All Episodes
Previous Next
March 24, 2025 - Ron Paul Liberty Report
20:53
Global Oil Rocked As Trump Slaps Secondary Sanctions On Venezuela Trade!

President Trump announced a 25 percent across-the-board tariff on any country that purchases oil from Venezuela - but who will really be paying for the additional cost? Also today, US/Russia talks begin again in Saudi Arabia. Will the US take control of Ukraine's power plants?

|

Time Text
Glad It Worked Out 00:03:02
Hello, everybody, and thank you for tuning in to the Liberty Report.
With us today, we have Daniel Mick Adams, our co-host.
Daniel, good to see you today.
Good morning.
How are you, Dr. Paul?
Good.
How was the weekend?
Recovering a little bit, but I think people had a lot of fun.
They followed my regulations.
You know, if you're going to talk about serious stuff, you can't mope around because we do know what the answer is if we only listen.
Yeah.
We can solve some of our problems.
But no, it turned out real well.
And with the weather nice, we got to sit out on our back patio and the turnout was very nice.
A lot of young people and a lot of new people.
So we were very pleased with that.
So I was very happy with that.
I had a few members of my family come in too.
So that was nice.
So I think, yeah, I think you mentioned, refresh my memory, how many of those have we done?
Well, we had our supporters' dinner at your house, and then we had our conference, the supporters' dinner.
That was our 10th supporters' dinner the night before the conference.
And as far as our conferences here in Texas, I think I don't really have a count because we did some with Mises and some with that, but we've done a few down here, that's for sure.
You know, I think it was this past year when we were a little sluggish on sending out the date.
I know we got a few calls.
Are you having that party this year?
And are you having that conference this year?
So people look forward to it.
So we were glad that we were able to help hold that.
Yeah, we have actually a picture that Connor, man behind the camera, took.
He was out there helping us do the videotaping.
I hope he doesn't mind the shout out, but he sent me this picture.
I thought it was pretty cool.
Maybe we can full screen that so people can see.
It's a view of you speaking through his monitor of his camera.
So you can see yourself up there.
So you can see in the background, it's a pretty full house and a lot of great people, like you said.
Someone said a lot of good vibes.
A lot of people were in a really good mood.
And that was nice to see.
And before we go further, I want to do a shout out to Doubting Thomas.
He was there.
He's in our live crew all the time.
And I was glad to see him.
Unfortunately, I was a little bit rushed.
It was after the conference, but he brought us some oranges from his orchard in Arizona.
And they're delicious.
Mandarins, I guess, technically you'd call them.
So it's great to see you.
Hope to see you at the next one, Mr. Doubting Thomas.
Great.
It's always a lot of work.
And we wouldn't have them if it wasn't for Daniel.
But it comes together, even though it's tough to put even the smaller conferences compared to others.
It is tedious, but it works so well.
And when it's over, everybody takes a sigh of relief.
That did work out pretty well.
So I'm happy about that.
But we have to get back to the really serious stuff and talk about what's going on.
Trump's Tariffs Impact 00:13:38
And I want to start off with something from Zero Hedge.
It has to do with the administration.
Did you know that the administration leans toward the use of tariffs to manipulate the economy?
I'm surprised, I'm shocked, and a little bit disappointed.
But the one advantage they have is if they put on tariffs and threaten to put them on and such a date exists, sort of like what's happening right now, they either reduce them and remove.
And then it's all positive new because we didn't punish the economy quite like we thought we were going to do it.
But the headline says, Trump, this is manipulation of tariffs more than just talking about economic Trump.
Any country buying Venezuelan oil slapped with a 25% tariff?
So that's working on foreign policy and a lot of other things.
The one thing that's drifting around to is when they use foreign aid or any of our aids that we give people, that one of the unwritten obligation that these people have is don't talk down our policies.
You know, if you're from Colombia and you happen to say the wrong thing and support maybe Gaza, the speech is regulated.
Oh, we'll take your money away from you.
I don't like that trend.
And that's happening on quite a few occasions.
