S3 E13: China vs USA - High Stakes Poker

The world's most important EVER, highest stakes EVER, poker match is set to take place this coming week, between China's Xi and Trump from the US. These two shrewd operators, sharks both, have been playing back at one another for weeks, months in fact, and recently the stakes went up.

Trump, holding a strong hand defined by Chips-AI-Quantum-Tech bet big earlier this month, splashing the threat of 150% tariffs onto the felt, "floating" the hand, on a bluff...(since he understands the US does NOT hold the best hand).

Xi responded by pushing "all-in" with the October 9th release of “Announcement No. 61/2025: Decision in Implementing Export Controls on Foreign Related Rare Earth Items, Rare-Earth-Related Technologies, Lithium Batteries and Artificial Graphite Anode Material Related Items".

Poker is a game of "I know that you know, that I know, that you know, that I know AND you know I'm bluffing, but you know that I know you can't "call". Trump tried to pull off a bluff, and Xi "came-over-the-top" and raised "all in". The question is, how will Trump respond?

Understanding just HOW IMPORTANT these elements, oxides, metals, and even manufactured products are, is to understand HOW FAR BEHIND the US truly is, and how DOMINANT China has become, with a four-decade long game plan that has left the US "reliant", held "hostage”...to China on Rare Earths! We are waiting to hear what Xi wants...and you know, that I know, that you know, EXACTLY what Xi wants.

It is NOT Chips-AI build out, NO! 

Xi wants Taiwan, which has ALL of the above, already in place, thanks to the US.

What happens next week will be historic, one way or the other. A deal that placates the US...or Xi sticking with the "long game", and leaving Export Restrictions in place, possibly driving US equity indexes sharply lower, helping lift unemployment, at a time when social unrest, outright violence, and politicians "declaring independence from the Federal Government”, has created total chaos, domestically. We are already at war with ourselves, divided from within, while also battling drug cartels, Venezuela, Colombia, and Chinese interests in Peru!! Are we really prepared to, or even willing to, "fight" China right now?

Xi's Maoist vision of Asian "manifest destiny", groomed by the CCP since 1959, for THIS MOMENT, his father was killed during an assassination attempt on Chairman Mao...and...the demise of the US currency...both... could be in sight, lying in wait, and the repercussions for global markets would be Earth-shaking.

Learn EXACTLY why I say this, all the gory details, history, data, stats and FACTS as to why this is SO important, and what the possible outcomes might be, by listening to the most important podcast I have produced to date 

Transcript

Season Close And Stakes Ahead

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Hi, Greg Weldon here. I'm your host for Money, Markets, and New Age Investing. This is season three, our final episode of the season, episode number 13. It also is our 41st episode that we have produced, which now is an episode for every year I've been in this business. It's just kind of interesting or sad. I'm not sure which. But um, at any rate, we have a lot of important stuff to talk about. I think you are entering a moment in time and space that is critical to how the medium to longer term future plays out. Meetings between G and Trump coming up. Hold the key. This is the most important point in history from this point forward. Now, before we get to all that, I need to do some housekeeping, which is to go through the just released CPI number, which the press called soft, softening, softer. And I I see this word all over the place in the you know in the news stories, and I just didn't see it. It wasn't soft at all. There was nothing in here that was soft, all right? And of course, that goes on to play into the narrative that it pet it creates the path to cut beyond next week's meeting, meaning multiple cuts in 2025, and right now is around a 60% chance of that uh implied by the futures prices that you will get two more cuts by the end of the year. Um what's interesting is if you kind of look at further out and where you are, it doesn't really matter because ultimately it comes down to where do you expect to be by the end of next year, in the next 15 months. The bottom line is there's a 62% chance that you will have cut five times by then, and you will be at a 275 to 3% target range for the Fed funds. Now, that price is in a lot, especially when inflation is still anywhere from two and a half to three and a half, depending on what measure you look at. And if you look at service prices, it's even higher. All right. I mean, so it's kind of interesting to me to see how this is all priced in in terms of using the midpoint against the futures market, because there are various ways to do this now. It's become more of an art than