In a surprise announcement Tuesday morning, President-elect Donald Trump declared that his new administration would be immediately launching an “External Revenue Service” focused on collecting tariffs and revenue from foreign countries he stated are manipulating the international economy to the detriment of the United States.
The news, broken by the president-elect on Truth Social, came as a welcome surprise to followers who have supported the Republican’s mission to enact steep tariffs on countries like China, India, and Mexico, which they claim have stifled the U.S. economy by employing overseas workers who manufacture goods for less before they are imported. The change was framed by Trump as a way to shift the burden of funding the federal government off the backs of taxpayers and onto some of the countries that most stand to benefit from a strong domestic economy. “For far too long, we have relied on taxing our Great People using the Internal Revenue Service (IRS),” Trump wrote in a Truth Social post.
Going on, Trump cited “weak Trade agreements” without mentioning them, though he has been explicit in his condemnation of NAFTA, the decades-long…
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