Tangle - Tariffs on Canada, Mexico, and China.

Episode Date: February 3, 2025

On Saturday, the White House announced that the United States will be imposing a 10% tariff on all imports from China and 25% tariff on imports from Mexico and Canada, with energy imports from Canada taxed at 10%. President Donald Trump used emergency powers under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act of 1977 (IEEPA) to authorize the taxes, citing the “extraordinary threat posed by illegal aliens and drugs” and saying they would remain in place until the crisis is alleviated. The tariffs were scheduled to effect at 12:01am ET on Tuesday; however, on Monday, President Trump said he would pause the tariffs on Mexico for one month after Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum said she would send 10,000 soldiers to the U.S.-Mexico border to target drug trafficking.Ad-free podcasts are here!Many listeners have been asking for an ad-free version of this podcast that they could subscribe to — and we finally launched it. You can go to tanglemedia.supercast.com to sign up!You can read today's podcast⁠ ⁠⁠here⁠⁠⁠, our “Under the Radar” story ⁠here and today’s “Have a nice day” story ⁠here⁠.Take the survey: What do you think of the recent tariffs? Let us know!You can subscribe to Tangle by clicking here or drop something in our tip jar by clicking here. Our podcast is written by Isaac Saul and edited and engineered by Dewey Thomas. Music for the podcast was produced by Diet 75. Our newsletter is edited by Managing Editor Ari Weitzman, Will Kaback, Bailey Saul, Sean Brady, and produced in conjunction with Tangle’s social media manager Magdalena Bokowa, who also created our logo. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

With the Fizz loyalty program, you get rewarded just for having a mobile plan. You know, for texting and stuff. And if you're not getting rewards like extra data and dollars off with your mobile plan, you're not with Fizz. Switch today. Conditions apply. Details at fizz.ca. From executive producer Isaac Saul, this is Tangle. Good morning, good afternoon, and good evening. And welcome to the Tangle podcast, a place where you get views from across the political

spectrum, some independent thinking and a little bit of our take. I am your host today, editor Will Kavak. And today we're going to be talking about the big story in the US, really the world from this past weekend, which is President Donald Trump's decision to levy tariffs on Canada, Mexico, and China. We're going to talk about some of the history behind these tariffs, what Trump's aims might be, what some of the best case scenarios might be, some of the worst case scenarios, and

broadly where we go from here. Looping in some late breaking news this morning that Mexico has agreed to send 10,000 soldiers to the US Mexico border to address drug trafficking in return for Trump delaying the tariffs by one month. That changes a lot of the dynamics of the story and gives us a good sense of where this could be headed. So let's jump into it. But before we do, one quick flag about content coming this week. Obviously, one of the biggest stories in the United States right now is also the plane and helicopter crash in Washington, DC last Wednesday night. We had planned to cover that incident as today's main story, but we ultimately felt that it

touched on so many different issues that we couldn't adequately cover in our standard newsletter or podcast format. And so we decided to dedicate this week's Friday edition to an in-depth assessment of the crash, what led up to it, what safety systems failed, and how we can avoid future accidents like this. As part of our coverage, we're gonna be sharing interviews with a former Federal Aviation Administration safety inspector, a few veteran airline pilots,

including one who flies for American Airlines, and a former Blackhawk helicopter pilot in the military. Should be a really compelling and insightful edition. We're looking forward to sharing it with you. And just a reminder to receive that Friday edition of the podcast or the newsletter, you should sign up to become a premium subscriber of Tangle. With that, let's get into our main story.

I will pass over to John for today's quick hits and the introduction to our topic. And then I'll be back for my take. [♪ Music playing. [♪ Music playing. [♪ Music playing. [♪ Music playing. [♪ Music playing. [♪ Music playing.

