Bulwark Takes - New Poll: Trust In Trump's Economy Dwindles Amid Recession Fears & Tariff Chaos

Episode Date: March 12, 2025

Andrew Egger and Sam Stein react to comments from President Trump's Secretary of Commerce, Howard Lutnick, about a potential recession, as well as polls showing voter approval of Trump's handling of the economy declining.

McCrispy strips are now at McDonald's. I hope you're ready for the most dippable chicken in McDonald's history. Dip it in all the sauces. Dip it in that hot sauce in your bag. Dip it in your McFlurry. Your dip is your business. McCrispy strips at McDonald's. Hi, welcome to The Bulwark. I'm Andrew Egger, author of our Morning Shots newsletter, joined here by the great Sam Stein to talk about the latest and greatest in the trade war with our good buddy Canada, which is kind of reaching heretofore unthought of levels of stupidity kind of across the board. Hey, Sam, how you doing? Good. First of all, thank you for calling me great. That's not how you treat me on Slack. So this is just for public show. And secondly, let me just take this moment because you brought it up to Canada. I do actually appreciate you and I feel bad. I was laughing at the stupidity of the

terrorists, not at the economic harm that they're causing you. It's ridiculous what Trump is doing. So I just want to clarify that. Yeah, we have all been owning Sam a lot because Canada got pretty mad at him for one of these. They're not happy with me, but I, I, I'm, I'm empathetic to them. You did nothing wrong. Like this is so fucked. That's just definitely, definitely. I think we're all kind of on the same page there. Thank you for venturing back onto YouTube to talk more Canada. So, so this is, I mean, we just wanted to react a little bit to,

to a clip from commerce secretary Howard Lutnick last night, which we will play for you now. It's really just kind of like the latest amazing, amazing piece of rhetorical posturing from this administration about this trade war. Let's go. Will these policies be worth it if they lead to a recession, even a short-term recession?

These policies are the most important thing America has ever had. So it is worth it? It is worth it. A, I don't think they'll be think the only reason there could possibly be a recession is because of the Biden nonsense that we had to live with. These policies produce revenues. So you're saying when it looks chaotic and unpredictable from the outside,

that there actually is a master plan when it comes to these tariffs? It is not chaotic. And the only one who thinks it's chaotic is someone who's being silly. actually is a master plan when it comes to these tariffs? It is not chaotic. And the only one who thinks it's chaotic is someone who's being silly. He said reciprocal tariffs. Nobody expected him to announce 50% tariffs this morning. He needed to break some guy in Ontario who said he was going to tax American energy 25%. The president of the United States in the White House says, oh, no, you won't,

and breaks him. And you think that's chaotic? Yeah. So, I mean, in order to really kind of like get at this, you have to see this as like the eighth act in all of this, right? Because Trump has been slapping tariffs on, he's been taking them off, he's been yelling at Canada, he's been saying mean things about Canada. He weirdly said one nice thing about the premier of Ontario last night after the latest in their trade war thing here. But but that is one of the things that's been spooking the markets. The other thing is all this recession talk that we've been having now. Right. And Trump over the weekend came out and kind of put that word on everybody's lips because Maria Bartiromo asked him on Fox, like, do you think we're going to have a recession? He's like, well, I kind of put that word on everybody's lips because Maria Bartiromo asked him on Fox, like, do you think we're going to have a recession?

He's like, well, I kind of hate to predict things like that. I can't rule it out. Yeah, and at that moment, like a little later on that day, Lutnick came out and he said, absolutely not. Under no circumstances are we going to have a recession, right? But then there's more talk about this, all this talk about, you know, a potential like detox from the Biden economy that we might have to go through this period of transition. And now we get this from Lutnick.

So I don't know. Where are we at, Sam, in terms of how the how the Trump administration is messaging all this? Well, it is it is a bit hard to follow because both the economy is supposed to be great, but also we're going through detox and we have to endure some pain. He's making real progress on inflation. But the jobs numbers, those are Biden's fault. So it's hard. You know, they're here and there. Spitballing, it seems, is like the right word here.

But this is real world consequences stuff, right? And Lutnick is, I think, underneath Lutnick saying, well, is it worth it? Of course it's worth it. And Trump saying, well, is a recession possible? Sure, it's possible. It's an admission that things aren't working the way they want them to work, because in no circumstances whatsoever would a president or his top economic policy person say, yeah, this is not great, but we have to just endure it. That's just not how this traditionally works. And I think it's

just worth underscoring that so much of this is just Trump's own making. I mean, so much of it. Sure, like there are trend lines that were happening prior to him. And yes, bird flu, for instance, is impacting the price of eggs. But when you launch senseless trade wars over things that are largely concocted, I'm not going to say fentanyl is not an issue, but the flow of fentanyl from Canada into the United States is relatively small. And when you are just sort of putting tariffs on and off at a whim, and basically they can get lifted because, you know, the president of Mexico calls you and, you know, happens to call you at the right moment

and say the right things, then this is just, you know, improvisational stuff. And that is creating the chaos and the uncertainty that is causing the economic problems that we're experiencing. And look, we can get this into this in a little bit, but the people aren't aren't falling for it. Like the numbers for Trump in the CNN poll this morning are pretty bad when it comes to the economy. Yeah, yeah. I mean, and that's been a trend we've seen in a couple of these polls, just in the last few days. Voters started off giving Trump quite a significant honeymoon on a lot of this on a lot of this economic stuff. And he started off in the black as far as as far as how people trusted him to handle the economy in particular was kind of his strongest issue in a lot of ways.

Right. I mean, inflation was the thing that ended up basically handing him the election clip clipped Joe Biden's presidency, made him unpopular in a way that he never really recovered from. And voters kind of had this expectation, all right, here comes Trump to set these things right. You know, I mean, kind of, we thought that was kind of insane from go. But I mean, we should not lose sight of the fact that voters started out with quite high expectations here

and are already kind of- Well, the reason they started out with quite high expectations here and are already kind of certain. Well, the reason they started out with high expectations is because he said in 24 hours, you know, things are going to be great. And, you know, prices are going to be coming down. Energy is going to become abundant. The war in Ukraine is going to be over. You know, you're not going to believe how quick I can get this stuff. And now he's saying, well, there might be a recession and you're going to have to, you

know, eat it for a little bit. And, you know, Elon Musk is saying, yeah, we're going to have some pain and all these cuts that we're making are necessary. And it's like, maybe if that, of course, if he had promised that in the election, he wouldn't have been elected. So it is a bait and switch. I mean, it is. And I think the irony is that like he got really decent, good numbers on the economy in his first term. But then you look at this stuff in the CNN poll, it's 56 percent of the public disapproving of his handling of the economy, 44 percent approving. And the thing is, though, you said like he had a fairly decent starting point on the stuff that he's fumbled away. But he hasn't fumbled it away entirely, right? Like there was another Wall Street Journal piece this morning where they interviewed

Trump supporters whose 401ks have taken a hit because of the stock market dive. And they were like, well, it's not great and it's going to affect my retirement and I'm going to have to reassess how I do things and how long I work. But I appreciate him and the tough choices he's making. So he still does have that grace period going. At some point, if this continues, that grace period ends and then those numbers get even worse. Yeah.

Yeah. And obviously, you have to kind of distinguish, too, between kind of the core of Trump's support there, who at least as far as everything we've seen in the past decade are kind of like ride or die with him. Right. But that's not the median voter at all. Right. And there's there's he's already hemorrhaging some support from from a number of constituencies that he needed to win the last election. And I mean, there's it's not like we're at the bottom of, you know, the things that could go wrong with the economy right now.

This is all this is all trade war stuff right now. We have not even all trade war. Well, I'm sorry. Yeah. The doge stuff matters a lot too but i mean the other big kind of economic disruption that that people have not really yet begun to price in is is another one that trump has promised to work very hard on which is the mass deportations of illegal immigrants here in america right so so that was yeah and that was in the our morning shots this morning which is i mean that so the morning shots ended this morning was that puma the the shoe wear, menswear company, is it menswear? It's not just menswear. Athletic wear.

Athletic wear. They sell women's shoes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I should know this stuff. I'm sorry. I'm not a big Puma guy. I'm more of a Nike guy, but whatever. We got internal documents.

We got internal documents. They're having some problems because of the business climate, predominantly uncertainty in North America and China. But their document also contained this little tidbit where they said there is a, quote, Hispanic hibernation. And by that, they mean basically Hispanic immigrants are afraid to leave their homes and they're not going out and buying stuff and they're not supplementing it yet with online purchases, maybe for related fears. But that has caused Puma to downgrade its expectations and they're now laying off 500 people globally.

I mean, so, I mean, that's just one sort of anecdote here. But if you start ramping up deportations, that too will have an economic impact. And look, maybe the J.D. Vance's of the world will say, well, that creates economic opportunity, right? Like you can then hire American-born workers who are sitting on the sidelines. But I think what this Puma thing points to is the fact that it's like, no, the deportations coupled with the economic uncertainty has made it less lucrative for us to hire and we're actually going to retrench. Yeah, yeah. I mean, all this stuff is kind of – in one sense, it's all of a piece, right? I mean, so much of the Trump agenda is about striking fear into the hearts of the people that annoy us, right?

Whether that is immigrants or whether it is Canadians or you name it, liberals, whatever. I'm not annoyed by Canadians. I just want to be clear. Again, I just want to be extremely clear. This is the Trump promise. Okay, I just need to be clear. You're really gun-shy about these Canadians.

You Canadians, you have no idea how successfully you kind of bullied Sam about it. It's not bullied. I was always on their side. I was misunderstood. I feel bad and I just want to make sure about that. I'm not even being prestigious now. I do feel bad.

