Make Love, Not War

Make Love, Not War

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
This show is produced and hosted by Mark Webber.

Speaker 2 (00:03):
The show is sponsored by G three of Parow.

Speaker 1 (00:05):
The views expressed in the following program are those of
the sponsor and not necessarily the opinion of seven tenor
or iHeartMedia. Who is Mark Weber. He's a self made
business executive here to help you find your success from
the New York City projects to the Avenue Montaigne in Paris.
His global success story in the luxury world of fashion

(00:28):
is inspirational. He's gone from clerk to CEO twice. Mark
his classic proof that the American dream is alive. And well,
here's your host of Always in Fashion, Mark Weber.

Speaker 3 (00:41):
Mark Weber.

Speaker 4 (00:42):
This country is amazing. It's capturing the tension of the world.
And tonight's show because of what was going on, I
was going to dedicate it exclusively to China, and I
was gonna call it make Love not War. I don't
want trade wars. I want fair trade. The world's not fair,
but we just have to navigate through it. But then
the whole subject of money and budgeting and where this

(01:05):
country's spending their money captured my attention. I call. I
need to remind you there's an old saying or important
say that figures lie, but liars also. Figure numbers should
be straightforward, but they're not. You have to look closely.
You need to be smart, or your forensic accountant will
be I want to talk money in its totality, corporate money,

(01:27):
corporate budgets, but particularly I want to talk about how
you approach it because the United States is under attack
right now. We're at war with ourselves with the way
we're spending money. The nonsense that USAID was laid for,
it's just crazy. You know, we have a corporate budget.
Let me just make it simple. Every single dollar is
accounted for, every single dollar is approved. Everyone looks at

(01:50):
everything you take marketing, travel, What class of service are
you allowing? At what level we're hotels? Are you allowing?
Are people allowed to take taxis limos? Every single line
is looked at. Then in marketing you want to talk
at advertising, men's how much money are you going to
spend on men versus women? Which products? Where are you

(02:11):
going to place your advertising? How often? And then there's
the question of the course provide him? And then overall
the most important question of all, why are you doing it?
You go even further entertainment. Are you to spend your
money on taking people's sports arenas or concerts? How about dinner?
Are you going to take them to different countries and

(02:31):
this is where you're going or the people in different
comptries you're going to visit with they want to know,
with whom they want to know? Always why you're doing it?
With the big question why every single dollar is looked
at an accounted for, except it seems in the USA budget.
Donald Trump is president, but he's a CEO first, I bet,

(02:53):
and in his heart CEO foremost. Now, he may love
the presidency and he loves the country he's doing it,
but he knows how to run. He knows how to
plan and process. No one can run anything without a budget,
let alone a corporation and of course the United States government.
So now here we are in a show that I
wanted to talk about. We're at war with Elon Musk.

(03:13):
So much for the love. There's a great Einstein story
that comes to mind. Einstein is teaching a class and
he's working on a blackboard and he puts up the
number nine times one equals nine. Then he puts up
nine times two is eighteen, and he goes all the
way through ten, and at nine times ten he puts

(03:35):
up an answer in ninety one and the class starts
laughing and ridiculing him. And when it dies down, he
looks at them and said, you know, it's interesting. I
got ten answers right. Nobody gave me any credit for that,
and then one answer is wrong, and all you want
to do is make fun of me and ridicule me.

(03:55):
The point is, in life and society and media, people
will always find your mistakes. And who doesn't make mistakes?
Only those people who do nothing. So here we are
the leftis at war with Elon Musk. When I was
ten years old, my mother and father sat me down
and gave me a ten dollar bill and they said

(04:15):
it's your allowance for the week. And they told me
you have to think about it. Mark. You have to
be very careful because you're only going to get ten dollars.
So if you go to the candy store, don't spend
all your money on the first day you need it.
For the week. You have to look at the price
of candy, your gum. You need to make a plan,
and then don't come to us when your money runs out.

(04:36):
It's your money. You have to respect it and you
have to treat it well and talking respect and talking
money and talking always in fashion. My lawyer, my co host,
my son, Jesse Weber.

Speaker 5 (04:49):
Hello, La Lallo. Good to be back on the show
with you.

Speaker 4 (04:52):
Hey, it's great. They have a question for you right
out of the box. I've always been serious with you
and money and budging when you got married. How did
I cancel you on budgeting? I don't even remember.

Speaker 3 (05:03):
It was very very simple. I think that this feels
like it would be straightforward. Maybe a lot of people
don't know. You said you have to. You have to
figure this out. How much are you making every month?
And what are your expenses? That's what you're the number
one thing. And are you making enough money to meet
your expenses or things? You have to cut back on it?
So you make a list. Here's the how much I'm

(05:23):
taking in. Here are my list of expenses. And when
I say expenses, it's things you absolutely need to pay for,
things that you you could maybe be a little bit
more flexible on, and things that you want to buy
but you don't you don't have the money to buy.
Give an example, rent rent every month, that's a you
have to pay that every month, right, you have to
Now now you have to eat, doesn't mean that you

(05:46):
have to go out to restaurants all the time.

Speaker 5 (05:48):
Maybe you buy groceries, maybe you cook a little bit more.

Speaker 3 (05:50):
And then of course the bottom line is clothes or trips,
things that you want to spend money on. But you
have the actual money too, And as long as you
are making it, taking enough money and save money properly,
then you can have a little more discretionary income.

Speaker 4 (06:04):
And I guess I should is did you learn from it?
And was I right about it?

Speaker 3 (06:08):
I did?

Speaker 2 (06:09):
I did.

Speaker 3 (06:09):
First of all, it's interesting because I've always done my
own life, living by my own budget and taking care
of myself. And then when you get married and you
have somebody else and they have things that they want
and things that they do, and you're together, and now
the cost of a meal is double. It's an interesting thing.
But she's also working as well. It's been a very
good educational process and I think I think we're quite

(06:32):
responsible when it comes to our budgets.

Speaker 4 (06:35):
Well, with that in mind, I think that the government
has the right and has the obligation to do the
same thing. Now would you agree with me on that?
So far we're doing good today.

Speaker 3 (06:45):
I agree, but I also think that there are certain
protocols and rules and laws put in place that, for example,
a president can't just.

Speaker 5 (06:53):
Do everything that they want to do, even if you
think it's the right thing to do.

Speaker 4 (06:56):
Well, that's not what we're talking about this week. In
real we're talking about I wanted to what Elon Musk
is doing with usam.

Speaker 5 (07:04):
And well, would you like to talk about that?

Speaker 4 (07:07):
I do. First of all, the Democrats are screaming, Elizabeth Warren,
it's a constitutional crisis. What's the buzzword of the day,
is it?

Speaker 3 (07:15):
Here's the first problem, Elon Musk. He's not an elected
member of the Trump team. He's a private citizen who's
directing where the money goes.

Speaker 5 (07:23):
That's I don't put it.

Speaker 3 (07:24):
Imagine it was a democratic president and imagine he had
a private citizen.

Speaker 5 (07:29):
I don't know whoever that meant.

Speaker 3 (07:30):
Maybe it was a celebrity of some kind telling him
this is where I think the money should go, this
is what agencies I think should be cut. That's the
first problem. Okay, that's number one. He's unelected number but he's.

Speaker 4 (07:40):
Acting on behalf of Trump. Trump is telling me exactlyet
does should.

Speaker 5 (07:47):
He be seeing this financial information? Does he have the
security clearance? That's number one. I'm just presenting the issues.
That's number one.

Speaker 3 (07:52):
Number two, and this is the major issue. Even if
you're Donald Trump, he is doing things that are arguably unconstitutional.
He is he is moving funds around and moving things
around with agencies that is really supposed to be the
responsibility of Congress, that they're the ones who determine our budget,
and that he might be violating federal laws in the

(08:14):
Constitution by what he's doing.

Speaker 5 (08:15):
So somebody could be.

Speaker 4 (08:16):
Like, WHOA, WHOA said anything yet he didn't move anything.
Yet he's pulling it out, saying what they should get
rid of, making recommendations. He can't change it.

Speaker 3 (08:24):
Well, the I Trump has on it the idea of
either getting rid of USAID or moving it to the
State Department. That's an independent agency, who says he has
the right to do that.

Speaker 5 (08:34):
This is going to be immediately challenged in court.

Speaker 4 (08:37):
It's an independent he's not saying it can be done.
This is what he's recommending.

Speaker 3 (08:41):
It doesn't have the authority, and I think it's going
to be challenged in court and he might lose. Now,
somebody will say This is so unfair. This is so unfair.
In hindsight, not he doesn't have the wrong thing. In
the hindsight, he has the right intentions. He wants to,
like you said, try to cut expenses. There might be
things you look at USAID, which by the way, is
the United States Agency for International Development, and you might say,

(09:03):
why are they spending money here? Why are they spending
money here. That's a fair conversation, that's a fair thing
to have. But the question of how he goes about
doing it, that's the problems. By the way, it's the
same thing that happened last week where there was the
firing of the inspector generals. On one hand, the president
has the right to do it. On the other hand,

(09:23):
he didn't quite follow the rules on how to fire
them in terms of they have a due process rights.
And somebody could say, ah, due process, schmooth process.

Speaker 5 (09:32):
But he'll go back into place, go.

Speaker 4 (09:35):
Back and do it. Meanwhile, Elon Musk is making recommendation,
he's bringing out the craziness that's going on. So is
it or is it not a constitutional crisis? So Foley's
doing is recommending to the president, what do you think should.

Speaker 3 (09:47):
Be if Elon Musk is doing this and directing this
and acting on behalf of the president. It could be
a constitutional crisis. It's the Congress under Article one of
the Constitution that controls the money. Elon Musk, not the
President of the United States. There's a law in place
about you know, president just can't change where the money goes,
where discretionary spending goes. It's part of Congress.

Speaker 4 (10:10):
We will see, you know. I think the Democrats are crazy.
Look what they're standing up and fighting.

Speaker 3 (10:15):
So they have to pick their battles. They got to
pick their battles, right. I think Donald Trump right now
is trying to go down in history as the best
president of the United States. I'm not saying he is
or will be, but what I'm saying is by how
he's changed, you know, trying to get rid of income tax,
trying to move on with tariffs, try to end to
trade war, ending the war in ending the conflict in

(10:36):
the Middle East, trying to end Ukraine.

Speaker 5 (10:37):
He's trying to do everything. I get it. He's got
well intentioned.

Speaker 3 (10:40):
How he goes about it and what he says and
does about it, that's it's important too.

Speaker 4 (10:46):
Okay, did you see Schumi yesterday by the microphone, Win
win Win.

Speaker 5 (10:50):
Did you see I try to ignore him?

Speaker 4 (10:51):
But now, oh he's embarrassing, and so is that Maxine
Waters and then Elizabeth Warren. Oh my, thank god, they
have the hands in the air because they got their
hands caught in the pork barrel. You know, where were
their line items? No one looked at them, No one
looked at them, No one shared where the money was going.

(11:12):
The committee, now this whole week saw the craziness and
seeing the waste. They're looking at the nonsense. I got
to ask a question, you're worried about constitutional crisis? Is
Elizabeth Warren and your crew there? Where were you? You're
the elected officials, You're the ones who should be responsible
for all of this. And those Republicans and those Democrats

(11:35):
who did take a look, why didn't you object? Was
it out of fear of reprisal or was it worse?
You didn't think anything was wrong. It's moronic. And what's
even moronic these Democrats are doubling down on the country
when the country voted against all of this nonsense. Have
they forgotten the shellacking they took their parties and shambles

(11:59):
Right now? Now, the part of me that is a
Democrat is embarrassed to support them. They have to wake up.
Trump is here, Musk is here. They're agents for change,
and change is happening. I have a different question.

