NIMA ALKHORSHID: Hi, everybody. Today is Thursday, October 16, 2025, and our friends, Richard Wolff and Michael Hudson, join us today. Welcome, Richard and Michael.
MICHAEL HUDSON: Good to be here.
RICHARD WOLFF: Hello.
NIMA ALKHORSHID: Richard, let's start with you, and with the reports we had in the New York Times that Donald Trump and his administration have authorized the CIA to do some sort of covert operation in Venezuela to overthrow [President Nicolás] Maduro. And here is what we've learned from Republican Senator Rick Scott on Fox News:
RICK SCOTT, U.S. Senator, R-FL, Senate Armed Services Committee (CLIP): I think if Maduro's smart he's going to go ahead and move to Russia, or China, some place like that, because his days are numbered. You know, the public of Venezuela don't want him. They rejected him in the last election. He stole the election. He's a dictator, a drug cartel leader. So, his days are numbered. However they do it, I look forward to the day that he is no longer in Venezuela. It'll be great for the world.
NIMA ALKHORSHID: What do you expect, Richard, from what's going on?
RICHARD WOLFF: Well, the only interesting thing about Rick Scott — and let me tell you, it takes a lot of work to find an interesting thing about Rick Scott — but the only interesting thing about his remark was that little remark at the end: whatever it takes. Because that's where we are.
And also, I like the way the television station juxtaposed the camera on him making the statement and, likewise, on the boat, somewhere in the Caribbean, that is being targeted by the missile.
I want to say here for the record: The United States is, therefore, engaged, by the president, with the approval of people like Mr. Scott, in being the police, the army, the judge, the jury, and the lawyer, for people it is executing. Those people were not arrested. Those people never had a chance to have a lawyer explain who they were, what they are. By the way, it's not just Venezuelans. Today's newspaper indicates that Colombians have also been killed in boats. So, who knows how widespread this is? Who knows how much we're being told?
I want to also stress to people that being in the drug trade is not treated as a capital crime inside the United States. People are arrested for the drug traffic in this country every day. They are not executed. Those that are found guilty are subject to various kinds of imprisonment and punishment, but they are not executed. So, we arrest people in this country; we give them a lawyer; they have their day in court; they get a judgment; and they are not killed.
What are we doing in the rest of the world? We are showing the rest of the world a little bit — a junior version — of what the Israelis have done in Gaza. We're killing people. We're killing people who are alleged to be involved in a crime that we don't kill people for in our own country. You know, I've been around a while. I don't recall anyone being executed in the United States for drug traffic, ever. I may be wrong, there may be somebody who once was, but it is hardly ever done. So, what are we doing here?
We're showing the world that we're a tough guy. You know, that's what the tariffs were: a big piece of theater, but it didn't cost anyone's life. Now, we're saying we're prepared — and we're not only prepared to kill people — with no judge, no jury, no lawyer, no due process, none of the guarantees that we say we revere as intrinsic to the Constitution and the values of the United States — all out the window — that is a remarkable statement to make. And we don't like Mr. —
Everybody who studies the drug traffic knows that the major problem of drugs comes from the Pacific side of the continent, not the Atlantic side; that there are loads of people involved who seem to be able to continue, with very little interference. Nor has the United States ever acknowledged, or admitted, that the problem begins with the fact that the United States is the world's richest market for the drugs — the endpoint of the trade is mostly here — and that we could do a lot more here without violating our Constitution to deal with it, if we were — we're not.
It's another message to the rest of the world that the United States is going it alone, that the United States is isolated, that the United States is relying on military power because its economic and political reach is now so weak. You know, we start — at this point, when you behave like this, then things have to be called by their proper name, not by their polite name.
The people, the immigrants, who came to this country for a chance to do what immigrants have always come to this country for a chance to do, are now being hounded by a special police force, and detained in concentration camps — that's what they are.
Let's be clear. Let's stop playing these silly games. We are killing people. We're promising to overthrow governments in the worst replay of the ancient activity of the United States in Latin America, which is as old as the Monroe Doctrine — and let me remind you, that's from the 1830s. What in the world do you expect, now? What are the countries in the BRICS going to think, given what Mr. Trump has said about them? Are they being overthrown by the CIA? Are we really back in that world?
Well, if we are, if we are using the CIA to go after the serious enemies, you know, enemies who can do something to the United States — Venezuela can't. It's too far away. It's too poor. It's too small. You're picking on somebody — you know, it's a little bit like the British fighting in Grenada, or the Falkland Islands — it's a joke. So, assumedly, they're going to go after the big guns, you know, Russia, China. So, the message to them is, that's what the United States is now reduced to. Get ready for that.
And let me make a message to my fellow Americans. You are messing with an enemy now that is much richer, and much stronger, than they have ever been. Be very careful because you will likely not prevail. Let me remind you: The CIA was busy in Vietnam, before that war — it failed. And the war that came after it, after the failure of the CIA? That failed too. Ditto for Afghanistan. Ditto for Iraq. Ditto, now, for the Ukraine. Wow. Be careful. Be very careful what you are doing.
There is an alternative — whether it's in the drug war, or any other conflict — and that is, you sit down with whomever else is involved — other countries, other enterprises — and you work something out: a deal that allows you not to be engaged in killing people and overthrowing them, because that is a game everyone can play. And now, more than ever in the history of the United States, the enemies that you are making by this behavior are strong, very strong.
So, this is now more dangerous than it has ever been, and it was never a good policy in the first place.
MICHAEL HUDSON: Well, Richard, if you try to work something out, then you're treating other countries as equals. And the United States has rejected that very concept. The reason that it's doing these assassinations and killings is for control. So, Trump has called Venezuela a narco-state, as if every Venezuelan is a drug dealer. And this is like [Benjamin] Netanyahu, as you pointed out, saying that every Gazan is a Hamas terrorist. So, the whole Caribbean belongs to the United States.
It's not really about drugs at all. It's about control. And I think — you've been describing — the United States has turned into a terrorist state. And it has been a terrorist state, since 1945, as a deliberate arm of foreign and domestic policy for what it calls "promoting democracy." The former head of the CIA, [Mike] Pompeo, has said the CIA is like Murder, Inc.: He found out that they've been killing people all over the world, beginning with Patrice Lumumba in Africa; Aldo Moro in Italy, when Moro tried to achieve a rapprochement with Soviet Russia. You know what happened to Libya with [Muammar] Gaddafi. You know what happened in Chile with Salvador Allende, and the whole terrorist actions throughout Latin America that the CIA began.
So, this is already official U.S. policy — long before Trump. And I think that on a larger scale, the U.S. is backing terrorist groups, like ISIS and al-Qaeda, throughout the Middle East, in order to maintain control of Near Eastern oil; and at home, you have the FBI assassinating Martin Luther King [Jr.], Malcolm X, and many others. This is called "managed democracy." You need assassinations to make sure that "democracy" works. That is, it works for the aim of enabling the United States to meddle, not only in foreign countries' elections — to make sure that they don't allow elections of leaders who follow policies adverse to those of the United States and its desire to control — but in the United States itself, the meddling [in] elections here.
These killings are merely the tip of the iceberg of America's attempt to control foreign policy and politics, and domestic policy; and it does not accept the United Nations rules of non-interference in other nations' affairs. That's been the rule of international law ever since the 1648 Peace of Westphalia, saying you have to agree [that] every country and every state has its sovereign power. The United States rejects that.
The United States says: We alone have the sovereign power; and we use that sovereign power not only to control who will be the rulers and the ruling parties of these states, but what countries various states can deal with, and in what commodities they can deal with. We have the power, not only to impose sanctions on other countries, but to confiscate companies that are following trade policies that interfere with the United States demand for unipolar control.
This is being done under the slogan of "national security." The United States government, the neocons specifically, feel insecure if they cannot control other governments, and international trade, and foreign investment, to make sure that the United States can decide who gets what, who trades what, and who owns what. It feels that if it doesn't control this, it will no longer have the unipolar ability to decide what countries do. And that control is at the center of U.S. foreign policy.
I think you have to begin with that, and realize that these killings are simply — well, in the case of Venezuela, it's killing the chickens to frighten the monkeys. What the United States is doing in shooting these Venezuelan fishermen (and also, I'm told, from Trinidad, fishermen), is saying: The Mediterranean is an American lake. We control the seas. We have no boundaries to what constitutes U.S. authority to control the world's geography.
All of this is simply a reflection of a larger picture that the press, and many observers are just too embarrassed to come right out and say; but the neocons have already spelled it all out, that that's the plan of U.S. diplomacy. You can use U.S. statements themselves for all of the evidence you need for that.
NIMA ALKHORSHID: Two citizens were killed from Trinidad and Tobago, Richard, in addition to what the Colombians were talking about.
Let me play a clip of the former director of the CIA talking about meddling in the elections in other countries.
LAURA INGRAHAM (CLIP): [Have we ever tried to] meddle in other countries' elections?
JAMES WOOLSEY (CLIP): Oh, probably. But it was for the good of the system, in order to avoid the communists from taking over. For example, in Europe in ‘47, ‘48, ‘49, the Greeks and the Italians, we — CIA —
LAURA INGRAHAM (CLIP): We don't do that now, though? We don't mess around in other people's elections, Jim?
JAMES WOOLSEY (CLIP): Well, [indeterminate vocalization]. Only for a very good cause.
LAURA INGRAHAM (CLIP): [Laughing] Can you do that? Do a Vine video on this former CIA director [vocalizing] —
JAMES WOOLSEY (CLIP): Only for a very good cause, in the interest of democracy.