[♪ Music playing. [♪ Music playing. [♪ Music playing. [♪ Music playing. [♪ Music playing. [♪ Music playing. [♪ Music playing. for today. First up, Treasury Secretary Scott Bissette reportedly granted access to members of the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOJ, led by Elon Musk, to the federal government payment system. The system contains the personal information of Americans who receive Social Security payments, tax refunds, and other payments from the government. Separately, Musk said he was working to shut down the

United States Agency for International Development as part of his efforts to cut federal spending. Number 2. Venezuela released six American citizens from detention following a visit from a top Trump administration official to discuss a deal on deporting unauthorized Venezuelan immigrants in the U.S. Separately, the U.S. ended temporary protected status for roughly 300,000 Venezuelans, making them eligible for deportation. 3. Acting Deputy Attorney General Emil Bov directed Acting FBI Director Brian Driscoll to fire eight employees and identify all current and former FBI personnel assigned to the January

6 and Hamas cases for an internal review, citing concerns over the employees' commitment to enacting President Trump's agenda. Number four, seven people died and at least 22 were injured after a medical jet crashed in northeast Philadelphia on Friday. The flight crashed shortly after takeoff and investigators are still working to determine the cause. 5. Fire crews in Los Angeles announced that the Palisades fires and Eaton fires had reached 100% containment. The fires burned 23,448 acres and 14,021 acres respectively after igniting on January 7th.

As promised, President Trump dropped sweeping tariffs on goods from Canada, Mexico and China, raising the risk of a trade war with America's three biggest trading partners. Canadian imports will be hit with a 25% tariff, although energy products will be at a slightly reduced rate of 10%. Those are set to take effect on Tuesday. There will also be a 25% tariff on Mexican imports and 10% on Chinese imports, although it is unclear when those tariffs will start.

Trump might be fighting with these countries, but who really is gonna pay the price? In case it is not yet clear to you, it is us, the consumers. On Saturday, the White House announced that the United States will be imposing a 10% tariff on all imports from China and a 25% tariff on imports from Mexico and Canada, with energy imports from Canada taxed at 10%.

President Donald Trump used emergency powers under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act of 1977 to authorize the taxes, citing the extraordinary threat posed by illegal aliens and drugs and saying they would remain in place until the crisis is alleviated. The tariffs were scheduled to effect at 12.01 a.m. Eastern on Tuesday. However, on Monday, President Trump said he would pause the tariffs on Mexico for one month after Mexican President Claudia Scheinbaum said she would send 10,000 soldiers to the

U.S.-Mexico border to target drug trafficking. So for a little bit of background here, tariffs or duties are levies placed on foreign goods paid by domestic importers to Customs and Border Patrol at ports of entry. Tariffs are usually intended to boost domestic industries by making it more expensive to purchase goods from foreign competitors, but they can also result in higher consumer prices. In his first term, President Trump issued tariffs on select goods from China, such as solar panels and washing machines, as well as steel and aluminum imports from most countries. President Joe Biden left the tariffs on China in place,

then added more duties on electric vehicles, semiconductors, and other materials. The newest levies affect all goods, have a condition allowing the president to increase them, and are known as ad valorem, meaning that they are taxed on a percentage of the item's value. Notably, the tariffs provided no exception for de minimis items or single shipments that are valued at $800 or less.

Canada, China, and Mexico all announced that they would issue retaliatory tariffs in response. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau told Canadians they could face difficult times in the coming weeks. Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum said Trump's claim that the Mexican government works with drug cartels was slanderous, while China called the tariffs a serious violation of World Trade Organization regulations. Mexico is the United States' largest trading partner. China is the United States' second largest net importer of goods behind Mexico. Canada is the largest exporter to 36 U.S. states.

