A battle is brewing over tariffs among Trump’s team
By Kayla Tausche, CNN
(CNN) — President-elect Donald Trump is still pushing for universal tariffs on imports from overseas as his trade advisers are working to craft a strategy to translate his campaign pledges into policy, according to multiple people familiar with the matter.
In private discussions, aides are still focused on drawing up plans that hew closely to the blanket tariffs Trump proposed as a candidate — 10% on imports from all countries, with a 60% levy on goods from China — while acknowledging that adjustments may need to be made to accommodate political or economic realities, according to three sources.
Trump’s aides are exploring enacting tariffs on a subset of critical industries — either in advance of or alongside a broader tariff program — to highlight trade imbalances and spur US manufacturing activity.
The discussion is still active, with the contours of the policy in flux, sources noted; no final decisions have been made.
The Washington Post was first to report on the selection of a handful of critical industries to consider for a first wave of universal tariffs.
Posting on Truth Social, Trump took umbrage with the article’s description that the move would pare back his campaign pledge. “The story in the Washington Post, quoting so-called anonymous sources, which don’t exist, incorrectly states that my tariff policy will be pared back. That is wrong,” he wrote.
Top economic advisers to Trump are weighing how to move forward with something resembling the blunt instrument that he has proposed — but that would also limit the impact on the stock market and consumer prices. The resulting ideological debate is reminiscent of Trump’s first term, when Steven Mnuchin and Gary Cohn — Wall Street alums serving atop Treasury and the National Economic Council, respectively — led a vocal charge to halt or dilute the tariffs Trump was proposing, fearful of retaliation and recession.
Trump’s new pick for Treasury secretary, hedge fund investor Scott Bessent, is “not entirely sold” on the idea of universal tariffs on all goods, according to people who have spoken with him. Howard Lutnick, Trump’s pick for Commerce secretary, has espoused using tariffs as a negotiating tactic. Larry Kudlow, Trump’s confidante and former economic adviser, has suggested tariffs could offset the cost of tax cuts. And Peter Navarro, perhaps the president’s most hawkish adviser, has long backed using tariffs at all costs.
Jared Kushner, the president-elect’s son-in-law who worked on international economic policy during the first term, recently said that there was “probably more work that needs to be done” on tariffs on China.
“What I believe President Trump wants is, he just wants a level playing field,” Kushner said in late December on the “Invest Like the Best” podcast. “He says, as long as we’re all competing on the same principles, then he has a lot of faith in American industry to be able to outcompete the rest of the world.”
The-CNN-Wire
™ & © 2025 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved.
