Yo Baxter - Deluzio to Democrats: don't reject tariffs

a425couple

2025-03-21 22:32:59 UTC

Yo Baxter, we know you are so obsessed with your TDS that
you can not think things through. Or even be honest, but:

from
https://www.wesa.fm/politics-government/2025-03-07/deluzio-tariffs-democrats-trump

Deluzio to Democrats: don't reject tariffs — despite misgivings about Trump
90.5 WESA | By Tom Riese
Published March 7, 2025 at 5:47 PM EST
/
90.5 WESA
U.S. Rep. Chris Deluzio on May 13, 2024.
Western Pennsylvania Congressman Chris Deluzio says Democrats should use
tariffs as an economic tool — despite misgivings that may stem from
President Trump’s chaotic deployment of the policy.

After weeks of seeing Trump using tariffs as a threat and a bargaining
chip, “We have some Democrats who are deciding that ‘All tariffs all the
time are to be opposed,’ and I don't think that makes any sense,”
Deluzio told WESA Friday.

In a New York Times op-ed published earlier that day, Deluzio said
tariffs can help U.S. manufacturing, even though President Trump's
on-again/off-again use of them on Canada and Mexico has been damaging.

“Democrats need to break free from the wrong-for-decades zombie horde of
neoliberal economists who think tariffs are always bad,” the piece argued.

Deluzio told WESA his constituents know a new approach is needed:
“Tariffs are a piece of it. Industrial policy, incentivizing American
companies to produce here, better trade enforcement, better trade deals
— that's what we ought to be doing.”

“I don't want folks to be confused. I think [Trump’s] approach has been
wrong,” he said. “But I think Democrats ought to be a little more
strategic in considering the effect of tariffs.”

If they’re carefully thought out, Deluzio said, tariffs can encourage
U.S. companies to produce more at home and prevent companies from
exploiting cheap labor overseas. “Bad trade policies” such as the North
American Free Trade Agreement enacted in the 1990s, he said, led to the
decline of domestic manufacturing, especially in the Rust Belt.

Deluzio said some Democratic colleagues agree with him, including those
from Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan and Wisconsin.

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Groups like the Council on Foreign Relations note that U.S.
manufacturing was on a downward trend as early as the 1970s.
Pittsburgh’s own steel industry collapsed in the 1980s, well before the
controversial NAFTA trade agreement with Canada and Mexico took effect.

But Deluzio said such pacts didn’t help. Instead, those policies “led to
the death of a lot of American manufacturing jobs, solid union jobs…
[and] let Wall Street and the corporate-management class decide that it
was more important to chase the cheapest and weakest labor rules… at the
expense of American manufacturing.”

For example, Mexican workers by some estimates make four times less than
the average American worker. And Deluzio said that unless the U.S.
ensures those workers are not exploited by trade deals, “we're not going
to see tariffs alone fix our trade deficit,” as companies look to other
countries for less expensive labor.

“Places like Western Pennsylvania and the Rust Belt that saw bad trade
deals for decades — we know what it is to see our country fail us on
trade,” Deluzio said. “And I think Democrats should be wise to
understand the importance of tariffs in our toolbox of how we grow
American manufacturing jobs.”