Weekly Skews - Weekly Skews – 4/8/25 – Trade Deficit Disorder

Episode Date: April 9, 2025

Today, Trump’s trying Super Brexit, apparently because he lost a piano auction to a Japanese guy in 1988 (not kiddin’). We’re talking tariffs that the White House can’t agree on why they’re doing them, apparently formulated by ChatGPT (really not kiddin’). And how we need to fix the trade deficit by making the people of Myanmar buy Cadillacs. It’s a lot, and of course there’s a nepo baby Soundcloud rapper involved. Join us.Support the show

what's up everybody welcome back happy skews day to you guess what mark guess what else today is happy birthday to me that's right yes it's Tuesday April 8th 2025 came in at this accursed world and this accursed day all those many many years ago but as we're sitting down to record this it's actually not yet my birthday I'm 38 for we bit longer because it is 1.50 p.m. on the left coast as we sit down to record this on April 7th. So I'm Trey, the birthday boy. And that's Mark. Yeah, it's what I get for my birthday. Another once in a lifetime catastrophe, you know, it's always fun. As a millennial, always look forward to those. Every five years or so, there's a new generational disaster that we get to

deal with. But yeah, the global economy teetering on the precipice of collapse for very reasonable and understandable reasons I'm sure we'll get into but how are you doing? Yeah, every time we like to Republican president this happens what are weird coincidence

so but I'm doing pretty good before we get to the show less than one week ago I Corey, what did Center of New Jersey Corey Booker did like a 25 hour

speech in the Senate floor Brooks Strom Thurman's record the record's fucking cool fuck Strom Thurman for sure There's also the Supreme Court election in Wisconsin, which we're not going to have a chance to talk about today, which Elon got fucked, and he lost a bunch of money, and that's funny. And he apparently was at least a five-point

drag on his candidate. That's great. I just want to, the only thing I want to point I want to make about it, it seems like blanking the airwaves with ads about puberty blockers and trans people in bathrooms did not have the attendant effect in Wisconsin. So I just want to flag that for everybody who's still holding on to that as a reason everything's falling apart. Do you think this is going to lead to like an actual, you know, what's the word I'm looking for? or like a course correction with Elon from the administration, like a bit of a smackdown for him as a result of this? He appears to be at least temporarily communicated,

but I don't know if it's because of that, because the tariff stuff we're going to talk about because he is super not for tariffs. Right, yes, there's also that. That's funny. He's a big free market guy, which, you know, makes sense. Well, he's free market when it comes to selling,

when it comes to government giving him money. Well, he wants money from the government. Yeah, yeah. So one thing before we get to the show, And yeah, today we're going to be talking about the tariffs, which no one can figure out why we're doing them or what the point is. We'll talk about that. But the, so in Idaho, there's an intro of Republican fight here between a lady who's a farmer and a guy named Ryan Spoon, who's a vice chair of the Republican Party in Heda County. The lady is state representative, Stephanie Mickelson.

He called ICE on her, accusing her of hiring undocumented workers. Of course she fucking does. They all do. Yes. Which is her point. She wrote an op-ed for. for a newspaper calling Spoon a carpetbagger from California who doesn't understand how farming works, which he is.

Right. Right. My question about that, so far with this limited information, I would say that she's, you know, spitting, but like is she herself,

is she also, is she like MAGA or is she not? Like, where's she at an immigrants generally? Throw them MAGA. She just wants her slaves. I know. Well,

that's what I was, that's what I'm getting at. I'm saying it's like, yeah, but in this limited context, it's like, yeah, you tell his ass,

Stephanie that's right you're right about that but then I say it's because like you said she's fine with all the rest of them getting rounded up and shipped off but not her in a war hands or whatever this is one of those apoxone everyone sounds like in a perfect world I think those people should be like given documented status and again being guaranteed solid wages but also in the real world they're willing to work not having legal status for a lesser wage but fuck her for abusing them but also we like the whole system runs on shit like this I'm not sure what anybody's supposed to do about it. But, like, her basic point about him not understanding how things works is true. Like, I try to understand how things work and wish they could be better. She likes the way they work currently, and he wants to make them worse. All right. So, yeah. But, like, not understand how it works, let's just point this out.

So the Idaho Derryman's Association, which also wants their slaves, estimates that around 90% of workers in the state's dairy industry are foreign born. The CEO of the Idaho Derryman Association's name Rick Nereabout, one of those. you know, Midwestern names, said if you remove the unauthorized portion of the agriculture workforce, at that point, we don't have the ability to produce enough food to feed ourselves. I think he's just talking about Idaho.

Right. No, anytime this ever comes up, I bring this up, but, you know, it's because it's relevant. Years ago now,

I don't even know, it had to be 10 plus years ago. When I still lived to Tennessee, Alabama as a state passed some really sweeping draconian anti-immigration measure to stick it to the Mexicans or whatever. and then they had like catastrophic losses in every agricultural sector that year like all their crops died and shit and it put them in a real bad way because of course it did and then they had to you know they had to go back on that eventually because it's just the reality of the situation and they you know i get the i know that they want to fear monger about immigrants and stuff especially around election time or whatever of course they're going to do that but like getting into actually putting these policies in place and rounding these people up and shit I thought that they were just being disingenuous and did all understand that it would be bad, that it would be disastrous, you know, and that they would not do that.

So they're just bullshit in the whole time. But if they go down that, you know, they keep fucking around, they're going to find out. So, which is sort of a theme lately. We're trapped in this doom spiral. Republicans are where, like, they gin up, they provide grist for the rubs, right? The rubs get amped up and claim more power. So they need to like, okay, now we got to cater to the rubs more. and more robs take over.

And then, but they've gotten in a substance situation where the people who believe all the lies control everything and there's nothing the powers they can be to rein them anymore, which is kind of what we're talking about today. Exactly. Right. But like, just in this specific scenario, we're what, nine week, ten weeks into Trump's presidency, and we've got the state party calling the Gestapo on each other already. So there we go.

Let's get into it. Let's get into it. All right. Producer Matt is with us doing this thing back there. This is weekly skews. Before we get into it, I, of course, got a couple things to remind you of. First, if you want to see me do stand-up comedy live and in person, go to Treycrowder.com. Check out my upcoming tour dates.

Northwest Arkansas just got back from there. The weather was horrific the entire time as it wasn't much of the country, but the shows, as always, were great. So thanks to you guys who came out to that. I got Knoxville and Chattanooga coming up with Drew and Corey, my co-founders of the Ske Universe, next week, this weekend. But those shows are sold out. So I hope you got your tickets already. Otherwise, you just have to catch me next time. And then we got Oregon.

A lot of those shows are sold out too. You guys are hitting for me. Houston, Texas, Vegas, Tulsa, San Diego, and more in the near future, Tray Crowder. com. Also, there's a link on there to my new special Trash Daddy on YouTube, which is hitting for people. It's funny. It's a good time. If you haven't watched it, what are you waiting for?

Go watch it, please. And lastly, if you enjoy this program and would like to show your support, you can do so by signing up on Patreon, weekly skews.com slash more, or just go to Patreon and search for my name, and you'll find it that way, too. $5 a month gets you. access to two full-length bonus episodes. We just do, you know, additional episodes of this show just the way it is. And sometimes we also switch it up by taking your burning questions. We call those skew-and-a's. Either way, it's just this show, but more of it. So get some more skews in your

life and support the show in the process, signing up on Patreon. All right. That's for the show tonight. We've already told you. We've already revealed what we're going to be talking about. again, the tariff tragedy going on worldwide and the reaction there to and the fallout thereof and everything surrounding it. But first, we got the Daily Dumbass. Matt, graphic, please. Tonight's D.D., the founder of Barstool Sports, for not realizing he's going to need to burn that barstool for heat this winter.

Trump has put his tariff all over the place. some wacky formula new tariff and everything's in this shitter because of it i'm down seven million bucks nice okay so it's dave portnoy the founder of barstool sports as we as we uh mentioned and i'm saying when you sent whoever group chatted this video like it's like the first thing i've seen him bitching about lately where maga and trump are concerned he's been uh he's been upset with them recently which is uh funny to me considered everything else about him he did but he did say he did what it go on to say he's still glad he didn't vote for cobbler harris but i do want to point that video was from friday here's an important update from today

if you got this man oh i hadn't seen this all right i went super viral when i said i lost seven million dollars i i'd kill to be back to losing seven million so to get portanoid credit he's he's dubbed today orange monday which is a pretty good bit. Except for the part it's going to be really embarrassing to us when historians figure out why. It's like, oh, the president was a guy

who painted his face orange. Not all of it, just the parts you could see straight on in a mirror and like, why, why? I think he thinks it makes him look younger even though everyone knows that he's 80. So, what we get into this? First of all, my condolence is anyone

who's got to put off retirement because of this shit or anyone who's like, who's good, like, we don't know who's going to be unemployed yet. But the only reason I care about the stock market at all as a person who doesn't have any investments. Right. I spent all my money,

any extra money I have my 20s and 30s having a good time. And all I've got to say is who's the ant, who's the grasshopper now, motherfucker? Sure. All right. But it is, I always think anytime this always comes up,

I think of that the line from that Alabama song, you know, so somebody told us Wall Street failed, but we was so poor that we couldn't tail or whatever. I've also never been tied to the stock market. But it is oftentimes, you know, a harbinger of larger doom in your future. Yeah,

if you've got a 401k. Generally, the market grows long term, and so it's as smart to put your money in mutual funds, whatever you get. But when it goes up a lot in the immediate term, it generally helps about 30 people in the world. Right, right. But when it collapses, it fucks everybody on the planet. Exactly. So that's the reason I care about it. And so when I talk about the economy, I'm not talking about markets.

I'm talking about stuff like homelessness, foreclosures, and the suicide rate. Okay. So with that context, I just want to point out before we get into the, the terrorist stuff. Since everyone who really loves or hates Trump seems to think that Trump has always some super clever plan. Always playing 8D chess all the time with everybody. I want you to keep the story in mind during all this.

Trump's tariff origin story, and this is from a piece in 2019, called Trump's Luffert Terrace began in Japan's 80s boom. Back in 1988, Trump was trying to buy a 58 key piano that was used in the movie Casablanca, but he lost the auction to a Japanese guy back when Japan was the big free trade boogeyman, right? And his takeaway from that was it was an affront to God

for a Japanese guy to have more money to spend on a piano than him. And he's made his life's mission to make sure other countries don't have money since 1988. That's the main thing going on here. Sure. But, you know, when I know you're not,

I know that we're both very aware, still doesn't make sense, but it's like that, it just also fucks everybody, us too. You know what I mean? Like, like, his rationale is like, he's just trying to screw everybody else. I know it's all about like trade deficits. He's, it's like he, that's one of those things that he's always been stuck on. It's like he, because he thinks he literally wrote that stupid ass book, the art of the deal. Like, he thinks he's like the, you know, he's the, he's the, he's the, he's the, he's the

fucking the overlord of all the, you know, the best business deals that ever been made. He understands them better than anybody else. And he thinks that if you're getting screwed, if America's getting screwed over in like a deal, it's got to be rectified. And he sees like a trade deficit, which there could be a million different reasons for. He sees that as being screwed, right? So it's like that's got to be fixed. And so that ain't how anything works in reality. Right, yeah.

I got a big show up preparing the trade deficit stuff. We'll talk about it because it's really, the trade deficit. He thinks it's bad because it has the word deficit in it. Yeah, sounds bad. But it's not. There's a minus sign involved. Right. Yeah.

So when you say it's going to like, it's possible there's some people that could be better off with all this. But like with targeted terrorists, we'd be on short some stuff, which I'm in favor of. But like the point is like not like this. This is the stupidest way to go about it. Right. And they're back last summer during the height of the campaign, you asked me this, our tariff's good. Uh-huh. And like, I was thinking about what's like asking like, is paint good?

Paint is good for changing the color of offense, but it's bad to drink. Right. So context matters here. And like, like, I have no idea where we're going to be at with this tomorrow. He might relent and delay some of the tariffs or change his mind and undo it. It doesn't matter. The damage, the America is no longer the center of global commerce. And it's just going to look way different over the long term.

