Tom Luongo says Trump’s tariffs aim to rebuild U.S. industry and anchor the economy in real assets like Bitcoin.
In this episode, Tom Luongo argues that Trump’s tariff strategy is not protectionist, but a calculated move to dismantle global trade imbalances built on what he calls “durable trade advantages,” surpluses propped up by regulation and manipulation. Countries like China depend heavily on U.S. consumers and exploit a system skewed by currency games and bureaucratic barriers. Luongo sees tariffs as a way to re-anchor trade around real value and reverse decades of economic decay caused by a globalist model that funneled capital out of America. He highlights dysfunction among U.S. fiscal institutions and warns that foreign powers, especially in Europe, have gamed the system to their advantage. As legacy structures like the WTO and EU lose relevance, the U.S. is shifting toward a collateral-backed economy rooted in real assets like oil, gold, and Bitcoin. For Luongo, Bitcoin’s true power is its ability to tokenize wasted energy and restore economic sovereignty through efficient, value-driven systems.
Tom Luongo presents a compelling case for tariffs as a strategic tool to restore American sovereignty, arguing they target deep structural trade imbalances and challenge a decaying global financial order. Rather than isolationist policy, tariffs are framed as a way to rebuild U.S. industry, stabilize the monetary system, and reset global trade on fairer terms. Whether or not one agrees with every point, Luongo offers a sharp, realpolitik lens on the seismic shifts reshaping the world economy.
0:00 - Intro
0:52 - Breaking down the tariffs
13:40 - Fold & Bitkey
15:22 - Trump and Bessent’s messaging
19:32 - EU and British psyops
30:54 - Red tape is falling, corporate press floundering
37:08 - Unchained Event
37:33 - Helping American economy
40:01 - Debt based colonialism, financial warfare
48:22 - Closing the arbitrage
55:54 - Prioritising the correct enemies
1:01:36 - Trump media strategy
1:08:46 - Overthrowing managerial class
1:15:13 - Biggest risk is a forced war
1:19:59 - Deshittification
1:24:16 - Bitcoin and mining
(00:00) there's an entire regulatory schema that's making sure that the money flows in one direction we have a crisis this crisis needs to be dealt with and we're slapping a freaking tariff on them that is going to get rid of half of that arbitrage what we're going to do now is we're going to claw back that trade surplus and because we still have the most powerful consumer market in the world you're going to eat it because you have nowhere else to send your products the markets are choosing the United States over Europe they need the US
(00:32) consumer China specifically they're not going to sustain their economy they need it like they need air to breathe this is the setup for one of the greatest opportunities to build things in America has ever existed and this not just for America for the entire world tom uh are you having fun yet always even when I'm not having fun I'm having fun i mean it's you know I I It's funny Marty i I I I get up I do the thing and every time somebody askked me "How you doing?" I'm like "Another great day in Trump's New America." Like you know
(01:10) that's all I'm saying like and and I'm and I'm doing that just to get every just to remind everybody like everybody relax take a pill it's it's not it doesn't all has to be Rome doesn't need to be fixed in a day it's actually as a matter of fact it's more fun if it is fixed in a day it's more fun to like string them along and then and then you know slam them it's actually more fun that way so well that's been the most perplexing thing this week everybody throwing their arms up in the air over tariffs like "Oh my god." It's like he's
(01:44) literally been saying this he campaigned on this for a year i know it's like It's like Oh my god no I know it is it's really funny i I just checked the the the Dow close i was actually expecting a better a better I was expecting a bump into the close this afternoon i'm actually surprised that um uh that we we closed down over 2,000 points today but to be honest with you it's a good thing like I I you know I hate to I know there's a lot of people losing their ass right now but like you know margin calls come they
(02:18) do what they do and this is what happens if you're overlevered so um but it has to happen because they need to drive the long end of the yield curve down and they told everybody that this is what they were going to do and then they did it and then the Chinese responded in a exactly how you would almost I mean it's funny the Chinese announcement this morning I think is what actually sent the market down into the close for the week but the big question then is you know is that even a little bit of kayfabe because or is it really that you know Xi
(02:53) is panicking because he's in trouble politically and uh and he's not sure what to do it's it's all up in the air right now and I I think that the best thing we can do is not overreact it's the stock market the stock market is supposed to do things like this we're not used to it because we're used to the magic money tree and all the USA ID money and all this and all that just going out there and then liqufying all this and uh the reality is is that um you know and again I know the common refrain is to blame the Fed on
(03:27) this and I'm not I'm not doing my hey I'm going to be a Fed apologist thing here that's not what I'm doing but is you realize that after you listen to Musk talk and he shows you you know the 14 computers with the magic money button you realize that what what that that um uh admission by Elon or that reveal by Elon is that we have a money creation engine we have a tax collection engine and we have a budgeting um engine and none of them talk to each other these are we would normally think that these are handled like like a
(04:08) company would or somebody would where it would be you know that the money would flow into the same department that then you know writes the reports of how it's being spent and then you know and everybody's it's all one system no these are three separate databases completely and you know the numbers that they bandandy around on Capitol Hill for the budget the amount of money that the Treasury is actually spending and whatever the the revenue department is collecting those three things aren't they they have nothing to do with each
(04:39) other and so when you have a system like that there are no checks and balances which means that they can just keep printing they could just keep pushing the make more money button in the Treasury Department and then everybody has to react to it and then oh by the way they blame the Fed on the back end and I'm like hm I wonder why that is and you have and you have Jerome Powell it seems like I'm sure you caught uh quotes from his interview this morning or probably watched it in totality but he he it seems like today I
(05:18) was watching it he feels like he's in a position where it's obvious that that's happening and he's like "It is not my problem." He was asked He was asked point blank like "Are you going to lower rates uh and print money?" He was like "I don't feel compelled to i don't I don't feel like we're in a rush to do that.
(05:33) " And somebody from the crowd yelled "Really you're not in a rush?" He was like "Yeah we're not in a rush." And I think that's like a an implicit acknowledgement of what you just described like there's problems over there that need to be fixed and I was doing this last night i think you hopped in um the thread momentarily but you're like if you zoom out on the 10-year going back to 85 or excuse me 75 I believe and you look at and I was just doing left side of the bell curve caveman brain sort of TA and it looks like we're coming into like a secular
(06:05) bare market in the tenure again and uh with all the efforts of Trump and Bent since the inauguration they've done a good job of of getting it down materially really it was below 3% for most of the day i checked right before we hopped on it was hovering around four i'm not sure if it's below four again but you can imagine a scenario in which drone pal's like something's going to break here and I don't want to be the one that basically leads to the implicit default of the dollar system by lowering rates printing a bunch of money like
(06:38) it's not going to be onus the onuses on the fiscal side to figure this Well he's been saying that for years and this is part of my this has been part of my argument as to why I don't think Powell was you know was complicit in whatever was that was going on during the Biden administration right i was clearly that you know yelling at Treasury and Powell at at the Fed were not on the same uh team now as far as where he is right now and I know that Trump came out and said "Derome you got to cut rates now." Blah
(07:07) blah blah blah blah you know cutting rate and I think Trump may be right ultimately about that but you know even a quarter point I just think you know from Powell's perspective cutting a quarter point here um all that's going to do is restore the upwardly scope sloping yield curve that he worked so hard to get before Trump took took power and you know but there are more there's more going on here than just Jerome Powell and Donald Trump that's a story that wants to be created and Trump likes to create stories we
(07:43) know that the story is far more complicated than that we know that the story is that there are people out there who shall remain nameless but their initials are Davos that want to you know manipulate our yield curve to sell a narrative they've been doing it for four years they should you know well hell they've been doing it forever but now they've explicitly been doing it to their benefit um you know in order to you know effectively close the c in order to you know close the the gate and and and destroy what's left of the US uh
(08:20) fiscal and and monetary policy during the last administration or ha as the case may be and you know why would they stop doing that because Trump's in power as a matter of fact they would double down on that strategy right i mean it it's the only thing that makes any sense to me so when I coming into this week I've been screaming to my patrons and and and and every once in a while when I do a podcast I'm like understand that they're selling the recession narrative by selling their stock of tens and 30s 10 years and 30 years and buying ones
(08:54) and twos and creating a you know creating that dip in in the yield curve and really selling the long end and really you know playing the dip in the in the belly of the yield curve to sell that oh we're going to have a terrible recession which you know over the next year or two which again isn't I mean it's an easy sell right it's not like it's a hard narrative to sell but they're clearly like no really it's going to happen and I'm like and they need to do that if they want to affect you know they're going to sell
(09:28) the 30 buy dollars and then sell the dollars to buy twos and that way they can keep they can play They can play games with the euro they can play games in with the pound um they've got massive stock that they have bought over the last three years they've got all this ammunition so we're going to find out if I'm right about that when the next TIC report comes out for February right and um we'll see if there's an inkling of that because we've what we have seen is that the stock in Europe hasn't really gone up you know in in Q4 they were
