Speaker 1: Hi, I'm Molly John Fast and this is Fast Politics,
Speaker 1: where we discussed the top political headlines with some of
Speaker 1: today's best minds and a p r.
Speaker 2: Ipoll says fifty two percent of Americans see Trump as
Speaker 2: a dangerous dictator whose power should be limited before he
Speaker 2: destroys American democracy. Where is the line? We have such
Speaker 2: a great show for you today. The Nation's cheat here
Speaker 2: stops by to talk to us about the Canadian election
Speaker 2: and what it means for Trump's rule of America. Then
Speaker 2: we'll talk to New York Times his own Peter S.
Speaker 2: Goodman about what the empty shipping containers coming into America's
Speaker 2: ports means for it the shelves in your local grocery store.
Speaker 2: But first the news.
Speaker 3: Somalie, there's a thing with Trump that things are always on,
Speaker 3: then they're off again. They're on, they're off again. This morning,
Speaker 3: Caroline Levitt was throwing a major major about the idea
Speaker 3: of Amazon putting the prices of tariffs on things. Now
Speaker 3: Amazon is denying they're going to do it, even though
Speaker 3: it was it a punch bowl newsletter that was sponsored
Speaker 3: by Amazon.
Speaker 2: Amazon. I watched the press conference this morning. It actually
Speaker 2: is a smart idea on the part of Amazon to
Speaker 2: point out how much tariffs are costing the consumer. It
Speaker 2: got Carolyn Levitt really miffed, It got Donald Trump furious. Look,
Speaker 2: Jeff Bezos finds himself in a bad position, despite the
Speaker 2: fact that he has a good zillion dollars. No one
Speaker 2: wants to see their company in decline. Much of what
Speaker 2: is available on Amazon is cheap and made in China. Ergo,
Speaker 2: there is every reason in the world why Bezos is
Speaker 2: not happy with these tariffs.
Speaker 4: And this was I.
Speaker 2: Think a pretty effective pushback. Made Trump fury again. I
Speaker 2: think really important to remember Jeff Bezos is now a
Speaker 2: captured billionaire. He's like these law firms. He is under capture.
Speaker 2: He has made a deal with Trump, he has sucked
Speaker 2: up to Trump, and now he serves at the pleasure
Speaker 2: of Donald Trump. So despite the fact that he has
Speaker 2: billions of dollars and is super wealthy and powerful, he
Speaker 2: is ultimately trying not to get regulated out of existence
Speaker 2: by Donald Trump. Now is this stupid? Yes? Could he
Speaker 2: stand up to Trump? Absolutely? Would Trump be able to
Speaker 2: regulate him out of existence? It would take a lot
Speaker 2: of time and a lot of confidence to things that
Speaker 2: Donald Trump doesn't have a huge supply. So you see,
Speaker 2: it's a real example of someone who who has created
Speaker 2: the capture that they are involved in, and Bezos is
Speaker 2: now perhaps cowering, perhaps pushing back. We'll see how this
Speaker 2: plays out, but I think it's important to remember these
Speaker 2: tariffs are bad for business, and Bezos is just one
Speaker 2: of the many, many, many, many business owners who are
Speaker 2: about to really get fucked by these one hundred and
Speaker 2: forty five percent tariffs. So you'll see more of this.
Speaker 2: And again, Bezos has created this capture for himself and
Speaker 2: now he is in a possible situation that he put
Speaker 2: himself in, and quite frankly, it's well deserved.
Speaker 3: We saw similar behavior with Paramount this week, and when
Speaker 3: the statement on sixty minutes is that they are afraid
Speaker 3: of their.
Speaker 2: Merger behavior to go through.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and I think Bezos has much more power here
Speaker 3: because that could bring down Trump's approval real fast.
Speaker 2: I mean, the reality is Trump's approval is terrible, right.
Speaker 2: His approval is now down to what it was in
Speaker 2: the first term, that sort of dregs approval. We've seen
Speaker 2: even just from the universities that Harvard is now in
Speaker 2: a much better position than Columbia is, where Columbia is
Speaker 2: trying to make these deals. They have no one to
Speaker 2: protect them. Trump World keeps going back on the deals,
Speaker 2: and at least Columbia has the courts to protect them.
Speaker 2: You're almost better off going into a court fight with
Speaker 2: Donald Trump then rolling over and letting him do whatever
Speaker 2: he wants.
Speaker 3: Agreed. Well, speaking of rolling over and doing whatever he wants,
Speaker 3: he's issuing executive orders, ramping up America's police state.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So again, there is a headline here that's very scary,
Speaker 2: and it's certainly possible that something very scary will happen here.
Speaker 2: But it's also I think really important to remember that
Speaker 2: executive orders are the least legally binding thing that the
Speaker 2: president can do, and they keep you know, he's not
Speaker 2: passing a law, and in fact, he has passed the
Speaker 2: least laws of any president at this point. You know,
Speaker 2: Executive orders are like just there vibes. Okay, there are
Speaker 2: things that he feels like, there are things he wants
Speaker 2: to do. These are things that are going to die
Speaker 2: in court, okay, Like so many of Trump's ideas. Does
Speaker 2: Trump want to be an autocrat? Yes? Does the Supreme
Speaker 2: Court want him to be? I think seven of them
Speaker 2: don't Alito and Thomas forget it. They'll go with whatever.
Speaker 2: But are his instincts scary and terrible. Yes. By the way,
Speaker 2: he's done executive orders that have targeted Mark Elias. My
Speaker 2: man has done a ton of executive orders about everything
Speaker 2: and everyone. So I don't think that we should take
Speaker 2: them so seriously at this point. Yes, he would love
Speaker 2: to do this. Is he going to be able to
Speaker 2: do it? Absolutely not. The thing that is worth remembering
Speaker 2: is that Pam Bondy is going along with a lot
Speaker 2: of stuff that she knows is not legal, that she
Speaker 2: knows is not going to go anywhere. And this is
Speaker 2: like another example of someone who knows better just destroying
Speaker 2: themselves for Trump because he wants them to.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Another thing that they're trying to do to consolidate
Speaker 3: and protect powers that they hope will stay on their
Speaker 3: side is they are blocking inquiries into the Trump administration
Speaker 3: and signal scandal.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So look again, you had Bondy trying to take
Speaker 2: away protections for journalists from being subpoena. They don't want
Speaker 2: you to know what they're doing, which is a pretty
Speaker 2: good sign they're not doing good stuff. Right If they
Speaker 2: wanted you to know what they were doing, they wouldn't
Speaker 2: be constantly trying to office scate. So signal gate is
Speaker 2: super embarrassing for Republicans. Trump did not fire heg set
Speaker 2: By the way, there's so much more coming on the
Speaker 2: heag sets stuff. Right, we have an office that is
Speaker 2: at war with each other. There's just going to be
Speaker 2: more and more embarrassing stuff. Everyone in the world out
Speaker 2: of that office is leaking. I think trying to cover
Speaker 2: up signal gate is going to be the least of
Speaker 2: their problems. And again this is example. Trump has decided
Speaker 2: that if he fires heg set he'll look stupid, so
Speaker 2: he doesn't want to fire hegsas, so he's doing everything
Speaker 2: he can to keep the guy on. But there's just
Speaker 2: no way this doesn't continually snowball into more and more.
