April 30, 2025 • 49 mins
The Nation’s Jeet Heer examines Canada’s election and what it means for Trump’s rule of America. The New York Times’ Peter S. Goodman details what the empty shipping containers coming into America’s ports mean for the shelves in your local community.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hi, I'm Molly John Fast and this is Fast Politics,
where we discussed the top political headlines with some of
today's best minds and a p r.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
Ipoll says fifty two percent of Americans see Trump as
a dangerous dictator whose power should be limited before he
destroys American democracy. Where is the line? We have such
a great show for you today. The Nation's cheat here
stops by to talk to us about the Canadian election
and what it means for Trump's rule of America. Then
(00:34):
we'll talk to New York Times his own Peter S.
Goodman about what the empty shipping containers coming into America's
ports means for it the shelves in your local grocery store.
But first the news.
Speaker 3 (00:49):
Somalie, there's a thing with Trump that things are always on,
then they're off again. They're on, they're off again. This morning,
Caroline Levitt was throwing a major major about the idea
of Amazon putting the prices of tariffs on things. Now
Amazon is denying they're going to do it, even though
it was it a punch bowl newsletter that was sponsored
(01:11):
by Amazon.
Speaker 2 (01:12):
Amazon. I watched the press conference this morning. It actually
is a smart idea on the part of Amazon to
point out how much tariffs are costing the consumer. It
got Carolyn Levitt really miffed, It got Donald Trump furious. Look,
Jeff Bezos finds himself in a bad position, despite the
(01:32):
fact that he has a good zillion dollars. No one
wants to see their company in decline. Much of what
is available on Amazon is cheap and made in China. Ergo,
there is every reason in the world why Bezos is
not happy with these tariffs.
Speaker 4 (01:54):
And this was I.
Speaker 2 (01:55):
Think a pretty effective pushback. Made Trump fury again. I
think really important to remember Jeff Bezos is now a
captured billionaire. He's like these law firms. He is under capture.
He has made a deal with Trump, he has sucked
up to Trump, and now he serves at the pleasure
of Donald Trump. So despite the fact that he has
(02:17):
billions of dollars and is super wealthy and powerful, he
is ultimately trying not to get regulated out of existence
by Donald Trump. Now is this stupid? Yes? Could he
stand up to Trump? Absolutely? Would Trump be able to
regulate him out of existence? It would take a lot
of time and a lot of confidence to things that
(02:37):
Donald Trump doesn't have a huge supply. So you see,
it's a real example of someone who who has created
the capture that they are involved in, and Bezos is
now perhaps cowering, perhaps pushing back. We'll see how this
plays out, but I think it's important to remember these
tariffs are bad for business, and Bezos is just one
(03:00):
of the many, many, many, many business owners who are
about to really get fucked by these one hundred and
forty five percent tariffs. So you'll see more of this.
And again, Bezos has created this capture for himself and
now he is in a possible situation that he put
himself in, and quite frankly, it's well deserved.
Speaker 3 (03:20):
We saw similar behavior with Paramount this week, and when
the statement on sixty minutes is that they are afraid
of their.
Speaker 2 (03:27):
Merger behavior to go through.
Speaker 3 (03:29):
Yeah, and I think Bezos has much more power here
because that could bring down Trump's approval real fast.
Speaker 2 (03:36):
I mean, the reality is Trump's approval is terrible, right.
His approval is now down to what it was in
the first term, that sort of dregs approval. We've seen
even just from the universities that Harvard is now in
a much better position than Columbia is, where Columbia is
trying to make these deals. They have no one to
(03:57):
protect them. Trump World keeps going back on the deals,
and at least Columbia has the courts to protect them.
You're almost better off going into a court fight with
Donald Trump then rolling over and letting him do whatever
he wants.
Speaker 3 (04:11):
Agreed. Well, speaking of rolling over and doing whatever he wants,
he's issuing executive orders, ramping up America's police state.
Speaker 2 (04:19):
Yeah. So again, there is a headline here that's very scary,
and it's certainly possible that something very scary will happen here.
But it's also I think really important to remember that
executive orders are the least legally binding thing that the
president can do, and they keep you know, he's not
(04:39):
passing a law, and in fact, he has passed the
least laws of any president at this point. You know,
Executive orders are like just there vibes. Okay, there are
things that he feels like, there are things he wants
to do. These are things that are going to die
in court, okay, Like so many of Trump's ideas. Does
(04:59):
Trump want to be an autocrat? Yes? Does the Supreme
Court want him to be? I think seven of them
don't Alito and Thomas forget it. They'll go with whatever.
But are his instincts scary and terrible. Yes. By the way,
he's done executive orders that have targeted Mark Elias. My
man has done a ton of executive orders about everything
(05:23):
and everyone. So I don't think that we should take
them so seriously at this point. Yes, he would love
to do this. Is he going to be able to
do it? Absolutely not. The thing that is worth remembering
is that Pam Bondy is going along with a lot
of stuff that she knows is not legal, that she
knows is not going to go anywhere. And this is
(05:44):
like another example of someone who knows better just destroying
themselves for Trump because he wants them to.
Speaker 3 (05:51):
Yeah. Another thing that they're trying to do to consolidate
and protect powers that they hope will stay on their
side is they are blocking inquiries into the Trump administration
and signal scandal.
Speaker 2 (06:04):
Yeah. So look again, you had Bondy trying to take
away protections for journalists from being subpoena. They don't want
you to know what they're doing, which is a pretty
good sign they're not doing good stuff. Right If they
wanted you to know what they were doing, they wouldn't
be constantly trying to office scate. So signal gate is
(06:31):
super embarrassing for Republicans. Trump did not fire heg set
By the way, there's so much more coming on the
heag sets stuff. Right, we have an office that is
at war with each other. There's just going to be
more and more embarrassing stuff. Everyone in the world out
of that office is leaking. I think trying to cover
(06:52):
up signal gate is going to be the least of
their problems. And again this is example. Trump has decided
that if he fires heg set he'll look stupid, so
he doesn't want to fire hegsas, so he's doing everything
he can to keep the guy on. But there's just
no way this doesn't continually snowball into more and more.
And last week we saw another story about a different
(07:14):
signal chat with the wife and the brother. Then we
saw a story about heg Seth having a makeup studio
built that is very embarrassing. And we're just seeing trickles
of embarrassing stories. And you know why, because you know,
he has an organization and everyone in there hates each
other and they're just leaking. Like a said, so I
(07:35):
think you'll see more of it, and I think you'll
see more Republicans trying to cover it for it. And
here's the thing. Donald Trump could end this tomorrow just
by firing Pete Hegsath. But he won't. And so many
of the things we've talked about today. Donald Trump could
end tomorrow the trade war. He could say no more
trade war, that was a mistake, Let's just go back
to normal, and it would end tomorrow. They're not going
(07:57):
to onshore manufacturing by making things more expensive. That's not
how that works. We saw Howard Lutinx today giving an
interview and he said, and I think this is really important,
he said, So gave an interview today and it was
like very wilber Ross. He said, c NBC. Remember there
has been a ton of the Trump administration trying to
(08:18):
go out and calm the markets. You had Treasury Secretary
Beson yesterday or Monday giving a talk say that he's
got all these trade deals in the hopper. By the way,
we were told by Peter and Navarro there would be
trade deals in ninety days. We're like two and a
half weeks into this and we have yet to have
a trade deal. China has said there are nowhere near
(08:41):
a trade deal. Japan no trade deal, India no trade deal.
But I want to talk about this interview Lutnik on
CNBC trying to make everyone feel better. CNBC says if
a company were to say we're raising prices because of tariffs,
is that a hostile act? And Lutinix says, I think
if you go out of your way to try to
make it seem like your price has changed, when it's nonsense.
(09:04):
A ten percent tariff is not going to change virtually
any price, and in fact, a ten percent tariff means
you're going to pay ten percent more good stuff.
Speaker 3 (09:17):
Speaking of Trump's authoritarian reaches, a top White House aid
by the name of Stephen Miller says that JB. Pritzker
calling for protests could be construed as inciting violence.
Speaker 2 (09:29):
Sure, so here's an interesting thing. Pritzker has been a
very strong speaker lately. He is the governor of Illinois,
but he's also the scion of the Pritzker family. The
Pritzker family is a wildly wealthy, deeply liberal, very philanthropic,
and pretty great family filled with a lot of really
(09:54):
smart people who give a lot of money to really
good stuff. So basically the opposite of elo. You know
how Elon is trying to strip the federal government. So,
and Pritzker has been really strong about criticizing Trump. Part
of that is because he has political aspirations, but part
of that is because he does not. He's not a coward. Now,
is he not a coward because he has billions of
(10:16):
dollars to back them up? Maybe, but it doesn't matter.
I mean, Jeff Bezos seems pretty cowardly, and he has
more money than Pritzker, So I'm not going to write
off his bravery so quickly. I wonder if Steven Miller
understands what he's opening the door to here. Now, want
(10:36):
you to think back to last week part of why
Trump stopped this crazy tariff thing or paused it. It
will come back like the gun on the wall in
the play in the third act. Right, this trade war
is still very much going to happen to us. But
I want to talk about this idea that Trump know,
Trump does not want to become an emerging market, right,
(11:00):
he understands, But I mean that's the real that's sort
of the real red lawne here, is that he understands
that the dollar is a safe haven, right, and he
does not want to have capital flight because if they
have capital flight, it means that our debt will become
so expensive that it will be almost impossible to service it.
And we have so much debt in this country, much
(11:22):
of which is held by the Chinese, and as the
dollar gets more expensive, we will have more trouble servicing
our debt. So what is happening here? So if Stephen
Miller were to go after JP Pritzker, that would be
real banana of public stuff, right, arresting a billionaire because
you're mad that he said something. Pritzker said he wanted
(11:44):
mass protests. Stephen Miller says it could be construed as
inciting violence. So if Stephen Miller is able to will
a scenario where they start arresting the governor of the
state of Illinois, who happens to be a left leaning billionaire,
you're going to see some capital fucking flight, man, and
(12:05):
you're going to see a lot of constitutional crisis, is screaming,
and a lot of stuff. So do I think Stephen
Miller is crazy enough to do that? There is no
I mean, I think Steven Miller is just waiting for
the chance, but you are opening the door to the
kind of market cratering, the kind of bond sell off
(12:27):
that I don't think anyone is ready for. And by
the way, we're already heading into very likely a stagflationary
period because of the trade war. I'm not sure that
Stephen Miller wants more than that to happen. Get here
(12:48):
is a contributor to the nation and the host of
the time of Monsters. Welcome back to Fast Politics.
Speaker 4 (12:57):
Cheat, good to be on the program.
Speaker 2 (13:00):
You are a Canadian bureau chief here Fast Politics, and
as Canadian bureau chief, you are uniquely situated to speak
to us about the Canadian elections, which Donald Trump played
a massive, massive role in.
