97. Trump’s Trade War 2.0: This Time It’s Different

Welcome to The Rest is Politics US with me, Catty Kaye.

And I'm Mianthody Scaramucci.

How are you, Catty?

What's going on?

Tell us where you are.

What are you doing?

I'm in London.

I have had the best week when I went to Wimbledon to the Royal Box.

How many photos did I send you?

How many times did I FaceTime you?

You were missed so much.

Lots of phone calls.

I got there, and the organizers of Wimbledon said, Well, we kind of invited you because we really wanted Anthony, but they didn't exactly throw me out.

But anyway, it was pretty clear.

You were the star and you were very missed.

I wish you had been there.

It's too overt, Caddy.

It's not working.

Okay, I know it works for you and like the BBC and these other places, but I love the fact that you were there.

This is for you.

This is it for you.

Yes, I do see you.

For those of you listening, this is a Wimbledon shopping bag.

This is a Wimbledon shopping bag with a hat for you.

They chose it for you.

Now, they said it is an extra large because they weren't sure about your head size.

I said an extra large is probably about right.

Yeah, no, of course.

I have a big head.

We know this.

Do you like this?

I'm modeling the Wimbledon hat for those of you who are not watching on YouTube.

Hats were very famous prior to Jack Kennedy.

Once Jack Kennedy got in office, he's like, hey, man, I got a full head of hair.

I'm not wearing that.

And then the hats went out of style.

But look at that.

I'm going to wear that hat, Caddy.

Yeah, it's a gift from the organizers of Wimbledon okay and I'm gonna I'm not I'm not a bashful person so I'm just I need a rain check on next year if you Wimbledon people are listening please invite me next year I will be good to go what are we talking about we are going to talk about the return of liberation day and Trump's tariff threats he has just announced sweeping new tariffs up to 50 percent on a bunch of countries he sent them letters which he then posted on truth social on tuesday we're recording this on Wednesday, and he is sending more letters out today to other countries.

And he says they have a new deadline for making trade deals, which is August the 1st.

So we're going to talk about that.

But first of all, we are going to talk about Elon Musk.

He is back, and he has announced that he is starting his own America party.

So I guess the question for you, Anthony, is, are you signing up?

Well, I mean, listen, I would love to meet with Elon.

I mean, it probably won't meet with me, though, because I'm sure the MAGA people, you know, disfigured me to people like Elon, which is totally fine.

But I would love to meet with them because I think the country

needs some change and the country needs some level of reform.

If you just again, we talked about the spending bill last week.

It's just to me, I think the spending bill is outrageous.

And 38% of the country wanted it.

And of course, they voted it in anyway.

So to me, I think we do need reform.

I think Musk is a very smart person.

I don't think he should be underestimated.

And I like the zero Fs.

Like I don't give a zero F version of Elon Musk because he's telling people that Steve Bannon's on the Epstein list, Donald Trump's on the Epstein list.

He's putting countdown clocks and memes just showing the farce of the whole Epstein list.

But I think, listen,

there's two ways to go with a third party here.

One is to go for a few purple districts and see if you can knock those purple districts into centrism.

Then you will freeze the whole demo-publican movement that does these stupid, big, beautiful spending bills.

Second way is to put up $30 to $50 billion,

have a nationally recognized third party.

Trump is putting out on Truth Social that these things don't work.

He's right.

But they've never had Elon Musk working on them, and they never had $20, $30, $40, possibly $50 billion to go into a third party.

But remember, a third party did work, and of course it started in 1854, and by 1860, we had our first Republican president.

So when Trump says third parties don't work, he's right today, but they did work 160 years ago.

And so you never know, Caddy.

But

I would like to learn more about it.

And if I get invited to have a meeting with Elon, I would go see him and just discuss it.

Yeah, I mean, my initial reaction was a bit like Donald Trump's, which I guess I don't say on this podcast very often, that there isn't a history of these third parties working, and the American system of two parties is set up with these huge big machines of the committees behind them and the money behind them.

And so it's very hard for people to break in, which is why Mike Bloomberg, when he was thinking of running the billionaire from New York, who was mayor of New York, and he was thinking of running, and he decided it would be a kind of form of bankruptcy to run because, however much money you put in, you couldn't overcome all the hurdles that everything from how to get on the ballot, the amount of money, the organization makes it very difficult to break through.

And certainly a third party could be a strategic spoiler.

And we've seen that quite often in recent history.

We saw it with Jill Stein.

back in 2016 when she got votes in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania that otherwise probably would have gone to Hillary Clinton.

I mean, I think Hillary Clinton and the Democrats would say that Clinton would have won in 2016 if it hadn't been for Jill Stein being on the ballot.

And then in 2000 you had Ralph Nader running as a third party candidate and he got enough votes in Florida and took them away from Al Gore, which meant that George W.

Bush won Florida.

And we all know how that election turned out.

So George W.

Bush won the election.

So you've had, in recent history, you've had key elections where a third party candidate has disrupted the status quo between the two candidates, the two parties, but hasn't actually managed to get anywhere near

running, winning as president themselves.

And maybe

that what you're implying is, I mean, maybe it's possible for it wouldn't be Elon Musk because he's South African born.

And so unless there was a constitutional change, he can't run for president.

Maybe it's possible that America, the America party, would mount a...

successful presidential candidate, but maybe actually it's the chaos and disruption, which of course we know because we did the series on Elon Musk.

He loves chaos and disruption.

And maybe that's enough.

That's what you seem to be suggesting is that, which is why I think you've got people like Mark Cuban saying this is interesting and even Sam Altman, very smart, influential people saying, look, like you're saying, Anthony, there's room now for disruption to kind of unblock the system of American government and that Elon Musk could successfully do that.

or this party could successfully do that.

What do you think are the hurdles to it, though?

Well, again,

yeah, lots of hurdles, which is why you'd need billions of dollars.

Again, as we've said on this podcast, they closed down on each other.

They created a very airtight duopoly after the Ross Perot election.

They made it almost impossible for third parties.

Trump did look at this in 2000 as a potential Reform Party candidate.

And then he decided there's no way I can get there.

And so he bailed.

And then he did a very smart thing.

He took over one of the two traditional parties.

He hijacked that party.

He did a hostile M ⁇ A, decapitated the traditional Republicans and replaced it with MAGA.

And so Trump has actually created a third party.

He just cleared out one of the older traditional parties.

So what Musk is talking about is very hard to do.

I'm not saying it's going to happen,

but I think if somebody could do it, he's the type of guy that could do it.

But also, you know, the people want it, Caddy.

People, when you ask people, they say, you know, we don't like it.

Congress has a 14% approval rating which is just slightly above kim el-jung the north korean dictator in terms of their slightly above journalists but not much yeah yeah slightly above journalists the north korean dictator vladimir putin etc but 95

incumbent re-election rate so they have a horrific rating.

It'd be like you and I opening up a restaurant.

I'm the chef.

I suck as a chef.

I get terrible Yelp ratings, but you never fire me.

And I just sit there and keep cooking, even though the meals that I'm producing suck.

And this is what's going on in America with the Congress.

And so the people don't like it.

And the question is, if you could create a change, seismic change.

And remember, Caddy,

there's about 100 million.

There's a voting block, a very important voting block, something like 100 million people.

They vote the exact same way in every election.

Very powerful voting block.

It's the non-voting block.

These people don't vote.

And just imagine an entrepreneur like Elon Musk convincing those people to come into the voting swimming pool, come swim with us here.

We've got better policies, different policies.

You've been indifferent and cynical about politics, but come in,

you could see a radical change to the whole system.

Can I ask you, though, one question, which is about personality?

I mean, I think Elon is, as we found when we were doing our series on him, and I think anyone that's watched American politics has found, I mean, he's got a very healthy ego.

He's kind of narcissistic.

So I think you have to wonder why he's doing it.

There are some policies that he might want to run on.

He's actually in the past been very in favor of trying to get the planet off fossil fuels, obviously.

He doesn't like deficits.

It's something that he's spoken about for a long time, which is probably why he's announcing this now.

But Trump pointed out something in his long screed, which I would recommend people reading because it's quite funny.

His long screed against Elon and the third party idea, which is that, you know, Elon was actually kind of happy with some of the things that Trump was suggesting, like shutting down the EV mandate,

when he was close to power.

But now he's not happy with them.

And he's coming out against a lot of Trump's policies.

But he was okay with what Trump was doing.

When he had influence and he could kind of, you know, help dictate who was going to get which cabinet position and he could sit in on the cabinet meetings and he could bring his toddler along to the Oval Office.

He sort of went along with Trump's policies and Trump's ideas, the ones he doesn't agree with now.

And so it makes you wonder, does he, in this media environment where authenticity is so important, does he get hurt by having seemed disingenuous?

I mean, the comeback is easy, right?

Hold on a second, Elon.

You were fine with this when you were schmoozing in the Oval Office and down at Mar-a-Lago, and now suddenly you're not.

I mean, I could see MAGA using that pretty easily easily against him.

Okay, well,

again, it would depend on how he handles it.

So where Andrew Cuomo misfired in his mayor Oriel campaign was he had some transgressions against him and he didn't want to face the music for it.

And I think in America, if you're able to face the music, you get second acts in America.

This is one thing.

F.

Scott Fitzgerald, the author of The Great Gatsby, had one line that he got really wrong.

He said, there are no second acts in America.

Of course, this was in the 1920s.

Maybe that was true then, but we're now in the 2020s, and there are second acts in America.

And I think that I find it ironic that there were Democrats railing on Elon Musk as, you know, three months ago, railing on Elon Musk, and now they're praising him because he's going after Donald Trump.

And so what ends up happening in our society is you can get a second act, but you got to be real.

And I think if Elon Musk was real and he said, listen, I got close to Trump because I was getting annihilated by the Democrats.

They didn't invite me to the EV summit.

They were knocking me around with my rockets.

And so I got close to Trump.

I showed Trump what I could do.

I helped him win.

He turned his back on me, which happens in Washington.

You know that.

It's called rat effing.

We'll just leave it there.

And I learned my lesson in Washington.

And now I'm going to be fortified with this story.

Why are you laughing?

Because that's sort of my story, right?

That's basically what happened.

Because you've done it.

I'm laughing.

And excuse me, I've just given interviews

all about your second act and how amazing it is that you've reinvented yourself.

But you know what the difference between you, Anthony, and Elon Musk is?

No, it's a sense of hubris.

I mean, where in Elon Musk do you see the ability to say, okay, I've really thought about this.

I've done the work on myself that it took.

I understand that my ego is out of control.

And now I've come back a more humble person.

And I, you know, I apologize for having kind of gone along with a whole load of bullshit in Washington.

Maybe he can't do it.

Yeah, maybe he won't be able to do it.

Listen, he's, remember this about Elon Musk.

He's the richest, most powerful

civilian in the world.

I don't know if that makes you humble.

That's the point.

So he may not be able to.

Look, we know that money and power corrupt people.

And he did say, and I'm quoting him, it's not me.

He did say, I love Donald Trump and I love Donald Trump as much as a straight man can love another straight man.

I think he said that was the exact quote.

So, and I've been there.

I've been there.

I've done that.

So I'm not sitting here throwing rocks at him, but I'm saying he could have a reclamation if he was self-aware and if he was humbled by the experience.

But he's not the first person to have it happen to.

And but here's the reason why I don't think he'll meet with me because you and I predicted that this would happen.

By the way, it happened to me.

It took me one Scaramucci to get blown out.

It took him 12.

And so, what happens sometimes when you predict something about somebody and it actually happens, it's like you shoot the messenger.

So you probably won't meet with me, which is fine, but I would like to meet with him because there's something wrong in the body politic right now.

The Nancy Pelosis of the world, the Chuck Schumers

are not listening.

They've unplugged themselves and they're doing what they want to do for themselves.

They're not serving their good.

And by the way, not just them.

It's Jon Thune.

It's Teddy Cruz from Texas.

These guys, they don't care about anybody.

All they care about is themselves.

They've looked at the math.

They can get re-elected no matter what.

And so they don't care.

And that's what's going on in Washington.

And maybe Elon will pull a trigger somewhere and cause a cascade of people starting to care.

You know, it has happened before in the United States.

You remember, if people are interested in this, go to the origins of the Republican Party.

They went after abolitionist Whigs and abolitionist Democrats and said, you don't want the slavery to cross after the Missouri Compromise breached.

You don't want it to cross into the northern territories.

It's immoral.

There's a great biography out this month on Charles Sumner, who was a legislator from the great state of Massachusetts.

He was a big-time abolitionist.

He had a major influence on Abraham Lincoln.

And people said, oh, there'll never be a third party.

There was.

Republicans came into power.

Changed America.

So America is set for another renewal.

I wouldn't discount Elon Musk.

And by the way, Caddy, I'll say this to you and get you to react.

It doesn't have to be Musk.

It could be a groundswell of people that have said enough is enough.

And so it doesn't have to be Musk.

It could be a more Cuban combo with other people.

You said something that I think is really interesting about the moment.

that we're living in, which is how Democrats are now kind of delighting in what Elon Musk is doing because Elon Musk has turned against Trump.

And I think that gets to the real root of some of the problems we have in American politics at the moment.

I mean, you know, some people call that Trump derangement syndrome.

So they're prepared to go along with Elon in order to, you know, the enemy of my enemy is my friend.

But I think actually what it points to, that happens on both sides.

And you have this knee-jerk tribalism on the left and the right.

And you have people who are not happy with that.

It was very interesting.

Joe Rogan interviewed Bono the other day and Bono kind of got Joe Rogan to say that actually the dismantling of USAID, which you and I have spoken about a lot and the damage that that has done around the world, but also to America.

Rogan said, look, actually, you know what?

That's a problem for America's soft power and America's standing in the world.

And what I like about what you're hearing from somebody when they say something like that is that they're breaking ranks.

I know what it's like to break ranks.

Occasionally, you know, you get a ton of bricks.

I hear from friends of mine who are on the left or on the right that when they say something that is against the Democrats or the Republicans, that is when they get the most ferocious kickback, right?

From liberals, if you, if people perceive you as being liberal and then you say something like, well, actually, Elon Musk has a point or Joe Rogan has a point, you get like a ton of hate coming your way.

So it takes courage to break ranks.

But I think there are voices now who are so dissatisfied with what Washington is doing or not doing, because the country is kind of borderline ungovernable, unless you have a president who's prepared to take an enormous amount of power as Donald Trump is doing and get things done that way, but who are dissatisfied and who are dissatisfied with the orthodoxy of thinking of their own party.

And it's those kind of independent voices.

I mean, you could imagine some kind of alliance potentially of people like Cuban and Joe Rogan.

And maybe they, and maybe this is non-representative because the voices we've spoken about happen to be incredibly wealthy, actually in this case, all guys, but people who are prepared to speak out against some sense of narrow tribalism and actually say, does this policy work?

What's good about this policy?

What's good about this president?

What's bad about this president?

Without the sort of knee-jerk default to tribalism.

And I don't know that Elon Musk is that person because I have, in some ways, Elon Musk, yes, has spoken out about issues, but in some ways he does seem quite,

as his foray in the White House suggests, very interested in power itself for power's sake.

But I do think there are people in the country.

who are saying actually that tribalism can't work anymore.

It's not healthy for the country anymore.

I would love to see that broken.

I would love to see America become more governable, you know, get back to the idea of a country that was built on and for cooperation and break up these kind of monoliths of the party structures.

And not just party structures, but tribal structures of liberal versus conservative.

Listen, it would be a big help to the country at this moment.

But of course,

you would want radical centrism, Caddy.

What you don't want is a harder than hard right new party, and you don't want a harder-than-hard left new party.

So, you would definitely want something that's centrist.

So, you have to always be careful what you wish for.

You don't want to open some kraken that comes out of the closet, and you've now got another nightmare on your hands.

Grok 4, Elon's new version of AI, is spewing out praise of Hitler and anti-Semitic tropes.

So, hopefully, they can fix the algorithm.

But I'm just telling you,

we're in a weird phase

of our civilization where even the structure of how we're going to fight with each other, what's going on in the military, structure of how we're going to get along with each other politically, structure in business.

We're now making decisions in America where we're going to

make people pay for the privilege of entering America's market.

We didn't do that for 80 years.

We're now going to do that.

And so a lot of things are going to change at the same time.

And again, you know, again, not to bore people with my bibliography, Dominic Sandbrook once yelled at me, Caddy.

He said, You bring up too many books, Anthony.

I don't know.

He was like, I probably shouldn't bring up too many books.

But there is a book called The Fourth Turning, which talks about how every 80 years, when you get a generational change of memory, the memory of the reasons why we put these institutions together, the European Economic Union, the UN, the World Bank, the IMF, the institutional real-time memory has gone away.

So now there's a 45-year-old bureaucrat somewhere saying, what the hell are we doing that for?

Let's try something new.

That's happening right now.

And so I like it, and I think people are uncomfortable with it at the same time.

But I'm just saying I would like it more if it led to a colossal reform and some level of collegiality.

One last point, I think this is an important one.

If Elon were going to start this, he asked me for advice, not saying he ever would, I would say put up the money and then decentralize it.

Have a convention, get people together, put some first principles together of what the party's going to be, and then take a step back.

And because what you find, and this frankly happened with Bitcoin, the starters of Bitcoin, they decentralized it and then they dropped into anonymity and it made the thing more powerful because nobody could point to one person.

Nobody could say, oh, this is Elon's party and it's only Elon's party and it's his words and it's too absolute, it's too king-like.

Start the party, step back and decentralize the party, but also have it be fabriced around principles.

In the case of the Republicans, change party today, but in the 1850s it was about anti-slavery.

I think you probably in an American system of electing a president and the way a president is elected with so much around a personality, you would quite quickly need that decentralized party to have some kind of figurehead.

What's interesting is that both of us are saying we are living in a moment of ultimate disruption, things are not working as they are, and

Elon has come up with this idea that I think neither of us are totally dismissing, which we may have done.

a few years ago.

So it's kind of interesting that we both think

this is worth taking seriously or at least looking at.

Before we go, because you know, I always like saying that to you before we take a break, two bumper stickers I saw this week, I have to just share them.

One is, I bought this car after Elon went nuts on Trump.

I thought that was great.

And then the other bumper sticker is, we're eating the checks, Gaddy.

We're eating the balances.

We're eating the checks.

We're going to have to do that outside my house, too.

It was my favorite.

I loved that.

Okay.

We'll be back.

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Welcome back to The Rest is Politics.

Okay, it's Liberation Day all over again.

This is interesting.

So, Donald Trump's sending out all of these letters, Anthony, to countries telling them that the pause on the tariffs has been extended to August the 1st.

And what I loved was this way he said, because how many times has this been, you know, this deadline been pushed backwards?

And he was asked,

is this it now?

Is August the 1st the deadline that we all have to get excited about for the tariffs?

And if you haven't done a trade deal, by the way, trade partner by August the 1st, you're going to get hit with these tariffs.

And his response was, it's firm, but not 100% firm, which I thought was just fantastically Trumpian.

And of course, what was interesting is that

I think America's trading partners and financial markets are hearing this and are saying,

we know that he is going to chicken out again and that the chances of America actually imposing up to 40%, up to 50% in some cases, tariffs on its trading partners by August the 1st look increasingly slim.

And so when he says firm but not 100% firm, the message to those other countries is

we can probably offer the very minimum that we can get away with in order to get some kind of a framework of a deal that gives Donald Trump the ability to say face,

which is why markets have barely blinked as far as I can see.

Am I right or am I wrong?

I mean, you are so right, but let me ask a follow-up question.

So, because I'm in the market and the market's telling you, blink, bint, blink.

This is not just a taco.

This is like the whole chipote.

Okay, it's like chipotle.

Okay, we got, you got everything on the menu.

This guy's not just tacoing, he's everything.

So, none of this is going to happen.

So, I don't know why he keeps saying it.

It's just not going to happen.

And it's just not going to happen because, again, the bond market will quake.

That will freak him out.

We've already lost 8 or 9% on the dollar.

Dollar rally back a little.

It was down 10.5%

for the year.

Now it's like 8% or 9%.

No way.

And so my follow-up question to you, though, because you're a Washingtonian, what are they saying in the circles inside of Washington related to the on-again, off-again tariff strategy?

Go.

So there's a new thing that I've just heard in the last week from somebody who is pretty close to Donald Trump on the economic side.

And it's this framing of tariffs

as not inflationary, but a price hike.

a one-off price hike.

So

that is not what American businesses are telling us because there's a new survey of American businesses out saying that 57% of US companies are already experiencing declines in gross margins because of tariffs.

7% of American companies are saying that they are considering price increases.

But I think there's a sort of new messaging.

I'm hearing that the 10% tariffs stay.

They realize there will be a hit on prices.

And so they're trying to reframe the message as,

but don't worry, this is not inflation,

Joe Biden style.

This is just a price hike.

I don't know that that really washes.

I mean, maybe technically that's right.

I'm not an economist.

They're trying out different

messages around this

is my sense of this, that they want to...

So they're saying these tariffs are going to go through and they're going to stick.

The feeling is the 10% tariff stays, the 10% across the board tariff stays,

and that it's just these extra reciprocal tariffs that will come down.

But here's the three problems.

I love this.

I'm finally doing a list of three, which you always managed to do, and I never managed to do.

But let me give you my three problems.

One, problem number one is that actually these companies are saying, call it a price hike, one-off, call it inflation, we don't really care.

It's causing us problems.

We're going to have to raise prices because of the tariffs.

The second problem is that

this amount of uncertainty and chaos makes it incredibly hard, as we've said before, for people to do any sort of planning.

Do you plan to build your factory in the United States that might be a five to 10 year project in an environment that is going to have retaliatory tariffs or maybe not have retaliatory tariffs, whatever it is you're trying to plan.

And so there's a lot of uncertainty for investors around the United States, which is why this phrase abuser, partly why this phrase abuser keeps coming up anywhere but the USA.

But then the third problem for America is that actually what is happening from my conversations with people in the European Union and Canadians is that these global trade flows are not stopping.

Actually, what America has done is precipitated other countries just to start talking to each other to try and have trade negotiations of their own.

So I'm told that the Europeans are now talking to the Indians, they're talking to the Mexicans, they're talking to the Canadians who are trying to rearrange their supply chains.

And so you've got the Japanese, and it takes a lot to get the Japanese and South Koreans to talk more closely to China, but that's what's happened.

So you've got kind of a trifecta of problems which the White House is still not addressing.

And even, let's say they actually say, right, even the 10% goes, which I think...

I think Trump is going to find that one hard to not have the 10%.

The other two problems have already happened.

You've already caused uncertainty, and you've already caused other countries to start talking to each other to try and circumvent the U.S.

market.

And that is, I don't see how that's a win-win for the states.

I mean, I'm frustrated by everything you're saying.

I do think the 10% tariffs would probably stay in place.

I don't think that they're workable.

I think that they will hurt the economy.

They will force up inflation.

They'll weaken the U.S.

dollar.

And listen, you're not going to get

clothing and textile companies back into the United States.

There's just certain things that we're not going to be making here in the United States.

We can pretend otherwise if you want.

There's a whole list of things that we're not going to be doing.

So

what I find fascinating about this whole discussion is that if you went to an economist and said, we're going to kick out all the migrants and so all these low-level jobs that they're doing, you already see the recessionary forces in certain cities like Los Angeles.

We're going to whack up the tariffs as high as we possibly can.

And then you said, well, then why is the stock market so high?

Why?

Because he's had the move.

He's had the move in the stock market.

Okay.

And so a lot of my friends will say, ah, you see, Trump is right.

Market's going to go higher.

And so why is that happening at the same time?

And the answer for me is because what Trump is saying is going to happen actually never happens.

And yes,

he dropped a bunker buster bomb.

I got that.

But I'm actually talking about the fight, the tug of war with the stock and bond market.

The president does not like

lower stock prices.

He doesn't like it.

He doesn't like higher interest rates, which means lower bond prices.

Does not like it.

And so I maintain that this stuff really won't happen.

And even the 10%,

I'm going to make a bet with you, Caddy Kaye, that there will be carve-outs on the 10%.

So talk a bit more about that

traders getting the taco mindset and just ignoring what President Trump is saying, because at the same time,

He is ramping up deportations around the country.

You've had the agriculture secretary just say this week that there will be no carve-outs for farms.

The president at one point has suggested there would be a carve-out for the agricultural industry and for the hospitality industry, but that's Stephen Miller apparently doesn't like that.

And so that's not happening.

And you've got the ag secretary saying that's not happening either.

You've just had the big beautiful bill passed, which is going to add massively to American debt.

And still your trader friends are saying everything is hunky-dory.

I get it that they might say on the tariffs, this is Taco Tuesday, and forget it, we're not going to have tariffs.

But how do traders feel that the policies coming out of the White House, whether it's around immigration or deficit spending, are the best policies for the long-term fiscal health of America?

Or are they just very short-term and they think, you know what, Trump is going to juice the markets because he likes that he that as somebody once said to me, a Republican, it was such a good phrase, a Republican member of Congress said to me, there is something very simple to understand about Trump.

He has one line and it's big line go up, by which he means send the DAO up.

And that's all he really cares about.

And so it's a short-term trading policy.

Let's delayer that.

Okay, so

number one,

I would say that the traders love the big, beautiful spending bill.

Why?

Because rich people benefit from the big, beautiful spending bill.

You've got more laxity, better tax cuts, tax cut extensions.

You've got depreciation going on now that's a little bit more accelerated.

So capital equipment can be purchased and be fully written off in the first year.

In cases prior to that, it wasn't that way.

And so if you look at the bill, This is a terrible thing to say to everybody on TripUS, but I'll share it with you.

If you look at the bill, making above $1 million a year, you're net plus $7,000 in additional benefits.

Making below $50,000 a year, your minus $700

in benefits, including a wipeout of your Medicaid and possible wipeout of your Obamacare, which makes it even more onerous.

And those numbers are coming from Bloomberg.

So the traders like the big beautiful spending bill.

As far as they're concerned, I'll deal with the deficit after I'm dead.

Ha ha, I'll be dead.

You'll be dealing with the deficit.

I don't care.

Number two, on the deportations,

let's give the news.

It's a little bit of tacoe thing going on.

Okay, these are exact numbers, and so I'm just going to give them to you.

Okay, Trump claimed 140,000 deportations in April of 2025.

He only got 70,000 people deported.

Contrast that with Joe Biden.

Joe Biden, over that period of time in fiscal 2024, got 271,000 people deported.

And so Trump continues to lag the Biden 2024 deportations.

Despite all of the fanfare, the people running around in LA with the cloths on their face, hiding, all of the alligator, Alex Red, all this stuff, he's just not deporting the same number of people.

And some people could say, well, that's because there's less border apprehensions.

He tightened the border.

Some people could say, well, he's focusing on interior arrests.

He's not focusing on border arrests.

So he's going after people.

I mean, they're doing this, Caddys.

Let's just tell people.

They're raiding homes.

They're raiding schools.

They're raiding workplaces.

And so, and you've got a lot of people sheltering in place.

Okay, there's a lot of...

people that are here illegally.

They will not show up for a temporary work job like they used to because they know they'll come there.

They won't go to Home Depot.

They're not going to 7-Eleven anymore.

They're going to local bodegas to get their stuff.

So Trump, again, traders know this because I know this.

So traders are like, all right, Trump's got a big mouth when it comes to trade.

It's the reverse of...

Teddy Roosevelt.

Speak softly, carry a big stick.

Trump is speaking loudly, tiny little twig when it comes to this stuff.

Was that bad to say that he had a tiny twig, Katie?

It was the finger.

Anyway, you get the point that I'm making.

That's what the traders are saying.

It was the little finger sticking up.

Let me just say that there has to be some tiny twigs because it explains a lot of the psychology.

But anyway, yes, there is an awful lot of money in the Big Beautiful bill for making sure they try and deport more people.

So let's see what actually happens and whether the fact that people aren't turning up is already having an impact on some businesses.

I've heard it's having an impact on some of the harvesting because people are afraid and so they're staying home.

But let's see whether that actually happens.

But you're right, it looks like this is taco, taco whatever day of the week it is on the tariff front.

But that does not mean that every country that has a trading relationship with the United States is not frantically trying to get a meeting.

You're seeing with the South Koreans, desperately trying to get a meeting with Donald Trump in the next three weeks, because if this were to come into effect, they can't play.

They can't play chicken with this stuff.

They have to try and get some kind of a deal.

The Japanese are clearly worried about this.

They've been sent a letter that says their tariff rates were higher than they initially thought.

The Japanese thought they were at the front of the queue.

They said they were going to invest a trillion dollars in the United States.

They gave Trump some kind of gold samurai helmet deal thing.

But it looks like they're now at the back of the queue again and not going to get the kind of deal.

So it's causing an awful lot of stress.

Even if the traders in Wall Street are happy about this, America's trading partners aren't.

And guess what it means they're doing?

They're looking to other people to see if they can make up what has become the trade from an unreliable partner.

And I think that that doesn't help the US.

and so you've got these kind of mixed messages a lot of confusion amongst america's trading partners um

but we'll see august the first the new day the new big deadline firm but not a hundred percent firm just remember this one thing the cost of capital from a trader perspective has been reduced the taxes from a trader perspective have been reduced.

And a result of which there's more capital going into the stock market, despite all the things that we're talking about.

And so far, the bond markets seem happy with a big, beautiful bill, too.

Yeah, exactly.

Which is also interesting.

Okay, we are going to leave it there.

In our bonus episode, however, this week, we will get into the politics of the Texas flood because President Trump, of course, is going to visit the area, the awful devastation there.

Our hearts break for those poor families who left their kids in summer camp.

It's just so, so heartbreaking for them.

And we will discuss what was behind the response and what we know about the emergency response.

We'll also talk about Trump's U-turn on Ukraine, how one Secretary of Defense might be in a little bit of hot water over that and who's really pulling the strings on Ukraine.

If you'd like to listen to the bonus episode, do sign up at the restispoliticsus.com to take a listen.

Thank you so much for listening, everybody.

Anthony, I'm going to get that hat to you so that you can enjoy it, even if you didn't make make Wimbledon.

I just want people to know that the bald spot in the back really isn't that bad, but I will wear the hat for you, Caddy Kay, in the hopes that I get invited next year to Wimbledon.

That's the goal.

Thanks, everybody, for listening.

Thanks, guys.

We'll see you next week.

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