Fox’s Neil Cavuto Wearily Explains Again That Trump Is Wrong to Say China Is Paying Tariffs

Fox’s Neil Cavuto Wearily Explains Again That Trump Is Wrong to Say China Is Paying Tariffs

Neil Cavuto seems tired of correcting Donald Trump on how tariffs work, and who can blame him?

Nonetheless, the Fox News anchor found himself in that position yet again on Friday afternoon, following a quick press conference the president held with reporters on the South Lawn as he departed for a weekend at his New Jersey golf club.

Trump wandered into his  after a reporter tried to tell him that a farmer she had spoken to said that tariffs are having a negative impact on him. Trump responded by telling her she had “interviewed the wrong farmer.”

He went on to add this gibberish:

“Any amount that China sucks out, we’re making up out of the billions that we’re taking in. Remember this, our country is taking in billions and billions of dollars from China. We never took in ten cents from China. Out of that many billions of dollars, we’re talking a part of it and giving it to the farmers because they’ve been targeted by China. The farmers, they come out totally whole.”

Trump then walked away as Fox cut back to its studio, where Cavuto tried to make sense of what he had just heard:

“I don’t know where to begin here but just to be clarifying, China isn’t paying these tariffs. You are. You know, indirectly and sometimes directly. It’s passed along to you through American distributors and their counterparts in the United States who buy this stuff from the Chinese and have to pay the surcharges. Not the Chinese government or China in particular.”

No matter how many times this gets explained to Trump, he never gets it right. One has to wonder if even the journalists at Fox News are getting tired of correcting him.

Watch the video above, via Fox News.

Gary Legum

Gary Legum has written about politics and culture for Independent Journal Review, Salon, The Daily Beast, Wonkette, AlterNet and McSweeney's, among others. He currently lives in his native state of Virginia.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *