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Just Another Orange Monday · Pod Save America

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Speaker 4: Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau.
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Speaker 3: I'm Jon Lovett.
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Speaker 1: I'm Tommy Detour.
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Speaker 4: On today's show, we're going to talk about Trump saying
1:44
Speaker 4: he'd love to send American citizens to the gulag in
1:46
Speaker 4: El Salvador as his administration is fighting court orders to
1:49
Speaker 4: bring back a man the government admits they sent there
1:52
Speaker 4: by mistake. That case is now headed to the Supreme Court.
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Speaker 4: We're also going to talk about how the resistance to
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Speaker 4: Trump is finally showing some life. There were huge protests
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Speaker 4: all over the country this weekend. Barack Obama also spoke
2:02
Speaker 4: up for the first time since Trump's inauguration. Then Lovett
2:05
Speaker 4: talks to Orrin Cass, one of the intellectual godfathers of
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Speaker 4: Trump's tariff regime.
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Speaker 3: I called him the architect. He didn't like that.
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Speaker 2: He didn't like it.
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Speaker 4: Big, big week for him.
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Speaker 5: Yeah.
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Speaker 4: Big week for him.
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Speaker 2: Yeah.
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Speaker 4: Speaking of tariffs, we will start there since that is
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Speaker 4: the biggest story in the world right now. Our last
2:21
Speaker 4: pod together was right before Liberation Day. And boy, has
2:25
Speaker 4: that left a mark.
2:27
Speaker 6: Yeah.
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Speaker 4: Remember, remember life before Liberation Day? Barely.
2:31
Speaker 3: Liberated some stool for some traders.
2:38
Speaker 4: Stool. Stool. Wow.
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Speaker 3: I don't know what else to say.
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Speaker 4: Speaking of stool, here's just a small sampling of recent headlines.
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Speaker 4: Wall Street Journal. Trump's tariffs wipe out over $ 6 trillion
2:51
Speaker 4: on Wall Street in epic two-day route. The Economist. Trump's
2:56
Speaker 4: trade war threatens a global recession. Fox Business, after Trump tariffs, J.P.
3:00
Speaker 4: Morgan raises chance of recession to 60%. CNBC, quote, this
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Speaker 4: is the Trump recession, CEOs say, with price increases, job
3:08
Speaker 4: losses coming. Seems bad, but our boy isn't worried. Trump
3:11
Speaker 4: spent the weekend hosting a Saudi-backed golf tournament at his
3:14
Speaker 4: beach club in Florida. And good news, the White House
3:16
Speaker 4: put out a statement saying the president did win his
3:19
Speaker 4: second round matchup of the senior club championship.
3:23
Speaker 2: Senior club.
3:23
Speaker 4: I don't know what happened in the finals.
3:25
Speaker 3: They showed his swing. His swing looks like dog shit.
3:28
Speaker 7: Really?
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Speaker 2: I didn't see it.
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Speaker 4: Then on Monday, after China announced retaliatory tariffs on the U.S.,
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Speaker 4: Trump announced yet more tariffs on China, totaling 104% if
3:38
Speaker 4: they don't back down. It seems like Trump's certainly not.
3:41
Speaker 4: Here's what he said to reporters on Air Force One
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Speaker 4: on his way home from golfing on Sunday when asked
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Speaker 4: whether there was a level of market pain that would
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Speaker 4: make him reverse course.
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Speaker 3: I think your question is so stupid. I don't want
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Speaker 3: anything to go down.
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Speaker 8: But sometimes you have to take medicine to fix something.
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Speaker 8: I don't think inflation is going to be a big
4:02
Speaker 8: deal because if you look at me, I took in
4:05
Speaker 8: hundreds of billions of dollars. This is not new to me.
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Speaker 4: You know, look, sometimes you have to take your medicine, guys.
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Speaker 3: Tim Cook is like, what do I got to do?
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Speaker 3: I'll put Ted Lasso in a MAGA hat. I'll fuck
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Speaker 3: a woman. What does it take? Help me.
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Speaker 4: I can't be selling $ 30, 000 iPhones in.
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Speaker 1: The United States, please. Saying your question is so stupid.
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Speaker 1: It's just, it's still funny to me.
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Speaker 3: It's great.
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Speaker 4: Guys, general reactions to the insanity of last week. And
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Speaker 4: what do you think Trump's plan is here? There seems
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Speaker 4: to be conflicting views coming from the White House. I
4:35
Speaker 4: know you're surprised on whether he wants to negotiate and
4:40
Speaker 4: what he ultimately wants out of this trade war. He
4:42
Speaker 4: was also on Monday in the Oval Office with Bibi Netanyahu.
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Speaker 4: There was a press avail and someone said, are these
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Speaker 4: going to be permanent? Or are you going to negotiate?
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Speaker 4: And he said, they can be permanent and I can negotiate.
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Speaker 2: Loves of both hands.
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Speaker 4: What do you guys think?
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Speaker 1: I assume it's primarily a negotiating strategy. I guess he's
5:00
Speaker 1: going to cut some deals. But again, the complicating factor
5:03
Speaker 1: is the issue doesn't seem to be the tariffs. It's
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Speaker 1: the trade deficit. I'm not totally sure how you fix that.
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Speaker 3: Well, it's a hard policy. Well, you can't fix it
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Speaker 3: overnight for sure. It takes time.
5:12
Speaker 8: Yeah.
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Speaker 3: Well, look, all these things are in conflict. If tariffs
5:15
Speaker 3: are a means of reshoring a bunch of domestic industry,
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Speaker 3: then they're not a negotiating tool. If they're a means
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Speaker 3: of raising a bunch of revenue, then they're not a
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Speaker 3: negotiating tool. If they're a negotiating tool, they can't do
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Speaker 3: both of those other things. I will say, I was
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Speaker 3: thinking about our conversation last week, pre-liberation day. We were
5:33
Speaker 3: in a pre-liberation day mindset. And we were talking like,
5:36
Speaker 3: it's strange that the markets don't seem to be behaving
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Speaker 3: as if this is real.
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Speaker 4: I remember you saying that.
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Speaker 3: And I was like, now they are.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, now they are.
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Speaker 4: Now they are.
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Speaker 3: Yeah.
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Speaker 1: But I mean, if it is a negotiating strategy, the
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Speaker 1: process is making him very, very unpopular overseas or abroad everywhere.
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Speaker 1: I mean, look at what's happening in Canada. The prime minister,
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Speaker 1: Mark Carney, is running on fighting Trump. And this issue
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Speaker 1: has revived the Liberal Party, which was dead in the
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Speaker 1: water after nine years of Trudeau. There's also no clarity.
6:02
Speaker 1: Like the tariffs are on, they're off, they're delayed, they're doubled.
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Speaker 2: We're golfing.
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Speaker 1: No one seems to know what's going to happen next.
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Speaker 1: And there's no prioritization. We're tariffing everyone. Like in the
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Speaker 1: Oval Office today with NetYahoo, This reporter's like, do you
6:15
Speaker 1: think you might get rid of the tariffs on Israel
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Speaker 1: since they got rid of all of theirs on you?
6:19
Speaker 1: And he's like, no, no, I don't think so. And
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Speaker 1: then we're tariffing like the Canadians. We're tariffing Lesotho. We're
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Speaker 1: trying to destroy the country of Lesotho.
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Speaker 4: Lesotho, Derek Thompson wrote about this. And I think for,
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Speaker 4: because what we didn't talk about was the trade deficit part,
6:32
Speaker 4: because we didn't know about the whole crazy formula last week.
6:36
Speaker 4: So for people who might not understand what we mean
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Speaker 4: by the trade deficit and how it's based on that,
6:41
Speaker 4: Derek- wrote a piece in The Atlantic about this. He said,
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Speaker 4: The notion that taxing Lesotho gemstones is necessary for the U.S.
7:08
Speaker 4: to add steel jobs in Ohio is so absurd that
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Speaker 4: I briefly lost consciousness in the middle of writing this sentence.
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Speaker 3: There's also this whole idea that a trade deficit means
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Speaker 3: other countries are screwing you. I'm not an economist. I
7:23
Speaker 3: talked to Oren about this a bit. There's a lot
7:24
Speaker 3: of reasons we have trade deficits with countries. Sometimes it's
7:27
Speaker 3: because we import their fossil fuels. Sometimes it's because they
7:30
Speaker 3: do have unfair practices to try to using their own
7:33
Speaker 3: industrial policies to grow their manufacturing base.
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Speaker 4: Overall, it's because we're the biggest, richest country around. And
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Speaker 4: so like, how do we expect smaller, poor countries to
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Speaker 4: buy more stuff from us than we buy from them?
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Speaker 3: And what, listen, I don't know if this is, I
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Speaker 3: don't know if you guys are history buffs, but I
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Speaker 3: don't think of Vietnam as a country we've been getting,
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Speaker 3: taking shit from, you know, like view it as a
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Speaker 3: place like, finally, we're going to get back at those Vietnamese.
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Speaker 3: What are you talking about?
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Speaker 1: To me, I'm glad you brought up Vietnam because the
8:02
Speaker 1: most confusing part of this is the China piece to me,
8:04
Speaker 1: because if China is the primary concern, if China is
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Speaker 1: the problem, Why aren't we focused on China? Why are
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Speaker 1: we tariffing the shit out of Vietnam? Because in Trump's
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Speaker 1: first term, the tariffs on China convinced a bunch of
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Speaker 1: industries to slowly move manufacturing to Vietnam.
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Speaker 4: We liked that.
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Speaker 1: The Biden administration in 2023, they've signed a big security
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Speaker 1: deal with Vietnam because everyone used Vietnam as a critical
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Speaker 1: partner in dealing with China. But Trump just slapped a
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Speaker 1: 46% tariff on Vietnam that will put 5.5% of the
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Speaker 1: country's entire GDP at risk. We're going to crush their economy.
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Speaker 8: Why?
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Speaker 3: And all the U.S.
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Speaker 1: Consumers that are buying products like Nike shoes, which makes
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Speaker 1: half of their shoes in Vietnam, are going to pay
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Speaker 1: a 46% tariff on every single sneaker?
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Speaker 4: Got to make those shoes here.
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Speaker 3: Everyone is just sort of intellectualizing what is like Trump's
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Speaker 3: sort of lizard brain 1980s idea of what tariffs are
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Speaker 3: for done in as stupid a way as possible. It
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Speaker 3: fails on its own terms, right? Like we're not isolating China.
9:02
Speaker 3: We're uniting the world against us. There's no strategy here.
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Speaker 3: We don't even know what people are supposed to do.
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Speaker 3: other than reduce their trade deficit, which is a long-term problem.
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Speaker 3: A lot of the governments aren't explicitly responsible for the
9:13
Speaker 3: exact amount of the trade deficit. Like there's no like,
9:18
Speaker 3: This started with Canada and Mexico where he was like, oh,
9:21
Speaker 3: it's about fentanyl and it's about immigration or whatever kind
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Speaker 3: of set of issues it was.
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Speaker 4: It's also not protecting critical industries. We could have had
9:29
Speaker 4: exceptions on certain products from certain countries, like tariffs on
9:32
Speaker 4: things like bananas, coffee, avocados. We're not making those here.
9:36
Speaker 3: We're not making bananas.
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Speaker 2: Famously.
9:38
Speaker 4: We're not doing that here. And then, of course, now
9:41
Speaker 4: you've got some people who are like, just don't buy coffee.
9:43
Speaker 4: We shouldn't buy coffee anyway.
9:44
Speaker 5: Yeah.
9:45
Speaker 4: Have fruit juice instead. It's like, I hate to tell
9:47
Speaker 4: you about the fruits. That's also a problem as well.
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Speaker 4: Some of the rationale here is out of fucking control.
9:53
Speaker 3: The number of conservatives that spent last year saying that
9:57
Speaker 3: Joe Biden is driving up the cost of eggs and
9:59
Speaker 3: everything comes down to... to the cost of eggs that
10:01
Speaker 3: are now these sort of zen-like... anti-materialist kind of people.
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Speaker 3: It's incredible. There's too many things. We've all become too
10:10
Speaker 3: obsessed with things.
10:12
Speaker 2: And oil and gas got a carve-out, by the way. Surprise, surprise.
10:15
Speaker 1: The biggest industry of donors to the Trump administration, to
10:17
Speaker 1: his campaigns, got a carve-out. But their little goofy-ass math
10:20
Speaker 1: equation excludes services. So financial services, digital services.
10:25
Speaker 3: Cloud computing, tourism, that's not part of the math.
10:28
Speaker 2: And that's where the U.S. has a trade surplus with
10:30
Speaker 2: a lot of countries. But we just decided not to
10:32
Speaker 2: put it in.
10:33
Speaker 5: So.
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Speaker 4: Endgame here, like could he negotiate down a bunch of
10:36
Speaker 4: tariffs and then declare victory when it's not really a
10:40
Speaker 4: victory just to save face? Yes, I guess you could
10:43
Speaker 4: see that as an outcome, a very typical Trump outcome.
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Speaker 4: He says, oh, I finally– I told the Vietnamese this
10:50
Speaker 4: is what I'm demanding and I got them. But I
10:52
Speaker 4: think the damage is already done and the– a lot
10:56
Speaker 4: of these CEOs and economists who are predicting recession or
11:00
Speaker 4: at least predicting a downturn– They're predicting that based on
11:03
Speaker 4: the idea that he may pull back some of this.
