How Investors & Entrepreneurs can Navigate Tariffs & the Big Beautiful Bill

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Trump's tariffs have clearly put like emergency brakes on an
economy that some would say was already on a slowdown.
And now we've got a tax bill that would like
pressing the accelerator. So do we have breaks and accelerator?
Is this a good thing? Is this a bad thing?

(00:20):
And how might it affect the economy? How it will
affect you specifically as a business owner and investor. And
I have with me today Matt Sukuerq on the Wultability Show.

Speaker 2 (00:32):
Matt, it is great to have you with us.

Speaker 3 (00:34):
Thanks, Tom, It's great to be here.

Speaker 2 (00:36):
So you've got a terrific resume.

Speaker 1 (00:38):
Just give us a few highlights of what you do
and what you've been doing for the last few years.

Speaker 3 (00:45):
Sure. I keep a foot in the academic world and
the business world. On the academic side, I'm a fellow
at Johns Hopkins University and at Durham University in the UK.
I do research on financial markets, asset pricing and how
those things feed through to the larger economy and business wise,
I'm a managing director at SITA Experts, which is a

(01:07):
consulting firm that focuses on the financial services industry, and
I'm senior macro advisor at hid Nite Capital Partners, which
is a long short equity hedge fund. We've been among
the best performing hedge funds in the world for the
last five or six quarters. And you know, I, you know,
I hope I can deploy that expertise in unscrambling tax

(01:29):
policy with you today.

Speaker 2 (01:30):
I appreciate that.

Speaker 1 (01:31):
So, Matt, I love First of all, I love talking
to other you know, apossibly gate policy geeks like I am.
And and second one, I love people who are crazy
enough to do multiple things all at the same time.
So you know, my our listeners are a lot of
them are entrepreneurs, they're investors.

Speaker 2 (01:49):
They tend to do multiple things all at the same time.

Speaker 1 (01:52):
Speaking of doing multiple things at the same time, we
have the master of multiple things at the same time,
Donald Trump out there wreaking havoc on the world economy
for good or bad, which is I think is a
matter of considerable debate. So he started with the tariffs,
and just to be clear, I want your take on this.

(02:13):
Tariffs are simply a tax. And you know, the question
is who their attacks on. But they are taxed clearly
on consumption, whether it's whether it's born in and it
appears and I'd love your take on this Paris. It's
born somewhat by the producer, but it's also born by
the consumer. There's there's a combination of people that's born

(02:34):
by But it is a tax, and attacks, by definition,
especially attacks on consumption, is going to slow down. You
slow down whatever you tax. Okay, it's a it's a
wait to drag on whatever you tax. And so when
you add these tax these tariffs, So let's ignore all
of the disruption they cause. But let's just talk about them.
Let's say that they were not like, you know, these

(02:55):
massive things. Let's go six months down the road. Things
have leveled out. Well, we have say a ten percent
flat tariff for you know, we have tariffs that are
you know, more reasonable than people might think the original
tariffs were.

Speaker 2 (03:10):
How do tariffs historically?

Speaker 1 (03:15):
What's been tariff's effect on the economy of the country
that's putting the tariff, that's actually imposing the tariff?

Speaker 3 (03:25):
All right, Yes, a lot to unpack there, but yes,
tariffs are taxes. And I think that is you know,
if there's anything that's clear in President Trump's intension with tariffs,
it is that it spreads part of the tax base
onto international trade and allows him to pull back the

(03:46):
tax burden in other areas. And you know, there are
some comparisons with the late nineteenth century where you know,
that's the time before the income tax existed and most
government operations were funded out of tariffs. And you know,
the justification for tariffs, you know, has has been you know,

(04:09):
purely for revenue in those early situations. You know, everybody
has to come through the ports, go through the customs house.
It's a channel that you actually can tax. But probably
the best argument for it as a policy measure was
made by Alexander Hamilton, you know, back in the infancy
of the nation, and it was to give producers within

(04:32):
your borders the opportunity to learn enough about what they're
doing before they can be competed out of existence by
foreigners who are better at producing whatever that is. And
today that argument comes back in the form of national
security that even if it is true that other people

(04:53):
in the world produce certain food items more efficiently than
we do, that they produce certain metals that our mind
from the earth more efficiently than we do because of
their resource endowments or whatever, we nevertheless should have that
ability because in a war, we need to be able

(05:13):
to feed ourselves and we need to be able to
produce certain things. And that that is really the way
in for President Trump to take control of tax policy
through his tariff policy, because usually taxation is a power
that's reserved to Congress except in the situation of national emergencies.
And he's used this national emergency and justification and national

(05:37):
security justification to to put tariffs on well almost everything
we do.

Speaker 1 (05:43):
Let's let's not the first president to do this, so
he's just he's just doing it in a bigger way,
right you know Biden Biden kept the tariff that Trump
first imposed his first term.

Speaker 2 (05:55):
He kept the tariffs on China.

Speaker 1 (05:58):
Other presidents have certainly imposed ar before and rarely does
Congress interrupt teriffs. So so teriffs. Would it be fair
to say, though, that terriffs are a break. They put
the brakes on the economy, They put the brakes on consumption.

Speaker 2 (06:13):
I mean that would that's not a question?

Speaker 1 (06:16):
Is it.

Speaker 3 (06:18):
Not at all? And it's not just consumption, you know,
we have to think of it from the production side too.
It's there are so many processes in the American economy
that rely to some extent on inputs that come from abroad,
whether it's whether it's labor which we can contract at
lower rates elsewhere, or you know, other other sorts of

(06:40):
factors like natural resources that we just don't have in
the United States. So it bites on both ends. It
costs more to buy the things that we buy from
the rest of the world. It costs more for us
to make things that you know, where the processes are
organized in the United States, but where we also depend
on the rest of the world for inputs. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (06:59):
So now you know, one of Trump's suggestion is that
what he wants to do is bring manufacturing back to
the US, and the tariffs is a way to do that,
because it makes foreign goods more expensive. And you know,
let's face it, I mean, you know, there are countries
that impose huge tariffs on us that we don't impose

(07:19):
teriffs back. I mean, that's that's that's a true statement.
There are countries that have value added taxes, which I
know most economists think they're fine. I disagree with that
just because while yes, it applies to their to their people,
you know, to in their country, as well as it
applies to international it is in fact a tax that

(07:42):
when we don't have one, it's a one way tax.

Speaker 2 (07:45):
So if we export to them, there's a tax.

Speaker 1 (07:49):
If they export to us, there's not, because we don't
have a value add a tax.

Speaker 2 (07:53):
So but but so there is that.

Speaker 1 (07:57):
So it's it we're we're putting those those breaks on
the economy. My question, and I'm going back to Ronald
Reagan days because I was around in Maronald Reagan days
and a little before your time, but I was around
in and what Reagan did, remember is that you know,
he had this high interest rates and he had stagflation.

(08:18):
He inherited an economy that was really slow, and so
what he did was is we had the high interest rates,
which put brakes on, and then he had a massive
tax bill nineteen eighty one.

Speaker 2 (08:32):
That put the accelerator on. Do you see that happening here?

Speaker 1 (08:38):
Even though I know you're most economists aren't a fan
of terroriffs, but do you see that do you see
that mechanism between the breaking of adding tariffs and the
acceleration of reducing income taxes?

Speaker 3 (08:53):
Well, i'd agree with you that the tariffs are putting
on the brakes. It's it's killing confidence across the board,
from your management, to investors to consumers, like confidence readings
that we see from surveys are lower than they've been
in decades. Whether income taxes are pushing on the accelerator
right now the way that they would have in Reagan's

(09:15):
day is different. I think it's harder to say that
the tax situation that we're starting from now is as
stifling as the one that we had in the early
years of the Reagan administration. You know, if you want
to think of a Laffer curve kind of argument, you know,
I don't think we're as close to the peak or
the you know, the declining side of that curve now

(09:37):
as we might have been during Reagan's time. So, you know,
the ability of tax policy to further stimulate the economy
is not as obvious, and I think you'd have to
consider the way the distribution of tax benefits in the
new bill comes out. They're really not as broadly based

(09:58):
as the Reagan tax cut swore, and the idea that
they're going to you know, really stimulate economic activity across
the board is difficult to sustain.

Speaker 2 (10:08):
Well.

Speaker 1 (10:09):
Surely, surely if the twenty seventeen Act were allowed to expire,
it would add additional breaks. I don't think there's any
question there. People would have less money. They have less money,
they spend less money. So and people tend to spend
everything they get. And you know, unless you're talking about
the top ten percent, that everybody else spends everything they get.

(10:30):
So so that would certainly put the brake. So I
actually think the extension of the twenty seventeen Act is
probably the best part of this bill, and there are
some things in there that are very heavy investment. One
thing I want to talk to you about, Matt, is
there are parts of this bill, this big, beautiful built
actually titled that interestingly enough, but there's parts of it

(10:51):
that are very investment driven. So there's deduction, you know,
bonus appreciation, there's expensing of research development costs.

Speaker 2 (11:00):
There are there's.

Speaker 1 (11:03):
Tax tax reduction actually for small business owners. So there
are things that are very investment driven in that bill.
And then there are these other things like not taxing tips,
not taxing over time deductions for automobile interest, things like

(11:24):
this that are seem to be very consumption driven. I'd
like your take on those things that are investment driven
from a policy standpoint, and in fact, potentially offsetting the
tariffs versus those aspects that are consumption driven.

Speaker 3 (11:41):
Right, Yeah, the investment focused features are you know, very
continuous with the twenty seventeen bill, the accelerated depreciation like
you mentioned, you know, there's debate over whether these depreciation
allowances favor investments of a longer term or a shorter term.

(12:02):
Making it an expense just kind of removes investment from
the from the calculus of taxation altogether. It's just the
government giving up that revenue. You know, this should stimulate investment.
The research on the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act from
twenty seventeen doesn't show a major uptick in investment. The

(12:24):
overall impact of the you know, the depreciation allowances and
other benefits of that bill on the supply side were
mostly given away in distributions to shareholders rather than increasing
capital expenditure within business. So continuing that, you know, yes,

(12:46):
I mean directionally it does favor investment, but the you know,
the bang for the buck of those those measures is
considerably muted. And on the consumption side, you know, like
you said, I mean, expanding the standard deduction in the
twenty seventeen Act really was what lowered the tax burden

(13:08):
for most people, and where that's going to come back.
You know, we're going to extend that which is.

Speaker 1 (13:15):
Possible, we're actually making it permanent. Yeah, yeah, this bill
makes it permanent.

Speaker 3 (13:20):
But what changes the situation for people in you know,
in load to moderate tax brackets is that they're going
to lose a lot of government transfers and so you
know it, whether it's worse than having their rates snap
back to where it was without the larger standard deduction,
I don't know. I mean, that's that's kind of a

(13:41):
technical thing that will have to be hammered out as
the bill comes. But you know, I, like I said, overall,
the incremental amount of stimulus from this is not likely
to be as profound as it was in twenty seventeen.

Speaker 1 (13:57):
So but let me ask you just in concept, Okay,
if you give a tax benefit that is meaning that
you have more money to those in the what I'm
going to call the spending population, because the reality is

(14:17):
top one percent, there's only so much money you can
spend in a year. I mean, they don't if they
get a tax break, that's not going to increase their spending.
That will more likely actually increase their investment than they're
spending because they again, you can only spend so much money.
Most people can only spend a limited amount of money

(14:38):
every year. Now nobody spends twenty million dollars a year. Okay,
So the let's take these two specific that I think
are very consumption oriented, the no tax on tips and
the no tax on over time.

Speaker 2 (14:53):
How does that impact? Is that a short term long
term Let's just assume their permit, which they're not, they're
five years.

Speaker 1 (15:01):
But even if they were long term, would they have
a long term impact or is it just like feeding
a child the candy bar?

Speaker 3 (15:13):
Well, I mean, it's kind of a game you play
with the employers when you change the rules. So if
there's less tax on tips, less tax on overtime, those
things are cheaper for the employer. So does it make
sense to hire twenty people or does it make sense
to hire fifteen people and have them work a lot

(15:33):
of overtime. Those are the kinds of decisions that will
be reconsidered in light of this. And likewise, for tipped workers,
you know there's this sub minimum wage where you know,
what you're required to pay workers is reduced if you
can show that they're made up with it. By tips.
If we have more workers that are swept into that category,

(15:54):
you know, they're losing what used to be guaranteed earnings
and now they're put at risk as tips. You know,
it's hard to say where it falls. You know that
that is the you know, as an employer, there is
this incremental incentive to lean more towards tips. But we
also know that Americans are kind of, you know, at
their limit with tips right now. I mean, I've been

(16:16):
in an airport kiosk buying myself a bottle of water,
and I check myself out and asked me if I
want to leave a tip even if I haven't interacted
with another person. So in it, you know, there's there
are limits on how much we can compensate people with
tips as well.

Speaker 2 (16:33):
No, I I get that.

Speaker 1 (16:34):
I guess my question that is, if if you give
people more money, does that what's the impact on the economy?
And when you give people who typically spend everything that
they make, what's the impact on the economy. Is a
short term impact? Is a long term impact? And how
does that impact compared to incentivizing investment?

Speaker 3 (16:57):
Yeah, it's I mean, of course it increases aggregate demand.
The question is you know, how how big is the
base for which it increases aggregate demand? You know, so
if you have you have one hundred people employed, and
all of a sudden they have more money in their pocket,
that's great. But if the the unintended consequences that of
that is to shift the number of employed people you know,

(17:20):
down to ninety five or ninety then the loss of
economic activity might offset the additional spending you get from
the people who are employed. And that's why I'm pointing
to these employers incentives that are created. You know, you
may have fewer people employed but working longer hours to
take advantage of the overtime incentives.

Speaker 1 (17:41):
The thing, it could actually drive wages down, even though
overtime typically is time and a half, right, I mean
typically you have to pay time and a half, so
it's over time for an employer, generally speaking, is more
expensive than having the more employees. Right, that generally more
expensive because you've got two percent higher wages. Are you

(18:01):
saying that because they're not tax that will drive the
wages down?

Speaker 3 (18:07):
Yes it can, and uh, you know, an employer's total
costs also include recruitment and uh, you know, attrition of employees,
and so you know, sweating the assets you have can
sometimes be uh, you know, a more effective means than
going out and recruiting more people to you know, to
keep to keep your hours at regular wage rates rather
than overtime rates.

Speaker 2 (18:30):
So let's let's talk about see do you think do
you think.

Speaker 1 (18:41):
That the incentive impact the the positive impact of this
tax bill, because it adds a huge amount to the deficit.
No matter how you slice it, it's going to add
to the deaf sit unless you're just saying, well, but
currently we're already adding to the deaf set, and so
the Extension twenty seventeen Act doesn't.

Speaker 2 (19:02):
Add to the deficit.

Speaker 1 (19:03):
We already have that unless you make that argument, which
some of the Republicans are making, it definitely adds to
the deficit. Does the positive impact to the economy offset
in your mind the negative impact of the tariffs?

Speaker 3 (19:24):
I would tend to think no. You know, the impact
on the deficit is weighing on longer term interest rates.
Excuse me, it's weighing on what we pay to finance
our debt, and interest on the debt is already a
major portion of the government budget. So as interest comes
to encompass more of the budget, that's less demand stimulus

(19:46):
that the government can give relatively speaking, you know, and yeah,
I mean if you can stimulate consumption, but if you
don't have the production on the other side to meet it,
then and the result of that is usually just inflation.
And as I pointed out, you know, the impact of

(20:07):
the tariffs is just as bad, if not worse, on
the production side as it is on the consumption side.
If you think, for example, you know, to take automakers
as an example. You know, you may export and reimport
certain automobile subassemblies multiple times before they end up as
a finished vehicle for sale in the United States. So
you can have tariffs biting on that process four or five,

(20:30):
six times before they reach the final consumer. So no matter.
You know, you can have deductibility of auto loan interest,
kind of giving people a bigger budget to buy cars,
but if the cars are twice as expensive as they
were before, that doesn't leave anybody better off. So you
might have more money in your pocket, but in effect

(20:50):
a smaller budget because there's less to buy.

Speaker 1 (20:53):
Interesting, So, one of President Trump's arguments that he's put
forward is that this is a temporary disruption that eventually
it will force between the investment incentives, it looks like
we now the Democrats aren't talking about reducing increasing the

(21:14):
corporate tax rate, which I think was a horrible discussion
that they took up in twenty eighteen, but.

Speaker 2 (21:23):
That seems to be permanent. The investment incentives and adding
the tariffs, the whole idea being well, we're going.

Speaker 1 (21:31):
To force manufacturing back, so yes, we'll have a disruption
for two, three, four or five years. Conceptually, could it
bring could actually force manufacturing back so that rather than manufacturing,
rather than just doing the final assembly, we're actually doing
all the manufacturing.

Speaker 3 (21:49):
I don't think it can, because it's not close. If
you want to think about making clothing in the United
States or something that's even impossible, like growing coffee in
the United States, we you know, no economic incentive can
make our climate right for growing coffee. And you know,
we we benefit from, you know, being able to access

(22:10):
the labor of the entire world, and the cost of
labor that's going that's embodied in the products that we
buy from from abroad, would not be attractive to an
American worker. Even after adjusting for for how much more
productive American workers are, these still don't produce better jobs.
We're better off sticking with the things that we do best,

(22:33):
and we're a major exporter of services. Americans may make
incredibly good wages and service jobs, and and to shift
workers away from that so that they can work low
wage manufacturing jobs that are less productive just doesn't seem
like a good move for anybody.

Speaker 1 (22:53):
Let's talk about that for a second, because because there's
actually aspects in the tax bill that or proposed in
the tax bill, who knows what it's going to end
up with, we're going to end up with that would
actually penal that actually penalized service workers. Okay, so for example,
the qualified business income in deduction that twenty what's now
a twenty three percent deduction under the.

Speaker 2 (23:13):
Bill, for the most part, doesn't applied to service workers.

Speaker 1 (23:19):
Some of the other taxman as they're talking about taking
away the deduction for taxes from small you know, qualified
you know service service, Uh, service industries. There are all
sorts of there's there's a lot of pressure being in
the service industry. I care about this. I think our
lobbyists are really bad. Uh, but how is it we here,

(23:41):
here's the thing that we export. Your saying that hey,
we export this the best, and yet we're penalizing it.

Speaker 2 (23:48):
Are you Do you see that? Do you see that
as a as a real issue?

Speaker 3 (23:53):
Yeah? I do. I mean it's I mean, historically, over
the last forty years, we've come to a point where
service workers have done well and people who were connected
to manufacturing did not do as well. So the political
demand for this is coming from the people who didn't
do as well. And I understand that. But there's also this,
you know, this culture war aspect of it that people

(24:15):
who are working in services, that are the people with
college educations. They're in blue states, they're in cities, they're
not obviously part of Trump's coalition, and you know, he
could he could just leave them alone, but his inclination
seems to be, well, let's kick them if we can.
And you know, clearly I'm not happy with it. And

(24:36):
I'm somebody who believes in human capital. You know, I've
got too many degrees for God's sake. But you know,
I don't see it is one of our strengths, it's
one of our chief exports. We export a lot of
college education to the world, we export medical care and management.
Know how across the board we're in huge surplus in

(24:59):
terms of services trade. I don't know why you would
try to recap that.

Speaker 1 (25:05):
So what about the idea that there are there are
going back to your original point that there are you
know we do have, I.

Speaker 2 (25:15):
Mean we can't.

Speaker 1 (25:16):
My understanding is, and I'm not the expert in this,
My understands we can't even build our own weapons start
to finish.

Speaker 3 (25:23):
Is that not.

Speaker 2 (25:23):
Truly a security issue?

Speaker 1 (25:25):
I mean, if we don't have our own steal, if
we don't have our own rarers, if we're not doing that,
are we not putting ourselves at risk?

Speaker 3 (25:35):
I don't know. I mean, we seem to have very
well off gun manufacturers who you know, resist any kind
of legislation that restricts their activities. So the lack of
a you know, robust industry on that end doesn't doesn't
seem to wash. We we also have the world's largest
defense contractors, and we're exporting arms to the entire world.
So I'm not sure what the what the lack is.