Imports from those three countries account for about 40 percent of all U.S. imports and amount to roughly $1.1 trillion annually. Encounters with migrants at the southern border have recently fallen to pre-pandemic levels just below $60,000 per month after peaking at nearly $250,000 in December of 2023. 89,740 people died from overdoses in the U.S. from August 2023 to August 2024, a nearly 22% decrease from the previous year, according to the latest data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. "'We need to protect Americans, and it is my duty as president to ensure the safety

of all. I made a promise on my campaign to stop the flood of illegal aliens and drugs from pouring across our borders, and Americans overwhelmingly voted in favor of it, Trump said in a post on Truth Social. On Saturday, Trump acknowledged that the tariffs may cause some pain for the U.S., while suggesting that he may impose tariffs on the European Union and the United Kingdom. Today, we'll get into what the right and the left are saying about the tariffs, and then editor Will K. Back will give his take. We'll be right back after this quick break.

With the Fizz loyalty program, you get rewarded just for having a mobile plan. You know, for texting and stuff. And if you're not getting rewards like extra data and dollars off with your mobile plan, you're not with FIZ. Switch today. Conditions apply. Details at fiz.ca. Alright, let's get started with what the right is saying. The right is mixed on the tariffs, but mostly supports them and says Trump should go further. Some say the tariffs are likely to hurt U.S. consumers more than anyone else. Others suggest that opposition to the tariffs is motivated by reflexive opposition to Trump.

In the American conservative, Alan Tonelson said Trump should go big on tariffs. Mr. Trump should go right ahead with his proposal for a universal tariff of up to 20 percent. A duty this sweeping can of course raise major revenue and help control the federal budget deficit, but it's also needed to prevent China from evading tariffs on its own products by shipping them through third countries through various subterfuges," Tonnelson said. Most other countries use exactly the same system, and it could help offset not only foreign tariffs but the wide variety of other, often hard-to-identify ploys used by other

countries' opaque bureaucracies to block U.S. exports. Although fits of peak may prompt some near-term foreign retaliation against U.S.-owned companies, full-blown trade wars are unlikely in the extreme. America's very status as the world's importer of last resort alone demonstrates how most major foreign economies depend much more on selling to the U.S. market for their own prosperity than vice versa, Tonelson said. President Trump has seen domestic and foreign leaders rush to accommodate his disruptive positions and bold pronouncements on a wide range of issues.

If he uses the powerful tools that authorize him to act unilaterally and swiftly, he'll find that going big on tariffs will ultimately produce similar results. The Wall Street Journal editorial board called Trump's action the dumbest trade war in history. Leaving China aside, Mr. Trump's justification for economic assault on the neighbors makes no sense. White House Press Secretary Caroline Levitt says they've enabled illegal drugs to pour into America, but drugs have flowed into the U.S. for decades and will continue to do so as long as Americans keep using

them," the board wrote. Mr. Trump sometimes sounds as if the U.S. shouldn't import anything at all, that America can be a perfectly closed economy making everything at home. This is called otter key and it isn't the world we live in or one that we should want to live in, as Mr. Trump may soon find out. Tariffs will also cause mayhem in the cross-border trade in farm goods. In fiscal 2024, Mexican food exports made up about 23% of total U.S. agricultural imports, while Canada supplied some 20%, the board said. None of this is supposed to happen

under the U.S.-Mexico-Canada trade agreement that Mr. Trump negotiated and signed in his first term. The U.S. willingness to ignore its treaty obligations, even with friends, won't make other countries eager to do deals. Maybe Mr. Trump will claim victory and pull back if he wins some token concessions, but if a North American trade war persists, it will qualify as one of the dumbest in history. In The Federalist, J.T. Young argued Trump's critics only oppose his tariffs because they

oppose him. Except for the Civil War income tax's life, tariffs were America's primary revenue source until well into the 20th century. They didn't just disappear once overtaken by taxes. They have been a constant revenue source since, Young wrote. Tariffs already exist on many goods coming into the U.S., including anything that doesn't come from the 20 countries we have trade treaties with. America has a trade-weighted average import tariff rate of 2% on industrial goods.

