Latest / UK Column Radio / Alex Krainer tries to understand Trump’s tariff wars with China

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Alex Krainer tries to understand Trump’s tariff wars with China · UK Column Radio

0:38
Speaker 1: Is it theater?
0:40
Speaker 2: Is it all theater? I don't think it is. I mean,
0:45
Speaker 2: I think that it's well, okay, to start off with,
0:50
Speaker 2: it's extremely difficult to interpret Trump, what he's doing, what
0:55
Speaker 2: he's trying to achieve. I think that one of the
1:00
Speaker 2: really relevant questions that is not clear, even though people
1:05
Speaker 2: haste to make up their mind, it's not at all
1:07
Speaker 2: clear whether Trump and his team have a well thought
1:12
Speaker 2: out plan or whether they're they're just swinging left and
1:17
Speaker 2: right and making it up as they go along, you know.
1:19
Speaker 2: And that's a very relevant question because you know, if
1:23
Speaker 2: you if they have a thought out plan, then you
1:26
Speaker 2: can try to guess what the plan is, and and
1:31
Speaker 2: how they might be achieving, how they might be moving
1:33
Speaker 2: a head towards that plan, what the obstacles are, and
1:35
Speaker 2: so forth. Then the analysis is maybe a bit easier.
1:41
Speaker 2: If they're making things up as they go along, then
1:45
Speaker 2: it's it's impossible. It's just a it's just a blizzard
1:48
Speaker 2: of uh of nonsense coming at us from all sides,
1:53
Speaker 2: all sides, all the time. Well, we also have to
1:56
Speaker 2: understand that Trump has very very powerful enemies, because he
2:01
Speaker 2: really is upending a system that's been you know, it's
2:09
Speaker 2: been created and reinforced as a way of protecting the
2:14
Speaker 2: privileges of a certain privileged class in our societies. And
2:19
Speaker 2: they are very upset with Trump, and they are the
2:22
Speaker 2: people who control the media, among other things. And so
2:26
Speaker 2: what comes through from the media is reinforcing the impression
2:31
Speaker 2: that this is just a circus and the Trump is
2:37
Speaker 2: making things up as he's going along. Here's no plan,
2:40
Speaker 2: there's nothing other than chaos, and so we need to
2:45
Speaker 2: stop Trump and stop the chaos and get the world
2:48
Speaker 2: back into a rules based order. I'm not entirely sure,
2:56
Speaker 2: but here's Over the past three months, having spoken about
3:04
Speaker 2: this to a good many people, and some of them
3:06
Speaker 2: claim that they have firsthand knowledge from people who are
3:13
Speaker 2: close to the Trump administration and who are sometimes sitting
3:17
Speaker 2: in cabinet meetings. The feedback is that Trump is not
3:24
Speaker 2: a deep thinker, okay, which doesn't you know, which doesn't
3:33
Speaker 2: exclude the possibility that he is. He has a certain
3:38
Speaker 2: intuitive acumen which is positive and accurate. You know that
3:43
Speaker 2: he knows what he wants to do, and he understands
3:46
Speaker 2: how to do it in a certain street smart way.
3:49
Speaker 2: But I also have a pretty good feedback about you know,
3:57
Speaker 2: from a from a Bosnian polyge Titian who said that
4:02
Speaker 2: he went to a meeting in Washington, not with not
4:06
Speaker 2: with the Trump and his people, but a level a
4:10
Speaker 2: level down in the hierarchy in the State Department, and
4:14
Speaker 2: he said, you know, I went there prepared to explain
4:18
Speaker 2: to them who we are and where Bosnia is on
4:21
Speaker 2: the map, and he said, I was I was shocked
4:23
Speaker 2: to find that they were very very well informed, very knowledgeable,
4:29
Speaker 2: that they understood the situation in detail and nuance. And
4:35
Speaker 2: so what that tells me is that that maybe the
4:38
Speaker 2: top level leadership they are as they are, you know, cowboys,
4:42
Speaker 2: may be shooting off the hip and they know what
4:44
Speaker 2: they want to do, but maybe the plan is vague,
4:50
Speaker 2: but that the the people in the deeper in the hierarchy,
4:58
Speaker 2: of the of the of the command and control structure
5:01
Speaker 2: are actually learned, sophisticated thinkers who are doing their jobs properly.
5:09
Speaker 2: And you know, there's always a two way communication going on.
5:12
Speaker 2: So if the commander in chief says, hey, let's do this,
5:17
Speaker 2: people down in the hierarchy will say, sir, this is
5:20
Speaker 2: not a good idea. And you know, as as we've
5:23
Speaker 2: learned from any of these military men. It's in the end,
5:26
Speaker 2: it's the colonels who who decide what is done and
5:30
Speaker 2: what is not done, because sometimes general are who are
5:35
Speaker 2: politically appointed people aren't as competent as they are, and
5:42
Speaker 2: they're all, you know, they're all ultimately afraid of blundering,
5:45
Speaker 2: so they don't you know, they won't They might not
5:49
Speaker 2: insist if a qualified person tells them, don't do this. Okay.
5:52
Speaker 2: So having said all that, let's pretend for a minute
5:56
Speaker 2: that they are, that they have a plan, and that
6:00
Speaker 2: they are trying to advance that plan. What might that be.
6:05
Speaker 2: I think that you know, we can start with the
6:09
Speaker 2: slogan make America great again? How would you do that?
6:14
Speaker 2: It would appear from you know, what we see and hear,
6:19
Speaker 2: it would appear that that just going around shaking people down,
6:23
Speaker 2: telling them you do what we say or we're going
6:26
Speaker 2: to hurt you. You know, and everybody sees that. But
6:32
Speaker 2: I think that if we take a very high level
6:35
Speaker 2: view and we take it in the historical perspective, I
6:39
Speaker 2: think that what Trump and his and this is where
6:44
Speaker 2: the terrorists work into the equation. I think that what
6:47
Speaker 2: Trump and his team are trying to achieve is to
6:52
Speaker 2: return the United States from the British system of free
6:58
Speaker 2: trade to the American system of productive economy. Okay, and
7:06
Speaker 2: so what is the difference. The difference is that the
7:09
Speaker 2: British system of free trade tends to create these boom
7:15
Speaker 2: bust cycles that the banking interests in the economy consistently
7:24
Speaker 2: and repeatedly inflate acid bubbles and then pull the rug
7:29
Speaker 2: from under them, because that's the process of creating private
7:39
Speaker 2: money in the form of credit and then forcing it
7:44
Speaker 2: into the economic system, inflates acid bubbles, whether it's housing equities, bonds, whatever.
7:54
Speaker 2: They play this game as insiders, so they know what
8:01
Speaker 2: they're gonna do, right. They know they're gonna prime up
8:04
Speaker 2: the housing sector, for example, and then they know how
8:08
Speaker 2: to position themselves in advance, and then you know, the
8:13
Speaker 2: credit impulse goes, and then people start buying houses, bidding
8:18
Speaker 2: up real estate prices, and they that way, they inflate
8:25
Speaker 2: a bubble, as they've done in the early two thousands,
8:28
Speaker 2: and then at a certain moment they yank the credit
8:32
Speaker 2: the bubble implodes, but they bail out before that. And
8:40
Speaker 2: you know, we've seen that so many times, and it
8:44
Speaker 2: appears to be unrelated because you know, there was a
8:46
Speaker 2: bubble in Japan in the nineteen eighties, there was a
8:49
Speaker 2: housing bubble, there was a Nasdaq dot com bubble. Now
8:56
Speaker 2: we have an everything bubble. Well, okay, so bonds have
9:00
Speaker 2: started deflating properly. But until you know, until two three
9:06
Speaker 2: years ago, everything was at two hundred year highs, right.
9:13
Speaker 2: And then in the process they they plunder a great
9:18
Speaker 2: deal of wealth from out of the society and then
9:24
Speaker 2: they even through their political influence, they get bailouts. So
9:29
Speaker 2: when the housing bubble imploded in two thousand and eight,
9:32
Speaker 2: the bankers got at least sixteen trillion dollars in bailouts,
9:38
Speaker 2: the two big to fail banks and not just American ones.
9:43
Speaker 2: And that's official, that's according to the Government Accountability Office.
9:51
Speaker 2: Higher independent estimates go to as high as twenty nine
9:54
Speaker 2: trillion dollars. And I you know, as a as a
9:57
Speaker 2: lifelong market professional, I think that whatever where the government concedes,
10:02
Speaker 2: double it at least. So I think that we're talking
10:07
Speaker 2: something in the neighborhood of twenty nine trillion dollars. And
10:10
Speaker 2: that is more than eighty five thousand US dollars per
10:15
Speaker 2: woman and child living in the United States. That's an
10:19
Speaker 2: absolutely massive loot, and the same mechanism is being perpetuated
10:27
Speaker 2: everywhere all the time, you know, is the system of
10:31
Speaker 2: colonial loot. And so it leaves a country crippled, It
10:38
Speaker 2: leaves a country impoverished and destroyed. As we can see
10:44
Speaker 2: in the United States today, you know, a couple of these,
10:47
Speaker 2: couple of these bubbles, burst, booms and busts, and the
10:51
Speaker 2: United States has been terribly weakened. You know, the US
10:56
Speaker 2: cities are full of homeless people, drug addicts, and the
11:03
Speaker 2: infrastructures falling apart. It's been de industrialized largely. So I
11:09
Speaker 2: think that making America great again probably is an effort
11:18
Speaker 2: to reverse all this. And how do you reverse all this.
11:21
Speaker 2: You have to allocate credit not to financial speculation, but
11:25
Speaker 2: to the production of physical goods. And so you have
11:31
Speaker 2: to repair. You have to repair the infrastructure. You have
11:34
Speaker 2: to repair the energy systems, ports, shipbuilding, communications, has a
11:43
Speaker 2: lot of work. And you also have to you have
11:49
Speaker 2: to disenfranchise the people who suck the wealth from out
11:54
Speaker 2: of the society through these financial manipulations and speculation. And
12:00
Speaker 2: these are very powerful and wealthy people. So a Trump
12:06
Speaker 2: cannot come out in the open and say, hey, this
12:09
Speaker 2: is what we're going to do because even though even
12:12
Speaker 2: though most people, you know, the ordinary people, entrepreneurs, employee people,
12:18
Speaker 2: everybody in the economy would say that's great, at last,
12:23
Speaker 2: there would be a lot of these very very powerful
12:25
Speaker 2: people who would want him dead. All eight US presidents
12:29
Speaker 2: who have either been assassinated while in office or died
12:34
Speaker 2: suddenly and mysteriously, all eight of them have been trying
12:38
Speaker 2: to promote the American system of political economy what I'm
12:41
Speaker 2: talking about this, and this system goes back to the
12:45
Speaker 2: eighteen hundreds. Abraham Lincoln's economic advisor, Henry Carey, formulated this
12:54
Speaker 2: in his book called Harmony of Interests. And so the
12:59
Speaker 2: you know, the the powers that be don't want this,
13:03
Speaker 2: They want pump and dump schemes forever because it's a
13:08
Speaker 2: big wealth extraction conveyor belt that they control. And if
13:15
Speaker 2: Trump is going to make America great again, then this
13:18
Speaker 2: would be a way to do it. But then you
13:21
Speaker 2: also have to avoid getting killed. And in Trump's case,
13:24
Speaker 2: you know, today, it's enough that he's constantly bearaged in
13:29
Speaker 2: the media for this or that that people lose confidence,
13:33
Speaker 2: that people think like, well, you know, this is a circus,
13:36
Speaker 2: this is you know, we're being led by clowns. They
13:39
Speaker 2: have no idea what they're doing, and so the headwinds
13:43
Speaker 2: are going to be very strong and very powerful. And
13:46
Speaker 2: I think that this is what we're seeing now, and
13:49
Speaker 2: whether Trump is going to be successful or not, that's
13:54
Speaker 2: the thing that we can't know now. We will have
13:57
Speaker 2: to wait and see and see how it goes. In
14:01
Speaker 2: the meantime, I would just for your viewers and listeners,
14:06
Speaker 2: I would suggest that we have to be a little
14:08
Speaker 2: bit circumspect about the way we judge Trump and his
14:12
Speaker 2: administration because we don't know exactly what they're doing, and
14:18
Speaker 2: a lot of it because if what I'm saying, if
14:22
Speaker 2: there's some substance to what I'm saying, then one hundred
14:26
Speaker 2: percent they have to do it either covertly, they have
14:30
Speaker 2: to hide their hand, or they have to move in
14:34
Speaker 2: such an unpredictable fashion that they you know, they disorient
14:38
Speaker 2: their opposition, they confuse the opposition, And so we have
14:44
Speaker 2: to kind of accept that uncertainty is going to run
14:46
Speaker 2: high for a while. But if you blast them and
14:59
Speaker 2: criticize them for everything, then you're actually reducing the likelihood
15:06
Speaker 2: that there will be successful. So you're actually helping the
15:09
Speaker 2: other side which has been which has been ripping off
15:16
Speaker 2: and humiliating humanity collectively for I would say at least
15:23
Speaker 2: two centuries now.
15:25
Speaker 3: But Alex I saw a video I think from twenty
15:29
Speaker 3: twelve of Trump giving a talk, and already there he
15:34
Speaker 3: was presenting a fairly anti China stance, which indicates to
15:40
Speaker 3: me that he has a personal gripe with China, unless
15:44
Speaker 3: I'm misinterpreting. And then what about in twenty twenty four,
15:48
Speaker 3: I think one of his key advisors wrote that document
15:51
Speaker 3: about how to readjust the Global System, which seems to
15:56
Speaker 3: be playing out right now. Stephen Ran, I think his
15:59
Speaker 3: name is Stephen Morran, Is that right.
16:01
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, Well I read Steve Moran's paper. I
16:06
Speaker 2: can't say that I'm okay. I can say I'm impressed
16:12
Speaker 2: that he's a very thoughtful man. I'm not necessarily impressed
16:15
Speaker 2: with the contents of the paper. But at the same time,
16:18
Speaker 2: you know, the paper that's available out there, I think,
16:21
Speaker 2: and my understanding is that it's not the finished version,
16:24
Speaker 2: so you know whatever, but you know, it's better than nothing.
16:30
Speaker 2: It means they think things through, They have a strategy.
16:34
Speaker 2: If you have a strategy, you have something to work on.
