Exclusive interview: Rep. Ted Lieu said Red Districts are going to start complaining about the trade war with China
One of most popular Representative with most social media followers congressman Rep. Ted Lieu talked with us in Irvine about the president Trump’s trade war with China, but he is confident that Red Districts are going to start complaining about the trade war with China.
Congressman Lieu from California’s 33rd congressional district, He said ” So first thing you know, trade is very complicated. I actually opposed president Obama’s trans-Pacific partnership in 2016. I thought it was not well designed, I thought that it was going to hurt the American workers, I voted against it.
I’m not philosophically opposed to tariffs. I am opposed to how the president Trump is doing it. It doesn’t seem like he’s doing it with any particular strategy, or rightful reason. So if you remember, one day, he decides without telling his staff that he is just going to pose steel and aluminum tariffs. 25% of steel, and then some amount of aluminum.
And then his staff freaks out, no one knows what to do, and then they end up talking to us what he now has to exempt all these countries. So it turns out the steel tariffs, that they don’t apply to Canada, to Mexico, to South Korea, to Australia, to any member of European Union, all in Europe. So, basically, these are fake tariffs. Right?
Because if you’re a company in America that buys steel, let’s say you are Ford motor company, you will just buy steel from Canada, or South Korea, or one of these other countries Donald Trump has exempt. So those tariffs don’t do anything for the American steel worker, right? It’s totally fake. So that’s a problem, right?
You have a president that sort of launches these things on Twitter without thinking them through.
And, now, he said he is going to, according to the media, put 60 billion dollars’ worth of goods in China, and higher tariffs. So, China responded, right, and China’s not stupid. China said, okay, if you want to do that, guess what we’re going to do? We are going to pose our own tariffs on pork, on soybeans, on all those things that affect people in these deep red Trump districts. And states like Iowa, where Donald Trump needs to win. So China is very smart, right? So they’re going to go to this trade war, and what’s going to end up happening is if this keeps on going, it’s going to hurt both countries.
But ultimately, mind you, is China has way more reserves than the United States. They can probably tolerate a trade war much better than the United States can. What’s going to end up happening is, all these farmers, all these people in these red districts, are going to start complaining to Donald Trump, and to the Republican senators, Republican members of Congress. The president will not be able to sustain this. So I think that’s what’s going to happen.”