Trump's Tariff Disaster, Abundance Politics, and Half-Baked Predictions With Armand Domalewski

Brogressive welcomes back fan-favorite guest Armand Domalewski to dive deep into the economic and political fallout of Trump's explosive tariff decisions (0:17). The guys analyze Trump's policy impacts on everyday Americans, the markets, and global trade (12:37) and discuss the political winners and losers emerging from this crisis (45:27). Next, the group dives into Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson’s recent book, Abundance, exploring whether this moment provides an opening for Democrats to move away from zero-sum politics toward a more optimistic, abundance-oriented agenda (50:06). Finally, they close by sharing their cautiously optimistic predictions for America's economic and political future (1:05:29).

Follow Armand Domalewski ⁠⁠⁠⁠@⁠ArmandDoma⁠⁠⁠⁠, YIMBY Democrats for America ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@yimbydems, Ben ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@BenBartlettt⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠,⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ and Brogressive Podcast ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@BrogressivePod⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ on Twitter/X.

Episode Transcript

(00:07):
Welcome back to Progressive. We are returning to our first
guest, Armando Milewski. It's good to have you back.
I'm glad to be back, of course it was under better
circumstances, obviously. So do we.
I was going to say, it's kind ofhard having your 4O1K get turned
into, I'd say 3O1K, but we'll downgrade it to 2O1K now so
people can knock off another K Anyways.
So I would say it's been a couple, three months.

(00:28):
We've had a lot of things happenin the meantime.
Obviously, we started this show November 27th, our first episode
1 live with you. But now here we are.
I want to say what is it? April 7th, right?
April 7th and we are less than three months in the Trump
presidency, nothing but a disaster.
So figure First things first, your stock portfolio, how's it

(00:48):
doing? Sucks.
I am a little bit fortunate in that I left a job recently
before the stuff started and I had a bunch of stock I'd
accumulated because we had like a stock program in the company
and I was like, I need to diversify little like so much of

(01:08):
my holding is in one company. So I sold and now I'm sitting on
a bunch of cash and I think I'm probably going to, I don't know.
It's tricky to say when to I want to buy at some point soon,
but who knows? Like they're just like more and
more. It's really, really uncertain.
So right now just sitting in a money market fund and making a
little bit of money. But yeah, I mean, my investments

(01:31):
look very, very rough. I'm particularly concerned more
for my parents who have, you know, they're retired.
And what sucks is my dad is a Republican.
And so he was like all gung ho. What's funny is like during
Biden, he really insists on buying gold, which is fine, but
not particularly amazing. Like go tends to rise if the

(01:53):
whole economy is rising steadily.
But then now he's like, oh, I want to buy Bitcoin.
And I and I've talked him off the lights.
You want to put like hundreds ofthousands.
We just put like a bit in Bitcoin and in like the stock
market. And just as he bought like Trump
is nuke the economy. But I haven't shaken his faith

(02:15):
yet. He's like, oh, there's a plan.
It had to be done. That's what I've heard from
multiple people in my frat who have shown me their brutal
portfolios in the last few days like, oh, it had to be done.
The economy was broken. I was like was it seemed like I
was doing pretty good, but I think there's some people coming
around we'll. See if if my textiles are not

(02:36):
made within a mile radius of my house, the economy is broken.
I'm sorry, that's just very true.
It's just the truth. They can only be made by a
straight white American man. Yes, if there's any woman
involved, even if they're involved in Australian skin care
company. For people that don't know,
there's like a weird meme about this on the Internet.
It's it's not manly enough do. You ever think it's insane like

(02:59):
to think like the domino effect of just a bunch of girls making
a TikTok with an Australian skincare company Like very well
could have led to like this. The domino effect of 1 little
piece right? One domino effect of of of them
making a TikTok to my 4O1K is naked and I won't get a job
after graduation. I mean, so much of history is
like contingent, like think about like if Barack Obama had

(03:22):
picked a different vice president or if a few more old
people in 2000 in Florida had like filled in ballots
correctly, right? Or like even a recent memory.
If I I need to be very careful of saying, I'm not saying this
any moral context. Don't come at me, people.
I'm just saying it is very clearthe history would be very

(03:44):
different if like a bullet had moved slightly like a few inches
in a different direction, right?Like history would be very
different. Yeah, like I'm sure you're
referring to World War One if Franz Ferdinand was assassinated
rather than the bomb. I'm sure that's that's right.
Well. I, I think it's interesting,
Armand, because like when we hadyou on for our first episode, it
was I think about a month after the election.

(04:06):
I think we spent a huge portion of it kind of trying to predict
what Trump would do and what hisfirst like 100 days first year
would look like. And I feel like it's been worse
than pretty much any of us expected.
I mean, I think like even our most like aggressive predictions
of him doing everything he said on the campaign trail.
I mean, even the tariffs he ran on wasn't it mostly it was like
10% across the board and some extra in China.

(04:28):
There was nothing compared to like the.
I mean I'm sure he like in passing referenced it, but at
least his like expensive published.
Form his published plans were like were 10%, which was simply
mad, but he did throughout the campaign make like insane random
comments and so it's like, yeah,it's been a lot worse than I

(04:49):
expected at least this quickly. They really it's also different
worse in different directions. So like there's a lot of talk
about like they were going to like start flying like 24/7
flights repatriation and just deporting en masse.
What they've done instead is like, they had more success than

(05:10):
they realize of, like, stemming people coming across the border,
I think in part just because, like, the specter of Trump was
so scary that people just, like,stop trying to cross.
And then they've been doing these like really awful, highly
visible things where they're like shipping people who are
very clearly like innocent and not convicted of any crime and

(05:30):
being very brazen about it or torturing like random German
tourists or like residents. But they haven't actually done
the, I think frankly, just because they don't have the
resources, which is what they realize they could be yelling
about a Biden for like, you don't need this border bill, you
can just do it. But like actually deporting
criminals takes time and effort.You have to find them, catch

(05:53):
them, ship them, a lot of countries won't take them,
etcetera. And so they're doing on the
cheap by trying to scare people,but they actually haven't done
the full like almost like s s Gestapo style mobilization for
that. But in terms of like economic
policy, I, I don't know. I thought frankly that like

(06:13):
Trump would just, you know, he'salways full of hot air.
But my nightmare scenario was like, he's just going to ride
the good, you know, accomplishments of Biden, right?
Inflation was lowering. These factories are starting to
come online. And I was just like, super mad.
I was like, fuck, he's going to take credit for all of this.
But like, he actually did something even worse.
Yeah. I wonder if we underestimated

(06:35):
the impact of, I mean, although obviously he's talked about
running for a third term again lately, but I wonder if we
underestimated the impact of them being term limited and his
like true belief in this tariff stuff and willingness to kind of
like bite the short term. You know what I was thinking
about honestly, I don't think it's honestly a punishment
thing. Like I, I think about this a
lot. Like, I think of it as like an

(06:56):
unchanged thing. Like he he gets to come in and
be like, hey, I broke historicalprecedent.
Like they tried to come after meand every adult in the room.
Like, I'm sure you guys all remember that.
Like, I don't know if it was BobWaters who reporter.
Like it was like the trade deal with Korea that Trump was gonna
blow up. And like, was it wasn't Gary
Connor. So somebody came in the office.
It was Gary Cohn, Yeah. It's just like everybody who was
the adult in the room, because my dad used to always talk about

(07:18):
it. He was like, well, things are
bad, right? But at least the president has a
bunch of babysitters fucking keeping them, you know, moron.
And I was like, now you have fucking Laura Loomer and like.
Yeah, I would say I feel very constantly that the people
around Trump, they're Co hint beliefs about like the economy
and politics are worse than Trump's natural inclinations if

(07:38):
you left him in a room alone. Yeah, I feel at this point.
Well, it's like, it's like he, he was getting advice.
I want to say it was like Oren. Crass was like a blood of Oren.
Crass is this lawyer who runs American Compass, which is this
like like MAGA think tank. They tried to like kind of like
they're like we're pro worker because we're anti trade and.

