The American empire is over: Richard Wolff on Trump, tariffs and the rising power of BRICS | UpFront

as Donald Trump and Elon Musk continue to slash public spending what impact will this have on the everyday citizens of the United States and how will Trump's tariffs impact the country's Global standing this week on upfront I ask those questions to Economist Richard wolf Richard wolf thanks so much for joining me on upfront my pleasure so the Trump Administration is set to cut $2 trillion in federal spending uh slashing funding for disaster relief humanitarian Aid the Center for Disease Control I mean just to name a few things uh what do you make of this well

on the one hand this is the traditional Republican pitch remember for at least a century the Republican Party presents itself in this country as the party against taxes the party for small government all of that yeah what you see in Mr Trump is is the same old Republican story but carried much further it's a little bit like the Republican Party always allowed uh the southern white population to leave the Democratic party and come over but they didn't Pander to white supremacy Mr Trump did you know the hostility to foreigners that you could get from the

Republican party is taken further Trump defined himself as different I'm going to give you more than any Republican ever did and you've got to let me do more than you might and that's the and so people say that in different ways but that's the deal look the Democratic party isn't that different it also supports private Enterprise and capitalism but it makes the alliance based on a different group of people women educ Highly Educated people black and brown people you know we all we all kind of know if you pay much attention the Democrats say to

the big shots support us cuz we will bring in and they will all like Nancy Pelosi in that famous moment during the campaigns a few years ago when she's at a college and a young student stands up and says you know to her what do you think about socialism they're obviously affected by Bernie and all of that and she doesn't you can see the camera is right on her so she doesn't know quite what to say and she's fumbling which she she's pretty well spoken so this was unusual and finally it comes out she looks

kind of befuddled and looks right at the young man and says we're all capitalist now wow and that's and that she's right that's exact we we're all all of them those folks and their job is to build the alliance that gets you the votes and when so you sit and when you don't do it well enough then the other one Trump comes along breaks all of this by saying I'm going way further in building that Alliance and I'm going to get enough people that I'm going to blow the rest of you out of the water

let's let's talk about that let's talk about that going further thing because you're not wrong at least based on what we've seen so far uh republicans in Congress want to extend Trump's existing tax cuts which are set to expire at the end of the year right uh if pass it'll cost an estimated $4.5 trillion yes uh but it disproportion will reduce taxes for the wealthy now the further part seems to be that in order to pay for it they're considering slashing Medicaid gutting parts of the Affordable Care Act I mean they're going further and deeper

than we've seen in recent years um but how does that jive with the populist promises he made again he's telling lots of people your life's bad now it'll get better under me but if they lose health care and high quality Medical Services how is their life better it isn't and Mr how do he sell that though Mr Trump is is well he sells it to the people in the end he has to that's the employer class look in in 2017 when Mr Trump was president and got them this tax cut it was then the biggest

tax cut we've seen emphasizing the corporations and the rich it came at the end of a 40-year period unequaled in American history for redistributing wealth and income up away from the poor away from the middle to the musks and the Bezos and all of them yeah and as an economist I can tell you never did we need a tax cut for corporations in the rich less than 2017 when they got it now they want to keep it because it had a sunset provision now they want to keep it in this year if he's going to

do that the only way he can deliver to them or to use his language I'm going to make you all rich exactly the only way he can do that now is to Savage the public sector where else is he going to get the money and then when the public realizes is it just too late how do how do they reconcile that Mr Trump won't be with us when they figure that out fair enough you mentioned uh Elon Musk he has not just been a public cheerleader for Donald Trump he's been brought into the fold in

very concrete ways uh kind of to help dismantle the federal government uh they've gutted into High departments including uh Aid agency us Aid as well as the Department of Veterans Affairs uh they've terminated thousands of contracts and they're set to lay off tens of thousands of workers in what might be effectively the biggest job cut in US history mhm they're not done no they're setting SS on the US Department of Education but again think like an employer for a minute even if it doesn't come to you naturally it doesn't come to me natur leer for

an employer this is nirvana because he's not going to have to tax them look he has to deliver that to them how's he going to do it he could borrow the money that's what his predecessors did but we are now at a level of debt this country has never seen it's becoming a scary problem because if the rest of the world no longer lends to the United States government to cover its deficits what are we going to do let's remember that for many many people you get paid less if you work for the government than

if you go in the private sector and the compensation for that was job security what Mr Trump and Mr musk are doing more than what the workers are that they fire is they've taken that security away where do you think public employees are going to go if either they've lost their job which is happening to tens of thousands or they're scared silly that they might lose their job they're going to go into the private sector where else are they going to go which means they're going to drive down wages and working conditions in the private

