| | GB News spoke to Steve Bannon and actually had some pushback against his views on tariffs. |
| | So let's get straight into the video. |
| | And if they steal 2028, for some reason we don't prevail, which will be them stealing it, they're going to put Trump back on trial for prison. |
| | They're going to put me back in prison. |
| | Every day I said, hey. |
| | Here we are, fascism. |
| | There's two options. |
| | We win fairly with a landslide because, you know, we're the chosen leaders. |
| | We deserve it. |
| | Or it's a conspiracy. |
| | They've rigged the election and someone's in control. |
| | This is fascism. |
| | This is fascism. |
| | Insane. |
| | Hey, this thing's all or nothing. |
| | Just because we had this tremendous victory in November, October at the time, they're all partying. |
| | Oh, this is great. |
| | And everybody's running around. |
| | They've got a MAGA hat now. |
| | And I said, hey, it's fine. |
| | But understand, we're at war. |
| | Will Trump's Tariff Liberation Day harm the US economy? |
| | Is Elon Musk leaving the administration? |
| | And is the president deporting enough illegal immigrants? |
| | He's bloody obsessed with deporting illegal immigrants. |
| | My name is Stephen Edgington and I'm GB News' US correspondent. |
| | Joining me to answer those questions and many more is the former White House chief strategist, Stephen K. Bannon. |
| | Good holiday. |
| | Thank you so much, Steve, for joining us. |
| | Thank you for having me. |
| | We just had Liberation Day. |
| | But many Americans are concerned that prices are going to go up. |
| | Americans, okay, stop. |
| | This is just the only reason people have any concern at all is because the running dog for the capitalists on Wall Street and the Lords of Easy Money media continues to go on with this false narrative that prices are going to go up, stock market is going to crash, everything is going to happen. |
| | Is that an anti-Semitic dog whistle? |
| | Yeah, I think it probably is. |
| | Happened over and over and over again without looking at any evidence. |
| | We put some of the strictest... Yeah, there's pretty much a lot of evidence that tariffs do increase prices, especially the level Donald Trump is getting at. |
| | Yeah. |
| | Potentially 145% tariffs on China. |
| | China isn't backing down in this trade war. |
| | And ironically, Trump doesn't have the cards here. |
| | China does. |
| | Because America is reliant on cheap Chinese products. |
| | They are. |
| | They love them. |
| | And the idea that the industry is going to move to America, how much are people willing to pay for an iPhone? |
| | Not five grand, which is what it would probably cost if you're going to pay Americans a half decent wage. |
| | So... |
| | There's tariffs ever on China in 17 and 18. |
| | And prices didn't go up at all on Chinese product. |
| | This is just a false, another false narrative put out by the media. |
| | It's the same as all the lies they're told about the pandemic, all the lies they're told about the Ukraine, all the lies they're told about the Ukraine, not Ukraine. |
| | What lies about the pandemic? |
| | So election, I could go on. |
| | What lies about the election? |
| | It was unequivocally found out that Biden won in 2020. |
| | Like... |
| | This is fascism, by the way. |
| | Conspiracy. |
| | Lack of evidence. |
| | Just... Ooh. |
| | If anything bad happens, it's them. |
| | And it's like... |
| | But Trump... You know, these tariffs that are already causing mass uncertainty for businesses across America, across the world, stock markets plummet, but Trump knows what he's doing. |
| | He knows what he's doing, even though he kind of doesn't. |
| | On and on and on. |
| | The only people who worked up about it, did the market crash today? |
| | No, did not. |
| | You have a... That's a pretty low bar. |
| | It's plummeted to the lowest it has in decades, but it didn't crash, so... Trump knows what he's doing. |
| | He knows what he's doing. |
| | Sorting out of things. |
| | I didn't say there was not going to be any turbulence. |
| | Didn't have any crash. |
| | Didn't have gold blow through the roof. |
| | Nothing that was prophesied yesterday. |
| | And look... Yeah. |
| | People were predicting the stock markets. |
| | They were terrified of Orange Monday. |
| | And it kind of did happen. |
| | So... |
| | There's a lot of uncertainty. |
| | And the stock market relies on belief about the future. |
| | Because people don't know. |
| | Especially with the 90-day pause on these tariffs. |
| | Because Trump has chickened out. |
| | Because he thought... China didn't do what they were told to do or expected to do. |
