9-17-24 - 9am - The Use of Tariffs

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Michael, did you know that under the Uniform Code of
Military Justice, a commissioned officer cannot use contemptuous words against
the vice president of the United States. However, under Article
eighty eight, a commissioned officer can use contemptuous words against
a candidate for president for the United States. This is
all too confusing, and you need to be a lawyer
to understand. So I'll leave it to you to do

(00:22):
all the speaking and the contemptuous word using.

Speaker 2 (00:26):
Well, but what I'll need is the contemptuous words that
you would like to use, since you're trying to outlawyer me.
I need your contemptuous words, and then I'll put them
in a sentence for you, or a paragraph, or a
novel or a novella, whatever you know, whatever you want,

(00:47):
or nutella if you want nutella too, I could do
it Nutella. I speak all sorts of jams. Due tell
a strawberry, cherry like cherry, raspberry.

Speaker 3 (00:57):
Grapes, the best grapes, the best?

Speaker 2 (01:01):
Do you think so?

Speaker 3 (01:02):
Yes? Very much?

Speaker 1 (01:03):
So?

Speaker 2 (01:05):
What's the Oh? Look, we had the new deep details
on suspect in apparent Trump assassination attempt. Hmm, Well, who'd
have thought it? Rhetoric blame game after second Trump Trump
plot foiled, Trump plot foiled. M Kamala Harris is going
to the National Association of Black Journalists.

Speaker 3 (01:30):
Non convention because she was invited a while back, so
and she didn't go.

Speaker 2 (01:34):
To that one. But now they're going to have like
a little like a high t or something, and they're
gonna sit around a little Kumbayau.

Speaker 4 (01:41):
Moment or something, cucumber sandwiches, some avocado toast.

Speaker 2 (01:56):
Uh. You know, I had plenty of time to think
about this, and of course I didn't because I was
got caught by a salesperson. So I was still busy talking
to a salesperson. Let's do this. Let's before we go
to the Senate races because of the trend lines. Let's
go to where do my bookmarks disappear to? Let's go

(02:17):
to this explanation of Trump's use of tariffs, because when
it comes to working class blue collar workers, tariffs may
you may think, oh, wait a minute, that's gonna that's
gonna increase the cost of everything that I buy because

(02:39):
everything we buy comes from China. Right, This is probably
the best explanation that I've heard. Howard Lutnik, who is
the chair of the Trump transition team said this on
CNBC yesterday.

Speaker 3 (02:56):
When you talked to the president former president about tariffs,
do you see it as a bargaining tip or if
you think you're going to see tariffs across the board
of twenty percent?

Speaker 5 (03:06):
I think we should put tariffs on stuff we make
and not put tariffs on stuff we don't make. It's
pretty simple, and of course it's a bargaining ship. We
can sell a Ford or GM in Europe.

Speaker 2 (03:20):
They go to Europe, you.

Speaker 3 (03:20):
Can't sell afford a GM.

Speaker 5 (03:22):
Why there's one hundred percent tariffs? How about in Japan?
One hundred percent tariffs? So do you think if we
said we're going to tariffy you the way you terrify us?
Do you think they're going to allow Mercedes and all
these Japanese companies and Porsches and BMW's. It's all of
a sudden, I have one hundred percent tariffs in America.

Speaker 3 (03:41):
Of course not.

Speaker 5 (03:42):
They're going to come and negotiate and their tariffs are
gonna come down, and finally Ford and General Motors are
going to be able to sell in these places.

Speaker 3 (03:50):
How does that sound?

Speaker 5 (03:51):
Of course they're going to come down. Of course, this
is just negotiately. It absolutely makes sense if you do
it strategically. If it's across the board, it creates a
real problem.

Speaker 3 (04:01):
And the question is whether you believe the President is
going to.

Speaker 5 (04:03):
Do it strategically or across the board.

Speaker 3 (04:05):
He keeps saying it across the board.

Speaker 5 (04:08):
Well, when you're running for office, you make broad statements
that people understand it. Okay, tariffs are an amazing tool
by the president to use. They're an amazing tool. But
he understands. Don't tariff's stuff we don't make. Right, if
we don't make it and you want to buy it,
I don't want to put the price up there, it's pointless.
But use tariffs to build in American if we want

(04:30):
to make it in America tariffic or if we're competing
with the TARFFID.

Speaker 2 (04:34):
But you got to remember, we need.

Speaker 5 (04:35):
To protect the American worker. Finally someone's going to protect
the American worker. And Donald Trump is here.

Speaker 6 (04:40):
To protect the American and we're a lot of money
on tariffs or if they're used as negotiating tactics. Look,
tariffs will come down there. We're not going to have
super high tariffs here either. There's not gonna be a
big pot of money at the end.

Speaker 5 (04:51):
I love that story. So which is it, do we
make a lot of money on tariffs? Or we bring
productivity here and we drive.

Speaker 2 (04:59):
Up our our workers here. So it's a see. I
think he misses one point right there, and that is
you know how you how you reduce the deficit. Not
only do you cut spending, which they seem completely incapable
of doing, but you create more taxpayers, or you increase

(05:21):
the amount of income that people are making so they
pay more money in taxes. What he's saying right there
is incredibly important.

Speaker 6 (05:30):
Money in tariffs or if they're used as negotiating tactics. Look,
tariffs will come down there. We're not going to have
super high tariffs here either. There's not gonna be a
big pot of money at the end.

Speaker 2 (05:39):
I love that stress.

Speaker 5 (05:40):
Which is it, do we make a lot of money
on tires? Or can we bring productivity here and we
drive up.

Speaker 2 (05:48):
Our workers here? So we bring product we bring productivity
back here. We increase productivity here so we can start
selling for GM whatever it might be in those other countries,
which means there's more job. There are more jobs, there's
more work for American auto workers. That's how you strategically

(06:11):
use tariffs and whether you get a pot of money
from the tariffs or you increase the demand for those
workers and the products they make that increases revenue. Now,
if we just to keep the drunken sailors from spending
the money, we could actually crawl our way out of this.

(06:33):
It's a win win scenario. I like both of them.

Speaker 5 (06:36):
I think what's going to happen is we'll make a
bunch of money monotabs, but mostly because everybody else is
going to negotiate with us and we will be more fair.
In nineteen forty eight, right, we came up with something called.

Speaker 2 (06:49):
The Marshall Plan.

Speaker 5 (06:50):
Right the world that Germany and Japan were destroyed after
World War Two, and we wanted to export our economy
to them. So we made a rule they tariff us,
and we won't tariff them.

Speaker 2 (07:03):
So they can rebuild.

Speaker 6 (07:04):
This explanation I've heard of, so.

Speaker 5 (07:05):
They can rebuild their economy. We rebuild their economy using
something called the Marshall Plan. Our economy is so awesome
that we'll use it to help you rebuild. When should
that have ended? What do you think? Nineteen eighty right,
nineteen eighty five? I mean, why forty years are Japan
and Germany and all of Europe still tariffing the heck

(07:28):
out of our auto industry, tariffing the heck out of
our furniture industry. Do you realize all your furniture you're
buying that's made foreign?

Speaker 2 (07:35):
It seems crazy.

Speaker 5 (07:36):
Why because they tariff us and we don't tariff them.

