All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
Trump's Big Week: Middle East Trip, China Deal, Pharma EO, "Big, Beautiful Bill" with Ben Shapiro
Sat, 17 May 2025
(0:00) The Besties welcome Ben Shapiro! (1:53) A Bestie apology to Phil Hellmuth, All-In Poker Tournament (7:58) Trump's majorly consequential Middle East trip: Saudi, Qatar, Iran, and his vision for a "New Middle East" (35:18) US-China deal: is the tide turning on tariffs? (46:33) GOP divided over "Big, Beautiful Bill" due to its impact on our debt spiral (1:18:48) Science Corner: Montana bans cell-based meat, joining Florida and others (1:24:31) Trump's EO on pharma prices: role of PBMs, is this too much government intervention? Follow Ben Shapiro: https://x.com/benshapiro Follow the besties: https://x.com/chamath https://x.com/Jason https://x.com/DavidSacks https://x.com/friedberg Follow on X: https://x.com/theallinpod Follow on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theallinpod Follow on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@theallinpod Follow on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/allinpod Intro Music Credit: https://rb.gy/tppkzl https://x.com/yung_spielburg Intro Video Credit: https://x.com/TheZachEffect Referenced in the show: https://www.whitehouse.gov/fact-sheets/2025/05/fact-sheet-president-donald-j-trump-secures-historic-1-2-trillion-economic-commitment-in-qatar https://www.whitehouse.gov/fact-sheets/2025/05/fact-sheet-president-donald-j-trump-secures-historic-600-billion-investment-commitment-in-saudi-arabia https://www.whitehouse.gov/articles/2025/05/in-riyadh-president-trump-charts-the-course-for-a-prosperous-future-in-the-middle-east https://www.semafor.com/article/05/16/2025/qatar-commits-more-than-200-billion-in-us-investment https://www.cnbc.com/2025/05/13/trump-saudi-investment-speech.html https://www.cnbc.com/2025/05/13/trump-says-us-will-remove-all-sanctions-on-syria.html https://www.reuters.com/world/what-have-china-united-states-agreed-geneva-2025-05-12 https://www.cnn.com/2019/07/02/politics/donald-trump-dictators-kim-jong-un-vladimir-putin https://newrepublic.com/post/185836/trump-brags-dictators-orban-debate-harris https://www.cnbc.com/quotes/US30Y https://www.politico.com/live-updates/2025/05/14/congress/the-titanic-johnson-predicts-houses-big-beautiful-reconciliation-bill-will-sink-in-the-senate-00348310 https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/GFDEBTN https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/GFDEGDQ188S https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/12/opinion/josh-hawley-dont-cut-medicaid.html https://www.whitehouse.gov/fact-sheets/2025/05/fact-sheet-president-donald-j-trump-announces-actions-to-put-american-patients-first-by-lowering-drug-prices-and-stopping-foreign-free-riding-on-american-pharmaceutical-innovation/
Chapter 1: What did Trump achieve during his Middle East trip?
Nick, find that picture immediately.
Can you cut it in?
If you want to come to our next event, it's the All In Summit in Los Angeles. Fourth year for All In Summit. Go to allin.com slash events to apply.
Hold on one second. Let me do the intro properly.
Ben, this is going to be so good right now. You're going to feel so uncomfortable. It's going to be amazing. Go ahead.
So look, Ben has a hard out in an hour and 40 minutes. So we're going to get the show started. However, Ben, we need to take a pause. Jason will explain what happened last week. He is going to issue a formal apology. If that formal apology is not good enough, I will step in over to you, Jason. Okay.
We, the members of the All In podcast, including Chamath Palihapitiya and myself, Jason Calacanis, would like to formally and respectfully apologize to poker legend Phil Hellmuth for our previous comments about his relationship with Hollywood actor Timothée Chalamet and the Los Angeles celebrity community more generally.
On a previous episode of this podcast, a number of inaccurate, potentially legally actionable statements were made by the host regarding Mr. Hellmuth. It was strongly implied on this program that Mr. Hellmuth was not acquainted with Mr. Chalamet, and it was further suggested that he had harassed and manhandled the Oscar-nominated performer during a social event in Miami, Florida.
This was a flagrant misrepresentation of the facts for which we are sorry. We here at All In are committed to journalistic responsibility and integrity, and we hope to use this time to correct the record. In fact, as a noted Bon Vivant and publicly visible representative...
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Chapter 2: How is the US-China trade deal evolving?
