Speaker 1: What's going on? Thank you so much for listening to
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smartphone or tablet. And again, thank you so much for
your support. So Tom Tellis is apparently threatening physical violence
against people. No, I'm just I haven't even heard the
clip yet, but apparently the US Trade Representative is testifying
before a Senate panel, and Tom Tellis is on that panel,
and this is Jamison Greer. Well, let's take a listen again.
Speaker 2: I haven't heard MS chairman, Ambassador grit thank you for
being here. Back in the nineties, it was in management
consulting and there was a new platform that came out
that promised to transform the business industry ERP. Some of
the early attempts at implementing the system proposed an ali
premium approach. Let's do it all at once, let's change
the plumbing out, let's get it all in, get it
done rip the band aid off. It proved to be
hugely unsuccessful. There were a lot of very visible projects,
and the industry decided there needed to be a methodical
sort of prioritization of what parts of the business needed
to perform better sooner, and how do you lay onto
that a comprehensive strategy. It looks like we've got a
novel approach here in terms of an olid prema approach.
I'm not a trade expert, and I'm not going to
question it at this point.
Speaker 3: I do have a question about at the end of
the day.
Speaker 2: The other thing in management consulting we like to focus
on is this concept of one.
Speaker 3: Throat to choke.
Speaker 2: In other words, when you're five only take a look
at a strategy, someone has to on it, and you
can't say that it's the president or the vice president.
So my first question to you in this scenario, the
decision maker who decided the ala prima approach, who has
obviously had to have spent time anticipating what we saw
in the markets and some of the pushback. I'm assuming
this all got gamed out, because because it's a novel approach,
it need to be thought out. Whose throat do I
get to choke if this proves.
Speaker 3: To be wrong.
Speaker 4: Oh my gosh, Well, Senator, you can certainly always talk
to me, but I what are you at the tip
of the spear? Well, I'm at the tip of the spirit.
For certainly, did.
Speaker 3: You propose the ali prema approach?
Speaker 4: So, first of all, I would push back center just
a little bit on this. For now, we've excluded pharmaceuticals
and semiconductor.
Speaker 3: Okay, we'll let me a different good, let's get it.
Speaker 2: We've excluded US section two thirty two and three oh one.
We know particularly Section two thirty two is still an
aluminum Section three oh one is Chinese imports where there's
no other provider. I overheard you say that. Maybe I
thought I heard you say in response to another question
that for the near term there won't be any exclusions.
Is that true of China where they have said the
US is unilaterally bullying and completely groundless and they're going
to fight to the end.
Speaker 3: Are they two thirty two and three oh one.
Speaker 2: Tariffs exclusions on the shelves until we get to a.
Speaker 3: Reasonable agreement with China.
Speaker 2: I'm just trying to answer a question that I have
several people in North Carolina asking.
Speaker 4: So the President again is the final decision maker on
all of these things, and he has directed that they're
not the exclusions.
Speaker 2: There will not be any exclusions on steel, aluminum, or
any products that are only manufactured in China for the
foreseeable future until China determines what the end is because
they said they're going to fight to the end. Again,
I'm just trying to communicate questions that I've asked, so
there will be no exclusions. I won't waste your time
asking for him. That's the main reason I wanted to
ask the question. So again, I'm just trying to get
my head around the logic of an alid premium, and
I'm waiting to be I'm waiting to see it be successful.
But it just seems like we've decided to beget a trade.
Speaker 3: War on off fronts. And that's okay.
Speaker 2: If the person who thought this through has an answer
for why you go after partners that we have a
very long story relationship with. Maybe we give some developing
countries a break because we're trying to actually get their
economies functioning, make them look to the West versus the
Chinese investment. So it just seems like I'm getting my
head around the al of premum approach. I'm not condemning
it because I'm not a trade expert, but I still
at some point and I understand that you are the
trade rep So if you own this decision, that I'll
look to you to figure out if we're going to
be successful. If you don't own the decision, I'm just
trying to figure out whose throat I get to choke
if it's wrong, and who I put up on a
platform and thank them for the novel approach that was
successful if they're right. But here's what I'm really worried.
I'm not going to ask any more questions. I'm just
going to tell you every time we talked about people
having patients, we need to understand that the founding fathers
made damn sure that that patience.
Speaker 3: Was never more than about fourteen months.
