President Trump's top economic aide on Friday said the country is not heading towards a recession and defended the commander with chief tariffs on the US's biggest trading partner.
“No, we're not heading towards a recession, but as you know, don't forget that the tariffs placed alongside Canada and Mexico are fighting the war on drugs.
“And during the drug war negotiations, we've got quite a lot of moves from Canada and Mexico in some of the negotiations, closing things on them and making it difficult for fentanyl to ship to the US,” Hassett told host Stuart Bernie. “And sometimes the conditions change due to our progress during negotiations.”
Trump imposed a 25% tariff on goods from Mexico and Canada this week, and also received a 10% levy in China.
Two of the three countries quickly retaliated. Canada slapped 25% tariffs on $30 billion worth of goods. China has inserted 15% tariffs on various items, including chicken, wheat, corn, cotton. An additional 10% tax has been added to the import of sorghum, soybeans, pork, beef, seafood and other items.
On Thursday, Trump suspended tariffs on Canadian and Mexican goods subject to the 2020 US-Mexico-Canada agreement. This is a temporary suspension that continues until April 2nd. The tariffs for the Canadian caliph, an important ingredient in fertilizer, have been set to drop to 10%.
“It includes cars and cars were leading to accomplishing this, but Canada and Mexico have done a good job of providing more work to prove they're reducing fentanyl death,” Commerce Secretary Howard Luttonick said.
However, the Commerce Secretary said that once the suspension is lifted, mutual tariffs will be imposed.
“Hopefully Mexico and Canada will do a good job with fentanyl, and this part of the conversation will go off the table.
Hassett said the administration views tariffs as “very ordered negotiations.” And the Trump administration is saving lives with this negotiation. And that's why the parameters are changing. ”
Trump's first employment report for the second term showed that the country added 151,000 jobs in February, reaching 4.1% unemployment. The report showed that the job market is stable as consumer confidence is still declining amid growing economic concerns.
The economist said recent firing of federal workers is not yet in the federal labor database.
“The federal layoffs we've heard about will begin to appear in next month's release,” writes Elizabeth Renter, economist at Nerdwallet.
Hassett described his Friday morning employment report as “great.”
“There were other factors, small factors, so I thought the numbers would be much lower than that. One of them was that it was a bad flu month and a lot of people weren't applying for jobs,” he said Friday morning. “Nonetheless, we got a strong number. And I was very pleased with the numbers we have today.”
