Pence: I Fully Supported His Approach, But I Was Never Confused About Who Pays Tariffs

RUSH EXCERPT:
Pence: “Well, first off, the initial reciprocal tariffs that he unveiled would be the largest peacetime tax hike on the American people in the history of this country. As I said, I’m glad he’s paused that, and as we are seated here, I understand the president is going to make an offer to 150 countries but look, he and I talked many times about trade, here in Indiana, we are one of the leading exporting states in the country. What we make here, what we grow and raise here, we sell around the world. I’ve always believed that trade means jobs but I’ve always come to expect Trump’s willingness to use tariffs to negotiate as we did with the new trade deal with Canada and Mexico, renegotiated south Korea, we were well down the road of a trade agreement with Japan, with the U.K., with the EU, during our time, but there’s no question in this administration that he is surrounded it appears to me, with people that nurture his more protectionist instincts, and as the president has said to me many times, he has a sense that other countries pay tariffs. When the reality is, when Americans buy goods overseas, the company that imports those goods in the country pays the tariff and more often than not, passes that along at higher prices to consumers. And I worry about inflation, we just heard Walmart made the announcement they will be raising prices in the wake of these tariffs. My view of tariffs overall is this. We ought to be aggressively negotiating for free trade with freemasons. We ought to use the threat of leverage to bring down trade barriers and subsidies.”