Ben Shapiro: “The tariffs are in fact a tax on American consumers. They drive up the prices.”
Shapiro: “If the idea of the tariffs is that they are inherently a good for the United States, that is not true”
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From the March 3, 2025, edition of The Daily Wire's The Ben Shapiro Show
BEN SHAPIRO (HOST): This is where President Trump does have to walk very carefully. Inflation killed Joe Biden's presidency. If you wish to see President Trump be successful, he needs a booming economy. He cannot have a recessionary economy.
If tariffs continue to drive up prices and if wages do not increase sufficient to meet those prices, you're going to be in exactly the same predicament in which Joe Biden found himself.
Now, again, I'm perfectly fine with using tariffs as leverage. If the goal of a tariff is to get other countries to lower their own tariffs — if the idea is you have a 25% tariff on our lumber, and now we have to put a 25% tariff on your oil products, and then we trade one for the other and all the tariffs go away, I'm perfectly fine with that. If the idea of a tariff is to threaten, say, the country of Colombia with a 50% tariff in order to get them to take deportees, great. That is a piece of leverage.
I still am unclear as to what the actual demand is against Mexico or Canada that would get rid of the tariffs.
If the idea of the tariffs is that they are inherently a good for the United States, that is not true. The tariffs are in fact a tax on American consumers. They drive up the prices.
Now, again, there may be industries, like, for example, semiconductors, where you need them produced domestically for national security reasons. It simply can't be produced in China or in any place that is subject to Chinese production. I get that, and I'm all for it. And there's another thing to say that Canada is some sort of deep and abiding national security threat requiring widespread 25% tariffs on Canadian product. Canada, by the way, is the number one trade partner with the United States. Here was President Trump yesterday saying there's no room left for negotiate — I wasn't even aware there were negotiations going on.