Former President Donald Trump waxed poetic about his love of tariffs again on Friday — including his love for the word itself.
Speaking at a roundtable with voters in Auburn Hills, Michigan, the Republican presidential nominee said he thinks “tariff” is “the most beautiful word in the dictionary.”
“You have other words that are damn nice, like ‘love,'” Trump said, while others in the room laughed. “But I tell you, I think it’s more beautiful than ‘love.'”
Trump, who calls himself “Tariff Man,” frequently touts his plan to impose steep tariffs on all imports if he’s elected president again.
He initially proposed a 10 percent tariff on American trading partners but suggested this week that that number could go as high as 50 percent. He also proposed a 60 percent tariff on imports from China. A Newsweek report found that such a proposal could hit his own businesses since his companies manufacture some products, such clothing accessories, in China, Vietnam and Bangladesh.
“If I’m going to be president of this country, I’m going to put a 100, 200, 2,000 percent tariff,” Trump said while speaking at the Economic Club of Chicago on Tuesday. “They’re not going to sell one car in the United States,” he added, referring to Mexico.
“Tariffs are the greatest thing ever invented,” he said last month in Flint, Michigan.
Economic analysts and experts aren’t so sure that’s the case.
The Washington Post published a lengthy report this week detailing how, if implemented, Trump’s tariff plan could be disastrous for the U.S. economy, with American consumers bearing the brunt of the cost. It could also lead to greater uncertainty in the stock market, and spark conflicts between the U.S. and other countries.
“We are talking about a plan of historic significance,” Douglas A. Irwin, an economist at Dartmouth College, told The Post. “It would be enormous, and the blowback would be even more enormous.”
Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen also warned that imposing “sweeping, un-targeted tariffs” would be a “deeply misguided” move that would negatively affect American businesses and ratchet up inflation.
“We cannot even hope to advance our economic and security interests — such as opposing Russia’s illegal invasion of Ukraine — if we go it alone,” Yellen said, speaking at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York.
Vice President Kamala Harris has also ripped Trump’s tariff proposal, calling it a “Trump sales tax.”
But the Democratic nominee has to walk a fine line with the issue to avoid alienating swing-state voters whose support she needs to win the November election. According to a Bloomberg/Morning Consult poll published last month, a majority of likely voters in swing states either strongly or somewhat support a 10 percent tariff on all imports.
Trump and Harris both stumped in Michigan on Friday as they seek to consolidate support in battleground states ahead of the election. Harris held a rally in the afternoon and addressed union auto workers after, and she’ll head to Detroit for a second rally in the evening. Trump will also hold his own rally in Detroit this evening.
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