Trump's Favorite Word: Tariffs

Hey everybody, it's in the Charlie Kirk Show. What is a tariff and where does that power come from? We explain how it's not a trade war, it's a drug war and how President Trump is going to enrich the country with his recent moves with tariffs.
Peter Navarro, Counselor to the President of the United States on Trade and Manufacturing, joins us as we dive into this. Email us as always, freedom at charliekirk.com.
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Honored to be with you. This is a very rapid developing news day, and we are going to break all of the news down from this last weekend.
Starting on Friday, President Donald Trump brilliantly put forward not a threat, but a tariff promise. Now, President Donald Trump did this in a very thoughtful way.
He's been talking about for quite some time, both on the campaign trail and, of course, throughout his two-week presidency, that he was going to use tariffs against countries that have been taking advantage of the United States and also to get them to help the United States. President Donald Trump on Friday afternoon evening said, oh, tariffs will be applied on Saturday morning.
And they were. This last weekend, we saw a 25% tariff applied on all Canadian imports, 10% on energy, 25% tariff on all Mexican imports, and a 10% tariff on all Chinese imports.
Now, mind you, this is the brilliance of President Donald Trump. President Trump wanted to be able to have a window of negotiation.
He knew that markets were going to get a little jittery. He knew that markets might have a sell-off.
So he did this intentionally on Friday to allow a weekend of some negotiation and dialogue when markets are closed. So the Dow does not go down a couple thousand points.
So that he has an ability over a Saturday and a Sunday to accept some calls in between golf rounds at Trump National in Palm Beach. And to negotiate.
Now, the tariff power is a very unique power given to the President of the United States. Unlike most economic measures and treaties, it does not require Congress.
The President of the United States has unilateral authority to be able to apply tariffs on imported goods in the United States. So what is a tariff?

A tariff is a duty. A tariff could be called a tax, but that is a very shallow way of interpreting it.
Basically, if I am going to import a car into the United States and that car is $10,000, Well, a 25% tariff would then make that car $12,500, and the tariff gets applied on the imported good. This power is derived from several pieces of legislation.
Of course, the Tariff Act of 1930, and then Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974, and Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962. This gives the president the power to impose tariffs if deemed necessary for national security.
For example, if the United States believes that the importation of certain products threatens national security, the president can apply immediate tariffs. Also, under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, the president can also declare a national emergency and use tariffs and sanctions as he sees fit.
The president ran on an America first industrial policy, rebuilding the heartland of this country, but most critically and importantly, stopping the flow of drugs, illegals, guns, and fentanyl into our communities. We've seen the wreckage, the damage that has happened because of the porous southern and northern border.
Last week we had Josh Parker on the program who is hoping to eventually maybe run for Elise Stefanik's seat in New York 21 as he was covering the northern border, the terrorists that are coming across the border, and Canada with Trudeau and Steinbaum in Mexico have not cared a scintilla about closing their border or mobilizing the military to help stop it. Tariffs are a long-term play.
This is not about a week of stock market swerves. This is about three things.
First, we are serious about using tariffs to force Mexico and Canada to take our border seriously. They've been happy to do nothing and let the entire world pour into our country, illegally, for criminal, or for welfare reasons.
We want them to be serious about helping fix this. And the way to do that is to remind them that we can blow up their economies.
Mexico does not exist with a 25% tariff. They are a fake country that exists at the will of the American people and at the pleasure of America.
If there is a 25% tariff, they collapse. And I have a lot of respect for the Mexican people, for the Mexican culture.
When I say that they are fake, it's the sense of if there is a tariff applied to them, they are brittle and fragile. They are wholly dependent on trade with the United States of America.
Wholly. They do not exist with a 25% tariff, period.
The way to do this is to remind them that we don't want to destroy your economies, but we're not going to put up with an invasion. And what we have learned over the last couple of years is that the way to stop such invasion and flow of drugs is you must have the intermediary countries such as Mexico or Canada work in collaboration with the United States of America.
The second reason for tariffs is to force other countries to stop taking advantage of us in other ways. We can say, stop spying on us, stop stealing our patents, stop flooding our market with drugs.
And I must also mention, not getting as much attention, there is a 10% import tariff on all goods from China. And we'll get to that in a minute.
And finally, tariffs are necessary to revive our own economic production. We've become too reliant, way too reliant on other nations for things such as vitamin C, making critical pharmaceutical manufacturing.
President Donald Trump using these tariffs has brought them to the table. In the breaking news in the last hour, the 25% tariff on all goods coming from Mexico has been suspended for one month.
In addition, the Mexican government is putting 10,000 of their own troops on the southern border to repel such invasion into the United States of America. President Donald Trump wants that to be zero.
President Donald Trump wants to get to the magic number zero, zero illegals coming into the United States. And yes, we have mobilized our military.
Yes, we are no longer doing catch and release. But still, there's too many people coming across the border, a couple hundred a day.
Now, mind you, it's down from like 3000 a day a day when Joe Biden was president, but Donald Trump is aiming for project zero. And understand when you view all these tariffs, it's about project zero.
No more tariffs, no more drugs, no more fentanyl, no more illegals. And you can only do that if you have a cooperative neighbor.
We are told for quite some time, oh, Mexico and Canada, they're wonderful allies, sort of, but they've taken advantage of us for so long, for so long. 75% of all known terrorist watchlist suspects cross through Canada, not through Mexico.
Remittances from the United States make up roughly 5% of Mexico's GDP.

