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Unknown A
So Donald Trump, Elon Musk and the Republicans are setting themselves up for a disastrous midterms. That's the subject of today's video. And effectively what it boils down to is, who are the Republicans going to serve? Are you going to serve the rich people? Are you going to serve everyday Americans? That's the choice they have to make. And let's go through the headlines and you guys understand what's going on. So it says here these Republicans have lost, have a lot to lose if Congress cuts Medicaid. Right? That's on the table right now. GOP split on Medicaid imperils Trump's tax cut plans. Right? So Trump and his buddies want the tax cuts for the billionaires, et cetera. And who's going to pay for it? You regular people, you're going to cut your Medicaid. The problem is, though, and this is the dilemma that Republicans face, if they're in a district that has a lot of voters that need Medicaid, what are you going to tell them?
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Unknown A
You're going to say, hey, I needed to kiss up to Trump because Trump's your buddy, Trump's your hero, but yet we need to pay for his tax cuts for the rich people. So unfortunately, you're the ones who are paying. And that's what they're faced, right? So there are going to be some Republicans that may go against Trump to try to keep their seat. And that's kind of a tricky one. Do I get close to Trump, hurt my local voters, or do I help my local voters? But they are like, why don't you support Trump? What are you doing? Right? And so that's where the numbers are going to be really interesting come midterms. Politico actually did the breakdown of this. They said Here there are 11 Republicans who are in districts where higher than average people have Medicaid, right? And that represents 2.7 recipients. So basically, the split in the house is 218 to 215.
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Unknown A
So it's very, very close. And let's say those Republicans, you know, vote for the Medicaid cuts, side with, you know, the billionaires. That's going to hurt them locally and set them up for disastrous midterm. On top of that, you have Elon Musk parading around all day, every day, hey, let's cut jobs, let's get rid of those federal workers, et cetera. And so essentially, you're putting people out of work. So their policies right now is put people out of work, cut Medicaid. And then on top of that their priorities are, okay, deportations. Right, Which a lot of Republicans want. You got stronger border stuff, stronger military tax cuts for wealthy. The numbers just. Frank, the numbers don't add up. And so you'll actually see this in the bond markets, et cetera, to where like, yeah, we think Trump's going to probably have to borrow, deficit, spend and push us more into the negative territory.
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Unknown A
And that's something that was predicted before. Right. Our national debt will most likely go up more under Trump. This was warned by a Nobel Prize winning economist. We talked about this before the election. I know the election's over and I'm just saying it's over, but this is sort of how it's playing out. What was predicted is playing out. Essentially their math doesn't work. And unfortunately, the people are going to likely pay for it. Again, is going to be cuts to your Medicaid. There may be other things that they'll figure out ways to cut. That's why, you know, Musk is like desperately looking around, okay, gee, can we cut park rangers? Can we cut, you know, FBI? Can we cut ca. Oh, yeah, let's save money that way. Let's get more corruption. That'll help everybody. That's their plan. Like I said, guys, the math doesn't add up.
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Unknown A
And if they were really serious about trying to balance the budget, at least getting to some fiscal responsibility, we wouldn't necessarily need these massive tax cuts for billionaires. And that's kind of what we're facing here. And I just find it fascinating when you read through what the Republicans are talking about of like, you know, where their priorities are. And that's up to you guys, right? That's up to voters decide, okay, which is more important to me? Do I really want to pay for deportations? Because it does cost money, guys. It costs money to deport people. And I understand if you really hate, you know, farm workers and you hate workers that, you know, take care of your kids, you hate workers that, you know, put roofs over your house, that's the kind of stuff you have to, you have to choose. But that's what we're talking about.
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Unknown A
It was actually really interesting when you, when you break down some more numbers, which I'll give you, it says here House Freedom Caucus members and other budget hawks successfully press for an amendment that directly ties 2 trillion in spending reductions over 10 years to the party's tax cut effort. Right. So they're thinking, okay, how can we cut government services to a trillion worth? And that would be the stuff that Musk is trying to do. And then also, too, how can we give tax cuts to billionaires? That's effectively what we're talking about here. Under that provision, the GOP pulls from Medicaid and other programs. The more financial room Republicans have for extending the Trump's 2017 tax cuts. Right. So that's what they're trying to do. On top of that, you actually have this. And I want to talk about the markets and how this relates, because you have to connect everything together.
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Unknown A
Things aren't looking so rosy at some companies. For example, Starbucks just announced today layoffs a thousand workers. And I believe this is going to be on the corporate side. So I don't think it's going to affect store workers. But that doesn't really bode well for the company. Now, the way you have to think about this stuff is if you're a company like a Starbucks and you're cutting corporate, that means you're probably going to put more work onto the people who stay. It also means likely that they're not looking to expand in R and D, they're not looking to grow these kind of things. We've known this about Starbucks for a while. They're just in a different time, right? They're facing much, much stiffer competition overseas, especially places like China. I can tell you here in Korea, we don't even really go to Starbucks that much anymore.
