The Chaser Report - All's Fair In Love And Trade War

Episode Date: February 11, 2025

As Donald Trump slaps Australian with tariffs, Dom and Charles brainstorm the best ways to slap him back. Watch OPTICS on ABC iview here:https://iview.abc.net.au/show/opticsCheck out more Chaser headlines here:https://www.instagram.com/chaserwar/?hl=enDonate here to save people from Perth:https://chaser.com.au/support/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Chaser Report is recorded on Gadigal Land. Striving for mediocrity in a world of excellence, this is The Chaser Report. The more time I spend with you the less time I get to have at the opera bar before David Siddharis. I'm glad you left that in. Hello, I'd rock at the Chaucer Report. That's Charles saying it's going to be a quick one because he's got David Sardis to hang out with. Not directly in the audience. Well, I'm assuming that afterwards he'll go, there's a face I know.

A fellow raconteur. Yeah, fellow raconteur from the Chase Report podcast, which I'm sure he listens to daily. And we'll go out afterwards for a night on the town. Maybe, I don't know, Rockpool. Where do you go now? Does Rockpool still exist? The fact that you don't know the answer to that question speaks for itself.

And to why, it isn't it won't be hanging out with you after the show. Nevertheless, if I'm wrong, I'm very happy to one. Dan, correct. That is the plane goes overhead. You can probably hear that. Nevertheless, this is raw podcasting, Charles. This is the real deal. You know that they probably can't hear that plane.

Oh, because the proximity effect of the microphones, yeah. Yeah, and because we've got really good equipment now. Oh, that's true. Okay, look, Donald Trump has slapped. It's always slapping a tariff. You don't gently deposit, you don't massage a tariff. You slap a tariff. Yes.

25% tariff on steel in aluminium. It's 25% without exceptions or exemptions, and that's all countries, no matter where it comes from. Despite Anthony Albany's attempts to carve out an exception for Australia. And do we know whether, Australia is exempted or not because this morning it was very strange straight after the phone call that Albanesey had with Trump. The age reported that maybe there'd be a deal and that he could look at it and the Australian reported no deal. I think you can trust the Murdoch press when it comes

to Trump, can't you? Let's talk to the timeline and it's strange and we'll try to make sense of how Australia should respond after this. It was strange, wasn't it? Because Anthony Amelanese popped up with a press conference, first thing in the morning, saying, I... It's all right. I've got a phone call booked. And this is the strange thing. He'd been, like, he'd been authorised by the White House to say, we're talking about an exemption for Australia.

So he wasn't just freelancing because he didn't want to alienate Donald Trump because the whole world doesn't want to upset Donald Trump because you know what happens when you do. And so he'd been given permission to sort of go, well, I think we'll be okay. And he pointed out that we have a trade deficit with the US. So actually, we're the good ones, sending them more money than they send us, unlike most places. But then shortly after, it was like within an hour or two, Donald Trump's in the Oval Office signing 25% no exemptions at all. No exemptions, yes. And they ask him about

Albanese's call in Australia. And he said, oh, you know, he was very positive towards Albanese. He said he liked him, something like that. The Australian Prime Minister has said that you are considering an exemption from Australia on steel. Is that correct? I just spoke to him, a very fine man. And he has a surplus. I told him that that's something that we will give great consideration. But then said, look, we're looking at that, but it's so far no dice. So I have a suspicion about what happened in that hour, which is I think that the check that we sent them for $800 million yesterday cleared.

Oh, I don't even thought it had bounced. No, that's why the tariffs went on. No, no, I think it cleared. And so Trump didn't need to sort of hurry favour because he was in the clear and he got both his 800 million and the tariff. Oh, I see. Once it cleared, yeah, that was it. I mean, the great thing is he's really analyzing this at a very impressive level here.

And when asked why that we had a surplus, he said, I mean, we have a surplus with Australia. One of the few. And the reason is they buy a lot of airplanes. They are rather far away, and they need lots of airplanes. And we actually have a surplus. It's one of the only countries which we do. He thought that was the reason because of our consumption of Boeing jets,

although we buy more air buses. But that's apparently almost nothing to do with it at all. No, no, that is nothing to do with it at all. But look, the thing about tariffs is they provoke wars, right? They provoke trade wars. So in some ways, what you can say is that Australia is now at war. Can you? Yes, you can say that.

Oh, goodness. Or sort of 25% of us is at war. Well, yes, certainly the steel industry is at war. Well, if you recall this is true. I mean, there was a genuine trade war with China not long ago, with the wine getting restrictions, and I think we tried to restrict them and didn't bother them at all. Yes. But yeah, I mean, there was a sort of one-sided trade war.

