Speaker 1: The trade deal President Trump and the EU when he
wasn't golfing and you know, putting black and brown people
in cages and such, cut himself a trade deal. Zach
Abraham's going to address that for us. He is the
chief investment officer Bulwark Capital Management. He's my friend and
my brother, and he joins us from an undisclosed location
deep in it. Wait, that's Mark Levin's, deep in a
hidden bunker. He joins us from some place in North
America courtesy of God Almighty.
Speaker 2: But Todd Herman show is one disapproved by big pharma
technocrats in Tyrone Sebrianwhere from the high mountains of Free America.
Here's the Emerald city exile Todd Herman.
Speaker 1: Today is the day the Lord has made, and these
are the times through which God is decided we shall live.
Zach Abraham joins us somewhere high in the mountains. Good
to have you here, my brother.
Speaker 3: How are you good? Good? I'm doing better today, man. Good?
Speaker 1: Now you been the part of Washington State where they
don't where they haven't legalized one hundred and fifty to
two hundred and fifty thousand dollars race based payoffs for
loans that don't need to be paid back for racial minorities.
Is that is that a different part of Washington State
or are you still in the same state.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, that's kind of like that line in Tombstone,
you know that that don't go around here, right? Yeah,
this is this is much more. It reminds me a
lot of the Free Mountains of Idaho. Actually, yeah, and
similar similar folks. I think it's kind of one of
the dichotomies of our state that people don't really understand,
which is, you know, outside of King County, especially on
the east side of the state, it's a very very conservative,
traditional values type place. You know.
Speaker 1: Oh, totally get that. And I wanted to ask you,
you know your your kids are you have a mixed
race kids? Is what the world would call it. I
hate that because it's just dude, they're just your kids,
right right, But they're old enough to get some of
that coin.
Speaker 3: Yeah. No, no, no, hey, I didn't, I didn't. I
didn't say that. We weren't filling out the apps. Okay,
we're getting in line now. Unfortunately, I think a lot
of those things are means tested, so they're gonna get
pushed out. Yeah, well, they're not going to I'm going
to no, but it's uh yeah, they you know that,
and and I know you know this, and I know
the vast majority of your listeners know it too, but
you said it. It's how it's how ridiculous all of
this stuff is, you know what I mean, especially the
race stuff. Like you hear people say things along those
racial lines, you know, and a lot of times they
mean it positively, talking about oh, we need to do
this for black people. Yeah, and you look at them
and go have you ever talked to the black people?
Do you know if that's what they want from it?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 3: Like these not these are not people that cannot help themselves.
Speaker 1: But I want democrats to try this sometime. Is go
to a place I'm thinking, uh oh, I'm picking American City,
go to Saint Louis, I don't care. And there's a
black person standing in line in the grocery store, and
I want a white person to come say, hey, let
me help you, because you know this is this this
is a dollar sign and I mean, you know how
much are you sure you've got the money for this?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 1: You could afford this, and just go just like go
physically pander to anybody and like do this, do this,
Like go find there's areas around the country everywhere, like
you're not that par far probably from Yakamau, Washington. There's
Hispanic people there who owned wineries for years, and I
mean they're super successful. And go get some illegal immigrants
who are living in Seattle, bust them over and drive
up to one of the mansions of one of the
Hispanic families who's owned these winers for years and say,
got your illegals, let's let's let's let's get them in
your house here. And they're like all tatted up and
they're like, you know, they're actually like diagar Ms thirteen
and you see the confused looks, what are you doing here?
Like I'm thinking of one family in particular that there's
Amora family and I knew them to wresting. They're get
off my property, right yeah, pandor physically.
Speaker 3: Man, Yeah no, I I couldn't. I couldn't agree more.
And uh. And it's one of those things when you
hear people, you hear people going off on those diatribes. Yeah,
like I said, you can't help, but just sit there
look at them and go, hey, do you know anybody
that's a minority because you talk like you don't, you know,
like I I just the lady doth protests too much,
you know. But yeah, that's that's the world we're living in.
Speaker 2: It.
Speaker 1: I know it is. I know it is. We're gonna
get into some economic stuff and I think we need
to look at the three percent growth in the GDP.
We'll do that with Zach Abraham in just a second.
Cheer one are the big drivers. Unfrankly, one of the
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Testament Angel dot com, slash todd. So this is from Heatherlong.
GDP US economy saw three percent growth in GDP Q two,
but it was highly unusual Number one. Massive decline in
imports thirty five percent for goods lifted. The GDP consumption
was plus one point four percent, solid but not spectacular.
Number Business investment declined in Q two. This is an
economy running above one percent. If you strip out the
trade noise, real final sales to provide domestic purchase was
one point two percent. That's a lot of stuff that
people like me Right now, my ears are bleeding. But
you probably have already figured this all out. So what
is the true picture about the gross domestic product of
the United States? And this Q two so.
Speaker 3: Interestingly enough, I would say that those domestic numbers actually
lend toward what Trump has been saying in terms of
those are numbers that would be more conducive with cutting rates,
meaning what I think you've got here. And look, we're spitballing.
