Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick enthusiastically defended Donald Trump’s erratic tariffs on Tuesday, claiming that even if they trigger a recession they’re “worth it.”
“The markets are going to learn, let the dealmaker make his deals,” Lutnick crowed on CBS Evening News about Trump.
Lutnick’s comments were risky amid rattled investors, given that Trump’s on-again-off-again tariff threats and his nod to the possibility of a recession sent stocks tumbling Monday.
When CBS News White House Correspondent Nancy Cordes asked Lutnick “what is being accomplished” by never-decided tariffs, he insisted it’s part of a strategy.
“When you’re negotiating with someone and they’re not paying attention, and they are disagreeing, the president — who’s the best dealmaker ever to sit in that chair — is going to say, ‘Here’s my response.’ And then all of a sudden, shockingly, they respond,” Lutnick smiled.
“Will these policies be worth it if they lead to a recession?” Cordes asked.
“These policies are the most important thing America has ever had,” he responded. “It is worth it,” adding: “These policies produce revenues.”
Lutnick had just vowed on Sunday there “will be no recession in America.”
And the revenues raised by tariffs will be paid by Americans, which he failed to point out.
Though Trump has claimed that foreign countries pay the tariffs he imposes, they’re paid to the U.S. government by American importers, like Target, which pass on most of the extra costs to their American consumers in the form of higher prices.
Studies by economists have found that U.S. firms and American consumers bore almost the entire cost of tariffs — some $116 billion — in 2018-2019 during Trump’s first administration
When The Independent’s White House Correspondent Andrew Feinberg late last month pressed Trump at the Oval Office about his misconception about tariffs, Trump responded: “No, I think they’re paid for by the other country,” which is not the case.
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt was also pressed about the same issue Tuesday by an Associated Press reporter. He asked why Trump was imposing a tax hike on consumers, referring to tariffs, which function much like a sales tax on imported goods.
Leavitt incorrectly insisted tariffs are a “tax hike on foreign countries.”
When she was challenged with actual facts, Leavitt snapped: "I think it's insulting that you're trying to test my knowledge of economics and the decisions that this president has made."
MSNBC’s Nicolle Wallace said later that Leavitt is “either tragically uninformed or lying.”
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