With half of America's imported industrial goods entering duty-free, many goods face tariff rates above 2%. The Biden administration didn't revoke Trump's China tariffs. They let these stand untouched for four years. Yes, free trade is optimal. However, free trade does not exist. Not here and certainly not abroad, where U.S. exports often face higher tariff rates than these countries' imports face from the U.S. Free trade is great in theory, but it is time the U.S. sought

lower trade barriers for its exports in theory, but it is time the U.S. sought lower trade barriers for its exports in practice, Young said. Much criticism of Trump's tariffs, both imposed and proposed, is based on politics and the establishment media's opposition to him. As Democrats and the establishment media's silence at the Biden administration's somnambulant trade policy of the last four years demonstrates, Democrats are hardly in a position to call out Trump on trade. Alright, that is it for what the right is saying, which brings us to what the left is saying.

The left mostly opposes the tariffs, arguing they are likely to increase prices for US consumers. Some say the tariffs are poorly designed to fix the problems Trump wants to solve. Others suggest the levies could be a catalyst for a trade deal with China. In MSNBC, Jared Bernstein asked,

what the heck are Trump and his team thinking? Who eats the tariff? The importer, the exporter, or you, the consumer? I'm sorry to report that the research suggests it's you. Most of the tariff gets passed through into higher consumer prices. Perhaps the clearest example of this was when Trump imposed one of his first tariffs back in 2018 on imported washing machines. The price of both imported and domestic washing machines subsequently increased by about $86

per unit according to one estimate, Bernstein said. The whole point of Trump's tariffs is to rebuild domestic manufacturing by making imports more expensive, but if the exporter eats the cost, then the U.S. price doesn't change. One conclusion is that this is all theater, threats to extract other golds from trading partners. We saw a microcosm of this last weekend in a dust-up with Columbia. But in the cases of Canada and Mexico,

this explanation is confusing because it's not clear what he'd want from them," Bernstein wrote. "'I strongly suspect that what's probably going on here has a lot more to do with politics than economics. As is characteristic of this moment, we are left with a lot of uncertainty about presidential fixation that even he may know is a bad idea right now. In Jacobin, Dominic A. Luster wrote, tariffs are a costly non-solution to the US's social

crisis. Trump rose to his second term on a wave of economic distress, which, when not sublimated into cultural resentment, found inchoate expression in support for trade barriers. The decline of industrial employment is viewed as the root of the country's malaise, and trade, specifically the U.S. trade relationship with China, as the main driver of that decline, Luster wrote. This theory of crisis is largely bipartisan. The consensus is evidenced by the Biden administration's Trumpian marriage of national security politics

and industrial policy in concert with trade restrictions imposed with the explicit aim of stunting China's further technological development. Tariffs will not and cannot redress America's trade imbalance, but is trade even the cause of American decline? Not really. Attempts to arrest global economic integration by curtailing trade flows are as futile socioeconomically as they are hazardous geopolitically because they misidentify the primary causes of the problems they purport to address, Luster wrote.

Most advanced open economies are as, if not more, exposed to the dynamics of global trade as the United States is. And not a small number of them are both wealthier and more politically stable while boasting higher levels of human development and lower levels of inequality. In the New York Times, Wendy S. Cutler wrote, "'Trump wants a trade deal, not a trade war. He may get one.'" By all measures, China seems like the perfect target

for Donald Trump's tariff hikes. Still, Mr. Trump hasn't imposed new tariffs on China. The 10% tariff hike he threatened to impose for its lax, fentanyl policies is significantly less than what he promised on the campaign trail, Cutler said. To be clear, this does not mean that tariffs on Chinese products are off the table. In the meantime, he seems to be directing his retribution

