Speaker 1: Hey, guys, Saga and Crystal here.
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Speaker 3: dot com. Let's turn out to some internal divisions inside
Speaker 3: of the Trump administration. Elon Musk, allegedly the most powerful
Speaker 3: person who was currently in the Trump administration, is majorly
Speaker 3: counter signaling the Donald Trump tariffs. He appeared recently in
Speaker 3: an interview with respect to Europe where he has been
Speaker 3: speaking against tariffs and what he would like to see
Speaker 3: is the end goal.
Speaker 1: Let's take a listen.
Speaker 4: I'm hopeful, for example, with the tariffs that at the
Speaker 4: end of the day, I hope it is agreed that
Speaker 4: both Europe and the United States should move ideally in
Speaker 4: my view, to a zero tariff situation, effectively creating a
Speaker 4: free trade zone between Europe and North America. And that
Speaker 4: would be my That's what I hope occurs. And also
Speaker 4: more freedom of people to move between Europe and North
Speaker 4: America if they wish, if they wish to work in Europe,
Speaker 4: who wish to work in America, they should be allowed
Speaker 4: to do so in my view. So that has certainly
Speaker 4: been my advice to the president.
Speaker 3: Obviously that's not what the President has taken in terms
Speaker 3: of his advice.
Speaker 1: And Elon is now openly.
Speaker 3: At war with Peter Navarro, who is Trump's trade advisor
Speaker 3: and definitely the person where a lot of these formula
Speaker 3: and this idea came from.
Speaker 1: Put this up there on the screen just so you
Speaker 1: guys can see.
Speaker 3: So Navarro gave an interview where he was responding to
Speaker 3: some of Elon's To some of Elon's points, Elon replied,
Speaker 3: a PhD in Econ from Harvard is a bad thing,
Speaker 3: not a good thing. Results in the ego and brains
Speaker 3: are greater than problem. He replies, Navarro is one hundred
Speaker 3: percent correct, PhD or no PhD, just obsessed with trade
Speaker 3: for quite a while. Elon quote, he ain't built shit.
Speaker 3: Here is Peter Navarro's response, Let's take a listen.
Speaker 5: Can we go back to Elon Musk for a second,
Speaker 5: because I'm glad that you brought that up. He also
Speaker 5: took a shot at you personally on X and he's
Speaker 5: going against the administration with respect to the tariff policy.
Speaker 5: The President has said in the coming months he may
Speaker 5: leave the administration.
Speaker 6: Peter, is there a rift internally?
Speaker 7: No? Look Elon.
Speaker 8: Look Elon when he's in his doge line is great,
Speaker 8: But we understand what's going on here? Do we just
Speaker 8: have to understand? Elon sells cars and he's in Texas
Speaker 8: assembling cars that have big parts of that car from Mexico, China.
Speaker 8: Batteries come from Japan or China, the electronics come from Taiwan,
Speaker 8: and he's simply protecting his own interests as any business
Speaker 8: person would do. We're more concerned about Detroit building cadillacts
Speaker 8: with American engines, and that's what this is all about.
Speaker 8: So it's fine, there's no riff here.
Speaker 3: There's no rift, Crystal. So who do we wrote root for?
Speaker 3: Is this is an Iran Iraq situation? You wish puts
Speaker 3: both sides. The best of Lovey is that is that
Speaker 3: where I don't know, he's not wrong in terms of
Speaker 3: Elon's incentives.
Speaker 1: What's Tesla stock at But here's the thing.
Speaker 6: Here's the thing though.
Speaker 1: Minus nine today, good Lord.
Speaker 6: Tesla has god Let's issues.
Speaker 2: The Tesla mostly elonth leadership and the union busting, but
Speaker 2: they've gone out of their way to source parts domestically.
Speaker 3: They are made in America, beyond the battery. It's the
Speaker 3: more made in America card than GM.
Speaker 2: I want you to think about what Peter Navarro was
Speaker 2: actually saying here, because if their policy was going to
Speaker 2: do what you're saying, this policy is going to do,
Speaker 2: should be a huge beneficiary. They're an American made car.
Speaker 2: This should be great. Elon should be celebrating, this would
Speaker 2: be his And the fact that for even Tesla, which
Speaker 2: has done everything they can to have a supply chain
Speaker 2: that is more or less here in America, that for
Speaker 2: even them, it's going to be devastating and a real
Speaker 2: problem in Tesla stock is falling.
Speaker 6: You know, there's all sorts of.
Speaker 2: Reasons Tesla stock's been falling, but the latest one is
Speaker 2: certainly related to the tariffs. As the rest of the
Speaker 2: market is in freefall at the moment, So it's such
Speaker 2: an admission that even for a company like Tesla, this
Speaker 2: is going to be extremely bad for business. As far
Speaker 2: as Elon's ideology, you know, we noted, I don't think
Speaker 2: this got nearly enough attention at the time when he
Speaker 2: was out there praising Javier Malay, it was anarcho capitalist,
Speaker 2: you know, hardcore libertarian leader of Argentina praising him for
Speaker 2: rolling back tariffs, and we noted that right away, like
Speaker 2: that's very different from what the Trump plan here is. Ultimately,
Speaker 2: Elon also so had gone to war over you know,
Speaker 2: h one B's with members of the sort of like
Speaker 2: Steve Bannon type MAGA portion of the Republican base. At
Speaker 2: that time, he won the fight for Donald Trump's heart.
Speaker 2: Trump basically, you know, completely sided with him in that
Speaker 2: particular battle. That's not going to be the case in
Speaker 2: this battle because Trump has just decided this is happening period,
Speaker 2: end of story. So you know, question mark what this
Speaker 2: means for the future of the Trump Elon relationship. Last
Speaker 2: week we talked about the fact that Trump was saying
Speaker 2: he Elon's going to be out in a few months.
Speaker 2: I mean, Elon has already completely changed his political stripes.
Speaker 6: You could see him.
Speaker 2: If the Democrats go back to being like a total neoliberal,
Speaker 2: like they're renegotiating TPP or whatever, maybe Elon's going to
Speaker 2: come back to the Democratic Party. I don't think that
Speaker 2: any Democrats should ultimately want that, but who knows what
Speaker 2: the future is going to hold. But you know, very
Speaker 2: noteworthy given how much power Elon has and how Peter
Speaker 2: Navarro really is the sort of like hardest core ideological
Speaker 2: tear up supporter within the Trump administration. Who I mean,
Speaker 2: he is the sickest fan, but that's he's not just
Speaker 2: there to be a sick fan.
Speaker 3: Allow you know, let me go off on this a
Speaker 3: little bit because I like Peter Navarro and I'm pro
Speaker 3: tariff and I'm pro to but like this talking point,
Speaker 3: that's the problem with Japan. Like Trump just put this out,
Speaker 3: spoke to the Japanese Prime minister this morning. He's sending
Speaker 3: a trop team to negotiate. They have treated the US
Speaker 3: very poorly. They don't take our cars, but we take
Speaker 3: millions of theirs. Yeah, you could give away a Ford
Speaker 3: f one fifty in Tokyo and they wouldn't drive it.
Speaker 1: Why would you.
Speaker 3: It's an over engineered, eighty something thousand dollars massive car.
