Trump's $1.7 TRILLION Stock Market Wipe Out Explained with Ian Bremmer & Larry H Summers

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if you don't make your product in America however under the Trump Administration you will pay a tariff and in some cases a rather large one I've been doing this for almost 50 years but I've never had a policy where I can't even understand what the rational affirmative argument for it is the markets keep crashing they keep going down started at down 145 did I hear you correctly $4 trillion in Market loss but why are they doing it playing sort of economic chicken is it for political gains is it for economic gains a lot of it

is Trump really truly believes that a trade a deficit is against America's interest but I think it is certainly um a willingness to accept that many many eggs will be broken to make this [Music] omelet we're rolling we got speed you're an animal part animal part machine do my best Larry Summers the 71st Secretary of the Treasury in the Clinton Administration also director of The White House National Economic Council under the Obama Administration former president of Harvard University as uh popularized by The Social Network where you come across as a total badass I got to

say I'm a fan I came down from Canada studied politics and economics and I've been using you as a as an example for a long time so I just wanted to to to to tell you uh I used I came down as a young political scientist and I said it's so funny to come to America uh where you know you have the the the the Democratic party through fiscal responsibility took the largest deficit went to the largest Surplus it was the Clinton Administration and then came in the next uh Republicans came in expanded government and

turned the largest Surplus into the largest uh deficit you were the the architect of that Surplus so and I believe that's I I I have it somewhere in here I think that's the last time we had a surplus when uh I was treasury secretary in 1999 and 2000 and those were the last surpluses that the country ran we were engaged in doing operations where we were buying back the outstanding debt unbelievable with uh the Surplus things are in a pretty different place uh uh today yeah some of that's the fundamentals of the economy uh some

of that is the way things have been uh managed but I think we've got a very serious fiscal problem uh in the United States so let's get into that um you've you've been sort of Highly profile uh uh going back and forth with uh Elon on on Doge but I wanted to get him because it's the on the news everywhere this morning and yesterday tariffs um what the hell is going on and you know what kind of economic chicken are we playing here tariffs are a self-inflicted supply shock they're like when the oil price increases

or the price of food increases only it's us doing it to ourselves right we're putting these 25% tariffs on it's going to raise the Tariff rate for the United States to its highest level since uh World War II it's probably the biggest protection shock we've had in decades and it's probably in terms of economic effects the equivalent of a $40 increase in the price of price of uh oil per barrel like from $70 a barrel to $110 um a barrel why do it I can't imagine why you would decide to increase prices um for consumers

lower purchasing power for uh workers in order uh to make businesses less competitive what they think and I guess their argument is that the tariffs are going to cause people to relocate production to the United States but I think the more lik thing is that they're going to make the production which takes place in North America much more expensive because every time car parts go back and forth across the Canadian border or the Mexican border there's going to be a big tariff added so this is the best thing that ever happened to our Asian competitors

this is the best thing that ever happened to Europe we're shooting ourselves in the foot in North America or take another part of it one part of the Trump program that he spoke about in the address to Congress is the across theboard tariffs on aluminum and steel and I have also imposed a 25% tariff on foreign aluminum copper Lumber and steel because if we don't have as an example steel and lots of other things we don't have a military and frankly won't have we just won't have a country very long we've got 60 times 60

times as many workers who work in industry Ries that use aluminum and steel as we do in the aluminum and steel uh Industries themselves so you're hurting 60 times as many workers by making their businesses less competitive as anybody who you're helping tariffs are not just about protecting American jobs they're about protecting the soul of our country I just don't understand uh the Strat y here maybe there's a goal to get Mexico to cooperate on fentanyl or to cooperate on drugs immigration some way or immigration but we don't have a drug problem from Canada we

don't have an immigration problem from Canada and they're putting the same tariffs in Canada so I I understand why we need to have a strong supply chain and that may mean taking measures with respect to uh China I get that but this is not with any strategy uh that I'm able to understand and you know markets came to that judgment uh in the day and a half after they announced these uh tariffs before there were started to be signs that they might take them off again uh the market lost uh close to 5% of its

uh value in a very short period of time and the risk premium the vix the fear gauge went up by more than a third so I don't I don't see the strategy here as um a logical one even if you accepted the idea of protectionism obviously the is out there that it's fenel uh cartels illegal immigration um so it's it's sort of you know quote unquote the art of the deal he's also made Illusions to uh America was you know the best off it's ever been sort of turn of the century the last century when

we had a lot of tariffs uh and and no income tax so sort of you know teasing that uh as as a reason it's nonsense um Carl Rove the guy who ran George Bush's campaigns and was a key advisor to George Bush yeah wrote a whole book about McKinley he says that Trump's version of that history is almost entirely wrong that McKinley was actually heavily focused on preventing tariffs from being spread too far and avoiding their tariff privileges uh being used in corrupt kinds of ways that was an era when the whole federal government was

less than 5% of the economy that's got nothing to do with the financial needs of the current ERA right and by the way there's a kind of a simple contradiction at the heart of trumpism which is you can't threaten people if you do X we'll take the tariffs off right and then tell the bond market that the tariffs are the source of Revenue that's going to pay back the de yes and so he can't have it both ways yeah that there's some kind of big Revenue source and some kind of big bargaining chip I've been

doing this for almost 50 years and I haven't there have been plenty of policies that administrations have had that I've disagreed with I thought the Biden policies were going to cause inflation I didn't like the bush or the Reagan tax cuts uh particularly so there plenty of policies that I disagree with but I've never had a policy where I can't even understand what the rational affirmative argument uh for it is uh you know another way to say it is economists disagree about everything you know famously when you have six economists he get seven opinions they

all agree they all except for the one president Trump pays agree that these kinds of tariffs do economic damage I mean usually you might try to stimulate the economy and then get higher price and accept that you were going to get higher prices or you might try to lower prices and recognize that that might increase unemployment a bit what's extraordinary here is pursuing policies that are going to increase both inflation and unemployment now what happens going forward Ward I I like your point of look you can't have it as a bargaining chip for immigration Fenton

or whatever else and and also for a way to pay down debt Andor bring in the Golden Era of uh of tariff Prosperity what happens going forward is like is this this deal making in in the in the sand law what what what happens well I think that over time it's going to become much riskier to make economic plans involving the United States MH I think over time the United States is going to stop being trusted and in some places start being hated given the way president Trump is cozying up to Putin and given the

way he's attacking our traditional allies in Canada and in Europe yeah and when people like the United States lash they buy fewer American uh product yeah so I think this is going to make the world a scarier place I think it's going to make it a more anti-American place and I think that's going to make the United States uh poorer over time you know these kinds of policies are new in the United States but they're not new in the world if you look at the economic history of Latin America most famously argentin mhm there are

lots of examples of where the President Juan Peron is the classic example tried to boss businesses around put tariffs up and said we were going to be strong and self-sufficient as a nation leaned on the central bank to print a lot of money to keep interest rates low and they ended mostly in disaster I'm supposed to not hit the table cuz it makes a noise but no I can't hit that table you can do I'm going to hit the table I'm they told me not to hit the table I'm going to Kate action prize picks

