📉 Is the American Empire collapsing from within?
On this explosive episode of Dialogue Works, renowned economist Richard D. Wolff breaks down how Trump’s economic legacy, global shifts, and internal fractures are accelerating the decline of U.S. global dominance. 🧠
Topics include:
🇺🇸 The weakening dollar & economic nationalism
💼 Trump’s impact on class conflict & economic inequality
🌍 The rise of multipolarity and America's shrinking influence
⚖️ Why systemic change may be inevitable
Don’t miss this bold, clear-eyed conversation on the true state of America’s future in a changing world.
✅ Like, comment, and subscribe for uncensored economic and geopolitical analysis!
#RichardDWolff
#AmericanEmpire
#TrumpEconomy
#DialogueWorks
#USDecline
#EconomicCollapse
#MultipolarWorld
#Geopolitics2025
#FallOfEmpire
#TruthAboutAmerica
#PoliticalEconomy
#GlobalShift
#USvsWorld
#LateStageCapitalism
#TrumpImpact
#ClassStruggle
#DollarCrisis
#WolffExplains
#UnfilteredNews
#EmpireInDecline
On this explosive episode of Dialogue Works, renowned economist Richard D. Wolff breaks down how Trump’s economic legacy, global shifts, and internal fractures are accelerating the decline of U.S. global dominance. 🧠
Topics include:
🇺🇸 The weakening dollar & economic nationalism
💼 Trump’s impact on class conflict & economic inequality
🌍 The rise of multipolarity and America's shrinking influence
⚖️ Why systemic change may be inevitable
Don’t miss this bold, clear-eyed conversation on the true state of America’s future in a changing world.
✅ Like, comment, and subscribe for uncensored economic and geopolitical analysis!
#RichardDWolff
#AmericanEmpire
#TrumpEconomy
#DialogueWorks
#USDecline
#EconomicCollapse
#MultipolarWorld
#Geopolitics2025
#FallOfEmpire
#TruthAboutAmerica
#PoliticalEconomy
#GlobalShift
#USvsWorld
#LateStageCapitalism
#TrumpImpact
#ClassStruggle
#DollarCrisis
#WolffExplains
#UnfilteredNews
#EmpireInDecline
Category
🗞
NewsTranscript
00:00:00Hi, everybody. Today is Thursday, April 17, 2025, and our friend Richard Wolff is back with us.
00:00:10Welcome back, Professor.
00:00:11Thank you very much, Nima. Glad to be here.
00:00:15Let's get started with what's going on between the United States and China and these escalations
00:00:23and somehow economic war between the two parties.
00:00:26Here is what the Chinese expert Victor Gao said about the way that China is going to respond to the United States.
00:00:35Right to the end, as the government has declared, and China has now imposed the territory tariff up to 125% against all U.S. exports to China.
00:00:48Now, if things are not handled well, this means complete stop of China-U.S. trade.
00:00:54Both ways, no goods exported from the United States to China, and complete stop of everything made in China to the United States.
00:01:02This is decoupling. If the United States wants to really welcome this, China will reciprocate.
00:01:10And causing the breakup of China-U.S. relations, whether this will evolve from peace to war, well, let's all be prepared.
00:01:17In essence, what China now declares is that it is prepared to fight to the end trade war, tariff war, technology war, or real war.
00:01:28So the ball is in Trump's court. You decide, and I will reciprocate. I will never succumb to the U.S. pressure.
00:01:35And this is the moment of truth. China wants to defend free trade. The United States wants to destroy free trade.
00:01:43The rest of the world is watching, and there will be a choice by the end of the day.
00:01:47For China, you cannot hold a gun to China's head and issue ultimatum and demand all the impossibilities, for example, and ask China to swallow that.
00:01:57China is the country that values dignity and decency and honor more than economic gains or economic losses.
00:02:06Richard, you see the tone and the way that they're responding to the United States.
00:02:12How deep are they going after this sort of economic war?
00:02:18Well, as we have talked about on many occasions on your program, you, me, Michael Hudson, and so on,
00:02:30there is a changing in the world economy that we are part of, that we are living through.
00:02:38The United States is living through it. China is living through it. Everybody is living through it.
00:02:43It is a fundamental change, above all, because one empire, that of the United States,
00:02:53the absolute dominant, unipolar moment, as it has been called by Professor Mearsheimer and others,
00:03:02is passing. The United States had its empire. It lasted, excuse me, about a hundred years.
00:03:10It came after the decline of the British empire, so that the pound sterling once was the global
00:03:19currency, then it was the dollar that was the global currency. After World War II, as we have
00:03:27talked about, the United States was the overwhelmingly dominant economic power that was left standing
00:03:36after the horrible mutual destruction of everybody else who might have been an empire. World War II finished
00:03:46the British empire. It finished the French, the German aspirations, which had already been destroyed
00:03:53in World War I, the Japanese, they were destroyed. The symbolism at the end of the United States,
00:04:03almost a monopolist in the atom bomb, dropping it on Japan. I mean, there you have, we are dominant,
00:04:14you are defeated. Okay? Now, for the rest of the 20th century, from the 1940s to the end of the century,
00:04:25the United States played that role. Of course it welcomed free trade, because it was in the best
00:04:37position to take advantage of free trade. They didn't want barriers anywhere. They wanted open
00:04:44competition, because between their economic power, their political power, their ideological power,
00:04:51and their military power, who was going to do as well as they were in a global market. So they had
00:04:59wonderful ideas. The profit and richness of American capitalism would now expand to take the whole
00:05:08world. And that's how they thought. And the people who lead the United States today, whether they are
00:05:15Democrats or Democrats or Republicans, are people who've lived their whole adult life, from childhood
00:05:23through the universities or colleges, schooling, into their political power position, with the United
00:05:30States as dominant. You must understand that to grasp the difficulty for them, when it turns out
00:05:41that their expectation, their hope, their assumption that this would last forever,
00:05:49comes to a screeching halt, when suddenly, somebody else is rising. It's as if the country here
00:05:59forgot its own history. It was a small, poor corner of the British Empire here in North America.
00:06:09And it became the child that not only outgrew the parent, but subordinated the parent. Britain is now
00:06:18the poor corner of the American Empire, not America, the poor corner of the British Empire.
00:06:26And now China. China emerges. What was it? A very poor corner of the British and American empires,
00:06:36abusively treated by both of them. And now through a whole host of spectacular adjustments that the
00:06:46Chinese made to their impoverished situation, they found a way to grow their economy faster than Britain
00:06:57ever did, faster than the United States ever did. And in a, literally, in 40 years, they become what?
00:07:07The powerhouse that they are today. And they have been very, very successful at doing it.
00:07:16And let's be clear, before I explain what this means. The Chinese are not only
00:07:22an immense economy now, but they, they had a particular strategy. And that strategy was
00:07:31to become the low cost, high quality manufacturing center of the whole global economy, taking advantage
00:07:42of the globalization that the United States organized as its market, as its framework,
00:07:50and then to become successful by producing the same goods and services that the West was producing,
00:07:59but of a better quality and a lower price. Often both, as in, for example, solar panels,
00:08:07or as in AI, or as in electric vehicles, all of which they now produce the best quality in the world
00:08:16at the lowest price. They succeeded in doing it. And it isn't all that difficult. Japan earlier did
00:08:25something quite similar. They went to work, for example, to defeat the West that had overwhelmed Japan
00:08:34by producing the automobile more cheaply and of a better quality to take that area, that niche.
00:08:44And it's not only that, but that was a particular focus of the Japanese. And they built an economy
00:08:52out of it. They built a place for themselves in the world economy. The Chinese have done it. They're a
00:08:58much bigger country than Japan. They have much bigger history and, you know, all of that. So they went to
00:09:05work and they have now done that. And so the question is, they have arrived and they want
00:09:13their economy to grow. They have lifted seven or 800 million people out of poverty in the last few
00:09:20years. They are therefore better at what? Well, they're better at what they have organized themselves
00:09:28to be. They understand. Partly it's their Marxism and their communism, but partly it's ancient Chinese
00:09:36philosophy too. They are aware that one of the weaknesses of Western capitalism is its inequality
00:09:46in the way that it has, you know, Elon Musk and then the 50 million people who can't get through next
00:09:54week in the United States. They understand that that is socially unsustainable. It is socially
00:10:03destabilizing to organize your economy. So they're not going to do that. And they have the government
00:10:11power because of the Communist Party and the way their government is structured. They have this hybrid
00:10:18economy, half state enterprises, half private enterprises, and they can use the power of the
00:10:26state to mediate, to control these two parts with an end result that is much more efficient, that's the
00:10:36sad truth of the sad truth of it, than Western capitalism privately owned. That's, they've shown that
00:10:43there's not a debate anymore except for ideologues who don't want to see what they have accomplished and
00:10:50what they are continuing to accomplish. And one more crucial thing, they understood as a late comer
00:10:58to the world of modern industrialization, that they better have real serious allies. Not merely trans,
00:11:11but they needed to build on what they could find to give them a community of allied nations. In a world of
00:11:24nation building and nation mentality, they had to come up with some kind of genuine internationalism.
00:11:36And the way they did that, brilliant, in my judgment, is they positioned themselves as a member,
00:11:47dues-paying member of the global south. They positioned themselves as part
00:11:53of that world of that world which European, American, and Japanese colonialism had repressed.
00:12:04And what that did is enable them, particularly in the last 10 years, to develop the BRICS.
