Speaker 1: What's going on? Thank you so much for listening to
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your support. Don't mess with me for it job. What
day is this February second? Groundhog Day? It's actually not
groundhog Day, that was February said it was. Yeah, it's
the weekend. Apparently we're going to get more winter if
you believe the uh, the oversized rodents prediction, which I
do not. But I do support going out and watching
the movie groundhog Day because it is such a fantastic movie,
a very philosophical movie. I'm a big fan. So if
you haven't seen groundhog Day, go check it out. If
you haven't seen it in a while, you should see
it again. It is a it's a really good movie
and again, very philosophically deep movie. Uh and funny too.
All right, so is everybody enjoying the new trade war?
How's it? How's everybody surviving? Right? Have you? Have you
stocked up on avocados and tequila and Canadian club? Nobody
stocks up on Canadian club? No, I'm kidding, but I
really I guess maybe some people do, Canadians probably that
are living here. Mate. But I am curious in all
of the uh uh, the North American trade war. I'm curious,
why are they getting hit with higher tariffs than China?
What's the deal with that? You know? Just separate from
the question and of are tariffs good or bad? And
my view is that they are generally not good. I
understand it's a negotiation tactic. Pete, you don't understand the
president's at seventy dimensional chess level. I get it. I
understand the art well. I know the arguments that are
made to you know, support the tariffs that Trump is,
you know, threatening all over the place. By the way,
I don't believe those arguments when people make them to me,
because it always really always comes down to one thing,
which is I trust Donald Trump. I believe that what
he's doing is fantastic, and then he will reverse course.
And that's all part of the plan, and you believe
Donald Trump, and that's that is your prerogative. You are
free to do so. I actually think that there's more
to it than that. I mean, I understand the use
of the tariffs. I understand the use of the tariffs
for leverage in a negotiation of some kind. I do
understand that. I don't know if that's solely what they're
being used for. And the only person that does is
really Donald Trump. So anybody who says that they know
that that's the purpose, like, that's just an article of
faith that you are taking, and that again, you are
free to do so. I have much less trust in
elected officials and why they do what they do and
that sort of stuff. So again, you're free to believe
whatever you want to believe on this stuff. I do
think though, that Donald Trump's past as a lifelong Democrat,
I think that is actually part of what's going on
here as well. He you know, came up during a
time when the Democrat Party was a protectionist party for
the labor unions and all of that, and so I
think that kind of formed his thinking on the economics
of tariffs. I've seen people say, oh, well, if you
do all of the tariffs, and then you couple that
with a wind down or elimination of income taxes, then
we would be able to fund the government. And I understand, like, sure,
show me the numbers on that. I would believe that
to be possible. I don't know what the tariffs would
need to be. I don't know all the countries you
would need to slap them on and what products or whatever.
But I'm open to the argument to see those figures.
But here's the thing again, I am a resident of
realvill as Rush Limbaugh used to call it, and I
don't see the income tax going away any time soon
at the federal level, I don't see that happening. If
it does happen, then and we fund through tariffs, So okay,
like that would be a way to fund the government. Sure. Now,
all of that being said, you know, Donald Trump has
been using these things in order to or the threats
of tariffs in order to get stuff that he wants
out of these countries to get concessions. Are they big concessions?
Not sure yet. I mean, I'm not sure what's going
to shake out with the With the Canadian situation, the
Mexican situation seems pretty clear. Right, it's about securing that border.
And right before we got on the air, they the
Mexican government announced that they were going to send ten
thousand troops to the US border in order to help
stemy illegal immigration. And so Trump said he would be
delaying the tariffs on Mexico, which he had said would
be twenty five percent. The Chinese tariffs are only ten percent. Again,
I'm not really clear why China gets a favorable deal
like that when Canada gets a twenty five percent tariff.
