Blake Neff (4:33)

Well, it's been back and forth all day. The line I saw was when there was basically a false report that a 90 day pause was likely or imminent. The overall stock markets rose about $2 trillion in value. There's 3, yeah, 3 trillion maybe. And you know, it's gone up and down, up and down all the day. And I think probably the reason it's more moderate is I think there's a greater sense that some sort of deals are likely to be made. We have the European Union offering to junk a bunch of tariffs. We have Vietnam offering to eliminate all tariffs if they can make a deal. And we have Trump saying we're basically open to negotiating with every country that isn't China. And if you take the U.S. trade deficit, you know, most trade the U.S. does is not with China. So if you reduce the range of trade war from every single country in the world to just China, that's undoing a lot of what we've announced in the past week. As you said, I'm, you know, more in the middle on this. I would say what I feel and what a lot of people feel concerned about is the sense that this was like just taking a giant. Like, it was like they wanted to push one single button to achieve everything they wanted to do. There's been reporting that one of the offices in the Trump White House, they actually did go and they figured out what would a reciprocal tariff be on every tariff on U.S. goods. So they, you know, they look at what actual tariffs are they imposing in France, what are they imposing in Vietnam, what are they imposing in, in Great Britain and so on. And then they were going to match those point for point. And then apparently the White House just thought that's nah, let's just go for the easiest one. And so they did this trade deficit based calculation. And what's missing from that is what do we say our goal here is? Our goal is to bring more manufacturing back to America, but when it's just like this, it's not finely tuned to that purpose. So, for example, you're doing a flat tariff on everything. You're not doing, for example, a tariff on finished goods, but then no tariff on raw materials that would encourage people to bring raw materials into the US and then make stuff here instead. It's just basically a hike on everything very abruptly. And I think a lot of people are very worried about what the impact of that will be.

Andrew Colvitt (7:00)

Yeah, no, and I think that is one of the critiques that I've heard floated, that it's a, you know, a sledgehammer when a scalpel was needed and that sort of thing. And I, I will say that, listen, you know, President Trump, he did not hide that this was going to happen. Now, we didn't understand the details or how it was going to be, you know, sort of put into place, put into practice. Nevertheless, this is not a mystery. President Trump has been very, very clear about this. And I, you know, I happen to, and Blake, you and I have talked about this privately. I am a true believer in this, in this strategy. I hear every one of the pushbacks and I absolutely disagree. I will say they could have done it without so much pomp and circumstance. They could have just done it quietly and done it country by country. I would have been fine with that. But directionally, here's What I mean, I completely agree that there needed to be, as Jack Posoba calls, a reset of the great reset. We needed a reset of the way that we do business with our trading partners. And I do believe that President Trump's art of the deal brinkmanship can be unnerving for the market. It can be unnerving for many people that are just watching it take place. But the base that voted for Trump wanted change. And there is. There are clips after clips after clips of, you know, farmers, beef, beef ranchers that are saying, yes, thank you, because all of these other countries have been able to sell into America for years. And, and, you know, we haven't been able to do the same to those countries. Australia, Argentina, whatever. This is recalibrating different parts of the economy, and that's going to be rough and bumpy for a little while. But I think what is very clear after this morning is that President Trump is dead serious. Peter Navarro's dead serious. Howard Letnick is dead serious about resetting and recalibrating a lot of these trade negotiations. Now, one of the pieces of news that came across the wire this morning was out of the eu. Okay, so I'm going to go ahead and play this clip. This is what I think is a good sign. And I'll explain on the other side of it.

Ursula von der Leyen (9:13)

136, we stand ready to negotiate with the United States. Indeed, we have offered zero for zero tariffs for industrial goods, as we have successfully done with many other trading partners, because Europe is always ready for a good deal. So we keep it on the table, but we are also prepared to respond through countermeasures and defend our interests.

Andrew Colvitt (9:37)

So this was European Commission President Ursula. That's quite the name. Von der Leyen. And she says the EU stands ready for a zero for zero tariff deal. Now, you know, she makes it sound like this is something they do all the time. Everything's fine. I don't know why we couldn't have just, you know, gotten together and hammered this out. Well, here's the problem. They couldn't hammer this out because the EU are really good negotiators. The United States has been locked in by a free trading, I would say, cult that sold a lot of our workers down the river. Meanwhile, EU has been very strategic about protecting its industry. And so why is she willing to say this now? She's willing to say it because President Trump is playing hardball, and the world is quickly catching up to the fact that we're. We're not messing around now. Yeah, we've lost trillions in market value over this trade war. These, these tariff, this tariff policies to adjust essentially a 1 to $1.5 trillion trade deficit. And a lot of people say $8 trillion in in market cap is not worth a 1.5 trillion dollar trade deficit. You have to expand that over years, folks. And you have to also assume the human price that has been paid as a result over years of these trade tariffs and these trade barriers that these countries put up. So guess what? As soon as we get resolution on this, you're going to see that market cap shoot right back up.

Dr. E.J. Antoni (11:08)

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Andrew Colvitt (12:14)

Blake, is the sky falling? What does Bill Ackman say? Break. Break down this whole Bill Ackman story for us.

Blake Neff (12:21)

Of course, of course. So Bill Ackman, he's a Wall street veteran, very opinionated. He's been a guy, a very loud voice on Twitter and then X over the past few years. He very notably was one of the sort of. He's generally mostly a Democrat donor historically and he is one of the most prominent voices who shifted towards being a pretty vocal Trump supporter in 2024. He denounced Dei. He was very involved in attacking universities like Harvard after the 107 attacks. So he's a guy who generally in the middle has moved towards supporting the right. Probably a good barometer of like the centrist Wall street money person. And he has been pretty upset about about the tariff announcement and he's been on a tear the last couple of days on X. He had a very long post last night that's already over 12 million views. I can't read the whole thing, but I wanted to get to a few excerpts from it. He says that, you know, the country is 100% behind President Trump on fixing a global system of tariffs that has disadvantaged the country. But he says business is a confidence game and confidence depends on trust. He continues later, by placing massive and disproportionate tariffs on our friends and our enemies alike and thereby launching a global economic war against the whole world at once, we are in the process of destroying confidence in our country as a trading partner, as a place to do business and as a market to invest capital. He continues further down, what CEO and what board of directors will be comfortable making large, long term economic commitments in the United States in the middle of an economic nuclear war? That's the term he uses. He says it's not just big companies that will suffer. Small and medium sized businesses will experience much greater pain because almost no business can pass through an overnight massive increase in the cost of business and they can't pass that on to their customers. So he's long story short, he's saying the president has an opportunity on Monday, he was saying this yesterday to call a timeout and have time to execute on fixing an unfair tariff system. And he got pretty angry because just a short time after he posted this, he then followed up and he said, I just figured out why Howard Lutnick in the Trump administration is indifferent to the stock market crashing. He and Cantor Fitzgerald, the company that he was from, are long bonds. He profits when our economy implodes. It's a bad idea to pick a secretary of commerce whose firm is levered on long fixed income. It is an irreconcilable conflict of interest. And then this morning he walked back from that. He said it was unfair of me to lash out at Howard Lutnick. I don't think he is pursuing his self interest. I'm sure he is doing the best he can. It is not an easy job. But I am just, I, Bill Ackman, am frustrated watching what I believe to be a major policy error occur after our country and our president have been making huge economic progress and that is now at risk due to tariffs. So this is just one guy, but he is speaking for a lot of people. I think there's a lot of people who are very anxious about what the tariff policy is. They're warning that this will have dramatic consequences if it's not paused or mitigated in some way. And we can see their angst playing out in the markets every day.

Andrew Colvitt (15:51)

Well, And I will agree with Ackman. I think he's a very smart guy. I don't necessarily think he's a true believer in sort of reforming, reshaping the American economy, especially with our trade deficits. I think he likes it. I don't know that he's got the, the, the guts or the true belief and the conviction to stay the course when it gets rocky. And I'm a little bit different in that way. I think where I will agree with him is that businesses, markets need predictability. And so the sooner that we can get to a predictable baseline, the better it will be long term. And so whether that Baseline is the 10% tariff across the board, so be it. Or if we're going to have right now, Trump, basically what happened with China to bring the audience up to speed with that is we essentially had 54 tariffs on China. They reciprocate. They came back with reciprocal tariffs or, you know, retaliatory tariffs up 34%. Trump now went to True Social and said, listen, we're going to hit you with an additional tariff of 50% which would essentially put the tariff over 100% on Chinese imported goods. I think China is his number one nemesis here that he wants to take off the chessboard and he's playing some high risk poker, there's no doubt about it, basically saying China cannot survive if without being able to trade all these goods into the United States. Now there's going to be other problems for us that that comes, comes along with China having supply chain issues into the United States. But that is the number one foe that Trump is after. It's very, very clear. So I happen to think that, listen, the sky's not falling. It's going to get bumpy, but we got to stay the course. Right now.

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Andrew Colvitt (18:44)

Honored to be joined by Dr. E.J. antone. He's an economist over at Heritage. Dr. Antoni, welcome to the show. Thanks for making some time here on a breaking news day. Sum up for us what you are seeing. The the market looks like dow is down 480. I mean, it was down much lower than that. Then it shot up to about plus 840 on some fake news of a 90 day pause in the tariff war. Now we're back down at 4, 450, something like that. We, we're hearing news about 50 plus countries that are at the negotiating table. We've got B.B. netanyahu has just arrived at the White House. Lots happening make it make sense for us.

Blake Neff (19:24)

Well, Andrew, thanks for having me. You know, unfortunately, a lot that we have to go on right now is really just rumor and that's why there's so much volatility in the marketplace. Now, there are a few things that we know for sure, right? Like you mentioned Benjamin Netanyahu being in town, like that's something we can definitively say is the case. But as far as nations being at the negotiating table, you know, again, there's rumors that there's a lot more. There's rumors that there's a lot less. We have heard some EU officials go on the record saying that they are willing on certain things to go to zero tariffs if the US does as well. So again, there is definitely some good progress here. But overall, there's a lot of rumor, which means there's a lot of volatility. Another thing that we know for sure was that because there were so many short positions on Wall street, as soon as we saw a little bit of an uptick today in stocks, there was a rush to cover. In other words, people were starting to buy stocks for fear that if the price went up, they'd have to buy them at an even higher price. Now, normally stock prices going up would be a good thing, but in the case of a short position, it's exactly the opposite. You're betting on things going down, not up. So whatever the case, this all caused a tremendous amount of not just volatility, but a huge swing. The Dow had its biggest intraday swing ever, moving over 2,600 points between its lowest and its highest point of the trading day. And we're only halfway done at this point. So again, tons of rumors, which means tons of volatility. Markets are looking for direction, they're looking for definitive answers. We thought we were going to get that last week with the tariff announcement and unfortunately because of the way these tariffs have been structured, we've gotten exactly the opposite of clear answers. We've, we've gotten a lot of misdirection.

Andrew Colvitt (21:05)

Yeah, I want to go into that idea of the way these tariffs are structured, Dr. Antoni, because there's been a lot of back and forth, especially on social media about that. Some people feel that President Trump shot too high on the tariffs, that they're not one to one, but they say they're factoring in, you know, trade deficits as well as other non tariff related trade barriers. Basically, President Trump, if I was, if I was looking at this, I would say that he is very provably a very, a true believer that he wants to get equal trade, meaning no trade deficit ongoing with the United States and our trading partners. I predict that this is going to be a fairly long term struggle in a trade war, if we want to use that word. Are you seeing the same and please comment on the way that these tariffs were structured in the first place. Was it done right? Were the things we could have done better?

