April 7, 2025 • 26 mins
(April 07,2025)
Bill Handel is back from his Italian wedding. Market turmoil deepens after Trump sticks with tariff plan. Younger democrats want to force an uncomfortable conversation about age.
Bill Handel is back from his Italian wedding. Market turmoil deepens after Trump sticks with tariff plan. Younger democrats want to force an uncomfortable conversation about age.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
You're listening to Bill Handle on demand from KFI AM
six forty KFI AM six forty Bill Handle. Here it
is a Monday morning, April seventh. Nice to be back again.
I've been gone for three weeks, as you know, and
it was normally it's a vacation. Well this one was
vacation slash getting married slash, honeymoon slash taking some time
(00:29):
off slash. And so people want to know, and I've
been asked, you know, what's this marriage business? I go, well,
let me put it this way. March twentieth was the
evening of my marriage, and I would say, right now,
it's already starting to fall apart. It's happening a lot
(00:50):
sooner than I anticipated. But Neil was there as my
best man, and Neil got very sick man. We're the
best this man and originally and I wanted to do
a lot of shtick. Neil and I are the stickmeisters.
By the way, for those of you that would like
to see a little bit of what it was about,
(01:11):
you can go to my Instagram page at Bill Handles
Show and there's a little short video and there are
some photos, and then I think there's a link to
Lindsay's page Lindsay Soprano, and that's the wife. And she
has put a whole bunch of photos and videos. I mean,
(01:34):
she's really into this social media stuff, has been for
a lot of years. So she is one of you folks.
Am I into? So I'm not in a social anything.
Speaker 2 (01:43):
What She's twenty five and a lot of young people
are into.
Speaker 1 (01:46):
No, she's not. We say she's twenty five. Not quite.
Let me put it this way. When we first met,
and I've been this has been going on for a
bunch of years. I've been separated from Marjorie for over
five year years. Lindsay and I had to wait for
her to graduate high school because I just didn't I
(02:08):
just wasn't prepared to get involved with the law at
that point.
Speaker 2 (02:11):
Oh you didn't want up to drive her to school
and pick her up?
Speaker 1 (02:14):
Yeah, well, someone said, someone sent a comment, posted a
comment saying handle your a walking cliche. Yeah I saw that.
Speaker 2 (02:28):
Well what are you gonna do?
Speaker 1 (02:29):
Yeah? And so coming up at eight o'clock, Coming up
at eight o'clock, we're going to have I'm gonna have
Lindsay on the show. She's gonna come in and say
hi and you get a chance to see basically how
nuts she is. Super liberal, Uh, that's sir, politics far
more than I am. And people the people have been
(02:49):
writing in, people would follow social media and her comments.
And she's not a big fan of Donald Trump to
say the least. As I said earlier, when we were
traveling through Italy, and people inevitably ask when they hear
people speaking, where are you from? You know, hey, what
part of the United States are you from? Or where
do you come from? Inevitably I would say Los Angeles
(03:12):
area or California. She would always start with, start with
I didn't vote for him, that's simple, and then the
conversation would split off about life in Italy and how
great the pizzas are, and they are, I mean the
food they're smoked. Yeah, they know, they know how to
(03:33):
make well, they make really good Italian food, and it
just it's insane.
Speaker 2 (03:39):
Really, the Italians make really good Italian food. Yeah, I
hear the Chinese make really good Chinese food too.
Speaker 1 (03:46):
Not necessarily, well, it depends what you're used to, but yeah,
I had one.
Speaker 2 (03:53):
So so pizza out there, but every pizza was phenomenal.
Every pasta, the carbonaa man is.
Speaker 1 (04:00):
I know it's crazy, but let me let me throw
a foody topic at you or foodie question. I just
mentioned that Chinese food in China is not necessarily that
good Chinese food in China is not American eyes. You
go to PF. Chang's, for example, it's Americanized Chinese food,
and most Chinese restaurants are. There aren't American eyed Italian
(04:22):
restaurants that I've ever seen. It's just other than spaghetti
and meatballs heat balls, But that's about it.
Speaker 2 (04:31):
Here's the difference is we tend to regionalize, so we
will have certain things here that are Italian, but they're
not from a bunch of regions. So it became more
popular about within the last ten years or so where
you would find regional Italian food, so you could find
(04:52):
small areas of Italy that weren't represented in traditional Americanized Italian.
Speaker 1 (04:59):
Food Northern Italian. By the way, for those of you
that I said earlier, I'm not a big fan of
Sicily or Southern Italy. Naples, waste of time, Sicily even worse,
they actually when they build roads they build them with
potholes in Sicily. Oh yeah, it's that bad. I mean,
(05:22):
there's poor Graffitis every place. I mean, it is just
not a particularly wonderful place my opinion and everybody else's
opinion that I've ever talked to northern Italy. And we
got married right outside of Verona in a castle. I mean,
if you can imagine.
Speaker 2 (05:40):
That like a castle in quotes, it's a castle.
Speaker 1 (05:45):
Yeah, no, it's a castle. It's a castle castle. It
was built in the thirteen hundreds castle and has been renovated.