00:12:12And that is crucial. It's not just the original BRICS. You know, South Africa, Russia, India, Brazil, and China.
00:12:22But the 15 or roughly more countries that have joined on one capacity or another partner or member of the BRICS.
00:12:34It is so important right now because the United States is decoupling from China. And let's be real clear,
00:12:44it's the United States that took the initiative to do this. The United States broke. The United States imposed tariffs first.
00:12:54When the Chinese retaliated, they almost always retaliated, very carefully, less than the United States.
00:13:03So if the United States is 145%, they stop at 125%. That's very symbolic, but it is very smart because it teaches the whole world the cause of this whole problem is the United States.
00:13:20It makes the interventions first. But the problem of the United States, given its situation,
00:13:27in its desperation, in its desperation to survive what it takes to be the terrible decline of its empire,
00:13:37it is sacrificing its alliances because it is so frightened, it is so desperate in its situation,
00:13:47that even to its border, Canada and Mexico, it becomes aggressive, it becomes angry, it becomes grabbing,
00:13:58it would take Canada, take Mexico's this or extraordinary. But look at the difference.
00:14:07The United States alienating Canada, Mexico, Europe, whereas the Chinese are building the BRICS,
00:14:15you could not have a more dramatic differentiation. But now let's really hone in on it.
00:14:25China will react to the decoupling with the United States by doing what Russia did when the United States
00:14:34became the support for the Ukrainians. What Russia did was turn to the BRICS, and it saved them.
00:14:43It meant that the economic sanctions of the West did not work. They failed. They were supposed to bring
00:14:52Russia to its knees. They were supposed to collapse the ruble. The ruble, by the way, right now,
00:14:58is one of the most rapidly rising currencies in the whole world the last few months. So the BRICS saved
00:15:08Russia. The BRICS are now going to save China. Why? Because the BRICS is over half the population
00:15:16of this planet. Somewhere 50 to 60 percent of the people of this world live in a BRICS member country.
00:15:26China will now turn to them. What it can't sell here, it will sell there. What it can't buy from the
00:15:33United States, it will buy from there. And we're talking about every continent, every part of the world,
00:15:43whose alliances were strengthened by Russia during the Ukraine war, just in time for China,
00:15:51China, who was supportive of Russia during the Ukraine war, to turn around and get support from
00:15:59Russia in return, which, as far as I can tell, will be forthcoming for them. And that's very, very
00:16:08important. And the United States, that's four and a half percent of the world's people. Not 50 to 60 percent,
00:16:15four and a half percent, with less going for its allies. The Europeans are not going to be in a very
00:16:25good mood to help Americans. They are bitter at what is being purchased at their expense.
00:16:33The United States making all kinds of plans that leave the Europeans high and dry, including the
00:16:40tariffs and all of that. So you are looking at a situation which, of course, because in the United
00:16:49States one is not allowed in general to be honest about what's going on. We live in a highly politically
00:16:58polarized society. And we have a long history of not wanting to acknowledge the empire that we sit on.
00:17:11So this is difficult for Americans to learn about, to understand, to see in any way. The Chinese are
00:17:20positioned now with a kind of automatic demonization. I want to remind everyone, when you hear all the
00:17:28noise that we're now going to hear about the evil Chinese, just remember, it wasn't just a few months
00:17:36ago that Mr. Putin was the worst imaginable leader on earth. He was a Stalin. Our president referred to
00:17:45him as a thug, you know, a criminal. What in the world are you doing? And before that, it was Saddam Hussein.
00:17:55And before that, it was Muhammad Gaddafi. One monster. We are the wonderful Democrats surrounded by the evil
00:18:09monsters and the dictator. Extraordinary. You live in a country that lives almost in a medieval
00:18:17bifurcation of good and evil. And everything is reduced to that story. And that, I wouldn't mind
00:18:27that. I mean, that would be a cultural peculiarity, except it is leading us to make one mistake after
00:18:35another. Let me end on that point. The war in Ukraine, I'm going to exaggerate a bit, but not by much.
00:18:44The war in Ukraine was lost because the United States thought that the mother of all sanctions
00:18:56by Europe and the United States together, focused on Russia, would destroy Russia. There were even
00:19:04thoughts it would break up. Mr. Putin would be thrown out. It would dissolve into little countries that could
00:19:11then be picked off by NATO the way Eastern Europe was over the last 20 years. That failed totally. Why?
00:19:23Because Russia had the BRICS. The current policy with China will fail for the exact same reason.
00:19:34America leaders in America can't get their heads around the fact that they have been outmaneuvered, outgrown.
00:19:48The Chinese found a way for economic development. The Chinese found a way to do what every poor country
00:19:58in Asia, Africa and Latin America wants to do. Economic growth quickly so they aren't so poor anymore.