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to a significant extent president Trump is right on a range of the social and cultural issues I wouldn't be exactly where he is but I think there was a need for a clear uh correction I think he's right to emphasize building and building fast and doing more to exploit the United States's fossil fuel uh strength so it's not that it's all one way or the other yeah but I think these tariff policies and some of the other things are really a bit almost crazy so let's use that as a segue you were talking about you

know this is a larger political issue but it's a problem for our allies uh Canada Europe um you know people are putting obviously tariffs uh uh to to respond and in Europe you know they're putting 100% 200% Terrorist on Tesla is a thing against Elon you have have been uh sort of going back and forth with Elon on Doge like what's your take on what's happening there because you know on one side you have look we should be looking at waste and there's all these you know hundreds of billions of dollars of waste and on

the other side obviously there's there's there's an uproar about what's going on what's your take on it look Elon Musk is a person who has accomplished extraordinary things that no one could have imagined would be possible he and the company he built put three or four times as much stuff into space each year as NASA with the whole federal government and a 20 billion budget behind it so he's a person whose ideas need to be very carefully considered but government's different than Private Business it wouldn't be true of almost any business but if you look

at the government far less than 10% of the government budget goes to pay government employees right so even if you go after that you don't really get anything uh that's large there are places where we should be reducing scale and where there is waste but the president and Elon they just say things that are just wrong like what you know the president May made a huge deal in his speech about all the social all the people in the social security file MH who were 120 years old or 140 years old or 160 years old or

whatever 3.5 million people from ages 140 to 149 and money is being paid to many of them here's the problem those people's names are in the comp computer but they don't get paid any money the last time this was looked at there were 86,000 Americans who were over a 100 and there were only 44,000 Social Security checks MH paid out to people who were over a 100 so these claims of massive abuse in many cases they're just not not close to right right and you know I don't know whether the numbers are exactly right but

one of the things the United States has been proudest of it wasn't brought in by some Democratic president it was brought in by uh President George W Bush was the pepar program and a range of other programs like that where we get a ton of Goodwill by Saving hundreds of thousands of lives by providing medicines in Africa yeah you cut those medicines off people die and that's what they just did and people are dying malaria is spreading because of an action that we took precipitously you know musk had a strategy for Twitter and I don't

know whether it's a good business strategy or not I don't running businesses isn't what I do right fired 80% of the people and then he figured he'd see what happened and he'd rehire people as it was necessary that's might be fine when you're running a business when you're a country that people have been relying on for their supply of medicine that's not a very good idea when you have the responsibility for assuring that airplanes are safe that's not a very good idea and while we're talking about airplanes being safe the government had let a contract

to put in the new information technology system behind air traffic control that contract got scrapped and they're trying to reallocate it to uh the musk uh company right doing that with Mr musk in charge isn't the way we should be doing things in the United States so it's a great idea to be getting his advice yeah on a set of these technology things that he I'm sure knows much more about managing than bureaucrats do yeah but letting them just run run run without respect for anybody who's been doing this for more than three weeks yeah

I think that's going to be dangerous in terms of people's lives dangerous in terms of plane of airplane safety dangerous in terms of whether we're going to continue to be able to operate the tax system dangerous in in terms of privacy rights that Americans uh rely on so are they right about a lot of things absolutely should they be listening to the kind of silicon valy expertise that is represented absolutely but is the way we're doing it right I don't I don't think so and I don't think the many errors of a previous administration justify

a whole new set of errors in different directions yeah I think I saw uh recently uh I think it's from a few years ago but it's a John Stewart uh talking to the head of the dod and and um you know it's $780 billion and and and and he was saying you know we can't do an audit an an $850 billion budget to an organization that can't pass an audit and tell you where that money went like I think most people would consider that somewhere in the realm of waste fraud or abuse because they would

wonder why that money isn't well accounted for she's like you don't understand what an audit is and she was a bit heavy-handed and he's like I'm a human being and I know that we pay taxes I'm a human being who lives on the Earth and can't figure out how $850 billion to a department means that the rank and file still have to be on food stamps like to me that's corruption I'm sorry absolutely look it's the impulse here is absolutely right yes but figuring out that it's screwed up and thinking that you plus a group

of 20y olds can in a week or two start giving orders to change everything around right that's a pretty different uh thing if I decided I had a lousy auto mechanic for my car I wouldn't decide that I could start fixing it myself with my buddy down the hall and that's the kind of thing that I fear that they are doing and if I was gonna have my buddy do it I certainly wouldn't let my buddy buy all the things from a company he owned right I don't want to be an apologist for the way

things are and I don't want to be a person who's saying that the impulses behind some of the things president Trump is trying to do are wrong but I think the risk is that we're going to do things in a very damaging uh way and that's even before you get to the whole National Security area it looks to me like we're doing what Neville Chamberlain did in the late 1930s um except he just appeased Hitler we are trying to become Putin's Ally and we are um doing what the big mistake they made after World War

I which was to try to extort huge amounts of money from the defeated Germans which ultimately set the stage for World War II and we're trying to do that with Ukraine who's a relatively innocent victim of President Putin's aggression so should we be working for peace does that mean leaning on both sides absolutely yeah is letting it go as it is a reasonable option no but does that mean selling out NATO is right I surely don't think so but I want to use that as a segue for my last question which is you know we

talked a bit about terorists talked a bit about Doge how did the economy become so politicized that there's sort of one you know one side the other side maybe the last consensus politician was Clinton sadly uh who who worked uh both sides of the aisle uh especially on the economy how did it get so politicized that that we don't even uh try to uh go against the other party we try to undo their policies as soon as we get in and and how do we use our economy as such a a political lever I wish