LAURA INGRAHAM (CLIP): Alright. Thanks for being here.
NIMA ALKHORSHID: "Only for a very good cause." [Laughing]
RICHARD WOLFF: Yeah, you know, it is very naive — and it's no longer working. You know, the United States, when I was growing up here, going to the schools in the United States, where I'm born, and lived and worked all my life, we were told stories about what the United States stood for, and what it was. And all of that had to be kept secret — that's why we have a secret CIA — because it clashes (what they do), with what we are told as a people. And that's why it has to be kept secret.
But when things get difficult, it becomes harder and harder to keep a secret. Part of what we're observing is that the secrets, you know, the word is out. Those fishermen who went out are now dead. They're not coming home. And their widows and their children are talking. We're in a connected world, and we hear about it. The world is different from what it was.
Let me give you another example. You don't have a clip, perhaps, but the President of the United States, if I heard him correctly, has told one of the largest countries in Latin America — namely Argentina — that he will give their government $20 billion to stave off the collapse of their currency — if they vote for Mr. [Javier] Milei in the election coming up there. Okay. You know what that's called? Interference in the election of another country. It's literally — because the United States is wealthy and Argentina is not — it's a bribe. It's an attempt to say to the Argentinian voter: Look. If you vote for the one you don't want, you'll get all this money; and if you vote for someone else, because you prefer the other person, well, then I won't give you this money. What? You know, legally, we don't allow that in this country; although I understand Mr. [Elon] Musk was running around last November giving money to people in various states for voting, or something pretty close to it.
We are becoming desperate. It's a word you hear me using on this program, elsewhere, when I talk. I believe you're watching a government that is becoming desperate. These things that it is doing are not new. But what is new is that they're being exposed almost — almost — as fast as they're happening. More and more people around the world, more and more governments, are speaking up about it. Mr. Maduro isn't the only one. There are plenty of others. If you talk to anyone from Cuba, you will hear a story of, I don't know, I think twenty-five CIA efforts to either kill him [Fidel Castro] or overthrow his government, over the period of the Cuban Revolution, since 1959. You know, it's all now more and more — and, given Latin America, it will circulate. This information, and all of this, will be known everywhere in Latin America, if it isn't already.
MICHAEL HUDSON: I want to interject here. Trump just doubled the $20 billion and said he's trying to round up private capital at $20 billion. After he made the statement that you quoted, he said, quote, if he [Milei] loses, we are not going to be generous with Argentina. The $20 million was spent to support Argentina's exchange rate, and this has two purposes. Number one: It helps the flight capitalists, the wealthiest Argentinians — it's an oligarchy in Argentina. Supporting the exchange rate enables them to move their money out of Argentina into foreign currencies. And they've run up a huge debt.
And Trump says: If you do not vote for the oligarchic candidate to continue doing this, now we're going to insist, with the International Monetary Fund, that you repay this $20 billion (or $40 billion), plus the few hundred billion that the IMF has lent. Well, suppose that a non-right-wing dictatorship comes into power in Argentina? That's when the IMF will say: We'll clamp down and withdraw all the support for the capital flight — and, of course, the currency will plunge. It could be a 50%, 60%. Enormous plunge. That's what the IMF does.
[Number two]: And so, when what it calls a left-wing dictatorship, meaning a country that elects a government that is not backed by the United States, its currency plunges and the inflation goes up, unemployment spreads, and the United States and the United Nations and the West say: You see? Socialism doesn't work. Only the right-wing works. They [Argentina's oligarchs] get the loans; they [the working tax-paying population] get the debt.
And of course, this debt is simply to enable the United States and the IMF and Europe to pull the plug and make sure, financially, as much as on war, that other countries cannot survive — unless they are subordinate to the United States.
RICHARD WOLFF: I also want to point out, just as a matter of history, that Argentina has an oligarchy that is among the greatest players of this game in the world. Argentina has borrowed money like almost no other country.
The last infusion that this extreme-right-wing government — which is the government of the oligarchs, who are in power, even when you had [Juan] Peron and you had [Néstor and Cristina] Kirchner, and the others — this government's last infusion of cash to keep itself going — was $20 billion, in April of this year! So, we're looking at, a few months later, another $20 billion, and yet another $20 —
The Argentinian oligarchs are laughing all the way to the bank, as America uses the taxpayer money of American citizens to enable them to convert their worthless (or about to be worthless) currency into dollars, to join the rest of the world in buying gold — because they haven't the confidence in the dollar they used to have, either? So, they're going to do a one-two jump: Get rid of the Argentinian [peso], get the dollar, use the dollar, buy the gold, and hold it somewhere in Europe — that's what they're going to do. It's a farce, what we're watching! An extreme-right-wing government, which has managed, in a very short number of months, to make itself hated — that's why Mr. Trump is stepping in — because that right-wing government has shot itself in the foot and is about to be kicked out by the Argentinian people.
