Returned, The Trade Wars Have | 🍋 #19

Summary

Podcast Summary: Lemonade Stand – Episode #19: "Returned, The Trade Wars Have"

Release Date: July 9, 2025
Hosts: Aiden (Alex), Atrioc (Brad), DougDoug (Charlie)
Title: Returned, The Trade Wars Have | 🍋 #19

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1. Introduction and Banter (00:00 – 01:37)

The episode kicks off with a playful exchange among the hosts about dominating conversations and their off-screen experiment with horse electrolytes. This light-hearted banter sets an energetic tone for the discussion ahead.

Notable Quote:

• Alex (Aiden): "[Welcome to the lemonade stand. We're back. We got a good pep in our step energy because we've started doing horse electrolytes off screen.] (00:12)"
• Brad (Atrioc): "[I'm so tired, I can't even fall. I will literally do some horse electrolytes right now.] (00:18)"

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2. Trade War Update: Resurgence and Setbacks (01:37 – 05:07)

The hosts delve into the resurgence of the trade war, highlighting President Trump's 90-day pause and the unmet goal of 90 deals within that period. They discuss the minimal progress made, with only a single significant deal with the United Kingdom.

Notable Quotes:

• Alex: "[Today is. We're rehashing old news. What are we talking about in that? The trade war, which has been so forgotten about, is back on, baby.] (01:38)"
• Charlie: "[90 deals. So that's a deal a day.] (02:14)"
• Brad: "[He came out the gate swinging.] (02:23)"

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3. Deal with Japan: A Bottleneck in Negotiations (05:07 – 16:55)

Focusing on Japan, the hosts analyze the failed negotiations exacerbated by Japan's rice crisis and President Trump's exaggerated claims about Japan's tariffs on American rice. They explore the political dynamics in Japan, particularly Prime Minister Ashiba's allegiance to the rice industry, which hinders progress.

Notable Quotes:

• Alex: "[Therefore, we invite you to participate in the extraordinary economy of the United States, the number one market in the world by far.] (04:18)"
• Charlie: "[Ashiba is very beholden to the rice industry in Japan. Like he is. You could even, you could say corrupted.] (13:52)"
• Alex: "[Our relationship has been unfortunately far from reciprocal.] (05:07)"
• Brad: "[PM was like, oh, America sama.] (12:34)"

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4. US Political Bill: Tax Cuts and Debt Concerns (16:55 – 30:39)

The conversation shifts to a significant bill passed in the US, encompassing tax cuts and Medicaid spending. The hosts debate the bill's impact on national debt, questioning the feasibility of economic growth outpacing the increased debt. They highlight skepticism regarding the bill's promised economic stimulation and its practical implications.

Notable Quotes:

• Charlie: "[Like, that's way less money for the government, that's what sends us more into debt.] (27:15)"
• Alex: "[The idea that keeping the, like we're not getting the growth right now, but we're still going to keep this going...] (29:14)"
• Brad: "[The hope is because we are putting so much money into people's pockets that it will stimulate an amount of growth...] (27:43)"

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5. Social Media Trends: The Rise of Threads (30:39 – 43:53)

Exploring the evolving social media landscape, the hosts analyze the surprising growth of Threads, a platform by Meta, noting its substantial international user base despite limited presence in the US. They discuss the challenges in accurately gauging social media metrics and the global segmentation of user communities.

Notable Quotes:

• Charlie: "[You just have to open.] (41:54)"
• Brad: "[So this is an interesting opportunity to talk about kind of what is the landscapes.] (41:22)"
• Alex: "[I. I legitimately do not believe that it is close to the daily active users of Twitter.] (41:38)"

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6. TikTok in the US: Bans and Fork Attempts (43:53 – 60:19)

The hosts examine the ongoing attempts to ban TikTok in the US and the proposed creation of a US-based version called M2. They discuss the complexities of disentangling TikTok from its Chinese origins and the potential inefficacies of such regulatory measures.

Notable Quotes:

• Brad: "[There's a whole bunch of evidence that shows Chinese engineers and software developers still have access to the data.] (60:32)"
• Charlie: "[It's gonna be like real ID at the airport.] (58:49)"
• Alex: "[This is an app developed in America. Correct.] (60:05)"

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7. Chinese Capital Flight and Money Laundering (60:19 – 83:21)

In an in-depth analysis, the hosts explore the mechanisms of Chinese capital flight and its intersection with global money laundering. They outline how Chinese triads facilitate the movement of capital out of China despite strict capital controls, using methods like mirror transfers and leveraging illicit networks.

Notable Quotes:

• Charlie: "[They're selling a bunch of Chinese goods back into Mexico, sell in local markets to get the pesos in cash to use for these payments.] (78:44)"
• Brad: "[Every individual gang across the world is kind of like a McDonald's franchise.] (82:37)"
• Alex: "[The entire process represents a way that you can move money around in order to make purchases like that.] (72:13)"

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8. Conclusion and Corrections (83:21 – End)

The episode concludes with the hosts making corrections regarding previous topics discussed, specifically clarifying their stance on birthright citizenship. They wrap up the episode with humorous exchanges, maintaining the show's characteristic informal and engaging tone.

Notable Quotes:

• Charlie: "[I want to clarify one thing first, is that I'm not against birthright citizenship.] (83:28)"
• Alex: "[Thank you for watching Lemonade stand. Thanks, everybody.] (87:58)"

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Key Insights and Takeaways

• Trade War Dynamics: The renewed trade war, primarily led by the US's partial progress in negotiations, underscores the complexities of international trade relations, especially with key partners like Japan.

• Economic Legislation: The passage of significant economic bills, despite growing national debt, highlights the ongoing debate over fiscal responsibility versus stimulus-driven growth.

• Social Media's Global Reach: Platforms like Threads demonstrate the vast and often unnoticed international user bases, emphasizing the fragmented nature of global social media consumption.

• Regulatory Challenges with TikTok: Attempts to regulate or ban TikTok in the US face significant hurdles due to the app's deep integration and cultural impact, coupled with technical and ownership complexities.

• Illicit Financial Flows: The intricate methods of Chinese capital flight and money laundering reveal the vulnerabilities in global financial systems, driven by stringent domestic capital controls and facilitated by organized crime networks.

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Final Thoughts

In this episode, "Returned, The Trade Wars Have," Lemonade Stand offers a comprehensive analysis of current geopolitical and economic issues, blending insightful discussions with their signature humor. From the intricacies of renewed trade tensions to the pervasive influence of social media and the shadowy realms of international money laundering, the hosts provide listeners with a nuanced understanding of complex global dynamics.

Notable Closing Humor:

• Alex: "[I'm a little baby. I'm sorry for being wrong. I'm not very good at my job and I don't do my research.] (83:28)"
• Charlie: "[I can't do this.] (88:03)"

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For those interested in the intersection of business, politics, and global affairs, this episode of Lemonade Stand delivers a rich and engaging exploration of pressing topics.

Transcript

[Alex]

All right, ladies and gentlemen, shut the hell up.

[Brad]

Sorry.

[Alex]

For one, seriously, let other people speak on this podcast.

[Brad]

You're right.

[Alex]

You're just dominating the conversation from minute.

[Brad]

How do I make this podcast?

[Alex]

Welcome to the lemonade stand. We're back. We got a good pep in our step energy because we've started doing horse electrolytes off screen.

[Brad]

I'm so tired, I can't even fall. I will literally do some horse electrolytes right now.

[Alex]

You already have. Literally. Don't say it like it's an exaggerated crazy thing. You already.

[Charlie]

I don't like that. The tub still here?

[Alex]

Yeah, me neither. I think it brings.

[Charlie]

Because it does kind of imply he has been drinking them, which is. I. I can't not be more clear. They're bad for you.

[Alex]

Very bad.

[Charlie]

It's very bad.

[Brad]

Straight up. One of the most popular episodes. Most viewed episodes last five or six horse electrolytes. We have a data point, and the data shows clearly what the people want.

[Alex]

Saying this. Other people have managed to make podcasts work without doing. It's not like it's mandatory. This is the future. This is not.

[Brad]

Yeah, and they're going to leave them in the dust. Okay. In the salt.

[Charlie]

This is what we need to break away dust. Crack it open. Is that a new. Is that a new one?

[Brad]

No, no, no, no. It's the same tub. It's like, there's no way you're unsealing so much. It was a few weeks ago. It has to protect from horses because they just want to get in there.

[Alex]

Hooves can't open it.

[Charlie]

Maybe this is what Jokic is taking because he owns horses, too. His horse just, like, won a race.

[Alex]

I mean, that would explain this.

[Brad]

Dude, what are we talking about?

[Charlie]

This is bad. This is bad. It's. I know it's a bit, but this is bad.

[Alex]

I think it's actually good. I get it. I get what he's doing. All right. He's bringing us back to a previous bit because we're going back to a previous news item.

[Charlie]

There we go.

[Alex]

Today is. We're rehashing old news. What are we talking about in that? The trade war, which has been so forgotten about, is back on, baby. It is back on in a major way. I think, like, weeks ago, this was a big news item. Everyone thought, oh, my God. And then we all forgot about it because Trump, in response to borrowing costs for the United States going up and the stock market getting a little shaky, put a big pause. Put a 90 day pause on the trade war. Well, 90 days is now up there was supposed to be 90 deals in 90 days. How many deals do you think we got?

[Charlie]

90 deals. So that's a deal a day.

[Brad]

Yeah, I think it overperformed 100.

[Alex]

That's you're so close.

[Charlie]

If I recall. At least he made one beautifully comprehensive deal with the United Kingdom.

[Alex]

You're right, that is one deal, one really signed deal in 90 days and that one was pretty minor. So we're a little bit short of the goal.

[Charlie]

I just.

[Alex]

Tiny 89 short.

[Brad]

So how many countries are there again? Like three.

[Charlie]

There's like there's three, which is crazy because he was at 90.

[Brad]

He was going to do a bunch.

[Charlie]

With the same ones. That's how confident he was.

[Alex]

He came out the gate swinging. So anyway, if you could pull up his Truth Social, which is where I get all my political news nowadays. The Truth Social today is a deluge of basically the same boilerplate letter to every, almost every country. He's just tweeting not true thing nonstop this letter and I'm going to read it to you. I'm going to read you. The one he sent to Japan is the first one because Japan's the most important. Let's talk about Japan more in detail. But dear Mr. Prime Minister, it is a great honor by the way. Everything is random caps like I do think he actually wrote the original draft of this. It has every one of his hallmark. It is a capital G, capital H. Great honor for me to send you this letter in that it demonstrates the strength and commitment of our trading relationship and the fact the United States of America has agreed to continue working with Japan despite having a significant trade deficit with your great country. Nevertheless, we have decided to move forward with you, but only with more balanced and fair trade all caps. Therefore, we invite you to participate in the extraordinary economy of the United States, the number one market in the world by far, comma, by far. We have had years to discuss our trading relationship with Japan and have concluded that we must move away from these long term and very persistent trade deficits engendered by Japan's tariff and non tariff policies and trade barriers. Our relationship has been unfortunately far from reciprocal. Starting on August 1st. Now this is what I want to say. So obviously the end of the deadline was Today was July. July 7th. 8th. 9th. July 9th I think is actually the day. But since we've reached this end of the 90 days and nothing has happened, there has now been an extension. These, these letters all come with an extension to which is now August 1st. So another month I guess is the idea and, you know, some people are questioning, well, if we get to August 1st and there's no deal, is there going to be another extension? I think that's a very fair question. But right now it's August 1st. We will charge Japan a tariff of 25% on any. All Japanese products in the United States. You know, basically, which is the same number or around the same number they had in those original Rose Garden big poster tariffs. Like, not much has changed. We're just threatening the same tariffs and pushing the timeline.

