Meet the Press NOW – April 9

Foreign. Whiplash in Washington and on Wall street after President Trump's stunning backtrack announcing a 90 day reduction in tariffs for countries that are negotiating with the administration, despite just two days ago publicly vowing that such a pause would not happen. Stocks soared on the news with their biggest one day rally since 2008. The Dow rose roughly 3,000 points, an 8% gain.

The S and P and Nasdaq also racked up huge gains. This is a time lapse of the day. You can see the moment the President made the announcement by his Truth Social account just after 1:15pm surges. Still, markets are lower than they were before Trump made the tariff announcement.

Last week was what he dubbed Liberation Day. At the same time as the President announced the rollback for many nations, he also announced a stunning 125% tariff on all Chinese imports in response to Beijing's retaliation and defiance. Shortly after announcing his rollback, President Trump acknowledged his initial announcement caused some economic anxiety. People were jumping a little bit out of line.

They were getting yippee, you know, they were getting a little bit yippee, a little bit afraid, unlike these champions, because we have a big job to do. No other president would have done what I did. No other president. The bond market right now is beautiful, but I saw last night where people were getting a little queasy.

You have to have flexibility. I could say, here's a wall and I'm going to go through that wall. I'm going to go through it. No matter what, keep going.

And you can't go through the wall. Sometimes you have to be able to go into the wall, around the wall or over the wall. These guys know that better than anybody, right? You got to go around them.

Sometimes. You. So I consider, you know, I think in financial markets, because they change. Look how much it changed today.

We went from, you know, pretty moderate today, but over the last few days it looked pretty glum to, I guess they say it was the biggest day in financial history. That's a pretty big change. And I think the word would be flexible. You have to be flexible.

White House Press Secretary Caroline Levin and Treasury Secretary Scott Besant held an impromptu press conference with reporters just moments after the President's announcement. Before he spoke, looking to rebut claims that the President changed course in response to the intensifying pressure and criticism from markets, business leaders, trade partners, some advisors, and also allies, we saw the successful negotiating strategy that President Trump implemented a week ago. Today, it has brought more than 75 countries forward to negotiate. It took great courage, great Courage for him to stay the course until this moment.

And what we have ended up with here, as I told everyone a week ago, they're in this very spot. Do not retaliate, and you will be rewarded. Many of you in the media clearly missed the art of the deal. You clearly failed to see what President Trump is doing here.

You tried to say that the rest of the world would be moved closer to China, when, in fact, we've seen the opposite effect. The entire world is calling the United States of America, not China. Now, remarkably, all of this was happening as President Trump's trade representative was at a hearing on Capitol Hill, defending the original tariffs and reacting in real time to the news. The president had just paused many of them.

So did you know that this was under discussion? And why did you not include that as part of your opening remarks? So, typically, what I don't do is divulge the contents of my discussion. How long is the pause?

How many days? How many weeks? I understand it's 90 days. I haven't spoken to the president.

So the trade representative hasn't spoken to the President of the United States about a global reordering of trade? Yes, I have. Yet interfering with you, but yet he announced it on a tweet. Wtf.

Who's in charge? The president is in charge. And what do you know about those details? Well, as I mentioned, it looks like your boss just pulled the rug out from under you and paused the tariffs.

Now, as we noted, today's announcement comes just one week after the president first announced the tariffs from the White House Rose Garden on what he called Liberation Day, and after the president and his top advisors repeatedly said and signaled that pauses or exemptions were not going to happen today. Would you be open to a pause in tariffs to allow for negotiation? Well, we're not looking at that. The president has been clear again that he's not doing exemptions or exceptions in the.

In the near term. I don't think the word exemption is going to be a factor. I don't think that's such a thing. The president was asked to answer this yesterday.

He said he's not considering an extension or delay. I spoke to him before this briefing. That was not his mindset. He expects that these tariffs are going to go into effect.

