Fox News reporter Chris Wallace took National Economic Council director Larry Kudlow to task on Sunday after President Donald Trump falsely claimed that his Chinese tariffs would be paid for “mostly by China.”
“But Larry, that isn’t true,” Wallace told Kudlow after playing the clip. “It’s not China that pays tariffs, it’s the American importers, the American companies that pay what in effect is a tax increase and oftentimes passes it on to U.S. Consumers.”
Kudlow claimed that “both sides” would pay, saying that “Chinese will suffer GDP losses and so forth with respect to a diminishing export market and goods that they may need.”
Wallace pressed “But it’s U.S. businesses and U.S. consumers who pay, correct?”
“Yes, to some extent,” Kudlow admitted.
The Fox host then pointed to a study estimating that Trump’s proposed tariffs would kill over 2 million jobs in the U.S. and cost American families over $2,200 a year.
Kudlow called those figures “pretty wildly exaggerated” and took a shot at Wallace’s “lightning round bullets.”
“Maybe the toughest burden’s on the farmers, the agriculture sector,” Kudlow said. “We’ve helped them before, and we’ll do it again if we have to and if the numbers show that out.”
An incredulous Wallace asked Kudlow, “Are you reading upside down?”
After Larry Kudlow defends Trump’s tariffs despite high estimates of job losses and increased costs to Americans, Fox's Chris Wallace asks “Are you reading upside-down?” pic.twitter.com/Pvqcl035y4
— TPM Livewire (@TPMLiveWire) May 13, 2019
This story has been updated to include the correct clip.
