Judging Freedom Podcast host Judge Andrew Napolitano Interviews Prof. John Mearsheimer on China and Trade. Read the full transcript here:
Trump Administration’s Internal Divisions
JUDGE ANDREW NAPOLITANO: Hi, everyone. Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Thursday, April 17, 2025. My dear friend, the good Professor John Mearsheimer joins us now. Professor Mearsheimer, thank you very much for your time. Thanks for accommodating my schedule. Do you have a sense that the neocons in the Trump administration are becoming ascendant?
PROF. JOHN MEARSHEIMER: Ascendant is too strong a word. I think that they’re one of two factions in the administration. Let’s call one side the restrainers. I think the restrainers are a formidable force, but there’s no question that the neoconservatives are there in large presence as well. And there’s sort of a stalemate between the two sides, which is why Trump is not moving forward on either Iran or Ukraine.
Iran and Israel Tensions
JUDGE ANDREW NAPOLITANO: The New York Times published a very interesting piece claiming that some of his inner circle, one of whom surprised me, if the piece is accurate, talked him into saying no to Prime Minister Netanyahu when Netanyahu was last in Washington about a week ago, about whether or not Trump would give Netanyahu the green light to attack Iran. I know sometimes you think it would be Netanyahu giving a green light to Trump. We can get into that if you want.
But according to the New York Times, based on leaks from inside the Pentagon, of all people, Secretary Hegseth was on the side of the restrainers. Now, three people in his inner circle were summarily escorted from the Pentagon in the past 48 hours. Whether he or whoever made the decision to remove them believes they were the leakers or not, I don’t know. But do you find credible the idea that the restrainers were triumphant in this respect?
PROF. JOHN MEARSHEIMER: No. I don’t find it surprising at all, in large part because if you read the article carefully, it made no strategic sense to attack Iran. First of all, the article makes clear, and this is an extremely important point to understand, the article said that the most you could do was set the program back for one or more years. Just think about that. We’re not talking about going in here and destroying this program once and for all.
JUDGE ANDREW NAPOLITANO: Well, what program are you talking about? Nuclear enrichment?
PROF. JOHN MEARSHEIMER: Yeah. Well, at least the nuclear enrichment and reprocessing capabilities.
JUDGE ANDREW NAPOLITANO: Okay. Because you know that the American intel community has told the President there hasn’t been any nuclear weapons development.
PROF. JOHN MEARSHEIMER: No, there’s been no nuclear weapons development. And I’ve said that on the show many times. The point is that what matters here is the fact that Iran has an enrichment and reprocessing capability and that’s what the Israelis want to eliminate.
Your question about what the target set would look like is an important one because it could be that we’re just going after the enrichment and reprocessing capabilities, or it could be that we’re going after the entire nuclear set of installations in Iran, in which case you would be talking about a massive attack. Because you want to remember when we go in there and the Israelis go in there, you have to tear apart their ground based defense networks as well. You just don’t go in there and get a free shot. There are lots of other targets that you have to deal with. You have to cut a corridor into the place and then you have to be able to sustain aircraft over the targets for a sustained period of time.
JUDGE ANDREW NAPOLITANO: The President’s golfing buddy, the senior senator from South Carolina, Lindsey Graham, wants him to destroy oil refineries. That would have a catastrophic offense on the world economy, would it not?
PROF. JOHN MEARSHEIMER: Yeah, absolutely. I’ve said before that I think what the Iranians ought to do is tell the Americans that if they attack their nuclear sites or they attack oil infrastructure, that the Iranians will target oil installations across the Middle East and shut down the flow of oil, at least out of the Persian Gulf. And you want to remember that 20% of the world’s oil comes out of the Gulf. So given the state of the international economy these days, with all these tariffs, having a crisis of that sort involving the flow of oil out of the Middle East would be catastrophic. And I think it would have huge deterrent effect.
And by the way, I’m sure that the Trump people, when they were deciding whether or not to go along with this attack in May by the Israelis, had that in their mind. It is a serious question whether attacking Iran will not lead to attacks on oil production in the region.
JUDGE ANDREW NAPOLITANO: Is Netanyahu reckless enough to do this without the United States?
Netanyahu’s Motivations
PROF. JOHN MEARSHEIMER: It’s possible. I have a very unusual view on what’s going on here. Let me just say one more thing about what the New York Times said. It’s clear from the New York Times piece that it would be better to do this in the fall, in October, than to do it now. As the Americans pointed out to the Israelis, we just need a lot more time to plan this. We can’t do this as a supply by the seat of your pants operation. And furthermore, it would be very helpful if we could use Israeli commandos. And the newspaper story says explicitly that those commandos won’t be ready until October. So the question is, why not wait? Why go now?
My view is that the principal aim here, not the only aim, but the principal aim is to cause a region wide conflagration, all for the purposes of ethnically cleansing the Palestinians.
To ethnically cleanse the Palestinians out of Gaza, you need a major conflict. You need a major war. And that provides the cover for the Israelis to go to work on the Palestinians in Gaza.
So I think they fully understand that there’s no way they can take out Iran’s nuclear capabilities for the long term. Maybe for a year or two or three, but that’s it. But the reason they want to do it and the reason they want to do it quickly is they see that there is an opportunity now to fully cleanse Gaza, if they can create a region wide conflagration involving the United States, where everybody takes their eye off the Palestinian problem. In other words, it provides cover.
JUDGE ANDREW NAPOLITANO: Add to that the overwhelming desire of Prime Minister Netanyahu to get the Israeli public’s eye off of his failures and the crumbling Israeli society and unite them behind a war against his professed demons.
PROF. JOHN MEARSHEIMER: Yeah, there’s no question about that. War is good for him. The more conflict there is, the more war there is, the better for him. The problem is that huge chunks of his society and the IDF itself have had it with all these wars. They need a break. They need to put an end to all these conflicts. And again, he understands that, which is why he wants to strike now, before he’s forced into a situation where he can no longer keep all those troops in Gaza and be in a position to cleanse Gaza.
You want to remember, since the ceasefire broke down, he moved large numbers of troops into Gaza, they say they now control one third of Gaza. That puts them in an excellent position to cleanse Gaza, but they have to do that under cover. And I think a war against Iran would do the trick.
Iran’s Military Capabilities
JUDGE ANDREW NAPOLITANO: The same article also opined that Iran is weak militarily. Here is a clip of our colleague, Colonel McGregor making the opposite argument. He’s on another show, Colonel Daniel Davis, and he chastises Davis. Well, you’ll hear what he says.
[VIDEO CLIP STARTS]
UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: What nation on the planet can have their embassy destroyed in another country? And to have an assassination in their capital city on an inauguration and not go to war with somebody yet that’s exactly what Iran didn’t do, because they don’t have the power to do it. So that should tell you.
UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: Wait a minute, wait a minute. That’s a fundamentally false statement. Which part?
UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: False, false, false.
UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: They don’t have the power to go to war. You haven’t looked carefully at Iran. Iran’s arsenal of missiles is enormous. It could flatten Israel in a day. They have the power to go to war. They have chosen repeatedly to avoid war. And I’ve said this a thousand times, no one in the Middle East is interested in a war except Israel and the United States.
[VIDEO CLIP ENDS]
JUDGE ANDREW NAPOLITANO: Agreed.
PROF. JOHN MEARSHEIMER: Colonel McGregor has said it a thousand times. I’m sad to say I’ve only said it 500 times.
JUDGE ANDREW NAPOLITANO: But…
PROF. JOHN MEARSHEIMER: There’s no question that it’s Israel that’s driving this train. If you look at what happened in April and in October of last year, in both instances, the Israelis tried to drag us into a war with Iran. And both the Iranians and the Biden administration did not want a war. And according to this New York Times story, here we are again. The Iranians obviously don’t want a war and the Trump administration doesn’t want a war. But who wants a war?
JUDGE ANDREW NAPOLITANO: It’s the Israelis and the neocons around Trump.
PROF. JOHN MEARSHEIMER: Yeah, there’s no question about it.
Neocons and Ongoing Conflicts
JUDGE ANDREW NAPOLITANO: Well, the neocons around Trump want the Ukraine war to continue, don’t they?
PROF. JOHN MEARSHEIMER: Yeah, they’re warmongers. There’s no question about that.
JUDGE ANDREW NAPOLITANO: So they would undermine Mr. Witkoff’s negotiations with Vladimir Putin, with Hamas, with the Israelis and with the Iranian foreign minister if they could. They would undermine all of that. They want both wars. They want one to start and another to continue.
PROF. JOHN MEARSHEIMER: Absolutely. What’s very interesting here is that Witkoff is Trump’s right hand man. He’s more or less his alter ego on these three big issues that you’re describing. So in a very important way, Trump has sided, more or less, with the restrainers, the people who want to work out deals. But the fact is he brought into his administration all of these super hawkish Zionists and he also has been acting in a very ham-fisted way. And the end result is he’s been unable to execute in ways that satisfy his basic inclinations regarding both Ukraine and Iran. So he’s in a really tough spot at this point in time.
JUDGE ANDREW NAPOLITANO: Why doesn’t he just say to Netanyahu, we’re not sending you any more weapons? Well, we know the answer to that because of the donor class. But what does he have to fear? And why doesn’t he say to Zelensky we’re not sending you any more weapons. He could stop both of those wars with a phone call.
PROF. JOHN MEARSHEIMER: He could. And look, he’s going to have to, in my opinion, bite the bullet at some point. Let’s just talk about the Ukraine war. If he doesn’t bite the bullet, if he doesn’t side with Witkoff, if he doesn’t go with his own inclinations, the war is going to go on and he’s going to end up looking just like Joe Biden. He’s going to end up employing the same policies as Biden, and he’s not going to end the Ukraine war unless it’s ended on the battlefield. And he won’t be responsible for that. And he will be blamed for losing the war. So he has a deep seated interest in ending this war as quickly as possible, but he’s been unable to pull the trigger.
JUDGE ANDREW NAPOLITANO: He said on Air Force One on Palm Sunday night, it’s Biden’s war. It’s his war now, isn’t it?
PROF. JOHN MEARSHEIMER: He knows it’s his war now. He’s the President of the United States. How could it be otherwise? He’s correct when he says that he didn’t start it. And I also believe he’s correct when he says that if he had been president, it wouldn’t have happened. Okay, I believe that. But the fact is it happened. He got reelected. He’s the President and it’s his responsibility now. And he has two choices here. He can either continue the war or he can end the war.
China Tariffs and Economic Impact
JUDGE ANDREW NAPOLITANO: What are the short and long term effects of 245% tariffs on Chinese goods?
PROF. JOHN MEARSHEIMER: I think that there are going to be very few goods except the ones that he exempts, like computers and iPhones, that come in to the United States. I think there’s no question that the American economy is going to be badly hurt. I think there’s no question that the Chinese economy is going to be hurt as well.
The question of which side is hurt more is an open question. If I had to bet, I would bet – and I’m not an economist, so this is just my gut, based on reading lots of stories in the newspapers – that the Chinese will come out of this better than we will. I think we have done a lot of damage to ourselves in terms of dealing with the rest of the world as a result of the way these tariffs have been handled. And I think it’s going to cause Trump a lot of trouble on the home front.
JUDGE ANDREW NAPOLITANO: I think you’re right. I think he’s going to end up with a Democratic Congress elected in 2026. Unless he somehow reverses this and brings people’s shareholder value back to where it was before he started, it isn’t anywhere near back to where it was before he put a 90 day pause. It seems reckless to me. I want him to succeed, but it seems awfully reckless to me. But on the Chinese, does it matter?
China and Trade: Tariffs and Economic Consequences
PROF. JOHN MEARSHEIMER: Can I just say one thing about what you just said? I think what you said applies to the rich people who support him. But you want to remember this has devastating consequences as well for his base, the MAGA base.
JUDGE ANDREW NAPOLITANO: Oh, absolutely. You know, Joe Six Pack goes to buy a Ford pickup. It costs $3,000 more because so many of the parts come from Mexico, Canada and South Korea. And Mrs. Joe Six Pack goes to buy a toaster at Walmart, used to cost 30 bucks, now costs 225 bucks. She’s not going to buy it.
PROF. JOHN MEARSHEIMER: Yes. And this is why Bernie Sanders is drawing huge crowds as he wanders around the country. Because there are huge numbers of people who don’t have a lot of money who are hurting and expect to be hurt even more because of President Trump’s policies. And most of those people voted for President Trump.
JUDGE ANDREW NAPOLITANO: Right. A young Chinese influencer on TikTok who speaks English has made a fascinating clip directed at the American people. And the first time I saw it, I said to Chris, we’ve got to play this for Professor Mearsheimer. We’ve got to have his comments on it.
So it’s a minute and a half long, but it’s in English and it’s fascinating and I want to discuss it with you after we watch it together. Chris, cut number 20.
[VIDEO CLIP STARTS]
UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: They rob you blind and you thank them for it. That’s a tragedy. That’s a scam. That’s why I’m saying this right now. Americans, you don’t need a tariff. You need a revolution.
For decades, your government and oligarchs who want to ship your job to China not for diplomacy, not for peace, but to explore cheap labors. And in the process, they hollowed out your middle class, crashed your working class and told you to be proud while they sold your future for profit. And yes, China made money, but we used it to build roads, leave millions out of poverty, farm healthcare, raised living standard. We reinvested in our people. My family also benefited from it.
What did your oligarchs do? They bought yachts, private jets, and mansions with golf course driveways. They manipulated the market, dodged tax and poured billions into endless wars. And you, you get stagnated wages, crippling healthcare costs, cheap dopamine debt and flagged wave property made in China while they pick your pocket for 40 years. Both China and the United States benefit from the trade, the manufacturing, but only one of us use that wealth to build.
This isn’t China’s fault. This is yours. You let this happen. You let the oligarchs feed your lice while they made you fat, poor and addicted. Now they blame China for mess they made. I don’t think so. I don’t think you need another tariff. You need to wake up. You needed to take your country back. I think you need a revolution.
[VIDEO CLIP ENDS]
Reactions to Chinese Perspective
JUDGE ANDREW NAPOLITANO: The one correction I would make, I realize a lot of this is ideological, is we haven’t spent billions on useless wars. We’ve spent trillions on useless wars. But take it from there. Professor Mearsheimer, if that young man were your student in your class and he stood up and gave that minute and a half statement, how would you respond?
PROF. JOHN MEARSHEIMER: I would tell him I basically agree with him. I think he’s correct. And I think, by the way, that this is a message in large part that Trump made as a candidate before the 2016, 2020 and the 2024 election, and it’s what helped get him elected in two of those three cases. I think there are a huge number of people in this country who feel exactly the way that Chinese gentleman feels about what has happened.
I would note to you on a subject that you and I disagree on, which is whether China can rise peacefully. I argued for a long time that China could not rise peacefully. And I was always very perplexed that all sorts of very hawkish people in the national security establishment disagreed with me. They argued that China could actually rise peacefully.
I remember when I had a debate with Zbigniew Brzezinski in the early 2000s on this issue. I remember I was sitting up on the dais and I said to myself, why am I arguing that China cannot rise peacefully? And Zbig, who’s about five to 10 notches to the right of me, is arguing that China can rise peacefully. And the fact is that almost all the national security elites in this country were making huge amounts of money consulting in China and they had a deep seated interest in having very good relations with the Chinese.
And hardly any of them were willing to say that if we turn China into a really powerful country, there could be serious problems. So I think in a very important way, what you saw happen here was that the national security elite was not as interested with the welfare of this country as it was with their own personal welfare. And the end result is a lot of people in the body politic figured out what was going on and they turned against the elite and they elected Donald Trump two out of three times.
