The Majority Report with Sam Seder - 3603 - It's Taco Trump China Version; No Kings Protests w/ Jostein Hauge, Hunter Dunn

Episode Date: October 15, 2025

It's Hump Day on the Majority Report On today's show: Trump uses the government shutdown as an excuse to slash "Democrat programs" even though these cuts have been in motion since before the shutdown began. Michigan Senator Abdul El-Sayed makes an explainer video over the GOP cuts to ACA subsidies. Publisher of the Global Currents newsletter, Jostein Hauge joins the program to explain China's response to the Trump administrations tariffs. Organizer Hunter Dunn joins the program to promote the upcoming No Kings protest on Saturday, October 18. Follow this link to find a protest location near your home. In the Fun Half: Donald Trump delivers a moving tribute to Charlie Kirk at the National Charlie Kirk day event. The federal invasion of our cities continues as we check in with horror footage from ICE fascists, some local heroes doing the lord's work in resisting them and even some Fed bloopers. Jennifer Welch, co-host of the "I've Had it Podcast" presses Cory Booker over AIPAC, Israel and the feckless state of Democratic resistance to Trump. Gavin Newsom gaslights Van Latham on the "Higher Learning" podcast after being asked his relationship with AIPAC All that and more The Congress switchboard number is [phone]. You can use this number to connect with either the U.S. Senate or the House of Representatives. Follow us on TikTok here: https://www.tiktok.com/@majorityreportfm Check us out on Twitch here: https://www.twitch.tv/themajorityreport Find our Rumble stream here: https://rumble.com/user/majorityreport Check out our alt YouTube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/majorityreportlive Gift a Majority Report subscription here: https://fans.fm/majority/gift Subscribe to the AMQuickie newsletter here: https://am-quickie.ghost.io/ Join the Majority Report Discord! https://majoritydiscord.com/ Get all your MR merch at our store: https://shop.majorityreportradio.com/ Get the free Majority Report App!: https://majority.fm/app Go to https://JustCoffee.coop and use coupon code majority to get 10% off your purchase Check out today's sponsors: TRUST & WILL: Get 20% off trustandwill.com/MAJORITY SUNSET LAKE:  Head to SunsetLakeCBD.com and use coupon code “Left Is Best” (all one word) for 20% off of your entire order  Follow the Majority Report crew on Twitter: @SamSeder @EmmaVigeland @MattLech Check out Matt’s show, Left Reckoning, on YouTube, and subscribe on Patreon! https://www.patreon.com/leftreckoning Check out Matt Binder’s YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/mattbinder Subscribe to Brandon’s show The Discourse on Patreon! https://www.patreon.com/ExpandTheDiscourse Check out Ava Raiza’s music here! https://avaraiza.bandcamp.co    

You are listening to a free version of The Majority Report with Sam Cedar. To support this show and get another 15 minutes of daily program, go to Majority.fm. Please. The Majority Report with Sam Cedar. It is Wednesday. October 15th, 2025. My name is Sam Cedar. This is the five-time award-winning majority report.

We are broadcasting live steps from the industrially ravaged Gowanus Canal in the heartland of America, downtown Brooklyn, USA. On the program today, Yostein Hogg, political economist, assistant professor at Cambridge University in England, and publisher of the global current newsletter on Substack. then Hunter Dunn, National Press Coordinator for the 50501 movement, which is part of the No Kings Day Coalition. Also on the program today, in breach of phase one of the ceasefire, Israel has aid as Palestinian hostages decry Israeli prison conditions. Supreme Court hears oral arguments over issuing a death blow to the Voting Rights Act. Young to middle-aged Republican groups nationwide.

Leaked chat shows a love of Hitler, mountains of racism, and praise of rape. Surprise, surprise. Just to be clear, young Republicans, apparently is age 18 to 40. They're a big tent party and a big white hood party. If it was just 18 to 24, there wouldn't be enough. Pentagon ordering staff to watch Pete Hegss's speech or else. The speech he gave a week or two ago. L.A. County declares state of emergency over immigration raids.

ICE continues to break laws and round up people in Chicago. As Prisker hints at possible. state prosecutions of federal agents. Meanwhile, U.S. taxpayer dollars pays for the killing of another six anonymous people in the United States' fifth Caribbean

boat bombing. They are trying so hard to go Venezuela and to responding. Day 15 of shutdown, Trump now canceling billions in grants to blue cities and states, U.S. revokes the visas of six people in this country for mean social media posts about Charlie Kirk. This is the administration protecting free speech.

Seth Moulton to challenge Ed Markey in Massachusetts and Maine Senatorial, recently announced senatorial candidate Janet Mills vows that if elected, she will not serve. serve until age 91, but rather only until age 86. That's amazing, this galvanizing. All this is more on today's majority report. That is, it is nice to see a politician come out and make a vow like that. Happy hump day. We've never heard that before, right?

We've never heard like just, I don't know, infamously in the last election or two cycles, is a very elderly candidate saying, trust me, I'll just try to serve one term. We've never heard that. You know what? I don't think we have ever heard a candidate promise to serve until age 86. That is very specific.

Right? I mean, that's... I'm staying in a race. I mean, you can say I'm staying in the race or anything else. But I don't... I honestly believe this is the first time in the history that we've had a candidate vow to stay in office until age 86.

It's beautiful. middle-aged republican yep that's exactly right it is that must be also we'll get to those uh leaked chats uh of those it's a young republican organization that's the name of it but literally they're 18 to 40 year olds in this organization i i suspect because they just can't support an actual like young people but maybe that's wrong but the funny thing the way that the van wilders of fascism it's in the way in the way that like like, you know, folks like J.D. Vance are playing it off as if it's a college chat. It is not a college chat. In fact, as far as I can tell, from what I've read so far, most of this Hitler-loving, rape, praising, N-word using stuff is from people who are well above college age. Oh, yeah. So it's not a college chat whatsoever.

