Receipts Live: Trump Has Absolutely No Idea How Trade with Canada Works

Hey everybody, it's me, Sam Stein, Managing Editor at the Bullwork. I'm with Catherine Rampell, we got receipts live. And look, usually Catherine would drive this when she's with JVL, but she's with me today, and I know nothing. And so I'm going to have to pepper her quite with the questions. Before we begin, we're going to be talking about a couple things. Canada, the day after, the Lake Ontario, I'm not calling it Lake America, press conference. We're going to be talking about the trade for a moose. There's like a big thing underway. I'm sure people have seen it to assure folks that the street is totally clear and fine, and we should just go through it. It seems a little bit too on the nose. And then we'll have a couple of topics. Kevin Warsh had to speech this morning at Jackson Hole. That was where it was, right? Okay, yeah. Where I, in classic Kevin Warsh fashion, I'm not sure he said anything, but he may have, and I just can't tell. Catherine's going to break that all down for us. But before we do that, Tim always does this, so I'm going to do too. You guys got to subscribe to our feed. We're doing like robust economics as well as silly maga stuff. It's the whole popery of content. So boost the feed, subscribe, hit like, do all that stuff. We got to catch up with the magagrifters and all them who have figured out the YouTube algorithm. All right, Catherine, let's start with Canada. How are you feeling a day after we change the name of Lake Ontario? You know, pretty much the same. Oh, no. Pretty much the same. Yeah, I mean, it's still, it'll always be like Ontario to me. Although maps are going to get a lot more confusing, I feel like, if Donald Trump really starts cracking down. Like, didn't he crack down on who he got mad at the AP? He got mad at the AP for Gulf of America, because they're like, I'm going to do it. But then Google Maps, I think, did change Gulf of Mexico to Gulf of America. So it is, there's like a bit of a who's going to do it. And I'll tell you someone who hasn't done it yet, who hasn't changed the name of the map. Who's that? The government. The government itself has not yet changed the name up. I've been checking out this page on the government, which is where they denote and map out the Lake Ontario. And there it is. That is the government website. It's from the FWS, which is why am I blanking out? Fish and Wildlife, yeah. So they have, I was looking through all the federal government databases and looking and searching for Lake Ontario. And as of this morning, there it is. Still like Ontario on our own federal government's website. I'm sorry for putting Spongebob and the poor people at the FWS. Poor career civil servant who is just doing your job fired. I know, looking at beautiful lake. Look, my feeling about all of this is it's incredibly stupid. Obviously, it's also something of a distraction from the much worse stuff that he is doing to destroy our relationship with Canadians to make affordability worse, to destroy lots of economic opportunities on both sides of the border. So it's like, yeah, it's fine. Okay, yeah, that's finished. But you know, that actually raises a question. And I copped to sort of ignorance here. Why are we fighting with Canada? Like, what was, what was, but I'm not, I'm not saying that rhetorically. Like, I know what I'm like, I think that's a valid question. Like, that's not a dumb question. I don't think that happened over the past week that like made us do this. Um, really unclear. Donald Trump had been, okay, to back up a little bit. We have a trade deal with Canada. Donald Trump is going to make it. Exactly. He said it was the best deal that America ever got. The USMCA, although in Canada, they call it the C-U-S-M-A or something like that. Whatever, he said that it was a great deal. It was not appreciably that different from NAFTA, which it replaced. It had some other language crib from the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which was another trade deal that Donald Trump tore up. That he said was terrible. But like, really, he just smushed together these two prior trade deals. Right. And flopped his name on it and said it was fantastic. Now, for whatever reason, he has decided he wants to go back to the drawing board. He's slapped a bunch of different tariffs on Canada in the past year. Allegedly for sending fentanyl over the border, um, he's also accused them of, uh, facilitating forced labor, imports made of forced labor or whatever, like a bunch of, a bunch of bullshit stuff, basically. And so the United States and Canada have been negotiating, basically with a gun hell to Canada's head, how to get rid of some of these tariffs and come up with a new trade deal, which, again, was sort of apropos of nothing. It's not like there was, there was something that happened that made us need to get this done. These negotiations have been going on for a little while. Um, allegedly, both sides, I think, had said that they were very close to a deal. A new deal. And then according to Mark Carney, the United States came in at the last moment and basically through a bunch of poison pills in there, including demanding that some of the French cultural requirements get stripped. Even though those are in the Constitution, the Canadian Constitution. So there were things like that. And like the United States wanted to have basically have kind of veto power over Canada's trade negotiations with other countries, essentially turning Canada into a vassal state of the United States. Well, it's not confirmed because that seemed totally, totally ridiculous to me, that the United States would get veto power over like Canada's trade. I mean, there are more nuances to it than that. But basically they had to follow whatever our trade policies were, at least. Why would they ever forfeit their sovereignty