Trump’s Trade War w/ Canada Is Just Getting Started!" | Edward Fishman PT 2

In the second part of this enlightening episode with Edward Fishman, the focus shifts to the broader implications of economic warfare in today's geopolitical climate. Edward and Tom navigate through the complexities of the U. S. strategic posture toward China and Russia, examining the evolving tactics in the age of technology and cryptocurrency. They emphasize the need for a robust economic strategy to counteract the influence of rival nations and safeguard U. S. interests. SHOWNOTES: 09:52 Strategic Moves in Manufacturing: Elon Musk's Role 10:26 The Long-Term Strategy: Bringing Manufacturing Home 11:14 Trump’s Tariff Strategy: A Double-Edged Sword 12:28 Economic Strategy in Dealing with China: Trump’s Approach 15:33 Technological Rivalry with China: Zero Sum Game 18:46 Russia’s Economic Strategy and Sanctions’ Impact 26:06 Crypto and Economic Warfare: Future Implications 36:28 The Existential Importance of U. S.-China Relations FOLLOW EDWARD: Twitter: https://twitter.com/edwardfishman CHECK OUT OUR SPONSORS: Range Rover: Range Rover: Explore the Range Rover Sport at https://rangerover.com/us/sport Audible: Sign up for a free 30 day trial at https://audible.com/IMPACTTHEORY https://audible.com/IMPACTTHEORY1 Vital Proteins: Get 20% off by going to https://www.vitalproteins.com https://www.vitalproteins.com/ and entering promo code IMPACT at check out Thrive Market: ​​Go to https:thrivemarket.com/impact http://thrivemarket.com/impact for 30% off your first order, plus a FREE $60 gift! Tax Network: Stop looking over your shoulder and put your IRS troubles behind you. Call 1-800-958-1000 or visit https://tnusa.com/impact ButcherBox: Choose either grass-fed ground beef, steak tips or organic chicken thighs to get free in every box for an entire year. Plus, get an extra $20 off your first box when you use code IMPACT at https://butcherbox.com/impact ITU: Ready to breakthrough your biggest business bottleneck? Apply to work with me 1:1 - https://impacttheory.co/SCALE Shopify: Sign up for your one-dollar-per-month trial period at https://shopify.com/impact American Alternative Assets: If you're ready to explore gold as part of your investment strategy, call 1-888-615-8047 or go to https://TomGetsGold.com https://tomgetsgold.com/ Mint Mobile: If you like your money, Mint Mobile is for you. Shop plans at https://mintmobile.com/impact. https://mintmobile.com/impact DISCLAIMER: Upfront payment of $45 for 3-month 5 gigabyte plan required (equivalent to $15/mo.). New customer offer for first 3 months only, then full-price plan options available. Taxes & fees extra. See MINT MOBILE for details. ********************************************************************** Do you need my help? STARTING a business: Join me inside ZERO TO FOUNDER here https://tombilyeu.com/zero-to-founder?utm_campaign=6762613-Scaling%20YT%20%26%20PC%20Ads&utm_source=IT_PC&utm_content=ztf_it_pc_ad SCALING a business: Click here to see if you qualify https://tombilyeu.com/scale?utm_campaign=6762613-Scaling%20YT%20%26%20PC%20Ads&utm_source=mindset_PC&utm_content=bdceo_mindset_pc_ad Get my battle-tested strategies and insights delivered weekly to your inbox:sign up here. https://tombilyeu.com/ ********************************************************************** If you're serious about leveling up your life, I urge you to check out my new podcast,Tom Bilyeu’s Mindset Playbook https://open.spotify.com/show/47VE90Cittmo6TGGFqg2xf —a goldmine of my most impactful episodes on mindset, business, and health. Trust me, your future self will thank you. ********************************************************************** Join me live on myTwitch stream https://impacttheory.co/4fitmnJ. I'm live daily from 6:30 to 8:30 am PT atwww.twitch.tv/tombilyeu https://impacttheory.co/4fitmnJ ********************************************************************** LISTEN TO IMPACT THEORY AD FREE + BONUS EPISODES on APPLE PODCASTS:apple.co/impacttheory http://apple.co/impacttheory ********************************************************************** FOLLOW TOM: Instagram:https://www.instagram.com/tombilyeu/ Tik Tok:https://www.tiktok.com/@tombilyeu?lang=en Twitter:https://twitter.com/tombilyeu YouTube:https://www.youtube.com/@TomBilyeu Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices https://megaphone.fm/adchoices See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Tom Bilyeu?

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• 0:45Tom Bilyeu?

  Their dashboard tracks what comes next based on what your business actually needs. So EIN number, registered agent, licenses and permits, bookkeeping, business banking. I tell every founder the same thing. Just make it official. Click the link in the show notes to check out Taylor Brands and get started on your business today. This is a paid advertisement. I'm Tom Bilyeu and this is Impact Theory. Welcome back to part two of my conversation with Edward Fishman. If you're just tuning in, go back and start with part one. We've already laid the groundwork on how global power is shifting, why economic sanctions are the new battlefield, and what most people don't understand about trade wars. Now, we're diving into the ripple effects of tariffs,

• 1:28Tom Bilyeu?

  how nations are preparing for the next economic standoff, and what all of this means for your financial future. Let's get right back into it.

• 1:36Speaker 01

  But here's, here's, here's the thing that worries me, Tom. Is what you're saying is a sign of Putin's efforts working, right? Where it's like, he's changed the conversation. Like, you gotta wonder, like, who's driving the conversation? Like, because the conversation was all about, like, you wouldn't even be thinking about business deals with Russia as a conversation that was separate and apart from an endgame to the war in Ukraine, right? The sanctions, the idea was you lift them if there's a peace that is tolerable, that, you know, it's part of it, that's, that's your carrot. You know, that's what you get to play, the card you play at the negotiating table. You say, okay, Putin, you know, if you pull back from this part of Ukraine and there's peace for this number of days, then we start lifting sanctions, right? Putin has kind of reframed the conversation, where the US and Russia are just talking bilaterally

• 2:21Speaker 01

  without really even considering the Ukrainian situation. And your point about Russia as an adversary and like this is like, why are we not negotiating oil deals with Iran, I think is really well said. And I think like, now I'll even say it just my own personal experience. You know, I came at this from as being a Russophile. I studied Russian history, Russian literature. I loved Russian culture. I lived in Russia for a summer when I was a student. You know, it's hard not to, you know, if you work on Russia issues, not to see the allure of a US Russia alliance, right? And in fact, US and the Soviet Union were wartime allies during the Second World War. The problem, though, is every single

• 3:06Speaker 01

  post-Cold War president has tried this, you know. Bill Clinton and Boris Yeltsin were best friends, you know. George W. Bush said that he looked in Putin's eyes and saw his soul. Obama, I think one of the most catastrophic decisions he made was he became president six months after Putin had invaded Georgia in the summer of 2008. And then he said he was going to reset US-Russian relations. So he basically gave Putin, basically just forgave the fact that he had just invaded his neighbor and effectively peeled off part of its territory in South Ossetia and Abkhazia, which are these two breakaway regions in Georgia. And then Trump, again, when he came in in 2017, basically tried to excuse a bunch of the things that

• 3:47Speaker 01

  Russia had done. Biden, you know, I think was probably the most hawkish post-Cold War American president on Russia. But when he came in, what did he want? He wanted a stable and predictable relationship with Putin. And the reason he wanted that was because he said he saw the world the way you and I do, which is, we need to focus on China, right? The problem is, you know, presidents don't get to just dictate the way other people act, right? And he might want a stable and predictable relationship, but what Putin wants is to rebuild the Russian empire. And so within, you know, a few months of Biden coming into the White House, you have 100,000 troops on the Ukrainian border. And so, you know, at some point, you got to ask yourself, like, are you willing to live with an imperialist Russia, right? With a Russia

• 4:28Speaker 01

  that's on the march, that's conquering neighboring territories, not just Ukraine, but then also NATO members like Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland?

