The Art of the Venezuela Oil Deal

We'll be happy about it.

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We all know about the background and the background. And as soon as we start, we'll be happy about the online shop. If you buy Shopify, then you'll be happy about it. This is just the reason for that. Our whole business will be happy about Shopify.

Now, let's start our business test on Shopify. [Music] Welcome back to Plads David World, I'm Tommy Btorch. I'm Den Rhodes.

“Ben, have you seen the clip of the three massive hurricanes that have formed?”

This is a big thanks to El Niño and I guess climate change. Yeah, I didn't have hurricanes on my list. I knew fires, I should be concerned about earthquakes. But now I guess we have all manner of national disasters that you're in California. Earlier this week there was a report that L.A. might get hit with a hurricane in the Labor Day.

I don't know if that's going to happen anymore, but what the hell is going on? We're kind of whistling past the climate apocalypse as well. The other apocalypse is happening. Yeah, there's an AI apocalypse. It's kind of hovering around us.

There's a climate change apocalypse. I don't know. The 31 flavors of nightmares, I guess. Let's just say the roof of my non-year old house was not built for the atmospheric rivers that have been building. So they got for me.

So I'm a little worried about stuff dripping. Yeah, I, you know. Yes, it's not going to be good. And I have a three year old and a two year old and they are outdoor cats and they are not going to like be an inside if you're dealing with months.

Anyway, this could be a fun show because we are guys who like to have a good time. Always. When things are really shitty.

“So what we're going to do today, we're going to review six months.”

Of Trump's perfect war with Iran. We're also going to talk about this resumption of fighting that's kicked off over the weekend. And I've gotten a lot worse today. Yeah. Right before we went in, there was a bunch of things changed.

A ballistic missile file fired that we'll talk through. We're also going to talk about how the Iran wars led to some pretty dire warnings from some of the most senior military leaders about the strain of wars having on the US military. Then we're going to walk you through this truly crazy deal. The Trump administration announced last week where the Pentagon is going to take a

stake in a Venezuelan oil company. That's a real sentence. Yes. Yes. That's a thing that is apparently going to happen to Pentagon is getting warrants to own an oil company.

Actually, it's based on Barbados. It's not even Venezuela. It's a Barbados. It's a good taxi. It's a whole department of war.

Yeah. Save on your taxes over there. So no potential for corruption there. Zero. There we're going to explain who wasn't who was not invited to the G20 Finance meeting in North Carolina.

We'll tell you about the latest on the recovery efforts after this just biblical looking flood and landslide in the Paul and China. One of the scariest things I've ever seen in my life. Why Iceland declined to join the European Union and then a crazy story out of South Korea that's worth watching.

And then I did our interview. It's with David Ebe, the premier of British Columbia. We talked about the Trump trade war. We talked about kind of the reaction from average citizens in Canada. Uh, about all the things Trump has done.

Spoiler alert. They're pissed. Yeah. And it's not just this. They're pissed about the 51st day.

The annexation threats. The shit talk. The calling. Carney the governor. Like all of it.

Um, and interestingly, he is not a member. Uh, the premier Ebe is not a member of Carney's party. He's like, any PDs of the left. Um, but there is cross party support.

“There as I think was a poll we talked about last week.”

72 percent support for Carney walking away.

So, um, it just feels like a fight that is destined to get worse and not better because Trump has like so thoroughly enraged. Um, average Canadians and a woken the sense of Canadian nationalism. That is, um, I don't know. Seems pretty durable.

Maybe I'm wrong. I think you're right because they have both sovereignty and political incentives to not capitulate to Trump and, you know, I don't even know what Trump's trying to achieve. I mean, that's it. It's like the Iran War, which was bad.

Like, what is his goal in this trade war? Like, we don't know other than you got mad. Good question. Yeah. I don't think it's softwood lumber.

Um, alright. Well, let's start with Iran. Uh, so we're about six months into the world with Iran. We are going to discuss some of the great achievements from Mr. Trump's excursion into Iran.

That was supposed to be four weeks.

But first, we're going to walk you through this latest round of air strikes in fighting.

So over the weekend, there was an exchange of fire between the U.S. and Iran for the first time at a month. Uh, sent com said they fired at Iranian troops that were trying to lay mines in the Street of Hormuz in response. Iran fired missiles at Jordan.

All of those were shot down by interceptors. The UAE also said they intercepted an Iranian drone over their waters. And the Wall Street Journal said reported that several ships had been struck by projectiles

But then today on Tuesday, uh, the U.S. conducted a bunch more strikes that they said were

“intended to reduce the risk of Iranian, you know,”

Iran firing on ships. And then right before we started recording video started circulating of Iranian ballistic missiles that have been fired back in response to the U.S. Here is Fox News is tray yinxed, relaying his conversation with President Trump from earlier Tuesday.

Let's watch. I just spoke with President Trump who indicated that if the Iranians respond to these U.S. strikes against their country, the president said they'll be hit much harder. He went on to say today's strikes were a very big hit.

And if it goes a third time, they're going to be totally wiped out as a country.

Now, I asked the president what was hit tonight in Iran, specifically in the southwestern part of the country. Next to the straight of Hormuz, President Trump says a lot of radar. And added that they were trying to rebuild the radar systems. And the United States was watching.

And then just before they completed this construction, that's when these strikes took place. The president says the USS George Washington, that new aircraft carrier that arrived in theater last week, is loaded to the gills with ammunition.

And he indicated that they have enough to continue this fight against Iran. Again, if the Iranians do decide to respond. So we now know the Iranians have responded. So a little state media clip there. Yeah.

Yeah. You know, tree yinks has done some really good reporting back in the day. I'm like coverage out of Tel Aviv. It's real bummer that he's become like a Trump phone guy. Yeah, incredibly.

He's going to, how many times has he been about to destroy Iran with the third strike?

Right. Not a lot of scrutiny on these statements. So on Monday, Axios reported the US was considering this like long-term mode. The grass strategy where they just periodically degrade Iran's military assets in the region. Then one might describe that as a forever war.

One might. Tommy, maybe because it's six months. And then in retrospective mood, I'm going to start with one thing, which is, you know, how Trump likes to talk a lot about how these other countries are free-loaders. You're, you know, especially allies in Europe and Asia.

“Do you remember that country that has the Prime Minister that helped convince Trump to do this?”

And is recently posted that he was able to get Trump to, yeah, a bummer on. Do you remember how at the beginning of this war? Israel was a part of it? Yeah. What would happen there?

Yeah. Who used to free-loader here? Because near as I can tell, we're in a forever war. BB's running a re-election campaign on how he convinced Trump to do this. That's what he said.

That's not me. So anyway, just put a pin in that one. Good point. Yeah.

We never talked about that.

You know, and we've kind of memory-holded that they were a part of the war. And then suddenly they weren't. And we never talked about that. Yeah. Not a deal.

Stop, stop. Yeah. Look, what's happening here tactically is pretty evident, which is, you know, The Iranians have successfully closed the straightaway moves. The Trump administration is going around boasting about the fact that through a combination

of tactics, you know, apparently ships in the dark of night close to Oman. The destruction of some of these radars, so that the Iranians can see that. We've now won the Great Victory Tommy, not of changing their enemy regime, or destroying the Iranian nuclear program, or obliterating the Iranian Navy, or military, all the other things that have been claimed.