(10:03) there was really it was just kind of the buying had stopped and now we were kind of flatlined so now is it going to roll over are we going to see them having you know dumped a couple hundred billion dollars with the treasuries over the next 3 months we're going to find that out three months in rears of course like we always would through the TIC data so and this that gives you plenty of time by the way of course to sell a narrative and but it's not enough time to sell an actual recession right now you think about it
(10:32) so I don't know man like I to me you have to factor that into whatever it is that you think you're seeing because there are plenty of people out there who want to sell a particular narrative in order to keep the focus on the United States and ignore everything that's happening over here because everything you know because again everything that I watch screams to me that the markets are choosing the United States over Europe credit spreads between the US and Germany are narrowing right the US German 10-year spread I
(11:03) think is going to close this weekend at around 1.4 1.45% same thing and the two-year the two-year spreads much wider than that it's like 1.8 but again this is Lagarde like holding on to something that's necessary now there the two and the 10-year spread aren't even you know they've been mirroring each other for years so whatever the the two is and the 10 if they're if there's any air between them it usually closes very quickly so the bond traders have been holding have been holding those spreads very tightly
(11:32) and ha and having the German yield curve mirror the American yield curve and a very tight spread across duration for years and then since the USID money went away now all of a sudden what was a tight spread or if it got out of whack for a couple of weeks or whatever it would you know it would close if the two was significantly lower than a 10 then one would correct towards the other and it's been sitting here at 40 basis points for like two and a half weeks now and it's the whitest I've ever seen it so clearly there's something going on
(12:08) here and then we take it one step further and I finally looked at German Italian spreads 10 year and I noted over this four-year period since they effect three-year period since they start since the the Fed started raising interest rates we all started coming off the zero bound debt has has vastly outperformed German debt like the spread was over two like two was like 275 basis points three years ago it's Now 100 now factor all that in when you start thinking about what you're seeing out of Georgia Maloney what you're
(12:47) seeing out of Trump what you're seeing you know clearly there's they're driving he's I think Powell and Trump and I think they're driving wedges here um and uh they forced Lard to into this financial repression scheme and they're going to blow her up and I can just see I can just smell it and what we're seeing right now is well we need to focus everybody on the oh my god the stock market is failing whatever dude it's like we were at a shiller PTE of like 38 for Christ sake you think it's the highest since since the do
(13:25) bubble yeah no it's almost as bad as the dot bubble the com bubble I think at a high of like 48 48 something like that yeah something insane it's at it's in the same stratosphere mhm i mean honestly anything over 20 is is is obscene sup freaks do you have a credit card are you getting cash back or airline points or points for some other service guess what those are [ __ ] coins you want to be stacking Bitcoin i have some groundbreaking news for you the team at Fold has finally released the Bitcoin Rewards credit card they have a
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(15:16) world use the key TFTC20 at checkout for 20% off your order that's bit.world code TFTC20 when it comes to like another like something that would signal to me that the Trump admin is highly aware of this and they're playing if I hate it's an overplayed term but like 40 chess if you will like Trump and Jerome and Bent that triumpvirate and I think Trump and Bent are playing good cop bad cop where Trump will come out it's the Fed it's the Fed and then you have Bent going on like Tucker Carlson today going on the all-in podcast a
(15:49) couple weeks ago Lutnik doing it like I think to combat at that recession narrative and the potential weaponization of these Treasury assets that are held by European entities they're being hyper communicative um with the public about this and I think they had to choreograph the stock market and everything to basically make people not freak out as much even though there is a lot of people freaking out but most of them seem pretty low IQ well you know it's funny we have we all forgotten that Scott Pacent was there
(16:22) when George Soros was playing his games in the in the in the 70s and you know ' 80s and the '90s like it's not like he doesn't know what the game plan is he doesn't know what their strategy is he doesn't know how they operate and they really only have one operation it's the same operation they they use over and over again which is to you know which is to destroy commercial banks and then roll the power up into the into the into the central bank and one of the interesting things about and you just you know you play the markets and the
(16:49) and the bond markets and the currencies in order to make that happen and push it and push markets into meltdown over a policy that you disagree with they did this to Japan they did it to the they did it to the English they've done it and now and they've done it at times with the Americans in the past every time there's a big fight crisis we see you know a whole bunch of banks go under get consolidated get you know we get consolidation of the banking industry we've lost twothirds of our banks since the late 70s where we had over 14,000
(17:18) commercial banks in the United States now we're down to under 5,000 or just around 5,000 um and um but there comes a point where you say "Okay well if they know all this and they're the guys in charge you think they're just going to like stand by and let them do what they always they've always done in the past?" That doesn't look that doesn't it doesn't look to me like it doesn't make any sense i mean so I I would say you're right certainly that they've done what they've needed to do to say look it's you know you
(17:49) shouldn't really worry about the stock market i think one of the things that Trump retweeted a short video that was out was running out there this morning about hey look like 94% of the stock market is owned by 8% of the people what i'm not that's not what this is about you know like I don't and Warren Buffett's already in cash and yada yada yada so like you should guys we were going to we were going to let the stock market go because it's about we have to deal with this like massive you know um branch of treasuries we have to deal
(18:20) with this mess that [ __ ] Janet Yellen left us which I was screaming about the entire time this was going on you know this like that she was you know issuing ones and twos and not issuing tens and 20s and like now we have to deal with this and that's all that stuff and all that stuff was was issued at you know four and a half and higher and now we've got the 10 year under four and you can get that you know um uh rolled out at under 4% it's a big that's a that's a big deal and you can't fix this you know with a couple of You can't
(18:57) fix this with you know waving your hands putting a couple of people in jail and you know it's not going to you can't unfuck us in 100 days it's just not possible you're going to have to watch the process play itself out and um you know the interesting part about what comes next I think is you know what does he do to say okay we're going to stabilize this now you know and that's where we're going to start getting into what assets are they going to throw in the sovereign wealth fund what are they going to do with gold what are they
(19:30) going to do with all the housing equity while the European Union is out there saying that they're going to mobilize I love the the use of the term mobilize um the excess savings a a phrase that only a ca that only a communist like Christine Lagard what egregious it means they're going to bail these people in they're going to hand them freaking They're going to hand them like perpetual bonds at zero at at 25 basis points they're going to steal their wealth you know what that's what they're going to do because they already
(20:03) know they're trapped right i was um I was actually chatting with Grock about this the other day you know by the way I'm I'm now firmly convinced that Grock is going to be our AI because it what other AI in the world is being trained faster than Grock on all the data that's coming that's that's flowing through Twitterx on a daily basis right but I was knocking Grock about this the other day because I was working on my uh on my newsletter for Newsmax and I was like trying to explain what I think is coming with the EU which is I think that
(20:36) they're getting ready to rugpole the entire world like I think they're their whole not their the entire world but their people like they've already they've announced all the bits and pieces and then they're just going to do it and I said "Okay Grock I'm going to lay some stuff out for you i'm going to leave out some stuff that I know you know but because I've had because of other conversations that Grock has had with other people that I know about a variety of things.
(21:02) " I said "I'm just going to throw these things out at you one by one." Okay so now we're we're we're we you know so does the Savings and Investment Union do we have any details on that do me a favor go do a deep dive tell me what we know we know nothing we know the name of it and we know that it's going to mobilize excess savings we know nothing else about it like Grock couldn't find like there are links to PDFs that they say they've published that Grock couldn't find it even went so far as to check variations on the on the URL that just because they
(21:34) might have typed it in wrong or whatever like you know like couldn't find it so they're hiding what it is whatever it is that they think they're going to do about this thing that's one we add in that the announcement of the digital euro in October and um and all the military spending that they want to do the rearm project right this thing when you put all that together it tells you a couple of things and and the fact that the Germans have now blown past their budgetary rules and are gonna are going to rearm like it's
(22:05) 1939 or something and I'm not kidding when I say that because that's what's going on here now the Germans are sending troops permanently stationed to P to the Lithuanian border border you know in the into the Lithuania like this you know Martin Armstrong's been banging his shoe on the table about this stuff he's right marty's completely right about this and you can see all the pieces i said "Grock tell me where I'm wrong.