00:20:07The Chinese did it better, faster than anybody else has ever done it. So of course they are the leader
00:20:15there. What would you expect? And no one's going to change that. The United States cannot
00:20:22not imaginarily do away with what I just said. And the power of that across this planet is overwhelming.
00:20:34And if you don't take it into account, you misunderstand the situation you face and you're going to make
00:20:43strategic mistakes. The sanctions war against Russia failed. It gave Russia the time
00:20:51and the space to mobilize its military and to win the military war on the ground in Ukraine, which they
00:21:00have done. And the decoupling strategy, which is the same, or tariffs. Tariffs is another way of whacking
00:21:09the world, just like sanctions is a way of whacking the world. What you are doing, the irony of ironies,
00:21:18you're bringing Russia and China closer together. You did that through the war in Ukraine. You're about
00:21:25to do it again. You're making the same mistake. You're not learning that you have a problem here,
00:21:33and that problem isn't going to go away. Look, Britain, as I think I've mentioned on this show,
00:21:40Britain tried to prevent the United States, even though it was in those days a poor corner of the
00:21:46British Empire. They didn't want it to break away. So they went to war, 1776. They went to war. They
00:21:55lost. They didn't understand. A few years later, in 1812, they did it again, and they lost again.
00:22:04After two wars, two losers, two losses. They didn't do it anymore. We don't have that luxury because of
00:22:12nuclear weapons. We can't go through two wars with China to figure out what I just said. We actually
00:22:19have to do it by thinking where we've been in the past, what it meant, how it worked out, what our
00:22:27latest misadventure in Ukraine. This is not a winnable situation for the mentality of the 20th century.
00:22:38The 20th century is over, and the American empire is over with it.
00:22:47We are not a nation of four and a half percent of the people of this planet. We are not in a position
00:22:55to overwhelm the BRICS with 50 to 60 percent of the world's people and two or more nuclear powers
00:23:04among them. I mean, this becomes lunatic. That's not where we're going in the world. We're not doing
00:23:14that. The Global South will not sit there and permit this to happen, and all the military power in the
00:23:23world will not change that. The reality is what it is, and only foolish people or crazy people persist in
00:23:37doing what isn't working. I hate to be so strong about it, but it is the reality, and it means that this
00:23:48noise with China is really a waste of everybody's time. The prospects for China among the BRICS in
00:24:01maintaining growth are much better than the prospects of the United States without its allies somehow.
00:24:09That's a kind of megalomania that thinks like that. And if you go too far, you will do enough damage that
00:24:19it will be very difficult to come back from that situation. I'll tell you the story, if I can, of
00:24:28of one example, and string it out so you can see the implications. The BYD Corporation, Build Your Dream,
00:24:41I believe is what BYD stands for. The BYD Corporation is a Chinese corporation that makes electric vehicles,
00:24:50cars, cars and trucks, and it makes what is globally recognized to be the highest quality at the lowest
00:25:01price. They recently got even more famous because they produced a battery for their electric vehicles
00:25:10that takes five minutes to charge, which none of the existing batteries can go that quickly.
00:25:16It takes about as much time as filling up your car with gasoline has been taking with that car,
00:25:24which was one of the big problems of that industry. It has so successful that it is now a larger
00:25:35seller of vehicles than Tesla, which was the first in the electric car area. Tesla is now
00:25:43shrinking. The stock price is falling. Mr. Musk will have to live with a little less than $400
00:25:53billion assets to his name. BYD is emerging. Now, what does that mean? Well, obviously it means that in
00:26:03the competition among all the car companies in the world to develop the best, cheapest, highest quality
00:26:12electric car, the electric car, the Chinese came in number one. That's already a very remarkable story.
00:26:23But that's only the beginning. That's what I mean by stringing it out for you. Now hear what's going to
00:26:29happen. The United States reacting to what the Chinese have achieved, not by figuring out how can we learn what
00:26:39they did. How can we replicate what they achieved? No, no, no. First, Mr. Trump and then Mr. Biden put an
00:26:49enormous tariff. Many Americans don't seem to know that. There's a tariff of 100% that has been in effect
00:26:57already before Mr. Trump became president again. Mr. Biden raised Trump's tariff of 27.5%
00:27:07all the way up to 100%. That means that no BYD cars come into the United States. If you travel this
00:27:16country, as I do, you will not see a BYD vehicle. But if you travel the roads of Europe, you will,
00:27:25of Asia, Africa, and South America, you will, because they are the best vehicle.
00:27:33If you have a taxi company, you're going to buy that car, because that's your best source of input.
00:27:42If you're a company that uses trucks for anything, you will be buying the best truck at the lowest price,
00:27:51which is BYD. American companies competing with people in every other part of the world
00:27:59will not be able to buy the cheapest, best truck. They'll have to do with a more expensive, less
00:28:06good vehicle. You know what that means? That means all American companies based here are put at a
00:28:16disadvantage in the world market because they have much more expensive vehicles they have to buy
00:28:26of a lower quality than all their competitors elsewhere in the world. Do you understand?
