Bulwark Takes - The World Economy Is In The Toilet! Does Trump Want a Crash?

Episode Date: March 12, 2025

Warren Buffett is pulling money out of the market. Jim Cramer is having a total meltdown. What is going on? Tim Miller talks about how Trump and his love of tariffs has thrown the world economy into chaos and why it’s not looking good for anyone

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. Hey guys, it's Tim Miller from The Bulwark. I wanted to look at a couple of different analysts' assessment of what is happening with the economy. Well, I guess one analyst and one investor, actually, because I think it paints a picture that is pretty telling and pretty damning for Trump. The first was a story from The Telegraph. It says, this 94-year-old stock market legend saw the Trump slump coming. Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway is well-positioned to withstand the downturn. Warrenren buffett that

may be a little overstated there uh because i don't know that this was all related to trump if you look at uh buffett's moves in the market uh he's going to have been predicting a cool down for a little while now as he's increased his cash reserves uh but it is pretty telling that you got somebody like Warren Buffett that is out there essentially saying, you know, essentially signaling rather through his investing, because these aren't through comments, that it's time to take some cash out of these markets. As The Telegraph reports, his cash pile has soared to about a third of his entire portfolio. His cash holding surpassed the value of all the businesses listed on the FDSE 100. Crazy. And so, you know, part of this was Trump. Part of this, I think, is competition from China and what we've seen from DeepSeek,

maybe an idea that some of the stocks were overinflated with AI. Uh, but it's pretty noteworthy that it is kind of classic contrarian fashion. Buffett had been positioning his portfolio, uh, for this, uh, Trump slump at a moment when all these other big finance guys thought that they were going to cash in on it. And so, sober, conservative, cautious wisdom of Warren Buffett, worth taking into account as always. Here's the opposite of sober. Jim Cramer over on CNBC. And I know Jim Cramer is easy to laugh at. People roll their eyes and they mock him because he's been known to get some stuff wrong with predictions. But here's the thing about Kramer, right? He can be a little bit of a dick and he can get some predictions wrong with stocks. Of course, this is not strategic advice, but here's something that he's good at.

Just real talk, just not bullshitting about what he sees as what is happening. And I want to play you this clip of Jim Kramer talking about just how absurd the current economic situation is. You mentioned the banks now 10% below the 50 day. That is an unusual number. It's time for them to make a stand. I think a lot of them have come down too much. But if we have a recession, banks are the worst stocks. I don't think we'll have a recession. Like I said, it's manufactured. It's manufactured. Well, that doesn't mean there won't be.

I'm not sure I understand. Oh, no, manufactured can easily cause a recession. Absolutely. I don't, you know, I'm not saying that manufactured means it's not going to happen. Right. I'm saying manufactured is that you can make it happen. And when you get angry and when you kind of lose your temper and you get mad instead of like the way shine bombs handle it in Mexico, it gets people nervous and upset. They want the president to be a little happier.

There's nothing wrong with being happy. You can be tough as nails and be happy. But right now it just feels like, oh, we're going to just screw every—people have been screwing us for years and we're going to fight back, which is true. It's absolutely true. But you've got to explain it very calmly and empirically how we're being hurt by an Italy, how we're being hurt by a German. And this is going to stop, and we're going to make it stop. And then don't scream at those countries. It doesn't work.

It doesn't work. It doesn't work because they know that they can stand their ground. You tell them, look, I am going to scream at you. Help us. Help us. And we'll help you. Still, the process of retaliation is starting to come into full effect. We heard the comments yesterday from Canada about electricity taxes and Doug Ford. I'll gladly shut it off completely if I have to. Smooth hauling. 60% increase in tariffs. There isn't anyone in any history book,

and I know the president reads history, there isn't anyone in any history book that doesn't say that was a considered reason why we had the Great Depression. There isn't a soul who's ever said that. Look, go read Galbraith's book. It's really quick. It was a direct cause of the depression, not the recession. So it is playing with fire, you think? Absolutely. But is it arson?

Meaning you can contain the blaze? No, meaning that you're doing it. Maybe it's deliberate. And it doesn't make any sense. You don't want people to be laid off because of what you say. People are scared, Carl. You don't scare people. You don't scare people. It's a wrong call. It's all message. People are scared. Come out with a little bit of humor. Come out and say,

listen, I'm going over to Germany. You know, it's going to be different for the Germans going forward. Not like, you know, I hate Germany. I mean, come on. They won our outlaws about 15 minutes ago. Now the Fundstrat raised this question yesterday. Do you think the president is willing to watch the German and Chinese stock markets go to the moon while ours craters? On this weekend, I did a piece and I said, everyone keeps thinking about the Dow. I think that the president is competitive versus other countries. And he could very quickly say, look, you know, he's distinguished himself as not caring about the stock market. Well, how about their stock markets?

They're crushing us. Are we really going to let the Italian stock market beat us? Is Spain going to, Spain? Spain? I mean, are you kidding me? And he's just exasperated. He's just exasperated. And he's right. He's like, He's just exasperated, and he's right.

He's like, what is happening? Trump is manufacturing a recession. He's crushing us. As Jim Cramer points out, this is all on Trump. I mean, maybe Buffett is right, and the market was going to correct eventually anyway. But this, the speed with which it's happened, is all just because of the erratic and insane choices of trump i think kramer's out there he's like why are you attacking germany like what are you doing why why are you attacking canada uh you know he's thinking it's almost as if trump wants the market to crash um i love this at the end we're're going to let Spain beat us?

Spain? This is winning, MAGA? This is winning? You're just getting mocked on CNBC for the fact that Trump is single-handedly potentially spiraling us into a recession just because he likes the word tariff? The whole situation that we're in is preposterous. It's predictable, but it is utterly preposterous. And I think the third data point here comes from the Morning Shots newsletter that Andrew Egger and Bill Kristol wrote this morning.

And they highlight the job losses at the shoe company Puma. Now, Puma, yesterday, we acquired some documents that showed that the company's rationalization that they put forth to the market and to their employees about why their numbers were falling said this. It said the company's sales had stumbled due to both trade disputes and immigration fears. And they pointed directly to the policies and the rhetoric of Trump as hurting the bottom line of Puma. So, like, we're seeing this in the real world now, in the private sector, with job losses because of Trump's behavior. We're obviously, we've been covering this wall to wall, even seeing this in the public sector, the job losses because of trump's behavior we're obviously we've been covering this wall to wall even saying this in the public sector the job losses because of doge we're seeing the stock

market crash all because of trump as jim cramer points out and we're seeing the old wise hand warren buffett you know basically saying i'm gonna hoard some cash right now I like all evidence points to, to arrow go down. I mean, this is just a disastrous across the board economic performance for Trump. And if they don't change course, it's going to get very rocky ahead for the country economically, but also for Trump's political fortunes. So subscribe to the feed. We will keep you posted as we see interesting analysis and reporting like this and bring any reporting of our own. And we'll be back here soon. See you then.

Peace. 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.