In a very unintentionally funny segment of “The Ezra Klein Show,” a podcast hosted by NYT journalist Ezra Klein, Klein spoke to a fellow NYT personality, Thomas Friedman, about the Trump tariffs and Friedman had a total meltdown induced by obvious rage over the policies popular with the Trump base.
Kicking things off, Klein asked Friedman about the Trump tariffs, noting that there appears to be solid reasoning for them. He said, “There’s a series of papers out there that make this argument that China has a hegemonic level of dominance over global manufacturing. They’re not the only manufacturers, but they have primacy there. And we have primacy on the financial architecture of the world. And in this theory, what Trump and his team are trying to do is take manufacturing back from China. Do you think their theory makes sense?”
Friedman then freaked out and had his Trump-induced meltdown, something for which the Trump-hating left has become famous. He said, “If that is your theory, then go ahead. Put all the tariffs a thousand percent on China. That’s Day 1. But these guys are entirely first-order thinkers. Day 2 has to be a strategy for what you do here the morning after. How do you then build the industrial base that you want to take advantage of the time you’re buying with your tariffs?”
Continuing, he freaked out over China’s tariffs on American goods, ignoring the fact that it has long been difficult for America to sell manufactured goods, particularly cars, in China. He said, “So what are these guys doing? Trump put up a wall against China, and then they went out and shot the American car companies. Ford was just downgraded today. Its stock, I think, is down to $7.50. Why is that? Because Ford did everything that Biden asked it to do. That a rational company would ask it to do. That we would want it to do.”
Friedman further spiralled as he commented on Trump’s view that building electric vehicles isn’t prudent, given their downsides, snapping that it was “right-wing” and “woke” to think as much. He snapped, “Then what does Donald Trump do? He comes in with his right-wing woke bullshit and says: We don’t do EVs here. EVs are for girlie men. We only do manly industries.”
Not done, Friedman got angry over the idea that Americans would be building cars, snapping, “Well, f*ck that. OK? Because look what happens now to Ford. So you say: We want to bring this here. I don’t want to have my kids screwing parts into cars. I want them designing, investing in and inventing the next generation of EVs.”
He then got angry over the idea that America would drill for oil or use coal for power generation, snapping, “But let’s go back to that ecosystem I talked about: EVs, robots, autonomous cars, batteries, clean energy. Before I came over here, I read that Trump wants to reopen coal plants. He loves ‘Drill, baby, drill.’ So it doesn’t make any sense.”
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And, pretending that energy autarky wouldn’t help create a wall between America and China, he snapped, “You’re building a wall against China. Great. I’m all for it. But what are you doing behind the wall so we catch up? You’re taking your own companies out and shooting them in the back if they’re not right-wing woke.”
Watch him here