Inside the White House Tech Dinner, Weak Jobs Report, Tariffs Court Challenge, Google Wins Antitrust

All right, Sacks, how you doing, brother? Wait, wait—what's this? Why are you wearing a tie?

I'm in D.C. today, so it's a government day.

Ah, so you suited up with a tie. Well, maybe I'll join you. Oh, look. What is this box I just got? Oh, that's for my guy Tom. Oh, just for JCAL, Mr. Jason Calacanis. Let's see what's in the box here.

Oh, what's going on here? Tom Ford sent you something.

Oh, Tom sent me a nice tie.

I heard that Moose ate your invitation to the White House.

He did. Sorry about that.

I'm not putting the tie on. It's just enough already.

You can't come to the White House. You can't figure out a tie.

Yeah, well, maybe you could show me how to do this next time I'm in town. I've got to practice with you. We'll go in the mirror. You could. That'd be great. Be behind me and show me how to tie a tie. We didn't have ties in Brooklyn. What do you want me to do?

It was an eventful week. Some of our besties—not all—were apparently invited to a little soirée at the White House with the president: Sacks and Chamath. Here's a photo. Pretty good seating arrangement here. Looks like Zuckerberg got pole position on the right hand of the father, followed by Sacks and Chamath, with Amodei sitting right across from Sam Altman and Tim Cook. What a crowd. What was the impetus for this dinner? Sacks, tell us.

Well, this was a tech dinner at the White House. I think it originally started with a group that Chamath organized in Silicon Valley, and they were kind of the core nucleus of this. Then more and more people just wanted to come and try to get in, and the president invited some of the top tech leaders. Pretty soon, it turned into the room that you saw there.

I mean, it's really pretty amazing—President Trump's ability to convene all these people. You normally don't get these people in a room together. Many of them are competitors, and it's remarkable. You pretty much had, I'd say, maybe half the tech industry there—

By market cap, certainly.

By market cap, for sure.

Yeah. And Chamath, you obviously were involved here, and you got a pretty good seat. Any great inside stories? Any inside baseball? What did they serve? By the way, I'm curious what gets served at a dinner like this.

That was a very elegant menu. They try to keep it light so that it's not overwhelming, which I think can get in the way. There was a burrata salad, then there was a filet, and then a nice raspberry dessert.

Okay.

Here's what I'll tell you. Sacks said it well. What was incredible for me—just to frankly be in the room—felt very surreal. You're seeing the leaders of the most important companies in the world sitting together, and I just felt like there was a sense of alignment and cooperation. That was really cool.

I think none of those folks have to really show up anywhere that they don't have to. I think they're at a place in their careers, given the importance of the businesses that they run. But the fact that the president can convene them says a lot about him and the agenda. They, to a one, were incredibly supportive of what he has done in clearing the way and allowing them to build their businesses with a lot more clarity.

It was just very clear—the juxtaposition of what it was like and the difficulty under Biden versus what it was now. You saw some very hardcore liberals who have now completely embraced President Trump, folks like Tim Cook and Bill Gates. I think that's an incredible testament to him and his agenda.

The second thing, which is more personal, is that I was so proud of Sacks. Every single one of these guys—and you're talking about the titans of titans—took a moment to say that he was doing an incredible job, and the president was really proud of it. As a brother, it's like you're seeing your brother just get completely recognized. It was great. That was really special.

Friedberg, any take on this? I noticed you didn't make it. You didn't make the cut. My invite got eaten by Moose, obviously, as we heard earlier, but I thought you for sure would get a seat. What happened for you? No seat for you.

I work in agriculture, J-Cal, so we're doing the agriculture dinner next month. It's going to be great. The president and I are arranging a roundtable. It's going to be fantastic. Just kidding.

So if I eat my vegetables, I can come to it?

No, no, I was in D.C. with the guys. I actually did an interview with Senator Rand Paul. It was great to sit down with the senator.

What was the highlight of the Paul interview? I didn't get to watch it yet—apologies, as I was getting ready for the summit. Did you have a highlight or two you want to share with us?

He's an interesting guy. A lot of people have challenged him because he's an independent thinker. He really has true libertarian views and beliefs, and he's held firm to them despite bucking with the party, which he did recently on the One Big Beautiful Bill. He was one of 3 Republicans to vote against it.

So he's criticized and chastised, and even ousted in a lot of different circles in D.C. because he doesn't fall in line. But I do think that dissent and debate are critical and important for us to find the better path forward. I like the role that he plays, and I think he's very principled.

I think his talking about his ability to get elected despite not being willing to always fall in line with the party is a really important point. He hopes it will inspire other politicians to follow the same path and for voters to see that there is a role for independent thinkers in Congress.

Yeah, I mean, that is something we need. It seems like these parties just get locked in lockstep. They're expected to vote the same. They vote on party lines, and, Sacks, that is definitely a weakness, I think, of the two-party system. Your thoughts on Rand Paul and his being a bit of an agitator, maybe like Manchin? Is there a role for this in our democracy?

Well, I think it's good to hear from a libertarian voice once in a while.

Once in a while. I caught that, too.

They're going to have a different sort of viewpoint that could be called conservative. So, I like Rand Paul. But can we just go back to the dinner? I want to build on a point that Chamath made about the level of camaraderie in the room.

I think the people in the room were remarkable. Even though a lot of these companies are competing with each other, they were largely on the same page with respect to what was happening in the economy and the world, and with the kind of support they needed for the tech industry to do well and for the U.S. economy to do well.

I think the reason why they were largely happy with the Trump administration is because the Trump administration has been pro-innovation, pro-infrastructure—which includes being pro-energy—and pro-export, so these companies can sell their products internationally. The other thing that's been very important to the Trump administration is being pro-worker.

You heard the president make all of those points in the critical AI speech that he gave on July 23 at the AI summit that we co-sponsored with Hill & Valley. I think a lot of the compliments that we received were due to the agenda that the president articulated so well at the AI summit, and the people in that room are largely supportive of that policy.

I don't know if I would call it a lovefest, but I think it was an opportunity for these tech leaders to articulate their concerns and where they could use help. The president is a great listener, and he wanted to take in their feedback and figure out how to make the economy grow even faster.

I had so many questions from behind the scenes, like the seating arrangement and how it was discussed. The first thing I'll say is that the president takes tremendous control over these details. So I've said this before about how conscientious he is, but one of the things that he noticed was that it was very difficult to host press conferences or world leaders outside in the Rose Garden.

The way that it started was, around 4:00, David asked the president, "Can we do a tour of the Oval for all the fans of All-In?" And the president said, "Absolutely." So Friedberg, Sacks, and I went, and Caroline Leavitt met us and walked us in.

By the way, if you want to see a star of stars, I've met few people like this who exude this level of competence. I think it was the first thing that Friedberg said after maybe 2 minutes of interacting with her: "Wow, this may be the most competent person I've ever spoken to. She's outrageously good."

She got us all together, cleaned up some stuff that had to be cleaned up, and walked us in. The president gave us this tour. And the beautiful thing about the tour, if you are a student of American history, is that the history is on the walls.

From George Washington to Abe Lincoln to even Ben Franklin and the Declaration of Independence, Jason. We were able to see all of that in detail, and he was able to talk about it. Then, as it always does, it veered where he does the weave and says, “Guys, what do we want to talk about?” Friedberg was able to ask some questions, and Sacks and I asked some as well. Then it became a little more freewheeling.

Well, it turned into a hang.

A hang. Yeah. We hung with the president, and then, after we turned the cameras off, we hung for another 30 or 45 minutes with him. People were coming into the Oval Office, and it was literally like an episode of The West Wing meets Veep. Everyone was just chatting and going in and out. You meet all the characters.

So that ends, and Sacks had to do some meetings in the Oval Office with the president. We all leave and we’re escorted into—I think it’s the Roosevelt Room. Sacks, is that right?

I think it’s the Roosevelt Room.

When we get into the Roosevelt Room, this is where it becomes surreal.

You’re seeing the most powerful people who have built these incredible businesses. I think there were 30 people, but the table could only fit about 15. So you have Tim, Sam, and Satya sitting on the couch over here by these two chairs, just like Dylan Field and Alexandr Wang. It’s the funniest scene because, at that moment, all the airs are gone. They know the context in which they’re there.

Yeah. In their own worlds, they’re like kings. But in the White House, you’re back—

You’re sharing the backbench.

You’re an American citizen who’s there to meet the president, right?

But there were some incredible people there, including people I’d not really met before. Safra Catz was lovely, as was her husband. Jared Isaacman was there, and it was wonderful to see him. There was a whole group of people who were amazing.

Then they say, “Hey, guys, can you just get into a single-file line?” Again, it’s a surreal scene: Sundar, Satya, Bill Gates, Sergey—these people are in a single-file line.

I mean, you guys sound like you went backstage at a Led Zeppelin concert. Incredible.

No, dude. Then we’re escorted into the Oval Office, and this is what’s so kind about what he does: He sits at the Resolute desk, and Meryth Orr, who’s incredible, introduces everybody one by one so they hear their name. It may sound like a weird thing, Jason, but to hear your name called in the Oval Office, then stand beside the president while he’s seated, and have them take this beautiful photo—it’s pretty amazing.

The first person was Safra and her husband, and her husband says, “Could I take a pen?” I swear. So the president says, “Of course. That’s what they’re there for.” He gives him a challenge coin and a pen. Everybody takes one. Again, you’re seeing the leaders of these incredible businesses. One by one, they get announced, go stand by the president, take a beautiful picture, and take a coin and a pen.

Then we’re all just milling around in the Oval Office after that’s done, and he says, “Well, guys, we’re going to talk at dinner, but do you want to just start?”

Does he sit behind the desk then?

He’s still sitting at the desk. Anyway, Sergey asks a few questions and really starts to get the conversation going, which I thought was really good. Then he says, “Okay, guys, let’s continue this conversation at dinner.”

We exit into the Rose Garden, and this is where our friend Sonny Madra says, as we’re walking, “Sir, I hear you have a playlist. Can we hear the music?” He takes the iPad and turns the music on. Apparently, he had been tuning it, and now he’s got a great playlist. It’s Fleetwood Mac—you’re hearing all the classics—and it’s just blasting in the Rose Garden. I mean, blasting.

Lisa Su posted one of the photos. You can see them all because the Oval Office is small.

Okay, so just to be clear—then—

That’s dinner.

Oh, wow. There you go. It’s stuffed. I’m right to the left of Tim, and Jamie Siminoff is right at the end. I think Vivek Ranadivé, who’s the owner of the Sacramento Kings, is right there. Then I think it’s me. I think I was standing more in the front there.

If you pause there, that window is where Shyam Sankar, who’s the CTO of Palantir, is standing, and behind him is David Limp. Then you can see Dylan Field, the founder and CEO of Figma. That’s the door you exit. You go into the Rose Garden, walk through, and head down the hallway. You guys have seen that before.

We go into the East Wing, and they say, “We want to introduce you to the first lady.” You walk into the East Wing, walk upstairs, and there’s a very elegant seating chart. It’s actually a really good way of doing it because normally you would walk around the table.

Yeah, it’s very thoughtful.

It was in the East Room, where we also did the crypto summit at the White House, and there have been other events there.

Let me give a shout-out to the first lady, Melania Trump. She’s very interested in the topic of AI. Earlier that day, we did an event at the White House with the AI Education Task Force, which she’s chairing, and she’s very passionate about making sure that every schoolchild in America has access to AI education.

We had dozens of companies there at the White House making pledges of resources to ensure that teachers, students, and families will have everything they need for kids to learn AI and develop the skills for this critical tool. This is a topic she’s very interested in, so she wanted to be at that dinner.

Then we get seated, and people are talking a little bit. He says, “Guys, if it’s okay with you, we’re just going to let the press in.” I thought that meant a few people. I’d never seen anything like this before. It was like a zoo entered the East Wing—cameras, boom microphones.

The gaggle.

They start screaming because everybody’s trying to shout over one another to ask questions. The president imposes control and says, “Guys, hold on.” He allows the CEOs of the big companies to say something, then Gates says something, and that sets the tone. Obviously, he says something, and then he says, “Anybody have any questions?”

Then they just start screaming. There are people running around with microphones. I honestly don’t know how you pick who gets to say something, because the question procedure is out of control.

No, but you know what’s crazy? The questions are so all over the place. I don’t know how you can be prepared. He knows what he’s saying, and he’s very purposeful with what he’s saying. I don’t know how you do that when the questions are all over the place.

One of them asked Zuck a question. It was like, “What’s going on, Zuck? What about your 12 houses in Palo Alto?” No, it was a tougher question.

What was that?

It was about free speech and the UK, and he did a pretty good job.

Zuck, my Instagram account’s locked. Can you help me? My Instagram account.

Anyway, then they leave.

By the way, they have to be thrown out. They don’t just leave. They’re out of control. They make a corral.

Yeah. Then we had this lovely three-course dinner. Right after the appetizer, I think he starts going around, and people start talking and saying the things that are on their minds. I’m not going to share anything from that, but I thought it was pretty illuminating and pretty awesome.

Let me ask you a candid question. Did anybody challenge him on any topics? We saw a lot of adulation—people saying, “Thank you, Mr. President.” There was a lot of deference. Did anybody throw him a fastball or a curveball? Was there any challenging question in that format?

It’s not about asking him questions as if you’re interviewing him. There are people who brought up challenging things they’re dealing with.

Yeah, that’s what I mean.

But that’s not what you said.

No, no. I mean something that maybe isn’t aligned with how the administration is doing things. That’s what I’m getting at.

Okay, but again, you’re trying to make it a gotcha. Nobody’s there to gotcha him. People are saying, “Sir, I’m dealing with this specific issue in this specific country. Can you help?”

Got it. I was thinking about high-skilled immigration. That seems like a topic everybody in our industry cares about.

I’ll tell you what we talked about. The issues they had were many, and they had to deal with how American companies can build businesses in a seamless, straightforward way. What they said is that, since Biden, what Trump has done is clean the decks and allowed them to do that. They all said that. They weren’t forced to say it. They all said it, which I thought was really cool.

This is again why I said earlier: I’m super proud of what David has done. The respect that all these guys had for him was palpable, which is awesome. But then what the president says is, “I could take care of this. I can do that. That’s not going to stand.” He’s like, what you see is that you have these American titans of industry.

I’ve said this before, Jason: The whole premise of the American dream, I think, rests on economic and military supremacy, and that is derived from technical supremacy. That group of people are the geniuses that create the technical supremacy for the world, and he is their biggest advocate. That’s inspiring, because they’re like, “Sir, here’s what we need,” and he’s like, “Great, I’m going to go to bat for you and try to get what you need.”

So there was that conversation, and then there was a joke. He said at the end something along the lines of, “Ah, you know, I had to film a segment for David’s dumb podcast.” He just said it as a joke, so everybody starts laughing. Then Zuck piles on. He goes, “Well, the only dumb parts are Chamath’s parts,” and everybody else starts laughing. When Zuck said it, he was leaning back.

And then he loses his balance. Sacks with the ’tism is just looking straight ahead at Tim Cook.

I’m like, “I don’t know what to do.” Nat caught Zuck. Nat pulled her arm—I don’t know how she got there. It was a really sweet moment.

I had a favorite moment, actually. It occurred after you guys left the White House. Here it is. This is Chamath’s greatest moment.

There is a Chamath superfan. As you can see there, that’s a Chamath superfan, and he’s signing multiple pictures from all different eras. Those will be on eBay later.

Look at this guy. I just want to back up and say one of the reasons why I thought it would be cool for us to do this interview in the Oval, where the president kind of gave us a tour of the changes he had made to the White House, is that I was getting a tour with my family one weekend of the White House. The guides who do these tours were telling us about how much care the president takes in the condition of the White House and all the upgrades that he’s made.

They’ve seen him walking around, and he’ll pick out paintings and art. They’ll move things around. He got a whole bunch of paintings out of storage. All the paintings that are now in the Oval Office are ones that he directly picked out. They also said that when he sees something wrong, like with the landscaping, he’ll call a gardener over and give him notes on how to make it look better.

The president himself posted a Truth a few days ago where the new pavers on the Rose Garden patio got damaged. There was a big scratch. He caught them online. He caught the delivery guys.

He went to the tape to figure out who did it.

Yeah. That’s a New York developer. And not only that, he fired them, he’s making them pay for it, and they have to buff it or something.

It’s funny. He told us the story at the dinner: The contractor who got fired was devastated. So he’s probably going to have to hire them back because, you know, he’s too nice. He asked everybody. He’s like, “Do you guys think I should hire him back?” We’re like, “Yes, hire the guy.” He’s like, “I’ll probably hire him back.”

It started as a tour. It was supposed to be a tour. We were going to see the Rose Garden and other things, and then it rained, so we just stayed in the Oval. Then it became more of a hang.

Oh, wow. You guys are going to make that into an episode. That’s going to be an episode. That’s incredible.

Okay, so, Jason, look: You see, a couple of days before, the president tweeted about this, Nick. I sent that to you. You have India, Russia, and China kind of fraternizing, and then, 1 or 2 days later, the president convenes this dinner of, I think, some incredible entrepreneurs building a lot of the really important things that the world needs in the future. I don’t know what your reaction is when you see the kind of—

I mean, yeah, there’s a Legion of Doom there: Putin and Xi, and not Modi, maybe, but he’s obviously making a point. Overall, I had a lot of thoughts about it. I did a press hit.

Of the 20 people there or so—I’m not sure what the exact number was; I’m just eyeballing it here—

I think we’re at 29 or 30.

I think about 19 of them are lifelong Democrats who have switched to this party. I think the Democrats need to look at this. This opportunity was always there for the Democrats, but what did they choose? They chose to take the position of “ban the billionaires” and an agenda that makes no sense.

If you were Biden or Kamala and you invited this group of people to come to the White House, they would have come as well, and you could have had a really thoughtful conversation about what the Democratic positions might be—wages, health care—and this same group of people would have engaged. But they were not allowed to access the White House. They were not allowed to have a dialogue.

I think they pursued a very weird agenda. You’ve got Nancy Pelosi out there day trading. You’ve got AOC and the socialists pursuing some crazy agenda. What do you expect people to do if you tell them, “We don’t want to hear your concerns. We don’t want to engage with you in debate”?

You can have all kinds of differences with Trump on style. I do. You could have policy issues. I do. But as a moderate, when I see something like this, I just have to give you a lot of credit, Sacks, for being able to give access to the president and give the president access to these individuals, and let all these important discussions happen. Then the group can act as one in the American people’s interest.

I think it’s very important for the Democrats to learn something here, which is that 90% of Americans aspire to be billionaires, and 10% maybe they’re socialists, Mao communists, whatever they are. It’s fine; they can pick and choose what they believe is important in the world. But Americans love these individuals. They love these products and services, and 70% of the top 50 companies in the world by market cap are American companies.

This is the best of America. This is the best of the American dream. It’s great that they can go and have debates with the president. To my earlier question, I know a lot of these guys have some issues with the president or certain issues—tariffs, et cetera. This is an important moment in time to just say: Trump 2.0, I know, is engaging the business community and meeting them where they are and saying, “How can I help you grow faster? How can we compete?”

America is not the only game in town. Now, as you saw with Modi creating this alliance with Xi and Putin, it’s imperative for the American companies to excel and create jobs. We have the lowest unemployment. We’ll talk about employment today; there are some new statistics. We have the lowest unemployment of our lifetimes.

It’s for a reason. It’s not because of any president. It’s because of these great companies. We should be celebrating them. The president has done an exceptional job of doing what all Americans do: We celebrate these companies. We love the iPhone. We love Teslas. We love these products and services people are building. People love Google. They love ChatGPT. It’s fantastic.

It’s easy to be cynical about business or business leaders, but this was really, I think, a great show of force. It shows the country is getting in sync on what matters, and that should be independent of political parties. So I was very proud of you, David, that you built this bridge brick by brick, and I think there’s more yet to come.

Well, I mean, just to be clear, obviously the president already had access to all these people. In fact, many of them were already on speed dial, and he already knew them. He’s the one who convened them at the White House. I’ve just been helping with policy, so I want to be clear about that.

Well, I’m not overstating it, but I’m even going back 6 months, when you guys held the fundraiser. You see a very close friend of mine, Mark Pincus, a lifelong Democrat who has donated probably 8 figures to the Democrats in total over the years. He got frustrated at a certain point that he couldn’t get his calls returned or have important discussions.

Well, here we are. He was at that dinner. I think that’s a very important lesson. The Democrats need to appeal to moderates and business leaders. They’ve got their Bob Iger, they’ve got Jamie Dimon, and they’ve got a bunch of people who could help build an agenda that’s not lunacy.

Yeah. What I would say is, look, maybe half the people at the dinner have actually moved to the center or to the right relative to where they were. I think Mark Pincus has basically put himself in that category. So there are people who have been red-pilling and moving over to our side.

I’d say the other half of the people in the room haven’t necessarily changed their politics; they’re just there to do business. They want to have a good relationship with the government. But the same is true on the part of the president. I saw some conservative influencers saying, “How can the president meet with this person or that person? He’s been such an opponent in the past.”

Look, the president is doing business as well. He asks all the attendees of the dinner, “How much are you investing in America? What do you need to invest more in?” He wants to see the infrastructure investment.

Why? Because it benefits all Americans, not just software companies. It benefits the construction industry, the trades, the electricians, the carpenters, the energy companies, fracking, and so on. He's there representing the interests of the country, and many of those CEOs are representing the interests of their companies. There's a dialogue going on, and it doesn't mean that everyone has to suddenly become a Republican or change their politics.

But it's constructive, and this is all in furtherance of having the U.S. economy grow better.

All right, perfect segue. We've got lots to talk about in terms of the economy. First story here: Trump's tariffs got overturned in court. A federal appeals court ruled 7–4 that Trump exceeded his authority when it comes to the International Emergency Economic Powers Act.

Okay, we'll get into the details here. Historically, Congress was in charge of tariffs, but under a national emergency, the president can get involved with tariffs. They cited the 47th administration's fentanyl crisis at the borders—Mexico, Canada, China, et cetera—and the trade deficits. The White House got sued by a group representing small businesses. In May, 2 federal courts ruled that he wrongfully invoked the IEEPA, and the White House appealed that.

They've now lost, and Trump's tariffs will remain in effect until October 14, allowing the Supreme Court to hear this. These tariffs have been tremendously unpopular in the business sector. I think maybe 70% to 80% of business leaders in a recent survey, Sacks, said that they're not crazy about them. But they've, on the other side, generated over $150 billion in revenue in a couple of short months.

So they could generate trillions of dollars in the next decade, according to estimates. I guess the question I have for you, Sacks, is: You guys are moving at the White House, there in this administration, the executive branch, at startup speed. “Move fast and break things” is something we talk about doing in our industry. Is this just the natural extension of that? The president is doing a lot of aggressive things, and sometimes they're going to be allowed, sometimes they're not. What's your take?

Well, I'm not concerned about the fate of tariffs at the Supreme Court, even though it's probably a coin flip whether the Supreme Court is going to allow the tariffs under IEEPA. There are 5 different laws under which the president has the authority to impose these tariffs. There's a chart here that we can throw up on the screen. There's Section 232, Section 201, Section 301, Section 122, and Section 338.

There are at least 5 different bases for the president's authority to impose tariffs. At the end of the day, I think it's actually quite unlikely that the Supreme Court's going to force a change in tariff policy. I don't think the Supreme Court sees it as this urgent matter that requires a quick resolution, so I'm not particularly worried about it.

In terms of the popularity of the tariffs, my guess is that they're not going to be reversed by a future president because I think they actually are quite popular with the country and with workers. Among the business elite, it's more mixed. I'll grant you that. But if you change the way you ask the question from, “Are you in favor of these tariffs?” to, “Are you in favor of raising $4 trillion in revenue over the next decade through tariffs to fund a tax cut like we had in the One Big Beautiful Bill?” then that might change people's perception of it.

So that's really the question: How do you want to raise revenue for the government? Between the One Big Beautiful Bill and the tariffs, what you see is a substitution from taxing Americans to taxing foreign companies, unless those foreign companies then make a big investment in America. There's no great way to extract revenue from the private sector. All taxation is unfortunate and undesirable, and it would be better if we didn't have to tax so much.

