Valuetainment - January 16, 2026


“Iran’s BREAKING Point” - Trump’s 25% Tariff THREAT ESCALATES US-China Tensions


Episode Stats

Length

12 minutes

Words per Minute

187.86725

Word Count

2,334

Sentence Count

173

Hate Speech Sentences

10


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

Trump says any country doing business with Iran will face a 25% U.S. tariff. We talk about why this is bad and what it means for the Iranian people. We also talk about the impact this could have on the global economy.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.000 Trump says any country doing business with Iran will face a 25% U.S. tariff, 25% U.S. tariff.
00:00:11.740 President Trump said on Monday, any country doing business with Iran will face a 25% tariff
00:00:15.540 on any and all business being done in the U.S. That new tariff on imports from Iran's
00:00:21.000 trading partner is effective immediately, Trump said in a true social disorder. This order is
00:00:25.600 final and conclusive. Thank you for your attention to this matter. Further details about the tariff
00:00:30.680 announcement were not immediately clear. A White House official declined to answer.
00:00:35.280 Disapparent effort by Trump to economically isolate Iran comes as in, as the,
00:00:41.920 that was good. As the oil rich Middle Eastern country struggles to suppress an ongoing
00:00:49.080 swell of massive anti-government protests, dozens of those protesters have been,
00:00:53.280 well, it's not dozens anymore. The report was 2,500 and CBS reported allegedly 12,500
00:01:00.240 killed. Tom, 25% tariff on people doing business with Iran as if they're not already suffocating
00:01:09.140 with inflation being 55%, water issues, right? Unemployment issues. The average worker making
00:01:15.280 less than a gram of gold per month, $110 a month. How bad is this when he puts this on them?
00:01:22.620 Okay. So it goes like this. My dad got really upset with me and grounded me. So I have to go to my
00:01:27.540 room when I get home from school and I'm sitting in my room. Then he gets home the next night and my
00:01:33.700 mom says, Hey, the report card just came in the mail. The report card sucks too. He knocks on the door
00:01:38.580 to my room and he says, you're not grounded for one week. You're grounded for two weeks. Well,
00:01:42.460 I'm already grounded. So really I looked at this when it came out and I said, really, what's he saying?
00:01:47.240 He's saying anybody that's doing business with people that I'm already punishing. And remember,
00:01:52.560 India is part of this. He said, then, um, okay, we'll put another 25% on anybody doing business.
00:01:58.060 So in other words, I already have China tariffs. I'm already got sanctions on Russia and I've already
00:02:04.180 sanctioned on Iran. But if anybody wants to even look like they're doing a backdoor deal on Iran,
00:02:11.440 on, with, uh, Iran for, um, uh, I mean, Russia's buying drones. There's some black market oil being
00:02:21.160 sold. So anybody caught doing that now it's another 25%. So the really, I think the, the,
00:02:27.440 what really happens here is that he wants to cause what few customers that Iran has to, to even lower
00:02:35.020 what's what they're buying, which points to China because China is trying to buy, they buy black market
00:02:41.020 oil. So he's like saying, okay, we're going to put another 25% on China. So this is really like
00:02:47.700 hitting again, a dog you've already been hitting for a month.
00:02:53.580 Brandon, your thoughts on this? Yeah, no, it's, um, I think they're at the breaking point where
00:02:57.440 something could happen here, like where the, you know, leadership change could happen. And, uh,
00:03:01.160 this is, um, you know, you just gotta keep like piling like layers on top of it to see what breaks.
00:03:05.720 And I don't think, uh, organic revolution leadership changes ever happened without the assistance of
00:03:10.840 an outside powerful force. So, you know, I think he, he's in favor of leadership change. I think
00:03:14.780 he's trying to do whatever he can without putting boots on the ground to make that happen. I think
00:03:18.300 it's close to happening, but, um, yeah, I, uh, it's interesting. Like we were talking about last
