The Daily Show: Ears Edition - Trump Gushes Over Xi & Jon Helps 2026 Graduates Land a Job the Trump Way

Episode Date: May 19, 2026

Trump supposedly went to China to get tough on trade, collect rare earth minerals, and maybe solve the Iran War, but instead he spent his trip telling President Xi what a tall, handsome, and strong leader he is. Plus, it's graduation season, and Jon Stewart gives the Class of 2026 the ultimate guide on how to nail that big job interview the Donald Trump way. Financial Times columnist Soumaya Keynes and Chad P. Bown of the Peterson Institute for International Economics sit down with Jon to discuss their forthcoming book, "How to Win a Trade War." They talk about Trump’s disregard of the most basic military strategy by starting a trade war on all fronts, how this administration's imposed tariffs revealed U.S. trade vulnerabilities, the debate over whether corporations are the soldiers or mercenaries of trade wars, and how wage insurance could transform job security for domestic workers. -- To get simple, online access to personalized, affordable care for ED, Hair Loss, Weight Loss, and more, visit https://Hims.com/dailyshow -- The Daily Show airs weeknights at 11/10c on Comedy Central. Stream full episodes on Paramount+ Follow TDS: YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, Twitter, Facebook Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

You're listening to Comedy Central. From the most trusted journalists at Comedy Central, it's America's only source for news. This is The Daily Show with your host, John. For you tonight, Paul. French. Also, later on tonight, economists, Sumaya Cain's, and Chad P. Bone will be here. Making some noise for the economists.

We got the boneheads in the house. I want to check with her. Is everybody feeling good? You feeling good? You feeling safe? I know why. I know why you're feeling good. I know why you're feeling safe.

Because Daddy's back home. He's gone for a couple days in China. We're you scared? Where's daddy? I'm so scared. Where's daddy? But now he's home, and I'm sure he brought us all the goodies from China.

Because as we all know, nobody, and I mean nobody, is tougher on China. Rimes with vagina. than Donald J. Trump. The only way you're going to get along well with China is you have to deal from a position of strength. I stood up to China like no administration has ever done before.

Nobody was tougher like on China than I was. I'm the toughest person in China anywhere in the world. There's never been anybody tougher in China than me. He's like a bull in a China shop. Obviously, is they called over there a shop? I'll let myself out. It's not a little. All right, let's see some of that famous toughness

in action. Let him have it. I want to thank President Xi, my friend. He's a man I respect greatly. The relationship is a very strong one. You're a great leader. I say it to everybody. You're a great leader. Sometimes people don't like me saying it, but I say it anyway because

it's true. I only say the truth. Yeah, President Xi to come to your house and say right to your face. Who's better than you? Trump's going to say something right now. She, you don't even have to say it back to him. You know what? That's okay. There's a lot of ways to negotiate.

Sometimes you get more flies with honey. So what did you get, Mr. President? Trade barriers down, help with Iran, some of them delicious rare earth metals. What's the most significant, specific thing you walk away from here for the U.S.? I think the most important thing is relationship. It's all about relationship. So nothing. You flew there to personally confront our rival superpower on the escalating trade. and geopolitical tensions between us. And all you came back with was his Instagram? The tariffs are in place, but we're on the close friend's story now.

Well, he's on mine. Look, was there any positive movement? He said the U.S. was declining for the last four years. And he said what President Trump has done in the last 15, 16 months has been virtually a miracle. He said, we have the hottest. He said we have the hottest country anywhere in the world. Yeah, that's what she said. No, I'm asking.

Is that what she said? Because that quote sounds really a lot like you. President Xi actually took you aside Donald Trump and said, actually said, President Xi said, you have the hottest country like no one has ever seen before. You only need a ballroom. That's all you need. At least any information about Xi that you gleaned being over there,

that the United States might be able to exploit in future negotiations. If you went to Hollywood and you looked for a leader of China, you couldn't find a guy like him. He's tall, very tall, and especially for this country, because they tend to be a little bit shorter. Guy, he's like, whir. I mean, you're Chinese, you think? You came back with this.

President Xi is apparently taller than what a 79-year-old white guy's idea of what a Chinese person's height should be. Listen, it's probably as good as we can expect from Trump. And Xi's eyes definitely wider than I thought they'd be.

