In Episode 411 of Hidden Forces, Demetri Kofinas speaks with Shehzad Qazi of China Beige Book about the impact Trump’s China tariffs are having on the U.S. and Chinese economies and prospects for a grand bargain.

Demetri and Shehzad discuss:

• The material impact that the trade war has had thus far on both economies

• The companies and sectors most likely to be impacted, as well as those best positioned to weather the storm

• The respective performance of each country’s currency and stock market

• Explanations for the punctuated sell-off in U.S. Treasuries

• China’s action plan to revitalize domestic consumption

Demetri also asks Shehzad about Trump’s stated desire to “do a deal with China,” what such a deal would look like, how big it could be, and what concessions either side is prepared to make in order to get it done.

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If you’d like to join the conversation and become a member of the Hidden Forces Genius community—with benefits like Q&A calls with guests, exclusive research and analysis, in-person events, and dinners—you can also sign up on our subscriber page at HiddenForces.io/subscribe.

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Producer & Host: Demetri Kofinas
Editor & Engineer: Stylianos Nicolaou

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Episode Recorded on 04/16/2025

In Episode 410 of Hidden Forces, Demetri Kofinas speaks with investors Paulo Macro and Le Shrub about the consequences of a breakdown in the international capital and trading system—and what this means for markets and investor portfolios.

The first hour revisits last year’s discussion on “EM-ification,” the breakdown of the rules-based global order, and the urgent search for a new safe asset in a world of deteriorating fiscal balance sheets. Together, Demetri, Paulo, and Le Shrub map out what investors should be paying attention to in the year ahead.

In the second hour, the conversation turns to the implications of a full-blown trade and capital war, including:

• The impact on U.S. assets—especially Treasuries and the dollar—if surplus nations redirect their capital flows away from the United States

• Resurgent inflation fueled by strategic rearmament and industrial policy

• A potential decoupling from—and even a hot war with—China

• The abandonment of fiscal restraint in the face of an economic slowdown amid persistently high or rising borrowing costs for the U.S. government

• The risk of massive wealth destruction triggered by a dramatic revaluation of the U.S. dollar

Subscribe to our premium content—including our premium feed, episode transcripts, and Intelligence Reports—by visiting HiddenForces.io/subscribe.

If you’d like to join the conversation and become a member of the Hidden Forces Genius community—with benefits like Q&A calls with guests, exclusive research and analysis, in-person events, and dinners—you can also sign up on our subscriber page at HiddenForces.io/subscribe.

If you enjoyed today’s episode of Hidden Forces, please support the show by:

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Producer & Host: Demetri Kofinas
Editor & Engineer: Stylianos Nicolaou

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Episode Recorded on 04/15/2025

Demetri Kofinas and Grant Williams have teamed up to launch “The One Hundred Year Pivot,” a new podcast series that explores the once-in-a-century economic, political, and geopolitical reordering currently underway. These transformational changes demand that we develop new maps and investment frameworks to help us navigate the challenges ahead.

Over the course of the series, Grant and Demetri will be speaking with the smartest and most plugged-in people they know to help us chart a path through this gathering storm and position ourselves, our organizations, our families, and our portfolios for the changes to come.

You are invited to join them on this journey as they explore the implications of:

1. The breakdown of existing political, monetary, and social institutions

2. The emergence of new economic and financial trading blocks

3. The reprioritization of national and economic security

4. The channeling of national savings into a new military and technological arms race

5. The development of a new investment paradigm with historic implications for investors

Premium subscribers to the Hidden Forces podcast and the Grant Williams Podcast will have early access to the episodes in this ongoing series.

Subscribe to our premium content—including our premium feed, episode transcripts, and Intelligence Reports—by visiting HiddenForces.io/subscribe.

If you’d like to join the conversation and become a member of the Hidden Forces Genius community—with benefits like Q&A calls with guests, exclusive research and analysis, in-person events, and dinners—you can also sign up on our subscriber page at HiddenForces.io/subscribe.

If you enjoyed today’s episode of Hidden Forces, please support the show by:

• Subscribing on Apple Podcasts, YouTube, Spotify, Stitcher, SoundCloud, CastBox, or via our RSS Feed

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Producer & Host: Demetri Kofinas
Editor & Engineer: Stylianos Nicolaou

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Episode Recorded on 04/08/2025

In Episode 408 of Hidden Forces, Demetri Kofinas speaks with James van Geelen, the founder of Citrini Research, which specializes in illuminating and demystifying the transformative “megatrends” poised to shape societies, economies, and the market’s distribution of returns for years to come.

James and Demetri spend the first hour of their conversation exploring a series of narratives and investment themes—including Trump’s recent tariff announcement—that have captivated markets and that are likely to be highly determinative of investor returns in the years to come. They discuss the investment implications of a fundamental reorganization of the global economy, along with its supply chains, energy systems, and underlying technological foundations, to say nothing about the changing relationship of government and fiscal policy to the economy and asset markets.

In the second hour, Citrini and Kofinas dig deeper into some of the more consequential themes that they identify in the first hour, including:

1. The wealth-driven white-collar recession that could accelerate the adoption of AI and rapidly reshape the workforce.

2. The rotation out of U.S. equities as America turns to fiscal austerity and as countries in Europe and Asia engage in massive fiscal stimulus.

3. The implications for America’s Democratic party base if its supporters increasingly find themselves out of work and under threat by the policies and changes underway in the new economy.

Subscribe to our premium content—including our premium feed, episode transcripts, and Intelligence Reports—by visiting HiddenForces.io/subscribe.

If you’d like to join the conversation and become a member of the Hidden Forces Genius community—with benefits like Q&A calls with guests, exclusive research and analysis, in-person events, and dinners—you can also sign up on our subscriber page at HiddenForces.io/subscribe.

If you enjoyed today’s episode of Hidden Forces, please support the show by:

• Subscribing on Apple Podcasts, YouTube, Spotify, Stitcher, SoundCloud, CastBox, or via our RSS Feed

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Producer & Host: Demetri Kofinas
Editor & Engineer: Stylianos Nicolaou

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Episode Recorded on 04/03/2025

In Episode 407 of Hidden Forces, Demetri Kofinas speaks with the Macro Tourist’s Kevin Muir about the power of fiscal spending and why fiscal austerity and trade tariffs will lead to lower asset prices, U.S. equity market underperformance, and a falling U.S. dollar.

Kevin and Demetri spend the first hour of this podcast discussing the importance of fiscal policy and why government spending has been one of the biggest sources of outperformance for investors in the last five years. They discuss why that’s the case, why the effects of fiscal policy continue to be overlooked and discounted relative to monetary policy, and what this means going forward if we take the Trump team at his word about wanting to reduce the deficit and scale back on fiscal spending.

In the second hour, Muir and Kofinas dig even deeper into the fiscal spending implications for U.S. equity and bond markets, concerns about rotation risk into global equities, the investment opportunities in Europe and Asia, downside risks to the US dollar, the China gold put, and much more.

Subscribe to our premium content—including our premium feed, episode transcripts, and Intelligence Reports—by visiting HiddenForces.io/subscribe.

If you’d like to join the conversation and become a member of the Hidden Forces Genius community—with benefits like Q&A calls with guests, exclusive research and analysis, in-person events, and dinners—you can also sign up on our subscriber page at HiddenForces.io/subscribe.

If you enjoyed today’s episode of Hidden Forces, please support the show by:

• Subscribing on Apple Podcasts, YouTube, Spotify, Stitcher, SoundCloud, CastBox, or via our RSS Feed

• Writing us a review on Apple Podcasts & Spotify

• Joining our mailing list at https://hiddenforces.io/newsletter/

Producer & Host: Demetri Kofinas
Editor & Engineer: Stylianos Nicolaou

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Join the conversation on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter at @hiddenforcespod
Follow Demetri on Twitter at @Kofinas

Episode Recorded on 03/24/2025

In Episode 406 of Hidden Forces, Demetri Kofinas speaks with renowned geopolitical analyst and forecaster George Friedman about the pivotal institutional and socioeconomic cycles that shape historical events—and how their convergence is driving the economic and political crises of the 2020s.

George and Demetri examine critical turning points in American history, including Andrew Jackson’s abolition of the Second Bank of the United States (which financed westward expansion), the presidency of Rutherford B. Hayes (and the Long Depression), the consumer-driven growth wave following FDR’s 1930s reforms, and the neoliberal era sparked by the Reagan Revolution.

In the second hour, Friedman and Kofinas apply this framework to the era we are living in today, which according to George, is the first time in American history that both the 80-year institutional cycle and 50-year socioeconomic cycle are occurring concurrently. They discuss how (and why) so-called “woke ideology” and a sclerotic and ineffective bureaucracy are symptoms of the end of the institutional cycle and why the economic policies of this new era will lead to more capital investment and a revitalization of the American economy.

Lastly, George provides listeners with a roadmap for geopolitical events in the 21st century that includes reconciliation with Putin’s Russia, a new paradigm of peace in the middle east, and a long and challenging period of economic weakness in China that will consume the energies of the Chinese communist party and challenge the PRC’s ability to assert itself on the global stage for at least the next several decades.

