➡ Trump’s tariffs led to a 10% drop in U.S. exports, a 24% increase in the trade deficit, and the loss of 245,000 jobs, but also increased government tax revenue. Despite some people’s hopes, it’s unlikely that the income tax will be replaced with a system of tariffs. The government’s size and spending, not the tax structure, were the main reasons for the strong American economy in the late 1800s. The idea of switching from income tax to another form of taxation is complicated and could result in both being implemented.
➡ The U.S. has a history of involvement in drug wars and has influenced the UN’s stance on drugs. Recently, there’s been a hidden tax increase due to tariffs on products crossing the U.S.-Mexico and U.S.-Canada borders multiple times, affecting the auto industry significantly. This tariff hike could lead to higher prices. Lastly, a humorous note about Volodymyr Zelensky wanting a hoodie from the David Knight show, which is offering a discount until 2025.

Here’s some of the economic metrics that came out of Trump 1.0 tariffs. You had a 10% decline in U.S. exports. You had the Republican counties suffered the most because they were predominantly agricultural. You had the trade deficit grew 24%. 24%. You had 245,000 jobs lost. And most importantly, I think from Trump’s perspective, and my guess as to why he’s doing something this stupid yet again, it was a windfall for the federal government in terms of taxes. By every metric, it was bad for Americans. Higher prices, lost jobs, lost exports, but more taxes for the government.

Why? Well, because you got the income tax and you got tariffs. And that’s what’s happening now, too. In spite of all of the Trump delusional idiots out there who are saying, well, that’s it. You know, we’re going to get rid of the income tax. And they’re fantasizing about that. As a matter of fact, here’s Dan Bongino. If Donald Trump can convince the Republican Congress to get rid of the income tax for a system of tariffs instead, ladies and gentlemen, the economy will absolutely explode like you have not seen since the Reagan years may be bigger.

The explosion of capital and investment in the United States and the basically $30,000 or so raise a lot of people are going to get will absolutely blow our economy up like you’ve never seen before. Yeah, well, he’s absolutely right about the effect of that. But Dan is living in a fantasy world. Dan, that’s not going to happen. What’s the matter with that? Oh, you’re born yesterday? What’s the deal? I mean, there’s absolutely no way he’s going to get rid of the income tax. You might notice, Dan, that he’s bragging about keeping these tax cuts from 2017, making them permanent.

You might have noticed that he’s also talking about how he’s going to lower the income tax rate for corporations to 15%. And that’s a magic number, Dan, because that’s the number that the global governance has decided is going to be the minimum tax rate. He’s not going to go below the minimum tax rate that the global governance says the G7 and the UN. Oh, no, we can’t have less than 50%. So he’s not going to buck that he’s going to follow their instructions on that. Total delusion. Yes, we can all fantasize about how wonderful it would be to not have an income tax and what we could do with all of that money and so forth.

That’s not in the works. Not in the works. Tucker says about the income tax, he said, there was a time before 1913 when you could keep every penny that you earned. You didn’t have to file reports with the federal government telling them what you earned and giving the feds their cut. Your finances were your business and nobody else’s. You had the right to earn, own and keep property. And it was sacrosanct, guaranteed by US law and tradition. Imagine that. If you didn’t have to file a complicated return and self-incriminate on all of this stuff.

But just the reporting requirements, as I said before, it was always more important to the US government to get that information about you than even the money. They don’t care about the debt, folks. Come on. Can we just put that aside? The only time the government cares about the deficit is when it comes to taxes. They’re Bernie Sanders will talk about it. If somebody talks about cutting your taxes somewhere, we can’t, we’re losing the treasury, right? Trump doesn’t care. He wanted to take the ceiling off of the debt for two years.

He doesn’t care. They don’t care except when it comes to taxes because taxes are the power to destroy your life so they can control you better. There are no audits. Imagine that there’s no income tax and there’d be no audits, no investigations, no account freezes, no withholdings, no other forms of payment. There was your productivity and you and that’s all. Just imagine we talk about regulation, deregulating all the reporting and all the other stuff and having to hire accountants and the rest of this. How was the government funded at that time? Well, it earned revenue through tariffs and the government was small enough to do that.

Jeffrey Tucker says, back in those days, however, the federal government barely existed compared with today. More precisely in real terms, the federal government in 1885 spent an inflation adjusted dollars about 0.05% of what it spends today. The government, it was five one hundredths of a percent the size of the federal government today. See, that’s the ultimate problem. It isn’t that we are being ripped off by Canada or Mexico. We’re getting ripped off by DC. We’re getting ripped off by Washington. Washington is the enemy. That’s why Trump is pointing to Canada and to Mexico.

They’re the ones who are stealing from us. Trump says, oh, 1885, it was great. And Jeffrey Tucker says, yeah, it was great. Why was it great? Well, because we didn’t have the income tax and we didn’t have repressive taxation from the government because it was five one hundredths of a percent the size of what it is today. I mean, it was almost like CO2 in the atmosphere. Not a problem. CO2 is not a problem. A government that size is not a problem. Trump likes to talk about how wonderful the American economy was in the late 1800s.

Well, it wasn’t because of tax structure. It was because the government wasn’t spending so much money and didn’t have a lot of regulations. Government spending cut the regulations and you’ll get it regardless of how you do the taxes. But I don’t like the income tax. I said as many times of all the different ways that we could do a tax. I think that’s the worst way that we could do a tax. And I would support any other form of taxation. But the big problem has always been how do we switch from one form to the other without getting both? And in the past, until Trump, until the Trump delusion, people would always say, OK, that’s a nice idea.

