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Speaker 1: The theft of American technology and they're still doing that.

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By the way, these guys have stolen, like I think

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since in the last twenty years almost ten trillion dollars

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worth of American IP. It's unbelievable, unbelievable. You don't have

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property rights in China if you're an American company, right, Yeah,

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so this is a problem. So what they've done essentially

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is they've cheated, they've stolen, and they've set up a

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system where the playing field is not at all level

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when an American company is competing with a Chinese company.

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Speaker 2: You're listening to Carrie Letz's Financial Survival Network where you

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get valuable information you just can't find anywhere else to

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thrive in today's trying times. You need the Financial Survival

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Network now more than ever. Go to Financial Survivalnetwork dot

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com and get your free newsletter and gift. Financial Survival

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Network now more than.

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Speaker 3: Ever, And welcome you are listening to and watching the

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Financial Survival Network. I'm your host, Carrie Lutz. Well, tariffs

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have been all the rage. It looks like the markets

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have calmed down enough, they've accepted the inevitability of the

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Trump tariff regime. Is it a plus is it a minus?

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I want to know your thoughts. Do you think tariffs

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are going to help make America great again? Or is

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it going to bring turmoil to the world. But one

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person who does believe that they are beneficial. Spencer Morrison,

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author of Reshore, tariffs will bring our jobs home and

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revive the American dream. Spencer, it's great to have you on.

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You know, growing up, I was really into Milton Friedman,

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free trade, all of this, but free trade never really

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took into account weaponized free trade, and that's kind of

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what we've been having over the past fifty years, isn't it.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, that's absolutely correct. You know, thanks for having me

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on the program. I love coming on and having an

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in depth discussion about these issues. You're entirely right. So

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for the last fifty years, especially ever since nineteen seventy four,

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America has been running a large on a trade deficit.

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You know, the cumulative value of that trade deficit, when

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we adjust it for inflation, it's over twenty eight trillion dollars.

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That's like a whole year of our GDP that we

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used to buy products from foreign countries, over and above

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what we built in this country, and that's caused a

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lot of economic dislocation. So you look, for example, since

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two thousand and one, when China joined the World Trade Organization,

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over sixty thousand factories closed. They moved to China because

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we don't need them anywhere by buying the Chinese products,

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over five million manufacturing jobs. They left our shores, they

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went to China, they went to Mexico. And on top

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of that, the balance of payments, right, so we still

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have to pay for these products. We're not getting them

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for free, but we're not making anything to trade for them.

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So in order to pay for them, what we have

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to do is we have to sell off assets, so

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the value of things that we made in the past,

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things like the value of our stock market houses, or

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we have to sell debt so the promise to make

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product in the future. As a result, what's happened is

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we've done the old switch ru. We've taken a whole

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lot of money from the productive economy, from Main Street,

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and we sort of funneled it into Wall Street and

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the financial sectors. So it's been a really bad, really

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bad deal for the ordinary America who you know works

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for a living.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, it's you know who thought this was a good idea.

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You know, It's funny thing. I was talking to a

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group of guys I'm friends with. We have coffee together

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at Starbucks regularly, and I live in Palm Beach. County

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is the most dysfunctional county in Florida by far, because

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it's the size. It's bigger than Rhode Island, it's bigger

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than Delaware, and parts of the county are agricultural which

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bear no connection to the coastal communities. So I'm saying,

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just redraw the lines. And the resistance I get from

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guys who understand inefficiency and understand how screwed up government is,

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it's like, why would you want to do that? Like

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everything should just stay the way it is. But you know,

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before it's the way it is now, it wasn't that way.

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Right in the fifties, sixties, seventies, the US was a

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manufacturing powerhouse, the manufacturing powerhouse of the world. And it's

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not because our quality got so bad other countries. Yeah,

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certain industries, autos, et cetera. Quality definitely was a factor

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in their decline, but it was really just unfair trade

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practices that caused this situation, right.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, so we have to understand the dynamics

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that have led to this offshoring disaster, and ultimately it

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doesn't act really boiled down to your standard sort of

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economic models. What we have here is a confluence of

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both economics and politics.

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Speaker 3: Right.

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Speaker 1: People need to understand that the economy is just not

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this thing that sort of operates above us and operates

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according to its own laws. There are foreign governments and

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in fact our government that take large stakes in the

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economy and would like to manipulate it for their own purposes.

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And China has been doing that expertly.

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Speaker 3: Right.

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Speaker 1: So, one of the things that China did in the

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nineteen eighties and leading into the early two thousands is

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they subsidized the heck out of their manufacturing sector. They

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gave preferential and use policies. They looked the other way

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in terms of you know, IP theft, the theft of

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American technology. And they're still doing that. By the way,

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these guys have stolen, like I think since in the

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last twenty years almost ten trillion dollars worth of American IP.

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It's unbelievable, unbelievable. You don't have property rights in China

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if you're an American com company, right, Yeah, so this

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is a problem. So what they've done, essentially is they've cheated,

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they've stolen, and they've set up a system where the

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playing field is not at all level. When an American

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company is competing with a Chinese company, it's not level.

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They're backed by their government. They're allowed to steal technology.

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Of course, our guys can't do that, and the result

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is that we're getting out competed, not because their products

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are necessarily more expensive, and not because their products that

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are of worse quality. We're getting out competed because the

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Chinese government is plugging a lot of money into their

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businesses for the purposes of out computing our industry. And then,

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you know what the thing is. This is what Peter

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Navarro has rightly pointed out. Once the Chinese out computer

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industries and they kill them, they move in and then

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they jack up the prices. So what they're doing is

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they're playing a long game. They're dumping their products and

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then establishing monopolies because they know that, you know, free

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trade is not just about what's good today. They're looking

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at it from a business and an investment standpoint. They

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want to kill our businesses so they can take the

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market chair, not today, ten years from now, and that's

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the real difference.

