Massachusetts congressman rejects ‘painful’ Trump tariffs

Mark Herz: This week’s tariff whiplash has caused for a lot of feelings and a busy week on Wall Street. Joining me now to discuss is Congressman Jake Auchincloss. Good morning, Congressman. Thanks for joining us.

The highest import taxes in a century since the Great Depression. There are those who think President Trump is a great deal maker. He said Korea and Japan are flying in to sit at the bargaining table. What’s your take?

Jake Auchincloss: It’s the largest peacetime tax increase in American history, and I’m particularly concerned about two different constituencies that I represent. One are families that don’t have any savings left over at the end of the month, and they’re looking at home insurance and car insurance bills that are going to spike, car insurance in particular by double digits because of these tariffs. That is really going to force some painful tradeoffs. And number two, I’m worried about my constituents in their 50s and 60s who are nearing retirement and who just saw their 401Ks go down by double digits. That is gonna force some painful conversations about what retirement looks like, and it was entirely unnecessary and self-inflicted.

Herz: What about China? This stands out. Many other tariffs were paused for 90 days, but with China and President Trump, nobody’s blinking. It’s just up and up and up, including today, 84% up to 125% tariffs from China imposed on the U.S.

Auchincloss: I served on the select committee on China for two years, which was a bipartisan committee dedicated to understanding and planning for strategic competition with our pacing adversary, and what I can tell you is there is absolutely a role for tariffs in regards to China and how we compete with China, because they have been cheating on the terms of trade. But the way that these tariffs have been rolled out on China, the enumeracy and chaos or surrounding them has been a gift for Xi Jinping. It is actually going to drive him closer to Europe and get him better terms of trade with Europe and it has undercut our leverage when we negotiate with China because the U.S. bond markets forced the president to blink. When prices were up and yields were going down, that was Wall Street shorting America. That caused the president to back off, and it made the United States look weak in front of our trading counterparties.

Herz: Okay, and so there’s a lot of discontent, chaos, and unpredictability, but it’s more than that. The Trump policies, even beyond the economic ones, [have led to] great resistance and great unhappiness in your party. But what I want to know is what effect can lawmakers in your or even either party, including Republicans who might have tendencies to resist Trump policies. What effect can they have when the president is governing by executive order? [00:03:13][32.0]

Auchincloss: The framers designed our constitution with a out-of-control executive in mind, right? They had just dealt with one across the Atlantic and so they understood that this could happen. They designed separation of powers where you had the president, the judiciary, and the legislature and they gave each one checks and balances. Right now, what’s happening is the judiciary is mostly doing its job. It’s standing up to the president, but it’s in a one-on-one fight because Congress has sidelined itself and the reason Congress has sidelined itself is because Speaker Mike Johnson and Senate Majority Leader John Thune don’t think of themselves as leaders of a separate and co-equal branch of government. They think of themselves as courtiers to Mar-a-Lago. When that happens, what Democrats and the minority have to do is go to the public, go to be ultimate branch of the government, which is we, the people. And so we’re going out across the country and we are building public pressure to put on congressional Republicans to stand up to the president. And it’s not going to happen overnight, but it is having the beginnings of an effect. We’re seeing it with the pain they’re going through over this reconciliation bill. We’re see it with pain that they’re going through over the tariffs. We’re seeing it with some modest course corrections and personnel within the Trump administration. And we’re gonna have to double down.

Mark Herz: [00:04:26] Okay, you say the judiciary is doing its job, but what if the president simply ignores court orders as he has indicated he may, and what if he simply ignores even the Supreme Court of the United States? It has no army, as people have pointed out.

Auchincloss: It does have the United States Marshal Service, which is basically the enforcement branch for the judiciary. In particular, as we’re looking at this Maryland man who was wrongfully deported to El Salvador, a grotesque violation of due process and habeas corpus, the court should send the U.S. Marshal service to El Salvatore to go get this man if the administration won’t and hold the officials in criminal contempt.

Herz: I wanted to ask you, there are many unhappy voters out there, but let’s focus in on just unhappy Democrats. They’re not exactly bullish on what congressional Democrats are doing so far. A poll from last month showed a big shift with only 40 percent of your own voters approving of the job the congressional Democrats are doing. What do you think of that?

Auchincloss: Well, whether you're a Republican or a Democrat, blaming Democrats is a favorite pastime and that's going to continue. There's going be a lot of tension and anxiety within the party because we're frustrated. We lost across the board in November, and it's painful to watch what this man is doing to the country that we love. We have to resolve the tension between two imperatives. One is we need debate as a party. We absolutely need intra-party debate on issues of the economy, on issues of law and order, and on issues of how we are going to earn back the trust of the American people who don't know what we want to do with power should we be given it. But we also have to be disciplined, that's the other imperative, because the vote margins are narrow in the House and the Senate, and we need to have consistency in the contrast that we are driving. And that tension between debate, which is healthy, and discipline, which was necessary, That requires some amount of leadership and some amount of maturity to resolve. I think Hakeem Jeffries is demonstrating that right now in the House, and I'm trying to do my part by engaging in really vigorous debate with fellow Democrats about where we go from here, but also being super clear that ultimately, we as a party are going to draw a sharp line in defense of core values about due process, about American strength and safety abroad at home.