00:28:31That is damaging the economic future of the United States and privileging the economic future of all
00:28:41our competitors abroad, especially the Chinese, so that this tariff backfires on the United States.
00:28:52It doesn't achieve even what it sets out to achieve. It doesn't protect the United States economy in the
00:29:02long run. It undermines it. Look, this is not advanced rocket science. This is what economics has learned
00:29:12over the years. Tariffs are not a new phenomena. They've been in existence used by countries for hundreds of
00:29:21years. If you go to any library and you look up tariff, there'll be hundreds of books and thousands
00:29:29of articles examining what tariff was used in this situation. How did it work? Did it succeed? Did it
00:29:38fail? If it failed, why did it? We know all that. If you teach a course in international trade, you teach
00:29:47about tariffs among other topics. Doing what we're doing now and having the president who clearly never took
00:29:56an economics course. Or if he did, don't remember what he learned. To have him tell you, I'm doing a
00:30:02tariffs and it'll have this effect is ludicrous. Nobody can do that. He can't. I can't. A tariff,
00:30:11the effect of a tariff depends on everything else going on in the environment when you do that.
00:30:19Therefore, to do it always involves a big fat risk that it could go this way or that way. And I can give
00:30:31you examples of when it went this way and when it went that way. You don't know. Mr. Trump acts like
00:30:38he knows. Maybe he thinks that's what a president should do, pretend to know what he couldn't possibly
00:30:45know. But for the rest of us watching, this is craziness. Now, is it possible that the tariffs
00:30:54will have the effect Mr. Trump wants? Yes. It's not a zero probability. Sometimes tariffs do what
00:31:03clearly Mr. Trump hopes they will do. But that's all he's got, a hope. The idea that he has masterfully,
00:31:14that's silly. That's silly. That's just silly. Meanwhile, the risk he has taken, every country
00:31:21in the world is hurt because almost every country exports stuff to the United States because we've
00:31:31been one of the richest countries on earth for 50 years. So every country, sooner or later,
00:31:37the producers in every other country find a market here in the United States. So he has just hurt all
00:31:45of them. In one act, he made life difficult for every exporting company and country in the world.
00:31:56Those people don't like the United States more because we did that. They don't like Mr. Trump
00:32:03more because he did that. Not at all. They are angry. They are bitter. Their economic situation
00:32:11has now been damaged. Every leader of every country in the world now has an invitation to blame the
00:32:23economic difficulties of his or her country on the United States. And there will always be some truth to
00:32:32that. They're not going to limit it to the truth part. They will excuse their own mistakes.
00:32:39But you know what that does to the United States? It isolates the United States. It makes the United
00:32:47States the number one candidate for the label rogue nation. The one who doesn't play fair.
00:32:56The one who doesn't be helpful to us. Our enemy. And that's going to show up right away.
00:33:07The latest statistics show that an enormous decrease in tourism from Canadians is now the reality.
00:33:19As people make reservations in Canada for a summer vacation, you know, a week by the lake or a trip to
00:33:26the Grand Canyon or something, they're not doing it. And they're not coming south from Canada out of a
00:33:33protest against Mr. Trump's threat to make Canada the 51st state.
00:33:39The cost of what he is doing. The risks he is taking. My, my, my. I think historians will look back on this
00:33:53and say, as I do, the economic problems of this country must have been extraordinarily profound
00:34:05to generate a government desperate enough to take such enormous risks for a chance
00:34:15that is really small for all of this to work out.
00:34:22Richard, you mentioned it's going to be so much difficult to get back.
00:34:26We've learned that China is going to replace the United States with Canada in terms of providing oil to
00:34:36China and soybeans with Brazil. If the things change the way that they're talking about, do you think
00:34:43how difficult that would be for the United States to get back? How much difficult that would be? Are these
00:34:50countries going to change their new sort of trade and get back to the old system? Is, is there anybody
00:34:59concerned in the United States about that? Or they're just thinking of whatever it's in, whatever is in
00:35:06their mind? Well, you know, that's the question the rest of the world is asking. Just that it's a
00:35:12question that half the people in this country are asking. Where is the opposition? And the opposition,
00:35:21I have to be honest, the, the, the dominant part of the Democratic Party is stunning by its silence.
00:35:33Mr. Biden says hardly a word. Mr. Obama says hardly a word. In fact, the only thing
00:35:42I've seen recently of Obama's is him coming to the defense of Harvard University, but not, you know,
00:35:51dealing with these economic. So I think the rest of the world is seeing very little in the way yet of
00:36:01opposition to the, the end of a commitment to free trade and the shift to economic nationalism, which is
00:36:11what all of this amounts to. Even Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, their trip around the
00:36:22country, which is impressive and drawing big crowds, seems to be focused on hostility to oligarchs.
