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April 3, 2025 - Sean Hannity Show
32:47
Returning Industry to America - April 2nd, Hour 1
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I'm Ben Ferguson, and I'm Ted Cruz.
Three times a week, we do our podcast, Verdict with Ted Cruz.
Nationwide, we have millions of listeners.
Every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, we break down the news and bring you behind the scenes inside the White House, inside the Senate, inside the United States Supreme Court.
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All right, today is Liberation Day.
We expect the president to announce his very specific strategy and plan for reciprocal tariffs.
We expect that to happen one hour from now.
When that does happen, we will bring it to you live.
And speaking of the word liberation, that will be our word of the day in our Tesla giveaway contest.
You just simply go to Hannity.com.
You click on the Tesla icon contest at the top of the homepage.
It will bring you to the contest page and you simply put in the word of the day, liberation.
Now, there is something technical everybody has to do.
Linda, explain to everybody what they must do about pop-ups or they're not able to register, just so they understand.
So, yeah, it's pretty simple, guys, but we really do need you to read the form.
So the form will say at the top, if you've disabled pop-ups or if you have an ad blocker, you're not going to be able to fill out the form.
It's a very short form.
It's first and last name, your birthday, just to make sure you're over 18.
It's your email.
It's your phone number.
It's very simple for us to contact you.
1, 2, 3.
But if you have a 2010-1000.
Yeah.
And by the way, you could turn it right off again and then put it back on when you register tomorrow.
You can register once a day, every day with the new word.
Well, you don't even need to do that.
You basically just go into your browser and you say, allow a pop-up for this one site.
You don't have to turn it off for, like, take it out of your browser.
You just got to turn it off for Hannity.com, which you should do anyway, because we're not going to spam you.
We're giving you good information.
But having- By the way, this has nothing to do with us.
This is our parent company, iHeartMedia.
These are their rules and regulations, not ours.
We want to make it as easy as possible.
But some people have complained that they have a hard time.
That is maybe probably in all likelihood the reason why.
Anyway, word of the day, liberation.
Go to Hannity.com and you get to win the Tesla of your choice.
You register once a day now through April the 11th.
And good luck to everybody out there.
I have one more little point because we're getting a lot of calls about this, as Katie is telling me.
When you are done, hit the word submit to enter.
If you do not hit the button submit, it is not in our database.
We do not have you submit it for the contest.
You got to hit submit.
That means you did everything for nothing.
Hit the word submit.
If it's Linda, you must submit to her will at all costs.
Absolutely.
That's what you should do.
Which I refuse to abide by.
Which I refuse to abide by.
And you're not getting a Tesla.
See that?
You have to buy your own.
You can't win it.
I'm not eligible to win it.
No, that would be, and I have nothing to do with picking the winner.
I'm telling all my friends to sign up for it, though.
I'm like, yeah, me too, man.
What do you mean?
And then I have friends that don't listen to the show.
They want to know the word of the day.
I'm like, no, listen to the show, and you get the word of the day.
It's that simple.
I give it up multiple times during the show.
That's it.
Anyway, it'll be the first time in decades.
And this really is beginning to infuriate me.
And I want to explain why I'm getting infuriated by this.
We are supposed to be the land of the free and the home of the brave.
We are supposed to be a people that are brave and think out of the box.
And this is driving me nuts.
America has been taken advantage of by many of our closest allies, which I will go into great detail and specificity.
And we seem like a bunch of gutless, spineless cowards because finally you've got a president that actually thinks out of the box.
He is not myopic.
And he is demanding a very simple principle be applied from allied countries, other countries as well.
And that is free and fair trade.
We have been abused.
We have been taken advantage of.
We've become a sucker nation in many, many respects when it comes to the issue of tariffs.
And no president has had the courage until Donald Trump.
And it's paying off big time.
That's another part of the equation that people refuse to even acknowledge.
And it's working on a dramatically.
The reaction, the response, the amount of money invested is now over $4 trillion in committed monies to be invested in this country that will create high-paying career jobs for Americans.
Other countries, and I will go into detail, they are now deciding to reduce or eliminate their tariffs against our country as a result of Donald Trump's measures.
That means we're going to be saving money at a very high level, and Americans will have more job opportunities with higher pay grades than they ever imagined.
And that's good for the American people on every level.
But they may get mad in everything.
And I don't want them to get mad at us.
I mean, when have we become so spineless?
You know, other countries rip us off, and we're getting lectured by those countries ripping us off, saying we're imposing tariffs on them and that they believe in free trade when, in fact, they don't believe in free trade because there never was such a thing as free trade.
There have been tariffs that have been applied to American industry, American farmers, American agriculture that have been going on for decades.
But this institutionalized thinking, group think, brainwashing even of the American people.
Oh, no, we don't want to rock the boat.
We don't want to make them mad.
We don't want to get them upset.
It's about time we demand the respect that we deserve.
It's really that simple.
Other countries have been ripping us off left and right.
I can start countries like India charging 100% on American imports on certain products, agricultural products.
That hurts our farmers, motorcycles, Harley-Davidson, it hurts our motorcycle manufacturers.
Brazil, 18% on ethanol.
Japan, a 700% tariff on American rice.
Japan's supposed to be an allied nation.
There's so many products that Canada's put tariffs on.
The European Union charges a 10% tariff on all American-made cars.
50% tariff on American dairy products.
They tariff all American guns, for example.
I'm just sick and tired of it.
You know, look at Germany, for example.
They have a 10% tariff, then they have a 20% VAT tax.
If you don't know what a VAT tax is, it's a value-added tax.
It's a national sales tax in Germany.
So that's like a 30% increase in the cost of an American car.
Well, guess what?
They sell eight German cars in America for every one sold here in America.
We're getting ripped off.
And if you want to know whether or not the threat of tariffs has been working, well, Israel has eliminated any remaining tariffs on all U.S. goods ahead of today's announcement by President Trump.
It's canceled its remaining tariffs on imports from the United States.
That's step one.
You might recall in February, before Trump's tariffs were set to take effect, Mexico agreed to deploy 10,000 troops in the U.S. at the U.S. border, the Mexican border, to stem the illegal immigration flow.
As a matter of fact, there's news on that front today, and don't think it's an accident.
The Mexican president, Claudia Scheinbaum, said that her administration has more names of top cartel operatives set for extradition to the U.S. as she steps up cooperation with the president.
The European Union, just because Donald Trump made the threat that he's going to impose tariffs back on them, has proposed lowering their tariffs on car imports from 10% to 2.5%, which is the amount that we charge them.
I mean, they're charging five times what we charge.
The United Kingdom, Great Britain, did not retaliate against Donald Trump's metal tariffs.
Instead, discussions began.
In other words, negotiations began regarding a potential reduction of the U.K.'s digital service tax.
The prime minister has called for a more pragmatic approach, opting not to retaliate against steel and aluminum tariffs.
And they are now negotiating a bilateral trade deal.
India reduced their tariffs in the lead up to today on motorcycles, whiskey, and are now proposing eliminating all tariffs so we do have free and fair trade.
And they're now negotiating a trade agreement with the U.S. that they're open now to lowering or eliminating tariffs on most U.S., if not all U.S. imports.
Colombia, remember they were threatened with the 25% tariff if they refused to accept flights for deported illegals?
Well, Colombia agreed to accept deportees on military aircraft.
Vietnam has cut the duties on U.S. imports, and they've approved Starlink as a Trump tariff decision was looming for less than an hour from right now.
You know, but the countries that have tariffs on the U.S., you know, it goes on and on and on.
The list is unbelievable.
Now, before I get to the specifics of it and the history of tariffs, because there's a misconception about tariffs, great column.
I think it was by Pap Buchanan today.
I think so.
I have to find out.
Anyway, Hyundai, do you think it's an accident since Donald Trump's been president?
