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 Wisconsin College Republican chairman Nicholas Jacobs
Speaker 1: received one of Elon Musk's one million dollar checks. We
Speaker 1: have such a great show for you today, the Atlantics,
Speaker 1: George Conway, stop spies. You talk about Trump's lawlessness and
Speaker 1: how to shore up institutions to protect against it. Then
Speaker 1: we'll talk to the economists Simon Ravenovich about how Trump's
Speaker 1: tariffs will actually be bad for the global economy. But
Speaker 1: first the news.
Speaker 2: So, Molli, one of the things with moving fast and
Speaker 2: break things in government and do process is that you
Speaker 2: need to actually go through a process and not just
Speaker 2: sending fathers to El Salvadorian megaprisons.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and here's the headline. It's such a Trump one
Speaker 1: point oh headline, but it's happening. I guess Trump one
Speaker 1: point zero they didn't stop doing due process. So in
Speaker 1: that way, Trump two point zero is an accelerationist version
Speaker 1: of Trump one point zero. But Trump administration accidentally sent
Speaker 1: Maryland father to Salvadorian megaprison and says it can't get
Speaker 1: him back. Whoops. It's a whoops. If you don't care
Speaker 1: about people's lives, it's a complete civil rights nightmare if
Speaker 1: you do. The government argues it no longer has control
Speaker 1: over this Maryland dad's fate. He is now in a
Speaker 1: Salvadorian prison. This is the same Salvadorian prison that you'll
Speaker 1: remember Christie Nome, famous dog killer. Christie Nome wore a
Speaker 1: humongous fifty thousand dollars roulics when giving a talk about
Speaker 1: how she was sending all of these people to this
Speaker 1: scary prison. The man had protected immigration status in the US,
Speaker 1: specifically barring him from being sent back to the country
Speaker 1: for fear of persecution. On Monday, and a filing in
Speaker 1: a land court. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement ICE admitted to
Speaker 1: mistakenly sending this man to El Salvador's notoriously brutal Seacot prison.
Speaker 1: This is pretty dark. It's also worth realizing that jd
Speaker 1: Vance Vice President Jade Vance actually lied about it on Twitter.
Speaker 2: He said, why is not the turble lot of I
Speaker 2: think might be even more I could attempted to dunk
Speaker 2: and got blocked right.
Speaker 1: Vice President jd Vance responded to comments asking him about
Speaker 1: the Trump administration's admission that they had sent this Salvadorian
Speaker 1: man with protected legal status to a mega prison. And
Speaker 1: then he said, in typical jd Vance fashion, it's gross
Speaker 1: to get fired up about gang members getting deported while
Speaker 1: ignoring the citizens they victimized. That's what jd Vance wrote
Speaker 1: on Twitter. He got into a fight with Jon Favreau.
Speaker 1: Vance wrote on X and jd Vance you know I
Speaker 1: mean this lying or so elz.
Speaker 2: And he had to edit the tweets after Jon Favreau
Speaker 2: dunked on him.
Speaker 1: It's a heartwarming story.
Speaker 2: So Elon held that little rally we mentioned in the
Speaker 2: intro where he gave away some checks and he used
Speaker 2: about that he has no clue why people hate his guts.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it is pretty incredible that. Again, look Elon said,
Speaker 1: and this is like the same thing that Trump used
Speaker 1: to say too when he pretended that he worked. So
Speaker 1: Elon said, it's costing me more. This is exactly what
Speaker 1: Trump used to say. In fact, it's costing me a
Speaker 1: lot to be in this job. You had Tim Walls
Speaker 1: dancing on stage showing a short on chessless stock dropping.
Speaker 1: It's an awful thing for him to do. Again, this
Speaker 1: is like this thing where conservatives can be offensive, but
Speaker 1: then they get very offended. You know, they can dish
Speaker 1: it out, but they cannot take it.
Speaker 2: The thing I heard somebody say, is that what we
Speaker 2: misread in not the fuck your feelings thing? Is they
Speaker 2: meant your feelings by Yes, he says.
Speaker 1: Not only is it I'm not getting paid. I'm definitely
Speaker 1: not stealing money. It would never get away with it. Okay, Well,
Speaker 1: as long as you tell us you're not stealing money.
Speaker 1: The value of my textless stock is half. So this
Speaker 1: is a very expensive job. Okay, quit, I think we've
Speaker 1: solved it.
Speaker 2: No one will cry if you go.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So we would like to offer Elon Musk a
Speaker 1: chance to make more money and quit destroying the federal government.
Speaker 1: That's our foray into telling people what to do. Elon,
Speaker 1: perhaps you would like to do that.
Speaker 2: Well, Unfortunately, it's not just Elon trying to overhaul the government.
Speaker 2: It's also Trump with executive orders, and one of them
Speaker 2: is going to be overhauling the Smithsonian Institute.
Speaker 1: Yes, you'll be shocked to now that this is the
Speaker 1: authoritarian playbook. Right, you start to remake institutions to better
Speaker 1: reflect your quote unquote beliefs. So Trump he wants to
Speaker 1: restore American history through Smithsonian overall. If you don't know
Speaker 1: what this is, you don't sort of understand what trump ism.
Speaker 1: Here is the order calls for vance along with Vince Haley.
Speaker 1: He wants them to remove exhibits that degrade shared American values,
Speaker 1: divide Americans based on race, or promote programs or ideology
Speaker 1: is inconsistent with federal law and policy. You'll remember Trump
Speaker 1: is deeply anti anti racism, which if you're anti anti racism,
Speaker 1: perhaps it's worth wondering what you are for. And again,
Speaker 1: this is just he wants to disassemble museums, libraries. He
Speaker 1: is at war with the culture because they believe in
Speaker 1: this idea that politics is downstream from culture. Right, This
Speaker 1: is the Andrew Breidbart thesis that if you can control
Speaker 1: the culture, you can control the politics. If you can
Speaker 1: say what is cool, you can influence how people vote,
Speaker 1: you can influence what they believe. You can do all
Speaker 1: the things that Trump is longs to do. And remember
Speaker 1: Trump is first and foremost obsessed with famous people and television,
Speaker 1: et cetera. You know you can see how this works.