00:36:31Okay, I understand that. That's, that's correct. We have an extreme inequality of wealth, and that is
00:36:40certainly a social issue for many people. But there doesn't seem to be a major critique of the economic
00:36:48strategy. So you're left with the feeling that if the Democrats come in, yeah, they will be different. They won't,
00:36:57you know, they won't have Elon Musk firing hundreds of thousands of federal employees.
00:37:05But, you know, even there, they're not, the attack is weak, and the attack is, is doesn't get much press.
00:37:15It's extraordinary. It's extraordinary. It's as if everybody is holding their breath, waiting to see
00:37:25if Mr. Trump can get enough going that it becomes politically dangerous to critique him. And since it's not
00:37:36yet clear, we're still in the young, you know, we're only three months into his presidency, the usual
00:37:45political people don't say much for a fear of being premature or some. So at this point, there's not
00:37:56much opposition. And so to answer your question, foreign leaders and foreign populations
00:38:03are beginning to get the idea that what Mr. Trump is doing is not the peculiarity of Mr. Trump,
00:38:15not even the peculiarity of the Republicans, but is some national agreed change in the United States.
00:38:27And since these things are hurtful to every other country, then you're setting up that the United
00:38:34States is going in a direction that it is willing and able to hurt you when it needs it. Most of the
00:38:42rest of the world thought of the United States for the last 70 years as being the superpower that
00:38:50presides over the world economy, keeping it going the way it has. We have the same. What was the phrase
00:38:59they liked? A rules-based international order. Yeah. Okay. Translate. The United States makes sure
00:39:07everything happens this way. And you could at least rely on that. You cannot anymore. That's what the world
00:39:16is learning. The United States has difficulties and is willing to try to fix them by behaving in a way
00:39:27that used to be considered unacceptable. I mean, our president announces he's taking a part of the
00:39:37sovereign country of Panama. He's taking a part of Denmark. They own Greenland. He's thinking of taking Canada.
00:39:51This is a reversion to old style colonialism. You know, and he allies himself with Mr. Netanyahu,
00:40:02as if to say, we're prepared in the United States to be as outrageous in terms of global
00:40:14rules of behavior as the Israelis are embalming Gaza. This is an extraordinary moment for the United
00:40:27States to do that. There are a dozen different solutions in the Middle East that could be worked
00:40:35out between the Israelis and the Palestinians. And the United States could be, as it has been in the past,
00:40:42trying in some way to broker something that might be acceptable to both sides. But instead,
00:40:51it's choosing to line up behind Mr. Netanyahu. First, Biden does it. Trump does it. So,
00:41:02the rest of the world understands the United States. Granted, other countries say something,
00:41:09but don't do much to stop it. I understand that. A lot of hypocrisy around the world. But at least they
00:41:16say something. The United States cannot bring itself to say something. Even the Canadians are now saying
00:41:26something, but not the United States. And you have to understand what that symbolizes to the world
00:41:33as it happens right now. No other country has imposed tariffs on everybody else. That's an absolutely unique
00:41:44unique act of hurting every other country. Letting the world know we are going to hit anyone. Are you
00:41:53a poor country in Africa? I know one of them in a little country in the south called Lesotho,
00:42:00which has, I believe, tariffs in the neighborhood of 40 or 50 percent. This is a desperately poor
00:42:08African-American. What are you doing? What are you doing? And the amount of trade between Lesotho and
00:42:13this country is trivial. He needs to show everything. There is no limit. Well, you know, it's a little
00:42:24bit like Mr. Netanyahu in Gaza. I'm going to break every apartment building. I'm going to bomb the hospitals.
00:42:33Okay. You are telling us something. And we're not stupid. We see what you're doing.
00:42:42And we, the United States, are going to be behind you in all of this. This is really charming.
00:42:51But you have to understand the United States brands itself a religious country.
00:42:57Our government right now is a government supported in a fundamental way, politically,
00:43:07by fundamental Christians, particularly, not only, but particularly. Well, you know, the Christian
00:43:17committed government is treating immigrants in a way that no Christian morality that I'm aware of
00:43:26would sanction, would support. Do you treat God's creature, your fellow human being, this way?
00:43:35Throw them out of the country after they've worked here for 20 years? Put them in a jail that is famous
00:43:43for its cruelty for its cruelty. What Christianity is that about? Well, they manage it. And that's a sign
00:43:53that people are desperate. Because I don't believe they want that. I believe those fundamental Christians
00:44:01believe what they say about the Bible. But they are not turning the other cheek.
00:44:08They are not recognizing everybody is equal in the eyes of God. None of that.
00:44:16They are behaving in a way that clashes. How they live with it, I don't know.
