That's What Xi Said...Trump Visits China

In this episode, Tim and Taber delve into Donald Trump’s recent China visit, exploring the staged displays, underlying political messages, and the broader implications for global geopolitics, economics, and military strategy.

Main Topics Covered:

• The choreography and symbolism of Trump’s China visit, and what it reveals about communist regimes and control
• The transparency and propaganda behind Chinese media and Western coverage
• The state of China’s population, birth rates, and economic strength relative to their military ambitions
• How globalization, rare earth metals, and supply chain dependencies influence US-China relations
• Strategies for Taiwan, Iran, and the Strait of Hormuz, including potential military and economic actions
• The impact of forced labor, environmental manipulation, and resource dependency on global power dynamics
• The role of protests, social media, and misinformation in shaping public perception and political stability

Timestamps:

00:00 - Trump’s China visit: staged displays and geopolitical symbolism
02:04 - China’s social control measures during COVID-19
03:54 - Population decline and birth rate concerns in China
05:00 - Western trends: declining birth rates and societal implications
06:18 - China's demographic struggles post one-child policy
07:36 - US trade restrictions and China's reliance on low-cost manufacturing
08:06 - Visual cues of fear and control in Chinese military parades
09:14 - Media coverage and propaganda tactics about China
10:44 - Western perception vs. reality of Chinese societal conditions
12:05 - Manufactured protests and influence campaigns
13:40 - Geopolitical tensions involving Taiwan and US military presence
15:16 - Historical perspective on land conquest and sovereignty
17:58 - The importance of strategic choke points like the Strait of Hormuz
20:18 - Chinese technological and resource dependencies, rare earth metals
22:08 - US shortages and vulnerabilities in critical minerals and energy
23:41 - The environmental and human toll of forced labor and resource extraction
25:11 - Advances in tech cooling systems reducing water use in crypto mining
27:40 - Geoengineering, cloud seeding, and environmental manipulation theories
29:18 - The fundamental industries of mining and agriculture and their global impact
30:57 - Environmental policies, deforestation, and invasive species introduction
34:00 - Conclusion: the ongoing status quo and future geopolitical risks

Resources & Links:

• Elon Musk
• Nvidia
• Rare Earth Elements Overview.
• Cloud Seeding Technology and Environmental Impact
• US-Chinese Trade Relations

Connect with Tim & Taber:

• Twitter

• LinkedIn

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Donald Trump visits China, and we're about to tell you exactly what she says. Trump is visiting China. I saw him getting off the plane, and you know, everybody's talking about how the kids were lined up and waving China and America flags, and news reporters are going around talking about the great things about China and the Great Wall and the economy, the trains run great and all that. Forget about the people that were killed yesterday. You take a look at all the stuff, the the pump and pageantry and and all that, and it's like, oh, on the on one level, that looks really cool. And look at the kids. On another level, it looks oddly organized. Like way too organized. Clearly staged. Yeah. Yeah. And how many, how many times do we see this with communist countries? They always seem to roll out the military weaponry and the children. It's very, very odd. They may or may not be planning to put one in front of the other. Iran already did that. They already put the women and children out on the bridges and all that stuff when Trump was bombing. So, you know, if they're willing to do that and they're buddies with China. I'm just saying, everybody, don't think just because the news is giving you this pretty picture of China, it is a communist dictatorship that imprisons people, puts people in jail, and all that cooperation you see with the people, they're doing it under absolute fear.

SPEAKER_00 1:49

That's a good point. I mean, there was that uh during COVID, all the you know, everybody over there in China has to have like these I these uh QR codes that are like their identity on their phone. So when they go to the restaurants and stuff, they have to scan in and all that stuff.

SPEAKER_01 2:03

And during COVID, they're waiting so it tracks their tracks their location and what they're doing?