They committed $20 billion to invest in the U.S. to create high-paying career jobs in the auto manufacturing business.
Do you think it's an accident that Apple, which has most of their plants abroad, has committed $500 billion over the next four years?
Do you think it's an accident that the UAE is committed to spending $1.5 trillion in the next four years, the Saudis $1 trillion?
Apple, by the way, is going to build their new factory in Texas.
They're going to accelerate investments in AI and silicon engineering and silicon engineering.
They have team facilities to expand in Michigan, Texas, California, Arizona, Nevada, Iowa, Oregon, North Carolina, and Washington.
Do you think it's an accident that NVIDIA has committed hundreds of billions of dollars for U.S.-made chips over four years?
Or SoftBank, OpenAI, Oracle, $100 billion for Stargate AI infrastructure in the United States?
You think it's an accident?
You think it's an accident this Taiwan semiconductor out of nowhere is committed to $100 billion building semiconductors in the U.S.?
You think Johnson and Johnson just decided because Donald Trump won for no reason at all to commit to $55 billion over four years, or a shipping firm CMA CGM, $20 billion, or that pharmaceutical manufacturers Eli Lilly and Merck have committed massive billions of dollars to be building manufacturing facilities and increasing capacity here in the U.S. Do you think it's an accident that Nissan and Honda,
both that were planning to build facilities in Mexico, decided to build them in the U.S. instead?
Or do you think maybe the tariff threat of President Trump caused them to make that decision?
You know, Geo Aerospace, $1 billion in U.S. manufacturing, they're committing.
You talk about the number of high-paying career jobs just from this $4 trillion that I'm laying out for you that has been committed investments.
It'll take a little time.
There's a build out period.
But this is money that's going to be in the economy in very short order.
And all these other countries, you know, that if they want to go in the other direction, little Justin unveiled $1.3 billion security plan for the U.S. and the Canadian border.
Canada only has to really do three things: eliminate tariffs on American goods.
Some, for example, you can't sell American seeds in Canada.
They put a limit on American dairy.
That hurts our dairy farmers.
And after they have tariffs at around 10%, and if you sell X percentage of goods or X amount of goods in Canada, then it goes up to over 200%.
This is insanity.
Canada is acting like they're supposed to be our friends, and they need to pay their fair share with NATO.
Then guess what?
It goes away.
All of these countries now have decided that it is in their best interest to go along with President Trump's demand for free and fair trade.
Others will resist.
And if they resist, we're not going to go any further.
As a matter of fact, the president's committed to going probably lower than the tariffs they are putting on us.
But otherwise, we are a sucker nation.
We're a bunch of idiots.
We are paying for them.
We're propping them up.
We pretty much pay for Canada's national security because they know the United States is not going to abandon them in their hour of need.
So they don't have to spend anywhere the amount of money or percentage of GDP on national defense that we spend in this country.
And what's the thanks we get?
Our dairy farmers, our poultry producers, other industries, they get screwed left, right, and sideways.
And you know what?
Now that the president is reacting and he's going to put major tariffs on oil and other important imports, guess what?
It's going to get their attention.
And what ultimately is going to happen is we're probably going to make a deal with these countries.
That's how this is going to end.
Hey there.
I'm Mary Catherine Hale.
And I'm Carol Markowitz.
We've been in political media for a long time.
Long enough to know that it's gotten, well, a little insane.
That's why we started Normally, a podcast for people who are over the hysteria and just want clarity.
We talk about the issues that actually matter to the country without panic, without yelling, and with a healthy dose of humor.
We don't take ourselves too seriously, but we do take the truth seriously.
So if you're into common sense, sanity, and some occasional sass, you're our kind of people.
Catch new episodes of Normally every Tuesday and Thursday on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you listen.
I'm Ben Ferguson.
And I'm Ted Cruz.
Three times a week, we do our podcast, Verdict with Ted Cruz.
Nationwide, we have millions of listeners.
