Ben Norton is a journalist and the founder of Geopolitical Economy Report focusing on international economics, which makes him the perfect guest for an episode centered on why Trump’s tariff tantrum isn’t going the way he hoped. In this conversation, we talk through how none of the things Trump promised the tariffs would do are actually materializing, and how they’re making life harder for working people. Plus, the result could be a much bigger shock to the global economic system than anyone could’ve imagined. Watch below:

When Trump threatened China with tariffs, many of us understood that of course, his main priority wasn’t the welfare of working people looking for more American jobs — it was just another opportunity for him to throw his weight around and shake a big stick at our enemies — but it’s still important to understand the appeal that he made, talking about re-centering American production and job creation by unseating Chinese imports from their current extremely important role in our markets. To Trumpers from working-class backgrounds, this was supposed to be Trump’s heroic moment returning to “made in America” stickers (but make no mistake, not a moment supportive of American union labor returning to prominence!).

Ben shows in our conversation how these were just more of Trump’s lies, everywhere from the desire of Americans to return to factory jobs (polling shows they don’t want to) to way higher prices, consumer freakouts about loss of access to goods, longer delivery times, and an overall mess in the economy that could have way bigger shockwaves as it continues to grow. Reindustrialization isn’t going to happen like this, and Ben walks us through the how and the why, from the fact that this could result in a global recession to the devaluation of the American dollar that’s happening now.

We hope you enjoy this wide-ranging conversation, which touches on everything from the trade war to Trump’s cruel and inhumane deportation policy, which we’re getting increasingly horrifying news about from El Salvador and from immigrant communities around the U.S. You can listen to this episode as a podcast when it’s released tomorrow night on Spotify, Substack, Pandora, Apple Podcasts, and more.