I knew uh some of it is that we have a system in Congress now where if you're a typical member of Congress you're more worried about losing a primary to an extremist from your own party than you are losing an election to a member of the other party yeah so it used to be that people tried to seize the model seize the middle in politics yes and now they're all about protecting their flanks in politics and that pulls people apart yes and the same thing happens in primary elections uh for presidential candidates and so I

think that's an important part of how it is that this has happened I also think we had a financial crisis we had covid when they bad things that happen people tend to be angrier and they tend therefore to go a little bit more for simplistic Solutions and simplistic uh Solutions often turn out to be wrong when I was in government I always consulted with people on the outside who were both Democrats and Republicans when previous Republican administrations were in place they would reach out to people like me who were on the other side but had

some relevant experience but I think that tendency has sort of falling away and people seek less advice and more validation than they used to and that is an unfortunate t Y and while I'm particularly critical of the particularly extreme policies being pursued now it's not that everything that's problematic began with uh Donald Trump in 2024 there have been economic mistakes made of various kinds by a range of previous uh administrations but you know I think that the country is better run and is more successful with a commitment to policies from the middle for the middle

class then it is when it's run in these more Extreme Ways here here uh the architect of the last great American Surplus Larry Summers thank you for your time uh and hopefully we can uh we can keep the dialogue going uh because we know this is going to be Number issue number one two and three on on most people's list I'd like that very much thank you thank you lar are you expecting a recession this year I hate to predict things like that there is a period of transition the fact is that what Trump is

doing is just helping other countries believe that every four years the United States will do something radically different and you can't count on it and you can count to a greater degree on other countries out there that's a serious problem all right Ian bremmer man oh man I am a fan you're everywhere uh in social media I'd just like to say I was a a fan before you blew up we've known each other for what about a decade now right yeah about a decade done some secret talks some interviews politics economics my favorite subject so

this is a a real treat for me I'm just going to your president and founder of uh Eurasia group also g0 media uh master's degree and doctorate in polyi from Stanford as well as a degree from T Lane you teach at Columbia and before that NYU and a senior fellow at Harvard uh Kennedy schools of belfer Center for Science and international Affairs none of that matters because in my mind you the number one international political economy brain out there and I want to get into it and chop it up thank you for spending the time

my pleasure and congrats on the uh on the full circle I am really happy uh that you're doing it and I'm looking forward to having the conversation here we go so number one uh on the uh headlines this morning and yesterday tariffs Canada Mexico China redrawing alliances uh what the hell is going on with tariffs what do you think the is this using economic uh carrot and stick to get political gain is that the fenel and illegal immigration both what does it mean for China Etc go Trump is in such a stronger position this time

around than he was in his first term I think that the markets sort of presuming that Trump uh carries a big stick but he doesn't necessarily swing it and certainly not repeatedly uh but I I think that's a misread I think that uh Trump first of all he had uh a lot of establishment Republicans around him and he needed them in his first term and they need him a lot more than needs them right now and his economic team in particular are mostly Yes Men um and bad carriers and hype men they're not people that

are going to push back hard on Trump even if they think he's doing something wrong that wasn't true first time he had you know of course Jared Kushner who he respects an enormous amount and who had real access he had Robert lighthiser he had Steve minuchin this is a very different group so I mean what he's hearing every day is yes you're the most brilliant person out there in the world and everything you're saying of course is going to work and we're going to we are we are there to implement for you sir and and

by the way why are they doing it what do you think the reason why are they playing sort of economic chicken is it for political gains is it for economic gains a lot of it is economic gains a lot of it is Trump really truly believes that a trade a deficit is against America's interest so he wants to balance uh those trade relations he wants the Americans at least to balance or in Surplus with other countries uh he beli believes that he has for decades that's not new to his presidency uh he thinks the tariffs

should be reciprocal so the United States should not have less access or be charged more than a smaller less powerful country he thinks that in places where the Americans are more powerful they should wield a bigger stick and you should do what we want or else and he also sees tariffs as useful from a national security perspective so you can use economic weaponization for the Americans to address the Border more broadly illegal immigration use it to address fenel use it to address National Security and whether the Americans want to keep troops on the ground in

South Korea or Japan you know all of those things play through but I'll tell you something that I worry about more and more these days is I see the three most powerful leaders comparatively unconstrained leaders on the global stage increasingly not getting good information and I really worry about that because you and I both know the only way you can respond to a challenge is if you know what it is if you get you know the best brain in the room to really explain and understand the problem you you and I might have different solutions

but you got to understand the problem so who are the three brains is that Putin Trump well it's Trump it's Xin ping and it's Putin and these are extremely powerful people yeah with very few checks and balances on their power who increasingly are surrounded by people that are not giving them great information they're older men with huge egos um and I worry about that could WR mostly about it in Russia because that's the most dysfunctional of the three but frankly I worry about it in the United States a lot too so tariffs with China it

seems to be the latest in an ongoing cold war with China both politically and economically what how and I want to maybe we we do the three we do okay these these tariffs how does it affect uh China and our relationship with them how does it affect Europe uh and Canada and North America but and what are the repercussions in Europe and therefore the knock on effects with with h Russia so I think as you just mentioned or you alluded to uh Trump doesn't just see tariffs by themselves as an economic lever yeah tariffs are

a core component of what the US is trying to accomplish in the broader relationship with the country yeah so I think if we're going to address us China relations and look at what he has done on tariffs we have to look at the broader set of us China relations and where they're going yes so yes uh it's interesting to me that unlike Mexico and Canada where the Tariff announcements were really meant as an opening Salvo to ensure engagement negotiations see what the Americans would get from those countries the art of the deal that's not true

with China right China you announced the 10% and they weren't interested in a call with Sean paying not at that point and then they announced another 10% same thing and that's also true with export controls on semiconductors that's also true with talking to other third countries about trying to contain the Chinese or else they'll be on the other side of the American tariff wall we've seen that with conversations with Australia with India with Japan you name it um and you know it's also about talking to countries not letting them uh take Chinese goods and bring

them through their countries into the US big part of the US Mexico conversation so this is more broadly um I know if I would call it a cold war but I would certainly call it a policy of containment the Americans under Trump have decided that China is America's principal adversary they want a a Russia rap pront in an effort to do a reverse Nixon and peel the Russians away from their China relationship which I think will fail we can talk about why that is later um but the point is that everything they're doing even less