(22:36) " Like do the solve i think this is what they're going to do tell me I'm wrong what What are their options given this situation they Grock was like "Well we they could pivot to China and try and do more of their trade that way because they obviously the the United States is now they've got a problem because Grock would brought up the Euro dollar system and the fact that the Euro dollar system is now.
(22:58) " He brought it up like that it's a lot less liquid than it was before and I'm like "Hm the douche you say?" You're like watching this scroll by and I'm like "Huh okay someone else is I'm not okay Grock's not stupid." And I know Grock has I don't even think Grock's ever read my blog to be honest with you so I'm like having this conversation with this thing and I'm like and it came to the exact same conclusion I did and I said "Okay well now take all these other things into consideration.
(23:26) " Um and tell me you know what happens when Trump puts tariffs on and then we do this and then we do that and he's like they have no other option they have to do what they're what you're what you're expecting them to do which is to one either create a false flag in order to force the United States in you know I started talking about the war in Russia and this that and everything else and I and I brought up collateral right the fact that they have no energy collateral they've been cut off from they've cut themselves off from basically American energy and Russian
(23:53) energy we have um North African energy is is getting is getting taken away from them thanks to Erdigan Erdigan staying in power and having moved into Syria has cut them off from trying to get you know access to Middle Eastern energy right and become the new overlords of the of the Middle East and they've failed completely at that because the neither the Russians nor the Americans over the last 10 years have allowed them to do this by the way again I'm going to remind everybody that's why Trump canled the JCPOA it was to stop France from making
(24:26) major energy deals with Iran okay this was important because then that would give the EU a lifeline out and would allow them to continue to get to get the collateral they need in order to then continue their you know um their integration with the global architecture of the WTO the WHO the the IMF the you know all of that the the UN and all of it because They know he knows that that was the plan and it's so I'm like and it's so obvious in hindsight that he understood all this then but he didn't talk about it in
(25:09) these terms he never did he just blamed Obama for everything and he blamed Obama for everything because that's an easy sell so he knows his audience really well and uh I just don't think we ever gave him enough credit for this stuff including myself i don't think I gave him enough credit for this back then so yeah I mean in Europe in France I think maybe across the whole EU they're they're saying "Go buy a prepper bag where we're going to provide you with one.
(25:39) " Yeah no yeah that's another data point that I think I threw a croc as well like I had this conversation a week and a half ago and that's now gone right it's like whatever stick it in stick 20% of it in long-term memory and then the rest of it gets kind of lost but yeah no you're right like they're telling people um build a prepper bag because we're going to we're I literally telling you they're going to crash their own economy they've told you that this is what their plan is they've said this before you know and you know they bailed in Greece they they bailed
(26:11) in Cypus i mean they've uh in the past they've already have the the legal network set up for this and as I've been saying over and over and over again everything that has been laid at the feet of the United States our fiscal nightmare our lack of you know a lack of discipline and all the rest of it right all the the the stories and that have been built and the ga and I'm now going to just frankly call it gaslighting the gaslighting of the idea that the United States is broke and is is nonfunctional and has to be is should
(26:49) be put into receiverhip and broken up for parts is a British scop or better a devian scop if you don't like my invocation of the British go right ahead and call it Davosian i don't give a [ __ ] pick your bad guy of choice doesn't matter it's a scop why because as Bent has been telling us we have trillions of and Trump trillions of dollars worth of assets that we cannot bring to the table because of dumb environmental policy or dumb regulation or dumb this or the insane how about that video of of of uh of John Stewart being told the the
(27:29) permitting requirement to get broadband the 14 points right it took like 20 minutes to explain right to explain it to him and then he's like "Oh my god." Oh my god dude now imagine what it's like to try and get a refinery built i know people in Cal or not even only California but doing oil and gas exploration you have to do like environmental surveys on whether or not you will disrupt the habitat of the hornback lizard it takes time and you you you get it done you pay you get it done you send it to the people who are
(28:05) supposed to review it and take like 6 months for them to get back to you and it's like "All right they're just they're too busy jerking off in front of their Zoom calls." Um dude I can't get my I can't get my county road my the c the county road that I live off of and I live on a private easement off county road just a little dirt road that really needs to have the water drained off of it during raintorms because it kind of rains a little bit in Florida right they're not allowed to move the water there's nothing but planted
(28:38) pines but they're not allowed to move the water they can cut they can cut drainage ditches along the side of the road and leave the road high and then have big drainage dishes dude we get 14 we can get like 12 inches of rain in an hour like it's insane like you know what I mean like it doesn't work that way and it's sugar sand so it turns into a sloppy mess and they spend more money taking a bringing a guy down from Lake City to run a grater over our road so that the school bus can get down the road every once in a while if it wasn't
(29:07) for the school bus forget it we'd never get a road graded but it cost them more money to regrade the road but they can't move any of the dirt because they can't allow the water to to leave because of because we we we haven't done an environmental assessment policy like it's insane like it's water and it needs to go somewhere and we're just going to let it sit there meanwhile pe people's cars are flooding out their brakes are being destroyed their their you know their U-jints are wearing out like you know the hundreds of thousands of
(29:34) dollars that's cost all of us keep our cars running down our little dirt road is insane like it could you know like unnecessary but that's just one little and that's in and that's in and that's in a low tax cy it's honestly it's in one of the reddest counties of Florida but this is Florida rules that were put in place by a [ __ ] GOP that takes their their marching orders from the national GOP who are in cahoots with the DNC to to destroy America like this is the way this the [ __ ] works and honestly at the end of
(30:08) the day I every person I talk to and I'm like I I explain this I said this before i I talk to and they find out what I do and they're like "Okay so I don't care about anything else when can we start shooting them?" That's the only answer that's the only question I ever get asked and I'm like that's between you and whatever god it is that you you know think is is judging you in the afterlife I guess and and the state of Florida but yeah I I I get your frustration um I we all drive trucks for a reason they don't you know we drive
(30:42) trucks and even then the trucks get you know get you know even their suspensions are designed for this stuff it's terrible so you're hopeful all that red tape is going to be ripped away i think that I think that that is the that that's the that's also what's ticking away in the background while we're all focused on tariffs there's other stuff that's happening right and and you know I I certainly hope so i I know that you know Steven Miller has made the point explicitly like we don't have to challenge these rules in court and then
(31:22) have them overturned because Chev because Chevron's no longer all these cases that were adjudicated under Chevron are null and void they're gone they're not they don't have to be readjudicated they don't have to be you know adjudicated and then and new and new judgments we don't need to like retry all these cases they've all those judgments have been rendered null and void we don't have to follow any of these rules anymore so but you know in some ways I I I I wonder sometimes whether or not Trump understands that that's a
(31:58) bigger battle to fight than the tariff thing but I don't I think I think what he's constantly doing is he's shifting to the venue that he wants to fight in in order to keep them off balance i think that's what he's doing i don't know whether it's a good strategy or not at this point i can't quite tell i'm more than happy to to to you know play the fifth on that one like I don't know if this is going to be a winning strategy for him um I'd like to believe that it is but you know it might it might actually not work for him
(32:24) if he cannot start putting scalps on the table i think objectively at least in the last month he's made the mainstream media look utterly stupid and two specific examples stick out to me one where everybody was up in arms cuz that quote unquote innocent guy got sent to El Salvador and wasn't an MS-13 and then it came out they were saying he wasn't an MS-13 i was like "No actually we're the other one.
