I just I hate them so much, and I really think they deserve it. And it's not just that they lie about everything. It's like they lie about everything, and then they have the nerve to morally judge us. Like if you just watch even just the last few weeks of the Trump election, they're not in the business of reporting the news. They're totally just in the business of making you feel like you're a bad person if you
don't fall in line with the regime. America has this giant war machine right, Like, we're just always at war. We're the most war hungry country in the world. Even if we're taking a little bit of a break from a war, we'll fight two more proxy wars while we do that. America looks back at the nineties. Bill Clinton
has the time of peace and prosperity. We call it peace because we only fought a war in like Serbia and had a blockade around Iraq, and we're like bombing the crap out of Iraq with a few other military interventions in there too. You know, the un estimated that Bill Clinton's sanction and bombing regime of Iraq. Okay, everyone just thinks of George H. W. Bush's war and w's war. But Bill Clinton was bombing Iraq his whole and you
had a full blockade around the country. The un estimated that five hundred thousand children died of starvation or malnutrition due to the blockade. Now I've heard people argue, by the way, that number is exaggerated. Maybe it wasn't five hundred thad maybe it was only one hundred thousand. So that's the time that we consider peace when we were just starving one hundred thousand children to death in Iraq. And you, everybody in the corporate media are in the
business every single one of those wars. You've sold them. Everyone my entire life, the media has sold those wars. And you're gonna morally look down on me. You're gonna judge me, motherfucker. You're in the business of baby murder. Get the fuck out of here. You're looking down judging an American because I maybe I'm going to vote for Donald Trump, or maybe I dare to question the results of the last election.
Fuck you, dude, probably the most consequential election of our lifetime, and within twenty four hours of that, the largest podcaster on Earth, really the largest platform on Earth, the Joe Rogan experience Joe Rogan. Who does he call? Does he call? I don't know, jd Vance or Trump to come in and talk about it. Now. He calls Dave fucking Smith,
a stand up comedian and libertarian podcast. That's who he calls to come in and give the true American breakdown as to what we just witness, what we just experienced. I don't think people understand how big what Dave is doing is. I'm going to get into it a little bit because I've got Tom Woods on in the second half of this episode, and he and I talk about this towards the tail end of our conversation. But I just want to really emphasize how special what Dave is
doing is right now. And yes, he's my friend, and yes I owe him a lot for all the help he's provided me. That's not why I'm saying this. I promise you that I mean this from the bottom of my heart. I genuinely think that what Dave is accomplishing, what he has accomplished since he decided not to run for the presidency under the Libertarian Party, has far out outpaced what he could have likely achieved had he ran. That's a pretty bold statement. And I think it's like
empirically true. I can't say it's sympirically true because I can't prove what he would have done had he ran for president, and I think he probably would have made major waves had he done that. But without doing that, I feel as if he is accomplishing arguably more than he could have had he been running. He was on with Patrick Bett David doing the live stream coverage of
the election. He then catches a red eye. I assume maybe he flew in the first thing in the morning, lands in Austin, hops into Alex Jones studio, does an hour or whatever it was over there, and then immediately kicks it over to the Joe Rogan experience. I mean, he talked to twenty million people in a matter of forty eight hours, and what is the message that he wants to convey there? War is bad? If you think that's not a big deal, I don't think you're paying attention.
And may this argument to Tom in the interview that I did with him, But I genuinely think that Dave is on the cusp of surpassing Ron Paul in terms of what he was able to accomplish. And again, this is a bold claim. So let me explain why I
think that's possible. There was a major push from myself and Dave and everybody else that's in our world, clamoring, screaming, you cannot have a nicky Haley, Mike Pompeo, led State Department, CIA, whatever Trump was thinking about doing with these people, And because of our pressure, in my opinion, not not necessarily ours, but like the collective MAGA world pressure against those candidates, Trump won a different direction, he says. He sends out a true social post and he says, look, I'm not
going with Haleyer Pompeo. I appreciate them. Well, we gotta go a different direction. While that is being announced, Dave tweets out, it's not enough to just throw a wall up to Haley and the Pompeos of the world. We actually have to have no neo cons in the cabinet. None, and who of all people quote tweets that Donald Trump Junior, the son of the President elect, and he says, I'm
on it one hundred percent. Now, there has been news over the past twenty four hours that leads me to believe Donald Trump Junior is losing that fight right now. In my opinion, it's our job to lend him credibility, to lend him support in his claim to his father that hey, this is not popular at all amongst your base. You don't have to go this path, and maybe he will have enough leverage to keep some of these more
atrocious candidates out. The latest being reports from the I think it was the New York Post put out that they have people that are around the campaign are saying that Marco Rubio has been selected for Secretary of State. Now, I don't think I need to convince you guys that Marco Rubio is not an America First guy. Okay. He has also been very very critical of Donald Trump, calling him a con man over and over again.
The stakes are giving control of the Party of Lincoln and Reagan, of the conservative movement, and ultimately of the United States over to a con artist. That will not happen. I make this promise to you today. I will do whatever it takes. I will campaign as long as it takes. I will stay in this race as long as it takes.
