This is CBS. I on the world. I'm John Batchelor.

To Lancaster County, the best county in the Keystone State, Jim McKeague, former Washington editor for Barron's Magazine, now a novelist.

Jim, a very good day to you. More politics in all directions in your time writing about tariffs.

Good idea, bad idea, old idea, never, not part of the future, because

we're told they're coming back. Good day to you, Jim. Good day, John. They're a new, old,

terrible idea. And the first American president to try tariffs was Thomas Jefferson.

And it just destroyed the U.S. economy.

And it destroyed the economy for two years.

It put our importers and exporters out of business.

The only winners was a vibrant smuggling industry that was smuggling in goods from Great Britain and booze from the Caribbean.

But you can expect more of the same with tariffs if they're overdone.

The guys who work in the ports will be out of, a lot of them will be out of jobs.

Companies that depend on China for their supply line will be scrambling, looking at other

spots on the globe to replace China.

That's going to be disruptive for two to three years.

The prices of consumer goods are going to increase significantly.

And in fact, retailers and wholesalers are raising prices already in anticipation of tariffs.

So we're anticipating there will be a black market in America? Oh, sure. I mean, we're excellent with black markets.

So, I mean, today, copper, you know, the big joke is that HUD is the largest producer of copper in the world because when HUD has a vacant house, thieves always go in and steal all the copper pipes. And HUD has an insurance policy for that. So they immediately replace the pipes and the thieves go back in and take the new pipes. I hear this from HUD employees, by the way. So, yes, smuggling.

I mean, the guys who loot stores here, they sell them to fences,

the people stealing your catalytic converges from your cars.

We have a huge criminal enterprise, which is why this is a little off subject, but I'm in favor of

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