• President-elect Donald Trump made a lot of questionable promises on the campaign trail. But one of the biggest ones was his promise to improve the economy by imposing at least a 10 percent tariff on all imported goods. For goods from China, he wants a minimum 60 percent tariff. Never mind that some economists say these tariffs, if imposed, could cost the average U.S. household an extra $2,600 a year. Stacey Vanek Smith, senior story editor at Bloomberg Audio, helps us break down what Trump’s tariff plans could mean for all of us.
• And in headlines: Trump confirms in an early morning retweet that he will try to use the military to mass deport millions of immigrants, momentum builds around the potential release of a House Ethics Committee report about former Rep. Matt Gaetz, and a new report finds 20 percent of Americans get their news from social media influencers.

• Check out Stacey’s work – www.staceyvaneksmith.com/audio
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TRANSCRIPT

Jane Coaston: It’s Tuesday, November 19th. I’m Jane Coaston. And this is What a Day. The show that is pouring one out for the mother of MAGA, Sarah Palin. Okay. Mother of MAGA is what someone on the internet called her, and then she shared it to complain about how she hasn’t got nominated to any cabinet positions. But if it helps Sarah. I also haven’t gotten nominated to any cabinet positions. [music break] On today’s show, Trump makes a critical policy decision at 4 a.m., maybe. And Tiktok, will we still have it in 2025? Let’s get into it. 

[clip of President elect Donald Trump] If you don’t make your product here, then you will have to pay a tariff, a very substantial tariff when you send your product into the United States. 

Jane Coaston: If you paid any attention at all to President elect Donald Trump, you know how much he talked about tariffs on the campaign trail. 

[clip of President elect Donald Trump] The word tariff properly used is a beautiful word, one of the most beautiful words I’ve ever heard. It’s music to my ears. 

Jane Coaston: But it turns out like overdone steak, Diet Coke, cheating on your wife, and other things trump enjoys. The widespread use of tariffs will not be good for us. Trump has promised to tax every single imported good from China at 60 to 100%, and according to the Peterson Institute for International Economics. Tariffs will cost the average U.S. household $2,600 a year. That is not very beautiful. Even Speaker Mike Johnson isn’t willing to buy into the tariff plan. Or at least he wasn’t when Jake Tapper asked him Sunday about Trump’s promise to put at least a 10% tariff on all imported goods like from anywhere. 

[clip of Speaker Mike Johnson] Well, just like with immigration policy, I’m not going to put the cart before the horse. The president and I have talked about this as recently as yesterday, um the use of tariffs in the economy and how that might be done. It will be a balancing act, as it always is. But he has some ideas, aggressive ideas to grow this economy again. 

Jane Coaston: But if you ask universally respected economist, Hulk Hogan, what he thinks, everything will be fine. Here he is on Fox News. 

[clip of Hulk Hogan] But when it comes down to business, he’s a businessman. You know like that economic forum where he schooled that guy who didn’t know a thing about tariffs. 

Jane Coaston: For the record, he did not school Bloomberg editor in chief John Micklethwait, who does know a thing about tariffs. Republican Representative Troy Nehls from Texas is also all for these universal tariffs, for very good reasons. 

[clip of Representative Troy Nehls] If Donald Trump says tariffs work, tariffs work, period. Because Donald Trump is really never wrong. 

Jane Coaston: Spoken like someone who definitely knows what a tariff is and definitely isn’t part of a cult of personality. To help me try to understand what any of this means, I called up Stacey Vanek Smith. She’s a senior story editor at Bloomberg Audio, and I think after two appearances on the show can officially be called a friend of the pod. Stacey Vanek Smith, welcome to What a Day. 

Stacey Vanek Smith: Thank you. I’m so glad to be here. 

Jane Coaston: Okay. Let’s start really simple. What is a tariff? 

Stacey Vanek Smith: A tariff is it’s just a tax on something that comes in from another country so it can be like a lamp or a car or a space heater or pork chops or anything that comes in from another country. It’s just a tax that the government can put on that product. 

Jane Coaston: And there are there are already lots of tariffs, even before Donald Trump, there were tariffs on things that we might not know that much about. So let’s get into that, because Trump has obviously talked a huge game about tariffs. 

Stacey Vanek Smith: This is his thing. Yeah. 

Jane Coaston: It’s a it’s a big thing. A thing he’s very enthusiastic about. What is it that he is trying to do and how would it affect your normal, everyday American consumer like me if he succeeds? 