Forever young. Which is not to say that, like, that would be helpful. to see in a college chat, but they're downplaying it in a way that is just, like, it's just a lie. Well, J.D. Van Sain, he's not going to clutch pearls over it the same day that they're revoking visas for people being nasty to Charlie Kirk. Exactly. We know what pearls that they will clutch at any given time. We've got a lot of news, but it is day 15 of the shutdown. we're going to play some clips later in the program that show the support for the Affordable Care Act has grown certainly over the years but certainly over the course of the shutdown too

because people are starting to realize like wait a second this is going to cost us real money and I think the Republicans are getting a little worried here is Donald Trump talking about what he's going to do during the shutdown but I want you to understand this there is nothing about this shutdown that allows Trump to do this that he would have I mean we could never ever know a counterfactual but more than likely he would have done the exact exact same thing if the continuing resolution was passed, just, we probably wouldn't even

hear about it as much, because it wouldn't be in the context of a shutdown fight. But there is absolutely no statutory authority for Donald Trump to do what he's doing in terms of canceling these grants that have already been appropriated. There is no statutory authority for him to do this, but he's doing it and pretending it's about the shutdown as an attempt to get leverage. Yeah, please. Do you feel any urgency to end the shutdown in the next week, two weeks, or would you be fine if it stretches into November and then toward the holidays with folks not getting paid? Well, you know, shutdown, we've had many, many shutdowns. And this is a shutdown that shouldn't have happened to a group of people brilliantly.

decided to make it after the election. Hold on for a second. I said, thank you very much. We just lost our video. Give it to Trump instead of Biden. Okay, let's go back together. A group of people brilliantly decided to make it after the election. I said, thank you very much.

In other words, give it to Trump instead of Biden. So it shouldn't happen. And likewise, debt ceiling shouldn't have. But the big, great, big, beautiful bill solved the debt ceiling problem for two years. Is there a floor where you would reach out? No, no. Here's what's happening in the shutdown, though. Honestly, can I put it in plain words for you?

And you're a smart guy, so you all in and say, but a lot of people don't. The Democrats are getting killed on the shutdown because we're closing up programs that are Democrat programs that we were opposed to. So we're being able, and they're never going to come back in many cases. So we're being able to do things that we were unable to do before. So we're closing up programs that are Democrat programs that we wanted to close up or that we never wanted to happen

and now we're closing them up and we're not going to let them come back the Democrats are getting killed and we're going to have a list of them on Friday closing up some of the most egregious socialist, semi-communist probably not full-communists we're saving that for New York

but semi-communist programs and we're closing them up we're not closing up Republican programs because we think they work. So the Democrats are getting killed, but they're not telling the people about that. I say it, nobody, well, I haven't said it probably as bluntly as I just said it. So we are closing up Democrat programs that we think that we disagree with,

and they're never going to open again. Thank you very much. Okay, first off, aside from the, you know, partially communist, somewhat communist, but you notice that he says, we're actually saving that for New York. Now, that's a reference, obviously, to Zohran Mamdani. He's just giving it away. Because presumably, by the time Mamdani is in office, there will not be a government shutdown. Now, maybe there will be, maybe there won't be.

But he is right there giving the game away. He would do this either way. Yep. And by this, we mean, which in fact, I think they actually canceled this before the shutdown. Trump administration has frozen or canceled nearly $28 billion that have been reserved for more than 200 projects primarily located in Democratic-led cities, congressional districts and states. This is according to an analysis by the New York Times. Each of these infrastructure projects had received federal aid, sometimes after officials spent years pleading in Washington. They only see that money halted as Trump has looked to punish Democrats over the course of the fiscal stalemate.

He has no legal authority to do this. In some cases, recipients have started to receive portions of the federal aid. Trump aides have offered a series of explanations for the administration's decision to pause or terminate. terminate grants, claiming in some cases that the spending would be wasteful or in conflict with the president's priorities. Again, that has nothing to do with the shutdown. It's also not legal. So far, the administration has targeted essentially two broad trenches of federal aid.

First, the White House has held up billions of dollars in previously approved transportation funding for New York and Chicago. In New York, the administration stopped the delay. of $18 billion in pledged investments for two major projects, the 2nd Avenue Subway, and the Hudson River Tunnel, which serves as the primary railroad through New York City along the Northeast Corridor. Funding for the tunnel in particular has come after years of wrangling as New York officials and their counterparts in New Jersey look to repair a roughly 115-year-old passage from damage wrought by Hurricane Sandy while improving rail capacity. This project,

was actually predates Hurricane Sandy. And the guy who initially rejected these funds because they were issued for this tunnel in particular during the Obama administration, it was Chris Christie, louded and praised by all sorts of centrist Democrats. And the reason why this money has, has not been actually used to fix the tunnel is because over 10 years ago, Chris Christie decided he wanted to show that he wasn't going to play footsie with Barack Obama.

Well, that was because he hugged him after her in Sandy. So he had to pivot back because he wanted to run for president and look how that worked out. In Chicago, Trump administration said a pause $2.1 billion pledged. for the city's own transit upgrades. This is, and two days into the shutdown announced, it would end roughly $7.6 billion and previously approved grants for 223 energy-related projects in 16 states, 14 of which are led by Democrats.

There was that big one in Nevada, the biggest solar project that we had in the country. The one in Dakota or Montana? Who is it? Montana was a hydro. Oh, the hydro, right. I'm sure that's included in this as well. It is revoked its plan to provide up to $1.2 billion for the Alliance for Renewable Clean Hydrogen Energy Systems,

which aim to develop a clean burning power source for heavy duty trucks, port operators, and other major drivers of harmful emissions. This whole thing where he's going to cancel Democrat programs. What he's talking about is money that has been earmarked and appropriated already by the government for Democratic areas. He's not going to cancel any Democrat programs because he knows that those Democrat programs help more of his voters than Democratic voters. That's just the reality of it. There are more Republicans who are using the Affordable Care Act in the exchanges and in the expansion. in a Medicaid than Democrats.

