Justin Wolfers

But that's not what's happening.

There is uncertainty.

no way it serves america's interests for the president to rip up a trade agreement on a friday which is what he did last friday he told the europeans we have a trade agreement but i'm just going to add 10 to 25 tariffs on top because i'm upset about greenland there's no way it's in america's best interest to rip it up on a friday and then restore it on a thursday

that cannot possibly serve America's interests.

It makes it harder for us to do business with anyone else.

It makes it harder for future promises to be believed.

It actually reduces the leverage of the United States because if you can't

credibly commit to something that no one will want to commit to anything with you.

Look, if I were to be glib about this, I'd say that if you had had many, many, many failed marriages because each of them involved cheating on your marriage vows, it's going to be hard for you to find the next wife because she's not going to believe you.

And in some sense, that's where we are with trading partners right now.

Ben, I appreciate the question.

I think it's actually a particularly important question for us to look the viewers in the eye and tell our audience exactly what's going on out there.

And it's really hard because it used to be a very simple question to ask, which it used to be that anything that comes out of the federal government has been fact checked and is true.

Even if it was spin, say, for instance, in a former president's State of the Union address, it would be spin, but it would still be true.

And so we would always say the facts are true

the context you might need to think about.

We're now in a much trickier world.

And so I think it's really important to distinguish between who different facts are coming from and the quality of different claims.

So the first thing that's completely obvious is almost everything that comes out of the White House is a lie.

If it's true, it's a mere accident.