Stacey Vanek Smith: Yes. Okay. This is this it’s like you’re right. It’s his whole thing. And so the appeal of tariffs, the reason that Trump likes them, is there’s this idea that it encourages people to buy American goods. And it’s true that they do do that. So if you think about like, let’s say you’re buying, I don’t know, I’ve been shopping for space heaters because it’s freezing in my apartment right now. So I’ve been looking at space heaters. And if there’s a space heater that’s made in the U.S., that space heater company is having to pay US wages, US rents, US environmental regulation, all that stuff. So they have to charge a certain amount in order to turn a profit on their space heater. Well, if you if you make the same product in China, the average worker makes way less than the average worker here. So when these space heaters go on the market, the Chinese company has a huge cost advantage. If you and I are looking at space heaters, we’re like going to buy the $30 space heater, not the $50 space heater. So tariffs are meant to kind of get rid of that cost advantage. So let’s say you put a big tariff on the space heater and now the Chinese company has to charge $55 to turn a profit. We’re probably going to buy the U.S. space heater, but also suddenly we’re paying $50 for a space heater. That’s where the higher prices come in. And that’s how it impacts us. 

Jane Coaston: Wouldn’t the American company also be purchasing items to make the space heaters that might come from overseas and might also face taxes, so they would be paying more and then they would make the space heater more expensive so everything would just get more expensive? 

Stacey Vanek Smith: Yes, that is such a great point because we’ve really had like a movement towards free trade ever since the end of World War two. Part of the reason they put free trade in place was to prevent war from happening um because they thought if you’re trading with people, you’re not going to be fighting with them. And so now that we’re sort of looking at all these tariffs, everything’s become so interconnected. I mean, iPhones make parts in like dozens of different countries. All the things that we use have parts and, you know, minerals and products from all over the world. And you’re absolutely right, tariffs are going to affect all those things. So we’re probably going to maybe paying more like 60 or $70 for a space heater now. 

Jane Coaston: That sounds terrible for our space heater needs, but again my– 

Stacey Vanek Smith: So bad. Get a sweater. 

Jane Coaston: For cold people like us it’s going to be a tough time. I think–

Stacey Vanek Smith:  It’s not good. 

Jane Coaston: This this question is quickly becoming a major theme on the show. Can he actually do all of this? Can he do 100% tariffs on goods from China? And I think, more importantly, does he really want to or is this like time for some game theory kind of nonsense? 

Stacey Vanek Smith: Um. Can he do it? Yes, absolutely. We saw him put a lot of tariffs in place in 2016. Uh. That was a very different moment in our economy. Inflation wasn’t a problem. And so that was just a very different situation. This time, though, it’s interesting. You make a great point. He’s kind of painted himself into a corner here, I think. Because if he puts tariffs like that in place, which he can absolutely do, everything is going to get a lot more expensive. And one of the reasons people think that he won the election was because people are so upset about rising prices. So the way around it would be to have much more targeted tariffs. Um. A lot of leaders around the world have would will pick like enemy countries and they’ll put big tariffs on like, you know, some specialty products or luxury products um is a really common thing to do. But Trump is talking about totally across the board tariffs, I think 60 to 100% on goods from China, 10 to 20% on goods, on goods from everywhere else. Um. If he does that, prices are going to go way up. And I, I mean, his response to that has been that companies will move their operations here, but that’s going to mean they’re paying American wages and rent again. So there’s no way around the higher prices if he puts these tariffs in place, I don’t know how he’s going to do that. I think I think the way around it for Trump, the game theory uh would be to pick and choose and make big splashy announcements around the tariffs he’s putting in place while not actually putting that many tariffs in place. 

Jane Coaston: It seems like this is less a battle between like left and right, because we know that Biden kept some of the tariffs that Trump had put into place. 

Stacey Vanek Smith: Yeah. 

Jane Coaston: And so it seems like I understand that this is an effort to, you know, boost American manufacturing. But if American manufacturing is also reliant on products with tariffs, it just seems like this is all just a very bad idea. Am I right? Is this just a very bad idea? 

Stacey Vanek Smith: It’s bad for yes. I mean, I think so. Um. This is my personal opinion. And tariffs can be really good. Like tariffs aren’t always bad. It can protect industries. It can have some good effects. But what it does do is make things more expensive, which brings everybody’s quality of life down because that just means you and I can afford less stuff. So we are having to pinch pennies a lot more. And this has happened. I mean, Argentina put really big sweeping tariffs in place uh like a few decades ago, and it completely destroyed their economy. They said everything had to be made inside of Argentina, including like smartphones and Blackberry started trying to make phones in the country. And iPhone left completely and prices went up and quality went down. And they’re still trying to pull their way out of that. And and all the inflation that it contributed to. 