Speaker 4 (13:18):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, including on election day where he had
this tweet where he was suggesting that that Canadians vote
for him, and which seemed a little and odd because
he was not on the ballot anywhere in Canada. But metaphorically,
I think it's it's absolutely true that Trump had a
massive influence. Now I have to say, like Canada, where
the tenth of the size of the US in terms
(13:39):
of population. Pierre Elliot Trudeau, who is the father of
Justin Trudeau and was a Prime minister in the sixties
when he met Richard Nixon, he said, well, for Canadians,
living next to the United States is like living next
to an elephant. However benign the elephant is if it
starts twitching and grunting. We notice in this case, like
imagine living next to an elephant, but it's actually on
crack and it's paging through the tendle. That kind of
(14:03):
has an impact. So Trump is the rampaging elephant of
this this election.
Speaker 2 (14:09):
So, yeah, people have talked about the Canadians feel like
they're living over a crack house. That's what I've heard.
Speaker 4 (14:16):
Yeah, yeah, that's also the betaphor. Yeah yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 (14:19):
In any case, so explain to us just the fundamentals
of how Canadian elections work. You guys have prime ministers,
they are elected for charge. It's more of a coalition government. Explain.
Speaker 4 (14:30):
Yeah, yeah, I know. I mean it's a parliamentary system.
So what it basically means is that the party is
like the House of Representatives, like you have like all
these districts, and whichever party has the most number of seats.
In American terms, it would be as if, like previously
Nancy Pelosi have been Prime Minister and then Johnson, but
it could easily be Keem Jeffries in twenty twenty six.
(14:51):
Now having said that, the other big difference though, is
that it's not a two party system. There are in
fact many parties. The Liberals and Conservators the two big parties,
but there's also the NDP, which is a social democratic party,
the New Democratic Party. There's a block Quebec QUAH, which
only runs in Quebec but is a sovereigntist party, but
it's also center left. And there's a Green Party which
(15:14):
had two seats in a Hasuan. And there's a right
wing party, the People's Party. Now, what happened in this election.
One of the big things that happened was that both
on the left and the right, the votes consolidated. Both
the Liberals and the Conservatives got more votes than they
did last time because people who normally would vote for
the third parties went to the main ones. So you
(15:35):
had like a more polarized electorate.
Speaker 2 (15:37):
In a way, like a real lesson to Democrats. Right,
because in the twenty twenty four cycle we saw that
the Green Party or Just Staying Home or RFK Junior
siphoned off some amount of votes, right.
Speaker 4 (15:52):
Yeah, you know. I mean, I think the analogy would
be that, like in American politics, when the Democrats can
consolidate the left of center vote, they win. When they
when you have people who either vote third party or
don't vote at all, Democrats are in a bad position
often lose. So I think Trump can be credited with
consolidating the liberal vote. Now, prior to like Trump's intervention,
(16:14):
for the last two years, the Conservative Party has been
leading in the polls. The Liberals had a minority government
supported by the NDP. This, as you meant a lot
of very good things because the NDPS wore social democratics,
So the Liberals pushed through things like extending dental care,
so now our healthcare system has a dental care component.
But like a lot of governments, you know, the Liberals
were suffering from post COVID inflation, cost of living, a
(16:39):
housing crisis, and then there's a real desire for change,
and the Conservatives under Pierre Polliever had a really compelling populist,
right wing populist message, which is Canada is broken. They
had a massive lead in the polls of like twenty
point lead over the Liberals, which basically would have meant
that the Conservatives could have formed a majority government, and
(17:00):
I have to say, like, you know, even though I
don't like the Conserna party politically, I think that is
a compelling message in this time this you know, like
it's a change election. We want to do things. And
the Liberals were responding by saying Canada has never been broken,
which to my mind right in the of Hillary Clinton
saying America has always been great, Like it's not a
good response to people wanting change. But in any case,
(17:22):
and Trudeau was unpopular, but then Trump came along and
started saying, like Governor Crudeo, and we want Canada to
be the fifty first state and you'll be a chair state.
And so the election didn't become about, you know, do
we want to change as Canada broke? And it's like
should Canada survive? And for the Liberals were much stronger
on this issue. They replaced Trudeau with Mark Carney, who
(17:44):
had been a very centrist figure who had been in
the Bank of Canada. Even despite his centrism, a lot
of mean I know a lot of people who were
in the MDP, and I think the polls bear this
out went to the Liberals because they realized that now
the main issue is Canada surviving, and the Liberals put
forth a very strong nationalist message, which is a Canada's
a sovereign state and we will stand up for it.
(18:05):
And this will allow the Liberals to get out of
their holding disaster really and they ended up getting like
I think roughly forty four percent of the vote. Now now,
right now, the Liberals are a little bit short of
forming a majority. They are at one hundred and sixty
eight roughly, and they need one hundred and seventy two
to form a majority. But having said that, the votes
(18:25):
are still being counted and the Liberals are picking up
speed because they were very strong in the early voting.
All their voters went in very early selection and those
are the last votes counted, and so there's a real
chance that the Liberals could form a majority. I'll be
a slim one. But if they don't form a majority,
what will happen is that there's still like the NDP
went down from twenty five seats to seven, but they
(18:48):
have enough seats that they can work with the Liberals
and we'll see a return to what we had before,
which is a Liberal minority government with NDP support.
Speaker 2 (18:56):
So I want to talk about Carnie for another minute,
because I think that's a really important point. Trudeau had
become pretty unpopular, and despite the fact that he had
been earlier very popular, he was and he was quite handsome,
which is for a politician sometimes play.
Speaker 4 (19:13):
No no, I mean tu. Trudau is a very effective
campaigner and he got the Liberals one of the strongest
majorities that they've ever had. And Carney is not an
effective campaigner, Yes.
Speaker 2 (19:23):
Right, he's not. But he is, however, the man that
got Britten through Brexit, and is a very good negotiator
and good at negotiating trade, and good at negotiating prickly
financial situations, which Canada finds itself in being the neighbors
who live over the crack house, and who are the
(19:45):
trading partners with America. Right now, there's a percentage of
Canadians maybe twenty thirty percent or boycotting American goods just right,
and you have a lot of Canadian goods that America
used to be a pretty a good trading partner. So
I'm really curious what happened behind the scenes that got
Carneie into this position, because it sounds like there was
(20:07):
a fair amount of smart, real politics going on.
Speaker 4 (20:11):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know. I mean having the Liberal Party.
First of all, it's a very successful political party overall.
In the last in the twentieth century, the Liberals governed
for seventy out of one hundred years, right, so seven
So they're kind of like the natural governing party. And
part of their successes that they pay a lot of
attention to leadership and have Actually, I mean one interesting
(20:32):
thing is they always switched from English to French because
it's a binational country. So actually like regularly for the
last hundred years, First you have a French leader, Crudeo.
Then you bring in an English person Carney. And Carney
was sort of cultivated. He had this background. He was
a central banker, governor both first and back of Canada
and the Bank of England. I think when once they
(20:53):
decided Trudeau had to go, they thought, like bringing him
someone who's like, hadn't been in politics before, has been
a broad mainstream acceptance. As you said, you know those finances,
knows how to deal with crisis. That seems a pretty
compelling figure. And I think that they were right. I mean,
he has negatives because he's not a politician he's actually
I think much less charismatic than Hudo or even I
(21:14):
have to say Polly ever, who's not my cup of tea,
but has been very effective on the campaign trail, you know.
But having said that, I mean, Carney, I think switching
out was a smart move. And because in Canada they
were we hold our things very quickly. They were well,
the leadership convention very quickly. So like I would imagine like, yeah,
Biden had stepped down much earlier, and you know, they
(21:36):
had gone through a proper convention, you know, like you
could have had either hair share or someone or you
would have had someone with legitimacy. I mean, the very
important that they didn't just put this guy in. They
actually had a leadership convention and they picked him. I mean,
I think the Liberals did a lot of very kind
of smart moves, and I think there s at of
national stitches that they put and actually the genuine fear
(21:59):
that people in the cane left had a Polyevra who
did kind of mix our creuppy noises about fake news
and going after the media and other things. I think
that scared a lot of people on the left and
that contributed to consolidating the vote, So liberals like and
I think, you know, they went from being twenty points
down to being ahead because they picked up a lot
of mainly NDP votes, but also a lot of black
(22:21):
quebec Qua votes Green Party votes.
Speaker 2 (22:23):
So Jesse has a question, which is, there's a report
that Carney said to Trump that Canada will sell its
US bonds if Trump doesn't knock off the fifty first
state stuff. Do you think that's real? Do you think
that's true? What do you think of that?
Speaker 4 (22:41):
I don't know how, I mean, it's I don't know this.
I think that. I mean, there's another story which is
sort of circumstantial evidence for which is when Kearney first
came in, he went to the Europe and he met
with the European leaders, and I believe that Japanese Prime
Minister was either went there or on the call. And
you know, Kearney's a guy with a banking background, and
they did reportedly they talked about bonds and you won.
(23:04):
You know, like when Trump did Liberation Day and the tariffs,
one of the big things that happened was that not
just a stock market went down, but people started taking
money off the bonds. Now that the American creasure bonds
are held, you know, not just by private individuals, but
by governments. The Canadian government, European governments, Japan have a
lot of treasury bonds. And we do know for a
(23:24):
fact it is actually an absolute fact that the people
who were take selling treasure bonds after Liberation Day was
not as some people suspected the Chinese, who do you know,
basically kept on holding onto them, but actually Japan, the
Europeans in Canada.
Speaker 2 (23:38):
Right just something.
Speaker 4 (23:39):
So it's whether there was like a coordinated effort or not.
I can't verify that.
Speaker 2 (23:44):
And you'll remember that the bond market was the thing
that finally got Trump to realize that he was running
a losing game. Now that said their.
Speaker 4 (23:53):
Yel because I mean the bond market is very like
you know, people need to understand this. If you sell
bonds then like to make for that, interest rates will
go up. And also the US the amount of money
that the US Treasury has to pay out ADEPT goes
up like bally substantial amounts. So this is really like
the kind of leverage point that could undo the American economy,
(24:14):
oh no question, and arguably the world economy. I mean,
this is serious thoughts.
Speaker 2 (24:19):
Yeah, I mean that seems like a real thing. Now,
I'm wondering if you can explain to us a little
bit about there's still votes coming in. They are counted
in a way that the early votes are counted last.
So the question is what number of seats do you
have to get to in order for the Liberals to win.
Speaker 4 (24:41):
One hundred and seventy two?
Speaker 2 (24:43):
Okay, And I'm curious, like when you look at these
two candidates, what was Carneie's idea? You know, does he
have plans for tariffs? I mean, I feel like he's
a very smart guy and if you were getting he's
like the person you would want to negotiate your tariff issue.
Speaker 4 (25:03):
Yeah. Yeah, I mean I think that the there's a
couple of things that are in play. What is you know,
in the Canada and US have a great agreement and
it's actually a trade agreement that Trump nomin only like negotiated.
