00:00:00.580Welcome back to Squawk Box. Jobless claims coming in this morning at $197,000, just a little bit below the expectation, and $1,000 lower than the prior week, which was revised down a little bit or up a little bit to $198,000.
00:00:17.420So insured unemployment claims coming in at $1.701, a bit below expectations, down from $1.712 in the prior week.
00:00:27.900Bond yields pretty much unchanged, but of course, they've been very volatile and at a high level, about 528 on the 10-year.
00:00:36.060I think that's just a little bit below the 07 high that we had taken out overnight at 534.
00:00:41.300The two-year, also largely unchanged, 485, 486 right there.
00:00:45.920And the dollar had gotten a bid overnight, partially on Kashkari's hawkish comments.
00:00:52.980And today, guys, I'd be watching these PMIs at 945 and, again, the ISM at 10 o'clock.
00:00:59.820The markets have been kind of unusually sensitive to these manufacturing and purchasing managers' reports here,
00:01:06.280seeing them as signs of growth and a reason, again, to sell off the long end if they come in strong.
00:01:38.860Had a long conversation with Kashkari last night about whether or not you could have inflation or sustained inflation if it doesn't come through the wage channel,
00:01:47.980which is not coming through at this point. You do not have rising or surging wages.
00:01:52.620In fact, wages have been real wages have been below the inflation rate and they've been declining since May.
00:01:57.960So that's something to watch. But he says there's still other ways for inflation to seep into the economy.
00:02:03.000So he doesn't think that's the only way it can happen.
00:02:05.180But that's something for sure the Fed would watch if you get that push in wages that would create more inflation concern at the Fed.
00:02:12.960Yeah, we were talking about it earlier that it's just weird.
00:02:16.680The labor market's held up pretty well.
00:02:19.360It's early with AI because that's the big fear that eventually you're going to see some.
00:02:25.300Today, we're thrilled to announce that Mesabi Metallics will be building the largest steel plant in American history in the great state of Iowa.
00:02:34.420It's the largest plant, one of the largest plants in the world, but it's the largest plant in America by far.
00:02:41.040We're also pleased to be joined by Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick, Secretary of Energy Chris Wright,
00:02:47.680Senator Joni Ernst, who's done a wonderful job, and I'm going to miss you, Joni.
00:04:24.780It's actually already happening all across America.
00:04:27.260There's a quiet factory boom in the data, the numbers, they prove it.
00:04:31.720That success, it now shifts into a higher gear with a massive new announcement.
00:04:37.260Foreigners are building the largest steel plant in America, right in the American heartland in eastern Iowa.
00:04:44.000And they're sourcing the iron ore from Minnesota.
00:04:46.860So stop apologizing for protecting American industries and American jobs and start promoting this mammoth, tangible example of America first economic agenda winning for Main Street.
00:05:04.900Thursday, 1 October, Year of the Lord, 2026.
00:05:07.480Terry Schilling is going to be sitting in this morning.
00:05:14.540let's get that mic working. You're an Iowa kid? Yep. Yep. Southeast Iowa was where the steel
00:05:20.260plant's going. Steve Cortez, tell me about this plant. Is this going to happen because if it is,
00:05:26.080I think it's the largest investment in steel in American history? Yes, it is going to happen.
00:05:32.520It's amazing news. And it is a real world kitchen table result consequence of America first trade
00:05:39.880policies. Before President Trump, for decades, America sat down at the poker table of global
00:05:46.600trade, and we acted like we had a pair of eights when we have a straight flush every time. We have
00:05:51.540the crown jewel consumer market of the world. Every company, every country on earth wants access to
00:05:56.400our market. We have earned that right. We've earned it through generations of grit and innovation and
00:06:01.620success. And when you have the best seats in the house, you charge a premium for them. We didn't
00:06:06.660do that previously, and it was foolish. And President Trump came along and said, wait a0.95
00:06:10.240second, we're going to start acting like economic adults here, and we're going to make you pay an
00:06:14.260ante for access to our market. You want a way around that? There's a workaround. Put your
00:06:18.700plan here. Hire Americans, buy American equipment, invest in the United States, and then we effectively0.83
00:06:24.520treat you like an American company when you're producing here. So this is a massive example of
00:06:28.900the success of that strategy. It's happening all over the place, but I think this is the most
00:06:32.620significant and in some ways the flashiest of all of these announcements. Because think of what you
00:06:37.020have going here, Steve. You've got an iron ore plant opening up in Minnesota, the first new one
00:06:42.540in a half century. And that iron ore, by the way, this is an important point which President Trump
00:06:47.540made. You would think, well, put the plant right there in Minnesota. Why aren't they doing that?
00:06:51.800Well, because of Tim Walz and Peggy Flanagan, who wants a promotion to the Senate. She's not going1.00
00:06:55.920to get it because they are so harmful to business and innovation. So instead, we're going to barge
00:07:00.160it down to Iowa. Fantastic. And Iowa is going to enjoy 6,000 jobs for the construction of the
00:07:05.460plant, and then on an ongoing basis, about 2,000 jobs. And we're talking high-paying,
00:07:10.940family-sustaining jobs. This is exactly what we need in the American heartland.
00:07:16.420The manufacturing news has already been fantastic. I've been trying to raise the profile
00:07:20.560of this quiet manufacturing boom and make it not so quiet, because it's a great story to tell.
00:07:26.280It's largely because of onshoring and because of trade policy, but I hope that this is a perfectly timed announcement to, by the way, both win those elections.
00:07:34.380We've got competitive elections in Iowa and in Minnesota, but also, as importantly, to build the case that the critics of tariffs and the naysayers from Wall Street and academia who say that an America-first trade policy can't work are wrong.
00:07:48.340What it results in is international capital pouring into this country, and what it ultimately
00:07:54.400results in is productive capacity returning to the United States, and what does that mean
00:10:15.240The term free trade is fake and gay because it was never real.
00:10:19.800It was always managed trade, and it was always managed against the interests of American workers.0.54
00:10:25.320What we now have is a trade policy that demands onshoring, that punishes you for offshoring, and prioritizes our people, our plants, our resources.
00:10:35.820And in addition to the prosperity and in addition to the cultural and social benefits that are key here, what it also gives us, Steve, is national security.
00:10:43.440Because you cannot be a strong nation if you don't make things.
00:10:46.300And you certainly cannot be a superpower if you don't make the things that are critical to your national security.
00:10:52.940Things like steel, semiconductors, and medicines.0.98
00:11:33.120Yeah, listen, this is incredibly concerning, and it is global.
00:11:36.420But here in the United States now, we're at the highest yields since 2002.
00:11:40.220And the fiscal profligacy of Washington, D.C. has unfortunately been a bipartisan failure.
00:11:45.360Massive, reckless borrowing and spending supported by both parties.
00:11:48.540And I'm afraid, Steve, that not enough people in Washington, even today with this crisis unfolding, are really aware and are worried enough about what's going on.
00:11:55.940And you're right. It is going on all across the globe. It's going on in France.
00:12:00.000Let me tie these two issues together, though, by the way.
00:12:02.180One of the long-term fixes to this debt nightmare that we're facing, one of the long-term fixes is onshore, so that the United States gets even more productive and even more of that capital is flowing here.
00:12:14.140But in the nearer term, when this new Congress is seated, and obviously I hope it's a Republican one, worried about that, but I hope it's a Republican one, we've got to get serious yesterday about trying to start managing this debt crisis because the bond market gets a vote.
00:12:28.380And the bond market right now is saying, guess what, United States federal government, you're going to pay far, far higher rate.
00:12:34.580You're no longer going to get the preferential treatment that you've gotten previously because of your fiscal recklessness, because of your profligacy.
00:13:09.120You're putting up these great videos all day long.
00:13:11.100We're going to be back on the next couple of days
00:13:12.540talk more about the bond market. Where do folks go to get your content and your investigative
00:13:16.000reporting? You bet. Please go to cortesinvestigates.com. Cortez with an S at the end. Also follow me on
00:13:21.920Twitter at CortezSteve. And then this article is up at Daily Signal, where I post all of my
00:13:27.540polling. I'm going to have new polling out soon. And this article on the Iowa Steel Plant at Daily
00:13:32.260Signal. Thank you, brother. Appreciate you. Thank you. Terry Schilling is going to be with us.
00:13:38.220Kobe's going to jump in for a minute. Terry Schilling is going to be with us for a morning.
00:13:41.480We've got a lot to talk about, a clarion call for the midterms, talking about the American family, the radicalness of our opposition, but to make sure we got traction.
00:13:50.820Give me a minute on that before we go to break.
00:13:52.400Well, look, we just released this memo.
00:13:54.460We've been doing polling and focus groups and consumer research panels for the last two years leading into the midterms.
00:14:00.360And what we're finding is, I think, obvious to anyone really paying attention.
00:14:04.220Voters right now trust Republicans when it comes to the culture war.
00:14:07.220president trump and republicans have delivered on men and girls sports no sex change for kids
00:14:11.460all of that however they don't trust republicans when it comes to the economy and that's why this
00:14:16.500iron ore factory is is incredibly important the republican party needs to do more they don't need
00:14:21.620to you know be socialist about everything but they need to at least talk to the economic
00:14:25.060concerns this is why president trump's going to peterbilt to the factory today in denton texas
00:14:29.540we're going to cover it all wall to wall because we're the lead they threw cnn off the plane today
00:25:10.100In other words, one may be saving you money, but the other may be more customer.
