On today’s ‘To the Contrary” Podcast, I’m joined by Josh Kraushaar, the editor-in-chief of Jewish Insider. We cover a lot of ground: from Elon’s Face Plant and the White House Correspondents’ Dinner to the Trump Administration’s handling of campus antisemitism. And why JD Vance is so damn mad at Josh… You can listen/watch right here, or: Watch on YouTube / Listen (and subscribe) on Apple/ Spotify / iHeart / RSS Feed.
Happy Thursday.
I know that there are a lot of claims on your time and your pocketbook. But please take a moment to consider supporting us — especially amidst this tsunami of crazy.
To the Contrary is a reader-supported publication. There are no investors. No sugar daddies. We’re not affiliated with any PACS. Or parties. Just me. And the dogs.
Folks, we’re not capitulating, surrendering, or shutting up.
To receive new posts — including podcasts and videos— please consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. (And I’m immensely grateful for your generous support.)
This is what voters wanted right?
**
The Trump Trade war has begun, in all of its arbitrary irrationality and malice. And consumers, businesses, and economists alike are asking; Please make it make sense.
I’m sorry, I can’t help. This is Trump’s fetish and it has been for decades. It’s more about scratching his id than the actual numbers, which seem to have been generated by a Ouija board.
This, my friends, is not a parody:
**
This explanation, actually makes more sense than the sweaty, desperate MAGA spin:
Lest there be any misunderstanding here: Trump just unilaterally imposed trillions of dollars in new taxes on the economy, raising tariffs to levels not seen since the 19th Century. And while he likes to talk about President McKinley, his real role model seems to be Herbert Hoover. Indeed, this is a good day to google “Smoot-Hawley” and share it with your MAGA friends.
Despite a petition from more than 1,000 economists urging him to veto the legislation, Hoover signed the bill into law on June 17, 1930.
Smoot-Hawley contributed to the early loss of confidence on Wall Street and signaled U.S. isolationism.
By raising the average tariff by some 20 percent, it also prompted retaliation from foreign governments, and many overseas banks began to fail. (Because the legislation set both specific and ad valorem tariff rates [i.e., rates based on the value of the product], determining the precise percentage increase in tariff levels is difficult and a subject of debate among economists.)
Within two years some two dozen countries adopted similar “beggar-thy-neighbour” duties, making worse an already beleaguered world economy and reducing global trade. U.S. imports from and exports to Europe fell by some two-thirds between 1929 and 1932, while overall global trade declined by similar levels in the four years that the legislation was in effect.
**
And who can forget this?
**
Trump’s new Smoot?
Economist Justin Wolfers is gobsmacked: “Monstrously destructive, incoherent, ill-informed tariffs based on fabrications, imagined wrongs, discredited theories and ignorance of decades of evidence. And the real tragedy is that they will hurt working Americans more than anyone else.”
There will certainly be higher costs for American consumers and businesses. Tariffs are taxes, and when you tax something you get less of it. Car prices will rise by thousands of dollars, including those made in America. Mr. Trump is making a deliberate decision to transfer wealth from consumers to businesses and workers protected from competition behind high tariff walls.
Over time this will mean the gradual erosion of U.S. competitiveness.
Other defenses of tariffs are even less coherent — just blizzards of meaningless buzzwords. And some Trump officials have even resorted to telling Americans to suck it up and accept lower standards of living — Treasury Secretary Bessent has declared that “Access to cheap goods is not the essence of the American dream.” (This would come as news to many Americans.)
Meanwhile, some Trump supporters are clinging to the hope that these tariffs are just a bargaining tactic that Trump will use to force other countries to lower their own trade barriers against American goods. That’s incredibly unlikely, given that A) all the evidence shows Trump just likes tariffs and hates international trade, and B) the tariff rates that Trump claims other countries are charging the U.S. are entirely made up.1
Americans will not be fooled by any of this. Stock markets had already declined in anticipation of Trump’s new round of tariffs, but the import taxes are apparently much bigger and more aggressive than investors had been expecting, so markets are set to fall even more. Trump’s poll numbers are falling, as swing voters recoil from the hot stove.
The basic message is “Let them eat ideology.” Trump called these tariffs “Liberation Day” because his ideology says that trade with other countries makes the U.S. dependent on those countries. To Trump, economic isolation is freedom, and that freedom is worth more than your 401(k).
Some highlights of my conversation with Josh Kraushaar
Judge Schimel hit his mark: He won 62 percent of Mr. Trump’s November total in the state. He drew more votes even than Justice Janet Protasiewicz had received in Wisconsin’s 2023 contest for the court, when she delivered an 11-point thumping to the conservative candidate. That was the last judicial race that Democrats had turned into a national cause.
The problem for Republicans this time was that Susan Crawford, the liberal candidate on Tuesday, won 78 percent of Vice President Kamala Harris’s vote total in Wisconsin — an astonishing figure for a spring election in an off year, and one that made a mockery of the bar the G.O.P. had set for itself.
This was an across-the-map thrashing: Judge Crawford’s percentage of the Harris vote was higher than Judge Schimel’s percentage of the Trump vote in every one of Wisconsin’s 72 counties.
Share this post