00:00:00.000Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Great America Podcast with Lou Dobbs,
00:00:04.200always in the fight for truth, justice, and yes, our American way of life.
00:00:09.240And now here he is, the Peabody award-winning voice of truth, the great Lou Dobbs.
00:00:14.620Hello, everybody, and good to have you join us here on the Great America Show. Welcome.
00:00:19.440And we turn now to American businessman, Jonathan Bass, who has considerable experience
00:00:25.200with global commerce and specifically the relationship with China, a man who I've found
00:00:34.040to be a keen observer of the geopolitics, geoeconomics of the Sino-U.S. relationship.
00:00:45.560Jonathan, great to have you with us. And I just want to start with this great country, China,
00:00:53.020is now having immense economic problems. Unemployment is considerable. We are seeing
00:01:02.100real debt issues with the housing and development sector, the property sector in China. We're also
00:01:11.960seeing defaults. And the Chinese government, the Communist Party, is not standing behind
00:01:20.280those companies who have taken in lots. And by lots, I mean tens of billions of dollars of foreign
00:01:28.400capital to speculate and to drive their economy. It's quite a sobering moment. What do you think?
00:01:37.560You know, when you're talking about the capital, I mean, everyone starts their conversations when you
00:01:42.000discuss China. Well, America is owned by China because they're the largest debt holder of American
00:01:48.660debt with, you know, $1 trillion, where I think Japan is actually our largest debt holder. But we have
00:01:55.560invested over the last 20 years trillions of dollars into the Chinese economy. And in the last couple
00:02:04.760weeks where you see the issue with the Uyghurs and the vote in Congress where we only actually had one
00:02:10.780dissenting vote, we have been able to show that there is unification on the Uyghur issue. But corporate America
00:02:21.800got spooked because the Chinese government came in and told, you know, Intel this, and they backtracked, told
00:02:28.800Walmart this, and they backtracked. Everyone that started to get hit. And those companies, those American
00:02:36.040companies have massive investments that I think exceed the trillion dollars that the Chinese
00:02:42.920government owns in American debt. Yeah, I think that the stranglehold they have on the United States
00:02:51.840is too often overlooked by our so-called elites, whether they be in government, academia, business,
00:02:59.860or finance. And the idea that somehow the United States doesn't have to be prudent, responsible,
00:03:10.020cognizant of all that China is, is so outdated. And they don't appreciate, even though it's staring
00:03:18.220all of us in the face, how dependent we are on China, whether it be for pharmaceuticals,
00:03:23.460pharmaceutical ingredients, whether it be for clothing, whether it be for finished
00:03:27.240electronics, computers, advanced computers, in point of fact. I think people have really
00:03:35.700just turned a blind eye to the power that China holds over the United States right now. What do you
00:03:43.160think? Well, I agree with you. It's, you know, we've lived in a generally peaceful time over the last 20
00:03:50.920years in trade. So guys in the boardroom have looked at always shareholder value and increasing
00:03:58.220profitability and lowest wage dictating where you're going to move supply chain. And we've now
00:04:04.860find that the boardrooms, which they are unprepared to deal with, are no longer looking at what's going
00:04:13.560on on low price labor, low price freight, you know, 11 day transit from Shanghai to LA port. Those are all
00:04:21.920out the window. And geopolitical issues are what's going to be dictating the future over our companies
00:04:28.360and what is going to dictate the new normal. And until they start to look upon how we get to this new
00:04:35.340normal, we're, we're as consumers in America, we're beholden to an inefficient corporate supply chain
00:04:43.360that's dictating from a boardroom. That's looking at the past and not looking at the future.
00:04:49.200And a, and boardrooms that by the way, have shown themselves to be hostile to the U S federal
00:04:57.720government, uh, and the policies, whether of Trump, uh, or, or, uh, even, uh, partially, uh, Obama in that
00:05:06.760administration. But we have now a Republican party that has awakened to the fact that corporate America
00:05:14.380in this country and wall street, uh, are absolutely aligned with China. Uh, they're aligned with open
00:05:22.460borders. They are aligned with diminished American sovereignty. They're aligned with illegal immigration.
