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Opinion

Peter Thiel: The Silicon Valley billionaire made big—and early—bets on Trump and J.D. Vance. What did he see that so many didn’t?

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News release from The Free Press

Triumph of the Counter-Elites

Bari Weiss and entrepreneur Peter Thiel talked this week in Washington, D.C.

On Tuesday night, Donald Trump announced that the richest man in the world, Elon Musk, along with the entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, will head a new initiative in the Trump administration: the Department of Government Efficiency, or “DOGE.”

Internet meme culture has now landed in the White House. Dogecoin is a memecoin—and if you don’t understand that sentence, fear not—I am sure Nellie will cover it in TGIF tomorrow.

But what the announcement solidifies—if Trump’s win hadn’t already—is the triumph of the counter-elite.

A bunch of oddball outsiders ran against an insular band of out-of-touch elites supported by every celebrity in Hollywood—and they won. They are about to reshape not just the government, but also the culture in ways we can’t imagine.

How they did that—and why—is a question that I’ve been thinking about nonstop since Tuesday.

And there was one person, more than any other, who I wanted to discuss it with. He is the vanguard of those antiestablishment counter-elites: Peter Thiel.

If you listened to my last conversation with the billionaire venture capitalist a year and a half ago on Honestly, you’ll remember that Peter was the first person in Silicon Valley to publicly embrace Trump in 2016. That year, he gave a memorable speech at the Republican National Convention that many in his orbit thought was simply a step too far.

He lost business at Y Combinator, the start-up incubator where he was a partner. Many prominent tech leaders criticized him publicly, like VC and Twitter investor Chris Sacca, who called Thiel’s endorsement of Trump “one of the most dangerous things” he had ever seen.

A lot has changed since then.

For one, Thiel has taken a step back from politics—at least publicly. He didn’t donate to Trump’s campaign. There was no big RNC speech this time around.

But the bigger change is a cultural one: He’s no longer the pariah of Silicon Valley for supporting Trump. There’s Bill Ackman, Marc Andreessen, David Sacks, Shaun Maguire, and Elon Musk, among many other tech titans who have joined the Trump train.

On the surface, Thiel seems full of contradictions. He is a libertarian who has found common cause with nationalists and populists. He invests in companies that have the ability to become monopolies, and yet Trump’s White House wants to break up Big Tech. He is a gay American immigrant, but he hates identity politics and the culture wars. He pays people to drop out of college, but still seems to venerate the Ivy League.

But perhaps that’s the secret to his success. He’s beholden to no tribe but himself, no ideology but his own.

And why wouldn’t you be when you make so many winning bets? From co-founding PayPal and the data analytics firm Palantir (which was used to find Osama bin Laden) to being the first outside investor in Facebook—Thiel’s investments in companies like LinkedIn, Palantir, and SpaceX have paid off, to say the least.

His most recent bet—helping his mentee J.D. Vance get elected senator and then on the Trump ticket—seems also to have paid off. The next four years will determine just how high Thiel’s profit margin will be.

On Honestly, Thiel explains why so many of his peers have finally come around to Trump; why he thinks Kamala—and liberalism more broadly—lost the election; why the Trump 2.0 team, with antiestablishment figures willing to rethink the system, will be better than last time. We talk about the rise of historical revisionism, the blurry line between skepticism and conspiracy, and his contrarian ideas about what we might face in a dreaded World War III.

Click below to watch the full-length video.

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2025 Federal Election

The Cost of Underselling Canadian Oil and Gas to the USA

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From the Frontier Centre for Public Policy

Canadians can now track in real time how much revenue the country is forfeiting to the United States by selling its oil at discounted prices, thanks to a new online tracker from the Frontier Centre for Public Policy. The tracker shows the billions in revenue lost due to limited access to distribution for Canadian oil.

At a time of economic troubles and commercial tensions with the United States, selling our oil at a discount to U.S. middlemen who then sell it in the open markets at full price will rob Canada of nearly $19 billion this year, said Marco Navarro-Genie, the VP of Research at the Frontier Centre for Public Policy.

Navarro-Genie led the team that designed the counter.

The gap between world market prices and what Canada receives is due to the lack of Canadian infrastructure.

According to a recent analysis by Ian Madsen, senior policy analyst at the Frontier Centre, the lack of international export options forces Canadian producers to accept prices far below the world average. Each day this continues, the country loses hundreds of millions in potential revenue. This is a problem with a straightforward remedy, said David Leis, the Centre’s President. More pipelines need to be approved and built.

While the Trans Mountain Expansion (TMX) pipeline has helped, more is needed. It commenced commercial operations on May 1, 2024, nearly tripling Canada’s oil export capacity westward from 300,000 to 890,000 barrels daily. This expansion gives Canadian oil producers access to broader global markets, including Asia and the U.S. West Coast, potentially reducing the price discount on Canadian crude.

