Lots of news happening in the world today, including an election in Canada, a deal with Russia and Iran, and economic fallout from the Trump administration's first 100 days in office. Daily Wire - The Countdown is on! The Daily Wire is celebrating President Trump's First 100 Days in office with a 100-hour flash sale on annual memberships.
00:01:25.000You make some choices you're going to have to live with up there.
00:01:27.000It wasn't clear whether the Liberals would actually win a majority of seats or a smaller share that would require them to win support from other parties to govern.
00:01:33.000That'd make a very large difference, by the way.
00:01:35.000If they only have enough seats in the Canadian Parliament that they have to form a coalition with another party, that still leaves them vulnerable to the possibility of some sort of vote of no confidence in the future.
00:01:45.000If, however, they have a pretty solid majority in the Parliament, then you get four years of Mark Carney up in Canada.
00:01:52.000Carney is the former head of the Bank of Canada and the Bank of England.
00:02:50.000And it's a very short election cycle because Carney, upon entering, declared, he could see that there was a boost in the polls, he declared a snap election, which meant that there was only about six weeks between the declaration of the election and the actual election.
00:03:08.000So the question is whether Justin Trudeau dropping out alone would have been enough to push the liberals to victory or whether it was a combination of Justin Trudeau.
00:03:28.000That President Trump obviously had something to do with the results of the Canadian election.
00:03:33.000So sure, obviously it makes a huge difference if you swap out the very unpopular Justin Trudeau for a cipher, a non-entity like Mark Carney.
00:03:41.000And Carney, to his credit, Ran a little bit more as a moderate on issues like immigration or even on the economy.
00:03:47.000He suggested he wasn't going to raise taxes.
00:03:49.000He was going to mildly lower the taxes in Canada.
00:03:53.000But the big election issue in Canada was not any more inflation or fiscal mismanagement in Canada, which is what Poliev had been running on.
00:04:01.000The main election question in Canada, beginning in January, simultaneous with the dropout of Justin Trudeau, was America's aggressive attack on Canada.
00:04:12.000Both rhetorically and in terms of policy.
00:04:15.000President Trump first started attacking the Canadians in December of last year.
00:04:21.000He started calling them the 51st state and trolling the Canadians.
00:04:25.000And then he started talking literally his first day in office about dropping serious tariffs on the Canadians.
00:04:32.000And what that did is it flipped the entire political fight in Canada.
00:04:35.000So before it had been about Justin Trudeau and the Liberal Party's mismanagement.
00:04:38.000And then it turned into who is best willing and conditioned.
00:04:41.000to fight President Trump on his tariff agenda.
00:04:45.000And there's a widespread perception in Canada that Pierre Poliev, because he was a candidate of the right and was widely liked by many conservatives in the United States, that Pierre Poliev was some sort of Trump ally and therefore ill-positioned to go up against Donald Trump.
00:04:58.000He tried to draw a contrast with Trump.
00:05:00.000He tried to say that he was going to fight Trump on the tariffs and that Trump was wrong on the tariffs.
00:05:03.000The problem was that imagistically he was of the right, Trump was of the right.
00:05:07.000His entire campaign slogan, by the way, was Canada first, which was very reminiscent And so that obviously was sort of roiling underneath the dynamics of Trudeau versus Poliev.
00:05:20.000And then once Trudeau dropped out, it was almost like a hot air balloon that had dropped its ballast.
00:05:24.000The Liberal Party started to rise precipitously, specifically because Trudeau, who was wildly unpopular with the public, was gone.
00:05:30.000And meanwhile, the underlying conditions had changed since the election in the United States, and particularly since President Trump took office and started aggressively using American policy.
00:05:43.000President Trump, of course, has been continuously trolling the Canadians.
00:05:47.000And the question you have to ask yourself here is what exactly was the strategy?
00:05:50.000Seriously, what is the thing that President Trump was going for?
00:05:54.000I've been asking this about President Trump's tariffs on Canada all the way along the line.
00:05:58.000If President Trump was simply trying to get the Canadians to lower specific tariffs, again, say, American dairy products, okay, so let's negotiate that.
00:06:06.000But President Trump, in his first term, Literally negotiated himself, the USMCA, which is the governing trade agreement with both Mexico and Canada.
00:06:14.000And then he overthrew his own USMCA to go after Mexico and Canada on the basis of his specious theories with regard to trade deficits.
00:06:37.000On sort of the MAGA right in the United States, I think many of them trying to get President Trump off the hook for some of the blame for Poliev's loss over there.
00:06:45.000The theory is that Poliev should have run harder to the right.
00:06:47.000He should have differentiated himself more from Mark Carney on issues like, say, immigration.
00:08:03.000Plus, he slammed Canada with a wide variety of significant high tariffs.
00:08:11.000Again, the sort of change in electoral mood in Canada was, in fact, due to both those factors.
00:08:16.000Justin Trudeau dropping out because Justin Trudeau is incompetent.
00:08:19.000Carney gives a feeling to Canadians that he is more solid because he has more of a financial background and he's done a lot more trade deals and all the rest of this sort of stuff.
00:08:28.000But according to pollsters, Poliev suffered for rhetoric too similar to President Trump's.
00:08:33.000Abacus data polling last week indicated 46% of Canadians held a negative perception of Poliev, the highest level since the start of the campaign.
00:08:41.000Now, conservatives didn't get blown out in the election.
00:08:43.000They still had more than 40% of the popular vote, which is close to the share in the last federal election they won in 2011.
00:09:10.000Now, believe it or not, there are some on the isolationist right in the United States who are celebrating this.
00:09:15.000So Kurt Mills from American Conservative Magazine, again, a very, very strong isolationist, he put out a statement saying, prediction, Trump will and already has, weirdly, get on with Carney.
00:09:28.000Trump vibes with the smart hyper Machiavellian center-left types.
00:09:31.000His relationships with Macron and Starmer are strong.
00:09:33.000He isn't actually friends with Boris Johnson.
00:09:35.000Poliev could have been Canuck DeSantis.
00:09:38.000Okay, so first of all, Canuck DeSantis sounds pretty great.
00:09:40.000As somebody who is a resident of the state of Florida, Governor DeSantis is an excellent governor.
00:09:43.000I do not know by any stretch of the imagination how it is better to have a socialist-leaning, Green New Deal nutjob as the sober-faced head of Canada as opposed to the other guy.
00:11:05.000It turns out that the United States, as the sort of sensor of gravity on planet Earth, many of the things that we do have a rather outsized effect.
00:11:12.000Canada just happens to be one of those effects, and so far those effects are not good.
00:11:16.000We'll get some more on this in just a moment.
00:12:17.000They'll be great for you the way they have been for me.
00:12:21.000Do you know, just like in the United States, Israel celebrates their own Independence Day, Yom HaTzimut.
00:12:25.000This year, Israel's Independence Day falls on May 1st.
00:12:27.000For the people of Israel, however, the concept of freedom has become intertwined with large ongoing challenges.
00:12:33.000Many people are facing difficult circumstances, navigating daily life amid uncertainty.
00:12:37.000During these challenging times, it can be hard to find moments of joy and celebration.
00:12:41.000Well, the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews provides essential support for vulnerable populations, ensuring the elderly, the sick, wounded soldiers, and families in need receive the care they deserve.
00:12:50.000Your generous gift to the fellowship today will help provide vital aid, including medicine, nutritious meals, safety measures, and comfort to those who need it most.
00:12:56.000Show your support for Israel by making a meaningful contribution.
00:13:00.000Your gifts can make a real difference in someone's life.
00:13:02.000Make your gifts online today at benforthefellowship.org.
00:13:17.000In actual good news, the Trump administration, there are many areas of the Trump administration that I think during the first 100 days have not gone particularly well.
00:13:24.000That would range from the economy to some areas of foreign policy.
00:13:27.000However, when it comes to immigration, President Trump has been absolutely stalwart.
00:13:50.000Well, yesterday, Caroline Lovett, the White House press secretary, announced that President Trump is going to be signing an EO, cracking down on illegal immigration.
00:13:58.000Later this afternoon, President Trump will sign an executive order on Law& Order and another executive order on Sanctuary Cities.
00:14:05.000The first EO will strengthen and unleash America's law enforcement to pursue criminals and protect innocent citizens.
00:14:13.000The second EO is centered around protecting American communities from criminal aliens, and it will direct the Attorney General and Secretary of Homeland Security to publish a list of state and local jurisdictions that obstruct the enforcement of federal immigration laws.
00:14:31.000He signed three executive orders, including one that instructed Pam Bondi and the Secretary of Homeland Security, Kristi Noem, to pursue all necessary legal remedies and enforcement measures against so-called sanctuary cities.
