Transcript
Person A (0:00)
This okay, because Donald Trump could blow.
Person B (0:02)
Up his own trade deal with Mexico and Canada.
Person A (0:06)
Can we just talk about the kind.
Person B (0:07)
Of damage that these tariffs could do.
Person A (0:08)
To our relationship with our closest trade partners like Mexico?
Person B (0:12)
$400 billion with a B worth of.
Carrie Lake (0:17)
Goods are imported from Mexico to the United States.
Person B (0:20)
That's a lot of stuff.
Stephen K. Bannon (0:23)
I think it's really worth highlighting here just how we are not talking about a repeat of Trump's first term tariffs. In his first term, Trump definitely expanded the remit of US Tariffs targeting, for instance, Chinese steel and other Chinese products, imposing about, you know, tariffs on around 300, $350 billion worth of Chinese tariffs. That is peanuts compared to the disruption that Trump is promising now. Maybe he'll still pull back from the brink. We'll have to what he does, obviously. But he's now talking about tariffs on close to $2 trillion worth of goods just from Mexico and Canada. And China is our third biggest trading partner, and that could be subject to another 10%, as you mentioned. So really worth getting in people's heads that this is really not a similar thing that Trump did last time. It's a category different to say, I'm not going to just target these sectors that we want to bring back US Production of, but I'm going to target everything that these countries ship to the US including, as that opening segment alluded to, things like avocados that we import from Mexico but don't really have the capacity to make here in terms of what domestic consumers want. So this is a really big threat to the economy. It is something that economists thought that maybe Trump was bluffing in the campaign trail or hope that he was bluffing on during the campaign trail. But he's making clear that at a minimum, he's going to walk up to the ledge and a lot of people are going to be in the crosshairs.
Economist/Analyst (1:52)
Mexico and Canada are two of the biggest exporters of fresh fruit and vegetables to the United States. In 2022, Mexico supplied 51% of fresh fruit and 69% of fresh vegetables imported into the US while Canada supplied 2% of fresh fruit and 20% of fresh vegetables. Think about that. A combined 53% of all of our imported fresh fruits and a combined 89% of all of our imported fresh vegetables. 89% of all imported vegetables. That is a lot of vegetables. But I don't know, maybe you're someone who likes the sound of that. Maybe you think the US should grow more of its fruits and vegetables domestically and just stop importing so much well, the problem there is that Trump's other signature promise could destroy that option too. According to the Departments of Labor and Agriculture, nearly half of the nation's nearly 2 million farmworkers lack legal status. The same is true of the workforce that makes up our domestic dairy and meat packing industries. Now, I am no professor of economics. Who am I to say that that would make American grocery prices skyrocket? Luckily for me, Reuters talked to a food economics and policy professor who told Reuters that mass removal of farmworkers would shock the food supply chain and drive consumer grocery prices higher. It's not just grocery bills that will feel the impact of Trump's agenda here. Take housing costs. Not only does the US get the majority of its imported lumber from Canada, which Trumps tariffs would make 25% more expensive, but Trump wants to deport the labor force that builds a gigantic portion of America's housing. This weekend, Texas construction industry sounded the alarm about just how devastating Trump's promised deportations would be for the industry's capacity to build. The CEO of the construction giant Marek told npr, it would devastate our industry. We wouldn't finish our highways, we wouldn't finish our schools. Housing would disappear. They'd lose half their labor. Tariffs on their own could devastate our economy. Mass deportation on its own could devastate our economy. And Donald Trump says he wants to do both.