Usually, is it? Can I do the eyes to show them? Is it okay? if I do the I pee-p in my coke, contrary to what I'm wondering, our president should not have this job. And yet, maybe I've got it wrong. Maybe it's, maybe it's time to stop being exasperated by this, by Trump. And maybe it's time to see if we can glean lessons from Trump's rise. Look, folks, it's May. And we were even getting questions about it today from young people. It's May. It's graduation season.

thousands of graduates are going into the world to interview for their dream job and maybe the advice that we've been giving them all along about honesty and hard work and all that other gay shit we should all be students at Donald Trump University which obviously you can't be because it was a fraud and got shut down but metaphorically and so that's what we're going to do tonight class of 2026 Everybody gather around whatever it is you watch. C.P. Your phone, brain chip, smart fridge, however you're watching this. We're going to walk you through what you really need to do

to nail that important job interview. Donald Trump way. The start at the very beginning. Young grad, you walk into the room, and what have we always told you to do? Eye contact, firm handshake, settle in. But that's what losers do.

What you want to do is set the terms of the battle in the interview. I will take your f***ing. Your prospective employer must know. You are the captain now. And if you come out of that interview with a hand that looks any less grotesque than this one, you did it wrong. The interview go, son. Let the interview begin.

We'll role play this out. Why do you think you're a good fit for our firm? You know, I went to great schools. I'm like a smart person. I guarantee my IQ is much higher than any of these people. I'm good at language. I've always been good at money.

I guarantee I have a vocabulary better than all of them. I know words. I have the best words. I have a very fertile, very fertile brain. That's how you do it, graduates. I cannot stress this enough. Make your answer cocky and super fucking weird. These other people might be good,

but I have words in a fertile brain. Brain can get pregnant. Pregnant brain. Make more brain. Lots of brain. Now the next thing, the interviewer is going to say to you is, why do you want to work here? And the right answer is, I don't. I didn't need this job.

I had a very nice life. I think I would have been a good general. My mother, she said, son, you could be a professional baseball player. They could have been a flutist. I could have been sunbathing on the beach. You have never seen a body so beautiful. Any firm would be lucky to grab such a talented athlete flutist, nudist. But see, now the interviewer's on the back foot.

They got all their stupid pre-planned bullshit questions that everybody's supposed to have a pro forma response to, and you just get to knock them down one after the other. Oh, tell us about one of your weaknesses. Yeah, I have weaknesses. I really believe I have weaknesses, but it's something I don't like discussing because I don't want to give it up.

That's the stuff. In the interview, what are your weaknesses? I don't know. Hire me, and you'll find out. I'm reckless. I make decisions on impulse. I do very little planning. I'm corrupt as a motherfucker.

But that's going to be my little secret until I get this job. Oh, for here's one. Here's one of my weaknesses. I make all the women in the office incredibly uncomfortable. It's that face. It's that brain. It's those lips. The way they move, they move.

They move like she's a machine gun. There she is. You don't mind being called beautiful, right? Because you are. You are beautiful. I'm not allowed to say that, you're not allowed to say that, you know, that's not going to be a problem in the office, is it? Oh, and by the way, it's not enough for the job interviewer to ask about weaknesses.

Oh, they also want to know, tell us about a time you struggled. Now, you've been taught graduates that they're expecting humility to prostrate yourself on a life lesson you learned. But that's for losers. The Trump strategy is to remind the... interviewer that they would kill to have the kind of obstacles you had. It has not been easy for me and you know I started off in Brooklyn my father gave me a small loan of a million dollars. You poor bastard.

He had to start off in Brooklyn in outer borough with only a small loan. I mean if you look at the check honestly it's mostly zeros. Now you've made it through the interviewer's psychological probing meant to reveal your introspective and self-critical side. And you've given them fucking nothing. Well done. But these bastards aren't done. They think a little playful hobby question might be the way to unlock a new grad's real self,

who they really are, something stupid like, oh, what's your favorite book? But you got this. The Bible is the best. One of the great books. Boom! Now those interview coaching firms or your school's career offices or your parents or responsible friends are going to probably advise you to have read whatever book you mentioned as your favorite. Winners don't have that kind of time.