| | He's like, yeah, yeah. |
| | Put 50%. |
| | And 35%. |
| | And they put 35%. |
| | 100%. |
| | 125%. |
| | 145%. |
| | China's not going to back down. |
| | But that's why he's doing this 90-day pause. |
| | Because he's lost. |
| | What's he going to do in 90 days? |
| | Is he going to... |
| | I don't think he's going to save face. |
| | But he could. |
| | And then he just blames. |
| | Oh, yeah. |
| | We came up with a deal. |
| | Like he said, Europe didn't retaliate. |
| | We did. |
| | But he's like... |
| | I paused it because they didn't retaliate. |
| | He's winning. |
| | It's just so pathetic. |
| | Trump went hard. |
| | He's... And it shows you, I think, to the world, he's not a maximalist. |
| | I was always for the reciprocity. |
| | But the reciprocity has a maximalist side where you just go and match whatever your analysis shows. |
| | He was also thinking there was tension around with President Trump to just do tiered at 20%. |
| | He did do reciprocity, which I thought was very important, to show the American people how people have abused the United States of America and American companies. |
| | in just this narrative that's out there by the vested interests in this country who don't want to see the end of the globalist system. |
| | The globalists are sitting here in panic mode because... |
| | Global trade... We've been trading globally for hundreds of years. |
| | It's an inevitable part of the economy. |
| | Like migration. |
| | It's like... |
| | It's just an inevitability. |
| | It ain't going away. |
| | Trade isn't just going to all of a sudden go back to America because of these tariffs. |
| | It ain't happening. |
| | Price... |
| | Unless people want to pay massive prices for their goods. |
| | Which most Americans don't. |
| | They want cheap gas. |
| | They want cheap products. |
| | They love it. |
| | So... |
| | It ain't going anywhere. |
| | Because now Trump has gone large and he's not going to back off. |
| | If you noticed today, I thought it was very important. |
| | There was a lot of commentary out there. |
| | He's already backed off and he will. |
| | That's the thing with Trump. |
| | He presents himself as a strong man, like... |
| | But he will just flip on a dime. |
| | He does that constantly. |
| | Because he's... People... |
| | Someone spoke to him the other day and said, Yeah, this isn't good. |
| | And he's gone, Okay, we'll do a 90-day pause. |
| | He's... |
| | He has no values. |
| | He will go where the wind goes. |
| | Including his Secretary of Commerce and even me saying, Hey, you know, Trump will be negotiating between now and the end of his current term. |
| | Before his... Before his... Before his third term. |
| | And he put out the word, No negotiations. |
| | They are what they are. |
| | So I think you show... Has he stepped into this decision? |
| | This is core Trump. |
| | This is something that he's been thinking about for 40 years. |
| | But really thinking deeply about with his advisors since the election was stolen with DeMar-a-Lago. |
| | But... |
| | Even though in the last 40 years, the global economy has changed so much that his view of the economy in like, the late 70s, 80s. |
| | Just very different. |
| | It's a different world we live in now. |
| | Oh, and I think this narrative just on and on and on, particularly by people on the left who want to be populist or understand that the reason that the... |
| | The reason that they lost is that they abandoned... |
| | The Democrats abandoned the working class in this country and they won't support him or vote for him anymore. |
| | You would think that they... |
| | Already the working class are turning on Trump because these tariffs are people like, Oh yeah, he's going to cut potentially Social Security, Medicaid, Doge. |
| | These tariffs are going to increase prices. |
| | I didn't vote for this. |
| | And also the myth that somehow Trump won in a landslide. |
| | It was pretty close. |
| | America is a deeply divided country where they're kind of a war with themselves and have been, well, since the Civil War. |
| | It's a deeply polarized country. |
| | We would try to at least understand the populist economic nationalist policy in bringing massive amount of capital investment in plant and equipment here and bringing plants and bringing high-valuated jobs back. |
| | But that's the key point, isn't it? |
| | But it isn't going to happen. |
| | It just ain't happening in this world. |
| | Unless people want to pay those big prices, which people don't. |
| | If people embrace that and go, yeah, I don't mind paying five grand for an iMac. |
