2514 - How The US Weaponized Global Economics w/ Eddie Fishman

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Majority Report with Sam Seder Episode 2514 - "How The US Weaponized Global Economics w/ Eddie Fishman"

Podcast Information:

• Title: The Majority Report with Sam Seder
• Host: Sam Seder
• Guests: Eddie Fishman, Professor of International Public Affairs at Columbia University
• Episode: 2514
• Release Date: June 9, 2025
• Description: This episode delves into the intricate ways the United States has transformed global economics into a tool of warfare. Through an engaging interview with Eddie Fishman, the conversation explores historical and contemporary instances of economic manipulation, the concept of choke points, and the broader implications for international relations and domestic policies.

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1. Introduction and News Highlights (00:00 - 18:15)

Hosts: Sam Seder and Emma Vigland kick off the episode with a rapid-fire rundown of pressing political events, setting a tense and urgent tone for the discussion.

• Federalization of the National Guard: President Trump’s decision to federalize 2,000 National Guard troops ostensibly to protect federal buildings following ICE-triggered protests in Los Angeles. This action is controversial, especially as it bypasses state officials like Governor Gavin Newsom and local leaders like Karen Bass, reminiscent of Cold War-era federal interventions (07:05 - 07:39).

• Violence at Protests: Protests against ICE in LA have escalated over four days, with incidents involving non-lethal rounds being fired at protesters and officers assaulting and detaining leaders like SEIU President David Huerta (05:03 - 05:09).

• International Tensions: Israel’s forceful actions against a humanitarian flotilla, including kidnapping members and using drones to harass activists, raise significant concerns about human rights and international diplomacy (00:14 - 02:41).

• Other Major News:

  • Trump threatening Elon Musk over political donations (01:39).
  • Banning travelers from 12 countries based on ethnicity and perceived terror threats (01:39).
  • Supreme Court decisions affecting data access and educational grants (01:39 - 02:39).

Notable Quote:

Sam Seder [04:40]: "These are people looking for work. They're at Home Depot because they're looking for work. And because our immigration system is so broken, they have to look for work under the table and they can't go through the proper channels because they're going to get picked up by ICE."

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2. Deep Dive: ICE Protests and Federalization (02:39 - 18:15)

Emma Vigland and Sam Seder provide a detailed account of the ICE protests in Los Angeles, highlighting the aggressive tactics used by ICE agents and the community’s resistance.

• Protester Arrests and Quotas: ICE agents have imposed daily detainment quotas, leading to the indiscriminate arrest of largely non-criminal individuals seeking employment. Evidence shows approximately 268 out of 300 Venezuelan detainees have no criminal records, underscoring the arbitrary nature of these arrests (13:05 - 14:54).

• Federal vs. State Authority: The federalization of the National Guard against state leaders' wishes marks a significant escalation, drawing parallels to historical events like the 1965 federal intervention during the Selma marches (07:31 - 07:39).

• Violence Against the Press: Incidents such as the attack on Australian reporter Lauren Tomasi by non-lethal pellet guns despite her role as a journalist raise alarms about press freedom and government overreach (05:49 - 11:32).

Notable Quote:

Eddie Fishman [05:09]: "Anyone like them who gets exploited by capitalists or rich people in this country for their labor should immediately be given citizenship."

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3. Interview with Eddie Fishman: Economic Warfare and Choke Points (23:24 - 70:57)

Eddie Fishman, author of the New York Times bestselling book Choke Points: American Power in an Age of Economic Warfare, joins the panel to dissect the transformation of global economics into a strategic weapon.

a. Understanding Choke Points (24:19 - 26:08)

Fishman introduces the concept of choke points, traditionally geographic locations like the Bosphorus Strait or the Strait of Hormuz, which have been pivotal in controlling resource flow and exerting economic pressure.

• Modern Choke Points: In the era of hyper-globalization, invisible choke points such as the dollar-based financial system and semiconductor supply chains have become crucial. Control over these elements allows the U.S. to impose significant economic harm without physical blockades (24:52 - 26:08).

Notable Quote:

Eddie Fishman [24:52]: "What that has enabled is the countries that control these invisible choke points, principally the United States, to impose really devastating economic harm on other countries just with signing a few documents."

b. Evolution of Economic Warfare (26:08 - 36:08)

Fishman traces the history from the 1990s, when globalization solidified the U.S. dollar’s dominance, to the present day where economic tools have become more sophisticated and pervasive.

• Iran Sanctions as a Case Study: The pivotal moment in modern economic warfare was the U.S. strategy against Iran, shifting from labor-intensive naval blockades to financial sanctions leveraging the global dollar system. This approach proved effective in isolating Iran and securing the nuclear deal during the Obama administration (27:08 - 30:59).

• Transition from Engagement to Confrontation: The initial belief in globalization as a path to liberalization faltered as China’s rise revealed vulnerabilities. The U.S. response transitioned from cooperative integration to aggressive economic sanctions and trade wars, particularly under the Trump administration (33:14 - 36:08).

Notable Quote:

Eddie Fishman [35:17]: "The mentality was, you know, if you're going to do sanctions, it has to look like the sanctions from the 90s, the embargo against Saddam Hussein. You need the full UN to support it."

c. The Economic Arms Race (36:08 - 56:45)

Fishman discusses how the U.S.'s use of economic sanctions has influenced other major powers like China, Russia, and the European Union to develop their own mechanisms of economic warfare.

• China’s Retaliatory Measures: In response to U.S. tariffs and sanctions, China has begun implementing its own sanctions and export controls, exemplified by actions against U.S. companies like Skydio and pvh (33:42 - 35:17).

• EU’s Anti-Coercion Instrument: The European Union has developed collective mechanisms to counteract Chinese sanctions, highlighting a shift towards a more adversarial global economic landscape (46:28 - 48:40).

• Inevitability of an Economic Arms Race: This mutual escalation leads to a divided global economy, with blocs forming around different economic and political interests, raising the risk of increased geopolitical tensions and potential conflicts (53:29 - 56:45).

Notable Quote:

Eddie Fishman [40:28]: "There's like this real, like, like broad analogy between, like, air power and drones on the one hand, and like the modern economic warfare toolkit on the other."

d. Future Implications and Global Economy Fragmentation (56:45 - 70:57)

Fishman explores potential future scenarios resulting from the current trajectory of economic warfare.

• Global Economy divided into Blocs: One scenario envisions a bifurcated global economy led by democratic allies under U.S. influence and an authoritarian bloc led by China, similar to Cold War divisions (60:22 - 63:14).

• Autarky and Imperialism Risks: The lack of permanent relationships and increased unpredictability in international trade may push nations towards self-sufficiency or even aggressive expansion to secure resources, reminiscent of imperialistic strategies (63:14 - 66:43).

• Impact on Domestic Policies and International Relations: Pushing for economic self-sufficiency could stunt economic growth and strain international alliances, ultimately fostering an environment ripe for conflict and reduced global cooperation (68:40 - 70:57).

Notable Quote:

Eddie Fishman [66:43]: "We are all trying to figure out the guy who did this."

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4. Sponsors and Light Banter (18:15 - 78:25)

The episode transitions into sponsored segments promoting products like Prolon’s fasting mimicking diet and Blueland’s eco-friendly cleaning essentials. Hosts engage in lighthearted banter, showcasing the show's dual nature of serious analysis and casual conversation.

Notable Moments:

• Discussion of Prolon's health benefits and personal experiences with the diet (16:15 - 18:15).
• Promotion of Blueland’s sustainable cleaning products, emphasizing environmental impact and convenience (18:15 - 23:24).

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5. Conclusion and Final Thoughts (78:25 - End)

The show wraps up with humorous interactions among the hosts, reiterating the importance of supporting the program and engaging with the community.

Notable Quote:

Emma Vigland [72:21]: "China deindustrialized us. Exactly."

