American importers learned many lessons during the trade war waged during the first Donald Trump administration. But with trade policy these days changing overnight and tariffs in the triple digits, this trade war looks far different from its first iteration.

Lisa Goldenberg, president of Delaware Steel Co. and a regular “Marketplace” guest, told us back in 2019 what is was like navigating Trump’s first tariffs. She joined host Kai Ryssdal to explain how this time compares to last.

An edited transcript of their conversation is below.

Lisa Goldenberg: The part that's new is the amount of energy it takes to sustain this amount of chaos is more than everyday business. Navigating through one day, it's literal. The next day, it's conceptual. The next day, it's a notion. The next day, it's policy. That just requires an enormous amount of focus and energy. My job is to buy low and sell high. And what we learned from the last tariff experience is that what goes up must come down. So it's kind of a last man standing. The first sales out the door, you can make the most money. Whatever you're left with after you replace the steel at a higher cost and then have to sell it, you lose money. So the trick is to make enough that you don't have to give it all back in losses.

Kai Ryssdal: You've been doing this a long time. No pejorative intent there, but, look, you are deeply experienced in this.

Goldenberg: Yeah, 40 years.

Ryssdal: You have a wide network of contacts here and abroad. And I want to ask you two questions. First of all, what are the conversations you're having with your professional colleagues here in the United States about what the chaos of President Trump's trade policy is doing?

Goldenberg: Well, I think that steel is a unique environment, and that it's generally a very pro-conservative economic environment, and in particular, more than not pro-Trump. The level of chaos is not what people expected, and most people are saying things like, “Well, overall, we think that a lot of good is going to get done. It's just the way it's going to get done is not going to be the way I would do it, but it's all going to work out.” So I think there's a lot of kind of backpedaling on blanket support, but, long view, people think that this is going to go in the right direction, but the here and now is far too turbulent for anyone to stomach.

Ryssdal: What about then, the contacts you've made in your decades overseas, and the American reputation overseas?

Goldenberg: Well, overseas is a whole other thing. Canadians think that we've lost our mind and they're angry. And generally speaking, when you're having trade, quote, issues, unquote, you negotiate, you have summits, you discuss, and then you walk away saying, “Geez, we've got an issue. We better work on that.” But because the administration came in and said, “There's been issues, so we're going to deal with it, and this is how we're going to deal with it,” without actually coming to the table, it's like being served divorce papers when you didn't know there was a problem. So people are very, very betrayed.

Ryssdal: I was going to ask you whether you worry about the future of the American economy, but based on what you've said, I'm just going to ask you: How worried are you about the future of the American economy?

Goldenberg: I think that the next four, five months are going to tell a lot. If we can sort of get through the next four or five months, bouncing around some really crappy days, the market falling apart, some rallies, some nonsense, back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, we can get through it.

Ryssdal: What does “get through it” look like though, Lisa?

Goldenberg: It looks like a mess. This is the level of volatility and mind changing and lack of balanced forethought. And in this environment, with this president, there's a lot of emphasis on the stock market and growth, which really only pertains to the uber wealthy. For the rest of the group, the workers, the people that the president swore to stand by at the end of the day, there is no data that supports that tariffs create jobs, that tariffs improve the lives of the worker. It just doesn't track.