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Speaker 1: What do we have, pristalded?
Speaker 4: We do. Many things unfolding in this town.
Speaker 2: As per usual, the showdown over USAID continues, as Elon
Speaker 2: Musk's hostile takeover of the government also continues. Canada and
Speaker 2: Mexico tariffs are off, at least temporarily. China tariff's still on.
Speaker 2: Saga and I are going to talk about it. Matt
Speaker 2: Stiller is also going to join to weigh in on
Speaker 2: this particular tariff regime. As floated. And he is also
Speaker 2: going to talk to us about some of the movement
Speaker 2: at Nationally Relations Board, which has effectively been gutted at
Speaker 2: this point, the Securities Exchange Commission, the CFPB, that's like
Speaker 2: the anti scam agency which also enforcement actions seem to
Speaker 2: be have been gutted there as well, So he'll weigh
Speaker 2: in on all of that. The DOJ out with the
Speaker 2: new DEI program, this one to combat anti Semitism, taking
Speaker 2: some shots from both left and right, not too happy
Speaker 2: about this particular direction. And Anthony Lowenstein is going to
Speaker 2: join us to talk about his new documentary about the
Speaker 2: way that weapons systems have been tested in Gaza and
Speaker 2: Palestine in general, but specifically in Gaza post October seventh.
Speaker 2: And he's also going to weigh in on the latest
Speaker 2: developments with regards to BB's visit to the US, which
Speaker 2: is today. He's also already announced he's going to extend
Speaker 2: his visits. That's right, he's extending down for a little
Speaker 2: extra time.
Speaker 3: There are a lot of open secrets right in terms
Speaker 3: of admitting like where your bread is buttered, in terms
Speaker 3: of what really all matters. There was an interesting meeting
Speaker 3: yesterday with Steve Whitdcoff and with Mike Walston Blair else.
Speaker 3: I am tapping my sources to find out about the
Speaker 3: laundry crystal. That's all I can think about. I gotta
Speaker 3: know whether it's true or what. Maybe he's been shamed
Speaker 3: into stopping it. But all right, let's get to usaid.
Speaker 2: So Elon Musk's takeover the government continues. Trump yesterday in
Speaker 2: the Oval Office was asked a little bit about his
Speaker 2: thoughts on how all of this is going.
Speaker 4: Let's take a listen to that.
Speaker 5: They're finding tremendous waste, really waste, more than anything else.
Speaker 6: I think you could.
Speaker 5: Say probably fraud and abuse can be added to it,
Speaker 5: the more standard waste, fraud and abuse. But they're finding
Speaker 5: tremendous amounts of really bad things, bad spending. Elon can't
Speaker 5: do and won't do anything without our approval. And we'll
Speaker 5: give him the approval. We're appropriate, we're not appropriate, we won't.
Speaker 5: But he reports in and he it's something that he
Speaker 5: feels very strongly about it, and I'm impressed because he's
Speaker 5: running out a big company, has nothing to do. If
Speaker 5: there's a conflict that we won't let him get near it.
Speaker 5: But he does have a good natural instinct. He's got
Speaker 5: a team of very talented people.
Speaker 7: The first from the USA. He was something that you
Speaker 7: liked in some respect.
Speaker 6: I love the concept of yeah that's the program.
Speaker 5: Sure, I love the concept. But they turned out to
Speaker 5: be radical left lunatics and the concept of it is good,
Speaker 5: But it's all about the people's an act.
Speaker 8: Of Congress to do away with USAID or if you
Speaker 8: believe you, I.
Speaker 6: Don't know, I don't think so.
Speaker 5: If not when it comes to fraud, If there's fraud,
Speaker 5: these people are lunatics, and if it comes to fraud,
Speaker 5: you wouldn't have an Act of Congress. And I'm not
Speaker 5: sure that you would anyway. But we just want to
Speaker 5: do the right thing that it's something that should have
Speaker 5: been done a long time ago.
Speaker 2: So weighing in there specifically on Elon's conflicts of interest
Speaker 2: and also on the USAID push to effectively dismantle that organization,
Speaker 2: bring it under the State Department. More on that in
Speaker 2: just a moment, Democrats or start to try to make
Speaker 2: a stand with regard to USAID in particular.
Speaker 4: You know, the conflict of interest.
Speaker 2: Piece is also quite important. Elon obviously has massive conflicts
Speaker 2: of interest across the entire federal garment.
Speaker 4: Just as one example.
Speaker 2: You know, we documented yesterday how he and his cronies
Speaker 2: gained access to the Treasury payment system. I mean, Elon
Speaker 2: wants to turn Twitter into a payment processor. Not to
Speaker 2: mention that for any tech overlord, having access to all
Speaker 2: of our data kind of an important and valuable commodity.
Speaker 2: I also was just reading that apparently he was influential
Speaker 2: in the pick that Trump made for the head of
Speaker 2: the Air Force, and it's a guy who lo and
Speaker 2: Behold was very influential in getting SpaceX contracts for Elon.
Speaker 2: So he is, officially, we now know Soccer, a special
Speaker 2: government employee. I think Caroline Lovett said that yesterday. There's
Speaker 2: actually criminal statute, criminal statute that governs the way you
Speaker 2: have to operate and the way you have to avoid
Speaker 2: any potential conflicts of interest when you are in that
Speaker 2: you know, special government employee capacity.
Speaker 4: This is usually people.
Speaker 2: Brought in on sort of like a temporary basis as
Speaker 2: specific experts in a field. That is the designation that
Speaker 2: Elon has. So, I mean, it's just it's wild what's
Speaker 2: going on.
Speaker 3: That status is the same one that was used by
Speaker 3: Ivanka and by Jared, because they also didn't draw salaries
Speaker 3: last time they were in the White House. But as
Speaker 3: you said, it's actually legally important. I think you sent
Speaker 3: this Richard Painter, who's a government ethics experts as a
Speaker 3: special Government employees still have to abide by.
Speaker 1: Conflict of interest laws.
Speaker 3: And I actually what I took away the most from
Speaker 3: the Trump comments is I think you could see some
Speaker 3: of the dangers here that are ahead with the elon
Speaker 3: because he's like, well, we'll give him permission whenever we
Speaker 3: need to, anything he doesn't need to will take it
Speaker 3: away from him. They are saying that it's quote read
Speaker 3: only access to the treasury payments, et cetera.
Speaker 1: But no, you're absolutely right about that data I get.
Speaker 3: I mean this kind of brings us back to our
Speaker 3: big debate yesterday though, And look, I hate to give
Speaker 3: credit where it is, but mounting a fight about USAID
Speaker 3: is politically genius in a few ways.
Speaker 1: Let's put this up there on the screen.
Speaker 3: For example, where we have members of Congress attempting to
Speaker 3: enter USAID is some speech, so they give us some speeches.
Speaker 1: Around this as well.
Speaker 3: The thing that I'm kind of like thinking about with
Speaker 3: all of this, and it gets to what we were
Speaker 3: talking about yesterday is at the end of the day,
Speaker 3: not only were we talking about an agency with point
Speaker 3: seven percent of the federal budget which is now getting
Speaker 3: rolled into the State Department, but mounting a fight on USAID,
Speaker 3: which again some of the least popular elements of the
Speaker 3: federal government, which is foreign aid to other nations, just
Speaker 3: doesn't seem like the ground for the Democrats where I
Speaker 3: would want to be. And we're going to play some
Speaker 3: of the quiet part out loud things about what USAID is.
Speaker 3: I thought, you know, the strongest ground that the Democrats
Speaker 3: are opposition to Trump have had so far as on tariffs,
Speaker 3: on medicare, meals, on wheels.
Speaker 1: Obviously they abandon all three of those. Unfortunately in the
Speaker 1: tariff case. We can talk about that in.
Speaker 3: A bit, but the ground of fighting for USAID just
Speaker 3: doesn't seem like one of those political To do it,
Speaker 3: you have to be reading the news and really involved.
Speaker 3: Me Like, okay, so Elon has gained access and they've
Speaker 3: rolled it onto the statee Department. It's like, well, you
Speaker 3: kind of already lost it. And then people are like, well,
Speaker 3: how does it affect my life? It's like, well, some
Speaker 3: Malawian healthcare program may get cut and people are like, okay, well,
Speaker 3: why were we even paying for that in the first place.
Speaker 3: So I'm just not sure this is the right move
Speaker 3: for the Democrats on this one. The medicare won the
Speaker 3: meals on wheels absolutely, but I mean, I think it's
Speaker 3: te very telling right that immediately the Trump administration bucked
Speaker 3: on that where picking a fight on USAID, one of
Speaker 3: the smallest agencies. The only agency smaller than the USAID
Speaker 3: is in USTR, the US Trade representative zero point seven
Speaker 3: percent of the federal budget. Overwhelmingly, if you were a
Speaker 3: pull this stuff super unpopular, maybe pepfar, you know, is
Speaker 3: the only one where people are like, Okay, the rest
Speaker 3: of it, I mean, we'll talk about the you know,
Speaker 3: money laundering and the CIA ops and all the other
Speaker 3: malfeasance and fraud that's run through the USA I D
Speaker 3: over the years.
Speaker 1: I just I don't think this is it.
Speaker 3: Like I feel like the Dems are searching for something
Speaker 3: and this is where they're like, we're mounting our stand
Speaker 3: here for USAID. I mean, you know, like, are we
Speaker 3: really weeping tears for four and eight pro wellams?
Speaker 4: I'm not.
Speaker 2: I think you make some good points there, but I
Speaker 2: think that that is intentionally why they went after USAID first.
Speaker 3: No, I agree, that's why I'm saying I have to
Speaker 3: give them credit for being small like.
Speaker 2: They I mean, first, I think there may be also
Speaker 2: a personal element here because USAID was also involved in,
Speaker 2: you know, pushing for the end of apartheid, so there
Speaker 2: may be some personal South African hurt feelings there.
Speaker 4: Not a joke, is it true?
Speaker 1: Actually, yeah, that's true. Okay, well blame Reagan, right, But.
Speaker 2: In any case, yeah, they see it as a sort
Speaker 2: of trial balloon because if you can get away with
Speaker 2: dismantling usai D, which is you know, was aw the
Speaker 2: rise by an Act of Congress, which you know, it's
Speaker 2: authority comes from specific laws that were passed that give
Speaker 2: it statutory authority as its own independent agency. If you
Speaker 2: can get away with that, then you can get away
Speaker 2: with anything. And we already know that, you know, Elon
Speaker 2: and Trump have both projected Department of Education is next,
Speaker 2: and you know that'll be a more difficult fight because
Speaker 2: people like their kids being educated, and there's a lot
Speaker 2: of funding that goes for you know, for poor kids
Speaker 2: and for kids with special needs and for school lunches
Speaker 2: and things like that that come from the federal government.
