Treasury secretary refuses to answer easy question: Who pays tariffs?
Democratic Rep. Mark Pocan of Wisconsin delivered some thunder to a House Oversight Committee hearing Tuesday, pressing Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent over the true impact of President Donald Trump’s ill-conceived tariff policies.
“Who pays tariffs?” Pocan, a small business owner and union member, repeatedly asked Bessent as the secretary stammered.
Eventually, Pocan laid things out as plainly as possible: “People pay tariffs!”
He went on to describe the rising costs his own business is facing, not just from added costs on imports but also from companies exploiting the economic uncertainties Trump has created in the market.
“Right now, we are getting screwed right and left because of the indiscriminate use of tariffs,” Pocan said. “That’s the reality for Main Street.”
Pocan slammed Bessent and the White House’s attempts to spin Trump’s economically disastrous trade wars as being a strategic tactic. He called out the disconnect between Trump’s billionaire-packed administration and working Americans struggling under Trump’s anti-family economy.
Pocan also noted that the administration’s so-called “strategic uncertainty”—the idea that if trading partners don’t know what you’ll agree to, then you have extra leverage—benefits only “really rich people like you.”
“For a small business, we don’t have that luxury, right?” Pocan explained, describing how empty ports and supply chain stressors are crushing small businesses. “That’s what makes small businesses fail. That’s what makes people lose their jobs. That’s what makes the stock market tank. So I’ll ask one more time, who pays tariffs?”
“Sir, the history would show that it is a complicated mix of who pays the tariffs over various times,” Bessent told the committee.
“So that’s exactly the problem,” Pocan remarked, suggesting that “a very educated person” like Bessent was deliberately avoiding answering the question of who pays tariffs. “It’s not complicated,” Pocan said. “Consumers pay Trump’s tariff tax. That’s the reality.”
No amount of gaslighting from Trump or his Cabinet can change the fact that working Americans are the people stuck with Trump’s trade-war bill.
Campaign Action