SPEAKER_00 2:09

Yeah, everything. So I had uh my my uh sister-in-law and brother-in-law were living in China during COVID, and they had like government-issued phones that are like their identification. So they go into like a restaurant, they have to be scanned in with this QR code, get on the train or the subway, scan in. It's just kind of how it works over there. It's like their all their currency and everything's on their device. You know, when COVID happened, my brother-in-law, sister-in-law, they were, they went to this restaurant, did all the protocol or whatever. Like a week later, the Chinese version of the CDC comes to their their house and they're like, hey, uh, you know, the app says that you were at this restaurant at this date and time, and one of the other workers has come down with COVID. We're gonna be at your house, or they didn't they called them and then they say we're gonna be at your house in like 20 minutes, don't leave. So they show up there, they test them, they're like, We'll get the results in 24 hours, don't leave your house until we uh get back to you. And if you come up positive, you're gonna have to go to this camp or whatever for sick people or whatever. Anyway, the whole point of me saying telling you that story was that that's the um, you know, if somebody doesn't obey or doesn't follow whatever the government's telling you, they just shut that system off. You can't buy anything, you can't you can't do anything. And during COVID, I forget how many it was, but it was like thousands or m tens of thousands of phones that just disappeared from their system.

SPEAKER_01 3:39

So you know, it's plausible that the people disappeared too.

SPEAKER_00 3:44

Right. Like the the people were were part of the system, they got COVID, they didn't know what to do with it, they took them out in the field, shot them, buried them, took their phones, burned them, done deal.

SPEAKER_01 3:53

But yeah, because how else are you gonna keep a billion plus people in check?

SPEAKER_00 3:59

I mean, it's yeah, it's hard enough. There's a lot of stuff come out lately that's like uh a lot of evidence to suggest that they have nowhere near a billion people, that they have like been lying all this time to inflate their their numbers, you know, like what they're um you know, you have to have what is it, uh I can't remember the term for it, but you have to basically every couple has to have two kids to continue economic growth in a country.

SPEAKER_01 4:32

This is a long game for China, and I I think it it always has been since they kind of busted into the manufacturing uh revolution for their country. One of the most important statistics for uh any country is the birth rates. And you do have to have a certain level of birth rate to maintain your population, which obviously is your workforce, your people are your biggest asset and all that. And we're beefing up militarily, and we have always done that, and we spend a ton of money on it, but at some point you run out of people to operate that. Now, maybe technology by then will be so far advanced that you know you won't need many people to operate our system and and all that, so maybe not a big deal. But countries that promote childbirth and not abortion and and not having children, and you know, there's a big trend in Western countries that are wealthy where women are primarily saying, Oh no, I'm not gonna have children. In fact, I don't even want to date a guy. I don't I don't want to be married.

SPEAKER_00 5:40

I don't want to dial up.

SPEAKER_01 5:42

Right. And I think it's something like two point six uh people per couple or per household is the desired birth rate. And I think it's at like one point eight now.

SPEAKER_00 5:57

But China's got to like uh, you know, they did a lot of damage with their one child policy, and if there was a boy born, they kept the boy, if there was a girl, then they you know, drowned in a rice field, whatever they did. Literally, that was happening because they didn't want to have baby girls, so they're still recovering from that. But I think that there is a lot of evidence to support the claim that they're they're doing much worse. They're they're probably at like a one, but they're claiming to be higher.

SPEAKER_01 6:21

A lot of experts that say too that they're not as economically strong as they're putting off to be. Like they're they're investing a lot in their military also, but the Trump administration has put the squeeze on them with trade. Um now they're straight to Hormuz, um, you know, all that.

SPEAKER_00 6:40

They're already making like pennies on the dollar. I mean, you you get all these companies like Amazon, and they're buying this shirts and shoes and everything, I mean, literally everything, but I think it started with textiles in bulk, and they're charging like, okay, you know, you want to be a person who sells hats, you get them in the States for eight bucks, but they're originally made in China for like 27 cents each, and then they're sold to some wholesaler who packages them by the 10,000s and sells them to some other wholesaler who packages them by the thousands. And, you know, by the time America gets it, we're paying eight dollars for something that some poor Chinese kid made in a factory and may or may not have died later, and nobody even cares. I mean, it's like modern day slavery. So all of this crap when Trump goes over there and all these kids are out there, that's exactly what I think of as like how many of these kids were removed from their factory jobs, told to stand in line, wave flags, cheer, and they have literally no clue what they're there for.

