(lively music) - Tariffs.

Attacks or duty to be paid on a particular class of imports or exports.

That's the simple dictionary definition of tariffs.

But the true meaning is extremely complicated.

President Trump's new tariffs are scheduled to kick in as we speak, but of course, that is subject to change.

We're joined tonight by Associate Professor Dr. Megan Remmel from the Political Science and International Studies Department at Bradley University.

Thanks for coming in, Megan.

- Hi, Mark.

- Well, let's talk about tariffs.

And I don't know about you, but I've had to totally reeducate myself on tariffs.

I don't even remember learning about this in high school.

But President Trump, very high on tariffs, and the tariffs that he's putting out there, the highest that we've seen in almost a century.

What are your thoughts on why this is being done?

- I mean, given the campaign motto that he's had repeatedly about making America greater again or keeping America great, it is very America-focused in that the entire idea of these tariffs on products that are coming into the United States is to make them more expensive to force American manufacturers to, kind of, take up the slack of what's no longer coming into the country.

So it kind of fits the credo that he's been giving for the last, what?

Eight years.

But it obviously seems to have some backfiring effects.

And so I think there's this tension between wanting to do what's best for Americans, American manufacturers, and wanting to try to keep prices competitive, for instance.

And so, depending on what your priorities are, your values are, tariffs are a mixed bag, to say the least.

- Sure.

And a lot of people are saying that when these tariffs are finally enacted, if they're not pushed back again by the time you're watching this, it could take eight months to a year before we fully understand and we're fully, it's on us, you know, so to speak.

So we may not know for a few months now what exactly this is gonna do to our society.

- Yeah, I think a lot of people are wondering like, "Well, I haven't felt it yet."

I think there's been a lot of news coverage about tariffs and the give and take in this going back and forth about if there's gonna be a tariff and what the tariff level is gonna be and on what products it's gonna be.

So I think people think that some of the tariffs are in effect that haven't gone into effect yet.

I think one of the other things that people aren't necessarily quite feeling yet is the price rises that they thought they were gonna see.

And I think one of the issues is that some companies seeing what was happening in the campaign last year went, "We should start stockpiling.

We should have as much in advance as possible.

We know we're gonna sell it regardless.

So at this point, we might as well manufacture this stuff cheaper so that we can still continue to, kind of, sell it at a competitive price."

So I think there are some companies right now that are still, kind of, using that stockpile, so their prices haven't gone up yet.

And I do think there are some corporations who, depending on what they do, what they manufacture, are able to at least eat the costs of tariffs temporarily.

But they're only gonna be willing to do that for so long.

So it does seem to me that if the tariffs go into effect on particular products from particular countries, at particular times, the effect is probably not gonna be really felt until next year, which is an interesting choice, given that next year is actually an election year.

And given the results of the 2024 election, obviously people are very much concerned about economics in general, but mostly prices, mostly what they're paying.

And so it does seem an interesting choice that those tariffs would then go into effect in an election year in a way that would potentially blow back on the Republican Party.

- Well, to try and simplify all this, which is very difficult.

(Megan laughing) So many products are made overseas because they're made a lot cheaper.

Whereas if those products were made here, we can't pay our people $2 an hour.

- Yeah.

- Obviously.

- So at some point, it seems like either, A, if these tariffs do stick, that people may not...

They may decide we don't need this product anymore in our lives, unless it's something essential, of course.

But it seems like a big ask to have these companies, like, say, Apple, start manufacturing all their microchips for their iPhones here in the US.

I mean, I don't even know where you would start on that.

- Well, so that's one of the things is having these tariffs happen in pretty short order should mean that you would already have the groundwork for that manufacturing to start.

And we don't have that.

So you could have the sudden rise in prices and nothing to pick up the slack for it.

Plus, even if things are assembled in the United States, even if some of the components are made in the United States, there will be some random mineral, for instance, that is only found in two or three countries in the world, and that you're gonna need to produce something like an electronics good.

So things like coltan, for instance.

You're gonna need access to these minerals that we don't have in the United States.

So regardless, you are still gonna have to import them even if you were doing the bulk of the manufacturing in the United States.

So, right now, the world economy is so globalized at this part that every little particular thing is coming from a different place.

So even if you put everything together here, even if you're doing the bulk of the manufacturing here and the actual, like, fabrication of some of the stuff that would go into these products, there is gonna be something that is coming from a different country.

And so regardless, the price is going to go up on one of those goods.

