The Duran Podcast - TARIFF PAUSE. White House chaos as problems multiply

Episode Date: April 10, 2025

TARIFF PAUSE. White House chaos as problems multiply

All right, Alexander, let's talk about Trump's announcement on Truth Social, where he said that he is canceling the reciprocal tariffs. He's going to keep the 10% tariffs, from what I understand. It's going to be a 90-day pause on the reciprocal tariffs. For all the countries that did not retaliate, the countries that did retaliate, well, they're going to be. going to keep the sanctions. And he's talking about China. And he said in his truth social post that it was a lack of respect. They did not respect.

I believe he used those words. They did not respect the United States with a retaliation. So those sanctions are going to, those tariffs are going to stay before the announcements. China retaliated with 84%. And then Trump retaliated back with 124 percent, by the way, the European Union. They had already voted for their tariff retaliation. That's done now that everything's going to get rolled back to the 10 percent for everybody, except China, I guess all of the countries that had their meetings and thought about what to do with the tariffs. Should we retaliate?

Should we send the delegation to the United States? should we talk to the Trump administration? Should we not do anything? I guess all of the things that happened over the past couple of weeks, just forget about it. Forget about it. Forget about it all. This was all a ruse.

This was a game to see who would retaliate against the United States. And actually, this is what the White House spokeswoman Levitt, as well as Besant and other. Trump official said this was this was all about seeing which countries would retaliate against the United States and who would not retaliate it against the United States. And they, they smoked out China. China was the country that retaliated. So this was, I don't know, 3,000 D chess from Trump, right? And just to wrap it up and then you can comment on everything that happened.

And Trump posted on Truth Social before he posted about the 90-day pause, he posted on Truth Social that it's a good time to buy, a good time to buy stocks and all these things. So there was a huge surge in the markets when this announcement was made. So I'm speechless. I'm speechless about everything that happened yesterday. Obviously, it's pretty ridiculous and dangerous, I think, for the United States. Very dangerous because you can't put any trust in what's happening in the U.S. And there's no stability.

How are countries going to look at the United States after this? how are businesses going to plan medium or long term. Trump's going to wake up in the morning one day and announce tariffs again. I don't know if I'm a business. What do I do? If I'm investing in the United States, well, how do I operate? How do I plan going forward? Anyway, your thoughts on everything that happened.

I may have a different view of things. But my view of it was that it was a walk back, a defeat. And he could have explained things. Better. And my next questions are going to be about why he did it, because I think there's the bonds, I think, played a big issue there. And I think pressure from Musk and other oligarchs, let's say, Wall Street and tech oligarchs also played a big part in this walkback. Well, absolutely. Can I just say, I mean, I not only agree, I think we have witnessed utterly chaotic and disorganized policymaking, chaotic on Trump's part, and I'm afraid it all reflects

very, very badly on his advisors. Now, there was, I think, two things that really spoke people about this. Firstly, there was an article that Peter Navarro, who is supposed to be the person who's, you know, the mastermind, the actual person who's putting these things into place, did in the for the Financial Times, which basically took the hardest possible line, said everything is fixed in stone. We're not going to shift at all. That was already bad enough. But I think the one thing that shocked the world and indeed the markets was an utterly extraordinary article or statement, which was published on the White House's own website by Stephen Moran, which actually said, you know, the United States is bearing this colossal burden

of keeping its armies around the world and keeping its fleets around the world and securing the peace and must, and is also bearing the burden of having the world's reserve currency. and what the United States therefore requires is everybody to pay into this system, which supposedly the world benefits from. And there was an extraordinary paragraph which said that people needed to, you know, countries might even consider just writing checks to the US Treasury Department. Now, I mean, that went down incredibly badly.

I mean, I know it did. I mean, that really infuriated people. I mean, it was basically implied that everybody around the world needed to start paying now, actually paying money, transferring money to the United States in order to sustain U.S. hegemony. So that went down incredibly badly. The other thing that went down incredibly badly was this decision by the administration to start imposing increasing tariffs on China. So the Chinese retaliated when the United States imposed its tariffs by slapping on a 34% tariff. And then the administration went ahead and put on a 50% tariff

on top of the 54% tariffs that it already put on China. So there we got 100, I think ultimately it came to 114% tariffs on China. which that looked, that gave every impression that we were now in an economic war between the United States and China. And then of course, we've had further responses from China as a result and tariffs are going still higher and how we have, we had this announcement of 124% tariffs, which I'm going to come back to. But the point about retaliatory tariffs of that kind is that we no longer, we know,

have a tariff system, any, you know, a policy of protectionism and tariffs, it's now looking like an economic war against China. And this was all followed up by incredible rhetoric from the White House about how the United States was out to isolate China economically. Well, the cumulative effect of all of this is that it spooked the markets and it was starting to affect the bond markets, and we were beginning to get a sell-off of treasuries. And I was getting all sorts of people saying it's China selling treasuries. And it turned out that it wasn't. It was actually normal investors who were losing faith in the economic management of the United States. So I think that caused the president to back down. Now, you should never have gone down

this route of reciprocal tariffs in the first place. When the United States practiced protectionism before, in the late 19th century, in the early 20th century, people who Trump has elevated his heroes, people like William McKinley, were strongly opposed to reciprocal tariffs. They said reciprocal tariffs is not the way that you pursue protectionism. You create tariffs in order to protect American industries, you do not use tariffs as a mechanism for economic war. He completely disregarded that. He just went ahead and went forward with his reciprocal tariffs idea. He's now walked all that back in the most humiliating and chaotic way. He's created exactly those doubts about the predictable decision-making.

in the United States that you spoke about. So now there's great uncertainty. People are not confident any longer about whether they should keep their money in the United States and the way that they did, whether they should continue to buy treasuries. He's created divisions within his own movement. So now there's an open split between himself, and it is himself ultimately. and Elon Musk and Doge, who runs Doge and all of those things. And he's had to walk you back.

Now, he could have simply gone ahead, announced the blanket 10% tariff, which is still in place, by the way. The higher tariffs on motor vehicles and other things, which are all still in place, that would have been protectionism as practice in the United States. States in the 19th century and early 20th century are not saying whether that's a good thing or a bad thing, but it is a coherent and sustainable policy. He decided instead to go down this route of reciprocal tariffs. He's had to pull back from that, but he's still locked, as we're speaking, into an unwinnable economic war with China. And he's going to have to do something about these tariffs. He cannot allow this situation with the tariffs with China to remain in

place indefinitely, because if they do with Chinese exports to the United States now essentially stopped, we are going to see in a few weeks' time higher prices in American shops. There is going to be a disappearance of many of the goods that the United States imports from China. It's going to start having a trickle-down effect through supply lines. He wants the Chinese to move first. I doubt very much that they will. They feel that they have the whip hand over him. The fact that he's brought down, he's cancelled or his other reciprocal tariffs is going to, they're going to see that as a sign of weakness. So, I mean, he's got to, he can't pick up the telephone and call the Chinese himself. And I understand why that would be politically very difficult to do. He's got to find a third party,

Singapore maybe, I don't know, someone who can actually start to broker a compromise and to move forward with the process, whereby these impossible tariffs that he's imposed against China. and are finally brought down, and we return to some type of normalcy. I mean, maybe 10% tariffs on China, maybe 20% tariffs on China, but not 124% tariffs on China. That is disastrous, ultimately, for the United States itself. You can argue that the Chinese are running an unsustainable trade surplus with the United States. You can criticize the Chinese for their economic practices as much as you like. But this kind of shock therapy is not going to cure the patient.

It risks killing the patient, which is the U.S. economy, because for the moment, the United States needs at least some of those Chinese goods, just say. Now, can I also say something else very quickly? is that Trump is telling everybody that, you know, he's lifting all of these reciprocal tariffs because all of these different countries have come forward and they said that they want to do deals. Which country is exactly? I know he's had conversations with South Korea and Japan. Vietnam contacted him or contacted his administration. It had the door slammed in its face. So there's no actual sign of movement there.

