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 Trump's economic approval rating falls to thirty seven percent. Still seems high to me. We have such a great show for you today. The nation's own Geed here stops by to talk about Trump and the art of the deal in case you're wondering they are
not good deals. Then we'll talk to the Center for American Progress's own Brendan Duke about our port slowdown shipping and how we are losing the trade war with China. As a special bonus, we'll talk to substacks the Jim Acosta shows Jim Acosta about Trump backing down on tariffs.
Molly, big news out of Illinois, and usually big news is not retirements. But we have both Dick Durbin, who's one of the senior Mostdems in the Senate, and Repgentik House. He both and that's of their retirement in a single day.
Okay, it looks like a problem, but is actually pretty good. So here's what's happening. We have a lot of older members of Congress. This has been something that Democrats, Democrats are nice and they're good and they're friendly, and so they don't make each other retire. And that's why we have gotten into a lot of problems with these older
members who get sick or die. We had two members who died this year in the House, and the Republicans in the Republican governors aren't letting their be elections to fill the seats. This is actually a real problem. What is very interesting and I think important is that we are seeing candidates run despite this and this story Katabuzagala,
she's a young TikToker, very good at communicating. She decided to run against her local rep who is a woman called Jen Schakowski, who has been in office since nineteen ninety eight, so that's twenty six years she did this, and actually Shakowski has dropped out. So this is a really good sign that when these younger people sometimes primary
a candidate, it works. And the truth is, one of the big problems Democrats are having right now is having these members who just hang on for a long time and who aren't good communicators or who don't really have the bandwidth to do the job. And there are a lot of people who have done a lot of great
service for this country. And it's not that we don't love them, it's just that right now, if America is in an emergency, which I think all of us feel that way right this creeping authoritarianism is a real thing. If America is in an emergency, then we need Democrats are ready to meet an emergency.
I think Rokana put it really well today that we should always be welcoming these primaries. He said he's probably gonna be the only Congressman who says it, but he's like, these are not lifetime appointments. And I applaud Rokana for saying that.
He's right, We really really really need this and it's an emergency, and so we need our electeds to be able to meet this moment. And Rocanna is right and this is the right thing. And we should also celebrate the members who are retiring. So we have Durbin who's retiring. He has done incredible work. We're so grateful for his service. He's retiring. Now we have a bunch of people running for that seat. It's Illinois. We have it's a safe
Democratic seat. Lauren under What is going to run. But also Raja Krishna Morti has already almost twenty million dollars and is going to run too. So yeah, there's going to be a big, big race for this very important senten seed.
My Pew has a pullout that I think is very encouraging. I'm going to shock you here. Americans. They're kind of into this whole rule of law thing.
Yeah. Yeah, this was not a good day for Trump's polls.
Earlier, it was hard to not write the whole show off of bad poors.
Right, It just bad poll after bad poll after bad polls. So this one says, share say it's important that judges are impartial in deciding cases. And you know that Trump went after the judiciary, just like Elon went after the judiciary. And instead of going and saying, yeah, the judiciary stinks,
they just sort of went after like Elon. For example, Elon was like, he poured all this money into the Supreme Court race in Wisconsin and he lost, and he's decided he's going to do doge And now his profits at TESLA are down seventy one one percent. This is a pretty good indication of what the American people don't like, and they don't like the richest man in the world cutting their social safety net.
Yeah, that sounds about right. So Sarah Huckabee Sanders has written to mister Trump and she's saying, I need federal assistants and I do feel bad. They've had a horrible run of fourteen tornadoes in Arkansas in March. But mister Trump, he's not feeling her vibe.
Yeah, you know, it's funny. I looked at this headline and I thought it might be Bernie Sanders says Arkansas and dire need of federal assistance, and then I realized, No, it's Sarah Sanders, the one, the first and last time those two people will ever be confused. But FEMA exists for a reason, and just because the Republicans don't like it doesn't mean it's not needed. These are We're in a moment where America has real climate emergencies. This is
one of them. Arkansas needs the money, they need these federal five and now we have a Republican senator who is asking for it. So I don't know. You know, the whole thing with Trump is that he wants like to have fivedoms and to have people come and beg him. But you cannot think of someone who has been a more loyal henchman for Donald Trump than Sarah Sanders. So we'll see how this plays. But first the news. Jed here is a contributor to the nation and the host
of the Time of Monsters. Welcome back to Fast Politics, jed Here.
It's always good to be on the program.
There's so much dysfunction happening. I remember this from twenty sixteen because we're that old. But like every at every place, it's like you just when you cover this administration, you never know where to start because there's so much dysfunction. Should we start with trade wars are good and easy to win?
Yeah, yeah, I know. I mean I think that's a good place to start.
The obvious dysfunction that we're seeing on the surface laplohole. Well, you know, like basically we have this pattern where like you know, Trump announces the trade war, the stock market starts tanking. You set out stop percent to say no, no,
we don't actually seriously read it. We're actually escalating to de escalate, and we're using this to like have more free trade, and the stock market calms down, and then Trump has a breather and then I realizes, Okay, now I can just say, like we're launching a trade war to create an uh aucarchy so the US never has
to deal with other donations in the stock market tanks. Again, it is a kind of pattern that's been set, or you know, it's a little bit of a month we've had this happened, but like three or four times, you know.
But having said that, I mean, I think because I was just talking to the economist Marshall Steinbaum of the University of Utah, and he made a very good point, which is that while one is looking at the chaos, it's also worth addressing the underlying like logic of what Trump is doing, and which is to try to create a more regressive tax base for the United States, because like Trump is a doesn't just talk about like you know, he doesn't like trade deficits and whatnot, doesn't wants to
reach store and have manufacturing jobs in the US. Like a lot of what he says is like, wouldn't it be great if we get rid of the personal income tax at corporate taxes and just rely on tariffs. Tariffs are like the super regressive like tax where like you know, like basically ordinary people everything gets much more expensive. So I think Marshall's plinny which I think is worth taking seriously.