Speaker 2: Yes, so one piece of good news is we are
Speaker 2: seeing the Dems fighting back in legal ways in a
Speaker 2: big way. The Democrats have sued to block trump spid
Speaker 2: to control elections.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so this is a really scary bill that Trump
Speaker 1: has which is really really, really important and I think
Speaker 1: is worth thinking about. This bill. You know, it's called
Speaker 1: the Save Act. It wants to sort of get in there,
Speaker 1: and Democrats are threatening to sue on this executive order.
Speaker 1: But this executive order, I want to sort of be
Speaker 1: clear on this is a part of is sort of
Speaker 1: the opening Foray into him wanting to pass the Save Act.
Speaker 1: The Save Act will make it so that you can't
Speaker 1: vote without like a driver's license, and this has always
Speaker 1: been what Republicans want to do. There's a lot of
Speaker 1: other really scary stuff in the Save Act and I
Speaker 1: think it will be a major backslide if it passes.
Speaker 1: But the point here, and what every sort of anti
Speaker 1: authoritarianism expert says to do is to push back on everything,
Speaker 1: and so this is really important. So the Democratic Party
Speaker 1: is suing President Trump over sweeping executive orders last week
Speaker 1: to wrestle control of elections from the states. This is
Speaker 1: very important. We do not want this federal government which
Speaker 1: is really now filled with Trump lackeys and cronies to
Speaker 1: control elections for many obvious reasons, but the largest of
Speaker 1: which is they may not be free and fair. And
Speaker 1: so this is really important and exactly what should be happening.
Speaker 1: And I'm glad Democrats are doing this, and they need
Speaker 1: to do this with everything. George Conway is a contributor
Speaker 1: to The Atlantic. Welcome back, Too Fast Politics, George Conway, NY.
Speaker 1: So let's talk about what's going on right now with
Speaker 1: Donald Trump and the rule of law. So one of
Speaker 1: the things that Donald Trump has done really effectively considering
Speaker 1: how incompetent he is, is his attack on the institutions.
Speaker 3: I'm going to take the issue with that. I mean,
Speaker 3: everybody's saying, oh wow, so competent. He's so competent, but now.
Speaker 1: He's not so competent. But the law firms. Talk to
Speaker 1: me about the.
Speaker 3: Law firms, Well, no, I mean, look, it's easy to
Speaker 3: destroy than it is to build, and that's the bottom line.
Speaker 3: And it's easy to intimidate when you have cowards and
Speaker 3: when you're the president. And he has absolutely no shame.
Speaker 3: He's behaving like a mob boss. And we've seen already
Speaker 3: his ability to extort things from people, extorted money from ABC,
Speaker 3: he almost did from CBS. Did they ultimately settle I
Speaker 3: don't know, but he you know, he's he got something
Speaker 3: from Jeff Bezos that twenty million dollars for Milania. People
Speaker 3: want to pay him off because they want, you know,
Speaker 3: they want protection money from him taking action against them,
Speaker 3: even if it's illegal, because even if it's illegal, it's
Speaker 3: still a pain in the body. It can hurt your business.
Speaker 3: I mean, I went to the Kirkinscory was that first
Speaker 3: law firm that sued, and I went two weeks ago
Speaker 3: to the hearing tro hearing before Judge Howell here in
Speaker 3: the District of Columbia, and one of the things that
Speaker 3: struck me was that even if they win across the
Speaker 3: board a final judgment, a permanent injunction against Trump, it
Speaker 3: might not necessarily help them because people are going to
Speaker 3: know if you are the general counsel of a big
Speaker 3: aerospace company, for example, we have some kind of issue
Speaker 3: before the Defense Department, whether it's you're trying to get
Speaker 3: a contract, or whether you're trying to get paid on
Speaker 3: a contract, or you're trying to work out some issue
Speaker 3: on a contract or something else. You're not going to
Speaker 3: want to go in there with that law firm, knowing
Speaker 3: full well that the people at the Defense Department know
Speaker 3: that you're basically persona in nongrade even if the court
Speaker 3: say you have to deal with them. So that is
Speaker 3: the position that these law firms. And I'm not justifying
Speaker 3: behavior you're critical of Paul Weiss. I'm explaining the behavior
Speaker 3: that if you are willing to basically put profits over your.
Speaker 1: Country, which a lot of them are, right.
Speaker 3: I mean, you know, I mean the head private equity
Speaker 3: guy at Paul Weissbrick and Whartney Garrison, which has traditionally
Speaker 3: been a very public spirited law firm and had founding
Speaker 3: principles based upon that public spirit that is written by
Speaker 3: a million who Waltim became a very prominent judge, signed
Speaker 3: and Rifkin. They basically put the dollar some ahead of
Speaker 3: you know, their commitment to the rule of law, and
Speaker 3: you know they were liberals, so they ordered to be
Speaker 3: committed to social justice over the years. I don't know
Speaker 3: whether I agree with all that, but I think you
Speaker 3: know that they should not be intimidated by the government
Speaker 3: from engaging in that kind of pro bono activity, and
Speaker 3: it should not be cow telling to the government. But
Speaker 3: you know, the private equity guy they hot and they
Speaker 3: murred over from another firm makes twenty five million dollars
Speaker 3: a year doing deals for private equity companies, and those
Speaker 3: deals sometimes often require government approval. And so you know,
Speaker 3: it basically comes down to whether whether these people want
Speaker 3: to have enough money to buy that setting or third
Speaker 3: house in the Hantons, or whether or not they care
Speaker 3: about the constitution in their country and they want to
Speaker 3: set an example and they want to preserve the country
Speaker 3: for their children, and they obviously choose the second or
Speaker 3: third house in the Hamptons. You know, it's it's disturbing
Speaker 3: and appalling and they should be a shamed because it's
Speaker 3: not I mean what At some point you have to
Speaker 3: stand up and take a position for what's right. I mean,
Speaker 3: I'm God blessed people who may may make a lot
Speaker 3: of money doing anything that's legal, in doing anything, you know,
Speaker 3: including the practice of law. I mean, I'm one of
Speaker 3: the reasons why I can spout off the way I
Speaker 3: have is because I don't need the money. And that
Speaker 3: was the most important thing that I think money can
Speaker 3: get you is the ability to say say whatever the
Speaker 3: fuck you want. And these people they obviously don't value that.