I don't know why Donald Trump would do that in terms of like, do you want loyalty, Well, he's not very loyal. Do you want someone who will actually try and get us out of wars. Marco Rubio has rarely seen a war. He isn't all in for. He's extraordinarily hawkish when it comes to China and Iran in particular. It doesn't seem as if it jives with his campaign promises. However, the fact that we always have to keep in the back of our heads is Mariam Maidelson, whose number one
goal is the defense of Israel. She shipped one hundred million dollars to Donald Trump to get him elected. So there's no doubt Donald Trump is going to do things and appoint people that are in alignment with her worldview and her preferences. That is an inevitability. The puritanical libertarians out there that have already been chastising me, Oh okay, who he look what he's doing. Ah, you fool. Look, I'm not naive. I know exactly what we're up against, and I know that that Trump is going to make
good on some of those promises to the AEOSNS. That's a fact. Do you think it would have been much different or maybe not even maybe even worse if Kamala Harris was the president, Like, do you think that she would have been like, ah, Israel, your on your own. No, that's that wasn't gonna happen either, So we have to like we are working in the land of the imperfect. Okay,
that's what politics are. So if you want to take your little victory lap and say, oh, I'm so pure and I didn't vote for uh Donald Trump, and therefore this is all on you, okay, fine, put the blame on me. I don't really give a shit. That's not what I'm in the game of. I'm in the game of can we influenced them to be better than the alternative? And I think the answer to that is yes, I think we can. And there has been the latest reports, and Apoulina Luna says, my understanding is that there has
been no pick made for Secretary of State. So what I think is happening is I think that Donald Trump is floating out names. He is not himself confirming these names. It's just being reported on. And then magaworld erupts and they say, what the fuck is this? This is not what we signed up for. And then he he gives you a twenty percent better option. This is a perfect example was with the the leadership of the Senate race
that's happening this week, in fact, tomorrow or Wednesday. I think, yeah, so tomorrow they are trying to do a vote in secret. And apparently Trump and Tucker Carlston the vague the senators I do like, and Micha Lee and Rand Paul, they're saying that Scott out of Florida, he's the guy. We got to get him in there as the leader of the Senate. Okay, I don't know. I don't love the guy. He's pushed red flag laws. I'm not super fond of
him by any stretch of the imagination. But on the alternative is Thune and Cornyn, who are just straight up swap monsters, really nothing beneficial to add. They are just a the heir apparents to Mitch McConnell's of the world.
You don't want that, So, like, if you're going to be a puritanical libertarian on these issues, well then Scott sucks too, right, But obviously the preferred option of the three on offer, like I would rather it be Mike Lee or Ran Paul, obviously, But I could shout those names into the wind and get nothing, or I can add my name to the growing chorus of people saying Scott's the guy, and maybe that's enough to shift the votes. Because as of the first announcement of this secret vote,
Thune was the favorite. Now the betting markets have Scott as the favorite. So this is the game that we're actually in. If you want to play it, this is how you play it if you're If you just want to say, my hands are clean, I didn't vote you know, I well it ought to be Rand Paul and just say that and then have it not happen. You can do that. That's it's your prerogative. But I'm actually in the game of like, can we marginally improve Trump's cabinet
and Trump's second presidency presidential term over the first. I think the answer is yes, we can, but we have to be willing to deal in the imperfect. Marco Rubio as Secretary of State would be a disaster. Is Anthony Blincoln good? No, I'd say he's at least as much of a warmonger as Marcro Rubio, as evidence by all of the wars that are happening right now. So like, this is actually what we're dealing with is not perfect. We're not dealing with our ideal. We are dealing with
what is the alternative? I could have voted for the libertarian case it, okay, and then Trump would still be the president anyways. Okay, So like now we have a significant influence. We have Donald Trump Junior in our orbit, we have a vake in our orbit, we have RFK junior in our orbit. They're all in Donald Trump Senior's orbit.
Should we be using our leverage, our influence, our audiences to try and scream the Senators into voting for Scott or should we just say none of these three guys are perfect, therefore we're not gonna say anything about it. We're gonna just say, oh, we hate all these guys. My answer is I'm going to try and get the best of the options on offer. A lot of you are gonna hate me for it. A lot of people are gonna be like, that's that's not that's not libertarian. Okay,
Like I've accepted my fate. I am in this to actually improve things on the margins. That is not getting me to anarcho Kappistan. It's like, it's not happening. But it might avoid World War three, it might it might get justice for some of the people responsible for the twenty twenty era. It might. It might. It might get some of the DEI ESG stuff out of academia, out of corporate America. It might. In fact, I think it will.
So that's that's really what I'm striving towards. And if you're interested in that, if you're interested in seeing genuine change on the margins, I think we have an actual opportunity to do that. So now let me get back to Dave. In a matter of forty eight hours, Dave is doing all this, and he has Donald Trump Junior that is quote tweeting him saying he's on it and that he's gonna keep all the neocons out. Probably gonna fail.
Let's just be honest, like, probably gonna fail. He's gonna there's gonna be some neocons in there, there's no doubt about that. And let's be honest. There's also some tactical reasons that you might want to do that, like if you're if you're negotiating, and if you're interested in peace, you may want some lunatics a llah John Bolton around just so you could say I'm better than this guy. You want to deal with this guy, you can deal with me this is what Trump said was the silver
lining of having John Bolton around. You know, more puritanical libertarians go, that's bullshit. Screw John Bolton. I don't want him anywhere. I don't want him anywhere around them either. But I do understand from a businessman negotiating standpoint like that, there is a rationale there that does make sense. Do you want to negotiate peace with me? Because I got John Bolton on the other line and we can go
We can go the hard way if you like. Like in geopolitics, there is there is some some value to that. But obviously my preference would be Colonel Douglas McGregor, like, that's who I actually want as Secretary of Defense, or some position high up that could actually avoid some of these wars that actually understands them intimately, Like that would be my preference. If that option isn't on offer, I'm going to have to deal in the imperfect. I'm going to have to deal with option A out of a
list of BCD being apocalyptic. Sorry, like, someone's got to tell you the truth. That's what politics is in this current iteration. We are trying to move them five ten percent, fifteen percent closer to us, and therefore move there electorate the mag of faithful ten to fifteen percent closer to us too, which I think has already happened to a
loge extent. And then you move it again another ten to fifteen percent two years from now, and another ten fifteen percent two years from now, like you have to have a little bit of a long time horizon on this little you know, delayed gratification, low time preference, if you will, to put in Austria in terms like this is this is actually how you how you make progress. And to get back to my very bold claim that I think that Dave Smith is on the cusp of
surpassing Ron Paul in terms of accomplishments. Doctor Paul made his name by being doctor No. He voted no against everything, and he passed very little. And I appreciate him for it, and he's a legend for it, Like that's the truth he is. He's an absolute fucking legend for it, and he's a saint. But in terms of like passing legislation, he didn't pass much. Most of the stuff he authored never got passed. And the Fed, you know, audit to
fed like it didn't happen. Okay, we have an opportunity, through Dave and our little orbit of influencers whatever I'm part of here, to genuinely influence policy on a federal level that gets implemented, not just ideas, not just words, not just hearts and minds, but actually changing policy at the federal level, doing it with a microphone and nothing else.
