Trouble's Coming: Tariffs, the Dollar, and Hidden Economic Risk

The Supreme Court Just Said No to Trump — But the Real Problem Is Bigger

When President Trump campaigned on imposing massive tariffs, I found it so confusing. Why would we want higher taxes on imported goods when the nation was up in arms about inflation? When he rolled out the “Liberation Day” tariffs, I was even more confused. Who would this help? What’s the appeal?

Since then, I’ve come to better understand that the tariffs are not an economic tool to Trump. They are just an instrument of power and control.

The Supreme Court said on Friday that the President doesn’t have this particular kind of power. Today, we talk about what that might mean practically. We also talk about who does have power in this economy and what worries us. There are no immediate action items here except looking for candidates with a current vision about the economy and a willingness to serve the public without enriching themselves simultaneously.

Outside of politics, we talk about The Pitt (which is honestly the only thing I want to talk about right now).

Thank you for listening, always.

We can’t wait to hear your thoughts on the tariffs, the economy, and, of course, The Pitt. -Sarah

Topics Discussed

• The Supreme Court says Trump’s Tariffs are Illegal

• Economic Indicators are Changing

• Outside of Politics: The Pitt

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Episode Resources

Pantsuit Politics Resources

• More to Say from the Supreme Court about Tariffs (More to Say | Pantsuit Politics)

• Emily Ley v. the President of the United States (Pantsuit Politics)

• Opinion | The Finance Industry Is a Grift. Let’s Start Treating It That Way. (The New York Times)

• 'Canary in the coal mine': Blue Owl liquidity curbs fuel fears about private credit bubble (CNBC)

• Jim Chanos: ‘We are in the golden age of fraud’ (Financial Times)

• Repair Cafe

• ‘The Pitt’ Season 2: Behind the Scenes with Noah Wyle (The New York Times Magazine)

Episode Transcript

Sarah [00:00:09] This is Sarah Stewart Holland.

Beth [00:00:10] This is Beth Silvers.

Sarah [00:00:11] You’re listening to Pantsuit Politics. Today, we’re going to talk about the economy. First, we are going to be talk about the Supreme Court decision, ending Trump’s tariffs and what his view of the trade deficit means for the economy. And then we’re going to transition into a broader conversation about an increasing number of warning signs and the dollar in the bond market with regards to private credit. Don’t worry if any of those terms confuse you, we’re going to walk through them really carefully and try to put some puzzle pieces together about not only the Trump administration’s approach to our economy, but the overall approach of our economy that’s been in place since the financial crisis and how that’s playing out. And if that all sounds tough, don’t worry. Beth has finally watched The Pit, hallelujah. Praise the Lord. Dylan, please insert some sort Choral praise music. And we’re going to talk about it. We’re going to talk about Dr. Robbie, who I love. We’ll talk about Dana. Beth has a prompt she wants all y’all to think about through the lens of this show. It’s going to be good.

Beth [00:01:24] I’m obsessed. Chad keeps saying, don’t you want to save some? I’m like, what? No, I don’t.

Sarah [00:01:31] Listen, it got so bad, I was staying up so late on my pilgrimage to England, because I was like, oh, I know, I’ll watch The Pit when I go to England because I like to have like a little something at night in my room by myself. That was a bad idea. I see that now. Because this show and they’re freaking cliffhangers. They’re so rude.

Beth [00:01:47] Every time.

Sarah [00:01:48] So I got smart about three, four days in when I’d already incurred like a five hour sleep debt. I would watch it to like mid episode when it just lagged just a little bit. I’d be like, okay, episode over. And then I would pick it up from the middle to the next middle so that I wasn’t tempted to watch like three or four episodes in a row.

Beth [00:02:04] I see and honor the discipline of that. I just want to sit on my couch and watch The Pit. There’s really nothing else that I’d like to do right now. And I’ll tell you, this is not quite as much fun as watching The Pit, but if you want to understand more about the Supreme Court’s tariff case, I did break it down using Broadway music, okay? Because when the justices are joining in part, but not this part or that part, we need a little hook to help us understand what’s going on. And I think I did an interesting job with that on More to Say. So that’s on Substack, if you’d like to join us there. Also, want you to know that we’re coming to Texas Sunday. It’s here, came so fast. We will be at Memorial Drive United Methodist Church in Houston on March 1st at 5 p.m. If you are in the Houston area, it’s free to come hang out with us and we would love to see you there.

Sarah [00:02:54] Up next, let’s talk about tariffs. Or as the Supreme Court really wants you to understand, taxes.

Beth [00:03:08] As happens, breaking news on Friday, last week, the Supreme Court issued an anticipated decision about the tariffs. So the case is called Learning Resources Inc versus Trump. I mentioned that name because the president has said that evil foreign forces were working against him in the Supreme court. And I think what everyone should know is those evil anti-American forces are small businesses. It’s a bunch of small businesses that sued the Trump administration about the tariffs that they were having to pay. Now, these are not all of the tariffs that Trump has issued during his presidency. It’s lot of them, but not all them. But if you really think about Liberation Day, those kind of sweeping some percentage on every country, that’s what we’re talking about here. Those tariffs were issued based on two emergencies. Sarah, do you notice how many emergencies we’re living right now, according to this administration?

Sarah [00:04:04] I mean, it’s hard to make fun of them because I actually do feel the chaos of an emergency. I do not agree with them what emergency we are currently living under. So I want to be like, haha, they call everything an emergency except for the act of calling everything an emergency in the way they exercise power. As a result, does in fact create an emergency.