MICHAEL HUDSON: This is all part of the broader fight that's happening in the world economy, to isolate, not only Argentina, but China, Russia, and the other countries. It's part of a much bigger picture.
RICHARD WOLFF: But it shows you the level of desperation that is now governing all of this kind of behavior. I would like to believe (I mean that) that even the CIA director, giggling on the right-wing show that he appears on — that's a right-wing woman, person, I forget her name right now, the clip that you just showed us — I'd like to believe that they, too, don't really want to kill fishermen, or whatever those people were, in the boats. We obviously don't know because there's not a shred of evidence provided by the President who has now authorized at least five — if I'm keeping score correctly, five — such attacks. If they had some evidence — right? — they would show it because they don't want to appear to be doing what they are clearly doing.
But when you're desperate, you can't afford it anymore. They have to have some "show." They have to show how tough they are. That's why we had the other bizarre (and maybe we can discuss it, the other bizarre) — the President of the United States tells us, yesterday, that India has agreed to stop buying Russian oil. He said that! And this morning, the Indian news reports coming out of India are that the government knows no such thing. There's been no such conversation, and no such commitment.
I don't know who to believe — and by the way, that's what's happening to most people: they don't know who to believe anymore. It is so chaotic. But you're not in good control. That's not a sign that the United States — Michael is right: that's what they want. But I'm right: it's what they want, but don't have anymore — and that makes you desperate.
NIMA ALKHORSHID: Yeah. Michael, the other point that Donald Trump was talking about is the case of India. He said that India promised him not to buy Russian oil, which was rejected later on by Indian officials. And not only that, Scott Bessent said that the Congress and the administration is ready to impose 500% tariffs on China, in case they decide to import Russian oil, and gas. Where are we going with the case of Russia, in your opinion?
MICHAEL HUDSON: Well, the real problem is not only isolating Russia, but isolating China. And that's where all of the action has been recently. The United States is trying to decide just which countries are permitted to deal with other countries, and what they're allowed to buy, and sell to these countries. And that's an extension of the control that we've been talking about.
This is the neocon strategy. If you can't have a U.S.-based "democracy" — a "democracy" means a country that has agreed to become a satellite of the United States (has nothing to do with the political system) — you can't have a "democracy" (meaning a unipolar world), without the ability to make sure that you can control other countries' elections and who they trade with.
Now, much more than the U.S. and Trump's demands on India — that essentially means you're going to try to block India's foreign trade with the enormous 50% tariff that's already put on — or the huge tariffs that you just mentioned on China (that means you block all trade with China) — this is going to essentially ensure, if it were applied, the most serious depression that you've had yet in the United States.
The kind of confrontation we're talking about began a month ago with TikTok. Trump used the "national security" claim, that somehow TikTok is looking at what Americans like to watch; and if you discover that, then you can control the way they think, with the narrative.
And TikTok further violated the United States' ban on free speech: it became a site for public discussion of politics.
So, you had many political people, views, treating it almost like X, or the other social media — and that included a criticism of genocide, and an insistence that the mass-killing was wrong. And that infuriated the United States. So Trump said: You have to sell TikTok to a group of billionaire Zionists — who will change the algorithm to prevent any discussion of the Middle East that is not in favor of Israel. There can be no use of the terms "Gaza" or the "Left Bank." It's "Judea and Samara" now. You have to control the dialogue and the discussion in order to shape what people think so that they will elect governments that are "democratic," meaning governments that are controlled by the right-wing alliance between the neocons and the financial sector (the 1%, the deep state, the Americans).
So, you have that again: you have the neocons feeling insecure, if you could have TikTok permit personal opinions and analyses — and, especially, they were having photographs of the children that were killed in Gaza. They were having photographs — Israel has done [its] very best — targeted photographers and reporters for assassination — precisely to prevent this. They were targeting doctors for assassination, so that there would be no photographs of the destruction of the hospitals, the destruction of the babies.
Now, if the TikTok deal is permitted to go through, the United States will control all of the social media and prevent any discovery of this. That will enable the United States to shape "democratic" opinion to vote in the way that "managed democracies" are supposed to do.
I know you have a tape that is a wonderful tape that I want you to show, Nima, but I'd like to talk about what happened two days ago when Holland was the first country outside the United States to confiscate a Chinese company, on the grounds that China — it was producing computer chips for automobiles, in Holland, [in] what had been a subsidiary of Philips — and the United States said any company — passed a rule — any [company] with more than 50% Chinese ownership must be confiscated if it in any way affects "national security" — if it makes batteries, if it makes computer chips, if it does anything that we consider "national security." I can go into that in detail if you want, but you probably want to shape the discussion first.
