New show: NewsReal with Joe & Niall

[Alejo]

Ahh, inside joke that indeed, "brings me back." (to this morning ;)

and to like 1929 ;)

 

[Ellipse]

Coming up in NewsReal...

Liberation Day: Trump Tariffs Whole World to 'MAGA'​

Here is the transcription done by AI (part 1):

Joe: It's all gone quiet.

Niall: It's morning in America.

Joe: It is?

Niall: Trump style.

Joe: What?

Niall: Morning in America, it was when Reagan announced big tax cuts. "Hello everyone, it's morning in America." Except this time it's liberation day.

Joe: (singing) Springtime for Hitler and Germany. Winter for Poland and France.

Niall: It's funny, you know, 200 years of free trade and open markets.

Joe: Huh?

Niall: 200 years of free trade, open your markets or we'll blow your port to pieces, you know?

Joe: And now it will blow you up if you don't.

Niall: And now it's "get out. Get out. Get away from me. We don't want your stuff."

Joe: "Leave me alone."

Niall: There's too much. It's almost like you all did it too well. "We can't handle all this stuff. Go away." Yeah, finally, the Trump wave function, I suppose, has collapsed after tariffs off and on again, nonstop. Turns out he was serious, very serious. So serious. He had the big, beautiful chart made up. Did you see the chart? Wasn't it a beautiful chart?

Joe: Best chart ever.

Niall: Announced liberation day, April 2nd. He called it liberation day ahead of the speech. Anyway, we shouldn't be surprised. Trump, there was a clip I saw.

Joe: It's so much murka.

Niall: You remember his liberation day? You remember after his formal acceptance, inauguration speech? which was indoors this year. Then he went to the sports arena in DC and they gave a separate speech there. and then that's when he sat at the table and began executive orders and throwing the pens. Well, in that speech, one of the things he said was, I think tariffs, such a beautiful word. Tariff is the most beautiful word in the dictionary. That should have been a clue as to how serious he was. Of course, there's also clips going viral of him speaking in the 80s about the fundamental problem in the United States. Back then it wasn't China, it was Japanese consumables, flooding the market, hurting US companies and workers. So this is, this is Trump's stick since, you know, this became an adult.

Joe: He's been an anti-globalist forever.

Niall: Yeah. I suppose anti-globalist. But he's not even, it's not even, I wouldn't even, that term wouldn't even mean, it might mean something to him. now, everyone uses it, but that's almost too ideological. It's just more like.

Joe: It's not ideological, globalization is a very real thing. It's an ideology, but it's very real. I mean, that's what we're talking about here. That's what he's talking about is globalization.

Niall: Globalization is- He never uses that word though. He never uses that word himself. It's they're killing us, they're stuffing-.

Joe: Well, that's what he's referring to.

Niall: Yeah.

Joe: It's the economic version of Alex Jones' globalist. It's the globalist. Yeah. But it's kind of weird because, yeah, it's kind of what-. I mean, it wasn't hard to predict, or not predict, but interpretation of what his second term was going to be about. It was going to be about protectionism. Do you remember I said that? Do you remember? I said that?

Niall: global economy? As a result of protectionism in January.

Joe: I said it would wreck it because he was going to undo the entire global system that has existed for the past few hundred years basically by reverting to a protectionist kind of trade policy.

Niall: So is he nuts or does he genuinely think the US doesn't get a battering itself in this process?

Joe: Well, it does. There's a remaking of the kind of global trade. It's hard to, I don't know, the whole thing's a bit strange.

Niall: I'm trying to understand the rationale.

Joe: Whose rationale? Trump's?

Niall: Trump's, but also Besson's. He's a hoity-toity guy, like big time Wall Streeter before he became US Treasury Secretary. Very much patrician, family background, super affluent, and he's totally on board. and he's trying to explain the rationale to Tucker Carlson.

Joe: The main rationale, I think- He agreed with it. He didn't want him acting, you know? Yeah. I think Trump's living with a problem, living with the results of 20 plus, 25 years of, you know, empire, neoliberal empire building. And that empire building was based on the system that Trump is trying to. undo now were basically manufacturing, primarily all manufacturing or most manufacturing will be done by other countries like China and other countries and the US would buy all of that. But those other countries would be kept in check by American military prowess and American imperial. Imperial influence basically, you know.

Niall: And social programs.

Joe: Yeah, and all the stuff, USAID and all that kind of stuff. Basically Empire. Empire and the US military might would keep those manufacturing countries, basically the poor people would do all the work, would make all the stuff and America would buy it from them. But then with the American dollar is a reserve currency, petrodollar, et cetera. America was pretty much safe economically from that kind of situation. And it would be awesome. There would still be demand for dollars. The dollar would still be king. American economy would still be fine. That's what we lived with. And America has done very well under that system. It's an unbalanced system, but it has done very well under that system. But the problem is that the idea of America being able to keep other major countries, China and lots of other different countries that will be the manufacturing base. And we would supply raw materials, either supply raw materials or manufactured goods, that they would be able to keep them under control via threats and by American dominance, basically military, diplomatic. political dominance hasn't worked out basically. So America and the last, you know, that attitude or that approach over the last 25 years really before, you know, since the nineties, I suppose. You can go back for that obviously, but, you know, in terms of the antagonism and the aggressiveness that really came on scene in, you know, in the 21st century basically. post 9-11, 9-11 was part of it, to expand America's military power around the world, you know, the project the New American Century, project American military power around the world, all that kind of stuff that was designed to keep those manufacturing countries, the poorer manufacturing countries in check. basically, you know, you're standing at their doors basically saying keep working or we'll beat you, and keeps planning those goods. That hasn't worked out because it was obvious that it wasn't going to work out. We've talked about this before about technological progress and all those kinds of things. Nobody did a good assessment into the future type thing. Well, they did obviously in terms of that's why 9-11 happened. That's why you have the quote unquote war on terror, the projection of American military power around the world was in order to keep those other potential peer competitors in check. But maybe they did factor in hubris, whatever. But they didn't factor in the fact that they wouldn't be able to contain those countries forever, basically, you know what I mean? And with the development of technology and all that kind of stuff, the spread of technology and technological advancement, and then number of people in those countries and the natural resource in those countries. Here I'm talking specifically about China and Russia, but other countries as well. They're the two leaders basically, but there are others coming up behind, you know, Asian countries, India, et cetera. You're never going to be able to stop them forever from actually being a real peer competitor. and both Russia and China have developed into real peer competitors, both militarily and economically over the past 20 years. To the point now that America has lost that ability to enforce compliance, economic compliance by military means. All bets are off basically. So it was never really, they never really, it was really, I suppose it was really in the last, yeah, particularly since 9-11, but it was capping before that, but America being aggressive, being threatening and unfair and invading countries and all that kind of stuff, pissing off other countries, other major potential peer competitors. That was, that's never, that's not really the way, you know, trade works, if you know what I mean. Like, I mean, Trump's trying to undo the idea of trade here. Like, I mean, the whole idea of surpluses and so on. His whole idea that it's a problem and he's going to tear off these countries that have this trade imbalance, basically, or they're running a deficit with certain countries. I mean, that's how trade has worked forever. It's not unusual that I, for example, imagine I'm a country, I'm one person, whatever, I would buy more of a certain thing from another person than I sell to them. It's not strange. That's how trade works. What is trade meant to be? Everybody buys exactly the same amount of stuff from everybody else. Do you know what I mean? There's always a complete balance. I mean, there's different resources. Different countries have different resources, different proclivities, different histories, whatever, in terms of what they manufacture and stuff.

Niall: The US is always down on everyone. The US's balance is always down. No one else's is always down with everyone else.

Joe: But it's more complicated in that sense because here we're just talking about manufacturing. But most other countries in the world run a deficit with the US in terms of services, financial services, IT services and all that kind of stuff. There's vast billions of dollars that that are purchased in terms of services from America by other countries.

Niall: Are they not included in the trade services?

Joe: No, Trump's not looking at them, but they should be, but they're selectively just not, they're selectively ignoring those because they want manufacturing back. And Trump wants manufacturing back because it base that whole situation that transpired over the past 20. period of neoliberal imperial expansion, that economic model that they pushed, that hurt the kind of rust belt in the South, particularly in terms of the lost manufacturing jobs that were outsourced, not necessarily outsourced, but basically shut down in America because other countries were manufacturing products that America was buying. That hurt the kind of rust belt and southern states, southern part of the country basically, in particular, where most of that kind of manufacturing. uh, was based. And so you could say that Trump is basically, you could maybe be cynical and say that he's just pandering to his base basically, but trying to increase manufacturing, domestic manufacturing, because that will benefit his, his supporters basically, his voters, people who vote for him.

Niall: If it's just that, why has no one done this before Trump? Why is he the only one? Why was it not obvious in Washington? And why is that?

Joe: Like I just give us, I just give a history of it. ever since 9-11, you know, of the plan that they had, the idea that they had and how it didn't pan out, you know, a lot has changed in the past 20 years.

Niall: So would you say that DC as a whole is with Trump on this?

Joe: No.

Niall: Ah, so they don't agree with it?

Joe: No.

Niall: They want to keep going.

Joe: It's a cancelling of the neoliberal imperial outreach agenda. They're not happy about USAID being mothballed and all that kind of stuff. It's just part of it, basically. It's part of cost saving, money saving. It's a retooling of the American economy to be more protections, like I said, to go back to more free trade, strict free trade. But he's being a bit extreme about it in the sense where he's demanding that whatever deficit we run with this country, we're going to impose tariffs so that we don't have to cancel that deficit we have with them. Basically, we're going to stop buying their products. We're going to put tariffs on them. to force manufacturing back home. I mean, it's a means to an end in a certain sense. You could in theory go back once he supposedly achieved what he wants to achieve, which is bring a lot of manufacturing back to the US, make America a manufacturing powerhouse again. Then you could go back to, you would run deficits with different countries based on what, but the overall, there would be a kind of a sea change in a certain sense where America would run much less of a deficit with other countries than it had previously, but there would be a loosening or a a softening of these tariffs against other countries once manufacturing has been brought back home by the imposition of these tariffs on everybody. Everybody gets tariffs, even the penguins. They just had a calculation and somebody just ran numbers through a program. you wrote a program or whatever to input all of the countries in the world. Just get the full CAA fact book of all the countries in the world. Put that in. Then put in all the numbers from the Treasury Department of all the deficits. Spit it out. put it on, put it on a board, hold it up in front of everyone and go, oh, oh, yeah, well, you've actually, yeah, you technically have include every single independent, technically independent country or pseudo nation state on the planet.

Niall: And one of them just has pink.

Joe: And one of them has no people. Yeah, but that was the program. I mean, we're not going to choose. We ran this to make it efficient, right? We're not going to do it by hand.

Niall: I have I have an explainer for how they came up with the formula. It's going to make you pull your hair out. And you're right. So. I didn't know that. Services are separate.

Joe: They shouldn't be because it's still money. That's because he wants manufacturing.

Niall: The US has a trade imbalance in goods with the European Union. And that's what Team Trump's highlighted. That's 200 and something billion a year accumulated. And separately, total bilateral trade in services between the EU and the US. was worth 746 billion euros in 2023. The EU exported 319 billion of services to the US while importing 427 billion euros worth of services from the US, resulting in a services trade deficit on the EU side of 109 million. I thought it was all the same.

Joe: It reduces the manufactured goods. Physical goods, it reduces that deficit to something like 70 or 80 million or something like that. 70 or 80 billion, not 400. Or not 300? in what order.

Niall: If you're a nuts and bolts person looking at the world, it's hard things that matter, right?

Joe: Yeah, but it's money. That exposes that it's not just about the money, right? Because if it was just about the money, it would be much less of an issue, right? If it was just about the... the official trade deficit and trying to reduce the American debt and all that kind of stuff.

Niall: Who works in services? It's not the lower 50% of the working force.

Joe: No, probably not. Not mostly, no. They're white collar workers. Exactly. So he doesn't care about that. So this is the formula for- But it's to bring back manufacturing, which is what he's been open about.

Niall: Yeah.

Joe: attempt to bring back manufacturing.

Niall: This is from Newsweek. So they were trying to find out from the White House. So how did you come up with these figures for that awesome chart? If you do a word search for, what's the end? According to analysts. So how Trump's tariff rates were set. According to analysts, and later White House clarification, each country's tariff rate was based on the US trade deficit with the trade deficit with that country divided by the value of that country's exports to the US. Trump then cut that number in half saying he was being kind. While Trump originally claimed the tariffs would reflect not just the trade deficit, but also non-monetary barriers and quote, cheating. expert believe the administration used a quick, simple formula to push through the policy. So what that means, number one, they're China. Tariff charge to the USA. That's bullshit. That's not a tariff charge to the USA. 67% is the trade deficit the US has vis-a-vis China. It's not a tariff from China. It's how successful they've been in sending selling products to the United States. It's not a fucking tariff. So you can't call it a reciprocal tariff. And even the never Trump media is going along with that. That's bullshit.

Joe: It's not a certain percentage of a trade deficit. with China, for example, is a function of Apple, for example, and many other American companies having their production facilities in China, making iPhones in China, and then sending them back to the US. I mean, that's an American product, right? That's an American company in China making their, you know, having them made there and then shipped back to the US. It's like, how is that cheating? You know what I mean? It's like, these are American companies. You know what I mean?

Niall: Yeah. I'd like to see the asterisks and the small prints on quote unquote non-monetary barriers and cheating. Is that like where, oh, they steal our IP? Did they do industrial espionage and steal it? Or has Apple been there so long? they've figured out how to do similar stuff, started their own startups? Well, globalization means everybody wants to figure it out eventually. That's not cheating.

Joe: Well, you buy an iPhone and open it up, right? I mean, it's not hard, right?

Niall: That effective rate is actually 69%. There's now a US tariff on all Chinese products of 69%. It was already at 15, and Trump doesn't start this. Interesting. It was at 15 when he took office. Who was that, Biden? Then he slapped the 20% one last month on China. And now the 34% figure, which is him being kind, is half of 67 as a percentage of the trade deficit. So it's currently at 69%. Am I right in thinking that that basically ends US-Chinese trade temporarily? No. Who's going to pay 69%?

Joe: Well, it might. We'll have to see where it goes. China will have to start looking to other places to try and...

Niall: You know, there'll be certain certainly there'll be quite a lot of Chinese products that they can stick and build a port on this herd in Amber Island. Yeah, they want the penguins.

Joe: Yeah, that'd be too expensive.

Niall: We have to pay 10 percent.

Speaker 1: If you pay 60 cents, if you pay the penguins 20 cents on the dollar to go and manufacture the iPhones there, then maybe.

Niall: To staff the port.

Joe: The Chinese will have to look obviously for some other markets to. to sell their products that they can't get into the US because of those tariffs. I think that's going to lead there. Because the problem is then other countries, who are the other countries? Well, the EU, I think, is China's biggest trading partner.

Niall: No, not even close. It's America far and away.

Joe: Well, it depends on what products.

Niall: Well, these were aggregate figures. It's America number one, baby. And then it's all its four immediate neighbors. Japan, South Korea and Vietnam. Oh, actually, the second one isn't really a neighbor because it's Hong Kong.

Joe: Right. But anyway, it depends how saturated the markets are with Chinese products already and how much scope there is for expansion into those markets. And I think certainly one place they'd be looking at is the EU, they're trying to up their exports to the EU, but then the EU will turn around and have to protect themselves from an oversupply or an influx of Chinese products. to stop the same thing happening to Europe, to protect their industry, to stop the same thing happening to Europe that Trump is complaining about, let's say, because there's a certain point, certain amount that you're willing to accept from another country, but you can't end up being completely dependent on another country for too many of your manufactured goods. So China could... Yeah. I mean, there's some possibilities of what China could do as a result. I mean, one worst, maybe, I don't know if it's a worst case scenario, but one thing countries do in that situation is to change over from, if they can't, if they're having a shortfall in terms of their customers, basically for markets, for their manufactured goods, they can return their industry or turn that into military production, you know, start producing. Okay. Because these tariffs and all that kind of stuff, tariffs in America, Europe has gone protectionist as well. All the countries may do the same thing for Chinese products. So we'll have to turn our manufacturing more towards military manufacturing and then sell those to the rest of the world. And if we can't find enough people to actually sell our military hardware, then we'll have to use it ourselves by starting a war with Taiwan. Because whenever you make a bunch of weapons, you have to use them, right?

Niall: Well, there's that. But just to give me an idea, what if behind the public rationale for Europe's massive attempt to the Rearm program, von der Leyen announced which was 800 billion investment in weapons manufacturing. But what makes weapons? Well, it's steel plants, it's hard nuts and bolts, plants, it's industry first and foremost. It's manufacturing. Energy and raw materials.

Joe: It's manufacturing.

Niall: Maybe what they're really thinking is we have to reindustrialize as well. The war with Russia is the reason for doing it.

Joe: Yeah, but we have to switch towards, because of this, essentially, we have to put people to work in building, making weapons rather than making manufactured goods. But then the problem is when you make all those weapons, you have to use them. You can just do a one-off, make a bunch of weapons and then say, okay, put them in stockpiling and that's the end of that game. Let's figure something out. So we have to buy them. basically, you know what I mean? And people don't buy weapons unless somebody has to use them. You can sell them to somebody, but they're going to have to use them, right?

Niall: You're just going to need to create an internal Neocon market to get some wars going.

Joe: It's like food. You don't buy food and then just stockpile it because then you wouldn't buy anymore. You have to eat it, right? So that you buy more, right?

Niall: Okay, that's not good. Because that could, that means a war with Russia is more likely.

Joe: War with China.

Niall: EU with China.

Joe: War with China, yeah.

Niall: No chance. American China.

Joe: No.

Niall: Did any of you watch the Tucker Cross?

Joe: That's why they're blowing up Yemen and that's why Trump's gone. all, all the MAGA bros like Adam here and stuff are all disillusioned with Trump because he was meant to be. peacemaker and stuff. and he's bombing Yemen and he's threatening Iran and all that kind of stuff. Well, it's like one way in the interim is to kind of like boost manufacturing while you're trying to bring manufacturing back home by imposing tariffs on all sorts of different countries. In the meantime, you can kickstart your economy or keep your economy taken over by manufacturing economy by making weapons, but then you've got to use them. So you've got to drop a bunch on Iran.

