A real resistance this time?
The people. Not alumni of the CIA, K street or Congressional lifers collecting checks on the Hill.
In a conversation with Hamilton College President Steven Tepper, former President Barack Obama once again addressed a critical moment in American/global affairs by speaking of the arc of the moral universe bending towards justice, as he often credits Dr. King profoundly having described in his time.
By now many have heard that New Jersey Senator Cory Booker spoke 25 hours straight on the Senate floor to rail against the policies enacted by Trump 2.0, and that Vermont Senator Sanders continues to tour the nation with NY Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to Fight Oligarchy. But Obama represents the fading neoliberal order with a gravitas (and charisma) few else today can wield.
During Biden’s administration, Obama attempted to be a moral rod in the ongoing terror in Gaza. Neither Biden nor Trump heeded Obama’s warning; arguably both of his successors exacerbated the situation in the Middle East to levels thought unimaginable in the civilized world post WWII.
This time however Obama spoke not of what the White House (or other nation-states) can do, but rather what institutions and once again people will have to do in order to resist, or more aptly fight for their values.
His most salient point, in my opinion, came when he spoke of individuals who work with Barack and Michelle Obama at their foundation:
..when you listen and you get a sense of other people’s priorities, lives, values, then you have the capacity to also reach people who do not agree with you on everything, who don’t think exactly like you or have the exact same priorities or perspectives as you do. That means that you can reach a broader audience..
Of course he is not the first person to convey this concept; yet this fundamental truth cannot be said enough.
Though many who have read/seen the conversation will focus on the following exchange (truncated for readability):
STEVEN TEPPER: ..It appears that many people in this country have lost not only trust in government, but maybe even more importantly, the relevance of democratic norms that undergird our government. Why has that happened? Does it matter? What can we do to repair it?
PRES. BARACK OBAMA: There are some bonds that transcend party, region, or ideology. There was a creed that we all stuck to.
There are these freedoms, a freedom of worship and freedom of the press and an assurance that if we go before the law, there will be an impartial process to make decisions. We all stuck to that, more or less..
I do believe that our commitment to those principles has eroded, and I think it eroded in part because the government itself got really big. What that meant is sometimes it felt distant and unresponsive..
Then finally, media. I think one of the most important aspects of our democratic practice is having a well-informed citizenry which is reliant on a free, objective, effective press..
If you’re a law firm being threatened, you might have to say, okay, we will lose some business because we’re going to stand for a principle. (Applause.) If you are a university, you may have to figure out, are we in fact doing things right? Have we in fact violated our own values, our own code, violated the law in some fashion? If not, and you’re just being intimidated, well, you should be able to say, that’s why we got this big endowment.
I say all this to say that the more we can encourage, I believe, space, institutions, practices that just get people talking to each other and working together on something in the real world, the more likely we are to break down some of that polarization and rebuild trust..
Those are the kinds of issues that we’re going to deal, we’re going to have to deal with it. And again, that’s going to be up to us actively, citizens, parents teaching kids, schools with their students to grapple with we’re not going to be — we cannot cooperate if we don’t see the same facts..
Given the location of the conversation, Obama’s unsurprisingly directed some of his commentary towards the current administration threatening universities and its students for exercising their right to free speech. On a larger scale, it’s also obvious he does not envy the new world order taking form.
Neither are the hundreds of thousands who protested this past weekend at Hands Off! demonstrations in more than 1000 locations across all 50 states:
Crowds of people angry about the way President Donald Trump is running the country marched and rallied in scores of American cities Saturday in the biggest day of demonstrations yet by an opposition movement trying to regain its momentum after the shock of the Republican’s first weeks in office..
Demonstrators voiced anger over the administration’s moves to fire thousands of federal workers, close Social Security Administration field offices, effectively shutter entire agencies, deport immigrants, scale back protections for transgender people and cut funding for health programs..
“Regardless of your party, regardless of who you voted for, what’s going on today, what’s happening today is abhorrent,” said Britt Castillo, 35, of Charlotte. “It’s disgusting, and as broken as our current system might be, the way that the current administration is going about trying to fix things — it is not the way to do it. They’re not listening to the people.”
