November 10, 2025 • 21 mins
(November 10,2025)
Shutdown on the verge of ending as Senate reaches deal. Trump says Americans will receive $2,000 tariff dividend. Can the U.S. revive manufacturing? What history tells us.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
You're listening to Bill Handle on demand from KFI AM
six forty KFI AM six forty Bill Handle.
Speaker 2 (00:08):
Here. It is a Monday morning, November ten, as we
start the week, and what a start. Yesterday the Senate
voted the shutdown will probably end by the end of
this week. And this, as you know, was a fight,
actually almost an existential fight between the Senate Democrats and
(00:31):
the Senate Republicans. And I have some ideas as to
why eight Democratic senators caved on this and cut the
deal with Republicans who said, you fund the government now,
and we will.
Speaker 1 (00:45):
Vote on the.
Speaker 2 (00:49):
Keeping of the extension for that for Medicare and not Medicare,
excuse me, for Medicaid and Obamacare.
Speaker 1 (00:58):
In other words, will we'll see the Republicans.
Speaker 2 (01:02):
Republicans say, will see about that, but we just have
to get the government going. And of course there were
Democrats are saying, no, we have to have a deal
in place. Those expansion credits that were passed, they're supposed
to end December thirty one, have now to be made permanent.
Speaker 1 (01:19):
It's that simple.
Speaker 2 (01:20):
We cannot have twenty something million Americans who were able
to get insurance under Medica under Obamacare and these extensions
are going to be out of insurance or their premiums
are going to skyrocket to the point where they can't
afford them. We're not going to let that happen, the
Republicans are saying. Not that we're not going to let
(01:41):
that happen. They're saying, we have to get the government going.
It's that simple, to the exclusion of everything else.
Speaker 1 (01:46):
So they were playing chicken.
Speaker 2 (01:47):
Forty days, the longest shut down in the history of
the United States.
Speaker 1 (01:51):
What happened. The Democrats caved. And I'll tell you why.
Speaker 2 (01:56):
I think the Democrats caved because these and Earns premiums
are going to explode or people are going to be
ineligible starting January. First, air traffic controllers are not eating now,
people are lining up at food banks now, and I
(02:16):
think it's a question of what do we handle. First,
Republicans would not move, would not say you've got the extension.
All they would say is we'll vote on it later,
which of course means that's not going to happen, because.
Speaker 1 (02:32):
That's just the philosophy.
Speaker 2 (02:33):
Is money in this administration and this Congress is to
be spent on defense, and it's supposed to be sent
on border patrol, border control. It is not to be
spent on social programs. It's that simple. It's a question
of philosophical difference. And so I think it was the
immediacy of the lines at food banks and the air
(02:55):
traffic controllers. They've sort of become the poster child of
what's going on when money is unavailable, when paychecks stop.
Speaker 1 (03:02):
As a matter of fact, I'm going to do that
at eight o'clock.
Speaker 2 (03:05):
I'm gonna do a story about the air traffic control
system because it goes way beyond just them being paid.
Speaker 1 (03:11):
Now, a few other things that.
Speaker 2 (03:14):
The Republicans did agree to is all the people that
were fired by the President, they'll be reinstated. There will
be no more firings and SNAP, and it'll be retroactive pay.
If you remember the President saying I'm not even going
to pay them retroactively when they come back to work,
or I might not pay them.
Speaker 1 (03:35):
Well, that's off the table. They will be paid.
Speaker 2 (03:39):
And so the Democrats are saying, and this is the
Republicans I think have a hard time defending that as
shutdowns continued. Do you know that there was no money
for the SNAP program during a governmental shutdown? And every
time there was a governmental shutdown. Since SNAP was created,
they always came up with money for SNAP always. This
(04:00):
is the first time that STAP payments stopped, even to
the point when a federal judge ordered the government to
pay SNAP program the SNAP program saying it's saying you
better find the money someplace. The administration said no and
appealed and was appealing that order, which now is going
(04:21):
to become moot.
Speaker 1 (04:22):
So we'll see this. So here's what happens.
Speaker 2 (04:26):
The first step was yesterday when the deal was reached,
and it's going to be there will be another vote.
This just moves it onto the Senate floor and it
goes over to the House. But the deal has basically
been cut and you'll see the money being paid. The
shutdown is actually going to be finished by the end
(04:48):
of the week. And then just a question of how
long is it going to take to issue the checks.
When are they going to wait for the next pay period?
