[MUSIC]
You're listening to American Power. I'm your host, Nat Tauson, stand up comedian, speechwriter, many other kinds of writer, and most likely to get me screamed at on the internet for an opinion that no one really disagrees with podcast host.
I'm joined as always by our panel of experts.
Our expert on foreign policy, the military, and today economic policy, Chad Scott. Hey, how's it going? I'm just adding things to my title here to just make me feel good about being a podcasters. He did just say off the air, not an expert, and I am throwing him officially under the bus. Joining me as well, as always, of course, you know, Mr. global our expert on the energy industry,
“all things oil and renewable, et cetera, Mr. global rent office here, how's it going Matt?”
Nat? Yes. When you see the southern cross for the first time, you understand why you came this way. I've been listening, obviously, to some cross we still is at Nash today, which means I'm in a great mode.
That music, from back in the day, always puts me in a great mode,
and I was listening to it right before we hit record, and now I can't get the words out of my head. So if I blurt something out, just understand. So our first topic of the day is you're riding on the Marrakesh Express. And wait, sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry. Something about that harvest mood, no, um, sorry, we want to talk about economic policy.
Today, we are going to talk about trades specifically in Trump's trade policy. What's what's he doing? Specifically our relationship with Canada, obviously has been fraught since the beginning of this Trump administration with the history of retaliatory tariffs.
“Now Trump is threatening to hike up, I believe, auto tariffs to 50%,”
Canada potentially retaliating. I'm hoping we could take a look at the US relationship with Canada. Can we go back in time a little bit and look at how our trade relationship has developed over the years? Chad, would you lay that out for us a little bit? Yeah, for sure. So this obviously because of our, it's the longest undefended
border in the world. We have a pretty interconnected relationship with our Canadian friends. But officially, just kind of going back, a lot of this started back in the Reagan and Canadian Prime Minister, Brian Mulroney, they signed the US Canada Free Trade Agreement back in 1988. And it took place or it took effect in 1989. And it was meant to eliminate kind of a small tariff for that was happening between each country. And they wanted to slowly phase out trade
“barriers, draw down tariffs. And then over that, that five-year period, it expanded a bit into”
what eventually became NAFTA, the North American Free Trade Agreement in 1994. And we decided to bring in Mexico into the system creating this incredibly integrated North American economy. And it was hugely powerful. But then you have Donald Trump, he came along and argued that NAFTA was a terrible deal. And force Canada and Mexico back to the negotiating table. And the result was the US MCA, which is the Mexico Canada Agreement. So US Mexico Canada Agreement. And this was
something Trump negotiated and he signed. And everyone celebrated it. It was technically not much different than NAFTA, but Trump talked about it as a historic improvement mainly for the United States entered into force in 2020. So from like 1994 to 2020, we were operating happily under NAFTA. The US MCA did not end free trade between Canada and the United States. It just kind of updated it strengthened the automotive rules, labor provisions, agriculture, digital trade,
enforcement, things like that. So we were able to kind of just codify a little bit more updated a lot of it for the digital age as well. That was a big portion of it. And now, he weirdly threw out his own policy, is trying to break down the whole thing. And even though he negotiated the rules for the US MCA, he now thinks it's not worth it. And so the negotiations have collapsed once again between Canada and the United States. And each side is now saying
the other side is at fault. US Trade Representative, James and Greer says negotiations had reached some sort of an agreement on Tuesday night to announce a path forward, but then apparently the Canadians wanted additional concessions on on future decision making. Canada says the opposite happened, Mark Carney, who's the leader of Canada, said the United States changed the terms of some of
the original discussion on some critical things like those the the automobiles, lumber, stuff like that.
He said the Americans, quote, asked too much and they offered too little.
And to be fair, this was an agreement that was being negotiated in both sides. And it was Canada that ended up walking away at this point. That being said, a lot of the reason Canada is walked away
“is because the United States, I think in my opinion, is being really unreasonable here. There are”
certain things that Canada builds for the United States specifically, like Ontario. They built like four to 350s, the GMC's, the Silverado's, various trucks that apparently there was arguments over terror productions for those. And it just wasn't sitting right with the US or Canada. And so they walked away. And as you said, it led to Donald Trump going to his preferred medium of announcing official business through social. And now we are looking at a situation where there's a pretty
what I would say severe trade breakdown. This is almost unprecedented since before the Reagan administration. And I would argue that probably Reagan is rolling in his grave at this point because these are things that are good for the United States and Canada. We should just be working together
are, for instance, our aluminum industry. It's basically the same industry. The supply chain for
aluminum is basically the exact same. So when we put tariffs on it, all's we're doing is hurting each other. So it makes no sense, whether it's the Canadian government, whether it's the US government. And at this point, it's the vast majority of the US government causing the problems. When we do things like that, it hurts everyone. Not just trying to hurt Canadians. It hurts Americans too. And like I said, I can get into that into the future, but I do want to get mad slots on this as well.
Yeah, Matt, jump right there. Yeah, you want your thoughts? My thoughts, Donald Trump got tired of hearing about the Iran War. And his base gets off on watching him pick on people. And I think this is nothing more than that. He doesn't know the first
thing about trade. Nobody in his administration knows the first thing about trade.
“If you want to know what they know about trade, it's about the same as any average Trump”
supporter. They're done more than a post. They don't know what they're doing. And this is all another just extension of the Trump reality show that is his administration. And I agree with Chad, it's very damaging. And it's stupid. It's stupid. Like unbelievably stupid. I mean, why, why is the tune? Okay, that's very strong opinion. Why? No, I mean, it's a very factual opinion. Okay, facts and opinions are two different things. It's a fact based opinion is what you're saying.
If we are not going to behave like the far right, we need to distinguish between those two. However, to agree with you, how much of this was like you're saying, you know, people did not know the damage this was going to cause. To some extent, we're talking down to the degree of people didn't understand how tariffs function. Should we spell this out? How tariff functions for our listener base? Or like I genuinely think that was part of the PR of the
beginning of this administration was, oh, we're not going to, we're not going to negotiate the way we used to. We're going to put tariffs on our trade partners. Where did that shift come from? I feel like our listeners know exactly how tariffs work. I mean, if they didn't a year ago, if you're new, I'm sorry. If you're listening to this podcast, you're interested enough to know you're probably right. I'm just trying to be the everyone. I'm just trying to make
sure we know where we're all at. But let me let me ask that slightly more informed question, then which is where did this preoccupation with disruptive tariffs come from? It's like a very
specific technique that he wasn't using or policy that he wasn't using in that way in his first
administration and spite motivated or otherwise, why tariffs now? You've heard people talk about the Don Road doctrine and how it's so familiar to the Monroe doctrine. But it's not. It's really not. Now, I'm not an expert in the Monroe doctrine, but I know basically he viewed the entire Western hemisphere as like this unified just big, not like super power, basically. That's the way I look at the Monroe doctrine. But what Donald Trump does is not that he's attacking the people in his own
hemisphere. Like he's not building coalitions in our hemisphere for all of us to have this huge, you know, to have a superpower hemisphere. He's attacking now. He's doing what I would think would be the opposite of what Monroe envisioned. And I don't know why he's so fascinated and assessed
“with Monroe anyway. I don't know where that comes from. But that's what I'm looking at.”