a science, per se, even though it should be a science, just by using the midpoint. I mean, the effective Fed funds rate right now is 411. The midpoint in the range is 412 and a half. Let's excuse the odds because the effective rate's 411. So you would think you would move to the effective rate, but you move to the midpoint of next, you know, the next cut, because that's where you would have an implied effective Fed funds rate once you got there. But truth is, Fed funds rate, the effective rate's been trading and it trades on its own every day, overnight money. I traded it for a while, I didn't like it. Uh, it was too close to market, too specific. Um that, you know, that that's a big deal. You know, for one 150 basis points, you know, that's not chunk change to whatever extent. That's you know, 1.5 basis points, really. You know, in French funds parlance is 150 basis points. So the point here is that the inflation number is not good. I mean, they're talking about it being soft because the uh monthly rate was up only 0.3. Well, 0.3 is 3.6 annualized, and doing it with the most simple math or higher, right? You're talking about that's not soft, 3.6. And you say it's soft because, you know, and how do you say it's soft when the year over the rate rose? Which means the 0.3 soft monthly rise was higher than the monthly rise was in September of a year ago. That's how the year over year rate increases. All right, so it's not only not soft, it's also not soft. And when you talk about three out of the last four months, you were in 0.3 or 0.4, which is three and a half to five percent inflation. Three out of the last four months based on a monthly number. The previous six months, you were 0.2 or lower, including negative in five out of six months. So you had been soft, you're not soft anymore. All right, and the biggest thing to me was on the very first page of the BLS report, comes every month. First thing you look at, all right, is the four major indexes: the all items, the food, the energy, and the core rate, X Food and Energy. I mean, you have had energy negative for over two years. Gasoline prices have been negative year over year for over two years outside of four months. Dating back to 2022, we're talking three years, over three years. The gasoline prices have been negative on a year-over-year basis, except for four months in that three-year period. It's basically one out of one out of ten months. All right. This is the first time in two years that all four indexes were above the inflation target. I mean, you really have the first time they were above and rising was in 2021, 2022. All right. The lowest energy is 2.8, and that's despite the fact that gasoline was down 6% for the month. Think about that. And while the base effect had been waning, and we're getting to that point now where it's beginning to wane, you know, unless gasoline rises, say 15 to 20 cents from here, you set up another negative base effect. But what happens when Trump hits Russian oil? Gasoline prices jump. You might wipe out that potential thing that holds inflation down when inflation is already accelerating and a kind of champing at the bit to get out of the gate, if you will. Both the core and the headline rate of 3%, that hasn't happened since January. I mean, it's only the second time this year they've been both have been three or higher. That's not soft. Let's look at food. Food away from home is 3.7. Full service meals away from home, aka restaurants, 4.2. 4.2. That's more than double the Fed's target range. Food and employee venues, 3.8%. Mobile true trucks and vending machines, 6.3 year over year. Other food away from home, 5.3. This is not soft. This is hard. This is choking, and especially we talk about like food for employees, you know, mobile food, food trucks, vending machines. You know, you kind of are talking to kind of the go-to when you don't have much money in terms of where you might buy food because you think it's cheaper, but the inflation's even higher there. This hurts even the lower part of the income spectrum even more if you really extrapolate out the thought process. You look at energy, well, gasoline was down 6.3 for the month, and for the year over year it was only down 0.5. Because, again, it was down by more a month the same month last year. So it decreased less, which brought the year-over-year rate almost up to a positive. And energy sector still as a whole was up 2.8 year over year. Why? Because electricity 5.1, piped natural gas 11.7. 11.7. Now, those are two of the factors in services. Okay, because we look at the energy the CPI services, excluding energy services, and there's only two. It's electricity and natural gas. So the energy services are 5.1 and 11.7. The other 84 indexes, and I included all the indexes, so there's a little bit of repetition, but not that much. 84 indexes, 37 or 44% or above 4% year over year. 44% of service prices are more than double the Fed's target range in terms of the rate of inflation. 19 out of 84 or 23%, almost a quarter, are running up more than 5%. I mean, think about that. So you mean it's basically you have a quarter running above five, and then another quarter running above four. Below two, only 23 or 27%. All the rest are jammed in at 3%. So in total, you have 60% of service price inflation is inflating at more than 3% year over year. 44% at more than 4%, 23% at more than 5%. One quarter of the services you pay for are running at more than 5% year over year. These are things people pay for all the time. If you have pets, it's even worse. Let's look at the city numbers because I always like to look at the major populations. You know, it's like, okay, Montana inflation is this, but New York City inflation is this. I think we read New York City as a more important indicator of what inflation is for more people. I don't actually know the population of Montana. So that may or maybe a few, right? No offense. But you know my point. Do you get my point? Okay, there's 22 cities that report the BLS reports specific inflation rates for. They're all over the map. It really is. Interesting, seasonal, depending on which you know, industry is close to that city to. You can really get some real nuance of uh tells out of these numbers. 22 total cities, 11 reported every other month. So every month there's 11 and it rotates every two months. This month of the 11, 10 of them are above 2%. Only one is below 2%. That's only 9%. Why is 91%? 91% of cities running above target. All right. You talk about 82% of cities running above two and a half, and 64% of cities running above 3% inflation, and guess what? 27% above three and a half. And guess where all 27%, which is three out of 11, all three of those are in California, where the governor has basically declared independence from the federal government. I mean, LA, San Diego, and Riverside. Three highest in the nation are all in California. When you talk about um, you know, um it's it's really not stopping the bond market, all right. It's interesting because there's something else going on in the bond market. I think it has a lot to do with trade, it has a lot to do with sanctions on Russia, with the trade war coming up, with rare earth. All of this stuff is so important. And at the same time, where I have said all year long, and you know this if you've been listening, that the Fed will ultimately acquiesce to higher rates of inflation to protect the economy, protect the consumer, protect the housing market, protect the labor market. We're there. We know they're doing it. I mean, they're already cutting rates, even though inflation is 3% on CPI. I know inflation is PCE, but it doesn't matter to me. It really doesn't. Fact is, you're above target in every respect, and notably so. And they're gonna be cutting rates. And the projection in the money markets, in the futures market, in the swap market, is that they're going to bring the Fed funds rate down to a level at or below the rate of inflation. Why would they do that? Unless to protect the consumer. Why? Because guess what? Again, credit card debt higher than savings in pure numbers. Personal consumption expenditures outpacing disposable income every month now for months. All right, really dating back to the pandemic. All right, when we the consumer crossed the debt black hole where they're spending more than they can, more than they're earning, and they've used their savings to do it. And now they've run out of savings. So then they use the credit cards and they run out of credit cards. The delinquency rates, the second highest in history. You have the only the third ever in history, 12-month decline of revolving credit, KKK aka credit cards. I mean, the consumer's choking. Inflation will be the dagger in the back of the consumer, even at the highest income levels. So, of course, the Fed is going to move to protect that. You know, so the bond market's really telling us that. The bond market is also telling us that what we see, you know, generally speaking, in terms of trade, is deflationary as well, and it really is. I mean, when you start to look at the bond market, I mean, you have the two-year note below three and a half, the five-year notes now below 375, the 10-year notes below four. The 30-year bond has dropped 55 basis points since Memorial Day. That's over two full rate cuts. It's gone from 515 to 455, lasted 460, about to break four and a half. Look at the Zeras, ZROZ. You want to make some money in bonds, you can make some money in bonds. And that was kind of being going to be the end, but put the end here because we're talking about the bond market. ZROZ is the uh zero coupon treasury bond. That's the longest maturity possible. It's breaking out on a long-term technical basis, multi-year trend reversal, the whole nine yards. The MBB, double B, double boy, M. Mary, double boy. The