Maggie Hassan To Trade Rep: Would Trump 'Reverse Course' If Tariffs Caused A 50% Stock Market Crash?

2 days ago

During a Senate Finance Committee hearing on Tuesday, Sen. Maggie Hassan (D-NH) asked US Trade Representative, Jamieson Greer, if President Trump would reverse course on his tariffs if they caused a 50% stock market crash.

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Transcript

00:00Senator Hassan. Thank you Mr. Chair and Ranking Member. Good morning Ambassador Greer,

00:06thank you for being here. Before I start with a couple of additional questions

00:12about the impact of these tariffs, I want to associate myself with Senator

00:15Whitehouse's comments just now about the impact on our small businesses,

00:19particularly those who are critical parts of supply chains for some of our

00:24larger corporations in the country. As you know, Canada is our biggest trading

00:29partner too, and we are already seeing the impact of these tariffs with our small

00:36businesses, especially in our tourism industry, which is being decimated because

00:40Canadians are not coming down to New Hampshire the way they usually do. Let me

00:46ask you about a couple of other things. President Trump's tariffs have made almost

00:51everything that families buy more expensive. The President imposed a 10%

00:56national sales tax on all imports into our country, and an even higher sales tax

01:02on imports from more than 50 countries, including our allies like Canada. This is

01:07the largest tax increase in over half a century, and it's going to cost the

01:11average American family $3,800 a year. Their morning cup of coffee will cost more,

01:17so will new shoes for their kids, and so will fresh fruit. So my question to you

01:22ambassadors, how much revenue from the President's national sales tax will be

01:28used to give tax breaks to billionaires?

01:31So Senator, as you know, any kind of tariff revenue that comes in tonight's

01:37state's government, it goes to the Treasury and Congress will decide what

01:41happens, what happens to that money. You know, obviously the President wants to have

01:44a very competitive tax policy that's good for everybody. That was part of why he had

01:48such a successful economy in the first term, as he married trade action with good

01:51tax policy to have $7,000 and increase in real wages over that time.

01:55Well, let's be really clear. The President, besides the contradictions in the way he

02:01talks about the purpose of his tariffs, the President's made very clear that he sees

02:05tariffs as a way of increasing revenue. At the same time, he's working with the

02:10majority in Congress to give additional tax breaks to the wealthiest people in the

02:15country at the expense of working people who are going to be paying more for

02:20everyday goods, goods they absolutely have to pay, goods they were hoping were

02:24going to cost less given the President's campaign promises. But of course, he isn't

02:30keeping to those campaign promises as prices continue to go up. Now, the

02:34President's national sales tax is increasing prices for families. It's also

02:39causing huge losses in Americans' retirement savings. Ambassador Greer, with the

02:44administration reverse course, if the President's tariffs led to 10% inflation.

02:51Senator, the President is fixed in his purpose. This trade deficit and the

02:56offshore and loss of manufacturing jobs is something that has persisted for too long

03:00and it's dangerous. I understand your justification for the policy, even though

03:05there are some very contradictory justifications coming out of the

03:07administration. But my question is, what's the inflation rate where you guys

03:13would reverse course? 10% inflation that I just asked you about, that is higher

03:18inflation than we saw at the peak of the COVID economic crisis. But you aren't

03:23going to say here today that you would reverse course even if you created

03:27inflation as high as we had at the peak of the COVID economic crisis. I think the

03:32most serious inflation we saw was during the Biden administration. When we did

03:36tariffs in the first term, inflation went down. It's not going to be a

03:40one-to-one. Inflation is about how much money you're putting into the supply.

03:43Well, let's just be really clear that the Trump administration is here today to

03:47say that even if inflation hits Americans' pocketbooks at 10% because of these

03:53tariffs, then the Trump administration is still going to go charging ahead. So,

03:59Ambassador, would the administration reverse course if the President's tariffs

04:03caused a 50% stock market crash, which would hurt Americans' retirement savings even more than

04:08they've been hurt in the last 10 days or so? Senator, the fundamentals of the economy are so

04:14strong. We had 228,000 jobs last month. We have, you know, 9,000 additional manufacturing jobs from

04:20the month before. So again, your answer is even if the stock market crashes 50%, which is how much

04:26the stock market crashed in the Great Recession, you're not going to say here today that you would

04:31reverse course even if you crashed the stock market and harmed retirement savings as drastically as

04:38happened during the Great Recession in 2007. Senator, your hypotheticals are not consistent

04:44with the history we have seen with the use of tariffs. My hypotheticals are based on the fact

04:47that a lot of Americans are looking at their 401 s today and wondering how much of a lifestyle change

04:55they are going to have to have or whether they're going to be able to retire when they plan to because

05:00of the recklessness and haphazard nature of the Trump administration's imposition of tariffs.

05:05Nothing was thought out about this. This has been a haphazard, incompetent effort, and it's showing.

05:12Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you. Senator Cassidy.

05:17Hey, Mr. Greer. Thank you for being here.

Maggie Hassan To Trade Rep: Would Trump 'Reverse Course' If Tariffs Caused A 50% Stock Market Crash?

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