Will Tariffs Work or Make Things Worse for Americans? - Nazak Nikakhtar Explains

🔴 Watch the extended version of this episode: https://ept.ms/4fSUSb5

This is the 30 minute TV version of Jan Jekielek’s interview with Nazak Nakakhtar. The longer-form version was released on Epoch TV on January 9, 2025.

🔵 Try Epoch Times now: https://ept.ms/3Uu1JA5

Jan Jekielek interviews Nazak Nikakhtar, the former assistant secretary of commerce for industry and analysis under the first Trump administration. She’s an expert on trade and national security and a partner at Wiley Rein LLP.

Nazak dives into the debate surrounding the use of tariffs. How have China’s unfair trade practices destroyed American manufacturing? Will tariffs work? Or will they make things worse for the average American? And what other tools will Trump have at his disposal that can restore and protect U.S. industry?

“A gentleman in the front row in the audience asked, Do you know how much the Trump tariffs are costing the average American family? And I said, Do you know how much China's unfair trade practices are harming American households, such that mothers and fathers now have to work 3 jobs to have enough money to put food on the table? The Chinese have made us poor because of their low cost economic structure, we've lowered prices as much as we humanly can to be able to compete, and wages have gone down.”

CHAPTER TITLES
0:00:00 - Trump Tariffs and the Impact on American Families
0:01:58 - Introduction to Nazak Nikakhtar and Trade Policy
0:04:05 - Legal Authorities and Tariff Levels
0:06:46 - Chinese Overcapacity and Market Manipulation
0:11:41 - Supply Chain Vulnerabilities and National Security
0:14:59 - Critical Minerals and Supply Chain Control
0:18:31 - Rare Earth Minerals and Export Controls
0:21:23 - Fentanyl Exports and Harmful Trade Practices
0:22:15 - Retaliatory Tariffs and Economic Impact
0:23:36 - Conclusion and Final Thoughts

About the tariffs imposed on China by Trump in 2018: “The tariffs that were imposed in 2018 on China, retaliatory because of China's IP theft. When you still look at the import statistics, those Chinese goods are still coming in, and in many instances, they drop the prices to help the importers offset the tariffs that they're paying on the imports by now getting the goods cheaper, right? So the Chinese are working to preserve their access to the US market. We've seen through those tariffs that we've already imposed, the Chinese haven't ceded the market. The bipartisan, quasi government body, the International Trade Commission, has already done a study that the tariffs we've already imposed on China, of 25% because of IP theft, hasn't had any impact on the US economy. There's been other studies that have been this that have concluded the same. So the point is, we have all of this empirical data that shows that China has been absorbing the tariffs. So yeah, let's throw more tariffs on them to make them really feel the pain.”

Nazak Nikakhtar about America’s supply chain vulnerabilities with regard to China: “There are really good studies about how the Chinese cartel depressed global antibiotic prices to get everybody out of the market, and then started, you know, raising the prices again. This is what they do. They underprice to get everybody else out of the market, so the Chinese can control that supply chain, and through that exercise of that control of the supply chain, right, coerce the United States and the rest of the world. So those two things are really related.”

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