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Brigid Bergin: It's the Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. I'm Brigid Bergin, senior reporter in the WNYC and Gothamist newsroom. Coming up in today's show, we'll dig into the mayor's big announcement yesterday that he will run in the general election in November, not in the primary in June, on an independent ballot line. Sally Goldenberg from POLITICO who broke that story, will be here to talk about the mayor's decision and how it is upending the shape of this race.

Plus, the linguist John McWhorter has a new book about pronouns, and it's not all about they/them. He calls "me" and "I" a "hot mess." Grammar nerds, it'll be your time to shine in this segment. We'll want to hear from you, so stay tuned for that.

Lastly, today, what do you think of the new subway map, if you've seen it? It's the first time it's been updated in at least 45 years. Not everyone likes it. Our transit reporter Stephen Nessen will give us the scoop.

First, it's April 4th, and as you have no doubt been hearing, President Trump introduced a sweeping round of new tariffs late in the day on Wednesday, April 2nd. He called it Liberation Day. Yesterday was the first full day for markets to absorb and respond to these new policies, and what a response it was. Did you look at your retirement accounts? Reuters is reporting that companies on the S&P 500 lost $2.4 trillion in stock market value yesterday, their biggest one-day loss in value since March 16th, 2020. That was back when the COVID-19 pandemic was emerging.

There is a lot to unpack here about how consumers will start to feel and see the impact of these tariffs, recession fears, and how an escalating global trade war stands to isolate the United States, reversing decades of trade policy that arguably go hand in hand with our foreign policy. To help us with all of that and to answer your questions and mine, I'm joined by Kathryn Anne Edwards, economist and economic policy consultant. Her recent column for Bloomberg is headlined The Coming Recession Will Be Self-Inflicted. No mincing words on where she stands on this issue. Kathryn, welcome to WNYC.

Kathryn Anne Edwards: Thank you so much for having me. Good morning.

Brigid Bergin: Good morning. Listeners, I know there's been a lot of coverage of this tariff news, but we're interested in how you are seeing the impact in your own life. Any soon-to-be retirees, how are you feeling and how are your accounts really doing? How are you absorbing this news, and is it prompting you to change any of your plans? What about our small business owners? How are the tariffs affecting what you do? Are you changing your business model, maybe selling fewer types of goods? Call us and help us report this story. The number is 212-433-WNYC. That's 212-433-9692. You can call or text us at this number.

Maybe you're a restaurant owner. Have you started to see an impact in the foods you're ordering? The reports that household basics like coffee, toilet paper, and bananas are all getting hit with tariffs. Listeners, we need your help. What are you seeing? What are you doing? What are your questions for my guest, economist Kathryn Anne Edwards? Again, the number 212-433-WNYC. That's 212-433-9692.

Okay, Kathryn, a lot of wind-up there, and there's been a lot of coverage of these tariffs. I want to take a little bit of a step back and just make sure we're all starting from the same page. Looking for a quick tariffs 101. First, can you just remind us what a tariff is and what kind of tariffs President Trump announced this week?

Kathryn Anne Edwards: The simplest way to think of a tariff is that it's an import tax you have to pay to bring in goods from outside the United States that you would like to sell here. It's paid by the company that is doing the importing. It also applies to goods and services used in the production of goods made in the United States. It doesn't just affect the end good, it affects any intermediate goods along the supply chain that are used to produce things here. Anything that comes from outside the country is faced with a certain tax. Some people like to think of it as an import tax or even a sales tax, but it's a fee that you have to pay to the US Federal government in order to bring something in from abroad.

Brigid Bergin: The types of tariffs that President Trump announced this week, pretty sweeping, pretty across the board?

Kathryn Anne Edwards: Yes. It was a, I would say, radical announcement. Even though he had been telegraphing it for a while that he was going to do this, it was indiscriminate in that almost every trading partner we have has been hit with some type of tariff, regardless of our political or economic, or even trade relations that we have with that country.

Brigid Bergin: Kathryn, the country's monetary policy isn't always something people are waking up every day thinking about in a macro sense. As I was saying in the beginning, there are lots of ways these policies are already hitting consumers' pocketbooks. What are some of the indicators that you are watching?

Kathryn Anne Edwards: Well, we're going to see it across the board. It's going to show up in a lot of ways. The fundamental problem with tariffs as a policy used to achieve some kind of economic aim is that it has a lot of deleterious consequences that you simply cannot control.

I put a 10% tariff on everything that comes in from France, but now how does France retaliate? In which domestic importer does that hurt? Do I need to help that domestic exporter that sends a lot of goods to France? Do I need to help them, or do I need to help the consumers that are buying that good?

If I help one, how does that affect how Germany retaliates against me, knowing that I'm starting to subsidize American exporters that are hurting? But I can't do that forever. Just imagine the tariff is the drop of water hitting a pool and the ripple just goes out in all directions. You can place the drop, but you don't know where the wave's going to go.

Brigid Bergin: That is a frightening image.

Kathryn Anne Edwards: Oh, I've got even worse metaphors in my bag, but we'll save that for later in the program.

Brigid Bergin: Well, not a metaphor, but another word that I think invokes a lot of fear in the hearts and minds of our listeners is that R-word which you invoke in your most recent column. You note that the country has faced 13 recessions since World War II, and you are predicting number 14 may soon be on its way. How does this tariff policy intersect with some of the other sweeping changes we have seen so far from the new Trump administration, like reducing the federal workforce and ramping up deportations?

Kathryn Anne Edwards: Well, what I would say is I make less of a prediction and more of a logical conclusion. The Trump administration is pursuing three policies that will contract the economy. If you deport workers, you reduce the size of the labor force, and you contract the economy. If you shrink the federal budget and slash through programs in how much the government spends, that will shrink the economy. If you institute tariffs that make prices higher, make it harder for exporters to sell their goods abroad, make it harder for consumers to buy goods here, you will shrink the economy. We have the simultaneous pursuit of three contractionary policies. You can only shrink the economy for so long before you enter a recession.

Brigid Bergin: Kathryn, we have a lot of response from our listeners already.

Kathryn Anne Edwards: Oh, wonderful.

Brigid Bergin: Yes. One listener texted, "I'm a senior in New Jersey, living off my savings. The volatility of the stock market is very scary as I watch my savings decline." We have a listener who I want to bring into the conversation, Michael in Astoria. Michael, thanks for calling WNYC.

Michael: Hi, thanks for hearing me. I just wanted to say that my problem is I'm kickstarting a new board game which is being manufactured in China, and there's no infrastructure in the United States to do what I need to have done, and now I have to double the cost of the kickstarter, which may not launch now. I guess the frustration comes that there is no support network for the drastic changes that are occurring currently.

Kathryn Anne Edwards: That is a great point. Michael, your story is so illustrative of what is the problem at the heart of tariff policy, which is that all you have to do is sprinkle some tariffs on the US Economy and suddenly, within a couple weeks we'll have all the manufacturing replaced here in the US, and that's simply not how industrial policy works. It's not how people make investments.

Say someone wanted to build a factory, given these tariffs, to now produce board games here in the US, that has to be financed, that has to be built. That has to come with some degree of certainty, which, of course, our financial and labor markets are not providing right now. You're creating chaos in the economy. That is not conducive for growth. A lot of times, industries need more than just a market to institute heavy manufacturing.

Brigid Bergin: As Michael also pointed out, the impacts in terms of the ratcheting up of a global trade war are impacts that we are seeing each and every day in response to the tariff announcements. Markets around the world dropped yesterday, nowhere worse than here in the United States. Then this morning, the reports are that China has responded. The country announced new retaliatory tariffs of 34% and barred a group of American companies from doing business in China. This is according to The New York Times.

The Times is also reporting that China's General Administration of Customs said it would halt chicken imports from five of America's biggest exporters. They also note that while President Trump's tariff included exemptions for certain imports like semiconductors and pharmaceuticals, the Chinese tariffs have no exemptions. Kathryn, what do you make of that specific news today?

Kathryn Anne Edwards: Well, you punch someone in the face and say, "Ah-ah-ah, I said no kicking." What do you expect? That they're going to do whatever we tell them and in line exactly with Trump's economic principles, give him the victory that he wants? I think it's a little foolhardy to say that he gets to wave a wand and all the economies fall in line in the exact order that he would prefer.

China, in particular, they're exposed to us the way that we are exposed to them. We're a major export market for their goods. That makes us very important to them. They are not indicating through these retaliatory tariffs that they will back down from a fight. Of course, this is a risk of a policy like tariffs. Again, you never get to control the consequences. You don't just get to sit there and punch another economy in the face and say, "You're not allowed to touch me." It doesn't work like that. This is one reason why they are generally regarded as terrible policy.

Even if the motivations behind, say, wanting to bring manufacturing back to the US or wanting to have more manufacturing here can have very good goals, tariffs are typically a terrible way to accomplish them because of all these reactions, the stock market, the retaliation of other countries, the many things outside of our control, the effect it could have on US consumers. It's the worst way to go about a good idea.

Brigid Bergin: We have this potential for a looming recession, an escalating international trade war. That's the current state of play. That is what is happening on the ground. I wonder if you can explain for those who are trying to understand what the initial rationale from President Trump was to institute this policy in the first place. What was he at least saying he was trying to achieve or address?

Kathryn Anne Edwards: On a kind of first-order rationale, if you tax goods that are coming from abroad, you can foster domestic manufacturing resurgence. That is the kind of stated, plain goal. If it's more expensive to buy things from other countries, it becomes relatively cheaper to just build them here. That's the reasoning behind it. Honestly, it's very appealing.

Brigid Bergin: We're getting lots of calls and lots of texts. I want to go to two callers who are both small business owners. We're going to start with Albert in New Brunswick. Albert, you're on WNYC.

Albert: Hi, good morning.

Brigid Bergin: Good morning.

Albert: We are importers and designers of children's watches, fidget toys, and things like that for specialty independent retailers. Those are our primary customers, we wholesale to them. The way our market works is you order goods, you show goods, and you sell goods to stores in trade shows in January and February, and then we import them in. Then they arrive in mid-March. You sell it to a customer for a price, you buy it for a price. Then the goods come in, you're told you have to pay a higher tariff, and now you have to raise your prices to the retailers. The retailers are saying, "Wait a minute, I didn't agree to that price." It's very frustrating that there's no lead time for these kinds of impulse tariffs.

One other thing, our tariffs aren't 34%. We've been paying 25% since 2018, and on top of that, the new 20%, and now on top of that, 34%, so really, we're paying 79% tariff on children's toys. That's the reality on the ground.

Kathryn Anne Edwards: That is so striking. What has it forced you to do differently? Will you be able to sustain your business in light of this escalating tariff?

Albert: Well, we're going to raise prices. It's as simple as that. I think that because everybody is going to have to raise prices, I don't think it really will put us out of business per se, but it's going to put retailers out of business, it's going to put stores out of business because customers that used to pay $12 for a toy isn't going to pay $20 for a toy. They're not doing it. That's what's going to happen. It's going to be pain for everybody. It's going to be rethinking everything as much as we can, I guess.

Brigid Bergin: Sure. Albert, thank you so much for that story. Let's go to Jamila in Brooklyn. Jamila, thanks for calling.

Jamila Wright: Thanks for having me on the call again. I'm Jamila Wright. My husband and I, we own Brooklyn Tea. We are a small business in Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn. We are already still reeling from the impact of COVID and trying to get back to a sustainable profit margin as is. As we are coming into this new information of tariffs-- We're a tea company, so you can imagine how frightening it is for us. Most of our tea is shipping from overseas. We have over 150 teas that we have on our menu from Chinese teas, single estate teas from Japan, all over the world that we're importing in to try to bring something beautiful to Central Brooklyn. Because if you go to Brooklyn, you'll see that we're the only Black-owned tea house in Central Brooklyn and in all of New York City.

We're trying to provide something that is affordable for our customers. Tea is already a thin profit margin and expectations around the pricing of tea is already at a low. We're already operating with a low-item ticket. Now we have our suppliers reaching out. They're dazed and confused. There's no way to predict what's going on. There's some expectations for the tariffs to impact us. They're saying it might go anywhere between 10-25% or more. This lack of knowing how to plan creates a complete detriment to trying to improve your business and trying to make decisions that not only impact us but our community. Because again, we're here to serve them and we're going to be happy to ask them to take the hit and all of us take the hit for something that none of us planned for and none of us asked for.

Brigid Bergin: Jamila, thank you so much for that story, Kathryn, wow, a lot of impact being felt by some small business owners, listeners to the show, already just on day two, day two. Any reaction?

Kathryn Anne Edwards: I think that what Albert and Jamila get at is, all right, so the appeal of tariffs, let's institute some taxes so that we can have a resurgence of manufacturing. What Albert and Jamila, and what Michael earlier made clear, is that there was not a push for these tariffs coming from US businesses. You did not have large swaths of retailers or importers or certain domestic industries saying we desperately need trade protections. Now that's not universally true. Steel producers in the US, they like tariffs. That's a very different motivation of maybe we should do something about steel versus we should have a 10-50% blanket tariff on any country we support. The majority of US businesses will see pain from this. Of course, this wasn't what they were asking for.

Their stories, I think are so fascinating at what this very simple, appealing, "Let's bring back jobs," where it fails in real life in the number of people who didn't get to weigh and said, "But you'll hurt me. You'll hurt my jobs. You'll hurt my businesses. All for the sake of a fictional manufacturing resurgence." It's such a lack of coordination. It's such a lack of listening. It's such a lack of thoughtful policy, of is this worth the cost of hurting so many people that rely on lower trade barriers in order to be very proud American businesses and small businesses?

Essentially, what the Trump administration said is nothing matters except for tariffs, but that's not how it'll affect people's lives. Everything matters when it is affected by tariffs to the American consumer, the American worker, the American business. He's written all of those concerns off.

Brigid Bergin: I want to bring in a caller who I think is pushing back a little bit, at least with a question in terms of how we got to the place we are now before the tariffs were put in place. Edmund in Westchester, thanks for calling WNYC.

Edmund: Hi, thanks for taking my call. I absolutely concur with what everyone is saying, and the pain is real. Absolutely. I do hope that we might be able to take this conversation a little bit further with the idea that, look, there's a reason this is happening. I'm oversimplifying, of course, but China hasn't opened up their markets to our goods. Had China been playing fair, we might not be in this situation. How do we talk about that, that this isn't just happening in a vacuum, but that there's some cause and effect here? I don't even know where to start with that conversation. This is why I'm asking the question.

Brigid Bergin: Sure. Edmund, thanks so much for calling, Kathryn, what is your response to the fact that we were importing so many goods from China up until this point? That certainly is going to change with this dynamic, but there's a reason that, at least theoretically, the Trump administration thought that this policy could help bring some new balance to that dynamic.

Kathryn Anne Edwards: Absolutely. I think it's a good place to recognize not just what Edmund brought up, but kind of a broader story here that we are living in a world that was dreamed of in the wake of World War II, that if we had open trade relations and that if we had a unified financial system across the world that we could buy peace for the future, buy peace and buy economic growth. For the most part, that has been largely true. Our economy has grown basically nonstop for the past 70 years. We have seen no major conflict within the countries of NATO in Europe for the past 70 years. It has been a prosperous piece.

I think what Edmund brings up and is something that's really important to recognize is that we have made mistakes along the way. We have made decisions that have been proven to be fatefully wrong in this process in which American workers or American consumers have been hurt. I think we shouldn't pretend like everything is perfect right now. A lot of people will tell you NAFTA was a horrible decision. Giving China most-favored-nation status in the World Trade Organization ended up being very detrimental to a lot of US manufacturers. I think what the point of all this is can you go back and recreate the past or do we need to build a better Future? That's one.

Two, I think what I would point out is that China being unfair doesn't really motivate attacking Europe, which is what these tariffs do. Then, I think the third thing to keep in mind is that international relations and trade does have an effect on our economy. It absolutely does. It's also helpful to remember what a fall guy it is in the narrative of your economic frustrations. How much manufacturing have we lost to trade versus how much manufacturing jobs have we lost to automation? You can sense the intuition for this.

Close your eyes. Think of a factory in 1925 making shoes. Close your eyes and think of what that shoe factory will look like in 2125; 100 years from now. We'll still need shoes, but we will not make them the same way. It doesn't matter where that shoe factory is in 2125, I doubt there'll be 10 people in it. That is a much larger trend that has been occurring long before World War II in this new era and will continue after it.

We are essentially chasing this past that doesn't exist, this world in which we didn't have trade. It's also chasing a past truly not re-creatable because of how automation moves in the manufacturing process. So much of this is taking anger about, say, China being unfair, which they are, and using that to enforce policy that is so detrimental in the economy, but as just a fundamental flaw. It can't go back in time.

Brigid Bergin: Right. We have so much more to talk about here, but we need to take a short break. More of my questions and your calls with economist Kathryn Ann Edwards coming up. Stick around.

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Brigid Bergin: It's the Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. I'm Brigid Bergin, filling in for Brian today. We are talking all things tariffs with my guest, Kathryn Ann Edwards. Kathryn, I want to go back to some of the historical analysis you offered in your column. The "horrific honorifics," as you call them, that are how we have come to define some of these darker chapters on our economic history. Can you walk us through some of those honorifics for previous recessions like in 2020, 2008, the financial crisis, 1981?

Kathryn Anne Edwards: Oh yes, it's just a parade of things you don't want to think about. The 2020 recession saw the highest unemployment rates since the Great Depression. The 2007-2009 recession, sometimes referred to as 2008-2009, sometimes called the Great Recession or the Financial Housing Crisis recession, that had highest number of foreclosures, longest period of job loss, longest time to recover the jobs lost in the economy. It was a brutal one.

The early '80s recession were two right back-to-back. There was the shortest time period between recessions. The 1973 recession, that was caused by a supply shock. We haven't had many supply-side recessions in the US. If this tariff fight does indeed result in recession because we do not stop the pain that will bleed into even the most coldly cruel economic data- eventually this will show up- it would be, really, one of two supply-side recessions that we've had.

Brigid Bergin: In the short term, President Trump's team seems to be digging in on these tariffs. I want to play about a minute of Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick on CNN with Pamela Brown. He said that President Trump would not be backing away from the across-the-board tariffs. As she pressed him on whether there was room for negotiation, this is what he said. It's about a minute of that conversation.

Howard Lutnick: Countries can fix their tariffs, their nontariff trade barriers, which are much, much rougher. That's what the story I was trying to tell you is that when we took cars from Korea in 2012-- when I grew up, there was no Korean cars in America. When we took cars from Korea, the deal was we could sell AG to Korea. That was the deal. They wouldn't let McDonald's bring in French fries because they couldn't prove the origin of the French fry. That is not a tariff. That is called a nontariff trade barrier. They take their taxes and they subsidize their steel industry, or they subsidize their energy or they give the tax back to their car manufacturer. This stuff has got to stop.

Pamela Brown: Let me just follow up--

Howard Lutnick: America's got to stop being exploited, and you're going to see America prosper. Then, and only then will Donald Trump make a deal with each country when they've really, really changed their ways,-

Pamela Brown: It sounds like he might back off down the road-

Howard Lutnick: -then they go sit with him.

Pamela Brown: -but not right now.

Howard Lutnick: That's not back off. That's not to back off. That is let the dealmaker make his deals when and only if these countries can change everything about themselves, which I doubt they will.

Brigid Bergin: Okay, so, Kathryn, let the deal maker make his deals. I have to admit, there was a lot I didn't follow in that response. Can you help translate some of what Lutnick was referring to there in terms of these trade policies? Is it fair to say that the United States was being unfairly penalized through policies like the ones he was mentioning?

Kathryn Anne Edwards: What he's bringing up is that there's more than one way to get at the effects of free trade. Import standards and regulations are not a tax, but they can prevent certain items from coming in the door. You have to meet certain standards. The US has a lot of these. In theory, we have standards related to child labor practices, in that if you are a factory in, say, Indonesia making Nike shoes, I don't know if y'all remember this, and you're using children, you can't sell that good in the United States.

These type of quality measures on imports, most countries have some version of them. Believe it or not, most countries get pretty mad about these. Not just the US at other countries, but the other countries at the US. His point was that this is all just a great way to make a deal in order to get rid of them, to reduce those standards that we don't like. It's kind of a remarkable statement from me because it's basically saying that independent countries, should not have the ability to set standards over the goods that enter their borders. Now, maybe those standards are ridiculous to us but matter to the other country.

I just found it kind of a remarkable statement that it's about taking over what other countries are allowed to do for their consumers and the consumer protections that they want to put in place. Europe has much stricter protections on goods of certain types than we do. They also have the ones like the perennial fight of, "It's only champagne if it's from Champagne." There's maybe more ridiculous ones but then there's ones that are-- If there's a country out there that has stricter standards over child labor and they slap that on the US because we're having a renaissance of child labor right now, is that really on us to declare a war, to say, "You don't get to tell us what we do here, but we get to tell you what to do there?"

