Trump’s Tariff Regime CRUSHES American Small Businesses

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So what you’re saying is we have to destroy trade in order to save it. I’m stealing that bit from, well, was it Peter Arnett quoting an unnamed major during the Tet Offensive in Vietnam, where it turned out in order to save the village, we need to destroy it, something like that. That’s where we’re at.

right now as far as I’m concerned when it comes to the current administration and trade. Destroying trade in order to save trade and save this country. I’ve gotten a tremendous amount of feedback from listeners, clients, people all over the country, various different camps. People oftentimes will send me, hey, Chris, you gotta listen to this.

podcast and this one said this and have a listen to what they had to say. And sometimes these are podcasts of people that I have a great deal of respect for. I’ll you an example, like a Victor Davis Hansen talked a little bit about it, his latest podcast and the markets and acting emotionally towards the markets. Unfortunately, unfortunately, Professor Hansen, I’ve read all his books, big fan of his.

They’re wrong. They’re wrong. They’re right on the sense is that, yes, will the markets right themselves? Yeah, we said that. We said that, what was it, the second day, the day after Liberation Day, I did a podcast. And what did I say? Business will find a way.

Business will find a way. Big companies will find a way. They always do.

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They always do. They have the right connects. They’re tied in to government. Take for today, for example, you had the story about, well, AMD seeing $800 million in charges from US export controls. Nvidia saying it’s going to record a $5.5 billion charge tied to its H2O processors that are exported to China.

And you’re going to continue to see more and more stories like this moving forward. But again, when all is said and done, it’s Nvidia. It’s AMD. They’ll find a way. They’ll get their cutouts. They’ll have their breaks here and there. The issue, the issue is this is going to kill small business here in this country.

the themes that I perpetually repeat again and again and again for all Americans is to go out there, build, create, protect and teach. Small business is not going to have these advantages. Small businesses are not going to be able to take advantage, just regulatory capture. They don’t have that type of power. It’s something that has always bothered me. It’s something that I’ve always railed about. It’s wrong.

and they are going to bear the brunt. You don’t think that this country, you’d rather have this country run by the oligarchs and the big companies out there, or would you like to see more of Main Street thrive? Because that’s what we’re being told, this is going to be great for Main Street.

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How is this great for Main Street? I can’t tell you the amount of people out there that they don’t know what to do next. All of a sudden, they’re expecting a certain delivery or a certain input, whatever it may be, and the prices have gone through the roof. It was interesting here. Just saw a report, Goldman actually put this out, putting out the data to understand where some basic

Basic imported home goods and building materials were sourced in 2024. Dishwashers, almost all. Well, 15 % China, 19 % Vietnam, 26 % Thailand, 12 % India, 1 % Germany, 1 % Italy, nothing here. Dryer imports, 89 % Mexico, small fractions, other places.

Tankless electric tankless water heaters 89 % Mexico, gas tank water heaters 73 % China, 19 % Mexico. And then you obviously have the high-end brands coming from again, Italy, Germany, Sweden and Canada. Gas tankless water heater imports. Yeah, I just built a house. I’ve got one. 94 % Mexico, the rest Poland, Finland, Germany, Italy.

Cabinet imports. 11 % China, 2 % Canada, 38 % South Korea, 38 % Japan, 7 % Mexico, the rest, Netherlands, Germany, smaller countries. Vinyl tile imports by market. China, 46%, Vietnam, 30%, 14%. Ceramic tile, we got 16 % Italy, 15 % Mexico, 20%.

India, Spain 18%, all of these various different countries, lighting fixtures. I can go right on down the list, but you get my point.

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You get my point. What do you do now as a contract?

What do you do now as a home buyer or you wanna buy a brand new or have a home built with mortgage rates at seven and a half percent and all of a sudden the costs are going up? It’s gonna make life pretty difficult. Is it not? One major home builder down here in Florida, south of me, they actually, they were shipping in tons of stuff ahead of time.

Are you actually using their office spaces and whatnot just to store various different items that they’re going to need?

try to break this down to an even greater degree. It was actually a pretty interesting piece. Because one of the things we’ve tried to do day in day out here on the program is I try to bring receipts, preferably receipts. I bring you facts. I’m not Lutnik, I’m not Navarro, I’m not Trump. I’m not going to go out there and just spew complete another BS because it suits them at a certain point in time. We bring you hard

numbers, the realities of manufacturing here in the United States. China entered the World Trade Organization 2001.