And what are the odds that they'll ask a follow-up anyway? I'm wondering what one or two of your most favored Bible verses are. I wouldn't want to get into it because to me that's very personal. You know, when I talk about the Bible is very personal, so I don't want to get into verses. I don't want to get into it. There's no. It means a lot to you that you think about or sight. The Bible means a lot to me, but I don't want to get into specifics.

Even to cite a verse that you like. No, I don't want to do that. Yes, people who love the Bible famously hate sharing their favorite parts. It's all on the, like to keep it on the, I think we've all seen this guy at the baseball games. It's pretty clear. You're lying. Keep it going. An Old Testament guy or a New Testament?

Probably equal. Testament, Old Testament. I'm equal. You as the interviewee have been very patient in this interview with your prospective employer's questions. Conventional wisdom would say, if you want to get that job, you've got to keep it that way. Calm, cool, answering questions to the best of your ability. But that just encourages them to continue this nonsense.

Now it's time to let them know that just because it is literally their job to ask you questions doesn't mean they can ask you questions. What a stupid question that is. It's such a stupid question you asked. And you're just asking questions because you're a stupid person. Don't ever say what you said. That's a nasty question. Why do you say, give me a horrible question?

It's not the question that I mind. It's your attitude. Only a bad person would ask a question like that. I don't know who you are, but only a very evil person would ask a question like that. So for you graduates, I know that this advice and behaving in the way you just witnessed seems counterintuitive. Why would I alienate the very people that I'm appealing to who are just doing their job and asking reasonable questions?

And my answer to that is, I don't know. I don't know why this works. I don't fucking get it. But here we are, and here he is, and he's the president, and I'm on basic cable. I don't understand. So the point is, it doesn't make sense. Just fucking do it.

Well, chances are at this point, once you hit him with the, that's a stupid question and you're evil, the interview is over. Because you've aced it. But you might not have quite sealed the deal. Remember, we're in modern times. They're going to check your social media profile. And chances are, you probably have some questionable ones in their life. Best wishes to the haters and losers on 9-11. Or, hey, I might be Jesus.

It still freaks me out to see. Can I, the thing that bothers me the most about this picture, I know it's AI generated. I know he's not Jesus, and I know I'm not really the guy in the bed. But here's what, so apparently if you plug into AI, Trump heals sick elderly man. My picture is dying old man. Back to the task at hand. Most of the literati will tell you. try and have a good cogent, believable reason for questionable posts that you made on social media.

Wrong. Mr. President, did you post that picture of yourself to keep it as Jesus Christ? Well, it wasn't a picture. It was me. I did post it, and I thought it was me as the doctor. Because apparently, even though the Bible is Trump's favorite book, he doesn't know the difference between Robbie Rabinovich and Jesus. You have done everything wrong so far as a recent graduate. And it's looking great.

The only thing really left to do for the interviewer is to get you to list some references. John Kelly is one of the best people I've ever worked with. When you ask me about Rex, I mean, he's a world-class player. Bill Barr, a terrific person, a brilliant man. Great. Thanks for that. Now all we have to do is check those references. He is.

a consummate narcissist. So he certainly falls into the general definition of a fascist. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson calling Trump a, quote, effing moron. Nailed it. So great job in the interview. So far, you've been arrogant, self-centered, narcissistic, ignorant, quick to claim credit, quicker to deflect, blame, petulant, short-tempered, vulgar, corrupt.

Name any sin from Trump's favorite book. You've been in. And apparently, in the upside-down that is now country, that's the way to do it. So congratulations, you're hired. The only thing left to do now is blatantly steal from whoever it was that hired you. The Trump administration has just announced it is creating a $1.7 billion fund to compensate Trump's allies and January 6th defendants. The fund, which will be financed by American taxpayers, comes as Trump is dropping his $10 billion lawsuit against the federal government.

