00:00:57.640So as we get everybody prepped for this China trip, the one to Beijing, this state visit summit, which, as you know, we're not completely crazy about here in the war room, but be it as it may, it's going to happen.
00:01:15.140We got Marty Davis and we're going to talk about trade, what's really going on, particularly from the entrepreneur's perspective.
00:01:22.000Marty, first off, Marty, I'm going to get to Cambria and your company and how you built it, you know, a native son of Minnesota.
00:01:30.380I'm going to tell the story about how our first met.
00:01:32.960How did you get to know Laura Ingram, and how did you get to be such a good friend with Laura Ingram?
00:03:16.240And I go, what do you talk about? We're right over the target. This is going to be every vote we have to go.
00:03:20.920And Paul Ryan just says it's not happening. I'm canceling the event.
00:03:25.800I'm ensuring that any state official will not be on the stage with you because and his excuse was, you know, I lost Wisconsin when I ran as as Romney's running mate.
00:03:37.120If I lose Wisconsin again and I go all in on national election, I'm finished nationally.
00:10:13.140The reason he loved you, Marty, is that I think you remind him of all the – he's an entrepreneur and entrepreneurs that really energize him.
00:10:20.200Talk to us, what's the difference in being an entrepreneur, and particularly in a manufacturing business, under Trump and America First and MAGA, than what you see in standard Republican administrations and in Democratic?
00:10:58.440Little did I know that as we sit here today, Steve, George W. Bush probably did more damage to manufacturing entrepreneurs in America than any president in recent history.
00:11:10.300I mean, it's not even a question about it.
00:11:12.960And he was calling the same mantra as what Trump called years later.
00:11:17.380But Bush never worked and never did anything, never worked in a business, never, never even worked at a bait shop and did stuff that you had to employ people, be responsible for them.
00:11:28.440He was a governor of Texas. He really any job he did was more in a governor role, kind of governor.
00:11:34.120I'm not very happy with Bush, but but Trump meant it.
00:11:37.800He he believed in the entrepreneur and it started with somebody running a bait shop for him.
00:11:42.560I remember when he came to my house, for an event, he was especially excited about a marina that was near us, a Shorewood Yacht Club, and he saw the sailboats, and he wanted to pull in and talk to the marina owner.
00:11:55.240When he came to our home, he saw the docks in the lake, and he said, who puts the docks in, and how many dock crews do they have, and how many docks does the owner of the dock installation company put in?
00:12:08.180And so you talk to Trump and you find a real entrepreneur.
00:12:11.920And I think that the pillar of who Trump is and his background, that's why I say to people, I don't know why he knows trade.
00:13:17.100How is the system, both the regulatory system, the legal system, the capital markets,
00:13:22.700how is the system at this time weighted against the entrepreneur?
00:13:27.820Well, I think there isn't that kind of voice at the government level very often, unless you get somebody like Trump, who's truly – I was at church yesterday and talking to a fellow, and he said he liked Trump, and I said, what do you like about him?
00:13:46.820He said he really cares about America, and he really cares about workers, and he really cares about business owners, and I think that's the point.
00:13:56.620And that's why I think Trump is fighting the way he does for America First and so forth, is to get the citizen heard and get the business owner heard at the government level.
00:14:08.760And he said as much to me one time about getting the fair and equitable opportunity for private sector entrepreneurship and business owners to engage the public in a way that – the public sector in a way that gets good government, good policy, and good structure.
00:14:30.000And it's difficult because you don't get hurt.
00:14:34.180We just put a family leave in Minnesota.
00:17:03.040Yeah, I think that it's a complex issue in some sense, and some it's not.
00:17:09.340But American importers, they're U.S. companies, they gaslight and stoke this.
00:17:18.100All domestic manufacturers are trying to be protectionists, or the unions are exploiting protectionist policies to gain economic favor to the union.
00:17:28.920And they stoke all these things that really are the argument of the of the foreign Pacific Rim government, in most cases, trying to penetrate and hijack American prosperity through its prosperous consumer.
00:17:43.000And they orchestrate this belief that that people are that domestic manufacturers are trying to actually game their government and get protectionist policies in place.
00:17:59.240I hate to keep beating on him, but he's got this thing out where he says, I don't like the isms, protectionism, isolationism, and nativism.
00:18:08.280And I thought, if I ever see him say, you know, how about cronyism?
00:18:25.000And I'm sure his daughters that I think of this is a wonderful talent. She sure seems like a great talent to me, but he's got a little ism there. She climbs the ladder of CNBC faster than all the other people that work there. How many years? So don't ism me, Bush. We aren't interested in, and again, she seems like a very talented lady, but you know, that she's gotten in front desk pretty quick, you know, cronyism.
00:18:49.600And so we don't want isolationism or protectionism. We want free and fair trade. And when foreign governments create and manipulate bypassing and gaming our free trade laws that we established to put them in the World Trade Organization, to give them that gift, and George W. Bush did it, which is why my ire in 2001.
00:19:15.680And then he didn't enforce any of their of the rules of the road that were established in there.
00:19:22.580Hang on. I want to slow down because I argue that our entrepreneurs want free and fair trade, but we're in a global mercantilist system, particularly by the Chinese Communist Party.
00:19:34.740Go back and give us the most favored nation in the World Trade Organization in 2001, which was teed up by Clinton.
00:19:41.080It's not 100 percent Bush's fault. This, folks, you should understand.
00:19:44.500You want to talk about unity in the political class?
00:19:47.620For the globalization movement, the political class came together.
00:19:50.520Newt Gingrich was pushing this as hard as the Clintons and Bush.
00:19:56.800But there were all types of provision, just like when Reagan gave the amnesty back in the 80s.
00:20:01.180There were supposed to be all these provisions first, then amnesty.
00:20:03.680What they got is amnesty and no provisions.
00:20:06.180Walk us through what was actually there to protect American families and the American consumer and the American citizen0.98
00:20:13.560when we allowed the Chinese Communist Party to come in and get Most Favored Nation0.85
00:20:17.280and into the WTO as an emerging nation, sir?
00:21:12.220They'll go from their red uniforms and hats and stars to suit and ties.
00:21:19.580And they did go to the suit and ties, but they never changed their ideology.
00:21:23.020In fact, they doubled down on communism and government control.
00:21:27.580The parameters and the rules of that road prior to that, you reviewed China's trade practices on an annual basis.
00:21:35.980And we were able to keep it in check and protect the integrity of free and fair trade.
00:21:40.900Once you put them in that WTO on a permanent basis, there is a variety of rules that were put in place around rare earth minerals, for instance.
00:21:51.480In addition to that, state ownership is a big part of the driver.
00:21:54.960If the state owns the business, then they're going to have all kinds of advantages like no debt, no amortization, no finance costs of that nature, and a whole host of advantages with the state, including freight and everything else, the more of the infrastructure that's owned by the state.
00:22:18.600They have one of the largest bad debt books in the world.
00:22:20.980Everybody talks about we borrow so much from them.
00:22:23.440Their bad debt book is, I believe at that time, it was the largest in the world, and I've read it multiple times since, so it still remains.
00:22:30.880They borrow their company's money, government money, low cost, and then they forgive the debt and take ownership.
00:22:37.220And they partner with the local person at some level, an oppressive level, but the government takes ownership.
00:22:43.980One of the key parameters of the WTO requirement was a simple one.
00:22:50.400Like, your state ownership has to go down by this much each year for you to be in the World Trade Organization trading with American prosperity.
00:22:59.700It went up, and they never, ever regulated it or dealt with it.0.99
00:23:04.920In fact, they didn't even – they weren't even smart enough to put the – Trump says how dumb we are.0.98
00:23:11.740I mean, like, obviously our government individually, the people of our government are very smart people.1.00
00:23:16.460But as a government, we sure get dumb and kind of stupid at times.0.99
00:23:20.360I think that's the point the president is making.1.00
00:23:22.820We didn't even put in parameters to prevent that they could combine companies.
00:23:28.380The way I read the reg, that they could combine companies and therefore they lowered their amount of state-owned companies.
00:23:35.800Even in the fact that they combined a bunch of companies and made three companies one to fiddle with that rule and that requirement,
00:23:42.660They still increased state ownership throughout Bush's tenure and beyond.
00:23:48.200So they didn't, that's a simple one they didn't do.
00:23:51.040There's a host of other things they didn't do around currency manipulation, all kinds of stuff.
00:23:56.880And at the same time, and if you wonder why I'm so upset with Bush, at the same time,
00:24:03.360Bush was negating safeguards that were awarded to American companies.
00:24:08.060One of the key tools of the WTO entrance on a permanent basis was the American manufacturers and the American side of the issue said, then you have to put in instruments that allow us, like tariffs, to enforce this agreement of them being allowed to be inside the World Trade Organization on a permanent basis.
00:24:31.600and one of the key ones was a safeguard provision and so american companies from 2001 to 2008 when
00:24:41.660bush was running the show they won safeguard cases before the itc just like the one we just won
00:24:48.520in our courts industry we just won one in february where the itc judged that we have not only been
00:24:54.120injured it's been substantial and there needs to be a remedy and now they've made remedy
00:24:59.440recommendations around tariffs and quotas. Well, when that happened under George W. Bush,
00:25:05.940he waived those safeguard awards against America, took a position against American companies.
00:25:11.860So the whole kind of realm of how Wall Street influenced it, obviously, with their globalization
00:25:18.680approach and then bad management by our government allowed China really to come into the WTO
00:25:27.480and operate unfettered all these years.
00:25:31.100And the other thing they did, what Trump doesn't get credit for,0.94
00:32:54.600He overruled, you know, didn't impose a safeguard and didn't add to the safeguard.
00:32:59.600He, you know, he went against, in some cases, the American steel industry and others.0.73
00:33:06.000I mean, he just he was all in for China and it was unfettered.
00:33:10.000And when U.S. companies went and used the remedies, the instruments that we were provided in the WTO regulations, I mean, it's an honor to be in the World Trade Organization trading with the most prosperous nation in the world.
00:33:25.820And doing it in governments, this is what people have to understand.
00:33:29.060If they all had democracy governments that even were closely related to ours, then the WTO doesn't have the teeth.
00:33:37.540But you don't need that kind of apparatus as much.
00:33:59.960And in many cases, they're communists, they're under command, or they're quasi-fascists, meaning they control their – everybody tries to make fascists a boogeyman.
00:34:11.000You allow a private sector, but you control that private sector in a very, very heavy-handed manner.
00:34:17.740And so to be in the World Trade Organization so that you can ask that, you know, attain, if you will, or introduce your products into our marketplace, you have to be, you know, following the rules of the WTO that were born to protect the free market in America from a rogue interventionist, you know, self-serving predatory government like Vietnam or China.
00:34:46.640or, you know, secondary governments to them like Thailand and Malaysia.
00:34:51.300So this is all to make sure we have to recognize these are not – they're like Russia.
00:35:12.520You know, they don't, their human condition, you know, temperature gauge is a little different than a leader in America.
00:35:22.880So their whole way they operate, the rules of their road are very different.
00:35:27.520So if you let them come in with their rules of engagement and penetrate the prosperity born of free and fair market rules of engagement, and you do that unfettered, they're going to thrash your domestic marketplace.
00:35:41.360They're going to convert your marketplace from the free and fair market that it is.
00:35:46.220We spent two years with Lighthizer trying to get there.
00:35:48.980I'm going to get to that in a second because that will tee up the discussion for what President Trump – your recommendation that President Trump needs to sit down with Xi.
00:35:56.000But India, let's talk about – in your industry alone, India – and as I go with that, the country, the number one topic outside – for MAGA, outside the Islamic invasion of this country is this H-1B visa fiasco.
00:36:08.360fiasco, where you have essentially all these Indians coming and taking the tech jobs from0.80
00:36:13.240young people. But you're having to compete. I mean, Navarro will tell you, and I'm a huge1.00
00:36:17.620supporter of Modi. I love nationalism. He's a nationalist, puts his country first.
00:36:24.240But Navarro will tell you, as hard as it is to get to the Chinese Communist Party to agree to
00:36:28.760anything and then enforce it, he said India is probably as bad. Talk to me about India,0.90
00:36:33.700particularly in your industry. Well, I think to the point I was making,
00:36:38.360quickly and I'll finish it is so when you engage with our country in commerce, you have to meet
00:36:44.880the principles of free and fair market competition. And if you don't, we have to be able to deal with
00:36:51.420you in an enforcement mechanism like tariffs and likewise. And that's the China, the whole China
00:36:58.560syndrome over there as it relates to the entire Pacific Rim. India is a party to it. And India1.00
00:37:05.120China operates, like you say, as nationalists in a much different way, but they have the same kinds of government.
00:37:13.200You know, they're not a command economy, but they operate very strong, strong armed in the way they manipulate the economics, their currency manipulation, their access to resources from communist platforms like the oil they get out of Russia, which is a big one now.
00:37:33.220But they've been doing that kind of thing for a long, long time.
00:37:35.900And they work with the Chinese on the technology.0.79
00:37:39.400Most of the manufacturing equipment to replicate and violate our technology and our patents and make products like ours much cheaper because of the false economics that exist in their countries, that equipment to India came from China, a lot of it, and the know-how and the technology in our space.0.78
00:37:58.960And then they, you know, their labor's oppressed in many ways.
00:39:24.320Cambria, our company, makes about 20 million square feet, so they'd have five Cambrias already built in India, and they sell the product into the United States for less than our raw material costs because of all the economic gaming that is done throughout their system.
00:39:45.800But, okay, the things I just mentioned, currency manipulation, the oppression, the labor condition and the way they manage it, the safety and manufacturing systems.
00:39:57.380Well, there are some good ones over there, and their pricing is different than the, would you say, the lower class of the quality that comes out of there and the cost structure that comes out of there.
00:40:07.260And then their raw material control and the way their government manages that labor on the mining side.
00:40:13.340So they get a variety of economic conditions that provide them almost a false economic market as compared to a free and fair market in the United States where competition, for-profit, entrepreneurism, and labor forces that can form and say, hey, I got to get paid here.
00:40:32.860But our trade laws are supposed to counter for that. How do they then get into this marketplace and undercut American producers?
00:40:43.340Well, when you go into them on anti-dumping and subsidy, they're pretty crafty.
00:41:24.320And so it's in that way that they manipulate every aspect to gain the advantage over the free enterprise of America, and they sell their products here.
00:41:34.140Why don't they sell the quartz slabs and other products in India?
00:42:32.400They run American import companies here owned by American citizens who some are Indian, American citizens that are from India or from, you know, the Pacific Rim or from wherever.
00:42:47.340I mean, they moved here and they've become citizens and were born and raised here, many of them.
00:42:52.280But they set up their employment bases often in the Pacific Rim.
00:42:57.120So most of these trading companies, these importers, the large part of their G&A, where ours is in Eden Prairie, Minnesota, or our competitors at Del Tower in Dallas, Texas, or our friends at Gedoni are in Atlanta, Georgia, and they have their infrastructures here.
00:43:15.420These importing companies employ thousands and thousands of people in those foreign countries to set up the gaming and create the whole thing.
00:43:25.160So they purport that they're U.S. companies, but most of their technology and HR and all their administration is in those foreign countries where they navigate for those foreign companies a very sophisticated and comprehensive structure and apparatus to come in and hijack American products and American consumers and ultimately American manufacturers of products through that entire apparatus.
00:43:55.160Marty, what is your – because I want to pivot to China where we've got time.
00:43:59.540What is your recommendation on all this, on both the importers and these foreign companies that are not playing by the rules and have their governments kind of shielding them?
00:44:08.920What's your recommendation that needs to be done?
00:44:10.680I think there's a variety of tariff instruments that need to be employed, what the Supreme Court did to the president calling this a tax is nonsense.
00:44:20.740than all the tariffs that Canada puts on us, 300% tariffs on cheese and butter, that's a tax on
00:44:26.720America? We're letting Canada tax America? Ask the Supreme Court about that. It's not a tax.
00:44:32.940It's a trade enforcement tool. They took it away from the hand of the president,
00:44:36.700and that was my key instrument. There are a variety of other tariffs. As the president said
00:44:41.920this morning, it becomes more laborious to get them accomplished. He will, but it's a lot of
00:44:46.820work. So we have to tariff. We have to, I think the reciprocal tariff program was righteous and
00:44:54.280it should have been expanded upon. And we have to get better work done by commerce and they're
00:45:00.020pretty well run. It's not commerce's fault. We got to get more teeth in there so that the subsidy
00:45:05.560anti-dumping and subsidy matters are at hand. And then parameters around, you don't sell
00:45:11.380the products you make in your country and you dump them in the US, you're paying a fee.
00:45:16.820because we can't even deal with the anti-dumping side of it when they don't even make markets in
00:45:21.180their own country for these products. And that's what they often do. And then they manipulate
00:45:26.560who the respondent is. So they take the highest priced product in the market, and there's always
00:45:33.320some good producers in these marketplaces that have economics that are closer to the United
00:45:40.160States because they're trying to do it right. And they're also trying to meet a higher end
00:45:43.960category. They use them as their respondents in the criteria for how to set the dumping
00:45:50.440and subsidy rates. We're working with the Commerce Department presently, and it's been
00:45:54.840very productive to change that. And they are working hard to do it. But I think we've got
00:46:00.580to be very aggressive on that front, Steve. Okay. I only got a couple of minutes. The
00:46:05.500Lighthires of Deal was supposed to take care of all the seven deadly sins that Navarro calls
00:46:11.040of the Chinese Communist Party, what had happened.
00:46:13.300They walked away from it, spit in our face, tore it up after two years.
00:46:21.380What would be your recommendation to President Trump that you know?
00:46:25.320Just give me a couple minutes of how he should comport himself
00:46:29.860with the Chinese Communist Party and Xi on matters of trade in his visit.
00:46:35.000Well, I think the number one thing they did to the Trump success of Trump 1.0 is they reverse fracked their materials through the entire rim.
00:46:45.600All they did then is move the nuclei from China and moved it into Thailand, Malaysia, Vietnam, even India.
00:46:53.560And I remember the Trade Commission saying, well, China won't get along with all those countries.
00:47:51.540There would have been more tenement squares had it not been for what we did in the World Trade Organization in 2001 under the Clinton-Bush partnership, as you call it, and kind of ratified by the Gingrich Congress as well.
00:48:05.720So we funded that dysfunction, and we should double down on that in Trump 2.0, and we should hold their feet to the fire, and we don't have to get along with them on trade.
00:48:16.860They're wrong. And their government is dysfunctional. And it's not a good form of government for people. They want to deploy that government. That's their business. But they shouldn't be doing it on the backs of the American middle class worker whose job they are robbing at the same time they're selling the product they robbed from them back to that worker in the middle class of America.
00:48:39.800So I think the president's got to get tougher with them, and we don't have to – he can get along with Xi and talk about a lot of things.
00:48:47.220When it comes to trade, I don't think I'd get along very much with Xi.
00:48:50.780He's been gaming the Trump tariffs and the success of 1.0 in very, very aggressive, expansive, and sophisticated ways since it happened, and they're still cheating and penetrating the U.S. markets, violating the WTO and violating a lot of the trade requirements.
00:49:09.060Do you believe I only got like 90 seconds. Do you believe they have leverage over us when it comes to rare earths, sir? Is that the leverage?
00:49:18.700Well, you know, yeah, I suppose I don't. People know a lot more about that than me, best at those type of people. But there's a lot of great rare earths in Africa. Get down to Africa. The African people, I was down there last year. They don't like China. They love America.
00:49:34.300There's other places in the world we must go, and then we have to hold their feet to the fire.
00:49:38.640And the rare earth thing is above my head.
00:49:41.360I'm sure there's things the president knows and the administration that I don't understand.
00:49:45.460But I think we have to, and the president has, aggressively pursue other rare earths around the world.
00:49:51.220I think America should be investing in Africa a great deal.
00:49:54.040It's a wonderful country of resource, and the people in Africa love America.
00:49:59.120But if you would tell the president right now, we don't need a trade deal.
00:50:02.380These guys are gaming it. They're gaming the system. You can't trust them. It's tough to enforce anything. They need us. We don't need them. Is that what I'm hearing?
00:50:10.760That's exactly what I would tell them, and I hope the president doesn't weaken in that posture because of the mistake, the terrible mistake that the Supreme Court made on IEPA.
00:50:22.220Marty Davis, how do people get to Cambria? How do they find out more about you?
00:50:25.840cambriausa.com and uh just understand that cambria wants to compete fairly and freely
00:50:32.640and earn our our business every day uh and so we're hopeful that we keep having a president
00:50:38.280like president trump and his team uh that ensure that type of of infrastructure for our businesses
00:50:44.740to compete in uh last thing the supreme court decision you agree was absolutely abysmal
00:50:50.860Yeah, it's a terrible decision. To call a tariff a tax, it's a trade enforcement tool.
00:50:57.600If you follow the history of the tariff, it's obvious what it is.
00:51:01.640And I argue the other countries tariff us. Like Canada, everybody's worried about Canada.
00:51:07.000I love Canada. I own land in Canada. But their government, their people aren't even happy up there.
00:51:12.580They can't even get our cell services up there. They block us. Their protection is on every level.
00:51:18.780They tariff us 300 percent on dairy products and lumber is like 100 percent or whatever.