This is the largest source of foreign income for Mexico,

surpassing tourism, foreign direct investment, and manufacturing exports.

This is President Trump addressing these tariffs.

Play cut 10.

Are you planning to agree with tariffs against Canada?

Well, it could happen. If they do anything, we will.
Canada has been very abusive of the United States for many years. They don't allow our banks.
Did you know that? Canada does not allow banks to go in. If you think about it, that's pretty amazing.
If we have a U.S. bank, they don't allow them to go in.
Canada has been very tough on oil, on energy. They don't allow our farm products in,

essentially. They don't allow a lot of things in, and we allow everything to come in.
It's

been a one-way street. We subsidize Canada by the tune of about $200 billion a year.

And for what? What do we get out of it? We don't get anything out of it. I love the people of

Canada. I disagree with the leadership of Canada.
And something's going to happen there.

Thank you. of it.
We don't get anything out of it. I love the people of Canada.
I disagree with the leadership of Canada. And something's going to happen there.
Of our entire economy, only 2.5% of our GDP is exports to Canada and Mexico. One third of the Canadian economy,

one third of the Canadian economy is exports from Canada to America. 17% of Mexico is exports from Mexico to America.
So basically they've de-industrialized our country to make their country wealthy while doing nothing to stop the flow of such toxins into the interior of the United States. President Trump is using the tariff power given to him by Congress to defend you, your children, your neighborhoods.
And then we're going to talk in the next segment, but how do you avoid a tariff? And this is the long-term play. Forget the short-term stock market ebbs and flows.
No, no, no. There is a long-term play here of a clear signal, and you're going to see this grow like a beautiful harvest.
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That is myphdweightloss.com, people want to do business in your country. We are not Portugal.
We're not India. Portugal famously has a lot of tariffs to protect their incumbent industry.
And it doesn't work great for them. It works good for some of it.
But they want to protect port.

They want to protect other fine delicacies of the Portuguese culture.

It's fine. Good for them.

They have every right to be able to do that.

We've been told and propagandized by the corporate class that tariffs make you poorer.

Tariffs are terrible.

So how do you avoid a tariff? And they can never answer this question. The corporate class can never come under examination when it comes to tariffs.
In fact, I remember once I was on a cruise ship, a Media Research Center cruise ship with Brent Bozell, great guy, and they had some corporate class lunatic who was giving a lecture on tariffs, about how terrible tariffs are. And he acted as if he was a super smart professor.
And I asked him 15 questions, and he couldn't answer a single one of them. I said, why is it that during America's greatest prosperity, we funded the entire government on tariffs? I asked him, how does one avoid a tariff? He said, well, he did it.
He did get this question right. Well, you avoid a tariff by making the country in the native, making the good in the native country.
Exactly. So what President Trump is doing is he's signaling, hey, you want to avoid all these tariffs? Build your factory in Lansing, Michigan.
You want to avoid this tariff? Build your factory in Mesa, Arizona. You want to avoid this tariff?