We're now claiming victory because traffic to the straightaway moves is like on a 40, 60% of what it was. So all we're doing now is like hitting the Iranians to try to stop them from hitting tankers to try to like eat a few extra tankers through a straight. That was open for the war began. And that's not a durable solution because the Iranians are not going to disappear.

“They live there, and they will continue to escalate, I think, militarily.”

They have issued some warnings in recent days that, you know, they're going to kind of return to hitting all these countries at host US military facilities and places where some of these strikes are taking place from. And so we're just another escalation cycle that is entirely about fighting over this control of the straightaway moves. Why is that preferable to just cutting some deal, diplomatically it opens the straightaway moves and just calling this thing a day.

Why do we have to spend tens of billions of dollars more money? We'll get into the depletion of stockpiles. We need to update on the cost, because they're keeping 50,000 US service members in the Middle East. Hundreds of billions of dollars. All these ships are there like anywhere we're naked everybody else. Yeah, let's take through some of the stats.

By the way, though, if you like foreign policy coverage that doesn't just take Trump's phone call and repeat what he says, please subscribe to Potsay Federal to your energetic plug. Yeah. We are trying to build a progressive counterweight to all the right-wing crap you see from Fox News in particular

And you also help us get good information into the YouTube algorithm and get good information to people. So please do also it's free. So just a couple of stats, Ben.

“The casualty count is now, after six months, 757 wounded 18 Americans dead.”

We don't know the real casualty count in Iran, but the journal estimates 3000 dead related to combat operations. Obviously that also, you know, that number is bigger when you include all civilians including well over 100 girls at a school. Despite claiming he was going to rescue the protesters' life for Iranians in Iran is horrible. Inflation is that 80% inflation for food items is way worse.

The Guardian reported that vegetable oil in Iran in August cost 383 percent more than that of a year ago.

The price of eggs rose by 294 percent, chicken by 177 percent in red meat by 148 percent. Oil prices are up 23 percent in the U.S. gas prices up by 38 percent.

“The chief economist at Moody's put the cost of war over $1,200 per American household between gas and inflation and interest rates.”

To your point earlier about shipping through the straight-of-home moves. So pre-war levels were about 130 ships per day. This data firm Kepler says that in recent weeks it's about a dozen ships per day going through the straight. So that is way, way, way down. There have been 71 attacks on ships since the war started killing 19 sailors Iran is attacked.

Israel, Qatar, Iraq, Syria, the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Oman, Jordan and Kuwait. So we've ignited this nice little regional conflagration. I guess the only good thing you can say about the Iran conflict is that it's currently only six months long. But you know, the fighting we saw today suggested we could see another six months quite easily.

Yeah, and first of all, I still find it strange that we think there was something called like the 12 day war last year.

You know, I mean, because this gets to the cost. We've had like an advanced force posture in the region, like since that 12 day war. Like this is, this is in some ways more than the six month war.

“But if you even take the six months saying, I think the fundamental problem remains the flaw at the outset of the war.”

Which, I mean, one flaw is just you shouldn't fight wars you don't need to fight. But the other flaw strategically was I don't think Donald Trump in his own mind knows what purpose this war is and is serving anymore. You know, it was he was clearly convinced that the Iranian regime would collapse quickly and there'd be some Venezuela like transformation, which we'll get to win get to Venezuela. And since that didn't happen, like he just can't identify a way to end the war. Because there's no way to end the war without accepting the fact that this was a pointless endeavor.

You know, like there's not going to be some miraculous victory of the Iranian regime surrendering.

So it's just going to be tipped for tad and tipped for tad until Trump realizes that the best you're going to get is opening up the street or movies basically.

And so it's a certain certain reason. It's a truly a reason to be fighting war. The incalculable cost is the extent to which this is like a body blow to whatever remained of America's. I don't want to say standing anymore because long term this is going to make middle eastern countries, you know, see US partnership is dangerous at worst unreliable at best. It is completely screwed over allies who are going to start to hedge aggressively from the United States and seek other arrangements, whether it's with China or other countries.

And just public opinion, I mean, I, I, I find myself Tommy like not, I don't trust what the Pentagon says. I have trouble even. It's not that I don't trust, but this regurgitation of Trump phone calls, you know, like, yeah, but that's only a few, that's a few reporters at few outlets. I agree with you, but then a lot of others are doing like pretty back break. Yeah, yeah, we'll get some of that. But there's, you know, it's never good when like you have this kind of country that already lacked confidence and information and I think we may look back on this wars like a bigger thing than it even feels like now it feels pretty big in terms of like trust and institutions.

And then lastly, I just want to put a pin in this because you know, I text about a lot. The, the economic disruptions you described are contributing to this anxiety that we see most primarily in the bond markets where you have unsustainable fiscal situations in countries. You've got growing deficits growing debt obligations. And then countries are making that worse because we're having to spend money to fill the gap to try to fight inflation because of high energy prices like this feels like a straw on the back of a camel that, you know,

Oh, no doubt. I mean, we talked about it on a recent show, the degree to which increased oil costs have led to all these disturbances in the Japanese bond market for example.

“But yeah, I mean, just to put a some data behind that, like the 30 year US treasury yields are near to decade highs. That's because people are dumping US treasuries 10 year bond yields in Japan are above 3% for the first time since 1996.”

And the UK, their bonds are the highest levels since 2007 in Germany, the highest in 2011. Our debt is 40 trillion dollars. That's 120% of GDP. France's debt is over $4 trillion, which is 117% of GDP. Japanese debt is 2 times their GDP. So like, I'm not usually like a big deficit debt guy. You've we've heard so many warnings about it over the year. You need to bring back so soon.

Yeah, but at some point it becomes the, you know, just servicing the debt becomes so unbelievably expensive that like investors will lose confidence.

One last point on this, it's just likely that the kind of status quo is going to lead to higher costs in terms of, you know, the price tag,

but also a cost in terms of human lives because USA today had a report out today about this new Iranian missile, but they've deployed that is apparently the one causing a time of damage and breaking through our defense is hitting bases. They call it the Castlebreaker. It's a mobile lunch missile that has a 900 mile range and the warhead can like maneuver at the, as it's coming down.

“So it's evading US missile defense systems and they think that that's what killed three US troops in Jordan that can July.”

So if they have a big stockpile of these things, they start launching them at US bases like more service members are going to die. And this is what happens in every war, right? Adversaries innovate, you know, they figure out different missiles are different drones. It can penetrate different defenses at the same time that we have the munitions problem, which we'll talk about. But the other thing that's, you know, notable is that the Iranian president just met with Putin and, you know, the Chinese,

and the Russians and the Chinese have incentive to help the Iranians innovate and help make this more costly to us. They are a beneficiary of this war, like make no mistake because it bogs us down, it drains our munitions, it drains our credibility. It dries up energy prices, which is good for Putin, so I'd watch that space too. So there are also these concerns within the Pentagon's top, top military leadership, the Washington Post reported this out. They had, they reported that a twice monthly report called the Secretary Defense Order Books or STOB contained some notable dissent from within the ranks of the military.

Leadership on the direction of the war, who reportedly think that the Iran operation has gone on, and it's been, quote, too much for too long. So this is described by the post, the STOB, quote, outlines the worldwide availability of US warships aircraft personnel weapon systems. It reflects the president's priorities for the force, which are carried out by the Secretary Defense. So some of the moves the Hexath has made that seem to have concerned or pissed off some of the combat commanders are things like, you know, he's extending the deployment of a bunch of troops in the Middle East until next year.

