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Brian Lanzo was a senior advisor on Trump's transition team into this current presidency
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and was also his deputy communications director during the first one. Brian, thank you very much indeed for joining us
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We're seeing triple selling of the dollar, bonds and American equities. Something is going wrong here, isn't it
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Yeah, listen, I think the world is starting to see what President Trump's vision is of a long term economy for the United States
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And for them, it means, you know, you've got to get out of the supply chain of China
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And what you're seeing is you're seeing the markets react because they've invested heavily into the belief that the U.S. is going to let the status quo remain and that more investments are going to take place in China, the more hollowing out of American jobs are going to take place
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I mean, Wall Street made that bet. And what you're seeing right now is instability in Wall Street because I'm recognizing that the bet was wrong
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President Trump is adamant in removing the supply chain out of China. And I think they're making cases why China is not a reliable partner when it comes to international trade, but also when it comes to international crises
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And they'll point back to COVID and look at the behaviors that they demonstrated during the beginning of COVID and how there was critical supply chain issues that they afforded that they hurt the international community
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And that I think President Trump's going to point to as the example says why China can't remain a trusted partner when it comes to supply chain issues
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I absolutely agree that behind all the tariff business there is this kind of almost existential struggle between the United States and the Communist Party in China And at the moment you got what 145 tariffs on China and they got 125 tariffs on you and neither side is blinking
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President Trump clearly expected Xi to blink and come to the table
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and do some kind of deal, but he isn't. So does this just go on and on and on
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You know, I don't know that he expected President Xi to blink. I think what he expected of President Xi was some type of cooperation
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And I think it's, you know, Trump's timeline of cooperation sometimes doesn't marry up with other people's timeline of communication
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And I think what we're seeing is President Trump trying to accelerate the communications between the two governments
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I think one thing the Chinese are known for, and it's a gift, truly, of stalling and delaying
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You know, why don't you meet with negotiator one before we have negotiation two? And Trump doesn't want to wait two years to have a negotiation
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He's ready to have another negotiation from day one. So what you're seeing is President Trump put leverage on presidency to try to force a negotiation sooner rather than later
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We've had an experienced American guest in the studio just now saying that he thought the chances of a recession in the United States were about 70 percent, not 40 percent, as the IMF says
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If that happens, it's not that long until the midterms, November next year
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So President Trump doesn't have forever, does he? No, but he never has
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I mean it important to remember you know no matter who the presidents were usually when it comes to midterm elections the president loses control of the House or the Senate So that the normal standard operating procedure So I think telling Trump hey you going to have devastating losses at the midterms which is what I know advisors would be telling him he going to turn and say
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well, doesn't every president have devastating losses during the midterms? Why should I change my planning if the status quo is going to remain
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Listen, I think we're going to see President Trump committed to removing the supply chain
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out of China, especially the technology supply chain out of China. I mean, if you want to build
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light bulbs if you want to build tables and those things. I think the internationalist
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community would be comfortable with that. But what he is saying, the president
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is saying, is we had an international crisis in 2019, and we saw how China behaved. They are not a
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trusted partner in times of crisis. Not only that, they've been cheating at this whole trade
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regime for 20, 30 years. The minute we offer any type of enforcement
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they cry foul. President Trump is not going to play that game
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I think you've in a sense answered my next question, which is what is the Trump tariff play all about
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Because it can either be a way of getting other countries' attention, as it were, slapping them gently across the cheek saying, pay attention, come and talk to us, come and do a deal with us
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Or it can be, as it were, an existential long-term resourcing of American industry, bringing back to America a lot of smokestacks that have gone elsewhere
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And it can't be both. Why not? I think it can be both
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I think President Trump is saying it has to be both. It saying you know first of all we need to remove the supply chain out of China We going to incentivize those things you know and that critical And that not only critical to the United States that critical to European security as well
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I mean, let's talk about what's taking place in China. President Trump will tell you and military intelligence will tell you that China is going through the largest military defense buildup in world history
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You know, we should take, you know, what's wrong with taking stock of that and saying, wait a second, should we be, should we be, should we be us
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our economies be part of that military expansion. I think Europe played that same decision with
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respect to Russia and said, we'll take cheap energy, but we'll continue to fund your expansion
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of your military. And that turned out to be a critical mistake for Europe and Ukraine
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President Trump doesn't like making those types of mistakes. And that's why you see him putting
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the stresses of having to get out of China. As for other countries stepping forward
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you know, listen, you've seen the South Koreans, you've seen the Japanese here
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Countries are here. Companies are here and companies are here negotiating with President Trump with respect to the tariffs
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I think that's what he wants. He has set up a regime where it's almost like an American television show called Shark Tank
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where everybody comes here and makes their pitch of we want we're great American partners
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We want to make sure here's what we're doing. And President Trump's either going thumbs up or thumbs down
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And I think that's what that's the role he sees is bringing, you know, bringing manufacturing back to the U.S. period
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Period. You're making it sound a little bit like a global version of The
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Apprentice, it turns out. But anyway, Brian, thank you very much indeed for that. Much appreciated
