April 21, 2025 • 14 mins
In this deeply personal Easter episode of Watchdog on Wall Street, Christopher Markowski grapples with his frustration over Trump’s erratic leadership, from a divisive Easter tweet to stalled tariff talks with Japan and Mexico. Highlighting behind-the-scenes maneuvering by advisors to pause tariffs, Markowski warns of prolonged market volatility and a potential economic downturn, urging listeners to pray for Trump and focus on portfolio resilience. He offers pro bono consulting for small businesses hit by tariffs, emphasizing hope and practical solutions amid “Hurricane Trump.” www.watchdogonwallstreet.com
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
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):
Dealing with Hurricane Trump. Happy Easter, everyone, Christ has risen.
I have spent not a Holy week in prayer trying
to figure out get my arms around everything that's taking place.
I don't I don't like it when I get as
(00:37):
angry as I have been recently on the various different podcasts,
I really don't. I guess it's again, it's it's a
guy thing, and you get to come to grips the
fact that you know, we just we we all have limitations,
and oftentimes, I guess my frustration comes out. I can't
(00:58):
do anything of out what's going on. I can't do
anything about what's taking place in the White House. The
only thing he can do is, I guess, pray for
the guy. Pray for the guy. I for years, I,
you know, people accuse me of having Trump derangement syndrome
and all sorts of other things, and I, you know,
(01:19):
had my reservations about the guy and I've made that
perfectly clear and known on the podcast, yet voted for
him two times. Again. I don't have any control over
what he's doing, what he's tweeting, the way he's acting
(01:40):
that this guy, this guy needs everyone's prayers. He's looking
more and more a bit lost. And I know you're
going to have the various different people on social media,
the various different sycophants out there basically speaking of him
like some sort of genius here and he's playing five
D chess or whatever it may be. I don't see it.
(02:01):
And I'm going to start off. I'm going to go
over a myriad of things that have transpired over the
past week one and again, this is information that's come out,
and it's almost like information that I don't really want
to know. Okay, you kind of want to know, but
you really don't want to know, because this is what's
taking place behind the scenes where you get you know,
(02:26):
Lutnik and descent, you know, basically sneaking in to a
meeting with Donald Trump. It's because Navarro was gone. He
was meeting with Kevin Hassett, and they rushed over to
the Oval Office to see Trump and propose the pause
that ninety day pause on the tariffs because Navarro wasn't
(02:47):
there to push back. They knew that they had a
tight window. They knew that they had a tight window,
and the meeting between best wasn't even on Trump's schedule,
and the two convinced Trump the strategy to pause some
of the tariffs and announce it immediately to help calm
the markets. Remember that, you know, Trump was all proud
(03:07):
of the fact that the stock market went through the
Roof's got to be some kind of record. Again. It's like,
you know, an arsonist, arsonist patent himself on the back
that he put out of fire that he started. Anyway, Anyway,
as it stands right now, none of these there's no
(03:28):
deals anywhere. You know. The word is is that Japan
is confused in regards to exactly what the Trump administration wants.
Mexico in the same camp at this point in time.
So yeah, I don't see much happening in the near
(03:49):
term when it comes to various different trade deals. But
put that aside, I'll discuss that and what that means.
We talked last week. We had time talking about Jay
Powell and Trump's Trump pushing back on Jay Powell last week.
(04:09):
This is what came out this morning. This is what
he tweeted out this morning. Preemptive cuts in interest rates
are being called for by many. With energy costs way down,
food prices including Biden's egg disaster, substantially lower, and most
other things trending down. There is virtually no inflation. With
(04:30):
these costs trending so nicely downward, just what I predicted
they would do. There can almost be no inflation, but
there can be a slowing of the economy unless mister
too Late, a major loser, lowers interest rates. Now Europe
has already lowered seven times. Powell has always been too late,
(04:53):
except when it came to the election period, when he
lowered in order to help sleep Joe Biden later Kamala
get elected. How did that work out? That was earlier
this morning, and markets were down already and had sent
the stock market even to a further fall. Because again
(05:14):
there is that concern out there that he may try
to get rid of Jay Powell, which he can't do.
He can't do, But again I don't I don't know
what type of rabbit he may try to pull out
of the hat. Trump's approval ratings on the economy dropped
(05:36):
to their lowest ever UH in the history of his presidency.
Yesterday he put this this tweet out as well, and
again this in my opinion, again, I listen a lot
(05:57):
of magas listened to this, and they send me nasty
messages all the time. This doesn't sound the slightest bit
Christian to me. This is his happy Easter message. Happy
Easter to all, including the radical left lunatics who are
fighting and scheming so hard to bring murderers, drug lords,
dangerous prisoners, the mentally insane and well known MS thirteen
(06:20):
gang members, and wife beaters back into the country. Happy Easter.
Also to the weak and ineffective judges and law enforcement
officials who are allowing this sinister attack on our nation
to continue, an attack so violent that it will never
be forgotten. Sleepy Joe Biden purposely allowed millions of criminals
to enter our country totally, unvetted, unchecked, through an open
(06:42):
borders policy that will go down in history as a
single most calamitous act ever perpetrated upon America. He was
by far our worst and most incompetent president, a man
who had absolutely no idea what he was doing. But
to him and to the person that ran and manipulated
the auto pen, perhaps our real president, and to all
of the people who cheer in the twenty twenty presidential
election order to get this highly destructive more unelected. I
(07:05):
wish you, with great love, sincerity, and affection a very
happy Easter. And again, but again, this is this is
this is Donald Trump. This is the way he acts.
And again I've you know, people have been listening to
this program for a while. It really unsettles me. And
(07:25):
again I'm trying trying to keep my cools as best
I can. Again, there's nothing you can do except pray
for the guy. At this point in time. There's nothing
you can do. I think many people, like myself, thought
that maybe the guy had changed to some degree after
(07:47):
the the assassination attempt. I don't know, if you know,
maybe the stress is getting to him at this point
in time. I don't know. Now, let's let's get back
into trade and these tariffs and the markets and what
this means. I'm gonna be honest with you at this point
(08:09):
in time, and I hope I'm wrong on this. I
hope I'm wrong on this. I don't see any any
sort of deals being cut anytime soon. I really don't.
I don't. I don't see it happening. And if there
are deals, they're not going to be any sort of
(08:29):
real deals. I think that it's just it's not in
the cards. It's not in the cards now this could
this could linger for some time, all of this uncertainty
and all of this volatility that's taken place. I made
that perfectly clear. I thought it was going to be
a pretty volatile first half of the year. Uh didn't
(08:52):
see this, didn't see didn't see this type of volatility.
That's okay, that's okay. You know, you're you know sometimes,
you know, sometimes you've got to deal with crazy things.
Sometimes again, the wax swan, whatever it may you want
to call it, you have to go about dealing with it,
and you have to be intelligent and you have to
keep your head. Got to take motion out of the equation.
(09:13):
And again, the best way to do that is, you know,
to basically say, okay, you know what am I doing?
What's on sale? What what positions in my portfolio have
become you know that much more attractive. I want to
start adding to those positions. And that's what you do.
It's all you can do okay, you don't have any
control over the presidency. I don't have any control over
(09:35):
the presence. I have any control all of these teriffs.
This saving grace and what we have, and this is why,
you know, all is not lost. You get a lot
of people out there, Oh my god, it's got to
bring down a global economy what he did with these teriffs.
These are mergencies. Again, it's an executive order, these emergency powers.
(09:57):
More than likely we'll get hosted out in a court,
don't I don't even see how they're constitutional at this
point in time. And you're starting the uh, the whispers
are starting to turn into mumbles and grumbles from Republicans
across the country that at some point in time they
(10:19):
may have to step in. They may have to step
in and uh save the presidency, save the president from himself.
They're gonna have it's you know, think about Ferris Bueller.
Save Ferris. Right now, it's saved Trump. It's gonna be
save Trump. How can he how can he basically you know,
(10:41):
save his uh presidency because it's going down the tubes
very very quickly, very quickly. And again you know, it
wasn't that long ago, was not long ago where the
country was fired up, animal spirits, deregulations, you know, taxes
coming down, a myriad of different things. And right now
(11:01):
you're taking a look at the overall feelings in regards
to the American people and the markets, and I mean
it's tanking. Sentiment numbers are tanking across the board. So again,
Republicans could save Trump. I don't know if they're going
(11:24):
to work with Democrats or Democrats to go ahead and
do this. I'm not sure how they're gonna have do it.
But again it could be done tomorrow quite frankly. And
there's already there's already lawsuits that are in the work
suing over these tariffs. So again that could save him.
