Leader Schumer Floor Remarks On The Reckless And Unnecessary Damage Caused By President Trump’s Trade War
Washington, D.C. – Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) today spoke on the Senate floor to denounce Donald Trump’s nonsensical tariffs that have put the U.S. economy in danger of a recession, wreaked havoc on the stock market, and risked draining hard-earned retirement savings while the president tweets trading advice to his followers. Below are Senator Schumer’s remarks, which can also be viewed here:
This morning I’ll take a little more than the usual time, because I want to review what happened over the past eight days with Trump’s tariff tax, so that it can be preserved in the record and so that we, as a nation, can try to process the reckless, unnecessary damage President Trump has created.
The past eight days have been an absolute embarrassment for President Trump and for everyone who truly cares about this country.
During these eight days, the world saw the President of the United States reveal his total lack of understanding of international trade, macro and micro economics, and foreign relations.
The world saw the American President issue a tariff ultimatum so ill-conceived and so flawed that it was mocked from here to the Heard and McDonald Islands.
This whole episode is so ridiculous that even the writers of Veep and the House of Cards would have shredded their drafts.
Yet, it was real. And it had real effects, lasting effects, on real people.
Donald Trump’s tariff fiasco caused real damage to the confidence other nations have in America.
It had real effects on the uncertainty we feel every day that Donald Trump sits in the oval office. It had real effects on people’s retirements.
Let’s start with his announcement that April 2nd , that would be ‘Liberation Day’, a day of massive worldwide tariffs.
Rather than providing a coherent explanation for such a substantial policy change, the stated justification for this massive tariff application varied depending on the moment or who the administration spokesperson was.
Depending on the day, President Trump claimed that tariffs would either balance the budget, enable the elimination of the income tax, or bring manufacturing jobs back to the United States.
While Peter Navarro gave full-throated support to all three of those goals, most of the rest of the administration ignored the first two goals and focused on bring manufacturing jobs back to the U.S.
A worthy goal, one that Democrats, including myself, have been advocating for decades.
However, even administration officials couldn’t get on the same page. While Navarro and Secretary Bessent were talking about the return of jobs, Secretary Lutnick was espousing that manufacturing would be coming back – but that it would be automated he said. So, are we bringing manufacturing jobs back? Or displacing them with machines?
It’s clear as April 2nd approached, no one – not even the most devoted Trump apologist – except maybe only Ron Vara - believed the President had an actual plan.
Nevertheless, he persisted.
And on April 2nd, President Trump, against all semblance of common sense, announced tariffs beyond what even the most isolationist Republican could have envisioned.
The President made some outlandish claims and he held up a chart with a lot of numbers on it.
And his claims—and those numbers—were a surprise to pretty much everyone, everyone who understands the language, the theory, and mathematics of trade.
Putting aside the idiotic tariffs applied to penguins who produce nothing but guano and baby penguins, and consume little more than krill and fish.
And putting aside the tariffs on countries who make products Americans crave, but who lack the purchasing power to buy our products in return, we all quickly realized that the numbers on Donald Trump’s chart were so nonsensical that it took some of the world’s greatest economic minds to reverse engineer it to determine the formula.
And yet, in perfect Trumpian fashion, his administration released the actual formula and the assumptions behind the chart.
Again, it quickly became clear that he based his entire tariff scheme on a formula so flawed, so economically incoherent, that he had to insert some random Greek letters--and assign them phony values--just to make it look like something out of A Beautiful Mind. But instead of a stroke of genius, what we got was gibberish. Not genius, but gibberish.
Remember back in September 2019, when Hurricane Dorian was approaching Florida, and President Trump used a Sharpie to alter a NOAA map to try and cover for his mistake?
Well, this phony formula is the 2025 reincarnation of Sharpiegate.
Except the economic consequences of this fraud will impact millions of Americans.
Now, I won’t stand up here and say I oppose all tariffs. I don’t.
I appreciate my supporters on twitter reminding everyone that I have long championed tough trade policies on China - going back to my early days in the Senate.