Speaker 2: And last week we saw another story about a different
Speaker 2: signal chat with the wife and the brother. Then we
Speaker 2: saw a story about heg Seth having a makeup studio
Speaker 2: built that is very embarrassing. And we're just seeing trickles
Speaker 2: of embarrassing stories. And you know why, because you know,
Speaker 2: he has an organization and everyone in there hates each
Speaker 2: other and they're just leaking. Like a said, so I
Speaker 2: think you'll see more of it, and I think you'll
Speaker 2: see more Republicans trying to cover it for it. And
Speaker 2: here's the thing. Donald Trump could end this tomorrow just
Speaker 2: by firing Pete Hegsath. But he won't. And so many
Speaker 2: of the things we've talked about today. Donald Trump could
Speaker 2: end tomorrow the trade war. He could say no more
Speaker 2: trade war, that was a mistake, Let's just go back
Speaker 2: to normal, and it would end tomorrow. They're not going
Speaker 2: to onshore manufacturing by making things more expensive. That's not
Speaker 2: how that works. We saw Howard Lutinx today giving an
Speaker 2: interview and he said, and I think this is really important,
Speaker 2: he said, So gave an interview today and it was
Speaker 2: like very wilber Ross. He said, c NBC. Remember there
Speaker 2: has been a ton of the Trump administration trying to
Speaker 2: go out and calm the markets. You had Treasury Secretary
Speaker 2: Beson yesterday or Monday giving a talk say that he's
Speaker 2: got all these trade deals in the hopper. By the way,
Speaker 2: we were told by Peter and Navarro there would be
Speaker 2: trade deals in ninety days. We're like two and a
Speaker 2: half weeks into this and we have yet to have
Speaker 2: a trade deal. China has said there are nowhere near
Speaker 2: a trade deal. Japan no trade deal, India no trade deal.
Speaker 2: But I want to talk about this interview Lutnik on
Speaker 2: CNBC trying to make everyone feel better. CNBC says if
Speaker 2: a company were to say we're raising prices because of tariffs,
Speaker 2: is that a hostile act? And Lutinix says, I think
Speaker 2: if you go out of your way to try to
Speaker 2: make it seem like your price has changed, when it's nonsense.
Speaker 2: A ten percent tariff is not going to change virtually
Speaker 2: any price, and in fact, a ten percent tariff means
Speaker 2: you're going to pay ten percent more good stuff.
Speaker 3: Speaking of Trump's authoritarian reaches, a top White House aid
Speaker 3: by the name of Stephen Miller says that JB. Pritzker
Speaker 3: calling for protests could be construed as inciting violence.
Speaker 2: Sure, so here's an interesting thing. Pritzker has been a
Speaker 2: very strong speaker lately. He is the governor of Illinois,
Speaker 2: but he's also the scion of the Pritzker family. The
Speaker 2: Pritzker family is a wildly wealthy, deeply liberal, very philanthropic,
Speaker 2: and pretty great family filled with a lot of really
Speaker 2: smart people who give a lot of money to really
Speaker 2: good stuff. So basically the opposite of elo. You know
Speaker 2: how Elon is trying to strip the federal government. So,
Speaker 2: and Pritzker has been really strong about criticizing Trump. Part
Speaker 2: of that is because he has political aspirations, but part
Speaker 2: of that is because he does not. He's not a coward. Now,
Speaker 2: is he not a coward because he has billions of
Speaker 2: dollars to back them up? Maybe, but it doesn't matter.
Speaker 2: I mean, Jeff Bezos seems pretty cowardly, and he has
Speaker 2: more money than Pritzker, So I'm not going to write
Speaker 2: off his bravery so quickly. I wonder if Steven Miller
Speaker 2: understands what he's opening the door to here. Now, want
Speaker 2: you to think back to last week part of why
Speaker 2: Trump stopped this crazy tariff thing or paused it. It
Speaker 2: will come back like the gun on the wall in
Speaker 2: the play in the third act. Right, this trade war
Speaker 2: is still very much going to happen to us. But
Speaker 2: I want to talk about this idea that Trump know,
Speaker 2: Trump does not want to become an emerging market, right,
Speaker 2: he understands, But I mean that's the real that's sort
Speaker 2: of the real red lawne here, is that he understands
Speaker 2: that the dollar is a safe haven, right, and he
Speaker 2: does not want to have capital flight because if they
Speaker 2: have capital flight, it means that our debt will become
Speaker 2: so expensive that it will be almost impossible to service it.
Speaker 2: And we have so much debt in this country, much
Speaker 2: of which is held by the Chinese, and as the
Speaker 2: dollar gets more expensive, we will have more trouble servicing
Speaker 2: our debt. So what is happening here? So if Stephen
Speaker 2: Miller were to go after JP Pritzker, that would be
Speaker 2: real banana of public stuff, right, arresting a billionaire because
Speaker 2: you're mad that he said something. Pritzker said he wanted
Speaker 2: mass protests. Stephen Miller says it could be construed as
Speaker 2: inciting violence. So if Stephen Miller is able to will
Speaker 2: a scenario where they start arresting the governor of the
Speaker 2: state of Illinois, who happens to be a left leaning billionaire,
Speaker 2: you're going to see some capital fucking flight, man, and
Speaker 2: you're going to see a lot of constitutional crisis, is screaming,
Speaker 2: and a lot of stuff. So do I think Stephen
Speaker 2: Miller is crazy enough to do that? There is no
Speaker 2: I mean, I think Steven Miller is just waiting for
Speaker 2: the chance, but you are opening the door to the
Speaker 2: kind of market cratering, the kind of bond sell off
Speaker 2: that I don't think anyone is ready for. And by
Speaker 2: the way, we're already heading into very likely a stagflationary
Speaker 2: period because of the trade war. I'm not sure that
Speaker 2: Stephen Miller wants more than that to happen. Get here
Speaker 2: is a contributor to the nation and the host of
Speaker 2: the time of Monsters. Welcome back to Fast Politics.
Speaker 4: Cheat, good to be on the program.
