2/4/25: Dem Sen Admits USAID CIA Front, Trump Calls Off Tariffs, Temu Screwed From China Tariffs
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Full shows, unedited, ad-free, and all put together for you every morning in your inbox. We need your help to build the future of independent news media, and we hope to see you at BreakingPoints.com. Good morning, everybody. Happy Tuesday. Have an amazing show for everybody today. What do we have, Priscilla? Indeed we do. Many things unfolding in this town, as per usual. The showdown over USAID continues as Elon Musk's hostile takeover of the government also continues. Canada and Mexico tariffs are off.

at least temporarily. China tariffs still on. Sagar and I are going to talk about it. Matt Stiller is also going to join to weigh in on this particular tariff regime as floated. And he is also going to talk to us about some of the movement at National Labor Relations Board, which has effectively been gutted at this point, the Securities Exchange Commission, the CFPB, that's like the anti-scam agency, which also enforcement actions seem to have been gutted there as well. So he'll weigh in on all of that.

The DOJ out with a new DEI program, this one to combat anti-Semitism, taking some shots from both left and right, not too happy about this particular direction. And Anthony Lowenstein is gonna join us to talk about his new documentary about the way that weapons systems have been tested in Gaza and Palestine in general, but specifically in Gaza post-October 7th. And he's also going to weigh in on the latest developments with regards to Bibi's visit to the U.S., which is today. He's also already announced he's gonna

visit soccer. That's right. He's extending it. We get him in town for a little extra time. There are a lot of open secrets, right? In terms of admitting where your bread is buttered, in terms of what really all matters. There was an interesting meeting yesterday with Steve Witkoff and with Mike Walsh at Blair House. I am tapping my sources to find out about the laundry crystal.

That's all I can think about. I got to know whether it's true or what. Maybe he's been shamed into stopping it. But all right, let's get to USAID. So Elon Musk's takeover of the government continues. Trump yesterday in the Oval Office was asked a little bit about his thoughts on how all of this is going. Let's take a listen to that. They're finding tremendous waste, waste.

uh, really waste more than anything else, I think you could say. Probably fraud and abuse can be added to it. The more standard waste, fraud and abuse. But they're finding tremendous amounts of, uh, really bad things, bad spending. Elon can't do and won't do anything without our approval. And we'll give him the approval where appropriate. Where not appropriate, we won't. But, uh, he reports in and he, uh,

It's something that he feels very strongly about, and I'm impressed because he's running, obviously, a big company. It has nothing to do with this. There's a conflict that we won't let him get near it, but he does have a good natural instinct. He's got a team of very talented people. The first term at USAID was something that you liked in some respects. I love the concept of it. Sure, I love the concept, but they turned out to be radical left lunatics.

And the concept of it is good, but it's all about the people. Mr. President, would you take an act of Congress to do away with USAID? I don't know. I don't think so. Not when it comes to fraud. If there's fraud, these people are lunatics. And if it comes to fraud, you wouldn't have an act of Congress. And I'm not sure that you would anyway. But we just want to do the right thing.

It's something that should have been done a long time ago. So weighing in there specifically on Elon's conflicts of interest and also on the USAID push to effectively dismantle that organization, bring it under the State Department. More on that in just a moment. Democrats are starting to try to make a stand with regard to USAID in particular. You know, the conflict of interest piece.

is also quite important. Elon obviously has massive conflicts of interest across the entire federal government. Just as one example, you know, we documented yesterday how he and his cronies gain access to the Treasury payment system. I mean, Elon wants to turn Twitter into a payment processor, not to mention that for any tech overlord, having access to all of our

data, kind of an important and valuable commodity. I also was just reading that apparently he was influential in the pick that Trump made for the head of the Air Force. And it's a guy who, lo and behold, was very influential in getting SpaceX contracts for Elon. So he is officially, we now know, Sagar, a special government employee. I think Caroline Levitt said that yesterday. There's actually criminal statute,

criminal statute that governs the way you have to operate and the way you have to avoid any potential conflicts of interest when you are in that special government employee capacity. This is usually people who are brought in on sort of like a temporary basis as specific experts in a field. That is the designation that Elon has. So, I mean, it's just...

it's wild what's going on. That status is the same one that was used by Ivanka and by Jared because they also didn't draw salaries last time they were in the White House. But as you said, it's actually legally important. I think you sent this Richard Painter, who's a government ethics expert, says a special government employee still have to abide by conflict of interest laws. And I actually, what I took away the most from the Trump comments is I think he could see some of the dangers here that are ahead. Yeah.

with Elon because he's like, well, we'll give him permission whenever we need to. Anything he doesn't need to, we'll take it away from him. They are saying that it's, quote, read-only access to the Treasury payments, et cetera. But no, you're absolutely right about that data. I mean, this...

Kind of brings us back to our big debate yesterday, though. And look, I hate to give credit where it is, but mounting a fight about USAID is politically genius in a few ways. Let's put this up there on the screen, for example, where we have members of Congress attempting to enter USAID. This is A3, guys. Yeah, there we go. They've given some speeches around this as well.

The thing that I'm kind of like thinking about with all of this, and it gets to what we were talking about yesterday, is at the end of the day, not only are we talking about an agency with 0.7% of the federal budget, which is now getting rolled into the State Department, but mounting a fight on USAID, which again, some of the least popular elements of the federal government, which is foreign aid to other nations, just doesn't seem like the ground for the Democrats where I would want to be.

And we're going to play some of the quiet part out loud things about what USAID is. I thought, you know, the strongest ground that the Democrats or opposition to Trump have had so far is on tariffs, on Medicare, Meals on Wheels. Obviously, they abandoned all three of those, unfortunately, in the tariff case. We can talk about that in a bit. But the ground of fighting for USAID just doesn't seem like one of those political—

To do it, you have to be reading the news and really involved. And be like, okay, so Iran has gained access and they've rolled it onto the State Department. It's like, well, they've kind of already lost it. And then people are like, well, how does it affect my life? It's like, well, some Malawian healthcare program may get cut. And people are like, okay, well, why were we even paying for that in the first place? So I'm just not sure this is the right move for the Democrats.

The Medicare one, the Meals on Wheels, absolutely. But I mean, I think it's very telling, right, that immediately the Trump administration bucked on that, where picking a fight on USAID, one of the smallest agencies, the only agency smaller than USAID is USTR, the US Trade Representative, 0.7% of the federal budget. Overwhelmingly, if you were to poll this stuff, super unpopular, maybe PEPFAR.

You know, it was the only one where people were like, okay. The rest of it, I mean, we'll talk about the, you know, money laundering and the CIA ops and all the other malfeasance and fraud that's run through USAID over the years. I just, I don't think this is it. Like, I feel like the Dems are searching for something. And this is where they're like, we're mounting our stand here for USAID. I mean, you know, like, are we really weeping tears for foreign aid programs? I'm not. I think...

You make some good points there, but I think that that is intentionally why they went after USAID first. No, I agree. That's what I'm saying. You have to give them credit for being smart. I mean, first, I think there may be also a personal element here because USAID was also involved in pushing for the end of apartheid. So there may be some personal South African hurt feelings there. Not a joke. Is that true? Yeah, that's true. Okay.

Well, blame Reagan, right?

that give it statutory authority as its own independent agency, if you can get away with that, then you can get away with anything. And we already know that, you know, Elon and Trump have both projected Department of Education is next. And, you know, that'll be a more difficult fight because people like their kids being educated. And there's a lot of funding that goes for, you know, for poor kids and for kids with special needs and for school lunches and things like that that come from the federal government.

But if you've already been able to dismantle one agency without a fight, then guess what? You are going to be able to do everything you want to do. And so, you know, we'll get to the rest of the elements here in just a second. But I do think it's useful to kind of zoom out and ask yourself, what is Elon's project here? And we've talked about this before. Mm-hmm.

Elon's ideology is not the same as what Trump ran on in 2016 at his sort of populist peak.

Elon is a fan of Javier Millay. Elon is an anarcho-capitalist. Elon is a fan of Curtis Yarvin, who thinks that we should have literal techno-feudalism. I know this sounds crazy, but Elon is a dramatic, he is an hardened ideological actor. So what does it mean if you're an anarcho-capitalist, if you believe in this like techno-feudalist project? He thinks he should basically run as a CEO of

the country, the government, the world, really. I think that is his, I know it sounds crazy, but that is his project. And you can listen to the way he talks about these things. I mean, his grand plans to like, you know, have a civilization on Mars and all of these sorts of things.

So, if that's your ideology and that's your goal, what you want to do is completely take apart the federal government. And you hear this not just in Elon's rhetoric, you also hear it echoed now in Trump's rhetoric, who talks about how his goal is for all federal government employees to be private sector employees. That's anarcho-capitalism. That means even the parts of the state that you like, the pieces that deliver for grandma and Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, all of that.

He wants to take and acts to. Elon has told friends that his entire metric is just how much I can cut. Not how much of the, you know, the fat and the fraud and the abuse and the parts that everybody would be like, okay, fine. Yes, cut that piece. He measures his success by just

How much of the federal government can he take and ask to? Now, do I think that he is going to be able to realize his anarcho-capitalist no state whatsoever dream? No. I think at some point the state is going to reassert themselves. You know, Trump still has control of the military, for example. At any point, he could get sick of Elon and say, all right, we're done. You're out. Goodbye.

But do I think a lot of damage could be done in the meantime? Yes, absolutely. And I also and this is where, you know, I want to come back a little bit to what we were saying yesterday and perhaps make a more persuasive argument about what I mean when I say people didn't vote for this. I'm not saying they didn't vote for like, you know, cutting some waste, fraud, abuse, etc., etc.,

But the Trumpist ideology, which is really like the Steve Bannon, like that's the OG MAGA ideology, that was what was sold to people. And this is not that, right? This is not the political project that you're – this is not populist, right? This isn't the political project you've been engaged in. This is something else entirely different.

Trump seems to have bought into it and seems to have given Elon, for now, the keys to the kingdom to do whatever he wants, up to and including dismantling entire federal government agencies, accessing whatever classified information he wants to, accessing your social security numbers and private data, accessing the system, the Treasury payment system, which controls everything.

of the money that goes out from the federal government. So if you imagine like, you know, it's like if Fort Knox actually held all of the like taxpayer dollars and gold and whatever, the richest man on the planet who has incredible conflicts of interest and a really radical ideology now has keys to that, you know, theoretical Fort Knox.

That's where we are right now. And that's why I find it so deeply, deeply disturbing and why even though this is, you're right about USAID not being the best ground for Democrats to fight on, why I think they feel like, all right, well, we got to do something here. I get where they're coming from. This is part of the problem. And this is where honesty is important. Not even Steve Bannon would tell you that he's in control of the federal government.

right? The Bannonist 2016 vision was almost immediately- Clarify. Not even Steve Bannon would say that who is- That his ideology in that 2016 vision, right? I mean, what is he actively doing? No, he sees Elon as a threat. He knows, but part of the problem for a lot of the people who share my beliefs is let's look at the track record. Trump in 2017 to 2021 governs effectively as like a, what,

cultural right warrior with George W. Bush flavor? Yeah. Well, he comes 40,000 votes away from winning the presidency. Then over the interim four years, assembles a coalition effectively of people who hate Biden. And within that, there's not a lot being sold there except for no more illegal immigration. The rest of it is really up for grabs. And so part of the new coalition, quote unquote, of the people who

signed up for Trump, I do think it does include some dope. Now, look, I hope that some of it is for the stuff that I've said here, but I have to be honest. I mean, tariffs are overwhelmingly unpopular. We're going to talk about that. People like cheap shit. They don't care if their TikTok comes from China or whatever. They want to live a pretty basic life, and they don't really want to think much about bigger things. Now, I think it's incumbent on the feds and on leaders like Trump and J.D. to make their case as to why they're important, but it's tough in a country like this where

Debt and all that is very, very high. Where I do think the doge of the USAID, the Department of Education, there is a feeling within the intellectual and I think within the suburban right of things have gotten out of control. Now, I think with the USAID, it's actually literally not disputable that the agency has been involved in insane –

fraud, CIA coups, basically a front for State Department for soft power, you know, and all that, if you want to call it. Funneling money is money laundering to NGOs. But even, you know, you're talking about the Department of Education. So you're not wrong. People support Head Start. People support, you know, federal dollars coming into schools. Yeah. I don't think the majority of schools are funded by the feds. I think it's like 20 something percent, right? It's about 10. It depends on the individual school district. Correct. Yes. And poor school districts,

- Rely more on federal funding. - More on federal funding. So they would be the ones that would be more impacted. Overall, it's about 10% of funding that comes from federal government. - But where does the MAGA, DOGE instinct to say, "Screw the DOE." It's not just libertarian right. It's, well, let's be honest, it's about a lot of DEI or trans, what was it, Title IX, I think that's what it's called.

that went through in terms of gender, pronouns, et cetera. That's where the instinct has now come from is like these institutions have been used for good purposes but turned against us so we're going to dismantle them. And if it does stick to that, as long as the dollars keep flowing, will people really notice at the end of the day? My instinct is probably not and it's probably going to be, yeah,

I mean, and if you sold it to me that way and you're like, look, we're going to get rid of this gender DEI stuff and all these bureaucrats, nobody really knows what they do and the dollars and the checks keep getting cut to all the states. I'm like, well, okay. You know, you need some administrators. That's where the instinct comes.

Now, I get what you're saying. And I think you're right. If they actually impact FAA, NOAA, the oceanic, the people who track the hurricanes, I always use that example because, like, who's against that? You know, the guy who flies into the middle of a hurricane is like, oh, it's category 4.5 now. It's awesome, right? It's a cool job. Or...

Coast Guard. There's a million different little things even that are non-DOD. They're actually pretty popular. That's why they start with USAID. Now, I think Doge in practice is going to look a lot like this. USAID total is 0.7. Let's say they cut

what, 5% of the, you know, 0.7% of the federal budget. It's like, okay, we're going to declare victory. This actually kind of gets to the tariff conversation we're going to have in a little bit about, well, what really changed here, you know, in terms of what we want. But vibe-wise, that's really important for both the media and for people to feel as if these parts of the federal government are getting pared back as long as their essential services are

go to them. And so that's why I think it is a big mistake. And I feel rudderless and almost religious the way that the Democrats are reacting here to USAID. I mean, you and I both know a key tenant of neoliberalism are functions like USAID and others. They're literally admitting this stuff out loud. A normal person at home goes, what? Like, I don't care about Malawian health care. I actually think that that is true because I looked at that.

some of the polling on this and some 60% of Americans want the U.S. to be a global leader in health. The PEPFAR program, the PEPFAR program in terms of, you know, like dealing with AIDS and HIV globally has been a tremendous success as George W. Bush program, et cetera, et cetera.

tremendously popular, dealing with malaria. I mean, USAID helped to combat Ebola. So yes, is it a, I mean, the whole project of USAID is soft power protection. That is what it is. Well, if it was just that, I think it'd be fine. But here's the thing though, is like a couple pieces just to get to the actual substance with regard to USAID. I mean, first of all, you've got a lot of people on Twitter who didn't know what USAID was three days ago who suddenly are convinced that it's nothing but CIA. That's all politics. That's number one.

Number two, I think the notion that subsuming USAID under the State Department is going to make it less nefarious is kind of preposterous. Number three, listen, there is also just a key principle here of –

Congress is, if you don't like USAID, if you don't like what they're doing, that's fine. Have that debate. We have elected representatives. Republicans have control of the House and the Senate. So you have to go through those channels in order to dismantle a congressionally authorized independent agency. That is what the Constitution says.

So not to mention, as I said before, I think you really have to keep in mind what the broader project is here from Elon. And Trump really has nothing to do with it at this point. I think it's pretty clear at every juncture when Trump could arrange Elon in and said, you know, he backs them on H-1Bs. He backs them here. He gives them the Air Force secretary he wants like everything.

I don't think Trump really cares that much outside of the areas of his interest, tariffs and whatever else. Tariffs and immigration. Turning on the water in California, his performative stuff. Those are the things he cares about. Everything else, I don't think he really gives a shit. Elon's feeding him talking points about South African farmers now. So you know who is in real control.

Elon's project is not just about USAID. It's not just about the Department of Education. It's about dismantling as much of the federal government as he possibly can. And so the USAID thing, it's a trial balloon.

what can we get away with? And that is the way that everyone needs to understand what's going on. So regardless of how you feel about USAID, I've got my own issues with it. You know, I'm happy to see the Imperial project being sort of pulled back in this sort of way, but I'm also not a

fool to think that that's really what's going on when you are talking about an administration that is openly actually embracing an old school imperial mentality a la William McKinley. Let's buy Greenland. Let's invade Panama. Let's try to make Canada the 51st state. Let's go to war with Mexico. I'm not enough of a fool to think that they're actually intentionally rolling back empire.

Elon wants to make it so that the federal government is not strong enough, is not stronger than him. Right. That's the bottom line. He wants to be able to do everything that he wants to do. He wants to be able to profit as much as he can off of your taxpayer dollars. And that is the broader project that is at work. I don't disagree with a word that you just said. I think what I get to, again, is trying to analyze how it will look like in practice and to the voter.

And that's why I come back to this Democratic thing. I think another problem, though, where you're talking about institutions, there's so many norms and other things have not only been blown up by Trump, but over the years, what I have seen more is we talked about this a little bit yesterday, right, with norms. For example, I mean, how many times have I listened to David Sirota and others criticize Biden for not legalizing weed on day one, for not canceling all student debt? But they don't care about Congress.

Okay, but Crystal, they don't care about Congress whenever it's about something they want to do. When Obama wants to legalize millions of illegal immigrants literally overnight and create an amnesty illegal program called DACA, oh, everybody's fine with it then, right? So there is a lot of hypocrisy here in terms of like which principles and which norms. This is way above and beyond like overruling the parliamentarian or something. Come on.

No, no, no. I agree. I think we're living through the most extraordinary takeover of the federal government since the 100 days over FDR. And if we look back to that time period, and I know many of the people who have read the same books that I have, is what did FDR learn? FDR said, I don't give a shit about Congress, and I don't give a shit about the Supreme Court. Civilian Conservation Corps, WPA, we are going to throw everything at the wall. And actually, the people who pared it back became way less popular. People hated it.

Hated the Supreme Court. But those things did pass through Congress. No, but actually many of them either were passed through Congress or were created artificially by his program. I mean, many of the criticisms of the Republicans of FDR in that time period rhyme exactly here. Like, hey, what about the power of the purse? And he's like, I'm a king. I just got elected with this and this. Not the same, but the spirit is.

The thing is, is that if you look back at that time period, the population overwhelmingly backed aggressive federal executive action. And I think what's happening here is, I mean, Yarvin himself is a student of FDR, probably more so than anybody else in that project. And what they understood is that

at a popular level, by doing this, they were basically able to win 90, almost 80% of what they wanted to and that the norms and all of that were fake all along. So, first of all, I don't accept the equivalence between what is being done here and, like, the lawlessness that is being executed here and the total disregard for the Constitution versus FDR. But in addition, just to make the point on the popular piece, which...

I don't think so is important because it matters in terms of how people are going to react to this.

You know, FDR was like creating jobs and health care programs and things that were delivering for people materially. This is the opposite of that. This is destroying things that people currently enjoy and take for granted from the federal government. That's the program. That's the project. So, again, in theory, in the abstract, do people support cutting the federal government? Of course. Sure. Of course. Do they support rolling back free school lunch for poor kids? No. No.

Probably 85% of the country would say no to that. Do they support rolling back Pell Grants, also under the Department of Education? No, they do not support that. Do they support rolling back federal funding for poor districts or any school district? I mean, one of the cautionary tales I think that people should look at is back during the teacher strike wave, which hit red states.

Red states in particular, rural red areas, take public education very seriously. And I think you're right.

that there is, you know, there was a reaction against like this sense, oh my God, my kids are being indoctrinated, blah, blah, blah. But if you go after people's school districts in those towns, those are institutions of small town America. You will have a fight on your hands. So with USAID, I do think, you know, I don't think it's as popular as you do, but I do think it is the most low hanging fruit, which is exactly why they went after it first. But if you think that

that this project doesn't have in its sights things that you or you or anyone out there appreciates and enjoys and takes for granted. Oh, food safety, hurricane tracking, planes not crashing into each other and falling out of the sky, Medicare, Social Security. You're a fool. So the question is, when will this be reined in? How far does it go?

I'll go ahead and play since we've been teasing it for like 18 minutes now. The Democrats finally showed up. I don't know what they've been up to, but not a whole lot. But they finally showed up at the USAID building to protest the fact that it has been shuttered. I'll give you some more of the details here in just a minute.

about the employees have been told not to show up at the headquarters. Today, they've been told not to show up at any of the USAID buildings. People who are overseas right now have been blocked access from their government security apps and from their communications, et cetera. So Democrats showed up there to make a stand.

not always in the most effective way. Let's take a listen to how that went down. USAID fights terrorist groups all across this world, making sure that we address the underlying causes for a retreat to terrorism. USAID chases China all around the world, making sure that China doesn't monopolize contracts for critical minerals and port infrastructure all around the world.

It supports freedom fighters everywhere in this world. We are witnessing a constitutional crisis. We talked about Trump wanting to be a dictator on day one, and here we are. This is what the beginning of dictatorship looks like.

And Elon, if you want to run AID, get nominated by Trump and go to the Senate and good luck in getting confirmed. Elon Musk, you didn't create U.S. aid. The United States Congress did for the American people.

And just like Elon Musk did not create USAID, he doesn't have the power to destroy it. And who's going to stop him? We are! We're going to stop him! Elon Musk, you may have illegally seized power over the financial payment systems of the United States Department of Treasury, but you don't control the money of the American people. The United States Congress does that.

So the funniest one there, of course, Chris Murphy at the beginning. That is the quiet part out loud. Yeah, I'm like, hey, Chris, freedom fighters. We're not supposed to say that. Fights terrorists. I mean, which freedom? What was that? Yeah. Yeah. But I mean, this is this is the first thing that they've really showed up to. I mean, somewhat the Medicaid portals being shut down. Yeah, but it was over so quickly. But yeah, that's that's right. But, you know, they they pushed back there and I think there was Republican pushback.

behind the scenes, no doubt about it, that helped get that flipped on a dime. But they are finally trying to show up for this and yeah, not making the best arguments, but I think a lot of Democratic-based voters will be happy to see at least they're doing something where so far they've been just like asleep. I think you might be right. I don't know.

I mean, when I look at that, I just see a supreme lack of political talent across the board. I thought Ilhan's comments there were probably the best. Right. The problem, again, is that you always have to be able to connect rhetoric to actual action. Telling people like, I mean, what did we really learn from the campaign against Trump? I learned a lot from the 2024 campaign.

But really what it was is like you can warn all day long, and if people don't like the status quo, they do not care about a lot of this. They need to feel it for real. And for right now, that's what I was saying. It's kind of genius to start with USAID, a program that only people in Washington care about mostly because it's paying a lot of their salaries.

But also, it's just one of those where if he's explained it to a normal person, you made a compelling case about Pell Grants and all of that. If you're Doge, what do you do? Or if Trump, really, let's put Doge because they probably would cut it. But if you're Trump, you're like, don't touch Trump.

Don't touch Pell Grant scholarship. Don't touch federal stuff. Fire all the career bureaucrats or whatever that are working on anything Title IX or X or whatever related. And will anybody really notice? Probably not. And that's kind of what it gets to. In the FDR thing, what's fascinating about this is this is a reverse FDR. It's a dismantling of FDR.

as opposed to a building of. But in a sense, what's happened in both cases is that the crisis of 1933 was this idea that the government was not there to address all of these problems, whereas the crisis of, I guess, 2024, in the minds of many Americans, was that the government itself has created many of these problems, or at least intellectualized the way that, in practice, if we are to blame, we're talking about cultural issues or even immigration, literally just a result of direct government policy, it's about a rolling back

of like a regime slash a government. So I think this is, nothing ever is 100% one-to-one. But analogy-wise, it's the only thing I can really think of. Maybe the John F. Kennedy first 100 days. I hope we don't find ourselves a similar international crisis, although I am worried about it. But that's kind of my mental model for how I'm thinking about it. And there is a big question mark that remains, right?

around how people will popularly receive a lot of this. I don't take a lot of these polls at face value. They've kind of been all over the place. I saw one yesterday, I saw Trump at 52%. I saw the same tracking poll you're talking about. I'm curious to see the

Virginia election, that gubernatorial election, which is always off here in terms of what does it mean for enthused Democrats? Well, we already had a little test run in Iowa. That's true. There was a 21 point swing. But, you know, that's the first indication that we've gotten that even as the Democratic Party has been asleep.

the Democratic base voters in that district in Iowa really showed up. I mean, it was like a 20 plus point swing in the direction of a Democrat for them to win. There was another special election in a Democratic blue district in Minnesota, I want to say, that also shifted even more. It was like the Republican got like 8% of the vote or something preposterous like that. Whereas previously they were getting, I don't know, 20% of the vote. I'm making up these numbers, but that's approximately what it is.

So you're right, that will be the first really indication and test case. But I think where there's a huge vulnerability here that Democrats can exploit if they're willing to, you know, not do their whole like good billionaires, bad billionaires shtick. But nobody wants the government run by an unelected billionaire. I mean, you pull that, it's dramatically, dramatically unpopular. And especially when it's so clear that he's running it for his own ideology and self-interested interests.

reasons. Like I think the reaction against, you know, you're right in a sense, I think if I were advising the Democratic Party, I would have focused more on the Treasury takeover and some of those things, which are way more, you know, to me are like the core of what's really frightening about what is being done here. And it's also, I think,

There's a bunch of lawsuits filed already against Elon and his acolytes and like the violation of privacy laws and other laws that have likely occurred here, not to mention the violation of just like separation of powers. And by the way, Elon, you weren't elected to anything that are going to go forward. But, you know, you're in the situation where it's like the courts are slow. So even if they issue an injunction, that's going to take some time.

And then there's a question like, are they going to listen? I don't know. I kind of doubt it, given how they've operated thus far, where it's just like, we want to do it. So we're going to do it ultimately. You know, I mean, Elon is already clearly, if he's a special government employee, he's already clearly violated like the criminal statute with regard to conflicts of interest. And it doesn't seem to really matter. So that's why I think this is, you know, a

can accurately be described as a constitutional crisis and beyond because they are clearly violating the Constitution, the separation of power, the power of the purse, etc. And the system is just totally unable to deal with it, to catch up, to handle the speed that this is all unfolding at, which has shocked everyone, I think, including, according to the reporting, people in the Trump White House who are like, what the hell is going on here? And they're not

read in on it either. Well, I think that's where the big Democratic check will come into is, let's say we do start going after Pell Grants or whatever. Trump's going to be like, yeah, I'm not dealing with all... I still think there is an existential risk, actually, to Elon of getting Steve Bannon. Remember the whole sloppy Steve saga of 2017? If he causes a genuine political crisis for the Trump White House, which is eminently possible, he will have his ass out there in no time. Well, and I think Bannon is correct to understand... Listen, I'm

Bannon's ideology is not my ideology, although there are more shared elements. There's a lot of overlap. There's more overlap between my ideology and Bannon's than I have no overlap with Elon Musk's ideology of just like burn down the whole federal government and let the corporate overlords rule everything like god kings. That is the polar opposite of my ideology. Bannon is right to see this as an existential threat to his own project.

And I think this will come up more when we talk about, I mean, tariffs somewhat, but even more so the gutting of the National Labor Relations Board, the gutting of the SEC, the gutting of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Because Bannon likes Lena Kahn. He thinks corporate power should be checked. That's the polar opposite of what Elon thinks. And so here you are, if you're a part of the Populist Right Project,

You got your J.D. Vance in there. You've got your guy Trump who has at least said some of the right things and done some of the right things in the past. You like this is your moment. And now you got this billionaire who's just hijacked the whole thing and is running as fast as he can in the total opposite direction with no one, with no one putting a check into place.

So I think this is, you know, obviously none of this is like, I find this all to be horrifying and I'm struggling to like wrap my head around how bad things could actually get. But if you are also on the populist right, I think you should also perceive this as an existential threat to your project, which has its best moment of potential success right now and is evaporating like before our eyes. I think they do, but I also think they know who the king is at the moment. Yeah. You're going to have to wait for a while to

be able to strike because I mean, look, you know, nobody else paid a quarter bill to get Trump elected. Trump takes that pretty seriously. So do a lot of the people in the government, right? I mean, Trump is not ID a lot. That's the thing is he never gave a shit about any of this. Well, I mean, and I've always been pretty honest about it. I know you, I don't think many people, uh,

many people do. And there's also, look, there's an element of political realism for a lot of this. We're like, yeah, look, you know, as long as we get mass deportation, maybe we can live with some of this. That's kind of the thinking and the talk that I've heard from others. But I think there will be some big fights ahead. You know, another thing I was thinking about yesterday, even though it feels like eternity, it's been two weeks. And it's one of those where in the long cycle of all of these presidencies, and Biden, Biden did not go negative, right?

until October 2021. That was nine months, right? Where he basically was in a positive territory. Yeah. Although when someone asked me five years from now, what do you remember about the Biden presidency? Like, oh, people hated him. But-

But the truth is, it's like the first nine months was kind of a honeymoon period. Well, and you know why people liked? Because they did a lot of federal government action to materially benefit people. I mean, that was the most popular stuff that he did was at the beginning when checks were going out and there was a huge COVID relief program. That's when he was most popular.

And then the two things that killed him, first Afghanistan, which I hate to admit, but that's the reality. It's obvious. And he never recovered from that. And then inflation. Inflation murdered him. And that was it. So, I mean, that's the complete polar opposite direction of what's being done here. That was a building up of government. I mean, I wouldn't call it FDR, but it was a break from the neoliberal era.

it was, you know, an expansion of the social safety net, you know, Trump did the same thing in his administration to deal with COVID as well. And when Biden really became unpopular was also because all of those pieces that had been added to the social safety net are stripped away. So that's why I think, you know, I...

I disagree with you that there's like some mandate, some desire to destroy all the federal government programs because, you know, when you ask people, they think that the Pentagon should be cut, which is not going to happen. They don't think that programs that benefit Americans are

should be cut and you know and I think it is telling that's why they do start with USAID because you can also fit it into this framework of oh, that's where to your you know, we're making it America first and

And then once you accomplish that, then you can move on to the things that are more politically difficult and where there may be more popular pushback. - Just to put a bow on it. I don't think that there's ever a mandate to strip the federal government of all agency. I would equate it to, if you ever worked in a company and there's a bunch of HR people who have a ton of power, but who don't do anything who everybody hates,

I would see it as the mandate is to strip that away, whether it's reality or not, the feeling as if they're doing nothing and they're actually making operations here more difficult. In practice, that's what I think basically will materialize as opposed to cutting any critical function. Now, I'm not going to lie. This whole move fast and break things ideology very much could move in the other direction. I mean, it nearly bankrupted Tesla. We've seen what it did to- But it did work. I mean, this is the problem.

The Peter Thiel quote comes to mind. It's like, look, financially, should you ever bet against him? Probably not. I mean, the government is not a business, though. I mean, that's the thing is if well, first of all, I mean, if you look at the management of Twitter, it's been a catastrophe, both in terms of the functioning of the product and the profitability of the product, et cetera. You know, it's been that has been a total and complete disaster. But also, and we've talked about this before that I know you agree with part of this, like

The way you run a business and the consequences of a business cutting too deeply and having an off quarter in terms of their earnings or whatever, profoundly different than cutting too deeply at the federal government and people die or kids don't have their head start or checks don't go out or the government defaults. Those are the sorts of things that

That's the way Elon operates, right? He comes in, he cuts massively, like not, oh, in this area we have a little fat. No, blanket across the board. He causes a near catastrophe, right?

and then tries to rebuild from the ashes. Like that's the way he operates. That's the way he's operating the federal government. And I know there's this instinct of like, oh, we should run the government like a business. The government should not be run like a business because businesses, it's all just about profit for the shareholders. The government is about providing critical

critical, at times life-saving programs and resources to the population. Not to mention, of course, what overarches all of this and why everyone should be disturbed by it is like, if you happen to like Elon, substitute George Soros or Bill Gates or whatever billionaire you don't like, we shouldn't have an unelected billionaire appointing himself king and just operating carte blanche, cut

cutting whatever programs he happens not to like, whatever agencies he happens not to like or has like a personal grievance with or whatever, that is the end of the project that we have known as America for the past several hundred years. Like that is the end of that if we end up in a situation where one unelected billionaire can just appoint himself king and operate with impunity. And I

Let's just, last piece here, we can put the last element guys up on the screen and then we can transition to talking about tariffs a little bit, which does fit in with all of this as well. But there have been, I think now four different lawsuits that have been filed.

This one was filed by, I know, AFL-CIO, SEIU, and a couple other groups together. They're specifically going after Doge's access to the Treasury Department's payment system. They say that it violates the Privacy Act of 1974 and other IRS statutes. As I said, I think there are three other lawsuits, at least, that have been filed in federal courts at this point. So we'll see. I think the next couple pieces are what do the courts do?

How does Elon and how did Trump, how do they react to any negative court decisions? And then the other piece just to flag, which Matt Iglesias actually flagged on Twitter, is there's a big funding fight. We're about to hit the debt ceiling in mid-March.

And, you know, now you got Elon in charge of the Treasury payment system or access, I shouldn't say in charge, access to the Treasury. You need only access, according to the White House. I don't actually know what that means. Yeah. But anyway, access to the Treasury payment system and whatever else he wants access to. How Democrats are thinking that that's going to be a place where they can exert some pressure and try to rein in what's happening here. How does that fight go down? Do they just say, oh, no, we're just going to pay the things we want to pay and that support?

our, you know, ideological ends and not pay the things that don't. To be fair, that is basically what the Obama administration and them did. With the extraordinary measures? Yeah, that's what extraordinary measures are. So, I mean, at a certain point, Trump does run the government like he is the president of the United States. So in a shutdown, you can decide what you want to pay for or not. I don't disagree. I'm not saying it's good or anything, but, and you're right, we should prepare people for that. It's absolutely a question mark. Yeah, so that is the next, the next, the next

pieces. Okay, what happens to the courts? How do they respond to the courts? And what happens with the debt ceiling showdown? All right, let's get to tariffs. A dizzying day yesterday in Washington as the news rolled in. Are the tariffs on? Are they off? What's happening? Let's go ahead and put this up there on the screen. Trump's Truth Social. I just spoke with President Claudia Scheinbaum of Mexico. It was a friendly conversation. She agreed to immediately supply 10,000 Mexican soldiers on the border. She

Separating Mexico and the United States, these soldiers will be specifically designated to stop the flow of fentanyl and illegal migrants into our country. We further agreed to immediately pause the anticipated tariffs for a one-month period during which we'll have negotiations headed by Secretary of State Marco Rubio. I look forward to participating in those negotiations.