Speaker 3: That wouldn't make sense when you have access to a
Speaker 3: ten thousand dollars more fuel efficient.
Speaker 1: Toyota high loock.
Speaker 3: You know why we drive Toyota's because they're more fuel efficient,
Speaker 3: more comfortable, better engineered, and they're cheaper.
Speaker 1: It's not because of a trade deficit. Same in Europe.
Speaker 3: The Fords and Chevies or whatever that sell in Europe,
Speaker 3: they would never sell here.
Speaker 1: They're tiny.
Speaker 3: If you ever go over there, you don't even recognize
Speaker 3: some of these models America.
Speaker 2: Try to drive an F one to fifty through like
Speaker 2: a European yea.
Speaker 6: Literally, you could work.
Speaker 3: You ranked one of those piece of shits little Pugo's,
Speaker 3: and to'll be driving around in Italy and you still
Speaker 3: can barely fit the damn thing through these one thousand
Speaker 3: year old Okay, so that's one thing. But that's what
Speaker 3: he's like, This is a Steven Miller thing too. He's like,
Speaker 3: you never see any American cars in Japan. I'm like, yeah,
Speaker 3: why is that? It's like, it's not because they're it's
Speaker 3: not because they're being blocked.
Speaker 1: It's because their cars are better than.
Speaker 3: Ours, And I hate I hate sounding like some Milton
Speaker 3: Friedman esque like they're you know, specialized comparative advantage, But like,
Speaker 3: what are we doing here? Do we really want to
Speaker 3: Japanese who have half of the median income of the
Speaker 3: average American to be rolling around in a.
Speaker 1: Cadillac with a cooler in it?
Speaker 3: The way that that's what these Americans are buying. And
Speaker 3: actually they shouldn't even buy them. They're ridiculous. They break
Speaker 3: all the time, they have too many electronics in it,
Speaker 3: They're way too expensive. We choose all of this bullshit
Speaker 3: luxury and then wonder why they were get to twenty
Speaker 3: percent APR and a sixty eight thousand dollars car payment
Speaker 3: for a brand new car. It's one of those where
Speaker 3: it's totally out of step, Like they would laugh at
Speaker 3: you if we were like, oh, you need to buy more?
Speaker 3: What is the Chevy equinhawks And I'm like, no, why
Speaker 3: would I do that? Whenever I have access to the
Speaker 3: Toyleta will last me for twenty five years, or Honda
Speaker 3: or you know, go to South Korea and tell them
Speaker 3: this preposterous This is where I just I'm seeing it's
Speaker 3: not even nineteenth century, because at least that actually made sense,
Speaker 3: you know, I dug out, Actually, I'll bring it in.
Speaker 3: We can, we can look it over together. I have
Speaker 3: a nineteen oh two US at list that I found
Speaker 3: in an antique store, and it's awesome because it shows
Speaker 3: all of our national expenditures and our customs duties.
Speaker 1: And it's true, almost.
Speaker 3: Forty two percent of all of revenue in nineteen oh
Speaker 3: two from my at list shows comes from the customs duties.
Speaker 3: But you know, it's also a country that basically spent
Speaker 3: nothing and had no income to act. It was very,
Speaker 3: very different, right.
Speaker 7: One of the.
Speaker 3: Interesting things in there too is to actually see how
Speaker 3: little America mattered at that time. In that atlas, it
Speaker 3: has a list of the military sizes of the Great
Speaker 3: German of the Germanic Empire, and America's like number twenty
Speaker 3: five in all of these It's not just a fascinating
Speaker 3: view into history. But my point just broadly is just like,
Speaker 3: what are we trying to do here? Are we trying
Speaker 3: to have more reindustrialization?
Speaker 1: Great?
Speaker 3: Do we want to force jap American cars on? Have
Speaker 3: we not exported enough Western bullshit over to them?
Speaker 1: Leave them alone?
Speaker 7: Same?
Speaker 3: You know, with there and this is not just my
Speaker 3: you know, Japanese love same thing with the Europeans, like
Speaker 3: they drive their cars because they're engineered for their purposes,
Speaker 3: in the same way that the Jeep grand wagoneer with
Speaker 3: coolers appeals to the American soccer mom. Most of the
Speaker 3: other rest of the world thinks that's grotesque and weird.
Speaker 3: But you know, different markets, different strokes for different folks.
Speaker 3: I just like listening to all of this. It's that
Speaker 3: their own goals make genuinely no sense on their face.
Speaker 3: And I don't think it's just people like me who
Speaker 3: are free you know, anti free trade protections or whatever.
Speaker 3: Even to the basic person, the person who is dying
Speaker 3: to understand this, you can't. There's nothing there, there's nothing
Speaker 3: to tug on.
Speaker 2: No, there is nothing there, And it's it's going to harm.
Speaker 2: Like if your goal is increasing manufacturing in the US,
Speaker 2: it's going to harm manufacturing in the US. If there
Speaker 2: is no change to this, it will harm manufacturing in
Speaker 2: the US, it will harm ordinary people. And we've talked
Speaker 2: about this in previous shows, but I want to make
Speaker 2: sure we get in this show too. The whole social
Speaker 2: contract of this country is cheap shit that's what we don't.
Speaker 1: Get, and the number has to go up for.
Speaker 6: And the number has to That's right, that's what we like.
Speaker 2: That's we don't have a social safety not like the
Speaker 2: you know, Norwegian we don't have that, like the Scandinavian countries,
Speaker 2: like Europe does.
Speaker 6: We don't have that. Okay, so what do we get?
Speaker 2: We get our Walmart runs, we get our Costco trips,
Speaker 2: we get what hassan biker calls our treats.
Speaker 6: We get our treats, we get them cheap, and the
Speaker 6: line goes up. That's the deal. Okay. I would like
Speaker 6: to change that deal.
Speaker 2: The deal that is on offer from Trump is you
Speaker 2: don't get your treats and you don't get anything else.
Speaker 2: You don't get anything else, You're gonna lose your job.
Speaker 2: We're gonna have a recession. The line is gonna go down.
Speaker 2: Like I mean, he is playing with fire. He really
Speaker 2: is playing with fire here. And maybe uh, you know,
Speaker 2: the global economy is able to absorb this better than
Speaker 2: we expect. Maybe the charish are rolled back and Trump
Speaker 2: is you know, making the ultimate bluff here, and maybe
Speaker 2: it doesn't end up as catastrophic as it could. But
Speaker 2: he is playing with fire because you are getting to
Speaker 2: the core contract that has been made and sold to
Speaker 2: the American people over fifty years. And he is in
Speaker 2: one fell sloop swoop without any democratic input, knowing damn
Speaker 2: well that it is going to be like a political
Speaker 2: bloodbath for him in his body whatever. He doesn't care.
Speaker 2: He is in one fell swoop with no democratic input,
Speaker 2: completely blowing that up. We'll see, we'll see what the
Speaker 2: fallout is. We'll see how people react to that. But
Speaker 2: I think it's I think on it makes it honestly,
Speaker 2: you know. One of the things that are also about
Speaker 2: the market rash that also was like making me sick
Speaker 2: last week to think about. There was a metric that
Speaker 2: came out I think from Friday's trading that hedge funders
Speaker 2: were dumping more than equities than they ever had before.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I did see that.
