Whatever you think of President Trump's tariffs, there's one point you have to concede.

His interest in them is not just some passing whim.

He noted that on Wednesday in the Rose Garden when he was announcing the latest massive round of tariffs.

Great consistency, actually, because I've been talking about it for 40 years.

But because I saw what was happening 40 years ago, if you look at my

old speeches when I was young, very handsome, my old speeches, and that people would say,

I'd be on a television show, I'd be talking about how we were being ripped off by these countries.

I mean, nothing changes very much. The only thing to change were the countries.

It's true. He's been talking about this for years. Here he is on the Oprah Winfrey show back in

1988. If you ever go to Japan right now and try to sell something, forget about it,

Oprah. Just forget about it. It's almost impossible. They don't have laws against it. They just

make it impossible. They come over here. They sell their cars, their VCRs. They knock the hell out of our companies.

You see, these are core beliefs for Donald Trump. Trade deficits are bad. Other countries are taking

advantage of the U.S. tariffs are the way to fix all of this. These beliefs shaped his whole first presidential campaign.

We have a $500 billion deficit, trade deficit with China.

We're going to turn it around, and we have the cards.

Don't forget, we're like the piggy bank that's being robbed.

The same beliefs shaped his first presidential term.

I am taking action to impose safeguard tariffs on imported residential washing machines and all solar

products. The first Trump administration would ultimately impose tariffs on thousands of products,

valued at nearly $400 billion. Well, that is nothing compared to Trump 2.0.

Tariffs on cars, tariffs on steel, and yesterday what he called the big one,

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