White House Economic Advisor Kevin Hassett Clarifies Trump's Tariff Exemptions Under Section 232

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During an interview on CNN's "State of the Union" on Sunday, National Economic Council Director, Kevin Hassett spoke about the exemptions under President Trump's tariffs.  Fuel your success with Forbes. Gain unlimited access to premium journalism, including breaking news, groundbreaking in-depth reported stories, daily digests and more. Plus, members get a front-row seat at members-only events with leading thinkers and doers, access to premium video that can help you get ahead, an ad-light experience, early access to select products including NFT drops and more:  https://account.forbes.com/membership/?utm_source=youtube&utm_medium=display&utm_campaign=growth_non-sub_paid_subscribe_ytdescript   Stay Connected Forbes on Facebook: http://fb.com/forbes Forbes Video on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/forbes Forbes Video on Instagram: http://instagram.com/forbes More From Forbes:  http://forbes.com

Transcript

00:00White House National Economic Council Director, Kevin Hassett. Kevin, good to see you again.

00:04Hey, Jake. Good to see you.

00:05The White House says everything that happened over the last week and a half went according to plan.

00:10Over the course of just a few days, the global market lost trillions in stock value,

00:13regained some of it, but not all of it.

00:15The strength of the dollar right now is plunging.

00:17Consumer sentiment is worse than at any time during the Great Recession.

00:22Is all of this part of the plan?

00:24Right. In fact, let's talk about what the trade plan is,

00:27because I think that it's very, very important for people to understand

00:30why we're doing what we're doing and how we got to the point where this is the right strategy.

00:35The bottom line is that in the United States, there are these things called 232s.

00:41You've heard people talk about it.

00:42It's a trade action where the government decides that there's something that's a serious threat

00:47to national security if we don't do something about it.

00:50And so an example, just hypothetical, would be suppose that in order to protect ourselves

00:55from an adversary, we had cannons, but we had to buy the cannonballs from them.

01:00Well, then you could put a 232 tariff on the cannonball, and then we'd have to make it here,

01:05and then that would make it so that if we ever did have a situation where we were in conflict,

01:09that we'd have everything we need to protect ourselves.

01:12And so the 232 things were always excluded.

01:15They weren't covered by the new actions that you discussed at the opening.

01:18And so it's not like, so for example, semiconductors are the key important part of a lot of defense

01:25equipment, and there's going to be a semiconductor 232 that studies those things carefully

01:30and decides what has to be onshore in order to protect America.

01:34And so it was always the case in Annex 2 in the Reciprocal Act that semiconductors were going

01:39to not be covered by that action because there's a 232 action that was announced in the executive

01:45order that is going to address it. And so I don't think that anything really should be a surprise

01:51if people stopped and studied, but it seems like a lot of the coverage, people are in a rush to get

01:55the coverage out and didn't really think through the logic of it, which is why we have a longer

01:59form show with you here, right, Jake, where we can talk about what exactly is going on.

02:04And then finally, why is it that people think that there is an emergency about this?

02:07Well, it's because, especially over the last four years, the influence of China

02:13into every little corner of our country has just gotten bigger and bigger and bigger.

02:18And so it actually is the case that it's a very uncomfortable amount of Chinese input

02:23in our actual weapons systems, Jake, in our actual weapons systems.

02:26And so President Trump thinks it's urgent that we address these matters.

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