Beth [00:04:31] And look, presidents name things emergencies to unlock new powers for themselves. That’s the point. It’s not about really speaking to complexity or challenges that the American public is feeling. It’s about opening a door to new power. And that’s the case here. So the two emergencies that the president wants to use to unlock tariff powers are a public health emergency based on drugs flowing into the United States. And a supply chain emergency because of our trade deficits, which Trump has long believed, and we’ve talked about this many times, hurt the American economy. Based on those two emergencies, the president went to a statute called the International Emergency Economic Powers Act. It’s a law passed in the 1970s to say because of these two emergencies I get to impose tariffs on the whole world. And the Supreme Court said in a 6-3 decision, no, you don’t. That statute does unlock new powers for you, but they are very specific ones that Congress described in a lot of detail. And nowhere do we see the word tariff in that statute.

Sarah [00:05:45] I heard this described as a 3-3-3 decision, that you have the three liberal justices saying, no, just under a plain reading of this legislation, he does not have this power. Then you have Roberts, Coney Barrett, and Gorsuch saying no under the major questions doctrine that I don’t like just for the record, I think it’s a bad doctrine. Happy that the outcome came this way. Then you have Kavanaugh, Alito, and Thomas dissenting, saying, no, he can still do what he wants because this is foreign policy and the major questions doctrine only applies for domestic policy. I said on the News Brief, man, when the decisions break out like this like joining in part A, section sub two, I’m like, bleh. That’s not my favorite Supreme Court decisions. But I think the high level is that they finally said no to something, which is encouraging.

Beth [00:06:46] Well, and just to give a little bit of context about the major questions doctrine, it is an idea that when Congress is delegating one of its most fundamental powers, Congress needs to say so very specifically. The court is not going to squint and read into a statute that kind of delegation of powers. And what I think is interesting politically from this case, I spent a lot of time breaking out all of those opinions on more to say. Today I want to talk about the politics of it because politically the Supreme Court says so plainly, tariffs are taxes. Now we’ve been saying that plainly. Lots of people have, but the administration does not want to talk about tariffs as taxes. The administration wants to say tariffs are magic wands that are going to make all Americans very rich and cost other people in the world money, but not us. And the Supreme court says, no, tariffs are taxes paid by American businesses. And Congress under Article I of the Constitution has the power to tax. And when we were writing the Constitution after a revolutionary war all about taxes, giving that power to Congress was really important and intentional. And so what Roberts and Gorsuch and to a lesser extent Barrett say is that we are never for any president of any political party about any policy going to squint and read a decision of Congress to delegate power more broadly than we think the text itself says. Barrett softens that a little bit. The three liberal justices say, we don’t need to discuss that here. We don’t need to relitigate our COVID cases. We don’t need to relegate the student loan forgiveness case because that’s kind of what that piece is about. We just need to know that here, in this case, the statute itself is clear and it does not include that power to impose a tax. So it doesn’t include the power to impose tariffs on any country and any product for any reason, for any length of time, at any rate, subject to the president waking up and feeling different tomorrow.

Sarah [00:08:54] Yeah. Because we were stuck in this doom loop where it wasn’t even based on emergency powers. It was based on somebody hurt his feelings. Somebody didn’t respect him the way that he wanted to be respected. And then all of a sudden there was a tariff. So it was truly out of the bounds of believability, his argument for these tariffs under an emergency power. My beef with the major questions doctrine, is it feels to me like they are saying we are protecting congressional authority, but what they’re really doing is telling Congress how to do its job. Which feels to me like not an exercise in checks and balances. It feels to be like you are expanding your own authority by saying you get to decide if Congress has never done its job adequately to your satisfaction. You get to define whether it’s a major question, you get define whether they’ve spoken to it clearly enough, and to me, do I think the IEEPA was sloppily written? Sure, but that happens a lot in Congress. And if the Supreme Court just keeps raising the bar on what is required in order for them to enforce congressional action, then again, they get to decide what history means, they get to decide if it’s a big enough major question, they get just decide if Congress spoke clearly enough and what this always feels like to me. I know the headline is always their expansion of presidential power, but it also feels to me like they’re just expanding their own power. They thought that the administrative state had gotten too large, and so they think they’re better arbiters. And I’m just not really sure that’s true. I’m happy with this outcome. Don’t get me wrong. I don’t want him to be able to just impose tariffs on a whim because somebody hurt his feelings. But I still quibble with the Supreme Court; although, I think they made the right call here. I am not sure I’m going to change things. They didn’t force, they’re not requiring him through the words of this decision to pay back the billions of dollars people paid in taxes. He came out immediately and said under section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974, he’s going to do a new 10% global tariff. Well, that’s good news for some countries that have had much higher tariffs imposed on them like Brazil and China, bad news for others like Britain. Then he came out the next day and said I’m going to raise it to 15%. So I’m not really sure what the practical effects may be. I do think it creates a mess with regards to what happens next. But as far as him feeling any sort of limitation, I’m in favor of that.

