Preet Bharara:

From CAFE and the Vox Media Podcast Network, welcome to Stay Tuned. I’m Preet Bharara.

Ian Bremmer:

The thing that is most likely to constrain Trump, in my view, is not the Supreme Court. It’s not a constitutional crisis and the system holds. It’s rather that he’s picking fights simultaneously with some very powerful actors that are capable of saying no and beating him up and undermining his position.

Preet Bharara:

That’s Ian Bremmer. When, excuse my language, shit hits the fan, I often call Ian. He’s a political scientist and founder of the Eurasia Group, a political research and consulting firm. He focuses on global risk and foreign affairs. He’s also long broken the record for most appearances on Stay Tuned. I guess shit hits the fan a lot, at least lately. Ian is joining me today to talk about the economic turmoil produced by President Trump’s tariffs, or as Ian called it, the most destructive economic own goal in recent history. We take in this moment of profound and chaotic change for America and the world. And after the interview, I’ll answer your questions about Trump’s alleged insider trading and how to get money out of our politics. That’s coming up. Stay tuned.

Are Trump’s tariffs a turning point for US economic and foreign policy? Political scientist and friend of the show Ian Bremmer is back to discuss it all. Ian Bremmer, welcome back to the show.

Ian Bremmer:

Preet, I’ve missed you so.

Preet Bharara:

Likewise, I’m sure.

Ian Bremmer:

Okay.

Preet Bharara:

So we weren’t going to have you on this quickly because you come on a lot.

Ian Bremmer:

More than most.

Preet Bharara:

You are more than all. And I have been noting both in your private text to me, which I will not share with the public, and also in your public pronouncements on social media. Your tone has gotten a little bit less familiar to me and more anxious, tell me if that’s the right word, more concerned.

Ian Bremmer:

Concerned.

Preet Bharara:

And you are the risk assessment guy. And I wouldn’t say you’re a canary in the coal mine necessarily, but it’s a metric. It’s a data point for me. Let me read back to you a couple of things that you said recently.

Ian Bremmer:

Okay.

Preet Bharara:

This was just a few days ago. You wrote on the X, “The United States, the world’s most powerful country, has become the most dysfunctional kleptocratic and unfree political system of the advanced industrial democracies by far.” How quickly did you come to that conclusion after January 20?

Ian Bremmer:

I’ve actually said similar things before January 20. They just weren’t taken as alarming because then-

Preet Bharara:

It wasn’t.

Ian Bremmer:

Because then you think of it as more structural as opposed to more driven by the guy that’s running the country. Because there are two reasons that the US is in this position. One is that for decades the US has become more kleptocratic. Its system has become more captured. Its people increasingly don’t believe in it. That is not a function of Trump. That’s a function of long-standing trends in the US that we do not have in Canada or in Germany or Japan.

Preet Bharara:

Can you define what you mean by kleptocratic for folks?

Ian Bremmer:

Sure. Coin-operated. I mean that the US system responds differently to people that give a lot of money to their favored political causes than it does to people that don’t. It is a very much two-track system in that regard in a way that other advanced industrial democracies are to a far lesser degree. So that’s not new, but if those-

Preet Bharara:

Right. Is that more structural? But the reason that you stated it in that particularly stark way, am I right, it’s because of how things have unfolded under Trump in the last 11 weeks?

Ian Bremmer:

Yes, yes.

Preet Bharara:

Okay. How kleptocratic were we under Biden?

Ian Bremmer:

And yet, we were… There were more billionaires that gave money to Biden and Kamala in the run in 2024 than actually gave to Trump. So it’s not like these guys were somehow a relief from that. But certainly Trump’s willingness to enrich himself and his family on the back of directly being in a position of power is now pushing the boundaries beyond anything we’ve seen before. Elon’s conflict of interest that exist in being the most powerful person outside of Trump, but also running six private sector major multinationals at the same time and being completely unclear whether he is representing an official view of the US or his private business when he is meeting with heads of state and CEOs. These are all unprecedented things. But also, Preet, since we’re focusing on the anxious side, just yesterday I also pushed back on the Financial Times, which has been having a day over the last weeks about how the US is now halfway to being a police state. And I’m like, that’s absolutely not true.

Preet Bharara:

How far are we?

Ian Bremmer:

Well, the US is not anywhere close to being the most free dictatorship. It is by far the most unfree democracy, advanced democracy. And those are two very different things. And the FT was completely gone.

Preet Bharara:

Oh, no. Well, it sounds like we’re dancing on the head of the thing that’s-

Ian Bremmer:

We’re not. We’re not. We’re not.

Preet Bharara:

Hold on. But the thing you just said-

Ian Bremmer:

Yes?

Preet Bharara:

… maybe it’s different from the other thing that other people said the FT said, but can you just repeat what you just said about being the most unfree democracy? That’s a pretty alarming and startling thing, is it not?

Ian Bremmer:

Most unfree advanced industrial democracy. There are democracies that are more unfree. I would say El Salvador is a democracy that is much more unfree.

Preet Bharara:

When you talk about the most unfree advanced democracy, how many countries in the denominator there?

Ian Bremmer:

Well, the important ones would be the other G7 because those are the least-

Preet Bharara:

Right. So that’s the large six.

Ian Bremmer:

Yeah, that’s six. But then you’ve also got a whole bunch of you’ve got New Zealand and Australia.

Preet Bharara:

So 15, 18?

Ian Bremmer:

Yeah, probably let’s say 25 or 30. You’re really not-

Preet Bharara:

Right. And by your reckoning, the United States of America is the least free of those advanced democracies. And how long has that been so in your mind?

Ian Bremmer:

That’s probably been so for at least 10 years, but it is now dramatically so. It was not as clearly so when I first started saying it.

Preet Bharara:

Can I push back for a moment?

Ian Bremmer:

Sure.

Preet Bharara:

So on the issue of speech, where do you think the United States ranks among that group? Do we have the most free speech, notwithstanding incursions into that right or onto that right?

Ian Bremmer:

I think that that is-

Preet Bharara:

Most countries don’t have a First Amendment.

Ian Bremmer:

I agree. I agree. And indeed that is one component of freedom and liberty that you would even in the last 10 years put generally on the American side of the ledger.

Preet Bharara:

Okay. So are we not free?

Ian Bremmer:

Well, more recently, of course even in freedom of speech, the US has had a very chilling effect as you’ve seen in the push against universities for needing to vet students on the basis of views on anti-Semitism, for example, and the numbers of students holding green cards that have been rounded up and deported on the basis of what they are and are not saying. And these are not people that have been tried with crimes unfree in terms of using a legal system to engage in suits that now big media organizations like ABC News and others are saying, “We’d much rather settle. We don’t want to fight that. We’re not going to stand up for our freedom of speech because it’s just not worth getting in trouble with a president.”

And so many examples like that. Look at what’s happened at the Washington Post or the LA Times that are just feeling like it’s not worth trying to run a broad political sample of op-eds because you’re going to end up only undermining your business. So there are lots of ways I think that freedom of speech have been constrained in the United States of late.

Preet Bharara:

We’ve still got a very robust right to bear arms. Does that count?

Ian Bremmer:

Yeah. I like the way you smile a little bit when you ask that. Is the ability for lots of people to buy… More guns per capita than any country in the world except Yemen. I don’t consider Yemen to be high on the freedom scale.

Preet Bharara:

They’re in the denominator we were just talking about.

Ian Bremmer:

No, Yemen probably doesn’t make advanced industrial democracy status at this point. I think that is a fair cop.

Preet Bharara:

So I want to talk about the economy and I want to talk about the tariff topsy-turvyness. But before we get into that, generally just related to what we’re talking about in kleptocracy and pay to play, so what we’ve seen, and I guess it was foreseeable, that Donald Trump announces broad-based tariffs. Everyone gets a tariff. “Here’s a tariff for you. Here’s a tariff for you. More for China.” And then the world freaks out legitimately and predictably. And now one by one we’re talking about exemptions. Well, the iPhone, we got to exempt that or certain other things we got to exempt. How does that play into your theory of kleptocracy or lack of freedom? Or is that a good thing that we can moderate a horrendous and devastating and debilitating tariff policy even if it’s so by individual companies getting their own private exemptions?

Ian Bremmer:

It’s a different thing, Preet. The fact that the United States has a political system that is increasingly untrusted and is seen by its own population as for various reasons illegitimate and they disagree on why it’s illegitimate and who’s responsible for the lack of legitimacy, but they generally agree on that. That’s why you got Trump. And Trump is a principle beneficiary of that underlying reality. In fact, most Americans that voted in 2024 that thought that democracy was a significant reason to vote actually voted for Trump and not for Harris. So these are people that thought that the US was already so broken that they wanted someone that was going to come in and just destroy stuff. And they believe that the only way you can fix it is through extralegal means, which is a big… That is a red flashing lights warning signal.

Now, the tariff issue is a very different challenge. It is the United States today as the most powerful country, as the strongest economy, also driving the lion’s share of geopolitical and geoeconomic uncertainty on the global stage. No one is doing more to disrupt and to create volatility than the US today. And first with these impositions of the highest sanctions you’ve seen on the world in well over a hundred years on everybody and with very little underlying logical justification for the kinds of tariffs that were the equation behind the tariffs that were actually implemented across the board. So very hard for others, whether you’re investing in the markets, you’re doing business, or you’re on the receiving end as another country trying to figure out why it was that this is being done and how should you respond and what is the end game for the Trump administration makes it really hard.

And then you’re right. Then responding very, very quickly to all sorts of pressure, domestic and international, to suspend I wouldn’t say take off because it’s unclear whether or not the suspensions are going to last for any period of time, but certainly suspend big pieces of the tariffs that have been put in place. But even the tariffs that remain as of today still bring us directly back to the 1930s in terms of tariff levels. So there’s no reason to be comforted. Even if there were no further snapback of sanctions going forward and this was it, you would still say, “Wow, this was massively destructive to globalization.”

Preet Bharara:

My question again, is it a good thing or a bad thing that particular companies like Apple can say, “Take us off the list even if temporarily”? Is that good?

Ian Bremmer:

It’s good for the markets. It’s good for Apple. It’s bad for people that don’t have the access like Apple. Small and medium enterprises cannot do that, and America needs small and medium enterprises and that’s how America has built itself up. That’s how you create a robust middle class and an upper class that is actually something that people can aspire to, and everybody is not Steve Jobs. So yeah, it is-

Preet Bharara:

How is it helpful? So this is the confusion that I talk about and think about all the time, and different people have different answers for it. If you are a MAGA Trump supporter and you trust him to engage in this broad-based tariff policy to bring back manufacturing jobs, which no one seems to actually really want, and you think, well, at least we can have iPhones being built in this country. And then he engages in these exemptions one by one, either on a whim or because of people’s political power or political contribution power. What do you say to that MAGA voter who is trusting Trump to engage in a very aggressive, some would say outlandish but he would say long-term, long-horizon strategy to bring manufacturing jobs back? What do you say to that person?

Ian Bremmer:

Well, then you’d want a strategy that you can execute on. You’d want a strategy that will work. And that is of course not what we’ve seen from the Trump administration. Now, he has implemented strategies that will work on other things that people want. Like for example, getting rid of illegal immigrants and closing the border. So there if that is an outcome that you want, and a lot of Americans do, I would say that Trump efforts so far on many issues have been consistent, strategic, and are likely to lead to the intended outcome. On trade and on reshoring, they are not consistent efforts. They are not going to lead to the preferred outcome. They are certainly going to hurt an immense number of Trump voters to get from here to there. And the promised land is not on the horizon. So very, very different on those two fundamental issues for why people came out and voted for Trump.

Preet Bharara:

Can we talk about a word that’s oft used and maybe not fully understood? And I’ll admit that I don’t fully understand the term globalization, which is a bad word in Trump’s circles. You have written, you’re not the only one, that whatever we mean by globalization, I’m going to ask you to define it, is one of the sources of America’s outsized wealth over the last number of decades. What is globalization? What do people mean when they talk about it? How much is Trump’s tariff policy understood as anti-globalization? And to the extent that globalization is the thing that made us prosperous, is that the reason why the tariff policy is pure folly or something else?

Ian Bremmer:

I think of globalization as a system that was driven by the United States with the support of all of its allies that allowed us to move goods and services and people and capital more easily, faster and faster across borders all over the world. And that improved efficiency. It improved productivity. It grew a massive global middle class that had not existed historically. It also massively enriched a small number, but a significant number of really rich people in the advanced industrial economies, particularly the US but also American allies.

Now, we all know that as a consequence of that, there were large numbers of people in the US and in the west that did not directly benefit, that lost jobs, lost investment. And that is a reality of the fact that they were comparatively expensive for the work that they were doing. And you could produce a lot of those things much more cheaply outside the United States.

But the profits were being brought to the United States and they were not distributed to those people. The shareholders and the government that was captured by the shareholders were not ensuring that the social contract in the United States was made good for a couple of generations of Americans, especially aspirational, working in middle-class men, and especially in rural areas, especially in second-tier cities, especially without university educations. And these are people that are now voting for Trump in overwhelmingly strong numbers. And they’re doing so not just among white people, but among Hispanics too and even among significant Black population. So that is telling you that the government response to globalization was really inadequate for a lot of Americans.

Now, the country as a whole did incredibly well. So the idea that the US has been screwed or victimized or taken advantage of or ripped off or whatever your term of art is that Trump and others are using by all of these other countries around the world. Well, first of all, the United States is by far the richest large economy. So how do these poor countries manage to all screw us? And oh, woe is us, the United States where all the big corporations are, where all the big banks are, where we have the reserve currency. We are the ones that make the decisions on how to invest. How are we screwed by all these other countries? Number one.

And number two, like Trump said, that while we’re screwed wherever we’re running a trade deficit and there are lots of countries that are running trade surpluses against us. Well, first of all, there are a lot of those countries that are running trade surpluses are so poor that they can’t afford any American goods. So that’s why they’re running trade surpluses. And the idea that we are getting screwed by them is insane on its face. And we need to say that. All of these countries like Bangladesh and all the Sub-Saharan African countries and the poorest countries in South America know. And secondly, even the countries where America was running and is running a trade surplus. So on its face by Trump’s own formulation, we are taking advantage of them. We are screwing them. That’s working because we’re running a trade surplus. He puts 10% tariffs on them anyway. Why?

Preet Bharara:

But we don’t care about them. We don’t have to worry about that.

Ian Bremmer:

Because he can. Because he can. So this was, in my view, one of the stupidest at scale policies I have ever seen implemented. Even in the context of America’s war against Saddam Hussein on the back of 9/11 which Iraq had literally nothing to do with, this seems pretty stupid even in the context of that.

Preet Bharara:

You know what’s interesting to me?

Ian Bremmer:

I don’t. Sometimes I do, but in this case I don’t.

Preet Bharara:

Not that you care, but-

Ian Bremmer:

I do care.

Preet Bharara:

It’s my show.

Ian Bremmer:

I frequently care. But because it’s your show, I really care.

Preet Bharara:

I feel like it’s not going to be something I care about. From time to time, you care. Well, that’s good. You’re my friend.

Ian Bremmer:

No, when it’s personal, I always care.

Preet Bharara:

Thanks, Ian. And this is a bit of my armchair psychology that may or may not be stupid, probably it’s stupid, but I’ve speculated about how the one reason in internal makeup and psychology of Donald Trump that he doesn’t care about allies and doesn’t see worth in allies is he doesn’t have friends. He is not seeing an important worth in loyalty to friends other than in one direction only to him.

Ian Bremmer:

And that’s why you and I care so much about allies.

Preet Bharara:

I think friendship.

Ian Bremmer:

For example, is that where you were going?

Preet Bharara:

It’s incredibly-

Ian Bremmer:

Because then I care if you’re saying that. I care all of a sudden.

Preet Bharara:

It wasn’t, but in parallel, and tell me if you think this is also silly.

Ian Bremmer:

I didn’t think that was silly. I don’t know if it’s true.

Preet Bharara:

Trump has ridden to victory in the White House two times, even though he’s an incredibly successful American business person. And you can quibble about his bankruptcies and everything else, but he’s incredibly successful. He won the White House twice. The second time he won the Senate and won the house, and yet he’s propelled himself based on a story of victimhood that everyone buys into. And I was reminded of that thinking when you were talking a moment ago about how in parallel fashion, he’s convinced a lot of people and certainly himself that the most prosperous nation the world has ever seen was in fact a victim and is always being ripped off. And how powerful a political argument it is to convince people who are very lucky, who are very fortunate, who are very well-endowed with riches and resources and privileges and rights that they are being screwed and they’re the victim. Is that odd to you?

Ian Bremmer:

I’ll open up on a personal bias here. And something in my job and your job, it’s so important for us to try to be aware of where we have personal biases. I have always fundamentally mistrusted people that come from extraordinary privilege and act like they don’t. I don’t like hiring people like that. I tend to think they’re lazy. I tend to mistrust their values. I understand that it’s a bias. It is unfair for me to bring that to a conversation with someone. But as someone who grew up from the projects and had nothing handed to me, I had an amazing mother, but I had no financial wellbeing, no connections, no network. And I saw all these kids in school and university and they’re showing up and their little BMWs and they think they’re all that, and they’re not working and they think that it’s just their due and frequently they can be so thin-skinned. And so I’ve always found Trump very unappealing in that way, that this is a guy who got everything from his dad.

Preet Bharara:

Right, unappealing to you. But how do you explain how appealing… It’s a sort of gaslighting. Here, you take the most powerful person on earth, the most famous person on earth, the most talked about person on earth, one of the richer people around, but he’s the victim. How does that play? How does he cause people to identify with him who are very, very, very different and who are in fact victims of structural inequalities in our system?

Ian Bremmer:

Well, I think because first of all, he has political instincts that are pretty extraordinary. He doesn’t really care about substance of policy, but in terms of reading a situation and smelling weakness, sensing opportunity and willing without any filter, any thought, just animal lizard, brain instinct, jumping in and doing it. And you see that in the way he acts constantly with people and on the stage. He’s also very charismatic. He’s very confident and sure of himself. He’s also quite tall and large, which helps in this environment, how go look at CEOs in America and look how tall and large they are. And I think that those things all play very well for him.

