Real Coffee with Scott Adams - Episode 2804 CWSA 04⧸09⧸25

00:00:00.000 do do do do do

00:00:01.440 good morning everybody and welcome to the highlight of human civilization it's called

00:00:12.520 coffee with scott adams and it's probably the best fun you'll ever have in your entire life but

00:00:18.140 if you want to take a chance on taking it up to a level then no human can even understand with

00:00:23.560 their tiny shiny human brains all you need for that is a cup or mug or a glass of tank or chalice

00:00:29.140 a canteen jug or flask a vessel of any kind fill it with your favorite liquid i like coffee

00:00:35.220 and join me now for the unparalleled pleasure of the dopamine at the end of the day the thing

00:00:39.920 makes everything better it's called the simultaneous sip and it happens now go

00:00:45.980 so good so good well we will of course talk about the tariffs and who's got

00:00:59.040 the upper hand china or the u.s i'll help you sort that out but first some other news some of it's

00:01:05.160 good activist robbie starbuck gets another big victory he's been racking them up lately

00:01:12.600 for a while now so he's going after big companies that have dei programs to try to talk the man of

00:01:20.500 being racist and uh you just got another big win with a company called uh constellation brands

00:01:27.680 and they own corona medela and pacifico beer and uh last week uh robbie starbuck did a story

00:01:35.700 exposing their woke dei policies and then they said let's negotiate and then they made a bunch of

00:01:44.300 promises so they're no good no longer going to do dei but they made a bunch of other promises that

00:01:50.200 made sense they won't be participating in this weird cei social credit system they they'll no longer

00:01:58.020 use the term latinx uh they won't be lobbying for legislation that isn't quarter their business

00:02:05.520 bunch of all basically all the things you'd want them to do so another big victory for robbie starbuck

00:02:11.720 keep keep keep an eye on him because he's he's just rolling up the the winds against racism finally

00:02:20.620 uh speaking of dei the post millennials reporting that uh the top u.s military official on the nato

00:02:28.740 military committees was fired and people think probably because of dei uh now as you know

00:02:38.660 whenever a woman in the workplace does something that's never done before we don't say oh somebody

00:02:46.900 did something good we say it's the first woman to ever accomplish whatever or to ever be in this

00:02:53.940 line of work or to ever achieve this the first woman well um the person who was fired is navy

00:03:03.140 vice admiral shoshana chatfield and uh she was one of the few female navy three-star officers

00:03:10.900 and she was the first woman to lead the naval war college and now she's the first three-star

00:03:20.100 i'm sorry it's not funny but she's the first three-star admiral to be fired for racism

00:03:27.140 i really shouldn't be laughing at that because she is a member of the military and i should show more

00:03:36.900 respect but what i'm making fun of is not her so much i'm making fun of the fact that we always say

00:03:43.300 the first woman to ever do anything and i'm so beyond that or the or the first black american

00:03:51.220 to do a particular kind of job and i'm thinking to myself what what are we just figuring out that

00:03:56.020 people can do jobs like why is that still a thing shouldn't we be long past it's the first

00:04:04.340 first Latinx to do something yes everybody can do jobs it turns out it turns out there's sufficient

00:04:14.500 smart people in pretty much every group and they can do jobs they can hold jobs yeah amazing

00:04:23.860 well bill pulte who's the u.s director of federal housing fhfa uh he's been uh posting on x a bunch

00:04:33.140 of cost cutting he's he's getting busy over there now i don't know how much of this is doge related

00:04:39.380 because i don't see doge in the um at least in the announcements so it might be that he's just

00:04:46.180 doing his own thing because he he's smart and capable and he knows how to do things uh

00:04:52.660 so here's what he just announced this is just wild this is one of his announcements there are a whole

00:04:58.980 bunch of things that look pretty successful there uh he said there's an announcement that fanny

00:05:05.220 may uh so one of his entities fires over a hundred employees for unethical conduct including the

00:05:12.900 facilitation of fraud how in the world did you catch a hundred employees involved in unethical

00:05:21.300 conduct including the facilitation of fraud and i kind of wonder what the other unethical conduct is

00:05:28.020 but i'm pretty sure he's got them dead to rights you know obviously it's something well

00:05:32.820 documented or it wouldn't be in the news or at least pulte wouldn't be interested in it unless

00:05:37.700 i had good evidence so congratulations bill pulte another superstar in the trump administration

00:05:47.860 apparently p hegseth got a big win in panama so he went down to panama to try to

00:05:55.060 de-chinify it because we don't like china having um control over the the panama canal

00:06:02.820 because they operate the ports etc um so according to rahim kassam and the national pulse

00:06:11.780 the u.s and panama are rebooting their strategic partnership and they're going to get rid of china's

00:06:16.740 influence and they're going to have a robust security upgrade a bunch of other things i guess

00:06:23.940 panama is going to reject the uh belt and what is it belt and road initiative that they were part of

00:06:30.820 and uh it's a little complicated what the the deal is but it's all pro america and panama has decided

00:06:38.100 you know what would be good i've got an idea what would be good what if i'm just going to throw this

00:06:44.580 out there what if we don't piss off the united states so much that they send the military in to conquer our country

00:06:52.500 i've got an idea but what if we just make china mad because they're much further away

00:07:00.900 so it looks like eggseth made the sale so uh big victory for trump and for p eggseth so that's good

00:07:10.100 all right let's check on the potentially fake news you you be the judge

00:07:14.020 according to the national news desk uh they there was a study of this year's flu shot

00:07:22.420 and it came up to the conclusion that there's a 27 percent higher flu risk

00:07:27.700 in adults who got the shot so in other words if you didn't get the shot according to the study

00:07:34.340 you know you had an average odds of getting the virus but if you got the shot suddenly your odds of

00:07:40.500 getting the virus would shoot up 27 now does that sound true do you believe that or does it sound

00:07:50.500 a little bit too on the nose you know what i mean because you know there's a there's an audience for

