Trump and the Tariff Sons of Anarchy

Chris slams Trump’s tariff chaos, dubbing it “Sons of Anarchy.” Peter Navarro’s $6T tariff claim? A tax hike, not a cut, hitting consumers hard—think pricier Italian wine and cars. He argues factories won’t return without workers, citing workforce gaps over tariffs. www.watchdogonwallstreet.com

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
The Watchdog on Wall Street podcast explaining the news coming
out of the complex worlds of finance, economics, and politics
and the impact it will have on everyday Americans. Author,
investment banker, consumer advocate, analyst, and trader Chris Markowski.

Speaker 2 (00:16):
Donald Trump and the Tariff Songs of Anarchy. I used
to like that show. That was a good show. Anyway. Yeah,
the Sons of Anarchy are out and about. So you
got oh, I got Peter Navarro out there basically saying
that the six hundred billion dollars a year over ten years,

(00:40):
which is six trillion dollars going to be collected due
to tariffs, on top of the one hundred billion dollars
a year that they're going to collect from the car
truck tariffs. Somehow, some way, Peter Navarro seems to think
that that is a tax cut. No, No, tariffs are taxes.

(01:09):
How these tariffs are going to be worked out? Who's
going to eat them? Uh? Yeah, manufacture certain Yeah, it's
gonna hit people who are buying stuff. Okay, it's gonna
hit you and I now again hopefully hopefully because again

(01:34):
right now, like I said, it's sons of arape. Nobody
knows the damn thing. Washington Post today, it's gonna be
twenty percent tariff across the twenty percent freaking high man,
that's a high tariff. I'm gonna be a little selfish

(01:57):
right here and there, Ualian whine I like to drink.
It's gonna get It's gonna be pretty damn expensive, pretty
damn expensive. And what do you think is gonna happen? Okay,
your Trump seems to think, well, I got buy American? Well,
well you think that the you think the folks out

(02:21):
nap A Valley are not gonna see well, hey, sm sham,
we'll make this. You know, we've got to you know,
sharden And they make great wines out there, they do.
They're gonna see their competitors' prices go up. What are
they gonna do. They're gonna raise them too. Sure they
may undercut them by a little bit, but they're gonna

(02:44):
raise your prices. That's what businesses are gonna do. That's
just the reality of the terrain. That's what tariffs are
going to do. Now, I get it. If you're using
these things as somehow, some way, somehow, some sort of negotiation,

(03:05):
some sort of negotiation to bring tarants down to open
up markets, allowed for our stuff to be sold in. Yes,
there's certain countries that take advantage. I get all that,
but twenty percent across the board. But again, we'll know,
we don't know. Supposed we were going to find out tomorrow.

(03:27):
But I mean, everybody's joking around about it. You know,
how long will that last? When is that going to change?
This is this is a disaster right at this point.
I'm just being honest with you, Okay. The way that
this has been handled, the way that this is, this
is anarchy. This is chaos. Now again, I mentioned here

(03:50):
on the program, you know, the early stages Trump's presidency
was like Christmas every day, Christmas every day with Doge,
with the cuts that we were seeing coming out, finding
out with government and all that stuff is great. Think
they said that that's chaotic. That wasn't chaotic. That makes sense.

(04:11):
Nobody can make heads or tails out of what is
happening right now. That's that's a problem. Again he Trump
says he settled on his Liberation Day tariff plan. But again,
what told you at the secret whatever? Whatever? Again, not

(04:34):
a fan, not a fan of the way that this
is being done, not a fan of the way that
this is being rolled out, you know, not not to
mention some of the some of the comets that Trump's man,
he's talking about. You know, you can buy people can
buy American cars, buy American cars, pricing can card. We're
gonna buy American cars at which one. I don't know

(05:01):
if I actually did this today. I spent some time
doing it today. I looked at various different lists of
the top autos there you do, Car Driver, Motor trend,
Us News, and they listed and we don't fare very well.
We don't fare very well when it comes to the

(05:24):
ranking of automobiles small cars. The highest one we had
ranked was number thirty one. Luxury small cars. The highest
one we had ranked was sixteen. I even go down
the list unless it's a pickup truck, we're not doing
too well. That's that's just an even SUVs, even SUV's, Honda, Mazda, Mazda, Hyundai, Toyota, Kia,

(05:52):
Hyundai Jeep Jeep again is owned by Stillantis, which is
a Dutch company. Toy go to Hant, I go right
on down the list. Oh, we got a luxury suv
that's on there, the Lincoln Nautilus. I don't even know
what that thing looks like, BMWs five, Audi Lexus, I

(06:12):
what doing too well? Yeah? Electric vehicles. Well, yeah, Tessa's
up there on the list. They're doing pretty well. But
other than that, Buck Trump says, buy American car. Okay,
could night asked talent Trumble, what's an American car? Can

(06:35):
can you define for me? Can you explain to me
what makes it American car? Is those BMW SUVs made
here in the United States? Are they an American car?
I guess supposedly because they're finished here, that makes them

(06:57):
an American car. How However, if BMW autos are getting
whacked with the tariff, they're going to pass those costs
on across all of their models and raise the prices
for those. Yeah, we're doing it wrong. We're doing it wrong.

(07:18):
This is not this is not how you compete globally. Again,
we got, you know, to go back and I've had
podcasts on this years and years and years ago, talking about, uh,
you know how we got our our butts kicked because
quality went into the toilet here in the United States
and a liar opening for foreign car companies to sell

(07:40):
here in the United States because to make high quality stuff. Again, Matt,
That's that's reality, and I have no problem with people
making those choices. And then you get Donald Trump part
again sounds of enarchy. So he pulls out his head. Hey,

(08:00):
he tells somebody, I basically said, American companies better not
raise the prices on their cars. That sounds like something
that Maxine waters ayok or Kamala Harris might say. You're
you're gonna tell a private company what they should do
with their pricing. Again, I don't know. Again, I don't

(08:27):
know his Sometimes he's just got to keep his mouth
shut with his ego. Okay, shut the hell up. What
are you dictating to a private company what they can charge?
If I wanted that, I'd drinking vote for Bernie Sanders
for client out loud, shut up, it's not your You're
telling America what they can charge. I'm just not gonna
sit good with the White House. What hell do you

(08:47):
think you want? Oh, I'm gonna tell you, I you
haven't got a president of the United States. I'm not gonna.
I don't. I'm gonna it's not gonna sit well with
us if Donald Trump raises the prices at his golf
formar alongo are some of his hotels. Yeah, I didn't
vote for this nonsense, because that's what it is. It's nonsense.

(09:13):
My side story, my grandfather worked at the General Electric
plant in Schenectady, New York. It's still open. I think
it's got about three four thousand employees, and I don't
know how much longer it's going to be open because
know what it makes wind turbines. Yeah, it makes wind

(09:34):
turbines now, and I don't I don't see much of
the future for those things. But whatever, whatever, I gotta ask.
At its height, I looked it up today. They employed
close to fifty thousand people at that plant. And many factories.

Speaker 3 (09:55):
Plants all across the United States. And yeah, many companies,
for whatever reason it may be, saw the opportunities. Hey we're
going to offshore, We're going to move this lower labor costs.
And uh again they made a mistake in many respects

(10:18):
saying hey, you know what we want to be We
want to get involved in that market in China. It's
a massive market. We see the future there, moves stuff there,
get it, without a doubt. It hollowed out much of
our manufacturing here in the United States. But you you
can't you can't say tariffs or called tariffs and expect
that to change. I share with you a quick story here.

(10:42):
This is from Micro definitamiliar with Mike Rowe's voice for
dead base, catch dirty jobs.

Speaker 2 (10:50):
He's been a big time advocate, you know for tradespeople
and you know people that work with their hands and
just done a lot of really amazing things. A really
neat guy. If you're not familiar with them, look up
who Micro is. He said. For every five every five

(11:12):
tradespeople that retire this year, to replace them. That's the
way it's been for the past twelve years. Says I
don't need to be a mathematician. This is bad arithmetic.
Seven point two million able bodied men today in their

(11:32):
prime working years are not only unemployed, they're not even looking.
What are they doing that two thousand hours a year
on average on screens. Said he got a call from
a company called blue Forge Alliance, and it's in charge
of something called the Maritime Industrial Base. The Maritime Industrial

(11:57):
Base consists of fifteen thousand individu ual companies, all of
whom are tasked with delivering thermonuclear powered submarines the US
Navy three a year two Virginia Class one Columbia Blue
Forge Alliance calls me and they say, we need to
hire some trades people, and we were wondering if you

(12:19):
and your foundation could help. I said, I'll try, as
you probably aarn. It's pretty skinny out there. How many
do you need? They said, one hundred thousand, one hundred
thousand tradespeople for one industry that most people don't even

(12:40):
think about. They said, we've looked everywhere. You know where
they are. I said, yeah, I do. During the eighth grade.
That's one hundred thousand building submarines. There's eighty thousand in
the automotive industry alone for technicians right now, eighty thousand openings.

(13:04):
You start to go down the list and you begin
to realize our workforce is wildly out of plots. That's
how you fix it. We again in the same way,
in the same way that Joe Biden or Barack Obama

(13:27):
or these you know green people out there, UH decided
to put the cart before the horse with all of
their plans. When it came out, everybody's gonna have it
like guitar. I'm like, wait a second, you know, let's
look at where the materials coming from. Let's look at
the electric rich There's a myriad of other things that
we've got to do. First, materials, you're gonna have to

(13:50):
lock down to make sure they had them if you
were going to do something like this. Okay, this is
the same thing. Well, you think that all of these
plants are just going to come back here to the
United States? Do you understand that the plants the Hyundai
plant right now, that's outside, it's outside of Atlanta, they're

(14:13):
having trouble finding workers. They are having trouble finding workers.
Oh yeah, that that Chips Act. Remember that, Oh, Taiwan
Semiconductors of setting up a plant here. They have to
import workers from their countries to work at these plants

(14:36):
because we don't have them. If we're going to do
these things, we might want to educate people and get
our workforce heading in that direction. Maybe get off the hey,
oh everybody's got to go to college, boloney, nonsense, stupidity.

(14:56):
Get rid of all of that and put people on
a proper career path when they're in the eighth grade.
Then you can do these things. Then you'll have the
workers to fill these jobs. Well, you think all of
a sudden, these plants are going to come back to

(15:16):
the United States and they can't find workers to do
the work. I mean, people, come on, you know, let's
be honest here, to be honest here, I come on.
You know how many people have a work crew do
their long or have had people do construction work on

(15:39):
their house. Who's doing these things? Let's be honest, who's
doing them? But we don't have the workers? And do
we start changing at that level and gear up in

(16:01):
that sense? What are we gonna do? We do you
think the plants are going to move back to the
United States when they don't have the workers that can
actually do the work. It's not gonna happen. You know,
this is where we were at today. You know, there's
no rhyme or reason to what's going on. There's no plan. Tariffs,

(16:24):
Tarff's gonna save the day all of a sudden, All
of a sudden, all those factories, all those factories that
were shut down in New England, in upstate New York
and across the Rust spell all, yeah, they're all gonna back. No,
they're not going to come back anyway. Well know the

(16:48):
more tomorrow the sons of narchy continue. Watchdog on Wall
Street dot Com