Donald Trump's director of the National Economic Council, Kevin Hassett, gave a word salad answer when CNBC host Joe Kernen told him that Trump had admitted his tariffs raised costs on US consumers.
Last week, the Trump administration said it would issue broad exemptions on Trump tariffs to try to combat the rising costs of food prices for the American people. This was after he claimed food prices were going down under his purview, a blatant lie the American people were not buying.
This is an admission that Trump's yo-yo tariffs are a tax on consumers.
Earlier today on CNBC, Kevin Hassett was asked this question, and, to dodge the issue, he responded with gobbledygook. Before he was confronted by reality with Trump supporting Joe Kernen, Hassett feigned surprise that Trump was being blamed for inflation under his administration and whined that Obamacare was the cause of inflation in America.
"It's astonishing to me that the cost problem is somehow being blamed on us," Hassett said. "And so now they're blaming President Trump for Obamacare as well."
Trump ran on lowering prices, period.
Americans are also blaming Republicans for eliminating ACA subsidies to give tax breaks to the rich, which is skyrocketing healthcare costs for Americans.
Joe Kernen gets real for a minute. Hassett responds with nonsense.
KERNEN: The whole issue of tariffs, if we're reversing some tariffs to try to help affordability, isn't that acknowledging that tariffs are responsible for some of the higher prices and for some of the inflation that is still a problem?
HASSETT: Well, first, this is nothing new.
If you go through all of the trade deals that we've been doing all the way through, then there have been things that we decided it was prudent based on the economics of supply and demand to exempt.
And one of those things that we've been exempting all along is something that we don't make in the U.S., we'll never make in the U.S., or almost never.
I know that in Hawaii, they make some coffee.
And so onshoring that production really doesn't make sense.
It's not part of our strategy.
And what the president just did with food is decide to make a blanket movement so that we weren't going through each deal and picking this and that.
Huh?
Lowering or eliminating tariffs to lower the price of food is an admission that tariffs are tax on US consumers.
After speaking gibberish, Hassett claimed Trump made a blanket movement because he was too lazy to go through each item when he imposed his tariffs on our trading partners.
Americans aren't that stupid, Kevin.
Kernen could have taken him to task over his lies, but moved on to the next topic.