sector because the worker who comes from the private sector laid off after 5 10 years that means not only your job is gone your income is gone but your career ladder has just been yanked out from under you so you're desperate you're worried you will offer yourself one way or another for less money than the person who's getting who's in that private sector job now let let let me let me reach over here and put on my red Maga hat for a second I'm going to uh represent the position of trump potentially good yeah we're

cutting taxes for the richest Among Us yes we're giving more and more benefits to corporations but that will create jobs that will allow us to take risks that will allow us to spark innov that will allow us to create the next big Market that will allow for you know more wealth for everybody if we build a new internet if we build a new Auto industry if we build a new thing everybody gets a job everybody wins more money's on the table this was a reasonable argument I I don't think it was ever true I'm I'm

a professor of Economics I've studied it all my life what you're saying is a nice way better way than they usually do for what used to be called trickle down economics you help the folks at the top you boost the profits you give them a tax cut and it'll trickle down to a good job for me and all that there was I'm going to be more nice now than I ought to be there was a grain of Truth to that but it isn't anymore and that's perhaps the most important thing that I can tell you

the and I'll say it as bluntly as I know how the American Empire is over we're done we we peaked about 12 15 years ago and we are on a down and it's very hard for the American people which I understand I am one it's hard to get your head around that we've had a century of on the way up which is a lot more fun than on the way down but it does happen to every Empire we're only the latest look at the British how far they've Fallen we're in that process so the problem

with the trickle down is yeah there might be more jobs but they're going to be created in China they're going to be created in Brazil they're going to be created in India they're not created here how do you compare this moment of slashing particularly in the federal government to say the '90s when Bill Clinton did something somewhat similar right are they is this just a partisan disagreement or are there substantive differences again and I know this is difficult for people to hear this is a cut based on desperation this is an economy that is inde

we have the greatest level of corporate debt this country has ever seen off the chart the greatest level of personal debt and we have the greatest level of government debt our government debt is now trillions of dollars greater than our annual output that was not the case in the 20th century it is the case now what you're seeing is desperation Politics the whole Trump phenomena or to say you wait a minute these jerky moves that are out of whack right in recent days we have seen the decision of the Trump Administration to kiss the war

in Ukraine goodbye we're not doing that no more because we can't afford it we can't keep funding a war which by the way the West is losing as anybody who pays attention knows all of these things are signs of what of a country that is in trouble and is it turning on its friends cuz it can to save itself we're going to take over you know we're going to get your energy for nothing we're going to you know make you build the wall here in Mexico look what he the genius in a way of Mr

Trump is that without understanding it because clearly he doesn't he feels in his own way the way lots of people do that there's something that necessitates going Way Beyond what has been done because our need as a society is beginning to show up look let me give you a simple example the best electric vehicles in the world right now but by uniform Global agreement are produced by something called the byd corporation which probably most folks have never heard of which is Chinese byd Le initials byd they make the best quality cheapest electric car and truck

all right you don't see them anywhere in the United States why not because Mr Trump put a 27% tariff on them and Mr Biden raised it to 100% so let me give you an example if you wanted to buy a $30,000 byd electric vehicle which you could do that's what they charge it's why it's so good you would have to pay 30,000 to get the Chinese to ship it here then you'd have to give another 30,000 100% tariff to Uncle Sam or in this case Uncle Dawn uh in the way of a tariff to would

cost you 60,000 bucks which you're not going to do because you can get a less good Tesla or GM or Ford or anybody else at 40 to 50,000 Which is less than you'd have to pay but here's the problem I say because right now this sounds like a good plan to a lot of people Trump has said I'm going to do this not just to China you know Al he's going to double existing T to China obviously but Mexico Canada everybody if we intensify the tariffs the scenario you just painted will happen and people will

be forced to buy us stuff right which then creates us jobs which again stimulates the economy all right let me be the economist okay that's good for for the Tesla company which I'm sure is purely coin and GM and Ford and the others good and they'll maybe be able to hold on to some jobs good but now let's follow the bouncing ball that's my job as an economist everywhere else in the world every company in in Asia Africa Latin America that competes with an American company that has to buy a truck as part of its

business will go to China and buy the best truck at the lowest price 30,000 bucks the best truck no American company that competes with them will do that and you know what that means those companies will be able to charge a lower price because they have better inputs than the American company which doesn't in the long run that will lose Americans jobs left and right as they're outco competed by all the rest of the world that can go and buy and is buying byd trucks if you go to Europe right now and you go on