00:14:51.000However, obstruction of justice, which is a thing that has been happening in these sanctuary cities, Where ICE goes in and you have local law enforcement actively obstructing, getting in the way, declaring they're sanctuary cities and going out of their way to sort of thwart federal law, that is something that the federal government should be cracking down on.
00:15:09.000Another one of these executive orders aims to bolster legal resources to police officers accused of wrongdoing.
00:15:13.000The third seeks to enforce existing laws requiring professional truck drivers to be proficient in English, according to the New York Times.
00:15:21.000Now, President Trump, of course, has also been unleashing ICE to actually We seized a
00:15:55.000Again, the raid had been planned for months, according to the DEA.
00:16:01.000During surveillance, investigators documented drug trafficking, prostitution, and presence of people suspected to be members of the Venezuelan gang Tren d 'Aragua, the international gang MS-13, as well as the Hells Angels.
00:16:15.000Attorney General Bondi, in explaining the nature of the raid, explained there had been a bunch of 911 phone calls during the Biden administration, basically ignored.
00:16:24.000So to back up, during the Biden administration, they received 170 911 calls to that club alone.
00:16:32.000That club we were just watching, 170 calls.
00:16:35.000Wouldn't you think that would have been a red flag?
00:16:39.000Guns, shootings, ag batteries, nothing happened.
00:16:42.000Okay, so again, this is the upside of the Trump administration.
00:16:46.000Immigration, they've been doing an excellent job, even though courts have been attempting to hamstring them pretty much every step of the way in sort of a funny corollary.
00:16:57.000Over the weekend, Kristi Noem, the Secretary of Homeland Security, her handbag was stolen.
00:17:03.000She had put it underneath a chair in a restaurant, and purse snatchers grabbed it.
00:17:07.000Well, the suspects were then nabbed by the authorities, and one of them, it turns out, was apparently in the country, not legally, so that was a bad idea.
00:17:15.000Tom Homan, the bulldog boarders are, had a bit of a funny quip about all of this.
00:17:20.000I don't have the criminal history, but I know the one who stole the purse is supposedly in the country legally.
00:17:26.000But, you know, pick the wrong purse and steal a purse from them.
00:17:30.000I mean, Secretary Noem is a strong, strong secretary.
00:17:33.000So, again, the Trump administration on this matter has actually been completely thorough.
00:17:40.000They are doing a good job on all this.
00:17:42.000And they're being very aggressive in their public facing about all of it as well.
00:17:46.000According to Axios, Trump administration officials late Sunday began placing dozens of posters of arrested unauthorized immigrants along the White House driveway.
00:17:53.000The posters, which we'd arrested, specify various crimes linked to the pictured immigrants and have the White House's official logo at the bottom, according to Axios.
00:18:02.000So all of these posters were designed to point out that, again, the goal here is to deport criminal illegal immigrants.
00:18:10.000Hundreds of these posters were put up.
00:18:12.000And this is still President Trump's most popular issue.
00:18:30.000She moved over from her law firm to head the Civil Rights Division over at the Department of Justice, and she's now reorienting the DOJ toward pushing against institutional discrimination under the Civil Rights Act, including universities.
00:18:43.000And now, that's been apparently a great way of getting people at DOJ, who are, in fact, many of them sort of deep state members embedded with the left, to quit.
00:18:52.000According to the New York Times, hundreds of lawyers and other staff members are leaving the DOJ's civil rights division as veterans of the office say they've been driven out by Trump administration officials who want to drop its traditional work in order to aggressively pursue cases against the Ivy League, other schools, and liberal cities.
00:19:29.000And it's specifically because, again, that the administration is doing so many really important things that I am concerned about the administration's generalized foreign policy approach.
00:19:41.000Because administrations rise and fall as a unit.
00:19:44.000If the American people like President Trump's immigration policy but do not like his economic plans, and the economic plans are pulling in the 30s right now, that is going to sink how they feel about his immigration agenda.
00:19:55.000If the American people like what President Trump is doing on DEI, I love what President Trump is doing on DEI, but they don't like his foreign policy or believe that his foreign policy is going to lead to a more fractious and conflict-ridden world, that drags him down.
00:20:09.000Again, presidencies rise or fall as a unit.
00:20:13.000Now, one of these sort of truisms of American politics is that foreign policy doesn't tend to matter all that much.
