Has the trade war begun? (03-04-2025--Hour3)

[00:00:04] What's going on? Thank you so much for listening to this podcast. It is heard live every day from noon to 3 on WBT Radio in Charlotte. And if you want exclusive content like invitations to events, the weekly live stream, my daily show prep with all the links, become a patron, go to thepetekalendershow.com. Make sure you hit the subscribe button, get every episode for free, write to your smartphone or tablet. And again, thank you so much for your support.

[00:00:30] Let me go back to the phones here and talk with Kirk. He has called in regarding Sean's call, which occurred in the last hour, where Sean was raising the issue of tariffs and the USMCA deal that was done back in 2020. And Kirk has been holding for a very long time. Hello, Kirk. Welcome to the show. Good afternoon, Pete. How are you doing? Hey, I'm good. What's going on? Oh, your whole time was 36 minutes. No big deal.

[00:00:59] To be fair, that was your whole time. It's your show. But anyway, one of the things that I listened to with the first gentleman was all these people that are going to be relieved of government. Do you remember that Bill Clinton put down 377,000 people?

[00:01:27] Well, he didn't put them down. There was no mass murdering. I mean, I know it's the Clintons and all, but there was no... There was no... He didn't put them down. Right, but he did. He let them go, right? He did, yeah. I don't know if he could have been better. I'll go with that. And when he talked about the crisis line, that's not government.

[00:01:51] We have people that go there and use it. That's not government. That is actually on the outside, on the civilian sector side. And I don't think people know that. The one that was supposed to be government, and it actually came through the VA, was the 988. And we had, in the first call that I knew of that went through there, we couldn't find an operator that spoke English. Hmm.

[00:02:19] They put the guy on hold four times, and the only reason I know about it is because a friend of mine called and said, Who are we supposed to call? I've got a guy, and I don't want the cops out here because they're going to shoot him. Hmm. Hmm. When they hung up from all the chaos, he actually called the sheriff and he said, I have a veteran in crisis. This is where we're located. I'm a veteran myself. I have others here. We have it under control.

[00:02:47] We just need to get him to safety. Right. If he didn't have a veteran with him that knew what was happening, that would not have happened. Right. And the thing for people to understand is, it doesn't matter if you're cutting it into government or cutting it in the civilian sector. If you have to be cut, it happens. You don't get to sit there and tell all these things that we're going to lose because you're not going to lose anything. Right.

[00:03:17] There's always an assumption baked into the argument that's never challenged because it's never articulated, which is that the jobs are worthy for the government to be doing, like it is an appropriate thing for government to be doing, and that it couldn't be done in any other way except for government.

[00:03:40] And you just kind of, they just, like Sean did, just kind of just jump past those assumptions and want to make an argument that, like, how dare you? You did this terrible thing by firing them. And by starting the conversation there, you're now arguing on their terms, not on the underlying assumptions that you've basically just accepted when you argue on their terms.

[00:04:08] Yes. And I don't understand why, like, have you ever heard the thing about knowledge is power? Yeah, I think I may have heard that at some point. Maybe, I don't know. Knowledge is power if the knowledge you have is true and useful. It's also power if you know how to use it and get people around you to be educated. Otherwise, it doesn't mean anything.

[00:04:37] You could sit there and have all kinds of knowledge, but because you don't share it, you don't use it, and you don't spread it, you're kind of more of an idiot than anything. So, actually, I talked a little bit about this concept of knowledge and the Socratic paradox last week, which is, you know, nobody really knows anything, but a wise person knows that they don't know anything,

[00:05:02] and that makes them the wisest, because they are the only ones that realize that. And so, yeah, I mean, knowledge and things that people know, and like in the conversation with Mike at the end of the last hour, and he sees where I see gaps in knowledge, and I know that I can't fill that gap in, because I literally don't know what is filling the gap.

[00:05:30] And so, I just kind of leave that open and accept that I don't know that. And some folks, and I think Mike was doing this with the Russia and the Ukraine issue, is that they plug in these narratives that they have in their minds, and to them it explains for them the gap.

[00:05:54] But it's also a little too convenient, because you're plugging the gap with something that you already believe to be true, and thus create a blind spot as to what the outcome might be, and then you're confused when the outcome is something that you weren't expecting, right? Because you had an incorrect fundamental assumption. That's why I say if you don't understand the thing that you're seeing, reassess your assumptions, right? Reexamine those. Reexamine those.

[00:06:22] And, you know, people who just make up stuff in order to plug those knowledge gaps are doing themselves a disservice, because you're not getting a clear picture. You're just, I mean, look, I get it. It makes them feel good, right? It'll make you feel good that you think you know what's going on, and you can explain everything, but that's not, that doesn't make it true. And I wish all your listeners understood what you just said. I'm sure they do. We have the smartest listeners. Take you, for example, right? All right.

[00:06:51] Kirk, I appreciate the call, buddy. Good to hear from you. All right. Have a great day, V. Yeah, man. You too. All right. Yeah. So I did not know that the crisis assistance line was done by private sector third party, but, and I don't know if they get government money, government funding to do that sort of thing. And this, I mean, getting back to sort of the approach that the Doge dudes are taking,

[00:07:16] and Elon Musk has said this repeatedly, that yes, they are going to, you know, move fast and break things. And they have no power to do anything themselves. They make recommendations to the department leaders. And the departments, be they, you know, agency heads or something or secretaries in the administration, they make those calls. Are they going to make mistakes? Absolutely.

[00:07:46] Yeah, absolutely. They will make mistakes. They will fire people or close down some shop or operation that was doing, you know, legitimate work. And what they have said is that we are going to make mistakes. And when we do, we will fix them as quickly as possible. That they will, then they will turn on a dime and they will say, no, don't do that. Open them back up. Invite them back in. But this idea that we have to have this perfection, right? Don't let perfect be the enemy of the good.

[00:08:16] So if they're doing good things in these different areas, right, then you're going to, you're going to point to the one error or even the ten errors. When you have all of these other things that they have done that are good and you're going to ignore all of that. This is why you don't get anybody defending, right, the transgender comics in Colombia or the transgender surgeries in Guatemala, right? That's why you don't hear people come forward and say, no, we have to keep funding these programs.

[00:08:46] They know what that looks like. They understand that. And they know it's a loser of an argument. So they're not going to make those arguments. So they find the crisis hotline, right? They find that stuff and they hammer away at that stuff in an effort to get you to shut up and stop doing what you're doing, Doge. Stop it. Because they're trying to protect all the other things that they don't want to argue about.

[00:09:13] Imagine if the approach were, you know what? Let's stop funding the thousand things that you found and let's stop doing that. We join you in getting rid of that waste and fraud and abuse and whatever. We join you in that. But hey, bring this thing back. It would be a way different atmosphere than we are seeing right now. All right. If you're listening to this show, you know I try to keep up with all sorts of current events. And I know you do, too. And you've probably heard me say, get your news from multiple sources.

[00:09:43] Why? Well, because it's how you detect media bias, which is why I've been so impressed with Ground News. It's an app and it's a website and it combines news from around the world in one place so you can compare coverage and verify information. You can check it out at check.ground.news slash Pete. I put the link in the podcast description, too.

[00:10:05] I started using Ground News a few months ago and more recently chose to work with them as an affiliate because it lets me see clearly how stories get covered and by whom. The Blind Spot feature shows you which stories get ignored by the left and the right. See for yourself. Check.ground.news slash Pete. Subscribe through that link and you'll get 15% off any subscription. I use the Vantage plan to get unlimited access to every feature.

[00:10:31] Your subscription then not only helps my podcast, but it also supports Ground News as they make the media landscape more transparent. We were talking about tariffs and then in the last hour we started that the discussion about tariffs and, you know, whether or not there's an off ramp to what appears to be the the opening salvos of a trade war. So but again, like I caution. Give it a minute.

[00:11:00] I don't because I can't tell you I cannot predict for you how this is going to shake out and a lot of people are offering up their predictions on this stuff, but I don't know if they're any more qualified to make these kinds of predictions than I am. I'm just I know enough to know that I don't know what the future holds on this stuff.

[00:11:24] And particularly when it comes to Donald Trump, I have learned to restrain myself from immediately trying to draw some conclusion about what about what the stories are, what the narratives are and what the what the strategy may be. The Ukraine thing is a perfect example of it, right?

[00:11:46] The blow up on Friday and for 48 hours we were told that this is all over and oh, my gosh, he's doing Putin's bidding and everything else. And now today we get the public statement from the Ukrainian president that, yeah, I'll sign the minerals deal. I want the war to end, which was something that he was not saying like over the weekend. He was saying stuff like this war is going to last a very, very, very long time.

