WarRoom Battleground EP 743： Tariffs Building Productivity; Truth Behind US Energy Production
Episode Stats
Words per Minute
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Summary
In this episode of The War Room, I'm joined by Josh Hammer of Newsweek to talk about the mainstream media's silence on the Trump administration's trade war with China, and why it's not just a trade war, it's a war against them.
Transcript
00:00:07.720
Pray for our enemies, because we're going medieval on these people.
00:00:12.920
I got a free shot at all these networks lying about the people.
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I know you try to do everything in the world to stop that,
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And where do people like that go to share the big lie?
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I wish in my soul, I wish that any of these people had a conscience.
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Ask yourself, what is my task and what is my purpose?
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If that answer is to save my country, this country will be saved.
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Back when they put Stephen K. Bannon in prison for absolutely no good reason.
00:01:06.780
What they tried to do to trump Bannon, Navarro, what they did do to them.
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It's not over, as Bannon just told us for the last hour.
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China is not going to give us the keys, as he always says.
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And in the midst of this, it's just shocking that the U.S.
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mainstream media press corps, et cetera, is coming to the defense of I don't know who.
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It's just stunning as I read the headlines screaming in here.
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He's tariffing the rest of the world to get American manufacturing back,
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to increase productivity, to make sure the American worker gets some pay for once in 40 years.
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You don't hear from any of the think tanks who are on, as Natalie showed us in the last segment,
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Go check and see where they're all funded from.
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And then all of a sudden, you see why the mainstream economists won't touch any of it?
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Because their universities are all funded by these major foundations.
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So back when Steve was in prison, I got to host the show.
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And one of my favorite guests always was Josh Hammer with Newsweek.
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And so I wanted him on to give us some context on this mainstream media framing.
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Is it the Democrat Marxist wing of the Democrat Party where the liberals are AWOL?
00:03:03.500
Look, I think it's a combination of all the above.
00:03:05.740
I mean, I think it's basically all the actors that you just named.
00:03:08.220
I think often about what Andrew Breitbart, the late great Andrew Breitbart, what he referred
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I mean, they are the ones who call the shots, Dave.
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They are the ones who call the shots in all of the corridors of power in America.
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And they've been doing so for a very, very long time.
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They're certainly the ones who call the shots when it comes above all to the corporate
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You know, it's funny that they don't even pretend to take America's side, right?
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I mean, they don't even for a second pretend to actually take the interests of the American
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So, you know, after these tariffs went into place there, it was very clear that this was
00:03:46.880
going to be the lay of the land for the foreseeable future.
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By the way, no one can say they didn't see this coming.
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Donald Trump has been consistent on the issue of tariffs literally for longer than I have been
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I was born in 1989, the year that the Berlin Wall fell.
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Donald Trump has been a – I call him a class trader, a class trader par excellence, frankly,
00:04:05.340
because he is the one among ultra-millionaires, billionaires who was outspoken against the
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rise of China, against laissez-faire fundamentalism, neoliberalism on the global stage, outsourcing
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or manufacturing, rooting up entire supply chains.
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He was always, always, always opposed to that, going back to his earliest days in the media,
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Oprah Winfrey show, the New York tabloids, 1980s.
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And the media had an opportunity once they saw this, OK, this guy who's been singing the
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same tune on this for four and a half, five decades, he's finally now back in power.
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You had a choice, media, to say that you're going to side with the American people once
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I mean, it kind of reminds me, frankly, of the same people who were rooting against America
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back in the early 2000s in a very different kind of war, in a foreign policy conflict
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against Al-Qaeda, Saddam Hussein, places like that there.
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And the media just consistently chooses to side against the American people.
00:05:07.000
But it's a totally different thing to side against the American people.
00:05:12.180
They've basically been rooting for the stock market to collapse, David.
00:05:14.820
I mean, I think of people in the New York Times, I mean, if they're happy that the market
00:05:19.800
recovered nine and a half percent today, frankly, I missed it because, again, they don't have
00:05:26.720
They are so reliant, so reliant upon the Chinese Communist Party, Wall Street, the Fortune 500
00:05:32.460
when it comes to exports, when it comes to consumers, when it comes to business there.
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Donald Trump's the guy who is uniquely positioned as someone of his heft, of his net worth, again,
00:05:43.300
because he is this class traitor par excellence, he's uniquely positioned to take his sledgehammer
00:05:52.360
Yeah, and in the first hour, I mentioned old St. Augustine, you know, the absence of the
00:06:06.460
They reject the idea of a good in the first place.
