Republican Senator Warns Tariffs Cost U.S. Businesses Access to Markets: ‘And They Don’t Come Back’
CNN’s Manu Raju chased down several Republican Senators on Thursday for their reactions to President Donald Trump’s sweeping tariffs that sent the stock market into a freefall.
“The consequences are yet to be fully known, but I would have thought they would have been less dramatic, less significant. And I think we ought to be focused on our economic adversaries and be… less damaging to our economic allies,” Sen. Jerry Moran (R-KS) told Raju.
“What about the impact on Kansans specifically in the ag industry?” Raju pressed in the clip.
“So I’ve said this from the beginning that we often experience retaliatory tariffs that come against our commodities, and it’s very damaging,” Moran replied. Raju shared the clip on X and noted Moran also said, “We often lose markets with tariffs and they don’t come back.”
Next Raju played a clip of Sen. James Lankford (R-OK) saying, “I think there’ll be some products that there’s going to be benefit for and some will be detriment on it and we’ve got to be able to work this out.”
“What might have a detriment?” Raju followed up.
“Things like clothing, electronics, some of those things that are only made overseas now,” Lankford replied.
“You think people want to pay more for cars?” Raju then asks Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL).
“People want American jobs. This is about American jobs,” Scott replied.
Raju then ended his report, saying, “And that last comment comes from Senator Rick Scott defending the president’s actions here. What you’re hearing from a lot of Republicans is that they say there’s going to be some short-term pain through all of this. But Donald Trump’s long-term vision, they say, will bring back American manufacturing, would change– improve Americans’ wages.”
“And they talk about things such as changing how the regulatory environment here in the United States extending the Trump era tax cuts back from his first Trump term. The question is, though, that’s going to take some time to take effect. If it does take effect,” Raju commented, concluding:
And will Americans be okay with having to pay for more prices in the short-term? One Senate, key Senate Republican just weighed in on this as well. That’s the majority leader of the United States Senate, John Thune, someone who has pushed for free trade for years and years and years and represents an agricultural state of South Dakota.
He just told our colleague Ted Barrett, he said, ‘We’ll give them the benefit of the doubt and see how it’s going.’ So some unease there from the top Republican who’s yet to criticize the administration, but is still uncertain about how this will all play out.
Watch the clip above via CNN.