00:07:57.540 the shots are not only not helping they're making everything worse you know you're going to get a lot

00:08:03.380 of attention if you publish something that says the shots make it worse a little too on the nose

00:08:09.620 well i don't know what's true but i'll tell you that grok looked at it and said the sample that they

00:08:16.900 used were clinic employees clinic employees in other words the people who are most often around infected

00:08:25.620 people with flu if your sample is just the clinic that's always surrounded by flu and you say huh looks

00:08:36.420 like people getting the shots got 27 percent more chance of getting it it's probably just that the

00:08:42.500 shots don't work and this is a group of people who around the flu all day so i think grok for the win

00:08:52.100 but again you don't want to believe grok just automatically um it's great for context but

00:08:58.980 is it a better authority than the study i don't know we don't know so apparently one of the uh

00:09:09.220 competent one of the commenters who follows me on x permaculture paladin

00:09:16.260 said after talking to grok this study was done on clinic workers and people were more likely to be

00:09:21.060 exposed now i love the fact that somebody who follows me immediately said hmm i don't know about

00:09:28.900 that and i went to grok and then got a useful answer that's good ontario the wait is over the

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00:10:23.060 ontario 1-866-531-2600 19 and over physically present in ontario eligibility restrictions apply

00:10:30.580 see golden nugget casino.com for details please play responsibly there's a story in nature by larson and

00:10:40.180 bursov uh that the big problem with science is not that people stopped trusting scientists

00:10:47.380 so didn't you think that people were trusting scientists less well according to this study people

00:10:53.780 people still have a high trust in scientists but the problem is they also trust things that are not

00:10:59.940 scientific and don't come from qualified scientists so it doesn't matter how much you trust

00:11:05.940 trust the actual scientists if you also have too much trust in the bs stuff that you saw online or

00:11:13.460 something to which i say how do you know the real scientists are the ones who are right one of my pet

00:11:20.980 peeves is people will look at a few studies from you know people who are outside the mainstream science

00:11:28.180 and they'll say ha these these non-mainstream uh tests show that all the rest of science is corrupt

00:11:36.820 to which i say maybe but why would you trust those other scientists if you don't trust the mainstream

00:11:44.820 scientists why would you trust the ones who are not mainstream and i'm not saying that the non-mainstream ones

00:11:51.460 ones are always wrong i'm just saying is there a logic there that if just somebody agrees with what

00:11:58.980 you suspect is true that that means that their work is accurate i don't know maybe sometimes if they

00:12:08.100 have the right incentives and they did the right kind of work um there's a story in just the news

00:12:15.380 news that biden's white house direct directly helped special counsel jack smith on his january 6 investigations

00:12:23.940 into trump now uh the the allegation is that uh senators ron johnson and chuck grassley who is i think he's 300

00:12:37.700 years old today um sent a letter to uh cash patel head of the fbi and and to pam bandy and they said that uh

00:12:48.260 somehow they got they got access to trump and then um and then mike pence's old former cell phones and i guess

00:12:58.340 there was something um so the white house counsel's office secretly attained them and then made them

00:13:07.060 available so there's something sketchy there i don't know how exactly illegal that is but uh one more

00:13:14.340 connection between the things that shouldn't have be connected in a perfectly operating government so jack

00:13:22.900 smith should not have had a biden white house help of any kind uh i'm a little unclear exactly what this

00:13:31.220 help suggests but uh there you go so you can read up on that on just the news um senator john kennedy

00:13:41.380 who is always full of folksy sayings about things he was on hannity with some other people and he was

00:13:47.780 asked about the new leaders of the uh democrats and uh john kennedy said i'll try to say it all folksy

00:13:56.500 because it sounds better if they say it i consider aoc to be the leader of the democratic party

00:14:03.300 i think she's the reason there are directions on a shampoo bottle

00:14:07.940 our plan for dealing with her is operation let her speak

00:14:14.340 see it's much funnier if you do it in his voice was that even close

00:14:18.580 that might be my best impression ever i'll be the official uh john kennedy impression guy

00:14:27.300 i consider aoc to be the leader of the democratic party

00:14:32.980 well harry enton continues to be the standout on cnn whose name is not uh scott and uh harry enton was

00:14:44.580 talking about trump i like the thing i like about harry enton is he gets very excited about his own

00:14:49.780 data you know he's sort of the data guy but he just takes the data where it implies so he doesn't put

00:14:58.580 the you know any kind of democrats spin on it so it's either good or bad and he just gets excited if

00:15:04.980 it's if it's a non-standard result uh but here he was saying that uh trump is not a lame duck if

00:15:12.020 anything he's a soaring eagle can you imagine a cnn employee saying that out loud on live tv

00:15:20.980 trump is not a lame duck if anything he uses a soaring eagle now i think at one point he does say

00:15:27.540 you know it depends what you think of his policies um but he's getting a lot done so his number of

00:15:33.460 executive orders is you know unprecedented at least in modern times and uh whether you like it or not he's

00:15:41.380 just getting a ton done so he's no lame duck so harry enton got pretty excited about

00:15:48.020 the scale of change that trump is doing we've never really seen a second have we ever seen a

00:15:56.340 second term president do anything i'd love to see the total list of second term president accomplishments

00:16:07.380 now his second term is weird because there was one in between um and because he's trump but i'd love to

00:16:15.300 see how he stock how he stands up to any other second term anyway so let's talk about some tariffs i'm

00:16:25.300 going to try to sort it out for you if you don't understand a lot about economics but you're nervous about

00:16:31.860 the future i'm going to try to put it in the simplest terms who's got the advantage so that

00:16:39.700 you can decide what you think is going to happen now given that the stock market has stabilized at the

00:16:46.420 same time that uh china has uh forget about the numbers let's say china raised their tariffs on us

00:16:53.860 what yesterday by 84 and then uh and then trump uh responded by raising their tariff to 104 you know

00:17:06.580 we're going to get lost in all the numbers so just assume that both of them have decided to put tariffs