But the reality is, I think that if you have a choice between taxing American people or imposing tariffs, tariffs may be the better way to do it. I just want to note that the CBO has now increased its projection of what tariffs will raise to $4 trillion over the next decade.

$400 billion a year. It's pretty significant, right?

Right, and initially it started as a lower number, and it completely pays for the One Big Beautiful Bill.

Chamath, here's the chart. Trump's tariffs were meant to help manufacturers. Do manufacturing firms think they're helping? Has your business been impacted by higher tariffs this year? Here, negative impact: 72% of manufacturers. 3.7% think it helped, 17% said no impact, and 7% don't know yet.

Your thoughts on tariffs? They're obviously unpopular with people in retail, manufacturing, and those businesses, but as Sacks points out, maybe the American people like them and they like the idea of a new revenue stream. What are your thoughts, Chamath?

I think that the tariffs, on balance, are a pretty smart masterstroke of strategy. We did not understand what the impact of tariffs would be, except for hypothetical econ-wonk talk. That hypothetical econ-wonk talk basically said that tariffs were always going to be a disaster. If you asked them, “Well, what is the actual practical data that you would point to?” they didn't have any. It was just more hypothesis.

But what is the practical data now? I think that the United States is going to book probably close to half a trillion dollars of incremental revenue. It's actually forced a stabilization in the dollar, which I think people were always very concerned with. What's going to happen to the dollar complex? Everybody always screams with their hair on fire. But the dollar complex has stabilized, I think, because of tariffs. So there's been some real positives.

What Sacks says is right, which is that whoever is president over the next 5, 10, 15, 20, or 30 years—there'll be some Democrats, there'll be some Republicans—it's going to be very hard to justify why you would undo this now, because this source of revenue is going to be an incredibly important one.

Well, and also, it's not just the fact that the revenue is very important. You raise a great point, which is the U.S. government is going to become dependent on that revenue, but also just workers. I think the tariffs are very popular with blue-collar workers. Auto workers really like them.

Well, here's what I was going to say: The pie chart that you showed is not accurate. The reason it's not accurate is that the investment cases that you would underwrite because of tariffs and the One Big Beautiful Bill haven't happened. I'll give you an example. I am a person who started a business that is building a factory to make batteries, in my specific example, in Michigan, to de-risk the battery supply chain from China.

What I will tell you, Jason, is that after the One Big Beautiful Bill and because of tariffs, it is much easier now for me to underwrite. Why? Because I have 100% depreciation across all my capex. It's a complete game changer on the IRR of these projects. Before, where I would have to raise billions of dollars from outsiders, I can subsidize a lot more of it internally because I can actually underwrite to a better gain, because the tax savings are so meaningful.

Same thing for this data center that I'm building in Arizona. In all of these cases, I think that, A, you have this uptick in revenue because of tariffs in the short term, and, B, the important thing is to redo this pie chart in probably a year. For example, our groundbreaking in Michigan will be in July of next year for that factory. It'll be online 2 years after that.

The real story, Jason, of all of this will be really known in that period. But right now, what I'll tell you is the underwriting case for putting a ton of money into the United States has changed to the positive because of these tariffs and tax changes.

Because of that 100% depreciation.

It's a huge deal.

Friedberg, here's your Polymarket. Will tariffs generate greater than $250 billion? It's peaked at around 30% and come back down to 5%. Most people are betting against it. So this could be a case of free money because it has a pretty good chance of hitting that. But—

Well, the number I said, Jason, is like a yearly run rate. So, technically, if you just look at calendar 2025, you only get a stub of 8 months because it starts April 1.

Eight months, $50 billion a month, gets you to $400 billion. So they should be able to. Actually, I think they're going to hit that bogey.

But, Friedberg, the reports from people who have been impacted by tariffs—obviously, these could become inflationary—say they've been eating them to date, but they're not going to be able to eat them forever. So it could become inflationary. What are your thoughts on the tariff kerfuffle here and the legal battle over them, as well as the impact it might have on inflation, which is something we do not want to see come back? We've been teetering just under that 3% number, which then puts the Fed, obviously, in a difficult position with its mandate to get to 2%. Friedberg?

I'll address the legal kerfuffle point, which I think is a good one, because I do think that the great debate that's going to happen from this presidency and will likely shape the next set of presidencies will be the right for presidents to declare emergencies to move forward their legislative agenda. Arguably, the tariff imposition, according to many members of Congress, should have gone through a congressional process.

In the meeting I did with Rand Paul this week, which has now been posted, he talked about the challenge they've had with Democratic presidents—Biden and, prior to that—using emergency authorization vested in them under the National Emergencies Act, which is a 1976 statutory authority to take action. In order for the emergency powers to be turned off, Congress actually has to vote, and they can only do so after 30 days.

When Congress makes that vote, the president can veto their vote. So the president can then say, “Send it back.” Then they have to get a two-thirds supermajority to get it to pass. It creates a system whereby the president can have this emergency authorization to progress much of their legislative agenda under the guise of emergency powers, which, for many people, they would say is not the right way to do it.

Senator Paul and others have proposed bills, for example, that the president has to get any emergency power reauthorized after 30 days, and then it can only be a maximum of 90 days without Congress enacting a renewal. So it requires actual congressional action to continue the authority of that emergency power, depending on what the Supreme Court does or doesn’t do.

I think it is going to catalyze a legislative push, and the Republicans are likely not going to embrace it this presidency or this term because President Trump is in office. But I think the conversation that some out-of-the-box Republicans like Senator Paul and others are having is, “Well, what’s going to happen next time? What’s going to happen when there’s a Democratic president and we don’t—”

AOC is going to use emergency powers to do something you might not like, right? Is that your point?

Yeah. As it relates to both the IEEPA of 1977, which is the act that this case is about, and the National Emergencies Act of 1976, should they go back and pass a new law that basically forces the president to get congressional approval for any emergency to last longer than 30 days? I do think that’s going to be the big debate that comes out of this.

As it relates to the tariff revenue, I am most worried about the fact that we use the tariff revenue, as I said before, to offset spending and basically keep a baseline of spending without actually getting ourselves to that deficit target. Right now, we are going to vaporize and create debt of $2 trillion this fiscal year.

