June 7, 2025 • 47 mins
The Lincoln Project’s Stuart Stevens parses Elon and Trump’s breakup and the case for nationalizing SpaceX and Starlink. The New Yorker’s John Cassidy details his book Capitalism and Its Critics: A History — From the Industrial Revolution to AI.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hi, I'm Molli John Fast and this is Fast Politics,
where we discussed the top political headlines with some of
today's best minds. And Russia has offered political asylum to
Elon Musk Perfect gotta love it. We have such a
great show for you today. The Lincoln Project's own Stuart
Stevens stops by to talk about the Elon and Trump
(00:22):
breakup and the case for nationalizing SpaceX and Starlink. Then
we'll talk to the New Yorkers John Cassidy about his
book Capitalism and Its Critics, a history from the Industrial
Revolution to AI.
Speaker 2 (00:36):
But first the news, Mally, I'm going to let you
and Stewart do the discussion of the girls who are
fighting between Elon and the Trump and all that surrounds it,
because we have other fish to fry that got buried
in the news this week. This one is particularly horrifying.
You and I were both wretching as we read this
before this question swirl over who's running the CDC? Not
(00:58):
a headline you want to read?
Speaker 1 (01:00):
This is not good? Okay. First of all, one of
the things that's happened in this administration which we should
all be thinking about, worrying about, and talking about is
that the Trump administration has given up on running the
federal government the way it's supposed to be run. And
the problem is they're disrupting things that we actually need,
like the CDC. Putting RFK Junior in charge of this
(01:23):
CDC is basically just giving it up right, and that's
what we're seeing here. Confusion over shifting Center for Disease
Control and Prevention COVID nineteen recommendations are reuniting questions in
the public health community about who's actually running the agency
and the answer is no one. And that is what
(01:44):
you should be scared of. This is really scary. We're
six months into the Trump administration. This health agency is
who we need to be tracking the avian flu, to
be following food borne diseases, to making sure that you know,
studies are being followed, that drugs that our dangerous are
being kept off the market, that you know there's the
(02:04):
CDC is a huge organization with a really important job.
And what we're seeing here is that RFK Junior, who
said he needed to be in charge of public health, well,
he is falling down on the job. He faced questions
about the direction of the agency and is send hearing
last month, and he really couldn't answer them. He said
things like couldn't answer questions, didn't understand what was happening.
(02:28):
So here's something important from the Health and Human Services
spokesperson said, the chief of staff has been carrying out
some of the duties of the CDC director as a
senior official. So you see what's happening here, right, They're
just not doing what they're supposed to be doing, and
it's very inefficient and we're going to see this is
going to be bad. This is like what we're seeing.
They're going to be wholes that need to be fixed.
(02:50):
It's not good. And you know that this is it
relates to our next story. So I don't want to
get ahead of ourselves, but this is the CDC that's
supposed to be following the bird flu and preventing another
once in a lifetime pandemic from catching hold. And now
let us move on to the next big problem coming
to us.
Speaker 2 (03:09):
Yeah, as you said, it's really similar, which is that
DOSEE fired too many people. They took a chainsaw that
was really long to this when they should have been
in with a scalpel. And now we're seeing absolutely horrifying
issues with this report from the Washington Post.
Speaker 1 (03:24):
So Jesse put this in our schedule to talk about.
I read it earlier and could not believe what I
read me And this is a piece. This's a big
expose in the Washington Post. And basically what they did was,
at every point they sent these emails and you could see,
well it was happening, that this was what was going
to happen. But it is I don't want to say gratifying,
(03:47):
because all of this is terrible and they're going to
be huge consequences that none of us can quite game
out yet. But basically, they offered these resignations to all
these people, many of whom needed to actually work in
the federal government. And this is where it is. So
this piece is really you should definitely read it. It
(04:09):
explains how at every point they fired people who were necessary,
then they listed jobs to try to get them to
come back. A lot of people didn't want to come
back because now they worry that the federal government is
not a reasonable place to work anymore.
Speaker 2 (04:25):
Do you mean that essay for the hiring we talked
about in the last episode. It makes people not want
to work in an environment like that. I can't imagine
why they wouldn't want to work with people who did
a loyalty essay for Trump.
Speaker 1 (04:36):
And it's also I would say, it's like the top
line is Elon is done with the federal government, but
the federal government has been just traumatized and injured by Elon.
And there are so many different parts of the government.
I mean, so, we just did a story about there's
no one running the CDC right the Center for Disease Control,
an extremely important part of the federal government that keeps
(04:59):
us healthy and safe. Now in this story, there's reporting
that all these other parts of the State Department, and
then they tried to rehire the people in the State
Department and they don't want to come back, and that's
security overseas. And then you have Trump doing these bands
from different countries, and you don't have the State Department
following up on what's happening in those other countries because
(05:22):
of these bands, and that's going to be really important.
And then you have in this article it talks about
how you have people that were fired from all different
sections like the Department of Agriculture, the Department of Housing
in Urban Development, the FDA. These are things food and
drug administration is housing in urban development, that's like housing,
(05:42):
that's different cities. And then agriculture that's our food safety.
So there are so many different parts of the federal
government that have been devastated by the richest man in
the world who thought it would be cool to pretend
to work government.
Speaker 2 (06:00):
Yeah, nice cosplaying there, Speaking of people whose job qualifications
seem like cosplay. I would say yesterday was in the
top ten funnest days on the Internet. But I was
really really sad that something that would have made the
day fun no matter what, got buried, which was Howard
Blunick testifying in front of Congress and showing what an
absolute unqualified person years to be running anything this high up.
Speaker 3 (06:25):
Let's listen.
Speaker 4 (06:26):
What's the terriffon bananas? Americans, by the way, love bananas.
We buy billions of them a year.
Speaker 1 (06:32):
I love bananas.
Speaker 4 (06:33):
What's the terriffon bananas?
Speaker 3 (06:37):
The tariffone bananas would be representative of the countries that
produced and what what's that terraff generally ten percent? Correct?
Speaker 4 (06:44):
Ten percent? Walmart has already increased the cost of bananas
by eight percent.
Speaker 5 (06:50):
As untrust who deals with us, that will go to
zero as countries do deals right now.
Speaker 4 (06:56):
American consumer now and on the businesses with the confus Now,
mister Secretary, I believe you know better. I believe you
recognize that a trade deficit is not something to fear.
I believe you know that predictability, stability is essential for businesses.
Speaker 1 (07:14):
I wish you would show that truth to this administration.
Speaker 2 (07:19):
And I yeope, back ladies my mind.
Speaker 5 (07:22):
Mister Tairman, if I make one quick comment to the end,
that'd be okay. I'm sorry, would you mind if I
make one quick comment to the representative?
Speaker 3 (07:30):
Please? Uh?
Speaker 6 (07:31):
There is no uncertainty.
Speaker 5 (07:32):
If you build in America and you produce your product
in America, there will be no task.
Speaker 1 (07:37):
We can't be hung as aling in.
Speaker 3 (07:39):
America and pay no tax. You cannot, very very clear.
Speaker 1 (07:43):
You cannot fighting build that as in America.
Speaker 3 (07:46):
Time with the general Lady has expired.
Speaker 1 (07:49):
Wait, you can't build bananas in America.
Speaker 2 (07:53):
It is so far this discussion of on shoring things.
What it's like, so many these jobs we don't Americans doing,
and that was what we worked on for seventy five years.
And then there's just things that are not able to
be done in our climate.
Speaker 1 (08:08):
Speak for yourself. I'm building American bananas right here. Baby, No,
this isn't completely insane. And what you don't see, because
this is audio and now video, is that he has
this enormous qrin on his face. That is absolutely it just.
Speaker 2 (08:29):
Is so he thought he killed it.
Speaker 1 (08:31):
Yeah, he thinks he killed it. I think that is
absolutely he thinks he killed it. And my man, he
did not kill it. It's just very annoying, I mean,
and also so insane.
Speaker 2 (08:43):
We have more incompetent hires that are totally unqualified for
their job this time, though it's much more in the
comical way of that. We have a twenty two year
old former gardener picked to lead the Terrorism Prevention Department
of Homeland Security named Thomas Fugate.
Speaker 1 (08:58):
Yeah. I mean, and this is you know, this is
this story relates to the story about the CDC, relates
to the story about everything else they are. They're defenestrating
the federal government, and they're going to be consequences. I
hope there aren't, but it really seems like they're going
to be. And it's just such a incredibly insane moment
(09:23):
in American life and just so fucked up. Excuse my
fact Stuart Stevens is a legendary campaign manager and the
author of the Conspiracy to in America Five Ways My
Old Party is driving our democracy to autocracy. Welcome to
(09:44):
Fast Politics, Stuart Stevens.
Speaker 5 (09:46):
Thank you, Molly. I've got to use this as a
shout out for your book. It's really extraordinary. It really
is an amazing piece of writing.
Speaker 1 (09:53):
Well, thank you. I really appreciate that. And you know,
Stuart is actually really incredible. You are a boot beautiful writer,
and you write tends not to be political, writing tends
not to be so lyrical, and you write very lyrically.
So I really appreciate that from you. And now we
must talk about your mad cap idea, which I love
(10:15):
it so much. It's also just super interesting. So talk
me through this idea.
Speaker 5 (10:20):
The idea of nationalizing Starlink. And yeah, the deeply troubling
thing about this is that I seem to agree with
Steve mannon, but I'm trying to get over that. Look,
I mean this in all seriousness, never if we had
one person so deeply embedded into essential related national security industries.
(10:41):
Companies Starlink and SpaceX are critical elements of American national
security and of America's power in the world. So, I mean,
if I just woke up in the Middle nine and said,
what if we had a guy who you know, has
a well reported, very high level drug problem, unstable obviously
mental issues, and he's the person that runs these companies,
(11:04):
he'd probably say that's really not a great idea. There
is this thing called the Defense Procurement Act, which is
passed in nineteen fifty. It was actually updated in nineteen
seventy to specifically include anything related to space, and in
earlier versions, the first was around World War One they
came up with It gives the government in times of
(11:27):
national emergency the power to direct or nationalize industries, and
it's been used before from the railways to mining and
various ways with steel companies. So Republicans say that we
are in a national emergency, they say that we are
at war. That's what they used to justify the use
(11:49):
of the Alien Act, and they call it a regular warfare.
So if I was a Democrat, though now that Steve
Bannon has supported this idea, maybe you don't have to
be a Democrat, I.
Speaker 3 (12:01):
Would take you face value.
Speaker 5 (12:03):
Okay, great, right, we're in a national emergency where it
war that gives the government the power to nationalize SpaceX
and Starlink.
Speaker 1 (12:12):
So as a conservative, it's a pretty bold idea. I
don't think it's wrong. But so the theory of the
case here is that I think Tesla it doesn't. It
is sort of a rounding error. But there are two
companies that Elon Muss that has had that our owns
that are where he is the largest stockholder of SpaceX
(12:35):
is actually a private company that he has built through
government subsidies and a lot of incentive advising with taxes,
and they have made him the richest band in the world.
And one is Starlink and one is SpaceX and starlink
is And again this runs to the idea that you
(12:56):
have a problem, which is you need SpaceX for satellites
and also space exploration. You need Starlink for all of
the stuff that's already in space and yeah, the communication.
And again Trump tweeted yesterday about canceling a lot of
Elon's contracts. But there is no other company that can
(13:17):
do this. So we got here because government refused to regulate.
I mean, explain is how we got here that we
have one company that does these things.
Speaker 5 (13:28):
It's interesting because wearing my conservative hat. You could make
a good case that this goes to the efficiency of
the marketplace. You had a guy who is extraordinarily gifted,
if deeply disturbed. So had this been set up by
NASA from the beginning, you would have had security clearances
that would have include drug testing, and you wouldn't have
(13:49):
an elone muff anywhere near this thing. So that's positive.
But now that it is what it is, one person
should not be allowed to have this power, particularly someone
who has such terrible judgment, is obviously in some sort
of manic personal crisis. And we have a perfect example
of his insertion of himself in world events when he
(14:11):
refused in twenty twenty two Ukraine, Yeah, of twenty twenty
two to allow Ukraine, I mean, just picture this. Ukraine
had set up the first use of one of their
now sort of famous water drones, these water power drones
that carry explosives that they've used to somehow for a
(14:34):
country that didn't have a navy to defeat the Russian navy.
So they are seventy kilometers away from their target, which
was the Muskova flagship, and Elon musk turned off the
starlink and refused to turn it back on. That is
extremely dangerous, and there is this weird affinity would be
(14:56):
the most positive way to put it. Of this group
of South Africans that he is part of. Sex is
another one. They have this soft spot for Russia, probably
but no other reason. It's an oligarch's paradise and they
are oligarchs or would be firing and they have elections
(15:20):
that are performative, not determinative, which they obviously you know.
I just I think it should be done. I think
if you had any sort of seriousness about national security,
you would step back from this and say, regardless of
how we got here, we're here and we can't allow
this to continue.
Speaker 1 (15:41):
I think it's going to be hard to convince people
to do that because I think the public markets aren't
going to like it. I understand the need for it
because Elon is very erratic, and he's running these companies
in a very erratic way, and there are certain things
that are needed from Starlank and SpaceX that you know,
his personal peccadillos are hurting right like, there are people
(16:07):
up in the space station who need to be okay,
there are people in Alabama or rural Kentucky or you know,
where they need to make sure the satellites, or Ukraine
where they need to make sure the satellites are working.
So there is a need that is beyond what Elon's
personal piccadillos are. But the worry I think a lot
(16:30):
of us on the both the left and the right,
is that once you start taking over private companies, it's
a very slippery slope.
Speaker 3 (16:37):
Yeah, it's look, it's been used before.
Speaker 5 (16:38):
It's always been unpopular with those that are connected to
the companies, right understandable, going back to when they nationalized
a lot of use of the railroads, uh, going into
the US entry into World War One. I think it's
like everything in life, you have to balance the good right,
And there's really no two companies that are as deeply
(17:01):
involved in national security.
Speaker 3 (17:04):
You know.
Speaker 5 (17:04):
This isn't a case of your nationalizing Tesla to get
FOURD to break or to help Toyota and Tesla, which
is really the source of most of his wealth. And
of course, which is one of the reasons they've had
this extraordinary higher technical fight is Trump wants to cut
to EV credits and until recently, the only money that
(17:25):
Tesla made was from EV credits. They were basically an
ev credit company that also made cars. You take that
away and the value Tesla's extraordinarily overvalued company.
Speaker 1 (17:38):
Right, Yes, for sure it will.
Speaker 5 (17:40):
Go down, but that's fine. I mean, Tesla's not necessary
to have financial security. I mean, all my neighbors in
Santa Monica can make do a print wood will survive.
But there ought to be responsible adults connected with the
best interest in the United States government that are at
(18:03):
this point running starlink and running SpaceX.
Speaker 3 (18:07):
Right, pay him a bunch.
Speaker 1 (18:08):
Of money, right by it from them.
Speaker 5 (18:11):
United States government has a lot of money. You don't
have to just seize it. Pay them a lot of money.
Speaker 3 (18:15):
That's fine.
Speaker 1 (18:15):
So you feel like it's an imminent domain question.
Speaker 3 (18:19):
Exactly like imminent domain.
Speaker 5 (18:20):
That's a very good it's a very good example, and
we use it, and it's controversial, and those that are
eminently domained out usually don't worry.
Speaker 3 (18:29):
Right.
Speaker 5 (18:30):
But I just think that you can't unsee what we've
seen in the last forty eight hours.
Speaker 1 (18:36):
Right, this is not a person who should be in
charge of National Saturday.
Speaker 5 (18:39):
I mean you could say, okay, here's a guy. He's
jumping up and down behind it. You know, President of
the United States. You look at that footage in the
Oval Office, and you know, there's not a teenage in
America that would walk into their home in that kind
of condition and not know that they're going to be
busted by their parents. How deeply into drugs do you
have to be that you can't restrain yourself the morning
(19:03):
of knowing that you're going to have meeting in the
Oval Office that's going to be televised. You know, if
you can't kind of hold it together for that, that
is a serious indication of a serious problem.
Speaker 1 (19:16):
Right. I mean, we don't want to speculate, but there
certainly has been reporting in the Wallstreet Journal about a
box of pills and this and that.
Speaker 5 (19:26):
You also said, did he use this kind of meine? Right,
and we can now use Donald Trump as a source, right.
Speaker 1 (19:32):
Well, Donald Trump, the two of them did definitely get
involved in a lot of pretty insane no name calling.
So right now there are a lot of people who
want Elan and Trump to sort of take it all down, right,
they are de accelerate, d you know whatever, stop fighting.
(19:53):
This is a bad situation for people like Mike Johnson.
This is a bad situation for people like Anna, Paulina
Luna or any member of the House goop who is
got to choose between their richest benefactor and their political
north star. Do you think, and this is something already
(20:15):
we're seeing this, do you think like this bill could
get crashed just by Elon? Should Democrats be pushing that
even if Elon pash the bill is something totally different
than why Democrats want to crash it.
Speaker 5 (20:34):
I think that what Democrats have to learn to do
is to use whatever tools they have available and not
to feel that like this is beneath me or that
is right. You can't allow yourself to luxury of pretending
that the greater good is served by acting like a
normal governing party. Right, as Jonathan last that brilliantly pointed out,
(20:56):
we don't need opposition party now, we need a dissident movement.
So this is a terrible bill for any reason. So
he didn't need Elon, But the degree to which Elon
can be useful in this, I think they should grasp
it and beat him over the head with it. And look,
this is also just we should not lose sight of
the fact this is terrible for the country.
Speaker 1 (21:18):
Right, no deep off medicaid.
Speaker 5 (21:21):
Today's no, just this fight is terrible country. The bill
is terrible too, But today's anniversary of D Day. Yeah,
but think about what America was doing then and what
the leadership, the sacrifice, and the image that it secured
for America's place in the world as a flawed but
(21:43):
instrument of greater good compared to this fight between two
deeply flawed, horrible human beings who are two of the
most powerful people in the world. I mean, it's just
how far are we falling? Publicans are to blame for this.
They didn't have to tolerate this, and they've allowed it
(22:04):
to happen.
Speaker 1 (22:04):
So talk to me about what this looks like now.
So Democrats really could and I think they should think
about trying to sink this thing with the help of
Elon Musk, because Keal and Musks people want it gone.
This bill, if it passes, will kick people off Medicaid,
it will cut food stamps for poor kids, It will
just do everything, and it will extend these ridiculous tax cuts.
(22:28):
And it will also open the door to no tax
on tips. How that will work, I have no idea
talk about that.
Speaker 5 (22:34):
Look, I think the Democrats should have a greater ambition
than just stopping this bill. They should use what's happened
with Musk as one of the instruments to undo and
get all these Doze cronies out of government. I mean,
just stop and think the guy that we have seen
in the last twenty four hours. Would you trust him
to hire someone to paint your house?
Speaker 1 (22:55):
Now?
Speaker 3 (22:56):
No?
Speaker 5 (22:57):
And he's what are these people like that he's hired.
They try to hide, they try to the big balls
in these crowds. They're going to be weird. They're not
going to have a sense of any patriotism, and they're dangerous,
right we are at this moment. I mean, anybody you know,
I think grusde has made this very good point.
Speaker 3 (23:15):
Oh this is great.
Speaker 5 (23:16):
You got one of these guys has all our personal
information in his pocket and the other has the nuclear codes. Right, yes,
well this is really great. So I think it just
indicates the recklessness and carelessness and lack of any sense
of responsibility that has driven this entire Doge effort.
Speaker 3 (23:39):
They should try to undo this.
Speaker 1 (23:41):
Yeah, it's it's interesting, and in fact, there's really good
reporting today from the Washington Post about how DOGE has
fired so many people, and there really is quite They're
trying to rehire these people that they fired. And I
do wonder if there is a question now if you could,
I mean, I think it would mean that you would
(24:03):
need to appeal to John Thoon. You would mean that
you would need to get Trump back on board to
try to stop sort of defenestrating the federal government. I'm
not sure. Like remember, part of why DOJE was allowed
to happen was because the Heritage Foundation really did want
to unravel the federal government. So there were two different
(24:28):
polls involved in that.
Speaker 5 (24:30):
Talk to that, yeah, I think also, yes, that's true
the Heritage Foundation, of course, but there is a hidden
motive here of someone like Trump and someone like Musk.
They really don't believe in democracy. They believe in autocracies
and the sort of great Man theory of history. So
(24:50):
if you have a government that is working, that is functioning,
they see that as a reduction of their own ability
to be historic figures. This whole notion that goes back
to George Washington, that the president is just holds the
office temporarily and this is he's a steward of something greater.
(25:13):
That goes back to the oath of allegiances to the Constitution,
not to a man that is deeply alien to someone
like Trump and someone like Musk, and everything is personal
to him. So this is one of the reasons they're
so drawn to putin. And it is cruelty, it is ignorance,
it is a complete inability to imagine how government can
(25:38):
help others. But it also is a ploy to make
the need for a strong man essential. I think the
best fights you get in not because you know you're
gonna win, but you get in because you have to fight.
It's true of Ukraine, is true the Battle of Britain.
That's that is the Democrats should have. I mean, if
(25:59):
Democrats take over the House, the first thing I would
do is I would cut off all funding for the
executive branch every bit.
Speaker 1 (26:05):
Yeah, such a good point, Such a good point.
Speaker 5 (26:08):
Don't play this game by different rules, except that this
is the game that we're in, and use those rules.
Don't be like we were in World War One when
hesitant to establish intelligence because gentlemen don't read other gentlemen's mail.
Speaker 1 (26:25):
No, right, that was the actual sense of Bidenism. Was
bringing a stuff to animal to a knife fight, was
refusing to meet these people where they were.
Speaker 5 (26:37):
Yeah, I think that there's two ways to look at that.
I think that's what you just said is absolutely true.
I think also that Biden historically will have to plead
guilty to having a greater expectation of what America could
rise to than America chose to rise to.
Speaker 1 (26:57):
That is really true. Thank you, thank you, thank you,
Stuart Stevens.
Speaker 3 (27:02):
Thank you.
Speaker 1 (27:03):
You're so smart. John Cassidy is a staff writer at
The New Yorker and the author of Capitalism and Its Critics,
A History from the Industrial Revolution to AI. So welcome
to Fast Politics.
Speaker 6 (27:18):
John, thanks very much for inviting me on.
Speaker 1 (27:21):
I am excited to talk about this book, but I
just want for a minute to talk about the progression.
So the last book he wrote was a book about
how markets fail, and this book is about capitalism and
perhaps how capitalism may have some failings. Is there a
connection here between this one and the next.
Speaker 7 (27:40):
I'm recovering the sort of economics and finance. You knows
since I was in my twenties and I in my
sixties now, so we're talking nearly forty years. So if
you cover finance and economics, what makes news is always
the market failures. My first book about was it was
about the Internet boom and bust back in the late nineties.
My second book was really about the financial Christ's great
(28:00):
financial Crisis of two thousand and seven, two thousand and eight,
two thousand and nine, and the sort of economic failures
behind that.
Speaker 6 (28:07):
And then I thought, well, I've done the two individual ones.
Speaker 7 (28:09):
Why not go the whole hog and do a book about,
you know, the sort of full history of capitalism and
its critics. The pitch for this book is that it's
not just another boring history of capitalism. It's toiled through
the eyes of the critics. So I mean I turned
it into a series of mini biographies going all the
way back to Adam Smith and the luod Heites up
(28:30):
until today.
Speaker 1 (28:31):
So it's working great.
Speaker 6 (28:32):
Huh.
Speaker 7 (28:33):
Well, I mean there's always two sided capitalism, right, I mean,
we generally regarded as better than the alternatives. We tried
an alternative in the twentieth century state socialism that eventually
broke down. I mean, capitalism has delivered a massive economic growth.
I mean, I've got a charge in my book showing
how if you just look at GDP since the year dot,
you know, it's basically a flat line until eighteen hundred,
(28:56):
when industrial capitalism comes on and then it takes off,
and it's been going up since. So I think the
reason capitalism survives is because it delivers the gods just
in terms of economic growth, but it brings with it
a lot of problems which have been there since, being
of the system, exploitation of workers and of consumers, inequality,
(29:16):
especially recent decades, that's been a huge problem. And now
technological displacement has always been an issue, and now with
AI it's an even bigger issue.
Speaker 6 (29:26):
So you know, it's a two sided story.
Speaker 7 (29:28):
I'm a sort of I come from a center left,
so I've always been critical of capitalism and thought it
can be improved, and I would describe myself as a
sort of Canesian social democrat. I think you've got to
keep the basics of the system, but you need to
manage it. I'm in favor of managed capitalism. That's the
argument I make in the book. And in sort of
terms of American politics, I guess you'd put me in
(29:51):
the sort of Elizabeth Warren Bernie Sanders camp.
Speaker 1 (29:55):
There are many people on this podcast who are in
that camp too. It feels there is a real bit
of post free trade hangover happening right now, and we
saw it again. Biden poor at explaining things for any
number of reasons. He did. Chips and Sciences was largely
(30:17):
about entering manufacturing because of Taiwan and because of any
number of other reasons, Tariff's, Trump whatever. But theoretically the
thought behind it is entering manufacturing. So can you explain
to us where this sort of free trade I want
to say, it's a sort of like free trade regretism
(30:39):
comes from. That's not a real word.
Speaker 7 (30:42):
I mean, I think you know you have to You
have to go back into history a bit.
Speaker 6 (30:45):
Well, that's the problem with covering Trump. Everybody gets caught
up in the day to day headlines. I do it myself.
Speaker 7 (30:50):
I just wrote about his comments about toys. But you
have to step back a bit here. Trump people attribute
too much to him. He is a react in a
part of a react against globalization and what he uses
neoliberalism basically sort of conservative economic policy from the sort
of nineties onwards and embrace of sort of unrestricted globalization
(31:11):
that produced in the US at least a lot of
a lot of job displacement, especially in Red States. Best
they joined the China Shock from about when China joined
the World Trade Organization in two thousand and one. If
you just look at the charts of manufacturing employment after that,
they go straight down, and that produce another There's always
(31:32):
this bigger, big debate about was Trump a product of
economic resentments or racial and cultural resentments. I think the
answer obviously is both, but economics definitely played a role.
So what we've seen since twenty sixteen, anyway, is a
big backlash against sort of free trade on both sides
of the aisle. Started off, obviously with Trump and his
(31:54):
tariffs in the first term, and he run in on
economic nationalism.
Speaker 6 (31:57):
America First, America First.
Speaker 7 (31:58):
That's basically a catchphrase for economic nationalism. The Democrats up
until you know, Clinton and Obama were very much in
favor of free trade. It was obviously Bill Clinton who
signed then After Agreement back in the nineteen nineties. So
the party had very much bought into the idea that
free trade and globalization was best for America, and there
are some strong arguments for it, but they'd sort of
ignored and say they ignored the downsides, but they didn't
(32:20):
do it, so they didn't do enough about them. So
Trump stepped into the sort of backlash that was building
and made it his own, you know, in twenty sixteen.
And Biden came in in twenty twenty and some people
thought he'd get rid of Trump's tariffs, but he did,
and he kept the way he did. He got rid
of the stuff on Europe and other things, but he
kept the tariffs on China and then introduced a very
(32:42):
aggressive industrial policy which he referred to the Chips Act,
the Infrastructure Act, and the part of the Green New
Deal aspects of the It wasn't really a green New Deal,
but a pro electric vehicles, pro green technology, aspects of
the American Rescue Act. And it was, you know, a
(33:03):
big shift for the Democrats to the sort of I
wouldn't say the Trumpian line, but in a more interventionist,
anti skepticism of tree trade.
Speaker 6 (33:11):
So that and then at the end of his term.
Speaker 7 (33:14):
Biden, when he was back, I think it was at
last September or October, he then doubled down on his
tariffs of China and raised them.
Speaker 6 (33:21):
He remember he raised someone.
Speaker 7 (33:22):
I think he raised the tariffs on electric vehicles Chinese
electric vehicles two one hundred percent, not as high as
Trump one hundred and forty five percent, but you know,
pretty high, more targeted. But you know, no way you
can describe that as a free trade policy. So I
think at this stage the sort of abandonment of the
old globalization model is a bi partisan thing. There are
few there are people on both sides who are still favorite,
(33:44):
but the sort of leadership of both parties have rejected
some extent. Now Trump has come in and taken that
sort of consensus and then twisted it, you know, tripled
down on it. I wouldn't say double down on it
with his blanket tariffs, tariffing countries, you know, tariffing poor countries,
putting huge tax on countries. Just Trump's not just anti
(34:07):
sort of unfair trade. Trump's anti all trade. It seems
like you eliminate all trade deficits, you know, and that
there's a huge difference between that and trying to just
target certain industries like Biden.
Speaker 6 (34:18):
But that's where we stand out.
Speaker 7 (34:19):
I don't think we're going back to the old model
of free trade agreements anytime soon.
Speaker 1 (34:24):
Right, Trump seems to not like any trade. Now, is
he against trade because he's a racist?
Speaker 5 (34:29):
Right?
Speaker 1 (34:29):
Obviously? I mean I don't think anyone would think even
he might agree to that, or is he against free
trade because he doesn't understand how trade deficits work.
Speaker 6 (34:39):
I think he doesn't really understand.
Speaker 7 (34:40):
He doesn't have any real appreciation of sort of free
trade and the sort of arguments for it. Going back
to Adam Smith and David Ricardo featuring my book, you know,
the argument for free trade is if everybody does what
they're best at, then everybody can benefit the sort of
gains from trade. And if you know you can bring
it down to you can bring it down to individuals
trade every day. I mean the famous example is, you know,
(35:03):
going for a haircut or something. You could cut your
own hair. You know, you could be self sufficient in haircuts,
but it wouldn't be very good. You gain you gain
from hiring an expert to do it, and you pay them.
So you run a deficit with your barber or your hairdresser.
Speaker 6 (35:15):
He doesn't he doesn't give you. He or she doesn't
give you any money, but you give them money. So
we all run trade differences in our daily lives with
all the people we deal with. That's what the free
market is.
Speaker 7 (35:26):
That that's what I could you know, that's the capitalism
and I exchange you're based on the sort of gains
from trade among individuals. The argument for a free trade
among countries is very similar. That if we want to
buy avocados, it's probably a good idea to hire them
from Mexico, where they buy them from Mexico, where they
can make them in bulk more cheaply than we can, and.
Speaker 6 (35:46):
We can call them you know, iPhones or whatever. They
don't have any and we do.
Speaker 7 (35:52):
So it's a very basic Almost any you know, any
economist across the spectrum agrees with that. But Trump has
just got this idea in his mind. I mean, yeah,
I think if I said I used to cover Trump
back in the eighties when I worked on the London
Times as a sort of Wall Street correspondent, and even
back then he was pretty much the same. I mean,
there's this famous editorial. You know, used to buy himself
editorials in the New York Times, full page ads.
Speaker 2 (36:15):
You know.
Speaker 7 (36:15):
The famous one was the one against The most famous
and notorious one was when he called for sort of
death penalty for the.
Speaker 1 (36:21):
Yeah for the Central Park.
Speaker 7 (36:23):
But another one he took out was about imports, and
at the time, the threat to American jobs and industries
were seen to come from Japan. Japan was the sort
of mini China of its time, you know, Toyota, Nissan
Hondo making roads into American car market, and Trump called
for basically blanket bands on any imports made very exactly
(36:46):
in his saying they were basically cheating, they were stealing
our markets, same as things. He says, now you know
they were stealing our markets, taking our jobs away, and
it should be completely banned. I mean, I don't think
his views have changed in Iota, in you know, forty years.
It was all there in those editorials.
Speaker 6 (37:03):
And I don't you can't really talk.
Speaker 3 (37:05):
About a bit.
Speaker 7 (37:05):
I mean, I'm sure some of his advisors do to
some to some extent try to when he you know,
when he says, let's put one hundred tariff on somebody,
I'm sure somebody says, are we sure about that, mister president,
But you know, he says, you're iron, and they just
go ahead. I mean, his argument is, you know, it's
all for bargaining purposes, but he talks across purposes. One
day he says, you know, we need it, we need
(37:27):
the huge tariffs because it'll strengthen our bargaining position and
they'll come beg in.
Speaker 6 (37:31):
And then we'll greect great pills.
Speaker 7 (37:33):
And then the next day he said, no, we we're
going to replace the tax system.
Speaker 6 (37:36):
We don't need income tax anymore. We should switch to
just tariffs will make so much.
Speaker 7 (37:41):
They those two things can't possibly fit together, because you know,
if it's the bargaining shape, you're bargaining away.
Speaker 6 (37:48):
The idea is to bargain down the tariffs, and then
you wouldn't know.
Speaker 1 (37:51):
Yes, I would love it if you could sort of
talk about where we are with the trade, because it
seems like we are on our way to a trade catastrophe.
But maybe I'm wrong. We don't have any deals yet.
From what I understand from the ports, from the information
on the ports, the ports are seem pretty spare. So
(38:15):
how does this how does this play out?
Speaker 7 (38:18):
Yeah, we're in a sort of interregnant period of the moment, Molly,
I think here whereas the policies have been put into effect,
especially the ones on China, but they haven't really hit
home yet. Companies order goods in advance, so most of
the goods they're using at the moment, or most retailers
are selling, you know, they ordered a year ago or
six months ago or whatever. So as this sort of
(38:39):
several month period of several months where Trump's announced these tariffs.
The hammer won't come down until, you know, the empty
ships don't arrive. There's already been big reports of the
famous one was Seattle. There was some day whether we're
apparently known, you know, no shipping containers in the port.
Speaker 6 (38:55):
But I think that maybe was a bit of a flu.
Speaker 7 (38:57):
And people think that by the end of May is
start of June and it really will be hitting home
and the shortages will start to kick in. I mean
that's what the retailers I think told Trump down at
the White House, head of you know, Home Depot, Walmart,
et cetera.
Speaker 6 (39:10):
Were in there.
Speaker 3 (39:10):
You know.
Speaker 7 (39:11):
Trump came out the next day and you know, said,
this is not really going to happen. It's going to
be here. You know, we're going to make deals.
Speaker 6 (39:16):
But now he seems to be changing his turn, and
he made this argument last week. You know he's done.
Speaker 7 (39:20):
Now he's forced to make arguments that kids don't need all, yes,
as many pencils, they can have five pencils instead of
five hundred pencils, which is a remarkable argument for a
Republican president to make, because arguing against consumerism. For all
my life, the arguments against mass consumerism have come from
(39:41):
the left. Now Trump is because he's in this political corner,
he's forced to sort of make some of those arguments.
And I wrote a piece facetiously arguing that he's become
a deep growth, which is in a very left wing position.
So I think, to get back to your question, if
he keeps the tariffs where they are now, there will
be an economic shock, and it will probably not the economy.
Speaker 6 (40:02):
Into recession Wall Street. He's not going to do that.
Speaker 1 (40:05):
Find someone who has faith in you the way the
public markets have faith in Donald Trump.
Speaker 7 (40:10):
Well they I think, what the you know, the member
the Liberation Day, you know, when he his tariffs and
the markets basically collapsed, and when the markets collapsed, and
especially the bond market went into a tissy, Trump basically caved,
not basically he did cave.
Speaker 6 (40:23):
You know, it came out.
Speaker 7 (40:24):
He put the you know, he suspended all the ones
apart from China for ninety days.
Speaker 6 (40:30):
He hinted that, you know, other ones that would be
coming down too.
Speaker 7 (40:32):
So I think the markets took that as a sign
that when push comes to show, they.
Speaker 6 (40:36):
Run things, not Trump.
Speaker 7 (40:38):
They've had this remarkable comeback when the markets are basically
back to where you know, when he was elected. So
I think the market is maybe be where we're being
too optimistic because I think it's very difficult to predict Trump.
He does have this sort of got instinct that what
he's doing is right, and I think he would be
a huge climb down for him to get rid of
all his tariffs. But at the same time, he hates
the market going down. We know that judges every private
(41:00):
so he sort of is between a rock and a
hard place. Really, so I think we'll go We're going
to end up. He's just sort of more chaos with him,
you know, sort of bucking down on some things, up
in the stakes on others.
Speaker 1 (41:11):
You know.
Speaker 7 (41:11):
We so he announced this threatened this week that he's
got about a hundred percent tariffs on more in films.
Speaker 1 (41:19):
Yes, those cash cass For a second, what I thought
was interesting about that chaos was that he was okay
with the market, the public markets creator but it was
when the bond market started freaking out. Now what I
think happened, and again, who the fuck knows, but it's
possible that someone went in and explained to him dollar flight.
(41:41):
I am like very interested in dollar flight. I just
read a really smart piece in The Economist about it.
Can you explain to us what dollar flight is and
why that is not an impossible I think it's unlikely,
but I think it's not impossible scenario right now.
Speaker 7 (41:59):
Well, it's back up to the Liberation Day fiasco again
and the market reaction what really spoop people in the
markets and in the White House and in the FED
and everywhere.
Speaker 6 (42:09):
Basically the stock.
Speaker 7 (42:10):
Market went down, but the dollar and bonds went down
to Usually when you have a crisis, money floods into
the bond market because it's seen as as seen as
a safe reserve. The US bonds US treasuries. People switch
out of bonds and they buy US treasuries.
Speaker 6 (42:24):
They do that all over the world.
Speaker 7 (42:26):
So if you're in China or England or Germany or wherever,
and you're trying to buy US treasures, you have to
buy dollars first to do it, because you could only
buy obviously their dollar denominated. So people buy dollars to
buy treasuries. That boosts the value of the dollar. So
in a crisis, it's always been a case of almost
always that the stocks collapse, people freak out. But the
(42:46):
bond market bounces and the dollar goes up this time,
but the stock market collapsed, well actually nearly collapsed. It
went down a lot, but the bond market tanked with it.
People seem to be fleeing out of bonds and treasuries
as well the US bonds and buying things like gold
and other currencies, you know, maybe europe bonds issued in
(43:07):
Europe or even Japan or wherever. And that seemed to
especially be happening on the night of the Liberation Day
in Asia. It seems hedge funds or maybe Asian governments
or whatever, we're basically dumping dollars. And there are stories
in the markets which I've been told and not not
never been completely confirmed that Scott Less and the Treasury
(43:28):
Secretary was on the phone to hedge funds and foreign
governments in Asia saying, look, you know, you've got to
stop this.
Speaker 6 (43:34):
We're going to deal with this crisis.
Speaker 1 (43:36):
Working for Trump Man that it's not a good job.
Speaker 7 (43:40):
So that happened. Then the question is, you know, are
we still vulnerable. Okay, he's reversed that, you know, he's
backed off. That could have happened again. I mean, the
problem is we're in a sort of overall situation in
which we are vulnerable because we run a huge you know,
we run a huge budget deficit and have have been
doing forever, and in order to in order to finance
that budget deficit, the treasury has to issue bonds, and
a lot of the buyers of those bonds historically over
(44:02):
the last decade or two have been foreigners, foreign governments,
including the Chinese government was famously.
Speaker 1 (44:08):
Well, we are in a basically in a cold war
with at this point exactly, the unspoken assumption underneath Trump's
trade war is that we're the big guy on.
Speaker 7 (44:16):
The block where the bully it can really do any
damage to us. Things are going to get bad, but
will come out best. Now, the fact that we're dependent
on foreign financing for the deficit sort of undermines that. So,
you know, maybe we're not as strong as we think
we are, or maybe as Trump thinks we are. So
that's always that's always the sort of tension here. And
you know, there's always this fear that maybe the Chinese
(44:38):
will start dumping bonds, maybe other governments will start dumping bonds,
and that would force you know, could in a crisis,
cause a collapse in the dollar and a big rise
in inflation. That's the sort of scenario we's developing countries
get into all the time, not the United States. I
think that's what we're so alarming to the markets and
to a lot of people. During the response to the Liberation,
(44:59):
Big Pretty Show. That's why they did a YouTube I
think basically made the same argument to child that I've
just made to you and said, we haven't ready to
go most choice, mister President.
Speaker 1 (45:09):
We have to do something, and we can see that again.
Thank you, thank you, Thank you, John, and we're looking
forward to finishing the book.
Speaker 6 (45:16):
Thanks very much for having me on.
Speaker 3 (45:20):
No moment.
Speaker 1 (45:23):
Jesse Cannon, Mali junk Fast.
Speaker 2 (45:26):
New Mexico is feeling the wrath of the job course closure.
More than four hundred employees and students at Albuquerque and
Roswell campuses are impacted. According to the New Mexico Department
of Workforce.
Speaker 1 (45:38):
Solutions, this is a moment of our grade that comes
directly from our friendly or in New Mexico. He just
sent me this thing. You know, you have this thing
called job Corpse. It's a small organization that helps people
get back on their feed. It is really good. It
trains kids to get jobs. It is like, these are
(45:58):
the things that we need our federal government to be doing.
It's not a huge amount of money to keep them going.
While Trump administration no more, Federal judge Wednesday temporarily block
job Corpse from closing by the end of the month
because this is money that Congress appropriated that the Trump
administration doesn't want to go towards the job Corpse, because
(46:22):
even though Congress created this and Congress should end it,
Trump has decided that the rounding error that is the
money to help these kids is not okay with him,
very very very annoying, upsetting, and also just unconstitutional. And that,
my friends, is our moment of fuck ray. That's it
(46:45):
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. If you enjoy this podcast, asked,
please send it to a friend and keep the conversation going.
Thanks for listening.
Hi, I'm Molli John Fast and this is Fast Politics,
where we discussed the top political headlines with some of
today's best minds. And Russia has offered political asylum to
Elon Musk Perfect gotta love it. We have such a
great show for you today. The Lincoln Project's own Stuart
Stevens stops by to talk about the Elon and Trump
(00:22):
breakup and the case for nationalizing SpaceX and Starlink. Then
we'll talk to the New Yorkers John Cassidy about his
book Capitalism and Its Critics, a history from the Industrial
Revolution to AI.
Speaker 2 (00:36):
But first the news, Mally, I'm going to let you
and Stewart do the discussion of the girls who are
fighting between Elon and the Trump and all that surrounds it,
because we have other fish to fry that got buried
in the news this week. This one is particularly horrifying.
You and I were both wretching as we read this
before this question swirl over who's running the CDC? Not
(00:58):
a headline you want to read?
Speaker 1 (01:00):
This is not good? Okay. First of all, one of
the things that's happened in this administration which we should
all be thinking about, worrying about, and talking about is
that the Trump administration has given up on running the
federal government the way it's supposed to be run. And
the problem is they're disrupting things that we actually need,
like the CDC. Putting RFK Junior in charge of this
(01:23):
CDC is basically just giving it up right, and that's
what we're seeing here. Confusion over shifting Center for Disease
Control and Prevention COVID nineteen recommendations are reuniting questions in
the public health community about who's actually running the agency
and the answer is no one. And that is what
(01:44):
you should be scared of. This is really scary. We're
six months into the Trump administration. This health agency is
who we need to be tracking the avian flu, to
be following food borne diseases, to making sure that you know,
studies are being followed, that drugs that our dangerous are
being kept off the market, that you know there's the
(02:04):
CDC is a huge organization with a really important job.
And what we're seeing here is that RFK Junior, who
said he needed to be in charge of public health, well,
he is falling down on the job. He faced questions
about the direction of the agency and is send hearing
last month, and he really couldn't answer them. He said
things like couldn't answer questions, didn't understand what was happening.
(02:28):
So here's something important from the Health and Human Services
spokesperson said, the chief of staff has been carrying out
some of the duties of the CDC director as a
senior official. So you see what's happening here, right, They're
just not doing what they're supposed to be doing, and
it's very inefficient and we're going to see this is
going to be bad. This is like what we're seeing.
They're going to be wholes that need to be fixed.
(02:50):
It's not good. And you know that this is it
relates to our next story. So I don't want to
get ahead of ourselves, but this is the CDC that's
supposed to be following the bird flu and preventing another
once in a lifetime pandemic from catching hold. And now
let us move on to the next big problem coming
to us.
Speaker 2 (03:09):
Yeah, as you said, it's really similar, which is that
DOSEE fired too many people. They took a chainsaw that
was really long to this when they should have been
in with a scalpel. And now we're seeing absolutely horrifying
issues with this report from the Washington Post.
Speaker 1 (03:24):
So Jesse put this in our schedule to talk about.
I read it earlier and could not believe what I
read me And this is a piece. This's a big
expose in the Washington Post. And basically what they did was,
at every point they sent these emails and you could see,
well it was happening, that this was what was going
to happen. But it is I don't want to say gratifying,
(03:47):
because all of this is terrible and they're going to
be huge consequences that none of us can quite game
out yet. But basically, they offered these resignations to all
these people, many of whom needed to actually work in
the federal government. And this is where it is. So
this piece is really you should definitely read it. It
(04:09):
explains how at every point they fired people who were necessary,
then they listed jobs to try to get them to
come back. A lot of people didn't want to come
back because now they worry that the federal government is
not a reasonable place to work anymore.
Speaker 2 (04:25):
Do you mean that essay for the hiring we talked
about in the last episode. It makes people not want
to work in an environment like that. I can't imagine
why they wouldn't want to work with people who did
a loyalty essay for Trump.
Speaker 1 (04:36):
And it's also I would say, it's like the top
line is Elon is done with the federal government, but
the federal government has been just traumatized and injured by Elon.
And there are so many different parts of the government.
I mean, so, we just did a story about there's
no one running the CDC right the Center for Disease Control,
an extremely important part of the federal government that keeps
(04:59):
us healthy and safe. Now in this story, there's reporting
that all these other parts of the State Department, and
then they tried to rehire the people in the State
Department and they don't want to come back, and that's
security overseas. And then you have Trump doing these bands
from different countries, and you don't have the State Department
following up on what's happening in those other countries because
(05:22):
of these bands, and that's going to be really important.
And then you have in this article it talks about
how you have people that were fired from all different
sections like the Department of Agriculture, the Department of Housing
in Urban Development, the FDA. These are things food and
drug administration is housing in urban development, that's like housing,
(05:42):
that's different cities. And then agriculture that's our food safety.
So there are so many different parts of the federal
government that have been devastated by the richest man in
the world who thought it would be cool to pretend
to work government.
Speaker 2 (06:00):
Yeah, nice cosplaying there, Speaking of people whose job qualifications
seem like cosplay. I would say yesterday was in the
top ten funnest days on the Internet. But I was
really really sad that something that would have made the
day fun no matter what, got buried, which was Howard
Blunick testifying in front of Congress and showing what an
absolute unqualified person years to be running anything this high up.
Speaker 3 (06:25):
Let's listen.
Speaker 4 (06:26):
What's the terriffon bananas? Americans, by the way, love bananas.
We buy billions of them a year.
Speaker 1 (06:32):
I love bananas.
Speaker 4 (06:33):
What's the terriffon bananas?
Speaker 3 (06:37):
The tariffone bananas would be representative of the countries that
produced and what what's that terraff generally ten percent? Correct?
Speaker 4 (06:44):
Ten percent? Walmart has already increased the cost of bananas
by eight percent.
Speaker 5 (06:50):
As untrust who deals with us, that will go to
zero as countries do deals right now.
Speaker 4 (06:56):
American consumer now and on the businesses with the confus Now,
mister Secretary, I believe you know better. I believe you
recognize that a trade deficit is not something to fear.
I believe you know that predictability, stability is essential for businesses.
Speaker 1 (07:14):
I wish you would show that truth to this administration.
Speaker 2 (07:19):
And I yeope, back ladies my mind.
Speaker 5 (07:22):
Mister Tairman, if I make one quick comment to the end,
that'd be okay. I'm sorry, would you mind if I
make one quick comment to the representative?
Speaker 3 (07:30):
Please? Uh?
Speaker 6 (07:31):
There is no uncertainty.
Speaker 5 (07:32):
If you build in America and you produce your product
in America, there will be no task.
Speaker 1 (07:37):
We can't be hung as aling in.
Speaker 3 (07:39):
America and pay no tax. You cannot, very very clear.
Speaker 1 (07:43):
You cannot fighting build that as in America.
Speaker 3 (07:46):
Time with the general Lady has expired.
Speaker 1 (07:49):
Wait, you can't build bananas in America.
Speaker 2 (07:53):
It is so far this discussion of on shoring things.
What it's like, so many these jobs we don't Americans doing,
and that was what we worked on for seventy five years.
And then there's just things that are not able to
be done in our climate.
Speaker 1 (08:08):
Speak for yourself. I'm building American bananas right here. Baby, No,
this isn't completely insane. And what you don't see, because
this is audio and now video, is that he has
this enormous qrin on his face. That is absolutely it just.
Speaker 2 (08:29):
Is so he thought he killed it.
Speaker 1 (08:31):
Yeah, he thinks he killed it. I think that is
absolutely he thinks he killed it. And my man, he
did not kill it. It's just very annoying, I mean,
and also so insane.
Speaker 2 (08:43):
We have more incompetent hires that are totally unqualified for
their job this time, though it's much more in the
comical way of that. We have a twenty two year
old former gardener picked to lead the Terrorism Prevention Department
of Homeland Security named Thomas Fugate.
Speaker 1 (08:58):
Yeah. I mean, and this is you know, this is
this story relates to the story about the CDC, relates
to the story about everything else they are. They're defenestrating
the federal government, and they're going to be consequences. I
hope there aren't, but it really seems like they're going
to be. And it's just such a incredibly insane moment
(09:23):
in American life and just so fucked up. Excuse my
fact Stuart Stevens is a legendary campaign manager and the
author of the Conspiracy to in America Five Ways My
Old Party is driving our democracy to autocracy. Welcome to
(09:44):
Fast Politics, Stuart Stevens.
Speaker 5 (09:46):
Thank you, Molly. I've got to use this as a
shout out for your book. It's really extraordinary. It really
is an amazing piece of writing.
Speaker 1 (09:53):
Well, thank you. I really appreciate that. And you know,
Stuart is actually really incredible. You are a boot beautiful writer,
and you write tends not to be political, writing tends
not to be so lyrical, and you write very lyrically.
So I really appreciate that from you. And now we
must talk about your mad cap idea, which I love
(10:15):
it so much. It's also just super interesting. So talk
me through this idea.
Speaker 5 (10:20):
The idea of nationalizing Starlink. And yeah, the deeply troubling
thing about this is that I seem to agree with
Steve mannon, but I'm trying to get over that. Look,
I mean this in all seriousness, never if we had
one person so deeply embedded into essential related national security industries.
(10:41):
Companies Starlink and SpaceX are critical elements of American national
security and of America's power in the world. So, I mean,
if I just woke up in the Middle nine and said,
what if we had a guy who you know, has
a well reported, very high level drug problem, unstable obviously
mental issues, and he's the person that runs these companies,
(11:04):
he'd probably say that's really not a great idea. There
is this thing called the Defense Procurement Act, which is
passed in nineteen fifty. It was actually updated in nineteen
seventy to specifically include anything related to space, and in
earlier versions, the first was around World War One they
came up with It gives the government in times of
(11:27):
national emergency the power to direct or nationalize industries, and
it's been used before from the railways to mining and
various ways with steel companies. So Republicans say that we
are in a national emergency, they say that we are
at war. That's what they used to justify the use
(11:49):
of the Alien Act, and they call it a regular warfare.
So if I was a Democrat, though now that Steve
Bannon has supported this idea, maybe you don't have to
be a Democrat, I.
Speaker 3 (12:01):
Would take you face value.
Speaker 5 (12:03):
Okay, great, right, we're in a national emergency where it
war that gives the government the power to nationalize SpaceX
and Starlink.
Speaker 1 (12:12):
So as a conservative, it's a pretty bold idea. I
don't think it's wrong. But so the theory of the
case here is that I think Tesla it doesn't. It
is sort of a rounding error. But there are two
companies that Elon Muss that has had that our owns
that are where he is the largest stockholder of SpaceX
(12:35):
is actually a private company that he has built through
government subsidies and a lot of incentive advising with taxes,
and they have made him the richest band in the world.
And one is Starlink and one is SpaceX and starlink
is And again this runs to the idea that you
(12:56):
have a problem, which is you need SpaceX for satellites
and also space exploration. You need Starlink for all of
the stuff that's already in space and yeah, the communication.
And again Trump tweeted yesterday about canceling a lot of
Elon's contracts. But there is no other company that can
(13:17):
do this. So we got here because government refused to regulate.
I mean, explain is how we got here that we
have one company that does these things.
Speaker 5 (13:28):
It's interesting because wearing my conservative hat. You could make
a good case that this goes to the efficiency of
the marketplace. You had a guy who is extraordinarily gifted,
if deeply disturbed. So had this been set up by
NASA from the beginning, you would have had security clearances
that would have include drug testing, and you wouldn't have
(13:49):
an elone muff anywhere near this thing. So that's positive.
But now that it is what it is, one person
should not be allowed to have this power, particularly someone
who has such terrible judgment, is obviously in some sort
of manic personal crisis. And we have a perfect example
of his insertion of himself in world events when he
(14:11):
refused in twenty twenty two Ukraine, Yeah, of twenty twenty
two to allow Ukraine, I mean, just picture this. Ukraine
had set up the first use of one of their
now sort of famous water drones, these water power drones
that carry explosives that they've used to somehow for a
(14:34):
country that didn't have a navy to defeat the Russian navy.
So they are seventy kilometers away from their target, which
was the Muskova flagship, and Elon musk turned off the
starlink and refused to turn it back on. That is
extremely dangerous, and there is this weird affinity would be
(14:56):
the most positive way to put it. Of this group
of South Africans that he is part of. Sex is
another one. They have this soft spot for Russia, probably
but no other reason. It's an oligarch's paradise and they
are oligarchs or would be firing and they have elections
(15:20):
that are performative, not determinative, which they obviously you know.
I just I think it should be done. I think
if you had any sort of seriousness about national security,
you would step back from this and say, regardless of
how we got here, we're here and we can't allow
this to continue.
Speaker 1 (15:41):
I think it's going to be hard to convince people
to do that because I think the public markets aren't
going to like it. I understand the need for it
because Elon is very erratic, and he's running these companies
in a very erratic way, and there are certain things
that are needed from Starlank and SpaceX that you know,
his personal peccadillos are hurting right like, there are people
(16:07):
up in the space station who need to be okay,
there are people in Alabama or rural Kentucky or you know,
where they need to make sure the satellites, or Ukraine
where they need to make sure the satellites are working.
So there is a need that is beyond what Elon's
personal piccadillos are. But the worry I think a lot
(16:30):
of us on the both the left and the right,
is that once you start taking over private companies, it's
a very slippery slope.
Speaker 3 (16:37):
Yeah, it's look, it's been used before.
Speaker 5 (16:38):
It's always been unpopular with those that are connected to
the companies, right understandable, going back to when they nationalized
a lot of use of the railroads, uh, going into
the US entry into World War One. I think it's
like everything in life, you have to balance the good right,
And there's really no two companies that are as deeply
(17:01):
involved in national security.
Speaker 3 (17:04):
You know.
Speaker 5 (17:04):
This isn't a case of your nationalizing Tesla to get
FOURD to break or to help Toyota and Tesla, which
is really the source of most of his wealth. And
of course, which is one of the reasons they've had
this extraordinary higher technical fight is Trump wants to cut
to EV credits and until recently, the only money that
(17:25):
Tesla made was from EV credits. They were basically an
ev credit company that also made cars. You take that
away and the value Tesla's extraordinarily overvalued company.
Speaker 1 (17:38):
Right, Yes, for sure it will.
Speaker 5 (17:40):
Go down, but that's fine. I mean, Tesla's not necessary
to have financial security. I mean, all my neighbors in
Santa Monica can make do a print wood will survive.
But there ought to be responsible adults connected with the
best interest in the United States government that are at
(18:03):
this point running starlink and running SpaceX.
Speaker 3 (18:07):
Right, pay him a bunch.
Speaker 1 (18:08):
Of money, right by it from them.
Speaker 5 (18:11):
United States government has a lot of money. You don't
have to just seize it. Pay them a lot of money.
Speaker 3 (18:15):
That's fine.
Speaker 1 (18:15):
So you feel like it's an imminent domain question.
Speaker 3 (18:19):
Exactly like imminent domain.
Speaker 5 (18:20):
That's a very good it's a very good example, and
we use it, and it's controversial, and those that are
eminently domained out usually don't worry.
Speaker 3 (18:29):
Right.
Speaker 5 (18:30):
But I just think that you can't unsee what we've
seen in the last forty eight hours.
Speaker 1 (18:36):
Right, this is not a person who should be in
charge of National Saturday.
Speaker 5 (18:39):
I mean you could say, okay, here's a guy. He's
jumping up and down behind it. You know, President of
the United States. You look at that footage in the
Oval Office, and you know, there's not a teenage in
America that would walk into their home in that kind
of condition and not know that they're going to be
busted by their parents. How deeply into drugs do you
have to be that you can't restrain yourself the morning
(19:03):
of knowing that you're going to have meeting in the
Oval Office that's going to be televised. You know, if
you can't kind of hold it together for that, that
is a serious indication of a serious problem.
Speaker 1 (19:16):
Right. I mean, we don't want to speculate, but there
certainly has been reporting in the Wallstreet Journal about a
box of pills and this and that.
Speaker 5 (19:26):
You also said, did he use this kind of meine? Right,
and we can now use Donald Trump as a source, right.
Speaker 1 (19:32):
Well, Donald Trump, the two of them did definitely get
involved in a lot of pretty insane no name calling.
So right now there are a lot of people who
want Elan and Trump to sort of take it all down, right,
they are de accelerate, d you know whatever, stop fighting.
(19:53):
This is a bad situation for people like Mike Johnson.
This is a bad situation for people like Anna, Paulina
Luna or any member of the House goop who is
got to choose between their richest benefactor and their political
north star. Do you think, and this is something already
(20:15):
we're seeing this, do you think like this bill could
get crashed just by Elon? Should Democrats be pushing that
even if Elon pash the bill is something totally different
than why Democrats want to crash it.
Speaker 5 (20:34):
I think that what Democrats have to learn to do
is to use whatever tools they have available and not
to feel that like this is beneath me or that
is right. You can't allow yourself to luxury of pretending
that the greater good is served by acting like a
normal governing party. Right, as Jonathan last that brilliantly pointed out,
(20:56):
we don't need opposition party now, we need a dissident movement.
So this is a terrible bill for any reason. So
he didn't need Elon, But the degree to which Elon
can be useful in this, I think they should grasp
it and beat him over the head with it. And look,
this is also just we should not lose sight of
the fact this is terrible for the country.
Speaker 1 (21:18):
Right, no deep off medicaid.
Speaker 5 (21:21):
Today's no, just this fight is terrible country. The bill
is terrible too, But today's anniversary of D Day. Yeah,
but think about what America was doing then and what
the leadership, the sacrifice, and the image that it secured
for America's place in the world as a flawed but
(21:43):
instrument of greater good compared to this fight between two
deeply flawed, horrible human beings who are two of the
most powerful people in the world. I mean, it's just
how far are we falling? Publicans are to blame for this.
They didn't have to tolerate this, and they've allowed it
(22:04):
to happen.
Speaker 1 (22:04):
So talk to me about what this looks like now.
So Democrats really could and I think they should think
about trying to sink this thing with the help of
Elon Musk, because Keal and Musks people want it gone.
This bill, if it passes, will kick people off Medicaid,
it will cut food stamps for poor kids, It will
just do everything, and it will extend these ridiculous tax cuts.
(22:28):
And it will also open the door to no tax
on tips. How that will work, I have no idea
talk about that.
Speaker 5 (22:34):
Look, I think the Democrats should have a greater ambition
than just stopping this bill. They should use what's happened
with Musk as one of the instruments to undo and
get all these Doze cronies out of government. I mean,
just stop and think the guy that we have seen
in the last twenty four hours. Would you trust him
to hire someone to paint your house?
Speaker 1 (22:55):
Now?
Speaker 3 (22:56):
No?
Speaker 5 (22:57):
And he's what are these people like that he's hired.
They try to hide, they try to the big balls
in these crowds. They're going to be weird. They're not
going to have a sense of any patriotism, and they're dangerous,
right we are at this moment. I mean, anybody you know,
I think grusde has made this very good point.
Speaker 3 (23:15):
Oh this is great.
Speaker 5 (23:16):
You got one of these guys has all our personal
information in his pocket and the other has the nuclear codes. Right, yes,
well this is really great. So I think it just
indicates the recklessness and carelessness and lack of any sense
of responsibility that has driven this entire Doge effort.
Speaker 3 (23:39):
They should try to undo this.
Speaker 1 (23:41):
Yeah, it's it's interesting, and in fact, there's really good
reporting today from the Washington Post about how DOGE has
fired so many people, and there really is quite They're
trying to rehire these people that they fired. And I
do wonder if there is a question now if you could,
I mean, I think it would mean that you would
(24:03):
need to appeal to John Thoon. You would mean that
you would need to get Trump back on board to
try to stop sort of defenestrating the federal government. I'm
not sure. Like remember, part of why DOJE was allowed
to happen was because the Heritage Foundation really did want
to unravel the federal government. So there were two different
(24:28):
polls involved in that.
Speaker 5 (24:30):
Talk to that, yeah, I think also, yes, that's true
the Heritage Foundation, of course, but there is a hidden
motive here of someone like Trump and someone like Musk.
They really don't believe in democracy. They believe in autocracies
and the sort of great Man theory of history. So
(24:50):
if you have a government that is working, that is functioning,
they see that as a reduction of their own ability
to be historic figures. This whole notion that goes back
to George Washington, that the president is just holds the
office temporarily and this is he's a steward of something greater.
(25:13):
That goes back to the oath of allegiances to the Constitution,
not to a man that is deeply alien to someone
like Trump and someone like Musk, and everything is personal
to him. So this is one of the reasons they're
so drawn to putin. And it is cruelty, it is ignorance,
it is a complete inability to imagine how government can
(25:38):
help others. But it also is a ploy to make
the need for a strong man essential. I think the
best fights you get in not because you know you're
gonna win, but you get in because you have to fight.
