“They’re destroying the economy, and they’re making it harder and harder for Americans to afford things.”
Washington D.C. — U.S. Senator Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) joined ABC News’ This Week with Jonathan Karl to call out President Donald Trump’s tariffs and its harmful impacts on the economy, and how Democrats can call out the Trump administration’s reckless policies.
View the full interview here.
Key Excerpts:
On Trump’s disjointed tariff policy:
[…] I think the lack of a coordinated response to the State of the Union was a mistake. And frankly, it took the focus off of where it should have been, which is on the fact that the president spoke for an hour and 40 minutes, and had nothing to say about what he would do to bring down costs for American families that were watching that lengthy address sitting at the kitchen table, hoping that he would offer something to help them afford a new home or pay the rent or afford health care or child care. There was nothing in it for the American people, and that’s where we need to keep our focus. I was just listening to your guest [NEC Director Kevin Hassett] precede me, trying to explain that these tariffs, these on-again, off-again tariffs are not about trade. It’s a drug war, but next month it’s a trade war, but now it’s a drug war. It was incomprehensible. And he was also trying to say that job numbers that came in less than expected are somehow good news. They’re destroying the economy, and they’re making it harder and harder for Americans to afford things. That’s where we need to keep the focus. That’s why we lost the last election because we weren’t laser focused on the high cost of living, and what they’re doing now is just making it so much worse in the administration. And that’s really what we need to emphasize.
On Trump’s reckless tariffs and impact on California:
[…] I think it may make sense to look at targeted actions that we can take to bring back American jobs, like auto jobs. But these, across the board, tariffs that are indiscriminate, that that are imposed one day and taken down the next, I can tell you the effect that they’re having in California because I talked to people. I talked to citrus farmers, for example, who still haven’t recovered the market share they lost during the first Trump administration with these tariff wars. So, I think these broad, indiscriminate and on-again, off-again tariffs don’t help anyone. They don’t help farmers. They don’t help auto workers. They’re a mistake.
On how Democrats can call out the Trump administration’s disastrous policies:
[…] I do think that the abundant corruption of the Trump administration – the self-dealing, the inconsistency, the economic decline that they’re advancing with their inconsistent and haphazard policies – yes, will cause the administration to collapse of its own weight. But that’s I think, first of all, not an answer to what Democrats need to do, which is we need to have our own broad, bold agenda to improve the economic well-being of Americans, to answer really the central question at the heart of our political challenges, which is if you’re working hard in America, can you still earn a good living? We need to be advancing policies and making the arguments about what we have to offer, not simply standing back and letting them collapse of their own corrupt weight. To me, that’s not enough. We need to effectively use litigation as we are. We need to effectively use communication to talk to new people in new ways as we are.
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