• 4:38Speaker 01

  Is that something we're okay with? Is that something that is, you know, something we can live with in the United States and would be be comfortable in that world? My own view is no, that we can't be comfortable in that world. And in fact, it's would be opening Pandora's box because as soon as you allow that to happen, what's stopping China from taking Taiwan or going even further, right? And taking other territories in its neighborhood, right? You basically get you undo the biggest accomplishment of the 20th century after the, you know, the catastrophe of World War II, which is to create a norm against the territorial conquest by force, right? We that's how most of history was, right? Most of history was you're a strong country.

• 5:21Speaker 01

  You just took your neighbor's territory with your with your army, right? It's a pretty big accomplishment in human history that we don't really do that anymore, right?

• 5:29Tom Bilyeu?

  Or didn't.

• 5:30Speaker 01

  And so I do think that it's it's pretty important to push back against Russian aggression.

• 5:35Tom Bilyeu?

  Okay. Uh, push back against Russian aggression by re teaming up with EU and funding the life out of the Ukraine?

• 5:45Speaker 01

  So the short answer is yes, but I think there's something that we should talk about because it's not getting enough play right now, but it's really important, right? So over the last three years, the US has given somewhere between 100 and 150 billion dollars worth of support to Ukraine. The EU has given a similar amount, right around 150 billion dollars to Ukraine. Currently, as we speak, there are 250 billion dollars roughly of Russian sovereign assets sitting frozen in European bank accounts. They're just sitting there accumulating interest. They're never going back to Russia. Why the hell has the European Union not seized these assets and given them to Ukraine?

• 6:29Speaker 01

  The US Congress last year, in overwhelming bipartisan majority, passed a law authorizing President Biden to seize the Russian assets in the United States and give them to Ukraine. In the US, there's only like 5 to 10 billion, so it's not that much, right? But in Europe, there's somewhere between 2 and 300 billion. So more than the total amount of US support to Ukraine over the last three years is just sitting there in European bank accounts. So I think that the obvious solution here, Tom, is for the EU to seize those Russian assets, use them to buy weapons from US companies. So it's good for the US. It revitalizes the defense industrial base in the US, which has gone into disrepair in recent decades. And you give Ukraine stable economic and military support without burdening the US

• 7:14Speaker 01

  taxpayer at all. The reason I love this is it's good, the Democrats will love this because they want Ukraine to be on stable footing. And the MAGA people should love it too, because Europe is shouldering the burden. They're taking these assets. And it's good for American defense companies, right? This is money that it's not like the Europeans are going to give that to European companies to buy weapons for Ukraine. The best weapons are made by US companies. And the reason I think this is a great idea isn't so much that Ukraine fights on forever, right? What you do is you change the dynamic on the battlefield. So Putin knows that Ukraine could fight on if it needs to for five to 10 more years. And we just got over talking about 10, 15 minutes ago, that Russia's economy is in a really bad place. And I think they only have one or two more years of runway before things really go off

• 7:59Speaker 01

  the rails. So I think just by that sort of incredible vote of confidence in the Ukrainians and saying, "Look, you're not going to wait them out, Putin. Sorry, you can't do that." I think then you really get Putin in the mind space for a real, serious negotiation. Problem right now is I think Putin is still kind of sitting at the table saying, "I have all the cards, I can get whatever the hell I want." It shouldn't be that way. The US, Europe, and Ukraine on one side of the table versus Russia, you have a coalition that could get a very good deal out of Putin.

• 8:31Tom Bilyeu?

  It begs the question then, why isn't Trump pursuing that?

• 8:35Speaker 01

  It's a good question. I don't know because you know, I think Trump has effectively shocked the Europeans out of their slumber and they're now taking seriously things like putting boots on the ground in Ukraine, right? You have the British and French saying that they're willing to commit soldiers to a potential peacekeeping.

• 8:50Tom Bilyeu?

  Oh, I hadn't heard that.

• 8:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, which is huge, right? I mean, and not only is that great for Ukraine, but that's exactly what Trump has wanted. Like, he wants the Europeans to step up and do more militarily, right? In terms of why he hasn't been pushing them to seize Russian assets, I don't know. And it's possible that some of this is happening behind closed doors. We don't know yet. I haven't heard a public argument in favor of it. And frankly, Biden should have pushed harder for it himself. I don't think Biden could have gotten it done because, you know, the Europeans probably viewed Biden as too much of a partner that, you know, they figured they couldn't listen to, you know, they could ignore him if they wanted to. But I think if Trump went to the Europeans and said, "Look, the price of me continuing to stand with you guys was

• 9:32Speaker 01

  you taking these Russian assets, freeing, unburdening the American taxpayer from this issue," I think the Europeans would do it.

• 9:41Tom Bilyeu?

  That's really interesting. Okay, so let me try to do the internet's favorite thing and mine read Trump. Don't they ever love that?

• 9:51Speaker 01

  You want people to do it.

• 9:52Tom Bilyeu?

  Let's see. So, okay, he has made public statements that basically if he can't get the deal done, he's going to let them fight it out. He's obviously made very public statements that this is a European problem and they need to be dealing with it. But if I'm Trump and I was, I wanted to make sure that Putin understood that Zelensky was a credible threat. I don't know why he didn't really push that agenda. Oh, man.

• 10:25Tom Bilyeu?

  If I think like a writer and I say, Trump wanted to get the credit himself. That's why he wouldn't try to make this a European thing like, hey, guys, you have all those assets. You should freeze them, give them to Ukraine. Part of it might be the messaging of, I just want the war to end. Because if you take Trump seriously and say, okay, this is somebody who just wants to see the killing stop. I can't reconcile two things. I believe him when he says he wants the killing to stop.

• 10:57Tom Bilyeu?

  And at the same time, if you want Ukraine to be strong so that you force Putin to the table, you would encourage Europe to get ready like, hey, boys, we've got the checkbook open. We're ready to go.

• 11:14Tom Bilyeu?

  Yeah, yeah. This is where I wish we had chat with us live. I'd love to see if anybody has like a different take on that. But the way that I reconcile that is he wants it to have been him that made the deal. He doesn't want to empower Europe to go make that deal and leave America on the outside. He wants to control the negotiations and that means promising Zelensky in his own unique way that now, trust me, if we intertwine our

• 11:43Tom Bilyeu?

  desire for the mineral rights, like if we're together on that, then I'm gonna do some unsaid thing. At least he hasn't said it publicly to keep you protected. But yeah, at least live here in real time, I can't come up with an argument as to why you wouldn't, other than that, why you wouldn't want Europe to be in the driver's seat. Stick around because after the break, we're getting into Trump's latest tariff strategy and whether it's actually going to work or backfire.

• 12:12Tom Bilyeu?

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• 12:53Tom Bilyeu?

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• 13:34Tom Bilyeu?

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• 14:14Tom Bilyeu?

  quo.com/impact. That's Q U O dot com slash impact.

• 14:23Tom Bilyeu?

  All right, we're back. Let's get into it.

• 14:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, it's clear that Trump is very interested in the Nobel Peace Prize. I think that's actually like, you know, it's hard to read Trump's mind, but this is one thing that, you know, he's talked about enough times that you realize like it's kind of one of the few things in life that he hasn't yet accomplished that he would love to have. So I'm with you, but I think that the Europeans aren't going to do this without Trump pushing them to do it. So I think he still winds up getting the credit.

• 14:50Tom Bilyeu?

  Why? Why wouldn't they? If the assets are frozen, do they plan to take them and just fund healthcare?

• 14:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, right. Does he use them to use them as like a pillow or something? Yeah, I mean, look, I think that the Germans in particular have been wary of this, and the reason is that they worry that it would undermine financial stability in the EU, that basically no one would trust the European financial system and the euro would be seen as, you know, an unsafe currency to be in.

• 15:18Tom Bilyeu?

  And they don't think that's already happened just by the freezing?

• 15:23Speaker 01

  They don't, but I'm with you. I find it to be a little confusing. What I will say, though, is you're about to have a political shift in Germany, right? This was under the previous chancellor, Olaf Scholz, who was in a wet blanket, frankly, a very, very weak chancellor, right? The new guy is coming in, Friedrich Merz, seems much tougher. And so we'll see. I mean, German politics are complicated. And so I think, you know, we're not exactly sure where things are going to head, but it's very possible that the German position could change. I think generally speaking, though, look, every American president in recent history has wanted the Europeans to do more, right? They wanted the Europeans to do more in terms of, you know, helping Greece get out of the Eurozone crisis. They

• 16:08Speaker 01

  wanted the Europeans to do more in the fight against ISIS. They wanted the Europeans to do more with sanctions on Russia, right? It's always like pulling teeth. I used to negotiate with the Europeans too, right? Because the Europeans are afraid that Trump will actually cut the cord, right, that Trump may be willing to go where no US president has ever even contemplated, which is like abandoning NATO, right, which I think would be very bad. So I hope he doesn't do that.

• 16:34Tom Bilyeu?

  Because you think it would unleash Russian aggression or imperialism?

• 16:38Speaker 01

  Yes, because they think that he might actually do that. They've kind of awoken from their slumber, right? So if this is some grand strategy that Trump is actually, he doesn't really want to get out of NATO, but he wants the Europeans to truly believe that he's willing to do it. It is working, right? I mean, the Europeans are getting much, much more serious about their own defense. I think that it's possible that the Europeans could come around to this issue of repurposing the Russian assets for Ukraine. And like I said, the US government, the US Congress has re-passed the law. It is the law of the land that we can do this. We have the authority to do it in the US. The Canadian government has the authority to do it as well. The British government has the authority to do it. So I think you have the other big members of the G7, the other issuers of the world's

• 17:22Speaker 01

  reserve currencies like the pound and the Canadian dollar, ready to stand up and do this. The big question's been the Europeans because, you know, most of these assets are in euros. And the thing that's interesting, Tom, just like, and this is a story I recount in choke points, actually, and it ties back to something you mentioned earlier about, you know, is there a risk to weaponizing the dollar? You know, most countries hold the lion's share of their reserves in dollars, right? 60% of all reserves in the world are in dollars. That's why you call the dollar the world's reserve currency. The, the second place is the, the euro, which is about 20%, right? So the, the dollar's three times as frequently used in reserves than the euro.

• 18:02Speaker 01

  In 2018, Trump, in a series of a month, imposed really significant sanctions on a Chinese company called ZTE. He imposed sanctions on a Russian company called Rusal, which is the world's biggest aluminum maker. That was really catastrophic for that company. He wound up pulling it back, both that and the ZTE thing. And he wound up pulling out of the Iran nuclear deal and re-imposing sanctions on Iran. This was all in April and May of 2018. And that was kind of when the world woke up to, whoa, like Trump is willing to like, really take some serious risks in economic warfare, like shooting from the hip, doing things that other presidents wouldn't consider. And what did the Central Bank of Russia do?

• 18:45Speaker 01

  Literally the next month, they took all their assets out of dollars and moved them into euros. And it's because they thought that, you know, the US may not be predictable when it came to economic warfare, but the Europeans would never go along and actually do this. And I think that's one of the, the sort of little known successes of the last administration, the Biden administration, was they actually got the Europeans on board for these sanctions against Russia. Because that's what Putin wasn't expecting, right? He thought that, oh, maybe the US would be crazy enough to sanction my central bank, but the Europeans, you kidding me? The Euros? They're not gonna do that. But they did. And as a result, Putin really wasn't expecting this act of economic warfare that they were hit with in, in February of 2022.

• 19:29Tom Bilyeu?

  So how do companies, how do countries like Russia, like Iran, how do they manage to survive when they've got such harsh sanctions?

• 19:38Speaker 01

  It's a great question. Iran, it's hard, right? Because Iran is comprehensively sanctioned. Like, there is very few, I mean, as an American, you can't do any business with Iran. You know, we've got a full trade embargo, full financial embargo on Iran. So they're very comprehensively sanctioned. We also have what's called secondary sanctions on Iran. So for instance, if you are an oil trader who wants to buy a barrel of Iranian oil, you yourself are risking getting sanctioned by the US. So if you're a Swiss oil trader who buys Iranian oil, the US could sanction you, which means that you are then cut off from the dollar, which probably means you're going bankrupt, right? So Iran, it's very hard. And the way that they basically managed to do business in the global economy is through an incredibly complex patchwork

• 20:23Speaker 01

  of, you know, telephone relationships, right? And barter, you know, trading, literally bartering, trading, we trade you a good, you trade us a good in return, and no currency ever exchanges hands. There's a great story I recount in my book, Choke Points, in the summer of 2022, the Russians seized a bunch of military equipment from the battlefield in Ukraine, American military equipment, like drones and things like that. They then took that military equipment and put it on a plane to send it to Iran in exchange for about 500 million euros in cash that then came back on the on the plane back to Russia.

• 21:01Tom Bilyeu?

  Whoa.

