December 6, 2025 • 49 mins
Think Like an Economist’s Justin Wolfers examines the bad economic vibes coming from the Trump administration. The New York Times’ Peter S. Goodman details Costco’s lawsuit against the Trump administration over tariff policies harming their business.
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Episode Transcript
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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 the Supreme Court will decide if
Trump's birthright citizenship order can stand. We have such a
great job for you today. Think like an economist. Justin
Wolfers stops by to talk about the bad economic vibes
(00:24):
coming from the Trump administration. Then we'll talk to The
New York Times owner Peter S. Goodman about Costco's lawsuit
against the Trump administration or the tariff policies harm to
their businesses. But first the news.
Speaker 2 (00:38):
Miley, this is really exciting.
Speaker 3 (00:40):
You and I have been working for months on a
series where we're going to start a conversation on the
DEM's Project twenty twenty nine and what they should do
when they regain power, because Republicans were really prepared and
we want to be too. So you and I have
been talking to some very smart people. It's time for
our audience to hear about it. Are you excited?
Speaker 1 (00:58):
We did something like this about Project twenty twenty five,
about the Republicans Project twenty twenty five, and we were
like one of the first people to get on that
story and By the way, Donald Trump was like, no,
I don't want to do it. I'm just kidding, and
everyone's like, okay, he's not going to do it. So
it was very frustrating for all of us. This is
very different. We are just talking to some really smart academics.
(01:20):
We're sort of spitballing how to solve these problems. I
want to say this is not the official anything for
Project twenty twenty nine. We're just trying to get the
ball rolling, get people thinking about broad sweeping anti corruption
legislation the way that was passed after Nixon. There was
a real failure I think on the part of the
(01:41):
Biden administration to pass those kind of broad sweeping anti
corruption legislations. You know, the problem was so much of
what we see in Washington d c our norms and
not laws. And the problem with the norm is it's
fine if you have someone who is a sort of
(02:02):
normal president because they observe the norms. But when you
have a Donald Trump and you get norms, they just
run right through them because they say, well, it's not illegal,
so who cares. And that is why we're trying to
get people talking about this. This first topic of campaign
finance reform seems very unsexy, but it's actually the nuts
and baults of everything else that follows. If you have
(02:26):
candidates who are funded by crypto or by tech companies,
or by cigarette companies though that is not really the
thing anymore, or by oil companies, then those politicians end
up just serving those interests. And that's why Campaign finance
reform is why we started, and we talked to some really,
really smart people who just gave us ideas on how
(02:49):
to get things going. It is probably the best thing
we have ever done.
Speaker 3 (02:54):
I think some of the parts that are coming out
even after this are some of the best things we've
ever done. This one's like amazing, and then I'm so
excited for the audience to see the rest of it
because I really am so proud of it.
Speaker 1 (03:04):
You're never going to find forty five minutes on campaign finance.
Speaker 3 (03:07):
Reform, but there's really answers in there. There's things people
haven't heard before. I'm Mike one of the people. I've
read more about this than ninety nine point nine nine
nine percent of people, and I still learned a lot.
Speaker 1 (03:18):
So if you want to nerd out, go over to
our YouTube and nerd out with us.
Speaker 2 (03:22):
And please share it with a friend and discuss it.
Speaker 1 (03:25):
Share it with a friend who loves campaign finance reform.
If you know someone nerdy, share it with them. Please.
Speaker 3 (03:31):
All right, Molly, let's get down to brass texts, and
by that I mean brass techie decorations inside Epstein Island.
Speaker 1 (03:39):
It's pretty weak. We were talking about nerdy. Yes, continue listen.
Speaker 2 (03:43):
My humor is appreciated by a few listeners.
Speaker 1 (03:45):
Yes.
Speaker 3 (03:46):
Anyway, So a judge is going to release the Jeffrey
Epstein grand jury documents. Robert Garcia's Oversight Committee released some
of the more disturbing photos of this estee trudge this week.
Speaker 1 (03:57):
Jesse is talking about the dents chair.
Speaker 3 (03:59):
I even think they'll above the fireplace painting is one
of the scariest things I've ever seen.
Speaker 1 (04:03):
We had on this podcast. Robert Garcia. He is our
buddy and we love him. He is the ranking member
of Oversight, and he is proof that if you put
someone on committees, to head committees who is actually young
and enthusiastic and wants to do the work and knows
how to push the message, they will do it. And
(04:25):
you know why we keep seeing Epstein in the news.
Jesse do you know.
Speaker 3 (04:28):
Why smart tacticians like Robert Garcia and Rocanna.
Speaker 1 (04:32):
All they do is talk about it, and all they
do is release stuff, and all they do is trip
drip up, and so good for him, good good good.
Here we go. So the judge is going to release
the Epstein grand jury documents. Grand jury documents, they tend
to have a lot of a pretty high level of redaction.
So I think you're going to get more from other stuff.
(04:54):
But it's certainly possible, yep.
Speaker 3 (04:56):
Speaking of the Epstein cover up, you may recall a
character used to refer to as Big Govan Bongo Dan Bongino.
Who now is that the FBI. He talked to mister
Hennity last night and many people are saying he gave
away the game.
Speaker 4 (05:09):
Let's listen, remember this.
Speaker 5 (05:11):
Just before you became the deputy FBI director. You put
a post on x right after this happened, and you said,
there's a massive cover up because the person that planted
those pipe bombs, they don't want you to know who
it is because it's either a connected anti Trump insider
or an inside job. You said that, you know, long
(05:32):
before you even thought of as deputy FBI director.
Speaker 6 (05:37):
Yeah, That's why I said to you this investigations just begun.
We are pretty comfortable we have our guy. I think
is again legal process starts to service and information facts
start to come out. The public is going to be
very comfortable with the investigation that was conducted under Director
Patel and his leadership. He's been great on this, but
(05:59):
I don't want to You know, listen, I was paid
in the past, Sean for my opinions. That's clear, and
one day I'll be back in that space. But that's
not what I'm paid for now. I'm paid to be
your deputy director, and we base investigations on facts.
Speaker 4 (06:12):
And you know, it was interesting.
Speaker 6 (06:13):
I was looking out in the crowd today at the presser.
Speaker 2 (06:23):
That sounds like the sound of joy Molly.
Speaker 1 (06:25):
Okay, So he's saying I was paid to make shit
up and to have opinions and to outrage bait. By
the way, can you believe this fucking guy is deputy
director of the FBI.
Speaker 2 (06:37):
It is one of the many horrors of this administration.
Speaker 1 (06:40):
Now he uses our tax dollars to just get around. No,
that's his boss cash Battel.
Speaker 3 (06:47):
Well, what you heard today is is boss cash Baitel
gets his girlfriend's drug, friend's hope safe, FBI paid ubers.
Speaker 1 (06:54):
Yeah, it's all so fucking bad, but it is great
that the FBI just keeps leaking and Lencoln. So look,
I think none of us should be surprised to know
that Bngino is taking liberties. And that was his job
was to juice the algorithm and to outrage bait, and
(07:14):
now his job is to I don't know. I can't
even think of Jesse.
Speaker 3 (07:22):
I'll move on to a much greater pastures. I'm going
to shock you here. Pete tig Sith, seems like you
whired about the boat bombing.
Speaker 1 (07:28):
Yeah, now I'm going to say that, Actually, what's worse
than Pete Hegseth lying about the boat bombing is everybody's
favorite Tom Cotton lying about the video he saw right,
Because Tom Cotton was like, it's totally exonerated, and everyone
else was like what we saw was bad shit.
Speaker 3 (07:46):
Do you mean to tell me Tom Cotton thought doing
a war crime was justified?
Speaker 2 (07:50):
That doesn't seem like him.
Speaker 1 (07:51):
It's ironic because Tom Cotton loves war. But it's also
like the other thing about is did Tom Cotton think
no one would ever see it? Like I mean that
kind of brazen lying. I have a lot of respect
for that kind of lying. And yet I'm kidding, do
we still do fuck that guy? Because Tom Cotton?
Speaker 2 (08:09):
Yeah, not a fan.
Speaker 1 (08:10):
Not a fan.
Speaker 3 (08:11):
This is not looking good as next week, Representative shre
Thanadar will be putting impeachment motions against Whiskey Pete.
Speaker 1 (08:19):
Yeah, you got impeach Whiskey Pete. I mean, I don't
know that Trump ever fires him, but you still got
to get on the record for impeaching that guy.
Speaker 4 (08:25):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (08:26):
Yeah, they got to take the stand and make people
vote that they're keeping this guy because I'm going to
tell you something, this is going to be his last scandal.
Speaker 1 (08:33):
Oh yeah, Whiskey Peet.
Speaker 3 (08:36):
Speaking of never ending cars, we got to talk jerrymandering.
The Supreme Court upheld Texas's redistricting map, giving the Republicans
a bunch of seats, and now the House in Indiana
has passed their redistricting map, but looks like there's trouble ahead.
Speaker 1 (08:49):
Yeah, so they have a new partisan redistricting setting up
a showdown in the Senate or there might not be
enough support to send the bills of the governor. I
just want to point out that this is so fucking
sketchy and sleazy, it would deliver two more GOP seats. Again,
all of this stuff works until it doesn't, Right, Like
(09:12):
we know the Texas seats are pretty smartly I use
that in quotes Jerry Mander to deliver for Republicans. But
like all this stuff, you don't get to get more votes.
You just make the margins different. So eventually a Jerrymander
becomes a dummy Mander. Besides the fact that it's so
fucking sleezy, you know, and sketchy and anti democratic, et cetera,
(09:36):
et cetera, it is very very very important to realize
that like Donald Trump is not popular, right, none of
this is popular. He is not popular, the party is
not popular. They are hitching their wagonto even more on
popularity by doing this, and so like they think they
can get around this, but they may actually make everything
(09:58):
worderse Over at our YouTube channel, we have some really
exciting stuff. Jesse and I have made a documentary. It's
called Project twenty twenty nine, a Reimagining. It's a series
about how democrats can deliver popular policies when they regain power.
(10:22):
The first episode is up now, it's the first part
of the series, and we're going to examine what went
wrong with some of the Biden administration's approach to policies
that may have prevented Democrats from being able to deliver
the broad anti corruption legislation that needed to happen, and
(10:46):
by the way, that would have prevented some of the
corruption we're seeing right now. The first episode dives deep
into the first step of fixing American politics. It may
sound unsexy, but it's a big, important issue and that
big subject is campaign finance reform. For this episode, we
(11:07):
talk to some of the smartest people we know, professors
and academics, people like Lawrence Lessig, Tiffany Muller, Michael Waldman,
and Tom Moore. Republicans were prepared for when they got
the levers of power. Democrats need that same kind of preparation.
(11:30):
That's why we need to start the conversation on how
Democrats can do the same thing. So please head over
to our YouTube channel and search Molli Jong Fast Project
twenty twenty nine or go to the Fast Politics YouTube
channel page and you'll find it there and help us
spread the word and stay tuned for more episodes. Justin
(11:55):
Wolfer is the host of We Think Like an Economist
podcast and a professor at the UNI University of Michigan.
Justin Warfer's Molly John Fast, what's happening with the jobs numbers?
Speaker 7 (12:06):
Who knows?
Speaker 4 (12:07):
Have you seen him?
Speaker 6 (12:08):
Now?
Speaker 7 (12:08):
I've been looking. I looked under my bed, by the bed. Actually,
I thought I might have let them under the clothes,
I asked, Betsy. We haven't seen them anyway, mate?
Speaker 4 (12:16):
Why why?
Speaker 7 (12:18):
I don't think I misplaced them. I think it might
be because there was a government shut down for six weeks,
which we only allowed essential services to continue, and generating
the data that will help guide us towards economic nirvana
is not seen as essential. So some of the data
was simply never collected for the first time in eighty years.
And other parts of the data were collected on a
(12:40):
slower timeline, and we're going to see them in two weeks.
And so, Molly, I understand. You look like you're on
the edge of your seat. You're feeling jittery. You're like,
where are my numbers? What's going on with the economy?
This is all I can think about and I can
sleep last night, so breathe. It's we're coming toward the
end of this deep dark data back out.
Speaker 1 (13:00):
So these jobs numbers are because of the government shut
down or.
Speaker 7 (13:05):
Are laid because of the government check So my guess,
Molly is you saw some headlines about week jobs numbers
and you want to talk about them. Mm hmm, Okay,
let me explain that. Okay, So we have the official
government jobs numbers put together by the best statisticians in
the world, fantastic, high quality, not perfect, but the least
imperfect we have.
Speaker 1 (13:26):
Do We still have those though, even though Donald Trump
fired the head of the Bureau of Labor and.
Speaker 7 (13:30):
Statistics, we still have lots of very high quality statisticians.
We have fewered than we once had, but we have
enough that America's economic statistics will continue to be first
class as soon as we fund them enough that they
can open and publish data. When the government can't do that,
everyone starts to look for private sector alternatives. There's one
called the ADP Payroll Report. ADP, for many of our
(13:54):
members of our audience processes your check, your payroll check
each month, and so that means they know a lot
about how many people are working, and so they crunch
their numbers and come up with another estimate. Now, the
problem is the statistical sophistication of the folks there. They
don't ADP doesn't print everyone's pay off, and so therefore
it's not clear which parts of the economy they do
(14:14):
and don't cover, and so therefore their numbers are simply
less reliable. Now, one number from ADP is not very exciting,
but if you have four numbers in a row, you
could sort of start to feel like four noisy numbers.
You can average it out and come up with some sense, again,
not a perfect sense. We've seen four very weak numbers
(14:35):
in a row, so it is left a lot of
people on edge when we get the real data that
we really know and we really trust. We are currently
feeling quite pessimistic. It could be that job growth has slowed,
it could have stalled, or we could be in reverse.
Speaker 1 (14:52):
So we don't know. So we really have nothing. The
numbers we have something.
Speaker 7 (14:56):
We have good reason, some reason to be quite pessimistic
about the last few months.
Speaker 1 (15:03):
Right.
Speaker 7 (15:03):
There are no certainties in my Worldmarde, there's just guesses.
Speaker 1 (15:08):
So we have some reason to be pessimistic about the
last three months three months, and that reason is because
what looks like job lost, yes.
Speaker 7 (15:18):
Could be overall job loss. And we also know that
the DOGE job cuts are finally going to hit the
statistics because when they tried to fire them, they got reinstated,
and then they had to fire them on a slower thing,
and blah blah blah. You know, nothing got done right
the first time, if it was even doing right at all,
And so we'll see some of those federal government job
(15:39):
cuts start to hit the numbers pretty much straight away.
Speaker 1 (15:41):
Give me a cent of how many people were fired
because of DOGE.
Speaker 7 (15:45):
The last number I saw is we're looking at about
one hundred and fifty thousand government jobs in October. Now
there may be more to come.
Speaker 1 (15:52):
Some though, were reinstated, right, like the people who guard
the nukes. Yep, right, I mean there were certain people
that were fired that we're not supposed to be fired.
Speaker 7 (16:02):
I honestly, Molly, it's outrageous. These people call themselves small
government folks, yet what they want to do is suck
on the government tit and put people out the front
of our nukes defending it, as if the free market
couldn't just do that for us.
Speaker 1 (16:14):
That's right, Just pay me, We.
Speaker 7 (16:17):
Need a sarcasm font with an Australian accent.
Speaker 1 (16:20):
We do. Well, let's just go back to the actual
question here, which is, I don't mean to be cranky
with you, so we think.
Speaker 7 (16:30):
Like, well, be cranky.
Speaker 1 (16:32):
One hundred and twenty five thousand fired, What percentage of
which you think well hired? So everyone gets rehired for
the three months.
Speaker 7 (16:40):
So we think that so there's actually many more people fired,
a bunch were reinstated. The net is about one hundred
and fifty thousand for October.
Speaker 4 (16:50):
That's all I got for you.
Speaker 1 (16:51):
Make that makes sense In the larger numbers, like what
percentage of government of loss job loss? Is that quite small?
Speaker 7 (16:58):
So one, it's quite small, and too. The other thing
that we want to do when we look at economic
statistics is see what the underlying economic forces. Those just
dead right. I think that this as a one off
to sort of look the other way. So the numbers
look bad, they were reflecting a genuine reality that a
bunch of public servants lost their job. That reality, of course,
is several months old, but it will hit the data.
(17:21):
But it doesn't in and of itself tell us much
about the economy's underlying momentum.
Speaker 1 (17:26):
So let's talk about the economy's underlying momentum. There's certainly
a number of factors. What is the biggest? So like,
Donald Trump is getting blamed for the economy, which is
a non partisan activity. Blaming the president for the economy
always happens. You don't like it, you shouldn't like it,
but it's what happens. It's sometimes true. The president has
(17:46):
usually less control over the economy than you would think.
That said, Donald Trump has done a couple of things
when he came in that seemed like they would have
huge economic impact that we might be feeling around now.
Is that so talk us through what those things are
and what you think the impact is?
Speaker 4 (18:02):
So far right?
Speaker 7 (18:04):
So, you know, the president came in actually did very
little apart from those for a couple of months. Then
he pivoted to tariffs. The big tariff announcement was in April.
But then you know, a week later he lost the
courage of his convictions and had a ninety day pause. Shockingly,
end of the ninety day pause, surprisingly he had not
secured ninety deals in ninety days, and you'll be surprised.
(18:26):
He then gave himself a twenty four day extension and
then eventually put in place a set of tariffs that
was remarkably like what we had begun with, and then
proceeded to cut them what looks like a somewhat random way,
as he would hear various complaints or meet with various
foreign leaders. But basically, we've had tariffs now in place
(18:47):
for about four months. We've only seen data actually as
far as the first one or two months of that.
So that's one big thing is what's going on with tariffs?
Speaker 1 (18:56):
And there's tariffs. Well, I just want you to answer
this because I'm actually interested What did she.
Speaker 7 (19:01):
Just say, I'm actually interested in economics.
Speaker 1 (19:04):
No, I'm interested in this answer. Let's ahead of verse.
Speaker 7 (19:08):
I'm actually interested in your next question, mark.
Speaker 1 (19:11):
What countries are these tariffs? Because like Trump has said
a lot of stuff, but like it's hard for me
to know what actually happened.
Speaker 7 (19:19):
The answer is all of them in my native Australia,
which is a country that buys more stuff from America
than the other way round.
Speaker 8 (19:27):
There were no.
Speaker 7 (19:28):
Updates on tariffs for the Hurd and McDonald Islands, and
so the penguins there remains in flux. They're not sure
whether no news is good news. Tariffs remained remarkably high
on China. They went astronomically silly. Then they got back
to milly absurd. And actually Canada has very low tariffs,
even as the President keeps talking about them, because most
(19:52):
trade with Canada falls under the existing free trade agreement.
So the tariffs don't affect nearest neighbors, even as we
bluster that we're coming after them. So look, there's a
lot there. And so that actually leads to an important
second shock, which is uncertainty. Uncertainly not just about tariffs.
I can tell you that I'm sure this is true
(20:13):
with the fancy dinner parties. You go to Molly with
titans of industry, that all they do is talking.
Speaker 1 (20:19):
About I just sitting here drinking my diet coke, and
all of a sudden we get titans of industry.
Speaker 7 (20:25):
I go on, Yes, you don't go to dinner parties.
Speaker 1 (20:27):
I don't even eat. I just drink die coke.
Speaker 7 (20:30):
That's amazing, that's okay. But titans of industry who are
seen in New York, which I do believe is the
city you're coming to us from. Many people also sit
around talking about the president, which is do I have
the right bathroom policy or will the president come after me?
What does dipolicy look like? Or will the President come
after me? Am I getting my imports from the right countries?
Speaker 1 (20:50):
All?
Speaker 7 (20:51):
Will the President come after me? The poor CEO of
Intel walked into the White House and walked out with
ten percent less of his company that somehow slid down
the cushions of the tear Treasury Secretary's couch, never to
be seen again.
Speaker 1 (21:03):
Then Donald Trump bought to a million dollars of debt
for Intel. He with his personal money.
Speaker 4 (21:09):
That's terrific.
Speaker 7 (21:10):
It's nice that he said, help make money.
Speaker 1 (21:14):
Ways I don't think he's trying to help. That's my
hottest take.
Speaker 7 (21:17):
You are so cynical, So cynical.
Speaker 1 (21:21):
Okay, So tariffs we'll have a big effect in certain times.
Speaker 7 (21:26):
Two uncertainty. Three and immigration shock.
Speaker 1 (21:30):
Let's talk about the immigration shop because.
Speaker 7 (21:33):
Really big deal, and we don't talk about it enough.
Speaker 1 (21:36):
We don't have more people being deported, right, we don't
because he's because they're very bad at what they do,
thank god. So the numbers are not actually higher than
they were under Obama or Biden. But they have created
things like what we saw in Georgia with the South
Korean Car Company plan in which we had Brian camp
(21:59):
workerly hard to get this Hondai factory filled with South
Koreans who were training American workers. Ice went in there,
arrested the South Koreans, put them in a Louisiana detention center,
flew them home, and effectively whatever happened.
Speaker 7 (22:16):
There lots of photographs of executives in chains.
Speaker 1 (22:21):
Yeah, they didn't like that.
Speaker 7 (22:22):
And what was really important we didn't see it over
here was that was front page news throughout the region
and it was interpreted directly as anti Asian racism, which
weeks and weeks, yes, and will affect a different part
of the economy, which is what we call foreign direct investment,
foreign companies building factories in the United States, which is
(22:43):
what the President wanted. They won't do that now in
case they're dragged out in handcuffs, which is what those
foreign companies don't want. It's sort of outrages that they
don't want to avoid handcuffs.
Speaker 1 (22:56):
How dare they?
Speaker 7 (22:58):
There are certain New York parties I'm told we're wearing
handcuffs as mandatory, and it's just understood that it's part
of the invitation. It's not one show in New York
amazing place, New York City. All right, So the so
that's investment, but that's part of it, but that's by
no means all of it. In fact, it might even
(23:18):
be a small part. The other is literally fewer people
in America. And you might be right that they're dragging
fewer people out through ice detention centers, but very few
people are coming in and some people are leaving. And
so American population growth, which has been you can open
a hot dog stand in any corner of New York
or indeed any city, and your sales tend to grow
(23:39):
because there are more people. It's an important source of
growth for many businesses. There's not going to be more
people next year. There's not going to be fear it'll
be about dead. Even that's a very unusual circumstance that
probably hasn't occurred through your lifetime only. And so that's
going to mean less growth in demand. It's also going
to mean problems and supply. This is the story that
farmers can't get the crops picked right now. So when
(24:01):
you disrupt what had been a fairly standard slow population growth,
everything's a little bit different. And so that's going to
mean many of our economic indicators are not measured on
a per person basis. For instance, we talk about how
many jobs do we have, we talk about how much
GDP we have. If we have not as many people
or not as much population growth, those numbers are going
(24:22):
to look worse. They're going to look worse even if
they aren't worse. That's the first point. But second is
anytime you have a stark adjustment like that, actually you
create lots of frictions and may potentially create bottlenecks like
not being able to pick your crops.
Speaker 1 (24:35):
And you have less people paying into Social Security.
Speaker 7 (24:39):
I would say you had fewer people paying into social Security.
Speaker 1 (24:42):
Well, you are the radar here, so explain what that means.
These are our people who are taking from government, but
they are giving because even if you're not a citizen,
you still pay taxes.
Speaker 7 (24:58):
Right, So, Molly, I'm going to answer your question and
tell you why I don't like it. What you're doing
is you're trying to say this discussion about immigration is
fundamental economic I'm going to have an economist explain the
economics of it, and I will happily do so. People
who think that immigrants are taken from you and I
don't understand the reality is about half of them have
fake Social Security numbers. Here I'm talking about undocumented workers,
(25:19):
which means they do pay into Social Security, but because
they're fake numbers, they don't take a penny out. And
there's lots of reports showing that they don't take a
penny out. So therefore, in fact, they are subsidizing yours
and my well, not mine, but maybe your parents. That's
the economic answer. So, and it's important because there is
a view that these people are taking from the government,
(25:39):
perse it's false. Let me come back and tell you
why I object to the question. The issue here is
far more fundamental than economics. The issue of immigration, I
think should not be about how does it affect my wallet.
We immigrants are people I would like to be thought
of as a person first, and.
Speaker 2 (25:58):
I have a life.
Speaker 7 (25:59):
I have a family, I have dreams, I have things
I contribute. This country made a promise to me. I
made a promise to it, and I think overwhelmingly that's
the most important thing at play here. Excuse my moralizing.
Speaker 1 (26:13):
I just want to.
Speaker 7 (26:14):
Say that if you want to talk about economic impacts
of immigration, let me focus on another couple that are
very important. One this is true of me. It's not
true of you, Molly. I am one of America's great exporters.
I export millions of dollars and therefore close the trade
deficit that president claims to so much about.
Speaker 4 (26:33):
How do I do that.
Speaker 7 (26:33):
I'm a university professor, and I educate students from all
around the world. And when they fly around the world
and spend forty thousand dollars a year in oun other Michigan,
they create high quality jobs, They receive an American education,
and forever will be transformed in a way that transmits
American soft power. The President is making it hard for
(26:55):
those kids to get across the border. So I am,
and the University of Michigan is a great American exporter
that wants to engage with the rest of the world
and help solve our trade deficit, and the present will
not let us do it. Here is not putting It's
not the equivalent of putting tariffs on imports. It's the
equivalent of putting tariffs on exports. This is crazy, and
(27:15):
these are wonderful jobs. The people who work at the
University of high quality jobs. They enjoy their life. They
work at a desk, they don't have a saw back,
but we aren't allowed to do it anymore. So that's
a very important thing. Another very important thing the H
one B VISA program is bringing in educated people in
areas where the United States has shortages. Those educated people
are working in the most innovative parts of the United States.
(27:39):
They have a huge impact on new technologies and therefore productivity, innovation,
and the future of the United States. Try doing the
world's best cutting edge science without talent from around the world,
you can't do it. The secret to America's technological innovation
supremacy has been we have been the home of science
(28:02):
from all around the world. We have been the place
scientist wanted to come. Now we're not letting them across
the border.
Speaker 4 (28:08):
Right.
Speaker 7 (28:08):
Do you want to hear about another shock? Yes? All right,
So Tariff's was one, and then we had immigration that
was another. Uncertainly was another. Yeah, I want to tell
you one more that we is not the usual language
of economics. God, I've never used this. I think there's
a competence shock. Normally, when economists talk about the economy,
(28:29):
we think everyone's making pretty smart decisions and the left
wing guys are doing stuff. The right wing goes don't like.
And the right wing guys are doing stuff the left
wing guys don't like, but at least they're doing it
moderately well. Right, these guys aren't doing it well. And
so the sense that the world's largest economy is being
driven by a set of policymakers who don't know what
they're doing is enough to cause people to pull back
(28:52):
on investment. And I fear that's part of what's going
on right now. And this is an administration that took
ten months to understand that America doesn't grow bananas, and
therefore ten months to understand that tariffs on bananas would
not lead to banana factory jobs in the United States. Right,
they finally backed off. But it's not just that, right,
(29:13):
This is firing the head of the BLS. This is
undermining the Federal Reserve, This is undermining the rule of law,
and on and on and on and on and on
and goes. These guys create chaos everywhere they go. This
isn't just about uncertainty. This is actually about implementing bad policies.
Bad policies are bad for the future of America. The
weak of the future of America, the less likely I
(29:34):
am to invest in it, and I think that's a
real part of the story.
Speaker 1 (29:37):
Yeah no, But all this is going to be solved
when Donald Trump makes Kevin Hassett the director of the
third Just kidding, You don't kidding, now, I am? I
am kidding.
Speaker 7 (29:52):
Oh you're kidding a king. If you want to talk
about a competent shock, if you want to talk about
the least distinguished economist ever to hold that role, if
you anap about it, a naked partisan who refuses to
face reality. If I just it's unimaginable.
Speaker 1 (30:09):
The twenty twenty six baby, it's coming up.
Speaker 7 (30:13):
Just I want you to compare this to Bush appointed
Ben Binenki, who subsequently won the Nobel Prize in economics.
Speaker 1 (30:20):
Kevin's gonna have a Fox show? Justin Wolfers, Will you
come back?
Speaker 7 (30:26):
Only for you mine, always for you, mine and your audience?
Speaker 4 (30:29):
Who I love.
Speaker 1 (30:32):
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. Peter Goodman, Welcome to
past politics.
Speaker 4 (30:43):
Thanks so much for having me both.
Speaker 1 (30:45):
Today, we want to talk about tariffs, yet another brilliant
Trump idea that is having some problems.
Speaker 7 (30:52):
With the implementation.
Speaker 1 (30:53):
First, can we talk about this lawsuit? Sure, I didn't
even know you could do that. So talk us through
Costco suing the Trump administration over tips.
Speaker 8 (31:03):
Well, there's a lot of legality to this that's not
terribly interesting involving how long Costco has to win their
case against.
Speaker 4 (31:15):
The Trump administration.
Speaker 8 (31:16):
But what's most interesting about it is that this is
a large company that is well known to people all
over America, Red States, Blue States, Maga Country, Liberal coastal Enclaves,
and unlike just about every other prominent brand in America,
they're not shrinking from the fight against the Trump administration
(31:39):
on what they view as an illegal, highly disruptive impact
on their business through this global trade war. And their
lawsuit essentially argues like, this is not an emergency, you know,
call it what you will.
Speaker 4 (31:53):
I mean.
Speaker 8 (31:54):
Trump has cited this Emergency Economic Powers Act as justification
for unilaterally tearing up treaties that have been negotiated by
other administrations through trade blocks, through the World Trade Organization
with other countries around the world. And he's done so
by saying, hey, it's an emergency in essence that you
(32:16):
Costco are bringing in cotton briefs made in Bangladesh. When
we don't send cotton briefs back to Bangladesh or anything
else for that matter, there's this bilateral trade deficit that's
an emergency. But what's really interesting to me about this
case is if you think back to the spring, when
for about thirty seconds, there was the possibility that Amazon
(32:38):
would on a discount website called Hall that most of
us have never heard of. They were threatening to break
out the cost impact of the tariffs on their website.
And Scott Bessett was in the middle of this press
briefing and he was going on for ten minutes about
how the tariffs were fixing up every American problem under
the sun, and Carolyn Levitt stepped then when bessen was
(33:01):
asked this question by a reporter of the room, you know,
doesn't this show that we Americans are.
Speaker 4 (33:05):
Actually paying these tariffs? And this is a shot.
Speaker 8 (33:09):
I can't remember the exact terminology, but I think she
called it a hostile act from Amazon. And by that
afternoon Trump was on the phone with Jeff Bezos, and
by the end of the day, Trump was saying, Jeff
is really nice guy. He fixed this. They're not doing it.
That's how it's gone. So this really breaks from that mold.
Speaker 2 (33:26):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (33:26):
You know what's funny when we were talking about I
was actually thinking about that Amazon tariff thing because it
was actually a great idea to be able to see
exactly how the tariffs would make things more expensive. And
for an administration that pretended to care about fraud, waste,
and abuse, that pretended to be pro transparency, you would
(33:48):
think that this would be a move towards transparency.
Speaker 4 (33:52):
Who thinks this administration cares about transparency.
Speaker 8 (33:55):
This administration cares about messaging, and the message is that
some days there is no inflation, or if there is inflation,
it's Joe Biden's fault. Any inflation due to tariffs, that's
in your imagination. That's just our political opponent's trying to
throw something at us. And that one consistent message is
we are not paying for the tariffs. The foreign producers
(34:18):
of the goods sent our way, they're paying for the tariffs.
Speaker 4 (34:21):
And here you have a very large company.
Speaker 8 (34:24):
We're roughly one out of every three Americans shops at Costco,
and this company is saying, well, hang on, we're paying
for the tariffs.
Speaker 4 (34:30):
And you know what that means. Our customers are paying
for the tariffs.
Speaker 1 (34:34):
So there's tariff money. I think that the admin is
probably waiting around to find out what the Supreme Court does,
because if the Supreme Court rules it illegal, they're supposedly
going to have to pay it.
Speaker 4 (34:43):
Back, right right, right.
Speaker 8 (34:45):
But there's this deadline that cost Co citing of December fifteenth,
where for tedious administrative reasons, if this is not resolved,
Costco's position is, even if we win, we're not going
to get the money back, and that's why they're taking
this action to file this lawsuit.
Speaker 1 (35:03):
It's such an interesting thing because it's like in so
many different companies in Trump world, at every point we've
seen billionaires, millionaires, corporate entity is just cave even like
in advance for example, I'm thinking about Sherry Redstone, I'm
thinking about you know, at every point they've just been like,
you might want this. A great example is Amazon with Milania, the.
Speaker 4 (35:26):
Forty million dollar deal.
Speaker 1 (35:27):
Yeah, let me just make sure that none of this
bothers you, and then you have like an actual lawsuit.
Speaker 8 (35:33):
I mean, it's interesting that the largest law firms in America,
most of them, at least the most powerful ones like
Paul Weiss, have essentially said, even if we file a
lawsuit against the executive order that's aimed to cripple us
and destroy our business, even if we win, we lose
because we require good relations with the administration in order
(35:55):
to do our business. Yet here's this company is a
discounter for like the everyman, and they're the ones who
are actually standing up to Trump. And by the way,
this is the same company that stood up to Trump
on DII. Virtually every large corporation in America has run
screaming from the pledges they made back when it was,
you know, politically in their favor to pledge allegiance to diversity,
(36:19):
equity inclusion programs. And Costco actually had a vote where
they convened a conference and they said, okay, look, you know,
we've looked at this proposal to get rid of DEI.
We happen to think that diversity is a good part
of our business.
Speaker 4 (36:32):
We think it's a comparative advantage, and we're sticking with it.
Speaker 8 (36:34):
So this is a company that, by all accounts, is
fairly conservative with a small c in terms of how
it goes about its business.
Speaker 4 (36:42):
They don't like to make huge changes. I've been told by.
Speaker 8 (36:45):
Friends who work in the environmental consulting world that Costco's
slow to come to the table in terms of emissions
or sustainability in the supply chain. But once they do something,
they really do it. They don't like to be pushed around.
It's interesting that they're not really sort of grandstanding here.
They're just saying, we're not rolling over. We still think
we live in a democracy that has courts, and if
(37:07):
we are faced with the threat to our business that
we think is illegal and unreasonable, we're gonna use our rights.
And that's interesting given that most large businesses are behaving
as if you know, courts, the law, the facts, like,
none of this really particularly matters. What matters is the
dictates of this administration, which will take extraordinary measures to
(37:29):
do what it wants to do.
Speaker 1 (37:31):
Yeah, it's really shocking you expect Donald Trump to push
But again, like there is this Supreme Court fight with
the Koch brother right, that's going to come down that
decision in June. The Supreme Court is either going to
have to disappoint Leonard Leo and the one surviving Coke
brother or disappoint Donald Trump.
Speaker 8 (37:50):
Yeah, I mean it's interesting because of course Trump is
already intimated that he's unhappy with Leonard Leo for other reasons.
Speaker 4 (37:58):
And so there's there are these heating.
Speaker 8 (38:00):
Notions of what the court means in the Trump age,
and it seems pretty clear that Donald Trump's view is
five point justices to the Supreme Court. Hey, all this
judicial philosophy stuff, that's all fine when you're tap dancing
in front of the Senate, like I own you, I
own your vote. You vote with me, whether there's ideological
(38:23):
judicial consistency or not.
Speaker 4 (38:25):
You're on my team.
Speaker 8 (38:27):
And Leonard Leo, say what you will about him, actually
does have a judicial philosophy and does have beliefs.
Speaker 4 (38:35):
You may agree with them or disagree with them.
Speaker 8 (38:37):
You find them it may find them repellent or heroic, whatever,
But there actually is a judicial philosophy at work, and
that's now colliding with this Trump position that you're on
our team or you're the enemy.
Speaker 1 (38:49):
Yeah, it is like a zero sum a little bit,
right in what sense you you're either with Trump or
you're against him. Right, there's not a lot of room
for nuance.
Speaker 8 (38:59):
I mean, people say it's a protection racket, right, that's
the term that gets thrown around. So you're either inside
the perimeter and you get the perks, or you're outside
and it's lonely out there and you don't have a
lot of avenues for protection. And so back to Costco,
they're saying, we're not playing that way. We think outside
(39:21):
the perimeter is this thing called American democracy in the
rule of law, and we still happen to think that
that matters.
Speaker 1 (39:28):
So let's talk about this battery stuff. It's not surprising,
So explain to us this central premise here with these
environmentally friendly but not really the car batteries, the clean batteries.
Speaker 8 (39:41):
Yeah, so I just spent a year investigating a part
of the global supply chain that we're invited to think
about never.
Speaker 4 (39:48):
You know, it's something I didn't know anything about. Most
people don't know anything about it.
Speaker 8 (39:51):
To the extent to which we think about the battery
in our car, which is very rarely. We're invited to
think that we're participating in in the circular economy, in
the recycling miracle, because it's true that the largest battery
manufacturers in the US have these sophisticated plants where they
go get spent.
Speaker 4 (40:09):
We're talking about lead batteries.
Speaker 8 (40:10):
By the way, these are conventional lead batteries in millions
of cars, including lots of evs, because even evs have
small mostly have small lead batteries the power and the
software systems.
Speaker 4 (40:20):
When they're off.
Speaker 8 (40:21):
So these large battery manufacturers go around, they gather up
spent lead batteries. They use machinery to extract the lead
from within, and they melt it down to get new
leads so they can make new batteries. But there have
been stricter and stricter regulations in the US to limit
lead poisoning of communities, and there's been growth, and so
they've needed to go find some new sources of lead.
(40:43):
They've gone around the world, and increasingly they're buying from Nigeria.
So I spent a year with a reporting partner at
the Examination, Will Fitzgibbon, looking at how these smelters operating
with none of these sorts of parts, no emissions controls,
workers breaking apart battery shirt lists, no goggles, no gloves,
(41:07):
using machetes their bare hands to rip out the lead
from inside, and then that stuff gets trucked up to
these giant smelters, just big furnaces basically that are largely
open air, you know, or the corrugated metal sheets on
the rooftops. But you can see the smoke just pouring
out in every direction. You can smell it. It's just foul.
(41:29):
There's a dust of black ash that's settling on everything.
And they're villages right next to these smelters in this
town of Oki Joe, north of Legos. And so what
we did was we actually found seventy people living in
the midst of these smelters and tested their blood. They
(41:49):
volunteered to be tested, and we found that roughly seven
out of ten of them have lead in their blood
at alarming levels. Every worker we tested had extraordinary high
levels of lead.
Speaker 1 (42:01):
So like lead poisoning, right.
Speaker 4 (42:03):
Yeah, we're talking irreversible brain damage.
Speaker 8 (42:05):
We're talking about schools right up against these factories with kids,
you know, breathing this stuff. And I talked to a
mom of a three year old girl who said, my
daughter's constantly coughing and black particles are coming out of
her mouth. I talked to a sixty five year old
man who was shaking uncontrollably, said he could never sleep.
He brought me into his house. He said, look, my
(42:26):
walls are black from this smoke. There's just no relief.
And so we traced the lead from these smelters in
Nigeria to the US through the port of Baltimore and
eventually got the second largest battery of manufacturer in the US,
a company called East penn to acknowledge that it was
buying this lead, it was using this lead to make
(42:46):
new batteries, and then they said, we're not doing that anymore.
Speaker 1 (42:50):
Do you believe them?
Speaker 8 (42:51):
I do believe them, because they plausibly were relying on
the assurances of the trading company they buy from, a
bunch of different middleman trading companies, including the Swiss company.
Speaker 4 (43:05):
Called traffic Eura.
Speaker 8 (43:06):
I don't believe that they tried particularly hard to find
out where's our lead coming from, and they sort of
cop to that. When I eventually got the CEO to
talk to me, which took months and had to ambush
him at a trade show.
Speaker 4 (43:18):
And when he eventually talked to me, he said said, look,
was I too trusting? You know, I'll take that shot.
Speaker 8 (43:23):
But here's the thing I asked him, Okay, so you're
not buying lead from Nigeria anymore.
Speaker 4 (43:28):
Where are you're making up the difference?
Speaker 8 (43:29):
Well, we're boosting our purchases from South Korea and Australia. Well,
the trade data shows that a lot of this Nigerian
lead is ending up in South Korea, and East Penn
buys lead batteries from South Korea. So I said, well,
how do you know you're not still buying Nigerian lead
through South Korea? He said, well, it's a good question.
It's very hard to trace metals. I mean, this is
the nature of global supply chages, is the engineered so
(43:52):
there's plausible deniability. There's so many participants, there's so many
countries involved that any single actor can essentially you know,
it's like you're standing on the tennis court with your
doubles partner.
Speaker 4 (44:02):
I thought you had that one.
Speaker 8 (44:04):
I mean that's like, that's how the global supply chain works.
Speaker 1 (44:07):
Do you think that there is a way to get
the lend out of batteries that is safer?
Speaker 4 (44:15):
Oh, there definitely is. Yeah. I mean we have these
plants in the States.
Speaker 8 (44:19):
They're present in Europe where they're very strict stames, but
it costs.
Speaker 4 (44:24):
Millions of dollars.
Speaker 8 (44:25):
And I mean I just got off the phone actually
with the guy one of these plants in Nigeria. He said, look,
I would love to put in an automatic breaking system
instead of having these guys with the machetes do the
work with their bare hands.
Speaker 4 (44:36):
Do you have four million dollars lying around? He would
have to borrow it.
Speaker 8 (44:40):
The prevailing interest rates in Nigeria are fifteen percent, and
who's gonna pay for that?
Speaker 4 (44:46):
Now?
Speaker 8 (44:46):
The sad part is if we hypothetically relied just on
that responsibly produced lead in Nigeria and all the costs
got passed on through the chain the consumer in the
US buying a battery. It's a hard hypothet all we
kind of modeled it. It wouldn't be much more. You know,
it's like single digit number of dollars more.
Speaker 1 (45:05):
It's not like making an iPhone in the United States.
Speaker 4 (45:08):
Oh, not at all, not at all.
Speaker 8 (45:10):
It's just that the trading companies who get the real
margins on this, they would have to give up profit,
you know, they look they'd rather buy.
Speaker 4 (45:19):
From a responsible supplier.
Speaker 8 (45:21):
In fact, there was one in Nigeria that we focused on,
called Green Recycling, that went out of business because they
couldn't pay as much for the spent batteries because they
were carrying the costs of putting in the automated braking
equipment and the emissions controls and so they weren't poisoning
the environment. The head of that company said, yeah, maybe
(45:42):
if we'd killed more people would still be in business.
I mean, it was actually a competitive disadvantage to them
to do.
Speaker 4 (45:49):
The right thing.
Speaker 8 (45:49):
And of course, you know, we don't go buying batteries
in the US with some sort of option over where
the lead comes from.
Speaker 1 (45:56):
Yeah, it's one of those things where it's like if
you know, then all of a sudden, you know it's
not okay. So it's one of the many places where
journalism is doing the heavy lifting.
Speaker 8 (46:06):
This is certainly a story that wasn't supposed to be tolls.
You know, there was nobody waiting for me to call
them up so they could help me understand the supply
chain for recycled lead.
Speaker 4 (46:17):
This is a secret trade.
Speaker 8 (46:18):
And the truth is if they shut these plants down
in Nigeria, which is possible.
Speaker 4 (46:21):
I mean, as we speak, the Nigerian government since our.
Speaker 8 (46:23):
Story ran has sealed up the worst polluting factories in
this town.
Speaker 4 (46:28):
We're focused on for them. Well, good for them, except.
Speaker 8 (46:30):
You know a lot of people work at those plants
would much rather have them improved as opposed to closed
and It's not as if, to your point, we're going
to suddenly, you know, bring all this stuff back to
the US and do it at a high standard. It'll
move to some other country in Africa, It'll move somewhere
else in South Asia. I mean, there has to be
accountability at our end where it's the international auto industry,
(46:53):
it's the battery manufacturers who are asking us to feel
good about buying their products. You know, we're helping solve
climate change, we're limiting pollution, while they're simultaneously relying for
supplies on a very nasty, tragic situation that they would
much rather we not examined.
Speaker 1 (47:13):
Peter, thank you so much for coming on. I hope
you'll come back.
Speaker 4 (47:16):
Oh anytime, Mollie, thank you so much for having me.
No moment second.
Speaker 3 (47:24):
Jesse Cannon, I'm going to take you back to a
time it was twenty twelve and all we heard was
Barack Obama as the secret Muslim. What did we know
that the first secret Muzzlim at our government would be
what GOP Republican Representative Corey Mills. And there's blockbuster new
(47:44):
reporting from our former colleague Roger Sellenberger that really has
a lot of strange stuff in this This guy is wild.
Speaker 1 (47:52):
It makes me wish that The Daily Beast still existed,
because if it did, this story would have been a blockbuster.
It's on his substack. You can read it. It's the
same standards George Santos with a gun. The untold story
of Corey Mills, a mercenary in Congress. He tried to
leverage his legislative role to the benefit of his arms business.
(48:15):
That's right, arms business, you heard me, arms like guns,
selling guns. He took the witness stand.
Speaker 3 (48:22):
How else are you going to finance spyke sex workers
in Afghanistan?
Speaker 1 (48:25):
Ohs does that come in there?
Speaker 4 (48:27):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (48:28):
What I'm thinking about. My man is also married. He
was cyberstalking and threatening his ex girlfriend with cyber porn.
He's got the kind of story that makes you wonder
why he's not a Fox Weekend host. Yeah, Corey Mills
(48:49):
is not as famous as George Santos, but he may
be soon.
Speaker 3 (48:53):
We should really say, Roger is one of the best
investigative reporters. He should really go and check out his
substack and read up on this an insane story that
this man is in our government and not booted out,
but Mike Johnson's majority is too.
Speaker 1 (49:05):
Thin, So read this, Read a substack, Corey Mills, George
Santos with a gun, The untold story of a mercenary
in Congress. 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 sense of all this chaos.
(49:28):
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 the Supreme Court will decide if
Trump's birthright citizenship order can stand. We have such a
great job for you today. Think like an economist. Justin
Wolfers stops by to talk about the bad economic vibes
(00:24):
coming from the Trump administration. Then we'll talk to The
New York Times owner Peter S. Goodman about Costco's lawsuit
against the Trump administration or the tariff policies harm to
their businesses. But first the news.
Speaker 2 (00:38):
Miley, this is really exciting.
Speaker 3 (00:40):
You and I have been working for months on a
series where we're going to start a conversation on the
DEM's Project twenty twenty nine and what they should do
when they regain power, because Republicans were really prepared and
we want to be too. So you and I have
been talking to some very smart people. It's time for
our audience to hear about it. Are you excited?
Speaker 1 (00:58):
We did something like this about Project twenty twenty five,
about the Republicans Project twenty twenty five, and we were
like one of the first people to get on that
story and By the way, Donald Trump was like, no,
I don't want to do it. I'm just kidding, and
everyone's like, okay, he's not going to do it. So
it was very frustrating for all of us. This is
very different. We are just talking to some really smart academics.
(01:20):
We're sort of spitballing how to solve these problems. I
want to say this is not the official anything for
Project twenty twenty nine. We're just trying to get the
ball rolling, get people thinking about broad sweeping anti corruption
legislation the way that was passed after Nixon. There was
a real failure I think on the part of the
(01:41):
Biden administration to pass those kind of broad sweeping anti
corruption legislations. You know, the problem was so much of
what we see in Washington d c our norms and
not laws. And the problem with the norm is it's
fine if you have someone who is a sort of
(02:02):
normal president because they observe the norms. But when you
have a Donald Trump and you get norms, they just
run right through them because they say, well, it's not illegal,
so who cares. And that is why we're trying to
get people talking about this. This first topic of campaign
finance reform seems very unsexy, but it's actually the nuts
and baults of everything else that follows. If you have
(02:26):
candidates who are funded by crypto or by tech companies,
or by cigarette companies though that is not really the
thing anymore, or by oil companies, then those politicians end
up just serving those interests. And that's why Campaign finance
reform is why we started, and we talked to some really,
really smart people who just gave us ideas on how
(02:49):
to get things going. It is probably the best thing
we have ever done.
Speaker 3 (02:54):
I think some of the parts that are coming out
even after this are some of the best things we've
ever done. This one's like amazing, and then I'm so
excited for the audience to see the rest of it
because I really am so proud of it.
Speaker 1 (03:04):
You're never going to find forty five minutes on campaign finance.
Speaker 3 (03:07):
Reform, but there's really answers in there. There's things people
haven't heard before. I'm Mike one of the people. I've
read more about this than ninety nine point nine nine
nine percent of people, and I still learned a lot.
Speaker 1 (03:18):
So if you want to nerd out, go over to
our YouTube and nerd out with us.
Speaker 2 (03:22):
And please share it with a friend and discuss it.
Speaker 1 (03:25):
Share it with a friend who loves campaign finance reform.
If you know someone nerdy, share it with them. Please.
Speaker 3 (03:31):
All right, Molly, let's get down to brass texts, and
by that I mean brass techie decorations inside Epstein Island.
Speaker 1 (03:39):
It's pretty weak. We were talking about nerdy. Yes, continue listen.
Speaker 2 (03:43):
My humor is appreciated by a few listeners.
Speaker 1 (03:45):
Yes.
Speaker 3 (03:46):
Anyway, So a judge is going to release the Jeffrey
Epstein grand jury documents. Robert Garcia's Oversight Committee released some
of the more disturbing photos of this estee trudge this week.
Speaker 1 (03:57):
Jesse is talking about the dents chair.
Speaker 3 (03:59):
I even think they'll above the fireplace painting is one
of the scariest things I've ever seen.
Speaker 1 (04:03):
We had on this podcast. Robert Garcia. He is our
buddy and we love him. He is the ranking member
of Oversight, and he is proof that if you put
someone on committees, to head committees who is actually young
and enthusiastic and wants to do the work and knows
how to push the message, they will do it. And
(04:25):
you know why we keep seeing Epstein in the news.
Jesse do you know.
Speaker 3 (04:28):
Why smart tacticians like Robert Garcia and Rocanna.
Speaker 1 (04:32):
All they do is talk about it, and all they
do is release stuff, and all they do is trip
drip up, and so good for him, good good good.
Here we go. So the judge is going to release
the Epstein grand jury documents. Grand jury documents, they tend
to have a lot of a pretty high level of redaction.
So I think you're going to get more from other stuff.
(04:54):
But it's certainly possible, yep.
Speaker 3 (04:56):
Speaking of the Epstein cover up, you may recall a
character used to refer to as Big Govan Bongo Dan Bongino.
Who now is that the FBI. He talked to mister
Hennity last night and many people are saying he gave
away the game.
Speaker 4 (05:09):
Let's listen, remember this.
Speaker 5 (05:11):
Just before you became the deputy FBI director. You put
a post on x right after this happened, and you said,
there's a massive cover up because the person that planted
those pipe bombs, they don't want you to know who
it is because it's either a connected anti Trump insider
or an inside job. You said that, you know, long
(05:32):
before you even thought of as deputy FBI director.
Speaker 6 (05:37):
Yeah, That's why I said to you this investigations just begun.
We are pretty comfortable we have our guy. I think
is again legal process starts to service and information facts
start to come out. The public is going to be
very comfortable with the investigation that was conducted under Director
Patel and his leadership. He's been great on this, but
(05:59):
I don't want to You know, listen, I was paid
in the past, Sean for my opinions. That's clear, and
one day I'll be back in that space. But that's
not what I'm paid for now. I'm paid to be
your deputy director, and we base investigations on facts.
Speaker 4 (06:12):
And you know, it was interesting.
Speaker 6 (06:13):
I was looking out in the crowd today at the presser.
Speaker 2 (06:23):
That sounds like the sound of joy Molly.
Speaker 1 (06:25):
Okay, So he's saying I was paid to make shit
up and to have opinions and to outrage bait. By
the way, can you believe this fucking guy is deputy
director of the FBI.
Speaker 2 (06:37):
It is one of the many horrors of this administration.
Speaker 1 (06:40):
Now he uses our tax dollars to just get around. No,
that's his boss cash Battel.
Speaker 3 (06:47):
Well, what you heard today is is boss cash Baitel
gets his girlfriend's drug, friend's hope safe, FBI paid ubers.
Speaker 1 (06:54):
Yeah, it's all so fucking bad, but it is great
that the FBI just keeps leaking and Lencoln. So look,
I think none of us should be surprised to know
that Bngino is taking liberties. And that was his job
was to juice the algorithm and to outrage bait, and
(07:14):
now his job is to I don't know. I can't
even think of Jesse.
Speaker 3 (07:22):
I'll move on to a much greater pastures. I'm going
to shock you here. Pete tig Sith, seems like you
whired about the boat bombing.
Speaker 1 (07:28):
Yeah, now I'm going to say that, Actually, what's worse
than Pete Hegseth lying about the boat bombing is everybody's
favorite Tom Cotton lying about the video he saw right,
Because Tom Cotton was like, it's totally exonerated, and everyone
else was like what we saw was bad shit.
Speaker 3 (07:46):
Do you mean to tell me Tom Cotton thought doing
a war crime was justified?
Speaker 2 (07:50):
That doesn't seem like him.
Speaker 1 (07:51):
It's ironic because Tom Cotton loves war. But it's also
like the other thing about is did Tom Cotton think
no one would ever see it? Like I mean that
kind of brazen lying. I have a lot of respect
for that kind of lying. And yet I'm kidding, do
we still do fuck that guy? Because Tom Cotton?
Speaker 2 (08:09):
Yeah, not a fan.
Speaker 1 (08:10):
Not a fan.
Speaker 3 (08:11):
This is not looking good as next week, Representative shre
Thanadar will be putting impeachment motions against Whiskey Pete.
Speaker 1 (08:19):
Yeah, you got impeach Whiskey Pete. I mean, I don't
know that Trump ever fires him, but you still got
to get on the record for impeaching that guy.
Speaker 4 (08:25):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (08:26):
Yeah, they got to take the stand and make people
vote that they're keeping this guy because I'm going to
tell you something, this is going to be his last scandal.
Speaker 1 (08:33):
Oh yeah, Whiskey Peet.
Speaker 3 (08:36):
Speaking of never ending cars, we got to talk jerrymandering.
The Supreme Court upheld Texas's redistricting map, giving the Republicans
a bunch of seats, and now the House in Indiana
has passed their redistricting map, but looks like there's trouble ahead.
Speaker 1 (08:49):
Yeah, so they have a new partisan redistricting setting up
a showdown in the Senate or there might not be
enough support to send the bills of the governor. I
just want to point out that this is so fucking
sketchy and sleazy, it would deliver two more GOP seats. Again,
all of this stuff works until it doesn't, Right, Like
(09:12):
we know the Texas seats are pretty smartly I use
that in quotes Jerry Mander to deliver for Republicans. But
like all this stuff, you don't get to get more votes.
You just make the margins different. So eventually a Jerrymander
becomes a dummy Mander. Besides the fact that it's so
fucking sleezy, you know, and sketchy and anti democratic, et cetera,
(09:36):
et cetera, it is very very very important to realize
that like Donald Trump is not popular, right, none of
this is popular. He is not popular, the party is
not popular. They are hitching their wagonto even more on
popularity by doing this, and so like they think they
can get around this, but they may actually make everything
(09:58):
worderse Over at our YouTube channel, we have some really
exciting stuff. Jesse and I have made a documentary. It's
called Project twenty twenty nine, a Reimagining. It's a series
about how democrats can deliver popular policies when they regain power.
(10:22):
The first episode is up now, it's the first part
of the series, and we're going to examine what went
wrong with some of the Biden administration's approach to policies
that may have prevented Democrats from being able to deliver
the broad anti corruption legislation that needed to happen, and
(10:46):
by the way, that would have prevented some of the
corruption we're seeing right now. The first episode dives deep
into the first step of fixing American politics. It may
sound unsexy, but it's a big, important issue and that
big subject is campaign finance reform. For this episode, we
(11:07):
talk to some of the smartest people we know, professors
and academics, people like Lawrence Lessig, Tiffany Muller, Michael Waldman,
and Tom Moore. Republicans were prepared for when they got
the levers of power. Democrats need that same kind of preparation.
(11:30):
That's why we need to start the conversation on how
Democrats can do the same thing. So please head over
to our YouTube channel and search Molli Jong Fast Project
twenty twenty nine or go to the Fast Politics YouTube
channel page and you'll find it there and help us
spread the word and stay tuned for more episodes. Justin
(11:55):
Wolfer is the host of We Think Like an Economist
podcast and a professor at the UNI University of Michigan.
Justin Warfer's Molly John Fast, what's happening with the jobs numbers?
Speaker 7 (12:06):
Who knows?
Speaker 4 (12:07):
Have you seen him?
Speaker 6 (12:08):
Now?
Speaker 7 (12:08):
I've been looking. I looked under my bed, by the bed. Actually,
I thought I might have let them under the clothes,
I asked, Betsy. We haven't seen them anyway, mate?
Speaker 4 (12:16):
Why why?
Speaker 7 (12:18):
I don't think I misplaced them. I think it might
be because there was a government shut down for six weeks,
which we only allowed essential services to continue, and generating
the data that will help guide us towards economic nirvana
is not seen as essential. So some of the data
was simply never collected for the first time in eighty years.