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Key Takeaways:

1. Weaponization of Economics: The U.S. has increasingly used economic tools like sanctions and control over financial systems to exert global influence, transitioning traditional naval blockades to more sophisticated economic maneuvers.

2. Choke Points: Modern economic choke points—such as the dollar-based financial system and key supply chains—are pivotal in exerting pressure without physical intervention.

3. Global Arms Race: The adoption of economic warfare strategies by other major powers like China and Russia has led to an escalating economic arms race, fragmenting the global economy into competing blocs.

4. Future Risks: Continued reliance on economic warfare may lead to global economic fragmentation, increased geopolitical tensions, and a shift towards autarky, with potential risks of imperialistic conflicts.

5. Historical Context: The shift from cooperative globalization to opportunistic economic warfare marks a significant change in international relations, influenced by past administrations and evolving global power dynamics.

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Recommendation: For listeners interested in understanding the complexities of modern economic strategies and their global implications, Eddie Fishman's insights provide a critical examination of how economic policies are reshaping international power structures.

Transcript

[Sam Seder]

You are listening to a free version of Majority Report with Sam Steder. To support the show and get another 15 minutes of daily program, go to majority SM please.

[Emma Vigland]

The majority Report with Sam Cedar. It is Monday, June 9, 2025. My name is Sam Seder. This is the five time award winning Majority Report. We are broadcasting live steps from the industrially ravaged Gowanus Canal in the heartland of America, downtown Brooklyn, usa. On the program today, Edward Fishman, professor of International Public affairs at Columbia University, author of the New York Times best selling book Choke American Power in an Age of Economic Warfare. Also on the program Today, Trump federalizes 2000 National Guard ostensibly to protect federal buildings after ICE triggers protests in LA. Meanwhile, the state of California suing over that nationalization press is fired upon with non lethal rounds and the SEIU head, local head assaulted and detained. Meanwhile, Israel kidnaps members of the humanitarian flotilla after boarding their ship.

[Sam Seder]

Circling them with drones and spraying paint on them. Insane report.

[Emma Vigland]

White House having trouble finding qualified people to work for Pete Hegset. It's not a joke. Trump threatens musk if he contributes money to Democrats which seems inappropriate. The Trump regime bans travelers from 12 countries because of brownness and supposed terror potential. Kilmar Abrego Garcia back in the US and now facing trumped up charges that caused the Nashville, USA U.S. attorney to resign. Trump looks to slash all Pell Grants and the Supreme Court lets DOGE access Social Security data. All this and more on today's Majority Report. Welcome ladies and gentlemen. Thanks so much for joining us at.

[Sam Seder]

What we like to call fire Fun Day Monday.

[Emma Vigland]

Yeah, we did. There was a time back in the day. There was a time back in the day when we like to call it.

[Sam Seder]

That but not so fun. But very much packed with news today at the very least. Just so much happening over the weekend. The Freedom Flotilla story is really important too. I'm sure we'll get to that. But like just the active brave bravery by these activists and also showing they advertised the whole time that it was a mission to bring food. Just laying bare that what the Israeli government is doing in terms of blocking these folks and there were, there are nine or six French citizens on board. We'll see how the Europe and Macron responds here. It's very significant.

[Emma Vigland]

Now we should also say out in la, lot of brave people standing up to ice. This has now been, we are now on day one, two, three, four of protests. Some instances protests have turned violent meeting the violence that was sort of presented to them at the beginning of this thing. It started in Paramount, a part of la and involved ICE going, rolling up with a bunch of paramilitary and attempting to round up people who were looking for work at a Home Depot. Numbers, I think were around like a hundred people they arrested, mind you, each one of these people, I mean, literally probably $500,000, we don't really know per person who was arrested in this instance.

[Sam Seder]

These are people looking for work. They're at Home Depot because they're looking for work. And because our immigration system is so broken, they have to look for work under the table and they can't go through the proper channels because they're going to get picked up by ice. But then if they need to make a living, it seems like they're going to get picked up by ICE anyway.

[Eddie Fishman]

Anyone like them who gets exploited by capitalists or rich people in this country for their labor should immediately be given citizenship.

[Emma Vigland]

And let's be clear, ICE obviously came in with flashbang grenades with non lethal pellet guns, essentially more or less anticipating something like this. And so protesters came out and really, I mean, just community members came out to attempt to defend their fellow community members. And then over the course of the past three days, I'm sure you've seen some of the footage here is, is this clip number number 4?

[Sam Seder]

4.

[Emma Vigland]

Oh, this is an image or a video, I should say, that shows you the size of the crowd at the LA protest. Now, just keep in mind, however, Louisiana is a massive sprawling city and all this could be going on and you could be living in any part of 80% of LA and have absolutely no idea. Maybe you'd see some helicopters, but the helicopters are flying over LA all the time anyways. So this is not a situation where like the, the city is in complete turmoil and not even big swaths of it. However, a lot of protesters came out and then LA sent its police out.

[Eddie Fishman]

This is from Jonathan Green on Twitter.

[Sam Seder]

And I guess that was the initial scene, just to give people a sense of scope before things really started to get to go haywire. It kind of went off the rails on Saturday. I'm not. When, when did Trump send in the.

[Tom Homan]

The National Guard that really happened?

[Emma Vigland]

I think Sunday.

[Sam Seder]

Sunday, right.

[Emma Vigland]

And to be clear, he federalized the National Guard against the wishes of Gavin Newsom and Karen Bass. The last time this happened without the consent of a governor was in the 60s over integration.

[Sam Seder]

It was 1965. LBJ ended up doing this to protect the marchers from Selma.

[Emma Vigland]

And now there have been, just to be clear, there have been. The Insurrection act has not been these National These National Guard have been federalized not under the auspices of the Insurrection act, but rather another statute which allows their operations to be or are authorized only within the limits of protecting federal workers or buildings. So they can't even do what ICE does. They can only protect those ICE if they are under siege. They can only protect federal buildings. That is their statutory limits as to what they can do in this instance. Nevertheless, there's a lot of talk from the administration about insurrection, et cetera, et cetera.

[Sam Seder]

That seems to be their break glass in case of non emergency thing where they want to dance around using the Insurrection Act. But I think they're afraid of the legal challenges that that would create.

[Emma Vigland]

Without a doubt. And remember posse comitatis law from the late 1800s. I think it is, it was post civil war.

[Sam Seder]

Yeah, right.

[Emma Vigland]

Basically says the federal government, federal, I should say, the military cannot function, do anything domestically except for protecting, protecting federal workers or federal buildings.

[Eddie Fishman]

Which means keep out of our business in the south.

[Emma Vigland]

Exactly. And but you know, sometimes those things come around for good reason. Here is video just to give you a sense of how out of control some of these cops have become. This is footage of a Lauren Tomasi, an Australian nine news reporter. This is on Saturday. You can see they're on the sides of the sort of the conflict where press usually hangs out and watches. And I want you to pay attention to the upper left hand corner just underneath the nine news logo as, as this video continues. And you will see a police officer essentially shift his gun and aim it right towards what is clearly a reporter doing a stand up report. Other bullets of protesters moving them on.

[Tom Homan]

Through the heart of L. A.

[Sam Seder]

So can we go like scroll over that slowly a little bit. You can see the wider shot here. There's a few angles but look at the last.

[Emma Vigland]

It's the last guy right there on the edge and he's just turning and you know they're surrounded by people with cameras. It is quite evident that's where the press is. You'll see every other cop is facing the other direction and he just fires.

[Sam Seder]

That's Lauren Thomasai of nine news Australia which is a CNN affiliate. I mean also shame on the affiliate.

[Eddie Fishman]

For calling it Crossfire.

[Sam Seder]

Yeah, you have a backbone.

[Eddie Fishman]

Please, for your own correspondence.