And the whole point is, unless you're the absolute biggest lily-livered spineless fuck-wit on Earth, as Australia's leader, you have to respond to this. You can't just let it slide and go, oh, well, here, have your 800 million. Oh, and in the same week, you can slap us with 25% tariffs. You have to have a proportionate response back, because otherwise you'd just be this, spineless fool who does nothing at all for your nation ever, right? Is what I'm saying? What are you trying to say,

something? It's just so subtle that even David Sedaris, with all of his wit and insight, wouldn't quite be able to detect your point. So the point is, we need to come up with the proper response and one that will actually happen, right? So I had this idea this morning that, you know, you've got to have targeted. You want, you know, because you don't want the war to get out of hand. No. You just have little targeted stuff that will really hurt the decision makers, but

not actually have any wider impact. So it's sort of, it's proportionate. It signals we're unhappy, but we don't want to escalate this further, right? Yeah, it's just a little signal. And my thought was 25% tariff on Tesla cars, right? Right. So just literally hit, you know, the president of the United States, where it hurts, in his hip pocket.

Just hit, hurt Elon. Yeah, just hurt Elon, that's it, right. But then I was thinking about it during the day and just going, he doesn't care. Like, Tesla's product is not cars, is it? The Tesla's product is the bubble that he's created where people pay money for a stock that doesn't exist. Well, see, he clearly doesn't care about Tesla. Because Tesla sales are absolutely tanked since Elon Musk joined the far-right. Even though they don't even have any tanks and they've tanks somehow.

That's true. Well, a sober truck, apparently, if it hits you, it's basically like a tank. It's the most pedestrian unsafe car ever conceived. So I've got a better idea to send a message. Which is, I say, what we do is, we do. We just rip up orchards. We just go... Oh, goodness.

We just go no orcas anymore. We just stop doing the payments. Oh, because the worry is that they'll cancel orcus. The worries that Trump will cancel orcus. No one's predicting us canceling it. Yeah, exactly. And we just go, okay, you've had your 800 million. That's it.

That's over. But Charles, if we cancel orcas, we won't have any submarines. We don't have any submarines. So what would the difference do we? How would we know? It's like, if a tree falls in the forest, if an orcus agreement is cancelled, and you never get any submarines. Did it even exist?

I mean, I am willing to bet that if we said, okay, well, we're going to put August on the table and we're going to suspend further payments until we don't have any tariffs anymore, it would electrify the Australian public. It would actually be a piece of theatre and it need only be theatre that actually makes people realise

that the government can actually do something in this situation. And that's what people want. People want, like, it's just so frustrating having in charge somebody who literally wants to dampen any opportunity to do anything ever about anything ever. It's like having Scott Morrison as your prime minister. It's just so shit and depressing. By the way, Charles, the 800 million that we paid, just to remind ourselves, it's a $368 billion deal.

Yes. So there's about 460 payments of the same. amount still to go. It's like after pay, but divided into 468 rather than four. Yeah, but it's like it's a very, very large series of payments. One thing we could do to send a message, we could cancel the verb Trump. You know, the verb Trump means to win, right? To beat.

Like, this Trump's that. Yes. What if we just cancelled that word? Or if we just had a, the word Trump could mean not impressive or a bit of a loser. That's true already. You know what I mean? Like, I don't know about you, but. He used that verb any more?

Oh, I see, right, like when you get trumped in 500. Yeah, if you're playing cards or bridge or whatever. Do you think you wouldn't notice that one? I don't think he would care. Oh, dear. No, no, no. It's got to be real. It's got to hurt them where it.

What about we ban Americans from coming to Australia? Because that's a double bonus. Because then we don't have any Americans in Australia. What would happen if no Americans ever came down under? I mean, we don't get their best, too. We get the odd random band. I mean, we've got Taylor Swift. I'm willing to bet China make submarines.

And because they do South China Sea. We've discussed this on the podcast before. The Chinese submarines would arrive much more quickly. Much more quickly. And they'd be state of the art, I presume. Yeah. Huawei submarines. They also monitor your phone conversations.

Maybe the point is, why don't we just put tariffs on all the things that annoys us a bit of America? Oh, you know, we just go really targeted. Tariff McDonald's. Yeah, just tariff. That would send a message to do. Donald Trump, actually. If all of the McDonald's burgers in Australia, it costs 25% more,

you're probably good for public health as well. What about just like a 50% tax on, you know, US tech companies that are over $10 billion or something? Like, you just hit Amazon meta. Like, who else is backing Trump at the moment? All of them. Yeah, exactly. Just tax them.

