Trump Tries To Force Nations To Do Business With Elon Musk To Avoid Tariffs

According to State Department communications obtained by The Washington Post, the Trump administration has been pushing countries to sign contracts with Elon Musk’s Starlink as part of trade negotiations. The contracts with Starlink aren’t necessarily enough to prevent tariffs, but countries are effectively being coerced into signing deals to show that they are open to US businesses operating in their countries. This is not going to help anyone except for Elon Musk, and the fact that this is being discussed by the State Department with other countries is pure corruption. Ring of Fire’s Farron Cousins explains what’s happening.

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*This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos.

According to a major new report from the Washington Post this week, the Trump administration has effectively been trying to coerce countries to sign contracts with Elon Musk's starlink in order to avoid, uh, some of the worst punishments from Donald Trump's trade war. The Washington Post got their hands on memos and diplomatic cables from the State Department that specifically mentioned starlink by name. When working out negotiations with these other countries, it started with the small African nation of, uh, Le Soto. They were facing tariffs from Donald Trump. And so they immediately said, you know what? We're gonna, we're gonna buy Starlink, uh, we're gonna ink a deal with Elon Musk. And they did. And, uh, things worked out much better for them. Other countries considering right now include, uh, well, actually India back in March, signed two contracts with starlink. You also have the Democratic Republic of Congo, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Vietnam, and Somalia that are now according to these diplomatic cables, thanks to the urging of Marco Rubio State Department working on deals with starlink in order to avoid tariffs from Donald Trump.

Now, just to make it clear, the Trump administration is not technically telling these countries that if you do this, we won't put tariffs on you. But the cables make it clear that these countries are being urged to do this with starlink so that it shows a good faith effort to the US government that you're open for these US companies to come into your country and make a lot of money. The State Department, when asked for a comment, had this to say, you know, we've got blatant corruption here. Elon Musk is a part of this administration. You are literally pushing his company by name to these other countries. What do you have to say for yourselves? And the State Department said, quote, starlink is an American made product that has been game changing in helping remote areas around the world gain internet connectivity. Any patriotic American should wanna see an American company success on the global stage, especially over compromised Chinese competitors. Guy, you gotta throw in crap about China, right? That's all y'all know how to do. Uh, here's the thing though. Sure. We, we want American companies to, uh, make money, I guess, right? I mean, it's, it's not gonna help us. You know, the average American out there, 99.9999% of people will get nothing out of these deals. It may help some of the people who work for Elon Musk, SpaceX, which runs starlink. Um, it may prevent them from losing their job, basically. But other than that, it,

It's not gonna help them. It's gonna help Elon Musk and that's it. He's gonna make more money, and that's it. So why, why is this even a thing that the State Department is pushing? Why is it a thing the State Department is defending? You know, if you really were interested in helping us companies that would then help of the workers, you would say, listen, uh, you gotta buy a bunch of Fords, right? You gotta buy General Motors. You guys need some Jeeps over here. You guys have to get all your pizza from Domino's. But you're not doing that, right? You're not pushing actual US businesses. You are pushing Elon Musk's star link. And that is where there is a massive conflict of interest. That is where there is this corruption and this administration doesn't care. They are so corrupt and know that they can get away with it, that they're just doing it out in the open. That is where we're at. And other countries might be playing along.