I mean when he came in, he tur DAFTA. Then
we have the you know, US, Canada and Mexico. Yeah,
which is you know, after with some changes. Now now
(25:25):
that's coming up again, and I think that the way
that Carnie could go forward, I think the Mexican government
is on board on this is to say, like, well,
let's read to go. Let's just do terrorists under this
ambed and renegotiate it. I think one thing is that
this gives Trump an exit ramp, because I think Trump
has gotten himself into something that he did not fully
understand what's going to happen, and all the trouble that
(25:47):
he's having to deal with now with the stock market
and everything else. And I think that this gives like
a way in which he can kind of say, Phace,
you know, just do like rename it, like you know,
this is a Trump agreement, just the big whatever non
wal tages. I mean, I think that, like, you know,
the auto workers have a legitimate belief that they want
wage guarantees for Mexican workers because the wages of Mexican
(26:10):
workers has actually gone down under free trade and is
now like you know, they're making three dollars an hour
at auto plants, and I think one could legitimately say,
you know, to raise that. Yeah. So I think that
is the way out of this. But I have to
say Trump continues to talk about, you know, Canada has
to be the fifty per state, and I don't know
how that's going to go, except that I think that,
(26:31):
you know, with the election out of the way, I
think everyone across the political speaker in Canada will have
an incentive to unite and is very noticeable that, you know,
some of the leading Conservatives on a provincial level, the
Premier of Ontario are very on board with working with Kearnie.
Speaker 2 (26:49):
From what I understand, what really killed the Conservative Party,
your Republican Party, was that they had people who supported Trump,
so they couldn't distance themselves from him. So that's almost
a little bit of what we could see in the midterms, right.
Speaker 4 (27:05):
Yeah, No, I know absolutely, I think that that was
like a kind of a major problem. I mean, I
think the two pounds is that their main issues were
kind of taken off the table. I mean, there's still
real issues, but also there were people inside their party
that you know, admired Cromp. There are people inside their
party that are very close to jad events. I think
(27:25):
that that gives the Liberals some sort of like advantage. So,
I mean, I do think that like as Trump's you know,
Tariff said, other things happen, there's a kind of backlash
to him, of which this election is one example. But
I think what is already seeing in the United States,
and you know the special elections that have already happened,
including the judgeship in Wisconsin. Yeah, I think that the
(27:46):
Democrats are a pretty good position in terms of their
midterm Do.
Speaker 2 (27:50):
You think Trump's threatening to make Canada a fifty first state?
Do you think there's any logic? Again, I don't want
to prescribe logic done either, why there isn't?
Speaker 4 (28:02):
Yeah, yeah, no, I mean we've had this blog your core, like,
we don't want to be saying loves right.
Speaker 2 (28:07):
We don't want to say my man is playing three
dimensional chess, because he never is. What do you think
of thinking here?
Speaker 4 (28:13):
Is well the thinking or maybe we can invest discribs
unthinking is that Trump doesn't understand how trade works, or
he thinks of trade literally the way people in the
eighteenth century thought of trade. It's mercantilism, right, And in
the eighteenth century, the various kingships that existed did not
believe in free trade. In fact, that's why in terms
(28:33):
of American history, you know, like they had the Stamp
Act and weren't allowing Americans to buy Dutch tea. The
idea was that you would keep the wealth within the
country or within the empire, not trade with others, because
that means you'd be losing money. And the only way
you could expand was through imperialism by conquering other countries.
And so the British and the French and the Dutch
all did this. They just like expanded and had wars
(28:55):
and fought. And then you know, people came on and said, like,
you know, like this is kind of stupid, Like we
were just trading with each other. We don't have to
cut you conquer each other, right, And in the American Revolution,
you know, it was really fought on this free trade
issue where the Americans thought like, well, it's stupid that
we can't trade with the Dutch. You know, we want
to buy Dutch tea, you know, like we don't want
to be forged to buy the English tea. Now the
(29:17):
Trump thinks, but Trump thinks in this eighty such a way.
He thinks that if the United States is buying products
from Canada, buying Timber, America is giving money to Canada,
and Bunny is leaving the country, right. And this is
like Trump's on a very primarial level. This is the
way he does all his own business deals and why
he's a bad businessman because he could not understand the
(29:37):
idea of like reciprocity and you know, you're exchanging one
thing for another for virtual benefit. And he thought like
someone is trying to screw someone in a trade. So
he thinks like, if Canada and the US are trading,
the US is losing something, whereas if Canada and the
US are one, then America is bigger, and on a
more even primitive level, Like I think he thinks like
a child, and he's like thinking, Okay, if there's the
(29:59):
US and Canada and land, like will be the biggest
thing on the map, right, we'll be here everyone else.
So I honestly think that the thinking here is this
kind of primitive tell thinking. And it's also this kind
of older economic way of thinking. I says, why he
praises mcimney all the time, right, like it is that
sort of you know, nineteenth century imperialism of which I
(30:21):
hope that humanity grown.
Speaker 2 (30:23):
Thank you, Thank you jet here, thank you all.
Speaker 4 (30:26):
It's great to be on the progo.
Speaker 2 (30:29):
Peter Goodman is a reporter at The New York Times
and the author of How the World Ran Out of
Everything Inside the global supply chain. Welcome to fast Politics, Peter.
Speaker 5 (30:41):
Great to be back with you, miy.
Speaker 2 (30:43):
We are at the beginning I think of a supply
chain crisis, not so dissimilar from COVID. So talk us
through what's happening right now.
Speaker 5 (30:52):
Yes, what's happening right now is lots of companies that
have depended upon supply chains that stretch across the Pacific
Ocean have quite understandably said, we don't feel like paying
one hundred and forty five percent extra for all the
stuff we're bringing in from China. Maybe we'll just hold
on with that. But it's not so obvious where else
they can go, because a lot of companies have shifted
(31:14):
production from China to places like Cambodia, Vietnam, India, other
countries to try to avoid previous tariffs. As we speak,
we're in this ninety day pause on these extraordinary towers
in some of those countries. But there's so much uncertainty
about the rules that will apply that a lot of
companies have said, let's just maybe stash our stuff in
(31:35):
a warehouse somewhere on the other side of Pacific and
wait and hope that things get better. And as a result,
we've got literally zero container ships at the Port of
Seattle Tacoba, which is one of the biggest ports on
the West Coast. We've got sharp traffic projected down at
La Long Beach. These are the two ports in south
(31:57):
of California that are together, they're the gateway for forty
percent of all imported stuff reaching the United States by
container vessels. And the head of that of the La
Porta Soroka is now out there saying we really don't
know what's going to happen. We got the dock workers
union saying they're really worried. So you got all these
factors that say less stuff coming in.
Speaker 2 (32:19):
So this is all about unintended consequences here, Like the
tariff story, is about this idea that there are intented consequences. Right,
Trump wants to ontour manufacturing. I'm not sure how making
how imposing these steep tariffs can will countries to build
factories to ontour manufacturing. You know, this was the kind
(32:41):
of thing that needed to be done with the scalpel,
not a sledgehammer. But I want you to sort of
explain to us why this uncertainty is going to cause
problems for the supply chain, So people are not importing
to these you'res not seeing port ships because they're not importing.
Just go downstream of that, right, So we're gonna have
(33:02):
dock workers drivers like, talk to me sort of what
this looks like.
Speaker 5 (33:06):
Sure, So if there's less stuff crossing the Pacific headed
for these giant ports or on the East coast, you know,
for that matter, because stuff comes in from India and
even in some cases from the East as that is,
fewer containers to lift off of container ships and onto
the shore by dock workers, who are some of the
most highly paid and also militant workers in the American
(33:28):
labor world. Then very unorganized truckers who are really at
the mercy of swings in the global economy. Less stuff,
less work for truck drivers. You're gonna have a lot
of people just sitting around waiting and hoping that cargo
materializes and on it goes, you know, people working in warehouses,
and eventually retailers are likely to be hit because if
(33:50):
there's less stuff coming in, there's less stuff to move
and less stuff to sell.
Speaker 2 (33:53):
And but retailers are going to be hit with less
stuff to sell. But ultimately consumers are going to bear
the brunt. Explain to us how that goes.
Speaker 5 (34:02):
I mean, if you're going off to Walmart or Target
with the expectation that these operations are enormous, it's just
like a magic trick. They never run out of anything.
They've got seventeen different choices for whatever product is we're
looking for. You could discover that things are back ordered,
the shelves are empty. And the part of this that
always bears discussing is there are lots of monopoly components
(34:26):
of these supply chains. If there's a lot of competition,
then there's a chance that somebody steps in to replace
whatever it is that you're looking for, and that can
keep prices lower. If you're a company that's got a
dominant hole on your industry, then this could be fantastic
for you.
Speaker 2 (34:45):
Give me an example of this.
Speaker 5 (34:47):
I mean beef. You know there's four companies in the
United States control eighty five percent of the beef supply.
We saw this during the pandemic wild yeah, I mean
that's beyond the robber barondage, right, I mean, four companies
control eighty five percent of the beef supply, and there's
engineered scarcity there. They're all sorts of lawsuits alleging that
these four companies essentially conspire they stop their purchases when
(35:11):
supplies are building up too high, precisely so you generate
panic buying. I mean the same thing that we saw,
you know, in terms of discussing av and flu in
terms of the egg supply terms out there's only a
couple compries that dominate those those industries.
Speaker 2 (35:24):
This sounds a lot like opek to May, where the
oil companies got together to inflate the price of gasoline.
Speaker 5 (35:32):
Is that a similar This is what we saw during
the pandemic, right, so we saw product shortages that were
caused by the chaos and disruption of the pandemic itself.
It's not like there was some grand conspiracy by monopolism, No, no,
disappear but once.
Speaker 2 (35:47):
But it is a grand conspiracy by monopolies to keep
prices inflated in a way that they wouldn't otherwise be.
Speaker 5 (35:55):
I mean the shipping industry, right Like, every time there's
a hit to the supply in somewhere, we hear, oh
this is terrible for the global container industry. Oh my goodness,
the hooties are opening fire on from Yemen, you know,
on ships that are headed to the Red Sea. This
is such a disaster for the shipping industry because now
instead of going through the Red Sea to get from
(36:16):
Asia to Europe, they got to go the long way
around Africa. Guess what, you know, shipping prices go four
hundred percent And that's everywhere, right because there's three alliances.
Why not, there's three alliances to control ninety percent of
the traffic across the Pacific. So if a whole bunch
of ships are suddenly deployed to go the long way
around Africa instead of through the Red Sea, that's an
opportunity to rip your face off in terms of pricing.
(36:39):
And yeah, we're all paying for that in terms of
higher costs. We saw this during the pandemic, where we
were told, oh, there's all this chaos, and that's why
the price of moving a shipping container from China to
the West coast of the United States goes up from
something like twenty five hundred dollars to north of twenty
five thousand dollars. We're talking tenfold increase in this space
(37:00):
of six months. And people said, well, this is just
you know, terrible for the shipping industry record profits. I mean,
we're talking like record profits.