16:36
Speaker 2: You know, strategies are never etched in stone documents. You
16:42
Speaker 2: always have to adjust it with time because things never
16:46
Speaker 2: play out the way you plan them to be. Okay,
16:50
Speaker 2: fair enough, the hostility towards China, I'm not sure about
16:56
Speaker 2: that either, because I know from Trump's mouth himself that
17:02
Speaker 2: he speaks to Jijiping on the regular, because he not
17:06
Speaker 2: only conceded that he spoke with Jijienping, but he also
17:09
Speaker 2: kind of in one of those press conferences I don't know,
17:16
Speaker 2: like five six weeks ago, he said under his breath,
17:19
Speaker 2: I speak with him a lot. So there's a certain
17:23
Speaker 2: level of coordination between between Trump and his people and Russians,
17:29
Speaker 2: and the Russians and the Chinese. The rise of China
17:36
Speaker 2: has actually been achieved by applying this Hamiltonian American system
17:42
Speaker 2: of political economy right, and the Russians are following the
17:47
Speaker 2: same model in their own way. And so it seems
17:54
Speaker 2: to me that there's a certain level of coordination which obviously,
17:58
Speaker 2: again cannot be fully disclosed. And it seems to me
18:02
Speaker 2: that this hostility stands is more for show. And I'll
18:06
Speaker 2: give you a concrete example. One of the big problems
18:10
Speaker 2: in in the in the United States is the is
18:14
Speaker 2: the the fentannel crisis, the crisis of over those deaths,
18:23
Speaker 2: and these these drugs are flowing into the United States
18:27
Speaker 2: on an industrial scale, and if you read the media,
18:32
Speaker 2: it's all China, China, China, and Trump is not making
18:38
Speaker 2: much effort to distance himself from this narrative. You know,
18:41
Speaker 2: it's China, China, China, And so it would seem you know,
18:45
Speaker 2: like if you if you, if you take your impressions
18:47
Speaker 2: from the from from the you know, general narrative, you
18:51
Speaker 2: would you would get the impression that the Chinese are
18:54
Speaker 2: deliberately smuggling drugs into the United States too, you know,
18:59
Speaker 2: to get the Americans drugged up, I guess, but you know,
19:05
Speaker 2: opium wars have been a tool and a weapon of
19:09
Speaker 2: foreign policy used by the British Empire for over two
19:13
Speaker 2: hundred years. So that's you know, that would be if
19:18
Speaker 2: I were investigating this problem, that would be top of
19:21
Speaker 2: my list of suspects. And then b the whole drug
19:29
Speaker 2: cartel network couldn't possibly exist without the support and the
19:39
Speaker 2: service of money laundering banks because they generate something like
19:44
Speaker 2: four hundred million dollars of revenues per week in the
19:50
Speaker 2: United States, and it's virtually all cash. So Mexican drug
19:56
Speaker 2: cartels earn billion upon billions of dollars in cash. They
20:02
Speaker 2: have these palettes of cash that they have to bring
20:06
Speaker 2: into Mexico. A large part of it goes back to Mexico.
20:10
Speaker 2: What do you do with that money? What do you
20:11
Speaker 2: do with that cash? You see, if you if you
20:16
Speaker 2: take that money in cash, well, now you have to
20:19
Speaker 2: store it somewhere, and you have to pay guards to
20:23
Speaker 2: guard it, and you can't spend it on just anything.
20:28
Speaker 2: You know, you can how what could you buy if
20:30
Speaker 2: you only had cash at your disposal. You could buy
20:34
Speaker 2: I don't know, some cars, some houses, some you could
20:37
Speaker 2: pay for some prostitutes. You could buy some champagne and caviar.
20:40
Speaker 2: But you know, after a while, there's there's not much
20:43
Speaker 2: more you can do with that because cash there are
20:47
Speaker 2: certain limitations to cash transactions. As we know from investigative
20:54
Speaker 2: reports by you know, by the by the Pentagon, by
20:57
Speaker 2: by by US government. Mexican drug cartels have heavy weaponry.
21:03
Speaker 2: They have whole militaries fielded, They have submarines, they have helicopters,
21:08
Speaker 2: they have anti tank weapons, They have all kinds of
21:13
Speaker 2: stuff that they could never buy with palettes of cash.
21:18
Speaker 2: Another problem is that if you have cash, you have
21:20
Speaker 2: to pay men to guard it. And what can happen
21:25
Speaker 2: is that these men could say to themselves, hey, why
21:30
Speaker 2: should we guard this money for L Chapo Guzma. We
21:34
Speaker 2: have weapons here, we're armed, we're capable. Let's just take
21:38
Speaker 2: this money for ourselves, start our own cartel. So, you know,
21:41
Speaker 2: you have a certain weakness, you have a certain vulnerability,
21:45
Speaker 2: because these piles of cash would be a magnet for
21:50
Speaker 2: alternative you know, rival gangs, for police law enforcement, you know,
21:59
Speaker 2: for all kinds of you know, problems that would that
22:04
Speaker 2: would that this cash would attract. Whereas if you can
22:08
Speaker 2: deposit this money in a in a bank account, so
22:11
Speaker 2: you have you have a clean bank account, well then
22:17
Speaker 2: that bank account will have a signatory or a few signatories,
22:21
Speaker 2: so L Chapel Guzman will have exclusive right to use
22:26
Speaker 2: that money or his or his accountant whoever, and then
22:29
Speaker 2: he decides who gets the money, who doesn't get the money,
22:33
Speaker 2: what gets bought, what what doesn't get bought, And the
22:35
Speaker 2: bank is guarding the money for him no longer aren't men.
22:39
Speaker 2: Well what that means is that the bank is actually,
22:45
Speaker 2: whether wittingly or not, enforcing the the cartel's hierarchy, because
22:51
Speaker 2: he said, they say, we only recognize El Chapo Guzman
22:54
Speaker 2: as the rightful owner of this account, and we only
22:56
Speaker 2: take orders from him. So if he orders a payment
22:59
Speaker 2: or transfer, we do it. If some guy from the
23:03
Speaker 2: from the cartel does it, we don't. And so they
23:07
Speaker 2: actually anoint the head of the cartel, and by by
23:14
Speaker 2: virtue of giving him exclusive access to this money which
23:18
Speaker 2: is now being cleaned up by the bank, they make
23:22
Speaker 2: that This is a long explanation, but I'll get to
23:25
Speaker 2: the to to to your question. So it's it's actually
23:31
Speaker 2: pretty much the bank that is the ultimate godfather of
23:36
Speaker 2: those banking of those of those drug cartels. Otherwise, if
23:40
Speaker 2: the if the bank, if the if the cash was
23:42
Speaker 2: on a pile in a storage house, these cartels would
23:45
Speaker 2: splinter into a million rival groups almost instantly and largely
23:50
Speaker 2: eliminate themselves, and then they would be relatively easy target
23:53
Speaker 2: for law enforcement to mop up. As it is, that's
23:57
Speaker 2: nearly impossible. It's you know, you can get El Chapo Guzman,
24:00
Speaker 2: somebody will take his place, it doesn't matter. And that's
24:03
Speaker 2: somebody will always have signature rights at the bank. Okay,
24:08
Speaker 2: So why am I saying all this because I've been
24:11
Speaker 2: trying to write about this. I've been trying to kind
24:14
Speaker 2: of alert people. Look, it's not China, it's not Mexico,
24:16
Speaker 2: it's it's the banks. It's the banks. Always. You you
24:22
Speaker 2: cut the money laundering and you've splintered the cartels. That's
24:26
Speaker 2: that's how you destroy it. So at the top of
24:30
Speaker 2: the heap in Washington you hear China, China, China. That's
24:34
Speaker 2: the that's the refrain that doesn't go away. I mean
24:37
Speaker 2: it goes away sometimes with Russia, Russia, Russia, but then Iran, Iran, Iran.