[00:12:11] And he was trying to get European countries to send troops and everything else like but just wait a minute. Let's just see how it plays out. And this is what in the last hour when I was talking with Mike, you know, is it possible that there is some sort of a strategy going on here to negotiate with Putin, who I would remind everybody was praised by Bill Clinton, George W. Bush.

[00:12:40] I mean, Bush had Putin out to the ranch down in Texas. So, you know, sometimes as though, you know, when you're trying to negotiate with world leaders that may not be fantastic people and maybe authoritarians, even if you're trying to achieve some sort of a greater good outcome, then that means you have to sit down at a table and talk to them. And you're because otherwise what?

[00:13:10] Just kill a bunch of their people like I'm. It's one of the more baffling aspects of this thing that with the Ukraine deal, but then there's the tariff issue and this like this, you know, trade wars are not good. They're not good. And they could be crippling to the economy. Was it the Smoot-Hawley Act in the 20s led to the Great Depression? Not good.

[00:13:40] Right. So I'm concerned, but I'm also willing to give it some time. Let me see what the play here is, because, yes, it's going to hurt us, no doubt. It's also going to hurt the other countries that are involved in the trade war. And that's sometimes why these things turn into shooting wars is because countries get so hurt. Let me get to some messages.

[00:14:02] This was from Good Wahoo, who says regarding Mike's call in the last hour that he doesn't care what may be the truth about Trump's negotiation strategy. He and other leftist Democrats simply don't want Trump to have any success at anything. Right now, that is part of the problem here.

[00:14:22] When you listen to quote analysis of what we just saw in the White House between Zelensky and Trump and Vance is that people who have ulterior motives will try to frame the narrative because they benefit. Their incentive is for Trump to fail. Their incentive is for the economy to tank.

[00:14:45] Also, regarding the Doge cuts, Good Wahoo points out that Obama fired everybody appointed under Bush when he came in, even people on the National Monuments Commission. So then there is this from Bob regarding Mike's call. One would think that as a lawyer, Mike would understand better how to mediate a negotiation. Yeah, he does. Mike understands this.

[00:15:13] That's why I said that's why I specifically use those words mediate to be the mediator, because I am certain that Mike understands the role of a mediator. Zelensky put the poop show into the public domain. Trump and Vance pounded him, which actually establishes a better framework for Putin to strike a deal. Also, Zelensky can beat his chest and brag to his, you know, domestic audience, the Ukrainians, that he stood up to Donald Trump.

[00:15:41] He's delusional if he thinks victory can be had with the U.S., maybe without the U.S. there. And Mike says the CEO of Chipotle said his company will not pass the tariff increase on the cost of goods onto the customers, namely avocados. The company will eat the additional cost in the form of a reduced profit margin.

[00:16:08] So, like you said, tariffs are more complex than a simple cost increase to all consumers. I doubt the Chipotle CEO did it out of the kindness of his heart. Rather, he realized that there is a price point at which people choose not to patronize Chipotle. The same may occur with other companies. Here's a great idea. How about making an escape to a really special and secluded getaway in western North Carolina, just a quick drive up the mountain? And Cabins of Asheville is your connection.

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[00:17:30] Call or text 828-367-7068. Or check out all there is to offer at cabinsofashville.com and make memories that'll last a lifetime. All right, let me get back to the tariff discussion. So China retaliated today against the latest round of U.S. tariffs by hiking their tariffs,

[00:17:56] covering $21 billion worth of American agricultural and food products, moving the world's top two economies a step closer towards an all-out trade war. This is according to Reuters.com, who I believe got USAID money. Beijing also slapped export and investment curbs on 25 U.S. firms on grounds of national security,

[00:18:23] but unlike when it retaliated against Trump's first tariffs back on February 4th, this time avoided punishing any household names. So these are companies that you would not have heard of. So in other words, what does that tell me? That tells me that it sounds like this is more about a propaganda, right?

[00:18:47] This is like when America charged a bunch of guys you've never heard of in Russia for creating bot farms on Facebook. And we were like, wait, who are these people? What did they do? Like, and then like, if they ever come into America, we're going to arrest them. So, okay.

[00:19:15] Beijing, well, here, a foreign ministry spokesperson told a press conference in Beijing, trying to exert extreme pressure on China is a miscalculation and a mistake, and that China had never succumbed to bullying or coercion. I mean, except with the communism and all. But other than that, the latest retaliatory measures come as the extra duty of 10%.