Speaker 3: They don't value the rights and liberties that they have
Speaker 3: as Americans in the way that you or I do.
Speaker 3: And and I think it's very very tragic and I
Speaker 3: ultimately think is self destructive of these law firms to
Speaker 3: be doing this, because you can't. You pay off the
Speaker 3: mob bus, you pay off the bully with your lunch money,
Speaker 3: whatever metaphor you want to use. He'll be back, okay.
Speaker 3: And if he's not going to be back for you,
Speaker 3: he'll be back for somebody else. He just encourages him,
Speaker 3: even if you think you're tricking him by giving him
Speaker 3: ice in winter, right, I mean, he's right, that's what
Speaker 3: pro bonar hours. They're pro bono hours, right, Okay, So
Speaker 3: it's like you're not actually charging anybody for that money,
Speaker 3: and you can and the time you know, it's like
Speaker 3: you associate it's gonna not she as you know, he
Speaker 3: might be a little more he or she might be
Speaker 3: a little more generous and putting down the time since
Speaker 3: it's actually not being built to a client who may say,
Speaker 3: wait a minute, why did you spend nine hours on
Speaker 3: researching this? But still it really sends a message to
Speaker 3: the world that even the law firms, the law firms
Speaker 3: who should be in a position to fight this and
Speaker 3: should be morally positioned as well as professionally positioned to
Speaker 3: fight this or just throwing in the towel. So why
Speaker 3: should any of us fight? And it's really just it's
Speaker 3: just I just find it morally reprehensible, and it's you know,
Speaker 3: it's it's basically it's extortion. I think it's, you know,
Speaker 3: at least the equivalent of the moral equivalent of extortion.
Speaker 3: I mean, he's it's it's not clear that he's getting
Speaker 3: a real standpoint that you couldn't charge it because he's
Speaker 3: not getting a direct personal benefit of anything. But you
Speaker 3: know that'll come. And that's that's sort of what happened
Speaker 3: in these other these cases that he settled, these bullshit
Speaker 3: libel cases. It would be the one where where he
Speaker 3: claimed that he was libel because because George Stepanopolis, you know,
Speaker 3: gave the impression that he raped a woman one way
Speaker 3: instead of raping a woman another way.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm glad you talked about this.
Speaker 3: Now.
Speaker 1: I want you to talk a little bit about why
Speaker 1: I think you're right. And I think that's a good point.
Speaker 1: And I do think if we give in to bullies,
Speaker 1: what we've seen, I mean, we saw this from the
Speaker 1: Trumpet first Trump administration is if you start negotiating with him,
Speaker 1: he just takes and takes and takes.
Speaker 3: That's what a narcissist do, right.
Speaker 1: I wonder if you could talk a little bit about
Speaker 1: just like Trump. One point out, Trump continues to pretty
Speaker 1: much almost completely lose in coren.
Speaker 3: Yes, it's a really remarkable string of losses as a Friday,
Speaker 3: according to a fabulation by a wonderful friend and professor
Speaker 3: at Georgetown, Steve laddiprof or of law.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and actually he sent this to me. Steve Vladdock,
Speaker 1: who teaches a Georgetown is a brilliant author of the
Speaker 1: Shadow Docket. We love that guy.
Speaker 3: No, he's really really terrific, you know, basically, even even
Speaker 3: though his philosophical bent is different than mine, it's like
Speaker 3: he's always right these days. We agree on everything he says.
Speaker 3: There are forty six cases in which judges have blocked
Speaker 3: Frump policies. These forty six decisions have come from thirty
Speaker 3: nine different federal judges who are appointed by five separate administrations,
Speaker 3: obviously both Republican and Democratic in eleven separate district courts
Speaker 3: in seven different federal service And what that tells you
Speaker 3: is that you have to be doing first of all,
Speaker 3: to get that number of decisions against you that quickly,
Speaker 3: you have to be doing something wall and to get that. No, no,
Speaker 3: this isn't one of these situations where Stephen Miller so
Speaker 3: felicitously put it on execute that these are all well
Speaker 3: Marxist judges trying to interfere with the you know, with
Speaker 3: the president's prerogatives. While Stephen Miller is an absolute lunatic
Speaker 3: and these aren't Marxist judges. These are I mean. One
Speaker 3: of the first decisions was rendered by a judge in
Speaker 3: Washington named Governor, who was a Reagan appointed and he
Speaker 3: said he couldn't believe basically that the Justice Department was
Speaker 3: appearing before him. They looked like day two of the administrations,
Speaker 3: give or take a day, that they were making this
Speaker 3: argument that completely perverted the text of fourteenth Amendment to
Speaker 3: argue that people who were born in the United States
Speaker 3: aren't necessarily citizens, even though the Constitution says that people
Speaker 3: who are born all persons born in the United States
Speaker 3: or citizens thereof what Trump is doing is based of
Speaker 3: pradition wholesale, ignoring laws that he doesn't like, whether they
Speaker 3: be laws about what spending has to be engaged in,
Speaker 3: which are you know, these are these these laws that
Speaker 3: appropriate money generally do not say if the president so desire,
Speaker 3: they say the presidents shall spend money in words in
Speaker 3: the substance. And then he's violating the Constitution by having
Speaker 3: Elon Musk. Essentially, I mean that that bilates the Constitution
Speaker 3: because he's essentially using his executive orders to to usurfu
Speaker 3: the power of Congress and to pass laws what he
Speaker 3: considers to be laws, overturning will of Congress and the statutes.
