The Bulwark Podcast
Catherine Rampell and Robert Garcia: China Is Starting to Eclipse the U.S.
14 May 2026
Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.
Chapter 1: How has China's perception of the U.S. changed in recent years?
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Hello and welcome to the Bulwark Podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller. We've got a doubleheader for you today. In segment two, it is, I think, alongside Ro Khanna, the other congressman who has been the most effective in the opposition for the Democrats in the House this year. And that's Robert Garcia, the ranking member of the Oversight Committee. So we have much to talk to him about.
But first, my colleague, my buddy, economics editor here at the Bulwark. She writes the newsletter Receipts.com. which is published this evening, Thursday evenings. She also co-hosts MSNOW's The Weekend Primetime. It's Catherine Rampell. What's up, girl?
Hey, good to see you. Long time no see.
I know. We saw each other, everybody, yesterday at the Bulwark All Hands, and I'm still in the shit town in D.C., as you can see from my background here.
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Chapter 2: What impact did Trump's trade policies have on American agriculture?
Okay, so you haven't made it back.
It's all the bulwark books. I took down the Sarah Longwell QR code that she wanted me to promote in my background. I'm like, this isn't QVC, okay? You should buy Sarah's book, but this isn't the QVC.
QVC is bankrupt, so one of the many Trump victims.
We got a lot of economics talk, and all China talk is at some level, all everything talk is at some level economics talk. I think that's Tyler Cohen. But I want to talk a little bit about the summit first. Trump and all of our greatest CEOs and... Much of the cabinet all traveled to China to pay homage to the communist dictator, Xi Jinping.
In their opening session, Trump said this, We have a fantastic relationship. I have such respect for China, the job you've done. You're a great leader. I say it to everybody. You're a great leader. The top CEOs are all here to pay respects to you. It is an honor to be your friend. It's laying it on a little thick for me. I don't know what you think about the meeting.
He's just a master diplomat right there. You know, he's buttering him up so that he can swoop in and make the deal of the century. I think that's what's going on. No, I think what's actually going on is he brought, you know, a little entourage of rich people to... I think he thinks impress President Xi because that's how Trump operates, right?
He thinks when you're surrounded by rich people, that means you're great and that means that they're paying fealty to you. Probably a lot of those rich people, i.e. the CEOs who were there, I think are really in harm mitigation mode. Maybe they're there financially. I mean, probably they have multiple objectives, right?
One of them is to do a little solid for Donald Trump or what Donald Trump thinks is a favor, but also make sure that they walk away without giant new tariffs on iPhones or or any of the other supplies that they might be importing from China. So I think all of that stuff is going on there.
Yeah, Xi didn't seem quite as effusive when talking about Trump. Maybe it's a cultural gap there. I don't know. Though Trump was way nicer and more – I mean, he's almost prostrate on the ground with his praise of Xi. You kind of compare that to the treatment of Zelensky getting lectured in the Oval Office or how he treats a lot of our – Democratic allies. It's a notable gap.
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Chapter 3: How is the Democratic party preparing for the upcoming elections?
coming out party. And there was a lot of like emulation of American culture and inviting American pop culture celebrities. I remember I went to the MTV awards in China while I was there. And there was a lot of like sort of knockoff versions of American pop culture icons and economic innovators and things like that.
And now China, I think in many ways, is trying to eclipse the United States or has eclipsed the United States, at least in select industries. So that's kind of a longer term story. I think that has been facilitated certainly by Donald Trump and hastened by the Iran war.
If you look at like who President Xi has met with just in the past month or a couple of months, you know, it's the leaders of a lot of Asian countries, Southeast Asian countries. Even before the war, you had the PM of Canada, the PM of the UK, the president of South Korea all coming together.
to Beijing for the first time in many years, in part because they were seeking a relationship, a tighter relationship with a different authoritarian leader as opposed to Donald Trump. And Donald Trump had sort of forced them into the arms of the Chinese government. And so all of that is kind of the subtext of that one photo.
Yeah. And it's not just, you know, Trump derangement syndrome, neolib, neocon, Tucker Carlson, FOIL, Catherine Rampell that has this assessment. We have a Washington Post report out today, a confidential U.S. intelligence analysis details the ways China is exploiting the war in Iran to further maximize its advantage over the U.S. across military, economic and diplomatic and other fields.
It goes through a list of a bunch of stuff, the ways in which China is like reaching out to our allies who are dealing with shortages, you know, and energy and other spaces. It seems to me that it is a pretty blanket assessment at this point that Trump comes to this meeting at a moment where China has been maximizing their advantage.
So a brutal frame logging by the ASU frat leader, Chairman Xi, you might say. Other bad news for Trump is kind of the broader economic forces. I want to go through things kind of point by point with you, but I'm wondering what your sense is of the macro right now. And we are in a moment where I feel like we've told the story a bunch over the last year or two, like the stock market.
If you're just looking at the stock market, you'd think things are going pretty swimmingly, frankly, but a lot of other indicators, not as good. I'm wondering what your sense is of the macro state of play.
Yeah. I mean, this is why no one should ever take financial advice from me because I frankly do not understand what is going on in the stock market right now for pretty much the reasons you laid out. Stock markets seem almost euphoric. When there's bad news, they dip a little bit. Bad news like we don't have a deal with the Iranians, for example. When there's good news, they rocket upward.
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Chapter 4: What are the implications of inflation on the current economy?
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You were seeing this where basically the upper middle class and upper class was continuing to do well. wow, things are getting worse for lower middle and lower class. People kind of stopped talking about that a little bit in the post-COVID era because wages were kind of going up for people in the bottom quintile.
You're starting to see that theme pop up again, I think, which is related to the stock market, which is this kind of K-shaped recovery.
Yeah, it's totally related to the stock market. And actually, if you look at like the University of Michigan consumer sentiment numbers, they broke out the share of people who talked about their personal finances deteriorating because of higher prices. They broke it out for those who own a lot of stocks and those who own no stocks. And as you can imagine, the people who do own stocks are...
much more copacetic, I guess. Like they're mad about gas prices and they're mad about grocery prices going up because they are going up. They're mad about all of those things, but then they look over at their 401k and they're like, meh, you know, maybe it's worth it. Maybe it's worth the trade-off. Whereas people who do not have those financial assets, who are lower income and
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Chapter 5: How does the stock market reflect the state of the economy?
And so, like, that's going to happen to the whole economy. The people that are insuring and reinsuring these tankers. the numbers crunchers back there at Tanker Insurance HQ are going to be like, I think we need to up the rates, okay, if we're going to be sending these ships. So it's like, anyway.
Yeah, I mean, that's already happened.
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It's nap time now once we start out the bond yield, but it is quite important. The craziest thing about all of this to me is one of Trump's big things when he came back in was he wants to get interest rates back down. And obviously he did it in a corrupt way and he did it in a ham-fisted way and he's not an economist, he doesn't know anything.
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Chapter 6: What challenges does the new Fed Chair face?
I said shitty. I said shitty. Bill Kristol and Jim Comey cussed on the podcast this week. So whatever vulgar word you had in your mind, this is the place for it. Just let it loose. Let your animal spirits loose. That's all I'm saying, Catherine. All right. I saw you talking about the ag economy this week on a social clip.
And I do just want to close with that because I think it's important because, you know. We care about the well-being of our farmer brothers and sisters who feed us. So for earnest reasons, it's important. For political reasons, it's pretty important because if the Democrats are going to take the power back that they need this fall, they're going to have to win in some farm areas like Iowa, Ohio.
nebraska kansas like this is this is where the senate is being fought and the economy is there shitty and i was interested this morning to see roger marshall on sputnik fox business his senator from kansas talking about how things are going in his state uh let's listen
China knows that he means business as well. So we're trusting it. We trust in Trump that he's over there making a great deal for us. No one's done more for American agriculture and rural America than President Trump, Secretary Rawlings, and a Republican-only Congress.
Excuse me, that's Sputnik Newsmax, not Fox Business. It's hard to tell the difference between the three sometimes. Roger Marshall, Kansas Senator on Newsmax, he's got an election coming up. What do you think about that assessment? Nobody's done more than Brooke Rollins and Trump and farm country is just having a golden age right now.
I think few people in American history have done more to screw over farmers than Donald Trump has in a very compressed period of time. If you look at what's happened to farm bankruptcies, they rose 46% last year.
And that's not only because of Trump policies, to be clear, but it's largely because of Trump policies through tariffs, which raise their input costs for things like fertilizer, for the equipment that they need. The tariffs also led to countries around the basically boycotting American goods. China stopped buying soybeans entirely for a while.
