Globalist Gary Cohn Falsely Claims Tariffs on China ‘Totally Hurt’ U.S.

Former White House economic adviser Gary Cohn, who proudly embraces the label “globalist,” falsely claimed on Face The Nation that tariffs on Chinese imports have “totally hurt the United States.”

During a segment, Cohn said without evidence that tariffs “have hurt the U.S.” economy and that tariffs did not help secure President Trump’s United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) to replace the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).

“I didn’t think the steel and aluminum tariffs were helpful to our economy,” Cohn said. “I don’t think the tariffs helped us get to any different outcome.”

As Breitbart News’s John Carney has reported for more than two years now, Trump’s tariffs have not spurred massive price hikes for American consumers on U.S. goods as free trade advocates had claimed for years.

Likewise, Trump’s tariffs on cheap, foreign-imported steel and aluminum have led to an economic resurgence in many American towns where steel mills have either reopened or new mills are being built.

Thanks to Trump’s implementation of tariffs, China’s economic growth has slowed to its weakest pace in three decades, and experts have said major companies are being forced to relocate outside of China. Contrary to Cohn’s claims, researchers have discovered that a 25 percent tariff on all Chinese imports to the U.S. would create about one million American jobs by 2024.

For decades, free trade has helped gut working and middle-class U.S. jobs and stripped whole middle American towns of their industries and livelihoods.

Since NAFTA was signed and China was allowed to enter the World Trade Organization, nearly five million American manufacturing jobs and more than 50,000 manufacturing facilities have been eliminated from the U.S. economy. This mass elimination of jobs due to free trade has coincided with an almost 600 percent increase in trade deficits and more despair for American communities left in the wake.

John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder.