Trump's Trade War FAILS: China DUMPS Dollar, Putin & Iran Just Got STRONGER w/ Ben Norton

Summary

Highlights

• China's strategic moves have exposed weaknesses in U.S. global dominance through Trump's tariffs. 📉
• Ben Norton explains how the tariffs have pushed China to develop its domestic capabilities further. 🏭
• The conversation discusses the global shift towards a multipolar world, diminishing U.S. hegemony. 🚀
• U.S. policies intended to curb China's growth instead bolster international resistance to U.S. influence. 🚫
• Economic ties among BRICS members have strengthened, challenging U.S. economic strategies. 💼

Key Takeaways

• Trump's trade war has backfired, empowering China, Russia, and Iran instead of isolating them. 🌐
• China is pushing forward with de-dollarization and strengthening its domestic industries. 💪
• The trade war reveals the U.S.'s vulnerabilities in global supply chains and economic dependence on China. 🔗
• BRICS nations are expanding cooperation and influence, countering U.S. attempts to dominate economically. 🤝
• U.S. aggressive policies have accelerated global efforts towards a multipolar world. 🌏

Overview

Chapters

• 00:00 - 00:30: Introduction and Guest Introduction In this introductory chapter, host Danny Hiong welcomes viewers to the live stream and introduces the guest speaker. The discussion focuses on how Trump's trade war has not only failed but also backfired on a global scale. Key topics include China's ongoing dedollarization efforts, the rising influence of BRICS, and geopolitical maneuvers by countries like Putin's Russia and Iran that the US is unable to counter, all in the context of Trump's tariffs.
• 00:30 - 10:30: China's Response to Trump's Trade War The chapter titled "China's Response to Trump's Trade War" begins by discussing the significant increase in tariffs on Chinese imports, with some reaching up to 245%. This has led to a substantial shift in global economic power dynamics. Ben Norton from Geopolitical Economy Reports joins the discussion to provide insights into the situation. The importance of audience engagement, like hitting the like button, to boost the stream's visibility on platforms like YouTube, is also briefly mentioned.
• 10:30 - 20:30: Economic Impact of the Trade War The chapter titled 'Economic Impact of the Trade War' discusses the escalating tensions in the trade war initiated by Donald Trump. It highlights how China has responded to the United States' complaints about imbalanced trade by telling Trump and US leaders to stop whining. Additionally, Trump has issued a memo imposing a total of 245% tariffs on certain imports, signifying a significant step in this trade conflict.
• 20:30 - 31:00: China's Strategic Moves in Response The chapter discusses China's reactions and strategic adjustments in response to global economic pressures and geopolitical dynamics. Particularly, it focuses on the impact of US tariffs on Chinese products, such as electric vehicles, and how these have unintentionally affected the global economy, the US's economic standing, and its geopolitical influence worldwide. The discussion highlights the intricate economic interplay between these major powers and the consequential effects of tariff policies on international relations.
• 31:00 - 40:30: The US Strategy and Global Reactions The chapter discusses the US strategy in the context of its economic relations, specifically focusing on the trade war initiated by former President Trump against China. The narrative outlines a timeline of events, highlighting contradictions between Trump's statements and those of his officials. On April 2nd, Trump declared tariffs on various countries, labeling it 'liberation day,' and falsely claimed the tariffs were reciprocal. The chapter critiques this approach, noting that the tariffs were actually based on other countries' trade practices.
• 40:30 - 50:00: The Role of BRICS and Multipolar World The chapter discusses the trade policies of the US, focusing on tariffs imposed by the Trump administration. It mentions the US trade deficit and how tariffs were used to address trade imbalances, including high tariffs on smaller nations and threats of tariffs on major trading partners like Vietnam.
• 50:00 - 59:30: The Impact of Trump's Policies on the Global Stage The chapter discusses the effects of Trump administration's policies on the global economy, highlighting a significant event on the 2nd and a subsequent policy decision on the 9th, which was a 90-day pause. This decision was made in response to various issues in the US, notably a crisis in the US bond market, which raised concerns within the Trump administration. The chapter likely further elaborates on the implications of this bond market crisis and explores how it influenced US government securities such as bonds, bills, and notes.
• 59:30 - 69:00: Rare Earth Elements and Industrial Strategies The chapter discusses the intricacies of how the U.S. government borrows money through selling securities at auctions and the implications of yield rates. A significant spike in yield rates coincided with a stock market crash, indicating a severe economic crisis in the U.S. It highlights a moment when former President Trump reacted with concern, influenced by his viewing habits such as watching Fox News. The chapter also mentions Jaime Diamond, the billionaire CEO, as part of this context.
• 69:00 - 78:30: The Global Economic Shift and Russia's Involvement The chapter discusses a significant shift in the global economy, focusing particularly on Russia's involvement. It highlights warnings from key financial figures, particularly Jaime Dimon of JP Morgan Chase, about the potential for a severe recession or depression in the United States. The chapter notes how influential billionaires, including Elon Musk, Tim Cook, and Bill Aman, applied pressure on then-President Trump, with specific actions like Aman's request for a 90-day pause being discussed.
• 78:30 - 88:00: Trump's Foreign Policy and Its Global Effects The chapter delves into Trump's foreign policy, emphasizing his focus on billionaire oligarchs as his primary constituency. It highlights the implementation of a 90-day pause on certain issues excluding China, and discusses the increasing tariffs on China, reaching symbolic levels as they surpass 50-100%, significantly affecting trade.
• 88:00 - 97:30: The Collapse of Trump's Strategies and the Rise of Multipolarity The chapter discusses the limitations of Trump's trade strategies, highlighting that while everyday items like toasters and refrigerators can be produced by many countries, certain specialized items such as specific semiconductors and machine parts are not easily replaceable. The significant tariffs imposed by Trump intended to penalize China and present a strong stance in this new cold war scenario have resulted in continued reliance on imports from China to meet these demands.
• 97:30 - 107:00: Impact of US Economic Policies on Global Economy The chapter discusses the impact of US economic policies on the global economy, specifically focusing on tariffs imposed on China. The US has increased tariffs on China to 245%, which President Trump claims are reciprocal, although this is not accurate. A reciprocal tariff would imply equivalent charges by China on US goods, which is not the case. The chapter notes the trade imbalance between the US and China, highlighting the US's de-industrialization and its limited production focused on oil, gas, and entertainment goods like Marvel movies.
• 107:00 - 116:30: The Role of US Corporations and the Global Economy The chapter explores the dynamics of trade between the United States and China, highlighting key exports such as soybeans, oil, and gas from the U.S. to China. The discussion delves into the trade deficit the U.S. has with China and the claims made by Trump regarding China's tariffs. It addresses the inaccuracies in Trump's claims about tariffs equaling the trade surplus and outlines the sequence of tariff impositions starting with Trump's unilateral tariffs on China, to which China responded with reciprocal measures.
• 116:30 - 126:00: The Future of Global Economic Systems The chapter discusses the escalating tariff war between China and the United States during Trump's administration. As the U.S. continually increased tariffs, reaching 245%, China eventually decided not to further increase their tariffs, deeming it ineffective in changing trade dynamics. This summary encapsulates the tension and economic strategies of the two countries, highlighting a critical moment in global economic relations.
• 126:00 - 135:30: China's Technological Advancements and Global Influence The chapter discusses China's technological advancements and global influence, highlighting how an executive order by President Trump affected trade between the US and China. It notes the order seemed all-encompassing at first glance, but actually had exceptions for key Chinese exports like cell phones, computers, semiconductors, and other electronics. This was in contrast to Trump's public statements, claiming there were no exceptions and criticizing the media for misrepresentation.
• 135:30 - 145:00: China's Response to US Sanctions and Trade War The chapter titled 'China's Response to US Sanctions and Trade War' discusses a significant development in the ongoing trade conflict between the United States and China. It highlights a statement from the White House and a related executive order, noting specific exceptions mentioned in both the title and text of the order. President Trump's remarks are discussed, where he clarifies that some entities are not fully exempt from tariffs, although the tariffs have been significantly reduced from previous rates of 145% or 245% to just 20%. This reduction is interpreted as a substantial de-escalation and an implicit concession of defeat in the trade war after nine intense days. The acknowledgment is seen as an admission that the US economy is unable to sustain continued trade tensions.
• 145:00 - 154:30: The Rise of BRICS and Alternatives to US Dominance The chapter titled 'The Rise of BRICS and Alternatives to US Dominance' discusses the critical role of electronics products, particularly those produced in China, in the global economy. It describes a hypothetical scenario where cell phones, integral to both the US and global economy, suddenly stop working, leading to a catastrophic economic crash. The narrative emphasizes the significance of digital infrastructure, with computers being highlighted as the most important technology globally. The underlying theme suggests that the global dependence on these technologies, many of which are manufactured outside the US, illustrates potential shifts in economic power and the rise of alternative global influences such as BRICS.
• 154:30 - 164:00: US Political Landscape and Global Influence This chapter explores the significance of semiconductors in the global economy, particularly focusing on China's role in producing legacy chips. These chips, while not the most advanced, are essential for the everyday electronic products that constitute over one-third of overall electronics. The chapter highlights the geopolitical implications of semiconductor production and its impact on the US's economic and political strategies on a global scale.
• 164:00 - 170:00: Conclusion and Final Thoughts The chapter titled 'Conclusion and Final Thoughts' talks about the dynamics of the US-China trade relationship. It emphasizes the shift in power where, despite initial strong statements from the Trump administration claiming significant leverage over China in trade negotiations, the reality turned out differently. Trump's actions, such as exempting many Chinese exports to the US shortly after starting a trade war, indicate a quick concession. This reflects that China holds considerable influence in the trade dynamics, contrary to the initial belief that the US held all the strategic advantages.
• 170:00 - 200:30: Outro and Channel Promotion This chapter discusses the strength of the Chinese economy and its superior economic position relative to the United States. It highlights the misconception in the U.S. about China's economic resilience and the dependency of the U.S. on China's economy. Additionally, there is mention of how tariffs imposed by the U.S. have been a topic of ridicule on Chinese social media platforms. Overall, the chapter underscores the robust economic standing of China.

