Jeffrey Tucker, president of the Brownstone Institute, drops truth bombs on RT — calling out the U.S. economic system, the trade war with China, and the shaky U.S. dollar supremacy 💵⚠️.
From a volatile stock market 📉 to global mistrust in the dollar, Tucker lays out why the U.S. needs to become a normal country again — with a normal currency, grounded policies, and leadership that isn’t ruled by chaos. 🇺🇸
👉 If you’re tired of the mainstream spin, this is your antidote.
📢 Full breakdown inside — don’t miss it!
#JeffreyTucker #USDollarCrisis #BrownstoneInstitute #TradeWarWithChina #USCurrency #DollarSupremacy #USStockMarket #GlobalEconomy #EconomicReality #FederalReserve #RTInterview #USChinaTensions #EconomicCollapse #USPolitics #FinancialSystem #WallStreetNews #USReform #NormalCountry #FiatCurrency #WorldNewsToday
From a volatile stock market 📉 to global mistrust in the dollar, Tucker lays out why the U.S. needs to become a normal country again — with a normal currency, grounded policies, and leadership that isn’t ruled by chaos. 🇺🇸
👉 If you’re tired of the mainstream spin, this is your antidote.
📢 Full breakdown inside — don’t miss it!
#JeffreyTucker #USDollarCrisis #BrownstoneInstitute #TradeWarWithChina #USCurrency #DollarSupremacy #USStockMarket #GlobalEconomy #EconomicReality #FederalReserve #RTInterview #USChinaTensions #EconomicCollapse #USPolitics #FinancialSystem #WallStreetNews #USReform #NormalCountry #FiatCurrency #WorldNewsToday
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NewsTranscript
00:00Well, Jeffrey Tucker is going to join us now here on the program.
00:02He's the president of the Brownstone Institute, also a senior economic colonist at the Epoch Times.
00:06Joining us now live from New York.
00:08I'm a big fan of your work, Jeffrey.
00:09It's so good to get you on the program.
00:11Thank you for your time today.
00:13It's nice to be here. Thank you.
00:16The U.S. Treasury Secretary claiming the pause, the sudden pause in tariffs on much of the world
00:21and the sudden sharp increase on China.
00:24Well, the U.S. Treasury Secretary saying that was all a part of Trump's original plan
00:29now media pundits are saying, no, no, no.
00:31It's all about panic and failure.
00:34Who do you find more credible at this point, Jeffrey?
00:37Well, one of the problems here is the Trump administration has cut off the mainstream media entirely.
00:42So they don't tell anybody at the New York Times, the Washington Post or anyone else what it is they're doing.
00:49In fact, this most recent round, the Trump administration dispatched a bunch of contradictory voices
00:56over the four days of meltdown to say things that just further confused people.
01:05And then Trump, out of nowhere, just repealed all the big tariffs against most nations
01:11and then singled out China in particular, causing the stock market to rocket up the third highest gain since World War II.
01:21So we're dealing with a different world here.
01:24And you and I are in the peanut gallery trying to figure this out.
01:29But I can just tell you this, right?
01:32You know, this is the first time probably since, say, 1912 that we've had an administration
01:41that would not cooperate with the mainstream media.
01:43I mean, anybody who works for the Trump administration who talks to the New York Times is immediately and instantly fired, right?
01:52So we've got a completely different way to understand and read the situation that's going on now.
01:59This is impressive.
02:01Yeah, it's a good comment right there, Jeffrey.
02:02Can you help me just briefly?
02:03Can you help me?
02:04I know it's not an issue that you can answer briefly, but how do I get my head around what's happening in the markets right now?
02:09We've seen a sea of red, then it shoots up, as you say, then it goes back to the red, then it shoots up again.
02:15I mean, it's just all over the place, right?
02:17Yeah, well, this speaks to the essential conviction of the Trump administration,
02:22which is that Wall Street is kind of bogus.
02:29They're tired of being afraid of the bond market.
02:31They're tired of being afraid of the financial market.
02:33And Trump wants to rule all things.
02:37And so, you know, to dangle these people, you know, like a puppeteer is just fun.
02:43You know, so we see everybody, it goes down, everybody panics, it goes up, and everybody celebrates.
02:49It's just a joy as far as Trump is personally concerned.
02:54And actually, I must tell you, everybody within the administration understands the game.
02:59They're enjoying playing with the press.
03:01They're enjoying playing with financial markets.
03:03It's just a delight.
03:05Yeah, meantime, for all the rest of us, we all know crap loves to roll downhill, right, Jeffrey?
03:10I mean, my goodness me, man.
03:12Meantime, meantime, is it possible, because people are saying, well, look, you know,
03:16America's trying to isolate China, and there's, you know, they're always going to have a feud for years to come.
