San. James Lankford said Sunday that while he’s not an economist, he is not anticipating that a recession will happen because of President Donald Trump’s tariffs and other plans.
Further, the Oklahoma Republican told NBC News’ “Meet the Press” that he expects to see the stock market stabilize once the president starts negotiations with other countries about the tariffs he imposed last week.
“Once the president starts announcing negotiations in other countries, we’ll start to see the market calm and the rates come down quickly,” Lankford said.
Meanwhile, Lankford said there is “more trust” for Trump’s economic policies than there was for former President Joe Biden’s.
Trump’s push on tariffs is aimed at bringing manufacturing back to the United States, which is “causing the rumble that’s happening on Wall Street,” he added. “We also see where things are going because we’ve seen this movie before and saw how successful it was.”
When asked if Trump’s tariffs run the risk of emboldening China into courting other markets, Lankford replied that “everything” emboldens China.
“They’re very confident in many ways,” he said. “They’re very, very dependent on exports. If they don’t have large quantities of exports, their economy doesn’t work at all.”
Trump, meanwhile, has made a statement that he’s talking to Vietnam about bringing down tariffs, which will be a “huge challenge” to China, said Lankford.
The tariffs will shift the economy to benefit the United States, even though they do cause prices to increase, the senator said.
“It’s a one-time increase that happens, and I want to get that down,” he said. “We’ve seen other rates in countries that are very, very high. We have to be able to work those down because our economies are intertwined globally, and we want to make sure it’s fair and works.”
Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, has proposed a bipartisan bill to allow Congress to play a larger role in tariffs, but Lankford said legislators already have a role in tariffs.
“It is right for the legislative branch to engage and say we have a role in our revenue issues and always have for that long term,” said Lankford. “The president is also trying to fix a major issue that’s been in the country for a long time, and that’s manufacturing leaving the country.”
Lankford is also spearheading an effort to get a bipartisan border bill passed, and said Sunday work is being done “little by little” on it.
Senate Republicans are also working on the passage of a budget bill, and Lankford said that Trump’s budget agenda is not in trouble, as some are saying.
“People will look at the Senate budget and say you’re not reducing enough spending on this,” he said. “We have to reduce a lot more spending, and we’re all nodding our heads and saying yes, we do have to redo a lot, but a budget bill is a wide framework to say let’s get started.”
Lankford added that lawmakers can “absolutely” get a budget bill passed before the August recess.
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