[Charlie]

Was there anything in place for the past 90 days? Was it, was it dropped to zero for that time period or was there something.

[Alex]

No, it hasn't been zero. It's been the, the 10% universal tariff. Okay, that is, that has been collected and been going on, but all of the talked about tariffs have still been delayed and delayed and delayed. So. So that's where we find ourselves. This is not only that Pearson, he sent it to, he sent someone to South Korea and I don't know, like 50 other nations, they're all getting this letter publicly on social media, I assume also mail to them.

[Brad]

Honestly, you shouldn't assume only truth.

[Charlie]

Only truth.

[Brad]

Social. You can't trust letters. You can trust the truth.

[Alex]

Wait, I want to. Let's see. The last thing is, you will never be disappointed with the United States of America is the last line. So anyway, so. So he's putting the pressure back on and the heat is back on, and the markets are again, much less believing of him as they were before when it was an instant panic. But there is a little jitteriness today, both in American stocks and then also in the currencies of all these countries that are affected by the tariffs. Just the idea is the deadline's a little shorter. Maybe something can happen if these actually go through. It will be extremely impactful. It's a huge, huge tariff.

[Charlie]

So, yeah, while you were saying that, Perry was scrolling through the letters and he basically scrolled the entire time you were talking.

[Alex]

Yeah.

[Charlie]

Is it 25% for every single country that's getting a letter broken down and different depending on the place.

[Alex]

It is different depending on the place. What was really interesting to me is he randomly picked. I don't know if this is because of the beef with Elon, which we should talk a little bit about, but South Africa got hit with a big one, like a 35% or something more, you know, just out of the blue. And South Africa, I looked it up. You know, we don't do a ton of trade with them. My understanding is they Buy our oil and cars and we buy platinum and jewelry from. And that it's a, you know, it's all in all 12 billion or something. It's not. So the fact that he made it, it's just interesting, you know, it's so focused on his whims and fancy. And I do want to say, you know, we'll continue South Africa thing real quick. There is a. The tweet he put out about Elon. You guys know we've talked about the Elon beef, but he said specifically, you know, because Elon's launching a new political party. Have you guys heard about this?

[Brad]

The America Party.

[Charlie]

America Party.

[Alex]

Uh, I'm saddened to watch Elon Musk go completely, quote, off the rails, essentially becoming a train wreck over the past five weeks. He even wants to start a third political party. Despite the fact they have never succeeded in the United States. This system seems not designed for them. The one thing third parties are good for is the creation of complete and total disruption and chaos. All caps. And we have enough of that with the radical left Democrats who have lost their confidence and their minds. Republicans, the other hand, are a smooth running quote machine. I love the random quotes, random quotes, random caps. It's just awesome. It's an awesome way to type. They just passed the biggest bill of its kind in the history of our country. It is a great bill, but unfortunately for Elon, it eliminates the ridiculous electric vehicle mandate and it goes on forever. I don't want to read it all, but basically says Elon's mad about the EV mandate getting rid no more EV subsidies. And then also that Elon wanted his friend to run NASA and that guy was a blue blooded Democrat.

[Brad]

I want to read one of the sentences from this tweet.

[Alex]

Yeah.

[Brad]

And I quote, elon probably was, comma, also, period. That's the. Yeah. So a lot to think about here.

[Alex]

A lot to think about.

[Brad]

This does make you think.

[Alex]

Okay, not very hard.

[Charlie]

I kind of like it in a sense of I have confidence it's him writing it. It's not somebody.

[Alex]

There's no middleman between.

[Charlie]

Because actually if you told me to write like Trump, I don't think think I could do it.

[Brad]

He dictates it to somebody to write. There's a video of him watching, I think Kamala Harris give a political speech or something. And this is during the election and he's in a room, they're all like, there's like eight people watching. And then he's dictating to a woman next to him to write So I don't even know that he is personally writing this, which is even crazier because, like, how do you even. He would have to manually be like, okay, Elon probably was, comma, also, period. And they said this. Like, the fact that he's dictating it makes it even crazier. How does he get these, like, strange.

[Charlie]

I kind of like the idea. There's a stunning staffer who has such a read on the vibe that they know what to capitalize.

[Brad]

Or they're like, on a lot of drugs and it's like his favorite guy is like, yeah, I trust Stan.

[Charlie]

Someone looking at this and they're like, space business.

[Brad]

Yeah, that's.

[Charlie]

That's capitalized for sure. Okay, so we've delayed until August 1st to basically renegotiate. We didn't send letters to literally every country, but we sent them to many with varying terrorists that will be placeholders during that time or will start on the.

[Alex]

Don't start until August 1st. So, again, nothing is directly changing today other than the fact that they're not letting it drift off into nothingness. That it's like the new. The story's continuing. Hey, the deals. We still want this. You have a small extension again.

[Charlie]

Okay, like, so as far from what, you know.

[Alex]

Yeah.

[Charlie]

Through this time period, through these 90 days, how much progress or. Or lack thereof was there on actually making deals with these countries? Like, did we get to a position where we were 80% confident we were going to make a deal with Japan? Do any of these. Are any of these countries close to making a deal or in the process of making a deal? How present is that in the nation?

[Alex]

That's a fire question. I really want to talk about Japan today, specifically Japan, because that has been priority, I think, under Trump's words, priority number one for the United States negotiation team. Because Japan is one of our, maybe perhaps our closest ally, realistically, and our kind of our East Asia partner. To have some against China, you know, it's like a whole thing. We really. And they buy the most of debt of anyone else. Like, they're. They're our partner. And so what's interesting is I come at this originally from the perspective of, like, you know, Trump is silly. Trump is. Is goofy. And Japan's trying their best to make a deal, and he's blowing it up.

[Brad]

If I could say. He's being a total baka.

[Alex]

He's being a sussy baka.

[Charlie]

Your Japanese is getting crazy.

[Brad]

Thank you. Thank you.

[Alex]

That's what I thought.

[Charlie]

Right.

[Alex]

I wanna. And I so I did some further research on how. Because this Japan deal has been priority number one now for 90 days. And they've sent United States best and brightest and, and Scott Besson and all these people have been flying to Japan regularly and having these meetings and you hear about some of the chaos and the inability to get it done. And I just assumed it was all on one side. So I want to give you a more nuanced picture here, Trump. Here's a high level. Japan is currently going through a rice crisis. A rice is, if you will. They.

[Brad]

That's good. I enjoy that a lot.

[Alex]

They, they had a bad harvest and so there is not enough rice to go around. So. And also they have a ton of tourism and everyone there wants to eat rice. So the rice keeps the price. The price of rice is going to get history.

[Charlie]

All right. Dr. Seuss keeps rising.

[Alex]

Dr. Seuss economics keeps rising. And it's becoming a problem. People are very angry about it in Japan. And one thing that Trump keeps saying in this deal and he's not, it comes through, he's not very well informed on exactly what Japan is and isn't doing. But one thing he's got stuck in his head is that they have a 700% tariff on American rice. They won't buy our damn rice and they need our rice. And what's interesting is that the current PM of Japan, Ashiba, who Trump called Mr. Japan because he forgot his name.

[Charlie]

Dude, that. Oh man, it's. It's so unfortunate how awesome that is.

[Alex]

Yeah, it's just roll with it.

[Charlie]

It's crazy to be in power of the wealthiest nation on earth and you're just like Mr. Japan.

[Alex]

I. That's crazy. I've come to deal.

[Charlie]

I know that is the important thing here. It's just, it's crazy how this he. I would love it really keeps on giving.

[Brad]

PM was like, oh, America sama.

[Alex]

Like we just go back to that. Be so sick, dude. I'm going to get to that because actually I think, I think there's some valuable geopolitical insights that we were saying. Actually, I'm going to get to it. Okay. So, so anyway, so Trump thinks there's a seven numbers in tariff. Now what there actually is is a decently high tariff. I don't know the exact number, but they have a terror. It's not 700%. Maybe it's between 1 and 400%. It's somewhere in there. They do protect their domestic rice industry. So what I found is that Ashiba, who's the current PM of Japan did not appoint the normal person to do the negotiation from the Japanese side. He appointed a different guy who's from the district that is, there's a picture of this parrot by the way of the guy and who is from the district where all the rice growers are. Ashiba is very beholden to the rice industry in Japan. Like he is. You could even, you could say corrupted.

[Brad]

By, or you could say corrupted by big rice.

[Alex]

Big rice in Japan. Like he. That's where a lot of his voting base is. That's where he's. So he actually has the opportunity here to just pretend what Trump is saying is true and go, you know what, sir, I'll bring down the 700%. What I'm saying is the more you look into this is that Trump has actually given them a lot of easy outs, but because Sheba is so wanting to appear tough for the rice, the rice industry that supports him, that they've reached this stupid impasse where they're both being pretty stupid. And someone had this tweet that is actually pretty funny to me. Clouseau Investments was a bit goofy, but the problem with Japans are too polite and straightforward analytical to make a good deal. They don't get showmanship. As crass as it sounds, if they pulled up to the White House in a gold embroidered special 47 edition Yamaha Golf cart with gold plated Mizuno clubs driven by Shinzo Abe's widow and a mannequin of Shinso wear the Donald hat, he'd be more than happy to sign a deal. It's actually true that, like, they're so desperate to close a deal that all they would have to do is lean into the showmanship of it and offer some basic concessions. But because it's politically unpopular on their side, they can't do it and nothing's getting done. It's becoming this problem where now I think Trump is pivoting to a different country to find the number one deal because Japan, they can't seem to close it.

[Charlie]

Japan was meant to be the number one deal.

[Alex]

Yeah, that was, that was the idea from minute one. And they were really willing to.

[Charlie]

Could we, can we backtrack a little bit to the one deal that did get made with the uk? I knew that deal got made, but in terms of like fanfare or its position in the news, I feel like I heard relatively little about it and also the contents of it, My understanding is that deal wasn't very comprehensive and it was something quickly put together. So why isn't his one win something that we're more locked into or you're presenting as something more important.

[Alex]

I think the UK deal. My understanding is that it's really just a restatement of the way things already were. It doesn't change much dramatically. It isn't like a, a huge win for American producers or that the UK is going to safely buy more goods they weren't before. Listen, the reason I brought up that Japan goofy tweet of that guy exaggerating is because like some countries, and including the previous PM of Japan, Shinzo Abe, who had his own faults but really knew how to deal with Trump is they've understood the, the showmanship. Like Qatar promised Trump 20x their GDP in investments. It's not real. They promised him multi trillion but like they did a big show. They had people with swords come out. They did a parade.

[Charlie]

They gave him a point.

[Alex]

They. Yeah, they gave, you know, they did the things that like work and they got the deal they wanted. And it's just funny that the playbook to winning these trade deals is actually pretty obvious now. And people that aren't doing it are now like caught. Like it's just causing problems for Japan's car industry because they can't get a deal done here. They do sell a lot of cars in America and it's, it's just funny they're being so hung up on this rice.

[Charlie]

Can we dig deep for a second? Let's use our lemonade stand powers to dig here. And is there if I'm a part of his administration or other people that are responsible for making these deals or setting the tariff amount, people like Scott Bessant. What is the argument, the pro argument for why these things are going well? Like what is the excuse for not having anything done in 90 days? Why have we actually been productive this whole time? If I want to be the strongest Steelman it. Do you guys know of anything to dig in the opposite direction?

[Alex]

What they would say is.

[Charlie]

Is there basically. Sorry, what I'm asking is, is there any talk about here other than outright failure? Because the presentation of it feels like that. And I'm wondering. It's like it feels like there must be something they could say if I had Scott Bess.

[Alex]

No, what I would say, yeah, I can. I could totally steal my. This from their side. What they would say is the onus is on everybody else. Like they don't care if a deal doesn't get made. Like they're, they're. What they're saying is like if you want to sell your goods here in America, you know, then better figure out a play by our book like, we don't care if there's no deal. We will just tariff. You will write it. We'll just write up a tariff. And that's fine by us. That. That's the idea. However, what I'm questioning is that because of the delays the first time, it seems like they actually do care about what the impact it'll have on stock markets and bond markets if we actually have the tariffs. I think they would rather have a nice deal and sign it and be done and.

[Charlie]

Mm.

[Alex]

But. But they have to pretend to be in a position of total strength. We don't care.

[Charlie]

And that's a possession. A position we can pretend to be in because as a market, we have so much buying power and we're not so much an exporter where we're relying all these countries to buy our things. We're at a deficit in the first place. We're a gigantic market that presumably these people need.

[Alex]

Yeah, I think they all need it individually. The hard part is whether they start.

[Charlie]

To collectively, if they all collaborate.

[Alex]

Right.

[Charlie]

How much do you need us? How much do you need the American market if you can literally sell to everywhere else?

[Alex]

That's the big question. And so I don't know, but I do want to say this. So China is the only country that's had above 10% tariffs. They've had like the 40% or from the. I know, and I know that that article, the one with the graph where you scroll down. So what actually has been happening, I think we predicted this on the show straight up, is like they're just shipping through other countries, which is like 100% what you'd expect to happen because the demand for the Chinese goods is still there and China still has the only place to make them.

[Charlie]

So let me give you a little window into this.

[Alex]

Okay.

[Charlie]

As someone who, you know, has experience working on a business that has sourced things from. From China.

[Alex]

Yeah.

[Charlie]

You know, I might have friends who operate businesses of similar scales.

[Alex]

Sure.

[Charlie]

That are making similar decisions around this problem who are also just doing this. Yeah, they're just doing this. They just. It just goes to a different country and gets something added or repackaged, and then it comes to the US that's all that happens.

[Alex]

This is the most predictable outcome. And I think we said it from minute one. And if you scroll down to the graph. So, like, the second these tariffs started coming into play, a huge spike in Vietnam and Indonesia imports happened, because that's where they're just going to Vietnam or South Korea or Indonesia, something's being slightly tweaked and it's being reclassified so the tariffs don't apply. So what this becomes is what the lesson of this is like, hey, either we spend gazillions more to try and constantly whack a mole and put all this down, or we tariff every country in the world at once. Questionable if that'll work, or we got to find a way to make a deal that both sides agree. Like the idea that, that these tariffs will just work with no workarounds, no black market. No. I think it's a little silly as my. That's where I'm at. So that's where we find ourselves on this trade war. With this update, I don't know if you had any further questions. I think it's pretty fascinating how. Sorry. Microphone discipline. I'm gonna import a second microphone, two.

[Brad]

On either side of your face.

[Alex]

One of those three like, podiums.

[Brad]

Here's to the voice acting booth. We're here, like, yelling through it.

[Charlie]

I think maybe let's. I think this cleanly connects into something we wanted to briefly touch on, which we were saving for later. But I think is the big beautiful bill passing. And I'll let you take on the lead with this mostly. Sure. But the way I see this, connecting is the pro argument for this bill passing. And if you're listening to this right now, we're. We've talked about the bill an endless amount and we've always been pro every aspect and we've been a pro the entire time.

[Alex]

So, like, please don't try to dissuade us from that position.

[Charlie]

Is, Is that in the bill, the deficit spending is being offset by things like the revenue from the tariffs, which are not accounted for in the accounting of this bill. Like the tariffs are a source of revenue to the country. And that is something that we haven't seen all the benefit of yet. That's supposed to come in and be something that helps with the financial math of this bill. Right. And my skepticism to that when I, when I heard it was, was this. Seeing the degree to which people will go to dodge these tariffs to begin with, whether it be a small business or a big business, everybody is looking for a way to circumvent it.

[Alex]

Yeah.

[Charlie]

Yeah. And I think just leading into that, I think there's a bit more teeth to that argument as well that I thought was interesting to cover that you might want to touch on or get into.

[Brad]

Yeah. We can hit up. I mean, I think what's. What's so the bill we've talked about a bunch of times, it did pass completely. I, I, you know, this time I was like, surely politicians will do what they say they're going to do and not vote for it. And that didn't happen. So that's been wild. At some point I'll stop my naive childlike whimsy will be stamped into the ground. But there was a lot of politicians who like, I will absolutely not vote for this. They've changed my critical things and it's, you know, they just, dude, it's just.

[Alex]

Wild for me to someone to get on like five different news networks and speak directly to camera and be like, this bill's a disaster.

[Charlie]

And unless it's changed I, the, the recency bias. I feel like I can't, I, I can't even believe I convinced myself a little bit. I think it's just the audacity to run the media circuit and then still go for it. Not even like a quiet like cool quote of like, yeah, I don't know if I really agree with this or like I don't know if this is in the right direction. And then you vote for it. It's like wildly doing the media circuit to like rile up your constituents against it and then being like, yeah, I said yes though, dude, it's great.

[Alex]

Ron Johnson was a, was a senator and like I played his clip maybe on here and also on my stream and I was like, this guy's spitting this guy. And he was like really going after and then I check and he voted for it. It's like, it's just crazy unchanged. The bill did not change. He just voted. That to me is wild.

[Brad]

They might be like lizards in a human skin. I just don't, I genuinely like what's going on here. Like what do you, what do you think you're the, is the point of your life if just like what you say has no bearing in any of your actions? Like what, what drives a person like that? I don't understand.

[Charlie]

Maybe like really nice dinners paid for by Comcast probably.

[Brad]

Man, I, I am just baffled.

[Alex]

Well, some of it's fear. Right. So my understanding is that, yeah you know, Trump definitely has the power to get a replicant primary so you'd lose your job. Like he, if he really gets the true social machine working on you, he can make you out to be but.

[Brad]

Then you fact to the America Party.

[Alex]

Yeah.

[Brad]

Which Elon Musk's new third party.

[Alex]

Yeah.

[Brad]

What I wanted to quickly touch on is the argument for why it could be good because I streamed on 4th of July last week and there are, you know, few comments of people being like, this is a sad day to celebrate America. We are our country's going towards ruin. And I think there's a legitimate argument towards that. For me, not only is there the kind of moral, ethical side of cutting a bunch of Medicaid, which is just not cool, the main concern that we've talked about a bunch is just the debt going up by trillions and trillions of dollars. And as we've discussed that it could send us like towards ruin as a country. So that is terrible.

[Charlie]

You can dislike this bill from so many different angles.

[Brad]

Yeah, there's a lot of angles.

[Charlie]

You can pick so many different things. A lot of angles as the reason why this sucks.

[Brad]

Yeah. So the debt and the deficit, that is the really concerning part to me amongst many. And so I was listening to an argument basically, again from the. Let's say Scott Bessant Treasury Secretary of what is the goal here? Like, why are they doing this? So part of it is like you said, tariffs. So when they talk about the amount of deficit that doesn't include tariffs, but even numbers on that could be wrong. And obviously, please double check me if you're. But okay, Vietnam, I believe is about $120 billion in trade, like trade with the United States. So even if we did a 20 tariff on them, that is like $20 billion. That's not that much money. So even if we, you know, get let's say $100 billion in tariffs every year. A couple hundred billion. That is helpful.

[Charlie]

Like, I didn't know you were doing that. Well, 20 billion, not that much. That YouTube.

[Alex]

That's because you got five channels.

[Brad]

His second channel goes crazy.

[Charlie]

Dude, you haven't seen the revenue on that second channel them.

[Brad]

Like, the Vietnam tariff money is like having a VOD channel. It's not going to resuscitate the US Government.

[Charlie]

Come on.

[Alex]

It's a slight stream of. Right, right.

[Brad]

And so between.

[Alex]

That he wouldn't understand because he hasn't uploaded on YouTube. He's a.

[Charlie]

Exactly, exactly.

[Brad]

Now, now China, that's our twitch primes. Okay. Like we can squeeze them. Yeah. So, you know, arguably there's going to be some tariff money, but you know, there's so much flux of tariffs, we don't really know. The more compelling argument that, that I heard is why is it acceptable to put US $5 trillion in debt by cutting everybody's taxes? And again, it is everybody. It's not just rich people. But you Know, if you cut everybody's taxes, way less money for the government, that's what sends us more into debt. What is the possible value of that? Well, the pitch is we want to get GDP growth up and one way to deal with a debt is to pay it back, which is stupid. Cringe or we outgrow it. Because if the idea is in 10, 20, 30 years, our GDP is so incredibly massive, our economy is just fucking cruising, that our dollars worth more. And the 36 trillion that we owe right now is comparatively not that hard for us to pay back. So if we just stop the debt from getting worse and we grow a lot as a country, we can outgrow the debt being problematic.

[Alex]

And there's no, I mean this statement if we just stop the debt from getting worse. Discussing a bill that makes the debt significantly worse. I don't.

[Brad]

Yes.

[Alex]

So that's my first.

[Charlie]

It's good. Well, yeah. Can I synthesize it from, from my understanding is the tax cuts and the bill in general are going to incentivize so much economic growth that it outpaces the debt that this bill adds.

[Alex]

Yes.

[Brad]

So that's, that's the hope. The hope is because we are putting so much money into people's pockets that it will stimulate an amount of growth and hopefully with AI and automation, all the other stuff going on, it will, we will actually outpace this. It would also require us to stop making the debt bigger. But theoretically, if we stop making the debt bigger every year and we just keep it at $36 trillion, just a little bit of money, just a small amount that we could outgrow. So a crucial part of the equation is missing, which is to stop making it bigger every year.

[Alex]

We've ever tried this cool idea where we cut taxes for wealthy people so that it'll sort of fall. What's a word for that? Like it'll get down and then the growth will. I wonder if we maybe trickled.

[Brad]

Maybe trickle Trick cereal.

[Alex]

Trick cereal. I don't know. I don't know. I don't think it's ever been tried before. And that's why I'm so excited about it.

[Brad]

Yes.

[Alex]

Because it's so brand new.

[Brad]

So, yeah. I'm also skeptical to be clear. But it is. I just want to point out for people who are like, this bill is a complete and total disaster. What the fuck are people on the right thinking? This is at least the argument probably for a majority of politicians. It's just like, hey, short term, let's get more money to people that's most likely what's going on. But that is at least the pitch is, I think more money into people's.

[Alex]

Pockets, let's grow more to steel, man. It But I just, I disagree. I understand. I'm with you and I think it's fair to do that. And. But I just want to say, like it's funny because so much of the tax cuts are just continuations of the tax cuts that exist right now. Like they're supposed to expire.

[Brad]

Right.

[Alex]

So the idea that keeping the, like we're not getting the growth right now, but we're still going to keep this going and then the growth's going to 10x like trillions of dollars to do the same taxes we currently have is going to give us the growth that we're not getting currently is stupid. I'm sorry. Like, I think the Occam's razor here is that they want to throw money to the people that support them. Like, is it the idea that it's this brilliant 90 chess plan that is going to grow us out of our debt is a nice thing to say as you blot the debt, but it feels like you're not treating the problem seriously. But you keep telling me that, like this is, don't worry, this is the way.

[Charlie]

Okay, so this is the other argument I've heard from a couple people and I think this has been copy pasted across a couple things that Trump has done. But this idea that through, in a similar way to Trump started talking about even before he was running for president, he was talking about China and our relationship with China, what getting rid of our manufacturing means. Like if you look at old footage of him, he's been talking about China for a long, long time. And that's energy he carried into his first campaign. And now our relationship with China or our trade relationship at least, is something that is top of mind in politics. Right. It's something that gets brought up all the time. And I think you could credit him for its place in popular politics talk like regular people bringing that up as a talking point. Right. And I'm not necessarily our mission accomplished. So I think the argument that I've heard with this is that through this bill getting passed and through other things that his campaign has been about this time or his presidency has been about this time, the conversation of the national debt has reached a point that is inseparable from the public conversation of politics. It has set us on a trajectory where we have no choice but to confront and address it really aggressively. And I'm not saying I agree with this argument. I would rather this have not passed. But this is the other argument I have heard is like the benefit of this, whether he intends it or not, is that now we have a problem that is so dramatic that we have no choice but to address it.

[Brad]

That person is a baca. That's, that's an insane.

[Charlie]

All right, Sorry, Dad.

[Alex]

I got a.

[Charlie]

Stat up to his credit, he's not.

[Alex]

The only person I feel like Trump is playing. He's the first person to find an easy mode for Dark Souls. He plays politics on such an. The amount you can bend over backwards to. Well, he's not fixing the problem, but he's bringing awareness to it so that eventually I don't think.

[Charlie]

No, no, no, no. I think the discrepancy between that is the people I have talked to, one of them happens to be my dad. But there are other people that have brought this up is not people who are like Trump, the genius who is making sure that we confront this down the line. They're like, through his recklessness, at least the country will be forced to address this very important issue that they have refused to let enter the public sphere.

[Brad]

Up until right now. We're like sick with the flu or something, but not enough to go to the hospital. And then Trump is coming in with a bucket of flu virus and injecting it into the body to incentivize us to go to the hospital. I like it.

[Alex]

I'm just saying, are these, he's health conscious. Are these same people being like, God bless Hunter Biden. Through his recklessness, he's bringing awareness to cocaine abuse and that is going to finally make America conflict. It's just absurd. It's just absurd line of thought, bro. It's like it's such a, a desperate play.

[Brad]

No, it's also funny because it implies that it's like a one time fix that we're putting off. No, it's, it's only there because we're moving towards the cliff. Like, you don't have to move towards the cliff. It's. It's not like we've got it. It's like spring cleaning. You've got to do it at some point. We don't have to have a $40 trillion deficit.

[Alex]

Yeah, you're.

[Charlie]

You're taking a spring cleaning approach to an episode of Hoarders.

[Alex]

But, but here's what I'll say to give credit, one thing I've never said Trump is bad at. He is actually one of the goats of this is he can read the room. I Guess on what real things that people are actually, you can find a kernel of truth people are actually upset or angry about.

[Charlie]

He's good at reading his base. Yeah, Very, very good at reading his base.

[Alex]

Yeah, he can understand. But like, I think for example, 30 years of jobs disappearing to China is something that like Americans were broadly. A big swath of Americans were broadly upset about. And he can harness that. I just never like, his, his solutions never seem to make sense. They never seem to be coherent. But he can, he can definitely read the room on like, these are problems that everyone's kind of stupid under the rub no one's discussing. I'm going to make a big deal about it. But, but you know, that doesn't mean you get automatic credit for fixing. You have to fix it. You have to. That's, that's a fine thing for a pundit, but it's not a fine thing for a president. A president has to have policy that fixes it.

[Charlie]

No, no, you're wrong.

[Brad]

You know, interesting element of this that I haven't heard anybod.

[Alex]

Yeah.

[Brad]

So Medicaid, there's all these Medicaid cuts. That's one of the most criticized part of this bill. And I've seen a lot of people criticize and basically say, you are going to be taking away healthcare from a ton of your constituents. How does anybody on the right justify this? Well, part of the reason they do is because most of the, basically all the people who are going to be cut from Medicaid, this would be under the expansion program of Medicaid. So quick recap. In 2012, Obama passed the Affordable Care act and that expanded Medicaid. And basically states could opt in and say, hey, we're going to expand Medicaid so it covers more people with higher income and it can include people who are able bodied and don't have dependents. So if you were able bodied and didn't have dependents before the Obamacare act, you could not get Medicaid. It was expanded under the Affordable care Act in 2012, but not every state took it. It was literally. Obama said, okay, the federal government, any state who wants it, will now cover like millions more people.

[Alex]

Hmm.

[Brad]

All us will pay 100% of it at first, 90% later. We'll pay all the costs for this and you can expand your Medicaid dramatically and we just way more people in your state get coverage. 40 out of 50 states did that, but 10 didn't, including Florida and Texas. So there are 10 states right now who don't have the expanded Medicaid. It is instead incredibly small and restricted compared to these other states. So if you're wondering why there seems to be certain groups of the country that are adamantly, let's say, even kind of like this moral crusade, it seems like to say Medicaid shouldn't be given to people can't work. To their credit, they haven't been taking the federal dollars for this for over a decade, even though they could have. And from what I read, there's people saying like, you know, this doesn't make sense. It's not financially responsible and people who are, you know, it takes away the dignity of work or whatever, you know, lines like that. So this is a weird things.

[Charlie]

Healthcare does take away the dignity of work. I've been saying that.

[Alex]

Yeah, I've been saying that to all your employees.

[Charlie]

Hold up there. Was that the union word I heard?

[Alex]

Hey there, champ. Here at Mogul, we don't talk like that.

[Charlie]

Why you quiet on down?

[Brad]

Yeah, so it's an interesting thing. If you're wondering why a bunch of states are, are so on board with removing Medicaid, it's because from their perspective, they haven't benefited from this for 13 years. They've adamantly been opposed to it, and now they're basically trying to say everybody should be closer to what we're doing. We've been the only financially responsible ones this whole time. It's like 20% of the country never expanded. It. It's. It's a lot of people.

[Charlie]

So it's really interesting. I didn't, I didn't know.

[Alex]

That is interesting. I mean, right.

[Brad]

If you're, if you're a Texan and you're a poor Texan on Medicaid, you, I mean, I wouldn't agree with this, but you could be like, everybody else should have the same standards as me. And it makes more sense why people in these countries, in these states would be receptive to this.

[Charlie]

Do you know how that was decided at the time? Was that state votes or constituent votes deciding whether or not they would accept it or was it just a governor or their state?

[Brad]

I'm not sure. I believe state legislator. Maybe you can look up Perry of like how states decided to join Medicaid expansion. But yeah, this was, you know, it's been happening over the last 10 years. But that was, you know, a major part of the pitch of the Affordable Care act is we as the federal government are going to cover the cost to massively expand Medicaid. And 10 of the states just didn't, which is Crazy for them to just refuse the money, frankly. Yeah. So they had to, it looks like, pass law. So it would have been state legislation. So in 10 of these states, they were just like, nope, we don't want it. We don't want your dirty Obamacare money.

[Alex]

You know, like, I got mine type voting. Like, if you're in Texas and you're, you don't want other states to have stuff you don't have, like, just simply, it's so like, interesting to vote to cut.

[Brad]

Yeah.

[Alex]

Because it doesn't benefit you at all. It's. It's someone else getting the fact that.

[Brad]

They voted for 12 years to never take the money either is strange. Like, that is strange to me that.

[Alex]

I'm sure some strings or something or like it comes out of the state budget in some way eventually on a.

[Charlie]

Lot like, well, you said it was. Eventually it becomes a 10 cost to the state. You said the federal government would cover 100%.

[Brad]

Still, like, if the federal government went to you and was like, hey, we're as a federal government, we will pay for 90% of Medicaid. If you expand it to like 5 million new people, almost every single anybody on earth would be like, yeah, sure, we'll take that. And they didn't.

[Charlie]

This strikes me as something, this is without me looking into this at all. Right. But I think about the fervor around Obamacare at the time. Right, Right.

[Brad]

And you can tell it was politics. It's like, we don't want, we hate Obamacare, therefore we won't even be a part of this movement.

[Charlie]

It's like the. Have you ever looked at the polling of you poll reception to Obamacare versus reception to the Affordable Care act versus reception to the line items of the Affordable Care Act? And each one is just an insane jump in percentage of people who are like, yeah, this is good. And Obamacare polled pretty low at the time. And then you just give the actual name of the bill and then people are like, yeah, it's pretty good. Pretty good. Much better than you show them what it actually does. And they're like, this is great, dude. Like, so it's just, it's just how politics works, I guess.

[Brad]

Like, yeah, in Texas, they're probably. Do you want Obama coming into your house and treating your grandmother with free care?

[Charlie]

Yeah, that's, that's, that's unironically what the rhetoric was at the time. If you go back and watch pundits talk about Obamacare at the time, it's crazy. It is.

[Alex]

They were right and they were Right.

[Brad]

I want my country back. All right, and mission accomplished.

[Charlie]

So why don't we. I want us to slide over because I think you had an interesting story about social media that you wanted to dig into.