For example, if the air traffic controllers and other federal
employees are paid on the fifteen in the first do
they wait until the next pay period. I don't know
how that works, but I gotta tell you it's we'll
see what happens. We'll see what happens with the extension
(05:13):
or the keeping of the extension of Obamacare.
Speaker 1 (05:15):
That's going to blow up big time.
Speaker 2 (05:17):
I think what's going to happen on that one is
going to affect the mid terms where Republicans are going,
Wait a minute, you know, am I really going to
vote against people have poor people having insurance?
Speaker 1 (05:30):
How is that going to look in the midterms.
Speaker 2 (05:32):
Look what just happened with these elections, these various state
wide elections. I mean, it was a suite for the Democrats.
We'll see what happens after that. Okay, Now going on
with what's happening economically in this country, and one of
the things a president has certainly put us all in turmoil,
and he has tariffs, tariffed the hell out of countries,
(05:56):
a couple of them or most of the countries. It's well, well,
where I disagree with the president big picture, I can
see the validity of his argument, and that is the
tariffs against China, the tariffs against other countries because the
balance of trade was simply unfair, because we are buying
from them far more than they than what they bought
(06:20):
from US. Okay, fair enough, Brazil only because he likes Bolsonnaro.
He made it very clear, I'm doing this because I
just like the guy that you're trying. In terms of Argentina,
not only are there no tariffs, but there's a bailout
of forty billion dollars only because the president is an
ally of Trumps.
Speaker 1 (06:39):
It's strictly personal the rest of it.
Speaker 2 (06:42):
Okay, So money is pouring into the US treasury as
a result of these tariffs because well, in China, the
tariffs for weeks were over one hundred percent, which means
if someone were to buy let's say a manufacturer was
to buy X dollars worth of products from China raw material,
(07:04):
it would be the amount paid to China, and then
that same amount if it was one hundred percent tariff
paid to the US government. Now, one of the things
about Trump, and I don't get how even supporters don't
understand when the President says China is paying for the tariffs,
China is not.
Speaker 1 (07:27):
We are paying for the tariffs.
Speaker 2 (07:29):
I told you the story of we had an emergency
shipment of cookware. My partner and I in Lake Industries,
and we had to supply a cookware, so we had
to buy seventy thousand dollars worth of cookware instantly, right
in the middle of the tariff wars, because now companies
are really sitting back and wondering what to do. Anyway,
we bought seventy thousand dollars worth of goods. The broker
(07:53):
who handles it said you need to pay eighty seven
thousand dollars in tariffs that went to the government. By
the way, China didn't write that check. We wrote the check.
So please don't tell me how China is paying for
the tariffs when I'm writing the check. Okay, so that is,
And tell me how you when he says China's paying
(08:15):
for it, China's paying for it even when you write
the check. But China's writing the check, all right, God
bless you. So now what's he gonna do with all
this extra money because money.
Speaker 1 (08:24):
Is pouring in.
Speaker 2 (08:26):
Well, one of the things he has said is paying
down the national debt, which is now thirty seven trillion dollars.
I think it's a great idea. Anything we can do
to pay down the national debt. He also sort of
floated the idea of two thousand dollars per person, not
including high income people. First of all, no plan has
been put in place at all. We don't know what
(08:47):
high income people mean, what they mean by it. Where's
that figure? Is it to everybody? Is it to wage journers?
We don't know. I think he's sort of floating the idea.
But this is one of those issues. When a president
even floats an idea, it instantly becomes major news. And
(09:07):
one of the things about this president is when he
says something that you or I might consider a crackpot idea,
it happens.
Speaker 1 (09:18):
It happens.
Speaker 2 (09:20):
Brazil was terror of fifty percent simply because of Bolsceonnario,
because Trump likes Bolscenario and Bolsonnario is being tried.
Speaker 1 (09:28):
He's being tried for corruption. And as far as the
balance of.
Speaker 2 (09:31):
Trade, Brazil buys more from the US than we buy
from them. It's a positive trade balance for US. We
make money off of them buying from US. So don't
tell me it's equality or inequality. It's strictly personal. So
is it going to be two thousand dollars per person?
(09:54):
If we can define who people are household individuals, is.
Speaker 1 (10:00):
High income we're going to be defined?
Speaker 2 (10:01):
We don't know, but I'll tell you what's not going
to happen, we're not going to be able to pay
down the national debt substantially and pay two thousand dollars
per person. You cannot put ten pounds in a five
pound bag. It just doesn't work. Well, maybe in my
world you can't. It could be if someone else says
(10:24):
there's ten pounds here, when it's five pounds, you go, yep,
this is five pounds, okay. When the president says to you,
prices are down, you are not paying as much as
the stores are charging you or the manufacturers.