00:20:18.000It doesn't matter all that much until it absolutely does.
00:20:21.000Excellent example of this would be Joe Biden.
00:20:23.000So if you look at Joe Biden's approval rating during his presidency, his approval ratings from the time he was elected were fairly high.
00:20:32.000After his election, his original approval ratings were up in the 50s.
00:20:36.000And then they started to slowly decline.
00:20:40.000Where they really started to cross streams, where the disapproved versus the approved started to cross streams, was specifically around the withdrawal from Afghanistan.
00:20:49.000So his numbers had been declining, albeit slowly, and then the withdrawal from Afghanistan absolutely cratered him.
00:20:54.000He was underwater the rest of his administration.
00:20:55.000Because it turns out, there's one thing Americans do not like, and that is our enemies winning.
00:21:15.000I'm always bemused and puzzled by people who seem to believe that Iran, China, Russia, and our foreign enemies are only reacting to us as opposed to they have independent interests that conflict with ours, that their agenda for the world is not the same as ours, and they see us as an enemy.
00:21:30.000That is very clearly true, for example, about the Russians.
00:21:35.000I discussed this on the show at length on Friday.
00:21:38.000We went through the thought of Alexander Dugin that happens to match up with the thought of Vladimir Putin and Sergei Lavrov and everybody else who is in power in Russia.
00:21:46.000They believe that the great obstacle to Russian imperial ambition is the Atlantic Alliance, meaning NATO, but effectively the United States.
00:21:56.000If Russia is able to take over Ukraine, this is one of their chief goals.
00:22:01.000If they're able to completely ingest Ukraine, regardless of how many Americans don't care about Ukraine, they will care if Vladimir Putin starts strolling through the center of Kiev.
00:22:11.000The same thing was true about Afghanistan.
00:22:17.000When we withdrew in shame in September of 2021.
00:22:23.000When that happened, it absolutely cratered the Biden presidency.
00:22:26.000If Ukraine were to be full-scale taken over by the Russians, that would be quite bad for the United States, for our allies, for NATO, for all the other countries that are along the borders of Russia, and for international politics more generally.
00:22:36.000Because, by the way, if Russia were able to completely ingest Ukraine, the next step would very obviously be a blockade of Taiwan by the Chinese government.
00:22:44.000They would start to occupy the outlying islands.
00:22:46.000And so far, President Trump, when it comes to Taiwan, has said that if that were to happen, we'd hit them with tariffs.
00:22:50.000Okay, well, we're already hitting them with tariffs, and it doesn't seem to be deterring them at all, as we'll get to in a moment.
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00:24:02.000Well, the answer is because hiking the tax on carried interest means higher taxes on investments that are currently helping Main Street economies grow and thrive.
00:24:09.000Left-wing politicians in Washington have been trying to raise taxes on carried interest for years.
00:24:13.000They'd love America's tax rate to be higher than China, France, Germany, even Canada.
00:24:37.000Basically, carried interest is the share of a profit of an investment that's paid to an investment manager that is basically sort of an alternative investment bonus.
00:24:46.000So if you invest really well, then you get carried interest.
00:24:49.000And that carried interest then is taxed at a capital gains tax rate as opposed to a basic income tax rate.
00:25:18.000So Russia lies about their policies all the time.
00:25:21.000They are now ordering, quote unquote, a three-day unilateral ceasefire in Ukraine, supposedly for next week, according to the New York Times.
00:25:28.000Of course, their last ceasefire, which was for Easter, really wasn't a ceasefire.
00:25:32.000They were flying drones the entire ceasefire.
00:25:36.000According to the New York Times, the Kremlin said Russian forces would stop fighting on May 8th for 72 hours to mark the May 9th celebration of the Soviet Union's victory.
00:25:44.000In World War II, which is a major holiday in Russia.
00:25:46.000In Russia, they do not celebrate the signing of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, which probably led to World War II in the first place, but put that aside.
00:25:52.000The Kremlin said during this period, all hostilities will cease.
00:25:55.000Russia believes the Ukrainian side should follow this example.
00:25:58.000And then Putin's spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, said the declaration underlines our willingness to get on the path toward a peaceful resolution.
00:26:12.000They don't need these three-day fake ceasefires, which are obviously an attempt to slow play the Trump administration.
