 Quick update from Davos. I'm not in Davos. I'm in New York City, but I'm reading up on what's happening in Davos. Because we need to keep an eye on the World Economic Forum because what happens there tends to spread everywhere and tends to have a huge impact on both intellectual, political, and economic thinking that occurs between World Economic Forum get-togethers. Anyway, one of the big stories out of the World Economic Forum is, and I actually mentioned this and I talked about this on one of the shows before the WEF. So I was on top of this story way before it became a big story. And that is the conflict between the United States and Europe over trade. And in particular, the fact that the Inflation Reduction Act that the Biden administration passed provides subsidies to U.S. tech and alternative energy companies in ways that violate trade agreements with Europeans. Europeans are super upset. China subsidizes industries. Now, I've argued that that does not help their industries. It actually hurts them. But China subsidizes the interest. The United States feels like, oh no, we need to start subsidizing our industries. So the United States subsidizes its industries and that gives them a perceived comparative advantage versus Europe. So Europe now looks at that and says, wait a minute, now we're being screwed. So we're going to subsidize our business. So what happens is once you start on the central planning, once you start on this government, on state intervention into economics and subsidies and trade barriers and tariffs and the whole gamut of issues, really, I think were brought to the forefront by the Trump administration when Trump was president and have just gotten worse since with Biden just taking on Trump's policies and making them even worse. This is accelerated. Europe is now because of the because of the Inflation Reduction Act and all the subsidies involved in it. And because of the CHIP Act and the subsidies involved in it, Europe is now saying it's put its industries at a significant disadvantage. There's a lot of discussion at Davos at the World Economic Forum between different world leaders, business leaders and so on and how to in a sense combat this, how to address this. And it looks like Europe is going to put together a massive economic bill that is going to subsidize. And so all the positive moves that have been made in the global economy in terms of reduction of tariffs, reduction of trade barriers, reduction of subsidies, reduction of state central planning, certainly in the sense of trying to across countries at least. We were making enormous progress in those realms. I mean, subsidies were down, trade barriers were down, tariffs were down. I'd say between 1991 and really starting in World War II, after World War II, but certainly from the early 1990s through 2016, massive gains in terms of world trade, in terms of freedom of trade, in terms of reduction of subsidies and a reduction in the involvement in government in the economy. And since then, and this is even true during Clinton administration, during Obama administration, and starting with Trump and now definitely on steroids with Biden, all the bad policies Trump started, Biden has doubled up on. And this shows the unity of Republicans and Democrats when it comes to these kind of things. They have doubled up on them and you're now seeing a deterioration in the terms of trade globally. You're seeing trade barriers going up, you're seeing increased in subsidies, increased in state controls, and all of this in my view stimulated by the U.S., all of this being led by the U.S. And right now, Biden's trade representative is in Europe telling them that we have now a new approach to trade and that approach to trade has to advance the needs of American workers, protect the environment, and create inclusive prosperity that is reducing inequality in the United States. So that means trade barriers, trade management, trade manipulation, bad news. For all of us. Those of us who believe in economic liberty, economic freedom, Trump and Biden have been a disaster for us. So that is going on. So in the background, there's a lot of these negotiations going on around Europe's response to the latest Biden administration, parts of which were bilateral, both Republicans and Democrats supported to subsidize and support American industry. That's one thing going on in Davos, just to give you a sense of what Davos has these panels with all these important people. One of the panels that they had featured Republican Governor of Georgia, Brian Kemp, it included Senator Joe Manchin from West Virginia, Kristen Sinema from Arizona, Governor Pritzker, Democrat from Illinois, all talking about the U.S. and the status of the U.S., but all really using the opportunity to pitch their states, their particular areas for more investment to bring people in. But Kemp was quite aggressive trying to pitch Georgia as a place where global companies should be investing. So they have these panels, a lot of people sit around. And I think the real action in World Economic Forum happens in the back rooms where these leaders meet and discuss a variety of different issues and schmooze with corporate leaders and all of that is kind of intermingled. The mingling is where the real action actually happens. Okay, one other interesting story coming out of Davos, over 200 million, I don't know the exact number, but more than 200 million is signed a letter that was submitted to the World Economic Forum in Davos where they are urging the global elites, the politicians, corporate leaders to start working towards an advocate for much higher taxes on the ultra-rich on themselves. So we're talking about ultra-rich people saying we want to pay more taxes, raise our taxes. The letter says, tax the ultra-rich and do it now. It says, it's simple common sense economics. It's an investment in our common good and a better future that we all deserve and as million is, we want to make that investment. Now, of course, they could all write checks to the government that nobody has to force them to do it. But notice, I've always said this, people always think no rich people vote against taxes and poor people vote to increase the taxes on the rich. That's not how it works. The rich vote to raise their taxes on themselves all the time. This is the guilt, this is the ignorance that unfortunately our culture incocates in the wealthy. They describe themselves in this case as a group of high net worth Americans who share profound concern about the destabilizing level of inequality in America. And they want their taxes raised and the focus is on America, but its focus really is globally, right? 206 signatories, actually from 12 countries. So it's not just Americans, but the Americans dominate the list. But it is fascinating. They call themselves, by the way, they call themselves patriotic millionaires, millionaires who care about their country. So they want to have higher taxes on themselves and on the other millionaires who maybe don't care about their country. Just the association of patriotism with paying higher taxes is bizarre and offensive, right? Thank you for listening or watching The Iran Book Show. 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