ICE Raids, LA Riots, Strong Economic Data, Politicized Fed, Iran War with Tucker Carlson

Chamath was talking about the next GDP release for the current quarter they were discussing, i.e., the Q2 2025 advance estimate. In the episode he says he expects growth to come in “in the low threes” and possibly “low to mid threes” and that it will be “meaningfully greater than what people are expecting.”(podscripts.co)

The BEA’s official advance estimate for Q2 2025 real GDP, released July 30, 2025, showed 3.0% annualized growth, which fits squarely in his “low 3s” range.(bea.gov) Market/consensus expectations going into that release were around 2.4%, so the actual 3.0% print was indeed meaningfully above expectations, as contemporaneous reporting noted it “beat expectations of a 2.4% rise.”(tradingeconomics.com)

Later revisions moved Q2 growth up to 3.3% (second estimate) and 3.8% (third estimate), but those ex‑post revisions don’t contradict his core call that the upcoming print would be in the low‑to‑mid 3% range and above consensus; if anything, they reinforce that growth was strong.(legistorm.com) Given the advance estimate outcome and the expectation backdrop, this prediction is best classified as right.

Available data so far show a sizable boost to federal receipts from tariffs, but not yet the sustained $300–$400 billion per year above prior forecasts that Chamath described, and the longer‑run effect still depends on policy choices and trade flows that are not yet known.

1. What the official forecasts said before the tariff shock: The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) June 2024 baseline projected FY 2025 federal revenues of about $5.04 trillion, and its updated January 2025 outlook projected $5.2 trillion (17.1% of GDP).(epicforamerica.org) Those baselines largely pre‑dated the full scale of the 2025 Trump‑era tariff expansion.

2. What actually happened in FY 2025: Treasury data summarized by Reuters show that total federal receipts in FY 2025 were $5.235 trillion, only about $35 billion above CBO’s January 2025 forecast and roughly $200 billion above the older June 2024 forecast – well short of the extra $300–$400 billion per year that Chamath suggested.(reuters.com) Customs‑duty (tariff) revenues did jump sharply, hitting a record $195 billion in FY 2025, up $118 billion from the prior year, but that is still far below a $300–$400 billion increment on its own.(reuters.com)

3. What newer projections say about the future: After the new tariffs were in place, CBO released an updated analysis estimating that tariffs implemented in 2025 would reduce primary deficits by about $3.3 trillion and interest costs by another $0.7 trillion over 2025–2035, a total deficit reduction of roughly $4 trillion over 11 years.(americanbusinesstimes.com) That implies an average annual improvement on the order of $300–$360 billion versus the earlier baseline, largely via higher tariff receipts. Separately, press coverage notes that if current high tariff collections persist, annual tariff revenue alone could approach the mid‑hundreds of billions of dollars by 2026.(axios.com)

4. Why this is still unresolved: Chamath’s normalized claim is conditional and forward‑looking: that under the existing tariff regime, federal receipts will on an ongoing annual basis come in roughly $300–$400 billion above prior forecasts, assuming current tariff levels and trade balances persist. To fully validate or falsify that, we would need several years of realized data with those tariffs in place and stable trade patterns. As of late 2025, we have only one fiscal year of partial implementation (showing at most ≈$200 billion above older forecasts) plus CBO’s long‑term projections, which are themselves contingent and uncertain.

Because (a) realized receipts so far fall materially short of the stated $300–$400 billion per year gap, but (b) official forward projections now do roughly align with that magnitude if the tariffs endure, and (c) the prediction explicitly depends on assumptions about future policy and trade that have not yet been resolved, the evidence is not strong enough to call the prediction clearly right or clearly wrong. It remains too early and too assumption‑dependent to judge definitively, so the outcome is best characterized as inconclusive at this point.

Two key parts of Chamath’s scenario did not occur in reality:

1. No 100 bps Fed cut within 60 days of June 13, 2025
   The federal funds rate was held at 4.25–4.50% at the May 7, June 18, and July 30, 2025 FOMC meetings; there were no rate changes in that span. The first cut of 2025 was a 25 bp move on September 17, 2025, well after his 60‑day window (which ended August 12, 2025). (en.wikipedia.org)
   Since the Fed never cut 100 basis points in that period (or even cut at all during those 60 days), the trigger condition of his prediction failed.

