Transcript
David Pakman (0:07)
Welcome to the show, everybody. Trump has folded on tariffs. Or has he? Maybe temporarily or not. So, listen, I'm going to report to you what we know as of this moment, with the caveat that this is so erratic, this is so unhinged, this is so based on Trump's politics of personal grievance, Right, rather than economic stability, that by the time you listen to this, this may have completely changed. But that really is the broader story. Whatever I report to you now, and I will tell you in a moment, the fact that this is all based not on what is best for your checkbook or my wallet or her pocketbook or, you know, whatever their 401k accounts, this, that makes this, by its nature erratic, unhinged, and a very bad thing for the United States. So here's the latest. All right, White House pauses tariffs on some Canadian and Mexican imports until April 2nd. This is a report from CNBC. And here's what we know as of this moment. Trump granted temporary tariff exemptions for Canadian and Mexican goods covered by the North American Trade agreement, known as USMCA, until April 2. So temporary only for goods covered by that agreement and only until April 2. Trump is poised to enact reciprocal tariffs April 2 on foreign nations that have import taxes on U.S. goods. Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum said Mexico should be spared when US Reciprocal tariffs come into effect. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said his goal remains to get all tariffs removed, and his government is having discussions about possibly delaying a second wave of retaliatory tariffs against the U.S. trump spoke to Trudeau Wednesday, told him what he's doing is not good enough. We covered that yesterday. Thursday's tariff exceptions excluded those imposed on China. The country is standing tough, saying it's prepared to fight any type of war with the United States. If you asked me the question, what do I expect on April 3, the tariff situation to be, my answer is I have absolutely no damn clue. And the fact that I have no idea, and maybe Trump does have an idea or he doesn't, we don't know. But the fact that I have no idea and the markets have no idea and employers have no idea and suppliers have no idea and travelers have no idea and business owners have no idea, that is core to financial instability. Now, yesterday, the stock market, you know, it was very up and down, but it was a recovery day initially, and then it collapsed, and then it went back up, and then it was down 500 points. You might be saying to yourself, if Trump's plan was become the arsonist, who puts the fire out to then get credit and say, why isn't everybody praising me for putting out the fire? Well, you started the fire. If the idea was Trump's going to create all of this craziness in order to then end it and have the stock market recover and make himself the savior. It's early. It doesn't seem like that is working because it is such a level of instability and unpredictability that putting the tariffs on was bad for the stock market and then pausing the tariffs didn't seem to help the stock market because no one has any idea what it is that is going on and what there is to expect. If we zoom out and go back to my idea from Wednesday, is all of this meant to hurt the economy temporarily? To allow the billionaire robber barons to come in and buy up assets cheaply to then profit on them? Even if that is the plan, and we don't know if it is, and it very well may be, even if that is the plan, it also doesn't seem as though the stock market and other markets are reacting in the way Trump would want them to react. So whatever his plan is, we don't know if he has a plan. The theme here is erratic, egomaniacal, self centered instability. And that is not good. And you know how we can tell that the country doesn't think it's good? Trump's approval rating, which I want to talk about next. Donald Trump's approval rating has gone negative for the first time during this second president presidential term. And this is a major problem for Trump and maybe even more so, it's a major problem for Republicans other than Trump. Didn't take long, did it? Just over a month into his second term, Donald Trump's approval rating has officially flipped negative according to 538. What this means is that more Americans disapprove of the job that Trump is doing rather than approve. This is the first time this has been the case during this second term. And if history is any indication, that is not a number that is likely to bounce back. Let me explain. Approval ratings for presidents in the modern Partizan era only decline and I've spoken about why before. There are many voters who default to the position of I approve until the president does one thing I don't like and then I'm gone. And then when that happens, there's no way to get those folks back. And we saw this with Biden. We saw it in Trump's first term. We saw it under a former president, Barack Obama. Obama. Once the president has done something you don't like, even if they come back and do a bunch of things you do like, people tend to say, overall, I disapprove. Now, what are the exceptions? Well, the exceptions are dangerous. George W. Bush and 9 11. George W. Bush's approval rating was cratering, and then 911 happened, and then he had record high approval, which he, of course, ultimately squandered again with the Patriot act and warrantless surveillance, the Iraq war, on and on. But the point is the sorts of events that in the modern political era significantly boost your approval rating more than a point or two. Right. Are the sorts of events that can be very dangerous if presidents start to get ideas. This brings us back to last week. Would Trump allow a terrorist attack to happen if he thought it would benefit him politically? Let's put that aside for a moment. Now go back to the numbers. Trump's approval was just barely in the green by like 0.1%. More people approving than disapproving. And then the tide turned. Trump is now completely underwater. It's a short, it's a brief, a small shift, but it puts Trump underwater. This came on the news of the tariffs taking effect. It immediately hit consumers. The stock market took a dive. Later that night, Trump gave the joint address to Congress, which was relatively well received by those who watched it. But the audience was overwhelmingly Republicans. And at a national level, it was not so well received. So what do we think is next and what do we think this is all about? If you look at Trump's first term, his approval turned negative by day 15. So negative approval, underwater approval doesn't necessarily mean that you can't hold on, but this is where it starts to become potentially a problem for other Republicans because they do have other campaigns to run and they need to manage the optics of am I too closely associated with Trump or not? And they are the ones who now are going to have to figure out, do I just say nothing? Do I jump out and defend this guy who's increasingly unpopular? Do I come out and denounce him? Or do I wait until I actually have a reelection more relevant for senators rather than members of Congress? Since members of Congress always have a reelection that they're up against, this is a major issue. CNN's Harry Entin said that Trump's approval numbers overall and on the economy specifically are historically awful heading into his joint address to Congress. And it's critical to understand that in both Biden's presidency and Trump's first term, once approval went negative, they never fully recovered. What it led to for Trump was losing reelection in 2020. What it led to for Biden was ultimately coming to believe he had no chance at reelected, stepping aside, and Kamala Harris ultimately being defeated. So will Trump break that trend, or is this the start of a long, slow collapse? And then one other little wrinkle. Just as like a side note, this might be the last time we even get fivethirtyeights polling average on Trump, because ABC News is reportedly shutting down FiveThirtyEight. And if that's true, once again, if you value data over vibes, that is not a good thing to see. 538 shut down. But the numbers tell a story, which is Trump is facing an American public increasingly turning against him. And if the policies start hitting people's wallets as they already are, it probably is only going to get worse. Andrew Tate has started to focus his anger on a very popular target for people like Andrew Tate, and it is the Jews. Andrew Tate was given permission to leave Romania and come to the United States. We've since learned that now the state of Florida has opened up an investigation into Tate. He's been doing some of the media rounds, and one of the places he appeared was the Milk boys. Sorry, the Nelk boys. And in this interview, he came. Very innovative, right? He says, it is the Jews that you cannot speak badly about. You can't speak out against the Jews. And by the way, why would you be speaking out against the Jews as a group? It's sort of like, if I said, why aren't we allowed to really speak out against the blacks? You would say, do you, do you feel the need to speak out against the blacks? It's very weird. Remember that this is one of the most popular sort of major manosphere influencers right now. If you're not familiar with them, brace yourselves. This is ugly stuff. I think it's going to all shift with Trump. Like allies and geopolitics.