Join me now at cnbc, senior economics reporter Steve Leesman. Steve, you were with us all of last week. Thank you for being here again this week. First, I just have to get your reaction to what we witnessed today.

How big of a rebound did we see in the markets? It's a big rebound. It's a huge sigh of relief by the markets. You can't discount that we're not back to where we were, the losses from the the Rose Garden announcement.

So, you know, we'll see what happens tomorrow. This is the beginning of a rally to get back. And I think the reason, Kristen, that I'm a little bit skeptical that we go all the way back is it's well remembered the president did not remove the tariffs today. He went back to essentially 10% tariffs across the board, which are worse than was expected, a higher tariff on China and we're told at least my our White House correspondent here at CNBC reports that tariffs on Mexico and Canada are still there as they are for steel and aluminum.

So what's happened is we started this whole process in United States before the Trump, second Trump administration with a 3% tariff. What happened in the Rose Garden last week was a 30% tariff. Now we're back down to what I'm hearing is an estimate of 15 to 20% tariff. You don't have to know those numbers.

What you may have to know is that the bottom line is these are still seen as fairly negative for growth and fairly negative for inflation, meaning higher inflation down the road. So we'll still deal with that and we'll still see how the market thinks about the idea. Well, we're not getting hit with 30% powers, but maybe it's gonna be 20%. And part of what you're describing, Steve, of course, is this climate of uncertainty.

Given that, what are you going to be watching for over the next 90 days while this pause and as you point out, it's really a lowering of the rate to 10% goes into effect. Right? Right. So I was thinking, Christine, you had the wrong person.

You don't need economic supporter. You need either a psychologist or some really good political reporters to figure out what the heck is gonna happen next. I would say that you want to watch the growth, watch the growth numbers, watch the employment numbers, watch the inflation numbers to see how all and by the way, as you point out, the uncertainty will have an effect in and of itself. Did companies hold back on investment?

Did they retrench from hiring? These are some of the things you want to watch the broader economic impact here. That's what I can do. I can tell if you tell me what the numbers are, economists can plug them into models.

The TR give you an example. Earlier this week, Goldman Sachs raised their recession probability of 45% at 1pm today they said, you know what, given what's happening in markets, and I want to give some color about that in a second. They said, given what's happening in markets, we're going up to 65%, which means a better than even chance. We think it's going to happen.

They then dial back down, not to where they were before, went back to 45%. So still a high probability of recession, just not as high as it was. And, and the color from the market is we woke up this morning and we started making calls to people we don't normally talk to. The people who I was calling this morning were people who oversee and think about and look at the financial plumbing of the, of the system.

And these are people that you would talk to only when things like the pandemic happen or the great financial crisis, when you get to positions where the financial system is not operating. Now, what they told me was we were not in a crisis mode. Somebody said 1%. We're not the story now, but we're getting closer.

And I think this is what President Trump saw and the reason why I say he didn't flinch, but essentially he ducked when it came to all this. He saw this gathering concern where we could have a kind of thing where, I don't know, the Fed might have to come in, you might have some blowups of a financial institution or something like that. He saw the possibility of that, and that's the most likely reason why he drew back, not because he got 75 phone calls from leaders around the world. Well, boy, it's incredible color and reporting.

Steve, let me just go back to something you said, which is the question of whether these markets can make up what was lost. Do you think it's possible, as we've been talking about, you're dealing with people's retirement savings. You're dealing with parents, college savings for their kids, some of them wanting to take out that money. Now, do you think that money can be recovered?

So that's a good question. One of the, what you call it, the dark humor going around was the president lost $10 trillion in wealth to solve a $1 trillion trade deficit. That wasn't a problem in and of itself. Look, there is a possibility.

The American economy is very dynamic. It figures out a way to deal with things. It's very important that American businesses know what the rules of the road are. They're very capable of adapting.

It could be that the economists are wrong, that they're being alarmist here about the recession possibilities. In those cases, earnings would come back. But you're sitting here at a period of time when there is an elevated recession risk. You would like to see the president dial back those tariffs across the board.