Speaker 3: But he's also for example, he's pointed Elon Musk to
Speaker 3: basically act as a as something of a czar for
Speaker 3: the government. And to do that, the pointance laws requires
Speaker 3: at a minimum, requires that his position be created by Congress,
Speaker 3: which it was not. And it further requires, given the
Speaker 3: breath of his power, it requires that he be set
Speaker 3: confirmed to the office that the that the Congress should
Speaker 3: have to have created. And it's you know, illegal on
Speaker 3: multiple levels and has now been so held by courts,
Speaker 3: and he has shown absolute disrespect for the law. He
Speaker 3: doesn't care what the law says, and their compliance with
Speaker 3: these court orders has been kind of shoddy, and they're
Speaker 3: just playing games with the courts of a fundamental in
Speaker 3: this whole bit with the Alien Enemies Act and the Venezuelans.
Speaker 3: They ship them on and they refuse to basically turn
Speaker 3: the planes around. You know, that's that's illegal.
Speaker 1: So what you're saying here is constitutional crisis discuss.
Speaker 3: Well, we are in a constitutional crisis. We are been
Speaker 3: in a I think we're in the early stages of it,
Speaker 3: because it's not going away anytime soon. You know, it's
Speaker 3: like stages of cancer. I mean, we are in stage
Speaker 3: four of trump Ism. In terms of the final constitutional crisis,
Speaker 3: we are in stage one or two at least of that.
Speaker 3: And I think the further stages are going to involve
Speaker 3: him absolutely flat out refusing to obey court orders in
Speaker 3: certain in certain cases, and then ultimately chaos because I
Speaker 3: think that he's not going to be able to control
Speaker 3: the public reaction to that, and I think he's going
Speaker 3: to try. I think he's going to issue orders that
Speaker 3: will be illegal, that some people will not obey and
Speaker 3: others will obey, and and you know, at the same time,
Speaker 3: these courts are going to be issuing these orders, whether
Speaker 3: or not they be enforced against Trump. I think we
Speaker 3: are headed toward legal and political chaos, and that's very,
Speaker 3: very tragic for the country, both politically and economically and morally.
Speaker 3: And it's it's just not I mean, it's something where
Speaker 3: you know, I've telled telling my middle daughter who's going
Speaker 3: into twelfth grade next year, that she should think about
Speaker 3: studying abroad for the next few years. I don't, you know,
Speaker 3: I don't have a lot of confidence that this is
Speaker 3: going to get resolved quickly and in a manner that's
Speaker 3: really sets us back to normality.
Speaker 1: So let's talk a little bit about how we sort
Speaker 1: of keep going through this. We have the courts are
Speaker 1: saying no to trump Ism as a response, instead of
Speaker 1: what happened in from one point out where you had
Speaker 1: a few normal people still in the administration, so they
Speaker 1: would say things like, you know, we don't like it,
Speaker 1: but we're going to listen to the courts. This time,
Speaker 1: you have JD. Van saying, you know, you have both
Speaker 1: Jadvans and Elon mush saying that you know.
Speaker 3: And don't forget Stephen Miller, because I believe that Stephen
Speaker 3: Miller is probably as powerful as Muskus in this administration,
Speaker 3: He's just not as high profile. I think he is
Speaker 3: the architect of a lot of what's going on because
Speaker 3: nobody else. I mean, I don't think Vance has the
Speaker 3: internal political power, and I don't think Musk is too
Speaker 3: scattershot and possibly intoxicated to really exercise this kind of
Speaker 3: anything other than arbitrary nihilistic actions, you know. And I think,
Speaker 3: so those are the three I think. And Miller is
Speaker 3: just obviously illning. I mean, I don't know if you've
Speaker 3: seen some of his TV heads lately where he's gonna
Speaker 3: sweaming at the television and whole rant the other day
Speaker 3: about Marxist judges. But he's he's not a well man,
Speaker 3: but he's very very.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he is very smart, but he's not well. So
Speaker 1: let's just sort of game this out. We have judges
Speaker 1: who are being targeted, federal judges. It feels like we're
Speaker 1: heading somewhere bad. Here there are still normal Republicans in
Speaker 1: the Senate. If a critical mask got together, they could
Speaker 1: protect these judges. I mean, are they going to try
Speaker 1: to impeach federal judges? I mean, that's what the right wants.
Speaker 3: I think the House may very well try to do that,
Speaker 3: and I think on a party line vote requires a
Speaker 3: simple majority, they probably can do it, although their majority
Speaker 3: has grow center and may even grow even more center
Speaker 3: in the next forty eight hours three thos, so we'll see.
Speaker 3: I don't think there's any chance at all of conviction
Speaker 3: in the Senate, but the harassment of these judges is
Speaker 3: something not to be taken light. It can cost these
Speaker 3: judges money to have to retain warriors, and you have
Speaker 3: to if you are the subject of an impeachment inquiry,
Speaker 3: you probably should retain a lawyer. And I know some
Speaker 3: efforts to make sure that or at least some intent
Speaker 3: among some people to try to make sure that judges
Speaker 3: have the resources to defend themselves. They may be subject
Speaker 3: to subpoenas and whatnot, And a truly scary thing about
Speaker 3: that would be is if it intimidates judges into not
Speaker 3: doing their jobs. But so far, I have to say
Speaker 3: that judges have shown remarkable courage. Their commitment to the
Speaker 3: rule of law has been just absolutely remarkable, including Republican judges,
Speaker 3: and we've seen the Chief Justice of the United States
Speaker 3: speak out against bogus and patient efforts and we saw
Speaker 3: a very conservative a friend of mine, Eleventh Circuit Judge
Speaker 3: William Pryor, has spoken out against impeachment of judges for
Speaker 3: their decisions. He was on Chunks shortlist in twenty seventeen.