(32:53) " Um no no he's actually in the gang like we we need he was here illegally we needed to to send him was a he was a gang member and then number two at the tariffs literally within 24 hours you had people like Ford came out was like all right we're going to start manufacturing cars back in the US you have paper mills spinning up in Maine and it's like like it's not like these guys don't have car we have automobile lines that they've shuttered over the last you know 1015 years like you know I'm like he should I know that he's like frozen the cafe rules he should but he's got a
(33:29) feckless Congress that can't that won't do anything because I I know these guys don't believe yet that he's got the power I think to um uh that he's got the same power to outlast them so that he hasn't quite proven yet i in my mind I think that's this is the way why Congress is acting the way they're acting and um they still think that they can control him and then just ride him out that's Davos is clearly Davos's plan um and just wait him out that's what's going on in Europe they're clearly acting like I I've heard this from half a dozen people
(34:03) that they just inside the room i was talking to Marty Armstrong about this i was talking to other people and they all said the same thing like inside the room they just think they can wait Trump out they don't realize what's coming they're going to get hit over the head and they're going to they're going to wake up one morning and they're not going to have a European Union and then they're not going to know what to do um these are not J these people are not jazz musicians is the best I think the best metaphor for what we're dealing with
(34:28) we're dealing with people who are at best um you know third string violinists and orchestra that know how to read a chart and follow and follow directions from the conductor and they have no ability to improvise they have no they don't actually even understand music theory at all enough to even begin to think about how they would improvise you know and um and you're dealing with someone with like Trump who can't even speak in a direct sentence because he's playing you know he's as he puts it weaving in and out of various topics in order to paint
(35:02) a picture and um you know and he just drives him completely baddy and that's his and he knows this his greatest strength against them he knows that they have no idea how he's going to attack them next and sometimes I I I think I can see what's been happening um like every once in a while he lets the pressure off of them and lets them talk for a little bit have you noticed he does it a little bit because he needs to figure out okay so how are they going to attack i'm sure that they've got a flowchart i'm sure that like he and that
(35:33) Mil whether it's Trump has got the is part of this or not but he knows that his staff around him like guys like Miller and others have you know they've worked out their flowchart of okay well if they we do this and they do that then we do this right series of moves like if you okay you take the three wood space well I'm going to take the two reads and you're going to go you know playing a game of a grle and we're going to do that game and then that's the way this round is going to work itself out um but every once in a while you got to
(35:59) see what move they're going to make right how are they going to respond and then you know okay well they're going to respond like that i mean we know what their decision space is because everything's opposite day in their world whatever Trump does they do the opposite right but you know there's a there's a decision space in there the definition of opposite is a little funible so I don't know like and then they wait and then they go "Oh you're going to do that you're not going to cop to that great we're going to
(36:25) watch we're going to watch you do X Y and Z and now we're going to we're going to go in this and now we're going to make this decision and we're going to hit you like this and Trump's really good at that that's what Trump's um I think that's where Trump's skill set is the is is is the highest is that he understands that once he's started the process of quote unquote making the deal or negotiating or playing the game however you want to put it whatever metaphor you want he he's really good at going "Oh that's the state of the game
(36:53) board we do this and he's really good at it and I got to give him credit um as a guy who does the same thing like on a regular basis like that's my that's my entire life right is to do that as well and so I think that uh you know I recognize it the new administration is pushing hard for government efficiency but can Elon Musk and Doge fix the dollar on April 16th PhD economist Peter Sain explains why Bitcoin is the most important tool for government efficiency and how the principles underlying the global shift towards sound money can
(37:24) help you protect and grow your generational wealth register now at unchained.com/r that's unchained.com/r the order of operations and the speed with which they're executing on this is important i mean with the tariffs I mean just look at look where oil is it's It's down at like $60 a barrel and may not be good for oil producers but I think for the American citizen and attacking the meme of inflation's high uh that's good it's going to be cheaper to fill up your gas tank yep uh tariffs domestic food production is probably going to stay
(38:00) domestic mhm it's going to bring down grocery bills we've already seen eggs which was the big meme egg prices are at all time highs yep well they killed they killed a couple hundred million chickens and then they said "Oh and it's Trump's fault that you know we killed a couple hundred million chickens and now there are no eggs.
(38:16) " Like yeah and so I think domestically like despite the uproar about the tariffs this week which I think many people are beginning to come around like maybe they're not that bad even people who are skeptical of them I think it's becoming clear that people who became tariff experts overnight are of course uh abject fools and then again the communication I think Bent particularly we talked about Europe everything going on there that's wrong with the assumption they have a grand plan to do that and I'm interested to get your thoughts on I wrote about this
(38:50) earlier this week but percent obviously over the last year has mentioned I think there's going to be a grand economic reordering in the next four years i want to be a part of it i want to be in the room i'm an economic historian this is what I'm best at uh and then he was on Tucker Carlson this morning and did two things particularly called out China basically said they're in a recession quasi depression basically signaling to the US people in the world more broadly like China it's not us this week it's China's
(39:23) weak and then mentioning gold and bitcoin as stores of value to me if we were to take his words at the Manhattan Institute event last June to heart and that he really believes that there's going to be this global grand economic reordering that these are moves he's making to sort of signal to China specifically like if we're going to do this we're going to need you at the table and so like I can paint you in a weak position publicly uh here and we can do the tariff game or we can get to the table and figure out
(39:59) what's going on with this reordering yeah no I I think you're I think you're on it i I do think that we're staring at a global reordering like I don't think that's um I don't even think that's up for debate the bigger question I think is you know who's going to be left off the table right and I think this is the the thing that scares I mean it's clearly it scares the French to death and this is why Macron is acting the way he is he's acting like you know he's um that he's the king of Europe he's trying to crown himself king of Europe and
(40:36) um and by doing this like it I when you when we talk about this in terms of global reordering it's it's very similar to what I've been like screaming about for years which is that the old system of creating debt and using debt as a means by which to issue currency to then you know value people's labor it's an extra it's just another form of colonialism it's all it is and like the more I think about it the more I realize that I've always been kind of right on this thing going way way back i'm just like now thinking about where my head
(41:31) was say 1015 years ago [Music] um it's very clear that this is just about the manipulation of currencies and arbitrage in order to create a durable advantage that doesn't close and such that capital shifts the capital moves in one direction and doesn't ever move back the other way and what Trump and Descent are doing are saying uh that's no that's we're not doing that and I felt when I first started talking about thinking about Powell that's what came into my head right which was that no Powell's clearly saying dollars are no longer going out
(42:11) and goods are coming in return that's not that's not a model that that makes any sense because we can't protect our banking industry i mean I think Powell was thinking about it like a banker we can't even protect the banking industry if we do that right because we're not because now our banks you know and the banks are you know are out of control and and andor the central banks are out of control the governments are out of control so we can't even control our own monetary policy we can't control the value of our own product so if we if
(42:37) we're doing that and remember that was put into effect during Trump's first term right which is the beginnings of sofur during Trump's first term and now we finally hit the end of the last little bit of LIBORE right so we had um LIBORE officially ended on you know the last contract was written on September 30th but those were six-month contracts synthetic LIBORE so that ended on March 31st so now and and this synthetic libore contracts by the way you know they're just like agreements between European banks well they don't have to
(43:17) post any collateral for this stuff they just post each other's you know fake repo you know swap contracts or repos and swaps and like it's all it's all funny money there's no there's no collateral behind those trades so those markets are liqufied right until now Trump goes out on April 2nd this is I think the timing on this is the timing is crazy yeah the timing is kind of perfect right now they got to go out when they need dollars they got to post collateral because they got to go to a US they got to go to a US bank or
(43:56) to the Federal Reserve to get it and they and so now they got to post collateral now they got to post now they got to pull from bank reserves to go this is one of the things that I talked to Grock about and actually was interesting in that conversation with Grock is that he brought that up now he brought that up because he spoke to my friends over at Nidal Chino over in over in Italy about two or three weeks ago who we were chatting about this in private and they had a conversation with them and like and with
(44:26) Grock and so it was in his database but he immediately saw where I was going with this just I didn't even have to like I didn't even have to nudge him he brought it up he brought up the Euro dollar system the end of synthetic eyeborg the end of this and said "Oh no they they have to go into get bank reserve they have to use bank reserves now to get dollars.