Also, I look back on his first G20 meeting as president in Hamburg with all the leaders and I look back on when a whole bunch of them were sniggering about him. I look back on the White House Correspondents’ dinner when he was sitting there and Obama laughed at him. And he has always not just had a chip on his shoulder and being around establishment elites, but also has never been treated as one of them. Has been he’s brash, he’s unpolished.

Preet Bharara:

Banks would not… People forget.

Ian Bremmer:

Yeah, banks wouldn’t bank him.

Preet Bharara:

Banks wouldn’t bank him.

Ian Bremmer:

Yeah. Deutsche Banks said no. I remember that whole thing, yeah.

Preet Bharara:

Yeah. Banks wouldn’t bank him. A lot of law firms wouldn’t work with him, which probably is why he drives some masochistic… Sorry, why he drives some sadistic pleasure.

Ian Bremmer:

Sadistic, what you were going to say. Yeah.

Preet Bharara:

I know. I get my S&M confused from time to time.

Ian Bremmer:

I know that about you actually, too. It’s made some made for some interesting evenings there.

Preet Bharara:

There we go. We’re going to have to cut that part.

Ian Bremmer:

Really? Why?

Preet Bharara:

Yeah, because-

Ian Bremmer:

Seriously?

Preet Bharara:

… it’s a family show.

Ian Bremmer:

That’s too bad.

Preet Bharara:

And I don’t want to look him-

Ian Bremmer:

Families?

Preet Bharara:

… about such important things in American life.

Ian Bremmer:

Sounds like S&M. I don’t think that we… We don’t need to somehow disparage alternative lifestyles on this podcast.

Preet Bharara:

Can I ask you to do a more substantive thought experiment with me?

Ian Bremmer:

Sure.

Preet Bharara:

What is the right way? So you’re God for a moment, right? And for the purposes of this experiment, or at least you’re Adam Smith.

Ian Bremmer:

Okay.

Preet Bharara:

Right? You’re a modern version, a more enlightened and-

Ian Bremmer:

Handsome.

Preet Bharara:

… modern and cosmopolitan version of Adam Smith, and you’re trying to design from behind this political theory conceit, the veil of ignorance. You don’t know what… After the construction of an economic system for the world, you don’t know if you’re going to be in America. You don’t know if you’re going to be in the UK. You don’t know if you’re going to be in Belize or in El Salvador. Where were you going to be? But you have a greater likelihood given populations of being in China, pretty substantial likelihood of being in the United States, and you’re trying to construct a free market system that lifts all boats, that allows individual nations to maintain their sovereignty and their borders and their national security. But the ability to make goods and products and offer services is done efficiently so that the citizens of all these nations benefit.

So if you are in a country that is blessed with the good weather to grow coffee beans, naturally your ordered system will lend itself to that exploitation of that resource. If you have great universities, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. What would that system look like in terms of tariffs and restrictions and the way we have seen globalization arise and how different would it look from what we have today?

Ian Bremmer:

I think it would have a tariff system that was very similar to what we had pre-second term Trump. It would have very, very low barriers to entry to markets. It would’ve very, very low tariffs. And it would also have relatively light touch regulation because a European system which has very strong performance for its citizens in social contract and for labor does not support growth, doesn’t support productivity. And helping your population when over decades, you can’t actually bring the benefits of that system to those people is not a system that you want to emulate.

You know that today, we think of Europe as rich, and yet the average European does not have the economic wellbeing of Mississippi, which is the poorest state in America. And it’s actually people in Mississippi on average wealthier than Europe, the average European. That is a pretty significant hole they have to dig out from. They’re obviously not producing for their people. But you do need to take away the ability of American political actors to be captured by special interests. That is where… The US system runs so much better in creating macro outcomes than any other major system, certainly wealthy system, but it just doesn’t distribute.

And so you have to ensure that look, what we need is more capitalism, Preet, honestly. We need more capitalism. And in the United States, we don’t have enough capitalism. What we have are really, really wealthy people in corporations that are incredibly capitalist when they talk about their own gains and they become socialists when they talk about losses that come because of them. They aren’t willing to pay for negative externalities. We need a system that forces corporations and special interests to pay for the negative externalities that come as a consequence of their profit. Whether it is the pollution that comes from the business, the resources they exploit, or whether it is the carbon and the atmosphere that comes from the productivity that they benefit from, whether it’s the water that they take as a free resource from the country. All of those things create negative externalities for citizens. And the views of most companies are, “Well, that’s not my issue. That’s just like a tax for everybody or that’s something that our kids should pay for.” That’s where the United States short-termism baked into the American system. Anti-capitalist is a serious problem.

Preet Bharara:

You don’t mean by more capitalism, less safety net, right?

Ian Bremmer:

No, no. I think that real capitalism is not just focused on profits. It’s also focused on losses. And you can’t have a system where you get to control the rules to ensure that no one recognizes your losses as your losses. The United States does not have… A capitalist system is one where the government asks acts as an independent regulator, and we don’t have those.

Preet Bharara:

Right. So does more capitalism mean less subsidy for private enterprise by the government?

Ian Bremmer:

Yeah, I think that there are probably strategic industries that would not get enough of a lift fast enough from being able to raise capital through traditional private sector means that it’s good for the government to put its foot on the scale there. There are also places where there are public goods that we agree that matter for a properly functioning civil society that just doesn’t make enough money for a company to want to go in. So for example, I believe that people in rural areas should have news. And if there isn’t a private sector market for that, I think that’s something that tax dollars should be spent on doing. I don’t think it should be politicized.

Preet Bharara:

Government dollar should be spent on independent journalism. How long does that stay independent?

Ian Bremmer:

I think for example, when I say news, I’m not talking about covering politics. I’m talking about weather. I think people in rural areas should have weather reports and forecasts. And if there’s not enough of a market to provide that, the US government and other governments should provide that for them. I believe that. I think there are things like that, but in general, I think subsidies are way too high and way too inefficient.

Preet Bharara:

This is not this, but when you’re speaking, it reminded me of the issue. How bad is it that we basically shut down Voice of America around the world?

Ian Bremmer:

It’s horrible. Horrible. As someone who used to listen to Voice of America when I was traveling in east block countries and talk to so many people that got their news from that, and I recognize it’s not as urgent today as it used to be, but VOA is not a Soros-supported leftist cabal that is trying to promote wokeism. Voice of America was actually standing for the values that got America late but ultimately into World War II. Voice of America’s standing for the values that brought the wall down that allowed people that were living under authoritarian regimes to aspire to personal liberty and to free speech.