Niall: I read that they blew through $200 million in weapons in missiles on Yemen last week alone. Yeah, yeah.

Joe: But that's why they're doing it.

Niall: To make money.

Joe: You've got to use them to make them work. Look, the guys in Boeing and Raytheon and Northrop Grumman, they're sitting there twiddling their thumbs, you know, unless there's orders coming in for more weapons. And nobody's going to order more. The Pentagon isn't going to order more weapons if their warehouses are full, right?

Niall: Why can't they make stuff like China does? China doesn't need a war to keep growing 5% every year.

Joe: Because Americans want to live in more than a bowl of rice or want to eat more than a bowl of rice a day.

Niall: The Chinese are getting pretty fat, huh?

Joe: Well, for now, they might have to tighten their belts. It just wouldn't work. They wouldn't be able to pay the Americans enough.

Niall: Back to Yemen in a second. Did either of you see this interview? Carlson with the US Treasury Secretary, Scott Besant?

Joe: No.

Niall: Yeah, a bit of it. I want to play a bit because it explains the domestic rationale for why tariffs and why upending the global trade system. But first, Tucker got it wrong as well because he primed Besant. saying, this is really about China and its exports, isn't it? And Besson went on and said, yeah. He said that China's exports as a percentage of its GDP was, quote, unprecedented in modern economic history.

Joe: To America, to the world.

Niall: No, no, China in itself, meaning that China's economy is so fundamentally imbalanced because it's so reliant on just mass exports that it would just, he thinks it was kind of grinning at that point. We've got them now. They're going to crash or go slow.

Joe: Crash our economy.

Niall: He's totally wrong. I checked it. It's not hard to find out. China's total exports are just 20% of its GDP, of which that 20%, 14% goes to the US market. It is its biggest export market too. But South Korea and Germany, 40% of their GDP is exports. 40%. In fact, the global average is 46%. China is going to ride this out. They're probably not happy, but I think the Americans are imagining that this is us putting on boxing gloves against China, but no, it isn't. You're putting on boxing gloves and you're going to punch your allies first. South Korea and Germany are most exposed by this. So that's troubling. He was very calm and collected and he gave a great presentation. Even though he's not the best speaker, he made some very crystal clear points. But then when I saw that one and I saw someone fact check it, I checked it myself and thought, if that's what they're saying to themselves in the White House, it better not be. This is how they're going to defeat China because his basic starting premise was so wrong. There's no basis in reality. But he did say this as well. So I want to play this. This is a couple minutes.

Joe: I'm not happy with what's going on in the market today, but the distribution of equities across households, the top 10% of Americans own 88% of equities. 88% of the stock market. The next 40% owns 12% of the stock market. The bottom 50 has debt. They have credit card bills, they rent their homes, they have auto loans, and we've got to give them some relief. I was struck by the statistic from last year. That's the message right there. Just as a bystander, I'm like, wow, okay. I like the examples, and I was really struck by two different statistics last year. Summer of 2024, Americans took more European vacations than they had in history. Summer of 2024, more Americans were using food banks than they ever have in history. I went into two food banks near my hometown to ask, what's the story? And they said, you know, it really takes, for a lot of people, it's a loss of dignity to walk in a food bank. Of course. But they were seeing something, a new phenomenon, that it wasn't their traditional clientele, wasn't people who'd lost their homes, wasn't people out on the street. These were working families who could no longer, $100 at the grocery store, that basket of groceries every week, they were missing five, six, seven things, and they were coming to the food bank to top up. So that's not a great America. record European vacation record food banks and No reason we can't keep the record European vacations going but we got to Take care of these other people. but and you know what? That they don't want handouts. the Democrats had this strategy called compensate the loser. So first of all the name of that strategy, I don't think the bottom 50% of Americans are losers. I think the system hasn't worked for them. I think that they are winners. It's just a bad system. So we are going to fix the system. And look, they want good jobs. They want their kids to do better than they did. They want to own a home. They want to pay down their debt. This isn't hard. And I think that we can do this in the next four years. Would it have been really fun for me to come in? and just keep issuing a lot of debt. And it's almost like a bodybuilder is taking steroids. Outside looks great. You're muscular. Inside, you're killing your vital organs. That's what was going on here. But it would have been easy to keep pumping up the economy, borrowing a lot of money, creating a lot of government jobs. There was no controversy when we're doing all that. You were going to end up in a calamity. If you go back and look, you look at the financial crisis in 07, 08, economy looked great right up until then. You go back and you look at the end of the dot-com bubble and then the whole credit problem, the fraud at Worldcom, Enron, some other companies, economy looked great until it didn't. And I think one of the things that we won't get credit for, but that this administration will have done is avoiding a financial calamity. So the internal organs he's talking about are, like I said, are the losers, are the people going to the food banks, are people who would vote for Trump.

Niall: Exactly. That's the MAGA rationale for why they're doing this. The internal is domestic issues. Nothing to do with China. It's about the US economy being fundamentally unbalanced.

Joe: Well, no, it's because it's a globalised economy, the way it's been set up. I mean, the US economy is fundamentally unbalanced because of a global system in which it sits. So it is to do with the entire... planet like the entire globe you know and that's why it's going to have global repercussions. you know if it was just an American internal economic American economic problem then other countries would be like yeah whatever we'll just carry on but obviously it's all interconnected. that's globalism right. so yeah and it makes sense. I mean it's not something you can just dismiss like Trump you know he's an ideologue as most people are and He's got his MAGA ideology and he wants it to, he and others want it to continue on after he's gone. They want it to be a new America based on the MAGA ideology. And so you need to, and you're always going to help blue collar workers. And they seem to think that they're locked into this ideology and it's a conservative. traditional values, ideology, let's say, they want to keep that going for years to come. And in order to sustain that and keep those people happy, it's not just about key. Obviously, is he an altruist? Is Trump, are these people altruists? They really care about the voters? Maybe. It's hard to tease that out. because you care about your voters because you want them to continue voting for you, right? Do you actually care about their livelihood? Well, the two are intertwined basically. If you want them to continue to vote for you and support your ideology, then you need to make sure that they're happy. If they're no longer happy and they're going to food banks every day, then suddenly they're going to start, there's room for something else to come in for them or they'll switch sides, they'll go somewhere else. So to keep them on board and to keep them voting for you, you have to keep them, you have to... stop the decline basically in terms of job losses and people not be able to pay for wicks, groceries and all that kind of stuff. That's intertwined with the idea of, oh, well, I actually feel for these people and this is a bad look for America. It's bad for these people. I actually care about these people. I've gone and met these people and I've talked to them and I feel them. I feel them in my heart. I love them and they're all my friends basically and I'm going to do this primarily for them. But at the same time, you have political considerations, which is like these are the people who... It just so happens that the people that I really, really love also are going to vote for me. Tease that one out if you want. So, yeah.

Speaker 1: Because it's not just all of that as well. I mean, like the whole tariff situation is like, this is a complicated mess. Like Trump got in. To a complicated mess which is already a complicated mess back in 2016 when he first got in. And so you know how how you retool something. That's. That's already not doing well. While it's in operation. Is hell of a thing to try and do and at the same time like it's not. it's not just. You know the the trade imbalances and all that stuff like part of the issue as well as. Something that you know they they just the Senate just like past or or voted on which is the the the government funding the budget. and so they got enough votes for passing the budget in the Senate and. Written in there is increasing the. uh, the budget deficit by an additional $5 trillion. So it, and this is something that Thomas Massey and Rand Paul have been talking about. It's like, you can't really fix what's going wrong without tackling so many things in tandem. And one of those things is not continuing to inflate people's, uh, the currency by printing so much by you know, using government debt as a, as a mechanism by which you stimulate like that, that kind of thing is not going to end up well.

Joe: It's not sustainable.

Speaker 1: It's not sustainable. And that's something that they're continuing to do. So it's like, on the one hand, they're trying to do the stuff in order to get like, in order to help the traditional base, but at the same time, you're still continuing to do things that are actively destroying your own endeavors.

Niall: Ramp all across the aisle in that boat. It was $51.49. He crossed the aisle and he said, no, no, that wasn't. So if you remember two months ago, the plan was to slash the US budget by a trillion. Musk was part of that and Doge, and I don't know how well they're doing now at this point, but he wanted $4 billion a day. When it came down to it, Republican senators, love their programs too much. Now they said, well, my constituents need the Medicaid or whatever it was. And in the end, once they've reviewed it all, they just cut like a minute. So they realized the only thing they're going to have to do in the short term now, because what's about to happen is that the lower 50% are about to be hit with much higher prices for consumables. So that $100 basket at the grocery store is about to shrink and they'll be going to food banks. So they were trying to get this through. And the only way to do it in the short term was to raise the debt ceiling by another 5 trillion. It doesn't mean they're going to hit that, but they just wanted it pushed out of the way for at least a year. So that's what I'm wondering, what happens next?

Joe: In the meantime, you're trying to reduce it by clawing back money in all these different ways by cutting domestic, cutting all the government jobs, USAID, all that kind of stuff, and then imposing these tariffs.

Niall: Well, you'd need income tax cuts. Those bottom 50% basically need, I know it's Lindsey Graham, but still he did the numbers. As things stand right now, people are going to be paying more tax this year and they're about to be hit with much higher prices for daily essentials. That's a double tax right off the bat. Trump probably didn't want that. He's not saying otherwise. In fact, what he is saying, he posted on Truth Social yesterday. I think the show now, it used to be that we had to be on Truth Social to see his tweets there, but he never mentioned this before, but he's saying it won't be easy and urges Americans to quote hang tough. He's got some exclamation marks in there and the usual slogans, but Again, China's the battering ram. Whatever. I don't even understand the first sentence. China has been hit much harder than the USA.

Joe: People were saying that America would be hit harder than anybody. Okay. No, no. China's getting it.

Niall: China's getting it. Okay. The next sentence is even worse. They and many other nations have treated us unsustainably badly. Unsustainably? We have been the dumb and helpless. Whipping Post, okay, that's his point. but not any longer. We're bringing back jobs and businesses like never before. He's bigging up $5 trillion of investment. I suppose that's his AI program with, what's his name? Larry Ellison and rising fast. This is an economic revolution. That's pretty accurate. This is like Lenin level stuff. And we will win. Hang tough. It won't be easy, but the end result will be historic.

Joe: I'm sure it'll be historical.

Niall: Even Millay was saying while campaigning, it's going to hurt. Trump never said that while campaigning. So yeah, that's a bit dishonest to say after the fact, yeah, austerity. Because maybe it can't be said in the US. Everything's always got to be up, progress, stocks, return, market, upwards. It's always, always upwards. And so Trump has had to sell the entire thing since his inauguration speech as golden age, as epic as never before seen. He's got to sell the product, but the product is a bitter pill. How long? A year or two? The rest of his term?

Joe: The bottom line, you can draw a fairly clear distinction here between the two policies, what do you call them? The Treasury, the Secretary there, and set to mention government jobs. producing government jobs or funding government jobs. And that's what Doge and et cetera have been all about, getting rid of all these, trying to get rid of as many excess government jobs, USAID, all that kind of money that's been paid to, I mean, that employed a lot of Americans as well. You have these people complaining, I just lost my job. And that's what a lot of the protests in the past few days were about. I mean, 90% of those people in the protests were people who either work for or no longer work for a government department that had recently been shut down or it's under threat of being shut down. That's why they're protesting. That's a hallmark of imperial outreach, the neoliberal imperial outreach agenda, the American empire, basically. You're creating jobs by creating like, you heard Musk talking about it. There's something like, I don't know what, some ridiculous number of government agencies. There was a new agency created every year for the past. Was it one every year or something like that or whatever? Anyway, a vast number of new agencies created all the time under Obama, Biden, and even beforehand. Then you've got this, and that employs a lot of people, but they're not blue collar workers who are pulled into those jobs. They're not a lot of blue collar workers like Southern redneck types that are going to work for USAID. So those people are being left behind. They're the losers he was talking about. And the government's policy, previous to Trump, the government's policy was just compensate them, throw some money at them to keep them happy, keep the deplorables happy.

Niall: And make sure the goods keep coming in cheap.

Joe: Yes, keep them all over the world. And feed them cheap.

Niall: To hell with the deficit, just keep it coming in.

Joe: Cheaper and cheaper. And we'll keep that going by expanding our government agencies, basically Imperial Outreach Agencies. creating new ones all the time, employing more and more people. Those are jobs, right? That's income tax receipts coming in because there are Americans being employed by a government agency. That's still a job that has an impact on the employment figures and all that kind of stuff. But on a practical sense, those people are out around the world spreading the American, the good word of the American empire, right? And by that, I mean infiltrating, insinuating themselves into the civic and political life of other countries in order to keep them, well, if you need to overthrow them, basically to maintain empire. And that was their plan has been, that's the way it has been for quite a long time. And that was the plan going forward. Just keep that going. And Trump came in and decided, no, and that's why I keep coming back to like the, really the thing that makes the difference is that he's He just saw it as a load of bullshit. Ideologically, it was bullshit to him, the idea of America spending all this money to fund all these woke and other subversive programs around the world, stroking conflict, all that kind of stuff, overthrowing governments. He wasn't in favor of that, but he was also not in favor of that because it was leaving his base basically behind. manufacturing was increasingly being destroyed in America and those people were losing jobs and not with food banks. So he wants to overturn all that. And by definition, it means pulling in, destroying that American and that infrastructure of the American empire that has been in place for quite a long time. That's been built up gradually over the past 80, 90, 100 years, progressively. And he wants to destroy that now. And the problem is the whole world has, most of the world has got used to that. And he also saw that it wasn't sustainable. In a very real sense, it was no longer sustainable because, like I said at the beginning, one of the linchpins of one of the pillars of being able to enforce that American imperial worldview and the application of it was having a military that was unchallenged, basically. That was the sole superpower, let's say, and could enforce USA and all these other agencies were there to soft power, to enforce America and prop up and sustain the American empire, i.e. control over as much of the world as possible. But if that didn't work, you have the military behind you. But now with Russia and particularly Russia and China, who have inevitably become become peer military competitors. It's like, well, we don't have that threat anymore. Those people can push back against us. So what does that leave us? With soft power?

Niall: With rainbow flags.

Joe: We're going to throw billions and billions of dollars every day of American taxpayer money, every day at soft power. And what if we get found out? What if people in those countries were trying to apply the soft powers, turn around and go, America, Joe Biden, stick your woke rainbow flag up your ass. We don't want, and they start having protests to kick out NGOs. Russia has been kicking out a lot of NGOs. Russia is very strict on American NGOs. And if that becomes contagious and they have Russia and China pushing a kind of bricks, kind of multi-polarity thing at the same time, it's all bad for America. So in a very real way, Trump has been very rational about this, you know, but there's multiple kind of. several different aspects to his motivation for doing this. Some of them ideological, some of them heartfelt for his base, some of them politically cynical for his base, some of them, one of them real world in terms of, look, we can't actually enforce this American empire anymore. I mean, it's already past that point and it's just going to get worse with other countries making alliances with Russia and China and then attempting to make alliances via a multi-border world and bricks. military alliances potentially as well. It's all bad, so we need to stall the zigger, stop this march and do a turnaround. And it's going to be difficult. We're going to have to break a few eggs to make this nice, huge omelette.

Niall: Huge.

Joe: And it's a huge omelette with lots of broken eggs and oh, fuck, it fell on the floor, face down. So whatever.

Niall: Maybe Trump also, I mean, we just heard from Trump's money man that as far as he sees it, so presumably they've shared thoughts on this. This is also about staving off an actual financial calamity. Another OA crash. Just take it by the horns and don't just let the next bubble do its thing.

Joe: For sure. For several of the reasons that he has identified, like particularly the Russian China. gaining in power and influence and pushing back against America, that meant that America's neoliberal imperial agenda or the imperial plan that they've been implementing for a long time was reaching its expiring point. It wasn't going to be sustainable. So he's right in that sense where something had a change. He's not doing it just for ideological reasons. I think he's doing it for very real world reasons, i.e. the world order that America has profited from and lived high on the back of for so long is changing and America is going to come out not very well from it. They're going to suffer as a result. So this is a last ditch effort to retool the whole system. Take the initiative, retool the system, change it around and go back. Essentially you are going back to a kind of 19th, early 20th century and previous global trade system. Each country trades based on their own inherent abilities, productivity, natural resources, etc.

Niall: Where is dollar hegemony in this? Because that's post-19th century.

Joe: That's something else in a certain sense. That may come along, but I think nobody's talking about that in any serious terms because a reserve is very difficult. Which currency are you going to pick? It's tied in a certain sense. It's the difficulty to replace the dollars as a global reserve currency. is only slightly more difficult than what Trump is trying to do, which is to change this whole system of globalised economic model with America as the enforcer and protector of it. To change that is very difficult. And that's what he started doing. But America certainly doesn't want to change. have some other currency as a reserve currency because they're very tangible and important for America, crucial for America, benefits that it drives from the fact that people actually want the American dollar. But at the same time, at the minute, he wants to devalue the dollar in order to make America's upcoming new huge manufacturing

Niall: base

Joe: that he's going to encourage all these tariffs, that would work much better on a dollar that has been devalued from where it is today, making American goods cheaper.

Niall: But factories, that's like 10 years. I don't see how he's going to get... tangible benefits to that 50% within this term.

Joe: No, he can switch. It's like a train, you know? There's a lever. It's on one track and you switch the lever and it goes on another track. You switch the lever, it goes on another track. Then it's set on that track. It's going down that track. It just so happens that track hasn't been used for a very long time. It's a bit rusty, a few holes in it, maybe a few pieces missing, that kind of thing. There may be a bridge out down the way. Who knows? But we're going down that track for good or bad. It'll come hell or high water. So like you said, hang tough. It's going to be a bit rocky.

Niall: Do you think it's going to be a bit rocky?

Joe: It's going to be fucking all up.

Niall: Yeah, it's a long time. The press is uniform. It's pretty universally on song here. This is just going to cause reciprocal tariffs, not just against the US, but everyone against everyone. And global trade will seize up substantially.

