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April 22, 2025 - Judging Freedom - Judge Andrew Napolitano
27:06
Pepe Escobar : The Shanghai Spirit - China Will Take No Bullying
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Hi everyone, Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom.
Today is Tuesday, April 22nd, 2025.
Pepe Escobar will be here with us in just a moment from Hong Kong on whether or not the United States can bully China.
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Pepe, my dear friend, welcome here.
Thank you very much for accommodating my schedule, although I guess we're also accommodating yours.
It's the middle of night where you are.
What good purpose...
Chinese tea for all of you.
All right.
Thank you.
What good purpose, if any, can be served by Trump's tariffs imposed on China?
Well, no purpose at all, except for make China great again.
Make China greater than 5,000 years again.
That's it.
Well, as you know in our audience, I was in Shanghai last week, and I am in Hong Kong this week.
And when you compare the former gateway to China here, Hong Kong, with Shanghai, which is the cultural trade, Commerce, business capital of China.
And what's been happening for the past two weeks or so, it's absolutely mind-boggling.
And between them, my neighbors to the north, if you take the high-speed rail train here, Judge, you arrive in Guangzhou, the great metropolis of Guangdong province, in a little over half an hour, literally.
The Canton Fair is going on in Guangzhou at the moment.
60,000 manufacturers, producers from all over China, in a gigantic sci-fi sort of hangar, selling to customers from literally all over the world.
This is the art of the trade deal in action, in front of you, when the whole planet comes to China to buy everything that China produces.
Be so bold as to modify the sentence you used.
Of course.
60,000 manufacturers, Chinese manufacturers, selling to people all over the world, except in the United States.
No, but there are a lot of Americans who came here.
And they are absolutely gobsmacked by what they're seeing at the fair.
The thing is how they're going to bring this produce back to the U.S., escaping tariffs.
So this is what's going to be the real deal.
But they are buyers from literally all over the planet, especially the Global South, much more than the Global North, of course.
Africans, Latin Americans, Central Asians.
Caucasus, East Asia, Southeast Asia, of course, our neighbors here to the south.
And this proves that whatever happens, the global center of trade is China.
And this is not going to change.
Whatever they come up with, team at Trump 2.0 comes up with, is not going to change the fact.
And on top of it...
The diplomatic offensive.
President Xi was in Southeast Asia last week.
There are Chinese delegations going to Central Asia soon.
Preparations for the BRICS summit in early July in Rio are now on overdrive because the BRICS summit in Rio, in only three months from now, have an extraordinary chance diplomatically to counteract this war.
This tariff war, which is against BRICS, against the global South, against the global majority, in fact.
Of course, the main target is China.
And from Shanghai to Hong Kong, the perspectives are very different.
Here, it's still, to a certain extent, very much Atlanticist and extremely Americanized.
Don't forget that the Americans were promoting a color revolution here in Hong Kong in 2019.
And eventually it was squashed, but very, very complicated.
And everything was being organized out of the gigantic American embassy here in Hong Kong.
But the Chinese government is convincing the Hong Kong oligarchy, the ruling elites here, that their future is not with the U.S. or with the West.
It is as part of the...
Greater Bay Area development.
Do Trump tariff supply to Hong Kong as well?
Some of them, yes.
Hong Kong is very, very specific.
It's an extremely complex problem and very specific.
It's a transshipment port.
The port, as you know and as we all know, is absolutely gigantic.
But... Cargo volumes now in Shanghai are even bigger than in Hong Kong.
Until the handover in 1997, this was the place to do business in China.
You have to come through Hong Kong.
Not anymore, especially for the past 10 to 15 years, and especially since Xi Jinping came to power.
So the Beijing plan for Hong Kong, including Hong Kong, is to streamline Hong Kong, Macau, Zuhai, and all the cities of the Pearl River Delta into what they call the Greater Bay Area,
which is an enormous cluster of everything, of manufacturing, services, in the case of Hong Kong, financial services, marketing.
They have unrivaled experience in soft power.
Some of the best firms in the world, they have their headquarters in Hong Kong.
So Hong Kong integrated with Guangdong Province, our neighbors to the north, and this Greater Bay Area.
It's one of the three major clusters of China, along with Shanghai, Yangtze Delta, and Beijing, Tianjin in the north.
This is what's driving...
The growth of China, that famous 5% a year, which they accomplished, by the way, in the first quarter, already 5%.
And, of course, they are transferring little by little their know-how and some of their production chains to the rest of China, to central provinces and to Xinjiang in the far west as well.
So none of that is going to change.
And once again, if I can, in 30 seconds, Judge.
This war, the tariff war, was more than expected.
In fact, the Chinese were prepared for this war since Trump 1.0.
So they were not caught flat-footed at all.
And that's why the mix of trade overdrive with all the partners in the Global South, plus...
The Canton Fair, which is going on now, proves that everybody wants to come to China to buy everything that China is producing, and especially now, high-tech electronics and AI for the large consumer market.
Do the Chinese manufacturers and exporters attempt to get their products into the U.S. via other countries with no tariffs or very low tariffs, like, say, Vietnam?
You have to be like that from now on, absolutely.
But don't forget that some of these Southeast Asian partners are also heavily taxed, especially Vietnam, Cambodia.
For instance, this trip by Xi last week was very important because he went to Malaysia.
Malaysia is one of the key BRICS members now as partners.
Vietnam, also a BRICS member as a partner.
And Cambodia, because there's a lot of foreign direct investment, Chinese foreign direct investment in Cambodia.
And Xi went to all these three and said, look, we have to have a concerted strategy to fight the tariffs.
All of you, the ASEAN 10, Association of Southeast Asian Nations 10. By the way, Trump doesn't know what ASEAN means.
And this is on the record.
And, of course, China together.
And they all know that the fact that Russia is starting to invest and also cultivate Southeast Asia diplomatically, and Putin says in every important forum, every two or three months,
he says the two great areas of development in the near future are Southeast Asia and Africa.
So Russia is involved in both.
So this is a BRICS coordinated strategy that now is picking up pace very, very fast.
What is the common understanding either among average folks or elites in China as to why Donald Trump did this?
There are many aspects.
First of all, Fear and insecurity of a dwindling empire, number one.
Number two, the people who are around Trump, which are all xenophobes, by the way.
Miran, the guy of the Mar-Alago Agreement, the chief of economic advisors, who came up with this plan, by the way, most of it.
Peter Navarro, which is a xenophobe, doesn't know anything about China.
And even the Secretary of the Treasury, Besant, who also doesn't know anything about China.
These are the three top people around Trump on the tariff front.
And Trump, as you know very well, Judge, he has a fetish with tariffs.
He actually believes that tariffs work.
Try to convince him otherwise.
Very simple.
China and the Global South will convince him otherwise from now on.
What will they do?
Just ignore him?
I mean, I can't imagine President Xi calling him up saying, hey, Donald, let's make a deal.
No, Judge, it's not only President Xi won't call, but on the record, and this was a little over a week ago, maybe 10 days ago, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Beijing, they said explicitly on the record in one of their briefings,
a tariff-wielding barbarian.
Cannot expect China to place a phone call.
Wow. As far as I know...
You referred to him as the emperor of tariffs.
They are calling him a tariff-wielding barbarian?
They did, Judge.
And what I was going to tell you is that I never heard the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Beijing, which is extremely polite in all circumstances, Using such terminology.
Never, never.
And now it's all over the place.
In Shanghai, I was listing barbarian once again from everybody, from diplomats, businessmen.
Top media people like the people who do the Guan Cha website, which is the best news analysis in China.
I visited them.
I talked to the new editor-in-chief.
Wonderful guy.
He was with the Global Times.
Now he's with Guan Cha.
Do you know how many readers they have with all their platforms put together, Judge?
200 million.
Oh, my God.
The numbers in China are...
Absolutely staggering, you know, everyone.
And this is a very small operation.
They have three rooms.
Very, very simple.
You know, old computers.
A lot of young geeks.
Some of them just returned from California.
One of the guys who interviewed me, he was probably 20 years old, just came back from the U.S. You know, absolutely.
