7-29-25 - 8am - Trump EU Trade

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey, Michael, I was just calling to postulate that the
continued propagation of climate propaganda has now effectively demoralized three
generations of people in our country, resulting in a population
that has a hard time sniffing out BSh.

Speaker 2 (00:22):
And I think that applies to a whole lot of
these in the civilization stories that we're told about, all
these apocalyptic things, you know, climate change and overpopulation, and
you know our food and blah blah blah blah blah blah.
Peak oil, peak oil. Yeah, we've reached peak oil a

(00:43):
dozen times now, and it really does become at some
point truly absurd. It's just absurd. I want to talk
about Trump's I finally spent some time yesterday digging through
Trump's EU agreement, but before we do, speaking of things

(01:05):
that I find hard to believe, except I don't. I
don't get me wrong, I still tip, however, I am
you know I was. I was opposed the idea of
no taxes on tips. Why why should why should that

(01:28):
particular industry other than that's an industry that Trump has
a lot of experience in. Why should they be exempt
from income taxes on the money that they earn? It's
not a gift, it's not alone, it's income. I don't

(01:50):
care how And in fact, I think the very first
time I talked about my attitude about tips, I sided
and I don't remember what it was now, but there
is there. There is a portion of the Internal Revenue
Code that defines tips as income. So if that's income,
that's no different than the income that Dragon and I earn,

(02:11):
except that it's ten times more than what we earned.
Then why should it be exempt from taxation? Why it
has caused me although I've not done it because I
just I can't bring myself to do it. But I
want to say to a restaurant owner that, hey, they're

(02:35):
no longer paying taxes on tips, So I think I
will reduce my tip by you know, a you know,
fourteen percent, you know whatever, or ten percent or whatever
twenty percent would be. I'm going to reduce it by

(02:55):
that amount, by reduce it by the amount that they're
no longer paying income tax on on that I am
paying income tax on. I haven't now bring myself to
do that yet, I guess because I still have empathy
for those who in the service industries who rely on
tips for their income. But then I get pissed off

(03:15):
at the owners for not recognizing that. Why don't we
just stop this whole charade. I would rather, you know,
I'd rather adopt the European model, where you walk into
a restaurant, the price you pay includes the cost of
paying everybody, the bussers and the waiters and the cooks

(03:38):
and the chefs and the sioux chefs and everybody else
that meal. The price of that meal, the dessert, the entrees,
the appetizers, the wine, whatever it is, that is all
included in the price that you pay for those items.
So the general rule of thumb in European countries is

(04:02):
you might leave for exceptional service. You might leave a
few euros. You might leave a couple of bucks, just
as a as a gesture, not as income, but as
a gesture. Hey, I recognize that you went above and
beyond the call of duty. But we're I don't guess
we're ever gonna get get around that. And then Dragon

(04:26):
walks in here and he throws this stupid story which
I I don't know what this. He has no idea
what bro bible. It's a website. It's one of the
websites you look at. No, it's a the aggregate that
I will go to. It's an aggregate to a lot
of that stuff. Okay, all right, but you did and

(04:49):
again you didn't read the story, of course, not okay,
all right, well, here here's the here's the story. By
the way, it kepts from Tampa. Maybe this maybe this
happened because the woman was suffering from heat exhaustion because
she was out at the end of the runway and
between the exhausts from the jet A and the heat

(05:11):
and the temperature and everything else, maybe she just didn't
understand what was going on. Maybe she was crazy. In
a video with more than twenty four thousand views, it's
a TikTok obviously, someone by the name of Jennis Kathy
Jennis shows what appears to be a basket for cash
tips at a United States Postal Service location. The basket

(05:34):
already had a sizeable amount of bills, she writes in
the caption, tiging the official account for USPS. Is this
the new normal? A tip jar? The tip collection trade
looks unofficial, likely for good reason. As it turns out,
USPS workers are explicitly forbidden from collecting tips according to

(05:56):
their employee tipping in gift receiving policy, all postal employees
are forbidden from accepting cash and cash equivalents such as
checks or gift cards that can be exchanged for cash
in any amount. So, if you want to do something
for your mail carrier you're a post office worker, they're

