‘F*ck That!’ NY Times’ Thomas Friedman Rages Against Trump’s Tariffs — Claims the President ‘Shot the American Car Companies’
Ezra Klein spoke to his New York Times colleague Thomas Friedman for the latest episode of his eponymous podcast, focused on President Donald Trump’s economic policies.
The blurb for the show on YouTube reads succinctly, “My colleague Tom Friedman thinks we’re screwed.” Friedman pulls no punches and drops quite a few expletives while hammering Trump’s tariff policies and accuses him of shooting America’s great “companies in the back.”
At one point, Klein asks Friedman if there might actually be some method to Trump’s tariff madness.
“There’s a series of papers out there that make this argument that China has a hegemonic level of dominance over global manufacturing. They’re not the only manufacturers, but they have primacy there. And we have primacy on the financial architecture of the world. And in this theory, what Trump and his team are trying to do is take manufacturing back from China,” Klein notes, adding, “Do you think their theory makes sense?”
“Hire clowns, expect a circus,” Friedman replied, adding:
If that is your theory, then go ahead. Put all the tariffs a thousand percent on China. That’s Day 1.
But these guys are entirely first-order thinkers. Day 2 has to be a strategy for what you do here the morning after. How do you then build the industrial base that you want to take advantage of the time you’re buying with your tariffs?
So what are these guys doing? Trump put up a wall against China, and then they went out and shot the American car companies. Ford was just downgraded today. Its stock, I think, is down to $7.50. Why is that? Because Ford did everything that Biden asked it to do. That a rational company would ask it to do. That we would want it to do.
Then what does Donald Trump do? He comes in with his right-wing woke bullshit and says: We don’t do EVs here. EVs are for girlie men. We only do manly industries.
“Well, fuck that. OK? Because look what happens now to Ford,” Friedman continued, becoming more animated, adding:
So you say: We want to bring this here.
I don’t want to have my kids screwing parts into cars. I want them designing, investing in and inventing the next generation of EVs.
But let’s go back to that ecosystem I talked about: EVs, robots, autonomous cars, batteries, clean energy.
Before I came over here, I read that Trump wants to reopen coal plants. He loves “Drill, baby, drill.” So it doesn’t make any sense.
You’re building a wall against China. Great. I’m all for it. But what are you doing behind the wall so we catch up? You’re taking your own companies out and shooting them in the back if they’re not right-wing woke.
Friedman penned an op-ed the same day his conversation with Klein was published, titled, “I Have Never Been More Afraid for My Country’s Future.”
Watch the full clip above.
