The MeidasTouch Podcast - Andrew Ross Sorkin Discusses Trump’s Economic Debacle

Episode Date: December 19, 2025

MeidasTouch host Ben Meiselas reports on the parallels between Donald Trump’s policies and the conditions that led to the Great Depression in 1929 and Meiselas interviews renowned writer and author of the new book 1929 Andrew Ross Sorkin. Remember to subscribe to ALL the MeidasTouch Network Podcasts: MeidasTouch: ⁠https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/meidastouch-podcast⁠ Legal AF: ⁠https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/legal-af⁠ MissTrial: ⁠https://meidasnews.com/tag/miss-trial⁠ The PoliticsGirl Podcast: ⁠https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/the-politicsgirl-podcast⁠ Cult Conversations: The Influence Continuum with Dr. Steve Hassan: ⁠https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/the-influence-continuum-with-dr-steven-hassan⁠ Mea Culpa with Michael Cohen: ⁠https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/mea-culpa-with-michael-cohen⁠ The Weekend Show: ⁠https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/the-weekend-show⁠ Burn the Boats: ⁠https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/burn-the-boats⁠ Majority 54: ⁠https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/majority-54⁠ Political Beatdown: ⁠https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/political-beatdown⁠ On Democracy with FP Wellman: ⁠https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/on-democracy-with-fpwellman⁠ Uncovered: ⁠https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/maga-uncovered⁠ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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19 plus to wager. Ontario only, please play responsibly. If you have questions or concerns about your gambling or someone close to you, please contact ConX Ontario at 1866-531-260 to speak to an advisor, free of charge. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. So as the White House gets more terrible economic news, I guess their economic plan is just to say everything's great and to say it's A plus plus plus. J.D. Van, speaking in Allentown, where a lot of the Trump policies have been harming that community, and he was asked. So, what grade do you give Donald Trump's economy? Here's what he says.

Play this clip. President Trump last week gave his economy a grade of A plus, plus, plus. What grade would you give the economy today? A plus plus plus. But then they also blame former President Biden for the A plus plus economy. I'm just trying to figure it out. Then you had Caroline Levitt, Donald Trump's chief propagandist, just lying about the inflation numbers and just saying they are what they aren't here. Just play this clip. First, very quickly clarifying Caitlin's question, you acknowledge that CPI in January when you took office was 3%. And in September, the last month for which we had data, it was also 3%. So inflation. No, it's 2.5%. Not in September. It was 3%. It's 2.5%. The

average CPI right now. I have it in front of me. And President Trump's first eight months in office, inflation is measured by the overall consumer price index has slowed to a 2.5 average pace. This is down from the 2.9% inherited in January. January is one month. What they do to manipulate the data is notice the word average. So they talk about what Trump did before his liberation day, which I call liquidation day. And then they blend it as what they call an average. So I'm 40 years old. It would be saying like my average age is 20 years old. And using that, I'm 20 years old.

That's my average age. Then you had Trump's Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent. He was on recently at the Deal Book Summit with Andrew Ross Sorkin. And the point that they're trying to push in MAGA, which is just entirely false, is that inflation, it's really just a blue state issue. It's not really all that bad in the red states. So it's so much worse in blue states. And then Andrew Ross Sorkin came with the facts. Let's play it.

That her people in her district are having an affordability problem. I should have said, well, she's in a red state. Affordability is worse. I mean, in a blue state, affordability is worse than a blue state. We can debate that. But there's no debate. The number of 50 basis points higher, inflation, the 10 highest, the inflation rate, the 10 highest, the inflation rate,

They are in blue cities, but... Just so you know, because I went to look at this. This is the Joint Economic Committee, since 2021. The highest inflation of the past four years has been in red states, especially Florida. I'm talking about current. Current. Current. Not over the past four years.

