Caroline Levitt (5:35)

You're starting to negotiate.

Ben Shapiro (5:36)

How soon do you think we could see some deals be made?

Scott Bessant (5:38)

Well, we have one of the Vietnamese officials coming in this week. The Japanese are very eager to get over. And I think you're going to see a couple of big trading partners do deals very quickly.

Ben Shapiro (5:52)

So then he reiterated that he said that President Trump had good calls with the Japanese. As we mentioned on Monday, the Nikkei dropped precipitously. On Tuesday, it recovered precipitously on precisely the rumors that Bessance is putting out there, that there will be a trade deal in the making with Japan.

Scott Bessant (6:08)

The president had a very Good call. Yesterday with Prime Minister, with the Japanese prime minister that led to these negotiations. And look, the Japanese are military partners, their economic partners. We have a substantial imbalance with them. And I'm sure that they are as anxious as we are to get this remedied again.

Ben Shapiro (6:32)

So what you're hearing from one camp is take the off ramp, get some good deals. And so Japan, which was set to be hit and last night, in fact, was hit with a 24% tariff, they were looking for an off ramp. And again, this is not just Scott Besant who is saying this. Caroline Levitt, who's the White House press secretary, she was saying this as well. She said yesterday, countries are falling all over themselves to make deals.

Caroline Levitt (6:52)

In total, since the Liberation day announcement, nearly 70 countries have already reached out to the President to begin a negotiation. Countries are falling over themselves to reform their unfair trade practices and free open their markets to our country. Why? Because these countries greatly respect President Trump in the sheer power of the American market.

Ben Shapiro (7:15)

Okay, so again, this sounds like off ramp, correct? Off ramp is the. Is the sound of this. And this is why the markets yesterday were a little bit happier at the beginning of the day. And Caroline Lovett again reiterated this because Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had just visited the White House where he said that he was not only going to rectify any tariff imbalances, he was going to rectify the trade deficit, which, again, I'm not even sure how he would do that. But this is the kind of verbiage that obviously the administration wants.

Caroline Levitt (7:40)

Just yesterday, President Trump held a bilateral meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Here at the White House, the Prime minister pledged to immediately eliminate America's trade deficit with Israel and remove their trade barriers. Israel's proactive approach should serve as a model for the rest of the world.

Ben Shapiro (7:59)

