Bulwark Takes - Consumers Absolutely HATE Trump's Economy

Episode Date: November 9, 2025

Sarah Longwell and Catherine Rampell take on consumer sentiment reaching its lowest levels ever, the impending Supreme Court rulings on tariffs, and rising job losses creating even more uncertainty amid a shaken economy.

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newsletter writer. Catherine, what's up? It's great to see you. Great to be here. Is this your first take? I think it is, maybe? Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I've done some other stuff with you all, like even before I joined the Bullwark, but I think this is my first official take. All right. Well, let's get our take on. Okay, so consumer sentiment. That's what I want to talk about. I'm just going to read a little bit from CNBC here. worries over the government shutdown surged in the early part of November, pushing consumer sentiment to its lowest in more than three years and just off its worst level ever, according to the University of Michigan survey that was released on Friday. So, Catherine, set the scene here. This month's consumer sentiment saying it's the lowest in years. How scared should we be about that?

What's it mean? To be fair, people have been getting progressively more bummed out about the economy over the years in ways that don't always reflect what's actually going on in the economy. But I think this grimness is pretty much grounded in like actual concerns about what's going on. It's the government shutdown. It's tariffs. It's the fact that affordability issues are not going away, as we've already seen happen in an election quite recently. So, you know, people are upset and worried about prices, about losing their jobs. The only thing that seems to be doing well in the economy, potentially propping it up, is the AI world. And if you look at those same consumer sentiment numbers, there is one outlier group, which is people who own a lot of

stocks, like the top terseil, I think it is, the top third of people in terms of stock ownership, they're pretty happy. They actually got happier in the past month, but everybody else is pretty bummed out. Yeah, I mean, I saw we lost, JBL and I did a take earlier this week, 1.1 million jobs lost since January. And I keep trying to figure out because when you say, well, people were like overreacting. And maybe that was us. Maybe it was us during when the tariffs hit the first time and the market dropped. Oh, I met even before this year. Like, if you look at how people felt about the economy in the last couple of years, in hard numbers, the economy was quite good, like in terms of inflation was coming down and job growth was pretty

strong and people still thought the economy sucked. And some of that's about like partisanship. You know, Republicans in particular don't like it. Like think the economy sucks more when a Democrat is in office and vice versa. But right now, like you're seeing everybody pretty upset about economic conditions. And the only reason I say like some of it could be overstated is just like given that these numbers are among the worst ever. I do not think that this economy is anywhere near as bad as that in 2008? This is what I'm trying to figure out is, is, where are we headed when you take consumer sentiment plus the job loss, plus the tariffs, plus core inflation?

Like, what is that level up to? Is it stagflation? Is it, is it, is it, is it, are we heading into a recession? Is the economy? Because I also see people saying like, well, the economy is actually still kind of strong, weirdly. And I know it's being propped up by AI and some of the tech stuff, like you said. But where does it feel like we're headed in the.

next year? Well, it is particularly hard to tell now because we're in a data blackout, effectively, a government data blackout because we're in this shutdown. So we're not getting GDP growth and certain measures of inflation. We're not getting the jobs, numbers, et cetera. The numbers that you and I have been talking about, things like consumer sentiment or the layoff data, those are actually private sector assessments. And that doesn't necessarily mean that they're bad, but like they're just not as robust much of the time as the government. government data. And the government data is like usually what really moves markets. So we have like we're in like a fog right now to be clear. And so it's really hard to tell what is going on in the present. And it's going to be even harder to tell what's happening in the next few months because Donald Trump changes his mind from minute to minute. And so much of the uncertainty about this economy that sort of like unease about what's happening with prices and what's happening with jobs is being driven by government policy. It's funny because I'm older.

up to remember when all of that economic policy uncertainty under Obama was supposed to be like deadly for capitalism. And there was a fair amount of economic uncertainty policy uncertainty about what was going to happen with Obamacare and what was going to happen with like the sequester if you really want to go way, way back. But now it's just like an entire universe worse, you know, like light years worse in the sense that like things change from from moment to moment based on Trump's truth social posts, right? It's not just about like, will Congress pass this law? When will they reopen the government? It's this paralysis that comes from the fact that there's one guy in the White House who can instantaneously levy taxes across the economy with few checks on his power.

At least for now, you know, we can get into the Supreme Court case and all of that. But that's the world that businesses, and to some extent, consumers and work, are living it right now. Actually, I do want to talk about that if you're willing to get into it because you wrote your newsletter about it and it was really good or your inaugural newsletter called receipts, which is a good name. We had to, it was like a, there was like, did you choose it or was it part of the slack? No, that was Sam, Sam Stein came up with that.

My contribution, don't make fun of me, was ramparts. I liked ramparts. I thought that was good. Because, you know, if you look at the dictionary definition of Rampart, it means bulwark. I know. That is what Marianne Webster says. And I love a good pun. I also love a good pun.

I was for that. You are. Okay. Well, I have to acknowledge receipts is the superior name. So kudos to Sam. Very well done. I'm super happy with that name. Well, in your first one, you wrote about tariffs and the court case that's currently in front of the Supreme Court.

I'll admit, I didn't listen to the. arguments. Maybe you did. But does it look like, JVL and I were also talking about this, does it look like the Supreme Court's going to save Trump from himself on these tariffs? Yes, but that means that they are temporarily going to humiliate him, but in the long run offer him a huge blessing. And by humiliate him, I mean, if you listen to the questions from the justices, they were somewhere between skeptical and outright hostile to the government's arguments that basically the president can A, declare a national emergency whenever he wants, and, B, use this particular law known as Aiba to impose tariffs, which are supposed to tariffs or taxes. They're supposed to be the purview of Congress. Congress has power of the purse.

So the question was, like, can Congress? I forgot about them. I know. They forgot about themselves. So it's not just you. So, so the idea is that, like, can Trump just sort of, like, yoink that. power of the purse whenever he feels like to impose these tariffs when the law doesn't seem to give him that power. Law doesn't actually mention the word tariffs anywhere. And again, under whatever pretext he wants, because the law is about national emergencies. What's a national emergency? Is it when the trade deficit looks high? Is it when people in Brazil are being mean to Trump's buddy Bolsonaro? Because that was a justification for some of these tariffs. Is it because the Canadians had the gall to run an ad from noted rabble-rouser Ronald Reagan pro-trade?

That's part of the reason why we have these tariffs on Canada. Trump cut off tariff negotiations with Canada, tariffs that are part of this national emergency because of that ad. So this would give Trump a lot of power. Now, normally you would think Supreme Court, like, they seem pretty cool with giving Trump more of a runway. In this particular case, they seem not. Maybe in part because it's about a separation of powers issue. I'm not a lawyer. You have to talk to a lawyer about all that. But the upshot is that it looks likely that they will strike down the tariffs. And if you look at betting markets like a polymarket, people overwhelmingly seem to think that tariffs will be struck down. So again, seems bad, seems pretty humiliating for Trump. But if he is smart, if he is smart, he will take the win. Because getting rid of these tariffs would create a lot more certainty for businesses. It frees them up to not spend all of their time doing, frankly, like, bullshit about canceling and uncancelling orders and scheduling and rescheduling shipments and finding new warehouse activity and, like, having the truck circle the warehouse of, like, all sorts of stuff that they're wasting their time doing rather than, like, I don't know, building new products or finding new customers. It would free up companies to just, like, do their thing, which is what they were doing before he came into office.

when, again, the economy was actually pretty strong. And also, it means that all of the tariffs that have been collected so far under these authorities would be due back to those companies. So that's likely to be about $200 billion by the end of this year alone. $200 billion, it's like not a small chunk of change. It means that you're going to get effectively a sudden $200 billion tax cut and stimulus program, whatever you want to call it, the Trump rebate, if you will. And And that would be good for the economy. And, you know, like, just to be fair, because markets are already anticipating that this is the likely outcome, like some of this little boomlet is probably already being priced in. So it's not like, you know, the Supreme Court's going to decide. And then it's like this big unanticipated stimulus to some extent, like people are already acting on this expectation. But it would still be good for the economy if he took the win, which I don't think he will. And when you say took the win, it's like basically like take the loss, turn it into a win because it protects him from himself. And I think to the extent that the me and J.B.L. and Tim talk a lot about stove touching and how for people to really understand the damage Trump is doing. So they have to feel the real pain. And like one of the ways that Trump constantly gets lucky is that other people protect Trump from himself. And so voters never know the idiotic things he's doing because somebody comes in and stops them. that was much truer in the first term than it's been in the second term. But your point was like the Supreme Court, if they knocked down these tariffs, it like one of the things that Trump is doing sort of single-handedly to hurt people gets taken off the balance sheet. Now, here's my one question about that, though. Doesn't he, if that happens, you could either ignore, ignore the Supreme Court, which would be like the really bad one. But the other option seems like he bullies Congress into doing some version of them. Or is, or do you think Congress?

if they had to do it, would just be like, no. I think there's actually an option three here, which is, which they've already talked about pretty publicly. They would use different tariffs. So again, like there are a lot of different tariffs that Trump has put in place. Most of them are these national emergency tariffs, which can go on entire countries. There are other tariff authorities that are like sectoral tariffs, like there are tariffs on steel. Those are global. They're not about one particular country that we're mad at so he could use more of those and there's some other like obscure tariff authorities that I don't even remember what they are so he has signaled his admit the administration

has signaled that they will cobble together something to replace them the good news is that those kinds of tariffs like can't just be like issued by a fat fingered tweet like there's more of a process involved effectively commerce has to do an investigation and you know there's for some of them there are hearings. Like there's just, it's, it's a longer run thing. And so businesses would hopefully have more time to adjust. And they're also vulnerable to legal challenges too. So they're not as bad as like Trump sneezes and accidentally like presses published on a truth social post and suddenly we're tariffing Madagascar or whatever. So, you know, it's not as bad, but it's still not good. It still creates uncertainty. And that's what I mean when I say, like, I don't think he's going to take

the win. Or maybe he'll do both. Maybe he'll be like, Trump rebate. Yay. Like stimulus checks for everyone, or at least for all the companies. And then still, uh, simultaneously try to put in place all of these other tariffs that would not be helpful. And just to clarify, like when the tariff rebate comes and it's, you know, assuming it comes, I should say, like we don't know for sure that the Supreme court is going to do this. And we don't know exactly like how the rebates would be manifested, but most likely, they're not going to go to consumers. They're going to go to businesses. And businesses can decide what to do with them as they like. Like, they could pass it along to their customers, which they may or may not do. But really, it's going to be a boom for

businesses. Hmm. Okay. And does that repair their relationship with Trump? Businesses? Yeah. Like, do they suddenly be like, look, Trump's giving us a rebate? Or do they know the score? Like, this is Trump tacoing and we're just benefiting from it? I think it's been interesting how little pushback, little public pushback there has been from businesses for this administration on tariffs, on immigration, on a whole bunch of other policies that have not been helpful for their bottom lines. Like, I think there are different ways to interpret what's going on. One is that it's a collective action problem. Like, nobody wants to be the one in this case, like there's a toy company that literally sued the government

over these tariffs, if I were that toy company or the CEO, I'd be watching my back all the time, right? Because there may be some retribution exacted upon the company that stands up. I don't know. And I'm not suggesting that it's actually happened, but I would be worried about it if I were those guys. A lot of businesses are acting that way. And many of them are trying to, like, use personal relationships to have backdoor peace talks with the administration and talk to people at the Council of Economic Advisers or the Commerce Secretary or wherever they can get an end or maybe President Trump himself and say, hey, could you please like take off these tariffs, for example? And there's been a bunch of reporting on that that like there's been some mysterious exemptions for certain

kinds of products, you know, tariffs for certain kinds of products, probably where there's like a personal connection with somebody in the administration. So to some extent, like, there's not a lot of overt hostility from the business community. And even the Chamber of Commerce and the Business Roundtable have been relatively muted in their criticism of this administration. I think because everybody's afraid of him. A hundred percent. There's no, I mean, there's no two ways about this. The business community, just along with everybody else, is very afraid of being, if Trump sort of turning his eye of sauron on them and getting in the crossways. And they're all doing special pleading. And Donald Trump clearly believes in tariffs as an

economic tool and mechanism. But it also seems pretty obvious to me that part of what he likes about the tariffs are that then everybody comes to him for special pleading. And he gets to do dispensations. And that's why you've got, you know, Tim Apple showing up and giving Trump like an award that they've made up, like in a, please don't make us have to move to America to do the little screws. Or the, what was it, the inaugural presidential Diet Coke Award? Yeah, exactly. That's my favorite one. Yeah, it's like they're all finding new ways to grovel. And again, when I was talking about, like, all of the bullshit that companies are doing because of these stupid tariff policies, it's not only moving goods around. It's also bullshit like this. Like,

how many meetings at Apple went into figuring out what this gold plaque was going to look like and was it going to match, you know, the right trimmings at Mara Lago or whatever. Like, this is such a waste of time. However much time they did spend on it, probably still wasn't enough given that it's like hundreds of billions of dollars on the line. And that's what I mean. When like your profit center becomes the people at the company who are trying to figure out how to most please or least piss off this president. That's, that's not a good thing.

Like, that's not how capitalism is supposed to work. It's not capitalism. That's why this is a no. I can't, if I have to have one more fight with JVL where he's like, Sarah, are you ready to give up on capitalism? I'm like, that's not what this is. This is a kleptocracy of Trump enriching his friends and wanting to wield tariffs so that he can punish countries that he gets mad at over a commercial or have the countries come begging for special pleading from him. Like, that's all this is. And I tell you, if this was a Democratic president, they would be just like screaming. I know. Holy hell about this stuff. But they are genuinely afraid. Like, afraid not just profit center afraid, but like kind of afraid, like, this guy is icky and scary

and could do not like push out of a window Putin's scary, but like erratic and can be awful. one tweet can like take us down kind of scary? Or one tweet or one order to an underling to, who knows how he's weaponizing government? There have been a bunch of reports about how he's trying to weaponize the IRS, which historically has had this great firewall, like impermeable firewall between the political people and the people who actually do tax audits and things like that. And there was reporting in Trump's first administration that he ordered people to go audit his enemies and they refused. I don't know what's going on this time. The same thing with DOJ investigations or indictments. He has a lot of powers at play beyond, you know, what he can tweet or true social

posts. And I understand it is rational for businesses among others to be freaked out by all of that. The problem is if everybody is freaked out simultaneously and nobody stands up, obviously you end up with like an even more empowered president. And what's especially troubling, I think, is that even the companies and institutions that have more resources to fight back are often not fighting back. And that sends signals to everybody else, like all the smaller guys, all the smaller fish that like, well, if whatever, Harvard or somebody, you know, or some big white shoe law firm doesn't think that they can win this battle, what are the chances that I can do it?

So it's like they're kind of, in a way, doing the dirty work for him. It's much more efficient anyway. If the institutions that are better situated to fight back don't fight back, then all of the ones that aren't, like, they just fall into line. And Trump doesn't need to threaten them. Yeah, that's exactly right. That's exactly how this is working. Okay, last question, because it is Saturday morning.

I obviously haven't brushed my hair. And, you know, we've all got things. Well, you look lovely. Sure. This is my sleepy head. The elections that we just had where the Republicans got their asses kicked, does that start to change this exact dynamic that we're talking about? Because one thing that I've sort of wondered is for businesses that are good at risk management,

at being forward looking about things, it is, there seems to have been a weird inability to be like, someday Trump will be going. on. And Democrats will be in charge again. So like I just feels like everybody changing their businesses to fit the whims of this guy, you know, so are people going to start looking forward or even feel like, hey, this guy doesn't have the mandate we thought. He doesn't have the American people at his back the way we thought as he becomes less and less popular. Do people start to get, you know, I don't know, find their spines again, be less scared of him? I don't think so. Not until he's gone. I think. I mean, as long as he's still in the White House, it doesn't matter who's winning the statewide office in Georgia or whatever. Or it doesn't really matter who's the mayor of New York City. I think that people are still going to be freaked out by him. Now, what happens when he's out of office? I don't know. And I think that businesses will adapt to those circumstances. And we've seen this in the past. Like, there was a, you know, a

rash of ESG and DEI and other things that were like more of the political moment, not necessarily because Democrats were in power, but like that was in response to cultural and political movements. And now those things are being withdrawn in response to cultural and political movements as well as threats from the president. I think you'll see similar malleability and adaptation going forward. But I also wonder like what happens to the powers of the person who's in the White House in the future. And this is one of the things that, in fact, the Supreme Court also sounded concerned about, at least in this particular case, right, that if, for example, like there was questioning about this in the oral argument, if, for example,

this president can declare a national emergency over, you know, trade deficits or fentanyl or being mean to Bolsonaro, what's to keep a future Democratic president from saying climate change is a national emergency, and therefore there should be tariffs on fossil fuels. This was literally something that came up. And now, some of us who like carbon taxes might say, that's not such a bad thing. But for a lot of Americans, that's a very scary proposition. Like what could a president AOC or Bernie Sanders or whoever do with the same set of authorities that Trump is claiming now? And one would hope, maybe fruitlessly. One would hope that whatever principles are being applied to a Republican president and whatever powers are being bestowed upon that person would also be transferred to

whoever succeeds him. And I think those are questions that the court has to grapple with. And Congress, frankly, has to grapple with. That if they are basically willingly giving up their constitutional duties of power of the purse and ability to declare war and all sorts of other things under this administration, what does that bestow upon his successor? Catherine, I'm so glad you're here because I have a million more questions about economics that obviously the rest of us talk about, but you're just way smarter about it than the rest of us. So this is great. Well, I try. I talk to a lot of experts, so that helps.

Well, and then we'll talk to you. All right, everybody, that's it for us. I'm Sarah Longwell, publisher of The Bullwork. This is Catherine Rampel. She's new and great, and we're so glad to have her on the team.