There are 18 very important trading relationships. We are currently negotiating with 17 of those trading partners. China we have not engaged in negotiations with as of yet. [00:00:17] So today, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent admitted in a congressional hearing that the United States and China are not actually engaged in any kind of trade negotiations. And that might be a little bit surprising to some of you, because Trump has [00:00:32] been suggesting that that is exactly what has been happening, and we will show you those receipts in just a little bit. But, Jake, did you expect that negotiations with China were going to take this long to get off the ground? Because we've been hearing since he first launched into these tariffs and caught all of that immediate backlash that, don't worry, they're banging [00:00:51] down my door trying to negotiate with me. Yeah. Okay. So there's two parts of the story. One is the hilarious lies that they were caught in. So we're in the middle of negotiations. It's happening. Right? Okay. Didn't even talk to them once. Okay. So we'll get to some of the receipts on that in a second. [00:01:07] And then the second part of the story is wait, are these tariffs really going to stay around. Because now some Trump supporters are like I'm hurt dog. Don't ask me if I'm all right. And does he have a plan. You know what the answer to that is. But so let's air it all out. [00:01:24] Let's see the Republicans who are starting to panic, and, and whether they actually are negotiating or not. So. Yes. Give us the details. Yeah. So there has been some debate as to whether or not the United States and China are actually having these talks that Trump has been, trumping, [00:01:41] toting, toting about for a while. So here's reporting from the New York Times. It says. In an interview with time, Trump said she had called him, though he declined to say when and asserted that his team was in active talks with China on a trade deal. Asked about the interview outside the white House. [00:01:58] The president reiterated that he had spoken with the Chinese president numerous times, but he refused to answer when pressed on whether any call had happened after he imposed tariffs this month. So when Trump asked about negotiations today, [00:02:13] things sounded a little bit different. Take a look. When you have a secretary said that there had been no negotiations with China, you have said something different. They want to meet, but they want to negotiate, and they want to have a meeting and we'll, we'll we'll be meeting with them at the right time. [00:02:30] - But you haven't met with them yet? - I have not met with them. Well, you know what Trump says we are playing the long game here, right? We got to deal with the short term pain for the long term gain. And he is insisting that even if trade completely stops between the United States [00:02:46] and China, it will be a net positive. So look at that. And by not trading we're losing nothing. So we're he's saving $1 trillion. It's a lot. We're losing more than $5 billion a day. $5 billion a day. [00:03:04] You don't talk about that. And right now, we're going to be at a point very soon where we're making money every day. Look how soon we were losing hundreds of billions of dollars with China. Now we're essentially not doing business with China. [00:03:21] Therefore, we're saving hundreds of billions of dollars. Very simple. Is it is it that simple? Also, why does he speak that way? He's very hard to listen to. But. Okay, but let's take a look at what the actual implications of these tariffs are. [00:03:36] This is from CNN. Says ships now pulling into U.S. Harbors from China are the first to be subject to the massive tariffs that America is imposing on most Chinese imports. Many of them are half full. That means in a matter of weeks, consumers will face higher prices [00:03:53] and shortages of certain items. So yeah, a lot of people are saying, you know, all these prices are supposed to spike. I'm not seeing it. It's going to be a little bit of a delayed reaction. And that delay seems to be catching up with us very shortly. So in the meantime, Americans are continuing to buy goods [00:04:09] that were previously warehoused in the United States, but those stockpiles are starting to run out. Imports to the United States during the second half of 2025 are expected to fall at least 20% year over year, according to the National Retail Federation. [00:04:25] The decline from China will be even starker. JP Morgan expects a 75 to 80% drop in imports from there. Yesterday, a Trump supporting owner of a clothing store actually begged the president to help out small businesses just like his. [00:04:41] Take a look at this. President Trump, as a longtime supporter of your mission and to make America great again, I want to be a part of that with you. But We e-commerce companies all across the United States. We need more time. Give us a 90 day off ramp to get off of our China goods and just tell us the plan. [00:05:01] If you tell us the plan, we can operate and we can know what to do. The hard part about everything that's happening right now is we're trying to manage our business from day to day, and that's very difficult. And a lot of small businesses, they don't have the cash flow to get through a 90 day [00:05:16] negotiation, and it's going to devastate a lot of businesses like cuts. You know, I'm in a group chat with $1 billion worth of small businesses, and there's several in there that are telling me, hey, Stephen, 30 days or 60 days, we're not we might not be able to make it. [00:05:32] There's been too many adjustments to the supply chain that are just being really devastating on our business. 