Transcript
Michael Negron on Tariffs and Small Businesses (Hour 1)
Nite Lite with Pete Schwaba and Greg Bach · Thu Apr 16, 2026
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Yeah, come on!
Here's Pete Schwabba and Greg Bach.
Dude!
Welcome to nightlight ladies and gentlemen.
Happy Thursday everybody.
It is great to be with you on this gorgeous night in the Season we like to call spring here in Wisconsin just an absolutely beautiful night and the perfect night to sit inside and gather the whole family around the radio and Let us entertain you prepare to be dazzled folks.
Am I setting the bar too high Greg?
I'm already
dazzled I'm dazzled and I've been working on the program.
So it's like when you can dazzle me.
I feel like it's just
Easy out there for those folks.
They're already dazzled.
You can feel it.
The energy is out there.
I'm
dancing on the cake.
I'm dazzled too.
Yeah.
Dom's dazzled.
Greg's dazzled.
I'm dazzled.
It
great to have your IMP Schwabba sitting just north in the state of my co-host Greg Bach.
And we are both along Lake Michigan.
Dom is in Madison, Wisconsin.
We make up the Otterhay Triangle.
How are you guys tonight?
How's it going?
I'm not doing too bad.
I'm doing too bad.
It's a beautiful day in Madison.
It's a beautiful day in the state of Wisconsin for the most part.
I love it.
I love it.
It
likes the weather.
Yeah.
I'm doing well as well.
Hung out with my dog today.
That was very, very nice.
Got some work done around the house.
And now I'm here with everyone here and Daniel on the live stream already.
Hello Thursday.
Hello chat.
Good afternoon, everyone.
Good evening.
If you want to get in touch with us, you can always call or text 855-752-484-2855-755.
Simply leave a comment on that live stream.
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And yeah, I'm having, I'm having a peachy day.
It was nice to not have like, you know, ominous clouds in the air and, and, and warnings.
Like last night it was, you know, I think we.
Heard tornado sirens in the county like Racine County.
They were far away, but they were still happening and so You know today just feels like it feels nice even though and we talked about this earlier There there are flood warnings across the state right now, right?
And please check the National Weather Service to find out.
There are a lot of counties that are part of this list.
There's a lot of flooding last night.
But please be aware of that.
Check it out.
We'll put the link in the show notes so you can find out.
But you can also always go to civicme.us for weather information.
But please, if you're in an area that's being affected by the flooding or getting a flood warning, take heed, be safe.
And you know, take care of yourselves.
That's all we want.
Make sure you guys are safe
and good to go.
And, you know, if worse comes to the worst, put on a nice pair of flood pants.
Don't underestimate the value of flood pants.
We've got Tony.
You see what I do, Greg?
When I say a clunker, I just keep talking before I can acknowledge there really wasn't much laughter.
Excuse me, but we're both laughing at what you just did.
That does not qualify as a clunker.
It was a reluctant laughter.
You're just wanting to bring up what happened yesterday.
If you would have said something about like, you know, flood pants and then neither one of us would react to it.
Then yes, you have a leg to stand on, but you said that thing and we're like, we chuckle.
All
right, fair enough.
I don't want to get into semantics.
Tony Zimmerman.
The live stream says I'd recommend listening with a gas fireplace going
well that work Tony whatever kind of fire you have at home It's outstanding and Tony says that really sets the mood and I agree We've got a great show folks tonight.
I want to My day was weird because I was doing all this research writing these scripts for a different project and I feel like we overused the word weaponize
One of the filmmakers was described as he weaponizes his creativity.
And I'm like, enough with the weaponize.
It's just, I
don't
like that.
Also doesn't
make sense.
Hear it all the time.
It's like, it's like you're trying to say, you know, like, well, I'm going to weaponize my ability to procrastinate.
It's just does nothing.
It makes no sense.
Yeah.
It weaponizes creativity to do what?
Make weapons?
Like, I don't like.
Like, I don't understand, yeah, I don't disagree.
I think there are a lot of words out there that we now use as, and also to me, using the word weaponize can also be very serious.
And when we say it all the time, then it just, it loses its overall effect.
And there are a ton
of
words in the English language, we do that too.
And I mean, it just happens all the time.
And gosh, now, I bet you, I bet you now, between now and let's say,
Tomorrow night show.