We were gonna need maybe a decade plus to do something like this if we really wanted to make American manufacturing great again.

And we obviously haven't done that, and we don't have the timeline to do that.

So, to me, a lot of this seems more symbolic than actually substantive or really short-term thinking versus long-term thinking, where it sounds good in theory, bring American jobs back, bring American manufacturing back, but the actual long-term effects of this and the capabilities that American businesses have right now to actually fulfill this kind of campaign promise that President Trump made are so limited that we're actually probably hurting ourselves in the long run.

- We will see if that is the case.

How much of this do you think is psychological from the administration's point of view?

Because they're not just politely asking, "Could you please pay 20% more in tariffs?"

It's kind of, it's our way of the highway type of thing.

- Well, and I think to a certain extent, this is also taking advantage of the fact that most Americans don't understand how tariffs work.

So most Americans think that it is the country or it's the business of origin in another country that is paying these taxes, essentially.

But it's the importer.

So it's somebody in the United States who's bringing these products in or bringing the pieces of products into the United States, they're the ones that have to pay this tariff.

So I think part of this is that Americans don't understand what this actually means and don't understand how this is actually gonna affect their wallets, their pocketbooks.

So it sounds good as a campaign promise, it sounds good as a way to reassert American dominance, both, like, obviously militarily, I think we already felt pretty confident there, but also kind of reasserting ourselves economically in the world.

So it's one of these things that sounds good on paper, but if you don't really understand how tariffs work, and I think most people don't.

I vaguely remember talking about tariffs in my US history class in high school and then never really talked about 'em again.

So it's been a bootcamp for all of us, but as long as most Americans don't really understand what tariffs do, how they operate, then it's kind of easy to continue to use this tariffs cudgel as a way to, sort of, threaten other countries, because admittedly, a lot of countries are reliant on importing goods into the United States.

So there's a small country in southern Africa called Lesotho.

Their primary part of their economy is manufacturing clothes.

Their largest market was the United States.

And tariffs did go into effect on Lesotho and their clothes, and their economy has absolutely plummeted.

They are in horrible shape right now.

And so at this point, because they're so small and they just are, kind of, reliant on this one market, they have to capitulate, they have to basically do what the Trump administration is demanding of them.

Not every country is gonna have to do that.

So obviously countries like in the EU, for instance, are gonna be able to at least hold out longer.

Countries like Canada and Japan and Mexico have so much of the manufacturing part of it that they can, kind of, hold us hostage eventually.

(laughs) They can say, "Well, fine, you're just not gonna get these materials anymore, and we wish you the best of luck."

- And the Chinese will do that.

- And yo, 100%.

So I think these tariffs actually have the most effect on the countries that are least threatening to us, are the least competitive, are the least worrisome for us.

And the countries that have, kind of, the biggest ability to, sort of, absorb some of the problems that are gonna come from this when people stop importing their goods, they're the ones that probably can either absorb the costs for a while or find new marketplaces.

So, like, a Lesotho might eventually be able to redirect its clothes to Canada, but that's gonna take a while.

Canada's always gonna be able to export logs somewhere.

So there's a market that they're gonna be able to tap into.

And so the countries that we are kind of wanting to, sort of, assert our dominance over are the ones that are probably most likely to be able to withstand that.

- Yeah, I noticed on the list of the highest tariffs, there are a lot of countries that are small and they're absorbing these high tariffs, but one country that's not small, Brazil, 50% tariff.

- [Megan] Yeah.

- I mean, that's a lot of money.

- It is a ton of money.

And obviously we can't always divine people's intentions and why they're doing these things.

And the concern with something like Brazil, for instance, is that a former president of Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro, was kind of an ally of President Trump during his first term.

He is under indictment.

He has been accused of a number of crimes by an administration that is on the left, that is a more left-wing administration.

And so the concern with a country like that is, not only are you maybe going after certain products because you want them to be made in the United States again, but that this is actually political retaliation, that you're basically threatening Brazil and part of its economy to get them to drop the charges against a former ally of President Trump.

And obviously, tariffs, regardless, are politically motivated.

Like, that's just part of what tariffs are.

You're not doing it necessarily purely for economic reasons.

And as a political scientist, economics are always political.

So that's one of the concerns with some of these tariffs and where they're being targeted is that it's not necessarily even seeming like it is because of an economic reason.

Like, we're not gonna be coffee manufacturers in the United States.