00:26:18.000By the way, the demands of the Russians still, today, include full demilitarization of Ukraine.
00:26:26.000According to the New York Post, Russia shamelessly demanded the U.S. lift its sanctions and that Kiev be demilitarized and recognized that 20% of Ukraine belongs to Russia.
00:26:36.000Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov insisted on Monday that Russia will accept nothing less than total victory over Ukraine.
00:26:41.000After Steve Whitcoff, the Trump special envoy, again, the idea that Steve Whitcoff has any sort of special negotiating expertise, I want to see one iota of evidence that this is the case, because he seems to just travel around the world being taken in by various dictators, the Emir of Qatar,
00:26:58.000or being taken in by Vladimir Putin, with whom he said he was striking up a friendship.
00:27:02.000When asked by the Brazilian newspaper, O Globo, what terms would Russia agree to come to the negotiation table with Ukraine?
00:27:09.000Lavrov then rattled off a list of items.
00:27:12.000Quote, the international recognition of Crimea, Sevastopol, Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson, and the Parisian regions as part of Russia, as sovereign Russian territory.
00:27:23.000He insisted that, basically, Ukraine give up its military.
00:27:30.000And also, that, at the same time, the West lift all the sanctions.
00:27:36.000In the Ukrainian constitution is a commitment to try to pursue entry into NATO.
00:27:41.000So they'd have to change their own constitution.
00:27:45.000So all of that says that the Russians are not interested whatsoever.
00:27:49.000I mean, there's no evidence of their desire for any serious peace negotiation here.
00:27:55.000Because what Lavrov is saying here is obviously a complete non-starter.
00:27:59.000Okay, but what is the U.S.'s perspective going to be here?
00:28:02.000Well, J.D. Vance, the Vice President of the United States.
00:28:05.000He was on with our friend Charlie Kirk, and he says, if this doesn't stop, if the war doesn't stop, the Ukrainians won't win.
00:28:10.000Okay, well, that's true if you cut off support for them.
00:28:14.000And by the way, there are actually three possible outcomes.
00:28:17.000One would be heavy support to the Ukrainians, sufficient that they actually push Russia out of these areas.
00:28:21.000That is a very unlikely outcome because it would require heavy levels of support the West is not willing to provide and risks the possibility of more Russian escalation.
00:28:29.000Then there is possible outcome number two, the most plausible.
00:28:32.000And the outcome and the one that the West should be pursuing.
00:28:35.000And that is effectively a 1953-style Korean armistice.
00:28:39.000Meaning, the lines are drawn where they are drawn.
00:28:57.000The Ukrainians aren't winning the war.
00:28:59.000I think there's this weird idea among the mainstream media that if this thing goes on for just another few years, the Russians will collapse, the Ukrainians will take their territory back, and everything will go back to the way that it was before the war.
00:29:13.000That is not the reality that we live in.
00:29:15.000If this thing goes on for another few years, we could have, you know, societies collapsing.
00:29:21.000The demographics of both of these countries are a nightmare.
00:29:24.000You could have millions of more people killed if this thing goes on for another few years, and it can risk escalating into a nuclear war.
00:29:38.000I mean, so I'm hearing Vance correctly assess that Ukraine is not going to be taking back Crimea or the Luhansk-Donesk-Kerson region anytime soon.
00:31:17.000I guarantee you that if I were president, this deal wouldn't be made.
00:31:21.000A deal would be made that's 100 times better.
00:31:24.000So, what was that terrible deal that Obama cut with Iran?
00:31:29.000Well, it included the so-called P5 plus 1. The five permanent members of the UN Security Council, China, France, Russia, the UK, the US, and Germany, P5 plus 1, and the EU, all signed in for the JCPOA, which is Obama's awful Iran deal.
00:31:42.000Again, not me saying it was an awful deal.
00:31:44.000President Trump saying it was an awful deal.
00:31:48.000Well, basically, it set a 10-year limit on the use of particular centrifuges.
00:31:54.000According to the Council on Foreign Relations synopsis of the deal, Iran agreed not to produce either highly enriched uranium or plutonium that could be used in a nuclear weapon.
00:32:04.000And they said they were going to ensure that four down the tons and the Iraq facilities, which are their...
00:32:09.000Various nuclear facilities pursued only civilian nuclear energy.
00:32:13.000Iran doesn't need nuclear energy, like, at all.
00:32:15.000They're one of the most oil-rich, natural-gas-rich regions on planet Earth.
