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PALM BEACH, FLORIDA - DECEMBER 16: U.S. President-elect Donald Trump speaks at a news conference at Trump's Mar-a-Lago resort on December 16, 2024 in Palm Beach, Florida.
Photo by Andrew Harnik/Getty Images

Oh boy, now Donald Trump is yammering on about a new ‘External Revenue Service.’ Goodbye, IRS?

Isolating the United States remains Trump's no. 1 strategy.

While it’s not exactly a mystery that Donald Trump‘s only lasting lifeline to relevance in the United States political landscape is the thinly veiled, ham-fisted mantra of “America first” at the cost of isolating the country to the detriment of the masses, never in our wildest dreams could we have dared to presume this was going to be his sole focus as the emerging 47th president.

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Trump can criticize the nasty, lying Democrats for instigating wars all day long, but it’s not going to change the fact that many of the conflicts currently tormenting the world go back to his first term. Trump’s isolationist policies weakened NATO, heightened tensions between Israel and Palestine, and emboldened Putin to the point that he thought he was going to get away with his “special military operation” into Ukraine. Now, even before stepping into office, Trump has been going around alienating every remaining U.S. ally by threatening tariffs and believing that the only way to give the everyday American some economic leeway is to ruin trade and make it even harder for the ever-diminishing United States dollar to maintain its value in international trade.

Trump is currently bullying Canada by referring to it as the U.S.’s 51st state and threatening to put a 25% tariff on all their goods if they don’t comply with his ridiculous demands. Caught in the growing web of his delusions, the convicted president-elect actually seems to think he can push everybody around to do his bidding without any repercussions. He’s probably even baffled when sovereign states fight back against his ambitions. I fear the day when Trump realizes that he has been limiting himself in his delusions. When you’re only winning in your imagination, why just limit yourself to the country’s oldest ally, why only go after Greenland and Panama? Maybe the entire EU would like to be a part of the United States. The limit is the sky.

Well, even if every economist in the globe unanimously agrees that Donald Trump doesn’t understand how tariffs work, he’s going to push his agenda and damage the economy — like he did during his first term, only managing to raise consumer prices, reducing employment rates, and compelling the targeted countries to impose retaliatory tariffs on American goods. In fact, Trump has just announced that one of his first acts after being inaugurated on Jan. 20 will be to establish the “External Revenue Service” aka ERS to gather tariff income.

“For far too long, we have relied on taxing our Great People using the Internal Revenue Service (IRS),” he wrote on his Truth social page. “Through soft and pathetically weak Trade agreements, the American Economy has delivered growth and prosperity to the World, while taxing ourselves. It is time for that to change. I am today announcing that I will create the EXTERNAL REVENUE SERVICE to collect our Tariffs, Duties, and all Revenue that come from Foreign sources.”

Trump’s aides have alluded to the possibility of tariff income replacing tax as the main source of income for the country, but whether that’s even plausible or just another populist scam to deflect from the real issues running the country haggard remains to be seen. The only successful tax cut Trump managed during his first tenure, after all, went to line the pockets of his rich pals, so it’ll be interesting to see how he’s going to trick the feverishly devoted MAGA crowd out of their money next.


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