Bulwark Takes - Inflation Rises as Trump’s Revenge Policy Won’t Bring It Down

Episode Date: February 12, 2025

Sam Stein and Tim Miller talk Donald Trump's broken promise to lower inflation on day one, as inflation rises 3% and consumer prices 0.5% amidst Trump's proposed policies.

Hey guys, it's me, Sam Stein, managing editor of The Bulwark, here with Tim Miller, my bud. We're going to talk about news this morning. Inflation came in a little hot. Pretty hot, actually. I'm going to give a little read from the CNN article. I won't do their, well, their read is, it's not just eggs, period. I'm, that's, I wouldn't have let that lead go, but whatever. Consumer prices rose 0.05% from December.

The fastest pace is September 2023, resulting in an annual inflation rate of 3% for the 12 months that ended in January, according to the latest Consumer Price Index data released Wednesday by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Oof, it's a mouthful, but in the short, prices are up. Not great.

Prices are up everywhere. It's up, and they're up at the pump. Gas prices are up. I thought that the liquid they're up at the pump gas prices are up i thought that i thought that the liquid gold underneath our feet was gonna resolve that and it is that liquid gold under our feet um but uh but but we've got uh we got gas prices up we got prices up across the board and the interesting thing is something that i've been pointing out i mean i look we can be reasonable i we had tom malinowski on the pod yesterday. And he was like, you know,

you, you don't want it. This is, you know, there's some element of this. That's like trolly. And I roll it. That's like,

Mr. Drumpf, you've not lowered prices. Day one. You promised. There's, there's some, I really element to that,

but there also is the fact that like his agenda is not deep is inflationary. I mean, like tariffs are inflationary. Tariffs are inflationary, and so are massive tax cuts. That is his economic agenda so far. Oh, by the way, so are deportations. They're kind of happening at a lower rate. Forcing tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of employees out of work?

I mean, that's not going to help matters. Well, that hurts them, but that maybe is deflationary. But the inflationary matters. I'm giving you a little macroeconomics 101 here, Sam. I understand. Tax cuts down. They spend less, but you have to actually factor in the idea that some of these people are actually building stuff for us, are helping us with energy production, are going to streamline goods and services that come to our country. That stuff matters.

You do have to factor that in. And I think that the hit on Trump that is real here is there have been some things that have happened in the first three weeks. I don't know if you noticed. We've fired some people that he doesn't like in the bureaucracy. He's gone after his foes. We've changed the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America. We have made sure that even if the pilot is a woman, we're still calling her an airman. That's been an important change. We've changed LGBT to LGB. There've been a lot of the changes. They've been focusing on wokes and revenge have they been doing anything to deal with the economic issues it feels like not really and and i do think that that is really

where the vulnerability lies not that like he is to blame for the fact that you know certain prices went up this month but the fact that like they don't really seem to have a plan for dealing with it. And there seem to be focusing on some shit that is pretty silly by comparison. No, I, for starters, yes, 100% to, I know it's, you know, a little bit ridiculous to blame him for this stuff because it's Joe Biden's data, but he did, I will say, you know, he did run on promising day one price. Should we watch the video? We can watch the video, sure. So when I win, I will immediately bring prices down starting on day one. On my first day back in the Oval Office, I will sign an executive order directing every cabinet secretary and agency head to use every tool and authority at their disposal to defeat

inflation and to bring consumer prices rapidly down we'll do it very rapidly we will bring prices down we will be a rich nation again all right so like if he gets to run if he gets to run on it then you do i think to a degree have to hold them accountable for it even though everyone said it was ridiculous news ridiculous and then even though he started uh going away from it even before he came into office. But my point about the reductions in government services was, yes, of course, obviously, fewer jobs, less people paying money or getting paid money means they're not paying for less goods, which means there's pressure to reduce costs of goods. So I get the macroeconomics. But my point is that if you have all these services

that the government helps provide, and this gets to your point too, which is where is the focus, right? Like if you are, you know, if you're putting every government employee in charge of trying to deport workers, uh, who are here illegally, uh, then you do have macroeconomic impacts that will actually be inflationary. And so I think that to your point, there's not really been any actual focus on getting the cost of goods lower. It's not like he's pumped, you know, tons of new energy and least, and even if you were, it's going to take 10 years to get those things online.

And also energy production was at historic highs with Biden. It's like what you were saying. It's, it's there's not this is these are trends that often can be outside of the executives purview and but trump isn't even trying his focus is on culture stuff dei gender all that shit and annexing canada is not going to help get these prices down it just won't maybe it will take over panama might help take prices down because just won't maybe it will but it won't happen tomorrow over panama might help take prices down because then right you know shipping costs go lower yeah panamanian workers probably getting paid lower than the american workers i guess greenland you know yeah you get some you get some easier shipping routes and you can drill in greenland but this is like what are we really

talking about i mean what he what he was talking about is let's get the prices of groceries lower. And how do you do that? You get more groceries on the market. Right. You increase production. You open up trade deals. You import more. You don't do tariffs.