The last major renovation was in the eighteen hundreds. And
then Andrea, whose family owns it. Andrea actually runs a
young man in his thirties. His grandfather bought it and
completely brought it up to what it is today. I mean,
(06:08):
it's just did a brilliant job. So anyway, it's a
it's a venue. We booked the entire thing. We all
stayed there at the castle, and it was it was
pretty neat. Northern Italian food, that is Rome North is
really good and that's the wealthiest part of Italy. Anyway,
the more south you go, the poorer the roads are,
(06:29):
or the poorer the economy is. So I'm a big
fan of Sicilian food either. It's just not the same
as Northern Italy. Okay, doubles, I.
Speaker 2 (06:38):
Mean is where you get you know, that thin crust pizza.
Speaker 1 (06:42):
Yeah, I know, but it's for the most part, the
thin crust pizza tends to be soggy. There there no
there were a couple of places where I went, Tara
Mina outside of Palermo, is I had the best then
crust pizza I've ever had in my life. It was spictack,
thin crust where it stayed crispy for the entire meal.
(07:05):
Not easy to do.
Speaker 2 (07:08):
It's not always the best.
Speaker 1 (07:10):
Okay. As I'm coming back in reality is hitting. I'm
looking at a bunch of screens and I'm looking at
you know, Fox and CNN, which I do every day anyway.
And when the market opened this morning, the Dow was
it started at a negative sixteen hundred points. I mean,
it was down. It has now changed. A few minutes
(07:32):
ago it was up four hundred. Now now it's up
about eighty and the market's not even been open for
an hour yet, so New York Clock Exchange. So we're
going to see it bounce all over the place. But
what I want to do is talk a little bit
about short term, long term in terms of what is
going on with these tariffs in the world economy and
a little bit of history, and I think there is
(07:55):
an analogy that should be made, or it has to
be a couple of presidencies have to be compared. First
of all, for those of you that hate Donald Trump
and you hate what's going on economically, this is not
a case of Donald Trump waking up one morning and saying, Okay,
what can I do to really destroy the world markets
here and wipe out the economies of entire countries, entire hemispheres. No,
(08:19):
it's what he believes. And by the way, he's not
off is that there is no basic fairness going on.
And the reason he's kicking in all these tariffs is
real simple. They tear if us, We're going to teariff them.
American products are not seen in many parts of the world.
(08:39):
Why because many parts of the world put up tariffs.
I just got back from Europe. How many American cars
that I see? Not many, that's for sure. It was
all European cars or Japanese cars all over the place.
No American cars. You won't go to China and find
them American car You won't go to Japan and find
(09:02):
American cars. Why because they make it difficult to bring
in American cars. They tariff the hell out of them.
Someone wants an American car, let's say South America. Guess
what you pay. That person has to pay a whole
lot more money for it because of the duties, the teriffs.
And so what Donald Trump wants to do is just
(09:23):
make it fair, that's all. And he is asking for reciprocity.
Real simple. You charge us twenty four percent for that product,
will charge you twenty four percent for this other product.
It's that simple. Now people think that tariffs twenty four
percent across the board. You know that tariffs on are
on items. If you actually look at the tariff laws
(09:47):
of the United States, when you look at the list
of tariff that industries tariff products, there are hundreds of thousands.
For example, let's talk about jewelry overseas. You bring in
a piece of jewelry a ring, that's one tariff. Now
you bring in a stone and a separate setting, that's
(10:09):
another tariff. It's a different thing. Same thing with car parts,
same thing with everything that's brought in, different kinds of terrorists,
different duties. And what Trump is saying, we're gonna make
it just even Stephen or even Donald and long term,
that makes sense because look what he's saying. He is saying,
(10:30):
because our products are sold over there and their products
are not sold here. What tends to happen as Americans
are buying foreign products, which means American workers are not
being employed, factories are not being built. And historically he
is absolutely right. Look at the factories along the Mexican border,
the car manufacturing factories and the assembly factories, the assembly
(10:54):
plants just south of the border, Tijuana and beyond the Machiadores,
I think is what they call him. Where the worker
gets three dollars an hour or two dollars an hour
with none of the benefits. You move that same factory
north of the border a mile away, and all of
a sudden, you're paying thirty four dollars an hour for
a manufacturing worker a car assembly worker, plus benefits, plus
(11:19):
union dues that they have to put into I mean,
and you've got pensions. All of that doesn't exist in Mexico.
So it makes a lot of sense. That's why all
those factories there. And Trump is saying, wait a minute,
that means that American workers, American factories are not being built. Here,
and he's right. However, this is a case of not
(11:41):
only throwing out the bath water with the baby or
the baby with the bathwater, but throwing out the tub,
the bathroom, the house, the neighborhood. And it's going through well,
this is typical trump esque, and that is you go
through this like a lawnmower goes through a backyard full
of grass, if it is one of those sit down mowers.
(12:05):
What a horrible analogy. It's like a hot knife through butter.
That's better, I know, Neil, don't give you that look. Yes,
that's terrible analogy. But it's happening so rapidly, so overwhelmingly,
where even the government is going, Okay, we made a mistake.
Oh my god, we fired everybody. Well, that's the other thing.