Congratulations, graduates. James and Chad, people! If something has been off in the bedroom, there is no reason to wait. Millions of men deal with erectile dysfunction at some point, but now taking control of the situation is easier than ever. HIMS provides a straightforward path to legitimate care. By using the HIMS platform, men can avoid the pharmacy lines and the awkwardness of waiting rooms. Everything is handled from home,

from the initial intake form to the review by a licensed health care provider and the final delivery of the medication. Treatment options like Sildenafil, also known as generic for Viagra, are available through HIMS at up to 95% less. than the brand name cost. If prescribed, these options ship in discrete packaging, making the entire experience private and transparent. It is a simple way to prioritize health and performance on your own terms.

To get simple online access for personalized affordable care for erectile dysfunction, hair loss, weight loss, and more. Visit Hems.com slash daily show for your free online visit. Hems.com slash daily show. Prescription required. See website for details and important safety information. Sildenafil is a generic version of Viagra. Viagra is a registered trademark of Vietra Specialty LLC.

HIMS is not affiliated with or indoor. by Beatrice. I guess tonight, they are the authors of the forthcoming book, How to Win a Trade War? Please welcome the program, Financial Times, columnist Sumea Keynes,

and Chad Bone of the Peterson Institute for International Program. Hello! I'm glad that we chose this seating arrangement. How tall are you? Very tall. Yeah, that's what I thought. When it came out at first,

I thought, I bet this gentleman can dunk. All right, that's how I say. How to win a trade war? Boy, this would come in handy if we found ourselves in a trade war. Are we in a trade war? Yeah. We are in a trade war.

With everyone? Yeah. How would we know? Oh boy. Are we winning against anybody? Is Belgium? Are we beating Belgium? It's like two doctors trying not to break bad news to me.

So we are, the trade war, let's be clear. We launched the trade war, correct? Yes. Liberation Day launched. a trade war? Yes. You can speak more than one word. So just over a year ago,

Donald Trump decided to ignore the most basic military strategy and fight a war on all the fronts at the same time. He launched a trade war against everybody. Everybody. Okay. Everybody. And yeah, there is a reason.

You're not supposed to do that. Would that be in here? Maybe, maybe. And so, Okay, so stepping back, right? The problem in the global economy, there is a real trade problem in the global economy and it's to do with the relationship with China. And that is a significant issue.

And what would have been good is to work with allies. I'm sorry, what was the last part? Because when you fight a war on all of the fronts, that means your allies are also fighting a war on all of the fronts. So suddenly, Europe was going to try to deal with the China issue, but now it's having to also deal with the U.S. issue at the same time. What would the metrics be of a trade? So how do we even judge whether or not,

so we understand the strategy should not have been to fire on our allies as well as our rivals? What are the metrics of a trade war? How do we judge it? I think the most important one is can you do what you want? Or are you being constrained by your vulnerabilities to not be able to do what you want? I think that's the biggest key to show how we're losing right now.

When we say, can we do what we want, we mean can we sell our products where we want to sell them for the price we would like to sell them at? That could be part of it. It could be that we want to impose policies. Maybe we're worried about certain countries out there that rhyme with Shmina. I had a different rhyme earlier, but yours works

to. And maybe you want to do things like tariffs or export restrictions or, you know, be a little tough on certain issues, but you can't because you're worried about them standing up to you in a way that you're really vulnerable. And that's where we found ourselves last year. China has figured out how to play a trade war, how to at least win a trade war at the moment. And that's because we're vulnerable to a lot of things we need for our economy to work that really China is the only one out there that makes right now. How are we vulnerable? What is it that China does that makes us vulnerable? They mine process, manufacture into magnets, something called rare earths. So they go into cars, into defense systems. Electronics. Electronics. I never thought I would know

so much about rare earth supply chains, but here we are. Right. And essentially, you know, China has been copying what the U.S. has been doing, I think, because the U.S. has been restricting exports to China for a while. And so the Chinese just looked at what the U.S. was doing and said, okay, we can do that too. So we do strategic restrictions, and you talk about this in the book, strategic restrictions on exports, meaning we have, the one advantage we have is our chips are apparently second to none. We're apparently two to three months ahead of everybody else

when it comes to chips. So we restrict that from going directly to China. That's our leverage. And the equipment that goes into make, that is used to make the chips. But we don't do that. That's done in Taiwan, is it not? So we do some of it. We also work with allies. So Japan and the Netherlands, you know, the Netherlands actually does the fanciest pieces of these equipment. We work with their government to say, hey, let's not send that stuff to China. What is it? Is that the part where they frosted at the end? Yeah.