Okay, well, the way that it could serve as a model is if the United States then, for example, went to Vietnam, which is also offering zero, or Taiwan, which is offering zero, or Israel, which is offering zero, and said, okay, deal taken. Great, we're postponing the tariffs with regard to you while we negotiate this thing out. That, of course, is not what is happening right now. People are holding off in the hopes that there will be an off ramp. Europe, for example, is not retaliating as of yet. Europe is holding off in the hope that something here will. Will come to fruition. According to the Washington Post, the European Union is taking a Zen approach. The bloc's member states will vote Wednesday on its first bladed response to a litany of Trump tariffs and will announce line item tariffs on American goods to counter US Levies on steel. But the EU is still working through how exactly to respond to other U.S. tariffs, including on cars and a blanket 20% tariff that Trump announced in a global trade blitz. The phased EU response partly owes to the nature of the 27 member bloc, which seeks political consensus among countries with disparate national priorities. But it also comes from a desire in Europe to allow for negotiation given the risk of further American escalation. Nation not just because the two economies are intertwined, but because Europe exists thanks to the security umbrella of the United States. Even some of the biggest advocates of the tariffs are starting to make the argument that Trump should be taking off ramps here. Here I cite Oren Cass. So Orrin has been a longtime proponent of a sort of right leaning industrial policy. He's the chief economist at American Compass. And again, his. His policy has been very interventionist with regard to the economy. I did an interview with Oren, it must have been seven or eight years ago at this point, in which we discussed the fact that there really kind of were no, in principle limits on what he thought the United States government should do with regard to propping up particular parts of American industry. He has a piece today titled Stop Freaking Out. Trump's tariffs can still work. But what it really is is a plea to President Trump to not go as fast, not break as many things, and to negotiate off ramps. When even Oren Cass is telling you, Mr. President, that you should really take this slower, you probably should take this slower. Oren Cass writes this going from 0 to 60. He's talking about China here, which we'll get to in a moment. He says going from 0 to 60 so fast is unnecessary and unwise. The most determined company could not shift production so quickly. A better approach would be to raise the Chinese tariff in three steps, 20 percentage points now, in a year and in two years, which is actually quite slow. Right. And for Congress to legislate this by revoking China's permanent normal trade relations status, as was the bipartisan recommendation of the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party, for the trading partners who have already come forward to negotiate, little would be lost and much saved. And Mr. Trump thanked them with a six month grace period in which to bring their best offers to the table. So again, here you got Oren Cass, who is a proponent of this tariff regime, agreeing with Bill Ackman, who certainly is not a proponent of the tariff regime because Cass understands that Leroy Jenkins ing this thing running into the middle of the world economy and slapping everybody in the face is actually not a particularly wise policy. He says those who fail to deliver could be hit with half the Rose Garden tariff rate and be given six more months to get it right before the full weight lands. Businesses would have time to assess their risk and plan accordingly, facing a landscape in which the obvious imperative is to start investing in the United States. And he says whatever path President Trump chooses, he could greatly increase the odds of successful negotiations and the largest possible US led economic block by explaining exactly what he wants. An orncast sounding very much like I sound here on the show. Clarity would be good. Gradual implementation would be good. What exactly are we looking for? Would be would be a useful thing here. And this is not about being a panic in this is about if you are going to do good policy you need to know what the policy is. What is the end game here? It's funny. People always want an end game with regard to say Ukraine and they are right. There should be an end game with regard to Ukraine. I want an end game with regard to the trade war. What is the goal? What is the thing we are seeking to do? Are we seeking to to end all trade deficits because it ain't going to happen? Are we seeking zero tariffs because that's doable, but we should be negotiating that as expeditiously as possible. Every policy requires a goal and that's also true for you on a personal level. Your goal with your cell phone company should be excellent coverage, better price. And this is where Pure Talk comes in. They're the cell phone company I use for business every day. They're cutting the fat from the wireless industry. That is right. PureTalk says I don't think so to $100 a month cell phone plans. That's just wasteful and irresponsible. Instead they're offering America's most dependable 5G network at America's most sensible prices. Listen to this. Unlimited talk text 15 gigs of data plus mobile hotspot for just 35 bucks a month. The best part right now you'll get a free one year membership to Daily Wire plus access the entire library of Daily Wire plus movies and documentaries. Enjoy uncensored ad free daily shows. Talk directly to my producers in our live chat. And as always you get that free leftist tiers Tumblr with peerTalk's US customer service team you can switch hassle free and as little as 10 minutes. You don't need Doge to cut the fat from your wireless bill. You need PureTalk Go to PureTalk.com Shapiro Switch on over to PureTalk@PureTalk.com Shapiro Get a year of Daily Wire plus for free with qualifying plan. PureTalk is wireless by Americans for Americans. Go check them out right now. PureTalk.com Shapiro get that year of Daily Wire plus for free with a qualifying plan Also, you know that old mattress that I used to have, the one that I got from the big Box store? You sleep on it and then you realize after you have a better mattress just how bad the old one was. My new mattress from Helix is great. 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That's helix sleep.comBen for 20% off sitewide, find your perfect mattress, start sleeping better tonight again, just visit helix sleep.comBen for this exclusive offer. That's helixleep.comBen to get 20% off sitewide Lauren Cass says finally Mr. Trump's administration needs to get serious about other policies necessary to support re industrialization. This is, I think one of the things that is the unspoken part of what the trade war means. It means massive government intervention in the American economy. I'm not just talking about tariffs, I'm talking about massive subsidies, shifts in wealth, shifts in economic burden from the 80% of people who are not in the manufacturing industry to the 10% of people in the manufacturing industry and maybe the 10% in agriculture. Right? That's what we're talking about. And we talk about a lot of 8020 issues. The services sector in the United states represents about 80% of all employment in the private industry sector of the United states, only about 10% is manufacturing what we are talking about here? If you're talking about re industrialization not through Deregulation, but through subsidy, is moving wealth from 80% of the public to 10% of the public. Essentially, if what you're talking about here is tariffs that are designed to increase prices on everybody so as to benefit American manufacturing and or subsidies, this requires massive interventionism. This is a centralization of government power. That is what this is. There's no other way around it. Oren Cass makes this clear. He's at least honest. He says Mr. Trump's administration needs to get serious about other policies necessary to support reindustrialization. If the United States is going to reduce its trade deficit quickly without painful cuts to domestic consumption, it's going, it's going to have to increase production capacity just as quickly, either to expand efforts to other markets or to substitute for imports at home. This requires industrial policy akin to what the Chips and Science act has already achieved for semiconductor manufacturing. Now, remember, President Trump does not like the CHIPS Act. He thinks the CHIPS act is bad and stupid. So you can't have it both ways. Warren Cass says new infrastructure will have to be built, new sources of energy brought online perhaps most critically, and enormous resources must be poured into workforce development. Again, there's the boondoggle that has been worksource redevelopment in the, in the United States. The idea that you can simply retrain workers as opposed to how the job market actually works, which is you go to a job and you kind of learn how to do the thing on the job. The. I've never seen an analysis that workforce development, meaning, like you take what people who are, who are in the services industry and you're going to teach them how to work at a factory, that what you actually need to do is put them in some sort of night school in order to do that. In any case, when even Oren Cass is telling you look for the off ramp, the off ramp seems pretty appealing. But then there's the part of the administration that is saying no off ramp. And this mixed signal is the reason why markets are freaking out because they don't know exactly what to expect next. But it's not going to matter. Honestly now it's not going to matter because now that the tariffs have hit, either the off ramp is taken in quickly or it's not. If the off ramp is not taken, then the pain is going to be felt by American consumers and by the way, American producers. American. And if the off ramp is taken, yes, that will be better, but a certain amount of damage is already done if you're an investor and President Trump is switching his policy from the most audacious tariff policy of our lifetime to the reverse. If you're an investor, are you putting all your money back in the market? Are you just, are you perfectly complacent that whatever Trump's professed policy today will be President Trump's professed policy tomorrow? And again, the Trump administration is signaling that there may not be an off ramp. This will take longer than expected. So yesterday, President Trump spoke to the coal industry and here's what he had to say.

