US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, a billionaire hedge fund manager who worked for George Soros, insists, “Access to cheap goods is not the essence of the American dream”. The Donald Trump administration knows its tariffs will result in higher inflation. Products will become more expensive as the US tries to economically decouple from China. Ben Norton explains.

VIDEO: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8DOCZjS_MVc

Topics

0:00 Inflation is coming back

0:41 US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent

1:57 Billionaires

2:34 (CLIP) Bessent: no more cheap goods

2:49 Stagnant real wages

3:54 How China exported deflation

6:20 Myth of the "American Dream"

6:55 End of income mobility in USA

8:04 US life expectancy falls

9:13 Trump's billionaire-filled administration

9:39 Inflation rises

10:11 Richest 10% drive US economy

11:07 Corruption

11:35 Scapegoating

12:15 Recession risks

13:39 Housing is unaffordable

15:40 Elon Musk

16:13 Blackstone

17:13 Fake populism

18:00 Outro

How is the US impacting Canada's elections, as Donald Trump imposes tariffs and even threatens to annex the country? Who is the banker turned Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney? To discuss, political economist Radhika Desai is joined by Dimitri Lascaris, host of the independent media outlet Reason2Resist.

VIDEO: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fZweNi7ycKM

You can follow Dimitri Lascaris' channel here: https://www.youtube.com/@reason2resist

This is part of the program Geopolitical Economy Hour. You can watch other episodes of the show here: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLDAi0NdlN8hMl9DkPLikDDGccibhYHnDP

Donald Trump is portrayed as a "populist" committed to average working-class people, but his policies benefit wealthy elites at the expense of everyone else. His administration includes 13 billionaires -- including Elon Musk, the world's richest oligarch -- and he is cutting taxes on the rich and corporations while imposing a consumption tax on the poor through tariffs. Ben Norton explains how Trump is waging a class war.

VIDEO with charts here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eL8cg-wWBO8

Check out our related video on JD Vance's speech on reindustrializing the US: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ywmpea6vvOE

Why Donald Trump won the US election: https://geopoliticaleconomy.com/2024/11/08/donald-trump-us-election-kamala-harris-economy/

Topics

0:00 Intro

0:09 (CLIP) Trump at McDonald's

0:33 Billionaires in Trump admin

1:36 Big Tech oligarchs

2:36 Corruption and bribery

3:17 Trump meme coin

4:20 Tax cuts for the rich

5:20 Tariffs are a tax

6:45 Trump's tax law benefited rich

8:25 Billionaires avoid taxes

10:01 Historical tax rates

11:44 Corporate tax rate

12:50 Progressive taxation

15:02 Why Trump won: inflation

16:43 Election turnout

18:02 Trump's low approval rating

20:20 Why people are angry

21:03 (CLIP) Obama on Wall Street

21:19 BlackRock CEO

21:48 Elon Musk

22:12 (CLIP) Trump on Tesla

22:21 US economy relies on rich

24:05 Unemployment rate is misleading

25:36 Stagnant real wages

29:34 Inflation is sticky

30:31 No more cheap goods

31:14 Scott Bessent & George Soros

33:25 (CLIP) Scott Bessent on American Dream

33:40 Cheap goods & China

36:51 Tariffs & reindustrialization

38:22 Myth of American Dream

40:07 US life expectancy is falling

41:17 Scapegoating

43:37 Recession warnings

45:01 Housing

47:02 Elon Musk buys White House position

47:35 Blackstone CEO Stephen Schwarzman

48:34 Trump's fake "populism"

49:22 Hopeful examples

50:15 Mexico: AMLO

51:43 Mexico: Claudia Sheinbaum

53:11 Learning from Mexico

54:50 China's poverty reduction

57:54 US oligarchy

58:37 Outro

US Vice President JD Vance gave a speech about globalization that inadvertently revealed the truth about the US empire, the goal behind the new cold war on China, the economics of imperialism, and how the Trump administration is serving billionaire Big Tech oligarchs in Silicon Valley at the expense of the working class. Ben Norton explains.