Build your factory in Mesa, Arizona. You want to avoid the tariff? Build the factory in Waukesha, Wisconsin.
It is a forcing function to redomisile factories that otherwise would be in Wuhan, Guadalajara, or Winnipeg. It is a forcing function to say that the labor of the world will no longer be used in this massive capital arbitrage that disenfranchises American workers.
And has the internationalist corporatist free trade experiment worked? Of course not. Just drive through Ohio, drive through rural Pennsylvania.
The first rule of economics is this. Human beings respond to incentives.
You want America to make more things? Change the incentives. So let's pretend you're a big company.
And by the way, the direction right now, there's going to be a manufacturing renaissance in this country like you've never seen. Because advanced 3D manufacturing is where all the smart money is going right now.
It's going to require high-tech jobs, engineers, incorporated artificial intelligence, advanced robotics. So that's where all of the smart capital is going right now.
Is that we are going to have a hardware, that's right, a hardware breakthrough, the likes of which no one saw coming. So let's pretend you're a big company and you're thinking of where to make your factory.
You don't want to have a 25% duty put on your products. So you say, hey, let's go build it in Tampa.
Exactly. And there's no tariff.
You build your product here, there is no tariff. One of the most famous tariffs that we talk about on this program is that there is a 25% import tariff to this day that Lyndon Baines Johnson put on the books on pickup trucks.
Do you know that every pickup truck you see on the highway has a 25% tariff? So how does Toyota avoid the pickup truck tariff. They don't need to re-headquarter the Japanese company.

That's... on the highway, has a 25% tariff.
So how does Toyota avoid the pickup truck tariff?

They don't need to re-headquarter the Japanese company. That's never, ever been the ask.
We don't want Porsche to be headquartered in New Canaan, Connecticut. No, you just make the actual product here.
And that is what Toyota does for their pickup truck. That is what Nissan does for their pickup truck.
I know people that have Hondas that are made in America and that's exactly what we want. Employ American labor, hire American workers and the end result is we can still export pickup trucks to the rest of the world.
You look at what we've done with pickup trucks. Again, the corporate class, the Koch brothers, they have been so, they've propagandized us because all they cared about was one thing, the lowest possible price for a good and poured into the country.
So we have piles of plastic that are littering our garages. We have garage sales of stuff that we have no attachment to, and we have entire communities look as if it's been Dresden.
This was China's strategy. They spent years using tariffs in an effort to build up their manufacturing capacity.
Now they are the world's best in many fields. And the world has no choice but to buy their stuff because it's the best.
But there is a new renaissance coming where we can beat China. It's advanced manufacturing.
Advanced manufacturing, 3D manufacturing, and highly sophisticated robotics, that is coming the corner and we want america to be the center of the planet for that golden era and you do that by a forcing function you want to avoid the tariff build your good in east palestine ohio even if you think it's a bit overhyped ai is suddenly everywhere from self-driving cars to molecular medicine to business efficiency. If it's not in your industry yet, it's coming fast.
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That is oracle.com slash Kirk. Joining us now is a dear friend and fellow warrior for America, Peter Navarro.
Peter, welcome to the program. Counselor for trade and manufacturing directly to the President of the United States.
Peter, great to see you, my friend. My brother, Kirk, man.
How are you doing? Doing great, Peter, and always fun to run into you as you are trying to make things happen. Peter, explain to the audience here what the president is doing with his tariff strategy and implementation.
Peter, the floor is yours. In this case, we have a drug war against the American people on the campaign trail, Charlie.
As you well know, the president promised the American people that people would stop dying from deadly Chinese fentanyl coming in through Mexico and Canada. It's important to understand how this works.
Fentanyl is a synthetic opioid. A grain of it can kill you you it's one of the most potent drugs ever made communist china has been making the precursor chemicals for years now going back to when i was with president trump in his first term we were fighting this battle and what the chinese do is they export the chemicals to mexico and then the mexican drug cartels have their little factories and processing where they make straight fentanyl pills but they also use the fentanyl to lace other drugs anything from heroin and speed and so on and next week when the super bowl happens in new orleans it's eerie.
The number of people are going to be sitting in the Superdome. About 75,000 is roughly equal to the number of Americans who have been dying every year because of this problem.
And Charlie, what's interesting as well for your demographic, your show, of course, you are the king of informing younger folk. The people who are dying in most numbers are in the 18 to 45 prime working age bracket.
So I'm going long on this to explain just how difficult this situation is. And so once it gets to Mexico, the cartels are going up to Canada.
There's also a bunch of it coming in from China directly through the mails. The stuff is so small, it comes in through packets.
And the president said, this is stopping. And what he has done is use the International Economic Emergency Powers Act, Emergency Economic Powers Act, IEPA, that's what it's called, which provides the president broad authority in times of crisis, in this case, a public health crisis and a border security crisis, to use tools such as tariffs to solve the problem.
So the tariffs were imposed on Saturday by the stroke of a pen with three countries. China gets 10% tariffs, Mexico and Canada 25% tariffs..
Breaking news, just this morning, the president and the Mexican president were able to successfully negotiate a 30-day pause in the tariffs. We're going to get 10,000 more troops at the border, Charlie, and a whole bunch of other stuff.
The Mexican government has actually been very helpful and willing to negotiate. It's in sharp contrast to Canada.
Canada has basically declared a trade war upon us when what we are dealing with is a drug war. Canada has a lame duck prime minister who seems to want to go out in a flourish, but who seemingly has no regard for either the welfare of Canadians or welfare of the American people.
And so this is where things stand at this point. The president has taken firm action to save lives.
And I mean, it's it's a carnage. More people die every year, Charlie, from fentanyl than died in the Vietnam War.
I mean, this is unimaginable. And the president is going to put a stop to it, sir.
Peter, explain how the White House views the implementation of tariffs to protect American industry and to have a forcing function of redomiciling industry against what would be the typical neoliberal Washington, D.C. corporate consensus.
Explain the philosophical worldview difference that President Trump has. The globalist view of the world, which is rooted in this thing called the Ricardian trade model, which every undergraduate is spot in our ivory tower schools, says that if you have free trade among countries and labor and capital or mobile, you'll have a bigger economic pie because everything's more efficient and life will be better for everybody.
But when you read the fine print of that globalist model, you see that it falls completely apart immediately because, first of all, some countries win, some countries lose. And second of all, there's no such thing as free trade.
The United States is the uncle sucker of the world when it comes to trade. We have the lowest tariffs, lowest trade barriers in the world.
We've got a trillion dollar trade deficit every year as a result. In what President Trump's view of the world, nationalist, economic, populist view of the world, if I may, is that it's America first.
We have to defend our factories and jobs and sovereignty against unfair trade. And the sovereignty comes in by the fact that when you run trillion-dollar trade deficit a year, that's money that basically the foreigners then use to buy pieces of America.
And that's an unsustainable equilibrium. So with respect to the different kinds of things the president's going to be doing, it's in different buckets.
There's a commitment to a global tariff. This is the deal with the trade deficit issue.
There's a review of steel and aluminum tariffs, which were successfully put on by President Trump in 2018, but which have been eroded by the Biden administration.