Speaker 5 (12:12):
Well we move that, I guess.

Speaker 3 (12:14):
Then I guess the counter argument to that would be,
what about the seventy five million people that voted against
Donald Trump and voted for Kamala Harris. I guess they're
representing them. They like, we can't sit back, we can't
stay silent, voted.

Speaker 4 (12:25):
For a transgender opera in Vietnam, or they voted millions
of dollars in Vietnam to spend on convincing them to
burn their garbage. This is where we're spending our money.
How can anybody defend that?

Speaker 2 (12:42):
You can't.

Speaker 3 (12:42):
I'm just I'm just saying. This is why you see
them jumping up and screaming.

Speaker 4 (12:46):
Yeah, okay, for what reason they're they're they're they're defending
the ridiculous. You know, I have a problem with charity.
I hate it. I give money, but I never understand it.
Why do hospitals need money? Why isn't all the money
there for hospitals to do what they can to make
our lives simple to save lives. I never understood why

(13:09):
a hospital needs money. They should have all the money
they need. I never understood why our government doesn't support
veterans they needed to raise money. These people who have
stood on our behalf and forught wars and got hurt.
I'll never understand this. It's crazy. Wounded warriors should have

(13:32):
to put their hands out. They don't have enough money
to get whatever they need to live a fair life
after the sacrifices they made. You, politicians, that's the constitutional crisis.
Veterans and wounded warriors don't have money, but you're sending
money to Vietnam to tell them to burn the garbage.

(13:52):
What's going on here? And then, of course there's our
senior citizens who've lived their lives working, paying taxes, and
they get older and in their golden years their financial trouble.
Why not take back all those millions and millions and
hundreds of millions of dollars in just this one organization
and spend it on our people. Why are we spending

(14:15):
it outside the United States? I don't get it. I
understand no one voted for Elon Musk, but nobody should
vote for you. You want to scream, we win, we
win that this that. Why don't you just do the
right thing. Why don't you save the money and let
it work for you. Why don't you do the right
thing to bring back the money to help our own people.

(14:37):
Some common sense is in order. Some common sense is
about taking care of each other.

Speaker 5 (14:43):
By the way.

Speaker 3 (14:44):
I don't know if you saw this on Dan Dan
Abrams Dan's News Nation show. He had on a guy
who has made money starting this X account. It's I
think it's called the Nancy Pelosi stock tracker. I might
be misnouncing it. But what they do is they track
what stock she's buying, and they buy it.

Speaker 5 (15:06):
And they're getting rich.

Speaker 3 (15:07):
Off of it because they're like, how does she making
so much money on it? So they're just following her,
following what she does. It's actually hysterical.

Speaker 4 (15:15):
I'm sure it's not inside of trading. I mean, heaven forbid.
There was a time. I don't know what the laura
is if there was a time that Congress was voted
that they couldn't trade any longer, and now I think
it disappeared. I don't know what happened. I don't know
enough about it. Yeah, what do I know? You know,
I'm not really qualified to talk about this stuff. It's logic,

(15:36):
it's common sense, it's business. Take care of your own.
Take a break. We'll be back in a minute.

Speaker 2 (15:43):
Always in fashion.

Speaker 4 (15:44):
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(16:05):
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Speaker 1 (17:21):
Welcome back to it always in fashion. Here's your host,
Mark Webber.

Speaker 4 (17:26):
Tonight's show is Make Love Not War. My intention tonight
was to talk about China, and I will in a moment,
I will. So many things are going on in the government.
President just began. He's in in three weeks. He's making
massive changes. Pretty much everything he's doing makes incredible sense.
And the Democrats are back at it.

Speaker 2 (17:46):
All.

Speaker 4 (17:46):
The hate is coming out, everything is being criticized. It's
like nothing ever happened. It's like there was no election.
There's not even a minute that they won't take a
pranknon pause and set to themselves. Maybe what he's doing
makes sense. Maybe now I want to talk about China
because of the trade war where it's going. I have

(18:07):
uniquely qualified position on China. I am uniquely qualified to
talk about China. I was in China a lot of times,
growing up in this industry. Active matter of fact, I
was always referred to by the Chinese in Beijing as
a friend to China. I don't think it's written anywhere.
It was a long time ago. The concept is a

(18:28):
friend in need is a friend. Indeed, I was a
friend who helped at a difficult time to and then
our friends in China. I helped and they helped us.
My first trip to China was in the early eighties,
at a time when China was reopening to the West.
Most of you were too young to remember. Hey, I
was too young to remember. Now let me give you

(18:49):
a moment of backdrop for those of you who don't
understand the history of China, which is thousands of years old.
But let's go back to nineteen forty nine Chairman Mao
Mount Saint Tung. He believed that to the west Europe,
the West the United States were harmful to his culture.

(19:10):
He believed we were ruining China and he didn't want
anything to do with it. He embarked upon a principle.
They called it Maoism officially Mount Saint Dung thought it
was a variety of Marxism Leninism, and he developed it
while trying to realize a social revolution and it was
pre industrial society of the People's Republic of China. How he,

(19:31):
Mao was considered one of the most significant figures of
the twentieth century. His politics and his policy were responsible
for a lot of maybe deaths since starvation and persecution,
but he had a point of view and he had
a vision for the country. During this time, when he
started to try and take China to a different place,
there was equivalent of a civil war. There was the

(19:54):
General Chiang Khai Schech one of the leading politicians, was
pushed out of China. He went to Formosa, which eventually
became Taiwan. It started a new Chinese government called the
Republic of China. And to this day, the history seventy
years later is about who owns China? Does the PRIFC

(20:14):
owned Taiwan? And it's a problem. But back in nineteen
forty nine when Mao made a decision to close his
doors to the West. And when I say closed, no contact,
no commerce, no dialogue, no visitors. He closed China. He
felt the Commers party felt that the West was polluting

(20:36):
and they wanted nothing to do with us. As this
went on for fifty years, there was no direct contact
with China, between our government and their government, perhaps behind
the scenes. Nineteen seventy two, then President Nixon, in his
Secretary of State Henry Kinchin Henry Kissinger visited China and

(20:57):
they agreed to open up the West. China agreed to
lift the veil over their country and re engage with
the West. It was a feel out process. It was
amazing process. It happened relatively quickly, and for the first
time in fifty years, China had relations with the United States.
And it was a remarkable time. Could you imagine in

(21:19):
China never having in business relations other than cordial relations
or diplomatic channels, And now it's open. My first trip,
as I said to you, I went in the early
days in the early eighties, and it was amazing. I'll
never forget. I swear to you this is true. My
first trip to Shanghai when I got out of the

(21:41):
hall my first trip to Shanghai. When I left the hotel,
people swarmed around me. They were looking at me. They
never saw a Western person, they never saw one of us,
They'd only seen their own. They swarmed. They literally stought,
and they're gaalking and looking, and some of the most

(22:02):
adventurous actually touched me. They wondered to see if I
was real. That's how far it had been my first recollection.
When I saw I was waiting to get picked up
in a car, and the car looked like something out
of the fifties. And all the cars in China, including
the black Flag limo which I would travel around in,

(22:22):
were cars from the fifties. And I asked the head
of our Hong Kong office, who's my translator and companion
on the trip? I said, what's going on here? Why
will these cars look like this? And they said, China
only had the plans for making automobiles from the forties
and fifties. They closed the door and that's why nobody
could see it. And yet here they were changing the

(22:43):
world forever. They wanted to switch from an agrarian population
to an industrialized population, get in manufacturing and export all
around the world, and companies like the ones I worked
for PVH were one of the ones that was going
to help that happen. I was part of a wave
of American businessmen and women on the front line of

(23:04):
opening up this channel. I remember driving in that car
down the main thoroughfare. I forgot what it was called.
Don't hold me to it. It was old dust. It
wasn't really paid, and there was street sweepers and the
dust was overwhelming. They couldn't keep up with it. They
picture of rural land with not really great roads and

(23:26):
the wind, and it was crazy. And I kept saying
to myself, how this this country? I knew it was
a concress country. How did this country decide that that
particular person, male or female, would be street sweepers versus
the people I was soon to meet in the offices.
And I always wondered about that. When I got to
China my first trip, there were not a lot of hotels.

(23:49):
There were no hotels. They were just starting to open.
I am paid the famous Chinese architect built the first
modern hotel in Beijing, and that's where I stayed the
first time I was there. The next time I went
back there, were enough rooms. They actually started asking people,
now that's a kind word, to move out of their
homes in the large department buildings that had been built

(24:12):
and make room for American or European business people places
for them to stay until they had hotels. I personally
and many people in my company had traveled to China
at that time. I actually slept in the suite that
Richard Nixon slept in when he opened up China was
fascinating looking at the people. They all wore uniforms. They

(24:34):
were called mouse suits. They came in three colors, army green,
navy blue, and industrial gray, and they only had two sizes,
too large and too small. It was fascinating. They had
absolutely no interest in fashion. What they were great at
was banquet dinners. One of my favorite stories, Jesse, you

(24:58):
were in Hong Kong.

Speaker 3 (25:00):
No backward, Oh, very modern, very very modern, state of
the art, top electronics, top restaurant's, top cars.

Speaker 5 (25:09):
It's not it was. It was very it was.

Speaker 3 (25:12):
I mean what it was was basically the Asian version
of New York City.

Speaker 5 (25:17):
That's what it was. In my view.

Speaker 3 (25:19):
I thought it was incredible. It was the only place
I think that would probably compare and I haven't been.
You would probably know better than me. Is Shanghai, right,
Shanghai's probably similar to that.

Speaker 4 (25:29):
Oh, Shanghai is way more advanced than New York City. Look,
let's face it, China has been building this country for
the last twenty or thirty years from scratch, so everything
they have is modern. Everything they've done is latest technology.
It's brilliant. But when I'm talking about it, I was there.
It was bizarre. It just was like going to in
the middle of our country where nobody has developed it yet,

(25:52):
and start putting up homes. Most of the transportation was
on motorbikes. You would see guy delivering one hundred hertens
on the back of a motorbike. You see families, mother, father,
three children on a motorbike. That was their means of transportation.
It wasn't just in China and Taiwan and Korea. It
was often the same. I'll never forget. One of the
most fascinating times I ever had was back in Maxims.

(26:15):
Maxims was a famous famous restaurant built by pr Pia,
built by Pierre Cardan in Paris, and someone opened up
a license, or Pierre Canadena himself decided to build one
in China. Now I'm in this place where it's just
it's just at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, and

(26:36):
in the middle of the city there's this incredible restaurant
from Paris called Maxims. What they did is every single door, wall,
table chairs were imported and rebuilt to resemble Maxines in
Paris identically in China. All the waiters, all the people
working there were dressed in tails and tuxedos. They looked

(27:00):
they looked elegant. But before this they were working in fields.
So their ability to get the restaurant running the way
they wanted to was when we were there, still a
work in progress. My favorite of all when it came
to ordering drinks, I ordered a club soda or a
coke or diet coke. At the time, I used to
drink beer because I was afraid of taking ice, so

(27:21):
I drank a lot of beer in those days. Jesse,
you ever known me to drink beer?

Speaker 5 (27:25):
Who is this?

Speaker 3 (27:26):
I have never heard seen you drink beer. The only
thing I've ever seen you drink is zambuca. The thing
with a little is it like a raisin or a
fly in it? I don't know what it is, but
used to drink it.

