On CNN's “Situation Room” aired Friday, Sen. Peter Welch (D-VT) argued that President Donald Trump should work with Democrats and Congress on tariffs, saying, “We support tariffs on China. There's a real trade imbalance there, and that's unfair trade practices.”
Welch said: “Congress gave the President a national security emergency power on tariffs decades ago. It was expected that the President would do it with restraint and actually have a military protection element. As the President often does, what he does is go completely too far and use this as a negotiation tool for what he wants to negotiate. And the other problem is that he is doing it in a chaotic way. We support tariffs on China, so he should sit with the Democrats and Congress. There is a real trade imbalance out there, and that's an unfair trade practice.”
Welch continued. “But to essentially unravel the USMCA, I'm just shooting myself with my feet. Ironically, the agreement he said was the highest ever, and he negotiated. This is an extraordinary harm to the trust between us and our partners, and genuine harm to Vermonters. And you won't let this go right away. I heard Mark Zandy. I think the economy is beginning to get a bit worse. The consumer confidence numbers are falling quite a bit, partly because of instability. And chaos is not a policy of getting good rewards for everyday Americans.”
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