Trumps Trade War: Exiger CEO Brandon Daniels on News Nation. ➡️GisermanGroup Gets YOU Noticed

Sharon saved her supply chain from cyber risk and ended the office goat debate. White House here now is supply chain expert Brandon Daniels who's the CEO of the risk management firm Exiger. Welcome, Brandon. Also, Greg Ip joins us. Greg's the chief economics commentator at the Wall Street Journal, which of course is President Trump's favorite newspaper. Particularly, he likes the editorial board there. He was saying something like that earlier. Thank you, Greg. Okay, actually, Greg, let me start with you. Not about the Journal's editorials or anything like that, but you've written yourself about how the ultimate goal you think for Trump is unclear. Now, we do see at least with Mexico this pause today that was announced. Does that clear things up at all? How do you feel now?

Well, I think the reason it's unclear is that all along Trump has offered two different motivations for tariffs. One is as a negotiating ploy to get movement from partners on things like drugs, fentanyl, trade deficit, etc. But he also talks about wanting like a return to an era when tariffs were permanently higher and a great source of revenue. Right? So I think it's still a little bit unclear. So even as he was talking, his own people were saying that Canada and Mexico were making progress on his demands that they do act on the border, he went ahead and imposed the tariffs. And the negotiators themselves from those countries were unclear on exactly what Trump was looking for. And I think that even if we do end up seeing a pause, delay, or a dialing back of the tariffs he announced on the weekend, everybody knows that he could reimpose them at any minute. And he is still talking about permanently higher tariffs later on. So I think that that's why I say it's a little unclear what is the end game here. Is it temporary tariffs now to achieve this short-term goal, or is it a world of permanently higher tariffs? No, I think it's an open question.

Right. I want Brandon to get your perspective on that. I point out, by the way, the Dow there, which we have on the screen, it was just in the green, now down a little. It was down like 600 points early today, but with the Mexico news, comes off those lows. Not a huge reaction, one or two percent even earlier. But Brandon, you're the CEO of a company that deals in supply chains, so I would have thought, boy, this is going to be like a lot of CEOs I've interviewed over the years about tariffs, they're going to be anti-tariff, blah, blah, blah. And then I read that you actually think that Trump, in the way he's dealing with this with a quote-unquote hardball strategy, is on point. That, you know, and that surprised me. So to pick up on what Greg is saying about the goals, from your perspective, and where you think he's right about this?

Yeah, yeah.