NIMA ALKHORSHID: Yeah, let me play the clip, Richard, that Michael mentioned. Scott Bessent talking about China:
SCOTT BESSENT (CLIP): No mistake. This is China versus the world. They have put these unacceptable export controls on the entire world. China is a command and control economy, and we and our allies will neither be commanded nor controlled. They are a state economy, and we are not going to let a group of bureaucrats in Beijing try to manage the global supply chain.
MICHAEL HUDSON: This is wonderful. Well, Trump said that, for the first time in history, nothing like this has ever occurred. And of course, it has occurred! It's what the United States —
What China has done is, [it] passed a series of rules that were almost word for word the same rules that the United States had imposed on other countries dealing with China — for "national security." China is finally doing to the United States exactly what the United States did to China.
The difference is that China doesn't really need the United States, in the sense it doesn't need U.S. exports, because the United States isn't exporting anything that China really needs. And if it does need something, like replacement parts for Boeing airlines, then it's going to avoid the fact that the United States has weaponized its foreign trade — so that it can stop the export of replacement parts for Boeing airlines, in the hope that the Boeing planes won't be able to fly anymore and [that] China will have a problem — because China has indeed developed its own commercial airliner.
But the United States has told foreign countries, and the international transportation licensing authority: Don't approve China. Only approve airplanes made by the United States and its satellites, like Airbus. Do not let any Chinese-made airplane land, because it doesn't have official U.S. approval. This matches with the United States intention that we must control all of the airplane, and other, essentials.
I want to talk about what happened last week in Holland, when the Dutch confiscated the Chinese ownership of a company called Nexperia. The Financial Times has been focusing on this by saying, for the first time, Europe has, and especially Holland has, moved away from the whole idea of open investment, free trade, free investment, to say: All domestic investment is now controlled by the United States. Any foreign-owned firm, specifically a Chinese-owned firm, should be confiscated; and any Chinese firm that uses American exports as part of its products, its trade must be banned.
Well, the company that China bought was a company specializing in making batteries for automobiles because China has become the world leader in making batteries. The United States wants to prevent China's leadership in batteries so that the United States can supply batteries that cost approximately ten times as much. The intention is to prevent Europe from using low-priced batteries designed by China, so that it cannot compete with American cars using American batteries.
So, you have this semiconductor company and battery company — with 12,500 employees all over the world, not only in Holland — and all of that has just been confiscated. It was sold to a Chinese conglomerate in 2017, and it was bought by a Chinese group, Wingtech, in 2019. And everything has been going fine, until the last few months when the U.S. State Department told Holland: You have to close down this Chinese company. We want to make sure that China cannot make any money in Europe, or any other "democracy" which we control.
So, the words that were used in your wonderful clip — a [command and] control economy — that's what the United States is: that's "democracy." If you do not centralize control (and, essentially, be a police state) then you are not assuring the U.S. unipolar control of the world. And China has fought back.
But if you go into the details, I mean, this is an escalation, this confiscation of Chinese companies. The Financial Times wrote that "Wingtech is a landmark moment in Europe's evolution, from one of the world's most open trading blocks to increasingly preoccupied with economic security." And the "economic security" is dominated, is defined, by the United States.
And just as the United States forced TikTok to be sold — either you sell at a giveaway price to the Americans, or we're just going to close you down — it's now using the same policy towards Europe. And China [has] essentially decided to fight back against all this. The court documents in the case that the Financial Times have been quoting is that The Hague (the government in Holland) was acting under pressure from the U.S. to back the control.
Well, look at what's happening. Lenin had made a quip once; that capitalist countries would sell [the U.S.S.R.] the rope from which to hang them [attributed to Lenin], metaphorically speaking — meaning the arms. Well, China has no intention of selling the United States the military materials — rare earth metals, and other metals, and other tools — to destroy it in missiles. The United States said: We expect war with China as our existential enemy in the next two or three years. We must destroy China. Again and again, from Biden to Trump, and to Congress, there is an announcement: We intend to go to war. We're preparing the way.
Well, of course, China's blocked what you need to make the missiles, the rare earth magnets to make the missiles. China blocked what you need to make the computers to guide the missiles, and to spread your control of the internet, control of the public media platforms, really, to control the direction that the world's moving in.
And China has watched what the United States did to Japan, with the Plaza Accords and the Louvre Accords that insisted that Japan raise its exchange rates, and essentially [brought] on its depression. And it's watched America's demands that Japan pay tribute of $350 billion to the United States, in order to have access to the U.S. market, even subject to the high U.S. tariffs. And China [has] watched the demand on Korea to pay just as large a $350 billion "choice."
China has no intention of surrendering on these terms, and it has no intention of letting the United States have, what it says is, the new equivalent of controlling the world's oil reserves; controlling the world's food; controlling the world's information technology; controlling the world's computer technology (computer chip technology, the programming technology, the engraving of computer chips — the blocking of Dutch companies from selling computer chip engraving machinery to China).