Beth [00:11:17] I think I disagree with you about the major questions doctrine, but my opinion about that is still forming because it’s relatively new. It really started to coalesce around COVID restrictions. And I agreed with the court in some of those cases, with the conservative majority in some those cases and disagreed in others. What I think is helpful about that discussion in this case-- and all of this is kind of sitting in an alternate universe. That’s how the Supreme Court operates, right? It only answers one question at a time. Roberts would say, not my job to figure out what happens next. I had one question to answer, I answered it. And now the lower courts have to figure out unwinding those tariffs. The court of international trade is going to have to tell the administration how to do those refunds. It’s going to work its way through the process again. So the Supreme Court gets to create its own bubbles and work in those bubbles. And in that major questions bubble, which is just such a luxury question for the world that we’re living in right now, I think that Gorsuch contributes a lot in his concurring opinion in this case by saying without principles like that, where we say, here’s how we’re going to do statutory interpretation; we all are hypocrites all the time, which is just part of politics. We all are inconsistent about politics. Gorsuch is really giving it to both the liberal and the conservative justices in this case. He’s saying to the liberal justices, I’ve been reading your writing about presidential power for many years now and it sure seems like you ought to be on the other side of this one. Because you read statutes for all they were worth when president Biden was in charge.

[00:12:59] And then he looks at Kavanaugh and Alito and Thomas and says, huh, wonder what’s different for you now because I sure read your opinions in those years too when you said, absolutely not; the major questions doctrine is a huge line protecting Congress’s power and limiting the power of the executive. So what’s changed everybody besides the person in office and your feelings about their policy? And I think that contributes a lot to this discussion, and I think it’s far from over around the major questions doctrine. To your point about Trump coming out and immediately saying, I’m going to do new tariffs now, it’s going to be a lot harder for him to use other authorities. So that 10%, no 15%, where he’s already changed his mind, comes from a different law, the 1974 Trade Act, and it only lets him do that tariff up to 15%, that’s the ceiling, for 150 days. And if he wants it to go on after that, Congress has to approve it. And other laws that they might use to keep the tariffs going, because they know Congress isn’t going to approve it, require agencies making certain findings. They’re going to have to do investigations that justify tariffs on specific countries or about specific products. This liberation day, I woke up and just felt what I felt and divined what the tariff should be isn’t going to cut it under all these other laws. So it’s not a complete shutdown of his tariff power, but it really does change the landscape for him now.

Sarah [00:14:34] I think what hasn’t changed is his articulated desire to reduce the trade deficit. He thinks we import more, way more than we should and export too little. And he thinks that is screwing America. Now, we have run a trade deficit for decades and post-liberation day, the trade deficit has increased, not decreased. Now, some people see this as a problem, others see it as just a natural consequence of having the world’s dominant currency- the dollar. But the Trump administration thinks it means we’re getting screwed and the tariffs are supposed to fix that. I think it’s worth talking about, which is what we’re going to talk about next, their view of the dollar and the dollar as a world reserve currency and the proliferating warning signs that their approach to the economy and long-term economic trends since 2008 are really coming to a head. So I think it’s really easy to just see everything through the lens of Trump, especially because of his extreme trade deficit policy. Because of these tariffs it’s easy to just think, this is all Trump, this is all his fault. All these warning signs we’re going to click through.

[00:16:12] And I think some of them are the policy of the administration, but I think some of these are long-term economic trends, including the financialization of the American economy since 2008 we’ve had a 10-year bull market, which has really been driven, and we’ve touched on this a couple times over the course of the show. By intervention in the central bank, putting a lot of money into circulation, working with the bond market, dropping the interest rate to near zero for so, so long. And so I think that it is important to know that like some of these trends started way, way before Trump. Now, retail participation in the markets, crypto currency, poly market. They’ve unleashed a lot of that. I think the Silicon Valley culture, move quickly, break things, is growing in tandem with that. It’s like all these, to me, Beth, what it feels like is all these long-term trends have just been it’s like they’ve joined forces under the Trump administration and accelerated. The speculation, the loaning of money and all these increasingly financialized and hidden ways. And, of course, the complete lack of regulation, like all of that to me. The empowerment of the tech sector to run rampant and do what they want. Like it just feels like it’s all converging at this particular moment with the Trump administration who has some conflicting but also clearly articulated views about America’s role in the global economy.

Beth [00:18:04] I think you’re right that so much of this predates Trump and really built the groundwork for his electoral success. You sent me a terrific piece from the New York Times about how banks used to invest in real things happening in the world. It talks about this through the lens of the song from Mary Poppins where they’re explaining to Michael that when he saves his money with the bank, then the bank goes out and builds bridges and boats and makes things in the world. And that’s how our system works. Michael makes money back from that investment a little bit, but the world gets better too. He’s contributing to something in the word. And that is just not how it’s been for a long time. For a long time especially in the United States, our economy has been about investing in other investments that are hedged against other investments. And we saw that come crumbling down in the financial crisis, 2007, 2008. And I think that set the stage for people to look at someone like Donald Trump who says, see, everything is a scam, so get yours. And America should get its own instead of being burdened by trying to do things better. Out of 2007, 2018, we had a push for more regulation and more constraints on how that investment world worked. And Trump came in and said, why? All the world’s a casino. And so stack the deck in your favor as much as possible and hope for the best and try to get rich without losing anything in the process. And I understand why that appealed to people. And I understand why people like a very low interest rate. There is so much about what the president says that has real appeal, but it’s like with the tariffs. He always wants things to be a magic fix without any cost on the other side. And that’s not possible.