And I think it's going to be around a while.
Yeah, let's put up that first clip.
This is from the hedge, and it's about, it happened just this morning, and we actually just changed our top topic when we saw this.
But this is sort of a pattern with Trump.
He's introducing sanctions and then he's pooling the sanctions and he's putting them back on and the market jumps up and down and the other.
But what these are, Dr. Paul, these are secondary tariffs on Venezuela.
And that's a whole different ball of wax because it's an attempt to basically blockade Venezuelan oil.
It says any country that does any trade in Venezuelan oil will get an across the board 25% tariff on their stuff on anything they want to export to the United States.
And here's his exact, if you put that next one up, here's exactly what he wrote.
This is how he announced it, I guess, on his truth still.
President Donald J. Trump announced today that the United States of America will be putting what is known as a secondary tariff on the country of Venezuela for numerous reasons, including the fact that Venezuela has purposefully and deceitfully sent to the United States undercover tens of thousands of high-level and other criminals, many of whom are murderers and people of very violent nature, among the gangs they sent to the U.S., et cetera, et cetera.
It's getting a long time.
Therefore, any country that purchases oil and or gas from Venezuela will be forced to pay a tariff of 25% to the United States on any trade they do with our country.
All documentation will be signed and registered and the tariff will take place on April 2nd, 2025, Liberation Day in America.
Please let this notification serve to represent that the Department of Homeland Security, Border Patrol, and all other law enforcement agencies within our country have been so notified.
Thank you for your attention.
That's what he wrote.
You know, I think the one area that they don't emphasize too much is who really pays the bottom line when they do this.
And they said, well, no, it's always an advantage to us.
And all this theory that it hurts our consumer.
I think they hurt our consumer.
I think this type of stuff hurts the personal choices of the country that's putting on the tariffs.
But it's always for good reasons.
So you can't really challenge people who claim.
I think they're well-intended, but I have come to the conclusion personally that paired terrorists really don't work.
And oil prices are going up.
So in a way, you do all this fancy stuff and punishing it all.
And what if there is a net increase in the cost of gasoline next year, which is possible?
Who knows where this is going?
So why would we do a policy that has the potential of hurting the consumers in this country?
And ultimately, you know, the consumer pays, regardless of what they do in anything in economics, it always drifts back.
Well, we don't have enough money to bail out all the poor people.
So we'll print the money and bail out the poor people.
And then the poor people get all the inflation and the high interest rate.
So it's all a gimmick to deceive the people.
And I think some of this stuff is there for deception.
And yet, you know, tariffs have been around for a long time.
And, you know, in the last century, in the earlier part of the last century, the Republicans were the big champions of this.
But, you know, in recent history, though, most of the economists, whether it didn't identify so strictly as Republican or Democrat, have generally been opposed to the use of tariffs for these political reasons and others.
But, you know, if you're dedicated to a society where every individual has freedom of choice in all that they do, all of a sudden, well, how can we deny the freedom of choice to buy stuff where they're able to get a better deal?
And why can't the people make this decision?
Instead, the politicians do.
That's where we get into trouble.
Yeah.
And you mentioned the price of oil.
Oil is a world market.
You know, if you tariff, if you make Venezuelan oil more expensive in the world market, it's going to go everywhere.
And we can see it in the chart that was in the hedge article.
If you put that next one up, this is the West Texas Intermediate Crude.
And you can see at that dotted line, that's where Trump made the announcement.
Boom, oil shot way up.
That means, as you say, Dr. Paul, pain at the pump for Americans.
Maduro is not going to be crying that he can't fill up his gas tank, but Americans will be crying that they can't fill up their gas tanks.
So these things don't happen in a vacuum.
Yeah, that's for sure.
But unfortunately, the average person, you know, will be attracted to the political justification and the tough man's approach.
We have to punish people like this and look at what they're doing.
And they don't see.
And they've already picked out, you know, when they start to interfere with speech and say, well, if you're not, if you're not relaying the propaganda that we want, because we're always at war with somebody.
