The Great America Show with Tim Descher, Executive Director of the Committee to Unleash Prosperity (CUNYPA) and President Donald Trump's top economic advisor, joins us to discuss the latest trade deal struck between the United States and China.
00:05:32.300I think I'd make a lot of friends, ultimately.
00:05:34.120If the United States government took a firmer stand with foreign countries, would we be better off, or are we so much now a part of the community of nations that we can't really afford to offend anybody?
00:05:45.880I think we'd be better off, and I think we'd be far more respected.
00:05:48.160I think the Japanese would respect us far more than they do.
00:05:50.580I don't think they have any respect for us, and they shouldn't have any respect for us, because we are idiots when it comes to what's happening.
00:07:38.280In fact, if you look at the debt-to-income ratio this country has, we have growing debt like it's nobody's business.
00:07:44.300And nobody's ever seemed to want to take care of it.
00:07:46.600Nobody's ever wanted to seem to take care of the deficit.
00:07:49.780Nobody's ever wanted to look at the fact that America, the number one GDP nation, the most powerful nation in this world, on this planet, is a deficit nation.
00:08:01.980I mean, we import more than we export.
00:08:23.440Well, it's funny because when I first came to Washington, D.C., you know, about however long ago, every time you talk about China or decoupling from China or anything like that, it was the, oh, well, we can't do that.
00:08:47.280And do you want the consequences in the midterm elections to happen where the prices go, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah?
00:08:53.440And all of a sudden, this guy comes down an escalator in Trump Tower in 2015.
00:08:58.900And 10 years later, this is the talking point that everybody is parroting decouple from China.
00:09:06.920We have to watch China, China, China, China, China, China.
00:09:10.100The president has completely, and citizen, completely changed the dialogue and discussion in this country to where we are now talking about going up against the world going up against China.
00:09:22.440The world decoupling from China, not just the U.S., but the world as we saw today when Trump laid down the gauntlet and said, all right, if you don't retaliate against us, we're dropping the tariffs except on China.
00:09:37.460So you're with us or you're against us.
00:09:39.660And that is the message that he has said.
00:09:42.160And I believe that most of D.C. in a matter of 10 years has completely changed their tune.
00:11:00.220He has made his case saying, you've taken advantage of the previous leaders, of the leaders that came before me, and they let you get away with it.
00:12:08.740You take a loss on your taxes, you lose a few hundred million dollars, and you can write it off for the next 20 years.
00:12:13.200Because he's probably one of the only people who's ever used that to his advantage because going to Atlantic City, which I spent a decent amount of time there.
00:12:55.060Like I was saying, the people that would tell me, even at the Heritage Foundation, 10 years ago when I started working there, that was the narrative.
00:13:02.700Now they are 100% on page with what President Trump is saying because it's the truth.
00:15:04.060We can say, oh, well, businesses are going to come back.
00:15:06.700Well, here's what isn't going to happen.
00:15:09.520We have had a corporate tax rate at 21% that has brought back a ton of business.
00:15:15.800We cut the rate in 2017 from $35 to $21, and we had a trillion dollars move back in investment from that move.
00:15:26.140All right, $0 has moved out of America since it came back because of the great business atmosphere that Trump created in 2017.
00:15:35.660Imagine if we cut that, any revenue that we generate from tariffs, we use that to cut the corporate rate down to 15%.
00:15:43.500Imagine what that's going to do to jumpstart businesses, even more businesses, moving back into America.
00:15:49.680So a long way of saying is, post-tariff, post this deal, 90 days, we've got to get that tax cut extended.
00:15:57.500We've got to cut the tax rate, and we've got to codify Doge and make sure that we're not only cutting taxes, but we're cutting spending and waste, fraud, and abuse in this government.
00:16:06.880Before we get into free versus fair trade, I want to go a little bit further into something you mentioned, long-term tariffs.
00:16:12.060In my opinion, I don't think that's something we have to worry about because the way that Donald Trump is using these tariffs, in my opinion, and by all indicators, it's to get an end result.
00:16:29.220China deserves a lot of payback for everything they've done to this world, this country, a million people dead during COVID, millions globally.
00:16:35.420That's a whole different story, but they need to pay the price for that, in my opinion.
00:16:38.840They should have never gotten away with that.
00:16:41.600So the way I see him using these tariffs, Tim, is to level the playing field, and it's not – you mentioned long-term tariffs.
00:16:48.560I don't think there is a long-term tariff play.
00:16:50.380Now, there are tariffs that are long-term that are currently still on China from its first administration, but they're by no means 125% tariffs.
00:17:40.260We cannot forget the free trade part of it, though, because we want to continue to do business.
00:17:45.380We talk about trade deficits all the time, and I know that's probably a buzzword here, but the trade deficit is what makes the dollar so strong around the entire world.
00:17:54.280People are buying our products or they're paying us in dollars.
00:18:52.920It's just a matter of how long that is and what we do domestically here to attract businesses into this country to start manufacturing here.
00:19:01.900Yeah, and I agree with you, but there's a line between – I mean, depending on what the product is, invoice, MSRP, suggested retail price or whatever.
00:19:11.200And they're built in margins of profits along the way, whether it be from factory to retail.
00:19:19.320Well, to suggest – and I'm not saying you're suggesting this, but some people have suggested if there's a 25% tax levied on something, it's going to cost the consumer 25% more.
00:20:47.460And so what I'll say to this is we know we just we just did a study.
00:20:51.900It's released on Unleashed Prosperity dot com.
00:20:53.500You can see, look, if these tariffs stay on automobiles, you're going to pay four to five thousand more per car.