troops in the Middle East e and Europe is oriented towards more focus on Asia and dealing with this China that is much more capable technologically than they used to be a much bigger economic threat to the United States than every other country that's out there and a country they fundamentally don't trust at all by the way a country that they did a deal with a hard-fought deal in Trump's first term and all of the Trump people say they didn't actually then go and implement the terms of the deal they promis so why would we do

a second deal with right so it's a I do think that the the the gloves are truly off on the US China relationship this time around yeah and look uh you you alluded to the fact you know that these things are all sort of intertangled and just just to let you know I want to get into tariffs I want to get into Ukraine Europe NATO and Gaza I remember talking to you about Gaza and it was funny because we went from Gaza to China why because at the time everyone was focused on Gaza and you're

saying but this is what's happening in China over here and that's why I like your brain because it's all of this stuff is interrelated but on the Tariff side so we've got tariffs as the the latest uh you know in in our ongoing uh China Saga and I want to get into Tech with Quantum and and AI uh and that race um but just to finish with tariffs uh it seems that there's an economic or that at least there's a nod to this sort of turn of the century 19 00 like tariffs paid for everything

and we didn't have to have tax and all of this stuff but also it's going to be used for fenel and cartel and and illegal immigration so we're using sort of economic stick to get to political gains it seems that you can't have both of those because they conflict I.E if you say okay we stopped the fentin and the illegal immigration then the taxation or the pay down the Surplus or the no IRS or whatever it is you've promised the other people goes away because you have to take away isn't that sort of schizophrenic sure

well I mean if you believe that tariffs are an answer to every problem then you're going to have to eventually pick and choose you know which of these challenges you are prepared to actually negotiate on do a deal on in the case of china I think the most important issue for Trump is not fenel it's certainly not immigration right uh the most important issue is that he wants to revise and restructure global trade flows away from China right he wants China to be a smaller part of global manufacturer he wants that going towards allies and

most particularly he wants to going towards the United States you want those Supply chains aligning more with the US now in some cases the Americans are in a strong position to do that when I look at Ai and I look at the new diffusion rules that are trying to get American aligned countries if you want to be in tier one where you're going to get access to the top semiconductors then you're going to have to have a whole bunch of rules around your supply chain around your data centers that need to align fully with the

United States that's an area where the Americans can get a whole bunch of countries that even though they trade a lot with China they're going to want to be in tier one no matter what the Europeans the Japanese the South Koreans the Emirates the Saudis um on the other hand when you look at energy transition and where the Chinese are on electric vehicles and batteries and technology or Advanced nuclear capabilities or even green hydrogen and they are Miles and Miles Ahead of the Americans and everyone else it's not like the United States has a credible

alternative for many of these countries to align with if they say no to China so a big piece of it is where do the Americans have actual leverage and how broadly does that leverage apply because a full decoupling of the commanding Heights of technology away from China is just not doable given the lack of American Investment into many of these Technologies for a very long time on the other hand if you want to look specifically at Ai and how AI applies to the military industrial complex that's a place where not only are the Americans ahead

but if the Americans don't take some fairly aggressive moves in the near- term and we assume that us China relations are becoming more confrontational the Americans might not have the ability to do that in 5 years time right so I'm more sympathetic on some of this than I am on others you brought up Supply chains semiconductors AI uh China America were leading to Taiwan there are the military operations which China has carried out in the waters south of Taiwan and then they're the words China has repeatedly said it intends to regain control of the self-ruled

island is Taiwan our Poland what happens over the next few years with Taiwan um it's you know China's been making a lot of moves we're both familiar with encirclement and things and there's movement of Chinese students to farm so we more self-sufficient all this stuff what happens with Taiwan and how important is it geopolitically so the big thing that has changed is the US the big things that has changed is Trump so if you're China you need to understand what that change means for you and what it means for Taiwan and there are conflicting signals

here on the one hand the Americans have just has thrown the ukrainians under the bus they've said we're not interested this is Europe's fight it is far away we're not providing the intelligence support we're not providing the money and the weapons anymore Europe if you want to do it have at it but we really want to ceasefire because this could be World War III now if I'm China hearing and watching all of those things and knowing that Taiwan is even further from the United States than Ukraine right not a part of Europe well then clearly

there's a possibility that Trump doesn't care about it especially when he is saying that tsmc is ripping off the Americans they're stealing intellectual property they're not actually doing enough in the United States so that's one hand but then at the same time not only do you have people around Trump in his administration and Republicans in the House and Senate along with the Democrats who see China as the principal us adversary but you see the American national security complex saying that they want to take troops out from the Middle East and out from Europe because the

principal area they need to focus is Asia and that Trump had a pretty good meeting with the Japanese prime minister is sheiba even though he's very weak unlike the Europeans unlike even the Canadians why because they recognize Japan's important India same thing with Modi oriented towards more alignment on Tech more alignment on their military relationship with the United States so if I'm xiin ping I recognize something very big has just happened in the United States and I don't yet have enough information so what do I need I need more information how do you get that

information I engage in a series of lowlevel meaningful escalatory moves militarily in my backyard South China SE and Taiwan because I want to understand how the Americans do or don't respond to that and and what the allies do depending on that right I mean do I am I starting to see fragmentation and maybe some allies that are pissed with Trump that I can pick off what about the new South Koreans um what happens how do the Taiwan East respond I mean they've got a majority for the kmt which is the more uh mainland China aligned

party yeah not with the president in Parliament in Congress and they're trying to reduce defense spend so if if China suddenly is doing a bunch of live fire exercises they've never done before right outside Taiwan they don't tell anyone do they get capitulation from the kmt that could be really useful information or did the Americans suddenly say okay we're going to start sending do do like a Pelosi trip but with Mike Waltz this time National Security advisor so xiin ping doesn't know what he doesn't know and in the next six to 12 months he's going

to learn he's going to find that out and that's going to help him play the long game you mentioned Ukraine and I love again how everything things intertangled and what is happening what's being played out in the Ukraine is teaching you know the Chinese Communist party what they can do uh uh uh in in in various parameters let's talk about the Ukraine like dramatic fight in the in the White House what about if you didn't have our military equipment inv if you didn't have our military equipment this war would have been over in two weeks

