Welcome in Clay Travis, Buck Sexton Show. Appreciate all of you hanging out with us as we were rolling in on a Thursday edition of the program. All Right, we got a lot of breaking news, many of you wondering, and we are still waiting for the biggest breaking news on the show, which is Buck and Carrie Sexton and the baby update. Last night they said, hey, actually we don't want you coming in tonight to deliver the baby.
They have gone in today.
Texting with Buck last night, I'm trying to stay out of the line of fire here because I know, having been through three deliveries, it's a little bit crazy. We will update you as news arrives. But I told Buck last night when they got the pass, like, hey, you might as well watch Gladiator tonight. You don't have to go in for the I'm sure Carrie couldn't be any more excited. She's got another night at home nine pregnant. You guys should definitely crank up Gladiator. Maybe maybe Brave Heart,
maybe you can double down. So we will update you on Baby Watch twenty twenty five as we get updates here. But the result is I am with you solo at least for today and tomorrow. Don't know how long Buck will stay out with the baby coming, But that is that update.
All right.
A lot of different news stories going on right now. Let me hit you with the absolute latest. Positive. Inflation is softening. It has hit the lowest rate two point four percent since COVID. Basically it has actually turned negative, which is very positive. We will break all that down. That is this morning's news. A budget resolution has passed the House, which will allow us to theoretically get one big beautiful bill from the from the House and the Senate.
They will now move into reconciliation. It passed two sixteen to fourteen after it was held over last night, and so we are going to get the tax cut. All of that. The details need to be hammered out. That is on its way. Also, we have further an addition of the tariffs coming down on China. One hundred and forty five percent is now the tariff level that Trump
has put on too China. Yesterday, the stock market had an absolute record day after a ninety day pause was put into place on the tariffs for every other country. But Trump now continues to escalate the China trade war. He has isolated China, and the tariff is now up to one hundred and forty five percent onto China. Stocks have begun to backtrack as Trump is saying that China
is the worst trade abuser in history. So all of that is underway, many different aspects of breaking news associated with it, and so all of those right now underway again. Stock market has turned negative. It has been a absolute roller coaster for everybody paying attention to the trade. Yesterday was the best day that we have seen percentage wise
nearly in the history of the stock market. But as I am talking to you right now, to the extent that I am now also a financial news analyst, the S and P five hundred down about four and a half percent after raising rising itself nearly ten percent yesterday. So all of that going on right now, we do have we have some audio clips to put into context. Let me put that all into context for you. First cut one, this was Stuart Varney saying inflation softening. It's
now at two point four percent. That is lower than the expected rate.
Let's take a big, deep breath. There's a whirl wind coming at you and your money. We'll start with inflation. Last month, consumer prices went down zero point one percent in the last year, they're up only two point four percent. Those are favorable numbers. Inflation is softening.
Okay, So inflation softening, hitting a four year low.
Uh.
And also this was CNN pointing out as you heard Stuart Varney say, there, actually prices have actually gone down. This is cut twenty four, which is an updated version of what CNN is saying.
Listen to this.
Consumer prices month over month. So this was actually a drop of point one percent, negative point one percent.
That's the first time we've seen.
That since COVID.
Year over year, the annual inflation rate was at two point four percent. This was also better than expected and a six month low, moving in the right direction. As far as why this happened, there's a few drivers. One thing that really played a role here, as you can see the trend here at the inflation rate dipping a little bit.
One of the drivers was energy.
The fact that gasoline prices did not move up like they usually do in the month of March.
That really helped.
Okay, so that is the updated inflation numbers. Why does this matter, Well, certainly, inflation got to nine percent under Joe Biden. Remember it started off at one point eight percent when he came into office in January of twenty twenty one, rapidly skyrocketed to nine percent, and we have been fighting the inflation battle since to bring it all the way back down to now two point four percent.
Trump is arguing, and I think there is some base in truth for this, that the overall interest rates set by the Fed need to be dropped as well. Obviously, that is why we're dealing with seven percent still ish thirty year mortgage rates that many of you have got in your lives that have locked you up and are keeping you from moving into a new house or maybe even putting your house on the market because you don't want to give up the number that you got. Okay,
all of this is complicated. Let's go back into the tariff universe. Here Trump was asked about why he decided to put a ninety day pause in place. This is something that we told you on the show. We thought made a lot of sense. And Trump is saying, hey, we are rewarding the countries that have not retaliated with higher rates of tariffs. And here is Trump cut four speaking to the press, saying he was watching the bond market and he was concerned about how the bond mark market was moving.
Listen to cut four.
I was watching the bond market. That bond market is very tricky. I was watching it. But if you look at it now, it's beautiful. The bond market right now is beautiful. But yeah, I saw it last night where people are getting a little queasy.
I think everything had well.
The big move wasn't what I did today.
The big move was what I did on Liberation Day. We had Liberation Day in America, were liberated from all of the horrible deals.
That were made.
