Where the hell is America first? - Where is it? - I thought it was an amazing meeting. He's a great leader, a leader of a very powerful, very strong country, China. And we have. What can I say? [00:00:18] We have, it was an outstanding, group of decisions. I think that was made. A lot of decisions were made on the scale of from 0 to 10, with ten being the best. I would say the meeting was at 12. [00:00:34] A 12, a 12. Well, President Donald Trump was absolutely on cloud nine following his meeting with Chinese President XI Jinping. And we're about to tell you what the US and China got out of these negotiations. But before we do your $0.02, Jake, was it a 12, do you think? [00:00:53] No, not exactly. There's two different factors here. One is where the tariffs still are. The other is how much money Trump is getting from the crypto industry through China. - Interesting. - So let's get into these details. So yesterday Trump spoke with Chinese leader XI Jinping. [00:01:12] They met in South Korea specifically. Now, Trump had threatened to effectively bail on the meeting altogether because earlier this month, China had made an announcement. Now, what was that announcement? Any company in China or abroad must get Chinese permission to export [00:01:28] certain products that derive more than 0.1% of their value from a rare earth. And that's really important and potentially devastating for the United States, because China controls much of the world's rare earth minerals supply, and rare earths are rare. [00:01:45] Earth minerals are used in electronics ranging from weapons, weapon systems, smartphones, things like that. So the Chinese government stated that they will not grant export licenses for military products. As for products related to things like semiconductors and AI development, [00:02:03] the Chinese government will grant export licenses on a case by case basis. Now, in response to that, Trump stated that he would raise tariffs on China and suggested that he would cancel this meeting that he did end up having with XI Jinping in South Korea. [00:02:19] But the president did tone down his rhetoric soon after that, once the markets responded negatively. So she did state that he would ease the restrictions on rare earths for the United States for one year. So I guess that's a bit of a concession. [00:02:35] That deal will be revisited annually and possibly extended further. However, there was no promise from XI to end the restrictions entirely. Yeah, so we're still in the middle of this trade war. So don't get it twisted. [00:02:50] You know, Trump loves to declare mission accomplished prematurely. Oh, the war in Israel and Gaza is over. Is it? Israel still bombing the crap out of him, them, right? Oh, this meeting was a 12. Do you know what the tariff is still at for China? - It was brought down to 47%. - Oh thank God. [00:03:08] That's still comically high, right? So why does China get a a decent deal here, though, right? So they've begun to like take away some of the outrage over 100% tariffs, etc. Because China has four pieces of leverage on us. Okay. - That's a. - Lot. [00:03:24] China's got a lot of leverage on us. So like Israel has no leverage other than incredibly rich people who support, them and hence buy our politicians, but they give nothing to Americans. Right. But China one, we buy their cheap products. And if they you got this kind of tariff, all of a sudden those [00:03:40] products are 47% more. And that's it hurts the average American. It drives up inflation. It hurts our economy. Number two, those rare earth minerals are enormously important. And they have such a big lock on that market. That's why we were howling. [00:03:56] That's why Trump had to go there and do this deal because he thought he was being cute when they turned off the spigot on rare earth minerals that we use in so many things, including defense, including a lot of the new electric vehicles, etc. There was howling number three. [00:04:12] By the way, mining for those electric vehicles is going to be great for the environment. Yeah, that's a whole nother thing. They also own a tremendous amount of our debt, but that's kind of a a nuke you can't use because if they start demanding their money back, it's going [00:04:27] to also hurt their economy a little bit. But it could devastate our economy that's mature and mutually assured destruction, destruction. And finally, get to this in a minute. They're now doing crypto deals with Trump. So that's a fourth piece of leverage they have. None of this is about American citizens other than the pain we have to face [00:04:46] because of this, you know, match where they're seeing who's got bigger stuff, I guess. I guess you can put it that way. It's just one thing to keep in mind is, the trade war, the tariffs. It was never about bringing manufacturing jobs back to the United States. [00:05:02] And if you look at the bigger picture, this has created an avenue in which corporations will essentially bribe the president in order to get a special carve out from the tariffs impacting [00:05:18] their imports to the United States. Oh, definitely. So it's just it's actually made corruption explode further within the executive branch. Now let's talk about some of the other concessions if you want to put it that way. So they also