MSNBC host Nicolle Wallace began her Tuesday episode of "Deadline: White House" discussing President Donald Trump's ongoing trade war with Canada and particularly with China.
Speaking to The Atlantic's Derek Thompson, Wallace noted, "America just elected a felon for the first time in her history because eggs were too expensive and other stuff. And now that person who ran for office, the highest office in our country's politics, isn't just saying that things are going to be more expensive. He's saying you don't need those things. You don't need 34 of one thing. You only need two. That thing is a doll."
She explained, "What most people spend — a doll is a sort of an annual purchase, a present, a gift for a young child on Earth-1, where he obviously doesn't live. But a whole bunch of other things are going to be out of reach, or a lot more expensive. And either there aren't people around Donald Trump who have told him that, or he doesn't care. But either way, is the slow-moving political asteroid that's about to hit the entire Republican Party."
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Thompson agreed, but recalled one specific comment that Trump made in the Oval Office on Tuesday while meeting with Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney.
"By not trading, we're not losing anything," Trump said.
"And that statement is absolutely, 100% correct except for the fact that the U.S.'s total exports in 2024 totaled $2 trillion," said Thompson.
"So, other than $2 trillion of exports and $3 trillion of imports, we're not losing anything with trading?" he questioned. "Five trillion dollars worth of economic activity that is imploded if America suddenly stops trading. And when you dig into it, who's really going to be hurt? Here's a terrible irony. You've got all this talk, especially coming from people who are MAGA and say that they're for the working class. They're for people who work in industry, people who are farmers."
However, he said, soybean farmers essentially had their business with China ripped out from under them. He noted that there is billions of dollars being made by farmers on soybean exports, "if not hundreds of billions of dollars."
"And for what? For what?" Thompson asked. "There was no crisis of soybeans. There was no crisis in American industry. We're doing all of this because Donald Trump fundamentally does not understand that trade is a positive-sum interaction."
He predicted there is a "0% chance Americans don't feel it in the next few months."
See the clip below or at the link here.