And then he could say, oh, you know, would have
been great and all this stuff, and he would have,
(11:46):
you know, basically, can blame somebody else. He's already already again,
you know, trying to put blame on Jay Powell. And
the fact that you know he wants Jay Powell to
lower interest rates again, that's you know, it's not going
to do much. Again, the bond markets will work. How
(12:08):
the bond markets will work, I think you might get
you know, but fed lowering rates you might get an
initial bit of a stock market rally, but when all
said and done, all said and done, you know, probably
again things will settle where they are, which is a
lot of I don't know what's going to happen next,
and that's you know, that's kind of par for the course.
(12:29):
So basically, you know what I'd be doing, what I'd
be doing when I be trying to rejigger my portfolio,
try to trade your way out of a situation like no, no,
you know, you can't, you can't, you don't know. You know,
nobody knows what's down up, sideways, backwards forward on any
(12:51):
given day, and you know, it's it makes it difficult
again because a lot of this, this is all self inflicted.
But you know, if I was again, if I was,
you know, somebody held a gun to my head and said, hey,
when do you think that this is going to work
its way out? I think you're probably looking towards June,
(13:12):
end of June, maybe even into July at this point,
and the way things look right now, again, the terrain
can shift, the train can shift, but you know, as
it stands, as it stands, it's going to continue to
be a very very rocky road, and what can we
do about it. We can yell and scream and get
upset at Trump like I've been doing, and it's waste time.
(13:38):
Waste time. You basically have to pray for the guy.
You do, you know, try to try to put away
as much of the negativity anger that you have. One
of the things that we're doing as well at Markowski
Investments in the Watchdog on Wall Street Show, anybody again,
always doing it helping out with people's portfolios and questions
(13:59):
that they have. But also, you know, if you're a
small business owner and you're getting hit by these tariffs
and you're confused and you want some advice in regards
to how you should structure things or whatever it be,
we're here for that too. We've done a ton of
consulting pro bono, pro bono. Yeah, McKinsey and all these
(14:19):
other companies will charge you an arm of a leg.
We do it for nothing. Okay, We're here to help you.
We want you to be wealthy. Okay, We're not going
to bang you out over the head and try to
help advise you in regards to dealing with tariffs and
restructuring and credit issues and a myriad of different things
will help you with that as best we possibly can.
So again, utilize us. There also again need to get
(14:43):
in contact, get to our website at watchdog on wallstreet
dot com. That's what we're here for. We're always here
to listen and to help. Watchdog on wallstreet dot com
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):
Dealing with Hurricane Trump. Happy Easter, everyone, Christ has risen.
I have spent not a Holy week in prayer trying
to figure out get my arms around everything that's taking place.
I don't I don't like it when I get as
(00:37):
angry as I have been recently on the various different podcasts,
I really don't. I guess it's again, it's it's a
guy thing, and you get to come to grips the
fact that you know, we just we we all have limitations,
and oftentimes, I guess my frustration comes out. I can't
(00:58):
do anything of out what's going on. I can't do
anything about what's taking place in the White House. The
only thing he can do is, I guess, pray for
the guy. Pray for the guy. I for years, I,
you know, people accuse me of having Trump derangement syndrome
and all sorts of other things, and I, you know,
(01:19):
had my reservations about the guy and I've made that
perfectly clear and known on the podcast, yet voted for
him two times. Again. I don't have any control over
what he's doing, what he's tweeting, the way he's acting
(01:40):
that this guy, this guy needs everyone's prayers. He's looking
more and more a bit lost. And I know you're
going to have the various different people on social media,
the various different sycophants out there basically speaking of him
like some sort of genius here and he's playing five
D chess or whatever it may be. I don't see it.
(02:01):
And I'm going to start off. I'm going to go
over a myriad of things that have transpired over the
past week one and again, this is information that's come out,
and it's almost like information that I don't really want
to know. Okay, you kind of want to know, but
you really don't want to know, because this is what's
taking place behind the scenes where you get you know,
(02:26):
Lutnik and descent, you know, basically sneaking in to a
meeting with Donald Trump. It's because Navarro was gone. He
was meeting with Kevin Hassett, and they rushed over to
the Oval Office to see Trump and propose the pause
that ninety day pause on the tariffs because Navarro wasn't
(02:47):
there to push back. They knew that they had a
tight window. They knew that they had a tight window,
and the meeting between best wasn't even on Trump's schedule,
and the two convinced Trump the strategy to pause some
of the tariffs and announce it immediately to help calm
the markets. Remember that, you know, Trump was all proud
(03:07):
of the fact that the stock market went through the
Roof's got to be some kind of record. Again. It's like,
you know, an arsonist, arsonist patent himself on the back
that he put out of fire that he started. Anyway, Anyway,
as it stands right now, none of these there's no
(03:28):
deals anywhere. You know. The word is is that Japan
is confused in regards to exactly what the Trump administration wants.