MBS Mortgage Backed Securities ETF and AKA mortgage bonds. You want to make some money? Buy the MBB. The M U B is the Muni bond. I might shy away from that because a lot of municipalities like New York and Chicago and LA that could go bankrupt. But you want the leader, is actually the emerging market bond market. EMB. Uh Eric Mary Boy is the EMB, is the leading upside bond ETF right now. You could also use the SHI, the SHY, which is the short-term treasury, versus the Xerz, the long-term. Zero coupon. The Xerz is breaking out against the SHI, which says suggests curve flattening, which is happening. So you want do you want maturity all of a sudden? But all this revolves around the biggest deal that's going on right now, the biggest thing, the most important thing in the last decade outside of Iran having nukes, is this rare earth battle with China. All right. I just did a special on this. If you want that special, I'll be happy to send it to you. It's going to carry a lot of the information I'm going to tell you about. It's in there. You want to see some cool charts, see the charts of all this. It definitely gives you a second level, you know, understanding. I also did a special on silver. We've been bullish on silver this entire podcast. We recommended silver uh in our second podcast, and it is skyrocketed. You've made a lot of money if we follow recommendations, not only in silver, but also in the metals, mining ETF, and the individual mining shares that we recommended, or not really recommended, talked about. Uh we don't recommend specific stocks, but we'll talk about them. Uh have been outperformers. All right. Recently, the uh spot silver market, in other words, you want to buy physical silver, it cost three dollars an ounce more than it did in the futures market to buy it for the end of December. That's an upside-down market. That's telling you there's not enough physical metal. I explained all of this and the hashtag silver squeeze phenomenon, which has been around as long as I have. When I first started in the markets, you had to talk about this. It's only grown since it is a real thing. We saw it flash its ugly head out of nowhere just recently. I give you some really cool charts from the swap markets, the lease rates, the open interest. All of this is really important. Uh, and how much you know, silver is actually in the vaults that could be delivered against the futures contract. It's a squeezable market. Silver could easily go to$150. You know, I was recently on a podcast and being interviewed, and the you know, the uh interviewer asked me about silver and you know, could it go to$100? And I said, look, you know, I remember when silver was, you know, when gold actually was you know introduced into the back into the market in 1971. You know, I was I was a kid, but I remember, you know, I was following this stuff. I was always into it. And that, you know, silver, I mean, excuse me, gold, the price of gold was fixed at$35 an ounce. It immediately went to 110, like almost instantly. And it's like, you know, yeah, and guess what? By the time I was, you know, in the gold market, it was$300. I could easily see silver at$300. I have no problem with that. I really don't.$500. You want to make it a strategic metal, which China's already done, the US is in the process of doing, you want to make it a tier one asset, it can replace gold, you know, and gold's gotten so expensive. That's why the Indians are buying silver hand over foot, which is percip what precipitated this entire jam backwards into the London markets where they don't have enough metal in the vault to satisfy the demand for the physical metal. I give you a full report on that if you want to see it. It's really good. It's short, but it's good. I also have the CPI data in a report we just did, and this R E E and R E O, along with the bond market special. All four of those reports are available. Just email me, Greg Weldon, G-R-E-G-W-E-L-D-O-N at Weldononline.com. The R E R E E and R E O, rare earth elements and rare earth oxides are key. There are 17 key elements, and the top 17 are key because they have broad-based militaristic applications from communications devices to defense warning systems to weapons guidance systems. In fact, all of this started in 1947. Of course, let's tie it to Roswell, when we all of a sudden come across new technologies, new kind of nanometals. We discover some, you know, we're looking for also uranium. In California, we discover some of these rare earths, and all of a sudden we got our own mind. All right, 1947. True to 1986, and we controlled 99% of the rare earth on this planet, and we're completely self-sufficient. But that's a we're going to continue with that in a second. The 17 elements, and excuse me if I say them wrong, there's some pretty kooky names. Cerium, which is with a C, dysprosium, which I really like because it's a multidimensional metal. It can change