Transcript of Press TV (Iran) panel discussion on Trump’s tariffs

Transcript submitted by a reader

https://www.urmedium.net/c/presstv/133259

PressTV: 0:00
China and the European Union have promised retaliation against the US trade war, following President Donald Trump’s threat of additional tariffs.

Lin Jian: 0:11
China will take the necessary measures to firmly safeguard its legitimate and lawful rights and interests. If the US side ignores the interests of the two countries in the international community and insists on fighting a tariff war or a trade war, China will fight to the end.

Olof Gill, EC:
Two things are happening. The first is our proposed response to the US steel and aluminium tariffs. That is being voted on by member states tomorrow. If they give us a mandate to move forward with those countermeasures, I expect that will happen early next week.

Also early next week, as the second phase of our response to US tariffs, this time on cars and reciprocal tariffs, we will basically be presenting our plan in the same way as we did with with steel and aluminium.

Press TV: 1:07
This after Trump’s threat of an additional 50 percent tariff on Chinese imports. Trump also rejected the EU zero for zero tariff offer by demanding that the block buy 350 billion dollars worth of energy from Washington to get tariff relief. Trump’s sweeping tariffs have shaken markets globally, with many major indexes experiencing the sharpest decline in years.

1:37
We’re going to take a look at the global effects of these tariffs in this part of our news program. I’d like to welcome a couple of guests to discuss this topic. Daniel Patrick Welch, political commentator out of Boston, and Gilbert Doctorow, independent international affairs analyst out of Brussels. Thank you both for being with me. I’m going to start it off in Boston and Daniel. Your thoughts that– tell me, what do you think the actual goal is? What is Trump trying to accomplish by doing what he is doing?

DP Welch: 2:15
Well, I think it’s important to distinguish between what he’s trying to accomplish and what he’s trying to pretend to accomplish. The idea of restructuring manufacturing and having, as Lutnick says, the Commerce Secretary, millions of Americans back screwing iPhones together is a pipe dream and a fantasy aimed at shoring up the base of the American working class to make them support it when it is purely against their interests.

The real goal is to shift more money to the ruling class, as always, and to kind of reimagine some Smoot-Hawley nightmare where they will control, again, the bulk of international trade, and with these fake ideas of tariffs versus simple math. “Well, we’re gonna reciprocate, we’re gonna give these–“

That’s not how it works. It works with trade imbalances. And there’s a formula for that, and there always has been. There’s not– and so he’s using muscle, again, like the Don. They should not call him the Donald. They should call him the Don. He is a mafioso and trying to bully the rest of the world into doing the US bidding. And it is bound to fail late in the game, and it will incite more retaliation than ever before.

PressTV: 3:54
Gilbert, your thoughts on this; where do you see this going? I mean, I’m sure that Donald Trump, obviously he has economists that he has talked to that he’s consulted.

We have seen the stock markets around the world taking a hit. Of course, Trump says that that’s good and that’s what needs to happen right now. I mean, your thoughts, is he getting expert opinion? Is there a possibility that this would work to benefit Americans, as Trump says?

Gilbert Doctorow, PhD: 4:31
The rollout of these tariffs was given one explanation. This is reindustrialization, bringing jobs back to the States. That is a convenient cover for what he’s doing. Of course, many economists have explained, just as my fellow panelist said, that to bring back industry is not such a simple matter, and it doesn’t happen overnight, even if Mr. Trump is talking about several trillion dollars of investments in the States that various companies have promised to make.

The reality is different, and it’s much more dangerous than Mr. Trump wanted to make public. This was introduced to avoid the financial collapse of the United States. That is the reason. The United States has these enormous trade deficits which have to be financed. The United States has an immense federal deficit, which has been extended, increased, each year of the Biden administration to gargantuan proportions that are an enormous burden on future generations. The United States has taken this action to cut its losses.

PressTV: 5:56
OK, explain that. You’ve mentioned that a couple of times. Explain what you mean, because what people are seeing right now is actually that the US is going to take a hit as well as many countries around the world. So what do you mean when you say that the US is doing this to cut its losses?

Doctorow: 6:15
If the United States take a hit and if there is a recession, that also plays into Donald Trump’s game. The point is, if there’s a recession, the imports, the consumption will go down sharply. And that is the essential problem. The United States has been living way above its means because of the cheap supplies coming in from Asia in particular. If he’s right and if his tariffs work, then there will be pain to pay, but not by the poor people. The main consumers who will be affected will be the ones who are buying 70,000- and 100,000-euro cars from Germany.