Speaker 1 (10:45):
You're not paying this price.
Speaker 2 (10:47):
When you go to the grocery store and you're paying
a dollar more for that box of cereals, you are
not paying that. Oh you're right, You're right. If you
say so, I'm not paying it. By the way, I
want you to try that. I want you to go
to the market this afternoon and when they give you
(11:09):
the when you're asked for the receipt, or they ask
you to pay at the checkout, and you're looking at
the receipt, and let's say you look at the same
item that six months ago costs I don't know, fifty
cents less than it is.
Speaker 1 (11:24):
I want you to look at that and look at it.
Speaker 2 (11:28):
Call me up and say, I am paying less money
than I was back then.
Speaker 1 (11:33):
Huh, okay, sure, why not.
Speaker 2 (11:39):
Sometimes as good, sometimes as bad. By the way, two
good ideas. But the problem is that I'm paying. You're
paying the tariffs, not China. Now a story I want
to share with you a little bit of handle history,
and this has to do with American manufacturing, and that
is we're going to go back to the days of
(11:59):
manu factoring. The President said we're going to bring back manufacturing,
and he's doing everything he can.
Speaker 1 (12:05):
There's no question about it.
Speaker 2 (12:08):
What we really don't know is those days are gone
no matter what happens.
Speaker 1 (12:13):
And here's a little bit of history. The post war,
post World War.
Speaker 2 (12:18):
Two era was when manufacturing exploded from the nineteen forties
through the seventies, huge economic growth. Companies were making a
bunch of money, workers were doing well. Plenty of Americans
graduated high school, then joined at union landed factory jobs,
paid enough to buy a house, raise a family, retire
(12:39):
with dignity. My dad was a union electrician right in
the middle of it in the fifties and bought a
house and we had a nice middle class, upper middle
class life. Because my mom also worked, and so a
lot of Americans believe that those days, that's the natural
order of things. And all we have to do is
go back to those days, and we're going to have
(12:59):
this vibrant middle class coming back because manufacturing is coming back,
because manufacturing pays good money. And politicians left and right
are saying, yes, this is where we're gonna go. We're
gonna come back, We're gonna we're going to restore American manufacturing.
Speaker 1 (13:15):
And guess what, it's not going to happen.
Speaker 2 (13:18):
Because the model from World War Two through the seventies
that we thought was the regular way of doing things wasn't.
Speaker 1 (13:27):
It was a fluke. It was lightning in a bottle.
Speaker 2 (13:30):
We're not gonna be able to bring it back because
look what happened the Industrial Golden Age, all right, Global
competitors had been bombed into submission. There was nothing being
manufactured in Europe, in Germany, in Japan, nothing because there
was totally bombed out of existence. Energy was dirt, cheap,
(13:54):
unions were had enormous power, could demand concession because there
were no foreign rivals. You couldn't see a manufacturer saying, okay,
we're going to move our manufacturing to China or Korea.
Speaker 1 (14:09):
That didn't exist. Whoa, I just dropped my coffee. Oh
good for me. Didn't exist in those days. Man, what
a mess. Okay, that's what happens. Lindsey better not come
in here anyway. Where was I? So it was a
world just a different days.
Speaker 2 (14:29):
It was a golden age, and it began with jocking
between industry and labor.
Speaker 1 (14:35):
After World War Two. Strikes were big, they were frequent.
Speaker 2 (14:39):
All the industries of that era had strike, steel, auto trucking, rubber,
coal mining. The unions had enormous power, and this pressure
from an organized that is, a unionized working class, raised
real wages, created huge fringe benefits, including health insurance were
(15:00):
ironman pay. You should see the pension that my dad
left my mother and how much they got. He had medical,
he had every kind of health insurance and then leaving
my mother lifetime health insurance. She called me up a
few years ago when she was still alive, actually after she.
Speaker 1 (15:19):
Died, which is a difficult phone call to make.
Speaker 2 (15:22):
And she was bitching and moaning why because she said
her copay, her premiums for Kaiser went up to thirteen
dollars a month.
Speaker 1 (15:34):
She went out of her mind.
Speaker 2 (15:36):
It had gone from five bucks a month to thirteen
dollars a month, and she felt she was getting screwed. Well, yeah,
who pays when a company pays most of your insurance
or a union does about how much do you pay
five dollars of it? Thirteen dollars of it? Those were
the days and the union wages. My dad bought his
(15:59):
first house, bought our first house. He was building the
Forum at the time, the Forum in la and it
was running behind schedule, and it was a union job,
so they were running so behind schedule that he ended
up working over forty hours, actually over sixty hours on
a Sunday night, above seventy feet in the air. All
(16:23):
of them had different categories. He was making over eighty
dollars an hour. This is in the fifties. Of course,
it was all taken away because of he had no
tax breaks. He was just a worker guy, and taxes
were in the nineties ninety percent in those days.
Speaker 1 (16:41):
But it was enough to buy the house.
Speaker 2 (16:44):
That's what the industrial the manufacturing world was about. And
no matter what President Trump can do, and he's doing plenty,
by the way, to bring manufacturing back, it's never going
to be the same, ever, because manufacturing happened war World
War two, right through the seventies, and we were in
a very different place. The President nineteen fifty six, at
(17:11):
the dedication of AFLCIO National Headquarters, said, labor is the
United States. The men and women who their minds, their hearts,
and hands create the wealth that is shared in this country.
They are America today. Technology is America, not labor. And
(17:31):
government support for the unions, by the way, had a
lot to do with it. You know, executive salaries were
a few times the median income of the workers in
a company, just a few times. Today you have these
executive CEOs making thirty forty fifty million dollars a year.
(17:52):
In the mid sixties, it started to go south. Why,
the Vietnam War was draining federal money. Lynch and Johnson
had to balance military spending with domestic programs of the
Great Society. Inflation started to go up, the dollar started
to weaken, and what happened was the US dollars purchasing
(18:13):
power abroad started going south, and for the first time
there was real competition. Japan, Korea, Europe came into the picture,
which didn't exist before.
Speaker 1 (18:26):
After World War.
Speaker 2 (18:26):
Two because the countries it didn't they just weren't manufacturing.
Speaker 1 (18:31):
They were decimated.
Speaker 2 (18:32):
There was nothing left of those cities and manufacturing plants.
Speaker 1 (18:36):
Man.
Speaker 2 (18:36):
I remember when Japan first started manufacturing. It was Sony
Superscope at that time, and the story of the guy
who created Sony said that the probably the most important
moment of his life is when he was talking to
an American executive and he was pitching moving some factory.
(19:00):
He's buying some product for Japan, and the executive said,
you know, all you guys are good for making those
little paper umbrellas that we put in our fruit drinks.
And that was the guy who created Sony. It's a
whole different story. Well here's a story of manufacturing. It
doesn't exist anymore. Bethlehem Steel one of the biggest steel
(19:23):
companies in America.
Speaker 1 (19:26):
It collapsed, just collapsed.
Speaker 2 (19:28):
It went from one hundred and fifty thousand employees one
of the most successful manufacturing facilities in the United States.
They had plants all over the Eastern Seaboard. Their girders built,
the San Francisco built, the Golden Gate, built stadiums, I
mean just all over. They went bankrupt in two thousand
(19:51):
and one, why Chinese steel was going to be coming
in manufacturing was there. It's a whole different world.
Speaker 1 (20:00):
We're not.
Speaker 2 (20:00):
It's you can't think of manufacturing. So this is a
myth that's coming down. Uh, and we're still somehow grasping
for it because those are. Let me give me an analogy,
and of course I'm going to go down to uh
uh the uh, the gutter if I possibly can. For
those of you that have been with anybody for any
(20:22):
length of time, like married, those first few weeks are
just unbelievable. You know, the sex is great, you know,
hanging out is just great, and then it just disappears
you're never going to go back there again. How's that
for an analogy that I bring it down to a reality?
Speaker 1 (20:42):
Huh? Who says I? Are you kidding? The first few
weeks in my case, the first couple of days.
Speaker 2 (20:48):
Oh, come on us, you're telling me the excitement level
is as high?
Speaker 1 (20:52):
Give me a break? Sorry?
Speaker 2 (20:55):
And is he crazy you've been married for a while.
Is he out of his mind that it's somehow just
as good?
Speaker 1 (21:01):
Is different? Different? That means it's not as good, No,
it's just different, neither good. Married to a Latina. Yeah,
I'm just gonna get Amy not as good. Right, I'm
not married? Oh then still good. Well, it depends, you know, No,
it depends. I know, and I know.
Speaker 2 (21:20):
And there's a little secret about Amy that I want
to share with you is Amy goes through guys the
way I go through my underwear once a week. Okay, Rosy,
thank you, Okay, there you go, just to make everybody
feel good.
Speaker 1 (21:35):
All right, We're done with that, aren't we. Yes, we are.
Kfi A M six you've been
Speaker 2 (21:41):
Listening to The Bill Handle Show Catch My Show Monday
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You're listening to Bill Handle on demand from KFI AM
six forty KFI AM six forty Bill Handle.
Speaker 2 (00:08):
Here. It is a Monday morning, November ten, as we
start the week, and what a start. Yesterday the Senate
voted the shutdown will probably end by the end of
this week. And this, as you know, was a fight,
actually almost an existential fight between the Senate Democrats and
(00:31):
the Senate Republicans. And I have some ideas as to
why eight Democratic senators caved on this and cut the
deal with Republicans who said, you fund the government now,
and we will.
Speaker 1 (00:45):
Vote on the.
Speaker 2 (00:49):
Keeping of the extension for that for Medicare and not Medicare,
excuse me, for Medicaid and Obamacare.
Speaker 1 (00:58):
In other words, will we'll see the Republicans.
Speaker 2 (01:02):
Republicans say, will see about that, but we just have
to get the government going. And of course there were
Democrats are saying, no, we have to have a deal
in place. Those expansion credits that were passed, they're supposed
to end December thirty one, have now to be made permanent.
Speaker 1 (01:19):
It's that simple.
Speaker 2 (01:20):
We cannot have twenty something million Americans who were able
to get insurance under Medica under Obamacare and these extensions
are going to be out of insurance or their premiums
are going to skyrocket to the point where they can't
afford them. We're not going to let that happen, the
Republicans are saying. Not that we're not going to let
(01:41):
that happen. They're saying, we have to get the government going.
It's that simple, to the exclusion of everything else.
Speaker 1 (01:46):
So they were playing chicken.
Speaker 2 (01:47):
Forty days, the longest shut down in the history of
the United States.
Speaker 1 (01:51):
What happened. The Democrats caved. And I'll tell you why.
Speaker 2 (01:56):
I think the Democrats caved because these and Earns premiums
are going to explode or people are going to be
ineligible starting January. First, air traffic controllers are not eating now,
people are lining up at food banks now, and I
(02:16):
think it's a question of what do we handle. First,
Republicans would not move, would not say you've got the extension.
All they would say is we'll vote on it later,
which of course means that's not going to happen, because.
Speaker 1 (02:32):
That's just the philosophy.
Speaker 2 (02:33):
Is money in this administration and this Congress is to
be spent on defense, and it's supposed to be sent
on border patrol, border control. It is not to be
spent on social programs. It's that simple. It's a question
of philosophical difference. And so I think it was the
immediacy of the lines at food banks and the air
(02:55):
traffic controllers. They've sort of become the poster child of
what's going on when money is unavailable, when paychecks stop.
Speaker 1 (03:02):
As a matter of fact, I'm going to do that
at eight o'clock.
Speaker 2 (03:05):
I'm gonna do a story about the air traffic control
system because it goes way beyond just them being paid.
Speaker 1 (03:11):
Now, a few other things that.
Speaker 2 (03:14):
The Republicans did agree to is all the people that
were fired by the President, they'll be reinstated. There will
be no more firings and SNAP, and it'll be retroactive pay.
If you remember the President saying I'm not even going
to pay them retroactively when they come back to work,
or I might not pay them.
Speaker 1 (03:35):
Well, that's off the table. They will be paid.
Speaker 2 (03:39):
And so the Democrats are saying, and this is the
Republicans I think have a hard time defending that as
shutdowns continued. Do you know that there was no money
for the SNAP program during a governmental shutdown? And every
time there was a governmental shutdown. Since SNAP was created,
they always came up with money for SNAP always. This
(04:00):
is the first time that STAP payments stopped, even to
the point when a federal judge ordered the government to
pay SNAP program the SNAP program saying it's saying you
better find the money someplace. The administration said no and
appealed and was appealing that order, which now is going
(04:21):
to become moot.
Speaker 1 (04:22):
So we'll see this. So here's what happens.
Speaker 2 (04:26):
The first step was yesterday when the deal was reached,
and it's going to be there will be another vote.
This just moves it onto the Senate floor and it
goes over to the House. But the deal has basically
been cut and you'll see the money being paid. The
shutdown is actually going to be finished by the end
(04:48):
of the week. And then just a question of how
long is it going to take to issue the checks.
When are they going to wait for the next pay period?
For example, if the air traffic controllers and other federal
employees are paid on the fifteen in the first do
they wait until the next pay period. I don't know
how that works, but I gotta tell you it's we'll
see what happens. We'll see what happens with the extension
(05:13):
or the keeping of the extension of Obamacare.
