Trump Defends Economy-Busting Tariff Plans In Wandering Remarks In Chicago

A combative and often rambling Donald Trump tripled down Tuesday on his proposals to hike tariffs on goods brought into the U.S. from other countries, again saying they would help the economy despite the vast majority of economists saying such plans would spike inflation.

Appearing before the Economic Club of Chicago in Illinois, the presidential candidate also said he could do a better job on interest rate policy than Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell, claimed he had never criticized 81-year-old President Joe Biden over his age, and refused to say whether he had talked with Russian President Vladimir Putin since the end of Trump’s 2017-2021 White House term, as journalist Bob Woodward has reported.

Trump’s often discursive remarks in Chicago — his response to a question about the Fed led to a lengthy tangent on Supreme Court justices — came a day after he unexpectedly closed out a town hall-style campaign event in Oaks, Pennsylvania, by playing music and dancing for over half an hour. That led his Democratic rival in the White House race, Vice President Kamala Harris, to write on social media, “Hope he’s okay,” playing up concerns about the 78-year-old’s mental health.

“You’re wrong. You’ve been wrong, you’ve been wrong all your life on this stuff,” Trump told John Micklethwait, the editor in chief of business news giant Bloomberg News, when the pair disagreed about tariffs and their impact on the U.S. dollar.

“What does The Wall Street Journal know? They’ve been wrong about everything,” Trump said when Micklethwait mentioned the paper’s editorial page being critical of the bigger budget deficits it says his plans would cause.

Trump said his proposed tariffs — 10% to 20% for most goods and 60% or higher for Chinese goods — would not fuel inflation, which has been steadily slowing after hitting the highest annual rate since the 1980s in 2022.

Importers pay tariffs to bring goods into the country. Those charges, though, are then passed on to consumers in the form of higher prices, most economists say. In a recent survey by the University of Chicago’s business school, 95% of economists said they agreed that tariffs are passed on.

Trump said there are two possible objectives of tariffs: to raise money and to incentivize foreign companies to relocate production to the U.S.

“If you want the companies to come in, the tariff has to be a lot higher than 10%, because 10% is not enough,” he said.

After Micklethwait, who worked at Chase Manhattan Bank and was editor in chief of The Economist magazine before joining Bloomberg News, suggested that there would be a “massive” negative effect on the economy from Trump’s proposed tariffs, the former president snapped back.

“It must be hard for you to spend 25 years talking about tariffs as being negative and then have somebody explain to you that you’re totally wrong,” Trump said.

Tariffs were not the only thing Trump clashed over. He did not directly say whether he would renominate Powell to chair the Fed.

Trump said Powell, who has won plaudits for seeming to pull off a so-called soft landing of the economy while hiking interest rates, has “the greatest job in government.”

“You show up to the office once a month, and you say, ‘let’s see, flip a coin.’ And everybody talks about you like you’re a god,” Trump said.

With the exception of Trump, presidents since Bill Clinton have generally honored the Fed’s independence, realizing that financial markets’ confidence in an independent central bank supports foreign investment and demand for the U.S. dollar. But Trump said he thought he had a “right to put in comments” on the direction of rates.

“I think I have the right to say, as a very good businessman and somebody that’s used a lot of sense, I think I have the right to say that I think I’m better than he would be,” Trump said, referring to Powell. “I think I’m better than most people would be in that position.”

Trump also declined to say whether he had spoken to Putin since leaving the White House in 2021. A new book by Woodward, the famed Watergate journalist, said Trump had given precious COVID-19 testing machines to the Russian leader early in the coronavirus pandemic and had spoken with him up to seven times after leaving the presidency.

“I don’t comment on that. But I will tell you that if I did, it’s a smart thing,” Trump said when Micklethwait asked whether he had talked to Putin. The Kremlin has said that Putin received the testing machines, even though Trump’s campaign has claimed Woodward was making up stories.

Trump also denied ever criticizing Biden’s age, even though he’d imitated a lost Biden wandering onstage at campaign events before the Democrat dropped his reelection bid earlier this year.

“I never attacked him for his age. In fact, I used to defend him on his age, “ Trump said. “I attacked him for his lack of competence.”

And Trump again stuck by his claim there was a “peaceful” transfer of power when he left the White House, despite the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection by his supporters at the U.S. Capitol that delayed the 2020 presidential election’s certification and left multiple people dead.

“You had a peaceful transfer of power,” Trump said, prompting a rare barb by Micklethwait as he mentioned a country Trump often cites in remarks about crime.

“You had a peaceful transfer of power — compared to Venezuela,” Micklethwait said.