Hi, I'm Molly John Fast and this is Fast Politics, where we discussed the top political headlines with some of today's best minds, and Wisconsin College Republican chairman Nicholas Jacobs received one of Elon Musk's one million dollar checks. We have such a great show for you today, the Atlantics, George Conway, stop spies. You talk about Trump's lawlessness and how to shore up institutions to protect against it. Then we'll talk to the economists Simon Ravenovich about how Trump's
tariffs will actually be bad for the global economy. But first the news.
So, Molli, one of the things with moving fast and break things in government and do process is that you need to actually go through a process and not just sending fathers to El Salvadorian megaprisons.
Yeah, and here's the headline. It's such a Trump one point oh headline, but it's happening. I guess Trump one point zero they didn't stop doing due process. So in that way, Trump two point zero is an accelerationist version of Trump one point zero. But Trump administration accidentally sent Maryland father to Salvadorian megaprison and says it can't get him back. Whoops. It's a whoops. If you don't care about people's lives, it's a complete civil rights nightmare if
you do. The government argues it no longer has control over this Maryland dad's fate. He is now in a Salvadorian prison. This is the same Salvadorian prison that you'll remember Christie Nome, famous dog killer. Christie Nome wore a humongous fifty thousand dollars roulics when giving a talk about how she was sending all of these people to this scary prison. The man had protected immigration status in the US, specifically barring him from being sent back to the country
for fear of persecution. On Monday, and a filing in a land court. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement ICE admitted to mistakenly sending this man to El Salvador's notoriously brutal Seacot prison. This is pretty dark. It's also worth realizing that jd Vance Vice President Jade Vance actually lied about it on Twitter.
He said, why is not the turble lot of I think might be even more I could attempted to dunk and got blocked right.
Vice President jd Vance responded to comments asking him about the Trump administration's admission that they had sent this Salvadorian man with protected legal status to a mega prison. And then he said, in typical jd Vance fashion, it's gross to get fired up about gang members getting deported while ignoring the citizens they victimized. That's what jd Vance wrote on Twitter. He got into a fight with Jon Favreau. Vance wrote on X and jd Vance you know I mean this lying or so elz.
And he had to edit the tweets after Jon Favreau dunked on him.
It's a heartwarming story.
So Elon held that little rally we mentioned in the intro where he gave away some checks and he used about that he has no clue why people hate his guts.
Yeah, it is pretty incredible that. Again, look Elon said, and this is like the same thing that Trump used to say too when he pretended that he worked. So Elon said, it's costing me more. This is exactly what Trump used to say. In fact, it's costing me a lot to be in this job. You had Tim Walls dancing on stage showing a short on chessless stock dropping. It's an awful thing for him to do. Again, this is like this thing where conservatives can be offensive, but
then they get very offended. You know, they can dish it out, but they cannot take it.
The thing I heard somebody say, is that what we misread in not the fuck your feelings thing? Is they meant your feelings by Yes, he says.
Not only is it I'm not getting paid. I'm definitely not stealing money. It would never get away with it. Okay, Well, as long as you tell us you're not stealing money. The value of my textless stock is half. So this is a very expensive job. Okay, quit, I think we've solved it.
No one will cry if you go.
Yeah. So we would like to offer Elon Musk a chance to make more money and quit destroying the federal government. That's our foray into telling people what to do. Elon, perhaps you would like to do that.
Well, Unfortunately, it's not just Elon trying to overhaul the government. It's also Trump with executive orders, and one of them is going to be overhauling the Smithsonian Institute.
Yes, you'll be shocked to now that this is the authoritarian playbook. Right, you start to remake institutions to better reflect your quote unquote beliefs. So Trump he wants to restore American history through Smithsonian overall. If you don't know what this is, you don't sort of understand what trump ism. Here is the order calls for vance along with Vince Haley. He wants them to remove exhibits that degrade shared American values, divide Americans based on race, or promote programs or ideology
is inconsistent with federal law and policy. You'll remember Trump is deeply anti anti racism, which if you're anti anti racism, perhaps it's worth wondering what you are for. And again, this is just he wants to disassemble museums, libraries. He is at war with the culture because they believe in this idea that politics is downstream from culture. Right, This is the Andrew Breidbart thesis that if you can control
the culture, you can control the politics. If you can say what is cool, you can influence how people vote, you can influence what they believe. You can do all the things that Trump is longs to do. And remember Trump is first and foremost obsessed with famous people and television, et cetera. You know you can see how this works.
