Your question contains errors in fact. The federal tax burden is levied on businesses via SS/MC payroll taxes, corporate taxes and other taxes. This system of taxation on businesses accumulates in the price of products and services.
When you compare tariffs to a NRST, American producers selling products at home, are taxed at the same rate as goods imported from communist/socialist economies, which frequently subsidize their exporters to undercut American producers. Tariffs are already provided for in the constitution and reasonable uniform rates provide all the revenue needed to run a constitutionally limited federal government. Promoters hope a NRST would replace the unconstitutional income tax and not be in addition to it, exchanging one agency for another to be the tax collector for the Federal Reserve. There is no need for a new NRST Revenue Service, tariffs could be implemented tomorrow.
Lastly, the NRST is not applied to American exports.
Of course not, American producers do not need to export products to Americans, but their goods would be taxed under the NRST. Tariffs would not tax American made goods sold to Americans, however the NRST taxes imported goods and goods made and sold in the US at the same rate.
This reduction in the price of exports will make American products and services greatly more competitive and will revive American manufacturing. In fact, other governments do exactly the same and that is why they are globally competitive whereas American international business is hamstrung by its current onerous system of taxation.
Replacing the income tax with tariffs would benefit Americans in two ways to a higher degree than replacing the income tax with a NRST. One by increasing our own standard of living by returning higher paying manufacturing jobs to the US economy and lower prices to Americans for American made goods. A NRST would be better than the income tax, but not as good as merely returning to tariffs. US tariffs would not be applied to American exports, either. I'm sure you will argue that other nations will retaliate with tariffs of their own. Let them. The American market is the one of the most desirable consumer markets in the world because it is the least socialist. Tariffs are preferable to NRST - because tariffs favor American jobs and American made goods, over goods imported from communist/socialist economies.
To be clear, we need to repeal the sixteenth amendment and replace it with nothing and fund the federal government with a nominal tariff applied uniformly.
Before America was exposed to the creep of socialism via Social Security, Medicare and Welfare, tariffs and excise taxes were all that was needed. Direct apportioned taxes were rare and had to be justified.
Excise taxes historically were high and it was a great discontent on the part of small farmers and business owners that saw a much larger ‘proportion’ of their income going to excise tax and a much smaller proportion on the part of large farmers and the wealthy. This ‘disproportionateness’ is what gave rise to populism and the idea of the Income tax on the rich. Today this disproportionate argument is drilled into socialists and especially democrat staffers. Persons schooled in the former Societ Union are well aware of the disprortionate argument in their studies of political science.
So tariffs were not the mainstay of federal taxation, it was excise taxes and they were skewed to benefit those with larger scale. For example, ‘rents’ were excluded from excise taxation.
The Rebate provision of the FairTax removes the historical basis for the Income Tax and eliminates the disproportionate argument from the debate. It was not possible to implement a Rebate before 1913 because the technology was not available to administer it. There were attempts prior to 1913 to exclude ‘first fruits’ or to nationalize tax holidays in market, but market calendars were intractable and it also meant farmers would have to get their product to market on those days else lose the tax free benefit. It simply was not feasible.
The problem today is that most Americans are paying into an unfortunate socialist hybrid system and the promises made to them must be kept. Therefore, tariffs and excises alone will not return the system to what the Founders established, a system that was brilliant in its aim to remove favoritism from a government that will always strive to seek more power. To carry the promises, the NRST must be imposed and with minimal disruption to the current level of funding, hence the FairTax is designed to be revenue-neutral.
However, the FairTax NRST is ‘transparent’ and its rate can be changed yearly. This alone is a great change. It will change the political debate over taxation like never before.