in that sense? Donald Trump thinks that they, I mean, he's been saying for what the past year plus that they should explicitly forfeit their sovereignty and become the 51st state. Yeah, that's a good point. So it's intellectually consistent, I guess. I don't know that that's really the motivation here. I think they were just trying to bully the Canadians. And then there's been a bunch of reporting in the times. And I think the journal and some other places about how these reports until like maybe they didn't really expect Canada to accept any of this. That maybe this was all intended to blow up the deal because like the steel lobby of the United States was not happy with some of the terms there. I don't have my own original reporting on any of this, so I don't actually know. But there are a bunch of theories about what happened in any event. Donald Trump has escalated the situation rather than just like not coming to an agreement. He has said we're going to have tariffs on first. It was a bunch of stuff related to like iconic Canadian goods hockey sticks and things like that. But also stuff that Americans buy, you know furniture and lumber and we're already tariffing their steel and aluminum. So there was that then he raised it up a notch and said we're going to start tariffing Canadian automobiles and auto parts. That stuff as I recall has not gone into effect yet. The hockey stick basket of things. Those tariffs have officially gone into effect. A lot of stuff that would be much more damaging, particularly if you look at how integrated the supply chain is over the US Canadian border because of NAFTA and the USMCA. It would just like dramatically raise the cost of doing business and the race and the cost of making a car and buying a car because it crossed those borders so many times. So Trump's been out there posting or talking about or offering up a bunch of statistics around how lopsided US trade is with Canada to begin with. I would love for you to sort of put some truth serum out there. So he's claimed that Canada conducts 95% of its business with the US and that it's utterly dependent on the US market. Is that like, I mean, I don't know, is that remotely true? It doesn't seem possible that 95% of Canada's businesses with the United States. You know, to be honest, I don't know the numbers off the top of my head. That sounds high to me. 95% will be like a third. Well, I mean, I believe that we are by far the biggest trading partner. Yeah, that makes sense. That's reasonable. Particularly because they're most important export to the United States is energy. And so we have pipelines going between. So have they said, were they going to cut off energy supplies to us? I know that there's something about the Alberta oil fields and concerns about that. And I know there's a lot of politicians, US politicians in states that border Canada who are deeply concerned about that. But is that yet taken effect? No, I mean, it hasn't happened. But Donald Trump certainly seems to be egging them on. Like he said, I think we have footage of this. But he said yesterday he was complaining about the size of our trade deficit with Canada. And he's tweeted similar stuff. Matt, can we play that clip? Yeah, let's play that. What would you say to those who are concerned a trade dispute with Canada could affect American affordability ahead of mid-term? Well, ultimately is going to be very good for us. Because when you talk about affordability, we're losing 62 billion a year on average with Canada. And if you really look at it, we're losing more than that. It's too much. It's too much. We can't lose that. We don't want to lose that. We don't want to lose it anymore. 60% is that right? He says 62 billion is what he said. So you can billion. Look, I got you. So what he's saying there is that we lose money to Canada because we have a trade deficit with them. So this is wrong on so. in many different levels. It's like the inception. - Does he think we need to have trade surpluses with the entire globe? Is that-- - Yes, yes, he clearly does, that he does, which is idiotic for lots of different reasons. I mean, the fact that you have a trade deficit with another country does not mean you're losing to them, does not mean that they are ripping you off. As other people have pointed out, like I have a trade deficit with the supermarket, I have a trade deficit with my dentist. It means that I am buying things from these counterparties and sending them money. And that's normal. We are not just sending $62 billion, which is not the right number, by the way, to Canada. We are getting stuff in exchange, specifically, we are mostly getting oil. So that number that he cited is about the deficit in goods. If you actually include goods, services, all the things that go back and forth that trinks it quite a bit, in fact, I think the numbers that I had looked up suggested that, yeah. So our overall trade deficit is like somewhere 20, something billion dollars, okay? - With Canada. - With Canada, excuse me. With Canada. Now-- - I can't believe we're sending them $20 billion for nothing, unbelievable. - Well, our energy deficit, our energy trade deficit with Canada is like three to four times that. It's somewhere around $85 billion. So what that means is that outside of energy, the US actually runs a solid net surplus with Canada across all goods and services. They're mostly buying more stuff from us than we are from them, which we should not care about, but because Donald Trump does, I'm pointing it out. The issue is that the whole story behind the trade imbalance, if you cared about it, is energy. When Donald Trump is complaining about we are sending money to Canada and not getting anything forward or whatever, we're clearly getting something forward, but it's because of energy. So what he is basically doing when he complains about that deficit is he's inviting