00:05:29.980Uh, and they turn again, a blind eye to the collateral damage as a result, whether it be the
00:05:35.580American middle-class or the hundreds of thousands of overdose deaths as a result of the drug traffic
00:05:44.300across that Southern border. Uh, and by the way, crossing that Southern border, uh, the second largest
00:05:51.100group of illegal immigrants are Chinese. Uh, this is, uh, this does not appear to me to be in any way,
00:05:58.140an accident or a coincidence. This is part of a plan as the Chinese continue to buy a farmland in this
00:06:05.540country, to buy whatever technology or, uh, advancement, uh, they can, they proceed. And right now
00:06:13.580their investment in this country is enormous and their influence in this country is enormous.
00:06:19.240You know, eminent domain is a word we should start to use when it comes to Chinese assets in America,
00:06:27.040because we have to start to look at what our national security assets that we sold them for,
00:06:33.840for boardroom gain and long-term laws. But that's one thing, the food issue Lou is a tremendous issue
00:06:42.640because what China is doing right now and what they did, the proof is always in the pudding and their
00:06:47.920behavior. What they've done with urea in stopping the export of urea to Canada and to Australia.
00:06:55.920Urea is one of the main components of fertilizer. And so what they're trying to do is control the
00:07:02.040mineral production of fertilizers, which dictates our production of food. And that's what leads to
00:07:08.680the conflict that's going on right now between Algeria and Morocco. Sub-Saharan Africa, Sub-Saharan
00:07:18.120Morocco has 75% of the world's reserve of phosphates and Algeria is the number three world recipient of
00:07:28.200Chinese military equipment. And we are being baited by the Algerian by the Polisario to actually go in and
00:07:38.840give the Sahara to the Algerians, which is actually giving a gift to the Chinese government. Now Trump,
00:07:48.440on his last move on Friday, recognized the Sahara and actually supported it and issued an accord to put a
00:08:01.320consulate down in the Sahara. Right now you've got guys like Senator Inhofe, who are trying to block the consulate from
00:08:12.600being built in the Sahara. But what they don't see is 75% of our ability to produce food over generations
00:08:21.320to come, we're going to hand that over to the Chinese government. So is Inhofe right in fighting it? Or was
00:08:29.000Trump right in recognizing it? And I tend to believe that Trump was right in recognizing it.
00:08:34.920Trump, in addition to that, looking at the new Middle East and trying to create alignments that are
00:08:44.120rational and proportionate and equitable, in every turn he understood the threat posed by the Chinese
00:08:54.520communists. He understood that Xi Jinping means to hold dominion over not only the Pacific and Southeast
00:09:04.680Asia, but indeed to be the major, major power in all the world. It is insufficient to call what he is
00:09:15.640trying to create a superpower. It will be the superpower if he succeeds, don't you think?
00:09:21.480Yes. And you have to look, Lou, at what he did since COVID began. They took down in the first three months, over 800
00:09:32.920crosses, shut down churches, attempted to shut down the 26 synagogues that are in China. They're imprisoning
00:09:43.880the Uyghurs, Muslims, and whether it's from organ harvesting, re-education, they're making the Nazis look like
00:09:55.640kindergarten teachers. What Trump saw is the way in Xi Jinping's desire to become emperor of the world.
00:10:06.600And his goal as getting his power from the heavens was the way he was going to rule.
00:10:12.600And if we have to look at what he did just in those five months that we went into COVID, he wants a godless world.
00:10:21.560And a world run by the Chinese is going to be a far different world to wake up to than the world run by the United States of America.
00:10:31.560And just ask the people of Hong Kong right now who are adjusting to a one system government. And that one system is obviously the Chinese Communist
00:10:45.720system of government and their influence now, their total control of Hong Kong. This happened without so much as a peep
00:10:55.880from Europe, from the United States. It's it is absolutely stunning to me, Jonathan, that the national
00:11:05.480left wing corporate media doesn't even take cognizance of the the threats that are being that are imposed
00:11:13.720now on Taiwan, the threats of invasion. I mean, it's raw rank and absolutely undisguised.
00:11:21.960They are threatening invasion. They are threatening the United States itself. If it's so much as protests,
00:11:29.320uh, the building of those artificial islands and any, any, uh, interference in their control of
00:11:37.400navigation across those sea lanes, uh, that are critical to 70% of the world's trade, uh, on those, uh,
00:11:44.840and the South, uh, South China sea, uh, your thoughts about just the lack of response, uh, on the part of
00:11:53.960the United States, but also Europe. You know, we, we have to look at history to determine the future.