Not only is it a terriff issue, it's also cutting
(12:25):
the expenses of the government, and doing that by letting
go of hundreds of thousands of federal employees and unraveling
entire agencies. Department of Education disappearing, for example. It's on
its way to just not existing anymore, FEMA not existing anymore. Now,
that doesn't mean that the services aren't going to be provided.
There'll be another agencies with the philosophy is cut cut cut, cut, cut,
(12:49):
and the philosophy is let's be more fair, fair, fair,
fair fair, and in the end the American work will
do better, factories will be built, all of that. That's
if it pans out. Okay, fair enough. Here's the problem.
If it pans out, that's years in the making, assuming
that President Trump is right, years in the making. So
(13:12):
what happens tonight, Oh, I don't know. A pair of
a tariff kicks in tonight, midnight Wednesday, another major era,
a tariff kicks in. Well, how about this, A tiff
can kick in on midnight on Wednesday, announce the factory
being built midnight on Wednesday and have it opened up
three minutes later. Doesn't quite work that way. So this
(13:33):
is very long term, and we've gone from day one.
Remember the day one promises the economy is going to
be better, the costs will costs for everything will come down,
Inflation will come down, although inflation was just fine when
he took office. But that's beside the point. I mean
(13:55):
a lot of day one stuff has not happened. This
is certainly not day one. I'm looking at the market
as we speak, watching CNN and Fox, etc. And the
numbers are bouncing two thousand points one way or the other.
The volatility is insane. First of all, there are rumors
(14:18):
that the tariffs are going to end, or that Trump
is negotiating right now with countries. Well based on that,
the market goes one way. When those rumors say, nah,
that's not true, it goes the other way. And the
White House has said that there are fifty countries now
that are negotiating with the United States regarding to regarding tariffs.
(14:40):
I don't know how much of that is true. And
tariffs are a whole world down to themselves, depending on
which markets, depending on what industries, what is manufactured, what
the business is. For example, range Rover has just stopped
thirty days. They're done. They're not importing in the United States.
The problem is you have these countries where the American
market is so important to them, where such a huge
(15:04):
amount of sales are made in America that the threat
of tariffs which effectively stops for example, Okay, champagne, right.
I don't know what the percentage is of the market
the United States buys and champagne, but it's huge. And
all said, if the tariffs go up fifty percent, that's
(15:25):
a big problem, and sales drop dramatically, And all of
a sudden you have people that are affected here in
that industry are getting nailed. People in the housing industry
because tariffs on lumber coming in from Canada. Well, if
they're paying that much more for wood, then builders are
in a lot of trouble because they just now have
(15:45):
to pay twice as much or fifty percent more for wood.
So what's happening here? And I want to share this
And as I said earlier, Trump long term, I mean,
I think his motivations are pretty clear, and that is
he wants manufacturing me to the United States, He wants
workers to be employed, and he is willing to turn
the US on its ear Now has this happened before
(16:09):
with a president literally taking the United States and moving
in an entirely different direction. You bet. Franklin Roosevelt. Franklin
Roosevelt invented social security, invented the SEC, invented financial controls
on banks, the FDIC, turned America completely into governmental intervention
(16:33):
and the safety net. But here is the turn America
around before that didn't exist. Now, all of a sudden,
we have quote a socialized government. As a matter of fact,
for those people that think that socialism is here, it
all started with Franklin Roosevelt at the turn of the
Great Depression. But here is the difference. Franklin Roosevelt inherited
the depression, and he was reacting to America starving. The
(17:00):
Civilian Conservation Corps, for example, where we have all kinds
of project. If you go to the San Frano Valley,
you see this Pulvid dam. That's a Civilian Conservation Corps
works progress administration just to keep Americans working. That was
all about, you know, the Roosevelt administration hired actors and
writers and Shakespearean actors go around the country and give
(17:22):
speeches anything to pay people. And whether you like it
or not, millions of people did not starve to death
because of that. So that was reactive. What President Trump
is doing is proactive. He didn't inherit an economy that
was falling on its ass. He may say he did.
(17:42):
Inflation was out of control. By the time he took office,
inflation was under control. Was it nine percent? Yeah? It
was horrible and then it dropped and right now it's
in pretty good shape. By the way, He also inherited
an economy where there was full employment, where businesses were
making tremendous amounts of money. Wages in fact, not only
(18:08):
were stable, but going up. Now, comparing the economy under
Biden to Trump's first administration, the Trump administration first one
out was brilliant. But I'll tell you what the best
economic administration we've ever had. For those of you fiscal conservatives,
Bill Clinton, his administration those eight years were the best
(18:29):
the United States ever had. That was one of the
few times where the government was actually not only was
the budget balanced, but it was actually paying off its debt.
Now today we're running into two trillion dollar deficits, two
trillion dollars per year deficits. Can you imagine during Clinton
years it was zero At least one year it was zero.
(18:53):
Last time it happened before that was Dwight Eisenhower in
the fifties. So what you have here is President Trump,
I think, taking a huge chance. Now smaller countries are
going to have no choice but to negotiate. There's no
question Israel has just been tagged with seventeen percent of
(19:14):
terrorists for all the goods sold in the United States
from Israel and nat Now who is in town, and
he's basically going to negotiate to give us a break, please,
And countries that don't have a lot of economic umph
are going to be forced to negotiate. And this is
where Trump may be absolutely right. He goes, I play
hardball and you come to the table countries like China,
(19:37):
and they're saying no, and they're willing to come to
the battle. They're willing to come to the war. And
here's the difference. They don't care their economy may suffer.