Right. Today. Okay. I would think four years would be a reasonable... to trend lines to look at today like more data would be better to look at let's bring in new york times best selling author andrew raw sorkin also co-host of squawk box which we cover here sometimes on the minus touch network and author of the new book 1929 inside the greatest crash in wall street history and how it shattered a nation it's not just a great look back there it's also a look present and look forward talk about these seductive illusions that were taking place back then and the warning signs

that it gives us for the president. So it's great to have you here. It's great to- Thanks very much to have me. I appreciate it. It's great to read your book. Let's just start there with these Trump regime officials who you've interviewed, who go on Squawk Box, and they're giving you these data points that you know are not accurate. How do you as a reporter deal with, that we saw you there deal with it how do you process what they're spewing look i think the the role that i'm supposed to play is to the extent that you can fact check in real time which unto itself is a is a complicated and oftentimes challenging thing to do you know in that instance he had he had made a comment like that earlier about a week earlier and i'd actually after

here he had gone and looked up some of the math and was not confused by but i saw the math and it didn't seem to translate, so I thought, well, if he brings that up, then we can actually talk about the numbers. And by the way, it comes from a place of curiosity more than anything else it's not coming from a place of, you know, here I am trying to prove him wrong. It was, I really want to understand he has a perspective and thinks that these are the numbers to focus on. Clearly, there are these other numbers that contradict those numbers. How is the public supposed to think about that? But I think the larger point that underlies this is, you know, you have an administration that oftentimes is trying to jawbone their way towards a specific goal,

irrespective of the facts. And by the way, you know, that's almost a political thing to say about this administration. But you could say the same thing about the previous administration. There was a period of time where the Biden administration was telling people, you know, that the economy was better than it really was. And you go on TikTok, go on X, go, you know, back then, people would say, but I'm feeling something very different. And I think that's the same thing that's actually in some ways happening right now, which is, you know, the president's saying, A plus, plus, plus, plus economy.

And everybody else is saying, but that's not the economy I see. You know, you take a look at, I think, some of the mistakes that you mention in the Biden administration. They're just telling people they were feeling good when they weren't feeling good. But do you think that's a bit different, though,

than telling people it's A plus plus plus plus? But setting aside that, the Trump regime outright saying, something like this, which I don't think we've really ever heard in any administration. I say this from an apolitical point. I say this as a data junkie who just cares about, like, can you just give me like the real numbers? When they go, they brought in $23 trillion, and they'll have someone like Lutnik, Commerce Secretary, or Bessent. They know they're not, that that money doesn't exist. And they'll say with a straight face that we've brought in,

and then you'll get them to say, ah, commitment. It's at this, end of that. Oh, sure. All the big numbers that they've bandied about, about investments in the U.S., sovereign investments from Saudi Arabia, from all of these other countries, you know, I think Bloomberg did a really good look at this recently. I think of the $23 billion figure that the administration's put out publicly, I think we'll be lucky, lucky if we get $7 billion. And in fact, I said this to the Treasury Secretary on that stage, and he said something to, something to, to the effect of, well, isn't $7 billion, you know, extraordinary? And I said to him, it is extraordinary, but just go with that number.

Go with the $7 billion. You don't need to go with the $23 billion, if that's the case. But I think that we've seen this over and over again. It's the same story with the inflation story, which is, you know, they've said repeatedly, tariffs do not create inflation. And yet, it is very hard to find a real economist in this country or elsewhere that will tell you that tariffs don't cause inflation. invariably they cause inflation.

Invariably, they are a tax to some degree on the American public. That's just what they are. And so when you tell everybody that there's something that they're not, when it's literally, right now, by the way, it's sunny here in New York. It's literally like telling somebody it's raining right now, even though I can see that it's sunny. You know, and one of the things that I love dissecting as a law professor or just as someone who's hungry for information,

is that when a big trade deal is announced that is said to be on the scale of like the United States, Mexico, Canada agreement or that's big, it's a big, these make types of shift. And when the Trump regime says, hey, we've got this deal that we just made with China, or we made a deal with Japan, or we made a deal with the European Union, I go, okay, well, where's the, let me read it. Like, let me look at it. where are the terms and then you sometimes get a press release or you get maybe a statement and then you don't get a statement from china how do you process that though because these things are i always wonder this from a financial reporter's perspective when they're out there saying these are deals that are happening but there's the most base look i think i think i'm doing

what i imagine i'm doing what i think the investor class is doing which is that at some level you have to discount what's being said so we are living in a policy by press the environment right now, and you have to look at that press release and you have to almost put a haircut on it. You know, earlier this year, the president came out and said that, you know, China was going to buy, what, 12 million or whatever the number was, billion, um, yeah, 12 million metric tons of soybeans. metric tons of soybeans by the end of the year. I repeatedly asked members of the cabinet administration over the last couple of weeks. I said, you know, the end of the year is like here. Like, we're, we're, it's 15 days away, right?

