April 8, 2025 • 35 mins
Today on the Jimmy Barrett Show:
- Thomas Delarenzo on the Trump tariffs
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
What we need is more common sense.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
Common breaking down the world's nonsense about.
Speaker 3 (00:12):
How American common sense.
Speaker 4 (00:13):
Will see us through With the common sense of Houston.
I'm just pro common sense for Houston from Houston. This
is the Jimmy Barrett Show, brought to you by viewind
dot Com.
Speaker 5 (00:29):
Now here's Jimmy Barrett. I don't know how this morning
we got on the topic of Hooters, but but we
did the restaurant point that out yet the restaurant. Okay,
that guy. Don't want to be misunderstood here, although there yeah,
restaurant and the other thing are one in the same
pretty much, right. Hooters, we talked about them a while ago.
(00:50):
They filed for Chapter eleven. They have not shut down
any restaurants. They just filed for bankruptcy protection. They're trying
to figure out how to I guess, to a certain extent,
reinvent themselves. Right. And I started thinking about this because
I'd like to not that I'm not a businessman. I'm
(01:11):
not a restaurant tour I don't really know what you
need to do to run a successful restaurant other than
have really really good food and you have people show
up every day and buy your really really good food
and to keep your costs down. Other than that, I
don't know anything about running a restaurant, and everything I
know about running a restaurant and people actually do know
(01:33):
something about it tells me how difficult it is. It's
not an easy thing to do. But I'm thinking that
the only thing more difficult than starting a restaurant chain
would be maintaining that restaurant chain. And I think we
have a lot of restaurant chains in this country that
are kind of, you know, they're kind of at that
tipping point whether or not they can continue to be
(01:55):
successful and whether or not they can kind of just
continue to exist. You know, Applebee's comes to mind. They
have the same business model pretty much they've always had.
You know, Hooters, who we're talking about right now. Denny's
has had a lot of issues. I mean, Denny's is
America's diner, but you know, there's plenty of other diners
you can go to, and you know, when you get
(02:18):
right down to it, what is special about their menu?
I would say the same thing about Hooters? What is
special about Hooters? What do what do you think of
when you think of Hooters? I think of beer and
wings and that was kind of where they kind of
built their their fame was beer and wings. You know,
there's plenty of good places to go for beer and wings.
(02:40):
There are, They're just I mean, here in Houston, we
have dozens different beer and wing joints, just dozens of
different brand names, you know, wingstop and all kinds of places.
Any there's all kinds of places you can go to
get beer and wings. Now that they granted, they have
other things on the menu at Hooters other than beer wings,
(03:01):
but that's pretty much what they're known for. And I
don't really think that that Hooters ever has been considered
you know, a fine dining experience. Let's face it, when
when you started going to Hooters, you know, it was
it was it was really specific what they were trying
to do. They're catering to younger men, and they were
helping to cater to those younger men by having really
(03:23):
pretty girls wearing orange spandex and basically you know, low
cut tops, and and it was it was as much
about sex as it was about anything that was on
the menu. Well there's other places that do that now too,
so it's it's become a more difficult cell as far
(03:44):
as getting that clientele in there. Plus plus you kind
of you limit yourself a little bit, right, I mean,
if you are specifically geared towards young men or even
older men, but men in general, then there's half the
population that doesn't think necessarily that they're welcome at Hooters.
Not that they wouldn't be welcome. They're more than glad
(04:04):
to wait on you and serve you food. But but
you know the fact that you've got these young girls
there the way they are just not attract a lot
of women, and it never really has attracted kids, certainly
not small kids. And quite honestly, don't you feel if
you have you ever been to a Hooters when like
a little league baseball team comes in, don't you kind
(04:25):
of feel a little bit like, Oh, my goodness, what
are those kids doing here? This isn't a kid's place.
I mean, they've tried to become more family friendly over
the course of time. They say that they want to
do more things to become more family friendly. They're getting
rid of their I guess they have a bikini night
or something. They're getting rid of that. They're going to
do more charitable things. But aside from that, my question
today was I mean, how can you think of anything?
(04:47):
What could Hooters do to attract more clientele and to
kind of get back on the right financial track. Here's
some of the ideas that we are sharing, or worse
shared this morning on ktr H.
Speaker 6 (05:00):
Good morning, Jimmy Andrew from Spring the best idea to
save Hooters is to turn it into an adult style
Chucky Cheese. But video games, arcades, ball hits for adults.
Speaker 7 (05:18):
So we all want to be children again. Everybody's just
coltic nowadays and this could help.
Speaker 5 (05:24):
Okay, it's not a bad idea. I'm not saying it's
a bad idea, but you know that's kind of what
that's kind of the David Buster's thing, right, although they
do seem to attract a younger crowd. What he is
suggesting is is you turn it into, like he said,
a chuck e cheese for adults. I don't know what
you would throw in there that would attract adults exclusively,
(05:46):
but you know there's some ideas there, all right, anybody
else have any ideas.
Speaker 8 (05:50):
Joe from Crosby would make Hooters more family friendly by
having him wear what every hot mom wears, yoga pants,
Hooters and Hooters, but I really don't think hiring male
staff at Hooters is going to pull them out of bankruptcy.
Speaker 5 (06:05):
No, probably not. And like I said, you know you
don't think of Hooters for that Hooters and duders. At
least that was a clean suggestion right this morning we
had one listener who suggested it didn't make the air,
by the way, but the listener suggested, well, well, what
if you had one half of Hooters continue to cater
(06:26):
to the to the men, and the other half of
Hooters cater to women, and you could, you know, have
like a woodpecker as your You have the awl on
one side and the woodpecker on the other side, and
you can guess what the other side would be called.
Speaker 2 (06:39):
Right.
Speaker 5 (06:40):
I didn't feel comfortable saying that on the air, but okay,
don't I don't mind the suggestion anybody else.
Speaker 7 (06:47):
Jimmy Andrew from spraying, Hey, listen, if we're talking about
making Hooters more family friendly, we should just move away
from the name Hooters all together. Doesn't sound like something
that brings the family together. Let's rename it Barracks, and
you and Skylight will be the poster dudes for the restaurant,
(07:09):
for the brand and you wear orange spandex pants and
white two tons.
Speaker 9 (07:14):
Good morning, it's John Seeley.
Speaker 7 (07:16):
Call it hippos.
Speaker 5 (07:19):
Now, those are two separate comments. But if you put Sky,
Mike and me an orangepan dix, you might as well
just call it hippos. Okay, And we're not gonn We
can't even attract flies, the two of us, okay to
a restaurant dressed like that, that that would be a fact.
All right, Well we had some fun with it anyway,
quick bill break, We are back with boring a moment.
Speaker 3 (07:38):
Jimmy Barrett show.
Speaker 5 (07:39):
You're running in nine fifty KPRC.
Speaker 3 (08:00):
Don't take story.
Speaker 5 (08:02):
Today is the same as the big story was yesterday,
and the story is on tariffs and how we are
reacting to it. I know how the mainstream media is
reacting to it and why the mainstream media is doing
what it's doing. I do believe that they're trying to
set off a many panic. I mean, there's some of
them that you know, really don't understand. You know, what
(08:23):
the president's doing. You could tell them six ways of
Sunday and they still wouldn't get it. As far as
what it is he's trying to do, I'm not sure
everybody understands what he's trying to do either, because I
think a lot of people think that this is all
about trying to get zero tariffs. Right, they have China
take their tariffs off of American maid products, European Union
to take their tariffs off American maid products, et cetera,
(08:47):
et cetera, et cetera. That is not really what this
is about. I don't think he's really trying to get
rid of tariffs ultimately, because I think President Trump views
tariffs as income, and as long as he views its income,
he sees it as income that can replace the federal
income tax. So I don't think he would want to
get rid of terrorists. Here's what he does want to change,
(09:10):
and this is the bottom line. I think he's trying
to get to. He's trying to get to open markets
for American products. We have a situation where there are
plenty of countries out there they either don't allow American
products in or have the crazy terraffs they have on
them in order to keep American products from coming in,
and yet we take things from them all the time.
(09:33):
It's called a trade imbalance, and it is huge. It's
been going on for decades and it's ultimately unsustainable for
the American economy. One of those areas would be agriculture,
and one of those areas would be American beef. Cattle
farmers here in the United States have huge teriffs put
(09:55):
on their beef products for other countries, the ones that
will actually allow American beef in because they know American
beef is really superior. In most cases, American beef is
superior and they can't compete with it, especially at a
price point. Here's the Senator Brosso, He's from Wyoming. He
understands a little bit about you know, American cattle industry
(10:17):
and a fit generation cattle farmer out of Indiana. Let's
here what they have to say about Trump's tariffs and beef.
Speaker 10 (10:24):
Australia has sold twenty nine billion dollars worth of beef
in the United States and we haven't been able to
sell one hamburger in Australia because of barrier. They showed
Thailand thirty percent tariffs on beef coming from the United States.
Speaker 3 (10:38):
Vietnam.
Speaker 2 (10:40):
Hey, you look at these.
Speaker 10 (10:41):
Numbers, and the ranchers of Wyoming are saying, thank you,
mister President.
Speaker 2 (10:45):
It is about time.
Speaker 8 (10:46):
Well, I'm very confident, and the reason I'm confident is
because I know the American people and people like myself.
What we do is we're going to go out and
do our job every day, no matter what happens on
the TV or with the.
Speaker 9 (11:01):
News and everything else.
Speaker 8 (11:04):
Every single farmer in this country, for one farmer, we
feed one hundred and sixty nine people, so that goes
out all across this country and the world, and that's
pretty efficient. So we're going to keep doing what we're
doing and the market's going to adjust itself. We're going
to have the highest quality beef in the world, which
we do have. So if we have fair trade, that
(11:27):
will eventually come back to us because people are going
to want our product because we know what we're doing.
Speaker 9 (11:33):
I haven't been here.
Speaker 8 (11:34):
My family's been here, like I said, like you said,
for five generations. That doesn't just happen unless you're doing
something right, and all across this country we see the
same thing from ranchers, So I think we just need
to settle down and let it play out. I get
a kick out of the markets today. It kind of
reminds me of my horse cash. Whenmember I get done
(11:55):
with a ride, you know he's and take his saddle off.
He runs off, and he's going to roll around in
the dirt and everything else and get away from me.
Speaker 9 (12:04):
But then as soon as as soon as.
Speaker 8 (12:06):
He gets done with that, if you hold out a
bucket of oats or something, he's running right back and
getting right back there.
Speaker 9 (12:12):
So I think these markets are going to.
Speaker 8 (12:13):
Do the same thing we saw it today with just
one little rumor what happened to the sophomarket jump right
back up and now it's it's really kind of hanging
in there. Now it looks like, yeah it is. You
know what struck me about what he said? I think
that's the first time I've ever heard of horse analogy
involving Wall Street that didn't include a horse's ass.
Speaker 5 (12:35):
But there you go. So the President spoke out yesterday
because European Union is among others, is now offering evidently
to go zero zero in terrafs. A lot of countries
are go zero zero on terraffs. Won't we won't put
any terraffs any longer on American automobiles. You don't put
(12:57):
any tariffs on European automobiles in the United States. And
that's when Trump just had it. He did this at
a press conference. He was having an informal one anyway
with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, where he's getting all
these questions, and that's where I think he did a
very good job of explaining for people who are paying
attention that this is not about zero tariffs. This is
(13:21):
about a trade deficit.
Speaker 9 (13:22):
The EU has been very tough over the years.
Speaker 1 (13:25):
It was I always say, it was formed to really
do damage to the United States and trade.
Speaker 9 (13:32):
That's the reason it was formed.
Speaker 1 (13:34):
It was formed with all of the countries from Europe,
I guess most of them, not all of them, but
most of them, and they formed together to create a
little bit of a monopoly situation, to create a unified
force against the United States for trade. So they have NATO,
which is largely the same countries, and they took advantage
(13:55):
of US dollar wise and militarily until I got there.
I was able to get six hundred billion dollars from
NATO where they paid NATO because most of these nations
weren't even paid.
Speaker 9 (14:07):
We were paying for NATO. So we're paying.
Speaker 1 (14:09):
Them to guard them militarily and they're screwing us on trade.
Speaker 9 (14:13):
So that's not a good combination.
Speaker 1 (14:15):
So now it's really turned around.
Speaker 9 (14:18):
It's the opposite.
Speaker 1 (14:19):
And the European Union has been very, very bad to us.
They don't take our cars like Japan in this sense,
they don't take our agricultural product, they don't take anything practically,
and yet they send millions of cars in a year, Mercedes, Benz, Volkswagen, BMW's,
they're sending millions and millions of cars into the US.
(14:41):
But we don't have a car that's been sold to
the European Union or other places. But let's go to
the European Union. And it's not going to be that way.
It's got to be fair and reciprocal. It's got to
be fair. It's not fair.
Speaker 5 (14:55):
There you go. I understand he went back to the
European Union based when they made proposal for zero zero
on teriffs and basically said, no, that's not going to
get it done. You need to purchase a very how
many was it three hundred and fifty million, at least
three hundred and fifty million dollars worth of American energy. That's
how big the trade deficit is between the European Union
(15:17):
alone in the United States. So in order to even
up the deficit. That what they need to do is
they need to purchase American energy, don't buy Russian energy,
buy American energy to that to three hundred and fifty
million dollars worth in order to have trade be balanced.
(15:38):
That's what he wants. He wants balanced trade. Here's more
on what the President's trying to do. And by the way,
what we saw yesterday was just panic, you know, just
complete panic. Now. I don't know if it's because of
what the mainstream media is saying and they've got everybody
all ginned up and worked up about this, or if
it's you know, people who are legitimately scared. But you
(15:59):
know what, all that's really going to happen here during
the course of all this is we're gonna have volatility,
which means we're gonna have big upswings and big down swings.
Yesterday we had a big down swing. Or day before
yesterday we had a big down swing. Yesterday, you start
to come back some and today, at least in the
morning hours haven't followed it. Since this morning, you know,
it was up quite a bit, so you know, I
(16:20):
wouldn't be surprised by the end of the day today
or tomorrow that we end up getting all the losses back.
There's no need to panic about this stuff. Here's a
White House Council, Trump Council, Peter Navarro urging us to
not panic.
Speaker 11 (16:35):
Here's the thing I want to say to small investors.
Don't panic. They want you to sell. You can't take
a loss until you sell. And what I see is
fifty thousand on the Dow. I predicted in twenty sixteen,
the day after President got elected. Back then, when the
dead futures were dead red down, I said we're going
to go to twenty five thousand. I got that exactly right.
(16:57):
We're going to fifty. But more importantly, with the S
and P five hundred, the games we've had over the
last couple of years have been basically seven stocks, the
magnificent seven of the AIS. Most of the stocks in
the S and P five hundred have gone nowhere.
Speaker 2 (17:12):
Now they're gonna go crazy.
Speaker 11 (17:14):
They're going to go so bullish because we're bringing our
investment home. The other thing I want to say is
we've got countries coming to us l with these zero
zero It's like, well, we'll put our tariffs down finally,
if you'll put yours down they're coming now and saying
we want to talk. Will lower our tariffs to zero
if you'll lower your tears, that's not the problem. Vietnam
is a great example, Laura. They sell us fifteen dollars
(17:38):
for everyone we sell them. Zero TIFFs would get us
no reduction in the one hundred and twenty three billion
dollar deficit we have, and five of that fifteen dollars
they sell us. You know what, it's China. It's that
clip you showed about Cambodi.
Speaker 2 (17:54):
How China is the same.
Speaker 11 (17:55):
It's the same kind of we call it transhipping.
Speaker 2 (17:57):
It's just crazy stuff.
Speaker 3 (17:59):
There you go.
Speaker 5 (18:00):
It's not about zero teriffs, is about closing the trade imbalance.
All right, we're gonna be back with more just a month.
Please stay with us, Jimmy Baird Show. You're on a
nine fifty KPRC. Alright, well, obviously, every let's talk about
(18:31):
the Trump tariffs as well. They should. And you've got
a lot of people in the media who, of course,
are making this out like this is gonna be a
big crash. You've even got some of the Wall Street
experts talking like that We've got a big crash right
around the corner. Of course, we had a huge down
day the other day, and now it's it's making its comeback.
I think what we can all agree on here is
(18:52):
things might be a little bit more volatile on Wall
Street for a while while we work our way through
all this. Thomas Di Lorenzo joins us. He's president of
the Missis Institute. It's a nonprofit organization that exists to
promote teaching and research in economics and individual freedom. Welcome
to the show, SIRT. Let's just give people, if you
(19:13):
don't mind, a little history lesson on tariffs, because I
think one of the things that President Trump has been
able to kind of educate people on is the fact
that there was a time in this country where we
didn't have a federal income tax. We relied on tariffs
solely as income.
Speaker 3 (19:28):
Yeah.
Speaker 12 (19:28):
Well that's when the federal government was very tiny compared
to where it is today. So tariffs were sufficient to
fund the constitutional functions of government, and that of course
ended when the income tax came in in the year
nineteen thirteen. And so, yeah, most Americans don't know that
(19:49):
we funded about ninety percent of the federal government with
TIFFs at one point. Now, if we got back to
only the constitutional functions of government. That could work again,
but of course, where the government spends money on anything
and everything under the sun today unlike the nineteenth century.
Speaker 5 (20:07):
Yeah, no, you're right about that. I mean, that's I
guess where DOSEE comes in, right. I start first of
all with cutting the cost of government, and the best
way to do that, at least in this bloated federal government,
is to search out the waste and the fraud and
to get rid of that first, which dose has done
a pretty effective job of doing. But there's plenty of
political opposition to that as well.
Speaker 3 (20:27):
Yeah.
Speaker 12 (20:28):
Well, yeah, of course, all the bureaucrats and all the
special interests. And I just read this morning that Chelsea
Clinton set up some Tony Boloney nonprofit and got paid
eighty four million dollars. That's one of the latest findings
by Elon Musk.
Speaker 5 (20:46):
I wonder what kind of attention do you think that
Elon Musk got when he said, you know, it's it's
funny that we've got We've got people serving in Congress
that make, you know, two hundred thousand dollars a year,
yet they have a fortune of twenty million dollars. How
do we suppose they got that twenty million dollars.
Speaker 12 (21:04):
Yeah, and they most of them have two houses, you know,
they have a house back home and a home district.
And then they at least have to rent an apartment
in Washington, d C. When they were when they're there,
And so that two hundred thousand before taxes. It's hard
to make twenty million dollars on that count of the salary.
But yeah, there's an old article in the Washingtonian magazine
(21:26):
years ago that I wrote an article about, and the
title was how did we ever get so rich? And
we being Washingtonians? And of course it's bribery and.
Speaker 5 (21:38):
Kicknats, which I guess is why they're fighting so hard
to try to protect this stuff, right, is they they
don't want the gravy training to go away.
Speaker 12 (21:46):
Yeah. If you want to know who benefits from all
the fraud, waste, and abuse, just listen to who's complaining
about cleaning it up the most.
Speaker 5 (21:54):
Yeah, absolutely right. All right, let's talk about Tariff's strategy here,
because I think one of the areas that maybe the
administration could have been stronger on was explaining to the
American people exactly why we're doing what it is that
we're doing. Because I think a lot of people at
least are working under the operational theory that we're trying
to get to the point where we have zero tariffs,
(22:16):
no teriffs against US, no terifts against another countries. But
that is not really what President Trump is trying to
accomplish here, is it.
Speaker 3 (22:23):
No, it isn't.
Speaker 12 (22:24):
And I think we should call them tariff taxes to
educate the public, because they are taxes, and what the
president is doing, by the way, is unconstitutional because the
increasing taxes has to come from the House of Representatives
and then the Senate and then the president. But so
(22:44):
what he's doing is illegal actually, And so that's one
point if people need to understand. And you know, the
European Union has made the deal of we will eliminate
all tariffs on American goods if the Americans eliminate all
tariffs on our goods, and so they that's their proposal,
(23:06):
and we'll see what President Trump does.
Speaker 3 (23:07):
Well, that would be the best of all world.
Speaker 12 (23:10):
He's interested in just encouraging economic growth. But he has
two two different conflicting objectives. One is fairness. You know,
if they have a fifty percent tariff on us, we
put a cent cent tamp on them. And that's sort
of like if they're going to shoot their consumers in
(23:30):
the foot, well, we're going to shoot American consumers in
the foot also with higher prices caused by higher tariff
taxes and so that the Europeans have proposed putting tariffs
down to zero. And I don't think President Trump is
going to accept that.
Speaker 3 (23:46):
No, so we'll see. I hope he would.
Speaker 5 (23:48):
He's no, he's already he's already not accepted it. But
he's told them what he would accept, and that is,
you know, we have about three hundred and fifty million
dollar trade deficit with the European Union. They're not they're
not paying their fair share for NATO. We have a
we have a trade imbalance. He wants them to buy
US energy to the tune of three hundred and fifty
(24:08):
million dollars a year in US energy so that we
have a zero balance on a trade deficit.
Speaker 12 (24:14):
Yeah, well that's the trade deficit is just a meaningless
artificial construct. You know, why would why would anyone think
that the people from Lichtenstein should buy as much from
Americans as Americans buy from the people of Liechtenstein, or
or look at it, this way, Why should people expect
(24:35):
California to have a trade balance with Rhode Islands, which
is a much smaller place. And so President Trump doesn't
understand the even the econ one oh one level of
international trade economics in doing this.
Speaker 5 (24:54):
But we have a lot of countries, sir, that have
basically said no to American products. I mean, we have
an agriculture American beef for example. In some of our
friends Australia, you know, they put the huge tariffs on
American beat because they don't want to compete with American beef.
That's not trad Well, we're.
Speaker 12 (25:11):
Not similess either in that regard. And the best thing
for the American public and our economy is to take
the Europeans up on this proposal to put all tariffs
down close to zero. These are tariff taxes. Remember, no
one ever created prosperity by raising taxes.
Speaker 5 (25:33):
Okay, well, there's gonna be interesting to see how we
get from point A to point Z. I just I
don't know that his goal is the same as your goal.
I understand what your goal is and I get that,
but I don't think his is the same.
Speaker 12 (25:47):
Well, he seems to want to recreate the American economy
of the nineteen fifties, with bustling car companies and lots
of unionized construction workers everywhere.
Speaker 5 (26:00):
Well, and what's wrong with.
Speaker 12 (26:01):
That, Well, it's the nineteen fifties. If you want to
live in the standard of living of the nineteen fifties,
there you go. We have to cut gen by about
two thirds.
Speaker 5 (26:11):
Okay, but you're talking about nineteen fifty dollars. Is comparing
apples and oranges?
Speaker 3 (26:17):
Well, yeahjustin for inflation.
Speaker 12 (26:19):
But one of the things we know is that the
terror for that the President has started will shrink the
international division of labor. It will harm all countries and
especially consumers. But the protectionist tariffs always benefit a relatively
small group of politically connected corporations and their unions if
(26:42):
they're unionized, but at the expense of everybody else. You know,
if American cars go up in price by twenty five
or thirty percent, President Trump has already said I don't
care about that, And what kind of thing is that
to say for the American world class to pay that
much more for the next new car.
Speaker 5 (27:03):
I think, ultimately what he's trying to do, and this
has a lot to do with his philosophy on trying
to bring back American manufacturing and American jobs is he
wants to switch from a basically a government run economy
to a private sector run economy. In other words, we've
got so many people who are dependent on government at
either the federal, the state, or the local level to
(27:24):
earn a living, and he wants to shift some of
that to the private sector.
Speaker 12 (27:29):
You know, well, the terror program is in conflict with that,
because I've heard the President on several occasions saying bragging,
We're going to take in so much more money from
these terraffs, so much more, and all that money is
going to go out of the pockets of the American
consumers and into the federal bureaucracy. And that's the opposite
(27:54):
of what he campaigned on. He came by the campaigns
on shrinking the bureaucracy, not seating it with tax revenue.
Speaker 5 (28:01):
Well, he's also i think, thinking about a deficit we
have to get rid of at some point in time.
Speaker 12 (28:06):
Well, yeah, that's why they're cutting spending. That's that's the
only way to get rid of a deficit. You raise taxes.
The government bureaucrafts are going to find a way to
spend it, and you know, and that'll never solve it.
You have to abolish as much of government as possible,
which is what Elon Musk is doing.
Speaker 5 (28:25):
Do you think that Elon Musk and President trumpet ultimately
are going to maybe butt heads over all this?
Speaker 12 (28:32):
Oh, I don't think so. I don't think so. I
think they work pretty well together, and they've had some
great successes. I think they're doing some great things.
Speaker 5 (28:41):
But I don't think Elon Musk's philosophy on terrorist is
any anywhere close to what the president say is maybe
that's where they're going to be button heads over this stuff.
Speaker 3 (28:49):
Yeah, well, I just said, increasing federal.
Speaker 12 (28:53):
Government revenue by hundreds of billions of dollars is the
opposite of what he Elon Musk is trying to accomplish.
And and and the hit on the stock market, by
the way, cost Americans hundreds of billions in their in
their retirement accounts.
Speaker 5 (29:12):
Only if they cast it a couple of days, only
if they cast it in yesterday. Yeah, that's the thing.
The same thing with stocks. I mean, you don't lose
any money on stocks until until you sell them. You've
you've lost on paper. But it doesn't mean anything until
you buy yourself.
Speaker 12 (29:27):
Yeah, well it does give you. It does give you
a heartburn that it doesn't it.
Speaker 5 (29:30):
Well, it does do that, Yes, it does. Tom, thank
you for joining us today. Good to talk to you.
I appreciate it.
Speaker 3 (29:35):
Okay, my pleasure to have a great day.
Speaker 5 (29:37):
You too, Thomas the Lorenzo, president of the Missis Institute.
They can quite go the way I thought it would,
and that's okay. He doesn't have to agree with everything
I say, although it would help if he did back
with more in the moment. Jimmy Baird Show, I'm kidding.
You're on an nine fifty k PRC. All right, let's up.
(30:11):
Let's talk a little bit about the hands off protests. Yeah,
that was just spontaneous, right, I mean all those people
showing up in major cities like Houston, you know, by
the thousands in some cases, you know, holding up signs
about social security, you know about not not you know,
not taking our social security away through DOGE. Yeah, the
(30:34):
hand hands off our social security, hands off our Medicare
and Medicaid. Yeah, that was that was just completely completely spontaneous. No,
it wasn't, we know better, highly organized paid for individuals
protesting and of course, fear mongering with the hopes that
what they can do somehow convince you that what what
(30:57):
Elon Musk wants to do is take away your social
Security when the reality what he's trying to do is
to take away the fraud and the waste and the
you know, the inefficiencies, so you have a social security
system that works better for the people who collect it
and last longer. Imagine how much better shape so social
(31:18):
Security would be right now if two things had happened
during the lifetime of Social Security. That the federal government
had a lock box on it so they couldn't get
in there and quote unquote borrow money which they never repaid,
borrow money from Social Security, and that you know that
that that they had done a good job of keeping
up with who was eligible who wasn't. You know, do
(31:41):
these Social Security numbers really match these names? Why are
we sending checks to people who are two hundred years old?
If they had done all that stuff along the way,
social Security would be in much better shape. But it isn't,
so now we've got to try to fix it. Greg
Guttfeld on his show last night, was talking about the aspect,
you know, who's really behind all this stuff in these
(32:02):
hands off protesting. Here's mister Gutfeld, how about.
Speaker 2 (32:05):
Those hands off protests?
Speaker 13 (32:08):
Cute title, right, sounds like something written on Joy Behar's
lunchbox at work.
Speaker 2 (32:14):
But it's fun hearing.
Speaker 13 (32:15):
Hands off from people whose hands are in your wallet,
scratching Tesla's and reaching for your kids, and with so
many trans women in the crowd.
Speaker 2 (32:21):
Some of those hands were huge.
Speaker 13 (32:24):
But what an exercise in mass performance art, the message
for the government to keep its hands off social security.
Speaker 2 (32:31):
Of course, no one's touching that.
Speaker 13 (32:32):
It's about fraud, so the entire event was also a fraud.
But hands Off is pure progressive branding, big emotion.
Speaker 2 (32:39):
Zero accuracy.
Speaker 13 (32:41):
It's like staging a protest to save the whales in
Nebraska when we all know whales are in New York.
Speaker 2 (32:48):
So what's this really about.
Speaker 13 (32:53):
It's about having no argument against the thing.
Speaker 2 (32:55):
It's railing against dose, which is.
Speaker 13 (32:58):
Designed to actually help the people who are protests saying
Doje's actual goal preventing a full blown economic collapse, the
kind where the US dollar becomes so worthless I don't
even bother to take them out of my g string
after a show. But rather than confront that terrifying reality.
The organizers cooked up a fake crisis. They claim Doge
(33:18):
is trying to destroy Social Security, which is like accusing
the fire Department of starting fires by pouring water on them.
They're also claiming that Social Security payments will cease if.
Speaker 2 (33:27):
Doge isn't stopped.
Speaker 13 (33:30):
Please, it's twenty twenty five that checks are digital, So no,
Grandma won't be eating fancy feasts because Trump took an
honest look at wasted abuse. That's a lie. But the
most cynical part the organizers know this. They know that
they need to kill Trump's agenda if they're ever going
to get their power back, and so they'd rather see
the system burn that admit Trump has a point. It's
(33:52):
the same group that brought you Russian collusion, Democracy's death,
Joe's just fine, and the classic fifteen days to flat in.
Speaker 5 (34:00):
The curve, Yeah, and other great lies. Right, and you
know usual suspects, the George Soroses of the world are
funding all this kind of stuff.
Speaker 3 (34:12):
You know, I'm not saying.
Speaker 5 (34:13):
That everybody shows up at these protests got a paycheck,
but I'm I'm saying that there are a number of
them that did. And certainly the organizers of this did
and they are. They're very well organized. You don't have
spontaneous protesting in a whole variety of different locals and
cities where everybody's holding up the same signs, everybody's using
the same slogans. No, that that's highly organized is what
(34:36):
that is. Hey, listen, enough for today, y'all. Have a
great day. Thank you for listening. Do appreciate it. See
you tomorrow morning, bright and early, five am over on
news radio seven forty KTRH. We are back here at
four on the AM nine fifty KPRC.
Speaker 2 (35:00):
The
What we need is more common sense.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
Common breaking down the world's nonsense about.
Speaker 3 (00:12):
How American common sense.
Speaker 4 (00:13):
Will see us through With the common sense of Houston.
I'm just pro common sense for Houston from Houston. This
is the Jimmy Barrett Show, brought to you by viewind
dot Com.
Speaker 5 (00:29):
Now here's Jimmy Barrett. I don't know how this morning
we got on the topic of Hooters, but but we
did the restaurant point that out yet the restaurant. Okay,
that guy. Don't want to be misunderstood here, although there yeah,
restaurant and the other thing are one in the same
pretty much, right. Hooters, we talked about them a while ago.
(00:50):
They filed for Chapter eleven. They have not shut down
any restaurants. They just filed for bankruptcy protection. They're trying
to figure out how to I guess, to a certain extent,
reinvent themselves. Right. And I started thinking about this because
I'd like to not that I'm not a businessman. I'm
(01:11):
not a restaurant tour I don't really know what you
need to do to run a successful restaurant other than
have really really good food and you have people show
up every day and buy your really really good food
and to keep your costs down. Other than that, I
don't know anything about running a restaurant, and everything I
know about running a restaurant and people actually do know
(01:33):
something about it tells me how difficult it is. It's
not an easy thing to do. But I'm thinking that
the only thing more difficult than starting a restaurant chain
would be maintaining that restaurant chain. And I think we
have a lot of restaurant chains in this country that
are kind of, you know, they're kind of at that
tipping point whether or not they can continue to be
(01:55):
successful and whether or not they can kind of just
continue to exist. You know, Applebee's comes to mind. They
have the same business model pretty much they've always had.
You know, Hooters, who we're talking about right now. Denny's
has had a lot of issues. I mean, Denny's is
America's diner, but you know, there's plenty of other diners
you can go to, and you know, when you get
(02:18):
right down to it, what is special about their menu?
I would say the same thing about Hooters? What is
special about Hooters? What do what do you think of
when you think of Hooters? I think of beer and
wings and that was kind of where they kind of
built their their fame was beer and wings. You know,
there's plenty of good places to go for beer and wings.
(02:40):
There are, They're just I mean, here in Houston, we
have dozens different beer and wing joints, just dozens of
different brand names, you know, wingstop and all kinds of places.
Any there's all kinds of places you can go to
get beer and wings. Now that they granted, they have
other things on the menu at Hooters other than beer wings,
(03:01):
but that's pretty much what they're known for. And I
don't really think that that Hooters ever has been considered
you know, a fine dining experience. Let's face it, when
when you started going to Hooters, you know, it was
it was it was really specific what they were trying
to do. They're catering to younger men, and they were
helping to cater to those younger men by having really
(03:23):
pretty girls wearing orange spandex and basically you know, low
cut tops, and and it was it was as much
about sex as it was about anything that was on
the menu. Well there's other places that do that now too,
so it's it's become a more difficult cell as far
(03:44):
as getting that clientele in there. Plus plus you kind
of you limit yourself a little bit, right, I mean,
if you are specifically geared towards young men or even
older men, but men in general, then there's half the
population that doesn't think necessarily that they're welcome at Hooters.
Not that they wouldn't be welcome. They're more than glad
(04:04):
to wait on you and serve you food. But but
you know the fact that you've got these young girls
there the way they are just not attract a lot
of women, and it never really has attracted kids, certainly
not small kids. And quite honestly, don't you feel if
you have you ever been to a Hooters when like
a little league baseball team comes in, don't you kind
(04:25):
of feel a little bit like, Oh, my goodness, what
are those kids doing here? This isn't a kid's place.
I mean, they've tried to become more family friendly over
the course of time. They say that they want to
do more things to become more family friendly. They're getting
rid of their I guess they have a bikini night
or something. They're getting rid of that. They're going to
do more charitable things. But aside from that, my question
today was I mean, how can you think of anything?
(04:47):
What could Hooters do to attract more clientele and to
kind of get back on the right financial track. Here's
some of the ideas that we are sharing, or worse
shared this morning on ktr H.
Speaker 6 (05:00):
Good morning, Jimmy Andrew from Spring the best idea to
save Hooters is to turn it into an adult style
Chucky Cheese. But video games, arcades, ball hits for adults.
Speaker 7 (05:18):
So we all want to be children again. Everybody's just
coltic nowadays and this could help.
Speaker 5 (05:24):
Okay, it's not a bad idea. I'm not saying it's
a bad idea, but you know that's kind of what
that's kind of the David Buster's thing, right, although they
do seem to attract a younger crowd. What he is
suggesting is is you turn it into, like he said,
a chuck e cheese for adults. I don't know what
you would throw in there that would attract adults exclusively,
(05:46):
but you know there's some ideas there, all right, anybody
else have any ideas.
Speaker 8 (05:50):
Joe from Crosby would make Hooters more family friendly by
having him wear what every hot mom wears, yoga pants,
Hooters and Hooters, but I really don't think hiring male
staff at Hooters is going to pull them out of bankruptcy.
Speaker 5 (06:05):
No, probably not. And like I said, you know you
don't think of Hooters for that Hooters and duders. At
least that was a clean suggestion right this morning we
had one listener who suggested it didn't make the air,
by the way, but the listener suggested, well, well, what
if you had one half of Hooters continue to cater
(06:26):
to the to the men, and the other half of
Hooters cater to women, and you could, you know, have
like a woodpecker as your You have the awl on
one side and the woodpecker on the other side, and
you can guess what the other side would be called.
Speaker 2 (06:39):
Right.
Speaker 5 (06:40):
I didn't feel comfortable saying that on the air, but okay,
don't I don't mind the suggestion anybody else.
Speaker 7 (06:47):
Jimmy Andrew from spraying, Hey, listen, if we're talking about
making Hooters more family friendly, we should just move away
from the name Hooters all together. Doesn't sound like something
that brings the family together. Let's rename it Barracks, and
you and Skylight will be the poster dudes for the restaurant,
(07:09):
for the brand and you wear orange spandex pants and
white two tons.
Speaker 9 (07:14):
Good morning, it's John Seeley.
Speaker 7 (07:16):
Call it hippos.
Speaker 5 (07:19):
Now, those are two separate comments. But if you put Sky,
Mike and me an orangepan dix, you might as well
just call it hippos. Okay, And we're not gonn We
can't even attract flies, the two of us, okay to
a restaurant dressed like that, that that would be a fact.
All right, Well we had some fun with it anyway,
quick bill break, We are back with boring a moment.
Speaker 3 (07:38):
Jimmy Barrett show.
Speaker 5 (07:39):
You're running in nine fifty KPRC.
Speaker 3 (08:00):
Don't take story.
Speaker 5 (08:02):
Today is the same as the big story was yesterday,
and the story is on tariffs and how we are
reacting to it. I know how the mainstream media is
reacting to it and why the mainstream media is doing
what it's doing. I do believe that they're trying to
set off a many panic. I mean, there's some of
them that you know, really don't understand. You know, what
(08:23):
the president's doing. You could tell them six ways of
Sunday and they still wouldn't get it. As far as
what it is he's trying to do, I'm not sure
everybody understands what he's trying to do either, because I
think a lot of people think that this is all
about trying to get zero tariffs. Right, they have China
take their tariffs off of American maid products, European Union
to take their tariffs off American maid products, et cetera,
(08:47):
et cetera, et cetera. That is not really what this
is about. I don't think he's really trying to get
rid of tariffs ultimately, because I think President Trump views
tariffs as income, and as long as he views its income,
he sees it as income that can replace the federal
income tax. So I don't think he would want to
get rid of terrorists. Here's what he does want to change,
(09:10):
and this is the bottom line. I think he's trying
to get to. He's trying to get to open markets
for American products. We have a situation where there are
plenty of countries out there they either don't allow American
products in or have the crazy terraffs they have on
them in order to keep American products from coming in,
and yet we take things from them all the time.
(09:33):
It's called a trade imbalance, and it is huge. It's
been going on for decades and it's ultimately unsustainable for
the American economy. One of those areas would be agriculture,
and one of those areas would be American beef. Cattle
farmers here in the United States have huge teriffs put
(09:55):
on their beef products for other countries, the ones that
will actually allow American beef in because they know American
beef is really superior. In most cases, American beef is
superior and they can't compete with it, especially at a
price point. Here's the Senator Brosso, He's from Wyoming. He
understands a little bit about you know, American cattle industry
(10:17):
and a fit generation cattle farmer out of Indiana. Let's
here what they have to say about Trump's tariffs and beef.
Speaker 10 (10:24):
Australia has sold twenty nine billion dollars worth of beef
in the United States and we haven't been able to
sell one hamburger in Australia because of barrier. They showed
Thailand thirty percent tariffs on beef coming from the United States.
Speaker 3 (10:38):
Vietnam.
Speaker 2 (10:40):
Hey, you look at these.
Speaker 10 (10:41):
Numbers, and the ranchers of Wyoming are saying, thank you,
mister President.
Speaker 2 (10:45):
It is about time.
Speaker 8 (10:46):
Well, I'm very confident, and the reason I'm confident is
because I know the American people and people like myself.
What we do is we're going to go out and
do our job every day, no matter what happens on
the TV or with the.
Speaker 9 (11:01):
News and everything else.
Speaker 8 (11:04):
Every single farmer in this country, for one farmer, we
feed one hundred and sixty nine people, so that goes
out all across this country and the world, and that's
pretty efficient. So we're going to keep doing what we're
doing and the market's going to adjust itself. We're going
to have the highest quality beef in the world, which
we do have. So if we have fair trade, that
(11:27):
will eventually come back to us because people are going
to want our product because we know what we're doing.
Speaker 9 (11:33):
I haven't been here.
Speaker 8 (11:34):
My family's been here, like I said, like you said,
for five generations. That doesn't just happen unless you're doing
something right, and all across this country we see the
same thing from ranchers, So I think we just need
to settle down and let it play out. I get
a kick out of the markets today. It kind of
reminds me of my horse cash. Whenmember I get done
(11:55):
with a ride, you know he's and take his saddle off.
He runs off, and he's going to roll around in
the dirt and everything else and get away from me.
Speaker 9 (12:04):
But then as soon as as soon as.
Speaker 8 (12:06):
He gets done with that, if you hold out a
bucket of oats or something, he's running right back and
getting right back there.
Speaker 9 (12:12):
So I think these markets are going to.
Speaker 8 (12:13):
Do the same thing we saw it today with just
one little rumor what happened to the sophomarket jump right
back up and now it's it's really kind of hanging
in there. Now it looks like, yeah it is. You
know what struck me about what he said? I think
that's the first time I've ever heard of horse analogy
involving Wall Street that didn't include a horse's ass.
Speaker 5 (12:35):
But there you go. So the President spoke out yesterday
because European Union is among others, is now offering evidently
to go zero zero in terrafs. A lot of countries
are go zero zero on terraffs. Won't we won't put
any terraffs any longer on American automobiles. You don't put
(12:57):
any tariffs on European automobiles in the United States. And
that's when Trump just had it. He did this at
a press conference. He was having an informal one anyway
with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, where he's getting all
these questions, and that's where I think he did a
very good job of explaining for people who are paying
attention that this is not about zero tariffs. This is
(13:21):
about a trade deficit.
Speaker 9 (13:22):
The EU has been very tough over the years.
Speaker 1 (13:25):
It was I always say, it was formed to really
do damage to the United States and trade.
Speaker 9 (13:32):
That's the reason it was formed.
Speaker 1 (13:34):
It was formed with all of the countries from Europe,
I guess most of them, not all of them, but
most of them, and they formed together to create a
little bit of a monopoly situation, to create a unified
force against the United States for trade. So they have NATO,
which is largely the same countries, and they took advantage
(13:55):
of US dollar wise and militarily until I got there.
I was able to get six hundred billion dollars from
NATO where they paid NATO because most of these nations
weren't even paid.
Speaker 9 (14:07):
We were paying for NATO. So we're paying.
Speaker 1 (14:09):
Them to guard them militarily and they're screwing us on trade.
Speaker 9 (14:13):
So that's not a good combination.
Speaker 1 (14:15):
So now it's really turned around.
Speaker 9 (14:18):
It's the opposite.
Speaker 1 (14:19):
And the European Union has been very, very bad to us.
They don't take our cars like Japan in this sense,
they don't take our agricultural product, they don't take anything practically,
and yet they send millions of cars in a year, Mercedes, Benz, Volkswagen, BMW's,
they're sending millions and millions of cars into the US.
(14:41):
But we don't have a car that's been sold to
the European Union or other places. But let's go to
the European Union. And it's not going to be that way.
It's got to be fair and reciprocal. It's got to
be fair. It's not fair.
Speaker 5 (14:55):
There you go. I understand he went back to the
European Union based when they made proposal for zero zero
on teriffs and basically said, no, that's not going to
get it done. You need to purchase a very how
many was it three hundred and fifty million, at least
three hundred and fifty million dollars worth of American energy. That's
how big the trade deficit is between the European Union
(15:17):
alone in the United States. So in order to even
up the deficit. That what they need to do is
they need to purchase American energy, don't buy Russian energy,
buy American energy to that to three hundred and fifty
million dollars worth in order to have trade be balanced.
(15:38):
That's what he wants. He wants balanced trade. Here's more
on what the President's trying to do. And by the way,
what we saw yesterday was just panic, you know, just
complete panic. Now. I don't know if it's because of
what the mainstream media is saying and they've got everybody
all ginned up and worked up about this, or if
it's you know, people who are legitimately scared. But you
(15:59):
know what, all that's really going to happen here during
the course of all this is we're gonna have volatility,
which means we're gonna have big upswings and big down swings.
Yesterday we had a big down swing. Or day before
yesterday we had a big down swing. Yesterday, you start
to come back some and today, at least in the
morning hours haven't followed it. Since this morning, you know,
it was up quite a bit, so you know, I
(16:20):
wouldn't be surprised by the end of the day today
or tomorrow that we end up getting all the losses back.
There's no need to panic about this stuff. Here's a
White House Council, Trump Council, Peter Navarro urging us to
not panic.
Speaker 11 (16:35):
Here's the thing I want to say to small investors.
Don't panic. They want you to sell. You can't take
a loss until you sell. And what I see is
fifty thousand on the Dow. I predicted in twenty sixteen,
the day after President got elected. Back then, when the
dead futures were dead red down, I said we're going
to go to twenty five thousand. I got that exactly right.
(16:57):
We're going to fifty. But more importantly, with the S
and P five hundred, the games we've had over the
last couple of years have been basically seven stocks, the
magnificent seven of the AIS. Most of the stocks in
the S and P five hundred have gone nowhere.
Speaker 2 (17:12):
Now they're gonna go crazy.
Speaker 11 (17:14):
They're going to go so bullish because we're bringing our
investment home. The other thing I want to say is
we've got countries coming to us l with these zero
zero It's like, well, we'll put our tariffs down finally,
if you'll put yours down they're coming now and saying
we want to talk. Will lower our tariffs to zero
if you'll lower your tears, that's not the problem. Vietnam
is a great example, Laura. They sell us fifteen dollars
(17:38):
for everyone we sell them. Zero TIFFs would get us
no reduction in the one hundred and twenty three billion
dollar deficit we have, and five of that fifteen dollars
they sell us. You know what, it's China. It's that
clip you showed about Cambodi.
Speaker 2 (17:54):
How China is the same.
Speaker 11 (17:55):
It's the same kind of we call it transhipping.
Speaker 2 (17:57):
It's just crazy stuff.
Speaker 3 (17:59):
There you go.
Speaker 5 (18:00):
It's not about zero teriffs, is about closing the trade imbalance.
All right, we're gonna be back with more just a month.
Please stay with us, Jimmy Baird Show. You're on a
nine fifty KPRC. Alright, well, obviously, every let's talk about
(18:31):
the Trump tariffs as well. They should. And you've got
a lot of people in the media who, of course,
are making this out like this is gonna be a
big crash. You've even got some of the Wall Street
experts talking like that We've got a big crash right
around the corner. Of course, we had a huge down
day the other day, and now it's it's making its comeback.
I think what we can all agree on here is
(18:52):
things might be a little bit more volatile on Wall
Street for a while while we work our way through
all this. Thomas Di Lorenzo joins us. He's president of
the Missis Institute. It's a nonprofit organization that exists to
promote teaching and research in economics and individual freedom. Welcome
to the show, SIRT. Let's just give people, if you
(19:13):
don't mind, a little history lesson on tariffs, because I
think one of the things that President Trump has been
able to kind of educate people on is the fact
that there was a time in this country where we
didn't have a federal income tax. We relied on tariffs
solely as income.
Speaker 3 (19:28):
Yeah.
Speaker 12 (19:28):
Well that's when the federal government was very tiny compared
to where it is today. So tariffs were sufficient to
fund the constitutional functions of government, and that of course
ended when the income tax came in in the year
nineteen thirteen. And so, yeah, most Americans don't know that
(19:49):
we funded about ninety percent of the federal government with
TIFFs at one point. Now, if we got back to
only the constitutional functions of government. That could work again,
but of course, where the government spends money on anything
and everything under the sun today unlike the nineteenth century.
Speaker 5 (20:07):
Yeah, no, you're right about that. I mean, that's I
guess where DOSEE comes in, right. I start first of
all with cutting the cost of government, and the best
way to do that, at least in this bloated federal government,
is to search out the waste and the fraud and
to get rid of that first, which dose has done
a pretty effective job of doing. But there's plenty of
political opposition to that as well.
Speaker 3 (20:27):
Yeah.
Speaker 12 (20:28):
Well, yeah, of course, all the bureaucrats and all the
special interests. And I just read this morning that Chelsea
Clinton set up some Tony Boloney nonprofit and got paid
eighty four million dollars. That's one of the latest findings
by Elon Musk.
Speaker 5 (20:46):
I wonder what kind of attention do you think that
Elon Musk got when he said, you know, it's it's
funny that we've got We've got people serving in Congress
that make, you know, two hundred thousand dollars a year,
yet they have a fortune of twenty million dollars. How
do we suppose they got that twenty million dollars.
Speaker 12 (21:04):
Yeah, and they most of them have two houses, you know,
they have a house back home and a home district.
And then they at least have to rent an apartment
in Washington, d C. When they were when they're there,
And so that two hundred thousand before taxes. It's hard
to make twenty million dollars on that count of the salary.
But yeah, there's an old article in the Washingtonian magazine
(21:26):
years ago that I wrote an article about, and the
title was how did we ever get so rich? And
we being Washingtonians? And of course it's bribery and.
Speaker 5 (21:38):
Kicknats, which I guess is why they're fighting so hard
to try to protect this stuff, right, is they they
don't want the gravy training to go away.
Speaker 12 (21:46):
Yeah. If you want to know who benefits from all
the fraud, waste, and abuse, just listen to who's complaining
about cleaning it up the most.
Speaker 5 (21:54):
Yeah, absolutely right. All right, let's talk about Tariff's strategy here,
because I think one of the areas that maybe the
administration could have been stronger on was explaining to the
American people exactly why we're doing what it is that
we're doing. Because I think a lot of people at
least are working under the operational theory that we're trying
to get to the point where we have zero tariffs,
(22:16):
no teriffs against US, no terifts against another countries. But
that is not really what President Trump is trying to
accomplish here, is it.
Speaker 3 (22:23):
No, it isn't.
Speaker 12 (22:24):
And I think we should call them tariff taxes to
educate the public, because they are taxes, and what the
president is doing, by the way, is unconstitutional because the
increasing taxes has to come from the House of Representatives
and then the Senate and then the president. But so
(22:44):
what he's doing is illegal actually, And so that's one
point if people need to understand. And you know, the
European Union has made the deal of we will eliminate
all tariffs on American goods if the Americans eliminate all
tariffs on our goods, and so they that's their proposal,
(23:06):
and we'll see what President Trump does.
Speaker 3 (23:07):
Well, that would be the best of all world.
Speaker 12 (23:10):
He's interested in just encouraging economic growth. But he has
two two different conflicting objectives. One is fairness. You know,
if they have a fifty percent tariff on us, we
put a cent cent tamp on them. And that's sort
of like if they're going to shoot their consumers in
(23:30):
the foot, well, we're going to shoot American consumers in
the foot also with higher prices caused by higher tariff
taxes and so that the Europeans have proposed putting tariffs
down to zero. And I don't think President Trump is
going to accept that.
Speaker 3 (23:46):
No, so we'll see. I hope he would.
Speaker 5 (23:48):
He's no, he's already he's already not accepted it. But
he's told them what he would accept, and that is,
you know, we have about three hundred and fifty million
dollar trade deficit with the European Union. They're not they're
not paying their fair share for NATO. We have a
we have a trade imbalance. He wants them to buy
US energy to the tune of three hundred and fifty
(24:08):
million dollars a year in US energy so that we
have a zero balance on a trade deficit.
Speaker 12 (24:14):
Yeah, well that's the trade deficit is just a meaningless
artificial construct. You know, why would why would anyone think
that the people from Lichtenstein should buy as much from
Americans as Americans buy from the people of Liechtenstein, or
or look at it, this way, Why should people expect
(24:35):
California to have a trade balance with Rhode Islands, which
is a much smaller place. And so President Trump doesn't
understand the even the econ one oh one level of
international trade economics in doing this.
Speaker 5 (24:54):
But we have a lot of countries, sir, that have
basically said no to American products. I mean, we have
an agriculture American beef for example. In some of our
friends Australia, you know, they put the huge tariffs on
American beat because they don't want to compete with American beef.
That's not trad Well, we're.
Speaker 12 (25:11):
Not similess either in that regard. And the best thing
for the American public and our economy is to take
the Europeans up on this proposal to put all tariffs
down close to zero. These are tariff taxes. Remember, no
one ever created prosperity by raising taxes.
Speaker 5 (25:33):
Okay, well, there's gonna be interesting to see how we
get from point A to point Z. I just I
don't know that his goal is the same as your goal.
I understand what your goal is and I get that,
but I don't think his is the same.
Speaker 12 (25:47):
Well, he seems to want to recreate the American economy
of the nineteen fifties, with bustling car companies and lots
of unionized construction workers everywhere.
Speaker 5 (26:00):
Well, and what's wrong with.
Speaker 12 (26:01):
That, Well, it's the nineteen fifties. If you want to
live in the standard of living of the nineteen fifties,
there you go. We have to cut gen by about
two thirds.
Speaker 5 (26:11):
Okay, but you're talking about nineteen fifty dollars. Is comparing
apples and oranges?
Speaker 3 (26:17):
Well, yeahjustin for inflation.
Speaker 12 (26:19):
But one of the things we know is that the
terror for that the President has started will shrink the
international division of labor. It will harm all countries and
especially consumers. But the protectionist tariffs always benefit a relatively
small group of politically connected corporations and their unions if
(26:42):
they're unionized, but at the expense of everybody else. You know,
if American cars go up in price by twenty five
or thirty percent, President Trump has already said I don't
care about that, And what kind of thing is that
to say for the American world class to pay that
much more for the next new car.
Speaker 5 (27:03):
I think, ultimately what he's trying to do, and this
has a lot to do with his philosophy on trying
to bring back American manufacturing and American jobs is he
wants to switch from a basically a government run economy
to a private sector run economy. In other words, we've
got so many people who are dependent on government at
either the federal, the state, or the local level to
(27:24):
earn a living, and he wants to shift some of
that to the private sector.
Speaker 12 (27:29):
You know, well, the terror program is in conflict with that,
because I've heard the President on several occasions saying bragging,
We're going to take in so much more money from
these terraffs, so much more, and all that money is
going to go out of the pockets of the American
consumers and into the federal bureaucracy. And that's the opposite
(27:54):
of what he campaigned on. He came by the campaigns
on shrinking the bureaucracy, not seating it with tax revenue.
Speaker 5 (28:01):
Well, he's also i think, thinking about a deficit we
have to get rid of at some point in time.
Speaker 12 (28:06):
Well, yeah, that's why they're cutting spending. That's that's the
only way to get rid of a deficit. You raise taxes.
The government bureaucrafts are going to find a way to
spend it, and you know, and that'll never solve it.
You have to abolish as much of government as possible,
which is what Elon Musk is doing.
Speaker 5 (28:25):
Do you think that Elon Musk and President trumpet ultimately
are going to maybe butt heads over all this?
Speaker 12 (28:32):
Oh, I don't think so. I don't think so. I
think they work pretty well together, and they've had some
great successes. I think they're doing some great things.
Speaker 5 (28:41):
But I don't think Elon Musk's philosophy on terrorist is
any anywhere close to what the president say is maybe
that's where they're going to be button heads over this stuff.
Speaker 3 (28:49):
Yeah, well, I just said, increasing federal.
Speaker 12 (28:53):
Government revenue by hundreds of billions of dollars is the
opposite of what he Elon Musk is trying to accomplish.
And and and the hit on the stock market, by
the way, cost Americans hundreds of billions in their in
their retirement accounts.
Speaker 5 (29:12):
Only if they cast it a couple of days, only
if they cast it in yesterday. Yeah, that's the thing.
The same thing with stocks. I mean, you don't lose
any money on stocks until until you sell them. You've
you've lost on paper. But it doesn't mean anything until
you buy yourself.
Speaker 12 (29:27):
Yeah, well it does give you. It does give you
a heartburn that it doesn't it.
Speaker 5 (29:30):
Well, it does do that, Yes, it does. Tom, thank
you for joining us today. Good to talk to you.
I appreciate it.
Speaker 3 (29:35):
Okay, my pleasure to have a great day.
Speaker 5 (29:37):
You too, Thomas the Lorenzo, president of the Missis Institute.
They can quite go the way I thought it would,
and that's okay. He doesn't have to agree with everything
I say, although it would help if he did back
with more in the moment. Jimmy Baird Show, I'm kidding.
You're on an nine fifty k PRC. All right, let's up.
(30:11):
Let's talk a little bit about the hands off protests. Yeah,
that was just spontaneous, right, I mean all those people
showing up in major cities like Houston, you know, by
the thousands in some cases, you know, holding up signs
about social security, you know about not not you know,
not taking our social security away through DOGE. Yeah, the
(30:34):
hand hands off our social security, hands off our Medicare
and Medicaid. Yeah, that was that was just completely completely spontaneous. No,
it wasn't, we know better, highly organized paid for individuals
protesting and of course, fear mongering with the hopes that
what they can do somehow convince you that what what
(30:57):
Elon Musk wants to do is take away your social
Security when the reality what he's trying to do is
to take away the fraud and the waste and the
you know, the inefficiencies, so you have a social security
system that works better for the people who collect it
and last longer. Imagine how much better shape so social
(31:18):
Security would be right now if two things had happened
during the lifetime of Social Security. That the federal government
had a lock box on it so they couldn't get
in there and quote unquote borrow money which they never repaid,
borrow money from Social Security, and that you know that
that that they had done a good job of keeping
up with who was eligible who wasn't. You know, do
(31:41):
these Social Security numbers really match these names? Why are
we sending checks to people who are two hundred years old?
If they had done all that stuff along the way,
social Security would be in much better shape. But it isn't,
so now we've got to try to fix it. Greg
Guttfeld on his show last night, was talking about the aspect,
you know, who's really behind all this stuff in these
(32:02):
hands off protesting. Here's mister Gutfeld, how about.
Speaker 2 (32:05):
Those hands off protests?
Speaker 13 (32:08):
Cute title, right, sounds like something written on Joy Behar's
lunchbox at work.
Speaker 2 (32:14):
But it's fun hearing.
Speaker 13 (32:15):
Hands off from people whose hands are in your wallet,
scratching Tesla's and reaching for your kids, and with so
many trans women in the crowd.
Speaker 2 (32:21):
Some of those hands were huge.
Speaker 13 (32:24):
But what an exercise in mass performance art, the message
for the government to keep its hands off social security.
Speaker 2 (32:31):
Of course, no one's touching that.
Speaker 13 (32:32):
It's about fraud, so the entire event was also a fraud.
But hands Off is pure progressive branding, big emotion.
Speaker 2 (32:39):
Zero accuracy.
Speaker 13 (32:41):
It's like staging a protest to save the whales in
Nebraska when we all know whales are in New York.
Speaker 2 (32:48):
So what's this really about.
Speaker 13 (32:53):
It's about having no argument against the thing.
Speaker 2 (32:55):
It's railing against dose, which is.
Speaker 13 (32:58):
Designed to actually help the people who are protests saying
Doje's actual goal preventing a full blown economic collapse, the
kind where the US dollar becomes so worthless I don't
even bother to take them out of my g string
after a show. But rather than confront that terrifying reality.
The organizers cooked up a fake crisis. They claim Doge
(33:18):
is trying to destroy Social Security, which is like accusing
the fire Department of starting fires by pouring water on them.
They're also claiming that Social Security payments will cease if.
Speaker 2 (33:27):
Doge isn't stopped.
Speaker 13 (33:30):
Please, it's twenty twenty five that checks are digital, So no,
Grandma won't be eating fancy feasts because Trump took an
honest look at wasted abuse. That's a lie. But the
most cynical part the organizers know this. They know that
they need to kill Trump's agenda if they're ever going
to get their power back, and so they'd rather see
the system burn that admit Trump has a point. It's
(33:52):
the same group that brought you Russian collusion, Democracy's death,
Joe's just fine, and the classic fifteen days to flat in.
Speaker 5 (34:00):
The curve, Yeah, and other great lies. Right, and you
know usual suspects, the George Soroses of the world are
funding all this kind of stuff.
Speaker 3 (34:12):
You know, I'm not saying.
Speaker 5 (34:13):
That everybody shows up at these protests got a paycheck,
but I'm I'm saying that there are a number of
them that did. And certainly the organizers of this did
and they are. They're very well organized. You don't have
spontaneous protesting in a whole variety of different locals and
cities where everybody's holding up the same signs, everybody's using
the same slogans. No, that that's highly organized is what
(34:36):
that is. Hey, listen, enough for today, y'all. Have a
great day. Thank you for listening. Do appreciate it. See
you tomorrow morning, bright and early, five am over on
news radio seven forty KTRH. We are back here at
four on the AM nine fifty KPRC.
Speaker 2 (35:00):
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