China plans to raise tariffs on $60 billion of U.S. goods to as high as 25 percent starting June 1.
- China plans tariffs in retaliation to U.S.
- Schumer says U.S. has to continue to be tough on China
- Despite stock market dropping, Schumer says it tends to go up and down
The announcement came Monday, days after the Trump administration announced it was doing the same on $200 billion worth of products from China.
"China's taken huge advantage of us," U.S. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-NY, said. "There are literally tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of jobs from Western New York that over the last 20 years have been taken from us. So being tough with China is good."
Schumer has generally supported the administration’s stance on China — including when the countries traded tariff increases last year.
"Let's see how it plays out," he said. "It's a lose-lose and if we let China keep taking advantage of us, we'll lose more wealth, more money and more jobs than if we successfully go after them."
But he believes the president has made mistakes in the process.
"I don't agree on Canada. I don't agree on Mexico. I don't agree on Europe and if he took those away we'd have more success and bring China to a close more quickly, but going after China, I think we've let China get away with murder, both Bush and Obama, Democrat and Republican, so we've got to go after them," Schumer said.
The minority leader said if the administration worked better with the rest of the world, a unified group of countries could focus on stopping China from stealing jobs and undercutting prices. Meanwhile, he didn't appear particularly concerned as the stock market plummeted Monday.
"If the last few days are any indication, it goes down then it goes back up," Schumer said. "On bad news it goes down. On good news it goes back up."