Is like that lines up with everything else Trump does, Like it lines up with his like tax policy, it lines up with what he's doing to student debtors, like really going after they want to have a much more pseudocratic friendly America. And I think that, like, you know, when the Democrats talk about this, like it's not enough to talk about just the chaos, but like what's the underlying vision?
What is the end goal here? And the end goal is you know, like basically the dominance of like the super we're wealthy like over everything.
But I'm going to pause for a minute because you were ascribing three dimensional chests to Donald Trump, and you should never describe three dimensions. This is always my man is eating the checkers. Sure, there is a part of Donald Trump that was like eighteen hundred's best time for American life, no income tax, wildly huge tariffs. We had the pores doing their thing, we had you know, our people built mansions, and it was the best time. It
was the Golden Age, so right, the Gilded Age. He clearly has read one book about this.
I don't he's even read a book. Somebody told m Steve Banden told of.
Yes, but I'm going to add I read a story in the Washington Post today. Now again, I don't think this will ever happen. I don't even think it's true. But I want you to tell me what you think about this story, a story in the Watching Post that said that Donald Trump is actually considering raising taxes for people who make over a million dollars. Tell me why this is absolute bullshit, but more importantly, why someone in Trump world is pushing this narrative at all.
Yes, I don't think that this is ever gonna happen.
Ever, ever, ever, ever go on?
Well there is, I mean, like you know, like I don't. I'm not saying three dimension leveled chests. But I do think that like Trump basically has a world that he wants, which is a world that you can imagine from a guy who like builds a giant building too named after himself with gold toilets, right Like, he wants.
To be like a king. And the thing with being a king is like one way that you have power is like you can decide who gets favored or not.
And we see this with the tariffs, right, Like, one of the things with the tariffs is the carvas you oppose the tariffs, and then but then you have all these rich people for Silicon Valley to say, well, actually we really need these computer parts, and can you give an exemption, and that he can grant the exemption, and by the way, you know, can you throw in money to us.
And I think that this threat of like taxes on millionaires is kind of like part of that, where like, you know, this is again, this is a good way to get people to bow down and scrape in front Trump. And also, I mean there's a kind of fiscal component, which is that I think that there are people in the Republican Congress who are kind of genuine deficit hawks.
Thomas Massey, Yeah, yeah, looking at stuff and thinking like, you know, like how the hell are we going to pay for any of this.
There's a little bit to propreciate them, a little bit to propreciate the sort of Steve Bannon faction, which is like out of power, but which is a component of the coalitionion and which has been like really angered by the Elon Musk, you know, having so much sway, you know, as with a tear war, a lot of it is kind of like a show and tell and also a
lot of it is I just heard about it. Trump, you know, has the mind of a goldfish or of a you know, I obvious say like a toddler, but like toddlers have more of a span.
I think that Trump. Yeah.
The thing I actually like, listen to Elmo saying for like, you know, like a couple of minutes, I think.
Trump would get distracted. But Trump basically listens to whichever advisor is talking to them. And we saw this recently with the story of the Wall Street Journal, which by the way, is doing the best reporting on Trump right now.
Unbelievable. Let's just talk about this second. You may not like the Wall Street Journal editorial page, but the Wall Street Journal reporters are killing it. Emma Tucker, Bravo. Like Wall Street Journal, New York Times, and the Washington Post, there's still these newspapers are still reporting it out in a way that's really good.
Yeah.
And so they had this story where like basically, you know, you have on the one that Scott Bissan, you know, who wants to use tariffs, he's basically going along within because Trump wantson but wants to like use them to create more free trade. And you know, Peter Navarro, who's like a hardcore crew believer. Let's have forkress America, Let's have no trade. Navara was like camped out, like Elon
Wiss camped out at the White House. And there's a reason why these guys like don't want to lead from sight because as long as they're in the room whispering to them, they can get his way. But Navarro had a meeting the wall Speatji reported, Then Scott is on sALS woman, like.
You know, bled into the room. So I just started like to you know, like say, like you know, the stock market stacking and just put up this tweet saying you know, we're gonna have a ninety day pause and then you know, stock market recovered. I mean, your point about like the guy eating the checkers is exactly right. That there's a guy, you know, with not a lot of inputs control, with a lot of warring ideas within himself, willing to like do whatever whoever's talking to him says.
And so so there might be a faction you know, within the White House, you know, that wants to recover this of the popular stuff. But but also maybe I actually think, like you know, this is a kind of he he likes to sort of keep Wall Street at Sulton Valley like a little bit fearful so that they'll pay respect to him. Right. To me, that's the underlying logic.
Well, I also think there's something else interesting happening here, right, which is Trump has about ten different wars going on, right, He's got the trade wars. He just has so many wars, and China is really a foe that you don't want to fuck with. And I'd love you to talk about like they got to be this economy by absolutely just being so obstreperous. They stole IP. I mean, just at every point, China has really shown that they have no
respect for any of the norms and institutions. Talk to me about what Trump has really hit his match with China.
It's pretty clear from Besson's recent comrades that they're going to back down on China. I mean, this is the case that this is maybe the most politically popular part of Trump's agenda because there are like legitimate concerns about you know, currency manipulation, trade barriers, you know.
The IP stuff.
But it is the case that China has the United States really integrated economies, like they're the two biggest economies.
And they are really.
There's a large part of America's depending on China and a large part of China that's dependent on America. And it's not just at the tech level, like you know, like a lot of you know, China's a big country, like one point four billion people who like have to eat, and you know, like American farmers like sell a lot of stuff. And you know there's this amazing like backup tweet say, well, Okay, we're not selling beef to China,
maybe we could sell out to India. Well, I gotta tell you, I was born in India.
You're not gonna sell that, right, So, I mean, there was way too much. There's now a bipartisan consensus.
And Biden was certainly trying to do like you know, like use tariffs and like try to like get tougher with China. But the way that Trump is doing it, like if you're gonna, as you say, multiple front wars. Right, there's a certain like people on the Republican side who do have some strategic wisdom and they're basically you know, their whole argument for making friends with Russia is to do a reverse Kissinger, will be friends with Russia.
