From 1789 to 1913, we were a tariff-backed nation and the United States was proportionately the wealthiest it has ever been. So wealthy, in fact, tha… - Donald Trump

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From 1789 to 1913, we were a tariff-backed nation and the United States was proportionately the wealthiest it has ever been. So wealthy, in fact, that in the 1880s, they established a commission to decide what they were going to do with the vast sums of money they were collecting….
Then in 1913, for reasons unknown to mankind, they established the income tax so that citizens rather than foreign countries would start paying the money necessary to run our government. Then in 1929, it all came to a very abrupt end with the Great Depression, and it would have never happened if they had stayed with the tariff policy. It would have been a much different story.
They tried to bring back tariffs to save our country, but it was gone. It was gone. It was too late. Nothing could have been done. It took years and years to get out of that depression, far longer than even FDR had that office right over there for a long period of time.