Speaker 1: You're listening to bill Handle on demand from KFI AM
Speaker 1: six forty bill handle here the tariffs I have kicked in.
Speaker 1: I mean this said. The Retalia is wary tariffs.
Speaker 2: And the big story is China back and forth. China's
Speaker 2: not backing down. And as of right now this moment,
Speaker 2: one hundred and four percent against Chinese goods, eighty four
Speaker 2: percent against American goods into China, and small business is
Speaker 2: getting nailed.
Speaker 1: What do you do? Well? How about this?
Speaker 2: You have a company that imports cookware from China, Cookwaar
Speaker 2: made out of stainless steel, and now we're talking about
Speaker 2: two of the products and geographical locations that are at
Speaker 2: the top of the heap, and how do you deal
Speaker 2: with it? My partner, my friend Savil Kellner, and we
Speaker 2: own Lake Industries, which imports cookware from China. Great Cookwaar,
Speaker 2: phenomenal cookwear, Savo, why don't we start talking about the
Speaker 2: benefits of our cook wear and how great it is?
Speaker 1: And now now we're not going to do that.
Speaker 2: What's going on? We talk about this every day? How
Speaker 2: are we you? You run the business dealing with the
Speaker 2: price of everything and the imports.
Speaker 3: Good morning Bill, It is so confusing. It's ridiculous. You know,
Speaker 3: you just mentioned one hundred and four percent, and how
Speaker 3: we get to that, of course, is the twenty percent
Speaker 3: on the Fantinel deal, and then there was the thirty
Speaker 3: four percent that the administration levied, which got us to
Speaker 3: fifty four percent, and then of course last night the
Speaker 3: other fifty percent came in, and that's one hundred and
Speaker 3: four percent. What we didn't talk about and what we're
Speaker 3: confused about, and confusion dominates the day, is the twenty
Speaker 3: five percent tariff on stainless steel. Is that part of
Speaker 3: the one hundred and four percent or is it over
Speaker 3: and above? And the other interesting thing we just discovered
Speaker 3: is there something called tariff stacking. So before we got
Speaker 3: to one hundred and four and we were just at
Speaker 3: the fifty four percent, if you started with a base
Speaker 3: product cost for easy math of one hundred dollars, you
Speaker 3: would add the twenty five percent Global stainless Deal tariff,
Speaker 3: so that takes you to one hundred and twenty five
Speaker 3: dollars one hundred plus the twenty five percent. Then you
Speaker 3: add the fifty four percent on one hundred and twenty
Speaker 3: five dollars. So it is so confusing. It is changing
Speaker 3: each and every day. What are we doing. We're communicating
Speaker 3: with our clients, our dealers in the United States, and
Speaker 3: we're saying, look, this is changing, and we're going to
Speaker 3: increase it or decrease it day to day. The best
Speaker 3: thing we have done so far is, and I don't
Speaker 3: think you and I have spoken about this, we're establishing
Speaker 3: an FTC or a free trade zone in our building.
Speaker 3: And that what that allows us to do right now,
Speaker 3: and I recommend it for any small business. What allows
Speaker 3: us to do is is defer two things. Number one,
Speaker 3: defer tariffs. So when anything comes into our building, our
Speaker 3: building is going to be officially designated as a free
Speaker 3: trade zone. We will only play the tariffs once we
Speaker 3: use the goods or ship the goods.
Speaker 2: The big wait, You're allowed to do that under policy
Speaker 2: and law?
Speaker 1: Is that correct?
Speaker 3: Correct? It's under policy and law. And in Nevada it
Speaker 3: used to be you used to have to be in
Speaker 3: a designated geographical area. No more. You can actually apply
Speaker 3: and it's quite an easy application, somewhere between four and
Speaker 3: seven thousand dollars depending on circumstances, but you can apply
Speaker 3: to have a free trade zone within your building. You
Speaker 3: do need to separate that part of the building off,
Speaker 3: probably with chain link and locked because CBP customers Customs
Speaker 3: Board Up Protection can come in at any point in
Speaker 3: time and take inventory. But that to first tariffs. The
Speaker 3: best part for us as a company is every time
Speaker 3: we reship something outside of the country, if we wanted
Speaker 3: to get the duty we paid upfront back, we would
Speaker 3: have to file a lot of forms they called the
Speaker 3: duty drawback. We don't have to do that anymore, so
Speaker 3: we don't pay the duty while it sits in the
Speaker 3: FTC or the free trade zone, and we we complete
Speaker 3: a form and saying we ship this to Canada, we
Speaker 3: ship this to Mexico, which we.
