'We launched a drug war, not a trade war': Trump's top economic adviser
In an interview Sunday on ABC News' "This Week," President Trump’s top economic adviser, Kevin Hassett, said the Trump administration was using tariffs to launch "a drug war, not a trade war," with Canada and Mexico.
The tariffs are "part of a negotiation to get Canada and Mexico to stop shipping fentanyl across our borders,” Hassett told ABC News' Jonathan Karl. "As we've watched them make progress on the drug war, then we've relaxed some of the tariffs that we put on them, because they're making progress."
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has pushed back against the idea that fentanyl is coming into the U.S. from Canada, saying that less than 1% of fentanyl seized in the U.S. comes from his country.
But Hassett claimed that Canada is a "major source" of fentanyl, saying, "I can tell you that in the Situation Room, I’ve seen photographs of fentanyl labs in Canada that the law enforcement folks were leaving alone. Canada's got a big drug problem, even in their own cities."
Hassett, however, did not cite evidence of large amounts of fentanyl crossing the border into the U.S. from Canada.
Over the course of seven days, President Trump imposed tariffs, delayed some, and then suggested the possibility of more, causing major whiplash and confusion that rattled financial markets, nearly wiping out all stock market gains made since Trump's election. The Trump administration says additional reciprocal tariffs could be as high as 250% on Canadian dairy and lumber.
Hassett said the Trump administration will be focused on the "drug war" until a government study on the impact of reciprocal tariffs is released in April.
"Whatever you do to us, we'll do to you. That's what [Trump] is asking for in April and it's not a radical idea at all," Hassett said of imposing additional tariffs on countries that currently have trade barriers against the U.S.
He added, "Right now there's a very, very asymmetric trade policy around the world where everybody’s putting high tariffs on our stuff if we sell it there, and we've got very low tariffs when we bring it in here."
Hassett also made the case that Trump was trying to bring more manufacturing back to the U.S., saying "what the president's tried to do is make it so that when we produce something, we produce it at home."
"President Trump wants to bring the jobs home, bring the wealth – the wealth home, and bring the wages home," Hassett said.
