{"id":8232,"date":"2025-04-13T19:19:06","date_gmt":"2025-04-13T19:19:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/khanna-on-trump-white-house-they-need-to-have-a-21st-century-understanding-of-the-economy\/"},"modified":"2025-04-13T19:19:06","modified_gmt":"2025-04-13T19:19:06","slug":"khanna-on-trump-white-house-they-need-to-have-a-21st-century-understanding-of-the-economy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/khanna-on-trump-white-house-they-need-to-have-a-21st-century-understanding-of-the-economy\/","title":{"rendered":"Khanna on Trump White House: \u2018They need to have a 21st century understanding of the economy\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Rep. Ro Khanna took sharp aim at President Donald Trump\u2019s sweeping tariff policies on Sunday, warning they\u2019ll raise prices on American electronics rather than bring manufacturing jobs back to the United States.<\/p>\n

\u201cI understand they have 19th century policies of McKinley, but they need to have a 21st century understanding of the economy,\u201d Khanna (D-Calif) said on CBS\u2019 \u201cFace the Nation, referencing the Trump administration\u2019s protectionist trade approach and his admiration for President William McKinley. Critics of Trump’s tariff policy have argued that the lessons of McKinley’s 19th century America are not applicable today.<\/p>\n

The California Democrat said the White House\u2019s plan to revive domestic manufacturing is already unraveling, pointing to the Trump administration’s decision to exempt smartphones and computers from his tariff regime<\/a> after financial markets spiraled into chaos last week over his sweeping global tariffs announcement.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey were chaotic and they were totally haphazard,\u201d Khanna said. \u201cSo you had Howard Lutnick on, saying that we were going to bring manufacturing back, and electronics manufacturing back, to the United States, and they realized suddenly that that wasn’t going to happen.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cActually, the iPhone price would go up to 1,700 or 2,000 dollars,\u201d he continued. \u201cAnd by the way, if that manufacturing moved, it would probably move to Malaysia or Vietnam.\u201d<\/p>\n

Khanna, whose district includes Silicon Valley, argued that if the U.S. really wants to compete with China and rebuild advanced manufacturing, it needs investment \u2014 not tariffs.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you want to bring back the manufacturing to the United States, you have to invest in the workforce, you have to have some investment tax credit for the facilities, and you have to be able to buy the things we make in the United States,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n

Khanna\u2019s remarks come ahead of a speech he is expected to give<\/a> on Monday in Ohio \u2014 Vice President JD Vance\u2019s home state \u2014 where he plans to cast Vance and Trump as \u201cstubbornly cling[ing] to 19th-century dogma in a 21st-century world\u201d with their approach to foreign and domestic policy. The speech also is part of a broader push led by Khanna to position himself as a counterweight to Vance.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is not something the president will be able to spin,\u201d Khanna said. \u201cEither we’re going to see new factories come or we’re not, and tariffs just aren’t going to do that. \u201c<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Rep. Ro Khanna took sharp aim at President Donald Trump\u2019s sweeping tariff policies on Sunday, warning they\u2019ll raise prices on American electronics rather than bring manufacturing jobs back to the United States. \u201cI understand they have 19th century policies of McKinley, but they need to have a 21st century understanding of the economy,\u201d Khanna (D-Calif) […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8232","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-congress"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8232","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8232"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8232\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8232"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8232"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8232"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}