00:17:14.020 on each other that are sort of through the roof and unreasonable um so they're both playing hard

00:17:20.580 now if that sticks the things that will be more expensive in the us there'll be lots of them here

00:17:27.460 here's an example things like uh iphones and playstation and uh thinkpad laptops and hp desktops and some

00:17:36.420 kind of tvs and basically any any consumer stuff that china is making but i look at the list and i say to

00:17:45.220 myself i don't really need any of that stuff you know if i had to switch from an iphone to a samsung

00:17:54.740 isn't the samsung made completely in south korea and would i be so unhappy if i had a samsung

00:18:03.300 i don't know so it might be bad for apple and it might be bad for a number of these companies but

00:18:09.700 um i don't know how much we need any of this you know one of the things that might come out of this

00:18:16.980 is americans having a completely different idea of what's essential

00:18:22.500 and it's easier to tell your kid that you don't that you don't want to buy them a playstation

00:18:28.420 because the price is through the roof well i'd love to buy you a playstation but you know not at

00:18:33.220 two thousand dollars um yes i do think it's time to upgrade your iphone dear but not at three

00:18:41.140 thousand dollars so it looks like you're going to keep your iphone for you know maybe a year or more

00:18:47.460 so there's a lot of stuff that we just sort of don't need we want but we don't need now there's

00:18:56.020 other stuff i'll talk about pharmaceuticals and rare earth minerals and stuff there are some things

00:19:00.260 that are just essential but a whole bunch of stuff we just don't need and if a parent can say

00:19:09.140 to a kid that's too expensive now we're going to wait a year that might actually help the parent

00:19:16.020 it's one less thing that they have to buy that they know won't be used that much all right so

00:19:22.340 i'm going to start with the smartest people who understand tariffs and what they say

00:19:28.020 this situation looks like we will start with scott besant who's on fox business with maria potteroma

00:19:35.620 and uh he talked about the uh the china exports to the u.s

00:19:43.940 are five times greater than our exports to china and he goes so they can raise their tariffs but so what

00:19:50.580 what now so what is more of a negotiating position obviously there's a so what to it but uh this should

00:20:00.420 be maybe the most important piece of data so the most important data is that they export more than we

00:20:09.860 we sell to them as long as it's five times difference we should have the advantage because

00:20:17.540 they've got five times as much exposure than we do for prices going up now you might say but scott

00:20:27.540 it's actually americans who are paying that um that tariff because when it gets to america

00:20:32.980 that's who pays it to which i would say but probably it's going to depress demand

00:20:38.340 and if they have that much exports and it depresses demand that's a lot of pressure on an economy that

00:20:47.140 we don't know how strong it is because we don't have perfect information about china

00:20:51.300 here's what the wall street journal says uh again they would be smarter than the average people about

00:20:56.580 stuff like this um the wall street journal says china's gdp growth could follow 2.4 percentage points

00:21:05.700 with 100 tariff that's what goldman says um and uh according to the wall street journal china's growth

00:21:13.060 was already anemic have five percent so i guess five percent's anemic if you're in china that would be

00:21:19.620 good for the united states but anemic for them uh if you cut that in half meaning you know what could

00:21:26.740 happen with these tariffs there will be serious domestic chaos now you're saying to yourself it

00:21:34.020 doesn't matter how much domestic chaos there is the the government just has a you know iron fist on the

00:21:41.300 people so it doesn't matter i would argue that domestic unhappiness is always important

00:21:48.100 uh even to dictators or anybody who has full control of stuff so that could be a big deal

00:21:56.340 um but again we don't know what numbers coming out of china are real and i don't know if anybody's

00:22:01.140 really smart enough to predict the exact impact but you can see that china has some exposure

00:22:08.900 um because their economy is not super strong and there's no doubt this would be a hit so it's a hit

00:22:18.500 on an economy that's already being called anemic when i found out my friend got a great deal on a

00:22:25.140 wool coat from winners i started wondering is every fabulous item i see from winners like that woman over

00:22:32.260 there with the designer jeans are those from winners ooh are those beautiful gold earrings did

00:22:38.100 she pay full price or that leather tote or that cashmere sweater or those knee-high boots that dress

00:22:43.700 that jacket those shoes is anyone paying full price for anything stop wondering start winning winners find

00:22:51.460 fabulous for less then there's kyle bass now kyle bass i love because he's as anti china as i am he's been

00:23:00.180 for years but he's also um very well informed about the whole financial situation with china better than

00:23:09.300 the average person because it's his business um he says there's a reason the chinese demanded that the

00:23:16.020 imf stopped publishing the reserve adequacy calculation for china and for hong kong in 2019 he says china

00:23:24.260 doesn't have adequate usd reserves to operate their economy now that's a little bit out of my um my zone

00:23:34.340 but just know that somebody who knows more about the need for usd reserves to operate your economy

00:23:40.980 says that they're running out are they well again i think all data is difficult to estimate but kyle

00:23:49.700 thinks that they're not in good shape because they demanded that the imf stop publishing their reserve

00:23:55.540 adequacy why would china insist that somebody stops publishing their reserve adequacy unless it wasn't adequate

00:24:05.380 so that's a pretty good you know connecting the dots there if it's not adequate and they needed to

00:24:12.420 operate their economy that's a problem then there's uh chamath uh palihapitiya who has the advantage of

00:24:23.380 being one of the smartest people around and you know has looked deeply into it um and his opinion on x was as

00:24:31.540 many problems as the usa may have i would say china's are worse and they listen china's seen the slowest

00:24:38.260 growth they've had in decades and again that would be based on what china tells us so it might be even

00:24:45.860 worse than they tell us their attractiveness as a recipient of foreign domestic investment has come to a

00:24:53.620 halt how many of you remember in 2018 when i lost my stepson to fentanyl and i told you that

00:25:01.780 china was unsafe for business and if it wasn't unsafe for business i was going to make it unsafe