Uh, will draw down the Billies them can focus on China. But actually what Trump is doing is like we'll fight the entire world and we'll fight China at the same time,
and which makes no sense. Like like if you're as think we'll want to have a trade war with China first, you should get everyone else online, right, you should get like uh, and what has happened now, Like you know, the most amazing thing was Chavan Geese like making this big trip around Asia, and China is like not that popular for like long historical reasons in many of these countries, like it has been an imperialist country in Asia, especially
like a place like Vietnam, right like after the you know, America had the Vietnam War, then Vietnam went and like you know, they fought China because China was supporting the camarrouge. But here Magi went to like Vietnam, And of course it's all stage, but it's interesting that was stage that they had huge lines of people coming to cheer him on.
To anyone who knows the history of Asia, like for Vietnam to become friendly with China, it's like, yo, you're going against like centuries, if not thousands of years of history.
Trump is done the basic thing, which is that he's like convinced like a large part of the world that youah, like, well, Tina is the safer bad I think all the signs are kind of pointing towards them, kind of like backing down from this trade war with China and backing down just because the whole thing was done in such a stupid way.
Ham handed yeah, yeah, yeah, well yeah.
No, just just in the sense of, you know, you have some guy you're gonna fight in the bar, but then you also insult everyone else in the bar. You get the vtitude like that's.
Not what you do, but that's what it is. So if he had gone and I think this is a really important data point, right, had he gone to Canada Mexico and said, you guys, my biggest trading partners, we are the same continent. Let's remake North American trade. Let's redo the trade agreement we've had forever to call it Trump American Trade. Well, I'll pretend that it's changed everything. I'll take the win, MAGA will be delighted. I'll lie
about a lot of stuff. And then you could have said, Okay, now we're going to bring Japan into North American trade, and we're going to have Japan and then we're going to bring the EU into North American trade. But what he did instead was he said, went to war with Canada, went to war with Mexico, and then was like also China, and then you have this problem of Japan. So over the weekend, Navarro the trade hawks were like, we have a deal with Japan. Japan a country that is suffering
from stagflation. Stagflation a problem that in America we're about to have, right, recession, higher prices, inflation plus recession equals stagflation. Look at Japan. Also, remember Japan. One of the reasons why Japan is in such terrible shape immigrants, right, no immigrants, so the birth rate declines, there's no one to work. It's just like a disaster. That's the economic future America is going to have because nobody's going to want to come here. And also we can't get anyone to come here.
And also when they come here, we put them in jail. All bad, all things that are bad. So what happens now, So we go to Japan. We said we're going to make a deal. Japan says, okay, now, Japan says, no, We're going to make a deal with China. They are not stupid. They know they can trust China more than they can trust Donald Trump's America, and ergo, what are we doing?
Yeah, I know, ye know, And I will actually mention this there.
A strategy that you outlined was basically what Obama was
like setting up in the last years. Like he was basically saying for US a Pacific trade agreement which was designed to counter China, which would like try to bring in Japan, the Philippines, South Korea, Vietnam into an alliance with the US to give it leverage to going against China, which to my mind like makes the you know, like when you can have all sorts of disagreements on that policy, but it actually like mad a certain degree of sense rather than taking a fight with like everyone in the
world at the same time. Well see how this tray stuff goes because it is actually something that Trump is fairly committed to. He has people who around him were like like Navara, were like fanatically committed to it, and the sort of power that was granted to him by Congress, which the publics aren't going to fight him on, so he could actually continue to do a lot of damage.
And yeah, I actually think that like that is the more likely scenario that they will be like this seesaw back and forth doing damage a stock market tanking, you know, trying to pull back a little bit. I don't see how you get out of that doom loop.
Well, that is the problem with trade wars, right, is how do you get out of the doom loop? So tariffs go on, things get more expensive. A great example is this is something that Elizabeth Warren talked about last week. You tearff watching machines tryers become more expensive because it's a price war, but in the wrong direction. I think the war the problem. The bigger problem here, and you
see this with Trump's wars on the educational institutions. We see this with Trump's wars on other stuff, is that you can't trust him. So if you're Columbia and you make a deal with him, which Columbia did, Trump wants more stuff. He went after this four hundred million dollars that he had wanted from them because he had tried to get them to pay it twenty years ago. Right, Whereas if you're Harvard, you can at least go to the courts, and the courts will say this is not legal.
So you're better off going to the courts, keeping yourself in the public. You're safer that way than you are trying to make a back alley deal with Trump.
Yeah.
No, I think that's absolutely right.
I mean, I mean this is actually very interesting that like in the we saw this, like there's a lot of sort of elite surrender to Trump, you knowing their media in Wall Street, in the big law firms, in the universities, but like because of his who he is, and you know, like if you give him an inch, he'll take him mine everyone. Even though all these elitian institutions that were very inclined to surrender to him, like
they're certainly waking up. But I think you see the same thing in big law and even beyond Harvard, like gee, I think the most positive thing coming out of higher education is I think a lot of the universities are going to try to come together and to try to have a common friend, which is what you have to do.
But that he you know, like they're the impulse that people had to negotiate with surrender to him is basically disappearing, you know, exactly it's still there among like you know, some very rich, powerful people, because he does have this thing where like it's all about like you know, deals
and favors and winning his favors. So you know, I mean, I think the example of it persisting is like CBS and how the executive producer of sixty minutes basically quit because CBS it looks like they want to toll the Trump line.
Yeah, and I think it'll be interesting to see because the thing is, we've seen so much obeying in evance that we now have a situation where the public is so hungry for people to take a stand. You have people giving to Harvard. Harvard has a gazillion dollars, it is so rich, but they are a symbol of resistance. Now, this is what it is. It's real true.
Yeah. Yeah, well I will say I don't people should give to Harvard, they have enough, funny, but certainly, like any other institution that resists Trump will get support and should be supported, including like this podcast. So you know this exactly. But but you give them all. He don't give to Harvard, But that's the right, No, you.
