← Bulwark Takes
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- [00:00]
JVL
Hello, everyone. This is the Bulwark. I'm JVL here with my colleagues Andrew Egger and Will Saletan. And this is the morning after Liberation Day. The tariffs are coming in good and hard and the markets are reacting. The woke socialist markets don't seem to appreciate the brilliance of Trump's beautiful, very strong tariffs. Andrew. I mean, putting aside whatever ideological biases you might have, just as a matter of conception, are these tariffs worked out with a very high degree of specificity and some real intelligence and forethought. You went digging into these today.
- [00:53]
Andrew Egger
Yeah. So this is a. We've all been kind of waiting in suspense, kind of on tenorhooks. The White House has been teasing Liberation Day when we're gonna roll out all these tariffs for quite some time. But it was sitting on the details. It was saying, you know, we're gonna have a bunch of tariffs. We wonder what they're gonna look like. Nobody knows. But they're coming at 4pm and they're going into effect at midnight. The White House rolls them out at 4pm Yesterday, President Trump gets up to speak at the White House. It's kind of amazing. You can what. You could watch it happen on cnbc. They had President Trump on the left and they had a stock ticker on the right. And he started talking, he started holding up charts and the arrow started pointing straight down. I mean, like, I've never seen anything like it in my life. But. But what? I mean, so they come out with these tariffs. It's gigantic tariffs on all these countries, basically every, you know, country after country after country after country, along with like a 10% flat rate. But then with these, with these, like, specific, specific tariffs, in theory, geared toward these different countries, everyone starts looking at these numbers, trying to figure, trying to wrap their heads around them, trying to figure out what's going on. The White House has billed these, what they, according to what they say are these are reciprocal tariffs, which is like their political winner. They think there are maybe a lot of people out there who aren't like, pro tariff in general, but they think, okay, if other countries have tariffs on us, maybe it's reasonable that we should have tariffs on them as well. So that's what the White House is calling these things, reciprocal tariffs. But as people start crunching the numbers just in a very basic way, they don't make sense at all. According to that metric, there are countries that have a lot of tariffs on us, that don't have a whole lot of tariffs according to these new trade policies. There are countries that don't have very many tariffs on us, that have massive tariffs according to these trade policies. Smarter math minds than I quickly hit upon what's actually happening here, which is literally just that the Trump administration has taken the countries with whom we have a large trade deficit and they are giving, and they have slapped tariffs, reciprocal tariffs on those countries essentially in relate in ratio to, in relation to how large that trade deficit is. There's a, there's a small, I mean the formula is literally exports minus imports divided by total imports. I mean it's, it's, and the White House has acknowledged, they've said, they've said that's absolutely not what we're doing. Here's our math. And then people have looked at the math and it's a very simple equation that says exports minus imports divided by imports. I mean it's, we're so through the looking glass here and like just, I'm ranting like, just to quickly describe what that means. If we buy a lot of things from a country but they don't buy a lot of things from us, we have a big tariff on them now just starting now starting immediately, starting at midnight last night. If we buy a lot of coffee from Indonesia, but Indonesia doesn't buy a lot of copies from us, surprise, American importers now have to pay big tariffs to import that coffee from Indonesia. And that's just the, I mean, and that's economy wide with a, with a very, very few number of exceptions, including Russia. For some insane reason it doesn't happen with Russia but basically every other place in the entire world. This is the way it's going to operate now. So yeah, that's kind of, that's kind of where we're at. And again this is like we're right at the opening bell as we're recording this. Who knows what's going to happen a day in the markets. But, but I mean you could, you could watch the after hours trading literally drop off a cliff as Trump was speaking yesterday. And that was before we even like figured out how stupid the math was on all this stuff. So that's where we're at.
- [04:20]
JVL
Will, do you think this is economic illiteracy or do you think it's malice?
- [04:27]
Will Saletan
Not malice. It's not malice.
- [04:28]
JVL
Not malice.
