In short
The host argues that world leaders are “checkmating” Donald Trump and that a new multipolar global order is forming, isolating the U.S. The episode claims China is leveraging rare earths and oil-market power to pressure the U.S., while regional alliances expand around Iran and other midpowers.
Guests
No specific guests are named in the transcript; it’s presented as a monologue with references to public figures and reported interviews/articles.
Guest backgrounds
Not applicable (no guests identified).
Key claims
China halts rare-earth shipments to U.S. firms despite licenses; China has effectively replaced OPEC as oil price setter; U.S. is losing credibility via bond sell-offs and ally disputes; Trump’s threats fail.
Notable examples
rare-earth export delays; Rosneft CEO Igor Sechin remarks; Xi Jinping comments at Shanghai Cooperation Organization; Norway cutting U.S. Treasury holdings; UN vote “Correct the Map” where the U.S. votes against; Trump blocking SpaceX/Blue Origin from Macron’s summit; Falklands naval-base claims; Axios report on “post-war containment strategy” for Iran.
Written by AI. May contain mistakes. Listen to the episode to check what was said.
Chapters
Tap a time to open that second in VOWorld Leaders Push Back on Trump
1:00 to 1:13
Discussion on the geopolitical shifts and the isolation of the U.S. under Trump.
“In business, the best days are when priorities stay on track.”
World Leaders Push Back on Trump
2:20 to 10:01
Discussion on the geopolitical shifts and the isolation of the U.S. under Trump.
“World leaders have easily checkmated Donald Trump, making quick work of his threats and his bluster.”
International Relations and the U.S. Position
10:01 to 14:00
Analysis of how other nations view the U.S. and their efforts to diversify away.
“In the Netherlands, they remove billions of dollars worth of gold from the United States because they don't trust their gold in the United States anymore.”
Trump's Impact on International Relations
14:00 to 15:10
Discusses Trump's disruptive influence on international summits and the UN's resolution regarding Africa's map.
“Organizers, you know, saying, oh, they've been disorganized.”
US Isolation in Global Affairs
15:10 to 17:15
Explores the US's unique position against the UN resolution and its implications for global diplomacy.
“was the only country in the world to vote against a redo of the map so that it actually reflects the real size of Africa because the Trump regime said it's too woke.”
Provocations and Global Tensions
17:15 to 19:49
Analyzes the provocations by the Trump administration against allies and rising tensions over the Falkland Islands.
“attacking Spain, attacking the UK, supporting Argentina with Javier Malay, the MAGA authoritarian leader of Argentina's claims to the Falkland Islands.”
The World Responds to Trump's Threats
19:49 to 21:28
Discusses how global leaders perceive Trump's threats and the emerging strategies to counter Iran and re-establish alliances.
“Axios, which is Donald Trump's kind of propaganda outlet, citing U.S.”
Transcript
Automatic transcript. May contain errors.0:00This podcast is supported by Anthropic, the public benefit corporation behind Claude. Everyone's got a hard question about AI. Your job, your kids, where it's going. Anthropic was built to surface those questions and share what it finds along the way. Because there's hope in hard questions. Ask yours at Claude.ai slash Spotify and keep thinking. That's Claude.ai slash Spotify. With summer coming to an end, you're going to be spending more time indoors. Get your home ready and save up to 50 % off custom window treatments during the Labor Day Mega Sale at Blinds.com. From room darkening to light filtering shades, finding the perfect fit is easy.
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1:50Ben Meiselas:Hey, it's Ryan Reynolds here from Mint Mobile. Well, now, I was looking for fun ways to tell you that Mint's offer of unlimited premium wireless for$15 a month is back. So I thought it would be fun if we made$15 bills. But it turns out that's very illegal. So there goes my big idea for the commercial. Give it a try at mintmobile.com slash switch. Upfront payment of$45 for three months,$90 for six months, or$180 for 12-month plan required. $15 per month equivalent. Taxes and fees extra. Initial plan term only. Greater than 50 gigabytes may slow when network is busy. See terms. World leaders have easily checkmated Donald Trump, making quick work of his threats and his bluster.
