Trump Cranks Up Tariffs on China
09:36 Share

uh yeah so tariffs uh at least as a recording they've gone up to 245 percent we're getting close to that 1776 percent uh one of our nice audience members suggested what about uh 84. i think he misspoke on that podcast but it was eight i mean eight nine six four i think that's a great idea if you understand what that means if you know you know right

You don't know, do you, Matt? You need Shelly to explain it to you. I don't. But I do think that 245% is pretty intense at this point. But it doesn't apply to everything. No. And I think people also are misunderstanding that tariff costs apply to the... They don't apply to the retail cost. Right. So it applies to whatever the...

I don't know if you call it wholesale or the base cost of the production. So that's one of the things that we covered in an episode this week about how

China has been evading tariffs in the past where like they go and they say oh well this batch of things that cost $100,000 on the paperwork it only cost $10,000. Yeah, there's like two invoices when they when they show the invoice to like the people at the dock in the US it's like they've reduced the price and

And then they don't, yeah, they only have to pay the cost on the $10,000 or whatever. I mean, the thing that does make it a trade war, sorry, Christopher Balding, is that each side is trying to fight each other and undermining the tactics, coming up with new tactics, back and forth. What's been the CCP's response to 245% tariffs?

I mean generally more of the same the propaganda push of like oh this is this is not going to hurt that I thought it was it was great that after JD Vance had that whole speech about you know we're depending on like Chinese peasants uh-huh then there was the Chinese official who's in charge of Hong Kong and Macau who was basically like American peasants won't be able to withstand 5,000 years of Chinese history

Which okay, what does that have to do with well? I mean it's stupid because it's well I mean one it's the famed diplomatic tactic of I am rubber and you are glue Yes, yes, but I wasn't sure how the Chinese history

Oh, it's, you know, it's the CCP claiming the 5,000 years of history. Right. After trying to destroy it for so long, but like this giant, unmovable monolith of Chinese civilization versus America. It's like what? Like a hundred years old at most? I mean. Crumbled. Dust in the wind. Just, you know what is a hundred years old? The CCP. Oh, ouch. Yeah. Ouch. I should retweet that at him.

get into an argument online with a Chinese official. Don't worry, because they're not going to let you back into Hong Kong anyway. That's true. I miss the Macau egg tarts. But so, yes. You can get those in Portugal. I can get those in Portugal. You can get those. Yeah, I was going to say, you can get them right here.

Well, I mean, the OG is in Portugal, and then they went to Macau, and then they went to Flushing. That's right. With some upgrades. Well, there is trade, Chris. Egg tarts are symbolic of how trade will persist despite tariffs. Or it's how China steals something and then sells it back to us. Well... I don't think they stole the Portuguese egg tarts. I'm pretty sure the Portuguese...

Anyway. Brought them to Macau. Brought them to Macau, and then they stole the recipe and are making their own filled with lead, melamine. Those are the only ingredients in the egg tarts that you get from China now. Yeah, but you know what? They're so good. Yeah. I mean, melamine. That is good. I have had Portuguese egg tarts at the bakery that invented them. Oh, aren't you fancy? You've been to Portugal. Well, so have you.

Yeah, when I was a child. We, oh God, this is, we're trying to talk about tariffs. We tried the place that supposedly created General Tso's chicken. Oh, in Taiwan? In Taiwan. And it wasn't good. I thought it was good. No. It wasn't, it didn't have that deep fried deliciousness that I was expecting. I mean, it didn't taste like American, like Chinese. Yeah, it wasn't good.

Right like what I want is a better version of what you get at the local Panda Garden takeout God's a tariffs China's responding, you know with its propaganda campaign which has a lot of different factors to it We could we could talk about the the fashion thing. Oh, yeah moment One thing I thought was interesting is I mean

The interesting thing about any battle between particularly a Trump administration and China is that then you have the U.S. media that hates Trump and needs to make everything he does the worst possible decision. So not only are we dealing with Chinese propaganda, we also have like disinformation from U.S. media. And I think a big one was about this current round of tariffs.

uh trump walked back the or temporarily suspended the tariffs on electronics and this was framed as like oh see he's already caving yes and then this was take this was taken up by um chinese propaganda online like oh yeah xi jinping he does nothing and win art of war

But that isn't what happened. One, it was just a temporary suspension of these most recent tariffs and Trump's earlier tariffs of like a flat 20% on all Chinese goods

Including iPhones, laptops. I mean, I guess I can understand how if you say you're going to go from 20 to 125 and then you say, well, no, we're going to take the 125 down on electronic goods. And people I can see why people would see that as like, oh, well, the 20 doesn't really matter. Or maybe forget about the 20 percent, you know, because it is a problem.

Much less than 125. Yeah. I think Howard Lutnick, the Commerce Secretary, was on some of the Sunday shows last week where he said that there will be those tariffs on the electronics, but they're just going to come like in the next batch or something like that. So it wasn't like...

Obviously, there's a big effect on American companies too. Although I personally don't care if Apple's profits hurt a little bit. Well, the interesting thing is most recently Trump just met with Modi and like Modi is talking about

expanding India's ability to produce, to manufacture things. Right. So India is really setting itself up as to be maybe the next world manufacturer. I would buy my iPhone if I had a choice between made in China and made in India. I think all of us would choose made in India. Yeah, and they make a lot of iPhones already. They do, but they're currently only for the Indian market or local surrounding areas. Like you can't get...

in the US, well, the last time I bought, you know, an iPhone was a couple of years ago in an Apple store. Like I asked them if there was any choice and they're like, no, they're all made in China here in the US. Yeah, I mean, I think they're still just ramping up production, right? Like they can't go from zero to like supplying the world with iPhones yet. I mean, they need literally hundreds of millions of iPhones. Like it's so many iPhones. That's, you know, there's only so many children in the Congo mining cobalt.

I know, well that's a real limitation. Well that doesn't have anything to do with where the finished products are assembled. Shelley, children yearn for the mines. That's why the Minecraft movie is so popular. It's going to make so much money. You want to see it, Matt? I know we both like Minecraft. I would go see the Minecraft movie with you, yes.

Sweet, man. I got a date. See you later, Shelly. Yeah, have fun, guys. We will. It's the Minecraft movie. Exactly, Shelly. Mindless slop. And popcorn. Yeah, I'm more kind of like, do I want to watch Jack Black and Jason Momoa?

The characters of themselves. Yeah, kind of do like a Laurel and Hardy routine or something. Yeah. But they have the children yearn for the minds meme in the movie. Oh, really? Yeah. Okay, so this is just like a movie that's... And like a wink and a nod to all of the stuff, probably. Yeah. I did see, I mean, this is so off topic now, but I did see some Instagram reels of young men in the theaters, like losing their minds when...

Like the chicken jockey comes up and like yelling and throwing popcorn and like, yeah, it looks like a good time that I will happily avoid. So trade war tariffs. Let's see if we can stay on that. Do we have more? We wanted to talk about that. Well, there's a fashion thing. Yeah. I do think that what's interesting is.

Thank you for watching this clip. I know you want to see more of me, Shelley, and Matt's mustache. So now it's time to watch our full hour-long podcast. It's available only for subscribers on our website, ChinaUncensored.tv. So check it out, join the fun, and support what we do at the same time. The link is below.