[Sam Seder]

They're non lethal rounds they're called but people have died from rubber bullets before so it's less lethal rounds. And that's at incredibly close rang to be hitting her with that rubber bullet. Just unbelievable.

[Emma Vigland]

Meanwhile, Tom Homan now he's in like sort of quasi Military fatigues. He has switched his outfit, if you'll notice, costume party. And it's sort of, it's just like, it honestly looks like, it almost looks like he's gone to one of those Army Navy stories, but not even. It really just sort of like the, the clearance rack at like, Old Navy.

[Sam Seder]

It's Buster Bluth's army outfit and, or.

[Emma Vigland]

You know, sort of like what they had at the LL Bean factory outlet or something to that effect.

[Sam Seder]

Camo collection.

[Emma Vigland]

And here he is on this is Today on msnbc. Again, we already mentioned that the head of the seiu, or I should say, you know, President David Huerta was, and he was protesting, has been detained, as far as I can tell, for like two or three days now.

[Sam Seder]

Maxine Waters tried to get into federal, a federal facility to see her, which she should be able to do as a member of Congress. And we'll show the video later, but the door was slammed in her face.

[Emma Vigland]

All right, here's Tom Homan. Is everyone that has been arrested by ICE agents have a criminal record like those you've described?

[David Huerta]

Absolutely not. And I said from day one, January 20th, we will prioritize public safety threats and national security threats. However, we will enforce law. I may prioritize my family life over my, oh, my work doesn't mean I ignore my work. We're going to force immigration law. We've been asked about that from day one, especially in sanctuary cities. Well, we can't get the bad guy in the safety and security of a jail. They release him to the street. Well, we got to go to the street and find them. And when we find them, many times are with others, others that are in the United States illegally may not be a criminal target. But guess what? If ISIS there to arrest that bad guy and other illegal aliens are there, we're going to arrest them. That's what sanctuary cities get. They put us in the neighborhood. They force in the neighborhood. This is what happens.

[Emma Vigland]

To be clear, it's not even clear that or obvious that they've arrested anybody with a criminal record. I mean, supposedly 300 Venezuelans sent down to seekot were criminals. And as of now, like 268have been shown not to have had a criminal record. So this is, you know, it's unclear that there's any criminals that are being rounded up. It's just absurd. And the idea that they're going to a Home Depot where undocumented folks hang out to get day jobs, this is a prime example of the fact that they're just, they are Tasked with a quota. They have a quota. It is 3,000 detainments a day. So they're just going to round up whoever they can round up.

[Sam Seder]

People should tune into or subscribe if they can to Austin Coker Subset. We've had him on the show before, but he tracks all of this data really well there. And the latest is showing that in terms of growth of detentions by ICE for convicted criminals, the growth in detention starting from January 12 to June 1, 1.5 times the previous rate, 2.7 times for people with pending criminal charges, but 9.1 times in terms of the rate of growth of ICE detentions with people who are other immigrant violator. Basically exactly who Tom Holman is saying. And every media outlet from the big to the small and online that carried water for this obvious lie, that they were going to be targeting criminals with this deportation regime, particularly laundering that lie in the final months of the presidential election where he was going unchallenged on it. You are fascist enablers who are were willing to believe the most prolific liar for some reason in the history of this country on this particular issue. I don't know because it pulled a certain way, you have enabled this authoritarian crackdown. The media that did this is complicit in this.

[Eddie Fishman]

There was a elementary school graduation also targeted in la.

[Sam Seder]

Yep. I saw there.

[Eddie Fishman]

There was a bad guy, says Homan.

[Sam Seder]

A worker at this school, crying because he saw kids that he had worked with basically and families in terror in this predominantly Latina neighborhood in Los Angeles. These are our neighbors, these are our friends, these are our community members. And this administration is trying to turn us on them.

[Emma Vigland]

We'll have more clips later in the program in a moment. We're going to be talking to Eddie Fishman, professor of International Public affairs at Columbia University, author of Choke American Power in an Age of Economic Warfare, which is a New York Times bestselling book apparently. First, a couple words from our sponsors. Long work days, busy weekends can leave you feeling and looking depleted. Hello. Prolon's five day fasting mimicking diet works at a cellular level to rejuvenate you from the inside out, providing real results. And now they're up in their game with the Next Generation five day program delivering the same science backed benefits in a cleaner, more convenient and more flavorful format. Prolon is a plant based nutrition program featuring soups, snacks and beverages designed to nourish the body while keeping it in a fasting state, triggering cellular regeneration and renewal. Next Generation builds on the original prolon with 100% organic soups and teas, a richer taste and ready to eat meals. Developed over decades at the USC's Longevity Institute and backed by top US medical centers, Prolon has been shown to support biolog, age reduction, metabolic health, skin appearance, fat loss and energy. I did this a year ago February and I think I've decided I'm going to be doing it starting Monday of next week because I gotta have Saul.

[Sam Seder]

Yeah.

[Emma Vigland]

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[Tom Homan]

It.

[Emma Vigland]

We are back. Sam Seder, Emma Vigland on the Majority Report. It's a pleasure to welcome to the program Eddie Fishman, professor of International Public affairs at Columbia University, author of the New York Times best selling book. Congratulations on that. American Power in an Age of Economic Warfare. Eddie, welcome to the program.

[Tom Homan]

Sam. Emma, thanks so much for having me on today.

[Sam Seder]

Of course.

[Emma Vigland]

Let's just start with a little rudimentary and we should say your book is a, a history of really the past couple of decades worth of what you would call economic warfare. Let's just start though with the concept of choke points. And then I want to go back a little bit Prior to, you know, sort of like the, I guess the antecedent to your book. And then we'll go through sort of the, some of this history. But, but just broadly speaking, so that people understand choke points. What, what does that mean?

[Tom Homan]

Sure. So historically speaking, choke points have been geographic features. So for anyone who's ever visited Istanbul in Turkey, there's the Bosphorus, this really narrow strait that flows through the center of the city. It connects the Black Sea to the Mediterranean and the oceans beyond. That's a critical maritime choke point. You have the Strait of Hormuz, which is another important one. Historically, these choke points have been important because you have large numbers of resources, whether it's oil or food, that go through them every single day. And so if you cut them off through a naval blockade, you can really inflict quite a bit of economic damage on another country. What's happened though, in the wake of hyper globalization in the 1990s, when you brought China and Russia into the international financial system and global supply chains, we now have these invisible choke points like the dollar based financial system and semiconductor supply chains, where one country has a dominant position and there are few if any substitutes. And what that has enabled it enables the countries that control these invisible choke points, principally the United States, to impose really devastating economic harm on other countries just with signing a few documents, just with the legal power of the state, as opposed to using a naval blockade or a siege, as you would have in previous centuries.

[Emma Vigland]

It's interesting. And one analogy, I think it was wrecking Detroit. There was a book about some of the labor fights on the Big three and how they wanted to move. They want to do instead of ready in time delivery of products. They want to back them up because they were finding that these small shops of union workers could literally shut down the entire production line by, you know, saying, we're just not going to do these ball bearings and everything would freeze. And so we have a similar dynamic here, but it's more like on a, on a, on a financial level. So let's go back. What was it? I mean, this notion of globalization, how did that change the structure of things? How much was that a function also? Or what role did the, the end of the Cold War play in that?