China has realized that if the United States has a monopoly on computers, on missiles, on automotives, on military technology, it's going to use this to attack China. And it's taking moves to stop it. And Trump has said he's willing to create a depression that will be like the 1930s in America. His threat to impose these multi-hundred-percent tariffs on Chinese goods means we are blocking all trade with China — that means with China technology.
Well, China has what the United States needs for its military domination. The United States doesn't have anything that China needs. China will grow. The United States will move into a crisis. And, as Richard said, this is an act of desperation; but it's a desperation that's worth following, because 90% of the Americans are going to be downgraded in their standard of living, their wages, what they can afford; but the 1% of Americans, the Silicon Valley billionaires and the financial banks, will make a profit.
And what's so amazing is that [on] today's New York Times first page: "U.S. Banks Score Big Helping China Firms Go Global" — Well, you can imagine what's going to happen. Who is going to win? Will American foreign policy be what the banks want — which is usually what foreign policy is all about for the United States? Or will it be what the neocons want? [Neocons]: We want war. We cannot have another country being independent from the United States. We cannot have a country of equals.
So, we're back at what we talked about with Venezuela: You cannot negotiate with other countries and make a reasonable deal because that would be to treat them as equals; that would be to treat them as sovereign countries. There is only one sovereign nation: the United States. All other nations are to be treated as, or turned into, satellites for the United States. And I think that's why Richard brought up what was happening in Argentina — to make sure that it's locked into a satellite controlled by a client oligarchy in Argentina; just as you could say the same thing is happening in Europe.
RICHARD WOLFF: Let me comment a little bit about Scott Bessent (and I don't mean to pick on him, although I'm not opposed to doing that either, but that's not what I'm doing).
Watch the fuzziness of the way he speaks. So: We're not going to allow bureaucrats in Beijing because they are a state economy —
This is a minister of finance whose boss just did the following: took a 10% ownership of the Intel Corporation; imposed a partnership of the U.S. government on AMD and NVIDIA; is busy taking other positions in American corporate governance — ownership. I mean, we are more of a state economy than we have ever been!
Tariffs are the biggest imposition of taxes any government of the United States has ever done. We are taxing everybody. The whole world is being affected by us because if you choose tariffs, it's international. You're taxing your own people, hugely. Look how proud Mr. Bessent was a few days ago, telling us that the tariffs have raised $60 billion already in their first x months. He's proudly telling you what previous Republicans would have been horrified — they're a party against taxes! No, now they're a party for taxes.
Every government that has ever taken a bigger and bigger share of the economy has used "national security" as its rationale. That's not new. That's what Republicans used to make fun of. It's really, it's remarkable. He's denouncing China for wanting to control the world. As Michael correctly says, China is demanding what the United States has always fought for, has acquired, and is now desperate because it's losing it. It's angry at China — for what? For wanting pretty much the same thing, if Mr. Bessent is right.
It used to be the argument, here in the United States, that a free-trade regime was the best protection against war, against hostility. People used to talk about the competing empires — British, French, German, Russian — before World War I, as the reason they destroyed each other. The League of Nations after World War I, and the United Nations after World War II, were created because countries that used "national security" to shape their economic policy ended up in war against each other. The whole point of these international organizations was to not have that happen again.
The United States' withdrawal from the United Nations — which has been going on for twenty years — is also, as we should have seen before, a withdrawal from that whole project; and a return to being a national security state, in which the state and the leaders — the oligarchs of business — are becoming the same people. Remember who was sitting behind Mr. Trump when he was inaugurated? The ten billionaires from the leading few industries the country has. It was an advertisement for the merger of oligarchs and government, which is a hallmark of fascism — Italian fascism, German fascism, Japanese fascism, Spanish fascism — come on! We know these things.
The difference is that the United States is now not the dominant country. The G7 is not the dominant player in the world economy. And all the pretense, and all the fuzzy ideology of Mr. Bessent, who conveniently forgets that his government is now becoming more "statist" with each passing week, and therefore not different from "China," but indeed rather more like "it" —
China is also not — because he should know better — it's not a state economy. Half of it is private enterprise. People are critical of China's claim that socialism has developed faster and further in the last forty years in China than any other system has developed; and they like to criticize that by saying, yes, yes, yes — but that's because of the "private" sector.
Okay, if you want to make that argument (I think it's stupid but, okay, if you want to make that argument), then you can't turn around the next morning and refer to them as a "statist" economy. You've just explained that they are a "private" economy — and that's why they're so rich and big and powerful — richer than you are.
And let me remind you: In the contest before World War I of competing "national security" — economic nationalisms built around Europe and its colonies — nobody had an outstanding advantage of population.