Speaker 2: And retail was buying the dip at larger numbers. And
Speaker 2: so you also have like the movement over the past
Speaker 2: number of years or like the you know, the the
Speaker 2: Stonks movement, the game stop that like impetus of retail
Speaker 2: trading and crypto and those people are going to get destroyed.
Speaker 2: Like I just the amount of pain the real harm
Speaker 2: that all of this is going to do to real
Speaker 2: people boggles my mind. It just boggles my mind. I
Speaker 2: cannot wrap my head around it. And so I don't know.
Speaker 2: I don't know where we're by.
Speaker 3: The dip ros are and a tough one because they're
Speaker 3: about down about ten percent when they bought the dip
Speaker 3: So you know it's rough. At the same time, you know,
Speaker 3: I feel of a long term view, et cetera. Yes,
Speaker 3: things are cheap, and I wouldn't ever encourage panic.
Speaker 6: Sellings, not financial advice.
Speaker 1: This none of this is you absolute shouldn't ask me.
Speaker 3: But just generally, where we are selling, we are screwing
Speaker 3: with people's lives. Yes, there will be damage at a
Speaker 3: personal level. The number one cause of divorce in North
Speaker 3: America is money problems. The number was one of the
Speaker 3: major reasons that commit people commit suicide, great depression, people
Speaker 3: feeling inadequate, et cetera. That's just tell on a person,
Speaker 3: men in particular, man in particular, provider role. Go look
Speaker 3: at the male suicide rate from O nine bloodbath. The
Speaker 3: same thing whenever it comes to businesses, people's dreams. I
Speaker 3: just talked, it's April. A lot of people graduating millions
Speaker 3: of Americans graduating in a month from now. What are
Speaker 3: they gonna do, you know, their theory? What are their
Speaker 3: parents going to be? Can they are they gonna have
Speaker 3: to move home? A whole generation of millennials had to
Speaker 3: move home. It was embarrassing, you know, for a lot
Speaker 3: of folks. They felt very inadequate. It caused a lot
Speaker 3: of social problems. All of the this is coming together
Speaker 3: right now, and yeah, you're screwing with people's lives. That's
Speaker 3: really where you know. I don't I don't forgive that.
Speaker 3: I don't downplay that, And I think it's a genuine
Speaker 3: red like it's a red button panic mode. And people
Speaker 3: can accuse you of bed wetting and all that. I'm
Speaker 3: always going to bed web for people who are you know,
Speaker 3: for who are trying to just live at a very
Speaker 3: basic level, and who as you said, they signed the contract,
Speaker 3: they didn't do anything wrong, and I genuinely don't think
Speaker 3: that they are getting what they thought they were going
Speaker 3: to get. Like you could say all you want about
Speaker 3: Trump ten percent, this is catched so far beyond that
Speaker 3: from where you know anything that he sold out on
Speaker 3: the campaign and even common understanding.
Speaker 2: He ran on I'm going to bring prices down, right,
Speaker 2: this is going to raise prices significant. And now he's
Speaker 2: saying I don't really care. I could care less prices
Speaker 2: go up. I mean that is directly contradary. So yes, look,
Speaker 2: if you're a Wall Street if you're on Wallstreet and
Speaker 2: you were like placing bets based on that, he's not
Speaker 2: serious about these tariffs. Like you were a fool. Sorry,
Speaker 2: you were an absolute fool. You should have just read
Speaker 2: Jeff Stine and the Washington Post and you'd be much
Speaker 2: better position. But for your ordinary person, he was out
Speaker 2: there saying I'm going to deal with this inflation crisis,
Speaker 2: like this was a central centerpiece of his campaign.
Speaker 6: And I saw the numbers earlier.
Speaker 2: Forty percent of the people who shifted from Biden to
Speaker 2: vote for Trump, they said inflation was their number one reason, right,
Speaker 2: That's what they thought they were getting. They thought that
Speaker 2: that was Trump was the businessman, and he would, you know,
Speaker 2: write the economics ship, and he's always had high approval
Speaker 2: ratings on the economy, and they just sort of felt
Speaker 2: like he's got it, like he'll do a good job, right,
Speaker 2: whatever that entails. He says, terrorists, he says, you know,
Speaker 2: tax Cus.
Speaker 6: Well, I he'll figure it out. He's a good businessman.
Speaker 2: I'm sure he's gonna, you know, steer your scent in
Speaker 2: a good direction. In no way, in no land did
Speaker 2: the mass of voters think that intentionally crashing the stock
Speaker 2: market was going to be that direction. And the reason
Speaker 2: I keep saying that was such kind. He posted himself
Speaker 2: a video that said Trump is intentionally crashing the stock market,
Speaker 2: and how can you not look at this and say,
Speaker 2: he is andeering a massive crash of the stock market
Speaker 2: and very likely if we continue in this direction, a
Speaker 2: recession intentionally.
Speaker 6: That's probably a.
Speaker 2: Good transition point, given the likely fallout from these policies,
Speaker 2: to move to the already the resistance that is formed
Speaker 2: on among the liberal base against Trump. You know, one
Speaker 2: of the early some of the early things that we
Speaker 2: said about Trump two point zero after the election in particular,
Speaker 2: and even early into inauguration the early months of his
Speaker 2: administration is like, this resistance is not the same as
Speaker 2: twenty seventeen. Like you had the Women's March. It was
Speaker 2: so many people in the streets. You had, of course,
Speaker 2: and this part still is different, but you had democratic
Speaker 2: electeds and the media and a lot of corporate executives
Speaker 2: all standing up against Trump. This time the landscape is
Speaker 2: very different. Well, over the weekend, we had our first
Speaker 2: mass resistance anti Trump protests movement.
Speaker 6: This was organized.
Speaker 2: It's called hands Off and let's go ahead and put
Speaker 2: the vo up on the screen and I can tell
Speaker 2: you more about it.
Speaker 6: So this was from Boston.
Speaker 2: Estimates are that there were some six hundred thousand people
Speaker 2: that came out in locations across the country. So this
Speaker 2: is Austin, Texas here. There were protests in all fifty states.
Speaker 2: There were Ryan Grimm's dad was down at one in
Speaker 2: the village, you know, down even in my area, which
Speaker 2: is you know, pretty far outside of of DC, there
Speaker 2: was a protest there.
Speaker 6: That was making Georgia. Here's Oakland, California.
Speaker 2: There were huge ones in the major cities in New York,
Speaker 2: in Chicago, Portland, Oregon with a very significant protest there, Richmond, Virginia.
Speaker 2: I know, I saw quite significant one in Utah in
Speaker 2: Salt Lake City, Utah. Even in some smaller places like
Speaker 2: we had the make and Georgia one up on the screen.
Speaker 2: So thirteen hundred different locations, all fifty states, six hundred
Speaker 2: thousand people and you know, the branding is interesting to
Speaker 2: meet too, Soccer, because this is also i think a
Speaker 2: contrast from last time around the beating heart of the
Speaker 2: sort of Democrats a base resistance to Trump last time
Speaker 2: was Russiagate, and it was also like, you know, him
Speaker 2: being a misogynist. That's where the women's march, the hands
Speaker 2: off you know whatever, Yeah, the grab a vibe.
Speaker 1: Let's just let's just all forget that that happened this Yeah.
