Bulwark Takes - Trump’s a Dunce. Don’t Blow This Dems!

Episode Date: April 9, 2025

They break down the chaos, confusion, and economic fallout of his trade policy, while slamming the Democrats' mixed messaging. With markets reeling and global trust in the U.S. plummeting, they debate whether this is short-term strategy, or long-term self-destruction.

So Democrats need to just be against it, full-throatedly say this is madness, he is killing the economy, and be just very clear. Sorry to interrupt, Trump just paused the tariffs for 90 days. Oh god. I wish I could rip up a bunch of papers, but I don't have any. Wait, what? So now the tariffs are paused for 90 days? Paused. 90 days? Oh my god.

Jesus Christ. Yeah, hold on okay hello everyone and welcome to a bulwark takes uh we're doing this because just the tariff thing keeps happening uh and uh and i don't know the markets are remarkably calm right now uh i don't know about you guys. I'm spending all of my time right now trying to become an expert in markets. And so I am now. And what I know is that they're green right now. And so when I know green means good and red means bad on my phone. And so because they're green, I'm assuming that for some reason people are panicking less today, despite some weird things that are happening. So, Joe, I want to start with you, because amid all the bad news, the Democrats, specifically Gretchen Whitmer, came out today and was like, tariffs may be good. And I only have one thing to say about this, which is why I'm hosting and not

talking and you guys are talking. And it is only my, and maybe this is a Luddite communications person's view of things, but in my opinion, when Donald Trump seems to be committing Harry Carey, or as I put it on Twitter, just like punching himself in his own junk. The Democrats have two choices here. One is they can join the pile on against Donald Trump or they can start punching themselves in the face. And they seem to be choosing, or at least Gretchen Whitmer seems to be choosing, punching herself in the face as opposed to going after Donald Trump. Like, why is that what is happening? So it's not just Whitmer. I mean, we're seeing it a lot on the Hill. You have guys like Jared Golden, who's a true believer in

tariffs. And you have Chris DiLuzio, the House Democrats official account tweeted a video of him being like, well, there's some tariffs that are good and we got to do them right. And there's a real lack of cohesion amongst their message. And so the easy answer would be to say something like, Trump crashed the economy. That's bad. They're not really doing that. They're trying to waffle on this old held democratic policy, which is a little bit protectionist,

when what's happening right now is full-blown protectionism. And trying to explain it away really gets off message as opposed to just being like, this is terrible. It needs to be reversed. And that waffling and the lack of cohesion there, you can attribute it to union loyalty. You can attribute it to the diversity in the caucuses, which is like you have these Midwestern Democrats who have been ravaged by free trade agreements and are still uneasy about figuring out a better system. And then you have these more coastal ones who support it. And you have South Texas Democrats who are, from San Antonio's big NAFTA hub. And so there's a lot of confusion and they don't seem to be getting on the same

page, which is a very easy thing, which is red, bad, green, good. And right now, red is real bad and no one seems to have that message right. Mona, can I just ask you something really quickly on this Dem point, which is what strikes me as odd is that we haven't heard anything from Gretchen Whitmer during any other part of what Trump is doing. And we haven't heard much from Democrats. Like the whole thing that Democrats are freaking out about is why aren't people doing more? Like Cory Booker basically became like a mythical champion for everybody just because he got up and did a thing. Like he just talked for 25 hours. Why, why would right now, why would they pick right now to chime in on what's happening? And to chime in with a wishy-washy message.

It's, it also came, Joe could have also mentioned Bernie Sanders, you know, who's attracting big crowds and is giving his followers, you know, a certain amount of red meat against the Trump actions. But on trade, he too is very wishy-washy. He always has been. There are a few exceptions. Jared Polis was out immediately after Gretchen Whitmer's speech with a sort of, you know, response saying, no, you know, she was saying, you have to use tariffs as a scalpel, not a hammer. And he was saying, no, it's a hammer and it's going to hit your hand. That was Jared Polis. So that was, you know, at least something. But, you know, the Democrats, you're right, have been flailing, looking for how do we respond? How do we get

