Although President Donald Trump and his White House are trying to spin his decision to back off slapping Canada and Mexico with massive tariffs as a triumph, Rep. Pat Ryan (D-NY) is pouring cold water on their exuberance.
Appearing on CNN, Ryan said that he agreed with a Wall Street Journal editorial that said that the president backed down from his threats against Mexico and Canada without gaining any significant concessions from the two countries.
"It's actually a rare moment that I agree with the Wall Street Journal that Trump got rolled here," he said. "The supposed wins that he's trumpeting and his press secretary is trumpeting were already in place. I mean, you guys have reported on this as well. These were agreed to in the previous administration."
He was referencing agreements from both countries to allocate troops to their borders with the U.S. — heralded as victories by Trump on Monday, but agreed to long before the tariff discussions.
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Ryan then hammered Trump for stressing out small businesses by leveling trade threats against America's top two trading partners, all while allowing X owner Elon Musk to take direct control over the United States government's payment system.
"The president of the United States, in a pursuit of power for himself and more wealth for the folks in the front row of his swearing-in, ... is hurting everybody else, hurting the American people, blustering and making threats, sowing chaos and division, all while he's allowing the most powerful and rich person in the history of the world, Elon Musk, to have access to our personal private data in an unprecedented, unconstitutional way," he said. "And we need to be out there talking about that."
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