Probably because it's a historical example of pro-Westernism in some ways associated with a president that has history and respect associated with his name. Because ultimately, it was Western hemisphere non-interference. I also would not profess to be a complete expert on the Monroe doctrine. But essentially the idea and it is not a modern political theory. It is clearly
You know, of a different era.
Western hemisphere from America and European countries. And I think if you're someone who, I mean, we've talked about this before. But Donald Trump's feelings on being a globalist at anti-globalist are like polar at any given day. But if you are trying to portray yourself as a America first or as a pro-West anti- Middle East, you know, for whatever, whichever big a tree he's soaking it at any given time or patriotism he's trying to soak it at a given time, I do think that
like granted an under-informed view, but the idea of looking at like, oh, I'm not, I mean, he likes being the disruptor, but oh, I'm being noble. I'm being like James Monroe, like there's historical precedent for this Western countries got us, you know, white countries
we all know, but Western countries got us stick together. And yet 50 percent tariffs on Canadian
automobiles are manufacturing. So I don't think that's quite following in the same philosophy. Not that I support the West has got to stick together. Well, he said that he's, oh go ahead, man. I just real quick, he's not anti-globalist when it comes to getting OPEC to produce a lot more oil to drive down prices in the United States or when he's trying to bring in hundreds of thousands of tons of mystery meat from God knows where. Like he's not, yeah, it's like, no, he's a real
capitalist. He's not anti-globalist until he needs to convince anti-globalists to sign off on his agenda.
“I mean, that's what it is. Like he knows that there's that like anti-immigration, you know,”
he could stoke that part of his base. Those are the most loyal people, right? But ultimately, he's a capitalist and he would like any other capitalist rather pay less for things, regardless of the quality. Well, and I would say Trump is more like a different president when it comes to his tear-for-person, that's Hoover, which is not a president. He want to be associated with in general. I mean, if you remember, he was basically the one that drove the Great Depression, but kind of brought
me into all those little villages. Hooverville. I know the Hooverville's. Yeah. Oh, you mean he built housing? He provided for him. Yeah, but so when you look at the, the, the the way Trump Trump treats tariffs as leverage, he sees the space. He has this basic theory that if you want to have access to the U.S. market, which is the biggest market in the world,
“if you want to sell your stuff here, if you want to join our stock market, or our equity”
is services, whether it's a New York Stock Exchange and ASDAQ, or S&P, or whatever, you, he says you get a play by our rules. And when he says our rules, it means his personal rules.
But the problem is win time. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So those are not ever set in stone.
Yeah, and he changes his mind consistently. Yeah. And actually, I did one of the future American Power Actors. I'm going to, and we're going to do probably next week. I'm going to talk about his contradictory foreign policy. But the reason I say Hoover is because Hoover is associated with what was called the Smooth Holly Act. And it was a, it was something that was put in place where tariffs were supposed to, to be this new great endeavor that this country took upon
to, to essentially make it so that we Americans would have to pay less taxes. This happened in 1930, and it raised tariffs by thousands, on thousands of imported goods, and it happened just as the great, great depression was taking hold. And so all of our trading partners, and we're seeing this now with Canada and China, all of our trading partners retaliated, though. So international commerce completely contracted, and it dramatically dragged the economy down, and US exports, especially
when it came to farmers were, were really hit really hard. And so during this time, because of the Smooth Holly legislation, US exports fell by roughly two thirds between 1929 and 1933,
and therefore world trade collapsed and it led to the great depression. Ever since then, we have always
seen tariffs as something to kind of keep a distance. Yes, they're good. If there's overtly the various practices like China's stealing, intellectual property, for instance, then tariffs and things hit them, punish them. But just using tariffs to broadly say, this is unfair,
“and we don't like the US is supposed to be an open market for a reason. That's why people will”
come to us. We are a secure open market, and what Trump is doing is now going back to the same types of legislation, the same types of policies that essentially ran us into the great depression, and as a businessman, it blows my mind that he doesn't recognize this. I think it's just because he's a failed businessman, let's be honest. And so he's trying to say tariffs are amazing, but every economist, since ever, every president, since the Great Depression, has said no, there's better ways
to inflict some sort of fairness doctrine, and a lot of it has to do with free trade agreements,
Because these countries they do want to come trade with us.
to trade with Canada, but I think it's becoming political. It's like, and as Matt said, it's a political
“move where they have Carney who upset Trump, and it's just like how the South Koreans decided to”
not help us in Iran. So now he's like, I'm upset at them. So I'm going to go ahead and not have this or I'm going to shorten this exercise. It's all this personal diplomacy, stick that Trump has, and it doesn't work. And so when you have the Canadians, not to disagree with you, Chad, but I would, I would hesitate to even call that political, so much as like, personal, but no, it's not political in the sense of like, he's not making a calculation of like,
"Ah, now we've got them on the ropes where we want them." It's like, "No, if you have these guys,
if they didn't help us," and maybe we look bad. Yeah, here's a quote out that this all restarted
when Canada posted better jobs numbers than the United States. And he is that petty. Like, I wonder if that was the thing that triggered this. Like, Canada had a good job's numbers month. We had a terrible one. Two days later, we're going to trade war with Canada. And that he is that kind of a child. I'll just, you know. And I will say that I don't think Canada
“is in a, I think they're in a position where they can win this quote on quote trade war.”
Because they're facing a scenario where it's almost like the Iran situation. We're not necessarily physically attacking Canada, but this is a bigger power trying to leverage unfairly over a smaller power. So they're rallying around the flag. Carney is hugely popular in Canada right now. Trump is hugely not popular in the United States. And so what's happening is, even though the United States has probably on paper the ability to really hurt Canada, mainly because geography
is Canada's biggest problem. I mean, they just 75% of their trade goes through the U.S. in some former fashion. So, but politically, Carney can look at his people and his small majority. He has like two to three seats in their parliament in his favor and say, this is us versus them. And they're going to rally around Carney even the conservatives are rallying around him in that country. And that's something that they're going to be able to ride out longer than Trump is because even Republicans
right now are like, this is going to hurt us. This is going to hurt us in automobile industry. This is going to hurt us in agriculture. This is going to hurt us in lumber. I mean, they provide us the the core things for like fertilizer and Matt can speak to energy. Got it. And we talked about this really. Could you imagine? I mean, what are your thoughts on that, Matt? What if they just say, this is gone too far? We're going to start shutting off the electricity that we share with you guys,
and we're going to start taking our energy away. I can't imagine. People in the United States have no idea how much electricity we get from Canada. And when I hear Doug Ford talk about shutting off the electricity. So just to paint this picture for you, because a lot of people probably think it's just some states along the border, but it's not. It's much more bigger than that. There's about five or six states that get in an enormous amount of electricity from Canada, Northeast Corridor,
you know, like New York, Maine, Vermont, and then Michigan, Minnesota, and then Washington state out west. But all total, there's 22 different states in the United States that get some electricity from Canada and over half of the US population. And so when they talk about cutting off electricity, you're talking about impacting about 170, 180 million Americans, about 50 million of which would lose power completely just a blackout. The remainder, the remaining 120 million or so would
see their utility bills double or triple, because they would have to find new sources of electricity. It would be in very tight supply, and you know, the cost would skyrocket. So for Canada to suggest, we're going to come off the electricity. I think of, or Doug Ford anyway. I think a lot of people think, well, that can't be that bad. Oh, it can be that bad. Now the thing, the reason I think that's
something that would absolutely never happen is that we send, we don't send as much electricity
to Canada as they send to us, but we do send a very significant amount about two thirds of what they send us. So we would just immediately respond and do the exact same thing and Canada would be in just as bad as shape as us. So I don't see anything really happening with electricity. That would be that would be an act of war on a scale that's even bigger than stuff we've seen in the
“Middle East this year. That's how serious that would be. You're talking about 50 million people in”
United States without electricity in August. Like, that's a lot of dead people, honestly. Like,
That's what that would equate to within a matter of a week, use the casualtie...
So so the fact that Doug Ford would even say that kind of blows my mind, I think he's kind of bombastic, you know, he comes across that way, but the fact that he would say that most people don't realize the size of the threat that that actually is, you know, they kind of blow it off. Like, yeah, that's not a big deal. It's just probably a couple of border states. No, it's not. It's over
“half of the Americans. So there's kind of a reason I think that we may not see the full measure of”
tariffs because I believe the 50% tariffs hit January 1st, 2027. Obviously, that's after the midterms for a reason, but also Canada's tariff hitback is supposed to be September 8th. And I think Canada is saying, hey, we've given you guys a couple weeks of wiggle room to work this out before we hit you back because it's kind of, it's kind of start, especially those tariffs in January are going to really hurt bad because when you look at like the American auto industry, there's no such
thing really. It's really the North American auto industry. Like, there's vehicles built, you have parts of vehicles, the same vehicle built in all three countries, whether it's Mexico, the United States, Canada. And so you may have vehicles designed in like Detroit, for instance, and then they're built in Canada, but also some of their components, their engines or something like that. Maybe built in Mexico. For it is a prime example of that. These are vehicles that cross
the borders where steel could be come from one place, parts come from another. And these tariffs are going to hit the auto workers. And if there's anything that a president is sensitive to,
it's auto workers. I mean, that was the first thing that got bailed out basically after the banks
in 2008. But second of all, the reason is if there's anything right behind auto workers, it's housing. And Canada, so before I get Trump likes to talk about, well, we have our own lumber industry, which is true. However, Canada's lumber is a specific type of lumber that we use in housing. And certain types of housing and the National Association of Home Builders estimates that these tariff actions are going to add between $10 and $15,000 the cost of building a new home.
And if that, if we're trying to, if one of Trump's economic goals is housing any state of this several times, that alone is going to wipe out anything he can do. And so between housing and cars, in the United States, I don't think he's going to go the full measure. I think there's going to be
he's going to taco. He's probably going to taco. I think, but the problem is, my worry is,
when it comes to Canada, he's slowly getting deeper and deeper into pain before he tacos. And it does have real consequences, not only to Americans, but to Canadians. And it's to, weirdly, people in his base. It's construction workers. It's factory workers. It's farmers. Get hit because of the agricultural inputs. And so these are things that, and Canada buys a lot
“of our agriculture. But that's why I don't think this is going to go the full measure, but if it does,”
it's going to be extremely destructive to both countries. And all of us little people down here, who make podcasts and sell teas, because that's my wife does or whatever, we're going to look around and go, "Why is this even necessary?" And I think it's going to start impacting the Trump administration, because Carney, as I said, is the one that's coming out looking like, "Hey, we're just trying to defend ourselves and push back against an aggressive administration." And Americans are seeing that too.
They are at this point. So we'll see, but I do think it's a political weapon, right? In addition to just you know, why would he threaten what is effectively an act of war to like effectively destroy
emergency services for a lot of Americans? The answer is probably not the answer, but part of why,
I think, is because Trump has kind of handed him a popularity button. Like, it's very popular to bash Trump if you're in Canada and made in Canada labels or everywhere like Canadian pride is at a high right now as a response, obviously not ubiquitously across Canada. I'm sure it's more complicated than that. But you're seeing an emergence of the made in Canada label as a brand, like all these things,
“people are slapping it on to in a way that didn't generate profits before. And I think I think”
that makes a lot of sense. I mean, is he bombastic? Yes, obviously. And do I think he's actually going to do it? No. But like, saying big and extreme things about this guy who just keeps taking swings at their country, at their allies, you know, at our ally, I should say at his allies, it seems to be very popular there right now. And like, that strikes me as a sign that a lot of people are feeling that same thing that you're describing. Like, they see this for the reality
of what it is. And also, I just want to imagine one other thing, you're talking about our lumber. It's also a huge amount of the pulp from lumber is a huge amount of our paper goods in the
US.
but also like our publishing industries, anything any print good is on death's door right now.
“Like, these people cannot afford a 25% increase in production costs. Like, in materials costs,”
rather, like, it's, these are industries that are not operating on a margin that can afford to just suddenly absorb, you know, a massive increase in cost. Yeah. And it's, it's funny because you're talking about this pride in Canada and your, you're absolutely right. Because one of the negotiations that we're taking place when it came to these trade negotiations was American liquor in Canada. And so we have a massive amount of liquor that gets shipped to Canada. And so you have these, these liquor
producers that are upset right now with the Trump administration, because initially the, the tariffs were hurting them. So the Canadians weren't buying American liquor. This is just more expensive.
But now we've essentially because of Trump and his, his bledurance towards Canada has
we're trading an import ban for a boycott, essentially. So what's happening is these, these various whiskeys or whatever we make, Tito's doesn't matter. It goes to, they, they see that maybe the, yeah, exactly the provinces will, in Canada, they've control liquor, but the, the federal Canadian government can kind of pressure them to, hey, go ahead and reduce the counterterrorist against them because they're reducing tariffs. Even if we were those provinces were to reduce
the tariffs to zero, I fully believe the Canadians are so pissed at us that it's just a boycott at this point. So we're not going to really see any growth in liquor until we get our act together. And that's, that's, people get to make decisions. So we may be able to have this trade deal that is favorable for everyone, but that, that heartburn, that, that, that, that, that kind of wire our friends hurting us, feeling that the Canadians have right now. That's going to translate
to their, their wallets and they're just not going to buy American goods. And I think we're going to feel the pain of that for at least the next administration to try to repair that relationship after after Trump leaves, which is still not, not for another at least to over two years away.
“I can remember which Bourbon bankrupt this boycott bankrupted, was it Jack Daniels or Jim Beam?”
I can't remember which one, but they went bankrupt over this boycott. And to touch on Chad's point about Canadian pride, I recently was doing research for some content I was making. Donald Trump has roughly a seven percent favorability rate in Canada. And even in Alberta, which is the most map of Magal, however they say it, what are the maple magas or maga maples? We're all the
pro-Trump people are. Even in Alberta, it's only 20 percent. So he is, and I don't have no idea what
Carnies numbers would be in the United States, but I guarantee you they're a liar. Then Donald Trump, so he's hated basically in Canada. He's like the doctor evil in Canada, like they don't like him, but yeah, the bourbon industry, they didn't you guys remember which one went bankrupt? It was either Jack Daniels or Jim Beam, I think, but I'm not sure if I'll bankrupt see a few months ago over the Canadian boycott. Because you know, our friends up in Canada,
you know, they like to pull one back every once in a while. And by, you know, every once in a while, I mean daily. So they're like the Irish if they went west. So they like to drink a little. Well, and I welcome as much as I love the United States, I hate when we have stupid policies. So I welcome this type of stuff, because to be honest, the rest of the world is watching. And there's really only two countries that have pushed back forcefully against this type of
action by Trump, one was China, who has a lot of firepower to hurt us, whether it's rare or minerals or pharmaceuticals or things like that. To be fair, we have financial power to hit back. That would be an absolutely worst case scenario if we were doing this with China. But with Canada, they're the other country. And the fact that relative size in economy and population, the fact
“that they're hitting back the United States so hard, it's a point of pride for them. And I think that”
other countries are now watching the this Canadian fight back push back. And they're like, you know what? We can do this too. The United Kingdom, we provide things, France, we provide things to the United States. We can resist as well. And it's going to have this cascade of fact where other countries are going to start looking at Donald Trump and his, his tamper tantrums that are going to be causing pain for not only Americans, but the world. And say, no, we've had
enough, and we're going to fight back. And Trump is going to start over playing his hand here. And it's going to start having real problems that potentially are going to cause not not just in trade, problems in trade, but in diplomatic efforts, such as, hey, let's work together on Ukraine. Hey, let's work together with the the Koreans and the Japanese to potentially counter North Korea and their efforts. They're going to look at us and be like, every time side Donald
Trump signs something, he signs it in Pennsylvania or shit.
these countries are now standing up and they're even forming coalitions, health, Saudi Arabia,
“formed a coalition with Pakistan because they don't trust the United States. And it's a cascading effect”
that this type of stuff is showing that if you have a good leader, such as like an Obama,
negotiating a JCPOA or something like that, the United States can be very powerful and a very
good friend on the global stage. But if you have a terrible leader who is who is deeply unserious and schizophrenic in his abilities to negotiate, they're going to look at the United States and say, you are useless right now on the global stage. You're just someone we have to try to manage and survive for the next couple of years. Like we're this guy's presence, they have to navigate. It's not like you can just ignore the United States. We'll punish you. Yeah,
exactly. And it's it's just sad because the US and Canada trade like almost $900 billion in services and goods. These are countries that we are so deeply integrated that it's it's just so foolish that we have someone for personal poopy pants potentially literally poopy pants reasons that
“he doesn't he doesn't want to deal with and I've said this before the Canadians stepped up hugely”
right when 9/11 was happening. They took in our people into their own homes because we could
they wouldn't be able to fly and land in New York City. They were diverted to Canada. And so we have massive amounts of crude comes through here. There's just so much that we integrate with that discuss me that Trump is like sitting here saying this needs to be the 51st state. If they want the benefits of being a state, they need to they need to become the 51st state. And I'm like motherfucker, you I've seen how you treated some of the states where you've withheld with you
withheld aid to places like California because they're Democrat. So and I asked you there and go, you know what it would be not not to say the Canadian should be American but you know what that's a that would be a good thing for us because it would just create Democrat seats. Let's be honest.
So really. But yeah, I mean he's mad because Canadian didn't vote for him in the election.
Yeah, that's exactly. He's same with the Cubans. He's like these Cubans didn't vote for me. On the liquor note, Matt, I did check it was Jim Beam. I didn't realize this lasted number that halted production for a year due to the Canadian. Wow, which I didn't mix. Well, it's interesting. One thing about liquor is like some liquor can be produced anywhere, right? But some is specifically region based or like Kentucky bourbon can only come from Kentucky
by definition, right? Some American bourbon, you know, Canadian, you know, these are obviously just because of the name of the country. But like some certain thing, you know, everyone loves to quote the thing about champagne and the region, but certain things are from a specific region. So yeah, I mean, if Jim Beam is the Kentucky bourbon that you know about and you lose that specific percent of your exports, like it's you know, we might think of that as an American brand, but it's like
it's getting exported heavily because it is the American bourbon, like people want American Kentucky bourbon. And like I mean, I see Jack Daniels as a popular whiskey too, but it's not a it's actually not a Kentucky bourbon, right? So it's like we might think of that as being like, oh, it's an American product. Americans are buying it. It's like no, it's an American product. So it's really attractive to other countries because it is, like I said, it's like the American
drink. And also, it's you mentioned a little bit. Canadian provinces have liquor boards, which does, you know, control the purchasing orders and access to alcohol. So it's way less free market up there than it is here, as far as I understand. And just in terms of like, it's less lazy fair, like you can't just do whatever you want to open a liquor store. Obviously, we have regulations too, but it does make it easier for them. I think to unify against, you know,
distributions. Like they can unilaterally remove distribution from a distributor country brand, manufacturer. So it's a dumb flight to pick. And, you know, again, it's hurting American countries. I'm not saying Americans don't drink enough whiskey. Don't take that out of context, but we don't drink enough whiskey to keep Jim Beam in business at the level that they were last year. The bourbon, the champagne of America. Yeah, it takes seven years to make a bottle of whiskey.
Then you need people buying whiskey for that whole seven years while you're waiting on the next bottle to cure or whatever. Like, and that's why they did that with the production. They just shut it down. Because nobody's wrong whiskey. Well, another good thing has changed, right?
“You have to remember that these people, yeah, that's also just deserves and stuff. So if you're going”
to do like make an 18 year bottle, and that's uncommon, but that's 12 year bottle of, you know, Johnny Walker or something like, yeah, you need profit along, you know, you need a multi-decade business plan.
That requires stability.
Is that's what I'm, that's what I'm, that's what I'm worried about now. I think we're going to have
a surplus. I might have been drinking some of that. But if they're not producing it this year,
“that's what I'm saying in seven years from now, beam is going to be as expensive as bullet or something.”