00:25:09.140 and there wasn't i don't think there was a single person who thought that was even remotely possible

00:25:15.780 because you know we were doing well with china it seemed like china was just coasting along

00:25:22.980 and uh i i said that that investment in china was going to come to a halt here we are

00:25:31.540 um chamath points out they have a very difficult demographic problem too many old people not enough

00:25:38.100 young i don't know if that'll have anything to do with the tariffs because that's sort of a longer term

00:25:43.780 problem tariffs are a shorter term um and then number four they need exports they do not have

00:25:49.940 the capacity to absorb everything they create now america has a consumer society china has a saving

00:25:58.900 society so if china said all right we don't need to sell all this stuff externally because we've got a

00:26:06.820 gazillion people in our own country we'll just sell it internally but they're not really poised to buy

00:26:12.740 stuff they're more poised to save money so they don't have the option that the u.s does where we

00:26:19.380 could potentially you know in a situation like this we can sell more stuff internally so i went to grok

00:26:26.180 which i used several times today and oh my god the combination of smart people on x plus using grok to

00:26:36.340 fill in any gaps that you don't know is the ultimate news understanding model i don't think i can say

00:26:44.580 enough about what elon musk has done for the ability to understand your world you need both it's not good

00:26:52.340 enough just to have the smart people weigh in because you you don't wonder about bias and you

00:26:56.580 don't know who's right about what but then you you fire up grok and it asks the question who can

00:27:02.740 withstand the tariffs more easily china or the u.s now the the overall answer is you know it sort of

00:27:11.140 depends and there's lots of moving parts so grok can't be completely sure but here are some of the

00:27:16.020 things it says the u.s is less trade dependent so we know that uh let's see uh so exports and imports

00:27:27.140 for the u.s are about a quarter of our gdp but exports to china are only seven percent of u.s exports

00:27:37.860 and we have the biggest consumer market so like i said we have the ability to possibly sell more things

00:27:44.020 internally if we wanted to so that is seven percent we're selling to china um we could probably find

00:27:51.460 another buyer it's not the most money in the world and you know it's something we could absorb at the

00:27:57.460 size of our economy um tariffs could reduce the deficit by curbing imports but they also risk supply

00:28:06.580 chain disruption so supply chain disruptions would be terrible um so apparently china is 16 of u.s imports

00:28:18.980 is that right let me check my other numbers um no china's economy is heavily export driven so their

00:28:27.460 their trade with everybody accounts for 37 of their gdp but the u.s is their biggest market it's roughly

00:28:36.420 17 17 of china's exports now these are numbers that completely surprised me i would have guessed

00:28:44.980 because everybody's talking about america being this gigantic economy i would have guessed that we're

00:28:50.020 like 30 of their exports we're only 17 and they're only seven percent of ours so i'm kind of surprised

00:29:02.660 because maybe both sides can absorb a lot of pain at least in terms of price for a while

00:29:12.820 so the u.s is a critical market but it's a 17 of china's exports

00:29:20.260 and china has diversified trade partners so they can trade with other people but that's not something

00:29:26.340 that can happen quickly um the u.s could face inflation and trouble cutting interest rates

00:29:32.820 yes so there'll be domestic domestic upheaval in the u.s and maybe some inflation almost certainly

00:29:40.260 some inflation um it would take years for the u.s to build domestic manufacturing so that's not going

00:29:46.020 to happen right away public tolerance for this economic interruption is a wild card as in

00:29:53.060 it's a wild card so if trump doesn't sell this and it doesn't show some kind of quick benefits it's

00:30:02.900 going to be a problem um china can deploy funds quickly and to offset their losses so they could

00:30:09.860 just pump some money into their into their economy but that's not good either because it inflates property

00:30:15.860 bubbles and creates more debt and they're not really so stable that they want to do that um

00:30:25.140 but their uh manufacturing base is unmatched it would be hard for us to get a lot of stuff anywhere

00:30:29.860 else so for example the uh antibiotics and rare earth minerals and stuff like that we would just be

00:30:38.100 sort of analog and for a long time uh there's there's stuff where we we couldn't simply go to our allies

00:30:45.540 such as australia they have a lot of rare earth stuff uh they just wouldn't have enough

00:30:51.860 so even if we tried to employ every one of our allies all around the world and that would include

00:30:58.260 like i guess japan does a lot of refining of stuff that comes from australia the rare earth stuff

00:31:03.700 and there are other a bunch of other markets that have some rarer stuff but if you added it all

00:31:09.060 together it doesn't come really too close to the amount we're getting from china or have been

00:31:17.940 now let's see what else so my question also was could the u.s form an economic trading block

00:31:27.300 that competes with china completely in other words is there anything that china is doing

00:31:34.100 that we couldn't in let's say two years find other countries that do it so for example uh you know

00:31:42.660 i said australia has a you know as a booming rare earth minerals business but it would have to boom a

00:31:52.820 lot more and very quickly for it to make up the difference could it is that something that they could

00:32:00.740 just spin up in two years i mean it's already in operating you know it's already fully operating

00:32:07.620 maybe i don't know um but the other places you could get rare earth or let's see besides australia canada

00:32:16.340 um in japan canada might be mad at us

00:32:21.780 anyway so the rare earth mineral thing looks like a big problem we couldn't easily do that

00:32:26.100 um the making of electronics did you know that uh who is the second biggest maker of electronics

00:32:36.900 after china it turns out it's the u.s i thought the u.s had just lost its ability to do everything

00:32:44.340 but the u.s is the second biggest maker of electronics claudia was leaving for her pickleball

00:32:51.460 tournament i've been visualizing my match all week she was so focused on visualizing that she didn't

00:32:56.820 see the column behind her car on her backhand side good thing claudia's with intact the insurer with

00:33:03.140 the largest network of auto service centers in the country everything was taken care of under one roof

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00:33:13.540 round but you got there on time intact insurance your auto service ace certain conditions apply