VIDEO: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ywmpea6vvOE

US Big Tech CEOs admit they want AI monopoly: https://geopoliticaleconomy.com/2025/02/03/us-ai-monopoly-unipolar-world-china/

Topics

0:00 (CLIP) JD Vance excerpt

0:38 US vice president speech

1:03 Preparing for war on China

3:15 Summary of Vance's speech

3:56 (CLIP) Marco Rubio on China "threat"

4:39 Deindustrialization

5:02 (CLIP) JD Vance vows "industrial comeback"

5:41 Uniting billionaires and "populists"

6:26 Neoliberalism

7:01 JD Vance's patron Peter Thiel

8:22 Trump recruits Big Tech billionaires

9:34 For monopoly, against competition

10:21 (CLIP) Peter Thiel loves monopolies

10:35 Elon Musk and Trump

11:05 Billionaire Marc Andreessen

11:47 (CLIP) Trump admin loves Silicon Valley

12:08 Trump coalition: billionaires & workers?

13:37 (CLIP) Techno-optimists vs populists?

14:21 Big Tech manifesto

15:56 Scapegoating China

17:13 (CLIP) JD Vance scapegoats China

17:34 JD Vance calls China "biggest threat"

18:53 (CLIP) JD Vance scapegoats China

19:12 Neoliberal globalization

20:07 (CLIP) JD Vance on globalization

21:18 Neoliberal globalization

22:07 Imperialism & dependency theory

24:11 China's development

24:35 US bans Chinese competitors

26:15 (CLIP) JD Vance on China's AI

26:40 US Big Tech monopolies

27:23 (CLIP) "Competition is for losers"

27:38 Trump's tariffs

28:36 Jake Sullivan's industrial policy speech

29:16 (CLIP) Jake Sullivan on Washington Consensus

31:36 Industrial policy

32:45 Tech war on China

33:31 Trump's strategy

34:01 (CLIP) JD Vance on US shipbuilding

34:53 China's Shipbuilding

35:46 State-owned enterprises

38:07 US government-owned factories

40:32 Industrial policy

43:41 (CLIP) Tax cuts on rich & deregulation

44:07 Reaganism 2.0

44:28 Historical tax rates on rich

45:48 Oligarchs avoid taxes

46:52 Trump boosts deficit & debt

47:38 Fake industrial policy

49:09 (CLIP) JD Vance is "fan" of Big Tech

49:28 Andreessen Horowitz investments

50:30 S&P 500 stock buybacks & dividends

51:03 Reaganomics

51:59 Trumponomics

53:21 Tariffs & wealth transfer

53:55 Outro

Donald Trump has threatened to colonize Greenland and make it a US territory, even though 85% of people there oppose this. Ben Norton explains the geopolitical and economic reasons: the USA wants to block China from the Arctic region and to profit from the territory's natural resources, especially critical minerals.

VIDEO: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BjXzhd4GVzE

Topics

0:00 Greenlanders don't want to join USA

0:58 (CLIP) Trump threatens Greenland

1:10 Targeting China

1:58 Natural resources

2:59 Independence from Denmark

3:40 Why they oppose US annexation

4:32 Protests in Greenland

5:57 Greenlandic political parties

7:25 (CLIP) Trump threatens Greenland again

7:59 Imperialism

8:44 (CLIP) Trump's Manifest Destiny

9:16 Expand US territory

9:29 (CLIP) Trump wants to "enlarge" US

9:59 Monroe Doctrine

10:45 Geopolitics of the Arctic

11:32 Map distortions

12:44 Geopolitics of Arctic Circle

13:52 (CLIP) Trump: divide Russia & China

14:15 (CLIP) Marco Rubio on China "threat"

14:41 China

15:25 (CLIP) Trump on Greenland

16:02 (CLIP) NATO chief Mark Rutte

16:21 NATO imperialism

17:48 (CLIP) Trump on US troops

18:41 NATO imperialism

19:00 JD Vance

19:16 (CLIP) Vance on China

19:45 US war with China

20:58 Supply chains

21:37 Ukraine's minerals

22:11 Greenland's minerals

22:29 (CLIP) Vance on natural resources

22:50 (CLIP) Vance on Greenland

23:20 Greenland's critical minerals

24:28 Red, White, and Blueland

25:11 US imperialism

26:51 Outro

The United States is the biggest arms dealer on Earth, responsible for 43% of the world’s weapons exports from 2020 to 2024. The US transferred seven times more than China, and five times more than Russia. Ben Norton explains how the military-industrial complex profits from war.

