March 13, 2025 • 18 mins
(March 13, 2025)
Government shutdown looms as Doge advises to cut spending. Shoppers are skimping on cigarettes, Doritos, and Twinkies. The new administration is dismantling the Department of Education… what does it do? Why America is now eating a crazy amount of avocados.
Government shutdown looms as Doge advises to cut spending. Shoppers are skimping on cigarettes, Doritos, and Twinkies. The new administration is dismantling the Department of Education… what does it do? Why America is now eating a crazy amount of avocados.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
You're listening to Bill Handle on demand from KFI AM
six forty.
Speaker 2 (00:07):
KFI AM six forty handle Here it is a.
Speaker 1 (00:13):
Thursday morning, March thirteenth. Then the rains are well, they're
basically over, aren't they, or at least they're passing.
Speaker 3 (00:22):
Amy you're asking about the rain, well, watching the residue
or the aftermath of a possible tornado and Pico rivera. Yes,
the heaviest of the storms moved out from the La areas,
pushing east now, so they're still getting some patches of
heavy rain, and we're expecting rain off and on through
the day, maybe even some thunderstorms. And that means that
(00:44):
mudslides and debris flows are still a big concern, especially
in the Burn areas.
Speaker 2 (00:48):
Yeah, I'm on an airplane tomorrow, so I just want
to make sure that I'm okay taking off.
Speaker 3 (00:52):
For the rest of you, there's still a chance of
rain tomorrow.
Speaker 2 (00:55):
Yeah, well tomorrow afternoon five o'clock. Okay, taking in the
rain is you know, a lot easier landing in the rain.
All Right, A story that's a little bit either as
important or not quite as important as me taking off
tomorrow at five o'clock.
Speaker 1 (01:12):
And that happens to.
Speaker 2 (01:13):
Do with the government shutdown, which is going to happen
Saturday night. Oh yeah, And so the deadlines are coming
and this time, well federal government is the funding set
to run out Saturday, And what's going to happen, No
one really knows. Now you've got President Trump and Elon
Musk overseeing DOGE and moving towards you andilaterally shrinking the
(01:38):
government and has led to dismissal or deferred resignation of
what seventy something thousand federal workers. And so the reality
is that some of the disruption really won't be as
big a disruption because they're all gone anyway. And so
now becomes politics, of course, part of it. But what
(02:01):
happens logistically is something else. And so right now you
got the Democrat Democrats scrambling and they've wanted to keep
the government open as long as possible, never shut down,
and keep all the programs going. Well, it's obviously not
what Trump wants and what the Republicans have always wanted,
(02:21):
but they didn't have Trump on their side previously. It
was a very different animal in terms of keeping the
government open or not. He is prepared to shut it
down if he doesn't get his cuts, and the Republicans
are all in line. Democrats are saying, no, this is
all going to be happening in the Senate. By the way,
the House has already said, yep, we're going to do
(02:43):
exactly what the president wants and unless we get what
we have, unless you pass you Democrats were prepared to
shut down the government, and that is to eliminate a
lot of these programs. Democrats always on the other side
of that, they want to keep it open, open, open.
And what a shutdown fight this one is because this
isn't just.
Speaker 1 (03:03):
About various programs.
Speaker 2 (03:06):
This is about the government itself shutting down and entire departments,
entire entire cabinets, cabinet positions, and you've got the Department's Education, etc.
Speaker 1 (03:19):
Which is looking to shut down anyway.
Speaker 2 (03:21):
So government shutdown means nothing, and so what is going
to happen. Well, here's the other part of the shutdown,
and that is that during a shutdown, the president has
much more power, and the president is arguing that he
has unlimited power in running the government, notwithstanding what the government,
(03:46):
what the Congress does. By the way, the Constitution says,
Congress funds the government. Trump is arguing I will decide
what Congress votes. Now, you can vote, because that's the Constitution, but.
Speaker 1 (04:00):
I'll make the call. Democrats are a little upset about
this one. They're going, uh no.
Speaker 2 (04:06):
And there are all kinds of court fights going on
because a lot of the funding has already been voted
by Congress. And the president says, I don't care, vote, vote,
don't vote. I've got the power and I have unlimited power.
And the Republicans are agreeing with him. By the way,
they're handing him the power that he wants, and effectively,
checks and balances don't exist in the Republican Party or
(04:28):
where or this president. The only thing that can stomp
him are the courts. And that's only because he listens.