Speaker 2: Really, everything that we need to do to know what
the political environment is going to be about next year,
it's going to be done by February of next year.
So in your mind, do you believe that over the
course of the next fourteen months we're going to have
a level of.
Speaker 3: Certainty and the people in the trailer park.
Speaker 2: That I grew up in Who are going to bear
the brunt of some of these short term cost increases,
maybe some job displacement for a.
Speaker 3: Period of time. How are they going to be feeling.
Speaker 2: Ground in groundhog Day twenty twenty seven or twenty twenty six.
Speaker 3: Do we feel like the majority of this will be resolved?
Speaker 2: And I'll be able to think whoever thought that the
alu premum approach was a good idea, because that's about
the timeline we've got to work with.
Speaker 4: Well, Senator, these people who voted for the president is
the same situation I grew up, and you know that
I agree.
Speaker 2: But let me just finish here because I don't want
to get away by colleagues.
Speaker 3: I'll be sixty five in August.
Speaker 2: Every day eleven four hundred people celebrate their sixty fifth birthday.
Speaker 3: That's four million a year. So there, let's.
Speaker 2: Say from sixty to sixty five people that could look
at it their four oh one case statements. They did
vote for President Trump, they voted for me. I hope
that they will again in both cases. Well maybe the
president not the president, but I int tend to run
for reelection. I'm just trying to figure out if they're
going to feel good about this because a long term
play in American politics and long term play in American policy,
public policy formation is about twelve months from the beginning
of an administration. I wish you well, but I am skeptical,
thank you.
Speaker 1: All Right, So he's looking, he's looking to choke somebody
whose throat do I get to choke?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 1: And that's the that is the That was the quote
that I saw associated with the clip. But what he's
asking is who's responsible for it?
Speaker 3: Right?
Speaker 1: Do you that gets the accolades if it works? And
if it doesn't, this is who is to blame? And
his like you may not like Tom Tillis, but what
he just laid out, right, there is political reality for
anybody that's running for reelection. And so there is a
clock running on on this effort. And I asked this
the other day. You know how long is the short
term pain? And nobody knows? And that is a that's
a problem, right, that's a problem when you're trying to
sell something and you're telling people to you know, stay
the course. This is going to be difficult, but it's
all going to work out. But I can't tell you
how long it's going to take and yeah, by the way,
if you know your groceries and all of your cost
of living goes up, maybe you lose your job. Then
you know, just be patient, my people. That's a lot
to ask of people. And that's you know, to the
question I asked in the last hour. It's sort of like,
what is the vision that we're going for here? What
does what does that America look like? Is it everybody
going back to work in factories and not being able
to afford more than like one car? Yeah, I mean
I don't know, or maybe you think that this is
going to create all sorts of untold wealth, even though
as I mentioned last week, this is a data point
that people should keep in mind. America is the second
largest manufacturer on the planet, and we have monthly half
a million manufacturing jobs that are unfilled. And so why
are we so confident that Americans want to do manufacturing
when they're not feeling the jobs that are available right now?
They have to want the jobs, you know, for whatever reason,
I need to work because like this now brings in
a whole different discussion about social welfare benefits, right, unemployment benefits,
people not wanting to work, right, I mean, there are
all sorts of other questions that now are coming in,
and so let me give you some other data points.
This is from Norbert Michelle and, the vice president and
director of the Cato Institute's Center for Monetary and Financial Alternatives,
who wrote in The Wall Street Journal that the share
of households earning more than one hundred thousand dollars has
tripled over the past fifty years. So you're talking about
out a share of the total households, a percentage of
all homes, of all households that has tripled, and the
share that earns less than thirty five thousand dollars that
has declined by twenty five percent. So you have a
lot more people moving up in the income brackets than down,
and you have a you have a shrinking lower class
lower income. For most of this period, workers in the
bottom ten percent of income distribution experienced stronger wage growth
than those with the higher incomes. The middle class has
shrunk only in the sense that former middle income earners
have moved up the income ladder. So if I were
to tell you that the middle class is shrinking, but
it's shrinking because more people are becoming wealthier, would that
necessarily be a bad thing. Would it be a bad
thing to have more middle class people moving into the
upper class or upper income brackets? Is that part of
a positive vision of the American future? Is that what
you would want to see? Or must we perpetually keep
a middle class even if it means you basically cap
their ability to get out of the middle class into
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Speaker 1: UM got a message. This is from Michael who says
when I asked the question about you know, higher paying
jobs coming at the expense of the middle class, and
Michael says, it depends on where the new financial shift
came from. How many of these higher paying positions are
in government? I don't know. Norbert Michelle did not provide
that information, but being from the Cato Institute, I suspect
he's not a fan of growing the government either. But
if the upper income bracket has more and more people
moving into it, and you have the lower income bracket
losing people and the middle income bracket losing people because
they're all moving up. Isn't that the goal I had him? Oh,
this Edward Lawrence, I think he's with Was he with CNB, No,
Fox Business? He used to work down the hall here
at WBTV. White House Press Secretary says one hundred and
four percent additional tariffs went into effect at noon today
because China did not remove it's retaliatory tariffs. So the
one hundred and four percent additional tariff will be collected
starting tomorrow because they missed the deadline. They slapped us
with a retaliatory tariff. We told them to take it
off or you were going to hit you with another one.
They didn't take it off, and now the additional tariff
goes into effect. It is in effect as of like
an hour ago. So this is Look, this is one
of the things about these types of trade wars, the
retaliatory tariffs going back and forth, and they just they
just keep raising the costs and erecting more trade barriers
against each other. And you can think that's good. I like,
I've made my position on all of this stuff clear
in the first day. I know people don't want to
hear it, but It's like I grew up and came
of age. I had a time where everybody kind of
agreed that tariffs were inflationary, protectionist and drove up costs
to the end user consumer, And so we're to be avoided. Now,
if this all works out in some different way, I'm
I'm willing to let's see how it looks. I don't
know how it's gonna look, but I hope it works out,
because if it doesn't work out, it's gonna be pretty
Bad's that's my expectation. It'll be good or it'll be bad,
or maybe a mixture of booth. All right, if you're
listening to this show, you know I try to keep
up with all sorts of current events, and I know
you do too, And you've probably heard me say get
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media landscape more transparent. This is a rumor being tweeted
out by media right news tweets our opinion and entertainment,
and not necessarily related to articles. So I have no idea.
But remember yesterday we talked with Ap Dylan about the
Mark Robinson scandal and who leaked all that you know,
information whatever, and like the rumors that were swirling around
that it was one of the staffers, well and it wasn't.
But in that piece that Ap wrote, and I actually
saw it after the fact, I saw somebody it's forwarded
me the invitation to an event in Claremont, North Carolina
where Mark Robinson appeared okay, and this is in the
people are saying that he's now apparently like testing the
waters to get back into politics. Now, so sources who
attended a box car grill event in Claremont with Mark
Robinson told media write news or whoever is running this account.
Here's the scoop again. This is a rumor. I don't
know if this is true. I want that fully understood here.
President Trump is privately brokering a deal to recruit Congressman
Pat Harrigan to run in a primary against Tom Tillis
and then have former Lieutenant Governor Mark Robinson replace Harrigan
for Robinson to run for that congressional seat. Uh A's
a bold strategy. I'll see if it works out for them.
I don't know about the Harrigan Tillis deal, but I
mean I I I'm not sure Robin. Maybe in a
solid Republican district it works right. Maybe maybe he, you know,
Robinson gets through a primary and then wins in the
general because the seat is a drawn safe seat for
a Republican and and maybe that's the way that shakes out.
It could.
Speaker 5: We'll see.
Speaker 1: Back to this piece at the Wall Street Journal, the
middle class has shrunk only in the sense that former
middle income earners have moved up the income ladder. Right,
with consumer price index adjusted income, using nineteen sixty four
as the starting point, that's the first year available data
from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. You go from nineteen
sixty four through twenty fifteen, and you adjust the consumer
price index adjusted income. Okay, so this creates a sort
of like inflation adjusted dollars. Right, You're now able to
kind of look at all of the data and account
for the increase in prices due to the devaluation of
the dollar and everything else. The first year nineteen sixty
four through twenty fifteen, real wages grew by thirty nine
percent using the Personal consumption Expenditures price index. China in
two thousand, rather with they get the trade deal opens
up Mexico nineteen ninety four. Right, it is true that
those trade deals had an impact. Now he minimizes those impacts.
