Tariffs – The Best Way Out is Through!
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The best way out is through say poem a servant to servants by Robert Frost. I don’t know how I remember some of this stuff from like ninth grade English class, but I do. The best way out is through and that’s quite frankly, that’s it. There’s no shortcuts. I don’t have any answers in regards to what’s going to happen next. You can’t go back in time.
I have never, never seen anything along with my career. And again, we talk about things that have popped out of nowhere in Black Swans. We talk about them a lot with Talib. This most certainly wasn’t on my dance card. For a guy that was doing everything, everything, I mean.
We’re gonna get, gonna be pro-business. We’re gonna get rid of regulations. We are going to cut government spending right on down the list. To do something like this, again, I really can’t get my arms around it. Okay, so we’re gonna plot our way through. You’re gonna ask me, okay, you said that, Chris. Easier said than done, okay? The best way out is through. There’s nothing, okay, nothing fundamentally wrong. There’s no.
fundamental problems with companies. Nothing, I mean, some people are talking about, well, you know, if there’s a recession, you’re gonna have, you know, 15 % hit to corporate profits. That was baked in a while ago. That was baked in by what, 12 o’clock yesterday, as far as stocks are concerned. Every calamity that I faced in our career here, whether it be the dot.
.com collapse and discuss that .com collapse and issues at that point in time. Why? Well, again, these companies, quite frankly, they didn’t have great business models and they were destined to fall and they were propped up. eventually again, earnings matter. We talk about all the time. They came back down to earth. You want to fast forward, you want to do great recession, you want to talk about
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you know, letting people borrow money that shouldn’t packaging all sorts of bad mortgages, putting AAA rated nonsense on it, selling them all over the world. I’m not going to break down the entire Great Recession because we’ve covered it. Something fundamentally wrong. Asian financial crisis, long term capital management, European debt crisis, COVID.
I have never, this is the first time I’ve ever seen, and again, I try to be a fairly decent student of history, ever see a president of the United States willingly tank the stock market? Never, never. And the thing is, quite frankly, it’s not going, it can’t last. And I’m gonna tell you why.
And this is why I’m saying, know, wait, the best way out is through. First and foremost, these tariffs for all intents and purposes are illegal. Are illegal. They’re gonna get thrown out in court. The President of the United States is allowed to put reciprocal tariffs on other countries. These are not reciprocal tariffs. That’s not what they did. These are not reciprocal tariffs. That formula that they put out,
that had the few Greek letters in it. As it turns out, those Greek letters are just fugazies. They just canceled each other out in the mathematical formula. was ridiculous. And the funny thing is it’s like they threw it into AI. They took every country around the world, threw it into AI, and applied their little tariff model. I mean, you got countries there that are tiny little islands, for crying out loud. It wasn’t thought out. It wasn’t intelligent. It was a rush job.
and don’t let anybody else tell you otherwise. So again, you’ve got that. Will Republicans start to push back on this? Absolutely, they are already. Ron Johnson, Ted Cruz, Rand Paul, they will see the writing on the wall. The people that Trump is throwing out there, you don’t really see much of percent that much, but Lutnick,
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Lutnik is an economic ignoramus. He was on a program yesterday and he was making a comparison between Poland’s spring water and Fiji. And he said, well, you know, foreign stuff is going to become more expensive, but well, the American stuff, the prices aren’t going to go up. I mean, are you really that stupid?
Are you really that dumb? What, you don’t think domestic companies are gonna raise prices if they can? Of course they are. One of the most ridiculous things I’ve ever heard, he’s commerce secretary. Not to mention the fact I’m throwing this out here. I don’t trust that guy as far as I can throw him. He was the former head of Cantor Fitzgerald. His kids run it now.
I want somebody looking into how they have positioned themselves in regards to this whole tariff war and how they’re trading it. I don’t trust them as far as I can throw them, but put that away. Let’s take a look at what we’re dealing with right now. IPOs have been shelved. IPOs have been shelved. If you think companies are going to be making any sort of investment here in the United States, you’re crazy. No way, no how. They’re going to hold off.
some of the arguments that are being made by people. Again, people love using that term. Trade deficit, take advantage of it, a trade deficit. I wanna explain this to you again. I have lots of trade deficits. Watchdog on Wall Street, Joe Markowski, I got a lot of trade deficits. I pay my landscaper, I pay my pool guy.
I pay my dry cleaner. I pay various different people to do things. They don’t buy anything from me. Well, some, we manage our money, but for the most part, they’re not buying anything from me. So I have a trade deficit with them, but I’m more than happy to have a trade deficit with them because it frees up my time. It’s not.
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that make any sense whatsoever for me to be spending the time to vacuum my pool or mow my lawn or whatever it may be makes no sense whatsoever because I can spend my time doing my job.
That’s trade deficit. Is that bad?
You explained to me how that’s bad. Now again, I understand if you have a marketplace where the consumers there are purchasing, are able to purchase the same type of products that we’re able to purchase and we want to be able to compete in that market. That, if there’s barriers put up, that would be a reciprocal tariff. Not what Trump put through. Not by any stretch of the imagination.