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And we're in a crazy place when it comes to morality, because I really do, Trump was raised
00:06:17.360
in Queens, kind of like the outsider motif, maybe a little bit you were, you know, getting
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And then he had some background, the Presbyterian mother, I think, and Norman Vincent Peale, and
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But then he's rough and tumble construction, and he ain't going to wear religion or anything
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And he certainly doesn't want to be perceived as being weak or pious or a moralizer.
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But on the other hand, if you look in Protestant theology, we got these guys that do, you know,
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If you, God operates in different spheres in different ways, right?
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We're not doing pastoral counseling right here, right, with China.
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This is real politic, and Trump seems to be a master craftsman in this sphere.
00:07:05.540
And it seems to me, as I said earlier, he doesn't have any self-interest I can detect
00:07:13.680
He really is all in, because I think he really does care.
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And when he's in the middle of those crowds, you can just see him beaming.
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I think he does, I don't want to say hate or whatever, he does not love the elites.
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And so what kind of moral frame would you view it in, or do other people view it in to help
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Because I do think it is very helpful going forward to frame this morally.
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And we got strong moral foundation to work from.
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First of all, I totally agree with you, Dave, that I think that the fact that Trump grew
00:08:02.220
up in Queens, he has this outer borough mentality, people in New York say would say, you literally
00:08:09.220
And this is a noble instinct, this instinct to kind of go against the grain to someone
00:08:13.180
who can actually arrive at some heterodox conclusions relative to what all of the group think, the
00:08:19.640
right-thinking people, so to speak, believe there.
00:08:22.060
But when it comes to moral framing, you know, Dave, you're the economist here.
00:08:34.120
I mean, one of the first things you learn in your econ 101 class, your freshman year of
00:08:37.660
college, is that resource scarcity is a real thing, and that every decision that you make
00:08:42.140
is going to have something that's going to come out on the other side.
00:08:45.360
So for instance, if you go all in for consumption, you're necessarily going to diminish
00:08:50.820
And Donald Trump's instincts on the issue of trade, namely that the so-called Washington
00:08:56.480
consensus, which came in after the fall of the Berlin Wall back in the 1990s, this notion
00:09:00.300
that we are going to maximize consumer surplus, we're going to minimize prices at any cost
00:09:08.280
And I'm not saying that I don't value having lower prices as a consumer.
00:09:12.020
I am merely pointing out that this has come at a serious, serious cost.
00:09:16.160
Anyone who's ever driven through the American heartland will be able to intuit this just
00:09:21.640
I mean, I've driven through places like Toledo, Ohio.
00:09:26.560
You see, you literally see it, the actual cost here.
00:09:29.980
And we've seen this now in tangible form in recent years as well.
00:09:32.700
The baby formula shortage a few years ago, pharmaceuticals, PPE, personal protective
00:09:38.240
Heck, Dave, the fact that we are even having an open discussion in this country right now
00:09:41.680
about whether or not America would go militarily defend Taiwan against a People Liberation Army
00:09:46.800
incursion from Xi Jinping, we're only really having that conversation because Taiwan's
00:09:51.580
semiconductor manufacturing company is the most important maker of the computer chips from
00:09:58.120
If America had not outsourced the most advanced computer chips to Taiwan, if we'd actually
00:10:04.360
been making that still at Intel and so forth here, we wouldn't even be having this geopolitical
00:10:09.960
So, you know, I hear some of these absolutists, people like the infamous George H.W. Bush White
00:10:15.140
House economic advisor, this guy named Michael Boskin, he famously asked the following question.
00:10:19.560
He said, potato chips, computer chips, what's the difference?
00:10:22.520
Well, I'll tell you exactly what the difference is.
00:10:24.460
The difference is that we're not going to go to war or risk war against China for potato
00:10:28.860
chips, but we're actually having that conversation in real time when it comes to computer chips
00:10:33.740
So, you know, this minimize price at all costs mentality has come at a severe, severe expense
00:10:39.260
when it comes to things like production, the fact that a country to be good has to actually
00:10:45.160
We can debate what stuff we should make, but surely we should actually make some of it and
00:10:51.860
Fundamentally, the thing that Donald Trump really gets, because he came in there in 2016,
00:10:56.880
the same year as Brexit in the UK, the rise of people like Bolsonaro in Brazil and so forth.
00:11:02.360
Donald Trump fundamentally gets that the era of the post-Berlin Wall kind of globalization,
00:11:08.280
the era of globalization is over and the era of nationalism is re-ascended.
00:11:16.180
And at least as of today on the markets, the market is starting to vindicate that as well.
00:11:24.000
You know, I did my PhD in economics and supposedly we just described the way the world is.
00:11:31.720
There's no ethical, this is good or this is bad, right?
00:11:35.680
We're just supposed to say the inflation rate is three.
