Attack of the Tariff Man!
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Attack of the Tariff Man. yeah. So I was minding my own business. Yesterday, four o’clock, my daughter had a game. So I’m going to watch my daughter’s game. Obviously had the little AirPods in listening to Trump’s announcement. Liberation Day. And I’m listening. And again, I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything like this ever. I never saw.
$2 trillion get wiped out of market valuation in all of, never my career in what, 15 minutes less? And yeah, he did that. He did that. Listen, it is what it is. Bill Parcells, I mentioned all of them, you are what your record says you are. This is the same, I guess it’s the same Donald Trump.
Same Donald Trump that tweeted out several years ago that if the market goes down by a thousand points in two straight days, the president should be impeached. He said it. Anyway, Trump being Trump. I listened to the entire speech. I get everyone was encouraged at first. I thought it was 10 % across the board when everybody thought it was gonna be 20 % of it’s like, yay. All of a sudden, no. We got these things called reciprocal tariffs. And.
I don’t even like to call them reciprocal. You know what they remind me of? It’s like reparations. Yeah, it’s like reparations. People asking for reparations for all of the, all of your trading sins throughout history. The United States is coming for you. Okay. I had this opinion. I’m not the only one that’s got this opinion. I’m not buying any of this. These tariffs are so absurd.
So, so out of whack. And again, people, the formula that they came up with for this makes no sense. One nation, you got one nation, some small tiny French island nation has got tariffs of 98%. I don’t know what happened. Maybe they sold.
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Maybe they sold maybe $3 million worth of crustaceans here in the United States and it screwed up the trade deficit. They got 98 % tariff. It’s ridiculous, quite frankly. It really is. I get it. Okay, again, we’ve talked about tariffs. I understand regulations, European Union attacking our various different tech companies. But this is so silly.
so silly at its face that it can’t be real. Trump’s a showman, we all know this. He’s always been a showman, loves appearing in movies, had his television show, likes to put his name on everything. And again, he wants to put on a bit of a show. this, I think, is a show. I think that…
you’re going to bring everyone to the table. And again, I’m hoping that this is the case. I’m hoping that we start seeing deals being cut and being laid out for everyone. Again, he can chalk that up. This is Donald Trump. He’ll chalk that up as wins. And he’ll use that. He’ll use that. go out.
He’ll get in front of a microphone. He’ll talk about all this great things that he’s done, bringing tariffs down from this country, cutting regulations here and there. And it will help propel his agenda. This is the, quite frankly, that’s the only thing that makes sense when it comes to this. The garbage that is being thrown out there by the various different talking heads, his pals on Fox News and
people within Howard Lutnick’s of the world. Let me just explain to you something. Nobody is going to be making appliances in the United States. Nobody. Okay? Nobody is going to be making appliances. No one’s going to be making televisions in the United States. Remember, he tried that, his first term. Epic fail that we’ve covered here on the program, the whole Foxconn plant in Wisconsin.
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Let me tell you first world countries that make appliances. Italy. Go ahead. Go to, what’s the fancy pants kitchen store out there? Williams and Sonoma. Go to Williams or Sonoma, go to Thorla-Tobbe or whatever to some of these fancy pants stores out there. And yeah, you could buy yourself an Italian toaster. Gonna cost you 350, 400 bucks.
What’s going to cost? You can you can go to you can buy yourself a buy yourself a Jura coffee maker made in Switzerland. Yeah, five grand. Or you can decide you can buy the coffee maker that was made in China or Burma or Malaysia or whatever it may be. Sure, sure. We make high.
and things here in certain high end things here in the United States. Absolutely. But what to think that all of that inexpensive, all that inexpensive stuff that we buy is going to be made here in the United States is patently absurd. You get it? You can throw all the raw workers, middle class.
You can get the morons over at Fox News, the Laura Ingraham’s of the world. All these factories were shut down. Many of these factories were shut down because companies go out of business too. Okay. It wasn’t all because of globalization that they want. And again, I do believe that Trump knows this. He understands this. I think he’s going to use this to springboard the rest of his.
Well, his big, beautiful bill and the other things that he wants to do moving forward. It can’t be anything else. It can’t be. But what if it is? What if it is something else? What if he actually thinks that we’re going to have this massive amount of factories come back here to the United States? Listen.