Really excited to have Ben Shapiro back on the program. Yeah, I'll listen to the Ben Shapiro show, you know, about Daily Wire. And Ben, you've been covering this Trump Middle East trip all week. So let's get into that as our first topic here. As everybody knows, Trump was in the Middle East.
He secured a huge investment from the Saudis, $600 billion, $140 billion for a defense partnership, and MBS said he wants to make it a trillion. A bunch of high-profile CEOs joined Trump, including friends of the show, Elon and, of course, Dara from Uber, Andy Jassy from Amazon. Amazon, who else was there? Alex Karp, Jensen, tons of people, including our fourth bestie here, David Sachs was there.
He also closed a $200 billion deal with Qatar or Qatar, which includes 96 billion from Boeing to send 160 planes there with an option of 50 more. And he removed sanctions against Syria, a little controversial, we'll get into that. To quote, give them a chance at greatness. He gave a speech at a Saudi US investment forum in Riyadh.
where he powerfully outlined his vision for a new Middle East, basically rejecting 20 years of American interventions and forever wars. And he gave big credit to a, quote, new generation of leaders, including MBS. for building better societies. Ben, what do you think here? What was your take on the trip? Is this the best Trump of all the versions of Trump?
This did seem to me to be the best version. He seemed really comfortable with this category of leader. in this region in particular?
Oh, for sure. I mean, there's no question about that, right? I mean, he likes MBS. He obviously likes the Emir of Qatar. He likes the folks in UAE.
We've known that for a while, and he's really signaling a shift away from the Obama-Biden policy toward a lot of these places where Biden liked to say the word democracy and then immediately divide off from Saudi Arabia on the basis of that and chide MBS. and all this kind of stuff, and then try to cut a deal with Iran, for example, at the same exact time, which of course pisses off the Saudis.
Trump is going over there and he's in deal-making mode. And you can see he's in deal-making mode. And his entire sort of approach to the Middle East is what he said in the speech, commerce above chaos, right? Let's do some business here. And he understands that there are a lot of people in KSA, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, and also in Qatar, UAE as well, who are really looking to do business.
And I think there are a bunch of strategic aspects of this that are really good. One of them, obviously, is driving these places away from China. And the more business ties you have with places like Saudi Arabia or Bahrain, UAE, Qatar, the further away they're going to get from China. I think you do have to be careful with Qatar in particular, which has some divided priorities, shall we say.
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Chapter 3: What are the implications of the 'Big, Beautiful Bill'?
But with that said, the idea of bringing dollars into the United States, combining on things like AI is what David Sachs has been working on over there. Like that stuff is all really, really good. The warning that I'd issue to President Trump is just make sure that that you have strings attached to. Meaning clearly there are strings attached from the other side when you're talking about Qatar.
So also the United States should have strings attached. So you mentioned Syria there. If you're talking about, you know, getting rid of the sanctions on Syria, there's an argument to be made. Obviously, Erdogan in Turkey would love that because basically the leader of Syria now, al-Jilani, he changed his name. He's kind of like the. the prince of terrorists, right?
He's the artist formerly known as al-Jilani. Now he's al-Sharai, I think he changed his name too. He was al-Qaeda, then he was ISIS, then he's HDS. He basically works for the Turks. And so obviously the Turks would love for al-Jilani to have sanctions removed. That's fine.
I mean, I think there's a case to be made for it, but you have to make sure that he actually delivers on the other end of that, which would be getting rid of the terrorists in his country.
What do you think, Ben, about Qatar, Qatar, for people, it's the same word just said differently here in the West and in their country. Um, do you think we should have deep ties to them? And is the steel man argument that their relationship with Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood acceptable to you, Ben Shapiro?
Or do you think we should hold the line with them and say, hey, you got to cut off these relationships if you want to have a relationship with the United States?
I mean, it seems to me that we have a lot more leverage in the latter situation. And Qatar has obviously been paying some $8 billion to have this airbase on its own territory, but then puts restrictions on how the United States can use that sort of airbase. That airbase was previously located in Saudi.
And so, you know, it's my perspective that after October 7th, for example, the United States under Joe Biden should have gone to Qatar, which obviously has a deep relationship with Hamas, as proven by the release of that American hostage while President Trump was in the Middle East, which was done at the behest of Qatar.
that probably the United States should have gone to Qatar and said, listen, the air base goes away unless all the hostages come out and the Hamas leadership goes into exile and you avoid the entire war. So there is leverage that can be exerted. I'm not sure that the leverage is being properly exerted on Qatar. Let's put it this way.
