(Excerpt from Interview):
Chris Stigall: Again, the last time we talked about tariffs, I know you shared much of the view that they weren’t necessarily a net negative. And, I also understand why people are hostile toward them, conservatives here domestically, but I don’t think anyone can argue President Trump has used these to great effect again without any kind of military action, which I think is not a small matter.
Shanker Singham: Yeah, when he introduced them in the first place on the liberation day, what he said was that lots of countries have been have damaged the US economy through various -not only their own tariffs- but, more importantly, the way they use regulations against US companies. The way they distort their markets, like China for example massively lowering costs to its companies so that are able to overproduce and therefore flood the US market and lower prices and put people out of jobs and so forth. So, this has been happening for 20 or 30 years at this point, and we have not been able to deal with it.
He has decided that we’re going to follow different path and the path that he’s followed is actually causing some of those countries to change some of their policies and particularly regulatory policies that have been enshrined in stone and you’re not allowed to talk about them.