MSNBC INTERVIEW WITH SEN. CHRIS MURPHY (D-CT)

TRANSCRIPTApril 04, 2025NEWS EVENTSEN. CHRIS MURPHY (D-CT)MSNBC INTERVIEW WITH SEN. CHRIS MURPHY (D-CT)VIQ Media Transcription, Inc.20 East Thomas Road, Suite 2200Phoenix, AZ [email protected] 2025. Provided under license from VIQ Media Transcription, Inc.All materials herein are protected by United States copyright lawand/or license from VIQ Media Transcription, Inc., and may not bereproduced, distributed, transmitted, displayed, published orbroadcast without the prior written permission ofVIQ Media Transcription, Inc.You may not alter or remove any trademark, copyright or othernotice from copies of the content.MSNBC INTERVIEW WITH SEN. CHRIS MURPHY (D-CT)APRIL 4, 2025SPEAKERS:SEN. CHRIS MURPHY (D-CT)CHRIS HAYES, MSNBC HOST CHRIS HAYES, MSNBC HOST: Senator Chris Murphy's a Democrat of Connecticut. He serves on the Foreign Relations Committee, and he joins me now. Let me just pick up there, Senator, because I think this is actually something really underappreciated about this entire thing. It's only a slight overstatement to say this country was founded in rebellion against a single figure slapping on an enormous tariff on a whim. Like that's pretty much the precipitating incident. Now, the largest tax hike in real dollar terms since 1960s happened yesterday two days ago by a president single-handedly just saying, here's $6 trillion tax hike. It is insane to me that Congress is not stepping into the breach to say, we fought a revolution and crafted a constitution around the idea that the king doesn't get to do this unilaterally. SEN. CHRIS MURPHY (D-CT): Yes, listen, I mean, that's the case I'm making to my colleagues here. I mean, the shape and the design of this tariffs are confounding economists who can't figure out how this works. It looks like an absolute mess in which you're not going to create any real domestic manufacturing boom, and all that's going to happen is a whole bunch of American businesses and American consumers get screwed. I argue that it's not designed as economic policy. It's designed as political policy because, you know, Donald Trump gets really excited when people have to come to him, petition the king for relief. That's what he's doing with law firms. That's what he's doing with universities. And I think that may be what he's doing with American businesses. It's true he said these are permanent. He said I'm going to cut a deal. But it stands to reason that what's going to happen here is every company and every industry is going to have to come to Donald Trump. They're going to make their case for sanctions relief. And in return, he's going to tell them the list of things they have to do for him, buy his crypto coin, tell their employees they can't work for the opposition. This is in fact why the founding fathers put the taxation power as well as spending power in the hands of Congress. We outsourced it to the president. And yes, it is completely within our power to grab it back. Hopefully, Republicans as they see this recession coming may think twice and join with us. HAYES: Yes, I just — just to stay on this because I think it's — you know, Chuck Grassley and Maria Cantwell, your colleague on the Democratic side, have a bill to sort of massage this. But I just want to just stay on this for a second because the actual statutory authority which is a law from the 1970s designed for essentially economic sanctions on sort of national security bad actors. You know, he wrote this emergency — declaring an emergency because fentanyl is pouring over the border. And then he's using that to slap tariffs on Madagascar that we import vanilla from, and Lesotho in Africa. And the South Koreans aren't giving us that. Like, the entire thing makes no sense on its face. And the idea that Congress is just like, well, what are you going to do, is crazymaking to me, I got to say. MURPHY: Well, again, that's true unless you come to the conclusion that the vast majority of Republicans, their number one priority is Trump seizing power and the Trump family and the MAGA universe holding power forever. And if that's his goal and if he's using the tariffs as a means to compel loyalty from industry and business, then you're not going to have a revolt from Republicans in Congress, because with the exception of maybe 20 Republicans in the Senate, the Republican Party inside Congress is done with democracy. All they care about is making sure that Democrats never ever win another election. And this might be you know just an element of a broader policy to try to destroy dissent in this country. HAYES: Your point about the washing machines, I watched that whole speech today and I thought it was very good. And one of the points that's important here is what happened with the prices is exactly what you would predict which is that the foreign goods got tariffed and they went up, right, because of the tariff, but domestic producers got to spike the prices too. So, it's like, yes, OK, maybe you're going to buy a Ford and not a Toyota. What do you think's going to happen to the price of the Ford if their competitor has to jack the prices by $5,000 or $6,000? MURPHY: Yes. And in the washing machines case, it wasn't just that the non-tariff washing machines went up in price too. Dryers went up too because you sort of know that those prices hang around together. And so, the greedy corporations just took the opportunity and raised prices on a machine that had no tariff attached to it. Yes, so listen, I — the lesson here is not that tariffs can't work. I actually think that we should be entering an era in which we are more willing to use some level of protectionism to boost American industry. But you have to partner those tariffs together with two additional policy elements. One is incentives for domestic manufacturing. You've got to have industrial policy. The penalty alone doesn't cause somebody to start a factory. And third — the second — the second new element is that you have to hold corporations accountable when they cheat people. You actually have to watch how they're increasing prices and have a price-gouging policy that holds those greedy corporations accountable. Trump doesn't have those other two elements, and thus all that's going to happen here is that people are going to be out a ton of money, corporate profits are likely going to stay high. And guess what? This bill that they have in the floor right now is going to allow the corporations to make all that extra money off of price gouging and pay a lower corporate tax rate. HAYES: Yes. And I would add one more thing which is there's all this talk about manufacturing. Like, our trade imbalance with Madagascar is because we get a lot of their vanilla, and they don't buy much from us because they're poor. It's not because they took our manufacturing jobs. And like we can't grow a lot of coffee here nor bananas nor vanilla, so it's like you're not — we're not insourcing that stuff, guys. Like, even if you had the theory of the case, like us going after them makes zero sense. But again, to your point, it's not about the economics here. Senator Chris Murphy, thank you very much for your time tonight. MURPHY: Thanks. END