That's just not something that has ever been a thing in the United States.

So let alone building that industry back isn't even an option.

So going after some of these things are...

Given that Americans like coffee, it seems like that's really gonna hurt Americans.

And so the only possible motivation is probably something that has to do with trying to manipulate the politics of another country.

- Yeah.

We don't have a lot of coffee bean firms here... - No.

- in the US.

- No.

- And I know how people get when they don't have their coffee.

(Megan laughing) So, I mean, things like that, you know, literally, you're gonna see the trickle down effect, which I think people understand, because, eventually, a lot of these businesses, countries, whatever are gonna have to jack their prices up and that falls on the consumer.

- Yeah.

- May not be today, but it'll be eventually.

- Well, and importers who are just bringing something like coffee beans in, they're gonna have to pay more of the price of your coffee beans at a local brewery, for instance, are going to go up.

What you see at the grocery store are going to go up.

Combine that with something like the huge weather swings that we're facing with climate change, where these prices were already volatile to begin with.

So if you think about chocolate, most chocolate comes...

The cocoa bean comes from West Africa.

West Africa has had significant problems with drought in the last few years.

And so even if you haven't noticed it, the cost of chocolate is just, kind of, slowly going up over time.

And the last harvest this year was horrible.

It was really, really bad this year.

So the tariffs are one thing.

A lot of these crops that we're dependent on are also being hugely affected by climate change.

Put those together at the same time, that is a perfect storm for us to have a massive rise in prices at who knows what time.

Like, you don't know when that perfect storm is gonna come together to really jack up all of the prices.

But it feels like it's, kind of, inevitable that it will happen at some point.

- Talking about coffee.

That's one of the big things that experts are saying prices will increase, along with clothing, shoes, wine and spirits, and cars.

Cars seem like that's gonna be a big deal because, obviously, you know, we talk about made in America, there's car plants here, but they get their parts from all over the world.

- Yeah.

I went to college in Greenville, South Carolina, and there's a big BMW plant there.

And so sometimes your classes, depending on the topics, like an econ class might manage to go to a BMW and kind of see how the process works and the logistics and how they're kind of connected to the global economy.

And my class did that.

And when we went, it's so apparent that this tiny little, like, nut and bolt are coming from one country and obviously computer chips from another country and the rubber from another country.

And so even, again, if you're putting it all together in the United States, it's made in the USA, kind of.

(laughs) Like the actual putting it together, like the cooking of the manufacturing process is happening in the United States, but the ingredients are not happening in the United States.

- Sure.

- And so, especially for something that has literally as many moving pieces as a car does that are both kind of like brute force stuff when you think of nuts and bolts, but also really high-tech computer pieces inside of these cars now, it is so many little, tiny pieces inside these cars that one of them is gonna... A tariff on one of them is gonna increase the price.

And a tariff on multiple pieces of a car is really gonna increase the price.

So, and we saw this during the pandemic where there was a kind of decline in the ability to get computer chips.

And so that was one of the things that the Biden administration was trying to do, was to encourage chip manufacturing in the United States.

Like, there was a bill that was enacted just for that purpose, but that idea of building infrastructure to manufacture computer chips, if you ever have watched a video of them actually in the facilities that create these computer chips, they have to be completely sterile, and they are really impressive.

They're not something you can build quickly.

So even something like the CHIPS Act is gonna take years and years and years and years to go into effect.

So even though that was trying to bring manufacturing back and make us less dependent on other countries, especially countries that are kind of politically vulnerable, so a lot of our computer chips were coming from Taiwan, for instance.

We are still at the, kind of, mercy of other countries for the foreseeable future for some of these products at least.

- So, the way President Trump is doing this, he's kind of coming in and saying, "Okay, this is the way it's gonna be."

Is that do you think a business tactic in terms of, okay, if your country, a year ago, had a 10% tariff, and President Trump says, "Okay, we're gonna jack that up to 40."

He's waiting for the country to say, "Okay, let's do 20, we'll do 20, 25."

- Yeah.

- Is that how that's... Do you see that's how that's working?

- I think that's the thought process.

And again, I think there's some countries that are just so beholden to the United States as a market that they have to capitulate.

I think we're seeing some countries going, "No, (laughs) make us."

And so that does, I think, inspire more energy from the Trump administration to then say, "All right, final tariff's gonna be even higher."

I think if you talk to businesses, they would rather be in a high-tax environment than in a volatile environment.

