Trump’s Tariffs Are Only the Start. Congress Must Now Cut Taxes and Regulations.

President Donald Trump announced historic tariffs on April 2—“Liberation Day”—to ensure that America is no longer “looted, pillaged, raped, and plundered” by other nations.

On Wednesday, the president announced a 90-day pause on the tariffs and lowered the tariff rate on most nations to 10%. He also raised tariffs on China to 125%.

His bold leadership, which quickly brought 75 countries to the negotiating table, he said, should be applauded. Clearly, his strategy is working: America is gaining leverage, and China is becoming more and more isolated.

While conservatives have been divided and disorganized about how to respond to the president’s policy, with almost all Republicans in Washington still watching from the sidelines, we’re calling on Americans to unify around a “yes, and” agenda.

That means saying yes to strategic, reciprocal tariffs that target China and other trade abusers—based on their barriers, not simply the balance of trade—as we work toward true free and fair trade.

And it means insisting that tariffs are most effective when paired with a broad array of conservative policies that alleviate economic pain on the American people. While Trump works to liberate us from foreign abuses, congressional Republicans must fight to liberate Americans from the burdens of federal regulations, mandates, and taxes.

Republicans Must Make Tax Cuts Permanent

First, we must not settle for extending the status quo on tax relief. Thanks to the majorities Trump delivered in November, Republicans must pursue deeper tax reform through reconciliation. Every penny raised from tariffs should be offset with pro-growth tax cuts.

Making the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act permanent is a good start, but we also must remove every remaining tax penalty on expanding hiring and business operations in America by adopting full and immediate expensing for all investments.

Pairing this with a simplified flat tax for all is even better. Congress should collapse the personal income and corporate tax rates to 15%.

Second, Congress should work alongside the Trump administration, using the reconciliation process, to transform the current 10% universal tariff into a true border-adjusted tariff. That means applying a universal 10% tariff on all imports, while granting a matching 10% credit to all American exports.

That isn’t just smart policy—it’s a long-overdue correction to a global tax system that has punished American industry for decades.

We’ve let foreign goods pour into our markets tax-free, while our manufacturers are taxed at home and slapped again abroad. That’s not free trade—it’s economic surrender. And no country has abused this broken system more brazenly than China, which has cheated on trade, exploited our openness, and gutted the U.S. industry while Washington looked the other way.

If we want to rebuild our economy, secure our supply chains, and end our dependence on adversarial regimes, then a border adjustment tariff must be part of the conservative economic playbook.

As a bonus, these revenues can be used to offset lost revenue from the lower tax rates we are calling for.

Congress Must Cut Federal Spending

Third, Republicans must finally get serious about cutting spending—not with half measures or messaging bills, but with real, structural reform.

Through reconciliation, Congress should significantly cut mandatory spending riddled with waste, fraud, and abuse.

Now is not the time to settle for the lowest common denominator, which is always a temptation in politics. If we are to undo the fiscal and inflationary damage done by the previous administration and decades of fiscal irresponsibility, we must go big and take advantage of this historic electoral mandate.

Then, through the appropriations process, we must slash the bloated discretionary budget that fuels the unchecked growth of the federal bureaucracy.

In the meantime, the Department of Government Efficiency must be fully unleashed to do its job—scrutinizing every dollar, rooting out inefficiency, and holding agencies accountable. This is how we restore fiscal integrity and prove to the American people that their government works for them, not the other way around.

Businesses Need Deregulation

Fourth, American enterprise must be unleashed through sweeping deregulation. For too long, unelected bureaucrats have imposed crushing rules that stifle innovation, punish small businesses, and expand government control far beyond its proper bounds.

It’s time for Congress to reassert its constitutional authority, starting by empowering lawmakers to roll back legacy regulations that have accumulated over decades of executive overreach by passing the REINS Act and the Sunset Act.

At the same time, the administration should lead a coordinated effort—through executive orders and agency rulemaking—to dismantle the regulatory state piece by piece.

Fifth, permitting reform is long overdue, and it’s time we treat it like the national priority it is. For decades, radical environmentalists and bloated bureaucracies have used red tape to delay, derail, and destroy American energy and infrastructure projects. The result? Higher costs, energy dependence, and missed opportunities for American workers.

We need to streamline the permitting process from top to bottom—cut timelines, eliminate duplicative reviews, and ensure projects get approved on merit, not political ideology. If we’re serious about unleashing American energy, rebuilding our industrial base, and securing true energy independence, then Congress must act—the administration must lead—with bold, unapologetic reform.

In Washington, conservatives talk a lot about policies, but policies are not ends in themselves. They’re tools to achieve a certain end—the flourishing of the American people. Americans care about policy only insofar as it influences how they can purchase a home, build strong families, raise their children in safe communities, and live lives rooted in faith, purpose, and freedom.

For too long, America’s strength has been undermined by a bipartisan failure to defend our own economic foundation. Congress and previous presidents ran up our debt, piled up regulations, outsourced our manufacturing base, surrendered our supply chains, and signed trade deals that ignored Chinese cheating.

All of this served government bureaucrats, but not the American family. The result? Hollowed-out towns, lost jobs, and a working class forced to pay the price for decisions made in Washington and on Wall Street.

This result wasn’t inevitable—it was a choice. And it’s time we choose differently. It’s time to put American industry, families, and sovereignty back at the center of our national agenda.

As conservatives, we’re not just fighting for policies—we’re fighting for the American way of life. A way of life rooted in personal responsibility, bound by opportunity, and defined by human dignity. Every policy we advance—whether it’s tax reform, deregulation, tariffs, or border security—must serve that higher purpose: to strengthen families, empower communities, and preserve the blessings of liberty for the next generation.

Originally published by USA Today