Speaker 4 (27:36):
No, it's actually coffee beans, so liquor with coffee beans,
an Italian thing. It's delicious. I love it. I have
a bottle in the house, I just don't have a
clue and I even have opened it. But here I
am drinking beer and one of our friends from Hong
Kong orders tea. Now we're in China. Tea in China,
you know it's that thing. Now, there were two types

(27:58):
of tea in the world. In China, when you ordered tea,
you got tea leaves and they poured water over the
tea leaves and what was underneath it was your tea.
And w they served your tea, it had the tea
leaves in it, so the tea leaves would get in
your mouth or you know, you'd have to sip it differently.
So guy orders tea, and there's all kinds of debates
going on in China. What's going on in the restaurant.

(28:19):
Finally the matre d of the restaurant comes in and says,
we have no tea. So my guy says them, what
do you mean no tea? This is China. He says,
we have no tea. What they didn't have with tea bags,
and therefore they wouldn't serve the tea in maxims the
Chinese way. So can you imagine going all the way
to China and find out no tea in China. My

(28:40):
favorite thing with drinking. Do you ever hear a maltai Jesse?
Did you have it when you were in Hong Kong?

Speaker 5 (28:45):
What's maltai now?

Speaker 4 (28:46):
Uh? Well, in my day was the national drink of China.
It's a rice wine and it comes in what looks
like a porcelain chanitor and drum, you know, like an
industrial drum. They leave oil in all those movies in
the United States and the Kill Guy they put him
in a drum. That's what it looked like. It was

(29:07):
white porcelain drunk. If you opened up the cap, the
entire room would smell. It was the most potent thing
in the world. You couldn't drink a tablespoon without getting drunk. Unbelievable.
We used to have designated drinkers because these guys in China,
they were used to going out in parties, taking people out, entertaining.

(29:28):
They seemed to be able to drink this stuff. Either
that or they were pouring it on the floor and
faking us all out. We used to name designated drinkers,
and I can't tell you how many people I carried
out and my associates carried out on nights with the
Chinese and drinking dinner. It was an amazing point of view.
Fortunately for me, I wasn't drinker and I never had
to be a designated drinker. But it really it gave

(29:50):
us camaraderie and the business was friendly when we showed
up the next day to work. Now, as I said before,
I had always been a friend to China. I was
part of the first exploratory group from the company Phillips
Venues and who ventured into China early in the Nixon
opening it up, and we went to Beijing to establish
relations in or pushed a test order and a shirt

(30:12):
factory in Beijing. Now I happened not to be there
on the first trip. The CEO of my company went there,
did all a routine and was given an opportunity to
buy ten thousand dozen dress shirts in China. Now, the
problem was China didn't know how to make our shirts. Now,
don't get me wrong, China has a billion people and

(30:34):
under those mouth suits they're wearing shirts. So they know
how to make shirts, but they weren't familiar with the
international standards. The amount of stitches parents, the amount of buttonholes,
the kinds of collars we needed, the way the seams
down the armhole would be, the fits. They weren't familiar
with any of that, and they needed to learn. They

(30:54):
also needed to learn about dye stuffs. What a dye
stuff the chemicals that are used to dye fabric that
usually comes in white color that needs to be dyed
into colors. And the best way I think any of
you out there would recognize it. You ever see or
hear stories about somebody wearing a red shirt or red
pair of pants and they sit down on a white

(31:15):
couch and ruin it because the dye comes up. China
didn't know how to make dye stuffs that would not
excrete color. They also were making a lot of their
products with lead, and in the United States we learned
that lead could course cancer. We didn't wanted that, so
when we went to China, the first ten thousand dozen
were made in white only. We didn't want to put

(31:37):
our own label in them because we were afraid of
the quality, and the idea would be we'd import them
back into the United States, and if the quality wasn't right,
we'd either sell them an off price to one of
the retails at a crazy price, but not the venuesing label.
We would put the retailer's name in. Whoever that retailer
may be. We called heat ceiling. You take a label

(31:57):
with glue on it, you apply heat and pressure and
it would permanently affix the label inside the collar of
your shirt. The ten thousand shirts came in, the quality
was okay. We didn't put the venues and name. We
put a private label in, sold it to I don't recall,
TJ Max and A Joder. I came in the next time,
and the next time I came was time we were
going to give them the right to make venues and

(32:19):
treach shirts. They were on it. They were thrilled. We
were excited. So I get to China, and in those days,
the head office, the head of the government was in Beijing.
I guess it still is. The way it would work
is we would make manufacture agreements in China with the
idea that they'd give us great prices. You just texted me, Jesse.

Speaker 3 (32:41):
Yeah, it's fine, you can ignore it, Okay, I mean
look at it later, look at it later.

Speaker 4 (32:45):
Okay, we were going to make manufacture agreements in China
and develop the quality that were required for them to
import shirts into the United States and for that matter,
around the world. So let me just see. The good
news is that China knew they needed to learn. They

(33:06):
wanted to become industrialized, they wanted to grow, and they
wanted to learn the right way. They wanted to be
international exporters, and a company like ours that had the
technical know how was more than welcome in China. We
were treated. I can't tell you how nicely they opened
their doors to us, and they made us feel welcome

(33:26):
because actually we're about to teach them. Interesting enough, let
me go into this for my memory for a second.
We were making shirts in the United States, call it
a white dress shirt based out of broadcloth. The price
was probably around one hundred and twenty dollars a dozen
to make those shirts. We also at that point were
importing from Korea at ninety dollars a dozen. We arrived

(33:49):
in China and after explaining what our requirements were, what
the quantities we needed, what the stitching we needed, the details,
all the technical know how, China offers us a price
of thirty six dollars a dozen. Think about that, one
twenty a dozen from US ninet different creator. They offered
us thirty six dollars a dozen without any negotiation. This

(34:11):
is a mind blower. And all the effort, all the time,
we took, all the political trips, all the handshake, all
the bowing, all the engineers, the test order, the technicians,
the marketing people, all the designers. We came to China
to teach them how to make shirts, and the nature
of our relationship is we would get prices and in
turn the engineering know how. We supplied them, including a