This point, it's coming. And I think it's, I think we've sold 300, some, some, a thousand metric tons. So 300,000, how are you going to get to 12, 12 million? It's just, the math doesn't add. And you can never get a straight answer. And then, of course, you know, just in the past week or so, they've said, well, it's not actually the end of the year. It's, it's the growing season.

And so, you know, you tell me what the growing season is, and everybody has a different view about that. so this could get extended out several months and call me in March or April, whenever you think the end of the growing season is, and you tell me whether we have 12 million pounds. You take the average of years multiplied by the cosine divided by 12 times in the Maybe we'll get there. By the way, maybe we get the $23 trillion worth of investments in 30 years soon now.

I don't know. They'll go on the shows in the morning with a straight face and Brooke Wallins will say, Look, under Biden, no one's ever bought this many metric tons of soybeans. And I'm sitting there, you're pushing back. Right. Tintanilla pushes back. But then occasionally, you know, other people are like nodding their heads. And I'm like, no, no, no.

Under Biden, it was 27 million metric tons. Right now, it's 300,000. But that brings me to the broader point about your book, though, which is. Well, I'll see one thing. The other crazy part, the crazy part, it's not just the administration saying these things. It's that business leaders make these commitments publicly. These are publicly traded, putting aside the sovereign, the big investments from countries. Think about all of the business leaders who announce these gigantic investment plans that when

you actually read through them, they've either already made half of the commitments before or they're doubling, double counting this and double counting that, because it's all an audience of one. And I do think that the investors in particular, I think, look through all of this. And I hope that journalists are trying to point these things out because that's our job. Having said that, there are clearly supporters of this president and this administration who don't want you to do that. And I hear from them. Trust me. And to your point, I mean, just look at the first week of this administration.

You had soft bank, open AI, the whole tech crew right there. And what did they? I forget the number that they did that we've committed immediately like $1 trillion in AI infrastructure projects together. And, you know, it's like the soybeans. I don't think they, as that group, first off, looking at that group, you're like, these people are going to work together, aren't they? That's a strange crew to work together. But, you know, they all wanted to be there in the Oval.

They've done nothing. You look at Zuckerberg. He was there at one of those meetings, and he's like, what number do you want me to use? $800 billion? $800 billion. I mean, he literally said that. And so your point, though, is that when you speak to a lot of business leaders in Wall Street, they know they have that audience, number one.

But two, smart money is actually putting a lie discount into what the guy said. So he's out there and the street's like, don't even listen to this guy. He's a freaking liar. The only thing there, when they're looking, when the investor class is looking at meta and what Mark Zuckerberg saying, they're looking at the quarterly reports, they're looking at what he is saying and what the company is saying genuinely, quote, quote, on the record in those statements, in those press releases, all those analyst calls. is those numbers that they're going to ultimately be held responsible for. It would actually be very interesting to see if, in fact, some of these numbers that are said publicly in these other environments, you know, whether shareholders or others, you know, sue at some point trying to claim that they were misled. It would be very interesting to see what kind of case could be brought because they could make these arguments that, you know, that their intention over a much longer period of time is to, in fact, make these investments. But, you know, I think it's a little bit hard to measure.

Right. I mean, back in the day when I was a practicing lawyer and I would deal with SEC types of cases, the level of meticulousness and carefulness of a CEO before just saying a number like that because they were aware that an SEC would take that and look at it and say, you just made a material misrepresentation on the market. You're the CEO of a publicly traded company. You said it in the overall. This SEC is not doing that. Exactly.

And that's an issue that part of the open season is that the SEC said, go for it, basically, which brings us to the thesis of your book and the framework that I wanted to establish. There is this seductive illusion. You know, you talk about these big personalities in 1929 and, you know, the similarities here with Trump throwing a Gatsby party, which says a little party never killed nobody with half-naked women in martini glasses. I think the symbolism may be a little bit too real, especially with what your book is. But here we are right now.

And it just feels like with this deluge of disinformation, we are treading water. And people are still treading water, but there's so much disinfo out there. And we're looking at the numbers, 54% job losses year over year. Like, that's a bad number. Inflation actually rising. The job report number, unemployment up 4.6%. What do you see in the parallels and what made you write this book now? Look, I think there's some parallels, there are some things that, in truth, are different.