And there's nothing we can do to undo it because we've proven ourselves to be morons who will elect moron to run everything twice right it's like it's yeah because it's like right the first time around the whole i feel like the whole world was like what the fuck is that about but then like he didn't win re-election and if we had not been elected him again we might have been able to get away with it with all the power and wealth that we wield but having elected him twice and just let watching him as he burns everything to the ground i mean yeah there our reputation or our standing or whatever you want to call it on the global stage is like definitely go like we've just handed it to china i guess china's number one now, which is ironic, considering how much shit they talk about China, and we've just

given it to them on a platter. Well, they're on a path to be, like, it's like, it's like, we've chosen the path now, right? So, like, it's not like, it's not like they, like, like, lapped us or whatever, but, like, the idea, the idea that we're always going to have a stronger military in China, I think it's a little bit of a fantasy right now, because when they, like, we've defunded all our science and shit and, uh, we don't believe in logistics. So, so they, yeah, but speaking of China, they've, like, they, haven't they, like, banded together with South Korea and Japan in response to this? to have, like, United Front, which is like, I mean, that's wild. When you've got the, you know, those countries working together, you know, getting up, getting up with Japan to do stuff as one, then, you know, you've really fucked up. I've seen some people say, like, half jokingly, that Trump, though it would ruin, will ruin America,

Trump could end up being a net good for the world if he continues to unite the rest of it against us. Like, he's like the most unifying factor we've ever seen for the rest of the globe, just bringing everybody together in opposition to our stupid. asses. I remember reading from a Chinese American knows a relative back in China who's a devout evangelical Christian who believed that Trump was

anointed by God to be president of America but to destroy America. Right. Yeah. So yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

So, like getting like like, like, you don't have to know a ton about like the history of Asia to be like yeah, China, pushing China and South Korea and Japan and doing a alliance together is like it's like you managed to get NBA back together in like 1994 so um so so like this is just fascinating to me because like no one really has any sort of coherent ideology anymore because everybody's going to buy into Trump's bullshit or oppose Trump's bullshit but like I think I text you guys the other day like I saw I was walking my dog and

I saw a black dude with dreadlocks get out of a jacked up Chevy pickup truck with a don't prudel me sticker on the back and skateboard away. And I was like, what the fuck is this dude about? Right. Our political parties are that now. And like, it's like where I was starting to think of where like that could be going, probably like to like a proud boys offshoot called the Rood Boys meetup. Sure.

See, so like here you're the vanguard of the conservative free trade party destroying global trade in the name of, protectionism for unions, kind of, but he doesn't really believe in unions, so we want low-paid factory jobs, which nobody wants. Right. Well, in a way, it's kind of, I mean, again, I know that it isn't going to work, but I'm saying, like, the argument for it, I feel like it's probably something that would have, that probably hits for people in my hometown where, you know, I've talked about it a million times.

We had our big, the factory that was the beating heart of our town's economy, you know, left with NAFTA in the 90s and decimated everything, and it was a blue county, and it's been in Red County ever since, it went hard for Trump and that whole narrative, the idea that, like, oh, these are meant to bring the jobs back, the factory jobs back. They're like, killed our town, you know, that people might hear that and be like, well, hell yeah. But that's, you know, it's just not how that's actually going to work. First of all, that would take a long time. Secondly, it's like our whole, everything about our economy has shifted. Third, it's like robots working factories now. Like, you know, it's just none of it's going to actually work. But. It's also based upon, like, like, people, people seem to believe in 1950s existed, like, the, the, the drawings they see in cigarette ads from magazines back there. Yeah, northern Rockwell pining's and shit. Right. A guy shows up at home in a big car wearing a suit from work from his nine to five job where a pretty wife, they're always white, by the way. A pretty white.

Leapes him in a dress with two. A casserole. A casserole. Yes. two boys and a girl and they have a house of the yard. Yeah, she's got a whiskey in her hand and her mouth is closed and stays that way. Yeah. And cigarettes are healthy for your T zone.

And like, and so like I just want to like the fantasy there to where overlords you're listening is not that people work in a factory. It's that they could provide a middle class living for their home on one income. Yes. It's not working widgets. They're trying to do the widgets without the one income thing. part, sweat shops, American sweat shops. Right. Yeah.

Yeah. So, that's a really good point, yes. Like, but like, you like, no one has the audience. So the Wall Street Journal had a front page this morning where Trump was looking gross and talking about how the, they did terrorist her catastrophe, yada, yada, yada. I mean, people were like, oh, the supposed left wing's mainstream media is not doing this, but the Wall Street Journal is going hard after Trump. They're more left than, they're not being more left than Trump.

They're being principled free market conservatives. Right. And you guys can't even see it anymore because everyone's brains are. so broken by the fucking internet. And so, but, like, this out of, like, imagine telling a Vietnam vet who lost both his legs, fucking trying to stop

Vietnam from falling to the communists, being told that the communist general secretary of Vietnam is calling up the White House trying to persuade the American president to embrace free markets. Yeah. Mm-hmm. And telling his dad, the World War II vet, that also his chief advisor is a Nazi

who, like, Hiles Hitler on stage in front of their rallies and shit. And one of his other chief advisors inside the White House is a Nazi Jew. So like, fucking make any of this shit makes sense. So, but like the, the fucking Chinese embassy is posting

videos with captions in Chinese of Ronald Reagan talking about how tariffs are bad. Yeah. The world, babe, up is down, left, is right. Dumb and smart. So,

Trump's got the President United Oilworkers, Sean Fane, talking about how great the tariffs are, which maybe they will be for his union. I'd have no idea, except that I would note that, like, as soon as the tariffs were announced, Stalantis laid off 900 auto workers. And then Fanez gave an interview today. He was like, well, nobody cares about the stock market because a ton of Americans don't own any stock, which is true, except the auto workers do through their pension fund.

So what the fuck is anybody on about? Right. I mean, that's the thing. It's like you said, I don't have stocks either and I always felt the same way about it. But as you mentioned right before that, a lot of like, just regular middle class, normal-ass people have like 401ks or retirement accounts and stuff like that to their jobs and shit, which are affected by this stuff, you know. And again, more importantly, like we said, when it all goes to shit, other things follow. You can't just point and laugh at Wall Street and the bottom falls out. You think the bosses are going to defer their bonuses?

Are they going to lay people off? Right. Right. So there's it. That's the problem. And, like, you brought up the NAFTA, like, yeah, the main, the main business employer in my hometown, the town went to high school in, was a furniture factory. And then after the mid-90s, it was a wall, now it's a Walmart. Okay. So you're absolutely right. I don't want to sound like

I'm super free. I just will note that like if you look at the graph of like U.S. manufacturing jobs, NAFTA comes in the middle of the downslope and you can't even observe a difference of it happening. That was happening anyway. I don't really know what Clinton's goals were. But if you told Bill Clinton that like, um, that the Republican president in 2025 will be talking like those NWO protesters in Seattle who had the giant puppets during the, during NAFTA, the NAFTA coachations, I'd be like what the fuck. The world's utterly broke. It's just like, so the, I will not to, I do not want to fucking be put in the position

of defending Bo Clinton. I will point out that America in general is a lot richer than it was in the 90s. the problem is no one's sharing the fucking money. Yeah, right. So, like, the problem, it's not, we do not want to necessarily want to put the factory back in Salina or Appomattox. We want to share the wealth so Appomatics and Salina can still have good schools and jobs programs, even if the factory isn't there. Great. Absolutely, yeah.

