This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Wednesday, April 1st, 2020.

I'm Caleb Brown.

Imagine if the president hadn't spent most of the last three years actively breaking

global supply chains, hiking tariffs, and

antagonizing trading partners. Would we have better access to supplies of life-saving

medical equipment? The White House has announced not a suspension but effectively a delay in

collecting some tariffs. Cato Simon Lester discusses the impact of that change.

The Trump administration has announced that tariffs will not be collected for three months.

Do I understand that correctly that that is a measure that simply says those funds will not be collected right now and will be collected at a later date?

That's right.

Are we effectively, we're not, so we're not effectively suspending tariffs?

Yeah, I wouldn't say we're suspending them.

I think we're deferring them.

And I've seen a lot of uncertainty as to how this is supposed to operate.

But it's good news, and I think it's the right thing to do.

I would obviously go further.

But look, in this time of economic collapse, you know, we don't know how

bad the economy is going to get anything we can do to help out small businesses, big businesses,

consumers, you know, everyone, we should do it.

And so, you know, it's similar to not making people pay their taxes right now.

Let's just let's not take people's money away from them when many of them are struggling to have enough to pay for food.

So if we're going to defer tariffs for 90 days, I think that's great start. Maybe after 90 days we defer

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