. And then you have them asking, well what would you like us to do about fentanyl? As if it's just a separate, unrelated, perfectly reasonable question, which it is. And apparently the US answer is that among other things they want China to send the message out to the makers of the fentanyl precursors that the penalties will be severe. Now I don't know if that's ever going to happen because I don't think China is actually serious about stopping the flow of fentanyl. I don't think they're serious at all. But if it at least gets us to talk about the other trade stuff, you know maybe it served some weird purpose there. Maybe.

But meanwhile the big question is whose economy is going to blink first? Is the US going to have more problems because of these tariffs or is China? And the one thing I can tell you about the Chinese economy, I don't believe any story about the Chinese economy. I feel like you could read a story from somebody who seems to be an expert that China is ready to collapse any moment now and they'll give pretty good reasons. Well you got this bubble and you got this demographic problem and you got all these factories that are closing and the workers are not getting paid and it sounds pretty good. And you say to yourself, all right, looks like China can't hang. So they're going to have to make a deal. And then five years later China will still be there cooking along. And I don't feel anybody knows anything about China. And of course we can't believe any numbers that come out of it. So you have to be careful.

But here's something that Zero Hedge was saying. According to Zero Hedge, the last cargo ships from China arriving in US ports that won't have a tariff. So apparently if you were already at sea and you were shipping stuff to the US that would not be covered by the extra high Trump tariffs. So those are just coming into the docks now. So if you bought anything after that it might be part of shortages or whatever. So if some of those shortages really hurt, it's going to cost China more than they know. Meaning that it's one thing if I can't get 30 dolls, but one of the things we might not be able to get is ibuprofen because apparently most of the ibuprofen, there would be other pharma products that might be a problem too. But if I don't get ibuprofen, which is the only thing keeping me alive right now, I'm really going to be mad. So China has to manage not just the products and the tariffs and the economy. I mean it's a lot to manage, but they have to manage how we feel about it. And there are going to be some products that if they hold back on them or somehow they're delayed, I don't know if Trump is going to get the blame for that. I think we're going to blame China.

But there was data that again you have to be careful about believing any data about the Chinese economy, but here's what Zero Hedge said. And this surprised me. That since 2018 US imports from China have dropped from 21% of total goods to 13%. Did you know that? That in 2018 21% of our total goods came from China but that's dropped all the way to 13%. What was it that happened in 2018 that would have changed that number so drastically starting in 2018? Does anybody know? So this is a question for my regular viewers, people who have been with me since 2018. Does anybody know what happened in 2018 that could have been the start of something really bad for the Chinese economy? I'm not going to answer that question but the people who follow me on Locals, they know what I'm talking about. And you never know. Hey, you know maybe we live in a big old simulation and maybe things that you didn't think were connected, maybe they're more connected than you thought. You never know.

Apparently Nvidia shares are expected to go up because the Trump administration is going to end some chip export restrictions. I guess the restrictions were developed by the Biden administration but they were supposed to go into effect on the 15th of this month and they were sort of complicated and stupid. So the Trump administration is looking to simplify them which would be good for Nvidia. And CNBC is reporting on that. So it's not a change in the tariffs or anything. It's simply has more to do with America deciding which of our technologies we should allow other countries to have access to. And Trump is just going to simplify that. So that's good news.

All right, this is really funny. This is a story on Twitchy. Even Pete Buttigieg is saying that it was too hard to build things in America because of excessive regulations. Now do you think the excessive regulations came from Republicans? Do you think he's complaining about all the Republican-led excessive regulations? Well I'm going to read to you some of the wording of the regulations that made it hard for But