White House tight-lipped on External Revenue Service on eve of tariff implementation

Published April 8, 2025 2:58pm ET



White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt declined to answer questions about how President Donald Trump‘s yet-to-be-launched External Revenue Service will work, just hours before he’s set to enact a wave of tariffs on nearly 90 countries.

In January, Trump signed an executive order directing Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick to establish the ERS to collect revenue from the president’s tariffs and potentially even supplant the Internal Revenue Service.

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