This guy in the Wall Street Journal. He's a president,
vice president and director of the Cato Institute Center for
Monetary and Financial Alternatives. He says the populist story of
the death of US manufacturing is nonsense. He says it
wasn't the China deal, and it wasn't after the killed
American jobs. It's true the number of manufacturing jobs, and
I don't believe that. I do believe there was an impact.
It's true that the number of manufacturing jobs is lower
than it was in nineteen seventy, but that's not because
we can make so much more with or sorry, but
that's because we can make so much more with fewer
people blame technology, not trade. So I would say it's both. Again,
I don't have to choose either one of these factors
and say that's the reason. I believe it was both.
That when you start allowing competition right from foreign countries
that you slave labor, you're not going to be able
to compete with that. From a price perspective. Real hourly
output per manufacturing employee has been on an upward trend
since nineteen fifty nine. Now these data points, I do
believe real US manufacturing value added so the sectors. Manufacturing
sectors contribution to the GDP reached its highest recorded level
in twenty twenty two. Manufacturing output was close to an
all time high in twenty twenty two, and the US
remained the global leader in manufacturing value added per worker
is one example. In nineteen eighty, one steel worker could
produce point zero eighty three tons of steel in an hour. Okay,
so less than a tenth of one percent of a
ton one worker per hour in nineteen eighty. Fast forward
forty years, and one steel worker can now produce one
point sixty seven tons in an hour, so almost two
tons per hour. That's a good thing, I think, right,
you become more efficient. That's what you want, right, You
want to be able to produce more with fewer people.
That keeps your costs down while providing the same number
or more output. So the assertion is, and this is
what I'm curious, what you think that Americans don't want
their kids to have to work punishing jobs in a
steel mill, and it's evident that they don't have to
do so. Is that true? Americans don't want their children
to have to work punishing jobs in a steel mill?
Is that true? Do you believe? Is that true? For you?
Do you believe that? Do you think that Americans want
their kids or don't want their kids to have to
work in a steel mill? American manufacturers now operate more efficiently.
They use fewer natural resources, They require less backbreaking labor,
they produce less pollution, and employ more highly educated people
than ever. No terror for trade restriction is going to
reverse those trends, he says, So what do you think
do Americans not want to have their kids go to
work in the steel mills? Because I kind of feel
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Americans want all of the manufacturing jobs? It's a question
I asked because I've seen the stat that there's half
a million unfilled manufacturing jobs every month right now. And
so if the purpose is to ignite a manufacturing renaissance
in America, will Americans actually want those jobs. I'm just
asking the I'm just asking question. I'm curious, like, how
does that how does that fit into this strategy? Seven
four or five? Seven oh eleven, ten, Let's go to Mike. Hello, Mike,
welcome to the program.
Speaker 6: Hey, how you doing.
Speaker 1: Hey, I'm good. What's up?
Speaker 6: All right? To give you a little bit of information.
In nineteen seventy I was pretty month shy of my
sixteenth birthday. My father put me to work in the
largest meal under one roof in the world, which was
Woodside Meal and Greenville, South Carolina owned by Dan River Mills. Well,
about nineteen seventy four were the act WU THEIA and
it was the Amleamated Clothing and Textile Worker Union came
down from up north and was trying to unionize the
textile mills around Greenville, South Carolina. JP Stevens, Dan River Mills,
and Michael Millikan Roger Milligan of Millican Meals said that
they would close the doors and send everything overseas before
they would be unionized. And another thing you're talking about
the people that won't fill the jobs today, the manufacturing jobs.
People will not work today like we worked when we
were younger, you know, like I mean, I'm seventy years
old now, so we grew up working. Kids now they
don't work. They play on video games.
Speaker 1: So you don't think people will take those jobs.
Speaker 6: No, I absolutely know they won't. And I know I
have worked over the last few years. I've been retired,
but I have worked a lot of people from overseas
in South America. They'll come here and they'll work their
cans off for the money that we make, and they
will they'll live a lot lower than what we live,
so to speak, right, I think.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And so it sounds like, this is a problem
if that's the strategy is to keep, is to bring
more manufacturing into America, but we don't have the people
to fill the jobs, then we have to import them
have the people.