You'd like to see the president adopt a more, I don't know, sensible approach to policy here that is more predictable, that would allow business to plan and adapt to very trying situation. I'd like to see the market come back. I think it might take a little bit of time here. Steve Liesman, don't go far because we will be calling on you again as we continue to watch these dynamic moves in the market and in the economy.

Thank you so much for joining us. We really appreciate it. As we've been discussing, President Trump's walk back of the tariffs does not apply to China. Instead, President Trump announced he was further increasing the tariff rate on Beijing to 125%.

I'm joined now by Gary Locke, who served as his ambassador to China during the Obama administration. He also served as commerce Secretary in the Obama White House. Ambassador Locke, thank you so much for joining us this afternoon. We really appreciate it.

Ambassador, first question, we saw this market volatility first, these really dramatic drops in the market when President Trump first announced his tariff policies and then today that rebound when he said he was pulling back most tariffs to 10%. What is your reaction? What do you make of what we saw today? Really good news that the president changed his mind and did not go forth with the so called retaliatory tariffs.

But as you indicated and others have commented, the underlying 10% tariffs on all things coming from around the world stays along with the tariffs on automobiles, steel, aluminum and even products coming from Mexico and Canada. And of course, over 100% tariff on all goods coming from China, so much of what Americans consume every single day comes from China. And so when the Walmarts of the world, the Costco's, the Home Depots, the Best Buys targets, have to pay twice as much for what they put on the shelves they're passing on to the consumers. And so this trade war with China can really affect both large and small businesses.

Well, and we are seeing this tit for tat with China. Do you see this as a full scale trade war with China and how are you anticipating Beijing will respond to this latest announcement by President Trump? Well, Beijing and the Chinese leaders, the Communist Party, are very proud and they don't want to be seen around the world as capitulating to the Americans. They've long viewed the Americans as trying to dominate the world and set rules for everyone else.

And they, along with many of the other developing countries bristle at that domination by the United States and some of the Western countries. So Xi Jinping is just as proud as President Trump. And I don't expect the Chinese to make the first move. Perhaps it will take a neutral intermediary, a former prime minister, to engage in some shuttle diplomacy because this trade war with China will hurt both the consumers and workers on both sides of the Pacific.

Given what you are saying and that relationship between the United States and China, can you assess at this moment who has the upper hand in this trade war? Well, I don't think both sides will suffer. But the reality is that so much of what Americans purchase comes from China, and there are not very many alternatives to obtaining those products. The Apple, iPhones, all made in China, some of our electronics, all made in China.

It would take years for many of these American companies to switch their supply chain to other countries. You just can't build these factories overnight. At the same time, China depends on exports to the United States to make the products, which then justify the workers and keeping their workers employed. However, China does have alternatives.

They do not have to buy American soybeans. They do not have to buy Boeing airplanes. They don't have to buy American GE medical equipment. They can buy German products.

So in some ways they have more choices. But still, so much of their employment depends on manufacturing items that are sold to America. And when there's a over 100% tariff on Chinese goods coming into the United States, a lot of consumers are going to back off. They're not going to buy and they're going to.

Therefore, China will suffer as well. I want to play you something, Ambassador Locke, that we heard from Secretary Besant earlier today and get your reaction on the other side. This was driven by the President's strategy. He and I had a long talk on Sunday and this was his strategy all along.

And you might even say that he goaded China into a bad position. They responded. They have shown themselves to the world to be the bad actors. And we are willing to cooperate with our allies and with our trading partners who did not retaliate.

It wasn't a hard message. Don't retaliate. Things will turn out well. What do you make of that attempt at tough talk?

Could it work? How will China hear those words? The Chinese leaders are very proud. Again, they don't want to be seen as capitulating to what they consider holding tactics by the United States under Democratic or Republican presidents.