Speaker 2: So anyway, this time it's the messaging is hands off,
Speaker 2: as in hands off soci security, hands off Medicare, hands
Speaker 2: off Medicaid, hands off veterans.
Speaker 6: And there was a lot of both.
Speaker 2: You know, anti Trump and anti dog and anti elon sentiment.
Speaker 2: But there was also a lot of frustration too, and
Speaker 2: we can put put e three actually up on the
Speaker 2: screen from Ken Klippenstein. There was also a lot of
Speaker 2: frustration among these folks aimed at Democrats, who Democratic elected officials,
Speaker 2: who they felt was were not fighting back adequately. The
Speaker 2: So there was a lot more of a i guess
Speaker 2: a sort of class war frame here as well in
Speaker 2: terms of focusing on the social safety net versus twenty seventeen.
Speaker 2: But Ken was there at one protest, and he talked
Speaker 2: to people and just asked them, like, why are you there.
Speaker 2: One person said Luigi was very right.
Speaker 6: If that gives you a.
Speaker 2: Sense of where they are right now. Another one said
Speaker 2: Congress is doing nothing. They were disgusted with the lack
Speaker 2: of leadership, both from Congressional Republicans and Democrats. There's no spine,
Speaker 2: said another is this America? There were a lot of
Speaker 2: concerns about the deportation with no due process, the disappearing
Speaker 2: of people into this foreign gulag, and El Salvador recover
Speaker 2: more developments there tomorrow. Someone said, we have to fight
Speaker 2: height harder, We have to get rid of them. It's
Speaker 2: rough out there, and talking specifically about Trump and Musk.
Speaker 2: So what I would say is Sager, why I think
Speaker 2: that these are significant is, first, it's the first like
Speaker 2: real mass resistance that we've seen. Second, it comes at
Speaker 2: a pivotal moment because you just had the Wisconsin Supreme
Speaker 2: Court thing, in those Florida special elections, and now you
Speaker 2: have this tariff insanity, and so I think it will
Speaker 2: probably make Republicans a little bit more nervous about the
Speaker 2: way that the opposition is getting more organized and more vocal.
Speaker 2: And I think probably most significantly, it will help bolster
Speaker 2: Democrats and make them feel a little more emboldened than
Speaker 2: the meek way that they have predominantly been operating in
Speaker 2: the Trump two point zero well.
Speaker 3: I think that the benefit that the protest movement has
Speaker 3: more than anything is that the doge and social Security
Speaker 3: was it was realistic, but it was still somewhat hypothetical,
Speaker 3: and it was like, Okay, it's going to eventually get
Speaker 3: to this place, right about social Security, Medicare, etc. Yes,
Speaker 3: we can talk about longer lines, but this is not
Speaker 3: exactly the same thing as like a real cut, same
Speaker 3: with elon taking over the government or any of that.
Speaker 1: That was all.
Speaker 3: I think it still requires quite a bit of like
Speaker 3: media literacy and its people actually reading the news to
Speaker 3: be able to connect with that everybody can connect with
Speaker 3: losing money and higher prices. That's where what you want
Speaker 3: is your protest, the center of gravity of your argument
Speaker 3: to hit to exactly where people's concern is.
Speaker 1: That is where people are.
Speaker 3: At right now, and that's why we can all agree
Speaker 3: at a fundamental level that this is one which will
Speaker 3: strike truly at the heart of where every common American
Speaker 3: can come together. Immigration, I mean, look, even on the
Speaker 3: immigration thing, as you know, I changed my mind on
Speaker 3: this stuff. But the Wall Street Journal poll shows that
Speaker 3: even if you violate due process, the due process, I
Speaker 3: think the majority of Americans, the people who stand behind
Speaker 3: that people got to be honest about where the country
Speaker 3: is too on immigration. So as much concern trolling as
Speaker 3: or does come from a lot of liberal activists, like
Speaker 3: you've got to understand also where a lot of public
Speaker 3: opinion is on the other side. But here this is
Speaker 3: where public opinion I think is totally united behind at
Speaker 3: least on increased prices and the violation of the social
Speaker 3: contract without an immense amount of change on the other side,
Speaker 3: which they're not wrong, they don't see and they're correct.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I wouldn't call it concern trolling.
Speaker 6: I would just call it concern.
Speaker 3: Well, I'm just saying, though, I mean, you have to
Speaker 3: acknowledge the architect the architecture of where we are in
Speaker 3: the discourse as a country that's a pretty insane place.
Speaker 6: Country has moved.
Speaker 2: I saw that pole and the way that it was phrased,
Speaker 2: it is definitely did not ask the question do you
Speaker 2: support sending indefinitely a makeup artist who has literally done
Speaker 2: nothing wrong at all to a foreign prison to be torture.
Speaker 6: For the rest of his life. That was not the
Speaker 6: phrasing of the Pole.
Speaker 2: So I don't think that Democrat should be afraid of
Speaker 2: prosecuting that case as well. But there is no doubt
Speaker 2: that in terms of you know, what will cause people
Speaker 2: en mass to completely turn on this administration, this president specifically,
Speaker 2: like if your your bottom line is your bottom line,
Speaker 2: if you can't make rent, if you can't afford to
Speaker 2: feedure it, prices are going up, if you lose your job,
Speaker 2: if the president engineers a recession, you can.
Speaker 6: Expect these protests to be like to look like.
Speaker 2: Nothing compared to the backlash that will come. And that
Speaker 2: seems to be what Trump is is courting right now.
Speaker 2: So with that being said, we're really excited to be
Speaker 2: able to have Rocana on and or in casts. So
Speaker 2: both of them just to set this up a little bit,
Speaker 2: and they'll explain their positions specifically, so I don't mischaracterize,
Speaker 2: but you know, Rowe is someone who is not an ioliberal.
Speaker 2: He supports some level of protection and he's certainly supported
Speaker 2: the Biden protectionism and industrial policy. Orn also supported the
Speaker 2: Biden tariffs and industrial policy. Oran is on the right.
Speaker 2: He is very supportive of tariffs in general. However, he
Speaker 2: does have some concerns about the way that this is
Speaker 2: playing out. So I think it should be an interesting
Speaker 2: discussion slash debate between the two of them about the
Speaker 2: actual contours of what is being done here, and you
Speaker 2: know what the fallout could ultimately be. So let's go
Speaker 2: ahead and get to that discussion. So we are very
Speaker 2: fortunate to be joined by two friends of the show
Speaker 2: here for a little friendly discussion slash maybe debate. We
Speaker 2: have orn Cass who is senior economists for American Compass,
Speaker 2: and we also have Connerson Rocanna of California.
Speaker 6: Great to see both of you. Really appreciate you taking the.
Speaker 1: Time, Gridge to you.
Speaker 7: Thank you. Congressman.
Speaker 6: Yeah, of course you should be on with the.
Speaker 7: Warn I always love debating or chatting with them.
Speaker 2: Lovely, all right, congresson, let me just start with you,
Speaker 2: just top line, what do you think of what the
Speaker 2: President's up to here?
Speaker 9: This is the single most destructive act to the American
Speaker 9: economy and American wealth in modern times.
Speaker 7: I mean, you have to look at probably what Vulker.
Speaker 9: Did in the nineteen eighties in terms of inducing a
Speaker 9: recession to have anything close and their vulgar actually had.