00:33:20.660 um south korea and japan have some have a lot of game as well so there might be some things that

00:33:27.620 south korea and japan could pick up in the short run but the u.s looks like maybe it could make if it

00:33:34.900 had the rare earth minerals it looks like it could make a lot of stuff pharmaceuticals um china has a

00:33:42.020 lot of pharmaceuticals but did you know that the pharmaceutical the other big pharmaceutical makers

00:33:48.980 are india the united states again i didn't realize that the united states was actually still big in pharma

00:33:56.580 but i think we're um third uh after india and china but also germany italy ireland france switzerland

00:34:05.780 japan and the uk all have pretty robust pharmaceutical businesses israel does too they've got one of the

00:34:12.900 biggest um what do you call it generic one of their one of their biggest companies in israel is a generic

00:34:20.580 pharma company and uh trump said we're going to be announcing very shortly a major tariff on

00:34:27.140 pharmaceuticals um he said when they hear that they're going to leave china and going to reopen

00:34:34.820 their plants all over the place in our country now here's a question if you had to design a pharmaceutical

00:34:43.460 operation from scratch that feels like it would take a long time because you'd have to really think

00:34:49.700 through you know what devices do i need and how many people and how big is the building and all these

00:34:55.700 decisions but if you're just trying to clone an operation that's already up and running in another

00:35:02.820 country let's say china how long does that take because don't you already have the plans now you'd have

00:35:10.500 to make them you know meet u.s building standards and stuff but i wonder if there's actually a fast way

00:35:17.940 for the pharma that's uh operating in china but is owned by u.s or other countries i wonder if there's

00:35:23.940 a fast way just to clone him say just build the same thing we'll just make sure it meets u.s building

00:35:29.860 standards yeah we'll find out then there's a risk that china could sell its u.s treasuries how many times

00:35:38.260 if you've been told that the u.s treasuries are substantially owned by china so it's like china

00:35:47.060 owns the united states because they you know own our treasuries well apparently china's ownership is

00:35:53.940 only 7.4 percent of foreign held u.s debt and it's way down from what it used to be

00:36:02.500 um so it was much bigger in 2012 and 2016. so that doesn't seem like a big risk you know even if they

00:36:10.660 and if they tried selling those treasuries it could uh it'd be bad for us because it would increase our

00:36:16.820 borrowing costs um but china would be devaluing its own holdings and weakening the wand which would

00:36:24.660 hurt its export business so everything's so connected that anything we do to china is bad

00:36:30.100 for us anything china does for does to us is bad for them um then in a uh unrelated topic

00:36:44.100 i forget his first name but who's the comedian whose last name is schultz

00:36:48.340 and he's it looks like he's trying to maybe pivot from being just a stand-up comedian to being a

00:36:54.900 politically relevant voice and he doesn't exactly have the skills for that but he's making a game

00:37:04.020 effort at it um but here's what he said recently on i think he was talking to chamath on his podcast

00:37:11.220 and he said uh schultz said if trump announces at the end of the year we're eradicating income tax for

00:37:17.060 people making under 150 000 midterms are going red now do you think that's true if the only thing trump

00:37:28.100 did is said no no federal income taxes under 150 000 because he has hinted that that might be a thing

00:37:36.180 that you do he's also hinted that he might raise taxes on the richest people people who make over a

00:37:43.860 million dollars a year i think do you think that would be enough to make the midterms go red i don't

00:37:53.300 i mean probably wouldn't hurt but uh yeah i think the tariff thing and interest rates and the cost of

00:38:00.580 a banana are going to overwhelm those things but uh it certainly would be popular i don't know how we

00:38:07.300 can afford it but it might be popular um there's another big problem called the baseless trade

00:38:16.820 now here's something i never heard of but apparently this affects the u.s hedge funds

00:38:21.460 now the hedge funds and other big investment places they can bet on just about anything

00:38:27.780 they can bet on the future you know will the future be better or worse than you thought will

00:38:32.420 these securities go up or down but they can also bet on price differences so apparently hedge funds have

00:38:39.780 big bets on the price difference between the u.s treasury bonds and uh another financial tool called

00:38:50.180 futures so the actual price versus the future price of the u.s treasury bonds and apparently this bet went

00:38:58.180 very wrong because of the new tariffs uh so there'd be a somewhat devastating financial loss for these

00:39:06.740 hedge funds to which i say isn't that what makes them a hedge fund it's not a it's not like it's some

00:39:15.060 kind of guaranteed annuity the whole point of a hedge fund is uh the point of a hedge fund is that it's

00:39:24.180 a riskier business and they're making bets that other people don't make and maybe they got this one

00:39:30.420 wrong so i don't know how how many of you have investments in a hedge fund i mean i'm doing all

00:39:39.940 right in life but i've never had a penny in the hedge fund it just seems like that's the super rich

00:39:46.420 thing to do not not just the you're doing well thing to do i don't know how big a deal that is

00:39:51.860 well another drama this is kind of fun um so elon musk of course is all in on doge but tariffs are not

00:40:03.220 part of doge so musk is apparently taking a view that's more um anti-tariff um i haven't i don't

00:40:12.900 quite understand his full point of view but what i appreciate is that he's acting like the head of a car

00:40:19.460 company so he's acting like a manufacturer and he has every right to promote what's good for his

00:40:29.700 stockholders and what's good for his companies and he's uh he would like fewer tariffs basically

00:40:37.460 because it's going to be real expensive for him even though it turns out that the top four

00:40:43.620 cars made in america that are made mostly in america with american parts and assembled america

00:40:51.460 the top four are all teslas so he's he's absolutely killing it compared to anybody else

00:40:59.220 in making things in america but you can't get everything so you still got some things that would get

00:41:05.460 really expensive and so i don't mind that he's fully pro doge at the same time he's advising trump

00:41:15.300 that tariffs are a mistake i like it when smart people disagree and as long as you know that you

00:41:23.380 know he he's operating not as a doge head when he makes these comments he's operating as a head of a