Jane Coaston: That sounds bad. So–

Stacey Vanek Smith: I know. 

Jane Coaston: –what would be I mean, I feel like I feel like it seems like adding to rising prices will not make the electorate happy. So, Stacey, what imported goods should we start stockpiling? 

Stacey Vanek Smith: Oh. I mean, for me personally, coffee. I’m yeah, it’s already gotten so expensive. Coffee, which I like to drink. Like I like I like strong coffee. So that is, of course, the first thing that comes into my mind. Um. We import so many things. I don’t even know what wouldn’t be more expensive because even like a quote unquote, “American product,” like an iPhone. Like every component like you said, every component in that iPhone almost is from another place. So it’s going to get a lot more expensive. Stockpile eggs, chocolate, coffee. 

Jane Coaston: Everything. 

Stacey Vanek Smith: Space heaters. 

Jane Coaston: Okay. 

Stacey Vanek Smith: Absolutely. 

Jane Coaston: Great. Great. Okay. I will. My closet full of chocolate coffee and space heaters is going to raise some questions. But in two years, everyone’s going to be saying, I wish I had been stockpiling. 

Stacey Vanek Smith: You were so smart. Exactly. 

Jane Coaston: Coffee, chocolate, and space heaters. Stacey, thank you so much for joining me. 

Stacey Vanek Smith: Absolutely. Thank you. 

Jane Coaston: That was my conversation with Stacey Vanek Smith, senior story editor at Bloomberg Audio. We’ll get to more of the news in a moment. But if you like the show, make sure to subscribe. Leave a five star review on Apple Podcasts. Watch us on YouTube and share with your friends. More to come after some ads. 

[AD BREAK]

Jane Coaston: And now the news. 

[sung] Headlines. 

[clip of Joel Leppard] She arrived at the party. She had sex with Representative Gaetz um within minutes of her arrival. Later on, when she was walking out to the pool area, she observed to her right Representative Gaetz having sex with her friend, who was 17 at the time. 

Jane Coaston: That’s Florida attorney Joel Leppard speaking with CBS News’ Major Garrett in an interview that aired Monday. Leppard represents two women who told the House Ethics Committee that they were paid to have sex with former Florida Congressman Matt Gaetz. The attorney says that one of his clients also witnessed Gaetz having sex with a third woman who says she was 17 at the time. Eew. Gaetz has denied all wrongdoing, but the misconduct allegations have followed him for years and led to investigations by both the Justice Department and the House Ethics Committee. The DOJ concluded its investigation without bringing any charges, but the Ethics Committee kept going. It’s scheduled to meet Wednesday and could vote on whether to release its report on Gaetz. House Speaker Mike Johnson said late last week he thinks the report should be kept under wraps because it turns out the alleged sexual abuse of young women is just not a big deal anymore. On CNN, he explained his view on releasing the report. 

[clip of Speaker Mike Johnson] Matt Gaetz resigned from Congress. He is no longer a member. There’s a very important protocol and tradition and rule that we maintain that the House Ethics Committee’s jurisdiction does not extend to nonmembers of Congress. I think that would be a Pandora’s box. 

Jane Coaston: But if Gaetz is to become the next attorney general, he’ll almost certainly need to be confirmed by the Senate. And many senators, even some Republicans, have expressed interest in the report’s contents. Donald Trump declared Monday that he would, in fact, try to use the military as part of his plans to mass deport millions of immigrants. Well, technically, at 4:03 a.m. eastern time, he re-truthed someone else saying that he would declare a national emergency and use the military to deport immigrants and then wrote, quote, “True.” But what this actually means is unclear. As in, will Donald Trump mass deport 11 million people after interning them in camps which the American Immigration Council estimates would cost $300 billion? That’d be absolutely insane, because no matter how many times Trump says he wants to deport millions of people, his closest allies keep saying he doesn’t actually mean that. Or maybe he does. Here’s Speaker Mike Johnson telling Jake Tapper on Sunday that the administration would focus on dangerous individuals. 

[clip of Speaker Mike Johnson] I think what the president’s talking about is beginning with the dangerous persons that we know are here. There are criminals, known criminals. There are known terrorists in the country. There are some who have been apprehended, apprehended for committing violent crimes after they’ve come across the border illegally. 