Speaker 1 (05:15):
That's going to blow up big time.
Speaker 2 (05:17):
I think what's going to happen on that one is
going to affect the mid terms where Republicans are going,
Wait a minute, you know, am I really going to
vote against people have poor people having insurance?
Speaker 1 (05:30):
How is that going to look in the midterms.
Speaker 2 (05:32):
Look what just happened with these elections, these various state
wide elections. I mean, it was a suite for the Democrats.
We'll see what happens after that. Okay, Now going on
with what's happening economically in this country, and one of
the things a president has certainly put us all in turmoil,
and he has tariffs, tariffed the hell out of countries,
(05:56):
a couple of them or most of the countries. It's well, well,
where I disagree with the president big picture, I can
see the validity of his argument, and that is the
tariffs against China, the tariffs against other countries because the
balance of trade was simply unfair, because we are buying
from them far more than they than what they bought
(06:20):
from US. Okay, fair enough, Brazil only because he likes Bolsonnaro.
He made it very clear, I'm doing this because I
just like the guy that you're trying. In terms of Argentina,
not only are there no tariffs, but there's a bailout
of forty billion dollars only because the president is an
ally of Trumps.
Speaker 1 (06:39):
It's strictly personal the rest of it.
Speaker 2 (06:42):
Okay, So money is pouring into the US treasury as
a result of these tariffs because well, in China, the
tariffs for weeks were over one hundred percent, which means
if someone were to buy let's say a manufacturer was
to buy X dollars worth of products from China raw material,
(07:04):
it would be the amount paid to China, and then
that same amount if it was one hundred percent tariff
paid to the US government. Now, one of the things
about Trump, and I don't get how even supporters don't
understand when the President says China is paying for the tariffs,
China is not.
Speaker 1 (07:27):
We are paying for the tariffs.
Speaker 2 (07:29):
I told you the story of we had an emergency
shipment of cookware. My partner and I in Lake Industries,
and we had to supply a cookware, so we had
to buy seventy thousand dollars worth of cookware instantly, right
in the middle of the tariff wars, because now companies
are really sitting back and wondering what to do. Anyway,
we bought seventy thousand dollars worth of goods. The broker
(07:53):
who handles it said you need to pay eighty seven
thousand dollars in tariffs that went to the government. By
the way, China didn't write that check. We wrote the check.
So please don't tell me how China is paying for
the tariffs when I'm writing the check. Okay, so that is,
And tell me how you when he says China's paying
(08:15):
for it, China's paying for it even when you write
the check. But China's writing the check, all right, God
bless you. So now what's he gonna do with all
this extra money because money.
Speaker 1 (08:24):
Is pouring in.
Speaker 2 (08:26):
Well, one of the things he has said is paying
down the national debt, which is now thirty seven trillion dollars.
I think it's a great idea. Anything we can do
to pay down the national debt. He also sort of
floated the idea of two thousand dollars per person, not
including high income people. First of all, no plan has
been put in place at all. We don't know what
(08:47):
high income people mean, what they mean by it. Where's
that figure? Is it to everybody? Is it to wage journers?
We don't know. I think he's sort of floating the idea.
But this is one of those issues. When a president
even floats an idea, it instantly becomes major news. And
(09:07):
one of the things about this president is when he
says something that you or I might consider a crackpot idea,
it happens.
Speaker 1 (09:18):
It happens.
Speaker 2 (09:20):
Brazil was terror of fifty percent simply because of Bolsceonnario,
because Trump likes Bolscenario and Bolsonnario is being tried.
Speaker 1 (09:28):
He's being tried for corruption. And as far as the
balance of.
Speaker 2 (09:31):
Trade, Brazil buys more from the US than we buy
from them. It's a positive trade balance for US. We
make money off of them buying from US. So don't
tell me it's equality or inequality. It's strictly personal. So
is it going to be two thousand dollars per person?
(09:54):
If we can define who people are household individuals, is.
Speaker 1 (10:00):
High income we're going to be defined?
Speaker 2 (10:01):
We don't know, but I'll tell you what's not going
to happen, we're not going to be able to pay
down the national debt substantially and pay two thousand dollars
per person. You cannot put ten pounds in a five
pound bag. It just doesn't work. Well, maybe in my
world you can't. It could be if someone else says
(10:24):
there's ten pounds here, when it's five pounds, you go, yep,
this is five pounds, okay. When the president says to you,
prices are down, you are not paying as much as
the stores are charging you or the manufacturers.
Speaker 1 (10:45):
You're not paying this price.
