FRANKLIN FOER: So, Michelle, the other big reversal this week was the president's pulling back the tariffs on Canada and Mexico.

So, what happened?

MICHELLE PRICE: I mean, this is a whipsaw of a week when it comes to tariffs.

You know, we started Monday morning with the president announcing that these tariffs would be imposed after he'd already announced a one-month delay, and then he had delayed them again by the end of the week.

You know, I think the biggest thing is that the reasons for why he's imposing these tariffs keeps shifting.

So, even if you're trying as a business or as a consumer trying to react to these and plan your business, your life, your expenses around this, you can't even read the tea leaves about whether it's going to come back because it was a first about immigration, then the president said that he posted the night before he announced the tariffs that the border crossing numbers are low, the next morning it was all about fentanyl coming over the border.

So, I think you know, at some point, the confusion for businesses is going to be worse than the tariffs themselves because it's just upending everything they're trying to plan for.

FRANKLIN FOER: But one thing he's done is he's denied that his reversal had anything to do with the fact that his policy crashed markets this week.

Let's listen to him.

REPORTER: Some of these exemptions that have been announced and some of these temporary delays, have you been influenced in those decisions because of the market reaction?

DONALD TRUMP, U.S. President: Well, there were no delays at all.

No, nothing to do with the market.

I'm not even looking at the market.

FRANKLIN FOER: Kayla, did the White House not expect markets to react so negatively to tariffs?

KAYLA TAUSCHE: I think they thought that when there was a reprieve that the markets would have the same type of response in a positive direction as it had in the negative direction, and then everything would come out in the wash. And that's not what happened because I think the market rightly believed that these threats are going to continue and this is not the end of it.

But for Donald Trump to say that is laughable to me because during his first term, when I was working at a business network, he was constantly frustrated about the fact that the market would fall on certain policies and he would send out his top economic officials to try to jawbone the market and to try to move it up and they would stay plugged in to watch the air after their interview to see if they had successfully moved the market upward so that they knew if they were going to go back in whether the boss would be happy.

That is a -- I mean, that is a core function of the Trump White House and of his economic team and that's one of the reasons why you've seen Howard Lutnick on every single network this week trying to put the genie back in the bottle to any extent that he can.

FRANKLIN FOER: Let me just stick with you on this because of your experience working for that financial network that you just referenced.

So, is the White House worried that they're edging closer to a recession?

And just as a matter of economic reality, how close are we to a recession?

KAYLA TAUSCHE: Well, I think it's very possible.

A recession is by definition two quarters of negative economic growth in its simplest definition.

And most economists believe that we will have negative economic growth in the first quarter, which goes until the end of March.

And that's inevitable based on some of the actions that the Trump administration has already taken.

Now, can they change course so that April, May, June, that that quarter has better economic numbers?

Perhaps.

But it's also expected that some of those federal job cuts are going to show up in the April and May jobs numbers.

We've already seen manufacturers say that they're not investing as much because of the uncertainty over tariffs.

And then there's the cost of things, and costs for businesses and consumers are going up, and interest rates are not going down.

So, there are a lot of pain points, and I think that's why you saw the treasury secretary say that the economy is going to go through a period of readjustment, in his words, as it moves away from relying on so much government spending.

FRANKLIN FOER: Yes.

And Trump hinted at some of that in his speech to the joint session earlier in the week.

So, Eugene, just stepping back and looking at everything that we're talking about, the whiplash on tariffs, the way that some of our closest allies have responded to us, the fact that we're on potentially a brink of a recession, this rift with Musk, you know, is this the end of, to use like the worst cliche, the honeymoon period?

EUGENE DANIELS: I know we used that in playbook today, where I apologize on our behalf.

FRANKLIN FOER: Sorry.

EUGENE: DANIELS: Let's see.

FRANKLIN FOER: I will flog you and you can flog me afterwards.

EUGENE DANIELS: It's our fault, we'll take it.

Possibly, right?

I think at the end of the day, there was a period of time where it just seemed like Donald Trump was able to just power through, right, everything.

And you had Democrats not knowing what to do.

They still kind of don't know how to react, as we saw this week.

You had Republicans just bowing down and really not even letting him know they were frustrated with certain things.

You had our partners around the world staying quiet and kind of talking behind closed doors and not being as aggressive as they have been publicly.

That's all changing.

So, what that tells you is that at some point, Donald Trump is going to have to figure out what his pain threshold is, right?

And it's not particularly high based on the past and what we've seen.

So, he wants everyone to see him as this powerful man who can do everything.

But as we all know, the economy is not -- the president of the United States doesn't have that much power over the economy.

It's a lot of other factors.

And so you're seeing him make changes, whether it's because of the markets, despite him saying no, or it's because of polling, or it's because of you have his own voters who are worried about the price of eggs, and saying, I thought it was going to be fixed on day one, even though we all knew that wasn't going to happen.

So it tells you that he is going to, at some point, have to figure out, is his pain, is his threshold here, and does he change anything from that?

