He president-elect Donald Trump announced plans Tuesday to create a new agency called the External Revenue Service to collect taxes, tariffs and other revenue from foreign nations.
“We will start charging those who profit off of us from trade, and they will start paying,” Trump said Tuesday on his social media site, Truth Social. He compared his creation to the Treasury Department’s Internal Revenue Service. United States (IRS), which is the nation’s domestic tax collector.
Creating a new agency requires an act of Congress, and Republicans have majorities in both chambers, the House of Representatives and the Senate.
Trump, who has promised to reduce the size of government, would be creating a new agency for functions already handled by existing agencies, including the Department of Commerce and Customs and Border Protection, which collect taxes and revenue from other nations.
The president-elect has named two business titans to lead his Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, a nongovernmental task force assigned to find ways to lay off federal workers, cut programs and reduce federal regulations, all part of what he calls his “Save America” agenda for a second term in the White House.
Billionaire Elon Musk and entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy are leading DOGE’s ambitious efforts to reduce the size and scope of the federal government.
The tariffs, with the threat of a possible 25% levy on all goods from allies such as Canada and Mexico and 60% on goods from China, have become a touchstone of Trump’s economic agenda as he addresses his second term.
Economists have said the cost of tariffs will be passed on to consumers, and are generally skeptical of them, viewing them as a largely inefficient way for governments to raise money and promote prosperity.
Democratic lawmakers were quick to criticize the IRS plan.
“No ridiculous rebranding will hide the fact that Trump is planning a multitrillion-dollar tax increase on American families and small businesses to pay for another round of tax breaks for the wealthy,” the senator said in a statement. Oregonian Ron Wyden, the top Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee.
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