[Brad]

Yeah, let's just dish, dudes. Let's just get into it. All right, so article, kick this off, Perry, if you could pull this up. So do you guys remember this crazy thing? I don't know if you've. If, like, this happened a while ago and it's. It's wild. Threads. Remember Threads on Instagram and how that existed briefly?

[Alex]

I remember.

[Brad]

Remember that. Remember, everybody was like, yeah, we're gonna go here instead of Twitter. Because I'm pretty sure, yeah, that launched after Elon bought it. I remember everybody's like, we're going to Threads. And then nobody ever talked about it ever again. Remember that?

[Charlie]

I remember everybody getting their handles and then never doing anything after that one thing.

[Brad]

And like, all right, just like Google plus. Just like Blue Sky. Just like Mastodon. Yeah, so this is one of those things. And then it, you know, kind of died off by the wayside. Except it didn't. It has gotten really big. So there's this graph that came out about the daily active users on. This is mobile, which is an important distinction on Twitter, Threads and Blue Sky. Twitter has, like about 150 million people who tune in every day on their phones now. Threads is almost at 150 million. Like, it is almost there. In terms of the impact that these apps are having, Threads is nearly as big, at least when it comes to mobile devices. On PC, there's basically no presence by Threads. Blue sky, they're like a million. Blue sky is not having a good time.

[Charlie]

Shout out to Blue Sky.

[Brad]

So this is an interesting, interesting opportunity to talk about kind of what is the landscapes. I looked across it of, like, what is even going, like. I. I assume you guys have a similar take as me, which is that I have not heard a single mention of Threads once in the past two years.

[Alex]

My take is that people are opening Instagram, a very popular app, and misclicking the threads button 100 million times. I. I legitimately do not believe that it is close to the daily active users of Twitter.

[Charlie]

Wait, okay, is it not its own app? You access it directly through Instagram.

[Alex]

It's connected to Instagram now. You have the same handle. You have a cross, dude.

[Charlie]

If you're connected, you still open the number of people. Wait, is Threads a separate app or not?

[Brad]

Yes, it is.

[Alex]

But you. In Instagram, there's now a Threads button.

[Brad]

That can, like, that can click over to it. You still have to open.

[Charlie]

Out of the, like, billion people using Instagram, it's just a bunch of them misclicking.

[Alex]

That is honest.

[Brad]

No, so. So this is what I want to talk about. This is what I was thinking. So, you know, again, Threads users going way up. If you look at this chart right here, it's just been growing like crazy. The monthly active users is like double that. It's like 300 million people a month are opening up Threads. So I was looking at it. How in the fuck is this app getting insanely huge? 300 million people a month looking at it every day. 150 million. None of us hear about it ever. It's not in the cultural zeitgeist in any way. And the answer is not. The entire world is America. So it turns out social media users, in 2025, there's like a billion social media users in China, India, almost. I should say almost 460 million. Now the United States, we got a lot. We got 240 million social media users. But then Brazil with 144 million. One of the countries that I feel like we never talk about is Indonesia. It's one of the biggest countries in the world. Yeah, I never hear anybody talk about Indonesia ever. They have 140 million people on social media. Mexico, 90 million. Philippines, 90 million. Vietnam, 70 million. Pakistan, 70 million. These are massive, massive numbers. And so looking into where is Facebook, as a specific example, getting all of their people. Well, so found this, this breakdown, it's mostly from Asia and South America. There we go. Out of the. So Facebook is still absolutely gigantic, by the way. It has almost 3 billion monthly active users. Like, it just like, you know, two fifths of the world's population is still on Facebook, which, even though, again, for Gen Z and millennial Americans, like, nobody goes on Facebook anymore, right? And so looking at this, of, of those 3 billion, India has 400 million active Facebook users. Indonesia, 100 million. Brazil, 100 million. Mexico.

[Alex]

So 400 million is more than the entire population of the United States, all using.

[Brad]

Just using Facebook from one country. So I think what is interesting to kind of. To, you know, step out and remember here is that America, relative to the entire population of the world, we are tiny. And even though we don't really use Facebook anymore and we don't use Threads, Meta, as a company across Instagram, WhatsApp and threads is really, really, really successful at capturing broad audiences across the world, particularly ones that are rapidly developing, like Southeast Asia, South America, you know, Brazil has a massive social media presence and all this. So I thought this was really interesting that Threads is actually doing fantastically well for them, just not really in a way that we care about, which is an interesting, just like way to think about social media.

[Alex]

You know, I mean, that is interesting that something I will say though is my understanding is the value per user because these, these, these platforms run on ad.

[Brad]

Oh, you think they're less valuable?

[Alex]

I don't think the less value is people, but I think there's an ad dollar thing where it's like one user in the United States is worth like I don't remember the exact numbers from marketing days, but it's like 20 plus dollars per person in terms of amount they can sell ads for it.

[Brad]

Yeah.

[Alex]

And it's like 8 cents if it's from anyone. They don't buy enough on ads. So from a profitability, I mean I get number of users and impact I guess is valuable. And this is very interesting but like from a health of the business, it's just a lot easier to get 100 million people from somewhere where you can't sell any ads than it is to get somewhere where it's like there's a high. Yeah, that's my, that would be my one counter. But that, this makes sense to me. I mean, I, I guess you do not think of it that way.

[Brad]

Yeah, it's, it's just like fascinating and I think it's, it's again like what you're talking. There's two, there's two angles. One is you objectively make way, way, way more money when you have an American audience.

[Charlie]

Or.

[Alex]

Yeah, or European. Or.

[Brad]

Yeah, or European whatever rich countries. Right. That's. You just objectively can squeeze us for a lot more of our precious, precious goo.

[Charlie]

I mean, even compared to Europe. Right. Isn't the, the, the ad rates in the U.S. yeah, the U.S. like the Canada, Australia.

[Alex]

We just consume like crazy love ads and we buy and we make and.

[Brad]

We have a lot of money. We're, we're rich people who want to buy stuff and that's, that's our vibe dumb TikTok ad. Yes.

[Charlie]

Well, I. A question I have for you guys. Are you residual Facebook users? Like do you guys engage or check it at all now? Like the Facebook the site and then if not Facebook, I'm wondering if you guys touch messenger at all anymore.

[Brad]

It got me like I kept using it for messenger specifically for about five years after college and now I am locked out of my account. I don't even have my password anymore. And I tried to reset it, and it wouldn't let me. And I was like, I don't care. I truly don't care.

[Alex]

Yeah. I'm a Messenger user because there's, like, there's that period in time where Facebook was big enough.

[Charlie]

Yeah.

[Alex]

And you have some friends that you just talk through that exactly. Just sticks.

[Charlie]

So that's what I was going to say. Is the US having a number that's even as high as 200 million is pretty shocking to me. But I think about the way that I use Facebook, which is basically, I check messenger once a week. And I think that's a lot of people, like you just have a residual use for Facebook that you continue to engage with occasionally. Or things like Marketplace, like Facebook Marketplace has become crazy popular. Things that let you hang on to the site in a way that is very different from the way that you were probably using it 10 years ago. So that was the first thing that I thought of when I saw this. Another interesting thing is, I think for young people, especially, the way you get into social media or end up picking a platform or signing up for is social pressure around you or social trends around you. Right. A way to engage with the friends you have at school, whether it be college or high school or something you might use for work. Right. And the trend of one site being big at a certain time hits different languages and countries at different times. Right. So even if Facebook has maybe a lot of the same issues that it did 10 years ago, and it's not a very good or very fun site to use, or people have phased out of it in American life, different countries are experiencing the wave of Facebook just being popular at different times. So I'm really curious, like, if you give another 20 years after this, what are the ways that all the people in all these other countries are still interacting with that site?

[Brad]

Right.

[Charlie]

The other thing I was thinking about with this was the segmented nature of language or culture on social media. And this is why China has always been so fascinating to me, even growing up, was that their Internet wasn't even on the same sites that I use. And I was kind of excited by that. It felt it's so secretive and cool. But with stuff like this, like Japan or Japanese gaming scenes, like, I came up playing competitive Mario Kart, and the Japanese scene is a huge part of that. But the world scene, on the whole, communicated to each other pretty much in English, even if you were French, even if you were German. The community was a linked thing that communicated in English as the medium of exchange. Right. And then Japan was pretty separate because they only spoke Japanese and they didn't mind playing with just their own community in a lot of ways. And they had their own forums, their own websites. And then eventually with Twitter, they had their own kind of sections of Twitter. Right. Like people. Like there's a whole world of Japanese Twitter to interact with that you can find if you follow enough Japanese people and speak Japanese. But if you have a normal English centered algorithm. Right. You're never interacting with that. And the same goes for like Portuguese, like Brazil has its own memes and own things. Right. That are totally separate from the way that the English Internet has developed.

[Alex]

Yeah. It's funny you mentioned China and they're entirely separate apps and the great firewall and everything I saw someone said the reason that was, that was funny to me, which is that like, you know, you mentioned there's like a billion Internet users there, right.

[Brad]

Wasn't 1.1 billion social media.

[Alex]

Social media.

[Brad]

That's not even Internet. That's. People who are on these apps have.

[Alex]

An absurd, absurd number of people online.

[Charlie]

It's got to be because of WeChat though too. I put an asterisk on that is like, everything is on WeChat and you need WeChat to like live, basically. So.

[Alex]

But you know, Even if it's 800, it's a lot of people online and they are all completely isolated from the rest of the world, really, through their apps. Like they don't, they don't use the same apps. I don't use anything. And you know, it's funny that the way someone phrased it was like, we think of it as they are being blocked from us, but in a way we're almost being saved from a deluge of 800 million Chinese people overrunning every. They would, they would outnumber almost every other country on every platform that we like. They would be.

[Charlie]

Oh yeah, the English audience would be secondary.

[Alex]

Yeah. Right now the Americans are. Or, you know, Western. Is this central like you said?

[Charlie]

I get what you mean. Like if you go to Mario Kart.

[Alex]

Wii community was through English.

[Charlie]

The examples that I would give. If you like you go to Twitch, if you go to YouTube, even when you account for all these languages in different types of videos. Right. The biggest creators on all of these platforms are still English speaking creators.

[Alex]

Yes.

[Charlie]

I'm trying to say in general there's like a few exceptions depending on how you measure it. Like for example, on Twitch, ebay, super big figure, right? Very. I mean, you have access to. There's more first people with Spanish as their first language than English. Yeah, like that's an enormous audience across so many countries. But on the whole, the largest consistent figures across all these platforms are English speakers. If you go look into the data, like you can go take a look. That doesn't mean, that doesn't mean it's always the case in every like subcategory and thing you Measure. But on YouTube it's Mr. Beast. Right. And then on Twitch it's Kai.

[Alex]

Well, like the idea would be if the firewall was down, it would be Chinese, the number one based on the number of people.

[Charlie]

And you can, you can go do this. Something I do think is interesting about Chinese websites is that they block people from going to websites that they don't approve of. But most of these Chinese platforms are things that you can access as an American. So that's the thing I would do growing up is I found out like what are the big Chinese like YouTube esque and like streaming sites. I would go like, like browse YY and douyu and like see what, what the do they stream.

