Trump battered by Chamber of Commerce VP with numbers showing he will kill small businesses with his Mexico tariffs

Appearing on CNN on Friday afternoon, the Executive Vice President of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce made an appeal to Donald Trump to back off his plans to slam Mexico with stiff tariffs if they don't halt what the president perceives as an immigration problem, saying small businesses will be devastated.

Speaking with host Brooke Baldwin, Neil Bradley -- who serves as the Chamber's chief policy officer -- said the president's plan is misguided and that businesses are already reeling.

"So the chamber said that the Trump administration has to -- must abandon this policy -- you tell me why," the CNN host asked.

"Well, you were just talking about it -- the jobs report this morning, 75,000 jobs, well below what we all anticipated, what we'd like to see," he replied. "The imposition of these tariffs is already dampening the economy and if we went forward and he [Trump] implements the tariffs it would be devastating to the economy."

"Here is one statistic for you," he continued. "Small businesses are the engine of job creation in the United States. Of the importers that would pay the new 5 percent tariffs on Monday, if they go forward, 40 percent of those who would pay the tariffs are small businesses with less than 50 employees each. We can't afford to do that to America's small businesses. We can't afford to do it to our economy."

Asked who would bear the brunt of the increased costs, business owners or consumers, Bradley explained, "Both. All of us, right? So in some instances it is a business importing something into a finished product, so auto manufacturers all over the United States import parts from Mexico that go into the plants so that the automaker would pay the tax first and then ultimately the consumer would pay it on the car -- in the car show parking lot."

"All of us who go buy avocados or tequila for summertime margaritas, we'll pay that tax," he added.

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