The Tucker Carlson Show
Bob Lighthizer: Why Trump's Tariffs are the Only Way to Save the Middle Class
Wed, 19 Mar 2025
A country that doesn’t make anything quickly dies. Former US trade representative Robert Lighthizer explains how Trump’s tariff program can stop America’s slide. (00:00) Why Do We Need to Reinstitute Tariffs? (06:10) The Slow Death of America’s Working Class (14:26) Was There an Organized Effort to Destroy America’s Free Market? (19:53) The Trifecta of Stupid (29:12) We Are in an Economic Emergency (36:10) The Three Ways to Balance Global Trade Paid partnerships with: ExpressVPN: Go to https://ExpressVPN.com/Tucker and find out how you can get 4 months of ExpressVPN free! PureTalk: Switch your cell phone service to a company you can be PROUD to do business with. https://PureTalk.com/Tucker Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Why Does the Current Trade System Need Change?
Thank you for coming on to explain this. I mean, my one frustration, I believe in what the White House is doing. I don't think enough Americans understand it. So I don't think there's anyone better at explaining it than you. I mean, you're the trade representative. What about our current system needs to be changed? Why is it important to do this, to institute tariffs, to rethink trade?
So that's the fundamental question, Tucker, and thank you for having me on. It's a pleasure to be here. I've been a fan for a long time. So I think you have to start with the proposition, has the system failed? And to me, it's an emphatic yes. I think of it in sort of two ways. One, if you think of the... The way trade is supposed to work, you're supposed to export in order to import.
And then you get the benefit of trade. You get actually, you do what you do best, I do what I do best, or I do what you do less best. You export, we import, and we get the benefit. We both have higher standards of living. That's not really what it's evolved to.
It's evolved to now where you have a few countries, the United States being the biggest, that have an open capital system and an open trading system. And other countries have an industrial policy that is designed not to increase the standard of living of their citizens, but to gain wealth.
So what they're trying to do is get wealth in order to get assets in the United States, in order to get technology, in order to get all these kind of things that make you wealthy. So I think of the kind of failure points as being, one, because this system doesn't work, we have this giant transfer of wealth from the United States overseas, and that is in the form of trade deficits. And
The way the system is supposed to work, no one should have large trade deficits for long periods of time. Things can happen. You can do it. You could have trade deficits with one country, surplus with another. But the notion of a country having hundreds of billions of dollars of trade deficits every year is not how it's supposed to work. We now are to the point where our trade deficits –
They calculate them at about $700 or $800 billion. If you did it the way you or I would do in a sensible way, you'd probably be at a trillion or a trillion and a quarter dollars. So that's a transfer of wealth from Americans overseas in return for current consumption. And it has nothing to do with economics. It's entirely the result of industrial policy of other people and our being defenseless.
So you ask yourself – What does that mean over a period of time? Why should I worry about that? There's a data point called the international investment position of a country. And that is how much for us all Americans own throughout the entire world versus how much everyone else owns here. That number is a negative $23.5 trillion.
And if you said what was it 20 years ago, it was probably a negative $3 trillion. So we have transferred about $20 trillion worth of our national wealth and I would say the future income of that wealth. overseas in return for current consumption.
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