Speaker 2 (07:41):
It's so obvious, pretty good explanation. So if if blue collar,
hardworking Americans understand that when Trump talks about tariffs, it's
all in term of a larger strategy of increasing the

(08:04):
demand for their skills, for their products, and that means
higher wages, that means more jobs, that means more productivity,
and from my point of view, not only is that good,
but also means that we have more taxpayers, and we
have more taxes that we can actually use to either
pay down the deficit, pay down the debt, or salvage

(08:28):
Social Security or salvage Medicare or whatever, or build a wall.
I mean, there's any brazillion number of things we could
be doing. I think that's why this particular group of
voters is so important and so overlooked. So in the
last hour, we went through at the presidential level. Well,

(08:51):
now let's think about what's happening in the down ballance.
As I said last at the end of the last hour,
for a long time, as recently is just a month ago,
there was really there was almost no movement in the
Senate races. Democratic candidates, incumbents and newcomers had truly modest

(09:13):
but consistent leads, even in those states where Trump was
ahead by double digits. Two best examples of that are
Ohio and Montana. People often ask me, like Montana, how
the hell does Montana have a Democrat senator? Well, because
of Butte, Missoula, Bozeman, and then you have the rest

(09:36):
of Montana, and the rest of Montana votes overwhelmingly Trump.
But it's not enough to offset those tiny little urban
areas like Missoula. Missoula is is the boulder of big
Sky country. Well, just in the last couple of weeks,
the Republican challengers in both Ohio and Montana and many

(09:57):
other states including Pencil have begun to either pull away
from their opponents, as true specifically in Montana, or is
true in Ohio and Pennsylvania. They're starting to substantially close
the gap between themselves and their opponents. And this all
happened against the backdrop of Kamala Harris's initial national surge,

(10:23):
and suggests that the surge energized not only her own voters,
but also those voters concerned about a Harris administration. Those voters,
for whatever reason, seemed more interested in ensuring that Republicans
preside over the Senate than they did even six years ago.

(10:47):
Now it seems reasonable to I think, to conclude the
possibility of a Harris presidency may have actually focused those
voters and sent them scurrying, if not out right panic,
running toward Republican candidates. You see, this is what naturally

(11:09):
happens in every election cycle, as I told you all
through the summer, not until after Labor Day. And here
we are, September seventeenth, when I'm broadcasting this line, are
voters beginning to focus on, Oh, where am I right now?

(11:31):
And what do I want? Four more years of Ah?
I don't want four more years, but I just went
through and so I can't even stomach the idea of
four more years of what is essentially another term of
Joe Biden. In fact, even worse than that, even worse

(11:51):
than Joe Biden. So those voters who are really concerned
about a Harris administration are for whatever reason, more interested
in ensuring that Republicans preside over the Senate than even
just what six weeks ago. I think it's reasonable, absolutely reasonable,

(12:13):
to conclude that just the mere possibility of a Harris
presidency is what's driving those voters toward Republican Senate candidates.
Go back a month ago, the Republicans were looking at
gaining one seat one seat in the Senate West Virginia

(12:34):
right now, and this is obviously subject to change, but
right now I think that they will win in Montana,
Pennsylvania in line with original expectations, and in Wisconsin so
plus four seats, which opened the door very slightly to
more aggressive budget reconciliations in the event Trump wins and

(12:55):
the Republicans do hold the House, which I do think
they will. On the other hand, it would make Vice
President Harris's life very difficult if she were to win, so,
just again, to give it a little context, she would
be the first Democrat president to take office with a
Republican Senate since Grover Cleveland. Who's Grover Cleveland? Are your

(13:21):
to you? Now, let's switch for just a moment. Let's
think about the DC Court and law fair. I don't know,
maybe you're not, but I'm somewhat grateful, smidgeon a little

(13:41):
bit grateful that Harris was just ecumenical enough during the
debate to acknowledge that she is now, at least for
the duration of the campaign, in favor of increasing ale
and gas production. Now that's obviously welcome news. I don't
believe her, but let's accept it for the moment the
sake of argument. Let's accept as welcome news. Over the

(14:07):
last decade, the United States has provided more than ten
times the energy of any other source or combined sources
in the United States from fossil fuels. But unfortunately, the
judges at the US Court of Appeals for the DC
Circuit have not gotten the memo that the long war