[Tom Homan]

So it changed a lot. I mean, I think maybe one thing just to make clear is that economic warfare has always been a big way, big part of how countries compete with each other. Right. I mean, you go back to ancient Greece. You had embargoes that ancient Athens imposed on its rivals. You know, Napoleon had an embargo against Britain in the early 19th century. The thing that really changed was this hyperglobalization. And probably the best way to illustrate it is you go back even to the 90s, which is really on the eve of what I call the age of economic warfare, when after Saddam Hussein ANNEXES KUWAIT In 1990, as some viewers may remember, the UN imposes an oil embargo on Iraq. And the way that that embargo was actually implemented, the way that the US and other countries endeavored to stop Saddam Hussein from selling oil on global markets, was through literally parking ships outside of Iraqi ports and inspecting every single oil cargo that was going in and out. And they had to do this naval patrol for 13 straight years, 24, 7. So highly labor intensive kind of activity. But when you bring every single country onto the dollar system, which really is what happens in the 1990s in earnest, it's when this dollar system moves from being something that really exists amongst advanced industrialized economies to really everyone in the world, you get a system now where even when countries like India and Saudi Arabia are trading with each other, they're using dollars to clear that payment. And so as a result, because the President of the United States, by virtue of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, a law that's been in the news a bit recently, has the ability to cut off any foreign individual or company from access to the U.S. financial system and access to the dollar, the government, the US Government can impose really devastating economic costs just by cutting off other companies and countries from the dollar. The dollar isn't the only choke point that can be used for this purpose, though. I mean, the semiconductor supply chain, computer chips have been, have come into public consciousness in recent years with the Chips act and fears about a Chinese invasion of Taiwan. But look, US companies are providing 40% of the value chain across the semiconductor industry. And so if you're cut off from the ability to use Nvidia designs or software from companies like Applied Materials, the US can also really cut off your ability to access the best in class computing technologies. And that's what has really been at the heart of this US China tech war in the last five to 10 years. And so the US does control the most important choke points today. But in emerging industries like clean technology, it's actually China that's the dominant player. And as we're seeing right now, being cut off from things like rare earth minerals in the US that can impose quite a bit of pain on American companies as well.

[Emma Vigland]

All right, and we're going to work our way up there just like relative because I mean, I remember that embargo on Iraq and it is a, I mean, I guess really sort of like another way of saying this much more blunt instrument in that era than this era now. Far less targeted because much of the suffering at the end of the day was borne by the Iraqi people. And the theory being that, I mean, theoretically this is going to create domestic trouble for Saddam and is going to influence his decision making, which is sort of, I mean, spurious, pretty spurious. I mean it wasn't terribly effective and it was very effective in harming innocent Iraqi civilians. It's much more, I mean, and broadly speaking then we can go through some of the examples but that you walk us through over the course in the next 20 years. But much more targeted in some ways.

[Tom Homan]

That's right. Look, I mean, I think if you're thinking about naval blockades or sieges, right? I mean if you're not allowing cargo to come in and out of a port, it's really challenging to distinguish between ship, you know, shipments that are contraband versus non contraband, right. And if you're going to do it, it's going to be highly labor intensive. So I think that probably the most important differentiator between the Iraq embargo or embargoes that existed beforehand and the types of sanctions that are imposed today, it's really about this, this labor intensive element where you do require ship inspections, you do require the deployment of naval force and it's also about the risk that you have to undertake, right. I mean, even that Iraq embargo, it wasn't, you know, it wasn't something that was being executed by Treasury Department officials or State Department officials. It was really the Pentagon, right. It was U.S. naval officers who were, who are, you know, implementing this embargo. What you have today is, I agree, more targeted in that you can specify specifically what you're trying to cut off, whether it's, you know, shipments of nuclear materials to Iran or oil. But that's not to say it's not harmful, right? I mean it's very challenging. I think when you're trying to impose really significant sanctions on a foreign country, it's hard to just cordon off the effects to the elites, right? And it is still everyday people who are suffering from it. I think probably from a historical perspective and frankly from the reality we're living in today, the thing that's most important is the threshold for the use of these economic weapons has gone significantly down, right. Because you know, historically, like I Said you had to be willing to risk, you know, naval officers, you had to be willing to send our ships into foreign, you know, into foreign ports. Right. Today you're just signing a document in the Oval Office. And so in some ways, I compare it to the impact that air power had on military strategy. Before you had airplanes, if you really wanted to inflict damage on a city, you had to send in troops. You were going to risk casualties yourself. With air power, you could inflict damage and be on your way. And I think that's in some ways the moral hazard that exists around economic warfare today is there's so much power that the US Commands, and we can do it without really risking too much ourselves.

[Sam Seder]

Has there been this? I mean, I guess I've noticed it, but I'm curious, from your perspective, a shift over the past decade or so with other, maybe larger countries that have more capacity, like China, Russia, even, you want to say, Iran, and how they've responded to decades of sanctions by the United States to onshore and find alternatives, is that a huge part of the reality that also I think this tariff regime is facing, too?

[Tom Homan]

Yeah, I think that's exactly right. You're very perceptive, Emma. I think if you kind of zoom out and look at the macro narrative that I tell in my book Choke Points, it really explains how we got from the mindset of the 1990s where economic relations between countries were seen as win win, to what I call today the age of economic warfare, where, you know, we really view our dependencies on other countries as potential vulnerabilities that could be weaponized against us. When I say we, that is true of the United States, but it's also true of China. It's true of the eu, it's true of Japan, it's true of Russia. And so in some ways, even though we do have economic interdependence that exists today, the mentality, the belief in it has really vanished. And and so initially, this did manifest primarily in terms of investments in national self sufficiency, ways to try to hedge against exposure to the dollar, exposure to U.S. supply chains. The thing that I actually am more worried about right now was that other countries have also learned from the way the US has done offensive economic warfare and have built their own versions of sanctions and export controls that they have now preparing to hone and to use against the United States. And so some of the tools that you've seen China use in retaliation against Trump's tariffs in the last few months, those are. That's a playbook that China's really been developing now for almost a decade, really preparing for this kind of fight where if you look at when Trump launched his initial trade war Against China in 2018, the Chinese were totally caught off guard. They didn't have these types of retaliatory measures that they could deploy with any facility.

[Emma Vigland]

Again, before we get to the specific instances, have we in general, or I guess this, I mean this Iran was sort of like the proof of concept in some level. Have we in general basically started an arms race in this regard? And we have now, basically it's caught up with us where other countries realize that they need to engage in this arms race or have, I guess for the past decade. And is it all simply a function of. It was just easier to do. Like, I mean, I mean obviously it's just the threshold is lowered so the opportunity to do it becomes greater.

[Tom Homan]

Yeah. The answer to whether we've launched an economic arms race is yes, like that is very much underway right now. You see it in terms of, like I said, China passing new laws that they've instituted in just the last few years to be able to impose sanctions on foreign countries companies. And just in the last few months they've imposed sanctions on major U.S. companies, including this company Skydio, which is the biggest drone manufacturer in the U.S. which now every single one of their customers only gets one battery per drone because they've been dependent on China for batteries. You know, they've imposed sanctions on pvh, the apparel manufacturer. The EU, by the way, has also built out its economic weapons. They built this anti coercion instrument that they, they created a couple years ago really as a collective defense mechanism to use against China. The sort of inspiration for this was that China had come down and imposed significant sanctions on Lithuania when Lithuania had opened a Taiwan represent representative office in their country. And so the EU wanted a way to be able to respond collectively. Now the Europeans are talking about potentially using that mechanism in response to Trump's tariffs as a way to sort of strike back against the United States in terms of why we're using these weapons more. I think there are a few reasons. One is the creation of these choke points I mentioned earlier that really only come into the fore with hyper globalization in the 90s. So it wasn't really possible for us to use the dollar as an economic weapon against the Soviet Union because the Soviet Union wasn't part of a dollar based system. Right. They existed sort of, they didn't have much interdependence with the west during the Cold War. You know, Another aspect is just the return of great power competition, where all of a sudden we have these intense rivalries with countries like China and Russia. They both have nuclear weapons. We really don't want to fight wars with them. And so we sort of are searching for other ways to fight. And economics, you know, is kind of the most obvious alternative to military force. I think the other one, and this is really about American politics, a lot of this is a reaction to Iraq and Afghanistan as well. Like, if you go Back to the 1990s, the US had military interventions all the time. It was actually remarkable. We kind of forget about this. But limited military interventions in places like the Balkans and parts of Africa and parts of Latin America were just part of the US Foreign policy toolkit. I think after the Afghanistan War in 2001, Bush's invasion of Iraq in 2003, after those became quagmires, I think the American domestic political audience lost support for the use of military force. And both parties in the US Neither of them is especially keen on using military force. And so I think in some ways it's also a reaction to that, where you no longer really have a major political, hawkish political constituency in the US when it comes to the use of military force. And so as a result, both parties have kind of coalesced around using economic warfare. And maybe final point to make here is that this is one of these rare kind of trends in 21st century America that really does cut across administrations and across parties where if you look at from George W. Bush to Barack Obama to Donald Trump to Joe Biden, each of those presidents impose sanctions at twice the rate of their predecessor. And so it's been kind of this exponential structural growth that's cut across administrations.