I mean, really, like you said, the factory part wasn't the part. It's, you know, hell, that would be utopic. Like, you know, you didn't have to work at the factory anymore, but your life still hit. Like, right. that's what's up you know nobody wants to people imagine like all these mega influences

by the way make their living podcasting and selling supplements are like oh this America's broken as men don't feel like they make anything anymore so you go work at the factory you're not woodworking at the fucking factory doing stuff that's fulfilling you're putting a piece of metal in the thing

and watching it get bent and then moving it but doing that repetitively all day it's like uh fuck no one wants to work in the factory is what I'm saying and like anybody trying to get anybody trying to bait you into wanting that is fucking lying to you and again

they make their living blogging podcasting lying. All right. So we say that as podcasting is the most dignified profession, of course. Of course. Um, uh, so like one of the reason I want to say is like I'm not super pro free trade. I don't think it's great that a bunch of children and people and also adults working sweatshop like conditions in Vietnam making our sneakers and our clothes. Right. But I don't think the solution is like, well, instead we should put American kids in the sweatshops. Yeah. So like I don't think that is actually the solution to anybody wants. Which is probably why you're, I'm sure you saw one of them, was it Lutnik or one of them like literally said that, right?

Did you see that clip? They didn't say sweatshops, but he said like, imagine a world where all those little hands are tightening screws on little iPhones, but that's happening in America or whatever. And it's like, dude, that's universally regarded as hellish conditions, I thought. But, you know, they know, they want the children to go back to work anyway. They've been after that for a minute. Their pitch is we need to orn shore the Foxcon factories with a suicide. Ness to keep it from dying when they jump off the building because they make them sleep at work. That's the sales pitch and people are falling for it.

So like, for contacts here, like, again, I'm in favor of ensuring a lot of this stuff. We saw like what happens to supply chains are in stuff like COVID, okay? Like, like, it makes sense. And what Biden was doing was like, was doing a, it was kind of working. We're in a middle of kind of a manufacturer like industrial boom right now that's being dismantled by these fucking tariffs. Like a lot of industrial investments collapsing because nobody knows they can import the stuff they're using to build the factories.

So let me give an example of what I talked about by trying to onshore everything immediately at gunpoint, like an economic gunpoint feels absolutely insane, okay? And not just because you literally cannot farm palm oil in Connecticut. You can't do it. Yeah, I've seen people use the example of coffee because Americans love coffee, right? And the only place in America you can grow coffee is Hawaii, I think. Can they have one coffee company there? Kona, which is like 0.1% of the coffee market.

It's a high and expensive coffee, too. It's like boutique. So, it's delicious, by the way, when the times I've had it. But like, make an example of what onshoreing looks like for some of that stuff. Okay. So, like, China manufactures a lot of our pharmaceuticals, right? So we own shore the pharmaceutical factories. But guess who makes the precursor chemicals that go into the drugs?

China. Okay. So now we own shore the factories that make those precursor chemicals. Guess who makes the machines? that make the ingredients. Chaita. So now we've got to onshore the factories that make the machines

that make the ingredients. Guess who makes the chips that go in the machines? So for this plan to work, we need, first we need a machine that builds itself contrary to laws of thermodynamics and we need it tomorrow.

Right. Yes. Yeah. You need every step in the process we're not prepared for. And you couldn't, you can't coordinate it in a realistic way

to make that feasible. either just because of the way this the way reality be you know it's just not something you can do it's also like like there there is such a thing as competitive advantage where they don't see which they literally want a conservative lawyer was trying to ask but how's competitive advantage that it affect like you know uh uh free uh overseas market it's like you mean like because like because america can't grow bananas so we trade stuff to south america for bananas and what we have to trade is money and that's what happens but like so like um something countries do things other than other countries.

Right. Yes. We have, uh, yeah, I know that like, like we were saying earlier with the trade deficits and whatnot, like, we get like gems, diamonds and emeralds and shit like that from like poor African countries, right? Because we're like, we live in a prosperous country where we can waste money on pretty rocks or whatever that they cut kids hands off to incentivize them to mine over there. And, uh, I don't think you can just put a diamond mine and fucking.

mine in Arkansas or whatever. But also those people, they don't make money doing that. They just do it so they don't get their fucking hand chopped off. So they're not then ordering like planes or whatever that we make here. So, you know, we're just sending them money and fucking and they're not. Yeah. But that's just the way it all works, you know. One of the countries we tariff is a tiny African country by name of LaSotho.

I think they get their highest tariff we could hit them with out of anybody. All right. And because when they plugged in this stupid math formula we'll get to, he's like, they sell us $100 million with the diamonds a year for money. And they have an average yearly income of, average daily income of like, I think, $5 a day. Okay. Right. So we have a huge trade deficit to them because they don't buy anything from us because they have $5 and we get $100 million with the diamonds. So our solution is we need the people to sell though in order to get this tariff wiped out.

They need to buy more Microsoft software. Right. Yeah. that's what I'm saying. It's just, it's nonsensical, you know, it's also, again, even in that, even with the current relationship, as you outlined it, like, we being America, are

the country in the better position of the two, like, very obviously. But we're getting ripped off by the soap, though. I know, that's what I'm saying. It's like, it isn't even a bad, we're not in a bad position right there. We're in the superior position in the one, the

dynamic you just outlined, but because it amounts to a trade deficit, Trump is like, well, this will not stand or whatever. Right. I don't know. It's insane. By the way, there are many historical examples of tariffs mixed with government planning and industrial policy producing prosperity for the nation that implements them.

But what happens when 40 years of government is bad propaganda leads you to doing one without a second step? Right. We're about to fucking find out, I think. So this is the most, there is no plan plan I've ever seen in my entire fucking life. Like, just an example, he talked to the 8D chess thing. like we've lost $10 trillion in market capitalization

to fix a $1 trillion trade deficit this is not 8D chest this is an orangutan and sticking a bishop up his asshole and smell like it, okay? Yeah. Right. So let me ask you how I've seen people say,

and I'm sure this is part of this thing you're trying to make sense of it, that it's like, it's just a wealth redistribution, it's a regressive tax on, it's just a sales tax effectively. So it's reorienting like tax policy towards working and middle class people and fucking them over at the expense of the rich people, which I mean, I know that it is,

but also the rich people are the ones to have all this shit in the stock market, which just plummeted, right? Like, Dave Portnoy's rich. He's crying on fucking stream every day, about the millions of dollars he's losing. So it's like, it just seems like it's bad for both of them, at least at this stage. So I don't understand, you know, like, well, any of it. I don't understand any of it. But like, so as CNBC anchor, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the,

the business and markets are great sort of channel, a guy was really angry saying, this is a tax clip for the wealthy at the expense of the poor, which it would be if it actually, if goods got in for them to be bought, I don't think goods are going to get in to be bought. So it's really going to be nothing about nothing. It's just not,

they're not going to be any stuff to get. Yeah. Stuff to sell. So anyway. They just said, however many billions or trillions or whatever of dollars just on fire, like a la the Joker and the Dark Night movie. Yeah.

Yeah. This is just purely mad king shit Its emperor has no clothes Times a million Except when the emperor didn't have any clothes All you got to do is look at a guy's gross old dick Right This is just

We gotta look at a guy's gross old dick And also not have food to eat Yeah, right So like so Did we get out far school this At the Trump At the Rose Garden ceremony Where they announced all this dumb shit

Trump brought up how his trade poses working because we got the price of eggs down He got the price of eggs down by speed running in the importation of a bunch of eggs and liquid eggs from turkey because they weren't tariffed. That's why the prices came down. Right. Yeah.

I'm assuming we've since tariff turkey. If he did that today, it would not, it would have the opposite effect, right? It would like, he was only able to do that because he hadn't levied his own tariffs yet. Right. Right. Yeah. So, price, again, the Marlowe from the Wirecrow, price they had going up, baby. So I can't really find a winner and all this.

Usually you think, okay, here's the conspiracy. And yes, I understand that, like, if your huge market collapses, people like Warren Buffett will scoop in and buy the dips and wait the long game for them to go back up, okay? Right. So, yeah, sure. Somebody profits in a market collapse always. But it's very hard to plan to make that happen.

It's a bad plan. In general, Warren Buffett, like just to always go up. But so, like, the only way to make sure. money off this is to like like if someone knew the tariffs announcement was coming and it was going to be this bad and they short they front ran the market with short bets which a couple people can do that yes like the same if you've seen casino royals it's what the sheaf did by trying to blow up the plane um and a guy sort of did yeah but even that is not like I mean that isn't fair right I mean isn't that like a version of insider trade that's something they shouldn't

be allowed to do no anyway no but there's not but the SEC doesn't exist yeah I know who's going to stop them right like this morning a guy he got shamed. paid eight pucks for a blue check mark on Twitter. Changed his handle to Bloomberg and announced that Trump was going to do a 90-day reprieve on the deter. That's where that came from? I was watching, I turned on CNBC just because I knew I was probably going to be talking about this and they're the business people and I'm market dumb or whatever.

And also just see what was even going on. I literally had just woken up. And they were talking about, they were talking about this rumor, this rumor that got out there. There was going to be a 90-day reprieve and I guess the market's temporarily bounced back when that came out. But then they just got an official statement from the White House saying that was fake news. And they were definitely not. And I was like, what the fuck is going on?

So that literally was from a just some random Twitter dip shit or just changed his name to Bloomberg and said it was going to happen. That is so perfectly this era of America. And he caused $4 trillion of movements in the market. It shut up and shut up and shot back down when he realized he was bullshit. But if he was able to get it and make some bets in there, he made a ton of money. So good like good. Again, no SEC. There's no laws here.

Good luck. Congratulations to that guy. Wall Street lost so much money in this. Like I was thinking about the guys in that Financial Times article we quoted before where they said, like, they were so happy because they trumped ones that means they can say the R word and call each other pussy at work again. Right. And I was just, this happened, this market started collapsing. I was like picturing them jumping out of a window like the guys like the stock traders did in 1929, but getting out one last R word on the way down. Yeah.

Or telling the other guy, it's like, you won't do it pussy about killing himself by jumping out of the window. Oh, good. So, like, I heard clips of at least two or three different earnings, because it's the end of the quarter when all this stuff was announced for it. So they're doing earnings calls in the middle of their earnings call, saw their stock price and said, oh, shit. Mm-hmm. I bet.

By the way, I will take back when I said there were no winners in this. I do want to note that Philip Morris stock went up the day the tariffs were announced. I don't really know why. I can guess why. I'm willing to guess that cars running in garage and stock was also... Right. Well, that is actually a thing, isn't it?

Like, sin stocks or whatever? I think they do well in times of, you know, turmoil like this. I think it's like an actual trend, you know, which I mean, makes sense. It's like how Ben's drinking surge during COVID, but liquor stocks went up. Right. All these people are cross purposes and can't even get their story straight or what they believe anymore. There's a weird... Play this clip, Matt, if you got it.

Everyone is taking a hit, including... including billionaires, Elon Musk lost just over $30 billion just on Thursday and Friday, and he's down again today. And by the way, he's in a fight with the point man on tariffs, Peter Navarro. Right. So, yeah, Elon made a video this week saying that tariffs are stupid. We need a joint free market with Europe. So basically, we should take the UK spot after Brexit.

And everybody from the White House told him to fuck off. So if you're wondering why he's on the Alciseis, it's not necessarily because of Wisconsin. Um, so talking about all these people can't get their story straight or at cross purposes. Like some Trump people are saying the tariffs are negotiating like tactic, a starting point for free trade deals with other companies as well. Others are saying they're permanent. And I can't tell who's wishing and who's shitting in their hand. Um, there's also some people, Trump, Trump people saying it's so that we can work in the factories where others are saying that the factories will be automated so the products will be affordable because if Americans work there, they won't be. Like an iPhone will cost like $30,000 or some shit.

Right. but no one's answer to the question is always just like with AI stuff if no one works who's buying the fucking products with what money it's the part of that never really makes sense to me when it comes to their general philosophy they seem to just I don't know be ignorant to it or not care I guess they're just like we'll just either enslave or kill them all it'll be fine but then it's like you said but there's who's still gotta yeah you're still gotta sell the thing that you're making right it's like people even just a whole idea even like trickle down you know is like just such transparently bullshit as an idea because it's been pointed out a million times you give those people more money and they just put it in some fucking hedge fund or whatever but if you give money to regular people they go buy the fucking things that these rich people's companies sell and like you need you need those people it's like i used always when i was a server i peep the church crowd on sunday would come in and be shitty and judgmental and say you know say we should be in church instead and not working there and i was always like internally of course it didn't say anything i was always like somebody's got to bring you your fucking chicken tenders you asshole like someone you want this, someone has to do it for you. Like, you know, but that, anyway, people are just dicks. Henry Ford was literally a Nazi and literally a Nazi and paid his black employees a fair wage because he said, well, who's supposed to buy a Ford if my employees can't afford a Ford? So if the fucking guy who made us all learned square dancing in high school to get rid of jazz music

understood this, why don't, are modern oligarchs? I don't fucking know. Right. They're just going to have sex robots and hang out with each other, I guess. so Scott Bissent went on TV and said that these ideas like oh we need to have the factories because of all the federal workers we fire can go work at the factories

so we've got all the PhDs you laid off who we're doing like research and like renal failure can go work at factories making phone cases which is like that's literally Maoism that's the cultural revolution we're doing the cultural revolution in America now we're getting rid of the academics and making the do labor

yeah I'm just glad they're not Camer Rouge in us yet if I'm saying that right you know where they killed people but with classics, glasses. Yeah. That's easy enough to disguise myself, though. I just want about to see you. Sure. Yeah, I sound very dumb. So maybe that'll, that'll assist me when that day comes.

All right. So they're also saying the tariffs are meant to replace the income tax. But if you, if you're using them to warn shore the manufacturing process, there's no tariffs being paid. Yeah, exactly. Right. So which is it? So yeah, I suppose to replace the income tax. But I thought ostensibly the whole idea is that they're like a deterrent to like initialize. this other thing that you want to happen so people shouldn't even be paying tariffs in a perfect world so how are they a source of revenue and if they are a source of revenue you are counting on that money then you don't want them to do the other thing which you use to justify their existence so you know it's just all one uh feedback loop of nonsensical

horseshit it seems like yeah um as trade sort of explained earlier like a trade deficit is just basically if you buy more stuff from another country and they buy from you right pretty straightforward which again there's a million reasons why that might be the case in any given relationship. We already outlined one with the African country we were talking about earlier. Like, it doesn't make it bad

at all for either side, you know, it's just the reality. You're never going to have, I feel like you would have to have trade. There's always going to be countries where you would, it can't work the other way. Like there can't be just 100% surpluses with everywhere

on account of how math and numbers and shit work. Or just preferences. What if I don't fucking want to eat Canadian baking? Right. Or just even just the reality of where things come from. Like with the coffee or whatever. You can't just make things be from somewhere they're not from or whatever.

So you get that from a place where it's from and we send them something that they ain't got. And it's just how it's all very elementary, you'd think. I don't know what the problem is. The only way to make it one to one is to go back to a pure bartering system. Right. Right. because the other way, like, like, the way buying stuff works with money is you get the thing and the seller gets money. That's not a fucking scam.

Right. Like, by the same logic, this trade deficit bullshit, I have a trade deficit with the grocery store because I buy stuff from them. They don't buy jack shit from me. Right. So, and to state the obvious here about how, like, they think we're getting fucked, but the reason rich countries have trade deficits is because they have more money to buy stuff. That's what I was saying earlier about the whole Lesotho thing or whatever. It's like, again, we're in the superior position that we're the rich country with people in it that have disposable. come to spend on fucking shiny rocks, right?

Right. Like, because it's, we're in a spoiled privilege, prosperous position, right? So we're not getting fucked over by the country where the rocks are in the ground. Like, it's crazy. It doesn't make any sense. Like, yeah, the biggest hit in this countries, I assume, all have many, many trade deficits. Because, like I said, they got more money to spend on shit that they don't even need but want. So why do you want to fuck with that?

I wouldn't even note that his trade deficit is there exactly. He's exaggerated because he doesn't include services in there. And the United States exports a lot of services. Right. So like, even then, like, it's not the trade balance. Trade deficits aren't even as imbalances pretending they are. Okay. But this whole, but the only way to rectify this trade deficit problem is to try to

force Cambodia to divide more forward raptors or something. I don't really understand what the fucking play out. So, so, also like, besides the fact that he, like, it's a stupid idea based on bullshit excludes services. He described the terrace as a reciprocal. and just pretended that other countries have a very high tariffs on American exports, which they do not. They just don't.

So he's just fucking lying to justify a stupid idea. So how does this math even math? That's where it gets even dumber, okay? Oh, good. When he asked the tariff rates, analysts, let me quote here from the story from Wired. When Trump announced the tariff rates, analysts were pretty stunned by the fact that the figures didn't seem to make much sense until a financial journalist figured out that the Trump administration hadn't calculated tariff rates at all.

as they said they had and instead just taking the U.S. trade deficit with a given country and divided it by that country's exports to the United States. As the financial journalist put it, it's extraordinary nonsense. And the day they announced this, at 11 a.m., they had a meeting to discuss how they were going to do it. And it feels like they hadn't done any homework before that point. Because then apparently what happened was someone went off and asked chat GPT, how do you do tariffs on a country? And it spit out this fucking formula.

um so they people figured this out because what they did was they went to they were like let me confirm my suspicions and a bunch of people went to uh to chat gbtt and asked it quote how to impose tariffs easily and they gave you the exact same formula the white house is using that's a bad look so they had a doge in turn go to chat that's what's about say i'm sure it's some big balls esk 19 year old who was tasked with doing that Where else is it going to go other than ChatGPT? Here's what it looks like when you ask Chad GPD the question. You go, what would be an easy way to calculate the tariffs that should be an easy way to calculate the tariffs that should be imposed on other countries so the U.S. is on even playing fields when it comes to a trade to trade deficit, set the minimum with 10%. And it gives you the exact same formula that Trump administration is using. We have our first AI global disaster is what's happening. And all the different AIs for whatever reason have the same stupid idea.

if you asked all the different publicly publicly accessible ones, including GROC. The caveat, if you ask Deep Seek, the Chata, one that's kicking everyone's ass, it did give you the same formula

that Trump administration is using, but it added a caveat saying, this is a stupid idea, don't do it. So Chado stays winning. So another way you know, Jeff G. Did it is because they sanctioned

a bunch of different fucking random islands and rocks that are territories of like legitimate countries. Yeah, I was hoping. I was hoping you'd get into this part and make sense of it for me as you did because, yes, I kept hearing that. It's like we tariffed almost everybody, including uninhabited islands filled with nothing but penguins.

So we put levied tariffs on penguins and stuff, which is, of course. Yeah, we're going to talk about the penguins. But not Russia, Belarus, Cuba, North Korea, right? We're like something the only ones left off the list. And we say it's because there's sanctions on them already. Anyway, who is and is not on the list? I was hoping that you specifically would get into that. list you did, Russia or Korea, Cuba.