00:44:23But the rest of the world is watching and drawing the conclusions. And the United States is going to have
00:44:29to live with them. This behavior, this punishing China. The Chinese Navy is not patrolling our waters.
00:44:41The US Navy is patrolling them. China doesn't have military bases all around the United States.
00:44:51The United States does have them all around China. I mean, who's aggressive here and who isn't?
00:45:00My goodness, even Americans, lost as they are in the endless repetition of these mistaken notions of
00:45:11what's going on, even they begin to see through it. And you know, it's very dangerous when you do
00:45:20something as a government, even if it's a domestic thing, and people see through it.
00:45:27That opens the space for people to begin to wonder about all the other things you've been telling them,
00:45:35if you're not trustworthy. Millions of people have been affected already
00:45:41by the wholesale dismissal of federal employees in this country by Elon Musk.
00:45:51They've been hurt. Their families have been hurt. The communities in which they live have been hurt.
00:45:59They were all told it has to do with efficiency. But you know, two minutes of thought, you will
00:46:05understand that to make something efficient, you have to take some time to really study it,
00:46:11to see how it, none of that was done. You just came in and fired huge numbers of people, cut the budgets.
00:46:21Wow. All right. That's still a small percentage of our people.
00:46:26But they are now talking to other people and thinking they've been abused here.
00:46:35They've been fired, even though they've been doing their job for 10 years. No one had a critique.
00:46:43Everyone understood what they were doing. I like to explain to people that in the 1960s,
00:46:51we had 2.5 million civilian employees of the federal government. Now, before Mr. Musk did his thing,
00:47:01we had 2.5 million people, civilian employees of the federal government. Our population is 100 million
00:47:08larger. But the same number of federal employees are taking care of 100 million more people. That's
00:47:15usually called efficient. That's what efficiency means. They'd be the last place you'd go to worry
00:47:23about efficiency, given their record. This is an ideological war undertaken by desperate people
00:47:34trying to hold on to a United States capitalism that is dissolving under them. And they're very frightened,
00:47:43which I understand. And they're desperate, which I understand. But they're acting out their desperation
00:47:53in ways that are not, they're not smart, they're not thought through, they're not likely to work,
00:48:00and they take enormous risks. This is a very dangerous situation. I'm reminded when I was a teenager,
00:48:08I wanted to be a lifeguard during this summer. And I had to take a course at the YMCA about how to be a
00:48:16lifeguard. And the first lesson was, when someone is drowning, when someone is in water over their head,
00:48:23and they can't manage it, you have to be very careful how you approach them, because they are desperate
00:48:29and don't really know they're looking for something to hold on to. And if it's you, and you're not,
00:48:36you don't know how to do it, you will be dragged down, and we'll have two people who drown instead of one.
00:48:43That was the first lesson, you know, all of us young men and women, we were very impressed.
00:48:48That's where we are. Only it's the country that's drowning. And we have to be very careful not to be drowned along with it.
00:48:56Richard, the case of Europe and European countries is of concern, because with the war in Ukraine,
00:49:07and we know that how hard the war and the conflict in Ukraine has hit Europe and its economy.
00:49:14And we knew people wanted some sort of political change. We know what has happened since then,
00:49:20you know, in Germany, they didn't achieve anything, France, United Kingdom, name it.
00:49:27And with the war in, with the, with China, with this economic war with China, it seems that the
00:49:36situation can a worse and the situation can get worse. And do you see any sort of wisdom on the
00:49:45part of Europeans to deal with that? Or they're going to get along with whatever comes from Washington,
00:49:51in terms of the fight between the two parties, United States and China?
00:49:57Well, I must say, as a person, you know, both of my parents were Europeans. I was born in the United
00:50:07States. But my father was French, born in France, my mother in Germany. For me, it's the end for Europe.
00:50:17Europe was in many ways, a kind of center of the world, whether you started ancient Greece,
00:50:24the Roman Empire, the medieval time, the colonialism, when Europe literally took over the rest of the
00:50:31world or in large parts. This is a sad decline, a tremendous decline. And the ironies here are very rich.
00:50:46Capitalism emerged in Europe in a close relationship with nationalism. The capitalists funded the
00:50:56nationalists. So that, for example, the Austro-Hungarian Empire collapses in part because Hungarians
00:51:05become attached to their nationality as Hungarian. And that was more important than the empire,
00:51:12Austro-Empire they were part of, and Germany likewise. And these countries were put together
00:51:20around nationalism. And it enabled a marriage, if you like, of nationalism and capitalism to overthrow
00:51:31feudalism. Feudalism was held together European-wide by the Roman Catholic Church.
00:51:39And that comes out of the Roman Empire. The history of Europe is a history of nationalism
00:51:46bringing capitalism to the dominant position. And so here's the irony. It's their nationalism
00:51:56that is now drowning their capitalism. They can't get together. They cannot work out a common policy.
