Tariffs, Tariffs Everywhere-What Will it Do to the US Economy, Inflation & Jobs
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Welcome, it is Verdict with Senator Ted Cruz, Ben Ferguson with you. It's nice to have you on this Friday morning. And Senator, everybody's waking up today.

They're looking at what's happening with these tariffs. They're looking at what's happening on Wall Street. There's no doubt, no matter who you are, there's a lot of anxiety, concern, angst. Those are the words I've been hearing from friends about what's happening right now. So let's break it all down for listeners and talk about where we are and what is happening, what your concerns are, what you think is happening, and what is being said by your colleagues in D.C. as well.

Well, on today's podcast, there is one topic and only one topic, and that is tariffs. And I will say I believe this week may well prove the single most consequential week in the Trump administration so far, and it may be the most consequential week in all four years of the second term of the Trump administration. I think this week is consequential as a policy matter, and this week is consequential as a political matter. I think there are enormous risks. There is the potential for upside.

but there are enormous risks. And so what we're going to try to do on this podcast is break it down because a lot of people are trying to figure out, okay, what am I supposed to think about this? What's this going to mean? What does this mean for my job? What does this mean for my family? What does this mean when I go to the grocery store? What does this mean when I buy goods for my family? And the answer is a lot. And so we're going to break it down and try to explain what it means and what's likely to happen next. I think this

And this podcast, in terms of the impact on the country, I think is as consequential as anything we ever talked about. So let's start with what the news is. This week, on Wednesday, President Trump announced massive tariffs. Tariffs on virtually every country on earth. A 10% baseline tariff on everybody. And then specific tariffs country by country. And I'm going to go through really quickly, but there are a lot of them.

So on China, 34% tariffs. On the European Union, all of Europe, 20% tariffs. On Vietnam, 46% tariffs. On Taiwan, 32% tariffs. On Japan, 24% tariffs. On India, 26% tariffs. On South Korea, 25% tariffs. On Thailand, 36% tariffs. On Switzerland, 31% tariffs. On Indonesia, 32% tariffs. On Malaysia, 24% tariffs. On Cambodia, 49% tariffs.

On the United Kingdom, 10% tariffs. On South Africa, 30% tariffs. On Brazil, 10% tariffs. On Bangladesh, 37% tariffs. On Singapore, 10% tariffs. On Israel, 17% tariffs. On the Philippines, 17% tariffs. On Chile, 10% tariffs. On Australia, 10% tariffs. On Pakistan, 29% tariffs. On Turkey, 10% tariffs. On Sri Lanka, 44% tariffs. On Colombia, 10% tariffs.

On Peru, 10% tariffs. On Nicaragua, 18% tariffs. On Norway, 15% tariffs. On Costa Rica, 10%. On Jordan, 20%. On Dominican Republic, 10%. On United Arab Emirates, 10%. On New Zealand, 10%. On Argentina, 10%. On Ecuador, 10%. On Guatemala, 10%. On Honduras, 10%. On Madagascar, 47%. On Myanmar or Burma, 44%.

On Tunisia, 28%. On Kazakhstan, 27%. On Serbia, 37%. On Egypt, 10%. Saudi Arabia, 10%. El Salvador, 10%. The Ivory Coast, 21%. Laos, 48%. Botswana, 37%. Trinidad and Tobago, 10%. Morocco, 10%. This collectively is the highest rate of tariffs the United States has had in place since 1930 in 100 years.

That is enormously consequential. That is, as a policy matter, a huge deal. And as a political matter, a huge deal. Now, we're in a partisan political environment where right now the world is turned upside down. We are very much tribalized, where each side is on their team. So Democrats right now are lighting their hair on fire.

Democrats right now are saying this is a catastrophe. This is destroying America. It's the worst thing that ever happened. And a lot of the media is echoing that.

