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Maria Bartaromo is with us, legendary in the financial space and broadcasting an all-around amazing person. Maria, thank you so much for joining the program.

Charlie, thank you so much for having me.

So, Maria, there's a lot of confusion, some could say, around the tariff issue.

You understand financial markets. You talk to more CEOs than anybody and lawmakers.

What is the latest with the tariff situation as of today, Wednesday, April 16th, as we are talking,

Maria?

Well, you know, I mean, it's interesting.

It's funny that, you know, you're saying, what is the situation today?

Because, of course, we know that it appears that it feels like it's constantly changing.

But the truth is, you know, President Trump has had plans in place from day one.

And he's trying right now to categorize things in different buckets, frankly.

I mean, to make it as simple as possible, he started this, you know, this exercise out by focusing on the fentanyl coming into the country, killing 100,000 Americans a year.

And so, you know, he went to the countries that, you know,

he was looking to help. And he put a 20% tariff on them for failing to really stop the problem.

And, you know, that was initially the first reason. And then, you know, it's also a revenue

generator. He's also raising money into U.S. coffers know, it's also a revenue generator.

He's also raising money into U.S. coffers.

So there's that.

He's talking about $2 billion a day.

Of course, that's terrific knowing our debt and deficits.

Then he's talking about bringing manufacturing to America.

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