Trump Reopens the Trade War

Welcome once again to The Roundtable, your weekly publishers and editors podcast here at the American Mind. I'm your host, Spencer Clavin, associate editor of the Claremont Review of Books and Canada Hater-in-Chief of the American Mind. I guess we'll find out whether I really hate Canada or not in this episode when we talk about Trump's tariffs and new found trade war or new front in the trade war against Canada. But first, let me introduce my co-host today, managing editor Mike Sabo. Ryan Williams is out one more time taking some very, very well-earned rest, and he should be back next week. But for now, we've got plenty to discuss. To start with, as promised last week, we wanted to take a moment to recognize the passing of Senator Lindsey Graham and talk now that some time has elapsed about his career and the legacy that he leaves behind. So if you have not been following this, Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina died rather suddenly of, I'm reading this because I don't actually know what aortic dissection is, but aortic dissection and cardiovascular disease. So it sounds like had a sudden case of heart failure and died. He leaves behind him the memory of a long career. He was in Congress for over 30 years. And I'm going to just try to summarize some key points of his varied career, and then we can get into what happens now and thoughts about his life and time. Graham was the first in his family to go to college. He's got a kind of not exactly rags-to-riches story, but he comes from relatively humble beginnings. His parents died while he was a student. And so he and his sister are very close. She now has succeeded him in Congress and is making a bid to make that succession permanent. More on that in a bit. He served in the Air Force as a prosecutor and defense attorney, then became kind of a major figure in the Bill Clinton trial. This is when he first rose to prominence, I think is in 1999, when Clinton was being investigated. He replaced Strom Thurmond in Congress, who I forgot was 101 years old when he retired. That's not really relevant to the Lindsey Graham of it all. It's just kind of amazing. It was not even like he died at 101. It's just he was decided that it's time to hang up his hat at 101. Lindsey Graham took over. He was a big supporter of George Bush during the Iraq War, and that became a major theme of his career, which was his hawkishness, his emphasis on national security, and his generally pro-war stance, major supporter of Israel, and most recently a major supporter of the Iran War as well. But before that, he was a member of the Gang of Eight alongside John McCain. This was a group that pushed forward an unsuccessful bill for immigration reform. So that was another issue on which he and Trump ended up aligning. I say ended up because before that all happened in 2016, he ran against Donald Trump. He was one of the many, many people, if you will recall, who made a bid for the presidency at that time, and in the course of that became one of Trump's most outspoken critics. He said, he's a race-baiting, xenophobic, religious bigot. He doesn't represent my party. He doesn't represent the values that the men and women who wear the uniform are fighting for. Then Trump won, and Graham made up with him is sort of the long and the short of it. He became one of Trump's closest buddies, negotiation partners in Congress, a Trump whisperer. He played a lot of golf with him. He became the Senate Judiciary Chairman in which capacity, I believe it was in that capacity that he was a major defender of Brett Kavanaugh during the Brett Kavanaugh scandal and sort of shameful witch hunt, I would say. That's certainly how he portrayed it. He said, it's the most unethical sham since I've been in politics. So that was obviously a point on which he and Trump and MAGA were aligned. In general, he became a MAGA figure. He did say on January 6th that enough is enough. He kind of distanced himself from Trump when that all went down, but then again had sort of affected a rapprochement on the second term and became a major supporter, especially of the Iran war, which is consistent with the through line of his pretty hawkish approach to foreign policy. As I mentioned, his sister Darlene was put in his vacant seat by South Carolina Governor Henry McMaster. Now she has just recently said that she's going to run to do a full term in his seat. She says, I've made a decision and I'm in. I give you Senator Lindsey Graham. Sometimes derided as one of the people most notorious for kind of abandoning all principle when it came to Trump. His opponents and critics would point to him as an example of how the GOP got captured by Trumpism or whatever. On the other end of things, I think some on the MAGA right, in the more isolationist wings of the MAGA right, would have lumped him in with these kind of old neocon hawks or whatever. But also as that litany, I hope, sort of showed a key player in some very important moments in defense of MAGA and Trump. And more broadly, I think somebody whose life and contribution to American politics extends far beyond Trump and is bound up with kind of the longer efforts to make, especially immigration reform happen. So I'm not asking Mike, you nor am I proposing to sort of be like Lindsey Graham, good or bad. Why don't we just start with kind of some of your reflections on his career. And I guess I should have said at the outset, you know, may he rest in peace and our hearts go out to his family, of course. Yeah, no. I mean, Lindsey Graham, like you said, in Congress for quite a number of years, 31 years. I think he was in the South Carolina House of Representatives before that. He had served his country for a very long time. And I think it's always good when somebody passes away, either the right, the left, Democrat, Republican, whatever, public figure, to take some time for reflection. I think that's one of the things that should be happening more and more and more. It's like, look, if you have nothing but bad things to say about the dead, you know, just wait, just stop. Just, you know, praise him if you were a really big fan of his, if you weren't, you know, and that's okay, too. So I think this is You can not say anything. That's an option. That's a thing that people can do online. It's possible. I know it's Twitter and I know the cesspool is there and I get it all, but it is possible not to say anything. So I think that, you know, it's certainly one of the reasons why we waited just to give some time for his family, especially South Carolina voters, his colleagues in the Senate, who, you know, as I've been reading across the aisle, I mean, Democrat, Republican, absolutely loved him. I guess he had a great sense of humor, was kind of a great, you know, invite to dinner parties, that kind of thing. Obviously, you know, he, like you said, I mean, he was neoconservative. I think that probably gets thrown around a bit too much. He was certainly a war hawk at the very least, was obviously, you know, for sanctions against Russia, was obviously a big fan of what the president did in bombing Iran, their nuclear sites last year. And then obviously with the war this year was a huge friend of Israel, I think constantly kind of shuttled back and forth, was kind of a, you know, a way that Benjamin Netanyahu kind of also kind of could talk to Trump, kind of not through Trump directly, but certainly through Graham. So again, and those are policies that you can praise, you can criticize, certainly with what looks to be the rise of, you know, J.D. Vance coming up. I think those are going to be, you know, a little bit more unpopular and certainly are more unpopular with younger voters. But actually, as I think some polls have shown that I think we've discussed actually in the past, maybe not as unpopular as actually it may seem with just kind of pure vibes, which is an interesting thing. But Graham also, I think another important thing with him was he was kind of an institutionalist, you know, say what you want about Mitch McConnell, about Graham, about people like Nancy Pelosi, who have been in power, or were in power, I mean, Graham said for a very long time, who, you know, actually were able to get things done. You look at, I mean, the difference between him and John McCain, who was a very good friend of and how they interacted with Trump. Lindsey Graham, obviously, was a never Trumper, as you said, he himself ran for president in 2016. But he stopped his campaign, I think, pretty early on, I think he could read the tea leaves and see the way that things were going. But then he kind of, he, you know, he became friends with Trump, and he became one of his absolute biggest supporters, even, you know, in some areas where they disagree, say, like immigration. I mean, he voted, he was one of the big endorsers for the one big, beautiful bill. He talked about the Save America Act that's still pending. He was actually a guy too, interestingly enough, especially for Claremont, he came out against birthright citizenship, a long time ago. This wasn't just recently. I mean, he was against birthright citizenship. You know, for I, as far as I understand, it's been decades. So I mean, you know, nearly as long as some of the Claremont scholars even talking about it in public, guys like Johnny, he's been in that earlier. So that's interesting. He obviously, like you said, Spencer, you know, strongly supported Brett Kavanaugh. So those are some big things, you know, on amnesty and immigration. You know, those are things I think that, you know, with the Gang of Eight, you know, Marco Rubio in 2013, obviously was with that too. So that was another thing that I think, you know, is separated and somewhat from the president, certainly the base. But, you know, look, I think we, you may not have agreed with everything that Graham did, but I think sometimes it's too easy to overlook kind of the institutionalists of these places and see that, okay, we need some people like that, you know, not necessarily in policy, but how he practiced politics. You know, he was a guy who could see, okay, Trump is going to be the leader of our party. Instead of just railing against him and not get anything I want, I'm going to work with him and actually get some things I want. I mean, so that sounds simple, but it's amazing how many people just absolutely could not do that. And so I do give him credit for understanding our political moment and really doing what was necessary for him to get through, you know, his preferred policies. Looking back on his life, I was reminded yet again of this essay by Winston Churchill on consistency in politics, which I've mentioned on the show a number of times because I find it such a challenging and also helpful piece of writing. It's about, you know, Churchill himself, of course, changed, ostensibly changed sides in British politics many times, but was in some ways offering an apologia for his own consistency and also looking at especially Burke, who has a similar kind of record of coming out on seemingly opposite sides of various issues in British politics, but actually having a consistent set of priorities and the difference between what party you might be affiliated with, what group or whatever you might be affiliated with, versus actually having things that you are aiming at, priorities and objectives that you're trying to achieve. With Burke, it was that, in some cases, his attitude about tradition meant that he was against these sort of free-floating, abstracted ideas of universal rights, and therefore he was against the French Revolution, but for the American Revolution, but also in the impeachment trial of Warren Hastings, talked a lot about, you know, these kind of geography has, morality has no geography and, you know, the Indian is our brother. And like, Churchill was basically arguing that there is in this a higher order philosophy, but it cashes out prudentially in different political objectives at different times. And I'm not saying that Lindsey Graham was a statesman on the level of Edmund Burke by any means, but I am saying that it's possible looking at this windy career of his to discern certain priorities, which you can agree with or disagree with, but they are summed up in the word security, he thinks that America, in order to be secure, needs closed borders and an aggressive foreign policy. He went about that in a way that was not the Trumpian way. I mean, the Gang of Eight bill, as I recall, I'm speaking a bit off the cuff, but it was pretty big on the path to citizenship for people who were already here. And that's the thing about it that set it radically apart from, obviously, the Trump approach and the Mag approach to immigration. And it's something that people have become increasingly impatient with and contemptuous of since the immigration issue has become such a flashpoint and because it's gotten even so much worse than when it was, you know, when Graham first was talking about it. Having said all of that, right, it's one thing to say, look, the guy kind of bobbed and weaved and was a political animal of the old fashioned type. It's another thing to say he was like spineless and had no principles, which was the theme of the attacks that you're talking about. I mean, you saw some really ugly stuff said about him that basically that he belongs. I think somebody actually did say, maybe on the bulwark, that he belongs in hell. Again, I'm speaking off the top of my head here, but this is the kind of thing that if you find yourself saying that immediately after the death of anybody, probably check out for a second and check in with your soul. For me, at least, this really does help to draw the line between achieving your political aims and the allies that you might have, including Lindsey Graham, who are in general moving the country closer to your political aims and who know how to do that effectively. As you said, Mike, there's a distinction. There's supposed to be a distinction in this country between that and somebody that you idolize or admire or love. I don't know Lindsey Graham. I never met the guy. My politics does not require me to have really any attachment to him personally one way or another, and my religion actually forbids me from passing judgment on his soul. Between those two things, it's really none of my concern what was, as they say, in the guy's heart. Overall, I think what we're asked to look at here is, did he, in general, move the country in the direction of the things that I want? I think the answer is, broadly speaking, yes. 100% of the time, no, but probably about 80% of the time. I find it really, really difficult to be shocked or even surprised by the fact that he ran against Trump and said all sorts of nasty things about him, and then when Trump won, pivoted to collaborating with him and trying to move him in the direction of his priorities. That seems to me actually a completely unremarkable thing, except that we live in this politics of loyalty where you're supposed to be attached to one presidential figure for your whole life and derive all of your opinions from that. It's actually the fact that Graham was doing what effective politicians have always done, that made him sort of unique, or at least remarkable and unusual in this age of intense partisan fervor. Maybe that's a bit of a hot take or something, I don't know. He actually seems pretty normal to me, despite the fact that he... Yeah. No, I think that's exactly right. The Churchill piece, him describing statesmanship, I think, as stepping on one side of the boat sometimes and then the other side of the boat, I think that's exactly what it is. That's what politics is. It's standing amidst changes, standing on principle. Well, that's going to make it appear like you are on one side one time and one side on the other. That's just, again, the nature of politics, and I think Graham, as obviously a consummate politician, clearly understood that. You look at even the voting base in South Carolina, did he represent every single Republican there, their views? Probably not, I'm sure. I mean, I knew people from South Carolina who were even in the Republican Party who said, I can't believe the guy's still there, let's get him out. Okay, they tried and they failed though. I mean, so you got to give Graham credit, no matter his policy views themselves. I mean, this guy understood politics, I think, in a deep sense. Much better sense than guys over at the Borg, I mean, who are talking about him in hell. I mean, again, I wouldn't wish that on my worst enemy, especially how the Bible, especially in the New Testament, Jesus actually talked about hell quite a bit. Unquenchable fire where the worm burns. I mean, I don't think that's a place where you want to be, so I wouldn't wish that on my worst enemy. But yeah, I mean, that kind of stuff is just absolutely foolish and should really have no part in any decent discussion at all. Again, you can agree, you can disagree, but that's out of bounds. And to be fair, I should say that I actually can't remember who was the bulwark or the dispatch or one of these places, so don't go attacking them on my behalf. But you can comment, if you're a paid subscriber, you can comment and tell me which one it is. I definitely saw somebody wishing hell upon him. It may have just been on social media, but as you say, Mike, that's just not where you want to end up for the sake of your own soul. You don't want to end up saying and doing that. And not for nothing, but I think this kind of discussion is going to be important in the coming years when Trump does inevitably leave the political scene. There are going to be candidates for his successor. Obviously, you mentioned among them. And there are going to be loyalty tests that people want to impose and they're going to want to make it about like this kind of idolatry of the man or of whichever person we've attached to. And I think it's a reminder, among other things, like looking at Graham's career that, you know, we're not in the business of electing princes and we're not in the business of idolizing people. We're in the business of trying to preserve our tradition of law and liberty. And I think that's just a very different game. And it means that your vote is not tied up with your soul. Your vote is not identical to your soul, I guess, at least we can put it that way. Well, OK, we can, I think, draw a close on our Lindsey Graham retrospective. But actually, as it turns out, our next topic also has to do with the Senate Judiciary Committee. It's an all Judiciary Committee episode all the time today because Todd Blanch is undergoing a hearing, a confirmation hearing at the Senate Judiciary Committee to become confirmed as attorney general. He's already acting attorney general. And to make matters even more confusing and to me somewhat absurd, he's going to be able to be the attorney general effectively, continue to fill that office, I think for the rest of Trump's term. I mean, the succession statute for the office is such that he seems to be able to just do this without the rubber stamp. He was confirmed already as deputy AG. Trump removed the existing AG, Pam Bondi. And I'm just going to read again on our paid segment. I'm going to talk about how I'm not an economist on this segment. I'm going to talk about how I'm not a lawyer. So I'm just going to read the statute here. This is 28 U.S. Code Section 508 on vacancies at the attorney general's office. In a case of a vacancy in the office of attorney general or of his absence or disability, the deputy attorney general may exercise all the duties of that office. And for the purposes of Section 3345 of Title 5, the deputy attorney general is the first assistant to the attorney general. So I think what this means is that basically the guy's already in the role. But obviously, Trump would prefer to have him confirmed. And it also seems to be wrapped up with the politics of the executive and legislative branches, because the two major holdouts here are Senators Tom Tillis and John Cornyn. Tillis of North Carolina, Cornyn of Texas. Cornyn just lost this primary race that we've talked about to Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who was Trump's pick. And so this is really about, I think, a battle of wills between Cornyn and Trump. And the key sticking points seem to be, first, Blanche's actions as deputy attorney general, brokering a deal with the IRS to shield Trump and his family from IRS audits. And then there is this other question of the anti-weaponization fund, which is to the tune of $1.8 billion that Cornyn opposes and Blanche has been in favor of. And so that, too, is something Blanche seems to be wrestling with, I guess. If they lose out one Republican vote here, I think they are sunk. They don't get the confirmation. So, Mike, my first question for you is, is there more to this than political theater? Obviously, political theater is significant, especially with the midterms coming up and with these primary challenges. But in point of actual fact, Blanche is, for all intents and purposes, the attorney general, no? Yeah, no, I think that's right. And even somebody who is critical of it, the National Review editors came out and said that they definitely opposed Blanche. I think Andy McCarthy, their legal analyst, also does not like Blanche for that position. And I think part of it is perceived corruption. Is he actually going to be independent of Trump? Is he just going to be Trump's lackey? So I think that there's certainly those perceptions out there. He did say something like he has some gap. I am his lawyer, which I think make people worry. Right. So I think part of this, too, is you have also this idea of the Department of Justice, is that actually under the executive branch? Is that actually under the president himself? So you have the separation of powers factored into this, too. I would say for the critics, are they maybe buying too much into this FDR-like separation from executive control in certain instances? So that might be something worth looking into. But look, in the editorial, I think did bring this up, too. And this maybe was a possibility the president and his lawyers thought about. Could Blanche just essentially be just serving interim AG for the rest of Trump's term? And that's possible. Should Trump have actually even put him up for AG itself? And so that's a political question. I don't know the answer to that. Should Trump have maybe done this after Cornyn actually left the Senate, depending on especially what the Senate's going to look like? I don't know. And those are interesting and big, important questions. I do just actually want to go back to Blanche and just have, just like we did with Lindsey Graham, just a little bit of more of his background. Oh, good. Yeah, please do. So he has been at the DOJ. He actually spent 15 years at the DOJ. He was assistant U.S. attorney in the Southern District of New York. And that's kind of commonly thought of the most demanding federal prosecutor's office in the country. He was co-chief of its violent crimes unit. And that meant he supervised roughly about two dozen prosecutors handling murders, kidnappings, cases obviously having to do a lot with crime. And then he switched to private practice. So he was at firms like WilmerHale, became a partner at Codd, Wallader, Wickersham, and Taft. So that's, I guess, one of Wall Street's oldest firms. And he was there from 2017 to 2023. And that was kind more white collar. So this is where the Trump kind of stuff comes in. His clients there included Paul Manafort, who was Trump's former campaign chairman. He helped dismiss a mortgage fraud case in 2019. Igor Fruman. So that gentleman, I guess, is linked to Rudy Giuliani, and there's others in Trump's orbit. He left that firm in 2023, and he actually founded his own firm, Blanche Law. And that's when he became Trump's lead defense attorney. So he represented Trump in the New York case where Trump had 34 felony counts against him, related to famous historian Daniels, the federal classified documents case, election interference cases. Both of those were dismissed post-election. And so that's kind of his background. And you have letters of support, actually, for him too, which is interesting. John Ashcroft, actually former attorney general under George W. Bush, came out in support of him. You have a letter that was sent to the Senate Judiciary Committee. 77 former DOJ officials have backed him. So there's so much kind of politics kind of swirling around here. And it's, again, going back to Graham is you have to read the moment. Okay, if not Blanche, who? So that's one of my things against some of the critics of who almost kind of acknowledge how the DOJ has been weaponized. And okay, even if they have some misgivings about Blanche, his background, his connection to Trump, et cetera, what do you propose? I mean, somebody like Bill Barr, who obviously served Trump as more of an establishment guy, that didn't exactly end well in Trump's first term. But I would say part of the criticism is, okay, where do you turn next? How do you actually go against people like Jim Comey against, I mean, just a whole crush of people who were out to get Trump, who worked at the FBI, who worked at the DOJ? I mean, do we just kind of let that slide and just act like, oh, bygones be bygones, the 2024 election solved that. So I think it's too easy to kind of overlook all that and not really take Blanche, what he's doing as seriously as I think they should. And to look at it again, more like, where is the DOJ? Some of these kind of meta concerns about separation politics, I mean, who does the attorney general serve? Where's the DOJ in terms of an executive agency? So I think that those questions still need to be thought about and hopefully resolved. Yeah, you mentioned Bill Barr. He's somebody I quite like and admire, and he has endorsed Blanche in a Wall Street Journal op-ed. He says he will run the department as effectively as anyone could under President Trump, providing much needed leadership and stability. So you can tell the guy's used to choosing his words very carefully. But I think, you know, this is, to me, a very difficult question that falls under the heading of this unitary executive theory that we've been talking about a lot. And it's one that I have not yet resolved in my own head and don't feel the need to, again, because it seems as if this actual proceeding is kind of beside the point of what's going to happen in point of fact. I mean, it sounds like at some point, this will probably come before the courts, right? The matter of the DOJ's relationship to the executive. And if it's the case that the presidency is going to accrue, you know, the court has obviously, in many cases that we've discussed, ruled in favor of the president accruing a fair amount of unilateral power to appoint his own people to the key roles in the executive branch. And that's all right and good. I mean, we are generally in favor of that. We think that, for one thing, it breaks the power of the kind of perma-bureaucracy and makes Trump the person, you know, makes it possible for Trump or whoever is in the presidency to execute the powers of the presidency. Always with the footnote that we want to add, which is also it would be really nice if Congress were sort of more muscular and active so that you actually had a counterbalance to this unitary executive. But be that as it may, the executive in the constitution is the executive, right? So we do it like in general on the whole, I think that's the right thrust of the argument here. The DOJ along with the Fed is sort of like one of these open questions in gray areas. So I would suspect that this is the sort of thing that's going to come before the court. And when it does, God willing, if the composition of the court is still as it is, I have a lot of hope that there will be a fair amount of detailed discussion and then maybe even like, God forbid, like a good decision about it. So I'm kind of waiting for that to happen or for something like that to happen before I pronounce judgment on like the larger constitutional issue. Again, since the confirmation hearing seems more to do with the internal politics of the Republican Party, which I agree, this is probably coming up because of the midterms because Trump and, you know, and Trump's administration don't know what Congress is going to look like and the prognosis isn't great. I mean, this particular seat, the Texas one that is now, you know, that Ken Paxton has primaried is kind of one of the big proving grounds, I think, or test cases for whether, you know, the midterms that we've said before seem likely to deal a blow to the incumbent as they typically do, but that's not the only thing they're going to do, right? They're also going to deliver a lot of judgment on MAGA candidates, which has been a mixed bag in the past, right? That sometimes MAGA, MAGA-fying the Senate races has sometimes led to the elevation of candidates who work better on the national stage than as kind of local politicians. In other words, people that appeal to the broad Trump sensibility, but are kind of off-putting to the lightly red areas where perhaps a more middle-of-the-road candidate could win. In other places, obviously, Trumpism has been hugely successful and obviously as like a populist movement or as part of this populist groundswell, like this kind of change is coming whether we like it or not. It's a question of how to sort of like filter and funnel it rightly through each local race and each state race. So, this whole little affair, is there a pre-shock to an earthquake as well as an aftershock? I don't know, but it's sort of a pre-shock to that seismic shift that we're going to see. I do think Trump would like if he can to get this official approval before all of that happens, because he knows that if he can get all the Republicans currently in Congress, currently in the Judiciary Committee on his side, then he can have this kind of, I don't know, rubber stamp, I guess. Yeah, I think the midterm angle is a good one too, because you look at, say, the Texas race. Okay, Ken Paxton versus James Tallarico. I mean, that's a race we've discussed a little while ago, but not recently. I mean, that's one where it's going to be very interesting to see what happens. I mean, Paxton, pretty much a total MAGA guy from what I understand. Tallarico, I mean, who's representative of very progressive Christianity, is certainly on the radical left in terms of a host of a number of issues. But then you do look at the GOP and the Senate. They look like they're probably going to keep at least their majority. It might go down by one or two even, so we'll see with that. More than likely, they probably will lose the House. It's looking like forecasters are definitely going in that direction. And then you have to Supreme Court with redistricting and a whole host of things. So I do understand, in a sense, why the Trump administration would feel like that they have to move now, just because it's better to deal with the knowns, the known unknowns, like Tal Rumsfeld talked about. It's better to deal with what is right in front of you and not with what might happen. You look at Mitch McConnell, even as kind of Dwayne of the Senate with some Supreme Court picks. That's why he moved, and that's why he didn't move at times when it seemed like that would have been the right choice. Again, going back to our first segment with Lindsey Graham, this is what politics is all about. Things are changing. Things are shifting all the time. Yes, you of course have some principles, absolutely. But so much of this is a read on human nature, a read on where people are at, where the electorate is at. And I think sometimes because conservatives and the right more generally, I mean, we churn out op-eds, we churn out pieces more than it seems like anything else. We can kind of get lost in our heads and it can kind of be abstracted like, no to Todd Blanch. Okay, well, yes to what? What's the actual plan? What do you think should work? It's kind of like, again, this kind of like vacuum sealed kind of approach in some ways where these things are kind of unconnected and it's like, look, okay, let's figure out, let's act on what Lindsey Graham knew, which is Trump is president. He is the only vehicle right now for the Republicans. And let's keep that in mind, especially if you're a Senate Republican. So those are just things that, you know, I think the Senate, you know, GOP especially should keep in mind. Yeah. Something we neglected to mention, actually you did mention it. I was going to comment on it, but forgot about Lindsey Graham is that he was funny. He had a really good sense of humor and he was great on TV hits. Like if you watched him ever do those, you know, an older media format, but something that occasionally, you know, it still affects a lot of people who go on these news hits. And he had just great one-liners and a sense of humor and a kind of joie de vivre, which was, was welcome. Like levity is welcome in these, in these situations. And I raise this now because also just completely apart from all the political questions and the larger constitutional issues, like as a human drama, I'm like the Michael Jackson popcorn eating meme about Gordon, because it's basically just a question of like, is this guy pissed off enough that he's going to lob one more bomb at Trump to mess him up on his way out of Congress? Or is he feeling like, you know what, I I'm beat. So I'm just going to try to make peace and play along and support the, you know, swallow my pride and support the party and get on side in these waning hours. And I just think, you know, apart from everything else, we live in the funnest country in the world. And it's in these moments when this stuff gets just like incredibly entertaining to watch. And actually, I could say much the same thing about our last topic. I'm going to introduce this topic with a little personal story. I mentioned on our podcast a while ago that I had a fabulous trip to Japan this summer. That was my big vacation. And both ways, I was supposed to fly Air Canada. And the whole time in my head, instead of Air Canada, I was thinking of the South Park song, Blame Canada. This is maybe a bit of a dated reference now, but you know, that that song that they have, I think it's supposed to be their fake national anthem or something. We blame Canada for everything. And in fact, as it turned out, this became particularly apposite when we were supposed to fly back. And we had this great flight that was like, you know, left at three o'clock in Japan time on Sunday and got back at like nine o'clock on Sunday in American time because you gain all these hours on the way back. And it was just going to be great to like come home from vacation, still have a little bit of time to decompress and like sleep in your own bed and all this stuff. I get to the airport and literally upon my stepping out of the bus, the shuttle that takes us to the Tokyo Narita airport, I get a text that says, your flight is canceled. Not delayed. Not like, oh, we're kind of walking it back by 30 minutes. Oh, no, now it's an hour or whatever. Just we're axing it. Whereupon chaos ensued. I mean, the airport was a mess. The whole thing fell apart. We had to spend six hours in Seattle for some godforsaken reason. We were on air Alaska, which when air Alaska is doing better than you, you know that it's rough time. So I am not favorably disposed at this juncture toward Canada. Now, in point of fact, this is, of course, neither here nor there. And Canada hate is a favorite sport. And this is probably not good enough reason to in and of itself to launch a trade war against Canada. I suppose I can concede that Trump shouldn't levy tariffs on Canada just because I had a bad flight home from my vacation. But it does make me sort of favorably disposed toward this this news story, which is to say that Trump has announced a 50 percent, a set of 50 percent tariffs on Canadian products, big tariffs, major tariffs on products that include I'm just reading off the list here, wine, hockey sticks and cement. Couldn't have made it up if I tried. Couldn't have written an onion article that included hockey sticks as one of the goods that we're putting putting tariffs on. There are other goods included, importantly, which were previously protected under the United States, Mexico, Canada agreement or OMSCA as it's as it's known in USMCA. Anyway, the USMCA has been, critics say, broached by this. There are other things that are excluded from these tariffs, including energy products, fish, critical minerals and products already subject to tariffs aimed at protecting national security, such as steel and aluminum. So in other words, this is a ratcheting up of a protective trade relationship between the US and Canada. These go into effect in 30 days. And so, as usual with Trump, there's kind of a deal window here, which I think is pretty important because it makes me wonder if really these are not intended to be put into place as described, but rather a warning sign and a bargaining chip. Let's talk now about what kind of deal we can have. Prime Minister Mark Carney said in response that he's ready to deepen trade talks with the United States. This is maybe a way of getting them to play ball. I don't know. The White House's own webpage announcement of this sort of frames it in contrast to Canada's own, they say, discriminatory treatment of American products. President Trump is offsetting the burden and disadvantage on US commerce from Canada's discriminatory treatment of US commerce and is leveling the playing field for crucial American exports, cars, alcohol and dairy. So there are quotas on cars imported to Canada from the US. Canada has halted the purchase, distribution or retailing of US alcoholic beverages, except all the two Canadian provinces have done so. In an all-time favorite clause, I don't think I've ever read something that tickled me more. As part of its complicated and protectionist dairy system, Canada established tariff rate quotas on US cheese that are much more restrictive than the tariff rate quotas imposed on similar imports of cheese into Canada from the EU. So it's on with Canada of all places, the famously nicest country in the world. But that reputation has been called into question lately, of course. And so, Mike, I wonder what you make of this whole affair. I think this is a continuation. I think, just like the trade ambassador Jameson Greer said, Canada's banned sale of US liquor. They've capped a limited amount of cars that can be shipped. I think they limited space to market access for US dairy. So this is one more step, I think, in a long kind of, I guess you could call it a trade war of some kind. And I think that was exacerbated by the wildfires. I think it should be linked to that, that that started happening. So there were about AI estimates, I think it was almost about 900 active wildfires, which I guess is pretty average, I guess, or maybe slightly above. But so that has to be linked to that. And I guess what Trump did, so this started kind of linking the tariffs to the fires. So on July 17th, Trump said that he's actually going to add the cost of pollution to the existing tariffs on Canada. And he actually told this to Mark Carney, they were at the FIFA World Cup final together. And so he suggested to him there that Canada pay the damages or face more tariffs. So that's kind of an interesting thing that I think Trump saw kind of an opening to, for some leverage and decided to use the wildfires against Canada. Because obviously you have, we actually weren't affected. I live right outside of Cincinnati. We actually did not see any air quality smog, anything like that, but certainly the country was like cloaked in smog. Yeah. I mean, some of these, it's almost like that. Oh, that a Blade Runner 2049, I think it was that came out. I mean, it had that look to it where it was just, everything was very grainy. I did not see that here, but I think, you know, everything North, I mean, it looked like that. So I think Trump kind of, you know, was using some leverage. I mean, he's, you know, very quick like that to intuit, you know, what people are complaining about and use that to his advantage. So that makes sense in a way there is as silly in a way as that kind of seems. And then also to another thing, this is, I think the administration kind of unleashing the next kind of trade policies. So you have the Supreme court earlier this year in February. This is the case learning resources versus Trump. They ruled against the tariffs that the president imposed in a series of executive orders. And that was through the international emergency economic powers act. That was a law Congress passed in 1977. So the court ruled that, you know, some of those tariffs were invalid. So what Trump is actually doing now, these new tariffs. So these were launched in three proclamations that he signed. So this is now under section 338 of the 1930 trade act. That's commonly known as the Smoot-Hawley tariff act. So, so that kind of shows you a window into kind of some of their new strategies regarding tariffs, you know, what laws the president's pointing to. Some commentators I've seen said, you know, basically that law hasn't been used since the 1940s. So this is, you know, opens up a whole new area where the Supreme court, you know, I'm sure is going to rule in some way because somebody is going to sue. That's just, you know, an eventuality that is going to happen. So, yeah. So, so it, so it opens it up on that way. So we'll, we'll see, you know, again, what, what the court says, you know, how the new kind of tariff policy turns out and it will be certainly interesting to watch. Yeah. This is just Trump loves tariffs. He loves doing this is something he really is devoted to. In fact, it's been pointed out. This is one of the most consistent things about his whole talk about consistency in politics. Like this is one of the things that he just is determined to do is wage trade wars with tariffs. And as you pointed out, like the Supreme court can block him on IEPA as they used to call it. And now he's doing a bit of an end run around that. And as you say, like probably in for another court case, I mean, I am not an economist. I think I've said that now twice on our show. And so far be it for me to kind of cavil and nitpick at Trump's approach. I have not seen these things really like doing a lot for Trump or for the American people. It just seems like something he's really gotten his head that is not serving him. But always when I feel like Trump is doing something crazy, like every now and then he comes back around and it actually worked out great. So I don't know. I mean, it just doesn't seem like the sort of thing to be doing while the Iran war is also sort of back in full swing and causing economic instability and so on and so forth. I'm not totally sure what he's thinking, except to say that this 30 day window makes me think, well, he's basically just tightening the to try and get Carney to come and negotiate. Which, yeah, like that part of it, I think, is more understandable. Like if you look at it in terms of will these tariffs themselves kind of help fix the problem economically? Like, again, doesn't seem like it to me. But if you look at it as this, this is a guy that really just wants our allies as well as our adversaries to sort of respect us and to stop jerking us around. I mean, that part of it does seem true. It does seem that countries that are ostensibly our friends are also very happy to kind of mouth off against us and to take advantage of our superior wealth and general leniency. We're so rich that we can kind of look askance at countries trying to, at countries leveraging tariffs against us. And yeah, we shall see. Do you think that there is any midterm angle to this or do you think that this is just something he's hoping to kind of get done with before the midterms and it's not really part of that? I would guess that this is linked to, yeah, I think a number of things. So with tariffs, obviously the president has been a fan of the use of tariffs since at least the 80s. I mean, on record, I think talking to Oprah. So this is something that just, he loves tariffs. I think he correctly diagnosed the Republican Party, their just wide arms open stance for free trade. I think he saw how that harmed the country. Charles Kessler actually talked about the Republican Trump and it basically looked at the Republican Party kind of pre-FDR and saw it during Coolidge, during Harding. What were their economic policies? Going back to Lincoln. I mean, I'd say definitely more of a protectionist party all throughout its years, even before there was a Republican Party. So I think that there's part of that. Trump feels like we've been taken advantage of and he's going to use all the tools at his disposal. I'm with you. Has this actually helped? Were the liberation day tariffs, did they help? I don't know. I think it's probably a mixed bag. People certainly haven't been seeing the approach, but that's the thing. I think this is more of a long-term rebalancing trade approach. In the short term, the problem is it may actually raise the prices of goods. Then you have that combined with Iran. So with affordability, that may actually even have not only just a neutral effect, but even a negative effect for the midterms. There's so many complications with tariffs and how this all works. I mean, Chris Caldwell has been talking about this at the CRB and then elsewhere to the spectator, just about how complicated this is. In his mind, I think he's fairly critical of how the president has done with regards to tariffs. So I think you have to see kind of all that two together and just know that the same economists who are kind of railing against all this stuff and against even just the idea of the tariff, those guys I think are mainly out of step with history. I think Trump is certainly more in line in principle. But again, how this all actually works itself out, it's difficult to discern. I mean, it looks like right now that I would say maybe it's having more of a negative effect overall. But all of this, again, is toward a much larger rebalancing. I think it has to do with the De Niro Doctrine in the Western Hemisphere to kind of reestablish. Yeah, not even reestablish, but just maintain U.S. hegemony. So I think all that is wrapped up in this. And again, it's hard to discern now just because I think it is more of a long term approach. Yeah. On our paid episode, we're going to talk about this Johan Kurtz article, which, by the way, you should come to claremontinstitute.substack.com to hear us discuss generational wealth gaps and whether millennials and Gen Z are suffering economically or not. And we're going to be discussing that in part as kind of a larger question about the American economy, right? Is it doing well or is it doing poorly? And how remarkably difficult it is to kind of get a bead on that in part because the GDP statistics don't reflect everything that people are actually feeling and experiencing. And sometimes they're even contraindicating what's really going on. They're moving in the opposite direction from the way people really feel. There's another piece that was earlier than this called by Larry Summers in 2024 about how that was true under Biden. It was one of the big Biden problems that he kept pointing to GDP numbers and all these growth statistics. But people kept saying, you can cite all those statistics you want, but I feel squeezed. I feel like I'm not able to afford groceries. I feel like every week I go to the grocery store and my dollars count for less. And Summers sort of said, look, what do you know? It turns out that if you run the numbers differently, this stuff actually does reveal itself. And we talked a lot about that when it came out. And I think, you know, as you mentioned, Mike, Chris Caldwell has basically taken, I think it was the tariff and the trade wars followed by the Iran war as a kind of one-two punch that he sees as basically having ended Trumpism. And I think his piece for CRB about the trade wars and about the operation, what was it called? Not Independence Day. You mentioned it earlier. It was called Liberation Day, the Liberation Day tariffs. His Caldwell's piece about that was entitled let's not do that again. And he's done it again. I mean, he's continued doing it. And so like, I do think these are the two biggest things which have damaged him. I'm not as ready as Chris is to pronounce time of death on Trumpism, but I do think that in his second term, he has made some unforced errors and that the chief among them are the Iraq situation and the tariffs, both of which, as you indicate, arise from reasonable assessments of the situation that others were unwilling to make. And it's important to give Trump credit for that, that there are responses to things that nobody else was even accepting as reality, namely the increasing difficulty for the American working class under global free trade conditions. That's the economic problem that Trump is responding to. Worldwide free trade doesn't work for the American working class in all sorts of ways. His response to that is tariffs. Also, Iran is a major threat to our primary ally in the Middle East, namely Israel. And Israel itself is under this terrible duress and has suffered this terrible attack. And his response to that has been the Iran war. In both cases, diagnosis true, situation genuinely critical, response has proven to be counterproductive. So it's easy to sit and be an armchair critic and all of that. But also, I'm not sure that I know what the right way to proceed in these cases is. And I'm not sure that Trump is as over as some of his critics have suggested. There are still almost three years to go in this second Trump presidency. The midterms, they will probably deliver a blow, but they will also shake things up. And there will still be a period of time when Trump is a very active figure in our political life. I don't think he's going to become the lame duck figure that some people seem to think that he will. I don't think that's his character. And I also think that he will want to have a major hand in sort of shaping his own exit. But yeah, I mean, these are not, to my mind, these approaches are not serving Trump, but we shall see. So as I mentioned, you can find those articles that Mike and I were just talking about, the Claremont Review of Books ones, at claremontreviewofbooks.com. We've got a still pretty fresh issue up there, and it should be in your inbox at this point if you haven't gotten it before. But all that remains now is to thank you very much for listening to The Roundtable. If you want to know more about all of the stuff that we do, you can visit our website at americanmind.org, or we've got all sorts of great content coming at you daily. And you can also support us, plus get stuff by going to claremontinstitute.substack.com and signing up for Claremont Digital Plus. That's where you can comment on all of our Substack posts. You can get extra episodes of this show and of various other shows, including The Close Read, which is our CRB podcast. You can check out our DC-based center for the American Way of Life at dc.claremont.org. And you can donate to support us at claremont.org. Donate, which we always greatly appreciate much. It's just how we keep the lights on, and we're very, very happy for any amount that you want to throw our way. Thanks very much to our one-man production and engineering crew, the Brother Gene, Ryan Gannon, and thanks to you all for listening. We'll talk to you next week.