the auto routes all over Europe you'll see byd cars and trucks America is shooting itself in the foot it may be great politics for Mr Trump I'm helping the AO companies and the workers he'll go to Michigan and'll give us yeah but what you're doing is diminishing the capability of the United States to hold on at a time when its footprint in the world is shrinking if you take the United States together with the other G7 countries that used to be the dominant block of the world right the United States let's just enumerate them so

everybody know Canada Japan Germany France Italy and uh Britain okay the G7 of war and I'm going to add up all the the GDP gross domestic Pro total output of goods and services of all of those seven countries us and its major allies and now I'm going to compare it to the gross added up gdps of China and its allies known now as the bricks okay you add up the United States about 28% of world output you add up China in the bricks it's 35% of the world output we aren't the wealthiest Block in the

world we're number two and that's new and that changes everything every country in Asia Africa Latin America trying to figure out who to go to to borrow money from who to go to to cut a deal with who to go to to sell your exports who to go to to invest in your railroads you know where they used to go Washington London Paris of course now they go there but they go to India and Brazil that's right they go to sou Paulo New Delhi Beijing and they ask can you give us a better deal and

here's the news I got to give you they get the better deals and they go that way and that's not going to stop and you can rattle your Sabers all over the you put the seventh fleet in the South China Sea isn't going to change that you've got to come to terms with that but we are led by people who don't want to do that because nobody wants to be the politician who has to explain to the people it's over and we now have have to figure out which we should do and we could do

and we have still lots of resources to manage coming to terms with the change situation and and a kind of economic insularity doesn't do that for saying hey we may not do so well in the global market anymore but if these companies these us companies are sort of treated properly and the tariffs keep the other people out we can just based on the few hundred million people in this country be able to support our economy create jobs and and and and live steadily I doubt it possible but I doubt it why I because it's never

work that way we have we have a global econ we're more globalized than we ever were we do we have language now supply chain almost every American kind of understand what's a supply chain didn't used to think about things like that because we were all here when they say supply chain they kind of know that when you get up in the morning and you have your breakfast the coffee doesn't come from America and the sugar in it don't come from America so if you put a lot of tariff your latte is going to cost you

30 bucks uhoh how are you going to manage this in a country already troubled with inequality the price increases alone suggested by what he's doing the dramatic actions they look dramatic I'm helping America it looks Wonder it's choreographed in Hol wood but it doesn't work do you do you think he has a good faith belief that this will lead to the best outcomes for the American people oh I think that'd be given what I what I gather from what he says I don't know how to say this politely he doesn't understand the economics real well

the things he said are things which an undergraduate after maybe three weeks wouldn't say wow I'll give you an example tariffs he keeps saying and he said it before the tariffs I'm going to get China with these tar tariffs are paid by Americans to the American government tariffs are a tax they just have a it's a tax on Imports to which we have given historically a particular name tariff but it's a tax and people ought to wonder the anti-tax party go the Republicans or the big gungho for something has changed he he keeps thinking that

he could hit other countries with a tariff no you hit us with the Tariff we have to pay it it means we will have to pay more for everything you attach a tariff to and they can retaliate with their own t there's another another piece of this is consumer protections um Trump has deregulated that's gone that's gone so consumers May pay more but I'm also hearing you say they also may be less protected from they are less protected what does that look like there's a leria epidemic going through old age homes here in the United

States really serious killing you I mean it's not just hurting people getting sick it's killing old people in in nursing homes okay that's why we have regulation you teach a course in regulation you understand if you do it properly that we've had a whole series of experiences we in the US and that has been mirrored by capitalist countries across the world everywhere if you leave activity to the private sector what you are doing is making profit the bottom line that's how they work so we needed regulation because the end result was we're not all good

people most of us are but there are those amongst us who will be tempted and then we'll have a cookie which kills us or we'll have a a wheel that doesn't work properly on the car so we need regulation guess what if you dismiss regulation which has happened before here's what has happened every time sooner or later we have to put back the regulation why because of the underlying logic of the system if you why does every company tell us safety is our first concern why do they tell us that because it isn't okay right

that's why they tell they have to tell us because we're all smart enough to understand we know why they're in business right they're in business to make a buck cuz we're in the business many of us to make a bu we understand and can you be tempted to do something that might not be sure you can I'd like to turn uh to foreign policy uh for a bit uh Donald Trump has said that he wants to turn Canada into the 51st state he wants to take over the Panama Canal uh Gaza uh and Greenland he's

already renamed the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America You' argued that this is a kind of 18th century crude colonialism why at A Moment Like This where the United States from your perspective has a weakened Global position would they take on such ambitious ostensibly Colonial activity as opposed to hunkering down domestically well if you study colonialism you discover that most of the time when a country began going overseas and snatching parts of the world it was because of two things one it needed to and two it could the United States needs it and the

