Tariffs, the Working Class, and Resistance
Economic Update with Richard D. Wolff
Democracy at Work
4.8 • 1.9K Ratings
🗓️ 15 April 2025
⏱️ 30 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In this week's episode of Economic Update, Professor Wolff critiques the DOGE practice of firing federal civilian employees, analyzes the Trump tariff program, and shows how both are presented as ways to solve deep economic problems in the U.S. but are actually an assault on the working class. The second part of the show features an interview with David Van Deusen, the former head of the Vermont state AFL-CIO and now an organizer of union-based resistance to the Trump program.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome, friends to another edition of Economic Update, a weekly program devoted to the |
| 0:26.2 | economic dimensions of our lives and those of our children. |
| 0:30.7 | I'm your host, Richard Wolfe. |
| 0:33.8 | Again, a quick reminder, Charlie Fabian awaits your communications if you have suggestions |
| 0:39.6 | about the program, Charlie.info3.8 at gmail.com. Once again, charlie.info-438 at gmail.com. |
| 0:53.0 | And again, the reminder that we have a companion book for this program |
| 0:58.0 | called Understanding Capitalism. You can get it from our website, Democracy at Work.Info. |
| 1:05.6 | I want to spend today on two subjects. Number one, just me for the first half of the program, |
| 1:14.2 | talking about Trump's economics, the tariffs, the assault on public employees, and all of that. |
| 1:20.8 | And then the second one, fittingly, about resistance that is building, particularly in the |
| 1:26.5 | labor movement. We're going to be talking with the former head of the Vermont State AFL-CIO about what they're doing, getting ready to push back against the Trump policies. |
| 1:40.0 | Okay. |
| 1:42.8 | I want to approach the Trump program, the tariffs, the attack on public federal employees |
| 1:49.4 | from two sides, but they have something in common, and we start with that. |
| 1:55.8 | Please understand that what Mr. Trump is doing is a classical service to the business community |
| 2:04.9 | of the United States, something that the GOP, the Republicans have been doing for at least a century. |
| 2:14.3 | That's what this is. |
| 2:15.8 | It's more of that. |
| 2:16.9 | More aggressive, more intense, more technical prisoners, |
| 2:22.4 | but that's what it is. Not some detail that you get lost in the weeds about. That's what it is, |
| 2:30.3 | an attack on the working class. So let me begin in that framework. For the last many, many years, |
| 2:39.0 | everybody studying economics in American universities as I did, and everyone pretty much |
... |
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