Breaking America's Economy: Unpacking Trump's Tariff War

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Welcome to Assembly Required.

I'm your host, Stacey Abrams.

Before we get into today's topic on the economic upheaval that's still unfolding as we tape, including tariffs, bond yields, and the ongoing chaos around our economic situation,

I want to take a moment of personal privilege and remind us of where we are and why you are listening to this show.

This past couple of weeks have been jarring.

The House passed the SAVE Act, which legalizes voter suppression at a scale we haven't seen on the national level since the Voting Rights Act passed in 1965.

Men and women have been snatched off of our streets and deported, or worse, they have been subject to rendition in foreign prisons without due process and with no accountability.

The measles, a disease that was near eradication, has now killed another child.

And the CDC has lost the ability to monitor diseases that threaten the lives of other vulnerable communities.

And as I've cautioned since this election, this is not about politics as usual.

This is not politics at all.

This is a slow-motion overthrow of our constitution, one that is achieved by rolling back our rights, our right to vote, our right to free speech, our right to exist in one of the world's most advanced countries, a country of prosperity and science that's denying its citizens both because we're led by the feckless, the reckless, and by too many people who are becoming very comfortable with evil.

But

I do this show because we won't give in to the terror that they intend.

And that's why for the past few weeks, we have been reading On Tyranny by Timothy Snyder.

And in this moment, two of the lessons in that book are particularly dear to me.

It's in chapters 9 and chapter 17.

Chapter 9 implores us to be kind to our language, and it includes this edict that we need to read books.

And then chapter 17 warns us to listen for dangerous words, the words that those who are intent on power will use to scare us into giving them our power.

And when taken together, Tim warns us that how tyrants can shape our worldview begins with the words that evoke panic and fear, and they offer themselves as the only safe harbor.

And as a guarantee that we can't create our own rescue, out of desperation and cowardice, these same tyrants ban the books that can show us the way to freedom.

Well, I learned last week that nearly 400 books were banned from the U.S.

Naval Academy, including a title called Our Time is Now, Power, Purpose, and the Fight for a Fair America.

That's my book.

It's a book I wrote that chronicles the erosion of voting rights, and it highlights the conservative attacks on democracy, and it provides a blueprint for ending voter suppression and empowering our citizens to hold and expand our democracy.

When I first heard the news of the book ban and my book being on the list, it struck me that those who hold our nation's power actually believe that my book about democracy is a threat to their ability to destroy it.

And I must say, I'm flattered, but I'm also angry.

Because you see, I published Our Time is Now Before the 2020 election, during a moment when voting rights were already under attack and we had taken to the streets to protest the consequences of a democracy that did not serve all of its people.

I realized then, as I realize now, some of my thoughts are controversial, like free and fair elections.

But I never imagined that my book would end up on a banned list at a military academy.

But my book joins hundreds of others that were just removed, books about race and gender, books about inequality and the cost of housing.

all in response to Trump's executive order targeting diversity, equity, and inclusion.

Because DEI contains all of the movements for progress and opportunity that we have achieved in our 249 years as a nation,

including protecting the disabled, a woman's right to choose, protecting our service-disabled vets, and protecting those whose differences might scare us.

These unconstitutional executive orders have already had devastating impacts across the country, much of which have revealed the outright contempt for civil rights and contempt for the ability of women, of people of color, of other marginalized communities to be equal participants in American life.

Their intent is clear to strip us of our rights.

And they're doing so as they shut down libraries, as they stall research, and yes, as they ban books.

Some Some of these books are by journalists.

Some are memoirs.

Some are studies on poverty or policing.

And apparently, anything that makes people think is the enemy.

Mind you, Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf and a book asserting that black men and women are of inferior intelligence remain on the shelves of the U.S.

Naval Academy.

So we must be clear-eyed about what Trump and the Republicans intend.

They are not banning books to protect young minds.

They're banning books to control minds.

Because if our military students start asking the hard questions, they just might demand real answers.

Tyrants and their lackeys want obedience, not curiosity.

They want memorization of their falsehoods, not analysis of the full truth.

They are terrified of leadership because real leadership requires understanding the whole truth of the country that you serve.

By censoring work that creates empathy and challenges myths about our fellow Americans, they are eroding our ability to respond to their abuses of state power.

Our military leaders in training are being taught that these are dangerous ideas.

Ideas like democracy and freedom, equality and difference.

And in their concerted attempt to neutralize our ability to advocate for ourselves and our communities, their quest to turn us against one another has reached into one of the academies intended to incubate our nation's leaders, our nation's protectors.

We trust these young women and men to make life or death decisions on the battlefield, but we don't trust them to pick out a book in the library.

In this current moment, we don't have the authority to override the choice being made to champion ignorance, but we can protect our minds.

We can read books, banned books, questioned books, uncomfortable books.

And so we must all insist and make noise right now because this abuse of power is designed to silence us.

It's designed to silence your voice and stop your activism.

But we can't sit on the sidelines.

And as we do always on the show, I'm going to tell you how we can act.

For example, there is a piece of legislation that's been pushed in state legislatures across the country called the Freedom to Read Act.

We need to support it.

We need to demand that public institutions reflect all of us, especially in the written word.

And if your state won't pass this act, demand that your city council or your county commission take up a local version of the measure.

It's out there.

Let's do it.

Your school board can make a statement of principle and adopt their own version no matter what level of government we're talking about.

The freedom to read should be inculcated into our laws.

And the contents are straightforward.

Protections against discrimination for library collections and for anti-retaliation protections for teachers and librarians.

We need to enshrine First Amendment precedents in in state and local law to protect us against the pro-censorship rulings that are undoubtedly going to start coming from federal courts.

And we need to create a private right of action for the tort of censorship so that authors, parents, and students can vindicate their First Amendment rights in state courts.

It won't work everywhere, but we are obliged to try.

Look, at every level of government, advocates of ignorance and bigotry have given themselves the power to ban books.

But they can't ban the truth.

And they definitely can't ban our commitment to making this country live up to its promise, to its purpose.

Because yes, our time is now, and no amount of censorship or tyranny can stop us.

And now to today's topic.

Last week, President Trump caused global chaos by launching a trade war against the rest of the world.

His sharp tariff hikes sent the markets into a tailspin and raised fears that the U.S.

could head into recession.

Stock prices fell and bond yields rose, which I can tell you is not what's supposed to happen.

So Trump waffled and announced a pause, and then he announced new exemptions for goods like smartphones and other technological items.

And then as of Sunday, he reneged on those exemptions.

People are understandably afraid and likely confused.

And because I'm taping on Monday, we all know that more is on the horizon.

So today we'll get into how to listen to the economic news and process it without falling down the rabbit hole.

First, you'll hear my conversation with economist and co-founder of the Center for Economic Policy and Research, Dean Baker, who will break down how this impacts our economy at large.

And then we'll hear personal stories from those who are already facing make or break situations for their livelihoods due to the tariffs.

We will have small business owner Beth Bennicke, the founder of Busy Baby, and Richard R.

Oswald, a farmer in the Missouri Farmers Union.

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Dean Baker, welcome to the show.

Thanks a lot for having me on.

Okay, so last week I had Ryan Holliday on as a guest, and he reminded us that when we're listening to the news, our very first question should be qui bono, who benefits?

And so to start answering that, I would love to ask you to help us give our listeners some guidance.

So I want to give them the ability to process what they're hearing.

So, I'm going to have you cover a few basics.

So, first and foremost, what are tariffs and how do they work?

Well, tariffs are taxes on imports.

And I harangue a lot of reporters because I think people are confused on tariffs.

I think possibly our president's confused on tariffs because they're not, they talk about tariffs.

We're going to impose a tariff on China.

We're going to impose a tariff on Canada.

And I think President Trump, I won't try and go into his head, but he talks like China's going to send us a check.

Canada's going to, that's not how it works.

It's a tax on our imports from China.

It's a tax on our imports from Canada.

Now, there's an economic debate.

How are taxes divided by different parties?

You know, if we put a tax on gallon of gas, do we pay that full tax?

Well, pretty much all of it, but maybe some of it will be borne by the oil companies.

But we know, most of us will pay that tax.

Tariffs, taxes on imports, we know.

People in this country will pay those taxes.

So tariff, I think, complicates it.

I think it's helpful just to call tax on imports.

Everyone can understand what that is.

Okay.

So with that understanding,

we are trying to figure out who benefits from this.

I mean, basically, we are watching economic chaos.

We're watching this rise in taxes.

So who benefits?

What's the qui bono answer?

Well, there's three parties.

One thing is I'll tell you the Trump administration story, and then I'll tell you what we know for absolute certainty.

The Trump administration administration story is we're going to reindustrialize America.

So we'll impose these big tariffs and then instead of buying things from China or Canada, wherever we're buying them from, we'll be building those things here.

Now that really isn't plausible for a large number of reasons.

I won't go through all of them, but I'll just say one thing that we could, again, say with absolute certainty.

If that's your goal, then what you want to do is put your tariffs in stone.

And what I mean by that is you're going to say, you know, we're going to have a 20% tariff, 30%,

and it's going to be there.

So count on it.

And my reason for saying that is I'm an auto company.

I'm a steel company.

I'm a textile company, whatever it is.

If I make a decision to build a factory in the United States, I want to know that that 20% tariff, that 30% tariff, that's going to be there for five years, 10 years, 15 years.

Because I'd be an idiot if I built that factory.

And then next year, the tariff's gone.

Now, the problem with the Trump administration is they're changing it by the day.

So we had Liberation Day, April 2nd.

You know, if people remember that, you know, we're going to produce everything here.

Then the next week, Trump goes, oh, no, you know, we changed the story.

People have to come and talk to me.

They have to kiss my ass.

That was his term.

I'm sorry about the word.

That was his term.

So

that's not a path to reindustrialization.

That's very clear.

So again, we could tell a story, and I won't go into great detail.

The Biden administration was trying to do that.

His tariffs were in stone.

They also were going with subsidies.

So he's saying, we want to build up our electric car industry.

We want to build up our clean energy.

And that was the idea was this is written in stone.

We had tariffs going along with subsidies, going along with training programs.

So that was very concrete.

What we're seeing here is chaotic, and it's very hard to see how that could lead to reindustrialization.

Now, who benefits?

Great question.

Two things we could again say for certain.

One is, insofar as we have the taxes in place, that's raising revenue.

Who does it raise it from?

Overwhelmingly working people.

So we have an income tax.

We know that's designed to be progressive so that rich people will pay a higher share of their income than lower income people.

The exact opposite with tariffs.

And there's two reasons for that.

One is that rich people don't spend their whole income.

So an Elon Musk, these other very wealthy people, they couldn't spend their whole income even if they wanted to.

So you're taxed on what you spend.

And in the case of very rich people, that's a relatively small share of their income.

Most working people earning 40, 50, 60,000 a year, they're spending pretty much all their income.

The other part of that story is they spend it on goods that are subject to the tax.

So when you get higher income people, and I don't mean just the very rich, but say someone earning two, three, four hundred thousand, why would they spend us on services?

They're taking vacations, they're going to restaurants, they're going to gym memberships.

I mean, nothing wrong with that, but the point is that they...

The tariff doesn't apply to those things.

It doesn't hit them anywhere near as much as when we're buying clothes, when we're paying for our shoes.

That's very, very direct.

So it's a very regressive tax.

That's, again, another thing we could say for certain.

The other thing is what Trump told us: kiss my ass.

What does that mean?

Come and offer me

bribes, whatever you want to call it, come and offer me favors.

You know, so he wants countries to come and offer him favors.

He wants companies, he want Apple to pay him to get a lower tax, which they did on the smartphones that are made in China.

And that's why most economists, I shouldn't say most economists, almost all economists are very wary of tariffs because it really is a recipe for corruption.