Now, that is producing a lot of Republicans who are naturally defending the president and saying, this is great, this is fantastic, that this is a day of liberation. And they are celebrating that. I will say it's a fairly odd dynamic because the two worlds are inverted. So a few years ago, Republicans were the party of free trade.

Republicans were the party of let's lower tariffs. Let's have more trade with the world that produces more jobs here at home that benefits White House, that benefits American producers. And Democrats were the protectionists. You think of the Dick Gephardt Democrats, the Democrats who wanted big tariffs against other countries. And so it is a bizarre dynamic that the two sides are.

have switched and they are essentially giving opposite talking points. My view, look, I want to set aside the talking points. I want to talk about what is likely to happen.

The big, big question, there are two big questions. Number one, how are other countries going to react? And number two, what is the Trump administration going to do in response? Now, there are two broad scenarios, one that is very, very good, one that is very, very bad. Here's the good scenario.

The good scenario is other countries freak out. That is clearly happening. Just every country I listed is freaking out right now. And in response, other countries come rushing to the White House and say, we want to negotiate a deal and we're going to dramatically lower our tariffs to U.S. goods coming into our country. That may well happen. We're seeing some of that starting to happen. It

If that happens, that would be a very good thing. Now, the second question is, if other countries dramatically slash their tariffs, let's say other countries zero out their tariffs. They say all U.S. goods will come into our country with zero tariffs. Then the second big question is, what does the Trump administration do in response? And if the Trump administration in response to other countries

slashing their tariffs, zeroing out their tariffs, if the Trump administration responds by dramatically cutting these tariffs, lowering them dramatically on this side, that would be a home run for America. I would be thrilled. I would be celebrating. And that could happen. Look, look, Trump is...

This is throwing a long ball deep into the end zone. And if 30 days from now, 60 days from now, 90 days from now, the world we're looking at is a world where our trading partners across the globe have slashed their tariffs on American goods and services. And the Trump administration has responded by slashing these tariffs they've just announced.

That will be a great outcome for the American economy. It will be a great outcome for farmers and ranchers and small businesses and manufacturers and jobs and workers. I will celebrate. And if that happens, I will say...

Donald Trump had a vision on trade that very few people in the world saw. And this was a frigging home run. So the best case scenario is to see more headlines like we saw tonight, which is, for example, communist Vietnam panics over Trump tariff sends deputy prime minister to Washington, D.C. with an emergency delegation. And I'll go to Trump family member. Eric Trump put out an interesting tweet where he said those that get here quickly are

and get a deal done will get the best deal. And those left at the end, it's going to hurt. And so it's pretty clear that's the strategy that you also just mentioned would be, in theory, best case scenario. Look, and if that's what happens, hallelujah. That is a great outcome. And listen, we've all seen Donald Trump's negotiating style is frequently to pick up a two-by-four, smack someone in the head with it, and then negotiate down from that.

And so if that's what's going on, yesterday was a two by four. It was unquestionably a two by four. And virtually every trading partner of America is reeling right now.

If the result is everyone cuts tariffs and we have massive more American exports and farmers are sending our crops and our livestock abroad and manufacturers are sending our goods abroad and service providers are setting our services abroad. That's great. Now, let me give you the downside. There's another way this could play out.

which is other countries get pissed off, and they jack up tariffs, and they impose retaliatory tariffs on American goods. And the tariffs Trump put in place remain in place. And I got to say, if we're in a scenario 30 days from now, 60 days from now, 90 days from now, with massive American tariffs and massive tariffs on American goods in every other country on earth, that is a terrible outcome. It's terrible for Texas, which obviously I care about deeply.

And it's terrible for America. It will hurt jobs and hurt America. And there is a very real risk of that. In the past, we have seen when one country jacks up tariffs, it can provoke a trade war where each country accelerates tariffs. And the result would do a couple of things. Number one, it would destroy jobs here at home and do real damage to the U.S. economy if we had tariffs everywhere.