The Europeans, far from talking to the United States, were preparing to impose retaliatory tariffs of their own. Netanyahu came to Washington to try to do something about the 17% tariffs imposed upon him, upon Israel. But it looked for a time as if the United States was not. actually willing to shift on the tariffs into Dune Post against Israel. So I have to say this. He's talking about all of these countries, anxious to do deals with the United States and queuing up 70 countries or 78 countries or whatever it was, queuing up to negotiate reductions in tariffs.

I've not really seen any proof that that is actually true other than the fact that he's saying it. So, and I, you know, I don't see that. And I'm sure that across the markets, people are saying that to each other. So one way or the other, he's lost face and he's weak in his position. Now, again, to reiterate, if he wants to move towards a system of protectionism, he can, he could have done that. But this idea of reciprocal tariffs, punitive tariffs, which he was talking about, was an incredibly bad idea and one which violated the orthodoxes of US protectionism as they used to be practiced in that very same 19th and early 20th century heyday of protectionism. and tariffs, which he is setting out as he's a precedent and his example. I think it's clear that the Trump administration was looking for a couple of things

out of this Liberation Day tariff war policy. I listened to Trump's statement very closely. I listened to Levitt and Bessent as well as they were talking, and I read all their posts on X. It seems to me that what they wanted was at first they wanted money from countries into the U.S. They wanted $350 billion from the European Union because they considered it back pay for all the years that the EU was ripping them off. And they wanted countries not to negotiate some sort of a tariff deal, a number. You put 5%, I'll put 5%.

It's equal. We're all good, right? That wasn't what they were looking for. I'm simplifying things, but that wasn't what they were looking for. They were looking for, here's a million, and let's now talk about the percentages on tariffs. But here's some upfront money, you know, right away for everything you've done for us as the United States and for the way we ripped you off in the past. I think that was the first thing that they were looking for.

That's why Trump is always talking about. Now you listen to his statements. He's constantly saying, we're making $2 billion a day. We're making $2 billion a day. He wants to show that money that he's had to be. a money in flow. That's the first thing that they were looking for and that they are looking for. The second thing that happened is that Musk, and this was reported by the Washington Post, as well as other Tech and Wall Street oligarchs, they push back. They push back on Trump.

And, you know, Musk obviously is very close to the White House. But you also had other Wall Street and tech oligarchs. You have J.B. Diamond and all kinds of other people who are close to Trump or the Trump administration, very powerful people in the United States who didn't like what they were seeing. That's another thing that happened. And the third thing that happened is the bonds. This was a theory that was floated out about a week ago as to one of the reasons why Trump is doing these tariffs in the way that he was doing them. And it was the fact that the bond yields, they were thinking that the yields were going to go down. They had about $7 trillion that they were going to, that was rolling over, that they were going to refinance.

And they were going to save a ton of money if those percentages went down. But as you explained, they didn't go down. They went up. And that was a big problem. So I think those three things combined forced Trump to pull back. And, of course, you had the fact that China was not backing down at all. No. That's another factor.

Absolutely. Now, on the last, you know, again, I have to say this, these people don't understand China very well. Now, I've been saying on program after program, we've been saying this on the Duran as well, China does not back down. Anybody who follows the way Chinese policy has evolved, basically since 1949, when the CPC became the government of China, is that they don't back down. The first law of diplomacy, I often say, it's the first law of war, don't march on Moscow. The second, the first law of diplomacy, don't bluff China because your bluff is always going to be called. I think here again, Trump made a fundamental mistake. He thought that China needed to trade with the United States and that if he imposed punitive tariffs on them, they would call him and they would try and negotiate with him.

And in fact, if you look at his comments on true social, you can see that he's clearly holding out for a deal with China. He wants to do a deal with China. And he's frankly baffled and I think perhaps even shocked that when he started to impose his tariffs on China, instead of the Chinese doing what he expected, which is calling him and asking for some way to get these tariffs brought down, the Chinese responded by raising counter tariffs of their own. And these tariffs that the Chinese are imposing on the United States are going to hurt the

United States. I mean, the tariffs that the United States is imposing on China will hurt China, but they will also hurt the United States. But the tariffs China is imposing on the United States will hurt the United States. China is a major export destination for American goods, oil, especially, agricultural goods, also, soybeans, all of that kind of thing. The Chinese buy a lot of those things. So he can't just walk away from, well, he can't just throw himself. into an economic war with China, which he doesn't see to have planned for or thought through properly in advance. So I agree with you. He didn't expect the tech people, Musk and the others,

to break ranks with him. He didn't expect the, he did expect that there would be payments made to the United States. And again, I come back to that bizarre article by Moran. which appeared on the White House website, which needs to be taken down, by the way, immediately. I mean, it is so ugly in its tone and approach and so threatening, you know, basically demanding protection money from across the world, because that's how it comes across.