Speaker 1: Let me interrupt for a moment.
Speaker 2: The complexity of this, dealing with the tariffs, not knowing
Speaker 2: day to day establishing any end around. Are you spending
Speaker 2: more time dealing with this and even the nuts and
Speaker 2: bolts of importing and selling our product.
Speaker 3: I'm probably spending fifty to sixty percent of our day
Speaker 3: doing that. We have to get creative, and the small
Speaker 3: business person in America has to get creative or they're
Speaker 3: going to go out of business. And by creative I
Speaker 3: mean not circumventing the law by any means. You know,
Speaker 3: last time we spoke, we were talking about Vietnam, if
Speaker 3: you recall it, we were talking about Cambodia as options
Speaker 3: to China. Those options are off the table because they're
Speaker 3: up there already at forty six percent. What we're looking
Speaker 3: at doing now is going back to the origin of
Speaker 3: where you and I started working, which was South Korea,
Speaker 3: because South Korea went back to the administration and played ball,
Speaker 3: and it seems like if you play ball with this
Speaker 3: current administration, they'll take care of you. So South Korea
Speaker 3: is currently at a twenty five percent rate, where China
Speaker 3: is at one hundred and four percent rate. The issue
Speaker 3: is it changes hour by hour.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Can you imagine I was having a conversation and talking
Speaker 2: about a twenty five san tariff as the best thing
Speaker 2: in the world out there, the.
Speaker 1: Best way we could go.
Speaker 2: I mean, it is ridiculous to think about that, and
Speaker 2: it's unbelievable.
Speaker 3: It is unbelievable. I don't know how people stay in business.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well you have to because you're making me money.
Speaker 2: So spend the day, make me make me some money, please.
Speaker 3: Okay, that is that is number one on my list.
Speaker 2: M Saville Kellner my partner, my dear friend, and we've
Speaker 2: been partners for what eighteen years already.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's been too long.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's been way too long. All right, thanks Savil.
Speaker 1: All Right, I want to talk about homelessness.
Speaker 2: Now. Homelessness used to be the biggest issue out there.
Speaker 2: Matter of fact, the governor ran on a homelessness issue,
Speaker 2: Gavin Newsom. Karen Bass became mayor on the back of
Speaker 2: the homeless issue. Paul Caruso ran against her. It was
Speaker 2: a homeless issue and that was the number one issue
Speaker 2: that California voters, Southern California voters thought about until, of course,
Speaker 2: the economic freefall here and Donald Trump coming in and
Speaker 2: changing everything. So let me tell you what's going on
Speaker 2: at southern California. La. La County, particularly La City has
Speaker 2: been accused of some really heinous accounting practices in terms
Speaker 2: of the approach to homelessness. Karen Bass has her program
Speaker 2: and that's Safe La and it is. It's done a
Speaker 2: pretty good job, ten percent reduction in homelessness, and she
Speaker 2: came into office. The problem is how much money is
Speaker 2: it costing, where's the money going, where's the oversight?
Speaker 1: Is there fraud involved? Bill A.
Speaker 2: Saley if I have that pronounced correctly. Newly appointed US
Speaker 2: Attorney for La announced the formation of a criminal task
Speaker 2: force to investigate potential fraud and corruption involving the homelessness funds.