We’re using the tariff revenue under CBO scoring to basically say, “Hey, we can do these tax cuts because it’s offset.” But the goal shouldn’t be to offset. The goal should be to get cuts to actually reduce the deficit. That’s the biggest concern I have with respect to the tariffs long term: it’s now a new revenue source that we don’t actually treat as incremental to reduce the deficit. We just use it as a way to introduce new spending or continue spending.

Sacks, just to talk about the three branches of government, wouldn’t it also be an option for the president just to go to Congress with some of these tariffs and say, “Hey, can I get these approved?” Would that be the worst thing in the world? Wouldn’t they vote for it?

Do you have concerns that President AOC might do some things with executive powers that the Republican Party might be opposed to if she winds up winning in 2028? That’s an important question, Sacks: if AOC is president and then she uses her emergency authorization to do things that you disagree with, wouldn’t the Republicans then regret that they didn’t pass one of these acts that limits emergency authorization and power?

Well, look, I think that in general, when you have a policy that you want to last for a long time, the best thing to do is to codify it into law because executive orders obviously only last until the next president decides they don’t want them anymore. So, yeah, it may make sense after the administration hopefully wins its case to seek to codify these things into law.

We have a few years to do that, but I don’t think it makes sense to wait for Congress to act because they may never act. In fact, it was President Trump who shifted the whole debate on this topic. The whole establishment of both the Republican and Democratic parties were very against tariffs, and it’s pretty obvious that nothing would have happened on this issue. He’s completely moved the debate.

This is just one where I think he’s acted unilaterally because he had to. But I think that once these tariffs are in place for a few years, I don’t think they’re going to get pulled back by a future president because I think they’re going to—

It’s too much money.

—become quite popular.

It’s too much money.

Okay. In the other cases, 2 more lower courts have ruled against Trump. One said the deployment of the Marines and the National Guard was illegal. One said he can’t freeze research funds for Harvard.

So, again, back to moving fast and breaking things. These cases are making their way through the courts, and there has been some resistance to sending in the National Guard, which is something there’s been a bit of saber-rattling about, Chamath—maybe going into Chicago next. What are your thoughts on the National Guard issue?

They should. Look, here’s the thing: who is against safety and security? Who, and why? I don’t understand. If you can’t do your job, you have to remember, Jason, let’s take where we live in California, where you used to live.

Yep. Not anymore.

13% of our income goes toward state coffers, and then we pay real estate taxes and all of the stuff that goes to local municipalities. What are you doing with that money if you’re not making the places we live safe? The second thing would be making the schools good.

If you can’t do it, of course somebody else should step in. Frankly, what I have heard consistently is that even though the talking point has to be, “Oh my God, woe is me. We can do the job,” everybody behind the scenes is like, “Oh, thank God they’re here.”

Anybody who is being impacted by crime would like to see the National Guard come in and remove encampments or drug dealers or get drugs off the streets.

Sacks, my perception would be that you think there should be a separation between the executive branch and maybe the states, and that this rule-breaking of sending in the National Guard would go against the sovereignty of the states.

Putting aside Chamath’s point, which is completely valid—that they haven’t done a good job here and it is illegal, as the judges are pointing out—do you have concerns about that?

Okay. Well, first of all, I reject this characterization that it’s the Trump administration that’s moved fast and broken things. If you recall—

Fast—let’s just say moving fast.

Well, I think the president is taking swift executive actions that are popular. You see this actually in his poll ratings. He got the highest approval rating he’s ever had just in the last week, and a big part of it is because of the reduction in crime in DC. I think he got to 55% approval in poll ratings.

Even in DC, by the way, the mayor and her staff have said all sorts of positive things about the help they’ve received now from the National Guard and from the federal government. The citizens are extremely happy. Crime is down. I think we had the first 2 weeks where there were no murders in the capital in a long time. The residents are very happy. So this is definitely working.

With respect to California, let me just point out that the National Guard wasn’t called in specifically to enforce laws on the street. What happened was that you had ICE and Homeland Security agents and workers doing their job, and they were conducting some deportations. Then you had protests turn into riots, and those protesters were threatening to burn down their headquarters. That’s why the National Guard had to be sent in.

So it wasn’t the Trump administration breaking things. It was rioters who were breaking things. I can’t understand for the life of me why the administration wouldn’t be able to send in the National Guard to protect federal workers against rioters, but apparently that’s the case.

I think the court reached a very specific decision about what happened in California. We still haven’t had a case adjudicating the question of whether the proposed interventions in these blue states to clean up crime will be allowed over the objections of Democratic governors. We don’t know.

I think it’s pretty clear that the DC intervention will be allowed, and it’s extremely popular. And look—

The DC one—he’s legally allowed to do that. So, yeah, he’s got his—what was it?—a 30-day mandate. He can take it over.

Here’s your popularity from The Economist. It is ticking up, but Trump and the country still seem pretty divided: 41% approved, 55% disapproved, 3% unsure. But he has moved up significantly in the last week.

Today, some big news came out Friday with the soft jobs report. Pretty much bad across the board. Jobs came in super light: 22,000 added versus 75,000 expected. Most of the gains came from part-time jobs. The US lost 357 full-time jobs while gaining 597,000 part-time jobs last month.

This is after a bunch of revisions. You guys remember we talked about this here a couple of times with these revisions. We’ll show some charts with long-term revisions. July was revised up slightly by 6,000, from 73,000 to 79,000. June was revised down significantly—remember that impacted the market by 27,000.

This makes June the first month with a net loss of jobs since July 2021. There’s an account on X called The Kobeissi Letter, and they did this revisions chart. It’s pretty crazy, as you can see. May and June revisions were in the six figures, and they’re constantly revising these down, it seems.

All right. Friedberg had some internet connectivity issues, apparently. Chamath, let’s talk about the revisions here and the concerning softness in the job market. Did the Fed maybe take too long to get toward cuts in September? What’s your read on this and the endless revisions?

Look, I think that I’ve said this last week, right? So I’ll just say it again this week.

You can't run the most sophisticated economy in the world if you have data that is completely unreliable in either direction.

