house and the virtue of these tariffs. people who do understand the market, people like steve mnuchin, who is larry kudlow. are against these tariffs. i hope larry gets better soon. people who for some reason should understand but don t and like ross and peter navarro are pushing these things. we are picking fights with our allies. look at the germans. they ve built a huge bmw plant in south carolina. perhaps the biggest they have in the world. mercedes-benz and volkswagen have also built car plants in the south. what are we doing? we re picking fights with them. why are we doing this? auto nation s ceo says automotive tariffs will make steel tariffs look look a company picnic. we know president trump doesn t have an understanding of how trade works. if i m lindsey graham, if i m in the state of south carolina, how
deficit is. this is not like a bank. he s saying the u.s. is a bank that they re robbing. that s not how trade works. when you look at china, how does putting tariffs on germany and canada help us to negotiate with china? it s backward. neil: i know what you re saying. his argument has been that they gouge us, too. they have special deals as well so much so that the german i know about his argument. there s no evidence of that. neil: i hear you. when you re fighting in the world. but his argument has prompted the german automakers saying we ll cut tariffs here. the bank will hopefully go through it. they want to avoid this. whereo u see it going? where i hope this goes is that the president like with some of his other twitter announcements backs away from them and doesn t do them when he starts to see the impact like
war, that we re going to be talking about recession, not just in the united states but for the whole globe. neil: the argument has been that the chinese recognize all of the above. teaming up with some of our allies that that might be debatable. but they have seen their markets tank. speculating the shanghai has moved into the bear territory. multiyear lows. their currency is getting smacked around. now they re doing everything they can to stimulate an economy that is hiccupping. so they need us to the point of the president more than we need them. they need to do a deal. they just don t want to lose their face here on this. what do you make of that? mayb but you know, we need them, too. that s how the trade works. definitely not neil: the president says not as much, austan. what do you think? the president, neil, clearly does not understand what a trade
past few days, analysts, watching trump s trade comments very closely, they re wondering what could come next. ben is a cnbc contributor, the headlines, sir, of your new piece, sufficiently terrifying for a lot of folks who watch the markets closely. there s the headline, trump s trade wars triggers recession fears. what s driving those fears and what do you make from what the president said a few minutes ago? we have to unpack a lot of what he said on trade deficits, which is fueled by a misunderstanding on how trade works. the first thing is the economy is doing well, we have good jobs growth, good wage growth, but we have this big negative overhang and that s the fraytrade wars, companies like harley davidson
people drinking more bourbon. i want to bring in policy correspondent for bloomberg media. the president unleashed a series of tweets blasting the trade relationship with canada. he talks all about the trade deficit. but my concern is the president doesn understa trade is viewed. when you look at trade, it s goods and services. and when you look at that entire picture, there s an $8 billion surplus in our, the united states s favor. and this isn t part of some left-wing conspiracy, this is data out of u.s. trade. the president clearly doesn t understand how trade works, not just in bilateral terms, but how trade treaties are negotiated. but this all goes back to that photo that you were showing earlier of angela merkel leaning over the table, donald trump looking bad in canada he s goes off to his meeting with kim jong-un. and so they re lashing out at the canadians to distract people. there s nothing wrong with what just continue trudeau said, he