You increase supply. You solve avian flu. Or you lower demand. Or you solve avian flu. And so when you get rid of all your public health workers and you slash CDC funding and you stop communications from these health agencies, it doesn't help alleviate concerns about avian fucking flu. To support your point. And if you fuck over the farmers, and again, it's like we're increasing supply or we're reducing demand. We don't actually want to reduce demand because that would mean we're in a recession.. So that is really the answer here. And right now, yeah. I mean, you've got, like we played the video earlier this week of the

farmer who was like, I'm getting fucked right now because I had an agreement with the government and Elon's put a stop payment on it. So look, I mean, there are things that they could be doing that they're not doing. And that's worth noting. Here's another relevant element to this. In the AP story about the inflation going up, we have a Wells Fargo economist saying we're not making any progress on inflation right now. That just extends the Fed's hold on interest rates. That's the other element of costs that are high, which is housing, cars, anything we have to borrow because rates are high.

And Trump's answer to this is like, he's bleeding this morning that he wants to bully Jerome Powell into lowering rates. And, and Powell's not going to do it. Like as long as inflation is high, Powell's not going to do rates. And so that is going to like bring us to another potential crisis, you know, crisis, you know, if the, if the independent fed, you know, ends up having to go toe-to-toe with trump over this because because prices aren't really going down and trump thinks the only way for prices to go down is to try to bully the fed to lower rates which i was uh it's funny i was at a background briefing with a prominent republican lawmaker and the issue of rates came up and this

person was like look i don't want them to lower rates because I'm worried about not having enough arrows in the quiver or whatever the hell the phrase is. If things go south economically, as in they wanted the ability to lower rates if the macro economy, if the US economy were to stumble. And so to a degree, some people probably might be relieved by this. But you're right. Like if one of the big costs that people are incurring is mortgage, right.

You need those rates to go down if you want to get more people to buy houses, but that's not going to happen. And then of course the cost of construction is going to go up and that's going to screw things over as well. I will say the, the administration has been the rhetoric from the administration is kind of funny to me.

Like they've just completely backed off their insistence that things would move. I think it was J.D. Vance said something on CBS the other day. It was like, Rome wasn't built in a day. Consumers are going to see lower prices at the pump and at the grocery store, but it's going to take a little bit of time. Rome wasn't built in a day. And Trump, I think we're going to become rich. Look, we're not that rich right now. Look, we're not that rich right now. We owe $36 trillion. That's because we let all these nations take advantage of us. So they are laying the predicate to try to get people to realize that this is not going to happen instantaneously.

But if he starts bullying Powell, if they go forward with auditing the Fed, which Elon Musk was talking about the other day, the macroeconomic uncertainty that will create is going to be incredible. And then we're in a whole different type of world. One last thing. I mentioned the gas prices at the top, but science don't seem good on that front. And the stories this morning, experts are saying the gas prices are set to go up dramatically in parts of the country. Do they say why say why yeah well yeah so they're concerned about uh the sanctions that trump's putting back in which i which i support on uh on russia and iran and iran uh is going to affect supplies and there's concerns about uncertainty in the middle east as the like as the israel hamas ceasefire starts showing signs of collapsing and like to your point, we are already doing a lot of domestic production.

So a lot of this is a global issue, right? And if you tie that on top of the fact that there's concerns about tariffs that might affect Canadian oil, which comes into the country, on all of the global side of things, there is uncertainty, there's tariffs, there's sanctions, which is raising prices. The domestic oil production was already high. I mean, he can try to turn the spigot on a little higher, but that's going to take time. Yeah, he's going to turn the spigot on. He'll turn the spigot on, but that does take time. And then the other question, and I'm not an expert in this field, but his relationship

with the Saudis has always been something he's had in his back pocket. And he's turned to the kingdom to turn on oil and turn off oil, in fact, during COVID, because oil prices were plummeting, and he needed them to stop pumping. I wonder, and again, I'm speaking from a bit of ignorance here, but all this volatility in the Middle East around the Gaza plan to relocate millions of Palestinians from Gaza, which the Arab nations hate and are opposed to.

Does that complicate his ability to go to OPEC and say, hey, help us out here? Maybe, maybe not. I mean, he's playing a lot of leverage games, right? He's threatening assistance to Egypt and Jordan, which would be remarkable if he followed through on it um would he go there with the saudis i don't know i mean there's a lot of

balls in the air here eventually some of them do come down and fall we'll see we'll see what happens how fun what a ride jace allflation up. Didn't happen for you. Day one. That is an X. It's an X. It's an X. Have you bought eggs recently? I mean, I know it's like a cliche to talk about the price of eggs.

I had to talk about eggs on a different podcast for like an hour yesterday. It'll be coming up on the feed later. Subscribe to the feed. You'll see it. Plenty of egg talk coming your way. All right. If you're interested in more egg talk. I want viewers to know my egg intake i'm now down to one not two you're rationing i'm rationing eggs the other day i literally was like i don't know i only got a

couple left and i don't really want to buy these eggs i i went for one i'm not a big egg man so it hasn't really impacted my intake so uh but i'm concerned for you i'm concerned for our viewers all right everybody subscribe to the feeds we'll see you soon bye