David Frum Reacts to Trump Failed Trade Wars

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1:01Ben Meiselas:This episode is brought to you by Credit Karma. When it comes to your money, Credit Karma keeps you ahead of the game. You can count on Credit Karma to keep up with your financial needs as they evolve, helping you monitor your progress and giving you personalized recommendations so you can make strides towards your goals. Make sure you're on the right track, no matter where you are on your financial journey. Intuit Credit Karma. Karma you can count on. Download today. Hey, it's Ryan Reynolds here for Mint Mobile. Now, I was looking for fun ways to tell you that Mint's offer of unlimited premium wireless for$15 a month is back.

1:37Ben Meiselas:So I thought it would be fun if we made$15 bills. But it turns out that's very illegal. So there goes my big idea for the commercial. Give it a try at mintmobile.com slash switch. Upfront payment of$45 for three months,$90 for six months, or$180 for 12-month plan required. $15 per month equivalent. Taxes and fees extra. Initial plan term only greater than 50 gigabytes may slow when network is busy. See terms. World leaders and people throughout the world are absolutely furious at Donald Trump and the Trump regime. It seems that every day Donald Trump just wakes up and then he'll make a post that's just incredibly offensive against the sovereignty of a nation, whether it's Canada, whether it's Brazil, whether it's Japan.

2:16Ben Meiselas:This morning he's posting about Brazil after the leadership in Brazil said it would be a big mistake if you're tariffing us. We run a trade deficit with the United States. And then Donald Trump then posted Brazil is doing a terrible thing on their treatment of former President Jair Bolsonaro. I have watched as the world has. They have done nothing but come after him day after day after day. And then Donald Trump talks about we're the hottest country in the world right now. And the great people of Brazil, they should want to be hot, too, just like we are hot right now. and people are looking at this and they're like, what the hell are you talking about?

2:55Ben Meiselas:You know, tourism is down in the United States massively. I think this is one of those big stories that are not getting enough attention. We're seeing that tourism may be down$29 billion this year as people just aren't traveling. I think the number could be even more than that. And if you just anecdotally speak to people in different countries, they'll tell you They had trips planned. They're canceling trips. They were thinking about buying real estate in the United States. They have no plans on doing it while Donald Trump is in power right now. And then remember when the Trump regime said they were going to do 90 deals in 90 days, and they had Peter Navarro.

3:35Ben Meiselas:I guarantee you, 90 deals in 90 days. They basically have done zero deals in 90 days. They have two somewhat frameworks of a deal, one in the UK and, you know, and another one in Vietnam. But those aren't really deals. It's a loose frameworks or social media post. They didn't do a deal with China. We just came. Here's what Peter Navarro said earlier in the morning. He was the guy who said 90 deals, 90 days. He goes, I'm super happy, though, with the progress. This is what we wanted. This is what we wanted here. Play this club. I've always wanted to ask you for the last 90 days about your comment on April 7th when you said 90 deals were possible in 90 days.

4:11We're almost up. And I just wonder, was you thinking at the time that it really was an aspirational number or are you kind of disappointed in two for now? I'm happy with the progress we've had because every country that we run a major deficit with is fully engaged.

4:29Ben Meiselas:I think what we're learning from the negotiations is simply, Carl, how difficult it is for these countries to give up the advantage they have over us. And so therein lies the tale. I think the negotiations are proceeding well. And by the way, the tariff revenues are coming in and really helping this country. The tariff revenue is a tax on American companies, on our importers. And he keeps, did he hear what he said? He thinks a deficit is a tariff by another country against the United States. Fundamentally, it's based on the most ridiculous thing that all of a sudden, if you enter a deal with Vietnam, Vietnam is going to start purchasing all of these American things with all of the wealth that Vietnam has.

5:16Ben Meiselas:And also, I mean, we're seeing headlines like this, India proposing retaliatory duties at the WTO against U.S. tariffs on autos, Japan drawing hard lines in its trade negotiations. I did a whole video on that. I want to bring in right now, though, David from from the Atlantic. He's got a new show on the Atlantic, the David from show. It's on YouTube. It's on Spotify and Apple. It's on video, wherever you get your podcasts from. David, I noticed that you were posting this morning that you were at an airport recently, I think either going to or coming back from Toronto. And you're like, where? Wait a minute.