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December of 2001, China entered the World Trade Organization. Between 2001 and 2007, now again, what happened in 2008, again, we had the Great Recession, financial issues, crash, housing market. During that period of time, the United States lost 3.4 million manufacturing jobs, 20%.

of the 17.2 million jobs, manufacturing jobs that they had at the end of 2000. During the recession, another 2.2 million disappeared. Next 15 years, we regained about one fifth. One fifth of that was, which was lost during that first decade of the 21st century. This is what they call the China shock.

This was the China shock and it’s real. It’s real. Some people will get the debate is on and again, William Galston had a really interesting piece today on this in the Wall Street Journal, talking about maybe it’s not China, maybe it’s technology. Manufacturing productivity increased significantly between 2001 and 2010, but.

It also increased by the same amount between 1991 and 2000. And at that point in time, manufacturing jobs were going up. Difference, China. Some say, and again, NAFTA, I’m go back to Ross Perot, and again, you get these people within the Trump administration hammering Canada, hammering Mexico, talked about NAFTA and how that was the issue.

That took effect in 1994, January 1st, 1994. From 1994 to 2000, manufacturing jobs increased by 300,000 in the United States. Yeah, NAFTA shifted some production away from the United States, but it also contributed to a growth in manufacturing that more than made up from the losses. Now, not only that, factory workers’ wages went up between 1994

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in 2000 quicker than inflation. So you’re gonna blame NAFTA? No, no, it doesn’t make any sense while we’re going after some of these countries. ridiculous, quite frankly, and how it’s being done. Actually, it’s been helpful to the United States not to mention the fact again, Trump renegotiated NAFTA in his first term,

And he called it the fairest, most balanced and beneficial trade agreement we have ever signed into law. That is a Trump direct quote.

Now, problems at manufacturing. Okay, our output has stagnated. Also, productivity hasn’t kept up. And again, there’s just some of the comments that I get from people. Wait, you know, it’s a national security concern. We got these issues. Okay. Okay, you want to reassure some things. Yes, we learned that we’re dependent upon other countries that we’ve learned a lot during that COVID.

China for drugs, medical supplies. We can’t keep pace with the shipbuilding that’s taking place in China. This is, and again, I haven’t argued against any of these points at all. They’re all legitimate points. However, this involves,

Not a sledgehammer, not an axe and a sledgehammer or a chainsaw. You need a scalpel here. A scalpel is necessary. You need targeted policies. You think a global trade war is an appropriate tool? We gotta destroy trade in order to save it.

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What did?

What did China do? Yeah, they suppress purchasing power. Again, they subsidized exports, allowing China to undercut intellectual property theft, all of these things. We’ve known this for some time. Isn’t there a better way of handling that? You want to direct tariffs on items where China does this?

turn around and use those tariffs to, I don’t know, rebuild shipbuilding here in the United States. That would be beneficial. Again, another thing as well, making America a much more attractive place for doing business. It’s just that simple. Because we’re gonna continue to see, again, you’re not gonna hear about these things, I do. Okay?

I hear about small businesses that are going under. I hear about small companies that are going under. One sent to me today, you know, an Ohio paper mill that was in business since 1817, 208 years, closing down. They can’t deal with these tariffs. They can’t deal with these tariffs. And again, we self-inflict a lot of things as well. I remember I told this story a long time ago.

on the program. It had to do with a ladder company. A ladder company in Watervilleet, New York, not far where I grew up from that had been there for some almost revolutionary war times. Reason why they shut down is they couldn’t pay the insurance cost. They were small, specialized ladder manufacturer. They just didn’t put out enough product in order to pay the insurance.

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on ladders because guess what? Tort attorneys would sue them every time a moron decided to put up Christmas lights half drunk and fell down. It was a ladders fault.

We do a lot of self-inflicted dumb things here in this country. We do it to ourselves. And these are some of the things that we need to get out of the way. Other solutions as well. There’s a nice piece of National Review talking about, and again, it’s just a working class guy. he’s basically, every job he’s had has been an hourly job and his wife.

in his entire life and he’s talking about the working class and how many of the free traders are talking past the working class. I try not, I’m not talking past the working class at all. I’m not. But for some time, we did change our ways in the sense of, you know, people like nice things. People like handmade artisan type goods.

