Americans Are in for A Rough Ride
Floor Speech
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Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Speaker, today is the fourth worst day on U.S. financial markets since 2022. It appears the American people are in for a rough ride. Buckle your seatbelts.
Prices are rising already, and our financial markets are turbulent in the wrong direction. Economic recession looms ahead. Unemployment is increasing and so is inflation. It wasn't supposed to be this way.
The economic repercussions of the Trump administration's tariffs are far-reaching, and they are biting down already. They threaten to raise prices on everything, including automobiles. I come from an automobile manufacturing center. Increases per car may be $9,000 to $12,000 per car. That is unaffordable. Housing is unaffordable now. Now cars, now other commodities like items that everybody uses--gasoline, lumber, road salt, potash, oil, energy.
The U.S. and Canadian economies are interlinked. They are interlinked. These tariffs are propelling prices upwards. We don't want them to go that way. We want to stop the rising prices.
High tariffs impose undue strain across the board, and they make American consumers and businesses alike miserable. The cost of living is climbing already, and the economic stability many workers have worked so hard to achieve is being undermined, as I speak.
Now, today's news that the stock market took a major nosedive across the board is serious. The Dow is down 900 points, the worst market outcome of this year. But it isn't just this year. If you look back, the plummet that happened today is not pretty. Perhaps the President thinks that putting a pause on tariffs will halt this market crash. I mean, his proposals have been like this, but I urge this administration to realize it is uncertainty that the market does not like.
Manufacturers cannot reinvent supply chains one month at a time. This stop-start, stop-start tariffs and tariffing are producing no benefits for America while already-rising prices and crashing workers' 401(k)s. Look what is happening to people's collective wealth in this country.
Close to home where I live, these policies are severely impacting all of the people I represent across the Great Lakes region, the industrial and agricultural heartland.
Trade policy must be targeted carefully, and it should never cause chaos. That is exactly what it is doing, causing chaos. Let me state plainly: Tariffs on our Canadian allies are foolish. The businesses and people of northwest Ohio and all of Ohio and the industrial agricultural Midwest overwhelmingly oppose this careless administration's ill-conceived trade war with Canada.
Canada is our Nation's most fair trading partner. Our accounts balance when you look over a 10-year period of time. Our Nation should stand for free trade among free people, and that is what our trade with Canada does. Imposing tariffs on North American companies already struggling to compete with penny-wage labor abroad will drive our economy backwards off a cliff. Why would anybody want to do that? It makes no sense.
Tariffs will hurt jobs across our region's manufacturing belt, in the automotive industry, in the energy sectors. The significant harm to our economy cannot be undone overnight, and it is happening right now as I speak.
The regions' economies are intertwined across the Great Lakes, with iron ore and steel, auto parts and finished vehicles, crude oil and refined gasoline crisscrossing our northern border numerous times before getting to its final customer. To put it simply, don't hurt North America.
The American people cannot stand idly by while we throw out all the hard-fought gains we have made in American manufacturing since the 1980s; and, boy, believe me, they have been hard fought. Our region lost so many jobs abroad to NAFTA and CAFTA and China PNTR. We fought against those. We knew they wouldn't work, and they didn't. Now, we have had about 10 years where we tried to rebuild our region, and now this just as we are making progress. It is really disgusting.
Who would even think about changing tariff laws through a tweet that the President did at 2 a.m. in the middle of the night? That sounds kind of peculiar to me.
Tariffs and trade policy have to be carefully calibrated. Where is ``The Art of the Deal''? This looks more like collapse an economy in 50 days.
Well, we don't want any of it. The American consumers are poised to be in recession. That is where we are headed. I urge, in the strongest possible words, the Trump administration to go back to the drawing board, get some of the most experienced people--we can recommend some to you--to figure out ways to solve the problem you want to solve, but don't put our people out of work. Don't stop reinvestment in our region. Don't drill down into people's 401(k)s. Don't harm the industries that are producing the real wealth of this country. The train on tariffs at the border is going backwards.
Mr. President, Mr. Speaker, we need to redo this Trump tariff regimen and produce a system that creates wealth, doesn't destroy it, that doesn't throw our financial markets into chaos, and allows regions like my own that have struggled so hard for decades to rebuild what was taken away from us.
Make us sound again. Don't do more harm to us.
We have just reached a point where we have to speak out against these dangerous tariffs. They are destroying our livelihoods. People can't afford groceries. Our food banks are crowded with people. These tariffs are already biting down. America needs growth, not recession.
Please, please, folks who hear my voice, urge the administration to redo its tariffs and take off this tourniquet around the whole northern border of our country that we share with Canada so that we can have robust growth again. We have worked so hard for it.
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