Speaker 1: This show is produced and hosted by Mark Webber.
Speaker 2: The show is sponsored by G three of Parow.
Speaker 1: The views expressed in the following program are those of
Speaker 1: the sponsor and not necessarily the opinion of seven tenor
Speaker 1: or iHeartMedia. Who is Mark Weber. He's a self made
Speaker 1: business executive here to help you find your success from
Speaker 1: the New York City projects to the Avenue Montaigne in Paris.
Speaker 1: His global success story in the luxury world of fashion
Speaker 1: is inspirational. He's gone from clerk to CEO twice. Mark
Speaker 1: his classic proof that the American dream is alive. And well,
Speaker 1: here's your host of Always in Fashion, Mark Weber.
Speaker 3: Mark Weber.
Speaker 4: This country is amazing. It's capturing the tension of the world.
Speaker 4: And tonight's show because of what was going on, I
Speaker 4: was going to dedicate it exclusively to China, and I
Speaker 4: was gonna call it make Love not War. I don't
Speaker 4: want trade wars. I want fair trade. The world's not fair,
Speaker 4: but we just have to navigate through it. But then
Speaker 4: the whole subject of money and budgeting and where this
Speaker 4: country's spending their money captured my attention. I call. I
Speaker 4: need to remind you there's an old saying or important
Speaker 4: say that figures lie, but liars also. Figure numbers should
Speaker 4: be straightforward, but they're not. You have to look closely.
Speaker 4: You need to be smart, or your forensic accountant will
Speaker 4: be I want to talk money in its totality, corporate money,
Speaker 4: corporate budgets, but particularly I want to talk about how
Speaker 4: you approach it because the United States is under attack
Speaker 4: right now. We're at war with ourselves with the way
Speaker 4: we're spending money. The nonsense that USAID was laid for,
Speaker 4: it's just crazy. You know, we have a corporate budget.
Speaker 4: Let me just make it simple. Every single dollar is
Speaker 4: accounted for, every single dollar is approved. Everyone looks at
Speaker 4: everything you take marketing, travel, What class of service are
Speaker 4: you allowing? At what level we're hotels? Are you allowing?
Speaker 4: Are people allowed to take taxis limos? Every single line
Speaker 4: is looked at. Then in marketing you want to talk
Speaker 4: at advertising, men's how much money are you going to
Speaker 4: spend on men versus women? Which products? Where are you
Speaker 4: going to place your advertising? How often? And then there's
Speaker 4: the question of the course provide him? And then overall
Speaker 4: the most important question of all, why are you doing it?
Speaker 4: You go even further entertainment. Are you to spend your
Speaker 4: money on taking people's sports arenas or concerts? How about dinner?
Speaker 4: Are you going to take them to different countries and
Speaker 4: this is where you're going or the people in different
Speaker 4: comptries you're going to visit with they want to know,
Speaker 4: with whom they want to know? Always why you're doing it?
Speaker 4: With the big question why every single dollar is looked
Speaker 4: at an accounted for, except it seems in the USA budget.
Speaker 4: Donald Trump is president, but he's a CEO first, I bet,
Speaker 4: and in his heart CEO foremost. Now, he may love
Speaker 4: the presidency and he loves the country he's doing it,
Speaker 4: but he knows how to run. He knows how to
Speaker 4: plan and process. No one can run anything without a budget,
Speaker 4: let alone a corporation and of course the United States government.
Speaker 4: So now here we are in a show that I
Speaker 4: wanted to talk about. We're at war with Elon Musk.
Speaker 4: So much for the love. There's a great Einstein story
Speaker 4: that comes to mind. Einstein is teaching a class and
Speaker 4: he's working on a blackboard and he puts up the
Speaker 4: number nine times one equals nine. Then he puts up
Speaker 4: nine times two is eighteen, and he goes all the
Speaker 4: way through ten, and at nine times ten he puts
Speaker 4: up an answer in ninety one and the class starts
Speaker 4: laughing and ridiculing him. And when it dies down, he
Speaker 4: looks at them and said, you know, it's interesting. I
Speaker 4: got ten answers right. Nobody gave me any credit for that,
Speaker 4: and then one answer is wrong, and all you want
Speaker 4: to do is make fun of me and ridicule me.
Speaker 4: The point is, in life and society and media, people
Speaker 4: will always find your mistakes. And who doesn't make mistakes?
Speaker 4: Only those people who do nothing. So here we are
Speaker 4: the leftis at war with Elon Musk. When I was
Speaker 4: ten years old, my mother and father sat me down
Speaker 4: and gave me a ten dollar bill and they said
Speaker 4: it's your allowance for the week. And they told me
Speaker 4: you have to think about it. Mark. You have to
Speaker 4: be very careful because you're only going to get ten dollars.
Speaker 4: So if you go to the candy store, don't spend
Speaker 4: all your money on the first day you need it.
Speaker 4: For the week. You have to look at the price
Speaker 4: of candy, your gum. You need to make a plan,
Speaker 4: and then don't come to us when your money runs out.
Speaker 4: It's your money. You have to respect it and you
Speaker 4: have to treat it well and talking respect and talking
Speaker 4: money and talking always in fashion. My lawyer, my co host,
Speaker 4: my son, Jesse Weber.
Speaker 5: Hello, La Lallo. Good to be back on the show
Speaker 5: with you.
Speaker 4: Hey, it's great. They have a question for you right
Speaker 4: out of the box. I've always been serious with you
Speaker 4: and money and budging when you got married. How did
Speaker 4: I cancel you on budgeting? I don't even remember.
Speaker 3: It was very very simple. I think that this feels
Speaker 3: like it would be straightforward. Maybe a lot of people
Speaker 3: don't know. You said you have to. You have to
Speaker 3: figure this out. How much are you making every month?
Speaker 3: And what are your expenses? That's what you're the number
Speaker 3: one thing. And are you making enough money to meet
Speaker 3: your expenses or things? You have to cut back on it?
Speaker 3: So you make a list. Here's the how much I'm
Speaker 3: taking in. Here are my list of expenses. And when
Speaker 3: I say expenses, it's things you absolutely need to pay for,
Speaker 3: things that you you could maybe be a little bit
Speaker 3: more flexible on, and things that you want to buy
Speaker 3: but you don't you don't have the money to buy.
Speaker 3: Give an example, rent rent every month, that's a you
Speaker 3: have to pay that every month, right, you have to
Speaker 3: Now now you have to eat, doesn't mean that you
Speaker 3: have to go out to restaurants all the time.
Speaker 5: Maybe you buy groceries, maybe you cook a little bit more.
Speaker 3: And then of course the bottom line is clothes or trips,
Speaker 3: things that you want to spend money on. But you
Speaker 3: have the actual money too, And as long as you
Speaker 3: are making it, taking enough money and save money properly,
Speaker 3: then you can have a little more discretionary income.
Speaker 4: And I guess I should is did you learn from it?
Speaker 4: And was I right about it?