Joe: It'll seize up for a while, but then that'll form new trading blocks. There'll be all sorts of new trade agreements. The NAFTA, North American Free Trade Agreement, and all the different trade agreements you've heard about over the years. There'll be all sorts of new ones like that, different smaller groupings making trade agreements with each other. For me, it makes much more sense. I mean, I'm looking forward to going back to the 19th century, 19th century trade.

Niall: I can see you on a horse and cart.

 

[Ellipse]

(part 2):

Joe: In a more equitable world order, let's say, you know what I mean? Where there's no British Empire, there's no East India Company and all that kind of stuff.

Niall: No hegemony.

Joe: No hegemony, except, you know, but everybody's going to be fighting. America and Trump will be fighting for to maintain as much hegemony as possible. They're not that stupid in the sense they're trying to maintain as much leverage and influence as they can while at the same time undermining the whole thing. But keep what we can. So yeah, it's complicated. Who needs Chinese classic crap anyway? I don't.

Niall: You don't? No. Are you sure? Yeah.

Joe: Come on.

Niall: Go back and look at your purchases. Either China or if it says Vietnam, it's actually Chinese.

Joe: See how much of it I actually need. I'll go through my Amazon purchases list for tax returns and I'll go. Yeah, didn't need that. Didn't need that. Didn't need that. Didn't need that.

Niall: You bought it though.

Joe: I know. But so, you know, I'm not going to... You're not going to not buy it.

Niall: I'm not going to not buy it if I... If it's available for you.

Joe: If I need it or whatever and it's cheap, whatever. But yeah, but I'm not going to... Really, there's nothing. If you think about it, think about what you actually need. I mean, I've got him what he needs. He needs... On his carnivore dad, he needs like a few pieces of meat a day and a glass of water, a horsehair mattress to sleep on, stars as his blanket, and a fire beside him. and he's fine.

Niall: And no gadgets. Gadgets for what?

Speaker 1: What are gadgets for? What's a gadget?

Joe: get that phone away from me and stop watching. Stop looking at the computer so much and stay off the internet and get out in nature. There you go. Get out in nature. Go hunt some food.

Speaker 1: Touch grass, bro.

Joe: Touch grass, ground, hunt some food, build a fire, watch the stars, wait for the comets.

Niall: And the computer.

Joe: And then at that point, you'd be ready for the aliens to come and come down and say, we're here to save you. We're your space brothers. All the drones will come back then.

Niall: To listen to the media, a revolution has started on the streets in the US. They make it seem like the timing is suspicious because it looks like it follows in sequence with Trump announcing tariffs and then mass protests erupt in the US. So, oh goodness, the Americans are not happy with Trump's tariffs. But then you actually look at what they're... what they're protesting about. It's specifically, it's really about Doge and Musk and like you said, American jobs, American government jobs.

Speaker 1: I don't even call that hands off.

Niall: This one, this is some footage of the one in New York yesterday. Pretty big. That's a lot of government workers.

Joe: There are millions of government workers and they're all very, very annoyed.

Speaker 1: And they're all very annoying.

Joe: That's the end of it. I can see the end of it for God's sakes.

Niall: Ah, but it's a big avenue.

Joe: Is that it? Let me see. Okay.

Niall: Pretty big, huh?

Joe: Decent amount.

Niall: Pretty big. And one in Boston as well. And then 50 others in smaller cities. But whatever.

Joe: Government workers, USAID workers. What do you call them around? Mask holes? They're the COVID idiots. Govern me harder, daddy. Where's my government? Leave my government alone. My government's my sugar daddy. I don't know what I'd do without him.

Niall: So I looked up what organization is behind us. This is the primary organizer of these protests yesterday. It's registered as handsoff2025.com. Hands off. We must stop Trump and must illegal billionaire power wrap Saturday, April 5th. Hands off Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security, our jobs, our wallets, our books?

Speaker 1: Bodies.

Niall: Bodies, our bodies, right. These are the people who made the rest of us take vaccines or else. Fair elections. Wait, what? Okay. Personal data, public lands, veteran services, cancer research. NATO? NATO? Right there. When I saw that, I was like, okay, this is CIA. This is just a CIA op. The model is not there, but I went to the website and the slogan for the event was, this is not just corruption. This is not just mismanagement. This is a hostile takeover. So then you go to their website, handsoff2025.com, and look at the list of their partners. And surprise, surprise, it's basically a who's who. if you just want to scroll down there, of Democratic NGOs, PACs, and CIA controlled trade unions. Move on. ACLU, AFL, CIA, Greenies, LGBT. Yeah. The Democratic, it may as well just say George Soros. Short hand. It's rich, though. This is a hostile takeover. No, it's an attempt to take back from the hostile takeover. And people are getting it. Separately, there was a big protest in D.C. for Gaza. I think people were conflating the two as I saw it on X and say, Oh, my God, look, look at this. the amount of protests rippling all over America against Trump because he's a Zionist. No, that's not what happened. It was a CIA color revolution type thing. The numbers are impressive. There's definitely a lot of people on the streets, but you can't ever be impressed by large crowds in the US because let's say you've got 20% of diehard 20% of the voting public are never Trumpers and they're in cities. Of course, they can turn up in large numbers. You will get dedicated blue oasis, you know, the US is still a sea of red though Even the even the ones in the big cities like like for New York, that's nothing.

Speaker 1: Yeah, New York has millions upon millions of people. there is like that's like one half of one tenth of one percent of one neighborhood on that street right there. Like that's. like. that's like when you when you look at like the total number of people that were out protesting, like, you know, yeah, it's like a large number, but it but relative to the number of people that actually exist in the country. It's such a tiny minority.

Joe: Yeah.

Speaker 1: Because there was the one in New York.

Joe: Yeah, alone. When were there? 30, 40, 50,000?

Speaker 1: If that. I don't know.

Joe: On that street? Well, you could estimate. Yeah. It's in the tens of thousands. Somewhere.

Niall: I think the Boston one is over 100,000. But then again, it's a very blue city.

Joe: Yeah.

Niall: Maybe it was a one-off. Maybe this will grow. You've got to think of the energy behind the vandalizing Tesla cars. There's this. There could be a replay of the BLM riots coming up.

Speaker 1: That's what I was wondering.

Niall: We'll see, because it depends on what Trump does next about the judges blocking Doge Cuts.

Joe: Those people don't riot though. Those people don't burn down cities. We've seen some interviews of other people who riot.

Niall: No, but I saw one that was a lot of boomers, older white people.

Joe: Exactly. Or young liberals. They don't burn things down. They key Tesla's, that's as far as they go. Once I'm burning, you have to go to the...

Niall: Yeah.

Speaker 1: You want to finish that statement?

Joe: No. You have to historically look it up.

Niall: Certain boroughs, certain burgs, ghettos, inner cities. Well, there were a lot of whiteies involved.

Joe: Go to the gypsy encampments.

Niall: It wasn't all minorities in 2020 doing that. But yes, it was substantially. And of course, the issue was different. There was backlash about that cop. What was his name? George Floyd. Yeah, no, it's different. It's not as it's not as emotional and stuff. It's not as much of a. A hot button, hot topic. But yeah. It could, I mean, you know, in a year's time, it'll be interesting, like if If that lower 50% feel worse off, you know, than they were before. It's like, don't fail us.

Joe: What are they going to protest against?

Niall: I know they don't, they don't generally protest. Yeah.

Speaker 1: But if it gets to the point where they're actually like no longer able to afford groceries, then yeah, you would. Then you would presumably get those types who wouldn't normally but now they're. Left with little option. so what else are they gonna do? and that's the other question that I have with all of this is you know there's the things that he's trying to do and the things that he wants to do. and then there's the things that. That the people who actually control the leaders of power are allowing him to do and the things that they want to do and could blame trump for. in order to rally sentiment against him and for the shadow government types and see if they can't wrestle back public sentiment away from the mega movement.

Joe: Yeah. Speaking of people in positions of power are pulling the strings. You know this woman, Michelle... Christine. Anderson, she's an MEP for AFD, AFD Alternative for Germany. She's the second largest party in Germany, probably the largest party except for her vote ring, but in the last election anyway, they came second. You see her a lot in the European Parliament. She's a German member of the Alternative for Deutschland, and she's a member of the European Parliament. If you scroll down to the video, Scotty, it's just weird to hear her. She's talking to this dude who used to be a Used to be a Fox News anchor, was he? I can't remember. What's his channel called?

Niall: Redacted?

Joe: Redacted, yeah. Anyway, it's just a couple of minutes, but it's crazy to hear someone who's a high-level notable member of the second largest political party in Germany, member of the European Parliament, talk like this. I think he's asking her at one point who's... Who's pulling the strings here? How is it? Good question. I don't know who's doing it. I really don't. I can tell you it's not Ursula von der Leyen. She is not making any decisions. It's not Bill Gates. It's not even Klaus Schwab, right? They're not the ones calling the shots because they're the idiots that hang their face in the camera and advocate for all of this nonsense and, you know, this totalitarian crap. So it's not them. But who it is, I really don't know. I have no idea. And I usually refer to them, for the lack of a better word, as the globalitarian misanthropists. Right? So there is a group of people, I have no idea who they are, but they are the ones calling the shots. And our elected governments are mere puppets. They are just, you know, pretty much implementing whatever they come up with, to what end and what their goal is. To me, it seems quite obvious. it is to ultimately erect a one world government and to transform our liberal, open, democratic, equal societies consisting of free individuals into some kind of a collectivism where the individual is becoming merely a malleable part that can be shuffled around any which way. the globalitarian misanthropists need you to be shoveled around, right? So, yeah, but it's to ultimately erect a total one world government. And that is, by the way, the reason the EU even exists, right? Right. So looking at Europe, we're living here on this rather small continent with so many different cultures, traditions, histories, languages even. And the European peoples are proud people. They are. You would have never been able to convince them to just surrender their national state and relinquish national sovereignty to a One word government, they would have never gone along with this. But since they pulled in the EU institutions, it's a stepping stone. So it's like, and it's under the pretext of, oh, we've been fighting so many wars on this continent, which is true. And we need to stop this. And the way to do it, we need to come together as Europe and as the EU institutions. It's just a stepping stone. So once they are relinquishing ever more competencies to the EU institutions, it's only a small step to then, okay, now we go full, we go to the one world government or whatever, right? One of us. Isn't it weird to see like she's like... You see how the AFD has to be banned, right? Or has to be sidelined and demonized. And you get the same kind of thing out of Marine Le Pen and stuff. You know, it's an interesting phrase. You know, I don't know who they are, but like all the official government leader, von der Leyen, the European head of state and all those different people are just puppets according to her. And again, she's, you know. She's in a position to have a good perspective on it. And she says the people who are running the show and pulling the strings of these puppets are, she calls them globalists, globalitarian, totalitarian misanthropes. Interesting to use the word misanthropes, you know, like as in they're people who hate humanity and they want to institute a one world government too. And yeah. And like you said, people are letting, who's letting Trump do what he's doing, that kind of stuff, you know, and this is for deep down the rabbit hole here. But if that's what's happening, whether or not that's what's actually happening, my prediction is that that is what will happen, that Trump will as a result, one way or another, not necessarily Trump's fault, but he in a certain sense is being, will is or will be led along or manipulated in one way or another too. create a situation that he's unaware of where you'll have some kind of a global economic crisis basically, which they hope will allow them to institute a whole new order, a whole new globalist order, whether or not it'll actually work out or whether, which more likely I think is in attempting to do such a thing, they will end up just fucking the whole thing up for everybody. And then they'll do the Homer Simpson thing and retreat back into the hedge and go, well, we tried to fix it, but we thought it was a good idea. But we have to go. See you. And we'll have to pick up the pieces, you know. At that point, your space brothers will come in and save you. And there'll just be another bunch of missing throats. So, yeah, it's all about the missing throats.

Niall: But surely the Space Brothers are working with the Misanthropes.

Joe: They are, yeah, they're the same.

Niall: The way you make it sound like the Space Brothers are hanging around for the Misanthropes to mess it up.

Joe: And then they'll come in and save us, but they'll just be another bunch of Misanthropes.

Niall: But the Space Brothers are also prompting the Misanthropes to do this one next. Yeah. Do this one. So they can move in. Okay.

Joe: And speaking of European people, European... politicians and stuff who have to be sidelined. Le Pen's party, Le Pen recently, last week there, got, she went down. She was sent down.

Niall: McConaughey jailed his people.

Joe: This is a pattern in Europe. They're getting desperate. Well, it's pretty despicable and a mockery of democracy. that sitting politicians are jailing the people, the politicians that the people actually want and will actually vote for. because no, you're not allowed to have those people. It's actually a sign of desperation when they're going that far and they're doing it very blatantly. They're doing it in Romania. They're trying to do it in several European countries. They're doing it in, they've obviously like the AFD that we just heard from, they're being... demonised and sidelined for a long time. And now Le Pen has been misused some EU funds.

Speaker 1: Allegedly.

Joe: Probably did, but then all of them are doing it, but they just pick on her. That's the way it happens, right? So they just pick on the person you don't want. You've got a bunch. You allow people to misappropriate money and embezzle money and all that kind of stuff within the system, as long as you're part of the system. If you try to do that, if you do that while not being part of the system, then you're going to get accused of, you're going to be exposed for it, which is what happened to Le Pen.

Speaker 1: I would be surprised if what she did actually was illegal. I would be surprised because I would think that she would be smart enough to realize that what she's trying to do is going to give her more scrutiny than anyone else. And so she should be going out of her way to not do that kind of thing.

Joe: It actually happened in 2016, started in 2016. the investigation.

Speaker 1: Well, yeah, I know.

Joe: That's nine years ago, right? So this is before or only at the very, very beginning of the whole resurgence of the left, right, the far right, the evil far right, the populace, all that kind of stuff, the demonization of them, you know. So I think this is brewing. But again, I think that this was being done, i.e. basically When you send members of your party to the European parliament as a representative of your party there, you get a bunch of money for aids and office supplies and all this kind of stuff, but with the proviso that you use them for European only. She was paying people who allegedly apparently were primarily doing work for her party in France. Now that probably happens all the time, right? I'd say that does happen all the time.

Niall: There's a particular incentive for why she did that more perhaps than say any other mainstream party in France. For the last 10 years, her party has been effectively debanked. She can't get a fucking loan in France. At one point she tried to go to Russia and they said, cool, we'll give you a loan. and they went... bang, got you on cooperation with Russia. So you're fucked here, you're fucked here. And then they got her here on this. We got you now. Aren't we clever?

Joe: So the main thing here is that, let's just put that back up. We actually didn't really talk about it. Le Pen's party would lead, according to a recent poll, would lead the president's elections in France that are planned for 2027. If they were held today, she would win.

Niall: Like she would have ten years ago and four years ago.

Joe: Except there probably was rigging going on.

Niall: But probably it's too big to rig next year.

Joe: And not only that, but it seems that her, this recent poll comes after her, the conviction that she got now. She got like four years in jail, two years suspended, so not in jail, and two years at home wearing a, not even at home, just wearing a bracelet basically. But the main thing that they wanted to get, that's kind of academic. The whole point. Was to prevent her from running. She's not allowed to run in the 2027 election. And as a result of that, she had a surge in popularity for her being the next president in 2027. So it just shows. I mean, it's as clear as the nose in your face that this is politically motivated and it was an attempt to sideline her. It's probably not going to work. It smacks of serious desperation.

Niall: So we know what comes next.

Joe: What does? Revolution?

Niall: No. July, 2024, Butler, Pennsylvania.

Joe: How did she get shot? Yeah. Well, but she's not, maybe her, I don't know. I don't know if there's anybody who could replace her or whatever, but I think it's bigger than just her, obviously. They're kind of like the majority of people in the majority of European countries are actually now technically officially far right populists. the majority of the electors in every country, not almost every country, I would say, are far-right populists by their terminology. They're not, they're just people who just have centrist, but they've always had basically, well, maybe they've swung a little bit towards the right, but they're basically center-right, which is normal. They're not far-right, anything, they're just called far-right. And that's a result of mass immigration and woke policies and all that kind of stuff. Governments have pushed people in that direction. And then they demonize them for it and prevent them from voting for people who represent those values that they hold, that they want to see represented by their political leaders. They demonize them for them and prevent them from voting people who would actually uphold those values. So that's super desperate. It's ridiculously desperate. And like I said, so it's bigger than just her. This is a sea change, a mood amongst the population. So it doesn't really matter if it's not Marine Le Pen. There will be somebody else, obviously. There's plenty of people. When the majority of the electorate feel that way, you can be sure that there's plenty of people in politics in one way or another who feel the same way as well. So they're getting desperate and that's all a good sign. So while a lot of people say, oh, isn't this terrible? There's no democracy in Europe anymore and stuff, blah, blah, blah. There's no democracy in America either. Well, there wasn't. Obviously when they tried to assassinate Trump, it's all on the same boat in that respect, but it's a good sign for me because it's a sign of growing desperation and taking extreme measures. And it's going to blow up in their face. Yeah. Kaboom. Kaboom. Splat.

Speaker 1: I just loved the... I say loved. I was just... like taken, taken a bit of back by the fact that, you know, she's, they got her on embezzlement, which is like, you know, oh man, you're taking money that you're not supposed to, except that she wasn't actually like, taking the money.

Niall: Like normally an embezzlement is for personal enrichment and they had to get her party to survive.

Speaker 1: Yeah, that it that she didn't actually get any money from this. So it's like, it's such a trumped up charge. And you're like, Oh, she's in. She embezzled money. And it's like, but she but she didn't do it for herself.

Niall: Yeah.

Speaker 1: Yeah. Unlike every other one of you retards.

Niall: And it's the same the same as in the US like the entire media against her. She has no advertising time. Yeah. But it's even worse than that because even if you do get miraculously your favorite nationalist leader elected, brown people still get blown up in the Middle East for Israel. Even if you do cross that insurmountable barrier, Israel wins. Now, I suppose we could make the case there that that's getting more desperate too and they're just reviled. Unfortunately, a lot of the nationalist right seems to be pro-Israel, somehow still probably shrinking.

