The Late Show host Stephen Colbert mocked President Donald Trump’s sweeping tariffs, joking that Americans are free from the “tyranny” of foreign goods.
“Thanks to Donald Trump, America is finally free from the tyranny of being able to buy stuff from other countries,” Colbert told the studio audience. “Who’s ready to learn how to make their own iPad from scratch?”
On Wednesday, Trump introduced a 10 percent minimum duty on imported goods and higher tariffs—although 60 countries will be hit with far higher rates of up to 50 percent when they come into force this weekend.
Unveiling them on so-called “Liberation Day,” Trump claimed the U.S. had been taken advantage of by “cheaters.”
Colbert remarked on the timing of the tariffs.
“Reportedly, Trump was still weighing tariff options until late yesterday. Now, if you’re not steeped in the wonky language of beltway insiders, that basically means they were spit-balling ideas through the bathroom door at 3 am.”
“Tell you what?,” Colbert added while impersonating Donald Trump. “What if Ireland has to pay extra to be on the Lucky Charms box? What about that? I’m just spit-balling here. We stopped Count Chocula at the border.”
Colbert said the tariffs would be the strictest since the 1930s levies, adding that was “just one of the reasons we remember Herbert Hoover as our greatest president, why they named all those vacuums after him because, because he didn’t suck”.
“Now, worrywart historians believe that the 1930s tariffs were responsible for a two-thirds decline in international trade and led to a global depression.”
China has been impacted particularly hard by the latest decree as the president announced a 34 percent tariff on imported goods. In comparison, Vietnam and Taiwan face a 46 percent and 32 percent levy, respectively.
This has led to concerns that products manufactured in Asia or using parts from the continent will cost more for American consumers.
It comes as Trump claimed the Great Depression would have been prevented if the U.S. had kept to its tariff policy, including the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act of 1930 - a claim experts disagree with.
The 1930 act raised tariffs on thousands of goods and is widely seen as exacerbating the economic downward spiral that led to the period of decline between 1929 and 1939.
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