That's just the reality. I mean, let alone how disproportionately the Medicaid cuts are going to harm red states, the rural hospital closures that result and get a bulk of their funding from Medicaid patients

up to 50% of rural hospitals could close due to this bill. But Republicans in those states have packed so many different, so much red, have gerrymandered there's districts in such a way that they're so cynical that they're okay with emiserating their own constituents in order to appease Donald Trump and get tax cuts

for the rich and for their donors. And it is interesting to see Trump try to create leverage out of thin air. I mean, we can see this for what it is. He doesn't have anything, but he's trying to make it seem like he has leverage because the problem that the Republicans have is that in previous shutdowns under Obama, they had messaging consistency on this, where they were shutting down the government in part because they don't believe in government. They're the anti-government party. They don't think government should provide certain services for people. That is their belief. How do you square that with the urgency

the need to reopen the government? How can they message that effectively when Project 2025 is all about downsizing the federal government? It's about destroying it. It's about making it difficult for people to use those services and they've made that case over and over again the republicans and the trump campaign in 2024 so then what is your leverage in terms of the political movement that you've built to make an argument that the government is essential so if the leadership in the party was more effective this would be the case they would be making every day is that government is important We want government to function. We need these ACA subs these to continue because there's going to be a cliff and people's

premiums are going to explode and it's going to emiserate millions and millions of folks. And that is where we can, we, let's play this clip. Number three. This is Abdul al-Sahid running for Senate in Michigan. Was recently on the program. Yeah, a few months ago, but we should have him back. Also a left reckoning guest. And here he is explaining this slashing of ACA subsidies because we are literally weeks away from the open enrollment period.

People are already starting to get notices about increases in their ACA. But the subsidies, I think, officially run out in a couple of weeks. And then the Republicans are going to have some real. pain well donnie why you shouldn't abdul donnie why you shouldn't on the government you're gonna have to figure that out abduel i think it's because your big ugly bill cut subsidies for the ACA in ways that are going to leave people's premiums going up an average of 75% for 25 million people abdul don't do it anymore and rather than actually protect their health care you're more interested in picking a fight with the other party empowering russ vote your grim reaper to come in

take out programs that Congress passed. That's what I do. Why do you say my name that way? Abdul. This makes me feel weird. Cute that. I told him. I told him, Abdul.

There it is. That's the messaging that people are hearing across the country. And that's why it's going to start to get a little more painful for them. And they're desperate right now to cut these programs. And we're starting to move into the area where we need to have Democratic politicians start talking about how they're going to respond to this if there's an opportunity for them ever to be in office. Right. But what they're for, not just what they're trying to protect. Exactly.

And because what is going to take to rebuild from this? Yes. We're going to need the same level of intensity and urgency. And vision that Trump showed. And luckily the Zorong Mamdani campaign understands that they're setting themselves up to govern. Democrats nationally need to think that way, too. In a moment, we're going to be talking to Yo Stein Haag. He is a political economist, assistant professor at Cambridge and publisher of the Global Currents newsletter on Substack.

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it's 20% off at trust and will dot com slash majority we'll put the link in the podcast and youtube description quick break when we come back yo stein hug uh political economist publisher the global currents newsletter on substack We are back, Sam Cedar, Emma Vigland, on the majority report. Pleasure to welcome back to the program. Yostine Haga is a political economist, assistant professional. professor at Cambridge and publisher of the Global Currents newsletter on Substack. Professor, welcome to the program.

Thanks so much for having me back on, Sam. It's a pleasure to be here. So I'm very happy you're here because it has almost gotten to the point where it's almost impossible, for me anyways. And I would imagine for a good number of our audience to follow just how effed up our trade policy is to the extent that there's actually a policy. Can you give us a sense of what has or was it was looking like it was going to be? I mean, we sort of got tacoed again, I guess, maybe with Trump in terms of China. But what's going on with China's, with China's, I guess, reciprocity to our trade war overtures.

Yeah, so the technicalities here are a bit complicated to lay out, but actually it's quite simple to understand the reasoning behind China's response, because what China's been, what China's done? No, what are they responding to? Like, which series of tariffs are they responding to at this point? So in many ways, what China's done now is what they've done previously, which is try to somewhat mirror what the U.S. is doing. And they're trying, especially to the U.S., to signal and tell the U.S., you don't really want to mess with us. So in the past few months, and a lot of people don't know this, the Trump administration has enacted a lot of trade restrictions and policies during this so-called truce between China and the U.S.

And this has now upset China to the degree that are saying, okay, we're going to do something quite powerful. We're going to put restrictions on exports of a lot of rare earth metals and also machinery and technology associated with that to really make it known to the U.S. that we're not messing around. So that's China's recent response. In many ways, it mirrors that of the U.S. in terms of, okay, you do this, we do that. we're happy to play the tit-for-tat with you in the trade policy game. Now, this is a bit different because the reach of the export restrictions are global. So they're not only applied to the U.S., they're applied to the world, essentially.

So why are they global if they want to target the U.S.? Well, the U.S.'s policies are global, and they target Chinese businesses in other parts of the world, so China's response is also global. But China is now also trying to send a signal to the rest of the world, and especially Europe, saying, hey, you know, you can see now what we're doing to the U.S., and this is also our line that we're going to play if people want to bully us. We cannot be bullied. Okay. So, wait, let's, I want to just step back a little bit. Can you, when we talk about export restrictions, can you, a, walk us through what that means in, in, in, in, and. in lay people's terms. And then B, what restrictions have we put on our exports to China? And if you have any sense of why, I mean, my initial guess would be because some guy that Donald Trump knows came into his office and said, this would be helpful to me and I will, you know,

buy a bunch of your crypto or whatever. But can you walk us through like what we mean, but when we say export restrictions, because generally people just assume, okay, okay, we're just putting tariffs, import taxes on them. The export restrictions are in, are part of creating an industrial policy, but what's weird about this era is that we have all the tools of an industrial policy are being utilized, but we have no industrial policy. Yeah, yeah. This is something that I think is quite, and before I get to the restrictions here, it's quite apparent to a lot of people who study these kinds of policies, because tariffs and export restrictions and trade interventions can be used for the purpose of building up an industrial base. But since Trump started the tariffs, there hasn't really been a lot of economic logic behind his trade policies. seemed to be a negotiation tool to kind of, for him to flex without thinking too much about

the economic rationale here. And, you know, you see that when you talk to manufacturing firms across the United States, they are saying this is creating uncertainty for us, this is rising the cost of inputs for us, et cetera. So it's pretty clear that Trump's policies are not having the intended effect or if that's even his intention to create a strong industrial base. Now, export restrictions can work in many, many ways, right? You can simply restrict the exports of certain goods to a certain country, like the U.S., for example, did with advanced chips to China for a long time. Then it turned out that China was able to eventually make these themselves, so it backfired.