They would rather know what's coming on a day-to-day basis so that they can plan today, this week, next month, this year, five, 10 years out what their, kind of, expansion plans are, for instance.

And so the fact that things are so volatile right now that, from day to day, I don't think any of us knows what the tariff level is gonna be on a particular country and on a particular product, I think that that's just gonna hurt American businesses too.

Businesses globally.

But American businesses are not going to be able to do that planning.

So either they're gonna stagnate as businesses and just, kind of, try to hold on while they can.

I've seen numerous media reports of people saying that they were planning on hiring and they haven't hired, or that they've had to lay off some of their staff as a way to try to absorb some of those costs, at least in the short run.

So I think businesses would just like some stability.

I think... We see the stock market, and depending on what the tariff announcement is for that day, it is all over the place right now.

And so that, kind of, volatility is not reassuring to businesses.

I genuinely think that they would rather just be in a consistent environment even if it costs more just so that they could plan in the long run.

And they're not able to do that right now.

And that is, I think, a problem because obviously that's gonna affect their ability to hire people.

So we just got a really bad jobs report last month, despite the fact that the Trump administration is questioning the numbers.

We got a really bad report last week, and we've got a revision of the prior months of losing something like 285,000 jobs.

So I think part of that is related to the volatility of this, kind of, tariff situation of businesses going, "Well, we need to cut costs somewhere so that we can, sort of, protect ourselves if tariffs come into effect."

So a lot of this is, kind of, preemptive, kind of, defensive of, sort of, anticipating what might happen, and trying to maybe survive, if not, manage to do okay because you cut costs.

But cutting costs is going to mean that people are gonna lose their jobs.

It is gonna mean that businesses aren't expanding and hiring more people or are not offering more products or aren't innovating in the same way.

- Well, in your opinion, let's say these tariffs do go through, and then we have all this money coming into the US, maybe billions and billions of more money.

Is that worth maybe straining a relationship with a certain country or having the world look more unfavorably towards us?

- Given the bill that just passed, the big budget bill.

Given that it's supposed to increase the deficit and the debt by trillions of dollars, the money that could be generated by these tariffs is, kind of, a drop in the bucket.

So I don't think it offsets some of the other actions that the Trump administration has made.

And there's gonna be a point at which that the prices do start to go up because these tariffs happen because people are importing less stuff or because they're importing things that they have to import to make the goods that Americans want, but they're gonna then pass the price onto, or the price increase onto consumers.

And so maybe in the short run, you get a, kind of, a big pile of money out of nowhere.

But the long run of it in combination with other economic policies that the Trump administration is making, I think are, again, like I said, gonna hurt us in the long run.

That this is a very temporary like put a finger in dyke and here's where maybe some of the money for the increased budget for ICE is coming, for instance.

But that's only temporary.

Those tariffs, the revenue from those tariffs, I doubt is going to continue to stay at the level that maybe they're basing their budget estimates off of.

So if the Trump administration simultaneously pursues this tariff policy and massively, massively increasing the federal debt.

Those two things are probably not going to go well together over time.

- We had you on last November, you and another of your associates from Bradley after the... - Dr. Davis - Yes.

After the election.

And we talked about the results.

And so now it's been, what?

Nine months since then, roughly.

Overall, from what you've seen from the Trump administration, what kind of a direction do you think this country is going in?

- So, I will say that political scientists have one bias, and it's not an ideological bias.

it's not a left-right bias.

There are left-wing political scientists, there are right-wing political scientists.

Most of us don't actually wanna be involved in politics.

(laughs) I've always told my students that if I run for office, I'm being blackmailed.

But the one bias that I think we all consistently have is a pro-democracy bias.

And so I think most of us are concerned about is a decline in how democratic the United States is.

There are a variety of objective, kind of, quantitative measures that political scientists have, and all of them have us going in a less democratic direction.

And it's a whole combination of factors that are doing it.

But a lot of this, I think, we can attribute to Congress allowing itself to just, kind of, be run over by the Trump administration in a way that I think has surprised political scientists.

Even if you're a Republican in Congress and you've got this Republican administration, usually you would still like to maintain your power and authority and still be able to say like, "We got the administration to do this for my congressional district," for instance.

And we're not seeing that...

It's kind of surprising how much Congress is, sort of, just letting the Trump administration do things, just letting the Trump administration violate federal law that Congress has passed.

(laughs) That the Supreme Court has ruled constitutional in the past, for instance.