Canada to stop selling us energy. - Right. - Because that's what we depend on. And by the way, it's not just oil. - Well, hold on. - It's oil, yeah, go on. - So we've looked up the stats. Canada's exports to the US are not 90, whatever it's said, it's about 70 to 75% of all Canadian exports are to the US, which is a lot. It's a lot. If Canada were to say, hey, all right, you don't want, you don't want to trade deficit, we won't sell you oil. It's not that simple, right? I mean, they need other customers. - Yeah. Yeah, I mean, it would be painful for them, absolutely. But Donald Trump seems to have no qualms about inflicting lots of pain on Americans, so that he can-- - It'd be painful for us too, because we'd lose a-- - Yeah, we would lose out, they would lose out. This is what economists mean when they say there are mutual gains from trade, right? That we are all better off if we continue trading with each other, and we have collectively, there are some individual winners and losers, but collectively, we are better off if we can continue to buy the energy from Canada. We continue to sell, to pay money to Canada for the oil, for the hydropower. That was the other thing I was gonna mention. New York City, where I live most of the time, is largely powered by hydropower from Quebec. Actually, there was a big new transmission line that was built or opened earlier this year about that, so like a million New York City households would lose their power potentially if they cut off that pipeline or that transmission line as well. So we're dependent on them, but we come out ahead, like we benefit, they benefit mutual gains from trade. Donald Trump has basically said he wants to punish everyone. Well, I mean, that's not what he thinks he's saying. He thinks like we're just punishing Canada if we put tariffs on them. No, we are hurt and they are hurt. If they cut us off from this very important product that we import, that they export, we are hurt and they are hurt. The question in all of these trade wars is basically who is willing to endure more pain? Well, yes and no. Well, yes and no, right? Like now we're going away from the economics into the sort of geopolitics, which is, I mean, you tell me if you think I'm wrong here, but it does seem like world leaders have kind of wise up to this in two ways. One is, they, a lot of them just assume that he'll taco and that when it comes down to it, he'll cut some deal that's basically status quo and say he's a great negotiator. But the other thing is, I don't think they take the threat and maybe relatedly, I don't think, I think they've prepared their economies better for the possibility that there's going to be some sort of, you know, friction with the United States. That, you know, Karney would give a pretty remarkable speech, not so long ago where he talked about reorienting the Canadian economy away from the United States. And he had a tweet up and I don't know if we can get it. If we can find it, it had to do with the renaming of Lake Ontario. But really, there's a part of it about how the United States was changing and that they had to realize that. And so I think it's just the reaction, the global and political reaction to what's happening now strikes me as fundamentally different than what we saw in, say, April, 2025. Yeah, I think that other countries, well, it's some combination of, they are trying to figure out can they weight him out, right? Like, are they going to, are they going to make whatever concessions he wants them to make? And it's not even clear what concessions he wants them to make. I think here's the carny tweet. Yeah, so it's the third graph that really stood out to me. We know that America is changing. They're trading relationships. They're foreign policies, they're national monuments. They're hard genomes, which is a fancy word for bodies of water, names of bodies of water. So yeah, I mean, he's just like, yeah, we know that this is, and it was almost like in a way he was just saying, I'm not bothered by this. Like, this is just the reality that we live in and I'm not shocked. And I feel like that's just fundamentally different than where we were a year ago. Yeah. I think you are seeing other countries, including Canada, reorient themselves to other trading partners. As I've mentioned several times when I've talked with Andrew Egger about the US Canada trade war, it's been a little disturbing to me that favorability among Canadians for China has gone up so much. So at the same time that Canadians have a less favorable attitude towards Americans, that's been going down. The attitude towards China has been going up. And it's not like China has developed a more democratic system or less authoritarian policies or better human rights record or whatever, but they do maybe look like a little bit more reliable of a trading partner at the very least than the United States does, which is a horrible thing to say. And I do wonder, so just in this example, I mentioned before that Trump is trying to-- or has announced that he's going to tariff automobiles in auto parts from Canada. I wonder, what does this mean in the long run for the Chinese EV business, which has been like BYD, for example? They make these-- I've never been to one, but I've heard that these are actually quite good, pretty, very cheap EVs. They're just churning them out. There's been this fear that they're going to take over the global market because they're just so much better and so much less expensive than a lot of the competition. And to date, Canada has had some hesitation about letting BYD or other Chinese automakers come in and sell freely to the Canadian market. Well, that's partly because that relationship between Ontario and Detroit was so tight, that supply chain was so tight. Now that we look less reliable, now that that supply chain is going to maybe have some more friction in it, maybe that's