What China has done now is basically made it harder for Chinese firms to export rare earth elements themselves and also technologies associated with rare earth, like magnets, for example. So they're saying you need to consult with the government before you export this, and we give ourselves the right to basically deny you exporting these goods. And that's very consequential in this rare earth supply chain, because China is now processing roughly 90% of rare earths and they produce a lot of the technology associated with that. So, you know, rare earths are used in tons of different technologies, high the defense sector.

They're used in magnets that are in consumer electronics. They're used in clean energy manufacturing and so on. So it has consequences and a lot of people are terrified now because this supply chain is very much in control. in control of China's hands. My understanding is that the, despite their name, the rare earth metals are sort of like a second order issue as to the capacity and ability to process them. And that's where China really has an advantage and where theoretically we could get these rare earth metals, but the processing of them, we just don't have any of the elements,

workforce and industrial base, to do that type of work. Yes, you're correct here. So there's a, you know, there's a misunderstanding among a lot of people right now, which makes complete sense, which is that these rare earth metals are actually rare. They simply refer to a range of metals in the periodic table. and they're called this due to certain chemical and historical reasons. So we should be clear about that that they're not actually or not necessarily rare. Some of them are rare.

So for example, metals like lithium and cobalt, they're not rare earth metals, but lithium is in very high demand and it's considered a critical mineral or a critical metal. So some rare earth metals are critical, but some critical metals are not rare earth metals. so yeah it's confusing to a lot of people um okay so um so the u.s has um you know so been chipping away at the at these um or adding export restrictions china has now said um we're going to show you that we we have more capacity than you think we do and it's also saying to third parties, I guess, do not export any of our technology or our process goods of this type to the United States, or you're not going to get them anymore either. Is that basically it?

I think they're trying to do that by making this rule or these exports restrictions global. Yes. But I, you know, I'm quite confident that if the U.S. If the Trump administration wants to have an amicable trade relationship with China, they're happy to have an amicable trade relationship. I think China is more than anything signaling something to the U.S. here. I don't think they have a desire, or there's no indication that China has a desire to limit the access that other countries have to these things over the long term. But they definitely want to tell the world, and especially the U.S., that, hey, we've gotten to

point now where we can do these things, our productive capabilities across a range of sectors, industries and technologies is so strong now that you cannot simply bully us. And it really has become that strong. Well, can you speak about that strength? When you were on last, we spoke about the paper that you had written, the new economic nationalism where you studied industrial policy and the different approaches in the U.S., China, and the EU. And you were making the case that the U.S. has been incredibly hawkish and that over the past decade or so, China has really ramped up its industrial policy internally in ways where it seems like the United States should be, should have anticipated or should know the basic facts about how much China has progressed

and its ability to create these things domestically? Like, that reality was always obvious, but why is the U.S. so slow to understand China's leverage here? Yeah. Well, I think a lot of the developments that we've seen in terms of China's industrial competitiveness have taken a lot of people by surprise across the world, not only the U.S.

I was quite shocked when I saw how far China had advanced in artificial intelligence and developing capabilities to reduce parts for advanced chips across the entire supply chain. So I do think it's starting to take a lot of people by surprise, but now realizing that the capabilities are strong. If you look at industrial policy in the rare earth supply chain, it's interesting because it goes back to the 1980s, and it goes to show how extremely long-term minded that the Chinese guys,

government has been and how extremely clever they've been with industrial policy over a very long time, which contrasts the U.S. where you've had certain efforts to do industrial policy here and there, but generally it's been very hard to plan. You've had presidential administrations that have basically tried to undo what the previous administration has done. And I think most importantly in the U.S., you've had a for-profit financial sector that has much more control and has chased short-term profits, whereas in China, you haven't had that. You've had a state that's been able to basically discipline capital and say, here's what we want to do. We're going to do it long-term. Of course, you need really, really capable, skilled people at the helm to be

able to do this and China's happened. It really does seem like the ability to say to for-profit entities that your profit's going to be X as opposed to X plus. So for instance, I mean, if we need housing, it may not be, you know, 10x profitable for you, but it's going to be 2% profitable. And that's what you're going to do. Like at some measure of being able to sort of say, you're going to produce even beyond a certain measure of what would be profitable because this is what we need under an industrial policy. My understanding, too, is that as late as 2022, like helium, which apparently is involved in these processes, a processing of rare earth metals. China was dependent on outside sources for helium like 95% and over the course of just two or three years

was able to rely on the outside sources for helium to around 5% and that they have been like actively sort of saying like we now have more leverage in these areas and they're exercising them now. Yeah. It's it's it's it boggles the mind When China says they're going to do something or plans to do something, they do it and they don't underperform.