Speaker 2 (10:47):
When you go to the grocery store and you're paying
a dollar more for that box of cereals, you are
not paying that. Oh you're right, You're right. If you
say so, I'm not paying it. By the way, I
want you to try that. I want you to go
to the market this afternoon and when they give you
(11:09):
the when you're asked for the receipt, or they ask
you to pay at the checkout, and you're looking at
the receipt, and let's say you look at the same
item that six months ago costs I don't know, fifty
cents less than it is.
Speaker 1 (11:24):
I want you to look at that and look at it.
Speaker 2 (11:28):
Call me up and say, I am paying less money
than I was back then.
Speaker 1 (11:33):
Huh, okay, sure, why not.
Speaker 2 (11:39):
Sometimes as good, sometimes as bad. By the way, two
good ideas. But the problem is that I'm paying. You're
paying the tariffs, not China. Now a story I want
to share with you a little bit of handle history,
and this has to do with American manufacturing, and that
is we're going to go back to the days of
(11:59):
manu factoring. The President said we're going to bring back manufacturing,
and he's doing everything he can.
Speaker 1 (12:05):
There's no question about it.
Speaker 2 (12:08):
What we really don't know is those days are gone
no matter what happens.
Speaker 1 (12:13):
And here's a little bit of history. The post war,
post World War.
Speaker 2 (12:18):
Two era was when manufacturing exploded from the nineteen forties
through the seventies, huge economic growth. Companies were making a
bunch of money, workers were doing well. Plenty of Americans
graduated high school, then joined at union landed factory jobs,
paid enough to buy a house, raise a family, retire
(12:39):
with dignity. My dad was a union electrician right in
the middle of it in the fifties and bought a
house and we had a nice middle class, upper middle
class life. Because my mom also worked, and so a
lot of Americans believe that those days, that's the natural
order of things. And all we have to do is
go back to those days, and we're going to have
(12:59):
this vibrant middle class coming back because manufacturing is coming back,
because manufacturing pays good money. And politicians left and right
are saying, yes, this is where we're gonna go. We're
gonna come back, We're gonna we're going to restore American manufacturing.
Speaker 1 (13:15):
And guess what, it's not going to happen.
Speaker 2 (13:18):
Because the model from World War Two through the seventies
that we thought was the regular way of doing things wasn't.
Speaker 1 (13:27):
It was a fluke. It was lightning in a bottle.
Speaker 2 (13:30):
We're not gonna be able to bring it back because
look what happened the Industrial Golden Age, all right, Global
competitors had been bombed into submission. There was nothing being
manufactured in Europe, in Germany, in Japan, nothing because there
was totally bombed out of existence. Energy was dirt, cheap,
(13:54):
unions were had enormous power, could demand concession because there
were no foreign rivals. You couldn't see a manufacturer saying, okay,
we're going to move our manufacturing to China or Korea.
Speaker 1 (14:09):
That didn't exist. Whoa, I just dropped my coffee. Oh
good for me. Didn't exist in those days. Man, what
a mess. Okay, that's what happens. Lindsey better not come
in here anyway. Where was I? So it was a
world just a different days.
Speaker 2 (14:29):
It was a golden age, and it began with jocking
between industry and labor.
Speaker 1 (14:35):
After World War Two. Strikes were big, they were frequent.
Speaker 2 (14:39):
All the industries of that era had strike, steel, auto trucking, rubber,
coal mining. The unions had enormous power, and this pressure
from an organized that is, a unionized working class, raised
real wages, created huge fringe benefits, including health insurance were
(15:00):
ironman pay. You should see the pension that my dad
left my mother and how much they got. He had medical,
he had every kind of health insurance and then leaving
my mother lifetime health insurance. She called me up a
few years ago when she was still alive, actually after she.
Speaker 1 (15:19):
Died, which is a difficult phone call to make.
Speaker 2 (15:22):
And she was bitching and moaning why because she said
her copay, her premiums for Kaiser went up to thirteen
dollars a month.
Speaker 1 (15:34):
She went out of her mind.
Speaker 2 (15:36):
It had gone from five bucks a month to thirteen
dollars a month, and she felt she was getting screwed. Well, yeah,
who pays when a company pays most of your insurance
or a union does about how much do you pay
five dollars of it? Thirteen dollars of it? Those were
the days and the union wages. My dad bought his
(15:59):
first house, bought our first house. He was building the
Forum at the time, the Forum in la and it
was running behind schedule, and it was a union job,
so they were running so behind schedule that he ended
up working over forty hours, actually over sixty hours on
a Sunday night, above seventy feet in the air. All
(16:23):
of them had different categories. He was making over eighty
dollars an hour. This is in the fifties. Of course,
it was all taken away because of he had no
tax breaks. He was just a worker guy, and taxes
were in the nineties ninety percent in those days.
