RFK'S LATEST MOVE HAS FOOD COMPANIES TREMBLING
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Summary
FDA chief Marty McCary unleashes a new policy on petro substances in our foods. RFK Jr. takes aim at Big Pharma and the vaccine companies. Why would anyone be against the idea of investigating autism rates and why one in 36 of our children are born with autism?
Transcript
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Hello, everybody, and welcome to The Great America Show. It's great to have you with
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us today. The big story of the day, RFK Jr. is taking a hatchet, an ax, a saw, whatever
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you want to call it, to big medicine, to big ag, and to these big food producers who have
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been putting poison in our food for quite some time. He's also going after the vaccine
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companies. It's not just RFK. It's this entire Trump administration, the FDA heads, and people
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who are in charge of making America healthy again. Marty McCary, who is the head of the
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FDA, unleashing their new policy on petro substances in our foods. Take a listen to Marty McCary
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on with CNN this afternoon. I don't think we appreciated the potential risks to human health
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and child health when they were first introduced. Yellow dye number five, for example, was noted
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to be a bright, vibrant yellow color as the byproduct of coal tar in the coal ash, and then people
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decided to put it in fabric, and then they thought, well, we can put it in food. The studies have
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caught up with the introduction of these petroleum-based chemical food dyes, and the data doesn't look
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good. Studies have shown in association with ADHD, it also makes ultra-processed food look
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more attractive for young kids, messing with their minds where they feel full, and they want more of
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the food. And we've got an epidemic of childhood chronic diseases, so we are erring on the safe side
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and moving to remove these from the U.S. food supply. Now, if you talk to any Marxist, Dan, they'll tell
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you what they're doing to our FDA, what they're doing to HHS is terrible. Has nobody ever asked the
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question on how these dyes made it into our foods in the first place. You heard Marty McCary there,
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the yellow dye, which started going to coal ash, then went into clothing, is now in foods.
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Nobody ever thought to ask how it made it in there in the first place. Now, while McCary is working
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on that and RFK is taking lead in that, RFK is also taking lead in something, I think, way bigger
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than that. And it's the fact of investigating autism in this country and why states like California have
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rates that are exorbitant relative to every other state in the nation. And there's one common
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denominator, and it's that California has the highest vaccine mandates in the country. So RFK, along with
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the NIH, has now spearheaded an operation of looking into autism rates and what's driving them. Now, this
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is the same thing that I had mentioned with the Marxist Dems having outrage about. Why would anybody be
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against America, RFK Jr., the NIH, the FDA, HHS, looking into autism rates and why one in 36 are now born
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with autism in this country? There's only one thing that I can think of on why anyone would be against
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it, and it's big health, big pharma. The medicines that they put into our children who are born with
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autism, the money the government makes off, the money these government contracts make off of it.
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And it's something very simple. If you solve the problem, then it no longer needs to be fixed anymore.
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And I think that's what these bureaucrats and you keep hearing me say big pharma are so worried about. And
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these are things that you don't hear about on Fox News. You don't hear about on CNN or MSNBC. And it can only
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be for one reason. And that reason is advertisers. You talk about this stuff when pharma, you can't turn on a
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television show, by the way, without seeing an ad for Ozempic or seeing an ad for AstraZeneca or something or for
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Pfizer or something. Take my word for it or go turn on a television set and see if you can get through
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an hour long show without seeing one ad from big pharma. So the only thing I can think of is that big
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pharma and you see what they've done when medical marijuana was introduced into society. When people
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were told, maybe if you take marijuana or cannabis products, it'll ease your pain. You saw the blowback
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from big pharma, from the makers of Vicodins and Oxycontin and Percocets, that something was
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created that can take away someone's pain without the addictiveness of it. You look at the lawsuits
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Purdue Pharma has settled over the last five, 10 years. I mean, numbers that we've never seen before
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because they're dumping poisons into people, making it addictive, making people get hooked on it.
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And now you've got this drug epidemic in this country that's spiraled out of control that nobody
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really knows how to fix. So if you simply just follow the money and you follow the money trail,
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most of it leads back to big pharma. And we'll leave it with that. President Trump says he's getting
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calls from all around the world on trade. Everyone wants to make a deal with America. Take a listen to
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president. They all want to be involved with America. And we have a lot of action going on.