• 21:02Speaker 01

  So that's how they trade, right? It's like it's because you can trade actual banknotes, right? There's you can't control that, but you can't make a wire transfer. For Russia, it's a little different because Russia is not comprehensively sanctioned. Right? I mean, the sanctions on Russia are still, I would call them patchy. You know, the financial sector is pretty, pretty significantly sanctioned, the defense sector, the oil and gas sector. You know, Biden was pretty weak when it came to energy sanctions on Russia.

• 21:28Tom Bilyeu?

  Wisely so, or was that a mistake?

• 21:30Speaker 01

  I think it was the biggest mistake of his Russia policy.

• 21:32Tom Bilyeu?

  Whoa.

• 21:33Speaker 01

  Because what Biden basically tried to do was he tried to maximize economic pain on Russia without touching the number one sector of Russia's economy, which is oil and gas.

• 21:41Tom Bilyeu?

  Because so many other countries were importing gas from them?

• 21:45Speaker 01

  It's because inflation was at a 40 year high in 2022 and oil prices were over a hundred dollars a barrel.

• 21:52Tom Bilyeu?

  Whoa.

• 21:52Speaker 01

  And ultimately, the political advisors in the White House won out over the national security advisors. And they said, we can't do anything that's going to make inflation worse or that's going to make oil prices harder and hit Americans at the pump. So we just can't go there.

• 22:06Tom Bilyeu?

  Yeah.

• 22:07Speaker 01

  And I think, look, he was right that inflation was a bad problem. In fact, it's probably a big reason that Kamala Harris lost the 2024 presidential election. But I think what it did was it signaled weakness to Putin. And I think it allowed Putin to have much more runway for this war than he would have otherwise had. So I think Biden, if he could go back in time, probably should have done much more aggressive oil and gas sanctions right at the beginning in 2022. If you had done it right then, it would have shortened Putin's runway for the war. And by the time you have the 2024 election, the economy would have adjusted, right? You would have, you would have had things like more shale production in the, in the US, taking advantage of the market signal of higher prices.

• 22:45Tom Bilyeu?

  Literally just going to ask about that. So how much of the drill, baby, drill, Trump mentality is going to help us inoculate ourselves or make it so that we can sanction them into oblivion if we so choose?

• 22:58Speaker 01

  I think it will help, certainly. And, and, and, you know, one of, one of the key aspects of why the Iran sanctions leading up to the nuclear deal in 2015 were so effective, and those are the most effective sanctions. Most effective act of American economic warfare in modern times were the Iranian oil sanctions from 2012 to 2013, in which in an 18-month period, the US takes off 60% of Iran's oil exports from global markets and locks up over $100 billion of Iran's oil money in frozen overseas USGRO accounts. The reason that the US is able to do this is because at the time, shale is pumping out so much oil that it's replacing all of the Iranian oil that's coming off the market.

• 23:42Speaker 01

  If Trump is serious about American energy dominance, which is what he says, and he's really willing to just unleash US oil and gas, it's not enough just to take down regulations and stuff. Investors in the US need a price signal. They need to say, okay, we know, we're going to drill this well, and we know we're going to be able to sell it for $80 a barrel, or something like that, right? And so I think that were Trump to actually ramp up oil and gas sanctions on Russia, combined with the fact that he's being a bit more lax when it comes to regulations on the oil and gas sector, could be a killer combination. But so far, we haven't seen any evidence that he's willing to stick it to Putin. This is the thing that worries me, is that, you know, he's, he seems very happy to apply

• 24:24Speaker 01

  pressure to Zelensky, but like, the guy who we really need leverage over, who's Vladimir Putin, we haven't seen as much.

• 24:32Tom Bilyeu?

  All right, super risky, but what do you think causes that? Like, people want to believe that, I don't know, either Putin says flattering things, that Trump is somehow getting kickbacks, or I don't know what they think, but that he is very much on Team Putin. Do you think he's on Team Putin? Or is this a dog who sees one potential enemy is weak and the other is strong, and so I'm going to bite the weak one?

• 25:01Speaker 01

  I do think Trump has a history of being more comfortable threatening small countries than big ones, right? Like, he, he does not, the level of kind of respect and almost deference he shows to Putin and Xi, Jinping, he does not show to Justin Trudeau and Vladimir Zelensky. I don't know what that is, but I do think that's a trend, right? And it's not just Putin, it is also Xi Jinping, who seems to have quite a bit of leverage over Trump.

• 25:36Speaker 01

  In terms of Russia itself, I think there are a few things at play. One is that the Russians blatantly interfered in the 2016 US election.

• 25:47Speaker 01

  They clearly had a preference for Trump. This is an objective fact. Whether or not it helped him win, I think no one knows, right? He may have won, even if the Russians had done nothing in the 2016 election, Trump may still have won. Right? But the fact that they did interfere in the election, that it was very clear that they did and that Trump won, I think Trump always sort of worried that his initial electoral victory was seen as illegitimate in some way. So I think on, on, on that simple count, he was sort of always a little concerned about Russia.

• 26:21Tom Bilyeu?

  That want to make him know, tell Putin to fuck off like, you don't have anything to do with this, like I'm the big man on campus. Like that, I don't know. Look, I've never looked deeply into that. I know some people are going to take super exception to the Russia, Russia, Russia hoax thing. That, that I don't know, but when I look at that, what do I think? I, my gut instinct is that Trump understands who is strong on the playground and who is weak. And it's so much more comfy to go after the weak person.

• 26:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 26:55Tom Bilyeu?

  And especially if also Trump really does want to make America great again. And what, like even if he only wants to believe that so he can end up a Mount Rushmore. Like, I don't need people to believe that he's doing it out of the goodness of his heart. But when you really think about what motivates a person, he wants to be remembered as a dealmaker, as a peacemaker, as somebody who really like regalvanized America. Then all of a sudden it makes sense. Like if you know Xi's going to be important, you've got to keep him at bay. You know that Russia at least.

• 27:33Tom Bilyeu?

  They're important on the world stage. They're nowhere near somebody like China, obviously, but they are certainly meaningful on the world stage. There might be something there with Europe in terms of he's sort of European and so there's like, I think he's got enough beef with Europe that there might be something there. But anyway, that feels right to me that, okay, I know strategically who I need to not push so far that they become aggressively antagonistic towards America. I mean, if nothing else, Russia still has a whole lot of nukes.

• 28:08Speaker 01

  Totally.

• 28:08Tom Bilyeu?

  So wanting to actively piss off Russia, probably not. Pissing off Ukraine, probably not as big of a deal. Pissing off Canada, I'm definitely not worried about that. Pissing off Mexico, not super worried about that. And I've got like America behind me on the anti-cartels stuff and the immigration stuff. So I don't know, like, all of those feel relatively politically wise. The only one that has this big question mark is the, certainly the Democrats despise his treatment of Putin. And so I'm always a little shocked that he's still somewhat soft on him because he has a perception problem if nothing else.