(14:27):
of the left against oil natural gas production is apparently
in some sort of ceasefire mode, because in the last
few weeks the judges in that particular circuit have started
their own gihad against oil and gas production by and
of course, tell me if you've heard this, because I
was hard pressed to find stories to validate what I'm

(14:48):
about to tell you, and that is that they're beginning
to vacate oil and gas permits that had already been
approved and finished by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. The
permits in question allow the building an operation of LNG
export terminals, the real grand in the Texas LNG projects,

(15:11):
and one pipeline, the Regional Energy Access Pipeline. The judges
vacated every single one of those permits, which had already
been issued after an entirely lenkey administrative process, and they
rejected them on the grounds that the Commission failed to
properly examine an account for environmental justice concerns, not environmental concerns,

(15:35):
environmental justice concerns, and of course climate changed too. Now
those were, of course, those were the nominal excuses to
vacate the permits. Their actual goal was to establish their
own ability to inject uncertainty into any infrastructure permits, for

(15:56):
that matter, into any federal agency process, no matter how
careful were rigorous that agency process was, and FIRK is
pretty vigorous and pretty rigorous. The purpose of that entire
judicial exercise is to ensure that people are discouraged from
investing in oil and gas projects of which judges may

(16:18):
not approve, like the liquified natural gas terminals will screw you, judges.
It's not up to you. Hey, Michael plays go duck,
don't be a cluck.

Speaker 1 (16:31):
Do the duck.

Speaker 2 (16:36):
This is the most passive aggressive audience I think I've
ever encountered in all the audience I've ever spoken to
that I've ever had on whatever station I've been on.

Speaker 3 (16:47):
Oddly enough that one was knocked in the system, so
I had to go find it and dub it in weird.

Speaker 2 (16:54):
And of course, when you could be doing any number
of things to prove the production value of this program,
I like works for the other show you like instead,
just do whatever they ask you to do. But whenever
they ask you do you just you happily comply. I
give up. So we're talking about liquified natural gas versus

(17:19):
what was that stupid song?

Speaker 3 (17:21):
Just go duck, Go duck.

Speaker 2 (17:23):
This go duck and liquefied natural gas. It all goes together.
You just don't understand how yet. So these judges reject
these permits. Now they've they've been through the entire Administrative
Administrative Procedures Act. The Federal Energy Relegatory Commission, which is

(17:44):
in charge of approving these types of permits, spends years
approving these, only to have the court, the DC Circuit
reject them. So what does this do? This creates additional uncertainty,
even beyond the considerable uncertainty and delay already imposed on

(18:06):
projects by just the inherent regulatory structure and bureaucratic mumbo
jumbo that is the federal government. What's happening here is
these judges are trying to tell investors and project developers
that their willingness to fight to build these facilities will

(18:26):
never be over and that they can be litigated even
after the permit has been issued. What kind of nation
can develop its own energy infrastructure can be energy independent
when judges sitting on a circuit Court of Appeals can

(18:50):
just decide, well, we're more concerned about environmental justice than
the law, and so we're just going to reject these
out of hand. When your face with a system that
gives the opponents of your project the opportunity to litigate indefinitely,
what's the result of that? It is almost in fact,

(19:12):
I think it is an absolute certainty that investor cash
project developers will go elsewhere. It's the whole theory of capital.
Capital wants to be used, just like water seeks its
lowest level. Capital wants to be put to its highest
and best use. It wants capital wants to be one

(19:35):
wants to grow. So investors see their cash and the
cash is going spend me, spend me, invest me, invest me,
And they say, okay, well, we can give the greatest
return by building these LNG terminals. We can make a
load of money off this. And then the federal government

(19:56):
steps in and says, no, you're not going to do it,
and you want to take us on way. We've got
these NGOs over here, all you've got all these environmental groups,
and we're going to fight you till the till till
the cows come home. So people pack up, they put
their cash back in their little statchels, and they go elsewhere.
They might they might build roads of bridges, except the

(20:19):
environmental come out for those two. They might be build
up pipeline or they'll come out with pipelines. They might
build power. We can't build a power plant because it's
all solar powered or something. So all the other infrastructure
that American workers, American families, American businesses actually need to

(20:39):
grow and thrive will not get built.