They often overperform. I also think it was, you know, this was, recently Xi spoke at a climate summit and laid out sort of the targets that China have for carbon reductions in the future. And some people say, said that, you know, China isn't ambitious enough. They need to reduce their emissions more than he's planning to do. And most likely they will, but when China says they're going to do something, they will do it, and oftentimes they will actually overperform. That's also happened with Made in China, 2025, which was this huge industrial policy plan published in China in 2015, that aimed to make China a global leader in a range of industries. And 10 years later, when they were supposed to achieve these things they had and actually had overperformed. And as far as climate change, I mean, for years, the argument was there's no point in the U.S. doing anything, and this is we heard from the right, there's no point in the U.S. doing anything because China, and China now seems to have like completely lapped us in solar power generation. And of course, like EVs, it's just, it's, I don't even think like, you know, if Americans understood what a Chinese EV vehicle,

was selling for and how far it could go. I think there'd be some type of revolt in this country. The latest reporting from Reuters is that the U.S., and it's hard to know at this point, whether it's just sort of a threat or not, has drafted countermeasures if negotiations fail with China that include requiring export licenses for software sent to China. if they were to do this, aren't we looking at basically like China basically then saying, okay, we're going to make our own software and basically due to software what they did to electric vehicles?

Like, I mean, if the U.S. does this, for someone who doesn't want to maybe pay for, you know, Microsoft operating system, it feels like I'm 16 months away from getting an open source version of Microsoft operating system that's going to be one-tenth the cost. Yeah, I think, you know, what happened in semiconductors is the best parallel here because that's, you know, the sector where the U.S. We're trying to formulate policy to prevent China from having access to advanced chips. And China essentially said, that's fine. we'll just make these chips ourselves, and they started doing that now.

At this point, the technological capabilities in China are so strong and so broad-based that, yes, I do think you're right. We might end up seeing this happening. But you mentioned Taco in the very beginning. Trump always chickens out, and I'm, you know, this is the outcome that I think we'll see yet again. Trump likes to pretend that he is this, you know, he knows the art of the deal and he knows how to be an effective bully, et cetera. But China just has so much leverage in the sphere of international trade right now that this is

not someone you can bully. And I think, you know, this is a mindset that's been part of American politics and especially, you know, U.S. administrations for years that we will bully developing countries to do what we want. And if they are a threat, if their sovereign, independent development are a threat to us, we'll use international trade sanctions, et cetera, et cetera, and we'll get what we want. And, you know, this mentality with China will have to change because China has now, without a doubt they have successfully embarked on an economic development path

that's independent that's independent that sovereign that's in many ways goes against this goes against US imperialist ambitions and at this point it's really hard for the US ruling class to do anything about it so this kind of approach isn't going to work with China I know this is an impossible thing to divine, but do you have a sense of, like, who understands this in this administration or even within the context of like these circles and who doesn't? I mean, Scott Bassant is on there yesterday saying that these export controls that China's talking about with RER is a sign of their weak economy, which you would have a better sense than I.

but I imagine it sounds like, you know, I'm going to, we're going to talk a lot of bluster, but like who's the audience for that? Like I just, the stock market, you know, reacted for the first time in months and months because of China's threat. So it feels like the investor class understands the how strong China is. I can't figure out like, who is Trump doing this? for. Yeah.

I don't have a good answer to that other than I think we just need to understand Trump's personality here and the fact that he just, I mean, again, he's also threatening with tariffs and he just loves tariffs and he loves to try, you know, he loves to embrace his personality of a bully. But in D.C., generally there seems to be, you know, more people are understanding the strength of China's economy. There are, you know, you can point out to some problems in China's economy like, you know, consumption or like deflationary pressures, et cetera, that are more, I think, about what's going on in the short term. But when it comes to long-term strength, when it comes to really the foundations of what builds a strong economy, having, you know, develop capabilities in producing.

a lot of high-tech stuff, also at an incredibly cheap price, which not enough people are talking about, being able to do this, you know, China is doing this right now across a range of sectors. So they've set them, even with, you know, even if you can agree that there are certain short-term wobbles in the Chinese economy, they've set themselves up for really strong success in the long term. And do you think that the, I mean, so far it seems like the people who understand that ultimately get Trump's attention one way or another, and then he starts this sort of back down and just, I don't know, puff up his chest and then pretend like something else is happening or something. I think we'll see this, we'll see some kind of

solution between the two countries soon because the economic dependence between them is just so strong, although they're gradually, I mean, the trade dependence between China and the US is vice versa is lower than it was, say, in 2015. So both countries are somewhat decoupling from one another, although China's exports are still surging. But, you know, it's, what strikes me is that in the administration right now, there seems to be this idea that China is the, China is the country that's retaliating. And this is what doesn't make sense to me, because you if you start analyzing the pattern, you see a Chinese response to certain policies enacted by Trump. And, you know, smart people should be able to see that it's the Chinese responding

here with aggressive policies. It's not, they're not the ones starting to bark up the tree. he's i mean he's out there saying that it's a hostile act by china not to buy uh u s soybeans um and threatening for us to develop our own cooking oil i guess industry yeah it's uh it's nuts and a lot of people are getting uh crushed uh economically in this country from it and i think you know we'll have a better sense of that once we start to get some numbers uh at one point but um anything else you think we should be looking out for in the coming weeks? Well, I mean, there's one thing, you know, one area where you can argue that the Chinese have done things, not unfairly, I would say, but, you know, they've had a strong and powerful

state that has used industrial policy actively for many years. And this is where the U.S. administration seems to be also. reacting to, in addition to the, you know, the trade interventions. I don't, you know, I don't think personally that this is unfair practices by China, simply using the state or using subsidies to develop industry. You know, the U.S. did that for a long time with its own tech industry, with DARPA, with defense, with the military industrial complex and so on. So every sovereign state should have the ability to do that. You know, I think, um, I think, um, We'll just have to wait and see for the next Xi-Trump meeting to see what the outcome is.

But we are seeing a pattern here emerging that Trump does something, China responds, and then there is some kind of truce. So, you know, that's my prediction that we'll have taco again, that some kind of trade relations will normalize, but that both countries are trying to use trade to signal to the other their strength, and that China is more successful at doing it, and that they actually also have more leverage in these trade negotiations. There's a real quality to this.