SPEAKER_01 7:38

They don't even know what the flags are that they're holding or what they represent, but they all jumped They're like, I got a cheeseburger for this. Right. I mean, they all were doing seemingly different things, but it was like they were spaced out where certain ones were doing the same thing. I mean, it's it's not a conspiracy that I'm just saying that was clearly choreographed. And you know, you have uh the the soldiers and all them standing, like it is very impressive and very clean and very sharp. The scary part is the lack of imperfection. Clearly, these people are in fear that if they move a muscle, it's not like, oh, like when I when I was in the military, we'd stand in parades and do all that. If you didn't, hey, weddings are the same way. If you didn't like flex your knees and kind of stay aware of that, you'd pass out. Do you think that's happening in China? No. No, you better damn well know. I mean, that that's the impression I get.

SPEAKER_00 8:39

I mean, it might be happening in China, but you don't know it because they drag that guy off and shoot him in the head, and like he's not allowed to stand here anymore.

SPEAKER_01 8:45

Exactly. And that's that's why it and it it makes me kind of want to vomit whenever I see all like all the big news stations, and it's all of them. It's conservative, it's liberal. They're all in China. They're doing these little side pieces on China and the and the the rail system and and all these things.

SPEAKER_00 9:04

There's a lot of truth to the whole the Pete Heggseth comment, like whose side are you on? That's how I feel about every like every time I watch the news, it's like, who are you who are you going for here?

SPEAKER_01 9:14

Everything that Trump does impacts our country. And I get that you think everything he's doing is bad. But if our president goes over to China to have negotiations and you're hoping that he comes out on the bad end of that, I mean, and that's crazy to me. And that the the propaganda that comes from these, whenever to me, what it does is it's it's not just, oh, hey, I'm here and we're reporting the president's in China and we want to show you what we see. Okay, well, that's what it used to look like whenever I was naive. But when you see story after story of all these great things about China and what's going on there, and they're not walking around in the slums of the rural areas or people that are probably starving because they're not that's where they send all the people that don't comply.

SPEAKER_00 10:02

I think they're walking around in it. They just don't want to like the media in our country is part of the elites or whatever. So they're walking around over there going, Oh, these all of these peasants work for you? What a great system. We should try to do this in America, you know.

SPEAKER_01 10:17

Exactly. And that they want that so bad, but what's sad is they want it so bad because it's mo a lot of them don't even know why they want it. They just know that it's an exact 180 of what Trump's doing so well. Communism, that sounds good. I mean, this isn't the first time we've seen protesters in the streets walking with communist flags. I mean, every time I see it, I think, oh God, we're we're going to hell in a handbasket. Everything is over, we're done. I mean, it's just a matter of time, and this is gonna blow up in our face, and that's probably true.

SPEAKER_00 10:50

I don't know if it's true. I think it's what they want everybody to think. Like, if you ever just turn your Facebook and your TikTok and stuff off and walk outside, I'm like, oh, the world's not that bad. It just isn't this little box here that tells me that it's terrible every 30 seconds, you know.

SPEAKER_01 11:06

Yeah, because I mean, all the stuff that I sit here and rage about, I I rarely see it myself. So maybe I'm living in a bubble and you know, watching digital media like everybody else. We're just living in the algorithm. There could be, I mean, there I've seen evidence. I'm living some of the evidence of the agenda of this progressive party. I do believe that there are bad policies and things that are that are happening that are real, but we can tell by this, by now protests happen and all everybody's looking at it like, who paid for that? You know, it's not even the message that they're trying to get across in the old days. People would think, oh, well, that you know, there's a lot of people riled up about this issue. And now you can't even trust the protest to be real, so it's like everything is manufactured.

SPEAKER_00 11:59

I was watching this girl, young conservative girl, curly hair. I'm sure you've seen her. She goes out to these protests and like college cases and asks someone.

SPEAKER_01 12:07

Everybody hates her.

SPEAKER_00 12:08

Everybody hates her, but they're all liberal idiots, and she's like, you know, like I saw one earlier this, she was arguing with these these two black girls, and the black girls were like, we should get rid of all the guns. And she's like, Okay, well, what if somebody like tried to come and rape you at gunpoint? And she was like, Well, you know, you you should you should just fight back with a knife. And she's like, You should fight back with a knife if you have if he has a gun. And she's like, Well, if we banned guns, then he he wouldn't have a gun. He wouldn't have one. She's like, So if we do you think we should just ban rape then? And they were just like, shit. You know, like clearly banning something doesn't make it not happen. Idiot. It's wild, man. People are I don't know. I I don't think that the pro after we tad after we had that interview with that crowds on demand CEO, uh Adam Swart. Seemed like a nice guy, by the way. I mean, hell, it's a great business model. But uh after we had that meeting, like I every protest I look at, I'm like, he's paid. You know, like especially when somebody asks him a question and they're like, I saw one guy um when they were like, what are you out of here for? And he's like, Oh man, we hate Trump. I was like, Well, what do you hate about him? I don't know, man. I can't call it.

SPEAKER_01 13:23

They were giving free weed out over there, man.

SPEAKER_00 13:26

Yeah, exactly. I don't know, but I got this cool haggy sack.

SPEAKER_01 13:30

It was legit. Uh it seems like the hard line in the sand was Taiwan or is Taiwan. I get that we have to have a geopolitical presence, but I get kind of tired of, you know, taking all the money on top of all the illegal money on top of all the subsidies to other foreign countries and helping out everybody else. Now, I understand there's some strategic, you know, bullshit involved, but I'm just getting kind of tired of, oh, okay, well, this country's in trouble. Let me take more billions of the taxpayer dollars while we do temporary gas prices of damn near $6 a gallon where I'm at.

SPEAKER_00 14:14

I don't know if it's changing or not, but I feel like that's the that like the dynamic of the planet is changing because in World War II, you know, when we went in and bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and we're like, we clearly have the firepower today to take over the world. We didn't do that. We went in and we're like, we'll help you rebuild, let's have a peace treaty, you know, and we helped countries all across Europe rebuild, we helped all these people rebuild. I think what you're saying is correct. Like I'm I'm not interested in like giving all these subsidies, and I don't want to kill a bunch of innocent people either. But I do think that when we go in and we take over, say, Iraq or Afghanistan, instead of doing what we do every time and being like, you know, we're we just want to implement, we want to have a U.S. embassy here, we'd like to have a presence, we'd like to have geopolitical peace and all that stuff. We should just take it over. Like all of these people in and you you see all these people in like the south side or the south side, the south, southern part of our country, all the time saying, Well, this used to be Mexico. Yeah, and we conquered it.

SPEAKER_01 15:16

Right. That's part of the game, ladies and gentlemen. I mean, there's take it back, you know? Every bit of land on this earth that's occupied by human beings was conquered by somebody at some point. So get just get over it, man. Get over it.

SPEAKER_00 15:32

But if we're gonna talk about Taiwan, though, like they can't really do anything with China there. We we need a better presence over overseas closer to China so they know that we're in charge. We should just take Taiwan.

SPEAKER_01 15:44

Like Well, we should take all the resources that are in Germany and all over Europe and move them to Taiwan. Because the Europeans aren't doing anything but abusing the fact that we're there. What is it gonna take for people to get sick and tired here? Now, obviously, we don't want violence and war and or anything like that. But at some point, like the old saying goes, if you're willing to give up liberty for safety, you deserve neither liberty or safety. And at some point you have to stand up. And I think that, you know, they've got everybody, you know, thinking it's gonna resolve itself. There's a lot that's being uh said in this administration. A lot of things look like they're happening, but there is no end game. There seems to be no result. And I'm not against the administration. I'm just like everything's coming at us so fast, you keep hitting us, boom, boom, boom, I ran. Whoa. They're destroyed. They have no capability. But we don't have control of the Strait of Hormuz. But we've we've decimated them. Uh, but there's still that whole Strait of Hormuz thing. Uh what are we talking about? I don't understand why why are the ships not moving? Other straits around the world that suddenly now everybody's like, huh, this could be a problem in other places. These are choke points. I'm like, did you guys just now figure this out?

