Justin Wolfers Discusses Trump’s Damage to US Economy
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What warning did Rupert Murdoch issue about Trump’s foreign policy and economy?
Rupert Murdoch issuing stark warnings to Donald Trump, both about his catastrophic war in Iran, as well as Donald Trump's disastrous economic policies. And we've seen Murdoch using his op-eds to kind of escalate this against Donald Trump or to put out messages in certain areas. And then you have Donald Trump's former VP, Mike Pence, also reposting the Murdoch articles. I mean, this is what the Wall Street Journal reports. op-ed editorial board writes about Trump's economic policies, how Trump's tariffs really work. He hails Toyota's investments, but what about the higher costs and manufacturing job losses? And this is Pence quoting the op-ed of Wall Street Journal. The president is right that his tariffs are at work.
Yeah. in destroying U.S. jobs and raising prices. The U.S. has lost some 75,000 manufacturing jobs since January 2025, including 25,900 in motor vehicle and parts production. Now, separately in international affairs, on a lot of state regime media, which calls itself Fox reports, they're out there saying, why the hell do we have Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner acting like they're envoys to the United States and that they don't know what they're doing. They're corrupt real estate people or investment people, and they know nothing about diplomacy. And you've seen that escalate as well. Now, of course, You know, on other Murdoch properties and shows, they might as well be worse than Kim Jong-un propaganda media.
But it does say something to me that they are striking kind of at both areas. I mean, international affairs and then on the economic front. And when Donald Trump's out there saying, I've created so many jobs, we're in a golden age. We all know that's not true. I want to bring in Justin Wolfers, launched Platypus Economics with Justin Wolfers on YouTube, and we'll talk about this at the end briefly. Justin and I are going to have a really big announcement next week. It may be related to Midas Touch of Platypus, but we'll see. Justin, it's great to see you. You're seeing this on the Wall Street Journal editorial pages, but then there are other Fox shows that will kind of give the Kim Jong-un, dear leader, doesn't make any mistake.
What do you make of this moment?
How did Wall Street Journal editorials and Mike Pence frame Trump’s tariff impact?
Because it does seem we're in kind of just, you know, sleepwalking. We're not, but like kind of sleepwalking into this massive economic crisis generationally.
Yeah, actually, I think the generational part is a really big part and it's the part that we're not hearing enough about. But, you know, let's come back. What is it the Wall Street Journal is saying? It's actually saying something that every economist with a pulse is saying, which is that the trade war hasn't helped. There's sort of two ways of thinking about this, Ben. One would be, could tariffs plausibly help? And then another is, what about the way they've done it? So, you know, I don't think these tariffs have helped. Let me start there. For instance, if you put a 50% tariff on steel and aluminium, oh, I'm in America, aluminium, that raises the costs of any factory that uses steel and aluminium, but only of American factories.
If you're up in Canada, If you're in China, you don't have to pay US tariffs in order to get the raw materials you need to make the stuff that you need. This is very straightforward. So look, page one of the tariff handbook says don't tariff inputs. And the president has done that egregiously and repeatedly. There might be a day when someone somewhere can convince me that National Defence says we need this form of tariff or that, but that's not what we've got. And that gets to the second point. Even if you can make the case for some of these tariffs, the way they've done it, the on again, off again nature of the tariffs. We've got people in Canada who are not going to import wine from the United States.
In fact, all of Canada, basically. They're all elbows up. Why is that? Because the President said he'd invade Canada and people take that very seriously. from the perspective of Americans, we gain nothing, and then we lost trade with Canada.
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