During a House Ways and Means Committee hearing on Wednesday, Rep. Jimmy Panetta (D-CA) criticized President Trump's tariff policies.
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NewsTranscript
00:00I now recognize Mr. Panetta from California for five minutes.
00:07Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate that.
00:09And, Ambassador Greer, thanks for being here.
00:11I admit, before this week, I talked to a lot of my colleagues about you.
00:16They actually said a lot of good things about you.
00:18You got a good reputation until this week, I have to say.
00:22Because I actually wanted to work with you on solutions when it comes to free trade agreements.
00:26I think we still can once we get past this.
00:29And I hope that's the case.
00:31But, unfortunately, you're defending a policy here from President Trump that's absolutely incoherent and inchoate.
00:38It's a self-imposed tariff regime of ten times the amount of tariffs that were in place before this president took office.
00:45It is the largest self-inflicted wound to our economy in history.
00:50A self-inflicted wound that, if it stays in place, it could constitute the largest tax increase on working families in more than 40 years,
00:57costing households more than $3,800 per year.
01:01A self-inflicted wound that prompted one of the largest three-day moves on the markets since World War II.
01:08And it's a self-inflicted wound that's leading investors to expect a severe economic slowdown.
01:15Eight years ago, this president talked about American carnage.
01:18Little did we know that he would create economic carnage that is spreading something similar across the entire global economy.
01:26Now, the reason for these tariffs is based on a national emergency that we have trade deficits, according to him and you.
01:33Unfortunately, the president's thinking about trade is reflected in this policy.
01:39This weekend, after the markets tanked, after small businesses fretted, and after the president played golf all weekend,
01:45the president said, I consider any trade deficit a loss.
01:49That type of scorecard thinking, combined with the president's 40-year fetish for tariffs,
01:55that has put this policy in place and put us in the global economy in this position.
02:00Now, I know the president is painting all trade deficits as bad,
02:05but they are a product of larger macroeconomic factors relating to a number of things, as you know well,
02:11savings, investments, cultural demographics, and so on.
02:14But the president is acting completely irrational when it comes to trade deficits.
02:19He believes that trade deficits are subsidies paid by Americans to other countries.
02:22His scorecard ignores our trade surpluses and services to the tune of $250 billion annually.
02:30He is oblivious to the relationship of trade deficits to foreign investment in America,
02:36in that when we send dollars abroad for goods and services, most of those dollars ultimately come back to America.
02:42And he refuses to grasp that tariffs are taxes paid by American importers and Americans, not foreigners.
02:48A perfect example of this unreasonableness is our reasonable trade deficit with Canada.
02:53The reason we have a trade deficit with Canada is because, starting with FDR,
02:57we entered into an agreement that would sell us oil at well below market prices.
03:02We entered into and maintained that deal, and we maintained the trade deficit with Canada so that we can buy cheap oil,
03:09which is a huge benefit for America.
03:11And if we took that oil out of our trade relationship, guess what?
03:14We'd have a trade surplus.
03:15Yet Trump says we're getting ripped off, even though we are actually getting the benefit of that sweetheart deal.
03:21Now, absolutely, sometimes a trade deficit is a loss.
03:24Foreign trade barriers are a problem that includes tariffs and non-tariff barriers,
03:28but there are ways to remedy these things.
03:30Free trade agreements, as I talked about.
03:32Free trade agreements that don't require a tariff policy that cripples our economy.
03:36Yet due to the president's fetish for tariffs and superficial thinking on trade deficits,
03:41the president has imposed a trade policy that makes the global baseline of 10 percent
03:46with countries that have trade surpluses like Singapore, Australia, Netherlands.
03:51Countries that have free trade agreements are getting tariffs at 10 percent.
03:56Countries that are free trade countries are getting tariffs at 10 percent.
03:59It does make no sense.
04:01It makes no sense of exactly what the president wants to fix or how he's going about these tariffs.
04:08Now, it's really contradictory based on the lack of clear messaging out of your administration.
04:15If other countries eliminate their tariffs and we eliminate ours, that's just deal making.
04:20And we don't raise revenue.
04:22And businesses don't relocate to the U.S.
04:24If it's a permanent revenue source and you want to relocate to the U.S.,
04:28then going to have these tariffs permanently and there are not going to be any deals.
04:33So what is clear is that you can't have it both ways.
04:36Additionally, tariffs undermine our national security, as we're seeing in the Indo-Pacific region.
04:41Look, I know the president wants to bring back the Rust Belt.
04:44I get that.
04:44But a big part of that is political.
04:46It's nostalgia.
04:47And nostalgia, as they say, is the rust of memory.
04:51We are not victims here.
04:52Our economy is the envy of the world, partly because it was our choice to invest in other countries over saving.
04:58It was our choice to have bilateral trade deficits.
05:01This is not some unexpected crisis here.
05:03This is no extraordinary or unusual threat.
05:05This is because we chose to invest in other countries where labor is cheaper and therefore products are cheaper.
05:10And as we know, it's okay for working families to want to pay low prices for products in this country.
05:16I know that the president is saying we're getting screwed.
05:18But the fact is, is that Trump is screwing us with these incoherent, inchoate tariffs that in the short term and in the long term, domestically and internationally, and for our economy and for our national security, they are making us weaker.