Because someone can come and say, we want special treatment.

And it happens all the time.

And Trump is being as explicit as possible.

Come and kiss my ass.

I don't know what else he could say that makes it more clear than that.

Can you talk about trade deficits and why it is that America has a trade deficit or a trade surplus with different countries and how we need to think about that in the context of these tariffs?

Well, there really, really, no particular meaning for a trade deficit with any specific country.

So some countries, we have a lot of pretty poor countries in Africa.

They export coffee to us.

They export cocoa.

They're poor countries.

So they're not going to import much from us because they can't afford it.

So do we think they've done something wrong for selling us cocoa, selling us coffee?

Now, overall, we could say, are we bothered by the trade deficit?

I'm not particularly.

I mean, it means we're getting goods that we're not paying for, at least in the current year.

But if we are, I mean, again, there's other things we might look to do, like build up our industry through industrial policy.

But again, there's not any obvious problem crisis.

I should also point out, I think a lot of people don't recognize this because you say our trade deficit's $900 billion this year.

It was actually much larger if you go back two decades.

So if we go back to 205, our trade deficit as a share of the GDP was about 6%.

Currently, it's about 3%.

So maybe people will still say that's too high, but the point is it's a lot lower than it was two decades ago.

So what's the status of the Trump tariffs on Mexico and Canada since they were the first wave of this roller coaster tariff policy?

Well, as I understand it, there's 25% tariffs except on the items that are covered by the United States-Mexico-Canada trade agreement, which, again, that's most of our trade.

And one of the bizarre things is Trump has been anxious to denounce this.

He even said the trade agreement was negotiated by morons.

Well, he negotiated that deal.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So this was a rewrite of NAFTA.

And he was very proud of it.

He was boasting about it.

You go back when it was 219 or 220, I forget exactly when he signed it, but he was boasting about it.

How this

trade agreement.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So

I'm not sure.

There's some amount of goods that are taxed at 25%.

They're also subject to the 25% tax that he's imposed on aluminum, steel, copper.

I think there was something else in that category.

So it's a real mishmash.

And again, this speaks to the problem of tariffs.

I mean, I understand there are people who are more on top of it than I am.

But you want the companies to know that, you know, okay, if you're producing steel, here's the tariff that's going to be there.

If you're producing copper, here's the tariff.

And as it is, these are jumping all over the place.

And that's not a way to do economic policy.

Since the announcement and the subsequent changes to the

tariff policies, we have watched the stock market respond dramatically in multiple directions.

But there is a consistent connection between an announcement, a pronouncement, a shift, and the stock market reacting in fairly dramatic fashion.

But we also know the stock market can seem like a bit of an abstraction to a lot of people.

So I'm going to ask you to break it down.

So first and foremost, what caused the stock market to plummet when all of this started?

Well, most people, most,

I'll say most investors, most people involved in the business world see tariffs as very bad news because

we have a thoroughly intertwined international economic system and this is like throwing a huge monkey wrench into it.

So, you know, Donald Trump might have this or that vision.

I don't think anyone shares that.

So again, I don't know whether he has a vision or he doesn't.

I'll just say there are very few people in the world that see his tariffs as good news for their companies.

So when you think of a company, certainly in Apple, they produce all their iPhones in China or other developing countries.

If you look at our auto manufacturers, all of them are thoroughly integrated in the international economy.

They sell overseas.

They buy overseas.

So you're throwing a huge monkey wrench in.

So when people see these high tariffs, they go, this is bad news for the economy.

It's going to be bad news for corporate profits.

And that's what the stock market is, in principle, looking at.

What are future corporate profits going to look like?

And, you know, I would agree with that assessment.

If you put those tariffs in place, they're going to be a lot lower than they would have been otherwise.

Aaron Powell, Jr.: So one of the major concerns related to the stock market for the average person is its potential impact on their retirement accounts.

I know that I have to assiduously avoid looking at my 401k and my Roth IRA accounts because I will weep.

And, you know, for those who have a decade or more of work left before retirement, you know, it's reasonable to assume that their accounts will rebound.

But for those who are retiring imminently, that can be a very different story.

So what should listeners who are about to retire or have a loved one who is retiring, what should they know about these vacillations that we're seeing in the stock market?

Well, I wish I could give good advice here.

I'll just say a couple of things.

One is that they're right to be very worried.

So that's clearly true.

And, you know, the fall we saw to date, you know, it's bad news.

I'm not going to tell anyone to be happy about it.

But I'll just say if you go back to 219,

my mother, who's well into her 90s now, but she's going, oh, I can't take this big hit.

She can, but

she has a pension.

That's why she could take the big hit.

But I point out to her, if we go back to when we had COVID, the stock market is up way more than you had a right to expect.

So even after the fall.

So again, I don't want anyone to be, no one should be happy to see the stock price down 10% or whatever they are as we speak.

But that's a hit.

The other thing is that I...

would encourage people to diversify.

The worst thing to do is panic and just sell everything all at once.

But one of the things that many people have encouraged, and even small investors, you could do these with mutual funds is to get international funds.

So you can get a fund that includes European stocks,

Japanese stocks, so it protects you.

I mean, none of us want to see the U.S.

stock market go through the floor, but you'd at least be somewhat protected.

The last point is...

Even if you're retiring, you shouldn't be in a situation where you have to sell all your stock at once.

So it might be a good idea, and for many people it is, to buy an annuity.

You know, so the idea is, you know, you have 200,000, whatever might be in your 401k.

So you take that and buy annuity.

You don't have to do that with your whole fund.

You could do it with $100,000, buy an annuity with that, see what happens with the other $100,000.

Does it go up?

Does it go down?

I don't have, no one's giving me the future, but you're not in a situation where you have to do that all at once.

Well, as you described, one of the issues of diversification is sometimes going into the bond market because that, until recently, was

one of the most solid investments that a person could make.

You know, as you know, anytime you buy a U.S.

bond, you're essentially loaning the government money and you receive interest.