Trump's Trade War FAILS: China DUMPS Dollar, Putin & Iran Just Got STRONGER w/ Ben Norton Transcription

• 00:00 - 00:30 welcome everyone Welcome to another live stream It's your host Danny Hiong and our guest today is going to talk about how Trump's trade war hasn't just failed it has backfired mightily on a global scale Uh China is ddollarizing as it has been for many years now BRICS is gaining momentum and we also have Putin Iran and the BRIRCS countries making moves that the US cannot stop as Trump's tariffs
• 00:30 - 01:00 which now are ranging upwards of 245% for some Chinese imports is causing a huge shift in global power To discuss this is Ben Norton of Geopolitical Economy Reports Ben it is really good to have you back on today Thanks for having me Danny It's always a pleasure being here Of course Of course Everybody hit the like button as you come on That helps boost the stream in YouTube's algorithm But Ben let's get
• 01:00 - 01:30 started because this trade war that Donald Trump has ignited in recent weeks has reached a climactic point where now China is telling Trump to stop whining and the United States uh uh rulers to stop whining over imbalanced trade And Trump has put in a memo that there are 245% tariffs in total on some imports
• 01:30 - 02:00 like Chinese electric vehicles for example But this has backfired in an intense way on the global economy on the US's economy and also on the US's geopolitical position worldwide Talk about what is going on How have these tariffs impacted all of these areas uh wherever you want to start Yeah Well first of all I'll say that not only has Trump's tariffs blown back in
• 02:00 - 02:30 the US economy but in many ways he kind of already gave up on the trade war that he started against China So let's briefly go through the timeline here because it's kind of confusing the there are so many contradictions Trump will say something his officials will say something different So on the 2nd of April Trump declared tariffs on countries all around the world and so-called liberation day He held up this big chart and he claimed that his tariffs were reciprocal which is not true It's actually false The tariffs were based on other countries trade
• 02:30 - 03:00 surplus with the US the US trade deficit So they were not based on the tariffs that other countries charge the US This is why Trump put 50% tariffs on tiny countries like the African nation of Loto and he put tariffs on this uninhabited island where there are only penguins and he also threatened tariffs of 46% on Vietnam which is a major trading partner of the US a major
• 03:00 - 03:30 producer of electronics and other goods That was on the 2nd And then what happened after that is Trump issued a pause on the 9th a pause for 90 days And this came after a variety of problems in the US especially a crisis in the US bond market which really concerned the Trump administration because if the yields on US Treasury securities which is US government debt you know bonds bills and notes when the US government
• 03:30 - 04:00 borrows money it sells those securities in auctions and investors demand some kind of interest rate some kind of yield and the yield shot up at a time when the stock market was crashing which is a sign of severe crisis in the US economy and Trump blinked He got really scared He was watching Fox News The Wall Street Journal reported that Trump you know he regularly watches Fox News and he saw Jaime Diamond who's the billionaire CEO
• 04:00 - 04:30 of JP Morgan Chase who is the Wait which is the largest bank in the US and and Jaime Diamond warned that this would cause a severe recession or even a depression in the US Trump got scared He also was being pressured by many of the billionaires around him like Elon Musk and also Tim Cook the CEO of Apple and Bill Aman the billionaire hedge fund manager They were all pressuring Trump Bill Aman the billionaire hedge fund manager asked for Trump to issue a 90-day pause and that's exactly what he
• 04:30 - 05:00 did So we see that you know Trump's real constituency are these billionaire oligarchs And then what happened is on the so he issued a 90-day pause except for China and every few days Trump keeps boosting the tariffs on China to a cartoonish level because once you get over a certain amount it's just symbolic I mean once you have tariffs of like over 50 70 100% Most trade is going to decline right there's no trade only only
• 05:00 - 05:30 Yeah There are only a few very specific things that no other country can produce But I mean if we're talking about things like you know toasters and refrigerators and furniture most many countries can produce that But if you're talking about like very specific semiconductors or machine parts like those kinds of things are very difficult to replace So despite the very high tariffs companies in the US will still have to import those from China So Trump to try to punish China to look tough as part of this new cold war
• 05:30 - 06:00 He keeps raising the tariffs on China every few days Now they're at 245% which is just I mean China actually Trump falsely claims that his tariffs are reciprocal They're not reciprocal Reciprocal would mean that China charges supposedly 43% tariffs on US goods It's not true China has a large trade surplus with the US because the US is de-industrialized and doesn't produce that much other than oil and gas and crappy Marvel movies and you know uh
• 06:00 - 06:30 guns So China doesn't buy that much from the US It buys soybeans oil and gas So the US has a large trade deficit with China So Trump claims that China has tariffs that are that are equivalent to the trade surplus that it has which are not it's not actually true So then Trump put those tariffs on China and then China actually responded with real reciprocal tariffs So Trump's tariffs were unilateral China responded with
• 06:30 - 07:00 equal levels of tariffs So then every single time Trump every time China did that Trump added more tariffs and more tariffs and then eventually the Chinese government released a statement saying we're not going to increase the tariffs because at this point it's meaningless I mean they're just adding numbers but it's not going to meaningfully change trade So we're at this point where now tariffs are 245% on China However that was the first week Something changed on the 11th which
• 07:00 - 07:30 didn't get a lot of attention because Trump quietly issued an executive order that made it clear that there were exceptions for the most important products that China exports to the US which are cell phones computers semiconductors and other electronics Now Trump claimed on his Twitter copy website he claimed that there are no exceptions He said the fake news media was misrepresenting it If you go to the
• 07:30 - 08:00 White House and you read the executive order it says exceptions in the title It says exceptions in the text There were exceptions What Trump said is well they're not completely exempt from tariffs but instead of being charged 145% or 245% now they're charged 20% But still that is a major step back and it's an implicit acknowledgement of defeat after after nine days of this trade war Trump essentially acknowledged that it failed because the US economy cannot go
• 08:00 - 08:30 a week without these very important electronics products produced in China including again think about how important cell phones are to the modern economy We could not the US economy would crash and most countries in the world would crash if overnight magically cell phones stopped working I mean think about everything is built around this digital infrastructure Computers I mean give me a break The computer the computer is probably the most important technology in the world today And then
• 08:30 - 09:00 semiconductors every computer every phone all these electronics products have lots of chips in them They're very important for the modern economy And China produces many of the world's legacy chips That means that not the most advanced chips but the chips that are used in most average products So by putting this exemption for these Chinese electronics which represent overall electronics represent over onethird of
• 09:00 - 09:30 China's exports to the US and Trump has now exempted many of them This is an acknowledgement that you know the Trump administration claimed that supposedly they had so much leverage over China as Trump's billionaire Treasury Secretary Scott Bessant claimed He said "We have all the cards China has a pair of twos." He said "We're going to win this economic game of poker." But Trump immediately surrendered nine days after he started this trade war Because in reality it's China that has the actual
• 09:30 - 10:00 cards What this has shown is that the Chinese economy is much stronger than many people in the US think And the US is actually much more dependent economically on China than vice versa Yeah And here is China There has been just constant trolling of these tariffs on Chinese social media as you mentioned to me earlier this week uh Ben Uh but this has been ongoing But uh yes indeed uh China is much stronger and is showing itself much stronger than I think what
• 10:00 - 10:30 the Trump administration has uh completely underestimated with regard to China And I wanted to ask you Ben uh given this you know early on in this tariff war what we saw or this trade war that Trump administration is trying to impose on China We saw China make several moves uh China uh asked its stateowned banks to hold off or at least reduce dollar purchases We also had
• 10:30 - 11:00 China uh and this is causing panic actually all across the western mainstream media now uh uh institute export bans on critical rare earth minerals that the Trump administration has been very obsessed about uh since he came into office including these magnets which are especially important for essentially anything that is electric or or gasun uh vehicles for example cars uh and then of course the military nostroke complex So talk about these moves in
• 11:00 - 11:30 response because there was the retaliation quote unquote that Trump is calling it the reciprocal tariffs and then there are these moves which um have so many different effects and reasons for coming into being Why is why did China make these moves yeah Well you mentioned some very important ones I'll add another one China has ordered the airliners the airline uh the airline companies which are largely stateowned It has ordered them to to stop deliveries of Boeing
• 11:30 - 12:00 airliners which is very important because China in 2015 made a an ambitious plan It's called the made in China 2025 plan And over the past past decade they had many areas of technologies where they wanted to catch up to the west to the US specifically and develop semiconductors and drones and artificial intelligence and all this and they met the goal in every single area every sector except one which was civilian airliners They're still behind
• 12:00 - 12:30 Although China now as of 2023 has been producing its own airliners its own jets However they rely on parts from the United States and from some European countries So in the civilian airliner industry there it's a duopoly There are two main companies which is Boeing which has destroyed its reputation and it's being run by these finance bros with no engineering experience They just want to maximize the the stock price and and get paid fat bonuses while they've let
• 12:30 - 13:00 safety fall to the wayside and stopped investing and and laid off good unionized workers who were trained and hired contractors who are not well trained So they've destroyed Boeing The other major competitor is a European company called Airbus and they're a duopoly So now China over years has been trying to develop its own competitor and this is going to kickstart China's drive to have a competitor to Boeing And I guarantee you in the next few years
• 13:00 - 13:30 China will have its own civilian airliners with its own domestically made parts Maybe there will be some parts from Russia Russia has some companies that make plane parts as well But it's not going to have any Western parts And this is so similar to what happened with semiconductors because in Trump's first term in 2018 he started the trade war in 20 well his first term was 2017 but in 2018 Trump started the trade war in China and he put sanctions on Huawei and
• 13:30 - 14:00 some other Chinese companies And then when Biden came in some people thought that he would do something different but no Of course he continued this bipartisan trade war and new cold war against China And then not only did Biden keep Trump's tariffs on China he added more And in particular the Biden White House put export restrictions on China to try to prevent China from getting access to the most cutting edge semiconductors these chips that would be needed for research on artificial intelligence Or so they thought Now
• 14:00 - 14:30 we've seen that China has already made enormous progress Chinese companies like Deepseek have surprised the world by releasing these models that one are just as good as the models being produced by the US major company Open AI which should be called closed AI because it's actually not open source OpenAI is 49% owned by Microsoft and it's the CEO of OpenAI is the billionaire oligarch Sam Altman who was invited to the White House just a few hours after Trump's
• 14:30 - 15:00 inauguration this January to announce this Stargate project with $500 billion of investment in USAI and then a few days later China's DeepS releases this model that is one not only as good or not only as good or potentially even better as the than the models produced by OpenAI But two it's open source Anyone around the world can use this program for free They can run it on their computer locally So that's a gamecher So the US thought that by
• 15:00 - 15:30 restricting advanced chips that China would not be able to catch up in AI but China has already caught up and is making huge progress So we talked about how China is going to be catching up soon in airliners It's already caught up in AI and China is developing its own domestic semiconductor industry As I already said earlier China is the world's leader in the production of what are known as legacy chips Not the most cutting edge but the less high-tech
• 15:30 - 16:00 chips that are in like every modern electronic product that we use And China is already dominating that industry And it's moving to catch up soon in the most cutting edge chips Especially Huawei has been working with this Chinese partially stateowned company which is called SMIC the semiconductor manufacturing international corporation and together they've been making very cutting edge chips including 7 nanmter chips that were released in the Mate 60 Pro the Huawei phone last year So China's making
• 16:00 - 16:30 a lot of progress in that area And now with these Trump tariffs it's going to further incentivize China to to develop its own domestic capacities in airliners in semiconductors in artificial intelligence and in other industries because every few days they announce new restrictions So the Trump administration just ordered Nvidia the major US chip
• 16:30 - 17:00 designing company which has a monopoly in many of these advanced chip designs The Trump White House ordered them to stop shipping certain chips to China So they keep expanding the drag net and they expect that China can't respond But as you acknowledge China has responded in several ways So let's talk briefly about rare earth elements This is also very important for modern technologies because the supply chains for cell phones computers even the military
• 17:00 - 17:30 technology used by the US these supply chains are very complex The US has many military technologies like famously the F-35 plane that rely on lots of rare earths Where do those rare earths come from well China dominates the global supply chain for the processing for the extraction and processing of rare earths Now the term rare earth can be kind of misleading People think that it's very rare as in there are not many rare earth
