The Chaos of Tariffs: A Business Perspective

(00:00.568)

Professor Chaos and his tariffs. Yep, yeah, the South Park reference. Butters, Butters superhero character is Professor Chaos. That’s what we have right now. boy, can’t wait. I can’t wait. All of the emails. I’m gonna get messages from the super Trumpsters out there that are gonna come rail me. How dare you question Donald J. Trump? Well, I’m gonna question J. Trump.

I’m going to put it to you this way. Suppose, suppose you own an Italian restaurant or you’re opening up an Italian restaurant and you you need to buy, you need to buy wine for your Italian restaurant. And all of a sudden you find out that you’re getting massive tariffs put on the wine that you have to buy. You want to have Italian wine, Italian restaurant.

No bueno. No bueno. Again, you’re running a business. You’re trying to figure out what your costs are going to be. And again, you know, I understand prices fluctuate, but wham bam, thank you ma’am. And you’re getting smacked upside the head with something like this. Might make running that business a little bit difficult. And the same thing is true across the board.

I’m a business owner. I’m a business owner. again, if all of a sudden, all of a sudden, my costs change precipitously, it makes it difficult. What makes it even more difficult is not knowing what your costs are gonna be, thinking that they’re gonna change. Now, yeah, I understand fluctuations, you know, a little bit here and a little bit there, but this is ridiculous. I’m sorry, all you super Trumpsters out there.

The market corrected 10 % the S &P in less than three weeks.

(02:09.866)

in less than three weeks. I’ve said this before, the markets need to correct, they happen. We talked about intra-year movements, the downside averaging 14%. But this escalated quickly. This escalated quickly and there are going to be repercussions for this.

Captain, Donald Trump’s alter ego. He’s got, he has his alter ego like butter’s alter ego on South Park, Captain Chaos. This is Donald Trump is Captain Chaos. He doesn’t have to be. He doesn’t have to be, but I don’t know why he feels the need to revert to this. We had a very optimistic view of what was going to happen as far as business was concerned, deregulation, taxes moving forward.

I don’t understand why he needs to be doing what he’s doing right in the way that he’s doing it, quite frankly. And the funny thing is he’s sending his little messenger boys out there. He sends Lutnik out. He sends Navarro out. He sends Bessent out. Yeah. And again, they’re trying to hold back the tide of people be like, what the hell, man? And they’re not getting anything. And again, know, Trump will roll out in front of a camera. You know, again, this is

It’s giving me PTSD, starting to remind me the COVID times. Got to get in front of a camera every single day. And he’s got to up. Nope. I’m not going to negotiate. This is the way it is. We’re not backing down when it comes to terrorists. We’ve been ripped off here, there and everywhere. And then you throw other things on top of it. It’s like he’s beaten a dead horse. But with some of the talk in regards to Canada.

Becoming the 51st state and annexing Greenland and our military is going to go into the Panama Canal You do understand that most Americans it doesn’t sit well

(04:21.346)

Doesn’t sit well with them. You all right, you made the quip about Trudeau and you called him governor. Fine. Okay, you did it once. You’re still doing this?

(04:33.45)

You’re still doing this. I don’t see the need. What’s the point? So you can get the super Trumpsters on social media, you make them horny because you fire off a ridiculous quip like that. It’s not necessary.

It’s, the shtick is, I’m sorry, but that shtick is growing freaking old already. Grow up, man. Grow up. Stop with this nonsense. Man, our fifth, can is, be great, can is gonna be the 51st state. Stop it.

I mean, again, why? Why do you feel the need to do that? I don’t get it. You I understand. You could definitely cut a defense deal with Greenland without all of this nonsense that taken place. Panama Canal, you sent Rubio down, you kind of took care of that. All right, leave it.

I don’t feel the need to go, I mean, off script here with this crap. You were heading in the right direction.

And I, you’ve drifted. You drifted. And again, listen, I get it. Okay. When you want to handle and bring tariffs down and you want trade to be freed up and you want to get everything, I get all of that. But the focus shouldn’t be on raising tariffs. It should be on lowering tariffs. Now, Trump comes out and he talks about, we’ve been getting ripped off here and we’ve been getting ripped off there.