Okay, so that is Trump. Here's Trump as well. He is asked, well, let's first see Trump has asked why Democrats wanted tariffs in the past. If you've seen Nancy Pelosi, if you've seen all of these other Democrats, Chuck Schumer talk about the necessity for tariffs. Here is cut six. Trump is praising a reporter who asked why Democrats wanted tariffs back then.
Now they hate them Duck Humor and Nancy Pelosi. They've been talking about tariffs for decades.
How come when these Democrat elifs want tariffs, everything's hunky jory. But when President Trump wants tariffs all help breaks the Do you see this double standard?
I love this guy, whoever the hell that is. That's really I appreciate that question. No, Chuck, chumor Nancy, everybody knew you how to do it, but they never had the guts to do it. It does take guts. It even takes guts for our country to go through it. That's why I say, be cool. They would taking about just be cool. It's gonna work out. It's gonna work out, and it's it's working out. I can tell you working out, maybe faster than I thought. But I said, it's you know,
it's gonna take a little conditioning. It's a transition to it's really I think it's a transition to greatness. It's gonna be greatness. Our country is going to be there'll be nothing like it, and people investing in our country they're going to do better than they've ever done before.
Okay, so let's talk about where we are right now. Effectively, Trump has isolated China. The terif rate on China, as I said, has now been elevated to one hundred and forty five percent. Every other country out there effectively is in a tariff pause. They are negotiating. I think you will see in the near future Trump start to announce trade agreements with England, with Japan, with South Korea, Australia,
countries that we have strong relationships with. I don't think it will take very long for those new deals to go into place. In the meantime, what he has now done is effectively announce hey, this is the United States versus China. And he has isolated China so that they are standing alone in terms of how this battle is playing out. And he has elevated tariffs to now one
hundred and forty five percent on Chinese goods. This handcuffs China in a substantial degree because China relies on exports to the United States for a massive part of its overall economic growth, and if China is not able to move those exports to the United States, I believe Trump is right here that China is going to have to sue for peace, and we will get at some form or fashion. In theory, a trade agreement that is fair for America helps to protect American jobs and helps to
allow American business to more fairly compete with China. What Trump has smartly done is he has recognized now that every other country is coming to the table and that we now are going to be in a position to negotiate better deals there too as well. And here's what I would also just continue to tell all of you. I'm going to give you stock market updates here and there. I understand this is not CNBC, this is not Fox Business.
But what I would encourage all of you to do is recognize you don't buy and sell stocks, or at least most of you should not on a day to day basis. You shouldn't make emotional decisions when it comes to your investments. And the analogy that I have made that I think is a really good one is your house. If you are fortunate enough to own a home, your home has a fluctuating value. Any given day, it can be up or down depending on whether someone is interested
in buying your house or not. You don't day trade homes because you know that the home is the foundation. You're not only owning an asset, it's also where your family lives. It's where you put your head down at night. You're not typically going to be selling your home and worried about the cost on a day to day basis, week to week basis, even month to month basis in an ideal scenario, there are substantial costs associated with selling homes.
As a result, most people, the best investment they ever make is buying a home, living in that home, and being able one day to profit on the increased value of that home. If you treat your stocks like you treat your home, then you are going to be in a far better position. And I'm not telling you to do something different. Then what I do. I buy s and P five hundred index funds. I put them in basically my bank accounts, my investment accounts, and I don't
really touch them. And over time, you are going to make eight or nine percent a year on that, and every ten years your money's gonna double. If you do that, you are betting on American growth and the exceptionalism and the capitalistic dynamism of the entire United States, and you don't have to worry about day to day market fluctuations
in price. That's what I would encourage you to do, because emotion often leads you to make poor choices, and if you make poor choices, then ultimately you and your family end up bearing the brunt of those poor choices. What do I mean by poor choices, I mean, by and large, what often happens is people sell at the absolute bottom of the market and they buy at the absolute top of the market. If you just keep your assets. And by the way, people say, oh, Clay, you've got more.
So what I'm doing the same thing now as I did a decade ago when I had a negative net worth, when I still had a lot of school loans that I was paying off. It doesn't matter whether you have five hundred dollars to invest or five hundred million dollars to invest. What I would be telling you is the exact same advice. We'll take your calls. We've got a couple of great guests coming your way, Steven Moore. We're
trying to get economic experts on the program. Yesterday we had doctor Art Laugher of the Laugher Curve, one of the foremost American economists in the entire country, come on and talk to all of you today. Steven Moore, one of Trump's top economic advisors, will be with us. Historically, Stephen Moore has been at one thirty one of the smartest guys on the right in all of the world. Douglas Murray is going to be on to talk about his brand new book, and those are two guests that
are coming during the course of the day. And as I said, we will continue to update you on Buck and carry Sexton baby watch if there is more news to share with you there. But in the meantime, I've got you. I'll have you today and tomorrow. At a minimum. We'll see when Buck comes back as a new dad. But we appreciate all of you hanging out with us in what is a dynamic and rapidly evolving media environment
with so much news going on. Again, biggest news story I would say right now is that the budget resolution has passed the House, which is going to allow the big beautiful bill that Trump favors to actually become law, and that is going to preserve the tax cuts among other things. As that continues to play itself out, but I want to tell you, everybody's got a fire extinguish
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Making America great again isn't just one man, It's many. The Team forty seven podcast Sunday's at noon Eastern in the Clay and.
