Loading summary
Transcript21 lines
- [00:00]
A
Hey, everybody. Tim Miller from the Bulwark here with my colleague Jonathan V. Last. He's got a newsletter out today. It's the best newsletter in the business. You got to go sign up for it. The bulwark.com and it is about this big push in the maga world to rationalize Trump's tariff regime, saying that we are going to have 4 trillion in deficit reduction as a result of this. Exciting. I have to admit, I'm happy you wrote this deep dive newsletter because this is kind of like been in my field of vision, but I just, it starts to, I See CBO and 4,000,000,000 and the terror and I, it just, it starts to get. I just move on. I'm like, I can't like this. Like, it all just feels like a farago of bullshit. And I just. And I, and I couldn't bring myself to care. But here's the gist of it. If you have, have missed it and then jv, you can explain what exactly is happening here. Trump posted, I guess this was what, over the weekend that he's pleased to announce that the radical left representatives at the cbo. So he takes a hit at the cbo, have now admitted how incredible my tariff strategy has been, saying that Trump's tariffs reduced the deficit by $4 trillion. Da, da, da. It goes on and on. That means we're the hottest country in the world. Thank you for your attention to this matter. So talk to us about that. What is he talking about? What is this CBO report? What is the truth?
- [01:22]
B
Yeah, so it's all, it's all bullshit. And what happened is CBO puts out a report on Friday and it is a revised income from tariffs for, for 2025. And what CBO says is they said our initial read on total revenue from tariffs, which we conducted on January 6th. So before Trump came into office, the initial read was that they would get $80 billion in revenue from tariffs in fiscal year 2025. So Trump comes in, he does liberation. Tariff rates all go up like crazy. And they now say that we're at about $136 billion in revenues taken from tariffs and projecting out to 200 billion by the end of this year, 2025. And CBO then says, and if everything stays exactly the same as it is now until 2035, then when is that? 2035.
- [02:22]
A
So God willing, we're all still here. And that's the singularity hasn't happened.
- [02:27]
B
But we should be so lucky, then we will have saved $4 trillion, which we can, we can apply Those revenues would be applied to the deficit. Now, this is crazy for all sorts of reasons, one of which is that Trump changes the tariffs, like, every nine days, right? So this is the, the assumption that.
- [02:48]
A
Projecting it out 10 years, that was static tariff rates, right?
- [02:52]
B
I mean, you can't even pretend. Like, in all seriousness, you can't even really project it out two weeks, right? Because he's doing deals. He's, you know, he's doing deals left and right, and who knows what they're all going to be? So it's crazy. And this is why. So right now, in manga world, everyone's like, trump just got us $4 trillion. Yeah, let's fucking go. And you know the fake news, mainstream media won't report it. Why won't they talk about how he got us $4 trillion? And the answer is the reason is because the report is bullshit. That the report is premised on this idea. That is impossible, right? These rates are not going to be in effect until 2035. They just won't. And so that's why nobody's reporting about it. But.
- [03:36]
A
But it disagrees with you. I do want to. I do want to tell you, he says that wherever you are on the, quote, Trump spectrum, CBO analysis validates the President's belief in tariffs as an essential tool of economic renewal as well as statecraft, and exposes the fundamental misapprehension of the topic by pretty much everyone on the left and the right. Hugh Hewitt. This proves the fact that we will have this for choice. I hear your point about how it's bullshit that this will not ever actually happen. Well, you can't project out 10 years, et cetera, et cetera. But let's just say you could. Let's just say you could, right? Like, 4 trillion, like, doesn't even pay for the tax bill.
- [04:22]
B
So this is what we're gonna get to, right? So it's much, it's all much stupider than this even, right? And so the, the big, beautiful bill was going to increase the deficit by 4.1 trillion over the next 10 years. And so even if the CBO stuff, even if President Trump for life is still. He keeps everything steady as she goes from here on until 2035, before Barron takes over. Uh, he's still already more than spent all of that money. But the other thing is, again, so where does that money come from? Like, it doesn't come from Sony and Toyota and Volkswagen. It comes from us because tariffs are a tax, right? The, the manufacturers might pay the tariff.
