Trump & company want to turn us into Taiwan circa 1985. But the brilliant minds behind the idea of intentionally weakening the dollar are prioritizing making America a good place to manufacture rather than a good place to live. If the administration stays on this track, this country will have lower incomes, higher inflation, and weaker buying power—and more expensive beer and tomatoes. Maybe we were better off with Jared there. Meanwhile, in the Rust Belt, some Dems are arguing for a smarter version of tariffs. Plus, Abrego Garcia's union brothers want him home and Trump wants to fight with Harvard. Rep. Chris Deluzio and Josh Barro join Tim Miller. show notes Rep. Deluzio's NYT piece arguing for smarter tariffs Josh's NYT piece on how Trump is giving Dems a gift with his tariffs
What are the economic implications of Trump's tariffs?
They're both pretty savvy at navigating the Q&A around Trump's ridiculousness. Besant seems totally incapable of handling that.
But there's no good way to market this tariff policy. I think that's an even more hopeless assignment than certain other aspects of the administration's policy.
Marco, in the immigration stuff, a lot of it is awful, but it's at least responding to a real political impulse in the United States where people were really unhappy with the level of irregular immigration under Joe Biden and get tough on that as a thing that there's a big market for. The president's approval ratings are actually still a little bit above water on immigration.
as an assignment in terms of go out and defend this awful thing. I think it's a lot easier with that than it is with this really idiotic tariff policy that is just going to make everybody poorer. And that's especially because Trump is so insistent on being so unpredictable about the tariffs because he clearly, he loves that.
He loves that, you know, everyone is hanging on his every word and people have to come into the Oval Office and beg him to make changes and And Tim Cook is there lobbying him all the time about, you know, please give me an exemption, et cetera, et cetera. Trump loves that.
But that just makes the terror policy not only so much worse for the economy, it also makes it completely incapable of achieving the stated goals the Trump administration has here. This is not a policy that is designed such that it will actually foster the construction of factories in the United States, for example.
So there's a version of the tariff policy that would have been large tariffs that are clearly telegraphed, that are announced and they stick to them. And it still would have been a bad policy, but at least you would have been able to explain what the hell you were doing. This, there's no available explanation for. I don't think Steve Mnuchin would be doing a good job messaging it if he were here.
I think the thing that you see, the demonstration that Steve Mnuchin is smart is that he didn't come back to serve in this administration. I think Besson has an impossible job.
So you're not as embittered as I am that the first gay Republican cabinet secretary is so hapless. That's fine. I'm just taking it a little more personal.
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