So I think they're going to stay the course and they have other mechanisms by which they can keep their economy going. But again, it will hurt the Chinese economy, Chinese workers and Chinese consumers, as well as American workers and consumers. Because if those products coming in from China, the US Company gets parts, components for the things that they make in America, and some of those components coming from China more than doubled in price, they're going to have to raise the price of their products which they try to sell in America and around the world, making their product compared to the German or the Canadian or the Mexican product less competitive. Let me ask you finally, Ambassador, do you think that China can use more than just tariffs to cause financial harm to the United States?

Is that a concern? Well, Americans, businesses, policy leaders, and in fact, their counterparts in many Western countries have long complained about the trade policies, the industrial policy, the financial policy of China, including lack of strong enforcement of intellectual property rights. And so President Trump during his first term tried to address that with tariffs. Unfortunately, it didn't really work.

And it's going to be hard to see whether or not these super high tariffs on China will have any effect on the underlying issues that America and other countries have with China. But in the meantime, if this trade war continues just between China and United States, people on both sides will suffer. All right. Former Ambassador Gary Locke, thank you so much for joining us and bringing us your insights and expertise.

We really appreciate it. My pleasure. Coming up, reaction from Capitol Hill to the president's latest decision to roll back tariffs as the House looks to advance the president's legislative agenda. Stay with us.

You're watching me, the president now. Welcome back. As we mentioned, lawmakers on Capitol Hill were caught off guard and largely relieved about President Trump's pause on tariffs. This afternoon, MBC News colleague Melody Denona is on Capitol Hill with the very latest reaction from the Hill.

So now Democrats and Republicans had spoken out publicly against these terrorists. What are you hearing there on the Hill? Yeah, there's been an overwhelming sense of relief, particularly from Republicans who had grown privately anxious about the market turmoil. Republican John Kennedy, he's a senator, he said that this is a win for America and a win for Trump.

And he also told us that he's actually been communicating behind the scenes to the White House about some of his concerns. So perhaps there was a bit of a pressure campaign here in the days leading up to Trump's decision to put this pause on some of these reciprocal tariffs. But some Republicans and most Democrats say this is not enough. Republican Tom, tell us, for example, he said that there's a lot of uncertainty when you have a pause that is happening in 90 days from now, I mean, some Democrats, excuse me, are calling for investigations until whether there was any market manipulation here.

But so far, for the most part, the GOP has been nothing but a positive reaction. Well, you know, that uncertainty now, I think it's going to be one of the big themes over the course of of this 90 days. We played some of that really extraordinary moment where the House Raising committee is holding a hearing about tariffs, questioning the US Trade representative when this announcement came out, and it seemed as though he was a bit caught off guard. What are you hearing and what are you hearing in the wake of that moment?

Yeah, it's a pretty remarkable moment there. But as you know, one of the common themes of this Trump administration has been members of his own party feeling like they're left in the dark on a number of key moves and in this whole tariff saga. And every Swiss intern has really been no exception. Aside from that hearing that you mentioned, the Treasury Secretary, Scott Bessant, was scheduled to meet with a group of House Republicans for their weekly lunch meeting today.

He ended up canceling, as we now know, probably why he had canceled and sent his deputy in his place. But during that meeting, I'm told the deputy did not even mention that this pause was coming, even though that news broke just as the meeting was wrapping up. So that can really be frustrating for some Republicans, especially those who spent the last week defending Trump and his tariff moves. No doubt about that.

All of this looming large over the effort by Republicans to get the president's agenda, that budget resolution passed through the House. Where do things stand right now? And I know that a number of Republicans were basically saying they weren't on board with this. Yeah, they did just clear a key procedural vote in the House.

But the bigger test is going to come in the next hours when they try to actually adopt this Senate budget resolution. And at this moment, Speaker Mike Johnson does not have the votes. There's a block of hardline conservatives who are worried that the Senate is not going to be committed to spending cuts as deep as the House wants to make. And so the leadership and President Donald Trump are really going to have to get involved here in the final hours.