I'm gonna hear someone use the term weaponize at least twice in that regard.
I'm like, oh I'm
gonna weaponize
my fashion sense and put on some flood pants.
I'm gonna weaponize my gun and Yeah, right
It's appropriate.
It's own
inappropriateness.
So we agree on that.
Hey, Greg, we've got some winners and we've been reading
all week or the
last week and a half.
I would say about this great contest we've had with Milwaukee film and giving away tickets
to
the Milwaukee film festival.
And our all access winner.
Do you want to should we tell the people who want?
I think we need to recognize these people.
I've got the list here, but
I say let's go I'll say you go for it because I just realized I deleted that email and oh there we go.
I got now, but go ahead.
Okay, let's read some of the some of the grand winners the amazing winners from the The text to win contest we had last week in this week.
All right, go ahead.
Well, and it's great too here.
I'll read the the
the people who won daily and then you read the all access winner
because I
think that was, we had some really, what I love about this is regular textures, like very
loyal
listeners.
Anna, Annie, I'm sorry, Annie from Watertown was a winner.
Julia from Madison,
Dave
from DeForest, Dave texts us on the text line and on the stream, which I love.
Edward from Madison and our pal Brett from Brown Deer.
And then we do have an all access winner and that's exciting.
Congratulations to Joel from Milwaukee who won the All Access Pass starting tonight for the Milwaukee Film Festival, 2026.
Enjoy all those who won.
Enjoy the movies you went to.
And here's the thing.
Take some, don't take pictures during the movie, but take pictures like at the marquee or with people at the, you know, I want
to see
what you guys are up to.
And then you can text those pictures in via the Civic Media app.
Download that app.
And you can text in those pictures.
I want to see the fun you're having at the Milwaukee Film Festival.
Let us know the movies you're going to go see.
And folks, if you didn't win and you're going to the festival, still let us know what you're going to be up to.
We'd love to know the films you're checking out while you're out there.
So congratulations to everybody.
Yeah, it's fun when you see, and maybe everyone there can, maybe they'll all become friends.
Wouldn't that be fun?
I would
love
Oh my gosh.
They could weaponize their winning
ways.
That one didn't count cause Pete said it.
That one didn't count cause Pete said it.
Tony on the live stream says, are we weaponizing the word weaponize?
I think that's without question.
No, we're just ruining it.
You guys are here on a great night.
We've got outstanding things planned here for your, for your, your, your joining us tonight.
Wow.
That was brutal.
We, in just a few minutes, we'll have Michael Negron on.
He is a.
a senior fellow for the economic opportunity at the Center for American Progress and former special assistant to the president for economic policy.
So he knows more about the economy than I do, Greg.
That's what I'm hearing from
him.
There you go.
All right.
Well, it's good to know your limitations.
It's good to understand when we all need to learn something as I will be learning as well.
We're going to be talking about tariffs and that's going to be,
they didn't go away.
I'm going to weaponize my
disinformation.
Done with that word.
All right.
Oh, dude.
Now that you said that, you have no idea how much I can beat that into the ground.
Do not challenge me, Greg Bach.
Okay.
I'm going to start a counter.
I'm going to start a counter throughout the show.
How many times you said
it?
It's
also night like movie club.
So let's, uh, let's tell the people about that.
Great.
We got big things planned.
It's going to be a fun night.
Uh, we are checking.
Well, we've already watched the classic Rob Reiner film when Harry met Sally.
Some would say the, uh,
I would say the diehard of romcoms where it brought it back to life and inspired decades of all these movies that we've been watching for the past, you know, I mean, almost 40, almost 40 years of movies
like 30
something.
Okay.
The point is, is we'll be talking about that during the movie club.
We're going to talk about some great trivia, talk about how the movie was made.
I mean, in my opinion, this just the people behind the scenes are stars in my humble opinion, but then we'll be talking about our thoughts on the movie, you know,
what made us, what made us laugh, what we liked, what we didn't like.
And if you have an opinion, please drop comments in the live stream, drop comments on the text line.
We'd love to hear from you.
This is a classic film.
And I can't wait to talk about this because I mean, it is just a fun movie to watch.
So yeah, that'll be coming up in the second hour.
And also in the second hour, we're going to talk deeper on tonight's question.
Should we get into the question there, Pete?