Speaker 1 (04:37):
To the courts.
Speaker 2 (04:38):
Maybe, by the way, there is precedent for a president
telling the courts to go just pound sand Abraham Lincoln
did that during the Civil War. Supreme Court said you
can't do that, you can't do that, you can't do
that in terms of martial law. He said, I don't care,
and he went ahead and did what he wanted to do.
Speaker 4 (04:57):
Didn't Biden push back on the Supreme Court for something.
Speaker 2 (05:01):
It was I'll tell you not as much because I
don't remember if he did or didn't. Now I do
know Richard Nixon with the tapes said outright, if it
is when he was ordered to turn over the tapes,
remember during water date, and the president said, and it
went to the Supreme Court whether or not it was
(05:22):
executive privilege or not. And the argument of those it
was basically the press one of those tapes, and the
press sued Supreme Court. And what.
Speaker 1 (05:37):
Nixon said is if it is a split.
Speaker 2 (05:40):
Decision five to four, he's not going to pay attention
and he's not going to turn over the tapes. He said, outright,
I'm not going to pay attention to the courts. Now,
it was unanimous, it was seven zero that he had
to turn over the tape. So at that point he
did anyway because it was so one sided, but he
was prepared to say no.
Speaker 4 (06:00):
Jennef to clarify, Just to clarify Biden, the court ruled
against his plan for forgiving loan debt, and he kind
of switched gears and went in a different direction, if
I remember correctly.
Speaker 2 (06:17):
Okay, and I don't remember that incident, But the point
is there is no enforcement available if a president says
no to the court.
Speaker 1 (06:28):
Who's going to who The Supreme Court.
Speaker 2 (06:30):
Doesn't have police, it's the executive who would have to
act on a court order against him. It's going to
be fascinating to see the kind of power. So it's
all in favor of the shutdown as far as Trump
is concerned.
Speaker 1 (06:48):
Even the Department.
Speaker 2 (06:49):
Of Education, which we're going to do down at the
bottom of the hour, as far as is dismantling. The
Congress is the only body that can shut down it.
Create it's a department, and then it can shut down
a department just Congress.
Speaker 1 (07:06):
Well, what can the president do.
Speaker 2 (07:08):
The President can determine how the department works and how
many employees. So by the time this is all ending,
there may be one janitor left at the Department of Education,
just to sweep up the floors. That would be within
the law, there would still be a department. Okay, Now
Trump is dismantling the Education Department. What does it exactly do? Okay,
(07:33):
I'll tell you. Let's start talking about the agency's main
role financial. Okay. It distributes billions of dollars every year
in federal money to colleges schools, manages the student loan portfolio. Now,
closing the department would mean redistributing each of those due
(07:54):
to eastern other agency, which can be done. By the way,
this is not a hard one to accomplish. Now, the
National Weather Service is a little tough, for example, to eliminate.
You can't hand that over the states. It's hard to
to send that.
Speaker 1 (08:09):
Over to local school boards.
Speaker 2 (08:11):
But what the Department of Education does, since it gives
out money, since it provides pell grants for example the
poor students who can't afford going to school, and these
are grants, it can be done by another agency. And
so Trump's argument that it really doesn't do anything that
it can be.
Speaker 1 (08:29):
It can be replaced. Yeah, that's true.
Speaker 2 (08:32):
The more controversial, controversial part of this is, uh, the
policy of the federal government while it gives money to universities,
and I don't think that's going to change. It's not
going to give money if that university teaches a woke course.
Speaker 1 (08:49):
I don't even know what that is racial? What is that.
Speaker 2 (08:55):
Critical race theory? I mean, really, you know define that.
No one really can define woke. No one really can. Also,
this is a quote the transgender insanity. If you teach
transgender insanity, does that mean if you recognize transgenders.
Speaker 1 (09:13):
That mean you're not gonna get federal money.
Speaker 2 (09:15):
And I don't know inappropriate racial, sexual, or political content?
Speaker 1 (09:19):
What is that? Define? What inappropriate it is? And who's
going to define it?
Speaker 2 (09:27):
I mean that's the part that is the most controversial,
and that is cutting off funds. Also difficult is cutting
off funds for the anti semitism? What is anti semitism?
If a school allows, for example, pro Palestinian students to
(09:50):
protest and start screaming we love Palestinians and Israel is
horrible and it's occupation forces, etc. You know what can
the feds say no to the school?