| | I don't mind paying $100 for a t-shirt. |
| | I think people should have less and have stuff that they have longer. |
| | They shouldn't be an iPhone every year. |
| | It should be every three to four years and make it actually good. |
| | But that isn't the world we live in right now. |
| | Isn't it more honest to say, look, we know that this is going to have an impact on prices. |
| | If you put at least a 10%, in some cases, much higher, powerful tax on American imports, there's going to be an impact on the price. |
| | It doesn't mean that price. |
| | It doesn't mean the... |
| | But why would they be honest? |
| | We're talking about fascism here. |
| | He knows what he's talking about. |
| | He doesn't believe what he's saying. |
| | He knows industry isn't coming back. |
| | He knows that this just plays massively to his base. |
| | Because it's great, isn't it? |
| | Like, he's a nationalist, populist. |
| | It's great. |
| | People get excited about this stuff. |
| | But it ain't happening. |
| | It ain't happening. |
| | And he knows it isn't. |
| | But it doesn't matter, does it? |
| | Increased costs flow to the consumer. |
| | Let me repeat this. |
| | We put... |
| | Okay. |
| | You can add everybody combined. |
| | And we don't buy as much as we buy from China. |
| | I think it's... |
| | The net trade deficit with China is $500 or $600 million. |
| | Excuse me, billion dollars. |
| | We are essentially to the Chinese what the colonies of America used to be to Great Britain during the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. |
| | We're just shipping raw materials. |
| | We send very little finished product because they gutted all our factories and sent them to China. |
| | So in buying that $500 billion and $600 billion is actually more because that's the net deficit. |
| | In buying that amount of finished product from China, prices didn't go up in 2018 and 2019. |
| | They just didn't. |
| | In 19... |
| | In Christmas of 19, we had virtually no inflation. |
| | Lowest interest rates we've ever had. |
| | Exploding growth. |
| | Exploding 3.5% growth. |
| | We had blue-collar wages rising faster than white-collar. |
| | We had non... And this is because of Trump... |
| | Sorry, not Trump. |
| | Obama's strong eight years. |
| | That's what it led up to. |
| | Because we know historically that Republicans... And it's the same with Tories in the UK. |
| | Horrible with the economy. |
| | Which is like a paradox, really. |
| | Because you think, oh, they'd be prudent. |
| | No, it's usually people on the left, Labor, Democrats in America that come in and fix the mess. |
| | Often increased pricing, increased spending, tax cuts, which obviously increases the deficit. |
| | And it's the liberals that have to come in and fix it all. |
| | So, it just simply isn't true what you're saying. |
| | College graduates raising higher than college graduates. |
| | That's kind of the economic nationalist model of Trump. |
| | And we're restricting immigration at the time. |
| | Since that time, Biden's exploded, you know, inviting in 10 million illegal alien invaders to drive down... |
| | It's just simply not true. |
| | And also, a massive misconception and myth about borders is that actually, before 40 years ago, before the idea of, like, having a stringent border on America, Reagan... Movement between Mexicans and Americans was free. |
| | And people would come to Mexico, work for a little bit, go back. |
| | But since the border, Mexicans are more likely to stay because they're afraid they won't be able to go back. |
| | So, you have 11 million, at least, Mexicans. |
| | And this border does not incentivize people not to go over to America. |
| | People will find a way. |
| | There's a big border between Mexico and America. |
| | And actually, having a strong border actually almost incentivizes people to go over because it's like, well... Well, you bought a border. |
| | I have to stay now. |
| | Whereas, the freedom of movement, people go back and forth between Mexico and America. |
| | So, actually, this has caused a problem. |
| | And we've got massive data on this. |
| | Strong borders create more illegal immigrants going over. |
| | So, it's not the solution. |
| | It's part of the problem. |
| | Wage cost among unskilled workers. |
| | But there's no evidence, when Trump did this the first time, not a scintilla evidence. |
| | from the largest partner we buy from on finished goods that there was any price increase. |
| | There was no price increase we could see when we put the steel tariffs in. |
| | So, they try to use this to scare people. |
