Spicer: Trump Plans 20% Tax on Imports to Pay for Wall

Despite long insisting that Mexico will pay for his promised U.S. border wall, President Donald Trump plans to fund the estimated $15-billion project by taxing U.S consumers. During a press gaggle on Thursday, White House spokesman Sean Spicer said the president has decided that the wall can be funded by a 20-percent tax on imports to the United States. According to the pool report, “He did not give any details about that tax, how it would work, and he described it as a beginning of a process that would be part of overall tax reform.” Additionally, Spicer said, “If you tax that $50 billion at 20 percent of imports—which is, by the way, a practice that 160 other countries do—right now our country’s policy is to tax exports and let imports flow freely in, which is ridiculous. By doing it that way, we can do $10 billion a year and easily pay for the wall just through that mechanism alone.” Such a tax, if applied to Mexico, would affect the price of agricultural goods, as the country directly south of the U.S. is America’s second-largest supplier of such imports, mostly including fresh vegetables and fruits, wine and beer, snack foods, and other processed goods.