'Christmas Will Be A Very Difficult Time': Slotkin Makes Eerie Prediction About Trump's Tariffs

During a townhall on Monday, Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D-MI) was asked about President Trump's tariffs.

Transcript

00:00I'm to start oh gosh it's Partridge Mark Partridge and my question is um all right I wrote it this

00:11way how do we get the public to understand that Trump's tariffs are a tax on ordinary Americans

00:18and this is the largest tax increase in modern history resulting in the largest transfer of

00:27money from the poor to rich people thank you for the opportunity to talk about tariffs let's talk

00:35about tariffs so we are the state of Michigan manufacturing agriculture those are our some

00:42of our primary industries that means we are being disproportionately hit by these tariffs or even

00:50threat of tariffs so President Trump announced his Liberation Day tariffs he announced all kinds

00:57of tariffs on all kinds of countries and he created basically the world's most intense marketplace

01:03at the White House where every country every industry comes hat in hand trying to make a deal

01:09with him now he said he wanted 90 deals in 90 days he got one deal in 90 days so he extended the

01:17deadline he's thrown some tariffs here he's held them back on other places it gets very confusing

01:23what you I think need to know is that the price of goods and services but particularly goods for like

01:31back to school clothing school supplies plastics those are things where we're already seeing significant

01:38increases we know we're seeing it on things like aluminum and construction materials farming materials

01:45I was just came from visiting a farm today and they're talking about tariffs you're right that people don't

01:52understand that a tariff is them having to pay more I think the school supplies might be changing some

02:00people I think a lot of people are talking about wait a minute I just went to buy some clothes for my kid and it was

02:04double what I spent last year and you can believe that Christmas will be a very difficult time last year a

02:12Tonka truck was 30 bucks for your child next year this year it'll be probably closer to 45 depending on what you're buying

02:20um and I think on top of the consumer feeling that price increase the the rationality behind these

02:31tariffs just does not make sense we currently have more tariffs on Canada than we do on China

02:37okay and we as Michiganders know I mean the Canadians we can have issues with them from time to time but

02:44you know this is this is a partner our supply chains are woven in with them so

02:52I even have Republican colleagues who are proposing bills saying that we need to send

03:00all Americans relief checks from tariffs to say here's a $500 check because we know you're paying

03:08more because of tariffs just don't have an insane tariff policy and you won't have to send another

03:15check to people right so the the policy and again if you want to get get me on tariffs with China and a

03:23few I mean we can have a real conversation I'm not against all tariffs but the way he's going about

03:28it is sloppy and chaotic and creating an environment where no industry including local places like whirlpool how

03:36could you possibly plan and make your budget for next year when you don't know what's going to happen

03:41so yes we can talk about policy papers and how we get people to understand to me this is why I tell

03:51people to keep book on what you pay on things because nothing is going to be more convincing than

03:57your own wallet your own family budget and I feel very firmly particularly as we head into the fall

04:04people are going to feel those tariffs unfortunately

04:07okay