Can give it. There's you know, just listen to the podcast. That's what you gotta do.
Yeah, yeah, but but it's absolutely the case. Yeah, there's absolute hunger for resistance.
The Democrats even like the immigration like von Holland went down tells Salvador and now like all the Democrats are like, you know, like actually taking a stance of like going visiting the people that Trump is trying to deport. So I actually think that, like you know, we always seeing people realize that, like, no, the positive incentive is like not to give into this guy. You don't actually get anything if you make try to make a deal with Trump.
And you'll lose it quickly.
Yeah, you'll lose it quickly. Yeah, I mean I actually think, like you actually absolutely see this with like on the international level, where like nobody, I mean, this is the thing, you know, they really want to try to make a deal with China, try to make a deal with Japan, but like nobody is actually gonna make any sort of deal.
There's no incentive, and you know, you actually get a lot more by resisting Trump.
Yeah, exactly. Get here. Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you.
Always great to be on.
Jim Acosta is the author of The sub Stack, The Jim Acosta Show, and the author of the New York Times bestseller The Enemy of the People, A Dangerous Time to Tell the Truth in America. Welcome Jim Acosta.
Hey, how are you. I'm so happy to see you.
I'm so happy that we are here and not at Seacott.
Give it time, give it time, no due process, right.
So, trade wars are good and easy to win. Did we win the trade war?
I don't know. Is this winning?
Is that?
What are we tired of the winning? I mean, honestly, what this shows is that Donald Trump will blink. Donald Trump will back down. I mean, you know, I've covered him for a long time now, for all the bluster, for the image he likes to project at his rallies and so on. He's the business guy who sits at the table and yells you're fired, and does all this
stuff the art of the deal and everything else. He backs down, He blinks, and it sounds as though, you know, for the guy who is still super sensitive about how he's viewed in New York and down on Wall Street and whatever, he still can't throw his weight around with with that crowd. That crowd came to him and said you need to back down, And he backed down.
Yeah, I think that's right. I think that's exactly right. I mean, I think that's it almost feels like Scott Bestent one. It was a Peter Navarro Scott Bessent contest, and Scott won and Peter lost, Thank god, because had Peter lost, we'd all be, you know, heading towards Jupan level stagflation.
Yeah.
And I mean, and the other thing too that's been on my mind is, you know, if you look at the breakdown of the vote in the twenty twenty four election, and I take this maybe a bit more sensitively than others, but Generation X, you know, they they pretty much lined up behind Donald Trump. I mean that was one of his best demographics. And your generation right as my generation.
I know, I'm not going to lump you in with me.
Jesse and I are at the very tale end.
Which generation is the most hyper sensitive about there for one case right now, it's got to be. I mean, sure people are baby boomers, young baby boomers on the referge to retirement and so on, but Gen xers and it's so you got to you know, you got to be rethinking this one, you know, right, if you're in this age group, I mean, look, at what he's done
with the economy. And this is a generation that is so dependent upon the outlook of their four one ks and their investments and so on, and they're just you know, it's all in the state of turmoil for the next three years.
Let's talk about this this because you covered him in his first admin a ton he was super mad at you. They took away your hard pass you've had. Here's a question for you that Trump polling. When he came into office this most recent time, there was a feeling that he was actually popular, he had won the popular vote. He had he said, I have a mandate. He you know, there was a real feeling the billionaires stood on this stage.
All of those numbers are gone. He is now almost as as he is, almost more unpopular than he was in his first administration.
Right.
Well, yeah, I think it's because of the way he's monkeyed around with the economy. Yeah, you know, not to go back to that issue, but you know, I think a Gallop poll that just came out shews fifty three percent of Americans view their financial situation negatively. It's the first time that that's happened since two thousand and one. I believe something along those lines. You know, you can only screw around with the economy so much, you can only screw around with the financial market so much. And
people have figured out the tariffs. I went to get my car service this week.
Not to just give a.
Completely weird anecdote, but I went to get my car service and I was asking the lady at the dealership, you know, are people freaked out? And she said, oh, yeah, they're freaked out. People came in and tried to buy cars. Like one hundred people came in over the weekend and bought cars because they're worried about the prices going on. I mean, people are starting to understand the effects of these terroriffs. And you know, even people in Mago world
have figured this out. And so of course he's underwater and he's he's going to continue to plunge. He can't help himself.
I think that's important just to like keep going on this for a minute. So best in sort of one. And now they're saying it might be forty percent, might be fifty percent. They don't know, it might be this might be that the whole point of the trade war was to get manufacturing on shore. That's a one year project. And again you are not going to have to get factories. That's a big job. It's going to mean all sorts
of things. It's going to be a big deal. Now that that did not you know now that they're they're backing down, that is not. Now there won't be any onshoring of manufacturing, right like you're not going to build a factory if you don't know what's going to happen in a week.
Yeah, and there are so many carve outs, you know, I mean, what's the point of having a trade war with China if you're going to exempt Apple and iPhones?
Now, you know, I mean, there there's that question. So all of this is I you know, I don't know who came up with this line of thinking.
First.
I won't claim credit because it's I didn't. It's not an original thought. But basically, the point of the terrorists, just like the point of everything else, is to have people groveling at Trump's May's begging for mercy. It's just it feeds into his his need to be you know, fond over and cared for and have his you know, his feelings you know, stroked and so on. And I and I just have to think that that's what this is all about, because if he really felt strongly about
all of this, he would be holding firm. And it took like what a week basically back down. They're putting out these signals that no, no, no, he's not going to lower the terrorists on China. But it's all these mixed signals and you turn on at CNBC for five minutes and this is what they're ranting and raving about. That the uncertainty in the markets is just it's just wreaking absolute havoc. And you have to wonder how long the system could take this.