Speaker 2: But if you've already been able to dismantle one agency
Speaker 2: without a fight, then guess what you are going to
Speaker 2: be able to do everything you want to do. And so,
Speaker 2: you know, we'll get to the rest of the elements
Speaker 2: here in just a second. But I do think it's
Speaker 2: useful to kind of zoom out and ask yourself what
Speaker 2: is Elon's project here? And we've talked about this before.
Speaker 2: Elon's ideology is not the as what Trump ran on
Speaker 2: in you know, twenty sixteen at his sort of populist peak.
Speaker 2: Elon is a fan of Hobber Malay. Elon is an
Speaker 2: anarcho capitalist. Elon is a fan of Curtis Jarvin, who
Speaker 2: thinks that we should have literal techno feudalism. I know
Speaker 2: this sounds crazy, but Elon is a dramatic He is
Speaker 2: an hardened ideological actor. So what does it mean if
Speaker 2: you're an an arco capitalist if you believe in this
Speaker 2: like techno feudalist project. I mean, he thinks he should
Speaker 2: basically run as a CEO the you know, the country,
Speaker 2: the government, the world. Really I think that is his
Speaker 2: I know it sounds crazy, but that is his project.
Speaker 2: And you can listen to the way he talks about
Speaker 2: these things. I mean, his grand plans to like, you know,
Speaker 2: have a civilization on Mars and all of these sorts
Speaker 2: of things. So if that's your ideology and that's your goal,
Speaker 2: what you want to do is completely take apart the
Speaker 2: federal government. And you hear this not just an Elon's rhetic,
Speaker 2: but you also hear echoed now in Trump's rhetoric, who
Speaker 2: talks about how his goal is for all federal government
Speaker 2: and plployees to be private sector employees. That's anarcho capitalism.
Speaker 2: That means even the parts of the state that you like,
Speaker 2: the pieces that deliver for Grandma and Social Security, Medicare Medica,
Speaker 2: all of that he wants to take an axe too.
Speaker 2: Elon has told friends that his entire metric is just
Speaker 2: how much I can cut now, not how much of
Speaker 2: the you know, the fad and the fraud and the
Speaker 2: abuse and the parts that everybody would be like, okay, fine, yes,
Speaker 2: cut that piece. He measures his success by just how
Speaker 2: much of the federal government can he take an acts too? Now,
Speaker 2: do I think that he is going to be able
Speaker 2: to realize his anarcho capitalist no state whatsoever dream No.
Speaker 2: I think at some point the state is going to
Speaker 2: reassert themselves. You know, Trump still has control of the military,
Speaker 2: for example, At any point he could get sick of
Speaker 2: Elon and say all right, we're done, you're out, go by.
Speaker 2: But do I think a lot of damage could be
Speaker 2: done in the meantime, Yes, absolutely. And I also and
Speaker 2: this is where you know, I want to come back
Speaker 2: a little bit to what we were saying yesterday and
Speaker 2: perhaps make a more persuasive argument about what I mean
Speaker 2: when I say people didn't vote for this, I'm not
Speaker 2: saying they didn't vote for like, you know, cutting some waste, fraud, abuse,
Speaker 2: et cetera, et cetera. But the trumpest ideology, which is
Speaker 2: really like the Steve Bannon like that's the og maga
Speaker 2: ideology that was what was sold to people.
Speaker 4: And this is not that, right.
Speaker 2: This is not the political project that you're This is
Speaker 2: not populous, right, this is the political project you've been
Speaker 2: engaged in. This is something else entirely. Trump seems to
Speaker 2: have bought into it, and seems to have given Inlan
Speaker 2: for now the keys to the kingdom to do whatever
Speaker 2: he wants up to and including dismantling entire federal government agencies,
Speaker 2: accessing whatever classified information he wants to, accessing your Social
Speaker 2: Security numbers and private data, accessing the system the Treasury
Speaker 2: payment system, which controls all of the money that goes
Speaker 2: out from the federal government. So if you imagine, like,
Speaker 2: you know, it's like if Fort Knox actually held all
Speaker 2: of the like taxpayer dollars in gold and whatever.
Speaker 4: The richest man on the planet.
Speaker 2: Who has incredible conflicts of interest and a really radical
Speaker 2: ideology now has keys to that, you know, theoretical Fort Knox.
Speaker 4: That's where we are right now.
Speaker 2: And that's why I find it so deeply, deeply disturbing.
Speaker 2: And why even though this is you're right about usaid
Speaker 2: not being the best ground for Democrats to fight on,
Speaker 2: why I think they feel like, all right, well, we
Speaker 2: got to do something.
Speaker 3: I get where they're coming from. Yeah, but this is
Speaker 3: part of the problem, and this is where honesty is important.
Speaker 3: Not even Steve Bannon would tell you that he's in
Speaker 3: control of the federal government. Right the Bannon Is twenty
Speaker 3: sixteen vision was almost immediately clarified.
Speaker 2: Not even Steve Bannon would say that, who's his ideology?
Speaker 1: Twenty sixteen vision, right, I mean, what's that you want
Speaker 1: to see? Unknown?
Speaker 7: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Part of the problem for a lot of the people
Speaker 3: who share my beliefs is, let's look at the track
Speaker 3: record Trump in twenty seventeen to twenty twenty one governs effectively,
Speaker 3: is like what cultural right warrior with George W.
Speaker 1: Bush flavor?
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, he comes forty thousand votes away from winning
Speaker 3: the presidency. Then over the interm four years assembles a
Speaker 3: coalition effectively of people who hate Biden, and within that
Speaker 3: there's not a lot being sold there except for no
Speaker 3: more illegal immigration. The rest of it is really up
Speaker 3: for grabs. And so part of the new coalition quote
Speaker 3: unquote of the people who signed up for Trump, I
Speaker 3: do think it does include some do Now. Look, I
Speaker 3: hope that some of it is for the stuff that
Speaker 3: I've said here, but I have to be honest. I mean,
Speaker 3: tariffs are overwhelmingly unpopular. We're going to talk about that.
Speaker 3: People like cheap shit.
Speaker 1: They don't care if their TikTok comes from China or whatever.
Speaker 1: They want to eat.
Speaker 3: They want to live like a pretty basic life, and
Speaker 3: they don't really want to think much about bigger things. Now,
Speaker 3: I think it's incumbent on the FEDS and on leaders
Speaker 3: like Trump and JAD to make their case as to
Speaker 3: why they're important. But you know, it's tough in a
Speaker 3: country like this where debt and all that is very,
Speaker 3: very high, where I do think they eat, you know,
Speaker 3: the doze of the USAID, the Department of Education. There
Speaker 3: is a feeling within the intellectual and I think within
Speaker 3: the suburban right of things have gotten out of control now.
Speaker 3: I think with the USADA, it's actually literally not disputable
Speaker 3: that the agency has been involved in insane fraud CIA,
Speaker 3: who's basically a front for state Department for soft power,
Speaker 3: you know, and all that if you want to call
Speaker 3: it funneling money is money laundering to NGOs. But even
Speaker 3: you know, you're talking about the Department of Education, So
Speaker 3: you're not wrong. People support Headstart, people support you know,
Speaker 3: federal dollars.
Speaker 1: Coming into schools.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I don't think the majority of schools are funded
Speaker 3: by the FEDS. I think it's like twenty something percent, right,
Speaker 3: it's about ten. Depends on the individual school distracts.
Speaker 2: Yes, and poor school districts rely more on federal funding,
Speaker 2: so they would be the ones that would be more
Speaker 2: impacted overall, it's about ten percent of funding that comes
Speaker 2: from federal So but.
Speaker 3: Where does the MAGA does instinct to say screw the doe.
Speaker 3: It's not just libertarian, right, it's well, let's be honest,
Speaker 3: it's about a lot of dei or trands.
Speaker 1: You know, what was it, Title nine.
Speaker 3: I think that's what it's called that went through in
Speaker 3: terms of gender pronouns. That's where the instinct has now
Speaker 3: come from, is like, these institutions have been used for
Speaker 3: good purposes but turned against us, So we're going to
Speaker 3: dismantle them. And if it does stick to that, as
Speaker 3: long as the dollars keep flowing, will people really notice
Speaker 3: at the end of the day. My instinct is probably not,
Speaker 3: and it's probably going.
Speaker 1: To be popular.
Speaker 3: I mean, and if you told it to me that way,
Speaker 3: and you're like, look, we're gonna get rid of this
Speaker 3: gender DEI stuff and all these bureaucrats and nobody really
Speaker 3: knows what they do, and the dollars and the checks
Speaker 3: keep getting cut to all the states of like, well, okay,
Speaker 3: you know you need some administrators.
Speaker 1: That's where the instinct comes from.
Speaker 3: Now I get what you're saying, and I think you're
Speaker 3: right if they actually impact faa Noah, the oceanic.
Speaker 1: The people who track the hurricanes.
Speaker 3: I always use that example because like, who's against that,
Speaker 3: you know, the guy who flies into the middle of hurricanes? Like,
Speaker 3: who's a category of four point five? Now it's awesome, right,
Speaker 3: it's a cool.
Speaker 1: Job, or coastguard.
Speaker 3: There's a million different little things even that are non
Speaker 3: DoD They're actually pretty popular.
Speaker 1: That's why they start with USAID. Now.
Speaker 3: I think DOJ in practice is going to look a
Speaker 3: lot like this is USAID total is point seven Let's
Speaker 3: say they cut five percent of the you know, zero
Speaker 3: point seven percent of the federal budget. It's like, Okay,
Speaker 3: we're going to declare victory. This actually kind of gets
Speaker 3: to the tariff conversation we're going to have in a
Speaker 3: little bit about well, what really changed here, you know,
Speaker 3: in terms of what we want. But vibe wise, that's
Speaker 3: really important for both the media and for people to
Speaker 3: feel as if these parts of the federal government are
Speaker 3: getting paired back as long as they're essential services go
Speaker 3: to them. And so that's why I think it is
Speaker 3: a big mistake and I feel rudderless and almost religious
Speaker 3: the way that the Democrats are reacting here to USAID
Speaker 3: I mean you and I both know a key tenant
Speaker 3: of neoliberalism are functions like USAID and others. They're literally
Speaker 3: admitting this stuff out loud. A normal person at home
Speaker 3: goes what like, I don't care about Malawi and healthcare.