And by the way, under these tariffs, the economies of
other countries suffer more than we do. We're too big
a market, will I mean, we're going to suffer, but
not like them. China doesn't care. China saying, okay, we'll
(20:03):
play tit for tat. I don't know how do you
say that in Chinese? I don't even know. Can you
look that up? Tit for tat? And no one's looking
it up in any case. China is they're gonna go
to war with us. She's laughing. Uh, you got other
countries that are not prepared to go to war with us,
especially the countries that don't have the same economic power.
(20:24):
And we don't know what's going to happen at this point,
we don't know. I'll tell you what is probably going
to happen, And Jerome Powell of the Fed said this,
Probably there's going to be a recession. Certainly inflation is
going to go up at least I think it's one hundercent.
I think he's giving it less of a chance than that.
And we're gonna be in an economic era of turmoil.
(20:49):
President Trump has gone from day one beautiful, terrific, it'll
be the best times, you're the economy will explode day
one to now. Okay, it's gonna hurt a little bit,
but it's gonna be for a very very short time,
and it's gonna be just a little bit of a bump. Well,
(21:09):
the stock market going down what six thousand points, seven
thousand points in less than a week, that's not a
little tiny bump. And we'll see what happens today. So
we're gonna be looking at a lot of this right
the second. The market is down according to BBC eight
hundred and nine points. It opened it down fourteen hundred,
(21:32):
went to sixteen hundred dollars south and then went at
one point to five hundred dollars plus or five hundred
points plus, and now it's down seven hundred and fifty.
So you talk about volatility. Man, we are in for
a ride like you cannot believe. As I have said,
all right, we're done with that. Let's do this. Let's
(21:53):
go to old people, as in who's old. Well, a
lot of people are, but let's talk about people in
public life. Year old. Former presidents are old. You've got
Supreme Court justices old. It used to be sixty five
is the age for retirement, by the way, that's been
(22:16):
out of that MS makes no sense now for fifty years.
But that was based on the fact that you'd retire
at sixty five and you die a year later. And
that's what So Scary is based on. That's why So
Scared is going broke, because we're all getting old and living. Now,
tell you use who's old. Members of Congress really old.
Nancy Pelosi is eighty five years old, still a congresswoman,
(22:37):
although she gave up her seat as speaker for quote
the new generation. Well, the points what's happening is this
is in the Democratic Party, is that all of a
sudden you have both Senators and congress people who are
seventy eighty years old, and you have a younger generation.
Is going enough of that? We're done. I think a
lot of it has to do with the Democrats that
(22:58):
got nailed by the Donald Trump win and missed the
boat completely, and a lot of younger people. You know.
For example, there's a Democrat in San Francisco, psychot chak
Rabat Barti I think is his name, and he's challenging Pelosi.
He's thirty nine years old. Software engineer ran Ocasio Cortes's
(23:22):
upset primary in New York in twenty eighteen, and he says,
look at all the Democratic Party, look at everybody. They're
all old as dirt. And he said, what people are
looking for are fighters. And he really got into it
with House Democrats, with the confrontational tactics. He was okay,
so Cartes's chief of staff, Cortez's chief of staff in
(23:45):
twenty nineteen. And he's just one of several a matter
of fact, more and more coming aboard to jump into
politics and say, hey, you know what, it is time
for millennials, It is time for a younger generation. It
is time for us to stir things up. Usually when
(24:05):
you look at Republicans they want the status quo. Well,
look who the Republicans have now. Donald Trump is president,
the man who is the least status quo president we
have had probably in one hundred years. And the Democrats
are taking a lesson here saying, this is why I
think what we want we don't want old school. What
(24:30):
we want is a new way of looking at it.
Brad Sherman, who is seventy is now has a campaign
going against them. And this is a San Frano Valley
Brad Sherman or West La Brad Sherman. So after November,
after these huge losses, the Democrats are going crazy and saying, well,
(24:52):
they're going crazy in the sense that they now realize
that the age issue is really important. And then I
ask you, do you think that Joe Biden has anything
to do with the issue of age? What was it?
I actually heard Joe Biden, and this is right after
the election. He was being interviewed, and he actually said
I could have one against Donald Trump. He actually said
(25:15):
that I could have won if they had let me
stay in. So imagine this. He had all of the
problems that Joe Biden had. This is Joe Biden because
remember that Trump won the election by attacking the Joe
Biden the entire scenario, including his age, and Joe Biden said,
I could have won, including my problems with my age.
(25:38):
That is the argument that these young Democrats who are
now politicos are having, and they're saying, you know, we're
we the Democratic Party. You're out of touch. Couldn't agree more,
could not agree more. Now, the unfortunate part for a
lot of people is that these young Democrats are pretty
out there on the left. I mean, anybody dealing with
(26:01):
Alexandro Occio Cortez. You know that's about as left wing
as you're going to get. All Right, we're done, guys,
this is KFI AM sixty. You've been listening to the
Bill Handle Show. Catch my show Monday through Friday, six
am to nine am, and anytime on demand on the
iHeartRadio app.
