The following is a lightly edited transcript of the June 3o episode of the Daily Blast podcast. Listen to it here.

Greg Sargent: This is The Daily Blast from The New Republic, produced and presented by the DSR network. I’m your host, Greg Sargent.

On many fronts at once, it’s suddenly sinking in how badly President Donald Trump’s policies are screwing over his own voters. Trump just lost his temper with Canada and launched a new trade war with that country that could hurt working-class voters, his people very much included. Whatever happens with that, the tariffs are continuing across the board. This comes as it’s becoming clearer by the day how badly Trump’s big budget bill will hammer Trump voters. And Trump himself recently admitted that his mass deportations are hurting farmers, a major GOP constituency, and hurting the economy to boot. So we’re checking in with economist Jared Bernstein, who has a new piece on his Substack arguing that the data is pointing to a softening economy—which means everything is poised to get worse. Jared is going to help us make sense of where we are on all this. Thanks for coming on, man.

Jared Bernstein: Thanks for inviting me, Greg.

Sargent: So The New York Times had this amazing piece the other day tallying up how badly the budget bill is going to hit working people. The House version will cut food benefits by hundreds of billions of dollars and it would knock over 10 million people off health care rolls. That’s going to hit a huge chunk of the working poor across this country. Can you talk about that?

Bernstein: Yeah. There have been lots of calculations trying to assess the damage here. There’s never been a budget bill that redistributes income more aggressively from the bottom to the top. This is Robin Hood in reverse on massive doses of steroids. They’re literally taking money from poor people and giving it to rich people. And anyone who knows anything about what it’s like to try to get by.… And [when] we talk about an affordability crisis—trust me—that’s a crisis for the bottom 20 percent, not for the top 0.1 percent. If you just combine the negative impact on the incomes of low-income people from this bill with the tariffs—which also disproportionately fall on middle- and low-income people because more of their consumption basket, more of what they buy falls under that import tax—this tax and service cut regime is incredibly punishing to low-income people.

One other point: It is consistently argued that Republicans won’t raise taxes. They signed a pledge, they’ll never raise taxes. And sure enough, they cut taxes all over the place. Well, they’ve belied that claim. They’ve raised taxes aggressively. Trump has done it, but they’ve stood by through the import taxes. That’s a tax. And as I said, it falls disproportionately on the most vulnerable.

Sargent: OK, so let’s talk about Trump’s eruption at Canada. On Truth Social, he suddenly ranted that Canada is putting a digital tax on American technology. He then said, “[W]e are hereby terminating ALL discussions on Trade with Canada, effective immediately. We will let Canada know the Tariff that they will be paying to do business with the United States of America within the next seven day period.” Now, when Trump starts using the word “hereby,” you know you’re in trouble. Trump is going to hit Canada with new tariffs. Jared, what does this mean? What does a ramped-up trade war with Canada look like?

Bernstein: Canada is an important trading partner, particularly when it comes to energy. So........

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