Glenn lays out how President Trump can use his reciprocal tariff plan to build a nation that doesn’t just survive. It LEADS. First, Trump must take an axe to the regulations in breathtaking ways. Second, he should shame Congress: does it have any courage to be bold at all? And third, he shouldn’t rebuild the factories of the past. He must build the industries of the future: computer chip factories, data fortresses, rare earth mineral mines and refining plants.
Transcript
Below is a rush transcript that may contain errors
GLENN: All right. There are three things that I want the president of the United States to stand hard on. Right now.
If I were -- if I had his ear and I were like, hey, Mr. President, here's what you do.
He would look at me like, Glenn, you think I'm going to listen to you?
Let me give him some advice anyway.
I want the president to hammer three things. First, today, I would urge him to take an axe to the regulations today, in breathtaking ways!
That's number one.
I want him to show up, actually with an axe. And say, I am going to cut regulations, so we make this country more competitive.
No need for this government to get into your way, of your dreams. The states want to do that. That's fine!
You know, if you're obviously going to you put poison into the rivers and everything else.
Then we'll get involved in that, but no more of this regulation. And I am cutting them today. In breathtaking ways.
And then I want him to shame the Congress.
You know, Congress is going out on like a three-week vacation now.
You know, it must be nice, guys.
Wow, insider trading. And unlimited vacancies, it seems.
At some point, they will come back. And they will make those tax cuts, that we got eight years ago, permanent.
That's not what we voted for. We didn't vote for that. We voted for significant tax cuts. We want you to reduce the deficit. We want you to give us significant tax cuts.
We want you to get out of our way!
And Donald Trump said, the last thing, that we have to do is raise tariffs.
Well, he raised tariffs yesterday.
Congress, shame on you.
People see the times that we're in. We're in bold times. Do you have any courage to be bold at all?
Okay. So he -- he raised the tariffs. And what everybody is saying, great. This will bring back American manufacturing. That instinct is right. We have to bring back jobs to America. We have outsourced way too much.
We have hallowed out our middle class.
And all we are now, is on -- on unmanaged decline.
That's really what the course is. Managed decline.
Donald Trump is trying to flip that. We have made ourselves so vulnerable to foreign supply chains. You know, that at best, they don't care about us.
At worst, some of these foreign supply chain providers.
I mean, they want to destroy us. So what are we doing?
So here's the truth: If all we have to do is chase the old jobs, we're going to end up building the ghost towns of opportunity for tomorrow.
You just, you can't do it. Because the factories, with lights on. But no people inside.
That's -- that's coming. Okay?
This time, when the factories come back, they're not bringing back the same jobs!
They're going to be done by robotics. Sensors. AI systems. And if we don't think bigger and broader and bolder, we are going to miss the opportunity, to build the nation, that doesn't just survive, it's the nation that leads!
We have to stop thinking about America's future, like it's a rerun of 1954!
It's not. GM is not coming back. The big factories are not coming back like that.
And the goal is never to return to the past. Do you think in 1954, they were like, oh, man. If we just had those big factories. You know, milling those cotton?
No. They weren't thinking like 100 years ago. Why are we?
The goal is not to return to the past. The goal is to build what the world needs, tomorrow!
And make sure we're the ones that are controlling it!
So when we talk about bringing jobs back. What are the jobs we should be looking for. What do we build?
Well, first of all, we build chip foundries. Okay. Not one, not two. Dozens of them, all over the country.
Dozens of chip factories. Because every single car. Every missile. Every drone. Every phone. Every satellite. Every AI model depends on those chips. We must control the chips!
Right now, the majority of high end chips, come from Taiwan. Which is 100 miles off the coast of a very aggressive and unstable China!
Do you think if things get tough, we're going to have -- we're going to have access to those chips?
And we can't just have Taiwan come in and say, oh, we're going to build one factory here.
No. Dozens of those factories. Redundancy.
You know, the -- having everything coming from Taiwan. That's not a supply chain. That's a hostage situation, ready to happen.
We need to bring the entire chip ecosystem home. That means, the raw materials. The design. The fabrication. The packaging. The protection.
That's sovereignty. That's bringing America into the future!
Not back to 1954. Another thing, and I wouldn't mind going back to 1954 on this one. Because we at least got this one right.
We need to build nuclear power. Period!
And not the creaking concrete dinosaurs of the Cold War. We need to build small, modular reactors. We have them now.
AI optimized grid systems. Next generation thorium designs. That are faster. That are cheaper.
That are cleaner. That are safer.
Why do we need them? Because of the data centers. These data centers are going to eat up so much of our electricity. If you don't build these things now, and you want to stay competitive with AI, as a nation. You're going to be having brown outs.
Because the -- the data centers are going need to them. So if we are ahead in AI, but we didn't build enough electricity. You're going need to be living in brownouts.
That's not a good idea. That's not how we lead. If we want to run the data centers, the factories, the server farms. The electric vehicles.
All without choking our air, and all without depending on any foreign oil, nuclear is not an option. It's the foundation.
And if we would -- if we would pursue this new technology. It's already here.
If our government would help, by just deregulating. Not the crazy stuff.
Well, actually deregulating the crazy stuff.
Not the protections against the crazy stuff. Make sure these things are safe!
But build them.
Then server farms. I don't want the government building a single server farm.
Not one.
But I do want the government. And this would create a lot of jobs.
To build data fortresses. Okay. Server farms.
Domestic cloud infrastructure. Let the private sector fill the buildings with the latest and the greatest. Let them carry all the risk.
Oh, gee. This is something brand-new. We have to get rid of all of that. Okay good. They carry all of that. But perhaps it is the government's job to build a fortress around those centers, to protect it. That's where the real money can come in. And businesses will say, I want. Because they're protecting it. It's safe here!
The back bone of every single AI model, every defense system. Every modern company, it's all going to be on data. Period.
And we're hosting far too much of it, right now, on foreign-owned systems.
Or in single points of failure.
Not a good idea. We need hardened, distributed, secure computers across the country.
Our future should not be held together by luck, some Band-Aids. And third party log-ins. What are we doing?
So forget about building, you know, the new GM plant of the future.
These are the things that we should be focused on.
We need to build robotics hardware.
Because while AI is the brain. Robotics is the body. And whoever builds the controls -- whoever builds the body. Controls the labor of the future.
Okay? Because it's not going to be you, working on an assembly line. It will be a robot. China is pouring billions of dollars into robot manufacturing. If they control the means of automated production, they control the next Industrial Revolution.
Have you seen their docks, compared to our tox. We're not doing anything, because of all of our labor unions.
China does not care about our labor unions.
Okay. I don't think that's a good thing.
I don't like China's model. But if we don't understand, that they will put us out of business. If we don't adapt to what is happening. We are going to be left in the dust.
All of this stuff is not worth anything. All of the pain that you will be feeling, at the grocery store, and everything else.
All of the arguing. And all of the fighting, that we have done. To try to save our country, is over in the next five years. If we're not understanding what I'm saying to you right now.
We cannot allow China, to lead in -- in AI, or automation.
From agricultural bots to surgical systems.
It has to be led by us.
We also need to create new jobs, in rare earth processing. And strategic minerals, refining.
Right here, we have to do it. Even if it costs us more for a while. These are the jobs, that must be brought to America. We must create them. Finding the mining, the refining of our own rare earth minerals.
Because you can't build a single solar panel. You can't build an electric motor. A wind turbine.
A guiding system. Without these materials. Because you can't build the chips.
And right now, China controls about 90 percent of all of the global refining.
We did the work here. And then we send it to them?
That's not just bad policy. That's national suicide.
What are you doing?
We need to mine smarter. Refine cleaner.
And stockpile strategically. We need to build next generation alloys and materials. Because very soon, AI will start discovering new substances, that we never would have thought of.
It will look at the periodic table, and it will say, why are you using steel? You want to build a steel plant? Why?
Take this, this, divide it in this way, and it will make something twice as light and three times as strong. Stronger than carbon fiber. Heat resistant, self-healing. All of that stuff is coming!
These are going to change the way we build planes. Buildings. Armor. Spacecraft. Maybe even the way we heal the body.
Profound change is here before 2030.
We should not be watching any of this from the sidelines. The United States of America, needs to lead it. If we are going to be -- have another great renaissance. And have, you know, what Donald Trump says, this new golden age, we have to be leading this stuff. We have to be building bio manufacturing. Domestic pharmaceutical productions.
You know, the next war, may not be fought with bullets. It might just be fought with a virus. Antibiotics. Hormones.
Vaccines. 90 percent of our active pharmaceutical ingredients still come from China and India.
That's madness. That's a choke hold.
We need redundancy. We need it here.
We need it now. We need to build vertical farms. Regenerative agriculture. AI-powered food networks.
I -- you can't eat patriotism. I want the farms to survive. I want American domestic products here. But we have to see, what's over the horizon.
And start building those jobs. It would be like, if I'm saying, you know what, farmers. We will bring back the jobs of the farm of the old days.
And I send you a horse, and a plow, to strap -- you wouldn't want that.
We must think differently.
You know, in a crisis, if all of our ports are down, our shelves are empty, in days!
We need cities to grow their own food. Farms, that rebuild the soil. Systems that ensure that every American can eat, and a quick reminder here, you know, with -- with very few exceptions here.
When I say we need to build, I don't mean the government.
With very few exceptions, like defense, the private market does all of this.
What the government can do is reduce our taxes. Reduce the taxes on builders and entrepreneurs, reduce the regulations.
Help us help you!
I don't care what's happening on the other side of the globe. I don't. We need to build freight infrastructure. We need to build corridors that let us move our supplies.m And our goods across the country, without ever having to touch a foreign port. And we don't need better roads. My gosh. How many times do we have to -- we need more resilient roads. Do you know some of the concrete?
Some of the things that are being produced now in other countries, that we are so far behind on?
Yes. Maybe we build a steel mill from time to time, but not the ones we remember. We built automated, modular, ultra clean micro mills, that forge the next generation of steel in smaller batches, closer to where it's needed. Because the future is not about bulk. It's about agility. It's about speed. It's about precision.
That is the new Industrial Revolution.
The question isn't, will America bring jobs back? The question is, will America build what the future depends on?
If we get stuck in this, trying to resurrect the past, we will be outpaced by nations that are inventing right now, they're inventing what's next?
Tariffs are just a tool, a lever. But they are not vision.
We need to think like builders again, like pioneers. Like people who understand, that the goal is not just to have a job. The goal is to have a capacity to survive. To compete. And to lead.
Let's build what matters!
Not nostalgia.
Not for headlines. But because the future can't wait!
And if we're not leading that. If we're not shaping the future. Believe me, someone else will.
I want us to do it.