Mexico confirmed this news, Claudia Scheinbaum, let's go and put that on the screen, actually broke the news first. Justin Trudeau similarly said, "I just had a good call with President Trump. Canada is implementing our $1.3 billion border plan, reinforcing the border with new choppers, technology and personnel, enhanced coordination, nearly 10,000 frontline soldiers,

Our personnel are and will be working on protecting the border. In addition, Canada is making commitments to appoint a fentanyl czar. We will list cartels as terrorists, ensure 24-7 eyes on the border, launch a Canada-U.S. joint strike force to combat organized crime, fentanyl, and money laundering. I have also signed a new intelligence directive

that we will be backing with $200 million. Proposed tariffs will be paused for at least 30 days while we work together. So there's been- Everyone knows, once your point is our, the problem is basically done. Over. It's a big question as to what happened here, whether this was the plan all along.

along. Many people are pointing out the fact that much of this actually existed already. So for example, put B3 up on the screen. Joe Biden, under the Biden administration, Mexico had apparently sent some 15,000 troops to the border. It's unclear whether there's going to be an additional 10,000 here, bringing the total to 25,000. Similarly in Canada, it appeared that some of these initiatives are already on the books on January 13th before Trump even took office. So I don't

I don't know. I mean, whether this is symbolic or not in terms of the Trump demands. I mean, the fundamental difference, I guess,

comes down to both the leverage, the power used, and the interim 30-day period, as in, well, if we don't like the results, then we're going to change things. So fundamentally, that's what I would say the overall difference is. But the tariffs are off for now, for the next 30 days. S&P 500, as of this morning, let's see, it is up by 0.14%, even with the China tariffs. So the markets were a little, I mean, they were a little royal. They actually didn't expect as bad. And

They didn't react as badly as I thought. I think they kind of assumed this is what was going to happen. I was going to say, so what if there is the rational market hypothesis that they were correct, that the tariffs itself were never going to happen? Maybe we should reconsider that, right? I mean, I'm just, I guess, still a little confused about what these tariffs are supposed to be about in the first place because-

The way I understood it and the way you, I think, accurately explained it yesterday is like, well, they're really about economics, but you have to put this bullshit layer of it's about fentanyl on top, even though no fentanyl comes from Canada, basically. It's a very small percentage, right? 1%. But then all the quote-unquote concessions

even if we grant that their concessions are about fentanyl. They're not about economics. And Trump previously had been saying, you know, the only way Canada can fly is if they become the 51st state or if our trade deficit becomes zero and is balanced out. But then, you know, what he gets in exchange for this is, oh, we're going to appoint a fentanyl czar and keep the troops on the border that are already there. So, you know, we're about to talk about the popularity of tariffs, which is something that you've been talking about. And I

I actually think that a tariff regime could be popular.

even if it did require some pain as Trump floated that there would be as a result of these things. But just as we're about to talk to Matt Stoller about this, we already recorded the conversation, that's why I'm previewing this. But just as Biden failed to enlist people in the antitrust project and the National Labor Relations Board and the CFPB,

There has to be a story that people understand of why they're sacrificing, why they're experiencing this pain. And right now, there is no real. It's all over the place. It makes no sense. Why Canada? Why are you putting higher tariffs in theory on Canada than you are on China? What has Canada done wrong? So I think that's part of the thing here is if you want to make this about China,

bringing back American manufacturing jobs, re-industrializing the industrial Midwest. I think there's a chance that you could enlist the American people in that project. But number one, I don't think that most of these tariffs accomplish that goal. And number two, I think the story about them is deeply confused, contradictory. Tariffs are a tool. I mean, look, in principle, I'm like, great, you know, 25,000 more troops at the border. Great.

having leverage over our allies of Canada and Mexico. Very questionable. But it's one of those where

Like you said, look, I believe in the story. I believe in tariffs. I believe in bringing back a lot of this manufacturing. And so if this is all it takes in order to basically get you to call them off, I don't know. I mean, is it going to be a fundamental difference? Maybe. You know, I guess it's an open question as to that. I think the reason I was excited about them, the reason I like the idea of even threatening is I fundamentally believe in using American assistance programs

power and the economy to achieve ends that are good for our people. Now, the American people have voted for Donald J. Trump on a message of immigration, threatening the Mexican economy, which is 80% exports to the United States if they don't help us out more on that, is in principle a thing I think is fantastic. I think it's good to be able to get them to either send troops there and to have a one-month cliff falling over their head where it's like, hey, guys, the guillotine's going to fall if you don't get your act together. All I totally support.

But the problem is that with this, the way that it currently is, it runs the risk of what you're saying, of not falling into this broader national project. Now, the China tariffs, for example, luckily, at least in my opinion, have gone into place, and I hope, and we're about to talk, as you said, with Stoller, about the de minimis exception and more of which I truly am praying and hoping that they close it just because of the impact it's had on our overall economy. But when there's not, there lacks explanation,

when there lacks coherent vision, that's when you risk blowback. And in the event that these tariffs ever do go into power, we perhaps could see that. So we had a... Do you want to speak for Harry Enten? One more thing and then we'll get Harry Enten. There is also a risk here that I think we already see playing out. And maybe, you know, honestly, from my ideological perspective, it's kind of a silver lining. But because...

all of this, you know, I'm going to threaten Colombia, I'm going to threaten Mexico, I'm going to threaten Canada for some reason, because this is all being done. And even after, you know, Canada had already announced this $1.3 billion package and enforced in anticipation of Trump coming in to try to please him in advance. Mexico had done a very similar thing with Claudia Scheinbaum, massively increasing the number of raids, the amount of fentanyl that was being seized at the border dropped to some of the lowest levels in years.

So they felt like, OK, we're doing the things he wants us to do. And still they end up in this situation of, you know, being bullied and threatened and, you know, put shoved into crisis and all of this sort of stuff. So you already see European leaders talking to the Financial Times, for example, saying, you know, we no longer see really China as the greatest risk to us. We actually think that it's these guys over here and maybe we need to form a

a sort of anti-American alliance because individually we have no chance. And Trump is floating tariffs against the EU, as you know, as well. Which I hope they go into place. And so, you know, that's the other piece is you are sort of aligning, forcing the world's hand, accelerating a shift that was already happening. Now, from my perspective, that may not be the worst thing in the world. But if you're interested in American power and empire, this is definitely something

counter to that particular political project. I actually don't agree. I'll tell you why. Okay, Mexico, what are you going to do? 80% of your economy or exports rely on us. You ain't going nowhere. Okay, who are you going to sell to? Canada, geography matters. 74% of your exports...

coming to the United States. They were floating, "Oh, maybe we should join the European Union." Yeah, good luck. Same thing in terms of the Europeans. "Oh, maybe we'll rely on China." Oh, China's gonna give you their nuclear umbrella and they're gonna protect you from all of your problems so that you guys can have universal healthcare but you don't actually defend yourselves in this giant social welfare state. So let's get real too about how long, it's taken 75 years of integration for the European Union and for the European economies in the United States.