Yeah, let's do the question of the night done.
Great.
Greg, why don't you share the question of the night?
Today is National Eggs Benedict Day, so We want to know what is your favorite eggs Benedict?
How do you like your eggs?
How do you like your eggs?
How do you like it?
Do you like them Benedict?
Do you like them?
Do you like them poached?
Do you like them salmon?
Did you like them over easy?
Do you like them weaponized?
How do you like your eggs?
That's called the callback in our
industry.
Do you like them with no Benedict whatsoever?
How do
you like
your eggs?
That's a question.
Scrambled.
I'm just going to say it.
I'm going to get
it out there
right now.
All right.
Excellent.
But text us in folks at 855-752-4842-855-756.
Let us know how you like your eggs.
You can also text us on the app or the stream on, if you're watching on YouTube, Facebook,
and ex-Twitter.
So let us know how you like your eggs.
It is National Eggs Benedict Day.
We got to celebrate that.
I think we have some stories though that we need to get to.
Yes, we
do.
We absolutely do.
Yes, let's weaponize them.
All right, Pete.
Yeah, we've
got,
was that, were you?
Saying that for me to introduce the story
if you want.
Yeah, I yeah, I mean, yes Well
introduce the story us we've talked our fair share about the war Greg
I would say it's
by and large the public opinion does not think it's going well over
of the people oppose it Yeah, but those in Congress apparently are voting in favor to keep it going and not stop it for the time being by a vote of in the house of 214 to 213 this was from NBC News
Uh, and almost down party lines, too.
I mean,
think there was one person from each party that jumped ship, but this is going to go on.
What's so weird, Greg, is what does that even mean?
Would that end the war if Congress said, hey, now wait a minute, like the president didn't even get congressional approval to start this war.
So what does
this vote even mean?
Well,
As far as I know, he doesn't have to get approval in the moment if there is a clear and present threat to the country, which there wasn't from Iran.
But I don't expect him to listen to anything.
I mean, this was the House failing to put guardrails on him.
Thomas Massey, a vocal critic of Donald Trump, a Republican from Kentucky, who is the guy in charge of saying release the Epstein files, voted to put guardrails on versus Jared Golden of Maine, who voted against this measure.
And I love it when this happens war and Davidson of Ohio.
He's a Republican just I'm present.
I'm here great good good contribution there war And but what's funny is that just yesterday the Senate also failed to do the same thing for the fourth time with Rand Paul Voting against Donald Trump and wait for it
John Fetterman of Pennsylvania voting for him because John Fetterman is a weirdo who
in my
opinion lied when he ran for office But yeah, I mean if they could vote all they want till they're blue in the face And I don't think he's gonna listen.
I don't think anyone's gonna you think Pete Hegseth is gonna listen to Congress, right?
And you got Mike Johnson the speaker of the house Who sided with Trump?
He's very religious sided with Trump over the Pope and said, you know, you know, the Pope should not go into political wars and like well the Trump
You know, President
Trump
already said he's weak on crime, so he has no crime policy.
They brought him into this.
The Pope just said, give peace a chance.
Like, yeah, that's
what he does.
Yeah.
So yeah, I mean, I don't, I didn't expect anything from the house.
I don't expect anything from the Senate and I don't expect Donald Trump or his cronies to listen.
So this is not surprising at all because they're cowards.
Agreed.
We are coming right back after this short break.
We're going to talk a little bit of sports in our big three things.
It's Peach Bobba and Greg Bach and Nightlight on the Civic Media Network.
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started.
Very influenced.
I've done the same thing too from time to time.
I'm like, welcome back to the
show.
Civic media.
And you know what time is doing there?
He's weaponizing the intro-outro music to get it to his advantage.
See, Dom, I can hear that.
That was bemoaning.
That was like, oh, what am I getting into
right now?
You're at four for weaponizing Pete Four.
I'm running it
down.
Only four?
Yes, ten, right?
It
feels like an eternity is
what it feels like.
Good God.
Maybe that's going to become our third story by the time I'm done.
Let's get back to our big three stories.
You know, one of my least favorite justices, I'm just going to come clean.
Clarence Thomas, I
nightmares about how he was confirmed and who he replaced Thurgood Marshall.
And he, he said on Wednesday on TV that.
