The Prof G Pod with Scott Galloway
Raging Moderates: The Price of Trump’s Trade War
Tue, 08 Apr 2025
Scott and Jessica break down Trump’s sweeping new trade war that’s tanking the markets, Elon Musk’s rumored White House exit after a rocky tenure as Trump’s government efficiency czar, and a fiery 25-hour speech from Senator Cory Booker that’s lighting a fire under Democrats — and may signal a new chapter in the resistance. Follow Jessica Tarlov, @JessicaTarlov. Follow Prof G, @profgalloway. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Chapter 1: Who are the hosts of 'Raging Moderates' and what is their dynamic?
And I'm Jessica Tarla.
Should I run for president, Jess?
It seems like the internets want you to.
Yeah? Stack ranking. Give me the pluses and the minuses. The dog. Dog 28. A chicken in every pot, a Cialis in every cupboard. We're going off script here. I'm coming in hot. What do you think? Give me the negatives first. I can take it. I'm thick-skinned, although I may never speak to you again the rest of my life. Go ahead.
Oh, well, that would be a bummer. I would hope that you could at least give me a low-level campaign position.
You're going to be ambassador. No, you're going to head up. What is it? American Free Radio?
To the islands with the penguins that got a big tariff?
No, the one they just canceled. You're going to be my Carrie Lake. I'll send you to Voice of America and then fire you the next day. I'll put you in charge of Doge. Just use your congressional authority and ramp up the spending on everything. I like that.
I won't be in it for that. I'll think about what position I would want. But the big negative... I would think would be your family. I do not feel like they would be excited about this. 100% agree.
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Chapter 2: What would Scott Galloway's potential presidential platform look like?
But fundamentally, we all agree that the government is supposed to protect us. And Trump ran on that with the border, right, saying Biden opened it up. And Harris was even the border czar and they did nothing about this policy and millions of people got in here. Americans are dead as a result of undocumented people that came across the border during the Biden years, etc.
And I'm looking at an administration that tells you to keep holding the line. When 62 percent of Americans own stocks or mutual funds, this isn't a problem only for the top 10 percent or something. Scott Besson gave a big interview to Tucker Carlson and was making this out to be a rich person's problem. He did the same thing on the Sunday shows. That is not true at all.
This is a middle class and upper middle class and certainly upper upper class problem. But this collective F you to the majority of Americans who are not too dumb to understand what's going on and are aware of the fact that also this calculation was based on a mistake. There's an incredible.
article from the conservative think tank, the American Enterprise Institute, where they were the ones that figured out that they had done the equation improperly in determining what the tariffs are that led to that chart that they paraded out there that Ed was talking about on Prof G markets. And People know it is not just about Nike doing more here or more auto plants here.
Like, this is a small business problem. The amount of small businesses in America that run off of cheap imports is in the millions. And they can't afford to pay a $500,000 tariff in order to stay in business. This is going to wreck every sector. of the economy if it keeps up like this. And this morning there was and we should say it's 11 a.m. on Monday morning that we're recording.
There was a rumor that Kevin Hassett from the president's team had said that there was going to be a 90 day pause or they're exploring a 90 day pause on everyone. But China market jumped up. Then the White House confirmed that that wasn't the case. And now the market is back down. And how are we supposed to survive this?
Yeah, just to the point about playing the populist argument of, look, a small number of people. I think the Dow and the Nasdaq are, in fact, terrible metrics because they give the illusion of prosperity and that everything's fine. Life expectancy has gone down for the last five years.
Our kids are more obese and anxious, but we don't have these really elegant metrics to track that, that everybody talks about every day at the beginning of every news program, if it goes up a lot or down a lot. So we've decided that that's more important. The argument they're making is one they've never made before. They didn't make it until it was convenient.
But I do believe that the Dow and the Nasdaq are not an accurate reflection on the health and well-being of America. They're an indicator. They're a signal. But people think, oh, market's up 2%. That means America is 2% better today. No, that's not true. And there are reasons you would probably want to sacrifice or justify the long-term investment or trade-off of the markets going down.
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