President Donald Trump is “deadly serious” about raising tariffs on Mexico to force a crackdown on the flow of illegal immigrants across the border, acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney said Sunday.
In an interview on “Fox News Sunday,” Mulvaney justified the move, and said it won’t hurt American consumers as is feared.
“He is absolutely deadly serious,” Mulvaney said of Trump’s intent. “I fully expect these tariffs to go into at least a 5% level on June 10. The president's deadly serious about fixing the situation of the southern border.”
According to Mulvaney, argued consumers won’t likely suffer the consequences.
“The old-fashioned economic orthodoxy doesn't work when it's relatively easy to substitute other goods,” he said. “Prices from China have gone up. American consumers are going to products that are made in the United States for example that don't carry those tariffs. We think the same thing will happen here and American consumers will not pay for the burden of these tariffs.”
He also said Mexico will be able to crack down on immigration in ways “we cannot.”
“We've seen in the last 24 hours the Mexican president has already reached out and said he thinks they can do better, he thinks they will do better,” he said, adding Mexico has “tremendously strong immigration laws, much stronger than ours. They have the ability to do things that we cannot. “
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