But that's not true, folks. The United States has 4.5% of the world's people. China and the BRICS have 60% of the world's people. What kind of a conflict are you imagining you're going to be able to have? What are your chances? This is very stupid.
You ought to be working your rear-end off, trying to come up with a revived United Nations to work out a way for the G7 to function, and for the Chinese and their BRICS allies to function. The planet is big enough for both of them.
Or, are we going to descend into another world war, even knowing the disasters of the first two? And in case you've forgotten, World War I ended up with the Soviet Union. World War II ended up with the Soviet Union — plus China. You notice something? You know where World War III will likely end up? Yeah, yeah. It ought to make you stop, and think a little bit about what you are doing.
NIMA ALKHORSHID: Michael, go ahead.
MICHAEL HUDSON: Today's international conflict between the NATO West and China is being fought over what kind of strategy the world will have. Given the inequality of population and size, the United States wants to be the only country that is able to wage war with the best armaments. It wants to be the only sovereign nation. All the other countries are to be turned into dependencies: trade dependencies, by weaponizing foreign trade; financial dependencies, by dollarization; and military dependencies. [It] is a precondition for their very survival. That's the only way in which the United States can possibly achieve the strategy that you say can't work.
Well, of course, it can't work in the end because other countries are going to retaliate. But the essence of U.S. foreign policy is to cripple other countries' ability to retaliate by things like controlling their oil supply, so they can't survive, if they retaliate; by denying them ownership of and production of information technology — computer chips, basic electronic technology — and monopoly of the internet, if they don't comply.
The United States says: Yes, of course, we know that there's this inequality of population and productive power. We've deindustrialized, they have not deindustrialized, but we can win anyway — by the policies (that I've just developed) of total control, and the narrative that is needed to impose that control.
And I think the policy of targeted assassination, of killings — like you've seen, from Venezuela to Gaza — are all part of this demonstration of America's willingness for total control, even to the point of preparing for the Near Eastern war against Iran, that many of Nima's guests believe is imminent.
NIMA ALKHORSHID: Richard, you mentioned G7 and compared it to BRICS. And once (we know, once), Donald Trump said that Spain is part of BRICS. He was trying to lecture the reporters in the room, and he said Spain is part of BRICS. Here is his latest comment on BRICS:
TRUMP (CLIP): I told anybody who wants to be in BRICS, that's fine, but we're going to put tariffs on your nation. Everybody dropped out. They're all dropping out of BRICS.
BRICS was an attack on the dollar. And I said, You want to play that game? I'm going to put tariffs on all of your product coming into the U.S. They said like I said, we're dropping out of BRICS. And BRICS is, like, they don't even talk about it anymore.
NIMA ALKHORSHID: Dropping out of BRICS? [Laughs]
RICHARD WOLFF: But, you know, it's it is important to understand that if you have a leader who forever makes things up like this — everybody's dropping out of BRICS —
You know, I pay a lot of attention to BRICS. I'd be very interested. Could that happen? Yes.
By the way, Argentina is the only example I know of. They did withdraw — with this fellow, Milei, who's on his way out. He withdrew. They [Argentina] actually joined, and then they withdrew — because it happened in a very short period of time, between when they joined, and when Milei took them out — and that was an act of him, as an extreme-right-wing neoliberal person, which he proudly says of himself. It's not a label I'm putting on him.
But when you have a president, like we do, who makes these casual comments — India has decided not to buy Russian oil — and turns out, no. And the BRICS are falling apart — no. Or I will put tariffs on them — as if that's the end of the whole story. This is becoming pathological, sure, but it's a pathology that has a place. It has an origin. It has a set of supports. It is to be taken seriously — he isn't; but the fact that he has to talk like that is an interesting phenomenon, right? Most leaders don't do that.
Why is it important for him to do it? It's like asking the question that should have been asked when he first ran for office — and he descended the escalator in one of his buildings in New York City; and he made the famous comment that the Mexicans here are all rapists and killers, and which he had, of course — you have to ask: Why would a personality aspiring to be a politician say such crazy stuff? Because in our environment, there's a need for it. He's meeting a need. His instincts tell him — and he was right. Politically, there was a constituent out there that needed to beat up on immigrants. Mostly from Mexico, they come.
So, it was important. He's meeting a need, and he discovered that there's a whole community of people whose peculiar experience in the last thirty years has been to be — what? They are white male Christian union members who lost their jobs because corporations wanted to replace white Christian male union people — because they were the highest paid part of the working class. So they were the targets: Replace them, either with automation, or by moving your production to China. And so they were left to die in their cities across the Midwest and the South, to become MAGA, his support.
He understood without — you know, he doesn't have the capacity, or the vocabulary, or the education, but he understood, instinctually, that there was a need out there to demonize Mexicans as immigrants. That's why you now have this Christian fundamentalist community cheering on the concentration camps for immigrant children — which violates their Christian commitments. And somewhere they know that.
