PREVIEW: “Tariffs, Greenbacks, Qatar’s Air Force One, and American Empire” with Assoc. Prof. David Smith

Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps

Josh Szeps

Comedy Interviews, Self-improvement, Society & Culture, Education, Comedy

4.6 • 863 Ratings

🗓️ 22 May 2025

⏱️ 31 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

How do you reconcile Trump's passion for American Greatness with his disengagement from international systems which America set up? What are the consequences so far of Trump's tariff flip-flops? Can Ukraine be resolved by the Great Powers alone? Do volatile bond markets predict the end of the U.S. dollar? Where does this all leave America in relation to the rest of the world? And what's the deal with Qatar's gift of a blingy Air Force One?

David Smith is an expert in American and international politics with the U.S. Studies Centre in Sydney. He's an Aussie who got his PhD in political science from the University of Michigan.

Here, he helps us understand the real theory underpinning Trump's foreign policy, and how it's likely to shake out.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Goody, humans. Welcome to the safe space for dangerous ideas, and it's an idea, a question
0:08.3	that has plagued me ever since the beginning of Donald Trump's political career.
0:12.7	What exactly is his theory of the case of international relations?
0:18.3	What is his view of diplomacy?
0:24.6	How do you reconcile the Trumpian passion for American greatness with his disengagement and withdrawal and disdain for all of the
0:33.0	international systems which America itself set up, like free trade deals and security guarantees and so on.
0:40.4	This conversation provides me with a better answer than I have ever heard before.
0:44.7	It comes from Associate Professor David Smith, who's an expert in American and international
0:49.4	politics at the U.S. Studies Center in Sydney, and he's an associate professor at the
0:53.7	University of Sydney, but he got associate professor at the University of Sydney,
0:54.7	but he got his PhD at the University of Michigan, PhD in political science.
1:00.2	And so he appears frequently in Australian press as a sort of a decoder of all things
1:04.2	Trump and all things America.
1:05.9	And here we really get into the weeds on the theory underpinning Donald Trump's foreign policy.
1:11.9	That expands to conversations about tariffs, about the strength of the US dollar, about what
1:17.6	bond markets and rising yields on bonds could presage about the fate of the US dollar as
1:24.0	the reserve currency of the world and what exactly all that means, whether Ukraine can
1:28.7	be resolved by Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin alone, and where all of this leaves America
1:33.9	in relation to the rest of the world. P.S. What the hell is going on with the Katari 747 that
1:41.2	Donald Trump wants to use as Air Force One? And what does that reveal to us about the great
1:45.6	man's mind? I hope you enjoy as much as I did this conversation with the one, the only, David
1:50.4	Smith.
	...

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