Former Labor Secretary Robert Reich warned that the tariffs from President Donald Trump’s financial coverage agenda may sign the tip of American affect on the planet.
In a current episode of “The Backside Line,” Reich, a professor on the College of California, Berkeley, stated when international traders, together with Individuals, began pulling their cash out of Treasury payments and away from U.S. {dollars} after the tariffs have been introduced, America’s standing on the planet might have wavered.
The U.S. greenback and Treasury payments are the most secure locations on the planet to carry cash, Reich stated. If that adjustments, the U.S. would “lose energy and we’d additionally lose a number of wealth on this nation,” he stated.
“Having the greenback be the reserve forex helps all of us Individuals right here as a result of we get, in a way, a free experience,” Reich stated. “We get the advantages of the remainder of the worldwide economic system investing in us.” He questioned why the Trump administration would wish to create insurance policies that finish this American hegemony earlier than may need in any other case occurred.
Reich additionally stated the tariffs are hardest on Individuals with decrease incomes.
“Each client, successfully, is poorer,” he stated. “It’s a regressive tax within the sense that customers who’ve decrease incomes … need to pay a bigger portion of their incomes within the type of this tariff tax.”
Watch the video to listen to extra from Robert Reich about the way forward for manufacturing in America, immigration, and what corporations can do to guard their backside strains.