Yes, so one piece of good news is we are seeing the Dems fighting back in legal ways in a big way. The Democrats have sued to block trump spid to control elections.
Yeah, so this is a really scary bill that Trump has which is really really, really important and I think is worth thinking about. This bill. You know, it's called the Save Act. It wants to sort of get in there, and Democrats are threatening to sue on this executive order. But this executive order, I want to sort of be clear on this is a part of is sort of the opening Foray into him wanting to pass the Save Act.
The Save Act will make it so that you can't vote without like a driver's license, and this has always been what Republicans want to do. There's a lot of other really scary stuff in the Save Act and I think it will be a major backslide if it passes. But the point here, and what every sort of anti authoritarianism expert says to do is to push back on everything, and so this is really important. So the Democratic Party is suing President Trump over sweeping executive orders last week
to wrestle control of elections from the states. This is very important. We do not want this federal government which is really now filled with Trump lackeys and cronies to control elections for many obvious reasons, but the largest of which is they may not be free and fair. And so this is really important and exactly what should be happening. And I'm glad Democrats are doing this, and they need to do this with everything. George Conway is a contributor
to The Atlantic. Welcome back, Too Fast Politics, George Conway, NY. So let's talk about what's going on right now with Donald Trump and the rule of law. So one of the things that Donald Trump has done really effectively considering how incompetent he is, is his attack on the institutions.
I'm going to take the issue with that. I mean, everybody's saying, oh wow, so competent. He's so competent, but now.
He's not so competent. But the law firms. Talk to me about the.
Law firms, Well, no, I mean, look, it's easy to destroy than it is to build, and that's the bottom line. And it's easy to intimidate when you have cowards and when you're the president. And he has absolutely no shame. He's behaving like a mob boss. And we've seen already his ability to extort things from people, extorted money from ABC, he almost did from CBS. Did they ultimately settle I don't know, but he you know, he's he got something
from Jeff Bezos that twenty million dollars for Milania. People want to pay him off because they want, you know, they want protection money from him taking action against them, even if it's illegal, because even if it's illegal, it's still a pain in the body. It can hurt your business.
I mean, I went to the Kirkinscory was that first law firm that sued, and I went two weeks ago to the hearing tro hearing before Judge Howell here in the District of Columbia, and one of the things that struck me was that even if they win across the board a final judgment, a permanent injunction against Trump, it might not necessarily help them because people are going to know if you are the general counsel of a big aerospace company, for example, we have some kind of issue
before the Defense Department, whether it's you're trying to get a contract, or whether you're trying to get paid on a contract, or you're trying to work out some issue on a contract or something else. You're not going to want to go in there with that law firm, knowing full well that the people at the Defense Department know that you're basically persona in nongrade even if the court say you have to deal with them. So that is the position that these law firms. And I'm not justifying
behavior you're critical of Paul Weiss. I'm explaining the behavior that if you are willing to basically put profits over your.
Country, which a lot of them are, right.