But they're so needy — I want to get that across. Mr. Trump is needy for saying this. We should understand, because it's important, what the need is, that this dismissal of the BRICS is about. And the need? The BRICS is overwhelming. The BRICS is the biggest danger he faces economically because it's the option for China to behave in the way Michael has laid out.
Because they have the BRICS, and all that that means, they can now afford, finally, to be taking steps, like what they did in response to the action of Holland. If I were to make a guess about the decision to hold back the rare earths? Michael is right. The precipitate act was not the fees charged to the boats that are made in China, which the United States is doing, or the slippage here or there — it was that: that act of trying to literally organize the whole world economy to be focused against China; to take Chinese property, the way they took the $300 billion of Russian assets at the beginning of the Ukraine war.
Okay, now is the time. And my guess is it took a difficult, long debate inside China as to whether this was the moment to move. And it should be taken seriously because the Chinese are responding to a deep need they have in taking their action, just like Mr. Trump is responding to a deep need that comes out of the dilemmas of the United States.
MICHAEL HUDSON: Well, what Richards brought up is the fact that this international trade war finds its counterpart in the U.S. and international class war. It's a war, not only of the U.S. to dominate other countries; but for the rentier class — the elites — to dominate labor, as its policies — by making revenue and wealth for itself, in the form of creditor claims, monopoly claims, and the capture, the privatization of government to prevent public social spending — all of this is going to impoverish the population. All of that goes hand in hand with the international class war to promote Thatcherism, privatization, financialization, and the whole economic philosophy that we've discussed so much in earlier episodes.
RICHARD WOLFF: And let me — a concluding thing: When you hear Mr. Trump and some of his lieutenants — as you are already hearing, and you will be hearing more — talk about how, even if it takes a depression, even if it takes mass suffering, this is a matter of the "national survival" and our "security" — you know what they're gearing up for? It probably means they are getting the advice that the tariff game is leading us into a stagflationary situation, one way or another: a very troubling combination of 3% or more inflation, with a decline in our employment situation.
Jamie Dimon was quoted everywhere yesterday, talking about the collapse of two automobile companies, and saying, where there's a few "cockroaches" — his word, not mine — there's always lots more. What is that? That's a statement that a credit crash is underway, or likely, or possible, with all that that has meant. Let me remind you of how the 2008 crisis got going. That, too, was a credit problem. That's why it's called the subprime mortgage crisis.
So, they're getting ready to even carry their craziness to the point of a mass depressive recessionary onslaught, because they are convinced it's the necessary price to pay — of course, always for the working class — to get them through the crisis they face, which is one of a world no longer willing to be the colonial territory; because that's really what this is about: it's a resurgence of colonialism.
It's not an accident that Mr. Trump meanders about Greenland, or Canada, or Panama or, now, Venezuela. These are all imaginaries; but they're logical, if the whole world is going to be controlled, because that's the control that a metropolitan country used to have over its colonies. It's the United States rehashing the end of the British Empire, hoping to reverse the flow of history.
Well, I am one of the masses of the world saying to the Americans: too little, too late, not available.
It's like explaining to Israelis that settler colonialism was something that worked two centuries ago, but now? Doesn't work anymore; puts you in an impossible situation.
MICHAEL HUDSON: Well, Richard, unemployment and economic collapse is not a price to be paid by the ruling elite.
It's easier to make money and get wealth in a crash, than it is in slow growth. The crash is going to lead, as I think you pointed out, to many mortgage foreclosures. People are going to lose their homes, as they did after [President Barack] Obama's bailouts in 2009. All of this led to a huge asset grab by the 1%. While home ownership declined in the United States, and GDP and wage levels for the 90% remained pretty stable, all of this wealth grew for the [1%]. Same thing in the world.
Well, when Trump withdrew support for the Agency for International Development [USAID], withdrew support for the United Nations health agencies and cultural and social-spending agencies, the intention was to create mass starvation and famine in the rest of the world — just like Trump's attack on global warming to maintain the oil supremacy is causing rising sea levels — it's going to create mass destruction.
All of this is viewed [by] the United States as a collateral benefit, not a collateral [damage]. You have to realize that when something like this happens, not everybody loses.
It will be a negative-sum game for the economy of nations, and the world as a whole, but very positive as a wealth grab by the 1%. And the United States is trying to make that the American 1%, not foreign 1%.
NIMA ALKHORSHID: Thank you so much, Richard and Michael. Bye-bye. Great pleasure, as always, talking to you.
RICHARD WOLFF: Talk to you again next week.
NIMA ALKHORSHID: Talk to you next week.
Transcription and Diarization: scripthub.dev
Editing: Kimberly Mims
Review: ced
Photo by Quiet Studio on Unsplash