He kind of just took a swipe at progressivism and said it's a political philosophy that is described as an existential threat to America, Greg, and the principles that founded it.
Yeah, it's free school lunch and not letting kids read Bridge to Terabithia that's ruining America, not pedophilia, frivolous wars, or trying to overturn elections for that matter.
What is he talking about?
Well, we wouldn't know that, Pete, because in this Yahoo!
news story, it says right here, Thomas, the Supreme Court's
Senior conservative members spoke broadly not referencing specific contemporary events or political figures to make his case So really he's just your uncle sending you that email.
It says forward dash forward dash forward dash forward dash Obama is a Muslim and his wife is a man forward dash He's right all he is is a useful idiot to Trump.
He's a puppet He is nothing and by the way, can I just say something too on the side here his whole bloviating about the the
the values of America and why we need to uphold what the framers had in mind.
Well, I don't think the framers also said like, hey, you know what, maybe our Supreme Court justices can get full blown worldwide trips financed from these billionaires out there and having houses paid for for my mom.
Don't come to me with your ideas of what American values are.
You are a corrupt piece of nothing to me.
And I despise this man.
Oh, you seem like
you're coming around on him.
I um His wife
helped His wife wanted to help orchestrate the overthrowing of our elections in 2020 that's right text messages are there his wife is absolutely a part of the problem too so as a couple they suck
Right.
And at least we had Merrick Garland on our side.
Okay.
So you're really digging in on that guy too.
All of a sudden, you know, too, I love when it's convenient that we say, well, the values of the founding fathers.
Oh, the slave owners, like, have we not evolved at all in 250 years?
I don't think we have to go back to them to quote or to find morality.
It's just kind
of
silly.
I mean, it's just absolutely ridiculous.
And honestly, like to me, all he's doing is covering up with those using those words.
It's very, very just poisonous rhetoric that now he just sounds like one of them.
When at a time when I felt like, you know, you could listen to you could listen to someone like a Scalia Antonin Scalia and despise everything he stood for.
But when he spoke on the the principles of this country and if you watch it, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Scalia
sitting together in a forum talking about the importance of upholding the Constitution, the importance of the processes at hand, everything that they're doing now to take it apart, like those justices stood for.
And this guy is just nothing more than, like I said, a puppet.
He's nothing.
He is a corrupt guy with a lifetime job who I cannot stand.
Sorry.
Come back.
That's called what you just did.
That was a good blow drying.
Like you, I am like literally
like,
beautiful rant.
Don't you ever hear that?
Like, oh man,
I can't
draw that good.
Like
you're never ever.
Hey, Tom, you ever heard anyone use that term for that?
Ever in your life?
No, I have not.
Not at
all.
You used
to cut hair.
You don't know the
blow dryer.
I know what a blow dryer is and I know how to use a blow dryer, but I've never in my life used the term blow dry or blow drying as a way of saying I have spoken a lot.
Well,
I didn't mean to weaponize the phrase.
Okay, let's get to our third big story.
This is interesting.
Tammy Baldwin throwing herself into the world of sports and by doing so, making herself, aligning herself with the people, really, because sports is getting so ridiculously expensive.
I
saw this, I think, on Yahoo, but
she is trying to, she's going to introduce something that would bring down the costs of sports on TV because it's getting too, uh, it's called the for the fans act.
It's getting
too
expensive and people are canceling subscriptions.
Here's the weird thing, Greg.
Um, it seems like when people cancel subscriptions because something is too expensive, that should bring prices down, but it's not.
Other people are just footing the bill and they're raising the prices for those who can afford it.
And I, to me, it's like, I used to get direct TV and all that.
I'm just like,
Part of me is I'm not that into sports anymore.
I am I'm still a huge fan But I'm not gonna overpay
and be
played for a second
and same here is I love baseball and I would love to watch the Brewers and I know that they have that Brewers dot TV deal But I remember at the first day that the opening day this year Someone's saying well, you can't watch it You have to watch it on Chicago sports channels and I don't understand that and the way it really was described in this article here it used this example of You know one of the problems is when the Packers took on the Bears
In Wisconsin people in Green Bay and Milwaukee could watch the game They could watch it on the local market for at a free outlet But there are five other media markets in Wisconsin and all of those were blacked out So her like part of the plan and we want to have someone on to talk about this so we can like understand because there's because this will affect as it says in the article This is going to affect.