| | The two reasons for tariffs is number one, I think for people in Great Britain to understand, is... |
| | I wonder if Bannon would be for the Chips Act and the tariffs that Biden put on Chinese EVs, which is stupid, by the way. |
| | It's just... |
| | But, you know, when Democrats do it, it's, you know, oh, what are you doing? |
| | It would be interesting to know what his opinion is on those. |
| | But when Republicans do it, it's fine. |
| | Is that... |
| | This is a premium market. |
| | The United States is a premium market. |
| | So, what President Trump thinks about, he says, hey, it's like buying a box, a skybox at a sporting event or front row tickets to a concert. |
| | To get into this market, you're going to have to pay a premium, okay, to get access to the biggest consumer, the deepest consumer market in the world. |
| | There's two ways to do that. |
| | You either stay outside and manufacture your finished products and you're going to pay a tolling fee to get in here. |
| | I think the reciprocal tariffs are in Great Britain, I think it was 10% if memory serves me correctly. |
| | Or you have an option. |
| | You have an option to come and move your manufacturing to the United States. |
| | I think he'd rather have the manufacturing come to the United States. |
| | But if not, we have an external revenue service now that Peter Novaris is in the auto loans alone, excuse me, the auto tariffs alone will bring in $100 billion. |
| | Remember, just think about this for a second. |
| | We sell essentially $800 billion of cars in the United States a year. |
| | Okay? |
| | Of that, only $500 billion of that are made overseas, Germany, Japan, etc. |
| | Even of the $350 billion that are manufactured here, they're really not manufactured, they're assembled. |
| | We take still the highway, the drive train, train, the engine from either Mexico, Germany, or in Mexico, we're making it for the Germans. |
| | So, or the Japanese. |
| | That all has to stop. |
| | We have to bring, and this is about bringing high-value-added manufacturing jobs to the United States, and certainly it's going to cause a little turbulence. |
| | I mean, we essentially, I think, went to economic war with the Chinese Communist Party yesterday. |
| | Those are particularly... Yeah, and you don't have the cards. |
| | China is going to win this. |
| | China is going to win this. |
| | Trump's already backed down. |
| | He's shown his weakness. |
| | He's shown, he's essentially shown he's not got the cards. |
| | He should be thanking China. |
| | Very unappreciative. |
| | Where Xi is, on his economic revival, which they're in very bad straits, these tariffs, I think, could put Xi out of business. |
| | So, it's, it was, it's both the... See, he knows, he knows that it's bad for America, so he has to say that. |
| | There's a reason why Xi isn't backing down. |
| | Because they will double down, they'll put everything into it and go, yes, we will, we'll beat America. |
| | And I think Trump may back down on this. |
| | Because, he's going to have people in his ear saying, this is not good for us, we can't win this war. |
| | Please, reverse course. |
| | And he's going like, no, I'm not, I'm not weak. |
| | And then, okay, 90 day pause. |
| | And he's going, okay, we'll reassess it in 90 days. |
| | And he may backtrack and go, well, we came up with a deal, the best deal, it's the strongest deal. |
| | Well, we won, we won. |
| | Obviously, he's going to do something like that. |
| | Geoeconomic and resetting the post-war international rules-based order, but it's also geostrategic. |
| | Lots of companies tried to outsource their manufacturing away from China and into other Southeast Asian countries like Vietnam. |
| | Cambodia. |
| | Cambodia had a bad day. |
| | Cambodia had a bad day yesterday. |
| | Exactly. |
| | So, is putting 50% tariffs on countries like Vietnam strategically a smart thing to do when you're trying to decouple from China, when you're trying to encourage people to stop building in China? |
| | Well, decoupling with China, we want to bring those jobs back to the United States. |
| | Yes, there's still going to be product made in Cambodia and these other places, but why, it's just reciprocal. |
| | Remember, President Trump's adamant. |
| | If you bring the tariffs down and particularly on reciprocity, you bring the non-tariff barriers, which is really where the juice is. |
| | You bring that down, we'll let bygones be bygones. |
| | Right, but it's not reciprocal though because the data that they're relying on is the trade deficit. |
| | They're not actually talking about specific tariffs those countries have implemented or non-tariff barriers. |