(07:59):
It's just, it's, it's like the, you remember the thing where
it's like Noah Smith's, we live in a kakistocracy, like the, the
government run by the stupidest people imaginable.
That's what this is. Like it's, it's, it's all the
baskets of people, like not evenlike of deplorables.
It's like a subset of, hey, are you the stupidest person on the
planet and you got kicked out ofevery job offer possible?
Can you suck the King's toes hard enough that you'll stay
employed? Like then the answer is yes.

(08:21):
Come on board. Like it's you.
Guys know how like Pete Navarro became Trump's trade advisor.
No, go ahead and RIP it. So at some point in the Trump
administration first term, I think it's either administration
or the campaign. They're like none of these
economists agree with Trump's instincts on trade.
Like we don't can't get any advisor hotels things he wants

(08:41):
to hear. So like let's find somebody.
And he literally went to Amazon and Pete Navarro's like anti
China trade book was like the biggest, but like P Navarro was
laughing stock. Nobody took him seriously.
He's not. I mean he's you read his book.
It's like gibberish, but he was somebody who like had a book and
credentials and which agreed with what Trump said.

(09:05):
And so they elevated him like they've the first term.
There's a lot of like Trump got elected and but he mostly had
former like people come up in the Republican Party had a
Republican ideas. But over the last several years,
the Republican Party has like warped itself around him and
it's like him elevating all sorts of people who previously

(09:26):
around their fringes and cranks into these high positions of
power because they reflected hiscringe and France cringe.
Not cringe. It is cringe but his fringe
worldview. Well, it's weird.
It's like worldviews like it's, it's like oddly simplistic.
And I feel like we spend a lot of time doing these mental
gymnastics of like, no guys, he wants to lower the rates so that
housing can come down or whatever, like all this stupid

(09:47):
shit. And it's like, have you
considered that the guy is just kind of like a room temperature,
like IQ who has beef with certain people?
And now he's just acting revenge.
Like, like the thing with Colombia is like he had that
like trade deal or not the tradedeal with Colombia.
He wanted to do the real estate deal for 400 million.
And then they're like, no man, like, sorry, we don't want to do
it. Now He's like, you know what?
Fuck your grants. Like I have.
We just considered he's just an impotent child or impotent

(10:09):
child. Like he's just a guy throwing a
temper tantrum. You don't have to do all this
mental gymnastics about rationalizing what he says or
what he wants. The other thing about Pierre
Navarro that was funny is that it recently, I don't know if it
recently came up, but I recentlyheard it, that the economist
that he referenced was a fake person in his book that was just
a pseudonym of his own name, he referenced Ron Barrett.

(10:31):
It was just like a fake guy thathe made out to justify his
belief. That goes further to the whole
Trump found people who mirrored him.
Are you guys from of John Barron?
Still, yeah, but this? Is amazing.
This is so when Trump was in the80s like a real estate guy.
There would be this guy named John Barron who would call up

(10:53):
all the journalists and talk about how amazing Trump was.
Oh my God, are you hearing what people are saying about Trump?
And like, I have great sources that tell me that Trump did this
and he even got quoted in the paper multiple times.
But every journalist in town knew that John Baron was Donald
Trump. I couldn't even hide the voice.
Well, he and he named. Him Baron, that's.

(11:15):
Hilarious. This is before he had a child
named Baron. So he named his child after his
fake alter ego and to this day he has never publicly admitted
that he like did this. There's just like some like per
Trump's worldview, there's some guy named John Baron who
represented him in the 80s who was mysteriously disappeared.

(11:38):
I think this is the best possible week to watch The
Apprentice movie from last year.And I think they have that
occurs in the film and it's really, I feel like the driving
force. I mean, maybe it's dumb to based
off a movie, but for me this week it's kind of been driving
my how I'm interpreting Trump's actions a little bit and just
his refusal to ever admit any wrong And and and frankly, it's

(12:01):
just true belief in the tariffs.I mean, they're like back then
he's talking about, he's talkingabout all these trade deficits
as if they are US getting rippedoff.
And for me, like when you're talking about how it's so
simple, he's just an idiot. Like that is the clearest
example I've ever seen of that. So when he said that every that
the trade deficit with every country needs to be 0 or

(12:22):
positive by the end of this, that is one of the dumbest
things I've ever heard him say. Or just like any prominent
figure. Armand, could you talk about
like trade deficits and why that's a stupid way to base the
tariffs on and how that's like not the same thing as reciprocal
tariffs? Well, so I got to Taco Bell
often. It's delicious.
I've spent a lot of money there.Taco Bell has never purchased

(12:44):
anything for me. I'm a massive trade deficit of
Taco Bell. And yet, like, I don't think
Taco Bell's ripping me off, right?
Like the way the reason we have a trade deficit of so many other
countries is because we're the richest country in the world.
And so we buy more from them than they sell to us.
So if you've got an individual example, this idea that we
should have surplus of everybody, Botswana sells those

(13:06):
diamonds. Botswana is an incredibly poor
country. They are not going to spend
their money on like jet engines made in the United States or
like software, you know, SAS software made in the United
States because they're poor. They spend it on like food and
supplies where they can get themmore cheaply and stuff like

(13:27):
that. And that's not a reflection of
like trade policy, just a reflection of how economic
dynamics work between a really wealthy country and a poor
country. And so while it is true that
there are like, like China's fora long time done things that are
kind of like shady on trade and that they would like require us

(13:47):
to have joint ventures with themand then steal the IP of
companies that work with them. And so there's places where
there are real legitimate trade grievances and we want to
address those. But the existence of a trade
deficit, something a loss doesn't make sense.
The other thing is that every trade deficit is a capital
surplus, which I think a lot of people don't realize, which is

(14:09):
like, I haven't quite figured out this really simple way to
say in a sentence. But like the short version of it
is like when Americans buy goodsfrom overseas, we have to get
foreign currencies to buy them. And so therefore we sell dollars
in order therefore there to be why do people buy dollars?
Some of it's like they want to, you know, Ecuador or use it, the

(14:31):
dollar and stuff like that. But primarily they buy dollars
because they want to either purchase things from the United
States or our exports or becausewe have, you know, we have fewer
exports than imports. We have a deficit.
They're investing in the United States, right, like, And so a
trade deficit, the mirror of it is a capital surplus.

(14:53):
People want to invest in the United States because we're the
richest country in the world, the best business environment in
the world. Well, recently, like most
people, if they want to just like have a safe investment
around the world, they would invest in the United States
because he knew that the stock market overtime grow, our
economy wasn't going to flow. There's not good.
Like when you're investing in overseas in other countries,

(15:15):
there's a real risk that like a coup happens and then just like
the company you owned gets takenby Putin and you get nothing,
right? And so that is really the issue.
Going back to extra though, about Trump being dumb, I think
one thing that Republicans have kind of part of the reason
there's this whole like trust the plan mentality, even amongst
politicians is like Trump has consistently done things in the

(15:38):
political arena that all these people thought were crazy and it
worked out for him. Some of it's like a coincidence
that worked out for him. Like, I genuinely think like a
non insane candidate, like even like Iran De Santis would have
done much better against comma than Trump.
But some of it it's like he's like in 2016, the crazy awful

(16:00):
things he said about immigrationwere able to get those things in
the headline made them salient. And for the like the white
working class voters in like those areas, like if you looked
afterwards like immigration was a huge issue for them.
And so I think a lot of Republican politicians of like,
he's got to have some deep wisdom, you know, like that I

(16:21):
don't understand. But like every time I think it
doesn't make sense, it works out.
And it's I think he has good political instincts, but that
doesn't mean he like has is an omnipotent genius for
everything. But he thinks that.
Political versus policy for sure.

