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Trump AI Speech & Action Plan, DC Summit Recap, Hot GDP Print, Trade Deals, Altman Warns No Privacy

All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg

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  • Summit Chaos Behind The Scenes
    • David Sacks shared the chaotic urgency of managing the AI Summit with heavy government involvement.
    • They balanced timing tightly to ensure President Trump’s presence and executive orders were featured. Transcript: Jason Calacanis Chamath and I just parachuted in to DC last week for the AI Summit. Sachs was busy working with POTUS to get all those executive orders done. Take us behind the scenes, Friedberg. All of these incredible speakers. You got Lisa from AMD. You had Lutnik. I liked him. Besant. I liked him. David Friedberg We had to say no to a lot of tech company CEOs that found out about the event and wanted to speak on stage. So there was a big kind of cutoff that we had to make around making sure that we got our message across. I think if you watch the content, we talked briefly about it at the beginning, but the focus was really on trying to dispel the negative AI narrative and myth that AI is just here to destroy Jobs because there’s this big economic boom that’s happening, both with respect to new industries that are emerging, which is why we showcased Hadrian and others, but then also the Infrastructure needed to support the AI race with data centers, chips, mining, and energy. And so we highlighted each of those four industries. And then the cabinet people found out about it and wanted to get involved. So we were unfortunately squeezing people on and off stage. It’s kind of crazy to tell the Secretary of Treasury he has to get off the stage because he’s passed his 20-minute allocation. But we had to line everything up so that the president could get his Secret Service detail to clear the stage and get set up in time. That’s why we were rushing everyone. But man, what a week, what a rush. It was awesome. Thanks to David Sachs for the leadership and pulling it all together, bringing those folks to the table. And Sachs, congrats on getting your EO signed and your action plan published. That was pretty cool. Pretty awesome to meet the president and meet all those cabinet members and have all of this day come together because of the work you’ve been doing. Jason Calacanis How does it feel? Sax, how are you doing in the afterglow there? I can see that you’re in the afterglow. You sent me a picture of the four besties with our incredible 47th president. (Time 0:02:11)
  • Trump’s AI Race Vision
    • President Trump’s AI speech declared an AI race akin to the space race, emphasizing innovation, infrastructure, and exports.
    • He insisted the AI models must be free of ideological bias, setting a tone for future US AI policy. Transcript: Jason Calacanis Of favorite moments. David Sacks First of all, I think we should talk about the substance of the speech because I think this was the first speech that President Trump has given on AI since the AI boom began. He’s spoken about it before, but this was a full-length policy speech. And he declared that the United States was in an AI race. It’s a global competition. I think the language that he used was reminiscent how President John F. Kennedy declared that America was in a space race. And in a similar way, President Trump declared that we had to win the AI race. I think you can argue that the AI race is more important than the space race. It’s going to reshape the global economy. It’s going to determine who the superpowers are of the 21st century. And President Trump was really clear that we had to win it and that he was going to support a strategy for winning it. And then he laid out what some of those key pillars are. Number one was innovation. We have to get the red tape out of the way and let our geniuses cook. And clearly was very supportive to a lot of the CEOs and entrepreneurs in the crowd. Number two is infrastructure. He touted the hundreds of billions of dollars of investments in energy and power generation and grid upgrades and data centers that he’s supporting. And then he also supported AI exports. He said that we have to make America’s tech stack the global standard. So I think those were really important messages. And then on top of that, I think there was also some parts of the speech that maybe have gotten less attention but are also important, where he said that it’s not only important that we Win, he said it’s important how we win. He sort of mentioned three non-negotiables here. Number one was that American workers have to be at the center of the prosperity that we create. Number two is that the AI models that the government procures and buys must be free of ideological bias. So no woke AI. And he also signed an executive order to prohibit woke AI in the federal government. We can talk about that in a second. That probably was my favorite moment. Jason Calacanis That was your favorite moment? That was my favorite moment. That was the red meat moment. I thought that was like that meat, yeah. That was the red meat for the base, yeah. David Sacks Yeah, the third thing is he did say that we do want to prevent our technologies from being misused or stolen by malicious actors. And look, we are going to monitor for emerging and unforeseen risks. So, you know, we’re not going to disregard the risk. But he had this really good line in the speech about how even though AI, look, it daunting technology because it’s so powerful and like any revolutionary technology like that it can Be used for bad as well as good but the the daunting nature of it is all the more reason why we have to do it in the united states why the united states has to be the pioneer and the leader is Because we don’t want the power of that technology being developed in other parts of the world, at least other parts of the world are going to have it, but we want to be the ones on the cutting Edge who are defining it and leading it. Jason Calacanis Fantastic. Okay. David Sacks So I think it was a really important speech, I think, this idea of an (Time 0:09:09)
  • Neutrality in Government AI
    • The new executive orders included preventing “woke AI” bias in government AI models, emphasizing non-ideological neutrality.
    • This was to avoid AI censorship and ideological bias found problematic in prior policies. Transcript: David Sacks About the executive orders for a second, because I think it’s pretty cool that the president of the United States signed three executive orders at the All-In Summit that we just hosted. I mean, that was pretty amazing. One of them was to promote AI exports, because we want the American tech stack to become the global standard. The second was around AI infrastructure to make permitting easier so we can help solve those energy problems. You’re talking about Freeberg. And then the third one was on preventing woke AI in the federal government. And that, to me, is probably my personal favorite because we spent a couple of years on the show talking about how, when we’re talking about woke, you’re really talking about censorship, Right? We were talking about censoring people’s views based on- Bias. Ideological bias, ideological dogmas. We saw what was happening in social media before Elon bought X that helped bring things back. But we were on a track, I think, before President Trump’s election to repeat that whole social media censorship apparatus in the form of AI bias or AI censorship. And we saw this with the whole Black George Washington and where some AI models were saying it was worse to misgender someone than to have a global thermonuclear war. And this wasn’t an accident, because if you go back to the Biden executive order on AI, there was something like 20 pages of language on there encouraging DEI values to be infused into AI models. So again, we were on track to repeat all the social media censorship, all the trust and safety stuff in this new world of AI. But it would have been even more insidious because at least when someone gets censored, you kind of find out about it. Jason Calacanis It’s explicit. It’s not explicit. David Sacks Yeah. But with AI, it would have been worse because you wouldn’t have even known. It would just be there rewriting history in real time to serve a current political agenda. We’ve been brainwashing our kids. Jason Calacanis Oh, and people trust these AIs more than they should. I mean, these things are making a prediction of the next word coming. This is not like God-given truth here. And so, Freeberg, you wanted to interject there about this one, because this is actually, I’ll be honest, Sax, I’m surprised you’re saying this was the most important one to you. I like that you clarified it because it was the one that was mocked or kind of like people were like, what? Why is this important? I think you made a good case for why it’s important. Freeberg, your response? Yeah. David Friedberg But Sachs, this is not about broadly making, quote, AI non-ideological. Private companies should still have the right through freedom of speech or freedom of expression or freedom to operate to make AI that does whatever they want it to do. What the EO was, was that the federal government would not procure ideologically biased AI. Is that correct? Yes, exactly. David Sacks No, we’re aware. David Friedberg Just to make sure that the federal government is not trying to instruct private companies how to operate. It’s simply saying, if you want to sell to us, these are the rules of the road. David Sacks Yes, that’s true. So we were very careful about the First Amendment issues. And you’re right, that if a private company wants to put out a biased AI product, we’re not going to tell people they can’t use it. David Friedberg Right. And it could work. It could be successful. People might like it. Yeah. David Sacks We’re just saying that the federal government is not going to spend taxpayer money buying AI models that have compromised their accuracy and quality because they’re beholden to some, You know, ideological agenda. Jason Calacanis Which is similar to the approach with the universities, right? Hey, listen, you could have a biased university. We’re just not going to fund it. We’re not participating. I think it’s quite reasonable in that way. David Sacks And I would just say that, you know, we were a lot more careful about this than the Biden administration was when they required that DEI be inserted into all these models. They didn’t distinguish between public and private money or government procurement versus private models. So they were trying to suffuse DEI into everything. And what we’re looking for here is just neutrality, right? We’re looking for a lack of ideological bias. The first step was to get rid of that Biden EO, which the president did his first week in office. This goes a little bit further, and it’s a little bit of a shot across the bow of these Silicon Valley companies saying, look, you need to play it straight. You need to be ideologically unbiased. Jason Calacanis As the default. David Sacks As the default, (Time 0:16:40)
  • Government AI Procurement Rules
    • Private companies retain the right to design AI with ideological bias.
    • The federal government merely sets unbiased criteria for AI it procures and uses taxpayer funds for. Transcript: David Friedberg Would you go so far as to make it… David Sacks We don’t want AI taking an Orwellian direction. David Friedberg Yeah, would you go so far as to limit free speech and make it non-ideologically biased? Like, would you make that law if you could? No, I wouldn’t. The the decision about the federal government procuring versus what these private companies can choose to reflect as their quote values in their system no he just you already answered David Sacks You know he would not yeah no look we understand the difference between public procurement and private speech and again and in a way that the biden administration did not because they Were saying that all ai models yes had to be here to a specific ideology. Jason Calacanis To the CEI stuff. Yes. It was an ideology they wanted embedded in it. You’re saying, don’t put an ideology. But just to be clear here, I want to make one point. This is the defaults. Anybody who wants to, when they start their prompt or they set up their preferred language model could say, I’m an atheist. Here’s what I believe. Please speak me with this in mind. Or I’m a Catholic. You know, I’m a Protestant, whatever you want. Here’s my belief system. Please never reference, you know, these three subject matters in this way. So this is the default. I think it’s a great thing. You’ve explained it perfectly. I think that’s a great example, J. David Friedberg Cal. I do think we’ll end up seeing religious AI. I think we’ll see AI that’s queued to people’s religious beliefs and other ideological. I would have one of the startups we did was doing (Time 0:22:20)
  • Fragility of Copyrights With AI
    • Intellectual property laws face challenges in the AI era as AI independently derives innovations.
    • Copyright and patents might diminish as enforceable concepts as AI-generated content proliferates. Transcript: Jason Calacanis And this is something that the press was having a field day with and they really keyed on, which was, hey, respecting IP, respecting copyright. What’s the feedback been so far on that, which was a pretty spicy part of President Trump’s speech? David Sacks Well, I think what the president said was just very pragmatic. He said we had to have a common sense approach towards intellectual property. And he said, if you have to make a deal with every single article on the internet, every single website, every single book, every piece of IP, in order to train an AI model, it wasn’t feasible. He said, look, I appreciate the work that went into people creating these works, but you’re not going to be able to negotiate a deal for every single one of them. And if we require our AI models to do that, and China doesn’t, and they won’t, they’re just training on everything, whether it’s pirated or not. Then we’re going to lose the AI race. So I think he took the side of a fair use definition. I don’t know if he used the term fair use, but effectively, he was taking the side of a reasonable fair use. Jason Calacanis What did you think of that part, Dave Freeberg? Do you have any thoughts or jamaht on that part? I think he’s absolutely right. David Friedberg I’ve said this before. If something’s in the internet, if something’s in the open domain, and I strongly disagree with the idea that AI getting trained is the same as AI replicating copyright material. If AI outputs text or outputs audio or outputs video that contains copyright material, it is 100% in violation of copyright. David Sacks And he said that, by the way. David Friedberg Yes. And if the AI is learning, it is understanding patterns, it is understanding reasoning, it is understanding concepts by reading copyright material, just like humans do. A writer, an author, reads a bunch of fiction, learns good techniques, learns good concepts, learns good theory from reading all those books, and then goes and writes his or her own Book, they are not violating copyright material. What if it’s all behind a paywall, Friedberg? What if it’s all the New York Times content and it’s not on the open internet? You’re 100% correct. That should be paid for or licensed. I’m talking about the open internet. I’m talking about open material. I’m talking about stuff that’s in the open domain. There’s a thing called common crawl. Jason Calacanis If somebody stole a hundred books, let’s say, and put them on their website and it was a pirated Russian website with a thousand books on it and you accidentally crawled it, you would Be obligated to take that out then. Correct. I think we all agree. David Friedberg Correct. Okay, correct. Jason Calacanis Because that’s what a lot of the lawsuits are around. So I think we’re reaching something. I just want to say, you know, this is such an important point, especially to me as a content creator and somebody who spent his career in this. I’ve been thinking about the end game. And I was, I’m here in Park City. I was just giving this a keynote and I wanted to show you something I made, a SACS, because I think we have to get to the end game here. So in my talk, I talked a little bit about how can we get through this fight and then maybe getting to a solution. So I had my team mock up the New York Times website here and ChatGPT doing a deal with them. So here you see you’re on the New York Times website, and you ask it a question powered by GPT. You ask it, hey, you might ask this question. In fact, you log in with your ChatGPT credentials, and it could be Grok, it could be Gemini, give me the earliest mentions of Putin, you know, if you were a fan of Putin or something, and It would then go through that and give you your Putin references. And then I made another one. And then obviously, this would be an exclusive to chat GPT, it would be one of those things where, you know, they get an exclusive. And then here on the Disney Plus channel, imagine you could make yourself into a Jedi Knight and you could then upload your photo. You know, kids might really get into this. You upload your photo. You can make, you talked about this, Freebrug, a couple of times of the future of narrative storytelling. You up your photo and then it makes you into a Jedi Knight. There’s, there’s Darth Calacanis. So. David Sacks That looks to me like you’re infringing on their trademark. What’s that? Are you infringing on their copyright? This is fair use. Jason Calacanis This is fair use. This is a perfect example of fair use for editorial. Chamath Palihapitiya You’re also infringing on some Ozempic. Jason Calacanis That’s a skinny version. Trust me. I am definitely infringing on some Ozempic here. Guys, I’m past Ozempic. I’m onto peptides now, man. I’m on the Wolverine protocol. So look out. Are you? Yeah, I started doing the… I mean, I don’t take a pod… Chamath Palihapitiya You and Vinny, what could go wrong? Jason Calacanis Don’t take a podcaster’s advice. Please, don’t take a podcaster’s advice on your healthcare. Rule number one, take Chamath’s advice because he’s got 6% body fat, which I think attributes to much of your pomp and circumstance around your privates. I think it has to do with the lack of fat, but I’m going to leave it at that. Chamath Palihapitiya First of all, it’s 11 and a half, but that’s right before I go on summer vacation. Then it ends up at 12 or 13. Did you go get that gelato? What was that place we went that we love? Lulumi. I’ve gone there every day, every day so far. Did you do two or one? Be honest. Two or one. Bro, I’ve had, I’ve had, I’ve been doing- No, no, per session. Do you do two or one? Be honest. Per session two. I start with the medium and then I finish with a small. Yeah, exactly. Jason Calacanis This stuff is so good. Chamath Palihapitiya I’ve never tasted any gelato like this. It’s incredible. I mean, it’s just unbelievable. Jason Calacanis We have to license it for the United States and put it into the all-in brand. We have to license it from them. Chamath Palihapitiya It’s really incredible. Jason Calacanis But Chamath, just generally speaking, or anybody who wants to have at it, Freiburg, Sachs, what do we think about the end game here? Because there’s some major lawsuits here. They’re going to get settled in the next year or two. But what do we think about sort of the future I’ve shown here today? David Friedberg I think what Sachs just highlighted is exactly right. David Sacks Look, we got to have a common sense approach here or we’re going to lose the AI race. I mean, one of the key determinants of AI quality is the amount of data that you have. It’s very simple, right? There’s a few building blocks. There’s energy, there’s chips, and there’s data and there’s algorithms. And if you lose on any one of those dimensions, then you’re in trouble. So, look, you just can’t have a situation where China can train on the entire internet and RAI models are hamstrung by needing to contract, negotiate contracts with every single website. But right now, Elon owns X, right? He owns Twitter, now X. Jason Calacanis Does Sam Altman have the right to use X in his corpus? It’s publicly available? No, it’s not. David Sacks No, it is not a public endpoint it’s not a public i just honestly i don’t know there’s i don’t know the answer to that there’s some edge cases here we’re gonna have to come up it’s not about Chamath Palihapitiya Whether it’s behind a paywall or not it’s whether these apis exist and whether you’re at you’re actually contractually allowed to use them or not the terms of service correct the terms David Friedberg Of service it’s published on every website what the terms of service are with respect to the content. David Sacks I think it would be okay to let people opt out. You know, so we already have this with Common Crawl. You can put in the footer of the website, … (Time 0:34:39)
  • AI Learning Vs Copying
    • Training AI on copyrighted content is akin to humans learning from books, not copyright violation.
    • Copyright violation occurs only if AI outputs directly copy protected works without transformation. Transcript: David Sacks The question is whether AI models are allowed to do math on the internet, you know, pattern recognition, basically, that’s what it is. David Friedberg And it’s and J. Cal, I think you’re conflating the two. And I don’t want to be interrupted. I understand the distinction. And I think that this idea that like, I can’t, for example, go to the library, rent a book, read it, and then learn some of the good techniques on how to write a good book should be restricted To humans in this AI context. Like this is exactly what they’re doing. They’re identifying patterns. And then they’re building predictive algorithms that allow them to output stuff that starts to fit within different kind of, you know, variable settings. Chamath Palihapitiya Do you guys think it’s possible that if you allocated enough compute at the problem, you could write Michael Crichton’s Jurassic Park de novo without ever having read it? David Sacks Yeah. Chamath Palihapitiya Me too. Me too. David Sacks I don’t know what that would mean like well this is my point i don’t know what i think i know what jurassic park is i don’t know what it means this issue i don’t know what it means to say can Ai write that like but you guys remember the ed shirin lawsuit do you remember that i did (Time 0:47:40)
  • AI User Privacy Gaps
    • AI user data lacks a clear legal confidentiality framework unlike therapists or lawyers.
    • Conversations with AI could be subpoenaed, raising privacy concerns needing new protections. Transcript: David Sacks We should talk about this AI privacy issue that Sam Altman mentioned. All right. Jason Calacanis That’s a great segue because I saw that as well, David Sachs. And as our civil servant working on AI, this is something where you could have an additional contribution. There’s more work we can give you. All right. Listen, here it is. AI user privacy is becoming an issue because friend of the pod, Sam Altman says there is no legal confidentiality when using his product, ChatGPT. Here’s a 30 second clip. Again, friend of the pod, FOP, Sam Altman, on Theo Vaughn. David Sacks People talk about the most personal shit in their lives to ChatGPT. Young people especially like use it as a therapist, a life coach, having these relationship problems. What should I do? And right now, if you talk to a therapist or a lawyer or a doctor about those problems, there’s like legal privilege for it. We haven’t figured that out yet for when you talk to ChatGPT. So if you go talk to ChatGPT about your most sensitive stuff, and then there’s like a lawsuit or whatever, like we could be required to produce that. And I think that’s very screwed up. I think we should have like the same concept of privacy for your conversations with AI that we do with a therapist or whatever. Okay. Jason Calacanis Sax, this is bringing up something super important. What’s your take on it? David Sacks Okay. Well, I think this is an interesting topic because like copyright, this is an area where we have existing law, but it does make you rethink whether those laws are truly applicable or Make as much sense in this new world. So the existing law, the existing example is search history. You know, the government can get a copy of your search history. They can subpoena it. Jason Calacanis Yeah. Every true crime story starts with the person searched for, how do I kill my husband slowly with poison? David Friedberg And then they, yeah, that’s how they catch it. Exactly. David Sacks The point is though, that I think Sam is right about the legal treatment right now, which is that your chat history isn’t any different than the search history in the eyes of the law. But it is much more personal. It’s much more interactive than your search history. You are using it, like you said, you could use it as your doctor, you could use it as your therapist, you could use it as your lawyer. And so the ability for the federal government to be intrusive is so much greater than with your search history. So I don’t know what like the right policy should be yet. But I will say it does make me uncomfortable. Jason Calacanis Yeah, there’s a market. (Time 0:56:38)
  • Encrypt AI Chats By Default
    • Encrypt all AI chat conversations by default to protect user privacy.
    • This approach can prevent authorities from accessing user chats without consent, resembling secure search practices. Transcript: Jason Calacanis There’s a market. Can I make a recommendation to my AI czar? Yes, please. He’s our servant. David Friedberg Why don’t we let AI models get bar certified and get medically certified? So if the AI models, it turns out, are actually proving to be more accurate, more thoughtful, more responsive, more reasonable, whatever it is, whatever metric we’re using, and they Pass the same criteria as one would need to pass to qualify for the bar to qualify for a doctor certificate, why don’t we do that for the AI? If that then happens, then the same privilege accrues to the AI as it does to the individual human that does it. And now if you extrapolate from where that takes us, if we’re suddenly giving AI the same sort of privileged rights that we give to privileged humans, where’s that going to take us ultimately With respect to the overall rights for AI? Jason Calacanis Well, they have responsibility. Hold on a second. I just want to point out here, once again, you have a mind-blowing concept here. I’ve never heard anybody vocalize that. Could they actually be certified in that knowledge? And if they pass the test, it makes sense they would, but then you also get responsibility. So with great power comes great responsibility. I will tell you this, you can turn this stuff off, but this is an opportunity. I’m going to send a note to you. David Friedberg And it sounds crazy today, but I guarantee if you put it on Polymarket, there will be a date when this happens. Let’s do it. That’s a great Polymarket. Shout out to Shane. Let’s get that up there. Jason Calacanis I just want to point out, and I’m going to email Elon about this when I get off the pod. This is an opportunity to create the signal equivalent of an LLM. All of your chat should be encrypted. All of it should be by default. By default on Grok. Make it so that Grok can’t even see it. They don’t have it. (Time 0:59:02)
  • Strong GDP Amid Fed Caution
    • GDP growth surprised positively with a 3% Q2 print, yet the Fed held rates steady.
    • The administration’s trade deals with Europe and others add large stimulus without inflation. Transcript: Jason Calacanis GDP growth was 50% higher than expectations in Q2 as the Fed held rates at 4.25%. In Q1, GDP declined 50 basis points. That’s probably due to the imports. People were stockpiling goods. David Sacks That’s the most pointless chart ever. Jason Calacanis Okay. And then, yeah, it is. I agree. Chamath Palihapitiya It’s a little bit, yeah. It’s distorted by one event. Jason Calacanis I wanted to have both. I wanted to have both as bar charts. This one- You’re totally on drugs. Chamath Palihapitiya Just say it. It’s okay. Jason Calacanis What drugs are you on? I’m not. I had coffee in an alp. I’m alped up. We’re all friends. You can tell us. Is it really just alp? All right. That’s that’s it. I’m taking it out. I took it out. And now let’s get back to the here. Okay. The Fed kept rates unchanged for the fifth straight meeting. This time, two out of 11 Fed governors dissented from Powell’s decision. Two of the dissenters were both Republicans nominated by Trump. So it seems like the Fed is becoming a little polarized now too. First time in 32 years that more than one governor dissented. And yeah, even one person dissenting is rare. Here’s a 25-second clip of Powell explaining how GDP factored into the cut decision. Nick, please play the clip. Chamath Palihapitiya Recent indicators suggest that growth of economic activity has moderated. GDP rose at a 1.2% pace in the first half of this year, down from 2.5% last year. Although the increase in the second quarter was stronger at 3%, focusing on the first half of the year helps smooth through the volatility in the quarterly figures related to the unusual Swings in net exports. Jason Calacanis The PCE index, and then I’ll throw this over to you, Sachs, for the official position here. For June dropped on Thursday. PCE is the Fed’s preferred gauge of inflation over CPI. PCE rose 30 bps in June in line with estimates. And if you remember, we talked about it in a previous episode, CPI rose a bit, 13% or 30 bps from May to June. So we’re not close to the 2% target. And that’s what the Fed keeps saying. We’re not there yet. And the economy is El Fuego. I don’t know if you noticed the Saks, but people are talking about the second quarter print, which was amazing for GDP. You were talking about it a bunch, Chamath, on the socials. He keeps referencing the first half. So he’s trying to blend those two together, I think, because of the tariff differences or maybe to smooth it out, as he said. What’s your take on this? The GDP boomed in 3%, which is pretty great. Chamath Palihapitiya But is that- No, the problem that Jerome Powell has is that he’s trying to smooth it because it allows him to justify his political decision. But the reason why you have to segregate Q1 and Q2, Q1 was before tariffs and Q2 was after tariffs. So I think you have to segregate these two things. And if you look at the run rate from Q2, what you’re probably going to see in Q3 and beyond is more similar to Q2, which is to say a large surplus, good GDP expansion, and moderating inflation. So why does the Fed not cut? Because at this point, not cutting is the only thing that you can do to slow the Trump administration down going into the midterms if you wanted to politicize the job. If, however, on the other hand, you just take the data as is, and you ignore Q1 because it was pre tariff, and you start to look at Q2, and you project forward. If you inject 100 basis point cut into the economy, this thing is going to go gangbusters, and Trump is going to look like an economic genius going into 2026. So I think that, again, in the absence of politics, you cut. Jason Calacanis Okay. Sachs, what’s the take from inside the administration and around it? I know you’re not speaking for the president on this issue, but you’re in the administration, so I’m assuming you’re- (Time 1:02:54)
  • Trump’s Trade Strategy Success
    • Trump’s trade deal strategy forced major countries to concede, benefiting U.S. economy substantially.
    • Tariffs have generated billions annually, aiding in balancing the federal budget. Transcript: Jason Calacanis But we’ll see if it works out. David Sacks April 2nd was Liberation Day. And the media went crazy. They were predicting a Black Monday, the market crashed. They basically tried to spook the markets and create fear. They said that we’re going to go into a recession or depression. And now look at where we are. Just a few months later, all the markets are at all-time highs. Trump has extracted trillions of dollars in these trade deals that people didn’t even know yet. Jason Calacanis Was it premeditated? Tell us the truth. Was it premeditated? Hold on. David Sacks President Trump has extracted trillions of dollars from other countries using powers that other presidents didn’t even know they had. Jason Calacanis 100%. 100%. Was it premeditated? Because it was chaotic. The market didn’t make those moves because of the media, by the way. The market made those moves because they were scared. David Sacks And we just had a 3% GDP growth print. So I don’t see how things could be. What I think happened that President Trump saw an opportunity here that other people ignored. It’s like when a CEO comes in to a company, a new CEO comes in, and that company’s been mismanaged for a decade, but it’s got wonderful assets on its balance sheet. It’s got a market position that’s still very strong. This has been underutilized. And he came in and understood that the United States had tremendous leverage in all these trade negotiations. Actually, they weren’t even trade negotiations then, in all these trade relationships. And he was able to essentially renegotiate all of them. And look at the results. I mean, they’re just staggering. And everyone said that, oh, Trump’s going to chicken out. He’s not going to hang tough. It’s all these other countries that have folded like, I don’t know, lawn chairs. I mean, they have all capitulated. Jason Calacanis Yeah, they fold a laundry. It’s really remarkable. But you’re not answering my question. Was this premeditated? David Sacks Give us some insight here. I don’t know what this is. What are you talking about? Jason Calacanis When they came out and it was like, oh, 100% tariff, 200% tariff, the market was not making that reaction based upon the media. They were making it based on what Trump was saying. So was it premeditated, this shock and bore, shock and reasonable negotiating strategy, or do you not know? Well, you’re not privy to it. David Sacks Look, I’m not speaking as an insider here, but we said at the time that all of that was happening, and Larry Summers was on the pod preaching doom, is that all of that was an opening bid. It was all a start to a negotiation and we had to see where it ended up and that the administration still had to stick the landing. But I got to say, based on EU, Japan, and South Korea, I mean, this is looking really good right now. Jason Calacanis Well, listen, it’s the top five that are like 90% of the negotiation. As Trump said, there was another little note he did in the keynote when he kind of drifted into his different things he wanted to talk about where he said, I don’t even need to know about The bottom countries. I’ve never even heard that names of some of these countries. He’s just got to nail the what? The top five, the top 10, and we’re done. And this administration has to stick the landing as well because these are handshake deals right now. They have to be inked. They have to be approved. So there’s a lot more work left to be done, but I am cautiously optimistic. There’s one other piece of it as well. David Sacks There’s one other piece of it. So we talked about the, you know, the fact that Europe has 0% tariffs on American products, but even after this deal, that the European products coming into the US will have a 15% tariff, And we’re not including the $600 billion of European investment in the U.S. We’re not including the $750 billion of sales of American energy to Europe. Okay, just talk about the tariff, that 15%. And what we’re seeing now across the board is generating about $300 billion a year of additional tariff revenue that goes to help balancing the budget. So $300 billion a year over 10 years is $3 trillion. That is a big number. Jason Calacanis It’s incredible, yeah. David Sacks So I don’t know if that completely satisfies Freeberg, but that’s a big help. (Time 1:13:17)