Speaker 3: And I highly admire the way the federal judiciary is
Speaker 3: hanging together to protect the constitution system of government.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'll say it's really important when you think about
Speaker 1: the way to protect the rule of law and norms
Speaker 1: and institution to what is in your mind the way
Speaker 1: to do it.
Speaker 3: Well, I think, you know, I think this litigation is
Speaker 3: obviously a very important art of what has to happen
Speaker 3: to show the world, to show the country that Trump
Speaker 3: is tearing up statutes in the Constitution and behaving them
Speaker 3: lawfully and really destroying this our system of government. Regardless
Speaker 3: of whether you think some of the objects that he
Speaker 3: is reporting to try to attain are good or bad,
Speaker 3: the fact of the matter is he's destroying the system
Speaker 3: by which we peacefully resolve our differences and by which
Speaker 3: we have lived for two hundred plus years, give or take.
Speaker 3: Set the Civil War aside, and this is the reason
Speaker 3: why we have had, you know, one of the most
Speaker 3: successful economies, one of the most successful societies in history
Speaker 3: and the reason why, ironically people want to come to
Speaker 3: the United States and want how people want to leave
Speaker 3: the United States or see scientists. Seventy five percent of
Speaker 3: scientists polled by Nature magazine say they're thinking of leaving
Speaker 3: the country.
Speaker 1: One last question for you with the disappearing grad students.
Speaker 1: What should the disappearing grad students be doing if you
Speaker 1: want to stay safe?
Speaker 3: If you want to stay safe. I hate to say this,
Speaker 3: but one advice that they had been given is to
Speaker 3: keep their mental shut. And it's the whole purpose of
Speaker 3: what Trump is trying to do. And it's a real
Speaker 3: problem the Trump administration is it is basically punishing people
Speaker 3: for speech. This woman who has taking off the street,
Speaker 3: she did all she did, write it off it. I mean,
Speaker 3: I'd agree with all its particulars. It was about obviously
Speaker 3: about the situation in gazzled. But it doesn't matter what
Speaker 3: it wasn't in promotion, He can't. It doesn't matter because
Speaker 3: what's it going to be next? Is it going to
Speaker 3: be somebody who says that Donald Trump is violating the
Speaker 3: Constitution right?
Speaker 1: Absolutely no question.
Speaker 3: That person might be deemed by Macro Aruvio to be
Speaker 3: raising a ruckus and their visa would reportedly be revoked,
Speaker 3: even though even you know, and and the whole thing
Speaker 3: that that what they're doing to lawful permanent residence people
Speaker 3: be in cars, they had no power to do that
Speaker 3: without going to an immigration for it would be very
Speaker 3: very unnerving time to be a foreign student in the
Speaker 3: United States. And I could not advise them that they're safe.
Speaker 3: You know, they can fight, they can hire lawyers. There
Speaker 3: are the aco you will defend them, others will defend them.
Speaker 3: But once they sort of you know, they're gonna they're
Speaker 3: doing unlawful things. What are you sending people to Louisiana
Speaker 3: on prisons there? Frankly without want the government is behaving lawles.
Speaker 1: Thank you, George Conway, thank you. Simon Rabinovich is the
Speaker 1: US economics editor of The Economist. Welcome to Fast Politics, Simon.
Speaker 3: It would be good to be here. Thank you.
Speaker 1: Great to have you so. April second, April first is
Speaker 1: April Fool's Day. April well second is liberation Day. We're
Speaker 1: going to be liberated from our money.
Speaker 4: Discuss that's right, Americans who've been sort of living, you know,
Speaker 4: shackled by the horrors of global trade for the last century,
Speaker 4: which of course also was a century in which America
Speaker 4: became the world's most prosperous economy ever in history. Will
Speaker 4: finally be freed Tomorrow at three pm or so in
Speaker 4: the Rose Garden, we'll find out just exactly what that
Speaker 4: liberation entails.
Speaker 1: One of the really strange things about Trump's first administration
Speaker 1: was he actually did well with tariffs. He didn't do
Speaker 1: well with a lot of things COVID, you know, civil rights,
Speaker 1: but he actually really used tariffs in an effective way,
Speaker 1: in such an effective way that Biden World continued a
Speaker 1: lot of these tariffs. Sort of explain to us what
Speaker 1: he did with tariffs and how they worked for him,
Speaker 1: and also how that has now given him brainworms about tariffs.
Speaker 4: I guess I would start by some and what disputing
Speaker 4: the premise that he did do well with tariffs, I
Speaker 4: would say in this first term that he didn't massively
Speaker 4: screw things up with tariffs, which is different. So, first
Speaker 4: of all, the overall tariff level in his first ministration
Speaker 4: it went up, but if you look at kind of
Speaker 4: America's overall effective tariff rate, it kind of went from
Speaker 4: two percent to a little over three percent. So we're
Speaker 4: not talking about a massive, massive change, and what did
Speaker 4: that actually achieve for America. Trump's target number one was
Speaker 4: the persistent trade deficit that did not narrow in his
Speaker 4: first term, so there was no progress made on what
Speaker 4: really was his goal of balancing America's trade relationship. There
Speaker 4: was a trade deal with China, which China did not
Speaker 4: actually abide by because.
Speaker 1: Because they don't yes.
Speaker 4: And it was also pie in the sky from the outset.
Speaker 4: You know, anybody who was looking at it said there's
Speaker 4: no way that they could possibly hit these purchase levels.
Speaker 4: They basically sold Trump a bill of goods. He bought it,
Speaker 4: sold it as a victory, and it was never anything
Speaker 4: that could possibly be actually delivered. So, you know, so
Speaker 4: he didn't close the deficit, he didn't actually get an
Speaker 4: effective trade deal with with China. He didn't bring manufacturing
Speaker 4: back to America, and fact studies show that, for example,
Speaker 4: his tariffs on the steel sector were very bad for
Speaker 4: the thousands and thousands of companies downstream from steel producers
Speaker 4: who saw their input costs rise. So you know, it
Speaker 4: was not good for US manufacturing. But you are right
Speaker 4: that the Biden administration did not reverse what he did
Speaker 4: specifically did not reverse what he did on China. They
Speaker 4: did actually partially reverse the steel tariffs because those were really,
Speaker 4: really quite harmful, the China tariffs. It's complicated because you
Speaker 4: then get beyond pure economic considerations into national security issues,
Speaker 4: into this kind of very hawkish American turn towards China.
