White House deputy press secretary Kush Desai said Thursday that President Trump is taking a “full-of-economy approach” to “restore American greatness,” even as others look at tariffs in isolation.
“Tariffs are just one of many economic tools that this president is using to unleash American growth and restore American greatness,” Desai told Newsmax.
“I think there's a tendency to look at tariffs in isolation, but when you look at the fact that this administration is also plowing ahead on deregulation - the previous administration put on trillions of dollars in new regulation on the American economy. That means added compliance costs for our companies and for everyday people,” Desai said. “When you look at what we're doing with energy, where we're unleashing American energy, and that's not just savings at the gas pump, but when you look at something like diesel, almost everything you get at a grocery store or something like that is brought to you in a truck. Those trucks are powered by diesel and, for truckers, usually one-fourth of their operating costs are diesel or fuel costs. So, we're taking a very comprehensive approach here, where our economic agenda is unleashing all these supply-side reforms in addition to tariffs. And it's this full-of-economy approach here to, as the president said, restore American greatness.”
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Desai also pushed back on the notion that Trump is hurting the economy with the tariffs.
“We've seen industry leaders, I mean, TSMC [Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co.], Apple, Hyundai, they're pouring in trillions in historic investment commitments to make in America and that's because of these tariffs and that's because of the deregulation and that's because of the energy being unleashed here," he said.
"So, again, I think there's this tendency in the mainstream media to really just focus on tariffs in isolation without looking at everything else we're doing,” Desai continued, adding that the Department of Government Efficiency is helping to bring down inflation.
“DOGE's going in there cutting spending, and that's going to help lower interest rates at the end of the day as well,” Desai said.
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