Speaker 1: I saw the interesting statement from Matt Walsh where there's some rabbi giving a statement and some kind of hearing of some sort talking about anti-Semitism and how it's not enough to be just neutral. You have to be actively anti anti-Semitic. And Matt Walsh posted it on Twitter saying like, this is straight out of the Black Lives Matter movement handbook for, you know, it's not enough to not be racist. It's not enough to be not be anti-Semitic.

Joe: Yeah. He's still hanging out with Ben Shapiro, right? Yeah. Is he allowed to say, I mean, he's a super, he's a super like, beardy conservative dad. Yeah.

Niall: He's reaching his crossroads. One of these days. So he's about to be Candice Owens.

Joe: Is he? So he is at least not selling out, yeah?

Niall: No, he's being consistent. All the others just do this kind of schizoidal thing where they, oh, okay, it's Israel, so switch programming. Censor, censor everyone. But Mash, he refuses to bend the knee and so he'll be out soon.

Speaker 1: He was always saying America first and he was always... And people went out of their way to be like, oh, you're not saying anything about Israel. And he's like, I've said it before and I will say it again. I am America first, not Israel first. And that was his messaging all along.

Niall: That's about to become verboten speech.

Joe: And is he Christian or is he Judeo-Christian?

Niall: Christian.

Speaker 1: I don't know where you want to draw that distinction.

Joe: I can draw it very easily. A big fat marker right down the middle. It's super fucking easy. Like I said before, if Yahweh was Jesus' dad, that apple fell very far from the tree.

Niall: Yeah, he's Christian. Israel's gone nuts again this week. I don't know how, I mean, are there stats? The stats I see day to day are 50 killed today, 300 killed. tomorrow and so on. How is this stacking up with the first year of bombardment? I don't know, but it looks horrific.

Joe: They at least admitted this time shooting up a bunch of Red Cross workers.

Niall: Yeah, because one of them had a GoPro camera running the whole time.

Joe: GoPro cameras are deadly.

Speaker 1: Was it a GoPro or was it a phone?

Niall: I think it was fixed. No, this was just...

Joe: This was a...

Niall: It was a medic. You hear him saying... His last prayers.

Joe: Yeah, yeah. But it's yeah. And then they admit it. I mean, Israel admits mistakenly shooting dead aid workers and gals. A footage from phone found a body seems to support claim. the troops fired on ambulances.

Niall: Yeah.

Joe: Seems to suggest it's like, duh.

Niall: Yeah. And again, it's so egregious, even the UN secretary general condemns it.

Joe: You can't do anything about it. But tomorrow it's all gone.

Niall: It'll be more of the same.

Speaker 1: I didn't even see anything in terms of.

Niall: They hit a school with 27 kids killed. They knew their kids were in there.

Speaker 1: When they did the shooting of the ambulance workers and everything, it was that Israel admitted that what they had previously reported and said happened didn't actually happen. And they had previously said that the people who were firing on these ambulance Ambulance people drivers and whatever that they weren't wearing the reflective reflective gear that the lights weren't on on the vehicles and that was why they were targeted. And so they they've only gone so far as to say that we we were wrong.

Joe: Mistaking mistakenly.

Speaker 1: we were mistaken about those statements and that's that's as far as they will conduct an internal investigation.

Niall: Same old. I've seen several just this week. I don't know if they're new or they're just going around again because Israel's doing another blitz. It's phone footage recorded by troops getting their orders from their commander. It's translated, so you can't be sure if the translation is accurate, but the commander is saying, okay, you see anything that moves, you kill it. If it moves, you kill it. probably official Israeli engagement strategy. The whole world knows it. The whole world sees it.

Joe: The world needs just a big boil on its ass, basically. I mean, is that what the world needs for some reason? I mean, if you take Israel away and that kind of bullshit, I mean, things are not great, but they're tolerable. Is Israel just there to antagonize and make humanity look bad to space brothers or something like that, to aliens or to whoever? Because they do, they make the whole world look bad. They're the standout group of people who are the psychos. We have this group of psychos on the planet, them the gypsies. Gypsies are widespread and all that kind of stuff. in a concentrated area, a bunch of cycles, it's just weird. Every other country has their problems and all that kind of stuff and how. they're good qualities and bad qualities, but the Israelis, why are they even there? Can we get rid of them?

Speaker 1: It's like high functioning gypsies.

Niall: You know what I detest? The hand-wringing usually by lefties, every time there's an atrocity, they go... Look what we have allowed to happen. Now, I get what they're getting at because in a longer argument, they'll flesh it out. They'll flesh it out. Well, Israel couldn't do this without American backing, without American weapons, without European weapons, without British biplanes, all this stuff. Totally. But easy going there with the we. You're not going to implicate all of humanity in this. I kind of get, yeah, in a sense, we're all responsible. But when you do that, You're humanizing the inhuman. This is totally alien. This is not known, not even the Americans when they go to war behave like this most of the time. However, Trump this week absolutely put his fucking foot in it when he posted this gloating post about an airstrike in Yemen, which indeed makes the Americans look like they're no different from the Israelis. And is it any wonder then that the Yemenis rise up and say, death to America, death to Israel? We won't play it. You've probably all seen it. Trump posted this. These Houthis gathered for instructions on an attack, presumably on American ships, right? Oops, there will be no attack by these Houthis. They will never sink our ships again. Airstrike, kaboom, they're all dead. And the people pointed out that's almost certainly. there's no vehicles, there's no military equipment. It's almost certainly just a local tribal. Maybe it's Huthy type, but whatever, it doesn't matter. It's not a sophisticated military meeting on a fucking hilltop in the open air and daytime. The US launches an airstrike, they're all dead, probably possibly with kids, photos of similar gatherings in public like that in Yemen. They bring the kids with them. Maybe women are present too. And as Caitlin Johnson pointed out, this wasn't even intended, but for all the good things about MAGA, it just encapsulates the fundamental flaw at the heart of this synergistic thing the US establishment has with Israel. Wait, so Trump's Yemen snuff film. not only resembles the Wikileaks collateral murder video, it was also released on this 15 year anniversary. That's that's scary because that shows you this, this, this sinking. Whose 15 year anniversary? Remember the Wikileaks Helicopter Apache video? And back then it took, it took Chelsea Manning to actually leak it.

Joe: It's got to be coincidental.

Niall: Oh, it's coincidental. I don't know. Absolutely. There's no. Trump's not doing this and releasing this to make a point. But that coincidence is a scary one. Precisely because there was nothing intended to it. And the broader point being made is here, back then you would have to have Chelsea Manning to release it. Okay, then WikiLeaks goes, boom, it's the first one. And it was so shocking. The Guardian and LA Times and others were like, Oh my God. And they published it. And that was good times for WikiLeaks. Obviously it all went south after the CIA began its campaign against Assange. after that. Things have gotten to the point now where the US president just does it himself and to boast about it. And what he thinks he's showing isn't what he's showing. He genuinely, Trump's kind of a a naive idiot, he would have been told by the Pentagon, this is a top level meeting and they're plotting to take out the USS Eisenhower as it approaches the Red Sea. What should we do? Take him out. There's nothing to do with that at all. And he glows about it. And it's more innocent instead in the Middle East. And yeah, is it to protect American ships or is it Israel? We'll never know. Everyone sees the connection and it's hard to separate the two because obviously the Houthis are doing what they're doing because they've expressly said it's to stand up for Gaza and that they're having an effect. They claim no Israeli ships or anything headed for Israeli ports passes through the Red Sea now.

Joe: Got to use them weapons, man.

Niall: Is it just that though? Or is it Israel?

Joe: That's baseline. It's more than one.

Niall: By the way, Trump's second line, they will never sink our ships again. People are jumping to that going, hmm. So what you're saying is they did sink one.

Joe: Claims that that happened. But that will be super covered up. That was under Biden.

Niall: And nothing big last year. One of those smaller bat hand class ones.

Joe: Who knows what it was. But you never that's.

Speaker 1: That's a never admit to that.

Joe: Never.

Niall: How do you ever. How do you cover all that? I mean, that's going to get out, no?

Joe: Unless some of those photographs are video footage of it.

Niall: Well, there were a few claims that this is footage of hits.

Joe: Never be recognized, never be admitted. You think it will be, you know, but in a way.

Speaker 1: You just wait a little bit and then you say, oh, it had an accident and sank.

Joe: It's coming back.

Speaker 1: Doing routine exercises.

Joe: Oh no, you just say it's returned to port. It's returned to its base in San Diego. Who's going to fact check that?

Speaker 1: Well, I was just thinking about the US military men who, you know, died during, what is it, like, you know, random like exercises and then Ukraine.

Joe: Yeah.

Speaker 1: And then really it's just like, no, they were in Ukraine and you're just bullshitting.

Joe: Yeah, that's standard SOP. Yeah, I'll do it.

Niall: Short-term prediction, there'll be a few such stories in the next few weeks because the version is hit. They say they probably killed about 85 foreign instructors.

Joe: It's become a regular occurrence these days in the past month.

Niall: Hasn't it been a while?

Joe: Maybe a couple of weeks ago it happened. Two or three weeks ago. But that's because the Ukraine is just getting... There's more and more... Stuff is happening behind the scenes in Ukraine where it's being wound up. I reckon it's going to be wound up by May. The war is going to end quickly. it's dragging out and it seems, you know, but there's going to be some move towards kind of definitive move to wrapping it up. Something has to happen to kind of like, you know, push it over that edge of it and then it'll quickly be a done deal because you can't say it's over and then say and then drag it on for another six months type thing. You can only do that before you admit that it's done or that there's some kind of definitive agreement where obviously there's all sorts of talks going on behind the scenes, but they reach a point where a decision is made and then it's a done deal and then it's over very quickly type thing.

Niall: And what happens when the empire wraps up a war? Starts a new one. Starts a new one.

Joe: Yeah, although that was the empire. That's not Trump. Have you learned nothing, Neil?

Niall: Yeah, but you just said he needs to drop their munitions on Yemen to keep the weapons industry going.

Joe: Yeah. Well, we're not talking about something the scale of Ukraine. That's what they did after Afghanistan, and that was under Biden. But this is Trump. He'll just do some huge, huge small bombings, huge pinpoint small attacks, bombings that will serve as a warning to Iran. And then it'll fizzle out. Or it'll kind of get out of control in a certain sense and Trump won't know what to do. And then he'd say, I'm going home.

Speaker 1: Rubio said that it would be weeks, not months before. We know for sure whether the Russians are serious about a ceasefire. Yeah.

Joe: For sure. That's all bullshit. That's all diplomatic bullshit talk. They know what the deal is. Stuff's going on behind the scenes all the time and a deal has been made and there'll be a change in government. basically this year, probably this summer sometime, there'll be a change in government. So when this could be gone, there'll be a whole new shake-up, a whole new organization. Get the US ambassador in there for... an Attaboy. Get Trump in. No, we don't get Trump in for an Attaboy. Get Rubio in for an Attaboy to glue this thing and get the teeth to stick. And then tell some people they need to go stay outside the government and do the political homework and others will be put into positions in power.

Niall: He learned that speech by heart. That phone call. Joe was listening in live.

Joe: There's a framework. There's a framework to that. So you just use the same framework. Let's try and test it, you know. It's not going to change. just because it's Trump, right? It's got to be the same deal, right?

Niall: But that's the US empire.

Joe: They don't do that anymore. No, but that's the same process will happen where you put in a new government, but it will be for different reasons.

Niall: Presumably this will be Moscow's approval.

Joe: Yeah. Trump's serious, he's obviously serious about the fact that this war has to end and he doesn't have the cards. Him and Zelensky don't have the cards and Russia has all the cards basically. and Russia's like sending drones, like massive drone attack just last night again and the Ukrainians shot down basically none of them. because there's... because there's no more air defenses basically. I mean, that's all drying up behind the scenes. Nobody's talking about that, but that's all drying up behind the scenes. Look at how quickly the Russians are advancing. Keep an eye on all that over the next couple of weeks and you'll realize that the Ukrainians are fucked. I mean, it's over and the Russians are just carrying on based on their agenda of how much they want to achieve while at the same time simultaneously talking to the... sometimes he's talking to the Americans and getting to the point where it's a game they're playing. We're going to continue sending massive drones attacking, like you mentioned, groupings of foreign mercenaries and all that kind of stuff. They're going to hit those kind of gathering points, manufacturing plants, weapons manufacturing plants, etc., etc., drone manufacturing plants. We're going to keep all that going. while at the same time negotiating, bringing the negotiations to a close with the US and they really don't have, and the US is going to try and save face and talk all sorts of bullshit, blah, blah, blah, blah, but the end result is completely new government in Ukraine, full of people who will have their orders basically, Zelensky gone obviously and all his people. That'll be it. All over. Done. Except for a bit of crying. From the Naffo trolls. Willing and gnashing of teeth from Naffo people and the like.

Niall: And then the golden age will begin.

Joe: And then the war with Iran starts.

Niall: No, no, the golden age.

Joe: And then your golden age starts.

Niall: Come on, we're in the age of Aquarius now. This is it. This is the end of the bullshit, right?

Joe: Yeah, the gold. That's where we all get some gold. Yeah, so that's what's going on.

Niall: Yeah. Any other items?

Joe: I think we're done. Dawn. Adam's done, is he?

Speaker 1: The UK is banning ninja swords, if you want to.

Joe: Yeah, Stormur said ninja swords should be banned.

Speaker 1: Ninja, specifically ninja swords.

Joe: Samurai swords are fine. Ninja swords, no way.

Niall: The UK government's insane. The regime, I mean, it's not the government. Technically, as a judge yesterday, sentenced a mother of two with another Irish name. I kept seeing that. There's so many Irish Brits, Brits of Irish descent, who We're in the front and center of the riots last year. A woman in Connolly, three years in prison for a tweet.

Joe: That was over the Stockdale riots there last July.

Niall: And it wasn't like, you know, go get them lads, cut their heads off. It was more like.

Joe: Burn down the places that they're housing them in, get them out.

Niall: It was inflammatory. Yeah, no doubt about it.

Joe: Three years in prison. Yeah, it was three years in prison minus, it's actually only end up going to be 40% of 31 months or something like that. It's actually only going to end up being one year, but it's still egregious for a tweet. It's ridiculous. But apparently there's something like one a day, one person is arrested per day for something they posted on social media in the UK. Yeah, he's a rare bastard, that Stormer fella, but then he's not the one controlling that. Roland from AFD said he's not the one calling the shots. He's just an asshole like the rest of them. Yeah. So we'll see. We'll see. Have you got a joke? No. No. Did you not bring one?

Speaker 1: No, I didn't bring one today. I left it at home.

Joe: I don't have a joke, but I've got a piece of advice for guys, especially if you're kind of like a... Especially if you're a bit older, I mean, you have to be past certain age maybe to do this, whatever, but basically just a piece of advice. Super corny, which is the way I like them. So when you're reversing your car, obviously when there are other people in the car, when you start to reverse your car, you just can, you know, you're obviously looking back or you just go, ah, this takes me back. Try it. People will love it.

Speaker 1: Oh, my gosh. That's probably the worst one yet. It's not.

Joe: It's not a joke. It's a piece of advice. It's a piece of life advice. It's a life hack.

Speaker 1: It's the worst life advice I've ever heard.

Joe: You try it. People love it. You make so many friends.

Niall: Something must be in the air. Something's in the air. because look at Brett's joke in the comments.

Joe: What do you say?

Niall: At the bottom? Yeah. What is the sexuality called where you- Ah, it's just here, we can't see it anymore.

Joe: What does it say?

Niall: I think it- What is the sexuality called? Can you read it, Scotty? Yeah, he wrote, what is the sexuality called where you are single for so long that you don't even remember what it's like to have romantic feelings?

Joe: Dunno.

Niall: Bisexual. As in bye-bye.

Joe: That's worse than mine. Absolutely worse. It's absolutely worse than mine. Bisexual. Come on, Brad.

Speaker 1: Bisexual. Try harder.

Niall: That's terrible. Okay.

Joe: We're going to leave it there for this week, folks. We hope you enjoyed the show. Don't forget to like, subscribe. I'm sure you all have done already. Anyway, just in case you haven't. And we'll be back next week with another show on whatever bulls*** has been going on between now and then. Of which there will be. Certainly some. So until then, have a good week. Take it easy. See ya.

Niall: Bye y'all.

Joe: Bye.

Niall: Can't stop the signal now.

 

[Niall]

Turns out, Trump's trade war is all about China, China, China!

Coming up shortly on NewsReal...

 

[Ellipse]

Turns out, Trump's trade war is all about China, China, China!

Coming up shortly on NewsReal...

Here is again the transcription after the database crash.

Part 1:

Niall: Yes. Trump's tariffs. They're working, right?

Adam: He seemed to get a lot of people to the negotiating table.

Niall: Which table?

Adam: Whatever table is big enough for 70 countries plus Trump's ego.

Niall: Okay. We've got some clarity versus last week. It's clearly about China because statements the US has made since then, not just Trump, but yeah, it was. Bit hairy there though for a while. Okay, they've raised their tafs. We'll raise ours. Okay, they've matched ours. We'll raise ours.

Adam: Raise it again.

Niall: Raise it again. 100%. 125%. I think it's currently at... China's at 125 on American goods and the US is at 134 or 145.

Adam: I saw 145.

Niall: 145. It hasn't moved. The tower barometer is still there, right?

Adam: But he's excluding laptops, semiconductors, solar cells, flat screen TVs, smartphones.

Niall: Including from China.

Adam: Yeah.

Niall: Right. Plus the polls on Wednesday. The polls was for everyone else, but now there's that qualifier, which is that certain goes from China. What are the categories again? Chips, computer chips?

Adam: Yeah, semiconductors, laptops, solar cells, flat screen TVs, and smartphones. So basically like all of the major consumer technology that Americans get from China.

Niall: Is that accurate? Is that roughly a match for the major ones?

Adam: Or is there more? I mean, those are just the ones that come off the top of my head as far as things that like I would buy that I knew came from China.