Speaker 2: I actually think that that is true because I looked
Speaker 2: at some of the polling on this, and some sixty
Speaker 2: percent of Americans want the US to.
Speaker 4: Be a global leader in health.
Speaker 2: The pet FAR program, the pet Far program in terms
Speaker 2: of you know, like dealing with AIDS and HIV global
Speaker 2: has has been a tremendous success with George W. Bush program,
Speaker 2: et cetera, et cetera, tremendously popular dealing with malaria.
Speaker 4: I mean, USAID helped.
Speaker 2: To combat ebola, So yes, is it a I mean
Speaker 2: the whole project of usa ID is soft power projection.
Speaker 4: That is what it is.
Speaker 2: But here's the thing, though, is like a couple pieces
Speaker 2: just to get to the actual substance with regard to USAID.
Speaker 2: I mean, first of all, you've got a lot of
Speaker 2: people on Twitter who didn't know what USAID was three
Speaker 2: days ago, who suddenly are convinced that it's nothing but
Speaker 2: cis politics.
Speaker 4: That's number one.
Speaker 2: Number two, I think the notion that subsuming USAID under
Speaker 2: the State Department is gonna make it less nefarious is
Speaker 2: kind of preposterous.
Speaker 4: Three.
Speaker 2: Listen, there is also just a key principle here of
Speaker 2: Congress is if you don't like USA, if you don't
Speaker 2: like what they're doing, that's fine, have that debate. We
Speaker 2: have elected representatives. Republicans have control of the House and
Speaker 2: the Senate, so you have to go through those channels
Speaker 2: in order to dismantle a congressionally authorized independent agency. That
Speaker 2: is what the Constitution says. So not to mention, as
Speaker 2: I said before, you know, I think you really have
Speaker 2: to keep in mind what the broader project is here
Speaker 2: from Elon and Trump really has nothing to do with
Speaker 2: it at this point.
Speaker 4: I think it's.
Speaker 2: Pretty clear at every juncture when Trump could arrange Elon
Speaker 2: in and said, you know, we backed them on H
Speaker 2: one b's, he backs them here. He gives them the
Speaker 2: Air Force secretary he wants like. I don't think Trump
Speaker 2: really cares that much outside of the areas of his
Speaker 2: interest tariffs and whatever else, immigration, turning off the water,
Speaker 2: turning on the water in California, and it is performative
Speaker 2: stuff like those are the thing he cares about everything else.
Speaker 4: I don't think he really gives a shit.
Speaker 2: You know, Elon's feeding him talking points about South African
Speaker 2: farmers now, so you know who is in real control.
Speaker 2: Elon's project is not just about USAID, it's not just
Speaker 2: about the Department of Education. It's about dismantling as much
Speaker 2: of the federal government as he possibly can. And so
Speaker 2: the USAID thing, it's a trial balloon what can we
Speaker 2: get away with? And that is the way that everyone
Speaker 2: needs to understand what's going on. So, regardless of how
Speaker 2: you feel about USAID, I've got my own issues with it.
Speaker 2: You know, I'm happy to see the imperial project being
Speaker 2: sort of pulled back in this sort of way. But
Speaker 2: I'm also not a fool to think that that's really
Speaker 2: what's going on. When you are talking about an administration
Speaker 2: that is openly actually embracing an old school imperial mentality
Speaker 2: a lah William McKinley. Let's buy Greenland, let's invade Panama,
Speaker 2: let's try to make Canada the fifty first state. Let's
Speaker 2: go to war with Mexico. I'm not enough of a
Speaker 2: fool to think that they're actually intentionally rolling back empire.
Speaker 2: Elon wants to make it so that the federal government
Speaker 2: is not strong enough, is not stronger than him.
Speaker 4: Right, that's the bottom line.
Speaker 2: He wants to be able to do everything that he
Speaker 2: wants to do. He wants to be able to profit
Speaker 2: as much as he can off of your taxpayer dollars.
Speaker 2: And that is the broader project that is.
Speaker 1: I don't disagree with the word that you just said.
Speaker 3: I think what I get to again is trying to
Speaker 3: analyze how it will look like in practice and to
Speaker 3: the voter.
Speaker 1: And that's why I come back to this democratic thing.
Speaker 3: I think another problem though, where you're talking about, you know, institutions,
Speaker 3: is so many norms and other things have not only
Speaker 3: been blown up by Trump, but over the years what
Speaker 3: I have seen more.
Speaker 1: Is we talked about this a little bit yesterday, right with.
Speaker 3: Norms with for example, I mean, how many times have
Speaker 3: I listened to David Serota and others criticized Biden for
Speaker 3: not legalizing weed on day one, for not canceling all.
Speaker 4: I mean, but they don't care about can do.
Speaker 3: That, Crystal care about but they don't care about Congress
Speaker 3: whenever it's about something they want to do.
Speaker 1: When Obama wants.
Speaker 3: To legalize millions of illegal immigrants literally overnight and create
Speaker 3: an amnesty illegal program called DAKA.
Speaker 1: Oh everybody's fine with it then, right.
Speaker 3: So there's a lot of hypocrisy here in terms of
Speaker 3: like which principles.
Speaker 2: Which it's just way above and beyond like overruling the parliament.
Speaker 1: But it's about Prince No. No, I agree.
Speaker 3: I think we're living through the most extraordinary takeover the
Speaker 3: federal government since the one hundred Days over FDR. And
Speaker 3: if we look back to that time period, and I
Speaker 3: know many of the people who have read the same
Speaker 3: books that I have, is what did FDR learn. FDR said,
Speaker 3: I don't give a shit about Congress, and I don't
Speaker 3: give a shit about the Supreme Court, Civilian Conservation Corps WPA.
Speaker 1: We are going to throw everything at the wall.
Speaker 3: And actually the people who paired it back became way
Speaker 3: less popular, people hated.
Speaker 4: But those Supreme Court did passed through Congress.
Speaker 3: No, but actually many of them either were passed through
Speaker 3: Congress or were created artificially by his programs. I mean,
Speaker 3: many of the criticisms of the Republicans of FDR in
Speaker 3: that time period rhyme exactly here, Like hey, what about
Speaker 3: the power of the person. He's like, I'm a king,
Speaker 3: I just got elected with this and this not the same.
Speaker 3: But the spirit is the thing is is that if
Speaker 3: you look back at that time period, the population overwhelmingly
Speaker 3: backed aggressive federal executive action. I think what's happening here
Speaker 3: is I mean, Jarvin himself is a student of FDR,
Speaker 3: probably more so than anybody else in that project, and
Speaker 3: what they understood is that at a popular level, by
Speaker 3: doing this, they were basically able to win ninety almost
Speaker 3: eighty percent of what they wanted to and that the
Speaker 3: norms and all of that were fake all along.
Speaker 2: So, first of all, I don't accept the equivalence between
Speaker 2: what is being done here and like the lawlessness that
Speaker 2: is being ok it's executed here in the total disregard
Speaker 2: for the Constitution versus FDR, but in just to make
Speaker 2: the coint on the on the popular piece, which I
Speaker 2: don't think so is important because it matters in terms
Speaker 2: of how people are going to react to this. You know,
Speaker 2: FDR was like creating jobs and healthcare programs and things
Speaker 2: that were delivering for people materially.
Speaker 4: This is the opposite of that.
Speaker 2: This is destroying things that people currently enjoy and take
Speaker 2: for granted from the federal government. That's the program, that's
Speaker 2: the project. So again in theory, in the abstract, do
Speaker 2: people support cutting the federal government but of course sure,
Speaker 2: of course. Do they support rolling back free school lunch
Speaker 2: for poor kids? No, probably eighty five percent of the
Speaker 2: country would say no to that. Do they support rolling
Speaker 2: back pelgrants also under the Department of Education, No, they
Speaker 2: do not support that. Do they support rolling back federal
Speaker 2: funding for poor district or any school district. I mean,
Speaker 2: one of the cautionary tales I think that people should
Speaker 2: look at is back during the teacher strike.
Speaker 4: Wave which hit red states.
Speaker 2: Red states in particular, rural red areas take public education seriously.
Speaker 2: And I think you're right that there is you know,
Speaker 2: there was a reaction against like this sense, oh my god,
Speaker 2: my kids are being indoctrinated, blah blah blah. But if
Speaker 2: you go after people's school districts in those towns, those
Speaker 2: are institutions of small town America, you will have a
Speaker 2: fight on your hands. So with usaid, I do think,
Speaker 2: you know, I don't think it's as popular as you do,
Speaker 2: but I do think it is the most low hanging fruit,
Speaker 2: which is exactly why they went after it first. But
Speaker 2: if you think that this project doesn't have in its
Speaker 2: sites things that you or you or anyone out there
Speaker 2: appreciates and enjoys and takes for granted, oh, food safety,
Speaker 2: hurricane tracking, planes not crashing into each other and falling
Speaker 2: out of the sky, medicare, social security, You're a fool.
Speaker 2: So the question is when will this be rained in?
Speaker 2: How far does it go? I'll go ahead and play.
Speaker 2: Since we've been teasing it for like eighteen minutes now,
Speaker 2: the Democrats finally showed up.
Speaker 4: You know that.
Speaker 2: I don't know what they've been up to, but not
Speaker 2: a whole lot. But they finally showed up at the
Speaker 2: USAID building to protest the fact that it has been
Speaker 2: shuttered you. I'll give you some more of the details
Speaker 2: here in just a minute. About you know, the employees
Speaker 2: have been told not to show up at the AGE
Speaker 2: at the headquarters today. They've been told not to show up.
Speaker 2: But any of the USAID buildings, people who are overseas
Speaker 2: right now have been blocked access from their government security
Speaker 2: apps and from their communications, et cetera. So Democrats showed
Speaker 2: up there to make a stand, not always in the
Speaker 2: most effective way. Let's take a listen to how that
Speaker 2: went down.
Speaker 8: USAID fights terrorist groups all across this world, making sure
Speaker 8: that we address the underlying causes for a retreat to terrorism.
Speaker 8: USAID chases China all around the world, making sure that
Speaker 8: China doesn't monopolize contracts for critical minerals, important infrastructure all
Speaker 8: around the world. It supports freedom fighters every where in
Speaker 8: this world.
Speaker 9: We are witnessing a constitutional crisis. We talked about Trump
Speaker 9: wanting to be a dictator on day one, and here
Speaker 9: we are. This is what the beginning of dictatorship looks like.
