All Episodes
Previous Next
April 7, 2025 - Judging Freedom - Judge Andrew Napolitano
25:01
Prof. Jeffrey Sachs : War and Tariffs
| Copy link to current segment

Time Text
Hi, everyone.
Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom.
Today is Tuesday, April 8th, 2025.
Professor Jeffrey Sachs joins us now.
Professor Sachs, a pleasure as always.
Thank you.
Great to be with you.
I want to ask you about what military gain, what political gain, what geopolitical gain there is with the United States bombing a helpless country like Yemen.
And then this morning I saw a video that the President of the United States himself posted on his own website of about 30 or 40 men in a circle or an oval about to break.
We can't show you what happens because of the censors about to break their Ramadan fast when one of Pete Hegseth's bombs obliterated all of them.
In the president's posting, the full video is there.
We're obviously not going to show it.
What is gained by this, the posting, the boasting, and the killing?
Obviously, we gain nothing except to prolong America's expensive, cruel, illegal...
This is a war that stretches across North Africa, Libya, East Africa, Sudan, Somalia, into the Eastern Mediterranean,
Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, and of course with the intention of Netanyahu, who was in Washington this week, to extend it to Iran.
This is a regional war that has raged for more than 20 years.
It's a war that comes because there is no peace due to Israel's policy of domination over the Palestinian people.
Which generates support for the Palestinians, including military support around the region.
Netanyahu's doctrine, as we've discussed, is never to negotiate, never to compromise, but rather to crush not only the Palestinians, but the Libyans, Somalians, Sudanese,
Lebanese, Iraqis, Syrians, and Yemenites.
Who would support the Palestinian cause?
You name them as terrorists, you name them for whatever you want, but the terror and, in fact, the genocide now is being committed by Israel in Gaza and in Palestine,
not because there is an implacable opposition, but because Israel is implacable.
about dominating what they call Greater Israel.
This is a mix of theological and secular desires of a radical extremist government which Netanyahu leads and has been his vision for 30 years.
We are party to that.
Trump again gave green light in The visit to NetYahu, a man that is under an arrest warrant by the International Criminal Court for war crimes and crimes against humanity.
We have seen in recent days the brutal slaughter of aid workers deliberately targeted by the Israelis.
Nothing stops it.
So when you ask what's the gain?
Well, you can say, but the Houthis are attacking us because they're defending the Palestinian cause.
Oh, the Hezbollah, they're attacking because they're defending the Palestinian cause.
Hamas, they're attacking because they're defending the Palestinian cause.
And the point is that Israel says there is no Palestinian cause.
We crush them.
We kill them.
We destroy them.
We ethnically cleanse them.
Colonize the West Bank with hundreds of thousands of settlers.
Of course, there will be no peace that way.
But is that really America's best interest?
Perpetual war?
To bankrupt our country?
To isolate our country internationally?
To absolutely break relations across the world?
Because people can see this for what it is.
Complicity in an ongoing...
Suppression and commission of war crimes.
So it's very, very sad because war cannot solve political issues.
It can kill a lot of people, but it can't solve basic political issues.
Our friend and colleague, Colonel Douglas McGregor, has offered here and elsewhere...
That the demands that President Trump has imposed on Iran, a dismantling of nuclear facilities which his own CIA and DIA and other intelligence communities tell him do not exist,
a dismantling of ballistic missiles and other offensive weaponry, A, would essentially reduce Iran to We
should understand that part of U.S. arrogance...
Over the last 30 years is you don't negotiate with the other side.
You bomb it.
You threaten it.
You believe that American dominance always prevails.
And in the case of Iran, there was a negotiated agreement to end Iran's nuclear program at whatever state it is, and in return to end sanctions.
That was the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or JCPOA, negotiated in 2016 by several countries, including the United States.
When Donald Trump came into office in 2017, he immediately repudiated the JCPOA.
At Israel's urging, by the way, Israel wasn't interested in the denuclearization of the JCPOA.
Israel was interested in Iran being the seventh war that was on the list that we've discussed many times.
Israel wants the United States to bomb and ostensibly destroy Iran.
And so there was an agreement.
We were there.
This is like what happened in North Korea, by the way.
Same thing in the late 1990s.
President Clinton negotiated with North Korea a program for denuclearization.
The United States did not carry out its obligations.
North Korea violated terms of the agreement as well.
In those circumstances, you double down and get back to the agreement that was signed.
Appointed John Bolton, one of our most destructive diplomats of modern history.