(16:42):
And like the idea that this is somehow going to save like steel
jobs in Ohio because it makes nosense.
And like, I feel like it's just so explicitly makes no sense
that like, like I know we're seeing like Ben Shapiro, all
these right wing people who aren't just pure loyalists or
trust the plan of this omnipotent genius.
Like they are all turning on it.I mean, I saw someone, Nate

(17:02):
Silver had a great tweet where he said it reminds him of the
Luca trade. Like unless you're literally
working for Nico Harrison's front office.
Like it's just so it's obviouslyon its face ridiculous that it's
impossible to defend for any like non insane or in a cult
person. The thing though, Shapiro
though, you mentioned him, he had an initial take was like,
this is really dumb. And then he's like, well, I

(17:23):
listened to Besant and he explained this complicated
strategy where they have to thread the needle where they're
trying to like lower interest rates.
And it's like, I think a lot of smart people who don't,
especially if you like as prominent as Shapiro, it's like
very bad for your business to belike stridently anti Trump.

(17:46):
They have to find ways to like reconcile it mentally.
So they come up with these comp,probably these complicated
schemes. But if you even step back from
those things, like the whole Besant strategy of like, oh,
this will allow us to roll over our debt at lower rates.
It's like if you're planning to reduce interest rates is to nuke
the economy. It doesn't matter that your

(18:07):
interest rates are lower and refinancing the debt is cheaper
because you have no tax revenue.It's like being like, well, you
know, I can. I was even wouldn't even work in
business because if you like nuke dual revenues, you wouldn't
get cheaper loans. So I that analogy doesn't work,
but it's just dumb. I burned my house down but at

(18:28):
least I get the insurance money.Yeah, Yeah, I'm that's a good
analogy, yeah. But you have no house.
I love it because the this is myfavorite mental activity is to
do the mental gymnastics of whatcould they possibly be thinking
about? And then and then eventually you
just go no, it's just it's just stupid.
Like just it's great. It's it's like a never ending
puzzle of like trying to puzzle piece of oh, the rates and

(18:51):
rolling with that. And then no.
Trump reposted the TikTok on hisTrue social that explicitly said
the goal was to cause a recession and then whatever
comes after. I forget what his stupid claim
was but he explicitly said the goal is to 1st 'cause a
recession. So I saw Peter Navarro like
didn't he promise no recession today?
So they're not quite on the samepage apparently, but.

(19:14):
It's well, because you have like, what was it the S and PS
down like 15% or something like that.
Like this is single handedly just like every every morning
you wake up and it's like new drop of whoever's like stock
market or like the Japanese knock on market.
They had to put the circuit breaker in place because so many
trades are happening or something like that.
It's like, I have a buddy who wants to go into finance right
after Trump won. He was like.

(19:34):
Oh, but look, it'll be good for the.
Market and I was like, it's it'snot it's not gonna be good just
just like just wait until he does his little tariff shit.
But we're kind of forgetting like all of this is about like
stability, right, like even if he had said like oh like fuck
it, we're doing like 10% blankettariffs at least that's like
predictable, right, like don't wave on it.
It's the unpredictability that'skilling everybody and like IA
part of you wants to go like to like I'm just gonna become a

(19:56):
joker. That's all I'm saying.
I'm just gonna like, I just, I can't with this shit anymore.
Well, the predictability, it's funny, I'm older than you guys.
I remember the Obama era. And the big thing Republicans
would hammer It's like Obama introducing new regulations is
causing business uncertainty, and it's bad.
And it's like. Yeah, remember all that?

(20:16):
Like, like even if you think Trump has a plan, by not telling
anybody the plans, like he's great.
Massive uncertainty, like nobodyelse.
What's going on? So I have a question.
So I think I've seen a take thatto me seems probably correct
that the market still doesn't really believe that Trump is

(20:37):
going to keep the tariffs for a substantial amount of time.
So what kind of and well, just like my general really unformed
intuition is that like the economic impact of all of this,
if it does continue is really like it's not reflected in the
level that the markets have decreased.
So what kind of event is necessary for the markets to
really believe that this is going to be a long haul type of

(21:00):
deal that's really going to impact the economy?
Like, what? What are the people on Wall
Street to see for them to believe that this is something
that companies are actually going to have to reconcile with?
Even though it seems like most people well met, there's been
numerous reports that companies are taking this seriously.
Like I saw like 28% of like Cross Atlantic shipping.
They're like already cancelling it immediately regardless of

(21:21):
what happens. So like, I feel like that
reality is not showing up necessarily in Wall Street.
So what's it going to take for them to believe that?
I think what there's going to belike a series of events like on
Wednesday and when these things actually hit, that would be like
the first thing because that's the really a test of like, is he
actually going to do it? And so there are a lot of people

(21:41):
still think. The 10% across the board right
now, correct? And yeah, the reciprocal, yeah,
the fake was, you know, then thewe'll make sure the Penguins
really, like, get it. Yeah, I've seen so many things
on my TikTok, Like my TikTok hasbeen half Penguins marching to
go negotiate chairs as Trump, which has been really funny.

(22:03):
That was a real own goal on their part, because it's like it
gave this a really funny visual.Yeah.
And it like got it to breakthrough to like, you know,
economic policy is a complicated.
So it's like hard to get onto like normal social media and
TikTok. But like the Penguins are, it's
funny, it's stupid. It's something that's broken
through to like, everybody in like, my generation that they

(22:25):
understand, yeah. It's absolutely broken.
Like everyone is just casually talking about it and casually
blaming Trump. I mean, I think it's like very
much Trump's tariffs like have entered the discourse and like
even normies understand like, oh, this is 100% Trump.
This is like exclusively his decision and he's the cause of

(22:45):
it. So can.
You guys send me to those textbooks because like I don't
have the app anymore like I I feel like I'm like well, no,
only zoom like left out of my generation dude, like my like I
take. It very often, but I'll try to
find some that's. So funny, actually just Penguins
like marching like on like the White House.
Or like people doing AI picturesof like Penguins negotiating
trade deals. Yeah.

(23:07):
That's, that's hilarious. That is actually so funny.
Another kind of question I had as someone who is very like
economically illiterate is like how, how can any like trade,
will any trade with at all happen with China if there's
actually 104% tariffs? Like how does any company
reconcile like 100 per 404% tariffs?

(23:27):
Like how does that work with anyone's margins?
It it basically doesn't. It's like at that level it
makes, which would be, I know a lot of people want to decouple
from China and I think it's unrealistic to entirely decouple
from like the world's at this point biggest economy depending
on how you measure like back andforth.

(23:48):
But yeah, I think the smarter place to like try to decouple
from industries that might be vulnerable if we enter go to war
like semiconductor chips. And I heard we like 87% of our
antibiotics or something come from China, which like surprised
me. And that's like something where
it's like, oh, we should try to like trade more with allies and

(24:13):
to build resilience. Man, that's crazy.
It sounds like he's almost saying if we just strengthened
our trade with allies and built things in America.
Incentivized domestic industrieslike the IRA as Trump is also
like if you were trying to do what Trump wanted you he would
be like seeing like the IRA is amazing let's do IRA times three
2.0. It dude, it's it's my favorite
thing. So I'm like sometimes people be
like, yeah, we're going to do like the list like Trump's

(24:34):
agenda, right, like which are manufacturing or fucking
whatever and I'm like, So what if we put like some incentives,
right? Maybe like we gave them some
money and said, hey, we should build this year.
Or they're like, oh, like the rates, the rates, I'm like, OK,
but what if we built more housesso they're cheaper and so you
wouldn't have to worry about theoverall cost like it's.
He's kind of taking the dumb lefty position on a lot of these
things. I mean, people made the Maoist

(24:54):
Trump joke. But like, I remember some left
Nimbies will like make the claimof like all this like supply
stuff is meaningless. It's all about interest rates as
if that's not just like part of the market inherently and quick
like rapidly killing the economyto get lower interest rates
isn't going to like cause a bunch of.
Well, if you want to talk about like reassuring supply chains,
right, the basic math of it versus China, right, is that we

(25:17):
have a fourth of their population.
A lot of there's a really interesting piece, so I'll let's
send you guys a link later aboutlike, why is China so dominant
and solar? And a lot of it is like just
sheer economy of scale when you have giant cities, any of 1.3
billion people and you can just scale on a level that a country

(25:39):
of 330 million people cannot, Which means that if you want to
build like resilient supply chains that are immune from a
competitor in key strategic industries, then you need to to
scale through allies, right? We have closer trade ties with
Canada and Japan and South Koreaand all those other countries.

