His policies have failed': Nobel economist disputes Trump's myths
Source: Alternet.org · Bias: Left
Summary
Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz responds to Donald Trump’s State of the Union address on Tuesday, when the president repeatedly touted his tariffs as saving the country money and boosting the economy. Stiglitz says Trump’s “lies” about tariffs can’t erase the truth about how they have raised costs for most U.S. residents. “It is estimated the average family is paying somewhere between $1,000 and $1,700 in extra money because of the tariffs,” says Stiglitz. “His policies have failed.”This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.AMY GOODMAN: “Streets of Minneapolis” by Bruce Springsteen. Later in the broadcast, we will speak with Aliya Rahman. She was ripped out of her car, her windshield ”the passenger glass broken by immigration agents as they cut her seatbelt. A U.S. citizen who was then invited to the State of the Union by Congressmember Ilhan Omar. She was removed from the gallery. We will ask her if she was also arrested. That’s coming up.This is Democracy Now!, Democracynow.org, the War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman. During his State of the Union, President Trump repeatedly hailed his economic record over the past year. He also openly criticized the Supreme Court again for striking down his global tariffs in a decision that’s having major implications on the global economy. Less than half, four of the nine Supreme Court justices, attended the speech. This is part of what Trump said. PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Everything was working well. Countries that were ripping us off for decades are now paying us hundreds of billions of dollars. They were ripping us so badly, you all know that. Everybody knows it. Even the Democrats know it, they just don’t want to say it. And yet these countries are now happy and so are we. We made deals. The deals are all done and they’re happy. They’re not making money like they used to but we’re making a lot of money. There was no inflation, tremendous growth. And the big story was how Donald Trump called the economy correctly and 22 Nobel Prize winners in economics didn’t. They got it totally wrong. They got it really wrong. And then just four days ago, an unfortunate ruling from the United States Supreme Court, it just came down. It came down. PEOPLE: [applause] PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Very unfortunate ruling. PEOPLE: [cheers and applause] PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: But the good news is that almost all countries and corporations want to keep the deal that they already made. Right, Scott? Knowing that the legal power that I as president have to make a new deal could be far worse for them. And therefore, they will continue to work along the same successful path that we had negotiated before the Supreme Court’s unfortunate involvement. So despite the disappointing ruling, these powerful country-saving—it’s saving our country, the kind of money we’re taking in—peace-protecting—many of the wars I settled was because of the threat of tariffs, I wouldn’t have been able to settle them without—will remain in place under fully approved and tested alternative legal statutes, and they have been tested for a long time—they’re a little more complex but they’re actually probably better—leading to a solution that will be even stronger than before. Congressional action will not be necessary. It’s already time-tested and approved. And as time goes by, I believe the tariffs, paid for by foreign countries, will like in the past substantially replace the modern-day system of income tax, taking a great financial burden off the people that I love. PEOPLE: [applause] AMY GOODMAN: We are joined now by Joseph Stiglitz, Nobel Prize-winning economist, Columbia University professor, former chair of the Council of Economic Advisers. Professor Stiglitz is also currently the chief economist of the Roosevelt Institute. His latest book just out in paperback this week, The Road to Freedom: Economics and the Good Society.Professor Stiglitz, welcome back to Democracy Now! Your response? You were among the signatories, the economists who have signed a letter against the tariffs. Talk about the president’s State of the Union and his argument for tariffs and against the Supreme Court. Two of his own appointees ruled against him.JOSEPH STIGLITZ: Well, the speech was characteristic of Trump's lies, misleading statements. I was with a group of a large number of Nobel Prize winners who predicted that he would be bad for the economy and we were right. The tariffs are paid by Americans. They’re not paid for by the foreigners. He says they didn’t have any effect on inflation. We saw inflation was going down, and if we compare where inflation would have been with where we are today, it is estimated the average family is paying somewhere between $1,000 and $1,700 in extra money because of the tariffs.The irony is he said it was going to bring back manufacturing jobs. Manufacturing jobs are down in the United States in 2025 when they were up under President Biden.
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