Peter Navarro is an economist who currently serves as a trade advisor to Trump. In Trump’s first term, Navarro was also an aide on trade issues. When the January 6 commission asked him to testify, he refused. He was eventually sentenced to four months in prison for contempt of Congress.

Navarro claimed in an event sponsored by Politico that Trump’s plans to create an External Revenue Service to collect tariffs were brilliant. He predicted that tariffs would produce so much money for the government that they could eventually replace income taxes as the primary source of revenue.

Currently, Politico points out, tariffs are collected by the U.S. Customs and Border Protection Bureau. But the tariffs are paid not by the country selling the goods, but by the company importing them. Most economists predict that the price increases will be passed on to consumers, which is another way of “taxing” them.

In other words, tariffs increase inflation.