an opening for China, for BYD. There are so many longer term implications about how our partners, including Canada, maybe reorienting the choices that they make, the economic choices that they make, and the diplomatic choices that they make, because we have just thrown a grenade in what had been a very stable, mutually beneficial relationship. And the auto sector is just one example of all of this. Like, who knows what other kinds of opportunities? Yeah. Americans are going to miss out on, and maybe China or other adversaries of the United States will benefit from. For folks who are interested in that and the EV portion of this conversation, Jonathan Cohen's written a lot about this, even prior to this, how we are shooting ourselves in the foot with EV competition in China. This will hurt it more. I am curious, two questions. One is, where's your cat? Like, where is the cat? Two is upstairs. He's upstairs. OK. If you had to put your crystal ball, take it out. Like, how does this get resolved? I mean, I think the logical resolution is some sort of taco type. We got a deal. And it's just really the status quo. But what do you anticipate? I think that's the best possible scenario. There are a lot of ways in which this can go haywire, right? Particularly because we are antagonizing China so much about energy. Like, I don't know. Maybe Canada will do something dumb, and maybe it's strategically. I don't know, but something painful, the very least, like. Cut up in New York? I hope not. I live in New York, you know. That would be bad. But. First of all, when you said New York runs on, I thought you were going to say bagels and then you went with Quebec energy. So. Not that bad. Yeah, that would be bad. That would be a definite middle figure. There are a lot of ways that this could go pretty badly and one thing that I think I've talked about before as well, is the fact that the feedback loop that has tempered Trump that has caused him to taco in the past has been the market, right? Like, Trump does something catastrophically stupid, like liberation day or whatever. Markets freak out and then he pulls back. He moderates somehow. How are the markets handling this? No. Because it's. No, because it's. No, because it's. This is the status quo. There you go. Right. And I think it's because there is this anticipation that he will taco. But because there is an anticipation that he will taco that may reduce the likelihood that he tacos. It's like a self-negating prophecy or whatever. That's what I'm worried about. That it's like, Trump is not getting the signals that he needs to demonstrate to him that this is really dumb. He's obviously not getting that advice from his advisers because it's a bunch of yes-men who just tell him everything he does as well. Well, you do pick up some stuff here and there. Like, I saw James and Greer, the US trade representative on Fox and they were, you know, they're talking and they're asking about the toilet paper crisis, which is actually not really a crisis. We looked into it. But what was interesting about Greer was he was just being like, you know, this isn't a big deal. Like, we're not even really doing it on that many goods. Like, he was trying. If you read the subtext. I know it is a big deal, but if you read the subtext, he was really trying hard to be like, we're going to get this resolved. Don't worry. Like, we got to figure this out. And you get the sense that some people there understand the severity of it doesn't mean that Trump does. Yeah. My recollection is that Greer made those comments on CNBC or wherever, some cable news channel. And then almost immediately afterward, Trump tweeted something to escalate, like, said that they should be the 51st state or whatever. Well, the next day, Trump renamed like Ontario. So there's that. Starting off, and we're going to move on from the segment, because we, again, folks, we're doing all the hard work and journalism here. We are not leaving any stone unturned. We went to all the online maps of the lake to see if they have changed the name yet. So let's put them up one by one. Let's start with Google Maps. What do we got? Like, they haven't changed it yet. They haven't changed it yet. They're going to get somebody in trouble, say, um. This is a private company. I'm not trying to get them in trouble. They can make their own decisions. Yeah, nobody, but last time Trump yelled at all of these companies. Okay. Well, then I will get them in trouble, because now we have Apple Maps. Let's go. It's a little bit hard to read, but that definitely says Lake Ontario. First of all, what's your preferred online app? Well, hold on. Last one. Map Quest for the traditionalists. Wow. Lake Ontario. Okay. What's your preferred online map? You know, I'm a map quest guy. I got to be honest. Really? No, I'm a Google map guy. Okay. I was going to say. I'm going to say, "I've lost some respect for you, Sam." Yeah. Just the bridge too far. How could you. Yes, literally. A bridge too far. Yeah. I'm a Google Maps guy. You Apple Maps? Okay. No. I want to like drive into the pond or whatever. It's not. You're not actually going to drive into pond. You'll be. We might say you're in the pond, but you're not going to drive into the pond. All right. Speaking of bodies of water, look at this transition. Let's talk about the trade-off from this. Okay? Didn't he name this one, then he call it the "Straight of America" or "Straight of Trump" or something? I forgot. Did he. He might have floated. He floated the idea of renaming the Atlantic Ocean yesterday. No, but before that. Well, whatever. I know you're talking about it. They've talked about like, "Oh, we're going to name it the "Straight of America." Yeah. I think they've definitely talked about it. I don't think. Well, he can do whatever. I mean, he could try to do whatever he wants, probably put some executive water out there. Anyways, the straight. Is it open? Is it not? We have, Tom, puts out some video that was very celebratory and very happy, where they declared that they have "Demigned the Straight." There's some interesting wordage in there that I think you can pick up, but let's watch the video. And then we're going to talk about whether or not this is just spin. U.S. military has achieved a major milestone in the Strait of Hormuz. We have successfully cleared sea mines in the straits international shipping lanes that were laid months ago by Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. International and recognized transit routes in the Strait are free of Iranian sea mines thanks to the incredible work of the U.S. military. Okay, so I'm not like a total expert on this, but the people I've read about this have said they don't have no reason to doubt it. In fact, they think it's probably true, but it's not the full Strait one, and two is it doesn't accommodate for the possibility that they didn't know where every mine was, or that there are mines still floating there, what they call ghost mines, or that Iran could, in fact, go back in and continue to mine the Strait, or that there's other ways to go after ships that are trying to navigate. So it is an achievement, but this fits into a larger context of the administration trying its best to encourage energy companies to use the Strait without fear. And we've seen it in a couple of occasions, Donald Trump has talked openly about it. We have Axios doing reports, Axios has gone from reporting about how close a peace deal is to how open the Strait is. They seem to be on the cutting edge of calming the markets. There's the headline that suckers open, US gains the upper hand in the battle for Hamuz. And yet the actual data shows that it's not open, or at least it's not as open as it once was. So I'll shut up as I get the data oriented, but what are your thoughts on this? Yeah. Well, a few different things. Fewer ships are going through, less oil is going through. And if all of that is true that the mines were gone, it doesn't seem to have actually convinced private companies, or they're insurers, that it is worth transiting the Strait. And before the war, something like 20 million barrels of oil were transiting the Strait every day, the journal had a piece, I think, saying that people who are actually paid to track how much oil is going through are finding, what was it, like, two to six million barrels a day? Yeah. So the journal has, I don't know, do we have it up? Well, I can read it. Yeah, read it. Yeah, they say that the count from commercial ship trackers tells a different story with estimates ranging from roughly two million to six million barrels a day. Industry figures on the amount of crude oil and oil products being loaded onto ships in the Persian Gulf and delivered to buyers don't corroborate U.S. claims. So what matters is not that Donald Trump and those answering to him say that it's safe and that oil is getting through. What matters is what private companies and the people that they employ and the companies that ensure them think is safe and possible and worth whatever cost benefit analysis that they are doing to actually send ships through, send these tankers through the Strait and that does not seem to be happening. And forgive me if people might be a little bit skeptical of the information coming out of this administration, the official statements coming out of this administration. Right. There's a rule of thumb that I think of quite frequently during this administration that I may have talked about before, but it's, I call it the Goolsbee rule. It's named for Austin. Austin? Yeah, you know, Austin. So he's now the president of the Chicago Fed. He said this beforehand, but he said basically some version of when you lose your credibility, the things you say start to mean the opposite of what you intend them to mean. So when you have an administration that has consistently lied about things big and small, crowd sizes, measles, counts, you know, voter fraud, everything in between. When they lie repeatedly about things, it means that when you really need the world to trust what they are saying, people won't. And so I think it is quite reasonable that this assurance alone from CENTCOM, from the White House, may not be sufficient to convince private companies that it is worth their while, that they will not get blown up by minds or by drones or otherwise antagonized to go through. And so they'll just say screw it. We're not going to. I think the private companies are one audience that they're trying to convince, but I don't think it's the full audience. I think they're trying to convince the markets. I think they're trying to like present this non-reality that everything is copacetic, back to normal, and you shouldn't worry about the war anymore, that we can live with whatever the status quo is right now with Iran, because we've done the hard work and gone the minds out there and shipping is happening all over again. So you look at Scott Besson, the treasure sector, he puts this tweet up. Okay. The blockade and operation economic outcast will crush the failing Iranian economy. U.S. has guided 130 million barrels out over there. of the past 14 days while Iran has done zero. And it's like, okay, I look at that. That seems cool and I'm happy and maybe things are cool. And then you actually do the math and it doesn't take much. You're like, okay, but if we're doing 20 million dollars a day, that would about to about 280. Now they're crawling over 130. And then you add on to that all the efforts that have gone into and still go into ensuring that ships can get into and out of the street. And upholding that blockade and monitoring the Iranians so they don't mind the straight again. And you're talking real investments here. And on top of that, the strategic petroleum reserve is at incredible lows. And they're just leaving all that stuff out for obvious reasons. And I think they're just doing it because they want to condense the markets not to crash. - Yeah, but that's not gonna work. - It's worked so far. It's worked so far. - I mean, oil prices, oil prices are high. - Yes, but the markets are not like. I mean, we all thought the market- - That is the market. What market are you talking about? - I'm talking about the stock market. - Okay, the stock market. - Like the larger markets, sorry. - 'Cause I'm gonna say, I don't know what oil prices are right now. We can look it up. But one second, I'm doing a lot of prices. This is the beautiful one. - Yeah, I mean, there's still not that high. - It's 88, yeah. This is nothing like it was at the peak during the Iranians. - Yeah, it's not as bad as at the peak. I think it's still above where it was pre-war if I recall correctly. - Sure. - In any event, yeah, there is this real question about why stock markets have held up. And is it because of faith in Trump and the economy, is it despite deteriorating faith in Trump and the economy? And I think it's mostly the latter. I think that the AI boom slash bubble is doing a lot of the hard work in pushing up prices. But I agree, it's like I have not really understood candidly why equity markets have been so copacetic throughout all of this. Again, not just the war, but the trade wars and all of the other erratic behavior and threats to rule of law and tainting of statistical data that traders rely, like there are so many reasons why I feel like all of these problems should be reflected with bigger pain in the stock market. And you haven't seen it, I don't entirely know why. I will say that the bond market is a different story. - All right, expanding that. - So the bond market is freaking out more than the stock market. And I think that's some combination of like we have a lot of debt. And so if we have a lot of debt, we have a lot of inflation still that the Fed has not been able to ring out of the economy. And I think that there is actually kind of a credibility crisis that treasury and potentially the Fed are going through right now. And the bond market, maybe there's like less dumb money floating around, I don't know, than in the stock market. Maybe there are fewer like whatever retired dentists and other like casual like retail traders. I don't know. And maybe there's just more professional types in the bond market, but you do see yields higher. Certainly then they were a few months ago when Scott Bessent tried to intervene in the bond market and bring those long-term rates, those bond yields down, it backfired. So you do see more jitters, if not outright panic in the bond market than you do in the stock market. And maybe that's something like, I don't want to say it's comforting, but maybe it feels a little more rational than what's happening in the stock market. But like again, I don't know how much of this is AI and how much of this is just like people are still playing music until, you know, while the, I don't know what the metaphor is, but it's like, they're dancing while the party's still going on. You know, and I think it's probably not. - I think it's one of these kind of deck of the Titanic or something like that. - Something like that. Well, it is, I guess it is kind of crazy to me how much we basically, it's not that we've backburned it, although I guess it is because the war obviously is still going on, but no one really, nothing's happening. You know, we're just in this moment. Strategic Petroleum Reserve, lowest since November 1982, we can put up the graph there for folks watching. You can see it's, and that downward turn right at the very end, that's all the war. - Yeah, I mean, I'm old enough to remember when Donald Trump was yelling at Donald Trump and other maggot people, we're yelling at Biden, right? For drawing down the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, which they did in part because there was a different war that's still ongoing, the Russia Ukraine War. And that was screwing up global oil markets. And so like they did draw on the Strategic Petroleum Reserve at the time in part to like, equilibrate, you know, to counteract the fact that there are all these supply disruptions and people Republicans were like, "Oh, that's too political." Like we need to save that for a real emergency. And now obviously Donald Trump is going up. - Just absolutely. - He's up beyond it. - Yeah. - Taking a big straw and sucking it all up as for the cost of career pre-war was $72. - There you go. - '88. So it is up, but it was over 100 and definitely not there now. All right, last topic before I let you go. There's like a slew of corruption stories. And it's kind of, you know, these are like a dime a dozen, but I do think it's incumbent upon us to actually- - What a sad commentary on the world here. - I know, I do think it's incumbent upon us to actually talk about them. There was three that we spotlighted. There's, I have my favorite. I don't know if you have yours from the doc that we're working out of. There's two really that I really want to talk about. One is the crypto bank, which is basically this Abu Dhabi royal has invested in sane amounts of money in world liberty financial, which is the company that the Trump family more or less runs and operates. The other one that I thought was really crazy was the prediction market story. So basically Don Jr., who has a stake in, was a Calhsi. Yeah, I think he must take a Calhsi and in polymarket. He goes in front of the attorney generals, the state attorney generals and he starts berating them to like not, you know, not crack down on these prediction markets and over-regulate them. And it's just, you can read it there. Mr. Trump in this case is not the president. It's Don Trump Jr., so it says, and I'll read it to the people who are listening. And