SPEAKER_00 17:18

Did you see that they're already trying to cut a new, they're trying to cut a new strait. Through the UAE or cutter or whatever? Apparently there's like seven countries that have mobilized equipment to dig a new canal so that the Strait of Hormuz is not even a relevant part of the conversation. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 17:37

Then you can further continue to break the back of Iran economically. I get why they've blocked the strait, and I I think it's a smart move. I just feel like we were on full attack, and these people are still waving a white flag and screaming death to America, you losers. It's like at some point you got to swat the fly. That's all I'm saying. At some point, it does become a protracted war. And I think that we have a little bit of fatigue on that. We need a little bit of time, and I think that this could blow up in Donald Trump's face at any moment. I don't want it to. I'm just saying this is kind of like a Somalia moment where we didn't go in and finish the job when Somalia happened, when our soldiers got attacked, chopper shot down, captive, and we didn't let our boys that were on the ground go in and finish the job. Now we have a ton of Somalis in this country committing fraud, taking millions and billions back to their country. So let's talk about what they discussed or the primary meat of what the discussion that they had today. And apparently it had a lot to do with Iran, of course. It had a lot to do with Taiwan. That that's a real hot button issue there. And basically, Donald Trump did not back down from supporting Taiwan. And she was very adamant about there will be this will result in conflict if it's not handled appropriately.

SPEAKER_00 19:14

What did she say?

SPEAKER_01 19:17

She basically said FAFO is what she said. We've taken a pretty hard line on that. Seems like there's always some sort of negotiation taking place. But another thing that she said was that they would not send weapons to Iran or military equipment. So okay, cool, but why don't you just tell Iran that they need to cut out their BS or you're gonna jump in the fight? You know, and I know it's more complicated than that, but what I'm taking away from the Donald Trump China visit is obviously the communism's in your face. So don't don't look at this and think, hmm, boy, that communism stuff looks really good, because it's not. And people are killed and imprisoned every day there. So don't believe what you see. That was so perfectly orchestrated that you could just see the communism dripping off of it. Like uh, no freedom here, guys. I'm sorry. These people are scared. And another big initiative of the conversation was that there was a lot of CEOs. Um, Elon Musk.

SPEAKER_00 20:25

Uh so who all went to this thing? Like you what like I didn't know that Elon Musk and them were there. Who all I saw that Elon's kid was like, you know, in China recently with him, but I didn't realize that was this same trip. So how many CEOs were there?

SPEAKER_01 20:38

I I I think there was five to seven. I I don't remember.

SPEAKER_00 20:43

The most notable one was Elon Musk, the uh CEO of NVIDIA, um, and other interesting, all of the AI and chipmakers.

SPEAKER_01 20:53

Exactly. And if you, you know, if if there was, if you looked at the list, you would probably go, ah, okay, Titans of Tech. You know, so yeah, they were there. So that's kind of a big story. Um, you know, they're wanting to talk technology deals and and all that. And I'm thinking, oh, sure, let's just chain ourselves more to China. Like we already rely on them for all of our earthly natural resources, our medications. Why don't we just tie ourselves more tightly to them? That doesn't make any sense.

SPEAKER_00 21:24

Do you know anything about rare earth metals? I know that they're rare. Yeah, and they're from the earth. Yeah, some most of them are metal.

SPEAKER_01 21:31

Metallic in nature.