24:42
Speaker 2: But it's always like that. It's always some obvious target
24:46
Speaker 2: that people can all identify because if you say banks, banks, banks,
24:50
Speaker 2: people think like, should I help? Should I hate my
24:54
Speaker 2: bank teller there? So it's like that. But then a
24:59
Speaker 2: few weeks ago I watched an interview and unfortunately I
25:03
Speaker 2: forget the man's name, I forget his office, and I
25:08
Speaker 2: forget what network it was on, but he was yeah, sorry,
25:15
Speaker 2: you know, but he was. He was one of the
25:18
Speaker 2: people I think in the DEA Drug Enforcement Agency or
25:23
Speaker 2: or one of those tobacco firearms, one of those things
25:27
Speaker 2: in the in the in the in the in the administration,
25:30
Speaker 2: and he was investigating the fentonyl crisis, and this was
25:34
Speaker 2: people will be able to find this because there was
25:37
Speaker 2: a major bust of a very large fentanyl lab in Canada.
25:45
Speaker 2: And as it turns out, this is the biggest fentonyl
25:48
Speaker 2: lab they ever busted. They ever knew that such a
25:52
Speaker 2: thing could exist. And then it turned out, we don't know,
25:54
Speaker 2: there may be more fentonal labs because a lot of
25:57
Speaker 2: these drugs come from out of Canada, you know, the
25:59
Speaker 2: same place with Prime ministers swears and also of allegiance
26:02
Speaker 2: to the King in London that place. And then as
26:08
Speaker 2: he was as he was answering questions of the of
26:11
Speaker 2: the interviewer and this is like I think it was
26:14
Speaker 2: on a on a mainstream media network, he started getting
26:19
Speaker 2: into the role of the banks. And so it was
26:22
Speaker 2: clear to me that people in the guts of the
26:25
Speaker 2: administration get it, they understand what they up against. Yeah,
26:29
Speaker 2: so again, you know, the whole big explanation was to
26:35
Speaker 2: to maybe clarify the difference between the facade where you
26:41
Speaker 2: have somebody at the top going China, China, China, because
26:45
Speaker 2: that kind of gets media all excited and it gets
26:48
Speaker 2: everybody's hair on fire, whereas people who are actually tasked
26:53
Speaker 2: with fixing problems have a much much better understanding of
26:57
Speaker 2: what they're up against and are probably formulating ways to
27:04
Speaker 2: deal with those problems.
27:06
Speaker 1: So all wars are bankers wars.
27:10
Speaker 2: It turns out that that's that's pretty much the way
27:13
Speaker 2: it is.
27:15
Speaker 1: That's including tariff wars.
27:19
Speaker 2: Oh well, you know the tiff war is no, it's
27:23
Speaker 2: not no, that's not a banker's war. That that war is.
27:31
Speaker 2: That war could be said to be the people's war. Maybe,
27:33
Speaker 2: you know, we don't.
27:35
Speaker 3: Explaining that a little bit because okay, so hang on
27:38
Speaker 3: just for just for clarity, because there's a lot of
27:41
Speaker 3: confusion around the pros and cons of tariffs. Would you
27:45
Speaker 3: mind just making that simple?
27:49
Speaker 2: Okay, So the obvious part, which is which is ostensibly
27:53
Speaker 2: the administration's intention is to penalize imports and to attract
28:00
Speaker 2: at manufacturing back home, to get the United States back
28:05
Speaker 2: on this American system of political economy. You know, we
28:08
Speaker 2: produce goods and services, and we trade those goods and services,
28:12
Speaker 2: and that slowly raises our prosperity back and makes America
28:17
Speaker 2: great again. But at the same time, you know, you're
28:22
Speaker 2: gonna trigger an inflation effect because as soon as you
28:27
Speaker 2: start imposing tariffs on foreign goods, the price of those
28:31
Speaker 2: goods is going to go up. And not only that,
28:33
Speaker 2: but even domestic producers of those goods are going to
28:36
Speaker 2: raise their prices because because now they can. You know,
28:39
Speaker 2: if you if you make European cars twenty five percent
28:43
Speaker 2: more expensive, the next day the American car manufacturers are
28:49
Speaker 2: going to be raising their prices because there's now this gap,
28:53
Speaker 2: there's so much more competitive, but they also want to
28:55
Speaker 2: make money, so and get you get inflation effect from
29:00
Speaker 2: that that's unavoidable. There's another very very important inflation effect
29:07
Speaker 2: with tariffs is that, you know, the way the system
29:12
Speaker 2: has been set up is that you have this NonStop
29:15
Speaker 2: and this is part of the you know, blowing of
29:18
Speaker 2: financialized bubble and creating this boom and bus. Sequence is
29:22
Speaker 2: that the monetary mass in the in the United States
29:26
Speaker 2: has grown much faster than the GDP. And you know,
29:31
Speaker 2: once upon a time when people talked about inflation, when
29:37
Speaker 2: when economy is talked about inflation, they were not talking
29:40
Speaker 2: about the price rise. They were talking about the growth
29:44
Speaker 2: of the money mass, the growth of the amount of
29:48
Speaker 2: money in circulation in an economy. And so we've had
29:52
Speaker 2: this monetary inflation for decades and it's growth faster than
30:00
Speaker 2: the GDP, but it hasn't produced consumer price inflation. And
30:06
Speaker 2: part of the reason there are two major pressure release
30:11
Speaker 2: valves in the economic system that keep the monetary inflation
30:18
Speaker 2: from creating consumer price inflation. One of them is the
30:22
Speaker 2: stock markets, the equity let's call it asset markets, So
30:27
Speaker 2: the money that goes into stocks and bonds doesn't circulate
30:33
Speaker 2: in the bricks and mortar economy, so it doesn't exert
30:36
Speaker 2: pressure on consumer prices. That's one big pressure release valve.
30:41
Speaker 2: The other one is foreign trade because you're importing goods
30:46
Speaker 2: from abroad. These goods keep the price pressures at home down,
30:56
Speaker 2: and the money that you spend on this good goes
30:59
Speaker 2: into the it goes into the accounts of exporting nations
31:08
Speaker 2: with the FED, so that money doesn't circulate in your
31:11
Speaker 2: domestic economy either, and thereby it doesn't pressure consumer prices.
31:19
Speaker 2: So so what we've had in the United States since
31:26
Speaker 2: since the nineteen eighties, you had the trade gap, the
31:34
Speaker 2: trade deficits going up and up and up and up.
31:38
Speaker 2: And I think that by February, by the time Trump
31:42
Speaker 2: came to office, they reached one hundred and thirty billion dollars.
31:48
Speaker 2: It was just going bigger and bigger and bigger and
31:50
Speaker 2: bigger and bigger. And then I think that even last
31:52
Speaker 2: two months of the last two months of Biden administration,
31:58
Speaker 2: the autopen administration, they went from about seventy eight billion
32:04
Speaker 2: dollars in trade deficits in November of twenty four two
32:10
Speaker 2: one hundred and thirty billion in January, which is completely unprecedented.
32:16
Speaker 2: It's a massive spike. It almost it almost feels like
32:20
Speaker 2: somebody did this on purpose to rig the British economy, gosh,
32:27
Speaker 2: to rig the American economy for demolition so that it
32:29
Speaker 2: could blow up on Trump's watch. But let's say that
32:35
Speaker 2: this trade deficit has reflected this draining of the money
32:43
Speaker 2: inflation from US consumer markets, so that you don't have
32:48
Speaker 2: consumer price inflation. Now, when you start to close that gap,
32:52
Speaker 2: when you start imposing tariffs and you start reducing this
32:56
Speaker 2: foreign trade in favor of domestic producers, well that's another
33:02
Speaker 2: another force that's going to exacerbate consumer price inflation. So
33:09
Speaker 2: you know that's they're going to get that effect. But again,
33:13
Speaker 2: to be fair, we have to we have to recognize
33:16
Speaker 2: that Trump didn't create this. All these imbalances have been
33:22
Speaker 2: gathering for several decades since the since the early nineteen eighties,
33:31
Speaker 2: and this was patently unsustainable. So you know, when something's unsustainable,
33:38
Speaker 2: it means it's going to blow up at some point.