Again, trade wars are just the messiest of all. I think a lot of people feeling the uncertainty in the market, pricing in the uncertainty is because there are so many nasty fights lingering in the background. You have to take our food. Well, what if a country says you use too much pesticides, and so we don't want your food? Are we saying, "Too bad. You have to give US companies and agricultural businesses, they get to use GMO and pesticides. If you won't take our product because you don't like it, it's because you're cheating us?" It's a big statement to make from the US Government because that means our standards might not hold up to them as well.

Brigid Bergin: That's right.

Kathryn Anne Edwards: Again, they could retaliate against us and say, "Actually, you have too much child labor," because we have a lot in the US right now. Again, retaliation goes in more than one way. It encompasses more than one thing.

Brigid Bergin: Certainly we're already seeing it this morning. We have a lot of callers who want to, I think, ask you questions and share some of their stories. We're going to go to Dana in Ottawa, Canada.

Dana: Oh, good morning.

Brigid Bergin: Good morning.

Dana: Thanks for taking my call. We're in Canada. Just briefly, we're all wondering what's happened to our benevolent big brother when we've been friends for so many decades. Anyway, that's not why I called, but I did want to make that point. We're all hurting up here, and not just because of the terrorists, but because of what feels like a broken relationship.

The reason I was calling is I wonder how much of this is an opportunity for further corruption on behalf of the Trump administration. Maybe that tariff, Canada, the UK, whoever it is, is the opening negotiation stand. Then, for example, I don't have any facts about this, it's just a hypothesis. Keir Starmer, the Prime Minister of the UK goes to Mar-a-Lago and comes back with a magic deal of 10% tariffs on UK goods, which is better than the rest of the developed world, if I remember correctly. I wonder, is this Trump's opening gambit, opening negotiation? If you show up and say you're going to buy a few million dollars' worth of Trump meme coins or whatever lining-the-president's-pockets opportunity might be, you get a better deal for your country.

As I said, I don't have any facts for this, but I just wonder. There are so many opportunities that he is creating for lining his own pockets, perhaps those of his allies, also his cronies, that this tariff might be an opportunity for further corruption.

The one final point I wanted to add was that business hates uncertainty. Your guest has made this already. Business hates uncertainty. This capricious, like, "Might be terrorists. April 2nd, we'll see," is also impossible to deal with if you can't actually say, "Here's what's going to happen, and therefore, here's how we're going to deal with it." I think the corruption piece is something I had not heard anything about before.

Brigid Bergin: Dana, thank you so much for that call. Thank you for listening. You always have a friend on the Brian Lehrer Show. Kathryn, any response to that? She very rightfully frames her concern as one that is not necessarily at this point backed by any evidence, but the potential for corruption is something that in her mind seems quite real.

Kathryn Anne Edwards: Kudos to Canada. Look at that elbows-up column. I see it. Question of I think rephrasing her question, but being more blunt because she's still a nice neighbor and we can be more blunt here. This is a president who is an inveterate liar, who has used the office of the presidency to enrich himself and is currently running a crypto coin scheme that looks exactly like bribery. Now, it's not bribery yet because we haven't proved it, and we're innocent until proven guilty in the United States.

There's been a lot of red flags raised that there is a coin that goes directly into his pocket that is crypto that you can buy. I think her concerns are valid. I'll say this. What we have heard from members of the administration has been incredibly inconsistent about whether these are a negotiating ploy or not. What we have heard from the president is that this is incredibly inconsistent. I think it certainly looks like they would like to renegotiate every trade deal we have so we're going to inflict some pain and start a fight so that we can bring people to the negotiating table. That's certainly what it looks like. If there's something underhanded underneath, we will have to just hope there are very good investigators to research that and maintain the integrity.

Even this tactic of, "Let's start a fight so we can open negotiations," it's treating all countries the same in that process. They all got a tariff. A lot of people pointed out that we started trade wars with countries we have a surplus with. Why would you start a tariff war on a country that we are currently not exporting into the positive? This tactic of "let's use some throw our weight around as the biggest economy in the world to negotiate" is being used rather indiscriminately and treats all countries the same especially the newer tariffs that are all these blanket 10%, which is remarkably not even short-sighted, more like shallow sided of what the current country's relationship with the US is. There are cases where we are risking more than they are, and we don't acknowledge that.