But I – and the American people – oppose a whimsical, nonsensical approach to international trade. Especially one that so clearly will increase costs on American families.
It’s one thing to target tariffs on bad actors, like China. That makes sense.
But to raise tariffs on allies such as Canada and Israel? Everyone knows that makes no sense.
To raise tariffs on random islands such as the Falklands, Heard and McDonald, and Svalbard? Everyone knows that makes no sense.
To raise tariffs on countries like Madagascar who import little from us but produce products wanted by millions of Americas? Everyone knows that makes no sense.
And yet, he persisted. Trump persisted.
And the world’s financial markets melted down on Thursday and Friday.
Now that meltdown may not have mattered to President Trump. But it certainly mattered to millions of Americans.
While the big financial players can hedge against an ignorant, erratic president, everyday Americans who have their hard earned nest eggs in pension funds, IRAs, and 529 accounts to help pay for their kids’ college tuition don’t have that luxury.
While the President and his family can create new memecoins and sell cheap, made-in-China swag, so that bad actors and sycophants can funnel them money, most Americans don’t have the luxury.
No, most Americans are living paycheck to paycheck. If they’re lucky, they put a little away each month for retirement or college savings. Some of them keep that money in interest-bearing accounts, for the stability. Their savings are probably doing ok but costs are going up so they may have to dip into those savings. The President let them down.
Some Americans put that money in mutual funds that depend on stability and predictability. The President let them down as well.
Of course, some Americans have no exposure to the stock market. Their only hope for retirement is Social Security – which Congressional Republicans want to gut and Elon Musk calls a Ponzi scheme. But the President also let them down.
Because they may not be exposed but their employer probably is. As is their neighborhood grocer, and hardware store owner. And they will be affected if any prices rise.
When the financial markets closed on Friday, with one of the biggest drops in history, President Trump was golfing and dining with his Saudi friends.
On Saturday, while the nation was stressing over their financial instability, the official White House press office gleefully announced that the President would, on Sunday, compete in his club’s golf championship.
This was the Trump version of ‘Let them eat cake’. ‘Let them eat cake’.
Then, on Sunday, after a weekend of uncertainty, a weekend of stress, while small business owners, retirees, and young families across the country were sitting at their kitchen tables trying to figure out how they were going to handle this dramatic increase in costs, what was the President doing?
He was, of course, still golfing.
And, to the surprise of no one except for maybe the actual tournament winner, President Trump tied for his own club championship. A remarkable achievement to be sure.
In fact, so great is that achievement, that if the President would make public his scorecard, I would gladly enter it into the Congressional record, and ask for its preservation at the National Archives.
Though I’m sure his caddie would be reluctant to testify under oath. I know the President likes to talk about his handicap.
Over the weekend, his administration tried to cover up for his indifference by claiming that ‘more than 50 countries’ had reached out to start negotiations.
That claim may have temporarily calmed the futures market but its un-believability certainly harmed the White House Economic Advisor Kevin Hassett’s credibility.
Adding to the uncertainty and lack of faith was that the incoherence within the administration that was in full public effect over the weekend.
In between golf swings, the President found time to post “WE WILL WIN. HANG TOUGH, it won’t be easy.”
Meanwhile, America’s de facto President, Elon Musk, told a globalist conference in Italy that he wanted a ‘zero-tariff situation’ between the U.S. and Europe.
That aspiration was quickly, and directly rebutted by the tariff architect Peter Navarro which led to a public spat the likes of which the Presidency has rarely seen.
On Monday, the Markets started low but quickly skyrocketed because some random ‘verified’ Twitter account ‘announced’ that an administration official said Trump would pause tariffs for 90 days.
The world and the Markets rejoiced but the administration quickly refuted that assertation and the markets fluctuated downward.
Tuesday started with great optimism and a quick market rise, but China’s retaliation and rumors of a European equivalent turned the rally bearish.
Which brings us to yesterday, Wednesday, April 9th.
History will likely record this day as America’s actual liberation day because it is the day that President Trump backed down. Backed down.
Of course, as with anything Trump does, his backing down created a few private winners and several public losers.