33:42
Speaker 2: And so if Trump did nothing, this would all blow
33:46
Speaker 2: up anyway. So it seems to me that what Trump
33:49
Speaker 2: is doing is maybe start to drain this, drain the
33:58
Speaker 2: water from behind the damned, reduce the impact from it
34:03
Speaker 2: just bursting uncontrollably. Again, you know, it's it's it's risky,
34:08
Speaker 2: and we don't know how it's going to turn out.
34:09
Speaker 2: But you know, he started the process, but he didn't
34:14
Speaker 2: create the imbalances that made the process necessary.
34:18
Speaker 3: And this is just part of the media narrative. It
34:21
Speaker 3: appears that shijim Ping is giving him the finger.
34:29
Speaker 2: It does appear so. But again, you know, the the
34:32
Speaker 2: tariffs are the wrecking ball Trump is using to raise
34:41
Speaker 2: this free trade system to the ground. And I think
34:46
Speaker 2: that the Chinese would prefer the United States to be
34:50
Speaker 2: on the American system because the Chinese strategy. You know,
34:56
Speaker 2: the Chinese have positioned themselves as the global man. You
34:59
Speaker 2: have manufacturing hub. Well yes, but you know, they they
35:06
Speaker 2: want affluent consumers everywhere in the world they can buy
35:10
Speaker 2: their stuff, So they don't want people everywhere to be
35:15
Speaker 2: poor with no purchasing power. So for China, let's say
35:21
Speaker 2: a prosperous United States would be preferable, then a desperate
35:28
Speaker 2: United States. That's then a security concern. So I think
35:34
Speaker 2: that with a longer view, the Chinese might prefer the
35:42
Speaker 2: United States to move away from free trade or let's
35:47
Speaker 2: say some kind of a controlled free trade on a
35:50
Speaker 2: bilateral basis, away from this globalist wto open free trade
36:02
Speaker 2: where the United States has pretty much become a buyer
36:08
Speaker 2: of last resort, consuming crap from all over the place
36:12
Speaker 2: on credit, you know, so they consume, consume, consume, and
36:19
Speaker 2: their debts are just exploding. It's all on debt. You know,
36:24
Speaker 2: it's a system that's going to implode anyway at some point.
36:28
Speaker 2: You can't run credit card tab forever and keep buying
36:31
Speaker 2: junk from everywhere, and so this system has to be
36:36
Speaker 2: you know, the change, of course was overdue, and it
36:40
Speaker 2: was going to force by the markets on the United
36:44
Speaker 2: States in one way or another. And well, you know,
36:48
Speaker 2: Sergei Karaganov several months ago before Trump was inaugurated, he
36:53
Speaker 2: said that we see our role as helping the United
37:00
Speaker 2: States transition from being an empire to just being a
37:06
Speaker 2: major power in the least disruptive way possible. And I
37:13
Speaker 2: think that the Chinese seed the same way. And so
37:17
Speaker 2: I think between Trump and Jijinping there might be a
37:23
Speaker 2: disoriented war of words, but also a certain level of
37:29
Speaker 2: coordination and cooperation.
37:32
Speaker 3: So, Alex, are you suggesting that Trump is in favor
37:37
Speaker 3: of multipolarity?
37:39
Speaker 2: Oh yes, Oh that's one hundred percent, because that's go
37:42
Speaker 2: back to fifteen January of this year, when Marco Rubio
37:46
Speaker 2: was going through his confirmation hearing, he explicitly said we
37:51
Speaker 2: have to recognize the world is shifting to a multipolar architecture.
37:57
Speaker 2: And he also said that we see the post World
38:01
Speaker 2: War two global order as more than obsolete his words,
38:06
Speaker 2: and it's actually being used as a weapon against us
38:11
Speaker 2: his words. And so Mark Orubio didn't come up with
38:16
Speaker 2: that himself. Mark Rubia was stating the policy position of
38:22
Speaker 2: this administration, and that was an extremely important revelation there. Obviously,
38:28
Speaker 2: you know, the media kind of glossed over it because
38:31
Speaker 2: they would prefer we don't think about it too much,
38:35
Speaker 2: but yes, I think that they are definitely shifting in
38:40
Speaker 2: favor of multiplarity.
38:43
Speaker 3: So if they're shifting in favor of multiplarity, what does
38:46
Speaker 3: that mean for the US dollar internationally?
38:53
Speaker 2: I think that the US dollar is going to yield
38:58
Speaker 2: its role as a global reserve currency and global trade
39:03
Speaker 2: settlement currency to something else, which I think will partly
39:12
Speaker 2: you see, the architecture that it seems to me that
39:15
Speaker 2: the Chinese and the Russians are favoring is some kind
39:20
Speaker 2: of a future currency that's going to back by not
39:23
Speaker 2: only gold, but other commodities, and then it's going to
39:27
Speaker 2: be a basket in which many countries will participate in
39:37
Speaker 2: proportion of their contribution to that basket of commodities. So
39:43
Speaker 2: you know, the United States is a great producer of commodities.
39:48
Speaker 2: It's a very resource rich nation, so it will have
39:52
Speaker 2: a major role in that system. This kind of thing
39:57
Speaker 2: has been formulated in a number of papers. I read
40:04
Speaker 2: a few published by by Russian I don't know, think tanks, academics,
40:11
Speaker 2: people who are people who are working on this on
40:14
Speaker 2: this problem matter. And I think that this too is
40:18
Speaker 2: part of Trump's plan because one of the big vulnerabilities
40:22
Speaker 2: for the United States is that there's about an estimated
40:27
Speaker 2: thirty two or thirty four I forget exactly trillion dollars
40:33
Speaker 2: worth of US dollar denominated assets sitting owned by foreign interests.
40:43
Speaker 2: And this is this is a real source of vulnerability
40:47
Speaker 2: because at a given moment, if they all decide to
40:51
Speaker 2: dump their US dollar assets, that could that could you know,
40:53
Speaker 2: that could be a tsunami that hits the US economy
40:56
Speaker 2: and there and their stock markets and the dollars. So
41:02
Speaker 2: part of the game with the tariff force is also
41:05
Speaker 2: going to deflate that dam, you know, drain, drain some
41:10
Speaker 2: water from behind that dam to reduce that pressure. And
41:14
Speaker 2: then I think, you know, there's been there's been talk
41:17
Speaker 2: about maybe setting up a dual currency system in the
41:22
Speaker 2: United States where you have a foreign dollar and a
41:27
Speaker 2: domestic dollar. So you know, the domestic dollar is used
41:31
Speaker 2: by you know, people to transact their business at home,
41:36
Speaker 2: and the foreign dollars used for foreign trade. And this
41:40
Speaker 2: is this is the model that the Chinese have, and
41:44
Speaker 2: this model has insulated China from external shocks. And you know,
41:51
Speaker 2: in the last forty years, China hasn't really you know,
41:54
Speaker 2: they had they had financial crisis in the sense that
41:59
Speaker 2: you know, they have this real estate, they had this
42:02
Speaker 2: residential real estate bubble that burst. But if you remember
42:07
Speaker 2: in nineteen ninety seven, when there was a massive East
42:12
Speaker 2: Asian financial crisis that pretty much engulfed all the East
42:17
Speaker 2: Asian tiger economies, China went unscathed. And this is exactly why,
42:25
Speaker 2: because they are because they have this dual currency, their
42:29
Speaker 2: domestic economy was not impacted. And so I think that
42:33
Speaker 2: it makes sense that the United States should maybe follow
42:36
Speaker 2: the same model again to insulate themselves from external shock
42:40
Speaker 2: to which they're very vulnerable. So that might be, you know,
42:45
Speaker 2: I don't know, Maybe I'm giving the administration too much credit,
42:52
Speaker 2: maybe I overestimate them. But knowing the nature of the game,
43:01
Speaker 2: I know that if they were thinking along these lines,
43:06
Speaker 2: they would not be able to say it out loud explicitly.