It's true of Ukraine, is true the Battle of Britain.
That's that is the Democrats should have. I mean, if
(25:59):
Democrats take over the House, the first thing I would
do is I would cut off all funding for the
executive branch every bit.
Speaker 1 (26:05):
Yeah, such a good point, Such a good point.
Speaker 5 (26:08):
Don't play this game by different rules, except that this
is the game that we're in, and use those rules.
Don't be like we were in World War One when
hesitant to establish intelligence because gentlemen don't read other gentlemen's mail.
Speaker 1 (26:25):
No, right, that was the actual sense of Bidenism. Was
bringing a stuff to animal to a knife fight, was
refusing to meet these people where they were.
Speaker 5 (26:37):
Yeah, I think that there's two ways to look at that.
I think that's what you just said is absolutely true.
I think also that Biden historically will have to plead
guilty to having a greater expectation of what America could
rise to than America chose to rise to.
Speaker 1 (26:57):
That is really true. Thank you, thank you, thank you,
Stuart Stevens.
Speaker 3 (27:02):
Thank you.
Speaker 1 (27:03):
You're so smart. John Cassidy is a staff writer at
The New Yorker and the author of Capitalism and Its Critics,
A History from the Industrial Revolution to AI. So welcome
to Fast Politics.
Speaker 6 (27:18):
John, thanks very much for inviting me on.
Speaker 1 (27:21):
I am excited to talk about this book, but I
just want for a minute to talk about the progression.
So the last book he wrote was a book about
how markets fail, and this book is about capitalism and
perhaps how capitalism may have some failings. Is there a
connection here between this one and the next.
Speaker 7 (27:40):
I'm recovering the sort of economics and finance. You knows
since I was in my twenties and I in my
sixties now, so we're talking nearly forty years. So if
you cover finance and economics, what makes news is always
the market failures. My first book about was it was
about the Internet boom and bust back in the late nineties.
My second book was really about the financial Christ's great
(28:00):
financial Crisis of two thousand and seven, two thousand and eight,
two thousand and nine, and the sort of economic failures
behind that.
Speaker 6 (28:07):
And then I thought, well, I've done the two individual ones.
Speaker 7 (28:09):
Why not go the whole hog and do a book about,
you know, the sort of full history of capitalism and
its critics. The pitch for this book is that it's
not just another boring history of capitalism. It's toiled through
the eyes of the critics. So I mean I turned
it into a series of mini biographies going all the
way back to Adam Smith and the luod Heites up
(28:30):
until today.
Speaker 1 (28:31):
So it's working great.
Speaker 6 (28:32):
Huh.
Speaker 7 (28:33):
Well, I mean there's always two sided capitalism, right, I mean,
we generally regarded as better than the alternatives. We tried
an alternative in the twentieth century state socialism that eventually
broke down. I mean, capitalism has delivered a massive economic growth.
I mean, I've got a charge in my book showing
how if you just look at GDP since the year dot,
you know, it's basically a flat line until eighteen hundred,
(28:56):
when industrial capitalism comes on and then it takes off,
and it's been going up since. So I think the
reason capitalism survives is because it delivers the gods just
in terms of economic growth, but it brings with it
a lot of problems which have been there since, being
of the system, exploitation of workers and of consumers, inequality,
(29:16):
especially recent decades, that's been a huge problem. And now
technological displacement has always been an issue, and now with
AI it's an even bigger issue.
Speaker 6 (29:26):
So you know, it's a two sided story.
Speaker 7 (29:28):
I'm a sort of I come from a center left,
so I've always been critical of capitalism and thought it
can be improved, and I would describe myself as a
sort of Canesian social democrat. I think you've got to
keep the basics of the system, but you need to
manage it. I'm in favor of managed capitalism. That's the
argument I make in the book. And in sort of
terms of American politics, I guess you'd put me in
(29:51):
the sort of Elizabeth Warren Bernie Sanders camp.
Speaker 1 (29:55):
There are many people on this podcast who are in
that camp too. It feels there is a real bit
of post free trade hangover happening right now, and we
saw it again. Biden poor at explaining things for any
number of reasons. He did. Chips and Sciences was largely
(30:17):
about entering manufacturing because of Taiwan and because of any
number of other reasons, Tariff's, Trump whatever. But theoretically the
thought behind it is entering manufacturing. So can you explain
to us where this sort of free trade I want
to say, it's a sort of like free trade regretism
(30:39):
comes from. That's not a real word.
Speaker 7 (30:42):
I mean, I think you know you have to You
have to go back into history a bit.
Speaker 6 (30:45):
Well, that's the problem with covering Trump. Everybody gets caught
up in the day to day headlines. I do it myself.
Speaker 7 (30:50):
I just wrote about his comments about toys. But you
have to step back a bit here. Trump people attribute
too much to him. He is a react in a
part of a react against globalization and what he uses
neoliberalism basically sort of conservative economic policy from the sort
of nineties onwards and embrace of sort of unrestricted globalization
(31:11):
that produced in the US at least a lot of
a lot of job displacement, especially in Red States. Best
they joined the China Shock from about when China joined
the World Trade Organization in two thousand and one. If
you just look at the charts of manufacturing employment after that,
they go straight down, and that produce another There's always
(31:32):
this bigger, big debate about was Trump a product of
economic resentments or racial and cultural resentments. I think the
answer obviously is both, but economics definitely played a role.
So what we've seen since twenty sixteen, anyway, is a
big backlash against sort of free trade on both sides
of the aisle. Started off, obviously with Trump and his
(31:54):
tariffs in the first term, and he run in on
economic nationalism.
Speaker 6 (31:57):
America First, America First.
Speaker 7 (31:58):
That's basically a catchphrase for economic nationalism. The Democrats up
until you know, Clinton and Obama were very much in
favor of free trade. It was obviously Bill Clinton who
signed then After Agreement back in the nineteen nineties. So
the party had very much bought into the idea that
free trade and globalization was best for America, and there
are some strong arguments for it, but they'd sort of
ignored and say they ignored the downsides, but they didn't
(32:20):
do it, so they didn't do enough about them. So
Trump stepped into the sort of backlash that was building
and made it his own, you know, in twenty sixteen.
And Biden came in in twenty twenty and some people
thought he'd get rid of Trump's tariffs, but he did,
and he kept the way he did. He got rid
of the stuff on Europe and other things, but he
kept the tariffs on China and then introduced a very
(32:42):
aggressive industrial policy which he referred to the Chips Act,
the Infrastructure Act, and the part of the Green New
Deal aspects of the It wasn't really a green New Deal,
but a pro electric vehicles, pro green technology, aspects of
the American Rescue Act. And it was, you know, a
(33:03):
big shift for the Democrats to the sort of I
wouldn't say the Trumpian line, but in a more interventionist,
anti skepticism of tree trade.
Speaker 6 (33:11):
So that and then at the end of his term.
Speaker 7 (33:14):
Biden, when he was back, I think it was at
last September or October, he then doubled down on his
tariffs of China and raised them.
Speaker 6 (33:21):
He remember he raised someone.
Speaker 7 (33:22):
I think he raised the tariffs on electric vehicles Chinese
electric vehicles two one hundred percent, not as high as
Trump one hundred and forty five percent, but you know,
pretty high, more targeted. But you know, no way you
can describe that as a free trade policy. So I
think at this stage the sort of abandonment of the
old globalization model is a bi partisan thing. There are
few there are people on both sides who are still favorite,
(33:44):
but the sort of leadership of both parties have rejected
some extent. Now Trump has come in and taken that
sort of consensus and then twisted it, you know, tripled
down on it. I wouldn't say double down on it
with his blanket tariffs, tariffing countries, you know, tariffing poor countries,
putting huge tax on countries. Just Trump's not just anti
(34:07):
sort of unfair trade. Trump's anti all trade. It seems
like you eliminate all trade deficits, you know, and that
there's a huge difference between that and trying to just
target certain industries like Biden.
Speaker 6 (34:18):
But that's where we stand out.
Speaker 7 (34:19):
I don't think we're going back to the old model
of free trade agreements anytime soon.
Speaker 1 (34:24):
Right, Trump seems to not like any trade. Now, is
he against trade because he's a racist?
Speaker 5 (34:29):
Right?
Speaker 1 (34:29):
Obviously? I mean I don't think anyone would think even
he might agree to that, or is he against free
trade because he doesn't understand how trade deficits work.
Speaker 6 (34:39):
I think he doesn't really understand.
Speaker 7 (34:40):
He doesn't have any real appreciation of sort of free
trade and the sort of arguments for it. Going back
to Adam Smith and David Ricardo featuring my book, you know,
the argument for free trade is if everybody does what
they're best at, then everybody can benefit the sort of
gains from trade. And if you know you can bring
it down to you can bring it down to individuals
trade every day. I mean the famous example is, you know,
(35:03):
going for a haircut or something. You could cut your
own hair. You know, you could be self sufficient in haircuts,
but it wouldn't be very good. You gain you gain
from hiring an expert to do it, and you pay them.
So you run a deficit with your barber or your hairdresser.
Speaker 6 (35:15):
He doesn't he doesn't give you. He or she doesn't
give you any money, but you give them money. So
we all run trade differences in our daily lives with
all the people we deal with. That's what the free
market is.
Speaker 7 (35:26):
That that's what I could you know, that's the capitalism
and I exchange you're based on the sort of gains
from trade among individuals. The argument for a free trade
among countries is very similar. That if we want to
buy avocados, it's probably a good idea to hire them
from Mexico, where they buy them from Mexico, where they
can make them in bulk more cheaply than we can, and.
Speaker 6 (35:46):
We can call them you know, iPhones or whatever. They
don't have any and we do.
Speaker 7 (35:52):
So it's a very basic Almost any you know, any
economist across the spectrum agrees with that. But Trump has
just got this idea in his mind. I mean, yeah,
I think if I said I used to cover Trump
back in the eighties when I worked on the London
Times as a sort of Wall Street correspondent, and even
back then he was pretty much the same. I mean,
there's this famous editorial. You know, used to buy himself
editorials in the New York Times, full page ads.
Speaker 2 (36:15):
You know.
Speaker 7 (36:15):
The famous one was the one against The most famous
and notorious one was when he called for sort of
death penalty for the.
Speaker 1 (36:21):
Yeah for the Central Park.