Donald Trump (17:18)

We have just really, well, deserving great American patriots. And it's such an honor to be here and doing, making such a big move, such a bold move in energy because, you know, for years people were just bemoan this industry and, and decimate the industry for absolutely no reason. Because with modern technology and all of the other things that we do, it's one of the great, great forms of energy. That's why other countries, leading countries are using it some exclusively.

Ben Shapiro (17:56)

Okay, listen, coal is great and coal miners are wonderful people and we should be deregulating around coal. But the idea that we need to reorient the entire American economy to produce more coal, for example, is, is a strange move. President Trump last night did a speech in front of the National Republican Congressional Committee and there he briefly boasted about his, what he called war on the world. Then he sort of revised his statement in the middle.

Donald Trump (18:21)

But I think it's going to be the most important thing we've ever passed. It's the best thing we've ever passed. And I do think that the war with the world, which is not a war at all because they're all coming here. Japan is coming here as we speak. They're in a plane flying lots of them. All tough negotiators, but things that people wouldn't have given us two years ago, wouldn't have even thought of it two years ago, three years ago, five years ago, seven. They're giving us everything. They don't want tariffs on themselves. And it's very simple. We're making deals and people are paying tariffs. Countries are paying tariffs. Right now China is paying a 104% tariff. Think of it. 104%. Now it sounds ridiculous, but they charged us for many items. 100%, 125%. Many countries have, they've ripped us off left and right, but now it's our turn to do the ripping.

Ben Shapiro (19:19)

Okay, so it's our turn to rip them off. Is not exactly a, a modus for a, for a zero tariff policy. And this is why the mixed signals and the mixed Signals are freaking the market out. They are. And it's not just the market. Again, in the end, the policy is going to be what the policy is. If the tariffs come down the way they're currently coming down, and if your prices skyrocket, if businesses that you like start to go under because it turns out that the marginal increase in price is too much for people who are selling you retail and they go under and jobs are lost, that will be a problem. The economy is interconnected. Pretending that there is kind of Main street and Wall street and that they are two sides of a wall and they have no connection with one another is not true. Peter Navarro, who is the architect of much of this trade policy, a man who used to be a zero growther actually in his early career, and then called himself Ron Vara in his own writings to create a fake name under which to attribute many of his writings. It was like Voldemort, his last name is Navarro. Get it? Ron Vera. Get it? You don't. This is dumb. Anyway, here's Peter Navarro, who should be nowhere near trade policy, explaining that the actual goal of the administration is not in fact to go to zero tariffs. It is in fact to rectify trade deficits. Good luck with that. The Vietnamese GDP per capita is $4000 per year. Gonna get them to buy a lot of American software, are you?

Peter Navarro (20:45)

But my point here is they're coming now and saying, we want to talk. We'll lower our tariffs to zero if you lower your tariffs. That's not the problem. Vietnam is a great example, Laura. They sell us $15 for every one we sell them. Zero tariffs would get us no reduction in the $123 billion deficit we have. And five of that $15 they sell us. You know what? It's China. It's this. That clip you showed about Cambodia, how China's the same thing, right? It's the same kind of. We call it trans shipping. It's just crazy stuff.

Ben Shapiro (21:19)

Okay, so we're going to get the Vietnamese to. He says right there, zero tariffs is not enough. This is the battle inside the administration. Off ramp. No off ramp. U.S. trade Representative Jamison Greer. He wouldn't put a timeline on any of this. Yesterday he was testifying before Congress.

