Donald Trump and Joe Rogan discuss potentially replacing income tax with tariffs in America: "We were so rich"

Donald Trump and Joe Rogan discussed possibly replacing income tax with tariffs in the United States of America. Trump has long advocated the economic policy of lowering taxes and increasing import tariffs, citing former fellow former POTUS (President of the United States) William McKinley's initial policies and the McKinley Tariff Act of 1890 as examples.

During his long-awaited appearance on the JRE (Joe Rogan Experience) podcast, Trump and UFC color commentator Rogan discussed various topics. Trump notably suggested that tariffs were a "beautiful" instrument, provided they're utilized properly.

Rogan then questioned Trump whether he'd floated the idea of, and was serious about, getting rid of income taxes and replacing it with tariffs. Trump responded by asserting that the U.S. was relatively the richest in the 1880s and the 1890s. He recalled that McKinley, who was assassinated in 1901, was known as the "tariff king" and spoke beautifully about tariffs.

The 78-year-old indicated that McKinley adopted the approach of not allowing foreigners to enter America and take jobs, factories, workers, and more unless they paid a big price. Trump emphasized that the big price was tariffs, which would ultimately benefit the American economy more than it'd help foreign nations:

"And he'd speak like that but he was right. And then, around in the early 1900s, they switched over stupidly to, frankly, an income tax. And you know why? Because countries were putting a lot of pressure on America. 'We don't want to pay tariffs. Please don't.' You know, believe me, they control our politicians. If you look at the kind of numbers that these guys make, then and now -- but we had a commission meeting in, I think it was 1887."

He added:

"Think of this problem. We were so rich. We had so much money. We didn't know what to do. So they set up a Blue Ribbon Commission on tariffs. And the sole purpose is what to do with all the money we had. We were so rich because we were taxing other people for coming in and taking our jobs."

Check out Donald Trump's comments below:

Watch the complete episode below (*Joe Rogan and Donald Trump's comments about income tax and tariffs at 40:44):

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Donald Trump and Joe Rogan on high taxation driving away wealthy entrepreneurs

As reported by Vox in 2019, Donald Trump praised William McKinley's tariff policy, underscoring how it'd help benefit American businesses by making it tougher for foreigners to extract profits from the U.S. to their nations.

Alternatively, CNBC recently reported that some experts have warned against Trump's proclivity for raising tariffs, which they believe wouldn't even come close to compensating for the deficit caused by massive income tax reductions.

During their conversation, Joe Rogan referenced the hypothesis that people support higher taxation hoping that the uber-wealthy millionaires and billionaires are taxed more because they earn more and that the lower-tier of the economic strata benefits. Trump replied by saying:

"Well, the problems are the rich people are going to leave, and they're going to close up their companies, and then the other people aren't going to have jobs. You know that's what happens." [2:41:15-minute mark of the aforementioned video]

Joe Rogan replied to the Republican Party's presidential hopeful by noting it does happen in other countries:

"It does happen in other countries."