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Brian Lehrer: It's the Brian Lehrer show on WNYC. Good morning, everyone. If you took the weekend off from news, you may not know, though you may have just heard it on the BBC, that Syria's dictator Bashar al-Assad got overthrown by a coalition of rebels and was granted asylum in Russia by fellow dictator Vladimir Putin. Considering that many of the rebels have had ties to ISIS and Al Qaeda, will the new boss provide any more democracy and human rights than the old boss? They're saying they will. We will see.

As for democracy and the new boss in this country, President Elect Trump mused on Meet the Press about whether he might try to ignore the Constitution and deport United States citizens who are related to people here illegally just by issuing an executive order.

Donald Trump: Well, if we can through executive action. I was going to do it through executive action, but then we had to fix COVID first, to be honest with you.

Brian Lehrer: An executive order rather than a formal repeal process to abolish the 14th Amendment. We'll see if he really tries it. Then there's this weekend's health and economic news. They're related. Friday's jobs report was surprisingly strong with 227,000 jobs added last month, the healthcare sector led the way with 53,000 new jobs. Trump's interest in cryptocurrency kept bitcoin trading around its recent record high. Yes, the crypto markets stay open on the weekend. Anyone want to buy a $100,000 coin? UnitedHealthcare stock, however, was down over the last two trading days from $611 a share to 549. That's a 10% loss, even as the S&P 500 overall was closing at a record high on Friday.

The reason appears to be that the killing of their CEO has focused the public on how the company puts profits over the health of the people they insure, allegedly. Maybe, just maybe, new scrutiny and regulations will follow. Because if you did take the weekend off from news, you missed the stories about how widespread has been what the New York Times calls the rage and glee of people reacting to the murder on social media. The New Yorker points out that UnitedHealth shut down comments on its Facebook page after the announcement of the CEO's death got more than 30,000 laugh emojis posted in response.

Americans ability to celebrate violence meets the free market's ability to inflict it. The Internet is choosing upsides over which is worse. Even a letter to the editor to the New York Post that I saw over the weekend called the killing karma. So even The Post gave voice to that rage and glee. Maybe UnitedHealthcare stock and the number of healthcare claim denials will decline in tandem in the coming months. The early indications are that that's a possible outcome. Trump, in his Meet the Press interview, said he may or may not present any plan to make healthcare more affordable.

Donald Trump: I have the smartest people in that world. You know, that's a separate world unto itself. I have the smartest people in that world looking at it and trying. If they come up with something, I will present it. Now, maybe you won't be able to sell it, but if we get better healthcare for less money, I believe it's very saleable.

Kristen Welker: Just very quickly, when will we see your fully developed plan? When are you going to show the public that?

Donald Trump: I don't know that you'll see it at all. I can only say that we have some of the best healthcare people--

Brian Lehrer: There it is. I don't know that you'll see it at all, Trump told NBC Meet the Press moderator Kristen Welker. Maybe United stock will go up today thanks to that. They are one of the companies selling policies on the Obamacare exchanges. Maybe investors in the health insurance sector will say, "Oh, Trump's saying maybe he won't issue any kind of plan." Meanwhile, one of the Trump nominees not getting much attention is his pick for Treasury Secretary, Scott Bessent, a 62 year old hedge fund manager who would be the first openly gay treasury secretary and also has a background with George Soros. Interesting.

The New Yorker's Financial Page columnist John Cassidy has an article about that. It's called Donald Trump's Interesting Pick for Treasury Secretary. He also has a brand new one John Cassidy does called How Long Will the Trump Crypto Boom Last? John Cassidy joins us now. John, always good to have you. Welcome back to WNYC.

John Cassidy: Thanks very much for inviting me on, Brian. Glad to be back.

Brian Lehrer: We'll get to crypto and Treasury Secretary nominee Scott Bessent, but can I start with healthcare? Can you say anything about why UnitedHealthcare stock was unchanged on the day that their CEO Brian Thompson was killed in the morning, but then dropped 10% after the public hatred of their policies became widespread?

John Cassidy: Yes, I mean, sure. It's been obviously a remarkable story in many aspects. I would point out it is up a bit this morning. You mentioned in the intro about how Trump seemed to knock down the idea of substantial healthcare reform even though he said he's looking at it. So the Stock is up at 1% or something today, which would suggest that UnitedHealthcare investors are not as worried as they were last week when, as you say, it fell 10%. I think it's just in terms, I mean there are two issues here. Obviously, the human issue of how people think about the healthcare sector and the rage which has certainly been present in some quarters over the situation.

Then as the financial aspect of it, will there be real reform? Will there have a big impact on the profit making companies in the sector of which UnitedHealthcare is the largest? My sort of take on that last question is probably not just because healthcare has always been such a it's incredibly complicated and it's a political time bomb as well. So politicians tend to shy away from it unless they have to. You know, the less substantial reform obviously was Obamacare, which was political football at the time, but now it is very popular after 12, 14 years of it being in effect.

I think what we have definitely seen is that there's still a lot of underlying anger towards the healthcare sector, especially these CEOs who pay themselves a fortune. In a sector where I think most people think healthcare is not just another good, it's people's lives are at stake here. Having a capitalist profit motive there is problematic for a lot of people to begin with. I think that's what you're seeing filtering through. [crosstalk] I don't think. I mean I was reading the Wall Street Journal comments section and there were a lot of people very critical there, too.

Brian Lehrer: Under Brian Thompson's leadership the last few years, I think he was just CEO for like two years, UnitedHealthcare's profits have gone way up. Do you know-- I don't know that this is part of your reporting specialty, but do you know if that was largely from squeezing their policyholders ever more with premiums, deductibles, co-pays and denials?

John Cassidy: Yes, I mean, I'm not a healthcare reporter. I haven't looked at that extremely closely. I do know that UnitedHealthcare is known in the sector as an innovator in a couple of respects. One in clamping down on cost. They take pride that their premiums don't go up as much as other people. Healthcare premiums are related to costs. How do you get costs down in the healthcare sector? There's only really two ways to do it. One is to cut the payments to providers, doctors, hospitals, et cetera. The second one is to deny coverage in certain areas, expensive coverage which they deem to be unnecessary.

UnitedHealthcare has been, I think, a leader in both of those areas. That's why investors like it. I was looking this morning knowing I was coming on the show and it's still rated a buy even after last week by the overwhelming number of Wall Street stock analysts.

Brian Lehrer: You mentioned healthcare as a right as opposed to a commodity. I mean, other countries, we tend to compare ourselves to have national healthcare plans of one kind or another. Yet Medicare for All, as Bernie Sanders calls it, hasn't ever caught on in Congress. Kamala Harris, who co-sponsored a Medicare for All bill with Sanders when she was in the Senate, walked away from it for her presidential campaign. Why do you think that was? Why do you think that's been generally that that hasn't caught on considering the public attitude toward their private health insurance companies?

John Cassidy: Yes, I mean, it's obviously a great question. I mean, I've been a supporter of public. I've come in from the UK and the National Health Service, which is free at the point of delivery, has some issues, but is incredibly popular institution and people just think about healthcare differently in the UK than they do in the US. I've been a supporter for a long time. It's always been a mystery to me why the public support which is there in the polls. I mean, 2012 and 2010, rather, we nearly got there and then there was that special election in Massachusetts and that put the kibosh on the public option in Obamacare.

I've always thought, I mean, it's going to be interesting, the public support is there for it. We're now in this great debate about where should the Democrats go after Trump re-election. I think healthcare is one of those issues which has been bubbling under the surface and hasn't really been part of that debate. I think it will be going forward because even though the polls as a whole show that Obamacare is pretty popular, a lot of people don't like paying for healthcare which they may be denied access or they have huge deductibles.

Some of these plans have got deductibles, $5,000, $8,000, et cetera. That's very unpopular with the public. I think it is all going to filter into the sort of where do the Democrats go story. I mean, you see, you heard in Trump's interview, which you put on, he has to say that we're looking at it. I'd be surprised, very surprised if he comes up with anything. I mean, remember during his first term, one of his big pledges was to repeal Obamacare and he was supposed to be coming up with a plan and coming up with a plan. Of course, he never did.

Brian Lehrer: He did try to repeal it. [crosstalk]

John Cassidy: I mean, they tried to repeal it, but he never put up-- sorry, he never put up an alternative.

Brian Lehrer: Killing the repeal. Yes, he never put up an alternative. Although, I look back at press clips from Trump's first term to see if there was an attempt to change Obamacare other than just repeal it. I saw an article by you from 2017 describing how there was a Republican plan on health insurance. It was a bill from Senators Lindsey Graham and Bill Cassidy, no relation to you, Cassidy. I suppose that would have rolled back Obamacare's expansion of Medicaid, which enabled 14 million lower income Americans to get health insurance at all, according to the article.