Niall: Okay. Um, but let's say, let's say that's the case, right? We can, we can, we can check that. Then basically Trump has also paused the tariffs on China, right? On Wednesday, it was everyone but China. In fact, this was the, the Wednesday, the Wednesday tweet was I had, I ran out of popcorn at this point. Trump no longer tweets, of course, he truths. Let's have a look. It's the Wednesday truth social tweet from Trump. I attempted to do it in his voice but I won't. Okay.
"Based on the lack of respect that China has shown us the world's markets, I'm hereby raising the tariff charged China by the United States to 125%. At some point, hopefully in the near future, China will realize that the days of ripping off the USA and other countries is no longer sustainable or acceptable. Conversely, and based on the fact that more than 75 countries have called representatives of the United States, to negotiate a solution to the subjects being discussed and that these countries have not, at my strong suggestion, retaliated in any way, shape or form against the United States, I've authorized a 90-day pause."

Not completely. He says it then is reverted to the 10% baseline tariff, which is roughly a match with what most of those probably 75 countries do charge the US. On average, it's around 8%, but whatever, we'll say it's 10%. So it's currently even. If you like, 10% is the US's merited reciprocal tariff. What would actually be a reciprocal tariff is that, around 10%. So yeah, it's a lot of shots across the bow. Followed by a lot of backing down. That's what looks like to me because that brings you back to the status quo. pretty much 10% Although with the threat of it's only a 90-day pause because this could change. the thing with Trump is this could change day to day but After a week of up and down, that's where we're at. I have an initial question about this Did Trump React because the markets reacted negatively.

Did that prompt this pause midweek? Because he will say that, no, no, that's fine. It's going according to plan. I'm not responding to the markets most of the time. But he also did admit, I think it's an admission. Let me see if this qualifies as one. Before I put it up, let me satisfy myself. Well, the headline RT went with is that, yes, he did admit he reacted. And they write, Trump has admitted, so this is the ninth, the same day, Wednesday, that is the decision to delay further tariff hikes was driven in part by sharp downturn in the US financial markets, urging Americans to be cool and telling investors that this is a great time to buy after the US markets lost more than $1.5 trillion in capitalization the day before Tuesday.

That's when he made his social posts. We've just seen the reversal to a baseline 10% except for China. And they have a statement from him. I never saw him say this, but maybe something he said on Air Force One or the full quote is, I was watching the bond market. The bond market is very tricky. I was watching it. But if you look at it now, it's, it's beautiful. But yeah, I saw last night, presumably Tuesday, where people were getting a little queasy. I thought that people were jumping a little bit out of line. They were getting yippy, you know, they were getting a little bit yippy, a little bit afraid. It makes me like that. That sounds to me like. He's talking about others getting afraid. Is that him getting a bit afraid?

Joe: Well, if they were getting afraid, then they were taking action, then obviously it would have an impact on his scenario, right?

Adam: Because he needs people to not be panicants.

Joe: Exactly. Panicants, the new branch of political party.

Adam: The panicants. The panicants.

Niall: Yeah. Yeah. So that Paul's Wednesday triggered a historic rally in the US stock markets with the S&P 500 closing up 9.5%, his biggest gains in 2008.

Joe: Right.

Niall: Similar for the others.

Joe: If I empty my bank account on one day and then put it all back in the next day, did I make that amount of money?

Adam: No, but you rallied your bank account.

Joe: I did.

Niall: To historic record highs. Yeah.

Joe: I've never had that size of a deposit before.

Niall: Well, it's a record since 48 hours ago. That's kind of like. what's so unnerving about this whole thing. People finding victories in victories or conversely catastrophic defeatism in short-term movements. But I do wonder, maybe my question is, was there actually something that moved? that did occur. Whether this is objective, it's hard to say, but it came specifically from the US Treasury bond markets. that did scare not so much Trump personally, but Trump and probably other Western governments because it pointed to a fundamental problem for the status quo of the current US-backed trade order. The assumption that was made was that it was a spike in like 5 billion worth of US treasures that were sold off.

Joe: Yes, and bonds.

Niall: And people assumed, oh, China's retaliating. And then it turned out the source was Japanese.

Joe: Yeah.

Niall: Not Chinese. And I doubt that's a strategic slap back from Japan to the Trump administration, which is probably very favorable to creating a new US-based order.

Joe: Well, the thing is, this is something that hasn't been done before, so everybody's a bit jittery and nobody knows what Trump is actually doing for good reason. He's a bit of a blowhard, you know, in that sense where he'll, it's hard to know if he actually has a plan or what, and this is a lot of people are trying to figure out, you know, and nobody's come up with any answers yet as to whether he actually knows what he's doing or not, you know, what his actual plan is. His plan, I mean, there's a phrase from kind of geopolitics, strategic ambiguity. It really involves a kind of like militarise, you know. military maneuvers or moves on the military chessboard, let's say from a geopolitics point of view, he seems to be adopting that for his financial global finance or America's financial policy point of view, strategic ambiguity, where it's like, yeah, maybe I'm doing that and maybe I'm not. What do you think?

Niall: Yeah.

Joe: I just did that. What do you think it means that I did that? What if I undo that, then what does that mean? And what if I redo it again after that? What do you think now? You got any ideas, huh? What do you think? Yeah, yeah.

Niall: I've always said that about Trump. It's like he's dancing. He's hot putting, you know, to keep everyone off guard.

Joe: But that's a line for some kind of an actual concrete idea or an actual policy, an actual strategy, a clear specific strategy. I don't think there is one except that he's playing with, I mean, overall. I think the best thing you can say about it or the most you can glean from it is that he is like his overall approach over the past few weeks, whatever, on the tariffs business is that he's basically threatening. He's kind of doing what the American governments before him have done in order to wield their power. They've used the implied threat of American military and hard and soft power against enemies and allies alike in order to keep them in line. And now Trump is the peacemaker, right? Isn't that right, Adam? He's the peace president, right? He's not going to start any wars. So what does that leave him with? Well, that only leaves him with finances, right? America's other primary strength is its financial power. So he's, rather than using military power, directly or going first with military power, he seems to be focusing, well, he's going with his own private personal strength, which is the business, right? The art of the deal, right? He's a billionaire, he's a businessman, right? He knows about the business.

He can take care of business, right? So that's what he's going with. He's running with his strength because he's not much of a, well, he's again being charitable to him. he's got a big soft heart right except not for the palestinians. but generally speaking he doesn't like seeing ukrainians and russians being killed and this war has to stop because all those poor people are dying and fuck the palestinians. but you know well we won't even talk about them. but anyway maybe he can't do anything about them because they're jews. so um he just can't go there. so um. So he's big-hearted, soft, he doesn't want to use military might in the same way that the Americans have done in the past and he's left them with his forte which is finances. So he's threatening countries around the world, like I said, allies and so-called allies and enemies alike with financial terrorism in order to get them in line. and by get them in line, I mean get them all to align with the American agenda, align with America financially, economically, trade agreements, all that kind of stuff. Align with America primarily against China.

Niall: Yes, that's become clear.

Joe: And of course the Chinese are trying to do the same thing basically. as a response really. Someone like Trump might claim that the Chinese have been doing that before now, before Trump came in, that the Chinese have been trying to gather allies, financial economic allies to push against or to try and corner or sideline the US. And that's where this is coming from. So you could argue over who's on first here. If you only just woke up, I suppose, in a certain sense, you might think, well, this is the Chinese responding to Trump. They're doing pretty much the same thing that Trump's trying to do, which is gather allies from different countries to form a kind of trading bloc or to negotiate trade deals. that would be favorable to that in group and less than favorable to America.

Just by the fact that they're they form a trade agreement or form an alliance themselves. That in itself is a threat to others if you're not part of a trade agreement. If I'm one of a bunch of countries and I get all those countries to, and we all agree together to have zero tariffs or to have a favorable trade agreement among ourselves and then we become a financial block or an economic block. that that makes us more powerful together, right? All of us together as part of a single entity under a trade agreement. Then we can use that together. We could use that leverage against collective bargaining power. Like America. So China is doing that now overtly in response to Trump doing that. And part of the reason, the way Trump was doing that was he was threatening people. to get them in line. I'm going to tariff you up the wazoo unless you sign a favorable trade agreement with us and actually form a trading bloc with us, me, America as the dominant power, but you all in line with it.

Niall: Have they said anything like that? Because that was the theory a week ago and it's holding sound. because the most reasonable theory when everyone was still guessing was that, no, no, the tariffs are just the first phase and it'll be to create a negotiating tactic or an opening for creating some kind of monetary union pegging of the dollar of favored countries. Had they articulated that that's what they're going for, what the tariffs are a tactic for the end result, something like a Western Union, like an EU-like I don't think we necessarily set up officially in that sense.

Joe: Trump doesn't want to be tied down to any official.

Niall: I thought they were trying to break away from alliances.

Joe: Exactly. Official agreement has to be. But it's more done as a result of threats of tariffs. Especially America. Trump is using America's economic influence in the sense that it's many countries' biggest export. partner or export country. It's mainly exports for most people. Most countries are dependent on America from an export point of view rather than an import point of view. They import some things from America, but that's again Trump's issue. That's what he sees immediately when he looks at the books. He says all these countries are exporting to us and not buying our products. most countries. While he decries that as cheating and unfair and all this kind of stuff and he wants to address it, that actually gives America a lot of influence over those countries because you're all dependent on America to a large extent, on one extent or another, but to a great extent, you're all dependent on America as an export country.

You make a lot of money from shipping your crap to us and us buying your stuff basically. So we're going to stop you from doing that. That's what tariffs are basically. That's what those tariffs are. Tariffs are saying, listen, you make shit loads of money by sending your shit over here. I'm going to stop you sending it. You're not going to send it anymore unless you... And the details of what some kind of a trade agreement between these countries are, but I think ultimately it would be to... band together and in some way or other push back against China, screw over China, which is why the Chinese have responded quite badly to that whole thing because they know that that's what's behind it. I mean, you can assume that that's what's actually going on. It's not just some benign kind of like, oh, let's all just do trade and let's work out a new way to trade with each other. Let's all be happy. China is very unhappy with it, right? Yeah. And they're acting as if they're being directly attacked. Yeah.

Niall: And they are because...

Joe: And not just by tariffs, but by what's going on behind tariffs, which is what I've just been saying, which is America, Trump trying to get as many countries as possible into some kind of an anti-China trade block. trading blog.

Niall: I haven't heard anyone in the administration articulate that.

Joe: I think someone roughly has.

Niall: I've heard an important tech bro say it though. I forget his surname, but he's the Indian American guy, Shamant. Do we be looking guy? Very articulate. He's kind of got his own podcast now with another tech bro. Was he former Google executive or something?

Adam: Maybe.

Niall: Shamant something. Anyway, he said it explicitly. What we need is a new economic NATO. That term is fucking loaded because think of how integrated, NATO was basically, if you put aside the actual war activity for a second, NATO was a highly integrated armaments trade bloc, US centered, US focus of the West. where not only would you buy American, going the other way, we have control of your systems, which we now know, such that we can turn off stuff remotely if we don't like the way you're using the stuff we sell.

Joe: Was that included in the trade deficit, the amount of weapons that other countries buy from America? We know that services weren't included. So it's all a bit false. It's all a bit fake. And a lot of people have been saying that Trump's analysis, the whole thing is fake. It's hiding something else, which is what I've been saying. Basically, it's not really. America really isn't getting a raw deal. They aren't being screwed over, all that kind of stuff. What they fear basically is what we've been talking about for quite a long time is the emergence of a multipolar world. And when you have a multipolar world, that's a really bad deal for, no matter what way you frame it. A multipolar world, a change from a multipolar world, especially with Russia and China at the head of it, is a really bad deal for America because America has, you know, America is what it is today because of a unipolar world. So you change it from a multipolar world and America by definition takes it. By definition, there's no way to spin it. America can't enter into multi-polarity without it going, without them having to tighten their belt several notches. And nobody in America wants to do that because- Yeah, yeah.

Niall: But Trump has promised the opposite. He's got Rubio using multi-polarity, broaching the- Previously the untouchable, the unspeakable. So it's been said now, which we can infer. Trump himself acknowledges this is the way it's going. But at that very inflection moment, he's telling the American people with that unbelievable speech on April 2nd, today we've been our liberation day and from now on things are going to be just. Awesome. We're going to be wealthier than ever before. He's promising them the very opposite of what realistically must happen.

Joe: Unless you do economic NATO.

Niall: Let's talk about it some more, because that's a hell of a term to use. Remember, NATO has become a dirty word in MAGA. They want out. Trump seems to be toying with actually breaking them out. Your answer to breaking up the alliance system. that Washington warned you, you should never get into or you'd end up in this situation.

Joe: Who?

Niall: Washington, George Washington, you know, foreign alliances. You'd end up being lobbied to death on behalf of foreign interests, which is basically what America is now. And your answer to how to bring jobs home, become genuinely sovereign again, et cetera, et cetera, is... to form a block. that's NATO-like. We want out of NATO, but we want a new one. This impulse, this instinct, when you feel that things are getting out of control, to corral and to form blocks, that's the opposite of what multipolarity is. China is not forming blocks, closed loops.

Joe: No, they're doing business. Yes, they can do business. They can do business a lot better than anybody else obviously. And the reason the NATO, economic NATO, but it's only NATO like, it's not going to be NATO like. You can't use the analogy of NATO in the term and phrase. economic NATO only goes so far. You can't look and just transplant military NATO onto economic NATO. You know what I mean? Because obviously it's very different. Military NATO means spending vast amounts of money funding other countries, the defense of other countries. why they don't pay the fair share, which is what was happening. You're on the hook for all of that. But an economic NATO would simply be a militant economic alliance dominated by America with other countries subservient. It's very, very different. You're effectively attempting to make other countries' economies subservient to America's economy, which is very good for America. It won't make America the greatest country ever, ever, ever compared to military alliance where in order for it to actually have any meaning, you have to actually put weapons and money into other countries. It's just a very different world. If NATO was a military alliance created to potentially protect against the communists, against the Soviets.

And that was going to be a war, right? So you're going to have to flood countries with all sorts of weapons and all that kind of stuff. It's a very different world today. I mean, it might look that way, the way particularly Europeans are talking about Russia and stuff invading Europe, but an economic NATO would be effectively the reverse of that. It would be instead of the U.S. pumping having to pump a lot large amounts of money and weapons into other countries and keep their troops there and all that kind of stuff. it's all. it's all. it's all a funny money. it's all numbers on the screen there's no. there's no outlay. you're not funding anybody for an economic NATO. you're actually taking from them. you're making their economy subservient to yours. you're forcing them into an economic pact where You benefit from the productivity and economic output of these other countries in this so-called economic NATO and you use that as an increased economic block to wage economic war against China and defeat them and rush headlong into the American Golden Age.

Niall: Defeat them, yeah.

Joe: And the reason they're doing this, obviously, the reason they're switching to an economic NATO, although they want to, is because military NATO is no good anymore for doing that kind of thing. Military NATO was set up essentially to protect American unipolarity, but it's no longer able to do that. And they've recognized that. They can't defeat Russia. They can't defeat China militarily. So that's just Forget about NATO. It's a waste of money, waste of time at this point. So let's focus on what really counts here, what the real problem is. And it's the rising economic threat from other otherwise peer competitors, peer military competitors. I mean, basically when you've got a peer competitor militarily, if you have any sense, you don't... unlike the Biden administration and the ones before it, you don't decide to go toe to toe and risk nuclear armageddon. You drop that completely. And if you drop that, you completely say, okay, look, I can't bully my way militarily out of this situation. So let's just drop that altogether. We're not going to fight. Let's talk about not fighting, which is what Trump is doing. Trump's going to be the peace president and all that kind of stuff. We're not going to fight with anybody. We're not going to start any wars, but we're not just going to sit back and do nothing. Yes.

Niall: We're going to fight.

Joe: the issues at the level that is most important to Trump as a businessman and to the American people, which is money in their pockets and jobs in their communities.

Niall: It worries me though that they're using bluff. Take the most historically subservient facile to the US, the European Union and or countries within, right? It's always been yes sir, yes sir. It was until last week. In the middle of this tit for tat, and the bond market's going squarely last week, there's an announcement that the EU and China are discussing basically allowing, because hitherto they haven't, allowing Chinese electric vehicles into the European market, pretty much for the first time.

Joe: Allowing into the European market? Yeah. No, there's plenty of those already. There's plenty of Asian electric vehicles. What is Kia?

Niall: I don't know, but yeah, there's plenty of Koreans and Japanese. Japan and Nissan and Renault are now one company. I mean, the Chinese, that would be new. What I'm saying is that's the signal they're sending. is the opposite result to what Trump would have wanted. Maybe it's a counter bluff by the EU and those negotiations will go nowhere, but they're signaling back to Trump. The most obsequious of vassals is signaling back to Trump. We're going the opposite way.

Joe: Well, that was whenever it looked. I mean, because it's against strategic ambiguity, they don't know what's going on. They don't know how serious it is. They don't know what his plan is, whether it's to go full tariff retard or if it's just kind of a bluff. So like, I mean, what do you do? Unless you have inside information on that and he turns around and says, I'm going to impose, you know, whatever 30, 40, 50% tariffs on the EU, the EU has to respond. Like they don't just go, unless they know, and they didn't know. because they have to have a response like.

Niall: Yeah. What Trump said officially, you can't believe it. It's so hard. He said no one else responded in that social post already. No one else responded in retaliated in any way, shape or form. Actually the EU did, but they backed out. and it was left with just China and the US going up and up and up. China announced it has resumed talks with the European Union to lower trade barriers and increase economic cooperation with specific focus on electric vehicles.

Adam: Okay, so it looks like the previously EU had set, like as of October of last year, it was 45.3% tariffs on Chinese-built electric vehicles going into the EU. So basically what they did was there are Chinese electric vehicles in the EU, but there's not a whole lot of them.

Joe: There's high tariffs on them.

Adam: There's super high tariffs. And so this is them trying to negotiate that down to something.

Joe: Flat rate.

Niall: To a minimum price. Yeah, exactly.