Speaker 2: And the bottom line is there are millions, hundreds of
Speaker 2: millions of dollars out there and we really don't know
Speaker 2: how that money has been spent. At best, this is
Speaker 2: pure negligence and lack of oversight. At worst, this is
Speaker 2: corruption and criminal activity. And the US Attorney for La
Speaker 2: Isie is saying, We're going to find out taxpayers serve
Speaker 2: answers for where and how their hard earned money has
Speaker 2: been spent. No kidding even to the point where La County,
Speaker 2: which had been funding the city agency that's LA Housing,
Speaker 2: what is the housing authority? A homeless services authority has
Speaker 2: pulled three hundred million dollars because of the lack of accountability,
Speaker 2: lack of reporting. Correctly, we don't know where the money
Speaker 2: is going. I mean, it's that bad when La County,
Speaker 2: this heavily invest in homelessness, pulls three hundred million dollars
Speaker 2: from LA City based on the fact that money is
Speaker 2: missing or money has been misspent, and no one really
Speaker 2: knows one way or the other where it's gone. I
Speaker 2: usually am not a big fan, particularly a big fan
Speaker 2: of this administration using its powers to come in and
Speaker 2: disrupt programs, disrupt entire divisions of government.
Speaker 1: I'm not a huge fan of that.
Speaker 2: However, in this case, you know, I'm surprised that it
Speaker 2: hadn't been done before. And I'm going to give the
Speaker 2: Trump administration big kudos on this one. And ASSAILI is
Speaker 2: an interesting guy. He's a former state assembly member who
Speaker 2: has just been appointed by the Attorney General to be
Speaker 2: the US attorney in Los Angeles, and man, he has
Speaker 2: been speaking out against what he called the homeless industrial
Speaker 2: complex for years. He has looked at this as a moneymaker,
Speaker 2: providing homeless services almost as an after after making the
Speaker 2: money and hiring bureaucracies, and even to the point where
Speaker 2: and this is I don't think just an accusation. It's
Speaker 2: being thrown out there for political purposes. The federal judge
Speaker 2: who has been involved in homelessness, David o'carter, has become
Speaker 2: his Bailey Wick.
Speaker 1: This is his wheelhouse.
Speaker 2: This is who's known for dealing with homelessness here in
Speaker 2: La La County, southern California.
Speaker 1: Orange County.
Speaker 2: He issued a scathing report about how the agencies are spending,
Speaker 2: not spending and appropriately spending money. And our new US
Speaker 2: Attorney's got to say people are going to go down
Speaker 2: on this one, and I hope they are. I mean,
Speaker 2: when you talk about how particularly vulnerable people are the homeless,
Speaker 2: and they really don't know where to go, and I
Speaker 2: know that there's a whole philosophy, well, they have to
Speaker 2: pull themselves up by their bootstraps, and this is America,
Speaker 2: and they have choices. There are a lot of people
Speaker 2: that are homeless that are up in this homeless situation.
Speaker 2: I'm going to talk about that coming up at seven
Speaker 2: point fifty this morning. There's a story I want to
Speaker 2: tell you about that that you probably haven't heard of.
Speaker 2: There are people that just don't have the wherewithal, they
Speaker 2: don't have the access. They're caught up in this. They
Speaker 2: are incredibly vulnerable people. And the quote housing people that
Speaker 2: are there for the benefit of the homeless, well, a
Speaker 2: lot of money is being spent, a lot of money
Speaker 2: is not being accounted for. And as the US Attorney
Speaker 2: has said, a new guy head's going to roll. If
Speaker 2: we find there's criminal accusation, heads are going to roll.
Speaker 2: Heats and roll anyway, just because of negligence. I mean,
Speaker 2: you hire someone, let's say you're in private business and yeah,
Speaker 2: you're a division head or you're a CEO or somehow
Speaker 2: you're a manager, and you hire someone that just is
Speaker 2: completely negligent. How long does that person stay working for you?
Speaker 2: You're out, You're gone, Donald Trump, You're fired.
Speaker 1: That's Donald Trump saying that on The Apprentice. By the way,
Speaker 1: just in case you didn't get that.
Speaker 2: Okay, another little spin on the what's happening with the
Speaker 2: Trump administration is the freezing of seven hundred and ninety
Speaker 2: million dollars in federal funding, Northwestern University a billion dollars
Speaker 2: to Coronell frozen, Harvard nine billion dollars.
Speaker 1: I mean, the list just goes on and on. And
Speaker 1: why is this happening?