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Speaker 3: And you know what, Like I was listening to a

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guy who's an inventor and big on Amazon, and he says,

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they look for markets when they see you're doing five

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million or more. And it's easy to figure out because

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the algorithms are available on Amazon. They then start to

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compete with you. They copy r design. Whether you have

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a trademark, copyright, or patent, doesn't matter. You complain to Amazon,

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they do absolutely nothing. Then they overwhelm the sector. They'll

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have ten of them there, all selling the same thing,

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different prices, different everything. And this is how they destroy

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American businesses here.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, we're the ones that invent and innovate. They copy,

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but they do it cheaper because they have the state

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lowering their prices artificially. Flave labor and slave labor. I mean,

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we don't talk about that. Nobody wants to talk about it.

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It's the same thing that's happening in India too. You know,

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the price of labor in India is one twenty fourth

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what it is in the States. And how do you

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compete with that on price?

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Speaker 3: You can't, Yeah, totally cannot so so the solution is

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what Trump is doing. And I have a theory that

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I believe that China has already capitulated. The only reason

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why Trump hasn't gone in heavier is because the Chinese

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illusion of an economy has already collapsed, and that would

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be the final nail in their coffin. But things like fentanyl,

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they've definitely cracked down on a lot of it. I

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think the intellectual property is starting to become an issue here.

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What are your thoughts.

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Speaker 1: I think people are finally talking about the IP. I mean,

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this has been going on for decades and no one

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even talks about it. It's pretty unbelievable. But you know

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what I'll say about China is I will believe it

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when I see it. China has been saying the verify yeah, exactly.

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And I think it's important to remember that China when

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they joined the World Trade Organization, they already signed up

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for all of this because that was a component of

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them joining, and then you know, obviously they didn't actually

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follow through on any of it. It's been over twenty years,

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so you know, they're saying a lot of the right things,

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but you know, the proof is in the pudding. Are

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they going to actually follow through.

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Speaker 3: I'm not so sure.

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Speaker 1: You mentioned at the start of the program Milton Friedman,

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and I think and I just wanted to come back

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to that because we were just talking about the difference

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between you know, a good trade today and a good

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trade tomorrow. You know, Milton Friedman has you know, been

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absolutely instrumental his ideas and maybe maybe more so his

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publicity in a lot of ways, I mean, communicating about

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economics to ordinary people, and I think most of that

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has been for the best. The one thing that I

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would like to just say in terms of you know,

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this free trade sort of paradox where America is free

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trading and yet we seem to be getting the short

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end of the stick. The reason for that is because

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economics as a discipline looks at whether or not a

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trade is efficient today. It's a very different modality and

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a way of looking at things. It's very different than

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the point of view of an investor or right who's

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looking at you know, this trade may be inefficient today,

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but it could be a good investment ten years from now.

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And in his book Free to Choose, Milton Friedman gave

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this example of you know, the sort of maximizing comparative

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advantage through the secretary and the lawyer. And he said, obviously,

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the secretary is good at typing, the lawyer is good

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at doing legal work. It makes sense for the firm

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that the lawyer specializes. Yeah, he's got to specialize in

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doing the legal work rather than doing his own typing.

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And the paralegal is going to be doing the typing,

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and that'll make everybody richer. And of course that's true.

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But when you look at it from an investment perspective,

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it's better for the paralegal to go to law school

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and become a lawyer, because even if she's a bottom

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feeder lawyer, she's going to make more money than the

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best paid parently all in our world. Right, So that's

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the difference. Right, So, where it makes good sense to

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trade and make that trade now, but ten years from now,

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it actually doesn't make. The analogy falls apart. And the

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same thing is true with our general economy. It may

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make sense to buy cheap goods from China now, but

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ten years from now, when we've hollowed out our industrial base,

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we've lost the capacity to make things. That stifles our

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innovation and our ability to grow the economy in the

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long run exactly.

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Speaker 3: So what feels good now isn't going to feel so

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good in ten years when the results of it happen.

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All right, well, exactly so, everybody out there get the

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book like I did. It's called Reshure, How Tariffs will

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bring our jobs home, Revive the American Dream. I think

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it's already happening now, Spencer. It's happening so much faster

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because AI makes things happen way faster than anybody ever

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believed possible. And I've been writing books to AI doesn't

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write it for me, but it's sure as heck does

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clean up my lousy work from my first draft and

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enables me to edit at a rate that I never

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believed possible before. And everybody get the book. Highly recommended.

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I think it'll give you an insight, but I want

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to know your feelings out there. Is resharing the key?

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Is it possible to save the American Dream? Or is

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the American Dream really dead? And how are you contributing?

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How's the American Dream working for you? Spencer? Really appreciated. Hey,

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it's got a question? Comment Klatcarrie LUTs dot com and

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of course you will find a link to Spencer's book

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and site on Financial Survival Network dot com. Just ask

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that you please sign up for our free newsletter, like

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over seventy thousand of you out there have done. Spencer.

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It's great connecting with you. We'll talk to you again soon. Hey,

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it's my pleasure.

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Speaker 1: Thanks for having me on the show.

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Speaker 2: Thanks for listening to carry Letz's Financial Survival Network, your

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solution to today's trying times. For the latest, go to

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Financial Survivalnetwork dot com. Financial Survival Network now more than ever,