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958 - Thursday Night Volckerball feat. Jamie Merchant (8/7/25) (Patreon)

Published:
2025-08-08 06:15:39
Imported:
2026-06

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Content

Writer and Chicago-area organizer Jamie Merchant joins us for a deep dive into Trump 2’s economic policy. We talk about Trump’s decades-long obsession with tariffs and the intra-elite class war at the heart of his economic policy, the legacy of Bidenomics, Trump’s messy relationship with Jerome “Too Late” Powell, and the future of free trade and manufacturing in the United States. We then swerve hard into the e-girl influencer drama tearing apart the far right #TeamEmily #MorganWashed.

Read more of Jamie’s work at: The Baffler: https://thebaffler.com/latest/the-uneasy-oligarchy-merchant 

And Heatwave: https://heatwavemag.info/dossiers/tariffs/jm-tariffs-052925/ 

Be sure to pick up Jamie’s book Endgame: Economic Nationalism and Decline here: https://reaktionbooks.co.uk/work/endgame 

And follow him on Bluesky: ‪@jamiemerchant.bsky.social‬

Just a FEW MORE DAYS (for real this time!) to get your pre-order in for YEAR ZERO: A Chapo Trap House Comic Anthology at badegg.co/products/year-zero-1

Files

Comments

Waddle Mi

LETS GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

Chris

TGIF

JD Nonce

My wife put a 100% tariff on getting dome 😣😩 she says I need to self suck to completion before she’ll do it 😖 been tryna suck my own dick for weeks

dfumps

Waiting patiently for a Dershowitz pierogi mention

Andrew Cross

Banshee reference, hell yeah

Danny

did not see this crossover coming, hell yes!!

CS

I love when Will opens the episode with an admission of how out of touch he is with literally anyone else’s experience

Charlie

Talking about trade so much thought it was a dang seeking derangements episode

Declan Kennedy

The Chapo patreon cries out "no more Jacques, we hate that guy" The monkey paw curls. It's an all vegetables week. Somewhere, in the distance, a Cajun cackles.

Travis

Felix begins speaking at 12 minutes and 19 seconds this episode

THEKILLERWHALE

I find it crazy that it is not the standard response to the fact that we have an industrial overcapacity and that there is simply not enough demand for labor in the modern industrial economy is that we should switch to a democratic economy where we all work 10 hours a week. I get that capital owners have all of the levers of information but it seems pretty simple that the solution to too much labor is we all do less of it. Supply and demand!

Patrick Mc Toal

Fuck man, that end was grim. Debasing yourselves as to who’s the most virtuous…. all the while for an audience of the most grotesque losers. Brutally terrible

cc

The fact that I now sorta believe in the nominative variety of determinism but not at all the metaphysical kind would trip 20 year old me out sooo much

K H

Someone was saying they knew someone in foster care that got basically all theit teeth replaced with implants as a child.

Aidan Conway

Why does Will sound like he has a Werther’s in his mouth

jer

You better believe in it because I just cc'd you

cc

How should I put this… AHHH THE ROMANI GIRL FROM THE POLYCULE WAS RIGHT ABOUT EVERYTHING

Hardcore Virgin

Bill wears a ring that if his health drops below 15% he does double damage

Sman

Who is this guest? The discussion about Powell you can tell no one here has any background the issue.

lake

He says that he doesn’t know much about how the economy works, I would call that the experience of the vast majority of Americans

Jake Creighton

My brother in Christ, it’s all computer 🤌

Nick Perri

How did Jamie and Felix not see or even hear about that hard hat video?!

Corey Dineen

Do these guys vape when recording?

Shuff Head

Do people understand that if you cry about every guest that goes on your favorite show, no good guests will want to go on your favorite show in the future?

Tim O'

Do you not?

Tim O'

Dershowitz Pierogi is the name of a Polish Jew written by JK Rowling

james

Jamie who?!?

Joe S.

Felix, when are you gonna post your hitler Antarctica YouTube playlist?

Doug Cartel

It would be funny to me if someone took the trump/Powell video and every time trump rebukes Powell someone pauses the vid and is just like OH SHIT TUMP JUST SERVED HIM DAAAMN and just way over the top about this old man sleep taking to the guy he wants to fire

Michael Adams

James? I loved your solo music in the early 90s!

Gabe P

I’m gonna commit etceteracide

lewis kirvan

Powell was appointed by trump. He needs a 'for cause' reason to fire him and wasting money on buildings is his cause. But it's not working especially considering his hundreds of millions in white house renovations

lewis kirvan

Right. I would have done a better job on basically all of this.

Doug Cartel

I think what he meant by 'debt' was 'youll be in debt trying to satisfy her' You know the whole 'gold digger' thing

No

T E N D E N C Y O F T H E R A T E O F P R O F I T T O F A L L

d.a.walker

I'm always surprised Trump is such a McKinley fan, doesn't he know he was killed by a Polish guy?