Bolton said, take a hard line, threaten and cajole the North Koreans.
And yes, what do we have in the end?
A nuclear North Korea with ever-growing nuclear arsenals and delivery capabilities.
The negotiated path.
So now, same thing, maybe.
Trump says, yes, we'll negotiate, but we'll destroy them if they don't agree on our terms.
We've heard that before.
This is the American approach that fails again and again and again.
American leaders believe that the key is to show utter disrespect and disdain for the other side, and that that somehow brings about the desired outcome.
This is the opposite of the truth.
It's the opposite of how we should behave in our daily lives vis-a-vis other people that we want to have a normal, ongoing relationship with.
It's the opposite of how you should behave with an irascible neighbor next door.
It is the opposite of a way to reaching a real agreement.
We will threaten.
Trump will cajole.
He'll say we'll destroy you.
Who knows?
But very likely, negotiations will collapse in distrust, and then God knows what will happen.
Will it be war?
Will it be a nuclear Iran?
We don't know.
But to get to an agreement, one actually has to approach matters through building a sense of confidence on both sides that one could actually find the mutual benefit of ending a nuclear program or definitively ending it if it is essentially ended,
and on the other side, ending the threats and the sanctions and the risks of attacking that country.
Under the control of a really disgusting Israel lobby, which pushes relentlessly for America to be at war.
That you have to actually solve by talking with the other side, not merely threatening the other side.
But America, and I don't mean American people, of course.
I mean the arrogant people in Washington who believe that Only threats and bombs are the solution.
Have led us for 30 years of nonstop war since the early 1990s.
It's unbelievable, but that's still where we are until today.
Here's the president yesterday after just having had lunch with Prime Minister Netanyahu.
Now, he's seated next to the Prime Minister, but you can't see him in this clip.
But there's one or two lines in here that probably made Netanyahu's eyebrows raise, even though the target of what Trump is saying is Iran.
This is the Oval Office yesterday.
Chris, cut number four.
Is the United States, under your leadership, ready to take military action to destroy the Iranian nuclear program and remove this threat?
I think if the talks aren't successful with Iran, I think Iran is going to be in great danger.
And I hate to say it.
Great danger.
Because they can't have a nuclear weapon.
You know, it's not a complicated formula.
Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon.
That's all there is.
Can't have it.
Right now we have countries that have nuclear power that shouldn't have it.
But I'm sure we'll be able to negotiate out of that, too, as part of this later on down the line.
But Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon.
And if the talks are successful, I actually think it'll be a very bad day for Iran.
We get to Iran.
He's seated three feet away from someone who runs a government that illegally possesses nuclear weapons.
That's another long story in its own right, how the United States tried to prevent Israel from getting nuclear weapons in the late 50s, President Eisenhower and President Kennedy, and the machinations that Israel took with many charges being made and so forth that I won't go into.
But in any event, yes, Israel is a nuclear power that is obviously not shy.
Deploying, I'll say, the U.S. military at its side because it pulls the U.S. into war after war after war on its unjust behalf, and it wants to do the same with Iran.
President Trump is correct.
It's not that complicated.
In fact, he walked into office the first time on January 20, 2017.
With such an agreement already in hand.
Perhaps he couldn't stand that it was an Obama-negotiated agreement.
Perhaps he just fell under the Israel lobby.
Perhaps he just took the hardline position, which he often takes, which is any agreement must be bad if the other side agreed.
We have to add more pressure until an agreement collapses so that we can add even more pressure to get whatever...
We want, or at least as he believes.
So the agreement was already there.
It's true.
He's right.
An agreement could be reached.
Threatening to destroy Iran is not a great way to get that agreement, I have to say, but an agreement could be reached because it's a proof of concept.
We already had that agreement.
Do we know if American intel views
as a threat to Israel?
We know American intel views Iran as no threat whatsoever to the United States.
Isn't it more likely that Israel is a threat to Iran than that Iran is a threat to Israel?
I don't know the American intel.
And anything called American intel, I put intel in.
Of course.
It's what the intelligence agency, and intelligence in that phrase is a term of art.
It's not an adjective.
How did they co-opt that word, Jeff?
Well, that's another very good question.
But the fact of the matter is, it's not a matter, is it a threat or isn't it a threat?
It's what we make of another country.
If we threaten other countries with bombing, if we violate agreements, if we negotiate agreements,
By the way, it is worth recalling for, I hope, some listeners who, if they haven't read about it, will go back to read it.
The U.S. ended Iran's democracy in 1953.