| | They've made that calculation and the White House have said this, they've admitted this, based on the trade deficit in goods with the United States. |
| | So how is that reciprocal? |
| | What's reciprocal to that country? |
| | I've got a question. |
| | You've got to work with us to decrease the trade. |
| | To the deficit, but not to the... |
| | But you have to do what you have to do to work and make sure that we somehow take care of that deficit. |
| | The accumulative... Because everybody talks... |
| | It's interesting that it seems GB News are even against these tariffs because they know it will increase prices. |
| | So that, I think, some hope. |
| | It's about our debt here, the $37 trillion in debt. |
| | We're going to have, I think, the Biden, the Biden, last year, is going to be, I think, near a trillion dollar trade deficit. |
| | We have a cumulative trade deficit. |
| | I believe a $25 trillion. |
| | This isn't necessarily a bad thing, though. |
| | Because then that means you're reliant on each other. |
| | China's reliant on America for its debt, its consumers, and then America's reliant on China. |
| | And it kind of creates... We want this... |
| | It just creates massive global instability if we're going to have these global wars, trade wars, that don't really benefit anybody. |
| | It just creates unstable markets. |
| | And if he does go through with 145% tariffs, prices will go up unequivocally. |
| | Maybe 10%. |
| | Although, I think he's lying on that as well. |
| | But it's going to cause real issues. |
| | And already has caused massive issues. |
| | They're kind of inextricably linked with debt, but the globalists never want to talk about trade deficit. |
| | They say, oh, it doesn't really matter. |
| | It doesn't. |
| | It matters tremendously. |
| | It doesn't. |
| | That was the wages of United States workers going overseas to pay something. |
| | Or it's the monetization of certain assets we have to pay for it. |
| | So no, I think each country in its own way will work out some sort of individual deal. |
| | President Trump said he's open. |
| | Right now, he says no negotiations because I think he wants a time for them to kind of realize that he's serious about this. |
| | And he is serious about this. |
| | No negotiations because he's not got the cards. |
| | And he knows that. |
| | Well, he doesn't know that, but he knows that. |
| | His primary focus is the economic rejuvenation of the United States. |
| | And I think that's very powerful. |
| | And for the American people, it's been an eye-opener. |
| | Because remember, one of the reasons for 30... |
| | Yes, it has. |
| | They don't want it. |
| | Most Americans are against this. |
| | There's an eye-opener of like, oh no, he is this mad. |
| | Oh no, he is this stupid. |
| | Oh no, he doesn't know what he's doing. |
| | Oh no. |
| | Why did we vote for him? |
| | Seven trillion dollars in debt is we have a trillion dollar defense bill. |
| | Why do we have a trillion dollar defense bill? |
| | Well, we're underwriting the security of Western Europe, of the Persian Gulf and the Gulf Emirates, of around the South China Sea and the Straits of Malacca, and then up to Northwest Asia with Japan and Korea. |
| | That has to stop. |
| | We're upside down. |
| | We have trade deficits basically with every part of the... You go around the horn, around the rim of the Eurasian landmass, we have trade deficits everywhere. |
| | We can't continue. |
| | He's trying to bring down the financial deficit at the same time he's trying to bring down the trade deficit. |
| | And this is the first time in our history, even with Reagan, that any president has stepped up and said, my first priority is American workers. |
| | And I'm going to show you how it's going to happen because I'm basically going to... You know what I'm going to say. |
| | ...lay out a new economic model for the world. |
| | And the world can think about it, adjust to it, and then come to us. |
| | I'm sure they'll have open discussions. |
| | Right. |
| | You mentioned Ronald Reagan. |
| | I'm going to quote from Reagan. |
| | This was when he was president. |
| | He was massively against the tariffs that occurred in the early 1930s during the Great Depression. |
| | He said, you see at first when someone says let's impose tariffs on foreign imports, it looks like they're doing the patriotic thing by protecting American products and jobs. |
| | And sometimes that works for a short while. |
| | What eventually occurs is homegrown industries start relying on government protection in the form of high tariffs. |
| | They stop competing and making innovative management and technological changes. |