You're listening to Bill Handle on demand from KFI AM
six forty KFI AM six forty Bill Handle. Here it
is a Monday morning, April seventh. Nice to be back again.
I've been gone for three weeks, as you know, and
it was normally it's a vacation. Well this one was
vacation slash getting married slash, honeymoon slash taking some time
(00:29):
off slash. And so people want to know, and I've
been asked, you know, what's this marriage business? I go, well,
let me put it this way. March twentieth was the
evening of my marriage, and I would say, right now,
it's already starting to fall apart. It's happening a lot
(00:50):
sooner than I anticipated. But Neil was there as my
best man, and Neil got very sick man. We're the
best this man and originally and I wanted to do
a lot of shtick. Neil and I are the stickmeisters.
By the way, for those of you that would like
to see a little bit of what it was about,
(01:11):
you can go to my Instagram page at Bill Handles
Show and there's a little short video and there are
some photos, and then I think there's a link to
Lindsay's page Lindsay Soprano, and that's the wife. And she
has put a whole bunch of photos and videos. I mean,
(01:34):
she's really into this social media stuff, has been for
a lot of years. So she is one of you folks.
Am I into? So I'm not in a social anything.
Speaker 2 (01:43):
What She's twenty five and a lot of young people
are into.
Speaker 1 (01:46):
No, she's not. We say she's twenty five. Not quite.
Let me put it this way. When we first met,
and I've been this has been going on for a
bunch of years. I've been separated from Marjorie for over
five year years. Lindsay and I had to wait for
her to graduate high school because I just didn't I
(02:08):
just wasn't prepared to get involved with the law at
that point.
Speaker 2 (02:11):
Oh you didn't want up to drive her to school
and pick her up?
Speaker 1 (02:14):
Yeah, well, someone said, someone sent a comment, posted a
comment saying handle your a walking cliche. Yeah I saw that.
Speaker 2 (02:28):
Well what are you gonna do?
Speaker 1 (02:29):
Yeah? And so coming up at eight o'clock, Coming up
at eight o'clock, we're going to have I'm gonna have
Lindsay on the show. She's gonna come in and say
hi and you get a chance to see basically how
nuts she is. Super liberal, Uh, that's sir, politics far
more than I am. And people the people have been
(02:49):
writing in, people would follow social media and her comments.
And she's not a big fan of Donald Trump to
say the least. As I said earlier, when we were
traveling through Italy, and people inevitably ask when they hear
people speaking, where are you from? You know, hey, what
part of the United States are you from? Or where
do you come from? Inevitably I would say Los Angeles
(03:12):
area or California. She would always start with, start with
I didn't vote for him, that's simple, and then the
conversation would split off about life in Italy and how
great the pizzas are, and they are, I mean the
food they're smoked. Yeah, they know, they know how to
(03:33):
make well, they make really good Italian food, and it
just it's insane.
Speaker 2 (03:39):
Really, the Italians make really good Italian food. Yeah, I
hear the Chinese make really good Chinese food too.
Speaker 1 (03:46):
Not necessarily, well, it depends what you're used to, but yeah,
I had one.
Speaker 2 (03:53):
So so pizza out there, but every pizza was phenomenal.
Every pasta, the carbonaa man is.
Speaker 1 (04:00):
I know it's crazy, but let me let me throw
a foody topic at you or foodie question. I just
mentioned that Chinese food in China is not necessarily that
good Chinese food in China is not American eyes. You
go to PF. Chang's, for example, it's Americanized Chinese food,
and most Chinese restaurants are. There aren't American eyed Italian
(04:22):
restaurants that I've ever seen. It's just other than spaghetti
and meatballs heat balls, But that's about it.
Speaker 2 (04:31):
Here's the difference is we tend to regionalize, so we
will have certain things here that are Italian, but they're
not from a bunch of regions. So it became more
popular about within the last ten years or so where
you would find regional Italian food, so you could find
(04:52):
small areas of Italy that weren't represented in traditional Americanized Italian.
Speaker 1 (04:59):
Food Northern Italian. By the way, for those of you
that I said earlier, I'm not a big fan of
Sicily or Southern Italy. Naples, waste of time, Sicily even worse,
they actually when they build roads they build them with
potholes in Sicily. Oh yeah, it's that bad. I mean,
(05:22):
there's poor Graffitis every place. I mean, it is just
not a particularly wonderful place my opinion and everybody else's
opinion that I've ever talked to northern Italy. And we
got married right outside of Verona in a castle. I mean,
if you can imagine.
Speaker 2 (05:40):
That like a castle in quotes, it's a castle.
Speaker 1 (05:45):
Yeah, no, it's a castle. It's a castle castle. It
was built in the thirteen hundreds castle and has been renovated.