Speaker 2: You are a Canadian bureau chief here Fast Politics, and
Speaker 2: as Canadian bureau chief, you are uniquely situated to speak
Speaker 2: to us about the Canadian elections, which Donald Trump played
Speaker 2: a massive, massive role in.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, yeah, including on election day where he had
Speaker 4: this tweet where he was suggesting that that Canadians vote
Speaker 4: for him, and which seemed a little and odd because
Speaker 4: he was not on the ballot anywhere in Canada. But metaphorically,
Speaker 4: I think it's it's absolutely true that Trump had a
Speaker 4: massive influence. Now I have to say, like Canada, where
Speaker 4: the tenth of the size of the US in terms
Speaker 4: of population. Pierre Elliot Trudeau, who is the father of
Speaker 4: Justin Trudeau and was a Prime minister in the sixties
Speaker 4: when he met Richard Nixon, he said, well, for Canadians,
Speaker 4: living next to the United States is like living next
Speaker 4: to an elephant. However benign the elephant is if it
Speaker 4: starts twitching and grunting. We notice in this case, like
Speaker 4: imagine living next to an elephant, but it's actually on
Speaker 4: crack and it's paging through the tendle. That kind of
Speaker 4: has an impact. So Trump is the rampaging elephant of
Speaker 4: this this election.
Speaker 2: So, yeah, people have talked about the Canadians feel like
Speaker 2: they're living over a crack house. That's what I've heard.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, that's also the betaphor. Yeah yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2: In any case, so explain to us just the fundamentals
Speaker 2: of how Canadian elections work. You guys have prime ministers,
Speaker 2: they are elected for charge. It's more of a coalition government. Explain.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, I know. I mean it's a parliamentary system.
Speaker 4: So what it basically means is that the party is
Speaker 4: like the House of Representatives, like you have like all
Speaker 4: these districts, and whichever party has the most number of seats.
Speaker 4: In American terms, it would be as if, like previously
Speaker 4: Nancy Pelosi have been Prime Minister and then Johnson, but
Speaker 4: it could easily be Keem Jeffries in twenty twenty six.
Speaker 4: Now having said that, the other big difference though, is
Speaker 4: that it's not a two party system. There are in
Speaker 4: fact many parties. The Liberals and Conservators the two big parties,
Speaker 4: but there's also the NDP, which is a social democratic party,
Speaker 4: the New Democratic Party. There's a block Quebec QUAH, which
Speaker 4: only runs in Quebec but is a sovereigntist party, but
Speaker 4: it's also center left. And there's a Green Party which
Speaker 4: had two seats in a Hasuan. And there's a right
Speaker 4: wing party, the People's Party. Now, what happened in this election.
Speaker 4: One of the big things that happened was that both
Speaker 4: on the left and the right, the votes consolidated. Both
Speaker 4: the Liberals and the Conservatives got more votes than they
Speaker 4: did last time because people who normally would vote for
Speaker 4: the third parties went to the main ones. So you
Speaker 4: had like a more polarized electorate.
Speaker 2: In a way, like a real lesson to Democrats. Right,
Speaker 2: because in the twenty twenty four cycle we saw that
Speaker 2: the Green Party or Just Staying Home or RFK Junior
Speaker 2: siphoned off some amount of votes, right.
Speaker 4: Yeah, you know. I mean, I think the analogy would
Speaker 4: be that, like in American politics, when the Democrats can
Speaker 4: consolidate the left of center vote, they win. When they
Speaker 4: when you have people who either vote third party or
Speaker 4: don't vote at all, Democrats are in a bad position
Speaker 4: often lose. So I think Trump can be credited with
Speaker 4: consolidating the liberal vote. Now, prior to like Trump's intervention,
Speaker 4: for the last two years, the Conservative Party has been
Speaker 4: leading in the polls. The Liberals had a minority government
Speaker 4: supported by the NDP. This, as you meant a lot
Speaker 4: of very good things because the NDPS wore social democratics,
Speaker 4: So the Liberals pushed through things like extending dental care,
Speaker 4: so now our healthcare system has a dental care component.
Speaker 4: But like a lot of governments, you know, the Liberals
Speaker 4: were suffering from post COVID inflation, cost of living, a
Speaker 4: housing crisis, and then there's a real desire for change,
Speaker 4: and the Conservatives under Pierre Polliever had a really compelling populist,
Speaker 4: right wing populist message, which is Canada is broken. They
Speaker 4: had a massive lead in the polls of like twenty
Speaker 4: point lead over the Liberals, which basically would have meant
Speaker 4: that the Conservatives could have formed a majority government, and
Speaker 4: I have to say, like, you know, even though I
Speaker 4: don't like the Conserna party politically, I think that is
Speaker 4: a compelling message in this time this you know, like
Speaker 4: it's a change election. We want to do things. And
Speaker 4: the Liberals were responding by saying Canada has never been broken,
Speaker 4: which to my mind right in the of Hillary Clinton
Speaker 4: saying America has always been great, Like it's not a
Speaker 4: good response to people wanting change. But in any case,
Speaker 4: and Trudeau was unpopular, but then Trump came along and
Speaker 4: started saying, like Governor Crudeo, and we want Canada to
Speaker 4: be the fifty first state and you'll be a chair state.
Speaker 4: And so the election didn't become about, you know, do
Speaker 4: we want to change as Canada broke? And it's like
Speaker 4: should Canada survive? And for the Liberals were much stronger
Speaker 4: on this issue. They replaced Trudeau with Mark Carney, who
Speaker 4: had been a very centrist figure who had been in
Speaker 4: the Bank of Canada. Even despite his centrism, a lot
Speaker 4: of mean I know a lot of people who were
Speaker 4: in the MDP, and I think the polls bear this
Speaker 4: out went to the Liberals because they realized that now
Speaker 4: the main issue is Canada surviving, and the Liberals put
Speaker 4: forth a very strong nationalist message, which is a Canada's
Speaker 4: a sovereign state and we will stand up for it.
Speaker 4: And this will allow the Liberals to get out of
Speaker 4: their holding disaster really and they ended up getting like
Speaker 4: I think roughly forty four percent of the vote. Now now,
Speaker 4: right now, the Liberals are a little bit short of
Speaker 4: forming a majority. They are at one hundred and sixty
Speaker 4: eight roughly, and they need one hundred and seventy two
Speaker 4: to form a majority. But having said that, the votes
Speaker 4: are still being counted and the Liberals are picking up
Speaker 4: speed because they were very strong in the early voting.
Speaker 4: All their voters went in very early selection and those
Speaker 4: are the last votes counted, and so there's a real
Speaker 4: chance that the Liberals could form a majority. I'll be
Speaker 4: a slim one. But if they don't form a majority,
Speaker 4: what will happen is that there's still like the NDP
Speaker 4: went down from twenty five seats to seven, but they
Speaker 4: have enough seats that they can work with the Liberals
Speaker 4: and we'll see a return to what we had before,
Speaker 4: which is a Liberal minority government with NDP support.
Speaker 2: So I want to talk about Carnie for another minute,
Speaker 2: because I think that's a really important point. Trudeau had
Speaker 2: become pretty unpopular, and despite the fact that he had
Speaker 2: been earlier very popular, he was and he was quite handsome,
Speaker 2: which is for a politician sometimes play.
Speaker 4: No no, I mean tu. Trudau is a very effective
Speaker 4: campaigner and he got the Liberals one of the strongest
Speaker 4: majorities that they've ever had. And Carney is not an
Speaker 4: effective campaigner, Yes.