00:11:39.500
And we're not supposed to say that's good or that's bad.
00:11:43.560
And so this moral framing I'm after also has to do with what is not covered, right?
00:11:49.840
If you look at the media and you brought up, you know, I was born in Detroit,
00:11:57.320
And now I'm in Lynchburg and we used to have shoes and textiles and furniture and a lot of that's gone.
00:12:04.300
And so it's interesting, right, even when I get and, you know, maybe comment on this, too.
00:12:11.760
I was in Congress and now when I get calls from local media, they're not really coordinated,
00:12:17.440
but they follow the headlines, right, from the majors and then, you know, state level, regional level media and the national media.
00:12:26.620
They all lead with, well, you know, our prices are going to go up and the stock market's jittery.
00:12:33.280
But there's no mention of Detroit or the loss of 5 million manufacturing jobs or the fact that productivity has been down for 70 years in a row.
00:12:43.800
And CBO expects us to grow at 2 percent for the next 30 years.
00:12:57.020
Dear Economist class, what's the cost of a million dead in Russia and Ukraine?
00:13:00.960
A million young dead boys laying there on the ground.
00:13:09.040
They don't want to get near it because they know if you engage that set of issues,
00:13:13.900
their conclusions are not going to be pretty to the funding class, to the billionaire class.
00:13:19.000
And so just back to you again on that, you know,
00:13:22.720
did these guys all arrange talking points or is it just laziness or is it corruption or is it funding?
00:13:29.840
What what leads this unified messaging on the left?
00:13:33.320
I think it's a lazy, stultified intellectual homogeneity.
00:13:38.480
I mean, you know, I mean, this is the ruling class.
00:13:41.180
I mean, this is what the late great political scientist Angela Cotavilla famously referred to in that 2010 essay as the ruling class.
00:13:48.140
These people all they all came up through the same gatekeeping institutions from K through 12.
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They all into the same fancy private schools, the same universities.
00:14:00.460
And surprise, when they finally come into into positions of professional power and professional authority,
00:14:05.160
they all end up spouting the same platitudes and end up saying the exact same things there.
00:14:09.700
So, you know, I'm not sure that it's I'm not sure it's literally coordinated.
00:14:12.900
I mean, it wouldn't shock me if they have this certain substack chats or whatever there.
00:14:16.860
I mean, I mean, who am I to say that that that doesn't exist?
00:14:19.560
But I think it's more just a result of these same people going through the same institutions time and time again and ultimately arriving at the same conclusion.
00:14:27.320
But it's kind of ironic in a sense, actually, Dave, because, you know, again, these people, they work in the corridors of power,
00:14:33.540
whether it's whether it's the media, whether it's the Fortune 500 people there that that are heavily reliant on China for consumers and exports and so forth there.
00:14:41.540
But we wouldn't have the modern American financial system.
00:14:46.820
We're not for one of my very favorite founders, Alexander Hamilton.
00:14:50.040
Alexander Hamilton is really kind of the godfather, so to speak, of the modern American economy, the first secretary of treasury.
00:14:56.020
Alexander Hamilton wrote a very, very famous and lengthy pamphlet that he presented to Congress back in 1791 called his Report on Manufacturers,
00:15:04.240
where he comes out swinging quite hard for an industrial policy because he knew that America has to be self-sufficient to actually manufacture and to make some goods.
00:15:13.400
This ends up becoming the dominant political economy in America throughout the entire 19th century.
00:15:18.860
Henry Clay of Kentucky, Abraham Lincoln, by the way, I mean, speaking of the moral case, no one more moral in American history than Abraham Lincoln, right?
00:15:26.100
Abraham Lincoln famously said one time, he said, my politics are short and sweet like the old woman's dance.
00:15:32.000
I'm in favor of an internal improvement system, a national bank, and a protective tariff.
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He was a big proponent of manufacturing and actually building stuff.
00:15:42.700
That helped lead the union to victory over the Confederacy.
00:15:45.960
Frankly, it was also the same industrial powerhouse from that same mentality that ultimately helped America prevail in both world wars.
00:15:52.580
So, you know, an industrial policy focusing on building stuff, whether it is semiconductors now, whether it was ships, munitions, and just textiles and goods back then, this traditionally has served America very, very well.
00:16:05.740
And again, we've gone so far away from this in recent decades there.
00:16:09.220
Donald Trump is simply trying to rebalance the playing field.
00:16:12.000
A lot of people are saying that this is kind of outdated nostalgia.
00:16:16.400
I think he's just trying to bounce the pendulum from an economy that has gone way, way, way too far away from production and way, way, way too much closer to minimizing prices.