Speaker 3: I did?
Speaker 2: I did.
Speaker 3: First of all, it's interesting because I've always done my
Speaker 3: own life, living by my own budget and taking care
Speaker 3: of myself. And then when you get married and you
Speaker 3: have somebody else and they have things that they want
Speaker 3: and things that they do, and you're together, and now
Speaker 3: the cost of a meal is double. It's an interesting thing.
Speaker 3: But she's also working as well. It's been a very
Speaker 3: good educational process and I think I think we're quite
Speaker 3: responsible when it comes to our budgets.
Speaker 4: Well, with that in mind, I think that the government
Speaker 4: has the right and has the obligation to do the
Speaker 4: same thing. Now would you agree with me on that?
Speaker 4: So far we're doing good today.
Speaker 3: I agree, but I also think that there are certain
Speaker 3: protocols and rules and laws put in place that, for example,
Speaker 3: a president can't just.
Speaker 5: Do everything that they want to do, even if you
Speaker 5: think it's the right thing to do.
Speaker 4: Well, that's not what we're talking about this week. In
Speaker 4: real we're talking about I wanted to what Elon Musk
Speaker 4: is doing with usam.
Speaker 5: And well, would you like to talk about that?
Speaker 4: I do. First of all, the Democrats are screaming, Elizabeth Warren,
Speaker 4: it's a constitutional crisis. What's the buzzword of the day,
Speaker 4: is it?
Speaker 3: Here's the first problem, Elon Musk. He's not an elected
Speaker 3: member of the Trump team. He's a private citizen who's
Speaker 3: directing where the money goes.
Speaker 5: That's I don't put it.
Speaker 3: Imagine it was a democratic president and imagine he had
Speaker 3: a private citizen.
Speaker 5: I don't know whoever that meant.
Speaker 3: Maybe it was a celebrity of some kind telling him
Speaker 3: this is where I think the money should go, this
Speaker 3: is what agencies I think should be cut. That's the
Speaker 3: first problem. Okay, that's number one. He's unelected number but he's.
Speaker 4: Acting on behalf of Trump. Trump is telling me exactlyet
Speaker 4: does should.
Speaker 5: He be seeing this financial information? Does he have the
Speaker 5: security clearance? That's number one. I'm just presenting the issues.
Speaker 5: That's number one.
Speaker 3: Number two, and this is the major issue. Even if
Speaker 3: you're Donald Trump, he is doing things that are arguably unconstitutional.
Speaker 3: He is he is moving funds around and moving things
Speaker 3: around with agencies that is really supposed to be the
Speaker 3: responsibility of Congress, that they're the ones who determine our budget,
Speaker 3: and that he might be violating federal laws in the
Speaker 3: Constitution by what he's doing.
Speaker 5: So somebody could be.
Speaker 4: Like, WHOA, WHOA said anything yet he didn't move anything.
Speaker 4: Yet he's pulling it out, saying what they should get
Speaker 4: rid of, making recommendations. He can't change it.
Speaker 3: Well, the I Trump has on it the idea of
Speaker 3: either getting rid of USAID or moving it to the
Speaker 3: State Department. That's an independent agency, who says he has
Speaker 3: the right to do that.
Speaker 5: This is going to be immediately challenged in court.
Speaker 4: It's an independent he's not saying it can be done.
Speaker 4: This is what he's recommending.
Speaker 3: It doesn't have the authority, and I think it's going
Speaker 3: to be challenged in court and he might lose. Now,
Speaker 3: somebody will say This is so unfair. This is so unfair.
Speaker 3: In hindsight, not he doesn't have the wrong thing. In
Speaker 3: the hindsight, he has the right intentions. He wants to,
Speaker 3: like you said, try to cut expenses. There might be
Speaker 3: things you look at USAID, which by the way, is
Speaker 3: the United States Agency for International Development, and you might say,
Speaker 3: why are they spending money here? Why are they spending
Speaker 3: money here. That's a fair conversation, that's a fair thing
Speaker 3: to have. But the question of how he goes about
Speaker 3: doing it, that's the problems. By the way, it's the
Speaker 3: same thing that happened last week where there was the
Speaker 3: firing of the inspector generals. On one hand, the president
Speaker 3: has the right to do it. On the other hand,
Speaker 3: he didn't quite follow the rules on how to fire
Speaker 3: them in terms of they have a due process rights.
Speaker 3: And somebody could say, ah, due process, schmooth process.
Speaker 5: But he'll go back into place, go.
Speaker 4: Back and do it. Meanwhile, Elon Musk is making recommendation,
Speaker 4: he's bringing out the craziness that's going on. So is
Speaker 4: it or is it not a constitutional crisis? So Foley's
Speaker 4: doing is recommending to the president, what do you think should.
Speaker 3: Be if Elon Musk is doing this and directing this
Speaker 3: and acting on behalf of the president. It could be
Speaker 3: a constitutional crisis. It's the Congress under Article one of
Speaker 3: the Constitution that controls the money. Elon Musk, not the
Speaker 3: President of the United States. There's a law in place
Speaker 3: about you know, president just can't change where the money goes,
Speaker 3: where discretionary spending goes. It's part of Congress.
Speaker 4: We will see, you know. I think the Democrats are crazy.
Speaker 4: Look what they're standing up and fighting.
Speaker 3: So they have to pick their battles. They got to
Speaker 3: pick their battles, right. I think Donald Trump right now
Speaker 3: is trying to go down in history as the best
Speaker 3: president of the United States. I'm not saying he is
Speaker 3: or will be, but what I'm saying is by how
Speaker 3: he's changed, you know, trying to get rid of income tax,
Speaker 3: trying to move on with tariffs, try to end to
Speaker 3: trade war, ending the war in ending the conflict in
Speaker 3: the Middle East, trying to end Ukraine.
Speaker 5: He's trying to do everything. I get it. He's got
Speaker 5: well intentioned.
Speaker 3: How he goes about it and what he says and
Speaker 3: does about it, that's it's important too.
Speaker 4: Okay, did you see Schumi yesterday by the microphone, Win
Speaker 4: win Win.
Speaker 5: Did you see I try to ignore him?
Speaker 4: But now, oh he's embarrassing, and so is that Maxine
Speaker 4: Waters and then Elizabeth Warren. Oh my, thank god, they
Speaker 4: have the hands in the air because they got their
Speaker 4: hands caught in the pork barrel. You know, where were
Speaker 4: their line items? No one looked at them, No one
Speaker 4: looked at them, No one shared where the money was going.
Speaker 4: The committee, now this whole week saw the craziness and
Speaker 4: seeing the waste. They're looking at the nonsense. I got
Speaker 4: to ask a question, you're worried about constitutional crisis? Is
Speaker 4: Elizabeth Warren and your crew there? Where were you? You're
Speaker 4: the elected officials, You're the ones who should be responsible
Speaker 4: for all of this. And those Republicans and those Democrats
Speaker 4: who did take a look, why didn't you object? Was
Speaker 4: it out of fear of reprisal or was it worse?