[Sam Seder]

In the 21st century that I think Jeff Stein of the Washington Post did some great reporting on that too. I know that's part of your book as well. But like, it's also this, the coinciding of the sanctions regime and the promulgation of like, unmanned drones and killing machines where there doesn't need to be human cost, I guess in theory, to United States personnel. It's the same backlash, but still trying to achieve the same great power ends without that toll and political cost.

[Tom Homan]

Yeah, yeah, I think, I think there's like, there is this real, like, like broad analogy between, like, air power and drones on the one hand, and like the modern economic warfare toolkit on the other, which is like, it's all about trying to get what we want with as minimal harm to ourselves as possible. That's Kind of made possible by these new forms of economic relationships and new technologies.

[Emma Vigland]

Let's, let's talk about the Iran sanctions and it leading up to the first nuke deal that Obama was able to strike. Walk us through. Was this the first sort of like big win, as it were, for foreign policy? And, and then I want to talk about like sort of the, I mean I'm, I'm in favor of less nuclear weapons across the world. I think that we should have less too. But I want to be able to contrast that from that to me seems like a better we, you know, our interests or a better world interests than maybe some of the other way reasons why we deploy these sanctions. But just walk us through what was unique and sort of novel about that approach.

[Tom Homan]

Yeah, the Iran case is really important and it winds up being the origin story of the age of economic warfare. It's why I devote a long time in my book to talking about the Iran sanctions that really start during the Bush administration, George W. Bush, and culminate in the Iran nuclear deal during the Obama administration. I think to kind of situate ourselves, it's important to go back to 2004. So John Kerry is running against George W. Bush in that presidential election. And at that time, Iran's nuclear program already was arguably the most salient national security threat to the United States. The Bush administration had launched an invasion of Iraq to get rid of a nuclear weapons program that proved not to exist, while right next door, a country that was bigger and more powerful than Iraq actually was developing an industrial scale nuclear enrichment program and a pathway to a nuclear bomb. And that country was actively supporting groups like Hezbollah and Hamas that the US had declared terrorist organizations. And so there was a real threat in the US this real sense of vulnerability that Iran could give nuclear material to a terrorist group that then could launch some sort of nuclear 9, 11. And during the very first presidential debate between Bush and Kerry, Bush was sort of in a defensive position because right before then, you know, the Iraq Survey Group had declared that Saddam didn't actually have weapons of mass destruction. They're asked, you know, what are you going to do about Iran? And Kerry's like, I'm going to impose some sanctions on Iran and we're going to get economic leverage and get a diplomatic solution to the nuclear program. And Bush just views this as with incredulity. He's like, we've already tried to sanction Iran, we can't sanction Iran anymore. And the mentality was, you know, if you're going to do sanctions, it has to look like the sanctions from the 90s, the embargo against Saddam Hussein. You need the full UN to support it. You need to put, you know, American sailors in the Persian Gulf inspecting every cargo coming in and out of Iranian ports. And there was just never. That was never going to happen. We weren't going to have the support to do that. The UN Wasn't going to, you know, had no interest in doing a full embargo against Iran. And so Bush basically thought that we had no shot. We were at a dead end. But after he gets reelected, this guy, Stuart Levy, who's the head of the part of the Treasury Department that does sanctions, he remembers what Bush says and he's like, this is a personal challenge. I need to figure out a way to get the leverage that Bush thinks we lack. And there's one day that he's actually sitting in a. Having breakfast, sitting in a hotel in Bahrain, flipping through the Financial Times when he reads a story about how a Swiss bank has decided to cut ties with Iran of its own volition. And Levy, this is kind of a light bulb moment for him because he realizes maybe we don't need support from the un Maybe we don't need to deploy the Navy. I can just go around and talking to bankers in places like London or Frankfurt or Dubai, bring with me declassified intelligence showing them how their banks are being used to funnel money into Iran's nuclear program and persuade nine out of 10 of them just to cut ties with Iran of their own volition. And the 1 out of 10 who don't agree, I can threaten to cut them off from the dollar and basically say either you cut ties with Iran or you lose access to the dollar. And so that strategy of sort of government to business diplomacy that is pioneered by Stuart Levy in the second Bush term. Levy, by the way, is reappointed by Barack Obama. So he stays into the Obama administration, winds up leading to Iran becoming completely isolated from the international financial system, eventually leads to us sequestering Iran's oil revenues in overseas escrow accounts and gives us the diplomatic leverage that we need to actually get the Iran nuclear deal. And so it's a new form of economic warfare that is pioneered against Iran. It does lead to a diplomatic resolution to this really what had seemed like an intractable problem. And I think it leads to really a consensus in Washington that we have this incredible economic power that we can then use against other countries as well.

[Emma Vigland]

How much was the things like the tpp, which was being developed concurrently, how much was that influenced by the ability to sort of control Iran through this new apparatus. The TPP being the Trans Pacific Partnership. I mean, I know you're aware of it, but just for people who don't remember, which was essentially an attempt to encircle China in the Pacific with a trade agreement that a lot of people, including myself, had problems with in terms of what it would do for a lack of sovereignty under some of the provisions, in terms of the way that corporations could expect countries to cater to their profit and, you know, projections, et cetera, et cetera. But leaving that aside, how much of the TPP was born or shaped out of an understanding of this new dynamic?

[Tom Homan]

Yeah, so I think there is a relationship, and I can talk about it personally, because I was involved in designing some of the Iran sanctions and implementing them, and then also part of the policy planning staff at the State Department when TPP was on the agenda and we were trying to get it through the Congress. So, look, I think the key ultimately to isolating Iran, the hardest parts, were getting countries in Asia like China, like Japan, like India, to buy less Iranian oil over time. And that process was not friendly. It was very challenging, honestly. We ultimately had to threaten these countries with secondary sanctions, and it did involve pressure and diplomacy, but it was really hard even just to get countries to buy less Iranian oil. And so I think what this taught us, Sam, was that getting that changing big economies, economic decisions is really hard. And it was hard enough against Iran if we were really going to try to do this against China. Because I think at this time, just the context as well, this is when China starts militarizing the South China Sea, you know, building these artificial islands and airstrips. And I think there's a recognition during the second Obama term that China is a real geopolitical adversary. But I think that we realized that it was so hard against Iran that there was no way that we were just going to, you know, go around using second, the threat of secondary sanctions to get China isolated. Now, we actually had to offer a real alternative. We had to offer benefits to other countries in Asia if we were going to sort of build a counter China coalition. And so I think TPP ultimately did have that kind of geopolitical aim. I think you can quibble about whether the substance of TPP was correct. And I think in some ways it probably wasn't shaped in a way that would have served as effectively as it could have as a counter China coalition. But I think it was in some ways, the difficulties that we had with respect to Iran taught us that when it came to bigger economies, be it China or Russia, we really did need to think about building coalitions that provided the members of those coalitions benefits in addition to just using the stick.