00:16:30.500
The late, great Toby Keith, one of my favorite armchair philosophers himself, you know, he had this line in his 2011 song, Made in America, where he speaks about being willing to pay a little bit more for the shirt in the store than on the back of the tag it says Made in the USA.
00:16:45.280
And that's kind of like a, you know, that's a lyric in a song, but fundamentally as a basic point there, it actually rings true as well.
00:16:57.160
I'm going to go to Rich Stern next to hit that manufacturing point and go over a few data points.
00:17:03.960
But I just want to thank Josh for being with us and helping out when I was helping to host the show.
00:17:12.820
He is one of the brightest, smartest, quickest, wittiest fellows we have on the program.
00:17:28.200
You just heard Josh going off on manufacturing.
00:17:33.480
Denver, if you want to put up a few slides just so people can get Adam at home.
00:17:39.120
Josh, I'm just putting up a few questions here for you.
00:17:43.820
Who have you heard that's willing to defend the status quo, the current trade regime we have?
00:17:52.140
And then who can explain to us why American productivity is so weak right now and why China
00:17:59.880
is doing all the manufacturing, $5 trillion, when we're doing $2.5 trillion?
00:18:08.720
But the slides, the next slide, Denver, I'm just going to go over them real quick.
00:18:13.540
They basically reflect the size of the trade deficits against us, right against us.
00:18:23.200
But all in, the next slide, Denver, we got coming up.
00:18:30.020
This is the total trade deficit in goods, $1.2 trillion to the far right.
00:18:35.900
The deficit just keeps getting bigger and bigger and bigger over time.
00:18:42.000
This is the Trump chart, Navarro, the Secretary Besant today.
00:18:49.060
The dark blue lines are the tariffs, but the light blue are the non-tariff barriers.
00:18:55.040
And you can see for most of the countries, these are the rich G20.
00:18:58.800
The non-tariff barriers are bigger than the tariff barriers.
00:19:01.780
And this doesn't include some of the other things, currency manipulation and other things
00:19:07.460
they've thrown in the pot for negotiations, especially with China coming up.
00:19:11.240
And then the last slide is just a slide I've put up over and over and over.
00:19:19.620
And you can just see the productivity of our country is roughly the same thing as the wage
00:19:25.020
rate all the way through the dark green line and the light green line for the last 70 years.
00:19:30.580
That's going down, down, down, down, down to now 2% productivity.
00:19:35.520
And this is the leading guy in the world, Bob Gordon out of Northwestern.
00:19:38.760
And that matches exactly, that 2% number, matches our expected real economic growth.
00:19:47.420
The Congress certainly wasn't going to change it through policy.
00:19:53.300
I haven't heard any respectable commentary on that strategy there.
00:19:57.600
And so we're status quo until President Trump comes along.
00:20:08.360
No, thank you for having me on, as always, and going through all of it.
00:20:11.220
Look, I think to your first point on there, absolutely nobody defends the current regime.
00:20:15.760
You know, what happens here is when you talk to people who were against the tariffs in the
00:20:19.080
get-go, that you'd say to them, but look, there's all of these trade barriers, forced
00:20:23.360
labor, currency manipulation, everything you just went through.
00:20:26.040
And they'd say, yeah, yeah, yeah, nothing's perfect, but, well, no, the answer is, why
00:20:31.300
don't we go back and try to get rid of these problems?
00:20:33.320
And that is exactly what President Trump has done here.
00:20:36.220
He's taken an assertive stand to hold a mirror up to these countries and say, you claim to
00:20:41.320
be for free trade, and yet you maintain these barriers and all of these other practices.
00:20:46.500
And as you pointed out, China is the worst trade abuser in human history and has done so
00:20:52.280
at the expense, not just of their own people, which they have, but at the expense of hundreds
00:20:57.120
of millions of people around the globe, in the West, and of course, right here in the
00:21:03.060
So what Trump has done here is taking a real stand to force them to the negotiating table
00:21:07.900
to really get to a level playing field, one where American workers can compete and out
00:21:14.520
And then as you brought up there, look, part of that is the story of declining productivity
00:21:18.820
and declining incomes, hallowed out small towns and industrial facilities.
00:21:24.400
But the other part of it, and I always say this, is as much as we're dealing with foreign
00:21:28.640
government abuses, we are also dealing with domestic government abuses.
00:21:32.800
Trump's broader agenda, doge, deregulation, tax cuts, spending cuts, are an attempt at dismantling
00:21:38.840
the deep state here in this imperial city of D.C. that has also been an oppressive burden
00:21:45.000
on American workers and families and communities.
00:21:48.340
And so I think what you see here is a total agenda from Trump, both on the foreign side
00:21:52.980
of it and on the domestic side of it, that is trying to loose these burdens, that is trying
00:21:57.560
to remove all of these government forces, both abroad and at home, who have impacted American
00:22:03.500
workers and strangled and siphoned off their production.