Concerns About Tariffs and Presidential Power
JUDGE ANDREW NAPOLITANO: I found very attractive what the young man said, and I wish that Donald Trump would listen to it. I don’t know what the neocons around him would say. I really don’t think that the tariffs were well thought out. I think they were a product of his at times pugnacious personality rather than a deep seated understanding of Economics 101.
I mean, our colleague with whom we agree most of the time, I know the two of you have debated, Jeff Sachs agrees entirely. I haven’t played this clip for him. We didn’t have it when Jeff was on this week, but I suspect he would agree. So that’s the problem with a Congress that rolls over when a president assumes powers that were given to the Congress. What’s a tariff? It’s a sales tax. Who in the Constitution is the only power that can impose taxes? The Congress. And yet they let him do it with catastrophic results economically and with catastrophic political results for their party.
PROF. JOHN MEARSHEIMER: Well, as you well know, there are no guardrails on Trump this time. I mean, I think Trump was quite successful in his first term from 2017 to 2021, and it was in large part because there were just lots of guardrails there and there were limits to how much trouble he could get into. But there are virtually no guardrails at this point. He can do pretty much anything he wants. And that’s a very dangerous situation. We have checks and balances for a good reason.
JUDGE ANDREW NAPOLITANO: Here’s a conservative Republican farmer from Iowa ripping into a conservative Republican senior senator. He’s the President pro tem of the Senate and I’ve known him well for many years. Senator Chuck Grassley at a town hall meeting. And I suggest to you everything this farmer said is correct as a matter of law and constitutional principle. Chris, number 21.
[VIDEO CLIP STARTS]
UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: We would like to know what you as the people, the Congress, who are supposed to reign in this dictator, what are you going to do about these people have been sentenced to life imprisonment in a foreign country with no due process. Our government cannot do anything because Constitution.
The framers of the Constitution said that every person, not citizen, every person within the jurisdiction of the United States has due process.
[VIDEO CLIP ENDS]
JUDGE ANDREW NAPOLITANO: His answer was a non-answer, which is why we didn’t bother playing it. But that too will get Trump in a lot of hot water politically. Unfortunately, innocents will suffer. I mean, he’s talking about sending Americans to this hellhole in El Salvador where the federal courts can’t reach him. And the president of the country will do whatever Trump says because we’re paying him a million dollars a month to house these prisoners.
PROF. JOHN MEARSHEIMER: I have to tell you, I just find this all unbelievable. I don’t know what else to say. I never thought I’d see the United States behaving like this. This is all almost incomprehensible. It’s such a direct violation of all the values that we represent. It’s going to do so much damage to the basic fabric of this country and do so much damage to our reputation around the world. I don’t understand why more people aren’t standing up and protesting.
JUDGE ANDREW NAPOLITANO: You know, I’m not a student of the political side, but in my view, when these Republicans feel heat like Senator Grassley just did, when they think that not enough of them will be returned to Congress to keep them in the majority, then they’ll do something. Not to save the Constitution, not to save personal liberty, but to save their jobs.
PROF. JOHN MEARSHEIMER: But this still tells you that we are in trouble. The fact that we need political heat to get them to act correctly, they should understand the basic principles that are at stake here. They should understand that the welfare of this country is at stake, and they should be doing something instead of sitting on their rear end and letting Trump do whatever he wants.
JUDGE ANDREW NAPOLITANO: On that note, a happy Easter to you and your family, Professor Mearsheimer. It’s Holy Thursday and Easter is on my mind. Thank you very much for your time as always. Thank you for letting me pick your very fertile brain. Look forward to seeing you next week.
PROF. JOHN MEARSHEIMER: Thank you. And Happy Easter to you in these very depressing times.
JUDGE ANDREW NAPOLITANO: Yes, thank you, Professor. All the best. And coming up tomorrow, Friday. Where am I? Somewhere there. I am coming up tomorrow, Friday. Good Friday at 4:00 in the afternoon, the Intelligence Community roundtable with Ray McGovern and Larry Johnson and of course, all of your regulars on Monday. Happy Easter, my friends. Thank you for watching Judge Napolitano, for Judging Freedom.
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