>> coverage of. >> trump's joint address to congress. coverage is going to start at 6 p.m. >> with ari melber. >> and jen psaki with a little preview. >> then at 8. >> p.m, they're going to join rachel. >> maddow and team. >> for. >> coverage of the speech itself. >> and at midnight, the three. >> of us will take. >> over with post-speech analysis and reaction. then we'll see you. right back here next saturday. >> 8 a.m. eastern. >> be sure. >> to follow us on. >> social media at the weekend msnbc. >> velshi continues our coverage now. >> good morning. >> ali velshi. >> did you see that nice little logo of the three of us that looked good? that was like. >> i like that a lot. >> the stars around it. >> i think that. >> you are stars and i love that. >> i will say i'm i'm. >> looking forward to tuesday night, largely because the first trump administration in that, in that what we think of as the state of the union, the joint address to congress, you know, there's always that hope that he's going to do something. it's going to make it make it look presidential or feel presidential. we have to worry about that after friday. the white house is don't have to worry about that. so you guys are all filtered in. i'm going to tune in at midnight and get

your takes on it. i appreciate that. until then, you have yourself a great couple days. >> you too. bye. >> starts now. hey. good morning. it's sunday, march 2nd. i'm ali velshi. coming up this morning, the one and only chris hayes is here to talk about the winners and losers in donald trump's economy. and in his new book, the siren's call. plus, president trump is picking another fight with canada over lumber just as his sweeping tariffs are set to take effect. and i'll talk to the canadian ambassador to the un in just a few moments. and the british prime minister, keir starmer, greets ukrainian president volodymyr zelensky with a literal hug as fallout continues from trump's siding with russia on friday. and as europe faces how to proceed in the region without the united states as a reliable ally. i'll talk to the former president of estonia about the new alliance that's taking shape in europe as we speak. but we begin this morning with donald trump's economy and republican's plans as they laid out, as they've been laid out in a newly passed budget to slash

the health care program that serves 1 in 5 americans. they're doing that in order to pay for tax cuts that disproportionately benefit the rich. the bill now heads to the senate, where republicans want to put up a smoke screen to obscure the enormous cost from the american people by using a budget gimmick which would reconstruct the way congress creates budgets and balances debt to help see through that smoke screen. let's look at the numbers. these new tax cuts come in the form of extending the 2017 trump tax cuts, which expire at the end of this year for another ten years. that's going to cost an estimated $4.5 trillion with a t, which poses several important issues for republicans, including leaving almost no room in the budget for several of trump's other tax promises, including no taxes on tips or overtime, no social security benefit taxes, and making the tax cuts permanent. and much like they had alternative facts in the first trump administration. the solution to these issues for republicans comes in the form of alternative

math. instead of putting the full cost of extending the tax cuts for ten years, that's 4.5 trillion on the books. they want to use an obtuse accounting method to simply make it disappear on paper. their argument is that since the tax cuts are currently in place, the cost of extending them shouldn't count toward future budgets. that's sort of like saying, since you spent 250 bucks a week for groceries, and it's largely going to stay the same. let's just not count it as part of your household budget. that's what we call some nonsense. these tax cuts will add to the deficit and they will have to be paid for. it's similar to the distorted logic that trump used during his first term in the early days of the covid 19 pandemic, in arguing against wide spread testing. when he said, when you test, you create cases. and of course, these tax cuts will mainly benefit the rich, as you can see on this chart. look at the budget model analysis from wharton. people who make up to $35,000 a year, that's right on the bottom left of your screen, are set to get

about $330 more per year from these tax cuts. the next stop there is $107,000. if you earn up to $107,000, you'll see an annual gain of about $5,000. those making more than $1 million a year. the top 1% that's the third blue bar, will see an increase of about $77,500, while those in the top 10. 1%. that's the bar chart on your right, who already make $4.7 million or more per year, will benefit to the tune of $619,000 on average. okay, so let's look at what's getting cut to keep giving high earners their tax breaks. the house bill outlines deep spending cuts up to $2 trillion in spending cuts, most of which are going to come from programs that benefit those who are most in need, including calls for $330 billion in cuts to the education and workforce committee, which would affect student loans and investment in

education. there's a $230 billion proposed cuts to the agriculture committee, which would most likely come from snap, which is what we used to know as food stamps. they provide benefits to low income americans and help them buy groceries. but the biggest cuts come from the energy and commerce committee, which maybe you didn't know. this is where the medicaid money comes from. nearly all of that $880 billion would have to come from medicaid, which covers health care costs for 72 million low income americans and americans with disabilities, including the elderly and assisted living and nursing homes. it's the largest health insurance program in the nation. it now funds almost half of all births in this country. it's the largest single source of funding for states, and it plays a particularly large role in rural america. joining me now is someone who needs no introduction to msnbc viewers. my friend and colleague chris hayes, he's the host of the program all in with chris hayes right here on msnbc. he's the author of a brand new book, the siren's call how attention

became the world's most endangered resource, which we're going to talk about in the next segment. but since i had chris here, you are the perfect guy to have this conversation with chris, because you talk about this all the time. this is a smoke screen. and while we're all very, you know, we're caught up in a whole lot of crazy stuff that's going on in washington. this may be the most important. the budget is the government's priorities. and this government's priorities are to cut resources to people who need them in favor of tax cuts for the rich. >> yeah. and i thought i thought you laid that out. in fact, i was sitting here taking notes because it can be hard to walk through this math. i thought you did a great job with it. here, here. what is i think is so striking about this moment, donald trump's big political innovation, and it was a real one, was basically to ditch the austerity, obsessive politics of a generation of republican lawmakers, particularly the kind of romney-ryan budget we're going to cut entitlement and social security programs. we're going to cut taxes for the rich. we're going to squeeze and tighten the belt. we're going to

cut programs people rely on. trump is like, i don't care about any of that. i don't care about the size of government. i don't have some austerity fetish. we're just going to hand out tax cuts. and then when covid happened, we're going to i'm going to sign checks for people. right. what you are seeing is a complete embrace of the most unpopular, destructive forms of hardcore redistribution upwards and austerity politics that i think are the most toxic aspect of republican conservative politics to the general populace. and it's really just a question of how much does this message get out about what they are doing? because. because it's toxic. >> we it's toxic not just to the general populace. it's turning out to be toxic to a whole bunch of republicans who are figuring out that things they actually need rural health care, medicaid, snap, agricultural programs. they didn't. they don't believe they voted for this. they voted for cheaper eggs. >> and this is a really important point. i mean, first of all, we got polling that says

71% of trump voters don't want cuts to medicaid, but something you just indicated there that i think is also really important in the time from 2012 when romney runs on the ryan budget and loses to now, 13 years later, the coalition of republican voters is has lower incomes. they are more dependent as a group on precisely the programs. i mean, truly medicaid, food stamps. there was a time when, because of the class composition of the two party coalitions, republicans could try to sell some story that, like snap, is for other people, medicaid is for other people. no, these are trump voters. >> and so what's happening is, as these republicans in congress are meeting up with resistance to this in town halls, the message is getting out there. don't do town halls. the hope here is that this budget passes and it's now in the past, it's we've gotten past that and we're into other things. it's literally the most important thing. the only thing in the constitution that congress has to do is now being done. you know, amidst the distraction of a whole lot of other distracting

and bad things that are going on in government. but this one is serious and dangerous. >> yes. and i do think i will say this about the democratic political opposition. i mean, they this is the one thing they want to talk about. everyone understands. i've looked at polling, i've looked at internal polling that's been passed around democratic leadership. i've looked at public polling, this stuff, cutting medicaid, austerity, huge tax cuts for rich people. it's the least popular aspect of the agenda, along with things like cutting cancer funding and things like that. so this is one place where if you talk to a democratic lawmaker and, ali, i know you do all the time and i do, this is not something they're shying away from. it's not something they think like, oh, we're not going to prioritize. this is the message out of democratic lawmakers and will be. >> you made interesting point. you mentioned the national institutes of health, nih funding cuts. these are those were the early days of the trump administration where a lot of these cuts went out. it. this is the problem, chris. you talk about government and when what government looks like, when it works and when government works best. it's things like the nih,

nih that you don't know about that you don't you don't think about on a daily basis. but somebody today is developing a cure to an illness you may have in ten years, and it's probably the best return on investment that you can get, because there's no private companies in between. these are universities, researchers and the government and your tax dollars at work. but this is part of the problem. they're cutting a whole bunch of things that some people find it hard to defend because they don't actually know what they do. usaid, another example of things that they work in the background, and we don't have serious problems because they work in the background. >> yeah, it's exactly right. and they're also on time scales that to your point, that the sort of return benefit over long periods of time, i mean, it should be said this, the national institutes of health is the largest single funder of medical research funding in the world. right? it's the envy of the entire world. it is the engine of american biomedical research and dominance. i mean, i know personally multiple research scientists who have come to the us, right? they come here

because of the atmosphere for biomedical research here, which is the greatest in the world. and that is powered by nih. and elon musk and donald trump are in the process of destroying that. and the results of that won't be immediate. i mean, some of this stuff will be immediate. rfk is going to make sure we don't have a flu vaccine next flu season, which is just nuts, but some of it won't be immediate. and that's what's so dangerous about these. a lot of what's being done here, it's sort of out of the camera view, and the cost will come to get us at some later date as yet to be determined. >> but to your point, which we're going to talk about in the next segment, your book, how do you get the attention of people on something that is hard to get their attention for? because not only will some of this, let's just stay with the nih for a second. not only will, will, will it be, will it cost us? you don't even know what you're benefiting from. somebody is researching something that's so beyond your. and my capacity to even understand is a problem. and there's some disease that i may not die of in 20 years or 30

years because of work that's been being done today that i don't know about. >> oh, yeah. i mean, this my favorite example of this, right. you know, through the years, you've always seen, like mccain used to do this and rand paul, they'll pull some research grant and they'll say, oh, you know, the sex life of lemurs or whatever, or, you know, how, how, how, how turtle mating works. well, the there was a research into the saliva of gila monsters. that is the origin of what became glp and ozempic. so you could very easily imagine someone demagoguing like, we got to study the saliva of gila monsters. turns out the saliva of gila monsters is what led us to the most both profitable and impactful drug class we have seen in a generation. maybe more so. this stuff is so easy to demagogue. it's so easy to sort of get attention for these kind of like little sound bite versions. but your point about the kind of coincident problems of attention and how a good

government functions is so important because the stuff that's working is not attention getting right. it's not sexy. it doesn't grab or compel. if a bunch of people around the world are doing a bunch of really interesting and good research that just happens in the background, the destruction what trump is doing with doge depends on is this constant state like interruption and spectacle. >> chris, stay right where you are. i'm going to come back to you, and we're going to take a dive into your new book, the siren's call how attention became the world's most endangered resource. well, she's back after a quick break with back after a quick break with chris hayes. i'm maya and these are my breasts. honestly, we've had a complicated relationship. ♪♪ i've tried sports bras, underwire bras, minimizer bras... ♪♪ and then out of nowhere, i found a lump.

breast cancer. ♪♪ then, losing the breasts i never fully appreciated. ♪♪ during treatment, i asked about kisqali - a pill that can help reduce my risk of cancer returning. and now i have a new perspective on what really matters. kisqali with an aromatase inhibitor is for adults with stage two and three, hr+, her2- early breast cancer with a high risk of recurrence. kisqali may cause serious skin reactions, liver problems, and low white blood cell counts, that may result in serious infections. life-threatening lung problems and abnormal heartbeats can occur. your doctor should test your heart and blood before and during treatment. tell your doctor if you have new or worsening cough, chest pain, or dizziness. before taking kisqali, tell your doctor all your medical conditions, medicines you take, and if you're breastfeeding, pregnant, or planning to be - as it can harm an unborn baby. common side effects include nausea, headache, and tiredness. i'm doing more today to help protect my tomorrow. ♪♪ because i'm more than just breast cancer.