(06:13.954)

We do the same shit, But why do you think we pay like three times as much as the rest of the world does for sugar? We do. But why do you think, you know, our sodas, we got corn syrup and so much of the sugary treats we have here in this country is because sugar is so damn expensive. Why? Because of big sugar here in the state of Florida run by the Fanjule brothers.

have donated significant sums of money to both Democrats and Republicans.

In Brazil, they have so much sugar, okay? Their ethanol is not made with corn. You can actually drink.

Drink their ethanol that they put into cars, I kid you not.

(07:08.27)

Why? Because again, we protect certain businesses and industries as well. What about the tariffs we put on trucks coming in to this country? Massive, 25, 30 percent? I’m not shaken. And protecting our pickup industry here. We do it too. The focus should be on lowering tariffs and lowering

barriers not raising them. That’s problematic. We want to continue to do business around the globe. We want to continue to sell to people around the globe. Let’s be on. Okay, great. We got a great market here. You 330 million people. So hell of a more people in China. Hell of a lot more people in the European Union. Hell of a lot more people in India that we want to sell to and we need to bring these things down. Now let’s look at Captain Chaos and what he’s done.

to his agenda. Listen, okay, I know a lot of the MAGA types and he brought a lot of people over to vote for him this time, a lot of younger people. A lot of people out there, a lot of younger people right now, newer investors utilizing some of the trading apps, Robinhood just got crushed.

I mean, just had, again, they just had their faces, I mean, a major correction within three weeks, just had their faces ripped off and they’re like WTF.

(08:46.926)

You got to get them to vote in the midterms, right?

They’re not happy a Lot of people taking I’m gonna take a look at their 401k. So this is all short-term stuff. Okay, so short-term stuff I’m not freaking out about the market in the market reaction markets need to sell off But you did it

Okay, they make no bones about it. He owned it. Okay, take ownership. could come out. Yeah, I tanked the stock market. And this is why it’s gonna turn around. They keep talking about short-term disruptions. They’re not gonna be able to get their agenda passed. They just put forth this continuing resolution, right? All right, a continuing resolution. We’re pushing it to September. What if you don’t have any political capital come September? You’re get nothing done.

(09:45.25)

You are gonna get nothing done. That’s like George W. Bush, all of his political, wins in the second term. Wins his second term, has this agenda, reform Social Security, do these various different things, actually do some good things. Did he get any of it done? No. Because he was too busy dicking around in Iraq.

(10:08.587)

You’re going to spend time messing around with these tariffs and this nonsense.

You’re not gonna be able to get anything.

You’re not going to get your tax cuts through. You’re going to get pushback from Congress. Yeah, they’re holding their fire right now. They’re keeping their mouths shut. But that’s not going to last.

It’s not gonna last. I get it. I get you. You wanna redo some trade policies, all this stuff. Okay, let’s figure out. Let’s sit down at the table. Let’s stop with this tit for tat nonsense. This crap that you did, this TV show, this Captain Chaos crap that you’re waging on TV and in social media, where it turns out it was like some sort of rapper’s battle where you’re trying to like insult someone more than the other person. man, you got dissed. I got, no, be an adult. Sit down and negotiate.

Don’t negotiate on social media, on truth social. Stop with the quips, stop with the nonsense and give for crying out loud the people who voted for you some semblance of what’s going to happen next.

(11:17.89)

Because right now it’s chaotic.

(11:23.126)

It’s plain and simple. Businesses are like, I don’t know what’s going to happen next. I don’t know what my costs are going to be. For crying out loud, man, you built buildings. How would you like it? How would you like it if you had no idea what your building costs were going to be? Because of tariffs by the president. You’d be freaking out.

(11:47.768)

So he’s got to he’s got to get his act together at this point. This is my, always been my fear with this guy. And I got to, yeah, it’s kind of like, know, watching the things that we’re getting done, stuff done by Elon Musk, the Doge stuff.

Some of the things that were done and they continue to do when it comes to immigration, fantastic.

But again, you’re doing well, show a little humility, Tone it the hell down. Figure, get this trade crap behind you so we can move on and actually get things done. This is a damn sideshow right now and businesses around the country are paying the price.

Now I’m sorry super Trumpsters, you can come out with your butt, butt, butt, butt, butt, the butt monkeys out there, it’s on him. Fix it. Fix it, if you gotta eat a little crow because you had a big mouth over the past couple weeks, do it. Watchdog on wallstreet.com.