Jane Coaston: And here’s Representative Tony Gonzales of Texas telling ABC’s Martha Raddatz that deporting someone’s grandma just isn’t going to work. 

[clip of Representative Tony Gonzales] If the message is we’re here to deport your abuelita, that’s not going to work well. 

Jane Coaston: But then Representative Chip Roy, a Republican immigration hawk, said that actually the U.S. should be deporting grandma and um a lot of other people. 

[clip of Representative Chip Roy] They all need to be deported and they need to be deported almost on day one. We need plans in place. 

Jane Coaston: It’s no wonder, then, that the ACLU filed a lawsuit on Monday seeking more details on to put it bluntly, what the hell Donald Trump actually plans to do? Election Day was two weeks ago, but the votes are still being counted and the concession speeches are still coming in. On Monday, Republican Eric Hovde conceded to Democratic Senator Tammy Baldwin in the Wisconsin Senate race. He did it in a video on Twitter. 

[clip of Eric Hovde] A request for a recount would serve no purpose because you will just be recounting the same ballots regardless of their integrity. As a result, and my desire to not add to political strife through a contentious recount, I’ve decided to concede the election. 

Jane Coaston: The Associated Press called the race for Baldwin the day after the election. The latest vote tally shows her beating Hovde by a little less than a point. But in the era of Republican election denialism, Hovde refused to concede for weeks. Citing debunked claims about voting irregularities in Milwaukee. Over in Pennsylvania, the state is getting ready for a recount of ballots in the Senate race between Democratic incumbent Bob Casey and his Republican challenger, Dave McCormack. On Monday, the state Supreme Court handed Republicans a win. It told all county election officials not to count mail in ballots with date errors. The court made the same ruling ahead of the election. And in the House, five races still haven’t been called. Two were in California, where ballots are still being counted. Two others in Iowa and Ohio are too close to call. The final uncalled race is in Alaska, which uses ranked choice voting if no candidate gets more than 50% of the vote. A new report released on Monday found that 20% of Americans get their news from social media influencers, mostly on Twitter, the platform I refuse to call X. The Pew Research Center reviewed posts made by social media users across the political spectrum with at least 100,000 followers. Basically, all of those progressive and conservative giants were posting those viral clips of campaign rallies, press conferences, and newscasts you see every morning. Researchers were specifically looking at popular content from this past summer, a high traffic time for posting around the election. And they found that young people, lower income adults, and people of color were more likely to get their news from influencers. Folks who were surveyed said that popular accounts like these help them better understand current events. And look, there’s nothing wrong with getting your news on social media if it helps keep you in the know amid all the chaos. But support journalism, too. Click those links that take you off the app to great reporting and analysis from folks like us, please. And that’s the news. [music break] One more thing. Remember that whole crusade lawmakers launched against TikTok, citing concerns about the app’s Chinese parent company, Bytedance? How Democrats and Republicans joined forces claiming that their ties to China posed a threat to national security and the American way of life. And probably apple pie, too. There was that whole congressional hearing about it where lawmakers grilled TikTok CEO. Dozens of Republican led states moved to ban the app from government issued devices. And it all came to a head in April when President Biden signed a federal law that gave TikTok an ultimatum. Cut ties with Bytedance by January or say bye bye to their U.S. market. But Trump could actually get in the way of that when he assumes office. He said on the campaign trail that he would reverse a ban on TikTok. I personally would like to know if my favorite make up influencers will be taken away from me, leaving me bereft and without contour. So I called up our TikTok aficionado, Priyanka Aribindi. Priyanka. Welcome back to What a Day. 

Priyanka Aribindi: Thank you so much for having me. I’m excited to be back. 

Jane Coaston: So I remember because it was like ten seconds ago when Trump wanted to ban TikTok during his first presidency. And now he’s saying he’s against banning it. He promised to save the app in September. What’s the latest there? What do we know about his plans for the app at this moment, given that he is very mercurial? 

Priyanka Aribindi: It’s very much concepts of a plan at this point. Not really clear what he’s going to do to save TikTok, just that he has said it. But, you know, when we take a step back, he originally was on Congress’s side here. He for the same exact reasons he thought that, you know, the Chinese government’s potential access to American user information posed a national security threat. He wanted to force a sale to an American company. But his change of heart, very coincidentally, happened right around the same time he met with a Republican Mega-donor, who just happened to own a huge chunk of Bytedance. He says– 

Jane Coaston: Crazy. 