What I do find interesting, what I’m finding interesting right now is the fact that despite the sell-off, and you gotta understand this, because I watch these things, these are computers. is Skynet is taking over and driving the markets down right now. That’s how it works. This is computerized trading at its best. Money is actually pouring in from retail investors. Retail investors are saying, you know what?
eventually where the best way out is through, which I’m thrilled to see. I’m thrilled to see. I just, quite frankly, I don’t know where the president of the United States gets off, gets off thinking that he has the right to crash the stock market and whack people’s portfolios. It has to be one, single-handedly, the most narcissistic thing I’ve ever seen.
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a president do in my entire life. That’s okay. He’s playing golf this weekend.
And stop. You get the various different people out there, okay, that think that all of a sudden, plants are going to come back here to the United States. We’re going to start making cheap t-shirts here in the United States. That’s not going to happen. It’s not going to happen. If it costs $15 to make a t-shirt here in the United States and it costs $3 to make it in…
Vietnam, 50 % tariff or whatever, or China, whatever it may be. Okay, that $3 t-shirt is now 450. The consumer has to pay more. Again, we can’t compete against that pricing here in the United States. It’s not gonna happen. Yeah, one of the things, unfortunately, you get a lot of these people out there, and this is the beauty of being able to travel throughout your life and to see different places and how they live and how things operate.
We don’t, you I talked about how we don’t have tradesmen anymore. Again, I here moved to Tampa, I try to find, you know, a cobbler, you know, to, I fix my shoes. You know, the shoes, I get nice shoes, because again, I like quality, but after time, you know what, the sole needs that we worked on. Other places around the globe, yeah, that’s a part of what they have. You go to Italy.
You you’re walking down the streets there, you can go in into places and you want a briefcase. They’re making it there. Right in front of you.
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It’s different.
I don’t see that happening here in the United States. And the absolutely moronic are they keep saying this, you know, they moved, they moved these plants to Mexico and they shut this down. A Whirlpool plant got shut down. They moved, they keep parading that UAW worker on Fox. he’s got all his Trump gear out there and he’s all Trump’s gonna bring all these auto workers here to the United States. Bullshit.
Okay, some of the reasons why companies decide to move elsewhere, and again, it’s not just cheaper labor, it’s also because the cost of making things, cost of making things is more expensive here in the United States due to regulations. We talked about this before. I said, if Whirlpool were to open up a washer and dryer factory here in the United States,
making washer and dryers the way that they made them back in the 1960s and the 1970s. They sell like hotcakes, but you can’t do that because the people watching say, oh, you can’t have too much water and it’s gotta be an energy saver this way. And they do all of these fricking things that make it impossible. We used to make high quality goods like that. Well, you’re gonna compare the crap you buy today to the stuff we used to have? I grew up in a house with three brothers.
My mom used to throw all of our equipment in those things. They never died. Refrigerators never died. That all changed.
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washer, dryer, dishwasher, that’s the same thing. I explained this before, you think they’re gonna start making toasters, name a high quality, I’m trying to think of one actually, high quality American appliance maker.
I really, none come to the top of my head. You got a lot of European companies that do that. And like I said, if you want to go get yourself a $300 toaster, you can get one. Made in Italy, made in Switzerland. We don’t do that stuff here.
We don’t. And there’s no tariff that’s going to make that happen. They’re made already. Unless you know somebody decides to open up a business and make a higher quality toaster that is able to sell here, market. I mean, it could happen, but probably not.
but it also allows for people to go out and buy appliances at a lower price point. Okay, you go to Home Depot and get yourself a toaster, know, 25, 30 bucks, rather than spending 300 bucks. You’ll keep constantly throwing that word around globalization. Not globalization, it’s killing everything. Okay.
It has brought prices down for a myriad of things. The way that you bring businesses back here to the United States, you do it the old fashioned way. You make our country more attractive than doing business elsewhere. We had been doing that. And again, I’ll take you back in time to the Obama administration when we had the highest corporate tax rate in the world. What happened? Corporations,
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corporations would up and leave and Ireland was a big one, Dublin, conduct a tax inversion where they would be acquired by a smaller company in Ireland so they could get around paying, at the time, was it? I forget what the corporate tax rate was at that point in time, it was 15 % in Ireland, it’s done. Remember Biden calling them unpatriotic companies. You get rid of ridiculous.
regulations to make it easy to do business. You keep energy costs down. Companies will make stuff here. They will. And you watched them the other day. Well, you know, they’re just assembling those BMWs here in the United States. So what?
So they’re assembling them here in the United States. So what? That they’re making the engines in Bavaria and shipping over. So what? They might have the people that are capable of doing it. Have you ever been to a high-end auto manufacturing plant? You see the type of work that goes, I it’s different.
different products for different people, whatever it may be. We talked about this when it came to cars.