Joe: Which would be really bad news for Tesla. Elon Musk must not like that. But that's them showing what they can do, basically. I mean, they are pushing back, obviously. We can and that's well. you know that that would be maybe why you know not the stock market or the bond market whatever got jitters but trump got a little bit of jitters too. you know he's doing his best. you know um and of course it'll be a big upheaval and the europeans don't want to have to do any of that. they don't want. nobody wants to have to change the current order. You know, the way trade flows around the world and the different deals they have with each other have been well established for quite a long time. Nobody wants to like have to redo all that. So when Trump backs down on the tariffs, then they go, okay, they probably cancel the thing with electric vehicles from China. You know, they put it on hold and wait and see and just carry on as usual until Trump decides to do something else.

Niall: The White House is, quote, waiting for Xi to pick up the phone. And Trump has said, China wants to make a deal. They just don't know quite how to go about it. Maybe. This is a bet on American confidence versus, well, the bet is that the world has changed and this will fall flat. I got to admit, they do sound super confident that they're going to get what they want out of China to come to the negotiation table to join the other 75. So far, it doesn't look like that.

Joe: It's basically it's ideological, you know, I mean Trump's. you've got a problem. He wants to make America great again economically. what he wants to make American economic powerhouse on many different fronts And he wants to obviously wants to bring jobs back manufacturing and all that kind of stuff. But first of all before you can do that, you have to unless you're gonna have people like the Chinese memes but I'd like that. you have Americans, you know screwing putting little screws into iPhones and stuff. Yeah, you have to have. you have to create a large inflow. you have to boost the American economy with a large inflow of money and Basically, you have to focus first on stuff that America actually produces and help people buy more of that before you can start producing things that you haven't produced in a very long time or never produced. In order to build factories, you need to have an inflow of capital and an inflow of money first. One way to do that obviously is to get other countries to buy more of our stuff, right? And it is ideological in a certain sense. I mean, countries have worked it out before now where they just buy for all sorts of different reasons, but I mean, they buy different things from different countries based on proximity and pricing and ideology as well. Agreements like Russia and China, for example, they're buying stuff and selling stuff to and from each other all the time because they're ideologically aligned, right?

And that's America's fault to a large extent. And Trump wants to... to change that. But it's hard for him. He's got this history, basically, that he's saddled with from previous administrations that turned these major countries against America and made enemies of these other countries. And he's trying now to make them friends again, but from a practical point of view. Let's be reasonable here. Let's be practical. I'm not Biden. I'm not the deep state. I just want to do business. And they fucked things up. for America for a very long time and I want to redo it now and let's work it out. China, for example, or the European Union, both of you need to buy more American oil, for example, American oil and gas. I mean, China, you're buying way too much Russian gas.

Why are you buying all your gas and oil from Russia? Well you see the reason we're buying from Russia is because you fuckers told us that we were an enemy and you're gonna invade us at any time and you're gonna threaten us over Taiwan and we decided to buy from Russia because at the same time you're threatening to blow up Russia and assassinate Putin and all this kind of stuff. Do you understand why we don't really buy a lot of your stuff or why we favor countries in our backyard? and countries that are favorite, like see things in the same way as we do, which is from a multipolar point of view. So I don't know how we're going to work this out. What have you got to offer? Tariffs. Well, that's not going to cut it. Fuck you too. I mean, that's just more belligerent. We don't want to go down that road. And in fact, I don't know. Do you have any cards, Trump? I mean, you said Zelensky doesn't have any cards. Do you have any cards? What cards do you actually have? Who has all the cards? Who has any cards?

Adam: There was one interesting speech that somebody gave. I saw it and scrolled and didn't think to bookmark it to save it for right now. But he was talking about what is going on as far as China and to your point that you mentioned earlier where you were saying that you can't just say, okay, tariffs and now we're going to do it all in America. A whole lot of infrastructure before you can get there. and what he was basically saying was that China is no longer the place that you go to for. for like cheap labor, because it's not that anymore. It's changed. You know, its economy is built up. And so if you want like super cheap labor, you go elsewhere. But the reason why people go to China is because they have such a long. they have a long enough history now that the amount of expertise that you need in order to do things like, you know, three nanometer micro trip factories and stuff, all of all of the uh

Niall: support structure all

Adam: of the support structure that you need not just supply chain but just like people and the um the expertise the the history of having done it you know. you know if you think about it as far as like a tradesman and an artisan you know a craftsman uh you have to go through a period before you actually become competent enough to be able to do certain things. and so China's been doing that kind of stuff for long enough that the the amount of people who are able to do those kinds of things is incredibly high. my comparison. What he gave as an analogy would be like where where america might have three people who can do. A certain kind of thing like china has a couple of field football fields worth. so it's like. it's not just that. you know, it's super cheap labor. It's also the fact that they have the infrastructure and they have the people who are technically skilled enough to be able to do it. And, you know, and so like looking at the American economy in that way, like, basically, you just have to train and re-educate a heck of a lot of people in order to get to that point.

Joe: You gotta start at the bottom, like everybody else.

Adam: Or we could just buy everybody.

Niall: But doesn't it strike you that Trump's The better spin on it is that he just wants to initiate a process and he's not that dumb. He knows this process would take possibly decades. But the way it looks now is that this is an attempt to strike out and get an easy way out. Just make it happen. I saw one idea about what a short-term plan to kickstart the return of capital to the US might be. Is it China or Japan that holds the most US dollars?

Joe: China, yeah.

Niall: And then Japan. Yeah, the whole Saudi Arabia.

Joe: Well, dollars are. There's dollars and then there's securities, bonds and common bonds.

Niall: One idea was that They want them to stop holding it, but not to just sell it in the open market. To buy US long-term treasury bonds, especially three-decade long ones, 30-year bonds, which would enable the US government to finance long-term to borrow more.

Joe: They also want to devalue the dollar.

Niall: They want their allies to double down on the bet. If you really believe that holding the dollars is the safe haven in a world where the US dollars reserve currency, bet down again, longer term, bet for the next 30 years that that's the case. In a sense, then if that's the kind of tact that is going on here, Trump is calling out the allies and saying, do you really believe that? Because if you do bet now, the US is the best place to invest, get in here now while you can. The fact that Japan, we can't say it's a Japanese government per se, but that it came from Japan, that the sharp sell-off in US treasuries that spooked the bond market, that made Trump back down, but make it sound like he wasn't, and he did back down, came from the ally that he's hoping to convince. to reinvest. It's kind of like the Saudis with the petrol dollar. Keep it coming. Invest in Silicon Valley and American jobs. Keep that money. The US dollar is coming back and investing here. The fact that he got a counter signal, that's what it was. It suggests just a week in, but it's not going to work.

Joe: The counter signal from who?

Niall: From Japan. Instead of using their big holdings of US dollars. to reinvest, to double down on the bet that America is the place for the next 30 years. Instead of doing that, they sold them in the open market.

Joe: Well, that could be seen as a jitter, getting a bit yippy. It wasn't just in America they were getting yippy. Other countries were getting yippy too. It depends. It's hard to know at this point what way they're thinking and stuff like this. This was this week as well. The EU and the UAE are starting talks on comprehensive trade deal. This was rushed forward. Talking about just boosting trade other than oil trade. Non-oil trade with the EU between the UAE and the UAE is $68 billion. This is going to start negotiations towards a wide-ranging free trade agreement, especially from both sides. So it's all about free trade, like setting up free trade, like European Union type situations. Again, this is what I said several weeks ago, that you'd see countries starting to form trading blocks with each other that are mutually beneficial in order to offset the threat from America. fulfilling its historic role under Trump. Now America is out for itself. It's not going to finance anybody anymore. It's not going to be the peacemaker or the policeman or the patron anymore.

Well, in that case, I think it hasn't fully happened yet. We've seen signs of it, but in that situation, people get the idea, other countries get the idea that Trump is serious about this. regardless of tariffs or tariffs or whatever, that ultimately he's set on a course of America divesting itself from the world in the way that it has, you know, in terms of from the role that has played in the world over the past 60, 70, 80 years. Well, then it's like, if people think that that is what's going to happen and there's going to be kind of systemic changes over the next few years under Trump as a result of that, well, then we got to. We've got to react and we've got to start looking for alternatives. And as more and more countries do that, you're going to see America becoming more and more economically isolated. People will just slowly develop because they've got 5% of the world's population. I'm sure they buy a lot of stuff more than that amount of people would suggest. they're still 95% of the rest of the world's population to take up the slack. I think that's definitely possible.

Niall: Would you say the golden age thing is hopium? Yeah. It looks like it.

Joe: It's going to be.

Niall: And or copium for the fact that.

Joe: It's going to be.

Niall: The Spanish prime minister was in China for a full state visit this week.

Joe: In China, yeah. They're pretty quickly jumping on that.

Niall: That's not someone who's going, oh, goodness, the world's bifurcating. I better not show disloyalty to Big Brother USA. That's like whatever. Maybe it was a long scheduled visit.

Joe: Well, it may have been, but obviously all these countries have been doing business with China increasingly over the past 20 years as well, and they have a solid trade. partnerships, let's say, or whatever, trading with China in particular, buying a lot of stuff from China. I think at the end of the day, like I said, America's main benefit or main card it has to play against any other country is the amount of stuff that America buys. Not what they buy from America. Obviously exports are very important, but you would You could argue that if we're going to prioritize things, the first thing we need to prioritize is having access to the goods, products, raw materials that we need. That's number one. Close second obviously is exports. from an economic point of view, from an economy, a healthy economy point of view. We need to be able to sell the stuff that we make and trade and export stuff to other countries. and that's where America plays a significant role.

Niall: But the most sensible...

Joe: You look for other markets basically. You can look for other markets to export to, but you can't really look for other markets to import from to the same extent because there are certain countries that only produce the particular types of products or raw materials and in the quantity. that is necessary, right? You're just looking from a small business, like, you know what I mean? If I'm a small business and I make something, I buy raw materials, I need to buy the raw materials first and foremost in order to make the product to sell it. If I don't buy the raw materials, I have nothing to sell and it's all over. At the very least, if I can buy the raw materials, I can make the product. And if my main customer goes belly up and is no longer available, at least I have the potential of finding someone else. There can be someone else who will buy my product. But if I don't have a product to sell, forget about it. I don't need a customer.

Niall: Right.

Joe: So number one priority is purchasing imports, buying your raw materials, buying the goods that you need to raw materials, but products that you need to sell in your country. You know what I mean? It's like not even exports. It's selling within your country. I don't know what the ratio is, obviously, but I'd say in most countries, the vast majority of products that are sold, whether they're from native production, i.e. native raw materials or imported raw materials or imported whole goods, they're sold back to the country in which they're imported into. It would depend on the country. So that's another variable. That will determine which way a particular country and even a block of countries like the EU, but then you'd have divisions. It's dependent on the particular country's profile, economic profile, how much they're willing or how much Trump's tariffs would scare them. It's like Trump says to France, we're not buying anymore or we're putting 100% tariffs on your wine. France would go, well, let's do the sums. Okay. This is how much we sell to America. Maybe those Chinese could take some of the shortfall and someone else could take some more of the shortfall, et cetera, et cetera. And anyway, wine isn't really, if France was an example of one of those countries where the products that they import into the country, the raw materials, the finished products, most of their economic activity is selling back to, selling internally to the country, within the EU. They're not buying products from China and shipping them to America. You know what I mean?

Niall: Yeah. Last week, I had a figure of 45% roughly of two countries' GDP that is dependent on the stuff leaving the country altogether. Germany and South Korea. So you've got some that are super exposed because of the whole system that we're leaving. And they benefited from that enormously. But now they're like, the most cogent explanation I've heard from official America, or the most cogent rationale or motive for what they're doing, makes sense from a real political point of view. And his, I can't remember who it was, but his argument was simple. Look, in a potential future war, regional or hot war, whatever kind, we're not self-aligned. We don't make enough steel for a war. We couldn't ship enough to Ukraine fast enough because we didn't have the capacity. I think Russia-Ukraine war taught them that. I'm not sure how much they actually connected the dots in their head, but maybe we can tell just simply by the fact that this is coming on the heels of that war ending. that they're doing the math. And Russia was able to sustain all the inputs, all the NATO countries, especially the US, through added via Ukraine, because they were self-alliant. And then they realized when they were privately impressed by that fact, holy shit, in a similar war game situation now, we wouldn't be. You have to be. It's interesting as well that China in its formal Beijing response midweek in the height of this tariff, tariff, more tariff, more tariff, their official statement was basically we won't bend the knee, but they specifically said China has always striven to be self-reliant and will continue to do so and no one will stop us from being so. as if that's all we're seeking.

Now it's a bit more than that because China's self-reliance is an enormous amount to do with exporting to the rest of the world. So they want to keep it that way, of course. But the underlying fundamentals are solid for China. In between the lines of what they're saying is if we have to, we can be self-reliant with internal consumption. We'll go that way if we have to. It won't knock us off where we're at. And of course, between the lines, They're saying back to the United States, we know we are, but are you? Another little bit of data picked up this week. Did you know that throughout the Ukraine war, something like 150,000 drones, most of them are your DJI Chinese made cheap drones, simple drones, but that were retrofitted cleverly, especially by the Ukrainians to use against Russia, came from China? China officially says, no, no, we don't partake in wars. We never sell weapons. And so they didn't actively sell a hundred thousand drones to Ukraine, but they were sold on the markets that were then pulled back in by the West retrofitted either outside by the Brits or within Ukraine by the Ukrainians.

Well, that capacity, that mass manufacture of those drones didn't come from the West. It actually came from the only one who was able to to scale it up. The war started. now, scale it up. We can't, sir. Okay, we'll get them from China. They realized we couldn't actually do that. Ironically, they'll come to their berating and saying, don't you dare start giving weapons to the Russians. Don't you dare come in on their side. They were using their stuff to hit the Russians with, because they themselves didn't make them. They cleverly tweaked them into all kinds of diabolical ways. much of it innovative. I know it was the world's first drone war, but it came with the raw material of the mass production of drones from China, not from American factories, British, French, German.

Joe: That's the way the world works.

Niall: They realized that the war taught them. Russia's confidence throughout that it would achieve the aims of its SMO and not run out of weapons or ammo as they were constantly telling us in the West. Putin was just like, well, if you believe that, if you want, their confidence came from their self-reliance. We have the resources, the know-how. We can scale things up if we have to. They did. The West can't do that right now. So that's, to come back to the start of my point, that's, I think, the real politic rationale that makes the most sense to me is that they're freaking out. If it's no longer a globalized world and it's multipolarity, well, a third of our critical dependence for these kinds of things comes from that pole over there. Another third comes from that pole. And if there are antagonists in a multipolar world, then shit, those two things need to come back here ASAP.

Adam: Yeah.

Joe: Yeah. So no American survive. But like I said, you're not going to be, he's not going to be able to be able to open that whole system without, without America and having the Titans belt and maybe suffering some kind of a. It's just, I don't see it as doable. I mean, there's no reason. You basically, instead of like going angry, aggressive tariffs on everybody, I mean, America at this point, in terms of what Trump is trying to do and what he would like to see happen, he should really be going cap in hand basically to other countries, especially China. But Russia, you see him doing that as well, because Russia is playing a significant part, obviously, from the point of view of energy resources and all that kind of stuff. Trump is asking for a lot of things from a lot of other countries, basically to service America. And please, will you all please help me make America great again and bring manufacturing back to America, et cetera. He could and should do it that way, maybe, and he might get a better response. But instead, he's decided to. Because that's not how Americans think, right? Every single American has been told from the day they were born almost that- They're all out to get us. No, that they're the greatest country in the world and that America rules supreme and it's an exceptional nation. It's not part of their psyche that they would turn around and nobody would accept it. It would be a political- the political suicide for any American to strike that or take that position as the representative of America on the world stage to go begging to all the countries. I mean, it's unthinkable, Neil. Do you not agree with me? It's unthinkable, no?

Niall: Yeah, no, absolutely.

Joe: There's no possible way that anybody could go. There's no possible way that anybody in America would accept that. It's not even that they accept it. I don't even think it's not part of their makeup. They don't exist. Americans like that don't exist.

Niall: But it's even worse. They've convinced themselves that everyone else has screwed us over from a system that they built and imposed on everyone else with a big stick.

Adam: Yeah, well, it's the same thing that like, hello, Mike Benz was talking about with Europe living in the Truman show. Thanks to like USAID money funding all of these various news organizations, whatever it's like. It ain't just the EU, it's it's also America in that sense, where so much of what is. Part of the American discourse. What's a part of the American philosophy?

Joe: Right.

Adam: It's it's.

Joe: there's a belief so much.

Niall: There's so much horse shit The exceptional nation and all that stuff. Yeah manifest destiny. Okay Trump's got big words, but it's not just from this is.

Joe: They're all high and room farts it Before you.

Niall: this is just 14 seconds from from The top of the news report on the evening news is what Americans are fed. I know this is Fox, so they will be most pro Trump about this. But before you even play this, check out the ticker below. This is what they tell Americans. Trump's tariffs are crushing China. Crushing like hyperbole much. OK, so now have a listen to his introduction to the evening news.

Adam: Remember how Reagan crushed the Soviet Union? He used economic force and military spending to break him into pieces. Trump has an opportunity to do the exact same thing here in China. It's what everybody has always wanted.

Niall: It's what everybody has always wanted.

 

[Ellipse]

Part 2:

Joe: We always wanted to crush other countries. Everybody wants to crush our competitors. Crush them.

Niall: Everybody's always wanted to crush China and break it into pieces. I mean, the interpretation of history is like, that's not what happened. There was a part of it. There was external pressure. But until now, everyone has agreed that it was internal, that the ideology mix of the regime of the late USSR was shite. And that's why it collapsed for internal reasons. And when they met in that forest in Belarus and agreed that each of the Soviet states would become their own sovereign independent state, there wasn't an American in the room telling them do this or else.There was no external pressure that forced that to happen a bit.

There was some, but he's saying to Americans... Do you remember that story we told ourselves about how we crushed the USSR? That's a story. That's not what happened, dude. And we can do that now to China. So I have a myth about the recent past that I'm going to loudly project with absolute conviction to you now on the evening news about what we're about to do now to China on an even fucking grander scale. China's population is much bigger than the Soviet Union. Like that's the fantasy world that they live in is It's crazy town.

