A CNBC anchor who witnessed Donald Trump’s latest rant on tariffs professed herself perplexed at his “crazy” economic analysis.
Trump used a speech to the New York Economic Forum on Thursday to set out his fiscal plans, which included claiming that he would pay for child care by raising tariffs on imports—but left many who saw it confused and unable to explain it.
Among them were the co-anchor of CNBC’s Squawk Box Becky Quick, who was on stage watching while Trump spoke for half an hour.
On Friday morning, she said she couldn’t make any sense of his plans for tariffs.
Quick (front row, right) was on the stage as Trump addressed the Economic Club of New York. She called aspects of his plans “crazy.”
Brendan McDermid/Reuters
“The idea you are going to raise a lot of money through tariffs and not have it be inflationary does not make a lot of sense to me,” Quick said on Friday morning’s Squawk Box.
Quick added, “You are either changing behavior or raising money. If you are raising money from it, it is inherently inflationary. Your consumers are not getting low prices.”
Quick’s co-host, Joe Kernen—named in court papers as one of the people on Trump’s contact list when he was in the White House—was equally perplexed at how Trump planned to hike tariffs on foreign goods without sending inflation into overdrive. He called Trump’s plan a “bad, populist idea.”
Trump’s incoherent rant Thursday on tariffs came after—of all things—he was asked what sort of legislation he’d support to make child care affordable.
“If you win in November,” a nonprofit founder asked, “can you commit to prioritizing legislation to make child care affordable, and, if so, what specific piece of legislation will you advance?”
Trump suggested that he’d bring down prices for parents by subsidizing it with money made from higher tariffs on countries like China, but offered no explanation on how that would actually work. His answer went on for two minutes and totaled 360 words, but was mocked by critics as an “absolute word salad.”
“Well, I would do that, and we’re sitting down—you know, I was, somebody, we had Senator Marco Rubio, and my daughter Ivanka was so impactful on that issue,” Trump said.
“It’s a very important issue. But I think when you talk about the kind of numbers that I’m talking about, that—because look, child care is child care, it’s—couldn’t, you know, it’s something, you have to have it, in this country you have to have it.”
Things got slightly more coherent as Trump began speaking specifically on tariffs, which he’s spoken of in the past as an answer to most economic issues. He promised Thursday to deliver “trillions of dollars” through new tariffs that, apparently, he plans to use to bring down child care costs.
Those plans appeared to confuse economic observers, including Quick, who said she could not push back on them because questions to Trump were “controlled.”
“There were four questions that were asked set up in advance by other people who were allowed to ask questions and not allowed to follow-up,” she said. “It is a controlled format.”
The host also slammed Trump for wanting to increase child tax credit by using funds earned through tariffs.
“The Child Tax Credit is crazy,” she said. “You know, thinking that you are going to raise enough money in these tariffs not only to balance the budget, to then roll out all kinds of spending, and to pick up child tax—to pay for child care expenses basically for everybody doesn’t make any sense to me.”
Quick also criticized Trump’s plan—which has since been mirrored by Kamala Harris’ campaign—not to tax tips, something she suggested was ludicrous to do while the federal government continues to run up a deficit. She said she was once a waiter, not for the $2.05 she earned per hour, but because of the tips that came on top of it.