Sarah [00:20:00] Well, worth noting that the man couldn’t even run a profitable casino, not for nothing, in his past career. And I think you’re exactly right. And what that misses is why all of this financialization worked is because we weren’t a casino, because we were stable, because we weren’t gambling along with everything else. And what you hear articulated, there’s a document that has a policy paper come out of the Trump administration called the Mar-a-Lago Accord, that specifically talks about weakening the dollar. Trump has said, yeah, the sliding dollar is great. The dollar has fallen 9% since he took office. Trust me, I just got back from Europe. I could tell you all about the weakening dollar. Now, meanwhile, Scott Besson goes on TV and says, no, we have a strong dollar policy. So they’re saying opposing things that market’s notice and the people who invest in the market’s notice. And the problem, I think, the weakening dollar makes sense if you view everything through the we’re getting screwed through this trade deficit lens. But we only export about 11% of our economy. And other 89%, the retail sector, the services sector, that gets hurt when the dollar is weak. That means higher prices, stickier inflation. It also means that the rising stock market it’s not exactly-- when Pam Bondi goes in front of Congress and starts screaming about the Dow, well, if you price those markets in euros, something that’s maintained some stability and is not weakening, it looks a little bit different, doesn’t it? It’s not rising through the roof. And I think then you get where the stability that this global currency is built on, the rule of law, faith in institutions, an independent central bank, democratic stability. You start to see the cracks and the dollar status starts to really, really erode. And I think that that is why people are running and looking for stability. They’re either trying to bring some real precision to their speculation with stuff like poly markets, or they’re looking for real stability like gold.

Beth [00:22:18] Yeah, it’s interesting how right now everybody is trying to grab for stability knowing that it doesn’t exist. And so you do see people reaching both forward and backward. You see this clinging to the artificial intelligence sector even as people are worried that it’s a bubble. Everything feels contradictory because it is right now. And I do think a lot of that is because we are reaping what was sown far before Trump became president. And with his presidency, he wants neutral observation. I’m not saying this as a criticism, but as a neutral observational about Donald Trump. He wants maximum flexibility in all spaces at all times. And markets don’t like that. Markets want to understand. They want these policy papers. They want you to express a view and know that that view will be consistent at least for the next year, at least until the next election. We have built-in instability for markets with midterm elections coming up anyway. When you pile on top of that, an administration that just doesn’t hold very long to one idea, that’s tough. What do you invest in in that environment?

Sarah [00:23:33] According to analysts at the Atlantic Council, markets are now pricing US policy uncertainty the same way they price uncertainties in countries that do not have reserve currencies. That’s crazy. So we are reaping basically none of the benefit of having the global reserve currency because people are so concerned about the instability. And you can see that he wants that maximum flexibility. Watching him run our country, it surprises me not at all that he’s gone bankrupt as many times as he has, first of all. He wants to just throw money at it. Spending is out of control. He shows no concern for the deficit at all. The bond market, just to refresh because sometimes I start reading about the bond market and I have to go wait, what is the bond? So when the government needs money, it borrows by selling bonds and it’s an IOU. The government promises to pay you back with interest after a set period. And the interest rate, traditionally on a 10-year treasury bond, is one of the most important interest rates in the world because it sets the floor, the bottom of what borrowing costs should look like everywhere. And usually bond prices and interest rate move in opposite directions. So when more people want to buy bonds, the prices go up, the yield goes down, which means it’s cheaper to borrow for everyone. When fewer people want bonds, because perhaps they’re concerned about the instability inside the American economy and government, prices fall and yields go up.

[00:25:08] So they need to keep selling bonds to fund all this spending, but they have to offer higher interest rates to attract them. And so that has put the Fed in a real, real trap. If they cut the rates while inflation is still pretty sticky and the dollar is already weak, it makes inflation worse. And that’s why they have what they’re calling stagflation-lite. Slower growth plus stubborn inflation with limited tools to fix it. Because that’s all they want. He wants to throw money at it and drop the interest rate. Because what does he care if there’s inflation? He’s sitting on a trillion dollars. So I just think that you can see. And they’ve interfered. Like I said, they interfered so often way before he got here. But now we’re borrowing at such a rate. 601 billion in just the first three months of this fiscal year, 2026. I don’t think he knows about what the one big beautiful bill tax cuts are going to do. I don’t know if he’s paying attention to that. We have to sell more bonds to pay for this. Did you read about how they’re trying to figure out the $50 billion in military spending they want to put in the budget and it’s so much money they don’t even know how to spend it? I’m like, what is this? What is this?!

Beth [00:26:22] I think that’s really important for people to know. It’s hard to follow this if it’s not your world. And it’s hard to have any grasp of these numbers. They’re so big. For so long, the stock market has seemed disconnected from reality in a lot of different ways. So it’s easy to glaze over here. You can understand though, when officials say this budget is so large, we don’t know how to spend it. You can understand that they’re not serious about cutting costs when you look at something like DOGE. Remember the Department of Government Efficiency and all those jobs that were cut?

Sarah [00:26:59] Yeah, I do. Against my will.

Beth [00:27:01] Just as one small example to follow up on how DOGE is doing. I just made this series about special education on more to say. DOGE almost eliminated the Office of Civil Rights, where they enforced some laws that protect students in schools from discrimination based on disability. So many lawyers were laid off. So many offices were closed. Eventually, a court stepped in and said, you’re doing this wrong. You can’t do it. We have to freeze things for now. For months, the Trump administration told those people who a court said could not be fired, you’re going to eventually be fired, so stay at home. The government paid tens of millions of dollars in salaries and told people not to work. And so all of that work piled up, and eventually all those people came back to work. The government let it go, reinstated the positions, and now those folks are back to work with a massive backlog. And we just flushed tens of million of dollars for nothing. For nothing. I mean, I’m glad those people were paid and those families didn’t go without during that time period, but that’s not a serious long-term thinking businessman running our government, right? And that’s been the con this whole time because he says I’m a businessman, but what he is is a TV businessman and he handles the economy episodically. He says, one big, beautiful bill tax cut, hooray. No future thinking about what that’s going to mean. Tariffs today, hooray, no future thinking about what that’s going to mean for small businesses. Cryptocurrency, amazing, no feature thinking about what’s that going to be. It is all one episode at a time and you can’t make reasonable, thoughtful investments in the private sector based on that. You certainly can’t invest in our bonds when you know that that’s the mentality.