00:41:29.620 a major manufacturing entity but that's fine i mean it's not like we're confused it's not like we see

00:41:39.220 him as not the head of tesla or something so yes um i don't know what's true in an absolute but when i

00:41:47.140 see the head of a giant manufacturing company arguing for things that would be good for the manufacturing

00:41:54.180 company that's okay yeah that's the best way you'd expect but he's getting in a shouting or let's say

00:42:03.060 an insult match with peter navarro this is where it gets funny uh so he labeled musk labeled navarro's

00:42:11.220 comments uh as dumber than a sack of bricks and called him a moron on x uh he called his claims to

00:42:20.020 monster be false and he cited tesla's high u.s content so i guess navarro may have made some

00:42:26.980 claims about uh musk and tesla that weren't quite true but then uh so mr navarro uh peter navarro

00:42:39.940 denied that there's any kind of rift between them and right after he denied that there's a rift musk

00:42:46.180 musk called him on x peter retardo

00:42:55.540 sorry allergies are getting me peter retardo anyway um what i'd love to hear

00:43:06.020 is what elon musk's alternative plan is so um if he's got a plan that's better than what trump is doing

00:43:16.340 why wouldn't i want to hear it why wouldn't trump want to hear it but i just don't know if he's in

00:43:22.420 a situation to be as completely independent in his thought as you would want somebody to be because

00:43:29.460 he's he's got a you know fiduciary responsibility to his stockholders which it looks like he's taking

00:43:36.820 seriously so that's fine people can disagree uh press secretary uh carolyn leavitt um said that uh

00:43:48.100 boys will be boys and she said trump is staying out of it trump staying out of it is exactly the right

00:43:55.380 thing we don't need trump getting into that it's funny enough as it is so just just leave it where it

00:44:04.020 is bank more on course when you switch to a scotia bank banking package

00:44:12.420 learn more at scotia bank.com banking packages conditions apply scotia bank you're richer than

00:44:18.980 you think according to zero hedge um there are many billions of dollars of uh factories being

00:44:29.380 canceled in the united states that we're going to make uh batteries for electric cars and i guess

00:44:35.940 the uncertainty of the future of electric cars because of trump's ruling you know we went from

00:44:43.300 the future has to be lots of electric cars under biden to you don't need an electric car

00:44:49.700 you know you buy whatever the market wants so it it made suddenly these multi-billion dollar

00:44:55.780 investments in building battery making plants in the united states it just suddenly turned them into

00:45:01.620 a bad idea because you don't even know if people are going to want more electric cars in the future

00:45:06.900 or at least enough to build all these factories so that's a big negative

00:45:13.540 here's a little update on the do you remember the story of the open ai whistleblower who was ruled to

00:45:20.180 have committed suicide um before he was finished with his whistleblowing and a lot of people including

00:45:29.060 his family said the scene of the crime does not look at all like any kind of suicide because it looked

00:45:37.460 like there was some kind of a struggle and yeah there was no indication he was suicidal and basically

00:45:43.860 the the facts didn't add up but the uh chief medical examiner said oh that's that's some suicide right

00:45:50.740 there and now the uh the latest information is that the parents say there's strong evidence that he was

00:45:58.740 shot twice in the head now i suppose there could be some room for doubt because one of the shots had

00:46:09.300 something to do with his tongue and the other one was not anywhere near his tongue so if something

00:46:15.060 affected his tongue like a bullet and something affected a completely different part of his head

00:46:20.500 that didn't first or second hit his tongue it would sort of suggest that there were a second bullet

00:46:26.660 now nobody commits suicide by shooting themselves in the head twice so i'll tell you what this makes me

00:46:35.060 think you know how smart it was when we saw soros funding all these district attorneys and attorney

00:46:41.700 generals and stuff we thought man he's so smart because he figured out the least expensive way to control

00:46:50.100 important things such as the department of justice well what would be better than bribing the chief

00:46:58.420 medical examiner in some town i feel like you could literally get away with murder

00:47:05.220 as long as the chief medical examiner was in your pocket and you blackmail them somehow or you

00:47:09.940 threaten them that that would be almost as good as the soros thing maybe better so i'm not going to

00:47:17.220 make any accusations about this particular chief medical examiner i guess the parents are all over it

00:47:23.860 but uh i'll just note that you would only have to flip one person to turn a murder into a suicide

00:47:31.940 just one person and how easily can one person become corrupted in our world really really easily

00:47:43.380 we see it every day with the judges you know being weird here's a story that i kept ignoring but um

00:47:54.500 it seems that the public is very interested in it and it's that uh would-be assassin of trump the golf course

00:48:01.940 one ryan ruth the one who's still alive and the news is that prior to the assassination he had tried to

00:48:10.340 get a stinger missile from ukraine um now i guess the way people are interpreting that

00:48:20.340 is that ukraine was maybe involved in plotting the assassination of trump but i don't think there's

00:48:27.220 any connection because it's not like he got it if ukraine sold them a stinger missile and it came from the

00:48:36.420 military or something then i'd say whoa what's going on here but the fact he tried to get one

00:48:42.740 because he had some he said had some connection with ukraine he was doing some uh i don't know

00:48:48.500 some kind of recruiting from other countries for ukraine so i'm not sure that uh

00:48:57.540 um i guess he said in a message at some point the post-millennials writing about this

00:49:02.980 send me an rpg a rocket propelled grenade or a stinger and i'll see what we can do um

00:49:12.820 and he was doing that with associates in ukraine but you know ukraine is just completely corrupt

00:49:19.540 so that doesn't mean that the government of ukraine was in on it it could have been any corrupt people

00:49:25.300 who had access to that stuff which is a lot of corrupt people yeah anyway

00:49:30.100 so it definitely raises a flag to look into the ukraine connection but i would say it's not

00:49:38.100 demonstrated yet he definitely has a ukraine connection so we know he's connected to ukraine