Speaker 2 (37:08):
So talk to me about diapers.
Speaker 5 (37:10):
Diapers are a product that, despite their sheer simplicity, are
actually constructed of lots of different pieces. Can't remember the
exact number. It's like dozens of parts drawn from around
the world. You run out of one of them somewhere,
you can't make a diaper. You know, think about the
computer chip and cars during the pandemic. Right, there's thirty
(37:31):
thousand parts in a car. If you run out of
one component of a computer chip, you can make the
rest of the car. As you know, Ford at one
point was making the F one fifty, its most popular
pickup truck, and then parking them across the street from
Henry Ford Elementary School in the shadow of Ford's corporate
headquarters because they couldn't get enough chips. You know, the
(37:52):
diaper gets affected. We saw during the pandemic that you know,
we've ran out of infant formula because there's one company
that has a dominant hold on that market in the
United States. And if there's any disruption anywhere, we don't
know where the problems will pop up where they will,
but they'll pop up somewhere.
Speaker 2 (38:10):
Right. It's a really good point, and you know, you
can't just skip out on diapers, right, You're gonna need diapers.
Speaker 5 (38:16):
And you're gonna pay.
Speaker 2 (38:17):
You're gonna pay.
Speaker 5 (38:18):
Yeah, that's a pricing power moment, right because if I mean,
if you've got a kid in the house who needs
diapers and the word gets out that there could be
a shortage, that's something you'll pay. I mean, think about
the toilet paper shortage, right, I mean, those are the
during the pandemic. I remember I was living in London,
you know, having to go down to schmooze, the guy
who talked to the truckers, you know, who could tell
(38:39):
me like what times the toilet paper show up. You know,
it could be like that with diapers. If you need them,
you'll do whatever it takes to get them. And don't
think that companies don't know that in terms of pricing.
Speaker 2 (38:50):
Right, like right now, there's this ninety day pause, which
means that nobody knows anything. There's no stability. Trump says
ninety deals in ninety days, or that was Navarro. We
have yet to see a single deal. May We've heard
like whispers of talks of whatever. It just seems like
with the dock numbers, we are careening towards the same
(39:11):
thing that happened during COVID, careening towards a scarcity event.
Speaker 5 (39:15):
It's a similar dynamic. And one of the things that
we learned during COVID is that fear of shortages create shortages, right.
I mean, that's what happened toilet Peper. We didn't actually
run out of stuff to make toilet paper with. We
got a surplus of people saying, oh my god, I
better go buy some toilet paper. And that can happen
not just a household level, but at the retail level, right.
I mean, if again, your Amazon, your Target, your Walmart,
(39:38):
you have enormous resources around the globe, You're able to
charter your own container ships if you need to, and
you want to get out in front of this as
they're doing, we could wake up and discover that warehouses
for a select handful of companies that are big enough
have got all the stuff. Smaller players have got nothing. Meanwhile,
households run out to buy as much stuff as they
(40:00):
can because they're nervous, and that's how we end up
in shortages. There's a whole other scenario, by the way,
that nobody talks about because we're too consumed with what's
actually happening. If Trump tomorrow said, oh, I'm really worried
about this. Okay, I'm lifting all the tariffs. Let's just
go back to how it was now predicting this, not
saying that's how it is. That would be the COVID scenario,
(40:21):
and we would get the shortages because what happened in
COVID was first factories in places like China and around
the world were disrupted and we made less stuff. Then
it turned out we wildly we I say, the economists, businesses,
they wildly miscalculated the impacts of this supply chain hit.
(40:41):
So they assumed, Okay, we're locked down, can't go to work,
so we don't need stuff. This is going to be
a basic economic downturn where the demand for everything goes down. Well,
that was wildly wrong. So we're not going to the gym,
but we're now we're working out at home. We need pelotons.
Our kids aren't going to school still now we're cooking
twenty seven meals for them at home, so now we
(41:02):
need more kitchen supply. Are they're stuck in the backyard
or we're buying trampolines and all this stuff comes in
from China. Once factories turned back on the container shipping industry,
which had actually set aside a lot of ships they
were idling in warm waters places like Greece, they said,
oh my goodness, there's actually more demand for stuff than ever.
(41:23):
And then we got what people may remember, these crazy
floating traffic jams off the ports of La Long Beach,
where you had seventy five ships circling around for weeks
at a time waiting for a chance to dock because
they all came at once. And that's what could happen here.
Whenever this ends, we're going to get a surge of
(41:43):
orders from wherever it can produce them, and that could
swamp the gears where we get the reverse, like instead
of worrying about there's no ships in Seattle, there's no
ships in La we can get all the ships coming
at once. The dock workers can only handle so many.
We can run out of truck drivers, which is in truth,
we just downgraded truck driving to such a degree at
any time people have to go look for another job,
and then they get one, they don't like to go
(42:04):
back to it. That's how we got the worst of
the shortages, and that could very much be ahead of us.
Speaker 2 (42:11):
So let's talk this through for a second, because I
remember during the COVID pandemic, we saw like lines of
ships at different ports, and you know, like hundreds of
ships at ports, and so you think that's sort of
the scenario we're looking at.
Speaker 5 (42:29):
I think for now, we're looking at the reverse of that, right,
we're looking at futures.
Speaker 2 (42:34):
I mean, eventually.
Speaker 5 (42:35):
But if it turns it back, I think whenever. I mean, okay,
if we take as a given that this policy is
designed to have us wean our dependence on long supply
chains and span across oceans, that I guess we'll just
start making everything in the US and everything will be fun.
No one believes that this can happen anytime soon. So
(42:55):
at some point there's going to be some policy change
that will prompt us to go back, maybe not China,
maybe back to factors in Vietnam and Cambodia and other
parts of Southeast Asia, maybe India. And whenever there's enough
certainty that the big retailers say okay, I get it now,
I get where it's economical for me to source my stuff,
(43:17):
there will be a surge of orders to replenish inventory
and that is likely to lead to traffic jams somewhere.
Speaker 2 (43:25):
Yes, so I wonder if we could talk about Carolyne
Levitt for a minute, the White House Press secretary. Today,
Amazon decided, and it is actually kind of brilliant to
publish exactly what these tariffs will cost. Right, so you
go on your Amazon page to buy a toothbrush, it
(43:48):
says this toothbrush was seven dollars. It'll now be ten dollars,
you know, or whatever because of a three dollars ra
or whatever. So uh, reporter, Amazon will soon display a
number next to the product, the price of each product
plus the amount that the Trump tariff is adding. Levitt
(44:09):
responds as a hostile and political act by Amazon, discuss.
Speaker 5 (44:14):
The whole Trump fantasy. Here is somebody else is going
to pay for this, not American consumers. Now there's a
lot to unpack here, right, because Amazon is reminding the
customer that if you increase the costs of the stuff
that we buy from far away to serve you, we
will pass on those costs to you. However, we have
no idea what Amazon's margins are on any particular product.
(44:38):
We don't know how much competition there is, we don't
know to what degree Amazon is availing itself of consumer
anxiety and now stoking consumer anxiety to justify price increases.
I mean, look again, think back to eggs, a thing
that we've all talked about to bet we know that
there's legitimate reason to think that the price of egg
should go up when there's avian flu, right, know that,
(45:00):
and when there's inflation in general, how much, Well, we
don't know, because there's a couple of companies that dominate
the egg business. And any time we go to the
supermarket and think, boy, I better buy some more eggs.
You know, I noticed the shelves are empty. All these
people are jogging around parts of the day, they are
no eggs at all. I better. That is pricing power,
(45:21):
and Amazon certainly has pricing power as a dominant retailer.
So the White House is not crazy to say there's
a stunt connected to this. Amazon is not crazy to
say you stick one hundred and forty five percent terrify
on Chinese goods. That's going to hit a lot of
stuff that you used to buying from Amazon. And you know,
I think it's fair to say that Jeff Bezos's enterprise
(45:43):
is not charitable we're going to look to take it
out of you, customer.
Speaker 2 (45:47):
So it is a really good point, right, which is
that they don't need to raise their prices, but they
are going to raise their prices, and we don't really
know what their markups are. So it's not like they're saying,
we buy this from China for twenty five cents and
we are paying a seventy five percent of tariff. Right,
(46:07):
We're not really seeing what the tariff is. We're seeing
what the tariff number is on the final price.
Speaker 5 (46:13):
This is premised on if you assume that our business
is entirely about satisfying consumer interest for low prices, and
our margins are tiny and fair, and we don't engage
in any predatory behavior, so our prices are to imagine
perfect representation of Milton Friedman's market economy, then sure you
(46:36):
stick us with some tariff that gets passed on to
the consumer pool. We know that it's a lot messier
than that.
Speaker 2 (46:41):
Yeah, really good point. But it is this Carolyn Levit comment.
It does I find it interesting they really are offended
by the idea that Amazon would transmit what they're doing, right.
I mean, ultimately that seems like the cardinals in here
is not up the goods to the American people.
Speaker 5 (47:02):
Wait, counter programming, right like in this reality show Presidency,
it's all about I'm working to bring jobs back to America.
You know, some days they say it's impossible to deal
with inflation, but most of the time they say, you know,
I mean, they certainly are aware that inflation seems to
be how Trump came back to the White House, and
they don't like the idea that one of the richest
(47:24):
most powerful people on a guy, by the way, they
thought they'd sort of muzzled with the whole fenestration of
the Washington Posts ed operation is now out there swinging
saying no, let me talk directly to your constituents, and
now I've got something to say, and you're jacking up
their prices. Clearly that's not part of the programming that
the White House would like to put out there.
Speaker 2 (47:45):
Yeah. Pretty incredible, I mean, and a really good point.
We will see how this plays out. Thank you, Thank you, Peter,
thank you, Molly.
Speaker 3 (47:56):
No moment, Jesse Cannon, Mollie, this is so just cruel,
engross And I know that that's the point, but I
know a lot of people whose lives have been saved
by the NARCAN program in New York, and I've seen it.
It's a miracle what it does for giving people a
(48:17):
second chance when they're at a bad place in their life.
And so a person who is a heroinaut for twelve
years named RFK Junior, who runs HHS, decides, Eh, we
can get rid of it.
Speaker 2 (48:28):
This is stripping the federal government. RFK Junior is nhsass
to take it apart, just like Linda McMahon is in
the Department of Education, to take the Department of Education apart.
This is Project twenty twenty five, dis assembling the federal government,
selling it for parts, making the government so small that
(48:48):
it doesn't do anything for people. That is the goal here.
So you can expect that RFK Junior is going to
do a ton of things like this. But part of
it is also he does not care about public health.
This is just a stick. He cares about power. This
is his last chance to get into power, and that's
what we're doing here. This has nothing to do with
(49:10):
public health. Personally, I think this is bad, but I
think there's one hundred other things you could point to
that are this bad or worse. That's it for this
episode of Fast Politics. Tune in every Monday, Wednesday, Thursday
and Saturday to hear the best minds and politics make
(49:31):
sense of all this chaos. If you enjoy this podcast,
please send it to a friend and keep the conversation going.
Thanks for listening.
Hi, I'm Molly John Fast and this is Fast Politics,
where we discussed the top political headlines with some of
today's best minds and a p r.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
Ipoll says fifty two percent of Americans see Trump as
a dangerous dictator whose power should be limited before he
destroys American democracy. Where is the line? We have such
a great show for you today. The Nation's cheat here
stops by to talk to us about the Canadian election
and what it means for Trump's rule of America. Then
(00:34):
we'll talk to New York Times his own Peter S.
Goodman about what the empty shipping containers coming into America's
ports means for it the shelves in your local grocery store.
But first the news.
Speaker 3 (00:49):
Somalie, there's a thing with Trump that things are always on,
then they're off again. They're on, they're off again. This morning,
Caroline Levitt was throwing a major major about the idea
of Amazon putting the prices of tariffs on things. Now
Amazon is denying they're going to do it, even though
it was it a punch bowl newsletter that was sponsored
(01:11):
by Amazon.
Speaker 2 (01:12):
Amazon. I watched the press conference this morning. It actually
is a smart idea on the part of Amazon to
point out how much tariffs are costing the consumer. It
got Carolyn Levitt really miffed, It got Donald Trump furious. Look,
Jeff Bezos finds himself in a bad position, despite the
(01:32):
fact that he has a good zillion dollars. No one
wants to see their company in decline. Much of what
is available on Amazon is cheap and made in China. Ergo,
there is every reason in the world why Bezos is
not happy with these tariffs.
Speaker 4 (01:54):
And this was I.
Speaker 2 (01:55):
Think a pretty effective pushback. Made Trump fury again. I
think really important to remember Jeff Bezos is now a
captured billionaire. He's like these law firms. He is under capture.
He has made a deal with Trump, he has sucked
up to Trump, and now he serves at the pleasure
of Donald Trump. So despite the fact that he has
(02:17):
billions of dollars and is super wealthy and powerful, he
is ultimately trying not to get regulated out of existence
by Donald Trump. Now is this stupid? Yes? Could he
stand up to Trump? Absolutely? Would Trump be able to
regulate him out of existence? It would take a lot
of time and a lot of confidence to things that
(02:37):
Donald Trump doesn't have a huge supply. So you see,
it's a real example of someone who who has created
the capture that they are involved in, and Bezos is
now perhaps cowering, perhaps pushing back. We'll see how this
plays out, but I think it's important to remember these
tariffs are bad for business, and Bezos is just one
(03:00):
of the many, many, many, many business owners who are
about to really get fucked by these one hundred and
forty five percent tariffs. So you'll see more of this.
And again, Bezos has created this capture for himself and
now he is in a possible situation that he put
himself in, and quite frankly, it's well deserved.
Speaker 3 (03:20):
We saw similar behavior with Paramount this week, and when
the statement on sixty minutes is that they are afraid
of their.
Speaker 2 (03:27):
Merger behavior to go through.
Speaker 3 (03:29):
Yeah, and I think Bezos has much more power here
because that could bring down Trump's approval real fast.
Speaker 2 (03:36):
I mean, the reality is Trump's approval is terrible, right.
His approval is now down to what it was in
the first term, that sort of dregs approval. We've seen
even just from the universities that Harvard is now in
a much better position than Columbia is, where Columbia is
trying to make these deals. They have no one to
(03:57):
protect them. Trump World keeps going back on the deals,
and at least Columbia has the courts to protect them.
You're almost better off going into a court fight with
Donald Trump then rolling over and letting him do whatever
he wants.
Speaker 3 (04:11):
Agreed. Well, speaking of rolling over and doing whatever he wants,
he's issuing executive orders, ramping up America's police state.
Speaker 2 (04:19):
Yeah. So again, there is a headline here that's very scary,
and it's certainly possible that something very scary will happen here.
But it's also I think really important to remember that
executive orders are the least legally binding thing that the
president can do, and they keep you know, he's not
(04:39):
passing a law, and in fact, he has passed the
least laws of any president at this point. You know,
Executive orders are like just there vibes. Okay, there are
things that he feels like, there are things he wants
to do. These are things that are going to die
in court, okay, Like so many of Trump's ideas. Does
(04:59):
Trump want to be an autocrat? Yes? Does the Supreme
Court want him to be? I think seven of them
don't Alito and Thomas forget it. They'll go with whatever.
But are his instincts scary and terrible. Yes. By the way,
he's done executive orders that have targeted Mark Elias. My
man has done a ton of executive orders about everything
(05:23):
and everyone. So I don't think that we should take
them so seriously at this point. Yes, he would love
to do this. Is he going to be able to
do it? Absolutely not. The thing that is worth remembering
is that Pam Bondy is going along with a lot
of stuff that she knows is not legal, that she
knows is not going to go anywhere. And this is
(05:44):
like another example of someone who knows better just destroying
themselves for Trump because he wants them to.
Speaker 3 (05:51):
Yeah. Another thing that they're trying to do to consolidate
and protect powers that they hope will stay on their
side is they are blocking inquiries into the Trump administration
and signal scandal.
Speaker 2 (06:04):
Yeah. So look again, you had Bondy trying to take
away protections for journalists from being subpoena. They don't want
you to know what they're doing, which is a pretty
good sign they're not doing good stuff. Right If they
wanted you to know what they were doing, they wouldn't
be constantly trying to office scate. So signal gate is
(06:31):
super embarrassing for Republicans. Trump did not fire heg set
By the way, there's so much more coming on the
heag sets stuff. Right, we have an office that is
at war with each other. There's just going to be
more and more embarrassing stuff. Everyone in the world out
of that office is leaking. I think trying to cover
(06:52):
up signal gate is going to be the least of
their problems. And again this is example. Trump has decided
that if he fires heg set he'll look stupid, so
he doesn't want to fire hegsas, so he's doing everything
he can to keep the guy on. But there's just
no way this doesn't continually snowball into more and more.
And last week we saw another story about a different
(07:14):
signal chat with the wife and the brother. Then we
saw a story about heg Seth having a makeup studio
built that is very embarrassing. And we're just seeing trickles
of embarrassing stories. And you know why, because you know,
he has an organization and everyone in there hates each
other and they're just leaking. Like a said, so I
(07:35):
think you'll see more of it, and I think you'll
see more Republicans trying to cover it for it. And
here's the thing. Donald Trump could end this tomorrow just
by firing Pete Hegsath. But he won't. And so many
of the things we've talked about today. Donald Trump could
end tomorrow the trade war. He could say no more
trade war, that was a mistake, Let's just go back
to normal, and it would end tomorrow. They're not going
(07:57):
to onshore manufacturing by making things more expensive. That's not
how that works. We saw Howard Lutinx today giving an
interview and he said, and I think this is really important,
he said, So gave an interview today and it was
like very wilber Ross. He said, c NBC. Remember there
has been a ton of the Trump administration trying to
(08:18):
go out and calm the markets. You had Treasury Secretary
Beson yesterday or Monday giving a talk say that he's
got all these trade deals in the hopper. By the way,
we were told by Peter and Navarro there would be
trade deals in ninety days. We're like two and a
half weeks into this and we have yet to have
a trade deal. China has said there are nowhere near
(08:41):
a trade deal. Japan no trade deal, India no trade deal.
But I want to talk about this interview Lutnik on
CNBC trying to make everyone feel better. CNBC says if
a company were to say we're raising prices because of tariffs,
is that a hostile act? And Lutinix says, I think
if you go out of your way to try to
make it seem like your price has changed, when it's nonsense.
(09:04):
A ten percent tariff is not going to change virtually
any price, and in fact, a ten percent tariff means
you're going to pay ten percent more good stuff.
Speaker 3 (09:17):
Speaking of Trump's authoritarian reaches, a top White House aid
by the name of Stephen Miller says that JB. Pritzker
calling for protests could be construed as inciting violence.
Speaker 2 (09:29):
Sure, so here's an interesting thing. Pritzker has been a
very strong speaker lately. He is the governor of Illinois,
but he's also the scion of the Pritzker family. The
Pritzker family is a wildly wealthy, deeply liberal, very philanthropic,
and pretty great family filled with a lot of really
(09:54):
smart people who give a lot of money to really
good stuff. So basically the opposite of elo. You know
how Elon is trying to strip the federal government. So,
and Pritzker has been really strong about criticizing Trump. Part
of that is because he has political aspirations, but part
of that is because he does not. He's not a coward. Now,
is he not a coward because he has billions of
(10:16):
dollars to back them up? Maybe, but it doesn't matter.
I mean, Jeff Bezos seems pretty cowardly, and he has
more money than Pritzker, So I'm not going to write
off his bravery so quickly. I wonder if Steven Miller
understands what he's opening the door to here. Now, want
(10:36):
you to think back to last week part of why
Trump stopped this crazy tariff thing or paused it. It
will come back like the gun on the wall in
the play in the third act. Right, this trade war
is still very much going to happen to us. But
I want to talk about this idea that Trump know,
Trump does not want to become an emerging market, right,
(11:00):
he understands, But I mean that's the real that's sort
of the real red lawne here, is that he understands
that the dollar is a safe haven, right, and he
does not want to have capital flight because if they
have capital flight, it means that our debt will become
so expensive that it will be almost impossible to service it.
And we have so much debt in this country, much
(11:22):
of which is held by the Chinese, and as the
dollar gets more expensive, we will have more trouble servicing
our debt. So what is happening here? So if Stephen
Miller were to go after JP Pritzker, that would be
real banana of public stuff, right, arresting a billionaire because
you're mad that he said something. Pritzker said he wanted
(11:44):
mass protests. Stephen Miller says it could be construed as
inciting violence. So if Stephen Miller is able to will
a scenario where they start arresting the governor of the
state of Illinois, who happens to be a left leaning billionaire,
you're going to see some capital fucking flight, man, and
(12:05):
you're going to see a lot of constitutional crisis, is screaming,
and a lot of stuff. So do I think Stephen
Miller is crazy enough to do that? There is no
I mean, I think Steven Miller is just waiting for
the chance, but you are opening the door to the
kind of market cratering, the kind of bond sell off
(12:27):
that I don't think anyone is ready for. And by
the way, we're already heading into very likely a stagflationary
period because of the trade war. I'm not sure that
Stephen Miller wants more than that to happen. Get here
(12:48):
is a contributor to the nation and the host of
the time of Monsters. Welcome back to Fast Politics.
Speaker 4 (12:57):
Cheat, good to be on the program.
Speaker 2 (13:00):
You are a Canadian bureau chief here Fast Politics, and
as Canadian bureau chief, you are uniquely situated to speak
to us about the Canadian elections, which Donald Trump played
a massive, massive role in.
