The Chaser Report - The Recession We Totally Could Have Not Had

Episode Date: April 6, 2025

Liberation is here! The United States is officially winning at the world economy now that the tariffs have begun, and Charles and Dom are here to tell Australia what to do next.Watch OPTICS on ABC iview here:https://iview.abc.net.au/show/opticsCheck out more Chaser headlines here:https://www.instagram.com/chaserwar/?hl=enGive us money: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. Hello and welcome to The Chaser Report with Dom and Charles. Charles, can you feel the liberation? As we know, Donald Trump unveiled a range of liberations, really, for the global economy. Yes. The entire stock market globally has crashed since, and retaliatory tariffs have come up and everyone's feeling they're in hell. But they don't understand the nature of the nature of.

the liberation that's been achieved, Charles. And I want to put it to you that what is needed to fix the U.S. economy, which is the only thing that matters in all this. It doesn't, our economy, doesn't matter. It doesn't, poor countries don't matter. America's economy matters. We need more liberation to make it work. It's only the first step. I'm going to explain why what needs to happen next is full-blown authoritarianism. Otherwise, the entire system of liberation won't work. So we're going to have to make America authoritarian. in order to make it free. See where this is going?

Right. A more controlled America is a freer America. Right. Okay. Liberate yourself from listening to us and enjoy these ads. Okay. I know everyone's sort of saying it's all a disaster, but I think that there is a wonderful schadenfreude in just watching the billionaires

who's all supported Trump, just get their fortunes completely taint in all this. And I know that there's a whole lot of terrible. consequences. For the penguins. Penguins that are paying tariffs. They're in LaSotho. No, but I'm saying like the Mark Zuckerbergs and, you know, who all sucked up the ass of Trump.

They all lost many, many dozens of billions of dollars in a day. Yes. And I think that what I love is that I think that they all think it'll just bounce back like it always does. Because whenever America says it has a shock, it then bounces back. So everyone's just going, buy the dip. You know, like they'll just offload now. And everyone's saying, oh, Warren Buffett's a genius.

He's got just $300 billion worth of cash lying around. He's just going to buy anything enough. And you're just going, what I'm going to really enjoy is watching the expression on their face over the next few years where they realize, all right, this wasn't just a shock. This was like, this is the new business as normal. There is no recovery from this. This is just like Trump now gets to just sort of do what he wants to the economy. and everyone has to come begging.

Like, there's, it's, it's just going to be general decline over the course of the next two decades. Well, that's one possibility is that what happens from here is that the tariffs bite and cause problems, but that everyone comes cap in hand to Trump. And in fact, well, yes. Donald Trump Jr. said, I've seen this movie my whole life. Make the first deal, you'll get a better deal. The last deal will be a terrible deal.

Yeah. Which I think is why Eric is the child that always loses. I think Eric always comes last. But, so that's one outcome is that he becomes this sort of mob boss. And I hadn't known this at all, but apparently Putin brought in similar sort of tariffs when he first started it, like in the early 2000s. He brought in a range of tariffs, which meant that businesses all went cap in hand to him saying, oh, can I have an exemption for my gas company or can I have an exemption for my technology company? We just didn't notice because Russia has a tiny part of the economy. And has a very, well, back then they didn't.

The funny thing is Russia actually was quite big back then. Well, yes, that's true. In the early days of the oligarchs. It just had 20 years of... Of Putin. Of systematic economic decline, which is a thing, exactly what you're going to say. It's like a soft landing for the American... So, Charles...

That's one possibility. Let me tell you what Donald Trump said about this. On Truth Social, which is about to flip for $3 billion, I think. I won't do it in... My Trump impression is good as it is. I won't bring it today. It is good. It is amazing.

Amazingly. Not good. The operation is over. The patient leave, then is healing. This is all in all caps. by the prognosis is that the patient will be far stronger. Sorry, don't do it in a Trump accent, but you should just shout it. The operation is a, oh, God.

No, no, just shout it because it's in all caps. Do it justice. Here, I'll read it. I'll read it. Let me read it. Let me read it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's this.

The prognosis is that the patient will be far stronger, bigger, better, and more resilient than ever before, make America great again. You've probably completely blown the microphone. Anyway, so that's Donald Trump's view on this. But a couple of things to say. So the first thing is that the entire suite of tariffs may be rendered illegal. I know a little bit about this because I've just been listening to a good podcast. The rest is politics and their expertise on all this.