And if you don't pick the right size, you can get into big trouble.
And then the sanctions can come.
And most of the time, we have been so involved in passing out money for the benefit and the control of the empire.
But I have to admit, though, some of the exposure here of what has gone on in the waste and the fraud, although I don't think this is an answer and this is going to be the final solution, but it certainly is a wake-up call for a lot of people, a lot of people.
And I think that's why, you know, the opposition, the Democrats, are going to have trouble convincing the American people.
They'll come back with something and they'll demagogue it.
And they certainly got away with that for four years.
But then the people spoke at the election time.
So I think this is going to be the same thing.
They're going to come back.
But I think the most important thing that's happening right now is a revelation on how terrible the system is and how much money is wasted.
It makes our argument, well, what would you do about it?
I says, I would see people obey their oath of office.
It's no more complicated than that.
And the whole thing is, you know, and the hedge writer, I think, captures it perfectly.
This whole announcement leaves a lot of people scratching their heads.
He wakes up this morning and says, 25% tariffs on anyone who does business with Venezuelan oil.
Now, this is how they put it.
And I think they put it as well as anyone really here.
They say the news comes one day after Venezuela agreed to resume accepting U.S. deportations of illegal immigrants.
They said, okay, you got us.
We'll break down.
Crying, Uncle.
We'll take back our illegals.
And the next day, Trump says, well, we're going to put tariffs on you anyway.
And they continue.
In February, Trump ordered the termination of a key oil deal with Venezuela, announcing an opposed on True Social.
Was reversing the concessions of the oil transfer agreement dated November 22nd, 2022.
Zero Hedge points out, but those were concessions enacted by his Democratic predecessor, Joe Biden, which had allowed the Chevron Corporation, active in the Latin American country for a century, to produce and sell oil in Venezuela despite sanctions.
What's going on here, they wrote.
So he's actually hurting Chevron by reversing the quote-unquote concessions that allowed them to start doing business in Venezuela.
So he's hurting American companies.
It'll hurt the American consumer.
But the other point that I would really like to make, Dr. Paul, is about these illegals coming over here from Venezuela that he's so upset about.
Why does he think they're coming here?
Because we have so many sanctions on the country.
We have crippled their economy to the extent that people are desperate to leave.
If he really wants to eliminate or at least to mitigate the problem of Venezuelans crossing over into the U.S., he should get rid of all the sanctions, start doing serious business and trade with Venezuela, raise their economy through trade with the U.S., people would be less likely to want to leave.
You know, that really sounds like a good idea.
But unfortunately, they're not listening.
They have other reasons to justify all the stuff that they pour out there.
Regulations, we know what's best.
And we're going to do such wonderful things for our taxpayers because we're going to collect tariffs because the announcements was the collections is already starting.
They're collecting money.
But my thoughts are that even within a year, if a year passes, I cannot see that the spending has been reduced, nor has the printing of money been reduced.
I think we still be there, but because they already are running into roadblocks, and that's not their fault because sometimes the courts can get involved.
And they say, well, we're going to cut so many people from this bureaucracy.
But what if they put a roadblock in there and all the money goes to their store attorneys finding these cases?
Yeah, I mean, I think Trump, unfortunately, is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.
Sanctions don't work.
This is sort of a form of sanctions, these tariffs are a form of sanctions on Venezuela.
They don't work.
So why not try something different?
Bombard them with free trade.
That would be cool.
The second thing we're looking at today is something that came out just before our conference.
If you put that next one up, it was an idea floated by the Trump administration to take over Ukraine's nuclear and I believe other power plants to protect them.
This is the phone call between Trump and Zelensky last week.
Trump said, hey, how about if we take over your electric supply and nuclear power plants?
Which I think is a pretty strange thing.
First, it was the rare earths, then it was the ports, and now it's the nuclear power plants.
It's kind of confusing what he wants.
But here's the plants that they're talking about.
At least I think these are the nuclear facilities.
If you go to that next clip, he said the U.S. can be very helpful in running those plants with its electricity and utility expertise.
