A genuine split — 8 shows land on three different arguments, with no consensus in the arena.
Can open up different markets. There needs to be a lot more work there, yeah? You know, like when I look at somebody who actually produces, like manufactures things in the US, I'm like, you must be a masochist. Like, how the paperwork, the lawsuits, like, why, you know? Give me those things through the lens of economic force. >> better. So, you've got Trump tariffs as economic force. What are they? How are they playing out? Regulations as economic force. Uh I don't think Americans understand what a burden economically regulations are. So, they've heard, like, oh, deregulate and that helps somehow free up growth, but they don't understand how or why. So, walk us through those two things as forces. All right. So, tariffs, okay, on their own, a tariff is a sales tax. It's a bad thing. If you don't like the government, you shouldn't like tariffs. However, they have two strategic goals, which is what Trump has been pushing. One of them is to get other countries to lower their trade barriers, which are enormous. Like, Canada, for example, they tax milk like at 94%. It's just goofy. Um there's a bunch of Canadian banks in the US. Uh you can't have any American banks in Canada, right? So, other countries have been very naughty. Uh we've let them get away with it. Uh so, that's one goal. The other goal is to reshore production. So, part of the reason why Trump's been yanking tariffs up and down, you know, critics say, "Well, you know, it's got to be predictable or who can make plans?" And I think that's actually intentional. He wants it to be difficult and painful to to like produce cars in Germany uh for export to the US, right? He wants them to just give up and say, "You know what? Screw it. I'm just going to build it in Alabama." Which is
Codeben to unlock 15% off bulland branch.com/ben. exclusions apply. One, we need to wreck China economically. Wreck them. That means, yes, tariffs, of course. It means we need to crack down on our trade with China. But in order to do that, we have to cut better trade deals with our allies in the region. If you're going to make people choose between China and us, we have to offer a carrot to our friends and a stick to our enemies. It also means we have to radically lower our spending. We can't just keep selling our bonds to China. We cannot make the future of the country dependent on China holding our debt because that means anytime they want to hurt us, they just sell our debt into the open market and destroy our capacity to borrow. It means that we do have to reshore important manufacturing to countries that are not China. That doesn't mean all the way back home, which is very expensive sometimes. It means you have to go to allies. Sometimes you got to manufacture in say India. We need to draw closer to India. We need to go after the countries that trade in necessary valuables with China. We need to secure our supply lines with regard to rare earth minerals, for example. The United States is the economic gorilla on planet Earth. And we ought to throw our weight around with regard to China. This notion that we thrive and China thrives, China has played the markets against us. China has used a certain opening of their economy in order to maximize their own leverage and power. We need to reverse that. Second, we must rebuild the American military. This is not optional. This is necessary. The president has asked in the new National Defense Authorization Act, he has asked for a significant upgrade in our military capacity, including with regard to things like patriots and
The president can impose tariffs or restrictions on imports deemed to threaten national security based on commerce department investigations. So, they may go to this. Can you also go to section 301 tariffs? Section 301 tariffs. >> These are the other tools. >> Yeah, these are the other tools. >> The trade act of 1974. >> Yeah. So, this is 1974. are ongoing duties imposed by the USR on Chinese imports often 7 and a half or 25% or higher to counteract unfair trade practices like intellectual property theft as of early 2026 these tariffs remain in effect and some rates increasingly uh increasing on strategy sectors such as So the biggest concern with the tariffs you know he said well we got all these deals that we're doing with tariffs and it was like small countries like nobody everybody wants to hear the one country and that's what China. So what things he can use against China? There is plenty of stuff to use the threat of national security against China. Adam, your thoughts. So I'm going to give a different perspective because obviously we're not happy about this and we were all fan of what's going on with the tariffs and what everything's going on with Lutnik, but let me try to turn that frown upside down because Trump's a brilliant marketer. So let I'm thinking of ways he can turn, you know, lemons into lemonade. So, do you think that there's people on the left cheering for this right now? >> Of course. >> Absolutely. >> So, let's think of some ways that he can combat that. You call me a fascist, you call me a dictator, you you're doing no king's protest. Well, here's exhibit A
Up, is because we have too big of a trade deficit with the rest of the world. meaning we import more than we export from all these different countries. Now, I've explained the reason for that. That doesn't mean anyone is necessarily ripping us off. That could just be the reality that we have a lot more buying power. Consumer uh uh purchases are larger here. And so then we're importing more to service that. But if his big priority is closing that gap, then that would be the deficit narrowing the trade deficit. But he posted an article on True Social seemingly believing this was a compliment to himself announcing that the US trade deficits widening writing US trade deficit widens. He posted this by the most in nearly 34 years and then links to this Reuters article. The US trade deficit widened by the most in nearly 34 years in November amid a surge in capital goods imports likely driven by AI investment boom which could prompt economists to trim their economic growth estimates for the fourth quarter. So Trump after insisting that his primary justification, do you remember the the um what did he call liberation day tariffs that he announced and they made that weird formula that was saying this is us getting justice for how we've been ripped off and really it was just uh taking the trade deficit with a certain country and then turning that into a percentage that we were going to tariff them with. Meaning the deficit regardless of the context for is it a small country that couldn't possibly