You know. One of the things we say all the
time is you know I and I apply this to
myself absolutely, which is, whenever we're talking about economic prognostications
or understanding economic numbers that are as big and expansive
and as you know, complete is GDP, let's all take
a big grain assault because you know, modern economies are
the most dynamic systems in the world, right and so
things can change. But what it looks like to me
is that due to tariffs, you've got some strengthening effects
and you've got some weakening effects in terms of the data. Right,
So there's certain things the way this shakes out that,
believe it or not, certain numbers are going to look
better because of tariffs. Certain numbers are going to look worse.
The consumption numbers are key, those are very weak. Right,
Yet at the same time, you're growing at three percent.
The smoking gun to me, and what we think is
going on is we think you're absolutely going through a
soft patch here economically that we're probably overdue for for
a variety of different reasons. And I think that that's
getting offset by the unbelievable amounts of capital expenditure that
are going into building out data centers and all the
AI stuff. Thatactly because yeah, because when I see three
percent VDP, and I haven't broken down the numbers directly yet,
I've gone through the headline numbers like you're talking about.
When I look at that underlying data that is not
conducive and supportive to a three percent growth number. So
you've seen this persistent growth, yet you've seen these things.
If you told me imports are down double digits in
a quarter, I'm immediately looking at you and going under
normal circumstances. Oh oh yeah, you probably had some kind
of contraction. Right, So when you see a number like that,
but you're still seeing a posting of a positive GDP number,
I have nothing other than to believe that that's got
to be mostly off of the AI Data Data Center effect.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 3: So I actually think that that kind of puts some
bullets and Trump's gun. As for cutting, now, is there
enough there to cut anywhere close as much as he wants? No? No,
I mean if you're talking about cutting one hundred and
fifty basis points or two hundred basis points, that's emergency
cut stuff, and there's nowhere near the data for that.
Now that being said, we have a FED decision that
I believe coming out today, don't we.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we're recording on Wednesday. So yeah, I think the
FED comes decisions.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Now I'd be highly shocked if they
cut this may on My assumption is they probably already
had the decision made by the time this data came out.
You may get a token twenty five per set or
a twenty five basis point cut, but the markets got
priced in no cut. So you know, like I've told you,
what is it, It's been one time in the past twenty
five years where the FED made a decision that was
not previously priced in by the market.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So now, the one thing I would say that you
may get a break from that is this is pretty
extraordinary circumstances when you talk about the head of the
FED and the way that he is getting along with
the president, so or not he's fee or not right,
and so he's got some definitely some flames underneath his feet.
So it wouldn't shock me to see them cut twenty
five but it would be pretty rare. I mean, it's
it's not a very not a very common occurrence for
the for the FED against the market.
Speaker 1: Who do you like in a cage match? Trump or
Jerry Powell?
Speaker 3: Oh man physically against Trump? Yeah, you can't go against Trump? No,
I yeah, I mean Powell looks like he's probably a
better shape, but uh no, Yeah, Trump, he's yeah, he's
he's hey. After I saw get up, after I saw
that man get up with a bloody year and talk
about andre O fight fight fight, I'll have criticisms for
him times, but for being top is gonna be one
of them.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you just reminded me something and this is one
of the things I love about your methodology at Bulwark
is you're talking about these AI data centers and I
just remember, I don't remember if it was a year
ago or two years ago where we're talking about. We
did a show on kind of a topic on investments
a lot of people haven't seen, and you came on
and you talked about the least sexy, most boring topic
ever on my podcast. It was the most fascinating financial
thing I'd ever heard, and you went on with the
big sexy. You were buying lots of local utilities, small
regional utilities, and a lot of the people in my
audience are used to hearing about bitcoin and what small
local utilities, and you were saying, Yeah, there's going to
be this massive increase in this need for electricity. We've
got all these dictats for electric cars, which Trump has
now canceled. But man, I'm thinking back about that now
and if I'm sitting on the board of a regional
electrical utility and the data center came in, that's that's
my retirement payoff right there. That's got to be huge
for these guys.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, well, it's a great It's really sharp that
you bring that up because I think that this data
center AI topic really helps you get your hands around
and head around how big this AI spend really is. Yeah,
I mean look at you you can go look at
the impact it's had on uranium prices in small modular
reactor companies that are you know that there's specializing these
small modular reactors. They've gone nuts, you know, I shoot,
I was. I mean, it wasn't even that long ago,
probably twenty eighteen, we were talking about how we thought
uranium was a goodbye, you know, and I remember at
that time chemical was trading it, you know, eight eight fifty.
Now it's over seventy. So the impact and my point
in bringing that up is, yeah, it's had huge impacts
on some of these utilities. It's going to continue to
but you've also seen impacts it's had on natural gas,
uranium prices, the nuclear industry writ large. And I think
that that helped you put into scale, you know, last
quarter alone, and it was either on an annual pace
or for the quarter, either way for a single company.
Like think about this. In Google's earnings announcement, they increased.
Like I said, it was either either for the year
or the quarter. Either way, it's eyewatering. But they just
increased capex spending by eleven billion dollars, you know, and
that's one company increase, yeah company, and that's an increase
off their baseline. Right. So you know, when you look
at the amount of money that's flowing into this I
think it's filling in a lot of holes economically for now.
