W.H.’s Peter Navarro: Of Course Conservatives Like Hatch and Sasse Are Wrong on Tariffs
The biggest policy development this week is the president’s announcement he is imposing a 25 percent tariff on steel imports and 10 percent on aluminum.
Joining us now, one of the architects of that controversial plan, White House trade adviser Peter Navarro.
Mr. Navarro, welcome to “Fox News Sunday.”
PETER NAVARRO, WHITE HOUSE TRADE ADVISER: Mr. Wallace, good to be here, my friend.
WALLACE: The blowback to the new tariff policy is intense, especially from conservatives who are — here are two leading Republican senators.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SEN. ORRIN HATCH, R-UTAH: I hope the president doesn’t really do this because if he dos at the president doesn’t really do this because if he does it’s going to — it’s just going to be a huge tax on American citizens.
SEN. BEN SASSE, R-NEBRASKA: If you own a steel mill, today was great for you. If you consume steel, and every American family at the store tonight has something that has different metals in it, today is a bad day for you.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
WALLACE: Are Sasse and Hatch who is the chair of the Senate Finance Committee, are they wrong?
NAVARRO: Of course, they are wrong.
In terms of the Republican Party, let’s remember this: Donald Trump ran against 16 Republicans. None of those Republicans supported Donald Trump’s positions on trade. He beat every one of them.
And then Donald Trump went on to the Democratic opponent who didn’t support his positions on trade and he beat them, too.
What Donald Trump wants to do is fulfill his campaign promises to the American people and defend American workers. And when we here about huge effects here, let’s do some of the numbers here. I mean, first of all, the reason why the president is doing this because if he doesn’t do this, we were will lose our aluminum steel, aluminum industry very quickly and our steel industry very quickly thereafter.
If you look at the aluminum industry, for example, we are down now to less than 10 percent to fulfilling our demand. With lost six smelters since 2013. We are down to five smelters, only two of them are fully operational. We are operating at a 43 percent capacity factor and only one of those smelters makes the high-purity aluminum we need for our defense —
