“When our Country had no debt and built everything from Highways to the Military with CASH, we had a big system of Tariffs. Now we allow other countries to steal our wealth, treasure, and jobs – But no more! The USA is doing great, with unlimited upside into the future!”
His history lesson is largely incorrect.
Facts First: The US has almost never had “no debt.” It was not even close to debt-free when it created the Interstate Highway System, and the national debt spiked when the military was built up during major wars. Trump was correct that the Interstate was not financed with debt, but he did not mention where the money came from: dedicated taxes.
Let’s go through Trump’s tweet step by step.
“No debt”: The US has been debt-free just once, in the mid-1830s, when then-president Andrew Jackson had it paid off. “There has been almost no period in US history when the federal government has been completely free of debt,” said Douglas Irwin, a Dartmouth College economics professor and a prominent expert on US economic and trade history.
“A big system of tariffs”: “Big” is subjective, and the US had numerous tariffs in place as it was building its highways. But during the era when the Interstate system was founded, tariffs were being reduced, not increased: the US and its international partners in the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, the precursor to the World Trade Organization, agreed to shrink or eliminate thousands of tariffs during their negotiations in the late 1940s and early-to-mid-1950s. By the 1950s, Irwin said, “tariffs were relatively low” in historical terms, in the 10% range overall, “and at that time raised a trivial amount of revenue for the government.”
“He’s dumbing down something that’s extremely complex. And what he doesn’t want to talk about is, of course, taxes,” said Tom Lewis, author of the 1997 book Divided Highways: Building the Interstate Highways, Transforming American Life.
CNN’s Nikki Carvajal contributed to this story.
Source : Nbcnewyork