Speaker 4: And so the tariffs were kept in place. They didn't
Speaker 4: hurt the economy as much as they might have because
Speaker 4: China moved so much of its production outside of its
Speaker 4: own country to Vietnam and Malaysia and Bangladesh, et cetera.
Speaker 4: Met Mexico of course, and so Americans continued to get
Speaker 4: efficiently cheap Chinese goods from other countries, and so you
Speaker 4: didn't see the big economic downsides. So that's kind of
Speaker 4: Trump number one, Trump number two.
Speaker 1: And also, can we just pause for a second and
Speaker 1: just add that this came on the heels of a
Speaker 1: massive tax cut.
Speaker 4: You're absolutely right.
Speaker 1: So you juice the economy and then you pull back
Speaker 1: a little bit.
Speaker 4: Right, So Trump number one, you're absolutely right. The broader
Speaker 4: context is very different. So you've got the big tax
Speaker 4: cut package, the TCGA, the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act
Speaker 4: of twenty seventeen that helped to juice the economy. You
Speaker 4: also had an economy that was, you know, basically five
Speaker 4: years into its big recovery after the global financial crisis,
Speaker 4: a recovery that of course was kickstarted under Barack Obama,
Speaker 4: and Trump inherited him from that. So you've got an
Speaker 4: economy that was on the up, that was juiced by
Speaker 4: tax cuts, and that, you know, if you look at it,
Speaker 4: and aggregate had a relatively minimal drag from tariffs because
Speaker 4: it simply did not add up to all that much.
Speaker 4: And so then you're right, you get into Trump too,
Speaker 4: and he looks back at it and says, hey, I
Speaker 4: did tariffs and Trump number one, and economists said they
Speaker 4: were going to be really bad, and lo and behold,
Speaker 4: they weren't bad. The economy prospered. So this time around,
Speaker 4: I'm going to go even bigger. And anybody who's warning
Speaker 4: of problems, of doom, of anything, they're just doomsayers. They
Speaker 4: don't get it. They don't see the transformation that I'm
Speaker 4: going to bring about.
Speaker 1: Yeah, not great. So Simon explained to us, now where
Speaker 1: we are with the tariffs, because there's so much on again,
Speaker 1: off again, it's hard to keep track.
Speaker 4: We certainly have seen that in the case of the
Speaker 4: tariffs on Canada and Mexico, you know, America's two biggest
Speaker 4: trading partners, that twice they were delayed and twice they
Speaker 4: were sort of onwhat reduced. But in the end, we
Speaker 4: do have tariffs that have been put into place on
Speaker 4: effectively the majority of the trade with both Canada and Mexico,
Speaker 4: and companies are kind of scrambling around trying to figure
Speaker 4: out how to adjust. We also have big tariffs that
Speaker 4: have been put in place on steel. We've had tariffs
Speaker 4: that have been increased rapidly on China. So you know,
Speaker 4: in the space of the first two months plus of
Speaker 4: his current administration, he's done more in terms of tariffs
Speaker 4: on China than he did in the entirety of his
Speaker 4: first term. And then tomorrow we're going to get Liberation Day,
Speaker 4: and the exact details are unclear and probably will be.
Speaker 1: And they will be unclear until they're more unclear.
Speaker 4: Yes, gone, they'll be unclear until the moment that Trump
Speaker 4: basically announces them in the Rose Garden. But we do
Speaker 4: know that there's kind of two competing ideas. One is
Speaker 4: that he does a big universal tariff ten or twenty
Speaker 4: percent on everybody on all imports into America, and the
Speaker 4: other is that he does something that's a little bit
Speaker 4: more targeted reciprocal, as they say, where they look at
Speaker 4: what other countries are doing to America, what their tariff
Speaker 4: levels are, what their non tariff barriers are, and try
Speaker 4: to cook up a number that matches. Supposedly, you know
Speaker 4: what American exporters face when they try to sell to
Speaker 4: other countries around the world. Whatever it is, it's clear
Speaker 4: that there are going to be a lot more tariffs
Speaker 4: announced tomorrow, and it's also clear that it's not going
Speaker 4: to be the end of the story that he wants
Speaker 4: to do more in the way of sectoral tariffs, so
Speaker 4: tariffs on products like semiconductors and lumber and pharmaceuticals, and
Speaker 4: probably it's also likely that we'll see retaliation from some
Speaker 4: countries that will beget yet more escalation from America.
Speaker 1: So China, Japan, South Korea, countries that never get together
Speaker 1: and do things have gotten involved in. It's sort of
Speaker 1: NATO for tariffs in China right talk to us about that.
Speaker 4: So China, Japan, and South Korea have said that they're
Speaker 4: going to come up with some kind of joint response
Speaker 4: to whatever or Trump does.
Speaker 1: Right, This is huge, right because China does not play
Speaker 1: well with others.
Speaker 4: It goes back and forth, right, so you know, it
Speaker 4: will have you know, specific countries in its doghouse, and
Speaker 4: Japan and South Korea have been there before. And then
Speaker 4: it also will, you know, at times to sort of
Speaker 4: try to make nice and try to say that it's
Speaker 4: kind of the grown up in the room and push
Speaker 4: for Pan Asian trade deals. So it is a really
Speaker 4: really interesting response. I wouldn't expect that it would be
Speaker 4: overly substantive in the sense of those three countries coming
Speaker 4: into a very tight trading arrangement. They still have a
Speaker 4: lot of baggage and a lot of friction. But for
Speaker 4: the time being, it's sending a clear message to America
Speaker 4: that if you think you can pick fights individually with
Speaker 4: lots of countries, those countries can actually turn around cooperate
Speaker 4: band together. And therefore, in fact, what the Trump administration
Speaker 4: believes that it has, which is bilateral leverage, if it's
Speaker 4: on a multilateral basis, that leverage begins to dissipate. It's
Speaker 4: tough enough going up against China in a fight, but
Speaker 4: if you're up against China and Japan and South Korea,
Speaker 4: et cetera. You know, it does get a lot harder.