In a joint MI6-CIA coup against Prime Minister Mossadegh, Mossadegh was an elected, popular, very intelligent Prime Minister of Iran who had the temerity to believe that the oil under the ground belonged to them,
not to the British and the Americans, the nerve of it all.
So they overthrew him in 1953 and installed a police state.
Until 1979.
Then we were very upset when the Iranians were upset with us for those decades of a police state.
But have no fear, when their revolution came in 1979 and we had the hostage taking and then the hostages released at the time of President Reagan coming to office, what did the United States do?
The United States armed Iraq.
Saddam Hussein, remember our good friend and ally, the one that we overthrew later on?
Armed Saddam Hussein to go kill hundreds of thousands of Iranians and with absolute devastation of civilian populations.
We did that.
We armed and equipped and financed Iraq to devastate Iran.
We've been there before.
Overthrows, coups, police state, and we say, look at how terrible, what an enemy they are, what a danger they are.
There's a history to everything, and it's often worth recalling the history.
If we sat down now and discussed, if we had just abided by an agreement negotiated in 2016, if we took, as we should have, The repeated, I would say almost incessant,
peace feelers by the Iranians during the brain-dead Biden administration, which neglected or threw out every time Iran tried to return to the negotiating table,
we may have been somewhere different from where we are right now.
We just can't get it through our fixed goals in Washington.
That threats and war and bombing and overthrows are not the right way to make peace.
Let me take you back to the conversation we had last Thursday, which was received by an enormous audience in which you and I were...
Harshly critical, you from an economic point of view, me from the legal and constitutional point of view, although you made these arguments articulately, of the president's tariffs.
What effect do these tariffs, as unlawful, unconstitutional, and misguided economically as they are, what effect do they have on the geopolitics that we have been discussing?
Well, first of all, people are not amused all over the world that $10 trillion of market capitalization has been wiped out in three days.
They're not amused that we're spiraling into a new economic downturn, that there's more economic unpredictability than there has been in decades.
We have China saying no.
We're not going to be blackmailed by you, Mr. Trump.
And then President Trump saying, okay, I add another 50% to 50 percentage points to the tariff rates to put them over 100%.
And apparently, just before we're speaking now, if I caught a headline properly, the U.S. is saying it's going to move forward on that.
I don't know whether that's actually...
The fact, because I haven't seen a detailed report.
But within three days, the world system was overturned by an executive order that starts with the powers invested in me as president of the United States.
I declare an emergency.
This is not how the United States operates as a democracy.
This is a...
Degradation and derogation of democracy.
It's a disgrace that our country operates this way, but it's operating this way and affecting the entire world.
Now, we're seeing all over the world countries scrambling to understand.
Some, yes, they're coming in bended knee.
What do we have to do to make you happy, Mr. President?
So some are doing that.
That no doubt delights the White House.
Some are taking the view that this is absolutely unacceptable for one person by a self-declaration to break a system built over many decades.
And most countries are asking, my God, who are our trade partners?
What are we going to do next week?
What are we going to do when the tariffs start hitting?
And so I believe that many, many countries are coming to the view quickly.
We need to cooperate among ourselves because the United States is breaking apart things that our people depend on for their livelihoods.
There was a call between the president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, and the prime minister of China.
Where the two sides said we had better negotiate stability right now so that we don't amplify the devastating effects that Trump's decisions are having on the world economy.
So China and the European Union are, I hope, sitting down in a mature way to say, let's not amplify this.
I mentioned last time we talked.
That India and China are taking steps to make sure that the relationship is calm and balanced.
China, Korea, and Japan are taking such steps.
ASEAN, the 10 countries of Southeast Asia, have been meeting to discuss how ASEAN should coalesce more closely together among themselves, which is 700 million people.
I know and believe that ASEAN recognizes that it must integrate even more with China as a result of the instability coming from across the Atlantic Ocean.
So Trump has single-handedly, by a decree, not debated, deliberated in Congress, not voted on the basis of law.
Backing in the American business community, no backing by the American public, certainly thrown the entire world into a crisis,
and a crisis that I think will cause countries to coalesce in a kind of defensive mode with each other, facing the United States as a dire economic threat to them.
Professor Sachs, thank you very much.
We've been all over the globe, and I deeply appreciate your comments.
I know it's the middle of the night where you are.
You're so gracious.
All the best to you, my friend.
We'll see you next week.
See you next week.
Take care.
Bye-bye.
Bye-bye.
▲
Export Selection