00:12:00.280It's our only lesson. I know everyone wants to cancel history right now. It's in mode, it's in fashion,
00:12:06.520but you, you just take the 1936 summer Olympics in Germany. IBM had sold the counting mission,
00:12:17.240the X, sorry, they leased the counting machines that counted the Jews, uh, gypsies, Christians that
00:12:26.040were put into the concentration camps. They didn't sell them because they thought they were going to have
00:12:31.080a long run of, uh, milk in it for the money. You had Ford that was in there. You had all corporate
00:12:38.280America that supported the 1936 summer Olympics by the world supporting the Olympics. It gave Hitler
00:12:47.560the power and prestige of doing what he did. Had we backed out of the 1936 Olympics, had Europe backed
00:12:56.520out, had we shown a line in the sand, a true line in the sand against what they were doing,
00:13:03.480it would have had a definite different impact toward the future of World War II. What I'm fearful of
00:13:10.120is as Xi Jinping comes out of this, the closing ceremonies at the end of February and walks into his
00:13:16.200March 5th communist party meeting, which I think happens every twice, every, uh, 10 years or something,
00:13:22.440or, you know, once every 10 years, the people's Congress meeting in Beijing, we are going to
00:13:29.000bring a more emboldened, uh, powerful Xi Jinping. And we could have had a moment where the world
00:13:38.200stood up and said, you know what, we don't support what you're doing to the Uyghurs. We don't support
00:13:43.000what you're doing to the Christians in China. We don't support what you're doing in Hong Kong,
00:13:47.240nor Taiwan, nor Ethiopia, nor Algeria, nor Iran, nor Afghanistan. We are on the other side of this,
00:13:55.480but we're so concerned about getting toilet paper that we're throwing the rest out the window.
00:14:01.960Yep. I think you're exactly right. And think about, uh, the, the posture of the United States.
00:14:08.520Uh, president Biden has said that we won't send our diplomats, which is precisely the kind of, uh,
00:14:14.840uh, psyops response you would expect from the left these days, uh, rather than substance to,
00:14:21.960to use a ruse, a ploy like that, that disguises perhaps to most Americans, the fact that we are
00:14:29.880sending a corporate America. We are sending, uh, those who want to, uh, go to China. We're sending our,
00:14:38.280uh, our top financiers to China. Uh, they're going to all be there for the, uh,
00:14:44.280the Olympics. And as you point out, the only thing missing will be those diplomats who will not be
00:14:50.840missed by anyone. Uh, but guess what? NBC will be covering the Olympics for all the world to see.
00:15:01.080And that will be the ultimate statement that we make in acquiescence, uh, and in compliance
00:15:08.600to the communist Chinese party. It is an outrage. And as you say, we do have a moment here where
00:15:15.640we could make a difference. And the difference we're making is not in the interest of the United
00:15:20.040States or Western civilization. As you know, NBC, they're going to put production value behind this.
00:15:26.840They're not going to go out and film the Uyghurs in camps being burnt up and gassed and reeducated.
00:15:33.320They're not going to go, you know, out into dormitories and factories, and they're not going
00:15:38.520to go show how people are being fed in these factories or these lockdowns, these extreme
00:15:42.600lockdowns where people's doors are welded shut. They're going to show what they want to show for
00:15:48.840production value. And the, the, the danger of all of that is that we will start to put forth what I
00:15:58.920call the John Wayne effect of China. John Wayne, Charlie Chaplin made the world look at American
00:16:06.520through a different lens. Now they've got NBC. That's going to make the world look at China through
00:16:12.120a different lens and not a truthful lens. And there's where the danger lies. But, you know, to add to that,
00:16:18.600that everything that's going on right now with COVID in China, and it's spread quickly,
00:16:27.080may be that God will take care of shutting down the Olympics. If he didn't leave it to humanity,
00:16:33.560they may actually have to shut it down. I mean, I think two days ago, China started turning back
00:16:38.440American airplanes, because they called them full of COVID, and sent them back to America. So, you
00:16:44.440know, it's, it, we're in an, a very precarious position where I think the big are looking to get
00:16:53.960bigger with China. Oh, yeah. And the small are going to be put out of business. This, this supply
00:17:00.520chain issue has really impacted independent and small retailers, and has benefited the major,
00:17:10.200bigger retailers, the bigger retailers have grown significantly by leaps and bounds, and they've put
00:17:17.720all of the small, you know, retailers out of business. So we're talking about big box stores, we're
00:17:23.560talking about Amazon, we're talking about what is one of the largest, just, just our retail
00:17:30.440businesses are the largest market for Chinese goods in the world. Well, I mean, you take Walmart alone
00:17:37.720is what $590 billion, which equates the GDP of Michigan and Louisiana, and then throw in another
00:17:44.840state or two, you know, you out of a $19 trillion economy, you know, you've got 500, almost $600 billion
00:17:53.080in one company's hands. So that which accounts for 13% of the exports of China.