• 17:30 - 18:00 elements but there actually are there's quite a bit of rare earth elements around the world but they're often not located in very concentrated uh areas You have to they're often spread out So you have to find concentrated areas And when they are processed it's very toxic It's very difficult to do And it takes a lot of skilled workers and it takes a lot of this technology that the US has not invested in because US capitalists prefer investing on Wall Street in
• 18:00 - 18:30 financial speculation They don't want to invest in mining rare earths which is not profitable It's risky and it they can get much more return on investment by buying up existing assets through private equity or simply investing in the stock market I mean so there's been a massive shortage of investment in the US That's why the US is de-industrialized because it's not very profitable to invest in manufacturing Trump expects that putting tariffs on will magically re-industrialize the US
• 18:30 - 19:00 But you know these capitalists they just want to make money They're just following their own economic interests And it's very difficult very complex and risky to make a factory to train workers to invest in all of these this capital expenditure all these machines and such and then you might not even make a good product It might not sell well You have to compete against many other companies and you might lose money Whereas you know if you invest in the stock market you buy up existing assets through private equity you asset strip it's much
• 19:00 - 19:30 easier to make money So China has invested in these supply chains and dominates the production of rare earths and other critical minerals which is why the US government is obsessed with trying to remove China from the supply chain because from their perspective of these imperial planners in Washington they're preparing for war on China very clearly the defense secretary that Trump appointed this Christian fundamentalist extremist Pete Hegsth who wrote a book
• 19:30 - 20:00 in 2020 titled American Crusade and he says that we're in a holy war that's the term he used on the first page of his book he says the US is in a holy war against China and Islam there are nearly two billion Muslims in the world and against the international left he says so this is the guy who's running the the the Pentagon he and book he said that they wanted he wants to overthrow the communist party of China that's calling for overthrowing the Chinese government so this guy is extremist he just went to to Asia to to
• 20:00 - 20:30 East Asia he went to Japan and the Philippines and while he was in Japan he Pete Hegset said that they're turning Japan into a warfighting base to prepare for a war on China So everything the Trump administration and and the Biden administration before that this is bipartisan In Washington there is a bipartisan consensus of a new cold war on China And they're preparing for war on China They have a big problem They rely on China for producing
• 20:30 - 21:00 everything not only phones and computers and semiconductors but also the critical minerals that are needed to make the weapons that the US military needs for war on China So this is why they're so obsessed with removing China from the supply chain because they recognize that if if and when there's a US war in China China can cut off those mineral exports to the US and then the US doesn't have the minerals it needs to make the weapons for war in China So the US Congress has a special committee on
• 21:00 - 21:30 China very an anti-China committee and they published a report detailing ideas for trying to create new supply chains So this is why Trump is constantly talking about rare earths or he sometimes calls them raw earths but whatever the point is is that what all of this shows in the past few weeks is that the US thinks that it's going to be so easy to bully China around to remove China from supply chains to decouple economically from China the the Trump
• 21:30 - 22:00 administration's top officials like you know uh Scott Bessant the billionaire Treasury secretary or Howard Lutnick the billionaire commerce secretary They keep going on TV and saying China is dependent on us We have all the cards It's going to be easy They they they can't they have no alternatives They sell it to the US market And then China has shown literally in one week in one week China showed the US that actually it's in a much stronger position and the US economy is actually much weaker than
• 22:00 - 22:30 many people think It is is a house of cards Well yeah I mean to everything you just said Ben uh the New York Times actually reported in this article about the rare earth export bans from China which they admit is not just US-based it's actually China is doing this kind of at a global level um in response to all of this and but it's going to hit the United States very hard they admitted that if the United States wants to do any of this on its own it's going to have to start from scratch and then it takes upwards of 29 years to build
• 22:30 - 23:00 these kind of factories that are needed to extract rare earth minerals to that's the first thing you need to do and that doesn't even get into how China is 90% I believe of the processing of these rare earth minerals for them to even be utilized for the purposes that they are for and then of course you mentioned Scott Besson here he is he you know he admitted the Wall Street Journal reported that he and the Trump administration are literally using these
• 23:00 - 23:30 tariffs to build up for war with China here's what he had to recently to none other than the American Bankers Association Unfortunately the biggest defender in the global trading system is China and they're they're the only country who's escalated And I can tell the rest of the world that I'm not sure whether was the prime minister the economic minister in Spain made some comments this morning Oh well maybe we should align ourselves
• 23:30 - 24:00 more with China That would be cutting your own throat because I can tell you that these Chinese exports that the US tariff wall is going to keep out that China for all all of you who can remember that Disney movie of the brooms carrying the buckets of water that is the Chinese business model It never stops They just keep producing and producing and dumping and dumping and it's going somewhere And you know I think uh Rob at the end of the day that
• 24:00 - 24:30 we can probably reach the a deal with with our allies with the other countries that have been long-term they've been good military allies not perfect economic allies and then we can approach China as a group And then we can approach China as a group V So so again he just literally admits that this whole tariff business is for approaching China which means uh confronting China war on
• 24:30 - 25:00 China Uh uh Ben your reaction first it's obvious that the Trump administration thought that they would threat these really high tariffs on China and then China would like many countries would beg the US to please stop As Trump said in this Republican party gala he said 75 countries came to me and they're kissing my ass He I mean it's so arrogant and other countries can they can they have internet They can see these clips and
• 25:00 - 25:30 see how Trump's talking about them So he expected that Trump would be like please please sir take down the tariffs Please we we'll do anything But actually China's the only country that I mean other countries have have been have had dignity and have stood up for themselves but China is the only country that actually said to the US "Okay we will respond with reciprocal actual reciprocal tariffs." And that's why Scott Bessant is absurdly portraying China as the aggressor It was not China that started this It was Trump that
• 25:30 - 26:00 started this by imposing six it was first 63% tariffs on China which is crazy that would reduce the vast majority of trade between the US and China So then China said "Fine if you're going to hit us with 63% tariffs we're going to respond with with reciprocal tariffs." And every time China responds Trump hits it with more I mean it's so similar to the portrayal of Israel right israel kills Palestinians occupies them imposes a siege on Gaza for two decades
• 26:00 - 26:30 and then when Palestinians fight back when little kids throw rocks at the soldiers occupying their country illegally then the Western corporate media says the Palestinians started it and then Israel attacks more and Israel says it's self-defense even though Israel is the one that started it I mean this is this is the strategy of imperialists throughout history of colonialists They attack an indigenous people and then the people fight back in self-defense and then the colonialists say we have to defend ourselves and we
• 26:30 - 27:00 are the ones who are actually on the good side and then the the indigenous people are supposedly the aggressors This is exactly how the US is treating China The US started this aggressive trade war against China China responds proportionally and then the US keeps ratcheting it up And so Scott Bessant says that he wants other countries to come with the US together in a group in order to isolate China This has been the US strategy for years What is the US going to offer these countries
• 27:00 - 27:30 especially after the Trump administration has been isolating itself from Europe i mean honestly I'm I think this is good for Europe I think Europe should pursue an independent foreign policy the more that it has subordinated itself to the United States the more it has hurt the European economy You see European economies are in stagnation Several were in recession They have also de-industrialized and financialized This Atlanticist model of financializing the economy and and integrating all of Europe into Wall Street and Silicon
• 27:30 - 28:00 Valley has been bad for Europe Where what what are the European technology applications that they have they they're entirely dependent on the United States They use US social media companies They use Google They use Amazon Europe should become a more independent pole in this multipolar world That's a good thing But Trump administration is pushing Europe away But then they expect Europe to come with the US together in a group against
• 28:00 - 28:30 China I mean but as Scott Besson acknowledged Spain is trying to play this role right now in Europe of trying to improve its relations with China Now I have little to no confidence in the leadership of Europe especially these wararmongering Atlanticists like Ursula Fonder I don't think that she is going to really improve relations with China But there are some people who are a little more independently minded especially France has always had a little more kind of a nationalist foreign policy And Makon he sees himself
• 28:30 - 29:00 as a kind of de gole figure He's not a de gole but he you know he sometimes says we want to be more independent We want strategic autonomy We want to improve relations with China So this is an opportunity for at the very least I don't expect the EU to become like allies with China It's not going to happen But to at least pursue a more independent foreign and economic policy which would be good for for Europe So the Trump administration has this totally contradictory policy They expect everyone to come together with them against China while the US is actually
• 29:00 - 29:30 attacking these countries that have historically been US allies and vassal states Which is why even South Korea and Japan which remain militarily occupied by the US and have been for decades even they are having negotiations with China trying to improve their relations with China It also helps that China is the largest trading partner of Japan and South Korea Now as for Scott Besson's talking point that that Europe should be careful about trading with China because
• 29:30 - 30:00 China he made this comparison to that Disney movie I guess it's Fantasia and he says China keeps producing I mean this is ridiculous in many ways because the idea of trade is that one country cannot produce everything and well China China is basically a continent I mean China basically does produce everything because it has 1.4 billion people But Spain he mentioned Spain Spain's not a very big country Spain can't produce everything So the idea is that Spain
• 30:00 - 30:30 will trade and export things to China that China wants and it'll buy things from China that it can't produce because it's a small country It's not a continent like China or a subcontinent So he says this is going to be bad for for Spain and Europe But no not necessarily if they have if they have trade relationships that are complimentary So China does produce for instance a lot of electric vehicles now and Europe is has actually put tariffs on electric vehicles after the US did
• 30:30 - 31:00 the same and they're negotiating for some kind of agreement and China is opening up some factories to make electric vehicles in Europe But for instance in Germany China is still really reliant on a lot of machines produced in Germany because Germany is a manufacturing superpower or a manufacturing power at least not a superpower but a major manufacturing power and Germany even though its car industry is in decline it still makes a lot of mining equipment a lot of uh
• 31:00 - 31:30 electrical equipment a lot of advanced machinery that very few countries if any can make So this idea that Scott Besson says that China is just going to destroy all local industry and no I mean that's not in the case of the US it was not China that was responsible for USD-industrialization This is what Scott Bessant who's a hedge fund billionaire from Wall Street He wants us to believe that because it's people like him who are responsible for the de-industrialization of the US because it was not profitable for the US
• 31:30 - 32:00 capitalist class to continue to invest in local manufacturing It was much more profitable to open hedge funds like Scott Besson who by the way where did he get his career start he worked for George Soros billionaire financeier who ironically is one of the main funders of the Democratic party and if you listen to the Republican party's rhetoric they see Soros as the antichrist as the big you know the boogeyman and even during his presidential campaign Trump's
• 32:00 - 32:30 campaign released materials portraying Biden as a soros puppet And here his treasury secretary is a Soros protege hedge fund billionaire from Wall Street who's blaming China for the de-industrialization of the US when in fact it was Wall Street that is responsible for these very same problems that we're dealing with today So once again we can see how the US not just not just Trump Democrats do this as well They love to scapegoat China and say everything's China's fault but the rest
• 32:30 - 33:00 of the world doesn't see it that way A lot of countries are looking at China especially right now and they're actually they're they're pretty happy that someone is standing up to the bully because a lot of small countries they can't stand up to the US because the US can destroy their economy like it like it tried to do to Iran like it tried to do to Venezuela to Cuba These small or medium-sized countries it's difficult for them to resist the power of the US empire not only militarily but economically right the US can put
• 33:00 - 33:30 sanctions on them and block them from the Swift system and and seize their foreign exchange reserves but we've gotten to a point where there are some countries that are too big to sanction Russia being an example with the Ukraine proxy war and the seizure of Russia's assets in 2022 And Biden claimed that they would turn the Russian ruble into rubble That failed The Russian economy is growing faster than any economy in Europe right now Russia's re-industrializing It's deepening its trade with Asia that failed and now
• 33:30 - 34:00 they're trying to isolate China which is the world's largest economy when you measure GDP at purchasing power parody it has been for nearly a decade now and a lot of countries are happy that at least someone is standing up to the US China's been fighting back against this trade war a lot of countries are afraid to do so Bessent thinks like many US officials they have these this blinkered vision they think everyone in the world sees the world like they do but the US actually is the minority I'm not saying
