John Carney, our Economic and Finance Editor at Breitbart News joins me to talk about all things trade and why it's all about China. He also talks about the BridgeColby confirmation process and why that matters so much to me.
00:00:07.000But it is a huge news day, so it's a great day to be in Charlie's captain chair.
00:00:12.000First of all, I go through my theory that everything Trump is doing when it comes to foreign policy and international relations is all about China.
00:00:20.000He is speaking softly and carrying a big stick in this regard, but I talk about all these maneuvers he's making and why it's all about China.
00:00:28.000Before we get into all things trade, big trade news day, John Carney is here with me.
00:00:32.000He is our economic and finance editor at Breitbart News.
00:00:35.000He's a total guru on the subject matter.
00:00:38.000He will give you all the arguments you need to debate your liberal friends on trade.
00:00:41.000And then I break down the Bridge-Colby confirmation process and why it matters so much to Charlie and why it matters so much to me.
00:01:07.000He's done an amazing job building one of the most powerful youth organizations ever created, Turning Point USA. We will not embrace the ideas that have destroyed countries, destroyed lives, and we are going to fight for freedom on campuses across the country.
00:01:25.000Noble Gold Investments is the official gold sponsor of The Charlie Kirk Show, a company that specializes in gold IRAs and physical delivery of precious metals.
00:01:35.000Learn how you can protect your wealth with Noble Gold Investments at noblegoldinvestments.com.
00:02:08.000I'm editor-in-chief of Breitbart News.
00:02:10.000If any of you are not familiar with me, if you are familiar, thanks so much for helping us at Breitbart be so big and so robust and so strong.
00:02:17.000It's all thanks to grassroots audiences.
00:02:20.000Like these, if I'm new to you, Breitbart is, I would say, the OG MAGA outlet for the anti-establishment media.
00:02:27.000I guess MAGA before there was MAGA. And so we love to be the pioneers of this space and are so proud that people like Charlie, who got to start writing for us at Breitbart News, have gone on to do such amazing things.
00:02:39.000And this is a day, I think, to reflect on how far we've come as a movement.
00:02:45.000Donald Trump is playing absolute 4D chess right now.
00:04:19.000You've got to be able to enact these things.
00:04:21.000And it's a basic negotiating tactic that's going on.
00:04:24.000So one thing you guys may have seen yesterday is a New York Times story announcing that, oh, the cartels are in such disarray, they're in such dire straits, all because of Trump's crackdowns.
00:05:54.000That he had in the Oval Office where he was insulting us.
00:05:57.000He was saying that war is coming to our shores.
00:06:00.000All of that was totally unnecessary, but it was partially because he'd been dealing with Joe Biden for all these years where all he would do is get a yes.
00:06:07.000All these Democrats giving him a yes all the time.
00:06:18.000And I got a feeling that Trump was pretty suspicious that maybe these minerals were not exactly what Zelensky was purporting to have.
00:06:26.000So anyway, Trump is trying to get these nations on their back foot, and the point is that he is not satisfied with the way these governments are dealing with the prospect of China looming into various regions.
00:07:31.000They're in Greenland, essentially, via the Arctic.
00:07:35.000They've got dominance over our minerals.
00:07:37.000Throughout the world, Trump's sick of this stuff.
00:07:40.000You see this thing that's happened in Vancouver, money laundering of trying to get Chinese money into Canada to try to be able to power through and be able to get things they want.
00:07:51.000There's this strategy they have called the Vancouver model, where you bring money into a casino and then you can bring it home.
00:08:08.000But at least here, where we've had these secret Chinese police stations, what's ended up happening is that we've tried to investigate them and at least shut them down.
00:08:16.000Now, I can guarantee you not everyone in the U.S. government is happy about that.
00:08:19.000I'm sure they would love to just take the Chinese cash and move on.
00:08:22.000But we've at least tried to deal with it to some degree.
00:08:25.000We're also looking at the Bridge Colby confirmation hearing today.
00:08:29.000He'd be the number three guy in the Pentagon.
00:08:31.000He's a guy that Charlie's really championed in a lot of the America First movement.
00:08:34.000One thing that Bridge Colby understands is the number one threat is China.
00:08:37.000He's also a very serious technologist.
00:08:40.000He looks to make sure that we've got the right technology available to counter countries like China who have us way outnumbered when it comes to populations.
