You could tell Fox & Friends host Brian Kilmeade was none too happy with Fox Business regular Charles Gasparino for telling the truth about these Trump tariffs. During a segment this Monday, where Kilmeade was carrying on about how great these tariffs are going to be (they’re not) which were announced during Trump’s batshit crazy presser over the weekend, Kilmeade asked Gasparino for his thoughts on the announcement, and Gasparino proceeded to throw cold water all over Kilmeade’s happy talk:
CHARLES GASPARINO (FOX BUSINESS CORRESPONDENT): The stuff that they’re buying from us, they probably would have bought anyway, Brian, to be real honest with you. They’re cutting back on Russian natural gas, obviously for a lot of reasons. They’re building out their military because of Russian expansionism. So that — they were going to do that anyway. And when you say we get 15%, true, but that means U.S. consumers are paying 15% more too. So, it’s kind of like a tax increase on U.S. consumers. That’s one way to look at this.
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GASPARINO: You do have to ask yourself, Brian, why the sort of rush to get a deal like this done. I mean again, not a lot of details, they didn’t agree to that much for us.
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BRIAN KILMEADE (CO-HOST): What about this? Fifty percent tariff on EU steel and aluminum. The big picture there, how is that going to affect all of us?
GASPARINO: Well, it’s going to — theoretically, if we need to buy steel from them, it’s going to cost us more. Again, Brian, to kind of put this in context: Every penny we get from them is being passed to the U.S. consumer. So, remember that.
KILMEADE: Not necessarily, right, it’s got to be the choice.
[CROSSTALK]
GASPARINO: Oh yes, necessarily. [CROSSTALK] Some companies will eat it for now.
KILMEADE: And they have so far.
GASPARINO: So far, but remember, companies don’t report to the president. They report to shareholders and they have a fiduciary responsibility for profit margins. And at some point — and that point is coming. I mean, you can see it. There are avid price increases on certain goods. I mean, there’s no doubt.
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GASPARINO: Let’s be real clear here. Tariffs cost. They’re a tax. That tax often gets passed on to consumers.KILMEADE: Right. Unless they want to make it here, and that’s also a goal.