Oren Cass (21:34)

Several of these countries, such as Argentina, Vietnam, India and Israel have suggested that they will reduce their tariffs and non tariff barriers in line with the President's policy. And these obviously are welcome moves. Our large and persistent trade deficit has been over 30 years in the making and it will not be resolved overnight. But all of this is in the right direction, particularly as we start to negotiate with these countries.

Ben Shapiro (21:56)

Yeah, but there's no timeline. So, again, the timeline is one of the keys here, because people start to feel the pain, and the timeline starts to accelerate rather dramatically. The. The current polling suggests that less than half of Americans support the new tariffs. Democrats, of course, say that they are very familiar. Only 36% of Republicans say they're very familiar with the tariffs. By the way, when it comes to the global tariffs, brand new Reuters Ipsos poll finds 73% of Americans expect that prices are going to rise under President Trump's tariff plans. Only 4% say prices are going to go down. Those 4% apparently hang out with Peter Navarro. The poll also showed 57% of Americans overall oppose the tariffs. Only 39% support them. That is not a popular policy. A vast majority of Republicans still support the policy because, of course, President Trump is promoting it. 73% of Republicans back it. That's a low number for President Trump's policies. Most of his policies with Republicans are in the 90s now. 24% of Republicans announce them. Independents are split 57 against, 41% in favor.

Oren Cass (23:02)

Okay.

Ben Shapiro (23:03)

And. And that is before anything kicks in. So those numbers are likely to go the wrong way for President Trump, not the right way for President Trump. Cause, again, nobody's actually feeling any pricing pain right now. And there's no world in which the prices don't go up when you put these kinds of tariffs on product. They're just. It doesn't. It doesn't work that way. This has led to what is the most obvious proxy battle in the administration between Peter Navarro and Elon Musk. Elon Musk has been just beating the living hell out of Peter Navarro online. He called him yesterday. Peter Ricardo. Peter Navarro said to Elon Musk, he said that. That Elon's a car manufacturer, but he's not a car manufacturer. He's a car assembler. And then Elon responded, quote, navarro is truly a moron. What he says here is demonstrably false. And then again called him Peter Retardo and said he was dumber than a sack of bricks. I mean, I'm on Elon's side of this one. Gotta be honest with you. I think that Navarro's policies here are ridiculous in the extreme. The White House was asked about this, and Caroline Lovett gave the best response. She says that this is boys will be boys. Yeah. Except one of these boys built trillions of dollars of value in the economy. And the other one of these boys used a pseudonym, Ron Vera, in order to promote his cockamamie economic policies. So one of your boys is. One of your boys is Doogie Howser over here. And the other one of your boys is. Is the bizarre dude from the Goonies. So great. Here we go.

Caroline Levitt (24:33)

These are obviously two individuals who have very different views on trade and on tariffs. Boys will be boys. And we will let their public spot barring continue. And you guys should all be very grateful that we have the most transparent administration in history. And I think it also speaks to the President's willingness to hear from all sides.

Ben Shapiro (24:54)

Caroline Levitt is very good at her job. She then dropped this. She said that Nancy Pelosi hated trade deficits. And so we are now doing Nancy Pelosi's policy. Now, I understand dunking on the left for switching their position. I just don't understand why everybody on the right is switching their position in order to mirror Nancy Pelosi's position from 1996.

Caroline Levitt (25:14)

In June of 1996, Nancy Pelosi spoke on the House floor. She urged her colleagues at the time to fight against the status quo trade policies that had contributed to America's trade deficit with China. In fact, Nancy Pelosi said, how far does China have to go? How much more repression? How big a trade deficit? How many jobs have to be lost for the American workers? How much dangerous proliferation has to exist before members of this House of Representatives will say, I will not endorse the status quo? Those are the words of Nancy Pelosi in 1996. Well, President Trump is finally answering her call 27 years later. Nancy Pelosi can thank President Trump today for the 104% retaliatory tariff that will be going into effect on China.

Ben Shapiro (25:58)

