There is history that tariffs came before income taxes as the means to fund the government. We know this because tariffs provided most of the revenue that funded the U.S. government from the birth of the country up until 1913 when the U.S. adopted the income tax which replaced tariffs. The concept of tariffs providing the revenue to fund the country is being revisited in this century by Donald Trump, who sees tariffs as the solution to many of our fiscal problems including the deficit.