(760) 884-4590 is a Research Call

Listen
Transcript Hi, this is your representative in Congress, Mike Levin at 202-225-3906. I'm holding a telephone town hall right now to answer your questions and address your concerns. You'll be able to ask a question by pressing Star three at any time during the call. Just stay on the line. The call will begin momentarily. Please hold while we connect you to your Access Live event. This Access Live event is currently in progress. Please note that this call may be monitored, recorded or rebroadcast. And $2800 more a year to buy the same goods as a result of the tariffs. And you know, the average household makes 70, $80,000 a year. $2,800 is a very significant hardship. It's also important to recognize that the tax increase, the effective tax increase from the tariffs is what economists call very, very regressive. Meaning the burden of that tax is borne to a much greater degree by folks that have lower incomes. They just devote a higher share of their budget to imported goods. You know, all consumers are hurt, low, middle and high income, but it's the lower income households that get hit the most. Of course, the tariffs are also a tax on businesses. It's not intuitive to many people, but many businesses rely on imported goods to produce whatever it is that they're producing. And so if they have to pay a higher price for those imported products because of the tariff, that cuts into their profitability and makes it less likely that they'll hire workers and in some cases they'll even begin to lay off workers. And given how high the tariffs are with China in particular, this could be very disruptive because trade between the two countries is now starting to shut down. So even you may not be even to get a product that you might need at any price just because of how prohibitive they are. And that means jobs. And so obviously if we go from, you know, the very strong job growth that that was occurring before the year began to now much weaker and then if we start to see some job loss, which is entirely plausible, again many scenarios here, but under many scenarios likely lose jobs. That also will undermine consumer spending and weigh on American households to a significant degree. The other thing I'd say is, you know, obviously the, the hit to the businesses is also reflected in lower stock prices and higher interest rates. And that hurts all Americans. Low, middle and high income. The 30 year fixed rate mortgage is now going for just about 7%. Lots of reasons for that, but one of the key reasons is concerns among investors about the safe haven status of the United States going back to the tariffs and other policies that are being pursued. And, of course, the stock market is down. Even with the recent improvement over the last few days, late last week and early this, we're still down about 10%. And that goes to 401k plans and people's retirement and is a hardship. So I can go on and on and on. But there are many, many channels through which the tariffs affect American households, American consumers. And I'll end by saying American households know this. We got a data point today, earlier today from the Conference Board. The Conference Board is a trade group that has been running a survey of consumers going back into the 70s. They do this every month, and they ask a set of questions. And based on that, they construct an index that plunged in the month of April. It's been falling now steadily for the past four or five months as it became clear that we would.
Date Blocked June 22, 2022
Call Activity Low Last detected 5 days ago

Just last week, 8,255 people got Nomorobo protection!

The number of frustrating robocalls is exploding, but there are more options than ever to fight back

Nomorobo is an excellent service and worthy of our Editors' Choice award.

It's a problem that gets worse every year...but a new website promises to change all that.

...life without that nuisance we know as robocalls has a nice ring to it.

A groundbreaking solution to the problem...I'm positive it's going to work.

If you have a phone, you probably get robocalls...but relief may soon be available...

...there is little you can do to stop them...but new technology [is] coming soon...

...propose[d] some high-tech strategies to finally stop automated sales calls.

Is there a hero among us who can rise up and build something to foil the dreaded robocall?

...may have solved one of the perpetual annoyances of living in the telephone age.

Robo-calls, meet the terminator.

...those illegal prerecorded messages hawking everything from timeshares in the Bahamas to free money.