President-elect Donald Trump announced plans Tuesday to create a new agency called the Foreign Revenue Service to collect tariffs from other countries.
"We're going to start putting tariffs on those who benefit from trade with our country, they're going to start paying," Mr. Trump said on his Truth Social network on Tuesday. He compared the new agency to the country's current tax collection agency, A2 reports.
Creating a new agency requires an act of Congress, and Republicans have majorities in the House of Representatives and the Senate.
President-elect Trump, who has pledged to shrink government, wants to create a new agency to perform functions already performed by existing agencies, including the Commerce Department, Customs and Border Patrol, which collect duties and revenues from other countries.
Mr. Trump has chosen two well-known entrepreneurs to lead his Department of Government Efficiency, a non-governmental organization tasked with finding ways to lay off federal employees and cut federal programs and regulations, all part of the "Save America" agenda that he is expected to implement in his second term in the White House.
Billionaire Elon Musk and entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy are leading the Department of Government Efficiency's ambitious efforts to shrink the federal government and cut its spending.
The threat of imposing tariffs of 25 percent on goods from allied countries such as Canada and Mexico and 60 percent on goods imported from China has become a key economic issue for President-elect Trump as he prepares to begin his second term.
Economists say the cost of tariffs would be borne by consumers and are generally skeptical of them, considering them a largely inefficient way for governments to raise money and increase wealth.
Democratic lawmakers immediately criticized Mr. Trump's plan to create the fee collection agency.
"No amount of outlandish ideas can hide the fact that Mr. Trump is planning a trillion-dollar tax hike for American families and small businesses to fund tax cuts for the wealthy," said Democratic Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon, who is a member of the Senate Finance Committee, in a statement./Voice of America (A2 Televizion)
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