00:32:18.000They are not technologically sophisticated.
00:32:20.000They are not interested in a green new revolution over there.
00:32:23.000The reason they are pursuing nuclear facilities is because they are pursuing nuclear weapons.
00:32:27.000Quite obviously, the JCPOA was supposed to limit the numbers and types of centrifuges that Iran could operate.
00:32:34.000And the IAEA was supposed to somehow enforce that.
00:32:36.000They're going to be allowed to use their centrifuges to spin up to a certain level of purity in their uranium, enrichment in their uranium.
00:32:45.000If you enrich uranium to 5%, that's good for like a nuclear power plant.
00:32:49.000At 20%, you can do it for a research reactor or medical purposes.
00:32:53.000You need 90% uranium enrichment in order to get to nuclear.
00:32:57.000But the problem, of course, is that the spin up from 5% to 90% is actually quite fast.
00:33:01.000It doesn't take years to spin up uranium from 5% enrichment to 90% enrichment.
00:33:06.000The deal also got rid of sanctions on Iran, freed up them to use money for ballistic and terrorist activity, ballistic missiles and terrorist activity.
00:33:15.000The IAEA was supposed to monitor them, but they weren't giving them full authority to see anything in Fordow or Natanz or any of the rest of their nuclear reactors.
00:33:25.000That's the deal that President Trump said was the worst deal ever.
00:34:10.000In a country they can't even export oil right now?
00:34:12.000They have such an oil glut that their entire economy has basically cratered.
00:34:18.000Because of the maximum pressure campaign of President Trump.
00:34:21.000So if you were to get rid of the sanctions and then to sign off on, well, they can have nuclear, but they can't actually have nuclear nuclear, that is just the Obama deal.
00:34:48.000We'll have something without having to start dropping bombs all over the place.
00:34:55.000Okay, well, the problem with that, obviously, is that when the president says a deal will happen, we'll have something without dropping bombs all over the place.
00:35:01.000Well, I mean, first of all, It's not necessary for the United States to drop bombs all over the place.
00:35:06.000I mean, I'm sure it would be helpful to Israel, for example, if the United States were to lend some B2s for one sortie over Iran.
00:35:13.000And that could destroy the nuclear facilities, and no, it wouldn't start a giant world war.
00:35:17.000Iran is so weak right now that after Israel destroyed their entire air defense system, they uselessly fired a bunch of missiles at Israel, which caused zero casualties.
00:35:27.000So this idea that Iran is like a sleeping giant waiting to awake at their nuclear reactors, Are finished off is not true.
00:35:35.000And we also know that the United States actually has struck significant Iranian targets before with no actual serious blowback, including the killing of Qasem Soleimani during Trump administration number one.
00:35:45.000But if the Trump administration were to sign a crappy deal with Iran that would allow them a pathway to a nuclear weapon, that would allow them to open up their markets again, to reconstitute their terror network, that would not be good for the world either and would be bad for the Trump administration.
00:36:01.000China continues to grow more and more aggressive.
00:36:04.000And this is where our trade policy comes in.
00:36:06.000So if the idea was that tariffs on China were somehow going to curb their aggressive intent, that is not yet in evidence at the very, very least.
00:36:13.000And again, there have been some mixed signals from the Trump administration on this.
00:36:16.000Remember, TikTok is still operating despite the fact that there is a congressional mandate for TikTok to come.
00:36:21.000To an end, or at least be divested of its Chinese ownership.
00:36:24.000Right now, China is making aggressive moves in the South China Sea, according to the Washington Post.
00:36:29.000The Philippines and China have each unfurled their flags on a disputed reef claimed by both nations in the South China Sea, escalating tensions, reigniting hostilities over Beijing's expansive territorial claims in regional waters.
00:36:41.000Well, because the South China Sea is the source of pretty much all shipping coming from the Far East to the rest of the world and vice versa.
00:36:47.000So, a lot of shipping moves through the South China Sea, I asked my friend and sponsor, Perplexity.
00:36:53.000And the answer is, according to estimates, one-third of all global maritime trade, somewhere between 30 and 33 percent, passes through the South China Sea every year.
00:37:02.000That's like $3.4 to $3.6 trillion worth of goods annually.
00:37:06.000It's particularly important for energy shipments.
00:37:08.000About 40 percent of all global petroleum products and 45 percent of crude oil transported by sea pass through.
