VOA News | Tuesday, January 14, 2025 
Trump says he will create an ‘External Revenue Service’ agency to collect tariff income

Washington — President-elect Donald Trump on Tuesday announced plans to create a new agency called the External Revenue Service to collect tariffs and other revenues from foreign nations. “We will begin charging those that make money off of us with Trade, and they will start paying,” Trump said Tuesday on his social media site, Truth Social. He compared his planned creation to the Internal Revenue Service, which is the nation’s domestic tax collector. The creation of a new agency requires an act of Congress, and Republicans hold the majority of both the House and the Senate. Trump, who has vowed to shrink the size of government, would be creating a new agency to perform functions already handled by existing agencies, including the Commerce Department and the Customs and Border Patrol, which collect duties and revenues from other nations. The president-elect has tapped two business titans to lead his Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, a nongovernmental task force assigned to find ways to fire federal workers, cut programs and slash federal regulations, all part of what he calls his “Save America” agenda for a second term in the White House. Billionaire Elon Musk and fellow entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy are leading the DOGE’s ambitious efforts to reduce the size and scope of the federal government…Read more