Let's see here.
It will affect the NFL NLB NHL NBA WNBA MLS
NWSL.
So there'll be a lot at stake.
So what like to have is someone come on and really explain it, but good on Tammy Baldwin.
This has been going on for a while and we just want to make sports easier to watch and people can still make money.
People can still make money.
That's the best part.
It just don't have to gouge.
And by the way, Tony on the live stream says grow the mustache back Pete.
I'll think about it.
Okay.
Thanks, Tony.
Grow the mustache back while he sit by the fire.
Uh, the gas fireplace, Tony.
We are coming right back, folks.
We're going to break for the news.
And then when we come back, former special assistant to the president for economic policy, Michael Negron will tell us about tariffs.
It's nightlife with the beat and threat.
Welcome back.
We are having fun tonight, folks, and we are so glad you're here.
It's a Thursday night here at Nightlight, and we are doing the Nightlight Movie Club in hour number two.
And tonight's movie is when Harry met Sally.
Get your Harry Met Sally trivia ready or knowledge and be part of the fun as we break down the movie and discuss this classic rom-com in hour number two.
Our question of the night is, how do you like your eggs in honor of National Eggs Benedict Day?
We've got a variety of answers so far and probably some I haven't even thought of.
So be part of the fun there and share with us how you like your eggs.
And we will do the same, and that's a reason enough to tune in.
Right now, it is my pleasure.
Our next guest is a senior fellow for Economic Opportunity at the Center for American Progress and a former special assistant to the President for Economic Policy.
It's our pleasure to welcome our first and only guest of the night, Michael Negron.
Hi, Michael.
Happy to be on, and I like my scrambled.
Boom.
Love it.
Write that down.
Scrambled.
I have to say, that's kind of the only way I can eat them.
unless they're
like, that's the same with my friend.
She's like, I can eat eggs only scramble.
I'm like, I need to understand why, but that's not for right now to talk about.
Those are deeper scientific discussions.
We could put a tariff on these questions and
ruin
everything.
Um, Michael, it's great to have you here.
Uh, before we let's jump in, but you know, for those listening who might be like me,
I do not totally understand how tariffs work.
So if you could just sort of explain that, and then in your opinion, what kind of effect on the economy is the president hoping they have?
Yeah, well, look, tariffs are basically a tax.
They're kind of like a toll.
Tariffs are a tax that a business, an individual, whoever it is that is trying to bring in a product.
from another country into the United States.
It's something they require to pay at the port of entry.
It's basically just that.
Now, historically, for quite some time prior to this administration, we had a fairly limited set of tariffs in place.
The first Trump administration amped up the tariffs on China, the Biden administration, we largely kept those in place.
But for most countries there weren't really the tariffs are fairly limited We had this you know steel and aluminum tariffs that the Trump first Trump administration put into place that Maintained that stayed in effect through the Biden administration, but for the most part it wasn't that It wasn't a big issue that if you were a business importing a product that you had to be thinking about You know which countries are coming from do I need to count how much one material is in it versus another and then Trump
Imposed this broad and sweeping set of country by country Tariffs that just ushered in a whole new regime where just beyond having businesses pay these additional taxes that they then in turn Pass on to consumers for the most part.
I mean there've been a number of studies that show that the vast majority of these Taxes end up getting borne by the consumers But it's also the case that if you're a business you got to do a lot more paperwork now
And there has also just been a bit of uncertainty.
There's a Erika York of the Tax Foundation did an analysis and found that the Trump administration had changed tariffs more than 50 times since launching them.
And we now have a situation where the Supreme Court struck down that first big regime of tariffs that Trump put into place.
So his administration used a different authority to put in place a 10% across the board tariff that's going to be in effect until
about mid july and then congress either has to extend them or they have to go away and what the president has said is that well my team is going to find other authorities to make all these tariffs permanent so if you're a business right now and you're trying to plan for summer for back to school for halloween for the holidays whatever your specialty is or whatever your hot seasons are there's a lot of uncertainty about it but if you're buying a lot of products from overseas it's not clear what you're going to be paying
in July, August, September.
And so that just creates a lot of anxiety and the overall effect on the economy besides just raising prices.