(44:47) " Well if you think about it who really has been pumping the mag seven up to hell and high to hell and gone right we have all this USA aid money floating around we have all this NE money floating around we have all this CIA darkpool money we got all this DoD money we got all this Department of Education money this that I know that they've mapped the guys who are now installed over at OM that they've mapped how much money this flows out and it's probably close to $2 trillion a year okay and I'm like I have that in the back of my head i'm like well clearly
(45:28) the minute now they have to go and get dollars for real and they have to post real what do they got to do they have to sell their stocks go get dollars to buy you know or they got to post to treasuries they got to do something i And I can also see them wanting to try and create a global margin call on the entire US stock market to cause cascading cascading defaults as well in order again I don't think we're facing nuclear war with the Russians i don't think we're facing Trump invading or allowing Israel or supporting Israel to invade Iran or bomb
(46:10) Iran or anything along those lines i think that's all bluff and bluster and the Israel thing is really easy erdigan's still in power in Turkey that's it it's all you need to know um the uh but the real nuclear war is financial it's when Europe says blackmails the entire world with a nuclear financial nuclear armageddon saying look we're going to cancel our currency we're going to we're going to bail in all our savers cancel the currencies cancel the debt and you make you whole with perpetual bonds europe's history is that whenever they
(46:55) get into trouble they choose war every freaking time versus kinetic both kinetic andor financial every freaking time i got a thousand years of freaking history with these people okay so they tried really hard to get the two countries with the most physical collateral in the world across all vectors not just oil the United States and Russia we control an unbelievable amount of wealth real wealth maybe you can add in Africa but like where would you rather do business the United States Russia or Africa clearly the United States then
(47:38) Russia then Africa in that order so the people who need the collateral are now going to try and blackmail the world I think with financial nuclear armageddon and then we see what happens and Trump's already threatened them because we had the the Mara Lago accords talking about um hey why don't we just uh why don't we just settle up for the last 80 years worth of NATO and all the other money that you owe us and we'll just you know we'll just give you 0% 100year bonds which are worthless yeah hey threatens to do that and
(48:21) And if Europe does this is the idea that causing this cascading liquidation fault in the stock market to be so globally cataclysmic they could sort of hide in the rubble and point at Trump and be like it was his fault yeah it was his fault because he put tariffs on us why do you think Why do you think they So the next move out of out of the European Union will be to be inconsolable about this right and say "Well he's putting target he's putting tariffs on us that are higher than our you know than our put 20% on them for
(48:54) Christ's sake when these people hide behind regulations I one of one of the things Martin Armstrong brought up in a in a blog post he did this morning actually it was really good um I happen to read Marty's blog this morning i I don't read it on a regular basis but you know I every couple weeks I come in to catch up and read a bunch of stuff one of the things he said was that France and the EU in general they don't actually you know their their tariff rate is their official tariff rate is a lot lower than their effective tariff
(49:22) rate and because you know they they deny our our imports because of quality reasons or this or that or anything else remember going back to all the Brexit talks and how the Brits the Brits were like losing their minds over coronated chicken do you remember that [ __ ] mhm okay it was all nonsense oh the Americans corn you know the Yeah you know yeah we like we like to kill the bugs that are living on the chicken that's that takes weeks that takes a couple of days to process and you know maybe we can It's insane like the amount
(49:53) of unbelievable so you like So I I get it you think our food quality is [ __ ] and you're not I'm not going to like argue with the but not on freaking chicken guys like it was just so dumb it was clearly a phrase created in an intelligence you know think tank to like what will trigger people the most coronated chicken it's like [ __ ] like people like we don't use disinfectants in you don't use disinfectants in your um in your meat processing facilities i don't want to eat the [ __ ] meat you people produce like you know what I mean
(50:30) like it's just it's insane but whatever like but that's what they did and they did this in order to try and scare the Brits into not leaving the EU because you know French meat because French chicken is so much higher quality than American chicken it's [ __ ] this is nonsense chicken it's freaking chicken for Christ's sake get over yourself it doesn't have any flavor like I don't you know whatever like it's But that's what they that's what these people do and it's all gaslighting and and it's part of the trade imbalance so going back to what I
(51:04) was saying earlier just to make sure that I I like square the circle on what I was talking about why Trump put the tariffs on the way he did um and is as follows what he was saying is what he's basically said is this if we had a free market for trade right with all our major trading partners we wouldn't be running regular durable year-over-year ever widening trade deficits because you know the currencies would would would attenuate and and then the money would flow back and forth and blah blah blah blah and the free market
(51:49) would grind out that arbitrage a trade surplus like with Canada is $124 billion a year that's a durable advantage created by a mix of tariffs regulations blah blah all of these things and so when you see a trade imbalance and and anytime you see you know any kind of arbitrage that doesn't close it's because something's getting in the way so for example go back to you know let's look at like when we were all talking about a year and a half ago or so between the the price of gold in Chicago and London versus Shanghai and for a while there
(52:30) was this big $40 arbitrage that was going on and it was holding up for like weeks at a time right now normally in the gold market like you get a a short-term arbitrage play like that like there's a big spike in demand for for gold in China well then the traders in London and Chicago turn around they buy a bunch and then they ship it they they they buy a bunch of futures contracts and then use those and post those as collateral in order to you know um trade on the Shanghai contract and then close the arbitrage right that's
(53:04) what they'll do over and the arbitrage will close and it doesn't take very long and you know the gold bugs will go crazy for 48 hours on Twitter because oh my god something happened and you know what they're trying to do what they're really trying to do is yeah something happened and I need to sell newsletters this month um when the reality is is that it's it's a market functioning normally there was a spike in demand traders came in and alleviated the supply shock dealt with the problem and moved it around now when we didn't
(53:30) now when that arbitrage didn't close that meant something and that's when Vince Lanchi and I spent you know weeks talking about this stuff like what that was and my and our friend our mutual friend Eric Jung talked about this as well which is that what was happening is that the physical gold couldn't be sourced out of the west something was blocking the physical gold being moving from London andor Chicago to Shanghai and that's why the arbitrage stayed in place for weeks on end well get got news for you that's the
(54:06) metaphor for these durable trade surpluses in places like I'm not talking about a place like you know I don't know the Congo or whatever that's you know that sells a bunch of people cobalt and that's all they have they're always going to run a trade surplus with us because we they you know we don't have anything to offer them our high-end goods we're just that's fine that that's not the big that's not a big deal but our traits are our our trade deficit with Vietnam that's Chinese dumping of textiles into Vietnam and into the
(54:32) United States to avoid the tariff you know French wines same thing like over and over german cars same thing over and over and over again canadian oil Canadian eggs Canad [ __ ] maple syrup that's what this is about that's what they're and so there's an entire regulatory schema that's making sure that the money flows in one direction and while it may have 100 reasons and the well actually folks on Reddit well you know well actually it's about business and you may be right you [ __ ] pedantic asses but until we can
(55:12) figure out what that what those things actually are on a case- by case basis and work those things out we have a crisis this crisis needs to be dealt with and we're slapping a freaking tariff on them that that is going to get rid of half of that arbitrage that's what Trump did and by doing that what he's now doing is saying "Okay what we're going to do now is we're going to claw back that trade surplus and because we still have the most powerful consumer market in the world you're going to eat it because you
(55:45) have nowhere else to send your to send your products as to your point Marty because China is in a recession yeah and that's like I had people text me this week like this is not good tariffs aren't good like the And that was my exact point is like they need the US consumer china specifically it's like they they need it they're they're not they're not gonna sustain their economy locally or in Southeast Asia and Russia is probably not they they need it like they need air to breathe they need it like women want need sex when they're fertile like it's
(56:24) this is the way it is like it's this is not this is reality folks this is not the model that's in your head this is not the textbook that you read this is not your this is not your Murray Rothbart pamphlet what you know at the end of the day this is the real world and I I remind everybody that McGreet and others have you know McGreet's very famous for this you know his picture his painting of a pipe with a statement this is not a pipe it's a picture of a pipe it's a model it's not the world go you know if you're not sure what I'm talking
(56:56) about go look up Ian McGill Chris go listen to him go listen that that brilliant Scottish man talk for an hour and a half about the difference between models that your left brain builds and the world you actually interact with this is the world we interact in okay there is theory and then there's real politic and real politic is a fundamentally different world and we can be guided by principle that we want free markets and we want capital to flow across borders and we want we want people to act peaceibly towards each