in three days I heard it from Putin in three days this is something in two weeks of course he yes it's going to be a very hard thing to do business like this I tell you to say thank you said a except except except is this staged is this a bit of B and puet theater or you know was that for real a b what what do we hope happens there and what the hell goes on with NATO which seems to be sort of the biggest shift in in uh since you know postwar when we

made up the deal the Europeans feel a true crisis here that's the the biggest change and I think that there were two different components of that the first component was in Munich a couple weeks ago when I was watching uh about 30 feet away uh vice president say that the principal enemies are not China or Russia the principal enemies are the Europeans in this room who are anti-democratic anti-free speech what I worry about is the from within the retreat of Europe from some of its most fundamental values values shared with the United States of America

when that vice president um said and very similar what Elon Musk has been saying that this afd party which the Germans consider a Neo-Nazi party uh should be fully integrated and aligned uh and the future of Germany uh they the firewall the German the so-called German the German firewall so I mean first of all they were shocked by that and they and and many of them especially the Germans but many Europeans I spoke to that made them think that on the one hand the Russians have a gun to their head on Ukraine but the Americans

have a gun to their head on Democracy so the Americans are an adversary that was the first shoot to drop second shoe to drop was when zalinsky came to Washington and met directly with Trump and met with Vance um and that Trump treated him not as a friend uh but as a supplicant as a vassel as someone to be beaten on um radically different than the Coalition of the Willing in the UK with all the Europeans that embraced him that said that they were supporting him no matter what uh and the United States saying you

don't have any cards here and I'm not on Ukraine side I'm not on any side Russia Ukraine I just want to end this on peace Trump did that unilaterally breaking not only with his own Republican party and the Democrats and of course the Republicans quickly aligning with Trump but also breaking with his NATO allies yes so if you are the Europeans you now feel in a matter of three weeks that you cannot trust the United States on the two principal issues that have been core to Nato rule of law and democracy as well as National

Security with Russia and Ukraine that's the reality now uh the Europeans are now taking this very seriously there's been true urgency and we are now seeing things from the Europeans that were inconceivable a few weeks ago so for example the Germans are now prepared to spend a trillion extra dollars before their new government comes in to essentially of ignore the Constitutional majority required debt break allowing them to radically increase their spending on defense and infrastructure that was inconceivable three weeks ago and you also see a number of countries talking about putting boots on the ground

in Ukraine they would prefer a back stop from the Americans but many of them prepare to do it even if the Americans aren't there so the Europeans seem to be willing to take the lead um on ceasefire negotiations with Ukraine on Russia if the Americans are saying we're not talking to the ukrainians anymore we're not doing the critical minerals deal now uh on the one hand if that works I could imagine Trump triumphantly saying look at me I just got the Europeans to take a leadership role when Biden never could have when Comm and never

could have and so now yeah now I'm willing to do more because the Europeans are actually playing a fair share they're do more in a part of the world that they should rightfully be doing more and they weren't for decades and I told them to last time and they refused and Russia invaded and they refused and Biden told them and they refused and now finally they get it and so now we can have a new NATO based on a reasonable agreement with these people like Trump saying I'm going to keep my troops in Poland because

the polls are moving to 5% of GDP defense spend much more than the Americans why because the polls are on the front lines so he could do that or he could say I'm doing a deal with Putin yeah I'd much rather align with Putin anyway um we're both aligned we don't want a strong European Union we're both aligned with the Reform Party in the UK and the afd in Germany and the national rally in France and all those parties and the Patriots uh in the EU and Orban and Hungary those are our friends those are

who we want to win those are the the Maga Europeans uh and those are Putin oriented Europeans so we can end the European Union that we never liked we never liked the strong EU and the ukrainians have to pay for themselves and if they don't want to sue for peace then that's it for Ukraine we'll see what happens we warned him he could do that too and I do think that Trump is very interested in a deal with Putin and the big question is whether that deal includes the Europeans or not whether that deal includes

the ceasefire or not because if it doesn't include a ceasefire that's because Trump says zalinski is the problem not Putin so I think that's the open question here and let's keep in mind zinski you know very courageous has in my view has nothing to apologize for his country was invaded illegally um you know we in principle stand for territorial Integrity but not anymore since we threw that away at the un uh General Assembly resolution where we're we're aligned with the Russians and the North Koreans now um I mean that's a problem but I mean the

fact is that the ukrainians without the US the ukrainians will not be able to fight for another year they probably won't be able to fight through the summer and a lot more ukrainians are going to die and millions more ukrainians will flee Ukraine so there will be a lot of pressure on the ukrainians to sup for peace and and if that happens and the poles and the bals and the nordics are standing up for Ukraine no matter what I can imagine the UK which is not in the EU anymore saying we got to find a

way to work with the Americans and do a trade deal with the US and I can imagine Maloney who doesn't spend much on defense and isn't prepared to send troops to Ukraine and has a better relationship with Trump and with Elon saying I'm going to do an alliance with the UK and we need to work together with the Americans so I mean it is possible that Europe falls apart on the back of all of this the Europeans are doing more the Europeans are acting credibly but it is very late my friend and there is a

lot to play for here you were just in Munich I believe uh when this happened and uh a uh I believe a little birdie told me uh that the the German defense minister had an outburst uh uh if you could talk about that little Insider uh baseball but also uh how much of a real slap in the face is this for Europe it seems to be redrawing uh our diplomatic Maps as we speak well I mean breaking from the ukrainians without discussing it with the European allly in advance um is a pretty staggering break but

it's not like Trump hasn't done it before I mean in Afghanistan Trump wanted to end the war he wanted to pull American troops out he engaged directly with the Taliban over the heads of American Allies that had fought shoulder-to-shoulder with the Americans for decades he did the deal he didn't ask the Europeans if that was okay um I think if you care about your alliances and remember the first time the only time Article 5 has ever actually been operational was after 911 when the Americans said we were just attacked by Bin Laden and we need

you for collective security and all of our allies stood up and said yes and a lot of them sent more troops per capita than the Americans were sending yeah Article 5 just to be clear is if you attack one NATO member you attack us all Finly that's right it's the core piece of collective security and so when the Americans the only country in history that has ever invoked Article 5 because of 9911 our allies came to our Aid and we had a collective Coalition based on NATO um and you know Denmark for example sent more

troops per capita had more people die in Afghanistan per capita and Trump's response to that is not only to throw them under the bus but to say we're going to take Greenland right so I mean if I were an American Ally yeah I wouldn't necessarily trust Trump a lot right I mean I think that's fair um and so yeah they were really concerned about Trump for a second time acting unilaterally on a core national security issue and Ukraine of course much higher Stakes than Afghanistan at least for the Europeans then you have in Munich Vance

