President Donald Trump has long praised tariffs as key to increasing wealth in the United States, idealizing Gilded Age policies that preceded the implementation of a modern federal income tax.  It would be great if it happens.

     Among the potential benefits, Trump claims, is the ability to replace revenue from federal income taxes with money the U.S. is taking in from tariffs - a concept he has touted since his 2024 presidential campaign, most recently at a Cabinet meeting Tuesday.  But tariff revenue doesn’t even come close to where it would need to be if federal income taxes were eliminated, and experts say such a plan isn’t at all feasible. 

      Here’s a closer look at the facts.  CLAIM: The U.S. is earning enough revenue from tariffs to eventually eliminate federal income taxes.  HE FACTS: This is false. Individual income taxes brought in trillions more dollars than tariffs did in the last fiscal year, accounting for more than 50% of total U.S. revenue, according to Treasury Department data. Tariffs made up only 3.7% of the total. In the first month of the current fiscal year, which began Oct. 1, individual income taxes accounted for 54% of total revenue. Tariffs made up 7.75%.  Trump’s proposal wouldn’t work regardless, according to experts, given the unreliability of tariff revenue as well as the harmful effects of tariffs on economic growth and their outsize impact on lower earners. 

     “It’s not possible. It’s not feasible mathematically or economically,” said Brandon DeBot, senior attorney adviser and policy director at New York University’s Tax Law Center. “And analysts from a range of different perspectives agree with that conclusion. Even the very substantial tariffs imposed this year, which are at the highest levels in the postwar era, raise nowhere near the revenue that income tax does.”