Speaker unverified: belief

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…hat was a big deal in American foreign policy. Something Obama did against very heavy criticism, something that cost him and cost Democrats in Florida and among Cuban voters in the following election. So I just don’t think that that’s that an unusual thing with Trump. I also just want to say with the tariffs, he wanted to cut the tariffs off from DOGE and cut the tariffs off from this broader agenda. And one reason I don’t is that I think the way to understand tariffs… Look, you can be accomplishing many different things with tariffs. One thing, which was a theory that you heard from some people around Trump and fit what he said on the campaign trail, which was Trump’s position on the campaign trail, was that he was going to lay down 10 to 20% tariffs on all imported goods and 65% tariffs on imported goods from China. So I think that’s a bad idea for a bunch of different reasons, but what that is, is a stable change in the cost structure for all corporations and all trade. And then different players can make different investment decisions in the long term based on this new cost structure. What he’s doing, as Derek said, and I’ve had these funny experiences where I’m literally doing a podcast with a tariffs expert and I’ll be talking about the auto parts problem, and then my producer will be like, “He just delayed the tariff on the auto parts.” What he’s doing with these tariffs that you move on and you move off and you negotiate over endlessly, and I’ve been told this again by people around him is their view is that America had leverage it wasn’t using. And tariffs in particular are a form of executive control. Trade deals need to be negotiated and ratified with Congress. Trade deals are something you have to do with the rest of the system, but tariffs are something Trump can do unilaterally. And one thing Trump wants is control. That is the through line of virtually everything in his politics. Tariffs are a leverage based form of foreign policy. They are America has the biggest economy in the world that anybody who’s going to get into a trade war with us is going to suffer worse than we will. And there’s something where the president can use the tariffs because of authority granted by Congress some time ago for other purposes. He can use them with a huge amount of discretion. So you can use them on the one hand to say, “Well, I think that we’ve lost too much manufacturing and the dollar is undervalued in other places, or overvalued rather. And so we want to use tariffs to make the cost structure differently so that people have to locate more of the supply chains and the intermediate manufacturing in the United States.” vervalued rather. And so we want to use tariffs to make the cost structure differently so that people have to locate more of the supply chains and the intermediate manufacturing in the United States.” But you can also use a tariff to say, Columbia has to take the people we’re deporting and they have to take them in chains. And Donald Trump is doing both things. And the reason I think it’s important to keep those in mind is that what Donald Trump wants, what connects a lot of different things is that he wants leverage over things. I think it connects to Eric Adams and you were sitting here talking to New York City. Eric Adams is a Democratic mayor. Donald Trump has no truck with Eric Adams, right? He did not support Eric Adams. Eric Adams is not his natural ally, but what he had over Eric Adams, he realized was a leverage that he could get the cases off of Eric Adams and then get Eric Adams in his pocket. So Donald Trump stepped in to save like the corrupt Democratic mayor of New York City. Not because they have a deep ideological alliance, but because then Donald Trump would’ve power over New York City and its policy that he wouldn’t otherwise have. The thing that connects Trump, Trump is a very old school politician. He’s very relational. He’s very 19th century. He’s looking for the angle. He’s very zero sum. He’s looking for things to empower. DOGE is a way of getting power over the bureaucracy. Tariffs are a way of getting power over the international financial system and foreign policy and breaking traditional alliances. Maybe in his mind, even getting Canada to become the 51st state, maybe getting Mexico to change its immigration policy, trying to weaponize the Justice Department against Eric Adams as a way of getting power over Democratic mayor. Some of what they’re doing with grants and money is a way of getting power over other institutions in American life. Again, you could think it’s bad or you could think it’s good, but it is coherent. I think it’s bad, but it is coherent, and the people who think it’s good think it’s good for Trump to have power. Again, with the Eric Adams thing, they were very explicit about this, right? They said that it is worthwhile for the president to negotiate over his policy objectives and to trade things to get his policy objectives more fully carried out. And so Eric Adams went from saying New York City would be a sanctuary city. They’d aggressively carry out deportations. You can think that kind of transactionalism is fine. I think in this case, given that it’s about corruption, it wasn’t. But the idea, Trump’s idea that the problem is that the president doesn’t wield enough power here the way he does in Russia, the way he might in India, the way he might in China. Trump has spoken very openly of envying some of the powers these other people have. I think it’s a consistent governing philosophy that needs to be taken as that. Right? ia, the way he might in China. Trump has spoken very openly of envying some of the powers these other people have. I think it’s a consistent governing philosophy that needs to be taken as that. Right? I think sometimes you describe… One of the difficulties Trump poses is sometimes if you just describe what he’s doing, I think quite neutrally, people say, “Oh, you’re criticizing him, you’re anti-Trump.” But I’m just describing what he’s doing. You can think it’s good or it’s bad, but the fact that he wants to arrogate power and find points of leverage and tariffs are one. What he’s doing through DOGE is another. What he did with the DOJ is another. It’s all very consistent. The question is really then just what your normative view is on Trump having that much power.…

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