I mean, you know, I mean the head private equity guy at Paul Weissbrick and Whartney Garrison, which has traditionally been a very public spirited law firm and had founding principles based upon that public spirit that is written by a million who Waltim became a very prominent judge, signed and Rifkin. They basically put the dollar some ahead of you know, their commitment to the rule of law, and you know they were liberals, so they ordered to be
committed to social justice over the years. I don't know whether I agree with all that, but I think you know that they should not be intimidated by the government from engaging in that kind of pro bono activity, and it should not be cow telling to the government. But you know, the private equity guy they hot and they murred over from another firm makes twenty five million dollars a year doing deals for private equity companies, and those
deals sometimes often require government approval. And so you know, it basically comes down to whether whether these people want to have enough money to buy that setting or third house in the Hantons, or whether or not they care about the constitution in their country and they want to set an example and they want to preserve the country for their children, and they obviously choose the second or
third house in the Hamptons. You know, it's it's disturbing and appalling and they should be a shamed because it's not I mean what At some point you have to stand up and take a position for what's right. I mean, I'm God blessed people who may may make a lot of money doing anything that's legal, in doing anything, you know, including the practice of law. I mean, I'm one of the reasons why I can spout off the way I
have is because I don't need the money. And that was the most important thing that I think money can get you is the ability to say say whatever the fuck you want. And these people they obviously don't value that. They don't value the rights and liberties that they have as Americans in the way that you or I do. And and I think it's very very tragic and I ultimately think is self destructive of these law firms to
be doing this, because you can't. You pay off the mob bus, you pay off the bully with your lunch money, whatever metaphor you want to use. He'll be back, okay. And if he's not going to be back for you, he'll be back for somebody else. He just encourages him, even if you think you're tricking him by giving him ice in winter, right, I mean, he's right, that's what
pro bonar hours. They're pro bono hours, right, Okay, So it's like you're not actually charging anybody for that money, and you can and the time you know, it's like you associate it's gonna not she as you know, he might be a little more he or she might be a little more generous and putting down the time since it's actually not being built to a client who may say, wait a minute, why did you spend nine hours on
researching this? But still it really sends a message to the world that even the law firms, the law firms who should be in a position to fight this and should be morally positioned as well as professionally positioned to fight this or just throwing in the towel. So why should any of us fight? And it's really just it's just I just find it morally reprehensible, and it's you know,
it's it's basically it's extortion. I think it's, you know, at least the equivalent of the moral equivalent of extortion. I mean, he's it's it's not clear that he's getting a real standpoint that you couldn't charge it because he's not getting a direct personal benefit of anything. But you know that'll come. And that's that's sort of what happened in these other these cases that he settled, these bullshit
libel cases. It would be the one where where he claimed that he was libel because because George Stepanopolis, you know, gave the impression that he raped a woman one way instead of raping a woman another way.
Yeah, I'm glad you talked about this.
Now.
I want you to talk a little bit about why I think you're right. And I think that's a good point. And I do think if we give in to bullies, what we've seen, I mean, we saw this from the Trumpet first Trump administration is if you start negotiating with him, he just takes and takes and takes.
That's what a narcissist do, right.
I wonder if you could talk a little bit about just like Trump. One point out, Trump continues to pretty much almost completely lose in coren.
Yes, it's a really remarkable string of losses as a Friday, according to a fabulation by a wonderful friend and professor at Georgetown, Steve laddiprof or of law.
Yeah, and actually he sent this to me. Steve Vladdock, who teaches a Georgetown is a brilliant author of the Shadow Docket. We love that guy.
No, he's really really terrific, you know, basically, even even though his philosophical bent is different than mine, it's like he's always right these days. We agree on everything he says. There are forty six cases in which judges have blocked
Frump policies. These forty six decisions have come from thirty nine different federal judges who are appointed by five separate administrations, obviously both Republican and Democratic in eleven separate district courts in seven different federal service And what that tells you is that you have to be doing first of all, to get that number of decisions against you that quickly,
you have to be doing something wall and to get that. No, no, this isn't one of these situations where Stephen Miller so felicitously put it on execute that these are all well Marxist judges trying to interfere with the you know, with the president's prerogatives. While Stephen Miller is an absolute lunatic
and these aren't Marxist judges. These are I mean. One of the first decisions was rendered by a judge in Washington named Governor, who was a Reagan appointed and he said he couldn't believe basically that the Justice Department was
appearing before him. They looked like day two of the administrations, give or take a day, that they were making this argument that completely perverted the text of fourteenth Amendment to argue that people who were born in the United States aren't necessarily citizens, even though the Constitution says that people who are born all persons born in the United States or citizens thereof what Trump is doing is based of pradition wholesale, ignoring laws that he doesn't like, whether they
be laws about what spending has to be engaged in, which are you know, these are these these laws that appropriate money generally do not say if the president so desire, they say the presidents shall spend money in words in the substance. And then he's violating the Constitution by having
Elon Musk. Essentially, I mean that that bilates the Constitution because he's essentially using his executive orders to to usurfu the power of Congress and to pass laws what he considers to be laws, overturning will of Congress and the statutes. But he's also for example, he's pointed Elon Musk to basically act as a as something of a czar for the government. And to do that, the pointance laws requires at a minimum, requires that his position be created by Congress,
which it was not. And it further requires, given the breath of his power, it requires that he be set confirmed to the office that the that the Congress should have to have created. And it's you know, illegal on multiple levels and has now been so held by courts,
and he has shown absolute disrespect for the law. He doesn't care what the law says, and their compliance with these court orders has been kind of shoddy, and they're just playing games with the courts of a fundamental in this whole bit with the Alien Enemies Act and the Venezuelans. They ship them on and they refuse to basically turn the planes around. You know, that's that's illegal.
