JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Financial markets have tanked as angry allies and adversaries alike retaliate against America after President Trump announces drastic new tariffs.

DONALD TRUMP, U.S. President: These tariffs are going to give us growth like you haven't seen before.

It'll be something very special to watch.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: It's certainly something special to watch.

Tonight, we'll try to make sense of Trump's trade war and Trump himself, next.

Good evening and welcome to Washington Week.

So, just like you, I am trying to make sense of all of this.

My main question, is there any possible way these new tariffs make things better for average Americans?

It's hard to find an economist right now who answers yes, but this is a question we'll explore tonight with my guests, Steven Hayes, the editor of The Dispatch, David Leonhardt is the director of the editorial board at The New York Times.

Kayla Tausche is the senior White House correspondent for CNN, and our old friend, Nancy Youssef, is a national security correspondent at The Wall Street Journal.

I don't mean you're old, by the way.

I just mean like I see you a lot.

NANCY YOUSSEF, National Security Correspondent, The Wall Street Journal: Thank you.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: You're welcome.

Just want to make sure everybody's clear on that at home.

Before we go to tariffs, which are kind of -- this feels like at least a world historical event, at least if you are looking at your 401(k) today, it feels like a world historical event, I want to talk about a couple of national security issues.

Nancy you're in the Pentagon.

Last night,Thursday, the president fired the head of the National Security Agency and Cyber Command, it's a dual-hatted position, General Timothy Hogg, after Laura Loomer, who is this well-known, far right conspiracy theorist and ostensibly close friend of Donald Trump's, told Trump that he was disloyal, this general, because he was appointed by Mark Milley, who was obviously not a favorite of Donald Trump.

And she also recommended, and the recommendation was received that Trump should fire various other mid-level officials of the National Security Council.

We both cover national security issues.

I don't remember anything like this ever happening before.

What is going on inside the defense establishment?

YOUSSEF: So, we should start by talking about what the NSA does.

It's responsible for signals intelligence.

It provides key intelligence in the presidential daily brief.

And the reason you put a general in there is that it's apolitical because intelligence should be apolitical.

And the idea is that the president should get unvarnished intelligence to make the best national security decisions.

That, a general who served for three decades was fired ostensibly because he was not seen as loyal enough to the president, politicizes that position.

It politicizes the military, it politicizes intelligence.

And this idea, Laura Loomer and her tweet about it, said that this was because he was close to Mark Milley because Mark Milley named him.

Well, Mark Milley named a lot of generals in that time.

So, the political tide that they're making him doesn't really hold water.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: If you're successful in the Pentagon, every presidential administration, you're going to get a promotion of some sort.

YOUSSEF: And the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff might sign off on that.

But there's no indication that their careers overlapped in any significant way or that there was any sort of alliance between them.

And so all of that is sort of, to your question, has really raised fears within the Pentagon that they will be measured not to their willingness to sign it, to honor their oath to the Constitution, but to their personal loyalty to the president.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Has this ever happened before, to your knowledge?

KAYLA TAUSCHE, Senior White House Correspondent, CNN: It hasn't, but also, I think perhaps even more consequentially, Trump said that Laura Loomer not only recommended people to fire, but also people to hire.

So, who will be coming into these positions in these people's places?

A lot of the folks that they fired were people who were doing legitimate, relatively nonpartisan work.

I mean, apart from what happened at the Pentagon, I mean, there were folks at the National Security Council who were helping to work on the deal that they were actively negotiating between TikTok and ByteDance and China, that being David Feith, who works on technology and national security.

And so there are real near term consequences to the people who are being removed from these positions, and that deal obviously getting scuppered in the last couple of days needing to be extended yet again.

But who she recommends to hire in their place is what I'm focused on.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Yes, go ahead.

DAVID LEONHARDT, Director, The New York Times Editorial Board: There seems to be an ideological component of this, which is the people who Laura Loomer is recommending for firing seem to be more seemed to be more hawkish, and the people she wants in there are more isolationist.

And it actually comes back to your group chat, in which we saw the J.D.

Vance wing of the Republican Party.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: I think of it as Mike Waltz's group chat.

DAVID LEONHARDT: Fair enough.

You were just visiting Mike Waltz's group chat, in which we saw J.D.

Vance representing really the isolationist wing of the Republican Party.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Right.

Why would we do this?

What's in it for us?

DAVID LEONHARDT: Yes.

And Mike Waltz and some others being more hawkish on things like Russia.

And so from a national security standpoint, I think it's concerning that you imagine the Trump administration will have even more people who are dovish toward Russia.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Right.

Steve, I'm sorry to do this to you, but who is Laura Loomer?

STEPHEN HAYES, Editor, The Dispatch: Yes.

Laura Loomer is a well-known far right conspiracy theorist who's thought of as so far right that Marjorie Taylor Greene thinks she's racist and crazy.

So, it's alarming that she's recommending people to get fired and people to be hired.

But it should be said she's not the only one doing this.

And to David's point, there is a more systematic effort happening inside the Trump administration to push out people who have sort of more Reaganite views.

My colleague, Michael Warren, reported on this three weeks ago, Sergio Gore, J.D.

Vance, acolytes, people who are in the sort of super MAGA part of the White House, part of the movement, are making lists.

They have an email chain, a text chain where they are recommending people who might be disloyal.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: So, they're purging even as they hire.

I mean, Sergio Gore hires.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: His job is to hire people in the administration, but they're already looking for signs of disloyalty?

STEPHEN HAYES: They're doing both.

They're blocking a number of people, some of whom Mike Waltz wanted to hire.

They've blocked those potential hires and they're already looking for people who are insufficiently loyal.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Yes.

Nancy, let's stay on this Mike Waltz question for one minute.

So, he's the national security adviser.

Laura Loomer, who Steve has memorably described as to the right of Marjorie Taylor Greene, not -- that's not an everyday -- STEPHEN HAYES: Not a lot of room, by the way.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Yes.

No, I mean, I think there is, but it's still way over there, obviously.

So, she comes in and says to the president, Mike Waltz has all these people who are bad and you should get rid of them, so the president just gets rid of them.

What has Mike Waltz done in the last 24 hours?

Does he defend his people and his institution?

NANCY YOUSSEF: Well, let's back up.

We don't even know how she got into the White House, who authorized her to go to the White House?

At whose request did she go there?

Then she's given interviews where she said that.

She provided a dozen names and that she had done her sort of own research on their loyalty or lack thereof to the president.

And Mike Waltz was part of these conversations when he wasn't able to defend his people.

Now, I can tell you at the Pentagon, the sort of shock was not just that it was Laura Loomer.

As it was, they were worried about Elon Musk getting rid of people in their department, and now there's this new name emerging.

They don't know the standards.

They don't know the qualifications.

And what it signals, to your question, that Mike Waltz doesn't have the kind of control over national security or his own staffing if somebody can come in sort of unannounced to the staff and make such dramatic changes to very key positions in national security.

STEPHEN HAYES: Yes.

To Nancy's point, you know it, people were surprised when Laura Loomer showed up in the Oval Office.

This was not something that was well-known.

Susie Wiles, the president's chief of staff, who also served in a senior position on his campaign, intervened at one point because Laura Loomer was flying around the country on Donald Trump's plane and set up sort of a system whereby she would be excluded.

The responsible people in the White House don't want Laura Loomer around.

They don't want her talking to the president the way that he's talking.

So, they set up these systems to sort of block her to keep her out, and those systems failed.

And I think that's been alarming to people in the West Wing.

KAYLA TAUSCHE: I think it's unclear whether it's been a massive gate-keeping failure ala when she appeared on ground zero at 9/11 when she -- JEFFREY GOLDBERG: And she's a 9/11 conspiracist, by the way.

KAYLA TAUSCHE: She's a 9/11 by the conspiracy theorist, and she was at ground zero with then candidate Trump.

And at that time, there was such an uproar that there was a backlash to make you think that it would never happen again.

And so that leads me to think, well, was her visiting the White House this time, was that actually a lapse or was this some sort of dog whistle to the far right, where they're indicating that they're still keeping the far right's preferences in line for the government?

STEPHEN HAYES: And it wasn't something that the president wanted.

I mean, if you go back to those post-election days, when Sidney Powell was -- people were trying to keep Sidney Powell out of it.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Remind us who Sidney Powell was.

STEPHEN HAYES: She was the election conspiracy theorist lawyer who kept sort of appearing at the White House or in Donald Trump's ear floating these conspiracy theories, telling him what he wanted to hear.

And people were alarmed at that time.

DAVID LEONHARDT: And she's been very active in a bunch of his stuff lately.

I mean, she also is one of the most aggressive people on social media saying really nasty personal stuff about any judge who issues some sort of ruling that Trump doesn't like.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Yes.

So, I want to get to tariffs, but, David, one more question.

I mean, you've been around Washington for a while.

This is Alice in Wonderland stuff at a certain point.

Where are we going?

DAVID LEONHARDT: Yes.

I mean, look, a lot of presidents have relied on advisers who make their other advisers uncomfortable, right?

We can all kind of do the list.

But this is just still a completely different level because it is getting in with the military, as Nancy was pointing it out.

And it really gives real reason to have concerns about national security in ways that we just haven't seen before.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Right.

And Nancy's point is a very important one.

The NSA, they're supposed to be honest brokers.

You might want the intelligence to mean this, but it actually means that based on actual experts, actual experts telling you.

So, if you're picking an intelligence chief based on loyalty, you're going to get the intelligence you want but not intelligence that might correspond to reality.

NANCY YOUSSEF: That's right.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: And that's when you get into serious trouble.

Let me one -- one more note on defense.

I just wanted to ask Nancy about this because it's important.

The Army is transferring the remains of four soldiers killed in Lithuania in a training accident late last month, the four soldiers, I'd like to mention them, they were assigned to the first armored brigade combat team, the third Infantry Division, Sergeant Troy Knutson-Collins, Sergeant Jose Duenz Jr., Sergeant Edwin Franco in Private First Class Dante Taetano.

They died in a horrible accident.

And thousands of people lined up in Vilnius, in Lithuania, thousands of Lithuanians, up into including the president to pay their respects as they're being transferred.

I want to note that President Trump is not as far as we can tell, meeting their bodies at Dover Air Force Base, and he is in Florida playing in a Saudi-sponsored golf tournament.

You're in the building all the time.

How does that sort of thing affect people in the defense apparatus?

NANCY YOUSSEF: Well, let me begin by saying not every president goes to every dignified transfer.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Obviously.

NANCY YOUSSEF: Okay.

Having said that, you know, if you've never been to a dignified transfer, it is when the remains come back to this country for the first time.

It's a very moving ceremony.

And for the civilians and those who attend it, it is a very direct reminder of the consequences of their decisions and the risk -- JEFFREY GOLDBERG: And the families are actually right there.

NANCY YOUSSEF: The families are there.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Yes.

NANCY YOUSSEF: It's a heartbreaking experience.

And so it's important for those who make those decisions to see that there's risk associated with it, not just in combat but in training as well, as in this case.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: This was a NATO training exercise.

NANCY YOUSSEF: That's right.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Right.

And we know how the, some people in the White House, as David alluded to, feel about NATO training exercises, generally.

NANCY YOUSSEF: That's right.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Do you think there's a political quality to this decision?

NANCY YOUSSEF: Well, look, those conversations between the president and some of those families can be very, very painful.

They are seeing their loved one come back.

There have been really, really confrontational discourse between them.

Having said that, as you noted, what happened in Lithuania was really remarkable.

I've covered the beat for 20 years.

I've never seen something so moving, thousands of people lined up, children carrying flags to -- JEFFREY GOLDBERG: American flags.

NANCY YOUSSEF: Yes, to show their gratitude for the service of these troops.

And so I think it's a very stark contrast this week.

And four service members lost and the civilian leadership not being there will be noted by the building because this week, the building was changed and following and mourning the loss of these four service members.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Yes.

It's a tragic situation.

All right, let's talk about the tariffs and let's listen to President Trump for a moment on the rationale for the new tariffs.

DONALD TRUMP: For decades, our country has been looted, pillaged, raped, and plundered by nations near and far, both friend and foe alike.

But now it's our turn to prosper.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: David, first, if I'm not mistaken, we are the richest country in the world.

DAVID LEONHARDT: We are by many measures.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: By many measures.

So, compared to other countries, we are prospering.

Put that aside for a second.

Bring it back if you want.

But what is the best argument that Donald Trump has and his team from making these new tariffs.

DAVID LEONHARDT: So, let's start with Donald Trump and his team's diagnosis for what's going wrong.

I actually think that's their best argument.

Their best argument is that we have had a high trade economy expanding trade for decades.

Just think about it as the 21st century roughly.

And although the United States is, in many ways, the richest country in the world, the bottom half, the bottom 60 percent, the bottom 70 percent of Americans by income haven't been doing well.

