GOP Senator Tells Fox News He Can’t ‘Bubble Wrap’ Trump’s Stock Market Selloff: ‘What’s Happening Is Not Good’
Fox News anchor Harris Faulkner spoke to Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA) on Friday and tried her best to put a positive face on President Donald Trump’s tariffs, which China just hit back at with a 34% tariff of their own on U.S. goods. Kennedy, however, sounded the alarm on Americans losing money in the stock market and warned of contracting GDP as a result of consumers spending less in a heavily tariffed economic environment.
“Mr. John Kennedy of Louisiana, member of the Finance, Banking, Judiciary, and Appropriations Committees, is with me now. Great to see you. Look, there are a lot of people in this country who have worked their whole lives, put money into the stock market through their job 401(K)s,” Faulkner began, asking:
There are people who are getting ready to retire and maybe looking to that money. What the president is asking people to do is give him a little bit of time. What’s your take on the message now to the American public? Because we have hit a place now where, as the president says, China’s reacting.
“Well, I didn’t know what China would do. I didn’t know and still don’t know what other countries will do. I’ve said consistently, since the president made his tariffs announcement, that we’re in uncharted waters. We’re in the economic unknown,” Kennedy replied, before offering his take:
The president’s long-term goal is laudable. I support it. It’s not complicated. America is rich. We buy a lot of stuff. Every business in the world wants to sell to us. The president is saying to those businesses in other countries, if you want to sell us and take our money, then you need to move your business to America and hire our people.
Now, who can be against that? Again, though, I’ve also been careful to say we’re in uncharted waters. The stock market matters. And before I talk about it, let me say the economy is fundamentally sound. We just got a good jobs report. I wouldn’t trade places with any other country in terms of our economy.
But the stock market does matter. About 62% of Americans have money in the market. The wealth effect is real– there’s reliable data that shows that for every one dollar that the stock market, holdings in the stock market go down, people spend twenty-five cents less. Well, we’re a consumer-driven economy and if people are spending less, that’s gonna affect your GDP.
And so I’m not going to bubble wrap it. What’s happening is not good. Now will it continue? Will we find the bottom and then it will start to go back up? I hope so. That’s what I’m pulling for. But if it doesn’t, we’ll have to recalibrate.
Faulkner struck a conciliatory tone and replied, “You know, the power of the words you just spoke and where you started with, we’re in uncharted territory. So is the rest of the world. The rest of the world’s never seen anybody do what we’re doing right now. But they do know Trump.”
“And if some of them have ever had any dealings with him, and many people around the world have, before he was president, they knew who he was. Art of the deal. They know that the reason you go into that uncharted territory is because you have a plan to get on the other side. So it’s interesting. There have been some countries that have early on said, ‘OK, we hear you.’ China came back with 34. We’ll see what it does with that 34%. But you and I, and I hear it from your voice, we’re counting on America. And the rest of the world is also in uncharted territories,” she concluded before moving on.
Kennedy, known for his colorful commentary on issues, has broken with Trump on tariffs, despite being a reliable booster of the president’s agenda. The Louisiana Republican shared a Fox News hit he did earlier in the week on Thursday to X and captioned it, “Tariffs are like whiskey: A little whiskey, under the right circumstances, can be refreshing—but too much whiskey, under the wrong circumstances, can make you drunk as a goat.”
Watch the clip above via Fox News.
