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I'd be lying if I said U.S. President Donald Trump's tariffs have been popular with our columnists

here at the Financial Times. Our senior trade writer called them crazy and morally reprehensible. Others have said

they make the U.S. unstable. But to be clear, there are people who have defended these tariffs.

Some of them even contribute to the F.T.

This is Swamp Notes, the weekly podcast from the FT News Briefing, where we talk about all of the things happening in U.S. politics.

I'm Mark Filipino, and this week we're asking, if you're a conservative, are tariffs still worth it?

Here with me to discuss this is Orrin Cass.

He's the executive director of the conservative think tank American Compass and a contributor to the F.T.'s opinion section. Hi, Oren.

Hi, how are you? Doing well. And we've also got the FTs U.S. national editor and columnist Edward Luce. Hey, Ed. Good to be with you, Mark. So, Orrin, I want to start with you. You're an economist. You've called yourself a new conservative. This past week marked 100 days of U.S. President Donald Trump, his second term. As someone who thinks about the economy, how is President Trump doing?

Well, I think in a sense it's too early to tell. There's obviously been a lot going on, and it is hectic on many fronts,

and none of them more so than on tariffs. I think, you know, if we're looking there in particular,

what we saw on so-called Liberation Day a month ago was an extraordinarily aggressive set of moves

that I think in many ways we're in the right direction

and tackled the right problems, but in some of the specifics just probably caused a lot

more cost and disruption than was needed. And what we've seen since then are various course

corrections, pausing the reciprocal tariffs, the ongoing tit for tat-tat with China. And I think we are getting

closer to something that could actually be very constructive and is focused a lot more on

...