Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you the Underwood Tariff act of 1913

 Now is the time, Ladies and Germs, to think about... the Underwood Tariff act of 1913. When Trump insisted on renaming Mount Denali Mount McKinley, maybe he was being more than the Loony Tunes character he usually plays. Maybe it was a hint. The Underwood Act coupled tariff reductions and income tax. The income tax, brand spanking new from the 16th amendment, was not a mass tax. It was conceived as a class tax - the working and middle class was not the primary target. The wealthy were. It was the rare middle class worker who paid federal income tax up until the 50s. Government, in the pre-income tax days, ran on revenue from tariffs. There were other sources, but tariffs were the bulk of it. Now, consider a crazy person - lets name him Elon M. - who wants pretty much to abolish income tax on the wealthy. Well, how are you going to pay your soldiers, and more importantly, your defense contractors? How about - going back to the tried and true? The system of William McKinley.

Now, even as I type these words I can barely conceive of a person who thinks such a thing is possible in 2025, when we have run trade deficits since the Reagan years and every increase in value produced by technical innovation depends in the immediate aftermath on cheap manufacture in China or Mexico or Vietnam, etc.

But we are dealing with people whose views are cray cray, no matter how much the average NYT Op ed writer tries to respect them.

So anything is possible. However, the Democrats who supported lowering the tariff were dependent, at that time, on an all white South. The Rs who liked tariffs were business Yankee whites. I'm not sure how a policy that is favored by Rs under Trump is going to go over with a base that is now heavily Southern and midwestern white.

All of this history is returning like a nightmare just as we are going into the ring with the Democratic party in its worst shape in history - not an idea in site among the whitehaired millionaires who run it.

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