'I'm Worried About Empty Shelves': Mike Levin Slams Trump Tariff Policy And Warns Of Possible Impacts

Rep. Mike Levin (D-CA) joined "Forbes Newsroom" to discuss President Trump's first 100 days.

Transcript

00:00Joining me now is Congressman Mike Levin. Congressman, thank you so much for joining me.

00:04Thanks, Brittany.

00:05We have just surpassed President Trump's second first 100-day milestone in the White House,

00:12and we have seen a lot. He has signed dozens of executive orders. He has started, stopped,

00:17paused trade wars with allies and adversaries alike. And in this milestone, I'm curious,

00:24how exactly would you characterize his performance so far?

00:28Well, Brittany, I would characterize it as chaos, dysfunction and extremism. And the president

00:35ran successfully last year on a couple of big issues. One was getting costs under control and

00:42improving the economy. Another was on immigration. And on the economy, we see the tariffs and the

00:51really reckless nature of trade policies around the world. The arbitrary tariffs that were announced

01:00then walked back and paused. The business community doesn't know which way to turn. And consumers are

01:06already seeing higher prices as a result. I'm worried about empty shelves this summer. And I'm worried

01:13about higher prices for the average American for some time to come. It's very easy to break things

01:19when it comes to the economy. It's sometimes much harder to fix them. And there's just a recklessness

01:24and a chaos around the economic choices the president has made that I think will cause not only the short-term

01:30pain, but long-term pain as well. And then on immigration, I think the president really had a huge

01:36opportunity to work with Democrats and Republicans alike interested in securing our border and coming up with

01:43a bipartisan solution on having a path to citizenship for our agricultural workers, for others who are seeking

01:52to contribute positively to our society and our economy. But instead of that, we've seen mass deportation and

01:59really lack of due process and an extremism that I didn't fully anticipate, given the, you know, maybe

02:09that was naive. Maybe given some of the rhetoric, I should have anticipated just how bad it's been.

02:14But I think a chaos, dysfunction and extremism for the first hundred days, which means that given a

02:20historic opportunity at a second chance, only Grover Cleveland has gotten a second chance as president

02:26of the United States and the hope and the belief that the president would actually focus on lowering

02:33costs and trying to come up with a fix on immigration, quite the opposite. And that's why he's upside down

02:40overall. That's why he's upside down on the economy and why he's upside down on immigration, which really

02:46were his superpowers to become elected both the first and the second time.