Speaker 4: You didn't think anything was wrong. It's moronic. And what's
Speaker 4: even moronic these Democrats are doubling down on the country
Speaker 4: when the country voted against all of this nonsense. Have
Speaker 4: they forgotten the shellacking they took their parties and shambles
Speaker 4: Right now? Now, the part of me that is a
Speaker 4: Democrat is embarrassed to support them. They have to wake up.
Speaker 4: Trump is here, Musk is here. They're agents for change,
Speaker 4: and change is happening. I have a different question.
Speaker 5: Well we move that, I guess.
Speaker 3: Then I guess the counter argument to that would be,
Speaker 3: what about the seventy five million people that voted against
Speaker 3: Donald Trump and voted for Kamala Harris. I guess they're
Speaker 3: representing them. They like, we can't sit back, we can't
Speaker 3: stay silent, voted.
Speaker 4: For a transgender opera in Vietnam, or they voted millions
Speaker 4: of dollars in Vietnam to spend on convincing them to
Speaker 4: burn their garbage. This is where we're spending our money.
Speaker 4: How can anybody defend that?
Speaker 2: You can't.
Speaker 3: I'm just I'm just saying. This is why you see
Speaker 3: them jumping up and screaming.
Speaker 4: Yeah, okay, for what reason they're they're they're they're defending
Speaker 4: the ridiculous. You know, I have a problem with charity.
Speaker 4: I hate it. I give money, but I never understand it.
Speaker 4: Why do hospitals need money? Why isn't all the money
Speaker 4: there for hospitals to do what they can to make
Speaker 4: our lives simple to save lives. I never understood why
Speaker 4: a hospital needs money. They should have all the money
Speaker 4: they need. I never understood why our government doesn't support
Speaker 4: veterans they needed to raise money. These people who have
Speaker 4: stood on our behalf and forught wars and got hurt.
Speaker 4: I'll never understand this. It's crazy. Wounded warriors should have
Speaker 4: to put their hands out. They don't have enough money
Speaker 4: to get whatever they need to live a fair life
Speaker 4: after the sacrifices they made. You, politicians, that's the constitutional crisis.
Speaker 4: Veterans and wounded warriors don't have money, but you're sending
Speaker 4: money to Vietnam to tell them to burn the garbage.
Speaker 4: What's going on here? And then, of course there's our
Speaker 4: senior citizens who've lived their lives working, paying taxes, and
Speaker 4: they get older and in their golden years their financial trouble.
Speaker 4: Why not take back all those millions and millions and
Speaker 4: hundreds of millions of dollars in just this one organization
Speaker 4: and spend it on our people. Why are we spending
Speaker 4: it outside the United States? I don't get it. I
Speaker 4: understand no one voted for Elon Musk, but nobody should
Speaker 4: vote for you. You want to scream, we win, we
Speaker 4: win that this that. Why don't you just do the
Speaker 4: right thing. Why don't you save the money and let
Speaker 4: it work for you. Why don't you do the right
Speaker 4: thing to bring back the money to help our own people.
Speaker 4: Some common sense is in order. Some common sense is
Speaker 4: about taking care of each other.
Speaker 5: By the way.
Speaker 3: I don't know if you saw this on Dan Dan
Speaker 3: Abrams Dan's News Nation show. He had on a guy
Speaker 3: who has made money starting this X account. It's I
Speaker 3: think it's called the Nancy Pelosi stock tracker. I might
Speaker 3: be misnouncing it. But what they do is they track
Speaker 3: what stock she's buying, and they buy it.
Speaker 5: And they're getting rich.
Speaker 3: Off of it because they're like, how does she making
Speaker 3: so much money on it? So they're just following her,
Speaker 3: following what she does. It's actually hysterical.
Speaker 4: I'm sure it's not inside of trading. I mean, heaven forbid.
Speaker 4: There was a time. I don't know what the laura
Speaker 4: is if there was a time that Congress was voted
Speaker 4: that they couldn't trade any longer, and now I think
Speaker 4: it disappeared. I don't know what happened. I don't know
Speaker 4: enough about it. Yeah, what do I know? You know,
Speaker 4: I'm not really qualified to talk about this stuff. It's logic,
Speaker 4: it's common sense, it's business. Take care of your own.
Speaker 4: Take a break. We'll be back in a minute.
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Speaker 1: Welcome back to it always in fashion. Here's your host,
Speaker 1: Mark Webber.
Speaker 4: Tonight's show is Make Love Not War. My intention tonight
Speaker 4: was to talk about China, and I will in a moment,
Speaker 4: I will. So many things are going on in the government.
Speaker 4: President just began. He's in in three weeks. He's making
Speaker 4: massive changes. Pretty much everything he's doing makes incredible sense.
Speaker 4: And the Democrats are back at it.
Speaker 2: All.
Speaker 4: The hate is coming out, everything is being criticized. It's
Speaker 4: like nothing ever happened. It's like there was no election.
Speaker 4: There's not even a minute that they won't take a
Speaker 4: pranknon pause and set to themselves. Maybe what he's doing
Speaker 4: makes sense. Maybe now I want to talk about China
Speaker 4: because of the trade war where it's going. I have
Speaker 4: uniquely qualified position on China. I am uniquely qualified to
Speaker 4: talk about China. I was in China a lot of times,
Speaker 4: growing up in this industry. Active matter of fact, I
Speaker 4: was always referred to by the Chinese in Beijing as
Speaker 4: a friend to China. I don't think it's written anywhere.
Speaker 4: It was a long time ago. The concept is a
Speaker 4: friend in need is a friend. Indeed, I was a
Speaker 4: friend who helped at a difficult time to and then
Speaker 4: our friends in China. I helped and they helped us.
Speaker 4: My first trip to China was in the early eighties,
Speaker 4: at a time when China was reopening to the West.
Speaker 4: Most of you were too young to remember. Hey, I
Speaker 4: was too young to remember. Now let me give you
Speaker 4: a moment of backdrop for those of you who don't
Speaker 4: understand the history of China, which is thousands of years old.
Speaker 4: But let's go back to nineteen forty nine Chairman Mao
Speaker 4: Mount Saint Tung. He believed that to the west Europe,
Speaker 4: the West the United States were harmful to his culture.
Speaker 4: He believed we were ruining China and he didn't want
Speaker 4: anything to do with it. He embarked upon a principle.
Speaker 4: They called it Maoism officially Mount Saint Dung thought it
Speaker 4: was a variety of Marxism Leninism, and he developed it
Speaker 4: while trying to realize a social revolution and it was
Speaker 4: pre industrial society of the People's Republic of China. How he,
Speaker 4: Mao was considered one of the most significant figures of
Speaker 4: the twentieth century. His politics and his policy were responsible
Speaker 4: for a lot of maybe deaths since starvation and persecution,
Speaker 4: but he had a point of view and he had
Speaker 4: a vision for the country. During this time, when he
Speaker 4: started to try and take China to a different place,
Speaker 4: there was equivalent of a civil war. There was the
Speaker 4: General Chiang Khai Schech one of the leading politicians, was
Speaker 4: pushed out of China. He went to Formosa, which eventually
Speaker 4: became Taiwan. It started a new Chinese government called the
Speaker 4: Republic of China. And to this day, the history seventy
Speaker 4: years later is about who owns China? Does the PRIFC
Speaker 4: owned Taiwan? And it's a problem. But back in nineteen
Speaker 4: forty nine when Mao made a decision to close his
Speaker 4: doors to the West. And when I say closed, no contact,
Speaker 4: no commerce, no dialogue, no visitors. He closed China. He
Speaker 4: felt the Commers party felt that the West was polluting
Speaker 4: and they wanted nothing to do with us. As this
Speaker 4: went on for fifty years, there was no direct contact
Speaker 4: with China, between our government and their government, perhaps behind
Speaker 4: the scenes. Nineteen seventy two, then President Nixon, in his
Speaker 4: Secretary of State Henry Kinchin Henry Kissinger visited China and
Speaker 4: they agreed to open up the West. China agreed to
Speaker 4: lift the veil over their country and re engage with
Speaker 4: the West. It was a feel out process. It was
Speaker 4: amazing process. It happened relatively quickly, and for the first
Speaker 4: time in fifty years, China had relations with the United States.
Speaker 4: And it was a remarkable time. Could you imagine in
Speaker 4: China never having in business relations other than cordial relations
Speaker 4: or diplomatic channels, And now it's open. My first trip,
Speaker 4: as I said to you, I went in the early
Speaker 4: days in the early eighties, and it was amazing. I'll
Speaker 4: never forget. I swear to you this is true. My
Speaker 4: first trip to Shanghai when I got out of the
Speaker 4: hall my first trip to Shanghai. When I left the hotel,
Speaker 4: people swarmed around me. They were looking at me. They
Speaker 4: never saw a Western person, they never saw one of us,
Speaker 4: They'd only seen their own. They swarmed. They literally stought,
Speaker 4: and they're gaalking and looking, and some of the most
Speaker 4: adventurous actually touched me. They wondered to see if I
Speaker 4: was real. That's how far it had been my first recollection.
Speaker 4: When I saw I was waiting to get picked up
Speaker 4: in a car, and the car looked like something out
Speaker 4: of the fifties. And all the cars in China, including
Speaker 4: the black Flag limo which I would travel around in,
Speaker 4: were cars from the fifties. And I asked the head
Speaker 4: of our Hong Kong office, who's my translator and companion
Speaker 4: on the trip? I said, what's going on here? Why
Speaker 4: will these cars look like this? And they said, China
Speaker 4: only had the plans for making automobiles from the forties
Speaker 4: and fifties. They closed the door and that's why nobody
Speaker 4: could see it. And yet here they were changing the
Speaker 4: world forever. They wanted to switch from an agrarian population
Speaker 4: to an industrialized population, get in manufacturing and export all
Speaker 4: around the world, and companies like the ones I worked
Speaker 4: for PVH were one of the ones that was going
Speaker 4: to help that happen. I was part of a wave
Speaker 4: of American businessmen and women on the front line of
Speaker 4: opening up this channel. I remember driving in that car
Speaker 4: down the main thoroughfare. I forgot what it was called.
Speaker 4: Don't hold me to it. It was old dust. It
Speaker 4: wasn't really paid, and there was street sweepers and the
Speaker 4: dust was overwhelming. They couldn't keep up with it. They
Speaker 4: picture of rural land with not really great roads and
Speaker 4: the wind, and it was crazy. And I kept saying
Speaker 4: to myself, how this this country? I knew it was
Speaker 4: a concress country. How did this country decide that that
Speaker 4: particular person, male or female, would be street sweepers versus
Speaker 4: the people I was soon to meet in the offices.
Speaker 4: And I always wondered about that. When I got to
Speaker 4: China my first trip, there were not a lot of hotels.
Speaker 4: There were no hotels. They were just starting to open.
Speaker 4: I am paid the famous Chinese architect built the first
Speaker 4: modern hotel in Beijing, and that's where I stayed the
Speaker 4: first time I was there. The next time I went
Speaker 4: back there, were enough rooms. They actually started asking people,
Speaker 4: now that's a kind word, to move out of their
Speaker 4: homes in the large department buildings that had been built
Speaker 4: and make room for American or European business people places
Speaker 4: for them to stay until they had hotels. I personally
Speaker 4: and many people in my company had traveled to China
Speaker 4: at that time. I actually slept in the suite that
Speaker 4: Richard Nixon slept in when he opened up China was
Speaker 4: fascinating looking at the people. They all wore uniforms. They
Speaker 4: were called mouse suits. They came in three colors, army green,
Speaker 4: navy blue, and industrial gray, and they only had two sizes,
Speaker 4: too large and too small. It was fascinating. They had
Speaker 4: absolutely no interest in fashion. What they were great at
Speaker 4: was banquet dinners. One of my favorite stories, Jesse, you
Speaker 4: were in Hong Kong.
Speaker 3: No backward, Oh, very modern, very very modern, state of
Speaker 3: the art, top electronics, top restaurant's, top cars.
Speaker 5: It's not it was. It was very it was.
Speaker 3: I mean what it was was basically the Asian version
Speaker 3: of New York City.
Speaker 5: That's what it was. In my view.
Speaker 3: I thought it was incredible. It was the only place
Speaker 3: I think that would probably compare and I haven't been.
Speaker 3: You would probably know better than me. Is Shanghai, right,
Speaker 3: Shanghai's probably similar to that.
Speaker 4: Oh, Shanghai is way more advanced than New York City. Look,
Speaker 4: let's face it, China has been building this country for
Speaker 4: the last twenty or thirty years from scratch, so everything
Speaker 4: they have is modern. Everything they've done is latest technology.
Speaker 4: It's brilliant. But when I'm talking about it, I was there.
Speaker 4: It was bizarre. It just was like going to in
Speaker 4: the middle of our country where nobody has developed it yet,
Speaker 4: and start putting up homes. Most of the transportation was
Speaker 4: on motorbikes. You would see guy delivering one hundred hertens
Speaker 4: on the back of a motorbike. You see families, mother, father,
Speaker 4: three children on a motorbike. That was their means of transportation.
Speaker 4: It wasn't just in China and Taiwan and Korea. It
Speaker 4: was often the same. I'll never forget. One of the
Speaker 4: most fascinating times I ever had was back in Maxims.
Speaker 4: Maxims was a famous famous restaurant built by pr Pia,
Speaker 4: built by Pierre Cardan in Paris, and someone opened up
Speaker 4: a license, or Pierre Canadena himself decided to build one
Speaker 4: in China. Now I'm in this place where it's just
Speaker 4: it's just at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, and
Speaker 4: in the middle of the city there's this incredible restaurant
Speaker 4: from Paris called Maxims. What they did is every single door, wall,
Speaker 4: table chairs were imported and rebuilt to resemble Maxines in
Speaker 4: Paris identically in China. All the waiters, all the people
Speaker 4: working there were dressed in tails and tuxedos. They looked
Speaker 4: they looked elegant. But before this they were working in fields.
Speaker 4: So their ability to get the restaurant running the way
Speaker 4: they wanted to was when we were there, still a
Speaker 4: work in progress. My favorite of all when it came
Speaker 4: to ordering drinks, I ordered a club soda or a
Speaker 4: coke or diet coke. At the time, I used to
Speaker 4: drink beer because I was afraid of taking ice, so
Speaker 4: I drank a lot of beer in those days. Jesse,
Speaker 4: you ever known me to drink beer?
Speaker 5: Who is this?
Speaker 3: I have never heard seen you drink beer. The only
Speaker 3: thing I've ever seen you drink is zambuca. The thing
Speaker 3: with a little is it like a raisin or a
Speaker 3: fly in it? I don't know what it is, but
Speaker 3: used to drink it.
Speaker 4: No, it's actually coffee beans, so liquor with coffee beans,
Speaker 4: an Italian thing. It's delicious. I love it. I have
Speaker 4: a bottle in the house, I just don't have a
Speaker 4: clue and I even have opened it. But here I
Speaker 4: am drinking beer and one of our friends from Hong
Speaker 4: Kong orders tea. Now we're in China. Tea in China,
Speaker 4: you know it's that thing. Now, there were two types
Speaker 4: of tea in the world. In China, when you ordered tea,
Speaker 4: you got tea leaves and they poured water over the
Speaker 4: tea leaves and what was underneath it was your tea.
Speaker 4: And w they served your tea, it had the tea
Speaker 4: leaves in it, so the tea leaves would get in
Speaker 4: your mouth or you know, you'd have to sip it differently.
Speaker 4: So guy orders tea, and there's all kinds of debates
Speaker 4: going on in China. What's going on in the restaurant.
Speaker 4: Finally the matre d of the restaurant comes in and says,
Speaker 4: we have no tea. So my guy says them, what
Speaker 4: do you mean no tea? This is China. He says,
Speaker 4: we have no tea. What they didn't have with tea bags,
Speaker 4: and therefore they wouldn't serve the tea in maxims the
Speaker 4: Chinese way. So can you imagine going all the way
Speaker 4: to China and find out no tea in China. My
Speaker 4: favorite thing with drinking. Do you ever hear a maltai Jesse?
Speaker 4: Did you have it when you were in Hong Kong?
Speaker 5: What's maltai now?
Speaker 4: Uh? Well, in my day was the national drink of China.
Speaker 4: It's a rice wine and it comes in what looks
Speaker 4: like a porcelain chanitor and drum, you know, like an
Speaker 4: industrial drum. They leave oil in all those movies in
Speaker 4: the United States and the Kill Guy they put him
Speaker 4: in a drum. That's what it looked like. It was
Speaker 4: white porcelain drunk. If you opened up the cap, the
Speaker 4: entire room would smell. It was the most potent thing
Speaker 4: in the world. You couldn't drink a tablespoon without getting drunk. Unbelievable.
Speaker 4: We used to have designated drinkers because these guys in China,
Speaker 4: they were used to going out in parties, taking people out, entertaining.
Speaker 4: They seemed to be able to drink this stuff. Either
Speaker 4: that or they were pouring it on the floor and
Speaker 4: faking us all out. We used to name designated drinkers,
Speaker 4: and I can't tell you how many people I carried
Speaker 4: out and my associates carried out on nights with the
Speaker 4: Chinese and drinking dinner. It was an amazing point of view.
Speaker 4: Fortunately for me, I wasn't drinker and I never had
Speaker 4: to be a designated drinker. But it really it gave
Speaker 4: us camaraderie and the business was friendly when we showed
Speaker 4: up the next day to work. Now, as I said before,
Speaker 4: I had always been a friend to China. I was
Speaker 4: part of the first exploratory group from the company Phillips
Speaker 4: Venues and who ventured into China early in the Nixon
Speaker 4: opening it up, and we went to Beijing to establish
Speaker 4: relations in or pushed a test order and a shirt
Speaker 4: factory in Beijing. Now I happened not to be there
Speaker 4: on the first trip. The CEO of my company went there,
Speaker 4: did all a routine and was given an opportunity to
Speaker 4: buy ten thousand dozen dress shirts in China. Now, the
Speaker 4: problem was China didn't know how to make our shirts. Now,
Speaker 4: don't get me wrong, China has a billion people and
Speaker 4: under those mouth suits they're wearing shirts. So they know
Speaker 4: how to make shirts, but they weren't familiar with the
Speaker 4: international standards. The amount of stitches parents, the amount of buttonholes,
Speaker 4: the kinds of collars we needed, the way the seams
Speaker 4: down the armhole would be, the fits. They weren't familiar
Speaker 4: with any of that, and they needed to learn. They
Speaker 4: also needed to learn about dye stuffs. What a dye
Speaker 4: stuff the chemicals that are used to dye fabric that
Speaker 4: usually comes in white color that needs to be dyed
Speaker 4: into colors. And the best way I think any of
Speaker 4: you out there would recognize it. You ever see or
Speaker 4: hear stories about somebody wearing a red shirt or red
Speaker 4: pair of pants and they sit down on a white
Speaker 4: couch and ruin it because the dye comes up. China
Speaker 4: didn't know how to make dye stuffs that would not
Speaker 4: excrete color. They also were making a lot of their
Speaker 4: products with lead, and in the United States we learned
Speaker 4: that lead could course cancer. We didn't wanted that, so
Speaker 4: when we went to China, the first ten thousand dozen
Speaker 4: were made in white only. We didn't want to put
Speaker 4: our own label in them because we were afraid of
Speaker 4: the quality, and the idea would be we'd import them
Speaker 4: back into the United States, and if the quality wasn't right,
Speaker 4: we'd either sell them an off price to one of
Speaker 4: the retails at a crazy price, but not the venuesing label.
Speaker 4: We would put the retailer's name in. Whoever that retailer
Speaker 4: may be. We called heat ceiling. You take a label
Speaker 4: with glue on it, you apply heat and pressure and
Speaker 4: it would permanently affix the label inside the collar of
Speaker 4: your shirt. The ten thousand shirts came in, the quality
Speaker 4: was okay. We didn't put the venues and name. We
Speaker 4: put a private label in, sold it to I don't recall,
Speaker 4: TJ Max and A Joder. I came in the next time,
Speaker 4: and the next time I came was time we were
Speaker 4: going to give them the right to make venues and
Speaker 4: treach shirts. They were on it. They were thrilled. We
Speaker 4: were excited. So I get to China, and in those days,
Speaker 4: the head office, the head of the government was in Beijing.
Speaker 4: I guess it still is. The way it would work
Speaker 4: is we would make manufacture agreements in China with the
Speaker 4: idea that they'd give us great prices. You just texted me, Jesse.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's fine, you can ignore it, Okay, I mean
Speaker 3: look at it later, look at it later.
Speaker 4: Okay, we were going to make manufacture agreements in China
Speaker 4: and develop the quality that were required for them to
Speaker 4: import shirts into the United States and for that matter,
Speaker 4: around the world. So let me just see. The good
Speaker 4: news is that China knew they needed to learn. They
Speaker 4: wanted to become industrialized, they wanted to grow, and they
Speaker 4: wanted to learn the right way. They wanted to be
Speaker 4: international exporters, and a company like ours that had the
Speaker 4: technical know how was more than welcome in China. We
Speaker 4: were treated. I can't tell you how nicely they opened
Speaker 4: their doors to us, and they made us feel welcome
Speaker 4: because actually we're about to teach them. Interesting enough, let
Speaker 4: me go into this for my memory for a second.
Speaker 4: We were making shirts in the United States, call it
Speaker 4: a white dress shirt based out of broadcloth. The price
Speaker 4: was probably around one hundred and twenty dollars a dozen
Speaker 4: to make those shirts. We also at that point were
Speaker 4: importing from Korea at ninety dollars a dozen. We arrived
Speaker 4: in China and after explaining what our requirements were, what
Speaker 4: the quantities we needed, what the stitching we needed, the details,
Speaker 4: all the technical know how, China offers us a price
Speaker 4: of thirty six dollars a dozen. Think about that, one
Speaker 4: twenty a dozen from US ninet different creator. They offered
Speaker 4: us thirty six dollars a dozen without any negotiation. This
Speaker 4: is a mind blower. And all the effort, all the time,
Speaker 4: we took, all the political trips, all the handshake, all
Speaker 4: the bowing, all the engineers, the test order, the technicians,
Speaker 4: the marketing people, all the designers. We came to China
Speaker 4: to teach them how to make shirts, and the nature
Speaker 4: of our relationship is we would get prices and in
Speaker 4: turn the engineering know how. We supplied them, including a
Speaker 4: market in the United States, with a label that was
Speaker 4: considered prestigioes around the world. We gave them the opportunity
Speaker 4: to put their label made in China in our shirts.
Speaker 4: They're very proud to have these labels. They were very
Speaker 4: proud to ship products into the United States. When they did,
Speaker 4: they set a whole team of their delegation to walk
Speaker 4: in the stores and see Maide in China, in Macy's
Speaker 4: or wherever we were shipping it. I'll never forget my
Speaker 4: first trip on men In fact, before I go there, though,
Speaker 4: I should talk about how you do business at the
Speaker 4: rest of the world and compare it to the companies
Speaker 4: and the offices who we are in Korea. And by
Speaker 4: the way, anybody says we China stole our technology is
Speaker 4: not true. We gave it to them gladly in turn
Speaker 4: for something we thought was important. Now let's get back
Speaker 4: to it. If you would go to Taiwan, to Chahar
Speaker 4: or tap in Hong Kong, work with business owners and
Speaker 4: companies that wanted to sell your product didn't work the
Speaker 4: way it didn't China. In China, you had to go
Speaker 4: to a political office, the head of the political office
Speaker 4: in Beijing. I'd missed admit when I was there. In
Speaker 4: Beijing it was called peaking. They didn't change their name
Speaker 4: back to the traditional in China to very few to
Speaker 4: a number of years later. Anyway, we met someone from
Speaker 4: the head office, we sat down and they would tell
Speaker 4: us you're going to make your shirts in Beijing factory
Speaker 4: number one. If we'd ask why number one, you wouldn't
Speaker 4: get an answer. Is that our only choice no to
Speaker 4: have a chance to inspect it before we go there.
Speaker 4: We'll let you walk through the factory. You'll be in
Speaker 4: the fact factory tomorrow morning at eleven o'clock and we
Speaker 4: go to the factory. We knew we're going to the business.
Speaker 4: We knew there were negotiations, but there was no negotiations.
Speaker 4: Here's the factory, you're going to make it, and here's
Speaker 4: the price. So we begin to tour the factory, and
Speaker 4: the manager of the factory and is people who take
Speaker 4: us around and show us all the operations, answer any questions.
Speaker 4: I was accompanied by members of our Hong Kong staff
Speaker 4: who spoke Mandarin and they translated between me and them
Speaker 4: and what was going on. And one of my first
Speaker 4: recollitions was how professional the factory looked. As they said,
Speaker 4: China made shirts for a billion people, they just didn't
Speaker 4: know how to make them the way international people needed them.
Speaker 4: I walked into the finishing area in the Chinese factor.
Speaker 4: You know what finishing is just.
Speaker 5: Putting the finishing touches on something.
Speaker 4: Yeah, well, shirt making, it's ironing, Yeah, putting in the
Speaker 4: you know, the putting in the cardboard and the collar
Speaker 4: under the collar, pinning it, putting it bags. That was
Speaker 4: what's considered finishing.
Speaker 3: See that was a better explanation than me. That was
Speaker 3: a much better explanation.
Speaker 4: Well, it was more detail. I'd like to think I
Speaker 4: know more than you about this. Anyway, I won't argue
Speaker 4: with you the lore, so I'll never forget walking down
Speaker 4: an aisle in the factory and I had never seen
Speaker 4: anything like this aisle before. It was in the finishing department.
Speaker 4: I don't know. It's probably about two hundred workers and
Speaker 4: one hundred yards On each side of the conveyor belt,
Speaker 4: there was a conveyor belt. On each side of the
Speaker 4: conveyor belt were these people, and each one of the
Speaker 4: people facing the conveyor belt on both sides were Chinese workers.
Speaker 4: One of them, all of them had a small Chinese bowl,
Speaker 4: a toothbrush, and a bar of soap. And as the
Speaker 4: shirt would come around on the conveyor, the various different
Speaker 4: workers would pick up a shirt and with their toothbrush
Speaker 4: and soap and water, they would carefully take off any
Speaker 4: improfessions on the shirt as they passed. I remember leaning
Speaker 4: over to my office management. I had an enginey and
Speaker 4: I said, what the hell is this about? We never
Speaker 4: seen anything like that. I asked them to find out
Speaker 4: what were they doing, and interestingly enough, they said, they
Speaker 4: have making white shirts and they want them to be perfect.
Speaker 4: Interesting they would take out all the dust and the
Speaker 4: impurities from the air, particularly white shirts. When we asked
Speaker 4: why are they doing this, the manager of the factory said,
Speaker 4: we have to keep people employed. China was throwing people
Speaker 4: into the process to make sure the quality is even
Speaker 4: better than you can imagine at the same time as ours.