• 34:00 - 34:30 everyone in the world loves China and they all want to hug President Xi I mean but they see China as a trading partner as a country that has its own independent policy that can help build a multipolar world in which countries have options I'm not saying that everyone's just going to ally with China against the US That's not what's happening What's happening is that as the world is more multipolar countries can actually have choices They don't have to obediently follow the US and do whatever Washington wants They can sometimes ally
• 34:30 - 35:00 with China sometimes ally with the US They can go back and forth with other countries They can improve their relations with India And this is the whole idea of the multipolar world we're in And the more that that the US lashes out and imposes sanctions and tariffs on countries and threatens countries it actually motivates them to seek alternatives So the US has been trying to isolate China and especially has been trying to put a wedge between China and India and China and Vietnam which are
• 35:00 - 35:30 Vietnam and India are major growing economies that are going to be very important in the decades to come They already are very important So what we've seen in the past year is that now China has improved its relations with India because India can recognize that the US is is run by maniacs and they can't be trusted And also Vietnam which always had okay relations with China but you know they were trying to balance both sides President Xi was just visiting Vietnam They signed dozens of agreements
• 35:30 - 36:00 deepening their partnership So the more the US pushes the more other countries seek alternatives H yeah and uh Malaysia the the kingdom they have a kingdom government uh they came out very strong during Cinping's visit as well stating that they stand with China wholeheartedly to in building this kind of community for a shared future for humankind and uh what that
• 36:00 - 36:30 essentially means is that they are going to uh build and broaden ties the entire ACSEN is going to continue to build ties deeper ties with China Uh this is part of the blowback And you mentioned Ben that in this increasingly multipolar world what the impact of these this trade war is essentially is that while it seeks to isolate China actually what it's doing is isolating the United States And I wanted to talk to you about the impact on the multipolar world
• 36:30 - 37:00 because as all of this trade war uh hysteria this like pushing the button taking the finger off the button behavior by Donald Trump Uh you had many uh announcements being made from other aspects other areas of the multipolar world in relation to China You had Iran for example as well as Russian oil uh spiking in recent months especially in the last month or so uh in response to
• 37:00 - 37:30 the economic turbulence of the Trump administration And then you also had Vladimir Putin He was at Bomb Moscow Technical University And here is what he had to say This was as the tariffs were being leveled on China you know 84% and 125% 245% this is what he told students there he said we have big plans with the people's republic of China they are
• 37:30 - 38:00 interesting good and grandiose and in general with the BRICS countries as a whole with India South Africa Brazil this cooperation does not stop and cannot stop So Ben uh talk about how you know as the tariff and trade war on China escalated and and took shape as exactly that a trade war an economic war on China uh the Trump administration has
• 38:00 - 38:30 been trying to address and navigate the entire multipolar world in an attempt uh to uh essentially isolate all of them And uh these are pretty big messages coming out of Russia Iran uh that they aren't going to be bullied either So what is the impact then of the United States's moves here with relation to China on the broader uh in the broader sense yeah Well what this shows is that Trump
• 38:30 - 39:00 thought that when he came in he would one end the war in Ukraine immediately Obviously that's not going as he thought because the US doesn't have that much leverage there just like it doesn't have much leverage over China So he thought he would end the war in Ukraine and ally with Russia against China to isolate China That's what he said with an interview in an interview with Tucker Carlson Obviously that's not working President Putin has said very clearly that Russia's relations with China are very important and with bricks in general Trump claimed that he killed
• 39:00 - 39:30 bricks in a press conference in the White House He said "I threatened 100% tariffs on bricks and every country gave in and they surrendered and he said "Brics is dead." That's not true In fact BRICS has continued expanding In January BRICS officially announced that Indonesia has been admitted as a full member Indonesia is the fourth most populous country in the world after the US It has a massive economy It's very f it's growing fast So Indonesia is now in bricks And then Nigeria which is the
• 39:30 - 40:00 largest country the most populous country in Africa Nigeria has become a partner of bricks as of January this year when Trump claimed that bricks is dead which again it's not So and then Trump thought that after isolating China breaking the China Russia friendship ending the war in Ukraine that he would use these tariffs to isolate China and force China to come to the negotiating table to sign a big deal with the US that would benefit the US at the expense of China Now obviously all of those
• 40:00 - 40:30 policies have utterly failed a complete abject failure And one once again what this shows is that US officials not just Trump and the Republicans but many Democrats they're living in the 1990s or at least the early 2000s they still think that this is a unipolar world where the US can just do whatever it wants and can bully other countries around and that the US has all of the leverage and all of the power and China has no alternative Scott Bessett has
• 40:30 - 41:00 said this repeatedly He says they have no alternative to the US market even though China now does more trade with ASEAN than it does with the US ASEAN is the association of Southeast Asian nations and China does more trade with the global south than it does with the global north and with the west So you know the the global economy has shifted in some fundamental ways The main difference is China It's not just China We've seen relative growth in India
• 41:00 - 41:30 which is pretty impressive although not nearly at the level of China We've seen especially a lot of very rapid growth in Southeast Asia especially in Vietnam which is following the Chinese model but also Indonesia Malaysia So there's a lot happening and a lot of these countries of course are either in bricks or around bricks and Russia recognizes that the economic winds are blowing from Asia and that Asia represents the majority of the
• 41:30 - 42:00 world population and it represents the heart of the global economy and the fastest growing economies and major manufacturing powers So Russia you know Putin being a a brilliant geostrategic analyst who understands the world from a understands global politics at a very profound level He can see that it would make no sense for Russia to sabotage its relationship with its largest trading partner China to
• 42:00 - 42:30 sabotage its relationship with the global south and Russia not just the Russian Federation but going back to the Soviet Union for a century the former USSR and Moscow today has carefully cultivated a friendly relationship with the global south During the first cold war the Soviet Union strongly supported anti-colonial national liberation movements Whereas the US was supporting all of the European colonial movements the Soviet Union was giving them weapons
• 42:30 - 43:00 to fight against the European colonialists The you know the global south in Africa and Latin America and Asia and then of course uh when the Soviet Union fell Russia in the 1990s was partially colonized by the US So the people of Russia knows know basically what it's like to be oppressed by a foreign power to have your economy devastated to have your country pillaged by these foreign oligarchs and local oligarchs of course but the US played a big role sending over economists from
• 43:00 - 43:30 Harvard and the University of Chicago to privatize everything to sell everything off to foreign corporations So I mean Russia has cultivated a close relationship with the global south So again Trump thinks that he can just bully all these countries and they will just do whatever the US wants But actually this is only incentivizing countries further to seek alternatives And this has been a process of course going back a long time but especially I want to talk about the belt and road initiative because what's not it's not
• 43:30 - 44:00 that well known why Belt and Road was declared Now anti-China pundits in the Western media absurdly claim that China's global infrastructure project the Belt and Road Initiative also known as One Belt One Road they absurdly claim that this is part of a Chinese insidious scheme to create an empire to take over the world That's ridiculous That's not at all what's happening What actually happened is that the US government has been preparing for years now for war on China
• 44:00 - 44:30 or at least a new cold war And this goes back actually even to the first Bush Jr administration and right before 9/11 the Bush George W Bush actually had very harsh anti-China rhetoric and it looked like before 9/11 they were preparing for a kind of anti-China focused policy He accused the Clinton administration of being too close to China Of course Clinton invited China to join the World
• 44:30 - 45:00 Trade Organization which officially happened in 2001 And a lot of the neoconservatives around Bush were uncomfortable with that If you go back and read the original statements of the project for the new American century Pinoch the Bush neocons they were really anti-China And they saw China after the fall of the Soviet Union they saw China as the next target And Deng Xiaoping the Chinese leader he famously gave a speech in 1989 where he said "I looked forward
• 45:00 - 45:30 to the end of the cold war but it looks like a new cold war is beginning The US and the West are starting a new cold war against the socialist countries and the global south." He said that in 1989 So let's not forget that in the 90s and the early 2000s there was this idea that after the Soviet Union fell China was the next target But then of course there was 911 September 11th 2001 and the US so-called war on terror and the invasion
• 45:30 - 46:00 of Iraq the invasion of Afghanistan the war in Libya the war in Syria So the US empire was much more fixated on West Asia and China had a little more time to continue to grow But then when Obama came in in 2009 he appointed the neoconservative hawk Hillary Clinton as the head of the State Department And as Secretary of State Clinton declared a pivot to Asia And what they really meant is they want to focus resources military
• 46:00 - 46:30 resources for a war on China to surround China They saw that China was growing very quickly And in response to the US pivot to Asia the the Chinese leadership recognized that they needed to diversify their relationship They were too dependent on the west on the and their trade with the US This was over a decade ago now So so President Cinping became the the internal inside the party He was
• 46:30 - 47:00 elected the the secretary general the general secretary of the Communist Party of China in late 2012 and then he became president of China in 2013 And right after he became president that year he went to Kazakhstan and he announced the creation of a new silk road and that eventually expanded The new silk road became one belt one road and the belt and road initiative and now over a hundred countries all around the world
• 47:00 - 47:30 almost entirely in the global south have joined the belt and road and China has been building new infrastructure around the global south in order to prepare for the moment that we're in now because China could see where the the direction of US foreign policy was going and that the US was preparing to try to isolate China preparing for war on China and that China could no longer be so dependent on the United States as its largest trading partner So by building
• 47:30 - 48:00 the infrastructure that would be needed for global trade without the west China was helping to build the infrastructure for a post US world for a multipolar world in which the global south plays a much more important role in the world economy especially Africa Asia and Latin America the three continents as they're known and they've now become o overall together they represent the majority of trade with China and that trend is continuing and Russia because the the
• 48:00 - 48:30 US-led west refused to accept Russia on equal terms to respect Russia's national interests they only wanted to subordinate Russia they wanted to carve up and break up Russia so it could never be powerful again because the US would not allow that Russia recognized that its future lies in economic integration with Asia and in general with the global south which now Russia calls the global majority because Russia is not geographically in the global south So
• 48:30 - 49:00 what's happening is Trump is now accelerating a process that has been happening for at least a decade if not longer but really planned by the Chinese leadership since at least 2013 They have been planning for this transition and now Trump Trump came in in his first term and the Chinese leadership was not yet totally prepared for the trade war and this attempt at decoupling and all of this Now they are prepared They're very prepared And this idea that Trump
• 49:00 - 49:30 had that maybe could have maybe possibly been possible in his first term of trying to divide China and Russia it didn't work in his first term Henry Kissinger advocated for it a reverse Kissinger It didn't work largely because of Russia gate and and also but also because it was in Russia's interest to continue to deepen its trade and political relations with China and BRICS And now we're at the point of no return
• 49:30 - 50:00 It's very clear that the future is in the global south which is the global majority and bricks is one is one of several platforms that I think represents this kind of new multipolar order that we've been moving toward for a long time but we're now finally seeing tangible examples of that that are growing Oh for sure Uh I mean u in many ways uh I know that there are a lot of people in China uh online who talk about uh
• 50:00 - 50:30 comrade Trump because of this kind of economic isolation attempt to uh cut China off from the world that Trump has accelerated to such a degree using tariffs uh astoundingly uh instead of sanctions which have been usually the uh principal tool uh for the US but using tariffs to do this has actually created a a large amount of self-sufficiency in China's economy to a degree that now as
• 50:30 - 51:00 you said with bricks and multipolar it's a point of no return in that as well and uh Ben you know there's also these other examples too of how uh this has uh also impacted the the uh most belleaguered of the multipolar world especially the rising powers So you mentioned Russia but there's also Iran When this whole nuclear uh threats over you know the threats over its
• 51:00 - 51:30 nuclear uh enrichment system were uh underway by the Trump administration It was China and Russia that stepped in right away and essentially started the process of negotiations around it independent of the United States And then it was Donald Trump that came in and said "Oh no Now now we should negotiate Now that's all I want is to negotiate." And that's what's happening these indirect talks So it's had this effect of uh both uh China's