7:07
That’s not your average worker. They will be the ones who are buying the 30-, 40-, 50-euro bottles of French wine or of cognac. They can afford if it goes up to 70 and 100 and 150 euros. It doesn’t make any difference to them. For the average working person who now buys a microwave oven for 50 dollars– which is a ridiculously low price, thanks to Chinese dumping in the States– so if he pays 100 after Trump’s tariffs, it’s still less than half the price of a microwave made in the States or in Western Europe and sold.

The point is, it is not– people who are buying their groceries in the supermarkets will not see the inflation that Mr. Trump’s tariffs are creating. The wealthy people will, and they can afford it. Therefore, the pain in the States is vastly exaggerated, because the people who are writing about it are the ones who will be paying for it all, not you and me. It’s a very, this is a very difficult thing to get your arms around.

8:18
I don’t agree at all with the fellow panelist that the poor people and the folks will be paying for the rich people. Not at all. For once, it’ll be the other way around.

PressTV: 8:27
So are you saying, Gilbert, that this is good for Americans at the end of the day?

Doctorow:
It’s good for America. The country will go under financially if it doesn’t do something drastic. Nobody expected Trump to be revolutionary, but he is. None of the preceding presidents had the guts to do what he has done.

PressTV: 8:50
OK. Daniel, your thoughts. So Gilbert is saying that actually this is something very positive, and it’s good for America. You’re in the United States. Tell me overall the general perspective in the United States right now regarding these tariffs.

Welch:
Well, I think that my fellow guest has made good points about the difference between perception and reality. The Democratic Party wants to launch an attack against this as simply evil, and it does have specific economic tailwind that has followed it through the ages.

Of course, protectionism has been a major part of industry since the Industrial Revolution. But if you look at that history, you have what happened when you incite what is called the Kinderberger spiral, where you have tariffs leading to reciprocation, reciprocation leading to more tariffs, et cetera. And between 1929 and 1933, you had a 67-percent drop in international trade. The idea that this doesn’t affect people at the bottom, I think, is not correct.

10:18
And he said the idea that it will take years. That is the whole point. Billionaires don’t give a damn about how long it takes or even rich people. They don’t care as long as they don’t want to buy an $80,000 car next year. But you can have a supply shock that is like the pandemic that comes from this kind of upheaval that hurts the bottom for the time being.

And the time being for most of us is all we have. We don’t have 10 years to rebuild the infrastructure that has been outsourced since 1980. There’s no way that you can have these factories up and running and recreate manufacturing in this country overnight. That can’t and won’t happen. It’s not their goal for it to happen. And it will, yes indeed, the same way all changes hurt people at the bottom, without any acknowledgement from the people in the middle and at the top. This is dangerous, and–

PressTV: 11:25
Well, Daniel, let me just jump in here. I mean, Gilbert said that actually what Trump is doing is courageous, that no one else has tried to deal with this, because we’re talking about a thirt-six trillion dollar US debt right now. He’s saying that something has to be done. I mean, your thoughts about that side of things?

Welch: 11:44
Well, I think that what he’s doing in effect is accelerating the trend toward de-dollarization and systemic staving off of American hegemony. What these economies are doing is finally responding, finally responding to the system that has shut them out or kept them in check. And now they have no reason not to, because the push is coming from the other side.

PressTV:
OK.

Welch:
It’s trade imbalances that matter. If trade from China goes down by 20 percent, then that could be more than they’re actually exporting now. They’re at $510 billion. If this costs $506 billion, then you’re already out of whack It’s not the simple math of “He had a 20-percent tariff, therefore. I’m going to put a 20-percent tariff.” It depends on the difference in your trade.

Yes. Yes, Gilbert is right about the the debt, but that has been the swan song of these Milton Friedman economists for a generation: that “we have to get the national debt under control and pay for it now, and therefore we’re going to make all these changes that are going to hurt the average worker.” Moving a microwave from 50 to 100 dollars is death to a lot–

PressTV: 13:21
All right, I would love to continue this conversation. It’s been interesting, but unfortunately we’re out of time. I appreciate both of you being with me; David Patrick Welch, political commentator out of Boston; and Gilbert Doctorow, independent international affairs analyst out of Brussels.