Sarah [00:28:57] Well, and I think, again, it’s just the manifestation of, look, we all were doing 0% interest rates, hooray, what does this mean in the long term? Post 2008, I think it was smart to make it harder for big banks to make risky loans. But did anyone say, well, where are people going to go for these risky loans?

Beth [00:29:17] That’s right.

Sarah [00:29:18] And that’s the other thing that’s really coming to head. You have this incredible Market of private credit where people are borrowing money from non-bank lenders hedge funds, investment firms, and these midsize business they need credit. They need capital to flow and it’s all tied up in higher interest rates where well the Fed is in a trap. It can’t lower interest rates because of the weakening dollar because of what we just talked about and so you have this private credit, I don’t know, growing nightmare is really what I feel like we should call it. You have a rising number of people doing payment in kind, which means they’re not paying back these private interest loans. They’re just pushing the payment to the next one like skipping your credit card payment basically and just tacking it on to the end. Then the real canary that got my attention was Blue Owl Capital. It’s one of the biggest players in private credit. It recently just stopped allowing people to withdraw money. Well, what does a lender do when there’s a run on the bank or a run on the institution?

[00:30:22] They shut it down. And the funds were marketed with the promise of liquidity. You could get your money whenever you wanted. Well, when redemption surged, they shut it down because these are risky investments and they were made on the dependability that we’d get back to that zero interest rate, that we would just have perpetual growth that would fuel all this financialization. Same things happen in private equity. You have a log jam. They’re supposed to buy things, extract the value and sell them. Well, guess what’s hurt them? Higher interest rates. And so they have $3.8 trillion in companies that they can’t get out of. They have a long jam of stuff they can sell over at private equity. So all of this simmering is starting to boil because we built so much of this economy on zero interest rates and perpetual growth. And we certainly don’t have a philosopher king who can help us out of this and transition into another form of a global economy. He’s just kneecapping things where he can and not paying attention to how this is going to play out in the long-term.

Beth [00:31:33] I think it’s really important to talk about this, not because there’s an action item today. We’re not telling anyone, go withdraw your savings from the bank and put it in your mattress or invest in gold bars or anything like that. I don’t think there’s a action item, today. But being aware of warning signals flashing is important. And when you vote, looking for candidates who have some kind of theory about all of this, it’s not going to work to have people who say, well, let’s just go back to. fill-in-the-blank date. We are way past going back to. We need people who have a future vision that pulls all these frameworks together, that figures out what government’s role is, that has a plan for when things go south because the economy will go south at some point. We’re not going to have perpetual growth forever and ever that benefits all people. So I get frustrated in elections with candidates who sound like they could be running in any year, not just this year. And that’s particularly true for me right now. I’m listening for candidates who are saying something that they could not have said if they ran two years ago or four years ago because the metrics are really different. It’s a different board right now.

Sarah [00:32:50] Well, and that’s the thing. Everyone is looking for stability. Used to you’d go to the bond market, you would go to the dollar. Well, not now. And so you see people searching like for gold, stable coins, which is making the Trump family very, very rich. Prediction markets like Polymarket, where you can really dial in the precision of your risk, also making the trump family very, very rich. And even people like speculators, I think Bitcoin was supposed to be like digital gold. It was supposed be this stable situation. It’s down 40%. All these people who trusted Trump, all these cryptocurrency bros who thought, yeah, we’ll he’ll unleash us. Yeah, unleash you to lose a bunch of money. I heard somebody describe this market as K-shaped. On one end, people are just going to get richer and richer and richer. So if they do have a long-term theory, that’s it. We’ll get richer and rich and everybody else will fall behind. And that seems to me, what’s happening? That there is not just like this search for stability, but you also have a lot of even just consumer delinquencies with regards to credit. Like just credit card bills going unpaid, other types of loans within the consumer market going unpaid. Like people are struggling and they don’t have a plan. I mean, they do have a plan. The plan is for them to continue to get rich when really what we need is an articulation of that vision, of an articulation of regulation that will prevent not only this enormous speculation, extraction of value from our economy by those at the very top, but like just fraud. I heard the guy who was the one who called Enron before it ever happened, called it the golden age of fraud. Like there’s just so much opportunity because they’ve taken their hands off the wheel to let anything and everything go. Even tying it into what you were saying at DOGE, that so many people who would be-- the government was always outmatched when it came to this kind of speculation and financial market. And with the decimation of the federal workforce, that’s just gotten worse. And I think that was the point.

Beth [00:35:13] I think it was the point too. And so as we think about who we’re electing in that K shape, I think we have to really press candidates on their willingness during their time in public service to build a little bit of a bubble around themselves. If you’ve ever been concerned about insider trading, meet poly market. These prediction markets are such an opportunity for people with access to information that lets them see around corners to make bank on that. And so we need people running for office who say, while I serve, I am willing to be hands off with my investments. I’m willing to take a lot of financial risk in order to show you that my decision-making is for the greater good, not for my personal portfolio. There are a lot of different ways that can go. Those are not sexy issues that people want to make commercials about. But that kind of focus on some fundamental fairness and some leveling of the playing field through rules is really important right now.