00:08:48.000So this is another thing that is an affront to the American establishment that has been completely content to get rolled by China on trade and to get rolled by China when it comes to dominance in the geopolitical space.
00:09:00.000So this is where Trump is fed up with it.
00:09:04.000And whenever you see the maneuvers Trump is making throughout the day, note whether or not this has to do with tariffs, whether or not these tariffs, whether or not his pressure is put on Canada and Mexico, whether or not to take it literally or to look at it as a bigger global play to counter our number one geopolitical foe, which is China.
00:09:23.000Now, a lot of good is going to come from that process.
00:09:26.000I think we're going to get a lot of favorable deals for America.
00:09:29.000We're going to reshore a lot of manufacturing in the process.
00:09:32.000We're seeing all these reports about companies building factories in the United States.
00:09:37.000We just got word that a new Honda Civic...
00:09:40.000Plant is going to be built in the United States.
00:09:41.000We got word that tens of billions of dollars worth of new pharmaceutical facilities are going to be built in the United States.
00:09:49.000These are things that are going to generate tens of billions, if not hundreds of billions of dollars for the U.S. economy.
00:09:53.000And a lot of it's coming through because people are afraid that if Trump is seen as uncontrollable when it comes to tariffs, and you've got J.D. Vance warming up in the bullpen.
00:10:04.000Then they might not be looking at four years of MAGA economic policy.
00:10:10.000And if that's the case, then why would they start building factories and stuff overseas in Mexico, et cetera, when they could build it here and then they won't have to worry about any of that.
00:10:19.000They're not going to have to worry about if the America First team that's currently in the executive branch of the United States, whether or not they're going to make it so that it's untenable to ship in those products into our country without getting tariff to death.
00:10:32.000Trump has completely reset global economic trade.
00:11:15.000Even though these novels were written in the 1930s and 40s, they're highly relevant today as they show what a tyrannical government does to human nature.
00:11:23.000More importantly, they can show us that faith, family and friends are worth fighting for.
00:11:28.000Maybe you read these books a long time ago in school.
00:11:30.000Maybe you've heard others talk about them and they seem a little intimidating.
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00:11:50.000Jesse Waters had a great graphic yesterday.
00:11:52.000Investments in the U.S. under President Trump, $14 billion from Nippon Steels, Japanese company, $20 billion from Hussein Sajwani, $500 billion over four years from Apple, $500 billion over four years from Stargate, $600 billion from Saudi Arabia, $100 billion from a...
00:12:09.000From Taiwan, Semiconductor, that's a new one.
00:12:13.000Pharmaceutical industry, again, pouring more money in to the United States, which is huge because a lot of these companies, these patents, you get something approved by the FDA and then you've got about, I think it's about 10 years on a patent for you to...
00:12:25.000Get production going to make money and then it's going to go generic and you're not going to be able to make any more money.
00:12:30.000So it's a big gamble where these pharmaceutical companies build plants.
00:12:33.000They're now building them in the United States.
00:12:35.000Eli Lilly just announced that they're going to be doing, I think, four new plants here.
00:12:39.000All of that is because they're in fear of Trump's tariffs.
00:13:10.000It's even worse than a NATO guarantee.
00:13:12.000Now, we're never going to get a NATO guarantee.
00:13:14.000Any of you who've heard any of my content, I think most of Charlie's content, you guys understand this, that Ukraine's always wanting to get into NATO. The Democrats want them in NATO because they just love Ukraine so much.
00:13:23.000But once you're in NATO, it obliges all of us to go to war with Russia should Russia ever invade Ukraine.
00:13:29.000Russia has always drawn that as a red line, and yet the Biden administration and much of the Democrats, even some establishment Republicans, have had that flirtation with Ukraine.
00:15:12.000It's up to plus 9% in a lot of polls, the highest I've ever seen for him.
00:15:16.000And so just saying Trump, Trump, Trump like it's a swear word, Musk, Musk, Musk like it's a swear word, trying to call Musk a Nazi, they can't hang with this stuff.
00:15:24.000None of this is going to counter the fact that he's bringing all these manufacturers.
00:15:29.000He's provided hope that we're going to get out of all these foreign entanglements.
00:15:32.000We're finally putting pressure on China.
