The Duran Podcast - Deep recession in collective west and tariff wars

Episode Date: March 19, 2025

Deep recession in collective west and tariff wars

All right, Alexander, let's talk about the economic situation in much of the collective West. Let's talk about the fear that there's going to be a recession or the fact that we already are in a recession or we have been in a recession for quite a long time. Let's perhaps talk about the economic situation in the U.S., in the U.A., in the U.A., in the U.K. And we also have the tariff wars as well, which are really heating up, specifically the tariff war between the United States and the European Union. We've got a lot of tariffs flying around as well as with China. Even China and the European Union, they're getting in on the tariff action. And so quite a chaotic situation going on from the economic side of things.

Where do you want to begin? Absolutely. Absolutely. Now, I think you gave the clue when you said that we have, in fact, been in a recession situation for a long time. Now, I think that there was a genuine recovery directly after the pandemic. You know, remember, there was this enormous closure right across the world of economy. during the pandemic, and then they reopened. And in the last months of Donald Trump's first term, and in the first months of Biden's term, we did see genuine economic recovery,

especially in the United States. Less so in Europe, by the way, but in the United States, there was a recovery. And then Biden came along, and he initiated this enormous infusion of money into a US economy, which was already recovering. And we said at the time that that was going to be inflationary. And then he made things worse by beginning an economic war with the Russians, which created energy prices to Zoom. And in my opinion, we have been in effective resertion ever since, not just in Europe, but I'm going to suggest even in the United States,

itself. And that recession was masked by the fact that the Biden administration continued to run very, very big deficits and that there was an enormous amount of, you know, money emission. In other words, the US government was continuing to pump money into the system. And that was creating an illusion of economic activity, which many people saw as a sign of growth. And I think most of the growth was a combination of inflation, which continued to rise and remain strong, right through the entire period of the Biden administration. And I think that also a lot of that growth was simply growth in debt. And we've seen debt grow in the US economy and indeed pretty much right across the entire collective West. So that was the economic inheritance that Donald Trump came into.

An economy in the United States, which was getting by to the extent that it was propped up by an absolutely unsustainable fiscal expansion. And in Europe, where we don't have the economic space that the Americans have, because the euro has never really managed to establish itself as a reserve currency, and where our economic policies are even more ill-judged than they were in Americas, and where we've borne the even heavier bruns of the economic war than the Americans have done, well, the recession processes have been even greater, And we have seen that in Germany, they've been leading to outright deindustrialization. So we have a very deep set of problems right across the collective West.

Now, what is happening is that after Trump came in, he's trying to bring this process of massive fiscal emission in the United States under control. That is what Musk is all about. That is what Doge is all about. They're trying to pull things back. And that is stripping off the mask of the recession that was already there and is in the short term probably deepening it. Now, this issue of tariffs that people are talking about is a distraction because we've not yet had tariffs in place long enough

to cause any real effect. on the general economic situation. Tariffs, as in the 1930s, are not the cause of the economic crisis. They are a product of it. They are what nations are doing and economic blocks are doing, led first and foremost by the United States, as they sense that this whole economic system, that they are perched upon is sliding into deep recession.

So that's what I think is, you know, a summary of the overall situation. Tariffs are seen by some people, are seen by Donald Trump as the answer to the deep economic problems. They are not the actual proximate cause to them. In Europe, they're embarking on a very ambitious spending spree for defense, as well as for infrastructure, at least in the case of Germany. We are getting news that Mertz finally got the Greens to sign on to his plan for the $1 trillion that he wants to put together. What do you think is going on in Europe? they've also slapped the United States with sanctions. The U.S. put sanctions on the EU.

Ursula announced the other day that she's now placing sanctions on the United States. Trump then replied that he's going to place huge sanctions tariffs, sorry, huge tariffs on the EU in a reply to their reply to his reply of tariffs. Anyway, what is going on in Europe? What is going on in Germany? How is Germany going to affect all of this and what verts is up to? By the way, I should just say that, you know, in many cases, the effects of tariffs and the effective sanctions is not that different. Yeah.

Just to make that great point. I meant tariffs. I didn't be sanctions. I mean tariffs. And we have the sanctions on Russia, which are still out there. Yeah. But, again, as I said, tariffs and sanctions, it's a fairly fungible point. I mean, what it does is that it affects trade.

That's what both sanctions and tariffs are intended to do. I never had the slightest app that the Greens would sign up to Metz's massive spending spree. After all, they advocated it. I mean, the way it's all been done in Germany is incredible. But, you know, I think as Tariq Cyril Armand has been, who's German, remember, has been looking at all. of this. Again, it seems that there's a certain amount about 130 billion euros going to be allocated in Germany for rearmament. There is no plan for rearmament. Remember, we did a program yesterday with Commodore Steve Germany, half the British military, and he pointed out that, you know,

they don't do strategy very well in any longer, certainly not military industrial. strategy. There's no sign of anything like that in Germany today. So this looks like a gigantic slush fund in terms of military armament. And as Tarek Sir Al-Amar says, the infrastructure fund looks like a huge slush fund as well. And he makes comparisons, rather pointed comparisons was Biden's, what was it, the inflation reduction act, yeah. You know, all of that. It's just the German variant of that same thing. In other words, pump up the economy with money.