They're really going to have to turn up the heat. They have been whipping these members pretty hard. White House meeting yesterday. But there is a lot riding on this vote because the leadership wants to show momentum on this bill and they also want to send a strong message to the markets.

I have a two week reset rate for them. House Republicans actually inserted a provision into the rules today that would effectively prevent Democrats from trying to force a vote to overturn President Trump's tariffs. What can you tell us about that? That's right.

So the procedure bill I mentioned, it was tucked in. The language was sucked into that bill. And essentially what it would do, it would ban any lawmakers from forcing a vote on a disapproval resolution to try to overturn the authority that Trump has used to justify some of these tariffs. And this move counts as Democrats were indeed planning to force a vote that was essentially revoked that emergency authority that Trump used to justify the April 2nd terrorist.

Speaker Mike Johnson standing by this move. Take, listen, wait for less now may very clear. I think the president has executive authorities, an appropriate level of authority to deal with unfair trade practices. That's part of the role of the president is to negotiate with other countries, the other heads of state.

And he doing that in my Democrats have been up in arms about that move. But even at least one Republican took issue with that language as well. A high Republican, he voted against that vote because of the ban on terrorists. Thank you.

Covering a lot of ground for us today. Thank you so much. Really appreciate it. Great to see you.

Coming up next, swing state voters who voted for Trump react to the ongoing economic turmoil spurred by the president's tariff policies. It's been a massive week for the economy in US Politics and it's only Wednesday. Don't go anywhere. You're watching the press now.

Welcome back. Turning now to the political fallout of the terrorists over the past few days. But before President Trump's big announcement today of the rollback on Paris, NBC News went back and spoke with 20 swing state Trump voters who participated in our national poll last month. Many of them right now seem prepared to trust the president even if his policies cause economic panic.

Those swing state Trump voters telling us, quote, this trade war has to happen in order for fair trade to happen, Quote, I'm willing not to look at my 401k numbers on a daily basis. I'm willing to trust President Trump that it won't turn around and nothing they're doing is news to people that voted for him. There are some signs that there may be cracks in President Trump's coalition, though. One Trump voter in Pennsylvania telling NBC News, quote, we're scraping pennies together.

I know how hard it is for us. I can't imagine how hard it is for seniors who are even older than us. Something's got to give somewhere. Joining now, I was a panel Tamara Keith, Whitehouse, correspondent at NPR Cornell Belcher, Democratic strategist and an NBC News, political ailments, and Stephen Hayes, editor and CEO of the Dispatch and an NBC News contributor.

So the panel was going to be talking about the big drop that we saw in the stock market. But Tam, big rebound in the President, Trump, not altogether pausing, really lowering almost all of the tariffs back to 10% across the board and then hiking them up on China. What do you think the political fallout will be? Well, in some ways, this is exactly where one might have expected this to end up eventually.

I think that the political fallout is likely to be exactly where it's been, which is people who are willing to give Trump the benefit of the doubt are now going to say, this man is a genius. Look at what he did. He brought them to the table. There's 75 countries that want to negotiate, and you know, he's going to make great deals.

And then his critics and people who have been very worried that they didn't know where the destination was on this are going to say, wow, you put us through all of this. And for what? It is a remarkable reversal. I think that there is a very real possibility that this hurts the credibility of this White House because of how firmly they said, even just as recently as like 24 hours ago, there is no way.

There's more going to be a pause. He is not going to put a pause on these tariffs. And then he did, even this morning, the president saying, stay calm, and then the president himself did not stay calm. Yeah, it's so notable, Stephen.

In fact, he acknowledged that there was queasiness. I thought that was an extraordinary moment. Do you think that Tam has a point that this could, in fact, harm the credibility of this administration because there has been so much mixed messaging and there's still a lot of uncertainty about what all this means? Yeah, it has to.

I mean, you had Secretary Bassin just recently, just moments before the president acknowledged that what he did, he did in largely in response to the gippiness of the markets, saying that this was the plan all along. It wasn't the plan all along. That's nonsense on stilts. Anybody who've been reporting on this understands that that was the case.