[Alex]

There was a phase where everyone was going on Zhao Hongshu which is like their Instagram Pinterest hybrid. It was like a trend. Everyone was going there.

[Charlie]

And then like I, I remember I made a QQ account growing up because that's how you could make a Chinese League of Legends account. And then I used a fake Chinese passport number to make my Chinese League account and then played three.

[Alex]

We're trying to go to China, not get banned from it.

[Charlie]

I played 300 ping Chinese league.

[Alex]

Yeah. Your support. You were terrible.

[Brad]

They're gonna look at your KD ratio and we are banned. If it's not.

[Alex]

Look at your toxic chat messages. You were raging.

[Brad]

They see you inting a single time.

[Charlie]

Woman Bushra pong, y'. All.

[Alex]

What's he's been practicing one more thing before on social media. So China, TikTok, let's bring this together. You know it's supposed to be banned.

[Charlie]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Alex]

There's a follow up here which is very interesting if you want to say anything but you keep delaying it. Big news is that I think by the end of August the international version of the app is supposed to be banned. And there. And TikTok is launching a new US only version of TikTok called M2 or something. Yeah. Do you have the details?

[Brad]

Yeah, slightly different than that. So TikTok is supposed to be banned. There's a law that we talked about this last week law. That's it's. Supposed to be banned. Trump's just stalling it. Just because of Pure Vibes. Supposedly there might be a buyer. The reason a buyer is really unlikely for TikTok is because the core app is developed in China. So there's a. You know, it's owned by a Chinese company.

[Alex]

They.

[Brad]

The idea that they are going to, like, give up the algorithm to TikTok, this wildly successful thing.

[Alex]

Never.

[Brad]

They won't want to do it. Not only is that just a stupid business decision, it also, there's a degree, degree of, like, national pride that China has created this international phenomenon that's extremely rare and uncommon, and it would be a big hit to the idea of China wanting to export culture.

[Alex]

And it's like giving up Labubu dolls.

[Brad]

You just couldn't.

[Charlie]

Yeah, yeah.

[Brad]

And so this is, you know, most people would agree, untenable. There is, like, no way that it actually here. I have this article here as well. I can pull up on the. There's, like, no way that the Chinese company is going to be willing to sell the algorithm, which, again, is developed by Chinese engineers by ByteDance in China. So TikTok is technically a separate company than Dien or Douyin, which is the Chinese version, but it's still Chinese engineers. Right. And that's the challenge. So this new one they're going to do is called M2. And the idea is it's going to be an app and a company that is entirely made within the U.S. and that way they can tell the U.S. regulators, hey, this has nothing to do with China. So it means moving the tech stack from China to an American company. And from, you know, a technical perspective, probably it means forking the code in some way. But it's not clear what this means because, again, ByteDance does not want to give up the code that allowed them to make TikTok. They don't want to give that away. And so the whole weirdness around selling TikTok is there's no way they'll sell the core thing that makes TikTok run. At most, they would sell the. Basically the name, the name TikTok and a bunch of data which is not valuable. And so there's this inherent disconnect between the idea of selling TikTok and what ByteDance might actually do. This is their attempt to get around it, seemingly. And so the specific dates they're going to launch this in September 5th, and then they're going to shut down TikTok on March 26th. So their idea is we will force everybody on TikTok to migrate to an app which is legitimately centralized and developed in the United States and then it'll be a kind of separate thing. And if that pans out, then maybe they don't need to be banned.

[Alex]

So interesting though, because that's like us soft, creating our own great firewall. Do you know what I'm saying? The idea that it has to be a US based app that is for other US users only.

[Brad]

Well, I think so. We don't have a lot of details about it. The idea would be the algorithm and what powers it in the data are all US based, but it would still be able to interact with international people.

[Alex]

Right. But I assume someone in, you know, France is down, is keeping the same version of TikTok and you are on him too. So unless they cross share videos.

[Brad]

Yes, they would.

[Alex]

They would.

[Brad]

Yeah, yeah. So the idea is like you still. Because, you know, if we get, I think TikTok is aware that if the United States gets removed from the TikTok ecosystem, it all fails. Right. Like we are too much of a cultural center. Right. You can't, you can't just pull away the US and have, and not have everybody else flood.

[Alex]

If I'm not dancing on there, it's not gonna last.

[Brad]

Right, right. That's what draws the people in.

[Alex]

Some of this is like how the app stays afloat.

[Brad]

If my 20,000 viewer TikTok clips of my stream don't keep going up, the site will crumble.

[Alex]

We don't have squeaks on there.

[Brad]

Yeah, but what makes that, what makes TikTok work culturally is the, the international spread. Right. So you need to keep that fabric going. The challenge is that you need to have the algorithm of the app not developed by China. So the idea here is that Americans will use an app that can still connect with the international version of TikTok. But it would be two different recommendations algorithms. One is developed by United States, one is developed by ByteDance. So you would never really know if you're going to have the different experience. Yeah, yeah. It'd be this very strange thing. There's a lot of unknown about this because we don't know exactly what they. They're doing. But this is what they're, you know, these are the reports coming out is like we're going to make this version that technically is developed by America and then there's this weird fracturing while maybe still keeping it all together.

[Charlie]

Do you think it'll have any impact on the number of people who are actively using the app? I feel like it will be Negligible at best, because the platforms that are sort of competing with TikTok that have worse algorithms. Like, I think even functionally from. It's clear to me that YouTube Shorts has a worse algorithm than TikTok does that the way it just serves me content. Right. But I still click the shorts. Like, I'm still. I still have the monkey in my brain.

[Alex]

Yeah, our brains are.

[Charlie]

I feel like you downgrade the algorithm, but I don't feel like it's gonna change the way people use it, which was the only benefit that I saw from banning it, but probably not. Beside. I mean, I don't know if I necessarily believe in, like, the security concerns in this specific case, but, yeah, I don't know.

[Alex]

I think habits will change too much. But I also don't know that this is even. You know, this. This could be, like, stalling, right?

[Brad]

We don't know if this is.

[Alex]

I think both sides are just stalling in this. It just feels like everyone wants to kind of, like, deep things. March 2026, we'll get rid of it. But by March 2026, they'll be like, all right, we need six. This.

[Charlie]

This is gonna be, like, real ID, bro. This is. It's gonna be like real ID at the airport. The TikTok ban is actually gonna come to fruition. They're like, all right, we got to.

[Brad]

Do it, like, for non Americans. For the last five years, every time you go to the airport, that's a sign that says you have to get a new updated ID or you can't fly. Coming in March of this year. And then every single year, signs, they're just like, look, we'll give you a little bit more time. And this has been going on for, what, seven years now?

[Charlie]

It has to be at least six years, right? I think I saw the first signs for a real ID at the airport, and I think Washington 2018. And I. I still lived in Washington when I saw them for the first time.

[Alex]

That's everything. We just keep extending. We just.

[Brad]

You just bail.

[Charlie]

Yeah, dude.

[Brad]

You just bail. I mean, the thing is, what they would do is they release this. So in. The reason I think it's interesting is because they're saying, September 5th. That's soon. That's in two months. So in. In two months, they release Dick Talk. And inside the current app, there's a button that says, you must migrate to TikTok by next March. And you press a button and you download the new app, and it's exactly the same in almost every single way. They might Pull it off. It'd be like a kind of. That'd be a kind of funny way to get around the whole thing.

[Charlie]

TikTok. Yeah.

[Alex]

Well, this is get around the law that supposed to ban it, which is still.

[Charlie]

That they're so what wasn't that it was never a ban. Right. It wasn't the whole idea. This was the goal of the law, was it not to get it under. It was to give this to an American controlled company or this is under American control. This is what the goal of the law was.

[Alex]

This is an app developed in America. Correct. But it's still owned by ByteDance, which is still a Chinese company. The whole point of the law specifies that, like, you have to get the Chinese ownership out of the app that is controlling.

[Charlie]

Hey, hold on. Run this back. Sorry, I actually skipped over this part. Then the Chinese company still owns this as, like a subsidiary, but it's just the data is being stored in the US and that's adequate.

[Brad]

All right. Currently with. Currently with TikTok.

[Alex]

Yeah.

[Brad]

ByteDance owns it and develops it. TikTok is a Chinese company. However, they store, at least for the US Their data in the United States. So that's. Their argument is like, the Chinese don't have control over it. The data is all in the US that is how it currently works.

[Charlie]

Yes.

[Brad]

However, the United States Congress and lawmakers said that's not enough. There's a whole bunch of evidence that shows Chinese engineers and software developers still have access to the data. The Chinese Communist Party is still pretty clearly able to tell bytedance what to do. So clearly there is influence. The core code running the app is Chinese, even though the data is stored here. The idea with this is they will move that actual development code to the United States so the whole thing is here. And then they might be able to get around it and say, yes, we have Chinese overlords who are technically in control of the company, but the engineers are no longer in China.

[Charlie]

Are you a Chinese tech company that's been forced to move your tech stack to the United States? Well, you can Sign up for NordVPN and you can also watch Vietnam. You can also watch some, like, crazy shows on Netflix.

[Brad]

That's going to be our fish.

[Alex]

That's our first.

[Brad]

Let's only take sponsors. Whenever we start taking sponsors that are just catered to TikTok, getting around American censors.

[Alex]

Okay, speaking of China, let's do a sponsor where we can get money out of China for money laundering.

[Charlie]

Yeah.

[Alex]

Okay, that's your final topic.

[Charlie]

I want to hear this was a cool. So this isn't really like, it's not breaking news or recent news in the sense that this has been going on for a while, but it's something that still exists now. And this, this interesting world of Chinese capital flight and money laundering, how it ties into the drug trade around the world, but specifically in the United States as well. And I started looking into this, I think almost, almost two years ago when some stories were breaking out about it. I remember watching.

[Alex]

Looking into this. He means starting to do drugs.

[Charlie]

Yeah, when I was buying the drugs and I started. And then I was like, I met a guy in San Diego and he was speaking Chinese and I was like, that's crazy.

[Alex]

I just noticed my plug kept getting more and more Chinese as I was buying throughout the years.

[Charlie]

No, but there's some really cool. There's some, like, cool reading you can do about this. There's some good videos out by both the FTSE and Viceroy.

[Alex]

I think had a good one.

[Charlie]

The vice one is particularly interesting if you want to go watch it after this because they actually go undercover and meet some of these Chinese brokers that'll tell you about. And it's really, really interesting. But basically. So if you are a rich person in China, you might want a way to get your money out of the country. Well, why is that the case? At a basic level, they have really strict capital control. So if you're a Chinese citizen, you can only move 50k USD worth of currency per year per person out of the country. So whether that. And if you want to make larger investments in, say, foreign companies of any kind, or buy things like real estate or make really large purchases for like a foreign good, you would need to get that approved somehow. So when you couple that with general restrictions or issues in China around maybe you're just not confident or in your assets in China for the foreseeable future, and you just want a way to get the money out of the country, how can you get it out? Well, you could use something called an underground bank that functions on the basis of these things called mirror transfers. And the basic idea of a mirror transfer is that on one end I deposit money with like an illicit bank or group. Like, I give you a bunch of.