[Emma Vigland]

I don't want to get too distracted by this, and this is sort of outside the scope, but that you mentioned, like the awareness that China was, or the sense that China was becoming more of an adversary. I mean that wasn't new, right? I mean that it's hard from my perspective to assess whether that was China reacting to the US perceiving it as a threat or not. I mean, I'm, you know, because this was, I'm not convinced that the Iraq war wasn't at least in part a function of, of concern about China ultimately. And I can say, having interviewed Gary Hart in 2004 when he was talking about chairing a Commission on the 21st Century Challenges, that there was a member of that commission who kept bringing up China when everyone else was saying non state actors, and that was Lyn Cheney. And she ultimately decided not to come back after the second or third meeting because nobody was taking her seriously at that time. I don't know, it was one of the Cheneys maybe. And I just remember the Asian pivot in terms of our military was happening in the first decade, it seems to me, of the arts or was in the arts. So I mean there was some of that already in the works.

[Tom Homan]

Yes, to a certain extent. And I talk about this in choke points as well. I mean, I think maybe just to go back a little bit in the 1990s, after the end of the Cold War, the US government, both during the H.W. bush and Clinton administrations, basically makes a bet. The bet is if you integrate China more into the global economy, ultimately they'll eventually evolve into becoming a more liberal country and they'll become a more responsible stakeholder in the international order. This was, I think, a reasonable bet to make, right? I mean, the world we had in the early 90s, it really was an incredible opportunity, right? It's rare that you have an opportunity to actually build a more just liberal, peaceful world. By the way, we made the same bet with regard to post Soviet Russia, right? Where bringing them into the wto, bringing them into global financial markets right now, there's a lot of sort of shade that's sometimes cast upon that decision. But I think like if we're just being honest and going with, without the benefit of hindsight, like it was a reasonable wager to make, I think with respect to China already by the early aughts it was clear that that bet wasn't paying off. Right? That, that it was, that China wasn't developing in the direction that we thought it was, that they were actually violating a number of sort of the core tenets of the international economic order in ways that were detrimental to US labor at the very least, if not, you know, the US Economy writ large. And I think it took a long time for government policy to sort of realize that the bet hadn't paid off and to actually take that seriously in choke points. The way that I sort of think about it is what happened was you built really strong interest groups in favor of the China sort of chimerica, predominantly, you know, multinational corporations, big US Businesses, even small and medium sized businesses in the US that had grown used to importing relatively cheap goods from China. And so in some ways, even after the intellectual consensus breaks down, which I agree with you, Sam, happens a bit earlier, you still don't get that policy change because you have very powerful groups that oppose sort of. Right. Sizing our policy on China. And by the way, you still have that today, right? I mean, I think you're realizing even when Trump has 145% tariffs on China for a few weeks, we can't sustain it longer than that because the economic costs of decoupling are so high in the near term that it's very challenging for any politician to really prosecute that policy in earnest. And so, so, yeah, I think the realization maybe happens in some corners before. I think the second term Obama administration really becomes disillusioned with China for a number of reasons. But it's really not until Trump's first term that you start seeing American policy really shift in that direction with the tariffs on China, the export controls on companies like ZTE and Huawei that then of course is built upon during the Biden years as well as now the second Trump term.

[Emma Vigland]

Well, wasn't our, I mean, those interest groups that you're talking about who were looking to develop that type of relationship with China, who were welcoming the idea that they get cheaper goods, that they could find cheaper labor there. I mean, what was the counterbalance like? I mean, I guess I'm having trouble conceiving of like, how that's distinct from what our policy was as a nation, because I'm not, I can't see what the counterbalance is. I mean, I understand like the idea, the sort of more, I don't know if ephemeral is the right word notion of like, hey, this could hurt domestic workers on some level. But we had already Done nafta we had already without him, without imposing the worker and environmental controls that we were supposedly going to after it was passed. Like, who is representing any alternative notion of, like, hey, this might be helpful to the, you know, certain elements of the business community and investors who are looking to invest heavily there, but whose else interest is. Is this in?

[Tom Homan]

Right. Yeah. No, I think that's part of the reason why it persisted longer than it should. And in some ways, I mean, the way that it was finally undone and the consensus was sort of flipped in Washington was really through the national security argument. It was when, you know, you kind of united some parts of the Republican caucus and the Democratic caucus and thinking that China was a threat. And by the way, the economic side of things also has national security implications because the deindustrialization that China, to a certain extent, by the way it's not fully responsible for, this has caused in parts of the United States has obviously been bad for the American worker, but it's also been catastrophic for our position from a national security perspective. Because, you know, when if you're actually in the position of, God forbid, fighting a war, you need to be able to produce stuff, and we don't currently produce very much stuff in the United States. And part of that is because we allowed China to dump cheap goods in the US Market and to effectively de. Industrialize parts of the United States.

[Sam Seder]

But doesn't that fall, I guess my, my pushback would be. Wouldn't it fall on the what in the 1990s? Right. When we're pursuing these policies? I mean, Russia. We could argue that Putin is the authoritarian leader that he is now, in part because of the United States flooding capital into Russia, into the post Soviet world. And then Yeltsin consolidated power and then Putin succeeded him and never let it go. Like, there's an argument to be made that China is right now better off without our side getting in the way of like, their domestic manufacturing. They're like, they've reduced poverty by some, some estimates so far. It's a bit of a different situation. Almost a kind of a case study to a degree.

[Tom Homan]

Yeah. No, I look, and I think in many ways the Chinese have kind of, you know, they've viewed the collapse of the Soviet Union as like this intellectual touchstone that they want to avoid.

[Emma Vigland]

Right.

[Tom Homan]

And that they've been going explicitly in an alternative direction. And I think in some ways, you know, 1989 is this interesting, this juncture, right. Where you do have in Russia, as well as other parts of the former Warsaw Pact, Eastern Europe, genuine movements toward democracy. Right. I mean, they actually wanted to move in a democratic, liberal direction, whereas in China, that's when you had Tiananmen. Right. It's when that, you know, democratic reform was kind of snuffed out at the point of a gun. And so, yeah, I mean, that was a disjuncture. I think the Chinese feel in many ways vindicated by the path they've taken in the 90s and 2000s. They didn't face much pushback for some of their mercantilist policies that they've done until very recently. Whereas I think when you look at at least Russia, there is this view that some of the neoliberal reforms that were pushed on them in the 1990s were. Had really negative effects on Russia.

[Sam Seder]

Undemocratic effects. Right. So my pushback just is on this notion of conflating, in my view, capitalism and democracy here, because so much of our sanctions regime, so much of our economic warfare, I mean, our whole policy in the Middle east is to prop up the most undemocratic leaders possible with United States funds. And then we talk about democracy. Are the flood of capital into Russia made them explicitly undemocratic to this day, you could argue. Right.

[Emma Vigland]

Yeah.

[Tom Homan]

I mean, the way that they had privatized the commanding heights of the economy was absolutely catastrophic and mismanaged. Right. It led to the rise of an oligarchic class. And in many ways, Putin was reacting to that, where he comes in and effectively sidelines the former oligarchs by threatening them, you know, imprisoning kind of the most powerful of them all, Khodorkovsky, and sending a clear message. I think that the tragedy, of course, then, is he just, you know, shifts to a different oligarchy that isn't so much the people who won in this casino capitalism structure of the 90s, but people who just so happened to be his judo partners in St. Petersburg growing up, you know, who became the winners of that system. Look, I write about this in Choke Points. I've also written about it elsewhere in a long essay I did in the Boston review, I think 2020, maybe. I think in some ways it's historical happenstance that the height of neoliberal economic thinking coincides with the end of the Cold War. And in some ways, that winds up being a tragedy because that wasn't necessarily the best model for some of these developing and transitioning countries in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet bloc. I think one of the ironies about the story I tell in Choke Points is that, you know, neoliberalism and sort of free market economics winds up being a really important precursor for globalization for kind of the choke points that I mentioned earlier. Like the only reason these choke points exists is because you've allowed the unfettered flow of capital around the world. That's what created a dollar based global economy. The reason you have American technology underpinning all these supply chains is because you have things like the WTO and free trade. And so neoliberalism enables the choke points to be created. And now the actual weaponization of these choke points, economic warfare itself, in some ways it's the government reasserting control over the economy. It's taking sort of these asymmetries of power created by neoliberal economics and turning them into weapons that the state controls both in China and, and in the United States.