(57:28) other and everything else and that's a fine and lovely and wonderful idea and then there's the people you're actually dealing with and so well actually we're dealing with evil freaking pedophilic vampires of old Europe and how are we going to get rid and how are we going to bankrupt them so that we can get closer to your ideal or are you just going to like or are we just going to all be left libertarians from the 70s and scream the open borders like no like not with a welfare state not with a warfare state hell even
(58:01) Rothbart like said that that was incompatible with libertarianism 40 years ago he said you know before he died like this is it's all dumb like at the end of the day remember Murray like enth enthusiastically back M Pat Pap Buchanan of all people who was in no way manner shape or form a free marketeteer in terms of economic policy just to remind [Laughter] everybody you know in case in case everybody's history is a little light because you know you your your head is only full of the [ __ ] that whatever you know MI6 put into it last week through M
(58:40) you know through the DNC and Emily's list like you know get over yourself yeah do you think a critical mass of American citizens are picking this up yes go look at Go look at the numbers on your favorability um ratings of Europe they're awful for Republicans and independents it's awful trump's winning he's winning the the messaging war on this because he beat them because he's attacked them across multiple vectors again not linear thinking what's he doing oh they still want war oh they want us to pay for NATO and they want us
(59:23) to go to war oh and they're cheating on trade oh and they're doing this oh and they're doing that and their response to everything we do is to hector us and treat us like mouth breathing Americans oh really like you're so cultured all you people ever do is go to [ __ ] war and then ask us to bail you out after you've after you're done doing it after you get yourself into trouble because you because you can't feel the freaking navy you can't build an army really like if you don't think like those training videos that come out of
(59:55) you know the British or the German training videos if you don't think that those aren't coming from people connected with Trump that they're not playing the fifth fifth generation warfare stuff like you're nuts of course they are but then again it doesn't even have to come directly from the Trump people it can just be I mean we have the trolls on 4chan they know what to do yeah oh they know what to do better than anybody mhm and you have to imagine domestically the EU is just losing out because of the immigration crisis and
(1:00:24) the HB laws at least in UK Ireland it seems like things are are really hitting ahead in those regards well well I I I mean I think they're what they're doing is they're just doubling down into the end they're just I think this is just we don't know what else to do flood it this is like when it was clear that they took their shot at Trump and missed everything we can we figured out we've been able to piece together since then they just started spending money left and right they spent every dollar that they they could they shoved as many
(1:00:57) dollars through the magic money machines as they could on their way out the door right i think they're doing and they opened up the floodgates and at the border and they did this and they did all of it and they're doing and they accelerated everything it was like it's like that moment in V for Vendetta when you know when John Herd screams about we have to do a full on assault to remind the people how much they need us that see well it's the same thing we have to create as much fear and as much anxiety and we have to try and push our agenda
(1:01:26) as close to you know as close to the the finishing line we got to push it over the finish line and they only know one way of doing that and that's fear and war moderate yeah that's why I think the combination of the speed of the blitz Greg by the Trump administration the overcommunication like their their media strategy has been incredible um in the first two months like getting on All In getting on Tucker Stephen Miller out there explaining God Ste everything when when something pops up uh it's really impressive honestly yeah they came in
(1:02:01) they were prepared yeah and we've had Mel Madison and others on and I think that's the consensus it's funny the consensus contrarian view uh the contrarian view uh the contrarian view in the mainstream is the consensus consensus view in our circle which is that or I don't know if you believe this but like the whole strategy was come quick out of the gate get yields down let the stock stock market crash get it to a point roll over some of the debt and then when things have settled at a somewhat stable lower base then
(1:02:39) unleash the economy and you have a rather quick recovery on the back end of all this perceived chaos well if you if you lead you into midterms well this is and this is where my this is where my libertarian or libertarian brethren should understand it what is Trump doing he's trying to liquidate the malinvestment like we're actually watching Warren Harding in 1920 they called him do nothing Harding and they killed him by the way I'm firmly convinced they killed Harding um because Harding refused to do nothing during the the depression of 1920
(1:03:20) libertarians use it all the time this example all the time tom Woods and pick pick your this is their this is their their their go-to right me two guys hey look harding did nothing allowed the economy to crash and then the economy came right back roaring right back 18 months later after everybody was forced to deal with their problems and liquidate all their malinvestment get it over and done with the pain was terrible for 18 months and then we were right back to where we were in no time flat now on top of that of course we started
(1:03:51) having a sovereign debt crisis in Europe we had the German hyperinflation which which gener you know which helped that process out this is that's another dimension to their argument that you know they do they you know factor that in no because they're only thinking as always they're only thinking about domestic policy and and they're not looking at the entire world as a you know that capital flows across borders right and but still it's still a powerful enough argument well it's the same kind of thing what you just
(1:04:23) described I think is a is a is a similar strategy on their part and I don't even know that you know look the stock market going from the the the Dow going from 42 to 38 is not a crash that's a correction right okay it's it's 9% folks okay it's 9% all right fine we were at a high of 45 fine but when this started to roll over we were really at what 43 so it's five grand on four okay so it's 12% okay you want to argue with me it's 12 whether it was 15 or 12 it doesn't matter it's not enough to matter do you remember what happened like we
(1:05:01) had a lost generation where the Dow didn't make a new high from 1966 to [Music] 1980 you know i mean do we not remember what how poorly the S&P 500 performed versus everything a after you know after the dot bust why do you think I I mean what you know whenever I whenever people ask me about you know some of what you know what asset classes do you like outside of gold or this like I always say timberland you know why cuz trees grow 8% a year that's why they got really low carry costs and in the long run they outperform the S&P
(1:05:44) 500 but they don't always outperform the SNP 500 why because the S&P 500 does this and Timberland does this like trees grow 8% a year and you don't need to harvest them when when prices are down and there's a recession on guess what then the trees become more valuable why well because now I can get 2x12s i can get more 2 by12s out of that tree i as opposed to just getting 2 by sixes or having to grind the goddamn things down and turn them into pulp or you know oriented strand board or whatever like you know all of a sudden I
(1:06:21) can get real lumber out of them like and then the stumpage prices go up and then and then and then and then then and they have control over what goes to the market because they're the ones it's their their stuff now I you know I I it's it's a fascinating study but it's going to be interesting when I sit down to like update my model on that after we have a nice nice sharp correction in the stock market for the next and maybe we have a sh an 18-month correction in the stock market would be good nice reorganization of capital where does the
(1:06:57) money need to go should it be in tech stocks should we be dealing with this AI bubble or do we need to be putting money into freaking you know um transportation commodities blah blah blah blah blah we have so much we are so behind the curve on uh exploration and production upstream across the entire commodity space which has been capital starved during this ridiculous ridiculous financialization of our economy um that I how can you not you know how can you not bet on that right and even when oil prices were refusing to like
(1:07:37) break back above 80 all the oil majors trading at pees of like four or five or six not 15 18 28 37 whatever and paying 5 to 7% dividends they were doing so at $78 a barrel of oil but they didn't have a lot of money to put into finding new reserves and I have like arguments with people about peak oil all the time and I'm like "Yeah well when you have governments that are incredibly hostile to new um exploration in places where we know there are trillions of barrels of oil why are we shocked that the that the production numbers out of the top 50?" I
(1:08:23) was talk I was arguing with Chris Martinson on on Twitter about this the other day um I'm like I just don't buy it like I'm sorry like the inflation adjusted price for oil is now lower than it was in the 1970s using the CPI which we know is understated so oil actually is actually cheaper today in the 60s it's insane yeah it's it's it's truly insane which makes again the the backlash from and the backlash is coming from the Reddit class the managerial class a bunch of people who would like to fancy themselves as individuals who can see
(1:09:02) something and respond to it and know the exact answer immediately it's like this is the setup for one of the greatest opportunities to build things in America has ever existed and this not just for America for the entire world because if America overthrows its managerial class it overthrows that the managerial revolution which we've already gone through it's going to have downstream effects for everyone because it's going to out compete the managerial class everywhere else at some point everything everything becomes too