The problem with this jobs report is that there are already 2 competing versions of the truth. One group of people is trying to paint the jobs report as if everything is working and there's nothing to see here. Another group of people is saying, “Hold on. There's a birth-death statistic where, if you extract that out, the jobs number is actually negative.”

I don't know which one is actually better in terms of where we want to be right now, going into a rate-cut cycle. My general commentary is the following: The BLS and its approach are incredibly brittle. It doesn't work.

I think Commerce has taken the first right step, which is to start publishing useful economic data into the blockchain. I think we need to figure out a way—and this is where Congress should get its act together—and pass an incentive or a requirement for certain parts of America's critical economic infrastructure to report their data in an anonymized way into a broad set of blockchains.

The reason is that you will have very astute and precise pricing oracles help distill that information. So, if you're ADP, American Express, or Stripe, there's an imperative now for you to contribute the information you have into a broad collection of information, so that we have an accurate sense of what the hell is actually going on.

Because I can't react to this number because I don't know how it's going to change. It could literally swing by 200,000 in either direction. Jason—

This is, I think, a really good point. Here's some research. I had one of my researchers at Launch work on this. Here's 2021 and the initial reading, first revision, and second revision. We did this for each year.

As you can see, in 2021, they missed it by 1.9 million, which was about 15%. In 2022, they miraculously nailed it. In 2023, they were off by 10%. In 2024, it looks like they were off again by 10%. All this is revising down, by the way.

First half of this year—

Initial reading: 985,000. First revision: 732,000. Second revision: 497,000. So they were off by 50% so far this year alone.

This chart is itself inaccurate. The table is—

—and it's because it's coming from the same people that measured. So you're asking the people who measured to grade themselves, and I suspect that the answer is actually much worse than all of this.

Now, what is the implication of it? The implication is, if you take the most positive view possible, that the people who then control the levers of the economy don't actually have accurate data. So they'll be hesitant to act until the data is overwhelming.

The most important lens of that will be the Fed and what they do with rates. Everybody's saying, “Oh, wow. There's a 99% chance of a 25-basis-point cut.” That may be wildly, wildly, wildly conservative in terms of the total amount that they need to be thinking about and how they should phase that in.

But how would I actually prove that to you? I can point to a whole litany of private data—

—but the problem is that federal actors use public data, and this data is not useful. When you get private data into your hands—which I know other folks have, including hedge funds, banks, and the White House—what they see is different from what the Fed sees.

So what I would tell you from this jobs report is that it's going to start again this clamor of, “What is your plan?”

Clapping is not a strategy. A 25-basis-point cut to a $32 trillion economy is not a strategy. I think the reason they don't know what to do exactly is because they have extremely faulty data.

Again, I'm not taking a position on this or framing it as if I'm taking a position. I'm just reporting the data here as they've reported it. I'm just doing that to be clear: I'm not endorsing any side of this. I'm an independent. I'm a moderate. I'm just giving you the data as it stands.

Here's the FRED chart, just so we can zoom out and see unemployment since the 1950s. We're still at historic lows, and there's a slight uptick to 4.3%, which is the highest unemployment since 2021, but it's absurdly low historically.

So even looking historically, Sacks, we're still very low. But do you have concerns that the economy could be slowing and that we could have a jobs issue? That, I guess, is the question filling the airwaves on CNBC and that everybody's talking about in group chats. Did we maybe not make the Fed cuts in time for what clearly is some amount of slowing?

We could argue over whether they're getting the data right or not. The Fed says they look at all data, not just this data. They say they look at the private data as well. But what are your thoughts here, Sacks?

Well, we had 22,000 jobs added in August. Yet, while the number of jobs went up, unemployment rose, like you said, from 4.2% to 4.3%. That's a little bit of a contradiction, but that happened because more people started looking for jobs.

Yeah.

But there are huge error bars around this data. Like you showed, there's roughly 50% revisions to all of this data over the course of a year. So we don't really have great visibility into what's going on. That's why you see such huge disparities in how people are interpreting this data.

If you want to look at some of the people who are pessimistic, you've got The Kobeissi Letter, but they're pessimistic about everything. You've got Moody's economist Mark Zandi. He says we're on the precipice of a recession, and he has a bunch of reasons why.

But if you look at Polymarket, people on Polymarket are strongly betting against a recession this year. I think the number is at about 8%. So it appears that most people still feel like the economy is doing well. Remember, we just had a 3.3% GDP growth rate for Q2. I'd be surprised if there's a recession. I think there are a lot of factors against it.

I guess I would also note that, if there's any weakness in the job numbers, it's coming from foreign-born workers more than native-born workers. Around 2 million more American-born workers have jobs in 2025 so far. Meanwhile, roughly 1 million foreign-born workers have lost jobs. So the net increase is about 1 million.

What you're seeing is, in a way, a repatriation of jobs within the economy. The other thing that's happening is a reprivatization of the economy. In August, the federal government shed about 15,000 jobs, and there have been 100,000 federal jobs lost over the course of the whole year. So that makes the overall numbers look worse than they are.

A lot of us would argue that having fewer federal workers is a good thing for the economy. So you've got those factors. Then you've got blue-collar real wages rising at the second-fastest rate in history. You had 3.7% wage growth this year versus 2.7% average inflation, so you have a net 1% wage growth. During most of the Biden presidency, it was negative.

I would also point to several factors that would make me optimistic about the economy moving ahead. You've had massive investment in the U.S. by both private companies and foreign governments. According to these new trade deals, I think roughly $8 trillion of new investment is coming.

You've got this AI boom you're seeing—

—and that's going to land over the next year, right? That hasn't actually been deployed yet. So we should see that in 2027, maybe late 2026.

Yeah. This is the outlook for 2026 and beyond. This would be the bull case.

Number one: $8 trillion of new investment in the U.S. economy by private companies and foreign governments.

Number two: the AI boom. You've got this massive buildout of data centers and AI infrastructure underway. That includes energy, and the manufacturing sectors are going to boom alongside tech.

Number three: this has been the most affordable summer at the pump since 2021, and low gas prices don't seem to be going anywhere anytime soon.

Number four: you have these huge new tax incentives for business expansion. You've got accelerated depreciation on equipment purchases and on R&D. I think those are going to kick in once the Big Beautiful Bill goes into effect.