And other parts of the data were collected on a
(12:40):
slower timeline, and we're going to see them in two weeks.
And so, Molly, I understand. You look like you're on
the edge of your seat. You're feeling jittery. You're like,
where are my numbers? What's going on with the economy?
This is all I can think about and I can
sleep last night, so breathe. It's we're coming toward the
end of this deep dark data back out.
Speaker 1 (13:00):
So these jobs numbers are because of the government shut
down or.
Speaker 7 (13:05):
Are laid because of the government check So my guess,
Molly is you saw some headlines about week jobs numbers
and you want to talk about them. Mm hmm, Okay,
let me explain that. Okay, So we have the official
government jobs numbers put together by the best statisticians in
the world, fantastic, high quality, not perfect, but the least
imperfect we have.
Speaker 1 (13:26):
Do We still have those though, even though Donald Trump
fired the head of the Bureau of Labor and.
Speaker 7 (13:30):
Statistics, we still have lots of very high quality statisticians.
We have fewered than we once had, but we have
enough that America's economic statistics will continue to be first
class as soon as we fund them enough that they
can open and publish data. When the government can't do that,
everyone starts to look for private sector alternatives. There's one
called the ADP Payroll Report. ADP, for many of our
(13:54):
members of our audience processes your check, your payroll check
each month, and so that means they know a lot
about how many people are working, and so they crunch
their numbers and come up with another estimate. Now, the
problem is the statistical sophistication of the folks there. They
don't ADP doesn't print everyone's pay off, and so therefore
it's not clear which parts of the economy they do
(14:14):
and don't cover, and so therefore their numbers are simply
less reliable. Now, one number from ADP is not very exciting,
but if you have four numbers in a row, you
could sort of start to feel like four noisy numbers.
You can average it out and come up with some sense, again,
not a perfect sense. We've seen four very weak numbers
(14:35):
in a row, so it is left a lot of
people on edge when we get the real data that
we really know and we really trust. We are currently
feeling quite pessimistic. It could be that job growth has slowed,
it could have stalled, or we could be in reverse.
Speaker 1 (14:52):
So we don't know. So we really have nothing. The
numbers we have something.
Speaker 7 (14:56):
We have good reason, some reason to be quite pessimistic
about the last few months.
Speaker 1 (15:03):
Right.
Speaker 7 (15:03):
There are no certainties in my Worldmarde, there's just guesses.
Speaker 1 (15:08):
So we have some reason to be pessimistic about the
last three months three months, and that reason is because
what looks like job lost, yes.
Speaker 7 (15:18):
Could be overall job loss. And we also know that
the DOGE job cuts are finally going to hit the
statistics because when they tried to fire them, they got reinstated,
and then they had to fire them on a slower thing,
and blah blah blah. You know, nothing got done right
the first time, if it was even doing right at all,
And so we'll see some of those federal government job
(15:39):
cuts start to hit the numbers pretty much straight away.
Speaker 1 (15:41):
Give me a cent of how many people were fired
because of DOGE.
Speaker 7 (15:45):
The last number I saw is we're looking at about
one hundred and fifty thousand government jobs in October. Now
there may be more to come.
Speaker 1 (15:52):
Some though, were reinstated, right, like the people who guard
the nukes. Yep, right, I mean there were certain people
that were fired that we're not supposed to be fired.
Speaker 7 (16:02):
I honestly, Molly, it's outrageous. These people call themselves small
government folks, yet what they want to do is suck
on the government tit and put people out the front
of our nukes defending it, as if the free market
couldn't just do that for us.
Speaker 1 (16:14):
That's right, Just pay me, We.
Speaker 7 (16:17):
Need a sarcasm font with an Australian accent.
Speaker 1 (16:20):
We do. Well, let's just go back to the actual
question here, which is, I don't mean to be cranky
with you, so we think.
Speaker 7 (16:30):
Like, well, be cranky.
Speaker 1 (16:32):
One hundred and twenty five thousand fired, What percentage of
which you think well hired? So everyone gets rehired for
the three months.
Speaker 7 (16:40):
So we think that so there's actually many more people fired,
a bunch were reinstated. The net is about one hundred
and fifty thousand for October.
Speaker 4 (16:50):
That's all I got for you.
Speaker 1 (16:51):
Make that makes sense In the larger numbers, like what
percentage of government of loss job loss? Is that quite small?
Speaker 7 (16:58):
So one, it's quite small, and too. The other thing
that we want to do when we look at economic
statistics is see what the underlying economic forces. Those just
dead right. I think that this as a one off
to sort of look the other way. So the numbers
look bad, they were reflecting a genuine reality that a
bunch of public servants lost their job. That reality, of course,
is several months old, but it will hit the data.
(17:21):
But it doesn't in and of itself tell us much
about the economy's underlying momentum.
Speaker 1 (17:26):
So let's talk about the economy's underlying momentum. There's certainly
a number of factors. What is the biggest? So like,
Donald Trump is getting blamed for the economy, which is
a non partisan activity. Blaming the president for the economy
always happens. You don't like it, you shouldn't like it,
but it's what happens. It's sometimes true. The president has
(17:46):
usually less control over the economy than you would think.
That said, Donald Trump has done a couple of things
when he came in that seemed like they would have
huge economic impact that we might be feeling around now.
Is that so talk us through what those things are
and what you think the impact is?
Speaker 4 (18:02):
So far right?
Speaker 7 (18:04):
So, you know, the president came in actually did very
little apart from those for a couple of months. Then
he pivoted to tariffs. The big tariff announcement was in April.
But then you know, a week later he lost the
courage of his convictions and had a ninety day pause. Shockingly,
end of the ninety day pause, surprisingly he had not
secured ninety deals in ninety days, and you'll be surprised.
(18:26):
He then gave himself a twenty four day extension and
then eventually put in place a set of tariffs that
was remarkably like what we had begun with, and then
proceeded to cut them what looks like a somewhat random way,
as he would hear various complaints or meet with various
foreign leaders. But basically, we've had tariffs now in place
(18:47):
for about four months. We've only seen data actually as
far as the first one or two months of that.
So that's one big thing is what's going on with tariffs?
Speaker 1 (18:56):
And there's tariffs. Well, I just want you to answer
this because I'm actually interested What did she.
Speaker 7 (19:01):
Just say, I'm actually interested in economics.
Speaker 1 (19:04):
No, I'm interested in this answer. Let's ahead of verse.
Speaker 7 (19:08):
I'm actually interested in your next question, mark.
Speaker 1 (19:11):
What countries are these tariffs? Because like Trump has said
a lot of stuff, but like it's hard for me
to know what actually happened.
Speaker 7 (19:19):
The answer is all of them in my native Australia,
which is a country that buys more stuff from America
than the other way round.
Speaker 8 (19:27):
There were no.
Speaker 7 (19:28):
Updates on tariffs for the Hurd and McDonald Islands, and
so the penguins there remains in flux. They're not sure
whether no news is good news. Tariffs remained remarkably high
on China. They went astronomically silly. Then they got back
to milly absurd. And actually Canada has very low tariffs,
even as the President keeps talking about them, because most
(19:52):
trade with Canada falls under the existing free trade agreement.
So the tariffs don't affect nearest neighbors, even as we
bluster that we're coming after them. So look, there's a
lot there. And so that actually leads to an important
second shock, which is uncertainty. Uncertainly not just about tariffs.
I can tell you that I'm sure this is true
(20:13):
with the fancy dinner parties. You go to Molly with
titans of industry, that all they do is talking.
Speaker 1 (20:19):
About I just sitting here drinking my diet coke, and
all of a sudden we get titans of industry.
Speaker 7 (20:25):
I go on, Yes, you don't go to dinner parties.
Speaker 1 (20:27):
I don't even eat. I just drink die coke.
Speaker 7 (20:30):
That's amazing, that's okay. But titans of industry who are
seen in New York, which I do believe is the
city you're coming to us from. Many people also sit
around talking about the president, which is do I have
the right bathroom policy or will the president come after me?
What does dipolicy look like? Or will the President come
after me? Am I getting my imports from the right countries?
Speaker 1 (20:50):
All?
Speaker 7 (20:51):
Will the President come after me? The poor CEO of
Intel walked into the White House and walked out with
ten percent less of his company that somehow slid down
the cushions of the tear Treasury Secretary's couch, never to
be seen again.
Speaker 1 (21:03):
Then Donald Trump bought to a million dollars of debt
for Intel. He with his personal money.
Speaker 4 (21:09):
That's terrific.
Speaker 7 (21:10):
It's nice that he said, help make money.
Speaker 1 (21:14):
Ways I don't think he's trying to help. That's my
hottest take.
Speaker 7 (21:17):
You are so cynical, So cynical.
Speaker 1 (21:21):
Okay, So tariffs we'll have a big effect in certain times.
Speaker 7 (21:26):
Two uncertainty. Three and immigration shock.
Speaker 1 (21:30):
Let's talk about the immigration shop because.
Speaker 7 (21:33):
Really big deal, and we don't talk about it enough.
Speaker 1 (21:36):
We don't have more people being deported, right, we don't
because he's because they're very bad at what they do,
thank god. So the numbers are not actually higher than
they were under Obama or Biden. But they have created
things like what we saw in Georgia with the South
Korean Car Company plan in which we had Brian camp
(21:59):
workerly hard to get this Hondai factory filled with South
Koreans who were training American workers. Ice went in there,
arrested the South Koreans, put them in a Louisiana detention center,
flew them home, and effectively whatever happened.
Speaker 7 (22:16):
There lots of photographs of executives in chains.
Speaker 1 (22:21):
Yeah, they didn't like that.
Speaker 7 (22:22):
And what was really important we didn't see it over
here was that was front page news throughout the region
and it was interpreted directly as anti Asian racism, which
weeks and weeks, yes, and will affect a different part
of the economy, which is what we call foreign direct investment,
foreign companies building factories in the United States, which is
(22:43):
what the President wanted. They won't do that now in
case they're dragged out in handcuffs, which is what those
foreign companies don't want. It's sort of outrages that they
don't want to avoid handcuffs.
Speaker 1 (22:56):
How dare they?
Speaker 7 (22:58):
There are certain New York parties I'm told we're wearing
handcuffs as mandatory, and it's just understood that it's part
of the invitation. It's not one show in New York
amazing place, New York City. All right, So the so
that's investment, but that's part of it, but that's by
no means all of it. In fact, it might even
(23:18):
be a small part. The other is literally fewer people
in America. And you might be right that they're dragging
fewer people out through ice detention centers, but very few
people are coming in and some people are leaving. And
so American population growth, which has been you can open
a hot dog stand in any corner of New York
or indeed any city, and your sales tend to grow
(23:39):
because there are more people. It's an important source of
growth for many businesses. There's not going to be more
people next year. There's not going to be fear it'll
be about dead. Even that's a very unusual circumstance that
probably hasn't occurred through your lifetime only. And so that's
going to mean less growth in demand. It's also going
to mean problems and supply. This is the story that
farmers can't get the crops picked right now. So when
(24:01):
you disrupt what had been a fairly standard slow population growth,
everything's a little bit different. And so that's going to
mean many of our economic indicators are not measured on
a per person basis. For instance, we talk about how
many jobs do we have, we talk about how much
GDP we have. If we have not as many people
or not as much population growth, those numbers are going
(24:22):
to look worse. They're going to look worse even if
they aren't worse. That's the first point. But second is
anytime you have a stark adjustment like that, actually you
create lots of frictions and may potentially create bottlenecks like
not being able to pick your crops.
Speaker 1 (24:35):
And you have less people paying into Social Security.
Speaker 7 (24:39):
I would say you had fewer people paying into social Security.
