Here are the import numbers (rounded) for the last three years for all goods and services, according to the latest revision from the US Census Bureau, here:
2008 = $2.5 trillion
2009 = $2.0 trillion
2010 = $2.3 trillion.
Federal revenues in 2008 equaled $2.5 trillion, coming mostly from income and social insurance taxes, as well as a more modest contribution from corporate and excise taxes.
To completely replace that income from tariffs would imply a 100 percent tariff, which is unimaginable.
Presumably at least some of our trade with the world is reciprocally fair, excluding it from such a punishing rate.
At some point along the tariff scale as you rise toward that extreme level, otherwise off-setting import revenues will fall as retaliatory tariffs are imposed by the global marketplace.
A 25 percent tariff on Chinese imports, as The Donald recommends, in 2010 could have generated only in our dreams something around $91 billion in revenues.
At a minimum, a vigorous reliance on tariffs for federal revenues today implies a much reduced size of the federal state.
