During remarks on the Senate floor Thursday, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) spoke about President Trump reversing his blanket tariff policy after announcing them on April 2nd.
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NewsTranscript
00:00This morning I'll take a little more than the usual time because I want to review what
00:06happened over the past eight days with Trump's tariff tax so that it can be preserved in
00:12the record and so that we as a nation can try to process the reckless, unnecessary damage
00:20President Trump has created.
00:23The past eight days have been an absolute embarrassment for President Trump and for everyone who
00:29truly cares about this country.
00:33During these eight days, the world saw the President of the United States reveal his total
00:38lack of understanding of international trade, macro and microeconomics, and foreign relations.
00:46The world saw the American President issue a tariff ultimatum so ill-conceived and so flawed
00:53that it was mocked from here to the Heard and McDonald Islands.
00:58This whole episode is so ridiculous that even the writers of Veep and the House of Cards
01:04would have shredded their drafts.
01:06Yet it was real.
01:08It had real effects, lasting effects on real people.
01:13Donald Trump's tariff fiasco caused real damage to the confidence other nations have in America.
01:19It had real effects on the uncertainty we feel every day that Donald Trump sits in the Oval
01:25office.
01:27It had real effects on people's retirements.
01:31Let's start with his announcement on April 2nd that that would be Liberation Day, a day
01:38of massive worldwide tariffs.
01:41Rather than providing a coherent explanation for such a substantial policy change, the stated
01:48justification for this massive tariff application varied depending on the moment or who the
01:56administration's spokesperson was.
01:58Depending on the day, President Trump claimed that tariffs would either balance the budget,
02:05enable the elimination of the income tax, or bring manufacturing jobs back to the United States.
02:12While Peter Navarro gave full-throated support to all three of those goals, most of the rest
02:19of the administration ignored the first two goals and focused on bringing manufacturing jobs
02:24back to the U.S.
02:26a worthy goal, one that Democrats, including myself, have been advocating for decades.
02:33However, even administration officials couldn't get on the same page.
02:38While Navarro and Secretary Besant were talking about the return of jobs, Secretary Lutnik was
02:44espousing that manufacturing would be coming back, but that it would be automated, he said.
02:50So, are we bringing manufacturing jobs back, or displacing them with machines?
02:57It's clear, Mr. President, as April 2nd approached, no one, not even the most devoted Trump apologist,
03:05except maybe only Ron Vara, believed the President had an actual plan.
03:11Nevertheless, he persisted.
03:19And on April 2nd, President Trump, against all semblance of common sense, announced tariffs
03:26beyond what even the most isolationist Republican could have envisioned.
03:31The President made some outlandish claims, and he held up a chart with a lot of numbers on it.
03:37And his claims and those numbers were a surprise to pretty much everyone, everyone, who understands
03:44the language, the theory, and mathematics of trade.
03:48Putting aside the idiotic tariffs applied to penguins, who produce nothing but guano and
03:54baby penguins, and consume little more than krill and fish, and putting aside the tariffs
04:00on countries who make products Americans crave, but who lack the purchasing power to buy our
04:05products in return, we all quickly realized that the numbers on Donald Trump's chart were
04:12so nonsensical that it took some of the world's greatest economic minds to reverse engineer
04:18it to determine the formula.
04:24And yet, in perfect Trumpian fashion, his administration released the actual formula and the assumptions
04:31behind the chart.
04:33Again, it quickly became clear that he based his entire tariff scheme on a formula so flawed,
04:40so economically incoherent that he had to insert some random Greek letters and assign them phony
04:49values just to make it look like something out of a beautiful mind.
04:55But instead of a stroke of genius, what we got was gibberish.
05:00Not genius, but gibberish.
05:04Remember back in 2019, Mr. President, when Hurricane Dorian was approaching Florida, and President
05:10Trump used a Sharpie to alter a NOAA map to try and cover for his mistake?
05:15Well, this phony formula is the 2025 reincarnation of Sharpiegate, except the economic consequences
05:23of this fraud will affect millions and millions of Americans.
05:30Now I won't stand up here and say I oppose all tariffs, I don't.
05:34I appreciate my supporters on Twitter reminding everyone that I have long championed tough trade
05:40policies on China, going back to my early days in the Senate.
05:45But I and the American people oppose a whimsical, nonsensical approach to international trade,
05:53especially one that so clearly will increase costs on American families.
06:00It's one thing to target tariffs on bad actors, like China.
06:04That makes sense.
06:06But to raise tariffs on allies such as Canada and Israel?
