President Donald Trump is just hours away from addressing a joint session of Congress where he's

expected to tout his administration's accomplishments and lay out his agenda for the rest of the year.

But as we've been discussing, his high-profile speech comes at a delicate time. On day one of a new

trade war, he started with America's top trading partners and as Europe is scrambling to fill the void

in aid for Ukraine now that Trump has ordered an end to U.S. military support.

Let's turn now to Capitol Hill. We'll hear from lawmakers from both sides of the aisle.

First up is Senator Eric Schmidt, a Republican from Missouri. Welcome back to the News Hour, sir.

Great to be with you guys.

So let's start with the tariffs.

President Trump's decision to slap major tariffs on Mexico and Canada.

He's doubling the tariffs on Chinese imports.

It's a move that has a lot of Americans nervous that's certainly reflected in the markets.

At a time when Americans are still grappling with high housing prices,

how high gross free prices, inflation is as stubborn as it is. Why is a trade war the right

approach right now? Well, I think you want to look at these things in two separate buckets.

As it relates to China, President Trump did this in his first term. We didn't see inflation.

We tried to rebalance the scales a little bit,

and we saw record wage growth among every demographic in the country. And so we were doing

quite well when those tariffs went in place. And by the way, Joe Biden kept them in place.

And as relates to Canada and Mexico, this is really about getting them to deal seriously

with not just illegal immigration

or southern border and northern border, but also as relates to fentanyl. And people might dismiss

...