Monday, during an appearance on FNC’s “Hannity,” Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) discussed trade negotiations between the Trump administration and targets of its tariff policies.
The Tennessee Republican argued that the United States had a strategic advantage because some nations needed U.S. markets more than the United States needed those markets.
“So, during this period of time where we were waiting for some of these deals to get done, the argument was that China was going to start making all these side deals with other countries, and that was going to take the United States out of the conversation,” fill-in host Katie Pavlich. “That clearly didn’t happen.”
“You’re right about that,” Blackburn replied. “It did not happen. What has happened is by President Trump being bold, moving forward, putting the tariffs in place, and then saying we want to get rid of these tariffs, go to reciprocal tariffs, get rid of the non-tariff trade barriers and focus on trade that is going to be good for American consumers. And by the way, we want to bring jobs back to the USA. And countries have lined up. They need our market more than we need theirs, and getting this trade in goods deficit dealt with, which last year, our deficit with China was $300 billion. Katie, that is our largest deficit. Mexico is the second-largest deficit.”
She continued, “And President Trump and Secretary Bessent and others that are working on this, they’re doing the right thing because people have come to the table and I will tell you, with U.K., with China and then you look at what is happening with the pharmaceutical executive order, you look at Putin and Zelenskyy meeting in Turkey to work things out, President Donald Trump has had a very good week and it’s good for the American people.”
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