Richard Wolff is Professor Emeritus of Economics at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and a visiting professor at The New School, where he works on economics in the Marxist tradition. This is Richard’s seventh appearance on Robinson’s Podcast. In his last appearance, episode #230, he and Robinson discussed Richard’s arguments against electing Donald Trump for president, as well as his analysis of the election. In this episode, Richard and Robinson talk about 2025 and the first weeks of Trump’s presidency, as well as what’s to come. More particularly, they discuss the irrelevance of Donald Trump, his domestic and global policies, China, narratives on the right and left, and the future of the United States. Richard’s latest book is Understanding Capitalism (Democracy at Work, 2024).
Understanding Capitalism (Book): https://www.democracyatwork.info/understanding_capitalism
Class Theory and History (Book): https://a.co/d/ht4trZN
Understanding the 2024 Elections (Article): https://asiatimes.com/2024/08/capitalism-mass-anger-and-2024-elections/
Richard’s Website: https://www.rdwolff.com
Economic Update: https://www.democracyatwork.info/economicupdate
OUTLINE
00:00 Introduction
08:34 How the Left Can Defeat Donald Trump
15:06 Why Kamala Harris Lost the Election
25:23 Is Victor Davis Hanson Wrong About the Elites’ War on the Working Class?
36:31 Did West Coast Elites Cause the LA Wildfire Disaster (Is Victor Davis Hanson Wrong?)?
42:26 Why Richard Wolff Enjoys Tucker Carlson
54:32 Why Unemployment Tanked Harris in the Election
59:45 Deep Seek, The Chinese Phenomenon
1:05:31 The Astonishing Story of How China Came to Dominate Elon Musk Over Electric Cars
1:13:25 Donald Trump’s Huge Misunderstanding About Tariffs
1:20:04 Richard on Donald Trump’s Contradictions About Immigration
1:34:23 The Marxist Truth About Why Immigrants Are a Gift to the United States
1:44:34 Why Trump’s Policies Will Increase Illegal Mexican Immigration and Drug Trafficking
1:47:58 Should Trump Make Canada the 51st State?
1:51:04 How Elites Rejected Donald Trump and Created the Man He Became
1:59:25 Why Donald Trump Wants to Take the Panama Canal (And the Actual Best Reason to Control It)
2:13:29 How the BRICS Are Drastically Outperforming the American Economy
2:25:18 Is There a Fatal Contradiction in Trump’s Climate Policy?
2:33:20 How Will AI Affect China and America’s Economic War?
2:43:19 How Elon Musk is Only an Unsuccessful Bureaucrat
2:51:10 Why Trump Thinks We Should Conquer Greenland
3:02:18 On China’s Number One Global Priority
3:09:41 What Marxists Learned from the Failure of the Soviet Union
3:15:23 Some Key Lessons from Marx’s Kapital
3:21:56 On How History Will Overwhelm Trump In the Next Four Years
3:26:30 Donald Trump and the Gulf of America
3:28:28 Why We Should Expect More of the Same from Donald Trump
3:32:26 On His Hope For a Brighter Future From the Left
Robinson’s Website: http://robinsonerhardt.com
Robinson Erhardt researches symbolic logic and the foundations of mathematics at Stanford University.