They didn't get the money that they were expecting. And, of course, the bog yield thing turned into a complete design. Instead of money flowing into the United States, instead of people queuing up to open factories in the United States, on the contrary, money was starting to flow out of the United States in the form of higher yields, treasury yields, and with indications that we were on the brink of the major sell-off in US treasuries. It was completely mismanaged, and the messaging was terrible. Yeah, the messaging was terrible. He's blaming it now on China. Yeah. And he's saying that this was, this was all some sort of a game to show that China is the bad actor and all of this. That's nonsense.

There are people who are believing it. There are a lot of people who are saying, wow, this was 5D chess, and Trump has just isolated China and he's exposed China. It's all nonsense. China is providing cover for a very failed implementation of what Trump identified as a problem with the United States. The United States does have economic problems, huge economic problems, which need to be addressed. Absolutely. He has ended globalism. It is the end of globalization. That's a positive.

He did that with these policies that he's trying to put together by recognizing. recognizing that globalism is not working. He has managed to end globalization. But the fact is that there's no strategy. He knows where he wants to go. He has an idea of where he wants to go, but he doesn't have the right people or the right strategy in place. And he doesn't have the correct timelines either as to how to get there. I want to get to that a bit, but you're right. The messaging was terrible. I feel that Trump could have yesterday. He could have come out. He said that people were getting yippy when they were looking at the stock market. Come on, man.

He could have come out and said, look, I want to deal with China. I'm going to try to contact Xi Jinping directly. We're going to try to get a deal. We're going to try to calm things down. We'll fall back on a blanket tariff and we'll remove the reciprocal tariff so that we can calm things down and just leave it there. You don't have to escape go China. You don't have to come out and say people are getting yippy, all these things, or we're trying to find out who's with us and who's against us. Nonsense. You're gaslighting the people. It's nonsense. He could have come out

and been more straightforward and I think people would have been okay, understood. He could have done that. So the messaging was way off. Anyway, I just want to get to your comments on that. And then I want to get to the fact that there is no strategy. There's a destination that he wants to go. There's problems that he has recognized, but he doesn't know how to get there. And it's not only about tariffs, Alexander. It's not about tariffs. It's the same story with Ukraine and the ceasefire.

It's the same story with Iran. I've been saying this on video after video. Why are you bombing the Houthis? Why? I don't know. You're just bombing them, but there's been no Oval Office statement. There's been no speech. There's been no explanation to the American people. Are we at war with them? Are we not at war? What's the goal of all of this? He says Iran every now and then. He says Iran does it. I don't want Iran to get nukes. There's no policy. There's no strategy. There's no understanding. The same with the ceasefire in Ukraine. The same with TikTok. The same with TikTok. You know, TikTok. It can't be Chinese. It has to be American. So the time runs out the first 75 days and he rolls it over to another 75 days because we have buyers here and everyone wants to buy TikTok.

He says, everyone wants to buy it and we're going to come up with a deal. And then he says we need another 75 days. It's the same story over and over again. There just seems to me, to me there seems to be no real understanding of these problems, a deep understanding of these problems. There's no understanding in who the adversaries are or who the. players are and there's no strategy in place as to how to get to where he needs to go. Absolutely. Can I just say about this? I mean, we have this expression in Britain,

if you are in a hole, stop digging. And he's messaging yesterday actually is a case of somebody digging, continuing to dig deeper the hole in which he's in, or everything that he said yesterday about, you know, being offensive about people in the stock markets and the financial markets, being yippee and all that, that is not going to play well with some of those people now. And it doesn't address the underlying issues and is basically deflection of responsibility for himself. That's first. The second, the second is that he's got to get away from this thing that, it's the Chinese who must approach him first.

