CC-Transcript

• 00:00This is probably the single largest self-inflicted economic foreign economic policy failure of any of our lifetimes. No matter how far back you go. So we’re in uncharted territory. The thing that really strikes me is to an extent that we have not seen before with Trump, even in the first Trump administration. He just seems to be immune. He’s not listening to other people, right? He’s not listening to the feedback from the markets. He just seems to be immune to that. We can speculate as to what the reasons for that might be. But my guess is it’s going to take him longer to back off the tariffs than people expect and people who are anticipating the same sort of like we’re doing this, we’re not doing this back and forth. I wouldn’t want to take that back. Even before the tariffs we’ve had that this market kind of reflect on some of the economic policies here. Just look at the stock market performance year to date in the US in the first quarter was dramatically below the rest of the world and that rarely, if ever, happens. Are you surprised? So the market has spoken. Are you surprised that members of Congress have not spoken about tariffs or perhaps some other policies? So I’m not surprised yet. I will be surprised if this keeps going for a few months. Right now, the Republican Party is still completely unified behind Trump. And Republican representatives in the House and Senate care most about that. But this is going to start to hit. And I would think the biggest way in which the pressure will start to ramp up is they’re working on these tax cuts. They want to do massive tax cuts again, despite, you know, obviously the deficit consequences of that. And those tax cuts are focused, again, disproportionately on the wealthy. I think Democrats are kind of going around saying, hey, if you guys want to erase do the largest tax increase in human history targeted primarily on the poor and middle class in order to pay for tax cuts for the wealthy, the politics of that look pretty bad to me. Even if you’re a Democrat and a Republican in a red state. We’ve got the script we can do. This has got him. I you’re coming from Boston. For those of you on radio, we’ve got a gorgeous backdrop. It looks like a Spielberg movie said of Beacon Hill, the Charles River, over to two universities of suspect ability. Professor Mukunda I mean, as simple as I can, President Trump is against the people dining at number nine Park and Beacon Hill. They’re against the fancy people of Boston and coast to coast as well. You say the Republicans are going to stay with them. John Bird, Murdoch in the F.T. says they’re already walking away. Do you anticipate or is there a historical analogue where the Republicans walk away from Donald Trump? So there’s a possibility. So what you saw in Andrew Johnson in 18, in the 1860s, where the Republican Party turned completely on him and it was the Democrats who were his base of support. But for Trump, it is impossible to overstate the charismatic hold that Donald Trump has on the Republican base. Right. Whatever criticisms you might make of Trump, his skill at crafting that is just unparalleled in American history. And if you’re a Republican congressman whose basic concern is getting reelected, that’s going to get really hard. That being said, I maybe I’m being optimistic here, but I think there is a core of Republicans who are looking at the damage and as much of the economic damage, they’re looking at the catastrophic collapse in our position in the world where essentially all of our allies are saying, you know, I mean, not behind the scenes, right? They’re saying on the record, they’re saying things like you’re better off along with China than the United States, because at least the Chinese are predictable. Right. That is also got to be a pressure on at least those Republicans who care a lot about foreign policy. And that’s just something that that we’ve never seen before. And the consequences of it are going to keep rippling out for for years and decades. If Trump vanished tomorrow, we would still be dealing with this for a generation. That’s that’s one of the most amazing statements of the week. You’re saying, Professor, if president if we had President Vance, whatever, if President Trump removed tomorrow. This continues. So so I mean, I’m not saying the part the economic policy might change, but the foreign policy effects will continue. So let’s let’s put this differently. Right? So I used to I used to advise the the chief of naval operations and, you know, the senior military. And so right now there is the Polish or the Japanese version of me who’s going and advising their minister of defense and saying, we have wagered the existence of our country on the American nuclear umbrella for, you know, quite a lot in the Japanese case since 1945 and the Poles since the end of the Cold War. And clearly, that is not possible because even if Trump weren’t here, the Americans clearly like to elect people like this. So we needed nuclear weapons of our own because it would be irresponsible not to have them. And that’s not speculation. The president of Poland just said Poland should probably look at acquiring nuclear weapons because the Americans are no longer reliable. The consequences of that are going to be kept flowing forever. Because if I were Japanese advising the Japanese Ministry of Defense, I’d say it is irresponsible not to do this.