03:21For years, they've said there's going to be a war with China.
03:24For the meantime, though, who is at risk of being isolated here,
03:28if indeed there is a concept that can be applied to this?
03:31Well, there's a sense in which both sides are a little bit panicked about this,
03:35but they're dealing with a fundamental problem, and nobody wants to talk about this fundamental problem,
03:39which is U.S. dollar supremacy in the world.
03:43I mean, in some sense, it's lasted since 1944, but the modern system kicked off in 1973.
03:50And, you know, anybody with a high-level education in business understands that if you have a wildly overvalued currency,
04:00that is the global reserve currency, you're going to become a net importer on an increasing basis.
04:09And that's what you look at with the trade deficits.
04:11Unfortunately for the U.S., this has meant the absolute gutting of all industries, essentially since the early 70s.
04:20And we've gone through a half-century of losing, you know, everything but oil and financials and a handful of services, really.
04:29And what you see happening right now is a kind of, you know, it's a kind of cultural panic that's taking place in the U.S.
04:38And I'm not sure that people really understand the root of it.
04:41The root of it is U.S. dollar fiat supremacy in the world, which guarantees, as a matter of math,
04:48that we will lose all of our manufacturing industries forever to low-wage countries that will never adjust upwards,
04:56and we will never adjust downwards.
04:58So what are you going to do in that condition?
05:00Trump's theory is that he will use tariffs as a proxy for currency settlement.
05:08Now, I don't know if that's going to work.
05:10I've read all the papers.
05:12I've examined all the arguments.
05:14I'm not sure if this is right.
05:17But there's another element here, too.
05:19So Trump has pitched these tariffs as a kind of reclamation of national sovereignty.
05:26He wants America to rule again instead of being subject to globalist institutions like the World Trade Organization and GATT and so on.
05:36So it's a complicated situation.
05:39I have my doubts that it's really going to work out in the long run for the U.S.
05:43Until we fix the currency problem, I just don't see this changing any time soon.
05:51Yeah, and as I understand, Jeffrey, in response to these trade tariff wars ongoing,
05:55as I understand, Beijing has just sold off about $53 billion of U.S. treasuries.
06:00And I'm so glad, by the way, you mentioned about this whole idea of the preservation of the U.S. dollar.
06:07In the meantime, we have the multipolar world, China diversifying with ASEAN, with the Global South, with the BRICS.
06:14Do you think Beijing is really sweating bullets over this?
06:19I'm not entirely sure.
06:21I mean, they're dealing with a new situation, no question about it.
06:23But, you know, in the end, I think what Washington needs to do and what Trump ultimately needs to do
06:29is recognize that U.S. dollar global supremacy has got to go.
06:34I mean, it has to go.
06:35We have to become a normal country with a normal currency, right, and stop this kind of imperial conquest of the planet.
06:45And, you know, part of me thinks that they know this.
06:48Certainly the VP knows this, right?
06:50J.D. Vance understands this very, very well.
06:54Trump personally coughs up the idea of giving up U.S. dollar supremacy,
06:58which is why he's going to these tariffs as a proxy.
07:01But in the end, it's probably doomed.
07:05And strangely, as counterintuitive as it sounds, that would be good for the U.S. in the end.
07:11Yeah, that's a great comment there, Jeffrey.
07:13What about these top American companies like Apple, Tesla, Walmart?
07:17They produce significant portions of their goods in China, Jeffrey.
07:21And if this whole tariff war continues, I mean, is it possible they could relocate back to America,
07:26as Trump would prefer?
07:27But what's your thought on that?
07:30Yeah, that's not going to happen anytime soon.
07:32You know, the U.S., Trump imagines the U.S. is going to become this great manufacturing country.
07:39Unfortunately, we lack the skills.
07:43We lack the infrastructure.
07:44We lack a lot of things.
07:45I mean, as I say, the deindustrialization has gone on for half a century.
07:50It's not the kind of thing you can reclaim in four years.
07:53So, yeah, no, I doubt very seriously the iPhone is going to be made in the U.S. anytime soon.
07:59You make a good point there, Jeffrey, because they say that if indeed the iPhone were to be made in America,
08:04it would cost at least or over $3,000 each.
08:09How do you explain such a difference there?
08:13Well, again, it goes back to currency valuations.
08:16I mean, like, and nobody wants to talk about this because it's too complicated.
08:19But if you have a wildly overvalued currency and it's possible for American companies to outsource their manufacturing to other countries
08:30where the currencies are wildly undervalued, you're going to gain a net benefit.
08:36You know, that just goes without – and Americans should understand this.
08:40When Americans travel abroad, they spend their dollars, they're basically rich.
08:44They're happy.
08:45Like, the best person you could ever be is a dollar earner living overseas.
08:50That's brilliant.
