In a recent appearance on CNBC, veteran financial journalist and senior economics reporter for the business network, Steve Liesman, made headlines for two reasons.
First, the Pulitzer Prize-winning Liesman pronounced that “what President Donald Trump is doing is insane, it is absolutely insane.” Losing patience with the “eighth different reason” for Trump’s tariffs and citing the various and variable Trump administration justifications for them, Liesman says the instability is a major financial danger.
(Early on, tariffs on Canadian goods were purportedly largely a punishment for allowing fentanyl to cross the border, later progressing to being a bulwark against an alleged unfairness baked into the current Canadian-U.S. trade deal, which Trump himself signed in 2018 to replace NAFTA.)
The second reason Liesman made news was a simple statement he made before introducing his opinion — an expression of wariness about truly speaking his mind in a political environment where dissent often warrants punishment from the top.
“I’m gonna say this at risk of my job,” Liesman began his criticism, acknowledging that, though the President campaigned on and promised to promote a more “free speech”-friendly political climate, he is often accused of using his influence to stifle voices that don’t align with the MAGA agenda.
“I’m going to say this at the risk of my job. What President Trump is doing is insane. It is absolutely insane.”
— Republicans against Trump (@RpsAgainstTrump) March 12, 2025
CNBC’s Steve Liesman goes off on Trump’s reckless trade wars. pic.twitter.com/mldxXYjln3
Sticking to his assertion that tariff wars run by executive fiat are dangerous, Liesman repeated his “insane” critique multiple times.
Questioned about whether perhaps the “insanity” was part of Trump’s strategy, Liesman swiftly shut down the notion: “Insanity is not a strategy,” he said. Conceding that fellow journalist Kelly Evans was giving him a chance to opine on a “silver lining,” Liesman said “I’m a sunny person,” but declined to identify any positive aspect of the Trump actions.
An even bolder criticism made fewer headlines. Liesman said: “The other thing that’s not talked about, Kelly, is what’s going on within the administration in terms of how they’re treating the Constitution and laws — I think all of that is bad for the attraction of capital.”
[Note: Liesman shared the Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting in 1999 with staff of The Wall Street Journal for their coverage of the Russian financial crisis in 1998.]
Asserting that the U.S. needs “massive amounts of capital” to pay for what’s needed, to fulfill bond obligations and to keep stock prices high, Liesman said that instead it “seems that this administration is doing everything it can to chase foreign capital away.”