Speaker 4: They were making shirts that could be better than the
Speaker 4: ones who are making in the finest factories in the
Speaker 4: United States or anywhere in Hong Kong or industrialized countries.
Speaker 4: It was amazing to see, and they were doing it
Speaker 4: because they were learning and they wanted to protect their economy.
Speaker 4: Many years later, I remember watching an interview with President
Speaker 4: Obama at the time, and I think Jing Hun p
Speaker 4: I forget his name. I'm sorry, I don't remember it really,
Speaker 4: and they were having a conversation. They were talking about
Speaker 4: this particular clip that I saw, what keeps you at
Speaker 4: wake at night? And Obama then started talking about nuclear
Speaker 4: weapons or terrorism, whatever he perceived to be that which
Speaker 4: keeped them awake at night, And then he asked the
Speaker 4: Chinese premiere what keeps you awake at night? And the
Speaker 4: Chinese premier said, I need to find twenty million jobs
Speaker 4: every year for my people. So when you look at
Speaker 4: the process of the Chinese government, the relationships in China,
Speaker 4: the businesses being directed through Beijing head office, when you
Speaker 4: look at what took place in China, our relationship was amazing.
Speaker 4: We brought technology, we brought them a market. They gave
Speaker 4: us amazing prices. They were much less than there were
Speaker 4: competitors around the world. That was the nature of China.
Speaker 4: I found them to be unique, honest, interesting negotiations. They
Speaker 4: knew their guardrails. They always delivered what was promised. We
Speaker 4: in turn, were honest, paid our bills in time, never
Speaker 4: canceled orders, held defeat to the fire on quality. It
Speaker 4: was a wonderful symbionic relationship. We both prosper and as
Speaker 4: they learned, our profits increased. Yet back in those days,
Speaker 4: when I would come to China, they would call me
Speaker 4: a friend in China, and to this date, I look
Speaker 4: at China as a friend now. Like I say, it's
Speaker 4: not as easy for him to say, because I'm not
Speaker 4: a politician. My job was to conduct business and protect
Speaker 4: our country's economy and make it work with a foreign
Speaker 4: communist country. So I can't make judgments. I can't I
Speaker 4: negotiated by company for I negotiate for my company and
Speaker 4: for my country. One lesson you learn you grew up
Speaker 4: in business. One of the first things they teach you
Speaker 4: never discuss politics in business, and particularly in a foreign country.
Speaker 4: It just don't work. You never know what your piece
Speaker 4: these people are thinking. They're different than you, theresent different thing.
Speaker 4: You don't know if they would get in trouble. You
Speaker 4: never mingle business with politics. You don't know what to think.
Speaker 4: You don't know what you're allowed to say, you don't
Speaker 4: know what they're allowed to say. You don't know who's listening.
Speaker 4: Just go about your business now. I have been caught
Speaker 4: up in some conversations around the world, but I avoided most.
Speaker 4: I'll tell you talking politics in a foreign country is dangerous.
Speaker 4: It's with foreign people. You have a good idea. Of course,
Speaker 4: you're in a diplomatic corps, then you could do it.
Speaker 4: You're instructed. No, you need to accomplish. You do not
Speaker 4: talk politics. And the reality is the Chinese people are
Speaker 4: playing chess. This is my greatest concern. I have nothing
Speaker 4: but the highest regard for these people. But as different
Speaker 4: as we are, as different as they are, I'm worried
Speaker 4: that their chess game is better than ours. I don't
Speaker 4: understand why there's so much activity in China. W appear
Speaker 4: to be undermining our country when we're such important partners
Speaker 4: whatever their long game concerns me because we don't seem
Speaker 4: smart enough. Well, kind of like the intouchables when they said,
Speaker 4: you bring a knife to a gunfight. We're bringing a
Speaker 4: knife to a gunfight. We're fighting a big war here,
Speaker 4: a war of brains, and we seem to be underutilized
Speaker 4: and out of our league. And my biggest concern, my
Speaker 4: biggest concern is Trump. You know, there's starting to be
Speaker 4: ramifications to what he's called the trade war. I never
Speaker 4: thought of trade being weaponized and using it to stem
Speaker 4: the flow of fentanyl, brilliant, using it to get fair trade,
Speaker 4: a balance of trade. If we buy a trillion dollars
Speaker 4: from China, they should buy a trillion dollars from us.
Speaker 4: But at the end of the day, China seems to
Speaker 4: be willing to push their plans back by years. They're
Speaker 4: acting as a country in a position of strength with
Speaker 4: financial resources, and over the last twelve years, I'm wondering,
Speaker 4: now that he's woke up our country, are they trying
Speaker 4: to ruin his presidency? Are they trying to make it
Speaker 4: hard for Donald Trump to be successful? And why would
Speaker 4: they do it in a chess game? Because they think
Speaker 4: he's strong, they think he's leading the country in a
Speaker 4: right direction, and they just don't like what he represents
Speaker 4: for China. I don't know any of that to be true.
Speaker 4: Our concern is this country that I've worked with, China,
Speaker 4: where I only had the highest regard for, is now
Speaker 4: fighting a trade war with the United States. I hope
Speaker 4: it lasts a minute. I believe we should be making love,
Speaker 4: not war, with that back in the minute and will
Speaker 4: continue to talk about China always.
Speaker 2: In Fashion, Done a.
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Speaker 1: Welcome back to Always in Fashion.
Speaker 5: Here's your host, Mark webber Tonight.
Speaker 4: I want to make love, not war. In this case
Speaker 4: trade wars. I'm concerned about them. Although I do respect
Speaker 4: President Trump weaponizing trade, I am concerned that they could
Speaker 4: be adverse effects. I'm not saying we should back down.
Speaker 4: I think we should talk more. We have to negotiate.
Speaker 4: I do not like I do not understand why our
Speaker 4: largest trading partner, China and the United States cannot agree
Speaker 4: on most things. And I want to talk about right now. Hey, Jesse,
Speaker 4: let's talk negotiation. Who wins the negotiation.
Speaker 3: Negotiations can get ugly, both sides will fight it out.
Speaker 3: But in any negotiation, you know who wins the side
Speaker 3: who has the power to walk away, And.
Speaker 4: That is my concern with these negotiations with China. All
Speaker 4: our medicines come from China, so many of our product
Speaker 4: come from China. I am not convinced. Here here's a
Speaker 4: crazy one we're in. They're always in fashion business. I'm
Speaker 4: pretty much convinced without China we would be walking around naked.
Speaker 4: I don't think there's enough apparel production in the United
Speaker 4: States or from all the other countries that we buy
Speaker 4: from to keep us all closed for a year.
Speaker 3: Well, where we going to make iPhones, iPads, tablets, laptops?
Speaker 3: Do we even have the ability to do that work?
Speaker 3: Silicon Valley? Do we have the ability to manufacture that
Speaker 3: here in the United States?
Speaker 5: I don't think so.