traction against Trump? There are so many things, not sure which direction to go, what we should do. And this is so bleeding obvious. I mean, he is tanking not just the American economy, but the world economy right before our eyes. And for Democrats, Democrats have to get over the idea that they're going to be bringing back, you know, unionized workers by being pro-tariff. First of all, those workers are already, you know, sort of bleeding out of the Democratic coalition. But second, it's not going to be this issue because Donald Trump is going to make anti-tariff Americans out of all of those people who thought that maybe tariffs were a good idea. As soon as they see what's happening, it's going to be toxic. It's going to be beyond toxic. So Democrats need to just be against it, full-throatedly say

this is madness. He is killing the economy. And be just very clear. Sorry to interrupt. Trump just paused the tariffs for 90 days. I wish I could rip up a bunch of papers, but I don't know. Wait, what? So now the tariffs are paused for 90 seconds? Paused. Oh my God. Jesus Christ. Yeah, hold on. Okay. Oh. Okay, so we're just getting word that Trump has now issued a new edict. The Mad King has issued a new edict now saying that he is going harder after China, but that everybody else gets a 90-day pause on the tariffs that he has

announced. And again, this is feeding into a good narrative for the Democrats, which is this kind of erratic decision-making, this kind of unpredictability is poison for our economy and for wages, for people's welfare. That's the point they should be hitting. Yeah. And OK, so we are just we're all we all just got stopped as we were taping this to sort of grapple with this 90 day pause. Jonathan Cohn, is he is he just is he listening to Bill Ackman from Twitter? Like what, like what, what do we think Trump is doing right now? I, you know, who the heck knows what's going on in that brain of his? You know, I'm going to, if I had to speculate, if I had to guess, I'm guessing that eventually

there's sort of the market chaos and enough people got in his ear and said, this is going to tank the economy. And that part of Donald Trump's brain that still has neurons that fire in the normal human way said, that's bad for me, Donald Trump. I better kind of find a way out of that and I'm just going to pretend this is what I wanted. I mean, that's my best guess. But I mean, this is such an example of the problem here, which is completely erratic, completely changes on a whim.

Nobody can... I mean, remember, the whole premise of this is that creating these tariffs is going to create a new business environment so that businesses can come here. How do you plan around this? How do you plan for a one-month horizon, let alone a five-month horizon? And I could not agree more with Mona. I was reading the Gretchen Whitmer speech. And content-wise, it was a reasonable kind of discussion. It sound very similar to what Paul Krugman wrote the other day. Right. You know, the kind of, you don't want to have these big tariffs, maybe some targeted ones where, you know,

you have partners or whatever, and you want to invest in it. Great. You know, that's, that's a great thing to write. If you're a Brookings or, you know, a columnist for the bulwark, maybe, but, you know, right now the line is such an obvious line to me is that this man, he's a man. He is, he is that this man, he's a man, he is unpredictable. He is bringing down the economy by being so irresponsible. And it doesn't feel like that's that hard a message to make. It's right there in front of you. Just grab it. And I do understand, we can talk later if you want, why Michigan Democrats are being careful on tariffs. That's a separate, you know, there's a reason. I understand it, but I think it's a mistake, especially for somebody,

let's face it, like, you know, Governor Whitmer, who is thinking about running for president and has a PAC named Fight Like Hell, last I checked. You know, that seems like not a bad place to be. Yeah, look, I think in a normal world, right, where we're having sober policy discussions, and you want to say, like, look, I want to, I'm a potential 2028 contender, and I want to express my position on tariffs. There's a world in which there's a time and a place to do that. That's not this world. That's not this time. That's not this place. Like what, like you, she does not need to do this right now. And I understand the Midwest, the hollowed out Midwest manufacturing center, everybody understands why it's a little bit different from them

or for them. But, and I just, it's such a strange thing to me to be like, ah, I'm going to say my first thing. And it's going to be this where I more or less come alongside Donald Trump at the moment when he is causing people their first negative consequences. OK, but so this 90 day pause, Joe, you're there in Congress. You've been talking to everybody. I'm sure Republicans have been kind of freaking out. Is this what they wanted? They want the 90 day pause? Yeah, they couldn't say we want to pause because that would be a rebuke of the policy.

