Cover Image Source: Getty Images | Photo by Andrew Harnik
The U.S. is about to pay dearly for Donald Trump’s incoming tariff regime, former Republican strategist turned Never Trumper Ana Navarro told Newsweek John Berman on Tuesday morning.
Donald Trump announced Monday he is going to make good on the tariff threats he made on the campaign trail, starting with 25 percent tariffs on goods across the board from Mexico and Canada and even higher ones on China. And that’s immediately going to hit Americans in the pocketbook, warned Navarro.
Mike Dubke, a former Trump administration official, praised the move on the same segment. “I think this is a warning shot,” he said. “I love that, that all gas, no brakes. I think the American people voted for that. And that’s what they’re going to get right out of the gates with Donald Trump.”
Navarro, however, wasn’t so thrilled, noting that these countries are likely to respond with tariffs of their own. “Right now, this is a lot of bluster without detail, right?” she said. “And the devil is in the details.
“He has said there will be these tariffs unless Mexico and Canada and China do this, do stuff. We don’t know what the stuff actually means in detail. What I do know is most conservatives are not pro-tariffs. We have free trade agreements, particularly with Mexico and Canada. And the leaders of these countries, right, the newly elected President of Mexico, [Canada’s] Justin Trudeau, China’s Xi Jinping, they’re not going to play dead. They’re not rolling over. They’re not.”
She added Trump keeps claiming tariffs will be paid by the other countries, but they “are actually imposed on consumers. Because it’s not the government of Mexico or Canada or China that are going to be paying this. It is consumers.
“When we go to the grocery store, it is consumers. When we buy a new house and the things that people complain the most about — the price of eggs, the price of groceries, the price of housing, the price of cars — those things are precisely what will be the most affected if we, in fact, go into a trade war.”