00:15:34.000We're finally cracking down on legal immigration, working to secure the border.
00:15:38.000We're going to annex the great state of Canada, or do you think it'll be two states?
00:16:06.000And they all think that if they just repeat a message enough that it'll get through the American public.
00:16:10.000But don't underestimate this because this has worked in the past.
00:16:13.000They did this with the Russian collusion hoax.
00:16:15.000They did this with the Charlottesville hoax.
00:16:17.000The find people on both sides myth that never happened.
00:16:20.000The go find me 11,000 votes, that was another lie that didn't happen.
00:16:24.000All these things, they are under the impression that if they lie the same way often enough, then enough ignorant people in the public will believe it.
00:16:32.000The good news is I feel like people have wisened up.
00:16:35.000They understand that this is all just a game.
00:16:37.000It's all a ruse to try to get Democrat politics mainstreamed into the American culture.
00:16:42.000So we still have to be on guard, though, to understand, don't underestimate your opponents.
00:16:47.000It's always a mistake, but it's worth pointing out how lazy these people are, how they have no ability to think outside of some sort of a blob, Borg-like situation.
00:19:27.000Contraceptives in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan?
00:19:30.000Of course the Taliban got some of that fun cut into for the other condoms that had to go to Mozambique.
00:19:37.000Which remember that dunk on Musk in the Oval Office where they pointed out to Musk that the condoms are going to Mozambique and not to actual Gaza?
00:19:49.000And you don't get a permanent job just because you work for the government.
00:19:53.000It's the same way in the private sector you don't get a permanent job.
00:19:56.000And there's such an outrage that if you can't write down five things you did last week that were productive, then you do not deserve a job.
00:20:03.000I think most Americans agree with this, and you have to be lied to by a lot of people very, very often for you to get convinced otherwise.
00:20:22.000John is, I believe, the single most knowledgeable person on Maganomics.
00:20:26.000John, it's great to see you in this context.
00:20:28.000John and I speak, I would say, at least once a week, either on my show, The Alex Marlowe Show, or on our premium membership, Breitbart Confidential, at the Breitbart Fight Club.
00:20:35.000Those of you who support us over there, I really appreciate it.
00:20:37.000That's where you get an in-depth, deep dive with one of my consigliaries of Breitbart News, one of my cabinet secretaries, if you will, every single day.
00:20:50.000I want to just start with what is happening today, what has Trump done, and what is the reaction to it, both domestically and internationally?
00:21:00.000Today is the beginning of tariffs on Canada and Mexico.
00:21:06.000Right after he came into office that he was going to impose a 25% tariff on Canada and Mexico unless they did a lot more to help at our border.
00:22:46.000If it just raised prices, this actually wouldn't hurt the stocks of companies at all because they were just passing through and their profits would remain the same.
00:22:55.000What we're seeing is actually a confirmation of what we've been saying here at Breitbart all along, that the tariffs tend to be paid for either by the companies that are exporting into the US or by the companies that are importing.
00:23:08.000In other words, they hit corporate profits rather than the prices on the store shelves.
00:23:15.000Canada has reacted very badly to this.
00:23:18.000They've announced that they are going to put on their own tariffs.
00:23:21.000That's a foolish thing to do if you are dealing with Donald Trump.
00:23:36.000I expect that they may announce some retaliatory tariffs.
00:23:41.000But in the end, I think both Canada and Mexico realized that a 25% tariff on all of their imports, except for Canadian energy, that gets a smaller tariff, a 10% tariff.
00:23:54.000We'll be very, very, very bad for their economies, and I think they'll back off.
00:23:58.000I don't think we're going to see a trade war.
00:24:00.000We may see a trade battle for a few days or a few weeks, but not a trade war, as people are putting it.
00:24:07.000Well, I'm up for it, and as of today, the polls show the American people are up for it.
00:24:12.000Why do you think the American people have shifted, and they're accepting of this, and they want to see this out, at least for now?
00:24:18.000That's kind of the general consensus, poll-wise.
00:24:21.000Yeah, I think they've come to the realization that Despite all of the rhetoric we heard over the past 25, 30, 40 years, frankly, about free trade, that the world trading system is nothing like free trade.
00:24:35.000Countries have much higher tariffs than we do.