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Speaker 4: Not that it could get even worse, right? Companies are
11:10
Speaker 4: already canceling plans to build new factories. They're already announcing layoffs,
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Speaker 4: which is just funny because I thought building new factories
11:16
Speaker 4: here was the whole point of the tariffs. But they're
11:18
Speaker 4: already starting to cancel that. So there's no certainty. And
11:21
Speaker 4: he's already doing damage. Also, a lot of the CEOs
11:24
Speaker 4: that CNBC was polling and talking to They have a
11:28
Speaker 4: real fear that there's just going to be a boycott
11:30
Speaker 4: of American goods all over the world because of the sentiment,
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Speaker 4: the anti-American sentiment, and that's going to really hurt U.S.
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Speaker 5: Corporations.
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Speaker 3: Yeah, there's no, how are you supposed to plan? How
11:40
Speaker 3: are you supposed to decide where to invest or where
11:42
Speaker 3: not to invest? We have no idea what's going to
11:44
Speaker 3: happen next. And by the way, it matters that Congress
11:47
Speaker 3: is so feckless and pathetic in the face of all
11:49
Speaker 3: this because the tariff power belongs to Congress. They've given
11:53
Speaker 3: it to the president, even in this case, this is
11:55
Speaker 3: being abused on some sort of Specious emergency ground we
11:58
Speaker 3: have a we have a global emergency against every single
12:01
Speaker 3: country on earth at the same time So we have
12:03
Speaker 3: to declare a trade war and that's within the president's
12:05
Speaker 3: authority but regardless Congress could take this authority back and
12:08
Speaker 3: then you could have a policy that was set through
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Speaker 3: an actual democratic process like this is So much power
12:14
Speaker 3: for one fucking moron to be exerting over the whole
12:17
Speaker 3: world Who on earth would want to invest United States
12:19
Speaker 3: who on earth would view it as a good investment
12:21
Speaker 3: to try to plan your business? In terms of building
12:24
Speaker 3: jobs here. It's ridiculous.
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Speaker 1: I it's wonky and nerdy, but like the fact that
12:28
Speaker 1: he's doing this with the IEPA authority, which is just
12:30
Speaker 1: completely unprecedented. This is basically the authority we use to
12:34
Speaker 1: sanction foreign leaders and terrorists and stuff and bad people.
12:37
Speaker 1: It's never been used like this before. He's essentially creating
12:40
Speaker 1: a backdoor tax on every single consumer in the United
12:44
Speaker 1: States through this authority and just going around Congress.
12:47
Speaker 6: Yeah.
12:47
Speaker 4: And, you know, unsurprisingly, the most hardcore MAGA faithful are
12:51
Speaker 4: still on board with Trump's trade war, which I got
12:54
Speaker 4: to say has led to some real North Korean levels
12:57
Speaker 4: of propaganda coming out of the administration and state media.
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Speaker 4: Let's listen.
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Speaker 3: You have to just let him do what he's going
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Speaker 3: to do.
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Speaker 6: Give him some time because he is a businessman. He's
13:07
Speaker 6: a billionaire. He knows what he's doing.
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Speaker 7: And everything is working very smoothly. So the American people,
13:14
Speaker 7: they can be very smart. Take great comfort in that.
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Speaker 5: See, what's going to happen is robotics are going to
13:22
Speaker 5: replace the cheap labor that we've seen all across the world.
13:27
Speaker 5: Remember the army of millions and millions of human beings
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Speaker 5: screwing in little, little screws to make iPhones. That kind
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Speaker 5: of thing is going to come to America.
13:36
Speaker 8: Losing money costs you nothing.
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Speaker 2: This is just the reality of life.
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Speaker 4: Like, were you young and dumb?
13:42
Speaker 8: How much money did you lose?
13:43
Speaker 2: Everyone loses money.
13:45
Speaker 6: Everyone loses money. It costs you nothing.
13:46
Speaker 2: In fact, it builds quite a bit of character. In fact,
13:49
Speaker 2: you learn a lot of lessons actually.
13:50
Speaker 5: Wow.
13:51
Speaker 3: Just real, real, real white Lotus vibes there. There's a
13:54
Speaker 3: lot of like, um, uh, just, just close your eyes
13:56
Speaker 3: and think of England.
13:59
Speaker 4: So for those, for those who aren't watching, but listening, uh,
14:02
Speaker 4: that was Fox and friends asking us to give Trump time.
14:05
Speaker 4: That was treasury secretary, Scott Besant, who, um, you know,
14:10
Speaker 4: really killing it on TV, Scott Besson, by the way.
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Speaker 2: He looks waxed.
14:14
Speaker 3: If I see that guy in pride, I swear to
14:16
Speaker 3: fucking God, I'll spit in his feet.
14:18
Speaker 4: Scott Besson might be a smart guy. He does not
14:20
Speaker 4: quite have the reassuring presence that you want from a
14:24
Speaker 4: treasury secretary during a time of economic calamity caused by
14:28
Speaker 4: the administration that he's part of.
14:30
Speaker 3: Better than Lutnick. Who looks like he's about to steal.
14:33
Speaker 3: He looks like a used car salesman. It's unbelievable.
14:35
Speaker 4: So yeah, that's the commerce secretary trying to tell us
14:38
Speaker 4: that Americans can get excited because they're going to get
14:40
Speaker 4: jobs screwing in tiny screws into the iPhone.
14:43
Speaker 3: Once we close the schools, it'll be a good thing
14:44
Speaker 3: for the kids to do. Get their little hands in there.
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Speaker 4: Besson also said somewhere else, by the way, that all
14:54
Speaker 4: of the federal employees that are being laid off can
14:56
Speaker 4: be the source of new labor for these factories. So
14:58
Speaker 4: the cancer researchers that we're firing, they can make the iPhones,
15:02
Speaker 4: which is going to be fantastic. And the last person
15:04
Speaker 4: that was talking, that was Benny Johnson. Yeah, that's great stuff.
15:08
Speaker 4: That's the we don't really need money anymore.
15:11
Speaker 3: What is money? Ones and zeros.
15:14
Speaker 1: It's like a fucking Bitcoin seascaping libertarian nightmare. Jesse Water said,
15:19
Speaker 1: I'm not panicking because I'm not looking. My people are
15:21
Speaker 1: going to set me up. So when this thing rallies,
15:23
Speaker 1: I can say in your face, hey, man, glad you're rich.
15:27
Speaker 1: Glad you can buy the dip. A lot of people can't.
15:29
Speaker 1: But also, for all the stock traders out there, in
15:33
Speaker 1: the past, when the stock market took a hit, the
15:35
Speaker 1: Fed road to the rescue with a rate cut.
15:37
Speaker 2: And that is a lot more.
15:38
Speaker 1: Complicated this time because there's lingering inflation. It is not
15:41
Speaker 1: clear to me that they're willing to put that at risk.
15:45
Speaker 3: I was so like I just I was over the weekend.
15:48
Speaker 3: I just I've been trying to explain this feeling because
15:51
Speaker 3: I do think it explains, I think, the broader reaction
15:53
Speaker 3: a little bit, which is I just assumed based on
15:56
Speaker 3: nothing that, of course, there's going to be announcements of
15:59
Speaker 3: a couple of deals and Trump's going to save face
16:01
Speaker 3: and pull these things back like he did for Canada
16:04
Speaker 3: and for Mexico. Like, this has gone far enough. You know,
16:07
Speaker 3: rationality and reason would prevail. And then this morning, I
16:11
Speaker 3: was like, why did I think that? What evidence did
16:13
Speaker 3: I have to believe that other than just a fruitless hope?
16:16
Speaker 4: I mean, it's all crazy, of course, and nothing should
16:19
Speaker 4: be surprising coming from the Trump administration. But I got
16:21
Speaker 4: to say, like, we literally just had an election just
16:25
Speaker 4: a couple of months ago where Trump and the Republicans
16:29
Speaker 4: had been for four years bitching about inflation and higher
16:33
Speaker 4: prices and costs. And it was the whole election was
16:35
Speaker 4: based on that. And in three months, they go from
16:37
Speaker 4: that to being like, suck it up. Stop bitching about
16:41
Speaker 4: the economy. What do you need money for? Who cares
16:43
Speaker 4: about prices?
16:44
Speaker 1: And put in place a strategy that seems to be
16:46
Speaker 1: designed to address unemployment when that's not the problem anymore.
16:50
Speaker 1: Like this, none of these solutions fit the challenge.
16:52
Speaker 4: Which is not even like maybe years from now, the
16:56
Speaker 4: reshoring will happen. Right.
16:57
Speaker 3: But no, actually, no, not the way they're doing it.
17:01
Speaker 3: Like they're not, they're failing on the, like there is
17:05
Speaker 3: a critique of free trade that we all agree with.
17:08
Speaker 3: That's from the left for the ways in which it
17:11
Speaker 3: has enriched like a small percentage of wealthy business owners,
17:17
Speaker 3: stockholders at the expense of working people. There are whole
17:19
Speaker 3: parts of the country that exist in a kind of
17:21
Speaker 3: permanent recession because of the hollowing out of whole different
17:24
Speaker 3: parts of our economy. Joe Biden cared about this a lot.
17:28
Speaker 3: The inflation reduction act, the chips act, the infrastructure bill.
17:32
Speaker 3: A lot of this was about trying to create an
17:34
Speaker 3: industrial policy to reinvest in American manufacturing. This is just
17:40
Speaker 3: so stupid. that it is just, it is so counterproductive.
17:43
Speaker 3: I mean, there's all these reports out of Michigan of
17:45
Speaker 3: these auto parts suppliers and companies in the supply chain
17:49
Speaker 3: of making cars. They're just, we're going to have to
17:51
Speaker 3: shut down production because people cannot afford, they cannot afford
17:56
Speaker 3: to make these cars without raising the price by $ 10, 000, $ 20, 000.
17:59
Speaker 3: And consumers can't afford that big difference. They're just not
18:03
Speaker 3: going to buy fucking cars.
18:04
Speaker 4: Well, it's like what Tommy was just saying about Jesse Waters.
18:07
Speaker 4: Like all these people who are saying, Well, suck it up.
18:10
Speaker 4: You got to take some pain and take the medicine
18:13
Speaker 4: and this is going to work long term. They're all
18:15
Speaker 4: fucking rich.
18:15
Speaker 2: What if you're at fixed income?
18:16
Speaker 4: Yeah, they don't care.
18:17
Speaker 2: What if you're about to retire?
18:18
Speaker 4: Donald Trump and Scott Besson and all these people, they're
18:21
Speaker 4: fine with a little economic pain. Donald Trump, he's not
18:24
Speaker 4: running for re-election again.
18:26
Speaker 3: We have no idea what Donald Trump was doing with
18:27
Speaker 3: his money in the days before he knew he was
18:29
Speaker 3: going to fucking... set this bomb off in the global economy.
18:33
Speaker 4: Oh, yeah.
18:33
Speaker 1: The chart of the S & P today, someone tweeted,
18:35
Speaker 1: looked like an EKG just going up and down and
18:37
Speaker 1: up and down. The only people who benefit from that
18:38
Speaker 1: are traders and people with inside information. I would love,
18:42
Speaker 1: you can only imagine the sketchy stuff going on.
18:44
Speaker 4: So there are some signs that some Trump fans are
18:48
Speaker 4: starting to get a little bit uncomfortable. Here's billionaire hedge
18:51
Speaker 4: fund manager Bill Ackman, barstool sports Dave Portnoy, and most
18:55
Speaker 4: notably Elon Musk.
18:57
Speaker 6: Donald Trump supporter Bill Ackman is now somewhat leaving Wall
19:01
Speaker 6: Street's backlash to the tariffs, calling Trump's tariff plan a, quote,
19:06
Speaker 6: self-induced economic nuclear winter.
19:09
Speaker 4: This is like a decision that one guy made that
19:13
Speaker 4: crashed the whole stock market. That's why we're calling it
19:15
Speaker 4: Orange Monday, not Black Monday.
19:17
Speaker 9: Both Europe and the United States should move, ideally in
19:20
Speaker 9: my view, to a zero tariff situation.
19:23
Speaker 4: Ooh.
19:24
Speaker 2: I like the Elon part.
19:25
Speaker 1: Bill Ackman's having like an op-ed length emotional breakdown on
19:29
Speaker 1: Twitter at all times.
19:30
Speaker 5: Yeah.
19:30
Speaker 4: He also like went after Lutnick too.
19:31
Speaker 3: And then apologized.
19:32
Speaker 4: And accused Lutnick of like personally profiting off of this
19:35
Speaker 4: because he's long bonds or because Cantor Fitzgerald, his firm was.
19:39
Speaker 4: And you know that all this is getting under Trump's
19:41
Speaker 4: skin because he posted a truth on Monday morning saying,
19:44
Speaker 4: don't be weak, don't be stupid, don't be a panicking,
19:48
Speaker 4: which I guess is supposed to be like a Republican,
19:49
Speaker 4: but it's as he says, it's a new party based
19:51
Speaker 4: on weak and stupid people. Don't be a panicking. Got it.
19:54
Speaker 4: I don't think that's the best. I think he's had
19:56
Speaker 4: better names.
19:56
Speaker 3: Yeah, some better.
19:57
Speaker 4: Better, better terms. But how significant do you guys think
19:59
Speaker 4: the criticism coming from Elon and some of Trump's most
20:02
Speaker 4: prominent fans is?
