After President Trump Admits His Tariffs Are Raising Costs, Courtney Calls on Congress to Retake Control
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Yesterday, in a speech on the House floor, Congressman Joe Courtney (CT-02) called on Congress to reclaim its authority over tariff policy. Last Friday, amid continued rising costs, the Trump Administration quietly back down from some it unilateral tariffs that are increasing grocery costs for Americans.
“Let’s be very clear. A tariff is a tax on imported goods. It is a tax. I’m from New England. Remember the Boston Tea Party? It was about a tariff on tea that the British government was trying to force the American colonists to pay,” Courtney said.
“Why don’t we also look at what is clearly happening in our economy right now and provide relief for the American people who are groaning under the high cost of living? [President Trump] has to look no further than the Conservative Tax Foundation, which, again, is a right of center economic thinktank, whose analysis is that by October, tariffs have raised retail prices on all goods by nearly 5% relative to their pre tariff trend line,” Courtney said.
“Instead of solving high inflation, the Trump tariffs have continued it and, in some instances, increased it. This includes a 6% increase for imported goods and 4.3% for domestic goods. Because a lot of our domestic goods incorporate items that are imported from overseas. The fundamental problem here is that this President believed in his mind that he himself had the power to impose these tariffs,” Courtney continued.
FULL SPEECH TRANSCRIPT
After months and months of President Trump insisting that his tariffs are not paid by Americans, insisting that tariffs don’t drive up prices, insisting that there will be no exclusions or exemptions from his liberation Day tariffs that he imposed back in April, on Friday afternoon, the White House very quietly released a statement that they, in fact, are exempting and carving out tariffs for a number of goods, which were blindingly obvious were going to be costing more because we do not produce any of those goods here in this country.
So included in his order is coffee, tea, fruit juices, tropical fruits, spices, bananas, oranges, and tomatoes. And obviously, you talk to anybody who’s been in a grocery store lately, the prices for all of those have gone up, by large margins, again, in the wake of the April tariffs that were put into place. Coffee is up 19%, bananas up 7%, oranges and lettuce up 3% and 4%.
Again, it was so clear to anyone who actually was connected to the real world that grocery prices are going up, and that we had to take steps to carve out exemptions for the sake of American consumers and our working families and middle class. It was amazing to see how the President in October was actually giving speeches where he said, ‘prices have come way down.’ ‘We have gotten prices way down for groceries.’ That’s the mentality which is in that White House. And again, these were tariffs that he imposed unilaterally without consulting Congress.
It’s good that, again, there’s going to be some price relief for some of these items which never should have been tariffs to begin with. But it begs the question about, well, what about the rest of the economy that is getting hammered by tariffs?
The National Association of Homebuilders announced after the tariffs were announced that [the tariffs] would raise the average cost of a new home by $11,000 because of the fact that so many parts and pieces that go into new home construction are imported. That’s just a reality in our economy. And when we talk about the cost of living and affordability, if anything is close to maybe groceries, it’s the cost of housing in terms of getting rents and new construction restarted.
So what about that Mr. President? Why don’t we also look at what is clearly happening in our economy right now and provide relief for the American people who are groaning under the high cost of living? He has to look no further than the Conservative Tax Foundation, which, again, is a right of center economic thinktank, whose analysis is that by October, tariffs have raised retail prices on all goods by nearly 5% relative to their pre tariff trend line.
And instead of solving high inflation, the Trump tariffs have continued it and, in some instances, increased it. This includes a 6% increase for imported goods and 4.3% for domestic goods. Because a lot of our domestic goods incorporate items that, again, are imported from overseas. The fundamental problem here is that this President believed in his mind that he himself had the power to impose these tariffs.
Let’s be very clear. A tariff is a tax on imported goods. It is a tax. I’m from New England. Remember the Boston Tea Party? It was about a tariff on tea that the British government was trying to force the American colonists to pay.
So right now, before the U.S. Supreme Court, there is a case, was argued just a couple of weeks ago where, again, the plaintiffs powerfully stated that the president did not have the authority to impose those taxes back in April. That is an Article One, Section [Eight] authority in the Constitution for the Congress.
And for the sake of reestablishing the checks and balances in our country, and for the sake of the American economy, where issues like tariffs, which require a lot of analysis and are very complex and require Congress to be part of that decision making, in fact, we are the decision makers, according to the Constitution, that those tariffs should be struck down and we should go back to basics, which is that when we deal with tax policy, it is the power of Congress that prevails in terms of making those kinds of decisions.
And the harm that’s been done to the economy, the harm that’s been done to the middle class and working families because of the Trump tariffs that, again, were just unilaterally imposed and indiscriminately imposed against some countries that we actually have trade surpluses with, have to be rolled back.
It is an admission on Friday by the administration that their tariff policy has failed, and it’s time for Congress to stand up and do its job and rebalance our economy. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
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