(1:09:38) complex right everything becomes too um bound up in its own inertia and sometimes you just have to like you know what n sorry and we're going to blow through it but we've told you you're not allowed to do that and you have to play by WTO rules we're not we we just took ourselves out of the WTO you can't do that I think yes I can push back a little bit it's not it's not it's not complexity that's the problem it's complicated they complicate everything complexity and complication okay I'm a I'm a semantic [ __ ] on this one it's like complex
(1:10:10) systems are good they're emergent complicated systems are forced on people they just complicate everything no you're that is that I I I stand corrected i I don't And you know I don't do that very often Marty you are correct you are completely correct um you are right um and but I mean complexity has its own and it's not just it's not just you know it's not just complexity and then you're you're you're correct i'm just like like vamping here now and thinking like what I'm when I when I use the word complex I mean that we have
(1:10:42) interconnected things that require a tremendous web of of inputs and you know that's the modern miracle of the entire thing that we do right as a what we call the economy you know it's like all these amazing freaking decisions that people make in order to try and figure out how to turn what is into what will be it's it's a brilliant beautiful thing and you know emergent dynamic chaotic lovely all that stuff it's great cuz you never know what's going to come out the other side right and you shouldn't but the control
(1:11:18) freaks want they they want they don't want that what they want is they need control so yes they need needlessly complicate your life with with unnecessary things and so my I the one I always go to is the the modern diesel engine look at what they've done to the diesel engine it's the simplest thing in the world it should be and they and in order to make it uncompetitive what did they do they turned it into a root Goldberg device with all this emission reurning and this and that and they knew exactly what they
(1:11:57) were doing they what they what were they doing they were trying to kill the the fuel efficiency of the diesel engine in order to make it too expensive to to to produce then there would be no comparative advantage and then they did to buying one and then at the same time they let all the diesel refineries go away and they wouldn't let us build new ones so that we restrict the supply of diesel then we changed the sulfur rules then we did this then we did that then we put cafe on then by the time we were done we're like yeah well
(1:12:31) we we didn't outlaw diesel commercial diesel engines and cars and and and and pickup trucks we just made it so that nobody wants to build one yeah that was the funniest tweet I've seen in the last month is uh whoever invented the or whoever introduced the concept of your engine shutting off when you hit a red light and then turning back on needs to be sent to El Salvador cuz it's like it's so stupid it's so stupid it's terrible for the car like I like I have a I have a BMW sorry not buy an American yet but uh like have I have to hit that button
(1:13:09) whenever I get multiple Stantis products that did this like multiple Jeeps or or or Rams that that did this and they they were Yeah no and they're they're all awful and we every time you get in the car I turn the push button start turn the thing off turn the auto the auto start thing uh start stop thing on and off immediately it was like bing bing two buttons to start the car every time yeah oh it's a cylinder deactivation don't even get me started on that like the the the Dodge Hemi V8 is one of the great engines of all time but they now
(1:13:40) you destroy it with that with doing cylinder deactivation in order to get you know in order to get to do 28 m the gallon on the open road well that's great you can do that uh and now this engine that should have lasted 400,000 mi is going to last 100 and a half yeah uh complicating things you know and I think the timing of sometimes God works universe God whatever you believe in works in incredible ways the uh the timing of this like thinking about like resetting the economy with all this technology particularly AI I
(1:14:16) mean you were mentioning Grock like I've been using it a lot it is who know there's debates in the tech sphere about how powerful it is whether or not AGI will materialize but I think it's objectively true that it is pretty powerful to the extent that it can make you much more efficient and um being in the venture space I've seen a lot of companies started by young excited people that are really Gen Z has been radicalized which is going to work in our favor they they have gotten the [ __ ] end of the stick a lot of them were told
(1:14:49) um that they're bad for for for just being who they are in the first place they've gotten dejected by colleges for for not having the right essay or the right skin color whatever it may be and and they're motivated to really bring back that American ingenuity and like prove to the world that they are worth it and they can do things and so you're seeing this I mostly an AI defense tech like I'm not sure if you've been following some of the defense tech companies like I'm anti-war guy but the some of the stuff coming out of
(1:15:23) Elsaundo California um which the tech they're building can be repurposed for not dropping bombs but doing productive things is crazy impressive like we're talking building 3D printed planes on a $5 million budget that is going to completely change change the world we're we're transitioning and I guess that like the last topic like how could this get [ __ ] up um and what should what should people be cognizant of and aware of and particularly from the narrative perspective cuz Yeah yeah no I I think what you I mean what I would watch very
(1:15:59) carefully is how I I I brought it up earlier our biggest tail risk at this point is somebody trying you know who desperately needs a war and in order to um to break down what's left what's left of of we have complex systems complexity is not a problem but complexity is easily attacked it's also if it's you know redundant like TCP IP is redundant right it sees outages as doesn't see it sees them as bugs and it just immediately reroutes the data right that's the the way TCP IP was written is a is a great metaphor I use it all the time is a
(1:16:40) great metaphor for how how you know systems are really good at adapting to you know problems right but at some point complex systems are can be fragile especially if somebody is being vandal is being vandal is trying to vandalize them and they say "Well we can we knocked that one out." Okay well that's one thing we knocked that one out too and that one and that one now what you know I I I just took a a two-day trip to New York to um celebrate the the Newsmax IPO and um I got on four flights all of them were delayed every
(1:17:20) one of them we were 75 minutes late getting out of Gainesville oh no sorry this my connection was not Yeah and my even my connection was late they they rerouted me to a different connection and we were still late getting off the runway um silly little maintenance issues or just it was it was insane we were late leaving Charlotte last night to get into Gainesville like like Gainesville it's it's a nothing airport we get there and we have to sit on the tarmac for 10 minutes why because we were late getting there another plane came in in front of
(1:17:53) us and there was only one ground crew and they were unloading the other plane and we had to wait for them to unload that plane before they let us off the plane like and I was just over and over and over and over again and I was like and I know that that's part of the plan the plan is to destroy you know it's not just transportation the food web all of it and I know people are are cognizant of this and so what I if I you know if you want you know what I think people should be most worried about is the attrition
(1:18:29) that we've seen in a lot of these basic industries since co are we're still seeing aftershocks of this and now we're not training the people to replace them where we have a you know we have a a short we don't have a shortage of pilots we have a shortage of like everything competent throughout the entire airline industry and Now we're going to put and we're putting people in the air still and all the flights were oversold and the prices are you know I'm sorry but the prices are insane um I flew coach which clearly told tells you that um you
(1:19:03) board the plane last and if you board the plane last you might not be able to keep your carryon you might have to check the damn thing but if you want your carry-on and you want to make sure that it gets to your destination because you know well then you can pay us an extra $200 for your ticket really okay yeah like the whole thing is is is is is is awful and they're trying to turn every interaction you have with the outside world into going to the Social Security office right that's what they're trying to do and knowing full well that
(1:19:42) that complexity or that th those complications will lead to a breakdown in complexity because you've now taken systems that are that should be durable and turned them fragile mhm and that's what I worry about more than anything else at this point and that's what I've been I've been you know screaming for years that like what should you do i don't know but go and look at your local town and figure out what's the we're not producing and start producing it or make sure that if we are producing something locally I don't know
(1:20:15) food this Hey I you know I I I default to my days as a as a goat farmer and say okay well I make sure that I you know that you you deal with your your local feed lot and you deal with your you know for your animal feed and you deal with you know you make sure that your local hay farmer you know can get his product to market and then you know you contract with him to get to get you know 50 bales or whatever the hell you need like whatever it need you know but then again it's also the barb wire guy you know it's also the bailing wire guy like we
(1:20:44) need him too we need you know we we can't allow the pipe factory down the road that makes you know the all the PVC for North Florida we can't we have to make sure that that thing keeps functioning you get what I mean like this is the kind of thing like that none of us think about on a daily basis but there are unbelievable opportunities all the way around like yeah and this was a I don't know did you see the debate pop off yesterday or the day before about somebody talking about reshoring manufacturing and talking about I think a toaster factory
(1:21:16) that was spinning back up people like do we need to build the toasters here it's like yes well actually you need to train people to work in a factory setting so that you can then poach them and move them up to SpaceX or Tesla whatever it is to build more complex systems right like yeah they I I remember that meme was running around like do we really need to be building toast in 2020 in 2025 in America i'm like "Yeah actually we do.