Speaker 1 (10:02):
Right now, the Feds are saying no.
Speaker 2 (10:04):
And like that guy who is in being held and
is about to be deported, the guy who's a green card,
the reason they're tagging him is because he led the
protests that occupied the school, that's illegally trespassed.
Speaker 1 (10:21):
That's an easy one.
Speaker 2 (10:22):
But defining what you're saying, what you're thinking teaching woke.
Speaker 1 (10:33):
To this day, I don't know what woke is. I
have no idea. And so that's going to go to
the courts.
Speaker 2 (10:38):
And the other situation is Congress is the only body
that can disband the Department of Education because Congress created
the Department of Education. But here is the problem with that.
The president can do an end around on this one
because he decides how big the Department of Education is
(11:00):
and how many employees the Department of Education can have.
He's fired half of them already, they're gone. And as
I said earlier, the Department of Education can exist with
a staff of fifteen people.
Speaker 1 (11:17):
It still exists. And the president has that kind of power.
Speaker 2 (11:21):
And I'll tell you why the shutdown that's coming up
Saturday night, if it happens, is the best thing for
Trump because during a shutdown, the president is actually running
the government and can make a bunch of choices that
otherwise he could not. And the whole issue about the
(11:43):
shutdown is how much power the president has. See that's
fairly new with this administration, and that is Congress, or
at least the Democrats, fighting the very power of a
president of which the Republicans are saying it is unfettered.
The president asks we deliver. The President asks us to
(12:07):
go over that edge. We are lemmings, we will do it.
And the Democrats are fighting like crazy. And then it
ultimately it goes to the courts. I mean, it is crazy.
Now we're gonna switch gears because been a lot of politics.
Speaker 1 (12:22):
A lot of current events. What's going on?
Speaker 2 (12:25):
But I enjoy talking about food and I love what
we do Neil and I do on Fridays tomorrow with
Foody Friday at eight o'clock. One of the things that
Neil talks about a lot, and we talk about avocados.
Speaker 1 (12:39):
Neil loves avocados. I like I don't.
Speaker 2 (12:41):
Yeah, I love guacamole. I'm not crazy about avocados and
sandwiches and the smoothies and stuff. But Americans are. Do
you know the average American now eat nine pounds of
avocados a year. In the seventies it was less than
one pound. Even in the nineteen nine nineties it was
less than two pounds. Well it's a big one. So
(13:08):
what's going on?
Speaker 1 (13:09):
Why?
Speaker 2 (13:10):
Well, let me tell us some reasons. At you and
this maybe interesting because you may not know this. Neil
probably does, or maybe he doesn't, so Neil will interrupt
or not. The reason that avocado use and ingestion has
exploded is most of them are not grown in the
United States anymore.
Speaker 1 (13:27):
Now that's counterintuitive.
Speaker 2 (13:29):
Wait a minute, they're not grown in the United States
and we're eating more, you bet, because where are they
coming in from. They're coming in from Mexico. And I'm
gonna explain what's happening in the background. So right now,
if someone wants an avocado, he has no choice.
Speaker 1 (13:56):
Really yeah, really, really yeah, I had to go there.
Speaker 2 (14:00):
Yeah you okay, And of course that's Mexican avocados. The
US now brings in annually about three billion pounds of them.
Ninety percent of the avocados Americans eat are imported. Ninety
percent of those come from Mexico, and until nineteen ninety seven,
(14:23):
they were not allowed into the country. They weren't accessible
across the country until twenty seven.
Speaker 1 (14:30):
That's how short this ban has been.
Speaker 2 (14:32):
So why did that happen, Well, it's because the.
Speaker 1 (14:38):
Free Trade Act that we had with Mexico.
Speaker 2 (14:41):
We passed a bill that makes Mexico and Canada. This
was a while ago before Trump came in effectively back
and forth with no tariffs, and so all of a sudden,
whoa free trade agreement happens, and avocados were right at
the forefront. And matter of fact, now they're sort of
the poster child of the fight twenty five percent tariffs,
(15:05):
and you've got people in the avocado business companies just
scrambling whether to eat the costs or whether they're going
to charge consumers, and what do you think which way
is going to go? So tariffs came in and then
the White House swerved and suddenly we're delaying the terriffs.
Speaker 1 (15:23):
For a month, and we don't know what's going on.
Speaker 2 (15:27):
And the fact that US companies keep and will keep
on importing from Mexico is that's the only way they
can meet the year round demand. I mean, we're that
crazy about avocados. This sandwiches, salad, smoothies, burrito bowls, sushi,
and of course, of course guacamole.
Speaker 4 (15:48):
You know the haas avocado what it is from right
here in southern California. It was either Altadina or Pasadena,
and it was the man who it's named after was
a postal delivery guy, so how and he discovered that.
So that's where the hot the hass comes from.
Speaker 1 (16:08):
Now, let me give you a little bit of history
before we bail out of here.
Speaker 2 (16:11):
In nineteen eighty three, unripe avocados, which were the only
avocados sold in the stores were baseballs.
Speaker 1 (16:18):
I mean, you couldn't use them.
Speaker 2 (16:21):
And so in nineteen eighty three, the technology researchers in
the avocado industry were able to ripen the avocados on
the pallet in the palette. So now when you go
to the store and you buy avocados, you're sort of
squeezing them and it's going to be the ones that
are ripe that you can deal with right there.
Speaker 1 (16:43):
And so.
Speaker 2 (16:46):
Then Mexico happened and we have a free trade agreement
and it exploded.
Speaker 1 (16:50):
And why Mexico, Well.
Speaker 2 (16:52):
Avocados are actually pretty particular about where they grow. Soil, conditions, weather,
irrigation sort of has to be all Together's like coffee.
You know, coffee does not grow in the San Fernando
Valley and he's a very specific kind of climate and soil.
Speaker 1 (17:08):
Same thing with avocados.
Speaker 2 (17:10):
So the bottom line is we eat tons of avocados
and now we don't know what's going to happen. Although
I was at a Mexican restaurant yesterday and man I
asked for us. Well, actually the guy who didn't speak English.
I was sitting there and I got a and I
took one a plate to go because I was by myself,
(17:31):
and a little dollup of avocado came with it, and
so I asked the fellow when I took it to go,
is there a dollar dollup of avocado in this other
plate which it should have? And he goes, oh, yeah,
I'll bring it. So he brings me this little side
of avocado. Charges me six dollars. I go, come on,
(17:52):
two tablespoons of avocado guacamole.
Speaker 1 (17:55):
Give me a break. I like blackamole. Suit does have.
It's delicious. It is very very good.
Speaker 2 (18:05):
Okay, KF I am six. You've been listening to the
Bill Handle Show. Catch my show Monday through Friday, six
am to nine am, and anytime on demand on the
iHeartRadio app
You're listening to Bill Handle on demand from KFI AM
six forty.
Speaker 2 (00:07):
KFI AM six forty handle Here it is a.
Speaker 1 (00:13):
Thursday morning, March thirteenth. Then the rains are well, they're
basically over, aren't they, or at least they're passing.
Speaker 3 (00:22):
Amy you're asking about the rain, well, watching the residue
or the aftermath of a possible tornado and Pico rivera. Yes,
the heaviest of the storms moved out from the La areas,
pushing east now, so they're still getting some patches of
heavy rain, and we're expecting rain off and on through
the day, maybe even some thunderstorms. And that means that
(00:44):
mudslides and debris flows are still a big concern, especially
in the Burn areas.
Speaker 2 (00:48):
Yeah, I'm on an airplane tomorrow, so I just want
to make sure that I'm okay taking off.
Speaker 3 (00:52):
For the rest of you, there's still a chance of
rain tomorrow.
Speaker 2 (00:55):
Yeah, well tomorrow afternoon five o'clock. Okay, taking in the
rain is you know, a lot easier landing in the rain.
All Right, A story that's a little bit either as
important or not quite as important as me taking off
tomorrow at five o'clock.
Speaker 1 (01:12):
And that happens to.
Speaker 2 (01:13):
Do with the government shutdown, which is going to happen
Saturday night. Oh yeah, And so the deadlines are coming
and this time, well federal government is the funding set
to run out Saturday, And what's going to happen, No
one really knows. Now you've got President Trump and Elon
Musk overseeing DOGE and moving towards you andilaterally shrinking the
(01:38):
government and has led to dismissal or deferred resignation of
what seventy something thousand federal workers. And so the reality
is that some of the disruption really won't be as
big a disruption because they're all gone anyway. And so
now becomes politics, of course, part of it. But what
(02:01):
happens logistically is something else. And so right now you
got the Democrat Democrats scrambling and they've wanted to keep
the government open as long as possible, never shut down,
and keep all the programs going. Well, it's obviously not
what Trump wants and what the Republicans have always wanted,
(02:21):
but they didn't have Trump on their side previously. It
was a very different animal in terms of keeping the
government open or not. He is prepared to shut it
down if he doesn't get his cuts, and the Republicans
are all in line. Democrats are saying, no, this is
all going to be happening in the Senate. By the way,
the House has already said, yep, we're going to do
(02:43):
exactly what the president wants and unless we get what
we have, unless you pass you Democrats were prepared to
shut down the government, and that is to eliminate a
lot of these programs. Democrats always on the other side
of that, they want to keep it open, open, open.