SPEAKER_00 21:32

Oh uh, anyways, apparently, like before I don't remember what year it was. I it was like 120 years ago, 150 years ago. We were like the number one producer globally of rare earth metals, which is like basically everything on the bottom of the periodic table. We turned all that over to China, and like you use rare earth metals to make all kinds of of semiconductors and and magnets and things that are. Vital to AI and computer systems and electricity production and all of this stuff. So we don't have the ability to do that in our country anymore. We have like one mining company in America that mines these rare earth minerals. And then we have none of the manufacturing. This one mining company has no competition? None whatsoever. But they don't they also don't really operate in American soil. They operate globally. They're not they don't even operate here. Um imagine the machinery is probably pretty expensive. Because of Trump's administration, they're trying to open back up here and start multiple mines. But I was listening to an interview that the CEO of the company was doing, and he was saying that we are so far behind on everything related to tech that they have the upper hand, but it only takes one. There's like seven different legs of this table or whatever, and it only takes one leg for us to catch up. So like right now, they have been China has been producing coal plants and solar and wind farms and nuclear power plants, and they have like 12 or 15 times the capacity that we do.

SPEAKER_01 23:10

But well, sure, they have forced labor.

SPEAKER_00 23:12

Yeah, I mean, of course, you got slaves, you know, you can do whatever you want. But basically, if we were able to catch up by building multiple nuclear facilities, then we could we could close the gap on the other six legs quickly. Or if we could figure out how to mine all of this stuff in America, again, the rare earth metals, then we could take a leg up because people would have to buy rare earth earth metals from us. But anyway, there's there's all these different legs of this table, and basically the two that we are most likely to achieve is rare earth metals or power. And to achieve the power, we're so far behind that it was it's gonna require fossil fuels, coal, wind and solar, all kinds of renewables, and that's why Trump fired back up the coal plants.

SPEAKER_01 23:55

China opened like 17 coal plants last year alone. Anytime you have forced labor, modern day slavery, anytime you have something like that, you're gonna be able to outwork the other countries that yeah, I mean you're just gonna be able to outwork the ones that banned slavery. They're exactly the native A reparations for slavery. You're there. And it I think it ties back to all the illegal immigration. It's not just we're not the only Western country. I mean, Canada is for all intents and purposes lost to the Muslims. We're on a fast track. England is is lost to the Muslims. It makes you wonder, like, okay, they tried this climate change thing and took somebody with a half a brain to come in like Donald Trump and say, this is BS. We're not gonna do this anymore. We're trying to go nuclear with our electrical grid. I think it's smart if if it can be done right and safe because it's renewable and it's the best renewable power that we have. I don't think it's realistic, but there's this initiative to build them. And then there is this initiative for all these data centers that I didn't know required a ton of water.

SPEAKER_00 25:11

I I have a little bit of knowledge about this because I was I was partnered with this company who was trying to use oil and gas to do Bitcoin mining. I learned quite a bit about the cooling process of all these machines, and that company wound up folding, not did not work out. Originally, yes, it took a whole bunch of water, but really that's not even a thing anymore. It's like it's almost like fracking, where the public found out and was like, oh, fracking is terrible for the environment. And it's like, well, no, like when we were in the early stages of fracking, there were some things we didn't know about how the process worked downhole, and you know, wound up contaminating some water, but we we have long since corrected that issue, and you're just finding out about it. It's kind of the same thing with the water. They've developed these like closed loop systems where they fill it's a I forget the name of the gel, but there's a gel that you can mix with water, and it makes the the water um non-conductive. So they can take this water, literally pour it directly into the computers, doesn't affect them. Once they figured how to do this, they take all the computers and they submerge the computers in basically a closed loop system. So they seal it, and this water with this compound or whatever it is in it, it circulates through the system and it goes outside, goes through a cooling system like a pool chiller would do on your swimming pool, and then it goes back in.

SPEAKER_01 26:28

So it's a one-shot deal. When they build a mining plant or mining center, they get whatever water they need.