Okay, I mean, like, cool that we get to dunk on Nancy Pelosi and all, but I don't understand why in order to dunk on Nancy Pelosi, we have to agree with Nancy Pelosi in 1996. She was wrong then. Nancy Pelosi is virtually always wrong. And she's only switching her position now because the Trump administration is mirroring her old position. It shows that she's dishonest. It doesn't mean that she was right in 1996. And Nancy Pelosi has been blind on politics for years. But how about blinds? Hey, you didn't see that transition coming, did you? Blinds.com makes it incredibly easy to upgrade your windows with custom treatments. Their team of design experts guides you through the entire process, ensuring you find the perfect style and color for every room in your house. What makes blinds.com stand out is their hassle free approach. You can choose to handle the measurements and installation yourself or have local pros take care of everything. There's no showroom markup. 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Don't wait for April 15th to make a move. Beat the IRS to it. Call 1-800-958-1000 or visit tnusa.com Shapiro that's T N usa.com/shapiro don't fight the IRS alone. Check them out tnusa.com Shapiro Meanwhile, again the big story that the Trump administration is pushing and the most interesting story is, of course, the tariffs on China. Now, from my perspective, it's the tariffs on everybody else that I'm the most concerned about. I don't understand why we're hitting lesotho with a 50% tariff. The great and powerful people of Lesotho. GDP per capita $916. We must stop the Lesothians from stealing our precious bodily fluids. We have to. The Cambodians must be, they must stop this. The great, the great and powerful people of Madagascar with their 47% tariff we hit them with last night anyway, like. But the trade deficit must be, it must be ended. You know, Iraq, way too powerful. The people of Iraq, 30, 39% tariff. So when it comes to alienating various countries, one of the things we need to look at is how much trade those countries or polities are doing with the United States versus how much trade they are doing with China, for example. So I asked our sponsors over at Perplexity, the amazing AI Service this question. Please provide the percentage of the following countries or polities, total trade represented by trade with the United States. And the countries are China, the eu, Japan. So for China, the percentage of China's total trade represented by trade with the United states is approximately 5.38%. So in other words, yes, we trade a lot with China, but on an absolute basis, China is trading with the United States, like 95% of their trade is not with the United States, with other countries. For the EU, our trade partnership with the EU represents about 46% of their total trade. For Japan, because a Far Eastern country, We represent approximately 8% of their total trade. Okay, so now take a look at the EU with regard to China. So I asked Perplexity, what percentage of EU trade is with China and what percentage of Japan's trade is with China. So the answer, according to Perplexity, is that the percentage of EU trade represented by trade with China is 21.25%, which is very, very high. That is a very high number. You would imagine that the United States would have a lot of trade with the eu. Obviously, we have a lot of ties with European countries. We have to. Our shipping is actually fairly easy. It's directly across the Atlantic. Shipping from China takes a fair bit longer, especially now that the Houthi's been holding up traffic in the, in the Red Sea. But that's a big number. And so if we alienate the eu, could they swivel toward China? Sure. How about Japan? Okay, so Japan is a much more Interesting case. So Japan, only about 8% of their total trade is with us. 42% of their total trade is with China. 42% of their total foreign trade is with China. Which means that if we alienate them and China offers them an open hand, will Japan start swiveling toward China? This is one of the big questions. The thing I'm worried least about is the Chinese on a moral level. However, there are some complexities to Chinese trade policy. Now, I've been an advocate of smacking the living hell out of China for as long as I can remember. My entire political career, I've always thought that the globalization warmup with China was a gigantic mistake. I think there's a case to be made that Henry Kissinger's opening of China in the 70s was a gigantic mistake. We should have kept them closed and collapsed them from the. From the inside, the way we did the Soviet Union. We didn't do that. We opened up China. And then China took advantage of capitalism in order to weasel its way into global markets in a completely damaging way to the United States and to world security. So the United States said on Tuesday night, 104% duties on imports from China would take effect after midnight. What exactly does that mean? Well, it'll be interesting to see what the fallout is. China, of course, is vowing to fight to the end on the tariffs. The Chinese Ministry of Commerce said, quote, if US Threat to escalate tariffs on China is made, it's a mistake on top of a mistake. If the US Insists on its own way, China will fight to the end. China then retaliated with its own gigantic tariff on American goods. Now, of course, China already had tariffs on American goods, and they consume far less of our product than we consume of their products. So we're hurting them way worse than they are hurting us in these terms for sure. However. However, there are some complexities which we'll get to in a moment. Here's the Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson saying that pressure threats in blackmail will not work. Pressure threats and blackmail are not the right ways to engage with China.

Oren Cass (32:42)

If the US Disregards the interests of both countries and the international community and.

Scott Bessant (32:46)

Insist on launching a tariff or trade.

Oren Cass (32:48)

War, China will fight to the end.