Speaker 2: And Elon, if you want to run AID, get nominated
Speaker 2: by Trump and go to the Senate and good luck
Speaker 2: and getting confirmed.
Speaker 10: Yeah, Elon Musk, you didn't create USAID. The United States
Speaker 10: Congress did for the American people. And sos like Elon
Speaker 10: Musk did not create USAID. He doesn't have the power
Speaker 10: to destroy it. And who's gonna stop him. We are,
Speaker 10: We're gonna stop him.
Speaker 11: Elon Musk, you may have illegally seized power over the
Speaker 11: financial payment systems of the United States Department of Treasury,
Speaker 11: but you don't control the money of the American people.
Speaker 10: The United States Congress does that.
Speaker 2: So the funniest one there, of course, Chris Murphy at
Speaker 2: the beginning. That is the COI part out loudah Mi like, hey, Chris,
Speaker 2: freedom fighters.
Speaker 1: We're not supposed to say that fights terrorist. I mean,
Speaker 1: which freedom?
Speaker 4: What was that? Yeah?
Speaker 2: Yeah, But I mean this is this is the first
Speaker 2: thing that they've really showed up to. I mean somewhat
Speaker 2: the Medicaid portals being shut down.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but it was over so quickly.
Speaker 4: But yeah, that's that's right.
Speaker 2: But you know, they pushed back there, and I think
Speaker 2: there was Republican pushback there too, behind the scenes, no
Speaker 2: doubt about it. That helped get that, you know, flipped
Speaker 2: on a dime. But they are finally trying to show
Speaker 2: up for this, and yeah, not not making the best arguments,
Speaker 2: but I think a lot of Democratic base voters will
Speaker 2: be happy to see at least they're doing something worse.
Speaker 4: So far, they've been just like asleep.
Speaker 1: I think you might be right. I don't know.
Speaker 3: I mean when I look at that, I just see
Speaker 3: a supreme lack of political talent across the board.
Speaker 2: I'm just like I thought Illan's comments there were probably
Speaker 2: the right.
Speaker 3: The problem again is that you always have to be
Speaker 3: able to connect rhetoric to actual action, telling people like,
Speaker 3: I mean, what we really learn from the campaign against Trump?
Speaker 1: I learned a lot from the twenty twenty four campaign.
Speaker 3: But really what it was is like you can warn
Speaker 3: all day long, and if people don't like the status quo,
Speaker 3: they do not care about a lot of this, they
Speaker 3: need to feel it for real and for right now.
Speaker 7: You know.
Speaker 3: That's why I was saying, it's kind of genius to
Speaker 3: start with USAID, a program that you know, only people
Speaker 3: in Washington care about, mostly because it's paying a lot
Speaker 3: of their salaries, but also it's just one of those
Speaker 3: where if he's explained it to a normal person, you
Speaker 3: made a compelling case about pelgrants and all of that,
Speaker 3: you know, we'd if your doge, what do you do?
Speaker 3: Or if Trump really, let's put dose because they probably
Speaker 3: would cut it. But if you're Trump, you're like, don't
Speaker 3: touch don't touch pelgrants, scholarship, don't touch federal stuff. Fire
Speaker 3: all the you know, career bureaucrats or whatever that are
Speaker 3: working on anything Title nine or ten or whatever related,
Speaker 3: and you know, will anybody really notice? Probably not, And
Speaker 3: like that's kind of what it gets to in the
Speaker 3: FDR thing, what's fascinating about this.
Speaker 1: This is a reverse FDR.
Speaker 3: It's a dismantling of as opposed to a building up.
Speaker 3: But in a sense, what's happened in both cases is
Speaker 3: that the crisis of nineteen thirty three was this idea
Speaker 3: that the government was not there to address all of
Speaker 3: these problems, whereas the crisis of I guess twenty twenty
Speaker 3: four in the minds of many Americans, so that the
Speaker 3: government itself has created many of these problems, or at
Speaker 3: least intellectualized the way that in practice, if we are
Speaker 3: to blame, we're talking about cultural issues or even you know,
Speaker 3: immigration literally just a result of direct government policy. It's
Speaker 3: about a rolling back of like a regime slash a government.
Speaker 3: So I think this is nothing ever is you know,
Speaker 3: one hundred percent one to one, But analogy wise, it's
Speaker 3: the only thing I can really think of, maybe the
Speaker 3: John F.
Speaker 1: Kennedy first one hundred days.
Speaker 3: I hope we don't don't find ourselves a similar international crisis,
Speaker 3: although I am worried about it, but that's kind of
Speaker 3: my mental model for how I'm thinking about it. And
Speaker 3: there is a big question mark that remains around how
Speaker 3: people will popularly receive a lot of this. I don't
Speaker 3: take a lot of these polls at face value. Just
Speaker 3: kind of been all over the place. Someone yesterday said
Speaker 3: Trump but fifty two percent. I saw the same tracking
Speaker 3: poll you're talking about. I'm curious to see the Virginia election,
Speaker 3: that gubernatorial election, which is always off here in terms
Speaker 3: of what does it mean for enthused Democratics.
Speaker 4: Well, we already had a little test run in Iowa.
Speaker 1: That's true.
Speaker 4: There was a twenty one point swing.
Speaker 2: But you know, that's the first indication that we've gotten
Speaker 2: that even as the Democratic Party has been asleep, the
Speaker 2: Democratic base voters in that district in Iowa really showed up.
Speaker 2: I mean it was like a twenty plus point swing
Speaker 2: in the direction of a Democrat for them to win.
Speaker 2: There was another special election in a Democratic blue district
Speaker 2: in Minnesota. I want to say that also shifted even more.
Speaker 2: Who was like the Republican got like eight percent of
Speaker 2: the vote or something prepostors like that, whereas previously they
Speaker 2: were getting I don't know, twenty percent of the vote.
Speaker 4: I'm making up these numbers with us approximately what it is.
Speaker 2: So you're right, that will be the first really indication
Speaker 2: and test case but I think where there's a huge
Speaker 2: vulnerability here that Democrats can exploit if they're willing to,
Speaker 2: you know, not do their whole Like good billionaires, bad
Speaker 2: billionaires stick. But nobody wants the government run by an
Speaker 2: unelected billionaire. I mean, you pull that it's dramatically, dramatically unpopular,
Speaker 2: and especially when it's so clear that he's running it
Speaker 2: for his own ideology and self interested reasons. Like I
Speaker 2: think the reaction against you're right in a sense. I
Speaker 2: think if I were advising the Democratic Party, I would
Speaker 2: focus more on the treasury takeover and some of those
Speaker 2: things which are way more you know, to me, are
Speaker 2: like the core of what's really frightening about what is
Speaker 2: being done here. And it's also I think there's a
Speaker 2: bunch of lawsuits filed already against Elon and his acolytes
Speaker 2: and like the violation of privacy laws and other laws
Speaker 2: that have likely occurred here, not to mention the violation
Speaker 2: of just like the separation of powers. And by the way,
Speaker 2: Eline you weren't elected anything that are going to go forward,
Speaker 2: but you know, you're in this situation where it's like
Speaker 2: the courts are slow, so even if they issue an injunction.
Speaker 2: That's going to take some time, and then there's a
Speaker 2: question like are they going to listen?
Speaker 4: I don't know.
Speaker 2: I kind of doubt it given how they've operated thus far.
Speaker 2: Weard's just like, we want to do it, so we're
Speaker 2: going to do it ultimately, you know. I mean Elon
Speaker 2: is already clearly if he's a special government employees, already
Speaker 2: clearly violated like the criminal statue with regard to conflicts
Speaker 2: of interest, and it doesn't seem to really matter. So
Speaker 2: that's why I think this is, you know, can accurately
Speaker 2: be described as constitutional crisis and beyond because they are
Speaker 2: clearly violating the constitution, the separation of power, the power
Speaker 2: of the purse, et cetera, and the system is just
Speaker 2: totally unable to deal with it, to catch up, to
Speaker 2: handle the speed that this is all unfolding out, which
Speaker 2: is I shocked everyone, I think, including according to the
Speaker 2: reporting people in the Trump White House or like, what.
Speaker 4: The hell is going on here? And they're not read
Speaker 4: in on it either.
Speaker 3: I think that's where the big democratic check will come
Speaker 3: into is, let's say we do start going after pel
Speaker 3: grants or whatever. Trump's gonna be like, Yeah, I'm not
Speaker 3: dealing with all. I still think there is an existential
Speaker 3: ricks actually to Elon of getting Steve Bannon.
Speaker 1: And you know, remember the whole.
Speaker 3: Sloppy Steve saga of two thousand and seventeen. If he
Speaker 3: causes a genuine political crisis for the Trump White House,
Speaker 3: which is eminently possible, he will have his ass out
Speaker 3: of there.
Speaker 1: In NOTEB well.
Speaker 2: And I think Bannon is correct to understand my Bannon's
Speaker 2: ideology is not my ideology, although you know there are.
Speaker 4: More shared overlap.
Speaker 2: There's more overlap between my ideology and Bannon's than I
Speaker 2: have no overlap with Elon musk ideology of just like
Speaker 2: burned down the whole federal government and let the corporate
Speaker 2: overlords rule everything like God kings.
Speaker 4: That is the polar opposite of my ideology.
Speaker 2: Bannon is right to see this as an existential threat
Speaker 2: to his own project and ideology will and I think
Speaker 2: this will come up more when we talk about I
Speaker 2: mean tariff somewhat, but even more so, the gutting of
Speaker 2: the National Labor Relations Board, the gutting of the SEC,
Speaker 2: the gutting of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, because you know,
Speaker 2: Bannon likes le Na Khan he thinks corporate power should
Speaker 2: be checked. That's the polar opposite of what Elon thinks.
Speaker 2: And so here you are. If you're a part of
Speaker 2: the populist right project. You got your JD Vance in there,
Speaker 2: You've got your guy Trump, who has at least said
Speaker 2: some of the right things and done some of the
Speaker 2: right things in the past. You like, this is your moment,
Speaker 2: and now you've got this billionaire who's just hijacked the
Speaker 2: whole thing and is running as fast as he can
Speaker 2: and the total opposite direction with no one, with no
Speaker 2: one putting a check into place. So I think this
Speaker 2: is you know, obviously, none of this is like I
Speaker 2: find this all to be horrifying and I'm struggling to
Speaker 2: like wrap my head around how bad things could actually get.
