God's Debris: The Complete Works, Amazon https://tinyurl.com/GodsDebrisCompleteWorksFind my "extra" content on Locals: https://ScottAdams.Locals.comContent:Politics, Robbie Starbuck, NATO Shoshana Chatfield, Fannie Mae Unethical Conduct, Bill Pulte, Panama Canal, Pete Hegseth, Flu Shot Study, Trust in Science, Jack Smith Biden Staffers, CNN Harry Enten, President Trump, Tariffs, Scott Bessent, Trade Imbalance, China GDP, Kyle Bass, China's Reserve Adequacy, China's Financial Challenges, Grok Excellence, US Treasuries, Hedge Fund Treasuries, Elon vs Navarro, 2 Head Shots Suicide, Ryan Routh Stinger, Disability Claims Activist Judges, RFK Jr. Fluoride, Mike Benz, Anti-AFD Lawfare, China Trade War Options, Scott Adams~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~If you would like to enjoy this same content plus bonus content from Scott Adams, including micro-lessons on lots of useful topics to build your talent stack, please see scottadams.locals.com for full access to that secret treasure.
Chapter 1: What is the highlight of this episode?
Good morning everybody and welcome to the highlight of human civilization. It's called Coffee with Scott Adams and it's probably the best fun you'll ever have in your entire life. But if you want to take a chance on taking it up to a level that no human can even understand with their tiny shiny human brains.
All you need for that is a cup or mug or a glass, a tank or chalice, a canteen jug or flask, a vessel of any kind. Fill it with your favorite liquid. I like coffee. And join me now for the unparalleled pleasure of the dopamine. At the end of the day, the thing that makes everything better. It's called the simultaneous sip. And it happens now. Go. So good. So good.
Chapter 2: Who is Robbie Starbuck and what victories has he achieved?
Well, we will, of course, talk about the tariffs and who's got the upper hand, China or the U.S. I'll help you sort that out. But first, some other news, some of it's good. Activist Robbie Starbuck gets another big victory. He's been racking them up lately for a while now. So he's going after big companies that have DEI programs to try to talk the man of being racist out.
And you just got another big win with a company called Constellation Brands. And they own Corona, Medela, and Pacifico beer. And last week, Robbie Starbuck did a story exposing their woke DEI policies. And then they said, let's negotiate. And then they made a bunch of promises. So they're no longer going to do DEI. But they made a bunch of other promises that made sense.
They won't be participating in this weird CEI social credit system. They no longer use the term Latinx. They won't be lobbying for legislation that isn't core to their business. Basically all the things you'd want them to do. So another big victory for Robbie Starbuck. Keep an eye on him because he's just rolling up the winds against racism.
Finally, speaking of DEI, the Post Millennial is reporting that the top U.S. military official on the NATO military committees was fired and people think probably because of DEI. Now, as you know, whenever a woman in the workplace does something that's never done before, we don't say, oh, somebody did something good.
Chapter 3: What happened to Admiral Shoshana Chatfield?
We say, it's the first woman to ever accomplish whatever, or to ever be in this line of work, or to ever achieve this, the first woman. Well, The person who was fired is Navy Vice Admiral Shoshana Chatfield. And she was one of the few female Navy three-star officers. And she was the first woman to lead the Naval War College. And now she's the first three-star... I'm sorry, it's not funny.
But she's the first three-star admiral to be fired for racism. I really shouldn't be laughing at that. Because she is a member of the military and I should show more respect. But what I'm making fun of is not her so much. I'm making fun of the fact that we always say the first woman to ever do anything. And I'm so beyond that. Or the first black American to do a particular kind of job.
And I'm thinking to myself, what are we just figuring out that people can do jobs? Why is that still a thing? Shouldn't we be long past? It's the first Latinx to do something. Yes, everybody can do jobs. It turns out there's sufficient smart people in pretty much every group, and they can do jobs. They can hold jobs. Yeah, amazing. Well, Bill Pulte, who's the U.S.
Director of Federal Housing, FHFA, he's been posting on X a bunch of cost-cutting. He's getting busy over there. Now, I don't know how much of this is Doge-related because I don't see Doge, at least in the announcements. So it might be that he's just doing his own thing because he's smart and capable and he knows how to do things. So here's what he just announced. This is just wild.
Chapter 4: What unethical conduct was reported at Fannie Mae?
This is one of his announcements. There are a whole bunch of things that look pretty successful there. He said, there's an announcement that Fannie Mae, so one of his entities, fires over 100 employees for unethical conduct, including the facilitation of fraud. How in the world did you catch 100 employees involved in unethical conduct including the facilitation of fraud.
And I kind of wonder what the other unethical conduct is. But I'm pretty sure he's got them dead to rights. You know, obviously it's something well-documented or it wouldn't be in the news. Or at least Pulte wouldn't be interested in it unless they had good evidence. So congratulations, Bill Pulte, another superstar in the Trump administration. Apparently, Pete Hegseth got a big win. in Panama.