And that's obviously hurt farmers in a lot of the states that you just rattled off. You have Trump deporting a large share of their labor force. The interest rates are really hurting farmers as well. And then you have little noticed, I think, by much of the media, but the cancellation of a these farmers, not just USAID and foreign aid programs that have been cut off that U.S.
farmers historically have been very supportive of because their crops and their meat products are being used to feed the world, but also here in the United States. You have SNAP, getting huge cuts, which the administration is bragging about, of course, saying that they've lifted people off of SNAP. No, they've pushed people off of SNAP. That hurts farmers.
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Chapter 7: How are Trump's policies affecting rural America?
But now we're at a point where the current president has called this a hoax. The attorney general – Former AG Pam Bondi and the current one have wanted to move on for months and months. And the survivors have yet to receive justice. There have been co-conspirators. There have been other men that have caused the abuse. And there's been no convictions as well.
And so we're trying to highlight the stories of the survivors. We've tried to work, when possible, in a bipartisan way to get support for subpoenas, even in the majority. We have fought really hard, been really aggressive, and we've gotten information.
I mean, the only reason why you've had those emails out that got released earlier from Trump and Colleen Maxwell, and the only reason all those photos and videos of the island, and all of those, all that information has been out, and quite frankly, The files that we've seen was because Democrats have fought to get it out, even though half of the files are still in the possession of the DOJ.
Half, 2.5 million documents at minimum. And so this is not an issue that's going to go away, and we're going to push it all the way until we get justice for the survivors.
The Democrats and Thomas Massey. He's got a primary next week.
Tom Massey is a huge – absolutely. Well, and look – and credit to some of the Republican women. Nancy Mace, Lauren Boebert, Annapurna Luna, while I disagree with them on almost everything, have actually been quite good on this issue.
The one frustrating thing about – and maybe this is part of the other documents that they have. But I do think the one thing that – from those of us on the outside are wondering is – It still seems like there's a dearth of like co-conspirator information. Like we know what Jeffrey Epstein was doing, maybe not everything, but like we know what Glenn Maxwell was doing.
Overseas there have been some examples, Prince Andrew, et cetera. But there really hasn't been any kind of – big breakthroughs or accountability about other co-conspirators who were sexually abusing girls. What do you think? What do you make of that?
I think that is partly true. I think one is we can't know the full story until we get all of the files. I think one thing that Donald Trump has been saying, and he's told this to other members, and Marjorie Taylor Greene recently said it as well, was that if all the files get released, a lot of his friends are going to get in trouble. And he doesn't want to see his friends go through this.
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Chapter 8: What are the future political strategies for Democrats?
Now, after that ruling and after the ruling in Virginia – I think the Democrats are still favored. I think you guys are still favored to take back the House. But it doesn't feel like a guarantee. And I'm wondering what the feeling is among your colleagues.
I think that is about the feeling. I mean, look, I think if we fight like hell, we're going to win. And I think that the leader is mapping out a path to victory and has. But I think that the attack on voting rights and what's happening right now with redistricting is incredibly serious. And I've said this –
often, but the response from our state and our governor should have been that level of action should have happened everywhere immediately and that level of intensity. And I don't think we saw it everywhere. And Republicans are always gonna have that level of intensity. They're always gonna push hard, go all the way. We're seeing what's happening now again in South Carolina.
I mean, they are pushing. And so I think we are gonna win the majority. I think it's going to be hard and a big fight. And I think that redistricting makes it infinitely more difficult. And I also worry about not just redistricting this year, but in 28, because whatever they don't do in 26 are going to do in 28. And so we've got to make sure that when we win the House this fall, that we hold it.
Because at the end of the day, we're going to pass a lot of great policy, hopefully some that we can get through when we're in the House. Are we going to have the Senate? I hope. We have a shot at it. But we need the presidency.
In 28, we have got to get to a place where we hold the White House and the Congress so we can actually make real change in this country and reverse some of the horrors of Trump.
And so what's the answer to that? Is that maximum redistricting and all of the other blue states turn Illinois into a computer chip? Or is it trying to find the Thomas Massey of redistricting to try to get some compromise bill passed? And it's kind of almost impossible to imagine Trump signing some sort of anti-gerrymandering law.
So I don't think there is any other solution than maximum warfare, right?
Maximum, I think maximum aggressive warfare has to be it. And it has to also be something coming from the states. And so, you know, look, when you have had governors in blue states not excited about redistricting, I think that's a disservice not just to your state, but to the country and democracy. This is like bigger than how we might feel about redistricting.
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