00:25:15.020But it might limit your health access.
00:25:16.260And so there's not always – these plans are products that these insurance carriers are trying to make a profit on, which is fine.
00:25:25.680But it's important to make sure you understand what health care you're actually getting, what benefits you're actually getting, and how to use them so that you're not surprised when you go to the doctor or when you want to go actually redeem the benefits of that plan.
00:25:37.740When you talk to the advisors and consultants, to people, you go to 845-BORM, do it now.
00:25:42.520You'll get no obligation, totally free.
00:25:44.880The feedback you get from them of what people's biggest issues are.
00:25:49.580I know a lot of people are very hesitant even to talk about this.
00:25:54.280What you're trying to do is make it, hey, we're trying to make it as personalized as possible.
00:25:58.400What are the biggest, what are you hearing from your advisors and consultants that every day talk to people about what their takeaways are?
00:26:04.020Their takeaways are everything from people.
00:26:06.560Many people are really struggling financially to afford the health care that they need.
00:26:11.140And so making sure that they can find plans that are available that do that.
00:26:14.560For a lot of people, most people who call in have very little understanding of how the inside sausage is made, which is natural.
00:26:21.120Why would you know if you don't work in this industry?
00:26:23.840But they don't realize that there are so many plans available that people can have access to that can save them so much money and get them the health care they need.
00:26:31.420So often the notes we get and the feedback we get is I had no idea that there were these 25 other plans that I could look at.
00:26:38.420I thought that I only had access to a couple.
00:26:40.920And that's one of the most common pieces of feedback.
00:26:42.840And that's you guys coming at it from a totally different perspective because you're not really health care guys.
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00:29:44.180War Room. Here's your host, Stephen K. Vann.
00:29:49.340Okay, we're going to be going to the White House a lot this morning.
00:29:52.120We'll start with Peter Navarro, who's got to bounce for a very big meeting on making sure that people do not gain the system around tariffs.
00:29:59.900We're also going to go back. Servos over at Treasury is going to join us also later.
00:30:04.540Peter, first off, we've had Cortez on.
00:30:08.440Just talk to us about the president's going down to Peterbilt.
00:30:11.000The factory is clearly making a big show of force on manufacturing.
00:30:15.500Talk to me about Iowa, the plant, and why it's a game-changer, sir.
00:31:52.240The T in tariffs has essentially been declared also transformational.
00:31:57.260It's going to take Iowa, which is heavily dependent on agriculture, and you with your Harvard Business School Wall Street thing, it's going to be a nice hedge with manufacturing.
00:32:10.000They're going to operate synergistically because that pipeline, which is necessary for the steel works, is also going to help keep ag costs down.
00:35:23.300This is a strong, solid manufacturing economy in a renaissance.
00:35:29.360And once we wind down this war, by the way, the plan that you and Besson are executing for the president to use every tool available to drive a manufacturing renaissance of high-value-added products and high-value-added jobs is working.
00:35:45.240Peter Navarro, I know you've got to bounce.
00:35:47.200Give us where we go for your content, where we go for your new book.
00:35:50.280I'm going to announce right now we're going to try to spend a ton of time with Peter tomorrow night at 5 o'clock.
00:35:56.240We're going to go through a lot of his interviews and play some clips and talk about the economy and also talk about the Fauci book.
00:39:06.620Because that's always been a standard for the Republican Party.
00:39:09.720That's one thing they can always depend upon.
00:39:11.380Well, we've created a K-shaped economy.
00:39:15.300And what a K-shaped economy means is the people that have assets, that own homes, that own stocks, that have real ownership in our economy, in our culture, their assets are being pumped up and inflated.
00:39:26.740If you have real or financial assets now, you're on a roll.
00:39:33.480I would say we actually have a socialist system in a lot of ways.
00:39:37.460But I think we've got to recognize that, by the way.
00:39:40.840But if you don't own things, if you don't own a home, if you don't have a car, if you don't have stocks, you're in a really bad spot because you have to make a decision.
00:39:50.680You can't afford the townhome that's now $600,000, the down payment that you were saving up when it was $500,000.
00:39:57.940Now you've got to raise another $20,000 for the down payment.
00:40:00.340And by the way, you're paying seven and a half, eight percent interest on that.
00:40:04.140So the K-shaped economy, I think, Steve, is all based off of our federal government printing and pumping and dumping our currency all over the world.
00:40:13.320And here at home, they print an extra they spend an extra two trillion dollars every year.
00:40:18.060And we wonder why our houses cost so much and why the interest rates are going up so much.
00:40:24.160Full stop. Full stop. You are. This is it's so magnificent.