| | They need to succeed in world markets. |
| | And then something even worse happens. |
| | High tariffs inevitably lead to retaliation by foreign countries. |
| | The result is more tariffs, higher and higher trade barriers and less competition. |
| | Okay. |
| | Thatcher, I don't need to be, okay, I got it. |
| | I understand what Reagan started. |
| | Reagan and Thatcher were neoliberal neocons. |
| | Okay. |
| | At that time in trying to take on the Soviet Union, I appreciate that. |
| | But also remember Ronald Reagan was coming at the beginning of which we had been a manufacturing superpower. |
| | and Carter started to, you know, as soon as we started running trade deficits and we stopped protecting American industries from mercantilist systems, this is not, that right there is a fantasy. |
| | It's a fantasy that comes out of the kind of the National Review and the, and the, all the intellectual conservatives like the Tory party that have gotten us into this situation, that gutted England, that gutted the United States because they, they believed in the system of fair trade when it's not fair. |
| | This is complete mercantilist system as reciprocity just showed the American people. |
| | The American people didn't know that all these tariffs and trade barriers were up against our allies that we're underwriting. |
| | This is the whole thing like with Europe. |
| | In Europe, it's quite frankly, we've been underwriting your defense since World War II and we're kind of underwriting your prosperity. |
| | That's going to end. |
| | We're going to get prosperous here. |
| | President Trump What prosperity in the UK? |
| | He's just wrong. |
| | The system that worked that when we broke off of the monopolistic power of the British crown and one of the reasons people don't understand this, we broke off not just for political freedom but also economic freedom. |
| | What drove the revolutionary generation as much as the suppression of their first free speech that we couldn't even do cartoons about the king and pamphlets or we'd be shut down was also the, what the crown did in corrupting, the crown and the aristocracy did in corrupting commons and giving monopolistic power to things, entities like the British East India Company or other industrial combines. |
| | What England had gotten to at that time was kind of how the United States runs today, right? |
| | Oligarchic power with state power combined, you have a system. |
| | that's what our revolution broke away from and what happened? |
| | A document that's just as dear to us economic populists and nationalists as the Declaration of Independence was really a declaration of war against the empire and the constitution which tried to get this thing organized later is the report on manufacturers by Alexander Hamilton who was a true economic nationalist. |
| | That's the third founding document of the United States and what happened from the American plan from the beginning of the, you know, from the beginning of the country right after the revolution all the way up to the early 20th century and particularly through McKinley we certainly protected and some of the biggest protectionists of protection our native industries were not just Alexander Hamilton but a guy named Abraham Lincoln, right? |
| | And then McKinley they understood and this is what this is what drove us although the industrial revolution started in England we rapidly became an industrial superpower why? |
| | Because of a smart system of tariffs The world is very different though to what it was 100, 200 years ago and we're not going back to the economy the problem is and he doesn't like it because of Jews or something is the economy in America is primarily financialized they don't really make anything and we're not going back to that point because it's just going to increase prices massively why produce like raw products like iron steel those kind of key products that often are made in poorer countries which brings up their economy gives them a chance to build up their nation it's way more complicated than he thinks and he wants to go back to this past where America is self-sufficient in a way but it ain't happening it ain't happening they're not just one country alone America putting tariffs can't just change the paradigm of financial capital he wants to do that but it ain't happening so what's going to happen with these tariffs I think Trump's going to back down or he'll double down and just create massive chaos increase prices and people aren't going to like him so tell me what you think in the comments below and I'll see you in the next video |