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Unknown A
There's just a lot more local competition. And on top of that, when the economy takes a downturn, are people still going to pay for their $8 lattes or whatever? And you guys can let me know, you know, what the cost of lattes are in your neck of the woods. I'll just say this. My wife likes to drink coffee. We do go to coffee places. But me, I'm not a huge coffee drinker. I get tea myself. But this stuff actually is quite expensive. So we don't go every day. And I know for you guys that know what I'm talking about, like, if you were to go every day to Starbucks, that bill gets up, you know, up there pretty quickly. So this is not necessarily like the kind of business that people will have to spend money on. And if economy takes a downturn and you'll just, you'll see it right?
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Unknown A
The companies essentially predicted in their numbers, like, okay, we just don't need so many corporate people. Now, to be fair to the markets, to refer to Trump is actually quite interesting. Remember, Tim Cook went to the inauguration. I think Apple gave Trump money and they're promising that they're going to bring jobs to the usa. Now, I say promise because it hasn't, hasn't happened yet. And they're actually promising quite a bit. And they're tying this to AI because this is the plan of the Republicans. Right? So tax cuts for billionaires. Right. We're going to cut your Medicaid to pay for it. We're going to put on tariffs to do all of our side projects. AI stuff, sovereign wealth fund. And theoretically. Now, it didn't say specifically, but I would bet this is sort of what's on the table. Theoretically, Apple's looking to get some of that tariff money.
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Unknown A
Because for those of you who are kind of curious how this stuff works, what you do is you say, okay, we're putting tariffs on foreign goods. Then we take that money, which is essentially a tax that you pay, and then we're going to, you know, distribute it however we want, be it in our sovereign wealth fund for our pet projects like Musk Trip to Mars, that kind of stuff. Or in this situation, maybe we'll use that tariff money to funnel it to Apple so that Apple can build a new factory in Texas. That's the, that's the, that's what was announced today. So they're talking Houston, Apple saying 20,000 jobs. It could happen. It could happen. I'm. I find this a little bit. That was a hard word to say. Optimistic. And you have to remember this. So basically you're getting people to, essentially taxpayers to subsidize Apple.
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Unknown A
That's what it ends up being to create jobs. To be fair, it could theoretically create jobs, but 20,000 in Houston, and then they're saying data centers, AI, this kind of stuff. I mean, I just feel like this is a big bubble, to be perfectly frank. Now, to be fair to Apple, Alibaba, and this is a Chinese company, they just announced they're going to be investing a bunch in AI. They're saying 52 billion. And there's theoretically competition for companies to build more AI. I always find this whole thing questionable because just think about this logically. So our growth strategy in the markets is, is again, invest all this AI technology to replace workers. So what's going to happen to all these workers? And that's sort of where I feel like it's unsustainable. Microsoft is already starting to pull out a bit. They said here Microsoft has dropped some AI data lease, you know, leases.
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Unknown A
Right. So data centers are expensive, energy is expensive. The math doesn't work, doesn't work out for me. I, I don't get it, but I understand this. If you watch YouTube. For those of you who watch more of the tech channels, they'll just tell you how AI is going to be awesome. But like I said, I don't think the math works out. And this is what it boils down to is like, how can we have a sustainable economy? Remember the Trumps and the must Plan tax cuts for billionaires, cut your Medicaid, deport a whole bunch of people, pay for that somehow, you know, get more border security. Then we're going to, you know, use whatever theoretical extra money that we have. I mean, and if we don't have extra money, we'll just borrow money, go into more debt or put more tariffs on people to. To build these AI centers to replace you and get this weird cycle of replacing workers.
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Unknown A
It doesn't add up for me. I don't really think their plan is going to work, but that's just my opinion. On top of that, you got something like this. Trump warns Elon Musk building a Tesla factory in India would be very unfair to his administration. I'll just say this, it's funny. Every now and then you'll get people who love Musk and Trump to say, oh, Chris, you're so dumb. And then they always accuse me that I'm Chinese, which I'm not, I'm Vietnamese, I live in Korea. There's that. But, you know, for some people, they think all Asian people are Chinese, right? For whatever reason. And I have to point that out because they never criticize Musk, that Musk has a big plant in China. He builds a ton of cars there. He could theoretically build all his plants in usa, but that's not really on the table.
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Unknown A
Actually, Musk is looking to build in Mexico, and as you can see here, he's looking to build in India. Trump is saying, oh, it's unfair, etc. But, you know, this is how the game is played for American companies to build in the usa. They want to essentially to be subsidized, right? So Apple may or may not get that subsidized money from your taxpayer dollars, and then the cycle keeps it going. I just try my best to keep you guys informed to understand how this game is played. The other issue as well is that the markets are grossly overvalued at the moment. And if this AI boom and bet doesn't pay off, if you don't see the profits and you'll start to see equities fall down. If equities go down, then wealthy people, the billionaire class, don't feel so wealthy anymore. And then they cut back on their, on their spending.
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Unknown A
And so then you got that problem. And then, then the Trumps and the Muscle do the same thing again. Well, you know, guys, we have to do more tax cuts for rich people to get them to spend again and get the economy going, which may or may not work. But again, their whole plan is to develop AI to replace you. So I don't know, none of this really makes sense to me. I just tell you what they're up to and what they're looking to cut, what they're looking to add to, and that's what's up. So, like to hear your thoughts, any one of these things, and I'll catch you on the next video.