Ben Shapiro (32:53)

And now, there are two possible risks here for the United States in what is happening with China. And this is, I think, why Oren Cass, again a proponent of the tariffs, is saying we should go slower with China. There are two possible risks. One comes from the fact that Donald Trump didn't just punch China in the face, which Again, I'm not only fine with. I am perfectly fine with it. I think it's a good idea. If you punch China in the face, you need to be offering a warm, welcoming hand to everybody who is ringing China. You can't alienate everybody. At the same time, if you are going to declare a trade war, you need allies in the trade war. You need people who are on your side of the trade war. Slapping Vietnam, slapping South Korea, slapping Japan, slapping everybody, slapping Australia, slapping everybody in the Indo Pacific region in or at the same time you're slapping China is a great way of alienating people into China's orbit. Especially when China is now going to all of these places and offering them zero tariff policies. And the difference between China and the United States is that China, being an authoritarian state, can actually hold its policy for longer than five minutes. One of the benefits of democratic capitalism is that supposedly there will be an open market policy that is predictable from administration to administration. If that shifts and every two years you're going to get complete change in free trade positions. Well, that is not a good basis for a solid world economy. If you are any one of these allied American states, if you cut a free trade agreement like Vietnam did with the United states in the 90s, if you have a free trade agreement with the United States like South Korea does, if you're one of these countries and we are currently alienating, you aren't going to start triangulating with China. If you are going to do this thing, what you do is you solidify your alliances with all these countries and then you smack China. If you alienate all these countries and then you smack China, China is going to go to them and offer them a warm hand. And these countries which have seen the United States over the course of the past two decades abandoned Hong Kong, Afghanistan, Iraq, Ukraine, among others, the Kurds, they're going to start thinking, maybe we need to triangulate. Maybe the United States is no longer the world's global hegemon. Maybe it's not that powerful anymore. At the very least, we need to hedge our bets. And so you're actually strengthening China while you're attempting to fight China by smacking everybody who's not China. Just on a geopolitical level. That is risk number one. Then there's risk number two. And this risk is quite real. That risk is, let's say that you really isolate China's economy. Let's say every you get what you want, everybody around China isolates China to the largest possible extent. But you haven't done what you need to do in order to solidify the Taiwan Strait. Why at that point would not China go for taking Taiwan, figuring it's got nothing to lose if you box them in so strongly? And again, I'm not saying this in a catch 22. It is a bit of a catch 22, which is why a slow, more incremental, well thought out policy that allows the reshoring of key industries from China to Vietnam to India to other countries, including the United States, a gradual tightening of the news that doesn't at any point give China the reason to just go and grab Taiwan and destroy the entire semiconductor industry for planet Earth. That's the other danger. You go too fast and you can provoke China into doing the thing. Now, again, it would be up to China whether to do that or not. China's would be at fault. If China decided to invade Taiwan, the moral blame would lie with China. However, geopolitics is of course, quite complicated and there are two possibilities here. One is if you alienate all the allies around China, they start to make common cause with China. You've now strengthened your enemy. Two is you isolate China. Let's say you're successful. You isolate China so successfully that China feels no, no compunction about going after Taiwan and breaking up the entire world economy by force. And that is the other risk. And these risks just exist. They are on the table. They are quite real. And so navigating those risks requires some forethought and requires a policy that is not Leroy Jenkins in. It's not just running into the middle of the room with a battle ax hoping that everything goes right. So how is all of this going to end? Well, my guess is that as the consequences of the tariffs start to sink in, you're going to start to see more of the off ramp. I think the off ramp is going to happen. And at that point, you'll hear a bunch of people who are big fans of President Trump say that this was the plan all along. This was not the plan all along. This is coming from somebody who raised money with president for President Trump, campaigned with President Trump and voted for President Trump. The reason that I'm making this point is because I think that it is important to recognize what good policy looks like and what good policy does not look like good policy. There ought to be incentives for presidents of all parties to make good policy based on the actual quality of the policy, not based on, do you trust this guy or do you not trust this guy? The position that we all ought to hold with regard to Our politicians, who are in fact public servants is trust but verify. Sure. I'm happy to let President Trump cook so long as I know generally what he is cooking. And listen, I don't have any authority over President Trump. He's going to do what he's going to do. But this idea that's been going around online where if President Trump does global tariff war with the world, it's a genius idea and if he backs off, it's just as genius. If a commentator is telling you that thing, that commentator is not being honest with you. They're not. You should know where the commentator stands on the policy, not just on the president. I like President Trump. I want President Trump to be successful. I think that the success of his presidency rides on avoiding a recession and yes, a global trade war. I think there's a lot riding on what goes on right now, which is why I want to see him take the Scott Bess into Elon Musk pathway off. That's why I want to see Peter Navarro's perspective ground into the dust here. He's wrong. I would like to see that perspective go the way of the dodo bird. If you want better policy, you should call for better policy.