Yeah, I don't know how popular Jim Beam is. I'm going to get, I'm going to get strong up for this, but I drink James and I'm an Irish guy. So sorry. Sorry, America. I'm not a big Irish whisky guy, but I will admit that this is a matter of taste and not colonial profit. I just like bourbon better or right. You're right. He's selling it. I'm from the north east man. That's our whisky. You know, until prohibition, Rye was far more popular than bourbon, and apparently something
about who managed to survive prohibition, bourbon became the American whisky. But prior to that, Rye was more popular, and remained considerably more popular in the northeast than anywhere else, because bourbon was, you know, Southern, you know, like sweet whisky was considered. I mean, sweeter than Rye. But now bourbon is essentially considered the default American whisky,
because I believe during prohibition, it won out and came back stronger, and Rye never really came
back. I'm just really enjoying that. We're beating Russia in vodka. The top two vodka producers for not only taste, but just general awards is coming out of the US and Poland. Interesting. Wait, this is a Russia's Tito's keeps winning everything, apparently. Oh, beverage. That's his real name. It is the name of Tito beverage. He, uh, look it up. It's not spelled the way you think it is. He did not work in liquor until he was like a
believe in his 50s. And folks, if your name is a profession or a product, I just want to say, if you're not 50 yet, it's not too late. You can make like Tito beverage. Just look at the writing on the wall. That's why your name is Net, Net podcast. Net podcast. Yeah, it's like
“him dunking the basketball player. You know, you have to figure it out. Yeah, I think I wasn't”
Colonel Sanders, like 70 or something when I started KFC. Yeah, because he, he just really old. He acquired one spice every eight years until he had the formula. Jeff, basis of like this. 40s are Amazon. So we're not, we're not, we're no longer interested, but yeah, we're no longer been inspired. I do want to, okay, so I'm not asking something else. As much as I could talk about the origins of American liquor and why Don Dreper drinks right for the entire episode, I want to talk to you,
a, no, another economic issue. That's in the headlines right now, which is our national debt. Apparently it has reached a surpassed 40 trillion dollars. I got five on it, but I don't know how we're
paying the rest of that off. Chad, what is it, do we really owe 40 million dollars and to whom? I'm sorry,
trillion dollars, I took home. Well, so the debt is really an interesting thing to think about. I want to be upfront. The debt is atrocious. Donald Trump, when you count both of his terms, has added 11.6 trillion to the debt compared to you. And to be fair, he's not, multiple presidents have, provided policies that have added to the debt. Obama was 9.32 trillion, but to be fair, he was part of the recovery from the 2008 crash. So a lot of that debt was generated there. You have
the debt that came from Biden. He added a pretty good chunk, like 8.4, 8.5 trillion to the debt. That was born from COVID, a lot of that. And Trump's first term debt, a lot of that was COVID related, as well. But by far, and make Mark my words, that's going to be probably above 15 trillion when he's done. Trump is the biggest adder to the debt. Why this is a problem for average Americans is because one of drives to interest rates higher. When the government is borrowing trillions of
dollars, it competes with businesses and consumers for available capital. And when that happens, it puts, it puts upward pressure on interest rates. And if you're trying to buy a home, a car, if your interest rate is only 2% higher, that can mean, like, on a 30 year mortgage, like a $500 month extra payment on your house. So there's that. Plus there's more money going to that interest. If we have 40 trillion in debt, we're paying massive amounts on that interest. Right now, it's about
a trillion dollars per year is going to debt. We could be using that for infrastructure, education,
“research. I mean, hell, if even if you want to be war-hawkish, we could even be using it against”
defense modernization. But right now, it's just going to surface the debt. And all these types of stuff lead to less economic growth, higher inflation. I can continue going on an on tax pressure, et cetera. I do want to say, though, the United States is unique. We don't have this situation where
We have to deal with a debt like other countries because we largely control t...
with the dollar. So first of all, we borrow in our own currency, so that means we can pay in our
“currency. Yes, if we start paying more because we have more it causes inflation, but it's not like”
some other country that suddenly runs out of the currency that is needed to be paying debt and they
collapse. They default, which is obviously something that's terrible. You never wanted to fault on your debt.
But also, the US debt is mostly owned by Americans. That's something a lot of people don't understand. So like domestic holders of US debt is about 80 percent of our current debt is held by Americans. And when that happens, you're borrowing against things like, unfortunately, social security, you're borrowing against things that, well, that's actually government debt. But I'm talking about like pensions and investment. People buy US debt in the US. Government owns a lot of the
debt as well about roughly about 5 to 7 percent of debt is owed to itself. 7 to 8 trillion is goes towards things like we've borrowed against social security, which was stupid, but still, it's ours. Only 20 percent of the debt is owed to foreigners. So there's this misconception that, oh, China, China owns all this debt and when they call it, it's going to collapse or economy. Not necessarily. If they call it on our debt, more likely someone also just buy it because they'll
end up getting a good term on that. They'll get the older terms with better potentially better interest rates or things like that or the US such as buy it back themselves. So the US is unique in that when you look at the debt, you also look at an economy. We have the largest economy. Our debt is now bigger than our economy, but it's not so unimaginable that we can, we're going to collapse. So there's a balance here. Make no mistake though. This debt is going to be a problem because
as it grows, it makes us weaker on the international stage. And it will impact things like our ability to fund our military, it will impact our ability to get aid places. And it's going to make the world more unstable. It's just because the US is kind of like the borrower of last resort, or the lender of last resort, so to speak, not borrow lender. The will be the last to feel it. We will feel it though and it is going to be a problem. And I know Matt has some thoughts on
“that because we were discussing before all this stuff. He's going to be like, I believe the interest”
on the debt is currently 14% of the total US budget. And look, I don't disagree with anything Chad said, but I have spoken to quite a few people in recent months that believe in this modern monetary theory where the debt doesn't matter and, you know, all this stuff is certainly matters. The matter of fact, a lot of them don't even believe debt is debt. They try to say it's not debt. When by definition a bond is a debt instrument. And that is how we finance our debt. Like it's debt.
Okay. So there's no other way to put it. It's debt. If it wasn't debt, we wouldn't have to pay it every year. My concern is, you know, looking at the projections for the debt, by the way, we raised the debt ceiling enough last year that was supposed to get us through the entire Trump administration. We're going to get about halfway through it a little more than halfway through it. And we're going to have to hit the debt ceiling again. We raise the debt ceiling by five trillion dollars
on the premise that that would get us to 2029. It's not. It's not going to get us through the end of 2027. So that is how aggressively the debt is growing under Donald Trump right now. With the cuts to snap and Medicaid and incredible services. My concern is my children and my grandchildren. When the debt is 30% of the budget or 40%. Do you think they're going to be cutting
defense? You know, they're going to be cutting all the critical services. They're going to be cutting
all the things that all the Americans have paid into their entire lives. And so a lot of people are afraid of this. I am very afraid of it because I look at our politicians and I see that they don't care and they're doing absolutely nothing. And this is on both sides. When you talk about the debt, you know, you have the left is like, well, we can't cut anything. We can't cut these, you know, and you talk about the right. It's like the debt doesn't matter. And it's like it does matter.
“It absolutely matters. And they'll be a day. I think currently is projected about 75 years out from”
now is when the debt would literally be 100% of our budget at current projections. The interests
measure. They'll never let it get there. I don't think it gets to 50%. Because to me, if it gets to
30%, like you're, everything's crashing, you know, but then what do you do? You utilize more debt
To try to fix it.
no way to turn around without getting stuck in a ditch, basically. And so it's very concerning for me,
because, you know, a lot of people in this country, no longer think about the future. They no longer think or care about what their grandchildren or children are going to experience in their lifetime. When you get to be my age and you have kids and grandkids, it's all you think about. Is are they going to be okay? And I see nothing that is encouraging to me
“for those people in my life and the future or this country, honestly, when it comes to the debt.”
Because it was in our lifetime where we had four years in a row of a balanced budget and we're paying down debt. Yeah. Like that was just Bill Clinton. And our defense budget was going down. Yeah. And that wasn't that long ago. And then, you know, George Bush comes in, immediately cuts taxes, immediately creates a more debt. And then his second year, he had the largest national debt in history. And his third year, he had the largest and that has happened every sense. Every year since then,
that is what has happened. And there's nothing on the horizon that even begins to look like it'll ever turn around just because of our obligations, our obligations to our seniors, our obligations, our Medicare and Medicaid obligations, all those obligations, I see nothing that can turn it around. You cannot, you know, they say, we can grow out of it. No, we can't. But you can't grow out of this. And we still need so much on our military.
I mean, you would have to have our GDP at 25 percent to grow out of this. It's ridiculous when
Scott Bessant says we can grow out of this. We can't grow out of this. That's not a thing. You would need a once in a million year economy. Yeah, exactly. And we're not headed that way at all. Also not in that. And like, if we were in an industrializing phase or an expansion phase, but the US economy is like saturated. And none of us have learned late stage. What's that? We're in late stage. Yeah. We're in late stage. Yeah.