♪♪ visit kisqali.com to learn more. ask your doctor if kisqali is right for you. so turn on nordvpn and encrypt your online nordvpn and encrypt your online traffic. get 72% off nordvpn and it ain't my dad's razor, dad, —hey, watch it! —it's from gillettelabs. this green bar releases trapped hairs from my face... gamechanga! ...while the flexdisc contours to it. so the five blades can get virtually every hair in one stroke. for the ultimate gillette shaving experience. the best a man can get. is gillettelabs. hundreds of sites so you can save up to 40%. >> look how easy that is. now i can relax. >> hotel trivago. >> this is poof linearizer. and

it puts an end to litter box stink. other products claim to reduce litter box odor, but with the litter riser, your litter box never gets a chance to stink. poof! litter is the litter box. civilizer earning cat fancy's editor's choice award for innovation. a dry and stink free litter box that saves you time and money. it's a no brainer. get poop litter riser for just 24.95. >> i think i changed my mind about these glasses. >> yeah it happens. that's why visionworks gives you 100 days to change your mind. it's simple. oh, dave's been very excited about saving big with the comcast business 5-year price lock guarantee. five years? -five years. and he's not alone. -high five. it's five years of reliable gig speed internet. five years of advanced securit. five years of a great rate that won't change. it's back. but only for a limited time. high five. five years? -nope. comcast business 5-year price lock guarantee.

powering five years of savings. powering possibilities. comcast business. >> how much is your attention worth? you want to know? the biggest companies in the world are making their money off of it. in his new book, the siren's call, chris hayes argues that our attention, what we choose to see and hear and notice is both

the most valuable resource in the world and the very thing that makes us human. the attention economy is where social media companies and advertisers vie for the right to every millimeter of space in our minds. and because the attention they're fighting for is so important to us, this is a big problem. chris hayes explains, quote, we are built and formed by attention, destroyed, by neglect, by neglect. this is our shared and inescapable human fate. now, our deepest neurological structures, human evolutionary inheritances and social impulses are in a habitat designed to prey upon. to cultivate, distort or destroy that which most fundamentally makes us human. end quote. still with me, chris hayes, my friend, colleague, and host of all in right here on msnbc weekdays at 8 p.m. eastern. and of course, he's the author of the aforementioned book, the siren's call how attention became the world's most endangered resource, which has got a cover that's made up of the very nice green color. so i appreciate that. chris, let me read a line from your introduction where you're describing why you call it the siren's call. you say,

attention, we're talking about attention here. attention is the substance of life. every moment we are awake, we are paying attention to something, whether through our affirmative choice or because something or someone has compelled it. ultimately, these incidents of attention accrue into a life. my experience, as william james wrote in the principles of psychology in 1890, is what i agree to attend to. increasingly, it feels as if our experience is something we don't fully agree to, and the ubiquity of that sensation represents a kind of rupture. and that's your point, that i don't i don't control my attention. i you think as a thinking human that you do. but but your argument is increasingly we don't. >> yeah. i mean, what makes attention so tricky is both it's so foundational. in every instant of our lives, we're going to pay attention to something. and as i said, that's basically what your life is. but it has these there are these sort of two different aspects of the faculty. one is intentional or voluntary attention. like right now i'm listening to you. you're listening to me. if you're, you know, engaged in some task, if you're really, you

know, focused on a meeting at work or you're watching your kids perform, that's voluntary attention. but the other faculty we have and in some ways, the evolutionary kernel of this faculty, is that involuntary attention. if you're walking across the street looking at your phone and a car honks, you pay attention to the car honking, right? or the siren going down the street without getting to choose whether you will or not. and that that ability to have our attention taken away from us without us knowing it, which is a sort of evolutionary necessity, is also the foundation upon which this entire form of attention, capitalism, is being built, such that we're constantly being pulled by things that we don't feel we have control over to pay attention to. >> right. and you use the example of sirens, because if you hear a siren, wherever you are in the world sounds a little different. but everybody knows that's a siren, that's an ambulance, that's a police car. explain what you describe as the attention economy. use a slot machine analogy. >> yeah. i mean, what we have

are the when you have competitive attention markets, people are trying to get your attention right. they end up selecting for that form of compelled attention through what i call iterative interruption. right. so the slot machine is a great example of where this all sort of drives towards. the slot machine can keep someone in the seat for eight hours, but it never tells a story. it never holds attention in any little increment longer than a few seconds. what it does is it uses that sort of evolutionary kernel for being aware of interruption to interrupt resolve, interrupt, resolve, that interrupt and resolve method of keeping attention is increasingly the dominant one in the social media age. it's what the platforms have engineered towards. and they're managing to keep billions of users and trillions of human attentional minutes through this kind of repeated interruption. >> chris, you talk about the attention age and, as you call it, a race to the bottom. let me read from your book in which you

say, attention ascends from a means to an end to the end itself. if you can't be heard, it doesn't matter what you say. and right now it's both easier than ever to shout and harder than ever to be heard. the incentives of the attention age create a new model for public debate, in which attention is its own end, to be grabbed by any means necessary. it's a simple paragraph, and yet it speaks so much to exactly where we are today. is there a fix for this, or are you just describing this is how we're evolving? >> i mean, the fix i think is multilayered. there's all sorts of ways that we have to sort of impersonal life through a regulatory regime, rethink how we're regulating attention. but this point about public discourse, which right now it feels like we're very trapped in, is the is the idea that all human interaction relies on what i call in the book attentional regimes. like right now, you and i have one, right? every conversation has turned taking. right. and if you don't have that, like if you're on a date and that doesn't happen, it's a terrible date, right? if you're