At the turning point of the American Civil War in Gettysburg, when America was literally at its most divided, President Lincoln eloquently stated that a “government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.” The words that preceded that famous quote continue to inspire people today:
..that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion, that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain, that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people..
And it does not hurt that along with national protests, Democratic politicians speaking out and a fracturing Republican party over the administration’s tariffs policy, Wall Street’s ire is growing (as noted below).
Economic Fallout:
A Tariff Nuclear Winter:
“Trump's new tariffs are ‘larger than expected’ and the economic fallout, including higher inflation and slower growth likely will be as well,” said Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell. On Friday, with the specter of a recession looming nearer, “all three major stock indexes in the US fell more than 5%, while the S&P 500 dropped almost 6% in the worst week for the US stock market since 2020.”
While House Speaker Mike Johnson claims the Republican party will give President Trump the “space” to renegotiate trade deals (with more than 100+ nations slapped with new tariffs), others in the Republican party are starting to defect and “reclaim congressional authority on tariffs from the president.” Senator Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) co-authored a Senate bill with Senator Maria Cantwell, (D-Washington), and Representative Don Bacon (R-Nebraska) is responsible for the House version of said bill. Speaker Johnson is likely to prevent Bacon’s bill from reaching the House floor, and Trump is ready to veto Grassley’s bill (which as of this writing has not reached the 60 votes needed to overturn a presidential veto).
And the stock market continued to tumble into yesterday as the Dow Jones dipped 320 points (with a 4 day loss of 4500+ points), the Nasdaq dropped 2.15% (its 4 day drop is more than 13%), and the S&P 500 also declined again, this time 1.6%. News of dozens of nations wanting to negotiate new trade deals helped spark some uplift in stocks, but the Trump administration striking even larger tariffs on China once again sunk the market.
New trade deals ongoing despite tariff formula being askew:
Economists argue that “Trump’s formula relies on a flawed, underestimation of a key metric, resulting in inflated tariff rates for countries.” Specifically “Trump’s formula for calculating tariff rates for nations around the world is based on an elasticity rate lower than it should be in practice.” If the assumptions were correct, no tariff would exceed 14% while currently the highest tariff is 50%.
President Trump on Sunday defended tariffs by suggesting “sometimes you have to take medicine to fix something,” As a direct result of ‘Liberation Day,’ Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said more than 50 nations have come to the negotiating table. (as of this writing, new deals with those nations have not been announced.)
On Monday, White House trade advisor Peter Navarro said Vietnam’s offer to eliminate all tariffs would be rejected. Speaking on behalf of the administration, Navarro said nontariff cheating is the issue, such as “Chinese products being routed through Vietnam, intellectual property theft and a value-added tax.” Reports suggest the European Union (EU) offered a similar ‘zero-for-zero’ deal weeks ago and were also summarily rejected. In response to the EU offer, Trump said “The European Union’s been very bad to us. They’re going to have to buy their energy from us, because they need it and they’re going to have to buy it from us. They can buy it, we can knock off $350bn in one week.”
China rebuffs TikTok deal and promises more pushback:
Following months of negotiations in which ByteDance, American investors and the Trump administration reached terms on moving TikTok’s US operations to a new company with American ownership, the Chinese government nixed the deal wanting to renegotiate Trump’s tariffs first.
On Thursday, Vice President Vance said to Fox News - “To make it a little more crystal clear, we borrow money from Chinese peasants to buy the things those Chinese peasants manufacture.” The responses have been swift; perhaps the most popular (140M+ views on the Chinese microblogging site Weibo) - “We may be peasants, but we have the world’s best high-speed rail system, the most powerful logistics capabilities, and leading AI, autonomous driving, and drone technologies. Aren’t such peasants quite impressive?”
Upon threat of President Trump enacting an additional 50% tariff, the Chinese Commerce ministry responded “The U.S. threat to escalate tariffs on China is a mistake on top of a mistake and once again exposes the blackmailing nature of the U.S. China will never accept this. If the U.S. insists on its own way, China will fight to the end.” At midnight last night, the White House, in response to China refusing to lift its retaliatory tariff, increased the tariff on China an additional 50% to a total of 104% on Chinese goods. In response, “China’s Office of the Tariff Commission of the State Council said tariffs on U.S. goods will rise to 84% from 34% starting on April 10.”