The head of the Pacific Command is not thrilled about having to send a carrier strike groups on aircraft carrier and the destroyers that travel with it from his area of operations in Asia to the Middle East. The post says the Navy in particular is feeling taxed and overextended due to long deployments for the force, and then we're in terror on naval assets. We've talked about that in the context of the USS Abraham Lincoln. Then I talked to a bunch of people who worked at top jobs at the Pentagon about this post story.

And most of them said basically the same thing, which is like, it's not unsurprising or all of that rare to have combatant commanders non concur on an order.

Non concur means I don't like it, but I'll do it. Yeah. It's like, you know, with your spouse, you're like fine, we can get tied, but I'm not happy about it. It's passive aggressive. I do like time.

I do that all. I like it a lot of time. So but like the way to understand this is like your combat commander, you have a specific region. You have a specific job in their scarce resources. So it's no surprise that if you're the guy in charge of the Indo-Pacific, you're going to be pissed off when the aircraft carrier in your region goes to the Gulf again.

So they thought that was not surprising, but everyone thought it was extraordinary that this leaked. Because it's suggested a level of anxiety and frustration and anger about excess decision making that is so high that someone was willing to risk ending their career. Getting court martial, you know, maybe going prison to leak this to the post. Yeah.

“I think first of all in the substance of it, look, why does this matter?”

You know, the far end it matters because if we have a reduced force posture and reduced munitions and all the rest of it. The huge scenarios you could or concerned about are Russian provocation or military action into Europe, which we've been talking about as a risk, you know, the Baltic states or somewhere else, or some Chinese action and Taiwan.

Yeah, so this is like, you know, I don't think that it's likely, but at the precise time that we appear to be concerned about, you know, at least one of the scenarios.

“Then beyond that, like the other thing is that these forces are often used for things like, you know, joint military exercises.”

Like they kind of routine functioning of how we work with allies, how we do, you know, things like freedom of navigation operations and the Pacific and the South China Sea. You know, like it just makes it harder for these people to do the kind of routine elements of their job. And there are other kind of things that could happen like natural disasters where the US military could up out of it. It's just not a good thing in principle to have this diminished presence. Even if, you know, nothing goes wrong and I should say for for what purpose, you know, it's not like we're fighting the Nazis here, you know.

It's not even like it's right after 9/11 or something like why we're doing this because of an episodic decision that Trump made in February on an ad hoc basis. And you're, a lot of point, this, there is a clear sign that there's just no confidence in hexa. You know, even though he's purged people that, you know, these are the people who remain after the purges, you know, like the people leaking or not, you know, the ones that survived can, you know, firing a bunch of people, not promoting a bunch of people.

So these aren't like left wingers, I don't think, and it shows you that they just fundamentally don't trust this leadership and don't think that he listens to them.

Because, you know, my sense, the military does not usually leak this kind of thing, you know.

And, and that suggests that they don't feel like they have an outlet to either hexaether, even frankly, to Congress, you know, which, you know, oftentimes is an advocate for the uniform military. So it shows you how bottom-up things are and how pent up the frustrations are. [Music]

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Just head to Ridge.com, use the code PSCW, and you're all set. After you purchase, they will ask you where you heard about them. Please support Podsafe the world and tell them we sent you. Speaking of that purge, on Monday, we learned that the Secretary of the Army is now out at the Pentagon, this is a guy named Dan Driscoll.

He has repeatedly butted heads with headset according to news reports over the last year or two. He's very close to JD Dance, and there are classmates at Yale Law School. The main beef between them seemed to be Driscoll's objection to headset, purging other top military leaders that he just didn't like, often because they were women or they were black or they were, I don't know,

at a mind of their own, including the April firing of the then Army Chief of Staff, Randy George, a move that headset made while Driscoll was on vacation.

And a position that hasn't been filled. There's also been a bunch of, there's like three other top army leaders that headset forced out. The Army is down from ten four star generals to five four star generals, and tech Seth was installed at the Pentagon.

“Like, I think all of us would agree that they were probably too many,”

like very senior leaders at the Pentagon, but that seems like there's been a bunch of stories about kind of the way the army in particular is rudderless in this moment, and Driscoll leaving is going to add to that. Driscoll also reportedly objected to headset firing a couple of black officers, and a couple of female officers, or at least preventing their promotions.

He also was sent to Ukraine for negotiations that may headset feel threatened, and also headset seemed to think that the Driscoll might be groomed to replace him, because he is not up to the job. So I don't know, seem bad, and also a headset apparently wants the Pentagon to black Sean Parnell to replace him, which is, like, the idea of, like, the assistant secretary in charge

of communications taking over as head of the army is, like, unheard of to me. Maybe I'm just wrong, but like that seems crazy. Yeah, well, because there are two things, there's a headset issue, and then a related trump issue, right? The headset issue is the complete lack of regard for competency in the US military.

Like, we've seen this in other trump agencies, particularly in the second term,

where they really don't care if positions go and fill, the people are competent or not. All they care about is, like, extreme loyalty, extreme on message. Like, when I say jump, you say hi, hi, hi, hi, hi, or when I show up to, like, do push-ups with you for photo-op, you know, act like a, you know, essentially train seal.

And it's one thing when we hear those stories that, like, you know, and I'm not trying to diminish these other agencies, but like, I don't even want to name, but, you know, like, the EPA or the, the ones that they want to destroy, you know. The US military is not a place to, like, do this level of the destruction of competence and purchase. Like, making a mistake, these are, again, hundreds, thousands of years of experience, like, you know,

being sent out the door, being shown the way, transformation, the demographics of the senior ranks, the military, like, that's bad. The, the Trumpian piece that I worry about, we've talked about kind of the authoritarian watch on the military, is in the last two years of the Trump administration, I just have a feeling, like, especially if they lose the midterms, like, should can get really weird.

Like, that could be when he wants to, like, you know, make a move on Greenland over the objections of Congress, or maybe he'll come back to wanting to put the military in the streets, you know. And, and it, it does feel like this effort to come transform the military into some compliant, you know, this guy resigned is not exactly like a resistance lib, you know, he's a genius. And so, you, makes you wonder, like what the bar is to be in a decision-making role at the Pentagon.

And, and, and, and, and A does that mean they might be more likely to go along with truly crazy shit that Trump asks them to do.

“And, be, like, we are allowed to look past Trump, like, oh, my God, what kind of Pentagon is the next president and inherit?”

You know, if you're a Democratic president, you're going to walk into a military that has been empty doubt of anybody except the most diehard, magaloyless, or yes men, and they're all men. And, and they will have lost all this capability. And then we'll probably also have like hundreds of billions of dollars in boondoggle contracts with, like, the likes of Don Jr's drone manufacturers.

Well, let's get to that. I'm sure many listeners were confused by a recent reports that the Pentagon has led an investment into a Venezuelan oil company. You are not alone.

Here's what happened and why this idea seems doomed to fail in the connection to Don Jr.

So, the investment was led by an office within the Department of Defense called the Office of Strategic Capital. The OSC, the OSC was set up during the Biden administration. The idea was to make investments in defense industrial production.

“Remember, the war in Ukraine kind of exposed shortages and munitions of the technologies”

that have since been exacerbated further by the war in Iran. The office's loan authority went from about $1 billion under Biden to over $200 billion under Trump. So, they got a lot of cash to move around here. One of the earliest moves under Trump was to loan, like $600 billion to a company connected to Donald Trump Jr.