(34:35):
market in the United States, with a label that was
considered prestigioes around the world. We gave them the opportunity
to put their label made in China in our shirts.
They're very proud to have these labels. They were very
proud to ship products into the United States. When they did,
they set a whole team of their delegation to walk
in the stores and see Maide in China, in Macy's

(34:56):
or wherever we were shipping it. I'll never forget my
first trip on men In fact, before I go there, though,
I should talk about how you do business at the
rest of the world and compare it to the companies
and the offices who we are in Korea. And by
the way, anybody says we China stole our technology is
not true. We gave it to them gladly in turn

(35:16):
for something we thought was important. Now let's get back
to it. If you would go to Taiwan, to Chahar
or tap in Hong Kong, work with business owners and
companies that wanted to sell your product didn't work the
way it didn't China. In China, you had to go
to a political office, the head of the political office
in Beijing. I'd missed admit when I was there. In
Beijing it was called peaking. They didn't change their name

(35:38):
back to the traditional in China to very few to
a number of years later. Anyway, we met someone from
the head office, we sat down and they would tell
us you're going to make your shirts in Beijing factory
number one. If we'd ask why number one, you wouldn't
get an answer. Is that our only choice no to
have a chance to inspect it before we go there.
We'll let you walk through the factory. You'll be in

(35:59):
the fact factory tomorrow morning at eleven o'clock and we
go to the factory. We knew we're going to the business.
We knew there were negotiations, but there was no negotiations.
Here's the factory, you're going to make it, and here's
the price. So we begin to tour the factory, and
the manager of the factory and is people who take
us around and show us all the operations, answer any questions.
I was accompanied by members of our Hong Kong staff

(36:21):
who spoke Mandarin and they translated between me and them
and what was going on. And one of my first
recollitions was how professional the factory looked. As they said,
China made shirts for a billion people, they just didn't
know how to make them the way international people needed them.
I walked into the finishing area in the Chinese factor.

(36:41):
You know what finishing is just.

Speaker 5 (36:44):
Putting the finishing touches on something.

Speaker 4 (36:48):
Yeah, well, shirt making, it's ironing, Yeah, putting in the
you know, the putting in the cardboard and the collar
under the collar, pinning it, putting it bags. That was
what's considered finishing.

Speaker 3 (37:03):
See that was a better explanation than me. That was
a much better explanation.

Speaker 4 (37:06):
Well, it was more detail. I'd like to think I
know more than you about this. Anyway, I won't argue
with you the lore, so I'll never forget walking down
an aisle in the factory and I had never seen
anything like this aisle before. It was in the finishing department.
I don't know. It's probably about two hundred workers and
one hundred yards On each side of the conveyor belt,
there was a conveyor belt. On each side of the

(37:27):
conveyor belt were these people, and each one of the
people facing the conveyor belt on both sides were Chinese workers.
One of them, all of them had a small Chinese bowl,
a toothbrush, and a bar of soap. And as the
shirt would come around on the conveyor, the various different
workers would pick up a shirt and with their toothbrush

(37:48):
and soap and water, they would carefully take off any
improfessions on the shirt as they passed. I remember leaning
over to my office management. I had an enginey and
I said, what the hell is this about? We never
seen anything like that. I asked them to find out
what were they doing, and interestingly enough, they said, they
have making white shirts and they want them to be perfect.

(38:10):
Interesting they would take out all the dust and the
impurities from the air, particularly white shirts. When we asked
why are they doing this, the manager of the factory said,
we have to keep people employed. China was throwing people
into the process to make sure the quality is even

(38:30):
better than you can imagine at the same time as ours.
They were making shirts that could be better than the
ones who are making in the finest factories in the
United States or anywhere in Hong Kong or industrialized countries.
It was amazing to see, and they were doing it
because they were learning and they wanted to protect their economy.
Many years later, I remember watching an interview with President

(38:53):
Obama at the time, and I think Jing Hun p
I forget his name. I'm sorry, I don't remember it really,
and they were having a conversation. They were talking about
this particular clip that I saw, what keeps you at
wake at night? And Obama then started talking about nuclear
weapons or terrorism, whatever he perceived to be that which

(39:14):
keeped them awake at night, And then he asked the
Chinese premiere what keeps you awake at night? And the
Chinese premier said, I need to find twenty million jobs
every year for my people. So when you look at
the process of the Chinese government, the relationships in China,
the businesses being directed through Beijing head office, when you

(39:36):
look at what took place in China, our relationship was amazing.
We brought technology, we brought them a market. They gave
us amazing prices. They were much less than there were
competitors around the world. That was the nature of China.
I found them to be unique, honest, interesting negotiations. They
knew their guardrails. They always delivered what was promised. We

(39:59):
in turn, were honest, paid our bills in time, never
canceled orders, held defeat to the fire on quality. It
was a wonderful symbionic relationship. We both prosper and as
they learned, our profits increased. Yet back in those days,
when I would come to China, they would call me
a friend in China, and to this date, I look
at China as a friend now. Like I say, it's

(40:24):
not as easy for him to say, because I'm not
a politician. My job was to conduct business and protect
our country's economy and make it work with a foreign
communist country. So I can't make judgments. I can't I
negotiated by company for I negotiate for my company and
for my country. One lesson you learn you grew up

(40:45):
in business. One of the first things they teach you
never discuss politics in business, and particularly in a foreign country.
It just don't work. You never know what your piece
these people are thinking. They're different than you, theresent different thing.
You don't know if they would get in trouble. You
never mingle business with politics. You don't know what to think.