Every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, we break down the news and bring you behind the scenes inside the White House, inside the Senate, inside the United States Supreme Court.
And we cover the stories that you're not getting anywhere else.
We arm you with the facts to be able to know and advocate for the truth with your friends and family.
So down with Verdict with Ted Cruz Now, wherever you get your podcasts.
What I told people I was making a podcast about Benghazi, nine times out of ten, they called me a masochist, rolled their eyes, or just asked, why?
Benghazi, the truth became a web of lies.
It's almost a dirty word, one that connotes conspiracy theory.
Will we ever get the truth about the Benghazi massacre?
Bad faith, political warfare, and frankly, bullshit.
We kill the ambassador just to cover something up.
You put two and two together.
Was it an overblown distraction or a sinister conspiracy?
Benghazi is a Rosetta Stone for everything that's been going on for the last 20 years.
I'm Leon Navok from Prologue Projects and Pushkin Industries.
This is Fiasco, Benghazi.
What difference at this point does it make?
Yes, that's right.
Lock her up.
Listen to Fiasco, Benghazi, on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
All right, before we get back to the topic de jaw, which is reciprocal tariffs and the need for it, and, you know, the weak Americans without spines, they might get mad at us and everything.
And why the history shows that tariffs are not what these idiots on TV, the punditry class, and Democrats are saying, I want to just, a couple of other things in the news that caught my attention today.
Charlemagne the God says Chucky Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries should be thrown out of office as the Democratic circular firing squad continues.
Listen.
So who's supposed to be the leaders?
Well, in Congress, you've got two people.
The first one is this guy, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries.
In America, we don't have a king.
We don't have a monarch.
We don't have a dictator.
In our democracy, we have separate and co-equal branches of government.
Yeah, I'm not feeling too inspired by business.
I'm not too inspired by business casual Morpheus, okay?
You take the blue pill, nothing changes.
You take the red pill, nothing changes but with cherry flavor.
And payless Obama's counterpart in the Senate, he's somehow even less inspiring.
It's going to affect beer.
Okay?
Most of it, corona here, comes from Mexico.
It's going to affect your guac.
Because what is guacamole made of?
Avocados.
Schumer is not the man with a plan to fight Trump.
He ain't the man with a plan for a good Cinco de Mayo.
It's not my job to say that any particular candidates need to be primaried and thrown out of office, but Hakeem Jeffries and Chuck Schuman need to be primaried and thrown out of office.
I like that.
It's not my job to say that.
That's part of the news.
Then Alec Baldwin claims America is in a pre-Civil War environment after watching a PBS miniseries.
The guy with the most anger that has more anger management issues than anybody else in the public eye, Alec Baldwin, you know, talking about a pending Civil War.
Listen.
And boy, you can see now that we are in a pre-Civil War culture now.
They describe things back then politically.
There are profound differences, of course, in terms of just history and age and what life was like back then and cotton and slavery, Lincoln, Robert E. Lee, and so forth.
There's just so many.
So forth, so forth.
This incredible story.
Awful that this country had to go through that.
Awful.
Yeah, it's awful.
He's trying to pretend that he is a historian.
Now, I got to give Alec Baldwin a tip of the hat here.
I got to give him credit.
Alec Baldwin probably had the greatest hosting moment in the history of talk radio.
Sometimes you've got to give people credit where credit is due.
Rush Limbaugh used to do a bit about the Tom Dashle radio show.
If Tom Daschell ever had a radio show, it would be just awful.
And it was very funny.
This is like the real life version.
Now, a little history to this.
He was trying out to be a radio talk show host on a station me and Mark Levin were on in New York at the time.
Okay.
We both called in.
He stormed out of the studio.
I blame Mark for this more than me.
He stormed off his own tryout show, and that's the history of it.
And then, unbeknownst to us, he tried another talk radio tryout, this time in Pennsylvania, in Philly, and nobody would call in.
I'm not making this tape up.
This is the greatest moment in the history of talk radio.
It did not result in a job.