And U.S. ownership would offer the best protection for Ukrainian energy infrastructure.
Seems bizarre for me, Dr. Paul, for the United States government to own foreign energy generating plants.
Is it just me?
Am I missing something here?
You know, it's it's I can only understand this when you think about empire.
You know, they want control and they do this to get control of the raw materials and all the products.
And that's why that's why they, to expand the power of the empire, you got to get hold of the canals.
You got to get hold of vacant land in Antarctica and every other place.
Greenland.
Yeah.
So that's the thing that we have to have to deal with.
But this whole idea becomes the motive.
Unfortunately, the American people say, well, that makes sense.
Remember, you remember it well when the Middle Eastern war was started.
I think they talked about there's enough oil there.
We'll get paid for everything.
You know, they say they paid for the military stuff.
Who's going to pay for the innocent people who got bombed that had nothing to do with this war?
How about the American people that had to serve over there and how many families were disrupted?
I mean, the devastating is so overwhelming that you're going to pay for that by taking their oil?
You know, bad idea.
Yeah, it's very unfortunate.
Well, the talks are kicking off again today between the U.S. and Russia.
And I believe about Ukraine, but also a broader, wider range of things.
Thanking Attendees 00:03:54
I think that's a good positive start.
I just kind of wish that Trump would be more consistent.
One day it's this, one day it's that, and it's kind of confusing.
But anyway, I think we're about ready to close it down today.
And we've a little bit shorter today, but we've had a very busy weekend.
I've had very little sleep, I have to admit.
But I do want to thank everyone for coming back.
If you're watching the show, please hit like or thumbs up.
And we look forward to seeing you tomorrow.
Dr. Paul, over to you.
Very good.
You know, I too really enjoyed our little conference yesterday.
And we were delighted to see so many friends there and so many supporters coming out to cheer us on to continue to do what we originally started to do.
And that is promote the cause of peace and prosperity.
And I always have been bewildered by such a wonderful philosophy and not in it not being complicated and it avoids all initiation of aggression and force against other people.
It's a question of are authoritarians supposed to take over or will voluntarism take over where people just respect each other and they deal in a voluntary way.
So it isn't complicated, but the one thing that gets in the middle of it and messes it up are the politicians.
And that is a shame.
And I think right now there's a lot of good efforts going on, a lot of effort to point out how out of control this has become in our government.
But we still have a long way to go because people now are still divvying up the loot.
Who's going to get and make have to pay and how long will it take?
So unfortunately, I don't think people say, you know, one year from now, everything is going to be much better off.
The only time that sort of happened was in 1921, when there was a deep depression that lasted just a little over a year and the GDP went down sharply, but they were hands-off.
No, they didn't try to fight it with bailouts and wars and whatever and pump up the economy.
And the whole thing was over in a little over a year because people went back to work.
Yeah, there was liquidation.
There was a liquidation of debt and the Federal Reserve was there, but they weren't sophisticated in running the printing presses quite like they are now.
So it's a shame that we don't, I always think that, well, they have some tools and efforts of how you get out of war and things like that.
But I'm more interested in how do you prevent it?
How do you prevent the inflation?
How do you prevent this encroachment on our liberties?
How do we prevent this from happening getting into this war?
And that is what is elves, but I think people have to accept the principle that authoritarianism, where a few individuals, no matter what they call themselves or where they come from, are they left, right, or middle or whatever, and they believe sincerely, I've met too many of them, that they're very necessary because the people need to be taken care of.
I think what we're seeing now is that attitude and coming to a climactic end because it's not working so well.
And there is now a day of reckoning because this debt cannot continue to grow.
But there are still people who think that's a falsehood because deficits they claim don't matter.
Well, they do.
And we have a lot of work to do to make sure that the people, when things become so chaotic and things have to be revealed, that they will at least consider the cause of liberty and why it is important to limit our government and maybe, you know, be old-fashioned enough to pay a little more attention to what the founders established in the Constitution.
I want to thank everybody for tuning in today to the Liberty Report.
Export Selection