• 51:30 - 52:00 economy becoming more resilient The the other uh bricks uh leaders and members becoming more resilient and now uh they are far more assertive politically in their leadership in the world order Uh what have you made about this connection of uh the uh economic warfare waged by the United States not just Donald Trump but Donald Trump is accelerating it but this economic war kind of backfiring boomeranging into a stronger multipolar
• 52:00 - 52:30 world Yeah Well I'll I'll briefly talk about Iran Iran is a really good example of one of these countries that have fought for decades and really suffered in the unipolar era So another example an honorable example would be Cuba right i mean the people of Cuba have bravely resisted US imperialism and aggression against their country for decades The US has tried to suffocate the people of Cuba for more than 60 years with an illegal blockade It's very similar in Iran People of Iran had a revolution in
• 52:30 - 53:00 1979 They overthrow overthrew a dictator the Sha who was propped up by the West He was installed by the United States and the British in 1953 when the CIA and MI6 carried out a coup that overthrew Iran's democratically elected prime minister Muhammad Mosadc who had the reason they wanted to remove him is because he was an independent nationalist who nationalized the oil reserves of Iran which angered Western oil corporations They removed him They
• 53:00 - 53:30 put in the Shaw The people of Iran had what essentially was a kind of national liberation movement like many countries in the global south in the 50s60s and 70s They overthrew the sha had a revolution The US then which was allied with Iraq The US encouraged Iraq to invade Iran in the Iran Iraq war The US gave Iraq a lot of weapons but then it also in the in the Iran Contra scandal We know that the US gave Iran some weapons to try to kill people on both
• 53:30 - 54:00 sides Henry Kissinger famously said that it was that he wished both sides could lose So a million people died And then the US put heavy sanctions on both Iran and Iraq The US invaded Iraq two times Well the Gulf War and it was also in Kuwait but they attacked Iraq and then they invaded Iraq in 2003 They overthrew the Iraqi government They overthrew the Libyan government They eventually succeeded in overthrowing the Syrian
• 54:00 - 54:30 government Iran has always been the target of this very aggressive campaign by the US to destroy its independent anti-colonial government It's part of this same process that the western colonial powers had where in the 50s60s and 70s across the global south There were anti-colonial movements national liberation struggles that that had new revolutionary governments that came to power The western powers did everything they could to try to remove those governments They succeeded in some places or they succeeded in putting
• 54:30 - 55:00 puppets in power and they have never succeeded in Iran and they've continued trying Another reason of course is because Iran has very large oil and gas reserves which are stateowned You know we we talk a lot about the coup against Mosadc in 1953 for nationalizing the oil Well still today in Iran you know it's an Islamic government but it's also a nationalist anti-colonial government and they have national control public ownership of the the natural resources and many parts of the economy So the US
• 55:00 - 55:30 has been desperate to try to remove Iran Of course there's also the fact that Israel is as an outpost for US imperialism in this very strategic region The US and Israel have attacked all of the independent first all of the communist movements then all of the Arab nationalist movements and now all of the Islamic nationalist movements like you know Hezbollah Ansalah and Yemen and of course the Iranian revolutionary government They have failed and the Iranian government has been able to survive all of these attacks and the
• 55:30 - 56:00 Iranian economy has become relatively self-sufficient I mean there's a lot there are many economic problems in Iran Inflation shortages of certain goods but Iran has developed some impressive local industries some local manufacturing even they have a pretty decent Iranian pharmaceutical industry because it's so difficult to get import So they had no option but to become more self-sufficient So in Venezuela when the US initiated first
• 56:00 - 56:30 under Obama the sanctions and economic war against Venezuela and then Trump came in in his fir came in in his first term and massively expanded the sanctions on Venezuela into a full-on blockade like the blockade on Cuba to try to destroy the Venezuelan economy Iran actually helped Venezuela a lot because it's been under sanctions so long It was it found ways around sanctions and and helped to develop it actually developed its own local oil
• 56:30 - 57:00 infrastructure because in Venezuela Venezuela has been a pro state for 100 years well before the birth of Ubu Chavez So Venezuela's oil industry relied almost entirely on machinery on infrastructure from US and European companies It didn't it didn't make its own machines that it needed to upkeep its oil industry So when the US put all these sanctions and this blockade in Venezuela it couldn't import the machines and the capital goods that it
• 57:00 - 57:30 needed to maintain its oil industry But Iran helped out a lot So the reason I'm talking about all of that history is because what it shows is that even at the peak of US unipolarity the US empire was never able to control everything right like there were always countries that were resisting and then the US had all of these regime change wars to remove all of the independent governments that were resisting US imperialism Libya they did it in former Yugoslavia Iraq tried against Iran tried
• 57:30 - 58:00 against Cuba Venezuela all these independent governments But again China and also Russia but especially China these are countries that are simply too big to sanction They're too powerful Their economies are too large and instead of destroying their economies what US sanctions and US tariffs do is it only encourages them to create a new parallel system to new new systemic alternatives to the US domination of the
• 58:00 - 58:30 global financial system Venezuela and Cuba tried that They did that domestic They did that regionally within Latin America and they created the community of Latin American and Caribbean states the Selak for political integration of the Americas They created the Alba the Bolivarian alliance for the peoples of our America for an economic alliance to bring together the countries of Latin America and the Caribbean so they can trade with each other without using the
• 58:30 - 59:00 dollar They created their own currency international unit of account to increase trade between countries So they don't they're not entirely relying on trade with the US But of course when you're dealing with countries with 20 million 10 million 30 million people it's very difficult to create a new system to challenge the global financial system that is almost entirely controlled by the US China and Russia bricks together their combined forces They are so large they now represent all
• 59:00 - 59:30 of the BRICS countries which is not just the original five Brazil Russia India China South Africa but also now Iran the UAE Egypt Indonesia and there are many other countries that are partners When you consider all of them together they now represent 42% of world GDP measured at purchasing power parody and 55% of the world population The US through these aggressive attacks and tactics
• 59:30 - 60:00 have pushed these countries closer and closer together despite their differences Despite the many political differences between China and India they've been pushed closer and closer together because they want to create some kind of alternative some kind of structures that will give them more opportunities in the world so they can pursue their own independent path of development So the US can't just overthrow their government with the regime change through a military intervention or a color revolution if the US doesn't like their government
• 60:00 - 60:30 That those tactics are becoming less and less effective And honestly I think that the Trump administration's extremely aggressive tactics I mean of course they're not new I keep emphasizing that there's a bipartisan element to this but what I do think Trump represents is an acceleration of that and an increasing desperation a recognition in Washington that if they keep using the old tactics which were very aggressive but if they are not as aggressive as possible
• 60:30 - 61:00 they're going to lose their hegemony They're losing it very quickly So what Trump wants to do is he's going back to the na 19th century style of imperialism which is really just old old school colonialism You know Democrats will often talk about human rights and democracy and all that I mean it's propaganda They don't actually believe in that It's it's a tool of soft power to justify their imperialist policies But Trump has dispelled that He says no we need the blunt fist of imperialism of old school colonialism The US is going
• 61:00 - 61:30 to colonize Greenland It's going to colonize the Panama Canal It's going to colonize Gaza It may even colonize Canada And the US is going to force other countries to pay tribute This is like 19th century style stuff Trump's top economic adviser Steven Myin gave a speech on the 7th of this month April in which he outlined some of the tactics that the Trump administration is pursuing its goals in implying tariffs to countries around the world and he said that other countries can pay they
• 61:30 - 62:00 can write checks to the US Treasury if they want the US to lift the tariffs They can give us money This is an extortion racket This is mafia tactics And this represents a recognition in Washington that they have to be as aggressive as possible to try to maintain their empire because this is what happens with every empire when it's in decline This is with the Roman Empire the Ottoman Empire the German Empire which culminated in the Third Reich and Hitler They get to a point of desperation where they lash out attack
• 62:00 - 62:30 everyone wage war on everyone They end up isolating themselves and actually accelerating the process of creating alternatives What scares me and what I think our goal is is as people who want peace and don't want the destruction of the world is we have to prevent World War II We have to prevent this desperation in Washington from becoming a nuclear war because there are some
• 62:30 - 63:00 maniacs in in the US who would rather have a nuclear war than see the decline of US age Oh Oh for sure Right I mean and I I believe that uh while some took a sigh of relief when the Trump administration began talking to Russia for example or even just recently after all this belligerance threats toward Iran got a bomb got a bomb took a side of relief when these indirect talks occurred uh it all stands to reason that the entirety
• 63:00 - 63:30 of the US's foreign policy at this point is the building blocks of this World War II uh scenario which has these uh big fronts to them It's China is the big one the biggest one And you said it here on this show before Uh there's a certain section of the ruling elite that doesn't see Russia as a threat Uh that includes of course uh the current administration Donald Trump's Uh but we still have the
• 63:30 - 64:00 Ukraine conflict going on We still have Russia and of course uh Iran and West Asia It's all these big fronts that uh also I think cloud what you just mentioned Latin America and of course there's Africa there's the rest of the global south which might uh be smaller in terms of the scale of warfare but uh in terms of their importance they're all connected to this because the US wants to see Russia and China separate from Africa they want to see Africa subordinate it but uh Latin America too it's the backyard of the United States
• 64:00 - 64:30 but it all comes back for the the so-called the foreign policy thinkers the think tanks the those who make policy They're all going back to Russia China and even in some cases Iran Uh I wanted to ask you though Ben there's this just there's this incredible op-ed that relates to this trade war and actually the biggest the the big impact here with the rise of the multipolar world that you've talked about on this show many times uh ddollarization And I
• 64:30 - 65:00 don't know if you saw David Ignatius the uh uh very much maligned now journalist of the Washington Post He who has been dragged rightfully so for his apologia of the CIA of torture and the like but he actually wrote what is just a shocking op-ed about DDOLization As Trump trade war continues the dollar may be caught in the crossfire And he even cites the data which a lot of western mainstream media
• 65:00 - 65:30 won't do but it cites the data about how the dollar is actually reeling and that actually the international monetary fund is showing that the world is actually uh uh lessening its dependence on the dollar Uh ongoing gradual decline in the dollar share of allocated foreign reserves of central banks and governments The international monetary report report international monetary fund reported they had accounted dollars for more than 70% of reserves in 2000 but now less than 60% last year Central
• 65:30 - 66:00 banks are transitioning to gold and other non-traditional currencies quote unquote like China's RMBB So Ben talk about how this trade war is fueling ddollarization because this has actually been a fear uh that Trump came in with He came in with this idea that he's going to save the dollar That was his goal He said it to all of us The dollar is not going to die on my watch is essentially uh to paraphrase him That's
• 66:00 - 66:30 that's what he said So how has actually this trade war and uh the entirety of US foreign policy at this point actually done the opposite including under Donald Trump this is a theme that we've seen repeatedly with not just the Trump administration but the US government in general The more it attacks foreign countries the more aggressive it is the more it's actually accelerating the search for alternatives We saw this with the seizure of Russia's assets The US and the EU seized hundreds of billions
• 66:30 - 67:00 of dollars and euros worth of assets held by the foreign by foreign res foreign reserves held by the Russian central bank They did this also to Iran and Venezuela and that accelerated searches for alternatives to the US dollar And now we have China the world's largest economy when its GDP is measured at purchasing power par And now the US is threatening to do something similar to China So China has been seeking alternatives This isn't actually new It
• 67:00 - 67:30 actually goes back to really the 2008 2009 financial crisis If you look that until then central banks around the world were holding more and more US treasury securities that's US government debt and they were holding them in their reserves and then with the financial crisis they started reducing their holdings and holding other assets including gold and gold holdings by central banks have been rising ever since then but in the case of China since 2013
• 67:30 - 68:00 2014 China's holdings of treasur Treasury securities as a percentage of its overall reserves have been falling Part of that is related to the US quantitative easing policy but also it's because in 2014 the US put sanctions on Russia and China was concerned that it could potentially be next And of course China was right because the US has been putting more sanctions and export restrictions and now tariffs on China
• 68:00 - 68:30 The US has been putting them on China So in terms of what's happening now with Trump this has been a a relatively gradual process really until 2022 So Trump was reducing it China was reducing its its holdings of US dollars and treasury securities Russia was doing the same But in 2022 when Russia's assets were seized that it massively accelerated the search for alternatives not only within Russia and China but
