Biden criticizes tariffs while maintaining Trump’s policies
President Joe Biden has stepped up his criticism of former President Donald Trump’s proposal for new tariffs on all imports, including a notable 60% on goods from China. Biden argues that these tariffs would significantly increase inflation and tax burdens on middle-class Americans. Despite this critique, Biden has chosen to maintain and even increase the tariffs on various products from China established during Trump’s administration, justifying them as targeted measures to protect U.S. manufacturing and jobs.
Trump defends his tariff strategy as protective and not significantly inflationary, suggesting they’d act like a “ring around the country” to bolster the economy. However, according to the Washington Examiner, Biden’s campaign sees Trump’s tariff ideas as potentially exploitable for political gain, considering them harmful to economic stability and costly for American families.
Meanwhile, Trump’s campaign maintains that his historical tax reductions have benefited Americans and accuses Biden of planning substantial tax increases that would hurt families financially. Trump plans to continue advocating for tax cuts and possibly make his previous cuts permanent if re-elected.
the discussion revolves around differing economic approaches, with Biden criticizing Trump’s broad tariff proposals for potentially exacerbating inflation and increasing taxes on middle-class Americans, while Trump argues his plan would protect and financially benefit the country.
President Joe Biden is ramping up his campaign attacks against former President Donald Trump‘s new tariff proposals, despite maintaining, and even expanding, the Trump administration’s tariffs on Chinese imports.
Biden told donors at a campaign fundraiser in McClean, Virginia earlier this week that Trump’s suggestion to put 10% or higher tariffs on all imports to the U.S. in addition to 60% tariffs on products imported from China would “drive up inflation” and “increase taxes on the average middle-class.”
“Every product coming to America, he wants a 10 percent tariff on it. That’s going to drive up inflation, and he’s reported to have said behind closed doors, according to the press, he’ll replace the income tax system — eliminate it and make it all tariffs,” the president said, referring to recent reports have indicated that Trump has discussed with his advisors eliminating the federal income tax and instead replacing that lost revenue with an all-tariff program.”A study came out today that shows his plan would increase taxes on the average middle-class family by $8,300 a year.”
However, despite Biden’s attacks against Trump’s new proposal, the president has opted to keep his predecessor’s tariffs on Chinese goods in place following a lengthy administration review and even raised tariffs on steel, solar panels, electric vehicles, and their component parts imported from China.
Biden’s team, both at the campaign and within his administration, argue that the president’s tariffs represent targeted policies that protect American manufacturing and jobs, as opposed to Trump’s blanket approach that only benefits the wealthiest Americans and corporations.
“What Trump is proposing will bring chaos to economic markets, raise costs on working families, and send inflation skyrocketing — all so that the richest Americans pay less,” Biden campaign spokesperson James Singer told the Washington Examiner. “American families can’t afford Trump’s broken economic promises, trickle-down agenda, and across the board middle-class tax increases.”
Trump has made increased tariffs a feature of his 2024 campaign platform. In an April interview with TIME Magazine, the former president suggested putting 10% or higher tariffs on all imports to the U.S. in addition to 60% tariffs on products imported from China. In the same interview, Trump also disputed that increased tariffs will raise costs for American consumers.
“I call it a ring around the country. We have a ring around the country. A reciprocal tax also, in addition to what we said. And if we do that, the numbers are staggering,” he claimed at the time. “I don’t believe it will have much of an effect because they’re making so much money off of us. I also don’t believe that the costs will go up that much. And a lot of people say, ‘Oh, that’s gonna be a tax on us.’ I don’t believe that. I think it’s a tax on the country that’s doing it.”
Biden campaign officials told the Washington Examiner that Trump’s TIME interview was a “slip on the banana peel moment” that Biden would be able to exploit.
However, a Trump campaign official told the Washington Examiner that the former president was not seriously considering the proposal and “simply floated the idea as one of many brought up during the conversation.”
“President Trump proudly passed the largest tax CUTS for hardworking Americans in history. Joe Biden wants to repeal every single one of President Trump’s tax cuts, raising the corporate tax rate to 28%, and implement the largest tax HIKE ever which would rob nearly $40,000 dollars from the average family who is already losing thousands every year due to Biden’s record-high inflation crisis,” Trump campaign spokesperson Karoline Leavitt additionally told the Washington Examiner.
Leavitt continued, “When President Trump is back in the White House, he will seek to make the existing Trump Tax Cuts permanent, advocate for additional tax cuts for working families, and ask Congress to end taxes on tips for service workers. President Trump’s priority has been and always will be putting more money back into the pockets of hardworking Americans.”
Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen argued to reporters Thursday that Trump’s new tariff proposals would not only raise costs for households but also businesses.
“I believe that is a substantial enough program that it would both raise costs to consumers broadly on all the imports they buy and harm American businesses — many of whom rely on imported goods for their supply chains that would significantly raise their costs,” she said in Atlanta, Georgia.
Douglas Holtz-Eakin, president of the American Action Forum and former director of the Congressional Budget Office said that Trump’s tariff proposal “doesn’t bode well” for American consumers’ average “cost of living.”
“The policy is very bad. Tariffs make consumers poorer,” Alex Durante, an economist with the conservative Tax Foundation, told CNN. “They shrink the economy. This would probably be the most damaging part of a Trump 2.0 economic agenda.”
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And Moody’s Analytics chief economist Mark Zandi wrote in a report published Thursday analyzing Biden and Trump’s respective economic platforms that Trump’s “proposed tariff policy raises costs for businesses and in turn weighs on growth and productivity, and lifts inflation as businesses pass many of their higher costs to consumers.”
Zandi had previously claimed that “Trump’s economic plans would increase the inflation rate” and drive the country into a recession shortly after increased tariffs were implemented.
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