David Dayen (10:23)

401Ks and they worry about it.

Sam Cedar (10:25)

What do you say to them tonight?

David Dayen (10:27)

I Brett, I say that what we are doing is we're setting the stage for long term economic growth, that we were on our way to a financial crisis. You know, I used to teach a history of financial crises and with that gigantic Government spending, it was unsustainable. You look back in 1998, you look back in 07, right before it were great that everything collapsed. So I mean, it looked great right before everything collapsed. So we have taken us off that trajectory and we are putting ourselves back onto a sound trajectory.

Sam Cedar (11:03)

Okay, we may have to listen to this again. Brett Bear is saying your tariffs have tanked the stock market. This guy saying we were on a. We were headed towards a crash. And how do you know? Because things look good. And before there was a crash, before things look good. So in this sense, where. And the reason why we're headed for a crash is because our government debt, which incidentally is absolutely in no way, in zero way helped by these tariffs. Because one of two things happens. Either we have massive inflation because people just keep buying these products and that supposedly funds the government, which of course they're going to do tax cuts, so it's all going to get offset anyways, or it's just, you know, or people don't buy these products, they try and find others, which of course there's upward pressure on those prices. Because I got news for you, there may be a couple of industries, you know, Trump threatened the car manufacturers with this, but just about in every other industry, if they know their competition is costing 50% more, guess what? They know we can raise it 5% and we're going to look like we're the good guys. So this whole theory is just bizarro play this again. Listen carefully. What he's saying. He's not responding to the question. And then he's saying the way, you know a crash is coming is it's because everything looks good.

David Dayen (12:45)

98, you look back in 07, right before it looked great that everything collapsed. So, I mean, it looked great right before everything collapsed. So we have taken us off that trajectory and we are putting ourselves back onto a sound trajectory.

Sam Cedar (13:02)

You said 10% over 10 years would be $2.5 trillion coming in. You know, you look at this list of all these countries and there's some policy decisions here. China is at 34% added to the 20% already.

David Dayen (13:16)

So that's 54% on Chinese goods.

Sam Cedar (13:19)

Are they going to come back with something big?

David Dayen (13:21)

Well, we'll see what they do. Is my, my advice to every country right now is do not retaliate. Sit back, take it in, let's see how it goes. Because if you retaliate, there will be escalation if you don't retaliate.

Sam Cedar (13:36)

Okay? This is, this is honestly like, I mean, particularly with his admit with Donald Trump, who incidentally was found civically liable for sexually assaulting a woman. It was in a court of law. I report. You decide. This guy basically saying, we are attacking all of these countries. And I would tell them, lay back, just take it in. That's what he says. Take it in. Let's see what happens now. I don't know if that's his way of trying to signal to other countries. We're doing our best to take the mad king off the ledge here, and we're hoping to roll back all this stuff. It's hard to know what he's talking about there. Guys are all panicked. They're all panicked. I don't know if they didn't think that Trump was gonna do it or if they did. I don't know. I think some of them, like they're saying, like that implies to me that what Ted Cruz is saying is, I hope these don't last forever. And this is just like a moment. But you have half the administration saying, no, this is the new status quo. Well, we will talk to David Dayen about this and more. Maybe we'll play that Howard Lutnick clip with Dayen so that we can share the laughter, the crying. First, a couple words from our sponsor. Oh, that reminds me. Left it in the fridge. Fast Growing Trees is the biggest online we got. Liquid iv. I want to just grab me one of those bottles. I think it's in the fridge. Fast Growing Trees is the biggest online nursery in the U.S. with more than 10,000 different kinds of plants and over 2 million happy customers in the U.S. i have been using fast growing trees for almost 15 years now, maybe more, actually. And then they came and decided to be advertisers here. No, I don't think they realized that I was one of their clients. Clients. Customers, I guess. And folks, one of the great things with Fast Growing trees is now that avocados are going to cost basically the amount of what a compact car did the other day. 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Easy to travel with, easy to put in your backpack for the day. Check it out. Embrace your ritual with extraordinary hydration from Liquid IV. Get 20% off your first order of Liquid IV when you go to LiquidIV.com, use the code majorityrep at checkout. That's 20% off your first order when you shop. Better hydration today using promo code majority rep@liquid I.com, check out the link in the podcast and YouTube description. Quick Break and then we'll be back with David Dayan. We are back. Sam Cedar on the Majority Report, Emma Viglin off today. Joining me now, the executive editor of the American Prospect, the co host of the podcast Organized Money, and also most importantly right now, the host of Prospects Weekly Roundup, which we are simulcasting as we speak.

David Dayen (22:05)

Indeed, indeed, your, your efforts to crush our tiny little show have not succeeded. I just, just assumed you, it's like, it's weird that you think you can control time. Like, like you're not allowed to have another Progressive Show. The 15 hours a day that you, that you post these, we are only.

Sam Cedar (22:26)

On for three hours a day.

David Dayen (22:30)

You're like Johnny Carson of the progressive blogging, blogging community here. Why did you call me and say you, I can't have a guest on 30 days before, 10 days after your show?

Sam Cedar (22:42)

It was actually 30 days after 30 and 30. That's the way we operate around 30.

David Dayen (22:47)

And 30 is the way you do it.

Sam Cedar (22:48)

Yeah, that's the way we do it. That actually you're joking. But there have been people in this space who have done, who got very, very upset just about people having a guest on.

David Dayen (22:59)

That's an old Carson thing, right? He would tell the Letterman, like, you can't have the same guest on.

Sam Cedar (23:06)

Yeah, well, we don't, we don't have that policy here. So it's great to see you.

David Dayen (23:12)

You're a ruthless dictator. But thank you for having me. This is, I should say, yeah, we do a little one hour roundup on Friday afternoons from 12:30 to 1:30 usually. And we take questions in our YouTube chat. So questions might come out.

Sam Cedar (23:31)

Great.

David Dayen (23:32)

As we're talking about this. I'll bring them to you. And yeah, I'm happy to be here. I mean, you know, I don't get to do the Fridays.

Sam Cedar (23:42)

Well, that's why I've asked you to move. That's the only reason why I asked.

David Dayen (23:46)

You to move it, to start it.

Sam Cedar (23:48)

At one.

David Dayen (23:52)

Demanding that we change the time. That was weird. I thought we were friends.

Sam Cedar (23:56)

But anyway, that's why I had my lawyer do it and I didn't want it to impact our relationship.

David Dayen (24:01)

You can't, you can't see the lawyer imperiously standing over me right now, forcing me to do this show. But I'm very happy to be.

Sam Cedar (24:10)

Well, I'm glad that. I'm glad that we, I mean, of course, we did the same thing with our law firm where they have to give us $100 million worth of pro bono work, but.

David Dayen (24:20)

That's right. That's right.

Sam Cedar (24:22)

Let's, let's get into this. You wrote a couple of pieces. Well, there's two pieces I wanted to talk to you about. It's the last two pieces you've written, frankly, because it's basically what we've been talking about. The most recent one, no personnel is policy is what we've been talking about here for four months, since the inauguration, essentially. But let's start with the piece you wrote yesterday about the tariffs. This is we just played a clip of Scott Besant, or Bessant as I like to call him, whose explanation of the tariffs was something to the effect of like our federal debt is out of control. I guess the implication being that we're going to raise so much money from tariffs that we're going to pay money, that our federal debt is so out of control that we're probably headed for a crash. And the way that you know it is because things were going well and that often the crash is there are.

David Dayen (25:24)

Only two states of being going well or crash. And so it has he is correct. It has to be true that you're going well before the crash.

Sam Cedar (25:36)

It's literally like saying I've studied car crashes and every time before a car crash, a car was moving.

David Dayen (25:43)

So as night follows day, crash follows good times.

Sam Cedar (25:49)

And people are out there trying to first of all, like we had the media saying these are reciprocal tariffs. They're not the numbers that were presented really are not are not tariffs that are levied on the US it was they took the good the trade deficit that we had with any other country. They took the they divided that by the amount of goods. They didn't count services, which should be included within the context of trade calculations. And then just came up with a new number that looks that they said was a tariff and then we imposed tariff and they're called reciprocal.

David Dayen (26:33)

It's even worse than that because the numbers that they use display a surplus to places with places like the never like a trade surplus with the Netherlands and Hong Kong and Singapore. And that's only because they have ports. That's the reason that there's an alleged surplus of goods coming in from the US to those countries because they literally land in those countries before going out to the rest of the world. That's how they.

Sam Cedar (27:05)

I was reading that they sort of plugged it into like, GROK or something and tried to. I mean, that's.

David Dayen (27:10)

There are several AI chat bots where if you ask them what's an easy way to do tariffs, this is their answer.

Sam Cedar (27:20)

So. So they've levied these tariffs. They're going to start. Give us your take on what, what these are, because they're not really. I mean, you have written extensively as well and as excessively as anybody I know about the Biden administration's industrial policy moves through the ira, through the, the CHIPS act, and to some extent to the American Rescue act, where they're trying to build an industry in this country that.

David Dayen (27:51)

And by the way, those did include tariffs. There was tariffs on China. There were also some targeted tariffs on steel and aluminum. Some of them were carried over from the first Trump administration. And they were paired with an actual industrial strategy that allows for a transition because factories aren't magically, you know, conjured up overnight to deal with a tariff situation. They offer incentives to build. They are targeted at specific critical industries that, that are seen as advantageous for the country. And that pairing was wildly successful. We actually cracked this code during the Biden administration. Construction, manufacturing, manufacturing, construction, I should say the building of plants and facilities went through the roof after 2022's passage of the Inflation Reduction act. Those factories are starting to come online. The top five semiconductor makers in the world all have locations in the United States, the only country in the world where that's the case. And we were on our way and, you know, we ran this, this thing from Joe Biden, if you remember, at the end of his term. You know, it's kind of saying this is the, you know, this is a hinge point, is basically what he said at the end. If we follow my policies, we're going to have this strategy be fully realized. Whoops.

Sam Cedar (29:36)

I mean, not only did the Trump just issue tariffs that have nothing to do with anything really. I mean, but he also started to attack the chips, the programs from the chips in the ira just because. Yeah, because.

David Dayen (29:56)

I mean, the funny thing is that because the chips act is new, it came out in 2022, and they didn't start hiring, you know, the people who would run the program office that would determine who gets funds and monitor the progress. They didn't start hiring those people until maybe 2023, 2024. Large numbers of that office were probationary employees, and they all got fired at the beginning when the probationary employees were fired. So something like two fifths of the entire chip's office was fired.

Sam Cedar (30:30)

Great. That's good news. So, okay, so his tariffs. So Trump's tariffs are not part of an industrial policy. They almost don't even. Some people try and sell it that way. It seems like in the administration, they also sell it as a, I mean, Trump seems to sell it as a revenue generator. But this is the equivalent of saying like, you know, when, when in New York City, they raised cigarette taxes by like, I don't know, like 10 bucks. And so a pack of cigarettes now costs like, $25. The idea was to discourage smoking. If, if you raised a ton of money from this, your policy agenda failed because you didn't discourage smoking, that would. The analogy in this would be you'd create industry.

David Dayen (31:25)

Any kind of govian tax, which is the term for a tax on something you want less of, that you want to discourage, you. You cannot use those to rely. You know, those cannot be the basis for your entire revenue collection system, because if you want less of them, you're going to get less of them if it succeeds, which means you're not going to be able to fund your country.

Sam Cedar (31:50)

And it also means that there's going to be a lot of inflation because, not just because those products themselves are expensive, but if I'm paying, you know, 25% more for a shirt made in, in, well, 54% more for a shirt made in China, US shirt makers are going to say, like, we got a little bit of wiggle room here to raise our prices.

David Dayen (32:15)

Well, just to be clear, you're not going to pay 54% more on a shirt because of these tariffs. These are tariffs on the cost of an import at wholesale rates, you know, a wholesale value. And then there's, there's, you know, a markup attached to that, and then it goes out to retail, it's going to be far less than, than that in terms of what the American consumer feels. It's still going to be significant, but it's not going to be a 54% increase.

Sam Cedar (32:43)

Well, we can, we can calculate it this way. If they think that it's going to raise $600 billion a year, that's $5,000 per household in this country.

David Dayen (32:52)

Absolutely. Raise. You can absolutely use that as a benchmark. If you think, in fact, that there won't be retaliatory tariffs, if you don't think there will be fewer lower volume, I don't think there's any reason to believe. Peter Navarro's back at the envelope claim about 600 billion a year. But you know, I mean, it's still going to be significant, obviously. And when you do these across the board, you're putting tariffs on things that we don't have the capacity to build in this country that we can't build because of our climate. You can't grow bananas at scale in this country. Okay. Unless you basically clear cut Hawaii and turn it into a banana plant. Like that's about the only way.

Sam Cedar (33:38)

I just did an ad for fast growing trees. People can grow their own avocados in their apartment.

David Dayen (33:43)

So I was told about that. Do we get a cut of that now? Because we simulcast that ad.

Sam Cedar (33:48)

You'll get a, you'll get an avocado.

David Dayen (33:51)

We'll get some.

Sam Cedar (33:52)

Which far greater.

David Dayen (33:55)

I'll ask the lawyer that's here that's forcing me to do this show.

Sam Cedar (34:00)

But the idea being that there is a lot of products that we wouldn't even want to try and build the industry in this country because we don't have. It's just simply not, I don't know, like our lumber industry is about as big as it's going to get. We don't have the forest that Canada has.

David Dayen (34:19)

And more to the point, it's a question of time. Right. So, you know, there is a world in which tariffs and then incentives can create a situation where we have a successful reindustrialization strategy, but takes probably three, four years to build those factories. And imposing the tariffs immediately and not phasing them in, it's going to create this near term economic pain. The truth is, is that we have a, we have an economy that's too financialized. It's based on services primarily. It's, you know, we, we've hollowed out our industrial base to the extent that it's somewhat of a national security problem. All of these are true, but we actually figured out how to deal with that.

Sam Cedar (35:16)

Right. It's an industrial policy which tariffs is a part of this. Blanket tariffs is exactly not how you would do it.

David Dayen (35:23)

But we were getting to the point, which is, I don't think it's even worth calling these tariffs. They're illegitimately derived. They are nonsensical in their execution. One thing to look out for, by the way, is that the implementation of this is going to be a mess. We don't have enough customs officials to implement these tariffs to know everything on the schedule. And there's going to be a huge backup at the ports next week is what I'm thinking. But anyway, let's set all that aside. These aren't tariffs. They are attempts to gain leverage over every country in the world, because this is the way Donald Trump operates. He has imposed a cost on every country, even ones only inhabited by penguins.

Sam Cedar (36:13)

He.

David Dayen (36:13)

And he is saying to the rest of the world, come at me, tell me what you'll give me in order for me to lift this economic pain off your country. And that might not happen tomorrow, it may not happen next week, but he thinks it's going to happen. The question is, is the United States indispensable enough that if the rest of the world kind of gangs up against them, will this actually play out? But I'm saying what's in Trump's mind is that he is a mob boss who goes to Main street and kicks in the door and says, you know, it's going to be a problem for you if you don't pay me protection money. Now, I'll give you a couple days to think about this, but you're going to have to come up with a way to, I run this street now, and you're going to have to come up with a way to figure out how to, how to compensate me. That's what's going on. That's his mentality.

Sam Cedar (37:10)

Yeah, I think that's accurate. And, you know, a good friend of the show, Guy Lawson, who has written a lot about the mobs, he said very early on, he said, this is, if you want to know how this is going to work, look at the way that, you know, organized crime is structured. But here's the thing that is unclear. What is it that he's. What's the ask? I get it. When the mob boss comes busted in through the door in your, you know, in your, in your Laundromat and says, hey, this place could burn down if I don't get 150 bucks a week or whatever it is. What's. What is he asking for? Of the, you know, the Canary Islands.

David Dayen (38:00)

I think it could be a number of different apps, and they could be geopolitical in nature. We want you to protect our interests abroad. They could be very specific, like, there's a company here that you're not letting in our cars and you need to let in our cars. So there could be a corrupt version of this where it's just forcing markets open for favored businesses. Right. It could be personal, it could be, you know, give me a billion dollars, I wouldn't put that past Donald Trump. It could be a number of things, and there's optionality to it. In Trump's mind, if you look at Besant, I wrote this six months ago, actually. If you look at Besant and what he actually believes, there was this great interview where he talks about putting every country in the world into a box. And the box is either red, yellow or green. And the green box means you don't have any tariffs or you have very low tariffs or something like that. The yellow box is you're doing something we don't like, that is. And we're going to put a higher tariff on you because you're in the yellow box. And the red box is even worse. That's, that's, you know, we're going to really mess with your economy and you can negotiate with us to move boxes, to move into the yellow box, move into the green box. But this is where we're going to situate you right now. And I see Liberation Day as the, you know, moving of countries into boxes. And now we'll see if they can climb their way out of them.

Sam Cedar (39:43)

If they, if the countries decide to climb their way out of them. Or basically just say, we will start to reorient in a different direction.

David Dayen (39:52)

Right. That'll take time and it'll be painful. Or, you know, the shortcut to that is, oh, yeah, you put tariffs on us, we'll put tariffs on you, and that becomes a trade war, which is really bad for citizens. But it's kind of a geopolitical power play and we're caught up on it.

Sam Cedar (40:15)

I mean, we're seeing that supposedly, I think it just was breaking this morning that China is issuing tariffs against them. We're going to see this with the farmers. And so are we going to just see. We just start to see the Trump administration now bail out the different industries that are to shore up like our end of this trade war.

David Dayen (40:39)

And he did that, he did that in his first term. You know, he used like, he used a Roosevelt era program to just give cash to farmers who were having various difficulties, particularly during COVID He just gave like $60 billion to farmers using a Roosevelt program. It was a wild thing that was vastly underreported. I have a question from our chat, actually.

Sam Cedar (41:04)

Sure.

David Dayen (41:05)

From Jared. He's asked how is the de minimis loophole changing? Which this is actually a really interesting part of this whole thing. I don't know how familiar you are with it, but right now a billion products a year come into this country, most of them from China, most of them from e commerce companies in China like She an and Temu under what is known as the de minimis loophole and a de minimis package is characterized in this country as a package under $600. Used to be far less than that, but there was a law that was changed about 10 years ago, I believe, to raise the threshold of de minimis. Those packages come in without tariffs, without any kind of inspection. And they. It is a way that we have accelerated this sort of E commerce drop shipping direct from China to a consumer, and they come in at a lower mail rate, too, which is actually kind of funny. So none of this is reflected in the balance of trade, by the way. So, you know, whatever our trade deficit is, multiply it by a billion packages, which are allegedly under $600. We don't know what's in the package because we don't inspect them, but they're valued at less than $600. I don't know that anything is going to change with that. There was a fake crackdown that Trump did on de minimis packages about a month ago, but because of the way in which it was structured, it doesn't really change anything. And in fact, what we saw. I just talked about how the ports got clogged or where they might get clogged next. They tried to change the de minimis loophole wholesale and say, no, everything's got to be inspected, everything's got to be checked for a tariff. And within two days, there were like a million de minimis packages at the ports. And they said, forget that, just let them go. And so I don't know that this changes that. And in fact, that might be an arbitrage strategy. You know, there are countries that might say, okay, so if I give you a million dollar order, that's going to be tariff, but if I give you $10,500 orders, that's not so we're yet.

Sam Cedar (43:38)

To see how people are going to react to this businesses. I mean, is there like, let's say Trump starts to hand out waivers here and there? Because that also feels like what, you know, what people have anticipated to get either the personal favors or whatever. You know, everybody comes. Laura Loomer comes in and says, you know, she wanted, you know, a villa somewhere. And maybe, I don't know, it's not an if.

David Dayen (44:06)

By the way, the American Petroleum Institute came out the day of Liberation Day and said, hey, thank you, Donald Trump, for not including oil and gas.

Sam Cedar (44:18)

Right?

David Dayen (44:18)

Yeah.

Sam Cedar (44:18)

And he said that. We went in front of them and said, you know, give me a billion dollars and I'll save you guys. And so, bingo.

David Dayen (44:26)

And he did. He did.

Sam Cedar (44:31)

What about like the, the implications of this on the economy in the sense that like, it feels like there's a lot of companies who are not going to be able to curry favor with Trump. Maybe every country will and whatnot and maybe there won't be a trade war. That's all, I guess the, theoretically the best case scenario. But you have like the entire country sort of going, I'm hitting pause on everything right now. I'm not going to buy a car. I'm not going to do this, I'm not going to do that. That.

David Dayen (45:09)

In fact, I'd say two things. First of all, we, we actually saw a surge in that kind of durable goods purchases in oh, so people.

Sam Cedar (45:19)

So buying anticipation. Yeah, yeah.

David Dayen (45:22)

There was a lot of moving forward. In fact, you know, we had a decent jobs report here in March. And I would say that at least part of that is because consumer spending was probably higher than anticipated in March because people were expecting Liberation Day to come down the pipe. So that's number one. Number two, the best case scenario is actually this. The best case scenario is that Congress recognizes that they actually have the power to stop this. There is no inherent tariff power in the hands of the president. It's all been delegated under these emergency laws.

Sam Cedar (46:02)

Wasn't it delegated also through the, the, the dirty continuing resolution? Didn't that also sort of like there.

David Dayen (46:10)

Was, there was a question of whether or not in the, in the continuing resolution, at least in the House, whether or not they could, you know, disapprove of certain tariffs or things like that. But rules are made to be broken. I mean, you can't really bind a future Congress. You can't bind.

Sam Cedar (46:29)

They did it as a political matter to give them cover.

David Dayen (46:34)

They did. But you know, the Senate already, the same day as Trump announced these tariffs, the Senate disapproved of the emergency declaration that was put on Canada for various Canadian tariffs and that passed the Senate. The Republican led Senate 5147 with four Republicans joining all the Democrats. And I think, you know, if this gets really bad and, you know, judging from where we're at with stock markets and expectations of layoffs and things like that, it really could, I think that Republicans might go ahead and think about making some changes here and they have every power to do that. And so that would be the best case scenario for a couple reasons. The biggest one would be sort of the end of this assumed dictatorial regime that we've seen over the last several months. And certainly Republicans have every political reason to defy the President on this, I mean, especially if they do it in numbers. He can't do 150 primary campaigns or however many. If they do it in sufficient numbers, it kind of ends the sort of luster of the President as the only policymaking individual in the government.

Sam Cedar (48:05)

And I would imagine, too, after Wisconsin, the, the incentive structure or the threshold window has changed a little bit for some of these Republicans because the threat of Musk and Trump seems at least somewhat diminished, at least during the midterms and whatnot. Would the President have to sign any type of legislation that came out of the House and the Senate to curb his tariffs or no?

David Dayen (48:40)

Sure. But when you're talking about something that every, every Democrat is going to pass and that Republicans will realize, well, there's only safety in numbers, then that 2/3 veto override threshold starts to become attractive.

Sam Cedar (48:58)

Let's talk about, I mean, I don't know, Wisconsin on some level in particular. And also what we saw in Florida for the most part, speak for themselves. I mean, these are huge gains in these Florida districts. Not that there's ever going to be a time where a Democrat's going to control them, but consistent with what we saw in that Pennsylvania special election. Consistent. What we saw in this Wisconsin election that is, you know, even with Musk generating, and it wasn't even so much his money, although that was a big part of it. But the, the, the earned media he had, by giving away, like, doing a lot of bribery, I don't know what you would call that for somebody who had voted. How much are we going to see? Like, what are the implications of that going to be? And then I want to also talk about the budget resolution, the reconciliation bill.

David Dayen (49:56)

Oh, great. Well, first of all, I can't believe we're talking about politics. I can't believe we're 25 minutes into the show and you haven't mentioned the poll showing AOC beating Chuck Schumer.

Sam Cedar (50:08)

I headline that I headlined with that. I had, like the beginning of the show. Are you kidding?

David Dayen (50:14)

Because that's, that's your favorite thing.

Sam Cedar (50:16)

No, I have that, I have that poll tattooed already.

David Dayen (50:19)

You got it real quick.

Sam Cedar (50:20)

Yeah, I got it tattooed right underneath here.

David Dayen (50:23)

Nice. Nice. We won't look at that.

Sam Cedar (50:26)

So, no, not, not on the simulcast. We're not giving away that for free.

David Dayen (50:31)

Hey, this is a family weekly roundup we have here. Okay. So, yeah, I mean, look at the aggregate swing of these special elections relative to the 2024 general election baseline. You look at the ones in Florida and maybe the statewide Race in Wisconsin, you're talking about something anywhere between 12 and even. 22 points, I think is the number. So, you know, let's say it's even half that. Like, let's say it's half of the midpoint of that. You got a, you got an eight point swing or seven, six, seven, eight point swing, something like that. That puts like 60 House seats in play immediately, maybe 100 if it's a swing that's closer to what we saw in these elections. And so that's got away on the minds of a non trivial number of Republican House members. And it looks, it certainly looks like the more Musk earned media there was, the worse he did. There were two statewide elections in Wisconsin, one that got all the attention, the state Supreme Court race, and one that got no attention and no money. State. No, no, no. There was another statewide individual race. It was the state Superintendent of Public Instruction race.

Sam Cedar (52:11)

I was not following that one.

David Dayen (52:13)

Right. So that one was kind of a normal midterm swing where the woman won by 5 points, the Democrat, she was an incumbent and she won by something like five points. And that had no attention. The one where Musk gave it all the attention, State Supreme Court, the Democrat wins by 10 points.

Sam Cedar (52:33)

Right.

David Dayen (52:34)

So Musk is literally a negative factor on the outcomes for his favored candidates. And he has said he's not going anywhere and he's going to double down and continue to spend. And Democrats across the country are saying thank God for that because it seems like the more exposure there is on a political level to Elon Musk, the worse his candidates do.

Sam Cedar (53:02)

And that's why there's been all those ketamine care packages being sent to D.C. indeed.

David Dayen (53:10)

Take care of the executive office building.

Sam Cedar (53:12)

You got to keep Elon Musk fueled to head out these elections. All right, let's talk about what's going on in with, with the budget resolution because, and just to explain to people.

David Dayen (53:31)

There is a way with the Schumer thing. Does this mean you're not running against Schumer, then? You're going to let AOC do it?

Sam Cedar (53:39)

Well, we'll get to that. You know, I'm not going to, I'm not going to. I'm not. It's a ways off. I'm very happy with my job now and I have no obligation, I have an obligation to fulfill these duties every day at noon to my fans. But the budget reconciliation is a way, is a very specific type of bill which only needs 50% plus one in the Senate as opposed to, you can't be Filibustered. But there are specific rules about budget reconciliation. It needs to be, it has to do with, I mean, theoretically, we haven't gotten to this part yet. Theoretically, it needs to have to do with the budget of the US Government, like inflows and outflows. And the parliamentarian traditionally makes a determination of these things. There's also, it also has to balance out.

David Dayen (54:45)

Right.

Sam Cedar (54:45)

You can't have these things under. Is it the Byrd rule that, that, that says. Or is the bird rule, the one that says you have to have.

David Dayen (54:54)

Only the bird rule is about being germane to budget matters. There are also other rules involving, yeah, neutrality in terms of revenue and, and, and spending in the out years. After the 10 year window, it all has to come together. But you know, I think what we're seeing is that a determined party can make those go away.

Sam Cedar (55:23)

Those, those rules. No, no, no, no. I can't believe that those are ironclad. Moses came down with those in the, in the tablets. Chuck Schumer has told me it was.

David Dayen (55:34)

Thou shall not kill, thou shalt not steal. And the minimum wage must be neutral after the 10 year budget.

Sam Cedar (55:42)

And the minimum wage does not impact what the government makes or not.

David Dayen (55:47)

Right.

Sam Cedar (55:48)

The House and the way it works with reconciliation, you've got to pass an overall resolution that basically gives you the parameters of spending and directs which committees.

David Dayen (55:59)

Right.

Sam Cedar (56:00)

Where they will make cuts or theoretically revenue, I guess on some level. But. And this resolution passed in the House about three weeks ago and I think or four weeks ago, too much to people's surprise, it was happening around the continuing resolution, so didn't get as much attention, but it was to people's surprise and it is now in the Senate and they are just about to pass it in the Senate. It's a Senate version and they've got to come together and reconcile these. But what. Just before we get into the details of it, and particularly the part about the baseline for the, the Trump tax cuts, what does it say to you that these resolutions passed in the way they did? Like, what does it say about the political climate that it was so easy for these things to pass?

David Dayen (56:50)

Well, I wouldn't consider it easy. I mean, by this time that it did or. Yes, yes. I mean, this time four years ago, the American rescue plan actually was law and we're still at step one of the budget resolution part of it, and I think what Republicans have sort of stumbled into as a strategy is the more decisions we can put off, the easier it's going to be to pass this shell of A budget resolution. So they, they have put in very wide parameters. They have deferred decision making, and that makes it a bit of a moving target. You can't say they're cutting Medicaid, but they're cutting 800 billion from the committee that has jurisdiction over Medicaid and would only. It would only make sense to cut 800 billion if they were cutting Medicaid. So it's a bit of a. It gives plausible deniability to those members. And then they're kind of like shading this in a way where different audiences get different messages. At one point this week, they were going to have 2 trillion or 3 trillion in cuts in the Senate committees, but only 3 billion in cuts in the House committees, which was a way to try to satisfy both constituencies until the House hardliners were like, what? This is ridiculous. What do you mean? We're only getting 3 billion of cuts? It just kind of didn't make sense. Right, but they're just sort of, you know, deferring these hard questions that inevitably they'll have to make an answer and resolve until the latest possible moment. I think that's generally how they're looking at this. And so what you have, I mean, when you read these budget resolutions, there's not a whole lot to them. It just says very vague. This committee will do this, will have a ceiling of X amount of dollars that it will reduce in spending, and this committee will have this much and et cetera, et cetera. They're very vague and they're intentionally vague. In this case, even more so than a normal budget resolution because they're trying not to inflame various factions of the Republican Party so that they will all come together and at least just advance this forward. The hard questions come later.

Sam Cedar (59:26)

And those questions are going to be like, you know, some people may not want to cut hundreds of billions from Medicaid and others are. Now, let's talk about the baseline thing, because this is the way it works generally, is that you pass a law and let's say you pass tax cuts for rich people and your name is Donald Trump, and they sunset in 2026.

David Dayen (59:53)

Let's talk about that. Because, I mean, the important thing is why do they sunset? Right? And the entire reason that they sunset is because of the budget reconciliation rules that we just talked about. So in 2017, they passed all these tax cuts they cost. I mean, I think they were scored by the CBO's congressional budget offices costing 1.5 trillion. Turns out it costs more like 2 or 3 trillion but they all end abruptly in 2025. And the reason is that outside that 10 year window, they need, everything needs to pencil out, everything needs to be neutral in terms of the budgetary impact. And so they just end them so that those, you know, very costly tax cuts don't affect the post 10 year window. So this is a game, it's been played many, many times. The Bush tax cuts expired and then they were passed and made, you know, so Donald Trump's rerunning this game and he comes in and says, I want to make these new, the tax cuts that I did in 2017, I want to make them permanent. The way to make them permanent, they've now been scored at 4 trillion over 10 years. So the only way you can make them permanent is you find $4 trillion in offsetting spending. Under the rules, the alleged rules of reconciliation, you'd have to find $4 trillion in offsetting spending was very hard to do $4 trillion outside of that window.

Sam Cedar (61:28)

Because these tax cuts will end.

David Dayen (61:31)

That's right. That's right. So, so how do you resolve this? How do you reconcile this? Well, there's two kinds of ways to look at these policies. This is almost like accounting in terms of the federal government. One way to look at it is the current law baseline. The law says these expire, therefore more revenue collection. And if you want to extend them, that will reduce that, you know, revenue collection in those years after it's expired. And so those will cost the federal government $4 trillion.

Sam Cedar (62:09)

Right, right. So if so just in other words, so like, you know, we passed these tax cuts in 2017, and if we look, let's say 20 years out, we have the tax cuts for whatever it was, eight, nine years, so less revenue, but then we have another 13 years of full revenue, as it were, and we put those monies together and that's the way we determine 20 years out what the debt or the deficit will be, you know, with other projections.

David Dayen (62:37)

That's correct. So that's the current law baseline. But then there's another way of looking at these things, and they call that the current policy baseline. In other words, our policy right now is a tax code that was put into place in 2017 by Donald Trump. So if we just extend that, the policy is the same, which means they don't cost anything because, but it's, it.

Sam Cedar (63:06)

Is basically saying, like, let's say, let's put it this way, if you moved those two decisions together in time, like it's one thing where you say, like, okay, back in 2017, we're telling you, over the course of the next 10 years, these tax cuts are going to cost $1 trillion. I'm just making up numbers, sort of what the CBO does anyways. And but if they said the next day, also we're going to extend them, and so they're going to cost $2 trillion that people like, what are you doing? But because they waited seven or eight years and just say, like, well, we're all used to this level of revenue now, so let's just assume that it's going to continue this way. And so when we're getting rid of more revenue, when we're cutting more revenue to the US Government by cutting taxes, it doesn't feel like we're getting rid of that much more revenue. Even though we said yesterday that we were including revenue that would follow after these seven or eight years or whatever it was.

David Dayen (64:07)

Yeah, that's right. And so the question is whether this would be accepted by the powers that be. The. By the parliamentarian, because this is an untested use of the parliamentarian is sort.

Sam Cedar (64:23)

Of has these supernatural powers to divine these things.

David Dayen (64:26)

And no music plays when the parliamentarian walks into a room.

Sam Cedar (64:30)

And we have heard time and time again from Democratic lawmakers that the word of the parliamentarian is that of God.

David Dayen (64:40)

Right, exactly. And so, you know, this has never been tested. They've never done this in a budget reconciliation process to use a current policy baseline. And so there was this need, of.

Sam Cedar (64:51)

Course, because it's a joke, it's ridiculous.

David Dayen (64:54)

Because it's a gimmick. So there was this meeting set up where, okay, the Republicans and the Democrats are going to come into the parliamentarian's office and make their case. And then the parliamentarian, in her infinite wisdom, would hand down a decision that would be binding on all. And then on Tuesday, Republicans canceled the meeting. They said, oh, actually, actually, what we can do is just say this isn't a decision that the parliamentarian gets to make. This is a decision that the chair of the Senate Budget Committee gets to make.

Sam Cedar (65:40)

And it's a very principled person. I'm sure that chairperson is a very principled person who would never ebb and flow based upon what, like Donald Trump says. Who is that person?

David Dayen (65:51)

Lindsey Graham.

Sam Cedar (65:52)

Oh, my gosh.

David Dayen (65:52)

Graham is the Budget Committee chair. And so Lindsey Graham can make this decision. And if Democrats object to the decision, they can just dispense with that upon a majority vote. So we don't have to listen to the parliamentarian. Now, at the same time, Republicans in the Senate are Actually saying we would never overrule the parliamentarian. That is not something we would do. Respect the parliamentarian. We respect her beliefs. She is the scorekeeper on this. We just don't have to go to her for the purpose of this. One thing that helps us by about $4 trillion.

Sam Cedar (66:33)

Wasn't there talk that the parliamentarian had to rule on whether they could bypass the parliamentarian for this? Honestly, that's. That was.

David Dayen (66:42)

I don't know about that.

Sam Cedar (66:43)

I've heard that there is a. That. That it's a parliamentary question as to whether the Senate Finance Chair gets decide. We're going to do a new accounting trick that basically works in our favor.

David Dayen (66:54)

I'm sure there's going to be a point of order along those lines that Democrats might bring up. The point is that parliamentarian. This is like the wizard of Oz when they rip off the curtain and it turns out the wizard is just a puny figure. The Republicans have decided we're not going to let the parliamentarian get in the way of our goals.

Sam Cedar (67:19)

But they also did this for the Bush tax cuts. They dismissed the parliamentary. They fired him.

David Dayen (67:24)

Yes, yes. This was a different matter. But the parliamentarian didn't allow certain elements of the Bush tax cuts go in. So what Bush did, what Republicans did, was they fired the parliamentarian and they put someone in much more favorable to their interest. And I know that if push came to shove on this matter, if they, you know, turns out they have to go back to the parliamentarian. Parliamentarian rules against this. You know, they would fire the parliamentarian and make Laura Loomer the parliamentarian. Like, there is no question that they would find a way to achieve their goals. They do not see these, you know, quaint, arcane structures of parliamentary procedure as, as, as a real obstacle.

Sam Cedar (68:17)

I have to give you a pushback on one thing. I would hate to see Laura Loomer taken off of her posts at National Security. That's true. Leave the country unsafe in that regard.

David Dayen (68:29)

I'm sure they could find someone else. We could probably brainstorm a top five parliamentarian substitutes that Donald Trump would pick.

Sam Cedar (68:36)

Cory Booker at one point during his holding the floor in the Senate, you know, prior to his fundraising bonanza, he said something to the effect of like, they're going past, you know, or Schumer's complaint. Like, hey, can you believe they're going past the. The parliamentarian? And no going back this time. Right.

David Dayen (68:59)

And the answer is, I can believe it, of course.

Sam Cedar (69:03)

Unbelievable. To me, this is, you know, to.

David Dayen (69:08)

Remark on the fact that Cory Booker does a 25 hour speech that is hailed as this, you know, the stirrings of pushback by Senate Democrats that they're finally going to approach this administration. What's happening with the proper alarm and the state of emergency that requires. And then literally two seconds after Booker gets off the floor, they ask unanimous consent to bring up a nomination and nobody objects.

Sam Cedar (69:41)

It's unbelievable. It's unbelievable. The, I will say this though. The, the anti urination technology that came out of what Booker did I think is probably going to have.

David Dayen (70:00)

Are you selling that in a live read?

Sam Cedar (70:02)

It's actually, it's a, it's a six hour digital course that we're doing.

David Dayen (70:10)

Lastly, let me ask you, there's no regulatory enforcement anymore.

Sam Cedar (70:14)

Exactly.

David Dayen (70:15)

Works in your favor.

Sam Cedar (70:18)

The, the projected revenue from tariffs. Right. Navarro is going around $600 billion. Well, how much is it possible that they will use that figure? I mean, you know, and say our tax cuts for billionaires, essentially millionaires, multi hundred thousandaires too, is offset by the $600 billion annually we anticipate bringing in from tariffs.

David Dayen (70:56)

Well, it depends on what you mean by use. So in a strictly legislative sense, Trump has already put in place the tariff structure. How would a Congress who is passing a law say we are going to offset X by doing something that's already in place. Like it doesn't make any sense. So that's like legislatively, it seems like. No, I mean, and in fact there is no tariff invocation in any of the budget reconciliation bills. However, and I think I'm going to make your point at this point rhetorically, it is absolutely the case that they are going to use this. In fact, what I suspect them to use is to call the extension of the Trump tax cuts economic stimulus. So we have destroyed the country. We have engaged in this self inflicted wound. There's a recession right now and we want to help our people. We don't want to put a $4 trillion tax increase on, on them right now at this point. So we're going to have to pass and extend these tax cuts because our people need help, our people need economic stimulus. I think rhetorically that is exactly what you're going to see.

Sam Cedar (72:26)

But do you think they're going to say either rhetorically or even, I don't know if the CBO would even like sort of consider this, but we're projecting $600 billion a year, $6 trillion over 10 years.

David Dayen (72:39)

We're doing that. That was an executive function. Like, like the legislature did not, did not do anything.

Sam Cedar (72:46)

But if they're calculating. But my point is, if they're calculating what, what revenue is going to be, they're looking at $600 billion more revenue. So that off the top, they could cut that in taxes and we'd still be revenue neutral at that point.

David Dayen (73:04)

Yes, rhetorically. Yes. The, the.

Sam Cedar (73:08)

Within the piece of this legislation, they can't do.

David Dayen (73:12)

Yeah, I think they can't use it as a literal offset, but a rhetorical offset. Yes. There is certainly a faction of the MAGA world that wants to replace the income tax with tariffs. They look at the 1890s as the golden age of America. Even in his speech on Wednesday, Donald Trump said, you know, we started the income tax and then 20 years later we had a depression. We never would have had that if we didn't have an income tax. And we kept doing tariffs. This is completely historical and it's putting, you know, three things together. It's like, you know, I wouldn't have fallen off that bicycle if I didn't have a smoothie in the morning.

Sam Cedar (74:01)

Every crash has come after a car is driving.

David Dayen (74:05)

So it's putting wildly disparate things together. But yes, this is a goal. And of course, what do you do when you replace a progressive income tax with a tariff, which is essentially a flat tax? It's regressive on all goods. It's a regressive. It is a boon to the rich by any dollar that goes away from the progressive tax system and into tariff collection is a boon for the wealthiest people in this country.

Sam Cedar (74:41)

A flat tax is a regressive tax. If, if it's going to cost every. I mean, just use Peter Navarro's numbers. If it's going to, if they're going to generate $600 billion, that's $5,000 per family in the country. If I make $40,000 a year, that is a, you know, whatever. It is essentially a 9% tax.

David Dayen (75:03)

So what you're saying is, what you're saying is the majority report empire will be relatively unaffected by this tariffs because you're just making money. Handover fizz.

Sam Cedar (75:14)

The money is coming in here that 5%.

David Dayen (75:16)

Tiny YouTube shows like myself will be devastated by these tariffs. This is, this is the power relationship.

Sam Cedar (75:26)

Yes, but the point is that money is headed upward. Like this is. This is a point that I think, like, just like broad strokes, government is always redistributing money. Every single, every single thing the government does redistributes money. And if you impose a tariff that is regressive by its very nature, a flat tax is regressive. You know, because costs a lot less as a percentage of the wealth and the income of somebody making a million dollars a year or $10 million a year or $50 million a year than it does if someone's making 40,000 or 60,000 or 70,000. And you're offsetting it, at least rhetorically or at least the way you're selling it, at least the way that, you know, lawmakers are going and justifying it by giving taxes, tax cuts to super wealthy people. This is just like a, like a direct pipeline of the money from basically 90% of the country to the top 1%.

David Dayen (76:29)

Absolutely. And I think the way that people are talking about this, even the way that some progressives, I think are talking about this as a failed industrial strategy or yes, we agree that tariffs are a tool in industrial policy and if they're combined with other things and very targeted, that we can, in fact, you know, bring back jobs and all, it's all bunk. This is about replacing one tax system with another in ways that protect the rich. And, you know, I mean, certainly you probably have a lot of rich people crying right now because their investments are not doing so well. But on the other side, if they take the pain, you know, which, that's another theme that Trump's putting forward, that it'll be some short term pain, the gain of this mass, this great replacement, if you will, is to benefit the.

Sam Cedar (77:25)

Tax structures of the very rich at the very least. It's all just like either a cover for these massive tax cuts or a way of just putting that obligation on.

David Dayen (77:40)

And I think, by the way, just because I'm saying it's rhetorical rather than specifically legislative, doesn't mean, I don't think it's powerful. Like, I think the rhetoric might in fact even work, especially if we are seeing ourselves in an economic downturn in six months, the attraction of, oh, we can just extend these tax cuts, not hurt our people more. Like all of those things are going to weigh on certain Democrats. I think that's absolutely true. To the extent that you can maybe even get 60 votes for it, where you don't have to worry about these parliamentary games. I absolutely think that they're, you know, I don't know that it's a considered strategy, but Republicans are going to capitalize on the fact that there's an economic downturn which they created. Right, to, to pass a bunch of tax cuts. Because, you know, think about what the stimulus was under Bush in 2008. It was tax cuts. And to an extent, in 2020, you know, the economic payments, they were just a bunch of tax cuts.

Sam Cedar (78:41)

So I mean even Obama's stimulus was making 1/3 tax cuts at least.

David Dayen (78:50)

All right, I have a question in our chat from Waldo. Can blue states bypass the tariffs as Newsom stated? I have not seen what Gavin Newsom has said there. I think that would be rather difficult without sort of commandeering the ports and the U.S. customs and Border Protection. I see little way that these tariffs can be circumvented at the state level. There is no question that there will be attempts to circumvent these tariffs from a country level standpoint. One great case in point is that the EU tax cuts or the EU tariff is something like 20% but the UK tariff is 10%. Now Ireland part of the EU, but Northern Ireland is part of the UK. So if I was an Irish exporter, I would certainly shuttle all my stuff up to Belfast and then send it out that way and save myself 10% on the tariff.

Sam Cedar (80:00)

Gotta use Trump trucks though that I'm in the trucking business now.

David Dayen (80:05)

I'm being told that, that what Newsom has said is he's directed California to pursue strategic relationships with countries announcing retaliatory tariffs against the US urging them to exclude California made products from those. Those tariffs. I see, you know, it's sort of a parallel.

Sam Cedar (80:25)

We saw that with Canada. Canada did that when there was were tariffs. They targeted bourbon to get Mitch McConnell essentially upset and pressure Trump in that instance. And this is sort of the reverse. Go ahead. How do we lose his audio? Hold on, we can't hear.

David Dayen (81:10)

Sorry, we had a technical difficulty.

Sam Cedar (81:12)

Well, I mean this is like, you know, we're not used to dealing with smaller shows like barely that kind of technology.

David Dayen (81:18)

So I can barely afford the basic tools because I'm being crushed by a monopolist who thinks that 12pm to 3pm they own for some reason.

Sam Cedar (81:29)

There you go. Well, that's why you're not that nobody's selling you a proper microphone because of our monopsony in the microphone business between.

David Dayen (81:40)

12 and 3 I've tried to make the purchases and they say, look, Sam said I can't sell to you. And I think that's, I mean it's a good strategy for you. I'm not saying not to do it.

Sam Cedar (81:52)

But I learned it. I learned it from, for the rest of us, I learned it from stuff I probably read that you wrote about monopsonies. It's just that it was also a recipe for, for it to be reading it.

David Dayen (82:05)

You're saying, oh, this is Horrible. We need to make policy changes. But also, let me, let me take some notes here.

Sam Cedar (82:10)

That's exactly what happened. Yeah, exactly what happened. All right, let's take a look at this because we've been talking about how problematic these sort of imposed tariffs are going to be. All the downturn in our economy that, but we're not talking about any of the positives. So let's talk, let's hear this clip from Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick who is expressing what, like how, how, how this is going to usher in a new, more beneficial age for all of us. And of course, just reminder, this is the same guy who said his grandmother or no, his mother in law wouldn't care, would not care if her Social Security checks did not show up. And of course she lives in his mansion with him. But there it is. Okay, here's Howard Lutnick on with Jesse Waters explaining how great this is going to be.

David Dayen (83:12)

All right, not going to have all factories come back like clothing manufacturing.

Sam Cedar (83:17)

That's tough to bring back.

David Dayen (83:18)

But what kind of manufacturing are you talking about returning here?

Sam Cedar (83:23)

Well, don't, you can't just give that away. See, what's going to happen is robotics are going to replace the cheap labor that we've seen all across the world. I mean, think of what our factories did. They went to the cheapest labor in the whole world, slave labor, cheap labor, the worst environmental conditions, polluting the heck out of it. And then we bring back those cheap products here and we feel good about ourselves because we don't see the pain. But the pain is in our workers. The American workers have been given the raw deal. And what's going to happen now is we're going to build factories and we're going to train and we're going to have tradecraft. We're going to do the greatest set of training ever. And our high school educated people, they're going to train to do robotics mechanics. It's kind of like a supercharged BMW mechanic, you know, like you just can fix those robots. You can build air conditioning as an example. But that's for a fab or for a semiconductor factory.

David Dayen (84:19)

These are great paying jobs that are Americans.

Sam Cedar (84:22)

We're going to have 5 million of those jobs coming. And America is going to retool, it's going to do manufacturing and robotics can sew as well. You've never seen anything like what. You're going to see the renaissance of American manufacturing coming because Donald Trump is bringing him back. He's driving him back $6 trillion. He said today he's got committed to America. It's unbelievable. It really is unbelievable.

David Dayen (84:47)

It is unbelievable in that it cannot be believed.

Sam Cedar (84:52)

So how long do you think it's going to take before we get 5 million jobs from high school students who are going to be trained to repair the robotic factories that are producing all of our clothing?

David Dayen (85:06)

Yeah, it's a, it's a nation of, of robot mechanics. Is, is what we're going to be.

Sam Cedar (85:12)

I mean, that is the best case scenario. How long? That's, I mean, that's what he's selling as our sort of nirvana. But it also, because I think he.

David Dayen (85:21)

Like, as a couple of years off from that.

Sam Cedar (85:25)

Do you think, do you think that will happen within 18 months or 36 months?

David Dayen (85:30)

It was interesting because I think as he launched into that, he realized the huge error that he made. He's like, oh, well, you know, we can take all these factories back because they're not going to have any people in them. Oh, wait, if they don't have any people in them, then this isn't the value of this. But we're going to like, fix the robots that are going to make all the things. So that'll get us 5 million jobs. Right.

Sam Cedar (85:55)

How many, how many robot fixers do you think would be working?

David Dayen (85:59)

What does the robot fixing industry look like? And why fix them? Like, why can't, if the robots can sew and they can do all these other things, why can't they fix the robots?

Sam Cedar (86:10)

Well, but then there's going to be another person fixing the robots that fix the robots.

David Dayen (86:15)

That's right.

Sam Cedar (86:16)

So we're going to move. It's going to be an evolution here. And believe me, it's going to be painful when we move from robot fixer to robot fixer. Robot fixer, fixer.

David Dayen (86:28)

Right.

Sam Cedar (86:28)

That is going to be one of the more painful transitions that we'll be making.

David Dayen (86:32)

But it will be just, it'll be.

Sam Cedar (86:34)

Just, it'll be environment because the, the, the Trump administration is very concerned about the environment and that's what is going on here. I mean, this is, I mean, it's, it's, it's possible there'll be something like that in the future where we will reassure some as manufacturing because it's so.

David Dayen (86:57)

Cheap that it's, to an extent that already represents certain, you know, advanced manufacturing industries. Like, yes, one of the reasons why you see a reduction in manufacturing employment in the United States is that many things have been automated. That doesn't mean that it creates like this huge cottage industry and robot fixers. But there's you know, we have seen these factories get more automated and in theory that higher productivity per worker should be good for, for the working class.

Sam Cedar (87:31)

Good for the capitalist class. That will take all of the benefits of that.

David Dayen (87:36)

This is my point. This was my point. Like, in theory, that's good for the workers. Unless somebody else owns all the robots and takes all of the, the, the benefits. Yes.

Sam Cedar (87:46)

And again, are we anticipating this is going to happen in June or like, what do we have a notion of what?

David Dayen (87:53)

I put out my second book, Monopolized, and it was during the pandemic and the book was scheduled to come out in June of 2020. And they said, you know what, there's a pandemic, a lot of people are getting sick. I don't think we're going to be able to do like live events. Let's make it July. Let's put it off till July. And that's when the book was released. So I think it's similar to that in that June might be a little hard to put in this robot fixer army and train them up. How about July?

Sam Cedar (88:31)

Let's talk about what's happening with the Senate. We have Wisconsin and I just, this is the last that we have Wisconsin that happened this week. And then these tariffs. Let's go first with Ron Johnson since he is from Wisconsin. I do not think I have seen Ron Johnson say a negative word about Donald Trump since the day that Donald Trump ran and Ron Johnson became a senator. Ron Johnson, until Tommy Tuberville came to the Senate, considered the most stupid senator in the Senate. I mean, that's by his peers. Al Franken had mentioned this to us a while back and I believe it. This guy basically admitted to being part of the scheme for the January 6th without realizing it and blamed it on an intern or something in his office. But here he is. The one thing like it's like that, that can sharpen the mind is sort of like a near miss or a sense that you're headed down, that there's a waterfall in front of you in the boat. And here is Ron Johnson responding about Trump's tariffs. I'm concerned. Stock markets are concerned.

David Dayen (89:58)

I'm concerned.

Sam Cedar (89:59)

You are concerned about the stock market? Yeah.

David Dayen (90:02)

Again, I don't, I don't have the.

Sam Cedar (90:05)

President's strongly held belief that this is absolutely what has to be done.

David Dayen (90:10)

But he's president.

Sam Cedar (90:11)

I'm not. He ran on this and, you know.

David Dayen (90:14)

I'm, I, I hope he's absolutely right.

Sam Cedar (90:17)

And if, if he's not, then what happens next? What can come. That's hypothetical.

David Dayen (90:21)

I can't.

Sam Cedar (90:22)

That's hypothetical. He said, I just want to be clear. I don't have the President's strongly held belief that this is something that absolutely has to be done.

David Dayen (90:31)

That is like the most euphemistic way of expressing opposition.

Sam Cedar (90:36)

Yeah, I just, I'm, I, you know, and, and then of course, like, what happens if he doesn't change? That's a hypothetical. I can't possibly get. That's complete conjecture. I can't possibly.

David Dayen (90:48)

I mean, you know, Johnson comes from a rust belt state that, that has, you know, some residual manufacturing in it. He's going to be most sensitive to, you know, the anger, anguish that is going to come from this. There are a lot of manufacturing facilities, a lot of auto parts manufacturers in Wisconsin.

Sam Cedar (91:08)

I wouldn't be surprised if they send some dairy to Canada's way and may get some retaliatory tariffs. And also he just saw essentially midterm level elections in that Supreme Court race and the Republican got wiped out.

David Dayen (91:30)

Yeah. And he's not, he's not up next year. He's not out until 2028 would be his next election. But yeah, still it's a problem. I mean, you know, you saw this week Dan Osborne in Nebraska say that he was going to explore a run in the other Nebraska Senate seat against a guy named Pete Ricketts, which is just perfect, like named after a 19th century disease. So Dan Osborne lost by seven points, six and a half points in 2024 in a pretty good Republican year. Yeah, the swing that we saw in Wisconsin right now would put him into office.

Sam Cedar (92:17)

And that is that race in two years. The Ricketts race is next year. Oh boy. That's the 26 race. Oh, I would be very nervous if I had rickets.

David Dayen (92:28)

If you had rickets.

Sam Cedar (92:29)

Or Ted Cruz, of all people. Now, Ted Cruz, known for his strong stance against Donald Trump and then completely like doing one of the most incredible double Lindy's that have ever existed in politics. But here he is, Ted Cruz coming out of like what, the semi retirement. And we should say he's not saying this on his podcast. He's actually saying it to the Larry Kudlow look.

David Dayen (93:00)

I think it is a mistake to assume that we will have high tariffs in perpetuity. I don't think that would be good economic policy. I am not a fan of tariffs. And the announcement yesterday, look, time is going to tell in the next month or two or three what happens if the result of yesterday's announcement is a lot of our Trading partners across the globe dramatically reduce the tariffs they charge on US Goods and services. And the consequence of that is the US Government dramatically cuts the tariffs that were announced yesterday. That would be a great outcome that would be good for America. If the result is our trading partners jack up their tariffs and we have high tariffs every, everywhere, I think that is a bad outcome for America. Tariffs are a tax on consumers and I'm not a fan of jacking up taxes on American consumers. So my hope is these tariffs are short lived and they serve as leverage to lower tariffs across the globe.

Sam Cedar (93:53)

So, you know, so we know that the tariffs that they put on that document that they handed around was not really the tariffs. What are the chances are that somebody's just going to go into the White House and say, guess what? All of the countries lowered their tariffs. President Trump. And he's like, perfect, okay, then we can lower ours. And they just take this as like a, as a big win.

David Dayen (94:21)

Well, I mean, and again, I don't think we should look at these as terrorists. But if you look at what that, that, you know, this tariff schedule implies, it says essentially the only way to get to zero is to have balanced trade with every country on earth and balanced in every context, not just an overall balance of trade, but literally like we have to have balanced trade with Suriname and we have to have balanced trade with Venezuela and we have to have balanced trade with every single country on earth.

Sam Cedar (94:53)

They got to buy more of our bananas.

David Dayen (94:55)

It's impossible. And by the way, if you go back to that clip, look at what the Kyron says. Look at what the lower third says.

Sam Cedar (95:06)

It said, this is one with the Cruz.

David Dayen (95:08)

Trump's tariffs spark demand for tax cuts. It's exactly what we were talking about in a rhetorical sense.

Sam Cedar (95:16)

Pop this back up, Matt, we'll take a look at it. Fascinating demand.

David Dayen (95:22)

Yeah. Trump's tariffs spark increased calls for tax cuts. Increased calls by whom? By Republicans who wanna pass their tax cuts and who now see at least the silver lining of an opportunity to do so rhetorically.

Sam Cedar (95:38)

And I should say, though, like, I don't think Larry Kudlow has ever been on television and he's had shows on CNBC and Fox where the chyron doesn't say calls for tax cuts.

David Dayen (95:50)

Right. They literally have a macro where they're just like calls for tax cuts. And it's very easy on the Chiron operator.

Sam Cedar (95:59)

Yes, exactly. The Chiron operator has more time to head out and maybe get the Larry a scotch and doesn't have to David Dayan. It's been a real pleasure.

David Dayen (96:20)

This was great. It was great to do the simulcast. Our people are happy. Your people are happy. We do a show. I'm sorry, sir. Lord Cedar. We do a show on Fridays from 12:30 to 1:30. It's usually members of our staff talking about the news of the day, talking about our articles that we post@prospect.org we also post that video after the fact and you can watch it on our website@prospect.org so if you. If you love the Majority Report, you can't miss a word that. That Sam says at in live real time.

Sam Cedar (96:59)

Yep.

David Dayen (97:00)

You can go back and you can watch our show after. And that is some insights there. There's a. There's room for everybody 100%.

Sam Cedar (97:08)

And I think you have made a very compelling argument why it would really be great of you guys to start at 1:30 because like you say or 2:30, you're on demand or 4 in.

David Dayen (97:21)

The morning when we could be live.

Sam Cedar (97:23)

You have this new fangled man service from YouTube and you could just run. You could start your show live at 1:30 and then you could be back into the regular rotation on Fridays. Just like the old days.

David Dayen (97:39)

You're just so nostalgic for the past. You're like Trump in a way. You're looking for a time. And we've moved on in 130.

Sam Cedar (97:48)

It's an old word, 130 that I just bringing it back. Everybody's saying 1:30 now, 1:30 this, 1:30 that.

David Dayen (97:57)

Eastern. Yeah, the old Eastern. Who says 130 in groceries?

Sam Cedar (98:01)

Yeah, exactly. David Dayne, always a pleasure. Thanks.

David Dayen (98:04)

Thanks a lot. We'll do this again. This was fun.

Sam Cedar (98:07)

Yeah, we should. All right.

David Dayen (98:08)

All right.

Sam Cedar (98:08)

Bye folks. Gonna head into the fun half of the program. That's late. It was a long show. David Dam. But we got a lot of stuff. What? Oh, yes. Also just a reminder, this program sponsored by my favorite sponsor, Sunset Lake Saba Day. Use the code left is best for 20 off. What do you get with 20 off? Well, you can get off. They got new vape pens. Great way to get your Seba Day after. Have you been. You were making a move for that. Matt, Matt. Matt uses them. They have leaf and they flower rather I should say in keef. And you can mix it with other things. Are you. Is that a Delta? Delta nine. Oh my. Should be taking that right now. That is already planning for the show to be over. I literally just watched them take a seven day. Like I've got the focus gummies here and I'll take Those before. Oh, that's what I thought these were too. Matt just popped a seven day Delta lie. They also have some attention which is, you know, I guess Matt feels fairly confident that they'll take good for productivity. They also have fudge and Sebadia coffee and tinctures and stuff to help you sleep. They're all their products third party tested. They use great farming practices, regenerative farming. They use no pesticides. They use integrated pest management. They're great movement partners. They've donated thousands, tens of thousands of dollars to things like refugee relief, Planned parenthood, strike relief funds, carceral reform, food pantries and give directly. And they've engaged in mutual aid up in Vermont. Just a great company and longtime fans of the show. Left his best 20% off of all these products. Check it out. Texas left just said I take a few Sunset Lakes every day at work all the time. Yeah, but Matt is taking the seven day with the Delta and that, that is a little bit different than just the straight seven day. You are having an emotional breakdown right now. God. We're gonna take a break in a moment and head to the fun half and then we'll probably come back with like, you know, trance music. Folks, also don't forget, just coffee co op, fair trade coffee and hot chocolate. Use a coupon code. Majority get 10% off of that. And if you want to help this show survive and thrive, join the majorityreport.com jointhemajorityreport.com Become a member today. Don't forget handsoff2025.com Big protests happening all around the country on Sunday. And again, I also want to thank Isaac Liebler. He's been doing our social media now for several years. Great job. He's heading off to greener pastures. Matt, Left reckoning. Yeah, Left reckoning. Where we are about like 20 shy of a thousand paying Patreon members@patreon.com left reckoning for those 900 or so Patreon members. We're gonna have a talk with Luke Savage of Jacobin at about the abundance agenda. So check that out. Patreon.com left reckoning. Oh, wait, the protest is tomorrow the 5th, I think, right? Yeah. Oh, it's tomorrow the 5th. Okay. The protest is tomorrow. Oh my gosh. Oh yeah. Saturday, April 5th. Oh, shoot, I thought it was Sunday. Hands off 2025. Protests are happening tomorrow. All right, quick break. Fun half. Three months from now, six months from now, nine months from now. And I don't think it's going to be the same as it Looks like in six months from now, and I don't know if it's necessarily going to be better six months from now than it is three months from now, but I think around 18 months out, we're going to look back and go like, wow. What? What is that going on? It's nuts. Wait a second. Hold on for. Hold on for a second. Emma. Welcome to the program.

David Dayen (103:03)

Matt.

Sam Cedar (103:06)

What is up, everyone? No. Me Key.

David Dayen (103:10)

You did it.

Sam Cedar (103:11)

Fun path.

David Dayen (103:12)

Let's go, Brandon. Let's go, Brandon.

Sam Cedar (103:14)

Fun path. Bradley, you want to say hello? Sorry to disappoint everyone. I'm just a random guy. It's all the boys today.

David Dayen (103:23)

Fundamentally false. No.

Sam Cedar (103:25)

I'm sorry. Women. Stop talking for a second. Let me finish.

David Dayen (103:29)

Where is this coming from?

Sam Cedar (103:29)

Dude? But. Dude, you want to smoke this? 7A. Yes. All right.

David Dayen (103:39)

This thing.

Sam Cedar (103:40)

Yes.

David Dayen (103:43)

Is this me?

Sam Cedar (103:45)

Is it me? It is you.

David Dayen (103:49)

If it's me.

Sam Cedar (103:50)

Hello? Is this me? I think it is you. Who is you? No sound. Every single freaking day. What's on your mind?

David Dayen (103:59)

Sports. We can discuss free markets and we can discuss capitalism.

Sam Cedar (104:03)

I'm gonna go Libertarians. They're so stupid. Though common sense says of course. Gobbledygook. We nailed him. So what's 79? 21. Challenge. Ma.

David Dayen (104:14)

I'm positively quivering.

Sam Cedar (104:15)

I believe 96. I want to say 857. 210. 501. 1/2. 3, 8, 9.

David Dayen (104:21)

11. For instance. $3,400. $1,900. 5, 4.

Sam Cedar (104:26)

$3 trillion. Sold. It's a zero sum game.

David Dayen (104:31)

Actually.

Sam Cedar (104:31)

You're making me think less of. But. But let me say this poop.

David Dayen (104:35)

Call it satire. Sam goes satire on top of it all.

Sam Cedar (104:39)

My favorite part about you is just like every day, all day, like everything you do. Without a doubt. Hey, buddy. We see you. All right, folks, folks, folks.

David Dayen (104:54)

It's just the week being weeded out.

Sam Cedar (104:56)

Obviously. Yeah. Sun's out, Guns out. I. I don't know. But you should know, people just don't like to entertain ideas anymore. I have a question. Who cares? Oh, chat is enabled, folks. I love it.

David Dayen (105:16)

I do love that.

Sam Cedar (105:19)

Gotta jump. Gotta be quick. I gotta jump. I'm losing it, bro. 2:00. We're already late and the guy's being a dick. So screw him. Sent to a gulag.

David Dayen (105:31)

Outrageous.

Sam Cedar (105:32)

Like, what is wrong with you?

David Dayen (105:35)

Love you. Bye.

Sam Cedar (105:38)

Love you. Bye.