2:28Ben Meiselas:And now Trump and the United States are isolated, frozen out, and really weak with the newly created global order, a multipolar global order, where you have China asserting its strength. You have all of these midpowers uniting. And Donald Trump's out there like attacking Canada and NATO and just flailing. And the United States lost this catastrophic and unlawful war to Iran. And the United States is out of weapons. We're out of munitions. And the whole world knows that. They know how incompetent this Trump regime is. And so in this newly created global order, you have China controlling the rare earths.
3:17Ben Meiselas:You have China controlling the oil market, essentially replacing OPEC. A new security architecture has been formed in the Middle East with Arab nations asserting themselves with alliances like the Mecca Pact and with China coming in to provide additional security guarantees and support. Why else do you think Xi Jinping was in Egypt with El-Sisi talking about a new global architecture while he was in Egypt? That was the main point of his visit. What do you think was going on in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization in Kyrgyzstan in Bishkek? What do you think is going to happen in New Delhi at the BRICS block meeting that's going to be taking place there?
4:04Ben Meiselas:All of this stuff is being discussed, and China is wielding its control over the rare earths to squeeze the United States. And Donald Trump's out there saying, Xi Jinping's my friend, and I can't wait to have him here in the White House. It's going to be all great. Let's take a look at what's actually happening in the world. So Chinese rare earths suppliers are halting some shipments to U.S. companies despite having export licenses, fearing punishment from Beijing amid rising U S China tensions. The delays in these Chinese rare arts from these Chinese rare arts suppliers are keeping critical material supplies tight and prices near record highs affecting defense, semiconductor, aerospace, and energy industries.
4:55Ben Meiselas:And what's that ultimately going to be doing? That's causing inflation to rise in the United States. And we're seeing what's going on there and it's hurting the American consumer and it's all being passed down. Let's talk about China's control over the oil markets. I think this was an article that's not getting nearly enough attention, but we've been talking about this here on the Midas Touch Network. So you have the CEO of Rosneft, the largest oil producer in Russia, Igor Sechin, and he is saying that basically China has replaced OPEC. And Bernard Bertrand says it well here. This hasn't been talked about much, but it may be one of the most consequential revelations of this catastrophic US war on Iran that China has effectively replaced opec as the global price setter for oil you see china is the number one importer of crude throughout the world and in 2025 when prices were low china imported massive amounts of crude.
6:08Ben Meiselas:So in China's oil reserves, they've got like 1.2 to 1.5 billion barrels, and they were prepared in the event of a oil supply shock on what to do. And so if China imported the amount of crude they previously did, I mean, the price right now of crude would easily be$150 to$200 a barrel. But because China has kind of abstained from importing that amount of crude, right, and it has allowed the supply of crude to not be fully kind of eaten up by all of these China imports, and China has gone to their domestic sources that they built up, it's actually allowed for, while the price of crude is very high, it's approaching$100 a barrel.
7:07Ben Meiselas:It could have been far worse right now. Now, China is not doing this out of the goodness of its heart. What China is also doing this is also out of leverage. Well, on the one hand, it knows that if the price of crude grows up dramatically, that That could have global economic Great Depression catastrophic effects, which would also hurt China. But also China can exert leverage right now because if it resumed importing at the previous pace that it did, it would basically blow up the entire global crude market, global oil market, which would then have further cataclysmic impacts on the United States.
7:54Ben Meiselas:States. So when the Trump regime is out there threatening economic D-Day and you have Besant with the bravado and the bluster, ultimately the United States can't do economic D-Day. The entire world looked at Besant's threats and laughed in his face and ignored him totally, right? At the Shanghai Cooperation Organization meeting that took place in Kyrgyzstan, where you had China and Russia and India and Pakistan and all of these countries that were there. And they all said, no, we're still going to work with Iran. Iran was at the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. They were viewed as like a hero.
8:34Ben Meiselas:They got a hero's welcome at the Shanghai Cooperation Organization meeting in Kyrgyzstan. And all these countries said, no, we're still going to do business with Iran. And there's nothing that Besant can do about it. There's nothing that the Trump regime can do about it because China controls the rare earths. China controls the oil market right now because of its position as the top importer of crude and because it prepared for this, unlike Donald Trump, who didn't prepare for anything. Xi Jinping, when he was at the Shanghai Cooperation Organization Summit, he would say things like this, China stands for an equal and orderly multipolar world where history is written by all peoples, not dictated by a single power.
