Needless economic pain from Trump not even worth it if his tariff gambit works: economist

The Rachel Maddow Show

MSNBC

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4.5 • 34K Ratings

🗓️ 4 April 2025

⏱️ 42 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Betsey Stevenson, former chief economist for the U.S. Department of Labor, discusses the likely consequences for average American consumers of Donald Trumps ill-considered tariffs, and explains why, even in Trump's best case scenario, his tariff gambit is not worth the pain he is imposing on the U.S. economy.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Rachel has the night off, but she will be back tomorrow. I promise you that. And we're going to
0:04.4	begin tonight with how the day began, and that is with the opening bell. As you know,
0:09.6	every morning, Wall Street trading officially begins when someone rings the opening bell at the New York
0:15.8	Stock Exchange in Lower Manhattan. We've all seen the images. It's quite important, quite symbolic.
0:20.8	The Stock Exchange does have this long tradition
0:23.9	of letting a different company ring the opening bell each day.
0:28.6	And in some ways, it is a way of celebrating
0:32.2	some kind of milestone that the company has just hit
0:34.9	or a company that may have been going public.
0:37.2	And today, because
0:38.6	the news guides do have a sense of humor, the company with the distinct honor of actually
0:45.0	ringing the opening bell today, out of all days, to officially start trading was the pro-Trump
0:52.0	conservative media outlet, Newsmax. Newsmax CEO, Chris Ruddy, did the honor,
0:58.8	surrounded by several of President Trump's longtime associates, people you know, people like Rudy Giuliani.
1:03.5	You see him there in the front. Trump's former labor secretary, remember that guy, Alex Acosta.
1:09.8	He was there as well, a little bit further back,
1:11.7	though. And they all clapped, and they cheered as it happens every morning. They rang tiny little
1:16.6	bells as they officially kicked off. What we now know was an especially terrible day on Wall Street.
1:25.4	Yeah, there's no sugar-coding it. This was the worst day on Wall Street
1:30.0	since the early days of the COVID pandemic. Traders and world leaders, and yes, ordinary
1:35.4	Americans, people with jobs and 401Ks reacted to the tariffs that have been imposed by President
1:41.7	Trump just yesterday by pretty much freaking out.
	...

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