RUSH: The tariffs subject is something I haven’t spent enough time on. And I need to, because as I figured was gonna happen, there’s a lot of misunderstanding about Trump and his tariffs and what the endgame is. And the reason this needs to be brought up is that Trump just tweeted there’s an EU leader coming to Washington tomorrow.

Trump tweeted that he’s gonna propose a new economic arrangement with the European Union.  It is to get rid of all tariffs, get rid of all taxes, get rid of all fees.  Let’s have a really fair and let’s have a really free and let’s have a really open market — and then he tweets that of course the EU won’t go along with it because they want punitive tariffs on American goods.  But they do not want any tariffs on goods from the European Union brought into the United States.

Same situation here with the ChiComs, and I think the great misunderstanding people have is who’s responsible for the tariffs.  In the larger scheme of things, it’s the ChiComs.  The ChiComs are the ones who literally have tariffs on their own goods first, before we do anything.  The Chinese and other trading partners who have these punitive policies on American goods? They started this.  This is not a United States problem in which we are culprit.  This is Donald Trump trying to level the playing field.  This is Trump giving them a dose of their own medicine.

This is Trump trying to bring pressure on them to drop their tariffs and their unfair trade practices which are harming American agriculture, exports, farmers, you name it, other manufacturers and retailers are being harmed by Chinese tariffs, European Union tariffs, not us.  Trump is simply trying to level the playing field by tightening the screws on them.  Now, once that starts, once you impose a tariff policy — which, of course, conservatives are on paper are supposed to be universal opposed to because a tariff is nothing but a tax.

And, of course, we oppose taxes simply on the movement of goods and services. But we didn’t start it.  Trump campaigned on this. When he talked during the campaign about American leaders being stupid and dumb and lazy, it was this specific issue he was talking about with tariffs.  The Chinese have been allowed to manipulate their currency to effect international trade.  They’ve been allowed to use tariffs.

The amount of American goods going into China is paltry compared to how much China manufacturers come into the United States.  Trump is trying to fix that, and he’s doing that by imposing tariffs.  But we’re not the bad guy!  This is part of fixing a great imbalance.  The Chinese are the bad guys.  The European Union is the bad guys.  But I don’t think there are enough — even on the conservative side of the aisle here — who understand how to properly talk about this, because there’s so much eagerness to criticize Trump.

There is such a desire to make it look like Trump doesn’t know what he’s doing that the instinctive thing to do is to criticize Trump.  “He’s imposing tariffs!  This is bad.  This is horrible.  This is a trade war.”  The trade war has been going on for the longest time, and we have been essentially bending over, grabbing the ankles.  Those days are over.  But once you commit to it, you have to stay with it, or the whole thing is gonna be a big bomb.  We’ve gotta stay with this until the other side — in this case the ChiComs, European Union — buckle.

That’s what’s going on.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH:  Trump could have done nothing on these tariffs and he could have sat back and let the stock market soar.  But Trump promised he was gonna do this.  He’s trying to level out international trade for the benefit of American manufacturers and employees at whatever harm it brings to him.  He’s gonna see this through.