There's just wishful things. They're idiots. We're getting on this. So the rule is supposed to be, Charles. No, you should refer only to the Chaser Report podcast. Yeah. Well, we listen to it so you don't have to. But they don't understand the grand plan. This is what I'm going to explain.

They don't get this. So they've said, look, the rules are. It's got to be an emergency. That's right. You know what the thing is. So the standard practice is 180 days notice if you're going to change tariffs at all. Congress has to sign off on it unless there's an emergency, a dire emergency that threatens national security. And Donald Trump has simply asserted that having any sort of trade imbalance, that's a national emergency.

Manifestly, it is not. It's very clear that that is not the case. It's designed for wartime powers to prevent dumping and whatever sort of stuff can happen with production of airplanes, what it might be. It's certainly not for this. So there could be a legal challenge to his power to do this. Oh, there will be, but the Supreme Court, we're appointed by Trump. So this is point one about why we need authoritarianism in the United States, because the president needs to have his arbitrary, completely ungoverned, unchecked power

over the world economy with no way of reviewing it. So that's, so the courts, if any court gets in the way, I mean, obviously you've got to impeach the judges, any judges that get in the way, impeach them. Get rid of them. In fact, it would be easier not to have courts at all. It would be easier, like the tariffs, all laws and judicial powers were just centralised in the president. If there is a national emergency, are you allowed to suspend the laws?

Is it a bit like... Oh, presumably. Yeah. Well, I mean, but also it doesn't matter what the laws say. What matters, whether is what we've learned, it doesn't matter what the conventions are or the laws say or the constitution says, what matters is how you interpret it and whether any judge is going to stop you or anyone's going to, Congress isn't going to stop you. Yeah, exactly.

So that's point one for authoritarianism. But Charles, it goes further than this, right? Because you're an economics graduate. Correct me if I'm wrong, right? The whole, because I did my thesis on tariffs. Yeah. And particularly in Asia, they industrialized by imposing lots of tariffs in places like Japan and Korea in Taiwan.

Yes. And they used those tariffs to build. And they made crap cars and crap computers and whatever at the start of the process. They used the tariffs to build domestic production. Yes. And compete domestically. and then they transitioned to exporting those same things. That's why Japanese and Korean televisions and cars and so on

were very competitive until Liberation Day. Yes, exactly. So export-oriented industrialisation, the tariffs are an umbrella. The tiger economy. That's right. You build the domestic market. In Australia, we never had things good enough to export, but all the TVs that were made in Australia, whatever, we had to buy those.

AWA. That's right. No, no, we had TV make. We did. I know, but I'm just saying they were never good enough to export. Oh, God, no. Exactly. Well, I reckon we probably exported them to, like, Pacific countries and maybe New Zealand.

Oh, New Zealand would have had to have ARCRAP TV. Sorry, New Zealand. But the point is, Charles, it's an umbrella under which jobs come back. And this is the whole thing. You build the factory in Texas instead of in Vietnam, whatever it might be. This is the logic. But you know what the problem is without thinking? And Donald Trump might not have realized this yes.

It might not have realized this yet. It's not going to work with the status quo because in two years... Too much democracy. Yeah, there's going to be the midterm elections, Democrats. are going to come roaring back in because of all the pain. There's a presidential election in four years. That's not enough time, and there's no certainty to build the factories. The factories have 20, 30 year time frames, which company, and the example of Hyundai has just

been given, they've just opened a big factory in America because of all these tariffs in the past to build cars in America. But they're going to go, why did we do that? There's going to be all these tariffs on the cars anyway now because the stuff's coming from overseas. So what you need, Charles, as I'm saying. is to stop democracy. Democracy and the uncertainty,

what if the Democrats come in in two years and ruin the liberation by getting rid of the tariffs? Yes. It would be a disaster. So what you need to do is suspend American democracy. I feel like if you did, a lot of people would try and flee America. So I think as a part of this plan,

you also need to erect very, very strong borders. Yeah, build the wall. And it's got to be an American-made wall, to be clear. This time, it would be to stop. people from getting out. Yeah, at JFK Airport, LAX. It's a big wall over the departure gates. Not so much a wall.

I'm thinking more like an iron curtain. Yeah, exactly. So it could be a metaphorical wall. Yeah. Because you know what's better than a physical wall. Yeah. A whole bunch of jack boot wearing military people with machine guns. Yes.