And they reach everyone all over the place.
Funny you should talk about a 20-year-old geek.
Because there is, I don't know how old he is, he appears to be about a 20-year-old Chinese geek fluent in American, made a 90-second clip, which is going viral over here.
It's in English.
I'm very anxious to hear your comments on it.
It was posted on TikTok, so we call him the TikTok guy.
Chris? They rob you blind, and you thank them for it.
That's a tragedy.
That's a scam.
That's why I'm saying this right now.
Americans, you don't need a tariff.
You need a revolution.
For decades, your government and oligarchs won't ship your job to China.
Not for diplomacy, not for peace, but to explore cheap laborers.
And in the process, they hollowed out your middle class, crashed your working class, and told you to be proud while they sold your future for profit.
And yes, China made money.
But we used it to build roads, lift millions out of property.
Found healthcare, raised living standards.
We reinvested in our people.
My family also benefited from it.
What did your oligarchs do?
They bought yachts, private jets, and mansions with golf course driveways.
They manipulated the market, dodged tax, and poured billions into endless walls.
And you?
You get stagnated wages, crippling health care costs, cheap dopamine, debt, and flagged waves properly made in China while they pick your pocket.
For 40 years, both China and the United States benefited from the trade, the manufacturing, but only one of us used that wealth to build.
This isn't China's fault.
This is yours.
You let this happen.
You let oligarchs feed your lies.
Well, they made you fat, poor, and addicted.
Now they blame China for mess they made.
I don't think so.
I don't think you need another tariff.
You need to wake up.
You need to take your country back.
I think you need a revolution.
Wow. This is one of the videos that has...
Hundreds of millions of people watching in TikTok and many other platforms, Josh.
TikTok is only one among dozens of similar platforms in China.
Yes, this one is one of the top ten in popularity.
And what he says in, what, two minutes?
It's better than the whole of U.S. think tank land together.
All of them.
Yes. It's certainly gotten more play than President Trump's...
Articulated defenses of the tariffs.
The thing that moved me the most, and I would correct him on this, where he said pouring billions into endless wars.
We have poured trillions into endless wars.
And we still are.
In Gaza, in Ukraine.
And to support about 850 military bases around the world.
China has about 10. We have 850.
Exactly. Judge, you remember that famous audit that Rumsfeld announced on the eve of 9 /11?
That never happened.
Say again?
The famous audit of the Pentagon that Donald Rumsfeld announced on the eve of 9-11.
What were they?
Exactly. And that audit never happened.
Money in the Pentagon that went down the drain all over the planet, literally.
In the forever wars business.
Yes. Tell me about...
The Russia-China strategic partnership.
How do you think it would play out if Prime Minister Netanyahu changes President Trump's mind and persuades him to join the Israelis in attacking Iran?
I can't imagine China doing nothing with all the oil they get from Iran.
Absolutely. Absolutely.
Because for China, Iran is a matter of national security.
It's one of the top energy providers.
Second, they have a strategic partnership.
It's not a military alliance.
And the partnership between Russia and Iran is also not a military alliance, but it's a treaty.
Between China and Iran, they have negotiations at the highest level, absolutely, all practically at the same level that Russia has with China.
They know that if that attack would ever happen, it's an attack on the three of them.
It's an attack on top three BRICS.
Iran, Russia, and China.
And an attack on BRICS who have strategic partnerships and very close ties among themselves.
So, obviously, we don't know what China would do.
And China never...
And the Ministry of Foreign Relations, the Ministry of Defense, they never...
There was never any hint of what they would do.
But there will be a lot of underground support.
Very similar to the response that I got in Yemen a few weeks ago from one of the members of the High Political Council when I asked him directly, do you have privileged channels of communication with both Russia and China?
And his response was essentially yes.
So can you imagine Iran with Russia and China?
Well, that's 10,000 yeses.
Absolutely. Yes, please, go ahead.
Is the scandal involving the American Secretary of Defense Revealing attack plans to friends, relatives, and in one case, a reporter.
Is that playing at all in China, or is it just considered an American domestic political matter?