But okay, whatever, So delay tariffs on Mexico for one
month to allow for negotiations because the Mexicans have promised
to send ten thousand troops to the border, which they
already did by the way, Like I remember them saying
that a couple of weeks back that they were going
to be sending troops to the US border to help
control immigration. So, like, I'm not sure, is this an
additional ten thousand. It didn't read like that when I
read the statement, So it just seems like this is
the same ten thousand. Also, we are going to work
on preventing the weapons trafficking back into Mexico. That was
one of the concessions. If you will that Trump gave
to the Mexicans, which if you're in Mexico and you
see all of these firearms coming into your country from
across the border, Uh, they want that to stop, and
so we should work with them to stop that. Absolutely,
we should not allow arms smuggling to go across the
border into Mexico. So I agree with uh, with Trump
agreeing to that quote concession, if you will. There is
also an idea that that this is simply a marketing
effort that you you make the demands, you get some
kind of quote concession, something that the Mexicans were already
interested in doing when Trump was coming in any way,
you know, put the troops on the border, and then
you give Trump the win quote unquote, and then he
gets to market himself as you know, making this great deal.
So there's that component going on again. You don't have
to pick one of these things as the reason or
the objective. You can you can believe that there are
multiple things occurring at the same time, that there are
different benefits. For example, for the Canadian one, I don't
see anybody talking about this or hear anybody talking about this,
which is that the you know, justin Trudeau up there,
you know, resigned in the Liberal party that's in control,
Like they suspended parliament. They're they're like out of session.
So they're not equipped to be responding very quickly to
any of this because their government is a wreck because
of Trudeau. And there's been this guy, what's his name,
Pierre Pouliveer or Polivivee or something or other, and a
very impressive guy Conservative Party. And when Trudeau, i should say,
before Trudeau announced his resignation, this guy the Conservative opponent
to Trudeau, he was doing well in the polls. The
Conservative Party was tacking up in the polls. He was
gaining a lot of momentum. And when Trudeau resigned, his
support now has been Paulave's support has been declining, and
so there is an opportunity for him to actually turn
this to his advantage. For internal politics, you always got
to keep in mind, right, like there's the international stage,
and we're looking at the international stuff. Sure, and we're
focused because we're Americans. We don't believe anybody else exists.
It's our birthright, and so like we're like focused on
our internal politics. But these other countries have their internal
politics as well. Marco Rubio talked about this before he
went down to Panama, which by the way, turned into
a very good deal for us, and I would submit
for Panama as well. Not so good for the Chinese,
which Crimea River Commis worked out a great deal with
the Panamanians. So there are again, I just clutioning against
the false choices, the binary choices that oh, it's either
this or it's that, and that's it. It's not it.
There are a lot of different moving parts to all
of this, and now at least we have Trump acknowledging
that prices will go up. Tariffs are inflationary, prices are
going to go up. But here's the thing, we're just
looking at it from our side. Yes, it's going to
go up for us. It's going to be painful for us,
but it's also going to be painful for the other countries. Right,
they have to deal with that too. This is why
you want to avoid trade wars. And by the way,
sometimes trade wars turn into shooting wars, so you want
to watch out for that too. All right, I hope
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You're laughing, swapping stories, reminiscing, and then somebody says, hey,
did remember those old VHS tapes? Did you ever get
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dot com. So Donald Trump put out a social a
tweet or something whatever, a comment seven forty one am quote.
I just spoke with President Claudia shine Bomb of Mexico
that he didn't write this. He didn't write I know,
you know how I know he didn't write this. There
are not randomly words capitalized, you know. And he didn't
call her some name. So anyway, I spoke with President
Claudia Shinbaum of Mexico. It was a very friendly conversation
wherein she agreed to immediately supply ten thousand Mexican soldiers
oh no. Eight soldiers is capitalized and border soldiers. So okay,
maybe he did write it separating Mexico and the United States.
These soldiers will be specifically designated to stop the flow
of fentanyl and illegal migrants into our country country capitalized.
We further agreed to immediately pause the anticipated tariffs for
a one month period, during which we will have negotiations
headed by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Secretary of Turchery
Scott Bessant, and Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnik, and high
level representatives of Mexico. I look forward to participating in
those negotiations with President Shinebaum as we attempt to achieve
a deal between our two countries. Hey, do you remember
the USMCA, Remember that thing. It replaced NAFTA. Remember it
was like the best deal ever. Remember Jim Garretty, writing
at National Review, he said, up until now, imports from
Canada and Mexico largely entered the US market either duty
free so no tariffs, or at average ad velorum in
other words, in proportion to the estimated value of the
goods or the transaction involved, tariff rates less than one percent.