(06:17):
still allowed. You're still allowed to give them a gift,
provided it's worth worth less than twenty dollars and that
some total of gifts from a single person does not
exceed fifty dollars per year. Who's counting that? Who's keeping
track of that? The postal worker clearly Isn't you think
the IRS is spending time to wait a minute on

(06:38):
your line. Here it shows that you gave you gave
more than fifty dollars a year to a postal worker
at the USPS station. Did you really do that? The
Postal Service says she's concerned about this. She can report
the issue either to the location's postmaster or to the
US Postal Service Office of Inspector General. But in the

(07:00):
comments section, this is the best part. Users were shocked
by the presence of a tip jar and a post office.
Many said they wouldn't even consider typing a postal worker.
Wrote a user, I ain't tipping nole government worker added another,
I work for USPS. Please tell me where this is
so I can report them. There is so much wrong here.

(07:21):
They aren't supposed to have all those hand type signs
everywhere either another. It's a fireable offense. Government employees are
not allowed to accept gifts of any kind, including tips.
It's part of the ethics training. We take our first weekend,
and then you take it your first weekend, and then
you become a lifer, and thirty years later you're supposed
to remember what you took in your ethics class thirty

(07:44):
years ago. In an email to this website, a spokesperson
for the USPS shared the following. As an added convenience
to its customers, the Postal Service offers contract postal units
around the nation, which can provide communities with additional access
to some postal services. We have one of those in
the Highlands. Rants it's a gift shop. I often go

(08:07):
there if I if I've got to mail a package
right and I need a receipt for it, or I'm
sending something that I need to receipt for, I'll go
to that little uh what do they call it? A
contract postal unit? This CPU. However, these CPUs are independent businesses,
not directly operator, but postal service. The location in question

(08:28):
is one type business, and apparently they can take a tip.
Would you tip if you could? And are you irritated
about the no tax on tips? As I am? Are
you tell me why or why not? I'm still Don't
get me wrong, I'm still tipping. Don't think I'm being

(08:50):
a complete a hole. I mean, I may be one,
but I'm not a complete one. I'm only ninety nine
point nine a hole. I actually so yesterday reading through
everything every story I could possibly find about the EU
trade deal. It really is one sided, and I think

(09:14):
it shows that Trump has all the leverage in these deals,
the trade deal, that Trump just stuck with the leader
of the EU ursulevander Lean. I think we ought to
recognize that. It's another what has become a long line
of reminders that in these negotiations, it seems Trump must

(09:35):
hell he's holding all the cards. Remember when remember when
he told Zelenski, uh one, we're not playing cards, and
you don't hold any cards. There may be some truth
to that, but in a much larger sense, Trump, at
least by this account, he does hold the card. Every

(10:01):
bit of the leverage is his, and I think he
understands that reality, and unlike every president before him, he's
actually willing to use that leverage to advance the interest
of this country and not to advance the interests of
anybody else. You want to advance your interests, didn't sit
down and talk about it, But my country comes first. Wow.

(10:25):
I just find that amazing. Now that's not to say
that well, with maybe the exception of Barack Obama or
maybe whoever is running the presidency during Joe Biden's years,
I don't think those presidents were unpatriotic. They didn't want to,
like Obama fundamentally transformed this country into a Marxist universe.
But I do think they were paid. I think they

(10:47):
loved the country, but I don't think that they were
necessarily willing to. Okay, sit down, here's the deal, and
this has got to be in. This has got to
when we put it on the scales of justice, when
we weigh the balance, it's going to be in favor
of the United States. So I think that so far,

(11:09):
based on more than any of the deals with other
countries around the world which have now proceeded, this particular deal.
It serves as the ideological center of the globalist world
order that the EU does. It symbolizes the reality that
globalism is either dead or dying. The remember the New

(11:31):
World Order envisioned and implemented by George HW. Bush Bush
forty one and then advanced for more than thirty years
by successors. It is probably now defunct. The world order
which I've talked a lot about, which has dominated globe
since the fall of the Soviet Union. I mean this
don't go as far back as World War Two, but