Speaker 7: Reasons because you had high inflation.
Speaker 9: Here, you just have blanket tariffs which are going to
Speaker 9: actually make it harder for manufacturers because it's going to
Speaker 9: drive up input costs and supply chain costs.
Speaker 7: You have no permanence, so if you're Mary.
Speaker 9: Barrow or Jim Farley, you can't even say let's build
Speaker 9: factories here, because Trump himself would say, I don't know,
Speaker 9: maybe these will be gone in a month or two
Speaker 9: months or a year. They're not targeted, and they're impacting
Speaker 9: allies as as well as very poor countries. I mean,
Speaker 9: it is just economic illiteracy. What I would say is,
Speaker 9: you know, you have the sort of total free market
Speaker 9: people who just think let everything be free markets. They're wrong,
Speaker 9: and then you have this kind of incoherent protectionism. They're wrong,
Speaker 9: and what we need is sort of smart industrial, smart tariff.
Speaker 2: Policy or in what are your thoughts on the specifics
Speaker 2: of what the president has imposed here?
Speaker 10: Well, I guess I agree with some of that and
Speaker 10: disagree with some of it. I think big picture, you know,
Speaker 10: the direction here and moving away from the unfettered globalization
Speaker 10: of the last generation is the right move. I actually
Speaker 10: think also that the sort of very blunt and broad tariffs,
Speaker 10: something like a ten percent global tariff, is a useful policy.
Speaker 10: Preferred to see us sort of change the rules of
Speaker 10: the game in that way, then have government going product
Speaker 10: by product, sector by sector and trying to figure out
Speaker 10: what to do in every case. But I do agree
Speaker 10: with the Congressman that in terms of how some of
Speaker 10: this has been rolled out, with some of the confusion,
Speaker 10: certainly the lack of permanence, I think we're sort of
Speaker 10: increasing the costs a lot further than they need to be,
Speaker 10: and we're probably not going to get all the benefits
Speaker 10: that we potentially could. And so you know, in my mind,
Speaker 10: I think the Vulgar comparison is actually very interesting because
Speaker 10: you know, ultimately Vulker was addressing a very serious problem.
Speaker 10: There was pain involved, and I think we all look
Speaker 10: at back at that very grateful that we had leaders
Speaker 10: who were willing to bite that bullet and that it
Speaker 10: was successful. And so I think that model can work.
Speaker 10: I think that kind of thing is needed here as well,
Speaker 10: But the specifics do matter, and I think there's a
Speaker 10: long way to go here. On the specifics.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I meanficing to the specifics and more.
Speaker 3: Because we could debate roll out, we shall also a
Speaker 3: debate vision about where things want to go. Something that
Speaker 3: Howard Lutnik, the Commerce Secretary responsible for really much of
Speaker 3: this out, has said is to bring back manufacturing, even
Speaker 3: in terms of screwing the little screws. So let's take
Speaker 3: a listen to that, and we're going to get both
Speaker 3: of your reactions.
Speaker 11: Great American workers.
Speaker 12: You know, we are going to a place on other network,
Speaker 12: armies of millions of people. Well remember the army of
Speaker 12: millions and millions of human beings screwing in little little
Speaker 12: screws to make iPhones.
Speaker 11: That kind of thing is going to come to America.
Speaker 11: It's going to be automated, and great Americans, the trade
Speaker 11: craft of America is going to fix them, is going
Speaker 11: to work on them. They're going to be mechanics, there's
Speaker 11: going to be HVAC specialists, there's going to be electricians.
Speaker 11: The trade craft of America, our high school educated Americans,
Speaker 11: the corn to our workforce is going to have the
Speaker 11: greatest resurgence of jobs in the history of America to
Speaker 11: work on these high tech factories which are all coming
Speaker 11: to America. That's what's going concerned the next generation of America.
Speaker 3: Congress, your reaction up because you represent one of the
Speaker 3: most high tech districts in the United States.
Speaker 7: I was just a little bit sad.
Speaker 9: I had invite the commerce sector to come out to
Speaker 9: my district where could give him a free education. Screws
Speaker 9: are about zero point two percent of an iPhone's cost.
Speaker 7: You know, we may want to work on.
Speaker 9: Things like the display screen or the flash drive or
Speaker 9: the camera. I mean, it's almost like he's living in
Speaker 9: the nineteenth century. Of course, they've got nineteenth century policies.
Speaker 7: On how to build an industrial base.
Speaker 9: I mean, you want to build high tech factories here,
Speaker 9: what we need is financing. What we need is a
Speaker 9: government to say, if you build it, will buy it.
Speaker 7: That's how Silicon Valley started. What we need is investment
Speaker 7: in the workforce.
Speaker 9: So they're just going about this in a way that
Speaker 9: isn't how FDR or Hamilton or Lincoln built the America.
Speaker 7: I mean, taris were a part of.
Speaker 9: It, but it was a very discreet part of it.
Speaker 9: FDR actually, who didn't want more to re industrialize America
Speaker 9: than anyone in the modern age, actually opposed the high
Speaker 9: terrafsy it's explicitly opposed as the smooth Hawley tariffs, and
Speaker 9: then opposed high tariffs and had a.
Speaker 7: Vision for industrialization.
Speaker 9: So you know, this is just I can't emphasize enough
Speaker 9: how much this is economic incoherence and how much Trump
Speaker 9: supporters are a gas at what's going on.
Speaker 7: I mean, the guy won because people thought he knew
Speaker 7: what he was doing with.
Speaker 9: The economy and business. And he's destroying American wealth. He's
Speaker 9: destroying American factories. There are no new factories that are
Speaker 9: coming up because these things aren't permanent. He's increasing the
Speaker 9: input cost of factories. He's hurting small businesses. The Russell
Speaker 9: two thousand is collapsing, and I just I hope there's
Speaker 9: some intervention or.
Speaker 2: Let me let me get tried. I want your response
Speaker 2: to that. But also some of the things Lutnik has
Speaker 2: been saying kind of get to this key question of
Speaker 2: what is even really the goal here, because you know,
Speaker 2: people raise, Okay, let's say you bring iPhone production to
Speaker 2: the US, the iPhones because we have higher labor costs
Speaker 2: and because, by the way, you know, we don't have
Speaker 2: as large of a social safety net. Also as other countries,
Speaker 2: So businesses have to bear a lot of that cost
Speaker 2: in terms of what they're paying labor. Things are going
Speaker 2: to cost a lot more. And what Letnik has been
Speaker 2: saying is no, because it's really going to be robots
Speaker 2: doing this job, which raises a question of like, Okay,
Speaker 2: so we're bringing back manufacturing for robots to fill the jobs,
Speaker 2: or is this about jobs? Is it about national security
Speaker 2: in your ideal world? What is actually the goal here?
Speaker 2: Is it to have manufacturing capacity for robots to be
Speaker 2: screwing in tiny screws, or is it to have manufacturing
Speaker 2: capacity for human beings some blend.
Speaker 1: Of the two.
Speaker 2: How do you see that particular dimension of this.