So, great start. What the Trump administration announced last week was that the Pentagon now has an option to take a 35% stake in the parent company of a Venezuelan oil company called North American Blue Energy Partners. That company is run by a guy named Alejandro Bettencourt. We'll come back to him in a minute.

Under this deal, though, the US has the right to buy 20% of the production from all of the company's current and future oil fields at cost

with the right of first refusal to buy the rest of the production.

We can just try to buy all that oil. Concurrent with that deal, the Venezuelan government granted North American Blue Energy Partners 100 year leases on 17 oil fields with reserves estimated up to $65 billion. So, a shit ton of oil is the technical term. Trump is trying to sell this to some sort of like cost free windfall for the American people that's going to reduce gas prices.

But in reality, I think there's a couple of reasons to assume that like this thing's never going to get completed.

The first is just the political risk. The next US president could kill the steel. Any Democratic president should. This is like corrupt instincts to high heaven. The next Venezuelan president could too trump ever allows elections.

And many experts think that this deal violates Venezuela's constitution. And they basically just question the legitimacy of any deal made by an interim government with a leader installed by the United States at gunpoint. I think that's a reasonable way to view it. There's also the question of political opinion of Venezuela. Trump was very popular in Venezuela right after the Maduro operation.

His approval has steadily fallen ever since. Trump has brought up Delsea Rodriguez, who has Maduro's number two in Stooge. He's cut side deals like this. Everyone in Venezuela sees all the corruption happening around them. And Venezuela, let's just say they have a history of being a touch heavy handed when it comes to taking back oil assets that they feel were unfairly taken from them.

That's huge of us. And then there's the oil itself. So without getting to technical, Venezuela and oil is heavy and thick. You don't just like drill a hole and it comes out. You need specialized equipment.

You did an enormous amount of investment by some estimates of to $100 billion all in to upgrade the pipelines, the power sources and everything else.

And it could take a decade to develop fully all of these oil fields, which is why I don't think we're ever really going to see much of this oil and why most oil and gas companies are looking elsewhere. Where the investment required is lower and it's just less like political risk generally. So Ben, I'll pause there. And then I think we should really dig into the corruption piece of this. But like, I think both of us in the same reaction to this were like, you read it once.

You're like, what the fuck? And then you dig into it and it gets even more bonkers kind of like the deeper you go. Yeah, it's basically like a, you know, 2026 finance and natural resources version of imperialism. I mean, this is just straight up imperialism. Like we went in, we removed the leader of the country under, you know, as bad as the guys, he was pretty strange dubious purposes.

Like, do we really think that was about narcotrafficking? No, it was about oil. No. So this is straight up imperialism, that's bad. Like we shouldn't be in that business like it's wrong. The second thing is let's talk about the Venezuelan people and then the American people. The Venezuelan people have gotten very little out of this whole enterprise.

You know, look, you and I mean probably in particular because of my wrong Cuba.

At times have been on, you know, the wrong side or people have been critical who, who wanted to remove mineral.

“And so I think that's a very important thing.”

And I think that's a very important thing. And I think that's a very important thing. And I think that's a very important thing. And I think that's a very important thing. And I think that's a very important thing.

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And that's a very important thing. And in the absolute best case scenarios, like you said, to take a decade to kind of get this thing online, do we really think Trump's taking that far ahead? Like, they're just going to squeeze the juice that they can out of this stuff

and spread the money around in a small circle while they can. And this just shows you the lack of regard they have for, it's certainly the best way it wins. Delsea, everybody, you know, Delsea, you can broadcast and her brother get to kind of maintain power.

And I'm sure they get to cut. This guy gets to cut. People around Trump get cuts and, and that's better. Like, it's, it's not like some grand strategy. This is old fashion, smash and grab and perils.

Yeah, I kind of, I just want to know the financial details. Because what the U.S. gets is warrant in this parent company of, a Bet and Courts oil company. So the warrant is like an option where at a certain price, you can, you can exercise it.

And apparently they're, they're called penny options. It sounds like we pay like literally a penny for these warrants. But then, you know, the value of the warrant goes to $10. You exercise the option and then all of a sudden you, you have all this additional value.

So it's interesting because the U.S. government is now incentivized to get these oil fields producing more oil.

“But also to see the value of this corporation go up, right?”

Because we have these warrants. Right, we have equity in this fucking oil company. And so my question is who else is warrants? Like does John Jr. have a bunch like to other corrupt people around the Trump administration? He's like, imagine like having a warrant in something where the U.S.

has a vested financial interest in seeing the share price go up. It's just, it's the whole thing. Super shady. The fact that this like Barbados based company just got 100 year titles for Venezuela and oil fields.

First of all, that's going to be stuck in litigation in perpetuity.

Yeah. We know some of that got people who are probably doing it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. No. In the fact that it's, it's clearly opaque by design.

But if you just take a step back, like why is, I mean, this is like a leftist fever dream. Like the Pentagon taking a stake in an oil company to steal the natural resources of a Latin American country and put in a shell company in Barbados. Like that's the thing that is happening in the world. You know, that is completely absurd.

If Russia was doing this, you know, there'd be seven trillion Atlantic levels about it. Like, you know, Ann Applebaum would write a book about it. You know, like, this is, like, but the fuck is going on here. This is not wild. It's wild. It's wild.

Okay, I've got that offer chest. Meanwhile, the G20, the Finance Ministers are meeting as we speak in Asheville, North Carolina. We'll tell you a little bit about the guest list, Ben. On the guest list, Russia's Finance Minister.

This was his first time at a G20 meeting since 2022 when the Russians

“invaded Ukraine. I believe that year it was on Zoom in the Germans,”

like stormed out of the Zoom meeting. This got to be his first trip to the US in a long time. Yeah. That's in like a hippie town in North Carolina. I love Asheville.

Asheville's beautiful. The first political job was in Asheville and Bunkham County. I did debate prep of the Obama. Oh, yeah. No way.

Nice. It's like beautiful rolling hills, clouds and stuff. Great. Great town. Okay. So, that's it. Has a bilateral meeting with the Russian Foreign Minister,

not invited to this meeting South Africa or their representative. The Trump administration is still mad at South Africa about a non-existent genocide against white farmers in South Africa. So, for those of you keeping a score at home, the guy from the country responsible for killing hundreds of thousands of people in Ukraine

and also his own country invited the guy responsible for the made-up fake genocide, not invited. Yeah. So, that's how this works now. Tells you a lot.

And, you know, I do think, you know, I watched this in Bessant, who's, you know, kind of going up my power rankings for odious Trump administration officials,

Because he says, "Shit talking."

Yeah. The sheen is off from like, you know, early Trump market whisper, "Normy Scott Bessant." Like, he's becoming more and more just a cartoon. But, you know, he's out there demanding that, you know,

these other countries join his non-existent economic day against Iran. He's speaking for them. He's saying, "Abdi agreed, but notably, they're not with him." He's doing that by himself and, like, interviews.

He's got trade wars going against, you know, the Canadian finance minister and terrorists on the Europeans. Like, this is a place. I mean, again, not to come back to an obsession. The G20 is where you're supposed to deal with the global economy.

“You know, that's what you're supposed to be working on there.”

These issues in the bond markets would be a normal thing, to find it, finance ministers should come together and figure out how to coordinate measures to deal with that. And instead, he's just jaw-boning these foreign ministers about cutting off their radians and forcing them to sit in a room with the

Russians. You know, how do you think the Europeans felt about that? Right. It's honestly worse that not solving the problem. It's like, the way you saw the problem right now for a lot of these countries is you end the war and Iran. Yeah. So the gas prices go down.