Buck podcast feed.
Find it on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts.
Welcome back in Clay Travis Buck Sexton Show. Appreciate all of you hanging out with us. Stock market stores Yesterday one of the best days in the history of the markets, and the ladies on the View, not surprisingly, had a series of inordinately stupid opinions, even by the standard of inordinate stupidity for which that show is widely known.
Sonny Hostin's says Trump actually.
Was engaging engaging in insider trading.
Here is cut twelve.
Trump tweeted out before this little pause.
He said, this is a great.
Time to buy, and that's really a whistle to those billionaires that can or people that have money that can buy low and then the stock market prices go up. That's generally called insider trading, and that would ordinarily trigger an investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission. We know now that that's not probably going to happen because all
of these government agencies have been destroyed and dismantled. But someone with knowledge of an economic policy change that would cause the markets to shoot back up right before posting about how great a time it is to buy right before the policy change happened, would certainly be guilty of insider trading.
I mean, first of all, he's the president of the United States. Everything that he says moves markets. Secondly, you have to prove, and we probably have a bunch of insider trading experts, you have to prove that someone benefited in some way from insider trading. In other words, my understanding is the president, unlike Hunter Biden, actually has frozen
all of his assets for some time. One of the ways that presidents handle these sorts of situations is, by and large they say, hey, I'm not managing my stocks on a day to day basis. They're outside of my control. They invest in index funds. I mean, it's absolutely bonkers, But yes, Sunny Austin, if it could be proven that Trump was given kickbacks in order to change the to give the ninety day pause on tariffs, then yes, you're right.
This is drastic insider trading, but crazily sunny Houstin is not even the dumbest person on the View the Views, Joy Behar says that Trump is intentionally tanking the economy for his billionaire buddies so that he can make himself a dictator. This is her theory. This is what you're listening to. And you might say, okay, well, why does this matter? There are millions of people that are listening to this show on a daily basis. Here is cut thirteen, Joy Behar with her theory about what's going on.
He's trying to destroy the country. Now why is he doing that? So there's a couple of theories. First of all, if he tanks the entire stock market, not all his billionaire friends can swoop in and buy everything. Look, that's not an original idea. That's Hawkim Jeffrey said that, and in fact, today on Truth Social Trump wrote a great time to buy hmm.
There.
The theory is from James Carville, which I think is interesting that he wants to stoke such instability and chaos to consolidate power for himself so that people start to really go nutspeak, starting to get mad. How mad will people get and how broke will people get and how many jobs will they lost? And then he can say, well, there's too much chaos and now we're going to have martial law in this country and he becomes a dictator.
Okay, this is bonkers. First of all, Trump has been saying it's a great time to buy in America for a long time. He's a pro American leader. But the billionaire buddies thing doesn't even make sense. Okay, do you know where most billionaires have their assets?
The stock market?
Whatever losses are occurring on paper are drastically higher for billionaires than they are for people who are not billionaires. It doesn't make sense that Trump would allow his billionaire buddies to make way more money by driving down the prices of their assets. It again, these are crazy town talks, and that James Carvel says, Hey, what they're trying to do is actually create dictator opportunities for Trump. Again, this is crazy town talk. And I've said this before, but
I do think it bears repeating. If Trump truly wanted to be a dictator, Let's pretend that he called me and he said, Clay, what should I do to become a dictator? The time when Trump had the most dictatorial powers basically of any president in our lives except for George W. Bush right after nine to eleven. Do you know what it was when COVID happened. Do you know what Trump did? He allowed governors to make decisions in their states, and he allowed individual mayors to make decisions
in their cities. If anything, if you were going to criticize Trump, it would actually be for during COVID not taking more executive authority and giving too much power back to the states, because the governors of California and New York, for instance, made disastrous decisions for most of their citizens because Trump deferred to the principles of federalism. Do you know who then took over massive amounts of power and tried to regulate you to the ends of the earth.
Joe Biden when he said if you didn't get the COVID shot that you could be fired from your jobs. Do y'all remember that, I bet most of you do. The only reason that didn't become law was because the Supreme Court said that Joe Biden didn't have the power to do it. Biden is the one who actually took advantage of COVID to implement dictatorial powers. You remember, we're going to have a winter of death. Remember when Joe Biden said his patience was running thin if you weren't
getting the COVID shot I do. And again, this is why the argument that Trump wants to be a dictator and authoritarian is absolutely bonkers. Okay, some of you guys went away in I told you I'd take some calls eight hundred. Uh, you can give us a call to a two to eight A two Sam in Milwaukee.
What you got for us?
All right, thanks for taking my call. I wanted to say, I actually support Trump's tariffs, and I this is somebody who's lucky to be well off. My portfolio went down, you know, by six figures over the last few days. But I think it's it's good for the country, and it's good for blue collar working people. And it's the people who have a lot of money in the stock
market and who profited from outsourcing who are complaining. The other thing I wanted to ask about is in another way to bring jobs back to the US, what do you guys think about replacing minimum wage with an earned income tax credit? Because you know, China has an unfaired advantage they treat their people like slaves. They don't have to adhere to the same safty and environment environmental regulations.
Allowing pre market to dictate a wage and then redistributing as much or as little wealth as you want with earned income tax credit would avoid that as well as encourage people to work.
Thanks, thank you for the call. We're coming up on April fifteenth. We have a situation where less than half of Americans actually pay income taxes. Now, to the caller's point, a lot of people pay payroll taxes if you have a job. And the biggest challenge that we have on a structural level with China is what he just referenced. The average Chinese worker makes a fraction of what the average American worker makes. And by the way, people in China make more money than people in Vietnam or Cambodia.
And so if you're producing a product, you can have wages that would be considered below slave wages in the United States to produce products. I mean, Nike is a good example. This is why I went after the guys in the NBA so aggressively, because they're very happy to rip America to shreds. They never point out that China, for instance, was making Nike shoes back in the day
with legitimate Chinese slave labor. So the modern day slave masters were actually NBA athletes who were profiting making tens of millions of dollars off of Nike shoes being produced by, at least in Xingjiang Province, people who were effectively slaves, and China was bragging about the fact that the cotton to make many of these shoes was coming from basically slave labor production. Now Nike has since pulled some of its production out of China. They moved into the Philippines.
They didn't do that because they're amazingly great human rights advocates. They did it because it was way cheaper to make shoes in the Philippines, because wages went up in China as China became a more industrialized country and it was
cheaper to go elsewhere. And this is one of the biggest challenges in general right about production of goods, is that it is quite a lot cheaper to make goods in foreign countries where they basically have what we would consider in the United States to be slave labor wages.
In places like Vietnam and Cambodia. And what China has done is they have recognized that their overall cheating on the world trade stage, even in China has been caught on some level, but they now have moved production to other countries, which is why figuring out how to rectify all of their cheating when it comes to global trade is so complicated. James in Roanoke, Virginia, what you got for us?
Well, mister Travis, thank you for taking my call. Longtime listeners since the mid eighties. I have a question that I'm really struggling with and I get frustrated when I hear people say that these illegal that are being deported have a ride to a trial. And I've always thought that eagles don't have any rights just based on being illegals, and so I was wondering if you can help them with that circa.
Well, I mean, yes, that's an argument that's going on right now, for instance, with the deportation of Venezuelan illegals. And honestly, it's been a huge debate that has gone
to the Supreme Court several different times. And I want to sound like a lawyer nerd, but this is one reason why Guantanamo exists because if you don't bring prisoners into the United States, and Guantanamo initially was created for nine to eleven prisoners, their rights as enemy combatants are different than the rights of someone who is being prosecuted in American court. And again, this gets really far down into the weeds on exactly what due process rights exist.
The argument here is that because they are here illegally, they have violated American law, and therefore they are not subject to the same due process rights that you or me, or any other American citizen would be. And on the enemy combatant front, which is another angle where they are trying to analyze this, if you were seized in a foreign country, the question of who exactly is an enemy combatant is actually one that is very complicated inside the law.
So the long way around the question is I think that the Trump administration is behaving appropriately when it comes to these individuals. The courts are going to determine exactly how to classify someone who is here in the United States physically present, but does not have the legal right to be here. And so I am of the opinion that the Trump administration has behaved lawfully. I think the Supreme Court will agree Trump is on a winning streak. I think he's won five straight cases in front of
the Supreme Court. But that is the complication that is associated with it. Thank you for listening for a long time, and thank you for calling Carol in my tan you wanted to weigh in on the view. By the way, public information is not insider trading. Another important aspect here. When you say something public, insider information typically has to be something that others do not know. Trump saying now is a good time to buy is immediately public, therefore
everyone can act upon it. Insider trading would require that Trump called friends and said, hey, I'm about to pause the ninety day issue here. I'm about to issue a ninety day tear pause. You should all go by right now. That did not seem to occur, at least based on my watching of the market, because the market did not pop until Trump officially made the statement on truth social that he was pausing the ninety days. So public comments by their very nature are not insider trading because they
are immediately public for everyone but Carol in Montana. I'll get to Carol in Montana and we come back. Pause for that, because I need to do this read. But we'll get to Carol in Montana. I'll get to Greg and Sioux Falls and Jesse and Aurora, Colorado.
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Sometimes all you can do is laugh, and they do a lot of it with the Sunday Hang join Clay and Buck as they laugh it up in the Klay and Buck podcast feed on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts.
News that is out there, Inflation softening down, to two point four percent, the lowest rate in four years. Prices actually went down point one percent since the last reading. Trump has raised tariffs to one hundred and forty five percent on China, and we have a budget resolution that has passed the House two sixteen to to fourteen, which will lead to a tax cut, the big Beautiful bill as Trump is calling it. Also, we'll add more for
border security, many different moving parts. Their stock market back down today after one of the biggest days in the history of stock market rallies yesterday.