Speaker 2: Right, he's not. But he is, however, the man that
Speaker 2: got Britten through Brexit, and is a very good negotiator
Speaker 2: and good at negotiating trade, and good at negotiating prickly
Speaker 2: financial situations, which Canada finds itself in being the neighbors
Speaker 2: who live over the crack house, and who are the
Speaker 2: trading partners with America. Right now, there's a percentage of
Speaker 2: Canadians maybe twenty thirty percent or boycotting American goods just right,
Speaker 2: and you have a lot of Canadian goods that America
Speaker 2: used to be a pretty a good trading partner. So
Speaker 2: I'm really curious what happened behind the scenes that got
Speaker 2: Carneie into this position, because it sounds like there was
Speaker 2: a fair amount of smart, real politics going on.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know. I mean having the Liberal Party.
Speaker 4: First of all, it's a very successful political party overall.
Speaker 4: In the last in the twentieth century, the Liberals governed
Speaker 4: for seventy out of one hundred years, right, so seven
Speaker 4: So they're kind of like the natural governing party. And
Speaker 4: part of their successes that they pay a lot of
Speaker 4: attention to leadership and have Actually, I mean one interesting
Speaker 4: thing is they always switched from English to French because
Speaker 4: it's a binational country. So actually like regularly for the
Speaker 4: last hundred years, First you have a French leader, Crudeo.
Speaker 4: Then you bring in an English person Carney. And Carney
Speaker 4: was sort of cultivated. He had this background. He was
Speaker 4: a central banker, governor both first and back of Canada
Speaker 4: and the Bank of England. I think when once they
Speaker 4: decided Trudeau had to go, they thought, like bringing him
Speaker 4: someone who's like, hadn't been in politics before, has been
Speaker 4: a broad mainstream acceptance. As you said, you know those finances,
Speaker 4: knows how to deal with crisis. That seems a pretty
Speaker 4: compelling figure. And I think that they were right. I mean,
Speaker 4: he has negatives because he's not a politician he's actually
Speaker 4: I think much less charismatic than Hudo or even I
Speaker 4: have to say Polly ever, who's not my cup of tea,
Speaker 4: but has been very effective on the campaign trail, you know.
Speaker 4: But having said that, I mean, Carney, I think switching
Speaker 4: out was a smart move. And because in Canada they
Speaker 4: were we hold our things very quickly. They were well,
Speaker 4: the leadership convention very quickly. So like I would imagine like, yeah,
Speaker 4: Biden had stepped down much earlier, and you know, they
Speaker 4: had gone through a proper convention, you know, like you
Speaker 4: could have had either hair share or someone or you
Speaker 4: would have had someone with legitimacy. I mean, the very
Speaker 4: important that they didn't just put this guy in. They
Speaker 4: actually had a leadership convention and they picked him. I mean,
Speaker 4: I think the Liberals did a lot of very kind
Speaker 4: of smart moves, and I think there s at of
Speaker 4: national stitches that they put and actually the genuine fear
Speaker 4: that people in the cane left had a Polyevra who
Speaker 4: did kind of mix our creuppy noises about fake news
Speaker 4: and going after the media and other things. I think
Speaker 4: that scared a lot of people on the left and
Speaker 4: that contributed to consolidating the vote, So liberals like and
Speaker 4: I think, you know, they went from being twenty points
Speaker 4: down to being ahead because they picked up a lot
Speaker 4: of mainly NDP votes, but also a lot of black
Speaker 4: quebec Qua votes Green Party votes.
Speaker 2: So Jesse has a question, which is, there's a report
Speaker 2: that Carney said to Trump that Canada will sell its
Speaker 2: US bonds if Trump doesn't knock off the fifty first
Speaker 2: state stuff. Do you think that's real? Do you think
Speaker 2: that's true? What do you think of that?
Speaker 4: I don't know how, I mean, it's I don't know this.
Speaker 4: I think that. I mean, there's another story which is
Speaker 4: sort of circumstantial evidence for which is when Kearney first
Speaker 4: came in, he went to the Europe and he met
Speaker 4: with the European leaders, and I believe that Japanese Prime
Speaker 4: Minister was either went there or on the call. And
Speaker 4: you know, Kearney's a guy with a banking background, and
Speaker 4: they did reportedly they talked about bonds and you won.
Speaker 4: You know, like when Trump did Liberation Day and the tariffs,
Speaker 4: one of the big things that happened was that not
Speaker 4: just a stock market went down, but people started taking
Speaker 4: money off the bonds. Now that the American creasure bonds
Speaker 4: are held, you know, not just by private individuals, but
Speaker 4: by governments. The Canadian government, European governments, Japan have a
Speaker 4: lot of treasury bonds. And we do know for a
Speaker 4: fact it is actually an absolute fact that the people
Speaker 4: who were take selling treasure bonds after Liberation Day was
Speaker 4: not as some people suspected the Chinese, who do you know,
Speaker 4: basically kept on holding onto them, but actually Japan, the
Speaker 4: Europeans in Canada.
Speaker 2: Right just something.
Speaker 4: So it's whether there was like a coordinated effort or not.
Speaker 4: I can't verify that.
Speaker 2: And you'll remember that the bond market was the thing
Speaker 2: that finally got Trump to realize that he was running
Speaker 2: a losing game. Now that said their.
Speaker 4: Yel because I mean the bond market is very like
Speaker 4: you know, people need to understand this. If you sell
Speaker 4: bonds then like to make for that, interest rates will
Speaker 4: go up. And also the US the amount of money
Speaker 4: that the US Treasury has to pay out ADEPT goes
Speaker 4: up like bally substantial amounts. So this is really like
Speaker 4: the kind of leverage point that could undo the American economy,
Speaker 4: oh no question, and arguably the world economy. I mean,
Speaker 4: this is serious thoughts.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean that seems like a real thing. Now,
Speaker 2: I'm wondering if you can explain to us a little
Speaker 2: bit about there's still votes coming in. They are counted
Speaker 2: in a way that the early votes are counted last.
Speaker 2: So the question is what number of seats do you
Speaker 2: have to get to in order for the Liberals to win.
Speaker 4: One hundred and seventy two?
Speaker 2: Okay, And I'm curious, like when you look at these
Speaker 2: two candidates, what was Carneie's idea? You know, does he
Speaker 2: have plans for tariffs? I mean, I feel like he's
Speaker 2: a very smart guy and if you were getting he's
Speaker 2: like the person you would want to negotiate your tariff issue.
Speaker 4: Yeah. Yeah, I mean I think that the there's a
Speaker 4: couple of things that are in play. What is you know,
Speaker 4: in the Canada and US have a great agreement and
Speaker 4: it's actually a trade agreement that Trump nomin only like negotiated.
