Will Saletan and Scott Lincicome: A Crime Boss Has Taken Over

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Bulwark Podcast – "Will Saletan and Scott Lincecombe: A Crime Boss Has Taken Over" (February 3, 2025)

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Introduction

In this episode of The Bulwark Podcast, host Tim Miller engages in a two-part discussion with longtime colleague Will Saletan and trade expert Scott Lincicome. The conversation delves deep into the pervasive influence of Trumpism, recent political maneuvers undermining democratic institutions, and the chaotic state of the Democratic Party. Additionally, lighter segments touch upon unexpected topics like NBA trades, providing a comprehensive analysis of the current political and economic landscape.

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1. The Enduring Influence of Trumpism

00:32 – 02:35

Tim Miller opens the discussion by addressing the relentless presence of Trumpism in American politics. Will Saletan echoes this sentiment, emphasizing that "there's no vacation from Trumpism, Tim. It's just everywhere you go" (00:32). Miller expresses a complex mix of emotions, acknowledging the disarray within the political sphere while admitting a sense of validation that predictions about the negative trajectory are coming true.

Notable Quote:

Tim Miller (00:48): "Here's number one. This is a shit show. This is a total shit show."

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2. Presidential Actions Undermining Democratic Institutions

02:35 – 23:37

The conversation intensifies as Miller and Saletan critique recent actions by the Trump administration that threaten the integrity of key governmental bodies. Bill Kristol's analysis is highlighted, detailing the forced retirements and firings within the FBI, described as "worse than Watergate" (06:06). The duo paints a grim picture of Trump acting as a "crime boss" who has infiltrated and destabilized law enforcement agencies to protect his interests.

Notable Quotes:

Will Saletan (07:37): "So the big picture on this to me is you and I are, like, trying to have a friendly conversation about this, but this is extremely serious."

Tim Miller (15:53): "This is an effort to completely isolate America from our allies, from having influence in parts of the world where there's competition for influence with the more authoritarian regimes."

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3. The State of the Democratic Party: Identity Politics vs. Economic Policy

23:37 – 40:09

Miller and Saletan shift focus to the internal struggles within the Democratic Party. They criticize the Democratic National Committee (DNC) for prioritizing identity politics over substantive economic issues. The discussion references a recent DNC forum where candidate Ken Martin struggled to assert a clear stance against Trump, instead getting bogged down in debates about representation and diversity quotas.

Notable Quotes:

Tim Miller (36:46): "That goes on for another 90 seconds. I spared you the last 90 seconds, but that goes on for another 90 seconds. Is this fucking Portlandia?"

Will Saletan (35:32): "From this forum, Tim, was the chaos. Like, here we have an authoritarian party on the right, and what do we have on the left? We have a party that looked like, from this forum, it was total anarchy."

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4. Implications of Trump's Trade Policies and Tariffs

40:09 – 73:09

In collaboration with Scott Lincicome, the podcast delves into the intricacies of Trump's newly imposed tariffs and the ensuing trade war. Lincicome breaks down the economic fallout, explaining how tariffs are not only ineffective in addressing the cited crises (like fentanyl importation) but also detrimental to the U.S. economy by disrupting established supply chains and increasing costs for consumers and manufacturers.

Key Points:

• Tariffs as Ineffective Remedies: Tariffs imposed in response to national emergencies (e.g., fentanyl) fail to address the root issues and instead harm economic relations with key trading partners like Canada and Mexico.

• Supply Chain Disruptions: The removal of duty drawbacks leads to compounded tariffs on goods that cross borders multiple times during the production process, inflating costs exponentially.

• Economic and Political Repercussions: Increased tariffs result in retaliatory measures from trade partners, exacerbating global economic instability and straining international alliances.

Notable Quotes:

Scott Lincicome (50:32): "Trump is going to implode all of it [free trade agreements] because of fentanyl. It just, it really makes no sense."

Tim Miller (55:58): "He understands, or at least somebody around him understood the value of bringing Canadian oil for the very reason you said, to places where it's geographically convenient and where it works. But I guess you know that that is not as important now as the tariff."

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5. The NBA Trade: Luka Doncic to the LA Lakers

73:09 – 75:44

In an unexpected yet spirited segment, Miller and Saletan discuss the controversial trade of NBA star Luka Doncic from the Dallas Mavericks to the LA Lakers. They express frustration over the Lakers' acquisition of a top-tier player and question the strategic reasoning behind the move, suggesting that it undermines the competitive balance of the league.

Notable Quotes:

Tim Miller (44:36): "He might be the second best player in the NBA. They trade him to the fucking Lakers, who always get the best people for Anthony Davis."

Will Saletan (45:43): "Everybody would like to get him. Why the hell the Lakers get him is just, it's a moral outrage. It's wrong."

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6. Closing Remarks and Final Thoughts

75:44 – End

Tim Miller wraps up the episode by underscoring the long-term damage inflicted by the Trump administration's policies on America's economic relations and democratic institutions. He emphasizes the importance of restoring free trade agreements and rebuilding international alliances to foster economic growth and global cooperation.

Notable Quote:

Scott Lincicome (71:29): "This is game theory stuff, right? You see a lot of retaliation in this space. But how do you retaliate? Well, you don't want to just do blanket tariffs like Donald Trump did. You want to hit politically influential groups."

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Conclusion

This episode of The Bulwark Podcast offers a scathing critique of the Trump administration's strategies, highlighting the erosion of democratic norms and detrimental economic policies. Through incisive analysis and candid discussion, Tim Miller, Will Saletan, and Scott Lincicome articulate the multifaceted challenges facing the United States, from internal political chaos to external economic conflicts. The conversation serves as a clarion call for a recommitment to liberal democratic values and strategic economic alliances.

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Notable Segments Skipped:

• Advertisements and promotional content for products like Seoul’s gummies and DeleteMe.com.
• Musical outro featuring unrelated lyrics.

Transcript

[Unknown]

Foreign.

[Tim Miller]

Hello and welcome to the Bulwark Podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller. We've got a two parter today. I added a bonus segment with Scott Lincecombe, who's a trade expert, to talk about the tariffs that are imminent and already rollicking the stock market. But first, it's back for the old timers, for the OGs. You might remember, Will, Saletan Mondays. Well, they're back right now. Bill Kristal's on vacation. I'm here with my colleague Will Salatin. What's up, Will?

[Will Saletan]

There's no vacation from Trumpism, Tim. It's just everywhere you go.

[Tim Miller]

No, he's been texting me. There's definitely no vacation for him mentally, but he does get one day off the podcast. Can I start with something positive, though?

[Will Saletan]

Go ahead, man.

[Tim Miller]

I don't know if you'll find it positive, but I'm feeling good about a couple of things this morning.

[Will Saletan]

All right, tell me.

[Tim Miller]

Here's number one. This is a shit show. This is a total shit show. And I knew it would be a shit show. We told everybody it would. But, you know, there was always a chance that Trump would get in there and, I don't know, decide not to do anything, right, and just kind of bleat and like get people to call him sir and not actually do anything and take credit for things that were already kind of percolating positively from the Biden administration. That was one option that could have happened. But instead we have JVL this morning in the triad predicting a stock market crash. And all of the topics we're about to go over is them messing things up. I don't know. Can we not have some pleasure in that? Knowing that they are as bad as we thought they would be?

[Will Saletan]

This is where we are. That, like the good is bad is that. Yeah, yeah, that's where we are. Tim, is it schadenfreude or is it that you think that there's something salutary about the pain that will lead to healing?

[Tim Miller]

No, I'm not about healing through pain. No. Thank you for saying that. Yeah, it's partially schadenfreude. It's partially just kind of like the, you know, solace and knowing that you are correct. The solace and knowing that we weren't leading people astray. There's something to that. There's a little bit of joy in other. Seeing other people's pain. But the bad people, the MAGA people, not this, there will be some collateral damage. Unfortunately. That's. That's not what I'm happy about, but just their failures is kind of giving me a little joy. No. Is that wrong?

[Will Saletan]

Well, I don't know. It's a little bit of the tree falls in the forest problem. If you and I are right, objectively, that this is insane and destructive, but the Republicans keep winning elections doing it, what consolation is there in that?

[Tim Miller]

I don't know. Personal validation? All that matters is solipsism. All that matters is having my own brain. Okay. I knew that you'd be on the other side of that, but I figured some of the listeners would be on my side. I'm enjoying it. There's another thing. It was related. I don't know. Ezra Klein, you might have heard of him. He's kind of a minor columnist and we might have him on the pod again soon. He had a piece over the weekend that said this Trump is acting like a king because he's too weak to govern like a president. He's trying to substitute perception for reality. He's hoping that perception then becomes reality. That can only happen if we believe him. As part of a longer monologue about just like this is not actually the actions of somebody who is going to take over the government in a gradual and effective way. Like, these are the actions of somebody that doesn't know what they're doing and is trying to continue the fraud that he's perpetrated on the country for a long time that covers up his fundamental political weakness. What say to you to Ezra's positive spin? These are the last two positive items of the podcast, just so you know.

[Will Saletan]

Yeah, I don't know about this. First of all, on the perception versus reality thing, look, look, one. You know, at some point, reality only matters if it intrudes. And, you know, we went through this election where the reality was Trump was an idiot and he was gonna do all this damage and he created a perception that. I mean, you saw the polls. People believed he was a good president. Like after Covid, after all that craziness.

[Tim Miller]

Well, four years later, people are stupid and have short memories. But, yeah, they didn't think so at the time.

[Will Saletan]

If that's the perception and they keep, you know that, then the Republicans keep getting to implement the crazy policies. I will say I do think, and I know you and Scott are gonna talk about the tariffs, but it is a good thing that very early in this process, among the stupid things that he was going to do and is doing, he's doing one that's going to hurt a lot of people quickly. And, you know, we'll make. It will make an impact, I think, on perception. And at that point, you know, the polls start to decline and all that, and Republicans might, might pay attention to that.

[Tim Miller]

I don't know who was talking. Who was I talking to this about last night? Oh, I was talking to JJ McCall. We did a YouTube video on this topic. And he's Canadian. He was like. He's like, won't the magas not care? Even if they're. I guess they're probably not even buying guacamole, whatever, you know, even if their maple syrup for their pancakes is going up and won't they just think that that's, you know, whatever part of Trump's grand plan? And I was like, yeah, but the problem is he got a lot of votes from people that did not have those strong ties, right. That were annoyed by prices and had some, you know, annoyances about the cultural shift left of the Democrats. And maybe they cared about crime or immigration. Right. But, like, there are people that are not in the cult that were for him. And I do think that some of them are going to maybe experience the consequences of the vote, but we'll see.

[Will Saletan]

I would like to believe that, but I just want to put on the table the dark theory that I have about all of this, which is maybe, maybe Donald Trump and his MAGA party are really bad at governing but really good at winning elections.

[Tim Miller]

I don't think so.

[Will Saletan]

Part of how they're really good at doing it is blaming and scapegoating. And we saw that with COVID right? We saw, like, this disaster happens. Trump grossly mismanages. It leads to many more deaths than were necessary. But he talks about the China virus. He blames everybody else, but then he lost. Well, he lost that election, but then he won the next one.

[Tim Miller]

All right, well, I don't like this roll switch, okay? I'm the pony. I'm fighting the pony. You're trying to bring me into darkness. I don't take it. Just let me have it.

[Will Saletan]

Tim, your pony is that things suck. That's not a pony. Come on, man.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah, well, it's a pony for me. All right, Things are getting darker from here, so I hope everybody enjoyed that segment. Will, our colleague Bill Kristol is. Wasn't so much on vacation that he couldn't write a newsletter this morning. He wrote about the scandals that are currently embroiling the administration that are worse than Watergate. He starts with the firings at the FBI. For people that have not been following this, there were, I guess, six high level FBI officials that were escorted out of the building late last week. Then there were other FBI officials that were involved in the Trump administration that they were trying to have relieved of their duties. But the acting FBI director, Brian Driscoll, actually refused to agree with that request. And in a message to staff on Saturday, he reminded FBI agents of their rights to due process and review in accordance with existing policy and law. We had a letter at the Bulwark this morning that comes from the society of former FBI Agents, which is not a group that is particularly political. And they are saying that this is an obvious disruption to FBI operations, the degree to which it can't be overstated. The forced retirement of director, deputy director, and now all five executive assistant directors. They say that this extreme disruption is occurring at a time when the terrorist threat around the world has never been greater. It's putting us at great risk. And we have basically, you know, the weekend of the Long Knives at the FBI, and this is coming to a head with the Cash Patel vote coming up in the Senate.

[Will Saletan]

So the big picture on this to me is you and I are, like, trying to have a friendly conversation about this, but this is extremely serious. And what's basically happened is that a crime boss has taken over law enforcement. He's President of the United States, he's taken over the Justice Department, the FBI, and he's putting his accomplices in charge of the Justice Department, the FBI. Bondi Patel didn't get Gates, but he's replacing all these other officials. And this is just an extension of the January 6th pardon. So the pardons were these thugs on Trump's behalf beat up cops to try to overthrow an election. So it's anti Democratic, it's fascist, it's a coup, but it's also an attack on law enforcement by criminals. The guy who sent them there then becomes president, and he pardons all of the thugs who beat up the cops. Right. And then he goes into the FBI and starts purging anybody. So they've demanded lists of anybody at the agency and anybody in the Justice Department, I believe, like thousands of people who were involved in any of the prosecutions of the criminals who worked for Trump. So Trump's got this paramilitary organization, he's put them back on the street, and he's now going after purging the law enforcement officials who prosecuted them successfully in front of juries. Right. They were objectively convicted. You know, it's not clear to me how far this goes. And just come back to our original question, Tim. It's not clear to me at what point the American public is going to care about this? If Trump is being Mr. Law and Order against Immigrants, is the public going to care that he's letting these criminals out and prosecuting the prosecutors?

[Tim Miller]

Yeah, I don't really care if the public cares at this point. It's like that's a problem for fall of 2026. I think that the, the substantive element here that you talked about, like at the beginning is about how scary it is you were smart to tie this to the pardons. And we had another story out over the weekend. I guess the fourth person that was pardoned that has had another altercation with police, this one is Dylan Harrington. He was nicknamed the MAGA Lumberjack. He was arrested for rape. He's raping a woman who is blacked out and did not consent. He had pleaded guilty to assaulting, resisting and impeding officers, was sentenced to 37 months in prison, and Trump had pardoned him. So you have that, you have the paramilitary organization, you said you have this unlawful firing of career federal law enforcement officials, high level law enforcement officials. We talked about this with Andrew Weissman on Friday. Just about like how important it is to institutional knowledge to have these, these people and judgment given the most challenging cases. We've gotten rid of all those people. And then JVL tied it also to what is happening with Elon Musk, where Elon Musk is now taking over the treasury department, going into USAID, having his little 20 year old doge officials try to bully career officials, get access to classified information, get access to personal financial information. And JBL's point is like, look, if you've cleansed the law enforcement agencies of anyone who would be willing to investigate members of the own administration, then members of your own administration can act with impunity and can commit illegal actions, which Elon Musk is doing, right?

[Will Saletan]

So all of this is an attack on the rule of law. Now, in the context of violent crime, Trump's pose and the Republican pose is they're the party of law and order. They stand for the cops. They back the blue against the criminals. Now, we've established that's not true because of the January 6th pardons, the purge of the FBI. What's actually going on is Trump's and the Republican Party's distinction is between foreign and domestic, right? We're against foreign lawbreakers. We're against people who entered this country illegally. We're against someone who steals a tube of toothpaste who came from overseas. But domestically, we're happy to pardon the people who Committed violent crimes. Let me take this over to your point about Doge though. So here we have a private organization, so you probably know this better than I do, Tim, Doge's legal status. Right. They're not a government department. Right. None of this is authorized by Congress. This is one guy, Donald Trump, having won one election, basically usurping power, right. They're taking over. Congress appropriates, Congress establishes programs, the executive decides. No, you know what? I don't care what the Article 2 branch, Article 1 branch did. I'm gonna usurp this, I'm gonna end this program, cut off these. Not only am I going to do it, I'm the elected guy. I'm going to give my buddy, who's not even a government official, right, access. These people coming in from Musk, what authorization do they have? So Trump's basic position is, never mind all of the rules that were established about who has the right to have access to these payment systems, who established these programs. I won this one election and therefore anybody I choose I can send in to run the government. So it's kind of democracy because he got elected, but it's illiberal democracy and it's anti rule of law democracy. It is authoritarianism with one election behind it.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah, I mean, here's just one example what was happening with usaid. This is from cnn. Officials with Musk's so called Department of Government Efficiency sparked a tense clash with USAID administrators over the weekend by demanding access to its physical headquarters and digital systems, threatening to call security when the agency refused. The incident led to two more senior USAID security officials being placed on leave. And DOGE ultimately succeeded in getting classified information. I mean like that is Hungary. We're doing this thing where it's like, we're having these conversations where it's like, are they on the path to Hungary? Are we on the path to Russia? Are we, what are they going to try to do? How much of this is just pr? How much of this is, you know, whatever Trump bleeding illiberal things and like this is unelected people that aren't, I assume, don't have security clearances or background checks yet because they're just random officials with DOGE going in and bullying existing high level national security officials with clearances to get classified information. And then obviously the next step of this is to then shut down usaid, which is, which is coming, which reports they are coming. USAID signs were taken down from the Reagan Building. They're going to put it under Secretary of State. I guess that's blatantly not legal. It's thug. It is thug. Autocracy. That's what that is.

[Will Saletan]

Wait, can I pull on your thread there a minute about Hungary?

[Tim Miller]

Yeah.

[Will Saletan]

Because there's a direct connection here with usaid. Right. The Orban regime and the Putin regime hate usaid, and they've, like, spoken out against it and they don't like this whole, you know, what are you guys doing? Promoting civil society and other, you know, you're interfering in our internal affairs. So undermining USAID in particular on Trump's part is part and parcel of his, you know, de facto alliance with the authoritarians of the world. Right. Here's this annoying agency.

[Unknown]

Yeah.

[Tim Miller]

Throw China in there, too, obviously.

[Will Saletan]

Yeah, right, right. There's a. An absolutely direct connection. I mean, USAID basically does, you know, good things. Liberals like the whole idea of international development is like something Trump's isolationism, America first. A lot of it is we're tired of being the good guys. We're tired of, like, giving things to other people. We're tired of helping other people. We're just going to focus on helping ourselves. And while we're at it, we're going to dismantle this agency that annoys our authoritarian friends.

[Tim Miller]

Go ahead and continue down that path. Because you said you wanted to talk about the geopolitics of the trade wars. And obviously we'll get into this more with Scott. But that all ties together. This is an effort to completely isolate America from our allies, from having influence in parts of the world where there's competition for influence with the more authoritarian regimes. And the trade war is directly connected to shutting down USAID in that sense. And it's also directly connected to the coming threats to NATO that we're going to be seeing in the coming months.

[Will Saletan]

Yeah, absolutely. So let me just sort of sketch. I know you and Scott are going to do the economics of this. Just wanted to the geopolitics of this. There's the NATO threatening to pull out a NATO, which he's, you know, I'm abandoning Article 5. I won't defend you. There's the EU. Trump just said twice in the last, like, three days. He said, am I going to impose tariffs on the European Union? Absolutely. He said that twice. They also are threatening, of course, Panama and Greenland. Trump said twice in the last two days, we're going to take it back, referring to the Panama Canal. We're going to take it back. Okay, Greenland, lots of threats to Greenland. We're picking a war with Denmark, of all things. J.D. vance was on TV on Sunday saying that we're going to take more of a territorial interest in Greenland. A territorial interest. So basically what we have is America First. Trump Vance means that we are going to target all of our enemies. We're going to pick fights with all of our enemies. Remember, Trump said his whole shtick during the campaign was the other side. Democrats are warmongers and there were no wars. He said at every campaign stop, I never started a war. He's starting a war with our allies. It's an economic war in which you, Mr. And Mrs. America, are the soldiers because you're going to pay at the grocery store and you're going to pay when you buy appliances and cars. He's starting wars for no reason. He chose these wars.

[Tim Miller]

Another news item I really wanted to spend some time on is a gentleman by the name of Darren Beatty. Darren Beatty. I don't know which one it is. Doesn't really matter. He's the new acting Undersecretary of State for Public Diplomacy. I want to go through the hit list here on Beatty and then we'll kind of tie it back to the point you're making. Beatty loves to tell people to take a knee. I want to see if you can notice any trend here. Well, here's our new acting Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy. Tim Scott needs to learn his place and take a knee to Maga. Black Lives Matter must take a knee to Maga. Ibram Kendi must take a knee to Maga. Kay Coles James of Heritage foundation needs to learn her natural place and take a knee to maga. Any guess on the race of K. Coles James Will Let me guess.

[Will Saletan]

It has to do with Eba Nee.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah. Yes. There you go. Black. Yeah. Tim Scott, K. Coles James. Conservatives, they need to take a knee. They need to learn their place, natural place, and take a knee to maga. So this guy is really. He was fired from the first Trump administration for his associations with white nationalists. He was one of the only people too racist to be fired from the first Trump administration. He's been brought back. He's also pro Uyghur genocide, essentially, or at least, at least a big excuser of the Uyghur genocide. And talking about how he said that we treat American rural whites worse than China treats the Uyghur minority. And then this takes us to South Africa. There's an interesting statement from Trump this morning. From Trump yesterday morning, rather, South Africa is confiscating land and treating certain classes of people very badly. It is a bad situation that the radical left media doesn't want to so much as mention. The United States won't stand for it. I will be cutting off all future funding to South Africa until a full investigation of this situation has been completed. Beatty had said this in the past. The whole concept of modern South Africa is absurd, doomed to fail. From the beginning, South Africa was the first modern nation to be refounded on the anti white principles of critical race theory. Musk is also from South Africa, you might remember, and his attack on USAID may also have something to do with his feelings about the South African leadership. USAID spend a lot of money helping black folks suffering from apartheid in South Africa. So, I mean, it's not exactly subtle, Will.

[Will Saletan]

No, it's not. And it's part of. When I talk about Trump being a fascist or this being a fascist movement, people think, okay, that's extreme language. Let's not compare him to the Nazis and stuff like that. And, you know, look, we have. We don't have people in, you know, murder camps at this point, but part of fascism is ethnic demagoguery, ethnic scapegoating and that. We're seeing lots of that already in the first couple of weeks of this administration. You mentioned Darren Beatty got fired before. You know, being a white supremacist, being friends with white supremacists, preaching that stuff that used to be too politically toxic for Trump. He thinks that's an advantage now. They're selling that now. And Tim, a little bit back to your point about politics. It's still amazing to me that in the 2024 election, Trump got, I believe in the VoteCast survey, he got 16% of the black vote and he got 43% of the Latino vote. And, you know, a lot of white liberals said, what the hell? Like, I mean, how can you vote for someone who's so overtly bigoted? And I would like to believe that at some point this will register and those numbers will start to return to recognizing. Donald Trump and his party are enemies of threats to insulters, of degraders, of minority communities. I mean, this guy has an amazing history. His campaign, remember the birtherism? You know, Judge Curiel, Latino judge was like Mexican heritage, Kamala Harris being a DEI hire, all that stuff. At some point, this needs to register.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah, I don't know. The Marco Rubio side of it is pretty interesting to me, too. See, he had to hire Beatty, right? And Marco Rubio ran in 2016, as I recall, on kind of a compassionate conservatism, updated platform. And Marco Rubio has hired the guy who said that Kay Coles James of the Heritage foundation needs to learn her natural place and take a knee to maga. And this is the type of person that Marco wants as his undersecretary. Somebody who is posting just the most overt, obvious racist bile over and over again about conservative black leaders. Not that it's okay to do racist stuff about Ibram Kendi, but like, this guy is so through the looking glass that he's posting racist shit about Tim Scott and Kate Coles James. And Marco is like, I want this man to be my undersecretary. I just think that the degree of the corruption, the corruption of the soul of these people is. That's pretty remarkable.

[Will Saletan]

Right? Well, you know, it's not clear to me what role little Marco had in this and whether this is sort of.

[Tim Miller]

You assume he had to okay it. I mean, it's his undersecretary.

[Will Saletan]

They're okaying anything Trump does at this point. Right. And Tim is this to balance things out. You know, we did appoint a Latino Secretary of state. So let's balance it out with an anti Latino, anti. You know, with a white racist.

[Tim Miller]

I guess. Yeah. I mean, I guess that's their version of dei.

[Will Saletan]

Remind me, what's the job that Beatty's getting here?

[Tim Miller]

Under Secretary of State for public diplomacy.

[Will Saletan]

Public diplomacy. So here we have, not just that we have these bigots in office, but we've put them in jobs where they're supposed to represent the United States overseas. So we're gonna go to Africa, we're gonna go to Asia, we're gonna go to Latin America with these people here. Let's put a bigot in charge of public diplomacy. Let's put Carrie Lake, one of the best known liars, like recidivist liars in our country, in charge of the voice of America. There couldn't be a bigger middle finger to the world. And we're basically saying, why should you trust us any more than you would trust the propaganda coming out of regimes in Russia or China?

[Tim Miller]

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[Will Saletan]

Yeah, well, that's just oligarchy, right? This happens in other countries. This wasn't supposed to happen here. That a guy gets elected, puts his billionaire friend in charge of the government, gives him special access. I think in Russ, the. The oligarchs, before some of them tangled with Putin, had this kind of leverage. Scott Besson and these normies, though, they're no protection because, I mean, remember, Scott Besson got that job for one reason, which was that he claimed that all the stock market increases under Joe Biden were because people expected Donald Trump to be president. Right. And that was just he. So he flattered his way into the job. He's a total yes man. Right. If Elon's goons. I don't know what to call these guys, maybe not carrying cudgels, but they're, you know, they work for Elon. They come in and they say, we want access to this stuff. Here, sign this piece of paper. Scott Besant, he's not in that job because he's brave. He's a coward like the rest of them. I mean, the entire party is populated with people who do bad things or people who are too weak to stand up to those who do bad things. And Besant is one of those, so of course he's going to sign that.

[Tim Miller]

So we are messaging about our topics for today. The worse than Watergate, firings at the FBI, shuttering of usaid, this racist that's going to the Secretary of State, Elon taking over the Treasury. Let's see the January 6th pardon, guys, raping people, the tariff, the trade, war, et cetera, et cetera. So we were discussing potential topics. You said to me, also, the outrage is not high enough about what he's doing on dei. So I just figured I'd let you cook on that for a little bit, too.

[Will Saletan]

Yeah. I don't even know how to distill this. It's amazing to me that there's a plane crash. Donald Trump steps up to a microphone, says, without any evidence that this is blame, he blames dei, says that the crash is all about being smart. Now, the obvious explanations were offered to Trump. Well, we have a shortage of air traffic controllers. There was technology. There was a question of that. He dismissed the obvious explanation. He says, no, it's because we don't have smart enough people. And the reason we don't have smart enough people is because of dei. And then when, when pressed for a little more detail, he starts talking about a lawsuit on the part of white applicants who didn't get jobs at faa, that they got discriminated against. So basically, the very clear message is, this plane crashed because we hired black and brown people at the faa. Now, this is bullshit. There's no evidence for it. And that statistically the numbers have changed very little in the last several years. But if you go into a situation where something bad happened and you say it is the fault of hiring black and brown people, which is the message here, and you have no evidence for that, that is straight up bigotry, and that is the kind of scapegoating that authoritarian fascist regimes do. He didn't say Jews. He didn't even say explicitly that we hired black people and they caused this.

[Tim Miller]

He did explicitly, like, he was citing people with mental health issues and paraplegics and other weird stuff that. But, yeah, I mean, the implication is obvious.

[Will Saletan]

That was his first answer. His first answer was, there's this stuff about hiring handicapped people or whatever. Disabled people. He switched that and he switched it to, white people can't get jobs, and that's why we have a shortage. Whatever. And then, Tim, it wasn't just Trump. The entire chorus came in. J.D. vance, Sean Duffy, the new secretary came in. They all parroted this line about white people not getting. So it's all part and parcel of what you were discussing earlier of, like, the South Africa thing, the Darren Beatty thing. This is just like revenge of white, anti black, anti brown racism. And it's amazing to me that the Reporters and the media coverage of this hasn't been more forceful about. Holy cow. The President of the United States is invoking a baseless racial explanation for this terrible thing that happened.

[Tim Miller]

Well, maybe if we had more Aryans like Darren Beatty watching at air traffic control, we might be in a better place. I don't know. But I wanted to let you cook on that because obviously it's racist and horror. And I think that additionally it will be illegal the way that they're targeting individuals who work in the government, who are career officials. We already saw the one example, I think I talked on a past podcast about Dan Crenshaw putting up a picture of a black woman and noting that she had changed her bio to take out DEI and basically saying, this woman should be fired, essentially. So there's going to be racist targeting of that. I worry a little bit about the Democrats response to this. We're going to spend a lot of time all week on all the horrors that the Republicans are inflicting on Americans. But the Democrats had an election over the weekend where they were going to choose who was going to lead the party in opposition to this. They chose a guy named Ken Martin from Minnesota. He ran the. What they call the DFL party in Minnesota. He seems like a fine enough person, I guess. I don't know. He doesn't. He doesn't exactly seem like the knife in his teeth attack dog that I might have wanted for the job. I don't know him that well. Leading up to his election victory, there was a debate that happened, and I want to play a clip from the debate and then discuss something that was related. How many of you believe that racism.

[Unknown]

And misogyny played a role in Vice President Harris defeat? So that's good. You all pass.

[Tim Miller]

So for people listening, everybody raised their hand. Ken Martin, the person ended up winning, was, like, the most excited with the hand raise, and he was, like, pumping his hand up to that question. Jonathan Capehart says they all win in that answer. Okay. I mean, okay, I want to get to that in a second. There's another segment where there's a question from somebody in the audience about whether the DNC needed to have a permanent seat at large seat for somebody who's transgender. There's another question about whether they needed Muslim affinity groups to do outreach to the Muslims. Everybody on stage, all the different candidates, supported both of those objectives, except for one person, Faiz Shaker, who was Bernie's campaign manager. So here I am handing it to Bernie's campaign manager. But he was like, I don't know. I think maybe we should focus a little less on this stuff and obsess on this stuff a little bit less. And so anyway, Will, I made you his homework. Watch some of this. And I'm wondering what you think, because I was not seeing a party that learned a lot from their defeat when I was watching this candidate forum.

[Will Saletan]

So, Tim, I did watch it, and I want that hour back.

[Tim Miller]

Sorry about that. I owe you one.

[Will Saletan]

So I wasn't so much struck by the issues about reaching out to this and that, you know, group in the rainbow, which Obviously, in the 2024, 24 campaign, hurt them to the extent that voters thought that, you know, the Democratic Party, because it cared about transgender people or cared about this or that minority, didn't care about economics. And I don't know how to solve that problem. And I don't want to renounce caring about the issues that affect these groups, because they actually matter. What really struck me from this forum, Tim, was the chaos. I mean, here we have an authoritarian party on the right, and what do we have on the left? We have a party that looked like, from this forum, it was total anarchy. Like, they couldn't, like, get the attendees to, like, behave themselves and just let the forum continue. You know, it's the old Will Rogers line about how it's, you know, not an organized political party. And Ken Martin himself had, you know, his pitch to the crowd was like, the DNC should not be putting a finger on the scale in primaries. The DNC should not be dictating things. They asked the candidates, Tim, when one candidate wins the presidential primary, should the DNC become an extension of the presidential campaign, which is normal. That's what happens, right? And, like, one person raised their hand, and they're all looking at each other, like, because they're afraid. There's, like, nobody leading the party. Everyone's trying to cater to the audience. And so if the audience cares about this or that pet issue, that's what happens. You kind of need somebody who will represent what they think the party should stand for, regardless of what the people in the crowd are saying.

[Tim Miller]

I mean, what you want from the leader of the DNC in this moment is somebody that's gonna be the tip of the sphere in taking the fight to Donald Trump. And there was just very little of that, again, besides Faze, who I thought was really good, who's talking about what, and I'm trying to get him on the pod. But what he thinks the DNC could do from a communication standpoint better, there just was A lot of caring about the internal nonsense that nobody cares about besides random people who are obsessed with Democratic internal politics. I understand that it's an internal debate, and I think at a time when the stakes are lower or back in 1998, I don't know if it was that big of a deal who the DNC chair was and they could all hash out their own internal disagreements, but there is a vacuum right now, and the vacuum needs to be filled by somebody on the left who is capable of being the torchbearer in the fight against Trump. And these guys just weren't it. I want to play one more clip from the outgoing. I'm sorry to obsess about the identity thing here, Will, but, like, somebody has to say it. Like, they need to learn about something. And so I want to play Jamie Harrison, the outgoing DNC chair. This is him in his intro to talking about the. I guess it was the rules of the vice chair race for the DNC and making sure they had the right representation.

[Unknown]

Rules specify that when we have a gender non binary candidate or office officer, the non binary individual is counted as neither male nor female. And the remaining six officers must be gender balanced. With the results of the previous four elections, our elected officers are currently two male and two female. In order to be gender balanced, we must elect one male, one female, and one person of any gender.

[Tim Miller]

That goes on for another 90 seconds. I spared you the last 90 seconds, but that goes on for another 90 seconds. Is this fucking Portlandia? Like, what are we doing here? Does the DNC need like, full balance between male, female and non binary representation on every committee? Like, if there's a great non binary candidate to be the vice chair of the DNC. That's awesome. I'm fine with that. Sarah McBride, this transgender congresswoman, she seems great putting her forth. I support that. But, like, what are they doing? Like, stop obsessing over this shit. Stop. Just stop, okay? Like, you can care about representation and making sure that people are at the table without making yourself into a caricature that makes the country laugh at you. Like, the object of the DNC right now is to build a party that can take on Donald Trump and the aspiring authoritarian that. We just went over all the things that they're doing to try to make this an authoritarian country. The opposition needs to be up for that fight, not like, obsessing over which committee has the right number of non binary Native Americans. Okay, we gotta stop.

[Will Saletan]

Okay, okay, Tim. Yes, but what do you do about the fact that that's bullshit? What do you do about the fact that the OCD level obsession with non binary, you know, two of this and one of that and three of that.

[Tim Miller]

Okay, Like Noah's Arc here.

[Will Saletan]

It's absurd.

[Tim Miller]

We need two of every race and gender, you know, two of every sexual identity. We need two intersex, two bisexuals. We need two of everything.

[Will Saletan]

Right, okay, that's all ridiculous. But it's niche, right? It's like this. It's not the essence of the party, but Repub managed to take that wherever it exists and make it look like that's the essence of the party.

[Tim Miller]

That is not true though, Will. It is the essence of the party. Was Jamie Harrison up there talking about how we need to make sure that there's a vice chair that didn't go to college or that there's a vice chair from communities that have been hollowed out by the economic crisis? I don't fucking know. You show people what you care about by what you talk about. Like, that's how you show people what you care about. And the Democrats over and over show people what they care about is identity politics. Making, you know, making sure everybody has, you know, a seat at the table. They just. I'm sorry. Like that is that, Is it like the Republicans don't do this. Like they don't have this happening at their meetings and people notice that there's.

[Will Saletan]

There's crazy stuff that happens at Republican meetings.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah, of course. Yeah, of course. There's other crazy shit that the Republicans. Republicans have plenty of baggage that they have to carry.

[Will Saletan]

Yeah.

[Tim Miller]

Why? What is the value of this?

[Will Saletan]

Okay, but you've picked out that procedural vote, that 90 seconds or two minutes of Jaime Harrison. Okay, that's stupid. But like, no, in reality, they did talk about a lot of economic issues. It's just that. That doesn't get the attention. Maybe people think it's like exotic, you know, and so it gets more news when they talk about, you know, three non binary whatevers that have to be on the committee.

[Tim Miller]

I'm sorry, you don't think that that's happening in meetings at Democratic hq, that there are people in private like, trying to discuss on the of, like, oh, we gotta make sure that we're representing. I do think it is impacting their strategy. I don't think that there's anybody in these rooms that are working class Americans that did not go to fucking fancy schools. Like, I just don't think there is. I think that the rooms are full of people that like, care about this, like, campus politics shit. Like, on balance I don't think that's true.

[Will Saletan]

I don't think. I mean, if you, like you mentioned fai, Shakir, he was talking about the whole Bernie campaign, right?

[Tim Miller]

He was the last person he went and he entered the race at the end because he was like, somebody has to talk different.

[Will Saletan]

Let me put in a plug for one guy who was at that thing and didn't win. Martin O'Malley, the former governor of Maryland. Right. He was in that and he was really good. He wasn't gonna win. Didn't win, but he's a really good spokesman for the party. He's very good at being on message and his message is about working people and basic material issues that they care about. But the question that your comments raised for me, Tim, is do you think that if the Democrats talk at all about transgender about this and that group in the rainbow about two of this and three and that at any point in a two hour forum that that is gonna void everything they say about economics?

[Tim Miller]

No, they can talk about it in a way that's normal. Like, they can talk about a way that normal people talk about shit. Like if you wanted to say at that forum, like it is outrageous that Donald Trump is kicking out of the military people that are transgender that volunteered to serve and that this fucking keyboard jockey that like, that ducked the military because he had fake bone spurs in his feet is now trying to tell a patriotic transgender American that they have to be kicked out of the military to appease some like 22 year old racists on Reddit. Great. Say that have passion in your gut for protecting people and for defending people. But like, don't just like, talk about how, oh, oh, you know, we need to make sure that the AANHPI committee has enough influence. And is that the, like, you know what I mean? Like, there's ways to talk about it that they, how they talk about it on Portlandia and there are ways to talk about protecting trans people in the way that they would talk about it at a dinner table in America.

[Will Saletan]

Yeah, Tim, I'd love to believe that. I just haven't seen it yet. And I would put it to you and you tell me whether I'm wrong, that what you just said about kicking transgender people out of the military, it's better than what Jamie Harrison said. But I'm betting you that Trump and his people would just take what you said and make an ad repeating the same message that Democrats, because Democrats care about transgender people. They don't. They, them, they don't care about you. And it would have the Same effect, maybe.

[Tim Miller]

I don't know. I don't know. But it would be fine for me if I felt like they were at least doing their best. I want them to defend people. Marginalized people should be defended. What I don't want is stupid tokenism because they think that it's helping people when it's actually just hurting them. Final thing, very important topic. Luka Doncic got traded to the LA Lakers, which is a madness for anybody who pays attention to the NBA. At the worst, you could say is the fourth best player in the NBA. He might be the second best player in the NBA. They trade him to the fucking Lakers, who always get the best people for Anthony Davis, who's always hurt. I don't understand it. I feel like we are. It's rigged. The NBA is rigged. They're upset about the ratings. Or maybe Miriam Adelson, who's the new owner of Dallas, maybe there's. Maybe she is, like, sabotaging the team. This is like, what was that movie, Major League where the owner was trying to sabotage the team. Maybe she's trying to sabotage the team because Mark Cuban used to be the owner and he's woke now. I don't know.

[Will Saletan]

So just a little context here. You are a Denver Nuggets fan, I'm a Houston Rockets fan. So what we have here is a couple of not small market, but smaller market fans complaining about what? First of all, why the hell the Lakers always get these people, right? Like, it's, it's, yeah, why the Lakers don't need this. They've got how many championships in their history, right? It's, it's obscene, right? And this is so dumb, this Luca trade. I was like, you know, the tariffs might only be the second dumbest thing anybody's done this weekend. Because the deal in the NBA is here's how the NBA cap works, people. You can only put five guys on the court, right? If you've got one of those people who, like you can put it in the game in the fourth quarter and just say, win the game for us, if you've got one. And, and who has to be guarded by two other people and to be stopped at a minimum, you, you never give that person up, right? If you've got a Luka Doncic, you never give them up. And you will trade anybody else to get them because you can replace all the lower level players. You can't replace the James hardens, the LeBrons, the Doncic, right? Everybody in the league, Denver would have liked to get him. Houston would have liked to get him.

[Tim Miller]

We will.

[Will Saletan]

Everybody would like to get him. Why the hell the Lakers get him is just, it's a moral outrage. It's wrong.

[Tim Miller]

It is wrong and it doesn't make any sense. It's horrible for the Mavericks long term. So I don't know why they would do it for their franchise. It might make them a little bit better this year, weirdly, just because Luke has been hurt. But it's outrageous. It certainly would be the second dumbest thing to the tariffs if it wasn't for this little piece of breaking news I got for you. The president of Mexico, Claudia Scheidenbaum, says that she has reached an agreement with Trump to delay the tariff by up to a month. So it will rise to the first dumbest move, the LUCA trade over the tariffs. If the Canada tariffs also get delayed a month after Trump talks to Trudeau, who knows? But that's the state of play on our very stable economy with our very stable genius president. So will Saletan, do you have any final thoughts on that?

[Will Saletan]

No, I like that's fascinating to me that that Trump managed to bluff his way all the way to the like the day before the tariffs go into effect and then pull the chair. But you know, I guess that's going to be standard practice for the next four years.

[Tim Miller]

What a joy. All right, Will Salatin, thanks so much. Up next, Scott Lince, I'm sure you know somebody out there who's been a victim of identity theft or had that credit card stolen or been stalked or doxed. This day and age, making sure that your data is private is critical. As a person who exists publicly, especially someone that shares my opinions online, I'm hyper aware of safety and security. It's easier than ever for people to find personal information about me or you online. All this data hanging out there on the Internet can have actual consequences. And that's why I personally recommend Deleteme. Deleteme is a subscription service that removes your personal info from hundreds of data. Brokers sign up and provide Deleteme with exactly what information you want deleted and their experts take it from there. Delete Me isn't just a one time service. It's always working for you, constantly monitoring and removing the personal information you don't want on the Internet. So take control of your data and keep your private life private. By signing up for Deleteme now at a special discount for our listeners today, get 20% off your delete me plan when you go to JoinDeleteMe.com bulwark and use promo code bulwark at checkout. The only way to get 20% off is to go to JoinDeleteMe.com Bulwark and enter code bulwark at checkout. That's JoinDeleteMe.com Bulwark code bulwark. All right. Hey, everybody. As I mentioned at the end of the Will Salatin interview, Trump backed off of the tariff to Mexico at least for a month. It kicked back a month in exchange for I guess, 10,000 troops, Mexican troops coming to the border. So I taped the Scott Lincecum part of this interview about the trade war before that news came out. We are going to keep that in here because Scott provides a lot of really kind of interesting analysis of how this stuff works in practice. And, you know, these threats and bluffs and back offs and, you know, this whole rigmarole. We're going to be living through this for the next few years. So I think it is still very relevant to hear from Scott on what the implications are. And as I'm taping this right now, we don't know what, if anything will happen with the Canadian and China tariffs, whether we'll try to punch those back a month as well or not. So we will see what happens. And we're back with my buddy, Scott Lincecum. He's the vice president of General Economics and Trade at the Cato Institute. He's an adjunct professor at Duke Law School. He writes the Capitalism newsletter for the Dispatch, subtly titled. And he also says, I believe, is this right? You're the progenitor of the viral T shirt. Tariffs not only impose economic costs but also fail to achieve their primary policy aims and foster political dysfunction along the way. You can see why that's a popular T shirt.

[Unknown]

Yes. Well, he was a joke that I guess has increasing relevance.

[Tim Miller]

Yes. Increasing and increasing as the minutes go by. Well, I wanted to have you on as our local tariff expert to dig deep on this. The Wall Street Journal called it the stupidest trade war in history. So I'm turning to you for both the kind of the big picture. We agree that it's bad. So that part is covered. But what exactly is happening? And then kind of. We'll dig into it.

[Unknown]

Yeah. So on Saturday, the president issued three executive orders invoking a national emergency with respect to fentanyl and the importation of fentanyl from China, Canada and Mexico.

[Tim Miller]

The Canadian fentanyl emergency. I've been hearing lots about that.

[Unknown]

Correct, correct. And of course, then applying tariffs on, on imports of all goods from these three countries, 10% for China because they already had 25% tariffs on a bunch of stuff and then 25% on all imports from Canada and Mexico. Leaving aside whether there is a Canadian fentanyl crisis, there's not.

[Tim Miller]

I think we can say at the bulwark that there is not a Canadian fentanyl crisis. I mean, I guess every. Every ounce, every gram of fentanyl that comes across the border is a tragedy, as RFK would say about. But I don't think it rises to a level of crisis.

[Unknown]

Yes, well, it's. And the big point, and I think the point that I think is going to be litigated is even if you grant all of these crises, the remedy is utterly disconnected from the emergency itself. I mean, how does applying tariffs on avocados solve the fentanyl crisis? And that's the big. I think the bigger issue here is that the remedy is really damaging for the US Economy, for the United States, global reputation, whatever, however we want to call that. And I really mean that in terms of international economic agreements, because, you know, Canada and Mexico are our biggest trading partners. They have had relatively free trade with the United States since 1994 because of the North American Free Trade Agreement, which then trumped Trump, rebranded the USMCA and said it was the greatest trade deal ever. So Trump's trade deal, all of that has been thrown away, along with, of course, all of the microeconomic stuff. Right. So you have supply chains that have evolved over decades. Automotive parts will cross the US Mexico border five, six, seven times before getting put into a vehicle. And they do that again because of this free trade zone. This has been a relatively good thing for the US Economy overall. Yes, there have been discrete harms for certain workers and companies, but overall, it's been a good thing. It's allowed US Firms to compete against Asian supply chains and European supply chains by diversifying. So all of this is good. And yet Trump's going to implode all of it because of fennel. It just, it really makes no sense.

[Tim Miller]

We should get into the legal side of this and what legal remedies there are. But just to be clear on what the political side of this is, I mean, Trump acknowledged what you're saying is that there will be some disruption. He said we may have short term, some a little pain. I don't remember him saying that during the campaign, but he acknowledged yesterday that there will be pain for people. He said recently, nothing can be done to forestall tariffs. We have very big deficits, and tariffs are something that we are doing. Canada has treated us very unfairly JD Vance writes yesterday. Spare me the sob story. He's such a dick. Spare me the sob story about how Canada is our best friend. I love Canada and have many Canadian friends. Quick fact check. I find that very challenging to believe that the JD Vance has.

[Unknown]

Well, they're very nice people, but does.

[Tim Miller]

JD has friends that are Canadian? I'd like to see the evidence of that. He writes. But is the government meeting their NATO target for military spending? Are they stopping the flow of drugs into the country? I'm sick of being taken advantage of. And these guys are all over the place, right? I mean, even in their own messaging. Like the fentanyl thing is just such an obvious fig leaf, right? Like he's, like he's talking about NATO and all this other shit.

[Unknown]

And Trump was on Truth Social, bringing up the trade balances, bringing up that this is going to be a great thing for manufacturing. So, yeah, the fentanyl thing kind of disappeared within about 12 hours. Right? And I would add it's not just their words that show they understand this is going to be painful for the US Economy. It's the actions as well, because they carved out Canadian oil, so Canadian oil gets a special 10% tariff, not the full 25. Now, why would you do that if this is going to be good for the American economy? Well, you do it because in reality, it's going to raise gas prices in the Midwest because we import a ton of Canadian crude oil. We do that not because we're not energy independent or any of that nonsense. We do it because Canada makes a certain type of crude oil that goes in the refineries that are in the Midwest. And again, we have this wonderful free trade relationship with Canadians. So we stopped buying OPEC oil, we started buying Canadian heavy crude. Everybody ends up better off, or at least they did, right? So even in their actions, their formal actions, they understand that this is going to be painful. But now, of course, it's just the great covering and distraction.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah, I liked this observation by Brendan Duke. He said it was just three months ago Trump was green lighting a pipeline from Canada to own the American libs. But now he's starting a trade war with Canada because he says we import too much oil from them. Right? The whole thing is just incoherent. It betrays. He understands, or at least somebody around him understood the value of bringing Canadian oil for the very reason you said, to places where it's geographically convenient and where it works. But I guess you know that that is not as important now as the tariff. Temper tantrum.

[Unknown]

Yeah, and, and it really reveals a fundamental flaw in a lot of, kind of the protectionist mindset is that a lot of the imports from Canada and Mexico are complementary to US Production. They do not push out US Production, they actually support US production. So a huge chunk of what we import from Canada and Mexico are industrial input. So things that we put in cars or microwave oven ovens or whatever, and that allows us to make more of those things. It allows us to create cheaper gasoline. Right. So these are complementary supply chains. They are not just simply zero sum, directly competitive. And the whole protectionist idea with trade deficits and, you know, imports, bad exports, goods really fails when you understand these complementaries. Right. When you understand that production actually goes up in the United States States as imports go up. So that's a, it's a big problem for them. And I, you know, for better or worse, assuming these tariffs actually happen, I think we're going to get a lot of real world lessons in the next couple weeks of how these complementaries work in practice.

[Tim Miller]

So let's just do 101 here. All right, so the tariff, I was getting a text from a buddy last night. He's like, so who collects the tariff again? Right. I mean, like, we're just trying to, you know, remember our, you know, macro 101 from college here. So the tariff at the border, the tariff is actually collected from the importer.

[Unknown]

Yes.

[Tim Miller]

Right. So, you know, it's not, it's not as if the Canadian exporter then pays a quarter on every dollar to the US Government. The importer pays that when they bring it in, is that right?

[Unknown]

Yeah, yeah. So we talk about tariffs when we talk about legal incidents and economic incidents. Legal incidence is who pays at the border. Almost always it's the, an American importer. There are a few little exceptions, but forget about those. So a good cross the border customs basically hands you a bill. Typically you actually get the bill later, but you get the idea and then you pay it. The economic incidence is trickier. Right. Because foreign producers can in theory lower their prices to offset the tariff.

[Tim Miller]

Right.

[Unknown]

So if you used to be charging a hundred and there's a 25% tariff, you start charging, you know, 80, 80 plus 20 is, you're back to 100. Everything's good. Right. Another thing is there are currency movements. So the economic incidence is harder. Generally, though, we have a ton of recent evidence from the Trump 1.0 tariffs, and we found that the economic incidents, the burden of these tariffs was primarily falling on domestic American companies and consumers.

[Tim Miller]

How do those Economic ones get happen like the US we send them a bill like, sorry, you're fucking with us.

[Unknown]

You still get the exact same legal framework. Customs collects the duty from the importer. The only thing that changes is the import price of the good. So basically, a foreign producer can say, you know what, I'm going to lower my prices and effectively offset any additional tariff that's applied at the border. It happens occasionally, and I would imagine you're going to see some of this with these new tariffs. But in general, most of it is going to be paid by Americans. And the other thing we should note, though, is there's then an invisible tariff because tariffs don't just raise the price of imports, they raise the price of domestic goods, too. Because if you're a domestic producer, you suddenly have more demand and less competition and less supply. Less supply in the market. So we, Econ101, you raise your prices. Right, and supply and demand. Yeah. So this morning, Wall Street Journal had the most predictable headline ever, which is that US Steel makers are raising their prices right now because of these tariffs.

[Tim Miller]

Well, that'll be great for infrastructure costs and all the, you know, issues.

[Unknown]

Yeah, and great for manufacturers because you and I, I mean, I actually. I don't know about your shopping habits, Tim, but I don't go out and buy big hunks of steel.

[Tim Miller]

I don't usually.

[Unknown]

Okay, so that's main. That's all American manufacturers. So automakers, aircraft manufacturers, energy pipeline producers, you name it. These are the folks that are going to be eating these new higher prices as well as any higher import prices as well.

[Tim Miller]

Well, I love that little economics lesson. Okay, just one more time on crossing the border. I want you to do this Sesame street style. All right, so we've got, like. You're imagining it's a cartoon, I guess. Sesame street isn't a cartoon. We're. We're going to do a PBS cartoon. It's a guy from Mexico. He's driving up on his truck with avocados. He's crossing the border legally. Is the customs guy counting the avocados and giving him a bill? Like, how does that. How does that actually happen?

[Unknown]

No, it's by value. Typically by value. Sometimes they do it by weight or whatever. But most of our tariffs are what we call ad valorem. It's dumb Latin. It just means by value. So if you have a 25% tariff and you're bringing over $100 worth of avocados, you're going to get a bill at the border for 25 bucks.

[Tim Miller]

The guy shipping it in is getting the bill. But I thought the importer was supposed to be paying for it because then they just charge the importer on the back end.

[Unknown]

They charge the importer?

[Tim Miller]

Yeah. Okay.

[Unknown]

That's actually a really important point. Mexico isn't launching avocados across the border. These are. I mean, not yet.

[Tim Miller]

It'd be kind of awesome. I talked to some mad Canadians last night. So there might be some maple syrup getting chucked across the border.

[Unknown]

Almost all trade has a willing consumer on the other end, an importer. So think of a company like Walmart. Walmart is buying from a seller in China or Japan or wherever Mexico. And when the boat arrives with Walmart's purchases, Walmart is then actually taking possession of those at the border. And it's not a guy with avocados from Mexico. It's actually. They're shipping it. Walmart's taking possession and that's when they're paying the bill to customs.

[Tim Miller]

So you kind of mentioned this, but what about just the broader structural supply chain challenges? Right. Like, because if you're immense. Yeah. Automaker. Some of this stuff's coming from China, China, through Mexico to the US or in. Right.

[Unknown]

Like so just last week on Cato, my RA and I did a blog post on the automotive sector in North American automotive supply chain. And we had this nice little map that we showed a single product because Bloomberg went out good for them. They actually tracked a single product that crossed the border several times to go into a car seat. So in the olden days. So pre these executive orders that that widget, it was a capacitor, could actually cross the US Mexico border the five times that it did end up in a car seat and have zero tariffs applied. This time it's going to get tariffed every single time it crosses the border.

[Tim Miller]

Why was it going across five times?

[Unknown]

Comparative advantage. So you have certain factories in the United States are good at. At certain things like creating circuit boards. So they.

[Tim Miller]

It's a complex widget. It has a couple different parts.

[Will Saletan]

Yeah, a lot.

[Unknown]

So it gets put into another thing that gets put into another thing. So engines are another example of this. They start out as an engine block. They keep getting more stuff added to them. So there is a little buried provision in both of the Canada and Mexico executive orders. Not to get too wonky on you, that is barring what we call duty drawbacks, this is a system that effectively allows importers to not pay duties if they're exporting the same thing they just imported. So let's say you you import an avocado, you make guacamole, you put that in a container and you export the guacamole, you can actually get a refund on the tariff you paid on the avocado. We call that duty drawback. Makes perfect sense because it's not actually entering the United States for consumption. You're actually just processing it. And we want to get that processing value. Right. So that's normal.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah, sure.

[Unknown]

They removed duty drawbacks. So I've heard from several people who are in these supply chains who are like, what, what the heck? What are we even going to do?

[Tim Miller]

We can say, what the fuck here? But, you know, you have children, I.

[Unknown]

Got a kid, yeah, you know, I'm all sanitized. So we have this question of compounding tariffs. So if you go back to the automotive example, you could have a good. That gets a tariff as its starting point, gets incorporated into something, crosses again, gets another tariff, crosses again, gets another tariff. By the end of it, you actually, because your tariffs apply, this is, sorry, really wonky to the gross value of the product. That means they don't apply to just the value you've added to a product in a certain place. So let's go back to our guacamole example. Even though the guacamole part of it is only half of the avocado is half of the cost, the guacamole is the half of the cost. Tariffs don't do that. They don't say, oh, we're only going to tariff the additional stuff you did. They just give you the full 100% of the new value of the product. Right. So you're effectively because of this system, which makes sense. It's hard to determine value add at the border. Nobody's going to do that. So because of the system though, you can end up with tariffs that are just kind of exponentially increasing because these things cross the border so many times.

[Tim Miller]

Well, that's going to do good things for prices. I think. The other funny thing I saw about this, two more funny things I want to share with you. One was they've removed the de minimis exception.

[Unknown]

Yes.

[Tim Miller]

And so this was like if a Canadian grandma wants to send her American, you know, wants to send a gift, right. To her grandchild who now lives in Austin. She like has got it. They got to pay a tariff on that now, I guess we're going to have external revenue Service people like 20 year olds Elon hires from, from, you know, the Reddit message board, I guess is going to be going through the Mail to figure out if there are any tariffs that need to happen.

[Unknown]

Now, this is another one of those kind of hugely underreported things. So the de minimis exception does have, have raised some concerns, right? Because effectively, after the China tariffs were applied, a bunch of manufacturers realized they could set up warehouses in Mexico and Canada and bring in small shipments from China, storm in the warehouse and then send to the United States duty free. Right. Because they're small dollar value. So there are needs for reforms. But by simply banning all de minimis shipments, you're actually hitting a lot of perfectly legal trade and a lot of stuff like you said, like grandma's cookies from Canada. But the other big point is I don't know how customs is actually going to enforce this. So some people look, because de minimis reform has been a thing that has been discussed for years now because of the kind of Sheehan and Temu taking advantage of this system, which, by the way, again, just to be clear, was never a problem until we had all these tariffs in place. Right.

[Tim Miller]

I just think we're going to take all the people from USAID and we're going to make them, we're going to make them border agents.

[Unknown]

Well, this is, this is what we're getting at. 30,000 new customs agents or more customs officials have said to Congress and whatever the amount of resources it would need to actually inspect individual de minimis shipments is outrageous. Just, it's crazy. They do inspect, they do a sampling system, they scan them, they do everything they can. But, but there's been this, I mean, we're talking about, I seem to remember, 4 million parcels a day crossing via the de minimis exception. Now, now, again, I'll just put on my libertarian free trader hat and say maybe it was actually better to have bulk shipments coming directly from China than having 4 million packages sent across from Mexico. But sorry, your tariffs have caused this, this big mess.

[Tim Miller]

I also like this from Chuck Grassley this morning. He's trying to blame Biden. Of course, Biden inflation increased the input cost to farmers by 20%, including particularly the high prices on fertilizer. So I plead with President Trump to exempt potash from the tariff because family farmers get most of our potash from Canada. I was wondering if that was a typo because Chuck Grassy does a lot of typos. I'm not a farm boy. I'm from the suburbs. But my farm husband informs me that potash is, is a real thing. Yes. And it's in fertilizer. Correct. And that's a big problem. So now we have individual centers begging Mr. Trump for mercy, for random, random products.

[Unknown]

So this is tariffs 101, right? Tariffs, when you apply them to an input, fertilizer is an input, it's going to harm your downstream producers. Farmers are downstream producers. And tariffs always lead to cronyism and lobbying because everybody wants an exception or exemption or they want their own tariffs.

[Tim Miller]

And I think we found the feature for the well, for sure.

[Unknown]

Well, the last time Trump implemented a bunch of tariffs, there was an exemption process through both Commerce Department and ustr. And then a bunch of enterprising economists went back and looked, and they found that you actually had a much better likelihood of getting your exemption if you donated to Republican candidates and hired a lobbyist who had connections to the Trump administration. So, so this is DC 101, right, man.

[Tim Miller]

But Sheinbaum and Trudeau are trying to counteract that by targeting red state businesses.

[Unknown]

Yes. And that's also trade 101. Right. So retaliation is almost inevitable because politicians in these other places can't look weak to their own domestic constituents. Right. You can't just look like a patsy to Donald Trump. You understand that import tariffs are going to be costly because you're not a mercantilist like Donald Trump. You actually understand this could be painful, but you have to do it because you need to get reelected or you, you know, there's national solidarity, all that kind of stuff. And you can actually, apparently the Canadians are really pissed right now.

[Tim Miller]

I did a whole segment on YouTube with our Canadian pal JJ that people can go find. We'll put the link in the show notes. And it's, you know, they're hot. They're hot under the collar up there.

[Unknown]

And, you know, Canadians are like the nicest people ever. So, like, for them to get upset, you've done something really wrong. So going back to retaliation. So they, there's a political incentive to retaliate. There's also a strategic incentive. So if retaliate, you're basically encouraging bad behavior by the. By the initial actor. This is all game theory stuff, right? You see a lot of retaliation in this space. But how do you retaliate? Well, you don't want to just do blanket tariffs like Donald Trump did. You want to hit politically influential groups. So you're going to go after pork producers. They pork guys carry a lot of weight. So you're going to go after pork imports. You're going to go after steel imports. They went after, famously went after bourbon because of Mitch McConnell and Kentucky bourbon. So this is very standard practice. You try to do these targeted hits.

[Tim Miller]

Well, that's a shame. And you, so finally, you see, you wrote this one. You think the impact here, if they actually go through with it, could be biggest one year tax increase ever.

[Unknown]

Yeah, $350 billion right off the top. Right. And, and I would add, even if this all goes away tonight, I think this may be a good place to close. There are still reasons to expect this to be damaging in the long term, because the United States today has effectively abrogated its free trade agreement commitments with its closest trading partners and has done it in a way that is just clearly absurd and damaging. And so if you are a foreign government official and you are looking to increase economic integration, and you have on the one hand, China, Xi Jinping, total pain in the butt, lots of problems with China's economic models and human rights compared to what you just got with Donald Trump and the United States. The calculus has changed. And I think that this is going to do long term damage to government's willingness to increase integration with the United States. And that just means slower growth, less competitiveness for the US Economy, onward and onward. And I would note as one of our adjuncts posted over the weekend, it also could come back to bite us when there's another global crisis because governments tend to work together, whether it's through public health or monetary policy or whatever, and trade agreement partners tend to do the best when it comes to working together in these things. But now we're bas destroying those relationships in real time.

[Tim Miller]

Now that's a good place to end. Thanks to Will Salatin, Scott Lincecombe, everybody else, we'll see you back here tomorrow. Peace.

[D]

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[Tim Miller]

A buffalo the Borg podcast is produced by Katie Cooper with audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown.