April 4, 2025 • 25 mins
Trump’s proposed tariffs are all over the headlines—but who’s really footing the bill? Kimberly Clausing, Professor of Tax Law and Policy at UCLA, breaks down why these economic moves don’t hit everyone equally—and who’s likely to feel the sting the most. Plus, Americans are rushing to buy everything from TVs to soy sauce ahead of the tariffs. And finally, the bizarre case of a U.S. couple locked up in a Mexican prison over a timeshare dispute—what happened, and why it took nearly a month to bring them home.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
This is Gary and Shannon and you're listening to KFI
AM six forty, the Gary and Shannon Show on demand
on the iHeartRadio app. What does it all mean? We
are bombarded with all this information. It goes back to
when we knew these tariffs were going to kick into
effect this week, Liberation Day and the like. The stock
market has responded the way all the experts said the
(00:22):
stock market would respond to uncertainty. What does it all mean?
Kimberly Classing is joining us. Kimberly is Professor of tax
Law and Policy at UCLA's School of Law. She also
works for an institute that is studying this. She is
a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics.
(00:43):
Joins us now kind enough to share her time with
us and Kimberly, what does it mean for us? When
we look at tariffs, we look at the slide on
Wall Street. Of course that's more four oh one k territory.
But in terms of what we're going to see with
higher prices, from the growth free stores to car repairs,
how are.
Speaker 2 (01:03):
We going to feel this?
Speaker 3 (01:06):
This is going to have a huge impact for consumers.
And it's ironic that a president who was elected in
part because people's discontent about inflation, has undertaken a policy
that will directly increase costs for US households. Most estimates
think that the full tariffs that he suggested over the
past few weeks will add up to almost four thousand
(01:29):
dollars in higher consumer costs. And that's going to be
much much higher than anything that they can hope to
get in tax cuts. And most of the tax cuts
are simply extending current law anyway, So this is going
to be quite painful. When people go to the store.
Speaker 1 (01:45):
When I hear about China and China retaliating today, they
use the words like what was it? Raw earth metals?
Things like that in your thing? What the hell is that?
How does that translate? Well, it translates into batteries, it
translates into car operating systems.
Speaker 3 (02:07):
Correct, that's right, And the retaliation in general should be expected,
and many anticipated that countries would retaliate. The Trump tariffs
are completely unprincipled. They don't actually bear any relation to
foreign trading partners trade practices. Most tariffs on US products
are actually quite low. The numbers that they put up
(02:32):
earlier this week to try to argue that foreigners were
tariffing our products were based simply on bilateral trade deficits.
They really didn't have anything to do with foreign protection.
So countries are understandably aggrieved, and Canada as well as
China and many others. The Europeans in addition, have all
either promised to retaliate or already in the process of retaliating.
(02:54):
And this is going to hurt Americans, not just in
terms of their consumption, like we just discussed earlier, it's
really going to hurt the economy as a whole, as
exporters face shrinking markets abroad, and as this puts a
big monkey wrench into supply chains. Is you point out
these critical minerals are crucial for clean energy production, and
that's just one area where we're going to see a
(03:16):
lot of disruption.
Speaker 1 (03:18):
All right, Yes, the term I was looking for rare
earths those used in computer chips, electric vehicle batteries, like
you've said, kimberly. Unfortunately, the news is not going to
get better anytime soon. As we make our way into
two car repairs and things like that in groceries, and
it seems according to your institute, it seems like this
(03:40):
is not going to hit everybody as equally. Can you
hang on and we can talk about that and tackle
that when we come back.
Speaker 3 (03:46):
YEP, sounds good.
Speaker 2 (03:47):
All right, great.
Speaker 1 (03:48):
We're talking to Kimberly Clossing. She's a senior fellow at
the Peterson Institute for International Economics, and they've actually studied
what these tariffs, how they're going to play out for
us looking at what's going on on Wall Street, but
in our real lives.
Speaker 2 (04:03):
We'll get into more of that week.
Speaker 4 (04:05):
You're listening to Gary and Shannon on demand from KFI
Am six forty.
Speaker 1 (04:11):
President Trump sounding an upbeat note about the tariffs today,
even as the stock market is doing what we have
been reporting to you it is doing, following more than
sixteen hundred points at times this morning, he said, I
think it's going very well. He likened the United States
to a sick patient in need of surgery and said
the market drop after his announcement was to be expected.
(04:34):
I don't know how much patience the president has. I
would bet on not a lot, which is why I
still have the question on the table, of the question
of the endgame. This doesn't seem to be like a
president who plays for the endgame, because when the endgame
is realized for something like tariffs, you're looking at twenty thirty,
(04:58):
forty years down the line to when things like production
and factories and all that have the time and the
infrastructure to move back to this country. If that's in
fact what they do, I think it's a very idealized
way of thinking that belongs or lived in the fifties
(05:18):
and the sixties of by American and let's make everything here.
Speaker 2 (05:21):
And I love the idea.
Speaker 1 (05:24):
It's just that in twenty twenty five, with the way
that we live in a global economy, it's hard to
think about that in feasible terms, just in logistics alone.
So I don't think this is a man that is
long on patience. And I'm just wondering how many days
of a hammering in the form of the stock market
(05:44):
alone will he be able to withstand. And I know
that the thinking is that these other countries, China and
the like will come to the table and there will
be an agreement worked out that benefits this country more
than we're benefit right now by the tariff rules that
are in place.
Speaker 2 (06:03):
But are they willing? I mean, who has more to
lose or is.
Speaker 1 (06:07):
It that much of a give and take between us
and the other global powers that we're talking about. I
just don't know. I don't know where the goalpost is
on that we're talking to. Kimberly Clossing. She is Professor
of Tax Law and Policy at UCLA School of Law.
She also is a senior Fellow at the Peterson Institute
for International Economics. And Peterson has actually done a story
(06:29):
or a study, I should say, a study about the
tariffs on America's three biggest trading partners and who that
will affect the most, And it seems like Peterson has
found that it's going to affect the people who can
least afford it the most.
Speaker 2 (06:46):
Kimberly, is that accurate?
Speaker 3 (06:49):
Yes, that's accurate. In the works that we've done, we
found that the reason troiffts are regressive tax that they
fall more heavily on poor and middle income cloud people
is really pretty simple. Those are the people who spend
most of their paycheck, and people further down in the
income distribution also tend to buy more traded goods. So
(07:10):
when you look at the share of income that they
lose from tariffs, it's very large and burdensome. Whereas a
rich person might be able to save a big chunk
of their income, and because of that savings, they can
insulate themselves from tariff because they won't be paying the
tariff on the part of the income that they save.
So I think this consumption hit is one of the
(07:31):
many reasons you see the market going down. But one
thing you should be aware of it with the market
as well, is that the market is fully capable of
thinking long term. It's a reflection of the future profits
of the economy. What these big drops in the stock
market are telling us is that the market itself doesn't
believe in this long term story. So this is a
(07:53):
a deeply wrong headed and misguided economic policy approach.
Speaker 1 (07:57):
If you were a betting person, is not what you do, Kimberly,
but you're you're you are very well informed, obviously very
well read and well researched when it comes to the economy,
and like you said, the stock market not betting on
on the endgame here. How how long can the market
(08:18):
sustain this kind of these kind of days on.
Speaker 2 (08:21):
Wall Street before all hell breaks loose? You know, I
think short.
Speaker 3 (08:29):
You're already seeing the hit in terms of their retirement
savings and any assets they have invested in the market.
I don't think this is going to turn into long
term gain. I think if the President sticks with this strategy,
it will turn into long term pain as well. And
there have been countries that have tried these high tariffs
over decades and they found it just makes them poor.
(08:51):
Just ask Argentina or Brazil how they prospered under these
types of import substituting policies. They've been firmly rejected did
by economists for a reason. So I'm hopeful that the
President will eventually give in on this and just realize
that that policy is not saying the dividends that he'd
hoped and learned something from these early days, because I
(09:13):
think the longer he sticks with it, the more pain
we're all in for as a country.
Speaker 1 (09:18):
All Right, Kimberly, Classing professor at UCLA Tax Law and Policy,
the School of Law there, appreciate.
Speaker 2 (09:24):
Your time this morning. I know you're super busy, and
thank you very much.
Speaker 3 (09:28):
Take care you too.
Speaker 1 (09:30):
All right, Coming up next, what are we rushing to buy?
Because we are, we're rushing to buy things. Here's the
short list, TVs, Soy, Sauce, Lululemon. We'll get into more
of what you could run short on's the heck of
a mix, right, it sounds like a nice afternoon to
me get home, put on some Lulu La. I lost
(09:50):
hours to the stupidest reality show yesterday, that Amy. It's
which One, The Secret Millionaire. It debuted last week. It's
the first season, and I don't know if it was
just decompressing from real news for all day, but my god,
I sunk into that thing yesterday.
Speaker 2 (10:08):
My couch was hurting. There's enough good ones on there.
You don't have to watch the bad one, I know.
Speaker 1 (10:13):
But you couple that with some Lululemon and some soy sauce,
and that is an afternoon on your big screen TV.
Speaker 4 (10:19):
Absolutely, you're listening to Gary and Shannon on demand from
KFI AM six forty.
Speaker 1 (10:28):
We'll be hooking up with Amy King coming up at
the top of the hour to talk all about the
wiggle waggle Walk, which has become legendary around here. We
all laughed and giggled at it the first year around
or so years ago, and now we it's like a child, right, Amy,
It's like one of our children.
Speaker 2 (10:45):
The wiggle waggle walk.
Speaker 1 (10:46):
We loved to wiggle and we love to wiggle and waggles,
so we'll talk about it. Four space tourists who orbited
the North and South Poles returned to Earth today. They
splashed down here in the Pacific to end their privately
funded polar tour. A bit coin investor Chun Wang chartered
a SpaceX flight for himself and three others. This was
in a dragging capsule outfitted with a domed window. They
(11:09):
got three hundred and sixty degree views of the polar
caps and everything in between. How cool. By the way,
if you're wondering the price tag, they're not saying. Chun
Wang will not say how much he paid for the
three and a half day trip. They took off from
Kennedy on Monday night, and then they returned today here
to southern California. The first human spaceflight to circle the
(11:32):
globe above the poles and the first Pacific splashdown for
a space crew in fifty years. The people invited were
Norwegian filmmaker Jeannick Mickelson, German robotics researcher Rabia Rose, and
Australian polar guide Eric Phillips. They all shared the stunning
(11:55):
vistas during their voyage. They said it was so epic
because it's another kind of desert, just goes on and
on all the way. All four suffered from space motion
sickness after reaching orbit, but by the time they woke
up on day two they said they felt fine. They
cranked open the window cover right above the south pole.
Speaker 2 (12:16):
How cool is that? But also, what.
Speaker 1 (12:19):
Is motion sickness for four people in a capsule?
Speaker 2 (12:22):
What does that look like?
Speaker 1 (12:24):
I'm not curious enough to know about the polar about
the poles?
Speaker 2 (12:28):
Shall we say to know?
Speaker 3 (12:31):
All right?
Speaker 1 (12:31):
Well, since President Trump announced these sweeping tariffs on imported
goods on Liberation Day Wednesday, Americans have apparently been busy
adding to kart.
Speaker 2 (12:41):
This is from the Wall Street Journal.
Speaker 1 (12:44):
They talked to one guy who promptly checked out with
two hundred and forty four dollars worth of workout apparel
from Lulu Lemon. Lulu Lemon, by the way, is a
Canadian brand, so that is why people are stalking up
on the Lulu Lemon.
Speaker 2 (13:00):
There was a sweater.
Speaker 1 (13:02):
He bought one hundred and fifty dollars sweater from House
of Sonny, which is a UK brand. See this is
where I am. I am woefully dumb. I have no
idea about brands and where they come from. And I've
never heard of House of Sonny and all of that.
I'm very much into the target tank tops that you
can get for seven to nine dollars.
Speaker 2 (13:23):
That's my jam.
Speaker 1 (13:25):
Let's see here they talked to somebody, Sean McKenzie. He
ran out to buy three eight packs of Guinness, filling
up on the refrigerator's vegetable drawer with cans of Guinness. Guinness,
by the way, is having a big research a renaissance,
shall we speak here in America at least a lot
of people drinking Guinness.
Speaker 2 (13:43):
Again. The guy that they talked to that and I
don't know if it's.
Speaker 1 (13:49):
A guy or a girl actually, or if we're even
using a box of that nature because the name is
Cedar Roach.
Speaker 2 (13:57):
Interesting name, Cedar Roach.
Speaker 1 (14:00):
Cedar says, I knew I was what was vulnerable and
what I wanted, so I wasn't going to delay. Cedar
Roach is a twenty two year old public policy major
at smu OH. She She She said that the tariff
news has been the talk of the campus, especially for
its political impact on alcohol prices. Let me just go
back for a minute there. Cedar is her name, and
(14:23):
Cedar is twenty two. When you were twenty two, did
you have that kind of money that would buy you
lulu Lemon?
Speaker 2 (14:32):
No? Uh? That is that is crazy.
Speaker 1 (14:36):
She bought two hundred and forty four dollars worthout a
work of worth, a workout apparel from Lululemon at twenty two.
Speaker 2 (14:42):
Wow, that's incredible.
Speaker 1 (14:44):
Maybe she's got a side job, Maybe she's selling her
body to the night or something.
Speaker 2 (14:49):
What can't you live without? Let's do a little gas
go around here?
Speaker 1 (14:54):
If things are running short, If she's Cedar is stocking
up on Lululemon, and what's his name, Sean? Her boyfriend
is stalking up on Guinness? Do we have our guests?
Speaker 2 (15:09):
Go around here? Kno, there we go? What uh?
Speaker 1 (15:14):
What can't you live without? I'll go, I can't think
of something I can't live without?
Speaker 3 (15:19):
Right?
Speaker 2 (15:19):
What ConA? What can't you live without? I can't live
without my hookahs? Hokahs? Okay, how many pairs do you have?
You say? I have like four? I think four pairs
of hokahs? And my wife has both. But she's a nurse,
so it's like, oh, she.
Speaker 1 (15:34):
Lives in those yeah, and she probably has all different
colors to match all the different colors of scrubs and
all that is correct.
Speaker 2 (15:40):
Nah, that's cool. I love that.
Speaker 1 (15:42):
I love everything about being a nurse. That's just what
you wear. I couldn't do any of the other stuff.
Speaker 2 (15:49):
They are.
Speaker 1 (15:49):
They are miraculous people to me who can do all
of the things that nurses do. I do think I
could wear the scrubs and the hokahs every day. That's
where it ends. But that's on like a nice life, Amy,
what can't you live without?
Speaker 4 (16:03):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (16:04):
That's a tough one. Yeah, I mean really, what can't
we live?
Speaker 1 (16:07):
Right? That's a very good You're like a Buddhist. You're
a Buddhist, Amy. Happiness comes from within there you go, Keana,
do you have something that you can't live without that
you need to stock up on?
Speaker 2 (16:19):
Coffee? Coffee? Yeah, sounds like you need a little right now.
Speaker 1 (16:24):
I do have one, but it's almost empty, and one
is not enough.
Speaker 2 (16:29):
No, it's not. No, I'm a curic. I'll probably go
pop a gickup in there.
Speaker 1 (16:33):
And I had three shots of espresso before I woke
up this morning.
Speaker 2 (16:36):
Before you woke up. This mainline that.
Speaker 1 (16:39):
If they if you could hook up an ivy to
the to the side of my bed with espresso. I
just put that needle in right away. Anyway, thank you,
conem So. Anyway, people stocking up on things. I don't
know if we're at the time for toilet paper yet.
I hope, I hope not to That was a dark
time and it wasn't. It didn't have to do with
(17:00):
the toilet paper. It was the visuals of people lining
up with toilet paper that was the most depressing thing
of the whole thing, Like, what are we doing here, folks.
We are better than this, We are better, we are
we we are not we are not all right? Coming
up next like timeshares needed more bad press. My god,
I get what the kids call an I get anxiety
(17:23):
thinking about sitting through one of those timeshare boondoggles that
they have when you get a free room somewhere and
they're like, oh, yeah, you just got to come to
our little talk, our little meeting for half an hour.
It's never half an hour. And all the people they
send in and then the closers they send in, they
never let you leave. It's like guantanamobey at those things.
(17:44):
It's awful. And now they're holding timeshare owners hostage for
trying to get out of them in Mexico. Not really,
but we'll get to the nuances when we come back.
Speaker 4 (17:56):
You're listening to Gary and Shannon on demand from KFI A.
Speaker 1 (18:03):
So I was just texting with a friend about time shares.
I asked him if I could share the story. He
hasn't gone back to me, But hey, what would Tim
Conway Junior? Do I think he'd share the story?
Speaker 2 (18:15):
He'd still share. You're damn right he would, Kiana. So
time shares terrify me.
Speaker 1 (18:22):
It always sounded too good to be true before I
knew what they really were.
Speaker 2 (18:26):
Like, you just get a cool place to.
Speaker 1 (18:28):
Go wherever you want to go for spending what five
hundred bucks a year or something like that, Like I
don't know.
Speaker 2 (18:34):
That was kind of the way I theorized it.
Speaker 1 (18:36):
It just sounded like, well, let's deal with this, and
then when you go to one of those timeshare meetings.
One of my best friends we went to Vegas one
time and she.
Speaker 2 (18:46):
Said, oh, yeah, I got us a free room.
Speaker 1 (18:48):
I just got to sit through this this hour meeting
where they're going to try to sell us on having
a place there, And I'm like, it's an hour. How
bad could it be holy hell, it could be so bad.
You just honestly feel like Captain Phillips. You're sitting there
and there's no way of leaving, and they keep bringing
(19:08):
in new people and you're having to be fake and smile.
And then at one point in that hour, which doesn't
feel like an hour, it feels like four weeks, you
start being fake.
Speaker 2 (19:19):
You start fake, you stop fake.
Speaker 1 (19:21):
Smiling because it's just it's getting to the point where
it's tedious.
Speaker 2 (19:25):
I'm not interested. I'm not interested. Oh, let's bring in Susan.
Speaker 1 (19:28):
Susan comes in with her power Blazer and Susan's like, hey,
so I hear you guys are thinking about it.
Speaker 2 (19:34):
Well, let me just tell you and they I mean.
Speaker 1 (19:36):
The salesmanship is incredit It really is a marvel if
you go to a good one. These people are good
at what they do. They're good at selling you on
this stuff. Why because they like money. They make a
lot of money. Let's see here one of my friends. Okay,
(19:56):
so he says, I can share the story he heard.
He teased this story. He said, we owned three time
shares and paid a company to get out of them.
Best decision, he writes, I was gonna sell time shares,
you make huge money. He says, ten years ago, I
talked to a guy who was selling him making two
hundred and fifty thousand dollars a year. He was living
in Hawaii. So there is money to be made off
(20:18):
of you. And then so there's a nightmare of sitting
through that that there's the slight enjoyment of when you
buy into it.
Speaker 2 (20:28):
And you're like, oh, this is really cool. This is
gonna be great for my husband and I.
Speaker 1 (20:32):
We're gonna go here, we're gonna go do this and
it's gonna be wonderful, and it'll be like living in
five star hotels. And that's the part that almost got me.
It was like, oh, we're going to stand in really
nice places. Okay, No, it's got to be too good
to be true.
Speaker 2 (20:46):
Right.
Speaker 1 (20:46):
Well, there was a couple in Michigan that has finally
been released. They spent a month in a Mexican prison,
a real prison, not one of those hour long can
we get you to buy into this boondoggle crap, a
real prison because they had a payment dispute with their
time share company. Oh my god, this is the worst
(21:07):
of the worst, right Paul fifty eight year old Navy
veteran and his wife, Christy sixty taken into custody after
their plane landed in can.
Speaker 2 (21:16):
Kun a month ago. Today.
Speaker 1 (21:19):
Prosecutors there had accused this couple of defrauding their timeshare company.
The couple has been released their criminal charges dismissed after
they reached a reparation agreement with the company. As part
of the agreement, the couple agreed to pay for damages,
which would then be distributed to three nonprofit organizations. So
(21:40):
it goes back to a twenty to twenty one timeshare
agreement between the couple and the company called Palace Elite.
This is a subsidiary of the Palace Company. The couple's
family says these allegations against them are false.
Speaker 2 (21:54):
Of course.
Speaker 1 (21:54):
They say that they've successfully disputed charges with their credit
card from a resort company that they claim breached their
contract by failing to provide services. You ever look at
the fine print or your timeshare agreement. I have no idea,
but I would imagine it's voluminous. Is that the word
a lot? There's a lot of fine print. That's what
I bet. Paul says about their prisons day. We had
(22:20):
no access to phones, Internet. They were cut off from
each other for roughly a week. They told you what
to do and when to do it. Christy said they
had a language barrier. They didn't speak Spanish, so they
didn't know how to ask for help or anything. They
have emphasized their gratitude for the outpouring of support from
(22:40):
US officials. She says, I don't even know how we're
going to repay or thank people. But the company has
has put out a statement. The Palace company and the
couple agree that one hundred and sixteen thousand dollars, the
(23:01):
amount that was contested by them and refunded to them
by American Express, will be donated to the Bona Fide
established nonprofit Mexico in Mexico benefiting orphaned children.
Speaker 2 (23:11):
Right like, that's going to happen, but it'll be interesting.
Speaker 1 (23:16):
The State Department is not weighed in the State departments
as were aware of the situation.
Speaker 2 (23:22):
But we don't have the specifics. We're not ready.
Speaker 1 (23:24):
To comment on the specifics. All we know is that
they were taken into Constady arrest warrants were issued after
that criminal complaint was filed by the company alleging fraud.
They claim that this couple canceled thirteen credit card payments
to the hotel chain, totaling that one hundred and sixteen
(23:46):
grand Now. Prosecutors did not elaborate on the evidence, but
said that the activity constitutes fraud. They say the company
failed to provide promise services a few months in their
timeshare contract, so they filed the complaint with their credit
card company, trying to get the refund of about one
(24:07):
hundred and sixteen thousand dollars back in the payments. They
argued that the company breached their contract. What it sounds
like to me, not knowing all the details, is that
this was a couple who thought they gained the system,
who thought, oh, you're trying to screw me, No, screw you,
and here's.
Speaker 2 (24:22):
How we're going to do it.
Speaker 1 (24:23):
We all know somebody like that in our lives, right,
who's like, okay, so here's what you do. Now, here's
how you get them right. And I think that was
this couple, and then the timeshare was not playing ball,
f around and find out right and landed them in prison.
Don't mess the bottom line, don't mess with the timeshare.
People don't buy into it, and you got to get
(24:44):
out of it unless you.
Speaker 2 (24:45):
Enjoy it, then enjoy yourself.
Speaker 1 (24:47):
If it's working out great for you, good for you,
that's wonderful, then the dream is real.
Speaker 2 (24:52):
Live and Let Live.
Speaker 1 (24:53):
Coming up next, Amy King Wiggle Waggle Walk.
Speaker 2 (24:57):
I'm excited. Do people still dress up? I don't know.
I have so many questions. We'll find out. Amy King
will join us.
Speaker 1 (25:04):
A big weekend there for the Pasadena Humane Society. We'll
talk about it right here on Gary and Shannon.
Speaker 2 (25:11):
You've been listening to the Gary and Shannon Show.
Speaker 1 (25:13):
You can always hear us live on KFI AM six
forty nine am to one pm every Monday through Friday,
and anytime on demand on the iHeartRadio app
This is Gary and Shannon and you're listening to KFI
AM six forty, the Gary and Shannon Show on demand
on the iHeartRadio app. What does it all mean? We
are bombarded with all this information. It goes back to
when we knew these tariffs were going to kick into
effect this week, Liberation Day and the like. The stock
market has responded the way all the experts said the
(00:22):
stock market would respond to uncertainty. What does it all mean?
Kimberly Classing is joining us. Kimberly is Professor of tax
Law and Policy at UCLA's School of Law. She also
works for an institute that is studying this. She is
a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics.
(00:43):
Joins us now kind enough to share her time with
us and Kimberly, what does it mean for us? When
we look at tariffs, we look at the slide on
Wall Street. Of course that's more four oh one k territory.
But in terms of what we're going to see with
higher prices, from the growth free stores to car repairs,
how are.
Speaker 2 (01:03):
We going to feel this?
Speaker 3 (01:06):
This is going to have a huge impact for consumers.
And it's ironic that a president who was elected in
part because people's discontent about inflation, has undertaken a policy
that will directly increase costs for US households. Most estimates
think that the full tariffs that he suggested over the
past few weeks will add up to almost four thousand
(01:29):
dollars in higher consumer costs. And that's going to be
much much higher than anything that they can hope to
get in tax cuts. And most of the tax cuts
are simply extending current law anyway, So this is going
to be quite painful. When people go to the store.
Speaker 1 (01:45):
When I hear about China and China retaliating today, they
use the words like what was it? Raw earth metals?
Things like that in your thing? What the hell is that?
How does that translate? Well, it translates into batteries, it
translates into car operating systems.
Speaker 3 (02:07):
Correct, that's right, And the retaliation in general should be expected,
and many anticipated that countries would retaliate. The Trump tariffs
are completely unprincipled. They don't actually bear any relation to
foreign trading partners trade practices. Most tariffs on US products
are actually quite low. The numbers that they put up
(02:32):
earlier this week to try to argue that foreigners were
tariffing our products were based simply on bilateral trade deficits.
They really didn't have anything to do with foreign protection.
So countries are understandably aggrieved, and Canada as well as
China and many others. The Europeans in addition, have all
either promised to retaliate or already in the process of retaliating.
(02:54):
And this is going to hurt Americans, not just in
terms of their consumption, like we just discussed earlier, it's
really going to hurt the economy as a whole, as
exporters face shrinking markets abroad, and as this puts a
big monkey wrench into supply chains. Is you point out
these critical minerals are crucial for clean energy production, and
that's just one area where we're going to see a
(03:16):
lot of disruption.
Speaker 1 (03:18):
All right, Yes, the term I was looking for rare
earths those used in computer chips, electric vehicle batteries, like
you've said, kimberly. Unfortunately, the news is not going to
get better anytime soon. As we make our way into
two car repairs and things like that in groceries, and
it seems according to your institute, it seems like this
(03:40):
is not going to hit everybody as equally. Can you
hang on and we can talk about that and tackle
that when we come back.
Speaker 3 (03:46):
YEP, sounds good.
Speaker 2 (03:47):
All right, great.
Speaker 1 (03:48):
We're talking to Kimberly Clossing. She's a senior fellow at
the Peterson Institute for International Economics, and they've actually studied
what these tariffs, how they're going to play out for
us looking at what's going on on Wall Street, but
in our real lives.
Speaker 2 (04:03):
We'll get into more of that week.
Speaker 4 (04:05):
You're listening to Gary and Shannon on demand from KFI
Am six forty.
Speaker 1 (04:11):
President Trump sounding an upbeat note about the tariffs today,
even as the stock market is doing what we have
been reporting to you it is doing, following more than
sixteen hundred points at times this morning, he said, I
think it's going very well. He likened the United States
to a sick patient in need of surgery and said
the market drop after his announcement was to be expected.
(04:34):
I don't know how much patience the president has. I
would bet on not a lot, which is why I
still have the question on the table, of the question
of the endgame. This doesn't seem to be like a
president who plays for the endgame, because when the endgame
is realized for something like tariffs, you're looking at twenty thirty,
(04:58):
forty years down the line to when things like production
and factories and all that have the time and the
infrastructure to move back to this country. If that's in
fact what they do, I think it's a very idealized
way of thinking that belongs or lived in the fifties
(05:18):
and the sixties of by American and let's make everything here.
Speaker 2 (05:21):
And I love the idea.
Speaker 1 (05:24):
It's just that in twenty twenty five, with the way
that we live in a global economy, it's hard to
think about that in feasible terms, just in logistics alone.
So I don't think this is a man that is
long on patience. And I'm just wondering how many days
of a hammering in the form of the stock market
(05:44):
alone will he be able to withstand. And I know
that the thinking is that these other countries, China and
the like will come to the table and there will
be an agreement worked out that benefits this country more
than we're benefit right now by the tariff rules that
are in place.
Speaker 2 (06:03):
But are they willing? I mean, who has more to
lose or is.
Speaker 1 (06:07):
It that much of a give and take between us
and the other global powers that we're talking about. I
just don't know. I don't know where the goalpost is
on that we're talking to. Kimberly Clossing. She is Professor
of Tax Law and Policy at UCLA School of Law.
She also is a senior Fellow at the Peterson Institute
for International Economics. And Peterson has actually done a story
(06:29):
or a study, I should say, a study about the
tariffs on America's three biggest trading partners and who that
will affect the most, And it seems like Peterson has
found that it's going to affect the people who can
least afford it the most.
Speaker 2 (06:46):
Kimberly, is that accurate?
Speaker 3 (06:49):
Yes, that's accurate. In the works that we've done, we
found that the reason troiffts are regressive tax that they
fall more heavily on poor and middle income cloud people
is really pretty simple. Those are the people who spend
most of their paycheck, and people further down in the
income distribution also tend to buy more traded goods. So
(07:10):
when you look at the share of income that they
lose from tariffs, it's very large and burdensome. Whereas a
rich person might be able to save a big chunk
of their income, and because of that savings, they can
insulate themselves from tariff because they won't be paying the
tariff on the part of the income that they save.
So I think this consumption hit is one of the
(07:31):
many reasons you see the market going down. But one
thing you should be aware of it with the market
as well, is that the market is fully capable of
thinking long term. It's a reflection of the future profits
of the economy. What these big drops in the stock
market are telling us is that the market itself doesn't
believe in this long term story. So this is a
(07:53):
a deeply wrong headed and misguided economic policy approach.
Speaker 1 (07:57):
If you were a betting person, is not what you do, Kimberly,
but you're you're you are very well informed, obviously very
well read and well researched when it comes to the economy,
and like you said, the stock market not betting on
on the endgame here. How how long can the market
(08:18):
sustain this kind of these kind of days on.
Speaker 2 (08:21):
Wall Street before all hell breaks loose? You know, I
think short.
Speaker 3 (08:29):
You're already seeing the hit in terms of their retirement
savings and any assets they have invested in the market.
I don't think this is going to turn into long
term gain. I think if the President sticks with this strategy,
it will turn into long term pain as well. And
there have been countries that have tried these high tariffs
over decades and they found it just makes them poor.
(08:51):
Just ask Argentina or Brazil how they prospered under these
types of import substituting policies. They've been firmly rejected did
by economists for a reason. So I'm hopeful that the
President will eventually give in on this and just realize
that that policy is not saying the dividends that he'd
hoped and learned something from these early days, because I
(09:13):
think the longer he sticks with it, the more pain
we're all in for as a country.
Speaker 1 (09:18):
All Right, Kimberly, Classing professor at UCLA Tax Law and Policy,
the School of Law there, appreciate.
Speaker 2 (09:24):
Your time this morning. I know you're super busy, and
thank you very much.
Speaker 3 (09:28):
Take care you too.
Speaker 1 (09:30):
All right, Coming up next, what are we rushing to buy?
Because we are, we're rushing to buy things. Here's the
short list, TVs, Soy, Sauce, Lululemon. We'll get into more
of what you could run short on's the heck of
a mix, right, it sounds like a nice afternoon to
me get home, put on some Lulu La. I lost
(09:50):
hours to the stupidest reality show yesterday, that Amy. It's
which One, The Secret Millionaire. It debuted last week. It's
the first season, and I don't know if it was
just decompressing from real news for all day, but my god,
I sunk into that thing yesterday.
Speaker 2 (10:08):
My couch was hurting. There's enough good ones on there.
You don't have to watch the bad one, I know.
Speaker 1 (10:13):
But you couple that with some Lululemon and some soy sauce,
and that is an afternoon on your big screen TV.
Speaker 4 (10:19):
Absolutely, you're listening to Gary and Shannon on demand from
KFI AM six forty.
Speaker 1 (10:28):
We'll be hooking up with Amy King coming up at
the top of the hour to talk all about the
wiggle waggle Walk, which has become legendary around here. We
all laughed and giggled at it the first year around
or so years ago, and now we it's like a child, right, Amy,
It's like one of our children.
Speaker 2 (10:45):
The wiggle waggle walk.
Speaker 1 (10:46):
We loved to wiggle and we love to wiggle and waggles,
so we'll talk about it. Four space tourists who orbited
the North and South Poles returned to Earth today. They
splashed down here in the Pacific to end their privately
funded polar tour. A bit coin investor Chun Wang chartered
a SpaceX flight for himself and three others. This was
in a dragging capsule outfitted with a domed window. They
(11:09):
got three hundred and sixty degree views of the polar
caps and everything in between. How cool. By the way,
if you're wondering the price tag, they're not saying. Chun
Wang will not say how much he paid for the
three and a half day trip. They took off from
Kennedy on Monday night, and then they returned today here
to southern California. The first human spaceflight to circle the
(11:32):
globe above the poles and the first Pacific splashdown for
a space crew in fifty years. The people invited were
Norwegian filmmaker Jeannick Mickelson, German robotics researcher Rabia Rose, and
Australian polar guide Eric Phillips. They all shared the stunning
(11:55):
vistas during their voyage. They said it was so epic
because it's another kind of desert, just goes on and
on all the way. All four suffered from space motion
sickness after reaching orbit, but by the time they woke
up on day two they said they felt fine. They
cranked open the window cover right above the south pole.
Speaker 2 (12:16):
How cool is that? But also, what.
Speaker 1 (12:19):
Is motion sickness for four people in a capsule?
Speaker 2 (12:22):
What does that look like?
Speaker 1 (12:24):
I'm not curious enough to know about the polar about
the poles?
Speaker 2 (12:28):
Shall we say to know?
Speaker 3 (12:31):
All right?
Speaker 1 (12:31):
Well, since President Trump announced these sweeping tariffs on imported
goods on Liberation Day Wednesday, Americans have apparently been busy
adding to kart.
Speaker 2 (12:41):
This is from the Wall Street Journal.
Speaker 1 (12:44):
They talked to one guy who promptly checked out with
two hundred and forty four dollars worth of workout apparel
from Lulu Lemon. Lulu Lemon, by the way, is a
Canadian brand, so that is why people are stalking up
on the Lulu Lemon.
Speaker 2 (13:00):
There was a sweater.
Speaker 1 (13:02):
He bought one hundred and fifty dollars sweater from House
of Sonny, which is a UK brand. See this is
where I am. I am woefully dumb. I have no
idea about brands and where they come from. And I've
never heard of House of Sonny and all of that.
I'm very much into the target tank tops that you
can get for seven to nine dollars.
Speaker 2 (13:23):
That's my jam.
Speaker 1 (13:25):
Let's see here they talked to somebody, Sean McKenzie. He
ran out to buy three eight packs of Guinness, filling
up on the refrigerator's vegetable drawer with cans of Guinness. Guinness,
by the way, is having a big research a renaissance,
shall we speak here in America at least a lot
of people drinking Guinness.
Speaker 2 (13:43):
Again. The guy that they talked to that and I
don't know if it's.
Speaker 1 (13:49):
A guy or a girl actually, or if we're even
using a box of that nature because the name is
Cedar Roach.
Speaker 2 (13:57):
Interesting name, Cedar Roach.
Speaker 1 (14:00):
Cedar says, I knew I was what was vulnerable and
what I wanted, so I wasn't going to delay. Cedar
Roach is a twenty two year old public policy major
at smu OH. She She She said that the tariff
news has been the talk of the campus, especially for
its political impact on alcohol prices. Let me just go
back for a minute there. Cedar is her name, and
(14:23):
Cedar is twenty two. When you were twenty two, did
you have that kind of money that would buy you
lulu Lemon?
Speaker 2 (14:32):
No? Uh? That is that is crazy.
Speaker 1 (14:36):
She bought two hundred and forty four dollars worthout a
work of worth, a workout apparel from Lululemon at twenty two.
Speaker 2 (14:42):
Wow, that's incredible.
Speaker 1 (14:44):
Maybe she's got a side job, Maybe she's selling her
body to the night or something.
Speaker 2 (14:49):
What can't you live without? Let's do a little gas
go around here?
Speaker 1 (14:54):
If things are running short, If she's Cedar is stocking
up on Lululemon, and what's his name, Sean? Her boyfriend
is stalking up on Guinness? Do we have our guests?
Speaker 2 (15:09):
Go around here? Kno, there we go? What uh?
Speaker 1 (15:14):
What can't you live without? I'll go, I can't think
of something I can't live without?
Speaker 3 (15:19):
Right?
Speaker 2 (15:19):
What ConA? What can't you live without? I can't live
without my hookahs? Hokahs? Okay, how many pairs do you have?
You say? I have like four? I think four pairs
of hokahs? And my wife has both. But she's a nurse,
so it's like, oh, she.
Speaker 1 (15:34):
Lives in those yeah, and she probably has all different
colors to match all the different colors of scrubs and
all that is correct.
Speaker 2 (15:40):
Nah, that's cool. I love that.
Speaker 1 (15:42):
I love everything about being a nurse. That's just what
you wear. I couldn't do any of the other stuff.
Speaker 2 (15:49):
They are.
Speaker 1 (15:49):
They are miraculous people to me who can do all
of the things that nurses do. I do think I
could wear the scrubs and the hokahs every day. That's
where it ends. But that's on like a nice life, Amy,
what can't you live without?
Speaker 4 (16:03):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (16:04):
That's a tough one. Yeah, I mean really, what can't
we live?
Speaker 1 (16:07):
Right? That's a very good You're like a Buddhist. You're
a Buddhist, Amy. Happiness comes from within there you go, Keana,
do you have something that you can't live without that
you need to stock up on?
Speaker 2 (16:19):
Coffee? Coffee? Yeah, sounds like you need a little right now.
Speaker 1 (16:24):
I do have one, but it's almost empty, and one
is not enough.
Speaker 2 (16:29):
No, it's not. No, I'm a curic. I'll probably go
pop a gickup in there.
Speaker 1 (16:33):
And I had three shots of espresso before I woke
up this morning.
Speaker 2 (16:36):
Before you woke up. This mainline that.
Speaker 1 (16:39):
If they if you could hook up an ivy to
the to the side of my bed with espresso. I
just put that needle in right away. Anyway, thank you,
conem So. Anyway, people stocking up on things. I don't
know if we're at the time for toilet paper yet.
I hope, I hope not to That was a dark
time and it wasn't. It didn't have to do with
(17:00):
the toilet paper. It was the visuals of people lining
up with toilet paper that was the most depressing thing
of the whole thing, Like, what are we doing here, folks.
We are better than this, We are better, we are
we we are not we are not all right? Coming
up next like timeshares needed more bad press. My god,
I get what the kids call an I get anxiety
(17:23):
thinking about sitting through one of those timeshare boondoggles that
they have when you get a free room somewhere and
they're like, oh, yeah, you just got to come to
our little talk, our little meeting for half an hour.
It's never half an hour. And all the people they
send in and then the closers they send in, they
never let you leave. It's like guantanamobey at those things.
(17:44):
It's awful. And now they're holding timeshare owners hostage for
trying to get out of them in Mexico. Not really,
but we'll get to the nuances when we come back.
Speaker 4 (17:56):
You're listening to Gary and Shannon on demand from KFI A.
Speaker 1 (18:03):
So I was just texting with a friend about time shares.
I asked him if I could share the story. He
hasn't gone back to me, But hey, what would Tim
Conway Junior? Do I think he'd share the story?
Speaker 2 (18:15):
He'd still share. You're damn right he would, Kiana. So
time shares terrify me.
Speaker 1 (18:22):
It always sounded too good to be true before I
knew what they really were.
Speaker 2 (18:26):
Like, you just get a cool place to.
Speaker 1 (18:28):
Go wherever you want to go for spending what five
hundred bucks a year or something like that, Like I
don't know.
Speaker 2 (18:34):
That was kind of the way I theorized it.
Speaker 1 (18:36):
It just sounded like, well, let's deal with this, and
then when you go to one of those timeshare meetings.
One of my best friends we went to Vegas one
time and she.
Speaker 2 (18:46):
Said, oh, yeah, I got us a free room.
Speaker 1 (18:48):
I just got to sit through this this hour meeting
where they're going to try to sell us on having
a place there, And I'm like, it's an hour. How
bad could it be holy hell, it could be so bad.
You just honestly feel like Captain Phillips. You're sitting there
and there's no way of leaving, and they keep bringing
(19:08):
in new people and you're having to be fake and smile.
And then at one point in that hour, which doesn't
feel like an hour, it feels like four weeks, you
start being fake.
Speaker 2 (19:19):
You start fake, you stop fake.
Speaker 1 (19:21):
Smiling because it's just it's getting to the point where
it's tedious.
Speaker 2 (19:25):
I'm not interested. I'm not interested. Oh, let's bring in Susan.
Speaker 1 (19:28):
Susan comes in with her power Blazer and Susan's like, hey,
so I hear you guys are thinking about it.
Speaker 2 (19:34):
Well, let me just tell you and they I mean.
Speaker 1 (19:36):
The salesmanship is incredit It really is a marvel if
you go to a good one. These people are good
at what they do. They're good at selling you on
this stuff. Why because they like money. They make a
lot of money. Let's see here one of my friends. Okay,
(19:56):
so he says, I can share the story he heard.
He teased this story. He said, we owned three time
shares and paid a company to get out of them.
Best decision, he writes, I was gonna sell time shares,
you make huge money. He says, ten years ago, I
talked to a guy who was selling him making two
hundred and fifty thousand dollars a year. He was living
in Hawaii. So there is money to be made off
(20:18):
of you. And then so there's a nightmare of sitting
through that that there's the slight enjoyment of when you
buy into it.
Speaker 2 (20:28):
And you're like, oh, this is really cool. This is
gonna be great for my husband and I.
Speaker 1 (20:32):
We're gonna go here, we're gonna go do this and
it's gonna be wonderful, and it'll be like living in
five star hotels. And that's the part that almost got me.
It was like, oh, we're going to stand in really
nice places. Okay, No, it's got to be too good
to be true.
Speaker 2 (20:46):
Right.
Speaker 1 (20:46):
Well, there was a couple in Michigan that has finally
been released. They spent a month in a Mexican prison,
a real prison, not one of those hour long can
we get you to buy into this boondoggle crap, a
real prison because they had a payment dispute with their
time share company. Oh my god, this is the worst
(21:07):
of the worst, right Paul fifty eight year old Navy
veteran and his wife, Christy sixty taken into custody after
their plane landed in can.
Speaker 2 (21:16):
Kun a month ago. Today.
Speaker 1 (21:19):
Prosecutors there had accused this couple of defrauding their timeshare company.
The couple has been released their criminal charges dismissed after
they reached a reparation agreement with the company. As part
of the agreement, the couple agreed to pay for damages,
which would then be distributed to three nonprofit organizations. So
(21:40):
it goes back to a twenty to twenty one timeshare
agreement between the couple and the company called Palace Elite.
This is a subsidiary of the Palace Company. The couple's
family says these allegations against them are false.
Speaker 2 (21:54):
Of course.
Speaker 1 (21:54):
They say that they've successfully disputed charges with their credit
card from a resort company that they claim breached their
contract by failing to provide services. You ever look at
the fine print or your timeshare agreement. I have no idea,
but I would imagine it's voluminous. Is that the word
a lot? There's a lot of fine print. That's what
I bet. Paul says about their prisons day. We had
(22:20):
no access to phones, Internet. They were cut off from
each other for roughly a week. They told you what
to do and when to do it. Christy said they
had a language barrier. They didn't speak Spanish, so they
didn't know how to ask for help or anything. They
have emphasized their gratitude for the outpouring of support from
(22:40):
US officials. She says, I don't even know how we're
going to repay or thank people. But the company has
has put out a statement. The Palace company and the
couple agree that one hundred and sixteen thousand dollars, the
(23:01):
amount that was contested by them and refunded to them
by American Express, will be donated to the Bona Fide
established nonprofit Mexico in Mexico benefiting orphaned children.
Speaker 2 (23:11):
Right like, that's going to happen, but it'll be interesting.
Speaker 1 (23:16):
The State Department is not weighed in the State departments
as were aware of the situation.
Speaker 2 (23:22):
But we don't have the specifics. We're not ready.
Speaker 1 (23:24):
To comment on the specifics. All we know is that
they were taken into Constady arrest warrants were issued after
that criminal complaint was filed by the company alleging fraud.
They claim that this couple canceled thirteen credit card payments
to the hotel chain, totaling that one hundred and sixteen
(23:46):
grand Now. Prosecutors did not elaborate on the evidence, but
said that the activity constitutes fraud. They say the company
failed to provide promise services a few months in their
timeshare contract, so they filed the complaint with their credit
card company, trying to get the refund of about one
(24:07):
hundred and sixteen thousand dollars back in the payments. They
argued that the company breached their contract. What it sounds
like to me, not knowing all the details, is that
this was a couple who thought they gained the system,
who thought, oh, you're trying to screw me, No, screw you,
and here's.
Speaker 2 (24:22):
How we're going to do it.
Speaker 1 (24:23):
We all know somebody like that in our lives, right,
who's like, okay, so here's what you do. Now, here's
how you get them right. And I think that was
this couple, and then the timeshare was not playing ball,
f around and find out right and landed them in prison.
Don't mess the bottom line, don't mess with the timeshare.
People don't buy into it, and you got to get
(24:44):
out of it unless you.
Speaker 2 (24:45):
Enjoy it, then enjoy yourself.
Speaker 1 (24:47):
If it's working out great for you, good for you,
that's wonderful, then the dream is real.
Speaker 2 (24:52):
Live and Let Live.
Speaker 1 (24:53):
Coming up next, Amy King Wiggle Waggle Walk.
Speaker 2 (24:57):
I'm excited. Do people still dress up? I don't know.
I have so many questions. We'll find out. Amy King
will join us.
Speaker 1 (25:04):
A big weekend there for the Pasadena Humane Society. We'll
talk about it right here on Gary and Shannon.
Speaker 2 (25:11):
You've been listening to the Gary and Shannon Show.
Speaker 1 (25:13):
You can always hear us live on KFI AM six
forty nine am to one pm every Monday through Friday,
and anytime on demand on the iHeartRadio app
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