An American domestic, for instance, Guangzhou.
Guangzhou, they follow American politics very closely.
And they have some of the best Chinese academics from Tsinghua University, Ramin, Fudan, etc., writing.
Practically every day about domestic American politics.
So this was seen essentially as another clownish performance by Hexner.
And now he's reaching Three Stooges territory very fast.
Yes, yes.
He's starting to be criticized by Republicans.
Chris, you have the full screen.
This member of Congress from Nebraska is a retired general.
Russia and China put up thousands of people to monitor all these phone calls at the very top.
And the number one target beside the president would be the Secretary of Defense.
Russia and China are all over his phone, and for him to be putting secret stuff on his phone is not right.
He's acting like he's above the law, and that shows an amateur person.
I find it unacceptable, and I wouldn't tolerate it if I was in charge.
The congressman's name is Don Bacon from Nebraska.
A retired Air Force Brigadier General and member of the House Armed Services Committee.
What he doesn't say is that...
I worked with Pete at Fox for 10 years.
We have a lot of mutual friends, but I don't think this looks good for him.
I think it's going to...
No, it doesn't.
It doesn't.
What our retired general doesn't say is that this goes on on Signal.
And we all know that Signal has backdoors.
Signal is a CIA operation, essentially.
So, obviously, the Russians and the Chinese have access to CIA backdoors.
No question.
Wow. If American military personnel are harmed because of the revelation of attack plans, we have a very, very, very serious potentially criminal problem on our hands.
Exactly. And especially...
On revelations about an absolutely illegal war against Yemen.
This war was not sanctioned by anybody, Judge.
You know better than anyone.
Yes. By the way, in one of his defenses of himself, Secretary Hegseth says, we've gone long, we've gone deep, and we've been successful.
You who have been there, he hasn't been there, you've been there, said that's absolutely not true.
They have not been successful.
It's absolutely not true because they don't have on the ground intel.
This is something we already discussed.
They don't know where under the mountains storage for missiles are.
And these mountains are in...
Okay, I cannot say exactly where.
But they are not in Sanaa.
And they are not in the city of Sada in the northwest.
So they don't have intel on anything.
And they are bombing civilian targets.
They bombed a port, the port of Issa.
They killed over 100 people.
It's a port.
It's a civilian port.
And they had, I think, 3 million barrels of oil in storage at that port.
And Yemen badly needs oil because...
Their oil installations were attacked by the Saudis in the war that started in 2015, 10 years ago.
So this is absolutely criminal in every respect.
They are killing civilians and they are bombing civilian installations.
And obviously not a word on American mainstream media about that.
And they're boasting about it and claiming that somehow, by some abstruse, absurd line of reasoning, this enhances American national security.
This is yet again the Trump administration doing a favor for Netanyahu.
This is yet again a bizarre relationship with Israel costing the United States.
Absolutely. It's a matter of national security.
And if something happens with the USS Truman, wow!
Which is quite possible.
We had...
This was very tricky because Yahya Sari, we met him in Yemen.
He's the military spokesman of Ansarallah.
He did not confirm that.
But the president of Yemen said that the USS Truman was hit.
Obviously, no word from the Pentagon.
So, we really don't know.
What happens with...
American vessels in the Red Sea is a black hole.
Nobody knows anything, really.
So anything might happen, and something very, very serious.
And the Yemenis have what it takes to do something really, really nasty.
Wow. Pepe Escobar, thank you, my dear friend.
Thank you for staying up at all hours for us.
Of course, you're accustomed to that.
I am!
But it's very funny, Judge, because in Hong Kong, everybody goes to, like it's midnight in Hong Kong, everybody literally goes to bed, except the guys who are in the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank across the street, because they are following the American financial market.
Got it, got it, got it.
Thank you, Pepe.
God bless you.
Safe travels.
We'll see you again next week.
Thank you, Judge.
All the best.
All the best to you.
What a pip, as we say in America.
What a wonderful human being.
Coming up at 2 o'clock this afternoon, Aaron Maté, and at 3 o'clock, Colonel Karen Kwiatkowski.
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