Clint Brewer, recovering journalist and Nashville-area public policy expert, said President Donald Trump’s “reboot” of the U.S. economy through his reciprocal tariffs trade plan is necessary in order to transform the economy into one that works for all American workers.
Last week, Trump unveiled his “Liberation Day” agenda, which included the U.S. charging 10 percent baseline tariffs on nearly all goods imported from other countries, reciprocal tariffs on nearly 90 countries that have the highest trade deficits with the U.S., and a 25 percent tax on all imported vehicles.
While the U.S. stock market has seen a loss of trillions of dollars in value since Trump announced his tariff plan on American imports, Brewer stressed that while there will be “some momentary upheaval,” Trump’s “reboot” of the economy is a necessary fix that will work to benefit the everyday American worker.
“Let’s keep in mind who we’re doing this for. We’re not doing this for an elite class of people. We’re not doing this for Wall Street. It’s being done for your neighbors. It’s being done for the people who work in factories. It’s being done for people who might be displaced by AI in 10 years. We have to create America for everybody, and this is part of it economically,” Brewer explained on Tuesday’s edition of The Michael Patrick Leahy Show.
“It’s going to hurt a little bit. It’s going to hurt people’s pensions. It’s going to hurt their 401Ks, but guess what? The market comes back…Look, I’ve got some investments. They took a hit. I’m not alone…but we have to reboot things,” Brewer added.
Brewer stressed that Trump’s tariff plan is not the first time an American president has rebooted the economy in modern history, pointing out the outcry from the left claiming that the president’s plan should “terrify” Americans.
“One of the things that I find the most annoying about modern living, let’s call it, is people’s lack of any kind of historical context when they analyze current events. This is not the first time an American president has done a hard reboot on our economy. Nixon did it. Reagan did it. Clinton did it. Clinton did it twice first when he set the tax rate as such to retire a ballooning national debt and then when he put NAFTA in place. We’ve been here before,” Brewer said.
“This is not the first American president to reset global trade standards. It just isn’t. Let’s just recognize that and put it in context. We have to move the conversation out of the province of Trump derangement syndrome and into historical context,” Brewer added.
Brewer said the scare tactics from the left in regards to Trump’s tariff plan shows that the Democratic Party has shifted away from being the “party of the working man.”
“It used to be that the Democratic Party positioned itself as the party of the working man, of the working American. That is not the case anymore. You have the Republican Party, and really the Trump movement within the Republican Party, that stepped forward and said, ‘We are going to champion the blue-collar worker. We are going to champion making America a great manufacturing power again’,” Brewer said.
Brewer further pointed out that if the U.S. economy did not require a massive reset, there would not be the level of global panic that is currently unfolding.
“If our country wasn’t one who needed to reset the global economy, then the effect you’re seeing globally wouldn’t be happening. Of course everybody’s panicking. We’ve been paying their bills for the better part of the same 40 to 50 years, and I can’t stress that enough…This is not political spin. This is math. This is empirical, it’s not up for discussion. That’s how the world economy works. We are their bank. Our consumers and taxpayers are their bank,” Brewer explained.
“I heard this great statement; it was to make a list of countries that tax their citizens and send their money overseas to America. That list is zero,” Brewer added.
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Kaitlin Housler is a reporter at The Tennessee Star and The Star News Network. Follow Kaitlin on X / Twitter.