Speaker 1 (26:00):
Well, I mean, clearly we you know, we import, say,
for example, rarers, which are used more and more in
new technology, and we like ninety percent of that from China. Okay,
So anything that requires the rare earth, which as technology
grows and developed, seems like it's going to be more
not less. That's a growth industry. Aren't we at risk

(26:22):
if we can't produce that we have it, we've just
not mined it. Okay, So it's not that we don't
have those resources, it's that we have not gone after
those resources because it's.

Speaker 2 (26:33):
Been cheaper to get them from China.

Speaker 1 (26:35):
So are we not putting do we not put ourselves
in the hands of this is I'm just I'm I'm
basically parodying an argument that that we hear a lot.

Speaker 2 (26:44):
Are we not.

Speaker 1 (26:44):
Putting ourselves at the at risk to people who we
don't necessarily consider our friends by not having some of
these strategic industries.

Speaker 2 (26:54):
I get clothing, I get that kind of stuff.

Speaker 1 (26:57):
But when you're talking about transportation, you're talking about defense,
you're talking about some of these really essential industries for
any any country to really succeed and defend itself.

Speaker 2 (27:09):
Don't we put ourselves at risk?

Speaker 3 (27:12):
Yeah? Well, I mean I'd really love to be having
a focused policy discussion about things like this that are
really essential to security, rather than across the board tariff
regime with every country in the world. And it's true
China is much better at recovering rare earths than we are.
It's not because they're more common in China. They go
and they mind them and the rest of the world.

(27:34):
But you know, mining requires a lot of power, it
requires a lot of water, and being able to do
that in a regime like China's where you can kind
of create the regulations you want on demand, makes that possible.
They also train a lot of mythologists and material scientists,

(27:54):
and in the United States we don't train people nearly
as much as we need to to be competitive there.
But overall, you know, for rare earths are rare, but
there you know, you don't really need large quantities of
them to produce what we do to add neodymium to

(28:15):
a magnet. You know, it's not like kilograms of it,
it's a it's a trace amount of it that really
increases the strength of it. So I still I don't
see a lot of processes that are running into limits
where they can't get the rareers they need at a
reasonable price. And uh, and so you know, it is

(28:35):
a concern, it's worth thinking about, but it's it's not
flashing red for me as as a major risk to
to getting on with with what we're doing.

Speaker 1 (28:44):
Okay, So so now I want you to kind of
change hats instead of being an economist that is thinking
about what ifs you're a business owner, you're a middle
market small business owner in the US, what are things
that you ought to be looking at?

Speaker 2 (29:02):
What are the things that you ought to be doing
in order to prepare for this?

Speaker 1 (29:08):
Clearly this change is happening, and clearly Drum's not backing
off the I backs off here and there, But the
reality is he's still moving forward with the tariffs. So
what does the small business owner do? What does the
entrepreneur do practically in order to deal with this?

Speaker 3 (29:27):
Yeah? Well, what I see people doing now is they're
trying to figure out, kind of within within the channels
that they have, within the people that they deal with normally,
what does their bottom line look like with tariffs and force?
What does it look like at the lower level of
ten percent where we hope we end up? You know,
can I survive in both of those states? For many people,

(29:52):
they're they're kind of willing to knuckle through the higher
tariff version of that for the sake of their customers.
And for the hope that eventually it's going to go away.
But if it doesn't go away, then then you start
to have this starts to unfold in many dimensions. You know,
the suppliers that you have may not be the ones
that make your business possible going forward, and you suddenly

(30:16):
have to start requalifying everybody that you deal with. The
material that you used to get from Thailand, maybe you're
going to try to get it from from Canada now,
or you're going to try to get it from the Caribbean.
I don't know, but this, these are these are kind
of the best war and grooves for every business there is.
You know, it's a lot of work to identify a partner,

(30:40):
to develop a relationship, to have trusts, to be paid
on time, to get your orders filled on time. Undoing
these relationships is really difficult and and I think a
real major source of stress for every business owner right now.