(41:07):
You don't know what you're allowed to say, you don't
know what they're allowed to say. You don't know who's listening.
Just go about your business now. I have been caught
up in some conversations around the world, but I avoided most.
I'll tell you talking politics in a foreign country is dangerous.
It's with foreign people. You have a good idea. Of course,
you're in a diplomatic corps, then you could do it.
You're instructed. No, you need to accomplish. You do not

(41:29):
talk politics. And the reality is the Chinese people are
playing chess. This is my greatest concern. I have nothing
but the highest regard for these people. But as different
as we are, as different as they are, I'm worried

(41:52):
that their chess game is better than ours. I don't
understand why there's so much activity in China. W appear
to be undermining our country when we're such important partners
whatever their long game concerns me because we don't seem
smart enough. Well, kind of like the intouchables when they said,
you bring a knife to a gunfight. We're bringing a
knife to a gunfight. We're fighting a big war here,

(42:14):
a war of brains, and we seem to be underutilized
and out of our league. And my biggest concern, my
biggest concern is Trump. You know, there's starting to be
ramifications to what he's called the trade war. I never
thought of trade being weaponized and using it to stem

(42:36):
the flow of fentanyl, brilliant, using it to get fair trade,
a balance of trade. If we buy a trillion dollars
from China, they should buy a trillion dollars from us.
But at the end of the day, China seems to
be willing to push their plans back by years. They're
acting as a country in a position of strength with

(42:57):
financial resources, and over the last twelve years, I'm wondering,
now that he's woke up our country, are they trying
to ruin his presidency? Are they trying to make it
hard for Donald Trump to be successful? And why would
they do it in a chess game? Because they think
he's strong, they think he's leading the country in a

(43:19):
right direction, and they just don't like what he represents
for China. I don't know any of that to be true.
Our concern is this country that I've worked with, China,
where I only had the highest regard for, is now
fighting a trade war with the United States. I hope
it lasts a minute. I believe we should be making love,

(43:39):
not war, with that back in the minute and will
continue to talk about China always.

Speaker 2 (43:46):
In Fashion, Done a.

Speaker 4 (43:48):
Karen began her career as one of the finest, most successful,
powerful women in the fashion industry. She developed a collection
aimed at the luxury market for women on the go,
women who were powerful in their workplace, women who had
lives that extended beyond the workplace, and her clothes went
from day and tonight. An extraordinary collection. But the interesting

(44:11):
thing Donna Karen had a young daughter, and she had
friends and they couldn't afford to buy the Donna Karon collection,
and Donna invented dk n Y. Donna Aaron, New York
it's an offshoot of the Donna Karen collection, the same
concept a lifestyle brand. Then we talk about lifestyle brands,
What does that really mean? Simply what they say, there
are brands that follow you throughout your lifestyle. You get

(44:34):
up in the morning, you start to get dressed Donna
Karen decaan why as intimate apparel, as hosiery, as all
those products. You're getting dressed for work. You get accessorized shoes, handbags,
and it takes you through the day. The remarkable thing
about DK and y clothes for work they work into
the evening. The dresses, the suits, the pants, the sweaters,

(44:54):
the blouses, extraordinary clothes at affordable prices that go from
day in tonight. Part of your lifestyle is active. You
have weekends, you have events, you participate in sports. Donna
Karen's casual clothes did that under the DK and Y label.
A vast array of casual sportswear that make women look

(45:15):
great as they navigate their busy lives. Whether you going
to soccer games for your children or whether you're going
out to the movies, whatever you want to do, dkn
and Y Jeens dc Y Sportswear is there for you.
That's what a lifestyle brand is. I need to mention
DKY active Wear, which is extraordinary, the leggings, the sports bras,

(45:38):
the sweats. You can wear DKY active Wear certainly in
the gym, certainly when you're working out at home, and
certainly if you want on the street, because it's that
well done. The quality of dk why is nothing short
of exceptional. And why shouldn't it be because it was
born from the idea of luxury made affordable for women

(45:59):
of America. Dkn why a true lifestyle brand that takes
you from day and tonight, from the week into the weekend.
DCN Why. You can find dcnhy and Macy's DKNY dot com.
As one of the world's most celebrated fashion designers, Carl
Lagafeld was renowned for his aspirational and cutting edge approach

(46:20):
to style. His unique vision of Parisian shit comes to
America through car Lagofeld Paris. He has women's collections, men's collections,
ready to wear, accessory, shoes and bags. The fashion house
Carlagofeld also offers a range of watches, I wear and
premium fragrances. You can explore the car lagofl collection at
car Lagofelparis dot com. But it's more than that. I have,

(46:44):
for one, love to shop. I love going around and
seeing what's happening and what catches my attention, what would
make me feel good to wear now. I don't wear
the women's wear obviously, but I can appreciate it, and
they look amazing. If you want to look right, you
want to have closed it fit you well. You want
to look like you're wearing something that's very expensive, that's

(47:05):
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the handbigs and the shoes. I, for one, wear men's clothes,
unlike my appreciation of women's clothes. I'm a modern guy.
I want to look current. I want to look the

(47:27):
way I want to feel. I go out at night,
I'm in black and carlagafelt Is my buddy. Calls are great.
They fit great, and they have little tweaks and touches,
whether it's a stripe on the sleeve or button at
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always had been one of the world's great designers, and
this legacy and goes on and on. I can't speak

(47:50):
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Speaker 1 (48:03):
Welcome back to Always in Fashion.

Speaker 5 (48:05):
Here's your host, Mark webber Tonight.

Speaker 4 (48:08):
I want to make love, not war. In this case
trade wars. I'm concerned about them. Although I do respect
President Trump weaponizing trade, I am concerned that they could
be adverse effects. I'm not saying we should back down.
I think we should talk more. We have to negotiate.
I do not like I do not understand why our

(48:30):
largest trading partner, China and the United States cannot agree
on most things. And I want to talk about right now. Hey, Jesse,
let's talk negotiation. Who wins the negotiation.

Speaker 3 (48:42):
Negotiations can get ugly, both sides will fight it out.
But in any negotiation, you know who wins the side
who has the power to walk away, And.