145% is essentially an embargo. And by cutting off, our, our products to be able to sell them, it's going to be really difficult. [00:05:49] It's almost a little bit sad to watch him. I can't tell if I feel bad for him because he said that he's been a long time supporter of Trump and of MAGA, but I don't know what he expected was going to happen. Also, I've said it before for a presidential administration to enact all these widespread tariffs on an entire population, not just here in [00:06:09] the United States, but around the world. You can't just do something without having some kind of contingencies in place, some ways that are going to support the populace, the people who are going to be most affected by it. All of this feels very slapdash and very irresponsibly laid out. [00:06:27] They just did it and said, whatever happens, happens. And they didn't seem to have any considerations for the business owners or just a regular, average people who are going to be the most negatively impacted by all these tariffs. And that's really just most of Americans. Whenever you consider that we're all going to see the prices [00:06:43] at the grocery stores going up, if they haven't happened already very, very soon. Jake, what do you think? I mean, this is obviously very disingenuous coming from the, from the Trump administration, but where do you think we're headed with all of this? What are your thoughts generally about these tariffs [00:07:00] now that things are the what what is it. What do they say. The roosters are going to come home to roost. That's not it. But you know. Chickens going to come home to roost. So okay. So let's dive into it first Trump, then this brother from, cuts. [00:07:15] Because I think he's a really interesting example. So I want to walk you through how his business is going to get affected because it's going to affect so many other businesses and the entire economy. So first, on Trump, he says, China's been calling me. No, they haven't. They put out a statement saying, no, seriously, we haven't called Trump at all [00:07:34] and we have no interest in calling Trump. And so they keep saying, no, it's okay, we're winning this one. China thinks, brother, we got a 100 year plan. You're going to be out of office in three and a half years. I mean, even if the tariffs lasted that long, which there's no way in the world [00:07:49] that they will have at it, Hoss, because what the Chinese are saying are saying and thinking is, we thought this through, and I bet you haven't, and I bet you're not ready to brace for impact and have all the different economic consequences hit the US and brush it off. [00:08:07] And I think that the Chinese are unfortunately correct. Trump has not thought it through as his supporter. There is beginning to figure it out. It is going to be very painful. We are not going to be able to withstand the pain. And so then he'll have done damage not just to the economy, but to the cause of tariffs and even reciprocal tariffs with China, [00:08:26] which we should have done a long time ago. Reciprocal is hey, you do 10%, I do 10%, not you do 10%. I do 145%, because when you do 145%, as a lot of these folks are saying, that businessman said it as well. In the long version of the interview, 145% is an embargo that you can't. [00:08:44] That's not a thing you could do. So like, let's say that he's selling a shirt and let's say it's a high end shirt. It's $100. Right. So and normally he gets it from China for make up a number here $50. Right. Okay 145% tariffs. All of a sudden that shirt's worth [00:09:00] you know is cost to him is near $125. But he's selling it for 100. So it doesn't make any sense. He has to double it because that's usually how it works in retail. So now the shirt he was selling for 100, he's got to sell for 250. [00:09:19] Well nobody's going to buy that shirt. So that's an embargo. That's not a tariff right. So now when you if you believe in tariffs that are reciprocal or targeted towards specific manufacturing base, we're all screwed. That's never going to happen after Trump because the idea of tariffs [00:09:35] is going to be so poisoned after all this, after it crashes the economy, which is the next part that I'm super curious about, because I feel like either I'm missing something, or the rest of the country is missing something because we buy an extraordinary amount of stuff from China, [00:09:55] and they're all going to be, in essence, embargoed. I don't think we realize the iceberg we're about to hit. Like everybody's like like there's a little bit of panic in the business world. [00:10:10] For small businesses, there are bigger panic in affected industries. Bigger panic. But the stock market, I'm shocked, is not cratering. Soon, I think there's going to be tons and tons of empty shelves or products that are so expensive that they're totally unviable. [00:10:28] So that's not a small amount of stuff that we buy from China. All right. Let's see how it turns out. Because my sense is this will be way more catastrophic than people realize. But the brother from cuts is beginning to realize how catastrophic it is to his business. So let me go back to that example for a second. [00:10:45] So why is he asking for 90 days? Because he's like, look, if I if I'm going to buy from China, all of a sudden the $50 shirt is $125, I can't do it. So and then when Jake Tapper asked him about, well, why don't you just buy from America? He's like, oh, we haven't been doing that in so long. Textiles. [00:11:01] In fact, not only are we more expensive in America, but unfortunately our quality has gone backwards and the China and other places are very high tech, so their quality has gone up. This is not my words. That's his words. He's a Trump supporter okay. And so he's got to go buy it from somewhere else. [00:11:18] So he's got to go figure out, hey is there a price I could afford from Sweden or or, you know, Cambodia, I don't know any country that doesn't have 145% tariff. So he's in a panic right now, because if he can't, then no one's going to buy [00:11:33] his shirts and he's going to go broke. Like, not in like two years from now in like two months from now. And what happens if that happens on a mass scale, which I kind of think probably will happen very soon. Do you think we can withstand that? No. People are going to be super angry. [00:11:54] And you know Trump, he's a flip flopper. He doesn't know anything. He throws things up against the wall and see if it sticks. And this ain't going to stick. So he's going to flip flop. But there are a ton of damage is going to be done. One more thing here. It's interesting actually two more things because even his own supporters like [00:12:10] that brother voted for him, even though Trump talked about tariffs, like there's a lot of things he didn't talk about. He didn't say, oh, I'm not going to follow due process. So if you elect me, I'm you know, I'm going to tear up the. I think he indicated that he hated the Constitution, didn't care about it and wanted to terminate. [00:12:25] He even said it once, but I couldn't get anyone to believe me, right? I couldn't get anyone to focus on how much he hates the Constitution and doesn't care. He just wants to be an authoritarian leader. But what's interesting is that his own voters and supporters, even on things he did say, like, I'm going to tariff the hell out of people. [00:12:44] They didn't really believe him since he lies so much and trolls so much and says such nonsensical things. They just started doing wish fulfillment, right? Like putting their wishes onto Trump, not really listening to what he's saying because, you know, three quarters of what he says isn't true. [00:13:02] Now, come to find out, he actually did mean it about tariffs. And they're like, what the hell? I didn't know you really meant it. That'll totally destroy my business. If he knew about this earlier, would he have voted for Trump? I mean, unless he's an idiot and doesn't like his business and would like to go broke, he probably wouldn't have. [00:13:17] Right. So the fact that he's such an enormous liar and that his own voters don't believe him is such an interesting phenomenon. Which leads us back to the original line that you saw in that clip. You know, we're losing 5 million a day, and if we stop it, we start gaining money. [00:13:35] No we don't. That's not how it works. So we're not losing money. They're sending in products here, we pay for them, and we pay a cheaper price than we would from anywhere else. And then we sell those products. So if you take a tariff and those products are actually bought, [00:13:51] which they're not going to be because they're too high a price, then we would take money from a tariff, but we're not even going to get that because it's essentially an embargo. So all that's going to happen is that trade is going to stop. So once the trade stops, then we don't get any imports from China. Do we then magically make money? No, no we don't. [00:14:10] He has no idea what he's talking about. He never does. Look guys, we showed you the clip the other day. He doesn't even know what the Declaration of Independence is. He's like, it's all about unity and love and respect. No it's not. It's the opposite of unity. It's declaring independence. Couldn't be more the opposite, right? [00:14:27] We love the British Empire. No we don't. That's why we declared war against them. Okay, so he knows nothing. You think that guy is going to handle a sophisticated economic policy? That's why when I feel bad for the guy, because he's probably about to go broke. But when he's like later in the interview, he's like, what's the plan? [00:14:47] Please just tell us the plan. There is no plan. Brother, I hate to break it to you. There is no plan. There is no plan. And there really doesn't seem as if there ever was a plan. And Trump really feels like that isn't even his problem. That he needs to provide some type of plan. [00:15:02] And I feel like I talk a lot about Trump's rhetoric, because the way he speaks is very interesting to me. The words that he chooses to use, the way that he chooses to describe things to his his voters. Right. He uses words like reciprocal tariffs to mean one thing [00:15:18] when it really is not the reality. He says things like it's 145% tariff when the reality is that it is more like an embargo. So he says a lot of things without explaining it. He almost changes the entire meaning of words, at least in, you know, the pop culture sense of politics, right? [00:15:35] And I think a lot of that serves to confuse people, including the people who vote for him, including the people who hear the words that he says and really do believe him. Right. Like they actually do think that the thing that he says, the thing that comes out of his mouth is, you know, that's a fact, right? [00:15:51] He they really just even at this point, at this stage in the game, ten years after having dealt with Trump for so long, they don't understand that the things he says is not necessarily reality. And also, as far as the business owners, I do feel bad for them because they're dealing with this constant instability. [00:16:07] I can't even make decisions for my own life, let alone my own business, without, you know, wondering about what the country is going to look like a few months or a few years from now. Right. It's very, very difficult for people to make big life decisions, such as like buying a house or even where to settle because even the [00:16:24] job market is so unstable, right? My husband works in, like in the tech industry, kind of. Kind of. And he's, you know, Doge is just like, looming in the corner, you know. And it's very hard to move forward. And now these business owners, they're also experiencing their own version of that. [00:16:40] You can't make business decisions when a lot of the things that were in place that stabilize the economy and stabilize the marketplace are no longer in place. Everything is up in flux right now. So people are just trying to get by from month to month, and that is not really a great way to run a business. [00:16:56] And we saw it during the pandemic. So many businesses, especially small businesses, had to close down. And in this country, especially during the Obama era, there was a lot of push for small businesses to to spring up and open in this country. Now we're seeing just the corporatists coming in and saying, [00:17:15] you know, we're going to scoop all this up and this is all ours now, and we have these big mega monopolies, and Congress is not doing anything to stop them. Every time you ring the bell below, an angel gets his wings. Totally not true. But it does keep you updated on our live shows.