(26:02):
And instead we're pursuing the opposite approach, breaking our
trade relations with them and pushing them closer to China.
And As for like domestic, you know, trying to specifically
make things domestically, like semiconductor trips in
particular are really vulnerablebecause they're primarily made
in Taiwan and and they're so foundational to like so much
technology and computers and allthat.

(26:25):
That's why we had the CHIPS Act under Biden and it was very
successful. We were able to, I think there's
more things we could have done the regulatory side to make it
easier, but we still built like the first Vance, like
semiconductor manufacturing factory in the US in a long time
with TSMC in Arizona. This was doable, but not the way

(26:46):
Trump's going about it. Oh, sure.
I'm sure you've seen the thing where it's like the, I want to
say it's like their new BYD, like electric vehicle factories.
It's like those things are like the size of like my city.
Like for context, I live in Santa Barbara.
They're fucking factories to make electric vehicles or the
size of like my city, right? They have like hundreds of
thousands of people working in these factories.
So it's like we can't be with, right if we only have 330

(27:07):
million people. But there's a really good
solution. We got some people north in
Canada. We got some people down South in
Mexico. Like we build a bigger supply
chain with our allies, except instead, how about we just piss
them off and start like Tara forwith them.
I feel like it's it's like living in just again, Idiocracy.
Like, I'm sure you guys rememberthat movie from the early 2000s.
Yeah, Yeah. It's really just like the
dumbest thing imaginable. It's like, oh, to be with China.

(27:30):
OK. We need more people, more
bodies, less. Don't.
We don't, we just like not have the workforce basically to do
like most of this too without like, you know, if we wanted to
manufacture so many just like less complex goods, our
unemployment is between 3 and 4%.
Where are these workers? Going to come from.
Also, these workers, they're people that again, when we talk

(27:52):
about comparative advantage stuff, right?
If you want to have short manufacturing the way JD Vance
and these people want nice 50 style, it's like, great.
But does that mean you want to take Silicon Valley away from
making AI and send them to go make socks?
Like if you want that, that's fine.
Like do you want me to stop personal training and go make
fucking Nike Blazers like I can do?

(28:12):
That it's it's that Dave Chappelle bit people were
reposting and and also like Armand, you were talking about
the uncertainty. I think it's important to lay
out too that like, let's assume,although we can't really assume
because they've said like 50 goals, but let's assume the goal
is to restore American manufacturing, or at least
that's one goal. The uncertainty of it makes that
impossible because why would anyAmerican company decide right

(28:32):
now to like build a new factory in the US because of these
tariffs if they have no idea if the tariffs are going to be
there in six months? And then it wouldn't have made
sense in the 1st place. Like, there's no certainty here
that would cause them to actually like, make rational
choices based off the policy. Well, so I have a couple of
buddies who work in the manufacturing industry.
A friend of mine is like a founder of like a small

(28:55):
manufacturing startup. And I asked him, actually, I was
like, OK, yeah, I always want tosanity check myself.
Like I was like, are any manufacturers being like, yeah,
great. Like we can protect it.
And he's like, no one, even though like Trumpier ones are
just kind of like not commenting, like trust the plan,

(29:16):
whatever, we'll figure it out. But nobody is like, oh shit, I'm
building like setting up investments for new factories.
And a bunch of folks I heard indirectly from them, like the
manufactured people went to DC, spoke to the White House and
said, if you do this, you have to give us a clear commitment
that this tariffs will stay in place for the rest of your

(29:38):
presidency. And they weren't even willing to
give that. And it's like, it takes a long
time to build the factory, right?
It just, it's a big, complicated, expensive thing.
But to go back to the iPhones thing, I also, I think it's a
little the Dave Chappelle bit isfunny.
So I think like place where we as Democrats kind of sometimes

(29:58):
screw up the messaging is we imply that like Americans are
too good to do these tough jobs or whatever.
And it's more that as countries get more advanced economically,
they move up the value chain. And so for example, Boeing,
there's a recent chart somebody did where they're like all the
parts of a Boeing plane. So many of them come from

(30:19):
different countries, but who makes most of the money off of
selling a Boeing plane? It is not their suppliers.
It's Boeing. Because the most difficult and
complicated and advanced part ofbuilding a Boeing is assembling
the and designing and selling those parts and selling the
plane, right? And so it's not like that.

(30:40):
It's like, I'm like, oh, it's beneath me to work.
I got on those poor people to work those jobs.
It's that, that that's why tradeis good.
It's a mutually beneficial exchange.
I get to move up the value chainlike we've already got, you
know, we started off like simpler manufacturing, get to do
advanced manufacturing, loan, make more money.

(31:01):
But also the person from a country that's previously
agrarian had to work on a brutalfarm and make no money and
subsistence wages all day. Like the best jobs in those
communities are working for international factory.
They usually have like, again, Ithink sweatshops, we need
protections, all of that. I'm not saying that those are

(31:21):
good things, but they are consistently the best and safest
jobs that are available in some of the poorest countries on
Earth. And people fight desperately to
get them so they can therefore move further up the value chain
and become more advanced. This is the first time I've seen
a country that is explicitly saying I want people to work

(31:43):
less and higher paying, more advanced jobs in terms of value
add and move down the value chain.
It's like the greatly backwards.Yeah, like I've seen so many
people saying, oh, the 10s of thousands of federal workers are
the perfect candidates to be first in the in the new textile
factors. And it's like, OK, but you know,
then we're just going to have a lesser GDP, lesser tax base,

(32:05):
worse infrastructure and, you know, worse education and going
to a spiral just becoming a lesser country that technically
is a higher manufacturing output, but it's just measurably
poor. We have to give a percentage of
living and just like could not be like a top economy anymore,
which I don't know why anybody would want to do that, but.
It's like econ one O 1 of like Iwant to say it's you can only
like grow in a couple different ways where it's like more

(32:26):
people, more land, more like resources or like you can refine
those things and like we have torefine those goods for an
advanced economy. Like we can, we can mine like
fucking cobalt if we want. If someone else could mine it,
we can pay them to do it and then we ship it here and we can
make it into something and then ship it somewhere else and then
they can refine it and then 10 steps later.