00:37:15.000It's a crucial artery for China, Japan, South Korea, and many other Southeast Asian nations.
00:37:20.000A Chinese takeover of the South China Sea could effectively cut off the east from the west in a lot of very important ways, which is why I also asked perplexity about China targeting islands and land masses in the South China Sea.
00:37:32.000There are a couple of areas where China has been particularly heavy on this.
00:37:36.000They've apparently reclaimed land and built artificial islands on seven reefs in the Spratly Archipelago.
00:37:41.000Equipping them with military installations, airstrips, ports, and surveillance equipment.
00:37:45.000There have also been recent standoffs, as we mentioned, at Sandy Cay, which is a small sandbar near Fitu Island, which is controlled by the Philippines.
00:37:55.000China's controlled those since 1974, but they've been increasing their militarization.
00:37:59.000They've actually been attempting to build entire islands in the Spratlys in an attempt to maximize military presence there.
00:38:07.000Who controls the South China Sea has a bottleneck.
00:38:10.000Which is one of the reasons why the Chinese are attempting to turn the South China Sea into essentially a Chinese lake.
00:38:17.000Manila deployed Navy and Coast Guard ships Sunday to Sandy Kay and two neighboring islands, where its national flag was planted, according to a statement in photos from its National Task Force for the West Philippine Sea.
00:38:28.000And that, of course, is a response to China's Coast Guard seizing the Sand Bank earlier this month and then planting their own flag on it.
00:38:35.000Now, again, China is moving aggressively to consolidate space in this entire area, figuring that if it can push the U.S. Navy further and further away from Taiwan, that will also solidify its opportunity to take Taiwan or blockade Taiwan, which would completely
00:38:50.000melt down the world economy, probably comparatively to China's benefit.
00:38:54.000Now, again, the way that President Trump was attempting to deal with this was through a massive tariff on China.
00:39:00.000As I've said before, I'm totally on board with this.
00:39:02.000President Trump should be doing that, but you actually have to fulfill the preconditions before you do that.
00:39:08.000You have to make sure that you are economic
00:39:54.000Hundreds of billions, but basically trillions.
00:39:55.000We went over the ledge into the T-word.
00:39:58.000And I can't imagine it's sustainable to have a country that can lose that much money for years into the future.
00:40:02.000Okay, so first of all, it's not how trade deficits work.
00:40:04.000You're not losing money when you run a trade deficit any more than I lose money when I buy a product from the grocery store.
00:40:09.000That money comes back in the form of people buying treasuries, in the form of people investing in American companies, in the form of them buying real estate.
00:40:15.000The money comes back just on capital services.
00:40:18.000There's all sorts of ways the money comes back.
00:40:20.000It just may not be on manufactured goods.
00:40:47.000And then some great genius said, let's go and tax the people instead of taxing other countries.
00:40:52.000So, again, that is a vision of tariffs that is very much in line with the idea that he just likes tariffs.
00:40:56.000And so what he's doing with China is actually more of a cover for his love of tariffs than it is about boxing in China.
00:41:03.000Either way, the markets are not responding particularly well to this.
00:41:05.000And again, the effect of the tariffs has not really hit yet.
00:41:08.000The empty ships are going to start arriving at any moment now.
00:41:12.000According to Investor's Business Daily, the Port of Los Angeles is now warning that there will be difficult decisions ahead as all the shipments from China cease.
00:41:20.000Again, it is one thing to cut off China at the knees.
00:41:22.000It's another thing to set up a trading system that actually in some ways benefits China comparatively.
00:41:27.000Meaning that if the EU doesn't cut off China, but the United States does, if countries in...
00:41:32.000Southeast Asia start reorienting toward China as opposed to the United States.
00:41:36.000That is not a win for the United States, particularly when the President is slamming those countries with their own tariffs.
00:41:42.000According to Investors Business Daily, President Trump's trade war policies are expected to bring about a 35% decline in cargo arriving at the Port of LA by next week.
00:41:51.000That is according to the Executive Director Gene Sirocco.
00:41:55.000His warning came during the Port's Board of Harbor Commissioners meeting April 24th.
00:41:59.000With the executive director saying retailers and manufacturers typically put in orders to factories in Asia around three to four months in advance of shipments, Trump's 90-day pause on the broad reciprocal tariffs resulted in no real difference for businesses because everybody is sort of not sure what's going to happen, whether Trump puts those back in place or not.