20:03
Speaker 1: I mean, look, it's, I think a question we've always
20:06
Speaker 1: had is, is good information reaching people who are just
20:09
Speaker 1: kind of like Trump curious, right? The Joe Rogans of
20:12
Speaker 1: the world, Dave Portnoy, I think is actually a pretty smart,
20:14
Speaker 1: sophisticated person who consumes.
20:16
Speaker 4: A lot of news.
20:16
Speaker 1: But, you know, last week we talked to, we didn't
20:19
Speaker 1: talk about it, but we all noticed that Rogan talked
20:22
Speaker 1: on his show about some of these worst immigration cases
20:25
Speaker 1: where people are getting sent to El Salvador with no
20:28
Speaker 1: due process and talked about how awful it was. And
20:30
Speaker 1: so it's good news that it's getting to him. I
20:32
Speaker 1: think you know, the fact that the stock market and
20:34
Speaker 1: Bitcoin are crashing at the same time is hitting a
20:37
Speaker 1: lot of these sort of like guy influencers where it
20:41
Speaker 1: hurts in their, in their wallets and they're reacting to it.
20:45
Speaker 1: And they're also like, they're desperately trying to find some
20:48
Speaker 1: method to the madness, but they can't because there isn't
20:52
Speaker 1: really any. And, you know, that doesn't mean that like
20:54
Speaker 1: they're all flocking from Trump yet or they're liberals yet,
20:58
Speaker 1: but I do like Portnoy in his long nuanced rants
21:01
Speaker 1: today about this, was like, I support the broader principles
21:04
Speaker 1: Trump is talking about, but if this is still happening
21:06
Speaker 1: by the midterms, like I'm gone, I'm voting Democrat.
21:09
Speaker 4: I mean, the polling is, you know, it's getting worse
21:12
Speaker 4: for Trump, but it's still early days and polling always
21:14
Speaker 4: tells you about like what people felt like three weeks ago.
21:16
Speaker 4: So let's see what the next couple of weeks bring.
21:18
Speaker 4: But John Byrne Murdoch at the Financial Times, he had
21:21
Speaker 4: a thread of charts that sort of gathered all the
21:24
Speaker 4: data from like the economic surveys and the Michigan consumer
21:28
Speaker 4: surveys and all that. And a couple of interesting points
21:30
Speaker 4: from that. Number one, Trump has had the same impact
21:33
Speaker 4: on economic uncertainty as the global pandemic. Number two, the
21:37
Speaker 4: share of adults who have a negative opinion of government's
21:41
Speaker 4: economic policy is the highest it's ever been in the
21:44
Speaker 4: United States. That is higher than the 2007 financial crisis.
21:47
Speaker 4: That's from the University of Michigan's Consumer Sentiment Survey. And
21:50
Speaker 4: then the third one is there are similar peaks in
21:52
Speaker 4: the percentage of people who expect the economy to deteriorate,
21:56
Speaker 4: who expect their own finances to deteriorate, and who expect
22:00
Speaker 4: like higher levels of inflation. And that that the inflation
22:03
Speaker 4: number is as high as it was during the peak
22:06
Speaker 4: of the higher prices under Biden. So this is it's
22:11
Speaker 4: getting bad.
22:13
Speaker 3: It's we're not even like there's so much like kind
22:16
Speaker 3: of rationalizing and like kind of intellectualizing. We're not doing it.
22:21
Speaker 3: But even we are just sort of I think like
22:25
Speaker 3: This is the dumbest thing a president has done in
22:27
Speaker 3: our lifetime. We have never seen a president do something
22:30
Speaker 3: this destructive. It is very hard for one person.
22:33
Speaker 4: Certainly with regard to the economy. The Iraq war is
22:38
Speaker 4: way up there. People say Herbert Hoover. But no one
22:41
Speaker 4: has single-handedly, by their own decision, no president caused this
22:45
Speaker 4: much economic damage.
22:46
Speaker 3: No one has destroyed this much wealth in such a
22:48
Speaker 3: short period of time and done it so haphazardly. brazenly, stupidly, irrationally,
22:54
Speaker 3: without a plan, without a strategy, without any explanation for
22:57
Speaker 3: how it's supposed to lead to anything better other than
23:00
Speaker 3: sort of these sort of tilting at these ridiculous ideas
23:03
Speaker 3: that like, oh, tariffs are going to, they're going to
23:04
Speaker 3: cause a rebirth of American manufacturing. Even the charts were
23:08
Speaker 3: incredibly stupid. The tariff numbers don't actually make sense. The
23:11
Speaker 3: countries on there aren't even countries.
23:13
Speaker 2: It's, it's, it's clear. There's penguins.
23:15
Speaker 3: There's penguins. It seems like maybe they really did go
23:17
Speaker 3: into a large language model and try to use it
23:20
Speaker 3: to do the work for them.
23:22
Speaker 4: And so watching a president- Another job that's not coming back.
23:25
Speaker 3: Right. And so when the president does the dumbest thing
23:29
Speaker 3: in the economy that any president has ever done in
23:31
Speaker 3: our lifetimes, maybe ever, you will get some feedback from
23:35
Speaker 3: his biggest supporters that are like, hey, hold on a second, buddy.
23:37
Speaker 3: I'm a little bit confused because I thought, we can
23:39
Speaker 3: fix this, right? We can still fix this. And they
23:41
Speaker 3: cannot accept that they've signed on to, they've hitched their
23:45
Speaker 3: wagon to the dumbest, worst human being we've ever put
23:49
Speaker 3: in this job. And they can't obviously accept that. And
23:52
Speaker 3: so they're really like, well, actually, I think there's a
23:54
Speaker 3: strategy here. He just, there wasn't enough specifics. He has
23:57
Speaker 3: to give more clarity. There's still time to fix it.
24:00
Speaker 3: But they still can't face what they're a part of.
24:01
Speaker 4: If only there were signs. It's as if this guy
24:04
Speaker 4: has just come out of nowhere.
24:05
Speaker 3: Absolutely.
24:05
Speaker 4: Not that we've been dealing with him since like in 2015.
24:08
Speaker 3: Well, even on this shit, they all, like even the
24:11
Speaker 3: most hardcore pro-Trump, let Trump be Trump people benefited and
24:16
Speaker 3: lived in the luxury of, of a world in which
24:18
Speaker 3: his worst impulses were prevented in the first term. That's
24:21
Speaker 3: what they could, they can't believe that he's actually following
24:23
Speaker 3: through on this stuff because the Jared Kushner coterie is gone.
24:29
Speaker 3: And instead we have these sort of sycophants and enablers
24:34
Speaker 3: and the supposedly serious people, the Marco Rubio's, the Scott Besant's,
24:38
Speaker 3: are either unable or unwilling to stop it because they're
24:41
Speaker 3: sad little weasels.
24:42
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, the kind of economic equivalent would probably
24:45
Speaker 1: be Paul Volcker jacking interest rates up to like 20%
24:49
Speaker 1: in the early 80s and triggering a recession. But that
24:52
Speaker 1: was to deal with massive inflation that everyone hated. And
24:56
Speaker 1: there was like a clear purpose and end game.
24:59
Speaker 4: And no one elected that guy.
25:01
Speaker 1: Well, it wasn't like 20% one day, 2% the next,
25:04
Speaker 1: 5% the day after that, right? There was some consistency.
25:08
Speaker 4: One more thing before we move off this topic. I
25:11
Speaker 4: think Republicans in Congress are not getting nearly enough shit.
25:14
Speaker 3: No, they're not. They're not.
25:16
Speaker 4: So Congress could stop this at any moment. The White
25:19
Speaker 4: House did say on Monday that Trump would veto any
25:22
Speaker 4: legislation that curbed his tariff authority, which means that to
25:26
Speaker 4: override a veto, you'd need two-thirds of the House and
25:29
Speaker 4: two-thirds of the Senate, which we can barely get a
25:31
Speaker 4: majority right now. But- Republicans should be held accountable since
25:35
Speaker 4: they're going to be up in 2026 in the House
25:37
Speaker 4: and in the Senate. So we have seven senators, seven
25:40
Speaker 4: Republican senators have signed on to this legislation that would
25:43
Speaker 4: curb his authority. Don Bacon, Republican in the House, has
25:46
Speaker 4: said that he's introduced companion legislation in the House. He's
25:50
Speaker 4: talked about maybe a discharge petition, which would be forcing
25:53
Speaker 4: a vote because obviously Speaker Johnson won't put it on
25:54
Speaker 4: the floor.
25:55
Speaker 2: I need a new word for that.
25:56
Speaker 4: I know. It's just so gross.
25:59
Speaker 3: Nobody's discharging in this economy. You know what I mean?
26:02
Speaker 3: Everybody's too stressed.
26:05
Speaker 4: That would take 30 days, 30 legislative days, so we'll
26:08
Speaker 4: have no more economy by the time he's ready to discharge,
26:11
Speaker 4: you know?
26:12
Speaker 3: Yeah, but we have electricity then. Yeah, I will say, like,
26:16
Speaker 3: John Thune, the Senate Majority Leader, was asked about this,
26:19
Speaker 3: and he said, well, it's not happening because Trump's issued
26:21
Speaker 3: a veto threat. We're not that far from a veto-proof
26:23
Speaker 3: majority on this. We're just not, right? Like, seven, you
26:25
Speaker 3: need another, what, like, 12? You need 67.
26:27
Speaker 4: Right.
26:28
Speaker 3: So you need another 12 senators. And then in the House,
26:32
Speaker 3: you need basically roughly a third of the Republicans, if
26:34
Speaker 3: we can get it to a vote. You need a
26:36
Speaker 3: third of Republicans to join basically half of the Democrats,
26:39
Speaker 3: the half that is Democrat, to get this to a
26:41
Speaker 3: veto-proof majority. And if ever there was a moment that
26:43
Speaker 3: called for a veto-proof majority, it'd be this.
26:44
Speaker 4: Or, Tim, our friend Tim Miller was talking about this.
26:48
Speaker 2: Oh, I saw this, yeah.
26:48
Speaker 4: Yeah. I realize it's fantasy politics, but, you know, we're
26:52
Speaker 4: in crazy land now. And he was saying it wouldn't
26:54
Speaker 4: take much for a couple of Republicans who were like retiring,
26:57
Speaker 4: moderate Republicans, vulnerable Republicans who don't like this. You know,
27:00
Speaker 4: you already got Don Bacon talking about it. like would
27:03
Speaker 4: switch parties or not just totally switch parties, but at
27:05
Speaker 4: least say we're going to caucus with the Democrats and
27:07
Speaker 4: get a new speaker in there.
27:09
Speaker 3: I mean, you know what? It's not that crazy. Arlen
27:10
Speaker 3: Specter changed the majority in the U.S. Senate at a moment,
27:14
Speaker 3: not having a very different moment than this, but when
27:16
Speaker 3: he had the same same powers worried about his own seat.
27:18
Speaker 3: So crazier things have happened, including Donald Trump declaring war
27:22
Speaker 3: on the whole world.
27:22
Speaker 1: As you said, the difference this time was I bet
27:24
Speaker 1: they'd fear that Donald Trump would literally send like Proud
27:28
Speaker 1: Boys to their homes to hurt them.
27:30
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, this isn't even in the outline today,
27:34
Speaker 4: but they did send armed U.S. marshals to the home
27:38
Speaker 4: of a former DOJ lawyer who was going to testify
27:40
Speaker 4: against the administration.
27:42
Speaker 3: Great.
27:42
Speaker 4: In Congress, just to let her know that that was
27:45
Speaker 4: violating some employment agreement.
27:47
Speaker 2: Not at all intimidating.
27:58
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29:28
Speaker 4: Trump's economic meltdown has overshadowed what he's doing to turn
29:32
Speaker 4: America into a police state. He has now been ordered
29:34
Speaker 4: by a federal court and a federal appeals court to
29:37
Speaker 4: bring back a Maryland father named Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who
29:40
Speaker 4: the government essentially kidnapped and disappeared to a torture dungeon
29:44
Speaker 4: in El Salvador. The federal judge in the case called
29:47
Speaker 4: it a, quote, grievous error that, quote, shocks the conscience.
29:51
Speaker 4: And this is from the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals
29:54
Speaker 4: unanimous decision. which called the move unconscionable, quote, the United
29:58
Speaker 4: States government has no legal authority to snatch a person
30:01
Speaker 4: who is lawfully present in the United States off the
30:04
Speaker 4: street and remove him from the country without due process.
30:08
Speaker 4: So the Trump DOJ has appealed to the Supreme Court.
30:11
Speaker 4: The Supreme Court has said, OK, we will ask for
30:13
Speaker 4: a response from Garcia's lawyer by late Tuesday afternoon. So
30:17
Speaker 4: they sort of pushed the deadline. The deadline was supposed
30:19
Speaker 4: to be midnight Monday night. So the Supreme Court will
30:21
Speaker 4: hear this. The DOJ also suspended the career prosecutor who
30:26
Speaker 4: represented them in court for this hearing after he basically
30:30
Speaker 4: admitted to the judge that Garcia shouldn't have been deported
30:34
Speaker 4: and didn't have answers as to why he was. This
30:36
Speaker 4: is a prosecutor who Trump's DOJ had just promoted a
30:40
Speaker 4: couple weeks ago for his good work on sanctuary cities.