And what a shutdown fight this one is because this
isn't just.
Speaker 1 (03:03):
About various programs.
Speaker 2 (03:06):
This is about the government itself shutting down and entire departments,
entire entire cabinets, cabinet positions, and you've got the Department's Education, etc.
Speaker 1 (03:19):
Which is looking to shut down anyway.
Speaker 2 (03:21):
So government shutdown means nothing, and so what is going
to happen. Well, here's the other part of the shutdown,
and that is that during a shutdown, the president has
much more power, and the president is arguing that he
has unlimited power in running the government, notwithstanding what the government,
(03:46):
what the Congress does. By the way, the Constitution says,
Congress funds the government. Trump is arguing I will decide
what Congress votes. Now, you can vote, because that's the Constitution, but.
Speaker 1 (04:00):
I'll make the call. Democrats are a little upset about
this one. They're going, uh no.
Speaker 2 (04:06):
And there are all kinds of court fights going on
because a lot of the funding has already been voted
by Congress. And the president says, I don't care, vote, vote,
don't vote. I've got the power and I have unlimited power.
And the Republicans are agreeing with him. By the way,
they're handing him the power that he wants, and effectively,
checks and balances don't exist in the Republican Party or
(04:28):
where or this president. The only thing that can stomp
him are the courts. And that's only because he listens.
Speaker 1 (04:37):
To the courts.
Speaker 2 (04:38):
Maybe, by the way, there is precedent for a president
telling the courts to go just pound sand Abraham Lincoln
did that during the Civil War. Supreme Court said you
can't do that, you can't do that, you can't do
that in terms of martial law. He said, I don't care,
and he went ahead and did what he wanted to do.
Speaker 4 (04:57):
Didn't Biden push back on the Supreme Court for something.
Speaker 2 (05:01):
It was I'll tell you not as much because I
don't remember if he did or didn't. Now I do
know Richard Nixon with the tapes said outright, if it
is when he was ordered to turn over the tapes,
remember during water date, and the president said, and it
went to the Supreme Court whether or not it was
(05:22):
executive privilege or not. And the argument of those it
was basically the press one of those tapes, and the
press sued Supreme Court. And what.
Speaker 1 (05:37):
Nixon said is if it is a split.
Speaker 2 (05:40):
Decision five to four, he's not going to pay attention
and he's not going to turn over the tapes. He said, outright,
I'm not going to pay attention to the courts. Now,
it was unanimous, it was seven zero that he had
to turn over the tape. So at that point he
did anyway because it was so one sided, but he
was prepared to say no.
Speaker 4 (06:00):
Jennef to clarify, Just to clarify Biden, the court ruled
against his plan for forgiving loan debt, and he kind
of switched gears and went in a different direction, if
I remember correctly.
Speaker 2 (06:17):
Okay, and I don't remember that incident, But the point
is there is no enforcement available if a president says
no to the court.
Speaker 1 (06:28):
Who's going to who The Supreme Court.
Speaker 2 (06:30):
Doesn't have police, it's the executive who would have to
act on a court order against him. It's going to
be fascinating to see the kind of power. So it's
all in favor of the shutdown as far as Trump
is concerned.
Speaker 1 (06:48):
Even the Department.
Speaker 2 (06:49):
Of Education, which we're going to do down at the
bottom of the hour, as far as is dismantling. The
Congress is the only body that can shut down it.
Create it's a department, and then it can shut down
a department just Congress.
Speaker 1 (07:06):
Well, what can the president do.
Speaker 2 (07:08):
The President can determine how the department works and how
many employees. So by the time this is all ending,
there may be one janitor left at the Department of Education,
just to sweep up the floors. That would be within
the law, there would still be a department. Okay, Now
Trump is dismantling the Education Department. What does it exactly do? Okay,
(07:33):
I'll tell you. Let's start talking about the agency's main
role financial. Okay. It distributes billions of dollars every year
in federal money to colleges schools, manages the student loan portfolio. Now,
closing the department would mean redistributing each of those due
(07:54):
to eastern other agency, which can be done. By the way,
this is not a hard one to accomplish. Now, the
National Weather Service is a little tough, for example, to eliminate.
You can't hand that over the states. It's hard to
to send that.
Speaker 1 (08:09):
Over to local school boards.
Speaker 2 (08:11):
But what the Department of Education does, since it gives
out money, since it provides pell grants for example the
poor students who can't afford going to school, and these
are grants, it can be done by another agency. And
so Trump's argument that it really doesn't do anything that
it can be.
Speaker 1 (08:29):
It can be replaced. Yeah, that's true.
Speaker 2 (08:32):
The more controversial, controversial part of this is, uh, the
policy of the federal government while it gives money to universities,
and I don't think that's going to change. It's not
going to give money if that university teaches a woke course.
Speaker 1 (08:49):
I don't even know what that is racial? What is that.
Speaker 2 (08:55):
Critical race theory? I mean, really, you know define that.
No one really can define woke. No one really can. Also,
this is a quote the transgender insanity. If you teach
transgender insanity, does that mean if you recognize transgenders.
Speaker 1 (09:13):
That mean you're not gonna get federal money.
Speaker 2 (09:15):
And I don't know inappropriate racial, sexual, or political content?
Speaker 1 (09:19):
What is that? Define? What inappropriate it is? And who's
going to define it?
Speaker 2 (09:27):
I mean that's the part that is the most controversial,
and that is cutting off funds. Also difficult is cutting
off funds for the anti semitism? What is anti semitism?
If a school allows, for example, pro Palestinian students to
(09:50):
protest and start screaming we love Palestinians and Israel is
horrible and it's occupation forces, etc. You know what can
the feds say no to the school?
Speaker 1 (10:02):
Right now, the Feds are saying no.
Speaker 2 (10:04):
And like that guy who is in being held and
is about to be deported, the guy who's a green card,
the reason they're tagging him is because he led the
protests that occupied the school, that's illegally trespassed.
Speaker 1 (10:21):
That's an easy one.
Speaker 2 (10:22):
But defining what you're saying, what you're thinking teaching woke.
Speaker 1 (10:33):
To this day, I don't know what woke is. I
have no idea. And so that's going to go to
the courts.
Speaker 2 (10:38):
And the other situation is Congress is the only body
that can disband the Department of Education because Congress created
the Department of Education. But here is the problem with that.
The president can do an end around on this one
because he decides how big the Department of Education is
(11:00):
and how many employees the Department of Education can have.
He's fired half of them already, they're gone. And as
I said earlier, the Department of Education can exist with
a staff of fifteen people.
Speaker 1 (11:17):
It still exists. And the president has that kind of power.
Speaker 2 (11:21):
And I'll tell you why the shutdown that's coming up
Saturday night, if it happens, is the best thing for
Trump because during a shutdown, the president is actually running
the government and can make a bunch of choices that
otherwise he could not. And the whole issue about the
(11:43):
shutdown is how much power the president has. See that's
fairly new with this administration, and that is Congress, or
at least the Democrats, fighting the very power of a
president of which the Republicans are saying it is unfettered.
The president asks we deliver. The President asks us to
(12:07):
go over that edge. We are lemmings, we will do it.
And the Democrats are fighting like crazy. And then it
ultimately it goes to the courts. I mean, it is crazy.
Now we're gonna switch gears because been a lot of politics.
Speaker 1 (12:22):
A lot of current events. What's going on?
Speaker 2 (12:25):
But I enjoy talking about food and I love what
we do Neil and I do on Fridays tomorrow with
Foody Friday at eight o'clock. One of the things that
Neil talks about a lot, and we talk about avocados.
Speaker 1 (12:39):
Neil loves avocados. I like I don't.
Speaker 2 (12:41):
Yeah, I love guacamole. I'm not crazy about avocados and
sandwiches and the smoothies and stuff. But Americans are. Do
you know the average American now eat nine pounds of
avocados a year. In the seventies it was less than
one pound. Even in the nineteen nine nineties it was
less than two pounds. Well it's a big one. So
(13:08):
what's going on?
Speaker 1 (13:09):
Why?