Speaker 4 (13:18):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, including on election day where he had
this tweet where he was suggesting that that Canadians vote
for him, and which seemed a little and odd because
he was not on the ballot anywhere in Canada. But metaphorically,
I think it's it's absolutely true that Trump had a
massive influence. Now I have to say, like Canada, where
the tenth of the size of the US in terms
(13:39):
of population. Pierre Elliot Trudeau, who is the father of
Justin Trudeau and was a Prime minister in the sixties
when he met Richard Nixon, he said, well, for Canadians,
living next to the United States is like living next
to an elephant. However benign the elephant is if it
starts twitching and grunting. We notice in this case, like
imagine living next to an elephant, but it's actually on
crack and it's paging through the tendle. That kind of
(14:03):
has an impact. So Trump is the rampaging elephant of
this this election.
Speaker 2 (14:09):
So, yeah, people have talked about the Canadians feel like
they're living over a crack house. That's what I've heard.
Speaker 4 (14:16):
Yeah, yeah, that's also the betaphor. Yeah yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 (14:19):
In any case, so explain to us just the fundamentals
of how Canadian elections work. You guys have prime ministers,
they are elected for charge. It's more of a coalition government. Explain.
Speaker 4 (14:30):
Yeah, yeah, I know. I mean it's a parliamentary system.
So what it basically means is that the party is
like the House of Representatives, like you have like all
these districts, and whichever party has the most number of seats.
In American terms, it would be as if, like previously
Nancy Pelosi have been Prime Minister and then Johnson, but
it could easily be Keem Jeffries in twenty twenty six.
(14:51):
Now having said that, the other big difference though, is
that it's not a two party system. There are in
fact many parties. The Liberals and Conservators the two big parties,
but there's also the NDP, which is a social democratic party,
the New Democratic Party. There's a block Quebec QUAH, which
only runs in Quebec but is a sovereigntist party, but
it's also center left. And there's a Green Party which
(15:14):
had two seats in a Hasuan. And there's a right
wing party, the People's Party. Now, what happened in this election.
One of the big things that happened was that both
on the left and the right, the votes consolidated. Both
the Liberals and the Conservatives got more votes than they
did last time because people who normally would vote for
the third parties went to the main ones. So you
(15:35):
had like a more polarized electorate.
Speaker 2 (15:37):
In a way, like a real lesson to Democrats. Right,
because in the twenty twenty four cycle we saw that
the Green Party or Just Staying Home or RFK Junior
siphoned off some amount of votes, right.
Speaker 4 (15:52):
Yeah, you know. I mean, I think the analogy would
be that, like in American politics, when the Democrats can
consolidate the left of center vote, they win. When they
when you have people who either vote third party or
don't vote at all, Democrats are in a bad position
often lose. So I think Trump can be credited with
consolidating the liberal vote. Now, prior to like Trump's intervention,
(16:14):
for the last two years, the Conservative Party has been
leading in the polls. The Liberals had a minority government
supported by the NDP. This, as you meant a lot
of very good things because the NDPS wore social democratics,
So the Liberals pushed through things like extending dental care,
so now our healthcare system has a dental care component.
But like a lot of governments, you know, the Liberals
were suffering from post COVID inflation, cost of living, a
(16:39):
housing crisis, and then there's a real desire for change,
and the Conservatives under Pierre Polliever had a really compelling populist,
right wing populist message, which is Canada is broken. They
had a massive lead in the polls of like twenty
point lead over the Liberals, which basically would have meant
that the Conservatives could have formed a majority government, and
(17:00):
I have to say, like, you know, even though I
don't like the Conserna party politically, I think that is
a compelling message in this time this you know, like
it's a change election. We want to do things. And
the Liberals were responding by saying Canada has never been broken,
which to my mind right in the of Hillary Clinton
saying America has always been great, Like it's not a
good response to people wanting change. But in any case,
(17:22):
and Trudeau was unpopular, but then Trump came along and
started saying, like Governor Crudeo, and we want Canada to
be the fifty first state and you'll be a chair state.
And so the election didn't become about, you know, do
we want to change as Canada broke? And it's like
should Canada survive? And for the Liberals were much stronger
on this issue. They replaced Trudeau with Mark Carney, who
(17:44):
had been a very centrist figure who had been in
the Bank of Canada. Even despite his centrism, a lot
of mean I know a lot of people who were
in the MDP, and I think the polls bear this
out went to the Liberals because they realized that now
the main issue is Canada surviving, and the Liberals put
forth a very strong nationalist message, which is a Canada's
a sovereign state and we will stand up for it.
(18:05):
And this will allow the Liberals to get out of
their holding disaster really and they ended up getting like
I think roughly forty four percent of the vote. Now now,
right now, the Liberals are a little bit short of
forming a majority. They are at one hundred and sixty
eight roughly, and they need one hundred and seventy two
to form a majority. But having said that, the votes
(18:25):
are still being counted and the Liberals are picking up
speed because they were very strong in the early voting.
All their voters went in very early selection and those
are the last votes counted, and so there's a real
chance that the Liberals could form a majority. I'll be
a slim one. But if they don't form a majority,
what will happen is that there's still like the NDP
went down from twenty five seats to seven, but they
(18:48):
have enough seats that they can work with the Liberals
and we'll see a return to what we had before,
which is a Liberal minority government with NDP support.
Speaker 2 (18:56):
So I want to talk about Carnie for another minute,
because I think that's a really important point. Trudeau had
become pretty unpopular, and despite the fact that he had
been earlier very popular, he was and he was quite handsome,
which is for a politician sometimes play.
Speaker 4 (19:13):
No no, I mean tu. Trudau is a very effective
campaigner and he got the Liberals one of the strongest
majorities that they've ever had. And Carney is not an
effective campaigner, Yes.
Speaker 2 (19:23):
Right, he's not. But he is, however, the man that
got Britten through Brexit, and is a very good negotiator
and good at negotiating trade, and good at negotiating prickly
financial situations, which Canada finds itself in being the neighbors
who live over the crack house, and who are the
(19:45):
trading partners with America. Right now, there's a percentage of
Canadians maybe twenty thirty percent or boycotting American goods just right,
and you have a lot of Canadian goods that America
used to be a pretty a good trading partner. So
I'm really curious what happened behind the scenes that got
Carneie into this position, because it sounds like there was
(20:07):
a fair amount of smart, real politics going on.
Speaker 4 (20:11):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know. I mean having the Liberal Party.
First of all, it's a very successful political party overall.
In the last in the twentieth century, the Liberals governed
for seventy out of one hundred years, right, so seven
So they're kind of like the natural governing party. And
part of their successes that they pay a lot of
attention to leadership and have Actually, I mean one interesting
(20:32):
thing is they always switched from English to French because
it's a binational country. So actually like regularly for the
last hundred years, First you have a French leader, Crudeo.
Then you bring in an English person Carney. And Carney
was sort of cultivated. He had this background. He was
a central banker, governor both first and back of Canada
and the Bank of England. I think when once they
(20:53):
decided Trudeau had to go, they thought, like bringing him
someone who's like, hadn't been in politics before, has been
a broad mainstream acceptance. As you said, you know those finances,
knows how to deal with crisis. That seems a pretty
compelling figure. And I think that they were right. I mean,
he has negatives because he's not a politician he's actually
I think much less charismatic than Hudo or even I
(21:14):
have to say Polly ever, who's not my cup of tea,
but has been very effective on the campaign trail, you know.
But having said that, I mean, Carney, I think switching
out was a smart move. And because in Canada they
were we hold our things very quickly. They were well,
the leadership convention very quickly. So like I would imagine like, yeah,
Biden had stepped down much earlier, and you know, they
(21:36):
had gone through a proper convention, you know, like you
could have had either hair share or someone or you
would have had someone with legitimacy. I mean, the very
important that they didn't just put this guy in. They
actually had a leadership convention and they picked him. I mean,
I think the Liberals did a lot of very kind
of smart moves, and I think there s at of
national stitches that they put and actually the genuine fear
(21:59):
that people in the cane left had a Polyevra who
did kind of mix our creuppy noises about fake news
and going after the media and other things. I think
that scared a lot of people on the left and
that contributed to consolidating the vote, So liberals like and
I think, you know, they went from being twenty points
down to being ahead because they picked up a lot
of mainly NDP votes, but also a lot of black
(22:21):
quebec Qua votes Green Party votes.
Speaker 2 (22:23):
So Jesse has a question, which is, there's a report
that Carney said to Trump that Canada will sell its
US bonds if Trump doesn't knock off the fifty first
state stuff. Do you think that's real? Do you think
that's true? What do you think of that?
Speaker 4 (22:41):
I don't know how, I mean, it's I don't know this.
I think that. I mean, there's another story which is
sort of circumstantial evidence for which is when Kearney first
came in, he went to the Europe and he met
with the European leaders, and I believe that Japanese Prime
Minister was either went there or on the call. And
you know, Kearney's a guy with a banking background, and
they did reportedly they talked about bonds and you won.
(23:04):
You know, like when Trump did Liberation Day and the tariffs,
one of the big things that happened was that not
just a stock market went down, but people started taking
money off the bonds. Now that the American creasure bonds
are held, you know, not just by private individuals, but
by governments. The Canadian government, European governments, Japan have a
lot of treasury bonds. And we do know for a
(23:24):
fact it is actually an absolute fact that the people
who were take selling treasure bonds after Liberation Day was
not as some people suspected the Chinese, who do you know,
basically kept on holding onto them, but actually Japan, the
Europeans in Canada.
Speaker 2 (23:38):
Right just something.
Speaker 4 (23:39):
So it's whether there was like a coordinated effort or not.
I can't verify that.
Speaker 2 (23:44):
And you'll remember that the bond market was the thing
that finally got Trump to realize that he was running
a losing game. Now that said their.
Speaker 4 (23:53):
Yel because I mean the bond market is very like
you know, people need to understand this. If you sell
bonds then like to make for that, interest rates will
go up. And also the US the amount of money
that the US Treasury has to pay out ADEPT goes
up like bally substantial amounts. So this is really like
the kind of leverage point that could undo the American economy,
(24:14):
oh no question, and arguably the world economy. I mean,
this is serious thoughts.
Speaker 2 (24:19):
Yeah, I mean that seems like a real thing. Now,
I'm wondering if you can explain to us a little
bit about there's still votes coming in. They are counted
in a way that the early votes are counted last.
So the question is what number of seats do you
have to get to in order for the Liberals to win.
Speaker 4 (24:41):
One hundred and seventy two?
Speaker 2 (24:43):
Okay, And I'm curious, like when you look at these
two candidates, what was Carneie's idea? You know, does he
have plans for tariffs? I mean, I feel like he's
a very smart guy and if you were getting he's
like the person you would want to negotiate your tariff issue.
Speaker 4 (25:03):
Yeah. Yeah, I mean I think that the there's a
couple of things that are in play. What is you know,
in the Canada and US have a great agreement and
it's actually a trade agreement that Trump nomin only like negotiated.