United States can it can't take over Europe it's too expensive too difficult they're too rich and they're too powerful and they can't control Russia they're learning that now oh yeah bad badly and they can't control China they've learned that now for 25 years but what can they control they can control Mexico they can control Canada or at least they can make a stab at it one out of five bucks worth of food that you and I and Everybody Eats comes from overseas and most of that from Mexico and Canada energy comes a huge portion of

our energy is Canadian oil gas and so so these are basic things we need and we're strong enough they depend on us way more than we depend on them we're a much bigger economy than either of them so we can so just might makes right just basically and he's also aware he's a good politician he's aware that a lot of the things he's going to do are going to produce real tensions inside the United States between those parts of the community that are hurt and those that are not foreign Adventures have always had that wonderful

quality that we can unite our country in opposition to in feeling Superior to in benefiting from really or by imagination those other over there let's talk about those others over there some more because throughout this conversation you've been talking about uh the brics Nations yeah how significant as a military matter um is the bricks economic Alliance is the emerging power of China how how scared should we be it's it's it's fundamentally very different let me explain economically the game is over the Chinese if not already a wealthier economic unit than we are which they probably

are will be within a few years very few like by the end of this decade if not if not already so economically they are now our equal but remember they're are equal they're going up we're going down we're equal but the trajectory is unmistakable across the board right and so politically it's comes right after that if you're that powerful economically if you're the place that the whole world goes to to cut a deal because you get a better deal than you can get from Washington or London which is now most of the time the case

that's why if you look at the biggest Harbor being built in Africa it's being built by it's Chinese if you look at the new railroads going across parts of Latin America it's built by the chinae you on and on and on you know the Panama Canal why does he want to take it well the second the United States is the number one country using the Panama Canal China's number two China has built all these buildings that handle their shipping you know it's everywhere and once you start looking you see it everywhere but militarily there's none

of that Americans have to understand even if you don't agree with me try to understand how the rest of the world looks at it the United States maintains 750 military bases around the world China doesn't have any the United States is a global Military presence the likes of which is not existing anywhere we are alone in that how how how long is that Solitude going to last if as you're saying the economic power is diminishing of the United States that then transforms into diminished political power because again the S held by the other nations look

at the votes in the UN you'll see the diminished political power right on display so then it feels like the military's next right how scared should we be well I think I put it this way I think you're at a Crossroads now either you decide to stay with what you're doing in which case you're right they will even if if they in their minds think it's defensive who cares they will develop a military capability because that will be their only safety for them forget whether you agree with them or not it's not the issue but

there's an alternative the alternative is you sit down and you say to your adversary we both got to live on this planet can we work out a deal where we give each other the room to function to live because if we threaten each other what's the end game of this we spend a fortune fighting if we ever slip and make a nuclear war it's over anyway so that's a dead end what what why don't we try to S why don't we try that it's a better shot right now we're still in a moment of shock

and disbelief as a global Community about the last white house meeting between Trump uh his vice president JD Vance and Ukrainian President Vladimir zalinsky at the Oval Office last week uh what was supposed to be I thought a fairly ordinary discussion uh about a deal regarding Ukraine's uh mineral wealth and Military assistance turned into an international spectacle yet had Trump Advanced literally chastising president of zalinski for a perceived lack of gratitude for us assistance uh at some point it went from a meeting to a shouting match in in many respects uh and zilinsky was eventually

asked to leave the White House which is something I personally have never seen before in my short time on this planet uh some people say this is a historical Turning Point again how does a moment like that uh speak to where we are as a nation and also uh the possibilities of the us being a steward of Global Leadership moving forward yeah well the United States is at that point which every Empire has had when it's over when the when the Empire is in Decline it's happened to every other Empire I know we might want

to believe that we are the exception we are the Empire that will last forever but the burden is on the person who believes that given the historical record so for me is this about a declining Empire this is about bad leadership no no no this is about a declining it may also be about it's not either or but the important thing is not the the lousy leader the which we have the importance is that on the issue of what I we just talked about coming to terms with China sitting down how do we live together