its shape, and this would be key to sending a vehicle through a wormhole. All right. And I've been doing a lot of I've done a lot of research on dysprosium going back into 2016 and 17. All right. Uh erbium, uh, europium, gandoluminium, uh, home home, again, lanthanum, lutatium, neodymium, uh, praseodumion, uh, promethium. I've never said these words before. I'm reading this this you know out loud for the first time. I certainly looked at it. Uh summerium with a U. Uh Scandium, Terbium, Thulium, uh, your biterum, uh, and yiterum, Y-T-T-R-I-U-M. Those are the 17 key REEs. All right. Okay, so the one mine that we do have in California, the Mountain Pass, which is on the border of California and Nevada, they produce carboninite, shonkininite, cyanite. Uh is that on the list? It isn't. Uh Al can uh alkali uh granite, uh, Leucotus genus, uh Amphrodobolite, Grandon Grandonorite nest. Man, these names are bad. Uh, telonic nest, biotite nest, poletic nest. Not one of the 17 is on the list that comes from the mine in California. So we talk about, you know, the China produces 69% of them, they produce 97% of the key 17 rare earth elements. So this is much worse than even people realize. We don't even mine that stuff. All right. That's the military use. 1947, we opened Mountain Pass, all right. By 1986, we were the number one hold 99% of these rare earths. And a lot of this, you know, was for you know um nuclear um energy and you know uh you know propulsion systems of the time. This was stuff that was necessary, you know, back in the 50s, 60s, and 70s, kind of pre-space age time, all right. But beginning in 1987, China begins to mine for this stuff. 1990, the communist government deems rare earths to be strategic medals to national security. They created the Chinese Society of Rare Earths, the CREIC, which is now a very powerful uh, you know, like think tank, all right, more than a think tank, political, you know, uh entity. All right. So they start in 1987, they make it a critical in 1990, they pass U.S. production in 1992, they name it also in 1992 as now a protected strategic metal, all right, where they have already started not exporting it. And by 1995, okay, in eight years, they're producing twice as much as the U.S. And you're talking about you know, bast in a night, bastinosite, and monazite, uh, in terms of the ores and key, again, none of which are in California. All right. This is a 40-year long game plan by China. This goes back to 1959. Why 1959? Chairman Ji, all right, in 1959 was six years old. His dad was among the top advisors to Mao, Seitong, all right, uh, and was killed in an assassination attempt on Mao. All right. Six years old, Xi was whisked away by the Chinese Communist Party, literally living in caves in the jungles, being kept, you know, and indoctrinated in the Maoist manifest destiny ideology. All right, he's groomed for this. They send him to the U.S. to get an Ivy League education. He's married, he presents well, he looks diplomatic, but he is a Maoist to the max with a manifest destiny. Zhi has said, he has said specifically his words, okay, not only do we want to be not dependent on anyone, but we want others to be reliant on China. Those are his words. He wants to create a better socialism than there is capitalism. Those are his words. I mean, and you know that, and I mean, gosh, I remember riding on the subway, going to a ranger game from the World Trade Center when I worked on a trading forward of Gold and Silver Pits. I was in my 20s. This is back in the 80s, right? And I just remember when the Berlin Wall came down, communism's dead, right? I remember having this conversation on the train as a 20-year-old in the 80s. The capitalism will die too eventually. It has to. Why? Because by then the polarization of wealth had already gotten to like 1987, to Wall Street, to where greed is good. That was the time, the Reagan Revolution. We defeat capitalism by overspending, starts the debt train rolling. The whole nine yards. I've seen this entire movie. All right. And we're talking about the polarization of wealth, is exactly what would bring us down. I remember saying that. Why? Because someday the have nots will be in the majority. They will rise up and take down the powers that be. At least they will try. And that, of course, the best way you know you want to read any kind of Russian, Chinese, communist, terrorist manifest manifesto. I mean, the best way to destroy the U.S. is to let us destroy ourselves from within. Do we not see that happening right now? All of it? All of it? There are several times in the 2000s where China has suspended exports of rare earths and rare earth oxides. 