00:22:07.700
And so finally, we've got an America first president, but not just America first, American workers
00:22:20.020
Economic policy at the Great Heritage Foundation under the great Kevin Roberts, who I always
00:22:26.440
forget to plug, a great leader, a great political philosopher of the Judeo-Christian West and
00:22:34.900
That's why you've got consistent ideas at the Heritage Foundation across the board, no matter
00:22:42.800
And then that brings me, Rich, to the—I hope I don't slaughter this thing—but all
00:22:49.320
of the—I just covered with Josh, the media framing on the left, right?
00:22:55.920
Trump doesn't seem to have any self-interest in propping up the welfare of the American worker.
00:23:02.960
It seems semi-sacrificial to reveal his love for this country for real.
00:23:07.960
But why don't you give the folks—if you want to go run over how the left is—who's
00:23:13.380
in on framing this leftist narrative that's against helping the working class, that takes
00:23:19.100
some doing to work against democracy and the majority of workers.
00:23:30.300
And give the folks some of the options where they can find some good narratives on economics
00:23:39.260
And thank you for the plug, and certainly for Dr. Roberts as well.
00:23:42.340
Look, what I would say to that is that you're right.
00:23:44.520
Look, the left is framing this in every negative way they can think to do in ways that make no
00:23:50.040
But it's the left, so what do you expect, right?
00:23:52.480
But I think into the segment you had before I was on, I think it's exactly right, right?
00:23:58.980
They're not really attacking even us sitting here.
00:24:05.760
They understand that that Judeo-Christian framework we're talking about, the notion that all of
00:24:11.060
us have dignity, that we have God-given rights that need to be respected, all of the ethics
00:24:16.540
about how we put our communities together, what is American civil society?
00:24:23.440
And so when they are attacking any of us or Trump or any of our positions, that's really
00:24:29.160
what they're trying to do at the end of the day, is attack that philosophical, religious
00:24:35.380
And not only all of the prosperity that has brought humanity, but all of the goodness,
00:24:40.520
all of the morality, all of the strong communities.
00:24:43.120
They don't like any of those because they have a warped version of humanity that puts them
00:24:48.200
at the center of it, that gives them control over everybody's lives, where each of us finds
00:24:54.020
a value in providing service to those around us.
00:24:57.900
The left, frankly, finds a value in controlling everybody's lives.
00:25:04.340
And so I think that's the important thing to remember when you look at the way that they
00:25:08.980
And certainly their assaults on all of these things we're trying to do as conservatives,
00:25:13.120
to get the government out of the way and let American workers and entrepreneurs do what
00:25:20.140
And then thanks again, I said, for the plug, you know, we've got the Daily Signal, of course,
00:25:24.240
here at Heritage, but you can always go and look at my bio page, that of all the people
00:25:27.960
of my team at Heritage that work on econ policy.
00:25:30.980
And really this nexus you've talked about, but not just, you know, what is the mechanics
00:25:51.120
Is it just man's natural egoism and concern for themselves?
00:25:59.480
But you know, the way I would say it is, as conservatives, we believe the goal is to
00:26:04.160
It's to believe in a service theory of value that we should be humble about how much control
00:26:15.660
The things have a value because they declare it to have a value.
00:26:31.800
All the disciplines in the liberal arts should explain the same reality.
00:26:37.120
All the departments at the Heritage Foundation explain the same reality.
00:26:40.940
Whether you're looking at politics or philosophy or morality or economics, the Heritage Foundation
00:26:47.300
is just super at uniting it all in one package that makes sense.
00:26:52.140
Right back after the break with some polling data on the tariffs.
00:26:56.380
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We're in the War Room on a shocking news day in our country.
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President Trump timing things, getting maximum outcomes, working on behalf of the American people.
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I want to give a shout-out to our friends at Birch Gold and Philip Patrick, one of my good friends.
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The rest of the world, I think we got the leverage.
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We're going to get a fair playing field coming up.
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But China will see which way they're going to play it.
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But over the long run, over a couple millennia, gold has been a source of great stability and relief as at least part of a good portfolio.
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So get in touch with Birch Gold, birchgold.com slash Bannon, or text Bannon to 989898 and get a free copy of The Ultimate Guide for Gold in the Trump Era.
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All right, Doug, back to the war room with Mark Mitchell at Rasmussen Polling.
00:33:53.020
Mark's not afraid to throw in the ethical content with the data,
00:33:56.660
and he's very clear on what he's doing, when he's doing it.
00:33:59.500
But I think, Mark, the whole audience is dying to hear.
