Happy Sunday.
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On our weekend “To the Contrary” Podcast, I’m joined by The Atlantic’s David Frum for a wide-ranging conversation about the economy, Canada, Ukraine, and Donald Trump’s Imperial ambitions. You can listen/watch right here, or: Watch on YouTube / Listen (and subscribe) on Apple/ Spotify / iHeart / RSS Feed.
We began with Trump’s single-handed tanking of the economy.1 “There are three main reasons why recessions hit the economy,” Frum says. “Something goes wrong in financial markets, and it feeds back to the real economy. That's the Great Recession of 2008. That's what happened in 1929 and 1931.”
Then there is the typical recession that most of us remember from when we were growing up, which is the economy gets too crazy. Prices begin to go up. The Federal Reserve tightens interest rates, and the higher interest rates send the economy into recession.
That's what happened with the Jimmy Carter recession in 1980. That's what happened in 1958 with the severest of the Eisenhower recessions. And the third kind of recession is there's some kind of shock in the external world. The oil shock of 1973 causes the recession of 74.The COVID shock of 2020 causes the COVID recession.
So those three things: financial crisis bleeding into the real economy, Fed tightening, or some kind of exogenous shock like oil or COVID.
I don't think we've ever had in American history just an example of somebody making a series of ludicrous, unnecessary, stupid decisions that everyone knowledgeable said, please don't do this.
And [Trump] did them anyway.
And completely individually, solo operation, put the economy into this kind of trouble.
Some highlights of our conversation:
The implications of abandoning Ukraine.
Military action against Greenland?
Putin’s strategy and the reconstruction of Ukraine.
Meanwhile…
I’ll have more to say this week about all of this…
Voice of America staff put on leave, Trump ally says agency 'not salvageable' | Reuters
Radio Free Asia set to furlough most US-based staff due to government funding freeze - POLITICO
CNN Poll: Democratic Party’s favorability drops to a record low | CNN Politics
Judges Become Targets in Combative Political Environment - WSJ
BONUS: A priceless gift to the enemies of freedom.
Nota Bene
Someone asked me the other day, ‘Who is the best writer on Substack,” and without hesitation, I answered: Matt Labash. Of course. Check out his latest:
As longtime readers here know, I detest writers larding up their copy by saying, “Merriam-Webster defines {whatever they’re writing about } as follows………” So let’s go another route. Britannica defines populism as a “political program or movement that champions, or claims to champion, the common person, usually by favourable contrast with a real or perceived elite or establishment.”
And yet, every time our great populist president has a chance to champion The People, he seems to tell them to piss off, while favoring the moneyed elite instead. Need facts to chew over? Here are some:
Trump, a billionaire, at least on paper, has staffed his administration with at least 13 other billionaires. Plenty of whom have zero experience in whatever they’ve been tasked with, but they’re rich, so who cares?
He’s given the richest billionaire of all, Elon Musk, charge of reshaping the federal government, which has come in the form of indiscriminately firing many thousands of middle-class workers — some of whom could go (the federal government is bloated), but many of whom perform vital services we need to actually make the country function.
Trump feels next-to-no pity for the fired workers, while at the same time, he cuts an informal car commercial for the beleaguered near-trillionaire, whose shitty, unsafe, overpriced cars are now getting boycotted by irate Americans — protests which Trump says should be illegal, as a man not of the people, but for The People’s persecutor, Elon. Tens of thousands of federal workers are now getting fired, and now have to figure out how to put their lives back together — some of whom will undoubtedly end up showing up at our church’s food bank. But Trump’s more worried about the guy whose wealth exceeds the GDP of over 140 countries.
While many say Trump was voted in to combat inflation, which was already declining when he took office, and which most economists say isn’t directly attributable to the president, Trump — even with his blizzard of executive orders — has done precisely nothing to combat inflation. In fact, he now says the hoi polloi should “shut up” about egg prices, and seems to be hellbent on increasing prices by slapping tariffs on our closest trade partners, even while repeatedly threatening to make one of them — our once-friendly neighbor to the North, who now can’t stand us — the 51st state.
Trump, either directly or indirectly (despite sometimes protesting to the contrary), now seems to have at least tacitly endorsed everything from cuts to Medicaid (which the poor depend on for healthcare, even as 92 percent of those on Medicaid who are under the age of 65 and who are not on disability are working, with Medicaid financing over 40 percent of births in the United States) to ass-patting his enforcer, Elon, the latter of whom just suggested to Joe Rogan (another faux-populist who Spotify only pays a mere $250 million) that Social Security, which you’ve spent most of your life paying into, is a “Ponzi scheme.” Even as Trump’s all-in on floating tax cuts for the rich (including corporations). And as his hare-brained tariff war — one that even the often-Trump-friendly Wall Street Journal called “the dumbest trade war in history” — is expected to cost the average American family up to $2,000 more per year.
Sunday dogs
Five years ago today, we picked up Baby Eli in Iowa and drove him home.
And he met his new big brothers.
He’s bigger now.
Majorities of voters disapprove of Trump’s early job performance on the economy (54% disapprove, 44% approve) and how he’s handling inflation and the cost of living (55% disapprove, 42% approve).
It’s a new development for Trump, who never previously had a majority against his handling of the economy in a national NBC News poll. Now, he is confronting jittery markets and businesses amid his early moves to put tariffs on U.S. neighbors and other allies. Trump also faces questions from voters about whether he is sufficiently focused on their core issue of costs as he pursues other projects like reshaping the federal bureaucracy.
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