Which is like everyone's always in Russia's pocket, sure. But why, like, Cuba, I don't know. Like, it's just like it's, we don't import shit from Cuba really anyway, so what's the fucking point? Well, that's what they said, but then it makes it look weird at a place. We ain't important shit from the penguins either. Do you know what I'm saying? Right.

But that's, but that's more evidence that's Chad GPT, okay? So, like, how computer sees the world, right? Okay. Computer sees countries as eminent domains, internet domains. the reason the Trump tariff schedule included a coordination that consists of uninhabited islands is the organization that handles protocols for handing out internet addresses

based on the national origin of the web address is very liberal about handing them out to avoid conflicts about who exactly counts as a country and who controls what territory. So like a lot of these uninhabit islands are kind of disputed territories. Like for example, like the Falklands in the 80s. Right. Yeah.

So like, but they even fucked up because they wanted to tariff Taiwan so they went in manually and ignored the fact that like again the country that hands out internet domains does it to like try to not take sides

and who belongs to what the Trump administration is the first American administration in forever to recognize Taiwan as a country and they did it by accident by AI told them to to fuck them over with tariffs yeah right

and on this list like the list of tariff countries, you'll find British Indian Ocean Terror Story, which is also known as the Chagos Islands. Nearly all the humans currently on these islands are U.S. military personnel at Diego Garcia military base. The

Diego Garcia base. So Trump just imposed tariffs on our own military base on territory we lease with the only residents are U.S. military because the computer told them to. I doubt they export anything to us, and they probably get their imports directly from U.S. cargo flights,

but like, nothing's going to happen, but this is, this should be fucking embarrassing and stupid, but nobody feels stupid anymore because whatever. So, yeah, so Jack Tapper asked Brooke Rollins as Secretary of Agriculture about the penguins yesterday. Let's listen to them talk about it. Why are you putting import tariffs on islands that are entirely populated by penguins? Well, I mean, that, come on, Jake, obviously, here's about why. She doesn't, she pivots to going back to some other answer because this is so stupid, she can't fucking defend it. it. Okay. Yeah, of course, there is no, there literally is no possible defense for it. I mean,

other than acknowledging, well, we kind of automated that whole deal. And so, you know, there were a few hiccups and we'll get those cleaned up and it'll work like a charm, but they can't tell everybody that they automated it, I guess, because, you know, it's got to be some grandmaster plan that they cooked up or whatever. So. Right. And she's going on to say, the people leading this are serious, intentional, patriotic, the smartest people have ever worked with, uh, which might be true because she was the policy director for then governor, Texas governor Rick Perry most commonly known

for Dancing with the Stars. So she might actually be telling the truth there. Howard Lutnik, you mentioned earlier. He said that they had to tear off the Penguin Island because it was to close a loophole because other countries would just run their commerce through the Penguin Island at the

tip of the coast of Antarctica. Yeah, that'd be simple enough, right? Yeah. Just Jetbozo standing up at Amazon delivery Center in the Arctic manned by elephant seals. This is, oh, God. So a few more comical examples here. The tiny island of St. Pierre El Miquilon, which is off the coast of Canada, but

is part of France, got hit with a 99% tariff because somebody bought $3.4 million worth of goods in July of 2024, which is probably crab, lobsters, and cod. And the 6,000 people that live there only bought $100,000 with the U.S. products. So the trade deficit looks fucking severe. But so, like, the solution to this problem is we don't get to eat cod. One of the highest, you already talked about Lesotho, which was hit with 50% of 50% fucking tariff rate because we buy diamonds from them and they don't buy Buffalo bills jerseys from us or whatever. Right. They, like, I want to quote here, Derek Thompson, the Atlantic, he said, quote, the notion of taxing Lestotho.

gemstones is necessary for the U.S. to add steel jobs in Ohio is so absurd that I briefly lost consciousness in the middle of writing this sentence. Well, that is another thing sort of right. It's like, there was talk about terrorists for a long time and it was focused on like Canada and Mexico and stuff and it's like, these are our allies

with this makes no sense, what the fuck you're doing? But it being on literally, almost literally, everyone. Like it did kind of come sort of out of nowhere, right? Like it was like liberation. Like people did not know it was going to it was going to be like this right because it's like so insane and nonsensical that you would ever do it in the first place well the reason the market didn't

collapse when the announcer was going to be liberation day because they assumed it would be like somewhere around 10% and it'd be like there'd be a bunch of caveats and carveouts and then when he announced how bad the tariffs were they still didn't drop enough as they would if they thought he was being totally serious because they still don't fucking believe him right so the real drop has not happened yet the the tariffs have not kicked in and the markets have not priced in the the the tariffs being at this level. So, yeah, I mean, it's getting real fucking stupid out here. I'm not sure when Wall Street will believe him, probably when they're all dead.

So let's, I want to play this fucking clip of Howard Ludnik here talking about beef. I mean, the European Union won't take chicken from America. They will take lobsters from America. They hate our beef because our beef is beautiful and theirs is wheat. I mean, you're right. So the reason Europe doesn't take our beef is because they don't like how much hormones and antibiotics we inject into it. Sure. Which, fair.

But I don't really know the science behind. I think it's probably fine to have some of the antibiotics and some of the hormones or that's cruel to the cattle. Maybe that's the reason why. But either way, like, they're making noise about how, like, Australia doesn't import our beef. American beef producers do not want to export to Canada because they make more money selling it here. They're trying to force our farmers to sell. beef overseas, they don't want to. Right.

Yeah. And I'm sorry, you said their beef is weak, but it's like, I mean, considering how marbling works and how fat hits and stuff, I feel like you might want a weaker beef, actually. That's also kind of the science, the idea behind the horrific pursuit, that's not the right word. Veal, how we make veal, you know, like you want them to be soft and fat and weak, so you just shove them in a cage and fill them with grain until they almost explode and then they get real juicy.

So anyway, I just want to digress. You're kind of weak, and there's, I think he's, like, talking about the steroids? Yeah, probably. Yeah, we pumped full of hormone. We got big old jacked bulls with big big old American bull dicks, Mark. And they got little pansy-ass French bulls fucking traipsing around the countryside over there. And I'm saying, even if that's true, I bet those, you know, little wispy French bulls might arguably taste better, is all I'm saying. Just so right now.

But they're not as profitable because they're smaller. There's less of them. Yes. Right. Of course. I'm glad we got to. I'm glad we figured all that out. I, like, I'm trying to figure out.