• 28:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, I agree. And in some ways, it would be, the easiest way for him to silence critics would be to go out and do something really tough against Russia. And, you know, two days into his presidency, I think it was January 22nd, so not too long ago, though it feels like a lifetime ago, he put out this post on Truth Social saying that if Putin doesn't end the war, he's going to face incredibly high levels of tariffs and sanctions. And I think he signed off saying, you know, Putin can do this the easy way or the hard way, and the easy way is always better. And for Russia watchers like me, this really, you know, raised my antenna because I said, I've never heard Trump say anything like this, right? I mean, you go back throughout

• 29:24Speaker 01

  his entire first term, he's never said anything even remotely threatening against Russia. But this was a very clear, almost an ultimatum that was delivered on Truth Social. We haven't seen anything really follow up from that. There's not been any action to back that up. So I don't know where that came from. But in some ways, Tom, I think if he were to do more of that, it would A, give the US a little bit more leverage over Russia, and B, silence some of those domestic critics who are saying, wait, why is he, you know, so like unwilling to criticize Putin?

• 29:58Tom Bilyeu?

  Yeah.

• 30:00Speaker 01

  I think the other thing, though, and this is, this is important. I think it seems like he has some affinity for Putin and Russia.

• 30:09Speaker 01

  He clearly hates Zelensky, right? And, and I think that he associates Zelensky with his first impeachment, right? Because it was all about a phone call that he had had with Zelensky. Obviously, Zelensky wasn't the one who pushed for his impeachment or something, but he's associated with that. And I do think that there was some concern. Certainly JD Vance has this concern. He said as much in the Oval Office that Zelensky actively wanted Kamala Harris to win the election. And so I think that Trump does not like Zelensky as a human being, and probably has better feelings toward Putin. And we, we know that Trump is a very, you know, kind of relationship-based guy, right?

• 30:52Speaker 01

  Like, he, he thinks that, you know, US-China relations are really Trump-G relations, you know?

• 30:57Tom Bilyeu?

  Yeah, that's interesting.

• 30:58Speaker 01

  And so I think that there's some element of that, too.

• 31:02Tom Bilyeu?

  Very interesting. All right, I'm deeply interested in cryptocurrency, especially Bitcoin. How much does that, which strikes me as a largely youth-led movement, youth-ish, led movement to reimagine the financial system? How much does that erode economic warfare and make it impossible? Because if they have a totally separate system, are they going to be able to impose the kind of sanctions that they can now?

• 31:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, really, really important question. So again, the choke points in the title of my book are these parts of the global economy in which one country has a dominant position and there's very little redundancy. So right now in finance, dollar is the only game in town, right? I say in the book, trying to do business across borders without access to the dollar is like trying to travel without a passport. You can't do it, right? What I will say, though, is that choke points are not immutable. They come and go. In fact, they're created by entrepreneurs. They're created by businesses who are building new products that beat the old guys. And then all of a sudden, governments realize that, wait, I have this resource at my disposal.

• 32:20Speaker 01

  Do I think we're on the verge of a fundamental shift in the way payments happen in the United States? Yes, I do. I think that the current dollar-based payment system that we rely on for international trade, and even when two non-US countries, even when India and Saudi Arabia are trading with each other, they're using the dollar and it's going through a correspondent bank account on Wall Street. Right? That process was built in the 70s, and it still takes days to clear international bank transfers. Using stable coins or central bank digital currencies, this process could take seconds.

• 32:56Speaker 01

  It's a better process, right? I think that digital currencies, whether or not they're cryptocurrencies or state-backed digital currencies, will disrupt international payments in the next five to 10 years.

• 33:07Speaker 01

  What I will say, though, is that that doesn't necessarily mean that the US will have less power. If it's a digital dollar or a stable coin that's pegged to the dollar or a US company that is putting out this digital payment system, the US government may have even more leverage to wage economic warfare. Because all of a sudden, these things are, all these transactions are happening in bits and bytes that could be going through US servers that are, you know, companies that need to comply with US law. And in fact, the single biggest sanctions enforcement case of the last few years was a $4 billion fine against Binance, the cryptocurrency company in which the CEO also had jail, had jail time. Right? It was a $4 billion fine.

• 33:51Speaker 01

  So clearly, the the long arm of the US sanctions enforcement state applies to crypto. The thing I'm worried about is that it could be China that wins this race. And at least when it comes to state-backed digital currencies, the currency in the lead is the digital RMB. You know, China launched a central bank digital currency about four years ago. The Fed has not done anything like this. And the digital RMB is by far and away the leader in this space. China has also created a platform called M-Bridge, where different central banks can use their own digital currencies to settle trade between each other. So that example I used before of Saudi Arabia and India trading with each other, if they're

• 34:34Speaker 01

  using M-Bridge, they don't have to go through a correspondent bank account in Wall Street. And that transaction could clear in a few seconds instead of a week. So I think it's time for the US to get in the game. We need to win the race for digital currencies for us to retain this leverage. And we actually have to take steps, in my view, to actively undermine these projects that China is putting forward. We shouldn't allow US banks to participate in China's alternative to SWIFT. You know, there's a program that China has called CIPS, or C-I-P-S, the Cross-Border Interbank Payment System. That's an alternative to SWIFT, which is the financial messaging service that most banks use today. Right now, US banks can participate in this. I think that's pretty foolish.

• 35:16Speaker 01

  So I think the Trump administration, if they're smart, will both do what they can to ensure the US wins the race for the kind of the payment system of the future, and also take steps to prevent China from gaining ground.

• 35:30Tom Bilyeu?

  Coming up, we're talking about why Putin's latest move might be his most desperate yet, and how it could shake up global markets. Do not go anywhere.

• 35:41Speaker 02

  In a world where everyone drives distracted, danger lurks ahead. Drivers swerve. Collisions litter the shoulders. Chances are taken and lives lost. They're driven by a compulsion, a compulsion to respond. Sounds like a movie. Unfortunately, it's our reality. Eyes on the road, not on your phone. A message from the Virginia DMV.

• 36:11Tom Bilyeu?

  All right, we're back. Let's get into it. Interesting. Now, I don't know enough about the digital RMB, but is, I assume it's a CBDC? Okay. And are you saying the US should do one?

• 36:25Speaker 01

  I think we should, yes.

• 36:27Tom Bilyeu?

  Cue people going crazy in the feed. Okay, so I have a super negative outlook on CBDCs from a just control standpoint. Given the Biden administration's absolutely anti-crypto stance, de-banking people, all of that, like that feels like some real 1984 shit.

• 36:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 36:50Tom Bilyeu?

  So do you see a difference between that and a stablecoin? Like, are they either one you're happy with, or you're like, no, no, no, it needs to be a CBDC?

• 37:03Speaker 01

  Look, I think that if you had a stablecoin that was actually as good as a dollar, right? And I think that so far, it's hard to say because the volumes aren't big enough to really be tested, right? I think it would be just as good as a CBDC. So what I'm really saying is, we need the US to win this race. I personally am a little skeptical that a privately organized stablecoin could compete or could be treated as the equivalent of a US dollar with the full backing of the US Federal Reserve. If it could, more power, more power to whoever's able to do that. It's just, it's, it's, it would be historically unusual for that to work.