I mean, to the point where we have to ask ourselves, what do we do with the populist that can no longer manufacture its own goods? You know, provide its own energy needs, things like that. Like, we, you know, we talked about how much are we a global society? We, yeah, we absolutely have to be our economy is no longer self-sustaining. And that's not that it ever was. But we are, we're not a manufacturing economy. You know, we, we, we are so interrelated with these countries.
We're trying to screw over right now. I think one great analogy. If I invented a pill tomorrow that cured all disease and no one ever got sick for their entire life until the day they died,
which would basically mean we wouldn't need Medicare, Medicaid anymore. Like, if,
“if I invented a pill that did that, it wouldn't do jack shit to our debt. That's how bad it is.”
And RFK would say it's, it's not good for you. Well, yeah. But you know what I mean? Like, if we get through the eliminated 100% of some of these huge obligations we have, we would still run trillion dollar deficits is what I'm saying. And that's, that's kind of where I come from is this, so we've been here before, but it was different circumstances, post-World War II. We peaked out about 120% debt to GDP, which is roughly where we're right right now. The difference is back
then we had a way younger population and a rapid economic growth largely because everyone turned to the United States as the one country that was mostly unaffected by the war. Obviously, we had Pearl Harbor and whatnot. But we were the ones that everyone were like, if we need to make money, it's got to go through the US. Today, we have an aging population with slower growth. And we're actively being the country where we're telling everyone, no, don't invest in us. It's not that we're
actively saying it. It's just our policies at this point are pointing in a direction where the US is not as secure a place to invest in because Donald Trump is going after Canada or going after the European Union or these tariffs. And so, to Matt's point, I agree, we're not going to get
“out of this debt problem. I think the problem we need to reframe is we just need to stop growing”
the debt somehow. Instead of trying to say, we need to eliminate the debt, that's too big a problem at this point. It's so big that it's just kind of throwing your hands up in the air and whatever, it's just kind of a nebulous number. But if we can focus on not growing the debt, we might be able to do something about it slowly over the next, maybe over the next 250 years of this country as long. So, hopefully we last that long. But what that means is we would have to
change some pretty fundamental policies within this country. First of all, we'd have to hugely encourage external investment in this country in order to grow the economy meaningfully like Matt said, a two to three percent growth just ain't doing it. So, the US has to open up more and when I say open up, that means we have to open up for an immigration standpoint too because whether you like it or not, Maga, these immigrants, they contribute massive numbers to our economy.
They are going to be the key because the white people, the we're just not hav...
country. And so when these immigrants come across, they bring their ambition, they bring their large
“families, they bring their youth and they grow our economy. This is also feeds to the the point”
of when you have immigrants come in, you can reach back into their origin countries and grow and grab investment. And when you have policies that are friendly to Canada or Europe or Japan, they want to invest. And so what we're looking at here is there's no shortcut. We can't tax unfortunately, we can't tax, and I'm not saying we need to tax billionaires more, but we can't tax billionaires a hundred percent and get out of this. What we need to do is try to slow the train
and get to a point where we need to stop the debt from growing faster than the economy. That's
going to be the, that's got to be the first goal. And if we can do that by reversing basically
every Trump economic policy right now, by opening the economy, by allowing the people to to trade cross borders with the US because the investments will flow into the US. If they will, if we are a partner that is worth investing in. And because right now and I just saw this this morning and it's so we have a lower approval rating amongst the glow amongst world nations in this survey than China does right now. Last time that happened was 20 years ago, when we were kind
of at the peak shittiness of the Iraq war, when we were, we were showing that we were just not a good partner when it comes to the Middle East. Low and behold, we're showing we're not a good partner, once again. And people's opinions of us are bad and now we're facing down an economic drag, whether it's an investment or due to the immigration. Those are things we're going to need. And as I said, we're not going to be able to solve the entire debt. We just need to slow it down.
So that may be over a hundred years or so. We cut it in half or something over time. You know, it ain't going to happen in any of our lifetime. I guarantee that. Yes, once again, we've gotten to the, the, uh, well, it would be good for the economy to not be big at it. Yes. Okay. If we don't want me to believe in climate change, okay, whatever it gets to spur to let immigrants in your country sucks that we have to talk that way.
Do you know, you, you have ethics at your core that teach you that all humans are human regardless of where they're from or imaginary borders. Nevertheless, let the immigrants in, they're having kids. They're making money. Good Lord. How do you think my people got here?
“Yeah, all of it. Here's the thing. We got to get away from this idea.”
That that business owners create jobs. They don't. That's a complete fallacy.
Consumers create jobs. Uh-huh. Period. I, I've owned many businesses. I've never created a job.
My customers created those jobs by buying stuff from me without the customers. There's no business for anyone to work at to begin with. That's the foundational part of job creation is having the customers. If the customers have money, the more money they have, the more money the businesses make. This idea of continually cutting taxes for the rich. Instead of cutting taxes for the poor and leaving the taxes on the rich, understanding that the poor are going to give those rich people their
money. They don't need to get that money in tax dollars. The poor people are going to give it to them. Because they're going to go spend their money and that's where they're going to spend it. And until we change our thinking on that, nothing can change. Like, you cannot fix anything in this country until we actually understand what creates jobs and what creates jobs or consumers with money in their pocket. Not rich people with money and offshore bank accounts.
Well, that value is provided by labor, right? Like, these people need jobs. Like, there's Americans who laborers are powering the economy, not people who are trying to
“pay them less every year. Yes, exactly. And if you want to, if you want an example to throw”
in magas face that we need to ensure that, as Matt was saying, the consumer base is the one that is protected because that will grow the economy. You just have to look at modern-day China right now. China is using government funding to try to try to shut their impending collapse because of their population collapse because they don't allow immigration in. But also, they're aging out like we are.
The problem is they have a humongous youth unemployment problem. And because the youth are not
working there, their economy is slowing faster than the United States. And that's going to be a problem for their debt as well. You cannot use the government to try to just say, hey, government, go build this building that we don't need. You need to make sure that the workers have a reason to want to go to work. And what you do with that is you fund things like the infrastructure
Bill.
companies that are, all these small businesses, friends, like one of the most brilliant things that Biden did during COVID was provide this small business assistance during COVID. That alone kept our economy from completely collapsing during COVID. All of these people were able to continue to pay their workers, small businesses, the local workers, they all came together and they were
able to continue functioning. The billion dollar companies, they were going to be going to be fine.
They were going to survive it because they have their nest eggs. But because of small business and because of the younger workers, the more ambitious workers and the allowance of immigration to flow in, everyone winds about the immigration that happened under Biden. You know what, that immigration did. It propped up our economy briefly as we were dealing with COVID. So all of those things, their things that people don't look at. And unfortunately, the Trump just loves to be like
stop all the brown people from getting in here. And it's in a racist, bigoted, a trotist policy. But it also is costing us jobs, our economy, and our status around the world. And if it means
“that I got to tell Maga, hey, if you want to make more money, perhaps stop being racist, that's what”
I'm going to do because they aren't going to do it just out of the goodness of their heart. Let's be honest, perhaps. I just, you know, racism tariff is what you're saying.