And it's said he's like, "Why don't you join us in this effort that's going to make everything worse?" Because all these, you know, you can call it economic day, but the Iranians are going to respond to economic day with ballistic missiles.

Yeah. Yeah. And it's just, you know, it's smashing up this institution, which I got to tell you, like, whatever you think of, you know, the international system, the G20 is like, that's your place. That's where you can actually get the most done.

And it was the most important institution in some ways of the

Obama era. That's where we coordinated the response to the financial

“crisis. And that's, that's clearly not what they're doing.”

Like, they're just kind of taking their short-term obsessions and bringing them into this forum. And then bringing their racism into it. I mean, they don't get to choose, like, using the G20 South Africa's in there.

And they're in there because they were one of the biggest economies in the world. And also because they're representative of sub-Saren Africa. So they're kind of representing a region too. And it just shows, again, the other lack of regard.

Meanwhile, the financial time just reported, Russia's secretly helping Iran develop supersonic cruise missiles. Leaks reveal a program behind one of the most significant no transfers of military technology from Moscow to Tehran. This is what I told you.

So Putin, you know, earlier today, met with the Iranian president.

And I speak some Putin, you know, he talked about how he was

admired what they were doing in the war. And we're going to help them wink wink, you know. And that, to me, is Putin saying, like, yeah, this kind of stuff is going to happen. The Iranians are going to get armed.

“I think Putin also suggested he would help them kind of break”

this blockade, like, resupply with some stuff, like overland. So we're just driving the Russians and Iranians closer together. And, you know, Russia, Iran, North Korea, China, we're getting closer. The Iranians are moving in that direction.

Like, that's us being so contentious of these other institutions. We built, or driving people into the arms of each other, including the Russians in the Chinese. Did you see that Zelensky said that North Korea may send another 50,000 troops to Russia?

Yeah. That is a lot of people. That has a lot of manpower. I mean, Kim Jong-un doesn't seem that. No.

We're worried about that. Then one of the best deals he's made, because it's revived the North Korean economy. Yeah. Then, as we were preparing for this episode, I was procrastinating and checking out Twitter.

I came across a video that had been posted and then deleted by Israeli National Security Minister, it's part of Ben Kovier. Have you seen this thing? I've seen.

Unfortunately, the algorithm tends to feed me the Ben Kovier content. Okay, so let's watch what this-- This is a concentration camp. Gentlemen posted. Yeah.

This is a bunch of overweight Palestinians being marched into what looks like a concentration camp. Now they're coming up skinny and crying. So for those who couldn't hear me over the soundtrack, Ben Kovier was taking a bunch of overweight Palestinians

bringing them into a concentration camp on a train tracks and then they came out skinny and crying. Again, this was posted by the Minister of National Security. He's part of the Israeli government. He's part of the Netanyahu coalition.

His party, Jewish power, has six seats in the Kinesiat out of 120. Yeah, I mean, let's be very clear about this. There's no question that's concentration camp. Like there are walls, there's barbed wire,

there's a kind of guard tower. The inmates are wearing drab, deaden of coal. Uniforms with numbers on them. They're coming out skinny. This is not at all subtle.

And this guy is the National Security Minister of the State of Israel.

Yes. But he's an extremist too.

He's in one of the most important positions in these really

government. That is in charge of the police. That plays in enormous role in the West Bank. That is fundamental to be being in now as political survival. These last several years.

So he's both a fringe character and a mainstream character. And I've not entered this discourse. I will get out of it very quickly. But we've got a lot of people in this country that when it's been a lot of time pouring over thousands of hours.

So we're done talking about the soundpiker and fucking twitch screamers when this is really important in amount.

“That's why I'm talking about a twitch screamer compared to this gentleman who is in”

the Israeli government. This is the only thing I'm going to say about this. Like Hassan is about a five minute drive from here right now. Is what it is.

In his house during a stream.

And this guy is helping run the fucking Israeli guy. It's crazy. This is the actual problem. And people can try to not look at it. People can try to pretend it doesn't exist.

I can call you. I mean, if I said, because that objectively looks like Nazi concentration camps. Like that's what it looks like. That's not, you know, by design.

That's an objective reality. That's not my opinion. And if you say that out loud, you know, you get resolutions against during the Congress, you know. And then the National Security Minister of the State of Israel post that.

And we're supposed to pretend like it doesn't exist in the physical world. Crazy stuff.

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The stories from survivors are gut wrenching.

“The disaster was believed to have been caused by a giant chunk of ice part of a glacier.”

It's split off a mountain fell 4,000 feet and the force from the fall was so strong that it registered as a 5.2 magnitudes seismic event. And seemingly like pulverize the ice into water, which went downhill and led to this massive flash flood. The New York Times reported that the flood waters were so strong that bodies have been found literally hundreds of miles away in India. That's how strong these waters were. As of Tuesday more than 900 people are confirmed dead, several thousand more missing.

The red cross estimates that 90,000 people have been impacted by the disaster. Nepal's Ministry of Foreign Affairs said Monday that over 10,000 people have been rescued so far including 323 foreign nationals. Resurers are still trying to free hundreds of workers were trapped in tunnels that is like hydro power site. We got this message from CNN International correspondent Hanako Montgomery about those rescue efforts, let's listen. The focus of the story has been about the hydro power plant workers.

And we spoke to about a dozen or so survivors of people who were rescued from those plants. And what they saw was truly devastating.

“I mean, they were in tunnels working when the flood happened.”

And they said that if they hadn't climbed up higher in the tunnels, if they didn't hang on to parts of the wall, tightly enough and they would have been swept away in the floods. And they saw a lot of their co-workers, their friends, their family members swept away in the floods too. I'm also currently right now in Barat Bor. We are about 60 miles south of the worst areas, but we're in this area because a lot of bodies, hundreds of bodies, have been washing up in this area downstream from the Himalayas.

So the disaster is also increasing political tensions between Nepal and China. And it's raised a bunch of questions about whether China was sharing enough information about flood risks and glacier levels. The Chinese have also removed videos and images of the disaster from social media. They've been accused of covering up the death toll into that. So kind of no surprise yet.

Not a lot of transparency. It's also a huge challenge for Nepal's brand new government a couple of months ago. We covered the election of Borlendra, Shaw, the 36 year old engineer in rapper, who's now Prime Minister. He took power in March. There were these huge, you know, Gen Z lead protests.

And now he has to tackle this kind of unfathomable disaster. Ben, I mean, this is like just a climate change. Yeah, I guess. Yeah, this is entirely a climate change phenomenon.

“That's why glaciers are falling off of mountains.”

And I should say, like where we come into it, I'll try to pivot this in something firm. Because there's a lot of negativity today. But Nepal was responsible for zero less than 0.1% of total greenhouse gas emissions. So how would you feel if you're living in a country that did absolutely nothing to cause man-made climate change? And because these other rich countries, the US and China chief among them,

did so little to restrain their own emissions. You've now got mass flooding in a country. It demonstrates the kind of moral necessity, as well as the practical necessity, to take not just action to slow greenhouse gas emissions, but mitigation efforts, right? The idea that we need to help countries prepare for these kinds of things.

And that leads into the USAID point. Like, we don't have a USAID. Like, we usually, that would be the tip of the spear of our capacity to help a country like Nepal deal with this. And so once again, we see the cost of like big balls and, you know, on Nask and there, you know, ketamine fueled fever dream at the beginning of Trump administration.

