President Donald Trump is using tariffs to apply heavy pressure on China on trade, but he remains open to negotiations with Beijing, Tucker Carlson says.
“Well, of course, he is,” Carlson said when asked whether he thought Trump is willing to negotiate with China.
“I mean, the question is: Who needs the other more? Does the U.S. need China more or China need the U.S.? I can’t answer that,” Carlson told The Daily Signal.
Only hours after new tariffs went into effect on about 90 countries around the world, Trump announced a 90-day pause on the “reciprocal” tariffs, but he increased tariffs on goods from China.
“Based on the lack of respect that China has shown to the world’s markets, I am hereby raising the tariff charged to China by the United States of America to 125%, effective immediately,” Trump wrote on Truth Social on Wednesday.
China and the U.S. “need each other,” Carlson said. “The deal has been for the past 30 years: We’ll buy your underpriced consumer goods; you buy our overpriced debt. And you know, in some ways that’s worked great. In other ways, it hasn’t worked at all.”
Carlson was at the White House last week when Trump stood in the Rose Garden and announced his plan to increase tariffs to a minimum of 10% on nations around the world. Despite knowing Trump for years and the president’s interest in tariffs as a negotiation tool, the conservative news commentator and former Fox News host said he was “shocked” by Trump’s tariff plan.
“I wasn’t against what Trump was saying, but I was like, ‘Oh, my gosh, that’s shocking that he said that. You can’t erect trade barriers.’ … It’s like all the childhood orthodoxies were still rattling around in my head.”
Free market conservatives have traditionally opposed most tariffs.
While there is a lot Carlson said he cannot assess regarding Trump’s use of tariffs due to not being an economist, he was confident in saying, “There’s going to be a disengagement from China.”
“I hope it doesn’t become a … total disengagement,” Carlson said, “and I certainly hope there’s not a military conflict. I don’t think we’d win. Well, we wouldn’t win at this point. But there needs to be some kind of disengagement on trade.”
America cannot be reliant on China and other nations for critical products such as pharmaceuticals and critical military components, he said.
“You have to be able to build a jet engine exclusively in the United States and not rely on supply chains 10,000 miles long or on countries that are hostile to you. I mean, that’s crazy. It’s just basic stuff. And we have the resources to do that,” he said.
On Friday, China raised tariffs on U.S. imports to a matching 125%.
Trump says he is using tariffs to bring American manufacturing back to the U.S., an action some on Capitol Hill say is long overdue.
“Missouri alone has lost 50,000 jobs to China,” Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., wrote on X on Thursday. “Trump is right to go after China.”
This article was originally published April 11.
This article was originally published at www.dailysignal.com