It would have undermined the Obamacare exchanges by stripping away the government subsidies that are there to help people with certain incomes afford the premiums. That was 2017. We now have Speaker Mike Johnson saying he will attack Obamacare in the new Congress. I'm just curious if you have any reflections on the failed Graham Cassidy Bill seven years ago or whether that might be past this prelude to what Speaker Mike Johnson might try to do.

John Cassidy: I mean, I could be wrong. Republicans could come up with a serious effort. I mean, there have always been initiatives in Congress on various aspects of the healthcare system, including Medicaid, which the big expansion in Obamacare and the exchanges, I think they've dropped the idea of getting rid of the exchanges because what's the alternative? They don't really have one. In terms of Medicaid. They could, I wouldn't be surprised at all if there's initiative on Capitol Hill to try and restrict the Medicaid expansion.

That's always been a Republican goal. The issue of Medicare and Medicare Advantage is going to be interesting too, because Mehmet Oz is a big supporter of expanding that. That's the private sector getting involved in Medicare. That's producing quite a lot of public backlash too. It'll be interesting. I mean, Trump has always taken the position that he's not going to attack entitlements, Social Security, Medicare, etc. It'd be very interesting to see whether he gives into some of these Republicans on Capitol Hill and actually does endorse some big cuts.

I would imagine with-- also, the other factor in play is of course Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency initiative. I wouldn't be surprised if they recommend some entitlement cuts perhaps in Medicare as well. Although it's such a-- I think there'll be a lot of people on Capitol Hill in the Republican Party who think that's a recipe for losing the midterms. It'll be very interesting to see how it goes.

Brian Lehrer: Listener texts, "Remember the argument against single payer. People love their private insurance. Now we see what nonsense that always was," writes one listener. Another one to something you just mentioned writes, "Question,are the majority of denied claims complaints coming from people on Medicare Advantage plans?" I don't expect you to know a statistical answer to that question. We know that's a big point of controversy in New York with the New York City retirees. The city wants to move them from traditional Medicare onto Medicare Advantage. That's gotten tied up in court and political opposition.

So many people, I think the stat is like a third of people on Medicare choose Medicare Advantage plans which are not mandatory, but any idea if they then wind up unhappy?

John Cassidy: It's good-- I haven't seen any polling on it. I mean obviously there's a lot of anecdotal evidence that they do. I mean you see a lot of the comments in the wake of the UnitedHealthcare shooting relates to that. UnitedHealthcare is a big player in Medicare Advantage, I think. It's always an issue when you bring private health care into any sector of of the economy because it's part of their business model that they don't accept everything.

Brian Lehrer: Yes. Listeners, we can take calls and more texts, questions or comments for the New Yorkers financial page columnist John Cassidy. We're about to get into the coming trumponomics generally on what John calls Trump's interesting pick for Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, or were you one of the 30,000 people posting the laugh emoji to UnitedHealthcare's Facebook page or posting anything like that anywhere online or just having that reaction?

Were you condoning terrorism if that's what the killing turns out to have been? Or how would you characterize your glee, to use the New York Times word for much of the explosion of online comments, any of those things? 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692. Yes, business owners, what about those tariffs that Trump says he's going to impose? We'll continue in a minute with your comments, calls, and texts, and John Cassidy from the New Yorker right after this.

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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC with the New Yorker's economy columnist. His column is called the Financial Page. We'll get to some of your calls and texts at 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692. He's got an article, Donald Trump's Interesting Pick for Treasury Secretary. He also has one called How Long Will the Trump Crypto Boom Last? Just to preview a little bit of what we're going to talk about in this part of our conversation, Trump was asked on Meet the Press yesterday if he could promise Americans that his plan for tariffs won't increase prices.

Donald Trump: I can't guarantee anything. I can't guarantee tomorrow.

Brian Lehrer: He's not guaranteeing no inflation from his tariffs. Where would you like to start with Scott Bessent. I said hedge fund manager in the intro, but more specifically, what does he do for a living now, this guy who you call interesting who Trump wants for treasury secretary?

John Cassidy: Well, he has been running his own hedge fund for the past, I think about eight years called Key Square Capital. I thought it was interesting because a couple of not just on his economic views, which we'll get onto, but just personally speaking, his background is with George Soros, who obviously is a great bogeyman on the right. Bessent made his name on Wall street as a trader in the Soros fund management empire. Not only that, he was also one of the key players in the huge trade they did back in the '90s, which is famous against the pound sterling, where they speculated against the value of sterling.

The bank of England tried to prop it up and in the end, Soros and the speculators won. Price of sterling collapsed. Britain crashed out of the European Exchange rate mechanism at the time. Soros fund management ended up making about a billion dollars, some people say more. Bessent was part of that trade and he worked for Soros for a long time. That's interesting. Obviously, Trump has just decided to set that aside and take the attitude that there's money on one thing and then there's politics on the other. They don't necessarily collide.

The other thing about Bessent, which is interesting, which you mentioned, is that he's openly gay and lives with his partner, who is a former New York prosecutor. They have two adopted kids, they have a big house down in Charleston. He has quite a real estate empire actually. He's not your typical Wall street corporate guy who-- he's obviously a Wall street corporate guy, but he's not the type we've seen in the past on a personal basis and the links to the Democratic Party in the past. Even co-hosted a fundraiser for Al Gore in 2000, so his politics have changed over the years.

I thought that was interesting. People on Wall Street are hailing the stock market went up when he was appointed. They're hailing the pick because they think he'll be a balance against the tariff protectionists in the Trump administration. They're hoping it'll just all Trump's talks about tariffs and being a protectionist and taking on China and he's been threatening Canada and Mexico in the last few weeks. That'll all just turn out to be talk and it'll be basically tax cutting, old fashioned Republican administration, which that suits people on Wall street just fine.

Brian Lehrer: By the way just a sampling of some polarized text coming in. One says, "I think it's very problematic that your show is trying to platform people who supposedly are gleeful at the murder of a CEO when it is obvious this is mostly unhinged TikTok users as well as bots pushing this narrative for the purpose of dividing people more." That represents one thread that's coming in. Another that represents the other says, "Murder is horrific, full stop. That said, corporate healthcare needs to listen to what is behind all of this glee. How is it okay to make billions while denying people access to needed healthcare?"

Were you surprised that some of these numbers they're being reported in the Times, in the New Yorker and elsewhere? Maybe you saw your colleague Gia Tolentino's article that I referred to in the intro from the New Yorker that had that statistic that UnitedHealthcare had to shut down its Facebook page because the announcement of Brian Thompson's murder generated 30,000 laugh emojis. Unless it is bots, it's not just a handful of unhinged people on TikTok.

John Cassidy: I don't think it's a handful. How widespread is always a question when you have these online phenomenon. People say Twitter's not the real world or X is not the real world. I think that it's certainly true. To just write it off as bots or some coordinated attack I think is unrealistic. As I said, what struck me was reading the comments in the Wall Street Journal. The Wall Street Journal readers are not known as rampant socialists or corporate bashers.

I would say I don't know, I didn't count them up. Certainly a substantial proportion of the comments there were saying, look, this is, it's obviously terrible, a murder, some guy just got shot in the back walking through Midtown. Nobody can condone that, but it does raise bigger issues here, as you just said about the corporate profit model in the healthcare sector.

Brian Lehrer: Yes. Here's Edmund in South Salem, in Westchester, who apparently read the editorial in the Wall Street Journal. Edmund you're on WNYC, thank you for calling in.

Edmund: You're welcome. Yes, I read the editorial and there might be a few of them there, but the one that I was reading, I was talking about Obamacare and how the frustration really is due to the fact that Obamacare has let everyone down. That how Obamacare hasn't successfully managed the care of cost. What really infuriates me about that opinion is that it's totally twisting what's going on here. The fury really is against the private healthcare industry and the fact that we have a business model around delivering health, and it's just something that doesn't fit. It's trying to fit a square into a round hole.

I just wonder, I guess the key question is at what point are people going to start to say, you know what, we shouldn't be making money off this. This is a service where we hold people accountable to delivering quality of service in a way that makes sense as opposed to holding people accountable to making profits off of other people's disease. It's just at what point do we start using common sense here? Do you understand what I'm saying?

Brian Lehrer: Yes, I guess the pushback, Edmund, from some people would be, well, healthcare is so overwhelmingly expensive if everybody has access to everything all the time, with all the expenses of technology we have now, all the different kinds of tests and treatments and everything else, that if it's a single payer government system, they're going to ration too, just in a different way than the market does.

Edmund: Yes, but the difference though is I think that what's galling about the UnitedHealthcare situation is that they were using AI to, without human intervention, deny claims. I mean, that is inherently infuriating. There's this idea of 50/50 is fair. Like we don't really understand why humans gravitate to the idea of 50/50 being fair. I kind of think it's just like this innate thing where, look, if you're going to deny it, this is a really important decision. I think we owe the respect of having it reviewed by a human.

In general, I feel like the whole idea of having pressure to gain profits off of this system in itself is, it's counter to the 50/50 intuition. I know the analogies are wrong here, but I'm trying to tap into the what makes common sense and what is humane. I feel like there's like things like the postal service. It's not a profit center. You can't make profits off delivering service to someone who's in the middle of nowhere. Yet we recognize that if we have this service, the whole economy does better. It's kind of greasing the wheels like we did way back when telecom was really expensive.

United States did a great thing by keeping telecom costs down low as opposed to the European Europe. That was considered a key success to what fueled our economy. This should be seen that way too. You have a baseline service. You get my point. Apologies for--

Brian Lehrer: Edmund. Thank you. Thank you. No, thank you. Thank you. Please call us again. Beth in Morris County, you're on WNYC. Hi, Beth.

Beth: Hi, Brian. Thanks for taking my call. As far as the economic picture is concerned, I had worked as a nurse for many years, and then a paralegal for malpractice, healthcare malpractice and then for a healthcare consulting firm. There are two things that really need to be addressed in the United States healthcare system. I agree with your previous caller. The for profit push in margins is what's causing a problem which brings up private equity firms. Private equity firms being in healthcare has destroyed what has already was crumbling because of fraud, waste and abuse.

Your guest spoke about, well, the way to save costs is by denying providers, the physician, the nurse more money or denying the patient more coverage. Those are things and screens that people use to not address the fraud, waste and abuse in healthcare by the healthcare system itself. There are billions of dollars of that. For an example, when you have food service, housekeeping, laundry, all of that, those are contract items. Who's going to take care of all that?

There's a lot of nepotism in those contracts when they're issued. There's a lot of price gouging. The same with the food service and healthcare. The food is not good, the institutional food, high in fat, high in sugar, high in salt. Yet the contract is for a lot more money than the food on the tray is actually worth. You also have--

Brian Lehrer: Beth, do you think, going back to the previous caller, do you think those kinds of things would be better under a Medicare for All program rather than private insurance?

Beth: Okay, so I'd like to see a hybrid. I lived in Sweden for two years. I understand the Canadian system. Very, very close family friend is from Australia. I think having a hybrid system would be good. In other words, if people, you have to have a quality foundation in some type of public health and it shouldn't be run by an algorithm either. I agree with that. You need a human there. The standard health for people who didn't want to opt out, because I have enough money to get the best physician in the world, I'm willing to pay private health care insurance.

That should be an option for everyone. As far as more of a public health, I'm going to say the dirty socialized word, more like a socialized system. That foundation, if that is there, that will even benefit the people that are going to pay private insurance because everyone will be lifted up. All the boats will rise as the tide rises, that kind of thing.

Brian Lehrer: I'm going to leave it there. I really appreciate your call and your experience as a nurse and how it informed your comments there. Back to John Cassidy, Financial Page columnist for the New Yorker. John, in a way that brings us roundabout back to your article on Trump's treasury secretary nominee, Scott Bessent, because he had a background with George Soros. What is the George Soros connection and is there any indication that he shares or has ever shared any of Soros's progressive politics?

John Cassidy: Well, as I said, he used to be a Democrat or he seems to have been a Democrat. In the 2000 election, he co-hosted a fundraiser for Al Gore at his home in the Hamptons. The Times actually had a picture of that event. Clearly he had--

Brian Lehrer: How much should we take from that? I mean, don't businesses and business people often contribute to both parties because they're not supporting any belief system, they're just buying influence from whoever might win?

John Cassidy: Yes, I think in those days, of course, there was also the issue of same sex marriage, et cetera, hadn't been resolved. I think one of the reasons Bessent was supporting the Democrats was because they were more pro that idea than the Republicans.

Brian Lehrer: Openly gay.

John Cassidy: Yes. Now that that issue has been resolved, hopefully to all intents and purposes, he can vote with his wallet or vote with his conservative economic views. He's a staunch Republican. Not only Republican, he's now a staunch Trumper.

Brian Lehrer: You write that Bessent defended Trump's economic agenda. Here's Bessent from a Bloomberg TV interview praising the President elect.

Scott Bessent: He has a deep understanding of financial markets as opposed to most politicians. He wants to be involved in the conversation. He has very well formed opinions. He has a lot of private sector friends.

Brian Lehrer: He respects Trump on economic issues. Here's Bessent again on Bloomberg TV on Trump's signature economic proposal of tariffs. You report that Walmart and AutoZone are among the companies that have said, "Hey, the tariff plan will push up prices for our customers." Here's Scott Bessent. Maybe you can explain this clip to me afterwards. Here we go.

Scott Bessent: Tariffs cause a stronger dollar. A weaker dollar with tariffs, it's an economic abnormality.

Brian Lehrer: Economic abnormality. John, I admit that was over my non economist head, but I'm not sure that sounded like Trump's incoming Treasury secretary is such a fan of tariffs. Can you translate?

John Cassidy: Yes. I mean there's a whole range of issues on tariffs. Bessent has been all across the board on this too. I mean one thing, obviously, if you're going to work for Trump, you have to flatter him or you're not going to last long. Bessent's obviously learned that lesson well. I think that explains the first clip. On his attitude to tariffs, I think the most honest thing he said was months ago when he wasn't openly in consideration, one who was closely in consideration. He said he thinks that Trump underneath it all is not really a tariff guy. He's a free trader and he's just using this as a threat.

The entire strategy is escalate to de escalate. I.e he's going to threaten the Chinese, he's going to threaten the Mexicans, Canadians, everybody. At the end of the day he'll make some sort of a deal and the tariffs won't be very high if they come in at all. That is the Wall Street reading on Trump right now, and we'll just have to wait and see whether that's how it pans out. My personal feeling just having followed Trump for 30 years is when he says something, he usually means it. Even if he goes back and forth, he's made tariff such a central part of his platform, saying that it's his favorite word in the English language, etc. I'd be very surprised if he doesn't go through with it, at least partially.

Brian Lehrer: You wrote that Elon Musk opposed choosing Scott Bessent as Treasury secretary and you cited a Wall Street Journal article that described Musk in a "knife fight" with Trump's transition chief and incoming Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick over Bessent. Why doesn't Elon Musk like this pick? Do you know?

John Cassidy: It seems to have, it doesn't seem to have been on policy issues because I don't think Elon Musk is a big tariff guy either. I mean, Tesla's got enormous-- his biggest factory in the world is in China. It doesn't serve Elon Musk and Tesla if there's a huge trade war. I don't think the differences between him and Bessent were on that one. I think it was more a personal thing. Musk is very close to Howard Lutnick, the Cantor Fitzgerald CEO who is now has been appointed Commerce Secretary.

Bessent, according to the Journal and lots of other reports, Bessent and Lucknick were rivals for the treasury job and there was no love lost between them. Musk took the side of Lucknick in that knife fight. That's the thing in the Trump world, as we remember from the first term, there's policy debates and there's personal factions, and it's always unclear from the outside whether the rouse are really about policy or whether they're about personal issues. This is a case of that, I think.

Brian Lehrer: All right, here's one more clip of Trump on tariffs from Meet the Press yesterday.

Donald Trump: They also solve another problem. If we were going to have problems having to do with wars and having to do with other things, tariffs, I have stopped wars with tariffs.

Brian Lehrer: Do you have any idea what he was referring to? I've seen some sort of fact check articles that say we don't see any way that Trump ever stopped a war with tariffs. Do you have any idea what he was referring to there?

John Cassidy: I think that one's in his own mind. I think what he's referring to, he's got this idea that tariffs can be used as a tool of foreign policy, not just for economic reasons. He seems to think that he can replace sanctions. Instead of sanctioning China or sanctioning Russia or sanctioning anybody else who the US is involved in a foreign policy dispute, he will tariff them rather than using sanctions.

Brian Lehrer: That does seem to be, according to a lot of people, part of the strategy with announcing these big tariffs on Mexico and Canada in particular, that what he's really after is getting them to do more to close the border.

