Matt Iglesias
speaker
87 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Jan 2025
last heard Jan 2025
Matt Iglesias’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
Yeah, I mean, I think that's right. What will be interesting when we see how democratic states sort of react to this, because Tesla still receives credits from California. This is not as important to their business as it used to be, but it continues to be a big kind of moneymaker for them because California has increasingly strict emissions rules.
And then a number of other blue states kind of piggyback on them. Gavin Newsom seems to be trying to see, like, can he reconfigure that as like a subsidy for non-Tesla electric cars? And I think there's... Legal questions and implementation questions around that.
Big picture, though, like I think the thrust of Trump's energy policies will increase America's gross domestic product by causing us to care less about climate change and certain other kinds of things. Whether they will reduce prices to American consumers, I think, is much more questionable. Right. The Democrats were going nuts all throughout 2024.
They were like, why are people mad about inflation? Inflation's down to 2.4 year over year. And then just like, well, we didn't like forget. that there was 9% inflation 18 months ago and that it was 5% inflation nine months ago. And I don't want to say we remember it was Joe Biden's fault, but the people who think it was Joe Biden's fault remember that they think it was Joe Biden's fault.
Now, a lot of conservative take-slingers will be hypocritical when they pivot back around to being like, you can't actually make the price level fall. But like, it's true. You can't actually make the price level fall. It's a shame for Joe Biden that we had 9% inflation when he was president. But, like, people were mad about that.
And I don't know that there's going to be so much juice in, like, lol, prices didn't get cheaper. That being said, I mean, when I was a guest on your show previously, we talked about this a lot. But, like, Trump's tariff agenda, his fiscal policy, all of that points toward a re-acceleration of inflation. Yeah. And that's perilous, even if it doesn't get up to nine.
But then he did say there's going to be tariffs on Mexico and Canada starting in February.
I think some foreign leaders have to ask themselves if they want to call the bluff here, you know, because you're right, Dara, right? I mean, Trump in his first term pretty effectively wielded the threat of tariffs as a kind of negotiating strategy.
Then during the last six months of the presidential campaign, Trump's business community supporters were like everywhere in the business press and amongst themselves telling people, like, don't worry. Don't listen to what Janet Yellen and Kamala Harris and, you know, Ezra Klein are saying about this. Like the president is just using this as a negotiating tactic.
So, you know, Trump, during the lame duck, he just tweeted or truth socialed that there's going to be 25% tariffs on Canada and Mexico. And then Trudeau put out some announcement that was like, we're going to get really tough on fentanyl. And then Trump took yes for an answer. It was like, oh, the tariffs are off. But now he says they're going to be back on. And... I hesitate.
These people, they've got to listen to their own advisors. They've got to think about what's what. But, you know, we all—you don't want to be a sucker in every negotiation. Like, at a certain point, somebody has to be willing to say, Mr. Trump, it appears to me from your behavior— that you in fact know that these tariffs are a bad idea and are doing a ploy.
And I can like read to you the passage from The Art of the Deal where you talk about how you like to bullshit a lot in negotiations and make dumb threats. And like, if you do this, it will be bad for my country. It'll be bad for your country. The exchange rates will also adjust. It's going to be political blowback on you though, not me, because people know this is your stunt.
And like, you know, leave us alone. It's risky. But the fact that they weren't in the day one, right? I mean, it does call into question that like maybe these business guys were correct.
But Besant has talked about tariffs as a negotiating tactic. And Stephen Mirren wrote an article. I think he just like did it for his hedge fund or something. And it's like what the article, quote unquote, says is that like the liberals are wrong and tariffs are really good. But then the analysis is that tariffs actually won't raise prices because exchange rates will adjust. Right.
And that means that you want to make the tariffs phase in slowly so that financial markets have time to adjust to the tariffs. And it all just seems like a way to say that you're for tariffs while actually acknowledging that they're bad. One view, I guess, is that Trump was like tricked by these guys. I don't know.
I kind of feel like I've been looking at all the like obsequious flattery that different CEOs have been throwing Trump's way. And I'm like... Do I really think that Donald Trump is such a like naive patsy, as everybody is saying? And it's like everyone knows the way to Trump's heart is with like completely disingenuous flattery. Or does he just enjoy this, right?
Like as a thing, he thinks it's funny that he can make the monkeys dance by putting it out there. That like if you say nice things about Trump, he'll like you.
Musk said they don't actually have the money. And then Altman came back and was like, you know, I hope that in your new role, you mostly make decisions that are good for America.
Well, and Musk retweeted a December 2021 Altman tweet where Altman had been praising Reid Hoffman for how much he spent on defeating Trump and saying that liberals don't know how much they should appreciate Reid Hoffman.
But that's what I read is happening here. So we need a Michael Bennett, Sam Altman beer summit where they can talk about their letter sending. No, I mean, that all makes sense. I think it's like... A year ago, I was really, maybe even six months, I was really on like, no, like Trump is a tariff fanatic. Like that's why he keeps talking about this.
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