00:03:21.880 week, how China's real power or their edge in, in, um, geopolitics is getting cheap oil from Russia
00:03:27.960 and Iran. So, you know, we're kind of putting them in a situation too, where it's more difficult to
00:03:32.040 get that cheap oil from Russia and Iran. So maybe China could, um, be helpful here. I don't know.
00:03:37.000 Yeah. And do what? And, um, you know, like go somewhere else for oil in the meantime and
00:03:41.340 stuff. Why would they, they're getting it at a massively discounted rate? Yeah. Well,
00:03:45.280 that's where negotiation comes in. Like, like, it's like, what do we care about more? For
00:03:48.520 us to say, stop doing business with them. Yeah. Take a pause. You realize this 25% is really,
00:03:54.100 who's he talking to with the 25%? I think China countries. Yeah. China and India. Yeah. So
00:03:59.240 China is going to sit there and say, yeah, I'm pretty much getting it for free. I'm not paying anything
00:04:03.860 for it. And you think, you think he's really going to come through with this 25%. I know. I think it's
00:04:09.600 a good, uh, threat, but you know, now we have Venezuela oil that we get, we get, um, put on the
00:04:13.800 table. You just imagine if you're the accountant, like you're the comptroller general of the U S
00:04:17.480 who the hell is the comptroller general of us right now, Rob used to be a guy named David Walker 20
00:04:23.380 years ago, who, whom I interviewed one time, who is the comptroller general of the U S today? We're not
00:04:30.180 even talking about this guy. This poor CFO must be having, there's no way this person is sleeping.
00:04:37.780 Can you, this is the CFO of America folks. Let's give him some credit. Can you pull up his picture
00:04:42.640 Rob? Who are you? And no one's even talking about you. Yeah. She's the comptroller general of the U S
00:04:49.660 okay. Go to her. Is she really the comptroller? I think there's a better picture than that one on
00:04:54.220 the American flag there. She looks kind of crazy. No, no, but I'm actually being serious. Is this truly
00:04:59.000 the comptroller general of the U S today? Is she the comptroller general of the U S or a state
00:05:05.700 began December, 2025 says she's the acting comptroller who sat in the chair following the
00:05:11.640 retirement of Jean Dorado, who retired just a couple of weeks ago on December 29th. So who's
00:05:17.400 the new one? She's the acting and it hasn't been named. So they haven't announced the new one yet.
00:05:22.540 Right. And this is just a couple of weeks ago. Well, go to Jean Dodaro, who is a Jean Dodaro was the
00:05:28.680 one that was doing all the stuff in 2025? Correct. Can you go to Jean, please? He was official.
00:05:33.580 Who is Jean Dodaro? Funny that we don't even know who this person is. This guy's probably aged more in
00:05:40.560 the last 12 months than the last 40 years. The amount of every day, 25%. It's like, it's like
00:05:46.140 working for a sales company and the CEO keeps changing the comp plan every day. Okay. You have
00:05:51.220 change it here, change your commissions to this year, change your commission to there's a,
00:05:53.980 it's like this constant, you know what I'm saying? Like that, that's, that's what it is
00:05:59.340 working in that environment. But, uh, the threat is you're suffocating Iran to have no choice,
00:06:05.380 but for everybody to stop doing business, to eventually give up, he's trying to get these
00:06:10.740 guys to quit and give up. Do you think it'll happen? Mark Iran?
00:06:15.080 I think there's a bigger problem at play here. And so, uh, while I certainly hate what's
00:06:21.480 happening there and I hate to see the people getting slaughtered. I mean, it's just absolutely
00:06:25.360 insane to think that people still live like that in today's day and age is insane to me, but
00:06:29.820 the bigger problem that we have is, is China. And so what China is doing is they're setting up a,
00:06:35.740 a new parallel financial system. The dollar is the reserve currency of the world. The U S dollar
00:06:41.920 is the payment network of the world back to Visa and MasterCard. The U S dollar is the payment
00:06:45.300 network of the world. And so the U S is able to sanctions, sanctions, sanctions, sanctions,
