That's Steve in Illinois finishing off this half hour of your calls.
Thanks to those of you who participated.
unidentified
Got a live picture this afternoon from the East Room of the White House, where shortly President Trump is expected to sign an executive order restricting transgender athletes.
You see House Speaker Mike Johnson there, Steve Scalise, Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin, all in attendance as this executive order will be signed this afternoon.
Live coverage here on C-SPAN when it gets underway.
So what we've seen the president actually do with tariffs, what does it say about what he wants to do with tariffs?
unidentified
So he has a lot of different goals, and that makes sort of parsing his moves a little bit difficult.
It's hard to always predict what he's going to do.
This most recent round of tariff threats that in the case of China, actual tariffs imposed, he did put a 10% new tariff on China.
It was related to border security.
So he's talked about the flow of undocumented immigrants over the border, the flow of drugs, particularly fentanyl.
And he has particularly faulted Canada and Mexico, which obviously are at both of our borders, but also China, because some of those fentanyl shipments come in from China.
This is separate from some of his other tariff threats that are still coming.
And so there's a lot of different things that he might be doing with tariffs.
Is that Canada and Mexico specifically, or are there other aspects there?
unidentified
So the Canada and Mexico tariffs are actually still on the table.
They're just on pause for a month for now.
You know, he reached agreements with each of those governments.
The Mexican government, for example, is putting more troops at the border.
And Canada, too, is ramping up its border security efforts.
And so it's a little bit unclear what might happen at the end of that month, whether there might be a reduction or removal of the tariffs entirely or whether they might still go into force because that's still on the table.
But in terms of future tariffs, I mean, he's threatened tariffs on particular sectors.
He's talked about higher tariffs on steel, aluminum, microchips, pharmaceuticals.
He's copper.
But then he's also talked about putting tariffs on various countries like economies like the European Union.
And then he's also talked about a universal tariff, the potential to just put tariffs on everybody.
What's the intended goal of having such a broad tariff policy?
unidentified
So there's a couple of different goals there again.
One of them is, you know, President Trump sort of fundamentally talks about trade as it being unfair where the U.S. has, in many cases, no tariffs at all or lower tariffs than many of our trading partners.
And that's because the United States is a net importer of the world's goods.
But also, Republicans are looking at cutting taxes.
They're looking at extending the tax cuts that are expiring and also potentially expanding them.
And the administration is pretty serious about wanting revenue to help sort of offset some of that lost revenue.
And so that's one of the reasons why you could see, you know, people aren't sure whether the universal tariff is just a threat or whether he'll actually do it.
But one of the reasons why you could actually see it is because the administration is serious about wanting new revenue.
You had an event at Politico yesterday, and one of those people was Peter Navarro.
We have a little bit of him, but set up a little bit about what he brought to the table when it comes to talking about the president's tariff policy.
unidentified
So Peter Navarro, who's a senior counselor at the White House, has been with President Trump since the 2016 campaign.
He's been with him sort of the whole time.
He's one of the few people who was in the White House the first time and is there again the second time.
And he's somebody who is really pro-tariff, really pro-you know, he particularly is a Chinahawk.
And he's somebody who wants to see the U.S. take a particularly hardline approach on protecting our domestic industries.
And there are different sort of factions in Trump's coalition.
Some of them might be a little want to see tariffs used a little more strategically, maybe more as like a negotiating chit on things like border security, but really anything, and not necessarily have quite as many tariffs actually deployed.
But Peter Navarro is somebody who is really plays into that part of President Trump's instincts where he's the tariff man, as he says.
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From that political event yesterday, here's a bit from trade advisor Peter Navarro.
And I think he came to understand that this is a drug war, not a trade war, that what the president is concerned about in this case is American science.
So we got the news yesterday on a call.
unidentified
He's on a call, President Art of the Deal.
We're getting a fentanyl czar.
We're getting billions of dollars spent on this.
We're branding terrorists, drug cartels as terrorist organizations.
And there's a number of other steps.
A lot of that's how this is Canada, though, was back from yesterday.
So this gets back to what I was talking about initially, which is he has tariffs threats for all sorts of different reasons.
Now, with Canada and Mexico, we've had a free trade agreement with them for decades, right?
We had NAFTA that was signed in 1994.
We actually had a free trade agreement with Canada before that.
And then President Trump in his first term actually renegotiated NAFTA, and there's a new deal called the USMCA, and that's actually going to be under review next year.
And so one of the big question marks is, you know, why was President Trump doing this if we, you know, he negotiated a deal with them for largely no tariffs?
So to suddenly put 25% tariffs on everything, 10% in the case of Canadian energy, that would be a huge overhaul of the deal.
And so the point that Peter Navarro has been making, which is the same thing we're hearing from all across the Trump administration, is basically this doesn't actually have to do with USMCA.
This is just about the border.
Now, the practical effect is still to sort of, would be to blow up the deal because it would sort of render the tariff provisions moot if they were to take effect.
But the point is, this isn't about unfair trade practices at all.
The president ran his campaign on helping people with the economy and improving the economy.
There have been those that said tariffs would go counter to that.
How does the White House balance those things, square those two things?
unidentified
So it's a little bit complicated to try and figure out exactly the extent to which he intended to put these tariffs on and or still intends to put these tariffs on, right?
And so, yeah, I sorry, can you repeat the question?
Well, how did they square trying to improve the economy when they know the tariffs could be ultimately bad for the economy?
unidentified
Right, exactly.
So inflation, right, prices have gone up.
And so one of the big questions about tariffs is whether they're going to raise prices.
And so I'm not, this is where I was sort of going initially, was, you know, it's unclear the extent to which he really intends to put these really high tariffs on or use them as a negotiating chip because some of these really high tariffs, you know, they're not necessarily going to pass directly through to consumers, right?
A 25% tariff isn't necessarily going to mean a 25% price increase.
But it is probably going to mean a price increase.