Speaker 2: But if you are also on the populist right, I
Speaker 2: think you should also perceive this as an existential chance
Speaker 2: threat to your project, which is has its best moment
Speaker 2: of potential success right now and is being evaporating like
Speaker 2: before our eyes.
Speaker 1: I think they do, But I also think they know
Speaker 1: who the king is at the moment. You're going to
Speaker 1: have to wait for a while.
Speaker 4: To be able for an opening.
Speaker 3: Strike because I mean, look, you know, nobody else paid
Speaker 3: a quarter bill to get Trump elected.
Speaker 1: Trump takes that pretty seriously. So do a lot of
Speaker 1: the people in the government right now.
Speaker 2: I mean, Trump is not id a lot. That's the
Speaker 2: thing is he never gave a shit about any of this.
Speaker 1: Well, I mean, and I've always been pretty honest about it.
Speaker 7: I know.
Speaker 1: You yeah, many people, many people do.
Speaker 3: And there's also look, there's an element of political realism
Speaker 3: for a lot of this, where are like, yeah, look,
Speaker 3: you know, as long as we get mass deportation, maybe
Speaker 3: we can live with some of this. That's kind of
Speaker 3: the thinking and the talk that I've heard from others.
Speaker 3: But I think there will be some big fights ahead.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 3: Another thing I was thinking about yesterday, even though it
Speaker 3: feels like eternity, it's been two weeks, it's like and
Speaker 3: it's one of those where in the long cycle of
Speaker 3: all of these presidencies and Biden, Biden did not go
Speaker 3: negative until October twenty twenty one. That was nine months
Speaker 3: right where he basically was in a positive territory. Yeah,
Speaker 3: although when someone asked me five years from now, what
Speaker 3: do you remember about the Biden presidency, be like, oh,
Speaker 3: people hated him but what the truth is, it's like
Speaker 3: the first nine months kind of honeymoon.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Well, and you know why people liked because they did
Speaker 2: a lot of federal government action, like to materially benefit people.
Speaker 2: I mean, that was the most popular stuff that he
Speaker 2: did was at the beginning when checks were going out
Speaker 2: and there was you know, a huge COVID relief program.
Speaker 4: That's when he was most popular.
Speaker 2: And then the two things that killed him forst Afghanistan,
Speaker 2: which I hate to admit, but that's the reality obviously,
Speaker 2: and he never recovered from that, and then inflation, inflation
Speaker 2: murdered and that was you know, and that was it.
Speaker 2: So I mean, that's the complete polar opposite direction of
Speaker 2: what's being done here. That was a building up of government.
Speaker 2: I mean, I wouldn't call it FDR, but it was
Speaker 2: a break from the neoliberal era. It was, you know,
Speaker 2: an expansion of the social safety net. You know, Trump
Speaker 2: said the same thing and his administration to deal with
Speaker 2: COVID as well. And when Biden really became unpopular was
Speaker 2: also because all of those pieces that had been added
Speaker 2: to the social safety net are stripped away. So that's
Speaker 2: why I think, you know, I disagree with you that
Speaker 2: there's like some mandate, some desire to destroy all the
Speaker 2: federal government programs because you know, when you ask people,
Speaker 2: they think that the Pentagon should be cut.
Speaker 4: Which is not going to happen.
Speaker 2: They don't think that programs that benefit Americans should be cut.
Speaker 4: And you know, and I think it is telling.
Speaker 2: That's why they do start with USAID because you can
Speaker 2: also fit it into this framework of oh, that's where
Speaker 2: you're you know, we're making it America first, and then
Speaker 2: once you accomplish that, then you can move on to
Speaker 2: the things that are more politically difficult and where there
Speaker 2: may be more popular pushbacks.
Speaker 1: Just put a bow on it.
Speaker 3: I don't think that there's ever a mandate to strip
Speaker 3: the federal government all agency. I would equate it to
Speaker 3: if you ever worked in a company and there's a
Speaker 3: bunch of hr people who have a ton of power
Speaker 3: but who don't do anything, who everybody hates. I always
Speaker 3: see it as the mandate is strip that a way,
Speaker 3: whether it's reality or not, the feeling as if they're
Speaker 3: doing nothing and they're actually making operations here more difficult
Speaker 3: in practice, that's what I think basically will materialize. As
Speaker 3: opposed to cutting any critical function now I'm not going
Speaker 3: to lie. You know, this whole move fast and Brave
Speaker 3: things ideology very much could move in the other direction.
Speaker 2: I mean, it nearly bankrupted Tesla. We've seen what did
Speaker 2: did too.
Speaker 6: But it's work.
Speaker 1: I mean, this is the problem. The Peter Thiele quote
Speaker 1: comes to mind.
Speaker 3: It's like, you look financially, should you ever bet against him?
Speaker 1: Probably not.
Speaker 2: I mean, the government is not a business, though, I mean,
Speaker 2: that's the thing is if well, first of all, i mean,
Speaker 2: if you look at the management of Twitter, it's been
Speaker 2: a catastrophe, both in terms of the functioning of the
Speaker 2: product and the profitability of the product, et cetera. You know,
Speaker 2: it's been that has been a total and complete disaster.
Speaker 2: But also, and we've talked about this before that I
Speaker 2: know you agree with part of this, Like the way
Speaker 2: you run a business, and the consequences of a business
Speaker 2: cutting too deeply and you know, having an off quarter
Speaker 2: in terms of their earnings or whatever, profoundly different than
Speaker 2: cutting too deeply at the federal government and people die,
Speaker 2: or kids don't have their head start, or checks don't
Speaker 2: go out, or the government defaults, like those are the
Speaker 2: sorts of things that that's the way Elon operates, Right,
Speaker 2: he comes in, he cuts massively, like not, oh, in
Speaker 2: this area, we have a little fat no blanket across
Speaker 2: the board. He causes a near catastrophe and then tries
Speaker 2: to rebuild from the ashes, like that's the way he operates.
Speaker 2: That's the way he's operating the federal government. And I
Speaker 2: know there's this instinct of like, oh, we should run
Speaker 2: the government like a business. The government should not be
Speaker 2: run like a business, because businesses it's all just about
Speaker 2: profit for the shareholders. The government is about providing critical,
Speaker 2: at times life saving programs and resources to the population.
Speaker 2: Not to mention, of course, what overarches all of this
Speaker 2: and why everyone should be disturbed by it is like,
Speaker 2: if you happen to like Elon, substitute George Soros or
Speaker 2: Bill Gates or whatever billionaire you don't like. We shouldn't
Speaker 2: have an unelected billionaire appointing himself king and just operating
Speaker 2: carte blanche, cutting whatever programs he happens not to like,
Speaker 2: whatever agencies he happens not to like, or has like
Speaker 2: a personal grievance.
Speaker 4: With or whatever.
Speaker 2: That is the end of the project that we have
Speaker 2: known as America for the past several hundred years like
Speaker 2: that is the end of that if we end up
Speaker 2: in a situation where one unelected billionaire can just appoint
Speaker 2: himself king and operate with impunity.
Speaker 4: And let's just last piece here.
Speaker 2: We can put the last element guys up on the
Speaker 2: screen and then we can transition in toto. Talking about
Speaker 2: tariffs a little bit does fit in with all of
Speaker 2: this as well. But there have been I think now
Speaker 2: four different lawsuits that have been filed. This one was
Speaker 2: filed by I know AFL, Cio SCIU and a couple
Speaker 2: other groups together. They're specifically going after Doge's access to
Speaker 2: the Treasury Department's payment system. They say that it violates
Speaker 2: the Privacy Act of nineteen seventy four and other IRS statutes.
Speaker 2: As I said, I think there are three other lawsuits
Speaker 2: at least that have been filed in federal courts at
Speaker 2: this point, so we'll see. I think the next couple
Speaker 2: pieces are what do the courts do? How does elon
Speaker 2: and how did Trump? How do they react to any
Speaker 2: negative court decisions? And then the other piece, just to flag,
Speaker 2: which Mattagleci is actually flagged on Twitter, is there's a
Speaker 2: big funding fight. We're about to hit the debt ceiling
Speaker 2: in mid March. And you know, now you got Elon
Speaker 2: in charge of the treasury payment system or acts.
Speaker 4: I shouldn't say in charge access to.
Speaker 3: The treasure only access according to the White Yes, I
Speaker 3: don't actually you know what that means.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but anyway, access to the charger of payments system
Speaker 2: and whatever else he wants access to. How Democrats are
Speaker 2: thinking that that's going to be a place where they
Speaker 2: can exert some pressure and try to rein in what's
Speaker 2: happening here. How does that fight go down? Do they
Speaker 2: just say, oh, no, we're just going to pay the
Speaker 2: things we want to pay and that support our you know,
Speaker 2: ideological ends, and not pay the things that don't be fair.
Speaker 1: That are basically what the Obama administration and them did.
Speaker 4: With the extraordinary measures.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's what extraordinary measures are. So I mean, but
Speaker 3: at a certain points Trump does run the government like
Speaker 3: he is the president of the United States. So when
Speaker 3: a shutdown, you can decide what you want to pay
Speaker 3: for or not.
Speaker 1: I don't disagree.
Speaker 3: I'm not saying it's good on anything, but and you're right,
Speaker 3: we should prepare people for that.
Speaker 1: It's absolutely Yeah.
Speaker 2: So that is the next the next The next piece is, Okay,
Speaker 2: what happens with the courts, how do they respond to
Speaker 2: the courts? And what happens with the dead ceiling showdown?
Speaker 3: All right, let's get to Tariff's a dizzying day yesterday
Speaker 3: in Washington as the news rolled in.
Speaker 1: Are the tariffs on? Are they off? What's happening?
Speaker 3: Let's go and put this up there on the screen.
Speaker 3: Trump's truth social I just spoke with President Claudia Shinbaum
Speaker 3: of Mexico.
Speaker 1: Was a friendly conversation.
Speaker 3: She agreed to immediately supply ten thousand Mexican soldiers on
Speaker 3: the border separating Mexico in the United States. These soldiers
Speaker 3: will be specifically designated to stop the flow of fentanol
Speaker 3: and illegal migrants into our country. We further agreed to immediately.
Speaker 1: Pause the anticipated tariffs for a one month period, during
Speaker 1: which we'll.
Speaker 3: Have negotiations headed by Secretary of State Marco Rubio. I
Speaker 3: look forward to participating in those negotiations. Mexico confirmed this news.
Speaker 3: Claudia Shinebaum, let's go and put that on the screen.
