BUCK: Larry Kudlow is also joining us now, the Fox News media contributor, his show Kudlow airs on 4 p.m. eastern on Fox Business Network, and Mr. Kudlow served as assistant to the president for economic policy and director of the National Economic Council. Larry, great to have you.

KUDLOW: Thank you. It’s a pleasure. The name’s Kudlow, by the way.

BUCK: Thank you, sir. So, tell us this. The Chinese situation right now vis-a-vis Russia and sanctions: A piece right now in the Washington Post: China Not Emerging as Lifeline for Sanction-Slammed Russian Economy. What do you see with this?

KUDLOW: Yeah, China’s backing off. They haven’t thrown in completely with Russia. (chuckles) They’re not exactly in the Western alliance. But it is interesting to me that they have backed off what I would consider total support for Russia. And, by the way, China has links to the Ukrainians, as you may know, and they have links to other east European countries, which I suppose I don’t like. But whatever I like or don’t like, they’ve decided to withhold.

And I had read also reports that Chinese banks were not stepping up their bank loans to Russia for one reason or another, for one product or another. And that caught my eye, I don’t know, three or four days ago because money in Russia has completely dried up. The U.S. and Western sanctions are working to a large extent. Better late than never.

But, yeah, China is being very cautious about this. And I’ll tell you one other thing, sort of a side light, not exactly what you’re getting at. But the fact that Russia is having so much trouble militarily. Their army is underperforming very badly. I know it’s overwhelming and eventually they’re gonna succeed in some way, shape, or form. But it’s a warning to China. You know, they could go into Taiwan but Taiwan will fight like hell just like the Ukrainians fought like hell. It may not be so easy to exercise any interference over Taiwan’s sovereignty. So there’s a bit of a warning shot there and I’m glad to see it.

CLAY: Larry, you just brought up the Taiwan-China situation, and I’m fascinated to hear what you think would happen. We’ve seen all these American corporations — Disney, Apple, Nike, basically anybody you name that has relationships with Russia — they’ve all backed off since the invasion of Ukraine and said, “We’re not gonna have anything to do with the Russians.” What would they do if China invaded Taiwan, given comparatively wildly more economic power on the side of China?

KUDLOW: Yeah. No, that’s a good point. I don’t know what they’d do. I mean, I… Look, Taiwan’s a very strong economy. It’s completely different than Russia. Taiwan is a leading economy, like a Top 10 or Top 15 economy in terms of their size and their efficiency and productivity and what not. So I’m not sure how these big companies who are heavily invested in China would deal with Taiwan. It might be trickier.

But the one area that is of international significance in Taiwan is not the entertainment or the media area. It’s the semiconductor area. Taiwan’s semiconductor is a powerhouse. It’s a global powerhouse. We’re trying to bring them to… You know, they’re gonna be building a new plant in Arizona. I think they got something going on in the Northwest — in Oregon, if I’m not mistaken.

So the economic value added is all the semiconductor stuff, and that’s really important. And, by the way, worth protecting because if that ever got shut down… So I don’t know how to answer your question. I really don’t. Self-sanctioning… I mean, look, self-sanctioning is a very pleasant surprise by these American companies with respect to Ukraine, very pleasant surprise.

It’s not a hundred percent, and we’re still buying Russian oil, which is a terrible thing, to finance Putin’s war machine. But I’m impressed even in the oil and gas area, there’s a lot of self-sanctioning going on. Refiners are walking away from contracts. Bank lenders are walking away from financing. So if you go to Taiwan, I think a Chinese invasion would be looked at just as badly as the Russian invasion of Ukraine, okay, Buck?

That’s my instinct here. You just can’t do this stuff. In other words, the world has awoken to threats, and that’s very important, and I think Russia has opened up a can of worms they probably never even anticipated. So my hunch is China had a real hard time going into Taiwan, and American companies should be very leery of helping China in any way, shape, or form.

BUCK: We’re speaking to Larry Kudlow, Fox News media contributor. His show Kudlow airs 4 Eastern on Fox Business Network, and obviously he was a senior economic adviser to Trump in the Trump administration. All right, Larry, you heard the State of the Union, obviously, earlier in the week. If we got you in the room with Biden and his National Economic Council and said, “Look, you gotta tell them what needs to be done here with regard to Ukraine specifically on the economy,” what would you tell them they should do that they’re not doing?