2. No official $600 billion‑per‑year fiscal improvement reforecast in that window
   Chamath said that, given the rate cuts and tariff revenues, “in the next 60 days” the U.S. would “have to reforecast” the balance sheet to show about $600 billion per year in improvement ($300B more revenue from tariffs + $300B in annual interest savings).
   In reality, the main official fiscal baseline at that time was the CBO’s January 2025 Budget and Economic Outlook, released months before his June podcast; it already showed large, persistent deficits and rising debt, with no such $600B‑per‑year improvement. (americanactionforum.org)
   Later analysis from the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget actually projected larger cumulative deficits over the next decade than CBO’s January baseline, not a big improvement, and also noted that CBO skipped its usual mid‑year 2025 update and would not issue another full outlook until 2026. (reuters.com)
   OMB’s Mid‑Session Review in September 2025—already outside his 60‑day window—did present a somewhat rosier long‑term path, but still in the context of trillion‑dollar annual deficits and without any discrete, officially labeled “+$600B per year” improvement from the combination of tariffs and lower interest costs. (crfb.org)

Given that:

• The Fed did not cut 100 bps (or at all) in the specified 60‑day period, and
• There was no official reforecast during that window showing the roughly $600B per year improvement he described,

the real‑world outcome does not match the scenario Chamath confidently laid out. On practical, forecast‑evaluation grounds, this prediction is best classified as wrong, rather than “ambiguous”: he clearly anticipated both a rapid, large Fed cut and an associated fiscal re‑scoring, and neither materialized in the timeframe he specified.

The prediction is explicitly conditional: Chamath says that if the U.S. secures roughly $600B in additional annual fiscal improvement from tariffs and the Fed cuts rates by 100 bps, then “every single risk dollar is going to run to America.” As of 30 November 2025, those preconditions have not occurred.

• Tariff‑revenue condition not met. Analyses of the 2025 tariff regime show U.S. customs duties reaching about $195B in FY 2025—up sharply from prior years but nowhere near a $600B incremental improvement. (finance.yahoo.com)
• Rate‑cut condition not met. The Fed held the funds rate at 4.25–4.50% through mid‑2025, then delivered two 25 bp cuts (September and October) to 3.75–4.00%, for a total easing of 50 bps, not 100 bps. (federalreserve.gov)
• Observed capital flows don’t match his described outcome either. In practice, 2025 has seen substantial rotations out of U.S. equities into Europe and emerging markets, and ex‑U.S. equity indexes have outperformed the U.S., the opposite of “forget Japan, forget Europe.” (reuters.com)

Because the specific policy mix he conditioned on (extra ~$600B in tariff revenue and a full 100 bp Fed cut) has not materialized, we cannot definitively evaluate whether his conditional claim about capital flows would have been right in that hypothetical scenario. Therefore, the correct classification is inconclusive rather than right or wrong.

• Condition mostly satisfied: Within days of the June 13, 2025 episode, Israel launched large airstrikes on Iran’s nuclear and military sites, triggering a 12‑day Iran–Israel war. The U.S. then directly entered the conflict on June 22 with “Operation Midnight Hammer,” striking three Iranian nuclear facilities; Iran retaliated with missile attacks on the U.S. Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar. Contemporary coverage explicitly described this as the U.S. entering the Israel–Iran war, a major shooting conflict involving the U.S. and key allies against Iran. (en.wikipedia.org)
• What happened to oil prices: Before Israel’s initial strike, Brent and WTI were trading in the high‑$60s/around $70 per barrel. After Israel’s and then U.S. strikes, prices spiked but did not come close to doubling: intraday peaks were roughly $78–$81 for Brent and about $77 for WTI, and by June 23 spot levels were about $77 (Brent) and $74 (WTI). By June 25, after the ceasefire took hold, Brent had already fallen back below $68 and WTI to about $65. (cnbc.com)
• Longer‑run prices: Through the rest of 2025, benchmark prices trended in the $60s, with recent Reuters and JPMorgan commentary putting Brent around $62–63 and WTI around $58, and forecasting averages well below $70, not near $100+. (reuters.com)
• Counterfactual scenarios didn’t materialize: Analysts did note that a closure of the Strait of Hormuz could have driven prices to $100–150, but Iran never actually closed the strait or significantly disrupted flows, so those scenarios remained hypothetical. (en.wikipedia.org)

Given that a short but substantial war involving Iran, Israel, and direct U.S. strikes did occur in the near term, yet oil prices rose only ~10–15% rather than roughly doubling to the $100–$112 range Chamath described, the realized outcome contradicts his stated magnitude. On that basis, the prediction is wrong.