• 68:30 - 69:00 within many global south countries even longtime US allies like Saudi Arabia Egypt they their reserves are their central banks are holding fewer and fewer US assets and more gold And in the in the case of bricks countries in general another major purchaser of gold is the Indian central bank India of course you know has good relations with the US but they're also concerned about this now So so in 2022 it accelerated
• 69:00 - 69:30 further So there are kind of a few moments here 2008 2009 crisis 2014 sanctions on Russia 2022 sanctions on Russia and now Trump's tariffs and trade war And this is only further accelerating the sale of US assets But in this case it's not just treasuries And it's not just foreign central banks It's foreign investors period Which honestly is really shocking because
• 69:30 - 70:00 Trump is a billionaire He has 13 billionaires in his administration His treasury is run by a billionaire hedge fund manager from Wall Street Scott Bessett His commerce secretary is another billionaire from Wall Street Howard Lutnik He one of the top officials in his administration is Elon Musk the world's richest billionaire oligarch He and Trump invited the most powerful billionaire oligarchs in the world to his inauguration Jeff Bezos Mark Zuckerberg Tim Cook and now Trump's
• 70:00 - 70:30 trade war policies at least temporarily crashed the stock market The S&P 500 the main stock market index fell by over 20% The NASDAQ which is a more technology focused index fell by even more Some of that's recovered but it's been very volatile in the stock market Every time Trump announced tariffs the stock market falls then he announces a pause then it goes back up and it's been very choppy So this has resulted in a
• 70:30 - 71:00 lot of volatility And then when Trump declared these massive tariffs in countries around the world there was a revolt in the bond market Trump's officials have made it very clear they really want to bring down the yields on US Treasury securities especially the 10-year note So when the US government runs a def a fiscal deficit it sells bonds bills notes and bonds in order to finance that deficit
• 71:00 - 71:30 And the US government is very concerned about the 10-year yield in particular because many other rates in the US economy are set based on the 10-year yield So the mortgage rate the 30-year mortgage rate in the US is usually about 2% higher There's a different spread It changes over time but it's you know two sometimes even higher up to 3% higher than the 10-year Treasury yield Right now the 10-year Treasury yield is was
• 71:30 - 72:00 getting close to 5% Which means you have 30-year mortgage rates of seven to 8% Which obviously makes it very hard for Americans to get a mortgage It's very expensive Furthermore you have other loan rates like uh auto loans credit card interest rates They're closely related to the 10-year yield That's part of it But then also a major concern is that the US government has right now it's paying out interest payments that
• 72:00 - 72:30 are 3% of GDP Now you know MMT people correctly point out modern monetary theory people correctly point out that a country that produces it that can print its own currency can't go bankrupt in its own concern currency However I think they often downplay how much inflation can be caused because yeah the US it's true the US can't go bankrupt from its own debt Right now US debt is 120% of GDP but the US has a lot of inflation A
• 72:30 - 73:00 lot of that inflation is because the US de-industrialized and can't produce anything So it has to import everything from abroad in the supply chain shocks due to the COVID pandemic caused significant inflation around the world These disruptions and now Trump is further disrupting supply chains which is going to cause more inflation in the US and he wants to re-industrialize which is not going to happen But if he actually tries to do that it's also going to be inflationary and he's deporting immigrants which is also going
• 73:00 - 73:30 to be deflationary So all of these policies that are deflationary and the US has all this very high debt which yes okay it's true that the US could basically just you know metaphorically print money to pay off this debt but it would run very hot inflation if it did that and inflation is the main reason that Trump won the election because a lot of voters blamed the Democrats for the inflation I mean the inflation was global but most incumbents who were in power in 2022 during the inflation
• 73:30 - 74:00 crisis caused by the pandemic disruptions most incumbents lost power in elections So inflation is a very important political issue for US politicians because if they don't contain inflation they're going to lose the election Trump knows that That's why he that's really why he won The Washington Post and Pew did studies that found that around twothirds of voters in the US said that that the economy and in particular inflation was the most important issue in the 2024 election So
• 74:00 - 74:30 the the Trump administration is in this situation where they do have this very high debt which yes the US can the US government can can't go bankrupt on its debt but with when they're running interest payments of 3% of GDP because the Fed raised interest rates they're paying a so much now they're paying almost the same level on interest payments as they pay on the military and the US military budget is as large as the next nine largest military spenders in the world combined ind And now Trump
• 74:30 - 75:00 says he wants to increase the military budget to a trillion dollars a year But Trump says he wants to reduce the deficit So what's the what's the best way to reduce the deficit they want to bring down interest payments on debt Well in order to bring out interest payments on debt they need to reduce interest rates How do they reduce interest rates well a few different ways They could cause a recession And some people have been speculating and it's very possible that the Trump administration wants to orchestrate a
• 75:00 - 75:30 recession because you know they know that average working people will suffer Millions of people could lose their jobs but they can bring down interest rates which means that the yields on 10-year Treasury securities would go down which means that interest payments would go down and inflation would go down because in a recession people lose their jobs They don't have money They don't go out to eat They don't buy things they those companies those businesses sell lay off their workers You have the spiral where inflation falls down because people don't have any money So that's one
• 75:30 - 76:00 possibility and it looks like it's a very real possibility the Trump administration may try to do that and then blame Biden They'll say well this is the Biden economy We couldn't do anything especially if it happens early enough Especially I I I feel like the play has been if it happens early enough then uh then you can make that you can make that case if it's within the first 6 months or so But continue Sorry No that's exactly right They want to do it soon Certainly before the the 2028
• 76:00 - 76:30 election but also before the midterms right which you know US elections happen every two years It's crazy I mean it's just like just constantly keeping us trapped in this like this charade where we pretend like US politicians represent people and actually it's just a bunch of billionaires buying them off But you know in the case of Congress over 80% of candidates running for the House of Representatives who have more funding win and over 90% of candidates who have more campaign contributions win So you know it's the best so-called democracy that money can buy But getting back to the bond market So I've explained the
• 76:30 - 77:00 the problems that the US US has this this conflict where you know Japan for instance has debt of over 200% of GDP But the reason that it hasn't been a problem is because inflation in Japan has been almost zero for like 30 years Ever since the you know the plaza accord in which the US overvalued the the yen and crashed the Japanese economy because it caused this big Japanese asset price bubble that exploded It popped in the early 90s and there was a lost decade
• 77:00 - 77:30 and Japan has been stagnant and has had very low rates of growth but also very low inflation So it's the debt isn't a big issue In the US there were very low rates of inflation after the 2008 2009 crisis because you know a lot of working people didn't they had stagnant wages and uh you know when the economy is pretty stagnant when wages are not growing it's easy to have low levels of inflation also China was exporting deflation to the US in the co in terms of low lowcost consumer goods and now
• 77:30 - 78:00 the US with all these tariffs is going to have much more inflation because we no longer have the cheap goods from China So the point I'm getting at with all these details is that the US government is in this contradiction The Trump administration they want to bring down interest rates but inflation is going to be a persistent problem It's not just the 2022 supply chain shocks It's here to stay It's like the 1970s So they need to find a way to deal with
• 78:00 - 78:30 this But usually this gets back to the issue of dalization So I kind of went off on a on a trail there but it's all related The point I'm getting at is that the bond market is what the Trump administration is really concerned about That's the main reason why Trump paused those those tariffs for 90 days in many countries because the bond market was revoling And if Treasury yields get too high it's going to cause a crisis in the US like what happened with the British Conservative prime minister If you
• 78:30 - 79:00 remember uh Liz Truss was prime minister for like one month and then she introduced this budget that was like this insane thatcherism with huge deficits that were not financed by taxes or anything The bond market revolted and she was ousted So Trump was in a kind of similar trust moment right and the the reason I mention all of that is because it's important to understand this because what it shows is the weakness the the Achilles heel of the US economy because almost always when the the stock
• 79:00 - 79:30 market crashes the bond market will rally because investors will engage in what's known as a flight to safety because their their stock prices are going down they'd sell their stocks and they want to put that money somewhere So they all they panic and what was what was seen as the safest investment was US government debt US Treasury securities So almost always in previous crisis crises When
• 79:30 - 80:00 the stock market falls bond yields fall because investors buy more bonds And that means that the the price of current bonds that have higher yields go up and then as the yields go down it makes it the borrowing cost of the US government lower However in this crisis that Trump started on the 2nd of April we saw the opposite happened The stock market fell crashed and the bond market crashed Bond
• 80:00 - 80:30 yields went up bond prices went down of existing bonds That is a a serious sign of a major problem a structural problem And I'm not saying it's going to cause another 2008 financial crisis but it could cause a serious economic recession or some kind of crisis in the US economy Because what we're seeing is actually massive capital outflows The the US economy has been has
• 80:30 - 81:00 been basically barely surviving in recent years on after the 2008 2009 crash It's been barely getting by through a big bubble what people call the everything bubble There's been a bubble in stocks a bubble in real estate There was a recently until recently until 2000 because of the the uh COVID pandemic until 2022 when the Fed raised interest rates there was a major a major bull market in in the b in the bond market
• 81:00 - 81:30 for years And so now what we're seeing is that foreign investors are simply getting out of US assets And that was really the only thing keeping the US economy going is this big bubble in in financial assets and the stock mark into the real estate market So what we've seen is that because of Trump's threats of tariffs and the volatility a lot of investors simply don't trust US assets period because they say "Okay the the stock market fell 5% yesterday It'll go
• 81:30 - 82:00 back up 2% today It might fall 5% tomorrow It might go up 5% It's so volatile They don't want to deal with it they'd rather put their money somewhere else So what we're actually seeing is that this is the real constituency of the US government This is why the Trump administration is is you know they have the fear of God in them now because they don't really care about working people They're real constituency are the billionaires on Wall Street and billionaires in other countries the global capitalist class And they're now doing a capital strike They're saying
• 82:00 - 82:30 that the US is no longer a reliable investment and they're looking for the safest investments which they can find which ironically is actually like Swiss bonds German bonds the European stock market has rallying has been rallying So this was the only thing that the US economy really had going for it anymore was Wall Street and then of course Silicon Valley China is creating alternatives competitors to Silicon Valley monopolies like deepseek and now
• 82:30 - 83:00 Wall Street is in crisis So the reason I'm going so so much into all these details is that what I'm trying to get at is that the US government thinks that it's so powerful and everything in the world revolves around the United States and other countries have no alternatives to the dollar and no alternatives to Wall Street and no alternatives to US Treasury securities and no alternatives to big tech corporations in Silicon Valley But increasingly there are alternatives And the more aggressive
• 83:00 - 83:30 that Trump is the more he's actually destroying all of the exorbitant privilege that the US had and all of these institutions that were keeping the US economy afloat and popping the bubble in Wall Street that made the economy look in the US like it was doing well Because as the Wall Street Journal recently reported onethird of US GDP comes from the spending of the richest 10% of the population The richest 10% of the population represents nearly half of spending in the economy So if their
• 83:30 - 84:00 wealth begins to decline because of these crises in the US capital markets this is going to cause a a a c a cascading series of crises throughout the US economy And that's going to further dolorization because one of the reasons that so many foreign capitalists held their assets in US ass in in US capital markets is because they always assumed that the US dollar would be strong because the US dollar is the
• 84:00 - 84:30 global reserve currency They always assumed that the US government would always do whatever it takes to protect Wall Street to to as what what what is known as the the Fed put or the Trump put which means that if there's a fall in the stock market Trump will step in and save the stock market or the Federal Reserve will step in and inject liquidity reduce interest rates to save the stock market But we're now what we're now seeing is simply a flight out of US assets Which is why even Deutsche Bank the major German bank is warning
• 84:30 - 85:00 that US assets in general are no longer seen as attractive to foreign investors So if that they continue this capital strike the US is shooting itself in the foot on trade shooting itself on the foot in terms of its exorbitant privilege with the dollar and accelerating ddollarization precisely at a time when Trump is telling countries that if they ddollarize he's going to put 100% tariffs on them But now
• 85:00 - 85:30 countries are saying "Fine we already have tariffs on us We might as well dolarize." Yeah Yeah It's uh you know it's astounding uh to watch how you know right now Ben uh there is this move by Donald Trump as he is escalating this trade war with China One of the things he said I don't know if you caught it He has said that countries around the world
