Listener supported WNYC Studios.

It's the Brian Laira Show on WNYC. Good morning, everyone.

You know, if you haven't been monitoring the news like minute by minute in the last 24 hours,

you may not realize what a day it's been in the new Trump trade war.

They may study March 11th and 12th, 2025, in economics history books, generations from now,

who knows, it might depend how it all turns out.

We'll go over some of it in a minute, take out your scorecards, because there's a lot.

And besides the facts, we'll get two contrasting views in this segment on how to understand

the tariffs chaos that is now generating

all these moves by the U.S. and multiple countries who we buy and sell things with and causing

perhaps most of the dramatic stock market decline that's been taking place, which has intensified

in the last week.

We'll hear a more skeptical and more supportive view of the tariffs.

But let's play a few clips first to set this up. On the campaign trail, Trump made many

claims like this about what would happen with the economy beginning on day one.

When I went, I will immediately bring prices down starting on day one.

But after the election, his tune started to change almost immediately.

Here he is in December, speaking at the New York Stock Exchange, of all places, as stock prices were booming at that time.

And maybe the traders weren't listening carefully enough when he said it would take some time for

prices to come down. He said it would happen eventually because of his policies on this.

Oil and gas, there is no country in the world that has more. We're number one. I brought it to number

one during my first term in terms of production. We're going to be number one plus.

...