Donald Trump Gets a “Spanking” from the Bond Market

The Political Scene | The New Yorker

WNYC Studios and The New Yorker

Politics, Obama, News, Wnyc, Washington, Barack, President, Lizza, Wickenden

4.2 • 3.3K Ratings

🗓️ 11 April 2025

⏱️ 36 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The Washington Roundtable is joined by Mark Blyth, a professor of international economics and public affairs at Brown University, to discuss how the bond market forced Donald Trump to retreat on some tariffs, and the risks of the President’s escalating trade war with China. “Ultimately, they can take the pain more than you can,” Blyth says, of the Chinese government. “They have locked down their cities for a year or more. They can deliver food through the window through drones. They don’t care if you cut them off from certain things. So getting into that fight is very, very destructive.”

This week’s reading:

“Trump’s Do-Over Presidency,” by Susan B. Glasser
“The Conservative Legal Advocates Working to Kill Trump’s Tariffs,” by Cristian Farias
“At the Smithsonian, Donald Trump Takes Aim at History,” by David Remnick
“The Trump Show Comes to the Kennedy Center,” by Katy Waldman
“The Other Side of Signalgate,” by Rozina Ali

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Have you guys seen Brendan Carr, the new head of the FCC?
0:04.0	He's wearing a Mao badge.
0:06.0	It's a Trump badge. It really is. I mean, this is an absolutely hilarious threshold to have crossed.
0:12.9	In 1966, this was one of the opening moments of the Cultural Revolution.
0:18.2	They started printing up badges of Mao's face, and everybody started
0:23.3	wearing them as evidence of devotion. You would wear, you know, bigger ones, and you would start
0:27.8	to have them go down your sleeve and, like, draped down. And then eventually they were doing so
0:32.2	many, they were printing so many Mao badges that it was disrupting industrial production
0:36.4	in China. And finally, they had to
0:38.5	bring it to a close because Mao said we need to be able to make airplanes. But like...
0:43.7	Evan, are you suggesting that there is a cult of personality underway here with Donald Trump? I mean, I don't know.
0:50.0	Not to mention we're in a cultural revolution. Well, that's it. Those were the opening strands of the cultural revolution.
0:56.4	And that is a sure as hell sign that you've got people losing the plot here.
1:01.6	Washington is an officially irony-free zone at this point.
1:05.9	Well said.
1:09.6	Welcome to the political scene from the New Yorker. a weekly discussion about the big questions in American politics.
1:15.8	I'm Evan Osnose, and I'm joined, as ever, by my colleagues Susan Glasser and Jane Mayer.
1:21.2	Hi, Susan and hi, Jane.
1:22.8	Hi, Evan.
1:23.5	Hey, they're so great to be with you guys.
1:29.0	Well, in the second week of Donald Trump's trade war, he put the global economy into chaos.
1:35.9	On Wednesday, after Trump's taxes on imports had torched trillions of dollars in value in the financial markets, He abruptly blinked. He retreated. He surrendered.
	...

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