When I was like 12, I had two cousins who were twins, and they were like five, and I would wrestle with the two of them, and then they moved away and came back like six to eight years later and I realized like I'm in big trouble now and that sort of feels like what's going on I think that's a good analogy yeah I you know one thing I heard this is very funny more and more commentators

in the US are explicit to saying now now we have to become Chinese we have to become China and this is this is a line I hadn't heard until very recently Well, we'll see. Yo Stein, Haga, political economist, publisher of the Global Currents newsletter on Substack. We will link to that at majority.fm and on the podcast and YouTube description.

Thanks so much for your time today. I really appreciate it. Thank you very much. Thank you. All right, folks, we're going to take a quick break. And when we come back, Hunter Dunn, National Press Coordinator for the 50501 movement, which is part of the No Kings Day Coalition, No Kings Day this Saturday. Saturday the 18th.

We got a link in the notes where you can find anyone near you, any protest near where you live. All right. We're going to take quick break and we'll talk to Hunter. We are back, Sam Cedar. Emma Viglin, Majority Report. Joining us now, Hunter Dunn, National Press Coordinator for the 50501 movement, which is part of the No Kings Day Coalition.

Hunter is helping organize the downtown L.A. demonstration for October 18th. Hunter, welcome to the program. Thanks for having us on. What's the 5050-501 movement? Yeah, 50-51 stands for 50 states, 50 protests, one movement. It started at the beginning of the second Trump administration. Everyday people were looking for some form of meaningful resistance against the Trump administration, and they weren't seeing it from their elected officials. So eventually, they decided to form one. on their own basic idea was getting having a protest at the same time at the state capital of every state across the country to show the entire world that we the american people are

against trump's executive overreach that quickly grew not just every state capital the major cities we had about 20 to 50,000 people in total but cut to a couple months later there's over five million people at over 2,000 events around the entire country and the entire world and that and that being the no king's day and that was the first one that took place on my wedding it was uh and trump's birthday we were out and uh no we made it uh on that day or i i think you were probably tied up with your wedding a little bit yeah a little bit so i was representing i was representing for emma yeah um so give us a sense of like i would imagine in the context of of los angeles there's there's a there's even a greater intensity uh in the wake of all of these sort of like a federal

invasion of l a um but uh give us a sense of like what's what is the value of this um like what what's supposed to happen um uh at these events but after these events yeah absolutely sam uh i mean the first snow kings happened right after the invasion of Valley started. I was there on June 6th the day David Huerta got arrested after large ice raids led to mass protests. Then we had a labor leader arrested. I was on the ground. I got tear gassed while passing out water, while talking to the National Lawyers Guild. For basically the week in the lead up to the first No Kings protest, it was the entire world standing with Los Angeles against Donald Trump's fascist invasion of our community. And now that that occupations,

invasion has mostly been phased out. We're seeing Trump try the same thing in D.C., in Memphis, and in more notably and more recently, Chicago and Portland, right? Trump claiming Portland's war ravaged. And then we cut to a live feed of Portland, and it's people in giant inflatable frog costumes doing the electric slide. Well, it was also a nude bicyclist. So, and that apparently caused Mike Johnson.

He had to check in with his son, yeah, at their heart rate monitor. I'm sure he was watching that feed very closely. I'm sure he hasn't looked away from the nude bicyclist the entire time. But yeah, I would say of Los Angeles, yeah, I would say in Los Angeles, in the greater Los Angeles area and the entirety of Southern California, the people who were hit the hardest by the first Trump occupation, for us, it's so important because we want to stand with those cities that stood with us. We want to stand with those communities that stood with us when Donald Trump attacked us

now that he's attacking them. No one's free until we're all free, right? I like to say we pass out these signs, at least to the LA events, where we're like, I'm here because, or I say no kings because, and then there's a blank, and we give people Sharpies, and they write in their reasons. And almost everyone's got some reason relating to, like, their community, right? Like, I want to protect my family.

I want to protect my neighbor, the tariffs, ice throwing people in concentration camps. But we also see from people talking about we can't be, we can't help other countries beat their fascists until we beat our own, right, talking about Putin, talking about Nanyahu, talking about these other dictatorial regimes that are supporting Trump because it's the billionaires backing Trump and backing those other dictators that is causing so many of the problems we're facing today. You mentioned Mike Johnson.

I was trying to remember which Republican had spoken directly about No Kings recently, and it was him, where he claimed that the No King's marches include a pro Hamas wing, that it's filled with Antifa people, and that this is the, so organized and that there's these liberal groups that they're funding it. When they speak in those terms, I see them probably targeting organizations like Indivisible and other liberal groups that have, and left-wing groups that have come together on this front. Is that a concern for you guys as organizers? that the administration, and including with Ken Klippenstein's reporting about what the

directive is to target left-wing groups, I believe it was the FBI. Is that something that you're prepared for or something you're considering? Well, first off, we're not just liberals. We're a broad tent. We include people who are left right and center. We include leftists. That's how I self-identify. But yes, absolutely.

When I read the NSPM 7, I think that's what's. called some of the stuff that the Trump administration putting out. I was reading it. I'm like, Antifa's not an organization. So they're talking about us. They're talking about indivisible. They're talking about these different groups. Some of them liberal, some of them leftist. And obviously, that's a concern. I've spoken with organizers on the ground who have been, you know, detained by DHS. I've spoken with people, I've received reports that they've asked about me. They've asked about other members of our movement in states that we're not from, which is, of course, fine to hear, but it's not new. Last time, we were part of a deep state global conspiracy. I received

a lot of anti-Semitic slurs, which is interesting, because I'm not Jewish. Like, you know, they're like, George Soros is paying us. And now they can't decide whether or not it's the ineffective Dem leadership. We agree on that point. But the ineffective Dem leadership that wants to sell T-shirts at the National Mall, or if it's these radical terrorist pro-Hamas militants, right? You kind of got to pick a lie, Mike. The enemy can't be both weak and strong someone. simultaneously. Well, unless you're lying fascist, but we knew that one already. Yeah, unless you're Donald Trump, who's the weakest man ever and constantly the pettiest guy ever, but also the strong man. But Hunter, let me, like, so what, I just want to hone in on this.