(11:52):
since the fall of the Soviet Union is now giving
way to some sort of pragmatic realism that every country
which makes or produces good for exports have got to
have access to one consumer market more than any other
if that country exporting some widget wants to grow and prosper,

(12:13):
and that market happens to be the United States. We've
always described ourselves we know we're a consumer economy. Well
now we are the consumer economy. And so some of
those countries that are led actually by authoritarian despots, you know,
you think Brazil or South Africa, Egypt, they've been penning

(12:37):
all of their hopes for growth on membership, say in
in bricks in that trading block, which did become a
rising force in the global stage during the years of
Biden's whatever that was for that four years. But now
if you really look at bricks, it's fading as a
factor as Biden's bumbling fieldy to taking orders from the

(12:59):
United Namesations in the World Economic Forum and the EU
is now being replaced by Trump's willingness to leverage our
economic power to our benefit. He only had a footnote
here real quickly, and actually I fell asleep, so I
didn't I've got to go back and listen to it again.

(13:20):
But she Jing Ping, you know, they're congress, the Politburea
Congress is meeting again in August, do you know. I
think there's a fifty to fifty chance that sheiging Ping
may not survive that that party leaders have seen what
he's done to their economy, and they've seen what he's

(13:43):
done to the Communist Party, and I think there's a
good chance that he may be maybe not disappeared, but
may certainly be thrown out as the party chairman of
the party leader. I only say that because that might
be why we don't have a deal with China yet,
Because this one authority, which I've cited before on this program,

(14:09):
has basically said that the party leadership has taken over
most of the decision making and that Eugen Ping has
in essence become a figurehead, and that may be why
we don't have a deal with China yet. So anyway
back to Trump's leverage. So if well the thing about

(14:31):
NATO for a second, NATO realized that they had walked
into a brick wall. That Trump was adamant, You've got
to increase your contributions to NATO. You've got to get up.
This one point five percent of your GDP is just
not going to cut it anymore. And if you're so
adamant about you know, ending the war in Ukraine, or

(14:51):
you know, defeating the Russians or however you want to phrase,
whatever victory looks like for you in the Ukraine Russian war,
if NATO, if that's what you want, then you're gonna
have to pony up too. So they NATO was that
first kind of crack in in the dam, and they

(15:12):
realize that we've met this immovable force, and if we
want to accomplish what we want to accomplish, and we
if we want to hold the alliance together. We got
to play by his rules. That's Utsbau. That's really on
the part of Trump, it is, that's really Hootsba. So
now EU, the European Union, faced with the same new

(15:38):
Trump driven paradigm Vanderland and the you had a really
stark yet clear choice in front of them. Either concede
the Trump's demands in order to maain access to our markets,
or bear the brunt of Trump's retaliatory tariffs and watch
they're already struggling economies collapse. I think Trump see ease

(16:01):
on a larger scale, something that I'm not comparing myself
to Trump here, but I've talked about how there's this
worldwide international tetering. Every country in the world is riddled
with debt. The entire earth is covered with debt, and

(16:22):
at some point that's going to have to be dealt with.
And I think that that's one reason why the European
economies are struggling, in addition to the obvious others, all
of the mass illegal immigration, all of their social welfare systems,
and the strain that illegal immigration has put on those systems. Yeah,
it may work in a tiny country like Denmark or Norway,

(16:45):
but then when you start having an influx of millions
of people from third world countries who have no intention
whatsoever ever becoming productive citizens, but instead just want to
live off that government social welfare program, eventually it's going
to start collapsing under its own weight. And I think
that's one of the reasons, one of the many reasons
why that these European countries are struggling. So in terms

(17:10):
of a timeline, Vanderlin, the President of the EU, I
think she held out for as long as she could,
but then she really didn't have any choice at all.
And so the one sided deal got agreed to, with
Vonderle and doing her best to keep a you know,
a smile on her face as she shook Trump's hand

