Commerce Secretary Lutnick Says 10% 'Baseline' Tariff Will Be In Effect For The 'Foreseeable Future'

On Sunday, Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick spoke to CNN's Dana Bash on "State of the Union" about President Trump's tariffs.

Transcript

00:00You mentioned the U.K. agreement. You were the lead negotiator there, aside from the

00:05president, of course. And it does, you mentioned some of the aspects of it, but one other aspect

00:11is that it keeps in place a 10% across-the-board tariff on goods imported to the U.S. from the

00:17U.K. As you know, the cost of tariffs are paid by American consumers. We've been talking about

00:23this. So should Americans be prepared? I disagree with that, you know. Well, okay. But many, most

00:30economists, I would say, disagree with you on that. And we have seen it being passed off time and time

00:36again to the American consumer. But regardless of that, just on the policy, this is what I want to

00:42ask you about. Is the 10% tariff that we're seeing in the framework for the U.K. going to be in place

00:49for the foreseeable future? So we do expect a 10% baseline tariff to be in place for the foreseeable

00:57future. But don't buy the silly arguments that the U.S. consumer pays. Businesses, their job is to

01:06try to sell to the American consumer. And domestically produced products are not going to have that

01:12tariff. So the foreigners are going to finally have to compete. They're going to have to compete.

01:17What happens is the businesses and the countries primarily eat the tariff. Look,

01:23we have 25% tariffs that were set under President Trump's first term. I don't hear a single word,

01:31not a single word about those tariffs. No consumers in America, those were set in 2017 and 2018.

01:39No consumers in America sit here complaining about those tariffs.

01:42What happens is prices have gone up for lots of reasons.

01:48Oh, no, no, no. Don't talk about the Biden inflation. That's another whole gig. When we

01:53left, when President Trump in 2019 had the lowest inflation in history. So you know that this works

02:00really, really well. It works well. These countries and the businesses have to compete.

02:06They have to cut prices. You've seen it. The Asians have said they're not raising their prices.

02:11So who's paying those tariffs? The governments and the companies.

02:15They want to compete in the greatest store in the world.