By Harold Pease, Ph. D.
A few weeks ago we published, “Before 1913 No One Paid Income Taxes, Tariffs Covered Everything.” Actually we have always had tariffs as the Constitution requires “All Bills for raising Revenue shall originate in the House of Representatives…” and, “The Congress shall have Power: To lay and collect Taxes, Duties Imposts and Excises…” with duties being a synonym for tariffs (Article I, Sections 7 and 8). But 124 years later, with the ratification of the 16th Amendment in 1913, America replaced the tariff tax on countries selling their products in the United States as the primary source of revenue for the federal government with a forced income tax on its own residents. Today most paying are taxed a fourth of their income.
The first concern of the newly formed Republic was how it would fund itself differently than had their former British government, as an object of economic control which fed their rebellion. They passed the Tariff Act of 1789, “which levied duties on imported goods to raise revenue and protect American industries from foreign competition” (TRUMP’S TARIFFS Constitutional, or Executive Overreach?,”New American, March 24. 2025, p. 21-22). Such funded a series of canals in or through the Appalachian mountains, the most famous being the Erie Canal linking the Great Lakes with the Hudson River and the Atlantic Ocean, 363 miles long in an unprecedentedly efficient waterway. We had four transcontinental railroads, the Civil War, and the Spanish American War. We had schools, colleges, subways, an army and navy. Tariffs funded the Industrial Revolution and Americans kept all their earnings which stimulated the economy.
Many believe this still realistic if we do three things. 1) Remove the trillions in waste and fraud identified by the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) led by Elon Musk. 2) Require all federal spending to stay within the constitutional list Article I, Section 8. 3) Return to the tariff as our source of federal income excepting “unavoidable wars,” as George Washington admonished in his famous Farewell Address.
It was Democrat President Franklin D. Roosevelt, however, that ushered in the fourth branch of government, the federal bureaucracy, that necessitated a gigantic federal budget. “Beginning with the New Deal, the entire complexion of the executive branch changed, as president Franklin D. Roosevelt effected an unprecedented revolution … a permanent entrenched, professional government bureaucracy to impose continuity.” He “set up a welter of new government agencies tasked with regulating every aspect of Americans’ lives, organs that could effectively legislate without the encumbrances of legislative process, and which were ‘apolitical’ – that is, unaccountable. All of this was accomplished by FDR via executive order, particularly during his fabled ‘First 100 Days,’ which featured an effusion of executive orders and proclamations without precedent, along with an enormous volume of enabling legislation passed by a supine Congress” (“President or King,” The New American, March 24, 2025, pp. 9-10).
Roosevelt created “69 new government regulatory agencies” now referred to as the alphabet soup agencies. No president changed the government and Constitution more in his first 100 days in office than he. It was indeed a bloodless revolution leaving us thereafter at the mercy of Big Government. Moreover, he put these —not under legislative branch authority but the executive—where they operated virtually “free of accountability….This sprawling regulatory regime, wholly illegitimate by any constitutional standard, has been inserted into the executive branch…[this] completely restructured the executive branch and redefined the powers of the presidency without even the formality of a constitutional amendment.” Roosevelt’s first 100 days in office established “an unprecedented executive power grab that utterly —and illicitly— transformed the entire federal government and laid the foundation of modern Big Government” (Ibid.).
Donald Trump emphasized the tariff in his first term and is presently making it ever more dominant in the economy today. With it he believes we can gradually end federal income taxes altogether—as was once the case for more than half of our history. He would also like to investigate and audit the Federal Reserve, with a view of removing it, which serves as an open-ended credit card for the Deep State allowing it to create money at will for its nefarious projects and purposes. The most visible consequence of it is inflation which destroys the value of everyones money especially retirees on fixed incomes and may prevent the young from ever owing a home of their own.
There is considerable evidence that the Deep State, then called Internationalists, abandoned the tariff for their federal income tax and the open-ended credit system of the Federal Reserve or Central Bank. These hatched the same year, 1913. Trump’s America First Policy is a return to protectionism and a rejection of the past—even present— move toward globalism.
Trump believes that “America has been taken advantage of through unfair trade practices which have weakened America’s “manufacturing, led to job losses, and made the country too dependent on foreign suppliers—particularly China.” He would like “to reduce our reliance on foreign nations for essential goods.” (TRUMP’S TARIFFS, p. 22). He believes he can do this and restore the tariff as the nation’s majority source of income as it once was, leaving the people untaxed.
Some are critical, as am I, as the Constitution gives only Congress the “Power to lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises”—not the president. But that authority too was transferred by FDR to the Executive Branch by his signing the Reciprocal Trade Agreements Act of 1934 (Ibid., p. 23). So Trump is not violating the Constitution by initiating tariffs as used by both parties for ninety years.
But that is a small issue next to Trump’s attempt to reveal and destroy the ‘secret combination’ now commonly called the Deep State and Congress seems unable to impeach even a single rogue judge. We’ll correct Mr. Trump later. Other than Kennedy and Reagan, Trump is the only president willing to take a bullet to remove the Deep State.
Dr. Harold Pease is an expert on the United States Constitution and a syndicated columnist. Read his weekly columns at www.LibertyUnderFire.org Column # 820 `
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