Alex Padilla U.S. Senator for California

WASHINGTON, D.C. — During an interview with MeidasTouch’s Ben Meiselas, U.S. Senator Alex Padilla (D-Calif.) sharply criticized President Trump’s chaotic, harmful tariffs that will raise prices for millions of working families and cost California farmers billions. Padilla highlighted Trump’s broken promise to lower costs and denounced the President’s recent comments that he “couldn’t care less” if his tariffs raise prices.

• MEISELAS: Let’s break down what’s going on, first in kind of California with the farming situation. We’ve got Senator Alex Padilla here, Senator from California. Senator, we’re seeing a lot of Trump voters now saying they regret this. This is absolute chaos. They didn’t vote for this. What are you hearing, Senator?

• PADILLA: Hearing a lot of the same fury, a lot of the same frustration, and people coming to the realization Donald Trump lied to them. His whole campaign, his platform, his promises were all a lie, and it’s coming home to roost.

• PADILLA: Because you’re right, whether it’s the tariffs — we know who’s going to pay the price ultimately. It’s not foreign countries as Donald claimed. It’s going to be working families here in the country when prices will go up. This is a President who said he was gonna tackle inflation and bring down prices on day one. The opposite has happened. Prices are up in all categories.

• PADILLA: The one thing he has said that’s truthful, just this last weekend, he says he doesn’t care. He “can care less,” specifically, is what he said, if prices go up. Because they’re going up on everything from cars to fruits and vegetables and everything in between.

As President Trump and other Republicans have admitted that the tariffs will cause “short-term pain,” Padilla underscored that these tariffs will exacerbate the affordability crisis and cripple the stock market, depleting Americans’ pensions and retirement savings.

• PADILLA: It was a bait and switch. He promised to lower costs. Costs are going up. This short-term pain? Only now he’s realizing what it means, but the pain is real. So my colleagues on both sides of the aisle — there’s inconvenience and there’s pain. … Pain is being left homeless, which a lot of people will be when they lose their jobs or can’t afford to pay the rent because of Donald Trump’s policies.

• PADILLA: Another impact of his tariffs — on again, off again and on again, on again prices going up is what’s happening with the stock market. Now I don’t say this because I’m sympathetic to traders on Wall Street. I bring this up because so many people’s pensions, so many people’s 401(k), so many people’s retirement savings are tied to the economy. So when the stock market crashes, that’s literally dollars that you no longer have for retirement. It’s gone up in smoke. But once again, if you ask Donald Trump what he thinks of all this, he could care less.

Padilla also blasted Trump for illogically and irresponsibly opening up dams and flooding the Central Valley, claiming to “turn on the water” to fight the Los Angeles fires after they had already been contained and using up resources farmers need in the dry summer months.

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