Number two, and this is a virtual certainty, inflation, this is going to have a powerful upward impact on inflation. And let's take, for example, all right, let's take cars. You know, Trump has announced a 25% across the board tariff on cars. Yep.

What does that mean? That means if you go and buy a new car, you're going to pay a hell of a lot more for that new car. And by the way, if you buy a used car, you're going to pay a lot more for the used car because when new cars go up, used cars go up too because that will impact the pricing across the market. Now, what is interesting, you might say, well, wait, wait, wait, this is just...

a tariff on foreign cars. So why do I care if a bunch of fancy foreign cars, their prices go up? Well, you know what? A lot of Americans choose to buy foreign cars. So if you're choosing to buy a foreign car, your prices are likely to go up. They may not go up exactly 25%, but they'll go up pretty close to 25%. If you look at what happens when a tariff is imposed, who pays it is dependent. For those of y'all who remember your econ class,

It's dependent on price elasticity. So sometimes the burden of the tariff is paid by the company. And by the way, if it's paid by the company, depending on the price elasticity,

That means the company's making less profits and they may well be letting workers go and ending jobs. But for many goods, it will be paid by the consumers and the immediate impact will be prices going up. But let's take cars again. It's not just foreign cars that will go up. All the American cars, their prices are going to go up too. If all their competitors' prices go up 25%, and it's not quite that simple because it will be less than 25%, but it will be in that neighborhood.

you're going to see every other car price go up that much as well. And there are weird impacts given how the American supply chain works. So, for example, I was talking with one of the major U.S. car manufacturers yesterday. You think of sort of the poster child. If you ask...

you know, just the guy on the street. Who's benefiting from all these tariffs? They'd probably say, their immediate answer, they'd say American car companies, GM, Ford, Chrysler. They're going to do great. Well, one of the big three told me last night that the impact of these tariffs will be the prices, the average prices of all of their cars will

will go up $4,500. That when you go and buy an American car from a big American company that you will pay, they said, probably starting in June. And I asked why June? And they said, well, there's some lag in the supply chain. So they've made cars that they've sold to their dealers. And so it will be the cars they're selling to their dealers. It'll be about June when the prices go up. But they were predicting last night $4,500 is what the price of a car will go up.

And what is interesting also, so this, as I said, was one of the big three car makers. They said they thought this would end up hurting them more than it helps them. That's what they told me last night. In part because if you look at the current supply chain of how a car is made, so many cars, many cars, the big three companies make cars in America, many of them make them in Texas. But if you look at the supply chain, it's very odd, but the way it works right now is that part

say the drivetrain or the chassis or different parts of the car, will go back and forth across the Mexican border. So they'll build part of it in America. They'll send part of it to Mexico and build. They'll send part of it back to America. And it goes sometimes three, four, five times back and forth before they fully complete a car. Every time it crosses the border from Mexico, those tariffs are stacking on top of each other. So this U.S. car company told me they actually thought that

That foreign car companies would benefit more than they would because if you just build the car in Germany or Japan and you send it over here, you pay one tariff. Whereas these guys are getting hit on each part that is going over and back and over and back on the supply chain. And they thought they would end up up. It's why they were talking about having to raise prices. Forty five hundred dollars each.

One of the undeniable impacts of these tariffs is the prices that Americans are going to pay are going to go up significantly, and that is painful. Now, what are some of the good outcomes? Because President Trump has acknowledged, he said, look, there may be some pain, but it's worth it. If we end up in the outcome I started with, which is foreign countries slash their tariffs on American goods, and we in turn lower the tariffs further,

that the Trump administration just announced, that's a great outcome. And we will see a big economic boom from that. And so I'm hoping for that. I'm rooting for that. I will celebrate and praise the administration if that's the outcome.