Speaker 2 (13:10):
Well, let me tell us some reasons. At you and
this maybe interesting because you may not know this. Neil
probably does, or maybe he doesn't, so Neil will interrupt
or not. The reason that avocado use and ingestion has
exploded is most of them are not grown in the
United States anymore.
Speaker 1 (13:27):
Now that's counterintuitive.
Speaker 2 (13:29):
Wait a minute, they're not grown in the United States
and we're eating more, you bet, because where are they
coming in from. They're coming in from Mexico. And I'm
gonna explain what's happening in the background. So right now,
if someone wants an avocado, he has no choice.
Speaker 1 (13:56):
Really yeah, really, really yeah, I had to go there.
Speaker 2 (14:00):
Yeah you okay, And of course that's Mexican avocados. The
US now brings in annually about three billion pounds of them.
Ninety percent of the avocados Americans eat are imported. Ninety
percent of those come from Mexico, and until nineteen ninety seven,
(14:23):
they were not allowed into the country. They weren't accessible
across the country until twenty seven.
Speaker 1 (14:30):
That's how short this ban has been.
Speaker 2 (14:32):
So why did that happen, Well, it's because the.
Speaker 1 (14:38):
Free Trade Act that we had with Mexico.
Speaker 2 (14:41):
We passed a bill that makes Mexico and Canada. This
was a while ago before Trump came in effectively back
and forth with no tariffs, and so all of a sudden,
whoa free trade agreement happens, and avocados were right at
the forefront. And matter of fact, now they're sort of
the poster child of the fight twenty five percent tariffs,
(15:05):
and you've got people in the avocado business companies just
scrambling whether to eat the costs or whether they're going
to charge consumers, and what do you think which way
is going to go? So tariffs came in and then
the White House swerved and suddenly we're delaying the terriffs.
Speaker 1 (15:23):
For a month, and we don't know what's going on.
Speaker 2 (15:27):
And the fact that US companies keep and will keep
on importing from Mexico is that's the only way they
can meet the year round demand. I mean, we're that
crazy about avocados. This sandwiches, salad, smoothies, burrito bowls, sushi,
and of course, of course guacamole.
Speaker 4 (15:48):
You know the haas avocado what it is from right
here in southern California. It was either Altadina or Pasadena,
and it was the man who it's named after was
a postal delivery guy, so how and he discovered that.
So that's where the hot the hass comes from.
Speaker 1 (16:08):
Now, let me give you a little bit of history
before we bail out of here.
Speaker 2 (16:11):
In nineteen eighty three, unripe avocados, which were the only
avocados sold in the stores were baseballs.
Speaker 1 (16:18):
I mean, you couldn't use them.
Speaker 2 (16:21):
And so in nineteen eighty three, the technology researchers in
the avocado industry were able to ripen the avocados on
the pallet in the palette. So now when you go
to the store and you buy avocados, you're sort of
squeezing them and it's going to be the ones that
are ripe that you can deal with right there.
Speaker 1 (16:43):
And so.
Speaker 2 (16:46):
Then Mexico happened and we have a free trade agreement
and it exploded.
Speaker 1 (16:50):
And why Mexico, Well.
Speaker 2 (16:52):
Avocados are actually pretty particular about where they grow. Soil, conditions, weather,
irrigation sort of has to be all Together's like coffee.
You know, coffee does not grow in the San Fernando
Valley and he's a very specific kind of climate and soil.
Speaker 1 (17:08):
Same thing with avocados.
Speaker 2 (17:10):
So the bottom line is we eat tons of avocados
and now we don't know what's going to happen. Although
I was at a Mexican restaurant yesterday and man I
asked for us. Well, actually the guy who didn't speak English.
I was sitting there and I got a and I
took one a plate to go because I was by myself,
(17:31):
and a little dollup of avocado came with it, and
so I asked the fellow when I took it to go,
is there a dollar dollup of avocado in this other
plate which it should have? And he goes, oh, yeah,
I'll bring it. So he brings me this little side
of avocado. Charges me six dollars. I go, come on,
(17:52):
two tablespoons of avocado guacamole.
Speaker 1 (17:55):
Give me a break. I like blackamole. Suit does have.
It's delicious. It is very very good.
Speaker 2 (18:05):
Okay, KF I am six. You've been listening to the
Bill Handle Show. Catch my show Monday through Friday, six
am to nine am, and anytime on demand on the
iHeartRadio app
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