Sarah [00:36:25] Yeah, it’s just so opaque. It is just so hard to see clearly what’s going on. They’re making a little bit progress on the no trades, the trade ban in Congress. But how long is it going to take us to get to this Polymarket example you’re exactly articulating? Like, that’s a huge risk. We need oversight. Part of the risk for the private credit, just like it was back before 2008, is that people can’t see what’s going on and you need regulators. Well, they’ve completely disbanded the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. That was one of the answers to 2008. The SEC, I don’t know what they’re doing. The DOJ is decimated on so many levels. I can’t imagine they’re out there worried about private credit valuations. So I just think the oversight is lacking. The enforcement is lacking, the regulatory innovation. That’s what I’m looking for. I’m going for a regulatory innovation. Don’t just tell me we’ll clean up the mess from five years ago. The messes are piling up quicker than y’all are finding fixes. And that’s a bigger issue, both administratively and bureaucratically, that I want to hear some candidates address. Because I’m glad the Supreme Court forced this sort of transparency and accountability, but they’re not the answer. They move way too slow. We’re going to need way more than that if we’re going to see ourselves not only out of the mess he’s creating, but the mess that has been being created for the last 10 years.

Beth [00:37:48] And what Gorsuch says so plainly in this set of opinions is that the only place to have that vision and do that work is Congress. The Congress must lead this effort. Congress has got to stop following. There’s a real ode to what Congress is supposed to be and implicit in that ode in Gorsuch’s work is an indictment of where Congress is. And this is all about trust to have the regulatory innovation. You have to change people’s views of what regulators are about because Trump has been really effective in saying, regulators, shmegulators, they’re just con men too. They’re just out to get their own and enrich themselves too. Democrats, their only goal is to make themselves rich and so let’s take power and make ourselves richer. I think and hope that we’re all realizing that where there was truth in that, we need to address it. But we can’t write the whole system off. We do need government to have some kind of role in our economy because this chaos casino that he’s created and that’s his future vision. That chaos casino is going to hurt a lot more people than it rewards.

Sarah [00:39:02] It’s just nihilism. I just feel like it’s nihilistic. If you follow logically the philosophical undercurrents of this administration, particularly economically, it is just nihilism. It doesn’t make anybody happy. It doesn’t help anybody live a good life. It’s not the path to democratic health, but I don’t think he cares about the health of our democracy. Not really even sure he cares about the health of our economy as long as the people he wants to get rich are getting richer. And that is just so nihilistic. I don’t think people want that. I don’t want that. Just because he was halfway decent in articulating the problem, I don’t think people understood that the next sentence was you articulate it, so we’ll just exploit it. The exploitation, the extraction that leads to not just growing income inequality, but the fraud and the scams, the annoyance economy, I just think people don’t want this. I don’t want this for myself, I don’t want this for my kids, like it’s exhausting and it is depressing because that’s what nihilism is. It’s a road to nowhere. And that’s what it feels like he is leading us with regards to the economy and many other things right now.

Beth [00:40:30] And there are some positive indicators that show people don’t want this. Last year you started seeing repair cafes pop up where people get together and help each other fix stuff. There are a lot of movements, some of them coming out of environmentalism, some of the coming out religious communities, some of them just coming from people who want to feel real in an increasingly digital world. Lots of places where people are saying, this is not what I want and I don’t want to be scammed all the time. I also just don’t want everything to exist only on paper or in code. And I hope that we vote like it. I hope those kinds of movements show up in the way that we press candidates of both parties. Nobody has clean hands here. Neither party has done an incredible job having a vision for a sustainable long-term economy. Neither party can say, nobody does inside trading on our side. There are problems all over the place, which means that there’s opportunity all over the place. We just have to prioritize these issues as we’re deciding what candidates we’re going to support.

Sarah [00:41:47] Beth, I know who has an answer to the nihilistic narrative in America right now,.

Beth [00:41:53] Dr. Robbie.

Sarah [00:41:54] Dr. Robbie and Dana and everyone in The Pit. I’m so glad you’re watching the show now.

Beth [00:42:03] I feel really good about having caught up.

Sarah [00:42:06] It was a strain on our partnership. It really was.

Beth [00:42:09] Yes, it was tough. It is so hard when you’re really into something and a person that you talk to all the time isn’t really into that thing. My best friend just started reading the Louise Penny series. There’s relief in my heart about it that we can have this common language. And I do need everyone to watch The Pit now who wasn’t now that I have gotten my stuff together and caught up.

Sarah [00:42:29] Just go ahead and just everybody watch it. All Americans. It has such important things to say. My favorite thing I heard it described as is competency porn. Because I just think that’s it’s showing and not competency as the answer. They are not ever arguing on this show that the people who care deeply, work hard, are highly competent inside this emergency room are fixing societal problems. And I think there’s some real courage in what they’re doing. We’re just going to show you what is going on and you can take with that what you like.

Beth [00:43:13] Medical professionals seem to love this show and they talk about how accurate it is.

Sarah [00:43:18] Green flag.

