Small Business Insecurity??

Are Trump’s tariffs spooking businesses? Chris Markowski dives into media narratives claiming CEOs and small business owners are rattled by unclear trade policies. Despite the chaos, he urges patience, arguing the U.S. holds the upper hand globally. www.watchdogonwallstreet.com

Episode Transcript

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

Speaker 2 (00:16):
Oh, here come the narrative creators. Yeah, they're out again,
and you can see story after story, various different publications
talking about how Man they've the business world out. They're
small business owners, they're they're frightened now, they're insecure, all
because of Trump's actions and his tariffs. Here, here's one here.

(00:38):
Trump's economic messaging is spooking some of his own advisors.
Senior officials, including White House Chief of Staff Susie Wilds,
have received panic calls from chief executives and lobbyists who
have urged the administration to calm jittery markets by outlining
a more predictable tariff agenda. Many in the business community

(01:01):
have abandoned efforts to get the President to reverse course
on trade, instead pleading with the White House for clarity
on his approach. Yeah, the President had meetings with various
different a business roundtable Monday, had meetings with IBM and
Qualcomm and HP and they all express concerns about tariffs

(01:24):
and some of the mixed messaging that's been going on
right there. Again, you know, some people have saying that
the Economic policy team hasn't been coherent enough. You had
Douglas Holtz Ekeen, former Congressional Budget Office director who runs
the American Action Form, which is a conservative organization, saying

(01:46):
it's been a horrific start for the Economic Policy team
and some of Trump's aggressive approaches, they saying unnerving economic officials,
and again a lot of there's very few names attached
to some of these things. Ken could be. Yeah, you're
not getting any argue for me that certain corporations out

(02:09):
there might be taken back or put off by some
of these Trump tariffs, they how they might affect them,
how they might have to adjust. I get that. And
then you're getting the stories out there talking about how
small business owners out there were just jubilant over Trump's
victory in November and now they're very, very uncertain about
the US economy. Well, let me tell you one thing

(02:32):
is certain about the US economy. It's always uncertain. It's
always there's never a point in time when you are
one hundred percent sure that things are going to work
out swimmingly and everything is awesome. And when people feel

(02:52):
that way, that's when you really need to look out below. No,
nothing go wrong, everything's awesome, party new paradigm. Earnings don't
matter anymore. Yeah. Yeah, real estate values they can just
keep going up forever. Oh, the countries is booming. Oh yeah,
every every plumber, every contractor's got a Ferrari. Yeah. Things

(03:21):
can come out of nowhere, and there's going to be uncertainty.
I I again, I talked about this. I appreciate and
I run a business the need for clarity when it
comes to rules and regulations. I happen to operate in
arguably one of the most regulated industries out there, dealing
with the SEC, dealing with new regulations every year, thousands

(03:45):
of pages of this, thousands of pages of that. It's
it's a lot to deal with. And again, I wish
again things were there was a better there was a
greater ease of use for this country. An owner's man
that actually made sense, that didn't look like you you know,
you bought something from China, from Ikea and you yeah,

(04:08):
you know that, you know those things put it together
packages that are this thick. Yeah, yeah, awful, awful. I mean,
that's like a it's like a purgatory punishment for crying
out loud putting together that stuff. But again, that's that's
what it's like to operate business here in the United States,
and we need to simplify that. We need to get
rid of the red tape. Now. Trump is promising a

(04:31):
reduction of ten regulations for every new regulation right now,
without a doubt, Without a doubt, people are still scratching
their heads in regards to how these tariffs are going
to work. Is it affecting U the economy right now?
Is it affecting the markets APSU freculuently? It is, There's
no doubt about that. But again, this is against short

(04:52):
term window stuff. Be a little bit patient, be a
little bit paid. I'm being patient when it comes to this.
I do think that there's going to be a grand
meeting of the mind sooner rather than later. There has
to be. Right now, it seems as if they're playing

(05:15):
this big game of chicken who's going to blink first?
And quite funly, I don't think Trump's going to blink
first when it comes to this. The reality of the
global terrain is is that they need our markets. They
need to be selling here into the United States. That's
just it has to be that way for them, So

(05:36):
they have a hell of a lot more to loose. Akin,
nobody wants trade wars, and quite frankly, I don't think
we're going to be in a trade war. I think
it's going to work its way up. We shall see,
we shall see. But you know, overall, okay, once you
get the rules out, you deal with the rules. As
long as the rules are not perpetually changing all the time.
Ken business owners can figure it out, they can handle it.

(06:00):
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