You know, you mentioned the Gatsby Party. There actually was a famous party that took place March, 1929. By the way, at Mar-a-Lago in 1929, it was owned, Mar-a-Lago was owned by E.F. Hutton, who owned the brokerages because the brokerages were the biggest thing rolling back in 1929. But, no, the similarity is that, you know, the 20s were a great era of invention around new technologies like radio, very much like, you know, Invidia or AI. So there was a lot of excitement around that. There were no rules back then. I mean, manipulation, insider trading, all of that, that was allowed.

There were no rules against it. And right now you do have some of the guardrails coming off of what the SEC is doing. There was no SEC back then. But also you have crypto and leverage. I mean, I think one of the great lessons of every financial crisis is you have a lot, you have too much debt in the system. And I think right now there's a lot of people taking on a lot of loans to make all of this happen.

And what's different is we don't know where all those loans are, meaning it's not coming from the banks right now. It's actually private credit, shadow banking. So I think there's a whole bunch of things to look at. That doesn't mean we have to have a Great Depression-style crash that ends up with 25% unemployment in America. But it does mean that if we're not careful, we could at some point have a real and meaningful pullback, and that would not surprise me at all. You talk about the over leverage leading up to the Depression.

And right now, what seems to be happening with all of these over levered AI companies, what they're doing, it seems, and maybe you can describe it better than me, is a company like a meta is creating these hold code. rent back deals with these shady not shade shadowy lenders yeah and they're basically treating cap x expenditures as loan payments and so they're hiding they're hiding the actual leverage because that would harm their ebino or or or reflect as as a lack of profits and so there's there's that's going on at a very high level and people are minted like we're seeing stuff like that that can how much should i be concerned about i don't want to scare you i think these are all red flags i think the second you see meta instead of investing its own money in a data center decide to partner up with a what's called a private credit firm

and effectively have like a leaseback deal with them so that they don't have to actually claim that they're making the investment themselves and effectively guarantee money back to this other firm and you know i think there's some questions just about how those transactions ultimately settle out, I think all those are supposed to be red flags. The problem for investors is figuring out, you know, what a red flag is and when it becomes, you know, a red line. That is always the question. You know, back in 1928, Charles Merrill, who was the co-founder of Merrill Lynch, told everybody to get out of the stock market. So you'd say, oh, he looks so smart. Except for the fact that the stock market between 1928 and September of 1929 went up by 90%.

So you can be a Cassandra, and I can say here, look, these are things that I'm nervous about, a warning and we should be anxious about. And I do think you got to watch them, but that doesn't mean that we have to go off the cliff tomorrow. And we talked about investors, and we've talked about corporations. Let's talk about the people, a lot of them who aren't investors. Sure, there are people who have 401Ks, but what we're, I think, seeing increasingly is people who, if they're fortunate to live paycheck to paycheck, what they describe. to me is feeling psychologically tortured by this economy where there are the corporations that are too big to fail, but there is the failure by design of people

in this economy who are working sometimes two jobs and can't work. Yes, the working class in America. The word affordability, it's unaffordable. How big, what are you seeing there that's, is there something now, though, in all of your decades of coverage of, that feels different specifically in this moment?

Look, I think the inequality issue is real and I think it's getting worse. And I think the inflation is outpacing wages and that's what inspires people to say, this feels unaffordable. Look, I took a taxi across town the other day. I looked at the bill. I couldn't even believe it was happening.

And I think that that is happening all over the place. You walk into a supermarket, you go get the gas, you go to a restaurant, whatever it is. Everything, the prices have risen so fast. And look, life is relative, too. too. So we all remember what the price was two or three years ago. And that's why it feels this way. But beyond that feeling, the wages haven't kept up. And of course, so many of our other costs, the costs that matter most us, education and health care, have obviously skyrocketed.