00:24:38.000Countries have much bigger barriers to entry, non-tariff barriers, and that the US raising tariffs isn't the...
00:24:48.000Beginning of a trade war, it's actually the U.S. responding to a trade war that's been going on for a long time, particularly with the Canadian and Mexican tariffs.
00:25:21.000Look, inflation and immigration were the two biggest issues in every poll taken of voters.
00:25:28.000And so I'm not surprised that they're saying, yes, Mexico must help us or they will pay a consequence.
00:25:34.000So one thing that I think a lot of people are probably wondering right now is that how much this is going to affect Americans in terms of prices, because this is one of Trump's biggest tasks is he's got to get prices down or at least slow inflation.
00:25:49.000Tariffs don't cause inflation, but they could cause a one-time price hike.
00:25:53.000And that's something that people are not going to have a lot of tolerance for, especially the media.
00:25:57.000I think a lot of people at home are looking for Trump to drive down prices.
00:26:02.000So I don't think we're going to see a big price increase.
00:26:06.000Look, the Atlanta Fed just did a survey, a study, trying to determine how much prices would go up if tariffs were passed through 100% or even 50%.
00:26:19.000I frankly think, actually, any pass-through is going to be much lower than that.
00:26:49.000We're not talking about a revival of Biden inflation.
00:26:53.000We're talking about a price increase that happens perhaps once and then doesn't happen again.
00:27:01.000Remember what happened during the Biden inflation years.
00:27:04.000It wasn't just that prices went up when we came out of lockdowns.
00:27:08.000It's that they went up and then they kept going up week after week, month after month, year after year.
00:27:14.000Okay, so what do you say to people who try to dunk on Trump and act like he has no idea what he's doing now because the Dow is down a little bit?
00:27:24.000For me, from my vantage point, John, it seems like a win-win because we're already seeing all this evidence of people announcing massive levels of expansion into American manufacturing companies staying here because they don't want to get caught up in this trade war.
00:27:37.000Also, we're not just trying to get – he's got a few missions here.
00:27:40.000One of them is to get fentanyl out of our country.
00:27:59.000Look, we have to send the world a message that we're not kidding around about this, that the free ride they've been getting with a broken U.S. trade policy is over.
00:28:07.000The American people voted against that.
00:28:10.000And I think that's one of the reasons we're seeing these huge investments come in, where companies are pledging hundreds of billions of dollars to build in the U.S. because they know this isn't really just about Donald Trump.
00:28:21.000This is about a change in the way Americans look at global trade.
00:28:27.000They're saying, so what companies, if they just thought they had to get through the next three years and then Donald Trump will go away and they wouldn't be investing hundreds of billions of dollars, they realize that the situation on the ground has changed and that we are now going to have much, we're not going to put up with what we did for, you know, basically throughout the Cold War and then afterwards.
00:30:37.000When the payments on your distressed or defaulted private student loan is so big that you can't even get a hold of your finances, that is YReFi.
00:30:44.000It may not be available in all states.
00:30:51.000So I'll share with you guys why I'm in for Charlie today.
00:30:54.000Those of you who caught some of last week's shows, and I'm sure he brought up yesterday as well, that Charlie is heading to Gavin Newsom's podcast, which is very interesting to me as a California, and I lived in California most of my life, and I'm here now.
00:32:04.000Officials need to figure out all the problems that were going on with regards to fire safety.
00:32:08.000There have been no new reservoirs built in the state since, I'm sorry, there have been no new dams built in the state since Newsom's been in public life.
00:33:14.000Vance gave a very positive and upbeat speech.
00:33:17.000Kind of the highlights were that he is a big character advocate for Colby.
00:33:21.000Colby is one of these guys where he's a conservative and he's an America First guy, but he also was correct on things like the Iraq War, which was very important to me.
00:33:30.000When I was kind of realizing that I didn't quite line up with the Republican establishment.
00:33:35.000My entire adult life, I've been a Republican.
00:33:38.000I was registered as a Republican when I was 18. And I've never not been a Republican, but it's always been very reluctant.
00:33:43.000And part of it is because our political class, our establishment.
00:33:48.000The Paul Ryans of the world, the Mitt Romneys of the world, the Bushes, the Cheneys, all these people, you got the impression that they were in it for the wrong reasons, and their values were not exactly where I was at.