Speaker 4: I mean when he came in, he tur DAFTA. Then
Speaker 4: we have the you know, US, Canada and Mexico. Yeah,
Speaker 4: which is you know, after with some changes. Now now
Speaker 4: that's coming up again, and I think that the way
Speaker 4: that Carnie could go forward, I think the Mexican government
Speaker 4: is on board on this is to say, like, well,
Speaker 4: let's read to go. Let's just do terrorists under this
Speaker 4: ambed and renegotiate it. I think one thing is that
Speaker 4: this gives Trump an exit ramp, because I think Trump
Speaker 4: has gotten himself into something that he did not fully
Speaker 4: understand what's going to happen, and all the trouble that
Speaker 4: he's having to deal with now with the stock market
Speaker 4: and everything else. And I think that this gives like
Speaker 4: a way in which he can kind of say, Phace,
Speaker 4: you know, just do like rename it, like you know,
Speaker 4: this is a Trump agreement, just the big whatever non
Speaker 4: wal tages. I mean, I think that, like, you know,
Speaker 4: the auto workers have a legitimate belief that they want
Speaker 4: wage guarantees for Mexican workers because the wages of Mexican
Speaker 4: workers has actually gone down under free trade and is
Speaker 4: now like you know, they're making three dollars an hour
Speaker 4: at auto plants, and I think one could legitimately say,
Speaker 4: you know, to raise that. Yeah. So I think that
Speaker 4: is the way out of this. But I have to
Speaker 4: say Trump continues to talk about, you know, Canada has
Speaker 4: to be the fifty per state, and I don't know
Speaker 4: how that's going to go, except that I think that,
Speaker 4: you know, with the election out of the way, I
Speaker 4: think everyone across the political speaker in Canada will have
Speaker 4: an incentive to unite and is very noticeable that, you know,
Speaker 4: some of the leading Conservatives on a provincial level, the
Speaker 4: Premier of Ontario are very on board with working with Kearnie.
Speaker 2: From what I understand, what really killed the Conservative Party,
Speaker 2: your Republican Party, was that they had people who supported Trump,
Speaker 2: so they couldn't distance themselves from him. So that's almost
Speaker 2: a little bit of what we could see in the midterms, right.
Speaker 4: Yeah, No, I know absolutely, I think that that was
Speaker 4: like a kind of a major problem. I mean, I
Speaker 4: think the two pounds is that their main issues were
Speaker 4: kind of taken off the table. I mean, there's still
Speaker 4: real issues, but also there were people inside their party
Speaker 4: that you know, admired Cromp. There are people inside their
Speaker 4: party that are very close to jad events. I think
Speaker 4: that that gives the Liberals some sort of like advantage. So,
Speaker 4: I mean, I do think that like as Trump's you know,
Speaker 4: Tariff said, other things happen, there's a kind of backlash
Speaker 4: to him, of which this election is one example. But
Speaker 4: I think what is already seeing in the United States,
Speaker 4: and you know the special elections that have already happened,
Speaker 4: including the judgeship in Wisconsin. Yeah, I think that the
Speaker 4: Democrats are a pretty good position in terms of their
Speaker 4: midterm Do.
Speaker 2: You think Trump's threatening to make Canada a fifty first state?
Speaker 2: Do you think there's any logic? Again, I don't want
Speaker 2: to prescribe logic done either, why there isn't?
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, no, I mean we've had this blog your core, like,
Speaker 4: we don't want to be saying loves right.
Speaker 2: We don't want to say my man is playing three
Speaker 2: dimensional chess, because he never is. What do you think
Speaker 2: of thinking here?
Speaker 4: Is well the thinking or maybe we can invest discribs
Speaker 4: unthinking is that Trump doesn't understand how trade works, or
Speaker 4: he thinks of trade literally the way people in the
Speaker 4: eighteenth century thought of trade. It's mercantilism, right, And in
Speaker 4: the eighteenth century, the various kingships that existed did not
Speaker 4: believe in free trade. In fact, that's why in terms
Speaker 4: of American history, you know, like they had the Stamp
Speaker 4: Act and weren't allowing Americans to buy Dutch tea. The
Speaker 4: idea was that you would keep the wealth within the
Speaker 4: country or within the empire, not trade with others, because
Speaker 4: that means you'd be losing money. And the only way
Speaker 4: you could expand was through imperialism by conquering other countries.
Speaker 4: And so the British and the French and the Dutch
Speaker 4: all did this. They just like expanded and had wars
Speaker 4: and fought. And then you know, people came on and said, like,
Speaker 4: you know, like this is kind of stupid, Like we
Speaker 4: were just trading with each other. We don't have to
Speaker 4: cut you conquer each other, right, And in the American Revolution,
Speaker 4: you know, it was really fought on this free trade
Speaker 4: issue where the Americans thought like, well, it's stupid that
Speaker 4: we can't trade with the Dutch. You know, we want
Speaker 4: to buy Dutch tea, you know, like we don't want
Speaker 4: to be forged to buy the English tea. Now the
Speaker 4: Trump thinks, but Trump thinks in this eighty such a way.
Speaker 4: He thinks that if the United States is buying products
Speaker 4: from Canada, buying Timber, America is giving money to Canada,
Speaker 4: and Bunny is leaving the country, right. And this is
Speaker 4: like Trump's on a very primarial level. This is the
Speaker 4: way he does all his own business deals and why
Speaker 4: he's a bad businessman because he could not understand the
Speaker 4: idea of like reciprocity and you know, you're exchanging one
Speaker 4: thing for another for virtual benefit. And he thought like
Speaker 4: someone is trying to screw someone in a trade. So
Speaker 4: he thinks like, if Canada and the US are trading,
Speaker 4: the US is losing something, whereas if Canada and the
Speaker 4: US are one, then America is bigger, and on a
Speaker 4: more even primitive level, Like I think he thinks like
Speaker 4: a child, and he's like thinking, Okay, if there's the
Speaker 4: US and Canada and land, like will be the biggest
Speaker 4: thing on the map, right, we'll be here everyone else.
Speaker 4: So I honestly think that the thinking here is this
Speaker 4: kind of primitive tell thinking. And it's also this kind
Speaker 4: of older economic way of thinking. I says, why he
Speaker 4: praises mcimney all the time, right, like it is that
Speaker 4: sort of you know, nineteenth century imperialism of which I
Speaker 4: hope that humanity grown.
Speaker 2: Thank you, Thank you jet here, thank you all.
Speaker 4: It's great to be on the progo.
Speaker 2: Peter Goodman is a reporter at The New York Times
Speaker 2: and the author of How the World Ran Out of
Speaker 2: Everything Inside the global supply chain. Welcome to fast Politics, Peter.
Speaker 5: Great to be back with you, miy.
Speaker 2: We are at the beginning I think of a supply
Speaker 2: chain crisis, not so dissimilar from COVID. So talk us
Speaker 2: through what's happening right now.
