Tucker Carlson: Yes, Trump Is Willing to Negotiate with China on Tariffs

The Daily Signal Podcast

The Daily Signal

News, Government, Politics, Daily News

4.6 • 1.2K Ratings

🗓️ 13 April 2025

⏱️ 12 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

President Donald Trump is using tariffs to apply heavy pressure on China, but the president remains open to negotiations with China, according to Tucker Carlson. “Well, of course he is,” Carlson said when asked if Trump is willing to negotiate with China. “I mean, the question is, who needs the other more? Does the U.S. need China more or China need the US? I can't answer that,” Carlson told The Daily Signal. Only hours after new tariffs went into effect on about 90 countries around the world, Trump announced a 90 day pause on the “reciprocal tariff,” but an increased tariff on goods from China. “Based on the lack of respect that China has shown to the World’s Markets, I am hereby raising the Tariff charged to China by the United States of America to 125%, effective immediately,” Trump wrote on Truth Social, Wednesday. China and the U.S. “need each other,” Carlson said. “The deal has been for the past 30 years, we’ll buy your underpriced consumer goods, you buy our overpricing debt. And you know, in some ways that's worked great, in other ways it hasn't worked at all.” Carlson was at the White House last week when Trump stood in the rose garden and announced his plan to increase tariffs on nations around the world. Despite knowing Trump for years and the president’s interest in tariffs as a negotiation tool, the conservative news commentator and former Fox News host said he was “shocked” by Trump’s new tariffs. “I wasn't against what Trump was saying, but I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, that's shocking that he said that. You can't erect trade barriers.’ ... It's like all the childhood orthodoxies were still rattling around in my head.” Carlson sits down with The Daily Signal at The Heritage Foundation’s Annual Leadership Conference to discuss Trump’s recent use of tariffs and what the results may be. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Well, he said it was his plan. He said this, you know, several thousand times in public over 40 years.
0:05.4	I was still shocked by the press conference. Even though I knew that those were his beliefs and I
0:09.4	basically agree with him, I was, it was one of those moments. I was like, wow, I've marinated
0:13.3	in libertarian economics for so long, my entire life living in D.C. where everybody's a free market
0:19.3	person, including me, free minds, free markets,
0:21.5	or whatever dumb slogan that I repeated all those years. I didn't really, I was just, I wasn't
0:26.1	against what Trump was saying, but I was like, oh my gosh, that's shocking that he said that.
0:29.8	You can't erect trade barriers? I mean, like what? It's like all the childhood orthodoxies
0:35.6	were still rattling around in my head. Well, Tucker, thank you so
0:38.9	much. Oh, thank you for having me. Are you kidding? This is a joy. So we are, we're speaking at the Heritage
0:44.0	Foundation's annual leadership conference in Florida. You're giving an address on the main stage.
0:48.3	You're kind enough to give us a little bit of time. So thank you for that. One of those big,
0:51.5	big questions obviously right now that folks are looking at is what's going on with tariffs and sort of these different shifts and power plays that are being made really fascinating this week to see Trump say, okay, these reciprocal tariffs are going into effect. Then on Wednesday, he said, no, we're doing a 90-day pause on all reciprocal tariffs, but on China, we're raising tariffs to 125%.
1:13.3	Yes.
1:13.5	Was this kind of always, do you think, Trump's plan to put on this pressure of tariffs and then say,
1:20.6	maybe we're going to pull up on other countries, but to leave that pressure on China?
1:25.0	Well, he said it was his plan.
1:26.7	He said this, you know, several thousand times
1:29.6	in public over 40 years. So none of us should be surprised. And yet I was surprised. I was actually
1:35.8	at the White House last Wednesday. It just happened to be not having anything to do with tariffs.
1:40.3	But I was sitting in a someone's office who was a former employee in mine. So I were to go say hi before I went to the meetings that I had.
1:46.6	And I happened to be sitting in this person's office and he had the TV on and the press conference going on in the Rose Garden and live and I'm just watching this.
	...

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