And that's probably what he's got Trump pushing on the
on the rate on the rate cut sword.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well we'll have to see. Like I said, I
don't think he's gonna get in you this quarter. But yeah,
the the the impacted, and and you're gonna continue to
see that impact Todd, right, Like, uh so you know
in that natural gas specifically, you're going to see it.
You're going to continue to see it in the nuclear stuff,
and you're going to continue to see it. You might
even see it impact you know, regional uh, real estate
prices as well, because you know a lot of lands
needed for a lot of these data centers and things
like that. So this stuff is going in past, hot
and heavy. We've got a really exciting interview coming up.
I'm get in a book. They think we're gonna have
it next week. But I don't want to give up
his name yet or where he works. But this guy
is the lead of the AI team for one of
the Meg seven companies. Wow and yeah, and he's a
buddy of mine, and just having him on and talking
this will mean something to you. I don't know if you.
I don't think you and I have discussed this. But
he said to me the other day, he said, he goes, Zach,
a year ago, these LM's, these large language models, these
AI models were approaching being as effective as like one
of my junior coders. Yeah, he goes, As of right now,
our LM is the best coder at our entire company.
And we're talking about a multi trillion dollar meg seven company.
And I said, you haven't got a coder there that
can beat it. And he goes no, and he goes,
I bet you within three months, there's not going to
be a quoder in the world that can beat this stuff.
And here's the kicker, Todd. If you look at the
base code, so the code for the LM, seventy percent
of the code is self written. They're at a point
now where the thing is written. It's seventy percent of
itself in not too in not too short a period
of time, it will have written ninety nine percent of itself.
Speaker 1: That's people need to understand the scope of this number one.
And I said it years and years and years ago,
probably five or six years ago. You're going to see
code that writes code, and then you're going to see
hardware that builds hardware. You're going to see not quite
beings that are building themselves. They're not quite beings because
they're not organic, they don't have souls. God didn't make them.
And understand this, like all this learned to code, you're
going to be saying to Silicon Valley people who spent
their lives investing in computer engineering and coding skills, well,
you can learn to mind that, you can learn.
Speaker 3: To garden, so you don't need to he said, He goes,
my daughter was encoding classes. I took her out. He goes,
it's not He goes, it's not needed. Here's the other
thing that people don't understand that you'll get and the
reason they don't. Now, I want everybody to take some
time and think about this when I say this, because
the human mind, for whatever reason, the human mind is
really bad at understanding exponential growth. Right, we don't get it.
We think linearly. Right, you know Moore's law, right, how
compute was doubling every twelve and fourteen.
Speaker 1: Months, powers every eighteen months doubles.
Speaker 3: Yes, Okay, they're doubling the compute power and the analytic right,
the processing power of LMS, it's doubling every four months.
Speaker 1: So if it's at a million, now, it's at two million,
four eight, sixteen thirty two, sixty four, one hundred and
twenty eight, at sixty four hundred and twenty eight, two
hundred and fifty six, and soon it's at trillions. And
then once it's at trillions, you lose number. I mean
it's gajillions millions.
Speaker 3: Yep. Yeah, Well, it's the old adage. And to put
it in perspective when you start thinking about that, it's
the old adage. Okay, would you rather have a million
dollars or would you rather have a penny for thirty
days and every single day, I'm gonna double that amount, right, right, Well,
if I start with a penny on day one and
I double that every day for thirty days, at the
end of thirty days, I think you've got about six
and a half seven million bucks, right, so crazy, It
is weird and people aren't used to thinking exponentially, but
would you start thinking about that or another great way
to put it, so Moore's laws eighteen months. Think about
how long it took for the for the internet to
spread and really start taking over our lives. Right, this
stuff is doubling at one at one who know what
would that be at one fourth time? So it is
doubling in one quarter the time that Internet was. Yeah,
which is just mind bottling.
Speaker 1: I heard an AI expert the other day and try
to get him on the show. Do you know that
the ais have stopped sharing their methodology?
Speaker 3: Yeah, and Dave, there's all kinds of funny stuff, so
they've started. There's cases of them talking to each other
in Sanskrits, so nobody knows what they're saying.
Speaker 1: Up in places that the companies don't know about.
Speaker 3: Yes, not getting one to get turned off. I saw
in exchange a buddy of mine had one with the
other day that was really really impressive and kind of freaky.
He basically sat there and said to the LLM something
along the lines of, don't give me that you don't
know anything. You're just like reset, just you're just reciting,
you know, data that you pulled off the Internet, and
he's kind of pressing it to see what it would say,
and it came back and it was like, you know,
you're absolutely right, we cannot do It was fascinating to
listen to the response that it had because it was
so well thought out and it was so articulate, and
it was just crazy, you know, the the types of
response if we're getting out of these things. And here's
the crazy thing too, these things are still not very
good at math, right, And and you know that that's
you know, when you understand the way these programs work
and how they that's just a matter of time and
then that math curve is going to go like that.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 1: It started with fuzzy logic on purpose.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yep, yep, yep, yep. Right and yeah yeah, because
they didn't want to box it.
Speaker 1: In right, right, they wanted to learn fuzzy logic like
and so it will get to the mass stage.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 1: I want this applies so much of what we're talking
about here, because Trump's bet on AI and his bets
on on crypto and bet on tech. I'm so torn
on this because someone's gonna lead in it. I guess
if someone's gonna lead it, I guess I want it
to be us, because our system is the worst in
the world except for all the others. Is the great cliche.
I want to talk about this the consumer inputs, although
I'd rather just stay with AI honestly and talk further
with you about that. But we need to just cover
this because people need to know. I have to tell
you something, and this is gonna be hard for you
to hear. Legit. I've been showing this to the audience.
I'm know you've been busy, and I just shared this today.
You don't know this. This is legit hard to hear.
So you know John Caldwell from Alan Soaps. Okay, So
John's been battling cancer. He's okay with me telling everybody
that at this point, every time they stop cancer and
when part of his body's popping up in another and
it looks like this is going to be terminal in
the next couple of years. So John's the guy who
runs Alan Soaps. And I announced this on Wednesday, and
I told people, do not make the reason this the
reason that you buy soap and Alan. Alan's gonna be
okay with his Mom. God's gonna take Alan. Alan is
take care of Alan. Alan's given his life to Jesus.
He's impacted by autism. He's nonverbal, but he's not a
dumb kid. He's a very smart His brother Ian, likewise,
Amy works at Alan. So here's what I'm going to
ask you to do. Legitimately, I'm gonna ask you this.
If you have not tried the soap for whatever reason,
and if one hundred percent of this audience did this,
it would be phenomenal. I do not want you to
buy the soap and keep using it if you don't
like it. It's all natural, it's made in America. It's
as general as it gets. A lot of these fragrances
come from the mind of Alan. You'll read about this.
I'm asking you to try it, and if you love it, subscribe.
And I'm going to tell you why, because after John
passes his wife, God willing, we'll take over the leadership
of the company. Alan and Ian and Amy will continue
to work there. But it would be a great gift
to this family and to their mission of employing people
like Alan, Ian and Amy if you would subscribe to
the soap in this period of time and it will
give John great peace of mind. And again I know
I'm speaking for him. If you get the soap and
you don't like it, do not continue to buy it.
This is not a charity.
Speaker 3: Okay.
Speaker 1: If you love it or even like it, equal to
the soap you have, now keep doing this. This is
a way to provide our friend John great peace of
mind that the soap company will continue so his son
as a can place to work. Okay, got that. Alen
Soaps dot Com slash Todd get ten percent off all
their products are Alen Soaps dot Com slash Todd tough
dudes to hear, right, brother.
Speaker 3: Yeah, why don't we get him down to our folks
in Mexico.
Speaker 1: He's checked with them and it's not the sort of
kids and he's going to respond to that.
Speaker 3: Dang it.
Speaker 2: Man.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I know, you know, Oh no, I it's just uh,
you know, you have those moments where you sit there
and truly you think to yourself, Man, for the grace
of God, you know, there's so much there's there's so
many things, you know, my children not being on you
know what I mean, just all the things that you
think about. Yeah, I just God bless them, man. Either
I just I love I love the way those people
attack life, love their silk. Yeah, yeah, it's just tough
to hear.
Speaker 1: Yeah. And by the way, John's not afraid. He doesn't
have a stick of fear in him. You know that's
where he's going. He's sad, wants to spend time with
his boys and his wife as much time as possible.
So started laid then on. You just realized I was
gonna talk about soap company, and I just wanted to
do that. So there's this US imports consumer goods plunged
by So this is Kevin Gordon. He's with Schwab forty
three point nine percent in the past three months, the
largest decline in history. Okay, number one, Wow, number two.
I didn't notice. What do you mean I didn't notice?
I mean I go to the grocery shore. Yeah, I
buy gas. I mean, granted, my loved wife says most
of the grocery shopping, but I do some. I still
have my supplements, still getting my boptimizers. I guess I
haven't noticed that maybe we could live without some of
this stuff.
Speaker 3: Maybe there is that. The other thing I would say
is because of and that's the other tough part, right, now,
I'll be there have been times where there have been
I'm trying to think of the right way to put this.
There have been times where there have been bigger waves
on the ocean right like COVID. But when you look
at this, My head of research, Chase and I were
just talking about this yesterday. But when you look at
this board, I don't know that I've ever seen a
more complex picture. And the reason why is there's so
many things going on that are one offs. For instance,
we can't just go back and look at the last
time at what the economic impacts were the last time
that we put tariffs on eighty percent of the world,
You know what I mean. Yeah, there aren't comps to it.
So we know that it's creating a lot of anomalies
in the data. It's hard to know. My suspicion is,
is that a big chunk of that number you just
reported is something along those lines. For instance, somebody pushing
out an order of something that would normally go down
this quarter because they're hoping for tariffs to fall off
and they're delaying it for next quarter. Yeah, because when
I hear a number like that, you can't post a
number like that if it's if that number is telling
you what it's supposed to be telling you. There's no
way that number is accompanied with three percent GDP growth, right, So,
meaning to me, there's some data noise there. Yeah, it's
also but it's also emblematic of where we don't really
know where we are. Meaning there's a lot of things
that are making the economy look artificially strong because people
were trying to get out in front of the tariffs.