But if it's not, here's one thing to understand. And I think I'm seeing a lot of sort of Republican cheerleaders that are kind of reflexively defending what the White House is doing. And listen, I love President Trump. I'm his strongest supporter in the Senate. I think he's doing incredible things as president. But here's one thing to understand. A tariff...

is a tax and it is a tax principally on American consumers. So when I read out all those percentages, I said, you know, X percent on this country that actually gets it wrong. So, so, so when, when I said, um, for example, 20% on the European union, it's not actually the EU that pays that it's you, Ben Ferguson. If you go buy anything from the EU as the consumer, you're paying that tax, right?

And so the effect of this is trillions of dollars of increased taxes on American consumers. If these tariffs stay in place, this is the biggest tax increase we have seen in a long, long time. I got to say, I am not a fan of tax increases on American consumers. I'm not a fan of tariffs.

And so if this is leverage to lower tariffs, great. But if the outcome is tariffs stay in place forever, that is going to do a lot of harm in the American economy.

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So let's talk timeline here. And you obviously have had a lot of conversations with the administration, but also with your colleagues. Is there any guess of what this timeline could look like? Is it truly dependent on the other countries that you mentioned? I mean, I go back to that headline of Vietnam and them rushing to D.C.,

They obviously know that this is something they don't want to deal with for a long time. And here's the reason why. Vietnam is among the world's most trade dependent nations, right? Their export equivalent to about 90 percent of their economic output. And guess what? The U.S. is the most significant customer. So they've got to fix this. We have a lot of leverage, I think, with Vietnam. That's why they're rushing to America. OK, so so you're right about that.

And listen, we're trying an experiment that hasn't been tried in really 100 years. The last time we really saw this tried in earnest was the Smoot-Hawley tariffs. And the Smoot-Hawley tariffs, look, history has not been kind to the Smoot-Hawley tariffs.

They were a major contributor to the Great Depression. And what happened in response to the Smoot-Hawley tariffs is my scenario two, the bad scenario, which is other countries put retaliatory tariffs in place. You had a trade war and it ended up hammering jobs and driving up inflation. Now, I will say we're in a very different world from 1930. 1930 was 100 years ago or 95 years ago. Today, the...

The American economy is the largest economy in the world. So we have massively more leverage than we did 100 years ago. What that means is that if we have a tariff, another country has a tariff, the tariff we're imposing will hurt the other country in all likelihood more than it hurts us because our market is a bigger deal. And so...

foreign countries, foreign companies facing massive tariffs will get hurt more. And so one of the positive consequences is

of the tariff announcement is that we will see more foreign companies announcing new plants in America saying we're going to build in America because the easiest way to get around the tariffs is build your products in America. That's a good thing. I'm all for bringing manufacturing back to America. Now I will say the process of building a new plant is

is slow. It can take years. It can take years just to get permitted, to find the land, to build the plant, to build the factory. That can take years. And in the meantime, everyone's prices go up. So we are seeing...

Look, we're seeing new factories being announced in the United States. I think that's great. I want as much manufacturing as possible coming back to America, coming back to Texas. But none of that happens quickly. You simply can't build a car factory in a couple of months. It doesn't work. In most places, you can't even get the damn permits done.

in less than a couple of years, much less pour the foundation, build the factory, put the machines in and hire the workers. So there is real time involved, but an unquestionable benefit of this will be more manufacturing in the United States. Now,

Look, let me give you another basic economic principle, and this is right at the heart of the debate between protectionism and free trade. And it deals with, there's a school of economic thought called public choice theory, and it looks at

how political decisions are made and the basic principle of protectionism. If you put big tariffs to protect an industry, let's say steel tariffs, big tariffs to protect steel, you have concentrated benefits, which is steel manufacturers in the United States get real benefits from that. And you often have diffuse harms. In other words, lots and lots of people are hurt by

but they're hurt less acutely than the beneficiaries are benefited. Now, as a political matter, let me tell you how politicians respond to that.

