Sen. Ted Cruz has begged President Donald Trump to stop listening to the tariff hawks in his administration and “take the deal” countries are offering to lower trade barriers.
On Tuesday, the Trump administration bragged that the phones had been “ringing off the hook” with world leaders anxious to negotiate an end to the universal “Liberation Day” tariffs that took effect at 12:01 a.m. Wednesday.
But administration officials haven’t been able to keep their stories straight on whether the tariffs are a short-term tactic to bring countries to the negotiating table or a long-term strategy to create manufacturing jobs in the U.S.
“There are voices in the administration that rather than take a deal are saying we want to have tariffs as a long-term, permanent feature of the economy. I think that’d be a mistake,” Texas Republican Cruz said Tuesday during a town hall with Fox News host Sean Hannity.
Last week, Trump announced 10 percent universal tariffs—a tax paid by American companies, with the costs typically passed on to consumers—on all imports, plus additional duties of up to 50 percent on products from countries that have large trade deficits with the U.S.
The new tariffs are on top of existing ones, meaning products from China for example now face a cumulative tariff rate of 104 percent.
On Tuesday night, Trump bragged to the National Republican Congressional Committee that his tariffs were “the largest transaction in the history of our country.”
“Don’t let some of these politicians going around saying—you know because I’m telling you, these countries are calling us up kissing my a–. They are. They are dying to make a deal,” he said.
Cruz said that if “in 30 days, 60 days, 90 days we see tariffs slashed worldwide, we see the barriers to U.S. farmers and ranchers and manufacturers dropping enormously and suddenly we’re able to access other markets and these tariffs drop here, that’s a great outcome.”
But that would require the administration to actually make the deals, he added.
Politico reported on Tuesday that world leaders trying to schedule talks with Trump haven’t been able to get a response.
Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick has said the tariffs will lead to “trillions of dollars of factories” being built in the U.S., while Trump’s deputy chief of staff, Stephen Miller, told GOP Senate staffers that the import levies would bring in $6 trillion in revenue over the next 10 years.
Lutnick in particular has pushed the president to enact increasingly aggressive tariffs over the past two months, according to Politico, even as markets plunged, consumer confidence dropped, investors expressed alarm, and the risk of recession skyrocketed.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent—who has reportedly argued for a more targeted approach—told CBS News Tuesday that the tariffs are “negotiable but not a negotiating tactic.”
“If a year from now, our trading partners have all jacked up tariffs on America and we have high tariffs on everyone, I think that’ll hurt this country,” Cruz said.
