Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick is an aggressive cheerleader for President Donald Trump’s economic policies, from steep new tariffs to the federal government layoffs being carried out by the Trump Administration with the help of the Elon Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). Lutnick drew a great deal of criticism from liberals and progressives after commenting that if his 94-year-old mother-in-law didn’t receive her Social Security payment on time, it wouldn’t be the end of the world.
But not all of the criticism of Lutnick is coming from the left.
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In a biting article published by the conservative National Review early Saturday morning, April 12, journalist Rich Lowry calls out “bad cop” Lutnick for his “incoherence” on Trump’s economic policies.
“The level of incoherence in the commerce secretary’s case for Trump’s tariffs has been off the charts,” Lowry argues. “The latest word is that (Treasury Secretary) Scott Bessent is now taking the lead on trade, with Lutnick getting the role of ‘bad cop.’ This pairing makes sense if the thought process is, ‘We’ll have someone who knows what he’s talking about, but might have to try to explain policies he doesn’t wholly endorse, and balance him out with someone who doesn’t make any sense. And then ,we’ve covered all our bases nicely.’”
Lowry laments that Lutnick’s “substantive case for” Trump’s tariffs “has been scattershot and unmoored from reality or any rational economic theory.”
“Your reaction to what a government official says in public might be, ‘Well, that’s reassuring,’ or, ‘He can’t possibly believe that,’ or, ‘Oh, no — that’s crazy,'” Lowry writes. “With Lutnick, the most appropriate reaction very often is, ‘Huh?'”
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Lowry adds, “On ‘Meet the Press’ a couple of weeks ago, asked about price increases in response to the tariffs, Lutnick responded with an eye-wateringly nonsensical answer. He said that balancing the budget would bring down interest rates, creating a boon for consumers…. Lutnick didn’t say how the budget was going to get balanced, a mathematical impossibility given the president’s mix of priorities: the status quo on entitlements, lower taxes, and a bigger defense budget. He suggested, though, that the trade war would play a role…. The obvious problem with this notion is that if tariffs work in convincing consumers to buy American, or in getting business to move supply chains to the U.S., then there are fewer imports to tax and the revenue-raising potential of tariffs is vitiated.”
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Rich Lowry’s full article for The National Review is available at this link.