(32:46):
It's like a semiconductor. Like does all this magic.
Like it's not like it's not likethat like like that.
I'm I don't know if it's in the ones you were was like how how
would a buying glasses work under like anarchy or something?
I'm not just gonna. Just find someone who likes
making glasses. I made a post about that.
I was like, hey, I need uranium 235 for the local power plant

(33:08):
near my house in order to have power.
Hey, I like refining uranium 235.
I'll give it to you. Thanks.
See, it's so simple. Why?
Why do you doubt the incredible talent and human nature of our
society? It's so funny that this has now
become like a right wing thing. Yeah, I.
Know like I feel like I'm in like bizarre world because I
feel like so much of what I'm seeing from the right wing is

(33:29):
kind of like half baked takes out to like during the
Democratic primary from the mostprogressive.
People about the American publicseems to check their privilege
and accept lower wages. I mean like material goods.
Are overrated. You know, it's a bizarre world
when like you're like sitting there like advocating to like
you're significant other. You're like, no, no, no, babe,
you wouldn't get it. Like we actually need to cut
like spending and raise taxes. But that's not what's happening

(33:52):
right now. Like no, no, no, like we, but
that's what we should do. But that's not what's happening
right now. I, I feel like I sound like,
like an 80s Republican. When I talk to my girlfriend,
I'll be like, well, no, no, no, like that is a problem, right?
And we should how to pay that down.
And everything they're saying iscorrect, like we should try to
pay down. But that's not what they're
doing. So like, that doesn't matter.
But but what I'm saying is real.And that's what it's like.
It's living in a bizarre world. The whole the whole thing about

(34:14):
like, you know, like these decadent western, you know,
fancy trinkets like you don't need that go back and work in
the factory. Also coming from like fucking
podcasters and YouTube hosts like no offensive podcasters.
You guys are great. But if you started going around
telling other people that their jobs are too soft and they need

(34:35):
to work in the mines like. Like they've become suddenly
like radical Marxist. They're saying like if you have
a three figure or 6 figure, likeinformation sector job, you need
to give that up in order for someone who is living, who is
working like a $15 service job in the Midwest can have a 22 an
hour factory job. But that's like the, I think the

(34:55):
most basic premise of this. And it's literally just like you
need to, you need to like acceptthat your sector of the economy
has to end and you need to go work in the factory.
So then other people can go likelearn the.
Factories. So then we can.
No, no, we. Can't coding.
Coding is 2 decades. We can't go to a.
Dark version of that. Yeah.
No, it's to learn to learn to mine.
Yeah. The joy It was a Minecraft

(35:15):
movement. Yeah, well, I forgot to say it's
like the it's not actually even Marxist really, because Marx
very famously was against protectionism.
He wrote whole things about how Marxism is bad and just.
Across this post, yeah. And it's actually just like
anarchist tradition of like small anarchist communities and
like, how like, or Maoist where like Mao, they were famously

(35:39):
sent like intellectuals back into the fields.
And, and it's actually, it's very funny.
Jane, there's a story where JaneFonda met.
I think there's a Fonda, some Hollywood actress met Deng
Xiaoping and she's like, oh, youknow, my father once told me
that he went to this field, thathe talked to a professor who's

(36:00):
working in the farms who said, well, I used to do like,
scientific research, but now my life is better because I'm
working in the fields and supporting my nation and
understanding like the struggle.And Deng Xiaoping was like, he
was fucking lying. She was like, crushed by this.
Like, you know, he was fucking lying, right?

(36:23):
He was like, amazing. So you guys fall for our
propaganda. Like seriously.
I'm just like shocked by the wayin which like the right has so
suddenly shifted to asking Americans to like give up
premises of like kind of the American dream that have been
like courts, like the RepublicanParty and even Trump isn't until
I feel like the past few months,basically until it's convenient,

(36:44):
politically convenient. Like obviously they were very
much in favor against even slight price increases so you
could have the maximum value from your wealth and everything.
So how what is going to what is it going to take?
I guess this is an open questionfor the public to like really
reconcile with this in either elections or pulling down.

(37:04):
Like, you know, the few point drops that we see.
I mean, obviously it's very early if they're really if we
reached a session, there's huge there's like also inflation,
mass job layoffs. I guess we'll see it then.
But I'm kind of worried because like, you know, my parents
savings needs a big political repudiation in order to be
saved. So very central concern to me, I

(37:26):
guess. Yeah, I actually would curious
to ask you guys because it feelsalmost like this switch went
over where it's like they're alltalking about the cost of
living. And then now they're talking
about like you need to sacrificefor the glory of whatever as
like young men who like know people maybe or your age or like
right leaning or independent. Like has any, have you seen

(37:50):
people kind of flipping like that or is it just like just a
political class has flipped on aswitch for this?
Personally speaking, I know absolutely no people at all.
Like the biggest thing, the biggest sense that I get from
the people around me of like anyideological basis is like,
things are hard enough as is forlike young people, like
frustration over like internships, like college

(38:11):
finances, housing, like the appetite for sacrifice
monetarily is absolutely completely zero.
And maybe it's because I do go to a very like liberal
university, but even the people I know who are very
conservative, their employment prospects are impacted by
everything. It's like there's like you could
probably, I feel like if you were to do polling on how much

(38:33):
you're willing to sacrifice for your nation, it would be like
the least among Gen. Z, regardless of ideology.
I'm sure conservative people would be higher, but it would be
like really, really low, which Imean, that's reflected I feel
like in a number of things. Like, I mean, if you like, I
recently saw a bunch of polls showing like the percentage of
people willing to fight for the country in Europe and some
countries are as low as like 20%or less.

(38:53):
So I think it's just that young people are young people and I
guess more can be patriotic, butsacrifice especially like and
this time is not at all appetizing so.
Well, and it would help if it's not a stupid sacrifice that's
actually like bringing no benefits to.
Yeah. Like if we're being.
Yeah, if we were invaded, that would be a lot of different

(39:14):
thing. This is like, do you want to
light $10 on fire to make somebody happy?
Like that's kind. Of yeah, I.
I'd say for for me, like with myfraud, like I feel like the the
soft Trump supporters, like the true believers, I think like the
ones I talked to, he literally had lost thousands of dollars in
the week and was like, it had tobe done.
Like it'll work out, like Trump will figure it out.

(39:35):
So, but I think the soft Trump supporters, the kind of like
barstool type of Trump supporterwho would like isn't fully into
the cult of personality stuff iskind of like, bro, what is Trump
doing? Like I've seen a lot of memes of
like this Bro is not a deal maker.
Like I, I think it's just kind of, I don't know that they fully
turned on him, but I think they're kind of like, like, what

(39:57):
is he doing? Like this is crazy.
But but I mean, I don't know howmany of those there are, but I
do think it's enough to like winan election.
So we'll see. I think there's also a question
of like salience, even in terms of approval, if it was
consistent, because in Trump's first term, a lot of his
negative approval was driven by,I don't want to say superficial

(40:19):
issues, but like kind of like the vibes he brought in, like
unprofessionality, just like abrasiveness.
Whereas now, like if you look atsay -6% in the beginning of his
last term versus now, he's like he's most approved of for his
like issues where his personality come into play are
like that brashness or even, youknow, although unconstitutional
and really horrible a number of ways.

(40:39):
She's relatively proves us on immigration.
But you know, inflation and price increases matter a lot
more to people. So maybe through like the, the,
I don't know, not the devolution, but the way that
like you know that approvals construction, various issues,
although it's very similar because the economy is like so
low and just getting lower. That may actually, even though
it's not affecting his overall performance in the same way.

(41:01):
It may, I mean that a lot of hislike more soft disapprovals are
actually pretty hard because they're based out of like
economic considerations. Maybe, I don't know, that's
maybe my little. It's kind of the reverse of what
I feel like the median voters take on Trump was, which was
like nostalgic for his first term because it was like, yeah,
he was crazy, kind of did stupid, crazy stuff.

