'Absolutely deadly': Senate Finance member shreds Trump White House's 'nutty' math

A member of the Senate Finance Committee told CNN viewers Thursday night swiftly smacked down President Donald Trump's method to determine tariffs — calling it "nutty."

Sen. Tina Smith (D-MN) joined "Anderson Cooper 360" on Thursday and called it a "disastrous day for our economy and for our Americans" as the stock markets plunged, sending millions of retirement accounts spiraling downward with it.

Smith pointed to economists at JPMorgan Chase who dubbed the tariff announcement the "largest tax increase that we've seen in this country since the 1960s."

Smith said no one in her home state has "any idea what's going on" but that they see "nothing" in what Trump is doing that is giving them "any certainty about what's next."

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The senator pointed to mixed messages in the Trump administration as billionaires contradict each other on whether Americans should even take the tariffs "seriously."

"This uncertainty is absolutely deadly," she warned, pointing to Minnesota farmers who now don't know how much to pay for their own input costs.

When asked about her knowledge of the methodology the White House used to impose the sweeping tariffs, Smith shredded the Trump administration's understanding of economics.

"The president seems to believe that anytime we have a trade deficit that that is bad for America and it is good for the countries that are buying our products," she began. "And it seems as if what they have done is put together some sort of nutty formula that identifies what this tariff should be country by country based on this formula."

She continued, "That doesn't make any sense to me and I don't think it makes any sense to the markets, to the capital markets who are looking at this and voting very clearly with what's happening with the stock market today. And understand, this is peoples' retirements; it's their 401(K)'s that have just gone down precipitously. And it's not just one bad day. It has been a really bad couple of months for Americans and Minnesotans."

Watch the clip below or at this link.