(1:21:41) " Like oh I mean unless you don't unless you believe that we shouldn't be eating bread that's a a different conversation but yes we should and we can make we can make the best we and we can make toasters that were as good as the ones that we made in the 1950s but with better you know but you know with with better wiring as opposed to the cheap [ __ ] that we make today that are all designed to to to to be worn out in 18 months like we now you know they they're trying to turn the entire world into into you know commod into you know everything is a
(1:22:10) service and again I I I go back to it all the time like every day the world is turning into freaking Philip Kada clan like everything is a service everything's a tip you know everything's a you know like no like are you kidding me like because somebody wants because somebody decided that they can figure out a way to cut a 3% VIG on a toll booth to do nothing and again that trade arbitrage I was talking about earlier i want you people to understand or you people I hate I I shouldn't have used that phrase that's
(1:22:42) that's I want everybody to understand that that arbitrage I was talking about that trade durable trade surplus that is what economists call rent it's unearned profit and that's what Trump is calling back now and then we can negotiate about the rest of it but we're not going to get there until we start bringing that money in because if he brings in say he brings in the5 to700 billion in tariffs that's money we don't have to raise taxes for that's taxes that we that's that takes care you know and we like it you're not
(1:23:25) going to fix the budget overnight you're not going to fix the finances of the country overnight but I I've been screaming from the beginning i'm like the world wants the United States to stop doing what it's been doing other than our enemies but our enemies are in no position to replace us europe's not in any position to replace us china is not really in any position to replace us if you know those if if those reports are true you know we can start getting into whether or not there's actually you know 7.1 billion people in the world or not i
(1:23:58) the more I think about it the the it doesn't make any sense that there's that there's as many people as they say there is and what if that's a Yeah I've always wondered that too how do we know it's 8 billion we don't know you know it's just it's it's a number that we we we pull out of our ass right so and when you think about it like again coming out fast resetting the market and then pertinent to me and my life and my beat like I think also just being uh accommodative to the Bitcoin economy here where it's like we're going to do
(1:24:37) all this you guys can play with your bitcoins play have fun playing with your bitcoins like slowly but surely more and more Americans are going to wake up and they're going to have a a better long-term savings vehicle through which they can then reinvest and do all this stuff as well and the industry I'm seeing it it's happening rapidly like the the products that are coming to market to really help people get into Bitcoin in uh in ways in which that is sort of like snuck into their life it's not really in your face you're not
(1:25:07) thinking about the daily price movements are coming to market quickly and no I just I think it's I think it's incredibly important because look we I mean for a I'll be honest with you we waste a lot of energy that we produce bitcoin in my mind aside from all of its other attributes I've said this before and I'll remind everybody Bitcoin's strongest attribute is that it tokenizes waste energy production and it does so and it goes out and finds inefficiencies within the energy production market and destroys them
(1:25:53) and that's a really really powerful tool and then the fact that we can do that and turn it into a token that has we know there's been work that's been done we know there was opportunity cost you know [Music] um dealt with by a human to create this unit of thing it's not it new monetary units should always come with an opportunity cost like by definition that's what makes them commodities there should be a choice to produce that as opposed to this and because then you have a human making a decision and making a value judgment
(1:26:36) on their actions and that's where value is created right inherent in the I value judgment I value that that is more productive use of my time than doing that right new monetary units were I push a button and nothing h and I can make instantiate a dollar or a billion dollars that's where the that's where the corruption comes from that's where the all of that's where everything is everything goes wrong so Bitcoin's ability through its uh through its its architecture to incentivize efficiency within the energy use
(1:27:21) space is its greatest attribute because it's literally turning productive work into a token that can be traded that other humans can then value in order to get work done that they need to get done i you know we we've done it with gold we can do it with Bitcoin we can do it with both simultaneously consecutively and concurrently i don't care i I don't care i just I know that that's what we need and that's when humans are at their when humans are at their absolute best i think is what I'm really getting out here yeah and you'll
(1:27:56) be uh you'll be happy to hear I I think you know this but I started helped start was one of the first team members on a Bitcoin mining company we did flare gas mitigation in the Bakan mhm started back in 2018 uh company um got acquired in 2022 I believe but back then in 2018 we were on well pads in the Bakan i wasn't physically there but a lot of our team was but that was when she you learned about the supply chain from upstream down to midstream to um the market ultimately it was always in our mind like it doesn't make sense to go and
(1:28:33) stop the flare on the well pad because it's just logistically and uh not scalable and inefficient and the idea was like if we go to the midstream Mhm and instead of sucking instead of consuming the flare on the weld pad suck it in from the midstream because you can actually get scale there and you don't have to plop up and move all the time that is the holy grail and I had a call earlier this morning where OMG companies have owned it on that they're like "Oh I get it now this is what we're going to do." So you just use Bitcoin mining as a
(1:29:06) pressure release valve if your pipes are getting too full and it's like "All right just cycle it to the Bitcoin miner." And then you have optionality on top of that like what's natty gas trading at and it's only $2 in MCF you know what if I turn this gas towards this generator produce electricity my Bitcoin with it I'm going to make $5 in MCF so I'm going to I'm going to bolster that revenue stream with some Bitcoin mining and then oh look we're pretty well capitalized we got good cash flow let's go drill some more wells let's go
(1:29:34) build some more pipelines right and the whole and the system is and the system is self and ultimately the system is self-correcting and you know and the other thing that's also interesting about that is then you also have compute power that can be used in other ways if the Bitcoin mining isn't necessary you know if the if the compute power isn't needed I Yes no that's not true no no no they they use the hash SH 256 uh algorithm in the A6 that's what they that's the I know that I know we I know that it's mostly A6 but I'm saying you
(1:30:07) know if the company wants to they can colllocate yes they can use the energy power you can't use the same compute power i know in Bitcoin mining because it's you can use the electrical infrastructure GPUs right to file GPUs and do and and do AI and and Yes right and and do AI compute like right there but I mean just as one example there's multiple ways of of skinning that cat so but first you build the base business and then you know let them figure out what the what what works and what doesn't work after that but you
(1:30:42) know again it's this is such an important idea and it's where we're going to wind up and I and I'm so happy that honestly gets this like Trump Trump pays back political favors right that's what he does right maybe he gets it maybe you know the maybe the the tech bros around him have explained it to them to the point that he gets it maybe i don't even care what I what I care about is that the Treasury Secretary understands this that's different that's important i mean un It was unprovoked with Tucker brought up Bitcoin bitcoin's turning
(1:31:29) into a store of value yep yep said it right alongside gold they're they're going to roll out a lot of different ideas and they're going to do it and they've got and as you've mentioned their their their media strategy has been excellent and they're going to use that media strategy they're they're using that media savvy to interject the next thing into the marketplace but since saying that it's a direct attack upon the European Union yeah compare that to the EU's there like all they have is Vanderline Mcronone and
(1:32:03) um Christine Lagard they come out and they just give like a very vanilla typical politician speech it's like nobody's picking this up anymore like Yeah well I mean the thing about And they're but they're all uniquely hostile to Bitcoin i mean oh yeah they're incredibly hostile to it and and anytime they saying and if they ever say anything nice about it no one's going to believe them because we all know what their plans are did I tell you did you know this i don't know the EC the ECB cited one of my newsletters in a paper
(1:32:33) they wrote disparage Bitcoin really it was it was a nice uh nice little medal on the uh thing positive or negative negative negative they were saying I misunderstood uh they were trying they were basically taking something I wrote in a newsletter i think it was about Japan and why I think it may have had to do with the carry trade blow up and like why this is why you pull Bitcoin instead of treasuries and they're like "Well actually they will actually lead me.
(1:33:00) " Yeah ecb research paper yeah no I'm I'm not I'm not surprised at all actually that's that's very cool yes to have anytime you have someone you have someone like that like come after you it was great it was It was It was a great morning i had people I didn't even know that it happened people are like "Mart you were you were cited in the ECB paper.
(1:33:21) " And I actually DM'd one of the co-authors i was like "Hey would you like to come on the show to discuss it?" He was like "Yeah let me talk to my handlers." Then he came back six hours later was like "Uh they don't want me to uh to do press like this." And I was like "Well I don't I don't actually want to defend anything that I wrote in public i'm not allowed to do that i have a I I operate you know in a in a very tightly controlled political space like obviously.
(1:33:47) " So cool yeah it's all good man well thank you again i know it's been a long week for you this is It's always incredible catching on with you and I feel like we do it like Friday afternoon every time now uh that's a good way not a bad time to do it actually like after the market closes all the all the drama is over thankfully as of right now we're not like going to sit down and talk about which banks went under yet um I'm I'm expecting most of them to be in Europe um I I and the on the way out the door just to remind everybody I I'm I think I'm absolutely right about
(1:34:17) what's going on with um with uh watch let's watch the Fed very carefully as European banks start to go under and the swap and they because they like screaming that they're worried about swap lines and the Fed and this dollar liquidity you watch to see who gets the bailouts and who doesn't what did you see uh did you see that headline from Germany about the conservative German politicians wondering if we should if they should call the golden kind from New York you know my Yeah I saw that and my my response to him I
(1:34:49) think on Twitter was that's nice we've got 80 years worth of NATO that you owe us back you pay pay us for and possessions 9/10en of the law so we'll we'll call you exciting times yes very incredible opportunity out there if you're listening to this if if you listen to this and don't recognize that there's incredible opportunity out there go back start over and listen to it as many times as you need to as necessary there hate to plug our own work but you know all right man you have a great weekend thank you for the invite and and for
(1:35:26) catching up and all you do and all the rest of it i really appreciate it you too Tom peace and love freaks yep take care
