The David Frum Show – “Treating Friends Like Enemies”

Date: April 9, 2025
Host: David Frum (The Atlantic)
Guest: Rahm Emanuel (Former White House Chief of Staff, Mayor of Chicago, U.S. Ambassador to Japan)

Episode Overview

The inaugural episode of The David Frum Show tackles the urgent question: What happens when America turns on its own friends and allies? Against the backdrop of an unprecedented Trump-imposed tariff crisis and a battered economy, David Frum reflects on recent history and the core values of democracy, honesty, and alliance. Special guest Rahm Emanuel joins to impart lessons from the 2009 financial crisis, discuss the global fallout from recent U.S. actions, and examine how, when defending democracy and America’s interests, treating friends as foes leads to failure.

Main Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Rationale for a New Show: The Abandoned Center

• David Frum explains the media landscape is dominated by extreme voices while moderate, fact-based discussion is neglected.
  • “The center ground lay abandoned and seemingly barren. Now that’s not the way things are in real life. In real life, most of us are pretty level headed people and we approach the world in a spirit of curiosity, not anger, looking for insights, not insults.” (02:15)

2. The Trump Tariff Crisis: Scale and Misconceptions

• Frum contextualizes the financial impact of Trump’s tariffs, calling it a historically unprecedented self-inflicted wound.
  • “As of Friday afternoon, US stock markets had suffered a loss of about $6 trillion... what Trump did was 30 times as expensive as Hurricane Katrina.” (04:35)
• Key misconception addressed: Tariffs aren't simply taxes on foreign goods—tariffs disrupt complex international supply chains, making all goods, from cars to iPhones, more expensive and less available.
  • “When you raise a tariff, you don’t just raise the tax to the consumer, you raise a tax to everybody. At every step along the way of the value chain.” (06:37)
• Tariffs create systemic opportunities for corruption, encouraging companies to seek exemptions for favors.

3. The Erosion of International Trust

• The lasting damage is diplomatic: the U.S. is now viewed as unreliable, prompting both governments and businesses to seek alternatives elsewhere.
  • “Trump permanently, or at least for a generation, stained the good name of the United States with dozens of allies around the world…” (05:19)
• Frum underscores the importance of seeing the world through other nations’ perspectives, quoting the Duke of Wellington: “All my life I have devoted my thought to the problem of what lies on the other side of the hill.” (12:26)

4. Treating Friends Like Enemies—The Strategic Costs

• Frum’s central thesis: The U.S. needs friends to counter adversaries like China. Alienating allies undermines not only economic prosperity but also strategic security.
  • “If the goal here is to counter China, why alienate every other nation in the Pacific? The United States, to balance a country as big as China, is going to need friends.” (10:14)

Rahm Emanuel Interview – Key Segments & Takeaways

[17:10] – Opening & Setting the Scene

• Frum recaps Emanuel’s career and contextualizes Emanuel’s expertise in crisis management.
  • “As you and I speak, where the United States is suffering another one, you got some perspective for us about what is going on. Lessons we should learn, hope to offer.” (17:53)

[18:00] – Comparing 2009 and 2025: Lost Leadership and “On Goals”

• Emanuel criticizes recent tariffs, calling them “the largest tax increase in American history on the American consumer.”
  • “If this is supposed to be a renaissance and America’s manufacturing… shutter them and bring all the jobs back. Now the over under on that, not very good.” (18:38)
• He emphasizes how recent actions undid decades of progress in months:
  • “So in 80 days, he’s undone 80 years worth of work.” (19:36)

[20:00] – Crisis Management: Then and Now

• Emphasizes bipartisan and international cooperation during the 2009 crisis.
  • Anecdote: President Bush took political risk in the auto bailout to give the Obama team breathing room. “That’s an anecdote of trust, not just of an action of trust, also worldwide of coordination.” (21:10)
• Contrasts this with today’s lack of consensus: “Now there were a lot of faults…and we could talk about it later on…but those two examples of working together to stave off not just a financial crisis, but…bordering into a small D depression….” (22:43)

[24:08] – Alliance Breakdown: U.S. “Trusted No More”

• Emanuel: The U.S. now treats its allies worse than adversaries, eroding the credibility of “the American brand.”

  • “You can’t treat them worse than you treat your adversaries…The devastation to America is a safe harbor that’s built up.” (24:16)

• Cites consequences:

  • Japan and Korea turn to China for economic partnerships, and companies like Samsung make independent deals, breaking ranks with U.S. policies.
  • “Samsung, which was critical to America’s export controls against China on semiconductors, just cut a deal with the Chinese company. So the first. We already have a company crack in the united front against China.” (25:36)
  • Short- and long-term damage to U.S. power and influence.
  • “Now China sees an opening and it’s basically isolating the United States and taking advantage of it. We just hurt ourselves.” (26:57)

[27:10] – View from Tokyo: Japanese Disbelief & Retrenchment

• Emanuel: Japanese leadership is experiencing “vertigo.”
  • “They just had the wind spit back in their face. And they’ve now realized that those were bad investments.” (27:33)
• Predicts Japan will reduce its integration with and support of U.S. businesses/employment.