30:43
Speaker 4: So this is not a career servant, deep state liberal squish,
30:47
Speaker 4: you know. There was also a 60 Minutes report on
30:49
Speaker 4: Sunday that found 75% of the Venezuelan men who the
30:53
Speaker 4: government has imprisoned in El Salvador with no hearings had
30:57
Speaker 4: no criminal records at all. Just tattoos that ICE, in
31:00
Speaker 4: most cases, wrongly assumed were connected to the Tren de
31:04
Speaker 4: Aragua gang. The White House response to all this has
31:07
Speaker 4: basically been, we don't give a fuck. Over the weekend,
31:09
Speaker 4: they tweeted an AI-generated Studio Ghibli meme of a J.D.
31:13
Speaker 4: Vance quote. What a sentence. Quote, we do not ask
31:16
Speaker 4: permission from far-left Democrats before we deport illegal immigrants. And
31:20
Speaker 4: here's what Trump himself said on Sunday when asked about
31:23
Speaker 4: an offer from Salvadoran dictator Bukele to house American citizens
31:27
Speaker 4: at his prisons.
31:29
Speaker 1: The president there said he would be willing to take
31:31
Speaker 1: American citizens in the federal prison population.
31:34
Speaker 4: Is that one of the ideas you're going.
31:35
Speaker 5: To be discussing?
31:35
Speaker 4: Well, I love that.
31:36
Speaker 8: If we could take some of our 20-time presidents. wise
31:40
Speaker 8: guys that push people into subways and that hit people
31:42
Speaker 8: over the back of the head and that purposely run
31:45
Speaker 8: people over in cars. If you would take them, I'd
31:48
Speaker 8: be honored to get them. I don't know what the
31:49
Speaker 8: law says on that, but I can't imagine the law
31:51
Speaker 8: would say anything different. If they can house these horrible
31:56
Speaker 8: criminals for a lot less money than it costs us,
31:59
Speaker 8: I'm all for it. But I'd only do according to
32:02
Speaker 8: the law. But I have suggested that, you know, why
32:04
Speaker 8: should it stop just the people that cross the border illegally?
32:08
Speaker 8: We have some horrible criminals, American-grown and born.
32:14
Speaker 4: He loves that. He loves that. He doesn't want to
32:16
Speaker 4: follow the law, even though he's not following the law
32:17
Speaker 4: so far, but he does want to follow the law.
32:19
Speaker 3: There was a concurrence, the Wilkerson concurrence, where he basically
32:24
Speaker 3: lays out.
32:24
Speaker 4: In the Court of Appeals.
32:25
Speaker 3: In the Court of Appeals, that lays out just the
32:28
Speaker 3: simplicity of the stakes, which is worth mentioning. The government
32:31
Speaker 3: has admitted they made a mistake in one of these cases.
32:33
Speaker 3: They have made many mistakes that they're refusing to admit
32:35
Speaker 3: and lying about, which is its own.
32:38
Speaker 3: Huge problem, but they've admitted they made a mistake. And
32:41
Speaker 3: instead of fighting to free this person, they're fighting the
32:44
Speaker 3: courts that are saying they have to free this person.
32:47
Speaker 3: And what the concurrence says is, if the government can
32:52
Speaker 3: take someone from this country and put them in a
32:55
Speaker 3: foreign prison without any due process, and then once they
32:58
Speaker 3: are in that foreign prison, claim they no longer have
33:00
Speaker 3: the ability to bring that person home, it's pretty clear
33:03
Speaker 3: that where you are heading, you are heading to the
33:05
Speaker 3: place where the government can pluck anyone, including American citizens,
33:08
Speaker 3: as Trump is now suggesting he's willing to do, put
33:12
Speaker 3: them in a foreign prison without due process. And even
33:15
Speaker 3: if they know they were wrong to do it, say
33:17
Speaker 3: they have no recourse and that the courts have no
33:19
Speaker 3: recourse to force the government to try to bring this
33:21
Speaker 3: person home.
33:22
Speaker 4: Also, this is now the third time that Trump has
33:25
Speaker 4: mused about sending American citizens to this foreign gulag. He
33:30
Speaker 4: did it During the end of the campaign once, because
33:32
Speaker 4: I remember, like, seeing the clip and being like, what
33:34
Speaker 4: the fuck is he talking about? Did everyone see that?
33:36
Speaker 4: And then it just sort of, you know, it was
33:37
Speaker 4: the end of the campaign, so no one paid attention. Then, remember,
33:40
Speaker 4: he was asked about Tesla vandalism and whether he would
33:44
Speaker 4: deport some of the American-grown American citizens who might be,
33:49
Speaker 4: you know, accused and convicted of terrorizing Tesla dealerships to
33:53
Speaker 4: El Salvador. And he said that sounded like a good idea.
33:56
Speaker 4: And now he just said he loves that.
33:57
Speaker 1: Well, I don't remember the campaign piece, but Bukele pitched
34:00
Speaker 1: this idea in February when Marco Rubio went there. He
34:03
Speaker 1: was like, we offer the U.S. that we outsource part
34:06
Speaker 1: of their prison system, including for American prisoners, for a low.
34:09
Speaker 2: Low fee.
34:10
Speaker 1: And Rubio called it an act of extraordinary friendship and
34:14
Speaker 1: said he would brief Trump on it. So I imagine
34:16
Speaker 1: that stuck with him.
34:17
Speaker 4: There's been shockingly little reaction to this. And I don't
34:22
Speaker 4: know what you guys, what is it all about? Do
34:24
Speaker 4: people think Trump's not serious? Do they think the courts
34:26
Speaker 4: would be able to stop him? Or do people just think, oh,
34:28
Speaker 4: it won't happen to me?
34:29
Speaker 1: I don't think anyone's hearing this. There's just too much
34:31
Speaker 1: going on. I mean, the stock markets are melting down.
34:33
Speaker 1: There's a trillion stories a day. I just don't get,
34:36
Speaker 1: I don't think these gaggles are making it to people.
34:38
Speaker 3: Yeah. I also, there's a, I think there is a
34:41
Speaker 3: little bit of, if we're talking about immigration, we're losing.
34:44
Speaker 3: I think that's in there for some of these Democrats.
34:46
Speaker 3: And I think that that's wrong. I think part of
34:48
Speaker 3: it also is there is a helplessness, which is, okay,
34:51
Speaker 3: I speak out about this. I think this is awful.
34:52
Speaker 3: I think it is terrible. It has to play out
34:54
Speaker 3: through the courts. It has to, like, you know, the process,
34:57
Speaker 3: the lawyers. What I can't get past is what if
35:01
Speaker 3: that time photographer wasn't there, right? I mean, would we
35:04
Speaker 3: even have.
35:05
Speaker 4: The time photographer who went to the prison. This was on,
35:07
Speaker 4: you should all watch the 60 Minutes segment.
35:08
Speaker 2: The 60 Minutes is great.
35:09
Speaker 1: I think, well, I thought you were asking about- I
35:11
Speaker 1: was asking about all of it. Okay, well, I think
35:13
Speaker 1: the deportations of U.S. citizens to El Salvador, like people
35:16
Speaker 1: are just not hearing that or think it's Trump.
35:17
Speaker 2: Totally.
35:17
Speaker 1: I actually think this has gone from a thing where
35:19
Speaker 1: people were not talking about immigration to once the specifics
35:23
Speaker 1: of the stories- were public, people are talking about it
35:25
Speaker 1: a lot. Like the case of Andre, the gay makeup
35:29
Speaker 1: artist from Venezuela, once his photo was online and you
35:32
Speaker 1: could see just how fucking absurd it was to declare
35:35
Speaker 1: that man was a gang member or some hardened criminal,
35:40
Speaker 1: I think it became very much in.
35:41
Speaker 4: The public discourse. I agree with that. I think I'm,
35:45
Speaker 4: like Democratic, elected Democrats have not been talking about it.
35:48
Speaker 4: Like I said, I could count on like two hands
35:50
Speaker 4: the number of statements I've seen. There's a couple tweets
35:52
Speaker 4: and it's from this, you know, Veronica Escobar and Pramila Jayapal,
35:56
Speaker 4: and I saw Ro Khanna tweet about it and a
35:58
Speaker 4: couple other people, but it's been very quiet among elected Democrats.
36:02
Speaker 4: And I don't understand it. And then, you know, you
36:04
Speaker 4: heard Ruben Gallegos answer to me, which was like, well,
36:07
Speaker 4: it's a trap and blah, blah, blah. You know, and
36:09
Speaker 4: I have heard from some people, I've talked to friends
36:11
Speaker 4: about this and they're like, well, you know, if, if
36:13
Speaker 4: it turns out that this guy's really MS-13, it's going
36:16
Speaker 4: to be a crazy hill for Democrats to die on.
36:18
Speaker 4: And then you have to go to the process, the
36:20
Speaker 4: due process argument, right? Which I know that's more like
36:22
Speaker 4: esoteric and it's about due process. But again, there is
36:26
Speaker 4: nothing stopping them from grabbing anyone off the street. And
36:29
Speaker 4: maybe they're not doing that now, but like it's early.
36:32
Speaker 4: A couple months from now, they see some, there were
36:34
Speaker 4: protests and they're mad at the protesters and someone does
36:36
Speaker 4: something stupid and they send them tells, what's stopping them?
36:40
Speaker 3: I also, I do think it's really important, the third
36:42
Speaker 3: piece of it. So there's the lack of due process.
36:47
Speaker 3: There's the, now the claim that they can't fix it.
36:50
Speaker 3: if they've ever made a mistake. I do think the
36:52
Speaker 3: third piece of it is a very important piece of it,
36:54
Speaker 3: which is they are willing to lie about these people.
36:56
Speaker 3: That really matters. Trisha McLaughlin, who's a spokesperson for the administration,
37:02
Speaker 3: said in March, at the end of March, not only
37:06
Speaker 3: is Andre a part of MS-13 or Trend de Aragua,
37:11
Speaker 3: there's a record in his social media that proves that
37:13
Speaker 3: 60 Minutes goes through a decade of his social media,
37:17
Speaker 3: what you find is exactly what you'd expect in a
37:19
Speaker 3: gay stylist.
37:21
Speaker 2: It's makeup photos.
37:22
Speaker 3: It's makeup photos. It's the gayest shit you've ever seen.
37:25
Speaker 3: It's just gay glamour shit. And like the idea that this,
37:29
Speaker 3: she's just lying. She's just straight up lying. You don't
37:31
Speaker 3: think they're going to lie about the, about the Americans
37:34
Speaker 3: they're going to grab and send to this place. You
37:35
Speaker 3: don't think that they're going to claim that these people
37:38
Speaker 3: belong there. They're willing. They have already admitted that That
37:42
Speaker 3: they've sent someone there by mistake and they are fighting
37:44
Speaker 3: to keep that person there. You don't think that they
37:48
Speaker 3: will let an American rot in this place? And I keep, like,
37:52
Speaker 3: I have this thought I can't stop thinking about, which
37:56
Speaker 3: is these people don't know that there's a public outcry.
38:00
Speaker 3: They don't know that their lawyers know where they are.
38:02
Speaker 3: They don't know any of this is going on. His
38:04
Speaker 3: head was shaved. He was put into this prison. He
38:06
Speaker 3: has not had any communication with the outside world since
38:09
Speaker 3: that incident. He is in a nightmare. He is in
38:12
Speaker 3: a nightmare. And he's been there for three weeks, as
38:15
Speaker 3: have a bunch of other people who were sent to
38:17
Speaker 3: this place.
38:18
Speaker 4: And look, I mean, my interview with Jasmine Mooney, the
38:22
Speaker 4: Canadian actress, and that was just U.S. detention centers. And
38:26
Speaker 4: those conditions, while they sounded absolutely fucking horrible, aren't nearly
38:30
Speaker 4: as bad as this fucking prison in El Salvador where
38:34
Speaker 4: they literally house like rival gangs together. so that they
38:37
Speaker 4: can commit violence against each other and just kill each
38:39
Speaker 4: other off. I mean, that's what we're talking about here.
38:42
Speaker 3: And, you know, Marco Rubio, who spent so many years
38:46
Speaker 3: talking about the importance of freedom and how much of
38:50
Speaker 3: his politics draws from America defending freedom and the kinds
38:54
Speaker 3: of abuses committed by communist regimes. These are those kinds
38:58
Speaker 3: of abuses. That is what these are. We have disappeared people.
39:01
Speaker 3: And we have sent them to a gulag where they
39:04
Speaker 3: are meant to rot without any idea how long they're
39:07
Speaker 3: supposed to be there, without any ability to question it
39:10
Speaker 3: or challenge it. We are doing the thing that all
39:13
Speaker 3: of these conservatives spent decades claiming that they got in
39:16
Speaker 3: politics to fight.
39:17
Speaker 2: I mean, look, yeah, this is the worst.
39:20
Speaker 1: But also these guys all defended like the worst excesses
39:22
Speaker 1: of the war on terror. So I just I don't
39:24
Speaker 1: expect any better from them. I do think we need
39:27
Speaker 1: hopefully John Roberts will come back with something. reasonable and
39:31
Speaker 1: force the administration's hand to get these guys back. Like the,
39:34
Speaker 1: the fourth circuit today was like, we're not suggesting you
39:36
Speaker 1: need to invade El Salvador to get this person home.
39:39
Speaker 1: You need to make a good faith effort to get
39:41
Speaker 1: this man back that you admitted you wrongfully rendered to
39:45
Speaker 1: a foreign country. And it doesn't seem like an unreasonable ask.
39:48
Speaker 1: That's not putting the judiciary above the executive branch when.