All right, re-cue that.
Let's start at the beginning.
Oh, we've got some time.
Oh, great.
We're going to...
Now, when can we take some calls, Ivan?
Whenever we want.
We have calls that are on there now.
No calls yet.
No calls yet.
What number do people call to get on the air?
Ivan, do we have that number?
It's right there.
Oh, do I have the call number in front of me?
Sorry.
That's interesting.
Interesting.
At 1210 at PHT.
Of course, any other questions you have, any other comments you have, call us to the what else?
Call us, please, at 215-1210.
Now, if you don't call, we're going to keep reading from the Scientology manual.
You might not feel it.
You might not feel the energy right now.
You might not feel the swell of what's happening here.
Do we have any calls yet there, Ivan?
No calls.
Let's read some more about Scientology.
Is Sean Hannity a Scientologist?
Alec Baldwin posing the big questions tonight here.
Do we have any calls here yet, Ivan?
None.
Boy, it's just incredible.
Unbelievable.
Well, you leave us no choice, listeners.
Then he called his mother because nobody called in, because nobody was compelled to call in.
Nobody had a comment.
Oh, man.
That's brutal.
That is brutal.
But it's the greatest moment in the history of talk radio.
All right, let me get back to the topic de jaw, which is Liberation Day, as President Trump calls it.
We expect him at the top of the hour to make his announcement.
And there's one thing, and I go back to Stephen Moore here for a second because Stephen Moore has a great column out.
It's on FoxNews.com today.
And he points out that he is an economist.
He's not a stock market prognosticator.
That's not what he does for a living.
And he reminded people that despite the higher tariffs that were imposed by Donald Trump in his first term, which did cause a temporary stock sell-off, which, by the way, whenever you do anything new, different, out of the ordinary, not institutional, thinking out of the box like Trump does, markets are skittish to begin with.
So that's predictable.
But he pointed out those effects were truly transitory.
And he points out the history because the market then later surged month after month after month, and stocks rose by roughly 60% in Donald Trump's first year.
Not too bad a return if you have your money in the stock market.
I don't like the stock market.
I don't care if it went up 60%.
I'm not the big stock market guy, and it's not the greatest indicator because they are so skittish.
And I think for a lot of us, the average investor, the game is rigged unless you're in something for the long term.
And he said, here's why I think history will repeat itself.
Trump is the most pro-business president in 40 years.
His agenda, aside from tariffs, is positive for the economy, is positive for investors.
He points out the Wall Street Journal, March 29th, Trump ushers in new high water mark for deregulation.
The story details a rollback of 31 regulations in a single day that will reduce costs and increase efficiencies of power plants, the oil and gas industry, electric vehicles, wastewater.
Now, the president has also talked about his economic plan, and the president has said that he is in support, perhaps, of 100% write-off for people that build factories and manufacturing centers right here in America, and that there will be no, that there will be significant incentives for people to buy American cars.
Never mind the up to $1 trillion in lower government costs because of Elon Musk and Doge.
Never mind the $4 trillion that I just went through in the last half hour and committed investments as a result of the threat of Donald Trump having reciprocal tariffs.
And then he points out by some estimates that the United States is sitting atop a treasure chest of more than $10 trillion in critical oil, gas, mineral resources, mostly in the western mountain states.
We've only begun to tap into the great reserves which we have in this country.
And his plan for economic growth is that serious.
Now, I want to take you back to 2019 and Pat Buchanan.
Pat Buchanan is a smart guy.
And he points out, he wrote, this column that he wrote at the time is tariffs, the taxes that made America great.
And this happens every time this debate comes up.
Let me give you the history that he brings up in this column.
That the Smoot-Hawley tariff caused the Depression in the 1930s, is a New Deal myth in which America's schoolchildren have been indoctrinated into for decades.
The Depression began with the crash of the stock market, which happened in 1929, nine months before Smoot-Hawley ever became law.
And then he points out the real villain, the Federal Reserve.