We will dive into that a bit more. But we bring on now.
We've been decided Buck and I did a while back, as the tariff process has played itself out, let's bring on people with strong economic backgrounds to talk with all of you. Yesterday we had our laugher on at the same time. Today we have on Stephen Moore, President Trump's former senior economic advisor. He is right now the co founder of Committee to Unleash Prosperity, and we bring him in now. And Steve and I appreciate you making the time for us.
You've been on.
It's been a couple of years since you were on with us last What do you think from an economic perspective, the millions of people listening to us right right now should know about what President Trump is doing and its impact.
Well, Klaie, thanks so much for having me. And by the way, how cool is that you had a laugher on the most famous economists in the world yesterday.
That's pretty cool.
And I have to say that he and I wrote a piece in the Wall Street Journal on Tuesday urging Trump to you know, let's just offer these countries zero terrorists and see if you know they'll lower their terrasts zero, we'd lower ours. And I think that was the impetus for Trump putting this proposal on the table, which I thought was fantastic. That you're right, yesterday was the biggest point increase in the Doubt Jones in the history of
the stock market. Now it's down today, but it's not down nearly as much as it.
Was up yesterday.
And then look, this is going to be a top sea turvy market for the next number of months until we get this settled. But I got to tell you, having worked with Donald Trump and seen him in action out front and personal, this guy is three steps ahead of everybody else on the chess board.
He is a master negotiator. He knows what he's doing.
And in the end, I think from my first advice to people, just now would be a terrible time to sell. You never want to sell, you know, when stocks have been falling. That's violating the first rule of stock convesting. You want to buy low and sell high. But sometimes people get panicked.
That's number one.
Number two. I believe what Trump is trying to do from an economics standpoint is his strategy is to isolate the bad actor, the new Soviet Union of the world, and that is China. China is a country that is a national security and economic security threat to the United States is I think they are to the free world, And so what he's trying to do, I think is unite the rest of the world against a kind of decouple from them because because they are such a threat.
And I think that strategy can work. But we're going to find out. We're going to really see whether or who are friends and allies are and who are our enemies? Will where will Europe be? Will they stand with us? What about Britain? Will they stand with us? What about Japan? What about Canada? We need to unite Trump is the guy to do it.
But we'll see.
Okay, So let's dive into this. You mentioned people who own stocks right now, which is a huge percentage, Yeah, huge percentage of our audience out there, either in pensions for oh one k's or people buying it and selling individual stocks. What would you tell people who are nervous, apprehensive, maybe pay attention to stock prices only when they're really
kind of popping in one way or the other. How should they handle emotional reactions to valuations on the stock market from your perspective as a highly try trained, highly successful economist.
Well, I'm an economist. I'm not a financial analyst, and sometimes sometimes economists are not great stock pickers. Of the great greatest economists who ever lived was Milton Friedman, and he was terrible. It's not investing, so yeah, I'll say that as a prelude to But the advice I'm going to give to your listeners is really pretty straightforward, and I think almost every financial honest would agree with me.
It's called stops for the long run. So in other words, if you're investing for you know, for it returns five years from now, ten years from now, twenty years from now, depending on what your age is, you want to be in the American stock market, it goes up.
It goes up. Now that doesn't mean that you.
Get these kind of downturns, but the real rate of return of the US stock market since the New York Stock Exchange opened its stores, it is like seven percent. So what I'm saying is, if you don't have to take your money out, if you're not cash squeezed right now, keep it in the market. It's going to do well over time. And again I'm not saying a you're from now,
maybe you're from now, maybe a little bit lower. What I'm saying is I feel very very strongly that three years from now, five years from now, you're going to get a nice return on your money. And if anything, I'd be buying stock right now, not selling it.
Okay, let's go into China in particular, because this is obviously now the focus based on the way the President has responded with yesterday's news, he really has isolated China. Tariffs up now to one hundred and forty five percent on China. From your perspective, what does a fair economic deal with China look like?
Well, China cheats, They steal They steal our intellectual property, they steal out patents. It is a very predatory nation. So I think we have to be very tough with China. And and by the way, you're talking to a guy who's a free trader. You know, I like free trade. I'm not a big fan of tariff's. I agree with eighty percent of what Trump is doing. I'm not a huge fan of terrists. My only the only thing I would fault Trump on is that I think we should you know, why is he going after Canada and some
of our allies. We really have to focus on China, and that's I think that's where he is right now. So that's that's the issue. I mean, come on, China is on the verge of possibly invading Taiwan. They're building up their military in a very aggressive way. They don't They're tariffs are three to four times higher than ours are. And I want to make sure that your listeners understand this. You know, I do a lot of I'm doing like the BBC, I do a lot of like media in
like Europe and Japan. You know, they're interested what Trump's going to do, and they're so self and they're self righteous, and they're They're like, why is Trump doing this? He's starting starting a trade war? And I said, wait a minute, what are people talking about.
We have the lowest tariffs.
In the world.
Their terrorists are higher than ours, So how can they say we're starting a trade war.