And so I think it's a confluence of all of those things. Plus, of course, housing. You layer student loans on that. And you can understand why people feel the way they feel. And so the question is, How do we get out of that? And I think there's a whole bunch of sort of structural things we got to think hard about. But I do think it's raising questions about, frankly, by capitalism and whether capitalism works. I'm a believer it does work, but I'm a believer it works only when the rules are, the right rules are in place. And I fear that we're getting to a place where they're not. And do you feel, though, that the system under Trump is even, I know this sounds odd,

capitalism where at this stage he's out there kind of building this is now we're into state sponsored capitalism i mean this is not really capitalism everything runs through 1600 pennsylvania avenue now this is totally this is new this is completely and utterly new we have never we have never had a time where CEOs business leaders are making their decisions daily their strategy is based on whether their strategy is going to be in line with the strategy of this president uh and we're whether he's going to agree or disagree or come out in favor or not or decide to sue or not over whatever you're doing. That is a fundamental reshift, and that is something that's more akin to, you know, place like

China, frankly. Did it surprise you with your relationships in the business community? Of course, you don't have to name who, but just the idea that these business leaders right after the election seemed so Gavin Newsom talks about this a lot. you know, supine, they just go right away. What can we do for you? Or is that, you know, or did you expect that based on them thinking that they had to do that for their shareholder? I mean, I think that I have a level of sympathy and empathy for this situation insofar as I think that they're, they think they're justifying and rationalizing in their head that they're doing

this for their shareholders. And they think to themselves, if I stand up and raise up, raise my hand and say, I don't like what's happening here, or I'm doing it differently. can they still fight another day or do they lose their job or does something terrible happen to the company? I mean, I think that is, I mean, I think there's sort of like almost an existential nature to this, this time around. And that's different for a business leader who feels responsible, not just for the shareholders. By the way, and this is where maybe you'd have some more empathy or maybe folks watching us would. You know, if you're a CEO and your job, you got, I don't know, a couple hundred thousand employees, let's say. part of is you're trying to keep the company.

It's not just shareholders. You actually do have people that you hopefully feel some responsibility for. And then the question is, pick your poison. Some of these people are swallowing their pride. There's no question that they disagree with this president. And yet they're going to the Oval Office and they're giving gifts and they're doing things. And you're saying to yourself, how is this even possible? But they're thinking to themselves, the alternative, the alternative is worse than that.

Now, the bigger question in my mind is, if this administration does something that, you know, crosses some kind of red line, does the business community or do these individuals who do disagree with the administration raise their hand and say, you know what, the red line, I'm out. And I just don't know whether that happens. And I think some of them think if I can just hold on long enough, I still want to be there so that if that moment happens, I can raise my hand. But I don't know if the goalposts will have moved so much that the red line will have moved to. And I'll say that, you know, perhaps some pushback that my audience would give as well. Do these corporate leaders even want employees anymore at all? Or is there endgame to use AI to push out as many employees as they can? And right now, employees are convenient.

I wouldn't disagree with that. I mean, I think there's a, you know, a true, I hate to say it, a true capitalistic CEO would say, yeah, if we could get to a point where we can lower our costs, they would try to do that. They would want to do that. I mean, I think that there is a level of, I don't want to be cynical about it. I think that's true. I think that's true. Andrews, these are the conversations that I love. And the books that you write, people sometimes know, well, like, what do I do?

Like, what books do I read? It's books by Andrew Ross Sark. And so I want everyone in my audience to go out. And by 1929, inside the greatest crash in Wall Street history and how it shattered a nation, I know that most of my staff here at Midas Touch have told me they're reading the book, and I told them all to read the book, and they love it, and they've been sharing with me some of their observations. Before we go, Andrew, anything else you want to say to our 6 million subscribers or our audience, just about these times or whatever?

You know, the one thing I would just say is I think we get into these moments, and I do have some optimism. I'll just leave you with a this, and it's not a blind optimism. You know, sometimes people say, you know, America's, exceptional and this and that i don't believe that i believe that you have to we have to earn that exceptionalism every day um i do think there's a lot of smart people including uh yourself and a lot of people are watching this broadcast you have a lot of ideas about you know what needs to happen to this country and they're using their voice and i do think that over time uh you know if if you

feel dispirited we will get to a better place Andrew ross sarkin we appreciate you joining us we hope you come back and everybody this is Get the book, 1929. Thanks, Andrew. Appreciate it. Everybody hit subscribe. Let's get to 6 million subscribers this month. Want to stay plugged in? Become a subscriber to our substack at Midasplus.com. You'll get daily recaps from Ron Filipkowski, add free episodes of our podcast, and more exclusive content only available at Midasplus.com.