Take your finger in it. Yeah. That worked. Boom. Exactly. Nice. But yeah. So we have been doing that kind of thing.

But for military purposes, right? We're really worried about China getting hold of these super fancy chips because it would enhance their military capabilities. And that's why we didn't want to send it to them. China's doing something that's very different, not sending us these rare earths. But they did that in research. Yes, they didn't respond. They were not doing it prior to this.

Well, they have done it in the past. They did this back actually in 2010 when they got mad at Japan for something at the time. But didn't Japan at that point get themselves a backlog, a stockpile of rare earths in preparation for this type of thing? Did we do that before launching this trade war? Is that in the book? Yeah. Japan got hit early and they prepared, right?

acted, you know, in a very extreme way to reduce their reliance on China. They were ahead of the game. And then when China did it to everyone else last year, everyone else was looking to Japan to say, oh, well, why didn't we do that? Yeah. So you're saying, if I may paraphrase, we launched a trade war rashly too broadly without proper preparation and now find ourselves mired in. an event that we are now losing.

This is just so out of character for this administration that I don't know what got into them. It's almost like trade wars are like real wars, right? Logistics win real wars. You need to... Well, thank God we haven't launched one of those. Let me ask you a question. Do they... When you talk about it as being like a real war, do they war game trade...

You know, I understand that they would say like if you attack Iran, we war game it, and most times they close the straight-ahormuz, and that's known. Do they wargame trade wars? Who's they? The Illuminati? I don't know. You're the economists. So some governments absolutely are doing this, right? And so I think... They plan it. They plan it. What might happen? And not all of it's just the fear of trade war and real wars. I think we learned a lot of lessons

during the pandemic when we ran short of products and we suddenly became very worried about supply chain vulnerabilities, right? We couldn't get access to toilet paper initially, but then it became things like semiconductors. And all of a sudden, governments all around the world started to look more closely at where they were getting some of these essential goods from. And they did really sophisticated data and analytic exercises

to try to figure it out. And then many of them have done wargaming exercises to try to figure out how to minimize a lot of those vulnerabilities. I'm not so sure that was the approach that this administration took when they came in last January. You're not so sure. So the idea, though, is a country is looking to assess its vulnerabilities, assess its strengths, and shore up those vulnerabilities to create resilience. Now, what we've been told is the reason we launched this trade war is to reverse

the years of hollowing out manufacturing. But that sounds backwards to me. Wouldn't you use other methodologies to increase manufacturing before launching a trade war so that you would be more resilient in that war? Yeah, it's a good, it's a good point. So more positively, I think you have a future ahead of you in policy. We talk about this, and it's very interesting because the analogy is launching a real war, and we talk about this as it really is a form of nationalism. Where do corporations fit into the playing field in trade wars?

Because we're talking, you're going after China, you're going after the Netherlands, you're going after the EU. Multinational corporations have no allegiance. Who are they in all this? So I think multinationals are the soldiers in the trade war, right? You know, the governments make the policy. They're the commanders, and then the companies are the ones. actually implementing it, right? And so if we think back to those vulnerabilities,

ultimately those are the product of companies responding to incentives, right? For years, it was cheap, it was efficient to buy your components from China, right? That was where all the other manufacturing was and you know, policymakers encouraged them. And now what we're seeing is the result of those companies responding to those incentives and saying, oh wait, what? the Chinese can suddenly cut us off. You know, it's also, you know, U.S. car companies that are sourcing from China, all those rare earths.