If you have a bunch of people that are benefited intensely, they're really motivated and they care about supporting you. And they're really excited because they're like, wow, you just gave me a huge, huge benefit. And the people who are harmed, like with steel tariffs, the people who are harmed is everyone who's buying steel. So oil and gas, you're putting pipelines, you're drilling wells, uh, railroads, you're putting railroad ties, building manufacturers, you're putting steel in building, um, you know, uh,

It's soda and beer manufacturers. You're putting either aluminum or steel, depending on what the cans are made of. But everyone who's using steel is the companies are paying more. The consumers are paying more. But it is diffuse across a lot of people. So public choice theory will tell you that politicians will care more about the concentrated benefits than diffuse harms, even though if you measure the aggregate harms.

There are, in many instances, much, much larger than the concentrated benefits. But the aggregate harms are spread out over a ton of people, whereas the benefits are concentrated in a much smaller group of people. That's the economics behind what's going on here. The consequences of this...

I think what happens on these tariffs, let's talk about politically, is going to be probably the single biggest determinant of what the 2026 midterm elections look like. If these tariffs result in massively higher prices, result in driving up costs for U.S. companies, result in job losses, and put us into a recession, and to be clear, they're

That is a if the tariffs remain in place and we have retaliatory tariffs, that is a very possible outcome. If we go into a recession, particularly a bad recession, 2026 in all likelihood politically would be a bloodbath. You would face a Democrat House.

And you might even face a Democrat Senate. Look, we've got a 53-47 majority in the Senate. But if we're in the middle of a recession and people are hurting badly, they punish the party in power. And to be clear, if that happens in 2027, in January of 2027, the Democrat House that gets elected will immediately impeach Donald Trump.

And we would spend the next two years of 2027 and 2028 with constant impeachment battles, constant investigations, constant political attacks, all of the weaponization that we saw in the first term. Deja vu. On steroids. Not even deja vu. Take the first term and put it on steroids. And so the political consequences of getting this wrong are,

This was this is a high risk play. The upside could be massive, but the downside could be massive. Is this the highest risk play so far from Trump's first term, second term combined so far? Not not even close. By far, yes. All right. So then I got to ask you this question behind the scenes.

What are the conversations with your colleagues on a scale of one to 10? How concerned are they over the scenario that you just described? 42. Okay. Look, there's another point that I think is important to understand. So you and I did a podcast, I think last week, where we talked about tariffs. And I talked about, I said, listen, the president uses tariffs for two principal purposes.

One is leverage as an incentive to incentivize other countries to enact policies that benefit America. And the clearest example of that is the threatened tariffs against Mexico and Canada, unless and until they help us secure the border. Now, using tariffs as leverage for something like that is very effective. The president uses it really well and particularly using them to push Democrats.

uh, securing the border. I am emphatically in favor of that is it, it has proven successful. It worked incredibly well in the first term. It produced the remain in Mexico agreement with Mexico. It produced the lowest rate of illegal immigration in 45 years, stopping the border invasion of the last four years as an acute national security and public safety, uh,

It is a mandate from the last election. It is massively important for Texas. So I'm all for using the threat of tariffs as leverage to get good policy that benefits America. But there's a second component, and this is an important thing to understand, which is Donald Trump and much of his administration believes in tariffs as an economic policy. We've all heard Donald Trump say, tariff is the most beautiful word in the English language.

And I do think the business community. So look, look, we we had the stock market plummeted. We saw massive losses in the stock market. We may well see more massive losses than the stock market. I think the business community was shocked by the magnitude of these community of these tariffs by the breadth of them.