No, it's a fantastic question. And when we've been asking on this program for some time. Okay, so you in general are a free trader. There is a tension and it certainly has been i think exposed to some degree between say Elon Musk, who is more of a free trader than not, and Peter Navarro, who is very much not a free trader. So here is the challenge, so far as I can see it is you kind of
have a schism. For lack of a better way to describe it, what Trump is advocating for, on one hand is free trade, and yesterday talking with Art Laugher, I said, free trade with Europe can make sense, Japan, South Korea, so called good actors. Right, for lack of a better way to describe it, then there are I think it's fair to say bad actors.
In China would be the most prominent and powerful among them.
How do you balance the free trade perspectives with a country that is not committed to free trade and end up with a deal that makes sense across the board from your perspective.
Well, that's a great question, and I'm going to give you a kind of historical parallel. You know, in the nineteen thirties, you know, we were a pretty free trade country, and we were trading with Japan. You know, we almost literally sold them the lead and the steel that they used for the bombs that they dropped on Pearl Harbor. So that was kind of a dumb thing to do. And so do we really want to do that again with China? I say no, I think we need to
really be very cautious about China. I also like and by the way, Trump has changed my mind a little bit on this stuff because I've watched him in action. I used to be like, a unilateral free trader, we should have low terrace, no matter what other countries do.
I no longer believe that.
I think Trump is right that. Look, I like this idea of reciprocity. If you're going to hit up, if you're going to hit us in the nose with a twenty percent terraft, you know what we're going to hit you in the nose, and if you keep it up, you know we're going to ratchet it.
I think at the.
End of the day, I really believe this that Trump is going to force these other countries to play other rules, create a level playing field that benefits everyone.
Okay, we're talking with Stephen Moore, Trump economic advisor, very successful economists. Let me ask you this question big picture. I'm sure you remember this well. I was a young guy at the time. But in the nineteen eighties, those of us who remember the nineteen eighties, the idea was sure Japan was going to buy up everything. Their economy was on fire, they were growing like crazy, and there was a great deal of fear about Japanese ownership of American assets.
Yeah.
Now forty years later, the japan economies around the same size, ish at least according to the stock market. Is China somewhat like Japan where you're going to see this massive growth and then they're kind of going to run into a wall now here we know the demographics. China's population is but likely begun to decline. You know, there are also it's getting more expensive to make goods in China, which is how as economies rise, the expectation of workers increases.
Do you see a parallel potentially between the rapid rise that we saw with Japan and then the plateau with what we have seen with China as well?
Yeah, and even more so.
Look, China is a centrally planned economy that is run by their government. It is run out of Beijing. One lesson of history. You're a history historian. I am a bit too. One of the most important lessons of economic history is that central planning does not work right.
It does not work.
It didn't work for the Soviet Union, It's not going to work for China. So China's economy will implode. And I'm not saying it's going to happen next year, but it will implode. It's going to happen because you know, we have a free enterprise system where we let capital markets and our small businessmen and women make the decisions.
They have the government making the decision. Who are you going to bet on?
No?
I agree, okay, So let me ask you this last question. I appreciate the time. I know how busy you are doing interviews all over the world. Who has more short term pressure on them in a tara for by your analysis China or the United States whose economy suffers more as we go back and forth stare each other down.
Well there, look, you know when we sneeze, China catches pneumonia, they have to trade with us. If we if we stopped at trading with China, it would hurt our economy, but their economy would go into a great depression. That's the leverage that we have over China. And Trump is playing that card. But it's a complicated question because they don't face elections.
Yes, President Gee, what's going to stop him?
He may he may be willing to throw his economy and do a depression. You know, Luckily we are a democratic country and so you know, our pain threshold is probably a lot of less.
Than theirs are because they're run by a dictator.
No doubt.
Well, that's an interesting way of contemplating it. What I know I said last question, But what do you think Chairman z is hearing and thinking as this process plays out. I think a lot of people can get into Trump's mind and understand the United States perspective. What do you think the China perspective is right now?
I think there's scared you know, it's not being covered by the media, but their market has fallen much more than ours.
Haas.
Yeah, you know they're facing there, are facing a very very severe recession.
So I think they're freaked out right now. They don't know how to deal with Trump.
I think Trump is as the upper hand here, and I'm going to bet on Trump in America, not China.
Steven Moore, I loved the editorial that you and Art laugher pin for the Wall Street Journal. We appreciate you coming on and thank Art again. I need to text him to thank him for coming on yesterday. We appreciate your expertise, and anytime you want to come on, let us know.
Okay, thanks so much, Take care.
It's great. I mean, you just heard from two of the most prominent economists in the world, frankly in the last two days.
Here.
I'll take some of your questions. By the way, the cabinet meeting continuing right now as I am looking up. Elon Musk is attending the cabinet meeting and speaking is live right now on CNN and Fox News. We are monitoring it and we will bring you whatever we have got. In terms of news there, look down with Buck last week in Miami, and went over to his place and his awesome wife Carrie, and he you know what we did. We had steaks. They came from Good Ranchers and they
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Stories of freedom, stories of America, Inspirational stories that you unite us all each day. Spend time with Clay and find them on the free iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts.