00:49:44.500 and we know he asked to get this weapon that doesn't necessarily mean that the government of ukraine was behind it

00:49:51.860 according to the washington times mike glenn is writing about this the pentagon is going to offer back pay

00:50:00.660 and benefits to troops who were forced out over the coven mandates

00:50:06.020 um apparently there were 8 700 ex-service members who were forced out of the military over refusing the jabs i guess

00:50:15.220 uh now the uh um they're they're going to be offered their old jobs back and back bay that feels fair

00:50:27.380 doesn't it i like that because i i like when the military gets their their due so that's good

00:50:36.740 um here's another activist judge story the daily wire luke rosiac's reporting so the uh calls it activist judges

00:50:48.580 have been rubber stamping billions in suspect social security disability claims so apparently what's been happening

00:50:56.500 is that when the social security administration looks at somebody's claim that they're disabled and

00:51:03.700 therefore they're claiming they should be paid forever by social security for their disability

00:51:09.060 if the social security says no you're not disabled you can work

00:51:13.700 they still have a legal path so they can go to a judge and the judge can decide if they're disabled

00:51:22.180 now how does a judge even decide if somebody is disabled i don't i don't know how that works

00:51:27.220 but apparently there are a number of judges who pretty much will say yes to 95 or so of all cases

00:51:36.500 that would be 95 of people who had already been rejected by the experts of social security who said

00:51:46.260 who would say you're not disabled and then the judge says yes you are so you get money forever and they

00:51:54.020 say it pretty much every time does that seem fair to you it doesn't sound fair to me

00:52:03.860 so that sounds pretty much like a rigged system

00:52:07.780 um there's another uh according to ars technica john brodkin uh there's another court

00:52:14.900 siding with the trump administration um and it's about uh access to personal data

00:52:20.740 so now a appeals court said that doge can access personal data held by the u.s department of

00:52:26.820 education and the office of personnel management and that overturns a an order from a lower court judge

00:52:35.060 hey i have a question when the supreme court ruled that judge biasberg i call him biasberg

00:52:43.220 um didn't have the standing to rule about uh some illegals who were in texas because he the judge was in dc

00:52:54.180 did that mean that that set a standard that none of the judges can do um national rulings

00:53:03.380 if they're only local and whatever the problem was wasn't just a local problem

00:53:07.860 does that generalize because it seems like that would be an enormous story and i've seen some

00:53:16.180 references to it but i don't feel like it's being treated as an enormous story so can somebody give me a

00:53:23.940 fact check on that um is it true that the supreme court has in effect without saying it directly

00:53:33.380 created a situation where these individual judges can't stop trump uh and if they've been let's say

00:53:41.060 shopped to find somebody who will say no you can't do this nationwide thing

00:53:46.580 so is that the end of rogue judges saying you can't do a nationwide thing or is that too optimistic

00:53:54.100 all right well i'll keep looking in your comments uh it was not a ruling on nationwide injunctions

00:54:05.060 um you're a retired lawyer so even though it's not a ruling on nationwide injunctions

00:54:12.420 did it not set the standard for what a judge could do meaning that you would know in advance

00:54:19.860 that the supreme court would overturn it if it was another one of these situations where the judge was

00:54:25.540 in dc and the problem was in you know texas or florida or something

00:54:33.300 so even if it's not a a precedent

00:54:39.540 doesn't it tell you which way it's going to go no i guess that's a precedent

00:54:43.940 all right so it's a precedent but not a ruling

00:54:54.100 it's influential but not a precedent a precedent

00:54:59.380 all right i'll look for a little more guidance on that

00:55:03.060 but if it had been a if it had shut down the ability of these judges to rule anywhere in the

00:55:10.740 country even if they were not you know the judge that should rule anywhere in the country if that

00:55:16.340 were true it seems like it would be the news all over the place so i'm feeling like it's not exactly the news

00:55:24.660 well let's talk about water fluoridation so fluoride in the water according to the children's

00:55:31.380 health defense brenda baletti's writing that water fluoride is linked to autism and other

00:55:38.340 developmental delays so there's a study that says it did lower the risk for tooth decay so that's the

00:55:47.380 good news the fluoride did that but a higher risk for neuro development neurodevelopmental disorders

00:55:56.420 according to a peer-reviewed study and apparently there's a more there's more likelihood of autism or

00:56:04.820 uh attention deficit hyperactivity uh intellectual disabilities and specific delays

00:56:14.020 that's kind of scary how many of you had fluoride in your water when you were a kid

00:56:20.740 um i did not now i've had plenty of fluoride in my water as an adult but we had a a private well

00:56:29.220 so we had lots of cavities lots of cavities oh lots of cavities uh but i didn't get adhd or

00:56:42.420 one of these other problems so maybe that's that's one data point so i wouldn't make too much of a

00:56:49.540 judgment over it well according to the lbc london has fallen out of the top five wealthiest cities in

00:56:57.700 the world because the millionaires are getting out of there are you surprised that the millionaires are

00:57:02.740 leaving london no you're not i think london's gonna fall all right let's do an update on the stock market

00:57:14.180 uh dow is down a little nasdaq is up a little s p is down a little bitcoins down a little yeah it's bouncing

00:57:22.900 around yeah the

00:57:30.820 yeah it looks like uh you're surprised that i'm not on the spectrum as far as i know i'm not on the

00:57:36.900 spectrum i mean that's not my understanding of myself but i suppose anything's possible

00:57:42.340 um mike benz has a prediction uh you know in uh germany there's a party called the afd and they're

00:57:53.060 the uh some would call them the right wing party but basically the most republicany looking entity there

00:58:02.260 they have now become the most popular party and benz is uh saying historic white pill he says this

00:58:11.380 in x the white house and the u.s state department must be ready to respond when the german government

00:58:17.620 inevitably arrests afd party leaders and threatens to cancel elections now this is an interesting

00:58:26.980 prediction because benz is looking at the pattern of you know populist or right-leaning governments