Not a singular no vote in Congress, as Ron Paul did, and God bless him for it, but just talking and convincing enough millions of people over a forty eight hour period and then getting the son's president to quote treat you saying I'm on it, no neo cons That is enough to actually change some of the cabinet appointments that will be in positions of extreme importance in Donald Trump's cabinet in his orbit. Like that is huge, huge progress for us, and I think people are sleeping on it.
I do, Like, does it mean that we will accomplish it?
No?
Does it mean that we will accomplish all of it? Definitely? Not Like we're definitely not going to get everything we want, that's a fact. But we have a chance to get some things that we want when we've gotten nothing. Ever. Ever, you see why that's an improvement. I hope this logic checks out for you guys, because I think I'm right. We've never gotten shit ever. They've never even thought to try and pander to us because we were so fucking unimportant.
They never gave us anything. They never gave us, they never lied to us. Even they were just like, you don't matter. We matter now. They came to our convention, but veg Grandma saw me, who's running for president, debated me. For God's sakes, we definitely matter. RFK Junior was there, Donald Trump was there. They want us to vote for them, They want our support. That means that our voices matter now.
Our voices matter when it comes to his approval ratings, when it comes to how the whole MAGA world and community response. And it's not just us, it's not just the Libertarians. There are genuine Trump supporters that are fucking furious about Marco Rubio secretary of State, or as John Thune as the head of the Senate. Like they are not that different from us. They don't want enlist wars, they want the government to be cut back. They want
prosecutions and genuine investigations into the lockdown era. They do so we can work with them as imperfect as they are and we are, I might add. Or we can just say we're better than you, we're more pure, and we can get fucking nothing done. Ever you choose, you get to be more pure than me. Congrats, I offer you that. I offer you a more pure voting record than I have now I have now voted for a winning president. It feels strange. I'll be the first to admit it, and it's going to be not even close
to my ideals, but I am not giving up. This is very early days, and yes, his cabinet matters tremendously, but he also was the least militaristic president in my lifetime, and he did that with John Psycho, bloodsoaked monster Bolton
in his cabinet. So just because he's appointing Mark or Rubio does not mean reportedly it looks like that may be false, as I said earlier, But just because he's appointing Mark Rubio to Secretary of State, or if he does, that does not necessarily mean that he will not deliver on his promises. Now, if he fails, if he actually starts a war, well, yeah, obviously this has all been a ruse and they have used us, they've used me.
If you're one of the pure ones that didn't vote for him, okay, I'll admit that, Like I'm totally fine with that. But until that happens, I'm going to continue to use my influence to try and sway him and them and his orbit as much and as hard as I possibly can, because that's that's what matters right now. It's not about oh, I'm better than you. I didn't do this. That's not what it's about. It's about can we get them ten, fifteen to twenty percent better? I
think we can. Don't stop, make your voices heard. Don't just be blackpilled and give up and odds just the duopoly and they okay, yeah, look, maybe you'll end up being right, But until you are for sure, it's still worth voicing your preferences, your concerns, what you want to see. I promise you these people are paying attention, serious attention to what we want. It was going to be Mike Pompeo and Nikki Haley. It is not the because of us,
not me, all of us. If we continue to lend our voices in unison to demand improvements in his cabinet we will get improvements. It will not be perfect, but it will be better. And if that's something that you would like to strive towards, I welcome you, and I hope that you will lend your voice in support of mine and we can actually get after it because we ain't got much time left. We are on the cusp of fifty trillion in national debt. It is a stone's throwaway,
very very close. We happen to also be in multiple proxy wars and one with the largest nuclear power on Earth. We don't have fucking time to waste. We don't have time to do this purity spiral bullshit. We have to actually stop World War III. Do I have to explain how important that is? I shouldn't. I shouldn't have to. That's my mind frame, that's my outlook. I just wanted to express it as direct to you as I possibly could so that I could stop with the look. It's
gotta be Rubio, Look, how fucking stupid you. I like these these tweets that I'm getting from people. It's like, God, really, is that what matters to you? Like? Are you are you more happy that I was wrong then you are upset that Marco Rubio might be the Secretary of State, like what are your priorities? Like? I think that's that's really what people ought to be asking themselves, Like what are you prioritize? Do you want to be right and pure?