So, it made sense to erect a tariff wall to try and preserve our auto industry. What makes no sense is to erect the tariff wall and then behind it keep everything the same. The only rational reason for building the wall of tariffs would be to spend the next 3 years busily incentivizing and building an American EV industry that can compete. And there's no reason that it can't. I mean, in fact, these cars are actually relatively easy to figure out how to build because they have so few moving parts. Detroit's capable of this, but we're just >> losing a lot of money trying it right now. >> They lost a lot of money because we changed policy. There's no uh uh there's no technological um barrier to us doing. It's not like the Chinese have some, you know, incredible technological insight that we haven't come up with. >> No, they have manufacturing ecosystems that we don't have. >> That's right. They've done that hard work to get that done. But we are completely capable of doing that. You know, that was really what the IRA envisioned. I mean, the IRA, among other things, one of the worst named pieces of legislation in American history, was really, you could have called it the, you know, trying to catch up to China Finally Act, and that would have been a much clearer name for it. >> But that doesn't quite answer the the question behind it, which is what should the relationship, what should the orientation towards China be? Look, in in Washington right now, not just under Trump, but this is true for Democrats,
For paying the tariff. The foreign country isn't, the foreign manufacturer isn't. So that's who ultimately will pay the tariff here. Um, I mean, I guess it's theoretically possible, you know, some foreign entity might make an argument that they were damaged by these tariffs because they sold fewer of the product than they would have otherwise. And maybe they'll have some claim against the United States for that. I doubt it. Uh, I think that the people will will the people who actually have a legitimate claim are the people who paid these tariffs and then are entitled to refunds. To me, this seems like the the biggest losers will be our poor lawyers at the Department of Justice who are already stretched too thin. Um, who now are going to have to litigate all these claims on who deserves a tariff and who doesn't. But Trump is going to try to argue that he has the ability still under different statutes to levy tariffs. Will that help? It might help him going forward. Will it help him with any of these back tariffs that he's already issued under the statute they've said he can't use? I I don't think that'll happen. That'll that'll help backfill anything here, right? Those those tariffs are unlawful and they they weren't imposed under the other authorities. And I mean, the there's a reason he used the emergency statute. It provides there are a lot fewer hoops in in terms of imposing some sort of tariff or uh bar on imports using the EA. Uh but there, you know, there are other authorities. I mean there are product specific authorities that he has that allow him to like bar imports of specific or tariff imports of steel for instance or cars. Um and there are also nation specific authorities that he has outside of the IEPA that he could do
A tariff is a tax. It is a fine. It is a fee. Which means if you are going to purchase a product from a different country, you have to pay an additional in this case 50% in order to import it. Which means the price all of a sudden has gone up to produce that product. So now you as a business have to either pay that additional 50% and then either pass that cost down to the customer, meaning raise your prices, or shrink your margins and make less profits. Or option number two is you have to find an alternative way to produce the products which means maybe you make it in a different country or you make it in the United States which still will probably cost you more money than it did before. This is where again people believe that we're going to see more inflation because if the prices of things go up well that contributes to higher costs for people. Now the reason why this Canadian tariff is so important is because this could be the start of something bigger. And I made a video about this a couple of weeks ago because a couple of weeks ago, President Trump refused to renew the US MCA, which is the trade agreement between the United States, Mexico, and Canada. And what the trade agreement did was essentially it would allow the United States, Mexico, and Canada to sell goods to each other without having to worry about tariffs on certain items. And President Trump said that we, the United States, were losing in this trade agreement, so we did not want to renew it. And now, President Trump has come back and has increased
Ship it is north south. And it's a very unique heavy oil. So we accept uh unfortunately and for now a price discount on the oil we send you which can translate into more jobs and paychecks but also lower energy price. You've got $5 a gallon right now in lots of places in America. Uh you're buying I want to produce more so we can sell 2 million more barrels of Canadian oil into the US market. And then there's there's housing. You've got huge housing pressures on young people. They can't afford a place to live. We're the biggest supplier of of lumber for home building uh of any country that imports to the United States, exports to the United States. Uh we've got very low cost but high quality softwood lumber we could be shipping or the best truck, the bestselling truck in America for 45 years now is the Ford series. It's aluminum. It's a it's a militaryra aluminum body. You guys can't make enough aluminum here. you don't have enough boxite or electricity to to convert it into aluminum and aluminum. You get your your aluminum from us. A tariff does not bring the production to America. It raises the price of the aluminum and therefore the F- series truck. Get rid of that tariff. You lower taxes. You lower the cost of an F-ser truck for the for the miner in Appalachia or the electrician in Ohio. And and that's just on the affordability side. There's a lot we can do with our minerals to make the continent a hell of a lot safer as well. So, I think it's in America's interest to to come towards a a tariff-free deal and and trade freely
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