You had other claims from Howard Ludnick, you had claims from Carolyn Levitt, but this was not what the president did. He flinched, he caved, he capitulated. I think it's good for the country that he did. I think the tariff regime was a bad idea from the get go, but, yeah, of course it should harm their credibility.

I think she's right. The base is going to stick with him. They're going to say he's a genie. No matter what he did.

They bought the case that this had to happen. We had to reorder trade in the world. It was time to take our brackets, stop being screwed by our trade allies and adversaries. And now that it's all off, they're going to say nevermind, we didn't really need to do that.

We're with the president on this. Cornell, you're a pollster. How traditionally does this type of whiplash play with voters? Play in the polls?

Do you see it bear out in the polls? Well, you are seeing it bear out Wall Street Journal, by the way, Wall Street Journal, who is criticized as to not necessarily a left wing organization. Right. Get critics of this on the right sort of ideas about what he's doing with terrorists.

But you see it in the polling. When you look at NBC's polling from last spot, you see the president underwater, underwater double digits on handling inflation and cost of living. The Wall Street Journal poll just came out like last week that also had him Underwater, I think 1415 points on dealing with inflation. We had an election that was supposedly largely about the cost and inflation.

And Americans right now are turning sour on the president and his handling of inflation in the economy, which is something they always had an advantage on. So I'm a House Republican looking at midterm. I know we're talking about midterms already. But the brand of the Republican Party has not been helped by what president has done and Democrats are hoping it will help the brand of the Democratic Party.

They are already trying to capitalize. We have some new sound from Senator Adamshif of California when placed. So I get everyone's reaction on the other side. Absolutely.

I'm writing to the White House to demand who knew in advance that the president was going to once again flip flops and are people cashing in. There is just all too much opportunity for people in the White House and the insider trading and you can't put it past them for a minute. So we're going to try to find out if there's one person who gets under President Trump's it is Adam Schiff made an extended riff about him just last night. Yes, he did.

What do you make of how you're seeing Adam Schiff respond and do you think the Democrats are doing an effective job at capitalizing on this moment? So I think what Schiff is possibly responding to is that President Trump hours earlier had put out on social media. It's a great time to buy if you had Taken his price, you would be doing really well right now. That may have been just.

What we don't know is whether the president knew at that time whether he was going to change his mind or if that was just wishcasting and trying to will the markets into a better place. I don't know that what Senator Schiff said is going to be the message that Democrats land on. I think the message that Democrats have landed on thus far is the president is doing all of this. It's going to raise costs for you consumers and he's in part at least doing this because he wants to cut taxes on wealthy.

That's the message to Democrats. Coalesce behind. Yes, for now. It's a really long message.

Look, I mean how do you think the Democrats are starting to find their footing or their messaging? There's a lot of different messages. There's too many. We had directional members today.

She was in Washington walking a very fine line on tariffs, basically saying look, you should not take tariffs as like a hammer approach. You should do it in a very careful way. But she was careful not to criticize Trump directly. You have other Democrats like Adam Schiff were going directly at him.

Well, look, I think there's too many messages and if you have five different messages, you have no message. And which shocking is Democrats are not very disciplined. All messy. Right.

It's a shocking thing. They have to take advantage of the opening that Trump has caused with them losing advantages on the economy and making it about the economy and cost. Tariffs are interesting, but two months ago most Americans didn't know what the word tariff was. Keep it simple about your pocketbook and about sort of your costs and about the ideals of recession and job loss.

I think we're too focused on tariffs which by the way, he can take away or move and most Americans will forget about it. But it's the economy and how you're hurting and your retirement is hurting. Yeah, it's a great point that when we start to get those broader economic indicators like the unemployment jobs report, the inflation report, that's really what will determine, I think how this president is judged. I think that's right.

