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Chuck Crismier: Potential settlement negotiations were squashed there. Donald Trump decided not to send the Vice President or anyone else over there to Pakistan to try to resolve things with Iran. At the same time, the President of the United States gets his third effort at removal from this planet by assassins. It seems that the whole world is moving in a direction that it is almost impossible to get our minds and hearts around.

Today, we'll do our best to talk about the issues that are taking place, not so much focusing on what's happened there with the assassination attempt. You can talk about that, you can listen to it on every news media over and over again. But here on Viewpoint today, we're going to talk about something that you're not likely to hear anywhere else.

You're going to hear again from economic strategist Christian Briggs, who happens to be the CEO and chairman of Hard Asset Management. He's joined us a number of times here on Viewpoint. It's been several weeks now, but he's joining us again today to talk about things that he sees developing in his international travels and connections around the world and here in the United States, particularly as it relates to Iran.

So it's good to have you aboard, my friends. Thank you for joining us here on Viewpoint as we confront the deepest issues that touch our hearts and our homes from God's eternal perspective today. I don't know to what extent we're going to bring our Lord into the picture. Certainly, He knows what's going on. He knows far better than anyone else what's going on, no matter what security interest people may have, no matter what spies may be out there in the international waters trying to discern or figure out what's going on in other people's thoughts.

Today on Viewpoint, we're going to take a look from a different viewpoint concerning the matter of Iran, concerning the matter of China, concerning the matter of Russia, and where all of this seems to fit. So again, I bring Christian Briggs on board with us here to talk about that. Christian, it's good to have you on the program.

Christian Briggs: Chuck, it's always a pleasure and honor to be on your show.

Chuck Crismier: Well, this is a tremendously challenging time. One could say it's a strategic time, but then you wonder where's the strategy? Strategery has to do with strategy, and it's very difficult to find out where the strategies are, isn't it?

Christian Briggs: Well, there's a moving target. There was a day once when you actually said ready, aim, fire, but now it's fire, ready, aim at what?

Chuck Crismier: That's right. It's kind of like the guy that has a blindfold on and pins the tail on the donkey. So where does the donkey go? Where does the tail go? That's where we're looking at here. Of course, we know that Iran has become very difficult to deal with, does not want to release its uranium, control over its uranium. That seems to be the big stopping point in negotiations.

They say it's just unreasonable, it's outrageous that we should have such a requirement. And yet that's the very thing that gives them an opportunity to destroy America, to destroy Israel, which they have decreed to do. So how are we to respond to that?

Christian Briggs: Forcefully, actually. I mean, that's what we have to do. We don't have a choice to do anything other than respond in a forceful way. Trump cannot look at let me take a step back first of all. When you're looking at the culture, it's a culture thing. It's not a gender. We're not just negotiating against men or women or combination of the two. It's mostly men obviously in the Middle East that are the chief negotiators because of the Sharia law and just the way the whole religion is predicated among the society.

Only from a strong position of strength. We did not have this for decades in the White House. We have not had this until Donald J. Trump, the man, because it's not about the title. The title is given to an individual, but the man is made up of substance. We call that the matter of fact. He is a chief negotiator.

I've always said this before, if a guy like anybody for that matter, but take the men that we're talking about, Donald J. Trump can negotiate against some of the hard liners of the New York unions when he builds buildings and the city council and the mayors and all of the economics that go into building a building, he can negotiate this.

You have to remember when you're sitting at this high table, not the table that we eat from but the table we negotiate at, he has to be 12 feet tall in the eyes of the other side. Because only out of respect can a deal be done. If your counterpart doesn't respect you, then the deal will not get done to the way of which the outcome is reasonable for both parties.

Chuck Crismier: And yet that's the argument that the Iranians are making, that Donald Trump doesn't respect them and wants to dictate to them. And so therefore I can't get no respect, and therefore I'm not going to do a deal.

Christian Briggs: I think at this point it's more than that right now. It's not about respect. As of today, the offer that was given about 24 to 48 hours ago by the Iranian delegation or at least the negotiators, the ones who have the authority to make this offer, was systematically just about everything that the United States wants.

Wait, I say the United States, this is not true. The entire world wants. There is nobody other than the Iranians, I don't think even China truly wants the largest state sponsor of terrorism in the Middle East, the Far East, South America, wherever it is, these guys got their hands in this cookie jar of terrorism. Nobody wants these guys to have 11, 12, or 13 nuclear missiles. That's the last thing we need.

Chuck Crismier: Well, that's exactly the thing that Iran insists they must have. I think it's partly a pride thing, but it's a power thing. It also goes to the very heart of their reason for existence through the vanguard of the Islamic revolution to bring the ultimate chaos in the world necessary for their awaited Mahdi, the Islamic Messiah, to show up. If they lose that, they've lost their complete raison d'être, reason for being.

Christian Briggs: There's exactly truth in what you just said. That is exactly right. The way of which they operate is based on a merit system. Where Christianity is based on grace, forgiveness, confessions, and the will of which to submit to obviously there's variables in that. But the bottom line is we can't earn our way, they have to earn their way.

Earning their way means a systematic destruction of non-believers. Let's just get right to the point. Their beliefs are the destruction to infidels is the greatest of causes because it has the greatest of returns. I'm making this very simple.

Chuck Crismier: Why do they want to do a do-si-do with China then? Why do they want to do a do-si-do with Russia? Well, maybe it's because they don't want to, it's because they have to, they know they have to. China knows they have to deal with Iran. Russia knows they have to deal. So it's a triumvirate of codependency. That's how I see it. Respond to that after the break if you would. Friends, you're listening to Viewpoint. Viewpoint does depend on destiny or Viewpoint determines destiny, actually. And our special guest today, Christian Briggs, joining us from Hard Asset Management. He is taken as an expert, economic expert around the world. We'll be right back with you.

Once upon a time, children could pray and read their Bibles in school. Divorces were practically unknown as was child abuse. In our once great America, virginity and chastity were popular virtues and homosexuality was an abomination. So what happened in just one generation? Hi, I'm Chuck Crismier, and I urge you to join me daily on Viewpoint where we discuss the most challenging issues touching our hearts and homes. Could America's moral slide relate to the fourth commandment? Listen to Viewpoint on this radio station or anytime at saveus.org.

Welcome back to Viewpoint, friends. We're confronting the deepest issues that touch our hearts and our homes, and indirectly because you may not think your heart and your home are being touched by what's going on there in Iran, what's going on incidentally with China and with Russia. Of course, with the United States and all of this is linked to Venezuela, linked to Cuba. All of these things are interconnected now.

It's very hard to get our minds and hearts around this. In fact, an article came out that our guest sent to me called "Economic and Foreign Policy High Wire Act." High wire act. Well, that's exactly what's taking place. When you're on the high wire, you can fall off either side and either way is a terrible fall, isn't it Christian?

Christian Briggs: Oh my goodness gracious. Unless there's a safety net and most of the times they try to get our attention by not having one, it is a high wire act and if you're not careful, you will fall. Stumbling off a high wire, you don't jump, tuck, and roll. You just lay flat. Usually there's a flat line goes with it. So we're balancing an act right now, Chuck, that I would not want another human being in this position than Donald J. Trump because this is what he does: the art of the deal.

Chuck Crismier: Well, it is true and most people don't understand it. Interestingly, I have said on this program, being a former trial lawyer, that I do understand it. I understand the nature of negotiation. I understand that it's not about all kinds of people having the same desire, getting together and making nice. It's a matter of some very profoundly different viewpoints and that if you're going to resolve, there has to be a basis upon which that resolution takes place. Depending upon the seriousness of it, that will be either a life or death situation very likely. That's what we're really dealing with here, isn't it?

Christian Briggs: We're dealing with a culture that death is a byproduct of success. Remember that. When we go into business, you go into a trial, you're walking in, you're a trial lawyer, you know these things. I'm going to lay it out for all the listeners. You walk in, you're prepared. You're prepared to do two things: make a case and receive a conclusive answer.

Hopefully the case you make has already been predicated on the evidence to make and to receive an outcome that you know within a high probability is going to go your way if the argument is made and it's clearly understood, communicated to the jury, or if you do a bench trial, then the conclusion should be something you're already anticipating, right?

Chuck Crismier: Well, that's why I only lost one significant case in 20 years.

Christian Briggs: Well, that's because you and I know the answer because you and I can communicate. That's why we know how to communicate. That's Trump's forte. See, to be a good negotiator and good at I call it the sales, Donald J. Trump is not just a good communicator, he obviously has to sell. You have to when you're trying to get something done, you have to sell and even though people like to say, "Oh, I'm not a salesman, I'm a politician," or "I'm this or..." No, we're always selling something or you're going to go broke, okay? That's just the way it is.

Chuck Crismier: Well, let's put it using a different word: present. We're going to present something and you may call it selling, you may call it marketing. We're going to present something as valuable, as important, as necessary. Here are the reasons why. So that's what Mr. Trump has been trying to do. But Iran has absolute, you may say has their feet stuck in the mud or their head in the sand. But what people don't realize is their whole raison d'être, their reason for being Iran, Persia as it is now, is rooted in their being able to hold on to their uranium and eventually develop it into the bombs that they can use to destroy America and Israel. If we realize that, it helps us to understand more deeply what is at stake here in these so-called negotiations, doesn't it?

Christian Briggs: Yeah. So let me go back to the word and you're correct, we can use present, but that's not what we're presenting you an offer to sell you a non-destruction opportunity of your way of life. Okay? It's either or. Yeah, exactly.

See, that's what I'm trying to say is when we go to the ballot boxes and we pull a lever, punch a card, I mean, hopefully we'll have this digital ID requirement, which would be fabulous where you've got to actually show citizenship before you can vote like 92 other things that we do each year. Try to get on an airline today or try to go anywhere without a formal ID. Good luck on that. But yet you can vote.

Putting that aside for just one second. Here's what we're talking about. President Trump is presenting an opportunity for them to buy freedom, recognition, provided they stand down on destruction. That's what they're doing. They're selling us the fact that they're the largest state sponsor of terrorism, that they took out the Shah. They've now literally murdered in 47 years a minimum of two million citizens or people around the world through direct or indirect terrorism. Two million. How do you negotiate? You don't. You tell them, "Here's what I'm giving you the opportunity to do today."

Now, they for some reason in the last 24, 48 hours think that they're going to renegotiate or subnegotiate some of the things of which that are have to be on the table. One of them of which is even today I was listening to a former intelligence officer and she was telling me, she was like, "Listen, they will not, at least at right now today, are not willing to give up their weapons-enriched uranium." They have it. They have enough to put together about 11 nuclear missiles, bombs.

Chuck Crismier: Well, that's what I was saying here. That is the ultimate fulcrum over which any resolution rides. And for them to give up that is like giving up their very life because their whole raison d'être, reason for being, is linked to having that at their disposal.

Christian Briggs: It is. Chuck, you're making a great point. It actually is. It's scary to think that the reason for their living is to kill themselves and take out other people. It's almost like why bother? I said this to somebody just recently and I said, "Gosh, they got billions of dollars coming in. They could just relax, chill out, go democracy. No one's going to mess with them. People will live like they did when the Shah loved his people. They was like living in the United States, except for even sometimes in some cases a little bit better in parts of it the way they did the healthcare and they paid for the oil and they would pay for housing. I mean, he was a very, very giving individual. His son is very much like that as well."

They had all of this. All this regime has to do is relax, stop the killing, literally change a small part of the direction of your of your madness or whatever you want to call it and you will be left alone, your people will prosper. You have billions at your fingertips. Don't you want to kind of like enjoy that fruits of the labor again? Not that and I'm not condoning them, but I'm trying to make a simple argument that Donald Trump is, the President of the United States and his his great entourage, I think JD did a good job as far as he could take it. I think there are some other people involved in some of the mitigating of what the consequences are that if Iran doesn't accept this. But just think about this. They got billions at their fingertips. Why don't they, I mean, run the government, let the people love you for how you treat them. That's just not going to happen, though. That's not how they think.

Chuck Crismier: All right, here's the problem. Here's the problem as I see it. The at least as Westerners, I don't care whether it's in America, whether it's in Europe, we just do not understand them. We don't understand them because our way of thinking, in fact, our very religious convictions, are not that deep. But they have a group of people, whether you want to call them a cadre, whether you want to call them a small intense group of true believers, fundamentalists, whatever you want to call them, they are the ones that rule and call the shots. For them, the only thing that matters, and I said the only thing that matters, is accomplishing what they perceive to be their calling for for life itself. Their very existence is to usher in world chaos so that their Mahdi, their awaited Messiah, can come in and enforce Sharia law on the world. That's their goal. It is deeply, deeply, deeply invested. It's who they are. It's not who the Iranian people are as a whole, it's who those who rule are. That's what we're dealing with, isn't it?

Christian Briggs: Yeah, that was well said. That was actually very well said. We're dealing with people whose ideology is to kill. Now, let's start with that first. The underlying value proposition that they have in their lives is doing in their in their eye they have to do works. They have to do works to get to the promised land. And some of those works are killing people. Unfortunately, there's extremist, I'm not going to say every Muslim believes that. However, it is in their code, I call it the code if you will.

Chuck Crismier: It's in their scriptures, but they don't necessarily buy into it just like the majority of Christians don't believe what they say they do about the Bible.

Christian Briggs: Well, that's true. I've had this debate with many many Christians and I just recently was talking to some Muslims and they said the same thing. They said, "We do not believe some of which is in the Quran to the extent the radicals do." They actually said that, which made me feel kind of good actually because I think there's hope there. I think there's hope there for at least some cordial communication down the road.

But in saying all that, that's not what we have today. The regime right now in Iran that we currently face is one of the more hardline left, I'm going to say left only because it's just an easier way to to put it into a box. The most extreme case of radicalism that you can get. The the Muslim Brotherhood is a secondary radical. These guys are further. How do I know? They didn't get elected like the like the nutcase did in Egypt after Mubarak. This guy of course was ousted later but he was a Muslim Brotherhood. He didn't do the extent level extreme terrorism, terrorist terrorism, that Iran did but he certainly had his way. These guys want to die for the lie. And so that's really a challenge to sit there and systematically negotiate with them in a in a manner of which they're like, well my life only means something when I take you out. So it's it's a challenge and Trump's doing a great job. He's close. I believe he's very close, but close sometimes doesn't get it.

Chuck Crismier: Okay. Now let's let's take all of this fundamental foundational discussion and take a look then at the implications, at the applications, the implications, the trajectory, for instance, economically, what has happened to the world as a result of this? One of the things that that I see is that somewhere in the mix of all of this as you and I were talking about two months ago, three months ago, gold and silver were rising exponentially. Never in history had anything happened like that. Then all of a sudden within two weeks it was almost collapsed back to where it had been. Did that have anything to do with what's happening in Iran or China or Russia or was that just a happenstance?

Christian Briggs: No, that had a direct consequence. When Iran conflict started, there was a mad dash to for the world started dumping US-based Treasury, okay bonds. And that ignited a higher interest rates. Well gold gold primarily because it's not a metal that's used in really strategic ways like silver, platinum, or palladium is. That ignited interest rates. Because remember when interest rates go up, when oil went up, it ignited higher rates because the anticipation was inflation was going to kick up if this was any kind of a prolonged conflict. None of them were wrong.

So I look at it in a lot of different ways. Most of the time there are people out there that are just short-sighted, short-term. You got to play the long game. You have to play the minimum three to five years. If you can play the minimum three to five years, then what you have is an opportunity to be able to capitalize on the dips and the peaks. But directly related to the oil prices and they're still hovering around the $92, $93 a barrel. Look at Brent crude or look at West Texas. You still have elevated oil prices at at least 40 to 50%.

Chuck Crismier: I thought it went up to 100 again.

Christian Briggs: Yeah, I think it did actually. But I think Brent may have broken the 100 and we may have broken 92, 93 today. You may be completely right on that one. Yeah because Brent's about $4 to $5 more than the North Sea crude up there near Norway. But short of all that, we've seen inflation numbers already pick up. There will be substantial increases in the cost of living if this is prolonged. Short term it's a blip, it's a blip on the radar, it's nothing. Trump's right. It has no long-term effects if we can contain this issue within the next four weeks. We will have literally no major consequences to the economy. In fact, when the markets drop, equities and bonds and gold, silver and that, we will look back two-three years from now as a buying opportunity for the last five years.

Chuck Crismier: Interesting. Okay. So people need to not fall into an attitude of panic and distress because they bought gold at 90 and it went up to 110 or 118 and now it's back to 78 and they're in panic. So they shouldn't be panicking.

Christian Briggs: No. Listen, Intel stock less than a year ago was at 21. It's now at over $60 a share. It will come back.

Chuck Crismier: All right. That having been said, we'll be back with Christian Briggs in just a few moments to dig our heels into what's happening vis-à-vis China, the big player there, and Russia, how all of this is playing out and how we should see it here on these shores.

There is so much more about Chuck Crismier and Save America Ministries on our website, saveus.org. For example, under the marriage section, God has marriage on His mind. Chuck has some great resources to strengthen your marriage. First off, a fact sheet on the state of the marital union, a fact sheet on the state of ministry, marriage, and morals, saveus.org. Marriage, divorce, and remarriage: what does the Bible really teach about this? Find out all of this at saveus.org. Also, a letter to pastors, the Hosea Project, saveus.org, and many more resources to strengthen your marriage. It's all on Chuck's website, saveus.org. Again, you can listen to Chuck's Viewpoint broadcasts live and archived at Save America Ministries website at saveus.org.

Again, I welcome you back to Viewpoint. Today, we're looking at a bigger picture view of the war with Iran. Some say it's not a war. Well, what would you call it? We'll just call it the war, the battle with Iran. And our special guest today, Christian Briggs, who is the CEO and chairman of Hard Asset Management, dealing with rare coins and precious metals. Let me ask you before we get into China, Christian. Are you still dealing with rare coins and hard assets like gold and silver and so on? And if so, how does that work when things don't seem to have been jumping crazily like they were three months ago?

Christian Briggs: Yeah, we still deal a lot. I've got a couple people that work with a lot of our institutional or larger clients. I'm not as working as much with a handful of people. My method right now of trying to incorporate as much information to the public as has been spending a lot on research and things. But people need to realize if they're looking for a straight up like, it goes up every single day, I'm not sure which asset that's going to be.

I will say this, however. When you look at one area of the world's economy, one area that's universal. Like there's one word that is universal in all languages and that's okay. There's no language that doesn't understand it is okay. Interesting. It is. Think about it. I don't care if you're from Asia, South America, the Middle East, Europe, or North America, okay is universally recognized and the meaning of such.

So I'm going to say this one word, one word that is universal at the heart of our Iranian discussion. It's called nuclear. Now Iran will tell you that they only want to build nuclear reactors for privatized, not military applications, for commercial viability, for energy use. They're probably not wrong because conventional energy is is never going to be enough to do the long-term power requirements that artificial intelligence running on massive amounts of hardware then as they scale up to the speeds of quantum in the next three to five years, there's never going to be enough consistent and reliable. I mean consistent being the reliability and the price point.

Oil is too volatile, it can change the the trajectory of the value proposition that was originally set forth in adopting that for AI or energy needs. And that's the thing. Plus a lot of times those resources that are needed to maintain consistent and reliable conventional energy, this is outside those crazy people that say wind and solar is going to replace everything. Not today it's not. And not for the reasons of which nuclear energy the one word that I can say two words but the one word will signify it all. If anybody asked me if I was going to ask to tell you to buy one product, it's the platinum group metals because platinum and palladium are critical for both conventional energy use, military applications, and nuclear energy. Make no mistake about it.

In the next five to 10 years, as gold and I told people to buy silver and gold like five-six years ago knowing that it was going to be used in the conventional manner of AI data centers and central banks were buying it to adopt a backstop for both current currency because the paper currency was being devalued so they backstopped it as well as new generation currency which is digital. And then China led the the entire parade on that for backstopping the digital yuan. We'll be adopting that here soon. It won't be very much longer that the world will be adopting gold to back all digital currency in some manner. And don't be surprised if gold backs Treasuries here come soon.

But the one thing that the world will not disagree on: they've adopted nuclear energy. Look at all of the press releases. Amazon, Google, Meta, Microsoft have all started buying partnerships, investing in nuclear energy in a private way to commercialize the energy capacity needs to run these things of which that are 10 times, 50 times, 100 times more energy requirement to scale to the levels in the next five to 10 years that they're going to need to scale.

Chuck Crismier: All right. So nuclear energy is enjoying a renaissance both in this country and all over the world, you say. In fact, you actually sent me an article a couple days ago, the US Department of Energy has set a goal to triple America's nuclear energy capacity by the middle of this century. Japan and South Korea are reaching out all over the world. About 75 nuclear reactors are under construction with another 120 planned. That doesn't sound a lot like all that we were hearing about all these data centers. So which is it? Is it the nuclear stuff that's exploding, the data centers, or is the nuclear exploding because of the data centers?

Christian Briggs: Well, the nuclear energy is because the whole world is becoming a system of AI. See, Chuck, you got to remember. We've gone from analog to low-level digital to mid-level digital to now quantum digital, okay. So analog, scrap that. That's like saying that we have TV stations that still use terrestrial broadcasting capabilities. Forget all that. That's old.

Digital has not just transformed from look at 20-25 years ago some of the first Hewlett Packard or if you want to go to Intel chips running at 100 MHz, 200 MHz, 500 MHz. Now we have storage and capacity in the multiple terabytes, petabytes. So what happens is the amount of required hardware in order to run systems has to double the capacity, the hardware capacity has to double every 18 months because it's required. That's why when iPhones are coming out, Samsung, Android-based phones are coming out new every year because the amount of software that's running on these requires a next generation additional increasing in hardware.

Why do you think they're creating longer-life batteries in these phones or your MacBook Pro or your PC or your desktop, your iPad, or even batteries? What we're seeing is is an unbelievable and I mean a hunger and a need of capacity. So capacity in hardware to run what? Massive amounts of artificial and synthetic intelligence systems and the only way to power that, you're not going to get a transformer that's been around since 1958 to do that. That's not going to happen.

Chuck Crismier: And oil isn't going to do it either.

Christian Briggs: No way. It's inconsistent, it's inconsistent. Look at the price. Right. It's consistent pricing, it's consistent capabilities, it's consistent reliability. So think about this. We were at $65 oil six months ago, four months ago. Now we're at $100 oil. Now if I was an AI data center operating by selling services like many companies out there, these these companies that are building these huge data centers for Meta or any number of I mean we're talking about worldwide here, we're talking about worldwide. The problem is those prices are now inconsistent with their financial modeling. They can't have that. You can't have a third to half of the cost to run AI be fluctuating at such a what happens if someone did a nuclear bomb in the Middle East and oil goes to $500 a barrel? What's going to happen? They're out of business. Or they're going to have to charge so much more for the services. Nuclear energy.

Chuck Crismier: By the way, speaking of that, I don't know if you're aware, but today I received information that Israel has become the most greatest, most dependent upon AI of any country in the world. They have assimilated AI into their life and their systems more than any other country in the world. Pretty shocking, but that's what I heard.

Christian Briggs: You want to know why?

Chuck Crismier: Well, just ask the question so I can say, that's a great question, Chuck. Why is that, Christian?

Christian Briggs: I'm so glad you asked that question out of the blue. Because Israel has one of the greatest intelligence agencies called Mossad in the world and AI helps them in a number of different ways. One, proactively and reactionary. That's why bottom line that if you were to summarize Israel's capabilities, it's intelligence gathering, intelligence sharing to the world community, especially the United States, CIA works hand-in-hand with their intelligent agency.

And also they have massive amounts of software companies that work there where AI has become prevalent across all their different platforms. You can look at all the different systems of which that come out that sell into the private commercial sector all the way to the government sector. I would not be surprised if the amount of energy that Israel's going to need in the forthcoming decade will take massive amounts of nuclear energy to be able to maintain the growth of needs that the intelligence community, the software companies over there will need to further further grow their businesses. Intelligence gathering is a business. NSA, it's a business. CIA, it's a business. Do you know that CIA sells their services for background checks, deep-dive background checks to companies, governments, anybody that will pay for it? And that takes a tremendous amount of energy capacity for next generation.

Chuck Crismier: Well, it takes a lot of energy on your capacity to deliver all this information and it may be, friends, that there may be someone out there that says, "You know what, I appreciate what Christian Briggs is bringing us, what he does, his knowledge and his understanding. I want to connect in with what he's doing. Maybe there's a way that he can work with me." Well, here is how you do that. It's called Hard Asset Management and his website is bmcham.com, that's bmcham.com, and a phone number, 844-426-4653. That's 844-426-4653.

Okay. Hard Asset Management, Christian Briggs, chairman of that. Now, you travel around the world. You just came back from Rome. What in the world were you doing as an economic strategist in Rome?

Christian Briggs: Well, it had to do with trying to some of it will be I got to be careful what I say. Some of it which will be trying to bridge some relations between current conflict between two countries in Eastern Europe.

Chuck Crismier: All right. And you weren't there to try to ingratiate yourself to the Pope?

Christian Briggs: Oh, no. I was there when when the President made a couple comments. I was at the Vatican, made a couple comments about both the Italian Prime Minister and the Pope. I was actually inside the Vatican at the time with some people actually from the administration as well as from other areas and it was an interesting afternoon. Let's just leave it at that. We were there for a couple days of high-level meetings.

Chuck Crismier: Wow. Okay. So let's go back to China now. We didn't get there as we promised in the last segment. We know that Beijing is desperate to maintain oil and gas, which they get about 16% of their oil and gas from Iran and the rest of it from Saudi Arabia and other sources. They are desperate to have that because they don't have any of their own. But then there's also Russia that has a lot, and Iran can't get theirs out there. What's going on here? How does this impact us all?

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Again, we're talking here with Christian Briggs concerning the economic systems in our world and how the Iranian battle is frustrating the economies of the world, is destabilizing the economies of the world and how that's affecting China, how that's affecting Russia and in turn how it will affect us. So let's start with China. We're going to have to keep it somewhat brief, give us your initial take on China.

Christian Briggs: Well, China is is almost kind of like the 800-pound gorilla that nobody wants to acknowledge has done extremely well the last 35 to 40 years. We simply just want to ignore this fact. By doing that, it does pose a couple things. One, you underestimate the value of what the success and progresses of your enemy and number two, it usually means that your arrogance or your secondary way of thinking should be prioritizing their success and then utilizing that as a backstop to what you're going to do to stop that success.

Trump didn't do that. He understood exactly how well they did, especially when Biden was President. Well, now I didn't say he was elected President, he took the oath of office from all the different ways of which you know the way he got in there. But because of the extent of what Hunter Biden did and the corruption that both Hunter Biden and his father did, that China had him by the let's just say he had him. And there was a lot of different things of which that China forced Biden to accept, one of which was the I mean massive progress on cooperation, joint ventures, cooperation, trade agreements where China would again continue its forward progress of infiltrating, I call it infiltrating if you will, countries that were, you know, they were just small countries.

But they had mass resources. Those mass resources were not exploited to the level that China realized they could be as well as what the needs of China were going to be over the decades forward. And when Biden took office, the acceleration of China doing this and Trump saw it. They tried to distract him, they tried to persuade him through all different ways by trying to put him in jail and this and that and all these things and they continued to continue to move forward.

He knew when he took office he had to hit the ground running to be able to stop China's progressive dealmaking because they were tying up at one point and they still are close to this 85 to 90% through different trade agreements, investments, coercion, or just when the countries can't pay back the investments that China made for roads, bridges, hospitals, schools, etc., they confiscated the resources of what those countries had to offer. Like in Africa. Oh man, Chuck. China has raped Africa horribly. They've raped these people. Where we've helped Africa by giving billions of dollars a year for economic development asking nothing in return.

And I will say this, that's not always been the case with every country that the United States worked with but we have done very well the last 40 or 50 years. There obviously is going to be some measure of corruption, some measure of discontent. But the theme was always to help impoverished areas through resources that the United States had. China went in there as a predatory lender, a predatory partner, a predatory bank if you will, almost like predatory lending in areas that you knew that the people couldn't pay the money back.

I'm not saying that lending at a little bit of a higher rate in the communities of America is bad because it does help people get by like payday loans and I'm not here to judge that. I'm here to tell you that China did it to us in predatory selling. They sold products like aluminum and steel and glass and all sorts of things below cost to hurt and when they got caught, Chuck, they went through Canada. Canada relabeled it as Canadian product. Canada got a cut, that tells you where Canada's interests lie. And then they brought it in through Canada or they brought it in through Mexico to bypass either the predatory lending and predatory selling, predatory artificial lowering of their yuan so they'd become more competitive in manufacturing.

Listen, it's not the people of China that think like this. This is not the case. It's a hardline 6,000 members of the hardline CCP led by President Xi Jinping. Yes, it is the labor board as we call it. Yes.

Chuck Crismier: So as energy prices go up, i.e., oil prices because of the Iranian snafu there with Straits of Hormuz and so on, high energy prices are putting China under immediate serious risk even though China's economy was always was failing to a certain extent even before the Iranian war. Now because of the Straits of Hormuz being closed up, energy prices are causing great risk there, aren't they?

Christian Briggs: Yes. The Iranians cut a deal. So let's go back to 2010 when the original China proposed a unified coalition of countries to undermine the United States's financial strength by destroying the dollar. That was called the BRICS. The initial countries are five countries, strategically located, strategically sourced with the resources at hand, and strategically influential in the the global business community.

And that was Brazil, the largest country in South America, one of the largest countries on the planet with an unbelievable endless amount of resources. You had Russia, which I don't have to even speak to their resources. It goes from oil and gas all the way to platinum, palladium. And then you've got India, which has incredible low-cost labor, low-cost labor, pennies per hour. Plus it has a as a consumer base of 1.4 billion people, so manufacturing in China that could be done, they had at least those three countries.

And then you had of course China itself, which we know the resources of China were unbelievable because they were ripping everything off that they had manufactured for partners around the world including us. And the last one, which people didn't realize, somebody asked me, "Wasn't that Saudi Arabia the S?" I said no, it was South Africa, strategically located in Africa with massive amounts of influence and it was a country that was the most developed country in Africa, economic-wise. And they also had massive natural resources, especially precious metals.

And so it was brilliant move on China's part to create the BRICS, which was a solidarity, a unified front, a coalition of countries that felt strong enough that they could undermine over time and grow the base. Of course, now I believe it's between members and partners about 21 countries including Iran. Yes, it was amazing. But you know what? It's being dismantled a piece by piece and we're doing it because we're cutting off the actual fuel to the fire. China being the fire and China being the head of this by cutting off both Venezuela and Iran. China needed that oil capacity hugely.

They needed that oil. That took about a quarter to a third of their daily oil needs down and it also catapulted the US energy sector through the roof because not only is our production going to go up to offset much of the hopefully the lost oil that's going through the strait, it will also increase our selling of oil, increase our GDP, increase our job growth because in the oil sector when you're at oil at $80, $90, $100, at $100 a barrel, we're making a lot of money.

In fact, the profits of the US oil companies could go from 60 billion roughly to maybe 165 billion. That is a direct reflection into the economy. So yes, we may have a little inflation, we may have a little oil prices, we're going to offset it with job creations and we don't have 11 nuclear bombs at the fingertips of some nutcases that really belong in a state asylum.

Chuck Crismier: Okay. So we've got three countries that are kind of glued at the hip. One is China, another is Iran because China receives so much of its oil and gas from Iran. Other countries that are feeding China oil and gas have to pass the Straits of Hormuz. And then you have Russia that doesn't have to use the Straits of Hormuz, it has its own, but is dependent in many respects upon China. China is dependent upon Russia, and both of them are dependent on their interrelationships with Iran.

How is that going to play out? How do you see this playing out?

Christian Briggs: Poorly for them. Poorly. I think what's going to happen is when the world recognizes that the United States is not just a tiebreaker peacekeeper, and again we have not always been at the very cornerstone of those two words, you know peace and prosperity. We've we've had our faults and we'll continue to have faults.

But at the end of the day, at the end of the day, and I believe this and that is in the Middle East there's just a handful of countries that probably could handle nuclear weapons and I'm not the person that can give you that answer. There may be.

Chuck Crismier: Well Turkey has 20 of ours.

Christian Briggs: They they have some.

Chuck Crismier: They have 20 of ours.

Christian Briggs: Right. I would call them kind of a quasi-Middle East even though they are a Muslim-led country or more secular, more of a secular country.

Chuck Crismier: Well, they want to rule the world for Sharia law just like Iran.

Christian Briggs: They do. They do, but they're just not as quite as aggressive on the terrorist list as okay. So if they can kind of keep everybody if they can just tell them and just say chill, okay? Just relax a little bit. Then maybe they'll be able to continue the growth of their economy. They don't want to take the United States on. We have a military that's second to none. Our men and women that serve both active and in the reserves are the best of the best. They'll die for the country. Their blood has been spread around and they'll do it and they'll continue to do it.

We have the very best military, we have the best people from the top to the bottom. And we have at our resources unbelievable technology that the world does not know about. Things of which which would frighten any any country that we can use at any time and Donald Trump is right. The President's right. He can take out anything he wants. He sees it in real time.

And I think the that if I was to give any advice to anybody out there in the world, why don't you go make a ton of money, build a country, have prosperity, enjoy the fruits of your labor, put the conflict aside for a second because there's enough of us that don't want what you're selling. You should be buying what we're selling because it's prosperity. And we won't be on your doorstep knocking every time you want to build a nuclear weapon but rather we'll be your partner in trade and we're cutting trade deals.

So I think that what China's going to do is they're going to see a whole new United States stronger than ever before and the dollar when you ask the question when the dollar goes up because rates go up it increases the value proposition of people buying US-based assets because they get a higher rate of return. That's the dollar going up. That's why gold has gone down, silver's gone down a little up from their highs.

But remember fundamentally those two products with platinum, palladium, even rhodium for that matter are critical. They're critical. They're almost national security resources and elements that are going to be needed for generational reasons. The thing about I've told people this before is that China's a behemoth not to take lightly and not to disrespect because look at where they've come in the last 30 years. You gotta I got nothing but respect for them in that sense because anybody that can go from you know as a kid, you know if I didn't eat my peas and carrots off my plate, someone would tell me there's poor little Chinese starving in China.

Their middle class is at a per capita based on their cost of living and their income is now higher than ours. It's higher than ours. Wow. So you have to respect where they are in the world's stage or on the world's stage. But at the same time, disrespect them in a sense for what they tried and attempted to do, which was to take down the United States financial system by destroying our dollar. But when you look at the people that and I'm not saying every single person in administration because I don't know them all. I've had the pleasure of meeting just a couple of them and knowing a few members here and there and then knowing a lot of people on the Congress side. That he's got people that love this country and we're not perfect. There's going to be some mistakes made. But at the end of the day, the safeguard of the United States is President Trump's number one priority and I think that that's what he's trying to accomplish on this.

Chuck Crismier: All right. We've been talking with Christian Briggs, chairman and CEO of Hard Asset Management. He's seen as a national and international economic strategist out there. An expert, they bring him on so many different areas for not seminars so much but behind-the-scenes consultations and so on. If you want to get ahold of him, bmcham, that's bmcham.com is his website, that's bmcham.com. Or the phone number, 844-426-4653. That's 844-426-4653.

Again, you've been listening to Viewpoint. We've covered a lot of ground here today on Viewpoint and I think if we were to go to the very heart of the discussion, it goes back to the first segment dealing with the rise of nuclear power all over the world, all over the world. And it's not primarily for military around the world, it's for commercial use: how to keep these data centers and all the energy that is going to be required in business.

Well, it might tell you something about where you might think about placing your investments. We don't tell you here on this program. That's not what we're about. But we are taking a look at the issues of our time as it relates to our lives as Christians here in the United States of America. Thanks for joining us today, partners. Friends, send your gifts by faith to Save America Ministries, PO Box 70879, Richmond, Virginia 23255. Do it today. Don't wait for the other guy to do it. These are very challenging times. We don't have any nuclear power to rely on. God bless you.

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