toward America's neighbors, with whom he has more leverage, making an early victory on trade more feasible. If Trump does travel to Beijing soon, there will be strong pressure for a big announcement during his stay, but sacrificing substance in order to reach a quick trade deal with China would be a mistake. A wiser approach would be to announce the start of negotiations and lock down a few early down payments, including a catch-up purchasing deal to meet the targets set out in the Phase One Agreement, Cutler wrote. Trying to improve the U.S.-China economic relation is a laudable goal, but only if Mr. Trump approaches those negotiations with the discipline equal to what Beijing will surely

bring to the table. All right, let's head over to Will for his take. All right, that is it for what the right and left are saying, which brings us to my take. Reminder, my name is editor Will Kavak, and I authored today's take. In Wednesday's edition on Trump's immigration executive orders, I suggested that immigration was the issue that propelled Trump to victory in 2024 more than any other. However, I think the issue he personally cares the most about is trade. Trump has been bemoaning US trade policy for decades. As a private citizen in the 1980s, he focused his ire on Japan, whom he said was, quote,

ripping off America by flooding the country with imports while restricting access to their own markets. Just as trade has been Trump's animating issue since his political infancy, tariffs have been his preferred solution. In 1989, Trump called for a 15 to 20% tax on imports from Japan, saying, quote, We're a debtor nation and we have to tax, we have to tariff, we have to protect this country. Over time, China has become the primary villain in Trump's view on trade, but his overall solution remained the

same. The president's affinity for tariffs also underscores another aspect of his political persona, a disregard for consensus views. Most economists and lawmakers believe tariffs do more harm than good, a position that unites people of all political stripes from the writers at Jacobin to Tea Party conservatives like Senator Rand Paul to the Wall Street Journal editorial board to Trump's own treasury secretary in a letter that was published a year ago before he was Trump's treasury secretary. Anyways, another widely held view is that it's generally in the US's interest to avoid

antagonizing its allies. President Trump clearly holds little regard for this consensus. It's something that frustrates his opponents, but it's also one of his biggest appeals among his voters. The commentary about Trump's tariff announcement has primarily varied from how the president is either weakening America's international standing or introducing more fairness to global trade or leading the country into an inflationary crisis or taking the first step toward boosting U.S. industries. Now, others have argued that

tariffs are an effective tool to protect vital U.S. industries and increase revenues while also preventing U.S. jobs from being shipped overseas. Before diving into those arguments though, I think it would be helpful to contextualize this debate with a few examples of the impact tariffs have had in the past. So let's start by talking about the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act, which I think is a perfect example of tariffs backfiring. This was signed into law by President Herbert Hoover in 1930, and the law increased already elevated tariff rates in an effort to protect U.S. industries during the Great Depression. However, it ended up exacerbating the ongoing global economic downturn and prompted harsh

retaliatory tariffs from other countries. So Smoot Hawley was, in other words, the worst case scenario of tariffs come to life. A negative sum game on the world stage. For a more modern example, we can look to President Ronald Reagan's decision to impose a 100% tariff on Japanese computers, televisions, and power tools. In this case, Japan had been violating a trade agreement on semiconductors, selling them below market price in the US, while blocking American producers from exporting to Japan,

which as we mentioned in the beginning, prompted then-Citizen Trump's comment about the US getting ripped off. Reagan's tariffs caused an increase in semiconductor prices in the US but it halted steep job losses in the semiconductor industry and eventually forced Japan to open its markets to US companies. Taking another step forward toward the present day, Trump's tariffs in his first term were couched in a similar rationale to Reagan's that unfair trade practices by other countries were hurting the US economy and causing job losses.

But the scope of Trump's tariffs was much broader. In 2018, he levied tariffs on solar panels and washing machines, then enacted tariffs on steel and aluminum imports from most countries. He extended those tariffs to the previously exempt European Union, Canada, and Mexico a few months later. Trump's tariffs on China prompted retaliatory action and each country had levied billions of dollars in tariffs on the other by 2019. Now most economists and analysts hold that Trump's trade war with China failed to deliver what he said it would, their arguments are also pretty compelling. Between 2018 and 2019, the US trade deficit with China actually increased, the opposite of what Trump said

he wanted to address. While China's exports also increased, growth in manufacturing jobs and production in the US failed to materialize and Trump's phase one deal to get China to buy more US goods and services fell short of its intended impact. Let's go to the present day though. We've already seen one major development with Trump's 2.0 tariffs. Mexico this morning committed to deploy an additional 10,000 troops to the border to target drug trafficking. And this is a win for Trump right off the bat.