But unless you’ve got a path for how to get from this to that, I’m not going to go there because they’re going to wind up with both. And that’s what we’re going to get because of Trump delusion. And so I find it interesting that the USMCA was ratified by the Senate and he’s going to ignore it. Whereas the Paris Climate Accord was not ratified and he has pretended that it was and followed it to the letter in his first four years. Well, I can’t get out. My hands are tied. I got to wait for four years to get out.

And now he says, and I want to get out of it again, but I got to wait for a year to get out of it. We were never in it, but we were in the USMCA like it or hate it. It was ratified by the Senate. The Paris Climate Accord was never ratified and he pretends that it is binding on him. And the one that he pushed, he bragged about and he got ratified. He’s sewing it to the curb. This guy cares nothing about the rule of law. Nothing. And so the reason, the reason that he gave for all of this stuff, um, quote, he said, I’m invoking the international emergency economics power act AIPA, I EPA, the extraordinary threat because of the extraordinary threat posed by illegal aliens and drugs, including a fentanyl.

Why didn’t he do it in his first term? Um, and so Brian Jalabi says, well, this is actually the first time I’ve read about illegal aliens and drugs coming across the border from Canada. It’s not even a thing. And he said, I looked up the stats on seized illegal fentanyl coming into the US in 2024. He said there were about 21,000 pounds. I’ve said earlier, 20,000 21,000, 21,000 pounds of illegal fentanyl seized at the US borders. By the way, there is legal fentanyl. Uh, fentanyl was created by the pharmaceutical companies, as Brian Jalabi points out.

And, um, you know, they don’t like foreign competition evidently, uh, 21,000 pounds of illegal fentanyl seized at US borders. And out of 21,000 pounds, 50,000 pounds came from, I’m sorry, 50 pounds, not 50,000, 50 pounds out of fifth, out of 21,000. In other words, as I said before, 0.2%. The other 99.8% is not from Canada. There’s no massive fentanyl industry coming out of Canada. And he says in his, um, official order here about the so-called emergency, another phony emergency addressed by another phony executive order. This guy doesn’t change folks. It’s groundhog day. He’s got you babe.

Uh, a recent study recognized Canada’s heightened domestic production of fentanyl. They got it up to 50 pounds, somebody and it’s growing footprint within international narcotics distribution. Come on. This is from the country that invaded Afghanistan, America, invaded Afghanistan. What do we do? Uh, we guarded the poppy fields. The Taliban was shutting them down. We guarded the poppy fields and, uh, the, uh, Afghanistan supply of opioids went from about 10% to over 90% of the world’s supply as we guarded it with our military. And, uh, Geraldo Rivera even did a report on that.

He’s been quiet about that ever since. I played that report many times. And then, uh, America is also the country that created crack cocaine to fund their secret wars in South America. And as a matter of fact, we’re the ones who have pushed the UN war on drugs. And yes, folks, it is a UN war on drugs. Uh, Richard Nixon, uh, became the face of the drug war when he called it a drug war. And when he enacted the stuff there, but where did all these four schedules come from? They all came from the UN Richard Nixon.

When he declared the war on drugs was enacting a UN agenda, the schedules that we have where they put all the different drugs and the different schedules, schedule one, no medical use, highly addictive is what they say for schedule one marijuana. Uh, and, um, I’ve said this over and over again as well, uh, car cars and parts cross the border multiple times, potentially exposing them to tariffs that could raise the cost. That’s what I said before. I said it is a stealth tax. First of all, uh, putting it into the products so that you don’t really know.

But when you have something like this, especially with us with Mexico and Canada, and that’s why I think this is really about, I think this is really about a massive increase in taxes while he’s telling everybody, but I’m going to take the taxes off of tips. And what he’s doing is he’s putting in a stealth tax. It’s really a value added tax. Every time these products go back and forth on the border, this tax is going to be added to him. That’s what he says the imposition of tariffs at each stage of fabrication would be disastrous.

Uh, says this article from the trade partnership worldwide. Uh, people, they said, uh, I’m sorry, that’s from the wall street journal. Uh, Mexico and Canada have spent decades integrating auto operations with factories near the borders for parts and final assembly of vehicles. And again, the ambassador bridge that was where the shutdown happened during the COVID protests, going back and forth to Detroit over that bridge. Uh, so they’ve been putting up these operations on either side of the border for quite some time. Last year, Mexico supplied the US with nearly 43% of imported motor vehicle body parts through November.

Canada sent over 25% according to research from trade partnership worldwide. Nearly every major automaker would be impacted. More than 40% of Volkswagen’s sold in the US originate from Mexico or Canada. Honda Motors, Stellantis, Nissan, General Motors also have above average industry exposure said the wall street journal. So, um, for products such as automobiles with complex supply chains for components that often cross borders multiple times, the effective tariff hikes could be even greater and will add to price pressures. Well, we all know that’s going to happen, except, uh, that’s not what you’re going to hear from the MAGA people.

Hello, it’s me, Volodymyr Zelensky. I’m so tired of wearing these same t-shirts everywhere for years. You’d think with all the billions I’ve skimmed off America, I could dress better and I could, if only David Knight would send me one of his beautiful gray MacGuffin hoodies or a new black t-shirt with the MacGuffin logo in blue. But he told me to get lost. Maybe one of you American suckers can buy me some at the David Knight show dot com and David is giving a 10% discount to listeners from now until 2025. At that price, you should be able to buy me several hundred.

Those amazing sand colored microphone hoodies are so beautiful. I’d wear something other than green military cosplay to my various galas and social events. If you want to save on shipping, just put it in the next package of bombs and missiles coming from the USA. [tr:trw].

See more of The David Knight Show on their Public Channel and the MPN The David Knight Show channel.