Or do you want to stop World War three? Do you want to stop the national debt implosion that's imminent and the confettiing of our dollar? What do you what's your actual end goal here? That's what everybody ought to be asking themselves. Are you in this to actually improve the world? Yeah, I am. I know. I'm just one dude speaking into a microphone. It seems fucking far fetched. Dave Smith is just one dude speaking into a microphone, and he is changing the fucking world. And he cannot
be alone in that fight. And I will not let him be alone in that fight. And you shouldn't either. We should all be fucking circling the wagons. Get after it. We have an opportunity here. Don't let it fucking slip through your fingers with some puritanical, nonsensical spiraling. It's fucking stupid, it's a waste your time. I promise you. I did it for a long time. I did it for most of my life. We have an opportunity here. It's the best opportunity we've ever had. Let's see what we can
make of it. That's all I'm asking. All Right, let's get in my interview with the great Tom Woods. He has the Tom Woods Show. He's written a dozen books or something crazy amount. I've read three of them. He's a great guy, absolute wealth of knowledge. If you don't know the Tom Woods Show, you ought to be subscribed to it. If you don't know Tom Woods, well you're
about to find out, guys. Brilliant. We get into the tariff's argument because I wanted to basically use him as a sounding board or a soundboard to bounce my ideas off of him as to like, is this feasible? Could we actually reply the income tax with tariffs? I'll save you the answer, I'll let him give it to you, and I think you'll enjoy this conversation. It was very
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In fact, we should probably make a video you me and Dave Vig.
We love you. Don't make us change, don't don't break my heart for it. I can't handle it.
Yeah, I know, I know we could.
We could sing yeah to the tune of Don't Go Break in My Heart by Elton John and Kid.
All right, well, let's see, all libertarians oppose taxation. Tariffs are a tax, and therefore libertarians oppose tariffs. I have I have never really given serious thought to tariffs because they are taxes, and I'm just like, well, I don't like taxes, and I haven't dug much deeper than that. Sure, I've I've read some of our greats in this this arena,
but that's kind of the depth of my knowledge. I'm much more in the Fed policy, interest rate policy lane And obviously Donald Trump made major news by talking about perhaps which is unlikely to happen, but perhaps getting rid of the income tax and moving to a tariff based tax a lah the late eighteen hundreds. He said this on the Joe Rogan Experience. So today I have on the great Tom Woods to tell me why tariffs in any form are bad, or perhaps if this is a
workable plan. So what do you what do you think? In Tom?
Well, Okay, first of all, if I really felt like I was being presented with a plan whereby we would ditch income taxation, and replace it with tariffs.
And I knew for a fact that that was what was going to happen.
I could, I would probably be on board for that. I would consider that a marginal improvement, you know. And you may think that my reasons are self interested or unconvincing, but for one thing, I feel like I, as an individual, I would have much much less imposition on my time and labor in preparing taxes, and I would have far less rusion into the my you know, into my privacy and private life and where I'm earning my income and all the different sources and having to track every last thing.
And I would rather avoid that if I could.
Also, there are limits to how high tariffs can go, because eventually they get so high that they become protective tariffs. Now, for for some Trumpers, that's a that's a feature, not a bug, that's the goal. There are a lot of products people do want to buy, and if you try to levy one hundred percent tariff on them, yeah, they'll very reluctantly buy the domestic version. But that's not a long term strategy. I mean, you're not going to become
competitive on the world stage by doing that. You're you're going to encourage your domestic industry to be inefficient and lousy. But anyway, So, but the whole point of this thing is, first of all, I don't believe that's what would happen. I think what would happen is we would still have income taxation, and then we would also have a bunch of tariffs on top of that, which I think is practically speaking, what's more likely to happen, which is why
I would be concerned about it. Now I come to you, Clint, not as somebody somebody who has TDS. You know that I'm not somebody who automatically rejects something just because Trump recommends it.
I'm not one of those people.
But I.
Don't like the tariff stuff, even though I will say that the main reason I've argued against I argue against tariffs is really the main libertarian reason, which is that it's a destructive thing to do to the economy.
We'll get to that in a minute.
But there are other arguments that I don't address directly. I mean, I suppose I could, and I have addressed on the Tom Wood Show, like it's better for us not to be dependent on potentially hostile forces, for necessities in case of a war, and so it's good for us to be self sufficient. Or another argument is we can use the threat of in effect closing American markets to force recalcitrant trade partners to liberalize their policies so
as to allow Americans to sell more to them. And now, now that's a different argument from we're going to use tariffs to save American manufacturing. That was really the main thing we were told was the virtue of these things that will save American manufacturing with them. Now it's interesting our friend Gene Epstein, who is the who runs the SOHO Forum in New York and he moderates debates. He participated in a debate at the SOHO Forum with economist
Stephen Moore. And Steve Moore worked with Trump for a little while in the White House, and Moore is a free trader, no doubt about it. But he was arguing in that debate that actually Trump could very well wind up doing more good than harm with his particular with tariffs, because he was using them, he said, as leverage to get other countries to open up to American exports. And he said, now, initially I went in there as a free trade purist, and I said, you're full of it
and this is all wrong. But then I observed with my own eyes that it was a useful negotiating tool. So again, so that is that's a strategic question we can argue with back and forth. But it's worth noting that when Jane tried arguing against that, he actually lost the debate. I don't know if Jane's going to listen to this episode, Clint, but he lost that debate. Steve Moore won that debate in front of basically an audience of libertarians. But my main concern is I think it's
a false promise. I don't think you're going to save American manufacturing this way. But secondly, I think I understand why people have a kind of a nostalgic attachment to manufacturing because they think, well, that means we're making things, and I know that make things is better than not making things. But at this point, manufacturing amounts to seven percent of all jobs in the US. Now, I mean that's a small number. It used to be thirty seven.
So I would just start with, we have to explain why this fetish for just this seven percent of the economy that we would want to rearrange everything in order to accommodate simply that.
Well, and then I'll give you one. I'll let you jump in a second. I know it's your own.
Show, but no, please.