39:52
Speaker 2: It comes to foreign policy.
39:53
Speaker 3: Well, yeah.
39:53
Speaker 4: And one of the judges who had written a concurring
39:55
Speaker 4: opinion there, who was a Reagan appointee, I think, he
39:58
Speaker 4: even said, like, he took the government's, like, concerns seriously.
40:02
Speaker 4: And that he's like, you know, I'm not saying necessarily
40:05
Speaker 4: that the government can and must order foreign policy. You
40:08
Speaker 4: can at least try. You can at least call him up.
40:11
Speaker 4: Try to facilitate.
40:12
Speaker 2: Kristi Noem was there filming a TikTok.
40:14
Speaker 4: Exactly.
40:14
Speaker 3: Well, the thing that's also, this is what I think
40:16
Speaker 3: is chilling about all of this too, which is Trump
40:19
Speaker 3: can say like, well, if only we have to follow
40:20
Speaker 3: the law. Of course, we're going to follow the law.
40:23
Speaker 3: Bukele knows that Trump wants these people to stay there.
40:25
Speaker 3: Of course. They know it's a fake request. I'm sorry.
40:28
Speaker 5: No.
40:29
Speaker 3: Then what?
40:30
Speaker 4: I can't tell if I'm more worried that the Supreme
40:33
Speaker 4: Court will rule against Garcia or or will rule for Garcia,
40:38
Speaker 4: and Trump will just ignore the ruling. Because I think
40:40
Speaker 4: either way, we're in fucking... I mean, maybe I guess
40:43
Speaker 4: the best outcome would be that they rule for Garcia
40:45
Speaker 4: and the administration backs down and tries to get him
40:47
Speaker 4: out of El Salvador, but that seems.
40:48
Speaker 1: I just think the administration has the politics of this wrong.
40:51
Speaker 1: They seem to think they cannot give an inch on
40:53
Speaker 1: any of these cases, no matter what, or it might
40:55
Speaker 1: unravel the whole policy. If they just showed a little
40:58
Speaker 1: human decency and were like, yep, we made a mistake.
41:01
Speaker 1: We're going to make mistakes every once in a while.
41:03
Speaker 1: We're trying to deal with really bad people. I think
41:05
Speaker 1: that would actually Get them some credibility, though. Maybe that's
41:07
Speaker 1: undercut by the fact that 60 Minutes, I think, dug
41:10
Speaker 1: into the numbers and only 12 of 238 of the
41:13
Speaker 1: men sent to Venezuela have any real rape, murder, serious cases.
41:18
Speaker 1: There are others who had petty theft or trespassing. And
41:22
Speaker 1: most had no, according to 60 Minutes, had no record
41:25
Speaker 1: at all. And again, if the Trump administration believes that
41:27
Speaker 1: that's wrong, they can just produce the evidence. They are
41:30
Speaker 1: refusing to, they are daring, they are enjoying this confusion.
41:35
Speaker 1: They're dividing this chaos, in part because I do think
41:38
Speaker 1: they want people afraid to be critical because they're afraid
41:40
Speaker 1: that they're going to go to bat for somebody who's
41:42
Speaker 1: going to turn out to be in Trente Aragua.
41:44
Speaker 4: And, you know, good for YouGov for asking this incredibly specific,
41:50
Speaker 4: dark question. But they asked in a poll last week,
41:53
Speaker 4: do you support or oppose deporting migrants who haven't committed
41:55
Speaker 4: crimes or had due process to El Salvador prison? 60%
41:59
Speaker 4: oppose and 46% strongly oppose. So I guess that's something.
42:03
Speaker 2: Well, that's an American citizen. I think you're talking 80, 90%.
42:06
Speaker 4: Yes, I agree. But again, I hope that like Democratic
42:10
Speaker 4: officials see that poll. And I get that they're all,
42:12
Speaker 4: you know, you're representing the people of Michigan and Arizona
42:14
Speaker 4: and American citizens, but it could happen to like, someone's
42:17
Speaker 4: got to speak up for the possibility that this could
42:20
Speaker 4: start happening to American citizens, to legal residents, and also
42:24
Speaker 4: to Like, if you want to deport people, again, the
42:26
Speaker 4: president has broad power to deport people and to deport immigrants.
42:29
Speaker 4: Why are we putting them in this, like, terror dungeon?
42:32
Speaker 4: This is crazy.
42:33
Speaker 3: Also, like, even if they do not claim to be
42:35
Speaker 3: targeting American citizens, as they ramp this up, which of
42:38
Speaker 3: course is what they plan to do, American citizens will
42:41
Speaker 3: be ensnared in it.
42:53
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44:17
Speaker 5: All right.
44:17
Speaker 4: So some potentially hopeful signs amid all of this god
44:20
Speaker 4: awful news. CNN reports that over the weekend, quote, millions
44:23
Speaker 4: of people took to the streets in all 50 states
44:26
Speaker 4: to protest Donald Trump's new regime. Organizers of the rallies
44:29
Speaker 4: called Hands Off said the attendance was much bigger than
44:32
Speaker 4: they expected. 20,000 in Atlanta, 25,000 in St. Paul, 25,000
44:36
Speaker 4: in Boston, 30,000 in Chicago, 100,000 in Washington. We know
44:40
Speaker 4: a lot of friends of the pod were out there,
44:41
Speaker 4: which we love to see. We've also seen some Democratic
44:44
Speaker 4: leaders start to speak up and actually break through all
44:47
Speaker 4: the noise. We haven't all been together since Cory Booker's
44:50
Speaker 4: record-breaking filibuster speech last week. Kamala Harris was out there.
44:53
Speaker 4: She started to speak up. And then our old boss,
44:55
Speaker 4: Barack Obama, held an event at Hamilton College, which got
44:58
Speaker 4: a bunch of attention for these comments on Trump's new regime.
45:02
Speaker 9: When I watch some of what's going on now, it
45:04
Speaker 9: does not... Look, I don't think what we just witnessed
45:10
Speaker 9: in terms of economic policy and tariffs is going to
45:14
Speaker 9: be good for America, but that's a specific policy. I'm
45:19
Speaker 9: more deeply concerned with a federal government that threatens universities
45:29
Speaker 9: if they don't give up students who are exercising their
45:37
Speaker 9: right to free speech. The idea that a White House
45:39
Speaker 9: can say to law firms, if you represent parties that
45:46
Speaker 9: we don't like, We're going to pull all our business
45:52
Speaker 9: or bar you from representing people effectively?
45:57
Speaker 10: Those kinds of, that kind of behavior is contrary to
46:05
Speaker 10: the The basic compact we have as Americans. I think
46:11
Speaker 10: people tend to think democracy, rule of law, independent judiciary,
46:16
Speaker 10: freedom of the press. That's all abstract stuff because it's
46:19
Speaker 10: not affecting the price of eggs.
46:21
Speaker 4: Well, you know what?
46:22
Speaker 9: It's about to affect the price of eggs.
46:25
Speaker 4: What did you guys think of Obama there?
46:27
Speaker 1: I think the most important thing he said was it's
46:30
Speaker 1: not enough to just say you're for something. You might
46:32
Speaker 1: actually have to do something and possibly sacrifice a little bit.
46:35
Speaker 4: Yeah, I was going to. The whole clip would have
46:37
Speaker 4: been way too long and man, his pauses are getting longer.
46:40
Speaker 2: Yeah, 1.5x that guy.
46:42
Speaker 3: He said at one point, he kind of basically said
46:43
Speaker 3: some version of like, I'm a little rusty. It was
46:45
Speaker 3: kind of, it was sweet.
46:46
Speaker 4: Well, it's also when I first heard about it, I
46:47
Speaker 4: thought it was a speechy point. He was just doing
46:49
Speaker 4: like a Q & A. So it was definitely off
46:51
Speaker 4: the cuff, which is when you get that.
46:53
Speaker 1: But I do think that sacrifice piece is missing, right?
46:55
Speaker 1: Like I have, I feel badly for the law firms
46:59
Speaker 1: that were attacked by the Trump administration and had other
47:02
Speaker 1: competitors go and try to poach their clients.
47:04
Speaker 2: That's a disgusting thing. shitty corporate thing to do.
47:08
Speaker 1: But when you stand up for principle, you might have
47:09
Speaker 1: to give something up and sacrifice something and sacrifice some profits.
47:12
Speaker 1: And so that piece has really been missing, I think.
47:16
Speaker 5: Yeah.
47:16
Speaker 4: He had this, the other part of that, right where
47:18
Speaker 4: the quote that you were talking about, he was like,
47:21
Speaker 4: there's this idea and I've noticed this among some wealthier
47:23
Speaker 4: folks who after George Floyd, they were right there and
47:25
Speaker 4: a bunch of companies were talking about how they cared
47:27
Speaker 4: about diversity and they wanted to do this and they
47:29
Speaker 4: were all for that. They're mute now. What that tells me,
47:31
Speaker 4: it's not, it was okay. when it was cool and
47:34
Speaker 4: trendy and when it's not, not so much. And I
47:36
Speaker 4: think we all have to examine like what we're willing
47:38
Speaker 4: to do.
47:39
Speaker 3: Yeah. Look, these, their values are being tested. Their fund,
47:43
Speaker 3: their values as institutions are being tested. And a lot
47:47
Speaker 3: of these law, we've talked about this, these law firms,
47:49
Speaker 3: they are, you know, they have good values in certain respects.
47:53
Speaker 3: They are craven corporations and others as are many institutions.
47:58
Speaker 3: The colleges too, they have their, their you know, intellectual principles, their, their, their,
48:03
Speaker 3: their great academic liberal spirit. And then they have the
48:06
Speaker 3: fact that they are giant financial institutions beholden to, uh,
48:11
Speaker 3: trustees and alumni. And those things are in conflict in
48:16
Speaker 3: some of these places. And when those values are being tested,
48:20
Speaker 3: they're caving. And like, you think like, you know, someone
48:23
Speaker 3: like Doug Emhoff is at one of these firms, he's
48:26
Speaker 3: at one of these firms and his, and, and, Kamala
48:29
Speaker 3: Harris is giving speeches about the importance of doing everything
48:31
Speaker 3: we can. Doug Emhoff recently talked about how important it
48:33
Speaker 3: is to do everything we can, wherever we can.
48:35
Speaker 4: He said he got outvoted.
48:39
Speaker 3: And that must sting. It must sting to get outvoted.
48:41
Speaker 8: Yeah.
48:42
Speaker 3: You know?
48:44
Speaker 4: Look, I just think it's... I think the purpose of
48:49
Speaker 4: or the benefit of someone like Obama speaking out and
48:52
Speaker 4: others is it starts... making others feel like, okay, maybe
48:57
Speaker 4: I should say, he said something, maybe I should say something.
48:59
Speaker 4: And then maybe someone else will think, you know, like
49:01
Speaker 4: it's start, yeah, it's starting to give people cover. Let's
49:03
Speaker 4: talk about the sort of resistance more broadly in the rallies.
49:07
Speaker 4: What did you guys think of that? How do you
49:08
Speaker 4: think everything's going here?
49:09
Speaker 1: I mean, I think it's great to see people in
49:10
Speaker 1: the street. I mean, the protests themselves were kind of
49:14
Speaker 1: about everything. And I think that reflects, honestly, the challenges
49:17
Speaker 1: of the Trump era, which is there's so many things happening.
49:20
Speaker 1: It's like, where do we focus? Is it what we're
49:22
Speaker 1: doing to kids on campuses? Is it what we're doing
49:23
Speaker 1: to migrants?
49:24
Speaker 2: Is it the tariffs? Like, we're mad about everything.
49:26
Speaker 1: And these protests were people who were mad about everything.
49:28
Speaker 1: There were protests about the Doge cuts. There were some
49:31
Speaker 1: against the arrest of Gaza protesters. There's some about cuts
49:34
Speaker 1: to park services, right? So it was just a little
49:36
Speaker 1: bit scattered shot. But I think the hard part is
49:38
Speaker 1: getting people out Um, I think the next round of
49:41
Speaker 1: these protests would benefit from more specific framing if it's
49:43
Speaker 1: around a thing or a demand or a desire, but like,
49:46
Speaker 1: I think once you get people out and they see
49:48
Speaker 1: the power of it and they feel the community of
49:50
Speaker 1: being in the streets, hopefully they'll do it again and
49:52
Speaker 1: again and again.
49:53
Speaker 5: Yeah.
49:53
Speaker 4: I feel like this is, um, building the muscle or
49:55
Speaker 4: at least like the muscles.
49:57
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly.
49:58
Speaker 8: Yeah.
49:58
Speaker 5: Yeah. Yeah.
49:59
Speaker 3: It was, it's been, I think we're seeing more and
50:01
Speaker 3: more of this. We've been seeing this with, the Bernie rallies,
50:04
Speaker 3: we've been seeing this. I do think that the incredible
50:07
Speaker 3: response to Cory Booker, which I was surprised by just
50:09
Speaker 3: how much it caught on, I think was interesting. I
50:13
Speaker 3: think you see it in the results in Wisconsin. We
50:17
Speaker 3: have to keep, we don't know how this story ends,
50:20
Speaker 3: but as we, the mass mobilization will be increasingly important.
50:25
Speaker 3: And I do think as we were talking, for me,
50:28
Speaker 3: the deeper question is, When does mass mobilization become not
50:32
Speaker 3: just a means of drawing attention, but about actually using power?
