Tom Bilyeu's Impact Theory
Russia Rejoins the Dollar, Dutch Tax Disaster & AI’s Next Job-Killing Wave | The Tom Bilyeu Show LIVE
16 Feb 2026
Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Good morning, everybody. Welcome to another Tom Bilyeu show live. We are going to be going through a whole lot of madness today. Russia may be considering re-embracing the dollar as part of a plan to build a stronger relationship with the U.S. This one is big, and I am very eager to talk about that, what that could potentially mean. The Netherlands are committed to committing.
Economic suicide with a proposed new tax scheme, one that keeps popping up here in the U.S. as well around unrealized gains.
Chapter 2: Why is Russia re-embracing the US dollar significant?
As you can imagine, this is going to bring out the best in me. I'm ready. I'm ready, Drew. Put me in on this one. I definitely want to talk about this. You had that thing written yesterday morning. It was like, we're not going to start there, are we? Oh, but I want to talk about it. And people are losing their minds because Argentina has made a 12-hour workday legal.
I'm going to leave that one there. I want to talk about that one in full. All right, everybody, welcome. Russia is moving back to the U.S. dollar as part of a wide-ranging economic partnership. I will put a huge asterisk on this.
Chapter 3: What are the implications of the Netherlands' unrealized gains tax?
This is one of those. It's part of the Ukraine peace deal, ultimately. So there is some stipulations that are still very much evolved. And we know that we pump faked on a peace deal a few times. So this is pending. Nothing is official. But some of the details that the partnership would include would be U.S. and Russia working together on fossil fuels.
joint investments in natural gas, offshore oil and critical raw materials partnership, windfall for U.S. companies, Russia's return to the USD settlement system, which I think that last one is something we want to highlight and talk about. Yeah.
So if we could get Russia to re-embrace the dollar as they have just apparently offered to do, this is coming from intelligence that people have obtained from in Ukraine and it is tied to the war in Ukraine.
Chapter 4: How does the Netherlands' tax proposal affect economic growth?
The story broke yesterday via Bloomberg, and if it's true and ultimately successful, that's going to be the big question. It would be extremely consequential for them to re-embrace the dollar. This came from the internal memo in the Kremlin.
It was drafted this year, circulated among senior Russian officials, and it proposes that Russia return to the dollar, which is crazy because that settlement system is a part of the sweeping economic system that was trying to hold them back. But This would allow them to basically get a win with Trump. As Drew was saying, it's contingent on actually ending the Ukraine war. So they want the U.S.
to come in, help them end the war in Ukraine. And if they do that, they're like, hey, here's the thing that we're prepared to do. Now, in the bare knuckle brawl to establish a new world order, which is happening right now, you are in the middle of it. Getting Russia back on the dollar train would be huge. huge.
This is the very same Russia that has spent the last four years aggressively de-dollarizing. They're a big part of the reason I keep creating content about, hey, everybody, wake up to the fact
that because, partly, Russia's been building alternative payment systems, settling 90% of its trade with China in rubles and yuan and championing BRICS as the vehicle for ending American financial hegemony, that we have gone from roughly 72% of global trade being settled in USD to now in the 50s.
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Chapter 5: What role does AI play in job automation and the economy?
OK, so it is happening. It is happening fast. And having Russia now quietly pitching Washington on coming back to the dollar would be a major change and a massive coup in terms of the U.S. versus China power dynamic. We are in a battle that is binary. Either the U.S. is going to win, and this is largely a question of AI, either the U.S.
is going to win and we are going to dominate the next century, or it is going to be China that wins and they are going to dominate the next century. This is how great power politics plays out. accelerated wildly by how winner-take-all AI is going to be.
Now, the memo, which is being dubbed the Dmitriev package, was named after Kirill Dmitriev, the Kremlin negotiator who also heads Russia's sovereign wealth fund. So this is somebody that actually understands deeply the consequences of the current Russian strategy. And Ukrainian President Zelensky has referenced it himself. So large reason to believe that this is all real.
And he said that Ukrainian intelligence had gathered information on this massive bilateral economic proposed agreement between Russia and the U.S. and that it's running in parallel to the peace talks. Now, I've got to imagine he's not exactly thrilled to see the U.S. and Russia coming together, but in terms of what is certainly better for America in the long run.
having a functioning relationship with Russia at this kind of level, where you get one of a small handful of global power players back on the dollar system, ooh, buddy, obviously very good for America in the long term. Now, the memo lays out seven areas of proposed cooperation.
Drew went through them, but you're talking about joint oil, LNG ventures, preferential conditions for US companies to reenter the Russian market, nuclear energy, this one is big because we're talking about getting the energy that we need for AI.
Russia's return to the dollar settlement would be the biggest of all of them, but all of these things together would be great, especially cooperation on critical raw minerals like lithium and nickel, by the way.
Um, this one's going to be controversial, but they're also doing a joint push for fossil fuels, um, to basically bypass some of the green energy policies that Russia even argues favors China and Europe. Oh, the irony that green policies favor China. Uh, ultimately the question is going to become why would Russia want to do this?
And especially right now, given the sanctions that we put on them, given how damaging that's been to their economy, uh, Um, wouldn't they be better off never being in a position to go through this again so that they can create an alternative? Uh, because on the surface, returning to the dollar settlement layer just means that you're resubmitting yourself to Washington control.
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Chapter 6: How is the US-China power dynamic shifting with AI advancements?
So given that we've frozen historically like $300 billion in Russian central bank reserves, why would they volunteer for this again? Um, And the answer is Russia is in a very difficult situation. The alternative currency systems that they built with China, they do work, but they come at a huge cost. Russia sees themselves as increasingly dependent on Beijing.
Remember, Beijing is making a play to be the central kingdom to the entire world. And that dependency is starting to feel to them, I'm sure, a lot less like a partnership than like a leash. And so the memo itself is arguing that returning to the dollar would stabilize Russia's foreign exchange market and reduce volatility in its balance of payments, which is true.
So in plain English, the ruble-yuan workaround is messy and expensive, and Russia knows it. And more importantly, this is a play to split the U.S. from its current hyper-confrontational posture towards Moscow and by giving Trump something he clearly wants. And people know if you give Trump a thing that he wants, then you are gonna be in a much better negotiating position.
Whether that's good or bad, I'll let you guys decide. But it does appear to be true.
Chapter 7: What are the potential consequences of AI on white-collar jobs?
And a win for the dollar on the world stage is a big win for the US. That is for sure. And it definitely would help Trump. If Russia re-embraces dollar settlement, it weakens the entire BRICS de-dollarization, not only narrative, but actual process. So that would be a huge victory. And at a moment when de-dollarization has been accelerating, this would be a very good thing.
So you've got Xi Jinping who's been hoarding gold, telling the world directly they should switch over to the yuan as the world's reserve currency. You even have Secretary of State Marco Rubio warning China
for years, by the way, that sanctions are on a path to becoming obsolete, which would rob America of so much of its power, and all because you've got countries that are moving away from the dollar. So you put all that together, and this is a really big deal. But it's not as fun as the Pam Bondi thing. So are people going to lean into it?
No, but going back to it, somebody in the chat was like, Russia is doing this so they can get that seized funds back. And I'm like, hey, for 300 billion that was seized by the U.S. government, I might make a deal too. Bro, that is a small price to pay to be the world's reserve currency. That is a tiny price to pay.
This is where you have to understand why being the world's reserve currency is so valuable in a very brief nutshell. it allows you to inflate your currency because you share that problem with the whole world, not just with your own people. And I have a growing hypothesis. I haven't heard anybody else say this, so take this with a grain of salt, but I have a growing hypothesis that
What we're seeing in the markets right now, the reason all things will just like dip and then bounce back, dip and then bounce back, is what you're seeing is a correlation across effectively all asset classes, that there isn't anything uncorrelated anymore because the thing that they're correlated by is uncertainty. Investors don't know what the new world order is going to look like.
Just when you think gold is the place you want to be, silver is the place you want to be, all that stuff drops because Russia is like, well, actually, we are going to maybe get back in bed with the U.S., but that's a maybe. And who knows? And so as all of this stuff plays out, is AI a bubble or is what Tom just said about AI true? And it's a winner take all.
And oh, my God, like whatever we do, we've got to do it. So nobody knows. And that deep uncertainty is causing them to be skittish. If you've ever seen like a deer, the way that it will suddenly freeze, look around and then just dart. And you're like, the fuck just happened? That's what the markets feel like to me. Everyone is just so paranoid because they know they can't sit in cash. inflation.
So they know they can't sit there because they're expecting hyper printing of money anytime. It's already started back up again, but they're expecting a whole lot of it to just go absolutely haywire.
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Chapter 8: How can AI be programmed with ethical considerations?
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Yeah, let's go. Nicely done, Ryan.
Tom, I'm curious how your conversation with Peter Zion updated your mental mapping of the economic conflict with China. What did you agree or disagree with?
Well, I can't wait for you guys to see the episode. It's out. It's out. Oh, my God. It came out yesterday. That's right. How's it doing? Okay. Okay. Oh, well, we need you guys to go check it out. Everybody should go watch. Check it out. The great irony that our deep dives now become our dominant piece of content. The interview with Peter was awesome. I'm very eager for you guys to see it.
Okay, so the things that updated my mental model, and you want to watch it for yourself, but the big one was that China does not have the military might to project its power. So we would have to go to China in order for there to be a Thucydides trap conflict.
The bad news is that I can actually see us going there because if we have to defend Japan, which is now arming themselves up, they're building a military again. There is massive beef between Japan and China. China or Japan is...
are staunch ally uh and we have economically leaned on them for a very long time japan has played a major role in the global economy so i could see us turning a blind eye to taiwan i can't see us turning a blind eye to japan so uh that's where i'm like oh even if China cannot push all the way over into the Western hemisphere via military power.
I think that they have means to suck us into a regional conflict. So I don't think we're off the hook as much as Peter would say we are there. Also, I think that demographics are a problem for everyone. And so while China may suffer more on a like raw number basis, like let's say that they are overstating their population by 400 million. Okay, cool. They still have a billion people.
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