Echoing the famous quip by Larry Summers explaining the lack of a national VAT in the United States on the grounds that “Liberals think it’s regressive and conservatives think it’s a money machine”—but if liberals and conservatives reverse their positions, a VAT might be implemented in the United States—Mitch Daniels, the former Republican governor of Indiana and former president of Purdue University, recently published a piece in the Washington Post arguing that Trump’s tariffs are “a clumsy, unintentional first step into national sales taxation.” From the piece:

First in 1986, and then in 2001, the income tax system was reformed in ways that, on balance, were positive for economic growth and, in particular the ’86 version, brought somewhat greater equity and simplicity by removing some loophole exclusions.

Those bills had something else in common. Each featured a significant reduction, in many cases to zero, in the income tax liability of low- and middle-income households. . . . It seemed a good idea at the time. But decades later, it looks like too much of a good thing, and it’s bringing us to a difficult pass. . . .

Enter the Trump tariffs. Boneheaded as economic policy, they represent a clumsy, unintentional first step into national sales taxation. Though it’s unclear exactly what portion of the tariff tax is falling on consumers, no one asserts that it’s small. . . . Consider it a dry run. Even less transparent to the victim than a state sales tax or a VAT, taxation by tariff constitutes a step into consumption taxation, of people at all income levels.

Excusing 40 percent of Americans from income taxation has made for appealing social policy and jolly politics. But it has had the deleterious side effect of anesthetizing its beneficiaries against the true costs of Big Government. . . . Those who label the tariffs a regressive tax on those less well-off are exactly right. But when it comes to taxing consumption, odds are we’re just getting started.