In the premiere episode of The David Frum Show, The Atlantic’s David Frum lays out his case for a new kind of political conversation—one that rejects the radicalized rhetoric dominating major podcasts. He then details why Donald Trump’s tariffs wrecked world financial markets. David takes apart the excuses offered by tariff defenders, and tries to explain the shock and betrayal felt by America’s allies. Then, David is joined by the former ambassador to Japan Rahm Emanuel. Emanuel shares the lessons he learned as White House chief of staff during the 2008–09 financial crises—and his assessment of how Democrats went wrong in 2024 and where they can advance from here. Get more from your favorite Atlantic voices when you subscribe. You’ll enjoy unlimited access to Pulitzer-winning journalism, from clear-eyed analysis and insight on breaking news to fascinating explorations of our world. Subscribe today at TheAtlantic.com/podsub. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Chapter 1: Why did David Frum start this new podcast?
Hello, and welcome to the first episode of The David Frum Show. I'm David Frum, a staff writer at The Atlantic. Why another podcast? It's a natural question. The answer begins with the chart I recently glimpsed from a media studies organization.
It showed that audiovisual content online tended to bunch up at the far extremes of American political dialogue, the far left and the far right, with the far right having a big advantage. The center ground lay abandoned and seemingly barren. Now, that's not the way things are in real life. In real life, most of us are pretty level-headed people.
And we approach the world in a spirit of curiosity, not anger, looking for insights, not insults. Yet, when the sound comes on and the video comes up, things are suddenly different. And the worst voices get the biggest audiences. I don't think it has to be that way. In the text edition of The Atlantic, we prove every day that Americans want something better.
I'm going to try to give them that something better also here in audio and visual content on The David Frum Show. We shouldn't assume that just because people have deeply reactionary politics, they're necessarily backwards in their technology. A century ago in another dark time, fascists outpaced Democrats and liberals in their mastery of the then new technology of the radio.
Something similar to that seems to be happening today. We need to meet the worst forces in our society on the battleground of ideas using the latest tools. And that's what we're going to try to do here.
You know, when people produce honest information about vaccines, about trade, about anything else that's important that has unfortunately become controversial, of course the production of that information costs resources, and those resources have to be paid for. The unfortunate result is that the truth is often paywalled, while the lies are always free.
Well, here on the David Frum Show, we're going to try to be free in every sense of that term and to make content available to all who want it in as honest a way as it's possible to do. My first guest this week will be Ambassador Rahm Emanuel, who has served the United States in many capacities.
I'm going to be talking to him at the beginning about one of those capacities, his service as White House Chief of Staff during the financial crisis of 2009, another steep collapse in financial markets. What similarities does he see between now and then? What differences? And what lessons does he have to offer us? Before my conversation with Rahm Emanuel, a few opening thoughts.
Last week, the United States suffered one of the severest shocks in the nation's financial history. It's a little difficult to wrap your mind around how big an event this Trump tariff disaster was. As of Friday afternoon, U.S. stock markets had suffered a loss of about $6 trillion.
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Chapter 2: How do tariffs impact the US economy and global markets?
But what about the steel that goes into the car? Well, that'll be tariffed. What about the aluminum that goes into the car? Tariffed. What about the glass out of which the windscreen is made? Tariffed. What about the fabric from which the upholstery of the seats is spun? Tariffed. What about electronic gear? What about the windshield wipers?
All of those components that are assembled into the car, all of them are tariffed, and the whole car's result is more expensive to everybody. And a car is by no means the most sophisticated item out there. Think about iPhones. Think about airplanes. They are just giant assemblies of components and subcomponents that come from all over the planet. And every one of them is more expensive.
And therefore, the final product is not only more expensive, but more disrupted. Because, of course, manufacturers these days expect things to arrive just in time. They don't keep warehouses full of parts. They bring the parts in constantly in container ships from all over the planet.
And when Trump acts in the irrational and unexpected way that he did, he disrupts all of those systems of delivery. Tariffs do one other thing that is very important to understand, which is they invite corruption.
They invite the corruption at the highest level of society because every business in America, every business in the world will now be on its way to Mar-a-Lago seeking a special exemption or a special favor for itself or some countervailing subsidy.
And of course, Trump will exact a price for those favors, buy his meme coin to direct wealth to members of his family, make a documentary and pay his wife or his child for the right to make the documentary. Do that and your tariff might be lifted. It also invites corruption that touches each of us more personally.
There's going to be, in a few days, a 60% difference in the cost of an iPhone in Toronto or Vancouver from the cost of an iPhone in the United States market. Smugglers will arbitrage that extraordinary difference.
And there will soon be goods moving on foot, by car, by truck, by boat, by plane, by container ship, from all the rest of the world into the uniquely high-priced terrain of the United States. It's hard enough to police fentanyl. Fentanyl is something that everybody agrees is wrong. When smugglers are moving things like pepper and cinnamon and coffee and toilet paper and flat screen TVs.
No one's going to think that's wrong. They're going to think those people are bringing them a better bargain. The idea that we're going to all pay more for tube socks is Peter Navarro, the Trump economic advisor said, well, some will, but many people will be looking for bargains from off the back of a truck from a guy who knows a guy who knows a guy. You'll hear excuses for what Donald Trump did.
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Chapter 3: What are the common excuses for Trump's tariff policies and are they valid?
How did you know? The Duke of Wellington replied, well, I'm a general. All my life, I have devoted my thought to the problem of what lies on the other side of the hill. Donald Trump won't think about the world from the perspective of anybody else. But that's something, if you're trying to do these so-called great deals, you ought to do.
If you're trying to impose your will on the planet, you ought to think about how will the rest of the planet respond. And everybody around the world looks at the United States and thinks, What are you people doing? We can't trust you. We can't look to you for leadership. You're unpredictable. We are seeing action after action that can't be explained.
Your betrayal of Ukrainian troops in the field, your abandonment of the island of Taiwan, this outrageous and deliberate act of unprovoked economic aggression, and the miserable, mean-spirited treatment with which you attack visiting tourists and people who may have had a mistake on their visa. You throw them in prison forever. What kind of country are you?
We look different in the eyes of the world than we did just a few weeks and months ago. And the rest of the world respond by saying, even if you change your mind about all this, even if Donald Trump rolls back the tariffs, we still need to keep our distance from you. We need to think about buying fewer weapons systems from you because you can't be trusted.
We need to think about developing military systems that are independent of yours because you can't be trusted. We need to think about strategic autonomy from you because you can't be trusted. We need to think about finding new kinds of trading relationships and new kinds of partners because you can't be trusted. Trump will end. Someday, this will all be history.
But the consequences will not fade so fast. Let me say a personal word. I come from Canada. I still spend a lot of time there. I have friends and relatives there. And my generation of Canadians undertook a long argument about the kind of relationship that Canada should have with the United States. And people like me said... Canadians should stand closer to the United States.
You can trust the Americans. They're good neighbors. They're good allies. And their world design is a benign one. And Canada can find a prosperous and secure part by following American leadership. People like me, we feel very betrayed right now. And I think that memory, that's not going to fade so fast. Now my conversation with Rahm Emanuel. But first, a quick break.
Rahm Emanuel, thank you so much for joining the podcast. It's such an honor to have you.
Thank you, David.
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Chapter 4: How do other countries perceive the US under Trump's tariffs?
Well, let's talk a little bit about the international aspect, because one of the things, it's a little dark to say this, but if you're at the European Central Bank or the Japanese Central Bank- I think it's a pretty dark day, so go ahead for it. Europeans, Japanese, British, major central banks.
You have to be hoping that this shock is as painful as possible and this recession is as nasty as possible to teach the Trump administration a lesson about waging economic warfare, economic aggression against allies in this way that is like an economic Pearl Harbor of bad faith and aggression. They don't want to help. It's not in their interest to help.
And in 2009, it was in everybody's interest to help each other. So reminisce a little bit about that. And how do we get back into a place where America's friends want to help instead of saying, you know, you screwed us, now we're going to screw you?
David, I mean, you got to treat friends like they are friends. You can't treat them worse than you treat your adversaries. I mean, now you say they don't want to help. I agree with that. There's also a part of them that the more you try to hurt, it may boomerang. So it's not exactly a clean shot on goal here. But there is a lot of animosity and I can't get back
not only trust in America, the devastation to America as a safe harbor that's built up. And so much of our hard power, economic power is built on what people view of America. Rule of law, somebody you can depend on in a storm. That power, these other manifestations of it, are dependent on one piece.
And the president is not only destroying America's hard power, its soft power, but the credibility of the American brand that people maybe short term will try to figure out retaliation versus negotiation because the Trump administration is sending both signals, which is also confusing. On the other hand, that's short term, long term.
Everybody will start to design economic pieces around America and away from America that will hurt America. Example, two things illustrating this point. We spent the lion's share of my time in Japan building a coherent alliance between the United States, Japan, and Korea, isolating China.
China seeing the opening just created an economic and discussion and partnership between Japan, Korea, and China, isolating America. Very bad for America. Two, forget the countries. Samsung, which was critical to America's export controls against China on semiconductors, just cut a deal with a Chinese company. So we already have a company crack in the United Front against China.
You don't trust America? You think America is going to treat you worse than they treat its own worst adversary? then you make your own deals. And now it's going to come where, which is what I said. They just gave Beijing a get out of jail card.
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Chapter 5: Who is Rahm Emanuel and what is his political and economic background?
All right. Candidly, I was recently in Austria and I was in Vienna and there's a short street there called Dumba Strasse, which as an English reader, you read as dumbass street. And I've been thinking that the whole world has been living on dumbass street for too long. But so, OK, granted, let's let's talk about how we live on a smarter street.
So the excuse offered is, look, these have been difficult times for Americans with less education, fewer credentials. And we need to have all these tariffs in order to protect Americans with less education and fewer credentials.
And the answer is a tariff wall is the solution to the problem of the parts of America that have not shared as much as other parts in the extraordinary economic progress of modern times. I know you have a lot of thoughts about that. Tell us, how do we think more intelligently about how to respond to the problems of people or the situation of people who have not done as well as others?
Chapter 6: What lessons does Rahm Emanuel share from the 2008–09 financial crisis?
So first and foremost, the analysis of the problem is correct. Over the last 30 years, neither the risk or the opportunities were equally shared. And as I like to say, The American dream is unaffordable now and inaccessible to many Americans, and that should be unacceptable to us. Rather than having a shot at the American dream, the American public's been given the shaft.
And globalization does have winners, but it has losers, and we left the losers alone, isolated, and on their own, just figure out their own way. That's wrong. That's un-American, actually. So the problem with the tariffs is it treats everything as a nail to its hammer. China and Colombia are not the same. One's a potential ally. The other one's an adversary. One's a potential market.
The other one isn't. Colombia doesn't involve itself in economic espionage. It doesn't involve itself in intellectual property theft. China does. That's one. Second, how do you make sure that Peoria, Youngstown, Battle Creek, La Crosse, Wisconsin, Ainge, Iowa, are not left on their own to negotiate against China, Mexico, or for that matter, Vietnam.
And the best way to do that in my view is to invest in Americans and America. And we didn't do that. So while globalization was happening, huge opportunities, also huge risk. Your kids, my kids are gonna succeed.
Other people's kids are going to get the shaft unless we give them the tools to succeed like our families gave our own children to succeed, which means, one, and I'm not saying I have the exact ticket, but we know it's true in human history. Education is essential for progress, both for society and for the individual.
One of the things I try to do in Chicago, we're the first city to make, if you've got to be average in high school, community college was free. So everybody had a shot without going into the poorhouse or a second mortgage to get an education past high school, which is where three quarters of all jobs are.
Second, equally valuable, to get your high school diploma, you had to show us a letter of acceptance from a college, a community college, a branch of the armed forces, or vocational education institution. We gave you support, career counseling, kept you on course, so if you wanted to go to the Navy, you knew what math courses, what history classes, what to take, so you were ready.
We made post-high school education expectations and requirements universal, not just the from and Emmanuel children. And third, just shy of 50%, 49.2% of our kids we're taking either advanced placement, international baccalaureate, or dual credit, dual enrollment college classes in high school. They would get graduating already with college credit and not having to pay for it.
So to me, that's number one, because your education is your passport to a better future. I don't care whether it's going into healthcare, at Malcolm X Community College in Chicago, Transportation Distribution Logistics at another school in our community college center, Advanced Manufacturing at Richard J. Daly Community College.
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Chapter 7: How did the Obama and Bush administrations collaborate during the 2009 crisis?
It's pretty clear that both Leave No Child Behind by President Bush, President Clinton's 100,000 specialized teachers plus school choice plus other types of things on both reform and accountability. President Obama's basically race to the top, those were actually quite successful academically.
They were slow, but steady progress on reading, math, scores, to getting not just the high-end kids or meaning children of high-income families, but low-income children succeeding. Now, the truth of the matter is we were replacing teaching with just testing. And there was a reaction both to the left, to the right to it.
And then once that accountability was basically erased, you had a deterioration in standards and educational attainment. And parents, mainly also educators, rebelled against the accountability. Now, testing is only a means of information to improve education. What happened was because of the strictures, we threw the baby out with the bathwater.
The testing became, we were teaching towards the test rather than using the test to improve teaching. And it kind of flipped. And what should have happened was more of a reform. But the idea that there was an improvement is not true. In fact, there was improvement. It begins to stall out around 2010, just at the period of time where people start to break from accountability.
And the impacts on that were most dramatically felt by first-time English learners and also the poor. And then it starts to, in COVID, float up to kind of all income levels.
Let's talk a little bit of the COVID experience in education. So if you were in COVID in a red state or especially a red county, you had a much higher chance of dying from the disease, especially after vaccines became available than in the blue states and blue counties. So that's a checkmark for the blue team.
They did a better job of vaccinating people or maybe a less bad job of dissuading people from being vaccinated. But if you were in a red state or a red county, it was more likely that your schools would reopen early. And we see some indications that kids in Florida did better than kids in California as a result of decisions made at the state level.
So how should we think about this gap in educational performance that was very much concentrated in blue states and blue cities?
Look, there's two things. One is the way I look at it, and there's Lessons to be learned from Alabama's improvement on math, Mississippi's improvements on reading. You can't undo the stupidity of two years of locking kids out of school. Can't undo it. But you can start to ameliorate it and make up for lost ground. A couple things are very clear.
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