So he went down to Panama to try to de-China-fy it because we don't like China having control over the Panama Canal because they operate the ports, etc. So according to Rahim Kassam in the National Pulse, the U.S. and Panama are rebooting their strategic partnership and they're going to get rid of China's influence and they're going to have a robust security upgrade. A bunch of other things.
I guess Panama is going to reject the Belt and Road Initiative that they were part of. And it's a little complicated what the deal is, but it's all pro-America. And Panama has decided, you know what would be good? I've got an idea what would be good. What if I'm just going to throw this out there?
What if we don't piss off the United States so much that they send the military in to conquer our country? I've got an idea. What if we just make China mad? Because they're much further away. So it looks like Exeth made the sale. So big victory for Trump and for P. Exeth. So that's good. All right, let's check on the potentially fake news. You be the judge.
According to the National News Desk, there was a study of this year's flu shot. And it came up to the conclusion that there's a 27% higher flu risk in adults who got the shot. So in other words, if you didn't get the shot, according to the study, You know, you got an average odds of getting the virus. But if you got the shot, suddenly your odds of getting the virus would shoot up 27%.
Now, does that sound true? Do you believe that? Or does it sound a little bit too on the nose? You know what I mean? Because you know there's an audience for the shots are not only not helping, they're making everything worse. You know you're going to get a lot of attention if you publish something that says the shots make it worse. A little too on the nose.
Well, I don't know what's true, but I'll tell you that Grok looked at it and said the sample that they used were clinic employees. Clinic employees. In other words, the people who are most often around infected people with flu. If your sample is just the clinic that's always surrounded by flu and you say, huh, looks like people getting the shots got 27% more chance of getting it.
It's probably just that the shots don't work. And this is a group of people who are on the flu all day. So I think Grok for the win. But again, you don't want to believe Grok just automatically. It's great for context, but is it a better authority than the study? I don't know. We don't know.
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Chapter 5: What are the implications of tariffs between the U.S. and China?
Well, Harry Enten continues to be the standout on CNN whose name is not Scott. And Harry Enten was talking about Trump. The thing I like about Harry Enten is he gets very excited about his own data. You know, he's sort of the data guy. But he just takes the data where it implies. So he doesn't put any kind of Democrat spin on it. So it's either good or bad.
And he just gets excited if it's a non-standard result. But here he was saying that Trump is not a lame duck. If anything, he's a soaring eagle. Can you imagine a CNN employee saying that out loud on live TV? Trump is not a lame duck. If anything, he's a soaring eagle. Now, I think at one point he does say, It depends what you think of his policies. But he's getting a lot done.
So his number of executive orders is unprecedented, at least in modern times. And whether you like it or not, he's just getting a ton done. So he's no lame duck. So Harry Enten got pretty excited about the scale of change that Trump is doing. We've never really seen a second... Have we ever seen a second-term president do anything?
I'd love to see the total list of second-term president accomplishments. Now, his second term is weird because it was one in between and because he's Trump. But I'd love to see how he stands up to any other second term. Anyway. Okay. So let's talk about some tariffs. I'm going to try to sort it out for you.
If you don't understand a lot about economics, but you're nervous about the future, I'm going to try to put it in the simplest terms, who's got the advantage, so that you can decide what you think is going to happen. Now, given that the stock market has stabilized, at the same time that China has... Forget about the numbers. Let's say China raised their tariffs on us, what, yesterday by 84%.
And then Trump responded by raising their tariff to 104%. You know, we're going to get lost in all the numbers. So just assume that both of them have decided to put tariffs on each other that are sort of through the roof and unreasonable. So they're both playing hard. Now, if that sticks, the things that will be more expensive in the U.S., there'll be lots of them. Here's an example.
Things like iPhones and PlayStation and ThinkPad laptops and HP desktops and some kind of TVs, basically any consumer stuff that China is making. But I look at the list and I say to myself, I don't really need any of that stuff. If I had to switch from an iPhone to a Samsung, isn't the Samsung made completely in South Korea? And would I be so unhappy if I had a Samsung? I don't know.
So it might be bad for Apple, and it might be bad for a number of these companies, but I don't know how much we need any of this. One of the things that might come out of this is Americans having a completely different idea of what's essential. And it's easier to tell your kid that you don't want to buy them a PlayStation because the price is through the roof.
Well, I'd love to buy you a PlayStation, but not at $2,000. Yes, I do think it's time to upgrade your iPhone, dear, but not at $3,000. So it looks like you're going to keep your iPhone for maybe a year or more. So there's a lot of stuff that we just sort of don't need. We want, but we don't need. Now, there's other stuff I'll talk about, pharmaceuticals and rare earth minerals and stuff.
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Chapter 6: How does the flu shot impact flu risk according to recent studies?