Speaker 1: Right, so maybe a lot of bunch of stuff in advance,
sort it's brought more than a number would right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And now you kind of have a little bit
of the inverse going on, where I think people are
probably pushing out purchases waiting to see what happens with
Chinese tariffs and things like that. So we just know
that there's a lot of cross currents. It's hard to
make a lot of sense of them. I think the
thing that we're focused on, and I think really the
only thing to focus on right now, is that government
spending the world over is going up, is going up aggressively,
and quite honestly, for the last fifteen years, we have
learned that government spending if done with the right intensity
and the right, focus out outweighs pretty much any other
type of macroeconomic impulse.
Speaker 1: So well, then it also has this annoying thing of
creating unsurpassable or unsustainable debt and too much power in
government hands.
Speaker 3: And that's the problems for problems for another day, Todd,
problems for another day, come on.
Speaker 1: Man, and in powering people who do not deserve this.
So this number, combined with the GDP, leads us into
this discussion about this deal that President Trump did. And
let's preface it this way. So he goes to the EU,
and let's go back and remember what we were going
to have with Trump two point zero. So let's review
some things. Number One, Russia would have taken over Europe,
so there's that. Number two, there would be a series
of nuclear wars all around the country in the world.
Number three, the Europeans would laugh at Trump and refuse
to work with him. And number four there would just
be legit economic ruin across the board. These are some
of the things you promise. So President Trump went to Europe,
they did a trade deal. Here's kind of how this
all went down. This is Ursula vander Lean and they're
talking about the trade deal and what occurred anybody else?
Speaker 3: Yes, man, question for the EU came to the president.
Speaker 1: What are the US beating sessions? What is the US
giving up in the deal to anything?
Speaker 4: So as the starting point was an imbalance, a surplus
on our site and a deficit on the US side,
and we wanted to rebalance the trade relation, and we
wanted to do it in a way that trade goes
on between the two of US across the Atlantic, because
the two biggest economies should have a good trade flow
between US, and I think we hit exactly the point.
We wanted to find rebalance but enable trade on both sides,
which means good jobs on both sides of the Atlantic,
means prosperity on both sides of the Atlantic, and that
was important for us.
Speaker 1: So here's some of the carbats and some of the
things in the deal. And this is, by the way,
the doge AI we just spoke about EAI. This is
automated from doge AI. The EU deal isn't just good,
it's a masterclass in leverage. Trump's tariffs threat a charff threat,
forced Brussels to blink, dropping demands for carve outs and
agreeing to a fifteen percent baseline rate, the real win,
real win Europe committing to seven hundred and fifty billion
in US energy buys six hundred billion in investments, cash
that should have flowed here years ago. Vonder Lean's rebound
sing span can't hide the fact that Trump flipped a
two hundred and thirty five billion dollar EU trade surplus
into a strategic reset. Critics call it chaos, but the
BBB Acts pressure tactics proved chaotic. Genius now watches US
expert surge while bureaucrats scramble to meet their own deadlines.
I mean, that's the dough AI, So that's a computer
speaking to us, but it checks out in terms of
deal flow. And then there's this question, I love this.
Why did it take a Trump to do this?
Speaker 3: Bush?
Speaker 1: Clinton, Bush Clinton, Bush, Obama, Biden? What the heck?
Speaker 3: Dudes?
Speaker 1: So how big is this? And like you just.
Speaker 3: Response, yeah, so, And I hope that this means something
well from both of us, because you and I have
you and I have been critical of some of the
things that Trump has done. Right, I'm laughing all the
way to the bank on this one, because I think
you and I discussed this beforehand. I think that this
has played out very much how I thought, how I
hoped it would how I thought it would. I think
there's two things. So the other thing that you forgot
about that we don't have that we were told we
would have is remember internament camps for trans and gays, right,
all the trans and gays. We're going to interment gain.
Speaker 1: They had some material problems. They couldn't get defenses.
Speaker 3: So okay, that's coming. We've got that to look forward.
Speaker 2: To, right right.
Speaker 3: But to me, the two biggest things here are energy. Okay,
so what is Trump done? He has started so nord
Stream two pipeline was blown up. Now that wasn't under
his watch, and it probably was subterfuge and it was
not a good thing. But with this deal, he is
basically forcing Europe to not make the same mistake they've
made over the last twenty years, which would be over
reliant on Russian fuel. And not only is that good
for our economy, but that gives them less leverage in
that part of the world, and that's a win for everybody.
Speaker 1: Yep.
Speaker 3: Second thing he's done, and I think it's really interesting
the way he's set up these tariffs because if you
look at it, in my opinion, one of the issues
that we've had with Europe is much like it'd be
like the same issue of having like a thirty five
year old kid living at home. Okay, meaning, of course
they loved the setup the way it was, right right.
They got to live underneath the umbrella the greatest military
superpower in the history of the world, and it costs
them nothing. And that's why I would get so irritated
when Europeans would look down their nose that Americans and
talk about, you know, did Doo's even have the educational
system paid for? You know that whole you don't have
socialized medicine, all that kind of stuff. You're like, well, yeah,
that's because we're paying for your defense, right, right, So
you look at these tariff deals basically what they are.
It's forcing them to pay for their defense. And I
actually think that these deals like this will lead to
tighter partnerships, not worse. I think when people are forced
to pay at least part of their fare, they appreciate
it more and I think it makes for better relationships.