with that speech and yes when he spoke specifically about the firewall and keep I mean I'll give you the background because the americ just you maybe explain the firewall too because it's the other parties can't align with the and just maybe just explain that firewall so the idea is you have this this farri party the alternatives for deuts land and they believe in a lot of things that we would consider anathema in any advanced economy so for example they support taking away the citizenship and the expulsion of existing citizens that have not adequately integrated in

their view with Germany right so they're talking mostly about Muslims right tur so I mean like literally I mean it's one thing to get rid of illegal immigrants it's another thing to take citizens and say you are no you no longer have citizenship in our country yeah right this is the kind of thing that last time we saw that in Germany was Nazi Germany so I mean the Americans led the way after World War II we didn't want to get in the war we might wasn't our fight uh Charles Lindberg was the original America firster

he was the one that coined the term he said this is this is the European problem we should I thought you you coined it and then it was stolen from you by Trump is I I referred to Trump's policies when he was running as not isolationist but America First in the context of Lindberg and Trump had never heard of that when the New York Times came to interview him on foreign policy and they asked him if he was isolationist and they just read my newsletter um I think it was David Sanger and Maggie hberman said

do you consider yourself an isolationist no no no not at all and then they said with after my update they said oh do you consider yourself America First and he loved it like oh yeah America first that's what I am not realizing that that was what kept the Americans out of the war now of course when Pearl Harper happened suddenly the war was about the US and then we got in but let's be clear if the Japanese had an attack the Nazis are taking over right yeah so I mean there's a lot of history around

America First and now we have the Americans who after World War II LED the process of denazification in Germany yes that was on our shoulders we were the ones that did the Marshal plan we were the ones that were going to create even with our adversaries that were defeated by us we were going to make them democracies we're going to make them align with us yeah learning from the Treaty of Versailles and was saying we're you're not allowed to do that because you were bad at that in World War I so we're going to do

it for you World War II that's right so here you have JD Vance and this is after Elon Musk is saying that you know Germany is done for it's history if they don't elect the afd this this party that is considered by a majority of Germans neo-nazis and they have something called the firewall which is that no matter what party is in government they will not work with the afd because of the Nazi background and because this is a Neo-Nazi party understandable in the German perspective completely so Vance comes to Germany he goes to dcau

he visits the concentration camps the next day he comes and speaks and does the most important speech the plenary at the Munich security conference I've been going for 15 years the US delegation is always led by a major figure usually the vice president not always who gives the most important National Security speech right he gives this speech I'm watching him give this speech literally 30 feet away and he is saying I'm not going to talk about Russia I'm not going to talk about China I'm not going to talk about the Middle East I'm going to

talk about the most important national security issue which is you guys destroying democracy and he goes through and he says look this firewall uh is anti-democratic it should not stand and at that point there is someone a man with a booming Voice who yells out from the front this is unacceptable and there there's 1500 people in the room it is tight it is standing room only everyone's seeing the back of his head I'm a few places away from I see him it is the defense minister of Germany Pistorius who I mean I literally I have

never seen in my life anything remotely like this in the Munich carment this is our our top Ally in Europe who is yelling out at the vice president um that his formulation is essentially adversarial and and so then then you have the German elections and by the way Vance refuses to meet with the German Chancellor because he's only going to be there for a couple months so why bother but he does meet with the leader of the afd yeah so later on you've got the elections that happen uh that later that week as everyone expected

the afd does about 20% Which is better than they had done but nowhere close enough to run a government so that they're going to be out and Frederick Merritts um is going to form a Grand Coalition two-party Coalition and meritz comes out and says we've got to formulate European Defense ourselves we can't rely on the Americans anymore and says what the Americans are trying to do to our democracy is no different from what the Kremlin has been doing to our democracy so I mean that these are unprecedented statements from a German leader but when you

understand the context of the zinsky meeting you understand the context of the Vance speech suddenly you understand why the Germans feel that way what happens going forward in the Ukraine it seems like and I I wanted to get into this later but this is a sort of a segue it feels like and I was actually looking for uh someone to attribute this quote to and I couldn't find but the American government has set up to do nothing um and do it very slowly uh when Obama got in and and had the the house and the

Senate felt like okay there's going to be a lot of stuff happen like a lot of times politics is just like I say bread and puppet bread and circus theater it's it's a two-party system it you know it's it's set up to do nothing and do it slowly it's galvanized into inactivity fine it feels now like we're on a sort of you know like we're on a cliff and we're about to jump off and a lot of stuff is about to happen and it's going to be looked at historically as wow you know this was

a lot of stuff going down number one I think uh on the on the jump off point is the Ukraine what happens going forward well I mean I think the relevant historic quote here is Vladimir Lenin's which you know there are decades where nothing happens and then suddenly there are days when decades happen yet there we go and and that is uh I mean I remember when Trump first was inaugurated I I wrote an update that led with that quote Yeah uh because I mean it felt like that was exactly what we were going to

see we were going to see revolutionary Behavior at home and we were going to see Trump as apex predator abroad uh which was very very different from the transactional you know sort of trump that was in place from 2017 uh to 21 yeah what happens uh to Ukraine now well I mean the Americans have already temporarily at least suspended Aid and so I mean while the ukrainians can still fight for now and I think we'll still have the capacity to fight at least until summer even if those conditions hold uh Summer's not that far away

way yeah but I mean the United States I mean this move fast and break things when you it works in Silicon Valley right but for the US government it means people die right right I mean when you move fast and break things in usaid you end a lot of ultra woke stuff that nobody supports and you also stop supporting um helping people fight AIDS uh or malaria and hunger and people die and we're already going to see that right so I mean and and obviously I don't want to go so far as far as to

say the cruelty is the point because I think people are largely indifferent to that um but I think it is certainly um a willingness to accept that many many eggs will be broken to make this omelet I strongly oppose that because I think that actually the American citizens as well as uh less fortunate uh citizens around the world uh have relied on the United States and we will fail them and they will hurt and they will suffer and I care about those people and even if I didn't I certainly don't want America's adversaries to come

in and take over that rule for their benefit which the Chinese will do so specifically on Ukraine even as it makes the Europeans stand up for themselves to a greater degree which is a good thing yeah but it also means that the Europeans do not trust the Americans going forward and there is a greater possibility the whole thing breaks and Trump is willing to take that risk because he doesn't really value it but I mean I think as Americans thinking longer term than just one Trump Administration we should value it these that ultimately matter like