Speaker 7 (36:23):
But another one he took out was about imports, and
at the time, the threat to American jobs and industries
were seen to come from Japan. Japan was the sort
of mini China of its time, you know, Toyota, Nissan
Hondo making roads into American car market, and Trump called
for basically blanket bands on any imports made very exactly
(36:46):
in his saying they were basically cheating, they were stealing
our markets, same as things. He says, now you know
they were stealing our markets, taking our jobs away, and
it should be completely banned. I mean, I don't think
his views have changed in Iota, in you know, forty years.
It was all there in those editorials.
Speaker 6 (37:03):
And I don't you can't really talk.
Speaker 3 (37:05):
About a bit.
Speaker 7 (37:05):
I mean, I'm sure some of his advisors do to
some to some extent try to when he you know,
when he says, let's put one hundred tariff on somebody,
I'm sure somebody says, are we sure about that, mister president,
But you know, he says, you're iron, and they just
go ahead. I mean, his argument is, you know, it's
all for bargaining purposes, but he talks across purposes. One
day he says, you know, we need it, we need
(37:27):
the huge tariffs because it'll strengthen our bargaining position and
they'll come beg in.
Speaker 6 (37:31):
And then we'll greect great pills.
Speaker 7 (37:33):
And then the next day he said, no, we we're
going to replace the tax system.
Speaker 6 (37:36):
We don't need income tax anymore. We should switch to
just tariffs will make so much.
Speaker 7 (37:41):
They those two things can't possibly fit together, because you know,
if it's the bargaining shape, you're bargaining away.
Speaker 6 (37:48):
The idea is to bargain down the tariffs, and then
you wouldn't know.
Speaker 1 (37:51):
Yes, I would love it if you could sort of
talk about where we are with the trade, because it
seems like we are on our way to a trade catastrophe.
But maybe I'm wrong. We don't have any deals yet.
From what I understand from the ports, from the information
on the ports, the ports are seem pretty spare. So
(38:15):
how does this how does this play out?
Speaker 7 (38:18):
Yeah, we're in a sort of interregnant period of the moment, Molly,
I think here whereas the policies have been put into effect,
especially the ones on China, but they haven't really hit
home yet. Companies order goods in advance, so most of
the goods they're using at the moment, or most retailers
are selling, you know, they ordered a year ago or
six months ago or whatever. So as this sort of
(38:39):
several month period of several months where Trump's announced these tariffs.
The hammer won't come down until, you know, the empty
ships don't arrive. There's already been big reports of the
famous one was Seattle. There was some day whether we're
apparently known, you know, no shipping containers in the port.
Speaker 6 (38:55):
But I think that maybe was a bit of a flu.
Speaker 7 (38:57):
And people think that by the end of May is
start of June and it really will be hitting home
and the shortages will start to kick in. I mean
that's what the retailers I think told Trump down at
the White House, head of you know, Home Depot, Walmart,
et cetera.
Speaker 6 (39:10):
Were in there.
Speaker 3 (39:10):
You know.
Speaker 7 (39:11):
Trump came out the next day and you know, said,
this is not really going to happen. It's going to
be here. You know, we're going to make deals.
Speaker 6 (39:16):
But now he seems to be changing his turn, and
he made this argument last week. You know he's done.
Speaker 7 (39:20):
Now he's forced to make arguments that kids don't need all, yes,
as many pencils, they can have five pencils instead of
five hundred pencils, which is a remarkable argument for a
Republican president to make, because arguing against consumerism. For all
my life, the arguments against mass consumerism have come from
(39:41):
the left. Now Trump is because he's in this political corner,
he's forced to sort of make some of those arguments.
And I wrote a piece facetiously arguing that he's become
a deep growth, which is in a very left wing position.
So I think, to get back to your question, if
he keeps the tariffs where they are now, there will
be an economic shock, and it will probably not the economy.
Speaker 6 (40:02):
Into recession Wall Street. He's not going to do that.
Speaker 1 (40:05):
Find someone who has faith in you the way the
public markets have faith in Donald Trump.
Speaker 7 (40:10):
Well they I think, what the you know, the member
the Liberation Day, you know, when he his tariffs and
the markets basically collapsed, and when the markets collapsed, and
especially the bond market went into a tissy, Trump basically caved,
not basically he did cave.
Speaker 6 (40:23):
You know, it came out.
Speaker 7 (40:24):
He put the you know, he suspended all the ones
apart from China for ninety days.
Speaker 6 (40:30):
He hinted that, you know, other ones that would be
coming down too.
Speaker 7 (40:32):
So I think the markets took that as a sign
that when push comes to show, they.
Speaker 6 (40:36):
Run things, not Trump.
Speaker 7 (40:38):
They've had this remarkable comeback when the markets are basically
back to where you know, when he was elected. So
I think the market is maybe be where we're being
too optimistic because I think it's very difficult to predict Trump.
He does have this sort of got instinct that what
he's doing is right, and I think he would be
a huge climb down for him to get rid of
all his tariffs. But at the same time, he hates
the market going down. We know that judges every private
(41:00):
so he sort of is between a rock and a
hard place. Really, so I think we'll go We're going
to end up. He's just sort of more chaos with him,
you know, sort of bucking down on some things, up
in the stakes on others.
Speaker 1 (41:11):
You know.
Speaker 7 (41:11):
We so he announced this threatened this week that he's
got about a hundred percent tariffs on more in films.
Speaker 1 (41:19):
Yes, those cash cass For a second, what I thought
was interesting about that chaos was that he was okay
with the market, the public markets creator but it was
when the bond market started freaking out. Now what I
think happened, and again, who the fuck knows, but it's
possible that someone went in and explained to him dollar flight.
(41:41):
I am like very interested in dollar flight. I just
read a really smart piece in The Economist about it.
Can you explain to us what dollar flight is and
why that is not an impossible I think it's unlikely,
but I think it's not impossible scenario right now.
Speaker 7 (41:59):
Well, it's back up to the Liberation Day fiasco again
and the market reaction what really spoop people in the
markets and in the White House and in the FED
and everywhere.
Speaker 6 (42:09):
Basically the stock.
Speaker 7 (42:10):
Market went down, but the dollar and bonds went down
to Usually when you have a crisis, money floods into
the bond market because it's seen as as seen as
a safe reserve. The US bonds US treasuries. People switch
out of bonds and they buy US treasuries.
Speaker 6 (42:24):
They do that all over the world.
Speaker 7 (42:26):
So if you're in China or England or Germany or wherever,
and you're trying to buy US treasures, you have to
buy dollars first to do it, because you could only
buy obviously their dollar denominated. So people buy dollars to
buy treasuries. That boosts the value of the dollar. So
in a crisis, it's always been a case of almost
always that the stocks collapse, people freak out. But the
(42:46):
bond market bounces and the dollar goes up this time,
but the stock market collapsed, well actually nearly collapsed. It
went down a lot, but the bond market tanked with it.
People seem to be fleeing out of bonds and treasuries
as well the US bonds and buying things like gold
and other currencies, you know, maybe europe bonds issued in
(43:07):
Europe or even Japan or wherever. And that seemed to
especially be happening on the night of the Liberation Day
in Asia. It seems hedge funds or maybe Asian governments
or whatever, we're basically dumping dollars. And there are stories
in the markets which I've been told and not not
never been completely confirmed that Scott Less and the Treasury
(43:28):
Secretary was on the phone to hedge funds and foreign
governments in Asia saying, look, you know, you've got to
stop this.
Speaker 6 (43:34):
We're going to deal with this crisis.
Speaker 1 (43:36):
Working for Trump Man that it's not a good job.
Speaker 7 (43:40):
So that happened. Then the question is, you know, are
we still vulnerable. Okay, he's reversed that, you know, he's
backed off. That could have happened again. I mean, the
problem is we're in a sort of overall situation in
which we are vulnerable because we run a huge you know,
we run a huge budget deficit and have have been
doing forever, and in order to in order to finance
that budget deficit, the treasury has to issue bonds, and
a lot of the buyers of those bonds historically over
(44:02):
the last decade or two have been foreigners, foreign governments,
including the Chinese government was famously.
Speaker 1 (44:08):
Well, we are in a basically in a cold war
with at this point exactly, the unspoken assumption underneath Trump's
trade war is that we're the big guy on.
Speaker 7 (44:16):
The block where the bully it can really do any
damage to us. Things are going to get bad, but
will come out best. Now, the fact that we're dependent
on foreign financing for the deficit sort of undermines that. So,
you know, maybe we're not as strong as we think
we are, or maybe as Trump thinks we are. So
that's always that's always the sort of tension here. And
you know, there's always this fear that maybe the Chinese
(44:38):
will start dumping bonds, maybe other governments will start dumping bonds,
and that would force you know, could in a crisis,
cause a collapse in the dollar and a big rise
in inflation. That's the sort of scenario we's developing countries
get into all the time, not the United States. I
think that's what we're so alarming to the markets and
to a lot of people. During the response to the Liberation,
(44:59):
Big Pretty Show. That's why they did a YouTube I
think basically made the same argument to child that I've
just made to you and said, we haven't ready to
go most choice, mister President.
Speaker 1 (45:09):
We have to do something, and we can see that again.
Thank you, thank you, Thank you, John, and we're looking
forward to finishing the book.
Speaker 6 (45:16):
Thanks very much for having me on.
Speaker 3 (45:20):
No moment.
Speaker 1 (45:23):
Jesse Cannon, Mali junk Fast.
Speaker 2 (45:26):
New Mexico is feeling the wrath of the job course closure.
More than four hundred employees and students at Albuquerque and
Roswell campuses are impacted. According to the New Mexico Department
of Workforce.
Speaker 1 (45:38):
Solutions, this is a moment of our grade that comes
directly from our friendly or in New Mexico. He just
sent me this thing. You know, you have this thing
called job Corpse. It's a small organization that helps people
get back on their feed. It is really good. It
trains kids to get jobs. It is like, these are
(45:58):
the things that we need our federal government to be doing.
It's not a huge amount of money to keep them going.
While Trump administration no more, Federal judge Wednesday temporarily block
job Corpse from closing by the end of the month
because this is money that Congress appropriated that the Trump
administration doesn't want to go towards the job Corpse, because
(46:22):
even though Congress created this and Congress should end it,
Trump has decided that the rounding error that is the
money to help these kids is not okay with him,
very very very annoying, upsetting, and also just unconstitutional. And that,
my friends, is our moment of fuck ray. That's it
(46:45):
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. If you enjoy this podcast, asked,
please send it to a friend and keep the conversation going.
Thanks for listening.
Host
Molly Jong-Fast
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