00:58:34.900 and how if they get close to power like trump the lawfare comes out and they just try to arrest them

00:58:42.820 and it might be because other countries are involved it might be just because they know it works

00:58:47.540 so as i often say the closest you can get to understanding reality is a narrative that predicts

00:58:57.300 so mike benz has a narrative which is whenever a party like this gets close to power that there will be

00:59:05.620 some fake legal activism against them to try to jail them so that they can't take power that's a pretty specific

00:59:14.820 uh prediction so if you're wondering is that narrative that whenever this kind of person gets close to

00:59:24.340 power or this kind of people that there's always lawfare that takes them out or at least attempted lawfare

00:59:31.460 in trump's case that's a very specific prediction and i've got a feeling he's going to be right about this

00:59:39.620 so it's kind of gutsy to make the call but it does look like it's heading that direction so i think my

00:59:46.900 ben's might be on to something you might be on to something all right ladies and gentlemen um the big

00:59:54.500 story is still the tariffs um i don't think that anything that anybody's saying about tariffs is completely

01:00:01.380 believable unless it's really generic i don't think we really know how long china can last i don't think

01:00:10.260 we know how long we can last um but i do agree this is the time for the fight it's not gonna get better

01:00:20.020 so if we're gonna fight might as well do it now now we should i think we have to uh acknowledge

01:00:29.460 that it would affect different people very differently um personally i'm getting slammed

01:00:36.740 so it's very expensive for me um but i can you know i can take the hit so i definitely am going to feel

01:00:45.380 bad for anybody who's going to lose their business because it looks like there's going to be quite a

01:00:49.460 bit of that and anybody who is looking to retire and they were depending on their stocks to do it

01:00:57.220 i'm not going to be the guy who says why was your money in stocks if you're ready to retire

01:01:01.780 it's a fair question but it's such a dickish thing to say that i think i'll stay off that

01:01:08.980 um so there are a lot of people who are definitely going to suffer potentially or actually because of

01:01:16.020 the tariff fight on the other hand what exactly was the alternative

01:01:24.900 the alternative is that we just keep getting beaten up by other countries for reasons that don't make sense

01:01:30.820 so it was time and i think if trump pulls this off even though there's going to be a lot of

01:01:37.700 salesmanship and hyperbole and a lot of bs that goes into the claims and the counterclaims

01:01:44.260 um if we get to anything good it will look like one of the greatest things that any president ever did

01:01:51.780 if it doesn't work um we probably have a few years where where we have to do major adjustments to our

01:02:00.580 economy to bring you know manufacturing here and find other sources of things but it seems like we have

01:02:07.940 two possibilities one is we get china to treat us in a way that we consider fair that'd be great the

01:02:17.860 other thing is that we create a let's say a trading block with our other allies in which we can get

01:02:25.060 everything we need not necessarily made in this country but everything we need from some of them

01:02:32.020 so as long as we're getting some of them uh you know in other words if we're getting their rare earth

01:02:40.980 minerals from australia and japan is refining them for us and you know south korea is maybe building

01:02:47.940 some factories in the u.s to make some more electronics on our soil and you know maybe canada

01:02:54.740 starts maybe we become friends with canada again maybe greenland uh maybe ukraine come up with some

01:03:03.940 rare earth minerals so i don't know if china wants to win this or lose this just consider this if if china

01:03:16.100 surrenders on tariffs and just says all right all right you know we'll we'll start treating you more

01:03:21.940 fairly is that going to be good or bad for china i think the worst thing for china would be to not give

01:03:32.100 in to anything and then force us to kind of suck wind for two years until we find an entire trading

01:03:41.060 block that can do everything they can do and then they will be unnecessary and then it's a whole different

01:03:48.100 world so it seems to me that china has two choices one maintain a lot of good business by treating us

01:03:57.860 fairly or two lose everything that they were doing with the united states forever because we would never

01:04:05.300 never trade with them again once we build alternative sources i feel like they would rather have some

01:04:12.260 leverage over us so for their own strategic reasons i think they need to surrender um but they have to

01:04:20.740 make it look like it was you know a win-win and not a surrender so don't be surprised if at some point

01:04:28.900 something like well maybe our diplomats should meet your diplomats and talk about this or maybe we should

01:04:36.820 come up with a grand deal i wouldn't be surprised and i'm not even sure if i'm gonna if i'm rooting for

01:04:44.900 them to cave or i'm rooting for them to not cave because by far our better situation would be we create

01:04:53.940 a trading block with the rest of the world where the rest of the world is providing us everything we

01:04:59.460 were getting from china plus a lot of it being made locally plus we learn how to make factories again

01:05:06.740 so we can either win or lose but i think we win both ways it feels like it it feels like we win we

01:05:16.420 have two ways to win and no way to lose now one of the one of the ways to win will be really painful

01:05:22.020 if we have to wait two years i'll just pick that number if we had to wait two years for

01:05:27.060 you know alternative sources of pharmaceuticals and uh and rare earth minerals to be available

01:05:35.540 that could be a real painful two years but boy would we be happy when that was over right

01:05:43.620 so uh remember my other prediction my other prediction that the stock market would come down

01:05:49.620 around 20 percent but then the psychology of investors would kick in and people would feel like

01:05:56.260 huh 20 that's a buying opportunity so i think we're seeing a bounce around like teasing that 20

01:06:05.940 and it might keep doing that so you might have your up days and your down days but i feel like when it

01:06:11.460 gets near 20 you're going to have about as many buyers as you have sellers so it might stabilize there

01:06:18.740 for a while until we get better clarity all right i'm going to say a few words to the locals people

01:06:25.220 privately the rest of you thanks for joining nice to see you and i'll see you same time tomorrow

01:06:32.580 for even more fun for even more fun all right locals i'll see you in 30 seconds

01:06:46.260 you

01:06:48.260 you

Real Coffee with Scott Adams - April 09, 2025

Episode 2804 CWSA 04⧸09⧸25

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