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A lynchpin of Trump’s claims about tariffs is that they are being done to bring manufacturing back to the United States. Trump expects companies to come flooding back into America.
However when pressed on CBS’s Face The Nation, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick told a different story.
Transcript from CBS’s Face The Nation:
SEC. LUTNICK: The country is focused on- you realize, trillions of dollars of factories are going to be built in America. That’s huge GDP. The factories being built in America are huge GDP–
MARGARET BRENNAN: That takes years–
SEC. LUTNICK: And that is going to matter to us.
MARGARET BRENNAN: And you said that robots are going to fill those jobs. So those aren’t union worker jobs.
SEC. LUTNICK: No, it’s really automated jobs. It’s automated factories- automated factories. But the key is, who’s going to build the factories? Who’s going to operate the factories? Who’s going to make them work? Great American workers. You know, we are going to replace–
MARGARET BRENNAN: You said robots on other networks. You said that to FOX.
SEC. LUTNICK: –the armies of millions of people- well, remember, the army of millions and millions of human beings screwing in little- little screws to make iPhones, that kind of thing is going to come to America. It’s going to be automated and great Americans- the tradecraft of America, is going to fix them, is going to work on them. They’re going to be mechanics. There’s going to be HVAC specialists. There’s going to be electricians, the tradecraft of America.
Video:
The cat is out of the bag now. The pretenses for these tariffs being good for anyone other than potentially billionaires are being debunked by members of the Trump administration.
The tariffs are a regressive tax that target the people in the middle and bottom of the American economy.
Tariffs are an upward redistribution of wealth.
Workers didn’t think that when Trump talked about bringing jobs back to America what he meant was that people could get jobs in maintenance and janitorial in automated plants owned by big corporations and billionaires, but that seems to be what the Trump administration is promising.
It is all a lie and a falsehood that is crashing the economy.
What do you think of Lutnick’s admission? Share your thoughts in the comments below.