CGTN Europe spoke to James P. Moore Jr., Founder and CEO of the Washington Institute for Business, Government, and Society.
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00:00Let's drill down more into tariffs. James Moore, Jr. is founder and CEO of the Washington Institute for Business, Government and Society.
00:08Well, clearly there's a great concern on the part of the automotive industry here in the United States.
00:14Stolaris has already shut down some of their factories temporarily until they can figure out exactly what is transpiring.
00:22I spoke recently with vice chairman of Ford Motor Company, and it's clear that they are very concerned about what what is going to transpire.
00:31But indeed, there's no question that there's going to be a negative impact on the automobile industry here in the United States.
00:38Which countries and companies are going to feel the most pain?
00:44Well, certainly the big three here in the United States will be experiencing a certain amount of pain.
00:50There's been, you know, it's interesting.
00:53I was very much involved when I served under the Reagan administration in dealing with the creation of NAFTA,
01:01the North American Free Trade Agreement, that was then turned into a finer agreement in dealing with the composure of the relationship between the United States and Canada and Mexico.
01:15In those days, there was a sense that it was going to be through numbers and being able to have the three countries come together to be able to make different parts.
01:25But when you have all of a sudden, for example, parts two and three hundred parts of any single automobile coming from overseas,
01:33and then those parts actually have parts from other countries overseas, you've got a real serious situation.
01:41And we're talking about adding three, four, five thousand dollars per automobile.
01:46And that is going to have a dramatic impact not only on the automobile manufacturers, but on the consumers themselves,
01:52particularly when you realize that for each consumer, an automobile is the second largest purchase that they will make in their lifetimes,
02:01the other being their homes. And so this is an important period, an important juncture for American consumers in addition to overseas manufacturers.
02:11We know that there's lots of negotiations going on at the White House before that deadline for those really high tariffs in July.
02:19But we're also hearing, for example, the visit from Japan this weekend, not so positive.
02:25I'm just wondering how you think it's going to play out.
02:27I think it's going to be difficult. I know that there have been different timetables as to when certain tariffs would come into place,
02:35when certain tariffs might be removed. But this is this is a brave new world scenario.
02:42And we just don't know how it's going to turn out at the end of the day.
02:45America has never, ever, including the administrations of McKinley and of Andrew Jackson, et cetera,
02:53that have, in fact, had this kind of a comprehensive implication and and the way that it's been geared.
03:03And so we're trying very much to try to anticipate what this means and what it will ultimately mean to the American consumer.
03:10And so we're trying to think of theaurais to adapt the way that we can create if we can
03:34put everything together, and that we can die tomorrow.