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I have no problems with, we have factories coming back here to the United States. I’ve discussed this. You got car companies that are building cars here in the United States from Korea, from Japan, from Germany. They build them here in the United States. Because why? Because it’s a good environment for them. It makes sense for them to build them here. Does it make sense? Makes sense for…
American auto manufacturers making, let’s say, inexpensive cars, where they’re paying people $10 an hour to build a car in Mexico, and it costs $70 plus an hour to build a car here in the United States. Your small, inexpensive Ford Fiesta or whatever they’re making just got a hell of a lot more expensive. How does that?
benefit the country. How?
Doesn’t. Doesn’t. It’s stupid. Stupid. What could happen? John Kenney from Louisiana. I love some of his one liners and some of his phrases that he puts out from time to time. He talked about tariffs today. He compared it to whiskey. Compared it to whiskey. said, yeah, a little bit of whiskey is okay.
But you know, you get too much whiskey and you end up getting drunk as a goat. It’s going to cause all sorts of problems. Yeah. Yeah, that’s the point. This is not just too much whiskey. OK, this is chugging a bottle. And I’m not talking Bluto and Animal House that could put down the whole bottle of Jack. OK. This not going to fly. OK. What if I’m wrong?
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What what if what what if I’m wrong then what? Well, first and foremost, you’re paying attention to the media right now. Everyone’s hair is on fire, freaking out. Or you get others out there saying this is awesome. It’s the greatest thing ever. Yes, it’s going to bring back all these jobs. We’re going to go after Wall Street. Yeah, anyway, anyway, don’t don’t.
Okay, you know, it’s never never been on the end of the world. It’s going to happen one time. Yesterday. Yesterday, and this is part of the problem. This is this is one thing that worries me. Countries around the globe are not stupid.
They’re not stupid. They know that this is an executive order.
Get rid of it.
get rid of it. It’s actually, you know, file a lawsuit and say what was just done is unconstitutional. He’s calling it an economic emergency. Really, economic emergency? No, the economic emergency, quite frankly, is our national debt and the fact that we’re spending too much. That’s the national emergency. But anyway, Republicans could push back in Congress and get rid of this. That’s
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That’s true. Another president can come in. It’s an executive order and get rid of it. If you don’t think Republicans right now are what’s going on here, two years is not too far. We got an election coming up. He will lose in a landslide.
You will lose in a landslide when it comes to this. The pitch that they’re giving out right now that are we’re sticking it to Wall Street and all the global and all it’s simple minded people, you know, might buy in to all of that nonsense. But me put it to you this way. I run a I run an investment firm that has clients all over the country from all walks of life.
And they’re not all multimillionaires. They’ve got investment 401ks, IRAs, saving for their kids, college, education, pension funds, a myriad of different things.
Well, you think everybody, the only people that benefit from the stock market and investing are rich people? No, okay. People, and it’s one of the things we do, differentiates us from other family offices is guess what? We help people become rich. Not just maintaining wealth.
So people will take it. They will. He will get the benefit of the doubt. But he’s on a real short leash. He’s gonna be on a… I’m sorry, I don’t care how many sycophants you’ve got on Fox News and Newsmax and these other places or the people you’re gonna parade on the morning shows.
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Okay, where they’re not gonna ask you any sort of difficult questions at all. It’s only gonna last so long. Prices go up due to tariffs. People’s investments, retirement accounts don’t recover. Okay, because this is self-inflicted. I think it’ll last. And all of this will go away.
That’s people, that is the reality of the terrain. Now again, I understand, I understand we’ve some issues with the European Union, and again, some has to do with some of their regulations. I get that. Okay, some of the stuff is stupid. Howard Lutnick, you know, on TV, I’m like, would you stop? You know, our beef is so much better.
Let me tell you something, they’re not gonna be buying American beef in Italy. I just got back from crying out loud. It’s just better! Their food’s better!
You’ve got, know, Robert F. Kennedy going after how food is done here in the United States. And we’ve talked about, you know, the agriculture here in the United States and the factory farms. They don’t do that in many of these places. They’re not going to buy our stuff. They’re not going want it. not going to want it. The people aren’t going to buy it for crying out loud. Now I know, well, you know, McDonald’s in South Korea, you know, he brought that up. Okay. But enough already. Go out.
and compete. And again, you want to have as level a playing field as possible. I get that.