• 85:30 - 86:00 are going to have to choose between the United States and China And I wanted to actually pull this up because I think the Trump administration has not been told that uh the world has actually made a huge decision over the course of the last 25 years Here you have in blue in 2000 where the US was the largest trading partner uh for these countries around the world all of Latin America most of Africa most of uh Asia and now
• 86:00 - 86:30 you see the uh huge difference in 2024 But this is ultimately the move it seems Ben that uh this push that China is making that David Ignatius the the panic in his voice uh through his article on ddollarization uh that he expressed was that the world is getting sick of the weaponization of the dollar and it seems like uh the Trump
• 86:30 - 87:00 administration's attempt to uh you know push ultimatums to try to bully the world into a deal where it cuts itself off from China and the rest of the multipolar world is a big part of this Uh what exactly maybe you can explain this uh as we as we close here Explain what exactly when Donald Trump because this is what we have the privilege of with Donald Trump is that unlike prior administrations like a Biden or someone
• 87:00 - 87:30 else Donald Trump says it straight up He came in said we're going to revive the dollar We're going to uh ensure that China and the rest of the you know these these group the bricks that they're not going to be able to do what they did in the last administration But that means that there's something to fear So what exactly are these countries doing why has there been this huge shift not just toward China but this multipolar world and and what exactly is the United
• 87:30 - 88:00 States afraid of you mentioned Wall Street and the corporations They're they're all part a part of this They all share this fear They're they're moving in this way in order to prevent the multipolar world from rising But what's what's so scary about it well you you lose the ability to extract monopoly rents from all around the world I mean this is the this is the business model of the US of big US corporations You create a monopoly and then everyone around the world has to to pay you monopoly rents I mean it's it's
• 88:00 - 88:30 like a landlord right this is what the economist Michael Hudson has been so brilliant at pointing out is that a landlord doesn't produce anything They they own the land and you have to pay them rent for the privilege to use it And this is how many US big corporate monopolies operate especially in Silicon Valley This is their business model In fact Peter Teal is the kind of power behind the throne of the Trump administration He is this far-right billionaire oligarch from Silicon Valley He wrote openly in an article that
• 88:30 - 89:00 capitalism is more important than democracy He does not believe in democracy but he does deeply believe in capitalism But when he says capitalism he means monopoly He wrote in an article in the Wall Street Journal titled competition is for losers That's the title In that article he said that cap that that capitalism is the opposite of competition because he points out that if you have competition eventually you have the rate of profit to fall So essentially he's acknowledging that Karl Marx was right that when capitalists
• 89:00 - 89:30 compete together they push down profit margins and if there's a perfectly competitive market profit mar profit margins will eventually fall basically to zero So Peter Teal says that's bad because he's a capitalist He's a billionaire So he says we need monopolies So he says that capitalism is not based on competition it's based on monopolies And he says monopolies are good And he has a long article and he has a lecture you can find online explaining why monopolies are good and why Silicon Valley's business model is
• 89:30 - 90:00 based on running at a loss and destroying all your competitors and then when you have a monopoly charge monopoly rents and suddenly you make a ton of profit And if you look at many big tech corporations in Silicon Valley this is exactly how they operated Uber is an example right uber comes in it's running at a loss for many years It tries to destroy all of the unionized taxi taxi unions you know taxi workers in many cities like New York They had they had
• 90:00 - 90:30 strong protections uh benefits health care retirement because they were in a union Uber comes in it in some cases off operates in a in an illegal basis or a semi- illegal basis in some cities It destroys the unions because it undermines them by offering much cheaper taxis So obviously you know if you're an average person you're living paycheck to paycheck you're going to get an Uber It's much cheaper And then after they bankrupt the taxi unions and destroy
• 90:30 - 91:00 their competitors and they establish monopoly then Uber doubles their prices which is what they did and now they're very profitable And this is true for many other social media companies They operate services for free They establish a monopoly and then they start charging people money or they fill everything with ads or they limit your services and you can only use all of the full services if you pay them money So this is what the US wants to do the to the entire world No competitors Every country must be rellyant on US big
• 91:00 - 91:30 corporate monopolies That's how you maximize your profits and this is how you get billionaires right this is why when China just surprised the world with its extremely rapid development of electric vehicles high quality cheap electric vehicles inexpensive but very good What what was the response of Elon Musk and this was even before he was in the government This is back in the Biden administration He said that if the if the US government doesn't impose
• 91:30 - 92:00 significant protectionist policies and restrictions on Chinese EVs U we will go out of business Tesla would go out of business And after he made those remarks a few months later the Biden White House put 100% tariffs on Chinese EVs So I mean the Silicon Valley business model relies on no competitors China is the major competitor There is go to go to Europe What what social media platforms do they use us social media platforms do they use they US
• 92:00 - 92:30 social media platforms They use Amazon They use Google they use Microsoft they use Apple These are all US companies India is another example India banned the BJP government of Modi you know which has flirted with the US but also kind of maintain an online position and now is improving relations with China They went through in particular a very heated moment of anti-China hysteria in India and they banned many of the most
• 92:30 - 93:00 popular Chinese apps like Tik Tok which the US is trying to do now Right what happened after India banned these Chinese apps They they they went back to only using US apps They don't have Indian social media platforms and Indian alternatives to Amazon Amazon is very active all in India and Amazon is undercutting local Indian producers by copying Indian products and selling it with the Amazon label So this is what it's all about It's about these US corporate monopolies being able to
• 93:00 - 93:30 control the entire world extract monopoly rents from everyone and living like you know trillionaires That's their goal They're already they already have hundreds of billions The goal is to have trillions And China is the only country that actually has alternatives to all of this which is why the US government is trying to ban them The US government under in Trump's first term they put sanctions and restrictions on Huawei And then under Biden they threatened to ban Tik Tok They briefly
• 93:30 - 94:00 banned Tik Tok Now Trump's threatening to ban Tik Tok unless it's sold to a US company And now they're talking about banning Deepseek The US military already banned DeepSseek and Open AI which is 49% owned by Microsoft its billionaire CEO Sam Alman he's calling for the US government to ban deepseeek as well claiming that it's linked to the Communist Party of China And finally this brings me to trade So you show this very important map that shows that the majority of
• 94:00 - 94:30 countries on Earth now trade more with China than with the United States China is our largest trading partner And why is that it's because China produces everything and it it's these are high quality goods at very low prices because the Chinese government carried out an a a concerted industrial policy Every 5 years the Communist Party releases a five-year plan saying these are the targets of the economy where the government is going to prioritize growth
• 94:30 - 95:00 in these sectors Semiconductors drones artificial intelligence electric vehicles They released plans They released a new energy vehicle plan That's the term they use for electric vehicles Saying "We're going to develop an electric vehicle industry and become a world power in in automobiles." And they did so They met their goals In 2015 they made an industrial policy for made in China 2025 saying "We're going to provide investment in infrastructure education job training cheap loans from stateowned
• 95:00 - 95:30 banks and other government support to develop these industries in strategic areas So we're no longer dependent on the US." And they've done so So China shows that yes they have a socialist system with a market economy It's a socialist market economy as they call it So it's not the Soviet Union it's a different model but they they have the best elements of socialism with also combining market elements So you do have competition pushing for technological innovation Their system is simply much
• 95:30 - 96:00 more efficient much more competitive and much better than the US system which is based on monopolies charging cor charging monopoly rents based on privatization of all of the the public utilities So they're expensive as as possible Infrastructure is falling apart because the government doesn't invest Education is insanely expensive Only rich people can afford good education I mean the Chinese system is simply much better at actually meeting the needs of
• 96:00 - 96:30 its people and producing things to make people's lives better It's not the Chinese system is not good at inflating bubbles in the stock market And they're currently popping the real estate bubble because as President Xi said houses are for living in not for speculation Whereas in the US 10% of houses are owned by private equity and other investment funds So I mean the Chinese system is simply a better system and the US cannot accept that and instead of learning from the Chinese system and
• 96:30 - 97:00 trying to engage in an industrial policy the Biden administration kind of tried a milk a toast halfbaked attempt at industrial policy with the chips act and the inflation reduction act which now Trump is tearing up and he expects that tariffs are going to magically re-industrialize everything and that's all it takes while cutting taxes on the rich cutting taxes on corporations reducing regulations I mean all they're doing is accelerating the deep structural crisis in the US And I you
• 97:00 - 97:30 know I'm an American you're an American I think that there's so much the US could learn from China instead of waging war on China And if we were a little humble we can say well yeah we should actually do a lot of these industrial policy measures public ownership of the banks public ownership of all schools and education and not so not not just rich people who go to the good universities public ownership of infrastructure to build high-spe speed rail public ownership of the electrical
• 97:30 - 98:00 grid and telecommunications There's a lot that the US could do but it's it's run by an oligarchy It's not a democratic system It's it's a bureaucratic system in which the rich buy politicians through campaign contributions which we now know the Supreme Court in Citizens United said there's no limit that corporations are people and they can donate as much money as they want to buy off politicians to do what they want So until those problems are solved and there's a deep structural transformation of the United
• 98:00 - 98:30 States unfortunately US politicians are just going to look for scapegoats and their scapegoats in the case of the Republicans can be immigrants LGBT people whatever woke ism DEI or in the case of both parties their scapegoats can be foreign countries especially China And they want to blame China for everything the billionaires in the US who caused all of these problems They want to blame China But in reality of course in the US we should be looking inward and see that that it's it's the
• 98:30 - 99:00 oligarchs themselves who are responsible And China I mean China has has benefited from the many problem many bad policies that the US government carried out But that's not China's fault Every country is going to do what's in its interest But unfortunately the oligarchy of the US don't care about the vast majority of people They only care about their own well-being We see that now very clearly with Elon Musk the world's richest man
• 99:00 - 99:30 like trying to run the US government like his own personal fft So I think that's a much bigger problem than anything China is doing And the more you know that we can stress that message I think the better it is Yeah Yeah Indeed I mean uh I I think you're exactly right The the way in which we have a system where we talk about geopolitics we're talking about finance in the United States we're talking really talking about finance
• 99:30 - 100:00 capital we're talking about uh finance and its complete intertwinement with uh the military and how all of this is just so profitable These monopolies are so profitable for such a tiny few number of people and they've they've their system now has become uh anathema to real development It doesn't happen in the United States anymore to an extent We even had a super chat who asked uh you
• 100:00 - 100:30 know if China doesn't make the most advanced chips uh for cell phones who does and you can definitely answer that question but I think what's so interesting is that for wherever the United States holds on to any kind of technological superiority which still does exist in some areas uh it is fast shedding its industrial capacity uh to the point where it has it has gotten to a place where a trade for like tariffs
• 100:30 - 101:00 in themselves People criticize say "Danny why are you so against tariffs?" And you've been on this show man You've said it's not the tariffs themselves It's not if they're individual tariffs if they're not blanket tariffs and actually if if they're part of a larger indust not just blanket tariffs on everyone in the world It's crazy then you can actually perhaps focus and plan development that will benefit uh your economy the the national economy but of
• 101:00 - 101:30 course the United States has been operating for so long in the reverse and as we have said bricks the multipolar world there really is no reverse button to that we are seeing over and over again how the United States's economy has become so monopolized so financialized that there really is no reverse button because Donald Trump hasn't uttered one plan If it wants to stop ddollarization it hasn't uttered one plan for how it's going to ensure that rather the dollar be just some
• 101:30 - 102:00 weapon that's used to bludgeon other countries around the world push them into a state of underdevelopment and indebtedness How are you going to use the very system that the dollar is supposed to be backing to actually develop an economy that prospers not just the elites but uh everybody in it so that the United States once again or at least you know once it can become a country that's normal in the world that is focused on its development focused on uh uplifting
• 102:00 - 102:30 the standards of living of people rather than uh ensuring that the profits and the dividends and whatnot of shareholders are maximized as much as possible that that there hasn't been a plan to address that And so all of this let's stop deolarization let's contain China uh let's negotiate with Russia let's threaten Iran let's stop bricks All of this is about the United States simply going on in the same way as this