[00:19:41] U.S. President Donald Trump threatened for the world's second largest economy took effect today. That makes for a cumulative tariff of 20% in response to what the White House considers Chinese inaction over drug flows. Right? This is all about fentanyl. I mean, this is what the Trump administration keeps saying. Now, people can choose not to believe that, but this is what Trump keeps saying this is about.

[00:20:10] It's about fentanyl. Stop flooding our country with this poison. China, and China is responsible for doing so. Right? If they're not sending the finished product, they're sending the materials to make it. And they're routing them through Mexico, but also through Canada to a much lesser extent.

[00:20:36] China has accused the White House, and that's why both of those countries are also involved. Trump is trying to address the fentanyl opioid crisis. Right? Again, you can argue that, you know, drug wars never work. You could say this isn't the right approach or whatever. But that's what his stated mission here is. That's what these tariffs are about, according to the administration.

[00:21:01] China has accused the White House of blackmail over its tariffs, saying that it has some of the world's toughest anti-drug policies. Well, for its own society. Right? I mean, oh yeah, don't get me wrong. Like, if you're dealing drugs to Chinese people in China, like, they'll murder you. The government will come in and just, like, line you up in the street and gun you down. Like, to be sure.

[00:21:30] But that doesn't address them exporting the poison to their geopolitical adversary. Right? Also, important to keep in mind, commies lie. Right?

[00:21:51] Analysts say Beijing still hopes to negotiate a truce on the tariffs, deliberately setting their tariffs below 20% so as to leave its negotiators room to hash out a deal. But each escalation reduces the chance of doing so. See, this is one of the other things. Donald Trump, he calls himself this, and everybody around him says it. He's a deal maker. He makes deals.

[00:22:20] China has caught on to this. I don't know why the Democrats haven't realized this. But I said it with the Ukraine deal also. It's like, give them space. And we heard from Marco Rubio yesterday. I played audio. He's like, we need the space to do this. And this constant attack as Trump is trying to secure a peace in Ukraine. Like, why won't you just let him try this approach?

[00:22:51] Let him try it. If it doesn't work, it doesn't work. And then you could just run hog wild with all your attacks on him. But right now, like, wait and see. Give it a minute. Maybe it works. China's government is signaling that they do not want to escalate, said Evan Pei, an agriculture analyst at Trivium China. Quote, it's fair to say we're in the early days of trade war 2.0.

[00:23:19] Saying that there is still time to avoid a protracted trade war if Trump and the Chinese president, Winnie the Pooh, are able to strike a deal. Okay, wait. He did not say that. I don't want to get the guy killed by China. It's Xi Jinping. And Xi Jinping hates any kind of comparison that people make of him to Winnie the Pooh, even though he does look like Winnie the Pooh. China said it would investigate U.S. producers of a type of optical fiber for circumventing anti-dumping measures.

[00:23:49] And they suspended the import licenses of three U.S. exporters. And they halted China-bound shipments of U.S. lumber, which is weird because I thought we got all of our lumber from Canada. It's very odd. The 20% tariff will hit several major U.S. consumer electronic imports from China that had previously escaped untouched, from smartphones and laptops to video game consoles, smartwatches, speakers, and Bluetooth devices. Now, something else to keep in mind here.

[00:24:19] Trump's hand is strengthened in this fight because of the recent announcements of investments, like $100 billion from TSMC, $500 billion from Apple, $27 billion from Zepbound, $100 billion from SoftBank, $20 billion from DAMAC, $500 billion from Stargate, $600 billion from Saudi Arabia. Right?

[00:24:43] So if you have all of this new investment that was announced, domestic manufacturing coming in, then his hand is strengthened because he can say, well, look, we're importing manufacturing now and we're going to be doing all this stuff. We're going to be, you know, energy independent. We're going to export energy and we're going to, you know, reinvigorate our industrial base and all of this. So we don't really need all of those imports anymore.

[00:25:08] Again, you can believe that or not, but that's their argument. You know, stories are powerful. They help us make sense of things, to understand experiences. Stories connect us to the people of our past while transcending generations. They help us process the meaning of life. And our stories are told through images and videos. Preserve your stories with Creative Video. Started in 1997 in Mint Hill, North Carolina.