Speaker 3: Put out actually broke the news first. Justin Trudeau similarly said,
Speaker 3: I just had a good call with President Trump. Canada
Speaker 3: is implementing our one point three billion dollar border plan,
Speaker 3: reinforcing the border with new choppers, technology and personnel, enhanced coordination.
Speaker 3: Nearly ten thousand frontline soldiers our personnel are and will
Speaker 3: be working on protecting the border. In addition, Canada is
Speaker 3: making commitments to a point of fentanyl z are. We
Speaker 3: will list cartels, terrorists, ensure twenty four to seven eyes
Speaker 3: on the border, launch a Canada US joint strike force
Speaker 3: to combat organized crime, fentanyl and money laundering. I have
Speaker 3: also signed a new intelligence directive that we will be
Speaker 3: backing with two hundred million dollars. Proposed tariffs will be
Speaker 3: paused for at least thirty days while we work together.
Speaker 1: So there's been.
Speaker 2: Once your point is our problem, basically you're done over.
Speaker 3: It's a big question as to what happened here, whether
Speaker 3: this was the plan all along. Many people are pointing
Speaker 3: out the fact that much of this actually existed already. So,
Speaker 3: for example, put B three up on the screen, Joe Biden.
Speaker 3: Under the Biden administration, Mexico had apparently sent some fifteen
Speaker 3: thousand troops to the border. It's unclear whether there's going
Speaker 3: to be an additional ten thousand here, bringing the total
Speaker 3: to twenty five thousand. Similarly, in Canada, it appeared that
Speaker 3: some of these initiatives are already on the books on
Speaker 3: January thirteenth, before Trump even took office. So I don't know,
Speaker 3: I mean, whether this is symbolic or not in terms
Speaker 3: of the Trump demands. I mean, the fundamental difference, I
Speaker 3: guess comes down to both the leverage, the power used
Speaker 3: and the interim thirty day period, as in, well, if
Speaker 3: we don't like the results, that we're going to change things,
Speaker 3: so fundamentally, that's what I would say. The overall difference is.
Speaker 3: But the tariffs are offered now for the next thirty
Speaker 3: days S and P.
Speaker 1: Five hundred. As of this morning, let's.
Speaker 3: See, it is up by point one four percent, even
Speaker 3: with the China tariffs.
Speaker 1: So yeah, the markets were a little I mean, they
Speaker 1: were a little royal.
Speaker 3: They actually didn't expect as bad. They didn't, well, I
Speaker 3: guess the act as badly as I thought.
Speaker 4: I think they kind of assumed this is what was
Speaker 4: I was going to say.
Speaker 3: So what if there is the rational market hypothesis that
Speaker 3: they were correct, that the tariffs itself were never going
Speaker 3: to happen, Maybe we should reconsider.
Speaker 7: That, right.
Speaker 2: I mean, I'm just, I guess still a little confused
Speaker 2: about what these tariffs are supposed to be about in
Speaker 2: the first place, because the way I understood it and
Speaker 2: the way you I think accurately explained it yesterday is like, well,
Speaker 2: they're really about economics, but you have to put this
Speaker 2: bullshit layer of it's about fentanyl on top, even though
Speaker 2: like no infentional comes from Canada. Basically it's very small percentage, right,
Speaker 2: one percent. But then all the quote unquote concessions, even
Speaker 2: if we grant that their concessions are about sens at all,
Speaker 2: they're not about economics. And Trump previously had been saying,
Speaker 2: you know, the only way Canada can fly is if
Speaker 2: they become a fifty first staid or if our trade
Speaker 2: deficit becomes zero and is balanced down. But then you
Speaker 2: know what he gets in exchange for this is, oh,
Speaker 2: we're going to appoint the fentanels are and keep the
Speaker 2: troops on the border that are already there. So you know,
Speaker 2: we're about to talk about the popularity of terrorists such
Speaker 2: as something that you've been talking about.
Speaker 4: And I actually think.
Speaker 2: That a tariff regime could be popular even if it
Speaker 2: did require, you know, some pain, as Trump floated that
Speaker 2: there would be as a result of these things. But
Speaker 2: just as you know, we're about to talk to Matt
Speaker 2: Stoller about this, already record of the conversation.
Speaker 4: That's why I'm previewing this.
Speaker 2: But you know, just as Biden failed to enlist people
Speaker 2: in the like Anti trust project and you know, a
Speaker 2: National Relations Board and the CFPB, there has to be
Speaker 2: a story that people understand of why they're sacrificing, why
Speaker 2: they're experiencing this pain. And right now there you know,
Speaker 2: there is no real It's all over the place.
Speaker 4: It makes no sense. Why Canada, Why.
Speaker 2: Are you putting higher tariffs in theory on Canada than
Speaker 2: you are on China?
Speaker 4: Like what is Canada done wrong?
Speaker 2: So you know, I think that's part of the thing
Speaker 2: here is if you want to make this about bringing
Speaker 2: back American manufacturing jobs, reindustrializing the industrial Midwest, I think
Speaker 2: there's a chance that you could enlist the American people
Speaker 2: in that project. But number one, I don't think that
Speaker 2: most of these tariffs accomplish that goal. And number two,
Speaker 2: I think the story about them is deeply confused.
Speaker 4: Contradictory tarifs are a tool.
Speaker 3: I mean look, I in principle, I'm like, great, you know,
Speaker 3: twenty five thousand more troops of the border.
Speaker 7: Great.
Speaker 3: Having leverage over our allies to and Mexico very questionable.
Speaker 3: But it's one of those where like you said, look,
Speaker 3: I believe in the story. I believe in the tariffs.
Speaker 3: I believe in bringing back a lot of this manufacturing.
Speaker 3: And so if this is all it takes in order
Speaker 3: to basically get you to call them off, I don't know.
Speaker 3: I mean, is it going to be a fundamental difference. Maybe,
Speaker 3: you know, I guess it's an open question as to that.
Speaker 3: I think the reason I was excited about them, the
Speaker 3: reason I like the idea of even threatening, is I
Speaker 3: fundamentally believe in using American assistance, power and the economy
Speaker 3: to achieve ends that are good for our people. Now,
Speaker 3: the American people have voted for Donald D. Trump on
Speaker 3: a message of immigration threatening the Mexican economy, which is
Speaker 3: eighty percent exports to the United States if they don't
Speaker 3: help us out more on that is, in principle a
Speaker 3: thing I think is fantastic. I think it's good to
Speaker 3: be able to get them to either send troops there
Speaker 3: and to have a one month cliff falling over their head,
Speaker 3: where it's like, hey, guys, the guillotine's going to fall
Speaker 3: if you don't get your act together.
Speaker 1: All I totally support.
Speaker 3: But the problem is is that with this the way
Speaker 3: it's currently is, it runs the risk of what you're
Speaker 3: saying of not falling into this broader national project. Now,
Speaker 3: the China tariffs, for example, luckily at least in my opinion,
Speaker 3: have gone into place, and I hope and we're about
Speaker 3: to talk, as you said with Stoller about the Deminimus
Speaker 3: exception and more of which I really am praying and
Speaker 3: hoping that they close it just because of the impact
Speaker 3: it's had on our overall economy. But when there's not
Speaker 3: the lacks explanation, when the lacks coherent vision, that's when
Speaker 3: you risk blowback. And in the event that these tariffs
Speaker 3: ever do go into power, we perhaps could see that.
Speaker 1: So we had to want to speak for Harry Eton.
Speaker 4: One more thing and then we'll get Harry Inton.
Speaker 2: There is also a risk here that I think we
Speaker 2: already see playing out, and maybe you know, honestly from
Speaker 2: my ideological perspective, it's kind of a silver lining. But
Speaker 2: because all of this, you know, threat I'm going to
Speaker 2: threaten Columbia, a threatened Mexican front Canada for some reason,
Speaker 2: because this is all being done and even after you know,
Speaker 2: Canada had already announced this one point three billion dollar
Speaker 2: package and enforce in anticipation of Trump coming in to
Speaker 2: try to please him. In advance, Mexico had done a
Speaker 2: very similar thing with Claudia Scheinbaum, massively increasing the number
Speaker 2: of raids. The amount of fentanyl that was being seized
Speaker 2: at the border dropped to some of the lowest levels
Speaker 2: in years. So they felt like, Okay, we're doing the
Speaker 2: things he wants us to do, and still they end
Speaker 2: up in this situation of you know, being bullied and
Speaker 2: threatened and you know, put jubbed into crisis and all
Speaker 2: of this sort of stuff. So you already see European
Speaker 2: leaders talking the Financial Times, for example, saying, you know,
Speaker 2: we no longer see really China as the.
Speaker 4: Greatest rust to us.
Speaker 2: We actually think that it's these guys over here, and
Speaker 2: maybe we need to form a sort of anti American
Speaker 2: alliance because individually we have no chance. And Trump is
Speaker 2: floating tariffs against the EU as you know as well,
Speaker 2: and so you know that's the other piece, is you
Speaker 2: are sort of aligning, forcing the world's hand, accelerating a
Speaker 2: shift that was already happening. Now, from my perspective, that
Speaker 2: may not be the worst thing in the world, but
Speaker 2: if you're interested in American power and empire, this is
Speaker 2: definitely counter to that particular political project.
Speaker 3: I actually don't agree. I'll tell you why. Which is Okay, Mexico,
Speaker 3: what are you going to do? Eighty percent of your
Speaker 3: economy or exports rely on us. You ain't going nowhere? Okay,
Speaker 3: who are you going to sell to Canada? Geography matter.
Speaker 3: Seventy four percent of your exports come into the United States.
Speaker 3: They were floating, Oh, maybe we should join the European Union. Yeah,
Speaker 3: good luck. Same thing in terms of the Europeans. Oh
Speaker 3: maybe we'll rely on China. Oh, China is going to
Speaker 3: give you they're nuclear umbrella and they're going to protect
Speaker 3: you from all of your problems so that you guys
Speaker 3: can have universal health care. But you don't actually defend
Speaker 3: yourselves and these giant social welfare states. So let's get
Speaker 3: real too about how long it's taken seventy five years
Speaker 3: of integration for the European Union and for the European
Speaker 3: economies in the United States. It's taken two hundred years
Speaker 3: now of Canada and Mexico. They are going nowhere, maybe Africa, India, China,
Speaker 3: South Korea, Japan. Those are the countries I worry much
Speaker 3: more about. But these people nothing, I mean, no matter what,
Speaker 3: they will be heavily reliant on the effectively client stays.
Speaker 3: I mean, that's what it is.