And then there's the strategic and national security type tariffs. So I remember, I think in some sense, the boss was inspired by the first time we closed the border, Charlie.
I was there in the Oval when the president asked whether we could impose tariffs on Mexico to force them to seal the border. And he looked at me.
I said, yeah, sure. And he looked at Pat Sipollone, the White House Legal council pat said yes he made that threat to Mexico, and within 24 hours after globalist heads exploded, sure enough, Mexico sent 20,000 troops to the border and signed the remain in Mexico policy, and boom, done.
So the current issue here is a drug war, not a trade war. We're trying to stop the flow of fentanyl.
And by the way, Canada is a very bad actor in this. It's not just that they're allowing these Mexican drug cartels in the labs and that they've got the fentanyl coming in in small packages across their border.
There's been almost 100 terrorists on the watch list that we've apprehended here in America that came through that northern border. And it's like they should be bending over backward to help us stop this carnage.
And that's where things are as we talk as we talk right now in closing here peter

are we in a trade war we are not in a trade war we are in a a war with uh the chinese chemical

producers the mexican drug cartels and the can Canadian authorities who are allowing fentanyl and other drugs and contraband and terrorists into our country. And look, I mean, Charlie, it's like the border security issue, I think, was the single most important issue in this election, followed only by the trade issue.

The president promises made promises and kept. No one knows better than Charlie Kirk that the president keeps his promise.
And he's going to stop fentanyl from killing all of these Americans.

