Trump tariffs could push allies to align with China: Delaware governor

Delaware Gov. Matt Meyer (D) said he fears President Trump’s expansive tariff agenda is going to push U.S. trading allies in North America and Europe to align closer to China. 

“If the goal is some endgame with China, my fear as someone — I’m probably the only governor who’s been a U.S. diplomat in Iraq — I have serious fear that the Europeans who have been some of our closest allies for generations — the Canadians, the Mexicans — certainly voices within their political sphere is going to say, 'wait a second, why are we playing hard with the U.S., why don’t we talk to China,'” Meyer said during his Thursday appearance on NewsNation’s “On Balance” with host Leland Vittert. 

“That’s really bad for America if we want to win this,” Meyer, who was an embedded diplomat in Iraq for a year, added Friday. 

Meyer said the U.S. needs to be “very clear” what China’s “evil behavior” is it's trying to stop and “whether it’s a tariff or how some other lever that we’re pulling really get us to an endgame.” 

Small and large businesses in Delaware, he said, are concerned "that there really is no endgame,” the governor said Thursday.

“That it’s going to go on and on for weeks and months and years and really be harmful to local economies like ours,” he added.  

The concerns about economic uncertainty have increased since Trump instituted his sweeping tariffs this week, before pausing most of them on Wednesday. The same day, he increased the tariffs on Chinese goods coming into the U.S. by 125 percent. That was on top of an already implemented a 20 percent duty on China’s items from earlier this year. 

China announced Friday that it would retaliate with a 125 percent tariff. 

The Delaware governor said the administration has spiked “uncertainty” in his state among investors, interest groups and business owners with the rollercoaster tariff policy. 

“There’s no certainty and the one thing any business owner knows is uncertainty is bad. It’s bad for our economy and bad for our communities,” Meyer said on NewsNation. 

“If the president were to come out and say, and the federal government would say, 'here’s the tariffs we’re doing, here’s why we’re doing them, and here’s the long term financial picture when we do them,'” Meyer stated, “I think we’d all be very appreciative of that. We see a strategy that’s not clear or changing every day.”