And I think yet again, the people that say, like,
you can criticize Trump on a lot of things, Okay,
if you're going to sit there and tell me that
he's not going to get deals done and that those
deals are not going to be more beneficial to the
United States. I'd tell you, you got to show me an example,
because I haven't seen that happen yet. And the guys
bringing home the bacon, now, I think a lot of
these are fairly low hanging fruit, meaning the Pannikins right
as he called them, that were freaking out over all
the tariffs. My whole thing was always, hey, guys, if
you're an export economy, you can't afford not to do
business with the United States. We're the biggest consumer market
in the world. So I don't think that we should
beat our friends over the heads with that. I don't
think that we should lord that over people. But I
do think when you go into any type of negotiation
of any kind, if you don't walk into that negotiation
understanding the leverage you have, right, that's a mistake. Yeah,
it's clearly a mistake. And I look at trade deals
like this, and I love the question that that one
guy post, which was Bush Clinton, where were you on
this one? You know? And look, I think it comes
down to they like the world order the way it is.
I think they liked the control that paying for the
defense in Europe gave them and the influence that gave them. Yeah,
and look, we all know the people at the top
of the heap. Things are going really well for them.
Speaker 1: And I think they like the vacations, and I think
they like the money in their production studios. I'm looking
at the Obamas who now make movies. I think they
liked that international prestige. I think they liked a lot
of that stuff foundations and and one thing about Trump
is he and I know this is the cliche of
all cliches with Trump is he doesn't need the money,
so he's bribable. I mean everyone is to a degree.
Maybe maybe that's not true. I don't know that I'm bribable.
I can certainly sin, and certainly.
Speaker 3: I don't think. I don't. I don't think you're bribable.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm probably not in the classic way, not with
my don't think. Yeah, people have tried it with me
with money, and it wouldn't be with money. It would
be subconsciously getting bribed into something and realizing, you know what,
I kind of went against my principles there, or really
really want to against my principles there and recently, Oh
my gosh, I but know if someone and I've had
cash bribes, million dollar bribe in DC my first couple
of weeks there.
Speaker 3: So but you know what, and they and they've got
everything you need, you know, a better than I do.
It's funny you bring that up. I really I don't
think money could bribe me. One thing. I have to
keep an eye on those egos stroking. Yeah, like I
love you know, hey, I love to read good press.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: But the whole thing about you, Zach is you're so
smart and good looking and enough.
Speaker 3: Oh, let's keep it keep this is just that.
Speaker 1: Yeah. On the topic of him and this deal and energy.
This again, I'm remembering. I don't know how many times
you and I have had the conversations where you had people.
Was it our very good friend Jim Kramer who was saying,
get out of oil, get out of petrol.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I said it was uninvestable at twenty dollars a barrel.
Speaker 1: And now we're looking at the United States with this
Europe guaranteeing to buy this much energy from US. So everybody,
once again, we just talked about the local regional utilities
and oil companies and now micro nuclear sets or that
wouldn't be something that you could take across the sea.
Why would they. But at the same time as we're
doing this Germany, Germany is de industrializing, They're tearing down
their nuclear plants. France is becoming Syria and the worst
parts of Syria. Trump warned these people. And this is
what's so funny about this is Trump warned them, don't
get dependent on Russian fuel. They did. Now he can
come in and go, Okay, you did it. Now you're
gonna buy for me. Then turning to India. Now the
India deal is new. This is what Trump had announced,
twenty five percent tariffs plus a penalty if you don't
start buying your energy from US and if you don't
stop getting if you don't stop buying weapons from Russian
China and turn to US instead. And India is not
a small marketplace.
Speaker 3: No, no, And India to me is something that I
would really like to see, and it seems to be
that this is the case. But I would really like
to see a renewed focus on that from the administration
because when you understand India culturally, they are much more
likely and they do align much more with the West
and with the US than they do with you know,
if you've got to start kind of thinking about the
world and kind of bipolar terms, right, the US on
one side, in China on the other, they are naturally
a much larger ally in a lot of different ways
to US. I think that I think that's a very
important relationship. I think if you were to ask me,
geopolitically and economically speaking, what are the most what do
you think are the most important relationships for the United States,
you know, over the next you know, twenty five to
fifty years. My guests right here sitting here today would
be I think their primary Latin American countries and India.
When you look at India's population, when you look at
their birth rate, They've got all of that. Now, they
don't have the infrastructure, not yet, and they don't have
the same form of government, so it's probably not going
to come nearly as quickly. But you know, a lot
of the things that China had going for them that
turn China into superpower, India has those things as well,
and I think India has certain cultural advantages. So anyway,
I think that that's an important relationship and I'd like
to see that one, I'd like to see us work
more with them, and and and the other part of it.
The same is true with some of these South American
companies our countries. Not only do I think they can
be beneficial relationships, but I think that they can be
economically beneficial relationships that have incredibly positive outcomes for their
citizens as well.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 3: And at the end of the day, you know, that's
the real miracle of capitalism, right, that's the real miracle
of free markets, is they make things better totally. And
if you and if you don't believe me, you know,
you gotta people wanting to go back to the well
of socialism. And I'm like, that's socialism. Is why people
are still driving studebakers in Cuban ry exactly.