Are we in a position, because you said that they're the soldiers in our war? It almost appears to me that they're actually the soldiers that started the war. Because globalization and the introduction of China into the WTO and all that, capital travels, but labor can't. So when these companies who are built in Silicon Valley or wherever it is using the infrastructure of the United States, Silicon Valley doesn't exist without taxpayer funding and government resources and any of those things. We built them. And then they could just go, these guys, we're going to where we don't have to pay our workers anything and we get to do everything and we can hollow out the very country that made us possible. And now we've got to fight a trade war to beg them to come.

come back, China would never put up with that, would they? No. Not to go on a Jeremiah, but I don't understand how they're allowed to get us into this mess, and then we've got to figure out a way to get out of it. Yeah, so there's a

couple things there. One, I think China has very different relationships with its companies than we do, and I think one of the agree, the way we should think about companies these days is they're really not American companies. They're multinationals. They kind of, they're the themselves, they're their own entities, and we can't expect them, as some may I put it, to kind of

fight our battles for us, right? Unless you incentivize them to, unless you create the right regulations to force them to behave in certain ways, they're just going to act in their own interests. And if that means going and getting, you know, where workers are cheaper, that's what they're going to do, and that's where they're going to make things. Now, there are some benefits to that, though, too. We actually do get, through international trade, access to much cheaper products than we would like, than we would otherwise. And I think we've seen today with inflation, right? People like it when prices are lower than when prices are higher. So there are lots of benefits from trade that we don't completely want to eliminate. But I think we do need to

recognize that that does sometimes come with costs, right? And especially costs for workers. And that has to be something that's dealt with as well. Why then are governments incentivized to always lubricate the way for corporations but not workers? Why are workers just always the inevitable victims of all of this, of all of these shenanigans. It's hard to understand that the government wouldn't put some limitations. If you want access to our infrastructure, you can't just screw over our workers because it's easier. Yeah. Part of it, I think, is the political process, right? In Washington, it's much easier for the big companies to organize and lobby and get the, you know, the policies that they want, and it's much more difficult for workers to do

so they're not soldiers, they're mercenaries, they're Blackwater. They're really not, they're not soldiers because soldiers take an oath to the nation that birth them. Yeah. And they don't. So how in a trade war, because how does it figure in, in a trade war, that we can come to a better understanding with these corporations? of what our expectations are for them? So I think what the Trump administration is trying to do is it's trying to reset that bargain, right? So it's saying, you know, if you want to serve U.S. customers,

then you've got to operate in the U.S. And it's trying to do that with its trade tools. And I think the tricky reality is that it's extremely hard to force these mercenary companies to do that, right? And so the risk is that you end up essentially taxing imports, right? So you put up tariffs, you make it harder for companies to get stuff from overseas. And what those companies do is they don't reassure they just do less of everything, right?

It can be really, really, you know, the problem that you identify is real. The challenge is getting that trade war then to sort of solve that problem, right? that link isn't... Yeah, no, that's exactly it because it seems to me that well, now we're going after China and the EU, but we're still not addressing the elephant in the room,

which is these free agent mercenaries. So let me ask you this, if this is a reasonable. You know, there's a lot of times that someone might say, all right, we'll pay for your college, but you have to give us four years of service as a teacher in

these certain districts. It's a way for us to get the people that we need to give them something, but to expect something in return. Is that the type of arrangement that can be done for the tax money and infrastructure that we use to build these companies? Yeah, I was just going to say there are things that I think we can do

that treat corporations differently, but it's not through tariffs, right? So I think... Not through trade wars. This is not a good way to do it. No, I mean, there's been efforts over the last 10 years to try to get global corporations to not be tax evaders, right, to not go to tax haven't countries,

to have them pay minimum taxes somewhere in the world, right? I think that's a more effective strategy trying to get these companies to behave and be, you know, kind of better global corporate citizens than just whacking them with with tariffs because with tariffs come all the bad things. Best case scenario, maybe they do bring some of that production back to the United States. We get more manufacturing here. But because we've made it so expensive because of tariffs for them to do so. They can't hire any workers, and they just have to do it all with robots, right? And at the end of the day, how does that really help us if we're really worried about the American worker? You bring something up in the book that I thought was really interesting

about wage insurance. And it was something because my concern is that there are casualties in trade wars that are the multinationals. He's cutting deals with Apple and Intel and NVIDIA and all these big players, but the people that are suffering are the small businesses in America, the people that don't like uncertainty and can't adjust their business practices to all these fluctuating tariffs and all these other changing things. But there's a program you mentioned called wage insurance. And it's generally done, and correct me if I'm wrong, if you lose a job in manufacturing because it was globalized and you get another job that isn't paying as well, the government provides you the money up to that level. Is that correct? Yeah, I think it's a certain

