This is CBS. I on the world. I'm John Batchel. I welcome Jim Path. He is the president of the

conservative caucus. We go immediately to remarks about the president's presentation to America and to

the chamber, a joint chamber of Congress, on what has been achieved so far in a very quick,

less than 40 days.

Jim, a very good evening to you.

I begin with the hot story the last 48 hours, tariffs.

Conservative caucus commits itself to free trade, fair trade.

Generally speaking, tariffs are part of protectionism, and that is not either free trade, fair trade. Generally speaking, tariffs are part of protectionism,

and that is not either free trade nor fair trade. So what is your opinion of the way the

president explained his tariffs last night, given that it's in negotiation, it could change

any 10 minutes? Good evening, too. Thank you.

Well, listen, the precision of what Donald Trump's rhetoric is sometimes belies what's actually taking place in the background.

So I really take the vast majority of the steps on tariffs that Trump is undertaking as on the

fair trade end of things. So I'm all four, and we are all for reciprocal tariffs, for example,

we have been in a structure since World War II where the United States gives all the

tariff advantage, all the trade restriction advantage to other countries.

And I think we did that somewhat purposefully to help countries recover from the devastation economically that World War II brought about.

And that may have been fine in the short run, and we were having fabulous success in our economy.

But that structure cannot be maintained in the long run.

I see this is a transition period where we're going to see reciprocal trade arrangements.

Donald Trump's immediately going to bump up when another country does.

In the long run, and he said this very publicly, and we solidly support it, let's get to zero tariffs.

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