KUDLOW: Drill, drill, drill! Completely change their policy regarding energy. You know, this was the fatal flaw from day one, sacrificing energy independence made us dependent on Russia. And it’s incalculably stupid, and it has so much to do with this crazy war going on in the Ukraine and Putin’s grandiose, ahistorical dreams of the Russian Empire. We have got to be using all of our resources. The thing is…

You know, I had Joe Manchin on the show last night. We had a long talk. And it used to be generally agreed upon in both political parties — going back to the last 30, 40 years — we had an all-of-the-above energy policy. We would develop fossil fuels, and we would develop renewables, and we would develop nuclear, and so forth. Now, what Biden has done and much worse… I mean, Obama tried some of this stuff, but the fracking revolution came full-steam on during the Obama years.

There was really not much they could do about it, plus Republicans had the Congress for a good chunk of his presidency. But what Biden’s done is this extreme policy where it’s no longer all of the above. It’s no more fossil fuels, all right, and it’s everything — $550 billion of subsidies going into renewables and batteries and electric cars and all the rest of that stuff. You know, this is a radical departure to these radical progressives, climate people.

And this has to be stopped, it must be stopped. And incidentally it’s not only about energy independence, it’s about the whole economy. Look, fossil fuel powers the economy. And if they continue or if they’re allowed to continue, it will do enormous damage to jobs, family incomes, and things like that. It would do enormous damage to the GDP. There is no alternative universe here. You are not gonna run an economy without fossil fuels! Right now it’s about 70, 75% of the economy.

And by the way, I’m not against wind turbines. I’m not against solar panels and so forth. I’m just saying, anybody who thinks you can get along without fossil fuels is literally out of their mind, and the Bidens are — in that respect — out of their mind. And they’ve never presented an alternative universe. They’ve never given us, you know, “Here’s how the structure is gonna look like. ”

And incidentally, the hypocrisy embedded in this view, in order to go to the electric automobiles and batteries and so forth. You’re gonna have to dig up a lot of commodities, and digging up a lot of commodities itself will be carbon intensive, okay? (chuckles) It’s gonna create more emissions, not less. And we don’t have those resources to do it, and the toll on prices, the cost of this would be just enormous.

And of course the quantity of power would come down. It would raise inflation, and it would do great damage to the economy multiply that’s the point. That’s the single biggest mistake those guys have made — and I’m not even talking about their massive social spending and their attempt to transform both the economy and our culture which is bad enough. I’m just saying on this one particular area is their single largest mistake.

CLAY: We’re talking to Larry Kudlow. He is a Fox News media contributor, and his show, Kudlow, airs an hour after ours, 4 Eastern, Fox Business Network. Last can we for you, Mr. Kudlow, appreciate the time. We talked with Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago last week, and part of our discussion centered around the question of whether or not Vladimir Putin would have invaded Ukraine if Trump were still president. You worked in the Trump White House. What’s your take on that? Would Vladimir Putin have invaded Ukraine, in your opinion, if Trump were still the president of the United States?

KUDLOW: I don’t think so. I’ve read his public statements. I have not talked to him in the last two weeks. I talked to him a little bit. I talked to him a few days before the invasion. But look, just in generic terms, Donald Trump would have rattled Putin’s cage, okay? If he had seen 150,000/175,000-troop buildup on the east side of Ukraine (chuckles), he would have got on the phone and rattled Putin’s cage, you know? And I think that’s the big difference.

And the threats that Biden made, for example, about sanctions just on that particular point that he never implemented until it was too late, I mean, Trump would have just told him, “You try this and XYZ. We’re gonna cut this off. We’re gonna cut that off,” and remember, a Trump presidency, we would have been energy independent. We were energy independent. We were producing over 13 million barrels a day! We didn’t need Russia. Okay?

We were the sweet producer, and we were independent, and we were actually exporting, net exports of fossil fuels. So we would have said, “We are gonna shut you down immediately. We would have go after your central bank. We’re gonna go after your oligarchs. We’re gonna go after your banks. We’re gonna go after your oil companies. We will…” So that’s my point.

He would have rattled his cage big time, which he is capable of doing. I was in the room I don’t know how many times with his phone calls with world leaders and all the bilats that I attended in the Cabinet Room the U.N. or the G7. I was the sherpa for the G7 and the G20. He wouldn’t have tolerated it, and he would have told them right there, up close and personal, “If you do this, this is gonna happen, it’s gonna happen tomorrow.” That’s why I think… That’s the difference between Biden and Putin.

BUCK: Larry Kudlow. Larry, thanks so much for being with us here on Clay and Buck. We appreciate it, sir.

KUDLOW: All right. Thanks very much.