You could tell former Obama economic adviser Robert Wolf’s points were landing just by looking at the expression on Stephen Moore’s face. Every once in a while, a little honesty is allowed to break through on Fox, and this Friday, Wolf managed to do just that during a discussion on the market’s reaction to Trump’s tariffs on The Story with Martha MacCallum.
Moore started things off by saying he wished Trump would back off of the tariffs on Europe and Canada and focus on China instead, and after MacCallum tried to paint Trump as some great negotiator with this madness in response, Wolf was asked to weigh in.
WOLF: Well, my thoughts is this big beautiful economy that actually was rolling pretty good with jobs and inflation coming down feels more like the Game of Thrones red wedding.
I mean, it is not going well. This is being executed poorly. His economic advisors are being intellectually dishonest.
Trade, trade wars are bad, tariffs are a tax. Consumer prices are not going down. We’re 70 percent consumer driven country, so building a moat around the United States with protectionists and isolationist economic policies are not positive.
And this isn’t me saying it. This is JP Morgan, 60 percent chance of a recession. Heritage Foundation is for free trade and thinks tariffs are poor.
I think Steve and I have always been for targeted tariffs. Go after the Eurozone on auto. Go after China on steel and intellectual property, but across the board is just coming back to haunt us.
And the markets are efficient. I disagree with Secretary of State Rubio. It’s not just the businesses are getting reset. They’re going to actually… look at what happened at Whirlpool in Iowa. They cut over 500 jobs.
And by the way, today you know the senator of Iowa and the senator of Washington are doing a bipartisan bill to possibly take away some of the power.
MacCallum tried to interrupt at the end, but ultimately ended up agreeing with him that “Congress really has not been muscular on any of these issues, even though they had the power to be.” That’s the understatement of the year. They’ve got the power to put a stop to this nonsense yesterday, and they refuse to do their jobs, so they’re just as culpable for the damage as Trump is.