Speaker 2: Well, it's real simple, and that is as you know,
Speaker 2: and again I have said, there's no agend, there's no
Speaker 2: secret agenda with President Trump and the Trump administration. You
Speaker 2: know exactly where he is going to go, you know
Speaker 2: exactly he's going to follow his promises. And that's exactly
Speaker 2: what has happened, certainly in terms of what he's attempting
Speaker 2: to do and one of those is to unravel the
Speaker 2: DEI programs around the country. He just doesn't want it
Speaker 2: to happen. It's wokeness, political correctness. He's fought against it
Speaker 2: for years. Also anti Semitism. Now he is as about
Speaker 2: as pro Israeli as you can get. Jerry Kushner, his
Speaker 2: son in law, is an Orthodox practicing Jew. He has
Speaker 2: a lot of Jewish buddies and business partners over the years,
Speaker 2: and he's a big fan of Israel. It's not simple
Speaker 2: and does not like anti Semitism. I mean, one thing
Speaker 2: he has been has not changed his mind on that
Speaker 2: one in.
Speaker 1: Decades and decades.
Speaker 2: So the Trump administration is saying, under federal law, on
Speaker 2: the Title six of the federal law dealing with discrimination,
Speaker 2: guess what, I'm yanking the funding because these universities are discriminating. Well,
Speaker 2: wait a minute, what do you mean discriminating. It's the
Speaker 2: other way around, isn't it.
Speaker 3: No.
Speaker 2: What Trump is say saying is you are discriminating against
Speaker 2: white people, and you are because you're pushing for DEI
Speaker 2: diversity inclusion. Minorities are being given preference. That's illegal. You
Speaker 2: can't do that. There has to be an even playing
Speaker 2: field now, we can talk about what's even, what's not even.
Speaker 2: We can talk about the history of how America has
Speaker 2: treated minorities, particularly blacks. All of that is certainly open
Speaker 2: for discussion and should be discussed. But right now, on
Speaker 2: its face, here's the law no discrimination. And if you
Speaker 2: have a program that says we are going to give
Speaker 2: preference to minorities, to blacks, to gay people, that's illegal
Speaker 2: under federal law Title six. And that is the argument
Speaker 2: that's being used, is that these universities have enormous number
Speaker 2: of DEI programs, and they do and anti semitism. That's
Speaker 2: the other reason that money is being yanked, because the
Speaker 2: argument is that they are at the forefront of anti
Speaker 2: semitism in this country, pro Palestinian demonstrations, allowing pro Palestinians
Speaker 2: to wear masks at demonstrator at demonstrations on campus so
Speaker 2: they can't be recognized. The Trump administration is freezing seven
Speaker 2: hundred and ninety million dollars in federal funding to Northwestern University,
Speaker 2: a billion dollars to Cornell, nine billion dollars to Harvard,
Speaker 2: freezing those funds. And why is that Because they're being
Speaker 2: told get rid of your DEI programs and your acceptance
Speaker 2: of anti semitism, and when you do get rid of those,
Speaker 2: we'll talk about refunding the money or refunding your programs again.
Speaker 1: And of course the universities are.
Speaker 2: Just spinning because so much of what they do is
Speaker 2: based on federal funding, the grants, the program I mean,
Speaker 2: all of it is based on federal money.
Speaker 1: It's really surprising how.
Speaker 2: Much federal money goes into these universities. And so this
Speaker 2: is all about DII programs. And there's two separate issues here.
Speaker 2: One is allowing anti semitism on campus, which the universities
Speaker 2: have in fact done, so you had the president of
Speaker 2: Harvard had to resign in a couple of other universities
Speaker 2: because of the allowing of these protests and not doing
Speaker 2: enough to stop anti semitism, which, by the way, universities
Speaker 2: have done that forever. Universities have been at the forefront
Speaker 2: of the anti Semitic movement, or at least allowing of
Speaker 2: anti semitism for years and years, and that we've known
Speaker 2: about and because it's well, it's First Amendment, it's political freedom,
Speaker 2: but it's always goes in that direction. The other one
Speaker 2: is the DEI programs, and as that pissed off the administration.
Speaker 2: We're done, the military, finished, corps, falling into line.
Speaker 1: Getting rid of their DEI programs.
Speaker 2: Schools, Well, let me give you an example of where
Speaker 2: quote political correctness and the two were really tied in together.