And so we're seeing the, kind of, mechanisms of democracy, these checks and balances that we all talk about in an Intro to American Government class, we're seeing them not hold as strong as I think some people thought they would.

And talking to my students, for instance, I think a lot of them think, "Well, it'll all work out in the end.

We don't have to worry about this.

Somebody will fix it."

And given that a lot of the actors that we would think of as being active in fixing it, whatever that means, are not really asserting themselves.

I think that there's a lot of concern in the population now.

I think public opinion is starting to get concerns.

Like, if you start to see polls about ICE's tactics in detaining people, we're seeing a huge drop in approval, particularly among independents.

So it's not even a Democrat-Republican thing, it's the independents that have really, kind of, turned their opinion against the administration for how some of these tactics are working out.

But public opinion doesn't really matter if your institutions aren't responding to that.

And so we're not seeing Congress respond to that.

We're not seeing the Supreme Court respond to that.

We're definitely not seeing the Trump administration respond to public opinion right now.

And so I think that's where political scientists are concerned.

We're not talking about the particular policies.

We're talking mostly about how the policies are being implemented that we're, I think, most concerned about.

- Well, let's bring up something that is near and dear to our hearts, the claw back of funding for CPB, which gives money to NPR and PBS.

I mean, a lot of Republicans have been trying to do that for a long time.

Decades.

- Yep.

- But it's finally happened.

- [Megan] Mm-hm.

- Does that set a precedent for an administration now saying, "Okay, you, Congress, you said you were gonna do this, but we're gonna take it back."

- Yeah, and I teach classes on Congress and the presidency.

And one of the things that we talk about in both classes is how much Congress has, over time, this isn't immediately just this administration, but for the last 100, 120 years has just slowly but surely been giving its power away to the presidency.

And this is just a continuation of that.

But this is, kind of, the most egregious way of doing it because there are laws that prevent the administration from doing what it's doing, and the administration's doing it anyway.

And Congress isn't raising a fuss.

So, for instance, there's something called impoundment.

And impoundment is the idea that money has been allocated, it's been appropriated by Congress.

You're supposed to spend it on these programs.

Impoundment is the administration going, "No, I signed a budget.

Yes, it said that we had to spend this money.

I'm not actually spending this money."

And during the Nixon Administration, Congress passed a law to prevent presidents from impounding funds.

And Nixon over or vetoed it.

Congress was so mad about this, they overrode the veto, which is not something that happens commonly.

And then a year later, the Supreme Court upheld the idea of Congress saying, "President, you can't impound funds."

The administration, they're doing it left and right.

There's just impoundment happening absolutely everywhere.

And Congress is just going, "Oh, okay."

And so Congress is by its behavior right now is allowing this to happen.

And once you, sort of, cede your authority, it's really hard to get it back because part of it can become like a norm.

People just go, "Well, yeah, that's the president's area now."

Like, we've always, kind of, expected that the president was sort of in charge of foreign policy, for instance.

And that was, sort of, his realm.

But Congress is really starting to give away a lot of its power, and it's gonna be really hard for them to get it back.

And so that's where I find myself concerned about things like hurting the funding for something like a PBS or an NPR, just the broader corporation for public broadcasting, is because that money was already allocated, and these organizations, including the station we're sitting in right now, had budgeted based on the money that they were supposed to get.

- Yeah.

- And so it's not even that you're cutting off their future funding, you're hurting them right now when that money was supposed to be theirs.

And so I think that's, again, going back to the short-term idea, great, we cut the budget by a couple billion dollars across all of these DOGE cuts, for instance.

That is, again, a drop in the bucket for our federal debt.

It's just not gonna have any kind of meaningful effect.

It's entirely symbolic, but it does have huge downstream effects for just average, everyday Americans.

My mom has Alzheimer's.

The NIH's Alzheimer's Investigation Unit has basically been shut down.

And so, in some way, even if you haven't directly had your Medicaid benefits cut, for instance, every single American is in some way going to be affected by these these cuts.

- Yeah.

Well, we will continue to follow the money.

That's seems to be (Megan laughing) what it's all about these days.

- Yep.

- Dr. Megan Remmel with Bradley University, thanks for coming in and putting a lot of this into perspective.

We appreciate it.

- Thanks for having me.

- All right.

Thank you for joining us.

We appreciate it.

You can check us out anytime at wtvp.org and on Facebook and Instagram.

Have a good night.

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