When the government, the cafe standards, the government forces companies to make cars that they can’t make money on. Which they do, okay? They say, okay, you gotta have a certain cafe standard for your entire fleet. So you have to make this little tiny car that nobody wants to buy to bring your cafe standards to a certain level. You’re taking a loss on, major loss if you’re making it here in the United States, because people really aren’t buying it. So you make it in Mexico.
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You offshore due to regulations and due to rules. That’s how the government gets involved with all of this. And it’s a disaster.
It’s a disaster. Again, the best way out is through, we’ll get back to that. The best way out is through. Okay, Chris, markets keep selling off, how long can this last? Until it doesn’t.
Okay. What does that say? The beatings won’t stop until morale improves. That’s true.
That’s true. Will it improve? Yeah. Yeah. Whether it’s this weekend, whether it’s next week, whether it’s next month, whether it’s, you know, five, six months from now, it will work its way through. Trump is also, he is going to be limited here, because he’s going to get pushback, okay?
I got to hand it to the Democrats basically even keeping their mouth shut in regards to this little chirping here and there from Chuck Schumer and whatnot. They’re applying the strategy, you know, when somebody is basically wrecking themselves. Let them go ahead. Get out of the way. Get out of the way. And that’s that’s what Trump is doing. You’re going to you’ll start seeing polls.
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You’ll start seeing, pull up if the election was held today, who would you vote for based upon this? And you’ll see people move away. you think that MAGA base is that tough? No, listen, my son, my son invests. I get a phone call from him today, dad, I’m thinking about taking $5,000 out of my saving and putting it more into my, I’m like, fine. But he and his buddies, they all do this and they’re pissed off.
They’re pissed off. It’s again, when you see these jerks on TV, all right, Wall Street’s been doing this. Wall Street, what do you mean by Wall Street? Wall Street, okay, a street in downtown New York where most nobody works. There’s a New York stock exchange there on a corner of wall and broad. It’s not even a stock exchange. It’s a sound stage. Wall Street built this country. Built this country, allowing companies to be financed.
companies to grow, brought wealth into this country. The amount of people that are involved in the markets, whether it be through their 401ks, their IRAs, pensions!
You imagine the pension hits that are coming through right now? It can only last for so long. Best bet, best bet. And again, I don’t know. I don’t know because again, know, Trump’s Trump and there’s no doubt about it. again, he’s never anyone, he’s never admitted he was wrong on anything. He’s an egomaniac. We all know this. Okay, again, people love him.
He’s gonna have to call an audible on this one. He’s a quarterback of the economy, which is just ridiculous. You’re gonna have to change directions here because you’re gonna lose people. No one’s gonna trust you anymore. No one’s gonna, yeah, you’ll have those true believers out there. You’ll have the Kool-Aid drinkers out there. You’ll have them.
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People are gonna trust him. This was nonsensical. whole thing is one big steaming pile of bull excrement, quite frankly. These are not reciprocal tariffs. Again, making them unconstitutional, lawsuit can get rid of them, which could happen. Or Republicans start pushing back, which might happen too. Might happen too, because they will lose 100 seats.
they will lose a hundred seats. I don’t care how many UAW workers you parade on that ridiculous propaganda network, Fox News.
I don’t care how many people you parade on there and then you bring these people on and again, again, it’s for show. They got time to fill the producers do it. this will look good. And they don’t know what the hell they’re talking about. almost it’s, it’s, you know what? It’s like you’re taking advantage of to some degree.
But this is where we’re at right now. I wish I had something better. Okay? I wish I had something better. I haven’t spoken to anyone. I have not spoken to anyone that expected this type of anarchy. This type of non-sacrificing. It’s unnecessary.
It really is. Let’s, you know, wishful thinking here. Let’s say he comes out and he says, you know what, we’re just going to keep the 10 % tariffs on. We’re going to negotiate everything and we’re going to suspend these reciprocal tariffs over the next six to eight months.
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okay. Fine. Market will rocket back.
type of a bounce in that situation. But he will lose people. People are not going to trust him. And that’s an issue. And the other thing as well is that it’s good to have a country where people want to invest and be involved in the markets. All of the nonsense that happened after the Great Depression and that
stock market crash and it turned people off to investing for a long period of time and we don’t want that.
We don’t want that. want an ownership nation. We want people to build wealth. That’s what I do for a living.
This is, what we’re watching right now, what’s transpired right now, quite frankly, is, it’s not even, I could say it’s a joke, it’s bad joke, awful joke, can’t even call it a joke. It’s just narcissistic nonsense.
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And I don’t know, hopefully, I think that Scott, Scott Bissett’s not an idiot. I know that he’s probably tied into the position that he’s in right now. I don’t think he’s gonna pull a, what’s his name there? I’ll think of it in a second. Paul O’Neill under George W. Bush and resign because he didn’t like what Dick Cheney was pulling. He resigns, does something like that.
forget it and you see another leg down in the mark and I think he knows that but he has to be some sort of pressure that’s brought to bear because this crime list is stupid. Quite frankly it really is and the best way through muck, murk, stupidity, whatever it may be is through Watchdog on wallstreet.com