Speaker 1: The problem is that they don't like that.
Speaker 3: I like reminding them of some of that, especially whenever
Speaker 3: it comes to the border, and the border alone is
Speaker 3: certainly justification for hitting them with tariffs or threatening tariffs
Speaker 3: if we want to. I would like, though, to see
Speaker 3: a return to some of what we talked about previously
Speaker 3: yesterday about manufacturing and about the fact that NAFTA itself
Speaker 3: had decimated a huge part of our manufacturing sector. The
Speaker 3: way that these automakers currently operate, where a single part
Speaker 3: will cross like forty or fifty times the Canadian the
Speaker 3: Mexican border, It'll cross three separate borders like multiple times
Speaker 3: before it ever even makes its way into a car,
Speaker 3: and then oh it's called American made. There's still a
Speaker 3: lot of deficits in the USMCA, so I had thought
Speaker 3: it was an opening on USMC, and I mean, I
Speaker 3: guess it certainly could be in terms of setting the
Speaker 3: ground for what that looks like, but for right now
Speaker 3: seems seems to be wrapped up.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I don't really know what else to say.
Speaker 2: Yeah, welt and we'll see what happens a month from
Speaker 2: now and we go back to this when we see
Speaker 2: this rodeo play on again. By the way, I should
Speaker 2: mention there were people floating also that. I mean, you
Speaker 2: got a bunch of billionaire like I mean, the Treasury
Speaker 2: secretary is a billionaire hedge fun guy, George Soros buddy,
Speaker 2: and wondering if there is also some profiting going on
Speaker 2: over these manufactured market drops and recoveries something.
Speaker 3: Oh, you're talking about the Soros finance, like a four
Speaker 3: x trade. That's actually pretty interesting. I wonder if they're
Speaker 3: if any got people, you know, people flag any trades
Speaker 3: because these are all.
Speaker 1: Public, right.
Speaker 2: If you're you know, if you're the Treasury secretary and
Speaker 2: you know what Trump's basic plan is here, well you're
Speaker 2: in a position of profit officially.
Speaker 3: Well it wouldn't even be him per se, but at
Speaker 3: this point with all the guidelines or whatever, but maybe
Speaker 3: people who used to.
Speaker 2: Work something if we keep going through this cycle, it
Speaker 2: may be something to keep in mind for the Wow.
Speaker 1: Well, here's the problem.
Speaker 3: You're going to encourage a bunch of retail traders to
Speaker 3: start doing four x and trying to recreate the shorting
Speaker 3: of the British.
Speaker 2: I am not encouraging to do any I'm just telling
Speaker 2: you what others are floating online and something to keep
Speaker 2: an eye on.
Speaker 1: You might be encouraging me to be.
Speaker 3: I'm like, well, maybe this money we made here, you know,
Speaker 3: don't make you some phone cult.
Speaker 1: No, I'm not going to go to president.
Speaker 2: All right, Let's get to Harry Nsen, who broke down
Speaker 2: some of the pulling about how people actually feel about tariffs.
Speaker 12: Let's sayalism Trump's tariffs on Canada, China, Mexico.
Speaker 7: Look at this, just thirty eight percent support.
Speaker 12: You don't have to be a mathematical genius to figure
Speaker 12: out that fifty one percent oppose is larger than the thirty.
Speaker 7: Eight percent support. Look.
Speaker 12: Trump has done some fairly popular things in his first
Speaker 12: few weeks in office.
Speaker 7: This is not one of them.
Speaker 12: No, no, no, horrible, horrible, horrible. To quote Charles Barkley,
Speaker 12: the American folks are opposed to these tariffs. When you
Speaker 12: ask it specifically like this about the three countries, or
Speaker 12: if you ask it more vaguely about tariff's overall, they
Speaker 12: simply put do not like it, mister.
Speaker 13: Interesting, even with China in the question, people say that
Speaker 13: they are opposed to tariff's.
Speaker 1: The majority here, and there's not a majority on a
Speaker 1: lot of things these days.
Speaker 12: The two big focuses for Trump in the polling our
Speaker 12: immigration and the economy tariffs.
Speaker 7: Ain't it, my dear friend, tariff's. Ain't it? Trump should
Speaker 7: focus on tariffs.
Speaker 12: In November of twenty twenty four, when IPSOS asked that
Speaker 12: it was one percent, look.
Speaker 7: At what happened to December of twenty twenty four.
Speaker 12: It doubled. It doubled, but to only two percent. When
Speaker 12: you double to only two percent, you know that the
Speaker 12: American people don't want Trump's.
Speaker 7: Focus to be here.
Speaker 12: They don't like it. They don't want his focus to
Speaker 12: be there. They want it to be on other issues.
Speaker 12: You know, Trump has done a lot of things that
Speaker 12: are unpopular in the past, but the poll numbers haven't moved.
Speaker 12: That may be the case here, but I'm a little
Speaker 12: skeptical of that. Why take a look at weekly Google
Speaker 12: searches for Terras. Look how much higher they are versus
Speaker 12: a year ago. They're twenty four hundred percent.
Speaker 7: That reach is a twenty one year high.
Speaker 12: You know, folks are paying attention when there are more
Speaker 12: Google searches for that than for Taylor Swift, who almost
Speaker 12: always is in the top.
Speaker 7: Of Google search.
Speaker 4: Till we caught people's attention, but not necessarily in a
Speaker 4: good way.
Speaker 1: Yeah, okay, we'll see.
Speaker 4: What do you make of that.
Speaker 2: I just going back to what I was saying before.
Speaker 2: I just looked it up. The original China Terrors that
Speaker 2: he put on in his first administration were in initially
Speaker 2: somewhat underwater, and they became more popular, absolutely, and they
Speaker 2: became majority, you know, in favor, which is why also
Speaker 2: you see the Democrats that dropped it a similar position.
Speaker 2: Biden continues that and does industrial policy, and I think
Speaker 2: it fits with what we were saying, Like people understand, okay,
Speaker 2: a lot of our jobs, you know, a lot of
Speaker 2: these industrial factory towns, a lot of the jobs left
Speaker 2: and are now in China, and so it was a
Speaker 2: very easily comprehensible story around this is why we're doing
Speaker 2: this now.
Speaker 4: You can still disagree with them.
Speaker 2: I don't think they you know, they didn't do much
Speaker 2: in terms of accomplishing their goal of restoring They needed
Speaker 2: to be paired with industrial policy. There were issues there,
Speaker 2: but people understood the story of what it was about.
Speaker 2: And I think we're even willing to, you know, have
Speaker 2: a more expensive washing machine or whatever.
Speaker 1: Not only that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, all of the doom and gloom was fake.
Speaker 3: You know, we had hundreds of billions of dollars in tariffs.
Speaker 3: I think the S and P five hundred was up
Speaker 3: by like twenty five percent.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Now they did have to like basically bail out the
Speaker 2: farmers because of the retaliatory terrorists. So it's not like
Speaker 2: there was no impact, but address the address the problem
Speaker 2: right exactly. But it is interesting to me that there
Speaker 2: does seem to be some I mean, there's almost like
Speaker 2: a nuanced view of tariffs among the American public where, Yeah,
Speaker 2: when it was China and we understood this, okay, we
Speaker 2: could go along with that, but when you're talking about Canada, Mexico,
Speaker 2: and this doesn't make any sense, and why are they
Speaker 2: being tariff more than China, and it's just across the board,
Speaker 2: and why should avocados be have a tariff, then yeah,
Speaker 2: you're not going to have people like lining up to
Speaker 2: pay more at the grocery store, more for their cars
Speaker 2: or whatever.
Speaker 1: There you go.
Speaker 3: Well, we'll see how it all comes into practice for
Speaker 3: the next thirty days. We all have a stay. Okay,
Speaker 3: let's get to mass Doolar. Joining us now is Matt Stoler.
Speaker 3: He is the author of the Big Newsletter. Great friend
Speaker 3: of the show. It's good to see you, sir, Thanks
Speaker 3: for joining us.
Speaker 6: Thanks for having me.
Speaker 3: So you just wrote this. Let's go and put this
Speaker 3: up there on the screen. What did Trump just do
Speaker 3: on the tariffs? It's very relevant obviously this morning, now
Speaker 3: that we no longer have China terifts. We don't have Canada,
Speaker 3: but we do have or sorry Canada tariffs or Mexico,
Speaker 3: but we do have China.
Speaker 6: I was like, wait, did I know?
Speaker 1: Like I got to look at Twitter, China is here.
Speaker 3: At least for now, we've got ten percent tariffs on China.
Speaker 3: But there's some big question marks of exactly what's in it.
Speaker 3: This is obviously falls within something an issue area that
Speaker 3: you care a lot about. Can you explain a bit
Speaker 3: to the audience and some of the.
Speaker 13: Importance of this yeah, I mean I so I wore
Speaker 13: a jacket with plaid to convey authority because this is
Speaker 13: going to be like very sort of technical.
Speaker 6: I'm going to do my best.
Speaker 13: Sure, So the situation is changing really quickly, so we
Speaker 13: don't one hundred percent know, but we'll know in a
Speaker 13: few days maybe. So there's this, uh so he put
Speaker 13: ten percent tariffs on stuff that's coming in from China, right,
Speaker 13: and that is you know, there's a lot of industrial
Speaker 13: machinery and various other things coming in. But what is
Speaker 13: interesting I think particularly interesting, and I think what a
Speaker 13: lot of we were just talking about this camera, there's
Speaker 13: there's a there's a loophole that is more maybe more
Speaker 13: important than just the raw amount that he put on.
Speaker 13: And that loophole is called the dominimous Exemption to trade
Speaker 13: or dominomous loophole under eight hundred dollars. When you bring
Speaker 13: something in, an individual does not have to have doesn't
Speaker 13: have to pay duties or tariffs or have that inspected.
Speaker 6: So this was set up.
Speaker 13: If you've ever been abroad and you come back and
Speaker 13: you bought a sweater or whatever, when you're on the
Speaker 13: plane and you fill out like they're like DoD you
Speaker 13: buy anything, right, was it worth more than a certain
Speaker 13: amount of money? You don't have to get that inspected,
Speaker 13: You don't have to know the tariff codes. They don't
Speaker 13: treat you like a commercial importer.
Speaker 8: Right.
Speaker 6: That's what Deminimus is.
Speaker 13: It's intended to let kind of tourists bring in a
Speaker 13: few things here or there. The problem is in the
Speaker 13: nineteen nineties, or the dynamic is in the nineteen nineties.