(17:31):
to seal it. Now, just to give you a hint
of where I'm going. Once I finished describing what the
EU trade agreement is, Trump did something at that announcement.
It's I may not play the full four minutes, but
he lectured EU about something that he's putting an end

(17:55):
to in this country. And I think for him to
I know, I'm bearing the lead here and I'm doing
it on a purpose. Well, no, I won't wind energy
when you look at the German economy and how it's collapsing. Well,
one of the additional reasons, in addition to mass migration,

(18:16):
all the illegal immigration, is also they're killing off of
all their nukes and going to green you know, renewables,
and they're finding out that doesn't work. So let me
give you the main details of the agreement and see
if you don't recognize that this is pretty one sided.

Speaker 3 (18:36):
Hey, Michael, I know this is off subject, but I
just heard on the hourly news that they're putting more
sanctions on Russia if they don't come to the table. However,
I don't think we should be putting more sanctions on
Russia because they're dealing with China. We should be putting
sanctions on China and punishing China for doing business with Russia.

(18:59):
That's the only way this is going to stop. Have
a good one.

Speaker 2 (19:05):
I'm not sure I agree with that, but you're right,
topic for another day. Maybe some of you are new here.
I just read through the text line. I think I've
made it abundantly clear that I am adamantly opposed to

(19:29):
the income tax. I think it is immoral to be
taxing one's labor. Now if you want to tax my consumption.
If you want to impose and I'm not talking about
a value added tax of a tax, but I'm talking
about like a national sales tax, then that gives me

(19:50):
control over how much tax I pay. I can choose
to buy the brand name Canada porkin beans or the
generic brand of porkin beans, and while that may be
a small delta between the price, nonetheless that affects how
much sales tax I pay. Or I may decide instead

(20:13):
of buying a new car, maybe I want to buy
a used car, or maybe I don't want to buy
a car at all because I don't want to pay
the sales tax. Or when it comes to buying a
new refrigerator, instead of buying a new one, you know,
from whatever, maybe they've got one excuse, got the dent
on the back side, and it's you know, forty percent off. Well,

(20:34):
that sales me on sales tax, I'm in control. Whereas
here the the payroll taxes and the income taxes are
all absolutely immoral in my opinion. So don't at me
about income taxes. I've made that abundantly clear. I'm talking

(20:56):
about no income and I went, maybe maybe you didn't
hear it, but when the UH three B, when the
ob cubed bill, had to think of what it was.
When the ob Cube Bill was passed, I went through
it extensively, went through it and explained that this is

(21:18):
not what you think it is in terms of no
taxes on tips. It is not what you think it
is about no taxes on overtime, and it's certainly not
what you think it is. In fact, I heard Trump
use the other day no taxes on social Security. I
throw the BS flag on that because I've read through
the bill, and and for those of you who think

(21:40):
that you're not going to pay taxes on tips, well
you're going to be in for a shock when you
realize that one there, there's there's a there's caps on that,
and there's also a time limit on that. And what
is given today is going to be taken away tomorrow.
The same is true with overtime. And in so far

(22:01):
as no taxes on Social Security, that's total bull crap. Oh,
let's just putts around with the brackets a little bit,
and so maybe a few people will have either maybe
they won't have any income tax. If you're in the
lowest of the low brackets and that's your sole source
of income. Then you may get by with NOE not

(22:21):
paying income taxes on Social Security, but otherwise you're just
gonna have to pay. You'll still pay, but it might
be a reduced amount. So don't be adding at me
on the text line about well, I totally disagree about
an income tax with all. No, you just haven't been
listening or you don't remember, because I'm adamantly opposed to
income tax. So back to this detail of the agreement

(22:45):
with the EU. So here's the tariff structure. We're going
to impose a fifteen percent baseline tariff on almost every
EU good that comes into the United States. Automobiles, pharmaceuticals, semiconductors,
you name it. Fifteen percent tariff. Now that's a reduction
from the thirty percent tariff that he was threatening back

(23:05):
at the first of the month, but it's higher than
the ten percent that the EU wanted to get. Now,
there are some exceptions. Tariffs will be reduced to zero
percent on some very specific items aircraft plane parts, certain chemicals,
certain generic drugs, some semiconductory equipment, and some ag products