00:34:03.540
I hope I haven't missed you on the war room, et cetera.
00:34:08.640
Where do we stand with respect to these tariffs?
00:34:11.740
And then, you know, a central question everyone was asking before the market went up is,
00:34:20.360
even if they do understand the good that's going to come out of this?
00:34:24.060
But we've become addicted to consumption, and we are a consumer society,
00:34:28.200
and there's going to be some trade-offs in a little bit.
00:34:31.240
We'll see what kind of tariff regime we end up with.
00:34:37.060
So give us your best guidance on where the American people stand right now.
00:34:40.400
Well, your guests have been spot on, especially Josh.
00:34:44.900
What it boils down to is the era of Trump is literally about the establishment
00:34:49.400
doing everything possible to maintain control over the power structures that they have.
00:34:55.080
Listen, I think if you went back and charted the last 10 years,
00:34:57.920
billionaires are probably the maddest now than they've ever been in forever,
00:35:01.360
probably calling Trump and all the Republican senators behind the scenes,
00:35:04.820
melting their phones down, begging for exemptions and special treatments.
00:35:08.940
But I'll tell you, this is what people voted for.
00:35:12.020
Now, we can come at this from a couple of different directions.
00:35:14.660
I will say this is the first thing that really kind of has drawn a little bit of blood
00:35:18.280
from a Trump approval perspective, but not a lot.
00:35:21.800
And I think it's in the rearview mirror potentially.
00:35:24.220
But as of today, he's down to 47% approval, 52% disapproved, so underwater five.
00:35:30.820
That's still not bad considering how politically volatile everything's been for the last decade or so.
00:35:36.860
But already the overnight numbers look like they've stabilized and are coming back up.
00:35:41.260
And he did lose some support from Republican voters.
00:35:45.800
They had an approval in the 80s with a 65% strong approve.
00:35:52.700
And I would focus on right direction, wrong track though.
00:36:05.720
but it basically averaged about 30% for all of Biden's term.
00:36:09.320
And this puts it at higher than 96% of all readings that we've had in the last 19 years.
00:36:21.380
because I think that his supporters are going to be very sticky.
00:36:26.140
But obviously, there's a psychological operation going on right now.
00:36:30.140
This Black Monday thing was absolutely ridiculous.
00:36:32.420
Jim Cramer came out and made that call on Wednesday.
00:36:37.260
But what was wild is that every single one of these legacy media outlets owned by billionaires,
00:36:42.560
like with a dog in this hunt, they have a dog in this hunt.
00:36:45.120
They waited till Sunday to drop what was essentially a coordinated attempt,
00:36:52.360
You can actually look at Google search volume for the word Black Monday.
00:36:56.700
And it spiked massively on Sunday because everybody's like,
00:37:01.480
And then you can watch the search volume drop off as the bell opens on the stock exchange.
00:37:16.120
Before you go there, Mark, let me ask you one question on that right track thing.
00:37:20.960
Is there any breakdown in right track for me, right?
00:37:25.020
People naturally worried retirement plans, et cetera, versus right track for the country.
00:37:29.720
Is there a way of teasing out, like, you know, I can see where people get a little anxious for their own welfare,
00:37:36.220
their kids, if they get a little jittery and they don't understand what Trump's trying to pull off.
00:37:40.400
And so they might say, but I still – or are there any numbers that differentiate right track for the country versus right track for them?
00:37:51.180
Right track is like a knee-jerk temperature of what you're feeling right now.
00:38:02.820
But what the political context is, is that going back decades, the economy has always been number one issue for voters when you ask them why they vote, right?
00:38:12.680
And the number of people who say the economy is important has not changed.
00:38:16.580
It's always like 80%, 90% say it's at least somewhat important.
00:38:20.800
And what has changed is the question, are you better off than you were four years ago?
00:38:24.720
And back in 2007, the first time we have crossed tabs for that, people said yes by about mid-50s to mid-30s, like 20% positive.
00:38:39.420
So a stunning plunge just in about 20 years of people.
00:38:43.840
And so people say the economy is the number one issue.
00:38:46.460
But it's like, no, the Biden administration that literally broke people, that was the issue.
00:38:51.860
And they're voting against the government, not necessarily even against Kamala Harris.
00:38:59.700
And what his mandate is, as we've talked about before, every single one of his policy items is more popular than Trump.
00:39:06.600
And so no matter what Trump's approval does, people are still going to want mass deportations.
00:39:11.220
And ultimately, the fundamentals behind the tariff polling are what is interesting.
00:39:17.160
Because you can get whatever result you want when you ask somebody questions about tariffs.
00:39:22.100
It really just comes down to what word you picked.
