Trump's Hidden Economic War On China (Tariffs, Venezuela, Iran Explained)

Added: 2026-05-28

[00:00:00]We have now this conflict between United States and China. Right? We've we've known that even before the Trump administration that the Chinese economy is growing faster than the United States.

[00:00:08]But now it looks like we're trying to actually in a way fight China.

[00:00:12]>> Yes.

[00:00:12]>> But not actually fighting them. I mean, when we announce these tariffs, some of the biggest and largest tariffs were on China. Why? Because we wanted businesses to leave China to Yes, bring manufacturing back to the United States, but also hurt the Chinese economy.

[00:00:26]When the United States invaded Venezuela, well, Venezuela was one of the or their largest seller of oil. They were selling oil to China. And so they intercepted that oil source for China.

[00:00:38]Iran was a large producer oil for China.

[00:00:42]Iran was selling that oil at a big discount to China below market value, which gave China an edge to produce products cheaply. And so it seems like the United States is almost like trying to fight China economically as a way to try to slow down their growth because we're worried and concerned that China is going to beat the United States.

[00:01:05]>> Yes. And I think we can look at a historical example here. If you were to ask the average American at the height of the Cold War if we were at war with Russia, a lot of them would have said, "No."

[00:01:15]Really?

[00:01:16]>> Yeah, my father was a Vietnam veteran and he you know, he came back and he saw that firsthand that a lot of people didn't realize that that we were just in you know, colonial conflicts all over the world and didn't realize that this was part of this greater thing that we were calling the Cold War. Conflicts don't look like they used to. There's this idea that they're fought through proxies. Israel being a famous proxy of the United States and Hezbollah in Lebanon being a proxy of Iran. And there's this additional level of economic dominance and global supply chain. And when it comes to global supply, China has actually been beating the United States for a while. And we're just now realizing that.

[00:01:57]And again, it's hard to imagine that Venezuela, like, oh, we want to get rid of Maduro, we want to oust the sort of terrorist leader of Venezuela.

[00:02:07]What does that have to do with China? As you mentioned, I believe it was 80% of all oil coming out of Venezuela was being sold to China. Now, they're signing treaties to sell it to us.

[00:02:18]That is a massive swing. We're looking at Iran and their sort of oil pipelines.

[00:02:24]And yes, it's sold to China, it's actually named something else. They sort of change the labeling on it before it gets there. But they were a big supplier to China. What else happened in the Middle East right before this? We had the UAE leave OPEC. The UAE, major producer of oil, also member of the Chinese-led BRICS alliance. We have been fighting China in the Middle East about energy consumption in the energy supply chain for years now. Russia's involved in this, too. Remember, as Russia invaded Ukraine and that conflict began, Russian oil exports to Western allies dropped by over 90%. Uh it's closer to a full stop. It just kind of depends on how you're looking at the supply chain. But China came in and said, "Look, we'll keep buying Russian oil. We have no issue with that. Cut us a nice discount, give us that competitive edge, and sure, we'll keep buying Russian oil." And so we've seen Russia manage to sustain its health despite losing most of its customers by still selling to China. Because of all the changes happening in the economy right now, I'm hosting a live, free, and virtual investor workshop on June 16th at 12:00 p.m. Eastern Time noon, where I'm going to be going over number one, how the economy's changing, and number two, how you can build wealth through these changes in the economy. That way you can build wealth outside of just your 401k, outside of just your house, because when you have all these changes happening with money, all these changes happening in our government, all these changes happening with AI and technologies, all of these create panic, but they also create opportunities. And some people are going to become incredibly wealthy because of them, and on June 16th, I'm going to be showing you my firm's research as to where money is moving and how we can create better investment opportunities for you. It's a free workshop and it's live, but you do have to register to reserve your spot because our software has a limited number of people that can actually join us live. And in the past, when I've done these live workshops, we've hit capacity every single time. And as an added bonus, when you sign up for the investor workshop, you're also going to get Market Briefs, which is my newsletter for investors, completely free. It's read by hundreds of thousands of investors every morning. And when you show up live on my investor workshop on June 16th at 12:00 p.m. Eastern Time noon, you're also going to get a free digital copy of my company's new book, How Money Changed Forever. But to actually get a digital copy of this book, you have to actually show up live on June 16th at 12:00 p.m. Eastern Time noon. So, if you're an investor, I invite you to join me for a live investor workshop on June 16th. If you have not registered yet, again, I have that link for you down in the description below. So, this is where I get a little bit confused. I want to dig into this with you because there's this, like you mentioned, this economic conflict with China. So, everything with the tariffs, Venezuela, Iran, all this is kind of in a way to fight China.