00:21:00.420In addition, if you don't roll back the Biden regulations, the green regulations Biden have, that's an additional six to seven thousand on cars.
00:22:00.220If you're a business, you're trying to build a business in Detroit and you are forced to use union manufacturers or union workers and people based in the city of Detroit to build your building.
00:22:11.300I'm sorry. That's a bad way of doing business.
00:22:13.620And I'm going to choose somewhere else to do my business.
00:22:15.900So so we got to be careful how we're talking about these tariffs and the impact that they're going to have.
00:26:15.340He's a he's a Pulitzer Prize winner, former New York Times journalist who moved to Detroit and just to cover the city because it was fascinating.
00:26:23.560And he immersed himself in the culture there.
00:26:26.060And he's been on the ambassador bridge reporting.
00:26:30.100He got on the ambassador bridge to report.
00:26:34.380He and I would disagree on most things.
00:26:36.040But when he starts talking about, OK, well, we have decent tariff rates with Canada on most things, not dairy, as President Trump points out, that's that's good.
00:26:50.200What about the fact that Canada has universal health care and and companies don't have to pay for health care?
00:26:56.860And American companies think about the auto industry.
00:27:00.620A lot of their burden is is health care and other benefits that we have to provide in this country because we don't have universal health care.
00:27:08.840That right there are the kind of things that we should be looking at, that we should be talking about in how we renegotiate deals, how we get back to the table and say, we want to do business with you.
00:27:23.080It's OK to move things back and forth across the border 10 times in order to make a cheaper car for consumers and a better car.
00:27:29.680That's fine. But we've got to make better deals.
00:27:33.700And I think that President Trump is poised to do that.
00:27:36.920Yeah. If anyone who wants to go test out the Canadian health care system, I invite you to go to Canada, become a citizen and break your arm there and see how long it takes you to get a surgery.
00:27:45.920By no means is Tim, I think, advocating for universal health care in America.
00:27:52.160Oh, but just pointing out how expensive health care companies and it's I mean, big part thanks to Barack Hussein Obama, who's made it impossible for health care companies to come in and bid.
00:28:03.580When I left Fox News and I came to do independent journalism, Alou, for me to get my own health care, Tim, I was 27 years old.
00:28:11.620It was eight hundred dollars a month, nine dollars a month on Cobra.
00:28:13.980I was 27 years old with no preexisting conditions, nothing wrong with me.
00:28:17.940A perfect bill of health, seven, eight hundred dollars a month.
00:28:21.280I mean, these these people, these companies make it totally unaffordable.
00:28:25.440And my favorite thing was during Obamacare.
00:30:02.120Who really knows if that number is right?
00:30:04.220We haven't had a trade surplus in this country for 50 years.
00:30:08.260Think about how long this country has been going down the tubes.
00:30:10.880People think it's maybe the last 20 years.
00:30:12.600And a large part of it is Bill Clinton with the Belt and Road Initiative, as you heard President Trump say earlier in the show, to make these stupid, stupid deals.
00:30:21.460Yeah, to give China, an emerging nation, all this power and free might to do whatever the hell they want.
00:30:28.400But I think it's been going on a lot longer than that.
00:30:30.240A trade deficit for the last 50 years.
00:46:44.920It's a great thing, especially coming from nothing and making it to everything.
00:46:48.320I mean, you should be applauded for everything you've done to get there.
00:46:51.500It's the American dream, as you said, to get to that position.
00:46:54.420But there needs to be some sort of debt relief for the American people, the American, you know,
00:47:00.840family, you look at debt numbers through the roof, debt numbers for the elderly through the roof.
00:47:06.360I mean, there's no other way, you know, in my opinion, to get there without starting to cut back for some of these people and give them the relief they need.
00:47:14.600Some of these people are paying 25, 30 percent on credit card debt, you know, credit cards maxed out across the board.
00:47:21.600We need to give these people some sort of relief.
00:47:24.820You know, that's what we can have a whole episode on on price controls.
00:47:28.880I tend to I tend to be in the camp where where we shouldn't have price controls and and that we should be responsible.
00:47:34.800I mean, I mean, people at home need to stop acting like the federal government and just kind of borrowing, borrowing, spending, spending, spending.
00:47:41.440And what they need to do is they need to demand from their lawmakers lower taxes, less regulation.
00:47:54.640Yeah. I live in a state like New York and you have property taxes are through the roof for an elderly person to pay nine thousand, ten thousand dollars a year on a on a house that they paid 50 or 60 thousand dollars for that's now worth eight or nine hundred thousand dollars.
00:48:08.500You've got them paying property tax to the roof.
00:48:10.300I was talking with economist John Lonsky not too long ago.
00:48:15.040You look at some of the things that people are racking up on their credit cards.
00:48:26.540And, you know, if you're living in a state like New York to tell someone to get up and move after they're, you know, 80, 90 years old, they have the doctors here.
00:48:34.780You know, they're getting fifteen hundred bucks, two thousand dollars a month in Social Security and they're paying nine thousand dollars a year.
00:48:42.280You know, that's not something that they can control.
00:48:45.040You know, you can't ask somebody who's 85 years old to get up and move.
00:49:11.340What I am saying, though, is that we were not having this conversation in twenty seventeen, twenty eighteen, twenty nineteen and twenty twenty.
00:49:26.680But Biden put us over, put us over the limit.
00:49:30.000And and that caused rent to go up, that caused mortgages to go up, that caused groceries to go up, that caused energy to go up, that caused everything in this dang country to go up.
00:49:40.660And now we are stuck talking about how much people are putting on their credit cards because of one man and one man alone.