And it should be said it's a nearly identical outcome to the tariffs he imposed on Mexico back in 2018. Trump is right to see poor border security as a major contributor to overdose deaths. In fiscal year 2024, Customs and Border Patrol, CBP seized over 21,900 pounds of fentanyl at the southwest border, slightly down from 26,700 pounds in 2023 and up from 14,700 pounds in 2022. Now apart from the blanket tariffs, one of the best specific actions of these orders is closing the de minimis loophole. That carve out has allowed shipments below $1,800 in value to enter the US duty free and with minimal inspection, which has enabled Chinese companies to undercut the US market and has very likely been a

gateway for fentanyl to enter the country. It's a loophole that Biden should have closed and Trump's action here will undoubtedly save lives. With Mexico, we honestly appear headed for a best case scenario, better enforcement on their side of the border, leading to declines in drug trafficking and migration before either country feels an enormous economic impact. A similar agreement may be possible with Canada, but Trump's goals for those tariffs are harder to determine.

The White House claims that fentanyl production is rising in Canada, but CBP data from the past three fiscal years shows that the amount of fentanyl captured coming from Canada makes up less than 1% of all fentanyl seized nationwide. And also, Canada has already begun taking action on Trump's concerns about drug trafficking at the border and made some pretty huge seizures already. So I suspect Trump is primarily using these tariffs as a tool to address America's trade deficit with our northern neighbor. And if that's the case, lifting the tariffs

won't be as simple as cracking down on drug trafficking. So while Monday's agreement with Mexico is a positive development, the worst case scenario of these tariffs still looms large. On Friday, the Yale Budget Lab released its outlook on the tariffs impact, estimating that U.S. households will lose $1,250 in purchasing power on average, driving up both prices on imports and domestic products. As a result, the lab expects higher inflation and commodity prices, including computers and electronics, a projected increase of 5.7 percent, motor vehicles and parts up 3.9 percent and fresh produce up 1.8 percent. Economist Noah Smith summed up the risks of these tariffs nicely, saying that they could hurt U.S. manufacturers by increasing their

input costs without imposing a similar penalty on manufacturers abroad. If Trump follows through on his threat to levy tariffs on the European Union as well, the negative effects could compound, leading to retaliation, a global economic downturn, and unintended geopolitical consequences. Should also be said, there are a lot of possible outcomes somewhere between those extremes. For example, it's very possible that a few weeks of economic turbulence and an anemic stock market, which is one of Trump's preferred measures of presidential success, bring Trump

to the negotiating table, where Canada and Mexico give him symbolic concessions that he can use to claim success. With China, the fight over the relatively low 10% tariffs is likely to play out over a longer period of time, making it harder to predict. Of course, all of these predictions could literally be wrong, and anyone telling you that they know exactly how these tariffs will play out should be regarded with skepticism. But we are still headed into an uncertain future with risks to both our economy and long-term security should we do lasting damage to our relationships with our allies.

When Isaac wrote about Trump's economic plan in September, he noted that Trump's arguments about tariffs rested on some faulty assumptions, namely that tariffs are a tax on a foreign country. They're actually paid by US companies importing the foreign country. They're actually paid by U S companies importing the foreign goods. But this economic rationale worries me and it leads me to believe that Trump has a deeper motivation for these tariffs to address perceived injustices. Trump has highlighted many valid issues with our trade practices and his impulse to balance the scales is totally understandable, but his view of tariffs as a catch-all solution,

or worse, as a show of force, risks attacking a problem with a worse solution. We'll be right back after this quick break. With the Fizz loyalty program, you get rewarded just for having a mobile plan. You know, for texting and stuff. And if you're not getting rewards like extra data and dollars off with your mobile plan, you're not with Fizz. Switch today. Conditions apply.