If I don't finish this point, I'm gonna forget it, which is that there's other manufacturing though that would be hurt by tariffs that are supposed to protect manufacturing. So, for example, I gave the example in a recent post on x in which I said, it's true that you could perhaps save some jobs in the steel industry by
putting a high tariff on imported steel. There are one hundred and forty thousand jobs in the steel industry, and you could very well say, see, look those jobs are still there, and why because of this terrif I implemented. The problem with that is apart from the fact that it's not making American steel competitive to give it this
kind of special advantage. But the real issue is there are two million American jobs that involve manufacturing that requires steel as one of its inputs, and now suddenly all these firms have to deal with a sudden artificial rise in the price of steel, and this will harm the marginal producers and the employees of these marginal firms will lose their jobs, but nobody will know that that's why they lost their jobs.
I'm looking on the name of statistics.
I'm blinking on the end of the economists. I'm sure you'll remember the scene versus the unseen with Frederick Bastiat Basia. So this is the unseen example. Yeah, the unseen are the jobs that you lose on the inside on the inverse of this.
Exactly, exactly, because what's seen is, of course, we can see with our physical eyes the jobs that are quote unquote protected by these tariffs. But what we we have to see with our mind's eye because our physical eyes fail us. Here are the other jobs that would be lost, but that won't be ear marked in the same way. You know, these steel jobs were earmarked by the tariff, and we know that they're going to get special protection, But who knows about all these other jobs that are
just spread out throughout the economy. That'll just be some inexplicable rise in unemployment that nobody can account for.
So that's a problem.
Well, I mean the way the the BLS does employment statistics these days, all of the jobs are unseen because they I mean they just continue to manipulate the figures
to confuse everything. But all right, so I'm gonna I'm gonna steal man some oppositional points because I have actually made this argument on my show, not knowing about gene Epstein's experience debating this topic, that I do think that if we're going to advocate on behalf of a free market, well, doesn't it make sense to use whatever leverage we have to try and beat down oppositional tariffs, tariffs that are
on our goods that we're exporting to people. I mean, if you look at Europe, if you look at much of the world, you have extraordinary tariffs that are levied against American products which make it completely uncompetitive for us to export our goods. There. On the flip of that, we import a ton of their goods, so they want
to sell into our market. It seems very likely that they would relent and they would drop their tariffs in order for us to be able to export some of our goods and to compete a little bit more readily. Is that not advocating, Yes, it's using state power. But is it because we're already dealing with state intervention in
the tariffs that exist from our oppositional side. Is that not kind of getting us into a better place to have a nego shating a chip that the President can go sit down with Emmanuel McCrone and say, hey, I don't want to do this, but Champagne is now tariffed unless you you drop the tariffs on American auto automobiles for instance.
Yeah, now, I don't.
I don't dispute that. It's it's conceivable that that could work out. But it's also conceivable that a trade war can go on for an extended period of time, that it can actually go on for years, and in the past sometimes has gone on for years, and then then we have a problem. And I should also note this is especially acute at a time when consumer prices are rising.
Now you may say that the rate at which they are rising is lower than it was a year and a half ago or something, but they're still rising faster than we'd like, and people are complaining about this.
Well, you're not.
There's no way you're going to reverse that by imposing a tariff on the inputs that everybody needs to use to produce their goods. That's that's not going to We want to get the most inexpensive inputs we can. So even if there's a country that is being stupidly belligerent in their trade policy, if the result of it is we get inexpensive inputs for our manufacturing here.
Why don't we just take them?
Right?
I mean that there's a pretty good argument for that. Why don't we just take those inexpensive inputs rather than say, well, maybe two years from now, I'll force them to back down. It's another two years of people having to deal with rising prices. I'd rather get low cost inputs now sure, rather than gamble on well, how good of a negotiating stance will our trade negotiators have?
I you know, I don't. I don't know.
Well, I think I think that the the My concern is that, you know, the statistics that you brought up earlier, that it used to be thirty something thirty seven percent or whatever it was that was manufacturing jobs, and now it's down to single digits. It's like, well, that is the argument for tariffs. I mean, that's that's what Trump is going to argue, is that, hey, the reason that that we're getting our lunch eaten is because they are
protecting their industries and we're not protecting ours. I mean, that's what they're going to say to you. So what would you respond to, Yeah.
Well, manufacturing is also falling in China, it falls everywhere because of productivity improvements. So we don't need as many physical people doing it. So it's the same process that occurred in agriculture. We don't need ninety eight percent of the public to be engaged in agriculture, and so we have For example, I understand that we think of manufacturing as being the backbone of the middle class that you get you can have a good middle class income in manufacturing.
But the thing is, there are huge swaths of the American economy where you can earn as much or more in construction. We have something like seven million construction jobs, and they generally pay better than in manufacturing. But for some reason, there's we don't have this weird attachment to those jobs even though they're buying large better jobs. Or the household sector has at least six million in jobs that pay better. We have a million jobs in oil
and gas extraction, same thing. And we have probably fifty plus million people who are in management positions or professional occupations that are in the non manufacturing part of the private sector. They're all earning at least middle class income. So for seventy five years, the share of the US economy devoted to manufacturing has been declining, regardless of what the trade policy has been, regardless of what domestic policy, we've had, none of it. It's like trying to stop
COVID with a mask. It's going to just do its thing regardless of what you do, because it's just natural, just the way the way life works. So are we going to impose what I think harms us? It certainly harms consumers, and it harms a whole lot of unnamed people in employment. For you know, on behalf of a seven percent that has been declining through benign forces for three quarters of a century.