And let's get back to appeasement for a minute. So yeah, with the back and forth on the tariffs. Now we have these cases of the universities. Right, Trump is trying to play a card out of the Victor Orbon school of like of university capture, right, hunish the elites, the academics, get them because they are absolutely the kind you know. The idea is to silence the thought and dissent. He's got a deal he's making with Columbia where they've just
given up and are doing whatever he wants. And then Harvard is fighting back against him, who is in a better spot.
I think the obvious answer is Harvard.
And this has been sort of what has been playing out since he came back into office. Is you saw, you know, institutions bending the knee, cutting deals, law firms just you know, completely subjugating themselves. And it's been an embarrassment for lots of important institutions in this country.
And I you know.
It's it's it's a fairly revealing episode because what Harvard has shown and I think what you're starting to see some for some other folks in various industry. I mean, look what Bill Owens did over at CBS in sixty minutes. You know, I do think that the folks who don't bow down, the folks who decide to fight and take this stuff on, they're just going to come out ahead in the long run.
And I think.
There's there's a there's a tendency on Trump's part and I've observed this over time when the fight gets to be too tough, when it involves too much work, he starts to back down.
Yeah, it's like the terrorist thing.
It's just too much, it's too much work for him to fight it right, and and so it's just easier.
Can I get this wrapped.
Up by Friday, So I got down, I got a tea time with so and so billionaire guy.
And it's like the Harvard thing.
I think that an eventual come out ahead because it's too much for him. He doesn't want to keep fighting it out, so he'll make it difficult for them for a while.
But look what happened to Look what just happened today?
He backs off of Jerome Powell, and what happens within like six hours he starts beating up on Zelenski.
Yeah.
Yeah, he just moves from one thing again.
Right, And I've been I've been calling it to see and say presidency, because you know, it's like that old toy you pull the string.
This is a duck.
This is a he can only do. He can only pick on one thing at a time. And it's the same tire talking points.
No, I think that's really what you're saying right now is so important and it's such a good lesson from trump Ism. And we remember this from trump One point, how is that if you just keep going, he will forget. And for example, that's the difference, like I think about the law firms that have made deals with him. He is now musing about like maybe they'll represent coal miners, maybe they'll do you know, because once you're captured by him, you are captured by him.
It's like, oh, well, the law firm of Dewey Cheatham and how they're on board with us. You know, let's let's give them, uh, you know Stephen Miller's side hustle business of going after DEI program. I mean, it's just like you just are just going to make more pain and suffering for yourself in the long run. And you know, like I mean, I like you brought my press pass case, like I learned my press pask.
When we pushed back, he backed down. It takes time. It's messy, comfortable court. What's that you win in court?
You win in court?
How yeah? I mean, we still have judges in this country.
Judge restored a voa. Uh.
In the last couple of days.
Judge another judge or jury slapped down Sarah Palin's bullshit defamation lawsuit. Like and he you know, Trump understands the clock better than anyone when he was up against it in legal hot water during the campaign. He played these courts, He played these judges like a fiddle. And I think what he taught everybody a lesson is you can do it right back to him.
And I think that's what's happening.
That's right, And I think and I think that that's really important. And it's also just when you have when you're put when you're up against him, what you have to do. The other thing that I think is so important is you have to stay loud, stay visible, stay focused. Like one of the things that I think really helped you was that you were able to stay like, you know, you kept talking and you you know, talk about that.
Yeah, I mean, you just keep going. And what was funny during that entire process, It's funny we're talking about this Sarah Huckabee Sanders. She was digging in her heels as the press secretary and continuing to try to take my press pass even though you know, the judge said give it back and so on.
And meanwhile Trump is, you know, telling reporters, well, what Jim did wasn't.
So bad, and that after I got my press pass back within the day, he's a question from me. Yeah, And it was like, you know, you just you just have to you have to just weather the storm with him.
And I think these these folks are and it's just a refresher course for a lot of people and their institutions and industries that that didn't get under his thumb in the first term in the first go around, and they're they're in the cross heres this time around, and they don't understand the playbook, and they think appeasement works, and it's just the monster. You give the monster food, the monster wants more food again.
And this is the United States of Amnesia, So they don't right, they don't remember. They don't remember what happened four years ago, so they don't remember that you have to push back, that you can't make deals with him now he has gone more North Korea than the last time. Yeah, and want to talk about this scene from the press briefing yesterday where we had the guy with the beanie. What is that guy's name, Timpoole with the bean pool.
Yep, he always wears a beanie. And it was lovely and Washington, yester. It was like seventy five degrees. I mean, it's like summer. It went from winter to summer. It's it's I think he might be the only person in Washington with a beanie on.
But I just I digress can.
You even wear a beanie when it's so warm up, Like, shouldn't you swap it out to it?
You would?
You would just have like the swamp season has already started earlier. You just have like speeds of sweat coming.
Back coming from the beanie. The beanie, you take up the beanie, it's all wet. So he's clearly wearing the beanie because he's losing his hair. Just who cares bebond? Half the people in that room are bald.
Some bald people are sexy. I don't know. That's what I've been told, not that I'm going to go that route. I got I got you Irish hair.
It's is not going to happen.
So lucky, but but I think so. So he's in there. He's the first question. The question is basically straight North Korean propaganda other people have given you. I don't even know. It's like a ten minute question. And then she sort of talked to me.
I know these are these are not briefings anymore. They're propaganda sessions, right, And Caroline Levitt is sort of like the little lady on the North Korean state TV who comes out and she reads her little talking points for the night and Kim Jong un was a very dear leader today and he did very dear leader things. And this is what Caroline Levitt does and now just sort of it's like a Johnny Carson Show kind of thing. And she's like, well, she can't just do it herself,
so she's got to have a sidekick. It's kind of like the Ed McMahon, you know, he's like the Andy Richter and Herran.
And he's in the new media seat.
He's in the new media. Does that mean we could get in a seat in the briefing room? Does that mean?
I mean the new media is? It's all now? I just want Temple is most famous for having been discovered to have taken money from Russia.
Right right right, And then they said that they didn't know that it was coming from Russia. And I think the DOJ. I was looking at some of this history because I was like, what happened with that?
