President Trump’s hardline tariffs are rattling New York’s economy and have drawn widespread condemnation from local elected leaders, but Mayor Adams refrained Tuesday from criticizing them and said he actually doesn’t “understand them” despite spending last weekend researching the issue.
“I must have spent, you know, a great part of the weekend reading up on tariffs, and I still don’t understand them,” Adams said during his weekly “off topic” news conference at City Hall when asked about Trump’s trade levies.
Still, Adams — who’s facing a perilous path to reelection this year after Trump’s Justice Department secured a dismissal of his corruption indictment in a manner many say has left him beholden to the president’s agenda — suggested he wanted to give Trump the benefit of the doubt on tariffs.
“One thing I know: Whatever we were doing, it was not working,” said Adams, who weeks before his case was dropped committed he wouldn’t publicly criticize Trump. “Affordability is an issue for everyday New Yorkers … I want to spend more time of understanding these tariff conversations, but there are greater minds than my mind that understand this more than I do, and I’m not even going to try to act like I’m an expert.”
Instead of his usual suit, Adams appeared at Tuesday’s news conference donning a white t-shirt featuring an American flag beneath the phrase: “In God We Trust.”
Before the tariff issue came up, Adams was asked about his shirt and replied it was a reference to the quashing of his indictment, a dismissal that even the judge who presided over his case said “smacks” of a political “bargain” as it came after the president’s team told the mayor they expected him to assist more with immigration crackdowns in New York.
“I went through hell for 15 months and all I had was God, you know, God and my family and those who understood that I did nothing wrong,” Adams said while elaborating on his fashion choice.
Trump’s announcement last week that his administration will slap tariffs of at least 10% on all foreign-made goods have sent shockwaves across the country, with stock markets and retirement accounts plunging in value as economists say the trade levies will result in drastic price hikes on various popular consumer goods.
The U.S. takes in trillions of dollars in goods every year, and the tariffs are paid by importers in the country. Importers, in turn, typically pass on the cost of the tariffs on consumers, resulting in a heavy financial burden on regular Americans.
Trump has insisted the tariffs will pay off in the long-run by boosting American industries. But U.S. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, the Empire State’s top Democrat in Congress, said the tariffs are “one of the worst things that’s happened to New York in a very long time” and predicted they could result in as many as 260,000 jobs being lost in the city, which depends heavily on international trade.
COMMENT FROM EXPERT
Since his indictment dismissal, Adams has increasingly embraced attributes of Trump world, including urging all New Yorkers last week to read “Government Gangsters,” a book written by the president’s FBI director, Kash Patel, that has been widely criticized for regurgitating pro-Trump conspiracy theories about a “deep state.”
Adams, who’s seeking reelection as an independent after dropping out of the Democratic mayoral primary upon his case being killed, said Tuesday others in his party should take a page from him in playing ball with Trump and his team.
“Get over it, he’s the president now, he’s the president,” he said. “We got to get over this, I got to deliver for our city, and that’s what I need to do, and all those who are saying, ‘just fight him, resist, resist, resist’ — I’m not part of the resist movement, I’m part of the produce movement.”