I mean, Apple, Tim Cook was there at the inauguration. The whole point is it doesn't have to be fair because it's like a tariff. We just put a tariff on social media service. This is still too logical. I worry that you're not understanding. It's got to be something like the Panama Canal. Let's just take some ads and then think it's something really outlandish. It's not about subtlety or strategy.

It's about noise. Yes. The Chaser Report. Less news. Less often. We've got to be outlandish. It's got to be something like... I know.

It's got to get headlines. I know. We get... What's the largest animal in Australia? Like the largest native animal? We don't really have many large ones. We used to have... The kangaroos.

We used to have some huge animals. Like the big red kangaroos, you know, those big red ones. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We get like, I'm thinking 100, right? Which is pretty easy to get, right? Pop them on a plane, fly over to Washington, and just drop them on the White House. Just absolute chaos. It's so random.

What? That's what you said you wanted. Okay, okay, that's good. And that would annoy Trump. It'd go, okay. I'll back down because I don't want these kangaroos. Why don't we buy Hawaii? Emus!

No, we send in the emus. They're better than us at war. That's true. Actually, they're undefeated. And they'll get out their machine guns and it'll be like, nah. Why don't we get the emus to seize the Panama Canal? They won't be able to stop it.

No, I think we should buy Hawaii. I think that would, it's close to us. Well, have you seen that the Danes have started a petition to buy California? Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Which is great at it, yeah. But I think we could afford Hawaii. It's not very big.

And it's sort of almost as close to us. Scott Morrison. Scott Morrison could be the leader. He could be the governor. He could be El Presente and rule from his iron deck chair. He could bring his ukulele over. Yeah, yeah. I think that could be outlandish, now.

What about renaming something? Yes. Let's rename Uluru. It's going to be renaming something American. Oh, renaming. Oh, I see right there. Okay. We rename

We rename It's really hard to think like Trump Isn't it? Yeah, yeah Is there an American Something The American Dream? But isn't the point

That if we Renate Oh so we unilaterally Rename Trump Tower As being Fuck Whitt Tower Is that the sort of thing Is that what you're doing better

I don't think I quite understand If there are any Trump hotels Or resorts in Australia We could rename those You know how Trump's been in

Like 30 films As cameos Yeah Yeah We ban those films We get the classification Home alone, too.

Home alone, two, out the door. And we do all these things. And because the thing about Trump is it's, he doesn't like losing the media cycle. So you just drop one a day, every day. That's good. Oh, what if we use his, um, because there are no Trump hotels and resorts in Australia.

What if we use his brand and to set up some really bad, like we name the mantra or something? Yes, yes. Like the worst chain we can think of. Maybe the Ivis budget is now the Trump. It's the Trump. Yeah, yeah. Oh, we could rename Jet Star, Trump Airlines.

We rename Adelaide, Trump land. Trumpier. Trumpier. The Australian Capital Territory could be, well, the Northern Territory. What would be the most fitting place? Maybe Queensland could be Trump land, sort of close to spiritual. Yeah, that's too mean to Queensland. Like, I know it's hard to be mean to Queenslanders, but I think it's sort of too far.

Too far, Dom. Too far. Maybe. Why don't we get that fatberg over in Perth and drop it on the White House? Finally, we've got some... I mean, the issue is we just don't really know what to do, do we? In which respond to this erratic guy. But I think it does have to be something that makes global headlines.

Something like banning Teslers or something like that. You own a Tesla, don't you? No, I don't own a Tesla. You don't own a Tesla? I mean, most Tesla drivers now have a sticker on the back that says, I bought this before Elon went crazy. Yeah, okay, yeah, okay. No, that's a good start.

I think ban Tesla's. Ban Facebook. Ban crypto. Crypto bros. We could actually end up with a sort of utopian society, which is just ban American things. Yes. And because then you wouldn't have American cheese. Well, that's not really cheese.

You wouldn't have American food. You wouldn't have... You wouldn't have... It would be healthier. We wouldn't use social media. We wouldn't have all those great Hollywood shows. It's okay. We can just remake it.

I think we need to do what North Korea does. We've got to pirate them all. And get by on British dramas. That's right. And also Australian-made content. Okay. You know, like optics. No, this isn't going to work.

Let's just give in. It's just easier to give you to Donald Trump, isn't it? Yeah. All right. We're part of the Aconoclass Network. And we'll catch you soon. See you.