So what you're saying here is constitutional crisis discuss.
Well, we are in a constitutional crisis. We are been in a I think we're in the early stages of it, because it's not going away anytime soon. You know, it's like stages of cancer. I mean, we are in stage four of trump Ism. In terms of the final constitutional crisis, we are in stage one or two at least of that.
And I think the further stages are going to involve him absolutely flat out refusing to obey court orders in certain in certain cases, and then ultimately chaos because I think that he's not going to be able to control the public reaction to that, and I think he's going to try. I think he's going to issue orders that will be illegal, that some people will not obey and others will obey, and and you know, at the same time, these courts are going to be issuing these orders, whether
or not they be enforced against Trump. I think we are headed toward legal and political chaos, and that's very, very tragic for the country, both politically and economically and morally. And it's it's just not I mean, it's something where you know, I've telled telling my middle daughter who's going into twelfth grade next year, that she should think about
studying abroad for the next few years. I don't, you know, I don't have a lot of confidence that this is going to get resolved quickly and in a manner that's really sets us back to normality.
So let's talk a little bit about how we sort of keep going through this. We have the courts are saying no to trump Ism as a response, instead of what happened in from one point out where you had a few normal people still in the administration, so they would say things like, you know, we don't like it, but we're going to listen to the courts. This time, you have JD. Van saying, you know, you have both Jadvans and Elon mush saying that you know.
And don't forget Stephen Miller, because I believe that Stephen Miller is probably as powerful as Muskus in this administration, He's just not as high profile. I think he is the architect of a lot of what's going on because nobody else. I mean, I don't think Vance has the internal political power, and I don't think Musk is too scattershot and possibly intoxicated to really exercise this kind of anything other than arbitrary nihilistic actions, you know. And I think,
so those are the three I think. And Miller is just obviously illning. I mean, I don't know if you've seen some of his TV heads lately where he's gonna sweaming at the television and whole rant the other day about Marxist judges. But he's he's not a well man, but he's very very.
Yeah, he is very smart, but he's not well. So let's just sort of game this out. We have judges who are being targeted, federal judges. It feels like we're heading somewhere bad. Here there are still normal Republicans in the Senate. If a critical mask got together, they could protect these judges. I mean, are they going to try to impeach federal judges? I mean, that's what the right wants.
I think the House may very well try to do that, and I think on a party line vote requires a simple majority, they probably can do it, although their majority has grow center and may even grow even more center in the next forty eight hours three thos, so we'll see. I don't think there's any chance at all of conviction in the Senate, but the harassment of these judges is
something not to be taken light. It can cost these judges money to have to retain warriors, and you have to if you are the subject of an impeachment inquiry, you probably should retain a lawyer. And I know some efforts to make sure that or at least some intent among some people to try to make sure that judges have the resources to defend themselves. They may be subject to subpoenas and whatnot, And a truly scary thing about that would be is if it intimidates judges into not
doing their jobs. But so far, I have to say that judges have shown remarkable courage. Their commitment to the rule of law has been just absolutely remarkable, including Republican judges, and we've seen the Chief Justice of the United States speak out against bogus and patient efforts and we saw a very conservative a friend of mine, Eleventh Circuit Judge William Pryor, has spoken out against impeachment of judges for their decisions. He was on Chunks shortlist in twenty seventeen.
