One of the reasons the United States won World War II was because we could outproduce our enemies. As White House Senior Adviser for Trade and Manufacturing Peter Navarro explained in a Fox News Sunday interview, the American “arsenal of democracy” permitted the Allies to triumph.

Navarro said the “military might” of the United States allowed “General George S. Patton” to take “Berlin…with trucks, Jeeps, and tanks that were made in the auto plants of the Midwest.”

Sadly, American manufacturing power has moved to countries like Mexico where “50 football field-sized assembly plants…are…making the engines for here,” said Navarro. As the country’s manufacturing capacity dissipated in recent decades, the United States became a consumer-based economy, fueled by Americans buying massive amounts of foreign goods.

President Donald Trump is intent on changing that dynamic and will be launching a new series of reciprocal tariffs on Wednesday April 2, “Liberation Day.” The next day, the President is planning on issuing “25% tariffs” on automotive imports into the United States.

Eventually, so much revenue will flow into our country that the President envisions the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) being outpaced by an External Revenue Service funded by foreign tariffs.

This funding transformation will not happen overnight. In the last fiscal year, the IRS collected $2.5 trillion from income taxes and $1.7 trillion from Social Security and Medicare taxes. In contrast, only $80 billion was collected from tariffs and fees.

Of course, prior to the passage of the 16th Amendment and the implementation of the first federal income tax in 1913, the nation’s government was primarily funded by tariffs. According to Douglas Irwin, Dartmouth College Professor of Economics, “From 1790........

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