Beth [00:43:19] And I think that it is really nice how much it leaves unresolved. Every episode, there’s so much, even in the emotional arc of the characters, the stories among the characters that aren’t really about whatever nightmare scenarios have come through the ambulance bay that day, but they just let people be and they let systems be. And then you walk away from it, not having any answers yourself, but really thinking deeply about how much policy and personality and the stuff of life creates our experiences every day in really important and high stakes situations.

Sarah [00:44:05] I mean, what happened to that lady and her employer? That was weird.

Beth [00:44:11] The trafficking story?

Sarah [00:44:14] Yes. What happened? They’re never going to tell us.

Beth [00:44:16] They’re not going to tell.

Sarah [00:44:17] That storyline in particular opened up a whole new level of understanding about what medical professionals and people, all kinds of people, school teachers, people who work in a library, what they’re doing on the front lines and how they reach the limit of what they can do. And the person walks out the door and you don’t know what happens. And how hard that must be and how that absolutely has to contribute to burnout. And I think like they do such a good job of showing like, yeah, for every Louis where the person you’re helping him and you’re building a relationship with him. There’s something where you see something you know is not right and you can’t really do about it and then they’re gone.

Beth [00:45:07] There are a ton of interesting questions about agency in this show. That people come in, you do for them what you can, but maybe the mom still is against traditional medicine or against a vaccine or maybe the person is not ready to receive help yet. I thought a really great storyline from season one that was gone in a flash. Was a mom really struggling and connecting with one of the doctors, Dr. McKay, who has walked what sounds like a similar path. And then one of the new student doctors pushing her a little too hard on a social worker stopping by, and she jets. And the door closes, and they don’t get to circle back around to it. And that’s just really how life goes. That dance that the doctors try to do to persuade people to take the resources that are available. The way that Dana talks about how we just keep offering and we let people know that we’re going to be here and we’re going to keep offering. And then all the ways in which that offer is imperfect, it’s really heartbreaking and beautiful and all the things.

Sarah [00:46:15] Okay, let’s talk about Dr. Robbie. Did you watch ER?

Beth [00:46:18] I did not watch ER.

Sarah [00:46:20] Oh, well, I’m sad for you because that just opens up a whole new level of this relationship. I watched all of ER. I loved that show. So I have I have known Dr. Robbie since he was a med student going by the name of Dr. Carter. I watched him learn and grow. Do you understand what I’m saying?

Beth [00:46:42] I do. does it feel like one continuing character to you?

Sarah [00:46:44] Absolutely.

Beth [00:46:45] That’s interesting.

Sarah [00:46:47] Absolutely, 100%. I’m just assuming he had to change his name for some reason, who knows why.

Beth [00:46:52] There’s a lawsuit right now about the intellectual property situation between these two shows.

Sarah [00:46:58] I know. But it is different, I mean, the hour by hour is different from ER, and ER spent a lot more time on their private lives outside of the hospital. I think the smart structure of the show, it prevents them from doing that and turning into Gray’s Anatomy, which I did not watch all of because it got super, super stupid. And it’s still going, right? Isn’t Gray’s Anatomy still on? Stop. Everybody stop.

Beth [00:47:19] My 15-year-old daughter is suddenly obsessed with Gray’s Anatomy and is watching it constantly. And she really suffered last week because when the actor who played McSteamy passed away, she had just watched the episode where he passes away on the show. So her heart was broken in a lot of different directions. But yes, there’s so much Gray’s Anatomy available to her.

Sarah [00:47:43] Yeah, it’s so drama. I think this is an improvement, like a really interesting evolution and innovation in ER. ER was great, but this is better. And I think that there was a great profile in the New York Times magazine of Noah Wile and how he makes this show and how he thinks about it. And he’s just so locked in with the medical community, the healthcare industry. I mean, he’s like their patron saint. You know what I mean? Like they love him and he loves them back. And I just think it comes across so well on the show. Even when he is truly pissing me off and he has quite often, particularly in this new season. I still just love him. I’m just like, you know what, we’ve like grown up together. Do you know I mean? Like we’re just like really in it. It’s how I feel about Ben Affleck and Matt Damon. They can do no wrong. I don’t care.

Beth [00:48:28] I didn’t watch ER for the same reason that it took me a little bit to get into The Pit. I am very, very squeamish. Very squeamish. I have to look away a lot during The Pit. I watch a lot of it with my eyes closed.

Sarah [00:48:39] I’m only every once in a while. It doesn’t happen a lot, but there are some times where I’m like okay enough.

Beth [00:48:47] I have probably surprising no one, a really high degree of empathy. And so I physically tap in to worry about people and pain that they’re experiencing. And so it’s a really intense experience to watch the show for me, but I think it’s worth it. And one reason that I think is worth it, this was named by the Prestige TV podcast. They talk about how efficient the storytelling is in The Pit. So with Noah Wiley, for example, Dr. Robbie, this emergency room doctor, rides his motorcycle in every day without a helmet. He carries the helmet inside. He has the helmet as a prop, but he doesn’t wear it on his head. And the setup for season two is he’s getting ready to go on a sabbatical for a motorcycle trip. And those details, the way they show us so much in something that never gets discussed or fleshed out, but gives us a lot of information about the characters, creatively, I am obsessed with that. And I love watching it, and I love hearing people dissect it. I’ll read everything about it because that kind of storytelling is just really captivating.

Sarah [00:49:55] The most physically painful part of the show so far for me is in a recent episode where the baby that has been abandoned keeps crying and no one will pick it up. And I was about to jump through the screen and I was literally screaming, “Pick up the baby. Pick up the baby.” I cannot stand to hear a baby cry. It makes me want to come out of my skin.