Details at fizz.ca. All right. That is it for my take. We are skipping today's listener question in order to give our main story some more space. So with that said, I'm going to send it back over to John for the rest of the podcast and I will talk to all of you soon. Have a great day. Thanks, Will.

Here's your Under the Radar story for today, folks. Last week, the United States transferred approximately 90 Patriot air defense interceptors from storage in Israel to Poland in anticipation of delivering them to Ukraine. The weapons systems had been given to Israel by the U.S. during the first Gulf War, and the Israeli Air Force officially decommissioned them last April. At the time, Ukrainian officials reportedly approached Israel and the U.S. about transferring the systems to Ukraine. The Patriot system acts as a crucial line of defense against Russian attacks on Ukrainian

infrastructure, and the transfer of the 90 interceptors is the most significant delivery of weapons from Israel to Ukraine since the start of the war. Axios has this story and there's a link in today's episode description. Alright next up is our numbers section. The percentage of Americans who say the United States has lost more than it has gained as a result of increased trade with other nations is 59% according to a Pew Research survey conducted in April 2024. The total value of U.S. imports in 2022 was $3.12 trillion.

The total value of US exports in 2022 was $1.95 trillion. China, Canada, and Mexico as a percentage of US imports in 2022 was 17.7%, 14%, and 13.5% respectively. was 17.7%, 14%, and 13.5% respectively. China, Canada, and Mexico as a percentage of US exports in 2022 was 7.71%, 15.8%, and 15.1% respectively. The estimated percentage increase in real gross domestic product over a six-year period

if the United States were to impose a 10% tariff on all imports is 2.86%, according to a July 2024 study by the Coalition for a Prosperous America. The estimated increase in inflation-adjusted household incomes if the United States imposed a 10% tariff on all imports is $4,250. And the estimated increase in taxes between 2025 and 2034 if Trump's tariffs on China, Canada, and Mexico are imposed long term is $1.1 trillion. Alright, and last but not least, our Have a Nice Day story. Alzheimer's disease is the most common neurodegenerative disease in humans, yet scientists have had difficulty designing medications that can pass the blood-brain barrier

to treat the disease. However, a recent Harvard study found that xenon, an odorless noble gas used as a general anesthetic, stimulated the brain's resident immune system, which can protect against Alzheimer's, leading to reduced neuroinflammation, minimized brain atrophy, and promoted protective neuronal states.

Phase I clinical trials of this drug are set to begin early this year. Good News Network has this story, and there's a link in today's episode description. All right, everybody, that is it for today's episode. As always, if you'd like to support our work, please go to reetangle.com and sign up for a membership. You can also go to tanglemedia.supercast.com

and sign up for a premium podcast membership, which gets you ad-free daily podcasts, Friday editions, Sunday editions, interviews, bonus content, and so much more. We'll be right back here tomorrow. For Will and the rest of the crew, this is John Law signing off. Have a great day, peace.

Our podcast is written by me, Isaac Saul and edited and engineered by Duke Thomas. Our script is edited by Ari Weitzman, Will Kavak, Gellysault and Sean Brady. The logo for our podcast was made by Magdalena Bikova, who's also our social media manager. The music for the podcast was produced by Diet 75. And if you're looking for more from Tangle, please go check out our website at reedtangle.com. That's reedtangle.com. With the Fizz loyalty program, you get rewarded just for having a mobile plan. You know, for texting and stuff.

And if you're not getting rewards like extra data and dollars off with your mobile plan, you're not with FIZ. Switch today. Conditions apply. Details at fiz.ca.