Political Quotes

“I rise to support my colleague Senator Kaine's joint resolution to terminate the Trump order placing blanket tariffs on products Americans buy from Canada. I am going to start by saying, as the Ranking Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee, I am always struck by how much doubletalk there is about trade. So let's be clear as we start this part of the discussion. Tariffs are taxes on things we buy from other countries. The bottom line is, those taxes make it more expensive for Americans to buy those products. No other country pays the tariffs. Let me repeat that. No other country pays the tariffs. The consumer pays the tariff. So if somebody tells you they can do tariffs and do it without raising prices--I am sorry, but anybody who says that with a straight face is basically taking advantage of you. Every credible economist, every automaker, every business on the record has said that Trump's trade taxes are going to make things more expensive for Americans. Ronald Reagan's favorite economist, Art Laffer, just released a study showing auto tariffs are going to raise car prices by $4,700. The Yale Budget Lab estimates that the full Trump tariff scheme is going to cost an average family thousands of dollars a year. It is one thing if tariffs are imposed with a good strategy, like decreasing sales in the United States by raising prices to punish countries that cheat on trade and changing their behavior so that U.S. workers get a fair shake.…”