At her town hall event in Queens, New York, on Friday, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) discussed the impact of tariffs.
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00:00Hi, I'm Liam. I just moved, like, last month.
00:03Welcome!
00:04I have a compound question here.
00:06Two really big issues, tariffs and the F1 deportations,
00:11both kind of related in the fact of how are you going to keep Trump
00:15as a crazy person in the White House that can't actually affect me?
00:18Kind of like the people on the, like, A subway trains that kind of rant,
00:23but, like, over there and not near me.
00:25Sorry, could you repeat? I'm sorry, folks.
00:30Sometimes it's a little hard.
00:31Yeah, can you?
00:32Oh, sorry.
00:33It was really about how, like, all these tariff problems
00:37and stuff that started affecting in the F1 deportations,
00:42how you, like, combating Trump's craziness with that.
00:47Yes. Okay.
00:49And you said combating his craziness with fact, you said?
00:54In all of those situations.
00:55How are you combating Trump's craziness, tariffs, F1 visas?
00:59So, a lot of this has to do, I think,
01:03there's different kinds of ways to approach Trump.
01:05I think a lot of times people have seen,
01:08perhaps felt the Democratic Party being a little on its back foot
01:14in the Trump administration.
01:18And I think it's because there are multiple ways to address Trump.
01:21And oftentimes there are a lot of people who think that we need to lean on institutions
01:29and rules and, like, processes in order to roll back and resist everything that the Trump administration is doing.
01:41And it's not to say that those things should be abandoned because sometimes we do win.
01:46Like, we are able to turn some of these things over in court.
01:49We are able to roll some of these things back.
01:51But also, we can't rely on rules with a rule breaker.
01:56And it means that we have to get creative.
02:03And it really does mean that with a reality TV show president, that public opinion matters.
02:12Public opinion really does matter.
02:14And when we're able to be on our offense with some of these folks
02:17and we're able to turn the public tide,
02:21then we are sometimes able to get and secure some changes
02:25and some rollbacks in what they are planning to do.
02:28And so I think we need to have, and this has been to our point here
02:33and what we did six years ago, both an inside and outside strategy.
02:38And sometimes I think existing, it has leaned too much on an inside strategy
02:42with not enough of an outside strategy.
02:45And it's very important that we be organizing and educating people right now.
02:48So on the point with tariffs, these tariffs are going to start to be,
02:53I want you all to know, we're going to really start feeling the consequences of these tariffs
02:58in about two to four weeks from now.
03:01Because in terms of our supply chain,
03:04and we all now are much more familiar with supply chains after COVID,
03:08in terms of supply chains, when these tariffs are announced
03:12and when they start to become enacted,
03:13we don't feel the issues in our supply chain the next day.
03:18It's when everything that was from the ports coming into the ports
03:21the day that it was announced, when that gets to our shelves
03:25and after they've been bought up,
03:27it's about what is happening at the ports the day after and a couple weeks after.
03:31And as we've seen, maybe some of you have seen,
03:33some of these ports are starting to kind of empty out a little bit.
03:37And so I don't say this so like people start stealing all the toilet paper from Costco.
03:43Please do not do that.
03:45But it's to say that things may get more expensive.
03:50And we're going to feel those changes in prices, not in an immediate sense,
03:55although some people may have already seen some prices go up.
03:58But we're going to really start feeling that in the next two to four weeks.
04:02And when public opinion,
04:04it's very important that we continue beating the drum,
04:09that these price increases are because of the tariffs,
04:13that the tariffs are doing this.
04:15Because what they don't want is for people to connect,
04:19A, to be aware that prices are going up,
04:22and B, to connect the dots that the prices are going up because of those tariffs.
04:26And so we need to be really sharing that information.
04:29I, of course, will be doing that in a public sense.
04:32But in an era of disinformation and misinformation,
04:36and there are plenty of folks that may not believe it when I'm saying it,
04:41but they believe stuff when their friends are telling them.
04:44And so our social ties and our social connections and personal relationships
04:48in transmitting information are now more important than ever.
04:52Because there are lots of folks that maybe won't believe CNN,
04:57or they may not believe, you know, TV,
04:59but they will believe when you say something,
05:02or when you reamplify some information.
05:05And so peer-to-peer information sharing is very important.
05:08And in fact, I think that's a big part of why they are rolling back these Medicaid cuts
05:13and delaying these Medicaid cuts.
05:15Because Trump is so much on the defense with his tariff disaster
05:20that now he knows that he can't take the hit on cutting Medicaid too.
05:26And so I think that we have to just continue to lay on him with respect to that.
05:30In terms of our community, and in terms of immigration,
05:35the Know Your Rights seminars and the Know Your Rights information
05:38has been very, very effective in protecting our community
05:42from kind of these ice raids that are trying to skirt the law
05:48and not fulfill their legal obligations.
05:52When our community knows their rights,
05:54and when everyday people know their rights,
05:57then we actually see some of that activity reduce in our own backyard
06:01because they know that they can't just take people as easily.
06:05They can't take an educated community as easily
06:08as they can take one that is not as educated.
06:11And so we have lots of Know Your Rights materials.
06:14If anyone here would like them or would like to distribute them,
06:18we have flyers available.
06:19We have them in digital versions for you to print out.
06:21We have them in physical versions for you to take home.
06:24But feel free to request those, and we're happy to provide them.
06:31Our next question is,