00:40:30.340that terry shilling has now no no because now because you were a standard stock republican
00:40:36.440a few years ago years ago right tax cuts will save us tax hold it you are neoliberal neocon
00:40:42.660and my lord you are now a fire-breathing prairie populism this is this is this is end of the dollar
00:40:49.220empire the first two chapters we do is about populism talk to me and this is why we say
00:40:54.060end of the dollar empire right now we don't want to see the dollar not become the prime reserve
00:40:58.900currency. However, as I say all the time, you have to have a national debate about it. Yes.
00:41:03.920Talk to me about your problem with the U.S. dollar. Well, OK, I call it my three hundred
00:41:09.240thousand dollar treehouse. Right. And what I mean by that is in twenty seventeen, my wife and I
00:41:14.340bought our home. We had three kids at the time. So this is five kids ago. But we bought it for
00:41:19.760six hundred thousand dollars. In just the past few months, I've been getting letters in the mail
00:41:24.340offering to buy my home for $900,000, for $920,000, for $950,000.
00:41:30.120And I thought, wow, I haven't done any expansions in my home.
00:42:17.460And look, when Reagan ran in the 1980s, right,
00:42:20.420He ran on addressing two main economic concerns, high marginal tax rates that were keeping middle class and middle income earners from expanding and making more money.
00:46:31.340The key here with this ad, it's a 10-point shift.
00:46:34.420We do these consumer research panels where we actually measure messages that shift voters from the Democrat column to the Republican column.
00:46:41.420In Ohio, that ad, that message right there leads to a 10-point shift.
00:46:46.640And frankly, it's because it attacks what DEI actually does and not DEI itself.
00:46:52.000If I had run ads saying trans this and trans everything, it wouldn't have been as effective.
00:46:56.080Instead, we talked about this candidate supports policies that would put boys and girls sports, that would give sex change procedures to minors, that would pay for it with your tax dollars.
00:47:40.880These hiring quotas are so toxic and they directly impact the family.0.87
00:47:45.200The little known truth is that women look for men that can make more money than them.0.82
00:47:50.320So if your DEI hiring quotas are forcing you to hire 98% only women, like we saw in the August jobs report, that's going to have a bad impact on the American family and young men being able to find women to marry.
00:48:03.360We have to treat, we passed civil rights law to say these things shouldn't matter when it comes to hiring decisions.
00:48:09.040And it turns out these are the only things that are mattering because these guys just care about destroying our country.
00:48:14.680And that starts with destroying the family and attacking young men who are the future of our country, who are strong.
00:48:20.560Is this rolled into why we have later family formations?
00:48:24.800And, I mean, first-time homebuyers are now 41 years old.
00:48:44.140It's both. Like, you can't separate it. Like, I don't like to even separate politics from the culture because politics is part of that pinwheel that makes up your culture.
00:48:53.860And the economy is related to the culture. What your culture says is right and wrong determines what your economy is going to be.
00:49:00.620The culture actually impacts the economy in ways that we don't understand yet, but also ways that we obviously can recognize.
00:49:06.720When we legalize pornography, right, that's saying it's okay to make money by filming people having these relationships, then selling it to young children online without verifying their age, right?
00:49:17.980When we legalize marijuana, we're saying that's okay to do that.
00:49:21.280The economy and the culture are not separate.
00:49:32.580If you're saying you're not allowed to hire young men and that you have to prefer other groups of people that are preferred for your quotas, that's hurting our economy, and it's also hurting our young men, who we should be building up, right?
00:49:43.720Young men have so much potential, and they're just human beings like the rest of us.
00:49:48.880Young men are why we won World War II.
00:50:55.360Parker, CNN got kicked off the plane today.
00:50:57.940They ain't happy about it. Real America's Voice has been covering the president all day as he goes to the Peterbilt facility in Denton, Texas.
00:51:04.860Talks about tariffs and how they're driving job creation.
00:51:08.520Also, he's going to go to Oklahoma for a rally. Real America's Voice will cover all of it throughout the day.
00:51:15.640Truckers tonight at the 5 o'clock hour. We're going to have the truckers there.
00:51:19.700Also, Richard Barris is going to join us. So we're packed in the next hour, packed at 5 o'clock already.
00:51:24.120Natalie's going to come back. Her report yesterday about the influx of the Indian subcontinent medical profession to the United States of America will follow up on all of that.
00:51:36.340We're going to leave you with Never Forget. We're going to go back to the White House.
00:51:39.620Terry Schilling is going to talk about his recommended solutions. He's done intense polling and focus group.
00:51:45.140Yeah, consumer research, but we've done it all.
00:51:47.120Yeah. And ties together. We're going to push this memo out so you can chew on it as Terry Schilling becomes a fire-breathing prairie populace.
00:51:55.500I knew eventually from Iowa, you're one of these college Republicans.
00:51:59.200Next thing you know, now I've got a fire-breathing agrarian prairie populace coming in right now.