We all know that, right?

Many towns have been hollowed out.

Income inequality has soared.

Life expectancy in the United States is the worst of any rich country in the world.

And so trade has not delivered the benefits that economists and politicians of both parties have been promising for decades.

And so the idea that we might want to look at our economy and say, wait a second, it's worked for highly educated professionals, but it isn't working for blue collar workers.

We should do something different with trade.

I think that argument, you can debate it, but that argument has substantial support for.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Right.

What's the argument against these tariffs?

DAVID LEONHARDT: I mean, the argument against these tariffs is they're shambolic, they're extremely high.

No one knows whether he's going to take them back the next day.

If you decided that our economy has not benefited from trade in the ways I was just suggesting and you wanted to use tariffs as a way to try to bring more jobs back here, you would do it in an orderly way.

You would try to get your allies on your side.

You would say we're going to put them in place starting in a couple years so people can plan.

The idea that Donald Trump brought out a big board with massive tariffs, and no one really knows what's going to happen, that's why we see the markets tanking, that's why we see even Trump's allies anxious about this.

And so there is an argument for tariffs, and there definitely is an argument against the kind of economy we've had over the last couple decades, but I have yet to hear anyone who puts together a cogent argument in favor of his approach.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Right.

I want to talk about the reaction to this in a minute, but, Steve, take us back.

Can you explain President Trump's singular preoccupation with tariffs.

STEPHEN HAYES: Yes, I think it'd fair to call it an obsession.

I was having lunch with somebody who worked very closely with the president just over the past couple of months.

I mean, this person worked with him in the first term.

And this person said the single issue he hear is most about in terms of policy, actual policy, is trade, is tariffs.

He loves tariffs.

He says this about himself.

I'm a tariff man.

I love tariffs.

And if you go back and look at interviews with Donald Trump in the 1980s, he was talking about tariffing Japan and they were eating our lunch and this was terrible.

And Japan was -- you know, they were making a mockery of us.

And I think this is basically best understood as Donald Trump's grievance politics gone global.

He always thinks somebody's ripping them off.

There's a they when he talks about it in conspiracy terms and domestic policy.

But when you talk about this, somebody's always ripping us off.

And I think there's sort of a fundamental misunderstanding of what trade deficits are.

You've seen this, if you followed his arguments about this, his rhetoric about trade deficits over the years, where he talks about trade deficits as if it's an actual deficit, as if other countries are coming in and pulling cash out of our national till rather than something that can sometimes be advantageous.

STEPHEN HAYES: Correct.

Correct.

So, I think it's sort of all of those things combined.

But what makes it scary is that he seems not to really understand why he's doing what he's doing other than this sort of grievance.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Right.

Kayla, what are you hearing?

I think you spent part of the week obviously talking to people in the White House, but you're also talking to business leaders, including business leaders who are sympathetic to the president.

KAYLA TAUSCHE: Yes.

And many of them are on the phone trying to get anyone on the line in the West Wing that they can to try to talk to about how this happened, how they can fix it, whether they can get an exemption there.

I mean, there's some gallows humor about whether they need to start hiring Trump friendly lobbyists to get an exemption from some of these tariffs.

But the real rub for them is that this seems like a solution in search of a problem.

And there's no real strategy.

There's no real endgame.

How long will these be for?

What are you hoping to get out of this?

It is really just a blunt instrument that the president initiated with very little cogent math behind it, and they're all calling each other, all of these executives trying to figure out, should we sue the White House?

Should we develop a counterproposal that we can get them to agree to?

Or should we just tell them that this is not going to work?

And one executive told me that that strategy has been unproductive because they called the White House and said, well, if you do this tariff, I would rather pay $5 million in tariffs or $20 million in tariffs and spend a billion dollars to move this factory by back to the U.S., and the White House's response was, well, then the tariffs need to be higher.

They want this manufacturing to come back to the U.S. so badly that it is a strategy that is going to be implemented at all costs.

But there's an asterisk there, which is that Donald Trump very much cares about what happens to the market.

He says he doesn't, but he very much does.

And he's been watching the market very closely.

And I spoke to one of his closest advisers today, and I said, where is the breaking point?

And this person said, we're getting there.

We're not there yet but we're getting there.

That's why he's on the phone with all of these world leaders, Vietnam, Israel, India, trying to get these, you know, 11th hour deals before the tariffs go into effect April 9th.