[Alex]

So you're. You're a rich Chinese guy.

[Charlie]

I'm a rich Chinese guy.

[Alex]

You have 100 trillion yuan. Mm, 100 trillion, 500 billion yuan.

[Brad]

That's what, like $6?

[Alex]

It's still a lot. That's still okay. And so you go to him and what are you doing?

[Charlie]

I'M going to Doug. He's actually. Doug is also Chinese in this scenario. And I give Doug a bunch of my Chinese yuan R and B. And on the other end, I have a contact in the United States that I'm comfortable holding assets for me. My little. My homie over there, my little guy over there. And the Chinese, like organized crime, has a representative in the United States that gives you, the person I trust, the equivalent amount in USD minus like a commission. Right, Right. So what we've done is there's no record of this transaction. There was no actual international transfer of money. And so it's just done through this crime syndicate that basically has the cash to do it and has signed off the transaction on their end. And the issue with this is that it's really hard to track. Right. But this is a way that Chinese people buy money outside of China in order to get. In order to get like foreign money or foreign assets.

[Brad]

You know, you always hear about particularly Chinese nationals, but just international people buying housing in North America, you know, like in Canada. That's a complaint that's often said by people. It's like, you know, foreign people are coming in and buying all the houses and that's why we can't afford any. How are Chinese nationals able to buy so many homes if they can only spend 50k a year?

[Charlie]

I actually had this question too, and I have two loose answers to this, and if anybody can weigh in, I'd appreciate it as well. But from my understanding, there was actually restrictions on the Chinese end that came to place into place in 2016 and 2017 that actually makes it harder for Chinese citizens to do this. So that's one thing that limits it. And then I also know in places like Australia and Canada, they've instated laws at local levels that also makes it harder for foreign citizens to just buy up real estate and hold it. So those are two things that have changed in like the last eight years that, that do affect this.

[Brad]

But how would they even buy a house in the first place if they can only spend 50k?

[Charlie]

So now one of the ways you could do it is through a system like this, or perhaps you just have a family member abroad that you could, you could do it.

[Brad]

Got it.

[Charlie]

But this whole process represents a way that you can move money around in order to make purchases like that.

[Brad]

Gotcha.

[Charlie]

I do want to stress that prior, like 2016 and prior, there wasn't as strict controls from the Chinese end on what you could be spending your money on. So there's some laws that have Changed from China's perspective that also have made it more of a reason to do this at all. So the way that this ties in is into the drug trade. A massive Mexican drug cartels make massive amounts of money selling drugs in the United States and around the world. And they need a way to launder the money that they bring in. Right. So this created an interesting opportunity and I want to walk you guys through the process.

[Brad]

So can I be the cartel?

[Charlie]

You can be the cartel, yeah, absolutely. So you could be the cartel in Mexico.

[Alex]

Okay.

[Charlie]

And your name is Doug.

[Brad]

Okay, cool.

[Charlie]

And you send a fentanyl shipment to our friend over here.

[Brad]

I knew you'll act on this one.

[Charlie]

And Atriok. Atriok operates a drug gang in New York that distributes and sells the fentanyl. Right.

[Brad]

Thought we were doing something fictional here.

[Charlie]

And this is fictionalized events. So the drug gang Atrioc sells the fentanyl in New York. Say they earn a million dollars in cash that now needs to be laundered and they tell the cartel back home that hey, we have a million dollars. We've successfully done this. And now you approach a Chinese triad member in Mexico, that's your broker for this amount of money. And he's like, you're like, I need to get my money. Now that guy hits up his Chinese contact in New York and he's like, there's a million dollars for you to go pick up. And then they communicate and then the guy in New York goes and picks up the money, tells the Chinese contact in Mexico, and let's say that's me, I'm the Chinese broker in Mexico. I pay you out the million dollar USD equivalent in pesos and I just give that to the cartel. Right. You've been paid out and made whole for this whole transaction.

[Brad]

Yeah.

[Charlie]

And the reason this is so good for you is this is way quicker and way safer than trying to smuggle cash across the border, which would take much longer periods of time get seized. There's all these associated risks with that. Right.

[Brad]

But instead all I did was my team in New York handed a million dollars to a Chinese guy and then we received a million dollars pesos in Mexico. And apparently this, they're like Chinese Zell.

[Charlie]

Kind of drug dealers. What's mind blowing about this is this regularly happens the turnaround time for you as the drug dealer regularly happens within a 24 hour period. It is an extremely fast. So compared to the weeks or months that it might have used to taking you, you know, back in your early drug dealing days.

[Alex]

Yeah.

[Charlie]

And then, so the way this continues is like the Chinese contacts have picked up the million dollars, right? And the Chinese broker in America now put up the US Dollars for sale to any Chinese citizens that might want those US dollars, right? And then Chinese citizens who want to purchase that US dollars to get their RMB out of the country, they meet with a agent of the triad, like a Chinese person in China, and then make a legal money transfer of RMB to their bank just within China. And now that representative of the triad in China, you know, texts the guy in the US and confirms that the transaction has been made. And then the US guy pays out the million or, you know, whatever amount in USD that they wanted to their friend in New York. And now your trusted contact, like, if I'm a rich Chinese person, I just have a homie in New York or wherever in the US it doesn't matter in the this scenario.

[Brad]

Yeah.

[Charlie]

And my friend now has the money in his hands and I've successfully acquired the USD that I want.

[Alex]

Yeah. What's fascinating about this is like, it's so, so much more difficult to track under all normal, like FBI money tracing methods because the, the USD has never left New York, the R and B has never left China. The pesos have never left Mexico. It's just, it's just circling in each one. But everyone gets what they want, which is.

[Charlie]

And so drug trafficking is like a very natural fit with this because there's a ton of cash that needs to be laundered. Right. But it isn't just the Mexican to US drug trade that is taking advantage of this. There's crime, organized crime around the world that needs money to be laundered. And so anywhere in the world where there's pockets of like Chinese, Chinese diaspora that have popped up for whatever reason, like in Africa because of the infrastructure projects that have been built or like Chinese mining companies that are working in Africa, there's little, there's like groups of Chinese people that now live in that place that can operate potentially as like, as part of this, part of this money laundering trade. Right. Or a huge thing. Crazy stat that I saw was how remittance. Remittance is when a foreign, like a foreign national is sending money back home to family. Right. Legal remittance from Italy has fallen off to like near zero in the past decade and a half because they've all gone to the black market because of the system now. And there's. So there's, there's all of this, like, illegal, you know, black market trade that exists all over the world that wherever a Chinese broker can, can provide this service because there's a need from Chinese citizens to get their money out of the country, they can provide a really click quick and clean service. Basically.

[Alex]

I mean my understanding, and you can correct me if I'm wrong, I think we rush to some more things is that over the past 10, 15 years, Chinese triads have taken over the global money laundering industry completely. Almost everywhere. It is complete. It used to be a million different ways from different people. It is now almost all global money laundering is done through Chinese triads because the demand from regular non crime affiliated citizens in China to get money out of China is so big that it can support everything else. Everything else can run off of that need.

[Charlie]

Yeah. And it's going, it's going up. And I asked myself like why this specific rise in this happening now? Right. And it was the, you know, the capital restrictions like I said, but also other things in China that have been happening that pressure people economically to do this. Like if you want to invest in foreign assets, you don't want to. The Chinese stock market just hasn't been, it sucks flat 30 years. So if you just want to put a bunch of your money in assets that exist outside of China in order to safely keep it, you want to get your money out. Chinese real estate struggled a bunch in recent years because of the giant bubble that started, that did pop, started to pop. You don't want to hold Chinese real estate anymore. You put your money, get your money out of the country and then general confidence in whether or not the government is going to like impede or like seize the assets that you own. Right. Because they have a history of doing that. So or, or a really basic reason, sometimes you just want to buy something super sick that isn't sold in China and costs a lot of money. Some people just want to use a service like this for the sake of doing that.

[Brad]

I, if, if you don't mind me spoiling it at the bottom of your notes, I see in all caps CSGO skins.

[Charlie]

Okay, this was a thought that I hadn't fully completed.

[Brad]

It's just, that's all it says with two question marks.

[Charlie]

CS2 skins.

[Brad]

Excuse me? CS2 skip.

[Charlie]

Well, this reminded me a little bit of the way that like the Chinese CS skin market interacts with the rest of the market. Because there's a giant trading site called Buff Buff163 that is Chinese only and is really difficult to get money into and out of as a foreigner. And you need to go through like all these Steps to do it. And China is the largest section of the skin market for cs. And I was noticing like weird parallels between like what I was watching and reading and the way that the skid market works in counter strike. But I hadn't completed the thought, which is why it was.

[Alex]

Completely thought then the same thing apparently is. Again, this is also a limit of misinformation. But I was reading this recently. Is happening in the early stages with the Labubu dolls. The demand is real from Western countries. We think it's really cool. There's like celebrities wearing them, they want to buy them. They have huge value, but they're made in China.

[Brad]

Hold on. Before we talk about Labuba dolls, let's start with like some objective facts. They are ugly as sin.

[Charlie]

Thank you.

[Alex]

Rihanna doesn't think so because she wore one around.

[Brad]

No, I think let's just start with the facts. No rational person thinks these look good.

[Alex]

Sorry, but riri thinks they're cool and so other people think they're cool and they. You can gamble on them and open blind box.

[Brad]

That's really fun. I'm gonna steel man it. I hate them.

[Charlie]

Oh, good. Steel man.

[Alex]

Steel. Manning is just saying my own opinion, but louder. Anyway, they're popular and they're worth quite a bit, especially some of the rare ones. And so recently this did happen. I get it's. I don't know if it's part of this larger thing, but they've begun to become seized at Chinese customs, leaving the country because they're made in China. And so people are getting access to them much cheaper than they would get them overseas. And then they are smuggling lots of them out of the country, then selling them for a huge inflated profit to get money out of the country. It's like a way of not carrying cash out, but carrying the dolls worth hundreds of money. You know, that's so. It's just funny because I do think in a similar way to how I'm kind of like making fun of Trump for trying to whack a mole tariff. Like, there's no way to.

[Charlie]

Yeah.

[Alex]

The similar thing is happening with Chinese capital controls where the demand is so great. There's so many porous holes open.

[Charlie]

People find a way.

[Alex]

People find a way. You can't. You can't clamp it down if they don't, you know, if. If you're like you said this, but if you're rich in China, you put your money in stock market, it goes nowhere. You put your money in real estate, it goes nowhere. You have to get the Money out of China. Even if you're not, like, afraid of it getting seized, you just have to find a way to get it to grow or you're shrinking. So you want to put it in Vancouver real estate, because that's mooning. You want to put it in Nvidia stock. You want to put it in, you have to get it out. And so they will find a way, whether it's through drug dealers, whether it's through the Booba dolls, whether it's through CS Go Skins, they're gonna find a way.