Travis O.

Changing my Twitter handle to Jon Post

Shane Baker

The other being this: "The final stages of capitalism, Karl Marx predicted, would be marked by global capital being unable to expand and generate profits at former levels. Capitalists would begin to consume the government along with the physical and social structures that sustained them. Democracy, social welfare, electoral participation, the common good and investment in public transportation, roads, bridges, utilities, industry, education, ecosystem protection and health care would be sacrificed to feed the mania for short-term profit. These assaults would destroy the host." -Chris Hedges

Jonathan Thomas

China does everything better than the US, including executing their billionaires

Richard Cochnar

He’s letting oppressed groups (guests) speak first.

Karl Childers

can anyone recommend a good book on private equity, its history & how it works? i still genuinely do not understand how you can buy a company with borrowed money then make the company pay back the money which was borrowed to buy it. (great interview btw)

Bil

Braegzit

Ant koz

Nice dead boys out

Alex Thorne

I haven’t looked at twitter in years and everyone mention of it on this show since makes me glad I haven’t

Mosie

What’s wrong with the name Morgan, Felix….

Tooffixer

The dental child restraints that Felix is referring to are called “papoose boards.” They’ve been illegal in much of Europe for years but are still common in the US. They’re only supposed to be utilized as a measure of last resort but that’s just a guideline, ultimately it’s a shared decision between parent and provider. Many dentists and psychiatrists have called for their ban in the US but it’s probably not happening anytime soon

foreversincebreakfast

I too have been wondering about this for a long, long time. Once you notice it you can’t unhear it.

August West

Can somebody please tell Felix it’s “haphazard” not “half hazard”

Payton M

Overcapacity is fake. It's a narrative about trying to undermine the Chinese economy with a western boycott of Chinese manufactured goods

professional loaf of bread

1:07:00 throwing rocks in those glass houses would be tantamount to setting off a nuclear bomb

Tea for the Tillerman

Trump barely audibly mumbling “jus came out” when he springs the fake number on Powell is so funny

ADIFT

Lol don't bring up topics you don't know lol. I get theres a performative "this isn't the most important or cool issue" aspect of it. But i feel like will had a lot of topics that he hoped jamie would have been read up on and he wasn't. I know this is a cringe rec, but Atrioc has impressed me with his reading on current affairs recently.

ADIFT

As an example, not knoeing the ins and outs of trump wanting fire powell and his strategy with the building construction

lyle menendez

No...it's amusing to some of us.

Chris T

Crazy to hear this racist white woman X exchange here after hearing it on Hasan’s show. I like what Hasan stands for but goddamn that guy has no sense of humor. Like he does not have the humor gene.

Michael

The E-girl controversy reminds me of that scene in the American version of Shameless where Frank Gallagher is sitting in a meeting at his youngest sons’ private school where all the woman are attacking each other before confessing to sleeping with him which caused an STI outbreak.

B

I often think about the Felix construction of a leveraged lunch wherein debt is assumed by my sandwich upon purchasing time.

etienne

Barbarians at the Gate mentioned in the show

etienne

it means basically you can't keep her home because she needs to work to pay her debts or pay those out of pocket (and if those are student debt that's bad in and of itself to those people)

Zach Young

Getting slutted out at labor notes lol

Dec

Caught With the Meat in Your Mouth - Dead Boys

JDF

Kewis Lirvan, Genius, has entered the chat (and I’ve entered hiz ma)

Sam Schick

These boneheads really fumbled the Powell story. Put 👏 in 👏 some 👏 fucking 👏 effort. Embarrassing.

Seattle Trading Post

I think it's important to note that IoT wasn't a failed movement. IoT was successfully integrated into the average person's life and has thousands of applications in that context, despite being somewhat of a misnomer.

UltraCoil

Care work is soooo ignored in any discussion of jobs, because it's for women really. There's huge demand for people, it's productive work, but we pay fuck all for it because it's not seen as useful to the economy despite underpinning the whole thing.

Elizabeth Stockham

Kinda sad how ever since Matt stopped being a regular host Chapo lost its Marxist voice.

delle_chiaie

‘stealing capital from the rest of the world’ is a bizarre way to frame this

Karl Childers

did not realize that was a book title, thank you

etienne

point stands that it 1) didn't yield the iPhone explosive growth 2) it generated enshittification because there are now washing machines that want to talk to HQ via Wifi and will get hacked and enter a botnet

protob1

Can you do something to get these degenerates you elected to stop with this tariff shit and lower interest rates the fucking alternator on the BMW was $1800

Jameson .