Speaker 4: America is the world's biggest economy, but it's one fifth
Speaker 4: of you know, global GDP. It's not the majority of
Speaker 4: global GDP. So you know, if it's America alone against
Speaker 4: the rest of the world, that's not a great fight
Speaker 4: to have. So you know that it's a really interesting dynamic.
Speaker 4: More more broadly, lots of countries are looking at ways
Speaker 4: that they can you know, form stronger trade partnerships deep
Speaker 4: in their supply chains and kind of work out trading
Speaker 4: arrangements that don't necessarily involve America.
Speaker 1: Right for sure. So there's another wrinkle to this, which
Speaker 1: Congress had more power on tariffs and they signed it
Speaker 1: away with the CR. So Continuing Resolution had to stop
Speaker 1: the government from defaulting on, you know and shutting down.
Speaker 1: Trump sort of snuck in the CR more power for tariffs.
Speaker 1: Talk to us about that, because that sets the stage
Speaker 1: for this fuck or a. In another way, the.
Speaker 4: Sieur itself is not I would say over the significant
Speaker 4: in this. I think the bigger issue is that just
Speaker 4: over the decades, Congress has signed away its authority over
Speaker 4: tariffs to the White House. They've seeded their authority. So
Speaker 4: there's been a series of acts that have been passed
Speaker 4: that although theoretically Congress is responsible for regulating foreign trade,
Speaker 4: in fact the White House has a great degree of
Speaker 4: discretion over what it wants to do with raising tariffs.
Speaker 4: So you know, you can go back to the nineteen
Speaker 4: seventies to the International Economic Emergency Protection Act IIPA, which
Speaker 4: is what the Trump administration has used as its justification
Speaker 4: for its tariffs so far. You also, in the American
Speaker 4: Trade Act have sections two thirty two and three ZHO one,
Speaker 4: which allow the White House to conduct, you know, investigations
Speaker 4: that then allow the president to enforce tariffs, which is
Speaker 4: what Trump used as the justification for tariffs in his
Speaker 4: first administration. So you know, over the decades, Congress has
Speaker 4: has vested a lot of authority over tariffs in the
Speaker 4: White House. At the moment, you know, there's simply is
Speaker 4: you know, no willingness, no spine to bring that back.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 4: I think one of the interesting dynamics that we might
Speaker 4: see actually is that when we get the push to
Speaker 4: renew the TCGA later on this year, plus whatever extra
Speaker 4: tax cuts Trump wants to make, you may well actually
Speaker 4: have Congress legislating signing some of these terriffs into law,
Speaker 4: because in order to use them as a way to
Speaker 4: basically pay for some of the tax cuts, it can't
Speaker 4: just be done something that's done unilaterally by the White House.
Speaker 4: It's actually got to be passed by Congress. So we
Speaker 4: could actually see a situation where Trump takes the lead
Speaker 4: and implementing these tariffs, but then ultimately actually Congress begins
Speaker 4: to legislate them later on this year as part of
Speaker 4: the reconciliation.
Speaker 1: The markets don't love tariffs. They don't love and uncertainty.
Speaker 1: We've certainly seen some investment banks change their forecasts for
Speaker 1: the quarter, for the year, writing up some possibility, you know,
Speaker 1: I saw I think Goldman increased to a thirty thirty
Speaker 1: five percent possibility for you know, some kind of contraction.
Speaker 1: What are the broader implications of these haphazard tariffs.
Speaker 4: So short term? You know, again, you're absolutely right that
Speaker 4: you know, market does not like tariffs. We've we've seen
Speaker 4: the stock market has been weak, it's basically erased all
Speaker 4: of its post election gains. When you know, investors have
Speaker 4: been much more optimistic about you know, trumpy and deregulation
Speaker 4: and how that might just growth, et cetera. Even now,
Speaker 4: in the in the space of kind of two months,
Speaker 4: had all of that wiped out, you know, trillions of
Speaker 4: dollars of capital gains gone investment banks and not just
Speaker 4: investment banks. You know, economists and researchers in general have
Speaker 4: been marking down their short term forecasts for the US economy.
Speaker 4: You know, the belief is that there's just so much
Speaker 4: uncertainty right now. It's you know, we've seen that weighing
Speaker 4: quite dramatically on consumer sentiment. Consumers aren't spending money, are
Speaker 4: much more worried about about economic prospects and are holding back.
Speaker 4: And equally, a lot of businesses are you know, they're
Speaker 4: just in limbo right now. They don't quite know what
Speaker 4: to do because they don't know what policy is going
Speaker 4: to look like tomorrow, much less next month. That's a negative,
Speaker 4: you know, a big negative for the short term. It's
Speaker 4: not just tariffs. You know, also the Elon musk Doge
Speaker 4: cutbacks in the civil service and what that might mean
Speaker 4: for kind of the broader employment picture and the delivery
Speaker 4: of public services. That's a that's also a big concern.
Speaker 4: The immigration crackdown and how that goes and what that
Speaker 4: means for the labor market. That's another concern as well.
Speaker 4: So all those things are kind of feeding into short
Speaker 4: term concern about the state of the economy in twenty
Speaker 4: twenty five and therefore increased possibilities of a recession. And
Speaker 4: you know, that's still not the kind of the dominant assumption,
Speaker 4: as you said, you know, Goldman is talking about thirty
Speaker 4: or thirty five percent, but that's you know, that's up
Speaker 4: dramatically from a couple months ago. And and you know,
Speaker 4: as many economists would say, Trump inherited an incredibly strong economy.
