Ben Shapiro: Trump's tariffs are “a massive tax increase on American consumers ... and it is designed to be so”
Shapiro: “If you like the products that you have at the quality that you have them and at the price that you have them, you're not gonna get to keep them”
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From the April 3, 2025, edition of The Daily Wire's The Ben Shapiro Show
BEN SHAPIRO (HOST): Now there are a number of reasons why this is a problem. Is it — say, OK. Whatever. Who cares? You know?
Do we need other countries anyway? OK. So first of all, yes. We do. It turns out that the supply chains all across the planet are incredibly complex. And if you like the products that you have at the quality that you have them and at the price that you have them, you're not gonna get to keep them. You don't get to keep the — anybody who tells you that you can is is telling you the same kind of falsehood that Barack Obama said when he said if you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor. You don't get to keep your Xbox at the same rate with the same quality. You don't. That's just not the way that these tariffs are gonna work.
So what exactly happens? Well, Tyler Cowen points out, quoting Scott Lincicome over at Cato, Trump's reciprocal tariffs impose hundreds of billions of dollars in new taxes on Americans without public or congressional input because that's actually what happened.
I have friends, for example, who import product to the United States and then sell them. This is be — why? Because they can't get the product in The United States. So for example, I have a friend who's in the jewelry business. And this friend in the jewelry business imports products that are not capable of being manufactured or found in the United States from abroad. So it's not like there's import substitution. You can just buy from an American. That's not how it works. This — by the way, this company is an American company.
The tariff that is now being applied to all of its imports is, like, 35, 40%. Those prices will get passed directly onto the consumers. It is a tax paid for by Americans. So this is a massive tax increase on American consumers. That's what it is. And it is designed to be so. And it is talked about in these terms by the Trump administration that this will cost 600, 700 billion dollars in additional revenue to the government.
You know what we call revenue to the government typically, paid for by Americans — because that's who pays for it. If you're importing a product and nobody buys it, then you stop importing the product and nothing gets paid to the government. It has to be sold. That is the — the consumer pays the tax. That is what we would call a tax increase.