I bet when I go back down to votes this afternoon, they'll be they'll be praising it as a great thing. Here's another example where, like, Democrats can take a victory lap. You know, they could say the pressure got to him. The markets reaction, the bond's reaction spoke for itself. It is bad policy. It can't happen again. And we need to do something about it in Congress, even though Congress won't get off their butts. But this is a perfect example of where they can capitalize on it. I don't know if they will. Joe, I bet I'm going to read in your next newsletter about how the Republicans were all saying that the tariffs were genius policy. And they're also going to say that

the pause on tariffs is genius policy, right? 4D chess. Well, I mean, this is to me, look, the fundamental, I was talking about this on the next level, but this will probably beat that out, which is it seems to me there's like three contradictory reasons being offered for why the tariffs are happening, right? One is we're going to fundamentally alter the American economy to bring back manufacturing, and it's a long, and Gretchen Whitmer says it's a multi-administration game, okay? And so that is a play where, you know, you got to keep the tariffs. You got to stiffen your spine and we got to stick to this because this is how we play the long game. Or it's a negotiating tactic, in which case, it's not actually about the long game and nobody should invest in things here because actually he's just going to use his master

negotiating skills to make better deals for America. And we're still going to have free trade just with slightly better deals. Or the third reason I've seen is the idea that it's to make money, to like raise revenue for the United States. You cannot do all three of those things. All three of those things cannot exist. And they contradict one another. They're directly in conflict. They're directly in conflict. Yeah. But so, John, you had this excellent piece for us where you talked about game makers, like board games, and how this was going to affect the supply chain and the pieces. With a 90-day pause, what does somebody like that do who's a small business who's trying to figure out how to navigate this moment? Yeah. I mean, they are in more or less the same boat they were before. They're just,

where they don't know what the future is going to look like. And so they can't plan. They're basically just hoping that Trump lands somewhere where those tariffs are low. You know, the game maker I talked to, and this is fairly typical, if, you know, big tariffs are going to kill them. Now, interestingly, you know, it's different, you know, as in any industry, you have different, you know, different companies. So, you know, most of the big game makers, so like Hasbro, which makes Monopoly, a while ago, they moved a lot of their production out of China into Vietnam, precisely because they thought there might be bigger tariffs on China. And so if now, if we stay in the world that we're in as of, what, 10 minutes ago, where China has big tariffs, but other countries are

much lower, companies like Hasbro, they do monopoly, they're going to be able to ride that out pretty well. The game maker I spoke to, he's a small it's a small it's the equivalent of a mom and pop shop. They still get their their games from China. So 100, if we're raising that tariff to 125 percent, you know, he said they can't sell their games at that level. It just is not viable as a retail project. And their particular business model where they basically sold their products in advance, they're really screwed because they've sold them assuming a much lower cost. So even in this new world that probably helps some of the big toy makers, there are going to be some businesses that are just going to struggle, they're going to close, they're going to lay off people. And what's true of the gaming industry,

it's true of every industry in this country that, you know, it does some kind of production work. So, you know, some people, you know, some companies, if, you know, get some relief from this, but, you know, some don't and everyone is still operating under the same uncertainty. We don't know what the environment looks like in a month, six months, you know, two years. And that alone, that uncertainty alone, whatever the tariff levels are, that amount of uncertainty is deadly for the economy because businesses are not going to invest if they don't know what the environment's going to look like. And if businesses aren't investing, the economy is not going to grow. Yeah. I mean, if you've got to sit around and wait for a bleat from this guy in order to plan

your businesses, that's not a great way to run a country. Ain't no way to run an economy, largest economy in the world. But Mona, this on China. So here's the thing. I'm an unrepentant businesses, like that's not a great way to run a country. Ain't no way to run an economy, largest economy in the world. But Mona, this on China. So here's the thing. I'm an unrepentant free trader, but I'm also an unrepentant, like let's compete with China. Let's not let them get a competitive advantage for a variety of reasons. What do you make though of like really getting into a trade war with China? Because there's still, you know, we can talk about a lot of these other countries, but like we do a lot of, a lot of business with China, get there's still, you know, we can talk about a lot of these other countries, but like, we do a lot of, a lot of business with China, get a lot of stuff from China. So what does it mean? So the, the problem is, again, that Trump's perception of this is all