(23:30):
steel and aluminum. A fifty percent tariff will stay in
place on EU steel and aluminum exports to this country,
though the President of the EU is suggesting, maybe hoping,
that those could be replaced with a quota system, pending

(23:51):
some further negotiations maybe, so you know, whether it's a
quota or a tariff. Either way, Trump's going to look
at it and say, what's the bottom line. Pharmaceuticals. There's
some clarifications about pharmaceuticals. Initially Trump said that pharmaceuticals would
be exempt from the fifteen percent tariff, but it's been

(24:15):
confirmed best I can ascertain that there will be a
fifteen percent tariff on pharmaceuticals coming into the country from
from Europe. There are a couple of unresolved sectors wine
from the EU spirits that's not clear yet, so those

(24:36):
discussions are still ongoing. But here's what. The EU agreed
to to invest an additional six hundred billion dollars in
our economy above the current level and in two particular
areas pharmaceuticals and automobiles, so BMW for example. And to

(25:00):
avoid teriffs. You're not only going to have to build them,
but you're going to according to the EU, you're going
to I'm just picking the BMW randomly because I drive
a BMW, you're going to be part of that six
hundred billion dollar investment, which means you're going to expand

(25:22):
either your assembly or your manufacturing in this country. In
addition to that six hundred billion dollar investment, the EU
has agreed to purchase at least a quarter of a
trillion dollars of our energy. Now. I love that primarily
because it helps our energy sector, but it also helps

(25:47):
stabilize and provide additional national security to the EU. Get
them off this stupid green renewable energy crap that they're doing.
They've agreed to buy a certain amount of military equipment
from US, and the EU will provide zero tariffs on
our goods entering the EU because they want to open

(26:11):
markets for US exports. And they have agreed to address
our trade deficit, which for last year was two hundred
and thirty five billion dollars. So yeah, fairly one sided
in my opinion, but good for US. Now they agree
to lower non tariff barriers for our autos some of

(26:33):
our agg products. Those details are still being worked out.
We drop demands for concessions on EU tech industry regulations
and food standards, which the EU said is non negotiable.
So meta, Facebook, Instagram, x Musk, all of you, those

(26:55):
industry regulations stay in place, so you're on your own.
You've got to go fight those yourself. And I'm okay
with that. I still believe that those regulations are anti
free speech. I think those are authoritarian measures, and I
think they're certainly going to lead to some probably arrests,

(27:19):
some fines, and some stifling of descent in the EU,
which I'm adamantly opposed to. But if that's non negotiable
for them, we got the other stuff. Doesn't mean that
we can't help those companies fight those regulations. So the
whole purpose is, the way I see it is they're

(27:41):
trying to rebalance trade while trying to keep the trade
flowing to support jobs and prosperity on both sides of
the Atlantic. And it does avoid a trade war which
could have resulted in the EU putting retaliatory tariffs on
our goods like aircraft's otto, soy beeing, bourbon blah blahah blah.

(28:02):
Now there's still some stuff that they haven't worked out.
This is a preliminary framework, it's not a comprehensive trade deal.
Still a lot of details to work out, including some
sectorial tariffs and some non tariff barriers. The EU wants
a written agreement quickly because they don't want many any misinterpretations,
and I think they don't want anything like what Japan

(28:27):
has done. They want to get their deal signed, sealed,
and delivered. Interestingly, there are already dozens of lawsuits that
questioned Trump's authority to impose these tariffs without congressional consent. Now,
I happen to fall on the side of if this

(28:49):
is if we're in a trade war or we're about
to enter a trade war, I think the executive has
the authority to sit down and negotiate these deals with
a foreign country in order to avert a trade deal.
The reaction has been pretty good. Georgia Maloney in Italy,

(29:12):
Mertz in Germany. They welcome the deal because they didn't
want a trade war. Ireland's Prime minister loves the predictability.
The French prime minister, not Macron, the prime minister. He's upset.
Of course, the French are upset. We saved their asses
in World War Two. We're never going to let them