00:33:58.000And when very smart conservatives started to explain to me just what a quagmire and a boondoggle the Iraq and Afghanistan wars had become, how much was being wasted, and how much of the money was being misallocated in places that would enrich certain Informative to me.
00:34:28.000But having grown up in the sort of George Bush era of Republican politics, we were all sold these wars.
00:34:35.000And even some of us who were 17, 18 years old being told how important it was for America to go to Afghanistan, Iraq, and spend all this blood and treasure.
00:34:52.000And those are the type of guys who need to be in our Department of Defense.
00:34:55.000They're, I think, going to make it more likely.
00:34:59.000Guys like Colby, guys like Hegsess, who are going to make it more likely that we're going to have a recruiting boon for this country, where we're going to be able to have some of the best and brightest, because they're going to have confidence.
00:35:10.000Look at it about how people talk about vaccines now.
00:35:13.000The overselling the coronavirus vaccine made it so that there's going to be massive skepticism of...
00:35:18.000Even basic medical stuff that it was presumed to be true.
00:35:22.000One thing that Colby can do is he can, I think, reassure people that there are adult, safe pair of hands who are involved in our major foreign policy decisions as well as defense decisions where we're spending our budgets, where we're focusing on things that will hold accountable the people who have been part of this establishment, permanent political bureaucratic class in Washington.
00:35:44.000We got some audio of him from his hearing.
00:35:48.000Let's play cut 105. Let's see what that sounds like, guys.
00:35:52.000I would like to begin by expressing my deep gratitude to President Trump for nominating me for this role.
00:35:58.000I am committed to implementing his vision of a defense and foreign policy of putting Americans' interests first and of peace through strength.
00:36:07.000I am deeply honored by the President's confidence in me.
00:36:10.000Thank you in particular to Vice President Vance for his exceptionally kind introduction and his confidence.
00:36:17.000I am profoundly honored by his support and presence here today.
00:36:24.000And my nomination comes at a time, as this committee has eloquently laid out, of deep peril for our country.
00:36:30.000Peace and the protection of American interests in the world cannot be assumed.
00:36:34.000There is a real risk of major war, and we cannot afford to lose one.
00:36:38.000I recognize these realities in my bones.
00:36:41.000It is my great hope that we can get through the coming years peacefully, with strength.
00:36:46.000In ways that put us and our alliances on a stronger and more sustainable footing.
00:36:50.000If confirmed, I would do all in my power to make it so.
00:36:54.000Yeah, it's all great stuff, and it's all the America First focus is what we want, and the Peace Through Strength approach is what we want.
00:36:59.000And I feel like that this has been the crucial thing that has been lacking, I think, why the marrying of America First with Doge is so important, because a lot of what we need to be doing As a country, in order to be prepared for the next war, is to make sure that the funds that we are extracting at gunpoint from taxpayers...
00:37:20.000It's not going in the pockets of people like the Lloyd Austins of the world who are in a revolving door from places like Raytheon into our defense department and then back, presumably, to some board to make a bunch of money.
00:37:33.000It's about making sure we have the cutting-edge technology, that we have the best intelligence, that we have integrity with the American people so that the money is being spent in a wise way, and that we're focusing on the things that are the true threats to us, and we have the technology updated so that we can take on...
00:37:49.000Not just foes from the past, but what is coming next for this country.
00:37:53.000And I like these forward-thinking guys, people who've had a track record of getting stuff right before the rest of us.
00:37:58.000Those are the type of people you want in the room.
00:38:00.000And so that's why people that I know, the people that I trust, are excited about this appointment.
00:38:04.000I think that's why Charlie has rode so hard for Bridge Colby, why people like Don Jr. and others.
00:38:10.000J.D. Vance, of course, introduced him today with, I thought, a very poignant speech.
00:38:16.000All this is good stuff, and it shows you that America First is not just a campaign promise.
00:38:23.000If you want to support me, please subscribe to The Alex Marlowe Show and head over to Breitbart.com and join our Fight Club, which is our premium membership.
00:38:29.000All that would be really terrific and a great way to support some real fighters who've been in it for a long time and are creating content that hopefully you'll all enjoy.
00:38:38.000Thanks again to Charlie and Andrew and the whole crew.
00:38:40.000I love doing this show, and I'll talk to you next time.