Eric Zuesse
The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of this site. This site does not give financial, investment or medical advice.
https://www.youtube.com/live/tQ5boxXBUJQ?t=99s
“INTEL Roundtable w/ Johnson & McGovern : Weekly Wrap 24-April”
F. 24 April 2026, Judge Napolitano – Judging Freedom
confirms Larry Johnson’s 20 April revelation that Trump was considering to nuke Iran; and McGovern says that on Sunday, it is possible or even likely that Netanyahu will nuke Iran, and that America will simultaneously bomb though maybe not nuke Iran.
——
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V6XxjahbxlE
Interview Of The Year: Jeffrey Sachs Vs Donald Trump | Fiery Conversation That’s Gripping America
22 April 2026, India’s The Times Group’s “ET Now News”
00:00
SACHS: If you
00:02
take your credit card and you go
00:04
shopping
00:05
and you run up a large credit card debt
00:08
you’re running a trade deficit
00:11
with all those shops.
00:14
Now, it would be pretty strange if you
00:16
then blamed all the shop owners for
00:18
having sold you all those things. You’re
00:21
ripping me off. You’re ripping me off.
00:23
You’re ripping me off. I’m running a
00:24
trade deficit.
00:26
That is the level of understanding of
00:29
the president of the United States.
00:33
The trade deficit does not represent at
00:36
all
00:39
trade policies.
00:42
It represents spending
00:45
relative to production or earnings.
00:49
>> [snorts]
00:50
>> We call that an identity. I teach it in
00:53
the second day of my course in
00:56
international monetary economics.
00:58
Trump never made it to the second day.
01:03
So, he says
01:06
you’re running a trade deficit. Look,
01:08
they’re all cheating me. But all that’s
01:11
happening is the United States is
01:13
outspending
01:15
its national income. And you can look at
01:19
the national income chart. You can add
01:23
up consumption and investment and
01:26
government spending
01:27
and you could subtract off gross
01:31
national product and lo and behold, what
01:33
will that equal? Not approximately,
01:36
exactly. That will equal the current
01:39
account deficit, which is the
01:40
comprehensive measure of how much you
01:43
spend on goods and services versus how
01:47
much you
01:49
sell in goods and services.
01:52
So, the United States runs a current
01:56
account deficit because it spends more
02:00
than it produces. Why does it do that?
02:03
We have a big credit card in the United
02:06
States.
02:07
It’s called the national government.
02:11
The US government spends about
02:15
$2 trillion a year more than it takes in
02:20
in revenues. What it’s doing is making
02:23
transfers to the American people and to
02:25
American businesses. It doesn’t tax
02:29
Americans for those transfers
02:31
because
02:34
here’s another little fact. Because the
02:37
congressmen that vote on the budget
02:40
got into office by being paid for their
02:44
campaigns by rich people who don’t like
02:46
taxes.
02:48
So, the political system says spend, but
02:51
don’t tax us.
02:53
So, we run a chronic deficit in the
02:56
United States.
02:57
That spending goes out either as
03:00
transfer payments or goods and services
03:03
and that’s more than our national income
03:07
which is about $30 trillion and our
03:10
spending’s about $31 trillion.
03:13
And that’s our trade deficit. And for
03:16
that, Donald Trump blames the world.
03:21
Okay, I fail him for this if he were my
03:24
student.
03:26
He’s my president.
03:28
It’s a little weirder.
03:31
Because when he did this, in 2 days, the
03:35
world lost $10 trillion of market
03:39
capitalization.
03:41
By the way, where did it go?
03:43
Did it get transferred from here to
03:45
here? No,
03:47
it got destroyed.
03:49
Why destroyed?
03:51
Because trade, something also the
03:54
president of the United States doesn’t
03:56
understand, is mutually beneficial.
03:59
So, if you stop trade everybody loses.
