Republican presidential primary candidate Nikki Haley is aligning herself with President Joe Biden to attack former President Donald Trump’s plan that would impose tariffs on foreign imports to protect American jobs and reshore industries to the United States.
While spending the week with Wall Street donors in New York City, Haley ramped up her attacks on Trump’s economic nationalist agenda that helped him flip critical swing states like Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania in 2016 that had gone for former President Obama in prior elections.
“This is a man who now wants to go and put 10 percent tariffs across the board, raising taxes on every single American. Think about that for a second,” Haley told CNBC this week, referencing Trump’s plan to impose a 10 percent tariff on all foreign imports.
Trump’s plan is also reportedly to include 60 percent tariffs on all Chinese imports to eliminate the nation’s massive trade imbalance with the communist country that has helped eliminate American jobs for decades.
Haley then claimed that the tariffs would “raise every household’s expenses by $2,600 a year” though research has consistently shown that tariffs do not spur inflation or raise prices on American consumers.
The latest research from the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) notes that there is no connection between the United States imposing tariffs on foreign imports and current inflation.
With Haley’s defense of free trade, she has aligned herself with Biden who also attacked Trump’s tariff plan using similar talking points — suggesting tariffs will “stifle economic growth and fuel inflation,” according to Biden spokesman Andrew Bates.
United States free trade with China alone has eliminated 3.7 million American jobs from the economy — 2.8 million of which were lost in American manufacturing. Similarly, at least 50,000 American manufacturing plants closed down.
Those massive job losses have coincided with a booming United States-China trade deficit. In 1985, before China entered the World Trade Organization (WTO), the United States trade deficit with China totaled $6 billion. In 2023, the U.S. trade deficit with China totaled more than $367 billion.
Haley’s opposition to tariffs is important in the Republican primary because about 70 percent of GOP voters today say that free trade eliminates American jobs, indicating significant opposition to free trade policies championed by the Biden administration, Democrats, and the Republican establishment.
Like Haley, tariffs are opposed by the likes of the Business Roundtable, Wall Street, and the Chamber of Commerce — all of which have a vested financial interest in making sure corporations can readily offshore American jobs to foreign countries and easily import products back to the U.S. market.
Experts at the Coalition for a Prosperous America say imposing a 15 percent tariff on most foreign imports and 35 percent tariffs on products in vital supply chains would create about 10 million American jobs and generate over $600 billion in new revenue.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at jbinder@breitbart.com. Follow him on Twitter here.
COMMENTS
Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting.