Trump Tariff Fiasco Worsens as Bizarre New Ramblings to Media Backfire

After President Donald Trump threatened to single out Apple with tariffs, he offered remarks to reporters that badly undercut his case. First he seemed to say this would apply to many iPhone makers, but then he reiterated he’d said this straight to Apple CEO Tim Cook, a potentially serious abuse of power that made him look more unhinged. Then Trump said U.S.–manufactured jobs would not result in higher prices due to automation, but this revealingly admits that the manufacturing work he hopes tariffs will create are … low-level jobs that will ultimately get replaced. And then he basically conceded that his threat to get companies to “eat” the cost of his tariffs really could mean potentially higher prices for companies and consumers alike. Oops! All these oddities taken together wreck the fraudulent arguments he’s been making. We talked to Monica Potts, the new class politics reporter at The New Republic, who usefully synthesizes all of it to explain what’s wrong with Trump-MAGA manufacturing nostalgia and why the Trump-GOP agenda comprehensively works against his stated goal of creating good American jobs. Listen to this episode here. A transcript is here.