Miscellaneous
(6/5/19)On May 30, President Trump announced plans to enact a 5 percent tariff on “all goods coming into our country from Mexico” in retribution for what he described in a Twitter post as that nation’s role in the “illegal immigration problem.” The President threatened to tack on an additional 5 percent for every month Mexico refuses to engage in border enforcement deemed acceptable by the administration, with the tariffs topping off at 25 percent if the dispute could not be settled by October. Many Republican lawmakers, long seen as being from the party of free trade, were clearly not happy. Senate Finance Chairman Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) called the move “a misuse of presidential tariff authority and contrary to congressional intent.” Republican senator James Lankford of Oklahoma told POLITICO that the Trump administration is “is trying to use tariffs to solve every problem but HIV and climate change.” But will their displeasure translate into action in Congress? On this week’s “TrumpWatch with Jesse Lent” on WBAI, Amber Phillips, a reporter for the Washington Post political blog The Fix and author of the June 4 article “Republicans’ opposition to Trump’s Mexico tariffs comes at great political risk,” talks about the storm brewing over tariffs and whether it could destroy the nearly unanimous support the President has enjoyed from his party throughout his term.