Trump’s Odd Ramblings to Media Accidentally Wreck His Own Tariff Scam

THE DAILY BLAST with Greg Sargent

The New Republic

News, Politics

4.4 • 800 Ratings

🗓️ 27 May 2025

⏱️ 22 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

After President Donald Trump threatened to single out Apple with tariffs, he offered remarks to reporters that undercut his case. First he seemed to say this would apply to many iPhone makers, but then reiterated he’d said this straight to Apple CEO Tim Cook, a potentially serious abuse of power. Then Trump said U.S.-manufactured jobs would not result in higher prices due to automation, but this concedes that the manufacturing work he hopes tariffs will create are low-level jobs that might get replaced. And then he all-but-admitted that his threat to get companies to “eat” the cost of his tariffs really could mean potentially higher prices for consumers. All these oddities taken together wreck the fraudulent arguments he’s been making. We talked to Monica Potts, the new class politics reporter at The New Republic, who usefully synthesizes all of it to explain what’s wrong with Trump-MAGA manufacturing nostalgia and why the Trump-GOP agenda comprehensively works against his stated goal of creating good American jobs. Looking for More from the DSR Network? Click Here: https://linktr.ee/deepstateradio Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:31.5	I'm your host, Greg Sargent. President Donald Trump's arguments for his tariffs have always been pretty weak,
0:47.0	but he's now faced some extensive questioning from reporters, and if anything, the case for
0:52.1	the tariffs now looks even worse.
0:59.3	Trump was unable to explain why he's threatening companies not to raise their prices.
1:04.9	He couldn't justify the threats themselves, and he said something revealing about labor costs and automation that seemed to undercut his arguments.
1:09.5	Monica Potts is the New Republic's new reporter on class politics, and she's been arguing in a
1:15.1	series of pieces that Trump-GOP policies are bound to hurt working class people across the
1:20.2	board. So today we're going to talk about whether working people are starting to understand
1:25.1	this and why the tariff debate might be so essential to making
1:28.8	that happen. Monica, welcome to the New Republic and thanks for coming on. Thanks for having me.
1:34.4	I'm excited to be here. So Trump put out this tweet on truth social saying that he informed Apple CEO
1:41.0	Tim Cook that Apple must manufacture iPhones in the United States from now on. If not,
1:46.7	Trump said, a tariff of at least 25 percent must be paid by Apple to the U.S. A reporter asked Trump
1:53.9	about this, and here's what happened. On Apple, you said this morning that if they don't make their
	...

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