福克斯新闻主播克里斯·华莱士在唐纳德·特朗普总统的贸易和制造政策主管彼得·纳瓦罗谎称政府对中国进口商品征收的关税没有增加美国人的成本后，极力回击。
特朗普政府的贸易官员试图在面试福克斯周日新闻报道称，中国正在承担关税成本，而对美国企业和消费者没有任何影响，这一说法与总统一再坚持中国要支付关税的说法一致。但华莱士向纳瓦罗提出了征税影响的事实，以及特朗普的劳工部和商务部的图表，显示了征税与美国消费者价格上涨之间的关系。
华莱士问纳瓦罗，美国企业是否将关税的附加成本转嫁给消费者，贸易官员回答说:“错了。”他认为，中国制造商和生产商正在大幅降低价格，以弥补额外的进口关税，从而允许美国企业支付与一年多前贸易紧张升级前相同的价格。
福克斯新闻主播随后往后推了推，播放了美联储主席杰罗姆·鲍威尔(Jerome Powell)概述对华贸易战对美国经济负面影响的片段。华莱士还阅读了高盛5月份的一份报告中的一段引文，该报告称:“美国关税的成本完全落在了美国企业和家庭身上，而中国出口商收取的价格却没有明显下降。”
华莱士根据美国劳工部和商业部的数据，绘制了一张图表，显示了美国消费者对收费产品的成本是如何增加的，之后纳瓦罗试图插话。“你不能给我一个机会在这里回应吗？”特朗普官员问道。华莱士说他会的，在回到图表之前。
“看看特朗普劳工部的这张图表，”主持人说。"黄线显示，自从总统开始征收关税以来，被关税化商品的消费价格大幅上涨。"华莱士向纳瓦罗指出，特朗普政府自己的报告显示，“在宏观和微观层面上，关税导致消费者价格上涨。”
特朗普一再错误地声称，他对中国商品的关税是由这个亚洲国家的企业和出口商支付的。然而，正如经济学家和分析师一再解释的那样，关税并非如此。当货物到达美国时，附加税由进口商支付。这意味着进口指定的中国货物的成本更高，导致企业为消费者提价。
尽管对美国企业和消费者产生了影响，特朗普上周四威胁要对中国商品征收更多关税。正如经济学家所说 新闻周刊对3000亿美元以上的中国进口商品征收10%的新关税，将会提高服装、鞋子、玩具和许多消费电子产品的成本，而这些商品此前在总统的贸易战中没有受到影响。牛津经济学的一位预测者说新闻周刊额外关税将使美国家庭平均每年损失700美元，如果特朗普像他威胁的那样将关税提高到25%，这一数字将增加到900美元。
今年5月初，华莱士接受采访特朗普的国家经济委员会主任拉里·库德洛(Larry Kudlow)让他承认，美国人将因总统针对中国的贸易政策而“遭受”损失。
“事实上，双方都会在这些事情上付出代价，”库德洛说，直到华莱士让他澄清中国没有支付关税。特朗普政府官员表示:“双方都会因此受到影响。”。
加里·科恩(Gary Cohn)此前曾在特朗普手下担任库德洛的现任职务，他经常表示不同意政府的贸易政策。三月份，他说在采访中用《魔鬼经济学》广播说“关税不起作用”
高盛前总裁兼首席运营官科恩说:“如果有什么不同的话，它们会损害经济，因为如果你是一个典型的美国工人，你就只有有限的收入可花。”。“如果你不得不在生活必需品上花更多的钱，那么在你想购买的服务上花的钱就更少了。”
当被电台节目主持人问及其他经济学家是否同意特朗普的观点时，科恩打趣道:“世界上只有一个，”他指的是纳瓦罗。
在面试科恩在上周接受英国广播公司采访时，再次批评了美国目前对华贸易政策。
他表示:“我认为，与美国的贸易战是中国放缓经济的一个非常方便的借口，因为中国需要放缓过热的经济，在过热的经济中，价格、房地产价格和一切都失控了。”。
国家经济研究局2019年3月的一篇论文在3月发表了一份报告，该报告审查了特朗普关税影响的数据。这项研究的结论是，额外征税的成本几乎完全由美国消费者和进口商支付。
FOX NEWS ANCHOR CONFRONTS TRUMP OFFICIAL OVER FALSE CLAIMS THAT CHINA TARIFFS DON'T RAISE COSTS FOR AMERICANS
Fox News anchor Chris Wallace pushed back hard after President Donald Trump's Director of Trade and Manufacturing Policy Peter Navarro falsely claimed that the administration's tariffs on Chinese imports were not raising costs for Americans.
