Ben Shapiro: “If the idea is that tariffs themselves enrich the American people, that is against pretty much all economic knowledge for the last couple of centuries or so”
Shapiro: “We cannot have the agenda founder on the rocks of misbegotten tariff wars”
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From the March 12, 2025, edition of The Daily Wire's The Ben Shapiro Show
BEN SHAPIRO (HOST): What is the goal of all of this? Seriously, I don't understand. What is the goal? That — I want President Trump to succeed. If President Trump is to succeed, we need a thriving economy.
Declaring a trade war on Canada under the terms of the USMCA, which he himself negotiated in Trump term one, is not going to be a productive move for his administration. And there's more to come, by the way. I mean, President Trump is expected to issue a bunch of new tariffs come April 2. I mean, he openly said that in the State of the Union address. If there is a plan here, the markets would love to hear it. Because, again, the markets are simply looking for some sort of predictability here. The markets are simply looking for some sort of understanding of what's coming next and why it's coming next and what the plan is.
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SHAPIRO: Again, I'm gonna need some clarification as to how this is actually going to, in the short term, medium, and long term, benefit Americans.
We can talk about other countries ripping us off as as much as we want. And, again, if the goal here is to lower the tariffs by getting other countries to lower their tariffs, then great. I'm all in. Makes sense.
But if the idea is that tariffs themselves enrich the American people, that is against pretty much all economic knowledge for the last couple of centuries or so.
So maybe I'm wrong. Maybe it'll turn out to be great. Or maybe the Dow Jones industrial average has been speaking over the course of the last couple of months, and it disagrees. The reason this matters, again, the reason this matters is because what President Trump is actually trying to do in so many areas is so important. We cannot have the agenda founder on the rocks of misbegotten tariff wars.