(41:22):
But I mean, he handled the economy well.
Remember how good the economy was?
And it's really been the inverseof like, I mean, it's like.
Obviously he's crazy sometimes, but he doesn't manage the
economy. And yeah, I mean, maybe like in
their minds he's even toned downthe crazy because like, like
kind of the resist energy for propping up every crazy thing he
does is gone. But.
I think also there's going to bea big difference between like if

(41:45):
today he was like I'm giving out, this is all I'm done, or
more realistic, he's like, I won, they all conceded, da, da,
da, and it's all reverse mark. You'll probably mostly recover.
There's going to be permanent damage anyway just because of
the uncertainty it's created because like at any point you

(42:05):
could try to do it again. So there's going to be like
broken trade relationships, different investments.
Part of what actually I wanted to say earlier about trade, I
think you really need to understand is like the reason
that domestic goods become more expensive, even if you impose
tariffs, is people think it's driven by like competition.
And there's some of it, right? There's like less competition

(42:27):
for goods that can raise their prices.
The primary reason is because ithas to displace other higher
value economic uses. So if you think about like wine,
if we banned all wine productionor ban all foreign sales of
wine, American wine would get really expensive because in
order to supply that demand, youwould have to convert other farm

(42:48):
lands. That's not as good for wine or
maybe it's not in good location or it's hard to transport.
And so the costs of that go up. And so those costs of tariffs,
those sorts of costs, like costsaren't immediately obvious, but
just like having to shift aroundand adjust for this risk.
It's going to be permanent. I think if like, he does

(43:12):
actually stick through it, people start getting fired,
losing their jobs, you start seeing prices are going way up
in the stores. And I think it's going to, like,
cut through like the soft Trump supporters because, yeah, you're
right. Like, he was sustained by a lot
by this, like, well, he's crazy,but like, things are fine.
What is it, some mean tweets? You know, now it's like the

(43:33):
craziness very obviously and very directly is fucking you
over. Yep, I agree.
And I'd, I'd like to, if we could transition a little bit.
I'd, I think, I mean, we've talked a little bit about it,
but the the political fallout ofthis, like some of what we
expect in the years to come as aresult of this.
We've talked about how this could like represent some sort
of realignment, how like Trump'susing some of these like kind of

(43:56):
anarchist the framing devices. But but I'd be curious to talk
about like some of the winners and losers of this.
For me, I think one winner for sure, I saw Matt Iglesias was
doing a bit of a well deserved victory lap on this is I think
Chuck Schumer's decision has aged pretty well to kind of
postpone the big fight and and kind of allow Democrats to back

(44:21):
out of the view for a bit and let Trump kind of blow
everything up until we had a better reason to fight him on
more favorable terrain. So I, I think he's definitely
has come off looking pretty goodfrom it.
Another thing that I think wouldbe interesting to discuss is I,
I feel like a big winner from this, or at least she thinks
she's a big winner is Kamala. I think all the clips of her

(44:42):
talking about the tariffs duringthe election and how it was
going to cause a recession by the middle of next year.
That combined with the, the HHS guide declaring for California
governor, I am definitely starting to think that she
thinks she can win if she runs again.
And I think that's where she's thinking.
So I don't know. Armand, do you feel like there's
any obvious like winners and losers from from this terror

(45:05):
fight besides, like America as aloser?
Well, let's say within sort of the Democratic Party, we have a
couple of interesting dynamics going on.
Schumer, for example. I think the reason that ended up
being like, the smart play in retrospect, I was like,
uncertain of it at the time. Right now, if there was a

(45:26):
government shutdown, the full, like, messaging apparatus of the
Trump administration would be that the government shutdown is
causing the market to lose confidence.
And then the press would report it.
And then, you know, they write somewhere in there like, well,
it's most likely because of tariffs, but it would muddy the
waters. This is so obviously owned by
Trump, and you're not even having these bullshit debates

(45:48):
of, like, them pretending it's something else.
And so it makes it very clear who's causing it.
I think the interesting thing oflike, I don't know who's going
to win or lose, but the interesting sub current is this
like, you know, there's a protectionist faction in the
Democratic Party. You saw Sean Fayne, head of UAW
basically that come out defending like the auto tariffs.

(46:11):
But like he phrased it in a way that was like not very like if
you go down to the paragraphs, he's like, oh, well, the way
Trump did it is reckless. But these tariffs are good.
Like you're really kind of did not come out like full force of
like Trump's tariffs are bad anddestructive and actually like
spread a lot of like things thatare frankly not true.
Like he talked about like NAFTA being the reason that America

(46:33):
did industrialize. If you look at a chart which
I've reposted A zillion times, like manufacturing employment as
a percentage of employment for the United States basically
started decline after World War 2.
It just steadily declined because automation and the rest
of the world wasn't blown up forever.
And so like, but there's that faction and you can see them

(46:57):
really trying to find their footing because they're like
really afraid that this is goingto make like the free trade
doctrines and ideas were dominant in the party.
And they felt like during the Biden administration, they were
really winning. Like there's this whole project
funded by the Hewlett Foundationthat was called like get beyond
neoliberalism, right? And they built this.

(47:19):
They funded a lot of places, including what we mentioned
earlier, Oren Cass, the AmericanCompass project, Like they
funded him because they want, itwas like a MAGA guy because they
wanted to basically like promotethese like free trade is bad.
We need to like have better likeindustrial policy and
protection. We can do smart tariffs.
And then the Roosevelt Institute, which was like pretty

(47:41):
much the think tank that provided a lot of like the
policy framework for the Biden administration.
There was this alliance between the security Hawks on China who
wanted protectionism for strategic reasons with like sort
of like the left-leaning, like anti free trade people.
And and so they built like intellectual edifice where it's
like free trade protectionism isnot just good because it's

(48:04):
resilient against China. It can actually like protect the
working class and stuff like that.
And what happened is like, you know, Trump has now really made
the Democratic Party. If you look at our voters like
those free trade, they've ever been like, it's like 90%.
Like when you do a couple monthsago, even before all this, like

(48:27):
for the first time, I think in like my lifetime, like NAFTA was
like very positively seen by most Democrats, even though
historically Democratic candidates have always been like
NAFTA has this original sin. And so I think that faction of
the party is really feeling likethe kind of on the ropes right
now. And they've been some of them

(48:47):
have even said like openly, likeI don't like how they're like
the new liberals are like, they're like so smug about like
tariffs being bad, Like here's ways we can do good tariffs.
And they're really fighting. And that's like I am trying to
encourage people to take the fight to them too, because it's
like there's no like it is true that there are smart strategic

(49:13):
individual instances to do tariffs for like strategic
goals. But this idea that tariffs are
an economic benefit is just not true.
There always a cost because theydivert from the most like high
value uses of capital and labor.Sometimes that cost is worth
paying, but it is always a cost.And the idea that you create a
perpetual motion machine where like like tariffing and doing

(49:36):
protectionism, you'll spurt industry and that'll create more
jobs and so on is just not proven by the data.
Like consistently they cost morejobs than they save, they
increase more costs, etcetera. I think that's the most
interesting sort of like fight going on.
I don't know who's like fully won or fully lost, but you can
clearly tell that like the production of swing feels on the
back foot. Which if I were them, I'd ask

(49:57):
myself like if someone is doing like the full throated vision of
what I want and it's a disaster,maybe I should reconsider what I
want. Yeah, I'd, I think they're right
to be worried. I mean, I'd be, I don't think
there's any path to like a Democratic candidate being pro
tariff in the fallout of this right now.
And I just couldn't see that happening.
I think it's like too high salience of an example to point

(50:20):
to. And I think it would like, I
mean, people were hyping up SeanFaines as a 28 candidate.
I think that put the death knellin it.
I mean, and I mean, maybe this is my own personal interest
taking over here, but I wonder if this sort of offers a bit of
an opening for the abundance stuff a little bit because I
think this is kind of the perfect counter example.

(50:41):
I mean, me and Max are planning to we're going to do a big
abundance episode. We're both on the last few
chapters. But I wonder because I mean, I
think that this, the worldview behind these tariffs represents
such a scarcity mindset of like,there's a pie and we're getting
ripped off. And like, like the slice of the
pie metaphor that that Ezra likecuts down at the beginning.