If you look at the impact of what the President has already done, you have people scrambling, people who are saying wait a second, I had planned for 15 years on the savings that were my 529 to help pay for my kids college and now I've got 25% less of that. I think Cornell is right. Too many messages from the Democrats, not good for the Democrats. If the Democrats can't take advantage of this moment, just give in.

And I watched Chuck Schumer yesterday in his press. He was tweeting something about the falls in the markets and the skittishness. And his response was and the rich get richer. I mean, it's a simple message.

It's a shorter message. It was also totally wrong. The rich are not getting richer. They were taking it like everybody else.

So it's important to be accurate in your messaging, too. Less than minute left to that point that this is really the best chance that Democrats might have to find their footing. Yeah. And there needs to be coordination, which is historical.

I worked for the chair of the party once upon a time and trying to herd all the leadership Democratic parties that hurting gats. But this is the moment they have to take advantage of this moment and get on one accord on the message about the economy, not simply about tariffs, and take that moving into it because we also have off your elections coming up as well. We'll see in New Jersey, Virginia, the first real test of the Trump agenda. Guys, thank you so much for being here.

Great conversation. And we will be back after a quick break. And welcome back. It is a very busy day here.

We continue our coverage. We are joined now by Wisconsin Democratic Congressman Mark Cocaine. Congressman, thank you so much for joining. Really appreciate it.

Oh, thank you, Chris. Thanks for having me. I have to start off just by getting your reaction to the news by President Trump that he's basically lowering those across the board tariffs to 10% to make the right decision, Congressman? Well, he should have never made the decision to mess up the economy in the first place.

But I'm glad at least someone talks sense to him and we've got a little reprieve. But, you know, Donald Trump's not good for the economy. He's not good for working people people. He's good for cutting taxes for rich folks.

But the rest of us, it's just been a pretty rough ride. You know, there's been a big back and forth over whether Congress can in fact play a role, try to halt or at least block President Trump's attempts to unilaterally impose tariffs. It seems like that effort has hit the pause button as well. Do you anticipate that there's enough support to get that passed?

Well, the Republicans just voted on a rule that made it harder for us to be able to have a vote to force a vote by members of Congress to try to take back the ability to have control on the tariffs from Donald Trump. So unfortunately, literally, I just got off the Floor. And that's what Republicans did. They gave him another set of keys rather than trying to stop him from these Trump tariffs that are taxing people in Wisconsin across the country.

You know, the president argues, look, he imposed these tough tariffs and now he says 75 countries have come to him to negotiate trade deals. We should know the White House has not released a list of what those countries are, in fact. But Congressman, President Trump at the end of the day is able to say, well, I got all of these new trade deals. Will it have been worth it and will he have had a point?

Well, a lot of people lost a lot of retirement savings. He created a lot of chaos for the market. I don't think at the end of the day, you can say it was strategic. I always think of the debate when he didn't have health care plan, he had a concept of a plan.

I feel like that's all he ever has, is concepts of plans and we pay the price. And right now, you know, working class folks are the ones who are hurting. And, you know, maybe he could have got this through what he's doing, but you could have also got this just trying to reach out to other countries and have different tariffs the way he did. It was chaos and harmful to the economy.

Well, Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, your neighboring state, was here in Washington today giving a speech in large part about tariffs. I want to play some of that and get your reaction on the other side. I understand the motivation behind the tariffs. And I can tell you here's where President Trump and I do agree we do need to make more stuff in America, more cars and ships, more steel and ships.

We do need fair trade. I'm not against tariffs outright, but it is a blunt tool. You can't just pull out the tariff hammer to swing at every problem without a clear defined end goal. What is your reaction to the governor and does she have the right message?

You can hear her walking a very fine line on this, not dismissing these tariffs outright. Well, she's exactly right. I mean, there's useful ways, if you have a plan, a strategic plan to have targeted tariffs, you're jumping, dumping cheeks. Steel in the country want to protect an industry we put tariffs on to protect those workers in that industry.