in a classroom where there's not an intentional regime, no learning gets done. right. what we've seen at the level of public discourse is this total breakdown of attentional regimes. and what it means is that people that just are good at getting attention in and of itself, donald trump's appalling spectacle in the oval office the other day, elon musk, with the platform he purchased, they achieved this kind of attentional dominance in this environment. and what other people outside of it have to do, which you did in your your really excellent open, is to kind of pull back and choose what we are focusing on and recreate attentional regimes in our own discourse as a kind of reaction to that. >> chris, it's a wonderful book, and it's a treat to have you here on on a weekend morning. i appreciate it and thank you. congratulations and good to see you. my buddy chris. >> i'm a big fan man. thanks so much. >> chris hayes is the host of all in with chris hayes here on msnbc. author of the new book, the siren's call how attention became the world's most endangered resource. coming up, the european union's foreign minister is calling for a new leader of the free world

following donald trump publicly siding with russia over ukraine on friday. generations old alliances are being called into question in this new trump era, including the alliance with canada. up next, i'll be joined by ambassador bob rae, canada's ambassador to the united nations. >> human rights during the meddling. and i am finally at some of them. i work out, i eat right, but there are just some areas i just need to have tweaked. >> that's why this celebrity housewife went to sono bello. one visit, permanent fat removal. >> i saw results right away. i just feel so much more confident in my body image. feels great. >> when it comes to your personal health and happiness, you deserve the absolute best. >> i go back to old dorinda. >> schedule your free, no obligation consultation call now or go to sono. com. >> what do you do when your tires are low and you've got some place to go? what if the solution was right in your pocket? introducing pocket air pro by bullseye, the compact compressor that goes anywhere to

fill it up with air. equipped with a 3000 milliamp rechargeable lithium ion battery, that's enough power to take this car tire from flat to filled and the whole family's bike tires in no time. it puts the power of a full size air compressor in your pocket. low pressure warning. fill it up with pocket air. motorcycle tire. flat pocket air pro can fill that. take it with you to class to fill it up fast. whether inflating basketballs or soccer balls, pocket air can do it all. featuring an advanced smart pressure sensor, it automatically stops when you set tire pressure is reached. simply set it and let it inflate completely. hands free. pocket air pro is lightweight, durable, and is powerful enough to lift all that weight. even a trailer loaded with thousands of pounds of equipment is no match for pocket air pro. pocket air is powerful enough to inflate this giant truck with an ultra bright led light and a large display screen. it's safe to use even at night, and with four custom air

nozzles on board, it's perfect for pool toys, exercise balls, and more. gas station air out of order. fill it up anytime, anywhere with pocket air. call or go online now and get the complete pocket air pro system for just 59.99. it comes with the carry case, car charger, and a 90 day money back guarantee. and for a limited time, we'll give you a 50% discount on a second one. plus, we'll ship your entire order free. you get it all. an incredible value. remember, when your air is low, you need bull's eye pocket air pro. order now. >> to order, call 1-800-346-2806. that's 1-800-346-2806. or go online to buy pocket air. com that's your

entire first order. when you sign up to be a new vip only at fabletics. >> kids, i'm sure you're wondering why your mother and i asked you here tonight. it's because it's a buffet of all you can eat. butterfly shrimp and sirloin steak. >> yeah, that is the reason i thought it's because i made varsity. >> you did?

>> of course. >> you did. >> of course you did. >> after glow cleaned our place for $19, we fired our old housekeeper home aglow. tackled everything from our kitchen to our bathroom, all our laundry. you just pick a date, pick a cleaner, and enjoy a spotless house for $19. >> all right. joining me now is the ambassador, bob rae, the permanent representative of canada to the united nations. he's also the president of the un economic and social council and the former premier of ontario. good to see you. >> good to see you, ali. >> wow. a lot has happened. you and i sort of agreed a few weeks ago that we would chat. and since then, really everybody's pointing to friday in the white house. and what happened with with zelensky that was that was not just a bad meeting. that was a rupture in, in a world order that we've together been building, for better or for worse, for about 80 years. >> culmination of a lot of things. i think for us at the un, it happened when the us asked everybody to line up and

urge the ukrainians to withdraw their resolution. they had another one. they wanted everybody to vote for. that didn't happen in the general assembly. there was a vote in favor of it in the security council. but that, to me was a signal. when you look at the sheet on the board wall that says who votes where? yeah, it's the first time this has happened and. >> it's something. >> that everybody doesn't move. >> people don't follow these things sometimes all the time. but when something unusual happens like this, it's worth pointing out. this is very unusual. the change in the resolution, ultimately, that criticized russia for invading ukraine. these don't seem like complicated issues to most people. and yet to this administration, it's apparently it's not complicated. they just don't want to portray russia as an aggressor. >> well, that's that's what they've said. and that's what that's the steps that they've taken. and that makes it difficult. i think for those of us who've been at this for the last three years, and many people have been at it for 20 years, the people of ukraine

have been fighting this for a long time, and canada's position has been very consistent. and i think a number of other countries feel exactly the same way, and that is that we have to tell the truth about what happened. prime minister trudeau is in london now, meeting with many other countries that are dealing with this issue, and we're going to continue to deal with that question. but the unfolding also takes other forms. the us substantially reducing its commitment to foreign aid assistance. some other countries doing the same thing. right. the impact that has on the global economy, tariffs going up, the impact that has on the canadian economy, but not just the canadian economy, the global economy. so we are in the middle of a sea change. it's a major, major change. the world has turned upside down. and it's challenging for people to learn that when that happens, you have to know how to pivot and you have to respond. and you have to recognize and distinguish between the noise and the signals in the attention that we pay. i enjoyed your your

conversation. i was having conversation you were just having. it's very true. i mean, you have to pay attention to what's really important and try to avoid as much of the noise as you possibly can. >> this is the challenge of our lives as journalists. >> that's your job? yeah. >> we'll talk about the tariffs in a second. but you just talked about that meeting that that the justin trudeau was at the keir starmer is, is convening in london some some by zoom and some in person. but it's non-american nato countries who are saying, all right, we have a real problem here as it relates to ukraine. what what what what does that look like? is that a new nato that might be forming, or is this just specific to ukraine? what what is this about? >> i think the organizational form remains to be seen. i think that's something that obviously will be discussed as time goes on. but i think the key point, and it is a dramatic moment, is that a number of major european countries and canada have decided that we do have to maintain our support for ukraine. we do have to continue to be there in the middle of

what we think is a major issue for europe and for the world, and we're not going to walk away. and so that's the position that we've taken. a number of other countries have taken it. and given the noise of this last week and the steps that have been taken in terms of resolutions and meetings and so on, i think it was entirely appropriate that it happened, and it happened quickly, that it not be delayed, that it happened in. >> it is an. >> impressive time. >> it's the impressive offset to everything that's been going on in washington. in a normal world, the biggest story would be that we're about to see this tariff regime with canada imposed this week because americans voted for lower prices and less inflation. that's there's no world in which increased tariffs equals lower inflation. >> that historically hasn't been tariffs are a tax. and so you're raising taxes, which means you're going to end up raising the cost and the price of things. and it's also going to slow down the volume and the

amount of trade which canadians don't see trade as a win lose proposition. we see increasing trade has always been tied to increased prosperity, not just between companies in canada and companies in the united states, but it's also around the world. that's what trade is. trade is not a bad thing. trade is a good thing. and if you put too many barriers in front of trade, if you put too many taxes and tariffs in front of trade, you slow everything down. you lay people off, you lose jobs, you lose prosperity. i don't see it as a logical step, but it's it seems to be what the president wants to do, exactly what form it's going to take. we still don't know. we haven't seen the haven't seen the final picture yet. >> you know, there are arguments for those who don't like trade as much or don't like as much free trade. and our governments in the western world have not taken the spoils of trade and necessarily seen them distributed evenly. so there's some people who are sitting there saying 50, 40 years of free trade, and my wages didn't

go up over all that time. there are real issues to solve. and with canada and the us, these issues have been going on for, you know, close to 200 years arguments about trade. they're still going on this lumber issue. what's happened here. this because when, when, when the president trump talks about increasing tariffs on lumber. that's a canadian issue. >> yeah of course it's a canadian issue. but it's also an issue for the united states. the point is this is company countries don't trade. companies trade. let's remember that it's not canada doesn't bring all the lumber together in one room and say, let's send this down to the united states. that's not what happens. companies are making deals with with all kinds of buyers throughout the united states. buyers choose to buy canadian lumber for one reason or another. either it may be a price advantage or it may be a quality advantage you don't like. >> if you're getting your roof shingled, your your shingling guy buys the. >> the lumber, what the product is that he wants, he doesn't he's not going to say i want it to be this or that. he says, i

want the best for the most, the most the best value proposition. so we've been arguing about this for a long time. the united states has long said, well, you subsidize your your lumber, which is not true. and every trade tribunal, every single decision of every trade tribunal, including the ones established by the department of commerce, have said consistently, canada does not subsidize. >> this going back 20 years or something. >> no, no, this is going back like the dispute around lumber has been going on about 106. >> well that's true. >> that's right. it's a long time. yeah. and it's you say look, we have we do have a lot of wood. there are a lot of trees in canada. and, and we do make good lumber. so yeah, we think we should, you know, try to but but now we will have to diversify markets. we'll have to see. well where where else can we sell. where can companies go. companies will be looking to see what to do. this is something we will weather through. we'll have to deal with it. it is going to cost jobs on both sides of the

border. and i think that's something that everybody has to understand. if you on the american side, if you increase prices too much, you then have fewer houses being built and you have layoffs and you have other things happening in canada. obviously, if there's less being sent out of the country, there's less being produced. that's bad for workers. so this is not something that we see as a positive. and we're trying to persuade the americans that actually it's not a positive for the american economy. and it's not a positive for us, whether it's, you know, the fertilizer season that's coming in the midwest, 80% of the potash that goes into building fertilizer comes from canada. what's the logic of increasing the price of that to farmers? what is the logic? what's the logic of an integrated car industry where parts of it are made in mexico, parts of it are made in the united states, parts of it are made in canada. what's the logic of increasing the price for everyone? we don't see the logic of it. and that's why we're continuing to try to persuade

the american government that that they should think again and reflect hard on what the costs and benefits of this trade are, and also what the costs and benefits and lack of benefits of increasing tariffs is going to be. >> all right. good to see you. thank you for joining us. >> thank you for seeing us. we hope to have another shot where we can talk about what's going to happen at the un. >> we will. >> as a result of all this. >> you're just down the road so we'll make it a regular thing. >> this is a global issue. >> bob rae ambassador bob rae is the permanent representative of canada to the united nations and the president of the united nations economic and social council. he's a former premier of ontario. all right. coming up, there's a type of warfare that has existed throughout history, and america has been particularly good at waging it. it doesn't take place on a battlefield. its soldiers are not brave military men and women. this type of warfare is conducted by lawyers, by bankers and business executives. coming up, i'll speak to edward fishman, whose new book, choke points, details how america points, details how america with fatigue and light-headedness, i knew something was wrong. then i saw my doctor and found out i have afib,

and that means there's about a 5 times greater risk of stroke. symptoms like irregular heartbeat, heart racing, chest pain, shortness of breath, fatigue, or light-headedness, can come and go. but if you have afib, the risk of stroke is always there. if you have one or more symptoms, get checked out. making that appointment can help you get ahead of stroke risk. this is no time to wait. (♪♪) hi neighbor! you switched to t-mobile home internet yet? trim your hedge. it's $35 bucks a month with no price hikes! bam! and it runs on t-mobile's wireless 5g network, so all you gotta do is plug in one cord! t-mobile 5g home internet. just $35 bucks a month. and with price lock, we won't raise your rate on internet. i did it! aaahh!! i switched to t-mobile home internet, and i am loving it! don't sneak up on me like that. (♪♪)

part ninja. meet the bissell crosswave hydro steam. it's part crosswave hydro steam. it's part vacuum mop, steamer and ninja for years, one supplement claimed it improved memory. but the truth? it can't support those claims. choose neuriva plus — which supports six brain health indicators, including memory, with clinically tested ingredients. it's time to switch to neuriva. on this? >> have you checked single care? whenever my customers ask how to get a better price on their meds, i tell them about single care. it's a free app accepted at pharmacies nationwide. >> before i pick up my prescription, i always check the single care price. >> it's quick, easy, and totally free to use. single care can literally beat my insurance copay. >> you just search for your prescription and show your single care coupon at the pharmacy. pharmacy. >> so i just ever feel like a spectator in your own life with chronic migraine? 15 or more headache days a month,

each lasting 4 hours or more. botox® prevents headaches in adults with chronic migraine. in a survey, 91% of users wish they'd started sooner. so why wait? talk to your doctor. botox® effects may spread hours to weeks after injection, causing serious symptoms. alert your doctor right away as trouble swallowing, speaking, breathing, eye problems, or muscle weakness can be signs of a life-threatening condition. those with these conditions before injection are at highest risk. side effects may include allergic reactions like rash, breathing problems, dizziness, neck and injection site pain, and headache. don't receive botox® if there's a skin infection. tell your doctor your medical history, muscle or nerve conditions like als, myasthenia gravis, or lambert-eaton syndrome and medicines like botulinum toxins, which may increase the risk of serious side effects. chronic migraine may still keep you from being there. ask your doctor about botox® today. learn how abbvie can help you save. have got a lot of great

books on the way for the next few meetings of the velshi banned book club. like a love story by abdi nazemian, the latest book from. that's banned from public schools in utah. cemetery boys by aiden thomas. tell me how it ends by valeria luiselli. you must take part in the revolution by melissa lee, two award winning young adult books. the 57 bus by dashka slater. and we are not free by tracy chee. and finally, two enduring classics, the awakening by kate chopin and the great gatsby by f scott fitzgerald. one of my favorite american classics. if you don't have time to grab a pen, don't worry, i'll post this list on my social media accounts, including blue sky, which you can scan the code on your screen right now. it will take you right to my blue sky page, and after you take all those titles out of your local library and purchase them from your local bookstore, please email us your thoughts and your questions. we do go through this and we use those for our questions to the authors. email me at my story at dot com. i want to know if you like the

writing, if the messages resonated with you, what you didn't like about the book, and what you want to hear from the authors. more reading as resistance together coming very resistance together coming very soon. you're watching. ♪♪ vicks vapostick provides soothing non-medicated vicks vapors. easy to apply for the whole family. vicks vapostick. dirt, and try new vaposhower max for steamy vicks vapors. mud, sand, and all sorts of other gunk indoors. but now there's a simple solution that won't have you scrambling for the mop and bucket. it's muddy mat. the pet perfect anti mud mat that keeps your dog's paws so clean. it's like they're wiping them at the door. muddy mat surface is designed with thousands of advanced ultra soft microfibers that are five times more absorbent than ordinary floor mats, trapping dirt and water perfectly protecting the floor underneath, leaving your floors clean and dry. it's

durable, super grip underside means muddy mat stays put even when your pal is tearing around. it's perfect for any floor surface. slip muddy mat under your pals food dish to absorb runaway crumbs and water, or use it in the bathroom as a home base for drying off. muddy mat can even be a perfect addition to catch spills in the kitchen. once muddy mat is trapped, all the mess. just toss it in the washing machine. it's machine washable and dryable so easy. >> i love the muddy mat. there's no mud or dirt on the floor or on piper's paws. it's on the muddy mat. >> my mom used to make me clean up after and now i don't need to. >> being able to keep that mop and bucket put away is a lifesaver. >> muddy mat is the simple anti mud mat that also stops dirt, grass, sand and more at the door. stop wasting money on those ordinary mats. super absorbent and built to last. muddy mat lets you spend less time mopping and more time romping with your four legged friend. reduce the mess caused by your pet and get the easy solution to keeping any of your

floors clean and dry. call or go online to order your revolutionary muddy map right away. through this exclusive introductory offer, we're giving a massive discount. see how you can get one muddy mat completely free. order two and get one free for only 19.95 each. buy two muddy mats and get one free for only 19.95 each. visit shop only 19.95 each. visit shop muddy mat.com or call asthma. does it have you missing out on what you love with who you love? it's time to get back out there with fasenra. fasenra is an add-on treatment for eosinophilic asthma that is taken once every 8 weeks and can also be taken conveniently at home. fasenra helps prevent asthma attacks. most patients did not have an attack in the first year. fasenra is proven to help you breathe better so you can get back to doing day-to-day activities. fasenra is not for sudden breathing problems. serious allergic reactions may occur. get help for swelling of your face, mouth, tongue, or trouble breathing. don't stop asthma treatments

without talking with your doctor. tell your doctor if your asthma worsens or you have a parasitic infection. headache and sore throat may occur. get back to better breathing. get back to what you've missed. ask your doctor about fasenra, the only asthma treatment taken once every 8 weeks. if you can't afford your medication, astrazeneca may be able to help. (♪♪) never. >> again must i polish my own throat. >> treat your inner monarch to convenient, affordable home cleanings at home. i tip it. be well. >> friday's disastrous meeting between volodymyr zelensky and donald trump effectively derailed a deal over ukraine's rare earth and other minerals that are critical to building today's most advanced technologies. while it's not entirely clear that such a deal

would have been in ukraine's best interest, donald trump sought to leverage u.s. military and financial support in exchange for access to ukraine's natural resources. my plan today was to discuss the details of that deal with you, but that's off the table for now. and while the deal has been described as a shakedown by president trump, there was some rationale behind it. you see, china dominates the critical minerals sector in 2024. china accounted for roughly 70% of global production, according to the data that's gathered by statista. just last month, china announced it would restrict exports of five critical minerals to, quote, safeguard its national security interests, further cementing china's effective monopoly over these crucial minerals. experts say the move threatens to disrupt industries that rely on these metals, including the defense, renewable energy and electronics industries. and, by the way, electric cars, another field in which china dominates. and according to a report by the u.s. geological survey, china's dominance over these critical minerals makes beijing a persistent threat to the u.s.

economy. now, there's nothing new about economic warfare. it's existed throughout history, but what has changed is how it's waged by the world's superpowers. today's tools things like export controls, sanctions and embargoes are much more sophisticated and have a much bigger impact. that's because decades of globalization have created a highly interconnected global economy. as a result, actions by superpowers like the u.s. can quickly ricochet around the world. edward fishman, a former state department official under president obama, has just published a big, fat new book on the subject titled choke points american power in the age of economic warfare. it's already being hailed as the authoritative work on the subject matter. it's the story of how america turned the interconnected global economy into a weapon more potent than war. fishman notes that a key insight from the george w bush era, under which economic warfare was revolutionized, was that the u.s. no longer needed china or russia to support certain foreign policy

objectives, such as isolating iran to prevent it from becoming a nuclear power. the u.s. could bypass these countries altogether and go directly to wall street to sever iran's financial ties. the reason is that the u.s. dollar is the linchpin of the global financial system, making it a critical choke point. nations, businesses and banks don't want to lose access to it. secondary sanctions imposed by the u.s. threaten to do just that. cut off banks from the global financial system. if they did business with iran and the plan worked, it led directly to the iran nuclear deal. as iran's exports to the west and its access to things as basic as international bank transfers, credit cards that could be used outside the country, it ground to an absolute standstill. experts called it the most successful use of economic warfare in modern history. fishman writes that doing business in the global economy without the u.s. dollar is like trying to travel the world without a passport. in his new book, fishman describes how the u.s. came to dominate this new form of economic warfare. quote,

it is how america fights its most important geopolitical battles today, from thwarting iran's pursuit of nuclear weapons to checking russian imperialism and china's bid for world mastery. the united states has reached into its economic arsenal to get the job done. in the process, the world economy has become a battlefield. its commanders are not generals and admirals, but lawyers, diplomats and economists. its foot soldiers are not brave men and women who volunteer for military service, but business executives who seek to maximize profits, yet often find they have no option other than to obey washington's marching orders. and america's strength in these battles stems not from its gargantuan defense budget, but from its primacy in international finance and technology. this is a new kind of war. end quote. when we come back, we'll talk to edward fishman about his new book and how trump is taking economic warfare to dangerous, unforeseen warfare to dangerous, unforeseen levels. swiffer sweeper dry* traps 2x more dust and hair for a clean even mom approves of.

nice reach! brooms can just push stuff around, but swiffer grabs dirt and even traps the hair. swiffer. the mother of all cleans. love it or your money back! stink. just sprinkle a few tablespoons on the clean litter for a dry and stink free litter box. look, this is about the same amount of pee wee most cats make in a month, but just a few tablespoons of poof litter sucks up all that wetness and odor and won't let it go. you can't wring it out. you can't squeeze it out. your litter box never gets a chance to stink. >> all right. >> now give it a smell. >> literally smells like nothing. >> that's crazy. >> and it makes litter last longer. slashing your litter cost. oh, nice. little riser is a nontoxic, environmentally

friendly formula used in top equestrian centers for over a decade to help keep horse stalls clean, dry, and sanitary. other products claim to reduce litter box odor, but with the litter riser, your litter box never gets a chance to stink, because the litter riser captures wetness and odor and won't let it go. and the litter riser makes litter box cleanup a breeze. no more stinky litter boxes. no more stinky houses. no one's going to come over and say, do you got a cat litter riser? eliminates unhealthy litter box odor and has no toxic or tacky fragrances. poof. litter riser is the litter box civilizer earning cat fancy's editor's choice award for innovation. call or go online to get a 16 ounce container of poof litter riser. good for months of litter changes for just 24.95. it's guaranteed to save you double that in kitty litter costs. a dry and stink free

litter box that saves you time and money. it's a no brainer. get poop litter for the litter box. civilizer for just 24.95. >> that's $225 for the night. >> not bad. >> $155 for the night. how it's easy when you know where to look. >> trivago compares hotel prices

invisible on the skin. it works like a dream. why didn't someone think of this sooner? >> and before the break, i told you about america's pioneering use of the global financial system to wage a new kind of economic warfare. joining me now is edward fishman, an adjunct professor of international and public affairs at columbia university. fishman served at the state department during the obama administration, where he led efforts on economic sanctions in response to russia's aggression in ukraine. also a member of the team handling sanctions on iran. he's the author of a groundbreaking new book, choke points american american power in the age of

economic warfare. edward, good to have you on the show. thank you. >> thanks for having. >> me. >> on today would've been a great conversation anyway. but given where we are in the world with ukraine and tariffs and these tariffs that are coming in on canada and mexico in a few days, remarkably important conversation. donald trump has talked a lot about tariffs being the most beautiful word in the english language. covered tariffs for a lot of years. they're a thing. they are sometimes really useful and beautiful and sometimes not useful at all. and damaging. why is he so attached to this? >> so look. >> tariffs historically have been used really for economic reasons in the very early period of american history. you know, george washington, you're using tariffs to raise revenue. right. this is what donald trump talks about today. mind you, at the time the us government was like ten guys in an office. right. so it's not viable to do that today. other times it's been used to protect industries in the united states from foreign competition. so, for instance, biden imposed 100% tariffs on chinese electric vehicles. he wanted to protect the domestic car industry. i think what's different about what trump is trying to do right now is he's trying to use tariffs as this cure all, almost a magic bullet

to solve every possible problem. columbia doesn't want to accept migrants on a flight, threaten tariffs. the brits want to create a new currency, threaten tariffs. the issue here is that tariffs are actually a weak tool if you're trying to use it as a national security weapon. >> there are also we have more targeted things. so when you worked on iran, for instance, super targeted, we're figuring out a way to not go to war with iran over its potential nuclear efforts. america finally took it off the swift system. so if you send a wire anywhere, you have a swift number. there's no swift numbers in iran. they literally had to stop doing business with the world almost overnight, except with rogue regimes that would do it without any war. >> that's exactly right. and i think that's why the iran sanctions have been so impactful. right. it wasn't tariffs on iran. it wasn't a trade embargo on iran. those are things that the us had had for a very long time. a big story that i tell in choke points is how really in the mid 2000, right around 2006, the us government figured out how to weaponize the dollar based financial system to isolate iran from the global economy. and the real innovation

that actually an individual, probably the most interesting character in my book, stuart levy comes up with, is that he doesn't actually have to go persuade the chinese government or the indian government to go along with the sanctions. he can go talk directly to the ceos of banks in places like london or frankfurt, take evidence with him showing how their banks are being used to funnel money into iran's nuclear program, or to support hamas and hezbollah, and basically just persuade those banks to stop doing business with iran of their own volition. and then the stragglers, you can threaten them and say, look, if you continue doing business with iran, we will cut you off from the dollar based financial system. and as a result, you isolate iran from the global economy. you got an iranian government who wanted to negotiate away their nuclear program, and you got a deal to do this peacefully. >> yeah. and then we walked away from the deal. let's talk about other currencies. you mentioned brics. china has talked about this for a while, creating an alternative currency, which would undermine the argument here, right. that the world needs dollars. the world all wants to have dollars. is there a viable alternative? is there is there a could the chinese

come up with something or could somebody else come up with something? >> so look, the choke points that i discuss in my book, like the dollar, which are these really critical parts of the global economy where one country dominates, they come and go. they're not immutable, right? so at some point there will be something that is a successor to the dollars we use today. that doesn't necessarily mean that china will be controlling it. i think one of the problems we have right now, ali, is that we've been kind of standing still, right? we've been relying on the same dollar based architecture from the 70s. you mentioned swift. swift was created in 1973. right, right. but china's been doing recently is they've launched a digital central bank currency, the digital rmb. they've created a platform called everbridge that allows countries to trade with their own central bank digital currencies. they're basically innovating in this area while the us has been standing still. so the thing i'm worried about, ali isn't so much that tomorrow we'll wake up and the rmb will be the world's reserve currency. it's that there'll be a technological disruption in which we're actually able to send money across borders much more quickly, and the us will be kind of playing catch up. why did.

>> what worked so well for america with iran not why is it not worked for russia as it relates to ukraine? >> so i think the russia sanctions are a tragic story, ali, because if you go back to when i was involved in the russia sanctions, i was part of the team that designed the original sanctions after the annexation of crimea in 2014, in the winter of 2014 to 2015, russia's economy was falling off a cliff. it was actually declining at an annualized rate of 10% in that winter. and what happened? right. instead of forcing pressing our advantage and really trying to get a good deal, the european leaders were petrified. they were worried that contagion would spread into their own economies. and so you had angela merkel basically rush into a deal with putin in february of 2015. that was not worth the paper it was written on. the deal was was violated multiple times. we never increased sanctions. and then trump gets elected in 2016, and he does absolutely nothing on russia's sanctions for four whole years. so i think by the time biden is dealing with this problem in the fall of 2021, you have 100,000 russian troops on the ukrainian border. putin has decided that the west just doesn't have the stomach to hit

him with devastating economic consequences. and so as a result, when world leaders like biden are going up there and saying, if you invade ukraine, you will be hit with the most devastating sanctions ever imposed. putin says, i've seen this before and it's not so bad. >> how does this minerals deal fit into your your thesis here? the minerals deal that didn't happen because there is china does control most of the important minerals that the us says it needs to for industry. >> that's exactly right. and look, we are living in an age of economic warfare, sanctions, tariffs, export controls. that's how countries compete today. it's how the us competes with things like the dollar with advanced computer chip technology. but it's also how china increasingly wages war. and the key choke point that china controls are these critical minerals. because things like graphite and lithium you need them to build batteries. and we cannot build electric cars in the united states without these minerals and without batteries made in china. and so just as the way the us weaponizes the dollar, china weaponizes these minerals, this deal with ukraine, i think that tragically blew up. i think

because potentially j.d. vance was trying to make a point or something i'm not totally sure would have helped insulate the american people from chinese economic warfare. it would have made you and me safer from xi jinping, hurting our economy. and i just think it's a pity that that has now, you know, gone to waste. >> what an amazing conversation. there are probably 50 more that come out of this book. what a great book. thank you for being with us. we'd love to continue the conversation with you. >> thanks, ali. >> edward fishman is an adjunct professor of international and public affairs at columbia university, author of the important book choke points american power in the age of economic warfare. all right, still to come on another hour of velshi the uk and france have agreed to work with ukraine on a ceasefire deal to end russia's war, filling a gap left open by donald trump after what can only be described as a diplomatic disaster in the oval office on friday. plus, as the trump white house moves to control and restrict the white house press pool. i'll talk to jim acosta, longtime white house correspondent who spent years holding trump to account. another hour of velshi starts right now.