It's taken 200 years now of Canada and Mexico. They are going nowhere. Maybe Africa, India, China, South Korea, Japan, those are the countries I would worry much more about. But these people, nothing. I mean, no matter what, they will be heavily reliant. And they're effectively client states. I mean, that's what it is. The problem is that they don't like that. I mean, I like reminding them of some of that, especially whenever it comes to the border. And the border alone is certainly justification for hitting them with tariffs or threatening tariffs if we want to.

would like, though, to see a return to some of what we talked about previously yesterday about manufacturing and about the fact that NAFTA itself had decimated a huge part of our manufacturing sector. The way that these automakers currently operate where a single part will cross like 40 or 50 times the Canadian and Mexican border. It'll cross three separate borders like multiple times.

before it ever even makes its way into a car, and then, oh, it's called American-made. There's still a lot of deficits in the USMCA. So I had thought it was an opening on USMCA. And I mean, I guess it certainly could be in terms of setting the ground for what that looks like. But for right now, seems to be wrapped up. I don't really know what else to say.

Yeah, well, we'll see what happens a month from now when we go back to this, when we see this rodeo play on again. By the way, I should mention there were people floating also that, I mean, you got a bunch of billionaire, like, I mean, the Treasury Secretary is a billionaire hedge fund guy, George Soros buddy.

And wondering if there is also some profiting going on over these manufactured market drops and recoveries. Oh, you're talking about the Soros finance, like a Forex trade. That's actually pretty interesting. I wonder if anybody, if people flag any trades, because these are all public. Right. If you're, you know, if you're the treasury secretary and you know what Trump's basic plan is here, well, you're in a position to profit off that knowledge. Well, it wouldn't even be him per se, but at this point with all the guidelines or whatever, but.

Maybe people who used to work for him. If we keep going through this cycle, it may be something to keep in mind for the future. Here's the problem. You're going to encourage a bunch of retail traders to start doing Forex and trying to recreate the shorting of the British. I am not encouraging anyone to do anything. So be careful. I'm just telling you what others are floating online and something to keep an eye on. You might be encouraging me. I'm like, well, maybe there's some money to be made here. You know? Start making some phone calls. No, I'm not going to go to prison.

All right, let's get to Harry Yenchen, who broke down some of the polling about how people actually feel about tariffs. Let's take a listen. - Trump's tariffs on Canada, China, Mexico, look at this, just 38% support. You don't have to be a mathematical genius to figure out that 51% oppose is larger than the 38% support. Look, Trump has done some fairly popular things in his first few weeks in office.

This is not one of them. No, no, no. Horrible, horrible, horrible, to quote Charles Barkley. The American folks are opposed to these tariffs when you ask it specifically like this about the three countries, or if you ask it more vaguely about tariffs overall, they simply put, do not like it, Mr. Brennan. It's interesting, even with China in the question, people say that they are opposed to tariffs. The majority here, and there's not a majority on a lot of things,

these days. The two big focuses for Trump in the polling are immigration and the economy. Tariffs ain't it, my dear friend. Tariffs ain't it. Trump should focus on tariffs. In November of 2024, when Ipsos asked that, it was 1%. Look at what happened in December of 2024.

It doubled, it doubled, but to only 2%. When you double to only 2%, you know that the American people don't want Trump's focus to be here. They don't like it. They don't want his focus to be there. They want it to be on other issues. You know, Trump has done a lot of things that are unpopular in the past, but the poll numbers haven't moved. That may be the case here, but I'm a little skeptical of that. Why? Take a look at weekly Google searches for terrorists. Look how much higher they are versus a year ago.

2,400%. That reaches a 21-year high. You know folks are paying attention when there are more Google searches for that than for Taylor Swift, who almost always is in the top of Google searches. So we caught people's attention, but not necessarily in a good way. Yeah, okay. We'll see. What do you make of that? Just going back to what I was saying before, I just looked it up.

The original China tariffs that he put on in his first administration were initially somewhat underwater and they became more popular. Absolutely. And they became majority, you know, in favor, which is why also you see the Democrats have dropped it, a similar position. Biden continues that and does industrial policy.

And I think it fits with what we were saying. Like, people understand, okay, a lot of our jobs, you know, a lot of these industrial factory towns, a lot of the jobs left and are now in China. And so it was a very easily comprehensible story around...

this is why we're doing this. Now, you can still disagree with them. I don't think they, you know, they didn't do much in terms of accomplishing their goal of reshoring. They needed to be paired with industrial policy. There were issues there. But people understood the story of what it was about. And I think we're even willing to, you know, have a more expensive washing machine or whatever. Not only that, you know, all of the doom and gloom was fake. You know, we had hundreds of billions of dollars in tariffs. I think the S&P 500 was up by like 25%. Yeah. Now, they did have to like basically bail out the

farmers because of the retaliatory tariffs. So it's not like there was no impact, but the federal government addressed the problem. Right, exactly. But it is interesting to me that there does seem to be some, I mean, there's almost like a nuanced view of tariffs among the American public where, yeah, when it was China and we understood this, okay, we could go along with that.

But when you're talking about Canada, Mexico, and this doesn't make any sense, and why are they being tariffed more than China? And it's just across the board. And why should avocados have a tariff? Then, yeah, you're not going to have people lining up to pay more at the grocery store, more for their cars or whatever. There you go. Well, we'll see how it all comes into practice. For the next 30 days, we all have a stay. Okay, let's get to Matt Stoller.

Joining us now is Matt Stoller. He is the author of The Big Newsletter. Great friend of the show. It's good to see you, sir. Thanks for joining us. Thanks for having me. So you just wrote this. Let's go and put this up there on the screen. What did Trump just do on the tariffs? It's very relevant, obviously, this morning, now that we no longer have China tariffs, we don't have Canada tariffs, but we do have, or sorry, Canada tariffs or Mexico, but we do have

China. I was like, wait, did somebody? I know, I was wondering that too. Like, I gotta look at Twitter. China is here, at least for now. We've got 10% tariffs on China, but there's some big question marks of exactly what's in it. This is obviously falls within something, an issue area that you care a lot about. Can you explain a bit to the audience and some of the importance of it?

Yeah. I mean, so I wore a jacket with plaid to convey authority because this is going to be like very sort of technical. I'm going to do my best. Sure. So the situation is changing really quickly. So we don't 100% know, but we'll know in a few days maybe. So there's this, so he put 10% tariffs on stuff that's coming in from China, right? And that is, you know, there's a lot of industrial machinery and various other things coming in.

But what is interesting, I think particularly interesting, and I think what a lot of, we were just talking about this off camera, there's a loophole that is maybe more important than just the raw amount that he put on. And that loophole is called the de minimis exemption to trade. And, or de minimis loophole.

Under $800, right, when you bring something in, an individual does not have to have, doesn't have to pay duties or tariffs or have that inspected. So this was set up, if you've ever been abroad and you come back and you bought a sweater or whatever, and you're on the plane and you fill out, like they're like, do you buy anything, right? Was it worth more than a certain amount of money?

You don't have to get that inspected. You don't have to know the tariff codes. They don't treat you like a commercial importer, right? That's what de minimis is. It's intended to let kind of tourists bring in a few things here or there.