9:25Ben Meiselas:Multipolarity, the right of every nation to choose its own development path, and the democratization of international relations are the right path for humanity. He goes on to say it is historically unjust for a small number of countries to dominate international affairs, a world dominated by one country or governed jointly by a few countries through bloc politics is not genuine multilateralism. Who do you think he's talking about right there? It should be obvious. And I'll focus a little bit more about China in a moment also, but we should take a look at these trends that are going on throughout the world as well.
10:03Ben Meiselas:In the Netherlands, they remove billions of dollars worth of gold from the United States because they don't trust their gold in the United States anymore. That's gold. Those are gold bars, okay? Like, let's talk about the bond market. Just take a look at what Norway did. This is the stuff that we need to be paying attention to because it's not just the Netherlands and Norway. There is an international sell-off of American bonds right now and American assets. Norway's$2.3 trillion sovereign wealth fund plans to cut U.S. Treasury holdings as it seeks higher returns and diversification. The move comes amid a global bond sell-off, multi-year high U.S.
10:50Ben Meiselas:yields, and inflation concerns tied to the Iran war. The U.S. is not viewed as a stable global player anymore. Predictability, certainty, these were hallmarks of the United States economy in the past, no longer under the Trump regime. And this is why you see these midpowers uniting as well. And Prime Minister Carney talks a lot about midpowers uniting and forming their own group in this multipolar world, right? Where you may have China, you can have these midpowers with shared values like Canada and the European Union. Then in this other pole, I guess the United States is just all alone and isolated.
11:35Ben Meiselas:You know, as part of this multipolar world, you have Russia allied with China and North Korea and Iran as well. And then you have Donald Trump just like flailing and posting weird memes and hoarding money and taking money for himself. It's really incredibly damaging to the United States in ways that will be felt for decades and perhaps likely forever. So you have the premier of British Columbia, David Eby. Here's what he was saying as well, that the relationship with the United States is never going to be as it was before. This is what the world thinks of the United States now. Play this clip.
12:14We've all watched countries make concessions to the U.S. to this president. And then the president comes back for more. Canada has made concessions to the U.S. We've stepped back from digital services tax and we've stepped back from other initiatives that the president found objectionable. hoping that that would, and I say we, these were decisions made by the prime minister, hoping that that would keep us moving forward. But the president just kept coming back for more. And I think everyone just understands that the agreement's not worth anything, basically, from the moment the president finishes signing it.
12:46It's what's next. And we're just done with it, I think, as a collective group. And so, you know, it's fine to say you're done with it. the U.S. is a huge market. We're deeply integrated. Trade continues, all these other pieces. But almost to a person, certainly Canadians and elected officials, how do we diversify away from the U.S.? How do we build other relationships? How do we protect ourselves? This relationship is not going back to the way it was before. And how do we make sure that we're more independent of the U.S. because we allowed ourselves to get too integrated and failed to keep our eye on the prize of ensuring that we're an independent country that can stand on our own two feet.
13:26And that's what our project is now.
13:27Ben Meiselas:And then just look at what the United States did to France. I mean, the Trump regime lashing out and hurting allies, or I guess now former allies in the most petty of ways. So French president Emmanuel Macron was throwing a huge space summit in France this past week. But what did Trump say? Trump said, SpaceX, you can't attend. Blue Origin, you can't attend. Any United States companies cannot attend this French international space summit and then just ruin the summit. Organizers, you know, saying, oh, they've been disorganized. But Trump destroyed France's space summit. Like, why would you? It's space.
14:11Ben Meiselas:It's international space. Why would you destroy it because that's who the trump regime is and look at this as well look at what happened in the united nations at the end of this week there was a un resolution to basically uh conform maps so that uh africa was the correct size so the un general assembly adopted the african-led resolution to hashtag correct the map for centuries it talks about how the the mercator maps shrank Africa today the world voted to see the continent at its true scale the United States by the way was the only country to vote against this resolution they were the only country I just want you to watch what it looked like in the UN General Assembly as the African lead resolution passed.
15:08Ben Meiselas:The U.S. was the only country in the world. There was six abstentions, but the U.S. was the only country in the world to vote against a redo of the map so that it actually reflects the real size of Africa because the Trump regime said it's too woke. Here, play this clip. The assembly will now take a decision on draft resolution A-80-L-104 entitled titled Correct the Map, Rebalancing Global Cartography, Representation and Promoting Equitable Representation of the World's Region, particularly Africa. A recorded vote has been requested. We shall now begin the voting process. Those in favor of draft resolution, A-80-L-104, please signify those against abstentions.