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really compelling argument. Let me give you one more oppositional argument and see what you think about it, because this is one that I've thought about myself, that that yes, I agree with you that as you go through the industrialization process, eventually you move into more of a service based economy or creation economy as opposed to just you know,
nuts and bolts type of stuff. And but because the US dollar has the reserve currency the status reserve currency status via the cantal On effect, essentially like you're always going to have if you are the reserve currency country, you're going to have maximal purchasing power from the US dollar domestically. Let me pause there and just ask you do you think that's accurate? First off, that because we have the printing price and we have access to the
dollars first and at the lowest interest rates. Mostly you would assume that that, in fact, inflationary pressures are felt globally worse than they are felt domestically or.
No, I think they're lower domestically than they would be otherwise we'll say that.
Yeah.
So the reason I bring that up is that if you want to maintain the reserve currency status, it seems to me that you are basically expediting the hollowing out of the kind of middle class America. And I know middle class has been synonymous with industry. It doesn't have to be. It probably shouldn't at this point, but that's how a lot of people view it. And I'm just concerned that, Like I think the libertarian answer here is, well,
we shouldn't be the reserve currency. Any of the deleitarious consequences that come from that, you know, beneficial position, or just the price you pay to be that that you're able to now borrow and spend more than any other country on earth. Deal with the consequences of that. But for the middle class in this country, they're looking at it, they don't think in these this.
Realm at all.
I mean, if we're being honest, like they're not going to think about any of this higher level stuff. But do you think that it's kind of inevitable that if you are the US, like if you are the global reserve currency, that you are essentially going to be in this position where almost everything gets produced outside of your land mass. I know that was a very complicated question, but I hope it makes sense.
I'm not sure that that has to follow, but I would have to. I would have to sit down and plot that one out. I'm not sure it has to follow that that in the in an arrangement where you have a fiat currency that operates as a reserve currency, and it just means that it's a in practical terms, it means that it's widely used or it's used in a bunch of places, and it is it's it's it's accepted and used in a lot of international transactions because it is noted for its stability compared to others.
But seventy percent of global trade is US dollars from what I've read, right, So it's a lot.
But I it could just be my inability to comprehend all this, But I don't think that necessarily even if it did lead to that outcome, then I still feel like I feel like once you understand how a market economy works, you realize that every time there's an attempt to manipulate it, to shift it around, to try to stop this what is perceived to be an undesirable phenomenon from occurring, that you're basically playing whack a mole because every one of these things that you hit winds up
creating another problem that wasn't there before. And then you hit that problem, and then there's another problem. So that's what I'm talking about with regard to the use of tariffs. Yeah, I understand, for example, that there's already intervention in the global economy and that there are other countries that have tariffs that are interrupting the free flow of international trade,
and so we want to whack that mole. But the problem is then we wind it turns out that we're actually harming ourselves, and not just because of likely trade retaliation, which, by the way, in I know it's fashionable these days to say the smooth Hawley tariff work. The trade retaliation against that was widespread and in a huge number of
industries it was. It was not a minor thing. But even if we didn't get any of that, somehow we miraculously avoid that, we still have the problem of we're crippling ourselves by artificially propping up certain prices in the US economy of things we need to produce the consumer goods whose high prices we are all complaining about. So it's like, no matter what we do, every mole we hit pops up another.
One another way.
So I feel like even if we try to, you know, even if, as you're suggesting, you could come up with a scenario that well, because of the United States unique position, it needs to impose this policy. The policy, it seems to me, seems self defeating, and so that for every problem it seems like it solves, it's creating three problems.
Yeah. No, I understand that logic. That does make a lot of sense to me. It's just I'm I guess I really want to get rid of the income text, and I'm I'm trying to figure out a way that this makes more sense. And you know, I do think that it probably would be preferable just for privacy purposes, as you said earlier, Yeah, I would rather have it. Yeah, And I think I mean from my understanding, our GDP, or like, our total consumption is somewhere around thirty trillion
in America and only ten percent of that is actually imported. Good. So if you could truly get rid of the income tax and replace it just with tariffs on that that ten percent of total consumption in America, well that seems like a trade off worth making. But I don't think you could actually do that because you need to bring in I mean, the way they're spending right now, you need to bring in three four, five six trillion dollars worth of taxes through tariffs.
Good luck issue like.
Ain't happening, brothers. So you got to cut the government. Then you could actually get back to a tariff's based, you know, funding model. But we're nowhere near what size of government we were in the late eighteen hundreds.
So and that's what the problem is.
That that's why we can't unfortunately we can't immediately do this, is that we're going to try to do it while still wanting to maintain the spending level that we have now. They were able to do it in the eighteen hundreds because, as Ron Paul would say, they had a different philosophy of government back.
Then exactly, and yeah, they would not be.
And the way tariffs work is that if you think, well we're not generating enough revenue, we'll just raise them.
The more you raise them.
The less people, you know, the less likely people are to pay them, because they will look for alternatives to the taxed goods.
And so if you you.
Know, whereas it's a Laffer curve of tariffs.
It is a Laffer curve of tariffs with income text.
I think you can go higher and hire and hire, and people do still they keep working because they want money in general, but I don't need that particular kind of car. So I could just absolutely cut that out entirely, and then where are they They can't make, you know, so maybe they could put a ten percent tariff for a twenty or thirty, but once they get to forty fifty sixty, thinking they're going to get more money, they're not.
And I think the Laffer curve, as we're calling it for international trade would say that probably appears much faster than it does with the income tax.