SPEAKER_00 26:34

Don't get me wrong, like even inside of a system, somehow it still evaporates over time. So you have to refill it, you know. But I mean, you're talking about like, you know, a gallon of water, you know, a week or something. It's not like what you would think, it's not it's not millions of gallons of water like it was in the beginning. But now all of these, like all of the stuff you see on social media is like, oh, it takes millions of gallons of water. First off, it doesn't. But if it did, they would just put them in the ocean.

SPEAKER_01 27:04

You know what I mean? Yeah, but there's there's a different thing with salt water because why would there be a shortage of water anywhere if we could just uh desalinate and other they say, oh, it's too expensive, but there's other countries that desalinate water.

SPEAKER_00 27:19

Yeah, it's definitely possible. I mean, we've got 70% of the planets covered in water, and I'm this is not a back in the day it used to be a conspiracy, but like um weather manipulation is a real thing. They they cloud seeding is a real thing. They go and they put you know stuff in the clouds and it creates um rain clouds, and you can just ask Dubai. They accidentally flooded Dubai.

SPEAKER_01 27:40

And the stuff that they use is highly has high levels of aluminum. Yeah, really good for your lungs. I saw this report where this guy said that like you see these these trees that they say these beetles are killing in the forest. Now, I don't know if it is or if it is not, but this report that I heard made sense that these cloud seeding operations they have aluminum particles in it. The aluminum particles get on or in the trees because somehow it's able to penetrate the tree, the tree dies, and then these beetles move in because they feed off of dead trees. Now, that's probably a theory amongst several theories, and there's a lot of people that say cloud seeding isn't real.

SPEAKER_00 28:27

A few years ago, that was something that was, oh, conspiracy theorists, you're crazy. It's not even up for debate now. There is definitely people, there's companies that specialize in cloud seeding. So, and they've been on like CNN, Fox, ABC, NBC. It's it's not a it's a thing, you know what I mean? Right. But I will tell you specifically about the trees. The guy that I was listening to talking about the the mining and for the rare earth minerals, he was saying basically when you really boil it down to the very, very basics, there are only two industries in the world, period. And those two industries are mining, whether that's physically like coal mines and equipment moving dirt or oil and gas and natural resources, but you mine for both of those things with a drilling rig or whatever, and agriculture. Everything from mining and agriculture on is entirely dependent on the existence of mining and agriculture. Doesn't matter if it's an iPhone, petroleum product, if it's a you know, cereal down, you know, it's all at agricultural level in the beginning. It was just a piece of wheat.

SPEAKER_01 29:34

So we've learned recently our food even has petroleum products.

SPEAKER_00 29:39

True story. Yeah, agricultural and mining have combined into one product that we both consume and uh use to fuel our cars. But he was basically saying with with the agricultural side, lumber used to be one of the biggest industries in America, primarily in California, because they have so many trees that naturally die each year. They would take the the lumber, they would cut all the dead lumber, and they would use that to I mean, they cut it down like as soon as it died, they cut it so it was still in good condition, they could build things with it, and they would ship that overseas. Whenever we started outsourcing everything, which is like the big thing in the 80s, outsource everything, you know, shirts and rare earth minerals and wood, whatever. So uh, and then they had this like spotted owl or barn owl or something they were trying to save up in Washington state. So Washington and California and and uh this the states in the northwest part of our country stopped producing wood. And in doing that, not only did they collapse the lumber industry, but they caused all of this basically kindling, which causes all the fires we see today. And on top of all of that, it caused us to import wood from China and multiple other countries overseas, and that's what brought in the beetles that you're talking about. Like the the trees, the trees that grew here originally all had developed um, you know, what is it? What's the word I'm looking for? That immunities, or they had developed resistance to all of these invasive species. But a new beetle from a new continent comes in and they have no ability to defend themselves. So much for customs enforcement. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 31:16

Missed something to to kind of close out this whole Trump China visit, is that the overall status is everything's still the same. Status quo, no difference. The same issues still exist. All that we got from this is the same lines in the sand that have been drawn. Leave Taiwan alone. Don't give Iran weapons, and I'm sure there'll be more to come. So thanks for coming on, checking us out. We'll see you next time, and we are out of here.