2010, 2016. Both times Congress got their act together, started putting together legislation that would allow us to mine more of this stuff because, of course, you know, the environmentalists are going to have a problem with that. Each time, every time twice this has happened, Z playing above the rim, the Michael Jordan of politics, the goat of politics, if you will, in the modern era. And I don't say that with any joy whatsoever. All right. True blue American. It pains me to say that. But you want the truth so you can prepare for what's coming next. You need the truth. And I'll give you the truth every single time. All right. Every time it got close to legislation being passed in the U.S. Congress about rare earths, China turned the spigots back on and it went away as an issue. They have completely outplayed us. Way above the rim. The long game. Clueless Joe Biden, they just walked all over the guy. At least Trump is a more formidable foe. All right. He's done some really good things. All right. But when it comes to Trump and trade, all right, and making America great. Again, it's kind of his core theme. He's the deal maker. He can make a deal with anyone. His ego is huge. We know this. His own worst enemy is his own mouth because he can't keep it shut for five minutes. We know he'd never be diplomatic, but we needed someone like him in this kind of dynamic. But in this instance, G knows this. G is a high-stakes poker player with a ton of patience. Where Trump is an action junkie. He wants the deal done as soon as possible. Plus, he's on a timeline. G has no timeline. They can afford Putin and G can afford to play the long game. So can open. Okay? It's a high-stakes poker game of I know that you know that I know that you know that I know that are bluffing, but you can't call me anyway. Z got Trump to bluff. 150% tariffs, and then G went all in. All in with REEs, REOs. He holds the world hostage. He holds the U.S. hostage. Is Trump gonna fold? Or could there be an agreement? There could be, but I think this is the time and space that has been decades in the making for the Chinese. And the point of attack is right here. Why? I'm gonna tell you why. Because there's bigger problems just in the REE, REO space. In terms of output, China is five to one, two hundred and ten thousand uh metric tons a year, U.S. is 43. Australia started at 18, Myanmar at 12, Thailand at 7, Vietnam at 4, India at 3, Russia at 3. Ukraine's not even on the list. Greenland's at 1,500. All right. So we're dealing deals with only Greenland. And we want to deal with Australia. Take some of theirs. We're still at 43 versus 210. All right. So we add, let's say we add a third of us Australia's. That's six. We add Greenland, that's seven and a half. We're at 50 versus 210. It's still 4 to 1 instead of 5 to 1. It's just not a game we're going to win in terms of just the output of the of the ore. Of the ore. And what's in the ground? 44 million tons in China. Vietnam second at 22. Russia at 21. India at 7. The US 2300. Let me say that again. 2 million 300, I should say. 44 million versus 2.3 million. They're 20 to 1 in the underground ore. Brazil at 21 is a high one, too. I mean, Brazil's up there with Russia. It's Russia, Vietnam, and Brazil, then China. And the U.S. at the bottom of the list. The U.S. at the bottom of the list of in-ground material. Alright? But guess what? It gets even worse. Why? It's not enough to take the ore out of the ground. Then you got to basically, you know, create concentrate. You got to push it upstream. The supply chain. All right. We got to create the concentrate. Then you got to do the separation. Then you do refining into the metals and the alloys that you then use to manufacture products. There's three additional steps here in the supply chain. Where we have zero capacity. None. We have nothing that is working moderate. There's a very small separation plant. Yes. One. All right. In terms of refining it into metal, zero. In terms of manufacturing the magnets and the guidance systems, nothing. Nothing. There's zero. Zero upstream at all. It's, I mean, zero downstream rather. It's all upstream. We are we begin at the upstream, but once it gets to the midstream, it's gone. And by the time it gets downstream, we got nothing. You know, when you look at it from that perspective, and you look at the different metals, and you look at all this, they you we rely on them for 97% of our demand for these types of things in products, in ore, in all of it. And if we want to start putting our own stuff together, guess what? All right, here's the announcement from the Chinese, from the Security Control Bureau, on October 9th, to safeguard national security and interests in accordance with the export control law of the People's Republic of China, the regulations on export control of dual use items and the People's Republic of China and other relevant laws and regulations with approval from the State Council of China. The following export measures are hereby adopted. Which means you've got to use a dual license. And if you're an undesirable country, which is the U.S., you can't even apply for a dual license. And the dual license is extremely