43:10
Speaker 2: They would have to work on this covertly. So we're
43:14
Speaker 2: obliged to guess anyway. So you know, I'll take the
43:18
Speaker 2: luxury of I'll take the freedom of guessing wrong, but
43:22
Speaker 2: I you know, if you guess otherwise, it's still a guess.
43:26
Speaker 3: You don't know, And Okay, So ultimately, a friendship between
43:32
Speaker 3: America and China is the best outcome, that's the win win.
43:36
Speaker 3: There's no point in them competing. So what they have
43:39
Speaker 3: to do therefore is push ahead with the multipolarity.
43:43
Speaker 1: Is that correct?
43:45
Speaker 2: I think that's absolutely clear, and you know, they they
43:50
Speaker 2: need to there's going to be competition. Obviously, there's going
43:55
Speaker 2: to be some rivalry in some sectors, but there's also
43:59
Speaker 2: a great deal of complementarity.
44:02
Speaker 1: Is that a word it is now?
44:06
Speaker 2: Yeah, So I officially inaugurate that way they're they're they're
44:11
Speaker 2: compliment there's really confused there. You know, there are areas
44:21
Speaker 2: where they where their economists could be complement complementary, complimentary, complementary, Yeah,
44:27
Speaker 2: I don't know if complementarity is quite it. That really
44:31
Speaker 2: tilted my brain. So and so they can you know,
44:36
Speaker 2: they can cultivate that they can develop that they can
44:41
Speaker 2: trade with one another. There would be a lot of
44:43
Speaker 2: stuff that that that the Chinese would want to import
44:46
Speaker 2: from the United States. There's a lot of things that
44:49
Speaker 2: the Americans would like to import from China. There's a
44:53
Speaker 2: lot of things that they could develop together to trade
44:55
Speaker 2: with other parts of the rest of the world. So,
44:59
Speaker 2: you know, there's no reason to always default to hostility.
45:04
Speaker 2: And well you know, if you are competing as we
45:07
Speaker 2: just have to take the Tonya harding approach to competition
45:11
Speaker 2: and and and kneecap you and and wage war. That's
45:17
Speaker 2: you know, that's that's the dumbest approach to to to things.
45:21
Speaker 2: And I hope that that that cannot happen overnight. You know,
45:26
Speaker 2: there's certain modality of modalities of behavior have become hardwired.
45:34
Speaker 2: There's people who have adopted a certain school of thoughts,
45:39
Speaker 2: certain approach to thinking, and have been you know, in
45:43
Speaker 2: the guts of the system for decades. They're not going
45:47
Speaker 2: to change overnight. But if you're talking to the people,
45:50
Speaker 2: and so if Trump and his people are talking to
45:54
Speaker 2: the Russians, they're talking to the Chinese, you know, little
45:59
Speaker 2: by little they can cooperate, they can coordinate, they can
46:06
Speaker 2: define areas of cooperation, they can forge bilateral agreements that
46:13
Speaker 2: are going to work for both sides and then gradually
46:16
Speaker 2: build on that. And then you know, it obviously has
46:20
Speaker 2: to include cultural exchange so that you preempt the you know,
46:25
Speaker 2: the xenophobia, the mutual fear of the two sides, and
46:31
Speaker 2: then you know, you can you can move the world
46:33
Speaker 2: towards peaceful cooperation and prosperity. It's not a fantasy. If
46:41
Speaker 2: you read Henry Carey's Harmony of Interest, that's practically exactly
46:45
Speaker 2: what he says. The American system is moving the world
46:49
Speaker 2: towards permanent peace and prosperity, whereas the British system of
46:55
Speaker 2: free trade practically requires a state of permanent warfare.
47:04
Speaker 3: That's so interesting because that goes against the free market
47:11
Speaker 3: arguments from people like Rothbaud and Mesus and High, et cetera.
47:18
Speaker 2: Yeah, it certainly does. And I know that there are
47:21
Speaker 2: many people there who are who are very committed to
47:29
Speaker 2: the to the ideas of the Austrian school of economics.
47:35
Speaker 2: I was one of them, but I've grown I've grown
47:38
Speaker 2: convinced that actually Austrian school of economics is control a
47:42
Speaker 2: position because there are too many there are too many,
47:47
Speaker 2: very obvious flaws in their theory. I'll give you an example.
47:55
Speaker 2: It's practically taken as axiomatic that everything privately owned and
48:01
Speaker 2: privately managed is far superior to anything state owned and
48:05
Speaker 2: state state state managed. Well, if you look around, it's
48:11
Speaker 2: very obvious that this is simply not true. I'll give
48:18
Speaker 2: you I'll give you a simple example. You know, because
48:22
Speaker 2: I grew up in former Yugoslavia, and I grew up
48:26
Speaker 2: in Croatia, which was one of the six republics comprising
48:30
Speaker 2: former Yugoslavia. UH it was a socialist country, so I saw,
48:35
Speaker 2: I saw the transition from the socialist economy to the
48:39
Speaker 2: capitalist economy. We went along with everything. We just pressed it.
48:43
Speaker 2: Basically took Western legal code and copy pasted into our
48:47
Speaker 2: own legal code. Everything become privatized, and so one many
48:53
Speaker 2: of these many of these things like water utilities, trash uh,
49:00
Speaker 2: trash collection, it all went to private owners, and it
49:05
Speaker 2: all post postal service. It all deteriorated so radically that
49:12
Speaker 2: it's it's glaringly obvious to everyone. You know, our cities
49:16
Speaker 2: used to be very clean, and the technology of taking
49:21
Speaker 2: people's trash and removing it was something that we took
49:25
Speaker 2: for granted. As far as I'm concerned. It was just magic.
49:28
Speaker 2: But you put your trash in the dumpster and it
49:32
Speaker 2: went away and that was it, and the city was clean. Well,
49:37
Speaker 2: now it's privatized and trash is everywhere. The cities are
49:42
Speaker 2: no longer clean. It's it's it stinks because you know,
49:47
Speaker 2: in order to boost their profits, they reduced the number
49:52
Speaker 2: of runs they do. So it went from trash being
49:54
Speaker 2: collected every day, which is what you want to do
49:59
Speaker 2: if you want to keep your cities clean, they do
50:03
Speaker 2: it once a week instead of picking it up in
50:06
Speaker 2: many spots. They've reduced a number of spots, so they
50:09
Speaker 2: actually kind of dumped the work of taking trash on people.