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But again, I talked about this. I mentioned Mike Rowe podcast yesterday. We don’t have the workers for a lot of this stuff. Again, they always touted that.
Chips bill, Taiwan semiconductor, they’re building a plant here. They’re building a plan here. Okay, they’re building a plan here, but they’re also importing workers because we don’t have the skilled workers that can work there. It’s a fact. That’s a fact. Again, you want jobs, well, you’re have to educate people and that’s gonna have to start right now. You have to start doing that in eighth grade. That’s what needs to happen. You don’t wanna put the cart before the horse.
But if you think the American people are all of a sudden, all of a sudden gonna wanna pay, know, $2,500 for a Vizio TV from Costco when they could have picked it up a month ago for $150, yeah, wait in the next election. Okay? No way, no how, okay?
And that’s what they know. It’s scared morning thing. You’re to get some sort of real left wing lunatics. In power. So again, OK, I’m getting to the point right now. I’m saying this. It can’t be OK. There has to be there has to be some method to his madness at this point in time. Some deals need to be struck sooner rather than later. Either way, as an investor, I’ve often talked about.
you know, part time times, you have to embrace the suck. I have, you know, in our career, countless, I I’ve forgotten the amount of calamities that we’ve dealt with at the time with the markets. I could wrote a column about it. Talked about it, you know, embracing the suck. It’s it they happen. Okay. The thing would about the thing about calamities every single time.
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Every single time it’s always presented by the media as some sort of near death cataclysmic event. It’s unprecedented every way, shape, matter or form. Whatever. Yeah, they’re painful for many people. I get it. I’m human too. Because you know, people, human beings, they start, yeah, if I only did this then, if I only did this at this point time, if I only take profits here, it’s downright now. Listen, OK.
Don’t do that. Okay, if you got on high quality companies and stuff is down, you gotta have faith in the process. If you’ve got the right process, you own quality, you’re doing the right things, your dollar cost averaging over time. Again, distressed right now, where were you? What was your portfolio five years ago? 10 years ago, 15, 20, 30?
realize this, okay? Put it into perspective. Over the years, this is where this is where people really lose a lot of money. This is where people lose. Again, they try to time. They try to guess. They think they know more. And I talk about you don’t understand that you don’t know what you don’t know. Okay, I didn’t know. I didn’t know yesterday that, you know, it was going to be attack of the tariff man. I had no idea.
So I wanted to listen to the announcement and enjoy my daughter’s game. I enjoyed my daughter’s game, but I had to listen to everything that was going on after the fact. Perspective is important. I would expect and it’s other people have come out and said this as well. got Carlos Gutierrez. was some Commerce Secretary under George W. Bush. I interviewed him actually several times. Real nice guy.
He said the same thing. He’s expecting by Monday. He thinks things are going to start to improve. We shall see. All I’m saying is, is this without a doubt is not permanent damage. Okay. It’s not. Can be taken off tomorrow. And unless, unless Trump starts getting some of these deals cut and concessions done, it seems like.
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This is why I think it seems like I’m listening to of the statements that are being made. Some of the stuff is blown out of proportion, in particular, some of the things that came out of the European Union. yeah, they’re going to fight back. No, no, they didn’t say that. They didn’t say they were going to retaliate. They’re going to say if negotiations don’t work out, then they’re going to retaliate. And you get country after country is saying, you know, we’re going to hold our fire right now. We’re going to negotiate.
outside of China, China’s a bit of a wild card at this point in time. Well, let’s just face facts, okay? China is also aware that the American public’s not gonna wanna start spending an additional $400 or $500 on their iPhone.
or for AirPods or whatever it may be. They know that too. So again, it’s a bit of a give and take. We’ll see. We’re gonna watch it. We’re gonna continue to cover it here on the program and some of the nuances. But again, I’m sorry. Okay. I am not, I mentioned this all the time. Have to, lot of new listeners. I’m an equal opportunity basher, people. I voted. I voted for Trump. I voted for Trump twice.
Okay, was he my guy? Both of no, no, he wasn’t. Okay, this right now, again, I’m not buying into this. And again, I hear the arguments out there, you said he was gonna put tariffs on stuff. tariffs, like I said, little bit of bourbon, rather than bonk, bonk, bonk, bonk, bonk, bonk, bonk. I mean, we’re drinking the bottle right now. Watchdog on Wall Street.com.