John Cassidy: Well, certainly, that's an example of him using tariffs as a threat and as a substitute for basically the backup, as you say, is sort of what his foreign policy is immigration policy here. I mean, he thinks, I think, that you can use tariffs to try and bully anybody into doing what you want because people are so desperate to export goods to the US, and to some extent there is something in that. The US is the largest economy in the world still, and foreign countries do want access for their goods here. He does have some bargaining leverage.

On the other side of it, which he never mentions, the United States needs access to foreign countries' markets as well. If he goes ramping up tariffs to 20%, 50% that he's threatening, they're certainly going to retaliate. That's why a lot of economists are worried of a spiral into a global trade war, which would be terrible for the economy and would be terrible for all the billionaires around Trump, too. That's the great tension in the middle of the Trump administration. How far is he going to push this populist protectionist tariff policy in the face of, I would say, most lukewarm support from a lot of his billionaire supporters.

Brian Lehrer: Yes, and I thought you boiled it down really effectively in your article on the big picture when you wrote that. It's a tension. I'm paraphrasing you, really, between an optimistic scenario, which Bessent states publicly, where tax cuts and deregulation unleash a burst of investment, innovation and economic growth, versus Trump's tariffs and deportations leading to a trade war, serious labor shortages, and efforts to undermine the Fed, which all would add up to a spike in inflation. Do you have a prediction?

John Cassidy: That's it. You're putting me on the spot there. I think we'll end up somewhere in the middle ground. I think he'll definitely do some deportations. There's no doubt about that. Whether it'll be 11 million, I'm skeptical of.

Brian Lehrer: I mean, the impact on the economy, because that's your beat.

John Cassidy: The impact on the economy depends on what he does. I mean, if he just introduces modest tariffs and modest deportations and doesn't hammer the Fed, then I think things will pretty much carry on as they are. He's also, we haven't talked about crypto yet. He also seems to be trying to promote a big crypto boom which could spill into a broader stock market bubble, which would pump the economy for a while. I think Trump's, obviously, obsessed with the stock market as well. If he goes the other way and becomes tariff man Trump and attacks the Fed, things could go wrong very very quickly. I don't want to make a prediction because I really I think with Trump, he's just innately unpredictable.

Brian Lehrer: Let's end on crypto. Your article just out is called How Long Will the Trump Crypto Boom Last? There's a Trump crypto boom?

John Cassidy: Obviously he's trying to spark one now. He just appointed a-- There's a lot of pro crypto. There's been some coverage of this book, but I don't think it's quite come into the public consciousness as much as it should yet about how a lot of crypto billionaires backed Trump. They raised lots of money for him, not just for Trump, but for Republicans in congressional races to take on people who are skeptical of crypto. Jared Brown being a big example. He went down.

Now, they're surrounding Trump-- Musk himself is a big crypto guy. Paul Atkins, who Trump has just picked as his nominee to run the Securities and Exchange Commission, is a crypto lobbyist, a crypto lawyer. I think we're going to see a big-- The Biden administration clamped down on crypto and basically tried to keep it as small as possible, it seemed, and try and make sure it didn't explode in a way which would harm investors. I think it's going to be a free for all, basically, in the crypto sector. That's why bitcoin has already gone to-- At the start of the show you mentioned it's up to 100,000. I checked before we came on. It's still at 100,000.

Lots of other crypto assets have also gone up enormously. I think what we're going to see in the next year or two is a whole range of new crypto issues, a lot more people getting involved. Wall Street's getting involved. They've also put out-- they're already launching crypto ETFs, exchange traded funds, which retail investors can get into the crypto boom with. I think we're going to see more of that. If we go back to the dot com boom of the late '90s, what you find is when you get a big speculative boom like that, it tends to spill over into the market at large and does gee up the economy for a while. I think that is also something Trump is thinking about.

It's a sort of cheap stimulus policy really, because the markets gee up things, you don't have to pay for it through the government. I'm sure there's something in the back of his mind too. I do think we're going to have some sort of a crypto bubble if we haven't got one already.

Brian Lehrer: John Cassidy writes the Financial Page column for the New Yorker. Two of his recent articles, Donald Trump's Interesting Pick for Treasury Secretary and How Long Will the Trump Crypto Boom Last? John, thanks for sharing so much of your thinking with us today. Thanks a lot.

John Cassidy: Thank you very much for inviting me on.

 

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