50:15
Speaker 2: So now instead of dumping your trash ten meters from
50:19
Speaker 2: your house, you have to walk two hundred meters with
50:22
Speaker 2: your trash so that they can collect it in just
50:26
Speaker 2: in fewer locations. It makes sense from their point of
50:30
Speaker 2: view they want to make profits, but it doesn't make
50:32
Speaker 2: sense from society. And then because they collect the trash
50:36
Speaker 2: only once a week, what happens is that this trash
50:41
Speaker 2: kind of rots there, and in the summer it's a
50:45
Speaker 2: serious problem because every two hundred meters as you walk
50:49
Speaker 2: around the city, and this includes tourist resorts, it smells
50:53
Speaker 2: that there's a rotting corpse somewhere. Well, this begins to
50:59
Speaker 2: become a problem because it attracts rats, and so you
51:05
Speaker 2: you you know, you you're creating the risk of very
51:12
Speaker 2: high external costs because at some point with all these
51:16
Speaker 2: rats and cats and stray dogs and fleas and other
51:22
Speaker 2: and maggots and flies. You're actually creating conditions for the
51:27
Speaker 2: outbreak of things that we thought we overcame, like black plague,
51:32
Speaker 2: like like like you know, you can create serious problems
51:37
Speaker 2: just so that the trash corporations could be profitable and
51:41
Speaker 2: maximize their profit so that their share price could go
51:45
Speaker 2: up sky high. Versus when this was stayed owned and
51:48
Speaker 2: state managed, the cities were clean, none of these problems
51:52
Speaker 2: because the same thing with water. We took clean water
51:55
Speaker 2: out of the faust for granted. Well, now every so
51:58
Speaker 2: often they tell it, oh, you know, you have boiled water.
52:01
Speaker 2: In many cities, the water looks like the water in
52:03
Speaker 2: the United States, you know, rather than being clean, it's
52:06
Speaker 2: kind of brownish, yellowish and cloudy, and people are reporting
52:12
Speaker 2: health problems. This is all private enterprise that has degraded
52:19
Speaker 2: the system. Our post office under socialism used to be
52:24
Speaker 2: like Federal Express on its best day, only super cheap.
52:30
Speaker 2: Now it's a disaster. Sometimes parcels come empty, somebody opens them,
52:35
Speaker 2: tastes of stuff. A letter from major cities travel three weeks,
52:39
Speaker 2: whereas they used to travel less than a day under socialism,
52:44
Speaker 2: and on and on and on and on.
52:46
Speaker 1: What is the ultimate win win.
52:48
Speaker 3: No tariffs anyway, or tariffs in various geysers.
52:56
Speaker 2: I would say probably tariffs in various guyses, because you
53:00
Speaker 2: want international trade. You don't want a patchword of autarchies
53:07
Speaker 2: around the world like North Korea that you know, everybody
53:10
Speaker 2: has to be completely self sufficient in everything. You know,
53:14
Speaker 2: there's always going to be some things that the Americans
53:16
Speaker 2: are going to be making that's better than anywhere in
53:19
Speaker 2: the world. And there's always going to be things that
53:23
Speaker 2: the French are going to make that's going to be
53:25
Speaker 2: and we're gonna want those things, you know. I h
53:29
Speaker 2: one of the things on my Christmas list would be
53:31
Speaker 2: to own a Steinway piano, which are made in New
53:34
Speaker 2: York and they're you know, they're they're just like one
53:37
Speaker 2: of those things like the Rolls Royce of pianostocasters for
53:46
Speaker 2: guitars exactly. Britain makes the world's best Hi fi systems,
53:51
Speaker 2: you know, amplifiers and and and things like this, and
53:55
Speaker 2: so you're you're always wanted because it's not just they
54:00
Speaker 2: to put together big machines that produce these things. There's
54:04
Speaker 2: a lot of knowledge, a lot of experience, a lot
54:07
Speaker 2: of like artisanal know how that goes into producing these
54:14
Speaker 2: top level things. And that's true everywhere. You know, French wines,
54:19
Speaker 2: Italian garments, clothes and jewelry, shoes, you know, apparel. Every
54:27
Speaker 2: country has certain things that they're really good at because
54:31
Speaker 2: not only do they make them, they cultivate generational know
54:37
Speaker 2: how that you know, advances and refines itself and then
54:43
Speaker 2: you know, it turns into something that you would prefer
54:46
Speaker 2: to have then over some kind of a forced domestic
54:50
Speaker 2: produced alternative to it. So I think that we're going
54:56
Speaker 2: to always have global trade, but you're going to also
54:59
Speaker 2: want to pretend domestic producers of other things. You don't
55:02
Speaker 2: want to just allow the place to be flooded every
55:08
Speaker 2: so often and everything raised to the ground.
55:11
Speaker 3: But isn't let me use that free market argument. Isn't
55:15
Speaker 3: choice the ultimate freedom?
55:23
Speaker 2: Yes, I think that stage.
55:25
Speaker 1: Let me let me well, sorry, let me rephrase that.
55:28
Speaker 3: You say the market gets flooded with let's pretend Chinese crap,
55:32
Speaker 3: but people are choosing to buy that.
55:38
Speaker 2: Yes, and no, because it would be it would be
55:42
Speaker 2: like saying people are choosing to buy cheap food. So
55:46
Speaker 2: everybody buys cheap food, it's it's they're choosing it because
55:54
Speaker 2: it's cheap, and they're also choosing it because they can't
55:57
Speaker 2: afford more expensive stuff. You know, if people could buy
56:02
Speaker 2: expensive seafood, food and champagne every day and have it
56:05
Speaker 2: on their table, I think that they would choose that.
56:08
Speaker 2: And the fact that they buy, you know, large bottles
56:12
Speaker 2: of coca cola and and and and cheap bread with
56:16
Speaker 2: white flour is because they can't they can't do better.
56:22
Speaker 2: And I think that it's you know, as you as
56:26
Speaker 2: you raise a community's prosperity and standards of living, they're
56:30
Speaker 2: going to make different choices. And I think that we
56:34
Speaker 2: all prefer quality products over cheap crap. And I think
56:41
Speaker 2: that if we could afford quality products, everybody would have
56:44
Speaker 2: a Steinway piano and the and the and the Fender
56:47
Speaker 2: stratocaster instead of you know, some cheap Chinese alternative to this.
56:52
Speaker 3: I just want to say that I have a Fender
56:55
Speaker 3: Strata coster from the United States.
56:57
Speaker 2: There you go.
56:58
Speaker 3: Yeah, Is the terraff war that we're currently seeing an
57:05
Speaker 3: attempt to bring sovereignty to America?
57:10
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think so. I think so, but again, you know,
57:15
Speaker 2: we'll see where it goes. You see, I have a
57:21
Speaker 2: hard time with the idea that Trump in his cabinet
57:28
Speaker 2: are just clowns careening from one crisis to the next
57:34
Speaker 2: without a plan. Because if that were the case, they
57:39
Speaker 2: would never have even started the tariff. For you know,
57:43
Speaker 2: if they did this, they did it for some reason.
57:48
Speaker 2: So you're forced to try to understand what could be
57:50
Speaker 2: the reason, what's worth the attacks and political pressures that
57:57
Speaker 2: they must have known this would this would draw on them.
58:04
Speaker 2: And I think that, you know, the the make American
58:11
Speaker 2: Great Again slogan is probably more important than just a
58:17
Speaker 2: bumper sticker sticker slogan for election purposes. I think maybe
58:24
Speaker 2: that's as important to them as build back Better is
58:28
Speaker 2: to the Davos set. You know, there's a there's like
58:30
Speaker 2: a there's like a whole agenda, an intended agenda, you know,
58:39
Speaker 2: something that that you intend to accomplish. So you're not
58:47
Speaker 2: just shooting off the hip randomly. You're actually trying to
58:51
Speaker 2: take the system somewhere. And so even you know, like
58:55
Speaker 2: even if very serious mistakes are made, even if even
58:59
Speaker 2: if the strategy ultimately fails, because it could, it's very
59:06
Speaker 2: hard for me to reconcile this with the idea that, oh,
59:14
Speaker 2: they're just a big bunch of clowns who have no
59:16
Speaker 2: idea what the hell they're doing.