00:17:59.640Yeah. And now, I had always been told that Walmart account was the third largest export market alone
00:18:08.920for Chinese products. When you now look at, and that was before the surge and the market power of
00:18:17.480Amazon, the United States now has to be easily the number one market, and number two, and number three,
00:18:25.800as you break down the various sectors of our economy, it add to, you were talking about the debt
00:18:31.480that's held by the Chinese, that's less worrisome to me than some others might consider appropriate,
00:18:38.280because I think that is some, in some ways, a countervailing force to the fact that China is
00:18:45.960holding hostages against America now. We were mentioning Walmart, Home Depot, all of the big
00:18:54.600box stores bringing in all of those exports from China. We're utterly dependent upon. Big Pharma is
00:19:01.320utterly dependent on China. But interestingly, we not only have that dependency, which makes us vulnerable,
00:19:08.680but we have major corporations, whether it is Tesla, whether it is any one of the major companies,
00:19:18.280Apple, certainly foremost amongst those in technology, that's actually held hostage by China,
00:19:25.720because their production, their intellectual property is in the is in the hands of the communist
00:19:34.200Chinese. And, and no one wants to acknowledge that reality. What do you think, Jonathan?
00:19:39.800I mean, Trump tried so hard with TikTok to recognize the threat and try to explain to the American people
00:19:49.800the threat that TikTok wasn't an app. TikTok wasn't some program that was going to tell you where your
00:19:58.200favorite pastrami sandwich that your restaurant was. TikTok is an algorithm that can pick up every part of
00:20:09.400your life in understanding your likes, your dislikes, what your impression by, how you're motivated, how you're
00:20:16.280saddened, everything. And they could use deep fake to actually change the mindset of people.
00:20:24.28010 people in a room could be impacted in 10 different ways off of TikTok. And Trump realized that it wasn't
00:20:33.560about, you know, the pastrami sandwich. It was who and how they were going to message to change the thought
00:20:43.320in direction and trajectory of the American public. And they're very successful at taking a long game.
00:20:50.520And we keep losing it because we keep standing up for the boardroom
00:20:56.360and instead of the people, and we need to start to stand up for Americans, citizens, world citizens,
00:21:04.120and protecting world freedom as opposed to going down a road of, you know, all of us becoming Uyghurs.
00:21:14.520Exactly. And I have to tell you, I am amused at the farcical limited minds of Hollywood as they try to
00:21:24.520grapple with the woke, the woke movement in this country, talking, spewing utter nonsense that they,
00:21:33.400as they do about politics, the, the neo-Marxists that make up the leadership of the Democratic Party,
00:21:41.880and, and saying they just simply, we have to, you know, be something quite different than we are,
00:21:48.920as they do business with the Chinese on an unprecedented level now, whether it's in production,
00:21:55.080whether it is in the actual distribution of movies, they can, you know, for example, AMC
00:22:00.680theaters, the largest theater chain in the United States is Chinese owned. And, and meanwhile, they're
00:22:08.200selling out to Chinese communists who are defying everything that they say they stand for. These are
00:22:17.080some of the most ignorant people in this country, those people running Hollywood right now, because
00:22:22.760they are simply in it to get bigger, as you said, to make more money. The Chinese have more money,
00:22:29.080and therefore the Chinese will win in Hollywood. But you're watching them take control of the content
00:22:34.920of American movie making. We are watching. They dictate the actor. Absolutely. They dictate the
00:22:45.400producer, director. And they scare the hell out of everyone. The Wall Street, those financiers, some of
00:22:54.440the wealthiest people in the world, sit on Wall Street and are scared to death to come out against
00:23:00.680anything that China does, any policy. We're talking about supply chain disruption. That isn't what we're
00:23:07.080really talking about. What we're really talking about is the craven American business community,
00:23:13.480corporate America, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the Business Roundtable, who sent American jobs to the
00:23:20.200cheapest foreign labor markets, played wage arbitrage with the future of millions of Americans. And guess what?