Now, again, the affirmative part is to be like, this is when we ultimately can rebuild a different kind of US foreign policy apparatus.

We're going to need to think about climate change and climate mitigation and disaster response again. You know, so all these things that are happening that we're seeing a lack of response for, we're going to need not just a US space, but kind of a collective effort to deal with emergencies like this. Because they're going to keep happening. Yeah, I mean, there's a great report in the nearer times that said that climate change could erase as much as 75% of the remaining glaciers by 2100.

So this is coming pretty quick. Yeah, very scary. Speaking of ice over in Iceland, Icelanders rejected a referendum to restart talks to join the European Union. So to be clear, this was not a vote about joining the EU. It was a vote on whether Iceland should restart talks with the EU about membership.

Iceland had applied in 2009, but they basically shut down talks in 2013.

The vote was 52.8% against 47.2% for with over 82% turnout. Pretty damn good. This all came in the wake of Trump's threats to take Greenland. But the referendum was moved up a year after Trump mistakenly said Iceland for different times when he was talking about his plan to annex Greenland.

Iceland's already a number of NATO, which before the Trump era would help deter others from invading US,

“especially members of NATO, but things changed.”

Fishing industry campaign hard against the referendum, because it would force Iceland to open its territorial waters to other European ships. Not surprisingly, the rural areas where these fishermen live voted against referendum, the urban areas were for it. Iceland's already in the EU single markets. So they got a lot of benefits of membership without being members. Then I thought some of this vote.

What do you think about the pitch?

I actually asked David E.B. about this that Canada should join the EU.

Well, I thought this was interesting. I kind of went down to Iceland, rabbit hole in this. Iceland is a fairly bespoke and a unique country, obviously given its geographic circumstances and its industries. But it's a good test case of how does a small country deal with global chaos and instability, right? Because the fundamental argument for coming into the EU fully is that in a really fucking messed up world,

there's going to be a lot of conflict in their trade wars and all the rest of it, and there's likely to be financial instability, that maybe it's better off like tucking under the tent here or the EU, and that that can provide us with security. The counter argument would be the inverse, like in that kind of world, like we need to get a hunker down, do our own thing, preserve our way of life, preserve our identity, avoid these clubs, spare our fishing industry disruptions, that kind of stuff.

And so I thought it was like an interesting task case of where opinion is in like a very reasonable country, like Iceland is reasoned people.

“They also had suffered the, mightily into the 2008 financial crisis people remember, and so similar, it's like, do we, do we, do we get closer to these places or would you stay outside the club?”

And you know, it's yet another brahmer that people are kind of like clinging to their traditional identities, you know, like there's a kind of sovereignty, the conscious nationalism, and that's saying that, you know, Icelandic nationalism is a little different than other places. To me, that's like what's interesting about it. I, you know, I'm an integrationist, so I probably would have been like one of those urban Icelandic people who've wanted to join, but, you know, that clearly people are not sold yet.

And in Canada's interesting, because what Karni has to demonstrate is like, is there some alternative way in which medium-sized countries, bigger than Iceland, can build trade agreements and supply chains and, you know, regulatory regimes together, or just got to like jump in the club that's available, you know, I think you would prefer the former than the latter, but we're going to see if that's possible. Yeah, last story, we wanted to circle back to South Korea. We covered a lot a couple of years ago because of all the madness there, but we haven't touched on it in a while.

“The listeners might remember a former South Korean president, Yunsuk Yul's declaration of Marshall Law back in 2024.”

It did not go well for him at the time, and now Yun is set to spend the rest of his life in jail. His wife now was also in a bunch of trouble. She was the genesis of a bunch of political scandals during his tenure. For example, in 2022, she was caught on camera accepting an expensive Dior handbag. But this year, she received both a seven-year sentence and a separate four-year sentence for bribery, stock manipulation, and dulling out political favors. But where this gets weird and interesting is that her political downfall has also ensnared an 83-year-old woman named Hanhok-ja,

who is the widow of the founder of the Unification Church. The listener may have heard of Reverend Sun Young, Moon. He called himself the Messiah. He built this cult-like church following. Han is now the heir apparent of the church. She is accused of giving this as Kim, the former First Lady of South Korea, about $60,000 worth of gifts. The court said the gifts were bribes, encouraged the churches, political power, and influence. So, the Unification Church has a lot of business interests. The financial times said they range from skiing to ocean and golf resort's construction defense and automotive parts.

They also own the Washington Times. New Gingrich is a columnist there. He wrote a column asking Trump to intervene in Hanhok's case.

We are chitten. The New Republic had a great breakdown of the whole story. They pointed out that the church paid Trump $2.5 million for speeches in 2021 and 2022.

Here's a clip of him praising Hanhok. I want to thank the Universal Peace Federation and in particular Dr. Hok, Johan Moon, a tremendous person for her incredible work on behalf of peace all over the world. The Unification Church, the guy who assassinated former Justice Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, said he did so because of Abe's ties to the Unification Church. The shooters mom gave away all her money to the church.

So very weird stuff all around and just kind of like interesting to see, you know, you and suck you'll get drunk one night to Claire's martial law and it pulls us string that unravels to hear to Donald Trump, like taping videos in front of string from space background space. Never before, you know, there's some kind of profit motor for Trump, you know, I'm just going to guess we don't know we have to make that disclaimer. Has he pronounced an Asian name that well, you know, he nailed that one, there's got to be some incentive in it for him.

The second point is these 60,000 dollars and gifts like you don't think that in a country where this is what's interested me, they put like almost all their former presidents in prison, you know, and they're like, you got to know this stuff is going to get out, you know, like, how do you think you're going to get away with taking the 60,000 dollars with the gifts, like is it really worth it, you know. Like how, yeah, there's got to be more to it than that probably, and the only thing I want to say about the Washington Times because it triggered me in a way, you know, I know you're to birthday recently Tommy, so I have to be birthday and you are not in my advantage and never will catch up.

That's one of the things about father time, but do you remember the days when the right way right wing media in this country was like the Washington Times.

Ronald Reagan once said that the Washington Times is the first thing he read each other.

Yeah, you know, I'd love to go back to the Washington Times is the only game in town, then Fox News comes along now it's this like 31 flavors of madness.

“But by the way, to your point, like, Han and her chief of staff, I think there are a few of them best links, seven million dollars in church funds, and then they rated her place and they found 26 million in like a safe in the bedroom.”

It's also one of these churches if you go down the rabbit hole, no matter how much you read, you can't understand it, you know, like, you know, like I can't describe what they believe.

It's this kind of culture thing that is all these business interests and this like rich guy who likes to spread money around the politicians, it's just a very odd eccentric part of geopolitan.

The whole thing is, like any K or something, you know, like two of Han's sons were a January sixth, and they also run their own like spin off fringe crazy church now called the rod of iron ministries, which is like infamous for having the worshipers hold semi automatic rifles, like just the overlap of these. When they're mass weddings, yeah, yeah, the moonies of the mass weddings, the whole thing is just a fucking bizarre strange cults.

“And you so, of course, the Trump people glum onto it. They're like, how can I get a piece of this? Yeah, any organization with a little like cohesiveness that they think they can bolt on the political coalition.”

Yeah, my heart, our church, come on over, whatever it takes. All right, that is it for a better night portion to show, but sit around for my interview with British Columbia premier David TV. We're going to talk about the U.S. Canada trade war, what Trump wants out of it, the reaction and Canada, the economic impact.

Very, very interesting interview. You'll want to check it. So stick around for that.

