Countries wishing the United States to lower President Donald Trump’s tariffs against them must first agree to lower their own tariffs, Sen. James Lankford told Newsmax on Thursday.
“[Trump] laid it out and said ‘I’m going to do a 10% tariff on everybody across the entire world,'” the Oklahoma Republican told Newsmax’s “Wake Up America.” “If it’s higher than 10%, it’s higher than 10% for a reason, because you put high tariffs on us.”
Lankford called the Trump strategy “interesting.”
“If you want to get to this rate that your neighbor has, there’s only one way to be able to do it — drop your tariffs on us,” he said.
The senator said that there will likely be some countries that see their tariff rates lowered, but one at a time.
“I think he’s putting the 10% tariff on everybody across the world, saying we’ve got a major trade deficit,” said Lankford. “We’ve got an obviously enormous federal deficit, so he’s laying a marker out there.”
There are some countries, however, such as China, that will “face a very high tariff for a very, very long time,” said Lankford.
“Obviously, it’s a communist nation,” he added. “They’ve had major policy issues with the United States. In addition to that, the flow of fentanyl, the precursors, is coming in from China, so the president is trying to be able to make that stop right now.”
Lankford also discussed a resolution passed in the Senate on Wednesday to end the national emergency Trump declared in order to put tariffs on Canada. The measure passed with the votes of four Republicans, Sens. Mitch McConnell and Rand Paul of Kentucky, Susan Collins of Maine, and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska.
“Obviously, the House is not going to take this up at all,” said Lankford. “The biggest issue I think people are missing is we’re seeing a dramatic increase in Canada of fentanyl flowing in. The Canadians in 2020 picked up 1,100 pounds of precursor chemicals for fentanyl. In 2021, it was 11,000 pounds, a 10 times increase just in that one year that is coming southbound to us. So the president is saying we missed it ten years ago, saying that the flow of fentanyl slowly started from Mexico. We’re not going to miss it from Canada. We’re going to stop it right now before it gets as bad as it is from Mexico.”
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