TrueValueMetrics ... Impact Accounting for the 21st Century

Date: 2025-07-04 Page is: DBtxt003.php txt00028560

COMMENTARY THE COFFEE KLATCH ... APRIL 5TH 2025 with Robert Reich and Heather Lofthouse Trump’s Tariff Tantrum PLAY YOUTUBE VIDEO Original article: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BK77PPR-N4I Peter Burgess COMMENTARY Peter Burgess
Trump’s Tariff Tantrum \| The Coffee Klatch with Robert Reich Robert Reich Premiered Apr 5, 2025 1.22M subscribers ... 362,155 views ... 14K likes The Coffee Klatch with Robert Reich How much damage will Trump's trade wars cause? What are Republicans hiding in their new budget plan? And what can Wisconsin and Florida tell us about the 2026 midterms? Heather and I answer this week's biggest questions on today's Coffee Klatch. The Coffee Klatch with Robert Reich Robert Reich Transcript 0:00 and it is the Saturday coffee clutch with Heather Loft House and yours truly Robert Rich and Heather it is so lovely to see you another terrible week but you are the highlight of my terrible week wow Bob ditto I don't really believe you or it's even lower than I thought no no it's been Well it's been a You know I I don't know how about how you feel but every time I wake up and I look at the news and probably I shouldn't do this but I I I'm shocked i I just everything I you know I'm prepared i'm stealed for the worst but it's just it continues to shock me this administration this regime which which wake up i mean I'm waking up so many times yeah you know and I feel like I've said I'm a seven but I think the seven is the outside shell and inside the shell is like a sweating crying three anyway so what are we what are we going to talk about today what what's the what's the high what are the highlights 1:05 of the week that you would like to explore and some low lights i have to do it okay so let's do People are getting fired up let's talk about that trump's terrible tariffs where the budget stands people are getting fired and they're getting fired up yeah both yeah well exactly says the former Secretary of Labor so yes so let's get into it let's start with today is a day of peaceful protest and 250,000 people at least are getting out in all 50 states um so that's good to see right that's that's a very very important i I think you know this word solidarity that is thrown around all the time is very important uh for people's morale for just a sense of of of steadiness to know that there are many other people out there who share our values uh that there that there are huge numbers of people who are as upset and as disoriented and depressed uh as 2:03 as we are by what's what's happening uh to this country and around the world uh so that that's one reason why uh these protests are so important and that reminds me of Cy Booker this week who stood up on the Senate floor for 25 hours and 5 minutes beating STM Thurman's record who had spoken out spoken out against the Civil Rights Act of 1957 so this was you know it had some important larger pictures sorry I just I think it was incredibly important for Cy Booker to do this because it it just showed that speaking out uh and he did it you know people are not paying attention to what he said he actually and I watched part of it and it was such a direct assault on Donald Trump uh that I think he gave gives other people courage uh indirectly um I by the way uh Stum Thurman did I 3:00 ever tell you my story about St thurman i don't know if you did I want you to retell it i'm going to lie and say no well I'll do it very very briefly we got into an elevator this was years ago i was secretary of of labor and uh he was there and he said 'Mr secretary,' he was about 100 years old he said 'Mr secretary I I like your suit.' Uh do they make that in an adult size he was not don't believe that Bob he was What was your response i thought you handled it beautifully he was Well I just said 'Uh I don't know Senator.' And then I left the elevator he was such a jerk that's not a nice thing to say about somebody who has passed but he really was but that is a horrible thing to say to someone i mean are you kid talk about a bully um in terms of he was a bully and he was a a racist among other things we know this hence he was on the floor for 24 hours talking racistly um so but the other thing about Cy Booker I think it's important to note that he did this live it went live on Tik Tok when he hit the 24-hour mark 4:03 there were already a 100 million likes but it's at last I looked it was over 350 million likes and I think his tone is so important it wasn't anger it was a tone I think of unity um and also sadness i mean it was kind of solemn and so I do think it had that unifying um effect and people were looking about it even though some people online were saying 'Oh so self- serving and oh is he a politician?' It turns out he is a politician not only is he a politician but he's a very good politician uh and coming up with this idea you know I'm sure a lot of people in his staff said 'Oh you can't do it it's just going to be crazy it's going to be look like a a carnival act.' But what's important is that it did make the point um it made the point that that there there is a a sense of outrage about what is happening in this country uh and you can talk for 5:00 25 hours or 26 hours about it and you can get huge numbers of people i mean how many did you just said 255 million 350 likes at least 350 yeah i mean that's extraordinary numbers uh talk about a demonstration uh well this is important this is important for people to know it's important for people to see it's important for for people to assimilate so big numbers kudos to Cory Booker in other big numbers tariffs i mean where do we begin i'm so excited to be having coffee with you in particular you've talked about tariffs for years listen here's the thing that is just so staggering uh you know since this over this week uh American corporations have lost over $3 trillion in their valuations i mean how Heather I mean $3 trillion in the valuations of American corporations and you're not even talking about the stock 6:03 market and you're not even talking about other things well we're talking about their market valuations totally going down by $3.1 trillion uh this is this is so much more than Trump is talking about um saving money so he can give this big uh tax cut to the wealthy i mean this is a gigantic uh problem for it's a problem for American companies it's a huge problem for retirees who've put their money in the stock market it's a problem for anybody who's put their money in the stock market uh it's it's just a it it it it shows how stupid I mean just incompetent this administration is the tariffs okay so he comes out with this piece of cardboard right and it has all the numbers on it where they've used ridiculous one numerator one denominator tada here's our number all the same across all different countries um same 7:00 calculations i mean this process is in I mean it's a ter terribly designed economically speaking Heather the word is bonkers now bonkers is a good word uh it's used in England a lot in the UK uh but it's bonkers the the there was no process here as far as I can tell i think he I I think they must have just thrown numbers up into the air um and maybe yeah the chat GPT they said well if if a if a country has this much trade deficit with the United States what should be the reciprocal quote unquote reciprocal tariff on that country it's absurd uh and it's going to hurt a lot of people it's going to hurt a lot of people in this country because they're going to pay huge amounts more the typical American family the best estimate I've seen is about $4,000 this year the typical American 8:02 family $4,000 more in terms of what it buys uh but it's a regressive tax uh because the the poor family the the family that is workingass is going to pay a much larger percentage of its income that $4,000 means a much bigger percentage of income than it does to Elon Musk uh or or Jeff Bezos it it you know you you couldn't have contrived anything that is cruer and and and stupider i mean really cruel and stupid but he gets the award why why is he doing it uh well uh I that's a very very good question here's what he says he he says he says he's doing it because he wants um all of these companies the world global companies to make stuff in the United States and it's going to be cheaper for them to make stuff in the United States than to make it in China or wherever they're making it and try to 9:02 send it to the United States because sending it to the United States means you have big a big tariff the problem is uh the re I mean this is so ludicrous uh a lot of companies a are not going to do this uh they it's simply not worth the the the money that it's going to cost to create a new factory in the United States especially when you don't know what Donald Trump is going to do 3 months from now or or six years from now i was going to say the timeline to build Oh you're going to build a factory tonight yes you have to That's right it takes time and a lot of effort and a lot of planning to build a factory you're not going to do it if you if you think circumstances may change and they will change uh especially with this administration uh secondly uh you're not going to get great jobs out of just building a factory uh the reason in the 1960s and 70s and 80s we had terrific 10:03 factory jobs in this country is because labor unions labor unions were active and they gave workers a great deal of leverage in bargaining for higher wages in those factories um American workers don't have that leverage any longer uh the uh percentage of the workforce unionized in in American manufacturing is very very tiny uh and and and besides you're going to have so much technology and you're going to have artificial intelligence uh you're going to have so much kind of machinery in those factories i'll be surprised if there are any jobs uh that are being created the whole thing is is just nuts can I just say yeah nuts or bonkers it's bunker well it's bunkers and nuts bunkers and nuts so you talk about Smoot Holly and the last time we had huge tariffs it led to disastrous results in the economy there was not a war going on that we are 11:03 responding to this feels self-inflicted but not only that it's feels like it's been telegraphed i mean this are we I mean we say we look at the news and we're surprised and I agree with that but these pe the Wall Street right isn't their main job to assess risk and to build models to look at where things could go up or down i mean how how did we not we not anticipate this well this is sort of another this is another 2008 in terms of a Wall Street meltdown uh or could be uh but uh no I think you you put your finger on it just now there was no national emergency here i I mean and this goes for everything Trump is doing you know his Trump is the national emergency he is the national emergency you know the his his mass uh deportations using uh a part of a law 12:00 that comes from uh you know from 1798 when you had a war on it's a kind of a wartime act um and then uh all of these tariffs that he's applying he's using another wartime emergency uh act to give him justification to do this all this is all wartime emergency stuff and Heather I don't know if you've noticed it but I didn't notice that there was a wartime emergency before Trump took office i mean he's he's creating chaos and he's creating emergency but there was not an emergency there was not chaos there is now and it's the world order it's it's so much larger than us and trade is a two-way street i mean this is not going to end well it's already a trade war i mean this is the war this is a war you want a war we have a trade war china the China 13:01 has already retaliated putting huge tariffs on American goods mostly farm products that are coming into China well what's going to happen to the agricultural sector the Midwest i mean they're going to need a lot of help uh and then at the same time you have Europe and Europe is going to put some uh recip kind of reciprocal uh tariffs on us uh there's no end to it this is Smoot Holly you said it before this is 1930 that smooth holly that tariff which was a generalized tariff what what what Trump is doing uh really made uh the the Great Depression much worse uh it hastened the Great Depression now I'm not predicting a great depression but Trump wants an emergency he loves an emergency an emergency gives him more power this is all about his power so it's affecting as you said the world 14:01 order the rule of law democracy Wall Street Main Street our collective consciousness our sleep patterns but does it feel I mean it does feel like there is a response that's beginning to happen you've said when these big catastrophic things happen people have to look at how the system was broken in a way that's different than how they might have looked at it as it was broken without all of this that that is the silver lining I keep going back to uh that Trump is breaking everything in a way uh that makes people go back to first principles and say 'Wait a minute who's the economy for is it for the CEOs is it for the billionaires or should it be for me and if it's for me what kind of economy do I want and what kind of economy should I support and it's forcing Democrats uh to re-evaluate what they're doing it's even forcing some Republicans i I don't know if you watched uh this week I think one of the 15:05 biggest news items was that several Republicans in the Senate pushed back against Trump's tariffs against Canada canada terry what do you how are you penalizing why are you penalizing Canada it's almost uh it's almost like a joke but Republicans in the Senate are not taking it as a joke they are starting to mobilize against Trump uh and in all sorts of ways I think the demonstrations today are very important cy Booker very important uh what uh I mean AOC and uh and and Bernie Sanders have been doing and they're going to be doing more of it uh the next stop is one week from today in Los Angeles in Los Angeles that's right and it's it's it's important for them to do this anti- oligarchic tour uh because people have to understand that the American oligarchy the billionaires 16:05 are really running a lot of America uh their big money is polluting our politics so again back to basics back to basics one thing you and I like to do is debunk myths too was the having these trade deficits so catastrophic i mean they're trying to spin and say h the trade deficits i mean we had to get in and handle these to debunk that is very easy uh trade deficit all trade deficit means is that another country is selling us more than we sell to it uh now if another country wants to keep our dollars uh and and continue to sell us more than we sell to it in one way you might say well that's pretty generous of of that country i mean it's it's not clear that a trade deficit is all bad a trade deficit in those terms might be quite good uh and you know the imbalance is just in the words uh if uh if a 17:03 country is going to continue to sell us more than we sell to it eventually I suppose the value of the dollar could suffer uh but uh you know let let's not assume that all trade deficits are bad just because they're called deficits i know and then of course we have to look back because history repeats itself we know this all too well now in Trump 1.0 um his first term he had the trade representative fine the trade representative had a chief of staff that chief of staff is now the trade representative today that's Greer Jameson Greer and we have to recall that there was a study that came out that showed not surprisingly that certain corporations who requested exemptions from tariffs in Trump's first term then of course got the exemptions because which ones got the exemptions who were approved out of thousands applying many who had given to the GOP so this is this 18:06 is a very important point Heather uh that all of these moves whether we're talking about the trades and tariff or we're talking about uh how Trump is approaching universities or how Trump is is dealing with big law firms i mean he's basically extorting uh concessions uh from them and and those concessions could next week or next month uh be turned into what uh some money i mean he's already the big law firms are already saying 'Okay we're going to give you hundreds of of of of millions of dollars of pro boner work.' What does that mean i you see I mean Trump deals in power and money those are the only languages he understands his entire economic policy the entire economic policy of the Trump administration comes down to three things one is a big tax 19:03 cut for the wealthy and they think they're going to get it because they put they put so much money into the Trump campaign and they continue to put money into Trump businesses so they want that tax cut and that's what they think they are owed and Trump is is certainly trying to do that uh the second thing is cuts in programs that people need i mean social security and Medicaid and veterans affairs i mean these programs are hugely important to people uh and Trump is just is just laying off enormous numbers of staff for each of these programs so the the programs cannot function and the third piece of all of this is the tariffs and you put them all together the tax cuts for the wealthy and the program cuts that are going to hurt working people and the poor and the tariffs that are really going to be a regressive tax on working people and the poor and what do you get you get a huge 20:06 redistribution hidden secret upward from average working people to Trump's cronies that's what this is all about and the misinformation that's out there saying that is not what's happening and how this is going to get so much money back into the pockets of the working class is incredible the videos that are out there going around that also Trump is putting out on Truth Social well it's it's propaganda i mean let's let's talk about this is agit prop this is this is stuff that you know was developed in Nazi Germany uh they knew the big lie if you keep on telling people over and over and over they will eventually believe it unless there is somebody on the other side who has a bigger or at least as big a megaphone and this is why it's so important what Bernie and AOC are doing and Cy Booker and others to just get the 21:01 truth out right right so can we talk a little bit more about where the budget stands um so the Senate has said 'Here is our version of the budget it has fewer cuts and now we're all going to vote so what are we looking for what's going to happen well there's something called reconciliation uh reconciliation is a is a process i mean it's it's arcane and now it feels kind of arcane you can get a bill through the Senate without a filibuster without needing 60 votes for a closure uh and that's what the Republicans are trying to do and what Trump wants to do to get his big tax cut through uh and reconciliation is a process that um he they're going to try to do this tax cut on uh but the question is you know what what does the parliamentarian of the Senate think about this uh you have to go through a lot of hoops to get 22:01 reconciliation uh tell us about the parliamentarian we don't talk enough about the Senate parliamentarian we don't talk because nobody thinks about the Senate parl the Senate parliamentarian usually doesn't have any power at all but in something like this the parliamentarian really is very important because the parliamentarians can say to the Republicans no you can't use reconciliation unless you do X Y and Z uh and that's why the Republicans are all everybody's looking at the parliamentarian right now you know every every what every three to eight years the parliamentarian becomes very important yeah exactly so here we have um this budget happening um I thought I read something in the New York Times so you've talked about this that there is so we just talked about some magical math around the tariffs that was kind of not sophisticated enough to put it nicely now we have different math happening here with the budget where 23:00 everyone's saying 'Oh you know tax cuts are what are we talking about?' Can you talk a little bit about the tricks they're trying to pull as it relates to the way they're spinning the budget well this is also important in terms of the process in the Senate uh and in the House because you have something called a budget uh and the uh the the House and the Senate the House and the Senate do something that's called scoring which means basically they are uh looking at how much a tax cut in this case is going to cost uh over the next years uh what Trump did uh for the first tax cut is say okay the window we're going to look at costs are only is only 10 years and this is going to cost $4 trillion over 10 years didn't look didn't look beyond 10 years didn't say okay over 15 years over 20 30 40 years no just 10 years uh and then we come to the second Trump tax cut uh and what the Republicans and Trump want to do is say 24:08 uh you have to use as the basis as the status quo from which you measure the future cost of this next the second the big tax cut you've got to use as the baseline where we are right now in other words forget this $4 trillion $4 trillion is going to evaporate uh the new cost of the new tax cut is going to be $4.5 trillion so that the total cost of both tax cuts no never add them together the Republicans say i mean this is insane this is insane there was this great there was this great New York Times article in the Upshot it was a couple weeks ago and so um these two reporters Marggo Sangeratz and Alicia Parapiano asked different 25:00 economists to explain how this works for us okay so there were two that I liked that were particularly helpful okay imagine it's like this your daughter's graduating from college you've been paying for her education so you're expecting to have a big improvement in your budget however after graduation your daughter announces that there's no need for her to go find a job since covering her expenses is just a continuation of current policy it's just That's right just a continuation it's just the status quo so just keep on keep on paying me right and that was Michael Peterson who did that one and then this one is um Jessica RLE who said so it's like this basically imagine last year despite being deeply in debt I bought a $100,000 sports car so next year buying another $100,000 sports dollar sports car is not irresponsible because I'm merely spending the same amount as I did last year see and if I purchase only a $70,000 sports car then I should be congratulated for reducing my spending my 700 I mean by 30,000 i mean what 26:01 these but that's that's what it is these show how crazy uh these these ideas of scoring these Republican ideas are but also they take no account of the def the deficit the budget deficit and the and the debt i mean they are going to be huge and again Heather just to put this in context Trump is saying that the United States is going to get so much money in from these tariffs uh that we can afford to spend uh essentially spend a lot of money on these tax cuts uh but that can't be right i mean the ma the mathematics doesn't work uh no mathematics does these are I don't know if you remember uh in the Reagan administration they talked about magic asterisks do you remember that phrase i do i remember it being referenced i was too young at the time well uh David 27:00 Stockman uh you know as as in charge of the budget he said that well it's these these are magic asterisks don't worry about the asterisks in this budget it's just the same thing this is even more magic uh and it and it doesn't work and it doesn't work and some people say 'Okay Trump is a businessman he must know what he's doing he's a failed businessman he failed at every business he's ever he's ever entered.' That's it it's so important and we from Inequality Media Civic Action put a video out about that and we got such a huge response on TikTok by people saying in the comments 'I actually didn't know this this is news to me.' That kind of thing because he is a good con man the greatest conmen in history uh are are are able to not only lie but lie in such a way that people forget their own memory i mean they they forget that things that are already they've registered i mean everybody knows uh they must know that 28:04 Trump was a failure but they don't really register it everybody knows that the first tax cut was a huge failure in terms of nothing trickling down to average working people remember he said $4,000 would trickle down to the average working people well no most of the benefits of the tax cut went to the very wealthiest people in the United States and nothing trickled down and he's doing the same thing again okay speaking of this has been the first coffee clot we've had in months where we haven't mentioned and I have to ruin it Elon Musk oh can we Sorry can we talk about what happened in Wisconsin this week you you take it away oh well the big big deal I mean Elon Musk u he sunk uh a bunch of his money i mean a rounding error million to somebody who who is that's right a rounding error to somebody who's uh the richest person in the world uh he's not getting into this race for the uh justice the Supreme 29:08 Court the person who's going to be the swing vote on the Supreme Court uh and uh he lost and the Democrat or the liberal won uh Susan and uh yeah and and Susan Crawford won by a big margin 10 points which is a very very big margin um and particularly if you've got all that money on the other side it turns out that Elon Musk himself figured into the election a lot of people at Wisconsin and bless you Wisconsinites uh you said 'No if Elon Musk is trying to rig this election uh for Shiml I'm not going to vote for Shiml i'm going to vote for Susan Crawford.' And that's what a lot of people did i think Elon Musk u the odor of Musk is is going to become such a negative and is already such a negative political odor uh that a 30:02 lot of candidates are going to say no so the odor of Musk yeah it's interesting and it's interesting to see people say well he was only coming to DC for six months anyway but he'll still have it's been there's been a change this week that has been fascinating to watch um and it was it was a blow to him i mean 10 points there were record-breaking um turnouts in so many different counties across the state you saw that New York Times image of how everyone moved left to the blue i mean all the counties did every county in in Wisconsin uh and actually Tuesday was a very important day also in Florida uh because uh the Republicans were counting on getting both of these special elections they did but by very tiny margins i mean margin margins that are much smaller than the margins that Trump took these districts by uh which means that the entire Republican party ought to right now understand that not only is Musk a huge liability but there are no 31:05 coattails with Trump he is also becoming a liability right it was these two ruby red districts um in Florida and the Democrats overperformed which is terrifi terrific to see and the margins by which the Republicans won were way less than Trump's you know 30 points over in November i think they were 14 um something around you know half that so that was fascinating to see and Heather this was all before uh uh Trump you know his tariffs and the meltdown of the stock market and the you know I mean can you imagine if those elections were held next Tuesday i know it i know it uh it's so horrific watching it all Bob it really is it's terrible can Wait a minute before can I just say something before you say it's terrible i agree with you it's terrible but going back to the first point you made at the beginning of our discussion uh it 32:06 reveals uh all of this terribleness reveals to many people who did not see what the oligarchy was doing in America many people didn't see uh the uh the consequences of having so much wealth in the hands of so few people uh many people didn't see the the the the money uh that was corrupting and is corrupting our politics now they have no excuse not to see it they see it and there will be a reckoning you've told us and this feels like the beginning of a response um that we're watching and it feels good to see other people paying attention feeling fired up so kudos to everyone who's keeping the fight up for democracy and our public services right yes and many many many people I I I just want to 33:01 say many people who are watching many of you out there you are demonstrating you are keeping you know you you're jamming the White House and the capital switchboards you are protecting vulnerable pe vulnerable people in your communities uh you are you are being more activist than you've ever been in your lives and I salute you and as I'm sure does Heather uh it is because of you uh that the tide is beginning to turn that's it someone sent me So Val Kilmer who was a beloved actor died this week many people saw that obviously and mourned his uh passing and someone sent us this clip which was funny because it's your son Sam talking about growing up with you as a dad and what it meant to grow up with a Secretary of Labor as a dad and one of the perks was getting to go to a movie premiere can we watch this cuz it's actually kind of funny to hear him talk about you thank you for letting us do it when we were in Washington the few trappings of that that I really appreciated were Hollywood pieces like we went to the premiere of 34:08 Batman Forever for this story to make sense you have to understand that like all I understood about politics was what my dad brought home he was secretary of labor for Clinton and I knew that N gingrich was like the enemy okay that's what I knew so it was after the premiere of Batman Forever and someone says Bob to my dad and dad turns around and there's N so he turns around and says this is my son Sam and I fold my arms and I turn Wow people have traced that back to now the divide begins yeah he started partisanship it all happened at Batman forever do you remember that screening yes I do and that was that was the beginning of Sam's activism it may be the end of Sam's activism too i was embarrassed i mean I I could not I was Secretary of Labor i could not turn my back on New King but there he was at the 35:00 age of nine sam did so good well thank you for letting us play that and Heather thank you uh you are just uh a a font of uh of energy and wisdom and clarity and I really appreciate you as my as my partner in in crime here and in inequality media civic action that is so lovely of you thank you it is true and and and for those of you out there uh I just want to thank you again for your activism your tenacity uh your uh your willingness to go through all of this with us uh because it's not easy and it's uh it's that's saying it in a in a very nice and modest way uh let me also uh hasten to thank uh Michael Lahanos Calderon uh and Naomi Bradford uh for their uh enormous and very important help in getting this uh coffee clutch to you and uh the entire staff of Inequality Media Civic Action that continues to make sure we get the truth out thanks [Music]

SITE COUNT