Mexico in the same camp at this point in time.
So yeah, I don't see much happening in the near
(03:49):
term when it comes to various different trade deals. But
put that aside, I'll discuss that and what that means.
We talked last week. We had time talking about Jay
Powell and Trump's Trump pushing back on Jay Powell last week.
(04:09):
This is what came out this morning. This is what
he tweeted out this morning. Preemptive cuts in interest rates
are being called for by many. With energy costs way down,
food prices including Biden's egg disaster, substantially lower, and most
other things trending down. There is virtually no inflation. With
(04:30):
these costs trending so nicely downward, just what I predicted
they would do. There can almost be no inflation, but
there can be a slowing of the economy unless mister
too Late, a major loser, lowers interest rates. Now Europe
has already lowered seven times. Powell has always been too late,
(04:53):
except when it came to the election period, when he
lowered in order to help sleep Joe Biden later Kamala
get elected. How did that work out? That was earlier
this morning, and markets were down already and had sent
the stock market even to a further fall. Because again
(05:14):
there is that concern out there that he may try
to get rid of Jay Powell, which he can't do.
He can't do, But again I don't I don't know
what type of rabbit he may try to pull out
of the hat. Trump's approval ratings on the economy dropped
(05:36):
to their lowest ever UH in the history of his presidency.
Yesterday he put this this tweet out as well, and
again this in my opinion, again, I listen a lot
(05:57):
of magas listened to this, and they send me nasty
messages all the time. This doesn't sound the slightest bit
Christian to me. This is his happy Easter message. Happy
Easter to all, including the radical left lunatics who are
fighting and scheming so hard to bring murderers, drug lords,
dangerous prisoners, the mentally insane and well known MS thirteen
(06:20):
gang members, and wife beaters back into the country. Happy Easter.
Also to the weak and ineffective judges and law enforcement
officials who are allowing this sinister attack on our nation
to continue, an attack so violent that it will never
be forgotten. Sleepy Joe Biden purposely allowed millions of criminals
to enter our country totally, unvetted, unchecked, through an open
(06:42):
borders policy that will go down in history as a
single most calamitous act ever perpetrated upon America. He was
by far our worst and most incompetent president, a man
who had absolutely no idea what he was doing. But
to him and to the person that ran and manipulated
the auto pen, perhaps our real president, and to all
of the people who cheer in the twenty twenty presidential
election order to get this highly destructive more unelected. I
(07:05):
wish you, with great love, sincerity, and affection a very
happy Easter. And again, but again, this is this is
this is Donald Trump. This is the way he acts.
And again I've you know, people have been listening to
this program for a while. It really unsettles me. And
(07:25):
again I'm trying trying to keep my cools as best
I can. Again, there's nothing you can do except pray
for the guy. At this point in time. There's nothing
you can do. I think many people, like myself, thought
that maybe the guy had changed to some degree after
(07:47):
the the assassination attempt. I don't know, if you know,
maybe the stress is getting to him at this point
in time. I don't know. Now, let's let's get back
into trade and these tariffs and the markets and what
this means. I'm gonna be honest with you at this point
(08:09):
in time, and I hope I'm wrong on this. I
hope I'm wrong on this. I don't see any any
sort of deals being cut anytime soon. I really don't.
I don't. I don't see it happening. And if there
are deals, they're not going to be any sort of
(08:29):
real deals. I think that it's just it's not in
the cards. It's not in the cards now this could
this could linger for some time, all of this uncertainty
and all of this volatility that's taken place. I made
that perfectly clear. I thought it was going to be
a pretty volatile first half of the year. Uh didn't
(08:52):
see this, didn't see didn't see this type of volatility.
That's okay, that's okay. You know, you're you know sometimes,
you know, sometimes you've got to deal with crazy things.