I mean having countries around the world that are advanced economies that are wealthy that have rule of law that actually have a greater amount of mutual trust with us that will work with us that will support things that we like long term I think are good for us and also the fact that even if we wanted to be great at the law of the Jungle and say who cares about these rules of the road we're the most powerful mhm that doesn't work well if you're not a dictatorship and America's not a dictatorship we've got a

70 or eight-year old man who is going to be in power given decent health for four years and then he's out and in two years he might have the Democrats controlling the house and he's constrained and there's still an independent Judiciary even if he doesn't want to listen to it it still exists and there's still a professional military that he's still going to have to deal with and it's still a federal system with independent Governors right and independent state legislatures and so I mean you know other countries around the world aren't going to treat Trump

like he's dictator for Life he's not so the fact is that what Trump is doing is just helping other countries believe that every four years the United States will do something radically different and you can't count on it right you can't count on it long term and you can count to a greater degree on other countries out there that's a serious problem how did Russia go from being the boogeyman um and our enemy in the Cold War and and and the you know who has openly tried to you know screw with our elections and you

know we've screwed with their elections and sanctions and all these things go from being the boogeyman to we're going to throw our NATO uh allies under the bus for for our new allies or our new buddy Russia to me that boggles the mind that we've that just sort of switches and and by the way not only does it switch but the exact same people in the Geo who said these guys are a number one enemy and you know they have all these nukes and this is they're the worst and the dictatorship and Putin KGB blah

blah blah are now like yeah yeah no they're are they're our bullies now how how do you switch that ideologically I mean look Ted Cruz isn't saying that and Lindsey Graham isn't saying that uh and I mean there are a lot of Republican Senators that are still very strongly committed to the idea that Russia is a principal adversary that should not be trusted that's number one number two I'm a little surprised you're surprised right because it is it is true that Putin has been messing with American elections has spent a lot of money on disinformation

is trying to like he's promoting like you know a whole bunch of uh racism and promoting a whole bunch of islamophobia stuff like that he's promoting a whole bunch of stuff the Kremlin has been that makes America want to hate each other more he's promoting disinformation and polarization but I mean it's true that you and I want r R of law but I mean what Putin has also been doing is promoting Trump like he wants Trump to win he didn't want Biden to win he didn't want Harris to win so I mean like in in

many ways he's aligned pretty well with Trump trump also doesn't want checks and balances in the US system Trump doesn't want rule of law in the US system he wants a stronger Trump he wants a stronger executive so in that regard what Putin has been doing inside the United States is pretty aligned with what Trump and Elon have been doing inside the United States and and also I mean you know Biden really supports a strong Europe thinks a strong European Union is good for the United States Trump doesn't Trump thinks a strong EU is adversarial

they free ride on America um they refuse to pay for security they coordinate on trade and on regulation and undermine American competitiveness in companies and they tariff us too much they won't give us access so what the US wants is an end to the EU under Trump he loved brexit he always talked to m macron in his first term and would said when are you going to do a brexit every time he met him he always said that Trump wants all of the parties that are more aligned with the with Trump and with the Kremlin

he loves Orban orban's the guy that always travels to maralago and says what a great guy Trump is he also promotes Putin so I mean frankly the Americans under Trump and Putin have a have a significant strategic alignment on Europe and and Trump believes that Europe is one electoral cycle behind the us but if you give it one more voting cycle that reform can win in the UK and elon's talked about maybe donating 100 million bucks to farage in that group though he doesn't like farage leading it um you know they want the afd to

win um they want uh the national rally in France Leen to win so I mean actually it would be quite surprising if Trump didn't see himself as aligned with Russia on those issues and also I mean I remember when when Trump had his first G20 Summit as president uh in his first term and you know he was there with all the Europeans but also with Putin and Trump knows that the Europeans don't respect him they're educated Elites they think he's you know some low class heck that you know doesn't that that they snigger at and

they laugh at just like Obama used to they don't respect him they say one thing in front of his face they say another thing behind his back and Lord knows he gets Intelligence on that and he sees that Putin actually gets along with him just fine he nice to him it's good to him just like Muhammad B Solon is and that matters to Trump and I remember in that first G20 meeting in Hamburg and he was sitting there with all these you know educated audite global leaders feeling you know disrespected and so he gets up

from his seat where he was sitting next to Shinzo ab's wife who was pretending not to speak English so she didn't have to talk to him because she hated Trump um and then he gets up and he goes around the table to sit down and talk to Putin and you know what and they Ed the Kremlin translator because his translator had Japanese but didn't have didn't have Russian and and this and I broke that news because a bunch of the leaders that were at that table told me about it they were so stunned I wasn't

stunn and this wasn't some conspiracy theory this wasn't Trump figuring out like how to do a you know some sort of like big Grand Alliance with Putin this was Trump feeling disrespected by Western leaders and saying screw you I'm not dealing with you I'm going to talk to this guy so I really think that people need to understand how Trump's brain works on this stuff just to be clear my surprise was not about that alignment my surprise was how does the GOP go from here's the biggest Boogeyman to here's our buddy no and that's why

I think it's important that to note that a bunch of GOP Senators who have not spoken out against Trump on hardly anything I mean they voted through RFK yeah I mean who you know frankly you know wouldn't get a cabinet position in Burkina Faso right and I mean is here uh right now for Trump they voted for tulsy gabard up for Christ's sake I mean who again who certainly shouldn't be on cabinet they also voted for a lot of very capable people on cabinet um like bessent and like you know uh Rubio and walz so

it's across the board but I mean they have spoken out on Putin a lot of them have who hasn't spoken out on Putin is Marco Rubio uh who you saw during the zalinsky blowup was just like Fading Into the upholstery yeah because I mean you know everything that he has stood for on this issue is being ripped up by Trump in front of him and he understands that his job as secretary of state is not to act as a principal but is to do the bidding of the American president so amidst all this drama with

tffs and uh Ukraine NATO the redrawing of the political map of Europe uh we seem to have forgotten and maybe there's Gaza fatigue what are your thoughts on Gaza what happens how do we come back from this incredibly uh tragic situation that happened there well as you say it's it's interlined there are some analogies uh Trump went and he was frustrated the Middle Eastern allies who he's closest to particularly MBS in Saudi and mbz in the Emirates that they were not acting faster and Egypt which gets the most US Military Support leaving aside the special