00:39:26.440
Should tariffs on foreign goods be increased or decreased?
00:39:29.760
And I got essentially the same amount of people say increased as decreased.
00:39:34.100
But here's the kind of stuff that we do that other people don't.
00:39:39.500
If we do not protect our nation's manufacturers, we lose a fundamental part of who we are as people.
00:39:44.200
Making things, building things, and working with our hands is America's heritage.
00:39:48.880
And it's like 73% of people agree with that statement.
00:39:52.520
And people say that the government doesn't do enough to protect manufacturing jobs, 45% to only 17% too much.
00:40:03.640
Because the economy is not the stock market unless you're a money manager, billionaire, somebody who owns mainstream media outlets.
00:40:14.420
The economists at all of the colleges, the MBA schools across the country, everybody conflates the economy with the stock market.
00:40:32.620
What do you – you've been doing this for years.
00:40:35.820
Rasmussen has a great reputation doing this for years.
00:40:39.320
What's your 30-minute crystal ball looking like for what you'd guesstimate how we come out of this?
00:40:47.240
Well, predicting the future about how this plays out.
00:40:51.400
Essentially, Trump just declared economic war against China and turned the rest of the world against China.
00:40:56.380
So I don't know if China is going to go kinetic.
00:40:58.780
I definitely think we're in for a period of great change.
00:41:05.340
What I can say, though, is that Americans are sticking with Donald Trump right now based on all of the things that he can't hang on, which were for the very first time a politician is giving people what they wanted.
00:41:20.600
I think there's a loyalty that's going in both directions, from Trump to the American people.
00:41:26.460
I cannot detect any self-interest on his part in what he's doing.
00:41:31.580
This is clearly guided to help the American people and help their jobs and wage rates going forward.
00:41:57.160
No one better to give us a summary of the coal news.
00:42:03.180
And so Dave Walsh, executive extraordinaire in the energy sector over the years.
00:42:13.500
Just take it from here and call for the charts you want.
00:42:18.280
The coal remains vital to our national energy security.
00:42:23.120
One needs diversity of energy supply for electricity.
00:42:34.160
That's what his statement about getting all of government behind the coal industry.
00:42:38.040
Coal is essential to national security because it provides, in this country, continuous duty,
00:42:43.560
baseload electricity that runs all the time, as opposed to solar panels from China that provide
00:42:52.060
So, that's a kudos to him and Zeldin, what he's doing.
00:42:55.300
If you want to go to the charts, we can touch on the, how this, not those charts.
00:43:08.840
Across the country, the utilities, the states have ordered, 91% of our new electrification capacity
00:43:15.840
in the country has been solar and wind and battery storage.
00:43:20.300
Only 9% has been baseload, continuous duty, nuclear, or gas.
00:43:25.340
So, 91% of what we've installed is, there you go, part-time.
00:43:31.100
The blue is a little bit of gas-fired technology.
00:43:35.120
91% of what we've spent $400 billion on are solar panels and batteries.
00:43:45.080
So, this is important because in the last five years, again, 91% of what we've spent money on
00:43:51.400
in power generation are two-hour to seven-hour-a-day devices, not 24-hour-a-day devices.
00:44:01.000
And this year, the pie chart is about this year.
00:44:03.040
There's nothing that the Trump administration can really do about the rest of the year.
00:44:07.120
This is embedded in state projects nationally by utilities.
00:44:11.960
Another 90% of this year's procurement of power generation equipment will be part-time,
00:44:20.480
So, over the course of now six years, we've de-electrified the country.
00:44:24.480
This stuff is so intermittent and part-time in its capacity,
00:44:28.340
we've only grown the energy in this type of procurement across six years by 0.4% per year,
00:44:42.920
And then tie that to the budget conversation we're having.
00:44:47.820
They count this on the left as manufacturing and capital equipment as well.
00:44:57.360
All of the solar panels, all the inverters, all of the battery storage utilities are buying
00:45:01.840
in this 90% of the procurement of generation equipment now that's coming largely from China
00:45:10.060
But worse yet, it's destabilizing the country's electricity supply.
00:45:13.800
Because you see here, we've shut down in the same period 60 gigawatts of equipment,
00:45:18.600
of coal and gas plants, while we've installed this stuff at a horrendous capacity factor.
00:45:27.440
Therefore, we've only added to electrification growth by 0.4% across the last four years.
00:45:34.760
Electricity demand has gone up by 3.5% in the last five years.
00:45:40.680
Yeah, if you had to talk about productivity, right?
00:45:47.120
So inputs, the amount spent, getting you that little 0.4 output, what would your commentary
00:45:53.080
be on the wisdom of the executive class over the last four years as far as productivity,
00:45:59.740
using our inputs and our scarce resources wisely?