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[00:26:03] All told through images. That's what your photos and videos are. They are your life, told through the eyes of everyone around you and all who came before you. And they will tell others to come who you are. Visit creativevideo.com. Let's go to the phones and chat with Snake. Hello, Snake. Welcome to the program. How are you? Hey, good, Pete. How you doing? I'm good. I'm doing all right. I'm just trying to make sure I got these numbers right.

[00:26:30] So I looked up and it said we like China imports about $500 billion worth of stuff. So if you say that all that stuff, they can make it. I'm just making up a number 5% cheaper. So if it's 5% cheaper than you can make it in America, then that's $25 billion, right? Yeah, but extra for that stuff. Yeah, go ahead. It's probably way more than 5% cheaper. I mean, when you're employing slave labor, for example, you know, you can make that really cheaper.

[00:27:01] Well, we can make it 10% then. How about 10%? I mean, I don't know how good they are. I mean, maybe, you know, I'm not in favor of trade wars, but it's just, you know, and then everything they do isn't cheaper than us. We do some things better than they do. But I'm taking the whole extent of it. And so if you said 10%, now you've got me doing math in my head, but then it's $50 billion, which is actually an easier number to remember.

[00:27:26] And then if you divide $50 billion by 35, 350 million people, you get like $140. Right now. But then you would have to run that also through Canada and Mexico and whatever their numbers are. And so the number I saw was that the direct impact is like $930 per taxpayer per year. Things will be more expensive.

[00:27:57] Yeah. Yeah. That sounds like a leftist exaggeration to me. That's all. No, I mean, those were the numbers. And I had them and then I closed it out. But it's those were economists that were doing the projections. So, yeah, again, and like I've seen competing projections from like the Federal Reserve in Atlanta has one set of numbers that they're looking at. They're like, oh, my gosh, this is awful.

[00:28:23] And then the Federal Reserve, I think up in New York, they were like, now the chance of a recession is like less than a percent. So or two percent, something like that. So, yeah, the economists, they disagree. And this is just the first day of it. So we don't know how it shakes out.

[00:28:38] And again, we don't know, you know, what other markets like, for example, if we are now no longer to export something to China, we may very well find another market in South America someplace or in Africa someplace. And so we could end up exporting it there. And there would there would be minimal disruption to that industry. So we don't know how it all shakes out just yet. No, you never do. I mean, you know, even forensically, it's almost impossible.

[00:29:08] Again, I'm not in favor of trade wars. Right. But you'd think to hear MSNBC tell it that, you know, the whole country is just going to melt down over this. And that's just not really true. Right.

[00:29:20] And, you know, recognize what the incentives are for that particular network, but also people on the left and also people on the right who make a living and have made their careers in in, you know, predicting this kind of stuff or being, you know, free free traders and all of that. They have they have an incentive to project the worst case and project the catastrophe. Right.

[00:29:49] And whether it's for clicks or engagements online or viewers or something or to justify their own life's work, whatever it may be. And I'm not saying that their predictions are wrong. Their predictions, they some of them could turn out to be true. I don't know. But there are incentives there for for them to be making some of the predictions they're making, you know. Yeah, no, they they got to sell newspapers.

[00:30:16] I just I don't you know, I just don't trust what the newspapers say for that reason. But then the only other thing I'd add and I know you got to go, but just China is one thing. Canada and Mexico, we need to get along with. I don't know what it takes, but it shouldn't take this. Yeah. And and that's the thing is like it's not about the particular tariffs and the trade policies. This is about securing the border and and reducing the flow of fentanyl into America.

[00:30:46] That's what the administration is saying. And so it's like to me, it's kind of telling that they don't seem to be interested in in stepping up in those areas to try to, you know, meaningfully crack down on this stuff in order to avoid the tariffs. So like that because that's they're instead responding with with tariffs on our stuff. But the root of it was fentanyl and illegal immigration. So why not help on those fronts?

[00:31:15] And then the tariff thing goes away on the illegal immigration immigration thing. I agree. But from one small libertarian to another, and I know you well, you know, when we've got a problem with drugs, we blame it on somebody else. And that's all right. Well, you can dump that. And that'll be the end of the program because you can't say that word on the radio. All right. That'll do it for this episode. Thank you so much for listening.

[00:31:44] I could not do the show without your support and the support of the businesses that advertise on the podcast. So if you'd like, please support them, too, and tell them you heard it here. You can also become a patron at my Patreon page or go to thepcalendorshow.com. Again, thank you so much for listening. And don't break anything while I'm gone.