money for Ukraine in the world after Israel he was very frustrated that they were not moving faster to take responsibility for what a post ceasefire Gaza would look like and so finally you know he meets with Nan yahu and he says okay I'm just going to do it myself and I'm G to take it over under whose authority under my authority and uh and they're all going to leave voluntarily the Palestinians and I'm going to make it into a beautiful Riviera and then he makes the Jordanian King come and kiss the ring uh while he

says that as well um but the reality is he doesn't have a plan to take over Gaza and he doesn't have a plan to get all the Palestinians out and they wouldn't leave voluntarily and he's certainly not going to engage in full ethnic cleansing he's not going to send boots on the ground to do it so um what what he's done is basically put more pressure on the Arabs to make a plan uh which they have now come to with a meeting uh in Cairo among the Arab League and that plan includes um a lot

more money for reconstruction in Gaza while the Palestinians are still there and are resettled on in camps where they have capacity with humanitarian Aid coming in the Israelis have not accepted that plan Trump has not accepted it yet but they're talking uh including with his very capable special Envoy W witkoff who's done a really good job with the gulf allies over the past few months um and so I think the intention is kind of like on Ukraine to get the Americans out of the process to have the gulf Arabs Take the Lead pay the money

yeah figure out the governance and let the Americans do other stuff um now I mean you do have the the uh complicating factor of the Israelis who are the exception consistently to Trump's America First policy because kind of no matter what Israel does the United States under Trump will make sure that they get a hell of a lot of support yeah um and that is you know not the way the Americans treat the ukrainians or the Canadians or the Mexicans or others but leaving that aside because Israel is in such a strong military position and

because they can basically determine the level of escalation or deescalation in the region because they destroyed they decapitated Hezbollah which was their principal military adversary oners because they've destroyed Hamas in Gaza uh because because they've done so much damage with Islamic Jihad in the West Bank and because Assad has been overthrown which means the Iranians can no longer get military weapons over the land bridge to Lebanon and Hezbollah Israel just doesn't face the kind of threat that they had faced before so there is no longer the same level of urgency from the Israelis as there

was after October 7th yeah when the Americans you know really deeply had to stand up for their Ally or there was a more existential question and so how does it resolve itself I mean you think that the GCC pays for the re rebuild and we make a sort of Dubai on on the med and that we forget uh and forgive and and we have an Ireland where we have uh jobs so therefore uh you know we have money and and and go forward no not quite I mean because again the Israelis are relevant here um

and they're going to demand buffer zones and they're going to demand some level of control um of uh of of Border uh security and what does and doesn't get in from a humanitarian perspective so I think we're very far from allowing the Arabs to have sovereignty over that process um the Israelis don't just want Hamas out and Arabs agree on that of course but they also aren't comfortable with the Palestinian Authority having any leadership that is at odds uh with the Arab plan so that would have to be discussed at the same time time the

Israelis are taking more territory in the West Bank they are um evacuating Palestinians from camps in the West Bank with Force um and that is likely a precursor to Israelis expanding illegal settlements which is supported by nyah's far-right Coalition Partners to allow him to stay in power um in Israel they're part of his government so I think there's a lot more hair on this yeah before we get to something that feels like oh this could be a plan for a Palestinian State even know the Arab plan does explicitly call for a role for a Palestinian

state which is something that Biden nominally supported though we didn't do much to support it uh Trump said I used to support it I don't anymore I want to get into even bigger stuff uh Global geopolitics and power shifts how do you see this this everchanging world of of China Russia Iran Gaza the Middle East uh what are the the power moves and uh the global economy you know right now with tariffs and we're playing e economic and and political chess what are the big moves that you see over let's say the next six months

to a year in the near term the United States gets a lot of announced wins some of which are symbolic only some of which are meaningful because other countries that are weak uh and other companies are trying to do everything possible not to get into a fight with Trump and his administration and that's true whether you're you're meta and Zuckerberg or whether you're tsmc or whether you're Panama they going to be a lot of wins like that but longer term uh the impact of that um especially for a country that doesn't have a very good

long-term strategy because of our political system um is going to be the US that will lose a lot of influence that will lose a lot of allies um and I think that's going to create more opportunities sadly for the Chinese and also more fragmentation geopolitically less growth geopolitically as well okay uh not great where do you see the Chinese American you know relationship heading over the next year uh significantly more negative I think that uh you know you're going to have the Americans continuing to impose tariffs they've already going with 20% Which is pretty meaningful

and the Chinese are responding in kind though not quite as hard there's also going to be an expansion of American export controls and America will use its power to get other countries more aligned with the Americans and get the Chinese out of their supply chain particularly in areas of technology that are considered adjacent to a national security broadly defined um and that effort to contain the Chinese will lead the Chinese to be fighting so I I think that you'll see more decoupling broadly speaking and also you'll see a more challenging uh relationship that won't be

as well manage between the US and China because of all this noise um we're forgetting some big things uh climate change and Global Security what like you know a lot of these things are just falling through the back burner what are your thoughts there yeah well I mean I'm ultimately even though the Americans are not part of a global response to climate change the Americans are part of a global response to investing massively in post-carbon sustainable Technologies uh because they are working at scale and I don't think the United States stes pulling out of the

Paris climate Accord um is going to meaningfully change that trajectory Texas is uh producing more renewable energy right now than any other state in the United States it was California a couple years ago why because entrepreneurs and capital know their returns and they're going to keep doing it so I mean yeah I can see that what the US is doing now will make this process more inefficient and maybe It ultimately means that we move more towards longer coal and longer oil and gas than we otherwise would see but we're still our kids and our grandkids

are going to have a future of inexpensive postc carbon um sustainable decentralized and abundant energy and the only real question is how much climate change and how much damage has been done in the interim and we'll probably do a little bit more damage that's the reality but you it's it's the genie out of the bottle on moving past uh coold and oil and gas long term and that's something we should and if we're going to end on something positive that's a good thing to end on we have some green shoots I like to end you've

got to accentuate the positive and eliminate the negative as the song Go friend listen a pleasure as always let's do it again uh the man the machine uh the legend uh Ian Bremer thank you good to see man take it easy be good [Music]