00:46:03.080
Well, you can have no productivity because the cost of energy, the cost of electrification
00:46:12.440
Steel, aluminum, chemicals, petrochemicals, pulp and paper, car manufacturing and assembly,
00:46:18.360
everything you can name is heavily, heavily dependent on inputs of cost-effective electricity.
00:46:24.860
And what's happened in this time period, because we've spent so much on this,
00:46:28.360
and because the electrical capacity is so low, electricity rates have predictably gone up
00:46:33.900
about 35% since 2021 to pay for this binge of buying equipment that doesn't work, meaning
00:46:45.100
The tariffs are a great way to get at this, and the attack on China, because this product
00:46:55.420
So setting the barrier up higher, we have a Congress that is on record.
00:47:01.580
We've got 35 RINOs stood up last week and took a pledge.
00:47:05.460
They will not vote against incentives on solar and wind.
00:47:10.080
Here's a sense we're incentivizing this idiotic behavior.
00:47:13.920
Let's put tariffs on it and make it very, very difficult for utilities to make these decisions,
00:47:18.280
and folks like NextEra to make these decisions, to solarize the country, diminish its electrification,
00:47:25.380
and continue to raise the cost of electricity here with that which hardly works at a huge,
00:47:32.280
The incentives embedded in this, by the way, the $400 billion, are about $150 billion of
00:47:37.740
incentives between investment tax credits and then longer-term production tax credits in
00:47:42.820
the IRA to also help fund this binge with taxpayer money, which is, unfortunately, Congress is
00:47:51.900
So tariffs are the way to go on this topic on China.
00:47:57.500
Go over the coal play again for us unsophisticated economists.
00:48:04.800
What percentage of our energy is coal going to bring?
00:48:08.080
How long will it take the administration to bring that into play?
00:48:13.720
Coal power is about 18% of U.S. energy right now.
00:48:17.120
Electricity-wise, it's about 25% of the baseload, continuous-duty electricity.
00:48:23.500
I mean, natural gas is the biggest part of that, 42%.
00:48:29.920
So of the baseload, completely necessary, constant-duty electricity system that must exist
00:48:36.180
for night, that must exist for night, and when the wind doesn't blow, which is 18% of
00:48:41.360
the time, that whole system that must exist, which is nuclear, gas, and coal, has to be
00:48:48.080
It has to be a diversified portfolio of fuel inputs.
00:48:59.020
Are there any other big hammers to drop when it comes to energy, anything you're anticipating?
00:49:03.200
Well, all right, let's, Warren, we're going to try to reboot Dave Walsh real quick.
00:49:18.340
And so the Trump regime fighting across the board in every sector simultaneously, right?
00:49:27.620
Again, all of this, ask yourself what percentage of Americans would like to have continuous
00:49:34.920
That's what Dave Walsh comes on and talks about every time.
00:49:38.680
You just heard him say, we've spent billions and billions and billions of dollars, government
00:49:56.620
That $4 billion got us, I think he said, a 0.4% increase in electrical output production.
00:50:08.220
And so I'm going to close out and just give another shout out to our friends.
00:50:13.480
In times of instability, you all know who to go to.
00:50:17.500
Steve Bannon has been key in writing, helping write their documents.
00:50:22.180
The rest of the world, this is going to be very interesting.
00:50:24.560
With the first 50 countries, now I think Besson today said we're up to 80 countries that are
00:50:34.600
But China is not done, as Steve said earlier today.
00:50:40.100
And so we'll see what kind of play they can make to take down the United States as the
00:50:51.400
And so to me, I feel the president has been making all the right moves.
00:50:56.820
He's just playing in real time and seeing the reaction he gets.
00:51:00.720
And he's trying to maximize whatever benefits he can get.
00:51:07.020
The Marxist left, that's their goal, is to take down the machine.
00:51:11.520
President Trump, every day, is working for you.
00:51:14.980
He's working to tear down the globalist, elitist establishment, ironclad power and control
00:51:23.140
they've taken over your lives for the last 20 years.
00:51:26.860
He's restoring your freedom and your chance at a living wage and a good wage rate for you
00:52:05.140
Jim predicted Trump's Electoral College victory exactly 312 to 226, down to the actual number
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Now he's issuing a dire warning about April 11th, a moment that could define Trump's presidency
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His latest book, Money GPT, exposes how AI is setting the stage for financial chaos, bank
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runs at lightning speeds, algorithm-driven crashes, and even threats to national security.
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Right now, War Room members get a free copy of Money GPT when they sign up for Strategic
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This is Jim's flagship financial newsletter, Strategic Intelligence.
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