[Emma Vigland]

I want to get to sort of where we are now and going forward and I don't want to litigate this too much, but the, the framing and have we come around. The framing of China was at least partially responsible for our deindustrialization. Wasn't it really our policies that like China's just operating in their, whatever they perceive as their interests, just like any other nation would. Wasn't it incumbent upon us to simply as to say, hey wait a second, we should not allow for our own deindustrialization so that we can juice our economy ostensibly with cheaper products?

[Tom Homan]

Yes, yeah, we should have shifted course sooner. No doubt about that. I think maybe one thing though, to the extent, just a caveat I'd put on the table, is a big part of the American led order, be it the security order like NATO post World War II or Bretton Woods. The economic order, a lot of it has been the US in some ways allows free riding. It allows other countries to benefit at our expense. If you just look at it in a pure bilateral sense. Right. But the idea was that on the whole we are the winner because we're at the center of the system. It's actually that mentality that I think Trump is challenging today, which, where he's saying actually we really should look at everything in terms of a bilateral relationship. And if, you know, we have lower tariffs on some developing country than they have on us, then that's unfair. That has not been the mentality of any US administration post World War II. It's always been that we accept a little bit of asymmetry in exchange from a bar from, to benefit more broadly.

[Emma Vigland]

And so where do you think we go from that? Like what are the implications in this Instance, I mean, we have these choke points on some level. What? And I don't know if Trump is conscious that he's doing this. Like, the idea of fairness seems, you know, sort of, I don't know, it's like, you know, that's, that's a conversation I have with my 12 year old son. Like, yeah, no, I know it's not fair that I get to say what you eat like that you can't have three, you know, popsicles tonight. That's unfair. But I mean, that's just the way it is. Like, it really, it seems the fairness issue seems less relevant than what is in our best interests. And then, you know, there's a question of like, who the hour is and what we determine is ultimately in our best interest. But where does that leave us now? Like as undermining that sort of system that we had more ability to exercise these choke points.

[Tom Homan]

So look, you know, I mentioned that there has been this kind of secular trend cutting across all the 21st century presidents where each president's been using economic warfare more and more and more over time. And so when I got to the end of writing my book, I kind of asked myself, you know, what explains this? Like, what is the structural reason? And the way I would kind of summarize it is that the global economy is still built for this peaceful 1990s, but we're living in a period of intensifying geopolitical competition. And so fundamentally, there's a mismatch between the reality of geopolitical competition on the one hand and the reality of the international economic system, which is still highly interdependent on the other. And so one way to kind of view trade restrictions, capital controls in the form of sanctions, export controls and tariffs, is kind of this haphazard way for countries to get the global economy to reflect the realities of the geopolitical competition that we're seeing today. It's putting in barriers in place so that we're not as vulnerable to our adversaries. When I say we again, it's the US but it's also other countries who are doing this too. To me, there are really two different ways that this could evolve in the next decade or so. You know, one is a global economy that's really divided into blocks, you know, one where the US leads a block of other democratic allies, you know, Canada, Mexico, the European Union, democracies in the Asia Pacific, whereas there's another sort of authoritarian bloc led by China, and then maybe some countries that are in between sort of mirroring what we had during the Cold War, by the way. I don't think that's necessarily the worst outcome. That might be the best possible outcome on offer, giving what we have today. But I think there's another possibility, and it seems to be the one that we're heading in, at least for now, which is one where we don't really have any privileged relationship with any country and that everyone is sort of viewed as just a country that we can get the best possible deal with. There's no sort of permanent relationships. And then when you think about it from the perspective of an American business, when you don't know whether a given country is going to be under sanctions or tariffs tomorrow, your only logical sort of course of action is to invest at home to do everything is everything you possibly can domestically. This is what we call autarky, right? It's very expensive. It would cause slower economic growth in the United States. It would take a very long time to effectuate. But I think the thing that worries me most of all is, is when you look historically, this concept of autarky, the mentality that you can only have secure access to markets and resources if you literally control them and you can't necessarily trade for them, it leads to things like imperialism and conquest, because it makes you think, well, I need to conquer more territory in order to have access to these rare minerals or whatnot. And so in some sense, when you hear Trump muse about conquering Greenland or annexing Greenland or making Canada the 51st state, I worry that that actually is of a piece with this autarkic mindset that you literally cannot control a resource unless you plant the American flag on the territory.

[Emma Vigland]

That's a little disturbing. I mean, but I mean, you'd also need more than the three or four years that Trump has left. But is your sense that that perspective is broadly based in the US or do we get to a point where they bring it to a point we have no other option?

[Tom Homan]

Right. No, it's a good. It's a good question. I think the American people, I think probably, if you were to pull them, wouldn't support this. And I think a lot of the. A lot of the thing that I find interesting, if you see pushback against Trump's agenda, there hasn't been much in the Republican caucus, but to the extent there has been, it's been against some of these sort of core pillars of American foreign policy. You see the Republicans in the Senate, you know, at this point, threatening to impose sanctions on Russia over Trump's head. Basically, you're seeing Some pushback against Trump's, you know, threats against Canada and threats against the European Union. So I'm not sure that it's broadly felt, but there is a lot that can change in a four year period. I think part of it also depends who winds up inheriting the mantle of Trumpism. Who leads the Republican Party after Trump. I think there, there are signs that someone like J.D. vance also feels share of some of these perspectives and that he really doesn't like the Europeans. He views them as, you know, leeches off of the United States. So, you know, I can't tell you, tell you for sure. I'd say the American people aren't there yet. But the longer you have these policies in place, the farther, farther we get down the road. And then the final point being that, you know, the current sort of system, the idea that you would have, you know, closer allies and maybe the possibility of a Democratic bloc, we're losing that possibility day by day because our allies now all of a sudden have reason to fear us and they have reason to hedge against their exposure to the dollar, their exposure to the American economy. And so I think that even if you were to have another shift in the next four years, I'm not so sure that the Europeans are going to be so ready to throw in their lot with the U.S. biden faced a little bit of that too when he said, you know, America's back, come on back. I think a lot of countries wanted to believe that, but they knew that Trump was still kind of waiting in the wings and he was still a phenomenon that they had to contend with.

[Emma Vigland]

Do you think the geographic or competition that heated up, that's been heating up, was it completely divorced from what was happening in terms of the exercise of this new economic warfare, or is it just coincidental? I mean, what was the, is there a dynamic there?

[Tom Homan]

It's a good question. I mean, look, I think that, I think that the return of geopolitical competition is ultimately like a deeper rooted, like force than economic warfare. I think economic warfare in many ways is a response to that. Right? It's, it's when you realize that China is your rival, but all of a sudden you're heavily dependent on them, they're dependent on us. You know, our dependence on them starts to feel like a vulnerability. Their dependence on us starts to feel like a weapon that we can use against them. Right. So I think economic warfare is more of a reaction to the return of geopolitical competition than the cause. At the same time, once you do start using economic warfare, more and more, it actually can start incentivizing geopolitical fragmentation. So I think the use of sanctions or tariffs against allies, like against the Canadians or against the Mexicans or against the Europeans, I think that in and of itself can be the cause of great power friction. Right. And I think you are seeing in some ways real decisions being made in some of these other countries that are going to be hard to reverse. You know, the Canadians, for instance, have felt totally comfortable for the last several decades, basically selling all of their oil and natural gas to the United States. They only have pipelines that run north, south. Right. They haven't had pipelines to the coast because they didn't think they needed to sell to any other market. But now when they realize that, you know, a president could say, okay, well, actually we're going to impose a 25% tariff or 50% tariff on you, they're investing in pipelines that are going to allow them to sell some of their energy on international markets. And once those pipelines are built, it's not like they're going to turn them off or something, you know. So I think some of these. There is in some ways a trap door for some of these decisions.