Brigid Bergin: Kathryn, I'm wondering, since there's no indication the Trump administration is shifting course, at least in the short term, do you see any hope in some of the proposals being talked about in the US? Senator Chuck Grassley, a senior Republican from Iowa, is spearheading a new bill to reassert Congress's authority over tariffs amid this escalating trade war. Are you following that, and does it offer any consolation?

Kathryn Anne Edwards: I think you're starting to see cracks in the coalition. How many days are we into this administration? Is this 75? We are not through the first 100 days of his presidency and you're already seeing senior Republican senators breaking from his primary economic policy radically. What Chuck Grassley proposed was essentially that Congress retakes the authority over tariffs, that they have to have warning, they have to have permission, and they get to veto a tariff that they don't like. Shouldn't be too hard since that's what the Constitution says that they should be able to do. I'm not a legal scholar.

This is basically saying he should not have the power to do what he's doing. The ways the cracks would show in the Republican coalition, this, to me, was a bit of a bombshell, only because it was truly, "You should not have the power to do this." It wasn't, "Let's change the tariffs you put in place," or, "Let's add this," or, "Let's put in this protection." It was like, "You shouldn't do this." It was a much stronger, opening salvo of the Republican revolt than I was expecting. A

I was reading in The Wall Street Journal maybe it was three weeks ago, that Republicans are basically putting themselves under a gag order with their own constituents, "Don't hold town halls. Don't go anywhere public because people are yelling at us." I understand that there's very little leverage over a sitting president who is a lame duck, but there is a lot of leverage over the 535 people that have to get your approval to have a job.

I think that you are starting to see constituents. People are calling their member of Congress, they're calling their senator. You have massive trade groups. There's federations of people who sell things, people who buy things, various importers, and they are all on their phones with their member of Congress saying, "This is hurting us." I think it's harder to get ahold of the president and say, "I don't like this." It's a lot easier to get ahold of your member of Congress and say, "This is hurting me." I think that you'll start to see, as the pain increases, more and more Republicans will probably start to choose their constituents over their loyalty.

Brigid Bergin: Kathryn, in our last minute, I need to share the theme of some text messages we have received a lot of during this segment. I'm going to read two of them. This gets to, I think, the point you were making there about how individuals can begin to respond to this. One listener writes, "I'm 76 years old and was preparing to retire. Yesterday I lost so much money in my retirement account that it's inconceivable that I can afford to retire now. People say it's just a loss on paper, but at retirement age, that's false. That is money that I earned and invested in. The loss is very real to me."

Another listener writes, "I retired four and a half years ago, rent in Brooklyn, and have a son in his first year of college. Most of my money is managed professionally, but I had a huge hit. I'm worried about having enough to pay for college if this goes on for a while. I was going to buy a new car, but will not now. Is this likely to be long term?" As I said in about our last minute, is there anything that consumers can do to protect themselves at this point? It sounded like one of your suggestions might be to hop on the phone with a representative and let them know how they are feeling the impact of these tariffs.

Kathryn Anne Edwards: Well, I'm going to come with a curveball and say I struggle to give anything like financial advice, but yes, you should tell your member of Congress how this is hurting you. They are much more sensitive to your approval, whatever public front they put up. You need to tell them, "This is how it's affected me, your constituent." Y'all, also keep your eye on the ball. This is why Social Security is so important, because there is a crowbar between whatever is happening in the economy and a monthly income that you get and that you earned. This is what is so dangerous about we need to cut Social Security. We need to invest Social Security. We absolutely do not.

You had almost 2 trillion dollars worth of wealth erased from the stock market yesterday. Social Security is exactly how it was the day before, right? It is impervious to these types of downturns. That is why it's so important to keep it as it is because it will protect you when the stock market, when the economy, when anything like that is incapable. Remember to keep your eye on the ball of what is the biggest risk of them, which is to attack the thing that doesn't have market exposures, which is your Social Security.

I have so enjoyed being here. I will make a short plug for myself. I am on all the platforms as Keds Economist. Keds, like the shoe, underscore Economist. I take questions and comments on videos. I make explanations where I talk about the economy. If you would like to send me questions, please find me at keds_economist. I'm on Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok. I love answering questions and making people feel empowered that they can understand their economy because it matters to them.

Brigid Bergin: It absolutely does. Kathryn Ann Edwards is an economist and economic policy consultant. Kathryn, thanks so much for joining me this morning. This has been great.

Kathryn Anne Edwards: Thank you so much for having me, and thanks for listening, y'all.

 

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