59:19
Speaker 1: And by extension, is this a good thing for bricks?
59:25
Speaker 2: Oh, yes, absolutely absolutely, because you see, my conviction is
59:31
Speaker 2: that the most important struggle in the world today is
59:36
Speaker 2: the struggle for the United States. Because if the United
59:41
Speaker 2: States aligns with the multipolar world and becomes a part
59:50
Speaker 2: of it, you know, a major part of it, but
59:53
Speaker 2: a part of it, you know. I think it was
59:55
Speaker 2: Larry Johnson in one of our conversations who said that
59:58
Speaker 2: the choice before the United States now is either to
1:00:03
Speaker 2: be the world's policemen or to be the polite guest
1:00:08
Speaker 2: at the at the global banquet. And so that that
1:00:11
Speaker 2: is really the choice. Are you going to join the
1:00:14
Speaker 2: multipolar integrations and be part of it, or are you
1:00:18
Speaker 2: going to force your order on everybody else at the
1:00:21
Speaker 2: at the you know, with the with the gun to
1:00:27
Speaker 2: everybody's head. And so for the multipolar integrations, having the
1:00:32
Speaker 2: United States become part of them and become that polite
1:00:36
Speaker 2: guest at the table is a huge win because it
1:00:40
Speaker 2: also takes the United States away from the globalist forces
1:00:44
Speaker 2: that want the United States to be their enforcement arm
1:00:47
Speaker 2: with you know, a thousand military bases everywhere around the world,
1:00:51
Speaker 2: telling everybody you do as we say, or we're going
1:00:54
Speaker 2: to hurt you. Sending these carriers, strike groups and bombing
1:00:57
Speaker 2: the crap out of everybody will be a much much
1:01:00
Speaker 2: better world. And we see how desperate the other side
1:01:04
Speaker 2: is to keep the United States on their side at
1:01:09
Speaker 2: the moment, concretely, to be the guaranteur of security for
1:01:15
Speaker 2: the Ukraine's government, which is you know, the idea is
1:01:20
Speaker 2: that the United States does all the heavy lifting and
1:01:23
Speaker 2: all the dirty work, while the you know, European banking
1:01:29
Speaker 2: families continue to enjoy enjoy their privileges.
1:01:34
Speaker 3: But then this also by extension, means that the US
1:01:38
Speaker 3: would become less favorable to NATO.
1:01:43
Speaker 2: Yes, absolutely, that's that's a given. The NATO is the
1:01:50
Speaker 2: creation of this of this globalist set, it's its whole history.
1:01:59
Speaker 2: Is is very very suspect. You know, we didn't know
1:02:02
Speaker 2: these things, but we know that NATO was created I
1:02:07
Speaker 2: think in nineteen forty eight or nineteen forty nine, right
1:02:11
Speaker 2: out of practically you know, the small the smoke from
1:02:18
Speaker 2: World War Two was still smoldering when Winston Churchill declared
1:02:24
Speaker 2: the Soviet Union the enemy of the West. That was
1:02:26
Speaker 2: in nineteen forty six. It was his Fulton speech in
1:02:30
Speaker 2: front of Harry Truman. And ever since, the West has
1:02:36
Speaker 2: been moving pieces into place to create this Cold War
1:02:45
Speaker 2: between the West and the Soviet Union. And you know,
1:02:50
Speaker 2: the NATO has just kind of grown by accretion around that,
1:02:57
Speaker 2: and the United States has always been the main military, political, diplomatic,
1:03:02
Speaker 2: and financial muscle behind that. So if the United States
1:03:06
Speaker 2: withdraws from Europe, that whole thing, you know, collapses into nothing. Look,
1:03:12
Speaker 2: I could turn out to be wrong, but you know,
1:03:15
Speaker 2: everybody who is opining on this is guessing yes, and
1:03:22
Speaker 2: don't We don't exactly know. You know, I heard the
1:03:24
Speaker 2: other day somebody whose opinion I really respect, opine on
1:03:31
Speaker 2: this very negatively, and they were saying that, oh, you know,
1:03:36
Speaker 2: this is putting the independence of central Bank in jeopardy,
1:03:42
Speaker 2: and and I'm thinking, like, how is that a bad thing?
1:03:45
Speaker 2: Excuse me? Why is why is the independence of central
1:03:51
Speaker 2: bank all of a sudden the sacred cow that we
1:03:54
Speaker 2: shouldn't we shouldn't question. You see. That's that's what I
1:03:58
Speaker 2: was referring to. That's been a certain school of thought
1:04:04
Speaker 2: has become entrenched in our society to the extent that
1:04:09
Speaker 2: many people now almost by knee jerk reaction, default to
1:04:14
Speaker 2: the opinions they formed a long time ago, and until
1:04:21
Speaker 2: they questioned them, they will. They will often default also
1:04:27
Speaker 2: to the wrong conclusion and then invalid analysis. And I'm
1:04:33
Speaker 2: you know, I grew up in Communism, so I became
1:04:37
Speaker 2: very comfortable early on in my life with questioning absolutely everything,
1:04:44
Speaker 2: because up until I was seventeen eighteen years of age,
1:04:50
Speaker 2: I was taught about communism, about Marxism, the greatest thing
1:04:55
Speaker 2: ever since Slice bred right. And then it turns out
1:04:59
Speaker 2: the whole thing was a lie. The whole thing was
1:05:02
Speaker 2: like kind of contrived in order to uphold the communist ideology,
1:05:12
Speaker 2: but every part of it was flawed or outright falls.
1:05:19
Speaker 2: And so I take the same approach with Western ideology,
1:05:23
Speaker 2: with Austrian school of economics, with Milton Friedman's economics, with
1:05:27
Speaker 2: Keynesian I mean, with the whole political everything. I don't
1:05:31
Speaker 2: take anything for granted, and so I try to avoid
1:05:36
Speaker 2: to default to these opinions that stem from assumptions that
1:05:43
Speaker 2: maybe themselves are not valid. But that doesn't mean that
1:05:48
Speaker 2: I'm right. I could turn out to be wrong as well.
1:05:51
Speaker 1: How can I follow your work?
1:05:55
Speaker 2: There are many ways, but three platforms where I'm the
1:05:58
Speaker 2: most actives active is on x My handle is at
1:06:04
Speaker 2: naked Hedgy. I have a personal publication on substack called
1:06:09
Speaker 2: Alex Kraner's Trend Compass. No, sorry, Alex Craner's Substack. And
1:06:16
Speaker 2: then I have a news daily newsletters for a daily
1:06:21
Speaker 2: newsletter for investors and traders called is System trend Compass.
1:06:26
Speaker 2: So that's that's three places where I'm most active. Then
1:06:30
Speaker 2: there's a company website and blah blah blah, but these
1:06:35
Speaker 2: three are the easiest places to find me.
1:06:39
Speaker 3: Well, on that note, let me dride again. On that note,
1:06:42
Speaker 3: Alex Kraner, thank you for joining me in the trenches
1:06:45
Speaker 2: Jeremy, great pleasure, thank you for having me, and warm
1:06:49
Speaker 2: greetings to your viewers and listen