Speaker 1 (30:54):
Yeah, it seems to me that you know, when when
times are tough is when the good businesses get better
and the bad businesses go out of business. That is forever,
that has always been the case. Okay, it happened during COVID,
it happened after COVID. You know, that's what happens. And
so it seems to me like now is to me,

(31:15):
it's an opportunity. It's an opportunity to say, hey, you know,
I've been okay with these suppliers. Maybe I need to
have additional suppliers. Maybe I need to you know, the
benefit is we have AI now. It's much easier to
find people than it was five years ago, much easier
to find suppliers, much easier to find alternative sources.

Speaker 2 (31:35):
So maybe I ought to just be we need to
be thinking smarter.

Speaker 1 (31:38):
We need to be working smarter, not harder, making sure
that we're taking capturing the efficiencies that AI can give
us in our business. So you know, we can actually
reduce our headcount for sure, or we can increase the
production of the headcount we have. I mean, whichever way
you want to look at I like the idea of

(31:58):
increasing the production.

Speaker 2 (32:00):
Of the headcount you have. But you don't have to
add more headcount. You can do so much more.

Speaker 1 (32:06):
You can do so much better analysis, you can have
better information, you can make better decisions, all of those things.
It seems to me like we ought to be doing
right now when when we have this period of disruption,
and everybody is being disrupted. I mean, the best time,
you know to to get smarter is when when the
whole world's being disrupted, because now you come out ahead

(32:28):
no matter what happens.

Speaker 2 (32:30):
It seems to me.

Speaker 3 (32:32):
Yeah, And I mean that's kind of why I resist
saying categorically that you know tariffs are going to lead
the recession, or that you know we're definitely looking at
some kind of outcome, because against that, you have the
ingenuity of every business owner working in your favor, and
you know, people find a way, and I have a
lot of confidence in people to find the best way,

(32:55):
you know, certainly, you know, I think we could spend
all that ingenuity in a better direction than trying to
overcome a policy that doesn't have an obvious purpose or endpoint,
but you know it is. You know, that's a great
thing about the American system is that, you know, you
let people find these solutions in a distributed way.

Speaker 1 (33:20):
That is what makes America great, frankly, is that we
we seem to be better at adapting and finding the
solutions than any any.

Speaker 2 (33:30):
Other block of people. And I love that about the
American entrepreneur. That's what why I love.

Speaker 1 (33:38):
I you know, I like you have. I know you
live in another country. I've been in all over the world,
and still I would rather do business in the US
than any other country in the world because it's just
easier to do business here, even with things like the
tariffs and the upset with the tax lot cetera. And

(33:58):
I would just encourage everybody, you know, pay attention. Don't
don't just say hey, I'm going to wait and it
is what it is, and I'm just gonna deal with it. Instead,
now's the time to do something, whether it's understand how
the tax law, this new tax law is going to
affect you, and sitting down with your tax advisor, whether
it's looking at new suppliers or looking at how technology

(34:20):
can improve your business. I think now is the actual time,
you know, to take control of your business and and
really get a handle ont so you can be better
coming out of this, whether there are twenty five percent tariffs,
hundred twenty five percent tariffs, or no tariffs at all.

Speaker 2 (34:36):
And no matter what happens with the tax law, because.

Speaker 1 (34:38):
What you when when that happens, you're always getting end
up with way more money.

Speaker 2 (34:43):
And pay wayless tax.

Speaker 1 (34:44):
Thanks everyone for joining us on the Multibility Show. Thank
you matts Kurque.

Speaker 2 (34:48):
Matt, where could we find more about you and your work?

Speaker 3 (34:53):
I have a website at Mattsukurque dot com. My last
name is spelled s e k E r k E
Matt Sukurqe. That links to my recent book with Steve Hanke,
which is called Making Money Work. It also links to
my substack where you can read my writing from week
to week and to interviews I've done in the media

(35:15):
on tariffs and other topics. So I hope you'll explore that.
And thank you Tom. I appreciate speaking with you today.

Speaker 1 (35:21):
Thanks Matt, thanks everyone for joining us, and we'll see
you next time on the Waltability Show.

Speaker 2 (35:26):
This podcast is a presentation of rich Dad Media Network.

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