Look, as we talked about in our earlier podcast on tariffs, what I've urged the president is two things. Number one, focus on China because delinking our economy from China is emphatically in America's national security interest and economic security interest. And number two, focus on reciprocity. And the reason I've said focus on reciprocity is the upside scenario I just talked about.

which is by focusing on reciprocity, if you incentivize other countries to lower their tariffs and we lower ours, that's a win-win for America. But the thing to understand, I believe the business community has systematically underestimated

how much President Trump and the Trump administration views tariffs as an ongoing, permanent feature of our economic policy. I can tell you virtually every time I talk with the president, I talk with the president frequently. He goes on at length. Have you seen the billions of dollars, the hundreds of billions of dollars, the trillions of dollars we are raising and are going to raise from tariffs? Now, I think a lot of people said, oh, he's going to threaten these tariffs, but he's going to lift them very quickly.

If he does that, great. If he leaves them in place and we just have constant tariffs, that is a massive tax increase on the American people.

And I think many people are underestimating that the president believes and many members of his administration believe that tariffs are just a fabulous feature of the American economy. They they hearken back to William McKinley when he was president. Now, now, look, we used to have before the income tax tariffs were the main source of revenue for the federal government. And they want to go back to that scenario.

And I got to say, we're going to find out because, listen, President Trump believes in this. I think in the first term he wanted to to impose policies like this. And I think many Republican senators talked him out of it, pressed him back and said, look, they're real risk. Don't do this. I think of the second term. Trump feels unchained. He feels unburdened. He's like, screw it. Let's go.

And he believes that I do not. By the way, that's where the threat could actually work. Right. Because every other country is looking at this saying, hey, like, surely he's not going to do it. He does it like what he's going to flinch quickly. There's no indication he's going to flinch per se quickly. Right. I think the real threat of it is the fact that he's actually willing to go through with it. Look, I want this to succeed. I want it to succeed. But my definition of succeed may be different than the White House's.

My definition of succeed is dramatically lower tariffs abroad and result in dramatically lowering tariffs here. That's success for the American workers, American businesses, American growth, American prosperity. That's a great outcome. But look, I think we're going to find out a hundred years ago, the U S economy didn't have the leverage to, to, to have the kind of impact we do now. But look,

I worry there are voices within the administration that want to see these tariffs continue forever and ever and ever. They don't want to lower them. They think they're great. And what is particularly, I think, has startled some observers, it wasn't just directed at China. It wasn't just directed at bad actors. It was directed against everybody.

That is, the breadth of it is enormous, and it carries upside, but it also carries real risk. All right, let's talk timeline and your definition of short-term or long-term. What does that timeline look like?

because obviously people are trying to figure out weathering the storm, right? You talked about supply chain and the car is a great example. You don't feel the pain till let's say June. All right. So it gives us a few months for things to kind of work its way through, work it out. Is that a timeline of short term? And then after that it's, it's, it's considered, all right, this is longterm. What is that timeline in your opinion? Well, let's be clear. The timeline was immediate. So, so, so let me read from, from the wall street journal. Uh,

headline, Trump tariffs send Dow to a 1600 point decline, dollar slumps, Asian stocks hit for a second day, fears of recession rise. And here's what the Wall Street Journal reports, quote,

U.S. markets suffer their steepest decline since 2020 on fears President Trump's new tariffs plan will trigger a global trade war and drag the U.S. economy into recession. Major stock indexes dropped as much as 6% on Thursday. Stocks lost roughly $3.1 trillion in market value, their largest one-day decline since March 2020. Stock index futures drifted lower Thursday evening, and stocks in Japan were hit for a second day as Friday training began.

In Thursday's market plunge, the Dow Industrials dropped 16, 179 points or 4%. The tech-heavy NAGSTEC, which powered the market higher for years, was down 6%, pulled lower by big declines in NVIDIA, Apple, and Amazon.com. The S&P 500, which fell 4.8%, and the other benchmarks suffered their sharpest decline since the

early days of the COVID-19 pandemic. The dollar, meanwhile, tumbled with the Wall Street Journal dollar index suffering its sharpest decline since 2023. Now, those are immediate hits and understand, look, it's easy to say, okay, fine, you know, that's just rich people. Look, at this point, a majority of Americans have money invested in 401ks and IRAs, and so that's impacting everyone.