Subscribe to our premium content—including our premium feed, episode transcripts, and Intelligence Reports—by visiting HiddenForces.io/subscribe.

If you’d like to join the conversation and become a member of the Hidden Forces Genius community—with benefits like Q&A calls with guests, exclusive research and analysis, in-person events, and dinners—you can also sign up on our subscriber page at HiddenForces.io/subscribe.

If you enjoyed today’s episode of Hidden Forces, please support the show by:

• Subscribing on Apple Podcasts, YouTube, Spotify, Stitcher, SoundCloud, CastBox, or via our RSS Feed

• Writing us a review on Apple Podcasts & Spotify

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Producer & Host: Demetri Kofinas
Editor & Engineer: Stylianos Nicolaou

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Follow Demetri on Twitter at @Kofinas

Episode Recorded on 03/17/2025

In Episode 405 of Hidden Forces, Demetri Kofinas speaks with Rush Doshi, former Deputy Senior Director for China and Taiwan on the National Security Council about the state of the U.S.-China competition, the Trump administration’s China policy, and how the United States can compete successfully with China without risking imperial overreach or bankrupting the nation.

Foreign policy in the first two months of the Trump administration has focused predominantly on ending America’s war in Ukraine, resetting U.S. commitments to Europe through NATO, reasserting dominance over the Western Hemisphere, and rebalancing trade relationships with both allies and competitors. What has not been clearly articulated in the Trump administration’s public communications is how America’s grand strategic vision—and any potential “Trump doctrine”—will look over the next four years, how China fits into that vision, and how success should be measured.

Demetri and Rush begin their conversation by reviewing Chinese party documents, materials, and analyses of China’s communications, conduct, and behavior over the last three decades to understand Beijing’s intentions and how they should shape U.S. policy during a time of waning relative American power amid a geopolitical rebalancing. They examine the new bipartisan consensus on China, discuss the Trump administration’s strategic foreign policy tactics and objectives—including the use of tariffs and incentives to rebuild American industrial capacity—and explore how the United States can successfully compete with China without risking imperial overreach or bankrupting the nation.

Subscribe to our premium content—including our premium feed, episode transcripts, and Intelligence Reports—by visiting HiddenForces.io/subscribe.

If you’d like to join the conversation and become a member of the Hidden Forces Genius community—with benefits like Q&A calls with guests, exclusive research and analysis, in-person events, and dinners—you can also sign up on our subscriber page at HiddenForces.io/subscribe.

If you enjoyed today’s episode of Hidden Forces, please support the show by:

• Subscribing on Apple Podcasts, YouTube, Spotify, Stitcher, SoundCloud, CastBox, or via our RSS Feed

• Writing us a review on Apple Podcasts & Spotify

• Joining our mailing list at https://hiddenforces.io/newsletter/

Producer & Host: Demetri Kofinas
Editor & Engineer: Stylianos Nicolaou

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Join the conversation on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter at @hiddenforcespod
Follow Demetri on Twitter at @Kofinas

Episode Recorded on 03/11/2025

In Episode 404 of Hidden Forces, Demetri Kofinas speaks with religious writer Rod Dreher about the crisis of modernity and how to open our eyes to the reality that life and the world are far more mysterious, exciting, and adventurous than we have been led to believe.

Dreher and Kofinas spend the first hour of their conversation engaging on fundamental questions about the nature of existence, the knowability of God, the centrality of love, and how to find mystery and meaning in a world that for many has come to feel empty and soulless.

In the second hour, Rod and Demetri discuss what the eastern tradition of Christianity can tell us about how we should live in the world, how those lessons apply to the culture wars, how to confront evil, and the appropriate role that Christianity should play in policy and politics.

Subscribe to our premium content—including our premium feed, episode transcripts, and Intelligence Reports—by visiting HiddenForces.io/subscribe.

If you’d like to join the conversation and become a member of the Hidden Forces Genius community—with benefits like Q&A calls with guests, exclusive research and analysis, in-person events, and dinners—you can also sign up on our subscriber page at HiddenForces.io/subscribe.

If you enjoyed today’s episode of Hidden Forces, please support the show by:

• Subscribing on Apple Podcasts, YouTube, Spotify, Stitcher, SoundCloud, CastBox, or via our RSS Feed

• Writing us a review on Apple Podcasts & Spotify

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Producer & Host: Demetri Kofinas
Editor & Engineer: Stylianos Nicolaou

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Join the conversation on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter at @hiddenforcespod
Follow Demetri on Twitter at @Kofinas

Episode Recorded on 02/24/2025