Adam: It's similar in many respects in ways to the American. The American storybook let me call it a history book the storybook of World War two and how America Absolutely demolished Hitler. if it wasn't for America, right? We would have everyone in France would be speaking German.

Niall: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Adam: And everyone in Britain, if it wasn't for us, you'd be speaking German, the German, the Dutch.

Joe: Yeah. Well, it's been a, but there's just, yeah.

Niall: And people let us slide because it was a good war, right?

Adam: Yeah.

Niall: You know, you're on the right side. So, you know, okay, we'll let that slide. That's not quite what happened, but fair enough.

Adam: Yeah.

Niall: Cause it's the only, it's the only really good war like. We can let you pat yourselves on the back for it. The rest are just naked, you know? Imperial grabs.

Joe: It's been a long time in the making though. I mean, America played a good game and won. You know, for such reasons as to follow the Soviet Union won that race basically. done well over the past 30 years or so, 35 years I suppose now. But there's a thing called the Primakov Doctrine, which isn't very complicated. This is on Wikipedia. It's basically a Russian political doctrine formulated in the 1990s by the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation under Yeltsin in 1986. He led efforts to redirect the foreign policy of Russia away from the West by advocating the formation of a strategic trilateral alliance of Russia, China, and India, i.e. not came to fruition in a certain sense through BRICS. basically revolves around five ideas. Russia is viewed as an indispensable actor who pursues an independent foreign policy. Second, Russia ought to pursue a multipolar world, managed by a consort of major powers. And third, Russia ought to pursue supremacy in the former Soviet sphere of influence and should pursue Eurasian integration. Fourth, Russia ought to oppose neo expansionism. Fifth Russia should pursue a partnership with China. So that's a doctrine that was formulated in the 1990s by the Russians even as just in the rubble of the Soviet Union. They had their own idea, but obviously they weren't.

They were in a bit of a mess at that point in America. The Americans were aware of this and decided to do something about it to make sure that didn't happen, i.e. Eurasian integration, what was just described there in that Primakov doctrine. And the primary way they did it was they came up with the idea of 9-11, right? Penak. PNAC guys, new conservatives, 9-11 projecting American power around the world into Central Asia, Afghanistan, take care of Iraq, make the Middle East safe for Israel because Israel's are unsinkable aircraft carrier and without Israel as RFK said, then China and Russia take control of the Middle East and America is bye-bye. So that's a short part of history of the past 35 years. But that's not a long time. And it's just. they're both playing the same game, basically. You know what I mean? I have Russia's plan from the point of view of we need partners. It's a multipolar world. I mean, it's based on it's kind of might make right in a certain sense. But it's like realizing that we're not the only power in the world. Like we can't be no one country can be right. America. America got the idea that they could be.

Niall: Yeah. Right.

Joe: And they ran with that. And they're finding out that it's not sustainable. Basically, like I said, with 5% of the world's population and especially that that vaunted big ocean between us that protects us from everybody is now going to turn around and bite you. It's going to make you isolated basically because that Atlantic Ocean that allowed you to go and dominate Eurasia, 80% of the world's population, 80% of the world's resources. scuttle off back home and watch the fires burn. Watch the fallout. Well, if things turn for the worse and Eurasian integration does take hold, 80%, like I said, 80% of the world's population in Eurasia, 80% of the world's resources more or less, then that ocean becomes a barrier.

Niall: It locks you out.

Joe: Yeah. And not even South America in a certain sense, because Eurasian countries, especially China and a lot of other Eurasian countries, are making links across the Pacific, the other ocean. Well, across the Pacific, but also across the South Atlantic, you know what I mean? Downwards, you know what I mean? So there's ties there, but America, because through its own choice, has decided to... You can see how a country that has decided that it's the... the single power in the world is by definition isolating itself. And it can only maintain a sense of control or cooperation or unity by control and coercion and wars and that kind of stuff. If you're not going to actually play fair, if you're not going to be part of a multipolar world, if you're going to be the dominant power in the playground, if you're going to be the bully in the playground, then you are by definition isolated. and you only maintain respect and the appearance of being part of the world community because other countries are coerced to pay their respects to you in that way. You can make it appear that way by intimidation and threats.

But if those other kids in the playground all get together and say, you know what, we're tired of your bullying, we're going to cut you out, well then... The reality of the fact that you have isolated yourself as a unipolar power in a burgeoning multipolar world, well, it leaves you bottom of the list. I mean, you might get some, after a while you might get some, they might take pity on you basically, but you don't have a good track record, you know? And Trump's the worst kind at present in that respect to... to be in place at this time because he doesn't inspire confidence in other countries. Whereas the American hegemon previously was magnanimous in a certain sense. It bestowed its favors and its graces and protection and that kind of stuff from other countries and spent all this money. Doge has been uncovering, you know, on soft power and all that kind of stuff. And people were like, okay, the vassals were okay. At least we're being taken care of type thing, you know, at least they're investing in us. But for Trump to take all that away, well, then it's like, well, what the fuck do you get? You know, what did Roma ever do for us? What does America, why should we even care about America anymore? They're not pumping money into our economy anymore. You know, they're not building houses and stuff, you know, and rape crisis centers and transgender clinics and stuff.

They're not paying for our transgender Sesame Street anymore. Why should we care about them? The big question for me is whether or not if and when, and I think it's more like a when than an if, things don't work out for Trump. At what point? or if it happens, does it turn more belligerent? Does he have to realize that the economic threats or the use of America's economic might in order to secure America's interest around the world isn't working? because that's not as intimidating as military power? And people do have a way to push back against it, you know, because, you know, it's an economy, right? It's, it's not, I mean, with, with armies, there's like, well, you've only got certain number of ships, certain number of soldiers, certain number of tanks. If America has tens or 20 or 30 times that amount, well, then it's like clear, I gotta pay homage. But from an economic point of view, if you're doing the numbers in terms of economies, it's like, well, yes, we're a lot smaller than America.

They have reserve dollar status or reserve currency status, but we do have other countries we can negotiate with economically. We couldn't negotiate with them militarily in a certain sense because a lot of people don't want to actually have to step up and go to war with America, let's say. That could have been the thing in the past. A bunch of countries would have all got together, built up the military to a similar amount or a peer competitor amount to be able to push back against America militarily and therefore no longer be vassals. But a lot of countries don't like the idea of having to consider the possibility of actual war. go that direction. But economics is different. It's easier. Nobody dies, at least not immediately. So the question for me is whether or not Trump will realize that even when he realizes that's not working, that these countries aren't bowing down and are deferring to

Niall: his

Joe: tariff threat if he will or he'll be encouraged by some of his advisors or people in his government to bring in more of the old school. military might because that's the other string to your bow, right? I mean, you still have all these aircraft carriers. You still have this military might. Should you start bringing that more in? It's like, look, I'm not necessarily against allies. Obviously, that would be kind of unthinkable in a certain sense because he's already talking about removing NATO troops from Europe and all that kind of stuff, withdrawing them is one thing, but- Another proxy war. Yes, another. Use America's military might to push forward more effectively his economic agenda. And we've talked about this in terms of like, you know, there has been a lot of activity recently in the Middle East. Under the ages of the Houthis aircraft carriers, I think there's two aircraft carrier groups. What was it? The Roosevelt? I can't remember. One calls it the Vincent anyway. There's two. that have recently moved to the Middle East under the aegis of the Houthis. But yeah, they're sitting off the coast of Iran. And Iran seems to have been taking note of this as well. So there is a kind of intimations of a buildup there. Even while Trump is having indirect talks or Trump's people are having indirect talks with Iranians in Qatar, was it? Oman.

Niall: With Witikoff.

Joe: With Witikoff, yeah. Even while that's happening and Trump's making, but you can never take what he says. He says, yes, look, you know, the talks were good with Iran and I hope they're going to be, you can do it. And he's told Witikoff and stuff that we want to settle this by diplomatic means and all that kind of stuff. Sure, but we can't take anything he says. We can't be sure he's not going to flip. You can't just say that he's set on the course of peace.

Niall: forever. For anyone listening to the article Joe pulled up, the headline is Iran transfers long range missiles to Iraq in major escalation, suggesting a anticipation or buildup by Iran in its perimeter for something that's coming down the pipe.

Joe: Because Iran would have to diversify its response to any kind of a potential attack on Iran. Iran would have to diversify its response. It couldn't just sit at home. hope this fire missiles from Iran, you know, we have to take, make use of all available resources that it has in the Middle East and non-linear responses, you know?

Niall: Yeah. Let me give a timeline because this is interesting. The beginning of last week, Trump issued one of his super bold, this or annihilation ultimatums. They gave around 60 days to come to the table. about nuclear weapons or else, 60 days, so two months. The clock is counting down now to June 10th, okay? His friend and sort of chief diplomatic envoy, Witkoff, went to Moscow again, popped up there yesterday in a surprise meeting with Putin, presumably, yes, about Ukraine and where are we at with that? But either before or after that, he spoke indirectly through the Omani foreign minister with the foreign minister of Iran. And that constitutes the first formal state-to-state exchange between Trump and Iran ever, apparently, because all the talkings they did around Soleimani were via Switzerland. There was no direct, anyway. Supposedly that's the first formal chat. But again, which sounds good. Okay. That sounds promising, but it's 24 hours after he's given them a 60-day ultimatum or you face total annihilation.

Okay. So what else happened? The plane, Wittkop was in midair when the White House quietly announced this. I don't think it has any teeth because as we'll see, it's kind of, he slaps sanctions on something very specific. which doesn't matter because it's a workaround to avoid US sanctions anyway. The US targets China oil storage terminal in new Iran-related sanctions. What the hell? The Trump administration imposed sanctions on Iranian oil trading networks on Thursday while Witkoff was midair, including on a China-based crude oil storage terminal. The sanctions came after Rubio said the US will hold direct talks with Iran, that's on Saturday, that was with coffee yesterday. Trump said Monday, his ultimatum, Iran would be in great danger, blah, blah, blah. And then they have some contextual information. China buys roughly 90% of Iran's exported oil because all the rest doesn't go to the Western market because it's sanctioned.

Joe: So you want to hurt the Chinese economy.

Niall: You want to hurt the Chinese.

Joe: Attack Iran.

Niall: Attack Iran.

Joe: Iran's oil refineries. Not only that, but you'd be attacking, like that article says, you'd be attacking Chinese owned oil trading networks, including a China based crude oil storage terminal. So you could have, like with attacking Iran, you could have American bombs landing on a China based, i.e. China. Well, no, I think that's in China for Iranian oil.

Niall: But it gets to your point. Spoil the market for your competitor directly in a proxy war.

Joe: Is that really that different than sanctions? I mean, what are sanctions? What are tariffs?

Niall: Exactly.

Joe: I mean, you can impose a tariff on the export, say, for example, of Iranian oil or try to impose or sanctions rather, not a tariff, right? More like sanctions, but how effective they are, how are you going to stop it? But still, it's economic, right? We're going to, like they've been doing against Russia, sanction this, sanction Russia this, sanction Russia that. So sanctioned China, and there's plenty of sanctions on China too. So sanctioned Chinese ships, Chinese tankers carrying oil from Iran to China. That's the lifeblood of the Chinese economy. So we impose those sanctions, say China, you're not getting any more oil from Iran. And Iran goes, fuck you, what are you going to do about it?

Niall: Fuck you because 90% of it's still going there anyway.

Joe: Of course, it keeps going. So is it really that different if you just blow up?

Niall: The temptation.

Joe: But it's just a sanction in a certain sense, isn't it? It's a sanction by another means.

Niall: This is why Nord Stream 2 opened the Pandora's box. You know, because Trump's like, I told you, I told those Europeans and they laughed at me, they should never have been so dependent on Russia. Then Biden goes, hold my beer, blows it up, Biden, the CIA. Oh, well, okay, it's gone now. Everyone pretends it was just an act of God. Obviously, it was a form of sanction. Did you know that in the first anti-China tariffs, that Trump imposed in 2018 and that Biden continued. The rationale for doing it was because China's flooding our country with fentanyl. And China's like, WCF, there's no connection between what you've tariffed. And so they knew, obviously, you're calling it a sanction, but it's fucking tariff.

Joe: That's what you're doing. And no fentanyl thing is propaganda to a logical extent. That's just anti-China propaganda, but that anti-China propaganda has been going on for at least 10 years. I mean, the Chi-Coms, Alex Jones took it up. The Chi-Coms, remember for a while there it was the Chi-Coms are doing everything. The Chi-Coms are out to get us. I mean, people forget that, but like there's been a conditioning in the same way, the whole anti-Muslim thing that because the war on terror leading up to, you know, after 9-11 and then... during the so-called war on terror, the whole anti-Islam, anti-Muslim thing, but all just for the purpose of justifying the continued aggression against Middle Eastern countries by America in order to protect Israel for America.

Niall: And to protect energy markets from Russia and China.

Joe: Right, exactly. Well, that's to protect Israel for America. So hot on the heels of that, I was that kind of waned a little bit. You immediately had this rise of Chaykoms, Chaykoms, anti-China, anti-China, starting in about 2010, 2011.

Niall: Probably with Xi, but yeah, maybe earlier.

Joe: Yeah. And it was suddenly. China was the next evil country that's doing all these sort of malign things. And most of it's all lies. In the same way, you know, 9-11 was a lie, Muslims flying planes into buildings and stuff. It's all nonsense. It's all just a means to an end, right? It's propaganda. And it's exactly the same way that the massive amount of lies over the Ukraine-Russia war, you know. Russia's people see it every day and they don't realize the lies that they're seeing every day. They can use it as a reference for all the other lies they've been told going into the past, where America spreads these lies about pretty much everybody that it doesn't like. 50% of the war before any kinetic war, actual war starts against the country, if it starts, 50% of the actual war that's waged is propaganda. It's setting it up and preparing the ground, preparing the population to be in the right mindset to see a certain country as the enemy. And it's all lies. I mean, Russia, the amount of lies people saw over the past three years about Russia. How many times did you see Russia was losing? Russia is about to collapse. Putin's about to die. Every day. Do you think anybody actually believed that?

Adam: Yeah.

Joe: No, but do you think anybody who wrote that actually believed that? No.

Niall: No.

Joe: Do you think that wasn't coming straight from the government? Like put this out here into the media because it justifies our continued belligerence, our continued belligerent stance against Russia. I mean, especially in terms of war, that's what happens all the time in a war. As soon as a war starts, as soon as America or any propagandist country, particularly the West, because they're very good at propaganda, as soon as they start a war with anybody, on the very first day, that country is losing. That country is losing and that country's leader is about to die. He's just got cancer. It just so happened that the day after we launched this war against this country, the leader of that country got cancer. How did that happen? I don't know, but he's going to die in a few weeks. Oh, well then, and all the population are like, oh, that's good. We should keep the war going because we're going to win. Snake Island. Yeah. All that bullshit.

Niall: Ghosts of Kiev. Yeah. The latest one I saw this week, British Daily Telloy, the Daily Express, Putin's resorting to using golf boogies to transfer the weapons to the front line. They've run out of vehicles.

Joe: They've run out of ideas, of bullshit ideas to spread. And the whole point of that is to keep the population to the greatest extent possible, keep them supportive. of the war effort to prevent any dissent arising at home because people will continue to support a military action or a war against another country and tolerate the fact that members of the population, their citizens, their brothers, their fathers, whatever, are dying in this war because we're going to win. If I, for a second, as a citizen of a country that was at war with another country, thought that my government was continuing a war against another country where members of the citizens of my country were dying and maybe friends, relatives, etc. And they were doing that in the context of us very likely losing that war.

There would be immediate dissent at home and you would have to stop the war. keep talking about how you're winning the war. And to do that, obviously you have to say how the other side are losing, perpetually, continually, all the time. From day one, they've been losing. The war's been going on for 10 years, but they're still losing. Even when they're taking more ground and actually winning, keep telling the people that they're losing.

Niall: Yeah. And maybe there's an additional buy-in for people. You get them to believe it because we better win this because otherwise you'll lose downstream. Yeah. You lose.

Joe: Well, that was the other narrative.

Niall: This is existential for the West.

Joe: That's what the Europeans are saying throughout it. Russia can't win. We can't let Russia win. Don't let Russia win. It'll be very bad for Europe. In what way? Oh, just in all sorts of very, very bad ways. It'll be bad, right? The goodies and baddies, right? We're the goodies and they're the baddies, right? Baddies win, it's bad for the goodies, right? You're the goodies. You like being goodie, don't you? You want to win, don't you like winning? Don't you? We're going to win. Let's keep pushing. They're losing. We're winning. They're losing. We're winning. 9-11 terrorism, terrorism, terrorism, 9-11, 9-11 Muslims, terrorism, Putin, Hitler, Putin, Hitler. Over and over again. Yes, sir.

Niall: Whatever.

Joe: Anyway, there's also this one from on the same topic of Iran doing stuff in Iraq. Putting missiles. Well, what was that story? I'm not transfer as long as missiles. Yes, supposedly to Iraq. And now we have the last one. I think this guy B-2 bombers arrived in Diego Garcia. Is it from MSN? Don't know where it's from. They usually pick it up.

Niall: That headline doesn't make sense.

Joe: B-2 bombers arrived in Diego Garcia.

Niall: Oh, separate sentence.

Joe: Separate. What follows an Iranian attack? So apparently there are, you know. reports again b2 b2 bombers. these are those kind of stealth kind of like kind of triangle shaped stealth bombers the ones that can't be shot down except by serbia except by serbia. who didn't know that it was a stealth bomber? we didn't know it was invisible so we shot it down. sorry um 3000 miles from iran. but well within the range of these bombers they can do about 6000 miles and they carry. They're kind of unarmed, they're not very maneuverable and all that kind of stuff. They would have to go with support, but they can carry big payloads, bunker buster bombs and stuff to blow the crap out of Iranian oil refineries and missile sites, whatever. Because of course it's going to be, the Israelis are going to be.