VIDEO: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PVFvEmhey_k

Sources and links here: https://geopoliticaleconomy.com/2025/03/13/us-top-weapons-exports-china-russia/

Credit to Stephen Semler for some charts: https://www.stephensemler.com

Topics

0:00 China "threat" claims

0:43 US military spending

1:34 US foreign interventions

2:40 USA is no. 1 arms dealer

3:57 Top weapons exporters

5:08 Growth in arms exports

5:56 Israel's suppliers

6:23 Top weapons importers

7:16 Europe doubles arms imports

8:32 Trump demands more NATO spending

10:47 Replacing welfare with warfare

12:56 Top military spenders

14:39 Real US military budget

15:40 DOGE ignores Pentagon fraud

17:00 Outro

Can the Donald Trump administration really end the Ukraine war? What is Russia's view? Why did the US fuel the conflict in the first place? These issues are discussed by political economist Radhika Desai, Russia expert Richard Sakwa, and China-based economic geographer Mick Dunford.

VIDEO: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iR3_KKf6kUY

This is part of the program Geopolitical Economy Hour. You can watch other episodes of the show here: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLDAi0NdlN8hMl9DkPLikDDGccibhYHnDP

Topics

0:00 Intro

7:08 Historical moment

9:39 NATO

13:30 Multipolarity

15:00 Imperialism & rent extraction

19:03 West lost Ukraine war

20:12 Can Trump end the war?

22:50 Russian view

26:03 Divide Russia and China

28:44 Trump's strategy

32:22 Isolationism

34:39 Russia-China alignment

37:16 Reverse Nixon

38:16 Root causes

40:07 Geopolitical shift

43:37 Trump is symbol of crisis

45:14 Dollar system

46:01 European politics

46:42 Trump's vision

47:44 US-Russia relations

48:29 ASEAN spirit

50:02 Europe's warfare state

54:18 Europe's deindustrialization

58:56 Western double standards

1:00:31 Russia's perspective

1:03:18 Russia's demands

1:06:12 Ukraine's civil war

1:07:40 Outro

Donald Trump’s Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is a self-declared “crusader” who believes the USA is in a “holy war” against China, the left, and Islam. “Communist China will fall”, he vowed in his 2020 book “American Crusade”, promising, “Israel and America will form an even tighter bond, fighting the scourge of Islamism and international leftism that will never fully abate”. Ben Norton reports on his extremist record.

VIDEO: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HOg-dqGd6Jk

Sources and links here: https://geopoliticaleconomy.com/2025/03/07/us-defense-secretary-hegseth-overthrow-china-crusade/

Topics

0:00 Trump's cabinet of hawks

0:42 Pete Hegseth's "American Crusade"

2:02 Hegseth: "Communist China will fall"

3:26 Make the Crusades Great Again

4:38 Fox News

6:10 (CLIP) US "prepared" for war with China

7:02 Fearmongering about China

7:29 (CLIP) Trump on China "threat"

7:37 Fearmongering about China

8:42 (CLIP) CIA lies, cheats, & steals

8:58 Fearmongering about China

11:31 US military is "most lethal"

12:04 (CLIP) Hegseth: "most lethal" military

12:10 Culture war

13:23 (CLIP) Hegseth on "lethality"

13:28 Conservative identity politics

13:45 (CLIP) Hegseth's "warfighters"

13:59 Media pundit criticizes media

14:20 (CLIP) Hegseth on the media

14:36 (CLIP) Hegseth on Fox News

15:14 Israel

18:17 Hegseth wants war on Iran

18:44 (CLIP) Hegseth calls to bomb Iran

19:55 War with Iran?

20:39 (CLIP) Trump: US will "own" Gaza

20:46 War with Iran?

21:03 Pete Hegseth's elite background

21:41 (CLIP) Hegseth Harvard diploma stunt

22:30 Wall Street

22:55 Neocon

23:35 Guantanamo Bay

24:43 Book "American Crusade"

25:45 Hegseth declares "holy war"

26:33 US Civil War II?

31:05 War on secularism

33:18 (CLIP) Trump on the Bible

33:53 War on secularism

34:16 Hegseth's war on Islam

37:44 Extremist loses friends

38:52 Outro

BlackRock, the world's largest asset manager, is buying the ports on both sides of the Panama Canal, after Donald Trump threatened the Latin American country and forced it to pressure a Hong Kong company to sell its stake. Ben Norton discusses how the US government is trying to weaken China -- and strengthen Wall Street oligarchs.