And there was a study from Albert Cavallo and some other economists at the Harvard Business School that found, excuse me, that found that the Trump tariffs had boosted inflation by about 0.7%, which doesn't sound like a lot, but when you're talking about the difference between 2.3 and 3% inflation, that's pretty big.
And it also just kind of slows the economy down.
The job market has slowed down.
And so when you look at April of 2025, it's a real dividing line in a lot of things.
You can look at what the job market looked like, what inflation looked like pre-April and post-April.
And it's a major difference.
And so this is kind of a self-own on the part of the president for a man who was elected to lower prices and get the economy
moving.
Something you just said there that really interests me because like in all your experience whether working within the White House or outside of the White House You know, we've seen presidents.
We've seen tariffs being invoked We've seen them being put on, you know various products or countries or whatnot, but but what we don't see is the uncertainty of I'm gonna tariff this country 25% well now I'm not gonna tariff them I'm gonna tariff them 100% well now I'm not gonna do anything at all and then next week it's 30%
that sort of instability in of itself has its own repercussions.
And we saw that early on with the stock market.
But from your opinion, for your opinion is, or what is your opinion on that?
Like, do we get used to that?
Or the fact that we just don't usually see that with the president being so incapable of making a decision and sticking to it for a long amount of time that it can't help the country and its growth, right?
Exactly right the uncertainty is it beyond the costs that the actual cost of paying those taxes the uncertainty is a big problem and as you pointed out Particularly last year Those numbers often change and they'd seem to change on a whim Someone would do something he didn't like and he threatened some massive regime of tariffs and then he would back off It's kind of like watching my son play Roblox you get with his friends like you get really angry and he'd be cursing
friend out and then the next day they'd be like nothing ever happened and you know sometimes like we see Trump he threatens massive tariffs on he just did it a couple days ago he was unhappy with the China and its participation in the Iran conflict and he threatened to double their tariffs or something and then this morning I think I was reading in the paper that he is now insisting that China has promised to not send any weapons to Iran and so
that is not something that if you're, you know, if you're just reading the newspaper and it doesn't matter to you, it might actually be amusing.
But if you are a business, if you're a toy store in a neighborhood that gets most of your products from overseas, you're a retailer that gets products from overseas, you read this and it's very alarming.
And so think about if you are, and I've heard this just in the line of my work, businesses who prior to the tariffs,
Things were going well.
They were thinking about expanding, adding facilities.
There was a business owner that I talked to a few months ago and I cited them in a piece that I wrote around Christmas where they had planned to build a warehouse that was
going to
save them a ton of money because they wouldn't have to rent out warehouse space.
It was going to be a big deal for them.
And they just decided not to make that investment because they just weren't confident.
And so if you replicate that across the economy, I think that's a big reason we have gone from
in the first quarter of 2025, about 120,000 jobs created a month.
And then you look at April and beyond of 2025, and it was basically net zero.
That's how we
ended
up having only 181,000 jobs created in 2025, which is the worst year for job creation outside of a recession since 2003.
And so it just really makes people pump the brakes.
They pump the brakes on hiring, they pump the brakes on investing.
And I think that's why you're seeing
this kind of low higher low fire economy investments are not being made other than by AI who are you know per virtually all the investments happening in this country are in support of AI but when you look at the real economy it's it's really been slowed and so I think that's where the uncertainty really plays out and again that's on top of people just paying more because of the tariffs but when you don't know what you're going to be paying in a few months that just makes it even worse.
Our guest is Michael Negron.
He is a senior fellow for Economic Opportunity at the Center for American Progress and a former special assistant to President Biden for Economic Policy.
He joins us now over the stream.
We're talking tariffs.
Michael, I admit, when the first talk of tariffs started in early 2025, I got really freaked out.
Everyone was sounding the panic button.
Pardon me.
And to hear you talk, they should be.
But what do you say to people who say that tariffs haven't really affected their lives yet?
And I don't even know that they've affected mine.
They probably have in ways I don't know.
But what do you say to those people?
And then when can we expect it to get really bad if this persists?
Well, I'd say a couple of things.
First, right at the beginning, there were a number of predictions of major economic catastrophe that I don't think bore out.
And part of the reason is that the president ultimately backed off a bit He came in really hot on the tariffs and then backed off in a number of ways and made exceptions for example, they came in initially intending to apply the tariffs on China and all Apple equipment and then you know the CEO of Apple Reportedly went around the White House and got some exceptions and so they they backed off in a way that the tariffs went from being
terrible to merely horrible.