Yeah, yeah, that's what it is. That's a great actually line. It basically is. It's like if you want to
be, your racism is causing tariff problems for us. It really is. The fact that you are now, you have such a big heart on for like SpaceX and all these billionaires who hang out with Trump. And the fact that you want to close the borders, it's a racism tariff. That's, I mean, we should make a t-shirt there. There's another t-shirt for you. You're creating a racism tariff. And it's because you don't allow young people to come in and take and build their lives here,
which is what happened after World War II, our rapid economic growth was because young people came together, loved this country, destroyed fascism and they had families and had optimism. That's not happening in the core population of the U.S. right now. But those immigrants, they certainly are bringing it. Matt, any closing thoughts on this?
Oh, boy. Thanks, Chad. Some didn't do the best. You can hear it on the bonus episode. Am I doing the bonus episode this Friday? That's you. You're, you're this Friday. I have one on the two economies of America. You may remember 2004, campaign was, it was John Edwards that talked about the two Americas. I did a little kind of spin off of that, that's the two economies of the United States.
That'll be your Friday bonus episode. So stay tuned for that for that to release on Friday.
“It's, I think it's a pretty good little 15 minute”
jot down memory lane and how the two economies of America work today. We, if you, if you guys didn't know the three of us, we're all in the same economy. Yeah, I knew that. Considering we have the same employer in podcast, I kind of assumed. I'm not a, I'm not a, I'm not a Mr. global business owner, but
never the last time. I'm still in your economy. Oh, yeah. Yeah.
We're in the 99% over here. I would say most podcasts. There's mine as Rogan and a few of the other grifters are in the same economy. I would say, well, check that out. American power extra drops in your feed Friday morning. YouTube Friday evening occasionally YouTube Monday. If we, if it's an extra long episode, and we want to give you a little extra time. But this Friday, new episode of American power extra about the two American economies featuring Mr. global. So check that out in your feed.
This week and let's end this episode as we end every episode by chatting about, if not the best,
“the least worst part of our week in a segment that I believe is called the least worst part of my week”
flawless introduction. Not tozzan. But anyone professional podcast or not tozzan. Anyone like to go first and tell me the least worst part of your week? Oh, man, that's got one. Go for me. Go ahead. We figured out how to make ammonia using sunlight and one and a half volts of electricity. And so people may not realize how significant this is. But this is key ingredient and what fertilizer, right? And so we make fertilizer is a environmentally climate intensive product.
We currently make ammonia using hydrogen, which is extracted from natural gas. It's a very intensive energy intensive and also climate intensive process to making fertilizer. And the things we need for fertilizer. So these scientists figured out how to, they call it a catalyst, the
This vaccine catalyst that converts nitrate to ammonia using sunlight.
volts of electricity, which is, I don't even know if I, Chad, what uses just one and a half volts of
electricity. That's a very small amount. Oh, alarm clock. But the heart. What is the heart use? I don't know. But anyway, this is a huge deal because it works great. And they can easily see how this can be scalable. So when we talk about, one of the things I thought about was just going to rub some people the wrong way. You know, we need fossil fuels to grow food because we need them for the fertilizer. Turns out in the future we won't. Because now, we have figured
out how to make something with just sunlight and one and a half volts of electricity. And that's fertilizer. And that is, I love when we discover new things. Like, I totally nerd out when we discover new things. I'm like, that is so cool. So, but yeah, that's the thing that just happened. So we'll see where that goes in the future. Isn't it nice when there's a science story that's like, what you thought the news would be like when you were a kid when you're like, oh, we discovered
a new thing. By the way, there's more dinosaurs than we thought, less polluted. We've got
“to make things less polluted. Like, that's what I thought the news was always going to be. When”
I was 10, I was like science rocks, man. Yeah. We're not what it should be. That's what it actually happens. Yeah. Usually, when we're largely disappointed at what hasn't come true, that we thought we were going to come true when we were kids. You know, all the flying cars and all that stuff.
But the stuff that has come true, we could have never imagined when we were kids. Like,
if you were to describe an iPhone to me when I was eight years old, I would say, whatever, you're fucking crazy. But you know what I mean? So it just looks different. But this, the science stuff is I love the science stuff. Nailed the grass ties and it's my favorite. One of my favorite people in the world. Because you know, it's how to explain things in a way I can understand. I'm kind of like, four scum, talking to his mom, you know. But yeah, I love the good news that comes from
science, and especially the health field and all that kind of stuff. No, I mean, I wasn't big sarcastic. I love when it's like, oh, we, we discovered a thing that changes projections about the future. You know, we look at, like, what part of this? Because a lot of the science news we hear is fatalistic about climate change these days, right? And not to, not to be a doomer about it. But it's like, oh, a science is in the news again, decay is happening faster than we realize. You know,
and all these projections are based on very real things. But it's amazing when you feel like, oh,
we discovered a way to, you know, eat large eat polymerchains in what a bacteria that eats polymerchains that can therefore clean water. You know, we're obviously we're still, you know, far, far away from finding a solution to our global pollution problem. But it's kind of fascinating when it's like, oh, that's like these solutions that like just didn't exist before, change the calculations. It's interesting. And just to point out, this is an AI assisted discovery. So we often talk about
the benefits of AI and the dangers of AI. This is one of those things that wouldn't have happened
“without AI. Yeah, that's what it should be for. Yeah. Oh, I agree. Yeah. Not to destroy the world,”
which is, oh, yeah. But it's going to be more also not to send like a meme to your dead-eyed friends of them as Barack Obama or whatever, but well, they go, you mean recreating the entire Odyssey because your angry at Christopher Nolan's is not a good use of growth. Not aware of that, but that's a thing to not watching it. Chad, what was the least worst part of your week? Other than not watching Elon Musk garbage Odyssey that he's going to make. Um,
so it stayed this. Yeah, it's dead. So this is the least worth part of the week. This is a, this is a cool story. And it's kind of going back to Canada. So there was this woman named Patricia Robinson. She was traveling across Canada to celebrate her 90th birthday with her family and she was flying alone. And on the flight she happened to sit next to a guy, fellow Canadian, name Quinn said Mark. Now Quinn says, he's normally the type of guy who puts his headphones on,
doesn't really talk to anybody. That's kind of like what we all do. Although I will say side note, I've started being that annoying passenger just hire. And if you don't want to talk to me, so be it, but often I find it super rewarding. Anyways, so yeah, don't just drink off. I do it all the time. Take your headphones out. Get off track. But for whatever, for whatever reason, he starts talking to this woman Patricia. And they start hitting it off. I mean,
obviously, the elderly love to talk to people because I mean, often their friends and family maybe passed on or whatever. About 50 minutes into the flight, the pilot announces that the wildfire
“smoke that we all experienced down here in the U.S., had closed. Maybe that's why these trumpets”
will piss all the wildfire smoke. But so they say that they can't fly on, they have to turn around and go all the way back to this woman's hometown, which is, um, uh, that Kailana or whatever, sorry, or Saskatoon or whatever. You have great names up there. I can't pronounce them Canada.
They can't, they can't land where their destination is.