share of the difference, basically. So they're cushioning that blow, right? So they're, so you know, if you've just lost your job, that means that you have some help, right? You're not, you're not, you've got a cushion, right? And so your income doesn't fall. You're also encouraged to get a new job. Maybe you switch to a new industry, something that isn't so vulnerable to all those globalization forces. And the evidence that we have suggests that it actually can pay for itself, which is kind

of never heard of in economic policies. So I think over the last couple of decades, economists have really been. beaten themselves up about, you know, helping the people who are left behind by globalization. And because trade tools are so bad at helping the worker, really what you need is better, you know, worker protections, including potentially programs like that one. Right. So let me ask you a question, which brings up the point. What if we use that preemptively in our war? So rather than wage insurance to help people in areas that have been hollowed out by globalization, use wage insurance to go to those companies who were going to go overseas and say,

we will make up at least most of the difference between what you would pay your workers in China and what you would pay them in Kentucky. And we do that preemptively. So those communities never get hollowed out in the first place. Could that be part of an industry and industrial policy that actually, you know, rather than how to win a trade war, a book on, you know, the next book, the sequel, How to survive a trade war? Yeah. Yeah. Would that be a possible solution? 100%.

There's so much more that we can do in terms of, you know, adjusting the tax code to make it more beneficial for companies to hire workers and not have to pay sort of extraordinary, you know, taxes and other burdens and things like that. And I think that's really what the emphasis should be on. How does this wind down? How do we find our way out of this? Do you have an idea? Have you seen this play out before? So I've got to... There's a lot of sighing going on here.

Well, I've got a confession, right? So it's an optimistic guide. What? We go through some scenarios, right? For, you know, how we could get ourselves out of this. And my confession is that a lot of the, you know, the happy sunlight uplands are quite a long way in the future. Yeah, there's a lot of 2050 in this. Yeah.

It's a lot of 2050. And so, you know, right now I think we're a bit worried that things are going to have to get worse. before they get better. But eventually, you know, it really should be possible for us all to come together and stop brandishing all these trade weapons together. Look, this is optimistic. No, this is very, yeah.

Eventually, we should be able to get together and do something that's, you know, mutually beneficial so we can escape the chaos. Chad, this is not going away. You were just talking about. Have you guys talked to each other about this? I'm the optimistic one in the book, actually. She's the pessimistic.

No, the issue's not going away. You just gave all this great advice to graduates, right? Saddle up. Fantastic. Thank you both very much for coming by. How to win a trade war. May 20 skates and Chad Bowen. Quick break.

We'll be right back after this. For the rest of the week, Mr. Ronnie Chang. Ronnie, what do you got for it? Right, too. Huge tech news, John. Sam Altman v. Elon Musk's lawsuit is over. And Elon Musk lost. Wow, okay, I guess a bunch of his kids are here.

Point is, Elon will not be controlling chat GBT. So we can all breathe aside relief. Aside of relief. Why? Why is that? Because now Open AI won't be in the hands of weirdo South African sociopath Elon Musk. It will stay in the capable hands of weirdo American sociopath, Sam Outman. USA! USA!

No, it's too easy. Very exciting. Thank you very much, Ronnie. Now, here it is. Your moment is Zen. Get into the good friend. Stephen. A little alphabet game?

But you promised we were through with this. Continue. Don't drag me into this, Stephen. Excellent. For God's sakes. God has nothing to do with it. Ha ha. I'm so glad you've chosen to...

Just stop. Okay. Look. Maybe you're right. Maybe we should stop. Now, Stephen. Obviously you want to quit. Please.

I'm having a great time. Quitter. Really? I want to see this through. Seriously? Totally. Understand. You're stuck with X and Z. Very challenging, I know, but I have an idea.

What's your idea? Xylophone. You're making no sense. Zero sense. Explore more shows from the Daily Show Podcast Universe by searching The Daily Show, wherever you get your podcasts. Watch the Daily Show weeknights at 11, 10 Central on Comedy Central, and stream full episodes anytime on Paramount Plus.

This has been a Comedy Central podcast.