He started this process. What he should have done was when he started imposing tariffs on China, he should have called China. Not the other way around. That's the way that it's done. He still approaches everything. Like the New York real estate dealer who knows, the big deals, does them fast, hits everybody from every side. You cannot play that game

with China, just as you cannot play it with the Russians, and you cannot play it with Iran. And he's got to get himself proper advisors. Just as he's made a huge mistake relying on the Waltz-Kalog people in terms of his dealings with the Russians. And we see where that's going. It's going nowhere. He's now got himself people like Navarro and Miran, who may, you know, academically be enormously clever intellectuals, but they don't have that grasp and feeling for China. And it is China ultimately that he's clearly worried about, or about general trade policies that he needs to have. He's got to start listening to more people making decision-making in a more structured way. And you're absolutely right. It's the same

about Iran. It's the same about the Houthis. It's absolutely the same about TikTok. And he's got to stop also this incestant practice that he has of going out and telling everybody the deal is around the corner. We're going to get the deal next week. We're going to get the deal in a few days. We're almost there. We're almost there with TikTok. We're almost there with a ceasefire in Ukraine. China wants to speak and wants to do the deal and they'll be doing it tomorrow next day in a week. time, he's got to stop behaving like an old man in a hurry, as we say it in Britain. He's got to understand that these things do take time. People, other people, other countries, Russia, China, Iran, buyers of TikTok, the financial markets, they have their own clock and they may not be

quite as much in a hurry to see all of these things done as he is. The entire economic policy and the whole economic fortunes of the United States is not something that can be done in a week or 10 days or three months time. It is a work of four years. It has to be done systematically, methodically, in a planned, structured way. Otherwise, it can't be done at all. Yeah. You want to start fixing things? Start cutting down. on expenses. Get out of Project Ukraine. He needs to address the problems one by one and finish the problems. Get to the solution. He's now opened up four or five different areas where he's stuck. He's fighting on four or five fronts now. Yes. Yes. Get to Ukraine. That one can be

solved. Get out of Ukraine. Stop the money. Stop the weapons. Talk to Russia. Get some business going with Russia. Solved. Address NATO. Address the money going to the EU. There's a region that you have complete leverage. You don't have leverage over China. But you have all the leverage over Europe. That's obvious. So start addressing the expenses there, the money that's pouring into Europe. You addressed USAID. Let's look at the military bases. Let's look at NATO. Let's look at all these things. How much money are we losing there?

He said he was going to cut defense spending by 8% just last week. Then he announces one trillion Pentagon budget. Well, which one is it? Yes. Which one is it? Are you trying to save money or are you trying to spend money? I mean, he's got these four or five different problems now that he's stuck in. And he's not solving any of them.

No. He's just saying we're close. We're close to a solution. All of them. Every single one of them, we're close to solution. He's making threats, and I'm going to hit you Iran. Now you're going to start a war with Iran as well. I'm going to hit you Iran.

I'm going to hit you Putin. I don't like the way you're behaving Putin. No TikTok, no China TikTok in the U.S. And China's showing a lack of respect. I mean, this is not how you saw Trump knows this. I don't know about the people around him. I don't know what's going on with his administration, but he's not on the right path. No.

Not at all. His presidency is unraveling. Yes. He better start solving the problems one by one. That's how I look at it. I could be wrong about all of this. But the way I see it is that he's in a mess on many different fronts and in many areas. And he needs to take a step back, take a breath with his team, with his best advisors.

I don't know who they are, Whitkoff, Musk. I don't know. And they need to start solving the problems one by one. And my suggestion has always been Ukraine. You got to start with Ukraine. Yes. That one can be solved. He may not like it.

The neocons may not like it. The deep state may not like it. But it can be solved. Exactly. It can be solved very easily. Not the conflict in Ukraine. That is enormously complicated. That is a very, very complicated conflict in the U.S.

But the U.S. involvement in Ukraine can be ended immediately. All it requires is a decision. It's a simple thing. You stop sending arms. You stop sending money to Ukraine. You tell the Ukrainians, look, we've done what we can. You tell the Europeans, look, we've done what we can. If you want to carry on with this, carry on with this.

