President Donald Trump is taking heat for making a wild claim about how he concocted at least one of his tariffs ― and it seems to undermine his own argument for imposing them in the first place.
“I had an incident with a very nice country, Switzerland,” he told Larry Kudlow during a Fox Business interview that aired on Tuesday. “They were paying no tariffs, sending stuff over here like nobody could believe.”
Trump claimed the United States had a $42 billion trade deficit with Switzerland, a number similar to one he’d used before and one that analysts said ignored trade in services, which actually put the deficit at $8 billion.
Trump said he imposed a 30% tariff on goods from Switzerland, leading to “an emergency call from, I believe, the prime minister of Switzerland.”
But that call didn’t seem to go the way Trump wanted.
“She was very aggressive, but nice, but very aggressive,” he said. “And I didn’t really like the way she talked to us, so instead of giving her a reduction, I raised her to 39%.”
There are a few problems with Trump’s claims, starting with the fact that Switzerland doesn’t have a prime minister.
Trump’s conversation last year was likely with then-Swiss President Karin Keller-Sutter, and occurred after he threatened to raise tariffs on the country to 39%. However, that tariff was later reduced to 15% after a Swiss delegation gave Trump several gifts, including a Rolex watch and a gold bar. The decision to give him those items is now under investigation in Switzerland.
But beyond the error ― and beyond the casual misogyny of Trump once again attacking a woman because he doesn’t like how she talks to him ― there was the larger issue of the tariffs themselves. Last year, Trump’s attorneys argued before the Supreme Court that he needed to act without Congress on the issue because trade imbalances had created a “national emergency” that the president was trying to address via tariffs.
Yet, saying he can raise and lower tariffs because of someone’s attitude seemed to undermine that argument.
With the court case still pending, Trump’s critics are pointing to the new interview and wondering if the justices were paying attention:
