Speaker 1: And hello, welcome to the Big Podcast. Happy Friday to you.
Today is the twenty fourth day of July, year of
our Lord two thy twenty six. Moname is Tom Sullivan,
and well we've got we'll get you up to date
on the latest from the White House about Iran because
it has been changing. I know, I know, there's no
surprise there, but welcome back to tariff land. Because the
President went out on Liberation Day back in April of
last year and did all the tariffs across the board.
Nobody could figure out the calculation. But regardless that it
went out over all these countries, Supreme Court said, you
don't have the power to do that, but you do
have the power for these temporary tariffs, and so we
said okay, and they put the temporary tariffs of ten
percent on a bunch of countries and that temporary expired today.
So tonight there's a whole new group of tariffs that
are being assessed to a little bit more than eighty
countries and it's going to be either a ten percent
or a twelve and a half percent tariff.
Speaker 2: And I.
Speaker 1: Don't know what the difference is. I'd home ones more
than the other, but the President and his team have
used every trick in the book. They've gone back to.
There was a trade law that allowed for the infamous
Smooth Hally Tariff Bill of nineteen thirty and when they looked,
they thought for sure that had been repealed. Was given
a lot of the reason why we had the Great
Depression was the smooth Holly. Anyway, apparently it's still available
and the White House grabbed it. And that is what
the President is using for a couple of different terriffs.
For example, he hit Canada with fifty percent tariffs and
Brazil also got hit with twenty five percent and two
hundred percent on generic drugs. That will take place apparently
in the near future, but today ten percent to twelve
and a half percent, with some reporting of sixty trading partners.
Others are eighty trading partners. So the President is once
again waging a trade war. And this is where I
have long established the fact that I think trade wars
have a long history of being dangerous. They're negative. So
I do want to address tariffs again. I know I've
gone over it in the past, but tariffs are simply attacks.
There are attacks on you and me and every business
in America. That buys anything that comes from overseas. So
I know, we would like to buy everything made in America,
but not everything is made in America. But it taxes
you and me, which raises prices, which causes inflation. It
distorts market incentives, It lowers long run economic growth. I
mean this has been proven year after year, time after time,
every time tariffs have been tried tried anywhere in the world.
So the direct tax is on the importers, they passed
it through to you and me. The supply chains become disrupted.
Economic growth is capital and labor into less efficient protected sectors.
It is the government manipulating the free market, if you will,
So it lowers business investment and you'll always get into
international tit for tat retaliation no matter what. And by
the way, the guy who was advising the president to
do this originally, well he goes way back on this.
But Peter Navarro, who if you look at his credentials,
I mean, he's got a great pedigree. But I will
tell you the reputation, in my humble opinion of Peter
Navarro by economists around the country is he's a nutjob.
And he is and he knows all of this. I mean,
he's smart enough to know that it slows growth, it's
attax he knows all that. But he has an agenda
about China. He hates China. He's written some books about
how bad China is, and he wants to punish China.
But guess what, this hasn't punished China as all at all.
Our trade deficit is still setting records even though we
had all these tariffs. So let's let's listen to Joya Manchester.
She is from the Hill.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 3: There's two sets of tariffs that were announced by the
administration this week. Earlier this week we saw the additional
fifty percent tariffs placed on Canadian goods, and on top
of that, you have President Trump saying he's taking a
look at even more tariffs to potentially slap on Canada
in response to their handlings of the wildfire up north.
But the latest tariffs that went into effect midnight on Friday,
those were announced yesterday, and those are on sixty countries,
and the administration says this is about, you know, these
countries handlings of labor, particularly forced labor. You know, President
Trump is using Section three oh one of the nineteen
seventy four Trade Act to implement this, and this is
after the Supreme Court overturned his initial vehicle to implement
tariffs back in February. President Trump used a workaround between
February and now that ran out at midnight. So this
is a new set of tariffs. But the big question
is why is President Trump doing this at this moment,
at a time when you see inflation, even though there
are some indicators that has somewhat improved, but you're seeing,
for example, oil prices hitting one hundred dollars a barrel
for the first time since May. You see inflation still
a burden on Americans. Gas prices back up to four
dollars a gallon. There is this financial concern among Americans,
and I think you know, the question is why are
we adding additional tariffs that could add an even more
more of a financial burden onto Americans. So that's the
big concern. The administration says this is about holding other
countries accountable for their trade practices, but it certainly I
think just chatting with sources is a risky move ahead
of the election.
Speaker 1: The timing it could not be worse because the war
is already going to drive inflation up with higher oil
and gas prices, and then you throw tariffs on which
drive prices up. And they're using the excuse that these
six One report is sixty another report is eighty different
countries that for some reason, they're all using forced labor,
and I it's a stretch that the very You know,
could they say that the United States uses forced labor? No,
but I guess that you want to make a point,
you could say, well, some people have to go to
work because they have to pay their bill, some goofy
excuse like that. Cameron Johnson, he's a supply chain expert.
He works between here in Shanghai. This is what he said.
Speaker 4: Because the results of all this, no companies are not
going to move manufacturing from China to Vietnam or from
Vietnam to India. They're just not going to do it.
Speaker 5: We saw that already.
Speaker 4: We have seen that, we saw that movie. We've also
seen some products go back to China just because of
the ecosystems and also it's more stable there. They know
exactly I can get this raw material for this type
of price. I know where the workers are, I know
how things are made. If you go to other parts
of the region, particularly because of the shortages from the
around war. We don't quite have that certainty. So at
the moment, nobody is moving and it's just an additional
cost we're all.
Speaker 5: Going to have.
Speaker 1: This guy's is a supply chain expert. Did you hear
what he said that companies have decided to go back
to China because China is more stable, a more stable
business environment where they can make their plans because the
President keeps changing his mind and the amounts on tariffs
and companies don't know what the price their products for,
what the plan for building factories, equipment, whatever it might.
This is very chaotic trying to deal with with Donald
Trump's trade wars. And guess what, if you do business
in China, you don't have to worry about that. So
let's move on because we've got another issue, and this
one is about True Social Truth Social that's the media
company that Donald Trump started. He still owns forty one
percent of that. The stock is down thirty percent this year.
I have to go back and look at prior years.
It's been a disaster financially, and now they are selling
true social access to people who pay one hundred thousand
dollars a month, you get an early look at what there.
You'll get the tweet before everybody else does, and the
president moves markets, so you know Wall Straight is going
to pay up for this sort of stuff. Speaking of
here's Wall Street Journal reporter talking about.
Speaker 6: It, so they get it like milliseconds before, exactly, So
this is going to be the very fastest way to
get Trump's truth social posts. And in this business, for
the high frequency traders, the types of firms that are
subscribing to this data, nanoseconds matter. We're talking billions of
a second can make a difference in terms of their
profits or losses. So they want to be the very
first of these posts and make moves across stock markets,
bond markets, derivatives markets exactly. So they are saying that
all these posts will be available once they become public, right,
but how you get the data is very important, and
API is certainly going to be faster than say me
opening up social in the morning and then trying to
trade off of the news. So one this could shift
the balance of power further towards Wall Street and away
from many main street investors who might want to trade
on this data. And there's entire Reddit boards dedicated to
trading on Trump's truth social posts. But just zooming out
a little bit. These HFT firms do everything in their
power to get this data as quickly as possible, even
tied to government data releases, think the labor market reports,
inflation data. A lot of them try to put their
computers next to the government data buildings around those reports
to get it again nanoseconds faster. And that's a practice
called cold location.
Speaker 7: Right.
Speaker 6: They're also investing in the most expensive, fastest technology to
get this data really fast and tradew.
Speaker 1: You know, don't be surprised the fact that there are
companies that will that already do this. They sell to
Wall Street firms early access to their information, and that's fine,
it's a private company deal doing business with investors. But
this is the president who moves market selling his true
social posts. He's the president. He's not supposed to do that.
No public figure is supposed to be doing this. It's
another way for him to put money in his pocket. Again,
it's one hundred thousand dollars a month per subscriber.
Speaker 6: It's really fascinating. When I was talking to traders this week,
we started the conversation with commenting on how unprecedented this is. Right,
we haven't had a president who's profiting from these payments before.
But then they went on to say, look, we have
to do this. We have no v but to subscribe
to this feed if we want to keep up with
our competitors. And many of them said, hey, we're already
doing it. We are already doing everything in our power
to get this data. Not up to them, though, I
mean they're playing by the rules that exists currently.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they are playing by the rules that exist currently.
But when the steps into a government official that can
move markets, it becomes just really eyebrow raising. At the
very very least, White House correspondence Dientner was rescheduled, didn't
make it in thirty days, but it's tonight, and it's
at the Waldorf Fast Storia in Washington, d C. That
is formerly the Trump Hotel Trump International in Washington, d C.
He sold that this is the old post office building
that Trump renovated supposed to be I've never been been
a beautiful hotel, So the Waldorf past Storia is the
place tonight. And security. Andrew McCabe, former FBI official, talked
about how the security is going to be really amp
up or this is a smaller event than the previous
one of the Hilton, but it's still a big event tonight.
Speaker 8: Yeah, and I think what we'll see with the right
perspective is a much increased bolstered perimeter.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 8: The perimeter is, of course the place where that video
that you just showed, where the gunman was able to
get actually through from the dirty side, the non secure side,
into the clean side of the event. Now, it's interesting
that the Secret Service still maintains that this was a success,
and from their perspective, I think that's a fair headline.
They say that's the point of the perimeter to keep
people out, and this person was essentially stopped in that area,
so therefore as a success, I think others could very
reasonably argue not one hundred percent success. This guy was
able to come out of a stairwell with a shotgun
to approach the perimeter and actually get through it, not
very far, but through it with a pretty with a
serious weapon that you could see there on the screen. Now,
so I think you're going to see a much tighter,
smaller space, likely more officers posted at key chow points. Yeah,
they are just absolutely swamped with what they call protective
intelligence investigations and actual credible threats. They said they're over
ten They've opened over ten thousand cases just this year
on protective intelligence investigations. That's when they receive some sort
of a threat or a concerning communication, most of which
come through the Internet these days, and every one of
those people has to be looked into to determine whether
or not they pose a credible threat. That process has
led them to conduct ten times as many interventions mental
health interventions with the subjects of those investigations this year.
So they are very frequently working with family members and
mental health professionals to resolve some of those things. But
with that immense workload, just wonder how far can this
relatively small agency be stretched and still perform at the
one hundred percent success rate that's required.
Speaker 1: Well, it's kind of a one, one of a kind thing.
When I was with Fox, I was invited and I
went once and it was interesting, but it was it
was one and done once I stunted. I checked that
box off. It's a bunch of politicians and they invite celebrities,
and the celebrities won't come because Donald Trump is a
president now. But it's just a it's a very strange
and you're dealing with all of your competition and they
all act friendly to each other, and yet you're in
tooth and nail competition with the other people, but they
all act it's all very Washington hypocritical. I don't understand it.
Speaking of Washington, Ram Emmanuel, you know he wants to
run for president. He's testing the waters right now. He
wrote a piece this is in Yesterday's Wall Street Journal
called the Bernie Bros. Could spoil Democrats' midterms. The sub
headline as Republicans will make even moderate opponents answer for
the radical views of Democrat socialist candidates, and Ram writes,
I have no objection to the Democrats nominating an oyster
man for a Senate seat. When I led our party's
efforts to recapture the House in two thousand and six,
we made a point of recruiting candidates with authentic, broad
based appeal. But that strategy would flip thirty one seats
during my tenure and claim twenty one more in two
thousand and eight was predicated on a substantive promise we
needed to ally voters worries that Democrats were weak on
national defense and culturally out of touch. Today, the Bernie
Bros And their fellow travelers in the Democrat Socialists of
America seem intent on repudiating the proven success of that strategy.
So he goes on Wall Street Journal yesterday. It's a
very interesting read. He's obviously trying to take a different
path and seek up for the Democrat establishment.
Speaker 9: Here's ram Emmanuel, Well, Jim, here's how I look at it.
This year, you have a war that's very unpopular. Two
thousand and six, you had the Iraq War, very unpopular.
To this time, you have massive amount of corruption around
the president, his family, and the Republican Congress is sitting
silent like the three monkeys. He know evil here speak
no evil, here no evil. Then you had Tom Delay,
you had the Iraq War, all the contracts. It is
set up to being prosecuted as a referendum on Donald
Trump in the Republican's a perfect set. I just came
back from Omaha. It's just a microcosm of an example.
We have a fabulous candidate, Denise Powell. They're calling her
dsa Denise, making her try to distance herself from the
New York thirteen. You know what happens in New York
thirteen doesn't stay there. And her opponent just voted against
the minimum wage. Seventy percent of the people in Omaha
on a referendum voted in favor of minim Wait, now
we're going to prosecute this against the minimum wage and
against his desire to be a lapdog for Donald Trump?
Or is she gonna have to spend precious resources dissing
yourself from somebody she never met and a set of
policies from defunding the police, open borders, and letting criminals
out of prisons.
Speaker 10: That is what the DSA stands for. And so to me,
this is malpractice. Now you have a perfect case. This
should show up as a referendum on Donald Trump and
the corruption. And the only thing they have is not
what they have, it's what we're giving them. And this
is a distraction. And when you recruit candies like Denise
Polo is excellent. Cann is like, we're back to down
in New Jersey against Tom King Junior, and you have
other military candidates that are perfectly set to win independent
voters to the Democratic calm, which is how you flip
read to blue. I'm not interested blue to blue, Read
to blue my new colored Jim Navy blue. That's all
that counts.
Speaker 1: So he's trying. He's trying to do the Democrat establishment
is the way to go. And well, I feel the
same way about the Republican Party. I long ago left
the Republican Party, but I don't like the magat wing.
I'm a Reagan Republican and a lot of Reagan Republicans
got pushed to the side. So they're with me over
here in the independent camp, no question about it. And
speaking of Republicans, they're having their issues as well. The
President is not happy with John Thune for a number
of things. The number one item is as that President
Trump wants to Save America Act to be passed, and
Thune keeps telling him, I'm sorry, I don't have sixty votes.
I've got fifty three Republicans, but I need sixty to
pass that, and I can't find seven Democrats to pass it.
So the President and John Thune are going at each other.
Speaker 7: Mike Johnson and Congress have done a great job, but
having a hard time in the Senate. The Senate, what
they're doing is just it's just not right. Everybody called
John Thun at the Senate. He's the leader of the
Republican Party and tell him to get this stuff approved.
Speaker 1: Yeah he's not no, no, no, he's not happy. Caroline
Lovitt weighs in as well.
Speaker 11: The President spoke about this directly yesterday. His patients is
running out. He wants to see as much of the
Save America passed as possible by the August recess. The
House did its job. The Senate needs to do its
job too.
Speaker 1: I'm sure that John Thune is trying, but he can't
convince seven Democrats to go to go with him on this.
The Democrats are not going to do anything to help
Donald Trump, especially in a midterm year. So I don't
know what rabbit he has in his hat, but it
doesn't look like he has any. Scott Jennings, who has
become a kind of an informal voice for the Republican Party,
this is his reaction.
Speaker 5: And the Senate is much different than the House, and
the way the Chamber works, the way the dynamics are
and the personalities at play here are different. I mean,
let's be honest, some of these Republicans in the Senate
conference are simply ungovernable. As it relates to the normal
political pressure that President Trump could bring to bear, and
let's be clear, he could bring enormous pressure to bear
on most Republicans, but a handful of these people are
retiring or lost primaries and they're on their way out,
and some people just have a philosophical difference of opinion
with him about the save acc Look, goodness knows, I
support the President's position so to virtually all Republicans out
there in the country. But some of these senators just
have a difference of opinion. And as Senator Thune knows,
as the leader, you don't run for the Senate to
be ordered around by a president or a Senate majority
leader or anybody else. You run for the Senate to
be your own man. And some of those people are
doing that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, a couple of the Republican senators, John Cornyn from
Texas and Tom Massey from Kentucky. The President actively worked
to support somebody who primaried both of them, and they're
both out. They lost because of Donald Trump, and now
he wants their vote, and they're going, well, wait a minute,
So John Thune, not only he has fifty three Republicans,
but there's at least two, if not more that are
going I'm not going to cooperate with Donald Trump on this.
So he's got his problems. Kristen Sualt to say, and
she's been a very powerful Republican campaign manager, if you will,
campaign consultant. This is what she said.
Speaker 12: I think it's interesting when you say we're used to
because in some ways it does feel like Congress over
the last not just two years, but over the.
Speaker 11: Last many, many, many many years.
Speaker 12: Has kind of ceded authority to the executive under both parties.
It does seem that way, and so I don't necessarily
mind somebody who's the leader of a chamber sort of
standing up and saying I've got to run my business,
I've got to do my thing. I think it's important
for him for the politics of the Republican side to
make clear that he's on sides with the President on
the substance because it is a very popular piece of
legislation with Republican voters, but at the same time also
make the case this is why it's so important for
me to have a robust Republican majority in the Senate.
Speaker 11: There have been some things that the President has done this.
Speaker 12: Year that have potentially jeopardized that, for instance, endorsing against
I'm been Senator John Corden a vote I am certain
that the White House would quite like right now. So
there are ways to be smart about the policy to
do politics, of addition, rather.
Speaker 1: Than some tri I will just add one think karent Well,
she said you've got to be smart about politics. She's
is she calling President Trump not very smart about the
way he does his politics. Well, if you if you
stab John Cornyn and Tom Massey and then turn around
and ask for their vote and their support, they're not
going to What do you think they're going to do?
All right, let's get the very latest on I roan,
because it keeps changing. The President was, you know, talking
tough again. I'm gonna I'm going to do a real
big attack this time, and now today he's going, well,
we're we haven't We're still talking about it. So is
he or is he not? Is he committed to actually
winning militarily? General Jack Keane.
Speaker 2: Well, certainly.
Speaker 10: Uh.
Speaker 2: The path that we're on is is pretty clear. Do
we do we go back and do more negotiations with
these folks, or do we actually face reality in terms
of the fact that what we have seen through negociations.