Speaker 13: What they said is this can be used not just
Speaker 13: for tourists but for e commerce. Right, And they said,
Speaker 13: if you are an individual buying through saying like an
Speaker 13: Amazon or something like that, and they ship you something
Speaker 13: from China, that can come in and it's less than
Speaker 13: eight hundred dollars that can come in under this deminimus
Speaker 13: under the dominimous rules, no inspections, no duties, no tariffs,
Speaker 13: and it can come in through what's called informal entry,
Speaker 13: so it doesn't have to have a licensed customs broker,
Speaker 13: doesn't have to be bonded. Now, there are about a billion,
Speaker 13: maybe more than a billion packages coming in every year.
Speaker 13: I think the number is one point four billion, but
Speaker 13: who's counting from China every year?
Speaker 6: Under the dominimus loophole.
Speaker 13: So this is the basis of the business model of
Speaker 13: timu of Shane, of Fast Fashion.
Speaker 6: And of Amazon.
Speaker 13: Right, more than fifty percent of third party sellers, which
Speaker 13: is the majority of their sales, come directly from Chinese sellers.
Speaker 6: Right, So this is you know, kind of crazy. Right.
Speaker 13: So if you're a bicycle producer in this country, you
Speaker 13: have to compete with bikes coming in duty free, no tariffs,
Speaker 13: no inspections, so on and so forth. And that is
Speaker 13: true kind of across the board. Now, what this Tariff
Speaker 13: Executive Order did is they said that dominimous exemption or
Speaker 13: that dominis loophole is going on sort of right, so
Speaker 13: they say, you now have to pay tariffs on any
Speaker 13: on everything, whether it's you know, twenty dollars or twenty
Speaker 13: thousand dollars. Okay, But what they haven't been clear on
Speaker 13: is whether they're going to force the deminimous stuff, stuff
Speaker 13: that's less than eight hundred dollars to come in through
Speaker 13: a more formalized entry.
Speaker 6: Right.
Speaker 13: Are they going to make you Are they going to
Speaker 13: make them put like Amazon or Tim mo Orshane. Are
Speaker 13: they going to have to use a licensed customs broker?
Speaker 13: Of you know, bonds, and if they do like it
Speaker 13: doesn't make sense to let you buy a three dollars
Speaker 13: T shirt and then you have to do you know,
Speaker 13: you have to get a licensed customs broker to handle
Speaker 13: that individual package. It makes more sense to, you know,
Speaker 13: bring in twenty thousand T shirts or one hundred thousand
Speaker 13: T shirts, bring them into US warehouse and then do
Speaker 13: fulfillment from there. And so it's not clear what they're
Speaker 13: doing with the actual process, but that a tariff on
Speaker 13: a three dollars T shirt doesn't matter ten percent two cares, right,
Speaker 13: especially because they're tariffing the whole sell price, so they're
Speaker 13: more likely tariffing you know, a dollar, right not or
Speaker 13: thirty cents not the three dollars. So a ten percent
Speaker 13: tariff on thirty cents is three cents.
Speaker 6: Who cares.
Speaker 13: But if they're saying, all right, you have to change
Speaker 13: your whole you know, it's just gonna be much more
Speaker 13: expensive to bring in an individual item. It doesn't matter
Speaker 13: for a bicycle that's five hundred dollars. It doesn't really
Speaker 13: matter for a piece of industrial machinery. It does matter
Speaker 13: for a T shirt or you know, a small you know,
Speaker 13: pazz spend cord. Right, So that's and that's not There
Speaker 13: are different versions of that floating around, and we don't
Speaker 13: actually know what they're going to come down and say,
Speaker 13: because they're big logistical challenges. If you get rid of
Speaker 13: the deminimus the tariff, just charging the tariff is not
Speaker 13: that big a deal, but the logistical question formal versus
Speaker 13: informal entry, so that I hope I haven't been too technical.
Speaker 3: No, but I think this is important because this is
Speaker 3: originally what I want to talk about is that these
Speaker 3: businesses ten. I mean, we've got the super Bowl coming up, right.
Speaker 3: Do you remember how many TAMU commercials.
Speaker 6: Were in our last job, like a billion?
Speaker 3: Yeah, these things have become massive companies and yeah, anyway,
Speaker 3: I that's that's why I wanted to talk to you
Speaker 3: about this.
Speaker 2: You focus on competition, and there's a definitely competition tie
Speaker 2: in here. How does this disadvantage like small and medium
Speaker 2: size retailers over you know, gives Amazon and Timu and
Speaker 2: these like big players a huge leg up?
Speaker 13: Well, I mean, so it's like, if you are making
Speaker 13: a product here, right, you have to comply with all
Speaker 13: environmental laws. You can't use slave labor. There's like a
Speaker 13: bunch of stuff you can't estensibly can't do right, and
Speaker 13: if you are, you know, we don't have jurisdiction in
Speaker 13: China or other countries. And but so the way we
Speaker 13: handle that is through the customs procedure, right, so that
Speaker 13: you know, you're not allowed to bring in goods and
Speaker 13: products where they are using certain techniques like human trafficking
Speaker 13: or whatever. If they don't do any inspections, right, or
Speaker 13: if they don't do you know, they are not charging tariffs,
Speaker 13: even if there's a tariff on the books, but they're
Speaker 13: not charging it, then you can bring all those goods
Speaker 13: in without any you know, like there's no no, there's
Speaker 13: no you know, we were just you're just mentioning the nicotine.
Speaker 13: I didn't actually know about that, but like that was
Speaker 13: a good example, right where you're competing against companies that
Speaker 13: don't have to adhere to the same standards that you
Speaker 13: do in this country.
Speaker 6: And that's that's just unfair. Right.
Speaker 13: So a lot of like the bicycle manufacturers are one
Speaker 13: of the coalition groups or bike stores, they are one
Speaker 13: of the groups that actually it's not just manufacturers, it's
Speaker 13: stores too, right, because if you're importing a bike from China. Right,
Speaker 13: if you import it directly to an end consumer, it's
Speaker 13: cheaper than if you bring it to a store and
Speaker 13: sell it to because the store is going to bring in,
Speaker 13: you know, one hundred bikes, so they don't get access
Speaker 13: to the dominimus, the dominus duty free, terra free, so
Speaker 13: there are It actually just changes the retail environment in
Speaker 13: the US and makes, you know, harms the little guy
Speaker 13: in all sorts of different ways. The other part of
Speaker 13: it that I think is kind of crazy is that
Speaker 13: you have you know, a billion plus packages coming in,
Speaker 13: so that's like four million packages every day, and there's
Speaker 13: a ton of fentanyl in these packages. Right, there's going
Speaker 13: uninspected and it's brought here by our own post office. Right,
Speaker 13: So there's a lot of conversations about, oh, there's all
Speaker 13: this fentanyl coming in from Mexico. Right, That's what a
Speaker 13: lot of Republicans like to talk about. In Democrats too,
Speaker 13: but mostly it's a Republican thing. But really what's happening
Speaker 13: is I mean, let's not say there isn't fentyl coming
Speaker 13: in from Mexico. But one of the things they say is, well,
Speaker 13: we haven't, we haven't seized any fentanyl coming in from
Speaker 13: these packages in China, and so we know it's coming.
Speaker 6: We're seizing a lot from Mexico.
Speaker 13: It's like, well, that's because no one's looking, yes, But
Speaker 13: when they start to look, and they have started to
Speaker 13: do some pilot programs, they're finding a ton of fentyl
Speaker 13: coming in through, you know, the these packages, and so
Speaker 13: it's a really good idea to actually just start bringing
Speaker 13: them through through normal customs procedures so that we can
Speaker 13: apply the same techniques that we use to inspect everything
Speaker 13: else for this really important.
Speaker 2: How does you know we all watch the inauguration. Jeff
Speaker 2: Bezos is you know, is Trump's new bud. His wife
Speaker 2: also was quite a notably there a lot a lot
Speaker 2: to say about her. You know, how does his influence
Speaker 2: tie into all of this?
Speaker 13: Well, it's interesting because because this has implications. So the
Speaker 13: tariffs have implications for Apple as well, because they didn't
Speaker 13: put an exemption into the iPhone, right, which you know,
Speaker 13: I was just listening to CNBC and they were they
Speaker 13: were talking about how this is going to take three
Speaker 13: percent of Apple's profits, right, because they are you know,
Speaker 13: what do they do they absorb the extra tariff? Do
Speaker 13: they raise prices? And annoyed Trump, like, what do they do?
Speaker 13: They change their supply chains. Someone's got to pay. And
Speaker 13: this is I think a much bigger deal for Amazon
Speaker 13: than Apple. But it's a big deal for Apple. It's
Speaker 13: also actually, weirdly a big deal for Meta because you know,
Speaker 13: the fast fashioned Chinese groups were spending billions of dollars
Speaker 13: on advertising. So this is the one where maybe like
Speaker 13: Google and Microsoft or not actually like super affected by it,
Speaker 13: but the other three are. And I think it says
Speaker 13: that these companies have some levels of influence on Trump,
Speaker 13: particularly on you know, when they're negotiating with foreign countries.
Speaker 13: If he feels that those foreign countries are trying to
Speaker 13: regulate American companies, he will he will fight for that.
Speaker 6: But he's not.
Speaker 13: It doesn't look like he's doing explicit favors for these
Speaker 13: companies yet. And I'll say one other piece, this is
Speaker 13: not about trade, but yesterday there was an argument having
Speaker 13: to do with a case against Googles, an anti trust
Speaker 13: case against Google brought by Epic Games. So not a
Speaker 13: government case, but the Anti Trust Division because the government
Speaker 13: can intervene in private cases if they think the state
Speaker 13: has an interest. The government actually had a lawyer there
Speaker 13: and argued for you know, basically Google was in the wrong,
Speaker 13: and you know that is an indication that this the
Speaker 13: anter Trust Division could have said, you're not doing that anymore. Right,
Speaker 13: like they've been telling regulators and enforced all of the government,
Speaker 13: we're totally changing things. They haven't done that with the
Speaker 13: Anti Trust Division in big tech. So this is a
Speaker 13: small hint of that. So this is really it's like,
Speaker 13: I don't know what to think because I see a
Speaker 13: lot of I'm not I don't trust Trump, I mean candid,
Speaker 13: I'm a Democrat, I am I'm very skeptical. I see
Speaker 13: a lot of corporate favoritism. You guys talk about it,
Speaker 13: but some of these areas like big tech's not getting
Speaker 13: exactly what they want.