Speaker 5: Yes, what's happening right now is lots of companies that
Speaker 5: have depended upon supply chains that stretch across the Pacific
Speaker 5: Ocean have quite understandably said, we don't feel like paying
Speaker 5: one hundred and forty five percent extra for all the
Speaker 5: stuff we're bringing in from China. Maybe we'll just hold
Speaker 5: on with that. But it's not so obvious where else
Speaker 5: they can go, because a lot of companies have shifted
Speaker 5: production from China to places like Cambodia, Vietnam, India, other
Speaker 5: countries to try to avoid previous tariffs. As we speak,
Speaker 5: we're in this ninety day pause on these extraordinary towers
Speaker 5: in some of those countries. But there's so much uncertainty
Speaker 5: about the rules that will apply that a lot of
Speaker 5: companies have said, let's just maybe stash our stuff in
Speaker 5: a warehouse somewhere on the other side of Pacific and
Speaker 5: wait and hope that things get better. And as a result,
Speaker 5: we've got literally zero container ships at the Port of
Speaker 5: Seattle Tacoba, which is one of the biggest ports on
Speaker 5: the West Coast. We've got sharp traffic projected down at
Speaker 5: La Long Beach. These are the two ports in south
Speaker 5: of California that are together, they're the gateway for forty
Speaker 5: percent of all imported stuff reaching the United States by
Speaker 5: container vessels. And the head of that of the La
Speaker 5: Porta Soroka is now out there saying we really don't
Speaker 5: know what's going to happen. We got the dock workers
Speaker 5: union saying they're really worried. So you got all these
Speaker 5: factors that say less stuff coming in.
Speaker 2: So this is all about unintended consequences here, Like the
Speaker 2: tariff story, is about this idea that there are intented consequences. Right,
Speaker 2: Trump wants to ontour manufacturing. I'm not sure how making
Speaker 2: how imposing these steep tariffs can will countries to build
Speaker 2: factories to ontour manufacturing. You know, this was the kind
Speaker 2: of thing that needed to be done with the scalpel,
Speaker 2: not a sledgehammer. But I want you to sort of
Speaker 2: explain to us why this uncertainty is going to cause
Speaker 2: problems for the supply chain, So people are not importing
Speaker 2: to these you'res not seeing port ships because they're not importing.
Speaker 2: Just go downstream of that, right, So we're gonna have
Speaker 2: dock workers drivers like, talk to me sort of what
Speaker 2: this looks like.
Speaker 5: Sure, So if there's less stuff crossing the Pacific headed
Speaker 5: for these giant ports or on the East coast, you know,
Speaker 5: for that matter, because stuff comes in from India and
Speaker 5: even in some cases from the East as that is,
Speaker 5: fewer containers to lift off of container ships and onto
Speaker 5: the shore by dock workers, who are some of the
Speaker 5: most highly paid and also militant workers in the American
Speaker 5: labor world. Then very unorganized truckers who are really at
Speaker 5: the mercy of swings in the global economy. Less stuff,
Speaker 5: less work for truck drivers. You're gonna have a lot
Speaker 5: of people just sitting around waiting and hoping that cargo
Speaker 5: materializes and on it goes, you know, people working in warehouses,
Speaker 5: and eventually retailers are likely to be hit because if
Speaker 5: there's less stuff coming in, there's less stuff to move
Speaker 5: and less stuff to sell.
Speaker 2: And but retailers are going to be hit with less
Speaker 2: stuff to sell. But ultimately consumers are going to bear
Speaker 2: the brunt. Explain to us how that goes.
Speaker 5: I mean, if you're going off to Walmart or Target
Speaker 5: with the expectation that these operations are enormous, it's just
Speaker 5: like a magic trick. They never run out of anything.
Speaker 5: They've got seventeen different choices for whatever product is we're
Speaker 5: looking for. You could discover that things are back ordered,
Speaker 5: the shelves are empty. And the part of this that
Speaker 5: always bears discussing is there are lots of monopoly components
Speaker 5: of these supply chains. If there's a lot of competition,
Speaker 5: then there's a chance that somebody steps in to replace
Speaker 5: whatever it is that you're looking for, and that can
Speaker 5: keep prices lower. If you're a company that's got a
Speaker 5: dominant hole on your industry, then this could be fantastic
Speaker 5: for you.
Speaker 2: Give me an example of this.
Speaker 5: I mean beef. You know there's four companies in the
Speaker 5: United States control eighty five percent of the beef supply.
Speaker 5: We saw this during the pandemic wild yeah, I mean
Speaker 5: that's beyond the robber barondage, right, I mean, four companies
Speaker 5: control eighty five percent of the beef supply, and there's
Speaker 5: engineered scarcity there. They're all sorts of lawsuits alleging that
Speaker 5: these four companies essentially conspire they stop their purchases when
Speaker 5: supplies are building up too high, precisely so you generate
Speaker 5: panic buying. I mean the same thing that we saw,
Speaker 5: you know, in terms of discussing av and flu in
Speaker 5: terms of the egg supply terms out there's only a
Speaker 5: couple compries that dominate those those industries.
Speaker 2: This sounds a lot like opek to May, where the
Speaker 2: oil companies got together to inflate the price of gasoline.
Speaker 5: Is that a similar This is what we saw during
Speaker 5: the pandemic, right, so we saw product shortages that were
Speaker 5: caused by the chaos and disruption of the pandemic itself.
Speaker 5: It's not like there was some grand conspiracy by monopolism, No, no,
Speaker 5: disappear but once.
Speaker 2: But it is a grand conspiracy by monopolies to keep
Speaker 2: prices inflated in a way that they wouldn't otherwise be.
Speaker 5: I mean the shipping industry, right Like, every time there's
Speaker 5: a hit to the supply in somewhere, we hear, oh
Speaker 5: this is terrible for the global container industry. Oh my goodness,
Speaker 5: the hooties are opening fire on from Yemen, you know,
Speaker 5: on ships that are headed to the Red Sea. This
Speaker 5: is such a disaster for the shipping industry because now
Speaker 5: instead of going through the Red Sea to get from
Speaker 5: Asia to Europe, they got to go the long way
Speaker 5: around Africa. Guess what, you know, shipping prices go four
Speaker 5: hundred percent And that's everywhere, right because there's three alliances.
Speaker 5: Why not, there's three alliances to control ninety percent of
Speaker 5: the traffic across the Pacific. So if a whole bunch
Speaker 5: of ships are suddenly deployed to go the long way
Speaker 5: around Africa instead of through the Red Sea, that's an
Speaker 5: opportunity to rip your face off in terms of pricing.
Speaker 5: And yeah, we're all paying for that in terms of
Speaker 5: higher costs. We saw this during the pandemic, where we
Speaker 5: were told, oh, there's all this chaos, and that's why
Speaker 5: the price of moving a shipping container from China to
Speaker 5: the West coast of the United States goes up from
Speaker 5: something like twenty five hundred dollars to north of twenty
Speaker 5: five thousand dollars. We're talking tenfold increase in this space
Speaker 5: of six months. And people said, well, this is just
Speaker 5: you know, terrible for the shipping industry record profits. I mean,
Speaker 5: we're talking like record profits.
Speaker 2: So talk to me about diapers.
Speaker 5: Diapers are a product that, despite their sheer simplicity, are
Speaker 5: actually constructed of lots of different pieces. Can't remember the
Speaker 5: exact number. It's like dozens of parts drawn from around
Speaker 5: the world. You run out of one of them somewhere,
Speaker 5: you can't make a diaper. You know, think about the
Speaker 5: computer chip and cars during the pandemic. Right, there's thirty
Speaker 5: thousand parts in a car. If you run out of
Speaker 5: one component of a computer chip, you can make the
Speaker 5: rest of the car. As you know, Ford at one
Speaker 5: point was making the F one fifty, its most popular
Speaker 5: pickup truck, and then parking them across the street from
Speaker 5: Henry Ford Elementary School in the shadow of Ford's corporate
Speaker 5: headquarters because they couldn't get enough chips. You know, the
Speaker 5: diaper gets affected. We saw during the pandemic that you know,
Speaker 5: we've ran out of infant formula because there's one company
Speaker 5: that has a dominant hold on that market in the
Speaker 5: United States. And if there's any disruption anywhere, we don't
Speaker 5: know where the problems will pop up where they will,
Speaker 5: but they'll pop up somewhere.
Speaker 2: Right. It's a really good point, and you know, you
Speaker 2: can't just skip out on diapers, right, You're gonna need diapers.
Speaker 5: And you're gonna pay.
Speaker 2: You're gonna pay.
Speaker 5: Yeah, that's a pricing power moment, right because if I mean,
Speaker 5: if you've got a kid in the house who needs
Speaker 5: diapers and the word gets out that there could be
Speaker 5: a shortage, that's something you'll pay. I mean, think about
Speaker 5: the toilet paper shortage, right, I mean, those are the
Speaker 5: during the pandemic. I remember I was living in London,
Speaker 5: you know, having to go down to schmooze, the guy
Speaker 5: who talked to the truckers, you know, who could tell
Speaker 5: me like what times the toilet paper show up. You know,
Speaker 5: it could be like that with diapers. If you need them,
Speaker 5: you'll do whatever it takes to get them. And don't
Speaker 5: think that companies don't know that in terms of pricing.
Speaker 2: Right, like right now, there's this ninety day pause, which
Speaker 2: means that nobody knows anything. There's no stability. Trump says
Speaker 2: ninety deals in ninety days, or that was Navarro. We
Speaker 2: have yet to see a single deal. May We've heard
Speaker 2: like whispers of talks of whatever. It just seems like
Speaker 2: with the dock numbers, we are careening towards the same
Speaker 2: thing that happened during COVID, careening towards a scarcity event.
Speaker 5: It's a similar dynamic. And one of the things that
Speaker 5: we learned during COVID is that fear of shortages create shortages, right.
Speaker 5: I mean, that's what happened toilet Peper. We didn't actually
Speaker 5: run out of stuff to make toilet paper with. We
Speaker 5: got a surplus of people saying, oh my god, I
Speaker 5: better go buy some toilet paper. And that can happen
Speaker 5: not just a household level, but at the retail level, right.
Speaker 5: I mean, if again, your Amazon, your Target, your Walmart,
Speaker 5: you have enormous resources around the globe, You're able to
Speaker 5: charter your own container ships if you need to, and
Speaker 5: you want to get out in front of this as
Speaker 5: they're doing, we could wake up and discover that warehouses
Speaker 5: for a select handful of companies that are big enough
Speaker 5: have got all the stuff. Smaller players have got nothing. Meanwhile,
Speaker 5: households run out to buy as much stuff as they
Speaker 5: can because they're nervous, and that's how we end up
Speaker 5: in shortages. There's a whole other scenario, by the way,
Speaker 5: that nobody talks about because we're too consumed with what's
Speaker 5: actually happening. If Trump tomorrow said, oh, I'm really worried
Speaker 5: about this. Okay, I'm lifting all the tariffs. Let's just
Speaker 5: go back to how it was now predicting this, not
Speaker 5: saying that's how it is. That would be the COVID scenario,
Speaker 5: and we would get the shortages because what happened in
Speaker 5: COVID was first factories in places like China and around
Speaker 5: the world were disrupted and we made less stuff. Then
Speaker 5: it turned out we wildly we I say, the economists, businesses,
Speaker 5: they wildly miscalculated the impacts of this supply chain hit.
Speaker 5: So they assumed, Okay, we're locked down, can't go to work,
Speaker 5: so we don't need stuff. This is going to be
Speaker 5: a basic economic downturn where the demand for everything goes down. Well,
Speaker 5: that was wildly wrong. So we're not going to the gym,
Speaker 5: but we're now we're working out at home. We need pelotons.
Speaker 5: Our kids aren't going to school still now we're cooking
Speaker 5: twenty seven meals for them at home, so now we
Speaker 5: need more kitchen supply. Are they're stuck in the backyard
Speaker 5: or we're buying trampolines and all this stuff comes in
Speaker 5: from China. Once factories turned back on the container shipping industry,
Speaker 5: which had actually set aside a lot of ships they
Speaker 5: were idling in warm waters places like Greece, they said,
Speaker 5: oh my goodness, there's actually more demand for stuff than ever.
Speaker 5: And then we got what people may remember, these crazy
Speaker 5: floating traffic jams off the ports of La Long Beach,
Speaker 5: where you had seventy five ships circling around for weeks
Speaker 5: at a time waiting for a chance to dock because
Speaker 5: they all came at once. And that's what could happen here.
Speaker 5: Whenever this ends, we're going to get a surge of
Speaker 5: orders from wherever it can produce them, and that could
Speaker 5: swamp the gears where we get the reverse, like instead
Speaker 5: of worrying about there's no ships in Seattle, there's no
Speaker 5: ships in La we can get all the ships coming
Speaker 5: at once. The dock workers can only handle so many.
Speaker 5: We can run out of truck drivers, which is in truth,
Speaker 5: we just downgraded truck driving to such a degree at
Speaker 5: any time people have to go look for another job,
Speaker 5: and then they get one, they don't like to go
Speaker 5: back to it. That's how we got the worst of
Speaker 5: the shortages, and that could very much be ahead of us.
Speaker 2: So let's talk this through for a second, because I
Speaker 2: remember during the COVID pandemic, we saw like lines of
Speaker 2: ships at different ports, and you know, like hundreds of
Speaker 2: ships at ports, and so you think that's sort of
Speaker 2: the scenario we're looking at.
Speaker 5: I think for now, we're looking at the reverse of that, right,
Speaker 5: we're looking at futures.
Speaker 2: I mean, eventually.
Speaker 5: But if it turns it back, I think whenever. I mean, okay,
Speaker 5: if we take as a given that this policy is
Speaker 5: designed to have us wean our dependence on long supply
Speaker 5: chains and span across oceans, that I guess we'll just
Speaker 5: start making everything in the US and everything will be fun.