And I highly admire the way the federal judiciary is hanging together to protect the constitution system of government.
Yeah, I'll say it's really important when you think about the way to protect the rule of law and norms and institution to what is in your mind the way to do it.
Well, I think, you know, I think this litigation is obviously a very important art of what has to happen to show the world, to show the country that Trump is tearing up statutes in the Constitution and behaving them
lawfully and really destroying this our system of government. Regardless of whether you think some of the objects that he is reporting to try to attain are good or bad, the fact of the matter is he's destroying the system by which we peacefully resolve our differences and by which we have lived for two hundred plus years, give or take.
Set the Civil War aside, and this is the reason why we have had, you know, one of the most successful economies, one of the most successful societies in history and the reason why, ironically people want to come to the United States and want how people want to leave the United States or see scientists. Seventy five percent of scientists polled by Nature magazine say they're thinking of leaving the country.
One last question for you with the disappearing grad students. What should the disappearing grad students be doing if you want to stay safe?
If you want to stay safe. I hate to say this, but one advice that they had been given is to keep their mental shut. And it's the whole purpose of what Trump is trying to do. And it's a real problem the Trump administration is it is basically punishing people for speech. This woman who has taking off the street, she did all she did, write it off it. I mean, I'd agree with all its particulars. It was about obviously about the situation in gazzled. But it doesn't matter what
it wasn't in promotion, He can't. It doesn't matter because what's it going to be next? Is it going to be somebody who says that Donald Trump is violating the Constitution right?
Absolutely no question.
That person might be deemed by Macro Aruvio to be raising a ruckus and their visa would reportedly be revoked, even though even you know, and and the whole thing that that what they're doing to lawful permanent residence people be in cars, they had no power to do that without going to an immigration for it would be very very unnerving time to be a foreign student in the United States. And I could not advise them that they're safe.
You know, they can fight, they can hire lawyers. There are the aco you will defend them, others will defend them. But once they sort of you know, they're gonna they're doing unlawful things. What are you sending people to Louisiana on prisons there? Frankly without want the government is behaving lawles.
Thank you, George Conway, thank you. Simon Rabinovich is the US economics editor of The Economist. Welcome to Fast Politics, Simon.
It would be good to be here. Thank you.
Great to have you so. April second, April first is April Fool's Day. April well second is liberation Day. We're going to be liberated from our money.
Discuss that's right, Americans who've been sort of living, you know, shackled by the horrors of global trade for the last century, which of course also was a century in which America became the world's most prosperous economy ever in history. Will finally be freed Tomorrow at three pm or so in the Rose Garden, we'll find out just exactly what that liberation entails.
One of the really strange things about Trump's first administration was he actually did well with tariffs. He didn't do well with a lot of things COVID, you know, civil rights, but he actually really used tariffs in an effective way, in such an effective way that Biden World continued a lot of these tariffs. Sort of explain to us what he did with tariffs and how they worked for him, and also how that has now given him brainworms about tariffs.
I guess I would start by some and what disputing the premise that he did do well with tariffs, I would say in this first term that he didn't massively screw things up with tariffs, which is different. So, first of all, the overall tariff level in his first ministration it went up, but if you look at kind of America's overall effective tariff rate, it kind of went from two percent to a little over three percent. So we're not talking about a massive, massive change, and what did
that actually achieve for America. Trump's target number one was the persistent trade deficit that did not narrow in his first term, so there was no progress made on what really was his goal of balancing America's trade relationship. There was a trade deal with China, which China did not actually abide by because.
Because they don't yes.
And it was also pie in the sky from the outset. You know, anybody who was looking at it said there's no way that they could possibly hit these purchase levels. They basically sold Trump a bill of goods. He bought it, sold it as a victory, and it was never anything that could possibly be actually delivered. So, you know, so he didn't close the deficit, he didn't actually get an
effective trade deal with with China. He didn't bring manufacturing back to America, and fact studies show that, for example, his tariffs on the steel sector were very bad for the thousands and thousands of companies downstream from steel producers who saw their input costs rise. So you know, it was not good for US manufacturing. But you are right that the Biden administration did not reverse what he did
specifically did not reverse what he did on China. They did actually partially reverse the steel tariffs because those were really, really quite harmful, the China tariffs. It's complicated because you then get beyond pure economic considerations into national security issues, into this kind of very hawkish American turn towards China.