Like, I thought the whole point of that Manhattan, the Make America Healthy Movement again, it was like, they don't, people don't want the hormones and the beef. Right. There's an idea here. We import the weak and gay European cattle without the steroids and we make the Europeans eat the steroid cat. I don't know, but like Brooke, Brooke Rawlins in that same Jake Tapper review went on to say, complained about the European Union doesn't take our pork. and Tapper brought up the fucking the hormones using pork thing

and she said Brooke Rollins said they're using fake science and unsubstantiated claims to not take our products which yes but who else is using fake science to say it like anyway

you guys made RFK Jr. the goddamn health and human services secretary what are we doing like the whole thing about like people are thinking you're not going to be able to get vanilla in the United States anymore

like oh well somebody a bunch of mega people on the internet were like well what does vanilla in besides ice cream bullshit I'll fucking put my foot down on that. Somebody who took up baking during COVID and now is a big devotee of it. They don't know what the fuck they're talking about.

Vanilla is the sweet version of garlic where it's like, I don't care what the recipe says. You just put it in there until it hits. But it's in almost everything that hit. Yeah, right. No, vanilla's like perhaps the most crucial ingredient in baking outside of like obviously flour and sugar or whatever. But yeah, no. anybody don't anybody ain't putting respect on vanilla's name they can take it up with me because they're fucking idiots right so we need vanilla we need vanilla we got an administration where r fk junior is going to be trying to ban like red dye number seven or whatever at the same time they're going to make him go out and argue that imitation of vanilla which is made from petrochemicals of wood pulp is better for you than real vanilla right that's where we're fucking headed and we are so goddamn stupid as a people man i mean CNN to this focus group of people uh

In your own word, CNN's audience shares their thoughts on Trump's tariff. It's a woman from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. I am planning on growing all our produce this year. Harrisburg is a suburb in central Pennsylvania. So she's saying she's going to grow bananas in her suburban yard in Pennsylvania. Look, I don't know, like somebody grew up on a farm here. Farming's fucking hard. Yeah.

You need a lot of land to do it. Bro, not even just farm. Even if you're just talking about for your, you know, My Ma Ma'amah used to always keep a garden and shit that we ate plenty of stuff out of every year. And it, like, and it hit real hard for me, by the way. But just gardening, that shit's harder than people think it is. I know it's like that whole like green thumb thing is a real thing. We've tried various things growing them out here.

And we can't, you know, you can't just throw seeds in the ground and hope for the fucking best. You got to know what you're doing a little bit. Also, if you go a few months of that rain, you starve to death, right? Yeah. There's a reason that's the reason people stop living that way. So, yeah. So, like, we had, we had, like, a garden at our house. It was, like, four or five acres.

So calling a garden's a bit fucking small, but we call it at a garden. And we had another acre of corn that we try to sell a roadside stand or whatever. But, like, my dad was able to do this because he worked in the garden all weekend, every weekend, had three children to do free labor. And we still had to buy vegetables because it wasn't enough. This reminds me the whole trad wife influencer thing with all these women on Instagram. Right. Yeah. And I'm looking at like people are like like like as aspirational like it does look like it does look like a decent life to be like I'm a stay at home mom who takes care of this hobby farm and I have six beautiful blonde haired white children.

But I'm looking at that. I'm like that's a millionaire. Oh yeah. That's a fucking millionaire. That's not like that's not a sustainable way for everyone to live. So like like I don't understand why people think that's possible. But to the scenario we're in, it's basically back in the 70s. U.S. business oligarchs, fucking funded a counterattack against the New Deal.

They deliberately dumbed everybody down in the entire population, made college unaffordable, and they wiped out the good jobs you could do without a college degree, and our country is pissed off fucking morons who think they can farm in their backyard in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, enough food to live on for the year. Yeah. Now, yeah, we mean and dumb. That's the order of the day, for sure. And it seems to only, you know, and they're only, they're pushing even.

further, you know, they're trying to basically just get rid of what schools we do have. And they're always, you know, talking shit about, you know, like playing to people's meanness instincts as well. So mean and dumb is what they won't, I guess. I don't know why you need the mean part. I guess so you got a, I guess so you got a bad guy to, you know, to get people rallied against, you know, if they weren't mean, they wouldn't hate Mexicans and Muslims and other immigrants and stuff. So I guess that's why you need it. But it's a shame. As far as China's part in this And China's not going to lay down on this trade deal

They don't have to We import way more stuff from them Than they do from us And they have plenty of markets That can sell here Of course, yeah And they're worth paying the price of this trade war To fucking watch us eat shit

Which is why they haven't raised A single people about us Accidentally recognizing Taiwan As an independent country Uh, China China rolled out flying cars the other day By the way We have measles

I'm not I'm not trying to do Like Pro Joddy's propaganda Should go way to frame that. Yeah. Like, not everybody in China, like a lot of poor people and oppressed people in China who don't have access to the flying cars. I'm not doing poor Chinese. Like, we've still, on the net for the moment, I'd still rather live here, okay?

But I want to quote here from the economist, China enters the new age of MAGA stronger than in Mr. Trump's first term. President Xi Jinping has long argued that America is too polarized and overstretched to sustain its global goal. His paranoid nationalism used to seem like dystopian hyperbole. now that Mr. Trump is committing such want and self-harm and general destruction, it looks ahead of its time. Yeah, so if you follow Chinese policy announcements closely, their Chinese century inflection point was supposed to be 2050. Okay. The 25-year difference between 2050 and now is the gap between their belief in American competence and America's actual competence. Right.

Yeah, we're just get, yeah. they overestimated us yeah didn't realize how dumb we could be dumb and incompetent to be fair I didn't either do we have a couple of minutes yeah we got we got about

well I mean not really we got like a minute left so do you want to just close it up or do you want to mention something I want to mention one last thing here in case you think any of these people are smart or know what you're doing Howard Lucknick the Commerce Secretary

we talked about a few times today he came up at Canter Fitzgerald started there in 1983 he worked his way up to CEO She's like, oh, he knows what he's doing. When he left Cantor to become Trump's Commerce Secretary, the people he put in charge of the company were his two sons. One of them, Kyle, in his 20s, used to SoundCloud rap under the name KZ KXTZ. So if you have money at Canter, it's run by a guy who thought it was a wise time investment to rap at Stanford.

And his dad, the guy in charge of the U.S. Department of Commerce, thought that was a smart hire. and I want everyone to disbues themselves as a notion that any of these people have any fucking idea what they're doing. Nope. Fail suns all the way down, baby. Yes. Anyway, all right, well, thank you guys for watching.

Hang in there. All right, we'll see. I will document how it goes as we head further down into the, you know, the depths of this hellscape. But we appreciate you watching. Like I said, go to tradecrouter.com and check out my upcoming tour dates

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