00:42:16.000He added that U.S. exporters are getting hit hard by retaliatory tariffs amid Trump's trade war, and that includes agriculture, heavy duty manufacturing and information technology services.
00:42:25.000Unions are starting to sound off, right?
00:42:28.000This is supposed to benefit manufacturing unions, but the Longshore and Warehouse Union came out with a very strong statement yesterday, quote unquote, unequivocally condemning the recent tariffs the Trump administration has imposed.
00:42:39.000Again, this is a very strong statement from...
00:43:17.000And then you'd have to assume no drop-off in actual purchases in order to replace anything remotely like the income tax.
00:43:24.000As the Wall Street Journal points out, Trump's statements point to a central riddle of his trade agenda.
00:43:30.000Whether the point of higher tariffs is raising money or gaining leverage to strike better deals with trading partners, as some administration officials and congressional Republicans insist.
00:43:38.000But the idea that we are going to be replaced, listen, if we were able to replace the income tax and tariffs, I'd be for it.
00:43:56.000Because if that falls through, if there is no preservation of the Trump tax cuts, the economy is going to freefall.
00:44:03.000So, right now, Speaker Johnson is pushing for passage of the big, beautiful bill by Memorial Day, which is four weeks away.
00:44:10.000According to Politico, House Republicans will launch a legislative sprint when they return to Washington on Monday, with key committees set to finally put GOP pledges on taxes, energy defense, and border security into legislative text.
00:44:22.000The problem is, unclear if you can get everybody on board, including many of the conservatives in the caucus.
00:44:29.000Representative Darren LaHood of Illinois suggested his colleagues on the House Ways and Means Committee will not be ready to advance the tax portion of the bill until early June, which of course is way past the Memorial Day deadline.
00:44:40.000There's been a lot of infighting inside the House Republican caucus.
00:44:45.000Meanwhile, Johnson is pushing to move quickly, but there are a lot of pitfalls ahead on spending.
00:44:49.000Republicans still haven't seen a plan to meet.
00:44:51.000The shared goal of slashing $1.5 trillion in spending over the next 10 years.
00:44:55.000And some Republicans want that number to be even higher.
00:44:58.000But then you have some populist Republicans, say Josh Howley in the Senate, who doesn't want to cut Medicaid at all, doesn't want to touch any of the entitlement programs.
00:45:05.000So it will take an act of political leisure domain.
00:45:10.000It will have to be basically political magic for Johnson and Thune to get something through.
00:45:14.000I think it will happen, but it's going to be a complex and difficult process, absolutely for sure.
00:45:20.000Okay, meanwhile, in other news, the media continued to melt down over the failures of 60 Minutes to basically allow the inmates to run the asylum.
00:45:31.000So 60 Minutes has had serious credibility and reporting problems for quite a while.
00:45:38.000Sherry Redstone, who's the head of CBS's parent company, Paramount, has basically asked to screen or at least know what exactly 60 Minutes is talking about.
00:45:46.000And this caused Bill Owens, who was the...
00:45:51.000Well, Scott Pelley, who is one of the faces of 60 Minutes, he did a monologue at the end of 60 Minutes on Sunday in which he ripped into management.
00:46:04.000stories we pursued for 57 years are often controversial lately the israel gaza war and the trump administration bill made sure they were accurate and fair he was tough that way
00:46:19.000But our parent company, Paramount, is trying to complete a merger.
00:46:24.000The Trump administration must approve it.
00:46:27.000Paramount began to supervise our content in new ways.
00:46:32.000None of our stories has been blocked, but Bill felt he lost the independence that honest journalism requires.
00:46:56.000You have Scott Pelley there saying they do a wonderful job with all these stories.
00:46:59.000Well, here was Leslie Stahl like two weeks ago asking a person who was literally in a Hamas tunnel, like kidnapped by Hamas in a Hamas tunnel, whether Hamas was nice to him or not.
00:47:45.000So what they're really mad about is the same thing that the Washington Post editors were mad about when Jeff Bezos was like, guys, by the way, you don't get to basically run whatever you want using an outlet that I own.
00:47:54.000So, again, 60 Minutes has been a wildly biased program for decades.
00:48:00.000They're getting what they deserve right now.
00:48:02.000And no, Bill Owens isn't a hero for standing up to management in any way, shape, or form.