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Chapter 4: What does Trump's pharma executive order entail?
Chapter 5: How does the new tax plan affect American debt?
And fundamentally, that's a colonial mindset, is what he's highlighting in this speech. He's saying that the point of view that all others are wrong means that they should come around to our point of view, our model of democracy, our model of governing. And in the speech, he basically underscored that that's not really the case anymore.
We are no longer going to be colonizers where we are going to enforce our view of government on the rest of the world and say this is the only good path. But there are other paths and we can respect them. We can work together so long as we aren't harming one another, so long as terrorism goes away, which he underscored in his speech. has gone away.
And by the way, I'm not trying to highlight or kind of prop Trump up for the speech itself. But I do think that this underscores a shift in the political viewpoint that has now come to power in America that, you know, we are no longer going to have this kind of moral or socio political framework that says, it's our way or the highway, but we are now going to go to folks like Xi
like North Korea, like China, and say, we can respect your way of living, we can respect your way of governing, and we can have partnership and continue to build a world together without saying that if you don't follow our path, we're never going to be true partners.
So for me, the biggest thing that came out of this whole visit was that shift in narrative that I think really is different than what we've seen in the past. And it counters a lot of how the mainstream media has kind of, you know, framed his quote, embrace of, you know, differing ways of governance.
Ben, this was obviously a Republican position as well. You know, just we're going to have a hard line on human rights and democracy. And in fact, The entire Republican position in terms of, and globalists, Clinton too, was, hey, let's embrace China and we will lean them towards democracy. That obviously didn't happen.
They did build a vibrant economy and took 400, 500 million people out of poverty into a middle class. But here we're seeing something different. You know, I've spent a lot of time in the region, maybe four or five trips in the last couple of years. Last couple of times I was there, women doing business, dancing, music, and now there's alcohol in the kingdom in some select locations.
There's a casino coming to UAE. We're actually seeing maybe this strategy of less judgment, more engagement, actually result in more modernization. So what's your take on this?
I mean, I think that one of the things that's happened in the media coverage of President Trump's speech is this sort of false binary that isn't really what's going on. So it was sort of posited as neoconism versus isolationism. And he mentioned both of those sorts of concepts in his speech. But the reality is that I think we should be careful about how we define these terms.
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Chapter 6: What are the consequences of rising interest rates?
My simple request for Americans is don't be mathematically illiterate and let's all grow up together. Come on.
Yeah, yeah. And I'll just say, like, just to go back a couple comments to Chamath's point, number one, monetize our assets. Totally agree. There's opportunities. We got to do it in a clean way. We follow the law. We follow the EPAs there to make sure that these methods and systems that we use are not endangering species or the planet or whatever other kind of acts are important.
But I'm not sure that the ramp up is gonna make up for the deficit. I think that's really important. It's great to say that at a high level, there's a North Star there, we can monetize our assets. But as you build out the annual plan over the next 10 to 15 years, first of all, political cycles are gonna affect this.
If the Democrats come back into power in this next election cycle, they'll put a blockade on this stuff. It's not gonna be persistent. So again, we have to fix the spending problem. And this idea that we have to cut entitlements to fix the spending problem. I don't even think that that's step one. I think step one is don't add new programs. Step two, go back to COVID level spending.
And then step three is you can address the entitlements and all the other kind of spending. And step four is you execute as quickly as you can on monetizing America's assets. But I'm not sure that the ramp up is going to be fast enough to make up for the deficit over the next four years.
One quick comment here also that I think is important, and that is that the American people, we're going to have to get used to the idea that we can't just spend every dollar that comes in. So if you take a look at the Spanish Empire in the 16th century, Spanish Empire in the 16th century is a dominant power in Europe. And then they discover all the gold in the new world.
And so suddenly they are easily the richest power on earth because of the amount of money that's coming in. And they immediately start spending all of it. And they immediately start... expending all of that capital in order to build up and build up and do different projects. And pretty soon they're bankrupt and they're defaulting on their debt routinely.
There's not a correlation between your asset base and inability to go bankrupt. I mean, we all know very rich people who go bankrupt because they outspend their asset base. In the United States, we can expand our asset base for sure. And we should do that, of course.
But if we don't wean ourselves from the addiction to spending particularly on social programs because that's what's going to bankrupt us, then all we will do if we increase our asset base is say, hey, look how much more money we now get to spend because it's there.
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