I mean when he came in, he tur DAFTA. Then
we have the you know, US, Canada and Mexico. Yeah,
which is you know, after with some changes. Now now
(25:25):
that's coming up again, and I think that the way
that Carnie could go forward, I think the Mexican government
is on board on this is to say, like, well,
let's read to go. Let's just do terrorists under this
ambed and renegotiate it. I think one thing is that
this gives Trump an exit ramp, because I think Trump
has gotten himself into something that he did not fully
understand what's going to happen, and all the trouble that
(25:47):
he's having to deal with now with the stock market
and everything else. And I think that this gives like
a way in which he can kind of say, Phace,
you know, just do like rename it, like you know,
this is a Trump agreement, just the big whatever non
wal tages. I mean, I think that, like, you know,
the auto workers have a legitimate belief that they want
wage guarantees for Mexican workers because the wages of Mexican
(26:10):
workers has actually gone down under free trade and is
now like you know, they're making three dollars an hour
at auto plants, and I think one could legitimately say,
you know, to raise that. Yeah. So I think that
is the way out of this. But I have to
say Trump continues to talk about, you know, Canada has
to be the fifty per state, and I don't know
how that's going to go, except that I think that,
(26:31):
you know, with the election out of the way, I
think everyone across the political speaker in Canada will have
an incentive to unite and is very noticeable that, you know,
some of the leading Conservatives on a provincial level, the
Premier of Ontario are very on board with working with Kearnie.
Speaker 2 (26:49):
From what I understand, what really killed the Conservative Party,
your Republican Party, was that they had people who supported Trump,
so they couldn't distance themselves from him. So that's almost
a little bit of what we could see in the midterms, right.
Speaker 4 (27:05):
Yeah, No, I know absolutely, I think that that was
like a kind of a major problem. I mean, I
think the two pounds is that their main issues were
kind of taken off the table. I mean, there's still
real issues, but also there were people inside their party
that you know, admired Cromp. There are people inside their
party that are very close to jad events. I think
(27:25):
that that gives the Liberals some sort of like advantage. So,
I mean, I do think that like as Trump's you know,
Tariff said, other things happen, there's a kind of backlash
to him, of which this election is one example. But
I think what is already seeing in the United States,
and you know the special elections that have already happened,
including the judgeship in Wisconsin. Yeah, I think that the
(27:46):
Democrats are a pretty good position in terms of their
midterm Do.
Speaker 2 (27:50):
You think Trump's threatening to make Canada a fifty first state?
Do you think there's any logic? Again, I don't want
to prescribe logic done either, why there isn't?
Speaker 4 (28:02):
Yeah, yeah, no, I mean we've had this blog your core, like,
we don't want to be saying loves right.
Speaker 2 (28:07):
We don't want to say my man is playing three
dimensional chess, because he never is. What do you think
of thinking here?
Speaker 4 (28:13):
Is well the thinking or maybe we can invest discribs
unthinking is that Trump doesn't understand how trade works, or
he thinks of trade literally the way people in the
eighteenth century thought of trade. It's mercantilism, right, And in
the eighteenth century, the various kingships that existed did not
believe in free trade. In fact, that's why in terms
(28:33):
of American history, you know, like they had the Stamp
Act and weren't allowing Americans to buy Dutch tea. The
idea was that you would keep the wealth within the
country or within the empire, not trade with others, because
that means you'd be losing money. And the only way
you could expand was through imperialism by conquering other countries.
And so the British and the French and the Dutch
all did this. They just like expanded and had wars
(28:55):
and fought. And then you know, people came on and said, like,
you know, like this is kind of stupid, Like we
were just trading with each other. We don't have to
cut you conquer each other, right, And in the American Revolution,
you know, it was really fought on this free trade
issue where the Americans thought like, well, it's stupid that
we can't trade with the Dutch. You know, we want
to buy Dutch tea, you know, like we don't want
to be forged to buy the English tea. Now the
(29:17):
Trump thinks, but Trump thinks in this eighty such a way.
He thinks that if the United States is buying products
from Canada, buying Timber, America is giving money to Canada,
and Bunny is leaving the country, right. And this is
like Trump's on a very primarial level. This is the
way he does all his own business deals and why
he's a bad businessman because he could not understand the
(29:37):
idea of like reciprocity and you know, you're exchanging one
thing for another for virtual benefit. And he thought like
someone is trying to screw someone in a trade. So
he thinks like, if Canada and the US are trading,
the US is losing something, whereas if Canada and the
US are one, then America is bigger, and on a
more even primitive level, Like I think he thinks like
a child, and he's like thinking, Okay, if there's the
(29:59):
US and Canada and land, like will be the biggest
thing on the map, right, we'll be here everyone else.
So I honestly think that the thinking here is this
kind of primitive tell thinking. And it's also this kind
of older economic way of thinking. I says, why he
praises mcimney all the time, right, like it is that
sort of you know, nineteenth century imperialism of which I
(30:21):
hope that humanity grown.
Speaker 2 (30:23):
Thank you, Thank you jet here, thank you all.
Speaker 4 (30:26):
It's great to be on the progo.
Speaker 2 (30:29):
Peter Goodman is a reporter at The New York Times
and the author of How the World Ran Out of
Everything Inside the global supply chain. Welcome to fast Politics, Peter.
Speaker 5 (30:41):
Great to be back with you, miy.
Speaker 2 (30:43):
We are at the beginning I think of a supply
chain crisis, not so dissimilar from COVID. So talk us
through what's happening right now.
Speaker 5 (30:52):
Yes, what's happening right now is lots of companies that
have depended upon supply chains that stretch across the Pacific
Ocean have quite understandably said, we don't feel like paying
one hundred and forty five percent extra for all the
stuff we're bringing in from China. Maybe we'll just hold
on with that. But it's not so obvious where else
they can go, because a lot of companies have shifted
(31:14):
production from China to places like Cambodia, Vietnam, India, other
countries to try to avoid previous tariffs. As we speak,
we're in this ninety day pause on these extraordinary towers
in some of those countries. But there's so much uncertainty
about the rules that will apply that a lot of
companies have said, let's just maybe stash our stuff in
(31:35):
a warehouse somewhere on the other side of Pacific and
wait and hope that things get better. And as a result,
we've got literally zero container ships at the Port of
Seattle Tacoba, which is one of the biggest ports on
the West Coast. We've got sharp traffic projected down at
La Long Beach. These are the two ports in south
(31:57):
of California that are together, they're the gateway for forty
percent of all imported stuff reaching the United States by
container vessels. And the head of that of the La
Porta Soroka is now out there saying we really don't
know what's going to happen. We got the dock workers
union saying they're really worried. So you got all these
factors that say less stuff coming in.
Speaker 2 (32:19):
So this is all about unintended consequences here, Like the
tariff story, is about this idea that there are intented consequences. Right,
Trump wants to ontour manufacturing. I'm not sure how making
how imposing these steep tariffs can will countries to build
factories to ontour manufacturing. You know, this was the kind
(32:41):
of thing that needed to be done with the scalpel,
not a sledgehammer. But I want you to sort of
explain to us why this uncertainty is going to cause
problems for the supply chain, So people are not importing
to these you'res not seeing port ships because they're not importing.
Just go downstream of that, right, So we're gonna have
(33:02):
dock workers drivers like, talk to me sort of what
this looks like.
Speaker 5 (33:06):
Sure, So if there's less stuff crossing the Pacific headed
for these giant ports or on the East coast, you know,
for that matter, because stuff comes in from India and
even in some cases from the East as that is,
fewer containers to lift off of container ships and onto
the shore by dock workers, who are some of the
most highly paid and also militant workers in the American
(33:28):
labor world. Then very unorganized truckers who are really at
the mercy of swings in the global economy. Less stuff,
less work for truck drivers. You're gonna have a lot
of people just sitting around waiting and hoping that cargo
materializes and on it goes, you know, people working in warehouses,
and eventually retailers are likely to be hit because if
(33:50):
there's less stuff coming in, there's less stuff to move
and less stuff to sell.
Speaker 2 (33:53):
And but retailers are going to be hit with less
stuff to sell. But ultimately consumers are going to bear
the brunt. Explain to us how that goes.
Speaker 5 (34:02):
I mean, if you're going off to Walmart or Target
with the expectation that these operations are enormous, it's just
like a magic trick. They never run out of anything.
They've got seventeen different choices for whatever product is we're
looking for. You could discover that things are back ordered,
the shelves are empty. And the part of this that
always bears discussing is there are lots of monopoly components
(34:26):
of these supply chains. If there's a lot of competition,
then there's a chance that somebody steps in to replace
whatever it is that you're looking for, and that can
keep prices lower. If you're a company that's got a
dominant hole on your industry, then this could be fantastic
for you.
Speaker 2 (34:45):
Give me an example of this.
Speaker 5 (34:47):
I mean beef. You know there's four companies in the
United States control eighty five percent of the beef supply.
We saw this during the pandemic wild yeah, I mean
that's beyond the robber barondage, right, I mean, four companies
control eighty five percent of the beef supply, and there's
engineered scarcity there. They're all sorts of lawsuits alleging that
these four companies essentially conspire they stop their purchases when
(35:11):
supplies are building up too high, precisely so you generate
panic buying. I mean the same thing that we saw,
you know, in terms of discussing av and flu in
terms of the egg supply terms out there's only a
couple compries that dominate those those industries.
Speaker 2 (35:24):
This sounds a lot like opek to May, where the
oil companies got together to inflate the price of gasoline.
Speaker 5 (35:32):
Is that a similar This is what we saw during
the pandemic, right, so we saw product shortages that were
caused by the chaos and disruption of the pandemic itself.
It's not like there was some grand conspiracy by monopolism, No, no,
disappear but once.
Speaker 2 (35:47):
But it is a grand conspiracy by monopolies to keep
prices inflated in a way that they wouldn't otherwise be.
Speaker 5 (35:55):
I mean the shipping industry, right Like, every time there's
a hit to the supply in somewhere, we hear, oh
this is terrible for the global container industry. Oh my goodness,
the hooties are opening fire on from Yemen, you know,
on ships that are headed to the Red Sea. This
is such a disaster for the shipping industry because now
instead of going through the Red Sea to get from
(36:16):
Asia to Europe, they got to go the long way
around Africa. Guess what, you know, shipping prices go four
hundred percent And that's everywhere, right because there's three alliances.
Why not, there's three alliances to control ninety percent of
the traffic across the Pacific. So if a whole bunch
of ships are suddenly deployed to go the long way
around Africa instead of through the Red Sea, that's an
opportunity to rip your face off in terms of pricing.
(36:39):
And yeah, we're all paying for that in terms of
higher costs. We saw this during the pandemic, where we
were told, oh, there's all this chaos, and that's why
the price of moving a shipping container from China to
the West coast of the United States goes up from
something like twenty five hundred dollars to north of twenty
five thousand dollars. We're talking tenfold increase in this space
(37:00):
of six months. And people said, well, this is just
you know, terrible for the shipping industry record profits. I mean,
we're talking like record profits.
Speaker 2 (37:08):
So talk to me about diapers.
