On Monday, Rep. Marcy Kaptur (D-OH) spoke on the House Floor about the effects of Trump's trade war and tariffs.
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NewsTranscript
00:00Mr. Speaker, today is the fourth worst day on U.S. financial markets since 2022.
00:09It appears the American people are in for a rough ride.
00:14Buckle your seatbelts.
00:16Prices are rising already, and our financial markets are turbulent, in the wrong direction.
00:25Economic recession looms ahead.
00:29Unemployment is increasing, and so is inflation.
00:34It wasn't supposed to be this way.
00:37The economic repercussions of the Trump administration's tariffs are far-reaching, and they're biting
00:43down already.
00:45They threaten to raise prices on everything from automobiles—and I come from an automobile
00:51manufacturing center—increases per car $9,000 to $12,000 per car.
00:59That's unaffordable.
01:02Housing is unaffordable now.
01:04Now cars.
01:05Now other commodities like items that everybody uses—gasoline, lumber, road salt, potash,
01:13oil, energy.
01:16The U.S. and Canadian economies are interlinked.
01:19They're interlinked.
01:21These tariffs are propelling prices upwards.
01:25We don't want them to go that way.
01:26We want to stop the rising prices.
01:32High tariffs impose undue strain across the board, and they make American consumers and
01:39businesses alike miserable.
01:42The cost of living is climbing already, and the economic stability many workers have worked
01:48so hard to achieve is being undermined as I speak.
01:52Now today's news that the stock market took a major nosedive across the board is serious.
02:02The Dow is down 900 points—the worst market outcome of this year.
02:09But it isn't just this year.
02:11If you look back, the plummet that happened today is not pretty.
02:15Perhaps the president thinks that putting a pause on tariffs will halt this market crash.
02:21His proposals have been like this.
02:23But I urge this administration to realize it is uncertainty that the market does not
02:29like.
02:31Manufacturers cannot reinvent supply chains one month at a time.
02:36This stop-start, tariffs, and tariffing are producing no benefits for America while already
02:44rising prices and crashing workers' 401ks.
02:48Look what's happening to people's collective wealth in this country.
02:52Close to home where I live, these policies are severely impacting all of the people I
02:57represent across the Great Lakes region, the industrial and agricultural heartland.
03:05Trade policy must be targeted carefully, and it should never cause chaos.
03:11And that is exactly what it's doing—causing chaos.
03:14Let me state plainly.
03:16Tariffs on our Canadian allies are foolish.
03:20And the businesses and people of Northwest Ohio, and all of Ohio, and the industrial
03:26agricultural Midwest overwhelmingly oppose this careless administration, ill-conceived
03:32trade war with Canada.
03:35Canada is our nation's most fair trading partner.
03:42Our accounts balance when you look over a ten-year period of time.
03:46Our nation should stand for free trade among free people.
03:51And that's what our trade with Canada does.
03:54Imposing tariffs on North American companies already struggling to compete with penny-wage
03:59labor abroad will drive our economy backwards off a cliff.
04:04Why would anybody want to do that?
04:07It makes no sense.
04:09Tariffs will hurt jobs across our region's manufacturing belt, in the automotive industry,
04:16in the energy sectors.
04:18The significant harm to our economy cannot be undone overnight, and it's happening
04:22right now as I speak.
04:24The region's economies are intertwined across the Great Lakes, with iron ore and steel,
04:31auto parts and finished vehicles, crude oil and refined gasoline criss-crossing our northern
04:37border numerous times before getting to its final customer.
04:42To put it simply, don't hurt North America.
04:47The American people cannot stand idly by while we throw out all the hard-fought gains we've
04:53made in American manufacturing since the 1980s.
04:56And boy, believe me, they have been hard-fought.
04:58Our region lost so many jobs abroad to NAFTA and CAFTA and China PNTR.
05:05We fought against those.
05:07We knew they wouldn't work, and they didn't.
05:09And now we've had about ten years where we've tried to rebuild our region, and now this
05:14just as we're making progress.
05:17It's really disgusting.
05:19Who would even think about changing tariff laws through a tweet that the president did
05:26at 2 a.m. in the middle of the night?
05:29That sounds kind of peculiar to me.
05:34Tariffs and trade policy have to be carefully calibrated.
05:39Where's the art of the deal?
05:42This looks more like collapsing economy in 50 days.
05:46Well, we don't want any of it.
05:50The American consumers are poised to be in recession.
05:54That's where we're headed.
05:55And I urge, in the strongest possible words, the Trump administration to go back to the
06:00drawing board, get some of the best experienced people, and we can recommend some to you,
06:07to figure out ways to solve the problem you want to solve.
06:10But don't put our people out of work.
06:13Don't stop reinvestment in our region.
06:16Don't drill down into people's 401ks.
06:20Don't harm the industries that are producing the real wealth of this country.
06:24The train on tariffs at the border is going backwards.
06:31Mr. President, Mr. Speaker, we need to redo this Trump tariff regimen and produce a system
06:42that creates wealth, doesn't destroy it, that doesn't throw our financial markets into chaos,
06:49and allows regions like my own, that have struggled so hard for decades to rebuild
06:55what was taken away from us, make a sound again.
07:00Don't do more harm to us.
07:02We've just reached a point where we have to speak out against these dangerous tariffs.
07:09They are destroying our livelihoods.
07:11People can't afford groceries.
07:13Our food banks are crowded with people.
07:17These tariffs are already biting down.
07:20America needs growth, not recession.
07:23Please, please, folks who hear my voice, urge the administration to redo its tariffs and
07:30take off this tourniquet around the whole northern border of our country that we share
07:35with Canada so that we can have robust growth again.
07:39We have worked so hard for it.
07:41Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
07:42I yield back.