Speaker 10: It's a great question, and I guess briefly, I just
Speaker 10: want to say I agree entirely with the Congressman about
Speaker 10: his broader point about the other kinds of policy we
Speaker 10: need here too, whether it's the financing policy, I think,
Speaker 10: workforce development, yes, huge, you know that's not kind of
Speaker 10: like details of implementation. That's a big part of the
Speaker 10: strategy that I think we probably agree on to a
Speaker 10: significant extent. I strongly disagree with his reaction to the
Speaker 10: Commerce Secretary's comments because I think it reflects what we've
Speaker 10: been seeing too much in this debate, which is an
Speaker 10: attempt to sort of take the worst possible and even
Speaker 10: obviously incorrect interpretation of what people are saying, just just
Speaker 10: to dunk on it rather than try to engage with it.
Speaker 10: Letnick didn't say it was the screws that were a
Speaker 10: high value part of the iPhone and that that's what
Speaker 10: he wanted people making. What he said was that he
Speaker 10: wanted to have the actual assembly process, which includes the
Speaker 10: screwing of the screws, in the United States, that that
Speaker 10: would be automated, and that the good jobs that he's
Speaker 10: talking about are the jobs actually operating the automated factory.
Speaker 10: And so look, I'm happy to have a debate about
Speaker 10: whether that's right, but let's be clear on what he
Speaker 10: was actually saying, which is not nonsensical or incoherent, and
Speaker 10: I think it's actually you're saying it.
Speaker 7: Much more censically than he did. He did.
Speaker 9: He didn't say let's have people be operating the advanced machines.
Speaker 7: He said let's have them doing the assembly of the screws.
Speaker 7: I just think he's out of touch.
Speaker 9: I don't know if he's ever been to Apple's campus
Speaker 9: or to Silicon Valley. I think he's got no clue
Speaker 9: about technology. I think these people are stuck in James
Speaker 9: folk expansionism and McKinley's tariffs. And the saddest thing is
Speaker 9: they don't understand the modern economy.
Speaker 7: They're kind of clueless.
Speaker 1: Go ahead, orn you can respond to that.
Speaker 9: Well.
Speaker 10: Look, Keith, I mean was specifically saying he was talking
Speaker 10: about the mechanics jobs maintaining the robots. This was I'm
Speaker 10: happy to say that there's room for improvement on the
Speaker 10: communication here, But what he was talking about is highly automated,
Speaker 10: highly productive factories and the jobs that come along with those.
Speaker 9: My guess is he probably wouldn't even be able to
Speaker 9: name the five pp components of an iPhone. Like literally,
Speaker 9: I don't think the guy understands the modern economy.
Speaker 10: But fine, I understand that part of your job is
Speaker 10: up communicating it. I understand that part of your job
Speaker 10: is just to attack people on the other side. But
Speaker 10: I'm interested in what the actual substance of the time.
Speaker 9: I think it was collapse the American economy. Who has
Speaker 9: gotten the people who are going to get people laid off? Yeah,
Speaker 9: in that attack, and he's done almost destruction of American wealth,
Speaker 9: of the American academy.
Speaker 7: We won't see answered Crystal, he's in coherent.
Speaker 1: Yeah, go ahead and answer the question. And I want
Speaker 1: to thank you God.
Speaker 10: Yeah, because I think the vision point is very important here,
Speaker 10: and it's it's a key point to understand that, you
Speaker 10: know what what I think the Trump administration envisions. You know, certainly,
Speaker 10: what I think is so important in focusing on this
Speaker 10: reindustrialization is not that you're somehow bringing back the same
Speaker 10: jobs of the nineteen fifties, doing the same kind of work.
Speaker 10: What you're talking about is actually rebuilding the industrial base
Speaker 10: and a strong industrial base in this country where we
Speaker 10: do actually have high quality, advanced, cutting edge manufacturing across
Speaker 10: a wide range of sectors.
Speaker 1: For one thing, it.
Speaker 10: Does provide a lot of good employment. And yes, there
Speaker 10: are many fewer jobs in those factories than there were
Speaker 10: in the factories.
Speaker 1: Of the nineteen fifties, but you know what, there's a.
Speaker 10: Lot more jobs in those factories than there already not
Speaker 10: having the factories. And so when you're talking about how
Speaker 10: you produce a broad based renaissance in the industrial economy,
Speaker 10: you're talking about a lot of regions that have left
Speaker 10: behind that you don't bring back by putting everybody back
Speaker 10: in a factory. That you bring back by having highly productive,
Speaker 10: high value factories. If we're sending a lot more advanced
Speaker 10: engineers to work in those factories, that would be great
Speaker 10: for those regions too, And so there's a lot of
Speaker 10: upside there.
Speaker 1: And soccer.
Speaker 10: Just to make one more quick point, I think the
Speaker 10: other thing that's key to recognize here is that the
Speaker 10: reason the industrial base is important is that you can't
Speaker 10: just pick and choose which things you want to be
Speaker 10: good at. We've tried to do that with our defense
Speaker 10: industrial base. We're just going to be good at the
Speaker 10: aircraft carriers and the submarines, and someone else can make
Speaker 10: everything else. And what we're seeing is that you can't
Speaker 10: just make those things, you can't just do the high
Speaker 10: end stuff if you don't actually have the core industrial
Speaker 10: base underneath it. And so that's why I think the
Speaker 10: broad based tariff model is right. We actually we actually
Speaker 10: do need to have a capacity to really make We're
Speaker 10: not going to be authuric, we're not going to make
Speaker 10: everything for ourselves, but we do to have an industrial
Speaker 10: economy that supports our prosperity.
Speaker 3: One of the things that's at the heart of both
Speaker 3: of your arguments. We'll start with Orn for you, with
Speaker 3: you Orn, and then to you Congressman, because this is
Speaker 3: a bit of a challenge, is that you're both kind
Speaker 3: of talking more about quote unquote high tech manufacturing. But
Speaker 3: the way that this is sold and ultimately was you know,
Speaker 3: Trump was elected on the backs of was on working
Speaker 3: class voters who don't necessarily have a four year college
Speaker 3: degree or you know, years of vocational training and engineering knowledge,
Speaker 3: et cetera. So in both of your cases and support
Speaker 3: of these policies, how do they actually help, you know,
Speaker 3: the person in the bottom, let's say, quintile of the
Speaker 3: American economy and somebody who feels as if their job
Speaker 3: and their stable life was taken away from them, because
Speaker 3: I haven't seen that in the vision that either of
Speaker 3: you are really saying.
Speaker 1: Or and you can start, well, let's.
Speaker 10: Keep in mind that when you're talking about the bottom
Speaker 10: of quintile, you know, you're talking about people don't even
Speaker 10: have a high school educational a lot of times, and
Speaker 10: so you know, to some extent what you also want
Speaker 10: is even the sort of lower skilled you know, service
Speaker 10: jobs in a local economy, whether those are good jobs
Speaker 10: depends on whether you have strong manufacturing base. I actually
Speaker 10: love sending people to a wonderful video. You know, the
Speaker 10: very libertarian Cato Institute did a video trying to show
Speaker 10: that free trade was good, and they highlighted a town
Speaker 10: that had been crushed by NAFTA, and then they showed
Speaker 10: it coming back twenty years later. And the way that
Speaker 10: it was coming back was with guess what, a new
Speaker 10: manufacturing plant making cars to sell in America. And so
Speaker 10: the examples of the jobs that created was not in
Speaker 10: the It was in the manufacturing plant for one thing.