We may never discern who the private winners are.
But we do know that at 9:37 am, President Trump posted – in all capital letters - ‘THIS IS A GREAT TIME TO BUY!!! DJT”.
What, exactly, was the purpose of that post? Why did he feel the need to add his initials to that particular post?
Was it to signal to his friends and family that he was going to pause the tariffs so they should buy low, knowing the market would boom? Was this another “stand back and stand by”?
We may never know. We may never know. But we need to find out—and it must be investigated.
Now, we certainly know who the losers are.
The losers are the millions of Americans who tried to protect their positions and sold assets during the downturn. They were let down by President Trump.
The losers are the administration officials who tried their level best to cover for President Trump’s instability by spinning to the media - only to have the President undercut their credibility.
Now we shouldn’t be surprised by this. We all lived through the first Trump Presidency after which even he admitted he hired bad people.
But, here in his second term, the effort that President Trump puts into destroying the credibility of his staff is utterly incomprehensible.
To paraphrase a former Trump official, people think Trump is playing 3-D chess but most of the time, the staff is just trying to keep him from eating the pieces.
That is what happened this week.
Trump sycophants, Fox News hosts, and Republican Senators are all used to this game. They know the President is dead wrong, that he is not remotely a very stable genius.
Yet none of them want to tell the Emperor that he has no clothes.
Secretary Lutnick’s credibility is shot because of his full-on defense of this tariff scheme followed by his admission that it wouldn’t result in American jobs because automation would take over.
Secretary Bessent’s credibility is shot because of his public attempts to defend the President’s ever-changing whims.
He spent the weekend and the week saying the administration doesn’t want deals, that we’re bringing manufacturing back, we aren’t pausing.
But, as recent as yesterday, he made the Orwellian claim that Main Street would benefit from this tariff scheme.
But, then today, his full humiliation was complete as he tweeted, after the President back down, ‘no one creates leverage for himself like @POTUS.’ Give me a break.
The President even undercut his Trade Representative during a Congressional hearing. Jamieson Greer spent hours defending the President’s tariff policy only to learn of the President’s back-tracking while sitting at the witness stand.
And then, after hours of administration officials claiming that this wasn’t a backtrack, that it was the plan all along, President Trump goes to the mics and undercuts his team by saying he caved because he was watching the bond market and people were getting nervous.
With Trump, obedience begets humiliation.
So, now, you and 330 million of your fellow Americans and countries across the planet are asking ‘Where are we?”
Sadly, no one knows, not even President Trump.
Some proposed tariffs have been reduced. Some have not. Our neighbors Canada and Mexico are asking how this applies to them and they can’t get straight answers.
The President himself has leaned into the uncertainty, offering that he may give breaks to certain companies, we should assume those that are owned by his family and his friends. That’s how this administration rolls.
Asked yesterday about potential tariff reprieves for companies, he replied, this is President Trump: “there have been some that have been hit hard…There are some that by the nature of the company get hit a little bit harder and we’ll take a look at that.”
So, as we look back on this week of self-made chaos, and even destruction we have to ask, what was the purpose of this exercise? What was the purpose of this exercise?
Was it, as President Trump originally said, to force other countries to pay enough tariffs so that the United States could eliminate the income tax?
No, Trump has backed off of that.
Was it, as President Trump later said, to retaliate against countries that were unfair to us?
No, that was never true but even if it was, Trump backed off that.
Was it, as some sycophants and Cabinet Secretaries have claimed, some 4D chess move to call China’s bluff?
No, everyone knows that isn’t true. This was not a week of 3D chess, 4D chess, nor even checkers.
Again, to paraphrase a former Trump official, people think Trump is playing 3-D chess but most of the time, the staff is just trying to keep him from eating the pieces.
President Trump is the guy who lights the house on fire, calls 911, and then his MAGA sycophants and Republican Senators hit the airwaves and take to social media to laud him for putting out the fire.
The President did real harm, real harm to America and Americans over the last week. And Senate Republicans stood by and cheered.
Senate Democrats will do everything we can to help minimize the damage.
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