Speaker 1 (16:41):
But it was enough to buy the house.
Speaker 2 (16:44):
That's what the industrial the manufacturing world was about. And
no matter what President Trump can do, and he's doing plenty,
by the way, to bring manufacturing back, it's never going
to be the same, ever, because manufacturing happened war World
War two, right through the seventies, and we were in
a very different place. The President nineteen fifty six, at
(17:11):
the dedication of AFLCIO National Headquarters, said, labor is the
United States. The men and women who their minds, their hearts,
and hands create the wealth that is shared in this country.
They are America today. Technology is America, not labor. And
(17:31):
government support for the unions, by the way, had a
lot to do with it. You know, executive salaries were
a few times the median income of the workers in
a company, just a few times. Today you have these
executive CEOs making thirty forty fifty million dollars a year.
(17:52):
In the mid sixties, it started to go south. Why,
the Vietnam War was draining federal money. Lynch and Johnson
had to balance military spending with domestic programs of the
Great Society. Inflation started to go up, the dollar started
to weaken, and what happened was the US dollars purchasing
(18:13):
power abroad started going south, and for the first time
there was real competition. Japan, Korea, Europe came into the picture,
which didn't exist before.
Speaker 1 (18:26):
After World War.
Speaker 2 (18:26):
Two because the countries it didn't they just weren't manufacturing.
Speaker 1 (18:31):
They were decimated.
Speaker 2 (18:32):
There was nothing left of those cities and manufacturing plants.
Speaker 1 (18:36):
Man.
Speaker 2 (18:36):
I remember when Japan first started manufacturing. It was Sony
Superscope at that time, and the story of the guy
who created Sony said that the probably the most important
moment of his life is when he was talking to
an American executive and he was pitching moving some factory.
(19:00):
He's buying some product for Japan, and the executive said,
you know, all you guys are good for making those
little paper umbrellas that we put in our fruit drinks.
And that was the guy who created Sony. It's a
whole different story. Well here's a story of manufacturing. It
doesn't exist anymore. Bethlehem Steel one of the biggest steel
(19:23):
companies in America.
Speaker 1 (19:26):
It collapsed, just collapsed.
Speaker 2 (19:28):
It went from one hundred and fifty thousand employees one
of the most successful manufacturing facilities in the United States.
They had plants all over the Eastern Seaboard. Their girders built,
the San Francisco built, the Golden Gate, built stadiums, I
mean just all over. They went bankrupt in two thousand
(19:51):
and one, why Chinese steel was going to be coming
in manufacturing was there. It's a whole different world.
Speaker 1 (20:00):
We're not.
Speaker 2 (20:00):
It's you can't think of manufacturing. So this is a
myth that's coming down. Uh, and we're still somehow grasping
for it because those are. Let me give me an analogy,
and of course I'm going to go down to uh
uh the uh, the gutter if I possibly can. For
those of you that have been with anybody for any
(20:22):
length of time, like married, those first few weeks are
just unbelievable. You know, the sex is great, you know,
hanging out is just great, and then it just disappears
you're never going to go back there again. How's that
for an analogy that I bring it down to a reality?
Speaker 1 (20:42):
Huh? Who says I? Are you kidding? The first few
weeks in my case, the first couple of days.
Speaker 2 (20:48):
Oh, come on us, you're telling me the excitement level
is as high?
Speaker 1 (20:52):
Give me a break? Sorry?
Speaker 2 (20:55):
And is he crazy you've been married for a while.
Is he out of his mind that it's somehow just
as good?
Speaker 1 (21:01):
Is different? Different? That means it's not as good, No,
it's just different, neither good. Married to a Latina. Yeah,
I'm just gonna get Amy not as good. Right, I'm
not married? Oh then still good. Well, it depends, you know, No,
it depends. I know, and I know.
Speaker 2 (21:20):
And there's a little secret about Amy that I want
to share with you is Amy goes through guys the
way I go through my underwear once a week. Okay, Rosy,
thank you, Okay, there you go, just to make everybody
feel good.
Speaker 1 (21:35):
All right, We're done with that, aren't we. Yes, we are.
Kfi A M six you've been
Speaker 2 (21:41):
Listening to The Bill Handle Show Catch My Show Monday
through Friday, six am to nine am, and anytime on
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