faulty. He was against the TPP, which was a trade deal that was negotiated under the Obama administration, that would have been a free trade arrangement with our partners in the East against China. It would have excluded China and it would have made everybody who was dealing with China's unfair behavior stronger because we all have been together as a united front. So he tanked that. And now by declaring war on all of our trading partners and alienating all of the people who we should actually be in common cause with against China's unfair trading practices, he's making it a one-on-one thing between us and China. We used to have allies. I don't know if we do anymore. They're not going to want to cooperate with us. And you know what? One-on-one, we're not as powerful against China

as Trump thinks we are. And China's definitely showing that. They're feeling their oats. Everything that he has done since he took office the second time has strengthened China, not weakened it. Yeah, that makes sense. All right, Joe, when you go and talk to these guys, what's their next move now? 90-day pause is still just a pause. Are they going to, what are they going to do? So a question I'd have, which I think I know the answer to is, are they going to try to exert some kind of authority in this period to make sure that this chaos doesn't continue to happen? I think that answer will be no, given the current majorities. But it's worth exploring because this kind of instability and uncertainty, it can't keep happening. And this episode's far from over. Like, he could wake up tomorrow morning and turn the tariffs back on, you know? Yeah.

Do you believe him, Joe? Do you think, do you believe him that people, he gave the, because he talked to congressional Republicans last night and he was like, everybody's calling me up and saying, please, sir, please, can we negotiate a deal? Is that true? Like, do you think that the thing he's saying when, if you read his full bleat, which clearly somebody else wrote for him, it is a because all of these countries have called and asked for us to negotiate. Like, is this true or is he just posturing like he did last time where he said he, you know, wrangled concessions out of Canada and Mexico and it was like, no, you didn't. These things were already in place. He loves to do this posturing, but I think the consensus among Republicans in Congress is that he's doing this as a negotiating tactic. Even if he says this is permanent or he has these

conflicting things, they still believe that it's a negotiation. Okay. What do you think, Mona? Do you think he's lying? So I don't know, but I don't think that's the key thing. I think the key thing is the uncertainty. And I think it's both true of our foreign policy generally and also of this trade thing, because this is not fixable. age, business people have realized how fragile the whole system that undergirds our economy is and can be, you know, manipulated by one person. Certainly all of the world now sees that the United States cannot be relied upon. And, you know, Trump may be defeating, you know, may not be in office, God willing, you know, after this. That won't change their perception. Their perception now has to be, they'd be insane to draw any other conclusion other than the United States is no longer the

leader of the free world, cannot be trusted as an ally, and we have to make other arrangements. I made this point on TNL, just that like, it's not just the economy happening. It is also the fact that people are seeing us allying with Russia on foreign policy. Like those things exist together to cripple people's perceptions of, sorry, Jonathan, go ahead. No, I just wanted to pick up on something that Mona had said before I thought was so important, which is, you know, if you want to, you know, China, we do have an adversarial relationship with China. We do have an adversarial relationship with China. We do have an adversarial relationship with China over trade. And it is certainly a worthwhile thing with certain industries that we really want

here to sort of be careful. And maybe tariffs have some role in that if they're targeted, whatever. But if you want to do that, the most effective way to do that is to have lots of other friends. We want to be sort of sourcing to, because there are parts of the, especially right away. I mean, you can't just reshore because there are parts of the, you know, especially right away. I mean, you can't just reshore everything and pull it to the United States in a day. It takes years to plan and build a factory. So if we're not getting the raw material, that's just the finished product, but the raw materials for our cars, our electronics, our toys, whatever it is, you're going to

have to get them from other countries. And so what you want are other countries to be your friends and have good relationships with them. in the loss of trust in the United States. Like the value of that trust has real dollars and cents values. It has moral value. It has all kinds of value. And that is the thing that's being squandered. And you can't measure that in the market today, but we will measure it over the next few years for sure.

All right, thanks guys. And thanks to all of you for listening to another episode of The Quick Bulwark Takes. Don't forget to rate and review us. Don't forget to subscribe.