Why Is Truth “Hostile” In the Trump Era

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So, truth, I guess is now a hostile and political act. Woo, yeah, we did a whole thing on truth a couple of weeks ago on the radio show, talking about Punch’s pilot, What is Truth? I’ve talked about it here on the program. yeah, everybody’s entitled to their own truth, their own reality when quite frankly, that’s nonsense. I have to say, full disclosure, this whole tariff

thing is the second most annoying topic I’ve had to cover in all of my years, COVID being number one. Anyway, so again, you got a press conference this morning with the Secretary of Treasury Scott Bessent and Caroline LeVette was up there too. And we’ll get into some of the things that the Treasury Secretary said. But first and foremost, a question was asked from the peanut gallery there, the reporters.

with a report that Amazon was going to start adding a surcharge where their customers could see on items that were coming in from China and what people had to pay. And LeVette, they were kind of like, she stepped up to the podium. She basically boxed out Scott said, I spoke to the president about this and said it was a hostile and political act.

How is it hostile and political? You’re an importer, you’re Amazon, and the United States government just levied a new tax, a new tax on your products. Shouldn’t you show that? I mean, why wouldn’t you show that? Again, you know what was thinking about today? I remember when I was a kid.

How many people remember the gas station? The gas station back in the 1970s, that I remember, and they would show you the price of gasoline, they would show you the federal tax, they would show you the state tax. You knew all of the embedded costs. You don’t know today, you just pay. You fail to realize all of the taxes that you’re paying every single time you fill up at the pump. Tariffs of tax.

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If this is so grand, spanking, star-spangled, mega-awesome, why not let Amazon show it? Her other retort was, didn’t Amazon do this when the Biden administration hiked inflation to the highest level in 40 years? So what was Amazon supposed to do? Put on a, a,

How do you quantify an inflation cost? You can quantify, you got a dollar amount exactly for what you’re being charged in tariffs. How does one do that? And then I’m sorry, know, all over Fox, business Fox, they start echoing the same bull crap. Stop it, people, you’re smarter than this.

You’re better than this. Are you gonna start putting an inflation charge? How does one quantify that inflation charge? Just let me know. But anyway, you can with tariffs. Anyway, statement from Amazon. I guess the whole thing was fake news. The team that runs our ultra low cost Amazon haul store has considered listing import charges on certain products.

This was never a consideration for the main Amazon site and nothing has been implemented on any Amazon properties.

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what the point was. I don’t know if they were worried about it. I know this was a shot across the bow warning people, you know, don’t be honest with the American people. Because again, I guess truth is a hostile and political act. Anyway, anyway, take it for what it is. Take it for what it is. You know, you don’t have to agree with me, whatever. I’m sorry. I know I’d be doing it.

I know most certainly I’d be saying, listen, this is, you again, when you buy something, you see the sale tax, You see the local sales tax on it, put a line on it. This is our tariff tax. This is why everything got so expensive. Anyway, let’s talk a little bit about autos here. First and foremost, General Motors pulled their profit guidance, citing significant tariff impact.

Its net income slid 6.6 % to 2.8 billion. Even though its revenue went up at this point in time, they say that the auto tariffs have clouded the outlook and its prior forecasts cannot be relied upon. The company’s also holding off on stock buybacks to conserve cash. Back in February, they approved $6 billion in buybacks.

They’ve purchased two billion, but they’re waiting for some more clarity moving forward. Again, we’ll see. It’s part of the uncertainty issues that we’re dealing with at this point in time. This is where, again, and I’m not a fan of this. This is part of the…

the lack of any sort of execution or intelligent design when it came to the rollout on these tariffs. Trump now wants to soften the impact of the auto tariffs, preventing duties on foreign-made cars from stacking on top of other tariffs that he has imposed. He also wants to ease

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some of the tariffs on foreign parts used to manufacture cars in the United States. automakers paying Trump’s automotive tariffs won’t also be charged for other duties such as those on steel and aluminum. Again, yeah, you know, I hate to be the accountants.

at these automakers at this point and try and trying to keep track of all this stuff. And I guess this is going to be retroactive, meaning that automakers could be reimbursed for tariffs already paid. There was a 25 % tariff on finished foreign made cars that went into effect this month. They’re going to modify its tariffs on foreign order parts, slated to be 25 % on May 3rd.

Allowing automakers to be reimbursed for those tariffs up to an amount of equal to 3.75 % of the value of a US made car for one year. The reimbursement would fall to 2.5 % of the car’s value in the second year then be phased out.

Again, you’re also talking about the steel and aluminum tariffs and whether or not they are compounded on this. Again, I’m a big fan of simplicity and I’ve made that perfectly clear over the years here on the program and we’ve gone off on red tape nation. This is not making life easier on anybody.

This is making it more complicated. It’s making it more difficult. Complicated and difficult is not conducive to business. And I know I’ve used this a million times over the years here on the program. was an interview with Steve Jobs. Interview with Steve Jobs and it’s taken us back to the 1980s where he was making fun of WordStar. WordStar was one of the…

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early word processing software programs. I remember, I remember, you know, they would have it in schools and whatnot. Nobody ever used it. Nobody ever used it because it was intimidating as all hell. First and foremost, the instruction manual was, it was like a, you know, an old New York City telephone book for crying out loud. And Steve Jobs made that perfectly clear.

in his interview saying no one’s gonna learn the slash Q’s and slash Z’s. He said no one’s gonna read, you know, a four or 500 page manual. You gotta read a novel to write a novel, it’s not gonna work. And again, talked about ease of use and simplicity. And that’s what we have to get back to in this country. And quite frankly, the tariffs are not doing that at this point in time. This,

This is something that is encouraging. It’s encouraging. Secretary Bassett announced that Trump will allow companies who move their manufacturing back to the United States will allow for their factory costs to be fully expensed. Full expenses of factories, bring your factory back. You can fully expense the equipment and.

the building, will couple that with deregulation, cheap energy and regulatory certainty. Okay. We’ll be honest, okay, I think that’s great, but you can’t declare and decree that. This is great and quite frankly, these are the things that should have been put into place first. Doing these types of things.

Doing these types of things would automatically attracted businesses back to the United States. You do that first. This has got to go through Congress. I mean, you can say that, but again, Congress has to approve this. One more thing, again, on the tariff stuff today, there was some conversation with the sent was up there talking about the revenues from tariffs. And again,

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the logic behind what they’re saying. Okay, I might explain it. Yes, I’m gonna explain it again. You’re saying you’re saying that income tax could be eliminated because of tariffs, saying they could be eliminated because of tariffs. But you want these manufacturing companies, you want them to come to the United States where they’re not going to be tariffed. Which is it?

They are basically polar opposites of one another, quite frankly, doesn’t make any sense. Any other quick note as well. Again, Scott sent actually said today, you see, we’re not basically looted. We’re not looking to bring back textile manufacturing. We want to have high end productive jobs coming back here to the United States. Now, again, that makes sense. But

the numbers here that they keep throwing out, they keep saying, ah, we’re gonna get rid of income taxes on everyone making less than $200,000 a year. So the amount of taxes collected by the 200,000 and below, that’s $675 million, a billion dollars, excuse me, $675 billion. If you think that the tariff revenue,

is going to supplant that, it’s just not gonna happen.

not going to happen. Tariffs would have to be much, much higher and across the board. Anyway, and other news. boy. Howard Lucknick is going to be on CNBC this afternoon. Hold on to your hats, kids. Watchdog on wallstreet.com.