Unknown (38:37)

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Ben Shapiro (39:07)

Alrighty. The domestic fallout from all of this is going to be quite interesting. Some House Republicans are already mulling the possibility of having to step in and stop President Trump's tariff plans if they get too nasty. Remember, there is a midterm next year. There are a bunch of Republicans in swing districts. Democrats are openly targeting these Republicans. If you want Trump's agenda, stop dead, he loses the House. If he loses the House, it's over. President Trump gets nothing done for the last two years of his administration. Then he really is a lame duck. So a bunch of House Republicans are saying, like, I don't know how I go along with this if it means I lose my seat. According to Axios, at least a dozen House Republicans are now considering signing on to Representative Don Bacon's bill to restrict The White House's ability to impose tariffs unilaterally, according to Axios. It's a significant break with President Trump. Bacon told the Axios. Two Republicans, Representative Jeff Heard and Dan Newhouse, those are from Colorado and Washington, have signed on to the bill as co sponsors. Now, again, these are people in swing district that is not exactly a shock. Mike Johnson is not going to go along with that, at least not in the near term. However, if the fallout here starts to really slam the door on the possibility of a Republican House majority, then the House may, in fact step in and act. The Senate, too. Senator Thom Tillis of North Carolina. Again, North Carolina is kind of a purplish state. He was asking Jamie Sanguari said, listen, I understand you want, you want me to let you cook? All right, we'll let you cook. Who do I strangle if this goes wrong?

Unknown (40:28)

The other thing in management consulting we like to focus on is this concept of one throat to choke. In other words, when you're finally taking a look at a strategy, someone has to own it. And you can't say that it's the president or the vice president. So my first question to you in this scenario, the decision maker who decided the alla prima approach, who has obviously had to have spent time anticipating what we saw in the markets and some of the pushback. I'm assuming this all got gamed out because it's a novel, appropriate approach. It need to be thought out. Whose throat do I get to choke if this proves to be wrong?

Ben Shapiro (41:08)

And the answer, by the way, from the American people is if this chooses to be wrong, this is the risk Republicans run. If a bad policy is totally attributable to the administration, the administration will be blamed. And Democrats know this, which is why they are ramping up the attacks. Here's Senator Elizabeth Warren going after the administration. But you do this very carefully and.

Peter Navarro (41:27)

You do it in combination with things.

Ben Shapiro (41:29)