• 37:47Speaker 01

  And I worry that as we sort of sit here in the US debating whether or not we should have this, China's actively gaining ground with their own state-backed digital currency.

• 37:56Tom Bilyeu?

  You think that's like some evil empire stuff, though? Where they're like matching it up with all their desire for control and their social credit score? Like, it feels so dystopian.

• 38:08Speaker 01

  It is dystopian, and that's why I think we need to defeat it, right? And I think it's, you can't beat something with nothing.

• 38:14Tom Bilyeu?

  China, China, like you can't do a more controlling CBDC.

• 38:18Speaker 01

  No, but I'm not saying that. So you could build safeguards and... To RCBDC, right? Uh huh.

• 38:22Tom Bilyeu?

  Tell me more. What? How do we build safeguards from?

• 38:26Speaker 01

  Well, you shouldn't. I think the US government shouldn't just be able to cut off American citizens from bank accounts. That's crazy.

• 38:31Tom Bilyeu?

  That is.

• 38:31Speaker 01

  Should we be able to bar foreigners from using our central bank digital currency? Of course, that is what sanctions are for, right? Why? Why should we allow Iran to be using Tether to fund its nuclear program? That doesn't make any sense to me, you know?

• 38:47Tom Bilyeu?

  What do you think about? This may create a choke point that I'm gonna be uncomfortable with. But what do you think about? So if a stablecoin is backed by, say, US treasuries, one to one,

• 39:01Tom Bilyeu?

  does that meet the needs you're trying to get to where we can stop foreign adversaries? But still not trip up a citizen? Or does that still just give them too much control where they can say, I don't, I don't even know how they would stop them from using debt, but presumably they could.

• 39:19Speaker 01

  Well, this is a broader point. Like, I find it interesting, and this could be my own background. You know, I'm one of the few people who I've worked in government and I've worked in tech. So I've seen both sides, both sides of the equation. And I find it interesting that some people are like, oh, it would be so terrifying for my whole life to be dependent on, you know, the Federal Reserve, right? And they could, you know, freeze my bank account, right? But they're totally fine with, you know, Mark Zuckerberg potentially being able to freeze their bank account, you know? And, and, and.

• 39:52Tom Bilyeu?

  Because of something like Libra you're talking about?

• 39:54Speaker 01

  Yeah. And actually, Libra plays a role in my story. One of the things that's really fascinating about Libra, about Libra is that Stuart Levy, who was actually that brought in to be the CEO of Libra, which then became DM, pioneered US financial warfare. He's the one who created the Iran sanctions playbook.

• 40:11Tom Bilyeu?

  That's interesting.

• 40:12Speaker 01

  In the, in the 2000s and 2010.

• 40:14Tom Bilyeu?

  For people that don't know what Libra is, please let them know.

• 40:17Speaker 01

  So Libra was a Facebook-backed digital currency that was supposed to be basically something that could eventually be as good as the US dollar. And the US government actively undermined it. And I think Janet Yellen, the Treasury Secretary in the Biden administration, is the one who sort of put the nail in the coffin where she told the Libra folks that she wasn't going to support it. And I think there was a lot of concern in Washington about the power that Facebook could have. And we're talking about, you mentioned, you know, what would a stablecoin that was fully backed by US treasuries, you know, would that be a serious competitor to the dollar? I think there are very few companies that have the balance sheets to actually do that credibly. Facebook was one of them, right? I mean, Meta, one of the,

• 41:00Speaker 01

  you know, the most valuable companies in the world potentially could actually do this. And given their user base between all of their various apps, I think it was a real threat. The thing I think is actually a little bit tragic is, you know, knowing Stuart Levy personally, he's literally the founding father of American sanctions policy. He is as patriotic as they come. He was appointed by George W. Bush in 2004, and he was kept on by Barack Obama in 2009. If he's running the thing, I wasn't particularly worried about it being used to fund Hamas or Hezbollah. In fact, quite the opposite.

• 41:41Speaker 01

  I think that was a good chance for the US to actually have digital currency innovation that complied with our national security priorities. The thing I worry about now is some of these other stablecoins that don't have anything like that level of seriousness and compliance at the top, they are being used, you know, for very, very nefarious purposes. And that's why you see, you know, you saw Binance get into the trouble that they got into because they were being, their platform was being used for all sorts of bad problems.

• 42:13Tom Bilyeu?

  Yeah, crypto is one of those where I'm very glad that it exists from the ability to opt out of inflation. But I'm always shocked that governments allow it. It's one of those where I'm like, it's pretty powerful to be able to print money. I hate it. I am violently opposed to it, but I get why they want to do it.

• 42:35Speaker 01

  Yeah. The thing that's interesting and one of the, another interesting sort of story I tell on choke points is, you know, the way we got the current financial system we have today, where the dollar is just everywhere, right? I mean, it's, again, you need it to operate in the global economy. It really came about in the 1970s with when Richard Nixon pulled the dollar off of the gold peg in 1971. It's called the Nixon shock where he gave a speech basically saying, effective right now, the dollar is no longer convertible at $35. Now it's for gold. And that was the central pillar of the Bretton Woods system, the economy, the global economy built after World War II, right? A big reason that that happened was this thing called the Eurodollar market.

• 43:20Speaker 01

  It's a very jargony word, but basically what it meant was in the 60s and in the 70s, European banks started issuing dollars that were not backed by the Federal Reserve because they're European banks, they're not regulated by the US government. It was effectively an illicit market. It was similar to crypto. And the US government could have easily shut it down, right? They could have told the London banks who were issuing dollars, these aren't dollars, you know, what are you doing here? But we actually came to like it because it wound up being a way for us to plug the deficits that we were running out with the Vietnam War. And so over time, this sort of like illicit market, the Eurodollar market, gets the stamp

• 44:01Speaker 01

  of approval by the US government and becomes like the central infrastructure of the global financial system. So in some ways, I think there's an interesting parallel to what you're seeing with crypto today, where the private sector sort of creates this like, you know, semi illicit market that's like these like pirates, you know, who are creating it. And then all of a sudden, the US government says, wait, we're going to assert control over this thing and we're going to use it to our own purposes.

• 44:27Tom Bilyeu?

  I mean, the whole idea behind Bitcoin is that they won't be able to do that. Now, the other stuff that I have less conviction on, but the idea with Bitcoin is that because they have broken free of the gold standard and now can print as much as they want, they're still stealing your buying power. They are taxing your buying power. I'll use a friendlier word. And Bitcoin was a response to that. So, man, if, if any one government is able to get

• 45:02Tom Bilyeu?

  Enough of the network, I suppose is possible, but it seems highly unlikely at this point. So fingers crossed because that is while I hate the idea of treating it like a life raft. You don't know me well enough to know how much my audience has heard me rail about inflation. Money printing, I think it is a grand evil.

• 45:23Tom Bilyeu?

