CNN’s Scott Jennings Confronted With Scathing Conservative Criticism of Trump’s Tariffs: ‘Dumbest Trade War in History’

CNN’s Scott Jennings fielded a question on Monday about the scathing criticism of President Donald Trump’s tariffs offered by some conservatives, including his old boss, Senator Mitch McConnell (R-KY).

“Scott Jennings, favorite son of Kentucky. Kentucky has largely spoken overnight on what it thinks about these tariffs,” declared anchor John Berman before playing a clip of McConnell arguing Trump’s tariffs would “drive the cost of everything up.”

“And Scott, your junior senator, Rand Paul, said ‘Tariffs are simply taxes. Conservatives once united against new taxes Taxing trade will mean less trade and higher prices.’ And I’ll just add one more to this, Scott Jennings, with The Wall Street Journal — which has a lovely profile of you in it this morning — they called this the dumbest trade war in history. So what’s your reaction to all this?”

“Well, first of all, I agree the profile was amazing. Number two, this is not without risks. I mean, look, there are risks in engaging in this kind of massive policy upheaval and, you know, change in our, you know, economic flow with Canada and Mexico. However, let me try to offer some explanations for why Trump might be on to something — again, not without risk — but he might be on to something,” began Jennings. “Number one, the name of the game here is behavior modification. He wants Canada and Mexico to help stem the flow of drugs and people across the border. That’s number one. He doesn’t think they’re doing enough. He’s using these tariffs as a tool to say, ‘Look, I’m not fooling around. We mean business until you help me, I’m going to inflict some pain upon you. The American economy is bigger than yours. You depend on us more than we depend on you. Therefore, please modify your behavior.'”

He continued:

Number two, the other goal here would be to renew some interest in American manufacturing. Don’t want to pay tariffs on imported goods? Make it here. Buy it here. That would take a long time to manifest itself in the economy, but there is some viewpoint that the more we have-, more manufacturing the United States, the less dependent we are on cheaper goods from other countries like this. So those would be the arguments for it.

I would also just argue, John, this morning, that Democrats who were crying foul about the possibility of raising prices for American consumers are simultaneously arguing to let the Trump tax cuts expire, which would, I guess, be a tax increase on everybody who pays taxes. So I think the hewing and crying from the Democrats today is a little hollow when they’re trying to raise income taxes, but fussing about these tariffs.

Watch above via CNN.

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