And what we saw was just inflation has been elevated.
And I think people are seeing it.
You may not think that if you thought it was going to be a doubling of prices, that no, that's not it.
But people are paying hundreds more than they would not have been paying because of the tariffs.
The Senate Joint Economic Committee did a study that found that in the president's first year in office, the typical household paid about $1,700 in tariffs.
That's more than $1,000, more than they would have paid.
I have a colleague at CAP who just did an analysis.
His name is Jared Birxing.
He was the chair of the Council of Economic Advisers for Biden.
He did like a hypothetical, what would have been the economy?
What would have been the state of the economy but for the president's
tariff policies and he found that we would have grown a full percent faster and inflation would be about a half point lower.
And so, you know, some of this is the the president promised to bring costs down and promised to stabilize the economy and people are more unhappy now than they were under Biden.
We have we just hit in the Michigan consumer sentiment survey
Just fell to the lowest it's ever been 70 years lower than it's ever been and and you know, maybe that's a brief Decline due to the Iran war and it'll jump back up, but it's been pretty persistently low polls show that people just aren't happy And so I think we are seeing the impacts.
We are seeing it in an economy that just kind of seems stuck in the mud costs that seem persistently high and then We have this war that has been there's been underway for six seven weeks and it's
causing energy prices to really shoot up.
And the impact of those prices of the rising costs of gasoline, of diesel, of fertilizer, of jet fuel, that will make its way throughout the entire economy.
And we may be in store for an actual 70-style rebound in inflation, where we head back up to 4%, 5%.
And then that, I think that will really get people down on the economy.
That is the voice of Michael Negron.
He was a economic advisor, former special assistant to the president for economic policy.
He's talking tariffs with us here at Nightlight.
We will have more with Michael after a very short break.
Dave on the stream says, hardboiled, scrambled and omelet.
That's how he likes his eggs.
Those are all
great.
What I like that is that people sent in like full paragraph descriptions of their egg choices.
So like I'm sitting here going, I like over easy.
Other people are like, let me give me a recipe card.
Here you go.
Don't mess
it up.
What's that?
What did you say, Michael?
Sorry.
I said, is it an omelet?
Just another version of a scrambled egg.
Yeah.
It's
like, it's like a sneaky.
It's like Picasso went after, you know, it's like, it's Cubis.
I don't know.
It's still delicious.
I don't care.
I call it a covert scramble, but that's me.
Tony Zimmerman says, feel free to ignore my comments.
Never, Tony.
All right.
We are coming right back after this very short break with our guest, Michael Negron.
It's Greg and Pete and nightlight on the Civic Media Network.
You're listening to Civic Media.
Find the latest news, information, and archives of all your favorite shows on the Civic Media website, civicmedia.us.
Welcome back.
This is Night Light.
Great to have you with us, folks, on this beautiful Thursday night here in the state of Wisconsin.
Nightlight Movie Club happens after the news at the top of the hour and after we read some of your texts to our question of the night, which is in honor of National Eggs Benedict Day.
How do you like your eggs?
We are talking about the movie when Harry met Sally in the second hour.
We'll do a deep dive into that.
That should be fun.
Right now we've got a few more minutes with our current guest, Michael Negron.
He is a senior fellow for economic opportunity at the Center for American Progress and he is answering
Very patiently answering our questions about tariffs because I feel like I have an extremely rudimentary or basic understanding of them.
Michael, a recent Wall Street Journal article claimed that the Trump administration is ready to start accepting claims for refunds of tariffs after the recent Supreme Court decision went against tariffs.
Will those refunds actually happen?
And how much are we talking here that will be paid back to these people?
What is that going to do to the economy?
Well, they are obligated to give refunds.
The Supreme Court ruled that the authority that the president used for these tariffs, which had never been used this way before, it's a law called the International Emergency Economic Powers Act that historically has just been used when the United States is in a conflict with somebody and imposes sanctions.
So pictures were
War with the country or we're having issues with the country and for national security reasons we post sanctions He used that law to justify all of these tariffs and Supreme Court said it was illegal and so those tariffs should never have been in effect so more than I think it's around 200 billion dollars in tariffs were collected under that authority and they are obligated to pay them back and so what the administration announced was they were putting up this portal Where businesses can apply to get
that reimbursement but it my understanding is that that will cover about two-thirds of the tariffs that have been paid.