[00:05:10]But now, because of these economic conflicts, we're also risking the health of the United States dollar because the most recent impact of the war in the Middle East is oil prices.

[00:05:22]Oil prices have shot up.

[00:05:24]Everybody sees gas prices are expensive, grocery prices are going up. We just got the recent inflation report, which showed that if you take out energy prices, you take out food prices, inflation is almost double where we were 3 months ago.

[00:05:38]Now, if you add in energy costs, you add in food costs, inflation, I'm sure, is even higher than that.

[00:05:43]So, when you have these concerns about inflation, that now brings back concerns about the United States dollar. So, we're trying to fight the Chinese economy, but we're also hurt Are we hurting the United States dollar by doing that?

[00:05:57]Yes and no. It's nuanced. It comes down to the sort of a larger strategic plan and experts are divided on whether or not it's working or it will work in the long term. But, one thing that China is very good at, where the US has struggled, is again, we keep coming back to this idea of the dollar and the reserve currency.

[00:06:21]China is more of an asset-based country and they work more in absolute value.

[00:06:28]What is that mean?

[00:06:28]>> And they're less concerned about about currency. Think, what is a currency?

[00:06:32]It's a trade note, right? Currency only has value in its ability to purchase things for you. It only has value in its access to goods and services.

[00:06:42]We've been obsessed with making sure that the United States dollar has the best access to goods and services in the world.

[00:06:49]China's been more concerned with the Chinese government controlling the supply of the actual things you buy with currency.

[00:06:57]Have you heard of Chinese commodity price crashing? Yes.

[00:07:01]Yeah. So, it's this idea where China is coming in and just flooding the market with commodities. And uh this happened very notably in lithium. Lithium carbonate had climbed to somewhere around $80,000 a ton, which isn't realistically an absurd price, but had climbed that high and it dropped to under $10,000 a ton because China flooded the market with this strategic reserve. And they lost a lot of money on that. They absolutely harmed their value stores by flooding the market.

[00:07:37]But, why did they do this? Well, because it's so expensive, because it's needed for so many things, because electrification was picking up. We had a lot of companies and a lot of countries going and saying, "We want to We want to mine lithium carbonate now. We want to start up an operation. We want to start producing this and selling it." Well, when the price crashed, these companies couldn't find funding. These new operations shut down.

[00:07:59]What happens? Well, all right, it's it's $10,000 for so long. All of the new operations shut down.

[00:08:08]Who's in control?

[00:08:09]China.

[00:08:09]>> [clears throat] >> 80% of the world's lithium is moving through the Chinese economy before it gets anywhere else. Now, everyone's given up because it wasn't profitable.

[00:08:18]So, what happens? The price starts to creep back up. They start to rebuild their reserves. They take that hit to the money they have to maintain control over the entire supply chain.

[00:08:29]Interesting. But, that's kind of like We've seen this in the startup world all the time. Like, Uber goes into a new market or when they were growing, they would underprice Lyft, they would underprice the taxis, lose money on every single ride just to get the customers. Once they had you as a user and they knew that people started to use Uber regularly, then they started jacking up the prices and they knew that you're not going to leave now because you don't want to go to a taxi or a Lyft, and that's when they started making money. So, you're saying China's essentially doing that, but from the government level, not from the country level.

[00:08:59]>> Yes.

[00:08:59]And lithium is just one example. China does this all the time. It's this widely studied thing. And actually, we have several congressional acts moving through the government right now to try to establish a critical minerals uh price floor, which says that the US and Western allies, basically anybody that we can sort of enforce our economic will on, has to set a minimum price floor for critical minerals. And this might extend into other commodities or other things might be declared minerals as well.

[00:09:30]And if the the price of it this commodity cannot go under that. And that is to protect companies from Chinese price crashing. Now, again, our influence and our ability to enforce this globally, well, that's limited by the dollar as a reserve currency, it's limited by our trade alliances, it's limited by our general economic strategy around the globe, right? All of a sudden, we have this price floor where our companies have to pay X to get lithium, copper, neodymium, rare earth, all these things.

[00:10:05]Well, do we think the Chinese BRICS alliance is going to abide by that? Do you think they're going to care? Or are they going to potentially leapfrog ahead of us because all of their companies are buying at half of what we are, a fourth of what we are? If you enjoyed this clip and you want to watch the entire conversation, all you got to do is click that button right over there. And for those of you who want to stay up-to-date on the top finance and business news, you can join Market Briefs, my free financial newsletter, by clicking that button below. Thank you for watching and I'll see you in the next one.