Was it? Yeah? I was like Trump, it was was it the Russia thing? You know? I was, I was.
Thinking that and and yeah, they apparently they he and a few other of those dudes took some some Russia money, but they didn't know, or they claimed they didn't know.
And the DJ said, well, we don't think that they knew.
And it's kind of like a sad empathetic exercise that the White House Press Secretary for the United States of America feels like they have to bring in loyalist podcasters to help them get their message out.
I mean, when you're trying that hard, maybe something's not working.
You know she is, but you could see a world where she ends up being a resistance the hero, right, I mean where she because you can see in her head like she's covering so hard, but you could see in her head like the calculus like maybe you.
Know, I'd be a twist.
That'd be cool.
And I you know, what I've been saying all along is is that you know, if she works really hard and she studies and does her homework and does her special exercises, she too can be as ridiculous as Sean Spicer and Sara Huckabee Sanders. I mean, they they are kind of like the All Stars. They're like the Hall of Fame, the Harlem Globetrotters. She's not quite there yet, you know, but she's you know, you put in the work, you might get there.
So everything Trump touches dies right, This is this idea that everyone who Trump, you know, the people who he goes through, and like if you look at Rudy Giuliani, that's certainly been true, right, Shawn Spicer. There are certain people who've gone through that, gone in and out of that admin and have not left the better for it. Yeah, Sarah Huckabee Sanders actually is the governor.
She's the governor of Arkansas.
She has a real job she.
Does, and apparently they're in a fight with the Trump administration over disaster relief funding. I don't know if you saw this, but apparently the administration said to Governor Huckabee Sanders, I'm sorry, but you're not getting her disaster relief money. So you know, you take one for the team here and there look where it gets you. You just don't you don't get your disaster relief money. Which is kind of a crying sham. I mean, it's one of those stories,
Molly that we don't have enough time to cover. But we we should have enough time, yeah, because we're heading into hurricane season. And if they're I mean, like the way that they're goofing around with Public Health and goofing around with the State Department and signal gait and so on. If we're not getting our disaster relief money system straightened out before hurricane season, a lot of people are gonna be suffering in this country. And I mean, it's it's it is actually deadly serious.
When we talk about out a lot of people suffering here there, it seems like we are hurtling towards something not good. The vaccine. I just read a piece in the Washington Post today about the people don't want to do. You know, there's a lot of confusion about vaccines. I think confusion is a very generous word for that. But there's clearly a lot of back and forth right about about vaccines. This is led by RFK. We have children dying of measles. This has not never been to sarp
K Junior. This has never been the kind of thing. This is never This is just a totally a phenomenon that is post COVID kind of craziness. Do you think that's this or most dangerous? I mean, what do you think the most dangerous thing this admin is doing right now?
Is that is one of the most dangerous things. It's hard to pinpoint what is the most dangerous thing. I mean, I do think when you have what eight hundred some cases of measles in West Texas, I mean that is that is scary?
Is that should not be going on? Kids? Two dead kids. That should not be going on.
And you have the Secretary of Health and Human Services not giving full throated endorsements for vaccines and it you know, it's established science going back decades generations, and he's still saying this cuckoo for cocoa puff stuff about autism, you know, and and just the other day, you know, talking about environmental factors causing autism, and you know, as if he has this certainty that comes from some imaginary scientific expertise.
That he has.
It's really disturbing stuff. And it has the potential, you're right, mind, it has the potential for being perhaps the most devastating thing that's happening inside the Trump administration right now, because if another pandemic comes along, we're just going to be woefully unprepared, and you're going to have people in charge. And it's not just RFK Junior Trump was making some of these same goofy comments the other day. You're going
to have a situation where history repeats itself. The government is woefully unprepared, and you have wack a doodles in charge of public policy, leading millions and millions of Americans astray, which of course will exacerbate the public health crisis.
That's exactly what we saw.
During COVID and and it could happen again. There's no question about it. RFK Junior is probably the most irresponsible cabinet pick. I mean, it's Pete Hegseth has got to be right up there. But RFK Junior is without question. I mean, you couldn't pick a more irresponsible person to be in charge of our public health structures. It would be shocking if we could just focus on that all the time. But it's a moving target every day.
Jim Acosta, you have the Jim Acosta shew on Subjects, which is hugely successful.
It's going well.
I enjoy it. You come on, You're part of the reason why it's successful. No, and I didn't think that this was going to turn in anything. I thought I left my open. I thought I was just going to go screw around for a little while and go on vacations.
And it went really well, right, I mean.
I get to talk to all these cool people, I get to have you on. I call it like my Friends and Family program because I get to talk to a lot of friends.
Brendan Duke is a senior director for Economic policy at Center for American Progress. Welcome to Fast Politics.
Brandon, thanks for having me on, Molly.
Okay, I'm going to introduce you in the least annoying way possible. Jesse and I were talking about the trade war with China. Part of the trade war with China is this issue of the shipping. Right China, I think it's our fourth largest trading partner. Does that sound right to you? Third largest training partner after Mexico and Canada. Right, that's right. We are having a trade war with all
of them, because why wouldn't we be. But Chinese goods tend to come from two main ports, the Port of Los Angeles and the Port of Long Beach, Right.
That's right. And they sit right next to each other. People don't realize this, but they are just right next to each other. Nobody can tell the difference between the two when you're looking at them from like a plane.
And during COVID, what we saw was that we just started to see these kind of unintended consequences of COVID, so shipping got so backed up that we'd have these huge groups of ships just waiting around trying to dock.
Yeah, that's right. People ordered a bunch of stuff online because you couldn't do anything fun. People bought too much stuff online and it just went through those supe works and there wasn't enough space, and they backed up and there were one hundred container ships waiting in the Pacific Ocean.
So, dog, that is supply chain, and that's how you got involved in shipping was because of this supply chain story. Now we are about to have, or maybe not, but probably yes, a big supply chain problem, but not because of COVID, but because of Trump.