And anyway, so he goes on to tell the story about Larry Kudlow, and the story began.
National Economic Council Director Lawrence Kudlow acknowledged Sunday that American consumers end up paying for the administration's tariffs on Chinese imports, contradicting President Trump's repeated and accurate claim that China foots the bill.
And he goes on to say, make the case that if you choose not to purchase Chinese goods, instead buy comparable goods made in other nations or the USA, then you won't pay the tariff.
And this is where America now will rebuild its industrial base, create high-paying career jobs with big manufacturing companies, chip manufacturing companies, auto manufacturing companies, and other businesses.
And tariffs, he points out, he says that those taxes made America great.
Those taxes relied upon the first and greatest of our early statesmen before the coming of the globalist Woodrow Wilson and FDR.
And he says tariffs to protect manufacturers, to protect jobs, to protect our business leaders, in other words, were the Republican Party's path to power and prosperity in the 19th to 20th century before the rise of the Rockefeller Eastern liberal establishment and their embrace of the British-bred heresy of unfettered free trade.
Now, President Trump is giving all these other countries the option of free and fair trade.
He points out the Tariff Act of 1789 enacted with the declared purpose, the encouragement of protection of manufacturers.
It was the second act passed by the first Congress led by Speaker James Madison, crafted by Alexander Hamilton, signed by President Washington.
After the War of 1812, President Madison, backed by Henry Clay and John Calhoun, and ex-presidents Jefferson and Adams enacted the tariff of 1816 to price British textiles out of competition so Americans would build the new factories and they would capture the booming U.S. market.
Harris financed President Lincoln's war.
The tariff of 1890 bears the name of Ohio Congressman, future President William McKinley, who said a foreign manufacturer has no right or claim to equality with our own.
He pays no taxes.
He performs no civil duties.
That is the economic patriotism.
That is what it means economically to put America first.
And then he pointed out that the Fortnite McCumber tariffs gave President Warren Harding and Calvin Coolidge the revenue to offset the slashing of Wilson's income taxes, igniting the most dynamic decades, the Roaring 20s.
That Smoot Hawley caused the Depression in the 1930s is a New Deal myth.
A tariff is a tax, but its purpose is not just to raise revenue, but to make a nation economically independent of others.
Now, if you go a little deeper beyond what Pat Buchanan laid out in his history and you look at what tariffs have done historically and what it means, you know, and you look at the EPIC Times, you'll find out auto manufacturing in Canada, Germany, Japan, Mexico, they're going to be the hardest hit.
Why should we care if Americans are getting those jobs?
According to an estimate from the firm PWC, the measures could increase the Trump tariffs, in other words, revenues from $76 billion to almost $697 billion.
The U.S. has recorded trade deficits every year since 1976.
Last year alone, the U.S. goods and services trade gap surpassed $918 billion, a 17% increase just from 2023 alone.
And if you look at automobile manufacturing in Canada, Germany, Japan, Mexico, they're going to be the hardest hits.
So what?
And if they want to put more tariffs on us because they're mad at us, fine, we'll put more tariffs on them.
The ball is going to be in their court, not in our court.
You want smart political talk without the meltdowns?
We got you.
I'm Carol Markowitz.
And I'm Mary Catherine Hamm.
We've been around the block in media and we're doing things differently.
Normally is about real conversations.
Thoughtful, try to be funny, grounded, and no panic.
We'll keep you informed and entertained without ruining your day.
Join us every Tuesday and Thursday, normally, on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
I'm Ben Ferguson.
And I'm Ted Cruz.
Three times a week, we do our podcast, Verdict with Ted Cruz.
Nationwide, we have millions of listeners.
Every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, we break down the news and bring you behind the scenes inside the White House, inside the Senate, inside the United States Supreme Court.
And we cover the stories that you're not getting anywhere else.
We arm you with the facts to be able to know and advocate for the truth with your friends and family.
So download Verdict with Ted Cruz Now, wherever you get your podcasts.
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