CNBC’s Jim Cramer: Trump’s Tariffs Make Me ‘Feel Like a Sucker’

CNBC host Jim Cramer said Thursday that although he doesn’t consider himself a “free trader” (he prefers the term “fair trader”), he still feels “like a sucker” after seeing the Trump administration’s massive tariffs.

Cramer, who had repeatedly warned Donald Trump not to institute his tariffs plan, appeared on CNN to discuss the fallout from Wednesday’s market-crushing announcement on what the president dubbed “Liberation Day.”

“I’m let down because yes, I’m not a free trader. I’m a fair trader,” Cramer told anchor Erin Burnett. “I always have been from the days when you worked with me at CNBC. And what I was hoping was that a coordinated thing where if you are charging us 20 percent, we charge you 20%. Instead of a car where we’re only making you pay two and a half and you’re not letting us in, we try to get things better.”

Trump’s tariffs, some of which were slapped on islands with zero humans but plenty of penguins, reached as a high as 46 percent and 49 percent for Vietnamese and Cambodian imports, respectively. Experts immediately questioned how those tariff amounts came to be, with Cramer’s CNBC colleague Steve Liesman writing that Trump “straight up lied when he said the US is now charging tariffs at half the rate other countries charge.”

“The numbers do not make any sense,” said Cramer, who admitted he “really believed” Trump would’ve gone with a more grounded rationale for the percentages.

“And what bothered me, Erin, was that they really did–over and over again–the president said, ‘Listen, it’s going to be reciprocal. So, you do it, we do it.’ And that was going to be so good. And I really believed in it,“ Cramer said.

“And I feel like a sucker tonight because I am not a free trader and I do not believe in free trade. And I was just as tough, if not tougher, than his people,” he went on.

“But they screwed it up and they really made–they did it a totally ill-advised way. And I was very let down as someone who really, truly believes that free trade is awful for the American working person. This is what they came up with? Jeez, come on! Have some gumption. Have some math.”

His comments marked a stark contrast from the way he discussed the plan during his show Thursday, which was likely taped before Trump had finished unveiling the plan.

“I’m going Mr. Brightside,” he said. “I’m doing it because I think we’ll be making too big a deal of these tariffs tomorrow, because we have been talking about how horrible they will be for ages. And regular viewers of this show know that.”

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