It's much cheaper. Yes. You don't need to build the war. And it also gives all the mega people something to do. Although, do you think that they'd be fit enough to get into the gear? Not yet, but give them a chance. Yeah, well, with the lack of... How fit have you got to be to wield a machine gun?

With all the lack of imports of food. Yeah. So none of them can escape and America becomes its own little domestic colony. And what happened on Liberation Day in some ways is the rest of the world was liberated from America. Yes. And this is exactly what's happening. And America got to go off on itself and complain about how it was really the victim in being the one who had to run the world and set up all the rules in its favour.

Yeah, when you look at America's trading history of the world, they've been ripped off for so long, haven't they? They're the victim. Yes. And the way that they invaded 30 countries since 1945. I mean, they have just been bullied and bullied and bullied. Just for the last 70 years. That's why, despite having a massive trade deficit with the US,

we still have to pay 10% tariffs as Australia, even though they, you know, we buy far more from them than they buy from us. And I welcome Germany's decision to remove the debt break from its constitution. I don't know whether you saw that. I didn't say this. Past a couple of weeks ago, the new Chancellor Mertz, who's just incoming now, actually put the bill up in the last parliament just before it disbanded. And he's now got the numbers. That's going to happen right. And the plan is that Germany will spend an extra trillion dollars on defense over the next 10 years, right? So, you know, and that's always done well when Germany re-arms.

We want Germany to rearm. That's right. Fix up the German industrial base in the roar. You know, like I feel like, yeah, I mean, I wonder why we had NATO. Why did we have NATO again? What was the reason we had NATO and that America would look after the sort of collective security? Oh, that's right.

It was because every time Germany rearms, it then tries to invade. The world. The Chaser Report, news a few days after it happens. Okay, so that's one good consequence. I mean, we know Donald Trump has German heritage. So we've already established America's going to be behind it. We can't call it an iron curtain. That metaphor has been used.

What are Tesla's made out of? What's the cyber truck? Flimsy panels. Flimsy panels that fall off. The Tesla panel curtain. Yeah. So there's that. It's a cyber truck.

Well, there'd be enough leftover cyber truck. All the panels would have called off. Just use that as the wall. As the wall. Yeah, a cyber truck wall. So that's the, that's the moral we're dealing with. But the great thing is, Charles. So yes, okay, Germany might be rearming and we know the irony of that. But basically, what's happened immediately after Trump's tariffs, and this was already starting to happen, is that every country in the world, apparently except Australia, by the way, is kind of going, well, forget America. They're not a trustworthy part anymore. And clearly they hate us, right? America, it's been very clear that the Americans, hate Europe now, at least this bunch of Americans. So export partners, they're not looking to America anymore. They don't have to deal with the tariffs. They're dealing with others. With China, with Japan, with emerging countries in Africa and India, it's going to be a world where they just cut America out of the deal.

And the best example of that is China, Japan, and South Korea have had a united response around some of the tariffs, right? Yeah, and South Korea and Japan had each other. And they were. allies of the U.S. is against China. Yes. But now they realize that the threat in the region is actually America. The other great one is Canada has now started talks with China.

And I don't know whether you remember, but Canada and China had a series of diplomatic place where, like, because Canada was arresting Chinese executives, like the Huawei executive. And then China was in retaliation also arresting Canadian citizens over in China, right? And it became quite. quite heated and quite, up until very recently, they've now entered into talks to enter into a free trade agreement just in the last few days. I presume Canada and India will become friends now because you know all that stuff about

I think India's been on the phone to everyone. Yeah, the sort of Sikh separatists and all that stuff. Yeah. The assassination that allegedly took place in Canada. So in some ways, this does unite the world. Yes, that's right, against a common enemy. It's actually the opposite of NATO. Like NATO was all these countries coming together to stop to defend against a common enemy.

Yes. What's the new version of that? The anti-American trade organization, Ato. And what I love about it is we're stuck on the wrong side of history, aren't we? Because we've got Pine Gap. Yes. We've got these Dudd-A-Orca submarines that are based in. We don't have them.

We're not going to have to worry about the submarines. Do we still have to keep making the payments? Is it like one of those things where you buy a car and it flames out and it gets scrapped? You still got to pay the repayments? Yeah, I don't know. Probably. No, I'm sure. It's just protected.