5:53Ben Meiselas:I'm noticing something very different here. And then in your conversations with some of your friends, they're saying, yeah, people are incumbent. So I know it's anecdotal, but there's a broader thing I want to talk to you about. Well, I'm born in Canada. I live in the United States. I crossed the border 20, 30, 40 more times a year. I flew across it just yesterday. I flew from Toronto into Washington, D.C. So at Pearson Airport in Toronto, there's a giant hall for people bound for the United States, just the United States, not the rest of the world, just the United States. The hall can potentially hold hundreds and hundreds of people.

6:25And a lot of the times I've been there, there have been hundreds and hundreds of people. The last few times, there have been dozens and dozens. I flew on a Sunday afternoon, which is when you fly if you had business first thing Monday morning, as I did. There may be two dozen people. I mean, I appreciate it. You go through much faster, but it's a sign that something is seriously wrong. And as you said at the beginning, there's a lot of data about how Canadians are avoiding travel, other people too. And while tourism is not the biggest industry in the U.S. economy, the mistrust and dislike of the United States that is expressed by the lack of tourism is being felt all across the economy.

7:01Ben Meiselas:You know, you wrote two articles here recently that I think are intertwined with this. So, yes, tourism, big deal. But then you also layer on that. What's one of the major causes of why tourism is down? It's because Donald Trump's attacking all these other countries. He's attacking their sovereignty, saying he wants to annex them. He declared a trade war against the world. Your recent article is why Trump is losing the trade war. And he's focused when you come to think about something like Vietnam. Why did we do a fake trade deal with Vietnam, which to me isn't really even a deal? It's because Trump's building a resort in Ho Chi Minh City.

7:38Ben Meiselas:They like they bulldozed all of the land there and like went over cemeteries so Trump could so Trump could get properties. That's crushing us. Tell us why you think Trump is losing the trade war against the world as he's enriching himself. Do you remember that old Norm MacDonald comedy sketch about Germany in the 20th century that the Germany fought a war and who do they fight a war against? The world. and you might think it would be close, but it would be difficult, it would be easy, but it was close. This war, the trade war is against the world. And it's unlike the German war against the world and the normal McDonald joke.

8:09It's not close. When you listen to someone like Peter Navarro, he is as useful on the subject of trade and tariffs as Bobby Kennedy Jr. is on preventing disease. That is, Bobby Kennedy Jr. is making disease more and Navarro is destroying the American economy. What a tariff is, is the equivalent of picking up a hammer and hitting yourself in the head. And he's saying to the world, we will not stop hitting ourselves in the head unless you all agree to hit yourselves in the head. People are saying, we don't want to hit ourselves in the head. Tariffs are bad for the person imposing the tariff. You don't hurt the foreigner with the tariff.

8:44You hurt yourself. You make your people pay more. You have higher taxes. You have higher costs. The big bill that Trump just passed, which is supposedly a tax cut bill, includes$2 billion in revenues from tariffs, which are imposed on working people and middle class people. But it's an especially vicious tax because most of the cost of the tariff, only a small part of the revenue from the tariff or the cost of the tariff goes to the government. And as you put a giant tax on people, collect a little bit of revenue for the government, and most of it is just pure waste. It is just lost to the whole U.S.

9:19economy and the world economy.

9:21Ben Meiselas:As we take a look at some of the changes that are happening in really the world order, I mean, someone like you has who's been steeped in politics your entire career to watch in a very short period of time. It seems a world order that was known before changing with the United States taking a increasingly pretty weak and isolated position in all of this. You see all the moves that are being made, whether it's Canada and the European Union forming defense alliances. Even though Donald Trump was at that NATO summit, they really relegated the U.S. position to talking about limited topics. And they didn't really have them in some of the other sessions.

10:03Ben Meiselas:Australia and Japan didn't even go up to the NATO conference. They didn't want to be around Donald Trump. And now we're seeing meetings between China, South Korea and Japan at the minister level, something we would never see before. It seems that things are let me get your perspective on what you're seeing. And do you think it would have happened this quickly? And what are you observing? Well, let's compare two great powers, the United States and China. The Chinese economy is nearly as big as the United States, not quite. Maybe it will never catch up, but it's a peer. But the United States is surrounded by wealthy and technologically advanced, like-minded countries.

