In the News

Tapper: Lead lawmakers today grilled Trump's top trade official Jamieson Greer on Capitol Hill. Democrats especially demanding answers on the tariff whiplash that we've been experiencing from the Trump administration. Democratic Congressman Jimmy Gomez from California joins us now. And Congressman, obviously, you questioned U.S. trade representative Jamieson Greer ahead of the announcement of the 90 day pause today about the tariff strategy. Does the announcement today of this pause assuage any of your concerns about the Trump administration' s strategy, such as it is when it comes to these tariffs? 

Gomez: Not at all. During the middle of my questioning is when Donald Trump actually issued the reversal on those tariffs or some of the tariffs. So, and here's the thing. It just shows that it's chaotic. It shows that they don't really have a plan. Remember this guy is listening, Donald Trump, is listening to first Peter Navarro who made up an avatar of an economic expert that it spells out Ron Vera that doesn't exist to justify his positions. They had a formula that was panned by conservative think tanks that basically said, your tariff formula doesn't add up. And some people assume that it was actually created by ChatGPT, and then they're trying to say that there's going to be short term pain. But everybody knows that once these painful hits, when it comes to the cost, go into effect, those prices are probably never going back down. So everything that they're doing, everything that they're saying, doesn't pass the smell test. It actually raises more questions when it comes to why are they actually doing this in the first place.

Tapper: And we should note that we are pursuing U.S. trade representative Jamieson Greer. We would love to have him on the show. What do Democrats do over this 90 day pause? Is it even possible to prepare for another switch up in the tariff policy? How do you guys strategize? 

Gomez: One of the things I think we need to do is continue highlighting the fact that the tariffs that are currently placed at 10% across the board, are going to still increase prices. So the national federation of business came into my Dads Caucus today to describe how small retailers have receipts saying their cost of their products are going up 20, 30% and that they already have to take that into account. That means people are going to still pay more when it comes to a lot of different products, from shoes for their kids. Remember, 99% of shoes in this country are made outside the United States. So we should still keep hammering that message because this hasn't gone away. This hasn't relieved the stress that the American people are going to feel, and let's remember, Donald Trump said he was going to lower prices on day one. He's done the opposite. 

Tapper: Surely you have sympathy for the desire to have fairer trade with other countries and to have more U.S. manufacturing, more manufacturing jobs, return to the United States? Right?

Gomez: Yeah, I say that I'm not against all tariffs. I'm against dumb tariffs and dumb tariffs are the tariffs that unnecessarily cause chaos in the marketplace, make prices rise up and hurt working men and women, scare off investors to actually put more money into building factories. Because that's what is also hurting, and then at the same time lower consumer confidence. That's what we're seeing. I helped negotiate USMCA, the one that got 398 votes in the House of Representatives, 90 votes in the Senate, that Trump said it was a high water mark and a model for trade policies moving forward. The one that now he's claiming is defunct. So yeah, we know how to do it, but you have to do it with targeted tariffs that actually have targeted investments to build factories and put people back to work. Not this craziness that we're seeing from this administration.

Tapper: Well, let me ask you, just theoretically take a country like China, which constantly violates trade agreements, steals intellectual property and uses what many call slave labor to build, you know, iPhones or Nikes, like, how do we stop them from doing that without getting into a trade war? 

Gomez: Yeah, one of the things is when you start firing in a trade war, people shoot back. I want to be clear, China has been preparing for this moment since his last administration, and one of the things that you have to do is you have to partner with your allies. But what does he do? He slaps tariffs on on canada, on mexico, on the european union. he hurts the people that we need to rely on in order to take on china. so one of the things is you got to have a strategy that is global, that you need to be able to reach into asia using japan, using south korea, you need to be able to build an alliance. but this guy thinks she can do it alone. that's complete nonsense. we need all our allies at the table, but this guy is actually scaring them off and creating an opening for china to take advantage of. 

Tapper: Congressman Jimmy Gomez, Democrat from California. Thank you so much. Good to have you on. Appreciate it.