CNBC's Steve Reesman stiffened Trump's strict tariffs as “madness” after rants that he claimed he had gotten a job with the network.
A longtime business journalist on Tuesday was torn by Trump after the president threatened to hike tariffs on Canada's aluminum and steel imports, unless his neighbor agreed to become the “51st state” before Trump torn apart.
Reesman, a senior economics reporter at CNBC, told Anchor Kelly Evans.
“That's about the eighth reason we had on tariffs and now he says he's putting a 50% tariff on Canada unless he agrees to the 51st province. That's insane.”
Trump on the day threatened with a post on True Society to double the tariffs on Canadian steel and aluminum products, raising taxes on car imports to “close Canadian car manufacturing forever.”
“The only thing that makes sense is that Canada will become our precious 50 first states,” Trump wrote in a post Tuesday. “This will create all the tariffs and eliminate all else entirely.”
However, the aluminum and steel taxes came into effect Wednesday morning at the original 25% tax rate.
Reesman nodded to the Wall Street Journal headline – “The trade war will hit stocks.” An opinion piece by Greg Jensen, co-chief investment officer of Bridgewater Associates, argued that heavy tariffs would damage US assets.
“The gentlemen at Bridgewater are 100% correct,” Reesman said. “We need to fund the deficit, pay for what we want to pay, sell bonds, or if the stock price is high, we need a lot of capital.
He argued that Trump's “unconventional” warning to Canada is evidence this time that the president is unlimited during his tenure.
“It's very different [Trump’s] The first administration that seemed to have someone around him – I don't know what the words were, but they looked smooth on some edges,” Reesman said.
“Other things that have not been spoken about, Kelly is what's going on within the administration in terms of how they deal with the constitution and the law,” he added.
Evans tried to save the conversation, laughing, saying: “Well, we can get into crazy as a strategy.”
But Reesman retorted: “Madness is not a strategy, sorry.”