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In 2013, we're about to start. The biggest advantage of Shopify for me is that we don't need technical information for ourselves. We all know about the background and the background. We're about to start with the online shop. We're about to start with Shopify, then we're about to start with the platform, which is simply the reason. Our whole story is about Shopify. Start to yet stay in constant nosen test of Shopify.com. I'm here today with David E.B., the premier of British Columbia Canada, a premier E.B., thank you so much for doing the show.

Thanks for having me. I really do appreciate it. So we're obviously talking about the ongoing trade war that President Trump has launched on Canada. It's been a rocky couple of years in U.S. Canada relations. Trump has called Canada the 51st state repeatedly. He suggested the U.S. with Annex, Canada.

First question. What is the mood in Canada about the U.S. and the wake of all this? And do you worry that public opinion could make it harder in the long run to find a agreement on a deal?

“Well, people are pissed off. There's just no two ways about it. And you can see it in any number of indicators.”

Like we've got friends and family at long time relationships in the United States as Canadians and our trips to the U.S. are down. More than 25% were buying Canadian products and basically any other product of the American products right now. And there's an ongoing liquor boycott. And I'm not sure that's really gotten through the noise in the United States to just how deeply unhappy Canadians are with the American administration. And it's a conflict in feeling because we still have good relationships with Americans.

It's the president of the White House for really struggling with. And I guess the broader administration right now. Yeah, no, it's it's a totally understandable decision to boycott U.S. But then in practice, that hurts the human beings producing those in America and just average people who own a winery in California or whatever it is. So it just feels like these decisions by political leaders are hurting everybody on both sides. And so when I like when I talk to trade experts or foreign policy experts about the talks between the U.S. and Canada and why they broke down.

I tell me those three buckets, you know, the first was tariff and economic, the tariffs and the economic impact on Canadian industries like the auto industry, for example.

The second was there were provisions that felt like an attack on Canadian sovereignty and the ability for Canada to make bilateral trade agreements. And the second was there was a lot of money that was in the middle of the country. And then there was a lot of money that was in the middle of the country. And then there was a lot of money that was in the middle of the country. And then there was a lot of money that was in the middle of the country. And then there was a lot of money that was in the middle of the country. And then there was a lot of money that was in the middle of the country.

But it's putting its foot down and not getting pushed around anymore. What's the right answer in your view? Both if that can be true. At the table were elected officials who were having serious conversations at the federal level about trade negotiations and what the Prime Minister and I think our federal team recently understood to be a trade negotiation that developed into something different. Like you can't have trade agreements with these third countries. And also, you know, we don't want to see French language on packaging and those kinds of things, which were non starters for them. So that was true for the elected officials at the table.

For Canadians, the repuls out that said more than half of Canadians, almost 60% of Canadians said no more concessions to the US. We've all watched countries make concessions to the US to this president. And then the president comes back for more Canada has made concessions to the US. We've stepped back from digital services tax and we've stepped back from other initiatives that the president found objectionable hoping that that would. And I say we these were decisions made by the Prime Minister hoping that that would keep us moving forward.

“But the president just kept coming back for more. And I think everyone just understands that agreements not worth anything.”

Basically from the moment the president finishes signing it, it's what's next. And we're just done with it, I think, as a collective group. And so, you know, it's it's fine to say you're done with it.

The US is a huge market. We're deeply integrated trade continues all these other pieces, but almost to a person certainly Canadians and elected officials. How do we diversify away from the US? How do we build other relationships? How do we protect ourselves? This relationship is not going back to the way it was before. And how do we make sure that we're more independent of the US because we allowed ourselves to get to integrated and and failed to keep our enterprise of ensuring that we're an independent country that can stand on our own two feet. And that's what our project is now.

“Yeah, I think one poll said 76% of Canadians supported the Prime Minister's decision to walk away from the talks, which is just an unheard of level support for any issue here in the United States.”

Last Friday, Trump released this executive order where he renamed like Ontario, like America, over the weekend, he posted a video of Canadian geese with like Trump hair and machine guns, which again doesn't I don't really get how it any make sense because they're Canadian geese. Obviously, this is childish and stupid, but sometimes symbolic gestures like this have the most potency and political debates. What's the reaction been so far in Canada to the like America nonsense? It's so cringe. It's just deeply embarrassing for us on your behalf.

And you think that the reaction would be a rage, but most everyone's just like, I mean, what feels like parity like it's crossed over a line and and if anything, it undermines some of the seriousness that I assume the president wants to bring to his concerns with Canada.

He's destroying your reputation on a global basis. Like if Canadians are your enemy, then who's left and and you know, it just I feel I feel awful for you that this is happening and and we are losing jobs and this is having impact and this is hurting British Columbians and Canadians and and you know, we hope for a brighter day of a better administration, but to be totally blunt, the Democrats have not been clear. Whether or not if they get elected, they're going to end this like what has been described as the stupidest trade war in history.

“And and I hope they do. I hope Democrats come and say, like, you know, if we get elected, we're going to end this dumb trade work, because we all benefit when we work together as as team North America and I think that's true still.”

I think, I mean, look, I've been talked a lot of Democrats about this. I think there's almost no doubt that they will want to unwind this madness because it's just going to hurt us economically.

Let's talk about the economic impact. Canada is looking at tariffs at about 20 tariffs on about 20 billion US dollars worth of goods potentially half a percentage shaved off a GDP.

There was one analysis that found Canada could lose 90,000 jobs because of the trade war. The CBC says that these newly tariff items represent about 13% of British Columbia's exports to the US. Can you understand kind of in practice what this impact would be on businesses and individuals in B.C. if it continues. Sure. Yeah. For us, you know, we're one of the least exposed provinces to the United States because we're on the Pacific coast. We trade a lot with Asia. And still, the US is by far in a way our largest trading partner.

And the sectors that are particularly hit by the president's actions is Southwood lumber sector in British Columbia. We've always had a tense relationship with the US under multiple administrations around Southwood lumber, but the bottom line is Americans cannot provide as much wood as America consumes.

And so what's happened with the national security tariffs, if you can believe it, on Canadian softwood, we now have worse market access to the United States than Russia and Europe.

So you are preferring Russian and European imports to Canadian lumber imports to the United States right now. And that means and has led to layoffs of Canadians and the closer it mills. The softwood lumber prices are already very low. And so when you couple that with the tariffs, it has an impact. But also, it has led us to pursuing with the federal government encouraging them to pursue free trade agreements with India, for example, that does currently have a tariff on Canadians off foot of 10%. And if that's reduced to zero under free trade agreement, we're going to have a significant new market there. So, you know, this is having impact we are pivoting.

And it's kind of disgraceful, in my opinion, that our ally, the United States, has decided to prioritize Russia and lumber imports from that country over Canadian imports. Yeah, that seems insane. But Prime Minister Carney has promised, basically, a dollar for dollar tariff response. You've suggested he should go further. You've floated ideas like reconsidering the purchase of the F-35 fighter jets. You've also encouraged Canadians to kind of take this into their own hands to avoid traveling to the US to buy local products instead of US options on Canadian shelves.

“How much room for escalation do you think there is on the Canadian side?”

My Minister's measure has been a very, I mean, it literally is the definition of proportionate response, but it is a dollar for dollar on the same areas except for some seafood areas that would have affected the cost of food. For a lot of British Columbians and Canadians. And so that is kind of the minimum to protect Canadian business in these sectors and encourage Canadians to buy Canadian rather than American to replace. So that piece is great, and it's helpful for a Canadian business, but I'm not sure that it sends the message about how we benefit when we work together.