No, I'm not. And I'm not trying to make light of it here. My point, though, is just like Trump is telling his base, we're going to strike fear in the hearts of all of these people. And that's what you want. But at the same time – It's like so funny. It's like, who the hell, are Canadians like the real villain in the MAGA storyline here? It's like, I understood. I mean, it was disgusting and cynical, but I get like that the Mexicans, because they were brown and from, you know, they were invading the border on the south and they were bringing all this fentanyl.

And, you know, I'm again, not saying I agree with this at all, but like that's a more traditional boogeyman for for MAGA. The Canadians, it's like, who the fuck are we supposed to be scared of Canadians? Like, this is ridiculous. But he's he's gone to town. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, and my my main point here is just like the more fear you're pumping out there into the world, obviously the more economic uncertainty that introduces kind of across the board.

I will note, it's kind of interesting. The other implication of this is that he – and we wrote about this, but the nationalism that Canadians now have is unbelievable. And I mean they're just united in their anger towards Trump. And it's not just Canadians. I want to pull up the clip here. But we you know, the other country, one of the other countries that Trump's been targeting senselessly is Greenland. And they had an election last night, I want to find I want to make sure I find this right. They elected I know nothing about Greenland's politics, so just be clear. But they elected a party unexpectedly that had never had gotten that much power before. It's a center-right pro-business party that has never held power, but they ran on

a strong opposition to American takeover of the self-governing territory. This is according to the Wall Street Journal. It got first place in the ballot box last night. So yet another case in which Trump is targeting a country and the response from the country is, fuck you, you know, we're going to actually, you know, do it ourselves. And we've seen this with liberals in Canada suddenly having life in their own politics, because they represent the main opposition to Trump. Yeah, it's so crazy. I mean, I remember a couple of years ago when when Russia first invaded Ukraine, and there was that that big kind of like, news cycle all about how like Ukraine had never really had like that deep of a single national identity. It's relatively new government, relatively new modern state, post Soviet, and that it was the the boogeyman of this like evil

external threat in Vladimir Putin's Russia that had like kind of crystallized them now into a new nationalism that was the kind of united around opposition to that. And that was kind of like a cool thing at that time. And it is it's it's very depressing now to see us being like the new the United States of America being the new boogeyman that that gets to be the big evil force that that helps other helps other smaller nations find their way to national fervor. Let me go back. I know we're jumping all over the place here. Let me go back real quick to one other thing from the Lutnick clip that we started this

all off with, if you recall. Just the notion that, I mean, he says these policies are the most important thing America has ever had. It's worth it. Even if we have to go through a recession, it's worth it to follow this plan because we're going to trust the plan. All you guys got to do is sit back and wait. We're going to make it happen. I mean, like this is the most amazing thing to say on the heels of a week of trade war news where it is so clear, like the idea that there is a plan has been falsified over and over again. The plan is for Trump to get up every day and ad lib, right?

I mean, the plan is for him to is for him to like put tariffs on and take them off at his own whim. And that and that just because he is like kind of this, this amazing force for deal making, it's gonna shake out somehow in America's favor eventually. But but despite that, like he has also already proven time and again that that he's not pricing in things like market uncertainty. He doesn't he doesn't like particularly care that he is like rattling, you know, shaking, shaking the stock around like a dog while he jumps back and forth. Like, why are we supposed to? I suppose. But he he he you know, he's the one who's sort of trying to do the traditional thing. We'll never have a recession. I mean, like, yes, he eventually did say we will need some pain.

But like he's out there trying to be a big boost and do like the normal stuff, which is don't entertain the idea that everything could go bad. And Trump is being like, well, it might go bad. And Elon's like, yeah, we're going to have to endure some pain. And now Lightning's getting on their page. I will note there was a Politico piece last night that allies, of course, anonymous are blaming him for the scattered economic agenda that Donald Trump is struggling to message around, which to me, this piece just reads like they're you know, they know they have a problem. They're throwing someone under the bus and it's Howard who's going to take the brunt of it. Yeah. Yeah. As the kind of stuff you saw all the time in the first Trump term, these pieces leaking out, you know, people constantly telling each other in

the press. You did not get very much of it during his campaign, which was interesting. I mean, I think morale was higher. They were running a tighter ship. Susie Wiles was was cracking the whip over there. And I do think, you know, as as they continue to run aground on stuff like this, it does seem like the floodgates might start to open a little bit more in terms of that internal stuff at the White House. All right. We can probably we can probably get there. What do you think? Anything else you want to get off your chest before we get off? No, man, I'm happy. I'm happy with how this went. And hopefully people are happy to. All right. Well, yeah, hopefully people are the country above us. Hopefully you're all insanely happy with how this went. Hopefully you're so happy you will push the buttons. You'll like you'll subscribe. You'll do all the time.

You'll tell your friends. You'll tell your neighbors. You'll tell your family. Thanks for watching. We'll see you again soon. Later. McCrispy strips are now at McDonald's. I hope you're ready for the most dippable chicken in McDonald's history. Dip it in all the sauces. Dip it in that hot sauce in your bag. Dip it in your McFlurry. Your dip is your business. McCrispy strips at McDonald's.