And he's going to do it by forcing china mexico and canada to put an end to what they're doing with respect to that trade and they all have a role each one of them has a different role in the process but when you add it all up the three of those countries have the capabilities to stop killing Americans, and that's what they're going to do, or we're going to do what we're doing. Peter, I know the president is operating at a rapid pace.
Give us a little window into the tempo of what you're seeing in the White House right now. Totally different from the first term.
We were turtles. Now we're thoroughbred horses.
We're at the top of the learning curve rather than at the bottom. We had a record number of executive orders signed on day one.
And we're just going. For the trade thing, I urge everybody to read the presidential memorandum, the America First trade policy.
That lays out the entire agenda for the next 100 days. And you'll see everything from investigations about possible global trade, export controls, currency manipulation, steel and aluminum tariffs, critical minerals, including the rare earths, essential medicines.
It's all laid out in that presidential memorandum, Charlie. And all you have to do if you're a good journalist is read it and you'll get great insight into the trajectory of the trade policy.
Love what you do, Charlie. Thank you.
I always say this when I come on, and I always mean it. You have done more than anyone to mobilize the youth of America on behalf of President Trump and the Republican Party.
And sir, I salute you. Peter, you're a great friend.
We have your back 100 percent. You know that.
Keep on protecting America and our interests. God bless you, Peter.
See you soon. Thank you.
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We have a lot to still cover here. USAID, which is a racket, it is a fraudulent racket, is just going to be shut down.
Just put people on administrative leave. There is this coming constitutional collision point, and it's all around the Impoundment Act.
It's coming like a freight train. Does the executive branch have to spend everything that Congress has appropriated? And if your answer is yes, then you don't believe in equal branches.
You believe in Article I supremacy. You believe in legislative supremacy.
The founders wanted equal branches that are constantly bickering with one another. They did not want to have a superseding legislative branch.
And if we're honest with ourselves, we have a supremacist Article 1, and then we have this Article 4, like a fourth branch government that comes together. And this Article 2 is basically the executive branch has become this weak, feeble, basically performative branch.
And President Trump is bringing it back to the vim and vigor that the founders envisioned. So the DNC had their winter meeting.
A lot happened at the DNC. And you have to wonder, for those of us that are conservatives and want to see the Republican Party go into a red rain, R-E-I-G-N, have the Democrats decided to adjust, to adapt, to read the country, and to understand that they're a deeply unpopular, hated organization.
The Democrat Party is hated. In fact, someone came up to me yesterday and said, Charlie, congratulations on the election.
I voted for Trump. It wasn't because I liked Trump.
It's because I wanted to repudiate the Democrat Party from all sectors of life. First time ever voting.
wow this is is your average kind of taste, a little appetizer, a little chef's tasting, if you will. A little amuse-bouche of the DNC.
Play cut 36. Good afternoon, DNC! Hello, Democrats.
Hey, I am speaking, and I would love your attention. There is a black woman at this podium and I deserve your attention like the 11 people who went before me.
Yes, I am speaking. Good evening Democrats, look up here.
Three strong black women standing before you. Three black women who rather than just grabbing a chair, ran for chair.
Te quiero mucho papa,. Gracias por todo.
My name is Artie Blanco, Freddy Blanco's daughter. Vote for me for vice chair.
Look at this room, y'all. Truly take it in.
This is the Democratic Party. We are our strongest when we stand together.
We are in a time in this country when our democracy and our rights are under attack. We're at a time where black and brown people, women and other minorities are being blamed for everything that's wrong with this country.
So let's fight together for a stronger and more inclusive Democratic Party. That's that's at the DNC meeting.
This is a great clip here. The DNC chair gets confused by his own party's rules for their gender balance provisions.
Has to hand over the mic to somebody else who can't explain it. This is just delicious.
Play cut 39. We're going to expedite.
We're finding out ways to expedite this. Because of our gender balance provisions on this next ballot, you will be able to vote for two candidates of any gender on the next ballot.
Okay? So on this next ballot, you will be able to vote for two candidates of any gender on the next ballot. If two candidates receive...
I'm going to turn to, this was this last weekend. There's been no adjusting.
There's been no adaptation. There's been no soul searching.
They don't even know their own rules. They got to go bring on some person.
Well, you know, non-binary, one male, female, no humility. Look, I don't want to get too high on our own supply as conservatives, but I'm feeling very, very bullish.
Not because of anything that we're doing, which by the way, we're fulfilling promise after promise. This is our opposition.
This is what we're up against. That is the state of the new and improved Democrat party.
It's not so new and not so improved. Thanks so much for listening,

everybody. Email us, as always, freedom at charliekirk.com.
Thanks so much for listening.

God bless. For more on many of these stories and news you can trust, go to charliekirk.com.