discussed fentanyl, which is a serious problem in the United States. [00:05:34] And the ingredients for this drug originate from China. They get processed in Mexico and smuggled to the United States through Mexico. Now, the U.S. Has long pushed China to crack down on fentanyl production within its borders. [00:05:50] Now, during the meeting, Trump, XI Jinping, you know, basically, Trump had XI Jinping promise to take action on the issue and essentially police the trade of chemicals used to make fentanyl. But according to the Wall Street Journal, there is a catch. [00:06:06] Okay, there's nuance to this. So more stringent regulation of the chemicals likely won't be enough to solve the crisis, because Chinese producers are adept at slightly altering the chemistry of precursors to get around the rules. It's pretty amazing. [00:06:22] So China would need to do a better job of addressing the people who produce those chemicals in order to fix the issue. Yeah. Can I just say I don't? I'm going to say something that sounds outrageous, but hold on, let me finish. I don't really care about the fentanyl issue. [00:06:37] Why not? Because I don't care about fentanyl in America. I don't care about it vis a vis China. Because even if we stopped all of that coming from China, it would just come from Vietnam or Honduras or some other country. You can't stop folks from making these drugs as long as there's money in it [00:06:55] because of capitalism. They will make the drugs. They'll find a way. Who cares if you move it to a different country? So I want you to get into the crypto stuff in just a minute. But I want to add one other thing about the drugs and the epidemic in this country. Listen, this week I mentioned how only two out of the 11 [00:07:15] San Francisco Board of Supervisors wanted to deport drug fentanyl traffickers who are here in the country illegally. That's the problem. That's part of the problem. Okay. When you have this weird culture of wanting to protect drug traffickers, [00:07:35] the very people who are in this country selling the drugs, and they're not even here legally, there's an issue there. Like, that's one of the issues that maybe we should start dealing with. When you see open air drug markets on the streets, when you see these people [00:07:51] preying on homeless people. Maybe we should do something about that. But for whatever reason, a portion of left wing ideology has been overtaken with this like zombie mentality of like, no, the drug traffickers who are here illegally and who are preying [00:08:09] on people living in poverty, they're actually the ones who need protection. No, I disagree. Go ahead. Jake. All right. So, look, we're doing 47% tariff on China. We're going to invade Venezuela, apparently all over fentanyl, when in reality, the people that started the opioid problem, which led to fentanyl [00:08:26] in the first place was Purdue Pharma. So that was an American company that absolutely devastated this country. But they paid a portion of their ill gotten gains back to the states and the government. And then they kept billions. Rest of the rest. [00:08:42] They start the problem. But since they're, you know, in the donor class and in among the elites, no one in the right wing or the left wing actually tells you what the real problem is, because it's not about the wings, it's about the Democratic Party and the Republican Party that are so corrupt. So because it's not just about Purdue Pharma, because there was a whole layer of [00:08:59] distributors that were massively corrupt. Right. And those guys are still among the most powerful companies in this country. The drug companies in this country have contributed to the opioid epidemic and fentanyl epidemic, more than any foreign country by a million miles. [00:09:16] But since their beloved donors of both parties, you get misdirected to hating the Chinese and the Venezuelans and starting wars instead of actually solving the problem. Yeah, last thing is crypto. So this is one of many, many deals that Trump has done. [00:09:33] But, Chinese nationals have invested $2 billion through the UAE, United Arab Emirates into Trump's crypto business. He doesn't get the whole $2 billion. There's a hundred different scams he's running. [00:09:49] Sometimes he'll get a huge chunk, sometimes he'll get the whole thing. And in this, when if you give to his meme coin, that money is gone. He gets 100% of it, right? But in this case, they make $80 million a year just by being something that's in that chain of transaction. [00:10:07] Right. So that's just a free $80 million to the Trump family every single year by the Chinese, basically. So that's why part of the reason why Trump comes back and goes, I feel great. That meeting was a 12 out of ten because his pockets are filled with cash. [00:10:25] Where the hell is America first? Where is it? Nah, this is crazy, man. Now we got inflation going up. You said that you were against inflation. You're trying to start wars. You said you were against wars and and nothing but delivering for your donors. [00:10:42] Just like every elitist establishment figure that's ever. Honestly, that's ever been president in my lifetime. Every time you ring the bell below, an angel gets his wings. Totally not true. But it does keep you updated on our live shows.