And so the tariffs were kept in place. They didn't hurt the economy as much as they might have because China moved so much of its production outside of its own country to Vietnam and Malaysia and Bangladesh, et cetera. Met Mexico of course, and so Americans continued to get efficiently cheap Chinese goods from other countries, and so you didn't see the big economic downsides. So that's kind of Trump number one, Trump number two.
And also, can we just pause for a second and just add that this came on the heels of a massive tax cut.
You're absolutely right.
So you juice the economy and then you pull back a little bit.
Right, So Trump number one, you're absolutely right. The broader context is very different. So you've got the big tax cut package, the TCGA, the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of twenty seventeen that helped to juice the economy. You also had an economy that was, you know, basically five years into its big recovery after the global financial crisis, a recovery that of course was kickstarted under Barack Obama,
and Trump inherited him from that. So you've got an economy that was on the up, that was juiced by tax cuts, and that, you know, if you look at it, and aggregate had a relatively minimal drag from tariffs because it simply did not add up to all that much. And so then you're right, you get into Trump too, and he looks back at it and says, hey, I did tariffs and Trump number one, and economists said they were going to be really bad, and lo and behold,
they weren't bad. The economy prospered. So this time around, I'm going to go even bigger. And anybody who's warning of problems, of doom, of anything, they're just doomsayers. They don't get it. They don't see the transformation that I'm going to bring about.
Yeah, not great. So Simon explained to us, now where we are with the tariffs, because there's so much on again, off again, it's hard to keep track.
We certainly have seen that in the case of the tariffs on Canada and Mexico, you know, America's two biggest trading partners, that twice they were delayed and twice they were sort of onwhat reduced. But in the end, we do have tariffs that have been put into place on effectively the majority of the trade with both Canada and Mexico, and companies are kind of scrambling around trying to figure out how to adjust. We also have big tariffs that have been put in place on steel. We've had tariffs
that have been increased rapidly on China. So you know, in the space of the first two months plus of his current administration, he's done more in terms of tariffs on China than he did in the entirety of his first term. And then tomorrow we're going to get Liberation Day, and the exact details are unclear and probably will be.
And they will be unclear until they're more unclear.
Yes, gone, they'll be unclear until the moment that Trump basically announces them in the Rose Garden. But we do
know that there's kind of two competing ideas. One is that he does a big universal tariff ten or twenty percent on everybody on all imports into America, and the other is that he does something that's a little bit more targeted reciprocal, as they say, where they look at what other countries are doing to America, what their tariff levels are, what their non tariff barriers are, and try to cook up a number that matches. Supposedly, you know what American exporters face when they try to sell to
other countries around the world. Whatever it is, it's clear that there are going to be a lot more tariffs announced tomorrow, and it's also clear that it's not going to be the end of the story that he wants to do more in the way of sectoral tariffs, so tariffs on products like semiconductors and lumber and pharmaceuticals, and probably it's also likely that we'll see retaliation from some countries that will beget yet more escalation from America.
So China, Japan, South Korea, countries that never get together and do things have gotten involved in. It's sort of NATO for tariffs in China right talk to us about that.
So China, Japan, and South Korea have said that they're going to come up with some kind of joint response to whatever or Trump does.
Right, This is huge, right because China does not play well with others.
It goes back and forth, right, so you know, it will have you know, specific countries in its doghouse, and Japan and South Korea have been there before. And then it also will, you know, at times to sort of try to make nice and try to say that it's kind of the grown up in the room and push for Pan Asian trade deals. So it is a really really interesting response. I wouldn't expect that it would be overly substantive in the sense of those three countries coming
into a very tight trading arrangement. They still have a lot of baggage and a lot of friction. But for the time being, it's sending a clear message to America that if you think you can pick fights individually with lots of countries, those countries can actually turn around cooperate band together. And therefore, in fact, what the Trump administration believes that it has, which is bilateral leverage, if it's
on a multilateral basis, that leverage begins to dissipate. It's tough enough going up against China in a fight, but if you're up against China and Japan and South Korea, et cetera. You know, it does get a lot harder. America is the world's biggest economy, but it's one fifth of you know, global GDP. It's not the majority of global GDP. So you know, if it's America alone against the rest of the world, that's not a great fight to have. So you know that it's a really interesting dynamic.