on this planet unfortunately Mr Trump is exactly where Mr Biden was there is no difference between them the pivot to China which by the way was initiated in those words by Mr Obama as President has been followed by everybody's sins in fact one of the arguments made by Mr the new defense uh head is that we have to free up our resources to confront our real problem you're going to see that coming from the Trump Administration now more and more as they disengage from Ukraine a lost cause but that's that that's not a a a

situation that would be replicated by Biden or Obama would you would you say I mean no Biden Biden wanted to fight the Russians right the Trump says Wrong Enemy and you're losing we don't want to do that we we don't want to send American troops over there because that wouldn't fly at home that's a dead air we can't do that Trump right absolutely what's he going to do everything United States has has been thrown into that war remember at the beginning of the Ukraine war we weren't going to give him uh Abram's tanks we weren't

going to give him F-16 we weren't going to give him high Mars we weren't going to give him long range missiles everything that we said we President Biden said was unturned we gave them we gave them because they were losing they needed more and more he wants still more he wants nuclear we there's no end for he's losing his country about a quarter of it are gone already the Russians occupy it and they keep moving Westward it's a losing proposition and it's it's as if the whole 20th century you know when I was growing up

I'm a creature of the 20th century at least the second half of it everything was told to us in terms of the Cold War capitalism democracy over here communism socialism over it that was the great that was the great struggle what happened all gone what now we're talk in Russia China we talk in countries which we used to do before the struggle became social socialism and communism so for me I think all Mr Trump is doing is saying okay we are now in a world of big Powers Russia China us Europe but the Europeans are

disunified they they're not doing anything they're not inventing anything they're fading out of the story it's really sad for the European but we're here and the Chinese are the big one coming up I mean let's remember America's population keep perspective America's population is 45% of this world China and the bricks together is 50 60% of the world this yeah it's not close you say that Trump is doing what whoever had become president would have had to do sooner or later this may be the most generous quote uh toward Donald Trump that you've ever give it

why I'm going to assume that Mr Biden was a rational leader and that kamla Harris likewise I'm assuming that um they would have seen that there are three ways things can go in Ukraine number one we can have a nuclear fight with the the the Russians I want to remind everyone because Americans don't like to face this most of the world believes and that's all I can say and I therefore I believe it too that the largest nuclear Armageddon force in the world is the Russians bigger than the Chinese and bigger than ours number two

a conventional war that would mean hundred hundreds of thousands of American troops would have to be shipped over there and fight against the Russians you know the record historically is not real good Napoleon and invaded Russia was real sorry Hitler invaded Russia was real sorry do we really Mr Biden always said no troops on the ground no boots on the he he seemed I'm going to give him credit that's that's a recipe for a disaster that we will will not be able to control okay but there is no third option other than to walk away

Mr Trump said I agree with you I'm walking away Mr Trump did it Mr Biden couldn't because he was so deeply in look it took us most people understand it took us several years to withdraw from Afghanistan but we lost in Afghanistan I know this is hard for Americans we went to war in Afghanistan against the Taliban you know who runs the country now the Taliban and it didn't take long no we lost we went into Vietnam to fight against the North Vietnamese the country was divided at that time which was run by the North

Vietnamese Communist party you know who runs Vietnam now the Communist party we lost all right we went into Iraq we were supposed to do something there hard knows what but we lost there we're gone there too and we're in the process of losing Ukraine if you're an Empire and you lose against some of the poorest countries on Earth you know what it suggests you're something's wrong look when you came out of World War II in 1945 the United States was absolutely dominant most of the second half of the 20th century where people you know watching

this program we all have at least some member memory about it we were the richest country the most politically powerful we had all those bases around the world we had the biggest military you know wow yes it go to your head it does we were King of the Hill but those things are always temporary they always have been when we go to Egypt we look at the ruins of their empire when we go to France we look at the chat that are the memory of what they once were well we it's not going to happen

to us we we're somehow different it's already happened we haven't been paying attention because it's so painful to look at I think I'm the Patriot saying to America to save the good things about the society let's sit down and work with look China says I'm not asking anyone to believe it I'm not sure I believe it but China says they're in favor of a multi-national world they're not interested in being the next Empire maybe because they once were an Empire some centuries ago they may understand better than most that it's it's a short run it's

a heavy run but it's a short run and maybe they will be willing to sit down and then the United States has a really good deal because right after China it's us we still are rich and Powerful as a nation just moving in the wrong direction that's right so maybe the best move is to sit down with the upand comers and work something out we'll see Richard wolf thank you so much for joining me on up front my pleasure and thanks for having a program like this where these things can be talked about you