This is more than an oil story. While our oil price differential has long been recognized, there’s growing urgency around our natural gas exports. The global demand for cleaner energy, including Canadian natural gas, is climbing. Canada exports an average of 12.3 million GJ of gas daily. Yet, we can still not get the full value due to infrastructure bottlenecks, with losses of over $7.3 billion (2024). A dedicated counter reflecting these mounting gas losses underscores how critical this issue is.

“The losses are not theoretical numbers,” said Madsen. “This is real money, and Canadians can now see it slipping away, second by second.”

The Frontier Centre urges policymakers and industry leaders to recognize the economic urgency and ensure that infrastructure projects like TMX are fully supported and efficiently utilized to maximize Canada’s oil export potential. The webpage hosting the counter offers several examples of what the lost revenue could buy for Canadians. A similar counter for gas revenue lost through similarly discounted gas exports will be added in the coming days.

What Could Canada Do With $25.6 Billion a Year?

Without greater pipeline capacity, Canada loses an estimated (2025) $25.6 billion by selling our oil and gas to the U.S. at a steep discount. That money could be used in our communities — funding national defence, hiring nurses, supporting seniors, building schools, and improving infrastructure. Here’s what we’re giving up by underselling these natural resources. 

342,000 Nurses

The average annual salary for a registered nurse in Canada is about $74,958. These funds could address staffing shortages and improve patient care nationwide.
Source

39,000 New Housing Units

At an estimated $472,000 per unit (excluding land costs, based on Toronto averages), $25.6 billion could fund nearly 94,000 affordable housing units.
Source

About the Frontier Centre for Public Policy

The Frontier Centre for Public Policy is an independent Canadian think-tank that researches and analyzes public policy issues, including energy, economics and governance.

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Automotive

Hyundai moves SUV production to U.S.

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MXM logo MxM News

Quick Hit:

Hyundai is responding swiftly to 47th President Donald Trump’s newly implemented auto tariffs by shifting key vehicle production from Mexico to the U.S. The automaker, heavily reliant on the American market, has formed a specialized task force and committed billions to American manufacturing, highlighting how Trump’s America First economic policies are already impacting global business decisions.

Key Details:

  • Hyundai has created a tariffs task force and is relocating Tucson SUV production from Mexico to Alabama.

  • Despite a 25% tariff on car imports that began April 3, Hyundai reported a 2% gain in Q1 operating profit and maintained earnings guidance.

  • Hyundai and Kia derive one-third of their global sales from the U.S., where two-thirds of their vehicles are imported.

Diving Deeper:

In a direct response to President Trump’s decisive new tariffs on imported automobiles, Hyundai announced Thursday it has mobilized a specialized task force to mitigate the financial impact of the new trade policy and confirmed production shifts of one of its top-selling models to the United States. The move underscores the gravity of the new 25% import tax and the economic leverage wielded by a White House that is now unambiguously prioritizing American industry.

Starting with its popular Tucson SUV, Hyundai is transitioning some manufacturing from Mexico to its Alabama facility. Additional consideration is being given to relocating production away from Seoul for other U.S.-bound vehicles, signaling that the company is bracing for the long-term implications of Trump’s tariffs.

This move comes as the 25% import tax on vehicles went into effect April 3, with a matching tariff on auto parts scheduled to hit May 3. Hyundai, which generates a full third of its global revenue from American consumers, knows it can’t afford to delay action. Notably, U.S. retail sales for Hyundai jumped 11% last quarter, as car buyers rushed to purchase vehicles before prices inevitably climb due to the tariff.

Despite the trade policy, Hyundai reported a 2% uptick in first-quarter operating profit and reaffirmed its earnings projections, indicating confidence in its ability to adapt. Yet the company isn’t taking chances. Ahead of the tariffs, Hyundai stockpiled over three months of inventory in U.S. markets, hoping to blunt the initial shock of the increased import costs.

In a significant show of good faith and commitment to U.S. manufacturing, Hyundai last month pledged a massive $21 billion investment into its new Georgia plant. That announcement was made during a visit to the White House, just days before President Trump unveiled the auto tariff policy — a strategic alignment with a pro-growth, pro-America agenda.

Still, the challenges are substantial. The global auto industry depends on complex, multi-country supply chains, and analysts warn that tariffs will force production costs higher. Hyundai is holding the line on pricing for now, promising to keep current model prices stable through June 2. After that, however, price adjustments are on the table, potentially passing the burden to consumers.

South Korea, which remains one of the largest exporters of automobiles to the U.S., is not standing idle. A South Korean delegation is scheduled to meet with U.S. trade officials in Washington Thursday, marking the start of negotiations that could redefine the two nations’ trade dynamics.

President Trump’s actions represent a sharp pivot from the era of global corporatism that defined trade under the Obama-Biden administration. Hyundai’s swift response proves that when the U.S. government puts its market power to work, foreign companies will move mountains — or at least entire assembly lines — to stay in the game.

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