(51:02):
And so I wonder, I mean, maybe not directly, I don't think
voters are going to be like, great.
I oh, well, this reminds me of that abundance book.
But I wonder if it like those ideas are kind of an opening for
Democrats, especially going into2028 to kind of run on like, no,
we don't have to live in this scarce world.
We can have it all. We can have an abundant mindset
and and then obviously like run on all the planks of the book,
but what do you think of that? I mean, is it too much Just I'm

(51:24):
into the book and obviously I'm thinking about, do you think
that like really is a bit of an opening for them?
I think the book is having really, really, really big
impact, not just with all the media appearances, but you can
see it in like sort of the backlash where people are like
taking it seriously. It's a threat to sort of like
their ideological worldview. And I like anecdotally, like I

(51:48):
saw I live in like San Franciscoand Pacific Heights.
It's a nice area. I go to the JCC to work out.
And like I saw like a random woman, like carrying it into the
gym, like, like this book is like getting out there.
It's in every bookstore. I've heard through the Grapevine
that like it is likely to be like in the top slots for the

(52:09):
New York Times, the best sellinglist, which is like really huge
for. A politics book. 86 year old
grandmother is a massive MSNBC fan and watches Maddow every
night and she texted me about the book and then was listening
to audio book from it just from their MSNBC appearances and was
like this is brilliant. It's the Democrats future.

(52:29):
She's 86 years old and lives in a old Prop 13 protected Menlo
Park house. If if it's getting to her, I
think that's a pretty good sign.Yeah.
Well, and so I, I think the two things that kind of like stand
out to me is that one is that just like the basic premise of

(52:51):
like abundance versus scarcity, right?
Like there's a world in which you think that you can only gain
if you hurt other people. Abundance is very much like,
let's grow the pie. And so like, wow, free trade and
trade issues were not like really that big a topic in the
book. It's Derek Thompson, and it was
a recent appearance, and he justspecifically said that like this

(53:13):
is like. On CNN, yeah.
He was he did this like big grants and by the time a
different appearance he had later where he explicitly
somebody asked him about this, he was like while abundance or
book was not explicitly about trade, it's very much like right
wing degrowth. Is this like anti trade thing?
Right. It's like a 0 sum every trade we

(53:35):
do if other people means they'reripping us off versus the
abundance world is like it's notjust about like taking or
giving. It's about like growing and
creating opportunities for everybody, which leads to a
second thing is that like for a long time after, you know, the
election, there's this argument on the left that we need to
center economic populism, You know, in terms of what that

(53:57):
means economics, I feel like it's kind of slippery.
People define a zillion different things.
But in terms of rhetoric, it's like sort of this fight
oligarchy thing that Bernie was doing.
And I think there's an element to that.
But I think it shows like that it's not always about like what
helps the rich screws the poor. Like, that cannot be your only

(54:19):
analysis because this tariff policy is hurting everybody,
right? And like, I think this mindset
where you're like, you can only think of things of like, the
only problems in the world can be ones where are caused by the
corporate oligarchs is it's truefor many things, but they're
also problems caused by like a NIMBY homeowner.

(54:41):
There are problems caused by like people who don't want solar
plants near them. There are problems caused by
well-intentioned bureaucrats whothink that we should write a
bunch of rules that create a bunch of litigation because
they're terrified for tensions and then going wrong and not
thinking of the cost and environment of doing that right.
Like the world is a big and complex place.

(55:02):
There's more than one lens through which to analyze
politics and abundance. Like I think particularly
addresses that within the party of just saying like we need a
bigger lens. And this trade thing is a great
example. It's like the right wingers
actually adopting the left wing rhetoric of like, of course it's
hurting Wall Street, so it must be good for like truckers.

(55:23):
I was like, you think truckers are going to do well when like
global trade shuts down? Really difficult for people that
I feel like wrestle with the idea that everybody can be hurt
by something specifically running like a stock market is
like especially when people are saying like, oh, so like now you
care about the wealthy because they hold like, you know, the

(55:45):
vast majority of the stock market, it's like, well, now
actually everybody can be hurt by like, like things and just
because you don't own stock as Imean this, you know, this won't
affect you. And it's like everybody's so
focused on like punitive measures for problems rather
than just it's like, I don't know, I think it's very kind of

(56:08):
just thinking like long term, I wonder if this will make just
the kind of plated political ecosystem maybe a little a
little less like punitive and sofocused on retribution because
we're like a bit we're we're trying in full force ideas of
retribution and punishment for others.
So. I hope so.
I I I actually thought Ben Shapiro, he he did an interview

(56:30):
with Ezra Klein and he had to sort of interesting connection
to abundance that I hadn't thought of of.
He was comparing everything, everything bagel liberalism.
But Ezra talks about like where for our listeners who don't
haven't heard Ezra talk about that.
It's like Democrats, for example, in the in the IRA bill
for the solar charging stations for electric vehicles, they

(56:54):
would put regulations that attempted to solve other goals
like trying to hire under representative groups through
your contractors or things like that.
But he was comparing it to the tariff, saying that these are
this kind of everything bagel conservatism where there's like
10 different goals that they're talking about.
Where it's like, are we we're trying to get reshore American

(57:14):
manufacturing, but also where these trade deficits and also
like we need to apparently protect workers in third world
countries who are like being exploited.
Like there's like so many different goals at play here
that clearly none of them are really being achieved.
I don't know what much to conclude off of that, but I
thought it was an interesting comparison to the book.

(57:36):
I mean, the what I'm thinking ofis like there are political
groups are always like coalitions, right?
And you try to make elements of your coalition happy when you
try to make all of them happy atthe same time.
And eventually, if you don't make choices, it weighs down the
whole project. And a similar thing is like the

(57:59):
way that protectionism usually works is there's an industry
this book influential and they can win protection for
themselves, but it's reliant on like everybody else not getting
it right because like the economy has the function.
And so they make it function a little bit shittier for
everybody at like a big gain forthem.
But Trump's tariffs are like, ifyou like gave in to every rent

(58:20):
seeker in the economy simultaneously.
And like if everybody's a rent seeker, the whole edifice
collapses, right? Like the host dies.
And so it's a, again, another example where it's like simply
looking at things of like good guy and bad guy doesn't work in
politics because this is just public choice theory, which is

(58:43):
very basic. Like the idea of there are some
things that really benefit a small group of people and
represent like a diffuse cost for everybody that's larger.
But then like they're all getting it at once.
And so the diffuse cost has exploded.
The whole thing falls apart. Definitely.

(59:04):
Yeah, that's something, especially in Michigan, I focus
a lot just on like population growth.
You know, that's a big thing that everybody talks about in,
like, Michigan State politics islike, how do we prevent brain
drain, build an information economy?
But then nobody actually wants to do it.
Like Republicans don't want to do it because they're too,

(59:25):
they're too committed to like, corporate welfare.
But then something that is coming up is that Democrats in
Michigan have a difficult time wrestling the need for an
information economy with the union workforce and everything.
Something my like worry for specific.
Sorry, this is a little bit of atangent, but I think it kind of

(59:45):
comes back to these ideas, especially ones that Republicans
now share proposing is that there's eventually going to be
in time where like almost all like plus the UAW is
diversifying, for instance, But like some of their workers,
their jobs are going to be able to replace by automation.
And then union protections won'tprevent you when you don't have
any leverage over automakers. You know when GM one day says I

(01:00:07):
mean. Just because I think automation
is going to keep increasing and they say, you know,
theoretically with the 10% remaining number of your
workforce, you could strike, butthat's not going to do anything
for us because we can automate 90% of you.
And so obviously the UAW is going to try their best to
ensure that they can have as many of their workers stay in
their workforce for as long as possible.
But at some point, you know, those jobs are probably not