50:37
Speaker 3: And I think the more we have people out there,
50:40
Speaker 3: the better, because there is one dark path. This ends
50:43
Speaker 3: where we have to get millions of people into the streets.
50:46
Speaker 3: And the more people get used to doing that and and.
50:50
Speaker 3: excited about doing that and being with each other, the
50:52
Speaker 3: more powerful and stronger the movement becomes.
50:54
Speaker 4: I thought about the Cory Booker speech for a while
50:56
Speaker 4: because I sort of felt the same way at first.
50:58
Speaker 4: I was like, oh, I'm surprised that this broke through
51:00
Speaker 4: in such a big way. And love Cory Booker. You know,
51:05
Speaker 4: you ask him a question, he will, you know, give
51:07
Speaker 4: you a lot of civil rights quotes.
51:09
Speaker 3: He did the third longest filibuster on this show.
51:11
Speaker 5: Right.
51:12
Speaker 4: But, like, the reason I think it works so well
51:14
Speaker 4: and the reason that, like, good for fucking Cory Booker
51:18
Speaker 4: is because the guy is... genuine about what he believes
51:21
Speaker 4: he genuinely cares and in the last couple months and
51:25
Speaker 4: since the election even during the election it's like been
51:28
Speaker 4: a whole bunch of democrats trying to figure out like
51:30
Speaker 4: okay how do i figure out my tiktok strategy and
51:33
Speaker 4: how do i get the exact right message and this
51:35
Speaker 4: and cory booker thought to himself you know what the
51:38
Speaker 4: platform i have and the one i'm comfortable with is
51:41
Speaker 4: speaking on the senate floor that is what he has
51:43
Speaker 4: done now for many many years and he's like i'm
51:45
Speaker 4: going to use that platform where i feel comfortable to
51:47
Speaker 4: the best of my ability to like breakthrough and do something.
51:51
Speaker 4: And that's what he did. And he like, and he
51:53
Speaker 4: fasted before and he thought about it and he figured
51:55
Speaker 4: out the speech together. And it's like, everyone doesn't have
51:58
Speaker 4: to like strategize and calculate the exact right strategy. Same
52:03
Speaker 4: thing about the protest too. It's like, yes, it's, we
52:06
Speaker 4: can figure out the message and the slogan and what
52:08
Speaker 4: it's called.
52:08
Speaker 3: And all that.
52:09
Speaker 4: Like that'll all come later, but just using the platform
52:12
Speaker 4: you have, using the abilities you have, the talents you
52:14
Speaker 4: have to like go out there and just speak is
52:16
Speaker 4: That's a first step, and it's a step that a
52:18
Speaker 4: lot of people aren't taking, so good for Cory Booker
52:20
Speaker 4: for taking it.
52:20
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, my constructive criticism was a lot of
52:23
Speaker 1: the sort of tweets and coverage I saw of the
52:25
Speaker 1: filibuster was about the existence of the 25-hour filibuster, and
52:28
Speaker 1: he had the same challenge as the protesters, where it
52:31
Speaker 1: was sort of about everything, right? So it's hard to
52:33
Speaker 1: sort of focus a message, but again, he showed personal sacrifice.
52:38
Speaker 1: You know, for 25 hours, his body was standing and speaking,
52:42
Speaker 1: and that's hard, and it shows.
52:44
Speaker 2: courage and a commitment. And I think that inspires people.
52:47
Speaker 1: A similar thing that's happening that's not getting a lot
52:49
Speaker 1: of coverage. Brian Schatz is holding up like 300 Trump
52:52
Speaker 1: nominees in the Senate, just gumming up the works in
52:55
Speaker 1: a lot of different ways and using his power as
52:58
Speaker 1: one U.S. senator to constrain the Trump administration or at
53:02
Speaker 1: least try to piss them off enough to get some
53:05
Speaker 1: leverage to get something in return.
53:07
Speaker 4: Yeah. My criticism about the Cory Booker speech was not
53:10
Speaker 4: at Cory Booker but it was like, there were so
53:13
Speaker 4: many other Democrats that were just praising Cory Booker. And
53:15
Speaker 4: I'm like, you do something. Don't just praise Cory Booker. Like,
53:19
Speaker 4: like Brian Schatz, he got out there and he's, he's
53:21
Speaker 4: doing the hold. Like whatever works for you, whatever you're
53:23
Speaker 4: good at, you go do it. You know? And I'm
53:25
Speaker 4: glad if of course we're praising Cory Booker as well,
53:27
Speaker 4: but it was just like a day's worth of like, okay,
53:29
Speaker 4: now I got to do my tweet praising Cory Booker.
53:32
Speaker 4: Go do something.
53:33
Speaker 3: I think, yeah, I think that what, what is the
53:35
Speaker 3: kind of, like I, I turned, I was sort of
53:38
Speaker 3: I was really glad to see Cory Booker do it.
53:39
Speaker 3: I was really glad to see the response to it.
53:41
Speaker 3: And it's funny because like Cory Booker jokes, like he
53:43
Speaker 3: could be cheesy. And like sometimes I asked him a
53:45
Speaker 3: question once and I think we got an MLK quote
53:48
Speaker 3: and a Gandhi quote in the same answer. But that's
53:51
Speaker 3: a great, like he was just down there like being himself.
53:53
Speaker 4: Who he is and what he really believes.
53:54
Speaker 3: And I really, I really liked that. But I do
53:56
Speaker 3: think some of the kind of attaboys were a little
53:58
Speaker 3: bit kind of like, it is I think in part
54:02
Speaker 3: like we just went through a continuing resolution battle where
54:05
Speaker 3: they didn't do all that they could and they know that.
54:07
Speaker 3: And that's part of it too. And so, you know,
54:10
Speaker 3: it is a performance and I'm glad we're doing it.
54:13
Speaker 3: That's the power we have to draw attention. But I
54:17
Speaker 3: think that's where I was a little bit like, well,
54:18
Speaker 3: hold on a second. You're holding the floor. That's great.
54:22
Speaker 3: You're saying we need to do everything we can. That's great.
54:24
Speaker 3: We just chose not to do everything we can. And
54:26
Speaker 3: maybe there was a difficult strategic choice there. But that
54:29
Speaker 3: for me is why it rang a little bit hollow,
54:31
Speaker 3: the praise of it.
54:32
Speaker 8: Yeah.
54:33
Speaker 4: All right, one last thing before we get to Levitt's
54:34
Speaker 4: interview with Oren Kass. Ashley Parker and Michael Scherer at
54:37
Speaker 4: The Atlantic are reporting that my guy Doug Burgum, North
54:41
Speaker 4: Dakota governor turned long shot presidential candidate, turned secretary of
54:44
Speaker 4: the interior, has been demanding that political staff at his agency...
54:50
Speaker 4: bake him fresh chocolate chip cookies using industrial ovens at
54:55
Speaker 4: interior headquarters.
54:57
Speaker 3: Those things are for cooking mousse.
54:58
Speaker 1: What is an industrial oven?
55:00
Speaker 4: That's a great question. I was hoping you wouldn't ask.
55:02
Speaker 4: I don't know. And quote, once instructed political appointees to
55:06
Speaker 4: act as servers for a multi-course meal. Apparently staff have
55:10
Speaker 4: been asked at least once to redo a batch of
55:14
Speaker 4: cookies because they weren't good enough. An interior spokesperson said
55:17
Speaker 4: these are just smears from, quote, unnamed cowards who just
55:20
Speaker 4: oppose President Trump's energy dominance agenda.
55:24
Speaker 3: But they're not smears because they also admitted that it
55:27
Speaker 3: wasn't like they were freshly baked. They were from store-bought dough.
55:30
Speaker 4: Yeah, that was two additional unnamed cowards. They were trying
55:33
Speaker 4: to clean up the story. They clarified that the cookies
55:36
Speaker 4: are made from store-bought dough and are offered to Department
55:39
Speaker 4: of Interior guests as a treat. Doug the diva. Should
55:44
Speaker 4: we be demanding more cookies?
55:45
Speaker 8: Yes.
55:45
Speaker 1: Apparently, ChatGPT says an industrial oven is a large, heavy-duty
55:48
Speaker 1: oven designed for high-volume or specialized heating applications in commercial
55:52
Speaker 1: or industrial settings, like large batches of bread. I don't
55:55
Speaker 1: see why that would be tougher on you for making cookies.
55:58
Speaker 3: I don't think it makes it harder. It may take
55:59
Speaker 3: longer to preheat. But the other part of it is
56:02
Speaker 3: the multi-course meal, the defense of the multi-course meal is
56:04
Speaker 3: very funny because the anonymous staffer defending Burgum is like,
56:09
Speaker 3: It was salad, lasagna, dessert. Three plates, three forks. Which
56:16
Speaker 3: I love. I love that spin because, hold on a second.
56:20
Speaker 3: This is just a lunch? Who's having a dessert at lunch?
56:24
Speaker 3: You're going to need a nap after that.
56:25
Speaker 4: And this was all pre-tariff. I hope those cookies are
56:28
Speaker 4: made in America. Also, restaurants, I don't need a new fork.
56:31
Speaker 4: I don't need a new plate.
56:32
Speaker 2: Just leave it there.
56:32
Speaker 1: What a stupid waste of time and energy and dishes.
56:35
Speaker 3: Salt of the earth, this guy.
56:36
Speaker 4: You know what I mean?
56:37
Speaker 3: This guy can eat salad and steak with Taylor.
56:38
Speaker 4: He's serving the meal himself. He's like, I'm more comfortable
56:41
Speaker 4: back in the kitchen than out here at the table.
56:43
Speaker 1: When I was on the Iron Range.
56:46
Speaker 3: Also, Doug Bergham's in his, how old is he? 50s, 60s?
56:48
Speaker 2: He's older now, I think.
56:51
Speaker 4: There's like 10... old billionaires in the administration 68 who
56:55
Speaker 4: you wouldn't know if you fell over.
56:58
Speaker 3: You tell me midday at work i'm having salad lasagna
57:01
Speaker 3: and dessert i'm out i'm laid flat.
57:03
Speaker 4: And you know what he probably is what he's the
57:06
Speaker 4: he's he's the secretary for donald trump's uh second term
57:10
Speaker 4: department of the interior and as there is they're cutting
57:12
Speaker 4: national parks and forest service all over what do you
57:14
Speaker 4: think he's doing.
57:15
Speaker 3: Think of the damage that would do to my interior
57:19
Speaker 3: I'm on fire today.
57:20
Speaker 4: Well, we started and ended with stools.
57:22
Speaker 3: Oh, boy. All right.
57:24
Speaker 4: We're going to take a quick break. But before we
57:25
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58:04
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59:14
Speaker 3: And we're back. It's been five days since Trump declared
59:17
Speaker 3: a trade war against the whole world. Markets are tanking.
59:20
Speaker 3: We're seeing the worst decline since 1987. The Fed chair,
59:24
Speaker 3: Jerome Powell, is warning of higher inflation. JPMorgan and Goldman
59:27
Speaker 3: Sachs are saying it's increasingly likely we're heading toward a recession.
59:30
Speaker 3: So I wanted to hear from a conservative who is
59:32
Speaker 3: among the right-wing voices arguing against the Republican consensus on
59:36
Speaker 3: free trade. He runs the conservative think tank American Compass,
59:39
Speaker 3: and he is the architect of Trump's current tariff policy.
59:43
Speaker 3: He's the one to blame. Oren Kass, welcome to Pod
59:45
Speaker 3: Save America.
59:46
Speaker 11: Well, I'm not sure about that introduction, but thank you
59:48
Speaker 11: very much.
59:50
Speaker 3: No, you are. I wanted to talk to you because
59:55
Speaker 3: you're someone that has been arguing for a different direction
1:00:01
Speaker 3: for conservatives. And I would have said if, you know,
1:00:04
Speaker 3: last year, the last couple of years that there was
1:00:07
Speaker 3: a kind of intersection between, I think, what some progressives
1:00:11
Speaker 3: have been saying about the economy and what you and
1:00:13
Speaker 3: some others have been saying from the right. It's all
1:00:16
Speaker 3: come to a head now as we see Trump kind
1:00:18
Speaker 3: of blundering into tariffs over the last week. So I
1:00:22
Speaker 3: do want to talk about what's happening right now. But
1:00:25
Speaker 3: before we get there, I think it's just helpful to
1:00:26
Speaker 3: understand what your critique is from the right of the
1:00:32
Speaker 3: free trade consensus that I think did span from center
1:00:36
Speaker 3: left to center right, and what you view as the
1:00:38
Speaker 3: goals of a reorientation, even if what we're seeing right
1:00:41
Speaker 3: now doesn't look like it.
1:00:43
Speaker 5: Sure.
1:00:43
Speaker 11: So I think the problem with the free trade consensus
1:00:46
Speaker 11: was that free trade in the real world was not
1:00:49
Speaker 11: operating the way that everybody seemed to think it would
1:00:53
Speaker 11: on the economics blackboard. I think actual trade between countries
1:00:58
Speaker 11: where we specialize in different things and we sell things
1:01:01
Speaker 11: to them and they sell things to us, that's terrific.