And also, more importantly, with Donald Trump, who does he blame?

MICHELLE PRICE: And he's also losing the ability to blame it on President Biden.

MICHELLE PRICE: Like he's -- every day he loses some of that ability.

FRANKLIN FOER: Not stopping him from trying.

MICHELLE PRICE: No, he's not stopping him from trying.

But you're also -- I mean, the way he's having Elon Musk come in and make deep cuts, he's making these shockwaves with these tariff announcements.

It's kind of like you break it, you buy it.

It's not like he's coming in and making little tweaks.

But if you send these big shockwaves, some of the consequences of that is going to end up on your plate.

EUGENE DANIELS: And Donald Trump is someone who says like, I alone can fix it.

So, that tells the American people that they can actually move up their expectations of when it's his economy, right?

Because, typically, it's around ten months is what experts say that that's the president's economy.

But for Donald Trump, because he says, I'm the most powerful person, I can do it all, maybe that's four months, maybe that's six months.

And so the American people are going to be watching that.

FRANKLIN FOER: I want to just talk about a few events which may have slipped under the radar this week but seem pretty darn significant to me.

So, Donald Trump signed an executive order stripping lawyers at the firm Perkins Coie, which had represented Hillary Clinton in 2016 of their security clearances and other privileges, which follows a similar executive order which he signed stripping those same privileges of Covington Burling, who'd worked pro bono with Jack Smith.

Then earlier today the administration stopped a huge number of grants and funds that were going to Columbia University to punish them.

Dan, I just want -- just what's the pattern?

What are we seeing when we see all these things lined up together?

DAN BALZ: Well, I mean, we're seeing what he promised, which is retribution and some measure of revenge against the people that he thinks did him wrong over the last four years.

They've been quite systematic about that.

They've done it through the whole Justice Department in a variety of ways.

And now they've broadened it out into the private sector, if you will, and into the universities.

I don't think there's any doubt that Columbia is not the last university that's going to see funds stripped from them.

I think many, particularly elite universities, feel that they are on notice.

You know, he's done things to try to rein in the press, or to, you know, to target the press, as we know, particularly the things that have gone on with the press pool.

And all of this, you know, is part of his effort to dominate everything about the federal government and to accrue as much power.

In his hands as he can.

I mean, you know, Musk has gotten all of the attention and for a lot of good reasons because it's been - - you know, it's been so, you know, out front.

But another aspect of what this administration came in with the intention of doing is, as they've said, you know, deconstruct the administrative state.

So, there is a part of what Musk is doing, which is to, you know, cut government.

But there's another aspect of this, which is to bring government in all its forms under his control, whether it's to disregard Congress in terms of how the money was spent, whether it is to take power from independent agencies, a court case that, you know, that could go either way, you know, as this plays out.

So, there's just a lot that's happening.

And I think that it was quite notable what he did to the two law firms this week in particular.

FRANKLIN FOER: I think it's maybe fair to ask in the face of this retribution tour.

Where are the congressional Democrats?

Well, they are trying.

They unveiled this video after Trump's address to the joint session of Congress this week.

Seriously?

EUGENE DANIELS: I mean, I think the at its basis, they're way behind.

That trend is old.

It's like -- so it already is they're behind.

It just doesn't show a seriousness, right?

It shows that they are trying to do the viral thing, but you also do that by just being yourselves and none of them look like they were being themselves in those moments.

And I think what you're hearing from Democratic voters, and we've heard from them for a long time, is that they want them to be fighters.

I don't know if they wanted them to look like fighters like that, but they wanted them to be tussling with Donald Trump and doing something.

And I think the idea that you're going to do that by kind of making little short videos, there's something wrong.

KAYLA TAUSCHE: There's not agreement over that.

I mean, there's also a sect of the Democratic Party who believes that some pain needs to be felt for the voters to want to choose something different in the midterms.

And they think that things need to get bad enough and they don't need to be softening some of these blows and that the voters need to understand what they voted for to a visceral point where then they need to choose change.

And that's something that even James Carville has said, go into a strategic retreat and then go for the jugular when it -- FRANKLIN FOER: It begs the question, is there a counterfactual, is there an alternative strategy that they're just, you know, sitting on or avoiding?

I mean, It's easy for us to take shots at the cringe -- MICHELLE PRICE: But, I mean, you saw Senator Elissa Slotkin's response this week to President Trump's address to Congress.

That was well received by Democrats in the party saying, this is how we should be speaking.

This is how we should be talking about what Donald Trump is doing.

She tried to reach out to Donald Trump's voters, not by trying to reach the viral voters who are like the trolling internet parts, but people are concerned about costs.

People are seeing what's going on with the government and they think -- and she said in her remarks, yes, let's make it more efficient, but let's not do it so haphazardly.

She's speaking to the confusion that's out there in the American people.

And that was a message that you see some Democrats starting to cue in.

FRANKLIN FOER: Unfortunately, we need to leave it there for now.

Thanks to our panelists and our viewers for joining us.