And people don't necessarily follow their 401k on a daily basis. Many people see their 401k statement when it comes out at the end of the quarter. A whole lot of people are looking at that and we'll see if that's a temporary one day hit. But if it continues to slide over the next few days, that's not waiting for six months to see the impact. That's freaking people out now. And so the consequences of this are real. And I want to be clear about something. Look, it

It used to be conventional wisdom in Republican politics that free trade is wonderful and we should just have no tariffs and lower tariffs. And that was almost everyone. Can I ask you a this is a question I'm just going to ask it because I know there's people listening. They want to know what the definition your definition of free trade is. That used to be conventional wisdom.

And I want to give Donald Trump credit for something really significant, which is he's changed the debate on trade fundamentally. And so I believe in free trade, but I also believe in fair trade. And so when I talk about reciprocity, Donald Trump has made a very clear point. And it's a powerful point, which is many countries on Earth have been taking advantage of the United States and have been imposing really high tariffs and barriers to U.S. goods,

while having free access to the American markets. And that is unfair. And so I love that President Trump is willing to use leverage to lower tariffs. I think that's great. And that really is a change in the debate. Ten years ago, there was nobody in the Republican Party making that argument. And that is the direct result of President Trump's leadership. That's a good thing. Saying we should be treated fairly, that is a good thing. That's a good thing.

That is a very different proposition from saying, doesn't matter if other countries lower their tariffs, we're going to impose tariffs on everybody because we think tariffs should be the principal vehicle of funding the economy. If the outcome of this is a multi-trillion dollar tax increase on American consumers, I think that that is really consequential and really, really harmful.

So let me ask you one other question, and that is if these tariffs don't change, Senator, then what would the impact be?

Well, let me share an analysis that a group called the Tax Foundation did. Now, the Tax Foundation is a think tank based in Washington. They're very good. They're economic experts. They analyze tax policies. They have proven to be incredibly accurate in terms of measuring the impact of taxes. Here's what the Tax Foundation has assessed from the announcement this week. They say if these stay in effect, the average tariff rate on all imports—

will rise from 2.5% in 2024 to 18.8%, the highest average rate since 1933, under the tariffs announced for 2025. The consequence of those tariffs, they will cause imports to fall by slightly more than $900 billion in 2025, or 28%. So that's what they're predicting, is that imports drop $900 billion, 28%, this year.

They also say the newly announced tariffs on April 2nd will raise $1.8 trillion in revenue over the next decade and will shrink U.S. GDP by 0.5%. The April 2nd escalation, they note, comes in addition to the previously announced tariffs, which will raise another $1.3 trillion in revenue over the next decade and shrink U.S. GDP by 0.3%.

Altogether, Trump's tariffs will raise nearly $3.2 trillion in revenue over the next decade and reduce U.S. GDP by 0.8%. They further project the tariffs will reduce after-tax income by an average of 2.1% and amount to an average tax increase of more than $2,100 per U.S. household in 2025. Now, to be clear...

That's a prediction if these tariffs stay in place, if they don't change. If the upside that I described happens, if foreign countries slash their tariffs and Trump in turn slash these tariffs, none of those numbers hold. Instead, I think we see an enormous economic boom. But if that doesn't happen, if these tariffs stay in place as an ongoing economic policy, we're facing very real and I think very detrimental consequences.

It's going to be an interesting one, Senator. I think it's important that we have these conversations. Hopefully many of you listening understand this more and the ups and downs and what this will look like. It's going to be changing often. And when it changes, we are going to continue to cover it day in and day out. So make sure you hit that subscribe or that auto download button wherever you listen to this podcast. Share it on social media. I hope this has helped you. And I honestly hope

that you'll share it with your friends so that they will share it and they can hear exactly what we did here today. And Senator, I will see you back here for our week in review on Saturday as well.

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