- [04:29]
Will Saletan
No. No. So jvl, you and I are old enough to remember the idea of the stupid party and the evil party. The, the Republicans said the Democrats were stupid, the Democrats said the Republicans were evil. That has all shifted. We've had a realignment, slipped around.
- [04:42]
JVL
Right.
- [04:43]
Will Saletan
We've had a realignment of stupid, evil.
- [04:45]
JVL
Totally true. Yep.
- [04:47]
Will Saletan
So this is a very simple situation that we find ourselves in as America and now the world. The Republican Party is following Donald Trump. Donald Trump is stupid. He is a very stupid man. As Andrew just detailed immaculately. Donald Trump doesn't understand this very woke discipline called economics. Right. Andrew just laid out what the consequences are going to be. So we have a stupid man doing a very stupid policy coming into office. People were unhappy with inflation, Donald Trump's ideas. How about if I break everything? How about if I chainsaw the government? How about if I start trade wars with, what is it, 180 countries? Right. The entire world. I'm going to attack the entire world. And we have a party of cowards following this idiot. So the consequences are already disastrous, as Andrew just detailed from the numbers. And this is the world that we're, that we're living in now. We have a party that is stupid and is breaking everything and we're just going to see the consequences for the next two years and possibly the next four.
- [05:52]
JVL
Do you guys think he sticks with this? I mean, I'm of, of like two different minds. The first is that yes, because creating economic calamity could actually help with long term goals for authoritarianism in a weird way. But the other is that these could be seen as, and this is something, Andrew, you and I have been talking about for a year at least. Tariffs are a means of controlling the business community. And you do the tariffs and then you force business leaders in the US to come and grovel to them in order to try to get exemptions. So maybe he could cause short term shock and then as American businesses knuckle under him, just keep doling out exemptions after exemptions until he eventually declares victory. I don't know. What do you like? I guess this is my real. What is the end game?
- [06:52]
Andrew Egger
Yeah, yeah. I mean, to a certain extent this is unstoppable force meets immovable object. Right. Because there are different impulses that are like bedrock impulses for Donald Trump's ID that kind of pull in opposite directions here. There's the desire to have the personal control, to be the guy in the seat who the various business leaders and CEOs have to come to as supplicants as you, just as you just described. He loves that. I mean, that is what he has always talked about as how he thinks the trade policy should work is that we put all these tariffs on and then the good companies that come will help them out a little bit. If anybody just so happens to be hurt by any of this. And so it'll be fine. It'll be like a win win thing. Obviously, the part that goes unsaid there is the people he turns away at the door. But even at a more fundamental level than that, this is just the way Donald Trump has always thought about tariffs, about trade policy, before he ever even wanted to run for president, before he was ever even the guy in the chair who was going to be making these decisions. He just has long held these two insane beliefs. One, that tariffs are lossless for the country, that puts them into effect, that you are just enriching yourself at the expense of your neighbors by having tariffs on and two, that trade deficits are basically like the single biggest sign that your economy is not healthy, that you're failing. If you're buying more goods from other countries than other countries are buying from you, you're just losing. You are in a bad place. And these are just, these are bed. I mean, like he has changed his positions on every other thing, but this is like the one thing that has been a constant through line for him for decades, going back to before he even really got involved in politics and before he even had the authoritarian type reasons for wanting to keep these things on that you mentioned. And he, I mean, he has, he could change his mind. I mean, like Liam Donovan likes to say that Trump's superpowers, he can always declare victory, right? Like he could get, the stock market could crash for three days, nothing could change. He could get some fig leaf face saving measure from a couple countries. He could say, we did it, guys, mission accomplished, we won the trade war. And plenty of people would kind of clap along like seals, like that's a good thing for Trump, but because they.
- [09:04]
JVL
Want him to turn them off, right? So if the price is everything playing along, they'll do it because they want him to turn it off. And if the price is just looking dumb while they play along, they're willing to do that.
