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Trump introduces his tariff plan with a bizarre and embarrassing history lesson [1]

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Date: 2025-04-02

Irony is dead. Satirists are collecting unemployment. And the mainstream media reporting what Trump says is now indistinguishable from the Onion. America is in the middle of a long national nightmare. And the President of the once "Greatest Country in the World" is on global TV making shit up.

According to Trump University founder and history lecturer, nobody knows why the US has an income tax. The Great Depression occurred because the US did not have tariffs. And that economic calamity ended sometime after FDR's presidency.

On Wednesday afternoon, an increasingly unmoored man introduced his tariff plan with a history lesson in the form of a farcical tale told by an idiot. In his words:

"In 1913, for reasons unknown to mankind, they established the income tax so that citizens rather than foreign countries would start paying the money necessary to run our government."

They? Who are these "they" who had no idea why they were doing what they were doing? Of course, they did. The federal government first considered an income tax during the War of 1812. Established one during the Civil War (1861) — which was repealed in 1872. And Congress created the IRS in 1862.

Republican President Teddy Roosevelt proposed an inheritance and income tax in 1906 when he said:

"There is every reason why, when next our system of taxation is revised, the National Government should impose a graduated inheritance tax, and, if possible, a graduated income tax."

Another Republican President, TR's successor, William Howard Taft, gave a speech on the Income Tax in June 1909. One month later, Congress passed the resolution that would become the 16th Amendment. The Amendment was ratified by the states in 1913. It seems unlikely no one knew why they were doing it.

Of course, they knew. Taft, in his tax speech, was clear on the need. He said that to cover the debt incurred by the federal government that was overseeing an economic expansion unmatched in the human experience — and a country transitioning from a largely agrarian state into a full-fledged industrial powerhouse — that:

"it was not possible to do so by import duties, new kinds of taxation must be adopted, and among them I recommended a graduated inheritance tax as correct in principle and as certain and easy of collection."

Taft also acknowledged that a modern state with an industrial economy needed more than just an inheritance tax when he added

“In the Senate the action of its Finance Committee and the course of the debate indicate that it may not agree to this provision, and it is now proposed to make up the deficit by the imposition of a general income tax.”

Trump ignored all that when he added:

"Then, in 1929, it all came to a very abrupt end with the Great Depression, and it would have never happened if they had stayed with the tariff policy; it would have been a much different story. They tried to bring back tariffs to save our country, but it was gone. It was gone. It was too late. Nothing could have been done."

This version of events is so absurd the reader needs no assistance in dismissing the dotard's demented drivel as the product of a diseased mind unmoored from facts.

However, for anyone needing a refresher, the Great Depression started when unregulated financial markets collapsed in October 1929 (GDP -8.5). And had zero do with how the government collected revenue.

Then, when Congress, under yet another Republican President, Herbert Hoover, passed the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act (raising tariffs by an average of 20%) in 1930, the economy continued declining (GDP -6.4%). When foreigners introduced retaliatory tariffs, the economy really started to tank. (1931 GDP -16.1%, 1932 GDP -23.2%).

Finally, after 12 years of Republican fiscal and laissez-faire regulatory policies had laid the table for economic armageddon, a Democratic President saved the nation. In FDR's first year, 1933, GDP shrink slowed to -3.9%. After that, excepting 1938 (GDP -3.3%), the economy ran in the black until the cessation of WWII. And the country's concomitant expenditure on war goods ended.

Not that Trump explained that way. In his alternate-fact approach to history, he added,

“It took years and years to get out of that depression, far longer than even FDR — had that office right over there for a long period of time. The ramp system, it's rather intricate, was built because of him. And every time you walk up, you think of him. And he did a great job in many ways — but it lasted long beyond his terms, as you know. But it's not too late any longer, and we're going to start being smart, and we're going to start being wealthy again."

Here are the actual numbers:

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2025/4/2/2314164/-Trump-s-bizarre-ignorant-history-lesson-would-have-received-an-F-in-grade-school?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=trending&pm_medium=web

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