Preet Bharara:

So why should it… Some things I understand why Trump does, even as I disagree with him, some things I understand less. What explains this?

Ian Bremmer:

I think when you look at USAID and you look at the State Department, these are agencies that are staffed by a feat intellectuals educated in a lot of the universities that Trump is now going after. They are-

Preet Bharara:

In the perception of some people, you’re not… Okay.

Ian Bremmer:

Yeah. But also, there’s some reality to that too. I don’t deny it. I think that there was a surfeit of DEI and wokeism in these places that I don’t think serve the country frankly well and serve the kids going through those systems. Well, I agree with that. As someone who went to Tulane, which was very much not that for example, but I also think that USAID specifically was a hotbed of progressivism inside state, and there were a lot of programs in there that if the average taxpayer was aware that’s where their money was going, 95% of them would say, “What the hell is this?” But that was not 50%, 70%, 80% of the money that was being spent. Most of the money that was being spent was on basic humanitarian aid, was on helping to prevent disease, things that actually really matter that reduce forced migration, including to the United States, that actually help us maintain our borders, that reduce the spread of infectious disease that doesn’t care about our border security.

Those are things that anyone should want and Trump and Elon decided to kill, and I completely oppose that. I think it’s super important to oppose that. I like the fact that the United States… Look, America first would work if it was America long-term first, if it was America strategically and thoughtfully first. But it’s not. It’s not. It’s really like America right now, I want it right now, it has to happen right now first, and by the way, it’s really about me, Trump, and people close to me.

Preet Bharara:

Although…

Ian Bremmer:

Yes?

Preet Bharara:

… as stupid and as idiotic and as consequential and as frenetic and as lopsided the tariff policy has been, on that point, Trump is not talking about immediately America first. He’s talking about a period of pain. You take your medicine, whether that’s injecting bleach or something else into the economy to use that metaphor. So all that you’ve said about… That’s what the analysis that I have engaged in and others have engaged in for a long time, what you just said, but on this issue of bringing manufacturing jobs back, which is asinine given the way he’s going about doing it, at least you can’t say this is a policy that is only recently something that’s of interest to Trump. It’s been of interest to him and a core belief for 40 years, and it’s a long-term strategic play, as dumb as we might think it is. Fair?

Ian Bremmer:

Look, I think that the United States deciding to allow semiconductors as an industry to wholesale leave the United States and go to Taiwan a hundred miles off of the people’s Republic of China over the last 25, 30 years was an enormous mistake. It was short-sighted.

Preet Bharara:

But I just want to get you to concede.

Ian Bremmer:

I’m getting there. So I thought that that was… So for example, Trump deciding that no, we’re going to tariff Taiwan and we actually want that industry in the United States because it’s strategically important, I fully support that. Now, why in God’s name would you at the same time say you’re killing the CHIPS Act? I don’t understand that. I think it was absolutely right for Trump in the first term to strongly pressure Germany and the Europeans against Nord Stream. And they’re short-term smart, long-term strategically stupid decision to get so much of their energy from Russia. Same thing, they shouldn’t have done that. It should have been from the Middle East, should have been from the US. Now, why Trump is now trying to cut a deal with the Russians over the heads of the Europeans is completely flies in the face of what he was trying to do in his first term.

So again, the execution is so poor and inconsistent on these issues, again, as opposed to on migration where I completely see and understand and support a lot of what he’s doing. It’s just very hard to give him credit for saying some long-term stuff about manufacturing in the US when none of the policies are really oriented towards doing that effectively.

Preet Bharara:

I’ll be right back with Ian after this. So what’s going to happen and how much of this change is permanent? I’ll point out another post that you put up in the last day or two. The Trump administration is more politically aligned with El Salvador than Canada and the European Union. This is challenging for a lot of world leaders to accept. Should they be surprised? We had a first go for four years.

Ian Bremmer:

It’s so different. So different because of course in the first go, Trump was constrained, very seriously constrained on his economic team, on his national security team by his vice president, by so many people that would just say, “No, Mr. President. We can’t do that,” or sometimes they wouldn’t even say it. They’d just go ahead and do things.

Preet Bharara:

Correct.

Ian Bremmer:

Right, exactly. Which is not, by the way, which is clearly not the way you want to run a government. But now-

Preet Bharara:

Unless Donald Trump is the president.

Ian Bremmer:

Now, we have on the back of the greatest comeback story, political comeback story in American history, we have Trump who is completely unconstrained and is completely convinced, confident that everything he’s doing is utterly right, doesn’t need to take advice from the others.

Preet Bharara:

So the question is, so what are European erstwhile allies going to do that will prevent a return to the normal order if you get a more sane president of the other party in place in four years?

Ian Bremmer:

Yeah, I think that there is already in three months, and we’ve got four years of this administration, in three months there has already been permanent damage done to the transatlantic relationship. It will not be put together again. Sometimes you have a relationship with somebody, whoever it is, and they do something and you go, “I can’t unsee that.” That is what has now happened between the United States and Europe. It did not happen in his first chart.

Preet Bharara:

And as part of the reason for that, they have now seen that there’s no inevitability to sanity in American politics. And so that even if a person who’s more global and in sync with the aesthetic and the philosophy and believes in the allyship, et cetera, et cetera, that four years later we could have another Trump because America’s proven that it’s capable of doing that. Is that what it is?

Ian Bremmer:

It would be nice if that was the reason. And I think that certainly that conversation is being had with among heads of state in Europe. But actually the real reason is that in just three months, the Americans have turned into a direct and threatening adversary of things that are core to Europe, and this is going to happen for four years. And that is there is no way you live through that without taking steps to protect yourself that are permanent, irrespective of what the next president is going to look like.

Preet Bharara:

But will Trump say and his supporters say in a few years? Well, that means that the Europeans are spending more on their own defense, they’re becoming more self-sufficient, they’re becoming Europe-first or individual countries-first, and that’s great. That’s how it should be. Or will they come to rue the day?