Beth [00:50:14] The baby creates a lot of tension for me in this season too because there are long stretches of time where we don’t get to know about the baby. We just know there’s a baby that was abandoned in a bathroom in the hospital. And we know that baby Jane Doe is waiting, but we’re having to get through all this other stuff and the whole time my brain is going, but what about baby Jane Doe? What’s happening.

Sarah [00:50:38] They should give me the baby. I will take the baby. That part is so realistic though. Do you know how long it takes to get like a social worker? Oh my Lord, no. That would take a million years. I’ll be surprised if baby Jane Doe there at the end of this season. And then, of course, there’s Dana.

Beth [00:50:58] Gosh, I think she’s the best.

Sarah [00:51:01] She won an Emmy, killing it. I mean, talk about efficiency. The way this woman will steal the entire scene with like five words is so impressive.

Beth [00:51:22] And a look. Just a look. She has the best facial expressions. So if you don’t watch the show, Dana is the charge nurse. Everybody recognizes that Dana runs the whole operation and that the whole operations would fall apart without Dana. And Dana is also the queen of boundaries. She both really cares about everybody and has a really strong sense that she can’t fix everything. And she can’t make everybody feel better and she shouldn’t promise things that she can’t deliver on. I think one of the most beautiful scenes in season one came in the late episodes. I can’t remember exactly which hour it happened, but one of doctors who was having a crisis that I don’t want to spoil, comes to her really trying to get her to promise to help him out, to kind of put on a word for him. And he’s just saying in so many ways, please make me feel better right now. And she won’t. But she won’t in a kind and caring way. And it’s just a great example.

Sarah [00:52:25] It probably speaks to my own boundaries issues or maybe like over-dependence on my capacity that when I see a capacity of hers, I’m like, just fix it. You could fix it, Dana. I would just watch a whole show of Dana going around fixing everybody. And I think it would be a good show and I think she could do it. Because a lot of times I’m just like I’ll see what you’re doing there, but maybe you could just fix this one time. One of my favorite Dana scenes is the beginning of season two when the little baby nurse comes. And she’s like, oh, welcome. And before she can even say anything, she’s unpacked all this gear off this girl. Just like her fanny pack and this and that. And she was like, no, no baby, you don’t need all these things. And it is just so well executed. And I love her. And I want to watch a show only about her. That’s like two hours long every week.

Beth [00:53:18] It’s just really nice to see a really mature woman in a show like this, fully embodying all of those life lessons that she has won in such a hard way. I really, really love that.

Sarah [00:53:31] I think she embodies those life lessons because she’s been married in real life to Dennis Hopper, French Stewart, and Grant Show from Melrose Place and that is the craziest husband lineup I’ve ever heard in my whole life.

Beth [00:53:40] It is the sampler platter of spouses. It really is something else.

Sarah [00:53:44] Dennis Hopper, French Stewart, and Grant Show. What is that? What is that?

Beth [00:53:50] Good for you, Catherine.

Sarah [00:53:52] Good for you, Katherine. All right. I think that we just recorded a really, really well executed and in depth and important conversation about the economy. And I promise you all the comments are going to be about The Pit.

Beth [00:54:08] It’s just a lot more fun to talk about.

Sarah [00:54:09] It is just so good though, but it’s helping. That’s why it feels good to talk about it. Because it is not Real Housewives, which is actually harming America. Don’t message me. I don’t want to hear your defense of Real Housewives. This show is helping. I sincerely believe that. It’s like doing good work in the world as a piece of art.

Beth [00:54:27] I totally agree with that. I feel so many things every time I watch it and I always take something positive away. And it’s also just affirming for a lot of different professions. Like I love that this show both demonstrates the unbelievable competency of these professionals and the fact that they’re always kind of guessing. And just trying to do their best and they don’t know exactly how it will turn out. Hopefully it works, but it might not. I felt that way as a lawyer all the time. I graduated from law school and I thought, I should have all the answers now. And then I started practicing law and learned that you use the word practice because you’re just guessing. You know a lot of stuff, but you’re guessing about what happens when you apply it and how you apply it and all those things. And I feel like that’s just true for so many professions. And I don’t know why we can feel that about our own discipline, but we walk around expecting every other discipline to be perfect. And I think this show does a great job at a really needed time in medicine of saying they know a whole lot and not everything. And that’s okay.

Sarah [00:55:39] I did the best I can. Ugh, God, I love this show. Listen, cannot wait to hear from all of you. I know how passionate I already am about The Pit because I announced when I started watching it last fall and I got so many messages. So unleash yourselves and all your thoughts on Dana and Dr. Robbie.

Beth [00:55:56] May I propose a specific prompt as well?

Sarah [00:55:58] Yes.

Beth [00:56:00] I would love to hear what character people most see themselves in. Like a little almost like BuzzFeed, which Disney princess are you, but our version will be The Pit.

Sarah [00:56:10] But wait, just hospital staff or patients as well?

Beth [00:56:13] Everybody. Anybody is fair game

Sarah [00:56:17] Okay. I’m excited. All right. That’s a good prompt. All right. We can’t wait to hear from you. We will be back in your ears on Friday. Until then, keep it nuanced y’all.

Show Credits

Pantsuit Politics is hosted by Sarah Stewart Holland and Beth Silvers. The show is produced by Studio D Podcast Production. Alise Napp is our Managing Director and Maggie Penton is our Director of Community Engagement.

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