Trump's Tariffs: A Tool of Diplomacy and Part of a Broader Strategy to Isolate China?

I want to talk about tariffs and specifically recently President Trump has decided that he wants to see a peace deal Russia Ukraine within 50 days and he's basically said if that deal isn't reached in 50 days 100% secondary tariff on Russia. What do you think about that? I love it. I mean this is this is the way President Trump operates and that's why I admire him so very much. He's a winner. uh he knows how to negotiate sanctions against Russia. Biden tried that. Hey uh they rose above that and had no problems. I mean Russia basically is financing that war against Ukraine with their oil and gas money. If that's the forceful hand we need to do to to put pressure on on the Russians to get to the negotiating table with Ukraine, then I support the president in that. You know, we we've been in this war for a long time. We've been supporting the Ukrainians. And I I think the question is what does victory look like for the United States? What is the path to peace? How do we end this war? We shouldn't call them tariffs because that sounds like this big evil word. A tariff is a sales tax on foreign goods. And Americans generally believe in sales taxes. I think every state has them. And all it is is saying we're going to charge a higher sales tax on a good from another country. Frankly, for the first hundred and some odd years of our country, it was sales taxes on foreign goods that largely funded the country. And then we introduced the income tax, which has all kinds of negative effects. Frankly, I've been thinking about the idea of should we abolish the income tax and replace it with sales tax on foreign goods. Think about what that would do for our economy. Think how that would supercharge the United States. But what about the use of tariffs as a tool of diplomacy specifically? I'll give you an example. You know, it's been described credibly, I think, a couple of ways. One way is that the US or the president is looking to uh have other countries choose between the US defense and trade umbrella and the equivalent of communist China or as a way of maybe isolating communist China. Your thoughts? Well, I China is uh so big economically that it is going to be a challenge to isolate uh but uh making sure that we enter into enough beneficial trade agreements with other countries specifically particularly in the Pacific region. Uh we are going to be able to put them at least back on their heels. I just did a trade trip with the natural resource committee to Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan. And I can assure you they want to turn to America. They want to turn our direction and they want to move away from and not be dependent upon China. We've got to get independent from China. There's no way we ought to have our any of our supplies for our airlines, for our vessels for get totally weaned off China. And um it's it's easier said than done. Tik Tok as an example. Why is that hard? Um, and I realize the young people use it here, but could we ever have an American Tik Tok in China? No. It wouldn't exist. This is an administration that recognizes what we have there with China and recognizes that we've got to be firm, that we've got to be strong, and we've got to be careful to not let them get any inroad. So, I don't doubt that when he puts these tariffs in place, he's putting people in a position of having to choose. Are you with us or are you not? We have this incredible asset, which is our economy and our demand for goods. We're a relatively small percentage of the world's population, but we buy a relatively large percentage of the stuff. And we're telling these other countries if they want access to our markets that they have to do things certain ways. our top 20 to 25 trading partners would be people that are are our allies today. And with just with with some continued uh friendly support or friendly pressure from our president, I I think we will we will end up with trade negotiations and trade policy that are that are much more reciprocal from people that are are our allies today. China when they come with gifts, bearing gifts, there's always strings attached. our allies and our friends and people that even are we're not that close to who need to realize going into these deals with China with their eyes wide open. There will be unintended consequences that are not going to be good. Uh Epoch Times was actually founded by Chinese Americans. You may be aware of that by felon gong practitioners. In recent years, we've learned that the CCP has actually extended its long arm into America even further to basically target the things that felong practitioners do like for example the Epoch Times and the Shenyun dance performance which maybe you're familiar with. What is your reaction to that kind of activity? The long arm of the CCP reaching into America. They need to prosecute these people. They they need to they need to get them out of our country. there CCP police departments around the around the United States. That is inexcusable uh that we would have uh any country attempts assassinations or or uh coercion uh of some form or fashion because people are are speaking out and and exercising their their first amendment rights. Uh our our government needs to absolutely stop that. Uh, I think it's important to expose it and and let folks know that it is going on and that they become very aware of it. That's the most important thing we can do in the United States is to educate and make people aware. This is one of the most uh oppressive regimes in the world. Um, you know, all of the constitutional liberties that we often times take for granted, the first amendment, the second amendment have no root in China. I mean, it is a completely different human rights paradigms. My heart goes out to the fallen gong uh people who are peaceful. We know for certain now that the CCP is running uh a forced organ harvesting operation that is beyond human comprehension to have people in prison objectors, prisoners of conscience, political prisoners. And this regime has got their blood types, their tissue types, uh, and somebody orders an organ, and they go in there and force force that that person to give up an organ, and he loses his life. It it is beyond anything I I I can even imagine. And it's a billions and billions of dollar operation. These are the people we're dealing with. The the Communist Party of China, not the Chinese people, believes it is at war with us. We somehow don't believe we are at war with them. Part of the reason we didn't hold China accountable for COVID is it's hard to hold accountable the country that you're buying all your stuff from. We should not depend on China for prescription drugs. We should not depend on China for anything we need as a country in order to survive. We need to have uh China not having so much influence in our universities, in our media, in our social media and things. It's uh people are and and so much so many people are just willing to fall victim towards that Chinese manipulation. People are believing a lot of lies that helps the Chinese Communist Party to advance its cause and undermine American uh sovereignty, American production, American strength. Look, I'm banned from ever going to China, which I'm proud of. Communist China has its tentacles in everything we do here in America. Uh they are preparing themselves. They're thinking a thousand years out. We're thinking two years, how do I get back to Congress? That's the problem. We've got to start thinking long term and we've got to be ready and prepared. And that starts with being informed.