Ian Bremmer:

They will. Well, of course publicly they will only say positive things. So whether or not some will recognize this was a big mistake is going to depend on how the Americans are performing. The reality is that the Europeans will end up doing a lot more business in other parts of the world. The reality is the Europeans will send their kids to other universities. They will travel less to the United States. They will work less with the Americans.

So yes, absolutely support the Europeans finally spending more on defense. But it is not just about that. This is long-term reputational capital that the United States has had and built up over decades and decades which we are incinerating. And I think that is so going back to do I feel more concerned right now? Yes. I hate… I consider myself a patriot. This country has given me a lot. It’s given me everything, every opportunity I have. And it pains me to see that young people are not going to have those opportunities because of things we are doing to ourselves. That does concern me. It bothers me as a person. I wear that on my sleeve a little.

Preet Bharara:

And you.

Ian Bremmer:

I’m old enough. I’ve done this long enough that I’m just going to be… I’m honest with people. I don’t have anything to be apologized for.

Preet Bharara:

Look, I’m with you. I have a lot of the same feelings. You and I are very good friends off camera and outside the podcast, and we talk about these things frequently over a beverage, which is how these things often need to be discussed. Is there anything that could happen, whether it’s the loss of confidence among independents, which looks like it’s happening, probably wouldn’t be the loss of confidence among the MAGA faithful because that seems to never happen, or the midterms swing to the Democrats or some other national crisis. Is there anything you can see that might halt the progress of this insanity that you’ve been describing? Not in four years, but before that?

Ian Bremmer:

I’ll answer that question. And I think that there are some things, but let’s also recognize that you have to ask the question of is there anything really fucking horrible that could also happen as a result of all of this damage that people aren’t thinking about right now?

Preet Bharara:

I was trying to be positive.

Ian Bremmer:

That could make it much, much worse than you actually expect. Both are possible.

Preet Bharara:

Okay.

Ian Bremmer:

So the thing that is most likely to constrain Trump, in my view, is not the Supreme Court. It’s not a constitutional crisis and the system holds. It’s rather that he’s picking fights simultaneously with some very powerful actors that are capable of saying no and beating him up and undermining his position. And we see that globally with China. He did not expect the Chinese were going to hit him in the face back hard. And that’s exactly what they’re doing and it is undermining him. And Xi Jinping is going out to the Europeans and going to the Southeast Asians and, “Let’s work together against this horrible guy Trump.” And now Trump’s saying, “Well, I might need countries to make a choice between the US and China.” Well, a lot of those countries are going to make a choice not to be United States.

So I think that the fact that Trump has picked a really big fight against an actor that is capable of waiting him out politically even though they’re going to take a lot of economic pain, could end up being a come to Jesus for Trump. That forces him to lose a lot of face, and that forcing him… And he is, Trump is, today in my view, Trump is in a weaker global position than he was the day before Liberation Day because of his own goals. He now has less influence with other countries that he wants to convince to do the things he wants them to do. When he was pushing around Panama and Denmark and Canada, now he’s pushing around everyone and some of those folks are coming back and saying, “Screw you.”

Preet Bharara:

Yeah, because the laws of physics ultimately apply.

Ian Bremmer:

Yeah, and home.

Preet Bharara:

And it may take some time for the forces to array or get organized. I’ll ask you another question since we’re running out of time. Forget about outside the United States. I think I know your answer to this and I know my answer to this and I’ve talked about it on the podcast many times. What is the need or necessity and likelihood of domestic institutions to say FU and fight back? Like some law firms, not all, and Harvard University just has. What’s your message?

Ian Bremmer:

Where I was going, domestic and-

Preet Bharara:

Yeah, tell me.

Ian Bremmer:

That’s right at all.

Preet Bharara:

Forget about China for a moment. What about American institutions?

Ian Bremmer:

I mean China and Harvard, right? That’s actually-

Preet Bharara:

Some people put those together.

Ian Bremmer:

Well, yeah. At this point, Harvard might as well establish a big campus in China. You could just align the whole thing. The reality is that Harvard, it is a university with a larger endowment than any other, and a lot of really powerful people that have given them a lot of money that care that are alums. And yes, they are vulnerable because of their wokeism, but ultimately I suspect Harvard is stronger than they are vulnerable. And it’s not clear to me that Trump really wants that fight full on that fight.

Preet Bharara:

They also have the long… You point out, I keep hearing reports that the Trump folks themselves realize they don’t have four years. You keep talking about they don’t have four years. They have 12 to 18 months, particularly because the midterms might be-

Ian Bremmer:

I hope that’s right.

Preet Bharara:

… disastrous for him.

Ian Bremmer:

I’m not sure it’s right.

Preet Bharara:

Because the forces array and an action taken in year four, even if it’s a lawsuit against an executive order against a law firm, you can wait it out. You did-

Ian Bremmer:

Depends on what the legal system in the US looks like at that point.

Preet Bharara:

True, true.

Ian Bremmer:

It depends on how much control. If the US looks more like Hungary or Turkey, then I’m sorry, you don’t have a lame duck period. And that’s what… We got to understand that those are the stakes we are talking about here, right?

Preet Bharara:

Are you chagrined, because I am, at how many institutions are just accommodating him, or are you a pragmatic guy? Look, if you can accommodate without too much harm to your self-image and to your bottom line and to your mission, you do it.

Ian Bremmer:

No.

Preet Bharara:

I don’t have that view.

Ian Bremmer:

I’m more chagrined. But I also try to put myself in the position of those people as opposed to just being publicly critical because it is very easy for you and I, Preet, having the history and the backgrounds that we do. We have put ourselves in a position where we can say what we want and our reputation is intact. Our career is intact. We’ve got our books. We’ve got our baseline money and our business and everything else. That’s it. If you are working for someone in an institution where you’re taking a lot of money from the government or they have a lot of direct leverage over you, or you could be fired at any moment, it is a lot harder to be out there publicly saying the things that you and I are saying. So first of all, I feel like I have a greater obligation to be in the position that I am because I’m in the position that I am. And I think that Harvard, I am glad that Harvard decided to go… Look, I’ve been talking to Larry Summers a lot over the last few months.

Preet Bharara:

Help us get him on the show because like to talk to him.