1:01:04
Speaker 11: What we have in the globalized economy, especially after embracing China,
1:01:08
Speaker 11: which is a non-market authoritarian communist state-controlled economy, bears no
1:01:15
Speaker 11: resemblance to that. We have trading partners that pursue active
1:01:19
Speaker 11: policies to shift manufacturing out of our country to them,
1:01:24
Speaker 11: not so that they can sell to us and buy
1:01:26
Speaker 11: something else from us, but so that they can sell
1:01:28
Speaker 11: to us and not buy anything from us. And that
1:01:32
Speaker 11: sort of strike one is the way that that hollows
1:01:34
Speaker 11: out our manufacturing sector. And then strike two is that
1:01:38
Speaker 11: it's not that we get the stuff for free. Instead,
1:01:41
Speaker 11: they take back our assets. So they take ownership in
1:01:44
Speaker 11: our corporations, our real estate, they take our debt, which
1:01:47
Speaker 11: is just pieces of paper saying, we'll pay you for
1:01:49
Speaker 11: this stuff some other day. And so we simultaneously hollow
1:01:53
Speaker 11: out an important sector of our economy and basically mortgage
1:01:57
Speaker 11: our future. And that's not a model that I think
1:02:00
Speaker 11: has been working very well at all.
1:02:02
Speaker 3: So I feel like a lot of different aspects of
1:02:05
Speaker 3: this get combined. One is trade deficit versus a trade surplus.
1:02:11
Speaker 3: Another is tariffs, what the goal of tariffs is. And
1:02:15
Speaker 3: then there's what happens when you do free trade with
1:02:19
Speaker 3: a country like China that isn't a free country, that
1:02:21
Speaker 3: isn't a free society. And I wonder if you could
1:02:24
Speaker 3: just talk a little bit about the difference between, say,
1:02:27
Speaker 3: a trade surplus with Canada, a country that is a democracy,
1:02:30
Speaker 3: that has a high standard of living, that has benefits,
1:02:33
Speaker 3: that has environmental and labor protections versus a trade surplus
1:02:37
Speaker 3: with China.
1:02:38
Speaker 11: Yeah, I think that's very well put, the way you've
1:02:40
Speaker 11: sort of separated that out. And so I would say
1:02:43
Speaker 11: China is its own problem. And regardless of what we
1:02:47
Speaker 11: do elsewhere, I think decoupling our economy from China is
1:02:51
Speaker 11: what I call is, I think decoupling sounds too nice.
1:02:53
Speaker 11: I would say really a quite hard break with China,
1:02:57
Speaker 11: recognizing that free trade with China does not promote a
1:03:00
Speaker 11: free market. It distorts our free market. That's kind of
1:03:04
Speaker 11: bucket one. I think when you get beyond that into
1:03:08
Speaker 11: our trade with the rest of the world, I think
1:03:10
Speaker 11: you're right. A trade surplus or a trade deficit with
1:03:13
Speaker 11: any one country is not necessarily a problem at all.
1:03:16
Speaker 11: In fact, you would expect those to emerge naturally. The
1:03:20
Speaker 11: problem is that we have large systemic trade deficits with
1:03:24
Speaker 11: virtually all of our trading partners. And that is, to
1:03:27
Speaker 11: a large extent, a function of policy. To some extent,
1:03:31
Speaker 11: it's a function of our policy. Running huge budget deficits
1:03:34
Speaker 11: here does not help, and we should do something about
1:03:37
Speaker 11: that too. But when you see countries like Japan, Korea, Germany,
1:03:41
Speaker 11: that are explicitly pursuing an economic model that calls for
1:03:45
Speaker 11: them to be doing large amounts of exporting to pursue growth,
1:03:50
Speaker 11: and they're adopting policies to achieve that, we shouldn't then
1:03:54
Speaker 11: scratch our heads and say, gee, I wonder why the
1:03:56
Speaker 11: thing they said they wanted to do and made policy
1:04:00
Speaker 11: to do is therefore happening. And so I do think
1:04:03
Speaker 11: it's fair to say, yes, in a healthy free trading system,
1:04:06
Speaker 11: you'd have surpluses and deficits, but what we have is
1:04:09
Speaker 11: a much more systemic imbalance where essentially most of the
1:04:13
Speaker 11: rest of the world is all expecting to do more
1:04:16
Speaker 11: producing and then we do the consuming on credit.
1:04:21
Speaker 3: So with a country like Canada, we have an incredibly
1:04:26
Speaker 3: interconnected economy. We actually run a surplus with Canada on manufacturing.
1:04:31
Speaker 3: We run a surplus with Canada on services. We just
1:04:33
Speaker 3: have a deficit because we get a lot of raw
1:04:36
Speaker 3: materials from Canada. We get a lot of oil from Canada.
1:04:39
Speaker 3: And yet, that's not something a tariff can correct for, right?
1:04:44
Speaker 3: We can't suddenly, unless we want to kind of cut
1:04:47
Speaker 3: down the Rocky Mountains, all the forests in Colorado. What
1:04:52
Speaker 3: I don't understand is, I don't know, I go to
1:04:55
Speaker 3: a hot dog stand, I buy a hot dog, I
1:04:57
Speaker 3: have a trade deficit with the hot dog stand. I
1:05:00
Speaker 3: still really like the deal. It's better for me. I'm
1:05:02
Speaker 3: eating hot dogs. He's making hot dogs or she's making
1:05:05
Speaker 3: hot dogs. All right.
1:05:07
Speaker 4: Thank you.
1:05:07
Speaker 3: It's important to know.
1:05:08
Speaker 11: Thank you for calling her in.
1:05:10
Speaker 3: But if the government suddenly taxed that hot dog vendor
1:05:13
Speaker 3: into oblivion, like to ostensibly create more domestic hot dog production. Yeah. Like,
1:05:19
Speaker 3: I guess I could go to the store and start
1:05:21
Speaker 3: buying all the supply, increase my domestic hot dog supply.
1:05:24
Speaker 3: But the reality is I'm just going to eat fewer
1:05:26
Speaker 3: hot dogs.
1:05:27
Speaker 6: Right.
1:05:27
Speaker 3: And so, like, I guess I just want to understand
1:05:30
Speaker 3: what the what the goal is.
1:05:33
Speaker 7: Right.
1:05:33
Speaker 3: Like it is each of these examples seems to require
1:05:36
Speaker 3: a specific set of policies.
1:05:38
Speaker 5: Right.
1:05:38
Speaker 3: And yet this ends up being this debate about kind
1:05:41
Speaker 3: of trade deficits and trade surpluses and tariffs, which almost
1:05:46
Speaker 3: feels like beside the point to me.
1:05:49
Speaker 11: I think it's actually useful to sort of start from
1:05:52
Speaker 11: the other end and think about what the actual goal is.
1:05:55
Speaker 11: What is the end state we want to get to?
1:05:57
Speaker 11: Because frankly, a lot of what is going on here
1:06:00
Speaker 11: is at that sort of, it sounds grandiose, but grand
1:06:04
Speaker 11: strategy level where the US has been pursuing what gets
1:06:09
Speaker 11: called liberal world order for a long time, where We
1:06:12
Speaker 11: want to advance markets everywhere. When we were welcoming China,
1:06:16
Speaker 11: part of the theory was this was going to liberalize them,
1:06:18
Speaker 11: democratize them. Obviously, we make a lot of defense commitments
1:06:21
Speaker 11: around the world. And the idea was that, yes, we
1:06:25
Speaker 11: would absorb a lot of excess production from other parts
1:06:28
Speaker 11: of the world. We would subsidize a lot of defense costs.
1:06:31
Speaker 11: But ultimately, as the hegemon, we benefited from that. We
1:06:35
Speaker 11: could have a longer discussion about how much that was
1:06:38
Speaker 11: ever true, but I think what certainly folks in the
1:06:40
Speaker 11: Trump administration would say today is that we no longer
1:06:43
Speaker 11: benefit from it. Part of the problem is that we
1:06:46
Speaker 11: are moving into a multipolar world. We can't be the
1:06:49
Speaker 11: hegemon even if we want to be. Secretary Rubio has
1:06:52
Speaker 11: talked a lot about how China is going to put
1:06:56
Speaker 11: aside trade. China is going to assert its own influences
1:06:59
Speaker 11: in the world and is going to have its own sphere.
1:07:02
Speaker 11: And then in the economic context, we are obviously not
1:07:05
Speaker 11: in the position we were in in the, you know,
1:07:07
Speaker 11: post-World War II years as the dominant industrial power. We
1:07:12
Speaker 11: frankly have a lot of problems in our own economy.
1:07:15
Speaker 11: And so I think what the goal is, is to say,
1:07:18
Speaker 11: you know, this sort of liberal world order needs to
1:07:21
Speaker 11: be replaced for the U.S. 's purposes with more of
1:07:24
Speaker 11: a U.S.-centered, ideally economic and security block. And we want
1:07:29
Speaker 11: to have high levels of free trade with allies in
1:07:32
Speaker 11: that block. But we would like to see overall trade
1:07:35
Speaker 11: within that block balanced. So we are on overall both
1:07:39
Speaker 11: buying and selling in relatively equal measure. Just as you
1:07:42
Speaker 11: don't worry about your deficit with the hot dog stand,
1:07:45
Speaker 11: but you do need to earn enough money from someone
1:07:47
Speaker 11: else to buy the hot dog, right? You can't just
1:07:49
Speaker 11: take out credit cards to buy the hot dogs. And
1:07:53
Speaker 11: for that to work, we're also going to then need
1:07:54
Speaker 11: everybody to agree to keep China out. we can't keep
1:07:58
Speaker 11: China out, but have Mexico welcome them in and then
1:08:00
Speaker 11: have free trade with Mexico. And so I think if
1:08:03
Speaker 11: that's the goal, big block, balanced trade, China out, how
1:08:07
Speaker 11: do you get from here to there? I think tariffs
1:08:10
Speaker 11: play an important role in that potentially. And that's what
1:08:13
Speaker 11: you see the Trump administration trying to move toward.
1:08:18
Speaker 3: So let's talk about what's happening right now then. So
1:08:22
Speaker 3: In the wake of, I think this was just before
1:08:24
Speaker 3: Liberation Day, but you saw South Korea, Japan, and China
1:08:29
Speaker 3: announcing they're going to respond together. If your goal is
1:08:33
Speaker 3: to build a big kind of anti-China bloc with as
1:08:36
Speaker 3: many countries on our side as possible, can you come
1:08:41
Speaker 3: up with a way to be more alienating of the
1:08:45
Speaker 3: countries we need than what we've seen in the last week?
1:08:48
Speaker 11: Well, I would say two things about that. One, I
1:08:50
Speaker 11: agree with you to the extent that I think sort
1:08:53
Speaker 11: of how we treat our allies matters and we should
1:08:56
Speaker 11: be engaging with them constructively and there is definitely room
1:08:59
Speaker 11: for improvement on that front. That being said, I do
1:09:03
Speaker 11: both think that that kind of that reporting, I think,
1:09:06
Speaker 11: was rather overblown. And even in just the last few
1:09:10
Speaker 11: hours here on a Monday afternoon, we've both seen China announce,
1:09:15
Speaker 11: you know, it is potentially planning retaliatory tariffs leading to
1:09:19
Speaker 11: more retaliatory tariffs from the US, while Japan has announced,
1:09:23
Speaker 11: or I think it was Secretary Besson just announced, he's
1:09:25
Speaker 11: delighted that Japan has come forward to proceed with a
1:09:28
Speaker 11: constructive negotiation. So in fact, I don't think it's the
1:09:32
Speaker 11: case that countries like Japan and Korea are thinking about
1:09:36
Speaker 11: siding with China. I do think it's the case that
1:09:39
Speaker 11: we owe our allies very clear explanation of where we
1:09:42
Speaker 11: are trying to go, what our expectations are, and that
1:09:46
Speaker 11: we give them a fair opportunity to to work that out.
1:09:52
Speaker 3: But the tariffs announced, they were described as reciprocal tariffs.
1:09:55
Speaker 3: But as you've noted, they're not based on tariffs. They're
1:09:58
Speaker 3: based on trade deficits. And look, there's value to America
1:10:06
Speaker 3: rebalancing trade. I think Democrats, Republicans, or some Republicans now
1:10:09
Speaker 3: would agree with that. But a country can't do that overnight.
1:10:13
Speaker 3: We just spent the last 75 years building up an
1:10:17
Speaker 3: interconnected system. people in Vietnam, just working people, right? They didn't,
1:10:23
Speaker 3: they're not, they're not taking advantage of us. I don't
1:10:26
Speaker 3: feel taken advantage of by, by working class people in Vietnam.
1:10:32
Speaker 3: Auto suppliers in Michigan are terrified today, right? They're talking
1:10:35
Speaker 3: about the fact that they're going to have to shut
1:10:37
Speaker 3: down production, that the costs are going up. It's alienating
1:10:42
Speaker 3: the allies. It may cause a decrease in domestic production,
1:10:48
Speaker 3: all because this is being done in this incredibly ham-fisted way.
1:10:52
Speaker 3: And at a certain point, do you worry that what
1:10:54
Speaker 3: you're doing is kind of intellectualizing, like coming behind Trump
1:10:58
Speaker 3: like an intellectual Zamboni, cleaning up what is just a
1:11:02
Speaker 3: rash kind of gut instinct 1980s pro-tariff mindset being put
1:11:09
Speaker 3: in place by people unwilling to tell him no?