That would be good for the United States, but anemic for them. If you cut that in half, meaning what could happen with these tariffs, there will be serious domestic chaos. Now, you're saying to yourself, it doesn't matter how much domestic chaos there is. The government just has an iron fist on the people, so it doesn't matter.
I would argue that domestic unhappiness is always important, even to dictators or anybody who has full control of stuff. So that could be a big deal. But again, we don't know what numbers coming out of China are real. And I don't know if anybody's really smart enough to predict the exact impact. But you can see that China has some exposure because their economy is not super strong.
And there's no doubt this would be a hit. So it's a hit on an economy that's already being called anemic. Then there's Kyle Bass. Now, Kyle Bass I love because he's as anti- China as I am. He's been for years. But he's also very well informed about the whole financial situation with China. Better than the average person because it's his business.
He says there's a reason the Chinese demanded that the IMF stop publishing their reserve adequacy calculation for China and for Hong Kong in 2019. He says China doesn't have adequate USD reserves to operate their economy. Now, that's a little bit out of my zone. But just know that somebody who knows more about the need for USD reserves to operate your economy says that they're running out.
Are they? Well, again, I think all data is difficult to estimate. But Kyle thinks that they're not in good shape because they demanded that the IMF stop publishing their reserve adequacy.
why would china insist that somebody stops publishing their reserve adequacy unless it wasn't adequate so that's a pretty good you know connecting the dots there if it's not adequate and they needed to operate their economy that's a problem then there's uh chamath palihapitiya who has the advantage of being one of the smartest people around and He has looked deeply into it.
And his opinion on X was, as many problems as the USA may have, I would say China's are worse. And listen, China's seen the slowest growth they've had in decades. And again, that would be based on what China tells us. So it might be even worse than they tell us. Their attractiveness as a recipient of foreign domestic investment has come to a halt.
How many of you remember in 2018 when I lost my stepson to fentanyl and I told you that China was unsafe for business and if it wasn't unsafe for business, I was gonna make it unsafe? And there wasn't, I don't think there was a single person Who thought that was even remotely possible? Because we were doing well with China, it seemed like. China was just coasting along.
And I said that investment in China was going to come to a halt. Here we are. Chamath points out they have a very difficult demographic problem. Too many old people, not enough young. I don't know if that will have anything to do with the tariffs. because that's sort of a longer-term problem. Tariffs are a shorter term. And then number four, they need exports.
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Chapter 7: What are the challenges facing China's economy?
In which we can get everything we need, not necessarily made in this country, but everything we need from some of them. So as long as we're getting some of them, you know, in other words, if we're getting there. rare earth minerals from Australia and Japan is refining them for us. And, you know, South Korea is maybe building some factories in the U.S. to make some more electronics on our soil.
And, you know, maybe Canada starts. Maybe we become friends with Canada again. Maybe Greenland, maybe Ukraine come up with some rare earth minerals. So I don't know if China wants to win this or lose this. just consider this. If China surrenders on tariffs and just says, all right, all right, we'll start treating you more fairly, is that going to be good or bad for China?
I think the worst thing for China would be to not give in to anything. and then force us to kind of suck wind for two years until we find an entire trading block that can do everything they can do. And then they will be unnecessary. And then it's a whole different world. So it seems to me that China has two choices. One,
maintain a lot of good business by treating us fairly, or two, lose everything that they were doing with the United States forever because we would never trade with them again once we build alternative sources. I feel like they would rather have some leverage over us So for their own strategic reasons, I think they need to surrender.
But they have to make it look like it was a win-win and not a surrender. So don't be surprised if at some point something like, well, maybe our diplomats should meet your diplomats and talk about this. Or maybe we should come up with a grand deal. I wouldn't be surprised. And I'm not even sure if I'm rooting for them to cave or I'm rooting for them to not cave.
Because by far our better situation would be we create a trading block with the rest of the world, where the rest of the world is providing us everything we were getting from China. plus a lot of it being made locally, plus we learn how to make factories again. So we can either win or lose, but I think we win both ways. It feels like it. It feels like we have two ways to win and no way to lose.
Now, one of the ways to win will be really painful. If we have to wait two years, I'll just pick that number. If we had to wait two years for alternative sources of pharmaceuticals and rare earth minerals to be available, that could be a real painful two years. But boy, would we be happy when that was over, right? So remember my other prediction?
My other prediction that the stock market would come down around 20%. But then the psychology of investors would kick in and people would feel like, huh, 20%. That's a buying opportunity. So I think we're seeing a bounce around, like teasing that 20%. And it might keep doing that. So you might have your up days and your down days. But I feel like when it gets near 20%,
you're going to have about as many buyers as you have sellers. So it might stabilize there for a while until we get better clarity. All right. I'm going to say a few words to the locals people privately. The rest of you, thanks for joining. Nice to see you. And I'll see you same time tomorrow for even more fun. All right, locals, I'll see you in 30 seconds.
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