That's exactly right.
Talk us through what's happening and how this went.
Look during COVID, it was the opposite problem. So, you know, people couldn't do anything fun, so they bought a lot of stuff online and there's only a certain number of reports and only a certain number of places the doctorship, and so we got all this backup because people bought
too much stuff. What we're seeing now is that you know, the retailers and other companies that send stuff into the United States are not sending it or they're not going to send it because they are trying to avoid the terraffs. So the last few weeks, last few months, they've been sending stuff like crazy because they're trying to get ahead
of the terraces. But now that the terriffs are here, we're sharding to see a drop off in those planned shippings crossing the Pacific Ocean, and so that'll start to hit the American consumer over the coming months.
What I saw, because I saw some of this again, this feels obscure, This feels like not the excitement that it should, but it actually is humongous because what happens is that right now we're in this pause period, but we're about to have maybe one hundred and fifty seven percent TIFFs maybe last maybe fifty today, so fifty or forty. But what's not happening is China is not packing ships
and sending them over. So talk to me about when you look at the numbers, what you're seeing over the next three weeks.
Right, So, we've had an importing bonanza over the last few weeks, and this week we're still importing a ton.
And explain why.
Basically, it takes about two to three weeks to send a container ship across the Pacific. Three weeks ago to this day was Liberation Day and the tariffs got announced, so a lot of the ships coming in now had
no idea what the tariffs were going to be. And then it wasn't until the following week that Trump supersized the China tariff to one hundred and forty five percent, So the container ships that are landing now did not know that there was going to be one hundred and forty five percent tariff when they entered here, which, if you think about it, it is crazy that small business owners who ordered stuff are going to have to write a giant check to the US federal government based on a
cost that they had no idea they were going to incur when they ordered the stuff. But let's leave that aside. Next week though, the expected shipping. You know, so right now we're up like fifty percent compared to a year ago. Next week we're going to be about down ten percent. So that's the beginning of people just stopped two three weeks ago ordering stuff to avoid the terraf.
So ten percent means that you have ten percent fewer goods coming from China. That means that if you want to buy something, there's going to be less on the shops right.
Eventually, because they've been on this ordering bonanza. Their warehouses are full, They're fuller than usual. This is the shipping low season. So it may be a little bit of time until you actually see this on the shelves because places like Walmart On and Amazon have some really smart people who've been trying to work and figure out to prepare for this. But if the ship stopped coming, the ship stopped coming, and there's going to be in a fact over you know, those coming months.
So what right now, when you look three weeks out, you start to really see a drop Yeah. Now, historically the shipping is static, right, you have a consistent number. So the fact that this drop off that is like, clearly China has a plan. They're not going to buy from China at one hundred and fifty percent tariff.
Onto stuff and it's sitting in a warehouse in Guangdong and Shanghai. And so especially Trump yesterday said maybe he lowsers it to fifty percent. If that's the case, there is no way I am putting something on a ship
right now. I want to wait to at least get the fifty percent rat maybe right, right, So even if I was planning to eat the one hundred and forty five percent tariff just to you know, get you know, get through the next few weeks, No way am I doing that when there's gonna be a ninety percent cut comment. So you know, again, you know, they're just trying to say they're trying to wake this thing out because this clearly
they don't think this is permanent. And so I think the financial markets feel relief because they're like, oh, maybe Trump will back off on the terraces. Well, what that effectively means is people are just not going to send stuff across the Pacific because they're trying to avoid a triple digit tax.
So it sounds like what's happening here is that these tariffs are freezing global trade for.
The United States. Yeah, it's not a problem for you know, Europeans buying from China. I mean stuff could get cheaper for that, right, but says it certainly freezes our trade, especially the trade over the Pacific.
When we talk about freezing our trade. The whole goal of this originally was on shoring manufacturing, build stuff in America. But because there is not a clear message on these tariffs. There is not a clear path for importers or exporters.
Right, absolutely not. I think it's more like the COVID freeze, right because if Congress legislated a one hundred and forty five percent tariff, and you know that was enacted and not going away, maybe some businesses would look at setting up stock factories in the United States to avoid the tariffs. Right now, they're you know, not willing to ship stuff
because they're trying to save a million dollars. Why would you spend fifty million dollars on a stock factory in the United States if it could go to away in a few weeks. Basically, what this just means is businesses are just going to sit on their hands when it comes to buying stuff overseas as well as investing in the United States.
When we talk about this phrase, there are certain things that are cut out for these tariffs. Can you explain sort of what the thinking on these cutouts are and what they are.
Some things are cut out because they're tariff elsewhere. So for example, it's a ten percent tariff on all imports across the world China, one hundred and forty five percent. Canada and Mexico are kind of twenty five percent. Some things are some things aren't. Can get into that right.
Now, everything's ten percent, right.
Except for Canada and Mexico and China. And then Canada Mexico is twenty five percent for like half of their stuff, and then China one hundred and forty five percent.
Why is this so complicated?
Because I mean, the guy's just taking his Twitter posting and turning into executive organs. Oh okay, that's what's going on.
Good deal.
And so then on top of that, there are these sectoral terraffs, right, So the first stealing aluminum, which you know we've done sealing illumine terraffs before. That's not topic of a deal. Then cars, which is an enormous deal because we don't build a car parely in America, we buy it, built it in America, Canada, Mexico and things across the border a million times. And then medicine is coming,
and then semiconductors are coming. So they've exempted, for example, semiconductors from China from the tariffs, right, but there is going to eventually be a twenty five percent tear now twenty five percent seems like a deal relative to one hundred and forty five percent, but that's the way the you know, exemptions work.
So we have semiconductors and Madison from China being tariffed at a rate we have not learned about yet.
I expect it'll be twenty five percent, but they haven't said yet.
We have everything else from China tariff data rate of one hundred and fifty percent, one hundred and sixty four percent, or perhaps today fifty percent or forty percent.
Yeah, it's like Russian roulette with American business.