Let's say we get at a protest and last time was five million people across the country and let's say it's seven or six or eight. what then happens like how is that people turning out there what's the next step for organizers for uh those people do they just wait until the next no kings or what yeah no i i appreciate getting the opportunity to talk about this because when we talk about no king so much of the coverage is just woo big event and not why are we doing this because it's not just orange man bad it's so much more than just Orange Man Bad. I think that there's three main reasons and three main results of a mass mobilization event like No Kings. Number one is the one that everyone talks about community solidarity, right?

Getting millions of people across the country and across the entire world. We have events in Western Europe, Mexico, Canada, India, I saw the other day. Really excited about that one. All those people sending up together against fascism, against tyranny, against Trump's regime, against the billionaires backing him. against Russell Vought. But that's just one thing. The other two things are

education and recruitment is one of them, getting people connected with groups on the ground that are doing work every day. Whether it's direct action like anti-ice demonstrations, anti-ice patrols, community defense groups, Tesla takedowns, fox takedowns, putting pressure on the pillars of support of this administration and getting those pillars to defect,

like we saw a Brigadier General for the National Guard do last week, right? Getting people involved in mutual aid, getting people involved in connecting their community, providing for people who are being hurt by these tariffs and by Trump destroying our economy, we're in borderline, hide your neighbor's territory. And we need to be ready for that once we get to that territory.

Right. So that's number two. And number three is I want to go back to that invasion occupation points. Being on the ground, watching what federal law enforcement was doing in Los Angeles, trying to agitate, attacking people, throwing community leaders on the ground, hurting them, shooting people in the face with rubber bullets, right? I know people personally who are hit. I'm sure you all saw the video of them shooting out a journalist.

I'm sure you guys saw what happened to the priest in Chicago. I'm sure you guys saw what happened to protesters in Portland. Those are massive issues, and those don't stop until you freak out the people doing them, until they realize that they don't have control, and there's nothing they can do to regain control. when over 200,000 people drone footage suggests as close to 300,000 total in Los Angeles alone at one time. The emperor has no clothes. The occupations defanged. They tried to bring in more national guard.

They tried to film propaganda videos in Los Angeles to regain control. But every time they took another step, it backfired because the game was already revealed. It was already over when they couldn't control that size of a crowd. And I want to do for Chicago and for Portland what we were able to do for Los Angeles, right? Getting people connected on the ground, getting people into those groups that are making a difference every day and putting pressure on the regime to end those horrifying occupations before more people get harm, or at least embarrassing them into moving their tactics down a couple of notches. And what about perhaps, like, does this lead in any way to? to the, you know, May 28th has been, excuse me, May 1st, 2028 has been, has been called for a national strike. You know, we've heard that talk from Fane of the UAW, and he encouraged unions to have their contracts and sign that, those contracts so that they end on that day.

how much down the road are you folks who are organizing these things thinking like we've got these emails we've got a way to contact people hopefully i mean hopefully people that's what the the point of RSVPing is or and hopefully there are people there on the ground with you you you don't need to RSVP for a protest whoever told you to that is lying to you okay like you can if you want to please use a burner please use a burner please don't use your real contact information right Use a burner email for this. Do the same thing for any time you donate to a DEM because we'll send you a million

scam emails as Grant Platner talked about. Use a burner. Please. Sorry. Keep going. No, no. That's great advice. I think it's increasingly more important, too.

But we want a way where these, where organizations can contact people, right? I mean, and I don't know if that's, you know, signing up or booths at some of these things or what. Like, how do we take these people who have been mobilized this one time and get them involved in things like mutual aid or in like, you know, we need an emergency protest here or people need to come to defend their community against ICE there? Yeah. So obviously, a lot of those community networks are on the ground. They're using encrypted secret platforms that the administration can't really tap into. Mostly signal, but there's other stuff, too.

a great ad for this thing called Breyer that I have to look into but looks interesting as a way to help connect on the ground. So getting people to these events, like to these mass mobilizations are important because it's really one of the best ways to get FaceTime and meet with those groups that are doing that work that they're not going to be posting about publicly. When it comes to May 1st, 2028, I mean, I'm glad to see that the majority report knows ball. I figured you guys did, but I'm glad to see it in reality that you guys know what you're talking about because most people don't know what I'm talking about even in some of these spaces when I'm talking about 2028. We have to, at some point, right, Trump's going

to do Trump or his handlers or J.D. Vance if Trump is no longer in the picture, are going to take an action to try to take permanent control of this country, right? They're going to try to rig elections. They're going to try to put something on more than just an occupation, but like an insurrection act, right? Full on martial law everywhere. And we have to be ready for that. We have to be organized for that. America doesn't have the protesting muscle that places like France do, that places like clearly Nepal and Madagascar do, right? So we have to build up to that. We have to build those community networks now. So we're ready then. So we're ready to support May 1st, 2028. So we're ready to shut it down if in 2026 or 2028 they try to rig elections.

and not just through state legislators switching up the districts, because that's what Prop 50 is for. If you're in California, I'm in California, please vote yes on Prop 50. That might help say our democracy. But we have to be ready, and No Kings is a way to get ready. Going to a mass mobilization protest, making your voice heard, exercising the First Amendment in such large numbers that Trump can't possibly arrest all of you, that is very important. I don't want to understate that importance. But that's just one day. We're in, this isn't a sprint, this is a marathon.