Speaker 3: And by the way, you know there's talk about if
Speaker 3: they're significant tartts. It was ten percent on China. Right
Speaker 3: now are the American companies, like tech companies that are
Speaker 3: just going to eat the cost of it? But then
Speaker 3: it's going to go down to the workers, right Their
Speaker 3: incomes are not gonna They're going to be not paid
Speaker 3: as much, and then I think everybody's going to feel
Speaker 3: the effects of it.
Speaker 5: So I'm a little concerned. Are you a little concerned?
Speaker 4: No, I'm not worried about the cost of doing business
Speaker 4: or the price of poker. That is a fact of life.
Speaker 4: If we raised China by ten percent and they raise
Speaker 4: us by ten percent, that's all well and good. But
Speaker 4: now I read the other day that in China they're
Speaker 4: now doing an exposy on Google. They don't like the
Speaker 4: way Google conducts themselves. That is dangerous. And this week
Speaker 4: a Reuter came out with an article regarding Calvin Klein
Speaker 4: some other company. I don't know, but I want to
Speaker 4: play it for you the article I hadn't read and
Speaker 4: listen to what it's saying.
Speaker 2: China plays Calvin Klein owner PVH Corporation and US gene
Speaker 2: sequencing company Ilumina Incorporated to a so called blacklist of
Speaker 2: entities among a series of retaliatory actions after new tariffs
Speaker 2: ordered by President Donald Trump took effect Tuesday, The Ministry
Speaker 2: of Commerce said that PVH and Alumna infringed on the
Speaker 2: principles of market transactions and undertook damaging actions against Chinese companies,
Speaker 2: without elaborating. PVH is also the parent company of the
Speaker 2: Tommy Hilfiger brand and has been under Chinese regulatory investments
Speaker 2: since September for allegedly boycotting cotton from the Shinjiang region,
Speaker 2: though the statement did not mention the issue. Illumina is
Speaker 2: the leading global of genetic sequencing and arrival to Chinese
Speaker 2: biotech giant BGI Genomics company.
Speaker 4: This is basically saying, if I'm not mistaken, six percent
Speaker 4: of Calvin Klein's operational income comes from China, but in
Speaker 4: the seventy or eighty percent of their products are being
Speaker 4: manufactured in China. If China wants to cut off Calvin Klein,
Speaker 4: they can do that tomorrow. In fact, Calvin Klein stock
Speaker 4: has tanked since this stuff has gone on, since we
Speaker 4: put the embargo in. I didn't anticipate that kind of
Speaker 4: retaliatory action. I thought it would be just dollars and cents.
Speaker 4: I don't know whether President Trump felt it would be
Speaker 4: just dollars and cents. I didn't know they were going
Speaker 4: to attack companies and perhaps put us out of business
Speaker 4: because of this trade embargo. Now, having said that Calvin
Speaker 4: Klein in particulars is getting involved with the laws of
Speaker 4: the land in China, you were heard in that article
Speaker 4: they refused to buy cotton in that territory. Once again,
Speaker 4: if my memory serves me right. That territory in China
Speaker 4: employs prison workers. They make people who are working in
Speaker 4: prisons work in the factories without getting paid. And I
Speaker 4: think that's against our rules or our laws. Jesse, do
Speaker 4: you know if that's illegal here?
Speaker 5: Ah, no idea. I was sick that day in law school.
Speaker 4: Well, I would assume in the United States it's against
Speaker 4: the law. I believe our prisoners make money on whatever
Speaker 4: the jobs they're assigned to, But in China they don't
Speaker 4: feel the need to. And here's the tricky port. Are
Speaker 4: we in a position to tell China what's right for
Speaker 4: China let alone? Would they even listen to us if
Speaker 4: we went in in the beginning and said, we want
Speaker 4: to buy China's products, but if they have slave labor
Speaker 4: or which that was, I guess what they're referring to,
Speaker 4: the prison labor, We're not going to buy. So you
Speaker 4: don't put us in those factories. But it's after the fact.
Speaker 4: I've learned a great lesson. I have a great story
Speaker 4: for you. A couple of them actually Bangladesh. Bangladesh had
Speaker 4: a problem, a lot of street gangs, a lot of
Speaker 4: learned children. There's not enough schools, not enough daycare, and
Speaker 4: not enough places for them to be without getting in trouble.
Speaker 4: So young kids, boys in particular, whatever school ended, their
Speaker 4: parents were working or there's no school, they're running around
Speaker 4: the streets. They're getting into trouble, lots of trouble. So
Speaker 4: a lot of Bangladesh parents wanted to bring their children
Speaker 4: to work. They would come to work, they would work
Speaker 4: right next to the mother. They would make money to help
Speaker 4: the family live because they weren't making enough money to
Speaker 4: get by. So the children were working. But the most
Speaker 4: important part, the children weren't getting into trouble. They were
Speaker 4: not on the streets running around with gangs. It is
Speaker 4: against our policies as a country to work with factories
Speaker 4: that employ child labor. Now here's the question, what do
Speaker 4: we know about what's going on in Bangladesh? Are we
Speaker 4: helping them are hurting them? If the mother is involved
Speaker 4: and she's made the decision, of the fathers involved and
Speaker 4: they made the decision, is it right to impose our
Speaker 4: will on the Bangladesh people. I always agree to it
Speaker 4: because that's the rules that are established in the United States,
Speaker 4: But there are questions about telling people in foreign countries
Speaker 4: how to work. That was a great thing. We made
Speaker 4: a stand that everyone in Asia deserve to be paid
Speaker 4: for overtime. But what would happen at the critical months
Speaker 4: before Easter, before Christmas? These people had to work overtime,
Speaker 4: and they were forced to work overtime even though it's
Speaker 4: against our rules, and we were left for the quandary,
Speaker 4: do you want the products you're bought or not? And
Speaker 4: no matter whether they said it or not, no matter
Speaker 4: whether they agree it or not, an awful lot of
Speaker 4: factories are running two sets of books, one showing those
Speaker 4: people getting paid and the other not. I have no
Speaker 4: idea what happened, but it just goes to show you
Speaker 4: how you tricky it is to get involved in foreign
Speaker 4: labor camps. I'm concerned for Calvin Klein, concerned for our countries.
Speaker 4: I'm concerned for all these things. It's a mess. I
Speaker 4: don't think Donald Trump has done anything wrong. I believe
Speaker 4: that behind the scenes they're talking. But before it gets
Speaker 4: too out of hand, there's a lot of things that
Speaker 4: have to go on. China, like them or love them,
Speaker 4: they have a country to run. They want to keep
Speaker 4: their people employed. You know the one thing I learned
Speaker 4: traveling all around the world, Well, I said before you
Speaker 4: never discussed politics. You can talk to people about being people.
Speaker 4: And the one thing I learned no matter what country
Speaker 4: I was ever in, whether it's in Paris or Taiwan, Korea, Bangladesh, Indonesia,
Speaker 4: Hong Kong, China, Macau, you name it,