The Trump administration trade official tried to argue during an interview on Fox News on Sunday that China was eating the costs of the tariffs without any effect on U.S. businesses and consumers, an assertion aligned with the president's frequent insistence that the Chinese are paying the tariffs. But Wallace confronted Navarro with facts about the levies' impact, along with a chart from Trump's Department of Labor and Department of Commerce showing how the levies were correlated with higher prices for U.S. consumers.
Wallace asked Navarro whether American businesses were passing the added cost of tariffs onto consumers, to which the trade official replied: "false." He argued that the Chinese manufacturers and producers were lowering prices significantly to compensate for the additional import levies, allowing U.S. businesses to pay the same price as before trade tensions escalated over a year ago.
The Fox News anchor then pushed back, playing a clip of Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell outlining the negative impact of the trade war with China on the U.S. economy. Wallace also read a quote from a May Goldman Sachs report that stated: "The cost of U.S. tariffs have fallen entirely on U.S. businesses and households, with no clear reduction in the prices charged by Chinese exporters."
After Wallace put up a chart showing how costs on tariffed products had increased for U.S. consumers, which was based on data from the U.S. Departments of Labor and Commerce, Navarro attempted to interject. "You can't give me a chance here to respond?" the Trump official asked. Wallace said he would, before returning to the chart.
"Look at this chart from the Trump Labor Department," the anchor said. "The yellow line shows that the consumer price of tariffed goods has risen dramatically since the president started imposing them." Wallace pointed out to Navarro that the Trump administration's own reporting showed that "on a macro and a micro level that tariffs cause consumer prices to rise."
Trump has repeatedly claimed inaccurately that his tariffs on Chinese goods are being paid by businesses and exporters in the Asian nation. However, as economists and analysts have explained over and over, that's not how tariffs work. The additional levies are paid by importers, when the goods arrive in the U.S. This means the cost of importing the designated Chinese goods is higher, leading businesses to raise prices for consumers.
Despite the impact on American businesses and consumers, Trump threatened to add further tariffs to Chinese goods last Thursday. As economists told Newsweek, the new 10 percent tariffs on $300 billion more of Chinese imports would raise costs of things like clothing, shoes, toys, and many consumer-electronics, which had previously been spared by the president's trade war. A forecaster with Oxford Economics told Newsweek that the additional tariffs would cost the average American household about $700 annually, with that amount increasing to $900 if Trump raises the tariffs higher to 25 percent as he has also threatened.
Earlier this year in May, Wallace interviewed Larry Kudlow, Trump's director of the National Economic Council, getting him to admit that Americans "will suffer" as a result of the president's trade policies targeting China.
"In fact, both sides will pay in these things," Kudlow said, before Wallace made him clarify that the Chinese are not paying the tariffs. "Again, both sides will suffer on this," the Trump administration official said.
Gary Cohn, who previously served in Kudlow's current role under Trump, has regularly stated his disagreement with the administration's trade policy. In March, he said in an interview with Freakonomics radio that "tariffs don't work."
"If anything, they hurt the economy, because if you're a typical American worker, you have a finite amount of income to spend," Cohn, the former president and chief operating officer of Goldman Sachs, said. "If you have to spend more on the necessity products that you need to live, you have less to spend on the services that you want to buy."
When asked by the radio show's host if other economists agreed with Trump's perspective, Cohn quipped: "There's only one in the world," referring to Navarro.
In an interview with the BBC this past week, Cohn again criticized the current U.S. trade policies toward China.
"I think the trade war with the United States was a very convenient excuse for the Chinese to slow down their economy when they needed to slow down an overheated economy where prices, and real estate prices, and everything were getting out of hand," he said.
A March 2019 paper by the National Bureau of Economic Research published a report in March, which examined the data concerning the impact of Trump's tariffs. That research concluded that the costs of the additional levies were nearly entirely paid by American consumers and importers.