And we have to convince the people at those protests that this is a marathon because they need to start training now so that they can run the whole race so that we can save our country from fascism and so that we can make the changes we have to make overturning citizens united, rank choice voting, universal health care, building more housing, universal child care, anything on Zaron Mamadani's platform, just all of that, in my opinion. right we need to make those changes so that once we get trump out of office once we get this regime out of office we don't just get another trump in 10 years right um hunter uh where can people get information as to where their nearest uh no kings um protest is yeah just go to no kings dot org and you can find your nearest no kings protest uh for 50 51 you can go to the word 50 50 the word 50 period and then the word one 50 50 50.1 to get more information on us but there's tons of amazing organizations at the local national level involved i don't need you to join 5051 i need you to join something and do something next week right from who you meet at no kings

thanks we'll put links to to both those hunter thanks so much for your time and uh um I won't run into you in L.A. on the streets there, but maybe we'll see some people. Spiritually. Yes. All right. Good luck. Thanks. Thank you, guys. Bye. All right, folks. We're going to take quick break. Head into the fun half of the program. Oh, I should tell you, before we go into this fun half,

folks are going to be in the fun half. Some of this is not going to be kid-friendly. We've got some good clips of people. telling off ice but there are swear words and I know some people are very sensitive to it Brian listened to this stuff earlier and it took like 20 minutes

to console as a young Republican I I never heard words like that before my life so lucky we bought that fainting couch when I joined Brian needed it we're we're gonna be demonetized in the in the fun half of the program today. But be that as it may, this is important. It's so worth it. There's one particular

video. People may know what we're referring to. But there's a couple. There's a, there's a couple of these ice. And just watching people push back on ice is spreading, you know, showing these videos to people, spreading them around, encouraging people. You know, there's a lot of stuff that I haven't liked that Pritzker did, but I do think there is value in telling people to go and videotape because it incur, you know, like, it's an intimidating thing. You have a bunch of like thugs, masked thugs around telling you not to videotape, not to do this, and it's intimidating. And it is, you know, helpful for people to feel like there's been an authority that is said

to do this and um uh and and and and in some way feeling like i'm not going to get in trouble because of the local authorities are telling me i can do it um but we're going to play that in the final i just wanted to give a warning to people whose sensitivity i'm i don't like to i don't like to hear too many swear words yeah my kids know this i it's just the way i am and uh also just a reminder, your support makes this show possible. You can become a member at Join the Majority Report.com. When you do, you not only get the free show free of commercials, you get the fun half, and you let us demonetize ourselves in the fun half when we know we're going to be like having

a lots of expletives. Yep. Yeah. Also, just coffee.coop, fair trade coffee, hot chocolate, use the coupon code. Majority get 10% off. Matt. Last night left reckoning, Alex Scopic, talking about. Javier Malay and the giant bailout that we gave his country, $20 billion.

You're welcome, libertarians. Now, have we given it or are we waiting to see? Because we've got footage of Trump saying, like, we're not going to give the money unless Javier wins. Besant said that, too. So I don't know if the money's actually gotten there. It's sort of like the backstop for Uncle Sam. I guess that's true.

It's the backstay. It's not like we're dumping off this $20 million and $20 billion in a – this isn't a Tom Homan type of situation where we would put all that in a big bag and drop it off there with French fries. It's nice to know that – well, Besson said stabilizing Argentina is America first on Fox business, I think, a couple weeks ago. And it would be nice if that wasn't contingent on stabilizing Argentina. it wasn't contingent on their freak, corrupt losers like Javier Malay being in power.

Because I think, you know, maybe he's the one unstabilizing the country. Yeah, but that's what they're concerned about, is that didn't he have some issues, Milley, in the last cycle, electorally, or is it the polling? The most recent elections, he did not perform well. Right, right. Noel from San Francisco, it's like a $20 billion line of credit, yes. But they're going to use that $20 billion, because the bottom line is there's a couple of Bessant's friends who are billionaire hedge funds who have a serious investment in Argentina.

Very America first guys. It's so obvious. Yeah. It is, Malay is the only one who's going to use that line of credit to put money into these hedge funds pockets. This is just another extraction play. And I would be shocked if there wasn't then a kickback. you know, it's never in cash. It's like some, I'm going to invest

in your Trumpink. Of course. Hotel Tower. It's because I'm smart. Okay. See you in the fun half. Three months from now, six months from now, nine months from now. And I don't think it's going to be the same as it looks like in six months from now.

And I don't know if it's necessarily going to be better six months from now than it is three months from now. But I think around 18 months out, we're going to look back and go like, wow. What? What is that going on? It's nuts. Wait a second. Hold on for, hold on for a second.

The majority rapport. Emma, welcome to the program. Hey. Fun hat. Matt. What is up, everyone? Fun hat. No, McKean.

You did it. Fun hat. Let's go, Brant. Let's go Brandon. Bradley, you want to say hello? Sorry to disappointment. Everyone, I'm just a random guy. It's all the boys today.

Fundamentally false. No, I'm sorry. Women's... Stop talking for a second. Let me finish. Where is this coming from, dude? But dude, you want to smoke this? Seven and eight?

Yes. Hi, me. Is this safe? Yes. Is it me? Is it me? It is you. Um, is it's me?

I think it is you. Who is you? No sound. Every single freaking day. What's on your mind? We can discuss free markets and we can discuss capitalism. I'm going to guess not what. Libertarians.

They're so stupid though. Common sense says of course. Gobbled e gook. We fucking nailed him. So what's 79 plus 21? challenge met. I'm positively clovering. I believe 96, I want to say. 857, 210, 35. 35. 501. One half. Three-eighths.

9-11, for instance. $3,400, $1,900. $6.5,4, $3 trillion sold. It's a zero-sum game. Actually, you're making me think less. But let me say this. Poop. You can call it satire, Sam goes to satire. On top of it all, my favorite part about you is just like every day, all day.

Everything you do. Without a doubt. Hey, buddy, we've seen you. All right, folks, folks, folks. It's just the week being weeded out, obviously. Yeah, sundown, guns out. I don't know. But you should know.

People just don't like to entertain ideas anymore. I have a question. Who cares? Our chat is enabled, folks I love it I do love that I got to jump I gotta be quick

I get a jump I'm losing it bro Two o'clock We're already late And the guy's being a dick So screw him Sent to a goul Outrageous

Like what is wrong with you Love you Love you Bye bye Thank you.