Welcome back in Clay, Travis Buck Sexton show. Appreciate all of you hanging out with us. We are joined now by a author, journalist, all round incredibly talented guy, Douglas Murray new book on Democracies and death Cults, Israel and the Future of Civilization. We appreciate you coming on. For those of you watching on video, the book is up beside me. Let's start right here. I got to go to Israel in December for the first time ever. I went to the kibbutz's on the border with Gaza. I
went all the way to the north in Lebanon. I was blown away by the concept which I should have understood before, but I didn't until I stood on the ground that Israel really is the front line of Western civilization.
If it falls, then Eastern civilization is in trouble. I know this is a big part of the book argument you make, but do people really understand the stakes, the consequences of what's going on in the Middle East, and more alarmingly, the fact that a lot of people in America and other Western civilizations have lost the ability to distinguish between good and evil.
It's very good to be with you and your listeners again. Firstly, the book is an attempted to describe the atrocities of the seventh of October twenty twenty three, how they came, about what happened. I've been there in the zone of the conflict for most of the last year and a half, and so it's a first hand account as well as a tempt to write first draft of history about the atrocities of that day. But the other thing that the
book is really about is a much bigger question. Is the one, as you say, that affects us here in America and the rest of the West, which is why when a democracy and how I of ours was attacked so brutally, the twelve hundred people massacred, two hundred and fifties innocent civilians taken hostage, why did so many people here in America side not with the democracy, but with the deaf cult of Hamaz. And I come to not just ask the question, but also I hope to try
to answer it. And one of the things that we've seen, and I relate that I saw it straight away early on on the eighth of October, as the massacre was still going on in Times Square in New York, I saw the demonstration of people supporting the terrorists supporting Hamaz. In the year and a half since, we've seen this disgusting outburst of hatred against the Jewish state and against
the Jewish people. Just two days ago at Princeton University, Jewish students were screened at by other students telling them to go home. The reason, in part, but as you know, and you've covered so well on your show, is that we have lived through an era in which America, the West, all of our allies are seen as the bad guys
over and over again. And if I have a rule that I've developed in the last fear and a half, wherever I've gone in America, when I see an anti Israel protest, I notice that they fly the Palestinian flag. They may fly the flag of Hamas or Hezbolah one of these other terrorist groups. They never fly the American flag. In fact, when they find an American flag, they'll burn it. Compare it with the pro Israel demonstrations that have happened.
They always have the flying of the Israeli flag and the flying of the American flag, and the singing of the Star Spangled banner and more. The people who have been most vocal again Israel since the massacre are people who have also told us that they hate Israel first,
but they hate America and the West most. And anyone who thinks that that is some kind of hyperbole, just consider that the student group of Colombia most supportive of Hamad says in its founding statements that it seeks as its aim the quote complete destruction of Western civilization, the complete destruction of Western civilization. They see Israel as being the nearest targets as Hamaz does, but not the last targets.
Why do you think young people, compared to older people in the United States in particular, are so susceptible to the argument that Israel is a force for evil and that in some way the Palestinians or the larger Middle Eastern community is a source of good, even in the wake of October seventh. Why has that worked with so many young people.
I believe that because they've been prepared for this moment very carefully for years. I said in my last book, The War on the West, that Americans, this generation of Americans coming up, were being taught hatred of America and hatred of the West.
We have seen in America the whole great history of America rewritten. In recent years, students and others told that to be an American is to be born into guilt, to inherit the guilt of slavery, of white supremacy, of colonialism, of genocide, and much more. Look at what the pro Hamaz anti.
Israel demonstrators on American campuses accuse Israel off. They accused of Israel completely falsely as falsely against America. They accuse Israel today of genocide, of ethnic cleansing, of white supremacy, and of all of the sins that they have been told they solves are the Americans born in the twenty first century are guilty of. This is what a psychologist
would call projection on a massive scale. Tell me what you accuse the Jewish state of, and I'll tell you what you've been taught that you are guilty of.
We're talking to Douglas Murray.
The book is on democracy and death, Cults, Israel, and the future of civilization. What should happen? You know, we've heard a lot from people in the Trump era talking about the right and wrong side of history. If you can see the massacre of Jews, the worst day since the Holocaust on October seventh and not recognize what the right and wrong side of history is. How do we rectify that? What should people who are smart enough to know better be doing well.
I believe that young people in the West, not just America but principally America, but also I've seen this in the last few and a half Autralia and Canada and Britain and elsewhere. They've been taught into this Western self hatred and hatred. Now that's been taught. Older generations of Americans do not hate America because they weren't taught to hate America. Older generations of Americans don't hate other democracies because they weren't taught to hate other democracies. Part of
this generation, not all of them. There are some great young people coming up, but part of this generation has been taught this hatred. I believe that it is going to require a generation to teach them out of it.
I think that's well said. We're talking to Douglas Murray.
The book I encourage you to all to go check it out is on Democracies and death cults.
It's out right now.
