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

Forbes Breaking News

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.

Transcript

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

00:04So the 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. The strength of the dollar right now is plunging.

00:17Consumer sentiment is worse than at any time during the Great Recession. Is all of this part of the plan?

00:24Right. In fact, let's talk about what the trade plan is, because I think that it's very,

00:28very important for people to understand why we're doing what we're doing and how we got to the point

00:33where this is the right strategy. The bottom line is that in the United States, there are these things

00:39called 232s. You've heard people talk about it. It's a trade action where the government decides

00:45that there's something that's a serious threat to national security if we don't do something about

00:49it. And so an example, just hypothetical, would be supposed that in order to protect ourselves from

00:55an adversary, we had cannons, but we had to buy the cannonballs from them. Well, then you could put

01:00a 232 tariff on the cannonball and then we'd have to make it here. And then that would make it so that

01:06if we ever did have a situation where we're in conflict, that we'd had everything we need to

01:11protect ourselves. And so the 232 things were always excluded. They weren't covered by the new actions

01:17that you discussed at the opening. And so it's not like, so for example, semiconductors are the key

01:22important part of a lot of defense equipment. And there's going to be a semiconductor 232

01:28that studies those things carefully and decides what it has to, what has to be onshore in order

01:33to protect America. And so it was always the case in annex two in the reciprocal act that

01:38semiconductors were going to not be covered by that action because there's a 232 action that was

01:43announced in the executive order that is going to address it. And so I don't think that anything

01:50really should be a surprise if people stopped and studied, but it seems like a lot of the coverage,

01:55people are in a rush to get the coverage out and didn't really think through the logic of it,

01:58which is why we have a longer form show with you here, right, Jake, where we can talk about what

02:02exactly is going on. And then finally, why is it that people think that there is an emergency about

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

02:14little corner of our country has just gotten bigger and bigger and bigger. And so it actually is the

02:19case that it's a very uncomfortable amount of Chinese input in our actual weapons systems,

02:25Jake, in our actual weapons systems. And so President Trump thinks it's urgent that we address these

02:29matters.

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