She's a 90-year-old woman alone, and now she's stranded in this airport. So this gentleman Quinn
“gives her his phone number and says, if you need anything, at least you got somebody here if you”
can't get it on a flight. Another passenger, super nice Canadian named Tanner over here's this conversation says, I'm in. I want to help out. But then he says, I'm renting a car. The two men offered this 90-year-old woman. They just met a few hours ago, offered to drive her the seven hours to her birthday party across Canada to the town she needs to get through. So they, uh, she can be with her family. And they alternate driving Quinn and Tanner because apparently Patricia can't drive
at that point. And they start calling themselves the three Amigos, they listen to comedy shows, hopefully they listen to some of that Towson comedy shows. But they, uh, they stop for snacks, told stories. And the, the cool thing is Patricia used to make this drive every year to go see her family with her husband, her late husband, who had died 10 years ago. And since he had died,
“she was too afraid to travel on her own and she didn't drive on her own. So she flies now to, to get”
over there. This was the first time in 10 years. She's driven that, that route. And she, on the way,
she's telling Quinn and Tanner, all the cool places her and her husband stopped. And so it's just kind of a personal story where they got to their family, had the birthday and on August 15th, it was her birthday. But kind of a cool twist. It was also Tanner's birthday as well. So the family celebrated his. She was turned 90. He turned 45 exactly twice as age. So just a cool story about Canadians being nice to each other. And if you've ever talked to Canadians or worked with them or anything like that,
there's super nice people. But do not mistake their kindness for weakness, obviously, as we see them push back against Trump and his nonsense policies. So that was, I just thought that was a cool feel good story of, like, kind of a buddy comedy almost, that you could turn into with that road trip movie. Also, it can be called a normal Thursday in Canada. Yeah, driving seven hours to the next town. These guys are looking out the window. There's cars on either side with two guys driving a 90-year-old
monitor. Yeah, we only got three hours to go. We're doing five. Yeah, she's a non-target. She's over, she's over and I'll burn out. We gotta go. Cars come in the other direction doing the same thing. I don't mean to belittle these people. I'm just saying Canadians are very very kind. Is there Canadian version of Justin Bateman that could be in that movie? What? That's Jason Bateman? Jason Bateman? Jason Bateman?
Can I say Justin Bateman? Can I say Justin Bateman? Can I just produce a Jason Bateman? The sister justine? This kind of kind of the technology to produce. I think that's one of the only economic advantages we have to this day is that we have, we can produce a Jason Bateman organically. Canada has been trying to do it in a lab for years. The best they've come up with is a jet, I don't know, Justin Long or something. They, they don't have, they don't have the technology for a Bateman, even a willar net. They would kill for that.
You know who they're going to classify today. They want to print money. It's going to be like
“Kevin Hart in the rock or something like that. That's what they're going to do. This is the same thing”
over in working. So Ryan Reynolds and they're at least he's going to. Well, the least worst part of my
week is also a small field good story. Maybe you saw it already, but for the first time here in New York
in over 100 years. We're having a lot of ecological recovery here, which is remarkable considering how bad climate change is and how bad pollution still is. But if you think pollution is bad now, imagine how it, how bad it was in industrializing New York when we had zero regulations whatsoever and had just been dumping chemicals directly into the water supply for decades. Didn't stop with industrialization, it continued. But I mentioned on the podcast recently,
one of the major things is New York, the big oyster, as it was once known, our oyster bay is being repopulated. And of course, these are things that, you know, ecological systems that are interrelated. So the oysters need clean water, but the oysters also create clean water. So there have been a lot of really good conservation and ecological efforts to clean up New York and specifically New York's waterways, which due to our manufacturing and being a shipping hub, factories and shipping
deeply, deeply polluted waterway even compared to other parts of the country. But there's been a lot of effort in the past 50 years plus to really make a big difference. And we saw whales
breaching in the harbor recently. And just last week, this is my, my new story for the first time
and over 100 years, otters were spotted in the wild in the Bronx river, just swimming around. And, uh, whales, great news, but they're not cute. Otters,
Cuteness is returning to the New York harbor.
yeah, people who are just like, look at that blue go. It's a baby blue guys from the song,
some whales are cute. You're right. I'll give you baby whales. Adult blue whale, you have a fetish. But my point is, you think that's cute, you got something else going on. But I'll make, they're, they're all gods creatures. My point is, thank God, we got some cute ones coming back. We people share that. It'll go viral. It's nice to see aside from just like, it's adorable to look at. I'd love to see otters in my day-to-day life. It's nice to see
that, you know, we're losing a lot of biodiversity. Climate change is, you know, it's more about
what we can save, not what we can, you know, we can't save everything. It's more about figuring
out what we can save at this point. It is nice to see stories, even if they are not the complete reversal of, you know, even if we need to keep fighting for our environment, it's really cool to see stories where you're like, oh, even in the short-time term, like ecological improvement actually does work. We haven't fully doomed. And I mentioned it not just to say, like, hey, it's not so bad. Like, it's going to be bad. And fighting climate change, I've said this before, but it requires
admitting that things are going to get worse. And you're going to lose things while you're fighting
“for a better future. But I like stories like this because I think we can think of those in terms”
of like ecological ages of like, oh, I'm fighting for hopefully in my lifetime, we'll see a change. And it's like, no, some of these, the downward spiral is not unstoppable. Some things can be safe. Something's going to be changed. And I think a lot of time when we look at it, we go, oh, what, you know, why bother? It's all theoretical change for a number of parts of carbon in the atmosphere. And it's like, no, it's not. It's there are still very real material changes we can
make in our own environments and our own habitats and our own communities. And I am in community with these auditors is what I'm suggesting. And I am going to register them to vote in the next election. And that is the least worst part of my week. And did they glow? Did they glow?
“Oh, only only sort of like a, like a healthy, you know, they were radiant, but that's what you're asking.”
But that you're really good. Okay. Yeah. My wife would be everywhere. It's part where you might want to watch out for that. Yeah. Normal number of eyes, normal number of appendages, you know. Well, even though you're speaking in a normal life, I'm probably normal around Chernobyl, this vibrant, like, yeah. And like people think that's crazy, but I think that's helpful, like,
you know, um, matter of fact, is it turns out that there's people that never left Chernobyl?
I saw I read that somewhere. I figured that would be some you would know. It's a daily bit. So there were people that, I mean, to be clear, they're dead now, not because of Chernobyl, but because of age. It was, they, they just, they were just, I mean, it's the situation where elderly people are like, I have nowhere to go. So, but they found out they didn't die from the radio activity. They just, they were just elderly. But yeah, no one lives there anymore. The
exclusions on his highly off limits at this point. But they did let people stick around if they really had nowhere to go. It was the Soviet Union. So let's be honest, they didn't really care. So, but, yeah, my, my wife will be super stoked about the otter story. That's her favorite animal. And I'll be another reason to go to New York. So, just the otter. Yeah. The one otter, I'm going to go find it too. So it's otters, at least. Oh, or more spotted. So, uh, she's got it. She's got it.
She's got, but you got to have two, or you can't have one. Yeah, they got to come for so much. So. Well, that takes us to the end of our episode here folks. Thanks so much for tuning in. Whether you're listening to us on your podcast app or on YouTube or in a cassette tape that you've dubbed us to we will be back on Friday with Mr. Global's American Power Extra. And then another episode coming at you on Wednesday. Once again, thank you for joining us for Chad Scott and Mr. Global.
“I'm an ad podcast. And this has been American Powers. Well, let's remember that power corrupts”
and American power corrupts, American League.