But when you just do a tariff on everything like Donald Trump is doing, that's then it becomes a tax. It becomes a tax on every single constituent. I have people across the country makes it harder for the economy. It makes the stock market do what we just saw it did.

But you can have a strategic plan to use tariffs wisely. We just didn't see a single bit of that from Donald Trump. You know, Governor Whitman obviously represents a state that went for President Trump, Trump, should that be the playbook for Democrats to walk a fine line? Because she did have some very specific criticisms of the terrorists and the way they're being implemented.

And yet she did refrain from taking in directly. And then there she was at the White House meeting with President Trump. Is that the key, or at least part of it to Democrats getting back on track, politically speaking? I think just being plain spoken, you know, I'm kind of an every guy in Congress.

I came from a lower middle class family. I'm not one of the millionaires up here. But I also know that, you know, Donald Trump did put a tax on me and people like me across the country and you do have to call him out. You know, one thing that I know Donald Trump cares about is Donald Trump.

And I guess I now add Elon Musk to that list. They're going to get a tax cut at the end of the day, four and a half trillion dollars. But I don't want them to cut health care and long term care and education spending and all these other things while he's playing with tariffs and wrecking the economy for people like me. Because a lot of us live paycheck to paycheck and you know, Donald Trump doesn't.

And the only people he's watching out for is that cabinet of billionaires and Elon Musk himself. And everyone belongs to Marlago. And of course, one of the big headlines today is that President Trump ramped up tariffs on China after China retaliated against the United States. Do you see this as a trade war and how concerning about it?

It's looking like the trade war. I know again, if you had a plan, there's a very strategic way to use tariffs against China and do it effectively. What Donald Trump is doing again is not that he's just throwing them out there. They add some, he had some.

At the end of the day, it's going to create chaos. But that's what Donald Trump likes. The more stability we have, the more planning we have, you can make tariffs work, but Donald Trump again is not doing that. I think he caved today.

I think that's the only way he can really describe it by his 90 day delay. I think he wants to get that tax bill done so badly he had people in Congress, including Republicans upset. He had his black tie, fancy fundraiser last night. And I think that was part of what brought him to the point where he was today on tariffs?

Well, you take me to my next question. Let's play some of what he said at that fundraiser for the NRC last night. Reaction on the other shot. I'm proud to be the president for the workers, not the outsources.

The president who stands up for Main street, not Wall street, who protects the middle class, not the political class, and who defends America, not trade cheaters. All over the globe, they're trade cheaters. The message not too dissimilar from what we hear from some of your progressive colleagues. What do you make of.

Yeah, but his plan is the opposite of what progressive colleagues actually would do when it comes to this. I mean, you know, we should, we should have good trade policies, we can have better trade policies. And I would love to see him do that. But what he's doing with tariffs is across the board.

It's not targeted. It's not going to actually accomplish those goals. So he talks a good game, but at the end of the day, if you don't have a plan and a strategy, which he hasn't had, it turns out to hurt the stock market, it hurts the economy, it's, you know, making it tougher and raising costs for the average person. And, you know, the biggest thing he won on in November was the economy.

People across the globe were paying more through inflation coming out of COVID and he simply has taken a real advantage in November and made it his strongest detriment right now because he's not dealing with the economy of effectively. All right, Congressman, thank you so much for joining us. We really appreciate it. We are back tomorrow.

Thank you. We're back tomorrow with more me the press now, but the news does continue with Hallie Jackson right now. Hey, it's Kate Snow, NBC News anchor and host of the Drink. This month, Demi Lovato is my guest.

The global superstar tells me that she is the happiest she's ever been right now. But getting there, it wasn't simple. Demi opens up about starting in Hollywood young and why she now thinks she may have started too soon. She talks about recovery, her new marriage and the deeply personal reason behind her new cookbook.

The Drink is always about the journey to the top. And this was an honest conversation about what that takes. Hope you'll listen and follow the Drink wherever you get your podcast.