08:51But what that means in reality is that the U.S. is always going to be a net importer on an increasing basis.
09:00And that's a problem for the American business operating domestically.
09:09And it's a problem for the idea of the American character.
09:12It's contrary to our history.
09:14We were once a great manufacturing country.
09:16We are no longer that.
09:18So there is a kind of a cultural panic and a political panic underneath all of this.
09:26You know, America wants to recapture what it was again.
09:28But I don't believe that's going to be possible with the absence of settlement in currency valuations around the world.
09:35Yeah, it's a really intriguing comment, Jeffrey.
09:37I appreciate you telling this to us.
09:39Look, I mentioned to you a short time ago, China is dumping $53 billion right now in U.S. treasuries amid this tariff war.
09:45A traditional American ally in that part of the world, Japan, is also dumping a large share of U.S. treasuries, receiving billions of dollars in the process.
09:55What kind of move?
09:56Why these moves?
09:58Is it kind of like a middle finger back to Washington?
10:01Or are they getting the dollars and using them?
10:03Yeah, it kind of is a middle finger.
10:06I mean, like we've had this cooperative relationship for decades.
10:09Like you hold our debt.
10:11You use U.S. dollar assets to expand your merchandise, your manufacturing capacities.
10:18U.S. businesses will cooperate with you based on low production costs in your country.
10:24And then we'll make our people happy by giving us a lot of cool, cheap stuff, right?
10:28That's been the deal.
10:29So the dumping of U.S. debt is a way of saying, all right, we've had a deal with you.
10:35Now you're breaking the deal.
10:36We're going to break the deal, too.
10:38So here's your debt back.
10:41Now it's all going to be repatriated to you.
10:44See what you think about that, right?
10:46We've been your friends.
10:47We've been your friends for a long time.
10:49Now you tell us we're robbing you.
10:51Actually, we haven't been robbing you.
10:53We've been your benefactors, you know?
10:55That's the way they look at it.
10:57And the U.S. is now treating your benefactors as actually your enemies, right?
11:03So this is a very complicated situation.
11:05Listen, I think in the end this is good for the U.S.
11:08I want Japan and China to dump U.S. debt.
11:12Even better would be for the U.S. not to create any more debt.
11:18That would be the best possible solution, right?
11:20Yeah, yeah, yeah.
11:23Well, you know, my goodness me, wouldn't that be an amazing concept, Jeffrey, just to try and actually balance the budget?
11:29But meantime, we're now blowing past a trillion dollars for the Pentagon budget, by the way, a trillion dollars for the first time in history.
11:36I mean, good luck balancing the budget when you're blowing that kind of money on the military industrial complex.
11:41Meantime, Jeffrey, and I'll let you go really soon, I promise.
11:43It was so good to have you on the program.
11:46Our traditional friends, America's traditional friends across the Atlantic and Europe, the Ursula von der Leyen and so on and so forth,
11:52they're preparing what they call countermeasures against America.
11:57How do you read between those lines, Jeffrey?
11:59Well, this goes back to World War II.
12:05The deal was that the U.S. and Europe would cooperate on a kind of a low-tariff regime.
12:13Trump has broken the deal.
12:14It's like 80 years of trade policy are hereby entirely blown up.
12:19Like Trump wants the U.S. to be a sovereign nation and stop engaging in these global deals.
12:29And it's tough for me because I'm like a free market, free trade guy.
12:34On the other hand, I think that Trump has a point here that the U.S. needs to determine its own policies with the world.
12:44NATO is probably an obsolete artifact.
12:48He's sick of it.
12:48He's probably within four years going to leave it at some point, I think.
12:54And so Europe's just fighting back.
12:57I mean, this is a new world.
12:58It's a new world.
13:00The consensus of, you know, the post-war consensus, neoliberal consensus is entirely gone.
13:08Every nation, nowadays it's every nation for itself.
13:12And I have to think in the end, even though it's going to be messy, it's going to be bloody, it's going to be terrible, but I think it's going to be ultimately good for national sovereignty, democracy, and even human liberty itself.
13:25Well, Jeffrey, I do admire your optimism.
13:27I really hope you're right, by the way.
13:29And just to dovetail on your last comment, the Italian defense minister has just come out saying,
13:34the age of great democracies is over, the time of great powers has come.
13:41Next time, you and me can talk more about that.
13:44As I see you looking, oh, I don't know about all that.
13:47Jeffrey Tucker, it's been an absolute pleasure.
13:48The president of the Brownstone Institute and a senior economic columnist at the Ipoch Times joining us from New York.
13:54An absolute pleasure.
13:54And a big fan of your work, Jeffrey.
13:57Keep up the good work.
13:58I'm looking forward to seeing your next interview.
14:00Thank you so much.
14:01Thank you, sir.
14:01Bye-bye.