They do. It’s an anecdotal example. Anecdotal example. was recently, like I said, told you, was in Italy recently and was looking at furniture. I went to a furniture store there. And we have high-end, you wanna call high-end furniture, maybe restoration hardware, our house.

There’s different levels. Okay, obviously these are much higher than a Kia. I get that You get in our house. Some of the things are made here in the United States, but a lot now It’s outsourced to China restoration hardware now I just bought some stuff from my house and I know where it’s coming from even though I tried to source here in the United States very hard to find

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Very hard to find. Italy not only is the quality far superior, but it’s cheaper. Cheaper there, they’re making it there. Tariffs here to the United States, not cheaper.

People like these things. And again, it’s been a problem that we’ve had here in this country feeding the education, the college industrial complex, telling every kid out there that they’ve got to go to a four year degree rather than teaching them various different trades. Make a fortune in these various different businesses. This is why you don’t talk past the working class.

You’ve got to, there’s got to be a change. And unfortunately, I think a lot of the unions, again, trying to hold on to the power and trying to basically stop time for the realities of certain industries didn’t do right by their workers.

I mean, jobs have come and gone. I was thinking about it today, various different industries. Where is it? I pulled up the lyrics to Allentown by Billy Joel, talking about Bethlehem Steel and the things that took place in Allentown. He wrote that song, that was on Billy Joel’s Nylon Curtain album. That was in 19…

82.

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1982, he was singing the woes of the steel industry in Pennsylvania. Now you go forward another, 1992, another great song by one of my favorite crooners there, it’s, know, Shaday, Feel No Pain, Mama Been Laid Off, Papa Been Laid Off, Been Laid Off For More Than Two Years Now, all of these things. This is how you go about dealing with creating jobs here.

in the United States, it’s being able to retrain people and get them into the workforce that we’re going to need down the road. We do not need to blow up world trade and in the process, blow up small business across the country. It’s not necessary.

I get, know, again, it’s amazing. I must be really getting overly emotional in some of these podcasts because people are noticing the messages that I’m getting from people around the country. The thing like Shade Song, Feel No Pain. I do. That’s the thing. And I’ve got small business clients. I do feel their pain and what they’re going through. And so should you.

Journal today had an editorial. They were talking about various different artisan chocolate shops here in the United States. Already the price of cocoa, their input costs went up because there was issues with bad weather in various different places where they source the chocolate from, where the cocoa to make the chocolate from. And as it turns out, there’s only

A couple of places here in the United States you can get it from that’s Puerto Rico and Hawaii and they can’t suffice to this now their costs have gone through the roof. You know, it was starting to come down. Some of the weather related issues had the prices going down, but now tariffs have made it much worse and they’re squeeze, squeeze, squeeze. How much can you charge for a chocolate bar? How much can you charge? You can only pass so much on.

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And that’s where we’re at.

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And then you can take this, this is not about Wall Street and the volatility. We’re going to continue to see volatility in the markets. That doubt me, but it’ll eventually subside. It’ll eventually go away. What I’m worried about is all the people living in the village.

that we need to destroy in order to save, right?

Because that’s what we’re doing.

That’s what’s taking place.

All of these jobs are not going to reshore. you know, people say, well, did you hear that Honda is going to bring some plants back here to the United? It’s all well and good. And that’s fine. And that’s wonderful. OK, that’s wonderful. But you are not hearing about all of the businesses, the small businesses that are getting wiped out.

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And that should be our concern. You wanna deal with China? Okay. Deal with China. Why the hell, why the hell do you have to piss off the entire world? Why the hell do you have to continue to spew unadulterated bullshit? the European Union was designed to screw the United States.

Come on, man, no it wasn’t. Okay, no it wasn’t. Do a little homework on the formation of the EU and how it got started with the coal and steel community post-World War II. Would you like me to, would you like me to explain it to you, Donald? But no, he didn’t want to hear it because he likes to live in his own little reality that fits his narratives.

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God willing, God willing, he is going to get enough pressure from powers that be that he is going to recognize that we need friends in this.

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We need allies in this. For crying out loud, China crafted a virus in a laboratory that killed millions of people globally, recently, not too long ago. Not too long ago. I don’t know, know, might have that, use that playing card and trying to craft various different trade deals with various different countries from around the globe. Just saying that might help.

there might be a much better way than again destroying trade in order to save it. Watchdog on wallstreet.com.