Speaker 5 (37:10):
Diapers are a product that, despite their sheer simplicity, are
actually constructed of lots of different pieces. Can't remember the
exact number. It's like dozens of parts drawn from around
the world. You run out of one of them somewhere,
you can't make a diaper. You know, think about the
computer chip and cars during the pandemic. Right, there's thirty
(37:31):
thousand parts in a car. If you run out of
one component of a computer chip, you can make the
rest of the car. As you know, Ford at one
point was making the F one fifty, its most popular
pickup truck, and then parking them across the street from
Henry Ford Elementary School in the shadow of Ford's corporate
headquarters because they couldn't get enough chips. You know, the
(37:52):
diaper gets affected. We saw during the pandemic that you know,
we've ran out of infant formula because there's one company
that has a dominant hold on that market in the
United States. And if there's any disruption anywhere, we don't
know where the problems will pop up where they will,
but they'll pop up somewhere.
Speaker 2 (38:10):
Right. It's a really good point, and you know, you
can't just skip out on diapers, right, You're gonna need diapers.
Speaker 5 (38:16):
And you're gonna pay.
Speaker 2 (38:17):
You're gonna pay.
Speaker 5 (38:18):
Yeah, that's a pricing power moment, right because if I mean,
if you've got a kid in the house who needs
diapers and the word gets out that there could be
a shortage, that's something you'll pay. I mean, think about
the toilet paper shortage, right, I mean, those are the
during the pandemic. I remember I was living in London,
you know, having to go down to schmooze, the guy
who talked to the truckers, you know, who could tell
(38:39):
me like what times the toilet paper show up. You know,
it could be like that with diapers. If you need them,
you'll do whatever it takes to get them. And don't
think that companies don't know that in terms of pricing.
Speaker 2 (38:50):
Right, like right now, there's this ninety day pause, which
means that nobody knows anything. There's no stability. Trump says
ninety deals in ninety days, or that was Navarro. We
have yet to see a single deal. May We've heard
like whispers of talks of whatever. It just seems like
with the dock numbers, we are careening towards the same
(39:11):
thing that happened during COVID, careening towards a scarcity event.
Speaker 5 (39:15):
It's a similar dynamic. And one of the things that
we learned during COVID is that fear of shortages create shortages, right.
I mean, that's what happened toilet Peper. We didn't actually
run out of stuff to make toilet paper with. We
got a surplus of people saying, oh my god, I
better go buy some toilet paper. And that can happen
not just a household level, but at the retail level, right.
I mean, if again, your Amazon, your Target, your Walmart,
(39:38):
you have enormous resources around the globe, You're able to
charter your own container ships if you need to, and
you want to get out in front of this as
they're doing, we could wake up and discover that warehouses
for a select handful of companies that are big enough
have got all the stuff. Smaller players have got nothing. Meanwhile,
households run out to buy as much stuff as they
(40:00):
can because they're nervous, and that's how we end up
in shortages. There's a whole other scenario, by the way,
that nobody talks about because we're too consumed with what's
actually happening. If Trump tomorrow said, oh, I'm really worried
about this. Okay, I'm lifting all the tariffs. Let's just
go back to how it was now predicting this, not
saying that's how it is. That would be the COVID scenario,
(40:21):
and we would get the shortages because what happened in
COVID was first factories in places like China and around
the world were disrupted and we made less stuff. Then
it turned out we wildly we I say, the economists, businesses,
they wildly miscalculated the impacts of this supply chain hit.
(40:41):
So they assumed, Okay, we're locked down, can't go to work,
so we don't need stuff. This is going to be
a basic economic downturn where the demand for everything goes down. Well,
that was wildly wrong. So we're not going to the gym,
but we're now we're working out at home. We need pelotons.
Our kids aren't going to school still now we're cooking
twenty seven meals for them at home, so now we
(41:02):
need more kitchen supply. Are they're stuck in the backyard
or we're buying trampolines and all this stuff comes in
from China. Once factories turned back on the container shipping industry,
which had actually set aside a lot of ships they
were idling in warm waters places like Greece, they said,
oh my goodness, there's actually more demand for stuff than ever.
(41:23):
And then we got what people may remember, these crazy
floating traffic jams off the ports of La Long Beach,
where you had seventy five ships circling around for weeks
at a time waiting for a chance to dock because
they all came at once. And that's what could happen here.
Whenever this ends, we're going to get a surge of
(41:43):
orders from wherever it can produce them, and that could
swamp the gears where we get the reverse, like instead
of worrying about there's no ships in Seattle, there's no
ships in La we can get all the ships coming
at once. The dock workers can only handle so many.
We can run out of truck drivers, which is in truth,
we just downgraded truck driving to such a degree at
any time people have to go look for another job,
and then they get one, they don't like to go
(42:04):
back to it. That's how we got the worst of
the shortages, and that could very much be ahead of us.
Speaker 2 (42:11):
So let's talk this through for a second, because I
remember during the COVID pandemic, we saw like lines of
ships at different ports, and you know, like hundreds of
ships at ports, and so you think that's sort of
the scenario we're looking at.
Speaker 5 (42:29):
I think for now, we're looking at the reverse of that, right,
we're looking at futures.
Speaker 2 (42:34):
I mean, eventually.
Speaker 5 (42:35):
But if it turns it back, I think whenever. I mean, okay,
if we take as a given that this policy is
designed to have us wean our dependence on long supply
chains and span across oceans, that I guess we'll just
start making everything in the US and everything will be fun.
No one believes that this can happen anytime soon. So
(42:55):
at some point there's going to be some policy change
that will prompt us to go back, maybe not China,
maybe back to factors in Vietnam and Cambodia and other
parts of Southeast Asia, maybe India. And whenever there's enough
certainty that the big retailers say okay, I get it now,
I get where it's economical for me to source my stuff,
(43:17):
there will be a surge of orders to replenish inventory
and that is likely to lead to traffic jams somewhere.
Speaker 2 (43:25):
Yes, so I wonder if we could talk about Carolyne
Levitt for a minute, the White House Press secretary. Today,
Amazon decided, and it is actually kind of brilliant to
publish exactly what these tariffs will cost. Right, so you
go on your Amazon page to buy a toothbrush, it
(43:48):
says this toothbrush was seven dollars. It'll now be ten dollars,
you know, or whatever because of a three dollars ra
or whatever. So uh, reporter, Amazon will soon display a
number next to the product, the price of each product
plus the amount that the Trump tariff is adding. Levitt
(44:09):
responds as a hostile and political act by Amazon, discuss.
Speaker 5 (44:14):
The whole Trump fantasy. Here is somebody else is going
to pay for this, not American consumers. Now there's a
lot to unpack here, right, because Amazon is reminding the
customer that if you increase the costs of the stuff
that we buy from far away to serve you, we
will pass on those costs to you. However, we have
no idea what Amazon's margins are on any particular product.
(44:38):
We don't know how much competition there is, we don't
know to what degree Amazon is availing itself of consumer
anxiety and now stoking consumer anxiety to justify price increases.
I mean, look again, think back to eggs, a thing
that we've all talked about to bet we know that
there's legitimate reason to think that the price of egg
should go up when there's avian flu, right, know that,
(45:00):
and when there's inflation in general, how much, Well, we
don't know, because there's a couple of companies that dominate
the egg business. And any time we go to the
supermarket and think, boy, I better buy some more eggs.
You know, I noticed the shelves are empty. All these
people are jogging around parts of the day, they are
no eggs at all. I better. That is pricing power,
(45:21):
and Amazon certainly has pricing power as a dominant retailer.
So the White House is not crazy to say there's
a stunt connected to this. Amazon is not crazy to
say you stick one hundred and forty five percent terrify
on Chinese goods. That's going to hit a lot of
stuff that you used to buying from Amazon. And you know,
I think it's fair to say that Jeff Bezos's enterprise
(45:43):
is not charitable we're going to look to take it
out of you, customer.
Speaker 2 (45:47):
So it is a really good point, right, which is
that they don't need to raise their prices, but they
are going to raise their prices, and we don't really
know what their markups are. So it's not like they're saying,
we buy this from China for twenty five cents and
we are paying a seventy five percent of tariff. Right,
(46:07):
We're not really seeing what the tariff is. We're seeing
what the tariff number is on the final price.
Speaker 5 (46:13):
This is premised on if you assume that our business
is entirely about satisfying consumer interest for low prices, and
our margins are tiny and fair, and we don't engage
in any predatory behavior, so our prices are to imagine
perfect representation of Milton Friedman's market economy, then sure you
(46:36):
stick us with some tariff that gets passed on to
the consumer pool. We know that it's a lot messier
than that.
Speaker 2 (46:41):
Yeah, really good point. But it is this Carolyn Levit comment.
It does I find it interesting they really are offended
by the idea that Amazon would transmit what they're doing, right.
I mean, ultimately that seems like the cardinals in here
is not up the goods to the American people.
Speaker 5 (47:02):
Wait, counter programming, right like in this reality show Presidency,
it's all about I'm working to bring jobs back to America.
You know, some days they say it's impossible to deal
with inflation, but most of the time they say, you know,
I mean, they certainly are aware that inflation seems to
be how Trump came back to the White House, and
they don't like the idea that one of the richest
(47:24):
most powerful people on a guy, by the way, they
thought they'd sort of muzzled with the whole fenestration of
the Washington Posts ed operation is now out there swinging
saying no, let me talk directly to your constituents, and
now I've got something to say, and you're jacking up
their prices. Clearly that's not part of the programming that
the White House would like to put out there.
Speaker 2 (47:45):
Yeah. Pretty incredible, I mean, and a really good point.
We will see how this plays out. Thank you, Thank you, Peter,
thank you, Molly.
Speaker 3 (47:56):
No moment, Jesse Cannon, Mollie, this is so just cruel,
engross And I know that that's the point, but I
know a lot of people whose lives have been saved
by the NARCAN program in New York, and I've seen it.
It's a miracle what it does for giving people a
(48:17):
second chance when they're at a bad place in their life.
And so a person who is a heroinaut for twelve
years named RFK Junior, who runs HHS, decides, Eh, we
can get rid of it.
Speaker 2 (48:28):
This is stripping the federal government. RFK Junior is nhsass
to take it apart, just like Linda McMahon is in
the Department of Education, to take the Department of Education apart.
This is Project twenty twenty five, dis assembling the federal government,
selling it for parts, making the government so small that
(48:48):
it doesn't do anything for people. That is the goal here.
So you can expect that RFK Junior is going to
do a ton of things like this. But part of
it is also he does not care about public health.
This is just a stick. He cares about power. This
is his last chance to get into power, and that's
what we're doing here. This has nothing to do with
(49:10):
public health. Personally, I think this is bad, but I
think there's one hundred other things you could point to
that are this bad or worse. That's it for this
episode of Fast Politics. Tune in every Monday, Wednesday, Thursday
and Saturday to hear the best minds and politics make
(49:31):
sense of all this chaos. If you enjoy this podcast,
please send it to a friend and keep the conversation going.
Thanks for listening.
Host
Molly Jong-Fast
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