More more broadly, lots of countries are looking at ways that they can you know, form stronger trade partnerships deep in their supply chains and kind of work out trading arrangements that don't necessarily involve America.
Right for sure. So there's another wrinkle to this, which Congress had more power on tariffs and they signed it away with the CR. So Continuing Resolution had to stop the government from defaulting on, you know and shutting down. Trump sort of snuck in the CR more power for tariffs. Talk to us about that, because that sets the stage for this fuck or a. In another way, the.
Sieur itself is not I would say over the significant in this. I think the bigger issue is that just over the decades, Congress has signed away its authority over tariffs to the White House. They've seeded their authority. So there's been a series of acts that have been passed that although theoretically Congress is responsible for regulating foreign trade, in fact the White House has a great degree of discretion over what it wants to do with raising tariffs.
So you know, you can go back to the nineteen seventies to the International Economic Emergency Protection Act IIPA, which is what the Trump administration has used as its justification for its tariffs so far. You also, in the American Trade Act have sections two thirty two and three ZHO one, which allow the White House to conduct, you know, investigations that then allow the president to enforce tariffs, which is what Trump used as the justification for tariffs in his
first administration. So you know, over the decades, Congress has has vested a lot of authority over tariffs in the White House. At the moment, you know, there's simply is you know, no willingness, no spine to bring that back.
You know.
I think one of the interesting dynamics that we might see actually is that when we get the push to renew the TCGA later on this year, plus whatever extra tax cuts Trump wants to make, you may well actually have Congress legislating signing some of these terriffs into law, because in order to use them as a way to basically pay for some of the tax cuts, it can't just be done something that's done unilaterally by the White House.
It's actually got to be passed by Congress. So we could actually see a situation where Trump takes the lead and implementing these tariffs, but then ultimately actually Congress begins to legislate them later on this year as part of the reconciliation.
The markets don't love tariffs. They don't love and uncertainty. We've certainly seen some investment banks change their forecasts for the quarter, for the year, writing up some possibility, you know, I saw I think Goldman increased to a thirty thirty five percent possibility for you know, some kind of contraction. What are the broader implications of these haphazard tariffs.
So short term? You know, again, you're absolutely right that you know, market does not like tariffs. We've we've seen the stock market has been weak, it's basically erased all of its post election gains. When you know, investors have been much more optimistic about you know, trumpy and deregulation
and how that might just growth, et cetera. Even now, in the in the space of kind of two months, had all of that wiped out, you know, trillions of dollars of capital gains gone investment banks and not just investment banks. You know, economists and researchers in general have been marking down their short term forecasts for the US economy. You know, the belief is that there's just so much uncertainty right now. It's you know, we've seen that weighing
quite dramatically on consumer sentiment. Consumers aren't spending money, are much more worried about about economic prospects and are holding back. And equally, a lot of businesses are you know, they're just in limbo right now. They don't quite know what to do because they don't know what policy is going to look like tomorrow, much less next month. That's a negative, you know, a big negative for the short term. It's
not just tariffs. You know, also the Elon musk Doge cutbacks in the civil service and what that might mean for kind of the broader employment picture and the delivery of public services. That's a that's also a big concern. The immigration crackdown and how that goes and what that means for the labor market. That's another concern as well. So all those things are kind of feeding into short term concern about the state of the economy in twenty
twenty five and therefore increased possibilities of a recession. And you know, that's still not the kind of the dominant assumption, as you said, you know, Goldman is talking about thirty or thirty five percent, but that's you know, that's up dramatically from a couple months ago. And and you know, as many economists would say, Trump inherited an incredibly strong economy. At the tail end of the Biden administration, growth meantum
was was robust, inflation was coming down. If you just basically sat on those hands and not done much of anything, you know, growth would have slowed a little bit, but we would not be talking about the possibility of recession. So, you know, just looking at the short term this is not a good picture. Longer term, this is also not good for the economy.