04:03
It’s not that one side wins, the other
04:06
side loses. He cannot understand that
04:08
concept as a guy that traded real estate
04:13
in New York.
04:16
So, his idea is somebody had to win,
04:20
somebody had to lose. But what happened
04:22
when he made this announcement was $10
04:24
trillion was wiped out worldwide.
04:27
It’s not that the US went up and they
04:30
went down. No, everybody went down.
04:33
Because the whole world system is based
04:35
on a division of labor
04:38
and he’s breaking that division of labor
04:41
into pieces.
04:43
So,
04:44
then people said
04:48
this doesn’t make sense. Even the very
04:50
rich people that
04:52
gave him the money for him to get into
04:54
office
04:56
started saying this doesn’t make sense.
04:58
The hedge fund managers who are his big
05:00
campaign contributors, Elon Musk who
05:03
paid for his election to became prime
05:05
minister.
05:07
I he said this doesn’t make sense.
05:10
And then the markets said this doesn’t
05:12
make sense. Not only $10 trillion, but
05:15
as finance minister said interest rates
05:18
started to rise because people began to
05:21
dump US Treasury debt.
05:23
>> The safest thing in the world,
05:24
apparently.
05:25
>> So,
05:27
interesting what happened.
05:30
It’s not quite true that he reversed
05:33
things. First, he left on this 10%
05:37
tariff
05:39
except for one country.
05:41
For China. 145% on Chinese products.
05:45
>> the tariff rates. That’s because the
05:48
United States has a deep neurotic
05:52
attachment to China.
05:55
The US political system hates China.
05:59
Why?
06:00
Cuz China’s big and successful.
06:04
And so, that the US hates.
06:07
It’s a rival, it’s a competitor. And so,
06:11
this is the one thing he left on. Now,
06:14
he’s going to mess up everything with
06:16
this, too, because in a trade war
06:19
between the US and China, China wins.
06:23
China does not depend on the US market
06:25
very much. It’s about 12% of China’s
06:28
exports. China will do just fine.
06:33
It’s just
06:35
dumb policy.
06:38
That’s there’s no more, sorry to say it.
06:41
There’s just no more explanation to this
06:45
than that.
06:47
It makes no sense.
06:49
Now, it raises, if I could, just one
06:52
last point.
06:53
How can this happen
06:55
when it makes no sense?
06:57
And that people should understand, we
07:00
are in one-person rule in the United
07:03
States.
07:04
Our political system is in a state of
07:08
collapse.
07:10
What President Trump did is an emergency
07:14
decree.
07:16
Everything he does is an emergency
07:18
decree. Literally, you can go on to
07:21
whitehouse.gov
07:23
and then type
07:25
follow the menu to executive decrees and
07:29
there are dozens of them. And each one
07:31
starts the same way with the powers
07:34
invested in in me as president of the
07:37
United States, I hereby declare A,
07:41
nonsense. B, nonsense. C, nonsense.
07:45
Because he’s king.
07:48
Those powers are not invested in the
07:50
president of the United States. They’re
07:52
invested in the Congress. You read
07:55
Article 1, Section 8 of our
07:57
Constitution. It says that all duties
08:00
originate with the Congress and
08:04
specifically in the lower house. All
08:06
legislation has to start in the House of
08:09
Representatives.
08:10
But the US,
08:14
starting in [25 July] 1945 after World War II,
08:18
became a military state to a large
08:20
extent.
08:22
And so, it sprinkled in its legislation
08:25
emergency, emergency, emergency. And
08:29
Trump doesn’t have to prove anything’s
08:31
an emergency. He just has to say
08:33
something’s an emergency. So, suddenly
08:36
the trade deficit became an emergency
08:39
and on that basis, he issues a
08:41
one-person rule. Even his aides don’t
08:44
know what he’s doing.
08:46
You raise one final interesting issue,
08:49
which is that the market recovered about
08:52
$4 trillion when he reversed.
08:56
Anyone who knew that 5 minutes before
08:58
made billions.
09:01
This is not the cleanest government in
09:03
the world, I can tell you.
09:05
I’d be hugely surprised if some people
09:07
didn’t know just a bit ahead of time.
09:10
Starting with members of the US
09:12
Congress, by the way.
09:15
——
https://mid.ru/en/foreign_policy/news/2099030/
24 April 2026 17:05
…
Every day we observe — we are, in fact, shown in real time — that in order to preserve their hegemony and to achieve these unseemly goals, illegal sanctions, plunder, the theft of other countries’ sovereign assets, blackmail, threats and, of course, the use of military force are employed, as we saw in Venezuela and now in Iran – all of that in blatant violation of international law. …
The unprovoked aggression by the Americans and Israelis against Iran has seriously destabilised the situation in the Middle East [and their ‘news’-media] don’t even begin to cover it, because the situation is now becoming destabilised globally.
…
This persistent push, which in recent years has openly manifested itself in the slogan of inflicting a strategic defeat on Russia, reflects a long-standing, indeed, as it now turns out, centuries-long strategy.
…
A war against us has been openly declared. The Kiev regime is being used as the tip of the spear. However, everyone is aware that this tip is unusable without Western supplies of weapons, intelligence data, satellite systems, training of military personnel, and much more. The Kiev regime and the Ukrainian state are being openly taken advantage of as a geopolitical battering ram. Some rather outspoken individuals, I believe in the Belgian General Staff, publicly stated that they were getting ready for war with Russia and that Ukraine was helping them buy time. As they say, they couldn’t be clearer.
In order to justify their policy, the West – above all the international bureaucracy in Brussels (both EU and NATO, which are increasingly becoming one), as well as Berlin, Paris, and, of course, London – are attempting to demonise everything Russian, and openly speak about gearing up for war with us in the foreseeable future. Chief of Defence of the Belgian Armed Forces FrederikVansina stated that they still have several years to go, and Ukraine is buying time for them. The same line of thinking transpired in a statement by German Chancellor Friedrich Merz when he described Israel’s attack on Iran and generally everything Israel is doing as the Israelis doing the dirty work for them by fighting Hamas, Hezbollah, and other “terrorist” organisations disregarding the history of their emergence. That history is directly linked to the outright refusal to implement the UN decision on the creation of a Palestinian state.
Despite the difficult circumstances, we will continue to pursue our foreign policy and to defend our vital national interests, creating the most favourable external environment for our country’s sustainable development as a multi-ethnic sovereign state strengthening our sovereignty in all areas. This is almost a verbatim quotation from the Foreign Policy Concept, which was updated and approved by the President of Russia in 2023. It remains in force and continues to stand today.
Our priorities include promoting equal and mutually beneficial partnerships with all those willing to cooperate on an equal footing, based on the universally recognised principles of the UN Charter and international law in general, and on the search for a fair balance of interests in order to achieve the goals of domestic development and to strengthen our sovereignty. A contrasting example is provided by our US colleagues, who are promoting their national interests as they understand them, and they understand them as their dominance which is currently reflected in their policy of gaining control over almost the entire global energy sector. We observe this every day.
The logic of the Americans in relations with most countries (I have not heard anyone say this in dialogue with us, and I hope I never will) is that if you do not do as I say, I will punish you. In other words, I do not promise anything, but you must give me what I want; and if you don’t, I will punish you. This is not a balance of interests, and certainly not an honest conversation.
…
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Investigative historian Eric Zuesse’s latest book, AMERICA’S EMPIRE OF EVIL: Hitler’s Posthumous Victory, and Why the Social Sciences Need to Change, is about how America took over the world after World War II in order to enslave it to U.S.-and-allied billionaires. Their cartels extract the world’s wealth by control of not only their ‘news’ media but the social ‘sciences’ — duping the public.
The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of this site. This site does not give financial, investment or medical advice.