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We have we're making a lot of money. This country, this country is not going to be losing money on
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trade anymore. We were losing two trillion dollars a year on trade. Now we're going to be making money,
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a lot of money. So that's very good. Every country wants to partake, even countries that have ripped
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us off for many, many years. China is an example, but it's not just China. European Union,
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they ripped us off for many, many years. And those days are over. We're going to make a lot
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of money for our people. We'll be able to lower taxes substantially. And we're going to be proud
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of ourselves. I'm not going to be a laughingstock that got taken advantage of by virtually every
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country in the world. Markets this week, rebounding, rebounding several thousand points
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from Lowe's seen as Wall Street reacts to every single thing that happens, every single word that
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comes out of President Trump's mouth to get a better sense on what's going on economically in
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the world, what's going on economically here at home, what's going on with tariffs. I asked our
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friend John Lonsky, the CEO and founder of the Lonsky Group, brilliant economist, to join us today
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to give us a little update and an outlook on where we're going and where we are. John, it's great to
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have you back with us here in the Great America Show. Last time you and I spoke, it was like the world
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that was on fire. Nobody knew if the stock market was going to be there tomorrow or what it was going
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to be doing tomorrow. It seems now, just a few weeks later, as anything in the Trump administration,
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if they're able to do something and do it fast, if anyone's able to do it, it's them.
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It seems the market's maybe now taking a little bit of a turn for the better, at least better from
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what we've seen over the last few weeks. Give the audience a sense of what exactly is going on right
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now. What is driving the markets? Well, the equity market has concluded that Donald Trump is not
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an idiot. He is not going to allow his approach to tariffs drive the U.S. economy into a recession
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that would also be accompanied, perhaps, by a short-term burst of price inflation. He will not
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let that happen. He's going to be flexible. And for that, he deserves some praise. We want to have
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leaders that are bold, but also flexible, that are willing to go ahead and take a risk. And if the risk
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entails too much downside, then make needed adjustments. I think that's an important
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consideration. I want to add one thing that's interesting. Everybody overlooked this. All the while,
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we had all this equity market volatility and the stocks selling off, you know, some days two and a
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half percent, three percent, whatever it might be. Throughout this entire period, the corporate bond
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market was relatively calm. The corporate bond market has a measure of default risk. I'm not going to go
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into it and explain it, but this measure of default risk never made it up to its long-term average,
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despite the fact that we're getting these severe sell-offs on the equity side every now and then
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that made it look as though recession was inevitable. So real quick, John, for the audience,
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explain to them what that would mean if the bond markets did make it to that point.
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If they became as nervous as the equity market, that would shut off credit to businesses.
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And you'd have a seizing up of credit. And that seizing up of credit by itself perhaps would be
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enough to help push the U.S. economy into a recession. The measure I'm talking about is simply,
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it's called the junk bond yield spread. It is the difference between the average yield of junk bonds
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and the yield of comparably dated treasury bonds, that particular difference. When we're going into a
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recession, that difference will be at about seven percentage points. In other words, junk bond
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yields on average will be about seven percentage points, if not more, higher than treasury bond
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yields. On average, that's about four and a half percent throughout the cycle. I think maybe only one
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day, maybe two trading days did we manage to barely top that average. And the last time I looked,
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that particular spread was at four percentage points, which again is well under its long-term
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average of four and a half percentage points. So the corporate bond market is worried about the ability
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of companies to make good on their interest payments, good on their debt servicing obligations.
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From what I can see, the corporate bond market never came close to panicking. If, you know,
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anything, it behaved in a manner that was indicative of normality. And the corporate bond market was
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assuming that Donald Trump is not a crazy man, he's not an idiot, and he's not going to let his
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tariff policy drive the U.S. into a recession. If he did, that might destroy the rest of his presidency.
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Yeah, of course. Correct me if I'm wrong, but the bond market sort of leads the way for everything
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else, right? So once you see the bond market start to take a little bit of a turn, then you should
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probably be a little bit more nervous for, say, housing markets, credit markets, for stock markets.