Makes sense to me. All right, do you have a few more minutes? I got to ask you one more thing. Yeah, that's anything you want, all right, so I'm sure you saw the the quote tweet from the President Alex's son of our good friend, mister Davey Smith, that happened yesterday, and I wanted to flow a concept past you and I I just knowing you as well as I do at this point, I have a feeling you've been thinking the same thing. First Off, it's unrecking, believably cool that
this is happening. It's so it's so novel to just see like a guy I know really well. I got to talk to Don Junior for an hour out in Iowa before I ROL started Josie and I did. I got to talk to the guy. I talked to him about a bunch of stuff that it was off the record, so I won't give details. But he's not too far away from us. I know people won't believe me. They'll think I've sold out or whatever. Like, No, this dude is pretty red pilled.
Yeah, I'm pretty I've been reasonably impressed with him, from which I've been able to glean.
Yeah. Well, and I'm telling you off off the record, off the mic, he is even more one of us, Like I really like him a lot. So anyway, setting that aside, what I was thinking to myself is like doctor Ron Paul, the Great Ron Paul, the legend himself. He is, he made his name by being doctor No, by basically not getting much past but just saying no to everything and holding the line, so to speak. But almost the government, you know, grew tremendously during his tenure.
I feel as if we are seeing a new iteration of Ron Paul in Dave Smith through a microphone, not through wielding hard power of a vote in Congress, but rather through soft power of just being influential. And I'm not sure that Dave won't actually be able to get more done than Ron Paul did in Congress for decades. And I'm just thinking, what are your thoughts on that? Am I am? I totally swinging out of my shoes ears that does that seem like a possible at this point?
Well, I'll say this.
He is on every large program. I mean, he's just been on everything. He's been on everything you'd want to be on. He's been on, and everybody likes him. I mean everybody, every host of these shows loves having Dave Smith on because they know it'll be entertaining and interesting and that yeah, he'll sound kind of like some of the Trump people they have on, but not entirely, and he'll be way different on in areas where the hosts themselves feel like Dave's probably the one who's right here
and to watch him. He's he's good at it. He's good at it too. I mean I think that's you know, we can't discount that. It's not happen never dance. Yeah, I mean, it's not happenstance that this has happened. I mean he's really good and also he's funny and engaging, and he knows the details too, Like he really spends time learning the material. So if he's going to do a debate, you know the other side, I better be ready because Dave is.
Ready, As is always the case. Liberty Lockdown is brought to brought to you by fanex on me on Dshan phoenixmo dot com. They have a great Twitter page X page if you haven't checked them out already, it's at Phoenix Mo. That's f E nix A m m O. And if you're running low, the only place to go is Phoenix ammo dot com. You don't need a promo code because they're just savages and they sponsor me because they love me and I love them, and it's just mutual,
and you ought to love them. And you have to get all your Ammo there, because then you'll love yourself a little bit more. So. You don't need a promo code because they already give you a discount when you buy in bulk, and if you're a libertarian, you're already buying in bulk. Hate to break it to you, Finix, that's Phoenix Ammo dot com. Get you some. He was on the arguably maybe not the largest, but one of
the largest live streams during the presidential election. He then catches a red eye, gets on Info Wars with Alex Jones the next day, and then that night is on with Joe Rogan, the largest show in the world, I mean, in a in a forty eight hour period, he reaches I don't know, twenty something million people, and then he's getting quote tweeted by the son of the President of the United States the next day, and then he's basically galvanizing is what you would think would not be our movement,
but kind of is. At this point where he's saying, hey, it's fantastic that Haley and POMPEII are kept out. That's not enough. And then Don Junior is just like, I got you, brother, We're we're going way harder than this. And I'm like, this is a fucking legendary run. Excuse my language, but this is a seventy two hour stretch that pales in comparison anything I've ever seen. And I'm
just sitting here like this is miraculous. I mean, Dave had the opportunity to easily get the nomination and run for president, but it's so crystal clear that this was the better route to go that his influence has grown far more, in my opinion, than had he run for the presidency. And I might add, had he ran, there's a decent chance that Kamala Harris is the president of the United States right now. So how do you like all that?
Yeah, I agree with every single thing you said. That A lot of us were disappointed when he didn't run, but it turned out to be the best decision he could have made. And not to mention, uh, he has a lot of things to say that that people on the right need to hear. Now, everybody needs to hear. People on the right need to be corrected on some of their you know, some of their problematic I hate using the word problem ditch that word on some of
their incorrect views. And he is a really good guy to correct them because he's not lecturing them, he's not calling them names like they'll listen to a guy like Dave Smith, and that's really important.
And he wouldn't have been able to do that.
If he had run, let's say he'd run on the Libertarian Party ticket. He would have got enough attention that Trump would have given him a name, you know, one of those nicknames like Lil Marco or whatever, and that would have stuck with him for uh, Dave right, And then that would have stuck with him. It would have been impossible from that moment on for him ever to crack into a world that needs to hear what he.
Has to say.
And you may have noticed that, Bill Kristal, you remember the guy. I now think of Bill Crystal, not as the publisher of the old Weekly Standard or the frequent cable TV news commentator, but as the guy who lost a debate to Scott Wharton.
I think of him that way too.
Bill Crystal pounced when Donald Trump Junior quote tweeted Dave and pointed out.
Oh, well, look at Dave three months ago he was anti Israel or some stupid thing like that.
And the response to that was overwhelming, Like, Bill, your day is over.
Bill, it's over.
Like no one cares about what You don't even get invited on MSNBC anymore, Like no one even cares about your neo con views. So Bill's post criticizing Dave got something like two hundred and fifty likes. Dave responded and get thirty eight thousands, like Bill, it's over.
Okay, you're the crank.
Now, it's a new era.
I mean, it's right, we're dictating the agenda now, not you, Bill, We're cleaning up the mess you made.
