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Floor Speech

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Mr. BLUMENTHAL. Mr. President, I am honored to add my voice to others we have heard already expressing grave concern about President Trump's misguided, mistaken, harmful tariff regime. Actually, it dignifies what the President is doing on tariffs to call it a regime, which implies that there is a strategy and a conceptual consistency and constancy to it.

Actually, it seems to be a flurry of announcements, some contradictory and inconsistent, about so-called trade deals. They vary from week-to-week, even day-to-day, with different countries--or the same country. President Trump calls them ``big wins.'' But these so- called victories benefit him alone, not the American people.

Let's cut through the bluster and the propaganda. Tariffs are taxes. Tariffs are taxes. The American people are the ones who pay the taxes-- not Donald Trump, and, almost always, not the countries the tariffs are directed against.

American families, particularly of lower and middle-income brackets will bear the brunt of these taxes. Whatever the rate, whether it is 15 percent, as the President has just announced against the European Union, or 20 percent against other countries, or 30 percent, these current tariff rates cause the American people to lose.

In fact, as a result of these tariffs, the average U.S. household is set to lose $2,400 in annual income. That is not Richard Blumenthal giving you that figure; it is the Yale Budget Lab, the scientists and the economists there who have no ax to grind, Republican or Democrat. They are just doing their work economically.

The costs of many consumer goods that Americans rely on are also set to rise. Here are just a few: Clothing prices, 37 percent; leather goods will rise by 39 percent; food prices will increase 3.4 percent, with fresh produce specifically rising by 6.9 percent; motor vehicles will rise by 12.3 percent, adding $6,000 to the price of the average new car.

With these increases, Trump's tariff plan will burden the lowest earners in our economy more than three times the highest earners. Let me repeat that: lower earners three times the burden compared to higher earners.

I have another key area of concern, and it has been baffling to me from the start of all this tariff talk: rising energy costs. Why would the President support a set of tariffs that raises our energy prices? So basic, especially in the highest use times in the year. Summer actually involves a higher use time than winter.

My home State of Connecticut already has some of the highest electricity costs in the Nation, 39 percent above the national average or an extra thousand dollars a year. But the President's tariffs will exacerbate this situation by driving up the cost of fuel and critical grid equipment--transformers and circuit breakers.

The recent projections have shown the tariffs could raise natural gas by 6.1 percent; oil by 2.3 percent; electricity prices by .7 percent. Those percentage points are real dollars in real people's pockets-- actually, dollars that will be taken from real people's pockets as a result of a senseless, reckless collection of taxes paid by American consumers. The cost of those utility increases will be paid by consumers. They will strain households in my State and across the Nation.

As the ranking member of the Veterans' Affairs committee, I am particularly interested in how these tariffs will affect our Nation's veterans. The President's reckless and destabilizing tariff regime will place incredible stress on our Nation's largest integrated health system, the Department of Veterans Affairs. Yes, it is our largest healthcare system. It serves 9 million veterans at more than 1300 facilities across the country. It is one of the essential public institutions.

The Government Accountability Office found in fiscal year 2024, the VA spent $16.6 billion on medical services and an additional $15 billion for drugs and biologics, medical and service instruments, and other equipment and supplies. And yet the administration's tariffs threaten access, the cost increasing for critical medical supplies and medications. Many of them are imported. The VA will pay more for them.

The recent deal with the EU levies a 15-percent tariff on all imports, including medicines, including pharmaceuticals. They represent the EU's largest single category of exports to the United States, and many go to our VA, where veterans ultimately will suffer the consequences of higher costs to the healthcare facilities that serve them.

European drugmakers have already warned that these tariffs will disrupt supply chains, delay research, and limit access to medicine. Forcing price increases into the VA system undermines the care we owe to all who have served.

Tariffs are already eroding job growth and reducing incomes. They are already felt in the supply chain. American businesses, especially our essential small businesses and those in the manufacturing sector, are already facing supply chain chaos. These businesses simply cannot easily absorb or offset the increased costs from tariffs on imported materials.

I visited a grocery in Connecticut just a week ago, and the owner said to me that he was absorbing the increased costs of tariffs--the percentages on tomatoes, on other produce. But he can't do it for weeks on end. Eventually, he will have to pass them on to consumers. He made very clear to me that he is now stuck between two bad choices--either eat the tariff taxes and risk going under or pass along these costs to consumers.

President Trump has repeatedly stated that he wants to restore American manufacturing, but his tariffs are actually making it harder, not easier, to build things in America. The costs of manufacturing here are rising, not declining. If he wants to reshore manufacturing, exactly the wrong way to do it is to disrupt the supply chain and increase the costs of what is necessary to build and make things in America.

In short, this tariff disaster is a self-inflicted economic wound that is the product of a mindset placing a priority on vanity and vengeance--Donald Trump's vanity, because he thinks tariffs are the best thing in the world--he said he loves tariffs--and vengeance against countries that don't follow his preferences, like Brazil. Consumers are paying more, workers are losing jobs and salary, veterans are at risk, small businesses are getting squeezed.

I call on my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to stand up to these deeply harmful tariffs. It is in the national interest that you do it.

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