06:10Everyone knows that makes no sense.
06:12To raise tariffs on random islands as the Falklands, Heard and McDonald and Svalbard?
06:19Everyone knows that makes no sense.
06:21To raise tariffs on countries like Madagascar who import little from us but produce products
06:26wanted by millions of Americans?
06:29Everyone knows that makes no sense.
06:31And yet, he persisted.
06:33Trump persisted.
06:35And the world's financial markets melted down on Thursday and Friday.
06:45Now that the meltdown, now that meltdown may not have mattered to President Trump.
06:50But it's certainly mattered to millions of Americans.
06:54While the big financial players can hedge against an ignorant, erratic president, everyday
07:00Americans who have their hard-earned nest eggs in pension funds, IRAs, and 529 accounts
07:06to help pay for their kids' college tuition don't have that luxury.
07:11While the president and his family can create new meme coins and sell cheap, made in China swag,
07:18so that bad actors and sycophants can funnel the money, most Americans don't have that luxury.
07:25No, Mr. President, most Americans are living paycheck to paycheck.
07:31If they're lucky, they put a little away each month for retirement or college savings.
07:37Some of them keep that money in interest-bearing accounts for the stability.
07:41Their savings are probably doing okay, but costs are going up so that they may have to
07:46dip into those savings.
07:48The president let them down.
07:51Some Americans put that money in mutual funds that depend on stability and predictability.
07:57The president let them down as well.
08:02Of course, some Americans have no exposure to the stock market.
08:07Their only hope for retirement is Social Security, which Congressional Republicans want to gut,
08:13and Elon Musk calls a Ponzi scheme, but the president also let them down.
08:20Because they may not be exposed, but their employer probably is, as is their neighborhood
08:25grocer and hardware store owner, and they will be affected if any prices rise.
08:31When the financial markets closed on Friday with one of the biggest drops in history, President
08:37Trump was golfing and dining with his Saudi friends.
08:41On Saturday, while the nation was stressing over their financial instability, the official
08:47White House press office gleefully announced that the president would, on Sunday, compete
08:52in his club's golf championship.
08:55This, Mr. President, was the Trump version of let them eat cake.
09:03Let them eat cake.
09:05Then on Sunday, after a week of uncertainty, a weekend of stress, while small business owners,
09:11retirees, and young families across the country were sitting at their kitchen tables trying
09:16to figure out how they were going to handle this dramatic increase in costs, what was the
09:21president doing?
09:23He was, of course, still golfing.
09:26And to the surprise of no one, except for maybe the actual tournament winner, President
09:31Trump tied for his own club championship, a remarkable achievement to be sure.
09:38In fact, so great is that achievement that if the president would make public his scorecard,
09:43I would gladly enter it into the congressional record and ask for its preservation at the National
09:50Archives, though I'm sure his caddy would be reluctant to testify under oath.
09:56I know the president likes to talk about his handicap.
10:00Over the weekend, his administration tried to cover up for his indifference by claiming
10:06that more than 50 countries had reached out to start negotiations.
10:11That claim may have temporarily calmed the futures market, but its un-believability certainly
10:16harmed the White House economic advisor Kevin Hassett's credibility.
10:21Adding to the uncertainty and lack of faith was that the incoherence within the administration
10:28that was in full public effect over the weekend.
10:31In between golf swings, the president found time to post, we will win, hang tough, it won't
10:38be easy.
10:40Meanwhile, America's de facto President Elon Musk told a globalist conference in Italy that
10:46he wanted a zero-tariff situation between the U.S. and Europe.
10:52That aspiration was quickly and directly rebutted by the tariff architect Peter Navarro, which
10:58led to a public spat the likes of which the presidency has rarely seen.
11:05On Monday, the markets started low but quickly skyrocketed because some verified Trump Twitter
11:12account announced that an administration official said Trump would pause tariffs for 90 days.
11:19The world and the markets rejoiced, but the administration quickly refuted that assertion and the markets
11:27fluctuated downward.
11:31Tuesday started with great optimism and a quick market rise, but China's retaliation and the
11:36rumors of a European equivalent turned the rally bearish.
11:42Which brings us to yesterday, Wednesday, April 9th.
11:50Mr. President, history will likely record this day as America's actual Liberation Day because
11:59it is the day that President Trump backed down.
12:06Of course, as with anything Trump does, his backing down created a few private winners and
12:13several public losers.
12:16We may never discern who the private winners are, but we do know that at 9.37 a.m. President
12:23Trump posted in all capital letters, this is a great time to buy DJT, Donald J. Trump.