I'm watching sitting on stage for question answer session with Montana's attorney general, Mr. Trump, that's Don Trump Jr. suggested that state leaders were being led astray by vested interest, gambling firms that wanted to protect their monopolies by attacking prediction markets for people familiar with their mark said. In reality, he said the markets already had robust oversight describing them as a sophisticated financial tool overseen by federal officials, not state attorneys general. Mr. Trump's tone was friendly, the people said. But his comments, which have not been previously reported dovetailed, where the message his father's administration has sent the state leaders back off. It does strike me as the sun is basically giving them a warning. My dad's going to come down on you. Yeah. And in this case, it's probably pretty intimidating. There is a real conflict. I mean, there are legitimate issues here about whether states or the feds should be regulating these markets. And the prediction market companies like Calci and Polymarket and others have argued like, well, we shouldn't have this patchwork regulatory regimes. It shouldn't be different in Texas versus Idaho versus Vermont or whatever. Yeah. The problem-- and I understand that. The problem with that argument is that that is how gambling is regulated right now. Like if you talk about sports betting, for example, that's done at the state level, those regulations generally. The federal government has a relatively light hand. And there are some conflicts between how states have regulated, again, this form of gambling, like sports betting or slot machines or whatever, and what is allowable on these sites. And now the sites will say that there are sophisticated commodity market. It's not the same thing as gambling, whatever. But I don't know if you're making a bet on the outcome of an athletic match. I don't know that it's really that different from a consumer's point of view at the very least. And so there are a lot of states. I think it's something-- I looked it up before. I don't know. In all but a few states, no one younger than 21, for example, can play sports bets. But on Calci, the app is available to anyone over the age of 18. So how do you reconcile those things if you're in a state that says you can't play sports bet, but you can do it on Calci? It just seems like there's some, at the very least, regulatory arbitrage that's going on that needs to be resolved. And I'm not a lawyer. I don't have very strong informed opinions about the right way to resolve it. I will tell you that I would not go to Donald Trump Jr. for advice on the right way to resolve it, because he clearly has a vested interest. And that quote that you read where he's talking about all of these vested interests are trying to influence the outcome of-- Thank you, buddy. It's like, yeah, most of them don't have daddy in the White House. I know. It's a remarkable thing. It's very stingy, yeah. like in a more traditional setting like let's say Donald Trump Jr. was not you know was on the board of a you know defense company and he went to all the lawmakers and not the attorney generals on the you know defense appropriations committee and he told them you you shouldn't buy any of the other companies because they're bad but just don't buy them like we'd be like that's insane behavior like you're basically using your ties to your father to benefit yourself and that's what's happening here just to be clear just to be clear the Trump administration has already started cracking down on this stuff like they didn't need DJ to weigh in and suggest it openly so the Trump administration has said that the CFTC which regulates commodities should be the only game in town for regulating prediction markets and the CFTC was set up in 1974 this is something else I think I pulled from I forgot if it was a journal article what I think it was a journal article in the half century since it was set up the CFTC had never sued a state over regulatory issues this year it has sued nine states all led by democratic governors and twice the agency has instructed prediction markets to sidestep court orders of invoking emergency powers that had had not used for decades and so they're coming down the side of less regulation I presume yeah yeah they're they're basically saying only the feds can regulate by which we mean not regulate at all these markets the states cannot and when the states try Donald Trump senior the guy in the White House will sue via the the CFTC and so Don Jr is like basically saying my dad's going to come after you which is credible because his dad is already coming after them yeah and I've never heard you use DJ T.J. before I like it oh DJ T.J. I should use that I don't know it's yeah I get it I'm aware of the acronym but it's nice I like it anecdotally I don't know if you've experienced this but I I've way more friends who are like just casually betting on things these days do you um I mean it's mostly sports honestly so I I don't know to be honest um I think I friends who are like in the middle of games will like re re bet uh on on the games and the outcomes and and wait and they're like you know they are admittedly like yeah I'm kind of addicted to it um and it's weird it's like it's an addictive thing obviously but I it's obviously this stuff is proliferating in ways that I don't think we appreciate and I'm seeing it in my own life I stay away from that shit I'm too I'm too anxious to do that yeah I'm not a gambler so no and also I don't really I'm not invested in anything athletic so maybe that shields me from some of this stuff you can bet on you can bet on a bunch of shit I know I know you could bet on you should bet on the 20 award winners and shit like yeah they have markets on all of that stuff but I am not partaking okay before before we go to the uh clean up stuff and in the tour dates