  Bitcoin, they call it the life raft. I hate that because the average person doesn't. One, it's too volatile still. And then two, the average person just, you're asking them to take a huge gamble on something that's only been around for, you know, less than two decades. So I hate that people need a life raft, but at least there is one.

• 45:40Speaker 01

  I'm with you, by the way, on inflation. I think in some ways, you know, many Americans who are experiencing inflation for the first time really in the last few years because we had been going through such a long period of price stability. But inflation is the, is the kind of the rising tide that sinks all boats, right? It's bad for everyone. It's bad for the poorest. It's bad for the richest. And so.

• 46:01Tom Bilyeu?

  But if you've got a mega yacht, that water can rise a lot farther before you feel it.

• 46:06Speaker 01

  That is true. That's true. And so, look, I, I think that, um, I think that it's, it's high time for us to take these issues seriously and worry about inflation, worry about just printing money willy nilly, worry about fiscal discipline. I think the thing that is a tough pill to swallow though, is the way for us to deal with these things is through increasing taxes. Right? I mean, it's very challenging for me to see how the US government can stop being so dependent on debt without higher taxes. I mean, cutting spending is obviously a good thing. I, I think that's well, you know, warranted and.

• 46:43Tom Bilyeu?

  I hope, do you think higher taxes on the current amount of GDP or you're saying increase GDP so that there's more tax revenue coming in?

• 46:51Speaker 01

  You need, you need both, right? I, I think, I think the idea that you can grow the economy so quickly that you can lower taxes and raise more money is a fool's errand. It's, it's something that, I would love to, to happen, but it's like, you know, when I was running for president of my fifth grade class and promised everyone more recess, you know? It's, it's, it's not going to happen, you know? You might get elected saying it, but it's. You know, and this is, this has been the story, I think, of a lot of presidencies in the last thirty or forty years where presidents come in saying that they're going to take, you know, deficits seriously and debt seriously, and then they lower taxes and they just worsen the deficit. And, you know, it was actually only in the nineties where the last time we had a balanced budget. So I think these things are important.

• 47:35Speaker 01

  I think it's important to cut spending. There's definitely some waste, fraud and abuse in the US government that I hope is cut. But if you look at the main spending categories of the US government, it's defense, which I think if anything needs to grow, given the geopolitical environment. It's healthcare, which we've got an aging society. There's not, we can't, there's nothing we can do about that. And we cover everyone who's sixty five and above, I think for good reason. And it's social security, right? All the other stuff is, is tiny relative to those three categories. Could you cut some spending? Yes. But the real thing you need to do is both grow the economy faster and not only raise taxes, but I think more importantly is simplify the tax code, right?

• 48:13Tom Bilyeu?

  I mean, Now you're singing my song.

• 48:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think like, I mean, I don't know about you, but I, you know, you, in some ways, you're just like, I don't care if I'm taxed more, but just like, make it easy. Like, tell me that I'm just going to be taxed a clear percentage on what I make.

• 48:27Tom Bilyeu?

  I'll be very, very honest. So because I live in California, I'm taxed at over fifty percent. So

• 48:34Speaker 01

  I am too, by the way, in New York. It's terrible. It's very, very painful.

• 48:37Tom Bilyeu?

  So here's my take on that. If you tax the wealthy at a hundred percent, you still don't solve your spending problem. So given that you can tax them literally at a hundred percent and you don't solve the problem, you have a problem that needs a solution other than more tax. I don't know that lowering taxes is the right answer, but I will say that you're going to have to increase GDP and you're going to have to find a way to balance your budget. Given that, now, why do I say that? Because, uh, as you said, the servicing the debt is rapidly, it just surpassed your military spending. It will surpass all of your entitlements. It, it will become a beast by the, if we keep spending at the current rate that we're spending, deficit spending, by the twenty forties, it's like,

• 49:22Tom Bilyeu?

  It is your biggest expense by like some grotesque margin.

• 49:26Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 49:27Tom Bilyeu?

  So it is a snowball that only gets bigger.

• 49:29Speaker 01

  Agreed.

• 49:30Tom Bilyeu?

  So it is not optional to uh get your spending in line. So you either have to do it by making more money. And again, you can tax the rich at a hundred percent. It won't get you there. So for people that want to pull that lever, I get it, but uh it's it doesn't actually get you there. Also, the vast majority of humanity does not understand the difference between being a billionaire on paper and having a billion dollars in your bank. They do those, it's phantom money. They would have to sell their shares in their company, which they may or may not be able to do. And as they start selling, it's going to drive the price down. Uh, so yeah, it, this is a very complex issue. That comes back to, as Milton Friedman said, there's no such thing as an unbalanced budget. If you're spending six trillion, they are taxing that money in the form of inflation.

• 50:15Tom Bilyeu?

  If they're only getting in tax, whatever, four point six. So, man, uh, here's where I wouldn't mind being taxed more. If the outcomes were awesome.

• 50:25Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 50:26Tom Bilyeu?

  And the outcomes are trash. And so I've lived in LA now for thirty years, more. And I'm just watching it move in the wrong direction. And I'm, companies are fleeing, dude, in and out, the burger joint is now moving to uh Nashville, I think.

• 50:41Speaker 01

  Oh, no.

• 50:41Tom Bilyeu?

  So, yeah, so it's like.

• 50:43Speaker 01

  Not California anymore now.

• 50:45Tom Bilyeu?

  No, dude, they are, they are making mistakes of the most egregious kind. Not recognizing the second and third order consequences of when you just try to tax, tax, tax, and spend it with no sense of like, what is my outcome? Uh, people leave, they vote with their feet.

• 51:04Speaker 01

  Yep, and we're seeing that happen. I'm, I'm, I'm with you. I think we need to demand the best government that we possibly can get, right? Because every single tax dollar we have. I'm, I'm worried about Doge, um, to be honest, because I think that what they're doing, and just to be clear, um, what they've done so far is they've given orders to fire all the probationary employees. So what is a probationary employee? It's somebody who's been in the US government for less than two years. So it means that they don't yet have civil service protections. So you can just fire them, right?

• 51:40Speaker 01

  These are recent law school graduates, recent business school graduates, recent public policy school graduates. They're people who are willing to work 12 to 16 hour days. They don't have kids. They're extremely smart. They're hungry. It's basically like you're firing all of the highest potential hardest working people and the cheapest employees. Your people are getting paid $60,000 a year and sparing the actual fat cats, you know, the people who've been there for 30 years, who may work six hour days, if that, and are making $150,000 a year, or even $170,000 a year. So I think the indiscriminate aspect

• 52:22Speaker 01

  of it is problematic. And I can say this firsthand because I've worked in the government and I know the people who work the hardest are actually young people, right? It's you go to Washington, you'll be surprised by how many 25 and 30 year olds are doing really big things because in order, you know, there's a US government, you know, even with compared to the biggest tech companies, there's no problem set like what the US government has to deal with, right? There's a limitless amount of things to do. And so if you're a young person who is hungry, there's a lot of opportunity for you there. And so I worry about firing the highest potential, smartest people. And I've seen it even now. I mean, I teach, I teach a graduate at the graduate school at Columbia University. And I've been

• 53:05Speaker 01

  preaching to my students for years that, you know, you could go make a ton of money on Wall Street, you can make a lot of money in Silicon Valley. And I, in fact, it's great, go ahead and do that. But now, while you're young and hungry, go work in public service, you know, be patriotic, make your country better, deliver, you know, national security wins for the American people. And I'm grateful to say that I have over a dozen of my students who are at places like the Treasury Department or State Department or Commerce Department. Doing really important things, working on out competing China in tech, or working on, you know, making the US independent on foreign sources of energy and critical minerals. And these, these students of mine are worried that their jobs are at risk.