00:06:49.840 but eventually you kick so many out of that payment network, that financial system,
00:06:52.940 and they go find a new one. And China is setting up a parallel system through Hong Kong that's being
00:06:58.000 settled in gold. And the, and they've now set up swap lines with 32 countries, almost every country
00:07:03.640 except the United States. And so now all of these countries can do business with themselves
00:07:08.900 using the RMB being settled in gold in real time, and they don't have to use the dollar network.
00:07:15.040 And so this is happening and it's happening very, very quickly. And the more that we weaponize the
00:07:20.560 dollar and the more that we slap sanctions, the more it drives people to that network. And so
00:07:24.400 what happens is this has diminishing returns. And so while I certainly would love to help the people
00:07:30.960 in Iran and I would love to see the United States somehow changes, you said it needs an outside power
00:07:35.380 to affect this. The problem is, is that it's accelerating the demise of the dollar.
00:07:42.220 Very good point. Because behind closed doors, this is getting people to say, well, I want to
00:07:46.720 independently do it. So let me lean on China to help me out with this. If that ends up actually
00:07:52.400 happening, you know who behind closed doors is celebrating right now with Iran getting hit left
00:07:57.240 and right. And they're, they're hoping Iran doesn't have a revolution. You know, it's the one country
00:08:01.800 that is hoping Iran doesn't have a revolution. Iranian people don't become free. Iran doesn't
00:08:06.880 become a democracy. Humberto said it in the back and you know who it is. Saudi Arabia. Saudi
00:08:12.320 is sitting there saying, no, man, like let him stay like this. Let the sanctions stay on.
00:08:18.560 Let people not do business. Keep it like this. This is more business for us. Saudi is quietly
00:08:24.480 sitting there saying, please stay chaotic. Please don't get rid of IRGC. There's no other
00:08:32.060 country in the world that is probably quietly supportive of IRGC than Saudi. Quietly in their
00:08:39.560 own way, not in a way that they're helping them out in their own way. Brandon, you look
00:08:43.620 like you want to say something. Yeah, no, I do agree with you. You're saying with the demise
00:08:47.060 of the dollar, but the renminbi, I've never thought of that as like something the rest of the world
00:08:50.960 would rely on. They're not relying on it. They're not relying on it. It's only used as
00:08:55.300 liquidity and it's all settled in gold. They're relying on gold.
00:08:59.000 Held in China, though? It's not. They're settling it. And so it's not fully functional
00:09:04.940 yet, but it's rapidly accelerating. It's all happening through Hong Kong. So the Shanghai
00:09:08.700 Gold Exchange is working or partnering with the Hong Kong board. And so it's all being used
00:09:13.720 only as liquidity, but again, settled in gold. And so we're seeing the reserve currency of the
00:09:18.340 world. The U.S. Treasury has been dropping right from 60 percent down to just under 50 percent in
00:09:24.560 just like the last decade. But we've seen gold now rise to about 30 percent. It's happening very,
00:09:29.620 very quickly. And behind closed doors, isn't it if you, Rob, type up what country has been buying up
00:09:36.520 the most gold the last five years or four years? I think China's at the time. Well, China doesn't
00:09:39.960 report it all, so we don't really know. But to answer your question, nobody's going to trust
00:09:43.880 Chinese currency. It is not a free, oh, it's not an open capital market. Nobody will trust it.
00:09:49.960 They don't have to. All they're using it is for the liquidity, and then the gold is what's settling
00:09:54.580 it. Yeah. So you're not saying that the China's threat to be the next reserve currency at all,
00:10:00.220 right? No, gold. That's why gold's 4,600 bucks an ounce right now.
00:10:03.160 Gold standard? Really? Interesting.
00:10:07.100 That's a whole conversation. But yes, I mean, that's what's happening. We've seen, like I said,
00:10:12.580 U.S. Treasuries has dropped below 50, gold's up over 30 percent in reserves right now.
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