Ian Bremmer:

Sure. He just came on mine last week and it was… I’m happy to because he should know that I like you a lot. It’d be good for you to have him. He’s been out there using his influence, a lot of it, to try to make sure that Harvard did the right thing here. And it’s a lot easier for Harvard than it is for my own Columbia where I teach for my amusement. And so I guess I’m saying I would like American CEOs to band together and be more public. Even Jamie Dimon, who has done more than most, has been very cautious in my view. He seems very stage-managed, very open.

Preet Bharara:

But some people will credit what he said most recently with being one of the prompts for Trump to pause the tariffs.

Ian Bremmer:

That’s right. And I’m saying that I’m reluctant to just come out and criticize Jamie given both the fact that I know he’s actually had a positive impact here, and also because he’s just in a radically different position than I am. There are potentially really negative consequences for Jamie and for the people at JP Morgan if he decides to say what he actually thinks publicly. And for me, frankly, maybe there are some, but frankly, I actually think short of the worst outcomes in the United States, it’s actually I’ve aligned myself so that it’s good for me to be authentic with people. Because I’m just not comfortable otherwise. I can’t live otherwise.

Preet Bharara:

Yeah. The problem with a lot of the things, the many problems, the things that Trump administration is doing is among them completely asymmetrical use of force, completely disproportionate application of retribution. So for example, going after a law firm because for five minutes they employed somebody who Trump didn’t like. Meanwhile, the thousand people that work there now had nothing to do with any of those things.

Ian Bremmer:

And they’re getting hurt, yep. Doesn’t care.

Preet Bharara:

It’s such an overreach that it’s hard to know how to deal with it and-

Ian Bremmer:

It’s like the El Salvadoran guy, which I’m sure you’ve had conversations about, right?

Preet Bharara:

Oh, many. Yeah. We talk about it on the podcast all the time.

Ian Bremmer:

It’s like the woman, the students in Boston and the one in Columbia. And these are all the cruelty is so frequently the point. One of our principal algorithmic exports at this point on X is a site that Elon frequently engages with called I find retards, right? And I really find it unfortunate that that’s something that my president and his advisors and cabinet and top supporters think that that’s a good thing for us to export. I really have a problem with that.

Preet Bharara:

Do you think there is a full heir to Donald Trump or does Trumpism essentially subside, this form of aggressive Trumpism and retribution and everything else, and transfixed loyalty on the part of 35% of the public? Does that go away when Trump goes away?

Ian Bremmer:

Look, Elon doesn’t even have a position and look at what he’s been able to do. I think that if Trump is still in good health and if he is able to anoint a successor, JD or someone else, that the impact that Trump will personally have in a next administration has the potential to be unprecedentedly large. I’m not someone that believes he’s trying to run for a third term, but I don’t think that Trump… I would-

Preet Bharara:

There’s a lot that we haven’t predicted. Did you predict this tariff policy?

Ian Bremmer:

Not at this level, but we certainly, if you go back and look at our top risks from January that you and I talked about back then, and I do that every month pretty much, I’ve been pretty stunned with how spot on a piece that a lot of people thought we were being alarmist at that point has proven to be. And it’s truly like you remember the G0 wins that the idea that the US is going to not just abdicate but actively try to burn down its own system, undo its own system, and instead be all about law, the jungle and power. That is exactly what’s been happening in my view.

Preet Bharara:

Ian Bremmer, thanks. It’s always, always a pleasure to have you on the show.

Ian Bremmer:

Good to see you, my friend.

Preet Bharara:

And we will talk soon.

Ian Bremmer:

Talk soon.

Preet Bharara:

Thank you.

My conversation with Ian Bremmer continues for members of the CAFE Insider Community. In the bonus for Insiders, we discussed Trump’s recent nuclear negotiations with Iran. To try out the membership, head to cafe.com/insider. Again, that’s cafe.com/insider. Stay tuned. After the break, I’ll answer your questions about Trump’s alleged insider trading and how to get money out of our politics.

Now, let’s get to your questions. This question comes in an email from Andrew who writes this. “With Trump’s tariff shenanigans and massive volatility and swings in the stock markets, is there any evidence of Trump’s family or associates inside trading? How would one go about investigating such a thing?” So that’s a question in a lot of people’s minds. There’s been, I think, a good bit of politicking about it. And here’s what gives rise to the question.

As you point out, Andrew, there had been a lot of tariff shenanigans and huge swings in the stock market. On April 9th after the stock market was way down from its highs, Trump posted, “This is a great time to buy DJT,” in all caps on Truth Social at 9:37 AM. The market was already down about 20% over the prior number of days. A few hours later, at 1:18 PM, Trump announced a 90-day pause and some of the new tariffs he had recently proposed. What happened then was quite foreseeable, the S&P 500 surged 9.5% by market close. Trump’s own company stock DJT rose by nearly twice that, increasing his net worth by an estimated $415 million in one day. There’s a video clip from the Oval Office showing Trump seemingly boasting about others making large sums of money that day.

And so back to your question, does that Truth Social post implicate insider trading? I think it’s a tough sell. I have quite a bit of experience in my prior life prosecuting and investigating insider trading cases. And the crux of the matter when you’re talking about insider trading of a criminal nature or even of a civil enforcement nature by the SEC involves the abuse of information called material nonpublic information, MNPI. The first defense would be, with respect to this fact pattern, is that the statement Trump made was quite public. On his Truth Social account, he has millions of followers. Millions of others heard about his statement when it was reported by the press. Is it material? Well, it was pretty vague. It was pretty general. You could argue that lots and lots of people would be inclined to buy on the dip anyway. Trump could also argue that he had not made any decision yet to pause the tariffs. So I think overall, it’s a pretty tough sell.

Now, some Democrats are causing a lot of noise about this. Senator Adam Schiff and others have called for an investigation into potential insider trading or market manipulation because he’d like to find out whether Trump or his associates gave advanced notice about the tariff reversal to anyone who could have profited. But there’s another relevant fact here too. If somebody heard Trump’s statement or had some information about the pause of tariffs, if they merely invested in an index fund like the S&P 500 or some other mutual fund, there’s no insider trading case to be had. If there are particular stocks that were traded in, that’s maybe a little bit easier but still difficult if there was no information given about those particular stocks.