The problem is in the 1990s, or the dynamic is in the 1990s, what they said is this can be used not just for tourists, but for e-commerce, right? And they said, if you are an individual buying through, say, like an Amazon or something like that, and they ship you something from China, that can come in, and it's less than $800, that can come in under the de minimis rules. No inspections, no duties, no tariffs,

And it can come in through what's called informal entry. So it doesn't have to have a licensed customs broker. It doesn't have to be bonded. Now, there are about a billion, maybe more than a billion packages coming in

every year, I think the number is 1.4 billion, but who's counting, from China every year under the de minimis loophole. So this is the basis of the business model of Timu, of Shane, of Fast Fashion, and of Amazon, right? More than 50% of third-party sellers, which is the majority of their sales, come directly from Chinese sellers, right? So this is kind of crazy, right? So if you're a bicycle producer in this country, you have to compete with

bikes coming in, duty-free, no tariffs, no inspections, so on and so forth. And that is true kind of across the board. Now what this tariff executive order did is they said that de minimis exemption or that de minimis loophole is gone, sort of, right? So they say you now have to pay tariffs on everything, whether it's $20 or $20,000, okay?

What they haven't been clear on is whether they're going to force the de minimis stuff, stuff that's less than $800 to come in through a more formalized entry, right? Are they going to make you, are they going to make them put like Amazon or Timo or Shane, are they going to have to use a licensed customs broker of, you know, bonds? And if they do, like, it doesn't make sense to let you buy a $3 t-shirt and then you have to do, you know, you have to,

get a licensed customs broker to handle that individual package. It makes more sense to bring in 20,000 t-shirts or 100,000 t-shirts, bring them into US warehouse and then do fulfillment from there. And so

It's not clear what they're doing with the actual process, but a tariff on a $3 t-shirt doesn't matter. Right. 10%, who cares, right? Especially because they're tariffing the wholesale price. So they're more likely tariffing, you know, a dollar, right? Not, or 30 cents, not the $3. So a 10% tariff on 30 cents is 3 cents. Who cares? Right.

but if they're saying, all right, you have to change your whole, you know, it's just gonna be much more expensive to bring in an individual item. It doesn't matter for a bicycle that's $500. It doesn't really matter for a piece of industrial machinery. It does matter for a t-shirt or, you know, a small, you know,

PEZ dispenser or something like that. Right. So that's, and that's not, there are different versions of that floating around and we don't actually know what they're going to come down and say because there are big logistical challenges if you get rid of the de minimis. The tariff, just charging the tariff is not that big a deal, but the logistical question, formal versus informal entry. So that, I hope I haven't been too technical. No, but I think this is important because this is originally what I want to talk about is that these businesses, Tim, I mean, we've got the Super Bowl coming up, right?

Do you remember how many Temu commercials were in our last Super Bowl? Shopped like a billionaire. Yeah, these things have become massive companies. And yeah, anyway, that's why I wanted to talk to you about this. You focus on competition and there's definitely a competition tie in here. How does this disadvantage like small and medium-sized retailers over, you know, gives Amazon and Temu and these like big players a huge leg up?

- Well, I mean, so it's like if you are making a product here, right, you have to comply with all environmental laws, you can't use slave labor, there's like a bunch of stuff you can't, ostensibly can't do, right? - Right. - And if you are, you know, we don't have jurisdiction in China or other countries,

So the way we handle that is through the customs procedure. So you're not allowed to bring in goods and products where they are using certain techniques like human trafficking or whatever.

If they don't do any inspections, right, or if they don't do, you know, they are not charging tariffs, even if there's a tariff on the books, but they're not charging it, then you can bring all those goods in without any, you know, like there's no, there's no, you know, we were just, you were just mentioning the nicotine. I didn't actually know about that, but like that was a good example, right, where,

you're competing against companies that don't have to adhere to the same standards that you do in this country. And that's just unfair, right? So a lot of like the bicycle manufacturers are one of the coalition groups or bike stores. They're one of the groups that actually it's not just manufacturers, it's stores too, right? Because if you're importing a bike from China, right?

If you import it directly to an end consumer, it's cheaper than if you bring it to a store and sell it to – because the store is going to bring in 100 bikes, so they don't get access to the de minimis duty-free, tariff-free. So there are – it actually just –

changes the retail environment in the US and harms the little guy in all sorts of different ways. The other part of it that I think is kind of crazy is that you have a billion plus packages coming in. So that's like 4 million packages every day. And there's a ton of fentanyl in these packages. They're going uninspected and it's brought here by our own post office. So there's a lot of conversations about, oh, there's all this fentanyl coming in from Mexico. That's what a lot of...

Republicans like to talk about and Democrats too, but mostly it's a Republican thing. But really what's happening is, I mean, it's not to say that there isn't fentanyl coming in from Mexico, but one of the things they say is, well, we haven't seized any fentanyl coming in from these packages in China. And so we know it's coming, we're seizing a lot from Mexico. It's like, well, that's 'cause no one's looking. But when they start to look and they have started to do some pilot programs,

They're finding a ton of fentanyl coming in through these packages. And so it's a really good idea to actually just start bringing them in through normal customs procedures so that we can apply the same techniques that we use to inspect everything else for this. Really important. How does, you know, we all watched the inauguration. Jeff Bezos was, you know, who is he?

- Trump's new buddy. - He's right there, yeah. - His wife also was quite notably there. - She was certainly there. - A lot of people had a lot to say about her. You know, how does his influence tie into all of this?

Well, it's interesting because this has implications. So the tariffs have implications for Apple as well, because they didn't put an exemption in for the iPhone, right? Which I was just listening to CNBC and they were talking about how this is going to take 3% of Apple's profits, right? Because they are, what do they do? They absorb the extra tariff. Do they raise prices and annoy Trump? Like what are they, do they change their supply chains? Someone's got to pay. And this is, I think, a much bigger deal for Amazon than Apple, but it's a big deal for Apple.

It's also actually weirdly a big deal for Meta because, you know, the fast fashion Chinese groups were spending billions of dollars on advertising. So this is the one where maybe like Google and Microsoft are not actually like super affected by it. But the other three are. And I think it says that these companies have some levels of influence on Trump.

particularly when they're negotiating with foreign countries, if he feels that those foreign countries are trying to regulate American companies, he will fight for that. But it doesn't look like he's doing explicit favors for these companies yet. And I'll say one other piece, and this is not about trade, but yesterday there was an argument having to do with a case against Google, an antitrust case against Google brought by Epic Games, so not a government case.

But the antitrust division, 'cause the government can intervene in private cases if they think the state has an interest. The government actually had a lawyer there and argued for, you know, basically Google was in the wrong. And, you know, that is an indication that this antitrust, the antitrust division could have said, "You're not doing that anymore." Right? Like they've been telling regulators and enforcers all over the government, "We're totally changing things." They haven't done that with the antitrust division in big tech. - That's interesting. - So this is a small hint of that.

I don't know what to think 'cause I see a lot of, I don't trust Trump. I mean, candid, I'm a Democrat. I'm very skeptical. I see a lot of corporate favoritism. You guys talk about it. But some of these areas, big tech's not getting exactly what they want.

My name is Paola Pedrosa, a medium and the host of the Ghost Therapy Podcast, where it's not just about connecting with deceased loved ones. It's about learning through them and their new perspective. I think God sent me this gift so I can show it to the world. And most of all, I help people every single day. Listen to the Ghost Therapy Podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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