- [09:16]
Andrew Egger
Right? But everything he's saying so far seems to indicate that he is in this for the long haul. He's telling people to brace for a little bit of pain. He's posting about how, you know, the operation was a success, the patient lived, and now, you know, we're set, we're golden, we're going. He's talking about how the Great Depression, which was in part caused by, by insane US Tariffs that were put in place at that time. He's out here talking about yesterday, how we would out have had a Great Depression if we'd kept the tariffs in place. I'm, like, stumbling over my words now because it's, like, astonishing. But, like, so the only thing that cuts the other way is that Trump is also an animal instinct when it comes to red line bad, right? Line on graph points down is bad. So in theory, you could imagine a situation where he just sees that red line pointing down hard enough for long enough that he's like, you know, I've actually had. He wouldn't say he had a change of heart. He would just declare victory for that reason and change course. But I don't know. I mean, like, that's, again, it's these warring animal impulses inside the guy that I guess are going to control the entire world economy from now on. Whichever wolf happens to win, whichever shoulder angel he happens to listen to is going to be the. It's going to be whether we prosper or don't. So that's cool. That's a cool place to be.
- [10:30]
JVL
So in this. The reason we want to do the three of us here is because this actually ties perfectly to something Will just wrote about, about Trump's Greenland policy. And Will, you. You made a connection, which is one of these things that once you see it, you can't unsee it. That Trump treats Greenland and Denmark the way. It's like the Access Hollywood tape. You know, it's like when you're, when you're a star, when you're a superpower, they'll let you do it. You just move on Greenland like a bitch. And it's all id. It's the same thing as the tariffs. It's the same, like, it is all the same sociopathy. No.
- [11:12]
Will Saletan
Yeah, well, the tariffs is a little bit different. I'll explain the Greenland thing first. Trump's. You know, I'm watching Trump. We're all watching Trump with this insane obsession. He's got the Panama Canal, he's got Canada. He wants to do the condos in Gaza, he's got Greenland. But he. The Greenland thing, he will not let go of. And they're like, it's beyond Canada. They're, like, constantly threatening we might have to use military force. We hope it doesn't come to that. And there's a country that currently possesses Greenland. It's called Denmark. It's like, if, if you guys know if, if you had asked a decade ago, who will the United States go to war with? Canada and Denmark might have been kind of near the bottom of the list. But. But somehow this guy, this idiot who's declared war on 180 countries, economically, is threatening, like, an actual war against a couple of our neighbors and allies. The Denmark and Greenland thing is so bizarre because Trump's been. He went at this in his first term, and there's a whole dynamic where the prime minister of Denmark is a woman. And Trump said she blew him off when he tried to. When he said, I want your. You know, I want Greenland off. Yeah. And, like, you can't talk to me that way. He's, you know, you can't talk to me that way. He's like some jilted guy who came onto her. So she says no to him. First of all, she says the people of Greenland, like, they're going to make their own decision. It's an autonomy thing. Trump doesn't understand autonomy. Trump's whole history as a predator is like, I'm taking you. I want you. I will literally grab you by the. Ahem. Right. And there's a whole history. The weirdest thing, guys, when J.D. vance went to Greenland on Friday, which JBL, you. You wrote about this, too. I'm watching him, and I'm like, this is. There's something really weird about this. Greenland said, we don't want to be American. Denmark said, hey, don't mess with our, you know, territory. Greenland. That's. That belongs to us for now and let them decide. And Vance's message to them is like, he goes in there with the talking point, hey, you people in Greenland, Denmark's not treating you right. Come with us. I mean, Denmark's an American ally, a NATO ally, and Vance is basically trying to take them from them and from Denmark. And I'm like, where have I seen this before? And I'm remembering all the stories that women have told about Donald Trump. A, grabbing them without their consent, B, not taking no for an answer, which is obviously happening in Greenland. A, and C, not caring. The woman says, some of these cases, my boyfriend is literally right there. And Trump's attitude is, I don't care. So he doesn't care that Greenmark is, A, its own place, B, a territory of Denmark. He's just intending to take it. And the only way to stop this guy, both in the economic realm and in the military realm, is to say no, right? It is to stand up to him. And not enough people are doing that. Hopefully, that starts now.