It's it's truly, it's truly amazing. I think for the younger libertarians out there that feel like this is normal, this is not normal. We are kicking the shit out of neo cons in public in their territory. Not only that, but all of the conservative thought leaders, like the real conservative thought leaders, the Tucker Carl Since the Candice Owns. Oh, they're all personal friends with Dave Smith at this point, and they all sound almost exactly like him when it
comes to foreign policy, Like really really close. So I just, I just I think I've I've struggled to deal with the amount of optimism that I've had over the past week. I have never in my life been so hopeful and optimistic about politics in my lifetime, and it's like it I'm so accustomed to being pessimistic that I feel like there's like there's I'm waiting for the other shoot to drop. Have you dealt with that at all?
Yeah, I mean that's why I'm I'm actually lowering my expectations because I don't want to be disappointed. I don't really think, for example, like I'm not actually optimistic that they're really gonna cut spending. I don't think anybody cares about spending. I mean, yeah, I know Elon Musk might cut some government employees or something. I really am skeptical about that, but I've decided that nobody cares about that, So that's just not happening.
So now I'll move on to the next thing that I care about.
But I do want to say one more thing about Dave if I may, which is how gracious he is in this situation. You know, I know somebody'll maybe I'll tell you his name off the air.
You probably know him.
Who very very quickly skyrocketed to the top in terms of media attention and popularity and then had a dramatic fall. And I'm not talking about Milo somebody else. And once he made that, once he broke through and became a bit of a phenomenon, he forgot all about his friends. It really, like was the old story. He forgot all about his friends because he's a fancy, gut person now and he moves in all these fans circles. He doesn't need them anymore. And not only is Dave not that way.
You know, he still texts, you know, a low life like me.
You know, I still talk to him.
But beyond that, he gets on these shows and he builds up his friends right till say. You know, Scott Horton has the classic book on this. It's already a classic, hasn't even come out yet, And you really should talk to him like Dave will do. You know, he's debating Chris Cuomo. He brings my book and puts it on the table and says, you should read this.
I was there for that, by the way, Oh were you okay?
I saw I was.
I think I was at a concert or something I was seeing. I think I was seeing an earth Wind and Fire and Lionel Richie that night.
I was sitting back back row in the in the right but I remember seeing your book and I was like, this is so awesome. By the way, I just got to point out that is a knock on effect. I think Dave probably is this type of person anyways, but that is a major knock on effect of his relationship to Joe Rogan, because what has Joe Rogan done. He has brought all of his friends up with him. He
has turned all of them into superstars. That's exactly what Dave's trying to do because he feels that same sort of gratitude towards Rogan, and he's trying to be the same guy, in my opinion, and I think it's and also I just think he's a good person and he wants to help where he can, and he realizes, like, yeah, a lot of these ideas I got from these guys, I'm gonna leave them behind, like of course.
Not, yeah, yeah, yeah, So I feel like it couldn't happen to a more deserving guy. And it happened in part because he seized every opportunity that came his way. And by that, I mean he had opportunities to debate people that he seized upon and took them and did it. And those debates, either the debates themselves went viral or clips of the debates went viral. So then people started seeing him. He'd been on Rogan all this time, so
that doesn't hurt. And so but all of a sudden, you know, in your feed, whatever platform you're on, but these days it's X I suppose is what where all the normal people are? You keep seeing the same guy over and over and you think, well, why am I not talking to him?
Yep, No, And just to prove your point that he hasn't left any of us behind, I texted the guy while he was on the PbD live stream during the election night, and I told him I think it's over.
I think Trump's got this. And he responds right away, and you know, I won't say the details of what we talked about, but yeah, he's just he's a real one man, and he and he's a true believer, and he's got incredible capacity to argue our points in a compelling fashion that can absolutely flatten our opposition but also embrace people that are not us, and most libertarians can't do that. So all of the haters, all of the people in the Libertarian party that are like, ah, fuck
Dave Smith, You're an idiot. Okay, oh you are awesome.
You will never have one millionth even a millionth of Dave's influence. And as I say, it's happening to him.
Because he put in the time, he put in the work.
I mean, he's told me when I've interviewed him about his early days that he went like two years on part of the problem with basically no traction at all, none, and he just kept at it and kept at it and kept at it. So you know, it's it's an overnight success that took years, which is true of most overnight successes.
By the way, that's right, Yep, he's been doing it for fifteen years. And people will say where'd this guy come from. It's like, well, he put in the time, and he's.
Like, by the way, now I get to brag to people because Dave was a groomsman at my wedding. Oh no, when I introduced when I was with Canvas Owens, I told her that as a way of kind of explaining, Look, you know, I'm a good guy.
Here's how I prove it.
But then I tell them, Then I tell them that Michael Malice was my best man, and they just stop, like with a cold white expression, like a ghost, like, oh my gosh, what what kind of a best man speech did that guy give?
And all I can say is you wish you could have been there?
Oh I bet, I bet it's It's legendary, no doubt. Anyways, the great Tom Woods tell people where they can follow.
You, Tom tom Woods dot com. And at the very top of tom woods dot com you can even do what every instinct in your body is telling you not to do, which is sign up for my email list. You think I don't want to get any emails. I know you don't, but you do want to get mine unless you have brain damage.
So Tom wars dot com.
Tom woos dot com. Uh, listening to the Tom Wood Show. He's great. You'll learn a lot if you haven't already been deep down this rabbit hole. And even if you have, he'll teach you more as I brought him on today to you know, steal man and uh and devour any arguments in favor of tariffs. So I appreciate your time Tom, and thank you guys so much for tuning in. Hit the like button, subscribe, shared around, and leave a comment down below If I got anything wrong, which I'm sure
I did, Appreciate it. Appreciate you guys. See you so peace.
Welcome to Liberty Lockdown, Plea's got your walk home to Liberty ain't come, but yeah it's on home.
Where did it come from? And where did he go