difficult to get. All right. And the whole idea had been, you know, at the first point, was the U.S. wanted them to drop the dual licensing. Now they've made it law and are putting it in place as a national security measure, let alone that there's now an undesirable list what the U.S. is on. G just went all in calling Trump's bluff. Trump has still has chips left, but he's willing to go all in. Now there's some people that think we should attack China first, right? Which is frankly kind of ludicrous. But you know, the point is they want, you know, they want uh chips and AI and quantum computing technology. Well, they can get that. It's all built out by the US sitting in Taiwan. That's the real thing that's at stake here. Is Taiwan is chips, is all these other things that China wants in return for they buy soybeans from us, they allow us access to REs, REOs, and they c clamp down on fentanyl. Will we give them Taiwan for this? That's the big question. And Trump's going in there as if Taiwan's on the on the agenda for him to get China to say that it's independent. Zia said he will never say that. We know that China wants a war, not with us, with Taiwan, with Vietnam, with the Philippines. They could win the Those wars. All right. In Vietnam, it's gas oil drilling rights offshore. In the Philippines, it's fishing waters. Again, man-made islands that Vietnam's put in place that extends their two-mile international border to impinge on Vietnam and the Philippines. We've had incidents that dating back to 2021 or 2022, I forget which year, one of those two years, the president of the Philippines threatened to declare war on China. And China actually backed down for a short period of time. But these are incursions by naval vessels that are running down fishing boats and destroying them, and someone's going to get killed, and it's going to be a national incident. We've protected, we've vowed to protect the Philippines. We've already pushed Vietnam to the Chinese. There's major trade deals now between Vietnam and China. China has brought them in closer. China's even brought Korea in a little closer. I mean, it's right across the straits. You want to talk about shipping? That's Malaysia and Korea. Those are the countries exposed there. And you, you know, Korea. I mean, the Chinese are doing flyovers in Malaysia right now, invading their airspace. All of this testing the defenses, poking and prodding and finding out why they're ready for war. They're marching out their whole gosh damn army on their own national day. And this is why Trump wants to do the did the whole thing on July 4th. That was a response to what China did. In the meantime, we're having civil war fighting within. You got governors in the U.S. declaring independence from the national, from the federal government. That's what Gavin News said. I declare independence from the federal government. He says, I will not bow to a king. It's a declaration of war by definition. Basically declaring civil war here. All right. At the same time, we're taking on Venezuela and drug dealers, even in the Pacific, to whatever extent, Colombia as well, new sanctions on Colombia now. You know, China's gotten in hot with Peru, or they own ports that the U.S. is, you know, doesn't like anymore, even to the degree that the Panama Canal is kind of in play. There's so much going on. Do we want a war with China right now? No, I don't think it happens. I think that we cave. I think it's one of those things, and I said this in my speech in Vancouver when I first laid this out was really 2018, when the Chinese opened the Shanghai crude oil futures market and used the Dubai OPEC grade crude as the contract and priced it in Rum Nimbi and got Russia to benchmark their Earl's crude against that contract. It was the beginning of the end for the dollar. Then came the BRICS unit, then came sanctions, asset seizures, uh tariffs, uh double secret probation type stuff in trade that we've implemented and you know uh deployed as weapons. Financial markets are weaponized. It's a commodity and resource world war already and has been for at least eight years. And we're gonna take it up a notch right here. This is the time and point. And not only that, but Trump thought, hey, you know, I'm gonna I'm gonna uh you know hurt China's economy and it's already hurting. And I I re reported repeatedly how much China's economy outside the property market was not hurting. All right. They have growth in final demand that's strong, they have loan growth that is strong, they have uh uh inflation is very low. I mean, are there some structural long-term problems? Of course there are. I mean, you know, every economy in the world is a house of cards right now. I mean, that's also part of the problem. But at the same time, you thought you would crush their exports. You thought they would crush their trade and that would backfire into a lower income and hurt the Chinese economy. Hasn't happened. In September, just reported last week. All right, Chinese exports were uh 300. What was the number? Where is my number here? I uh I made a little note for this one. 328.7 billion. I remembered, I can't find my notes. 