You'Re doing domestically to support so that work actually gets done, not Donald Trump comes in and basically starts the dumbest trade war in the history of this country. The only thing that could have saved Democrats is a manufactured recession. It is the only thing that could have saved Democrats, which is why it needs to be avoided. It needs to be avoided. Do you want Elizabeth Warren in charge of your national policy? Do you want President aoc Way you get that is with a national recession that was engineered by bad trade policy unilaterally from the White House. That is how you get that. That is just what. So again, maybe I'm wrong. Maybe it all works out beautifully. Maybe it works. By the way, if it works out beautifully to the tune of we take the off ramp. That was what I was calling for from day one. In order for me to be totally wrong on this, you'd have to maintain the trade war and it would all go right. Okay, But I don't care how it goes right so long as it goes right. If it goes right, then the birds are singing and the sunshine is. Is warming our shoulders and we're all living in a John Denver tune, and that's great. But if it goes wrong and if there's a recession and if the American people turn on President Trump, that is the worst thing that could happen. It is very, very bad. And again, the tariffs hitting is different than speculating about the impact of tariffs, because then there's the policy. And the policy exists in the real world. And as of 1201 last night, the policy now exists in the real world. According to the New York times, President Trump's 25% tariffs on imported vehicles, which went into effect last week, are already sending tremors through the auto industry, prompting companies to stop shipping cars to the United States, shut down factories in Canada and Mexico, and lay off workers in Michigan and other states. Jaguar Land Rover, based in Britain, said it would temporarily stop exporting luxury cars to the United States. Stellantis idled factories in Canada and Mexico that make Chrysler and Jeep vehicles and laid off 900 US workers. Audi, the luxury division of Volkswagen, paused exports of cars to the United States from Europe, telling dealers to sell whatever they still had on their lots. So, again, there are problems. Meanwhile, it may be that as the tariffs dump demand, meaning that prices go up, you don't have enough money left over for, say, travel, so you're using less oil and gas. Then what is the incentive structure for more drilling and drilling and drilling. What we need right now in the United States is cheap energy, the oil of prices. The price of oil has been dropping precipitously along with the market over the course of the last week. When the price of oil drops, it is no longer profitable to open new fracking wells, for example. It undermines the American domestic energy industry when the prices actually drop too low on energy, because, again, supply and demand. If it turns out that it's more expensive to frack a well than it is to simply get your resources elsewhere, you get your resources elsewhere. If the cost of gas is cheaper than the price to frack the well, the well ain't getting fracked. And that's how you end up with underproduction According to the New York Times, President Trump's tariffs are posing a major barrier to his plans to expand oil production. Since the tariffs were announced, oil prices have fallen to hover around $60 a barrel, a nearly four year low. At that price, fossil fuel companies will most likely reexamine their plans. According to Rebecca Elliot, who's an expert on this. Below this level, you start getting wells that are no longer economic to drill. There are knock on effects to all of the policies that are being made. And by the way, we need to actually have more energy if you wish to, for example, supercharge AI. So one of the cases that's made by tariff advocates is, okay, the most valuable resource that America can be in control of. The thing that is going to keep, for example the dollar is the global reserve currency, is that we are going to produce so much in this country that everyone is still going to be reliant on us despite the tariffs. We'll have a monopoly on the things that really matter. And so when you say, okay, what are the things that really matter? AI is the big one that comes up a lot, okay? The problem is China is building out AI like nobody's business. China is developing energy resources that are extraordinary in capacity. In China, again is an industrial policy driven nation, top down, centralized. And so they are pouring tens of billions of billions of dollars into winning the AI race. One of the things it takes to win the AI race is massive development of energy. Well, if we are fracking fewer wells and if we still have a bunch of regulation on the books with regards to energy development, it's going to be very difficult for us to compete in the AI space. This is the point that's being made by Neil Ferguson and Nick Cumbelman over at the Wall Street Journal today. As they point out, despite tech firms willingness to pay a premium for clean, reliable energy, the current US Grid can't meet the AI challenge. Leading data center markets in Northern Virginia, Georgia and elsewhere are crippled by lack of power. Environmental regulations and grid permit guidelines mean major data center projects have had to be canceled to protect, for example, the habitat of a rare bumblebee. Without more power supply, AI data centers growing demands could cause a spike in electricity prices, harming American consumers and industrial competitiveness. And this is right, we need to be focused here on deregulation. We need to be focused here on outcompeting everybody else, not out taxing everybody else. All this comes amid a new report out of Semaphore that apparently President Trump said last week to the Senate budget Committee Republicans and Majority Leader John Thune that he was open to raising tax rates on some of the highest earning Americans if we start doing that. I'm just wondering at this point, what is the difference in policy between Republicans and Democrats? If the idea is tariff barriers, massive subsidization of domestic industry, increased tax rates on highest earners, how is that distinguishable from kind of normal Democratic platform policy? Precisely. It's not going to happen. By the way, Republicans in the Senate will not go along with that, nor will they go along with it in the House. All the wins are on the table for President Trump. Take the off ramp. Do the deals, do the deals as fast as possible. By the way, we could have done the deals without all of this. This is the other thing that I keep hearing is, well, we need, we needed to do this giant nuclear bomb in the middle of the world trade system in order to get people to the table. That's not true. The United states is the 800 pound gorilla in the room. If we wanted Japan at the table, all we had to do is make one phone call. If you wanted Israel at the table, just call up Netanyahu. If you want Victor Orban at the table, just call him. The United States remain like, by the way, you actually stack the odds against yourself when you declare trade war on the entire world. Why? Because now you have a possible axis forming in opposition to you. What you should do if you want a better trade deal with Italy, is go to Italy and tell them you want a better trade deal or you're going to smack them. Because then you have the world's largest economy fighting, not the world's largest economy. One of the things that people should realize about world trade is that America represents a market that is like 17 of trade with the EU. The other 83% is coming from the EU and everywhere else. America represents about 16% of the trade with, with China. The other 84% is with somebody else. Now, we can do a lot of damage. We absolutely can. And with regard to China, we should, which is why we should be isolating them, not fighting everybody all at once. Take the deals. Take the deals. Listen to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessant, listen to Elon Musk, listen to the people in the room who are giving you the rational solution to this problem. And you'll get some wins and you'll get plaudits for the wins. Do those things and do them fast. Because let's be real about this, the markets don't like what's going on and it's not just the markets. The market. And the markets are a thermometer. They're taking the temperature. Businesses aren't going to like it. Again, when your costs increase, you're not going to like it either. So right now, if the policies remain as they are, this is the high watermark for the popularity of the policies. This is not the low point. This is the high watermark for the popularity of these policies because it is literally the first day before all the effects are felt. Take the off ramp. Mr. President, please take the off ramp because I want you to succeed. I want your policies implemented. I want the world that you promised while you were campaigning. I want a more solid world with more powerful America that lies at the center of global gravity. Those are the things that I want, a stronger American economy, not an autarkic American economy with higher prices, giant subsidized industrial policy and more economic stagnation. Those are the things that I want and those are the things the American taxpayers deserve. And those are the things that I think President Trump can and will achieve if he takes the wins. So take the wind. Are you coming up? President Trump actually did get a win, another win from the Supreme Court yesterday. Plus, we'll get into the mailbag. The only way that you can watch all of that and the rest of the show is to join Daily Wire. Plus, if you're not a member, become a member. Use code Shapiro. Check out for two months free on all annual plans. Click the link in the description and join us.