Why Is Truth “Hostile” In the Trump Era

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Chris dives into the absurdity of today's political climate where telling the truth is treated as a hostile act. He dissects Amazon’s tariff controversy, blasts the confusion surrounding auto tariffs, and critiques the tangled mess of U.S. trade policies. From hidden taxes to retroactive reimbursements, Chris explains why complexity is killing business—and why real economic revival requires simplicity, deregulation, and honesty. 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 we'll have on everyday Americans. Author,
investment banker, consumer advocate, analyst, and trader Chris Markowski.

Speaker 2 (00:16):
So truth, I guess, is now a hostile and political act. Whoo. Yeah,
we did a whole thing on truth a couple of
weeks ago on the radio show. I'll talking about Punches pilot.
What is truth? I've talked about it here around the program.
Oh yeah, everybody's entitled to their own truth, their own reality,

(00:38):
when quite frankly, that's nonsense. I have to say, full disclosure,
this whole tariff thing is the second most annoying topic
I've had to cover in all of my years, COVID
being number one. Anyway, So again, you've got a press

(00:58):
conference this morning with the Secretary of Treasury Scott Bessant,
and Caroline Levette was up there too, and we'll get
into some of the things that the Treasury Secretary said.
But first and foremost a question was asked from the
peanut gallery there the reporters with a report that Amazon
was going to start adding a surcharge where their customers

(01:22):
could see on items that were coming in from China
and what people had to pay. And Levette kind of
like she stepped up to the podium so basically boxed
out Scott's. And I spoke to the President about this
and said it was a hostile and political act. How

(01:47):
how is it hostile and political? You're in importer, you're
your Amazon and the United States government, the United States
just levied a new tax, a new tax on your products.

(02:09):
Shouldn't you show that? I mean, why wouldn't you show that? Again?
You know what I'm thinking about today? I remember I
was a kid. How many people remember the gas station?
The gas station back in the nineteen seventies that I remember,
and they would show you the price of gasoline. They
would show you the federal tax, they would show you

(02:29):
the state tax. You knew all of the better costs.
You don't know today, you just pay. You failed to
realize all of the taxes that you're paying every single
time you fill up at the pump, tariff's attax. If
this is so grand, spanking stars spangled, now the awesome,

(02:52):
why not let Amazon show it? Her other retort was,
why didn't Amazon on do this when the Biden administration
hiked inflation to the highest level in forty years. So
what was Amazon supposed to do? Put on a eight?

(03:12):
How do you quantify? How do you quantifyify an inflation cost? Yeah,
you can quantify. You got a dollar amount exactly for
what you're being charged in tariffs? How does one do that?
And then I'm sorry, you know, all over Fox Business,

(03:33):
Fox Ever, they start echoing the same one line, bull crap,
Stop it, people, You're smarter than this, You're better than this.
You're going to start putting an inflation charge. How does
one quantify that inflation charge? Just let me know. But anyway,
you can with teriffs anyway. Statement from Amazon, I guess

(03:59):
the whole thing was fake news. The team that runs
our ultra low cost Amazon Hall store has considered listing
inpoort charges on certain products. This was never a consideration
for the main Amazon site, and nothing has been implemented
on any Amazon properties. I don't know what the point was.

(04:23):
I don't know if they were worried about it. This
was a shot across the bow warning people, you know,
don't be honest with the American people, because again, I guess,
truth is a hostile and political act anyway. Anyway, Take
you for what it is, Take you for what it is.

(04:46):
You don't have to agree with me whatever. I'm sorry.
I know i'd be doing it. I almost certainly i'd
be saying, hey, listen, this is you know again, when
you buy something, you see the sales tax, right, see
the local sales tax on it. You put a line
on them. This is our tariff tax. This is why
everything got so expensive. Anyway, let's talk a little bit

(05:08):
about autos here first and Foremost General Motors pulled their
profit guidance citing significant tariff impact. It's net income slid
six point six percent to two point eight billion, even
though it's revenue went up. At this point in time,

(05:33):
they say that the auto TIFFs have clouded the outlook
and its prior forecast cannot be relied upon. The company
is also holding off on stock buybacks to conserve cash back.
In February, they approved six billion dollars in buybacks. They've
purchased two billion, but they're waiting for some more clarity.

(05:55):
Moving forward again, we'll see it's part of the uncertainty
issues that we're dealing with at this point in time.
This is where again and I'm not a fan of this.
This is part of the the lack of any sort
of execution or intelligent design when it came to the

(06:19):
rollout on these tariffs. Trump now wants to soften the
impact of the auto tariffs, preventing duties on foreign made
cars from stacking on top of other tariffs that he
has imposed. He also wants to ease some of the

(06:40):
tariffs on foreign parts used to manufacture cars in the
United States, so automakers paying Trump's automotive tariffs won't also
be charged for other duties such as those on steel
and a luminum Again. Yeah, you know, I hate to

(07:06):
be the accountants at these automakers at this point and
try and trying to keep track of all this stuff.
And I guess this is going to be retroactive, meaning
that automakers could be reimbursed for tariffs already paid. There
was a twenty five percent tariff on finished foreign made
cars that went to effect this month. They're going to

(07:30):
modify its tariffs on foreign order parts slated to be
twenty five percent on May third, allowing automakers to be
reimbursed for those tariffs up to an amount of equal
to three points seventy five percent of the value of
a US made car for one year. The reimbursement would
fall to two point five percent of the car's value

(07:50):
in the second year, then be phased out again. You're
also talking about the steel and aluminum tariffs and weather
and they are compounded on this. Again. I'm a big
fan of simplicity, and I've made that perfectly clear over

(08:12):
the years here on the program, and we've gone off
on red tape Nation. This is not making life easier
on anybody. This is making it more complicated. It's making
it more difficult. Complicated and difficult is not conducive to business.

(08:35):
And I know I've used this a million times over
the years here on the program. It was an interview
with Steve Jobs. Interview with Steve Jobs and has taken
us back to the nineteen eighties where he was making
fun of word Star. Word Star was one of the
early word processing software programs. I remember, I remember, you know,

(09:02):
they would have it in schools and whatnot. Nobody ever
used it. Nobody ever used it because it was intimidating
as all hell. First and foremost, the instruction manual was
it was like a you know, an old new York
City telephone book for crying out loud, and Steve Jobs
made that perfectly clear in his interview, saying, no one's

(09:25):
going to learn the slash cues and a slash z's.
They said, no one's going to read, you know, a
four or five hundred page manual. You got to read
a novel to write a novel. It's not going to work.
And again talked about ease of use and simplicity and
that's what we have to get back to in these
country and quite frankly, that the tariffs are not doing

(09:47):
at it at this point in time. This this is
something that is encouraging. It's encouraging. Secretary set announced that
Trump will allow companies who move their manufacturing back to
the United States will allow for their factory costs to
be fully expensed full expenses of factories. Bring your factory back,

(10:13):
you can fully expense the equipment and the building. We
will couple that with deregulation, cheap energy, and regulatory certainty. Okay,
and be honest, okay, I think that's great, But you
can't declare and decree that this is great. And quite frankly,

(10:34):
these are the things that should have been put into
place first, doing these types of things. Doing these types
of things would automatically attracted businesses back to the United States.
You do that first. This has got to go through Congress.

(10:57):
I mean you can say that again Congress. Congress has
to approve this one more thing again on the tariff stuff.
Today there was some conversation where the Scent was up
there talking about the revenues from tariffs, and again the
logic behind what they're saying. Okay, I might explain it. Yes,

(11:18):
I'm gonna explain it again. You're saying, you're saying that
income tax could be eliminated because of terrafts, saying they
could be eliminated because of tariffs. But you want these
manufacturing companies, who want them to come to the United
States where they're not going to be tariffed, Which is it?

(11:44):
They're basically polar opposites of one another. Quite frankly, doesn't
make any sense. Any other quick note as well, again
Scott sent actually said today, you know, we're not basically looted.
We're not looking to bring back textile manufacturing. We want
to have high end productive jobs coming back here to

(12:07):
the United States. Now, okay, that makes sense. But the
numbers here that they keep throwing out. They keep saying, Ah,
we're going to get rid of income taxes on everyone
making less than two hundred thousand dollars a year. So
the amount of taxes collected by the two hundred thousand

(12:29):
and below, that's six hundred and seventy five million dollars.
A billion dollars. Excuse me, six hundred and seventy five
billion dollars. If you think that the tariff revenue is
going to supplant that, it's just not going to happen,
not going to happen. Tariffs would have to be much
much higher and across the board anyway. Oh and other news,

(12:55):
Oh boy, Howard Lutnik is going to be on CNBC
this afternoon, Hold on your hats, kids, Watchdog on Wall
Street dot Com