328.7 billion in September. That's the highest non-December export number ever in China. And there's only two December's that were higher. And December's a big, you know, Christmas, the whole holiday thing. It's always the biggest month of the year. It's very seasonal. The September number was the third highest in history, including all the December's. Was the highest ever for non-December. Not only that, but the year-over-year rate of change was 8.3. That's almost double August 4.3. It produced a 90 billion surplus, all right, and six of the last 11 months in in China has been a trade surplus of over 100 billion dollars. Where's the hurt we're putting on China in trade? The cash register, cha-ching, cha-ching, cha-ching, every single month. The U.S. consumer borrows$30 billion, and since our trade deficit is about 40% rare earth, I could safely say U.S. consumer borrows about$30 billion a month, gives that money to the government in taxes, whether they buy it or income taxes or whatever it is, and then the U.S. government sends it to China for rare earth. Without China, we don't have this stuff, man. They hold the nuts, aka and poker terminology, the winning hand, the highest possible hand, with the cards on the board. All right. And now Trump hits up uh Russia with sanctions on their oil. I mean, holy macro. I mean, top two producers. Guess what? China, two million barrels a day from Russia. 800,000 barrels a day to the Chinese state oil company, to the Chinese communist government. You're gonna like, you know, sanction that? Uh you're gonna tariff that. You know, no wonder Russian jets just went into Lithuanian airspace, and then the EU says you'll be shot down. The EU and the UK have imposed tariffs. I mean, holy mackerel. In the meantime, you got Chicago, Los Angeles, Portland, New York, Minnesota, Virginia, all want to secede and declare war on the U.S. In the meantime, we're fighting with Venezuela, Colombia, Peru. I mean, do we agree? Z just recently said in his speech after the five-year plenum, Communist Party plenum, that uh brace for high winds and rough seas. What do you think he means by that? I know what he means by that. Do you think it's a coincidence that, you know, this dates back to China opens the crude oil market in 2018, 2020 Olympics? Biden doesn't go. Xin and Putin arranged for a hundred trillion to be state bank financed, two different projects, building a new crude oil pipeline from Siberia to China and engaging Kazakhstan for a new pipeline to reroute natural gas from EU to China. And guess what they did? They rerouted natural gas from the EU to China. How about taking over to Ukraine? What's in Ukraine? It's the breadbasket of Russia. They also have some REs, but it's about food. And the and the ports, they control they took every port except for one, the most Western one in the country of Ukraine. Oh, every other port is now under Russian control. Why? Because they got the breadbasket, they got the food, they got the ways to ship it to China. Commodity war, resource war, food and energy war, Russia, OPEC, China against the US. And then time is right before us now with a long game. The 40-year plan crystallizes in this moment in time and space that could be a dangemon. What's going to happen in the next week is going to be huge. What's the missing link? China walks away from the table, somehow blows up this meeting, and the stock market crashes. It's the only thing that's holding up. And that raises unemployment. And by the summertime, the violence in the streets in the U.S. is doubled. The federal government's worried about Venezuela and violence in the streets. You think they're going to want to take on China over Taiwan? Do we not see what's coming? This is why bonds are in play. This is why precious metals are in play. Email me for my special report on the upside-down silver market. Email me for my special report on rare earths and the trade deal with China. Email me for my special report on the bond market and the CPI data, Greg Weldon, G-R-E-G-W-E-L-D-O-N at Weldononline.com. Follow me on Twitter at Weldon Live. See me on YouTube, Gregory underscore Weldon. Check out the podcast on X. I said Twitter already. On X at money underscore podcast. And for a free trial to my daily research with specific recommendations or for information on our money management business, where since 2018 we put this program in place specifically for this type of event that we're see coming, where we have outperformed just about everything out there except maybe physical gold and silver. Shoot me an email, Craig Weldon at Weldon Online. Thanks for listening. And we'll see you next time with episode one of season four.