Tamara Keith, National Public Radio:
Well, so as we know, President Trump announced this on Wednesday. Even based on public statements, we know that a decision had not been finalized as of Tuesday afternoon.
So this was not a well-planned rollout. Since then, there’s been a lot of reacting. But there are a couple of underlying and also conflicting messages. One is this idea that President Trump is this great dealmaker and somehow he’s going to get deals. Today, he put more of that out into the bloodstream.
He had Prime Minister Netanyahu in the Oval Office and talked about the things that Netanyahu was going to do for the United States. He’s talking about talking to Japan and other countries and everybody wants a deal. Then, at the same time, he is also saying that he doesn’t want to give time for deals to take place. He wants these tariffs in place now.
He’s saying that the U.S. — this is a great opportunity for the U.S. to reset the table on the global economy and global trade and that it’s going to be painful, but he’s the man who can take the pain.
Now, there’s pain to go around; 62 percent of Americans have some money in the stock market either directly or indirectly. And I think that’s sort of the political challenge that the president faces. Because he’s taking all the positions, it’s not clear exactly where this is going. It’s not clear to the markets where this is going.
And so far, there hasn’t been sort of a moment where the president sits down with the American people and says, OK, this is our policy. There are going to be sacrifices. I understand that. You need to understand that. We all need to come together as Americans and accept these sacrifices, which in theory is what would have to happen for him to weather what could be months or years of turmoil.