VIDEO: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ANqHCejgUTM

Check out our related video on Trump's attempt to divide Russia and China: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KRJIymzuRGU

Topics

0:00 Goals of US foreign policy

1:08 BlackRock buys Panama Canal ports

2:08 (CLIP) Trump threatens Panama

2:32 BlackRock

3:26 US empire fears China

4:03 (CLIP) Marco Rubio on China "threat"

4:46 CIA targets China

5:42 (CLIP) CIA director on China

6:34 CIA threats

6:50 Trump attacks China

7:06 (CLIP) Trump on Panama Canal

7:17 BlackRock takeover

7:43 Monroe Doctrine

8:40 Greenland

9:27 Marco Rubio

11:09 (CLIP) Rubio on US "backyard"

11:46 (CLIP) Rubio on "dangerous" China

12:24 (CLIP) Rubio on Taiwan

12:56 New cold war

13:39 Panama Canal geopolitics

14:59 BlackRock buys ports around world

15:54 Biden's infrastructure scheme

16:09 Belt and Road Initiative

16:33 Partnership for Global Infrastructure

17:53 BlackRock, Microsoft, and AI

18:06 Stargate Project with OpenAI

18:26 USA is an oligarchy

19:39 G7 summit starred BlackRock

20:16 (CLIP) CEO Larry Fink at G7 summit

21:11 BlackRock backs both US parties

22:15 Asset managers invest $128 trillion

23:06 Blackstone: Largest US landlord

24:33 USA: best "democracy" money can buy

25:13 Blackstone CEO Stephen Schwarzman

26:45 Elon Musk: biggest US donor

27:51 Trump's trickle-down economics

31:37 Class war

33:24 Trump's Russia strategy

33:51 Outro

Donald Trump's fight with Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky in the White House reflected how the US treats Ukraine as a colony. Trump is demanding control of the country's rare earths and critical minerals, to weaken China, re-industrialize, and make new technologies. Trump wants to be paid $350 billion, roughly twice Ukraine's GDP. Ben Norton discusses Washington's economic colonialism, and Republican Senator Lindsey Graham's comments that "this war is about money" and the USA will "enrich ourselves with rare earth minerals".

VIDEO: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zxxv2IEfU_c

Trump wants US to ‘partner’ with Russia to weaken China: Divide-and-conquer strategy - https://geopoliticaleconomy.com/2025/02/24/trump-divide-russia-china-us-strategy/

Topics

0:00 (CLIP) Trump fights with Zelensky

0:21 Trump treats Ukraine like a colony

1:07 (CLIP) Trump: Ukraine has no cards

1:51 Throwing Ukraine under the bus

2:14 Economic colonialism

3:36 (CLIP) Trump wants Ukraine's rare earths

4:43 Lindsey Graham says quiet part loud

4:58 (CLIP) Ukraine has trillions in minerals

5:34 US wants minerals

6:03 (CLIP) Graham: "This war is about money"

6:53 Colonialism

7:05 Toxic effects of rare earth elements

8:42 US attacks China in supply chains

9:54 Dividing Russia & China

10:22 (CLIP) Trump: split Russia from China

10:40 Making weapons

11:10 (CLIP) Trump: make tech & weapons

11:43 USA targets China

12:31 Trump's Ukraine mineral demands

14:20 Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent

14:48 US-Ukraine fund

16:57 How much will USA be paid?

18:03 Zelensky proposed mineral stake

19:01 US Fed oversees Iraq's oil revenue

20:07 Billionaires run Trump admin

20:36 Kissinger: fatal to be US ally

21:10 What does Ukraine get?

22:32 (CLIP) Trump on military support

23:29 Trump boasts of arming Ukraine

24:20 (CLIP) Trump on Ukraine aid

24:36 False $350 billion aid claim

26:41 Why Zelensky was angry

27:08 JD Vance, Peter Thiel puppet

27:39 (CLIP) JD Vance: thank the US empire

28:06 Ukraine "card game"

28:26 (CLIP) Trump gives orders to Ukraine

28:38 Trump erases US culpability

29:37 (CLIP) Trump: thank US military

29:55 Trump boasts of Javelin missiles

30:27 (CLIP) Trump vs Obama on Ukraine

31:00 NATO fought to the last Ukrainian

31:19 (CLIP) The last Ukrainians

31:30 US hypocrisy

31:56 Lindsey Graham attacks Zelensky

32:37 (CLIP) Graham on Zelensky

33:01 Ukraine as a US "investment"

33:47 (CLIP) US tells Zelensky to resign

33:54 True face of USA

34:07 WWII UK debt with US

35:11 It's fatal to be a US "ally"

36:26 Outro