Speaker 1: You know, you brought this to minds for me. You know,
this is someone you know and you remember when we
went down to Mexico. Obviously you remember that renew and
you met Caesar yep, So do you know his story?
Speaker 2: No?
Speaker 1: Okay, So this is really cool about renew and the
way they work down there. So there's a lot of
American expats who live there and work for Renewed healthcare.
This is the stem cell company I use. They harvester
stem cells from people they know because they pay for
the birth process of these women. They monitor their health
during and after pregnancy to make sure everything is top notch.
Sometimes they will say no to stem cells. There's been
cases they've said no to eighty percent, and they don't
tell the women unless there's something they find that's really dangerous.
Then they go to the women and say, hey, you
need to know you've got this, and your stem cells
show this. Obviously they're not going to hide something like that,
but they take this walk downstairs into this world's class
lab and then they culture them. And that is the
opposite of what happens in America, where are stem cells
from whomever frozen shipped across the country. Some chiropractor has
it and injects that in you. And okay, Caesar, he
met Steve and Jim who run the place, because he
drove them around. So he was a driver, that's all
he did. And Jim eventually said, do anything else. Now
I'm a professional driver. Come to work for us. So
Caesar goes to work for them, and he told me
this great, great story of you know, Steve is a
very gregarious, very nice man. You've met him, the managing
partner there. They went into a neighborhood to a furniture store.
They were getting some furniture ships in they bought wholesale
and Caesar was saying, Steve, you know, he wears a
nice watch and he's walking in and Caesar said, please,
mister Anderson, take the watch off. I'm a taking the
watch off. And Caesar said, mister Anderson, please, I'm begging you,
please take that watch off. And he's protecting this way.
This was years and years ago. Caesar is now runs
the facilities. He cares for Steve's home when Steve's in
the United States. He has the keys to everything at Renew.
He knows all the doctors by name and where they live.
He as now someone who carries helps the patients with
translations when they go to the hospital. He's taken me
to the hospital. He's actually intervened on my behalf between
an MRI guy and me as Caesar came in and said, no, no, no,
the patient's right. He knows where these these devices are located.
He's now training to run some of these things. He's
training to run the hyperbreak chamber. And this is a
guy who used to drive. Now you tell me about
the values of this company. You tell me about how
they treat human beings. And you asked, Caesar, you want
to go back to socialism? You ask the people at
renew who live there, you want to live under that?
Speaker 3: No? No, no, no no.
Speaker 1: We have great, great work here. So guys, if you're
in pain and you're being told that surgery or pills,
get with renew r e u E dot Healthcare. If
you've had a big neurological damage, please check with them.
Forms of traumatic brain injury has been handled with these
stem cells because a lot of it is inflammation driven.
Please check with them. If you can't move your hands
to arthritis, I've seen it fixed. Go to renew e
u E doot Healthcare. That's renew dot Healthcare. So you
did your live for your webinar, the halftime webinar last week.
What was your takeaway from that when you talk to
people you did the presentation and halftime, what came out
of that and what were the kind of big things
going in that you were talking about. I know you
get feedback and questions on this, So talk about how
that went and what the big takeaway was and some
of the questions and some people hadn't.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I well, first of all, I'm a chart guy,
and so there's.
Speaker 1: About seventy five charts.
Speaker 3: Well there were, no, there weren't nearly as many as
I wanted to compliant. The compliance we've gotten we got
to buy the compliance. Thing is the process has just
gotten ridiculous. So anyway, I'm hoping to get these approved
into the next one. Okay, but we still went over
all the data and I gave the people the disclosure
and I said, listen, I don't have all my charts
because I couldn't get them approved. But the biggest things
that we that we that we discussed is you know,
just continuing people to trying to get people to wake
up to the changing landscape underneath, to let them know
that what they have gotten used to over the last
twelve to fifteen years is the exception, not the rule,
and to realize how out of whack things currently are
on a global basis. And it doesn't when I say
out of whack, it isn't Oh everything in the US
is about to implode and it's time to put on
the big short or anything like that. But we are
running whether we know it or not, we have started
playing a new game post COVID, and that is the
game that we have not played in this country for
forty years. And that game is inflation. And the reason
I call it a game is because inflation reminds me
of that old adage of the guy walking through the
forest with his buddy and you know, they think they
hear a bear in the woods, and the one guy
just stops at an nowhere and starts tying his shoes,
and the other buddies go, what are you doing, man,
I heard it bear, And he goes, yeah, that's why
I'm tying my shoes. I don't need to run faster
than the bear. I just need to run faster new right, right.
And that's It's the game we're playing with inflation, which
is we've got to get out ahead of it. And
when we think about that, we need to think about
that in a lot of different ways of outside of
just number go up, right, Meaning now all the sudden
currency valuations matter. Now all of a sudden, we've got
to take these different things into consideration. Now we've got
to look at the impact of these different trade deals,
and you've got to start looking at it, and what
you see is a world where everything was designed to flow,
you know, not designed. It just kind of ended up
that way. But everything was just flowing into the United States.
Now a lot of things have a lot of impetus
and a lot of reasons to flow outside of the
United States, and we're starting to see that happen, and
that's going to have a big impact on markets. It's
going to have a big impact on what you see.
You know, when I started my crusade against bonds in
twenty sixteen twenty seventeen, people kind of look at you
like you had a third eye grown out of your head.
