There's the story of the real economy, and then there's the story of the financial markets.

But I also think there is this sort of distinct, and maybe you could call political,

maybe you could call it geopolitical.

I'm not sure.

So there's other story, which is just about Trump the character as he tries to negotiate

in the world and establish himself, right, as the master negotiator, which he seems to see

himself as a deals person.

Hello, and welcome.

Wise. It's happening with me, your host, Chris Hayes.

I want to start off today with the confession, which is that I full-time pay attention to the news, particularly domestic politics, particularly the Trump administration,

cover it every day. I am having a hard time tracking the tariff story. Like, where, what is,

which one is on, which one is off, which one is paused. There's been this crazy cycle where Donald Trump announces some new tariff and out of

seeming hurt feelings or spite or pettiness or just an undying rage at the people of Madagascar

and the penguins on that random island. And then he comes back and says, we're pausing them,

but then hikes some new ones and then maybe does some carveouts.

It's been very hard to track this story because in some ways, I think there are kind of three stories.

There's the narrative story of Trump's attempting to unilaterally bully the world into kind of paying the U.S. a kind of tribute.

He views us as a kind of mercantilist empire that people should pay us for the privilege of selling

things to us, which is very weird. So there's sort of the story of how Trump's dealing with the tariffs.

There's how financial markets have dealt with the on again, off againness.

And then there's the real effects to the real economy.

Like people that actually have to use and import steel or lumber or drop ship products from China

...