Speaker 1 (24:42):
Well, you are the radar here, so explain what that means.
These are our people who are taking from government, but
they are giving because even if you're not a citizen,
you still pay taxes.
Speaker 7 (24:58):
Right, So, Molly, I'm going to answer your question and
tell you why I don't like it. What you're doing
is you're trying to say this discussion about immigration is
fundamental economic I'm going to have an economist explain the
economics of it, and I will happily do so. People
who think that immigrants are taken from you and I
don't understand the reality is about half of them have
fake Social Security numbers. Here I'm talking about undocumented workers,
(25:19):
which means they do pay into Social Security, but because
they're fake numbers, they don't take a penny out. And
there's lots of reports showing that they don't take a
penny out. So therefore, in fact, they are subsidizing yours
and my well, not mine, but maybe your parents. That's
the economic answer. So, and it's important because there is
a view that these people are taking from the government,
(25:39):
perse it's false. Let me come back and tell you
why I object to the question. The issue here is
far more fundamental than economics. The issue of immigration, I
think should not be about how does it affect my wallet.
We immigrants are people I would like to be thought
of as a person first, and.
Speaker 2 (25:58):
I have a life.
Speaker 7 (25:59):
I have a family, I have dreams, I have things
I contribute. This country made a promise to me. I
made a promise to it, and I think overwhelmingly that's
the most important thing at play here. Excuse my moralizing.
Speaker 1 (26:13):
I just want to.
Speaker 7 (26:14):
Say that if you want to talk about economic impacts
of immigration, let me focus on another couple that are
very important. One this is true of me. It's not
true of you, Molly. I am one of America's great exporters.
I export millions of dollars and therefore close the trade
deficit that president claims to so much about.
Speaker 4 (26:33):
How do I do that.
Speaker 7 (26:33):
I'm a university professor, and I educate students from all
around the world. And when they fly around the world
and spend forty thousand dollars a year in oun other Michigan,
they create high quality jobs, They receive an American education,
and forever will be transformed in a way that transmits
American soft power. The President is making it hard for
(26:55):
those kids to get across the border. So I am,
and the University of Michigan is a great American exporter
that wants to engage with the rest of the world
and help solve our trade deficit, and the present will
not let us do it. Here is not putting It's
not the equivalent of putting tariffs on imports. It's the
equivalent of putting tariffs on exports. This is crazy, and
(27:15):
these are wonderful jobs. The people who work at the
University of high quality jobs. They enjoy their life. They
work at a desk, they don't have a saw back,
but we aren't allowed to do it anymore. So that's
a very important thing. Another very important thing the H
one B VISA program is bringing in educated people in
areas where the United States has shortages. Those educated people
are working in the most innovative parts of the United States.
(27:39):
They have a huge impact on new technologies and therefore productivity, innovation,
and the future of the United States. Try doing the
world's best cutting edge science without talent from around the world,
you can't do it. The secret to America's technological innovation
supremacy has been we have been the home of science
(28:02):
from all around the world. We have been the place
scientist wanted to come. Now we're not letting them across
the border.
Speaker 4 (28:08):
Right.
Speaker 7 (28:08):
Do you want to hear about another shock? Yes? All right,
So Tariff's was one, and then we had immigration that
was another. Uncertainly was another. Yeah, I want to tell
you one more that we is not the usual language
of economics. God, I've never used this. I think there's
a competence shock. Normally, when economists talk about the economy,
(28:29):
we think everyone's making pretty smart decisions and the left
wing guys are doing stuff. The right wing goes don't like.
And the right wing guys are doing stuff the left
wing guys don't like, but at least they're doing it
moderately well. Right, these guys aren't doing it well. And
so the sense that the world's largest economy is being
driven by a set of policymakers who don't know what
they're doing is enough to cause people to pull back
(28:52):
on investment. And I fear that's part of what's going
on right now. And this is an administration that took
ten months to understand that America doesn't grow bananas, and
therefore ten months to understand that tariffs on bananas would
not lead to banana factory jobs in the United States. Right,
they finally backed off. But it's not just that, right,
(29:13):
This is firing the head of the BLS. This is
undermining the Federal Reserve, This is undermining the rule of law,
and on and on and on and on and on
and goes. These guys create chaos everywhere they go. This
isn't just about uncertainty. This is actually about implementing bad policies.
Bad policies are bad for the future of America. The
weak of the future of America, the less likely I
(29:34):
am to invest in it, and I think that's a
real part of the story.
Speaker 1 (29:37):
Yeah no, But all this is going to be solved
when Donald Trump makes Kevin Hassett the director of the
third Just kidding, You don't kidding, now, I am? I
am kidding.
Speaker 7 (29:52):
Oh you're kidding a king. If you want to talk
about a competent shock, if you want to talk about
the least distinguished economist ever to hold that role, if
you anap about it, a naked partisan who refuses to
face reality. If I just it's unimaginable.
Speaker 1 (30:09):
The twenty twenty six baby, it's coming up.
Speaker 7 (30:13):
Just I want you to compare this to Bush appointed
Ben Binenki, who subsequently won the Nobel Prize in economics.
Speaker 1 (30:20):
Kevin's gonna have a Fox show? Justin Wolfers, Will you
come back?
Speaker 7 (30:26):
Only for you mine, always for you, mine and your audience?
Speaker 4 (30:29):
Who I love.
Speaker 1 (30:32):
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. Peter Goodman, Welcome to
past politics.
Speaker 4 (30:43):
Thanks so much for having me both.
Speaker 1 (30:45):
Today, we want to talk about tariffs, yet another brilliant
Trump idea that is having some problems.
Speaker 7 (30:52):
With the implementation.
Speaker 1 (30:53):
First, can we talk about this lawsuit? Sure, I didn't
even know you could do that. So talk us through
Costco suing the Trump administration over tips.
Speaker 8 (31:03):
Well, there's a lot of legality to this that's not
terribly interesting involving how long Costco has to win their
case against.
Speaker 4 (31:15):
The Trump administration.
Speaker 8 (31:16):
But what's most interesting about it is that this is
a large company that is well known to people all
over America, Red States, Blue States, Maga Country, Liberal coastal Enclaves,
and unlike just about every other prominent brand in America,
they're not shrinking from the fight against the Trump administration
(31:39):
on what they view as an illegal, highly disruptive impact
on their business through this global trade war. And their
lawsuit essentially argues like, this is not an emergency, you know,
call it what you will.
Speaker 4 (31:53):
I mean.
Speaker 8 (31:54):
Trump has cited this Emergency Economic Powers Act as justification
for unilaterally tearing up treaties that have been negotiated by
other administrations through trade blocks, through the World Trade Organization
with other countries around the world. And he's done so
by saying, hey, it's an emergency in essence that you
(32:16):
Costco are bringing in cotton briefs made in Bangladesh. When
we don't send cotton briefs back to Bangladesh or anything
else for that matter, there's this bilateral trade deficit that's
an emergency. But what's really interesting to me about this
case is if you think back to the spring, when
for about thirty seconds, there was the possibility that Amazon
(32:38):
would on a discount website called Hall that most of
us have never heard of. They were threatening to break
out the cost impact of the tariffs on their website.
And Scott Bessett was in the middle of this press
briefing and he was going on for ten minutes about
how the tariffs were fixing up every American problem under
the sun, and Carolyn Levitt stepped then when bessen was
(33:01):
asked this question by a reporter of the room, you know,
doesn't this show that we Americans are.
Speaker 4 (33:05):
Actually paying these tariffs? And this is a shot.
Speaker 8 (33:09):
I can't remember the exact terminology, but I think she
called it a hostile act from Amazon. And by that
afternoon Trump was on the phone with Jeff Bezos, and
by the end of the day, Trump was saying, Jeff
is really nice guy. He fixed this. They're not doing it.
That's how it's gone. So this really breaks from that mold.
Speaker 2 (33:26):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (33:26):
You know what's funny when we were talking about I
was actually thinking about that Amazon tariff thing because it
was actually a great idea to be able to see
exactly how the tariffs would make things more expensive. And
for an administration that pretended to care about fraud, waste,
and abuse, that pretended to be pro transparency, you would
(33:48):
think that this would be a move towards transparency.
Speaker 4 (33:52):
Who thinks this administration cares about transparency.
Speaker 8 (33:55):
This administration cares about messaging, and the message is that
some days there is no inflation, or if there is inflation,
it's Joe Biden's fault. Any inflation due to tariffs, that's
in your imagination. That's just our political opponent's trying to
throw something at us. And that one consistent message is
we are not paying for the tariffs. The foreign producers
(34:18):
of the goods sent our way, they're paying for the tariffs.
Speaker 4 (34:21):
And here you have a very large company.
Speaker 8 (34:24):
We're roughly one out of every three Americans shops at Costco,
and this company is saying, well, hang on, we're paying
for the tariffs.
Speaker 4 (34:30):
And you know what that means. Our customers are paying
for the tariffs.
Speaker 1 (34:34):
So there's tariff money. I think that the admin is
probably waiting around to find out what the Supreme Court does,
because if the Supreme Court rules it illegal, they're supposedly
going to have to pay it.
Speaker 4 (34:43):
Back, right right, right.
Speaker 8 (34:45):
But there's this deadline that cost Co citing of December fifteenth,
where for tedious administrative reasons, if this is not resolved,
Costco's position is, even if we win, we're not going
to get the money back, and that's why they're taking
this action to file this lawsuit.
Speaker 1 (35:03):
It's such an interesting thing because it's like in so
many different companies in Trump world, at every point we've
seen billionaires, millionaires, corporate entity is just cave even like
in advance for example, I'm thinking about Sherry Redstone, I'm
thinking about you know, at every point they've just been like,
you might want this. A great example is Amazon with Milania, the.
Speaker 4 (35:26):
Forty million dollar deal.
Speaker 1 (35:27):
Yeah, let me just make sure that none of this
bothers you, and then you have like an actual lawsuit.
Speaker 8 (35:33):
I mean, it's interesting that the largest law firms in America,
most of them, at least the most powerful ones like
Paul Weiss, have essentially said, even if we file a
lawsuit against the executive order that's aimed to cripple us
and destroy our business, even if we win, we lose
because we require good relations with the administration in order
(35:55):
to do our business. Yet here's this company is a
discounter for like the everyman, and they're the ones who
are actually standing up to Trump. And by the way,
this is the same company that stood up to Trump
on DII. Virtually every large corporation in America has run
screaming from the pledges they made back when it was,
you know, politically in their favor to pledge allegiance to diversity,
(36:19):
equity inclusion programs. And Costco actually had a vote where
they convened a conference and they said, okay, look, you know,
we've looked at this proposal to get rid of DEI.
We happen to think that diversity is a good part
of our business.
Speaker 4 (36:32):
We think it's a comparative advantage, and we're sticking with it.
Speaker 8 (36:34):
So this is a company that, by all accounts, is
fairly conservative with a small c in terms of how
it goes about its business.
Speaker 4 (36:42):
They don't like to make huge changes. I've been told by.
Speaker 8 (36:45):
Friends who work in the environmental consulting world that Costco's
slow to come to the table in terms of emissions
or sustainability in the supply chain. But once they do something,
they really do it. They don't like to be pushed around.
It's interesting that they're not really sort of grandstanding here.
They're just saying, we're not rolling over. We still think
we live in a democracy that has courts, and if
(37:07):
we are faced with the threat to our business that
we think is illegal and unreasonable, we're gonna use our rights.
And that's interesting given that most large businesses are behaving
as if you know, courts, the law, the facts, like,
none of this really particularly matters. What matters is the
dictates of this administration, which will take extraordinary measures to
(37:29):
do what it wants to do.