Speaker 4: At the tail end of the Biden administration, growth meantum
Speaker 4: was was robust, inflation was coming down. If you just
Speaker 4: basically sat on those hands and not done much of anything,
Speaker 4: you know, growth would have slowed a little bit, but
Speaker 4: we would not be talking about the possibility of recession. So,
Speaker 4: you know, just looking at the short term this is
Speaker 4: not a good picture. Longer term, this is also not
Speaker 4: good for the economy.
Speaker 1: It's nice that is it shorter term and then longer
Speaker 1: term go on.
Speaker 4: I mean, this is also not good because you've got
Speaker 4: an economy that is you know, optimized for global production
Speaker 4: where you have you know, innovation and investment that is
Speaker 4: pouring into kind of the highest value added segments of
Speaker 4: the economy that you can imagine. You think about the
Speaker 4: last five years, and you know, in the business world
Speaker 4: and now kind of in the broader world. You know,
Speaker 4: the biggest thing that people have been talking about is
Speaker 4: the rise of AI. Well, America is the world leader
Speaker 4: in AI because you know, it's been able to attract
Speaker 4: the world's best researchers and it's got the world's best
Speaker 4: you know comp side labs and companies that are really
Speaker 4: kind of pushing the envelope. And the reason that happens
Speaker 4: is that you have an economy that's able to allocate
Speaker 4: talent and resources and money to cutting edge research and innovation.
Speaker 4: What Trump is trying to do is to try to
Speaker 4: re energize manufacturing in America, which it sounds good, sounds
Speaker 4: like something that's worthy and notable. You have JD Vance
Speaker 4: coming out and saying a million cheap toaster ovens from
Speaker 4: around the world are not worth it if it comes
Speaker 4: at the cost of one single manufacturing job. But what
Speaker 4: they're actually talking about therefore with tariffs is you know,
Speaker 4: bringing back manufacturing of things like toaster ovens, erecting protective
Speaker 4: tariff barriers that are not going to be good for
Speaker 4: the competitiveness of the US economy, are not going to
Speaker 4: be good for innovation, and ultimately are going to bring
Speaker 4: resources and talent and money away from the most competitive,
Speaker 4: most advance sectors and putting them towards things that that
Speaker 4: really you know, America, an economy as wealthy and developed
Speaker 4: as America, is not in the business of producing. So
Speaker 4: it's a really really retrograde step. Once you put the
Speaker 4: tariffs in place, they're really really hard to get rid of.
Speaker 1: Why that's interesting, I haven't I mean, I know it's true,
Speaker 1: but I don't understand why.
Speaker 4: So I mean, I guess think about it this way.
Speaker 4: If you think about the auto sector, You've got some
Speaker 4: American car companies that are good and that produce good vehicles,
Speaker 4: but that rely on inputs that come from Mexico, Canada, China,
Speaker 4: et cetera. And ultimately they're trying to produce a car
Speaker 4: that is competitive against the rest of the world because
Speaker 4: the rest of the world can send their cars to
Speaker 4: America as well. It pushes the Big Three in Detroit
Speaker 4: and all of the up and coming ev companies to
Speaker 4: make better and better cars. Well, as soon as you
Speaker 4: put tariffs in place, especially you know the big tirists
Speaker 4: they've put in place on the auto sector of twenty
Speaker 4: five percent American car companies. Car companies based in America
Speaker 4: aren't You're not going to have to compete against cars
Speaker 4: that are being shipped from Japan, or Germany or Canada
Speaker 4: or you know, or god forbid, China. They're going to
Speaker 4: be protected in their own little sandbox here, which means
Speaker 4: that prices will go up for American consumers and those
Speaker 4: car companies no longer will need to deal with kind
Speaker 4: of the specter of global competition. So you'll get higher
Speaker 4: priced cars that are actually going to be an inferior product.
Speaker 4: And you know what happens after kind of a decade
Speaker 4: of that kind of production. If you're GM or four
Speaker 4: and you're kind of thriving behind this tariff wall, and
Speaker 4: you know that your product is less good and more
Speaker 4: expensive than global cars, you will have a very very
Speaker 4: strong lobby in place saying do not get rid of
Speaker 4: these tariffs, because if you do, you really are going
Speaker 4: to kill manufacturing jobs because they're now dependent on this
Speaker 4: protection being in place, so you effectively create this consumer
Speaker 4: subsidy for concentrated manufacturing. You know, that's just not a
Speaker 4: healthy thing for the economy. It's why for a century
Speaker 4: the focus of global trade negotiations was on kind of
Speaker 4: mutual disarmament. You lower your tariffs, we lower ours. This
Speaker 4: is good for our companies, good for our consumers, good
Speaker 4: for our economy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, thank you so much, Simon.
Speaker 3: Thank you, Molly. I appreciate it more perfectly, Jesse Cannon.
Speaker 2: So, Molly, I don't be de laughed because there is
Speaker 2: a victim of this crib. But one of the most
Speaker 2: insane things about once you start doing authoritarian shit, it
Speaker 2: gets real dumb, real fast. And we have a Republican
Speaker 2: calling ice on a GOP rivals farm.
Speaker 1: Yes, it is shocking to know that these people are
Speaker 1: also very importantly hypocrites. So an Idaho Republican has accused
Speaker 1: a GOP rival of harassment and an op ed after
Speaker 1: he reported her farm to ICE. In January, Ryan Spoon,
Speaker 1: vice chairf's the Republican Party of Ada County, publicly called
Speaker 1: for immigration rates on state Representative Stephanie mckinlan's farm, accusing
Speaker 1: her of employing undocumented immigrants. I'm curious what would happen
Speaker 1: if you did that at mar A Lago. This, my friends,
Speaker 1: is what will be one of the many moments of
Speaker 1: fuckery in an administration and a Republican party deeply in
Speaker 1: trench in fuckery. That's it for this episode of Fast Politics.
Speaker 1: Tune in every Monday, Wednesday, Thursday and Saturday to hear
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