And the Israelis in this situation are going to sit back, if this happens, if something along this line, if Trump's tariffs don't work out and he says, oh, we've got to go kinetic, we've got to do something, we've got to give the Iranians their very bad day in order to screw over China. Kind of reset the apple card. It's kind of like pigeon on the chessboard, right? It's a pigeon gets on there and says I'm gonna play chess Knocks everyone over says see I won or you didn't win. more likely Right before this pageant is checkmated he jumps open the board craps all over it knocks it over says you didn't win. Nobody can say you won. Um So If this Yeah If this happens, it's going to be good. I've been bad, really bad, really huge. It'll be huge.

Niall: If this happens, a lot of people are going to be, see, I told you, Israel controls the United States. Yeah. But that will only be part of the story.

Joe: Well, if this happens, it's going to be- Because it's a US interest. It'll be, yeah. There is a US interest, especially under Trump, and Trump's a bit manipulatable and a bit gullible and open to being told things. It's very hard to read the guy, which again is not good, which is why a lot of countries will ultimately go, look, we'd like to believe what Trump says, but we have no way. We'd like to join. maybe in theory, we might like to join some kind of a trade agreement with America or do what Trump says. buy more, lots more oil from America, even though we're buying a lot already, oil and gas, but how long is he going to be there? I'm getting all three and a half years or so. Who's going to come afterwards?

Niall: Some of them are hedging on just waiting it out. That's probably why Trump's floated the idea of him getting a third term.

Joe: Exactly, yeah.

Niall: But all that's- Okay, shit, signal to market, I'll be here for a while.

Joe: Yeah, but all of that just doesn't, that doesn't- encourage anybody to trust and to feel that there's like a level of stability in the American government and stuff. Even like what? He's going to get a third term? How is he going to do that? To clear himself dictator? We're going to be able to trust him more then. But anyway, the point is if this happens in Iran, if it goes that direction, Israel will probably stay out of it. That's why Israel. Well, we know the long prophesied attack on Iran, right? It seems that in the same way that the time was right for Israel to implement in its local little sphere, implement its final solution to its Palestinian and Hezbollah problem and Syria. So, you know, get rid of Hamas, get rid of Hezbollah, supposedly get rid of Assad. Three out of four is good, but we need the fourth one because they're still, this could all come back online after a number of years. We'd be back in the same position if Iran isn't dealt with. Iran has to be dealt with.

Niall: Well, Hamas claims its numbers are back to three wars down. Yeah.

Joe: Well, no doubt. Yeah. That's the way it happens. But don't expect anybody to be reality-based in America or anywhere else in Israel to be reality-based enough. But that's why this isn't the end of it. That's only a prelude. That's only the first setup of the Gaza thing. slaughtering Palestinians in Gaza, taking care of bombing Lebanon, getting rid of Assad. That's only preparatory to Iran. Obviously, Iran is the prize that has to be done. It's like the head of the snake. It's like the final boss. These are just his henchmen. From Israel's perspective, these are just henchmen. If you don't get rid of the boss, he's just going to hire more henchmen.

Niall: And surely Israel has to be involved in that. The way Trump goes, you're coming in here too.

Joe: No, they won't because, well, this is why Americans set up this way where there's a clear interest, a clear American interest in giving Iran a really bad day.

Adam: No, that actually makes more sense because then if Israel is seen to be playing a major role, it's right there.

Joe: Exactly. It's not America's got. the America's got its ocean, right?

Adam: Yeah, America has its ocean. Israel has like one country. So it's it's not. it would be nothing for them to just volley. And presumably, they've got the capacity to do it. The reason and so they're not going to do that. That actually does make more sense for them to just try and manipulate things or push or nudge or whatever in order to get America to do it on its own.

Joe: But that's been the thing for like. decades, you know what I mean? None of these really mind for decades to get America to attack Iran. I mean, Netanyahu's been at the UN year on year, literally, no joking, I'm not exaggerating, for 30 years, with his cartoon drawings, with his drawings saying Iran is two weeks from having the bomb. Literally, in 1995, he was at the UN saying Iran is two weeks, and this week, the same douchebags in America, like commentators and stuff, and even amongst Trump's people, are saying, That same bullshit refrain. It's like Iran, like, so for 30 years, who do you believe here? If Iran was two weeks from having a bomb in 1985, 30 years later, do you think they have a bomb? Or was that bullshit? They weren't two weeks from having a bomb. And every year subsequent that he said that they were two weeks from having a bomb, none of that was true. And so still today, when they're saying, no, Trump saying Iran can't have a bomb because, and that's why he gave the 60 day time frame, because he claims that within 60 days, they're going to have a bomb. So Iran is potentially going to have a bomb for 30 years.

And if Iran did not have a bomb, does not have lots of bombs. Iran would have been taken out long before now, over the past 30 years. You imagine the war and terror and all that kind of stuff, how easy it would have been to tie Iran when they tied Saddam Hussein to Al-Qaeda and the 9-11 attacks, why they didn't try and tie Iran to it. I'll bring that in. At least at some point, war and terror went on for, maybe it's still going on. It's been going on for 25 years. Why not bring Iran into it? Because Iran has a bomb. Why last year, with these bullshit tit for tat, kind of spectacular, but not really, between Israel and Iran? Why does that not go anywhere? Why did Israel not do something big? For the same reason that Israel won't be involved in any attack on Iran this time, it's because Israel will be nuked. by one of Iran's many nukes. And I wonder if Trump doesn't actually know that, if he's not being told that Iran has a big stockpile of nukes. Now, it can have nukes, but then there's the delivery systems and all that kind of stuff, but nobody knows.

Niall: No one wants to be the first to use them though. That would include Iran.

Joe: Yeah. But if Iran felt that it was under access in the same way Russia, Russia's nuclear doctrine, is that anything that comes up that looks like the state is being threatened, the existence of the state is being threatened, well then nukes are permissible. Iran would have any country with a similar problem.

Niall: So they do what they did in Ukraine, what they did to Russia via Ukraine, they keep it under thresholds and test the waters, test the waters, and always stay under the MAD threshold.

Joe: And not even mad. But that has the effect of, that has serious. The bigger problem for the globe from some kind of an initiation of some kind of a conflict or war and attack on Iran by the US is global markets like oil and gas, because you're talking about blown up oil refineries and what that would do to the economy now. Maybe it would withstand it and all that kind of stuff. But with Trump, with the instability around Trump's tariffs, we'll see where it goes. But if that kind of gets worse over the next couple of months, whatever, and the stock markets are up, down, up, down, up, down, and then you have an attack on Iran. fucks up the entire supply for China. Imagine you deprive China of oil by blowing up Iranian oil refineries or seriously deprive them of oil. What effect does that have on the global economy where China can no longer produce the crap that everybody relies on to survive anymore?

Niall: If you're a blanket American imperialist type, you bet, as has worked every other time there's a crisis, that people seek safe haven in the dollar. This is where they might be hoisted on their own card. But when it came down to a major crisis, they think, well, we're still safe, not just geographically of the oceans, but financially, because people will seek safe haven in the dollar. But it doesn't happen, maybe. And then you have genuine FUBAR.

Joe: If you screw over Chinese production by blowing up Iranian oil facilities and reducing, you know, China's access to the oil that greets this industry and you have a 50% reduction in Chinese production, Chinese output, then you have a 50% reduction of Chinese products going to the rest of the world. And what do I do? So then is that Trump's idea then? Okay, great.

Niall: There's now a vacuum for us.

Joe: There's a vacuum and here we are. The demand goes up. Well then, get all the Americans into those factories and put the little screws in the iPhones. Can you scale up that quickly?

Niall: Or they've convinced themselves they can use AI and automation to do it.

Joe: You've got to build those robots though, right? Well, you'd think it would at least be a longer term thing rather than a... all of a sudden, right? You think you'd want to prepare the ground a little bit, but then Trump's only got three years, right? Unless it's a dynasty we're talking about and Don Jr. is going to be the heir to the throne and you'll have a Trump dynasty going on for, but you need that amount of time. This whole project has to be, if it's going to work, would have to be developed out for a much longer period of time, you know? But Trump probably, and his people probably think we don't have that time because we let it go longer, then China is just going to become more powerful and it's not going to be possible in 10 years time to implement that. If we wait 10 years and try and slowly cajole the world into doing better trade deals with America and thereby investing in America and push back against China and everybody else and Russia and all kinds of stuff and build up a manufacturing base slowly and build the facilities through, first of all, investment, then to have the capital inflow to build the factories, to be able to produce the iPhones and all that kind of stuff. Well, yeah, it's going to take 10 years.

Let's give it 10 years. But sir, 10 years from now, it's not going to be possible. China will have taken over completely by then. You know what I mean? And you may have Eurasian integration and the whole BRICS and multipolarity, Eurasian integration, all that kind of stuff. That will all have taken hold and there'll be no point. We'll be like, right, we're ready to go. America will be like, right, let's go. And it's like, oh, sorry. you know, pretty much the world moved on and, you know, you're, you're a second tier nation. America is a second tier nation now, you know. So what has to be done now? We have to fast track this thing. What do they call the COVID thing?

Niall: Operation Warp Speed.

Joe: Operation Warp Speed. It's Operation Warp Speed to redo the global economy. It's got to be done. That's why 60 days. Hit the ground running. Tariffs for everybody. Doge. eviscerate the whole deep state, get rid of China, make a deal with Russia.

Niall: Extend term limits.

Joe: Extend term limits and make America great again.

Niall: Is there a constitutional way you can do it? Is it like? no president can serve two consecutive, more than two consecutive terms? Is that what he's angling at? I can still get a third term because there'd be two terms back to back.

Adam: I haven't looked into what his what his like rationale is thus far as to like how it's supposed to be doable, but it's at least so far as I'm. so far as it. Yeah, so far as I'm aware, they after FDR, they pretty much made it impossible for any per any person to serve as president for more than two terms consecutive or otherwise.

Niall: Okay. So he can't. he's just he's just messing people.

Adam: Well, I mean, he can still try. That's American optimism for you.

Joe: The perpetual optimists. The man's going to make it.

Niall: Yeah. Yeah. What it comes down to is can the United States try to win things economically, financially, geopolitically, without resorting to war? That's basically what this comes down to because here we are back and the whole maggot stick was no, no more wars. Stop. There's a huge anti-war momentum behind Trump's, the reason he's in the White House. So the temptation to use that carrot in a clever way that makes it looks like it wasn't us who started it or a proxy war that makes it look like we're not driving it. It comes down to, can the United States just not use war to do anything? Because that's all they know.

Adam: Yeah. On the theoretical side of things, it's like one of the ironies is that one of the reasons for China being the way that it is is because it modeled its banking system on old American colonial bank structures. And so yeah, the dramatic irony is that China is doing America better than America. And it's reaping all the benefits of it. And so like, theoretically, there's there's ways and means. But practically speaking, the way the way things are, and the way things are set up, and, you know, given who's where and who's like running the show. Yeah, I don't think so. It's because like it's who was it that said that was it Woodrow Wilson maybe way back in the day who said that there's a? there's a cabal so secret so subtle so well organized that you know captains of this industry barely speak of it above a whisper.

Niall: Yeah, and Part of a Churchill.

Joe: No, that was no most new.

Niall: Okay,

Adam: and You know when you when you look at kind of like what's going on in the world and everything and you know people have all sorts of like narratives and things and it's like oh it's the bankers oh it's the jews and it's like well we know those guys they're not exactly subtle yeah and either and either can cartoonishly

Niall: evil often like BB.

Adam: yeah yeah yeah. so it's so that leaves them still in play wherever they are and whatever they're doing. So if they're still hanging on to power, then practically speaking.

Joe: Since I entered politics, I have chiefly had men's views confided to me privately. Some of the biggest men in the United States in the field of commercial manufacture are afraid of something. They know that there's a power somewhere so organized, so subtle, so watchful, so interlocked, so complete, so pervasive. They better not speak above their breath when they speak in condemnation of it.

Adam: Yeah.

Joe: He was talking about the Jews.

Adam: The underground tunnel Jews.

Joe: Cave Jews.

Adam: So yeah, if they're still in play, which, you know, presumably they are because no one has unmasked them and revealed their subtle influences, then...

Joe: They can do what? Curveballs.

Adam: Curveballs. Because I don't think... Well, that gets to a question that I had that you brought up earlier with regards to Japan and the scaring of the bond markets. I'd be curious to know, or I am curious to know, just who and what did that? And why? I mean, there's a way of looking at... looking at it and maybe getting an idea, but sometimes there's an impetus that doesn't quite make sense for the reason why people do things.

Niall: I don't know, but I suspect it's kind of like trying to find the source of a DDoS attack when everything points to it coming from the Get America gang that operates out of Iran. You can take that at face value because it's so easy to spoof. I think it's similar to the financial markets. If you have, as Wilson said, a power so tight knit and so pervasive, they can make it look like Iran's smacking Trump back and Trump starts to doubt. And he goes, oh, I had a word though with the PM there last week, now they're betraying me. And he's guessing and dancing as much as the rest of us because, you know, there's something that's able to spoof signals all over the place. I doubt you could dig down to that and go, okay, I have a clear picture there of what happened.

Adam: But that's what I mean as far as like, that's the practical reality that we live in. Like there's all kinds of, like I was saying, there's ways and means, there's theoretical possibilities for a way that Trump can retool the American system in a way that benefits America and in a profound and meaningful way. But practically speaking, He's dealing, he's in a den of vipers. He's swimming in a sea of monsters.

Niall: Yeah. And there's a financial nuclear bomb under his feet, which is? how much is it? 40 trillion in US dollars, drilling around the world. The moment it goes south, it comes rushing home and the US is at least a second tier nation for a generation. The great ideas can come afterwards, but all your great ideas, and even if it forms a coherent ideology, that's why most of the time politicians are not actually just lying when they're on the campaign train. They really believe their stuff. And then they get into office and it's like, okay, sir, here's the first pile of issues you have to deal with. And they open them and they go, oh my God. Well, my great ideas are going to have to go in the back of it because these are pressing issues right now. Money going this way, weapons going that way. There's the reality of what you're faced with. That debt bomb is enormous. He has spoken the truth about it here and there. It comes through in his kind of panicky threats. In recent months, Bricksnet better not come up with an alternative to the US dollar, oh my God, that'd be hell to pay, annihilation.

He's articulating the essential fear, the financial time bomb nuke that the US is on. I'm sure they'd love to reset, restart, et cetera, but this problem. Let's assume he's trying to navigate a way out. He's not in it for ideological reasons where we must be number one and not China. That's actually a rhetorical attempt to boost morale and motivation in Americans to follow him in making an attempt to do it safely, that the financial bomb doesn't go off. looked at from that point of view, it's admirable. But someone pulled up a clip from Putin. I never found out if it's a recent one or something that he said in the past. But the context of the topic was clear. He was being asked by journalists at a roundtable in Moscow. About us efforts to contain china and he laughed and he said so again. i don't know if this is about after this week's past weeks events or if it was done earlier. he laughed out loud and he said.

All of these efforts will come to nothing. trying to contain china is like telling the sun not to rise. you can tell the sun not to rise but tomorrow morning it's going to come off. I think that's like. There's reality. The only question that remains to be seen is how much of a hit the US takes if others have sympathy and try to cooperate and help manage. It is a global problem because it's not just American's problem. Maybe the source of it is from the creation of the Federal Reserve and the US dollar as world reserve currency and that insane decision in 1971 to say Oh, shit, we've gone from being a surplus country to a debtor country. Oh, fuck it. Let's just keep ballooning the deficit. Do away with gold standard and the dollar will just become the thing in itself. Fair play to them. They got 50 years out of it. That was pretty impressive, but it was not going to last forever.

Joe: They just replaced gold with oil.

Adam: Yeah, yeah, more or less.

Niall: Yes, but as long and that's more controllable. But then when Iran is not ideologically aligned, to say the least, has the same potential as Saudi Arabia.

Joe: You're hoisted in your own petard. You want to control oil supply, create the petrodollar. and thereby you have to control the flow of oil and that's where all the wars in the Middle East come from and control and support Israel and all that kind of stuff and all that bullshit. It has an expiry date, especially as technological advances, they've been trying to do that as well, keeping countries down, screwing more economically, stopping them developing militarily and all that kind of stuff, but you can only do that for so long before it actually... It doesn't work anymore and countries naturally rise and naturally become peer competitors. And then if oil is one of the things that you're desperate, that you have to control in order to maintain your economic prowess, but the countries that are sitting on all the oil are now peer competitors, well, you're screwed. Unless you're going to blow them up, but then you can't blow them up because they've got nukes. So what are you going to do? Soft power? transgender clinics or something. That didn't work. Yeah. It's reached its expiry date, basically, in Trump's class. We're trying to extend it, extend the shelf life for a little while. Anyway, I think we're done, are we?

Niall: Yeah. All right. Yeah, I think so.

Joe: No more business.

Adam: No.

Niall: No.

Joe: No. Okay. What brown covered in green fur has four legs and if it falls on you when you're walking under a tree, it'll kill you.

Niall: Brown has four legs covered in green fur. Green fur? What are those sloths? No, they're not green.

Joe: What's a sloth?

Niall: A sloth.

Joe: A sloth? No, it's a pool table. So just in case you...

Adam: I saw another joke. I really like this one. So a vegan and a vegetarian decide that they're going to have a race. And the race is that they're jumping off a cliff to see who reaches the bottom of the cliff first. Who wins?

Joe: Vegan, vegetarian.

Adam: Yep.

Joe: No idea.

Niall: Both of them. Vegan.

Adam: Society.

Joe: That's terrible. The poor vegan is vegetarian. You're such a MAGA carnivore. We're going to have to rehabilitate you.

Niall: You are a carnivore diet, aren't you? No wonder you're having such thoughts.

Joe: Yeah, we're going to have to.

Niall: Take in for give him some vegetables.

Joe: Reprogramming Gone wrong. Anyway, yeah, so we'll leave there for this week folks. We hope you like the show. We'll be back next week with another one on whatever bullshit's been going on between and then. So until then have a good one. See you later. Bye.

Niall: Bye Bye everyone. Thanks for watching. Can't stop the signal now.

 

[Niall]

No show today folks, it's Easter Sunday and we're taking a break.

Happy Easter to all!

 

[Niall]

And we're back!

More wars and rumors of wars... Yemen & Iran vs US Israel, India vs Pakistan, W. Europe vs Russia...