Remember when negotiations actually began. After we went to a
ceasefire on April seven. Negotiation kicked in pretty much the
next day, and for weeks after that, we tried to
work a deal, and we actually did get a deal,
and the President of Iran signed it and the President
of the United States signed it. And that in itself
was an accomplishment that hasn't been done before because in
that deal was there was only one agreement. All the
tough issues were kicked down the road for sixty or
more days, and it was open the straits of a mouse.
And what happened. We removed our blockade, and what did
they do. They refused to give up their control of
the straits and influence of it, and actually went so
far as to fire on ships who were not obeying
their orders. What they expected out of that was negotiation
team to come back and huddle again to work out
future compromises, et cetera. But what did they get. They
miscow once again. President Trump was not going to stand
for that. It was a violation of the deal that
he signed. He recognizes full up what he's dealing with here.
He obviously always suspected what he's dealing with a regime
that's been in existence now with different players, but the
same philosophy, the same ideal commitment, the same barbaric behavior
that we've been dealing with for forty seven years. And
he went back to combat operations to certainly open the
straits forcibly given the fact that Nick not going to
willingly cooperate. So here's the choice in front of us
as we speak right now. The Iranians are talking about
negotiating again, and so that choice is available to us.
We can go back and negotiate and kick the can
down the road and see if we can get a
better deal. But I think where the president is, he
sees him for what they really are. Look at, this
regime hasn't changed, truth be known in forty seven years,
the same ideology, different people, and they've always used diplomat
as so called moderates reasonable trying to get concessions out
of the United States and our allies, appearing to meet
the objectives that we're trying to achieve despite the hardline
is that they have to deal with that has always
been a false narrative. There is only one regime now
and for the previous regime leaders as well. They always
used so called moderate reasonable negotiators. That's the reality of
what we're dealing with here today. So the choice going
forward is do we fix this regime and shut down
their behavior once and for all, go back to major
combat operations. That is a much better choice. If we
continue with negotiations, they've already demonstrated even if we get
a deal, they will not comply with it. What would
that mean? That would mean strategic failure. People are not
going to remember five years from now that we had
to pay higher game prices. And I'm not minimizing the
impact that has on families and working class families who
meet and pay bills every month. Certainly it has an
impact on them. But what they will remember is a
regime that has recovered, that has rebuilt itself, that is
a predator in the region again, and yes, killing Americans
and our allies and partners and the Israelis once again.
They will remember that, and that is something we can
avoid right now. And I'm absolutely convinced the President is
not going to go down that path. He's going to
go down the path to fix this the behavior of
Pazeem forcibly, once and for all, and listen. I credit
sent an a share she as you played his statement.
People should go read that statement that he made today.
It has moral clarity in it that you rarely see.
It reminds me of some of the speeches that Lindsey
Graham has made and John McCain has made, and people
should read it and understand what's in that speech and
why we're doing what we need to do here against
this regime. One president forty seven years has stood up
to this regime, and that's President Donald Trump. And we're
on a pathway to fix this problem once and for all.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it seems well. First of all, it's very unpopular.
All the polling shows a majority of Americans are against
this war with Iran. I am not for war, but
the problem with Iran is they are going to want
to build a nuclear weapon that will not only take
out Israel, but we'll attack probably many cities here in
the US someday if we don't stop them, and nobody's
been willing to stop them. The problem with I'm having
with President Trump is he's not going full force against them.
He's going part of the way, and he's calling her
to skirm me. She's not looking at it and the
other thing I do not understand why is he answered,
Why any of the officials, the president others as well.
Why are they talking about we'll do this, we'll do that,
we won't do this, we won't do they give away
the plans. You better believe Tehoran is listening to every
single word that they say. So it's it's frustrating. I
wish they would just full more military, get rid of
the regime, completely, arrest them, take them into custody, set
up a government for the people of Iran to decide
and move forward. And the faster we do that, the better.
Otherwise we're going to have a long, drawn out, more
a forever war, all right, normtok Wall Street because it
was it was positive, but it was more positive than
where we finished. The Dow Jones Industrials did close up
two hundred and thirty five to fifty one thousand and
nine forty seven. It had been up double at earlier.
Sp just barely moved up three nasdak more, selling of
especially the Magnificent seven, down one hundred sixty one points
today for the Nasdak, the price of hold up five
dollars to four thousand and fifty five. Oil actually was
down a little more than a dollar a day to
ninety one dollars for one barrel of West Texas Intermediate.
That's it for today. Have yourself a wonderful weekend. We're
about ready to put together the Financial Friday podcast and
post that. I hope you have a chance to tune
in there, and I'll see you back here on Monday.