Speaker 2: I went to cal State Northridge, and now we're talking
Speaker 2: in the seventies. Okay, mid seventies. I'm in cal State Northridge.
Speaker 2: That's a lot of years ago. And I decided I
Speaker 2: was going to take a Pan African course. I don't
Speaker 2: know why, but I was crazy and decided, okay, I'm
Speaker 2: interested in African studies. So I walked into the classroom.
Speaker 2: I was the only white guy there. It was all
Speaker 2: African American students. And those were the days of the Afros,
Speaker 2: so you couldn't actually walk down any of the aisles
Speaker 2: because the Afros were touching each other, and I had
Speaker 2: to walk around the outside or the corners of the
Speaker 2: classroom on the walls. And I remember walking into the
Speaker 2: classroom and teacher hadn't been there yet, and in walks
Speaker 2: the teacher, the professor full the shiki African garb, and
Speaker 2: he writes his name on the board and whatever it was,
Speaker 2: some African name that.
Speaker 1: He had.
Speaker 2: Accepted or that he has got he had that was
Speaker 2: now using and one statement on the board, and it
Speaker 2: started with the white man is the devil. Now.
Speaker 1: I lasted ten minutes.
Speaker 2: I got out of there, and I'm thinking, how does
Speaker 2: a university allow this to happen.
Speaker 1: Where that kind of virulent.
Speaker 2: In this case, anti white sentiment is allowed, anti any
Speaker 2: kind of sentiment, sentiment is allowed.
Speaker 1: Now, the argument was.
Speaker 2: That it was the pendulum swinging back, and in fact,
Speaker 2: there are some real issues with the way black African
Speaker 2: Americans were treated. Of course, there are some real issues,
Speaker 2: slavery being the original sin of.
Speaker 1: The United States.
Speaker 2: The first black man to hit American shores was a slave.
Speaker 2: I mean, there are some huge issues involved, but teaching
Speaker 2: the how evil we are I am because of what happened,
Speaker 2: and that's exactly what the Trump administration is saying, We're
Speaker 2: done with that.
Speaker 1: That's for one.
Speaker 2: The other one is the entire DEI philosophy program.
Speaker 1: We're finished with that.
Speaker 2: It is the law says we have to treat everybody
Speaker 2: the same, there will be no preference. The argument, of course,
Speaker 2: and I had Jesse Jackson to make this argument when
Speaker 2: I interviewed him, saying, you know, what we are We
Speaker 2: minorities are given now we're given the benefit. We are
Speaker 2: now getting better treatment than And why is that? Because
Speaker 2: the pendulum has to swing back because it was so bad,
Speaker 2: and the Trump.
Speaker 1: Administration is saying no.
Speaker 2: And so you have political correctness as far as this
Speaker 2: administration is concerned.
Speaker 1: It's gone. It's gone.
Speaker 2: And we hear of people getting preference in terms of hiring,
Speaker 2: in terms of education, in terms of scholarships. You know
Speaker 2: it's going to all be married based. That's what the
Speaker 2: Trump administration is saying. You're not going to have these
Speaker 2: other programs out there.
Speaker 1: And so you.
Speaker 2: Now have Harvard losing nine billion dollars in federal funding.
Speaker 1: I mean, if I'm running Harvard, I'm spending on this one.
Speaker 2: I'm going way Wait a minute, Brown University half a
Speaker 2: billion dollars, Princeton Columbia. I mean we're talking about all
Speaker 2: manner of programs, not just DEI programs.
Speaker 1: I mean, stop federal funding period.
Speaker 2: Also, the ban on masks on campus because you had
Speaker 2: these Ivy.
Speaker 1: League university.
Speaker 2: Schools allowing demonstrations on campus right not outside on campus,
Speaker 2: with students allowed being covered up, their their faces being
Speaker 2: covered up. Because that was hiding their illegality, and the
Speaker 2: school was allowing that, and the Trump administration saying we're
Speaker 2: done with that, We're finished.
Speaker 1: Do I agree with that? You bet you I do?
Speaker 2: All right, This is KFI AM six forty.
Speaker 1: You've been listening to The Bill Handle Show.
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