(29:33):
forget that. That's why we have cemeteries there. They called
the deal a dark day for the EU. They said,
it's a dark day when an alliance of free peoples
brought together to affirm their common values and to defend
their common interests, resigns itself to submission. Well, you should
have thought about that before you submitted yourself and your

(29:53):
own country sovereignty to the European Union. That's who we
have to deal with. Yes, that's who we've got to
deal with. So sucks to be you, But you shouldn't
have joined the EU to begin with. Now. Negotiating favorable
deals like this and the others that Trump has gotten

(30:15):
in recent months, I think has always been possible, something
I think any of the post World War two predecessors
in office probably could have achieved. I think the difference
now is that we finally have a US president with
the necessary skill set, the willingness to leverage, the fact

(30:37):
that he holds the cards, and that he is again,
as I said on X last night, personnel equals policy.
People equals policy, And I think Trump's got the right
people in place. Trade secretary, the trade representative, Commerce secretary,
the Treasury secretary. He's got the right people in place

(30:58):
that share the same agenda bingo personnel equals.

Speaker 4 (31:03):
Policy Michaels, speaking of doing less? How much less can
a city, county, or state employee do and still be
considered on the job. Colorful, Colorado living behind Polus's iron curtain.

Speaker 2 (31:22):
Comey, Colorado, living behind Bullets's iron curtain. I want to
address a text message because I think it's a maybe
you weren't serious when you ask you, but I think
it's I think it's an excellent question. Fifteen seventy three,
White Rights Mike, with regard to the caps and the
time limits on like no taxes and tips nor time,
et cetera. Why do they have to put caps in

(31:44):
time limits? There should be no limits. It should be permanent. Here,
don't shoot the messenger. I'm just telling you why they
do it. It all has to do with scoring the budget,
with calculating the costs of no tax on tips in
the context of the entirety of the cost of the
entire bill. So if you make it permanent, then that

(32:10):
cost gets carried over into the calculation of the budget
deficit for eternity for a ten year period or longer.
So they cut it off so they can say, instead
of no taxes on tips and I'm just gonna pull
some numbers out of my butt. You have no relation
to reality whatsoever. I don't think unless my butt smarter

(32:30):
than I think it is. If no taxes on tips
permanently costs a trillion dollars, why that's going to just
blow up the deficit. But if you reduce it and say, oh,
we're only going to do no taxes on tips for
the next two years, that's only a billion dollars. Well,

(32:51):
now you've got a number that you can get more
Senators and congressmen to vote for, and when the CBO
scores the budget, then it's not nearly as devastating. So
they use all of those kind of manipulations for everything
in the button, not just the no tax stuff, but
for every spending bill. That's what they do for every

(33:16):
cut that they make. They may say, for example, I've
told you that a lot of these cuts for the
Green New Deal crap. The ugly truth that they didn't
tell you is some of those don't. Some do start immediately.
Some of those cuts are immediate, others are phased in. Well,

(33:36):
why would you do that, Well, because some of that
money's already been appropriated and authorized and appropriated so some
of it's already in treasury going out the door, and
they don't want to have the fight. And they, you know,
they got some congressman and some it could be a
Republican some Republican congressman that's getting some you know, one

(33:56):
hundred million dollar grant project for some green New Deal project,
and he doesn't want to lose that, and so in
exchange for his vote for the rest of the bill,
they allow that to get phased in. You don't want
to watch the sausage being made because it's ugly, really ugly.

(34:18):
I've watched it. I've been in that gristmill and it's
pretty nasty. And so that's why you have caps and
time limits, and I agree there shouldn't be any, but
unfortunately there is. They don't have time to get this
except to tell you that I've not seen this story
anywhere else but dragging through it on my console this morning,

(34:42):
and it comes from Westward. Of all places, monthly inflation
in Denver, guess what, We're in the top ten. We're
at number seven at two point inflation. Consumer price index

(35:03):
changed last month versus one year ago, up two point
two percent. Wow, way to go, Devin. I graduated,