The Briefing with Jen Psaki
Cost-Benefit Analysis: Trump Enriches Billionaires, Bleeds Consumers Amid Tariff Reversal
14 Apr 2025
Jen Psaki breaks down the disparate impact of Donald Trump's on-again, off-again tariffs, revealing how the wealthy capitalized on the president's stock tip hours before he announced a big reversal on his tariffs this week. Kentucky's Governor Andy Beshear joins to discuss the real world implications of Trump's unpredictable and inconsistent economic policies, which are set to blow a "huge hole" in family budgets. Next, Jen is joined by Rep. Melanie Stansbury of New Mexico and former White House Communications Director Jennifer Palmieri to talk about the Republican's budget proposal, which puts Medicaid in the crosshairs. Jen also examines Donald Trump's stunning interpretation of a Supreme Court ruling requiring the return a Maryland father who was mistakenly sent to El Salvador by the Trump administration and wrongfully imprisoned. Finally, Andrew Weissmann joins to discuss how Donald Trump is using the presidency to extort nearly a billion dollars-worth of free legal services from private law firms.Check out our social pages below:https://twitter.com/InsideWithPsakihttps://www.instagram.com/InsideWithPsaki/https://www.tiktok.com/@insidewithpsakihttps://www.msnbc.com/jen-psakihttps://bsky.app/profile/insidewithpsaki.msnbc.com
Full Episode
Well, it's been a hell of a ride for the U.S. economy over the last few weeks. I mean, this past week began with the stock market continuing its nosedive because of Donald Trump's kind of weird obsession with putting in place tariffs based on a completely made-up formula.
Then on Wednesday, he abruptly pulled back on the most egregiously high tariffs on most countries for 90 days, but left a 10 percent tariff across the board on all of them. Then he jacked up tariffs on China to 145 percent before announcing an exemption for smartphones, flat screen TVs and semiconductors late Friday night.
And then it continued to get more confusing because just this morning, his commerce secretary said this quote is not like a permanent sort of exemption, whatever that means. So there's a little bit of a pattern here. He's going too far and then he's caving and it's all a little uncertain and murky.
But it's important to remember that even with all these walkbacks, prices on everything from clothes to toys to appliances are still going to be much higher for everyone. And in less than 90 days, Trump could have a brand-new chart with a brand-new fake equation, and we could be right back at square one.
The point being that, unfortunately, we are not quite out of the woods yet with all the tariffs. One of the things that really stuck out to me this week was how Trump announced his reversal on tariffs, or his semi-reversal, I should say. It all began Wednesday morning, when he issued something of a stock tip from the White House.
In all caps, he said, quote, this is a great time to buy, signing with his initials DJT. You can see it on the screen right there. He posted that at 9.37 in the morning, just right after the market opened. Of course, not everyone has a pile of cash sitting around. Most people don't. But for those who did, we now know that, yeah, that was an awfully good time to put money in the market.
Because less than four hours after that post, Trump backpedaled on many of the tariffs, causing the market to surge as he knew it would. So anyone who took Trump's advice that morning that he posted on Truth Social could have made a whole lot of money. I mean, it was a pretty timely heads-up. And it also produced some very interesting television later that afternoon.
Earlier this morning, before the pause, he put out a message saying it's a great time to buy, and here we are. Here we are, much higher.
I'd always bet on Donald Trump. Every time I'd always bet on Donald Trump.
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