Speaker 10: It was also at the pizza parlor in town, because
Speaker 10: you can have a good pizza parlor in a town
Speaker 10: that has a strong manufacturing plant. And so this is
Speaker 10: about a broader industrial ecosystem and a broader economy generally
Speaker 10: that actually spreads economy or excuse me, that that spreads
Speaker 10: prosperity widely.
Speaker 1: Yeah, a congressman, go ahead.
Speaker 7: Well, I agree with a number of things that were
Speaker 7: to said.
Speaker 9: One is that if you have factories in a place,
Speaker 9: it has a multiplier effect three to four times. So
Speaker 9: let's say you have a modern steel plant, You're not
Speaker 9: going to have forty five hundred people because you have
Speaker 9: robots in automation, you have one thousand people in a
Speaker 9: town of twenty thirty thousand.
Speaker 7: That's still a lot. And if those are.
Speaker 9: High paying jobs, they're going to spend them on restaurants,
Speaker 9: they're going to spend them on daycare, they're going to
Speaker 9: spend them on a gym membership, and it can actually
Speaker 9: revitalize an economy. Now, to your point, Siger, there's a
Speaker 9: difference between saying we want advanced manufacturing and we just want.
Speaker 7: High tech stuff. I agree with you.
Speaker 9: If it was just let's put semiconductor factories and battery
Speaker 9: plants everywhere, that is maybe not going to create a
Speaker 9: sufficient amount of jobs for the working and middle class.
Speaker 9: But if we're talking about advanced steel plants, if we're
Speaker 9: talking about advanced production in and of itself, that is
Speaker 9: going to create electrician plumber.
Speaker 7: Jobs, jobs of machinists.
Speaker 9: And what we should do is make sure that every
Speaker 9: person in high school has an opportunity to have a trade,
Speaker 9: whether that's a vocational trade or a digital trade, and
Speaker 9: many of these advanced manufacturers facilities would create those jobs.
Speaker 9: Plus they're going to spawn the service sector to have
Speaker 9: higher wages but it needs more of an investment in
Speaker 9: the workforce, and it also needs, in my view, standards
Speaker 9: for wages.
Speaker 2: Laren, let me get to you on this piece, which
Speaker 2: is something you've kind of alluded to, if we could
Speaker 2: put F four up on the screen, because you've said, listen,
Speaker 2: you support tariffs in principle, but it has to be
Speaker 2: done the right way, and part of that, like a
Speaker 2: really critical part of that the right way is pairing
Speaker 2: it with industrial policy.
Speaker 6: And you can see here we actually.
Speaker 2: Not that it's been the end all be all, not
Speaker 2: that it's been enough, not that we don't need to
Speaker 2: do more, but we actually have had a policy over
Speaker 2: the past couple of years that has significantly increased US
Speaker 2: manufacturing construction spending, and that has been, you know, the
Speaker 2: Biden policy of combination of protectionism and industrial policy through
Speaker 2: both the Chips Act and the Inflation Reduction Act.
Speaker 6: So not only is this new.
Speaker 2: Tariff scheme completely on board from any sort of industrial policy,
Speaker 2: not only are we actually at a time when this
Speaker 2: administration is engaged in an austerity push that was going
Speaker 2: in the opposite direction of industrial policy, but they're also
Speaker 2: undermining these programs which actually we're working to increase the
Speaker 2: US manufacturing base.
Speaker 10: Well, I certainly agree with the strength of some of
Speaker 10: the industrial policy that we've seen in the last few years.
Speaker 10: You know, I'm a very strong supporter of the Chips Act,
Speaker 10: and I think what you saw in that chart was
Speaker 10: a huge bump overall, driven almost entirely by a huge
Speaker 10: bump in those red bars, the electronics and manufacturing where
Speaker 10: the Chips ack. You know, look, we're spending a lot
Speaker 10: of public money. It's about forty billion dollars of public money,
Speaker 10: but that is generating hundreds of billions of dollars of
Speaker 10: investment in those specific chips factories. Then, you know, as
Speaker 10: the Congressman was describing, in a broader ecosystem of other
Speaker 10: manufacturing and suppliers around them. That's a huge part of
Speaker 10: the picture. I think my support is for the ada
Speaker 10: that you don't want to only do that, And the
Speaker 10: reason is that what we'd start to look at is, okay, well,
Speaker 10: now every one of those bars that you want to increase,
Speaker 10: are we going to go you know, are we going
Speaker 10: to pass a law for everyone? Right? I mean, it
Speaker 10: took us four or five years to get the Chips
Speaker 10: ACKed up and running. There's an interesting effort now on shipbuilding.
Speaker 10: Funny enough, the Ships Act, you know, I think that's
Speaker 10: very promising too. But the idea that we're going to
Speaker 10: go through every industry and in every case figure out
Speaker 10: how to create a new bill, a new office to
Speaker 10: fund the investment in that where there is something as
Speaker 10: particularly a high priority like chips, absolutely is I think
Speaker 10: the industrial policy push makes a lot of sense. But
Speaker 10: on the on alongside that, accompanying it, I do think
Speaker 10: it's important to put a thumb on the scale for
Speaker 10: domestic manufacturing broadly and say that whoever's supplying those factories
Speaker 10: and other industries that aren't going to be politically sexy,
Speaker 10: you know, we would like to see investment in domestic
Speaker 10: industry there.
Speaker 2: Too, Congressman on that chart, and you know, you've you've
Speaker 2: had sort of a bipartisan consensus that has emerged that
Speaker 2: is a break from neoliberalism. And you know, Trump gets
Speaker 2: some credit for that from his first term with his
Speaker 2: China tariffs. I think, you know, the Biden policy maintained
Speaker 2: most of those, expanded them, introduced the industrial policy piece.
Speaker 6: And one of the things that I'm.
Speaker 2: Fearful of is that Democrats will just be completely negatively
Speaker 2: polarized against all tariffs, and you already see some signs
Speaker 2: of this among the Democratic base. Representative Deluzio's member from
Speaker 2: westerns Sorry, Western Pennsylvania, put on a video that was like, Hey,
Speaker 2: I have big problems these tarifs.
Speaker 6: Tarrifs in general.
Speaker 2: Okay, maybe in the right place, but big problems with
Speaker 2: what Trump is doing. And he was viciously attacked online
Speaker 2: by a lot of liberal Democrats who say, how dare
Speaker 2: you even say that tariffs are good in any circumstance?
Speaker 6: Whatsoever?
Speaker 2: You know, as you someone who has like myself a
Speaker 2: more nuanced view on trade and sees the utility of
Speaker 2: tariffs in certain targeted instances, what are you hearing and
Speaker 2: feeling from your colleagues? Is that a concern that you share?
Speaker 7: I think the.
Speaker 9: Attacks on Representative de Lusia beIN totally uncalled for.
Speaker 7: He's one of the most thoughtful people on this issue.
Speaker 7: I'd highly recommend his New.
Speaker 9: York Times out bet on terraffs, which he basically said,
Speaker 9: smart terraffs to protect critical industries against unfair trade practices
Speaker 9: and dumping are perfectly reasonable. What we don't want is
Speaker 9: blanket tariffs, and what we don't want is them done
Speaker 9: with no collaboration, because you have no idea whether it's
Speaker 9: going to be there a month, two months, three months,
Speaker 9: and there is no planning in terms of whether they're
Speaker 9: actually going to help create new factories.