Have u considered not buying a bmw

M Varnzo

I think I’ve heard making those long ass Twitter posts called giving Ackman. Lol

Kvvvy

Bill Smokecrackman strikes again

protob1

Leave JP alone and remember when he was pumping our bags back in 2020

protob1

Wow! I wish I had your insight in 2020 when interest rates were 0% and before the government triggered a global supply crisis over Chinese fly.

Pat M

Get Weisenthal back on the pod

CS

Will is not going to fuck you

Taylor Markey

“It’s weird how much Christians like lions. It’s like, weren’t they enemies at one point” is an all time Felix one liner for me.

Sman

Yeah it was insane how bad they dropped the ball here

Hot Rod

One of Trump criticisms in Powell is the new Fed Reserve building is way too expensive. Originally they wanted glass walls. One of the line items added by by the Commission of Fine Arts was for domestic marble. Trump’s appointees made the building more expensive.

Edison Franklin

Josh Kosman - The Buyout of America. From a few years ago but I think it does a good job explaining how it works

Roger Peet

"Endgame" is on top of the pile!

Alex Weber

This pod was funded by the globalist “Big Words” cabal and I’m going to sue Mr. Chapo for it.

etienne

im sure racism is bad but have you considered not trying to crash patreon with chatgpt spam

samuel henly

can someone shut this cunt up

SMP500

The way I cackled out loud 😭😩🤣

Zen Ben

Where the hell are the site mods? AI comment-bombing is not as amusing as you seem to think.

Zen Ben

Dude, you need to check yourself. The content perse is interesting

Zen Ben

Dude, STFU

Alberto Suarez

BITCH, if you only donated to palenstine once this entire time and then decided it was okay to donate again instead of buying the antology, i salute you🫡 once for having the heart, and twice for being the same brokey as ME now with nothing to read and a huge hole in your war shaped collection fuck you :(

fisher ilijasic

poor Will you can tell Jaime hated that nominative determinism joke lmao

Blingo Starr

To paraphrase matt: the neat thing about being a Marxist is it’s always overproduction

snafujesus

Swing and a miss on the Powell story. This has been a slowrolling attempt to oust Powell on corruption charges for construction overruns on the Fed campus renovation . Trump added costs already paid for a different reno to the total and Powell batted his bullshit away handily.

DT

Brandonization will never end.

Joseph Mabrey

STATE. RUN. CAPITALISMMMMMMMM something something China. For a Marxist podcast they don't really understand Marxist theory. Felix said we are in feudalism lol

Matthew

Sometimes you eat the b'ar, and sometimes the b'ar eats you 🎳

Agent Grange

"He thought it was like Solid Snake's Boss." Invisible????? YOU CAN'T EVEN SAY. MY NAME. HAS THE MEMORY GONE, ARE YOU FEELING NUMB?

Noctor

Using the insult that someone gives it up for free and therefore is a hoe implies that she is an advocate for prostitution. Which is actually very Christ-like

No Relation to Henry

And it’s like the main sector of the economy remaining in a lot of post-industrial communities. The town I live in in the rust belt used to have factories and still has a few, but today the biggest employers by far are the hospitals and the universities. (Another big employer is the prison. The Trillbillies have given me a lot of insight about how the prison-industrial complex has replaced things like manufacturing and extraction in a lot of communities that used to be centered around that.)

rexedog

really enjoy episodes on will’s least favorite topic

Lizard

Comment section even more schizo than usual

Sammi

Have they had Ben Norton on yet? Would be very funny hearing Will try to navigate a discussion with a deliberately serious, minimal humour econ guy. Would be even funnier if Felix was there being as ambiguously serious and funny as he is and basically having two separate conversations

protob1

B-E-A-N-E-R S-C-U-M

Anna Grace

When was the last time you posers were at DSA convention? ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️

BrasilMentioned

As the sole fan of the show in Brazil it's kind of crazy to be in the crosshairs of this crazy US administration. First 50% tariffs on goods, now the trump admin is coming for our payment system (PIX), sanctioning public servants who hired cuban doctors in 2013 and now there's talk of sanctioning Brazilian banks if they don't block a Supreme Court justice account. All of this just so Bolsonaro won't go to jail (Brazil is one of the few countries with whom de US has a trade surplus).

Alice Pooper

Hope I’m not too late but I’d recommend Appelbaum and Batt’s private equity at work. It’s an an academic book but still pretty readable and gives a good overview with case studies (focus is on labor as title kinda suggest). Also search articles by Doug Henwood (mentioned in this ep. He’s the goat) . I remember a piece he did in the nation on PE about ten years ago.

Jonathan Thomas

This is it. Immanuel Wallerstein demonstrated pretty convincingly that capitalism would be done by the mid 21st century, and would become something either more repressive or more democratic. He basically thought it was a coin toss.