[Charlie]

Yeah, I think it's almost assuredly happening with csgo to some degree, because through the larger skins, like, they're ridiculously expensive at the high end.

[Alex]

The one we didn't mention that is the elephant in the room is crypto. Crypto is a huge vehicle for this. And so it's happening all over or it's gold. People are finding a million different ways.

[Brad]

But, well, okay, let me steal. Man, that NFTS look really cool.

[Alex]

That guy who hates Labu Dog loves monkey. Jpeg Twitter profiles.

[Charlie]

Yes, sir.

[Brad]

Let's just start with the objective facts. Okay?

[Charlie]

I'm sorry, I don't like these steel, man. Okay, wait, I want to ask you guys something, though, because I. And I. Does any question pop in your head when I. When I give you this scenario? Think about the whole process we had outlined with the drug trade in, like, Mexican cartels. Like, what are. They're selling drugs in the United States? They sell it for USD.

[Brad]

Yeah. When does money actually change countries?

[Charlie]

It never does. That's the whole appeal of the.

[Brad]

But, like, at no point. At no point ever.

[Charlie]

No, that's. And that's what protects these transactions. But I think you're getting at the question that I had, because if you think about how this works, right, the drugs are sold for USD and the. The brokers are paying you out in pesos.

[Alex]

Precursor. Is that what you're getting to know?

[Charlie]

I mean, they're selling fentanyl. That's the drug in the analogy.

[Brad]

Is a track still on fentanyl?

[Alex]

I've always been. This whole time. I couldn't do this with you guys if I wasn't on a little fan.

[Charlie]

He's not on fentanyl this time, right? It's not important in the analogy. There's no analogy, actually. I'm just explaining.

[Alex]

I thought you were trying to get at the point that, like, well, the pesos have to come from somewhere. Right, but.

[Charlie]

Exactly, exactly. I was wondering the exact same thing. When I was thinking about this. I was like, where do the brokers get the pesos? Because if you follow this system as it's been laid out to me, right, you have a finite supply of pesos to pay out the cartel, right. Where do the pesos come from? So this was one of the. There's a whole, we got to close the loop here. This was wild to me. The Chinese, like crime organizations, import, they use the yuan that they get in China and then use it to buy cheap Chinese goods that they then transport and import to Mexico and then sell at stores and markets that the, that the triad still owns in Mexico. And they only sell them for cash. And they run massive, like market businesses of like, shoes, clothes, masks, anything you can think of that could be produced in China. And the trade relationship, if you look at the amount of goods that have come into Mexico from China in like the past decade has spiked dramatically. And that's how they get the pesos. There's a whole, like closed loop to this where they continue to bring in Chinese goods back into Mexico, sell them locally there, get the pesos in cash to use for these payments.

[Alex]

That makes total sense. I did hear the way I heard it. And that makes. I 100% believe you. I think it's probably makes more sense than what I'm about to say. That's the amount of paces you need to be staggering. Right. So you have to do all that. But the way I heard it was, you know, to close the loop. The real thing they need pace they can get pesos for is from the drug cartels that are making fentanyl in Mexico to export to the United States, need fentanyl precursor. They need like the, the raw chemicals and materials to make fentanyl. And they buy that from China. Yeah, with peso pesos. So they, they trade the pesos, but never leaving the country.

[Charlie]

So I think you're probably right here because when I was looking at the, I think it was the, the vice report where they're going through the stores that the brokers are showing them that they own. I was like, this seems crazy to me. Like, how could you be pushing enough volume of these goods in order to make up the gap of like, how large these payments are expected to be, Right? So it's probably both. It's like you need every, you need every avenue you can get to bring in as much pesos as possible in order to operate the business, the illegal business at the scale that you need to operate it at. Because in the, in the interview where they're using the body cameras and stuff, they're talking about, like, the. The reporter is pretending to be a fake, you know, fake Chinese party interested in laundering a bunch of money. Right?

[Alex]

Yeah.

[Charlie]

And the people they're talking to are, like, bragging about how much money they can. Can launder or pay out at a time through the system that they have. And they're like, well, 200 million would be, like, way too much. Like, we can't do that all at once. It would, like, take a long time, but, like 10 to 20 million, no problem. You give me a day heads up, like, I can move that for you instantly. And I was blown away by that. I was.

[Alex]

It's so funny to think that, like, something as seemingly irrelevant as, like, China changing their capital controls could cripple the drug industry, like in mechanics, you know what I'm saying? Like. Like every one of these pieces, including just rich Chinese people that don't care about drugs at all, that want to get their money out, has to exist for this all to work otherwise.

[Charlie]

Yeah, yeah.

[Brad]

Do you, do you think that there is a group, a whole section of people in the United States who lost their job as drug dealers and money launderers and are now upset at the Chinese for taking their jobs?

[Alex]

We need a drug dealer.

[Charlie]

You know what's funny? The money launderer part, genuinely. Yeah. Because that's, that's what has been replaced here, presumably in this whole scenario that we outlined. The local gangs and, like, whether it be like in the European example, they were talking about the Italian mob and in New York cases, In New York's case, it could be a local drug gang. Like, you know, we haven't lost those jobs yet, thank God. But, but the, the money laundering is the thing that's been replaced.

[Brad]

Yeah.

[Alex]

Every individual gang across the world is kind of like a McDonald's franchise where they get the drugs from someone else.

[Brad]

Yeah.

[Alex]

And they do the money laundering. They just operate their local, like, flavor of crime of like, like violence, but they're not making the drug and they're not handling the money long everyone else. It's all. That's really funny. It's funny that it has become so.

[Charlie]

American, who can only view things through lens of McDonald's.

[Alex]

Oh, you're saying it's like burger.

[Charlie]

It's like burger. It's like when burger friends.

[Alex]

I see. Yeah. But makes total sense.

[Charlie]

I, I think this story is, you know, I, I recognize that this whole process, you know, has pretty dire consequences at corners of it, but holistically, I found it incredibly fascinating.

[Alex]

Wait, we're coming up on time. You had a correction you wanted to make?

[Charlie]

Yeah, I did want to make a correction from last week. A quick, quick thing you do the.

[Alex]

Correction song where you say, I'm a little baby. I'm sorry for being wrong. I'm not very good at my job and I don't do my research. I didn't do the song, by the way, when I lied about cancer two.

[Charlie]

Weeks ago last week, I talked about birthright citizenship and a few people were correcting me, and rightfully so. So I want to clarify one thing first, is that I'm not against birthright citizenship. I don't know how that came across.

[Alex]

Comments?

[Charlie]

Nope, not, not against birthright citizenship. But one thing I was wrong about, I meant to clarify, or what I meant to say was unrestricted birthright citizenship is not common in a global context. However, there are way more countries than the US And Canada that have it. And those include like Mexico, Cuba, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Jamaica, Chile, Ecuador. So a bunch of countries do have it. Like, way more than even I thought, but still a minority of countries. And then a bunch of people pointed out that, like, birthright citizenship is way, way more than that. And it's like, yeah, but that's restricted birthright citizenship. That has a bunch of, like, rules and addendums to it, which is not what I was talking about. So I just want to make that correction because I was wrong about the number of countries that have it. And just keep that in mind.

[Alex]

That is why next week we're replacing him with Gavin Newsom, who doesn't get so many things lie about birthright citizenship. He tells.

[Brad]

He does his research before the show.

[Alex]

He checks his sources.

[Brad]

Speaking of checking sources, you want to hear something funny? So I was looking into all this social media stuff, right? And I was looking at numbers for threads and I was cross checking a bunch of things just to make sure the numbers were actually right. And one of the websites I was using to primarily talk about threads, not this one, but another one was basically it was talking about how threads has grown. And so again, the whole point of the story was like, wow, threads is gigantic. And we just kind of don't realize it. They have 150 million people that are being that are using this like every month or whatever. And, and what's crazy as a stat is of that 150 million, 50% are from Armenia.

[Alex]

That's not true, right?

[Brad]

Armenia has 3 million people.

[Charlie]

And so I was like, that just.

[Brad]

Came according to this website, very confidently is just stating. Yep. And we know looking at the data that Armenians are about half of them. Half of the 100 fish million people. So each. So either Threads is growing kind of spread around the world or every single Armenian person has multiple. Has 30 threads accounts that they are personally running, which is just like. It's a cool cultural place to be. You really get to feel like you're immersed in.

[Charlie]

This is my account for work, my account for friends, my account for my second wife.

[Brad]

For every hour of the day impression.

[Alex]

Of cheating on you.

[Charlie]

I don't know. So I. I say it in a British accent. I don't know.

[Brad]

What I learned from this is that it is very hard to get accurate numbers on social media. And it's. It's mostly estimates.

[Alex]

So it happened to me when I worked in marketing all the time.

[Charlie]

You.

[Alex]

You, dude. So much of this stuff is fluff or empty or. And you'd have to give these pitches on like the growth of platforms to your executive and it would just be you just like just fudging it.

[Charlie]

You just.

[Alex]

There's no, there's no, there's no numbers. They don't publish it.

[Brad]

Nobody knows. Nobody knows. Apparently it's all Armenia.

[Alex]

Dude. This is a symptom though. I've been talking to my stream about this. No matter what your position is, if you Google hard enough, there'll be a website that confidently agrees with you with a stat that doesn't make sense. There's God and people. You know, like, you have to have some kind of trusted sword. There has to be some kind of barrier because otherwise there will be a website. I. I promise you. I agree that you're. Someone's gonna find out.

[Brad]

Dude. Of the eight or nine, half of them linked to each other as the source. It was just like, dude. What?

[Alex]

Dude, it's like bot forms for me.

[Brad]

Yeah, it was bot farms that are referencing each other, all with different numbers. Like what. What is even going on here?

[Alex]

I feel like they add a little bit of noise to the data just to change.

[Brad]

Right? Just. Just so their. Their website's a little bit different.

[Alex]

It's fucking crazy.

[Brad]

The Internet. I want my country back. Internet used to be a good, honest source of news that I could trust.

[Charlie]

Yeah, I mean it used to be better. It used to be better for sure forum days.

[Alex]

You have a little signature. Did you ever do that?

[Charlie]

Yeah. Oh yeah.

[Alex]

I used to make them for anime banner forms.

[Charlie]

I was on the. I was on the Yu Gi oh card maker forum.

[Alex]

No, I would make you one that says like Yu Gi oh lover. Yeah, like Yugi and add a little Photoshop sheen to it. I used to crank those out. That was easy money.

[Charlie]

Yeah, you're making them in gimp because you couldn't get Photoshop.

[Alex]

I pirated.

[Charlie]

Oh, never mind.

[Brad]

Well, I think that about wraps it up. We do have about 45 more seconds. So what I would like to pitch is a track just counts down from.

[Alex]

45, 30, 29, 28.

[Charlie]

I can't do this.

[Alex]

Thank you for watching Lemonade stand. Thanks, everybody.