Beshear blasts Trump tariffs: ‘It is chaos. It is increasing costs’

Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear (D) sharply criticized the administration’s sweeping tariffs, saying the policy approach amounts to “chaos” and is bad for the U.S. economy.

“No, not at all,” Beshear said in an interview on NBC News’s “Meet the Press,” when asked whether the people of Kentucky voted for this tariff agenda.

“This is, what was it, first across the board, then reciprocal, then industry-specific. I think there was a company-specific tariff proposed. Now, we have tariffs on countries if he doesn’t like who that country is prosecuting,” Beshear continued, referring to the president’s varying policies on tariffs.

“It is chaos. It is increasing costs. You know, the people of Kentucky, many of them, voted for Donald Trump because they thought he’d make paying the bills a little bit easier at the end of the week. And he’s just making it harder.

Beshear said he’s seeing small businesses in his state lay people off because of the tariffs on raw materials, which Americans often import and then assemble on U.S. soil.

“And when a small business is laying somebody off, it’s somebody they go to church with. It’s somebody who their kids play soccer with. This is going to impact the economy in such negative ways,” he said.

Trump on April 2 announced “reciprocal” tariffs on dozens of other countries, using trade deficits to help calculate the tariff rate. But a week later, he lowered those rates to 10 percent for 90 days as markets reacted negatively, giving time for negotiations.

That 90-day deadline had been set to expire this past week, but Trump has issued letters to numerous U.S. trade partners informing them of their new “reciprocal” rates slated to take effect Aug. 1. Trump has sent mixed signals about whether there is still wiggle room to negotiates those rates.