- [05:06]
A
It's just a Regressive tax shift. Like, Right. Even if you take him at his word and you're like, we have a $4 trillion tax cut that disproportionately helps people at the top.
- [05:15]
B
Yes.
- [05:15]
A
Not entirely. And we're going to replace that with 4 trillion in tariffs that we're getting from consumers disproportionately, like lower middle, lower middle class, like regular consumers. Like, that's like all. It's just a, that's what it is. Straight shift from the middle class to the rich. Like there's no deficit benefit on balance. Like even, like it's bullshit. But even if it happened as a, as, as they're arguing, like, that's all it is. It's just a transfer of money from.
- [05:41]
B
The middle class, just more wealth transfer. And the other thing is that it also makes a bunch of assumptions, for instance, that there is no inflation. Right. Which if you go and read all the way down to the bottom of the report, which Trump didn't do and Hugh Hewitt didn't do, they say, of course there are a bunch of near term negative effects. And among those negative effects, they say economic productivity in America is going to decline, inflation is going to rise. We're seeing both of those things already. We had first quarter this, this year was negative GDP growth, which is insane. The producer price index is way up. The Fed is really worried about inflation. So, like the CBO report, which Trump is crowing about, has a bunch of warnings about things that are happening right now, which they ignore. And then it has a bunch of just bullshit about things that might happen in a decade if by some chance nothing changes. And that's what they focus on. And it's like the biggest piece of fake news. I hate to be reduced to using the term fake news, but that's, I don't know what else to call it.
- [06:50]
A
I'm sorry, I've got to give a contrary view. Let's listen to another perspective.
- [06:54]
C
As you know, the stock market went up almost 1,000 points on Friday. And it went up not because of this very, I think, terrible. Hello? Who's that? Who is that back there? All right, get out of the room. It went up because of something much different. It went up because it was announced. CBO announced the numbers. And as you know, they gave no credit to tariffs. They said they made a mistake, that the trade deficit will, will be reduced because of Trump's tariffs, will be reduced by $4 trillion. Right. Is that what they said? Right. They said $4 trillion and the market went up like a rocket Ship because the tariffs are good. Well, tariffs aren't that usual. The seven wars I stopped, four of them were because of the fact that I had tariffs on trade. And I was able to say, well, if you do this, if you go fight and you want to kill everybody, that's okay, but I'm going to charge you each 100% tariff when you trade with us.
- [07:59]
A
There you go. I'm sorry, jvl the president has said so. One market sword.
- [08:04]
B
And he even says reducing the trade deficit. That's the other weird thing. Like, so here he is, he doesn't.
- [08:11]
A
Even know what he's talking about.
- [08:12]
B
He doesn't know what he's talking about. He's talking about the budget deficit, now he's talking about the trade deficit. And it's, it's hard to know what the hell is happening here. But this is the President of the United States, and all of these policies are being made by whatever flits through the front of his brain pan while a camera is rolling. Yeah, like, that's just how all the policy is being made. And I'm sorry, over at the cbo, you guys will have to, you know, somebody will say something to him at a meeting, and he'll have to, he'll redraw the tariff on Finland, and you'll have to go and run the numbers again in three days.
- [08:45]
A
Well, I've got some good news, though, for the people at the CBO is they bought themselves a lifeline here. You know, Trump's out there firing Fed governors, like random people in the Defense Department who, like, you know, made, you know, offhand comments about how we're maybe over focusing on China versus other threats. They're out. You know, people at random boards are out because they, because Laura Loomer came from them. CBO's got, like a light flying here, a little cover. Now Trump thinks that the radical leftists at the CBO did something that he likes even though they really didn't. Exactly. But, you know, that means that we're going to have a Congressional Budget Office of actual professionals still for at least another, I don't know, month or, or.
- [09:29]
B
Two, even if things go well.
- [09:32]
A
Well, thrilling stuff, everybody. Even though we gave you the gist, JBL gives you a lot of little Easter eggs in his newsletters. It's worth it. That's worth it. Go sign up for it. The Bulwark.com subscribe to us here on this feed. Tell your friends about us. We'll be back soon. A lot of other fake news will be happening out there, but not right here on the sheet. See you soon.