Icky Creeper Howard Lutnick Would Like To Sell You Some More Trump Tariffs

It's your Sunday shows rundown!

It’s been a weird week.

From Donald Trump being revealed to be the reported Diddler Doodler-In-Chief in Jeffrey Epstein’s birthday book to Trump definitely NOT bribing CBS to cancel Stephen Colbert to Trump telling weird tales about the Unabomber because maybe he’s senile, it’s no wonder most of Trump’s allies seemed to skip the mainstream political Sunday shows. But we still are on our watch, and there’s still Howard Lutnick.

Trump’s Commerce secretary appeared on CBS’s “Face The Nation” to once again try to sell the notion that tariffs are great and Trump is a great negotiator.

He even said the “magic phrase.”

LUTNICK: Oh, they're going to love the deals that President Trump and I are doing. I mean, they're just going to love them. […] This will go a long way to fixing the trade deficit. And that's gotten these countries to the table. And they're going to open their markets, or they're going to pay the tariff. […] [T]he next two weeks are going to be weeks for the record books. President Trump is going to deliver for the American people.

TWO WEEKS!!! AAAAHHH!!!

We assume that Lutnick’s use of “two weeks” is similar to how pets take on traits of their owners. And “two weeks” is just short enough to seem imminent, but long enough for news to move on or reporters to forget.

But Trump has used this arbitrary and artificial deadline so much that there’s even a compilation of how many times he’s said things were happening in “two weeks.”

As late night host (as long as it pleases Dear Leader) Jimmy Kimmel has pointed out, “for a guy whose catchphrase was ‘You’re Fired,’ no one has given more two-week notices than Donald Trump.”

Host Margaret Brennan followed up with previous statements that said that no matter what “deals” are made, Trump is imposing tariffs on everyone. Even with countries we have specific free trade agreements with.

BRENNAN: But back on what the Canadian prime minister, the man you're negotiating with, said, he's assuming there's going to be a tariff here. There's already this baseline 10 percent tariff that we are seeing from the administration. Is that set in stone or is it going to go to like 15 or 20 percent?

LUTNICK: Well, I think what you have got is, you should assume that the small countries, the Latin American countries, the Caribbean countries, many countries in Africa, they will have a baseline tariff of 10 percent. […]

BRENNAN: OK, so just quickly, are you going to renegotiate that free trade deal the USMCA?

LUTNICK: Oh, I think the president is absolutely going to renegotiate USMCA. […] But that's a year from today. […] Today, of course, 75 percent comes in free. But, of course, should you expect us to renegotiate it? It makes perfect sense for the president to renegotiate it.

Of course it does! Why wouldn’t you renegotiate a disastrous and idiotic trade deal, negotiated and signed into law by [checks notes] Donald Trump in his first term?

“Art Of The Deal,” amirite?

Brennan helpfully reminded Lutnick that other countries could impose reciprocal tariffs on US goods, but Lutnick had a foolproof answer for that.

BRENNAN: Well, OK, let me ask you about Europe. Boeing airplanes, Kentucky bourbon, these are some of the things that the Europeans are looking to target if we get into a trade war as retaliation by them.

LUTNICK: We're not – they're not going to do it. They're just not going to do it.

Ahh, yes, the old “no hit back” strategy. I remember how well and how honored this was when playing tag as a child. Truly a masterful gambit, good sir.

Lutnick then extolled the virtues and benefits of tariffs in helping pay our ever-increasing debt, but Brennan pointed out an obvious fatal flaw of this strategy.

LUTNICK: You got to remember, this is going to pay off our deficit. This is going to make America stronger. […] We are finally protecting America.

BRENNAN: Well, you will have that income if you keep them in place. But if you're negotiating them away, then they won't be there. So that is contradictory to me.

Right! Tariffs cannot be both a negotiating threat and our country’s revenue source. If they are a threat, then they can be negotiated down or away. But if they are a critical source of revenue, then you can’t take them away, and you remove the usefulness as a negotiating tactic. Lutnick kinda conceded this when admitting that every country would still keep paying a 10 percent minimum tariff, no matter what is negotiated.

But the problem with tariffs has always been who really pays the tariffs. And once again, Lutnick refuses to acknowledge these basic economic facts that literally everybody who’s ever taken Econ 101 knows.

BRENNAN: And American corporations are just going to swallow that and not pass that price increase on to consumers? What is your projection?

LUTNICK: What, what's so interesting is that you're worried about the importers. How about the people who build and employ Americans …

BRENNAN: No, I'm asking about people who go to the store to buy. […] I was asking you about consumer prices, what people will pay when they go to the store.

But in – since you don't want to answer…

LUTNICK: Oh, I think they will be low. I think they will be low, shockingly low. […] Seriously.

BRENNAN: The Consumer Price Index doesn't currently reflect that, though, that the trend is towards higher.

LUTNICK: Well, it just went up. What did it go up, a tenth of a percent? Look, the dollar has declined …

BRENNAN: Two-tenths on the core.

Lutnick wouldn’t know how much a banana costs, much less that we can’t just grow them here.

Have a week.

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