00:52:07The French don't trust the British. Neither of them trust the Germans. The Italians are yet in another
00:52:13place. The Spanish in still another place. You know, the Spanish have been welcoming immigrants.
00:52:20The rest of Europe has been expelling immigrants. You know, Italians are playing with fascism.
00:52:27The French don't want to go there. The Germans don't know what to do with their economic miracle having
00:52:34disappeared. You know, the Germans love to tell themselves about what they call in that country
00:52:42Wirtschaftswunder, the miracle of economic growth or development. But now they're in recession,
00:52:49as I speak to you, and in deep trouble. And the British, well,
00:52:53catastrophic what they did. And look, look how desperate they got. They didn't blame the Chinese.
00:53:03The British blamed the Europeans and broke away in Brexit, right? Ten years ago, they broke away
00:53:11away as if Europe was their problem. Ridiculous. A level of stupidity that boggles the mind.
00:53:24And they all know it now, too, because, you know, by ten years later, looking back, wow, was that a mistake?
00:53:31All right. The only thing worse than that was the fact that after World War II,
00:53:39they became slavishly subordinate to the United States. Not only could they not get together,
00:53:48but they all competed to be beloved by the United States. The British had an advantage, English.
00:53:58English. But they all competed. And then you have this Ukraine war in which the United States
00:54:08gets them to join in a renewal of the Cold War. The communists were gone in 1989. You know,
00:54:19it's over the USSR. You now have another more or less capitalist regime
00:54:27that wants to participate in some way in Europe. You don't let them. You freeze them out
00:54:36because you're stuck in the late 20th century. You can't get out of this mentality. And so you fight a war
00:54:45war that devastates the economy of Europe. And still you require the leaders to act as if
00:54:56the United States is our beloved leader. No matter how much you destroy us.
00:55:04This is pathological. At this point, you're watching Europeans digging their own grave as we proceed.
00:55:16They can't get together. They are being separated now by the United States, which will pick them off
00:55:23one after the other. In order not to lose all of Europe, they will make deals with whoever. And the
00:55:30Europeans are afraid any of them to speak up because then the United States won't pick them. We'll pick
00:55:37one of the other ones. Look at the reception of Maloney going to Washington versus a Starmer going to
00:55:46Washington. And Starmer comes, you know, on his knees begging. Hmm. Maloney is more what we want to do.
00:55:55I mean, this is the end. This is the end. Europe cannot find its way. It's embarrassing. Every new
00:56:05technological breakthrough is either coming from the United States or from China. It doesn't come from
00:56:12Europe. You know, and now the Chinese will be trying to sell in Europe, but they can't sell here. They
00:56:22will bring the price down. The Europeans don't know what to do. What are they going to do? Buy it from the
00:56:29United States? No, they're not going to do that. Or maybe they will. Maybe they will become even more
00:56:37subservient. But let me tell you, the American problem isn't going away and allowing yourself to be
00:56:47the whipping boy. Allowing yourself to be damaged by a United States in trouble invites the United States
00:56:57to do more of that. So be very careful. German companies cannot afford the energy price that you
00:57:07have in Europe. So they moved production to the United States. They will continue to do that
00:57:15if not to the United States somewhere else. And the Chinese will make them offers. It will be very hard
00:57:25to refuse. And you're going to see the Chinese doing what the United States does, finding cooperative
00:57:35governments in Europe with whom to make a deal. And then goods can be exported from China to, I'll pick a
00:57:47country, Hungary. And then in Hungary they can be a little bit further processed. I mean like put a red stripe
00:57:57of paint on something on something and then export it to where? To the United States because the import duty
00:58:07on Hungary is low. And so the Chinese goods can come to the United States. All of that is now being organized.
00:58:18It will be, it's already underway. It always has been underway.
00:58:22Sanctions don't work for that reason. Sanctions don't work for that reason. Boycotts tend not to work for
00:58:28that reason. And tariffs are not immune to the exact same procedure. So maybe the United States will have
00:58:40to punish all the countries, started already, punishing the countries that do business with China.
00:58:48All that does now is isolate the United States. The United States makes international trade more expensive,
00:59:01more difficult, and that will not help the United States. Very, very dangerous route road we have entered onto.
00:59:13Yeah. Thank you so much, Richard, for being with us today.
00:59:22Let me say one more. I don't want to leave people in a depressed state. I don't, I don't want to tell
00:59:28you a story. If you want the happy news about how everything's working out, then please go to your
00:59:34regular mass media, your newspapers. They'll give you lots of encouraging good news. But if you want to
00:59:41understand where we really are, then programs like NEMA's here are the other place to go. Because these
00:59:48are the places where these kinds of conversations are allowed, are encouraged, and we need it more than ever.
00:59:59Thank you, Richard. Great pleasure, as always. Take care. Bye-bye. Bye-bye.
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