Priyanka Aribindi: That they yeah crazy.

Jane Coaston: It’s crazy how that happens. 

Priyanka Aribindi: He says that they didn’t talk about TikTok at all, but um I don’t know, color me a little bit skeptical. 

Jane Coaston: So as you mentioned, President Biden signed a federal law earlier this year ordering TikTok to cut ties with Bytedance by mid-January. But TikTok, along with a bunch of content creators on the app, filed a federal lawsuit earlier this year claiming the law is unconstitutional. What’s their argument here? 

Priyanka Aribindi: Yeah, so their argument hinges entirely on the First Amendment. They claim that shutting down TikTok violates user’s First Amendment rights. It would be akin to basically not letting Americans publish content on foreign owned media outlets. And they also say that because this user base is so broad, 170 million Americans, this supposed violation would be really widespread. And they also in this lawsuit go on to say that it wouldn’t be possible for Bytedance to divest without this technology. TikTok wouldn’t work the same way. And they’ve repeatedly tried to reiterate that TikTok does not share this U.S. user info with the Chinese government. 

Jane Coaston: What happens if TikTok loses this case? Is the app just going to disappear from our phones? Who would it be sold to? What would happen? 

Priyanka Aribindi: Whoever loses that case is expected to appeal to the Supreme Court. So this is not the end of this because this is so widespread. 170 million American users and a First Amendment case, the Supreme Court, very likely to take this up. As for what a potential ban would actually look like, it’s actually targeting app stores. So you wouldn’t be able to update your app um and you wouldn’t be able to get the app anymore on your app store. If you have drafts, I don’t know. I would save them. It’s not necessarily that you would be fined or something if you had TikTok. It’s mainly service providers wouldn’t be able to allow U.S. users to access it, and these app stores wouldn’t allow US users to download it anymore. As for who could potentially buy TikTok? A little unclear. Previously, there were talks about former Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin kind of like rallying this group of rich investors who might want to do something here. There’s been talk about some private equity firms kind of banding together and maybe trying to pursue this, but very unclear. We are running up to that to that date, January 19th. That is one day before Trump’s scheduled inauguration. So uh a lot to be seen here. 

Jane Coaston: What could Trump do to reverse the ban? Could he, quote unquote, “save TikTok?” 

Priyanka Aribindi: I mean, I suppose he could try to issue an executive order to reverse the ban. Most experts say that this wouldn’t work. Most experts say that to get rid of the ban, you would need Congress to act on it. Could ask Congress to repeal the law. Unclear how that will go because they said bipartisan support. He could ask his new attorney general, potentially Matt Gaetz, to not enforce this law. He could also, as part of this law, grant a one time 90 day extension to Bytedance and TikTok if they’re in the process of a legitimate sale, if the president determines that this is in progress, he could give them some more time to do it. Unclear how he might be able to finagle that if something isn’t actually in the works. The Trump team has not said anything about this, but we will all be watching. I personally will be. What am I going to scroll on without TikTok?

Jane Coaston: You’ll have to go back to Instagram reels. It’s going to be very sad. 

Priyanka Aribindi: No, no ugh. 

Jane Coaston: It’s going to be very sad. 

Priyanka Aribindi: Horrid. 

Jane Coaston: Priyanka, thank you so much for coming. 

Priyanka Aribindi: Thank you for having me. 

Jane Coaston: That was my conversation with Crooked correspondent Priyanka Aribindi. [music break]. 

[AD BREAK]

Jane Coaston: That’s all for today. If you like the show, make sure you subscribe. Leave a review. Remember the time that Republicans desperately wanted Sarah Palin to run for president? And tell your friends to listen. And if you’re into reading and not just about how to stock up on fine leather goods and coffee and chocolate, like we’re the god dang East India company like me, What a Day is also a nightly newsletter. Check it out and subscribe at Crooked.com/subscribe. I’m Jane Coaston and seriously, I do not like tariffs. I don’t want to spend more money. [music break] What a Day is a production of Crooked Media. It’s recorded and mixed by Desmond Taylor. Our associate producer is Raven Yamamoto. Our producer is Michell Eloy. We had production help today from Tyler Hill, Johanna Case, Joseph Dutra, Greg Walters, and Julia Claire. Our senior producer is Erica Morrison and our executive producer is Adriene Hill. Our theme music is by Colin Gilliard and Kashaka. 

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