00:23:29.400Those American workers, their families lost and lost big. And we are seeing this come home
00:23:36.520as we are now dependent on factories and production facilities spread all over principally Asia
00:23:44.840that are just not working because the Chinese also just happen to own the vast majority of container
00:23:53.560ships bringing all of those goods to America. And that reality is escaping nearly everyone, it seems,
00:24:01.960in Congress, in the Senate, and the White House. They see it as just a benign, competitive moment.
00:24:11.880The White House and our State Department under the current administration is more concerned
00:24:21.320with a green revolution. And will Xi Jinping commit to, you know, carbon neutral by 2060 or 2050? And,
00:24:33.960oh yeah, he'll sign that. Okay, give him what he wants. Everything is being dictated by this green
00:24:40.360initiative, which is unrealistic because they're not going to withstand an agreement. China has never
00:24:47.800agreed. They didn't agree to phase one and live up to it. They have not agreed and committed to any of
00:24:53.240their issues. But going back to the shipping containers, there's about 53,900 shipping containers
00:25:00.600on the water right now. The Maritime Association made an agreement to change the engine types from bunker fuel
00:25:09.240engine types to diesel and natural gas. And they were supposed to do this in 2020. Now, the 15 largest
00:25:16.520container ships owned by the Chinese emit as much pollution as 780 million automobiles, which is nearly the population of
00:25:27.320automobiles in the world. So even if you electrify all those 780 million cars and forget what coal
00:25:35.720production is going to do to generate that electricity. But even if you electrify it, you've only taken care
00:25:41.880of 15 container ships. There's 53,900 left. So we're heating our waters at the tune of four nuclear bombs
00:25:50.440a day. And our icebergs aren't melting from the top. They're melting from the bottom. I call it the
00:25:56.840Titanic effect. Hollywood created the Titanic movie. And you all learned one thing from watching Titanic,
00:26:04.680is that 90% of the iceberg is underwater and 10% is above water. But if you open up your computer
00:26:12.280and you look at any of the melting icebergs in the North Pole or the Arctic, they're crashing into
00:26:19.320the water. That means the 90% has melted away. And why is it melted away over the last 20 years?
00:26:26.120Because of globalization. And globalization is at risk right now. And their plan has to be changed.
00:26:36.760You know, one other point that I wanted to add to what you said was, when we look at
00:26:42.920our politicians, we consider the Israelis to be the most sophisticated on the intelligence side,
00:26:48.680on the technology side and everything. They basically gave their port to the
00:26:59.320Shanghai International Port Group for $1.7 billion. That was the cheapest investment
00:27:06.440that China ever made in intelligence gathering. Because they now know every container,
00:27:13.400what's included in it, what military, what technology, what they're shipping to which country they're
00:27:21.640shipping it from, which is Israel, and to. And you're carrying, you know, more than 18,000 containers
00:27:31.240out of that port. And these Israelis, who are the smartest in the intelligence game,
00:27:39.720gave their black book to the Chinese for $1.7 billion.
00:27:47.320It's stunning how stupid the Chinese make just about everybody in the world look. I frankly can't
00:27:54.520think of that exception. So I'll say just about everybody, but I think it's everybody in the world.
00:28:01.800They are outworking us, they're out thinking us, and they're out maneuvering us. And when I say us,
00:28:07.800I'm talking about the United States, I'm talking about European nations, and I'm certainly talking
00:28:12.920about Southeast Asia, the Middle East, and certainly Africa. It is stunning what they've managed to
00:28:20.440achieve in the last 30 years. And they've done so because the West has become indolent, unimaginative,