• 53:49Speaker 01

  And for no reason, not because of their performance, but just because, you know, these are the only people that, you know, Doge thinks they can fire because they've worked there for two years. So if, if you wanted to do a top to bottom personnel review in which you fired the least productive workers, and you raise the standard, raise the bar for what you expect a US government employee, I'm all for it. We need the best and brightest in our government. But I think the way that it's been handled so far, I don't think is actually driving toward that goal.

• 54:18Tom Bilyeu?

  Yeah, I mean, I'm, I look at it and see the greatest capital allocator, certainly of our time. You've somehow managed to get him for free in the government, who's done the largest, as far as I know, the largest corporate turnaround ever. And he's doing what he can in terms of if you've got some people that are protected and there's no way that you can fire them. Well, obviously he's not going to focus on that because he's got to deliver results quickly. You have a political reality to face, which is you've got to get some wins under your belt fast. The thing that I'm drawn to though with Doge is just give me transparency. I want to see it all. I want to see where this is going. I want to see all the dumb stuff like,

• 55:00Tom Bilyeu?

  the rate that people can retire is tied to the speed of the elevator in the mine shaft that they put the paperwork in. I still can't believe that's real. That's crazy. And so getting somebody in there and starting to pull this stuff into the light, publishing out on a website, these are all the things that we're doing. I think that's good. Some of it is probably just theatrical and isn't like the real substantive thing. But at least capitalizing on this moment where people really want change and going, cool, like, we're going to mix this up. We're going to start forcing transparency. We're going to start holding people accountable. And then hopefully over time, to your point, I mean, you outlined this so well in the book, that you start doing these things. In the beginning, they're like these awkward sanctions and they work a little bit, but they have this knock on effect that you didn't realize would happen.

• 55:45Tom Bilyeu?

  And so now you address it and you begin hardening it over time. If we can, over time, start doing like you're saying, I mean, one thing Elon has said is, pay government employees more, not less.

• 55:55Speaker 01

  Of course.

• 55:55Tom Bilyeu?

  Because there's a corrupt forcing function where they're living in Washington DC, one of the most expensive places in the world with a terrible school system. So they want to send their kids to private schools. So it's like, oh, God, if I take this lobbyist money. And you get this system that deranges itself. So getting everything transparent, getting everybody to want the government to be audited, which I still can't believe people are pushing back on that. That kind of change, at least directionally, is going in the right place.

• 56:23Speaker 01

  I'm all in favor of transparency. I think that transparency is wonderful and I encourage that. To pivot back to the books, I'm glad, I'm glad you brought this up. I think that there is actually something Doge could accomplish when it comes to economic warfare and geopolitical competition.

• 56:42Speaker 01

  I had the good fortune during my time in government to do a tour of duty in the Pentagon, where I worked for the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Marty Dempsey, who's a four-star Army General. And I was kind of the token civilian who got to, got to work on his strategic planning team. And it was helpful because I got to see what the US military and the Pentagon does when it comes to planning for the wars of tomorrow. You know, when you think about something like a potential Chinese invasion of Taiwan, right? Actively, every year, they're not only coming up with different military options that could be used in such a scenario, they're rehearsing them. That's what a military exercise is. You're actually testing this out, right?

• 57:24Speaker 01

  You're literally going out there and, you know, seeing what might go wrong. You're war gaming these things and you're updating your plans, right? Your troops are professionally recruited and trained over decades of their lives, right? This is why we have the most lethal fighting force in the world. When it comes to economic warfare, I mean, we are a patchwork, right? You've got the Treasury Department, you've got the Commerce Department, you've got the State Department, you've got different officials at the White House. Frankly, if you read my book, it's focused on individuals. It's focused on people like Stuart Levy, who pioneered different uses of financial sanctions, because it takes policy entrepreneurship to succeed in that kind of system, right? There's not a Pentagon for economic warfare.

• 58:08Speaker 01

  And as a result, I also am concerned that we're falling behind other countries. You know, China does have a much more streamlined process for doing these things. Even Japan just recently created a Cabinet Minister for Economic Security, right? They, so like we have the Secretary of Defense, they have a Minister for Economic Security, right? I think Doge would be wise to think about not necessarily cutting money into economic warfare. If anything, we need more money for these things, but right sizing how the US government does it, right? Like going back to the drawing board and say, if we really want to fight and win the economic wars of tomorrow against China, against Russia, how do we need to structure our government so that we're not playing games of telephone and arguing with each other all day and what we're actually positioned to win?

• 58:54Speaker 01

  And I think that would be a very beneficial thing, and I would love to see Doge and Elon Musk put their time and attention into that problem.

• 59:02Tom Bilyeu?

  Economic warfare, man, is crazy. Where can people follow along with you?

• 59:06Speaker 01

  Well, first of all, I would highly recommend that you read my new book, Choke Points.

• 59:10Tom Bilyeu?

  I can vouch for it. Fantastic.

• 59:12Speaker 01

  Appreciate it. And the Wall Street Journal just called it one of the 10 best reviewed books of February, which

• 59:17Tom Bilyeu?

  Let's go.

• 59:17Speaker 01

  was an honor, an honor. And if you do read it, please reach out to me. I'm available on X at Edward Fishman. So you can, you know, send me a note there and I love hearing feedback. I've already, the book came out on Tuesday, February 25th, and I've already had, you know, over 100 messages from early readers asking me questions, making comments. I love that. You know, the, the thing, as an author, you sit in your office for several years writing, and the thing that's most satisfying is when a reader picks up your book, reads it, and it sparks a new idea, and sometimes it changes my own thinking. So please. Please reach out to me. I'd love to talk to you about it.

• 59:54Tom Bilyeu?

  I love it. Awesome. Well, guys, if you haven't already, be sure to subscribe. And until next time, my friends, be legendary. Take care. Peace. Let's talk about a pattern that is guaranteed to be killing your progress. You know what you need to do. You need consistent nutrition. We all do. You need vitamins, probiotics, greens. We all know that we should be doing more of it. When your morning gets chaotic, you skip it. When you travel, you skip it. When your routine breaks, everything tends to break. And that inconsistency compounds against you every single day. AG1 is designed to solve the execution problem. One scoop, eight ounces of water, and you're done. You're getting 75 plus ingredients, vitamins and minerals, pre and probiotics,

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