There are two pieces to this episode. First, a tour of what Donald Trump has done — and what he has backed down from doing — over the last few days. There’s a lesson there. Perhaps Democrats are starting to learn it.Then I wanted to hear the view of Trump’s first weeks back in office from someone on the right — someone who agrees with many of Trump’s policies, but also understands how the government works and who cares about our Constitution.Yuval Levin is the director of social, cultural and constitutional studies at the American Enterprise Institute. His latest book is “American Covenant: How the Constitution Unified Our Nation — and Could Again.” What struck me about our conversation is that, on the one hand, Levin is less alarmed about much of what’s happening than I am. But on the other hand, he’s a lot less impressed by what Trump is actually getting done — and how these moves are likely to work out for him — than most Democrats I know. It’s a perspective very much worth hearing.Mentioned:“Don’t Believe Him” by Ezra KleinBook Recommendations:The Rhetorical Presidency by Jeffrey K. TulisWhy Congress by Philip WallachThe Extinction of Experience by Christine RosenThoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected] can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” was produced by Elias Isquith and Jack McCordick. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris. Mixing by Isaac Jones, with Efim Shapiro and Aman Sahota. Our supervising editor is Claire Gordon. The show’s production team also includes Rollin Hu and Kristin Lin. Original music by Pat McCusker. Audience strategy by Kristina Samulewski and Shannon Busta. The executive producer of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser. Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
Full Episode
From New York Times Opinion, this is The Ezra Klein Show. Over the weekend, President Donald Trump announced 25% tariffs on Mexico and Canada. The markets reacted with shock. We were really doing this? Didn't Trump's Wall Street backers tell us again and again this was all just a negotiating ploy? And then Mexico said that it would add 10,000 troops to the border.
And Canada said it would appoint a fentanyl czar, and they noted efforts they were already making on the border. And Trump delayed the tariffs by a month in both cases. So how to read this? Did Trump back down in the face of market turmoil? Did he get what he wanted, even though what he got wasn't very much, was mostly things that Mexico and Canada were already doing?
Are we going to have this happen again in a month and maybe every month after that? I don't think anybody actually knows, very much including Donald Trump. What seems clear here is that Trump likes tariffs, but he dislikes political pain. He wants to be seen as in control. He wants the world bending to his will.
But the stock market plummeting does not make it look like the world is bending to his will. The stock market plummeting threatens his control. And so when other countries see that, their strategy is going to come clearer. The more Trump bullies other nations, the more they will band together in retaliation, and the more that will batter markets.
The world does not want to be endlessly pushed around by Donald Trump. Actions create reactions. So yeah, Trump has the power to impose tariffs, but he does not have the power to impose them without paying a price. And so far, at least, he does not seem to want to pay that price. Domestically, Elon Musk is trying to remake the federal government.
I was going to say by fiat, but it's not even by anything as official as that.
His people have pushed their way into the Treasury Department's payment systems, putting the longtime civil servant in charge of that system on leave when he wouldn't give a bunch of Musk's deputies access to a system that, and I really think it's important to understand this, a system that virtually nobody even in the Treasury Department has access to because it contains so much private data.
because it presents such severe cybersecurity risks, and because something going wrong in it would throw government payments into complete chaos. And that's been far from their only move. The really splashy, aggressive thing they did over the past couple of days was that Musk's team announced that they were closing down USAID, the foreign aid agency created by Congress decades ago.
They don't have the authority to close down USAID. And so I agree with Lauren de Jong Schulman, a former Office of Management and Budget official, who wrote that the way to talk about this is not to say something anodyne and settled, like they got passwords to the payment system or they closed down USAID.
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