Whether he can get them with some of the major powers, I think is probably a foregone conclusion but he's trying.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: So, right now, everybody's trying to make their own side deals.

I want to stay on the issue of reaction to this, and I thought this comment I want you to listen to from Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, very MAGA, especially for the Senate, is kind of interesting.

Let's listen.

SEN. RON JOHNSON (R-WI): Well, I think the president and his advisors should be listening to what the stock market is telling them.

I know for my part we're talking to constituents who, quite honestly, realize that tariffs are a double-edged sword.

We'll see whether they recover or not whether people view this as a buying opportunity, that things level out.

Or if not, I would hope that this administration is going to react to the realities on the ground.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: So, Nancy, that's notable because he's slowly backing into Homer Simpson-style, a little bit backing into a bush there, and Kayla mentioned that, you know, there's a lot of anxiety.

Do you see this administration folding anytime soon, or do you think this is a kind of situation where it's just doubling and tripling down?

NANCY YOUSSEF: Well, I thought what was interesting what you were describing is that they're looking for a face-saving measure.

They've said, you see a lot of countries either retaliating or negotiating, and that each side is sort of deciding which way they're going to go.

The polling would suggest that there's going to have to be some adjustment.

The Wall Street Journal just released one, and it started March 27th through April 1st, the day before this announcement.

And in that poll, 54 to 42 percent supported tariffs before this announcement.

And over time, it showed a growing unease with Trump's handling of the economy, the thing that he campaigned on.

And so the question becomes how long they will stick to this policy and what will be the breaking point.

And it's not just the stock market, but we've seen the value of the dollar rise signaling that the international community is potentially looking for alternative markets or currencies to reserve against like the euro.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Yes.

David, this is a -- I mean, it's sort of an unfair question, so I'll definitely ask it.

How bad can it get?

I mean, you're an economic specialist among other things.

How bad can this get?

DAVID LEONHARDT: It can get bad and I think one of the reasons why the market -- JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Do Democrats want to get it so bad that it becomes good for them?

DAVID LEONHARDT: I think if Democrats were honest, they would say the last couple days have been good for them, but they won't say that because it makes it sound like they're rooting against the economy.

But the Democrats don't have enough power to do anything to really affect this anyway.

DAVID LEONHARDT: Part of the reason this can get bad is markets, as we all know, are driven by psychology as much as they're driven by anything else.

The stock market heading into this period was extremely expensive by the fundamental measure of prices relative to corporate profits, extremely expensive, late 1990s level expensive, late 1920s level expensive.

That doesn't mean we're going to have a stock market crash.

But when you put that level of stock market expense and you combine it with something that freaks people out, I'm not predicting that it's going to get bad and you shouldn't listen to anyone who tells you what the market's going to do, but it has the potential to be quite bad.

NANCY YOUSSEF: But, David, can I add to that?

On a more basic, just the basic level, once these tariffs go in, all goods become more expensive.

If the president's plan comes to fruition and factories are here and things are being built in the United States, prices will stay up.

There's not an off ramp where you see prices drop.

And one of the things that Americans have asked for is to see inflation addressed and prices come down.

DAVID LEONHARDT: It's a reminder that the details matter.

I mean, when Ronald Reagan came to Washington, he came with all these conservative policy intellectuals who had spent years thinking about what they want to do.

The same was true of Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush.

And the Trump people have some broad theories that you can imagine putting in place but they're just doing it in the slap dash way that the odds of it working out are really small.

KAYLA TAUSCHE: Well, they have theories and then the president steps in and says, this is what -- JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Well, I want to -- last 20 seconds, I want to ask Kayla this question.

The treasury secretary, highly respected guy, he's going along with this.

He's giving interviews to Tucker Carlson saying that he's going along with it.

Where does a guy like that fit into this scheme?

KAYLA TAUSCHE: In southern parlance, he tried his darnedest.

He had a different strategy that obviously didn't prevail here.

So, now he has to own it and he is trying to figure out behind the scenes how he can find that off ramp and make this better.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Fascinating, not the last time we'll be talking about this.

We are going to have to leave it there for now, I'm sorry to say.

But I want to thank our panelists and our viewers for joining us.

For the latest on the tariffs crisis, please visit theatlantic.com.

I'm Jeffrey Goldberg.

Goodnight from Washington.

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