So the idea that you get kicked in the back by a friend, and then you turn around and you spend $12 billion on fighter jets from that friend and integrate your military.

Further is like, how does that make any sense? We've got a great proposal from Europe for a bunch of jets from sob. They're going to build a bunch of factories in Canada to put them together. Let's just move on with that. Let's deepen our ties with Europe and the rest of the world, instead of the United States. This is what we should be looking at as well, and it doesn't mean this isn't what's going to happen, but I'm encouraging the Prime Minister in that direction.

“And at the reasons, I think, speak for themselves. For listeners at home, they should understand that you're not in Prime Minister Carnies political party.”

There's been broad support, though, for his response so far, including from conservatives, as well as folks to his left.

The political waters can get rockier. How durable do you think, you know, kind of the support for Carnies right now in the sense of nationalism and unity?

You know, that one of the great defining characteristics of Canadians that we always point to is that we are a different country from America.

This is like, and you're like, well, what is that? It is a defining thing we think about as Canadians. What are we as Canadians? Well, we're not Americans. And having that identity as a separate country under direct attack by the president. I mean, it might seem silly to Americans, but this is very important to me. It's important to all Canadians that we're able to set our own destiny, including a destiny that's closely tied with the United States.

“And we can choose that as Canadians. And that's what's under attack.”

And that's what the president and JD Vance and all these guys love to bring up the 51st state and all of this. Candidate should just, they want to be the benefits of the state without becoming a state and on and on, it is constant energy for this Canadian movement and the willingness to make sacrifice for it. And Canadians have had enough. And I think there is a lot of juice in the tank for this. Obviously, is that the cost start to mount. There will be reckonings in Canada on this question. But ultimately, there is a significant majority that supports this.

And also the lesson that we're not going to go back to the way things were before, which is an important lesson for Canadians to have taken from us and one that needed to be taken from it. So, yeah, I mean, Prime Minister Carney sort of core argument was laid out during this speech in Davos. I forgot when earlier this year, last year, who knows anymore, what times of flats are cool. He said, "Time for Canada to move on from America. It's time to build this broader alliance of so-called middle powers."

“I think that makes a lot of sense in theory. If you're Canadian, it's a little more challenging in practice.”

What do you think he's doing? And also, one idea I've seen floated is that Canada could join the European Union and diversify away from the United States of that way. What do you make of that proposal? Well, you can see what the Prime Minister is doing in my opinion. He's quite transparent about it, including in his speech Davos is that he is seeking to deepen our relationship, including with the EU. Also, with Asia, the APEC meetings are going to be happening. In China, Canada will have a strong presence there, seeking relationships with other Asian countries.

We are a specific trading country and Asia Pacific. It'll be crucial for us, and that's where a lot of growth is happening.

So, I think what you're going to see going forward is Canada's seeking to deepen relationships around the world. The Prime Minister has negotiated a number of additional free trade agreements. And there's more to come. And we're just going a different direction than the United States in terms of our global relationships. It will be a long-term benefit to Canada. We can never replace the US market. And both of those things can be true at the same time. It would be great to have a strong productive positive relationship with the US again.

And at the same time, we can't assume that that will be the case and bluntly I don't expect it. There's a referendum coming up in Alberta where Albertans will decide whether to hold a Brexit style referendum on independence from Canada. Earlier this year, it came out that Alberta separatists met with Trump administration officials, a move you called treason. I'd love for you to unpack your feeling on that meeting, and also give listeners a sense of whether you think that separatists move and select the one in Alberta

are likely to come to fruition in the level of political support there.

“It's an unfortunate thing that's happening in Alberta. And I think that most Canadians are concerned about it.”

Having watched Brexit, I think that anyone who says that this is a foregone conclusion that Alberta will vote a certain direction. News to give their head a shake. It is a serious threat to the sovereignty and the integrity of Canada. And I think everyone should treat it that way. And we'll watch to see what the results are currently the polling suggests. I just like it didn't Brexit that the vast majority of Albertans will not support this. But it is what it is and people will be voting and polls have been wrong before. So I certainly feel anxious about it.

The concern that I had that I have is that the United States is actively involved in and interfering in the referendum, which is like an astonishing thing for me to say.

And there's always been concern around the influence of American culture and politics on Canada, just given the scale of the United States compared to Canada.

And the 51st day references and so on and and maps being released that show Canada's part of the United States and whatever.

“Like it is deeply concerning to me and I think just beyond the pale and just way beyond anything that we've seen in our relationships previously.”

And a departure that doesn't get noted or commented on particularly. And in a worrying way because if that bridge can be crossed with little apparent public conversation then you know what else can we reasonably expect in Canada and do we need to consider our relationship with US in terms of interference here on the same plane as we do consider interference from China or from Russia or from other countries. And in terms of protecting Canadians.

One element that was apparently on the table in these talks was the prime minister carnie reportedly revived the the keystone pipeline or put that on the table in some former fashion.

What's your reaction to that do you think that should be something that is negotiated still.

“I understand why it's part of the conversation you know the presence adventure is some of the Middle East is led to incredibly high oil and gas prices Canada's reliable provider of oil and gas products to the United States.”

And I can understand why that's a priority of the presidents and certainly it's something that the prime minister has been open to. The thing that strikes me is is the bizarre assurances from the administration that that Americans don't eat Canada in terms of energy because you've got Venezuela. You know Canada produces five times more oil and gas than Venezuela tests in terms of the stable partner for providing energy and British Columbia provides a huge amount of electricity down the west coast on tario to.

The eastern parts of the United States I.

I just can't fathom that president is leading you in the direction of ever higher energy prices and reliance on an unstable energy partner, but I mean that is where he is taking things and and it seems strange to me.

“In terms of oil and gas and climate change and overall concerns about that I think you know if we need to be doing important work together that has been completely abandoned.”

Since the end of the Biden administration and has completely changed the conversation about carbon emissions internationally unfortunately in a way that is quite. Damning given the wildfires we saw this past summer in British Columbia in the United States and across Canada and in Europe so hopefully the US assumes the leadership role again at some point on this important issue. Yeah the weather weather patterns are losing their mind Europe is being baked all summer the report that next weekend here in Los Angeles we might have a hurricane.

Which is not something we're used to here so yeah I wish we were talking about bigger things like climate change and artificial intelligence and not stupid AI photos of geese by our president. Let me just end with a statement which is that to you into anyone listening from Canada. A lot most Americans think this sucks to we find this embarrassing as well we want the president to stop threatening our very friendly neighbors to the north so. Sorry for this bullshit but hopefully you know we can get past this guy together and I appreciate your time coming on the show.

It's that plane speaking that in Deers Americans to Canadians and thanks for that thanks for having me on the show and. And to the Democrats out there send us strong message that we'll we'll rebuild our relationship if you're elected the midterms and generally that would be a positive thing we'd we look to that kindly from Canada. Well said thank you thanks again a premiere eB for joining the show and I'm going to see you at the unification church on Sunday. Ben. I'm offering you a person here cut yeah I'll get some gifts I'll get some cash don't worry.

Okay thanks positive world is a quick immediate production or show is produced by aluminum and coffee Michael Goldsmith and the ship energy. Our team includes Matt to grow and health coat Jordan canter can you moth it David tolls and Ryan young or staff is proud of the unionized with the writers killed of America East. [MUSIC PLAYING]