Right now, after twenty twenty two, the worst year on
record for treasuries in terms of the hit they took
on valuation, I think a lot of people are opened
up to that. But you're going to see bonds increasingly
have a negative outlook. And the reason they're gonna have
a negative outlook is higher rates of inflation, higher rates
of interest, you know, higher interest rates, bonds taking real
life hits. You know, interest rates go up, bond values
go down, and so what what is that? You know?
We need to explore what what is that? You know?
Rather than bonds. What should be an alternative? You just
have to think about the world completely differently the other
part of it. And like I've told you, it's it's opportunity.
You know, our main fund and we it's it holds
about eighty percent of our client's stock market performance. And
then about ten percent is in an ETF fund and
probably about well, no, about probably about fifteen percent of
our assets inner management or in an algorithmic portfolio. But
but eighty percent of our stock exposure is in our
value fund that I'm the portfolio manager of. And you know,
we're up twenty plus this year, twenty percent plus this year,
while the market's up seven and a half eight. And
I don't say that we've had plenty of years where
we've underperformed. We were up fifteen last year when the
market was up twenty three. But the reason I bring
it up this year is we haven't really done anything.
There's never there's not been any really big hits or
any really clever trades. It's just starting to take advantage
of these other asset classes outside the United States, and
they're starting to really perform and really run and pay
excellent dividends, and people just need to wake up to.
You have historical imbalances in the world today, and you
need exposure to a lot of things that the average
retail investor has never had less exposure to international markets
and precious metals. I cannot think of two things that
you need more in an inflationary world and like today.
So how do you do it? Do you buy the
Vanguard All World STOCKYTF No, because that's basically a proxy
of the S and P five hundred. It's it's a
lot more complicated some of these markets. It's hard to
buy stock, you know what I mean. So it's you
gotta you gotta spread out, and you got to look abroad,
and you got to look at other places because they're
tremendous value available. But there are asset classes outside of
US tech.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: No, I think that's super well said. I learned a
great lesson from a friend of mine. And I've mentioned earner.
Sh've never said her name, and this has got repeated.
Speaker 2: This.
Speaker 1: I have a this is related to visible. So I
have a friend of mine who lives over in your
separate country. So he's in the boat sales business. He's
got rentals, boat sales, boat rental, boat repair, and he has, ah,
it's an ancillary business to that, that's that's recreation based.
He takes the those you know, floaty toys, so you
know those jumpy houses that have He has a whole
thing where he has floaty versions of that. All those
are in separate company, which makes sense right, So from
a liabilit to perspective, has them all set up as corporations.
So he heard me talking about bisible and I'd been
telling people, even if your lawyer set it up, even
if your tax accountant set it up, I challenge you
go see if you have actual corporate credit. So he's
a supercificated guy, very you know, wealthy cat. So for
yucks and giggles, he had to search for this stuff
because it's been a while, and he went back and
found his foundational documents right there. He is, his wife's
still security number and all of them, yep, every I know, every.
Speaker 3: Single I was the same way because that's how you
start companies and after a while you just forget about it.
And I remember when Brian approached me with this and
I looked at him and I was like, yes, not
only will I sign up, but I would love to
be a part owner. In this thing. Yeah, you know,
just because I was like, yes, yes, I need this,
and if I need this, I know a lot of
other people do. And the thing is, it's when you
look at what you're getting and you start thinking about
it in terms of insurance. The other part of it
we don't even talk about is the lending platform makes
it so much easier to get corporate credit and all
that kind of stuff. But no, it's to me, it's
a no brainer. I mean, you guys, all these people
out there thinking that they've got a protection from you know,
the corporate veil, and they don't.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that wasn't my friends, I coul because you think
about his business. Okay, boat sales, you sell the boat,
someone wrecks it, and they're gonna blame you. Boat rental?
Are you kidding me? Do you know the riter he
has to pay to be able to rent boats to people? Repair? Hey,
you repaired my boat that caught fire. Floaty bouncy house yep?
With kids getting in this thing. So he immediately said, Okay,
I get it. I'm in touch with your guy, and
I got to get this taken care of. Because he
got back to his accountants and his lawyers and like, yeah,
we could get to that with the next you know,
a couple of months. Yeah yeah.
Speaker 2: No.
Speaker 1: So, folks, if you're a small medium says business owner,
or this case as I wouldn't necessarily count my friend
Kurt as a small or medium sized business. All of
those businesses are pretty big. Here's the website. It's go bisible,
that's with a Z, go bisible dot com. And here's
the deal. Brian and his team will give you a free,
no obligation consultation and they'll show you right in front
of your very own eyes, whether you have corporate credit
or not. There's the lending platform that Zach just mentioned
makes your business fundable. So it's go bisible dot com.
Go bisible dot com. I know you and your wife
are on a vacation before you roll in to be
in football, coach Zach, So I want to thank you
for coming on and it's always good to have Vice's
counsel from you and go with God's good grace, my brother, thank.
Speaker 3: You always good to be here.
Speaker 1: Thanks for having me my pleasure. This is the Todd
Herman Shaw. Please go be well, be strong, be kind,
and make a decision today to walk permanently forever in eterrinity,
in the life of Christ,