The last thing I would say is that interest-rate cuts are coming. In light of the latest jobs report, Powell should really cut 50 basis points. I doubt he will in September 2025.

Yeah, I doubt he will. It'll probably be 25, and then hopefully another 25. But I think you can make the case that they should do 50 now and then 25 after that.

Regardless of what it is, I think most people believe interest rates are coming down, and that's going to juice the economy and further improve our fiscal position. So, looking toward 2026, I think there are a lot of bullish factors here.

All right, just before we wrap here, Google, as we know, was found liable in this antitrust case, but the sanctions don't seem to be as harsh as people thought they would be. Judge Mehta rejected the request that Google spin off Chrome and Android, and pointed out that Google is facing massive competition.

So we had 4 years of Lina Khan and these aggressive cases. There were tactical things we talked about here, like dark patterns, et cetera, that we all agreed with. I think there was consensus there, but this one we found a little confusing because, gosh, Google's under so much pressure.

What are your thoughts? I thought this was—

Excellent.

Unpack it all.

Essentially, the crux of the ruling was: Look, there are some restrictions that Google has to live by—don't get me wrong—but the most punitive remedies that were suggested were thrown out. The reason they were thrown out was that the judge very eloquently cited competition in a fair, free, and open market.

And that is incredibly refreshing because the real question is: would this judge have had the wherewithal and the courage to actually rule this way a few years ago, when there would have been an enormous amount of political pressure? They probably would have found a way to run this case in a different place, et cetera. But now what you saw was just very simple logic intervening. And at the core of it was, when we started this lawsuit, things like OpenAI and ChatGPT didn't exist.

And when you fast-forward, it's incredibly fast-moving. We are reallocating hundreds of millions or billions of users' intentions. As a byproduct, we're reallocating tens of maybe hundreds of billions of dollars of revenue. And so the judge said the most severe remedies aren't necessary because the free market is doing its job.

Yes.

So I just think that's incredibly refreshing because we forget that if the market is left to deal with these issues on its own, they do a very good job of cleaning things up. And it's because, as you said earlier, Jason, consumers want creative destruction. They want the next best thing. They want better prices, better services.

It happens by the free market. They're willing to reward better companies and better products. So I think the great news for Google is that this takes an enormous risk off the table. And now I think that they probably have even more ambition and energy to just go for it and try to compete because they're not going to be worried about everybody on the outside and probably some percentage of employees on the inside who are always trying to slow things down.

Yeah. And to call it correctly—and I'll let you comment on this, Sacks—they did get some tactical penalties here, and they make sense. Doing deals that are exclusive when you are a monopoly player, like getting Firefox and Apple to only do exclusive deals with you, they're not going to be allowed to do that.

And, man, that would change the game on the field if somebody like DuckDuckGo or Bing or a new entrant, Perplexity—whoever is doing search—would be able to say to Apple, “We will outbid Google for 10% of the searches. We'd like to buy 5% of the searches from the Safari browser,” going to Firefox and saying, “Hey, we'd like to one-up, and we'd like some percentage of that.” So that seemed like a good part of the ruling. Your thoughts overall about this?

So on this podcast, I think it was 2 or 3 years ago when this case first came up, I think I took the position that Google should be broken up into 2 or 3 companies because I thought it was this invulnerable monopoly, and I don't think monopolies are great for the search ecosystem. And what I mean by that is they had the Google search monopoly and that YouTube business, which is basically a monopoly, and so forth and so on.

So I was in favor of breaking this up, but I've got to admit I was wrong about that for the reasons that the judge said, which is Google, for the first time in a long while, is existentially threatened by what's happened with AI. I mean, their cash cow, the core of their business, is search, and people are starting to substitute in droves from traditional Google search, which they own, or keyword search, where they have this monopoly or dominant share, to AI.

And if you look at AI revenue, I think something like 90% of it is going to OpenAI. I mean, they have the dominant position among consumers.

For now.

And there's, let's say, 5 major AI companies that are hot on their heels and very competitive.

And performing equally, if not better, on performance benchmarks.

So the point is, I think everyone can now see that the search business is either going away or transforming into something else, which is basically merging with the AI chatbot business.

It's an answers business now. It's not a “give me links” business. It's just, “Give me the damn answer,” right?

And we've been talking about this for a while, where it's so obvious that having AI just give you the answer is better than 20 blue links, especially as the quality improves and it gets better at synthesizing those 20 blue links into the exact right answer, and the speed improves.

One of the things that Google's really good at is just fast responses. They've always shown you in milliseconds how long it takes to give you the search result. And obviously, if you're looking for something quick and an AI chatbot's going to take 30 seconds, you're going to go with Google. But that's going to get better, too.

So I think Google is kind of in the fight of its life right now. And I think this is why Sergey Brin has come back. We saw him at the dinner at the White House yesterday, and he said he's very involved in Google DeepMind.

He's going to the office all the time. Yeah.

Right. And so you're seeing that founder involvement again because they know that they've got a real existential threat to their business. And this is the argument that opponents of strong antitrust enforcement have always made, which is that the free market will eventually break up even the strongest monopolies if you just give it the chance to do it. And that's what appears to be in motion right now.

By the way, I'm not saying that Google's going to get destroyed. I'm not saying it's going away. I'm just saying that they have to pivot here in a big way. Their business is being disrupted, and they suddenly have competition, I think, in their core business like they've never had before.

So I do think that we don't need to bring the hammer down on them in the same way that maybe we did a few years ago. I still would not let them pursue anticompetitive tactics against, say, applications in the Android store, where they basically have a duopoly. So I'm not saying I would let them do anything, but I certainly agree with this judge that we don't need to break up that company right now.

Yeah. And there are rules in the field that need to be adjudicated. So having a very simple approach with the FTC of saying, “Hey, these exclusive deals, when you have 90% market share, that's not allowable. But you can compete and you can fight versus the 5 new entrants and have at it and give consumers a better product at a cheaper price.” That's really the goal of the FTC: to have some basic rules of the field.

We saw it in the media business as well. We spent a decade or two trying to fight the consolidation of media companies, and then Netflix has trounced them all and YouTube as well in terms of viewership. Netflix and YouTube are crushing the cable monopolies that we spent all this time trying to regulate.