If it's enough, money to keep America away from us. But we don't need their prediction money if the rest of the world is united against them. That's right. So we need to work out what we're going to do. Will the will? Will the US require us to fight? Oh, alongside them? Oh, dear. I don't think they will, because they don't care about us. They just don't care. No. So we get to, and then, so what we need to do is, so what do we need to do? So what we need, so the first thing we found is we haven't even bothered to have reciprocal tariffs, right? Albo has just been kind of like, no, don't worry about it. We need new friends. We really need new friends. And,

I've always said that, yes, China is authoritarian, but here's the difference between China and America. I don't really have noticed. China are quite good at it. Yes, okay, as political rights have been appalling, the violation of individual freedoms in that kind of, you know, cyber-monitored country is shocking. In many ways, it would be very tough living in China. But it's a very, you know, they build infrastructure.

They govern, they run the economy, they run it strategic. So you're saying it doesn't matter about the lack of democracy, at least the trains run in time? Well, no, but it matters enormously, but I'm saying if it's taken off the table, like, if your choice is authoritarian America, or authoritarian China, which one of them is actually good at running a country? Yeah. I mean, America is so sporadic. We want a really efficient authoritarian, right? Well, you're going to get one. At least, as we've said before on this podcast, and I'm not saying, I don't love authoritarianism.

Of course I don't. Charles, we, as stupid as it may seem, we would be dissidents if Australia was, I mean, the history of the chaser, right? But, like, we've, as pissy as we may be, we've actually been critical with the government. So you couldn't do it in time. Oh, yeah, we'd be dissidents. We'd probably be disappeared. Yeah, that's right. So, by the way, if this podcast stops coming out suddenly.

I'm just saying, if we had ordered the submarines from China, we would have the submarines. Yeah, we would have the submarines. And they would work. I feel like we should probably go down a more nuanced part. There'd probably be cameras in the submarines, and they'd probably have, you know, remote control where suddenly the Australian no longer piloted. Knowing Chinese made tech goods, they'd probably run on

Bluetooth. Oh, and they'd disconnect halfway through. It'd be like the Titan. Oh, God. Yeah, they'd run it for PlayStation controller. So anyway, point is Charles, the world is changing dramatically. I wonder whether they sell submarines on Alibaba. I'm just going to look at a quick look. Yeah, that'd be very handy. They probably do.

I'm sure. I'll have a look at Timu while you do that. Yeah. And But the fact is, Charles, we are here, this is a historic episode of the podcast. dealing with a rapidly changed world. America is no longer the trustworthy, indispensable partner. Oh, yeah, they do sell submarines. I'm looking for a submersible.

Oh, wow. $10,000 to $12,000, minimum order, two units. A submarine boat. Oh, that's very good. Does it require you power? That looks pretty cool with an easy return policy. What if you drown? Timu's got some of these.

A compact semi-submarine is better than the tight. To be fair, dramatically better than the... Look at this! A new aluminium offshore submarine watercraft boat for underwater viewing, $18,000. Alibaba. That's a lot cheaper. I've got a good business idea. We should buy one of these and then take it down to the Titanic.

Just check it out. Run tours. Can it cope with that much water pressure, Charles, though? We'll find out. We'll be stable. All right. So we've solved it all, I think, Charles. more authoritarianism for America. Otherwise, the plan won't work.

Trump's plan. This is a real problem. It simply won't work. I like the idea. I think Trump has started America down the path of isolationism. Yes. I think he should just keep going. I think that's the whole thing.

I think the rest of the world probably just want him to just keep going and get, and just to the point where we don't have to talk about him and listen to the rest of his politics, US podcast ever again because they're not allowed to book up. Yeah. It's not out of it. I mean, do you remember when we were kids? We had no idea what was happening in Russia. You never got pravda in the post.

No. No, no, no, no. The Washington Post, similarly, we'll have to stop reading that. Jeff Bezos has changed the editorial line. So there you go. I guess in the end of the day, if you can't trust the rest of the politics, what is the one podcast to navigate us safely through these challenging times, Charles? The rest is.

The rest is politics, UK, surely. No, the Chase's the report. Oh, the Chase's report. Yes, yes, of course. We're the only ones who fully understand this. new multipolar world. And as Charles once wrote for news.com. We are sponsored by Foshan Important Export Co. Limited.

Supplies of compact semi-submarine, mini-submarine boat, underwater aluminium boat with monitoring LCD system for sale. To be fair, Charles, I think the best place we could be in these times is in national waters. Bring that on. No, I think China has them sewn up around here. Oh, yeah, that's true. There's not just thing anymore. Oh, well.

So, yeah, but we're part of the. Conachless Network as well. See, bye.