And investors all over the world have relied on these bonds because of absolute faith in the U.S.

government and its commitment to standing by its debts.

So I was watching with very,

with great curiosity as we were watching that treasury yields were going up even as the stock market was plummeting.

Can you talk about why that headline that treasury yields are up is so jarring and why this is unusual?

Yeah, I mean, it was really striking.

There are two things I'll say here.

One is that the conventional view, and I'm inclined to agree with it, is that the investors in the treasury market are sort of more informed.

They're more institutional investors.

They're bigger money investors, if you like.

These are people that study the fundamentals.

They look at the economy closely.

So the question is, why are bond prices falling, interest rates rising?

Usually when you see the stock market go down, the thinking here was we're at greater risk of recession.

Again, a view I'd be inclined to agree with.

You'd expect to see interest rates fall.

We are seeing the opposite.

So the general view is that people were looking, investors were looking at the United States as, you know, what do things look like two years out, three years out, five years out?

And they were getting very worried in a way that they aren't aren't typically about the U.S.

economy.

So, we know when you look at developing countries,

they're erratic, they do economic policies that sometimes aren't very good.

People don't think of the United States that way generally.

Apparently, they are increasingly thinking of the United States that way.

So, that's a scary prospect.

And that's why so many people are looking at the bond market.

I'll also mention the currency market.

The dollar is falling a lot against the Euro and other major currencies.

Again, not a vote of confidence in the U.S.

economy.

Okay, so let's go to China,

which is a very complex part of this trade story.

And we have watched this escalation in tariffs and retaliatory tariffs and how tariffs are being justified.

But we've also seen this pause and then

restarting.

We've seen the idea that we're going to

put tariffs on our electronics and then we took them off, That there were national security implications for tariffs on semiconductors or the chips that power so many of our consumer electronics.

And then there was the possibility that those were going to be imposed or not.

We still aren't clear.

But what we do know is that as of Sunday, April 13th, China responded by blocking access to rare earth minerals and magnets, which are essential for the car, the semiconductor, for aerospace industries, as well as for many of our military contractors.

What does it mean for the average person that we are facing a trade war with China?

Well,

it could likely mean a lot.

I mean, just at the basics, we import about $430 billion a year of goods from China.

And we now have, I guess, we're 154% tariff.

Now, very few things are going to come in at 154% tariff.

But what that means is we're going to be looking at the goods we do still import from China with the tariffs costing us like twice as much as what they do currently.

So smartphones, again, he exempted those, but if those go back on, you know, we'd be paying twice as much for the next smartphone you buy.

We'd get a lot of clothes from China.

We've got dishware, furniture.

We get all these things from China.

We'll be paying twice as much for those.

Now, the bigger picture in terms of the economy, China has, I sort of think Trump doesn't know what he's dealing with.

China really, I won't go into measurement issues.

It's a larger economy than the U.S., and it certainly exports way more than the U.S.

does.

And Trump thinks he holds the cards because we buy stuff from them.

They don't have to sell to us.

They could sell to their own people.

I've joked if Z wants, the President of China wants to, he could send everyone a $2,000 check and put Donald Trump's name on it.

I don't know if he has a sense of humor, but I think that'd be pretty funny.

You know, he doesn't need us to buy their stuff.

You know, we have long-standing economic relations that benefit both countries.

But at the end of the day, Trump really holds very few cards in this story.

Now, if he blocks, if Z blocks, well, he has blocked them, if he continues to block the export of rare earths, that's going to be a huge problem for large sectors of the U.S.

economy because these are not easily replaced.

I mean, over time, they can be.

I mean, that's the thing with most things.

You know, we could build up an internal car industry.

It takes years, but we could do that.

You could get rare earths many places.

They aren't actually that rare, but it takes time to develop them.

They pollute like crazy.

So we could do that, but we can't do that tomorrow.

So we would see a lot of our industry seriously hampered if this ban on Chinese exports of rare earths stays in place long.

So we would feel that.

So having walked through all this, what would a better approach be to trade that benefits Americans?

Well, I think, you know, particularly with China, we should look to go more route of cooperation.

I mean, we could look at China and say, look, a lot of things about China we don't like.

Clearly, it's not a liberal democracy.

You know, they treat the Uyghurs horribly.

I mean, you know, you can go, it's a long list.

No reason to go through that.

We agree.

It's not our ideal country by any means.

But we don't have a mechanism to tell them what we think they should do.

To my view, we should try and look and cooperate as much as possible, which to some extent we have been doing.

But look at something like electric cars.

They now make a high-quality electric car that's selling for $13,000.

Imagine being able to get a new car that's very cheap to fill up.

You know, you get your, and now you could do it within six minutes.

You could, you know, recharge your battery.

It's roughly the same time it takes you to fill the tank of gas.

You know, so suppose we said, okay, we're going to let you sell those cars here.

They're subject to huge tariffs.

This was even under Biden, but we'll let you sell some number of those cars.

We had this with Japan, voluntary export restraints.

So we'll give you restraints, let's say 10% of our our market.

I'm pulling it out of the yard.

Maybe it should be 5%, maybe it should be 20, but you get 10% of our market.

And, you know, so people will get these cars, see how good they are.

And we want you to transfer the technology because we want to produce it here.

You know, we want our companies to be able to produce it.

That's the quid pro quo.

Same with solar panels, same with batteries, same with other things that would help us move to a clean energy transition.

So I think that would be a much more realistic strategy that would offer us a lot of benefits very, very quickly rather than paying for really no obvious benefit.

I mean, and even Trump is acknowledging, oh, yeah, we might have a painful period, but then at the end of it, we'll get something.

And everyone's going, what are we going to get?

So I'd rather see us do a cooperative approach.

And that's not saying it's not endorsing China or anything.

It's just acknowledging reality.

Sadine, you talked about industrial policy and we saw Biden do this, as you mentioned, with clean energy and we saw the CHIPS Act, the the Science Act.

And the argument that's being made by the Trump administration is that what he's trying to do is bring manufacturing back to the U.S.

and that the short-term pain is worth the long-term good.

How do you think about this?

And

how realistic is it given the advancements that we've seen in manufacturing?

So I guess I'm asking two questions.

One, the sort of macro question of industrial policy of bringing manufacturing back to the country.

And then a second question which is is there going to be a moment and is that the right thing to do for our economy to try to internalize it all and think that that's going to be the long-term benefit

two points here first off the biden administration was incredibly successful and it just you know it's it it pains me how little credit they got for that factory construction doubled I mean, just an unprecedented, I'd have to go back, I haven't checked carefully, but I'll tell you, it was not recently, not in, you know, last 40 years, that you've seen anything like that growth in factory, in manufacturing of factories, production, construction of factories, to put the term correctly.

So that doubled.

So the CHIPS Act, the IRA, the Inflation Reduction Act, they worked in a really, really big way, probably almost better than anyone had a right to expect.

So we were doing exactly what Trump said he wants to do.

And this is particularly in semiconductors, clean energy.

That was where, that's what they focused on.

So we were doing that.

It's a a good thing to do in specific industries.

You know, again, that's the idea of industrial policy.

Now, do we want to do that with everything?

Why?

Why?

And this, again, it just, it defies any common sense, any logic.

I did the arithmetic on it.

Currently, 8% of the U.S.

workforce is employed in manufacturing.

If we balance trade,

So, and we did it entirely through increased production of manufacturing instead of agricultural output or services, we would go from 8% to 9%.

That's not going to transform our economy.

The other part of the story is manufacturing jobs are not necessarily good paying jobs.

They were half a century ago, but that was because of unions.

So the manufacturing sector used to be very heavily unionized.

One-third of manufacturing workers were in unions back in 1980.

Currently, it's 8%.

It's a little better than the 6% of the rest of the private economy, but it's just not that different.

And in fact, the wage premium that manufacturing workers have historically gotten, you know, and I know about those jobs.

I went to grad school in Michigan, knew about Detroit,

those have dwindled.

So the wage premium in manufacturing is basically zero now.

So there's no reason to think that a manufacturing job is going to be better than a job in healthcare, job in any other sector.

So it really is wrong-headed from almost every angle.

So as we wrap up, we know that keeping up with the news on economic issues is incredibly challenging.

And you and the center do a fantastic job of really researching and helping people understand what this means.

But do you have any favorite trusted resources that you would recommend for folks who don't want to go back to school and get a degree in economics, but want to understand what the news is telling them every day?

You know, I wish I could say a single source.

The Washington Post and the New York Times have had good coverage.

Again, I'm critical of a lot of what they do, but they have had generally good coverage.

Someone I recommend very highly, Paul Krugman, my friend.

You know, people know him and used to to write for the New York Times.

He has a sub stack that people could get.

Adam Toos also has a sub stack.

So those are two I'd recommend highly.

But again, you know, day-to-day basis, Washington Post and the New York Times, they've done really a lot of very good coverage on things that are hard to do because the Trump administration is threatening them.

And let's hope they can continue to do it.

Dean Baker, the co-founder of the Center for Economic Policy and Research and astute economist, thank you so much for joining us here today on Assembly Required.

Thanks a lot for having me on.

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Joining me now is Beth Benicie, a mom, entrepreneur, and founder of Busy Baby, as well as Richard Oswald, a lifelong farmer and the vice president of the Missouri Farmers Union.

I want to thank you both for joining me.

Glad to be with you.

Thanks for having us.

So I'd like to start by asking each of you, and I'm going to start with you, Beth.

Can you tell our listeners a little bit about yourself and how you got into your field?

Yeah, I mean, like you mentioned, I'm a mom.

I was in the Army for 10 years out of high school and then 10 years in corporate work before I met my now husband and started a family.

And I ended up where I'm at now because after my baby was born, I identified a problem that all new parents have, which is babies dropping and throwing everything within their reach.

So I invented a placemat that you can suction down to the table and attach their toys so everything stays within reach and off the ground.

So that was the business I started when my son was born eight years ago.

And that's what I'm doing today.

I run the company with my brother, who's also a veteran.

And we've expanded our product line to eight products that keep things within reach and off the ground at home and on the go.

Well, fantastic.

I will say I can very much appreciate that.

I actually co-founded a business with my business partner more than a decade ago called Nourish, which was for busy moms who had to mix a bottle and take it on the go, and realizing that trying to mix a bottle, find clean water, get the formula in there.

So, we created the first disposable self-serve bottle.

But we can talk about the business challenges of doing what we do.

So, congratulations to you because Busy Baby is just doing extraordinarily well.

Thank you.

And then, Richard, let's talk about you and your family of farmers.

Okay, well, I'm 75 years old and been farming all my life right here in the same spot.

I have two children that live nearby and both of them are engaged in farming and livestock production.

Both have cow herds and my son farms with me.

My daughter and her husband have a electrical contracting business and farm on the side, which a lot of people do anymore.

And Brandon and I farm together.

Fantastic.

Well, I cannot say that I have any experience farming.

I've been to farms.

I actually was the legislative livestock roundup grand champion.

So I know how to set a cow.

But other than that, I will just be deeply appreciative of your

capacities.

So, Beth, I want to talk a little bit more about your business.

As you mentioned, you have been.

You've been solving a problem.

And in fact, you did it so well.

You were invited to Shark Tank and you recently brought your products to big box retailers like Target and Walmart.

And you're thriving.

And then came the tariffs.

Can you talk to us about how you're thinking about these tariffs and how they're impacting you and your customers?

Yeah, I mean, I'd say we were thriving.

We had a couple actually hard years.

And this last six months has been nothing short of amazing getting contracts with both Walmart and Target.

And we felt like we were really coming out of a hard spot and up and up.

on the rise and really reaching some huge milestones for our business.

And in the last week, I feel like my legs have been cut out from underneath me.

I have currently product in China that is produced and ready to come to the U.S.

that I can no longer afford to bring into the country.

So, what that means for me is when I run out of the product I currently have in my warehouse, which is maybe two to three months worth of inventory, I no longer have anything to sell, which means no revenue coming into my business, which means I can't pay my employees.

I can't pay my loans.

I could end up losing my house.

I'm so sorry.

Can you talk, though, for a second, for those who have never been in the

product delivery business, there are always questions about, well, why are you sourcing it from China?

Why not source it from next door?

Can you explain to folks why sourcing from China is the answer for so many small businesses, especially those getting started?

Yeah.

I mean, the answer is simple.

We don't have the infrastructure in the U.S.

We don't have...

enough factories in the U.S.

And because most of the resources used to do production, mine is silicone, that comes from outside of the U.S.

The factories in the U.S.

need to order quantities that are large enough to get bulk pricing, which means the people they service need to be running production runs of enough units to make it worth.

their time.

Because every minute that a production line is not running because you're switching between companies or doing small runs, they're not making money.

So for them to stay in business and for their business models, they need to run as long as possible.

So as a startup, inventing a product that didn't exist before, I was really unsure if people were even going to buy it.

I didn't know if this was something that was even going to be something people would want.

I could not risk and did not have the money to do a production run of 20,000 units, which was like a minimum order in the U.S.

So, I had to start in China because

that's where the expertise lies.

That's where factories are willing to take a risk and do small unit runs, hoping that they do a good job and you'll do well and your business will grow and they'll get to grow with you.

So, Richard, in many ways, you're in the opposite boat from Beth.

You don't have to depend on importing from China to run your business, but exporting to international markets.

So can you walk us through the products that you ship out and how much of your farming operation depends on these exports?

Well, as I said, I've been farming for a long time now.

And when I started out farming, we had livestock, we had chickens, I had a milk cow.

And

row crops were something that were just kind of another small part of our enterprise.

But farming in the United States has evolved to the point where a lot of people who started out the way I did now farm mostly only row crops, corn and soybeans primarily.

And

We do a really good job of producing those things.

And we have markets for them here at home, but we always produce more than we can use here.

And crops come every year, no matter what.

it's another year just like this year the you know the calendar pages are flipping and it's time to plant we don't have a choice to wait or see if things get better we just have to do it right now and we've always relied on china to be a customer uh for soybeans that goes through back to when richard nixon was president and he went to china to try to you know involve them in in business with the united states and trade and we built up business with china we built up business with mexico Mexico exporting corn because we can grow more corn than they can simply because we have the soil and the climate to do more of it.

And we rely on those export markets to use up that surplus that we always produce to keep the prices profitable for us so that we can feed our families and pay our bills and pay our bank loans off.

And so when something like this comes up, It makes it very difficult to decide

really what the future is because a lot of things I'm already committed on, I'm committed on loans to go for another two or three years.

I can't just stop borrowing money.

That continues as well.

So, justifying what I do to the banker

becomes more difficult, and the banker's under no obligation to provide financing for me.

If he thinks I'm a bad risk, he'll just say, I'm sorry,

I can't give you any money.

I just feel this in so many ways for Richard.

My husband's a sixth-generation farmer, and we're going through the same thing.

And what both of you talk about is the uncertainty of it all, that you have to make decisions based on the business realities in front of you.

And, you know, small businesses have always dealt with uncertainty.

And certainly, Richard, in farming, and Beth, as you know from your husband, uncertainty is just built into the agricultural universe.

But so is the absolute need to plant at a certain time and reap at a certain time because the seasons aren't going to change.

Since we don't know what the trade policy is going to be two hours or two days, let alone two months from now, how are each of you thinking about your decision-making for Beth, for you, the future of your business and you, Richard, for the future of your farm?

You just talked about your loans becoming due and running out of product.

How are you all navigating and thinking about what to do?

And Beth, I'll start with you.

The one thing I know is that there are babies all over the world, and maybe I can't sell to babies in the in America for a while because I can't handle the uncertainty.

I cannot hope that this works out.

I have three months to figure this out.

So, for me, I'm going to navigate it by learning how to do international distribution and find people who will distribute my products in Australia and Canada and Europe and sell to babies in other countries.

And, Richard?

Well,

farming is like a glacier.

It moves very slowly, but it never stops moving.

And so we have to keep moving.

But I've seen this

in the past.

I've had experience with embargoes.

An embargo and a tariff is two different things.

But as we're learning now that when tariffs get too high, they are the same as an embargo because your customer chooses not to buy your product.

Whereas with an embargo, our government says we won't sell it to you.

But it's the same thing.

It's surplus building and it creates a problem with prices for us.

Things get cheap, really cheap.

And the only way to weather that is on the equity that the farm has, on the property that it owns is paid for and whatever money they have in the bank.

And you just live off that equity, waiting for things to get better and hope that the government steps up if that's what it takes.

and provides support.

But that's always up to Congress and Congress is never a sure sure thing.

It's just, it's very exasperating when things have been going fairly well like they have in my industry here for the last few years.

It's very exasperating to just have this unknown just pop up out of nowhere.

And

another concern that I think we should have also that just happened recently was I think that China said that they would be re-examining their export policy on electronics, the same electronics that the president exempted.

And they may choose not to sell those earth metals and electronics.

And most farm machinery, modern farm machinery today, has those electronics in it, just as your car has it.

We have the same stuff in our tractors and combines.

So repair parts.

What if they just decide not to make replacements anymore or sell replacements?

Where's that going to come from?

Right.

And Richard, I'm going to stick with you for a second because, I mean, you just raised an extraordinarily important point that people often forget just how modernized farming is.

But there's also the responsibility you have as the vice president of the farmers union.

And you're talking to constituents of yours who are trying to understand the arguments that are being made by this administration that these policies will bring benefits in the long run and that the pain they're feeling is short term.

How are you having these conversations?

What are you hearing from those who are in your union?

Well, as you know,

Politics are very polarized right now.

And it's pretty hard to get back that initial of that initial initial responses of either, I support the president or I hate the president.

And that's just sort of the discussion now.

I think since none of the dire predictions have actually come true for us right at this moment, we still have markets and we're still planting and going, but this is a cumulative effect.

And I think as we get farther into the year and into next year, if things don't improve, if we don't have some certainty come back in and know that we can continue to do what we're doing, then I think there'll be a lot of farmers that will start to question their support of some of these policies as we're seeing them today.

And Beth, you mentioned that your husband is a farmer.

You're a small business owner.

You are running what is a startup that is moving into that early stage phase of success.

As I mentioned, I started a small business that did product manufacturing.

We did bottled water for babies and toddlers.

And one of the challenges challenges we had was that we grew to death.

We weren't able to produce our product in because we produced it domestically.

We hit this ceiling where we couldn't afford to your point about the product runs.

We couldn't afford to move to the automated product runs because we didn't have the money for it.

And so we actually had to shut down our business over time.

When I think about what you're having conversations about with your you know, fellow small business owners and at home with your husband who's thinking about what's happening on the farming side.

How do you think about the domestic production intention of this administration?

Do you think it's viable given your lived reality of trying to make things happen here?

You know, I've spent the last week of my life trying to figure out realistically how can I bring my manufacturing to the U.S.

because in the end,

President Trump is our commander-in-chief and he is setting the rules.

And so if that's the goal is to bring manufacturing to the US, if that's actually the goal,

I'm going to do what I can to figure that out.

So I have 10,000 square feet in my building.

I could start my own factory.

So I did some digging.

There's eight machines I would have to buy to do that.

Those machines would cost me about $350,000, except I have to buy those machines from China because that's where the expertise lies.

You cannot buy these machines in the USA.

So now I wonder, do I have to pay a tariff on those machines to get them here to start my factory?

On top of that, we don't have the expertise.

I have no idea how to operate, run, maintain these machines.

And there are no people here for me to hire with this expertise because it does not yet exist here.

It's going to take a long time.

So then my next thought was, okay, let me find a factory in the U.S.

Now that we've grown a little bit, maybe we can do these bigger production runs.

The problem there is it takes four to eight months to get the tools made.

And then you take the material, which we still have to import because it's not available in the U.S.

And there's tariffs on the material.

That will more than double my price to do that in the U.S.

right now.

It is not physically possible for me to do that.

And I don't have four to eight months to try and make that happen.

But what I want to add is I thought until yesterday that bringing manufacturing back to the U.S.

is what the goal was.

But yesterday it was announced that cell phones and computers are no longer going to be tariffed.

They are exempt from tariffs.

Apple is worth more than $3 trillion.

They have $54 billion in cash reserves.

Who is more suited to bring manufacturing back to the U.S.

than Apple?

But now they have zero motivation to do so because they don't have to pay the tariffs.

Look, I feel your pain so much.

I have a massive mold for a bottled water that is sitting in a storage facility because there is no market for selling a tool-dyed machine that is only to produce one product.

And when I think about what you've gone through, Richard, through the embargoes that happened under the past administrations, through the tariffs that happened in the first administration, can you talk about

just how you're feeling?

And I don't want to create political dissension because this isn't about partisanship.

It's, I think, about what it means to feel like being an American in this moment and watching these decisions play out in real time and thinking about how your country is thinking about you.

Well, I hope that the country supports farmers continually.

But

we're going to launch into this long debate about whether it's right or not to give farmers money because

you got to have money.

And wherever it comes from, there's no substitute for money.

And if it doesn't come

for us from the market, then we've got to have money someplace else.

Because the only other way to get money is to sell the farm, sell the machinery, sell the farm, sell the livestock, and go do something else.

And when that happens, once a farm goes away, it never comes back.

Somebody will operate it, but it'll be somebody who's an industrial farmer these days rather than just a family farmer, rather than someone who is fifth generation like I am, sixth generation like as my children are, and

have lived agriculture all their lives.

We are

the living repository for the knowledge of how to grow food, how to grow things that people use.

And when we're gone, then it's going to be corporate agronomists and corporate employees and corporate tractors and you'll have very little say in

how the food that you want is raised or where it comes from.

So I guess when you ask me how I'm feeling about it, I'm feeling like, well, here we go again, because I've lived through this three or four times in my lifetime where everything's going along fairly well.

And then the government decides they're going to fix things.

And

I got to tell you, the best way to fix things is to let people trade.

Let people make their choices and let people have an opportunity to work and make a living and earn a return.

And Beth, you serve this country.

You believe in this country.

You are living the embodiment of one of the narratives of this country, which is creating your own business, being your own boss, and creating opportunities for others.

And I see that this is resonating and hitting you hard.

How are you thinking about this moment?

It's really tough right now

because there's a lot of people that are leaving hateful comments on my videos and telling me I deserve everything I'm getting right now because I chose to produce in China.

And it's okay for them to say that.

I feel they're uninformed about what it takes to manufacture.

And I fought for our freedoms as Americans.

And one of those freedoms is the freedom of speech.

I think a lot of people are scared and don't know how to handle it.

And so they respond with hate.

You know, one of those freedoms is

our democracy.

And I've been in the media quite a bit lately with this situation.

And I'm wondering, where are the checks and balances?

Do you know how many of my state representatives or congressmen have reached out to me?

Zero.

I don't feel like America's government cares about America's small businesses right now, not counting the small business administration.

The small business administration did reach out to me and they are trying to help locate a factory in the U.S.

that I could work with.

But the fact of the matter is the tariffs on the raw material that would get imported, the cost of labor, the timeline it's going to take to get up and running, that's still not an option for me.

But at least they care.

They reached out and they're trying to help.

Well, I'm going to correct one thing you said.

We do live in a nation where people have the right to speech, but no one has the right to that kind of personal invective and vitriol.

And you do not deserve the meanness that's being sent your way.

As someone who has experienced it on occasion, I can tell you that

for as many loud, angry, and as you pointed out, frustrated people who feel that it's valid to attack you, please know that there are so many who are celebrating you and cheering and working

and want you to be able to succeed.

So please stay out of your comments.

Okay.

Yeah.

There are so many people supporting me too.

I just want to be clear, you know, the serving the country, being in the military, we fight for our freedoms.

And that is a freedom is the freedom of speech.

And I'm glad we have it.

And I think you articulated it perfectly.

I mean, people.

who have never done this do not realize how hard it is to do this.

As I said, I've got a massive machine, a mold that has been sitting in a storage facility for a decade.

I keep paying for it because there's literally nowhere else to send it.

And it was incredibly expensive.

That was a risk I took and the risk didn't pay off.

And you took a risk and the risk worked because you tried to use the system as the system exists.

And Richard, to your point, you've seen this happen before.

And your challenge is that.

We don't seem to learn our lessons.

We keep repeating the same, you know, bad behavior or certainly the same misguided behaviors.

And so, I'm going to ask you both to do something that is really, really hard.

But I'm talking to an entrepreneur and a farmer, so you guys are used to hard.

Uh, Richard, I'm going to start with you.

I want you to offer a bit of advice for folks who are in a similar position but don't have your fortitude.

What do you want them to leave this conversation thinking about?

Well,

you look on the horizon and you see a storm coming, and you do what you can.

You close the shed doors and

try to get the hay in before it gets wet, and put the machinery in, and make sure the animals are safe.

And in the barn, the door shut on that.

But at the end, you just have to wait for the storm to pass.

And storms always do pass.

And there may be some cleanup when it's over.

But if you just wait long enough, the earth always turns and it's a new day, and things get better.

And

I understand Beth's problems to a small extent because I am a fella who, over the years, has tried to think of other things I could do to make money that would be more reliable than farming when farming turned bad.

And to be an entrepreneur, entrepreneur like she is, and to actually do something like that and be successful, that's an amazing ability.

And I believe that she'll weather this, and I believe that she'll come out on the other side too.

You're here.

Beth,

your last mission.

Tell people what you think they need to know as we weather this storm.

Well, first of all, I want to say thank you to Richard because

I'm married into this farming life.

So I'm kind of on both sides of this right now with the uncertainty.

My husband, I mean, my two boys already know they want to be farmers too, like their dad.

And I hope that they can.

But when it comes to people in my position, other small business owners, and it's not just product creators like me who are manufacturing, it's the small boutique shops on Main Street

that bring in their products.

those prices are going up those people are struggling and are worried about going out of business too um the takeaway right now you know along lines with richard you know weather the storm let's hang in there but take care of your mental health this is going to be a mental health crisis for so many of us and so i just urge all of my fellow small business owners to

Reach out to your friends, go for a walk in nature, turn off the news from time to time, breathe, meditate, whatever you need to do to keep your mental health in check.

Because right now it feels really, really bad.

But, like Richard said, storms come, storms go, we can get through it.

Well, I want to thank you, Beth.

I want to thank you, Richard, not only for taking the time to be here on Assembly Required, but for your perseverance, your candor, and your willingness to weather the storms.

So, thank you, thank you.

As always on Assembly Required, we like to give our listeners actionable tools for facing the challenges of today.

So here's this week's toolkit, in which we encourage you to be curious, solve problems, and always do good.

At the top of the episode, I mentioned my book, Our Time is Now, Power, Purpose, and the Fight for a Fair America, a book that has been pulled from the U.S.

Naval Academy Libraries.

Book bans and censorship do not just threaten freedom of speech.

They limit access to information and can even jeopardize library funding.

So here's your task today.

Head to your local library, get a library card if you don't have one, and check out a book from the banned books list.

Fight back with curiosity.

If you want to do more, check out Book Riot or Penn America's guides of what you can do to help fight book bans.

Next, we're going to solve problems.

We've said it before and we'll say it again.

Call your representatives and your senators, no matter their party, but don't stop there.

Local elected officials have power too, sometimes more than we realize.

Let them know how you feel about the rise in book bans, the effect of tariffs, and how all of the changes happening in this country are affecting your community.

And share your full humanity.

As we saw with Beth, I want you to include your anger, your fear, your sadness, your frustration.

Be polite, be respectful, but be honest.

And if you've already called everyone on that list, encourage your friends and family to do the same.

We need you to use your voice to speak up and fight back.

And always, always, always do good.

It's hard to tell what the trade situation will be from one week to the next.

And as our guests all pointed out today, that uncertainty itself can be a killer for small businesses.

You heard Beth talk about the need to support her small business and their small businesses just like that where you live.

So if you have the means, support small businesses in your area.

Go to that local farmer's market and buy something.

Don't just browse.

And encourage your friends and family to do the same.

Shop local, spend local.

That's our job this week.

As a reminder, we can be found wherever you get your podcast, including on YouTube.

If you want to tell us what you've learned and solved, send us an email at assemblyrequired at crooked.com or leave us a voicemail and you and your questions and comments might be featured on the pod.

Our number is 213-293-9509.

That wraps up this episode of Assembly Required with Stacey Abrams and I'll meet you here next week.

Assembly Required with Stacey Abrams is a crooked media production.

Our lead show producer is Alona Minkowski, and our associate producer is Paulina Velasco.

Kirill Polaviev is our video producer.

This episode was recorded and mixed by Charlotte Landis.

Our theme song is by Vasilius Vitopoulos.

Thank you to Matt DeGroat, Kyle Seglund, Tyler Boozer, and Samantha Slossberg for production support.

Our executive producers are Katie Long, Madeline Herringer, and me, Stacey Abrams.

Our production staff is proudly unionized with the Writers Guild of America East.

McCormick knows unbeatable flavor starts with the right spices.

It's why we created Flavor Sealed.

So anytime you peel back the seal of McCormick herbs and spices, you can be confident they will pack the same amount of flavor as the day they were packed.

The kind of flavor that brings out the best of your favorite recipes and keeps everyone coming back for seconds or maybe even thirds.

McCormick, flavor sealed for unbeatable flavor.