Speaker 3 (20:43):
Now.

Speaker 2 (20:43):
I don't think it can be accidental that this newly
discovered ability of the courts to vacate already issued permits
somehow occurred in the wake of the Supreme Court's decision
decision in Loper, which got rid of the whole idea
that you can well they got rid of the Chevron doctor.

(21:06):
Perhaps the judges in the in the DC Circuit think
that they can regain some of the regulatory ground that
was lost in that overturning of the Chevron doctrine, or,
more likely, as this nation heads toward an election which
Trump seems poised to win, the judges are trying to

(21:28):
create a precedent that what when we started this discussion
now with lawfair. The judges are hoping to create a
precedent that they can then use against a Trump administration
that may be in the eyes of the court just
a little to enthusiastic with respect to the issues of
permits to those who want to build essential projects, like

(21:48):
I don't want to know power plans and pipelines. Trump
gets elected, that's just the first battle, this whole idea
of fighting the administrative state. Trump's got to take it
more seriously than he did before. He's got to get

(22:10):
a listener general an attorney general, and he's got to
put deputy attorney generals and assistant attorney generals and US
attorneys everywhere, all across the Department of Justice to fight
back against this. You know, when Trump announced at the

(22:32):
New York Economy Club that he was going to have
this Government Efficiency Commission and announced ronically, I think that
it would be headed by Elon Musk. Well, let's be honest,
Musk does know something about government efficiency, or the lack thereof,
because a lot of his fortune originates in trying to

(22:55):
gain the government systems, more specifically government programs regulate automobiles
and the emissions they produce. When he got bored with that, hey,
he decided to extract taxpayer cash from NASA, the Department
of Defense, who knows where else for a SpaceX business.
But he gained the system. So make no mistake. The

(23:19):
Tesla line of products they've got, they've got their worshippers,
including obviously must partners and vendors in communists, China, and
SpaceX seems like a definitive improvement over previous government sponsored efforts.
Look at NASA and Boeing, how's that working for those two?

(23:42):
Still circling the planet, but putting all that aside. Whatever
you think about Elon Musk, putting America's premier profiteer from
government funding and government regulatory schemes in charge of a
group designed sific to specifically look at ways to make
the government more efficient does seem a bit like letting

(24:03):
the fox design the security for the Henhouse. But that's
okay because Musk is smart enough to realize that those
councils usually don't amount to very much. That's why anytime
I hear about a task force or a Blue Ribbon commission,
or a stripe force or some sort of council, does
it produced bit a bunch of bull crap, Because the

(24:27):
fundamental flaw that every single commission, Blue Ribbon commission, task force, whatever,
the fundamental flaw that every single one of them share,
and the flaw that this iteration would likely inherent, is
that they are composed almost entirely of successful businessmen who
have this unfounded notion that the government should be as

(24:49):
efficient as possible, and they fail to realize that outside
of the judicial function, government is not primarily about the
efficient deliver of goods or services. It's about shipping cash
and power to friends and allies. It's crony capitalism, and
wherever possible, growing both the amount of cash and power

(25:11):
that one has is the second subset of their objectives,
and that's true for both bureaucrats and members of Congress alike.
All of those groups fail to realize that every dollar
in government and every program that spends every dollar in
government was put there by somebody. There are very very

(25:34):
few dollars of the government spends that are not attached
to a single, if not numerous members of Congress. So
all those programs are operating more or less the way
their sponsors wanted them to operate, inefficiently and in favor
of one sector of an industry versus another sector of
an industry, or over an entire industry versus another industry.