[Emma Vigland]

Fascinating. Eddie Feshman, professor of International Public affairs at Columbia University, author of Choke American Power in an Age of Economic Warfare. We'll put a link at that in our podcast and YouTube description. Thanks so much for your time today. Really appreciate it.

[Tom Homan]

Sam and Emma, thanks for having me on. This was really fun conversation, for sure.

[Sam Seder]

Thank you.

[Emma Vigland]

All right, folks, take a break. Head into the fun half of our program. All of this sort of like, taking place somehow just divorced from any type of national conversation in my estimation. I mean, the only part that we would hear is some. Some head fake to the notion of jobs over the course of 20 or 30 years. When this conversation started with NAFTA in the early 90s and we basically just gave over. As far as I can tell, our. Our national security, both as defined by, like, our ability to have access to, you know, goods that we need, pharmaceuticals, I don't know, food, in some instances, whatnot. And national security in the sense of, like, having a country where we don't have hollowed out towns or industries or people or workforce, doesn't seem like it was in any way sort of up for debate that much.

[Eddie Fishman]

Society is too unequal to have conversations like that.

[Emma Vigland]

I mean, it is fascinating to me to sort of say, like, China deindustrialized us.

[Eddie Fishman]

Well, I mean, all the money we.

[Emma Vigland]

Made, I think, like, wait a Second, somebody. Somebody made some. There was. Somebody got rich off that.

[Eddie Fishman]

We're all trying to figure out the guy who did this.

[Emma Vigland]

Exactly.

[Eddie Fishman]

Look at my portfolio.

[Emma Vigland]

Exactly.

[Sam Seder]

In the American flag suit.

[Emma Vigland]

The guy. Yeah. Oh, no, the guy wearing the banana suit. Right. Isn't that. Is it the hot dog?

[Sam Seder]

Yes.

[Eddie Fishman]

It's a United Fruit.

[Sam Seder]

Tim Robinson.

[Eddie Fishman]

You know. Yeah. Was it. I think you should leave.

[Sam Seder]

I think you should leave. Yep. Great show. Yeah.

[Emma Vigland]

But there it is, folks.

[Sam Seder]

Appreciate him coming on.

[Emma Vigland]

It's your support that makes this show possible. You can become a member by going to join the MajorityReport.com Join the MajorityReport.com when you do, you not only get the free show free of commercials, we also get the fun half. And you can IMs during the fun half. Don't forget, we also have merch shop. Majorityreport radio.com go there. We have some snazzy hats that are on order. We're just waiting for them to come from our U.S. union shop. But this is. This is serious beach wear.

[Sam Seder]

Oh, yeah.

[Eddie Fishman]

And is that our slogan?

[Emma Vigland]

It's beach wear. Oh, no.

[Sam Seder]

Also gonna be expecting, like, bathing suits.

[Emma Vigland]

Well, it's hats. It's two hats and a T shirt.

[Sam Seder]

Yeah. No, got it.

[Emma Vigland]

Nobody wants a majority report. Bathing suit.

[Eddie Fishman]

Serious beach wear.

[Emma Vigland]

Yeah. I don't want any funny beach wear. I want it to be real serious.

[Eddie Fishman]

Yeah. Fun and games at the beach. No business.

[Emma Vigland]

This is not a hat you want to let fall off your head and get sandy.

[Eddie Fishman]

It's not for your frivolous beach right trips.

[Emma Vigland]

Also just coffee co op, fair trade coffee, hot chocolate. Use the coupon code. Majority get 10% off. Left reckoning.

[Eddie Fishman]

Left reckoning. We had a Sunday show with David and I. Patreon.com left reckoning. We talked about the Trump and Musk feedback fight and the thirsty Dems sliding into the DMS trying to get in with Elon now. So check it out. Patreon.com left reckoning.

[Emma Vigland]

I feel like you had one on your program the other day.

[Eddie Fishman]

There's some thirsty Dems out there.

[Emma Vigland]

Holton hem says we'll absolutely buy Mr. Branded swim trunks. Two hats and a T shirt is all I wear to the beach, says Pope Paxel. All right, folks, see you in the fun half. Three months from now, six months from now, nine months from now. And I don't think it's gonna be the same as it looks like in six months from now. And I don't know if it's necessarily gonna be better six months from now than it is three months from now. But I think around 18 months out, we're gonna look back and go like, wow. What? What is that going on? It's nuts. Wait a second. Hold on. Hold on for a second. Emma. Welcome to the program.

[Tom Homan]

Fun Half.

[Emma Vigland]

Matt. Boo. Fun hat. What is up, everyone? Fun hack.

[Sam Seder]

No.

[Emma Vigland]

McKee, you did it. Fun hack.

[Sam Seder]

Let's go, Brandon.

[Tom Homan]

Let's go, Brandon.

[Emma Vigland]

Fun hack. Brandon. You want to say hello? Sorry to disappoint everyone. I'm just a random guy. It's all the boys today.

[Tom Homan]

Fundamentally false.

[Sam Seder]

No. I'm sorry.

[Tom Homan]

Women.

[Emma Vigland]

Stop talking for a second and let me finish.

[David Huerta]

Where is this coming from?

[Sam Seder]

Dude?

[Emma Vigland]

But. Dude, you want to smoke this seven egg? Yes. Hi. Me? Yes. Is this me? Is it me? It is you.

[Tom Homan]

Is this me?

[Emma Vigland]

Hello? That's me. I think it is you. Who is you? No sound. Every single freaking day. What's on your mind?

[Sam Seder]

Sports.

[Emma Vigland]

We can discuss free markets and we can discuss capitalism.

[Sam Seder]

I'm gonna go skyline.

[Tom Homan]

Cool.

[Emma Vigland]

Libertarians. They're so stupid. Though common sense says of course.

[Sam Seder]

Gobbledygo.

[Tom Homan]

We nailed him.

[Sam Seder]

So what's 79 plus 21?

[Emma Vigland]

Challenge.

[Tom Homan]

Man, I'm positively quivering.

[Emma Vigland]

I believe 96. I want to say. 8, 5, 7, 2, 1 0, 3, 5, 5, 0, 11 half.

[Eddie Fishman]

3, 8, 9, 11.

[Tom Homan]

For instance.

[Sam Seder]

$3,400. $1900. 5, 4.

[Emma Vigland]

$3 trillion. Sold. It's a zero sum game.

[Sam Seder]

Actually. You're making me think less.

[Emma Vigland]

Wait, but let me say this. Poop.

[Tom Homan]

Call it satire. Sam goes satire.

[Emma Vigland]

On top of it all.

[Tom Homan]

My favorite part about you is just.

[Emma Vigland]

Like every day, all day, like everything you do. Without a doubt. Hey, buddy. We see you. All right, folks. Folks. Folks.

[Sam Seder]

It's just the week being weeded out. Obviously.

[Emma Vigland]

Yeah. Sun's out, Guns out. I. I don't know. But you should know. People just don't like to entertain ideas anymore. I have a question. Who cares?

[Eddie Fishman]

Oh, CHAT is enabled.

[Emma Vigland]

I love it.

[Sam Seder]

I do love that.

[Emma Vigland]

Gotta jump. Gotta be quick. I gotta jump. I'm losing it, bro. Two o' clock. We're already late and the guy's being a dick. So screw them. Sent to a gulag.

[Sam Seder]

Outrageous.

[Emma Vigland]

Like, what is wrong with you?

[Tom Homan]

Love you. Bye.

[Emma Vigland]

Love you.

[Tom Homan]

Bye.

[Emma Vigland]

Bye.