TRUMP EXTENDS TARIFF EXEMPTIONS TO CANADA AFTER DUSTUP WITH TRUDEAU

Hassett spoke to reporters briefly Friday morning at the White House, where he insisted that the president’s economic agenda is bringing manufacturing jobs back to the United States.

“Why were those jobs created here in the U.S.? Well, it’s because people are wary of what might happen to tariffs in the future, and they’re already onshoring American production,” he said. “We’ve got more than a trillion dollars of commitments, some new factories in the U.S., because people are trying to onshore production, and this is the first of many reports that are going to look like this.”

Hassett was not able to quantify the short-term negative impacts the president’s tariffs might have in store for American consumers, as previewed by Trump during his address to a joint session of Congress earlier this week.

“Tariffs are about making America rich again and making America great again. And it’s happening, and it will happen rather quickly. There’ll be a little disturbance, but we’re OK with that,” Trump said Tuesday night. “It won’t be much.”

“What I’m most interested in right now, what I’ve been seeing, is the short-term gain,” Hassett countered when asked what the president meant by a “little disturbance.” “So we’ve got more manufacturing jobs, we’ve got revenue coming up for tariffs, we’ve got interest rates going down quite a bit, saving each basis point about a billion dollars for taxpayers.”

“I know that there’s some uncertainty, but in the end, if we make it so that it’s really attractive to produce things in the U.S., then all the value and production in the U.S. that moves here is a positive economy,” he continued. “There’s going to be some uncertainty, especially between now and April, before tariffs are finalized, but after that, then, it should be just a gain. That’s going to be a golden age, because what we’re doing is we’re moving towards a world where domestic production in the U.S. is the most attractive place to produce on Earth.”

Hassett specifically quibbled with reporters’ assertions that the tariffs would raise the cost of groceries for American households.

“If we reduce inflation at the aggregate level by stopping the $2 trillion a year of deficit spending, then that’s going to be way more impactful on the price of groceries than a tariff here,” he said. “So, I think that it’s really easy to get lost on the minutia of the tariffs without looking at the macro-economic lift.”

Trump is slated to announce new “reciprocal” tariffs on or around April 2 for a host of goods, including automobiles, pharmaceuticals, lumber, copper, and more. He has already placed 25% tariffs on the import of some Canadian and Mexican goods, 20% tariffs on Chinese imports, and 25% tariffs on all steel and aluminum imports, along with their downstream products.

TRUMP’S TARIFFS TURN CANADIAN ELECTIONS UPSIDE DOWN

A number of American manufacturers voiced significant concerns after Trump’s tariffs on Canada and Mexico went into effect on Tuesday. That, coupled with a significant downturn in the markets this week, led Trump to extend a one-month tariff exemption for all goods compliant with the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement he implemented in 2019.

White House officials say that roughly 62% of imports from Canada, including energy products, and 50% of imports from Mexico will still be subject to the 25% tariff rate.