The last major renovation was in the eighteen hundreds. And
then Andrea, whose family owns it. Andrea actually runs a
young man in his thirties. His grandfather bought it and
completely brought it up to what it is today. I mean,
(06:08):
it's just did a brilliant job. So anyway, it's a
it's a venue. We booked the entire thing. We all
stayed there at the castle, and it was it was
pretty neat. Northern Italian food, that is Rome North is
really good and that's the wealthiest part of Italy. Anyway,
the more south you go, the poorer the roads are,
(06:29):
or the poorer the economy is. So I'm a big
fan of Sicilian food either. It's just not the same
as Northern Italy. Okay, doubles, I.
Speaker 2 (06:38):
Mean is where you get you know, that thin crust pizza.
Speaker 1 (06:42):
Yeah, I know, but it's for the most part, the
thin crust pizza tends to be soggy. There there no
there were a couple of places where I went, Tara
Mina outside of Palermo, is I had the best then
crust pizza I've ever had in my life. It was spictack,
thin crust where it stayed crispy for the entire meal.
(07:05):
Not easy to do.
Speaker 2 (07:08):
It's not always the best.
Speaker 1 (07:10):
Okay. As I'm coming back in reality is hitting. I'm
looking at a bunch of screens and I'm looking at
you know, Fox and CNN, which I do every day anyway.
And when the market opened this morning, the Dow was
it started at a negative sixteen hundred points. I mean,
it was down. It has now changed. A few minutes
(07:32):
ago it was up four hundred. Now now it's up
about eighty and the market's not even been open for
an hour yet, so New York Clock Exchange. So we're
going to see it bounce all over the place. But
what I want to do is talk a little bit
about short term, long term in terms of what is
going on with these tariffs in the world economy and
a little bit of history, and I think there is
(07:55):
an analogy that should be made, or it has to
be a couple of presidencies have to be compared. First
of all, for those of you that hate Donald Trump
and you hate what's going on economically, this is not
a case of Donald Trump waking up one morning and saying, Okay,
what can I do to really destroy the world markets
here and wipe out the economies of entire countries, entire hemispheres. No,
(08:19):
it's what he believes. And by the way, he's not
off is that there is no basic fairness going on.
And the reason he's kicking in all these tariffs is
real simple. They tear if us, We're going to teariff them.
American products are not seen in many parts of the world.
(08:39):
Why because many parts of the world put up tariffs.
I just got back from Europe. How many American cars
that I see? Not many, that's for sure. It was
all European cars or Japanese cars all over the place.
No American cars. You won't go to China and find
them American car You won't go to Japan and find
(09:02):
American cars. Why because they make it difficult to bring
in American cars. They tariff the hell out of them.
Someone wants an American car, let's say South America. Guess
what you pay. That person has to pay a whole
lot more money for it because of the duties, the teriffs.
And so what Donald Trump wants to do is just
(09:23):
make it fair, that's all. And he is asking for reciprocity.
Real simple. You charge us twenty four percent for that product,
will charge you twenty four percent for this other product.
It's that simple. Now people think that tariffs twenty four
percent across the board. You know that tariffs on are
on items. If you actually look at the tariff laws
(09:47):
of the United States, when you look at the list
of tariff that industries tariff products, there are hundreds of thousands.
For example, let's talk about jewelry overseas. You bring in
a piece of jewelry a ring, that's one tariff. Now
you bring in a stone and a separate setting, that's
(10:09):
another tariff. It's a different thing. Same thing with car parts,
same thing with everything that's brought in, different kinds of terrorists,
different duties. And what Trump is saying, we're gonna make
it just even Stephen or even Donald and long term,
that makes sense because look what he's saying. He is saying,
(10:30):
because our products are sold over there and their products
are not sold here. What tends to happen as Americans
are buying foreign products, which means American workers are not
being employed, factories are not being built. And historically he
is absolutely right. Look at the factories along the Mexican border,
the car manufacturing factories and the assembly factories, the assembly
(10:54):
plants just south of the border, Tijuana and beyond the Machiadores,
I think is what they call him. Where the worker
gets three dollars an hour or two dollars an hour
with none of the benefits. You move that same factory
north of the border a mile away, and all of
a sudden, you're paying thirty four dollars an hour for
a manufacturing worker a car assembly worker, plus benefits, plus
(11:19):
union dues that they have to put into I mean,
and you've got pensions. All of that doesn't exist in Mexico.
So it makes a lot of sense. That's why all
those factories there. And Trump is saying, wait a minute,
that means that American workers, American factories are not being built. Here,
and he's right. However, this is a case of not
(11:41):
only throwing out the bath water with the baby or
the baby with the bathwater, but throwing out the tub,
the bathroom, the house, the neighborhood. And it's going through well,
this is typical trump esque, and that is you go
through this like a lawnmower goes through a backyard full
of grass, if it is one of those sit down mowers.
(12:05):
What a horrible analogy. It's like a hot knife through butter.
That's better, I know, Neil, don't give you that look. Yes,
that's terrible analogy. But it's happening so rapidly, so overwhelmingly,
where even the government is going, Okay, we made a mistake.
Oh my god, we fired everybody. Well, that's the other thing.
Not only is it a terriff issue, it's also cutting
(12:25):
the expenses of the government, and doing that by letting
go of hundreds of thousands of federal employees and unraveling
entire agencies. Department of Education disappearing, for example. It's on
its way to just not existing anymore, FEMA not existing anymore. Now,
that doesn't mean that the services aren't going to be provided.