1:11:13
Speaker 11: Well, I guess I don't worry about that broader dynamic
1:11:16
Speaker 11: that you just described. I mean, I've been writing about
1:11:18
Speaker 11: the need for the United States to start a trade
1:11:21
Speaker 11: war with China in particular and use tariffs for more
1:11:24
Speaker 11: than a decade now. It's certainly where I see that
1:11:29
Speaker 11: the free trade consensus went wrong and we need to
1:11:31
Speaker 11: take a different approach. Even with something like these reciprocal tariffs,
1:11:36
Speaker 11: it was interesting. I wrote a piece, I guess it
1:11:39
Speaker 11: was back in February, looking at just what the Trump
1:11:41
Speaker 11: administration was saying and inferring, I don't think it was
1:11:45
Speaker 11: that hard to do, that clearly what they meant was
1:11:47
Speaker 11: not tit for tat reciprocal tariffs based on tariff rates.
1:11:51
Speaker 11: What they meant was they were going to focus on
1:11:54
Speaker 11: trade balances. They were going to try to induce those
1:11:58
Speaker 11: countries to change their policies. And by the way, just
1:12:01
Speaker 11: to give a concrete example of what that looks like
1:12:03
Speaker 11: when it works, this is what Reagan did in 1981
1:12:07
Speaker 11: with Japan. I mean, under threat of heavy tariffs from Congress,
1:12:12
Speaker 11: Reagan got the Japanese to self-impose a quota on exports
1:12:18
Speaker 11: of Japanese vehicles to the United States. And the result
1:12:20
Speaker 11: was the Japanese auto industry in the US South. So
1:12:24
Speaker 11: I share many of your criticisms about the details of
1:12:26
Speaker 11: how this is being executed. But I think it is
1:12:30
Speaker 11: important to separate the question of sort of tactics from
1:12:34
Speaker 11: strategy in a sense and work on getting the tactics right.
1:12:38
Speaker 11: And I think there are a lot of opportunities to
1:12:40
Speaker 11: get these tactics right and in fact, achieve changes that
1:12:45
Speaker 11: are worth making.
1:12:48
Speaker 3: There's a little bit of a kind of trick there
1:12:50
Speaker 3: to me, which is you're pointing at a specific example
1:12:55
Speaker 3: of there was a strategic goal, there was pressure applied,
1:13:01
Speaker 3: people understood the stakes, they understood what the goal was,
1:13:05
Speaker 3: the US policy was predictable, all right? It was also targeted, right?
1:13:11
Speaker 3: And at a certain point, The markets, and I don't
1:13:14
Speaker 3: think the markets are a reflection of the economy in full, right?
1:13:17
Speaker 3: There's a lot of, you know, we have spent decades
1:13:21
Speaker 3: watching wages stay flat while markets went up. But the
1:13:27
Speaker 3: markets are responding terribly. There's a warning of inflation. There's
1:13:30
Speaker 3: a warning of a recession. Our allies around the world
1:13:33
Speaker 3: are telling us that they're going to put retaliatory tariffs
1:13:36
Speaker 3: on us. At a certain point, you can't separate the
1:13:40
Speaker 3: tactics from the strategy, right? You are saying, oh, there's
1:13:43
Speaker 3: a strategy that I largely agree with, but I have
1:13:45
Speaker 3: some quibbles with the tactics. But fundamentally, are we watching
1:13:48
Speaker 3: kind of Donald Trump take what you view as the
1:13:51
Speaker 3: ultimate goal and kind of proving the opposite case, showing
1:13:55
Speaker 3: you that like, basically obliterating the argument you're making by
1:13:59
Speaker 3: fucking this up so thoroughly?
1:14:02
Speaker 11: I think that's a rather crass way to put it.
1:14:05
Speaker 4: The way that I- Yeah, it's a little crass.
1:14:07
Speaker 3: It's a little crass. Or I should say, you and
1:14:10
Speaker 3: I went to college together.
1:14:10
Speaker 11: We did.
1:14:11
Speaker 3: We weren't close.
1:14:12
Speaker 11: No, we must have taken a class together at some point.
1:14:15
Speaker 3: I'm sure we did.
1:14:16
Speaker 2: I'm sure we did.
1:14:17
Speaker 3: But sorry, I just was interrupting you.
1:14:20
Speaker 11: What I would say is, and maybe even the term
1:14:22
Speaker 11: strategy sort of is two different things, because when I
1:14:26
Speaker 11: think about strategy, what I'm talking about is the way
1:14:28
Speaker 11: that we're defining and recognizing this as a problem at all,
1:14:32
Speaker 11: which is, I think, a really significant shift. And that
1:14:35
Speaker 11: goes a little bit to your point about even before
1:14:38
Speaker 11: the current Trump administration starting to see a new consensus
1:14:42
Speaker 11: developing on that point. The fact that we are actually
1:14:47
Speaker 11: now recognizing that this model of hyperglobalization is a bad
1:14:51
Speaker 11: one and we need to change it, the fact that
1:14:53
Speaker 11: we're recognizing that manufacturing matters, that trade deficits matter, and
1:14:58
Speaker 11: that we should do something about those things, I think
1:15:00
Speaker 11: that's really important and a positive step. The fact that
1:15:04
Speaker 11: the tools we're talking about to do something about that,
1:15:06
Speaker 11: that we are talking about having a low, stable global tariff,
1:15:10
Speaker 11: The fact that we are really talking about very high
1:15:13
Speaker 11: tariffs on China, we're taking seriously the idea of disentangling
1:15:16
Speaker 11: from them. And the idea that we're trying to actually
1:15:19
Speaker 11: get to more balanced trade, I think those are the
1:15:23
Speaker 11: right things we should be doing and the tools we
1:15:25
Speaker 11: should be using. So I don't think that it would
1:15:28
Speaker 11: be fair to say, well, look, I don't like the
1:15:32
Speaker 11: set of things he announced on Wednesday. I'm not even
1:15:37
Speaker 11: sure kind of what the punchline is. Therefore forget about
1:15:39
Speaker 11: the whole thing.
1:15:40
Speaker 3: I think the, well, no, it would be, it would
1:15:42
Speaker 3: be to say as much as I agree with the
1:15:44
Speaker 3: goals here, that as much as I believe we need
1:15:47
Speaker 3: a reorientation, the way that this is happening is so
1:15:50
Speaker 3: awful and destructive and chaotic that it is not the
1:15:53
Speaker 3: approach I would take, but it is antithetical to the
1:15:56
Speaker 3: way that I believe we should, uh, be pursuing an
1:15:59
Speaker 3: economic agenda. No, we should not rebalance the American economy
1:16:03
Speaker 3: by going through a recession, uh, having all kinds of
1:16:07
Speaker 3: supply shocks, causing all kinds of job losses, and alienating
1:16:11
Speaker 3: our allies around the world. If that's the price of reorientation,
1:16:15
Speaker 3: we should not do it.
1:16:17
Speaker 11: I guess that strikes me as maybe a bit overdramatic.
1:16:20
Speaker 11: Just to give you a very concrete example, let's say
1:16:23
Speaker 11: we took essentially this policy that the administration is pursuing,
1:16:28
Speaker 11: and we said it would make a lot more sense
1:16:30
Speaker 11: to phase tariffs in than snap them in on day one.
1:16:34
Speaker 3: Because it takes a decade to build some of these factories.
1:16:36
Speaker 3: Because it's a decade to undo some of these interconnected
1:16:39
Speaker 3: supply chains.
1:16:40
Speaker 11: It takes a decade to do some things. I think
1:16:42
Speaker 11: we should be a little skeptical of people saying that,
1:16:46
Speaker 11: you know, it takes five to 10 years when we've
1:16:50
Speaker 11: seen that when businesses really, I mean, it did not
1:16:52
Speaker 11: take that long, for instance, to massively offshore production to China, right?
1:16:57
Speaker 11: I mean, take a look at the drop in US
1:16:58
Speaker 11: manufacturing employment and you will see how quickly these things
1:17:02
Speaker 11: can move. And so I think we said, look, frankly,
1:17:06
Speaker 11: I think the 10% global tariff is something that you
1:17:09
Speaker 11: do sort of do. And among other things, that conveys
1:17:12
Speaker 11: that you really mean it, you're serious, and that this
1:17:16
Speaker 11: is going to start changing the equation. I think something
1:17:19
Speaker 11: like the tariffs with China, ideally you do phase in.
1:17:23
Speaker 11: And by the way, there's very good bipartisan legislation in
1:17:25
Speaker 11: Congress right now to revoke permanent normal trade relations with
1:17:29
Speaker 11: China and go all the way up to 100% tariffs
1:17:30
Speaker 11: on strategic goods but do it over five years. And
1:17:35
Speaker 11: so if you think about kind of the 60% that
1:17:37
Speaker 11: Trump is talking about at that point, if you did
1:17:40
Speaker 11: that 20, 20, 20 over three years, I think that
1:17:43
Speaker 11: would be a fairly reasonable approach. And I think when
1:17:47
Speaker 11: you then talk about these negotiations with specific countries, again,
1:17:52
Speaker 11: you make a very good point that we have obviously
1:17:54
Speaker 11: built up these relationships over a long period of time.
1:17:57
Speaker 11: If we're not happy with how they're behaving, we've certainly
1:17:59
Speaker 11: tolerated it for a long period of time. I think
1:18:02
Speaker 11: if we say, look, this is what the consequence is
1:18:04
Speaker 11: going to be if we don't have a plan to
1:18:05
Speaker 11: fix this. Here is a period of time for having
1:18:09
Speaker 11: an initial negotiation and seeing if we have a way
1:18:11
Speaker 11: to fix this. If we can't agree, half of this
1:18:13
Speaker 11: goes into effect. And if a year from now, if
1:18:18
Speaker 11: you're just out on this project, then we do go
1:18:20
Speaker 11: up to the full level. I think that would be
1:18:22
Speaker 11: a reasonable way to proceed. And so it's an interesting question. Obviously,
1:18:27
Speaker 11: this is a very significant question, do you snap it
1:18:30
Speaker 11: into place or do you phase it in? But I
1:18:33
Speaker 11: think there is still a lot of room to take
1:18:35
Speaker 11: these ideas and say that there is actually a path
1:18:39
Speaker 11: forward here that accomplishes some really important things.
1:18:44
Speaker 3: Last question. Is there a version of this in which
1:18:49
Speaker 3: we wouldn't be seeing incredible economic disruption, the possibility of
1:18:54
Speaker 3: a recession, markets crashing? What does a version of this
1:19:00
Speaker 3: that you would think is working well look like?
1:19:03
Speaker 11: Well, we just talked about a piece of it, which
1:19:05
Speaker 11: is phasing things in. I think the phase-in makes an
1:19:08
Speaker 11: enormous difference in minimizing the cost because basically what you're
1:19:12
Speaker 11: saying is you want the costs that you're imposing are
1:19:16
Speaker 11: intended to be an incentive. You want those to come
1:19:19
Speaker 11: into play as quickly as it is reasonable to expect
1:19:23
Speaker 11: people to change their behavior. If you impose the cost
1:19:25
Speaker 11: faster than that, you get the cost, but you can't
1:19:28
Speaker 11: get any faster change in behavior. So I think phasing
1:19:32
Speaker 11: these things in is a huge potential piece of the
1:19:35
Speaker 11: puzzle on the front end. And then I think the
1:19:37
Speaker 11: flip side is just greater clarity and certainty.
1:19:41
Speaker 3: Because- Well, greater, yeah. But we have no idea even
1:19:45
Speaker 3: what the demands are, right? I mean, they're being implemented
1:19:50
Speaker 3: instantly and we don't know what they want, what other
1:19:54
Speaker 3: countries can do to lift them. I mean, it's really
1:19:57
Speaker 3: like a, it's a blank, there's no hostage. We've taken
1:20:01
Speaker 3: the hostages, but we have no, we started killing the hostages,
1:20:04
Speaker 3: but there's no demand.
1:20:07
Speaker 11: Well, we know one demand, which is more balanced trade.
1:20:09
Speaker 11: And we know that they just prepared an enormous report
1:20:12
Speaker 11: documenting the unfair trade practices that countries are engaged in.
1:20:16
Speaker 11: So I think there's a start there, but I absolutely
1:20:19
Speaker 11: agree with you on both of those. And that's why
1:20:21
Speaker 11: I say these are the two things. One, the phasing
1:20:23
Speaker 11: in to reduce the costs. And two, a much clearer
1:20:26
Speaker 11: description both of where we're trying to go and what
1:20:28
Speaker 11: we're asking people to do so that there is some
1:20:32
Speaker 11: certainty and some credibility of this is what the long
1:20:34
Speaker 11: run is going to look like. People can be reasonably
1:20:37
Speaker 11: expected to act accordingly. And at the end of the day,
1:20:40
Speaker 11: the actual benefit we're trying to achieve is a different
1:20:43
Speaker 11: pattern of investment, getting people to invest more in the
1:20:46
Speaker 11: United States. And if you want them to do that,
1:20:48
Speaker 11: you have to give them the stability and certainty about
1:20:51
Speaker 11: what the long run is going to look like.
1:20:54
Speaker 3: I guess what I want... You're so mild-mannered and measured.
1:20:56
Speaker 3: I really want you to say some version of... Of course,
1:20:59
Speaker 3: I'm for rebalancing trade. These people are behaving like fucking morons.
1:21:04
Speaker 11: Well, again, that's a lot crasser than I would tend
1:21:06
Speaker 11: to be. I work on improving policy and that's what
1:21:10
Speaker 11: I'm doing.
1:21:11
Speaker 3: Oren Kass, thank you so much for your time.
1:21:13
Speaker 11: This was great.
1:21:13
Speaker 7: Thank you.
1:21:19
Speaker 4: That's our show for today. Dan and I will be
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