(26:00):
Can you get a privateer like Elon Musk, who did
make a considerable portion of his fortune by trading pollution
credits at the state and federal level. He knows all
of that. So maybe maybe somebody like Elon Musk, who
has a clear understanding of the real purpose of government
programs and actually understands how to exploit those programs, might

(26:25):
be just the person to put in charge that was
to put in charge of the hen House. And maybe
that effort might be successful, but I wouldn't bet on it.
And maybe I'll take a break right here.

Speaker 5 (26:39):
Since we're doing song requests, I'd like to request black
Magic Woman by Santana, Thank you very much.

Speaker 3 (26:48):
It's not in a system.

Speaker 2 (26:51):
We're waiting.

Speaker 3 (26:52):
It's not in the system.

Speaker 2 (26:55):
Well here, let me let me see if I dang it,
I'm plaguing my damn.

Speaker 3 (27:00):
Do you track? God, God, God, wait for you.

Speaker 4 (27:03):
Go ahead.

Speaker 3 (27:05):
It's the Fleetwood Mac version. It's in the system. But yeah,
that's that's not what the person requested.

Speaker 2 (27:12):
Well uh.

Speaker 3 (27:16):
M hmmmmmmmmmm uh huh are doing over there?

Speaker 2 (27:25):
Got to get through this spots here, let's see. Uh,
turn the microphone on.

Speaker 3 (27:40):
Okay, it's on, it's on. What's your problem? Is thatthing
wrong with there? Michael? Michael? What's going on? Your microphone's on?
Is there a problem?

Speaker 2 (27:58):
You know you're supposed to make the host look Do
you know that you know that that top line of
your job description is make your host look good, make
your host sound good, and in fact, do everything to
chase you. If my mics.

Speaker 3 (28:16):
Ain't no miracle on Hell or Earth it will be
able to make you look or sound good.

Speaker 2 (28:21):
Here's the saddest, the saddest part of all of that
is I literally was sitting here trying to really riff
on you about how you're supposed to make me look good,
and then I thought, for that split second, try to
suddenly glance over and see if your microphone or not,
because Mike guesses it probably is not on.

Speaker 3 (28:38):
Well, it can be on. I can just pot it
down and nobody would be able to hear you anyway.

Speaker 2 (28:42):
Is that what you were doing early?

Speaker 3 (28:43):
So I can just do that right now. So the
microphone is on, as you could take a look, it
is clearly on, but nobody could hear you since it's
potted down for some weird reason. Put that back up
for you.

Speaker 2 (28:57):
I just want to go home.

Speaker 3 (29:00):
I just want to go home.

Speaker 2 (29:03):
Let's see as long as long as we're doing something
that is just going to kill time. Oh, let's do
this real quickly. I can't get it all in but
right after No, I can't.

Speaker 5 (29:16):
Do that either.

Speaker 3 (29:16):
Can't do that. But we could read the last text
message that we got from Guber number sixteen forty one.

Speaker 2 (29:22):
Mike, did you just go ahead and do that well,
I just pack up right.

Speaker 3 (29:24):
Yeah, you're what are you even doing here?

Speaker 2 (29:26):
Still?

Speaker 3 (29:26):
Mike, the Babylon b is so good. Kamala Harris safe
and stable condition after attempted interview.

Speaker 2 (29:34):
Oh that is good, Gubman er sixteen forty one, that's excellent.
I did not know this zero three nine zero Tesla
did pay all the money back with interest. I didn't
realize that. I assume you still had outstanding loans and
grants from them. Ingolbert Humperdink after the Loving is the
most got awful song in the world about the talent

(29:55):
loves it. That's one of my all time favorites. Ingelbert
humperding that one.

Speaker 3 (30:00):
It is in the system. Oh yeah, of course, let's see,
and this is legit.

Speaker 2 (30:08):
After the new polls that are coming out in favor
of the Republicans, I am even more concerned about Trump's safety. Yeah,
as well, you should be. Unfortunately, if Dragon is turning
into DJ Johnny Fever, that makes me less less. Okay,
what a