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Is that a correct answer? Yeah. Ultimately, you know, if you're a shareholder, the last thing you
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want to do is have your company go into bankruptcy, because in that event, the value of your common
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equity is zero. It's nothing. No. OK. And if you find out that the bond market is not very worried
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about a broad based rise in bankruptcies, well, that's telling you that maybe we should be able
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to ride off the storm and that maybe some of these pundits on the equity side or economists have gotten
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carried away with their predictions of a recession because those predictions were based on Trump
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rigidly adhering to what early on was a dramatic increase by tariffs. He was only using that as
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a negotiating tool. Yeah, but Wall Street doesn't ever take everything they do. They take for something
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that's supposed to be based on such speculation as is Wall Street. They take everything pretty damn
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literally. John, he puts these tariffs on and these people absolutely go into a tailspin.
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They sell off. They sell off. They sell off. That's the thing that is really perplexes the
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hell out of me is they know Donald Trump. They know Donald Trump from 2016 to 2020. They know his
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economic policies. They know he know what he's doing. And they know now this time around that he
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has a way stronger team and Scott Besson and Howard Lutnick doing his bidding on the trade side,
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on the economic side. They know very well, why do the markets react to every little thing by the minute?
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Well, part of that is because a lot of stocks are purchased on margin. They're purchased with
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borrowed money. And when stocks begin to fall, you get a margin call. And so investors that find that
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their debt finance stocks are falling in price, have to come up with cash in order to please the
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lender, whoever made the margin loan. And that leads to some selling in the equity market. That
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would explain part of it. It's just, you know, the equity market is very sensitive to news, much more
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so than the less liquid corporate bond market. We do have momentum buying on the way up in the equity
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market. And on the way down, we often run into momentum selling. There's a much also, you know,
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a much greater presence of the retail investor, the smaller investor in the equity market than in
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John, let's turn to the big picture of this all. And that's trade with nations who have taken
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advantage of us for years. Take a listen to President Trump yesterday addressing that.
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Clarify, Mr. President, on China. Are you thinking about, are you thinking about lowering
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their tariffs? Fair deal with China. It's going to be fair. Are you talking to them actively now?
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Actively. Everything's active. Everybody wants to be a part of what we're doing.
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They know that they can't get away with it any longer, but they're still going to do fine.
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And we're going to have a country that you can be proud of, not a laughing stock all over the
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world for many years. You know, in 1913, they traded to the income tax system. We used to be all
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tariffs and we had no income tax and we had the wealthiest country proportionately from about 1870
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to 1913. It was all tariffs. And we did, we had more money than anybody. They had committees,
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how to spend the money. They had so much money they didn't know how to spend. Then some brilliant
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person said, let's go income tax. Let's let the people pay. Now we're going to be able to
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substantially lower taxes when this is finished. He ended there with a banger, John. And if lower
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taxes doesn't boom the hell out of the market, then I don't know what does. Let's talk about
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this a little bit on the big picture scale on what President Trump really wants and his end goal. He
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wants to cut taxes on, I think the number they said was people making $150,000 on less down to zero if
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they could. He said yesterday, he's not in favor of any new tax. We've heard in the past that he may
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be interested in upping the tax rate on the rich. He said yesterday, that's not the case. He doesn't
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want to look at that. So big picture, John, he wants to level the playing field with trade and he wants
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to balance a tax system so that the middle class American who's living on $50,000 a year isn't giving
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away half their paycheck and isn't getting bludgeoned. Yeah, that's wrong. If the middle class
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American who lives in New York State or California is giving close to 50 percent of their income each
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year, which who knows that well might be the case, move it in the right direction. In that sense,
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you want to get rid of unfair trade practices by foreign countries. China, unfair labor practices,
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that's very bad. You want to have a situation where U.S. industry is protected from potential
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dumping of overproduced goods in China. Remember, China isn't run by a market system. China's not a
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democracy. I mean, China's a controlled economy. Right now, China has something like a million
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more electric vehicles than they could possibly sell in that country at this point in time.
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China would love to dump these EVs on the United States and Europe, but that would be horrible
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because that would do a lot of damage to our nascent electric vehicle industry here in the United
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States. National security, my goodness, this is of the utmost importance. What in the world are we
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doing if we're so dependent on China, a belligerent country towards the United States for pharmaceuticals
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and other important materials? It might be steel, rare earth metals, and so on. You know,
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help take care of that problem. Tariffs are not going to do the trick. We also need tax incentives
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here in the United States so that companies expand their production facilities related to drugs,
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pharmaceuticals. It might be steel. It might be aluminum. We should also soften some of these
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environmental restrictions that make it difficult to build manufacturing facilities, environmental
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restrictions that make it difficult to mine for rare earth minerals. We have to do this
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just for national security's sake. It goes all over the place.
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Just as we're talking right now, a wire just came through. A dozen states sued Trump administration to
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stop their tariff policy. I'm just going to read through this real quickly so we can get your reaction
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to this. Trump sued, the administration sued in the U.S. Court of International Trade in New York
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on Wednesday to stop its tariff policy, saying it's unlawful and has brought chaos to the American
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economy. We're not even going to talk about Joe Biden and what he did to the economy over the last
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four years. The lawsuit said that policy put in place by President Donald J. Trump has left the
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national trade policy subject to Trump's whims rather than sound exercise of lawful authority.
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The states that are included are Oregon, Arizona, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois,
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Maine, Minnesota, Nevada, New Mexico, New York, and Vermont. Now, John, the common denominator in all
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those are run by Marxist Dems. I'm sitting in Arizona right now as we speak. It's truly troubling
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because with the exception of, I think, Arizona, Oregon has an absolute massive deficit, drug problem,
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homeless problem. Colorado is another one. Connecticut, everyone knows Connecticut's
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just a highway between New York and Boston. Delaware, Illinois, I saw yesterday the mayor of
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Chicago has an approval rating of 7% as they look at a massive deficit that they can't afford to get
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into. Minnesota, Nevada, New Mexico, and New York of all people. Tish James, really? I mean,
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why can't these people, John, just let this man sit back and do what he's going to do? Let him do his
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job. We all dealt with four years of turmoil and chaos and embarrassment on the world stage.
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This man's been in office, John, for three months, four months now, I guess, right? January,
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February, March, going in April. Give the guy some time to fix this thing. It's not going to happen
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overnight. The height of hypocrisy, my goodness. This is the same party that's responsible for
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allowing 11 million illegal immigrants into the United States. Allegedly 11 million, John.
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You know, I heard that. I think the entire, all the Democrats in Congress are headed to El Salvador.
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Let him stay there. Great idea. It's such a joke. It's such a farce. My goodness. Give me a break.
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New York is an absolute mess. I, you know, I would be shocked if the people of New York state
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are stupid enough to return the Democrats to power after the mess that they made.
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Here we have upstate New York. They're, oh my goodness, they're struggling. And yet in the
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southern tier of New York, they have these vast deposits of natural gas that should be kept
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via fracking to help reduce the sky high utility bills that you're paying to Con Edison. I mean,
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this is just absolute nonsense. And also, you know, the horrible energy policy of the Biden
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administration, whether you like it or not, helped to build up the coffers of Iran and of Russia.
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And as Russia and Iran had more money, they could go ahead and finance what happened on October 7th in
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Israel. They and Russia could go ahead and finance what they did to Ukraine. And now they're telling
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the Ukrainians that, no, keep on fighting, guys. Keep on fighting. But we're not sending our kids
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It's truly a disgrace. Not one of those governors. I think there's only one of them who's made money
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on his own, and it wasn't even his. It was his daddy's money is J.B. Pritzker of Illinois. But
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not one of those governors, John, can shine the shoes of anyone in this Trump administration,
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nor do they have the IQ or brainpower that these people have. Scott Besson, I mentioned, who's running
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massive amounts of things for President Trump right now in the Treasury, was over in speaking about the
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World Bank, pretty much telling these people, we're done. You guys, with your woke policies of
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green energy and all this nonsense is over. We're done writing bank checks. Take a listen to Besson
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yesterday. The World Bank must be tech neutral and prioritize affordability and energy investment.
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In most cases, this means investing in gas and other fossil fuel-based energy production.
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In other cases, this may mean investing in renewable energy coupled with systems to help manage the
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intermittency of wind and solar. The history of humanity teaches a simple lesson. Energy abundance
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sparks economic abundance. That's why the bank should encourage an all-of-the-above approach to energy
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development. John, give me your sense on Besson going after the world, Brian, going after the
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globalists. By the way, he's over there speaking to us. Klaus Schwab steps down from the World Economic
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Forum, is now under investigation for financial crimes, possibly. But these are the people, John,
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we've looked up to over the course of the last quarter century.
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Look what we got for it, my goodness. Unaffordable energy, wars popping up here and there. What good
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did it do? I don't know. And Scott Besson, what he's emphasizing is the need to conduct cost-benefit
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analysis when looking at policy choices. And that's something that Scott Besson is very aware of when he's
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looking at the role of tariffs as far as improving national security, as far as re-industrializing
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the U.S. economy, and as far as getting a level playing field in international trade, believe me.
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You know, as a brief aside, I've become interested in Greenland because Trump has spoken about annexing
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Greenland. So I was reading about it, and believe it or not, you know, back in the time of Leif
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Erickson, this is about 1000 AD, Greenland's climate was warmer than it is today. And that's
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without fossil fuels. There's no burning of oil or coal. How could that be? So, I mean, that brings
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us back to the point that we could be spending a lot of money trying to limit carbon emissions and
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find out that that is not the only change taking place that's increasing carbon dioxide in the
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atmosphere, that there may indeed be something else at work, may not be the only change taking place
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that's raising the world's temperature. Yeah. Anything to, you know, I always thought it was
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a scam, but you know when I really thought it was a scam and when I figured out it was a scam,
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I said to myself, why should we have to spend millions of dollars and hundreds and tens of millions
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of dollars into a year into a climate agenda? If you're going to cut your emissions, you're just
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going to do it, right? You shouldn't have to pay into something called the Paris Climate Accord
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or donate tens of millions of dollars to underdeveloped nations. And that's what I said
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to myself, something doesn't seem right. If we're sitting here doling out hundreds of millions of
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dollars a year to cut greenhouse gases, something doesn't make sense.
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John, I want to turn to the U.S. dollar. It was something that Scott Besson also brought up
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and the importance, obviously, for the powerful, the strength of the U.S. dollar. Take a listen to
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to Besson. To me, the strong dollar means having the policies in place to deserve capital flows
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and have confidence. But it doesn't mean the price on the Bloomberg screen every day.
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And it also has different meanings in terms of bilateral prices.
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Your thoughts, John, on the U.S. dollar. As we were talking before the show, the dollar up today,
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about a percent, as you pointed out to me. The U.S. dollar remains the world's vehicle
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currency, and that is of the utmost importance to the U.S. economy. You know, as long as the U.S.
00:25:26.680
Treasury bond market serves as the benchmark credit market for global financial markets,
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we perhaps have no reason to fear that the U.S. dollar will soon be replaced by China's currency
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or some other currency as the world's dominant currency. And to be quite frank about this, I mean,
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if we ever come to that day where we find that the dollar has been toppled, given the fact that we
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have these gargantuan budget deficits, we would quickly discover that our interest rates would soar
00:26:03.360
higher. But that really hasn't happened. People talk about the sell-off of the Treasury bond market.
00:26:08.340
My goodness, Treasury bond yields were higher in early January. There were about 4.8% for the 10-year
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yield when it was thought that Trump's policies were going to fuel a very strong potentially upturn
00:26:23.120
by U.S. economic activity compared to the recent highs. The recent high for the 10-year yield
00:26:28.700
perhaps wasn't much above 4.5%, maybe as high as 4.6%, but well under that high of January 2025.
00:26:39.800
The important, I think, market watch to have been watching all the time on the credit side
00:26:45.160
wasn't so much a Treasury bond market. You had to look at the corporate bond market. And in that market,
00:26:50.920
there was simply no sense of panic. And by the way, a Treasury bond yield that's not setting new 52-week
00:26:57.760
highs does not reflect a Treasury bond market that is under a great deal of selling pressure and thus
00:27:04.460
is worthy of tremendous worry. Well, if you listen to MSNBC, everything you just said is not true.
00:27:11.540
But those people are far dumber than you. John, you're an economist, probably more qualified to
00:27:18.040
run the Fed than Jerome Powell is right now. Donald Trump is having a very big problem with Powell.
00:27:24.880
And we spoke about this last time. Before the election, before the election in November, John,
00:27:29.660
he played with the rates whenever he had to play with the rates. They dumped money and bought back
00:27:34.200
as much as they needed to buy back on Treasuries. Now Donald Trump's in office. He seems to not be
00:27:39.980
doing his job, doesn't care to do his job. Donald Trump's had enough of him. It's unclear if he
00:27:44.180
could fire him or not. But if there's anybody who can fire someone, it's certainly Donald Trump.
00:27:49.620
If you're the chairman of the Fed right now, John, what are you doing with rates? Are you holding tight?
00:27:54.700
Are you cutting? Are you looking at a short-term cut? Are you looking at something immediate?
00:27:59.980
What are you doing right now, immediately, if you're the chairman of the Fed?
00:28:04.220
Here's the problem. When I look at the data, this is what I see.
00:28:07.820
Consumer sentiment is down. Businesses are more jittery. But all the while, the economy continues
00:28:14.920
to grow. Jobs continue to surprise on the upside. Retail sales were very strong in the month of
00:28:21.740
March. So what do I do? I just sit tight. And I want to have some evidence that at long last,
00:28:30.880
business spending and consumer spending and hiring activity are following the path taken by
00:28:37.220
consumer sentiment and business sentiment. And that hasn't happened yet. I want to go back to
00:28:43.340
Powell, though. Prior to Trump, Jerome Powell was guilty of errors of omission. You know, we had a
00:28:52.160
gargantuan budget deficit before Trump took office. We had a budget deficit at nearly $2 trillion.
00:28:58.640
What does that mean? The U.S. government was spending nearly $2 trillion more than it took
00:29:05.060
in in terms of revenues. And there was an award going on. There was no recession. There was no
00:29:09.880
excuse for that deficit. That deficit was in large part, you know, reflective of this hangover from
00:29:17.200
excess COVID spending on the welfare side, the transfer payments, as well as, you know,
00:29:24.640
government support for green energy. We would throw that in, too. And yet, not a peep out of Jerome
00:29:32.020
Powell. No, I cannot criticize the federal budget deficit because I'm supposed to be apolitical.
00:29:38.480
But the minute Trump gets elected, he becomes a political animal.
00:29:43.620
This is trying to stop. These tariffs are horrible. My goodness, this deficit, we have to be worried
00:29:49.600
You know, it's the same. It was the same thing with Janet Yellen. You know, six years ago,
00:29:54.580
seven years ago, you'd almost think what you believe. Janet Yellen was when Lou Dobbs was asked
00:30:00.720
back under Trump's first administration who you'd have running the Treasury. He actually said Yellen
00:30:07.040
wouldn't be a bad choice. You now see this woman who's taken a complete. Now, thank God she's out of
00:30:11.760
government, but who took like a complete 180. She sounded level-headed seven, eight years ago.
00:30:16.660
She comes into the Biden administration, John, and this woman is as woke as, I mean, any of these
00:30:22.440
purple-haired, blue-haired people you see on the streets of New York running Teslas.
00:30:26.720
You know, that's so correct. And I can't help but be impressed that we get these reports of
00:30:32.180
disagreements between high-ranking officials in the Trump administration. They argue with each
00:30:38.580
other. Besson's arguing with Musk, and Musk is arguing with Rubio. They're having these fights,
00:30:43.860
you know, there's a little bit of, and that's good. There's some competition that we know about.
00:30:48.760
But on the other hand, with the Democratic Party, if whoever it is that runs a Democratic Party says,
00:30:55.700
you have to say this or nothing else, you must obey those rules, must obey those standards.
00:31:00.760
You have to agree with what we say about green energy, what we say about DEI, what we say about ESG.
00:31:08.220
You can't go ahead and stray from the party line. This is why I really don't have any respect for a
00:31:14.540
lot of economists who are sworn to the, you know, they're sworn allegiance to the Democratic Party,
00:31:20.580
because for all I know, they're basically, if you like, crippled by this need to be narrowly focused
00:31:29.260
on an ideology that you are forbidden to stray from. That's sad. That's undemocratic.
00:31:35.960
John, it's not just economists who have sold out over the last 10 years. It's lawyers. I mean,
00:31:42.060
it's accountants. It's priests. I mean, it's so many people, John, across the board that you're
00:31:47.580
absolutely right. The Marxist Democrat wing of the party has brought these people to a place that they
00:31:53.240
can't return. And people like Janet Yellen, it's a woman who ruined her legacy for what reason? For
00:31:58.100
Joe Biden, a man who was barely alive. John, before we wrap up, I want to get your take.