There'll be another agencies with the philosophy is cut cut cut, cut, cut,
(12:49):
and the philosophy is let's be more fair, fair, fair,
fair fair, and in the end the American work will
do better, factories will be built, all of that. That's
if it pans out. Okay, fair enough. Here's the problem.
If it pans out, that's years in the making, assuming
that President Trump is right, years in the making. So
(13:12):
what happens tonight, Oh, I don't know. A pair of
a tariff kicks in tonight, midnight Wednesday, another major era,
a tariff kicks in. Well, how about this, A tiff
can kick in on midnight on Wednesday, announce the factory
being built midnight on Wednesday and have it opened up
three minutes later. Doesn't quite work that way. So this
(13:33):
is very long term, and we've gone from day one.
Remember the day one promises the economy is going to
be better, the costs will costs for everything will come down,
Inflation will come down, although inflation was just fine when
he took office. But that's beside the point. I mean
(13:55):
a lot of day one stuff has not happened. This
is certainly not day one. I'm looking at the market
as we speak, watching CNN and Fox, etc. And the
numbers are bouncing two thousand points one way or the other.
The volatility is insane. First of all, there are rumors
(14:18):
that the tariffs are going to end, or that Trump
is negotiating right now with countries. Well based on that,
the market goes one way. When those rumors say, nah,
that's not true, it goes the other way. And the
White House has said that there are fifty countries now
that are negotiating with the United States regarding to regarding tariffs.
(14:40):
I don't know how much of that is true. And
tariffs are a whole world down to themselves, depending on
which markets, depending on what industries, what is manufactured, what
the business is. For example, range Rover has just stopped
thirty days. They're done. They're not importing in the United States.
The problem is you have these countries where the American
market is so important to them, where such a huge
(15:04):
amount of sales are made in America that the threat
of tariffs which effectively stops for example, Okay, champagne, right.
I don't know what the percentage is of the market
the United States buys and champagne, but it's huge. And
all said, if the tariffs go up fifty percent, that's
(15:25):
a big problem, and sales drop dramatically, And all of
a sudden you have people that are affected here in
that industry are getting nailed. People in the housing industry
because tariffs on lumber coming in from Canada. Well, if
they're paying that much more for wood, then builders are
in a lot of trouble because they just now have
(15:45):
to pay twice as much or fifty percent more for wood.
So what's happening here? And I want to share this
And as I said earlier, Trump long term, I mean,
I think his motivations are pretty clear, and that is
he wants manufacturing me to the United States, He wants
workers to be employed, and he is willing to turn
the US on its ear Now has this happened before
(16:09):
with a president literally taking the United States and moving
in an entirely different direction. You bet. Franklin Roosevelt. Franklin
Roosevelt invented social security, invented the SEC, invented financial controls
on banks, the FDIC, turned America completely into governmental intervention
(16:33):
and the safety net. But here is the turn America
around before that didn't exist. Now, all of a sudden,
we have quote a socialized government. As a matter of fact,
for those people that think that socialism is here, it
all started with Franklin Roosevelt at the turn of the
Great Depression. But here is the difference. Franklin Roosevelt inherited
the depression, and he was reacting to America starving. The
(17:00):
Civilian Conservation Corps, for example, where we have all kinds
of project. If you go to the San Frano Valley,
you see this Pulvid dam. That's a Civilian Conservation Corps
works progress administration just to keep Americans working. That was
all about, you know, the Roosevelt administration hired actors and
writers and Shakespearean actors go around the country and give
(17:22):
speeches anything to pay people. And whether you like it
or not, millions of people did not starve to death
because of that. So that was reactive. What President Trump
is doing is proactive. He didn't inherit an economy that
was falling on its ass. He may say he did.
(17:42):
Inflation was out of control. By the time he took office,
inflation was under control. Was it nine percent? Yeah? It
was horrible and then it dropped and right now it's
in pretty good shape. By the way, He also inherited
an economy where there was full employment, where businesses were
making tremendous amounts of money. Wages in fact, not only
(18:08):
were stable, but going up. Now, comparing the economy under
Biden to Trump's first administration, the Trump administration first one
out was brilliant. But I'll tell you what the best
economic administration we've ever had. For those of you fiscal conservatives,
Bill Clinton, his administration those eight years were the best
(18:29):
the United States ever had. That was one of the
few times where the government was actually not only was
the budget balanced, but it was actually paying off its debt.
Now today we're running into two trillion dollar deficits, two
trillion dollars per year deficits. Can you imagine during Clinton
years it was zero At least one year it was zero.
(18:53):
Last time it happened before that was Dwight Eisenhower in
the fifties. So what you have here is President Trump,
I think, taking a huge chance. Now smaller countries are
going to have no choice but to negotiate. There's no
question Israel has just been tagged with seventeen percent of
(19:14):
terrorists for all the goods sold in the United States
from Israel and nat Now who is in town, and
he's basically going to negotiate to give us a break, please,
And countries that don't have a lot of economic umph
are going to be forced to negotiate. And this is
where Trump may be absolutely right. He goes, I play
hardball and you come to the table countries like China,
(19:37):
and they're saying no, and they're willing to come to
the battle. They're willing to come to the war. And
here's the difference. They don't care their economy may suffer.
