Q&A – Did President Trump Cave on Tariffs?

When the topic of tariff punditry comes up two thoughts come to mind. The first is an old and somewhat crud saying about opinions. The other is my saying about there being two sides to stories and one side to facts.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
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(00:24):
dive into tariffs and whether the President caved on them?
Has President Trump caved on tariffs? Well? This is brought
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(01:04):
free on demand anytime you want us. All right, So
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Today's note is this At Brian Mud Radio, Ben Shapiro

(01:27):
said Trump caved Unshia tariffs that it wasn't for d chess.
Do you agree? Okay? Before diving in, I introduced to
you on topic Treasury Secretary Scott Ascent talking about things.
We had a plan, we have a process, and now
we have a mechanism with our Chinese counterparts to prevent

(01:50):
an escalation. Again, yes, because he was getting the same
kind of thing. Did you cave? Did you you know?
Back down? And do we have a plan? We are
executing that plan. The plan actually, if you've been paying
any attention, has actually been working really quite well, maybe
better than could have been expected. Today. When the topic

(02:14):
of tariff punditry comes up, two thoughts come to mind.
The first is an old and somewhat crude saying about opinions.
The other is my saying about there being two sides
of stories in one side of facts. It is really
frustrating to me, really frustrating when anyone of influence isn't
operating with opinions based on facts. In general, I like

(02:40):
and respect been Shapiro. I also tend to agree with
him about tariffs, as I've a long said, I'm not
a tariff person either. It's not my inclination to do
the tariff thing. With that said, President Trump's used the
tariffs in his first term proved to be so effective
the President Biden at them in place, and it kind

(03:03):
of changed my perspective a little bit. It earned him
additional consideration this time around with me because I was
the first time around, was reticent on it, and it
worked out perfectly. So new information I'm open minded about.
Shapiro was a critic of Trump's terroriffs the first time around,

(03:26):
never admitted he was wrong. Was especially loud when it
came to his Liberation Day tariffs this time around, which,
by the way, I think Joel's back to feeling liberated.
Oh yeah, maybe too liberated. Specifically, Shapiro said, I think
that the way that the tear of Playing was rolled

(03:47):
out is about as bad a rollout as you can do. Okay,
that's an opinion, right, It's an unquantified opinion, and by
the way, it hasn't a twelve in the early going,
as stocks and cryptos have more than fully recovered pre
Liberation Day losses, and the inflation rate has continued to

(04:08):
fall through April, though in fairness, the impact of the
Liberation Day tariffs wasn't felt in April. Also, we just
got word that we ended up having a budget surplus
in April, with tariff revenue doubling during the month being
a significant contributor to that. The inflation rate was three

(04:29):
percent the day that Donald Trump became president. It is
two point three percent today. Shapiro's comment, cided in Today's Note,
came last week when President Trump announced a ninety day
trade deal with China that reduced tariff rates by one
hundred and fifteen percent. That is when he said it
wasn't forty chess, but rather it was just people getting
yippie and bond markets getting queasy. What Shapiro did was

(04:53):
play a clip of Trump's saying that early on when
he quickly relaxed the across the board tariffs for most
trees to ten percent. But here's the thing, and it's
a considerable one. Trump hasn't caved done anything. There has

(05:13):
been no I was wrong. I'm going back to what
we had before. None of that has happened anywhere. Every
time that is reported, it is false. Anybody that has
said he's he's reversed himself is incorrect. Here is the
average teriffray charged by the United States on imports today

(05:33):
on January twentieth, So when he came into to office,
we averaged a two and a half percent teriff freight
on goods into the US. On April second, on Liberation Day,
after that announcement, we averaged twenty seven percent. Most recently
after the China trade deal was announced. So we have

(05:55):
the UK and China trade deals done, where are we
We are averaging seventy point eight percent. Seventeen point eight Now,
maybe you think President Trump's tariff policy is a good idea.
Maybe you don't. What is not open to interpretation, however,
is this one. President Trump most certainly has not reversed
his tariff policy. The average tariff rate charged for imports

(06:15):
most recently is over fifteen percent higher than it was
the day that he became president. It is also a
false narrative that's advanced by some who said his plan
was a poor one, it would fail in the first place.
Most people only hear that tariffs have gone up or
come down, not the terms, not the rates. They don't
understand the inner workings, and then to espouse opinions based

(06:38):
upon having that lack of information in hand just poor form.
And by the way, this is especially true regarding China,
because nowhere has it been more significant than with China.
The Chinese tariff rate by date. If you take a
look at January twenty eighteen, this was when Trump first
imposed tariffs on China, it was at eight point three percent.

(07:01):
Then when he became president January this year, the tariff
rate twenty point eight percent on China. Where is it
today This is be mindful after the most recent trade
deal with China, it is at thirty one point eight percent.
As of today, the tarifrates imposed on Chinese codes is

(07:21):
twenty three and a half percent higher than it was
prior to his first term. It's eleven percent higher than
when it was when he started this term. Also, the
imposed tarif rate on China remains twenty one point eight
percent higher than the rate being imposed on the rest
of the world, so China is still getting the sharpest
end of the stick. Additionally, when President Trump announced the

(07:43):
UK trade deal. He mentioned that the ten percent terif
rate would remain in effect and would be the floor
going forward, meaning that at a minimum, terif rates, even
after all trade deals take place, will remain a minimum
of seven and a half percent higher than where they
were prior to his administration. So it remains to be

(08:06):
seen what the long term effects of all this will be.
But what isn't open to interpretation is that he's doing
things differently. He absolutely is. There's been no reversal, there's
been no acquiescing. There is a plan he's executing that period.
Two sides of stories, one side of facts. Those are
the facts.