Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) mentioned Wednesday that it’s a “fallacy” to assume tariffs will assist the nation’s financial system as President Trump gears as much as impose huge reciprocal tariffs on U.S. buying and selling companions.
Paul, who has spoken out towards tariffs beforehand, joined The Hill’s “Rising” on Wednesday, the place he mentioned his disagreement with tariffs, calling them “a tax.”
“On tariffs, I think it’s just economically — it’s a fallacy to think that it’ll help the country,” the Kentucky senator mentioned. “Tariffs are a tax, and if you tax trade or if you tax anything, you’ll get less of it.”
Trump is getting ready to unveil new import taxes within the a whole lot of billions of {dollars} Wednesday, with the president reportedly nonetheless choosing between a flat tariff on all imports, a flat tax focusing on imports from particular nations or personalized import tax charges for different nations.
Final week, Trump additionally unveiled that he’ll impose a 25 p.c tariff on foreign-made automobile imports, additionally going into impact Wednesday.
“We know by looking at the history of the last — at least 70 years or so in this country, that as international trade has increased, so has the prosperity of our country,” Paul mentioned Wednesday.
On Wednesday, Trump pressured Paul and different Republican senators to vote towards a decision from Democrats to dam his emergency declaration to impose tariffs on Canada.
The president, on his Reality Social platform, pushed Paul and the opposite Republicans to “hopefully get on the Republican bandwagon, for a change, and fight the Democrats wild and flagrant push to not penalize Canada for the sale, into our Country, of large amounts of Fentanyl, by Tariffing the value of this horrible and deadly drug in order to make it more costly to distribute and buy.”
The Hill has reached out to The White Home for remark.