- [14:10]
JVL
So what do you. What do you guys think the end game is on Greenland? I have been very, very. I. I've been very unwilling to believe that he means any of it on Greenland. And, you know, like, him not meaning it doesn't mitigate the international consequences. Like, you know, just, just the fact of doing this, I think has driven a stake through the heart of NATO. But on the other hand, I do think this is just part of his flood the zone. But maybe not. I mean, I really. He's, he seems very committed to the bit. Andrew, what do you, what do you think his Greenland endgame is?
- [14:51]
Andrew Egger
I'm, I'm so hesitant to speculate on a thing like this, but the, but I mean, like the. It does seem as though a thing that we have learned about Trump is that he, he never allows the ratchet to turn backward. Right? I mean, like, like he, he will get the bit in his teeth for something like this. And I mean, like, yes, a. It sounds insane to say Donald Trump is going to declare war on a NATO ally in order to seize sovereign territory that does not belong to us. And you talk about driving a stake through the heart of NATO that would end NATO. I mean, it would just be over. Even as a functional matter, I guess the rest of NATO would be obligated to go to war with us. And in that case, like, that sounds insane to say. I'm not saying it. At the same time, it is insane. It's factually insane to say Donald Trump will at some point find the argument plausible that he has to bow to an international order in any way rather than get a thing that he wants. So I think it is, I mean, like, that's never happened. It just doesn't happen. It hasn't happened. It hasn't happened. It didn't happen when he got, when he lost the 2020 election. That, that was a thing that a lot of people were like, well, of course that's not, of course, that is a real hard line in the sand where he's not gonna, for instance, provoke an army of his people to come and try to kill his vice president and reinstall him by force. Well, that kind of happened. That was a little bit weird when that happened. Right? So, I mean, it's like we are in this situation where the kind of like plausible real politic thing is that he will ultimately be more interested in and bend more of his own time and murderous intent on punishing domestic allies at home that the Danish Prime Minister will kind of fall to the back burner of people he's gonna get around to retribution against. And so in that way, Greenland will get to continue determining its own course. But, I mean, it's bad. You cannot plausibly sit here and make the argument that Donald Trump Secretly, deep down, respects other places territorial autonomy, and that's why this isn't going to happen. I mean, it's just not true.
- [17:04]
Will Saletan
Jbl, you asked about the end game here, and you wrote this week that Vance is. I mean, it's not just Trump. Now we have the vice president going and giving prepared remarks attacking Denmark and saying Greenland should come with us. So it's his. It's his policy. And you wrote that NATO is dead. And I, I want to argue the other side of that. I don't think NATO is dead. I just think that NATO now has to focus not on protecting Europe from Russia, which is still true, but also on protecting it from the United States of America. So I think NATO is alive. And my evidence for that is when Trump went after Greenland and clearly threatened NATO, I mean, multiple times, threatened to tariff Denmark. Okay, Threatened to tariff Denmark if they did not give him Greenland. This is not about economics, not about his economic literacy, which is still out there. It's about, give me this territory or I will tariff you. Denmark freaked out. And the prime minister of Denmark went to France, went to Germany, went to NATO headquarters, Right? And she got Olaf Scholz and Macron people to come out and make statements, basically about, hey, we're serious about protecting sovereignty everywhere. Clear message. Not to Vladimir Putin, who they were already saying it to, but to Donald Trump. So I think NATO is still alive. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization will still try to protect Western Europe. They're just going to have to protect it from us.
- [18:32]
JVL
Guys, I don't even know how to end from that. Hit, like, hit. Subscribe, Follow the feed. We'll be back on this channel with more because this is going to be a day, believe me. Good luck, America.