Speaker 5: No one believes that this can happen anytime soon. So
Speaker 5: at some point there's going to be some policy change
Speaker 5: that will prompt us to go back, maybe not China,
Speaker 5: maybe back to factors in Vietnam and Cambodia and other
Speaker 5: parts of Southeast Asia, maybe India. And whenever there's enough
Speaker 5: certainty that the big retailers say okay, I get it now,
Speaker 5: I get where it's economical for me to source my stuff,
Speaker 5: there will be a surge of orders to replenish inventory
Speaker 5: and that is likely to lead to traffic jams somewhere.
Speaker 2: Yes, so I wonder if we could talk about Carolyne
Speaker 2: Levitt for a minute, the White House Press secretary. Today,
Speaker 2: Amazon decided, and it is actually kind of brilliant to
Speaker 2: publish exactly what these tariffs will cost. Right, so you
Speaker 2: go on your Amazon page to buy a toothbrush, it
Speaker 2: says this toothbrush was seven dollars. It'll now be ten dollars,
Speaker 2: you know, or whatever because of a three dollars ra
Speaker 2: or whatever. So uh, reporter, Amazon will soon display a
Speaker 2: number next to the product, the price of each product
Speaker 2: plus the amount that the Trump tariff is adding. Levitt
Speaker 2: responds as a hostile and political act by Amazon, discuss.
Speaker 5: The whole Trump fantasy. Here is somebody else is going
Speaker 5: to pay for this, not American consumers. Now there's a
Speaker 5: lot to unpack here, right, because Amazon is reminding the
Speaker 5: customer that if you increase the costs of the stuff
Speaker 5: that we buy from far away to serve you, we
Speaker 5: will pass on those costs to you. However, we have
Speaker 5: no idea what Amazon's margins are on any particular product.
Speaker 5: We don't know how much competition there is, we don't
Speaker 5: know to what degree Amazon is availing itself of consumer
Speaker 5: anxiety and now stoking consumer anxiety to justify price increases.
Speaker 5: I mean, look again, think back to eggs, a thing
Speaker 5: that we've all talked about to bet we know that
Speaker 5: there's legitimate reason to think that the price of egg
Speaker 5: should go up when there's avian flu, right, know that,
Speaker 5: and when there's inflation in general, how much, Well, we
Speaker 5: don't know, because there's a couple of companies that dominate
Speaker 5: the egg business. And any time we go to the
Speaker 5: supermarket and think, boy, I better buy some more eggs.
Speaker 5: You know, I noticed the shelves are empty. All these
Speaker 5: people are jogging around parts of the day, they are
Speaker 5: no eggs at all. I better. That is pricing power,
Speaker 5: and Amazon certainly has pricing power as a dominant retailer.
Speaker 5: So the White House is not crazy to say there's
Speaker 5: a stunt connected to this. Amazon is not crazy to
Speaker 5: say you stick one hundred and forty five percent terrify
Speaker 5: on Chinese goods. That's going to hit a lot of
Speaker 5: stuff that you used to buying from Amazon. And you know,
Speaker 5: I think it's fair to say that Jeff Bezos's enterprise
Speaker 5: is not charitable we're going to look to take it
Speaker 5: out of you, customer.
Speaker 2: So it is a really good point, right, which is
Speaker 2: that they don't need to raise their prices, but they
Speaker 2: are going to raise their prices, and we don't really
Speaker 2: know what their markups are. So it's not like they're saying,
Speaker 2: we buy this from China for twenty five cents and
Speaker 2: we are paying a seventy five percent of tariff. Right,
Speaker 2: We're not really seeing what the tariff is. We're seeing
Speaker 2: what the tariff number is on the final price.
Speaker 5: This is premised on if you assume that our business
Speaker 5: is entirely about satisfying consumer interest for low prices, and
Speaker 5: our margins are tiny and fair, and we don't engage
Speaker 5: in any predatory behavior, so our prices are to imagine
Speaker 5: perfect representation of Milton Friedman's market economy, then sure you
Speaker 5: stick us with some tariff that gets passed on to
Speaker 5: the consumer pool. We know that it's a lot messier
Speaker 5: than that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, really good point. But it is this Carolyn Levit comment.
Speaker 2: It does I find it interesting they really are offended
Speaker 2: by the idea that Amazon would transmit what they're doing, right.
Speaker 2: I mean, ultimately that seems like the cardinals in here
Speaker 2: is not up the goods to the American people.
Speaker 5: Wait, counter programming, right like in this reality show Presidency,
Speaker 5: it's all about I'm working to bring jobs back to America.
Speaker 5: You know, some days they say it's impossible to deal
Speaker 5: with inflation, but most of the time they say, you know,
Speaker 5: I mean, they certainly are aware that inflation seems to
Speaker 5: be how Trump came back to the White House, and
Speaker 5: they don't like the idea that one of the richest
Speaker 5: most powerful people on a guy, by the way, they
Speaker 5: thought they'd sort of muzzled with the whole fenestration of
Speaker 5: the Washington Posts ed operation is now out there swinging
Speaker 5: saying no, let me talk directly to your constituents, and
Speaker 5: now I've got something to say, and you're jacking up
Speaker 5: their prices. Clearly that's not part of the programming that
Speaker 5: the White House would like to put out there.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Pretty incredible, I mean, and a really good point.
Speaker 2: We will see how this plays out. Thank you, Thank you, Peter,
Speaker 2: thank you, Molly.
Speaker 3: No moment, Jesse Cannon, Mollie, this is so just cruel,
Speaker 3: engross And I know that that's the point, but I
Speaker 3: know a lot of people whose lives have been saved
Speaker 3: by the NARCAN program in New York, and I've seen it.
Speaker 3: It's a miracle what it does for giving people a
Speaker 3: second chance when they're at a bad place in their life.
Speaker 3: And so a person who is a heroinaut for twelve
Speaker 3: years named RFK Junior, who runs HHS, decides, Eh, we
Speaker 3: can get rid of it.
Speaker 2: This is stripping the federal government. RFK Junior is nhsass
Speaker 2: to take it apart, just like Linda McMahon is in
Speaker 2: the Department of Education, to take the Department of Education apart.
Speaker 2: This is Project twenty twenty five, dis assembling the federal government,
Speaker 2: selling it for parts, making the government so small that
Speaker 2: it doesn't do anything for people. That is the goal here.
Speaker 2: So you can expect that RFK Junior is going to
Speaker 2: do a ton of things like this. But part of
Speaker 2: it is also he does not care about public health.
Speaker 2: This is just a stick. He cares about power. This
Speaker 2: is his last chance to get into power, and that's
Speaker 2: what we're doing here. This has nothing to do with
Speaker 2: public health. Personally, I think this is bad, but I
Speaker 2: think there's one hundred other things you could point to
Speaker 2: that are this bad or worse. That's it for this
Speaker 2: episode of Fast Politics. Tune in every Monday, Wednesday, Thursday
Speaker 2: and Saturday to hear the best minds and politics make
Speaker 2: sense of all this chaos. If you enjoy this podcast,
Speaker 2: please send it to a friend and keep the conversation going.
Speaker 2: Thanks for listening.