Yahoo Finance

White House, meanwhile, reportedly directing federal agencies to cancel all remaining contracts with Harvard University, that's as Trump continues his fight with that institution. For more, let's welcome in here Yahoo Finances Rick Newman. Rick.

Hey, guys, uh, I mean, you got to wonder, what is going on here with Trump? And so I dug into this a little bit. Uh, if you go back to the 2024 election, uh, Trump won, uh, pretty strongly, he won working class voters, and by a mile he won white working class voters. So I think part of what's going on here with this, uh, what you might call a war on the university set is Trump is playing to his base. This probably works for him politically. But Trump said something that hasn't gotten much attention that I, it got my attention, which is, what if we transfer some of those $3 billion or however much it is federal grants to Harvard? What if we transfer those to trade schools instead? And I thought, you know, if this were not something that Trump was tweeting out and probably only thought about for 5 minutes, this might actually be a good idea. You don't have to punish Harvard in order to invest more in, uh, working class Americans. But guess what? We actually have a significant shortage of exactly those type of workers. That's carpenters, uh, welders, electricians. Um, there there is a shortage of hundreds of thousands of those types of workers, and those are exactly the workers Trump is trying to help with the trade war. When Trump says he wants to bring assembly lines back to America, that's what That's who he's trying to help. Why not get more people into trade schools? And by the way, you don't have to punish Harvard or anybody, just make this a serious policy idea. Now, I don't think Trump is going to do that, but I detected a kernel of a good idea in this rampage against the university set.

You know what? It's interesting, uh, kernel of a good idea, but, you know, when I was a young lad, I thought maybe someday I could go to an Ivy or like a Harvard. It was aspirational for his base. It seems like the reputation of the Ivies has taken a significant hit. Um, it's a difficult question to answer, but do you see any sort of lasting impact on the on the mind space that they occupy in his bases being, this is where, you know, it would be a proud moment for the family if they got into a place like this?

Well, I mean, one of the things that's not that relevant to our audience, but this is a huge culture war issue for Trump. I mean, I I think he's he's got it he nailed it pretty well that elite universities did turn out to be bastions of wokeness, however you define wokeness. I mean, if you believe wokeness exists in the US, uh, in the US society, then if it exists anywhere, it exists at these elite universities. And then we saw the controversies with all the, uh, anti-Israel, um, protests at some of these some of these universities. And then, you know, I think Trump, given his audience, I mean, his audience is these people who just want to go back to what they consider bedrock bedrock values of the 1950s when things were simpler. Um, people didn't have so many opinions on so many complicated things. I mean, this this is just an easy target for Trump, uh, and his base. Whether it's going to I mean, I think with so many Trump policies, there's this huge question of, how much is this actually going to change things in the end? Um, I think there are still, I'm sure there's still plenty of demand for an Ivy League education. If Trump manages to keep foreign students away, um, that that would certainly hit their bottom line hard, I think. I think something like 25% of Harvard students are foreign. Um, but as with so many things under Trump, that's being litigated and a lot of Trump stuff gets under gets overturned. So maybe this will lead to some, you know, necessary reforms at some of these schools, but everybody's going to come out okay.

Thank you, Rick. Appreciate it.

Bye, guys.