(01:00:28):
going to exist due to automation.
And so I, it's a difficult question because like,
especially in the Midwest, unions are such a part of the of
the Democratic Party. And this is like wanting the
best for all people because thatpoint is going to come.
But it's very difficult thing towrestle with politically,
especially when like Republicansare offering policies that

(01:00:51):
reportedly will help unions directly, but, you know, are
damaging them. So I think I think that we're
going to see a lot of change with coalition's in terms of
organized labor because of this,especially because like the UAW
has come out in full force of the tariffs, which is just kind
of, it's really difficult kind of to understand where things
are going for the Democratic Party's coalition in Michigan

(01:01:12):
specifically. I mean, I think the reason that
like Europe has a lot of problems obviously, but one of
the things that Europe does better, particularly the Nordic
countries, is that they have sectoral bargaining.
And so instead of which is like the idea that you know, for the
audience, like, instead of bargaining collectively of like
individual unions of individual companies, you have like entire

(01:01:34):
sectors of the economy. And so they, those unions in
general tend to be much more proautomation.
Like Europe, for example, if yougo on the trains, European
trains have way less like staff accrued.
There's a lot more automatic trains, but everybody has lots
of jobs because there were more trains and you can take into

(01:01:57):
instead of like being like, I need to hold on like and prevent
progress by having preserving these jobs for these people.
If you are negotiating collective benefits for
everybody in the sector or like part of the economy, you can say
like, OK, we'll automate this away.
And then the gains will allow usto like, expand more production.

(01:02:17):
And they can like, do these jobsbecause ultimately, like all
automation hasn't. Like, you know, if you told
somebody in 1930 about all the automation we'd have today,
they'd be like, who's has a job?We automated everything, right?
But like, it creates new opportunities for jobs.
But the incentives aren't reallyaligned.

(01:02:38):
Like, I don't blame labor unionsindividually for being afraid of
automation because the way it's set up now.
Decisions, right? No, definitely.
Yeah, and that's that's what I need to do.
So many people I feel like, especially with organized like
my not them, but the discussionsI've had with people is
conflating just conflating blamewith just like a realization.
It's like nobody's necessarily acting like against anyone else.

(01:02:59):
It's just they want to preserve,you know, their own jobs for as
long as possible. And it's a difficult thing to
deal with. But I'll add sectoral bargaining
to the list of bad initiatives and constitutional amendment by
bad initiative. I actually get down in Michigan
in my lifetime. So.
We already have that from California for fast food and
like the result of that has beenthat like turnover in fast food

(01:03:19):
has decreased. It's not fully formal, but it's
like a food council. It's like a it's a complicated
thing. Turnover has decreased, wages
have increased, costs have slightly increased of fast food.
How much is because of this is not clear.
But overall, there's been like you've been able to shift a lot
of like the ideal bargaining scenario is like that you shift

(01:03:43):
relative like income from like management and shareholders to
the workers, but not actually like hurt the company as a
collective entity. It seems to be working so far.
So I think that's like a promising experiment to look at
it. It really makes me wish that in
Michigan, for instance, because we don't have as many ballot
initiatives remotely as California, because we've
restrictions that people who cared about implementing good

(01:04:05):
policy would invest in organizations that could.
We'll get those ballot initiatives rather than just
state legislative races. Because if you take if you pick
your three biggest issues and got them on the ballot, they
would probably pass. And that would do like as as
much good as like 3 consecutive Democratic trifectas would do.
I'm careful what you wish for. We have so many things to vote
on in California. Like I had to vote.

(01:04:28):
This is a recurring joke of likewe voted for many, many, many
straight years on a kidney dialysis ballot initiative.
Yes, I saw that, yeah. So many times it's just crazy
it's nice for political nerds who get to like research and I
enjoyed I enjoy researching every ballot measure and then
sending them to my parents and stuff.

(01:04:51):
Trust it but but thank you so much Armand.
We don't want to hold you too much longer.
We really appreciate it our first guest and it's nice to to
have you back on. I wish it was wish we had more
to celebrate in terms of the country and the world, but but
lots to lots to talk about. And I think we want to to such a

(01:05:13):
kind of depressing week or so. If we could end with what is one
thing that you you're kind of optimistic for in the next year
or so, politically or otherwise,I suppose.
But in terms of the effect of these tariffs or just in
general, what's something you'reoptimistic for in the next year
or so? And I would say one of mine is I

(01:05:36):
think this is going to cause a lot of backlash to like tariff
type policies. And my hope is that president,
let's say Josh Shapiro, althoughI don't have any, that's not an
endorsement, but will be willingto touch the Jones Act when he
takes office. And I would very much like to
see that. So that.
Would be for for the audience. If you're not familiar, Jones

(01:05:57):
act is a a law from the 1920s that basically says that you
can't ship between two American ports unless you use a ship made
in the United States, a ship made in the United States with
American cruise. That's actually a really good
example in this context because that's like the most
protectionist law you could everpass.
Like, it's not a tariff, it's just illegal.

(01:06:17):
And America has like 27 ships like that.
Like it just not has not worked.But yeah, that would be great if
we could get reformed. Touching it, but like feared, I
think some of the opinion backlash and stuff.
So hopefully this fuels it, but yeah.
In terms of what I'm hopeful for, so I'm going to show my own

(01:06:40):
whole thing for right now is that, so ENB is for Harris,
which we started during the campaign, has now become ENB
Democrats for America. And sort of our primary thing is
going to be a podcast called Radio Abundance.
So we're going to be producing content around like trying to
spread the ideas of abundance with the idea of being like ENBA
is now evolving to like a broader portfolio of ideas.

(01:07:03):
And there's a lot of different people doing stuff in the
abundant space. Like our goal is to be a media
platform from messaging and ideas around that because I want
it to be like a this to be the default, like democratic
position and belief to continue.So the I think these books are
great that have come out, but I need a continuous channel.

(01:07:25):
We've got interviews with Congressman Jake Auschenkos from
Massachusetts, Governor Westmorefrom Maryland.
He's awesome. Congressman Robert Garcia, who's
like one of the chairs of the UMB caucus and just a bunch of
good people. So if you're interested in that,
look up BNB Dems on Twitter. Look up you can now see online,

(01:07:46):
we haven't like done a full public launch, but you can
already look up the podcast likeon Spotify and whatever it's
called Radio Abundance. That gives me hope.
I'd love to have you guys on it at some point.
The other thing I'm going to cheat, give me hope is and to be
very cheesy. You guys like you guys are doing
great. I've been like listening to your
podcasts, like I was the 1st guest and you guys have been,

(01:08:07):
you found a voice like you have a fun dynamic.
I think it's a voice the Democratic Party really needs.
You speak to things that like other people, you know, people
my age wouldn't get. We just live a different life.
I yeah, I think you guys are doing great and keep it up.
You give me help? Awesome.

(01:08:28):
We appreciate that and that's awesome to hear.
I did. I knew you guys had shifted to
like you and me, Democrats, but that, that's awesome to hear.
I'm excited to listen and we'll be sure to link that in the
description so you guys can justScroll down and make sure to
check that out. That'll be awesome.
David, you got any optimism? Yeah, I guess I will say my
hopeful thing is that maybe any changes created kind of in the

(01:08:52):
Democratic Party's theological aims and like tangible goals
that public transportation will have a bigger place and be more
easy to advocate for and where people understand its importance
moving forward. And also, you know, if maybe
they're and regulations will ease a bit on the things that

(01:09:13):
make public transportation possible, so.
Well, that would be great to see.
We maybe we'll have hopefully we'll do our like quarterly
Armand check in and hopefully some of it we'll have some of
our hopes will have come true bythen or be on a better path.
Well, thank you guys for listening.

(01:09:34):
Thank you for joining us, Armand.
And yeah, make sure to, we got alot of fun content coming out in
the next few weeks or so. So stay tuned to the progressive
feed. But thank you guys for
listening. Have a good one.
Thank you.