10:42So America is bulwarked by Europe, by Great Britain, by Japan, by Australia, by Canada, by Mexico. It is surrounded by friends. America's borders are secure. Americans don't have to worry about their immediate neighborhood. Their immediate neighborhood is safe. China is surrounded by enemies, from Vietnam to India. And enemies, by the way, it's made. It's not like they're victims. They have provoked these enemies. And they have no friends. So obviously, it's much better to have wealthy, powerful friends. But Donald Trump sees that as a problem. And of all the many cases of bad behavior, the one that is actually most dangerous is the one that sounds silliest.

11:17And that's Greenland. because the United States is not, in fact, going to invade Canada. Trump threatens, but it's not going to happen. But the United States easily could seize control over most of the territory of Greenland. There are only, what, 50 ,000, 80 ,000 people who live there. The only military forces on this vast near continent are American. It could very easily do it. But if it does, it will be committing aggression against NATO ally Denmark. It will create a question, does the NATO treaty defend against aggression by one NATO country against another NATO treaty, it leaves NATO dead.

11:48Denmark will have to withdraw from NATO, and NATO just collapses. So Greenland sounds dumb and silly and petty, but it's actually the thing that is the stupid little brick that could pull down the whole architecture of American security.

12:02Ben Meiselas:You know, when I even read, though, how the idea of annexing, conquering, taking over Greenland is so normalized by something like, you know, the New York Post. And this is how they reported about it yesterday. They wrote, by connecting the U.S. to Greenland, which Trump has vowed to annex one way or another, its flight demystified the Arctic island for ordinary Americans. Greenland is not some inaccessible fantasy land. It is, in fact, closer to New York than it is to Denmark, which colonized Greenland. And so you see this, and it's very much the language of Vladimir Putin. And I think even discussing the idea of annexation that the U.S.

12:49Ben Meiselas:is, whether it's done or not, when Trump says we're going to make Canada the 51st state, when he says we're going to annex Greenland, that gives a green light, I think, to China to say, OK, well, then we're going to annex Taiwan. And it gives a green light, right? Something that needs to be stressed about that article in The New York Post. Some of your viewers may say New York Post, so what? The person who wrote that article was a former U.S. ambassador to Denmark. That's someone whose job it is to help not just explain the American point of view to Denmark, but Denmark is a country, it's a smaller, it's wealthy and successful, but it's small, it's easy to lose sight of its imperatives.

13:21That person's job is to come back and remind Washington policymakers, you know, this is an important friend and don't take them for granted. And instead, she's putting her effort into advocating aggression, invasion, attack, annexation. And as you say, what it does is it legitimates aggression everywhere. Because one One of the things that the world's dictators, Putin's, China, and their talkers inside the United States, the Tucker Carlson's, always want to say is America is no better than anybody else. Who do you think you're fooling? You think you've got ideals, you've got nothing. You're just another dictatorial imperialist regime.

13:55And the best answer has always been America's friends. When I was young in Canada growing up, we knew anti-Americans would say, America, there's no difference with the Soviet Union. And I would always answer, to believe that there's no difference between the Soviet Union and the United States, you have to believe there's no difference between the level of freedom in Canada and the level of freedom in Poland. And we all know it's a lot freer in Canada than it is in Poland. So obviously, the big neighbor is not the same. So it was the testimony. It's the date. So when people slur the United States, it is the testimony of Denmark.

14:27It is the testimony of Portugal. It's the testimony of South Korea. It's the testimony of friends all over the world who says, no, we benefit from American protection. We value American friendship. They are friends. They are partners. They're richer and stronger than others. Yes. But they're friends. They're partners. You can trust them. And when you undermine that, you not only encourage foreign dictators, you encourage those at home, like the Tucker Carlson's, who want to destroy the American system of democracy by defaming America's place in the world.

14:55Ben Meiselas:You know, by now, people say you prefer to Trump as taco. Trump always, you know, chickens out. And you look at the deadline, July 9th, 90 deals, 90 days or else. And pretty much no countries budge. Then what does Donald Trump do on his own? Well, I really meant August 1st. Actually, I never said 90 deals in 90 days. That never happened. And look, it has we discussed in the beginning of this interview that is having a very negative impact on our trading relationship, on our tourism. More fundamentally, though, when it comes to issues of war and peace as well and life and death, someone like Putin sees Donald Trump saying two weeks, there's two weeks that or else.