There’s also the question of whether or not Trump’s statements made as President of the United States is an official act or an official statement that would be protected. Now, it might be a different situation legally and arguably if Trump had inside information about a particular company who’s being given particular reprieve and that particular stock was traded in by somebody before that information became public, and maybe there’s a reason to investigate such a thing. It wouldn’t be shocking if there were people in Trump’s orbit who were considering gaining for themselves based on their service in the government or their proximity to people who were serving in the government. And certainly, by the way, if the standard for opening an investigation is the standard that’s been set forth by Pam Bondi and others within the Justice Department with respect to Chris Krebs and Miles Taylor and others, well then that threshold has been met.

The final thing I’d like to say, which I’ve said often before and various members of Congress have often said, there should be an absolute ban on the trading in individual stocks by members of Congress in the House and in the Senate. Why it can be the case in 2025 given all the information that’s transmitted, given all the relationships that people have, given the minimal level of trust that people have in their government, given the scourge of insider trading, that should be taken off the table once and for all.

This question comes in an email from Michael who asks, “My question is on how to end the Citizens United ruling in 2008 by the Supreme Court? If one were to begin a new constitutional amendment to end the personhood status of businesses and corporations, which would allow campaign finance laws to be invoked, what would be the simplest wording that should be used?” So one minor correction, Michael, the Citizens United ruling that you speak of actually came in 2010, and what did it do? It allowed corporations and labor unions and other entities to spend unlimited money and political campaigns so long as the spending was independent from the campaign. So independent expenditure was ruled lawful and constitutional. What’s the reason for that? Well, the majority of the court found that expenditures, spending money on campaigns, is a form of speech. In fact, it’s a form of political speech, which is especially protected under the First Amendment.

And the court, of course, went on to say that those political speech rights, which are protected by the Constitution, don’t depend on the identity of the speaker, even if the speaker is a corporation or an association. And since then, there has been a chorus of criticism of Citizens United because it has facilitated the rise of what are known as super PACs, which can raise and spend unlimited amounts of money to influence elections so long as they don’t coordinate directly with campaigns or so long as there’s no evidence that they have coordinated directly with campaigns. And a lot of people think this is unfortunate, but the Supreme Court has ruled, and the only way to deal with that really is a constitutional amendment.

I don’t know what the simplest wording would be. I haven’t given a deep thought. I haven’t articulated my own proposal for a constitutional amendment, but some members of Congress have. One proposal has come from Representative Pramila Jayapal, who’s introduced an amendment that changes the legal status of corporations. Here’s the text that she has proposed. “The rights and privileges protected and extended by the Constitution of the United States are the rights and privileges of natural persons only. An artificial entity such as a corporation, limited liability company, or other entity established by the laws of any state, the United States, or any foreign state shall have no rights under the Constitution and are subject to regulation by the people through federal state or local law.”

So I guess that would do the trick. I haven’t delved into the complications or consequences that might arise from changing the legal status of corporations, but certainly would do the trick with respect to Citizens United. But of course, the likelihood of a constitutional amendment passing either phrased this way or some other way is pretty close to zero in the near term. There have been other proposals that are worth mentioning to at least mitigate that decision’s damage to our elections. They address mostly disclosure. There are at least a couple of proposals. One, the Disclose Act and another, the Real-Time Transparency Act. Both of them seek to shine some light on the dark money that’s being used in these elections. They would force super PACs to disclose their donor lists, so at least there would be some light. But my favorite solution might be perhaps fractionally more likely than a constitutional amendment, but still very unlikely in the near term is that the Supreme Court sees the error of its ways and rules differently in a future case.

This question comes in an email from Tim who has a language query. He writes, “Preet, I enjoy every podcast you do from day one to today. The one with John McWhorter was really enjoyable. One thing I thought was interesting was the term folks. I agree, I use that more and more these days, but it made me think of Eddie Glaude Jr. who I see on TV from time to time. He uses folk instead of folks regularly, and I’m curious what you and John would think of that usage versus folks. Nerdy question perhaps, but wanted to ask.” So I don’t know why you would use the singular versus the plural. I say folks all the time. I say, “Hey, folks,” at the beginning of some answers I give to questions. Sometimes I begin the podcast that way. Sometimes I talk to my class that way. Folk just doesn’t seem like it captures the plural.

Obviously when you think about it, folk, F-O-L-K, should refer to the plural and folks with an S is not necessary. So we did some digging. The crack team did some research, and it turns out that folks with the S is a very old usage in the United States, and it can’t be described as a regionalism since it’s pretty widespread. The word’s predecessor folk that is favored by Eddie Glaude originally meant a people, nation, race, or tribe is quite old. The OED, the Oxford English Dictionary, cites written examples dating back to Beowulf, and the word has its roots in ancient Germanic tongues.

Our research also revealed that English speakers began using the plural folks that way in the 14th century. And in the 17th century, the plural folks replaced the old form with the singular folk being labeled archaic or dialect. To the extent you care or are interested, here are some citations from the OED and their dates couple of centuries ago. From 1710 in a letter by Jonathan Swift, “I have heard wise folks say an ill tongue may do much.” 1774 from Benjamin Franklin, “It was the ton with the ministerial folks to abuse them.” And this also from 1774 from a letter by Abigail Adams. “Some folks say I grow very fat.” So with a bit more dictionary support than my eternal clinging to plead over pleaded, I will continue to use folks.

Well, that’s it for this episode of Stay Tuned. Thanks again to my guest, Ian Bremmer. If you like what we do, rate and review the show on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen. Every positive review helps new listeners find the show. Send me your questions about news, politics, and justice. Tweet them to me, @PreetBharara, with the #AskPreet. You can also now reach me on Blue Sky, or you can call and leave me a message at 833-9977338. That’s 833-99-PREET, or you can send an email to letters@cafe.com.

Stay Tuned is presented by CAFE and the Vox Media Podcast Network. The executive producer is Tamara Sepper. The technical director is David Tatasciore. The deputy editor is Celine Rohr. The editorial producers are Noa Azulai and Jake Kaplan. The associate producer is Claudia Hernández. And the CAFE team is Matthew Billy, Nat Weiner, and Liana Greenway. Our music is by Andrew Dost. I’m your host, Preet Bharara. As always, stay tuned.