Speaker 7: So I think the attacks on him have been.
Speaker 9: Unreasonable, and he's one of the most thoughtful members of Congress.
Speaker 7: In fact, he's leading this group.
Speaker 9: I've been calling for economic patriotism, and he's been leading
Speaker 9: a group of economic patriots.
Speaker 7: Group that is very productive.
Speaker 9: I do want to say that I appreciated Orion's role
Speaker 9: in helping with the Chips and Science Act Todd Young
Speaker 9: and I did that.
Speaker 7: With at the time. Senator Schumer is a much.
Speaker 9: Better legislator than he is in this moment in getting
Speaker 9: that through, and it's one of the things I'm proudest of.
Speaker 7: And he's right.
Speaker 9: From thirty billion dollars, that's won four hundred billion dollars
Speaker 9: of investment all five semiconductor manufacturers Intel, Micron, sk Heinez, Samsung,
Speaker 9: and TSMC here in the United States. No other country
Speaker 9: has that, and so we should be looking at efforts
Speaker 9: like that. The problem is Trump is basically Reaganism of
Speaker 9: the tax breaks deregulation disguised as I want to build
Speaker 9: new factories, and basically he's added to that high, high
Speaker 9: blanket irrational tariffs.
Speaker 7: There's no strategy of building things.
Speaker 9: And in the three periods in American history, you look
Speaker 9: at Hamilton, you look at Lincoln, you look at FDR.
Speaker 7: How they did it. The large part of it was.
Speaker 9: In federal investment, then investment in our workforce.
Speaker 3: My last question, urin this is a political and a
Speaker 3: coalition question for you is restrained person. I supported the
Speaker 3: withdrawal from Afghanistan, we also have to admit it was
Speaker 3: a disaster the rollout, even if we support it on
Speaker 3: a policy level, it enabled I would say, and I
Speaker 3: know the Congressman will disagree with me full scale. You know,
Speaker 3: funding of the war in Ukraine. It emboldened the neo
Speaker 3: cons and in my opinion, you know, set our foreign
Speaker 3: policy in a much worse direction for a few years,
Speaker 3: even though at a basic level I agreed, you know,
Speaker 3: with the spirit of what was being done. Since you
Speaker 3: are involved in these coalitional fights, are you worried that
Speaker 3: a bad rollout here would embolden the Cato Institute, the
Speaker 3: American Americans for Tax Reform, the Chamber of Commerce and
Speaker 3: winning over the public's heart.
Speaker 1: If this is not done correctly.
Speaker 10: I don't worry so much about those sort of old
Speaker 10: right groups, which which I just don't think are as
Speaker 10: relevant anymore as they used to be. Just across the board,
Speaker 10: I do worry a lot about the American people. I
Speaker 10: do worry that if this is done poorly, if there
Speaker 10: are a lot of unnecessary costs imposed, if the point
Speaker 10: of the policy hasn't communicated well, and then if you
Speaker 10: don't do the kinds of things that actually generate the benefits,
Speaker 10: then I think people will rightly look at it and say, well,
Speaker 10: that didn't work, and the broader principles have the potential
Speaker 10: to be discredited. So I do think getting this right
Speaker 10: is obviously incredibly important, and you know that's something that
Speaker 10: American Compass we were sort of ultimately focused on.
Speaker 7: Right.
Speaker 10: We're very happy to kind of go to the mat
Speaker 10: defending these principles in the direction and at the exact
Speaker 10: same time be totally honest about what we think is
Speaker 10: not structured correctly, what we think really puts the project
Speaker 10: at risk, and hopefully that plays some small part in
Speaker 10: maybe moving us in a better direction.
Speaker 2: Orn Trump can always change. You could do something different tomorrow,
Speaker 2: you know, we could be having a completely different discussion
Speaker 2: next week.
Speaker 6: God only knows.
Speaker 2: But if these particular tariffs move forward and stay in
Speaker 2: place and are not matched with any commesorate industrial policy
Speaker 2: or support for Americans who are in American businesses who
Speaker 2: are going to be facing massive fallout over this, do
Speaker 2: you think that these tariffs will do more harm than
Speaker 2: good in your estimation?
Speaker 10: I think I think the short term costs have the
Speaker 10: potential to be pretty high.
Speaker 7: You know.
Speaker 10: I think one of the most important elements of this
Speaker 10: that that we've always put into anything we argue for
Speaker 10: is that you want to see things phased in because
Speaker 10: the kind of transformation that we're talking about takes time,
Speaker 10: and so you certainly want things to be coming into effect,
Speaker 10: you know, as quickly as possible to create incentives that
Speaker 10: that people respond to. But it doesn't make a lot
Speaker 10: of sense to impose a lot of costs faster than
Speaker 10: people can respond. And so I think that's where we're
Speaker 10: getting a lot of the unnecessary cost. And that on
Speaker 10: the flip side, if and Congressman exactly right about this,
Speaker 10: if you don't have the certainty in the permanence, you're
Speaker 10: not going to get the investment and therefore you're not
Speaker 10: going to get the benefit. And so that's that's what
Speaker 10: I'm focused on, is there are costs here. I love
Speaker 10: that that we potentially have leaders communicating that we accept
Speaker 10: that there will be call us for things and we
Speaker 10: think they're worth that. But you have to get that
Speaker 10: equation right, and you have to take an approach that
Speaker 10: keeps the cost as low as possible and that then
Speaker 10: delivers the benefits. And that's what I think we have
Speaker 10: to sharpen.
Speaker 1: All right, Congressman, last word to you one minute until
Speaker 1: we got to go.
Speaker 9: What do you say building things in America has always
Speaker 9: been hard when after you are trying it In nineteen
Speaker 9: thirty three is when he started, and he prepared the
Speaker 9: country over a decade for then what was the industrialization
Speaker 9: in World War Two?
Speaker 7: And I just think we've got to be honest with
Speaker 7: the American.
Speaker 9: People that just having massive tax breaks and having the
Speaker 9: tariffs isn't going to magically transform us into a manufacturing superpower.
Speaker 9: What we need is an investment in the workforce. What
Speaker 9: we need is to doing hard things.
Speaker 7: Like the chip sack.
Speaker 9: What we needed is better state capacity and being able
Speaker 9: to do things faster than we did during the Chipsack.
Speaker 9: What we did is federal financing, and it takes years
Speaker 9: to build, and this is not something that can just
Speaker 9: happen in one quarter. But I think what Trump is
Speaker 9: doing is appealing to this sense that we lost too
Speaker 9: much to China. We need to build, but trying to
Speaker 9: tell people he can just magically wave a wand with
Speaker 9: tariff policy and tax policy and fix it. He can't,
Speaker 9: and he's making things worse with the blanket tariffs.
Speaker 1: Got it.
Speaker 3: Well, thank you both very much for joining us. I
Speaker 3: think people will get a lot out of it, so
Speaker 3: we appreciate it.
Speaker 6: Thanks gentlemen, this was great.
Speaker 1: Thank you, thank you, Thank you guys so much for watching.
Speaker 3: We appreciate it. I hope you enjoyed our tariff special.
Speaker 3: We'll see you all tomorrow.