[28:55] – No Economic Theory, Just Vengeance

• Emanuel dismisses any intellectual justification for the tariffs:
  • “There is no economic theory. Don’t dress it up and put lipstick on a pig. This is all about vindictiveness, anger. There’s no economic theory behind this.” (28:57)

[30:06] – Addressing Inequality: Tariffs Are Not the Solution

• Rahm acknowledges the real issue: economic growth has not been equally distributed.

  • “Rather than having a shot at the American dream, the American public’s been given the shaft. And globalization does have winners, but it has losers. And we left the losers alone, isolated and on their own.” (30:18)

• Proposes serious investment in Americans:

  • Universal access to post-high school education
  • Using data/testing to improve education, not just “teach to the test”
  • Investment in both education and broader infrastructure as a response to inequality.

[37:05] – Lessons from COVID & Education Reform

• Importance of in-person learning; criticizes extended school closures during COVID, especially given disproportionate impact on disadvantaged students.
  • “You can’t undo the stupidity of two years of locking kids out of school… Can’t undo it, but you can start to ameliorate it and make up for lost ground.” (37:54)
• Advocates for:
  • More one-on-one instruction (potentially using technology)
  • Compulsory five-day school week (ideally year-round)
  • Community investment: “No teacher by themselves can handle the effects of poverty rushing through the front door of the classroom.” (39:58)
• On phones in school: “Get rid of them. Not in the classroom. Not allowed.” (40:16)

[41:24] – Political Lessons: 2006, 2008, 2024 and Beyond

• Emanuel outlines three lessons from the 2024 election:
  1. Disconnect between leadership pronouncements and public experience fueled anti-establishment mood.
  2. Kamala Harris swung campaign momentum by focusing on economic realities, then squandered it by shifting back to “democracy” messaging.
  3. Three events broke public trust: Iraq war, 2008 financial crisis, and COVID. These fostered resentment toward leadership and establishment politics.
  • “What happened in 2024 is informative about understanding, not just the anger, legitimate parts of why people are angry… Rather than being given a shot, they were given the shaft.” (46:21)

[47:14] – Will America Have Free and Fair Elections?

• Emanuel gives a “75 percentile” confidence rating.
  • Main risk comes from foreign actors (Russia, China, Iran, North Korea), especially as the Trump administration has “unilaterally disarmed” American cyberdefense.
  • “What he is doing on our cybersecurity with our men and women who man the front lines, the thin blue line in protecting America from our adversaries… he just unilaterally disarmed.” (47:23)
  • Domestic election administrators are described as trustworthy and patriotic.
  • “If you ask me what makes up the lion’s share of my 25% of fair is our adversaries” (48:44)

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• David Frum (on supply chains & tariffs):
  “Every industrial product, every product, is an assembly of components from other countries and other places… And a car is by no means the most sophisticated item out there. Think about iPhones. Think about airplanes. They are just giant assemblies of components and subcomponents that come from all over the planet.” (07:20)

• Rahm Emanuel (on tariffs and China):
  “China was becoming the center of focus… There are more than 500 countries that have taken different type of legal actions against China because of unfair trade practices. And the President just declared Liberation Day in Beijing, not in America, because he’s giving them an out of jail card to get out. And now made America the focal of everybody’s energy and anger and frustration.” (17:56)

• Emanuel (on repairing institutional trust):
  “The question is on all of us, what did we learn under President Clinton, President Bush, President Obama… That’s what we should be doing. What we’re doing now is just rage. And we’re turning allies into adversaries, and we’re giving adversaries a get out of jail card.” (46:21)

• Frum (on American credibility):
  “Trump will end someday. This will all be history. But the consequences will not fade so fast.” (14:02)

Timestamps for Important Segments

• [02:15] The abandoned center in American media
• [04:35] Scale of the Trump tariff disaster
• [06:37] How tariffs damage whole economies
• [10:14] Alienating allies undermines U.S. power
• [17:10] Rahm Emanuel interview begins
• [21:10] 2009 economic crisis: bipartisan, global cooperation
• [24:16] U.S. now seen as unreliable—global implications
• [27:33] Japanese view: betrayal, reevaluating U.S. alliance
• [28:57] No economic logic to tariffs—just anger
• [30:18] Real inequality, but tariffs are not the solution
• [37:54] Lasting educational impacts of COVID
• [41:24] Political lessons from recent elections
• [47:14] Will U.S. elections remain fair? Foreign threats

Tone & Style

The conversation is frank, historically informed, and urgent. Frum’s analysis is precise, fact-focused, and concerned with root causes, while Emanuel is candid and pragmatic, at times forceful in his criticism but always policy-oriented. The podcast’s tone is compassionate but unsparing, asking listeners to look unflinchingly at failures but also consider practical remedies and the enduring value of trust, alliance, and democratic institutions.

Summary Takeaway

Treating friends like enemies, Frum and Emanuel argue, is a recipe for self-inflicted economic damage, diplomatic isolation, and a betrayal of America’s founding spirit. Repairing the center in politics and society, restoring trust—both among citizens and with allies—and investing directly in people, not just policies, are the only way forward. The U.S. cannot be great, or free, or prosperous if it stands alone in the world, nor if it abandons its most vulnerable at home.