12:34What exactly was the purpose of this post?
12:37Why did he feel the need to add his initials to this particular post?
12:43Was it a signal to his friends and family that he was going to pause the tariffs so they should
12:48buy low knowing the market would boom?
12:54Was this another stand back and stand by?
12:58We may never know.
13:00We may never know.
13:01But we need to find out and it must be investigated.
13:07Now we certainly know who the losers are.
13:10The losers are the millions of Americans who tried to protect their positions and sold assets
13:16during the downturn.
13:18They were let down by President Trump.
13:21The losers are the administration officials who tried their level best to cover for President
13:26Trump's instability by spinning to the media, only to have the President undercut their credibility.
13:35Now we shouldn't be surprised by this.
13:37We all lived through the first Trump presidency, after which he even admitted he hired bad people.
13:44But here in his second term, the effort that President Trump puts into destroying the credibility
13:50of his staff is utterly incomprehensible.
13:56To paraphrase a former Trump official, people think Trump is playing 3D chess, but most of
14:02the time the staff is just trying to keep him from eating the pieces.
14:07That Mr. President is what happened this week.
14:11Trump sycophants, Fox News, Republican senators are all used to this game.
14:17They know the President is dead wrong, that he is not remotely a very stable genius, yet
14:24none of them want to tell the emperor that he has no clothes.
14:28Secretary Lutnik's credibility is shot because of his full-on defense of this tariff scheme,
14:35followed by his admission that it wouldn't result in American jobs because automation would take over.
14:42Secretary Besson's credibility is shot because of his public attempts to defend the President's
14:48ever-changing whims.
14:50He spent the weekend and the week saying the administration doesn't want deals, that we're
14:54bringing manufacturing back.
14:56We aren't pausing, but as recent as yesterday, and as recent as yesterday, he made the Orwellian
15:04claim that Main Street would benefit from this tariff scheme.
15:10But then today, his full humiliation was complete.
15:15As he tweeted after the President backed down, no one creates leverage for himself like POTUS.
15:22Give me a break.
15:25The President even undercut his trade representative during a Congressional hearing.
15:30Jameson Greer spent hours defending the President's tariff policy, only to learn of the President's
15:36backtracking while sitting at the witness stand.
15:40And then, after hours of administration officials claiming that this wasn't a backtrack, that it
15:46was the plan all along, President Trump goes to the mics and undercuts his team,
15:52by saying he caved because he was watching the bond markets and people were getting nervous.
16:00With Trump, obedience begets humiliation.
16:06So now, Mr. President, you and 330 million of your fellow Americans and countries across the planet are
16:16asking, where are we?
16:19Sadly, no one knows, not even President Trump.
16:23Some proposed tariffs have been reduced, some have not.
16:27Our neighbors in Canada and Mexico are asking how this applies to them, and they can't get straight answers.
16:34The President himself has leaned into the uncertainty, offering that he may give breaks to certain companies.
16:40We should assume those that are owned by his family and his friends.
16:47That's how this administration rolls.
16:49Asked yesterday about potential tariff reprieves for companies, he replied,
16:55this is President Trump, there have been some that have been hit hard.
17:00There are some that, by the nature of the company, get hit a little bit harder.
17:05And we'll take a look at that.
17:07So, as we look back on this week of self-made chaos and even destruction,
17:15we have to ask, what was the purpose of this exercise?
17:20What was the purpose of this exercise?
17:23Was it, as President Trump originally said,
17:27to force other countries to pay enough tariffs so the United States could eliminate the income tax?
17:34No, Trump backed off that.
17:37Was it, as President Trump said later, to retaliate against countries that were unfair to us?
17:43No, that was never true.
17:45But even if it was, Trump backed off that.
17:49Was it, as some sycophants and cabinet secretaries have claimed,
17:52some 4-D chess move to call China's bluff?
17:56No, everyone knows that isn't true.
17:59This was not a week of 3-D chess, 4-D chess, nor even checkers.
18:04Again, to paraphrase a former Trump official, people think Trump is playing 3-D chess,
18:11but most of the time, the staff is just trying to keep him from eating the pieces.
18:17President Trump is a guy who lights the house on fire, calls 9-1-1,
18:22and then his MAGA sycophants and Republican senators hit the airwaves
18:26and take to social media to laud him for putting out the fire.
18:31The President did real harm, real harm, to America and Americans over the last week.
18:39And Senate Republicans stood by and cheered.
18:44Senate Democrats will do everything we can to help minimize the damage.
18:48to yield the floor, note the absence of.