It's nice that is it shorter term and then longer term go on.
I mean, this is also not good because you've got an economy that is you know, optimized for global production where you have you know, innovation and investment that is pouring into kind of the highest value added segments of the economy that you can imagine. You think about the last five years, and you know, in the business world and now kind of in the broader world. You know, the biggest thing that people have been talking about is
the rise of AI. Well, America is the world leader in AI because you know, it's been able to attract the world's best researchers and it's got the world's best you know comp side labs and companies that are really kind of pushing the envelope. And the reason that happens is that you have an economy that's able to allocate talent and resources and money to cutting edge research and innovation.
What Trump is trying to do is to try to re energize manufacturing in America, which it sounds good, sounds like something that's worthy and notable. You have JD Vance coming out and saying a million cheap toaster ovens from around the world are not worth it if it comes
at the cost of one single manufacturing job. But what they're actually talking about therefore with tariffs is you know, bringing back manufacturing of things like toaster ovens, erecting protective tariff barriers that are not going to be good for the competitiveness of the US economy, are not going to be good for innovation, and ultimately are going to bring resources and talent and money away from the most competitive, most advance sectors and putting them towards things that that
really you know, America, an economy as wealthy and developed as America, is not in the business of producing. So it's a really really retrograde step. Once you put the tariffs in place, they're really really hard to get rid of.
Why that's interesting, I haven't I mean, I know it's true, but I don't understand why.
So I mean, I guess think about it this way. If you think about the auto sector, You've got some American car companies that are good and that produce good vehicles, but that rely on inputs that come from Mexico, Canada, China, et cetera. And ultimately they're trying to produce a car that is competitive against the rest of the world because the rest of the world can send their cars to America as well. It pushes the Big Three in Detroit and all of the up and coming ev companies to
make better and better cars. Well, as soon as you put tariffs in place, especially you know the big tirists they've put in place on the auto sector of twenty five percent American car companies. Car companies based in America aren't You're not going to have to compete against cars that are being shipped from Japan, or Germany or Canada
or you know, or god forbid, China. They're going to be protected in their own little sandbox here, which means that prices will go up for American consumers and those car companies no longer will need to deal with kind of the specter of global competition. So you'll get higher priced cars that are actually going to be an inferior product. And you know what happens after kind of a decade
of that kind of production. If you're GM or four and you're kind of thriving behind this tariff wall, and you know that your product is less good and more expensive than global cars, you will have a very very strong lobby in place saying do not get rid of these tariffs, because if you do, you really are going to kill manufacturing jobs because they're now dependent on this protection being in place, so you effectively create this consumer
subsidy for concentrated manufacturing. You know, that's just not a healthy thing for the economy. It's why for a century the focus of global trade negotiations was on kind of mutual disarmament. You lower your tariffs, we lower ours. This is good for our companies, good for our consumers, good for our economy.
Yeah, thank you so much, Simon.
Thank you, Molly. I appreciate it more perfectly, Jesse Cannon.
So, Molly, I don't be de laughed because there is a victim of this crib. But one of the most insane things about once you start doing authoritarian shit, it gets real dumb, real fast. And we have a Republican calling ice on a GOP rivals farm.
Yes, it is shocking to know that these people are also very importantly hypocrites. So an Idaho Republican has accused a GOP rival of harassment and an op ed after he reported her farm to ICE. In January, Ryan Spoon, vice chairf's the Republican Party of Ada County, publicly called for immigration rates on state Representative Stephanie mckinlan's farm, accusing her of employing undocumented immigrants. I'm curious what would happen
if you did that at mar A Lago. This, my friends, is what will be one of the many moments of fuckery in an administration and a Republican party deeply in trench in fuckery. That's it for this episode of Fast Politics. Tune in every Monday, Wednesday, Thursday and Saturday to hear the best minds and politics make sense of all this chaos. If you enjoy this podcast, please send it to a friend and keep the conversation going. Thanks for listening.