They've said that there are some there's some tariffs that they think are not eligible because too much time has elapsed and so that could be the subject of lawsuits and we could see that play out but for the other two-thirds they have committed to I think review for several weeks or it'll take a month or two to make decisions
And so that represents some recognition of the Supreme Court's decision.
Now, a number of the folks who sued the administration and other observers have said, hey, the government already has this information.
Why are you making people apply for it?
You should just refund these tariffs automatically.
By making people apply, you're making people jump through hoops, and there will be folks who just
don't get it together in time or don't have the records or what have you to do it.
And so it's good, I guess, that they have recognized reality and put into place a process.
You know, right after the decision was made, when asked about refunds, the president said something to the effect of, oh, I'm sure this will just play out in the courts.
So the fact that they are putting up a form on Monday is a good thing, but they aren't making it easy for people.
And I find that just unacceptable because this is something they chose to do over to everybody, right?
This is not a
favor they were doing to the American people.
They were imposing attacks on everything coming into the country.
And then when the Supreme Court says it's illegal, they're saying, well, now you need to come ask for it and present records and all these things.
And I'm sure they just have the money sitting there in a bank account somewhere, you know, at a fifth, third or a Chase bank.
Michael, you know, we're talking about at home right now, but I want to take it to a global scale.
You mentioned it before as far as China.
How does the, I mean, these, these tariffs have had major effects on our relationship with other countries.
I mean, and I'm not even talking about like Canada.
I'm talking about countries where he is praising like China and Russia, their leaders, but then throwing tariffs in their faces at the same time.
That again brings a sort of inconsistency that I can't imagine these leaders who I'm
You know, I don't want to get in the room with some of these guys.
They don't respect us or care.
They think, well, we'll get around it somehow.
I mean, how is this affecting us on the global stage as well?
Well, I think what we see is not great evidence of strategy here.
The foundations of what the president is doing, and it's something that the Biden administration tried to grapple with as well.
And that is this.
A lot of what we need is made in countries that are either not our friends,
or in places at risk.
So we get a lot of the vast majority of semiconductor chips, which are going to everything, not just your computers, but into your cars, into your phones, all kinds of devices are made in Taiwan.
And now Taiwan is an allied country, but Taiwan is in a risky area.
And the Chinese have made more threats against the future independence of that country.
And so there's a recognition.
Hey, we should figure out how to make more of this in the United States.
And so the Biden administration worked with Republicans in Congress to pass the Bipartisan Chips Act, which is putting more money into building a domestic semiconductor industry.
So those are legitimate concerns.
And so there should be a patient strategy to strengthen our supply chain.
So we are not so vulnerable to the fact that a lot of the metals we need are in Russia and China and things like that.
But in order to do that, you need allies.
You need friends to help you
have that kind of strategy because the fact that we are vulnerable also means that countries like France and the UK and Italy and Spain and Japan, Korea, all these countries that are democracies all share the same anxiety.
Instead of trying to organize those friendly countries to have a shared industrial strategy where we're trying to make sure that we're more resilient in the case of a future pandemic, we're not relying upon these dictatorships for the materials that we need.
Instead, just
went on his roof and just fired a gun in every single direction and put a tariff on everything that walked.
And that ends up wasting a lot of goodwill that we could have been using to actually have a plan to build more of these things at home.
I think a perfect case study of this that's just similar, not on the exact topic, but shows the lack of strategy is that, you know, in the case of Iran, the Iranians closed the streets of Hormuz, which cut off
20% of the oil that the world gets.
And in order to help deal with that, the president removed sanctions against the Iranians themselves, enabling them to make money while they were being attacked, removed sanctions on Russian oil, which counter to our strategy, our commitments in Ukraine.
And so this is someone who's sort of flying by the seat of his pants here, and it's not really helping our country or making it stronger or bringing costs down.
Michael, great stuff.
Thank you
so
much
for being really appreciate
that.
Yeah.
And we liked your egg choices too.
So have a great night.
Michael Negron.
Thank you so much for your insights on terrace.
When we come back, it's the night light movie club.
And we're going to read some of your texts after the news.
This is Pete Schwabba and Greg Bach night.
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