16:03The Assembly is now voting on Draft Resolution A-80-L-104 entitled, Correct the Map, Rebalancing Global Cartographic Representation and Promoting Equitable Representation of the World's Regions, particularly Africa. Will all delegations confirm that the votes are accurately reflected on the screen?
16:32The voting has been completed. Please lock the machine.
16:43The result of the vote is as follows. In favor, 164. Against 1. Abstentions, 6. Draft resolution
17:02Draft resolution A-80-L-104 is adopted.
17:14Ben Meiselas:And then the United States has just engaged in all this provocative behavior, attacking Spain, attacking the UK, supporting Argentina with Javier Malay, the MAGA authoritarian leader of Argentina's claims to the Falkland Islands. It's like, what are you doing, Trump? I mean, Trump's saying, I don't think the UK would be able to win a war over the Falkland Islands again. And then you have UK's foreign secretary, Ed Miliband, say the UK's position on the Falkland Islands is unwavering. The islands are British and will remain so because that is the overwhelming position of the islanders. When you had Javier Malay of Argentina linked with Donald Trump announcing plans to build an integrated naval base near the Falkland Islands and basically talking about retaking over the Falkland Islands as Trump encourages that.
18:10Ben Meiselas:I mean, you have Donald Trump basically promoting and encouraging a lot of the immigration issues in the Northern African area, the Saeta area that's controlled by Spain, independent territory, but Donald Trump doing that to create instability in Spain, to create instability. Go back to what the Trump regime's view of the European Union was. It was the Trump regime said that they basically want to support groups that destroy the European Union from within. And that's the behavior that the Trump regime has engaged in. And so that's, where we're at right now. M.B. Galibaf, Iran's parliament leader, said the following, China's emphasis on fostering common security reflects a principle Iran has long champion.
19:01Ben Meiselas:Regional countries must be taking their future into their own hands, and true stability can only come through a new security architecture that is homegrown. Iran stands ready. That's why I want you to see what's developing internationally right now. This has been accelerating lately. I think world leaders now clearly see that Donald Trump will threat and he'll huff and he'll puff. He doesn't carry through on his threats. If he tries to, he does so so recklessly and incompetently that Iran was able to beat the United States in the war. I think that was very revealing to the rest of the world. And just look at what Trump's saying now, like with the world moving on, making deals with each other, freezing out the United States.
19:47Ben Meiselas:Here's what Donald Trump is saying. Axios, which is Donald Trump's kind of propaganda outlet, citing U.S. officials and other sources with knowledge say, the Trump administration is building out the plans for a post-war containment strategy for Iran. Per the report, the strategy is based on three main pillars, creating a regional diplomatic and security framework built to contain an aggressive of Iran, a renewed concerted effort to resolve and build out post-conflict frameworks in Lebanon and Gaza, and an expansion of the Abraham Accords. However, per one U.S. official speaking to Axios, they are cooking it, but it's not yet cooked.
20:28Ben Meiselas:The strategy is in its nation formation stages, and it's yet unclear if U.S. regional allies will be on board. No, they won't be on board. They're cooking it. They're doing frameworks of deals, frameworks of frameworks of frameworks. No one wants to do, no one wants, the Abraham Accords are not going to be extended. Nobody wants to do any of this with the United States. The Trump regime has showed how unpredictable, uncertain, it's impossible to work with. You can't do a deal with bad people. And that's what Trump has demonstrated. He's demonstrated his whole life. And I think 2025, the world was still seeing like, I don't know, is this three-dimensional chess?
21:09Ben Meiselas:Is he going to make good on the threats? What's he going to do? And now I think the world's like, got it. This guy's an idiot. And all he cares about is stealing money for himself. And he doesn't work in the national interest of the United States. And he's incompetent. And now's our time. Now's our time to restructure the world order. And that's what we're seeing. That's what we've seen happen and we've seen it happen rapidly right now. There you have it, everybody. Let me know what you think. Hit subscribe. Let's get to 7 million subscribers. Thanks for watching.
22:01yeah
From the publisher
MeidasTouch host Ben Meiselas reports on world leaders increasingly pushing back against Donald Trump and taking steps to counter his threats and policies as new international alliances and partnerships take shape.
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