Speaker 1 (37:31):
Yeah, it's really shocking you expect Donald Trump to push
But again, like there is this Supreme Court fight with
the Koch brother right, that's going to come down that
decision in June. The Supreme Court is either going to
have to disappoint Leonard Leo and the one surviving Coke
brother or disappoint Donald Trump.
Speaker 8 (37:50):
Yeah, I mean it's interesting because of course Trump is
already intimated that he's unhappy with Leonard Leo for other reasons.
Speaker 4 (37:58):
And so there's there are these heating.
Speaker 8 (38:00):
Notions of what the court means in the Trump age,
and it seems pretty clear that Donald Trump's view is
five point justices to the Supreme Court. Hey, all this
judicial philosophy stuff, that's all fine when you're tap dancing
in front of the Senate, like I own you, I
own your vote. You vote with me, whether there's ideological
(38:23):
judicial consistency or not.
Speaker 4 (38:25):
You're on my team.
Speaker 8 (38:27):
And Leonard Leo, say what you will about him, actually
does have a judicial philosophy and does have beliefs.
Speaker 4 (38:35):
You may agree with them or disagree with them.
Speaker 8 (38:37):
You find them it may find them repellent or heroic, whatever,
But there actually is a judicial philosophy at work, and
that's now colliding with this Trump position that you're on
our team or you're the enemy.
Speaker 1 (38:49):
Yeah, it is like a zero sum a little bit,
right in what sense you you're either with Trump or
you're against him. Right, there's not a lot of room
for nuance.
Speaker 8 (38:59):
I mean, people say it's a protection racket, right, that's
the term that gets thrown around. So you're either inside
the perimeter and you get the perks, or you're outside
and it's lonely out there and you don't have a
lot of avenues for protection. And so back to Costco,
they're saying, we're not playing that way. We think outside
(39:21):
the perimeter is this thing called American democracy in the
rule of law, and we still happen to think that
that matters.
Speaker 1 (39:28):
So let's talk about this battery stuff. It's not surprising,
So explain to us this central premise here with these
environmentally friendly but not really the car batteries, the clean batteries.
Speaker 8 (39:41):
Yeah, so I just spent a year investigating a part
of the global supply chain that we're invited to think
about never.
Speaker 4 (39:48):
You know, it's something I didn't know anything about. Most
people don't know anything about it.
Speaker 8 (39:51):
To the extent to which we think about the battery
in our car, which is very rarely. We're invited to
think that we're participating in in the circular economy, in
the recycling miracle, because it's true that the largest battery
manufacturers in the US have these sophisticated plants where they
go get spent.
Speaker 4 (40:09):
We're talking about lead batteries.
Speaker 8 (40:10):
By the way, these are conventional lead batteries in millions
of cars, including lots of evs, because even evs have
small mostly have small lead batteries the power and the
software systems.
Speaker 4 (40:20):
When they're off.
Speaker 8 (40:21):
So these large battery manufacturers go around, they gather up
spent lead batteries. They use machinery to extract the lead
from within, and they melt it down to get new
leads so they can make new batteries. But there have
been stricter and stricter regulations in the US to limit
lead poisoning of communities, and there's been growth, and so
they've needed to go find some new sources of lead.
(40:43):
They've gone around the world, and increasingly they're buying from Nigeria.
So I spent a year with a reporting partner at
the Examination, Will Fitzgibbon, looking at how these smelters operating
with none of these sorts of parts, no emissions controls,
workers breaking apart battery shirt lists, no goggles, no gloves,
(41:07):
using machetes their bare hands to rip out the lead
from inside, and then that stuff gets trucked up to
these giant smelters, just big furnaces basically that are largely
open air, you know, or the corrugated metal sheets on
the rooftops. But you can see the smoke just pouring
out in every direction. You can smell it. It's just foul.
(41:29):
There's a dust of black ash that's settling on everything.
And they're villages right next to these smelters in this
town of Oki Joe, north of Legos. And so what
we did was we actually found seventy people living in
the midst of these smelters and tested their blood. They
(41:49):
volunteered to be tested, and we found that roughly seven
out of ten of them have lead in their blood
at alarming levels. Every worker we tested had extraordinary high
levels of lead.
Speaker 1 (42:01):
So like lead poisoning, right.
Speaker 4 (42:03):
Yeah, we're talking irreversible brain damage.
Speaker 8 (42:05):
We're talking about schools right up against these factories with kids,
you know, breathing this stuff. And I talked to a
mom of a three year old girl who said, my
daughter's constantly coughing and black particles are coming out of
her mouth. I talked to a sixty five year old
man who was shaking uncontrollably, said he could never sleep.
He brought me into his house. He said, look, my
(42:26):
walls are black from this smoke. There's just no relief.
And so we traced the lead from these smelters in
Nigeria to the US through the port of Baltimore and
eventually got the second largest battery of manufacturer in the US,
a company called East penn to acknowledge that it was
buying this lead, it was using this lead to make
(42:46):
new batteries, and then they said, we're not doing that anymore.
Speaker 1 (42:50):
Do you believe them?
Speaker 8 (42:51):
I do believe them, because they plausibly were relying on
the assurances of the trading company they buy from, a
bunch of different middleman trading companies, including the Swiss company.
Speaker 4 (43:05):
Called traffic Eura.
Speaker 8 (43:06):
I don't believe that they tried particularly hard to find
out where's our lead coming from, and they sort of
cop to that. When I eventually got the CEO to
talk to me, which took months and had to ambush
him at a trade show.
Speaker 4 (43:18):
And when he eventually talked to me, he said said, look,
was I too trusting? You know, I'll take that shot.
Speaker 8 (43:23):
But here's the thing I asked him, Okay, so you're
not buying lead from Nigeria anymore.
Speaker 4 (43:28):
Where are you're making up the difference?
Speaker 8 (43:29):
Well, we're boosting our purchases from South Korea and Australia. Well,
the trade data shows that a lot of this Nigerian
lead is ending up in South Korea, and East Penn
buys lead batteries from South Korea. So I said, well,
how do you know you're not still buying Nigerian lead
through South Korea? He said, well, it's a good question.
It's very hard to trace metals. I mean, this is
the nature of global supply chages, is the engineered so
(43:52):
there's plausible deniability. There's so many participants, there's so many
countries involved that any single actor can essentially you know,
it's like you're standing on the tennis court with your
doubles partner.
Speaker 4 (44:02):
I thought you had that one.
Speaker 8 (44:04):
I mean that's like, that's how the global supply chain works.
Speaker 1 (44:07):
Do you think that there is a way to get
the lend out of batteries that is safer?
Speaker 4 (44:15):
Oh, there definitely is. Yeah. I mean we have these
plants in the States.
Speaker 8 (44:19):
They're present in Europe where they're very strict stames, but
it costs.
Speaker 4 (44:24):
Millions of dollars.
Speaker 8 (44:25):
And I mean I just got off the phone actually
with the guy one of these plants in Nigeria. He said, look,
I would love to put in an automatic breaking system
instead of having these guys with the machetes do the
work with their bare hands.
Speaker 4 (44:36):
Do you have four million dollars lying around? He would
have to borrow it.
Speaker 8 (44:40):
The prevailing interest rates in Nigeria are fifteen percent, and
who's gonna pay for that?
Speaker 4 (44:46):
Now?
Speaker 8 (44:46):
The sad part is if we hypothetically relied just on
that responsibly produced lead in Nigeria and all the costs
got passed on through the chain the consumer in the
US buying a battery. It's a hard hypothet all we
kind of modeled it. It wouldn't be much more. You know,
it's like single digit number of dollars more.
Speaker 1 (45:05):
It's not like making an iPhone in the United States.
Speaker 4 (45:08):
Oh, not at all, not at all.
Speaker 8 (45:10):
It's just that the trading companies who get the real
margins on this, they would have to give up profit,
you know, they look they'd rather buy.
Speaker 4 (45:19):
From a responsible supplier.
Speaker 8 (45:21):
In fact, there was one in Nigeria that we focused on,
called Green Recycling, that went out of business because they
couldn't pay as much for the spent batteries because they
were carrying the costs of putting in the automated braking
equipment and the emissions controls and so they weren't poisoning
the environment. The head of that company said, yeah, maybe
(45:42):
if we'd killed more people would still be in business.
I mean, it was actually a competitive disadvantage to them
to do.
Speaker 4 (45:49):
The right thing.
Speaker 8 (45:49):
And of course, you know, we don't go buying batteries
in the US with some sort of option over where
the lead comes from.
Speaker 1 (45:56):
Yeah, it's one of those things where it's like if
you know, then all of a sudden, you know it's
not okay. So it's one of the many places where
journalism is doing the heavy lifting.
Speaker 8 (46:06):
This is certainly a story that wasn't supposed to be tolls.
You know, there was nobody waiting for me to call
them up so they could help me understand the supply
chain for recycled lead.
Speaker 4 (46:17):
This is a secret trade.
Speaker 8 (46:18):
And the truth is if they shut these plants down
in Nigeria, which is possible.
Speaker 4 (46:21):
I mean, as we speak, the Nigerian government since our.
Speaker 8 (46:23):
Story ran has sealed up the worst polluting factories in
this town.
Speaker 4 (46:28):
We're focused on for them. Well, good for them, except.
Speaker 8 (46:30):
You know a lot of people work at those plants
would much rather have them improved as opposed to closed
and It's not as if, to your point, we're going
to suddenly, you know, bring all this stuff back to
the US and do it at a high standard. It'll
move to some other country in Africa, It'll move somewhere
else in South Asia. I mean, there has to be
accountability at our end where it's the international auto industry,
(46:53):
it's the battery manufacturers who are asking us to feel
good about buying their products. You know, we're helping solve
climate change, we're limiting pollution, while they're simultaneously relying for
supplies on a very nasty, tragic situation that they would
much rather we not examined.
Speaker 1 (47:13):
Peter, thank you so much for coming on. I hope
you'll come back.
Speaker 4 (47:16):
Oh anytime, Mollie, thank you so much for having me.
No moment second.
Speaker 3 (47:24):
Jesse Cannon, I'm going to take you back to a
time it was twenty twelve and all we heard was
Barack Obama as the secret Muslim. What did we know
that the first secret Muzzlim at our government would be
what GOP Republican Representative Corey Mills. And there's blockbuster new
(47:44):
reporting from our former colleague Roger Sellenberger that really has
a lot of strange stuff in this This guy is wild.
Speaker 1 (47:52):
It makes me wish that The Daily Beast still existed,
because if it did, this story would have been a blockbuster.
It's on his substack. You can read it. It's the
same standards George Santos with a gun. The untold story
of Corey Mills, a mercenary in Congress. He tried to
leverage his legislative role to the benefit of his arms business.
(48:15):
That's right, arms business, you heard me, arms like guns,
selling guns. He took the witness stand.
Speaker 3 (48:22):
How else are you going to finance spyke sex workers
in Afghanistan?
Speaker 1 (48:25):
Ohs does that come in there?
Speaker 4 (48:27):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (48:28):
What I'm thinking about. My man is also married. He
was cyberstalking and threatening his ex girlfriend with cyber porn.
He's got the kind of story that makes you wonder
why he's not a Fox Weekend host. Yeah, Corey Mills
(48:49):
is not as famous as George Santos, but he may
be soon.
Speaker 3 (48:53):
We should really say, Roger is one of the best
investigative reporters. He should really go and check out his
substack and read up on this an insane story that
this man is in our government and not booted out,
but Mike Johnson's majority is too.
Speaker 1 (49:05):
Thin, So read this, Read a substack, Corey Mills, George
Santos with a gun, The untold story of a mercenary
in Congress. 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 sense of all this chaos.
(49:28):
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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