If you are an importer from China, what is the move urban? I mean right now, the move is for the next three months everybody. It's because it's three weeks since Liberation Day. There's a three month pause, So for three months everybody is going to be importing and exporting like a lunatic to try to get ahead of it.
Well, no, the tariffs are in effect now, which is why we're seeing the drop off.
Oh there was a two week pause.
No, one hundred and forty five percent tariff is in place. Oh wow, okay, that's it is currently happening. You know, these poor container chips.
People who tried small businesses.
Yeah, I mean a lot of the small business Half of what we import in the United States are things American businesses used to build other stuff. Right. They're not consumer goods. They're things that businesses use, right, So they're currently in place. And that's why you know, they were they were shipping. When they thought the tariffs would be reasonable,
they stopped. And that's why we're seeing the extremely sharp drop, you know, especially because you know it's like we see like a thirty percent drop off and expected imports two weeks from now. I expect that's mostly the China stuff. The stuff from like Vietnam and Japan and stuff like that. Those things are probably still coming because it's only a ten percent tariffs.
But Trump tried to make a deal with Japan, and Japan said we're going to make a deal with China.
Yeah, and actually I think the discussion of deals I think has actually been hugely misleading. Yeah, for for this reason. So Trump initially, you know, proposed the Liberation Day tariffs of like twenty five percent or so for Japan. You are closest allies who are supposed to be helping with
counter China. But you know, whatever twenty five percent. Then everybody said this is insane, so he backed off for ninety days, right, so he's deal, and then he moved it down to ten percent, and it's ninety days in July.
You know.
The idea is we have these trade deals and then it won't be twenty five percent, but it will still be ten percent. He has said, the White House has said it is going to be ten percent no matter what. So no matter what this deal is, it is still going to be ten percent. And we are not talking with China, we are not talking with Canada and Mexico. We're talking about getting rid of the steel, aluminum, car, medicine,
and semiconductor terrasts. So even if Phoenix deals with all of these countries they're talking about doing, we are still seeing the highest terraff right since the nineteen thirties. We're still seeing a three percent increase in overall prices in the United States. We're still seeing a five thousand dollars reduction in American households purchasing power. We're still seeing a ten increase in terrast that is ten times larger than
Trump's first term. That is with the deals. Right, So there's all this talk of oh, if it gets these deals, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Getting the deals just means we're continuing the current situation, which a lot of people worry about. A recession. Not getting a deal would be worse. But getting a deal does not mean we are you know, we are home free here.
One of the sort of nightmare of scenarios is stagflation. It means recession with inflation. So usually in a recession, people don't buy things, they get cheaper. You have less money, but things are cheaper. You can get out of it because you know, it sort of works out stagflation. This night meare scenario is that things are inflated, they get more expensive, but you're in a recession, so you have less buying power and things are more expensive. How do we not end up in stagflation?
I think the only way we avoid stagflation is Congress reasserts its constitutional power to set tariffs and takes away the car keys from Donald Trump. That's the that's the only way we can do it. If Trump says, well, I'm not going to enact the tariffs, who's going to believe him? If Congress takes away his power to do it. However, I think businesses will you know, have that confidence to know, okay,
like we're you know, we're gonna avoid this. So that is the only it's the smartest economic policy imaginable is just taking away the car keys from Donald Trump.
Congress can do it, but also the Supreme Court can do it. So talk us through that, yeah, because he doesn't really have this power. I mean, this was an emergency power he gave himself and everyone was like, ooh.
Guy, right, so you know, first, let me, you know, do the non disclaimer. And you know, I've walked with a lot of lawyers about this who know stuff, but not a lawyer. But my understanding is this, so there's normal trade processes by which we imposed tariffs. Trump has actually done that for the steel and aluminum terriffs. But this ten percent, one hundred and forty five percent tariff, No,
he has not done that. He's used this thing called the International Economic Emergency Powers Act, which has never in its history been used for tariffs. The word tariff, the
word tax does not appear in there at all. It's what we used, for example, to clamp down on Russia with sanctions, but those are not terraff right, and he's declared, you know, these emergencies, that we have a sentinel problem because of Canada, that the trade deficit which we've had for like fifty years is an emergency, those sorts of things.
And then basically the Supreme Court has the question before it, do you know, does the president have the power to just say a law gives him that power even though the law doesn't say that. So that's going to be the question before the Supreme Court. There's multiple court cases put up by conservative you know, legal organizations who do not think the president has this power. So I think at the very least they're pretty legally questionable.
So there are two ways that we solve this problem. One is that Congress takes away tariff powers from Trump. Then businesses know they'll be safe. They put on a tariff, they don't put on a tariff, but they know they won't be back and forth, so they can buy stuff they can on shore, they can offshore, et cetera. Or the Supreme Court takes away.
The power from him exactly.
This was really interesting. I'm sorry that I made you talk about ports, but I'm glad we got to talk about this because this is real stuff. So thank you for joining.
Me, thanks for having me on Hope. I had never talked about parts again, but we'll see no moment pact.
Jesse Cannon smile.
One of the things that you know, I don't want to mansplait something that's happened to you many times. But one of the things that comes with the price of trump Ism is that your family gets terrorized when you become on the other side of them. It is very, very horrible to see after all the stuff that Kilbrego Garcia's family has gone through, that they are victim to this as well.
Yeah, so Trump World has said a lot of bad things about Garcia, including every which way of trying to smear him. And again, like Garcia is not about Garcia the person. This is about Duke process to the thing. But either way, she has been now she's afraid for her safe. She's staying in an undisclosed location with her three children. I read this in the Times. Maybe it's not right, but that she had three special needs children. So this woman has now her husband is in this prison.
We don't know if he'll ever come back. She is now in an undisclosed location with three special needs children. This is not the kind of stuff that you want happening in a democracy. And when you look at these numbers, you know, when you look at the bond market and you look at people flying from the dollar, people don't want to live in a banana republic. And that's what this is. This is real Banana republic stuff. So it is our moment of fuck Ray. 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.