Paul Krugman on Tariffs
The Brian Lehrer Show
WNYC
4.6 • 1.5K Ratings
🗓️ 6 March 2025
⏱️ 21 minutes
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| 0:00.0 | Listener supported WNYC Studios. |
| 0:07.2 | It's the Brian Larrow Show on WNYC. Good morning, everyone. You know the old comedy, the Keystone cops, |
| 0:25.9 | you know, the police officers who bumbled and bungled their way through their jobs, |
| 0:30.5 | maybe we are now seeing a strain of the Keystone Doge cops or the Keystone Downsiders, or less charitably, the Keystone Authoritarians doing this in |
| 0:42.3 | ways that grab more power from other branches of government more than they save the taxpayers' money. |
| 0:47.9 | What's the context for all this? |
| 0:49.4 | Well, there is an ever-increasing list of blunt instrument, you know, chainsaw-type firings that are being |
| 0:57.1 | reversed. The latest, which came yesterday, maybe you've heard this, is a court has ordered |
| 1:02.3 | the administration to reinstate 6,000 agriculture department employees. Why? Well, they all got |
| 1:09.4 | letters saying they were being fired for poor |
| 1:11.6 | performance when actually no performance reviews went into those dismissals. It was just a |
| 1:18.4 | firing of everyone in their employment category. Imagine if that happened to you. Fired with a paper |
| 1:23.5 | record that says you perform poorly when you weren't evaluated that way at all. And it's not a |
| 1:29.8 | one-off. NBC News notes the ruling effects only the USDA, but other agencies have carried out |
| 1:37.5 | similar mask firings of probationary employees, meaning the order could have a wider impact. |
| 1:47.1 | Here's another one, also from NBC News. |
| 1:55.5 | Trump admin is rethinking Guantanamo immigrant detention plan amid cost issues and power struggles. |
| 2:00.2 | Cost issues and power struggles. So maybe that doesn't turn out to be a good deal for the taxpayers either. |
| 2:05.5 | And add those to the list, which already included this from Politico. |
| 2:12.2 | Trump administration backtracks on Forest Service firings. And this from Reuters, two weeks ago, |
| 2:19.0 | federal workers responsible for America's nuclear weapons, scientists trying to fight a worsening outbreak of bird flu, and officials responsible for supplying electricity, just those little things, |
| 2:24.4 | are among those who have been accidentally fired in President Donald Trump's rush to lay off |
... |
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