Longtime Republican operative and Fox News contributor Karl Role urged President Trump and his administration to avoid “happy talk” around tariffs amid the uncertainty around the country’s economy.
“Remember, one of the problems that we had under Biden was we had happy talk. ‘Bidenomics is working,’ and people didn’t believe it. Inflation was growing dramatically,” Rove said during his Friday appearance on Fox News’ “America Reports.”
“And look, we’ve had good inflation numbers, but it’s only one month,” he added. “We’ve got to be careful about that, and the administration needs to temper, in my opinion, its language.”
Rove, who was a top aide to former President Bush, pointed to the University of Michigan consumer sentiment survey, which showed the index being at 50.8 percent in April.
“It is the second lowest number since 1952; the only number that is worse in consumer sentiment was during the Great Recession of night of 2008, 2009. So the administration has got to temper its talk,” the GOP operative said.
After Trump implemented the 10 percent flat tariff on all goods coming into the U.S., along with steeper reciprocal duties, the financial markets experienced a downturn, some business leaders started to sound the alarm over the state of the economy as bond markets started flashing warning signs.
Trump paused the majority of the tariffs on Wednesday. The markets started to bounce back, but the same day, the president increased levies on Chinese goods, with the figure climbing to 145 percent. China fired back Friday morning, levying 125 percent tariffs on U.S. goods flowing into Chinese markets.
Rove said the sweeping tariffs have a “huge” impact on the nation and that the administration needs to get “this thing right.”
“Think about this: The U.S. population is only 4 percent of the world population, 96 percent of our customers for American businesses and goods and services are outside of the United States, and our economy is 27 percent of the world economy. But that means 73 percent of world’s economy is out there, the purchasing power of people who are going to be buying things. So we really want to have the best trading posture we can possibly have,” Rove said on Friday.
Rove also said on Fox News that “Shark Tank” investor Kevin O’Leary was right when he said on CNN Friday that China has been stealing intellectual property.
“We have done nothing about that for the last eight years, and it’s only accelerated,” Rove said. “But the important thing to remember is that trade makes us richer.”