You mentioned younger generations and the need to teach them about what actually has taken place. How much of this is the perverse idea that you built on here that white people are to blame for everything, and that Jewish people are just seen as white and therefore in the left wing anti American and anti Western perspective, there is no ability to grapple with the idea that someone who is of lighter skin could actually be a victim here.
I mean, I think is partly a function of just the broken worldview at play.
I think you're completely right. The thing that this generation has been taught, the thing that has been across our media, whether it's a New York Times sixty nineteen project, whether it's radical Democrats talking about white guilt and all of this sort of thing, always the Jews are going to become a victim of this. And sure enough, the people who believe that they're against racism are accusing.
Again.
It goes back to this thing. It's a mirror of their own sins, as they've been told them ways they accuse Israel of white supremacy.
I mean, you've been there, yeah, like me.
It's one of the most ethnically racially diverse countries on the planet. One third of people in Israel of European descent one third. The other two thirds are Middle Eastern. They are from countries across the region historically who were chased out of those countries Iraqi Jews, Persian Jews, Assyrian Jews,
and many others North African Jews. To see white college campus kids in America accusing black Jewish Israelis of white supremacy is even by the standards of our time and even with our probably wearied ability ability to be shocked, absolutely shocking and shocking, not least just for its sheer ignorance.
When you look Douglas Murray, the author of On Democracies and Death Cults, encourage you to go read the book what you just said, the you know, white American college kids coming after this. When I went to Israel, the other thing that stood out was Trump being called Hitler when Israel, if it could vote in the American presidential election, would have voted like Wyoming did or like West Virginia did. That is basically seventy thirty pro Trump as someone who
doesn't live in America. And when you hear that argument, how outrageous and outlandish is that analogy for our current president when it comes to his relationship with Israel.
Well, just one quick thing, I actually do live in America when I'm not living in various war zones. I hotfooted it from my native Britain some years ago for very good reasons, and I'd like to think I'm one of the better American importance of research.
We'll accept you, yes, thank you.
Not to say but you know, because I love this country. I love America, I love the founding Fathers, I love American history, and I love American people. So it grieves me enormously to see some of the wild, wild hatred and wild claims that people have been encouraged into in recent years. Many people have been persuaded that basically, you know, all of the history is just the nineteen thirties and forties.
They only know one bad person in history, and that's Hitler, and their aim is to be anti Hitler, which is like, wow, guys, that was a very brave and important thing to be in the nineteen thirty and.
Forties, by the way, when many of the people were not actually anti Hitler, when it would have been helpful, right.
Exactly, It would have really helped if there'd been more anti Hitler people in those days. But history is a bit more complicated when you're going through it, and we are going through it now. One of the things that we've se in the last eighteen months is how many people who regard themselves as being anti racists are in fact the racists. How many people who think they're anti
Nazi are literally siding with a Nazi movement Hanaz. How many people who think they would have been on the right side in the nineteen thirties and the nineteen forties are on the side of an anti Semitic and anti Western Deaf cult today. The people who told us for ten years to believe all women are the people who don't believe Israeli women who were raped on the seventh of October. This tells us nothing about the Jewish state
or the Jewish people. It tells us everything about the people who have been lecturing us for years now, and how wicked they can be.
Douglas Murray, last question for you. You hit on something that I think is hugely important we have in a historically illiterate country. Your point is, yes, basically, the only historical analogy many people seem to be able to make is too Hitler and too World War two how much of all of this is rooted in America, but also Western civilization in general, not having educated its people in terms of real history and having much of a depth of knowledge at all.
Well, I'll tell you it's obviously. The ignorance of history is profound everywhere, not just in America. Across the West, young British and Canadian school children and college students are also being taught versions of the same rot. One of the things I finished this book on, though, is to say, why not regard this as I do, as a civilizational
moment and a civilizational test. We all weigh ourselves up against the greatest generation of World War II, and we should we ask ourselves, would we do what our forefathers were able to do when the time of trial came. You can take the route, if you're a young American of being led into the grievance culture, the victimhood culture that you and I have spoken about for years and
that we hate. But you can also choose another route, and it's the route that the young men and women of Israel who I had the honor to be with in Gaza, in Lebanon, in Israel in the last eighteen months. It's the route they have chosen, which is the root of heroism. Protecting your people, protecting your faith, protecting your family, protecting your way of life, and knowing that your way of life will only continue if you're willing to fight
for it. I'd like to see Americans learn from the Israeli youth on this, because if they do, we have a bright future too.
Well said the book on Democracies and Death called Douglas Murray good luck on the trail, and I hope you sell a lot of books. I know this audience will be very receptive to your book and the argument you're making.
Thanks for everything you're doing.
It's great to be with you. Thank you.
That is Douglas Murray look much less serious. I hope you guys enjoyed that super smart guy. Obviously historical a literacy is a big part of the challenge that we face in this country, but much less serious. I bet a lot of you are paying attention to the Masters down in Augusta, Georgia, where I know we have a huge audience right now Thursday at the Masters Underway and prize picks the best place out there to feature all
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