We were advising this. We were talking about this way back in the summer, long before he was elected. And that would have been simple, and it would have been clean. And it would have been very easy to explain to the American people. who are not sold in their critical mass on Project Ukraine. It was never a particularly popular policy. Perfectly easy to do. I completely agree.

That is where you start. And then, of course, obviously, some people would have been unhappy. But as we've seen over the last couple of months, those people do not have popular traction in the United States. and they are increasingly not having much traction in Europe either. So that would have been an easy one. It would have been an easy thing to sort out and to move forward. The second is a proper conversation with the American people about where the real threats to the United States are coming from.

They're not coming from the Russians. Obviously, that is ludicrous. They're coming from the enormous structural problems within the American economy, the massive overspending, the budget deficit, which is out of control. That's one thing, by the way, the Doge has exposed is the extent to which all accounting practices within the federal government have completely broken down so that we don't even know exactly what is being spent on what anymore.

So bring the budget under control. And that has to extend, and this is a difficult thing, for many people, for Lindsay Graham and all that crowd, to understand. it has to extend to significant cuts in defense spending, which Trump has said that he wants to do. So do it. But obviously, if you're going to cut defense spending, you need to come to understandings with the others. So obviously, you normalize relations with the Russians. That, again, is easy.

And then you have to have some kind of a dialogue with the Chinese. And with the Chinese, it is extremely difficult because, as you rightly say, the Chinese, you have only very limited leverage over. Though you have enormous leverage over the Europeans, you can tell the Europeans, look from now on, you can look after yourselves, we don't like some of your economic practices, we need to rebalance our things altogether.

And by all means, as part of all of that, if you believe the tariffs are part of the answer, and you want to end globalization, and ending globalization, by the way, I think is a good thing. About tariffs, as I said, I am neutral. I don't know the whole, I haven't worked it out of all exactly. But about tariffs, if you think that as part of budget cutting, bringing the financial

system in the United States back into order, doing all of those kinds of things, if you think that some tariffs are necessary, do them by all means, 10% tariffs, but don't go for reciprocal tariffs, which have some. thrown everything into chaos in the way that they have done and consult widely, talk to people who understand these things, expand your pool of advisors. There are lots of people in the United States who are prepared to help you have proper structured meetings, do those sort of things. I don't understand why Trump, who is far from a stupid man, by the way, doesn't do

these things, why he feels all the time that he needs. needs to act in this impulsive way. I am going to suggest, and people will be, go completely against me when I say this, it's not self-confidence or egoism or narcissism that makes Trump behave in this fashion. On the contrary, it's sometimes insecurity that he makes him feel that in order to assert himself, he has to take the strongest, most immediate decision, the toughest, steps in order to somehow prove to himself and to the rest of the world that he's as strong and that the United States is as strong as he wants them to think it is. One point I think we can both make is that most of the world, until now, until the events of the last couple of days,

has wanted him to succeed. This is something he hasn't done. Most of the world hated the Biden-near-Con policies. I say most of the world, 90% of the world hated it. Most of the world understood that the United States has problems. They want the United States to start behaving like a more normal country again. Obviously, countries around the world, Russia, China, South Korea, North Korea, anybody, Vietnam, they have their interests. that they want to defend. But if you start approaching them in that kind of way, they will do what they can to help you. And there are plenty of people in the United States and the

knowledge and the expertise to help you also. Yeah, I agree with that. The only countries that are sad to have seen Biden gone is the EU countries, most of them. Ursula, Hayak, Alic, and Adelida. They're upset, Joseph Burrell. They were sad to see Biden go. Every other country in the world was so happy when the Biden neocons left. There was a sense of buoyancy. I remember this at the first weeks after Trump's election.

There was a sense of relief around the world. Far from the being, you know, horror, you know, the fact that it was Trump again. There was a sense that this is a man we've liked, we worked with. And instead, what he's done has dissipated all that goodwill and that awful thing by Moran, which went up on the website. As I said, it really does make it look like the United States wants to run at some kind of global protection racket, which is absolutely the wrong image that he wants to project. I think it is repairable. There is still time. but he's got to start being more straightforward with the American people.