Sometimes again, the wax swan, whatever it may you want
to call it, you have to go about dealing with it,
and you have to be intelligent and you have to
keep your head. Got to take motion out of the equation.
(09:13):
And again, the best way to do that is, you know,
to basically say, okay, you know what am I doing?
What's on sale? What what positions in my portfolio have
become you know that much more attractive. I want to
start adding to those positions. And that's what you do.
It's all you can do okay, you don't have any
control over the presidency. I don't have any control over
(09:35):
the presence. I have any control all of these teriffs.
This saving grace and what we have, and this is why,
you know, all is not lost. You get a lot
of people out there, Oh my god, it's got to
bring down a global economy what he did with these teriffs.
These are mergencies. Again, it's an executive order, these emergency powers.
(09:57):
More than likely we'll get hosted out in a court,
don't I don't even see how they're constitutional at this
point in time. And you're starting the uh, the whispers
are starting to turn into mumbles and grumbles from Republicans
across the country that at some point in time they
(10:19):
may have to step in. They may have to step
in and uh save the presidency, save the president from himself.
They're gonna have it's you know, think about Ferris Bueller.
Save Ferris. Right now, it's saved Trump. It's gonna be
save Trump. How can he how can he basically you know,
(10:41):
save his uh presidency because it's going down the tubes
very very quickly, very quickly. And again you know, it
wasn't that long ago, was not long ago where the
country was fired up, animal spirits, deregulations, you know, taxes
coming down, a myriad of different things. And right now
(11:01):
you're taking a look at the overall feelings in regards
to the American people and the markets, and I mean
it's tanking. Sentiment numbers are tanking across the board. So again,
Republicans could save Trump. I don't know if they're going
(11:24):
to work with Democrats or Democrats to go ahead and
do this. I'm not sure how they're gonna have do it.
But again it could be done tomorrow quite frankly. And
there's already there's already lawsuits that are in the work
suing over these tariffs. So again that could save him.
And then he could say, oh, you know, would have
been great and all this stuff, and he would have,
(11:46):
you know, basically, can blame somebody else. He's already already again,
you know, trying to put blame on Jay Powell. And
the fact that you know he wants Jay Powell to
lower interest rates again, that's you know, it's not going
to do much. Again, the bond markets will work. How
(12:08):
the bond markets will work, I think you might get
you know, but fed lowering rates you might get an
initial bit of a stock market rally, but when all
said and done, all said and done, you know, probably
again things will settle where they are, which is a
lot of I don't know what's going to happen next,
and that's you know, that's kind of par for the course.
(12:29):
So basically, you know what I'd be doing, what I'd
be doing when I be trying to rejigger my portfolio,
try to trade your way out of a situation like no, no,
you know, you can't, you can't, you don't know. You know,
nobody knows what's down up, sideways, backwards forward on any
(12:51):
given day, and you know, it's it makes it difficult
again because a lot of this, this is all self inflicted.
But you know, if I was again, if I was,
you know, somebody held a gun to my head and said, hey,
when do you think that this is going to work
its way out? I think you're probably looking towards June,
(13:12):
end of June, maybe even into July at this point,
and the way things look right now, again, the terrain
can shift, the train can shift, but you know, as
it stands, as it stands, it's going to continue to
be a very very rocky road, and what can we
do about it. We can yell and scream and get
upset at Trump like I've been doing, and it's waste time.
(13:38):
Waste time. You basically have to pray for the guy.
You do, you know, try to try to put away
as much of the negativity anger that you have. One
of the things that we're doing as well at Markowski
Investments in the Watchdog on Wall Street Show, anybody again,
always doing it helping out with people's portfolios and questions
(13:59):
that they have. But also, you know, if you're a
small business owner and you're getting hit by these tariffs
and you're confused and you want some advice in regards
to how you should structure things or whatever it be,
we're here for that too. We've done a ton of
consulting pro bono, pro bono. Yeah, McKinsey and all these
(14:19):
other companies will charge you an arm of a leg.
We do it for nothing. Okay, We're here to help you.
We want you to be wealthy. Okay, We're not going
to bang you out over the head and try to
help advise you in regards to dealing with tariffs and
restructuring and credit issues and a myriad of different things
will help you with that as best we possibly can.
So again, utilize us. There also again need to get
(14:43):
in contact, get to our website at watchdog on wallstreet
dot com. That's what we're here for. We're always here
to listen and to help. Watchdog on wallstreet dot com
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