This was arranged under the US Mexico Canada Trade Agreement,
the US MCTA or the USMCA, which Trump signed into
law on January twenty ninth, twenty twenty, and that he
touted as the largest, most significant waymit. Well, he couldn't
have signed it into law on January two, twenty ninth,
twenty twenty. I thought it was before that, because he
was gone by the twentieth of twenty twenty. Anyway, he
called it the largest, most significant, modern and balanced trade
agreement in history. All of our countries will benefit greatly.
One of the advantages was its clarity and policy certainty.
It ran three hundred and one pages. It laid out
the US tariffs on thousands of different kinds of goods,
and they were all set at zero with the new tariffs.
Trump has violated the treaty that he signed into law,
a treaty that his White House called a quote tremendous
victory for American workers, farmers, manufacturers, and businesses alike. But again,
there's a one month pause now, at least for the
Mexican side. Back in twenty eighteen, Peter Navarro, then President
Trump's National Trade Council Director, confidently assured Fox Business Network's
Maria Bartiromo that no country would retaliate against America in
tariffs on their goods. He said, I don't believe any
country in the world is going to retaliate for the
simple reason that we are the most lucrative and biggest
market in the world. They know they're cheating us, and
all we're doing is standing up for ourselves. End quote.
Jim Garretty National Review says this might shock you, but
it turns out that other countries' leaders don't believe that
they are cheating us and that we're just standing up
for ourselves. They think the new administration just picked a
needless fight. They think the administration is breaking its promises,
and they think that the Trump administration has set everybody
up for economic disruption and higher prices on goods and energy,
and retaliation came swift and hard. The Canadian Prime Minister
Justin Trudeau announced plans to impose twenty five percent tariffs
against one hundred and fifty five billion dollars worth of
American goods. Like the American tariffs, our response will also
be far reaching and include every day like American beer, wine, bourbon,
fruits and fruit juices, including orange juice, along with vegetables, perfume, clothing,
and shoes. To me, the big news there is that
we actually make all that stuff. Still. That's impressive. I
did not realize that we were still making that stuff
and exporting it too. That is amazing. I mean, well,
orange juice I did know the end, Bourbon I did know,
and okay, American beer I did know. Yeah, I did
know that. That does make sense. But perfume, that's interesting.
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A couple of messages here to Pete at thepetecalandarshow dot com.
This from Tom who says, Pete, I forget the economist
who said it, but the quote is something like, if
goods don't cross borders, are means will? Yes, that is
always a concern when you start ratcheting up pressure like this.
You know, trade wars can lead to shooting wars. Mike
in Mineral Springs says, correct me if I'm wrong. But
during his first term, didn't Trump levy a twenty five
percent tariff on goods imported from China with negotiated loophole
cutouts for companies like Apple, which President Biden, in one
of his rare lucid moments, left in place throughout his term.
So if that's true, the ten percent new tariff is
being added on top of the existing twenty five percent
tariff on goods imported from China. Love your show. I
do recall that he did slap them with tariffs and
Biden did not remove them. I do know that that occurred.
So maybe that explains why the ten percent is only
ten percent. But to our neighbors and ally of Canada,
it's twenty five percent. By the way, there is a
quote here from an economist prominent economist Mined a year
ago said the tariff gun will always be loaded on
the table, but rarely discharged. Of course, strategic and national
security issues around China will remain. Another differentiated view that
we have is that Trump will pursue a week dollar
policy rather than implementing tariffs. Tariffs are inflationary and would
strengthen the dollar, hardly a good starting point for a
US industrial renaissance. The economist who said that Scott bessn't
Trump's secretary of Treasure, so there is also, by the way,
there is something here. Have you heard? I was not
aware of this tariff mechanism. It's called the dominimous Yeah,
the deminimous tariff loophole. So the vape company Jewel Juul,
they put out a statement today that said, you know,
American Technology and Innovation Company commends Trump's efforts to protect
American citizens through increased enforcement of trade laws in border security.
This includes closing the so called deminimous tariff loophole, which
allows Chinese exporters to smuggle products into the US with
scant oversight or inspection. Over the past four years, criminals
have used smugglers tactics to exploit this loophole and flood
the US with illegal Chinese vapor products, which now account
for approximately seventy percent of the market. This key provision
of the America First Trade Agenda empowers our law enforcement
agencies to stop the flow of illegal Chinese vapor products
and further secure our border. So this, as I understand,
it's something like anything less than eight hundred dollars is
allowed in or something, and so has created good like
China specializes in black markets, Like this is what they
are really good at doing is figuring out ways to
get around all of your rules and laws so they
can get their garbage into your country. And so they've
been exploiting this deminimous loophole with vape products, which people inhale.
I'm not sure you're aware of how that works. It's
like a it's a nicotine substitute. And like I find
it odd. Like also that Jewel recalled they got like
the the I think it was the FDA under maybe Biden.
Somebody slapped them down and said you can't have these
flavor products. So Jewel I think it created the like
the product vape, the vape thing, like the market was
created by Jewel, an American company, and they had these
different flavor vapes and they got smacked down so they
can only offer like menthol and and tobacco flavor. And
because all the other ones are, you know, they're trying
to entice kids to vaping. Meanwhile, the Chinese are flooding
the market. Check up behind the gas station counter. Next
time you're in a gas station counter at the counter,
take a look behind and see all the different weight
products that are up there. Those are all not Jewel.
So yeah, they're exploiting the loophole, much like they exploit
other countries with their Belt and Road initiative, which Panama
had signed on too, and now they're looking to get
rid of it after a visit by Marco Rubio, our
new Secretary of State and the threat of massive tariffs
against Panama over the way Panama is treating American companies
through the Panama Canal, which I always find it important
to point this out, as President Trump does as well.
Americans built that. America built it, paid for it, built it.
It costs tens of thousands of lives. People died like
crazy building the Panama Canal. And if you don't know
what the Panama Canal is let's just say it connects
us to like half the planet because before because it's
one big land miss like from the top of Canada
all the way down to the bottom of South America.
And so by cutting through Panama, we got a waterway
that allowed us to save weeks of travel time for
our ships and that includes our military. They don't have
to go all the way down around South America. They
could just cut in half. Now, I'm not aware if
the fear has ever materialized that like cutting it in
half would mean like the bottom half of South America
would just kind of drift off and like go down
to the to Antarctica. I'm not aware that ever happening.
But yeah, we just we cut right through it and
we owned it. And then Jimmy Carter gave it back, sorry,
sold it back for one crisp clean American dollar. One dollar.
Gave it back, and Panama has been bending the knee
to the Chinese because the Chinese see this as a
very important strategic funnel point, and they are it's a
choke point, and they are correct. They are absolutely correct,
which is why America and apparently Donald Trump the only
president to realize this should value its importance as well. So.
Panamanian President Jose Raoul Mulino said his country would not
renew its agreement with China's Belt and Road Initiative. You'll
hear it referred to as BRI or BRIE as I
call it, following a visit from Secretary of State Marco Rubio,
a move that'll make it the first Latin American country
to leave the BRA Initiative the Belton Road Initiative. Mulino,
speaking to reporters yesterday after Rubio's first foreign trip as
America's top diplomat, said he believes the agreement is due
for renewal in a year or two. Ah, really sure, Well,
I haven't checked the paperwork on that thing. Yeah, when
does that expire. I'll have to go back and go
through my desk drawer and find it. But he says
it should expire. He said he would study whether it
can be finished earlier or not. The news is a
blow to Beijing, which views Panama as critical to its
foreign influence efforts in the Western Hemisphere. Chinese businesses operate
ports near the Panama Canal, which the United States owned
and operated until moving control to Panama in nineteen ninety nine.
Brazil also considered joining the Belton Road Initiative late last year,
signaling a desire to align with the Chinese Communist Party.
The country abandoned those plans soon after, however, with officials
expressing fear about signing long term agreements with Beijing, which
is that that is wise because as communists, we all
know commies lie. 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 your news from multiple sources.
Why well, because it's how you detect media bias, which
is why I've been so impressed with ground News. It's
an app, and it's a website, and it combines news
from around the world in one place, so you can
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Your subscription then not only helps my podcast, but it
also supports ground News as they make the media landscape
more transparent. Russ sends in a tweet or a message
on the Twitter machine who says he rewatched Groundhog Day
last night and he totally had forgotten the scenes where
Phil does so much to prevent the death of the
homeless guy. I have heard the movie depicts thirty eight days,
but he actually spends ten years repeating that day. And
I wrote him back and I said, I remember reading,
and I've I did not get the stuff because technically
today is in Groundhog Day. But I've got a bunch
of analyzes of that movie, and I recall one of
them saying that it was like a thousand years that
the movie actually takes place. So he relives that one
day like in this purgatory, reliving the one day to
learn the you know, the purpose of life basically, and
it took it could have been a thousand years anyway.
So and then as a giver, Russ says, you only
ask one thing of us every day. Don't break anything
while you're gone. Based on the last several weeks, I
think we all need a refresher on what that means. Yes,
they all are incorrigible. Let me see here, this is
from good Wahoo. Uh. My understanding is Trump initiated tariffs
of ten percent on China because Trump already put tariffs
on China in the first term and they are still
in place. Biden kept them also from a practical sense,
believe as we have such a huge trade deficit with
China relative to Canada and Mexico, so ten percent brings
in just as much and actually probably more. Also less
impact on consumers as so many things are made in China.
And then I had another message from Timoteo who said,
considering China, you this is a lot of slave labor.
There should be such a high profit margin that they
can lower their prices ten percent to continue selling in
the US with no change in prices for the US consumer.
It just depends on how much they want the business. Also,
I'm not jumping on the COMMI bandwagon, but you know,
Trump enjoys occasional divergence from the truth as well. Yes
that's true. When I say Commi's lie, though, I mean
it is it is fundamental, Like the entire philosophy is
based on lies. So like everything about it is deception.
And so that's why I say the rule number one
of communism is is Commi's lie. You can never trust
anything that they say, nor should you. Steve says that
apparently avocados will now henceforth be called Americado's that's regarding China.
So this over the weekend, a medical device used in
hospitals has been found hosting a back door. This is
software lingo, paving the way for an unauthorized user to
remotely control and tamper with equipment. So this is the stuff.
This is the monitor that like when you're in the
hospital and you're hooked up to the machines. This is
the monitor, and so it is it has been found
to have a quote back door, and data and even
control of the machine itself has been affected, so like
the data has been going out from these machines. The
threat was discovered in three different versions firmware versions for
a patient monitor called the Context CMS eight thousand, also
sold as the EPSIMDE, which can display a user's vitals
including heart rate including heart rate sorry, according to an
advisory from the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency or CESSA,
which is weird because I thought like their main mission
was to just spy on UH and then get shadow
band conservatives on Facebook. I thought that was spending all
their time doing. The equipment from China based Contact Medical
Systems was mysteriously configured to connect to an IP address
for a third party university with no connection to the manufacturer.
They have not named the university, so some university some point.
I don't know if it's an American university or foreign
or what, but this university has the IP address and
it's going to them. The back door enables the IP
address at the unnamed university to remotely download and execute
unverified files on the patient monitor. In addition, the same
backdoor automatically sends patient data to the IP address quote.
This is from an advisory from the FDA. Once the
patient monitor is connected to the Internet, it begins gathering
patient data, including personally identifiable information or PII or as
I call it PIE, as well as protected health information
or PHI as I call it FI, so PI and FI.
They also xfiltrate or withdraw the data outside of the
healthcare delivery environment. It's unclear why the third party university
was not named, but SISA learned of the back door
when an unnamed security researcher tipped them off. The agency
then tested the three firmware versions and noticed the anomaloust
work traffic which the security researcher had flagged, and SISA
concluded the back door was not a legitimate way to
use the patient monitor When the function is executed, SISA
says files on the device are forcibly overwritten, preventing the
end customer like the hospital, from maintaining awareness of what
software is running on the device, so they can actually
put stuff into the device too. So think if you're
a high value target. Let's say federal agencies are advising
healthcare providers to prevent the patient monitors from connecting to
the Internet at all, So unplug any Ethernet cables or
disable the wireless connections, so the patient vital signs are
only observed by a caregiver or healthcare provider in the
physical presence of a patient. But yes, let's keep trading
with China. All right, that'll do it for this episode.
Thank you so much for listening. I could not do
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You can also become a patron at my Patreon page
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much for listening, and don't break anything while I'm gone.