President Trump recently announced that he was reducing tariffs on coffee and other food items, a reversal that Charlie Cooke, on today’s edition of The Editors, cites to blast the president’s tariff policy as a whole.

“This has been from the beginning just garbage. Garbage,” Charlie says. “They can’t decide what the tariffs are for. They change that every eight minutes. . . .

“I’ve seen presidents lie. . . . I’ve seen presidents fail to grasp the subject matter. I’ve seen presidents flail around and search for different arguments, test one by one the best messaging, and then eventually settle on whatever worked. I have never seen a policy that was over and over again in repeated cycles sold on completely self-contradictory grounds,” Charlie says.

Charlie says that he knows “that people have constructed this political worldview, this economic worldview around it. I know that they try to dress it up, but Donald Trump just likes tariffs. He just likes the idea of tariffs. He has this as a presumption, his priors, and he proceeds from there. And whatever it is that needs to follow from that presumption follows. It’s not working. . . . No one’s buying this. The tariffs are not popular.

“This has just been a total disaster,” Charlie says. “It’s been a disaster practically. It’s been a messaging disaster. And although I assume that he will go scorched earth if it happens, he should be praying that the Supreme Court comes in and tells him he does not have plenary power over tariffs.”

The Editors podcast is recorded on Tuesdays and Fridays every week and is available wherever you listen to podcasts.