because we have a tour coming up I want to announce the details Kevin Worsh did speak this morning and and I'm sorry that you have to cover this man I really genuinely feel bad for you because people have to understand in journalism it's great to cover the crazy figures and I guess that's partially why Trump is you know he gets pressed but it's like people genuinely like covering Trump even though he's horrible Kevin Worsh is the antithesis they he says nothing it's like reading like a scroll in a different language that you're not familiar so what did he say? that's the job of every Fed official there are jobs that's their that's their that's their job if they're he's very good at it they're screwing up well it's good at not making news um I don't actually think that's true I think he is trying to not make news but if you look at his last press conference he made quite a bit of news unintentionally by suggesting for example that the Fed was maybe going to change the artistic it uses for measuring inflation that would be like a very big deal he kind of said it in an off-hand comment um maybe going to maybe yeah well but that like freaked out markets because they're like well it's just a backdoor way to like not be as tough on inflation I mean there are a bunch of things that I think he didn't mean to say the best Fed officials or the ones who have very control I mean from the perspective of not from a journalist per second from the perspective of like what's good for markets um and the economy the best Fed officials are the ones that like stay on message that like project calm seem like they know what they're doing and I don't know that Warsh did that at least at his last press conference today he kind of said nothing and um and I guess that I mean the thing that I was hoping he said inflation was still worry some okay great um and he made one little cutesy joke about like you can call what I'm about to tell you uh you know I'm gonna tell you what my speech is about you can call it an outline you can call it a framework but don't call it forward guidance which is a joke for e-con nerds because they they've not been giving forward guidance to something else I mean uh did you chuckle I did not but it's it made it into every right up of the speech so I guess he did his job that he distracted people from like the actual potential credibility crisis that are financial policy that Kevin Warsh with his one liners I know well the thing that I wanted him to address and then I think a lot of other people were hoping that he would address is how the Fed is viewing these bessent bond buybacks um because it really seems like the treasury you know Scott Besson is treasury secretary it seems like treasury is kind of like homing in on um the Fed's turf because the Fed is supposed to be the one that's like setting interest rates mostly the short-term interest rates but they also do things to affect long-term interest rates like buying and selling long-term bonds and now Bessent is getting in on that and so like there's this question about who's in charge and he didn't get into any of that so a lot of unresolved questions well we don't need to belabor it and try to figure out or divine what he was trying to say it's just the world we live in um but for folks who do want to get a better understanding of the economy they should subscribe to your newsletter receipts you had a great one but the fuck around and find out economy of course because you're super light you're like saying the word fuck in the text so i'm i i'm gonna say i'm not gonna say it f-a-f-o Catherine doesn't like to swear and every time i try to put a swear in her text no it's true but let's be honest every time i try to put a swear in your copy you're like take that out so i'm not gonna do it anymore it's true are you denying it i'm definitely said bullshit a bunch of times uh it's not swear Catherine you know it's interesting so i used to work at the Washington Post right and i was a columnist there for many years and i was kind of used to this world where like i could say outrageous things in my initial draft and knowing that editors would pull me back and that's the opposite of the world so i won't be a little bit more careful because it's like sometimes i'll put in something like bullshit in my draft figuring that i'll change it you know like i'll come up with some better less crash way to say the thing that i'm trying to say and um and then it just it lips there and that's okay it lives there and i'm like actually can we go a little harder um yeah all right i'll stop doing that all right quick quick no before let you go uh this is for folks who are the real sickos out there who like seeing us in live as opposed to on youtube actually i will say uh the having done a couple of these the live shows are awesome like they are totally different experience so much energy in the room uh it's fun you get like to be around others uh we do different segments have different games um it's a genuinely fun experience and we're always hanging around and you you got a chance to talk to us on occasion so uh if you're in these three cities columbia south Carolina Charlotte North Carolina and Atlanta Georgia those are the three stops on what we are calling the good fight tour it's this october coutan's gonna be in one of those which one you're gonna be in do you remember uh Charlotte yeah you're in Charlotte so we got columbia south Carolina on october 16th Charlotte North Carolina on october 18th and Atlanta Georgia on the 20th you can get tickets right now you can see it on the website the borough.com/events i would highly recommend if you can make it to come and do one of these events it's a great way to ramp up for the midterms meet the gang have a good evening take it to sale the borough.com/events all right Catherine thanks so much really appreciate it take care we'll see you soon