President Donald Trump is once again postponing aggressive new tariffs that went into effect on March 4. Trump, however, isn’t canceling the tariffs — only delaying them — and in April, new 25% tariffs on goods imported into the United States from Canada and Mexico are scheduled to go back into effect.
During a Friday night, March 7 appearance on MSNBC, GOP strategist Rick Tyler was highly critical of Trump’s new tariffs — which he compared to a “wrecking ball” and warned are creating “chaos” in the U.S. economy.
Tyler told MSNBC host Symone Sanders, “Tariffs have a negative effect on the economy — we don’t have to wonder about it. It’s like a wrecking ball at the apex aimed at the building when the wrecking ball starts to move. We know what’s going to happen: It’s going to hit the building. That’s what’s going to happen.”
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The GOP strategist continued, “Let’s be clear about what tariffs are: Tariffs are a tax. Republicans used to not like taxes. Now, they love taxes. They love 25% taxes, and it is the worst kind of tax because it’s a regressive tax — mostly on the poor and the middle class. And so, what happens is: imports come in, they go to the port. You cannot release those imports from the port until somebody pays the 25 percent tax.”
Tyler noted that someone will have to “absorb the tax,” be it “the importer,” “the distributor” or “the retailer.” And he argued that a variety of economists, from liberal Keynesians to the conservative Austrian school, hate tariffs.
The conservative added, however, “But in most cases, eventually — because we live in a market economy and there’s competitors — they will have to raise the price. Who will pay that price? People who shop at Walmart, people who buy cars, people who buy washing machines, people who buy refrigerators…. People are paying more than they were when Trump took office, and they’re looking for relief. I don’t see how they’re going to absorb the 25% tax on all of these different products.”
Tyler also pointed out that tariffs create “supply chain” issues, warning, “And that is chaos. The market can’t deal with that. Markets hate chaos.”
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