He's got to start consulting more widely. He's got to start talking more with world leaders. He should indeed be working towards getting those summit meetings with the Russians, with Putin, and indeed with C. Putin can help with China. He can help with China. He mentioned Singapore, but Russia. Russia, more so, absolutely. He can get all of that.

together. And as I said, Russia is easy. It's actually easy. It's not difficult at all. The Russians, more than anyone else, are relieved to see Biden coat. Biden was waging a war against them, for God's sake. All you have to do is end that war and you've got the goodwill there. But don't start wasting everybody's time with talks of sea. virus, which they'd already rejected. Russia can help with the relations with China. Russia can help with Iran, absolutely, with the whole nuclear issue, which you had with the JCPOA.

Yes, we know, we know. He had it with the JCPOA and Trump dismantled it in his first term. Everyone understands that. It is what it is. But now he's saying, I don't want Iran to get nukes. Russia can absolutely help with that as well. And when it comes to Ukraine, as you said, he could. He could dismantle this German command center that they have going on, dismantle it, and the U.S.'s involvement in this war against Russia.

And there you go. And start doing business with Russia on top of it. You start doing business with them. Absolutely. And get rid of this whole peace through strength thing that they keep on and on about. I've said this now for about two months. I cannot stand the whole peace through strength. I can't stand it.

But it's getting in their heads. And everyone's thinking, yeah, peace through strength, peace through strength. Yes. And they're messing up. Exactly. They're messing up on everything. Absolutely. Completely agree.

I completely agree. And as I said, I mean, start listening to the right people, people who know China, who know Russia, who experience in negotiations. I've been reading reports of the Russians that when the Americans turned up in Riyadh, at both of those two meetings that took place in Riyadh, the Russians found the Americans completely unprepared. They've got the terms, Alex. They've got the terms, June 2024. The terms are right there.

I don't. I know. What does it matter to the United States who governs? Slaviansk. I mean, you know, that, those are the questions. I mean, people need to need, in the United States need to address. You start getting yourself worked up about these things. You will never finish.

Start building high-speed trains, start building roads, start getting health care, start getting infrastructure, start... What do you care about Slavians? Exactly. Anyway, any final thoughts and we'll wrap the video up? I don't have anything else to say. He's been pushed back. I think for the moment, there is still residual goodwill towards him,

within the United States itself. I think, you know, there's the core part of the MAGA movement that is still with him, you know, the industrial workers, the coal miners who have been, you know, who he's been meeting. But he now doesn't really have very much time. He's got to find some way to bring these. tariffs that he's imposed, that he's recklessly imposed on China down and get back to a proper trading system with China and a proper negotiation on how to rebalance trade and to move forward

with the divorce with China, the structured, organized divorce with China that he seemed to be talking about in his first term. The Chinese, by the way, have made an interesting point. They said that the current account surplus, the China runs, used to be almost 10% of China's GDP in the early 2000s. It's now fallen to just over 2% of their GDP. So this isn't such a big existential issue for China anymore. They will probably be willing to negotiate because they're moving, they're gradually changing. the structure of their own economy themselves. So this is a difficult negotiation, but not an impossible one, if handled intelligently.

And if you look at the Chinese statements, they issued a very interesting white paper the other day. They are still saying that they are prepared to negotiate these outcomes with the United States. But they will not be pushed around and they will not be backed down and they won't come crawling to Donald Trump and doing the kind of things that he wants them to do or things that he would want them to do because of all of this peace through strength idiocy. He's got to put that aside and understand that the Chinese are strong. They're not peasants as people talk to them about.

They're in sophisticated, intelligent players, just as the Russians are. And if he pursues a genuine policy of peace, then he will achieve, then he will get. there and he can start to address and will be able to address the many deep problems of the United States, which are real and getting worse, but which, again, to repeat, and I've said this many times, are not insolvable. Yeah. All right. We will end it there. The durand.com. We are on Rumble, Odyssey, Bitray, Telegram, Rockfin, and X. Go to the Duran shop, pick up some merch like what we are wearing in this video. Update 15%

sent off. All merchandise use the code, Spring 15. Take care.