• 102:30 - 103:00 economy and country that is dominated by an oligarchy which sees its own preservation reproduction and any kind of expansion it can get of its dominance as the sole goal and purpose uh right now of of the United States and nothing else But uh Ben maybe you can answer that super chat question and uh any reaction you have to what I just said No I agree with you I think you you hit the nail on the head I mean at the end of the day all these issues are related Domestic politics in the US is obviously very closely linked to global politics
• 103:00 - 103:30 and the US government is acting on the in the interests of these oligarchs on Wall Street and in Silicon Valley And this is true for all US governments This is certainly true under Biden Famously Biden when he campaigned for president in 2016 he said that in no 20 Yeah 2020 Biden said that when he was at a a campaign rally a a fundraising event a gala with a bunch of rich people He said that when if I'm
• 103:30 - 104:00 elected nothing will fundamentally change That was the famous quote And he told a bunch of rich donors that And he was right When Biden was elected nothing fundamentally changed But in the case of Trump I mean he's just made it as clear as day You have to be blind to ignore the fact that Trump is constantly doing events at the White House with a bunch of billionaires the richest people in the world And Trump loves that Again as his inauguration Trump invited the world's richest billionaires to sit with
• 104:00 - 104:30 his cabinet members including Jeff Bezos Elon Musk Mark Zuckerberg Tim Cook and under Pchai who's the CEO of of Google And then he invited more billionaires like Sam Cook Sam Sam Cook I combined Tim Cook and Sam Alman Sam Alman to the White House for AI this AI announcement And then actually just a few days ago after Trump's tariffs briefly crashed the stock market and then it went back up
• 104:30 - 105:00 Trump you know he went on his his Twitter copy website and he tweeted out like now is a good time to invest like like buy stocks and then the stock market rallied because the the US government is now openly doing pump and dump schemes I mean we talk about the US economy has become like a big house of cards based on a bunch of finance bros selling NFT schemes to each other and pump and dumping you know memecoins The US president has a memecoin His wife Melania has a memecoin And then now
• 105:00 - 105:30 Trump himself is like pump and dumping the stock market with his Twitter copy website But then after he did that he invited Charles Schwab the billionaire financeier to the White House and Trump said "Yeah he made $2 billion in one day." What this is insane I mean this is just blatant looting blatant corruption I mean I often say that like what the US did to this the former Soviet Union to Russia in the 1990s with the looting of
• 105:30 - 106:00 the country by oligarchs that's what the US is doing to itself now in broad daylight And I mean it's it's it's incredible But I could I could keep ranting but I'll briefly now answer the question from your super chat Great question So if China doesn't make the most advanced chips who does well the answer is that mainland China doesn't make the most advanced chips but a part of China does which is Taiwan which according to international law is
• 106:00 - 106:30 recognized as a province of China Even go to for instance the IMF website which you know is dominated by the US They have to acknowledge that it says Taiwan province of China At the United Nations they say Taiwan province of China Well Taiwan has the world's most advanced semiconductor manufacturer which is called TSMC Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Corporate Company and Trump is actually trying to force TSMC to move over to the US It's actually bipartisan again like many of US imperial policies The Biden
• 106:30 - 107:00 administration passed the chips act which was an attempt again a halfbaked attempt at having an industrial policy in which the US government would provide incentives to develop local manufacturing of advanced chips in the US largely because they're preparing for a war on the Chinese mainland and the US knows that they're going to try to use Taiwan as this base to carry out a war against the Chinese mainland So they're probably going to end up destroying Taiwan the US And they just like the US
• 107:00 - 107:30 destroyed Ukraine and in the and in an attempt to try to weaken Russia As Biden's defense secretary Lloyd Austin said the goal was to weaken Russia They destroyed Ukraine and they didn't weaken Russia but now they're going to try to destroy Taiwan to weaken the Chinese mainland And so Trump has been forcing TSMC to continue to move its assets to the US And what's funny is you know the US government has been providing these incentives to TSMC but and they've made
• 107:30 - 108:00 some factories in Arizona but they've they've found a huge problem It took them years to build all these factories and everything And there were no skilled workers in the US who knew how to make semiconductors because you can't just go from the street one day and you see a job listing and you go they you go there and then you make semiconductors It's extremely complicated very skilled work It's going to take a long time to trade to train US workers on how to do this So what happens is that TSMC half of their
• 108:00 - 108:30 employees are from Taiwan They're just sending these employees from the factories in Taiwan with their families and they're sending them to Arizona and they're all like they hate living in in Arizona I mean it's Anyway so it's it's a it's a mess But this is this is what this is called a chip war I mean in the 21st century this is one of the most important parts of the modern economy Chips semiconductors computer chips which are in everything and China produces many of the legacy chips The
• 108:30 - 109:00 mainland of China produces the you know not not the most high level not the most advanced chips but the most common chips But then Taiwan province it manufactures the most advanced chips And then also ASML in the Netherlands is another major company involved in designing the machines used to make the chips And then Nvidia in the US is designing chips but not actually manufacturing them So once again we see
• 109:00 - 109:30 this this global supply chain and many different parts of the world and not even to mention all of the rare earths and the critical minerals and all of that that are in the actual chips and then all of the skilled workers I mean it's a very complex supply chain It's going to be very difficult if not impossible for the US to recreate that supply chain which is why you know this attempt at decoupling from China I think is it's it's it's either going to fail or it's going to take many years if not
• 109:30 - 110:00 decades Yeah And with lots and lots of pain Uh I I think maybe I can pull up one of these images Ben because uh you know Chinese social media has been doing a lot of trolling Okay And we can just end maybe on a a fun note so to speak because of course there's been the uh uh you
• 110:00 - 110:30 know Xiinping being told by Donald Trump uh you need to call me to settle the trade to to settle this to settle the the trade disputes Uh the ball's in your core You need to call me We don't need to make a deal with you you need to make a deal with us which has and I'm just trying to pull up all the uh examples of this um that I have pulled up because you know it's just so funny to
• 110:30 - 111:00 watch uh Trump actually having blinked the United States having blinked and here is what Chinese social media was posting these uh very I'm not going to play the music to them but uh because of copyright but these AI videos of essentially what the United States economy will become when uh the tariffs are supposed to
• 111:00 - 111:30 supposedly re-industrialize the United States So it's videos like this have been shared everywhere of just you know the Trump administration making the sneakers now making uh you know these these so-called uh lower value added goods returning them to the United States Uh and it's just it's been hilarious And then there's this one there's been so many on the um front of just trolling Here is one on
• 111:30 - 112:00 the uh press secretary of the Trump administration wearing an outfit literally designed in China um for a lot cheaper actually And um China has been promoting their goods lately uh uh and how cheaper they are I think there was one video saying that you know um there are these luxury bags you can get for $40,000 US you know for tens of
• 112:00 - 112:30 thousands of US dollars And but if you actually just get it from the the Chinese factory that's producing putting together all these parts and producing the bag you're going to get them for 10 20 30 times cheaper And actually the same The only difference is it doesn't it doesn't say like Louis Vuitton or whatever doesn't have the little tag but it's exactly the same It's exactly the same And then I want to show the one of actually the military I maybe I already have it pulled up Uh yes I do actually
• 112:30 - 113:00 Here it is Um so uh the I think this is the Waybo account actually Yes of um uh uh the PLA saying "Are you waiting for a long- aaited phone call uh referencing Donald Trump uh continuously?" I think he said this repeatedly over and over again that Xiinping needs to call him despite the fact that it's in the Trump administration laying all these tariffs
• 113:00 - 113:30 on and essentially uh bullying trying to bully China into taking just you know uh this lying down So all this to say is that we are seeing I think Ben and I think this kind of summarizes the stream and I just want to thank everyone for giving all the super chats I'll pull them up uh while I get Ben's final reaction I think what we are seeing is that despite the growing pains the
• 113:30 - 114:00 difficulties that uh building a multipolar world building an alternative to US full spectrum dominance uh despite the growing pains associated we are actually seeing the United States through this trade war but really through its entire foreign policy under Trump before Trump I think we've been seeing this for subsequent administrations over and over again the more that it accelerates as you said this aggression on all fronts whether it's military economic warfare what have
• 114:00 - 114:30 you it actually what it does is while there may be a massive body count and just destruction laid in its wake but what we see out of that comes uh a strengthening of relationships of bonds of new forms of cooperation of ddollarization of moving toward a world that is truly post United States and China is the most advanced economically We are seeing this uh more and more so
• 114:30 - 115:00 with countries like Russia militarily and uh you know it's only going to accelerate the more that the United States takes this absolutely destructive posture But we're in an age where it can't really unless there's a fundamental change in US politics Unless it's a fundamental change in US politics there is no in in US economic uh development it's system there is no other option that those who pull the strings of
• 115:00 - 115:30 someone like Trump or someone like Biden or whoever they don't see any other option Because if the other option is to cooperate is to treat another country like an equal is to allow an alternative economic development system to emerge alongside it Well then that cuts into what their ultimate goal is which is to topple the Chinese government the economy take it over do what it does
• 115:30 - 116:00 which is nothing ever good Just look at what's happened to Ukraine uh and there's so many other examples to that but that's ultimately the goal with for China for Russia for Iran for the rest is to topple them means to extend this dominance and it's it's not working in the way that I think many who see US superiority and exceptionalism and all of this um and who still hold on to it I think many I think are having a hard time with this fact the world is moving
• 116:00 - 116:30 a different direction the United States is moving in its current direction in the other direction And uh what they're hoping is to destroy and I I think you're right Ben the the I've been saying this it's not about the chess game or the Brazinski chess board No it's about actually um just trying to lay waste to all the chess pieces in the way It's not about outsmarting them It's not about being better or competition anymore It's about destroy destroy
• 116:30 - 117:00 destroy and that is winning It's not working anymore Your final thoughts as I pull up these super chats though Yeah it's about dominance hgemony and monopoly because again that's how you maximize your profits and rent extraction No no they don't want competition They say there's a competition between the US and China We see that the US doesn't want competition China says "Okay fine Let's have a competition because they know they'll win." The US knows they would lose a fair competition So it's tariffs sanctions restrictions and war That's
• 117:00 - 117:30 that's their unfortunate solution Yes indeed Uh well thanks everyone Expect to eat some good good comments Yeah Yeah there's some good comments some unhinged ones You know if you want to give money to an independent media channel and you want to give unhinged comments go right ahead Just make sure you do it um with money attached because uh at the very least I can ignore it and uh also used for independent media unironically
• 117:30 - 118:00 Um in any event all right Ben this was a great stream everybody Yeah that was a good comment The US wants to be number one but it's education secretary is a WWE wrestling executive another oligarch And by the way I don't know if you saw this clip So funny of the US education secretary giving a a comment giving a speech and she talks about AI but she doesn't know that AI she says A1 I saw this clip that went viral on social media I couldn't believe this I thought
• 118:00 - 118:30 it was a joke but she was talking about the how AI is changing education and she kept saying A1 is going to change education so much A1 funny It's funny It's really funny Yeah I couldn't believe that She doesn't know what AI is This is the head of the US Hey here we go Let's see what she says Um I heard I think it was a letter or report that I heard this morning I wish I could remember the source but that there is a school system that's going to start um
• 118:30 - 119:00 making sure that first graders or even preks have A1 teaching you know every year starting you know that far down in the grades And that's just a that's a wonderful thing Kids are sponges You they just absorb everything And so wasn't all that long ago that as we're going to have internet in our schools whoop now Okay let's do see A1 and how and how can that be helpful how can it be helpful in one-on-one instruction a1 A1 You know that's that's Linda
• 119:00 - 119:30 McMahon the US Treasur US education secretary from a wealthy oligarch family And by the way Trump signed an executive order to dismantle the Department of Education So right at a time when we're calling when she's calling AI A1 and warning about the effect of A1 education Well we might not even have education in the US pretty soon Yeah Well Ben it was great being here with you Everybody as you leave
• 119:30 - 120:00 here be sure hit the like button That helps boost the stream in YouTube's algorithm Go to the video description You can find all the places to support my work Patreon Substack and so many other places Thanks to everybody super chat Ben's YouTube channel Geopolitical Economy Report is in the video description as well Uh we'll be back again soon Um I'll be back again soon in a couple days I'll announce uh what's going on But without further ado everybody take care Have a good night Thank you again Ben Yeah thank you was a
• 120:00 - 120:30 pleasure