Speaker 4 (48:53):
That is my concern with these negotiations with China. All
our medicines come from China, so many of our product
come from China. I am not convinced. Here here's a
crazy one we're in. They're always in fashion business. I'm
pretty much convinced without China we would be walking around naked.
I don't think there's enough apparel production in the United
States or from all the other countries that we buy

(49:15):
from to keep us all closed for a year.

Speaker 3 (49:17):
Well, where we going to make iPhones, iPads, tablets, laptops?
Do we even have the ability to do that work?
Silicon Valley? Do we have the ability to manufacture that
here in the United States?

Speaker 5 (49:26):
I don't think so.

Speaker 3 (49:27):
And by the way, you know there's talk about if
they're significant tartts. It was ten percent on China. Right
now are the American companies, like tech companies that are
just going to eat the cost of it? But then
it's going to go down to the workers, right Their
incomes are not gonna They're going to be not paid
as much, and then I think everybody's going to feel
the effects of it.

Speaker 5 (49:46):
So I'm a little concerned. Are you a little concerned?

Speaker 4 (49:50):
No, I'm not worried about the cost of doing business
or the price of poker. That is a fact of life.
If we raised China by ten percent and they raise
us by ten percent, that's all well and good. But
now I read the other day that in China they're
now doing an exposy on Google. They don't like the
way Google conducts themselves. That is dangerous. And this week

(50:12):
a Reuter came out with an article regarding Calvin Klein
some other company. I don't know, but I want to
play it for you the article I hadn't read and
listen to what it's saying.

Speaker 2 (50:22):
China plays Calvin Klein owner PVH Corporation and US gene
sequencing company Ilumina Incorporated to a so called blacklist of
entities among a series of retaliatory actions after new tariffs
ordered by President Donald Trump took effect Tuesday, The Ministry
of Commerce said that PVH and Alumna infringed on the
principles of market transactions and undertook damaging actions against Chinese companies,

(50:45):
without elaborating. PVH is also the parent company of the
Tommy Hilfiger brand and has been under Chinese regulatory investments
since September for allegedly boycotting cotton from the Shinjiang region,
though the statement did not mention the issue. Illumina is
the leading global of genetic sequencing and arrival to Chinese
biotech giant BGI Genomics company.

Speaker 4 (51:06):
This is basically saying, if I'm not mistaken, six percent
of Calvin Klein's operational income comes from China, but in
the seventy or eighty percent of their products are being
manufactured in China. If China wants to cut off Calvin Klein,
they can do that tomorrow. In fact, Calvin Klein stock

(51:28):
has tanked since this stuff has gone on, since we
put the embargo in. I didn't anticipate that kind of
retaliatory action. I thought it would be just dollars and cents.
I don't know whether President Trump felt it would be
just dollars and cents. I didn't know they were going
to attack companies and perhaps put us out of business

(51:49):
because of this trade embargo. Now, having said that Calvin
Klein in particulars is getting involved with the laws of
the land in China, you were heard in that article
they refused to buy cotton in that territory. Once again,
if my memory serves me right. That territory in China
employs prison workers. They make people who are working in

(52:12):
prisons work in the factories without getting paid. And I
think that's against our rules or our laws. Jesse, do
you know if that's illegal here?

Speaker 5 (52:21):
Ah, no idea. I was sick that day in law school.

Speaker 4 (52:25):
Well, I would assume in the United States it's against
the law. I believe our prisoners make money on whatever
the jobs they're assigned to, But in China they don't
feel the need to. And here's the tricky port. Are
we in a position to tell China what's right for
China let alone? Would they even listen to us if
we went in in the beginning and said, we want
to buy China's products, but if they have slave labor

(52:49):
or which that was, I guess what they're referring to,
the prison labor, We're not going to buy. So you
don't put us in those factories. But it's after the fact.
I've learned a great lesson. I have a great story
for you. A couple of them actually Bangladesh. Bangladesh had
a problem, a lot of street gangs, a lot of
learned children. There's not enough schools, not enough daycare, and

(53:12):
not enough places for them to be without getting in trouble.
So young kids, boys in particular, whatever school ended, their
parents were working or there's no school, they're running around
the streets. They're getting into trouble, lots of trouble. So
a lot of Bangladesh parents wanted to bring their children
to work. They would come to work, they would work

(53:34):
right next to the mother. They would make money to help
the family live because they weren't making enough money to
get by. So the children were working. But the most
important part, the children weren't getting into trouble. They were
not on the streets running around with gangs. It is
against our policies as a country to work with factories

(53:54):
that employ child labor. Now here's the question, what do
we know about what's going on in Bangladesh? Are we
helping them are hurting them? If the mother is involved
and she's made the decision, of the fathers involved and
they made the decision, is it right to impose our
will on the Bangladesh people. I always agree to it
because that's the rules that are established in the United States,

(54:16):
But there are questions about telling people in foreign countries
how to work. That was a great thing. We made
a stand that everyone in Asia deserve to be paid
for overtime. But what would happen at the critical months
before Easter, before Christmas? These people had to work overtime,
and they were forced to work overtime even though it's
against our rules, and we were left for the quandary,

(54:38):
do you want the products you're bought or not? And
no matter whether they said it or not, no matter
whether they agree it or not, an awful lot of
factories are running two sets of books, one showing those
people getting paid and the other not. I have no
idea what happened, but it just goes to show you
how you tricky it is to get involved in foreign
labor camps. I'm concerned for Calvin Klein, concerned for our countries.

(55:01):
I'm concerned for all these things. It's a mess. I
don't think Donald Trump has done anything wrong. I believe
that behind the scenes they're talking. But before it gets
too out of hand, there's a lot of things that
have to go on. China, like them or love them,
they have a country to run. They want to keep
their people employed. You know the one thing I learned

(55:22):
traveling all around the world, Well, I said before you
never discussed politics. You can talk to people about being people.
And the one thing I learned no matter what country
I was ever in, whether it's in Paris or Taiwan, Korea, Bangladesh, Indonesia,
Hong Kong, China, Macau, you name it,