00:32:02.700
Give me some, you had mentioned indicators on where the economy is going. So last time we spoke,
00:32:07.980
you'd said it's possible we're heading towards a recession, maybe early midsummer. I want to give
00:32:14.040
you a chance to either double down or take a new stance on where your mind's at based on what's
00:32:21.420
happened over the last few weeks. And number two, are there any big key indicators, any big numbers
00:32:27.340
coming out, jobs, Fed numbers over the next few weeks that will give us a definitive answer on
00:32:34.480
where we're going? Well, Friday, May 3rd, you get the jobs report. You know, we keep hearing about all
00:32:40.620
of these layoffs in the federal government, but still initial state jobless claims remain at
00:32:46.280
historically low levels. We'll see what happens there. I don't really know of, you know, widespread
00:32:54.300
job cutbacks in the corporate sector, though occasionally you read about cutbacks here or
00:32:59.680
there. But a lot of these cutbacks are just a bit of normal part of, you know, getting rid of people
00:33:06.500
because they're underperforming or the business is headed in a different direction. You keep a close
00:33:13.120
eye on what's happening with consumer spending on retail sales. I just, you know, I just don't see
00:33:20.300
where retail sales are slumping in a manner that would significantly increase the risk of an impending
00:33:29.480
recession. And I, the flexibility again, exhibited by the Trump administration with tariffs, I think
00:33:37.760
is important. The minute they begin to believe that these tariffs are going to lead to sharply higher
00:33:44.480
prices, empty short store shelves, and a loss of jobs, I think that they will tone down their
00:33:53.800
approach to tariffs very quickly. They'll at least temporarily show more flexibility or maybe choose
00:34:01.060
to adopt a different strategy. For instance, why not go to China? If you want to send all of these
00:34:06.720
products to the United States, why don't you come here and set up factories like the Japanese did with
00:34:12.120
with automobiles so that not everything is made in China. As in the case of Japan, not all cars made
00:34:18.220
by Japanese car companies were made in Japan and so on. So there's, you know, there's room for, I think,
00:34:23.620
negotiations. There's different approaches you can take in order to try to mitigate imbalances,
00:34:30.940
unsustainable imbalances that come about because of chronically huge trade deficits.
00:34:37.980
So it sounds you're a lot more optimistic than the last time we spoke.
00:34:42.400
Yeah, a little bit more optimistic, I think so. I'm just, you know, I'm looking at what's going,
00:34:46.380
what's happening with the market. And as I said earlier, I was shocked that the corporate bond
00:34:52.280
market has yet to drive yields up to levels relative to treasury yields that otherwise might
00:34:59.020
warn of hard times ahead, economically speaking. Do I think we're going to have very strong economic
00:35:06.100
growth later this year? I don't think so. I think that's going to be hard to pull off,
00:35:09.980
if only because we already have a relatively tight labor market. If you don't have the excess supply of
00:35:18.040
labor, it's really hard to have the economy grow at something close to 3% indefinitely without risking
00:35:29.520
John Lonsky, it's always great talking with you, always insightful. The CEO and founder of the Lonsky
00:35:36.300
Group. Thanks for everything. Thanks for giving the audience some insight and hoping to sleep better
00:35:41.720
at night. I want to end with one point. Elon Musk is set to probably leave the White House and head
00:35:47.880
back into Tesla around May. If I were Donald Trump, I would give Elon Musk the ultimatum. I want the
00:35:55.140
federal government to no longer be the largest employer of American workers, and then you can go.
00:36:00.960
You cannot leave until the American government is no longer the largest employer in America.
00:36:06.920
That's important. And also, it's important that Elon Musk introduced modern technology to the
00:36:12.000
federal government so that they could operate much more efficiently. I think there's room for that.
00:36:16.800
They're perhaps using outdated IT systems and so on. And there's probably a lot of redundancies in
00:36:24.120
Washington. People that are basically performing the same task performed by somebody else in a
00:36:30.260
different federal agency. You want to get rid of that as soon as possible.
00:36:34.760
Redundance. Redundancies, to me, sounds like a waste of money.
00:36:38.380
Yeah. If you got a $2 trillion deficit, I think it's time for some belt tightening.
00:36:44.820
Tell me about it. John, we'll talk to you soon. Thanks so much for joining us today.
00:36:50.320
Thanks to John Lansky, and thank you all for being with us today here on The Great America Show. We'll
00:36:53.940
see you back here tomorrow for The Great America Show, where our quest for truth, justice, and the
00:36:57.780
American way continues. Until then, may God bless you, may God bless America, and may God bless the