15:39Ben Meiselas:And then Donald Trump never does the or else. And so it just seems that it's like, OK, I got it. Trump's not going to do anything. Putin. I'm just going to give Trump a call. What they talk about last week, doing movies together. Putin put an announcement saying we talked to Trump about movies and cultural exchanges. And Donald Trump said it was a wonderful idea. Here's Trump this weekend on the tarmac saying I'm very disappointed. I'm very disappointed. Here's what he said this past weekend. You said you had a strategic call with Zelensky the other day. What strategy did It was a good call. He's being hit very hard, as I said he would.

16:17He's being hit very hard. And I was very disappointed with my call with President Putin. I was very disappointed.

16:25Ben Meiselas:And for a while now, Donald Trump's been saying two weeks, two weeks, two weeks with Putin. I'm going to do sanctions. But then behind the scenes, you have this guy, Elbridge, Colby, and at the Pentagon and others who have been defunding Ukraine, who without telling Ukraine, without telling our NATO allies, without telling the G7, congressionally appropriated money and weapons are just not going to Ukraine. And so after that phone call between Trump and Putin, what Putin do, he attacked Kiev worse than ever before and escalated things to say, F you, this is what I'm going to do. And the world is taking note of that right now.

17:05Ben Meiselas:And I mean, we're even seeing in Poland, for example, they're calling for urgent air defense because, you know, they're thinking this could be a lost cause. We're next where this is headed. What do you make of it all? Well, let's not forget the worst thing Trump did, which is in the spring, his administration cut off the flow information for Ukrainian air defense targeting. And that cutoff cost lives of dozens and maybe hundreds of Ukrainian soldiers. Ukraine is a brave democracy fighting for its life. It should be able to count on help from not only the United States, but all of America's friends and partners.

17:37And Trump has been very obviously switching sides. And all this two-week stuff, it's not just about chickening out. It's indirection. The United States is flipping from being a Ukrainian ally in this war to being a Russian ally. And all the commotion is designed to distract from what is actually happening and how appalling it is. And it leaves a much more dangerous world in many ways. You know, Donald Trump often talks about the world as if it was sort of a mistake that after World War II, the United States said to Germany, you don't need such a big army anymore. Leave it to us and to Japan. You know, that Navy, you don't need it.

18:10Leave it to us. You guys concentrate on beautiful cars and beautiful cameras and bettering your people. And you want to have universities and highways and healthcare. Good luck. Leave the security to us. Everybody will be better off. That was not a mistake. That was the plan. The United States would provide the security, the allies would help underwrite it, and the whole world would be safer. And Europe would not have to fear major war. A world in which the United States withdraws is a world in which everybody needs nuclear weapons.

18:38Ben Meiselas:And to use the Trumpian language for the MAGAs, the United States would get rich, the world would get protected, and also, you know, in my view, with the richest nation in the world. And as you pointed out, once you are the richest nation in the world, not to screw working class people, though, also not to screw people who form the backbone of the country as the richest nation in the world. So he's taken away our wealth. He's screwing over working class and hardworking people. He's screwing over our allies. These are the types of conversations that I know you're going to be having in-depth, detailed conversations with some great guests on the David Frum show.

19:18Ben Meiselas:It's going to be on the Atlantic YouTube channel and wherever you get audio podcasts, whether it's Spotify, Apple, or anything else, you can check out David from there. David, thanks for this enlightening conversation. I hope you come back. Let's chat more. Thank you. Bye-bye. Everybody hit subscribe. Let's get to 6 million subscribers. Can't get enough Midas? Check out the Midas Plus sub stack for ad-free articles, reports, podcasts, daily recaps from Ron Filipkowski and more. Sign up for free now at MidasPlus.com

19:56With summer coming to an end, you're going to be spending more time indoors. Get your home ready and save up to 50 % off custom window treatments during the Labor Day mega sale at Blinds.com From room darkening to light filtering shades finding the perfect fit is easy Get free samples, expert design help, and professional measure and install services, or DIY with confidence and support every step of the way. Shop up to 50 % off site-wide plus huge savings on doorbusters right now during the Labor Day mega sale at blinds.com.

20:27Ben Meiselas:Hey, it's Ryan Reynolds here from Mint Mobile. Now, I was looking for fun ways to tell you that Mint's offer of unlimited premium wireless for$15 a month is back. So I thought it would be fun if we made$15 bills. but it turns out that's very illegal uh so there goes my big idea for the commercial give it a try at mintmobile.com slash switch up front payment of 45 for three months 90 for six months or 180 for 12 month plan required 15 per month equivalent taxes and fees extra initial plan term only greater than 50 gigabytes may slow when network is busy see terms