Spend it to the extent that you can. You don't actually have any real plan about. how you're going to spend that money, quite plausibly go for Eurobonds. Though there's major issues about how Eurobonds are going to be supported and whether the market will buy them, because if you flood, you know, if you flood out, pour out Eurobonds at a time when there's an enormous amount of debt already around, there might be people who are perhaps a bit wary of buying those Eurobonds, especially now that they see Germany, embarking on this massive debt spree, which is what it's going to be.

So, in effect, it's binomics coming to Europe. This is what this is all about. And it didn't work in the US. Why should it work in Europe? We've seen what it's done in the US. It's masked a decline into recession. It will do exactly the same in Europe as well. And, of course, in the meantime, as we have tariffs being thrown up by everybody as they try to protect what is left of their domestic economies.

And to some extent, you know, this is starting to resemble some of the picture that we saw in the 1930s. And I make this, I say this with great care because, of course, a lot about the world economy today is very different from what. we saw in the 1930s. The most resilient economy is going to still be the United States. It still has enormous economies of scale. It still has tremendous technology advantages over its immediate competitors, certainly in Europe. And it also is largely self-sufficient in food and raw materials. So if we're going to just retreat into a tariff wall, then as I said, the United States is in a much better position to see it through than the European zone. And coming through this process, it might be that we will start to see some signs of some re-industrialization in the United States. Here I get to say that Elon Musk, possibly, might be the key person to look.

at. He's not just a tech person, but he's also an industrialist. He's one of the very few people in the West anymore who knows how to build factories and run them, not just car factories, but other kinds of factories as well. What happens to him in this administration is going to be a very, very important test if he is pushed out in the way that, say, Michael Flynn was at the start of the first Trump administration. When Michael Michael Flynn was pushed out. Trump's entire foreign policy basically went out at the window and he never regained his balance. If Elon Musk is pushed out in the same way, then Trump's economic policy could find itself in great difficulties as well. That's my own guess.

But anyway, we'll look at all of that. But the United States currently is better positioned than the Europeans are and other economies around the world, Japan, South Korea, obviously Europe, they're going to find themselves in very, very great difficulties. China, Russia, the UK, what the other global South countries? World recessions are never good for the global South and many economies there could find themselves in serious trouble. India could find itself in serious trouble, for example, I'm guessing. But if we're talking about China, I think that they've been working, I think they've been working, I think they've seen this coming.

Remember, the Chinese, because they are the world's biggest trading economy in terms of durable goods, they've probably been picking up a lot of these indicators of recession for some time. And they've seen to have taken steps to try to mitigate that within China itself. But of course, they will be affected by it. The Russians are in a unique position, because they've been tariffed and sanctions, you know, up to the guilds, as we say in Britain. So they are probably in the strongest position of all, if there is the kind of recession that we might be looking at. They are probably in the strongest position of all to see it through, to, in other words, continue to achieve growth. Because there's little prospect, whilst the sanctions remain in place, of any major capital flow.

There's lots of capital inside Russia. That's led to an investment boom. The investment boom is something that has created its own problems with inflation. That's why the interest rates are high, by the way. But like the US, there are self-sufficient economy. And unlike the US, they've already, they're already, industrialising, re-industrialising, on the basis of what was already, by the way, quite a significant industrial base, as we've seen over the course of this conflict.

So I'm not saying that they're going to be unaffected, but they've got little debt, they've trade on their own terms, they're self-sufficient, they're already sanctioned, probably they'll be less affected than others were, just as they were, by the way, during the first the other great recession of the 1930s. In the 1930s, the Russian economy also grew just the same for the same sort of set of reasons. Now, Britain. Britain is in a very difficult position indeed. There are very serious problems of governance here.

Britain has de-industrialised over a very, very long time. So we are very exposed in that respect. We are not self-sufficient in food or raw materials in any sense. So our position is nothing like that of the United States. In order to balance things, in order to keep ourselves supplied with things, we've needed to keep investment flows from outside into Britain. and if there is a recession, that is going to start to run down. And I find it very difficult to see how Britain can get through this

without undertaking massive cuts to its social spending, to its welfare state, putting aside any fantastic ideas of rearmament or anything like that. Just saying. All right. We will end it there. The durand.locals.com. We are on Rumble Odyssey, pitch, you, telegram, rock, fan, and X. Go to Durand Shop, pick up some merch like what we are wearing in this video update. The link is in the description box down below. Take care.