Speaker 6: We have the people to fill the jobs, but we
have so many people that their mindset is I'm not
working my can off for fifteen dollars an hour. I
don't care if he was paying on forty dollars an hour,
they'd still be saying the same thing because people are
basically lazy anymore.
Speaker 1: Right, So again this sounds like a problem with the strategy.
Speaker 6: Well, I agree with you there to a certain extent.
Speaker 1: Yeah, because I don't know a way around it, right
because like I don't know because I'm I'm seeing the
same thing you're saying, and I don't see how you
fill the jobs if they're not being filled right now.
I see, Look, I live right near a bunch of
manufacturing facilities. They've all got signs out in front of
their buildings that say, you know, we're hiring, and they're
like hiring for like thirty thirty five dollars an hour,
no experience necessary. So like, I know what I'm going
to do when the day comes when they tell me
that I'm not welcome at WBT anymore, I'm gonna walk.
I'm going to walk on over to the to the plant.
I'm gonna go work there if they'll have me. If
I you know, I don't know how old I'll be
at that point. They may not want me. But I
don't know, Like that's that's what I would do. But
I don't know. If I don't know if other Americans will,
you know, I don't know how many other Americans will.
Speaker 6: It takes in initiative, It takes drive, people that want
to work, people that want to speed. We have too
many freebies and giveaways in the United States for people,
and people are much too easy on their children anymore.
Speaker 1: No, I got you, Mike. I appreciate the call, buddy,
Thank you, Yes, sir, all right, take care. Let me
get to Jim. Hello, Jim, Welcome to the program.
Speaker 7: Hey Pete, thanks for taking my call, sir. My grandfather,
my father, two brothers, and niece either worked or still
work at steel mill in Cleveland, Ohio. My brother Kenny
retired as a millionaire and has a very very nice
retirement income thanks to his retirement pensions. My brother Bob,
who currently works at the same mill, makes way way
beyond one the year. Granted, he's a hard working guy
and works every overtime hour he can, and he lives
a life of Riley's two homes, vacations in Alaska and
Florida because he loves fishing. He managed to get his
daughter in the same mill, my niece and granddaughter. It
transformed her life. She has a very nice life, makes
a very nice income, brought her mom a brand new car.
Speaker 1: So I but it's not about It's not about the
compensation levels for the manufacturing gigs. Like I've never talked
about the manufacturer or the compensation levels, because depending on
what kind of manufacturing you're doing, you're going to be
well compensated, especially modern America right now, because the high
tech manufacturing is really all that's that remains that you know,
the low tech stuff's automated, right they're not paying people
to do that, or the low tech stuff is probably
manufactured in in you know, China. So what you have
in America is this manufacturing base that is higher tech
and higher skilled, higher paid. But the problem I'm seeing though,
is that there are these half a million jobs every
month that are not filled. And I don't know if
there is going to be this cultural push to because
we've said the same thing about electricians, right about people
in the trades and those professions. You can make a
lot of money doing that work. But they're always looking
for more people in those lines of work because Americans,
they don't they don't take those jobs.
Speaker 7: I don't know how many openings there are at Cleveland
Cliffs in Cleveland, but for the kids coming out of
high school who doesn't want to go to college, it's
a fantastic opportunity to make a very nice living.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I got you, Jim. I appreciate the call. All right, buddy,
let me get Kathy on real quick. Hello Kathy, I
have about half a minute, but it is all yours.
Speaker 8: Okay, I'll make it real quick. First of all, I
love your show.
Speaker 1: Thank you.
Speaker 8: You need to run for you need to run for
off no no, yes, no, no, no quickly. I think
a lot of it. I see the younger generation, hopefully,
if I'm right, kind of waking up a little bit again,
if the people out there, the parents out there, say look,
if we really love our kids, we're going to make
them get out there and we're going to make them
become good people, and I think we are getting at
a point where they have to. They can't afford you
raise adult children. I know I can't. Yeah, And I
pushed mine out and said, you're done. I'm done. I
worked mine butt off, I've done my time.
Speaker 6: It's your turn, Kathy.
Speaker 1: I appreciate it. I appreciate the call, Kathy. It's a
fair point. But I mentioned earlier the Bulldozer parents, right,
these are parents that cleared away all the obstacles for
their kids. I'm not sure they're they're going to be
the ones to say go work in the steel mill.
All right. That'll do it for this episode. Thank you
so much for listening. I could not do the show
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