And by the way, under these tariffs, the economies of
other countries suffer more than we do. We're too big
a market, will I mean, we're going to suffer, but
not like them. China doesn't care. China saying, okay, we'll
(20:03):
play tit for tat. I don't know how do you
say that in Chinese? I don't even know. Can you
look that up? Tit for tat? And no one's looking
it up in any case. China is they're gonna go
to war with us. She's laughing. Uh, you got other
countries that are not prepared to go to war with us,
especially the countries that don't have the same economic power.
(20:24):
And we don't know what's going to happen at this point,
we don't know. I'll tell you what is probably going
to happen, And Jerome Powell of the Fed said this,
Probably there's going to be a recession. Certainly inflation is
going to go up at least I think it's one hundercent.
I think he's giving it less of a chance than that.
And we're gonna be in an economic era of turmoil.
(20:49):
President Trump has gone from day one beautiful, terrific, it'll
be the best times, you're the economy will explode day
one to now. Okay, it's gonna hurt a little bit,
but it's gonna be for a very very short time,
and it's gonna be just a little bit of a bump. Well,
(21:09):
the stock market going down what six thousand points, seven
thousand points in less than a week, that's not a
little tiny bump. And we'll see what happens today. So
we're gonna be looking at a lot of this right
the second. The market is down according to BBC eight
hundred and nine points. It opened it down fourteen hundred,
(21:32):
went to sixteen hundred dollars south and then went at
one point to five hundred dollars plus or five hundred
points plus, and now it's down seven hundred and fifty.
So you talk about volatility. Man, we are in for
a ride like you cannot believe. As I have said,
all right, we're done with that. Let's do this. Let's
(21:53):
go to old people, as in who's old. Well, a
lot of people are, but let's talk about people in
public life. Year old. Former presidents are old. You've got
Supreme Court justices old. It used to be sixty five
is the age for retirement, by the way, that's been
(22:16):
out of that MS makes no sense now for fifty years.
But that was based on the fact that you'd retire
at sixty five and you die a year later. And
that's what So Scary is based on. That's why So
Scared is going broke, because we're all getting old and living. Now,
tell you use who's old. Members of Congress really old.
Nancy Pelosi is eighty five years old, still a congresswoman,
(22:37):
although she gave up her seat as speaker for quote
the new generation. Well, the points what's happening is this
is in the Democratic Party, is that all of a
sudden you have both Senators and congress people who are
seventy eighty years old, and you have a younger generation.
Is going enough of that? We're done. I think a
lot of it has to do with the Democrats that
(22:58):
got nailed by the Donald Trump win and missed the
boat completely, and a lot of younger people. You know.
For example, there's a Democrat in San Francisco, psychot chak
Rabat Barti I think is his name, and he's challenging Pelosi.
He's thirty nine years old. Software engineer ran Ocasio Cortes's
(23:22):
upset primary in New York in twenty eighteen, and he says,
look at all the Democratic Party, look at everybody. They're
all old as dirt. And he said, what people are
looking for are fighters. And he really got into it
with House Democrats, with the confrontational tactics. He was okay,
so Cartes's chief of staff, Cortez's chief of staff in
(23:45):
twenty nineteen. And he's just one of several a matter
of fact, more and more coming aboard to jump into
politics and say, hey, you know what, it is time
for millennials, It is time for a younger generation. It
is time for us to stir things up. Usually when
(24:05):
you look at Republicans they want the status quo. Well,
look who the Republicans have now. Donald Trump is president,
the man who is the least status quo president we
have had probably in one hundred years. And the Democrats
are taking a lesson here saying, this is why I
think what we want we don't want old school. What
(24:30):
we want is a new way of looking at it.
Brad Sherman, who is seventy is now has a campaign
going against them. And this is a San Frano Valley
Brad Sherman or West La Brad Sherman. So after November,
after these huge losses, the Democrats are going crazy and saying, well,
(24:52):
they're going crazy in the sense that they now realize
that the age issue is really important. And then I
ask you, do you think that Joe Biden has anything
to do with the issue of age? What was it?
I actually heard Joe Biden, and this is right after
the election. He was being interviewed, and he actually said
I could have one against Donald Trump. He actually said
(25:15):
that I could have won if they had let me
stay in. So imagine this. He had all of the
problems that Joe Biden had. This is Joe Biden because
remember that Trump won the election by attacking the Joe
Biden the entire scenario, including his age, and Joe Biden said,
I could have won, including my problems with my age.
(25:38):
That is the argument that these young Democrats who are
now politicos are having, and they're saying, you know, we're
we the Democratic Party. You're out of touch. Couldn't agree more,
could not agree more. Now, the unfortunate part for a
lot of people is that these young Democrats are pretty
out there on the left. I mean, anybody dealing with
(26:01):
Alexandro Occio Cortez. You know that's about as left wing
as you're going to get. All Right, we're done, guys,
this is KFI AM sixty. You've been listening to the
Bill Handle Show. Catch my show Monday through Friday, six
am to nine am, and anytime on demand on the
iHeartRadio app.
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