Blake Neff (22:07)

The floor is yours, Andrew. These are great questions. Thank you for asking them. And it's really something, I think where we need to set the record straight because there is so much misinformation out there. There are way too many versions of the truth here. There's only one truth. So here it is. What President Trump wanted were true reciprocal tariffs. In other words, he wanted a kind of economic golden rule, if you will, where we say to other countries, look, you are imposing these tariff and non tariff barriers on us. You are penalizing our exporters and therefore our workers. And so we're going to do exactly the same thing to you. Holding up a mirror, as it were to these other countries. That is what he tasked members of his administration with, like the Commerce Department, like the US Trade representative, et cetera. That is, that was the whole reason for the delay, for example, waiting until April 2. It was to give those folks time to calculate what are the average effective tariff rates among all these different countries around the world. Instead, what we got was something that has literally nothing to do. Let me be perfectly clear. These tariff rates have nothing to do with other nations tariff and non tariff barriers. They simply looked at the ratio of imports to exports and only looked at the imports and exports of products, not even services. And so at the end of the day, you're simply looking at trade deficits. And again, it's just the trade deficit in terms of goods. Unfortunately that means for some countries where we actually have an overall trade surplus. You know, maybe we sell them shoes, excuse me, they, they sell us shoes, so we're buying shoes from them, let's say. And then maybe we turn around and sell them financial services. And they are buying much more in financial services from us than we buy shoes from them. That's a trade surplus for the United States, except that according to this formula, it's counted as a trade deficit. And we impose a penalty tariff rate on that country for having that trade deficit in goods with them. That's a ludicrous trade policy. It's not going to get us what we want, which is more free trade. That's the whole point of reciprocal tariffs. It's to force other nations to get rid of their tariff and non tariff barriers so that just as foreign nations have access to our consumer markets, our producers can have access to their consumer markets. That's the goal here. We want more free trade, not less. You know, it's not that we're protectionists, it's that again, we want true reciprocal free trade, free and fair trade, what some people call it. And the problem with how these tariffs are structured because they're not actually looking at other nations tariff and non tariff barriers, is that we have imposed penalty rates on many countries who don't deserve them. Why on earth is it we have a tariff rate on Israel that's almost twice as high as the one on Iran? Why is it that China has a tariff rate that's just frankly middle of the pack? They should have the highest rate among any nation because they engage in the most trade abuses, whether that's manipulation of the currency, subsidizing industry and dumping artificially low priced products in other countries markets. You have slave labor. I can go on and on. Whether it's currency manipulation, et cetera, the list just goes on and on when it comes to China and all of their unfair trade practices. And yet again they have a middle of the road tariff rate. So the issue here is not the goal, right? President Trump absolutely has the right goal. And I even think that his method, if you will, or his tactic of reciprocal tariffs was a good one. The issue here is how that was implemented. The issue here is that he has people within his administration who frankly have not served him well enough, who did not provide him with the reciprocal tariff schedule that was promised. That's the issue here. And again, if you look at markets Reaction when it was first announced we were going to have this 10% across the board, tariff markets actually rallied. Initially the futures markets went up, I think about 1.5% on that news. But then all of a sudden when this tariff schedule appeared where it made absolutely no sense, these numbers clearly did not come from tariff and non tariff barriers. That's when futures started to tumble. And then we've had now three days basically where the markets have really taken it on the chin again. This all has to do with uncertainty. People don't know where we're going to go from here. And that's a problem.

Andrew Colvitt (26:23)

Yeah. And I think to your point, I mean President Trump, I believe everything that I'm seeing and everything that I've seen from him historically is dead set on correcting a trade deficit that we currently are experiencing. Right, let's just play one of many clips that are out there. Let's play 107. This is 2012, President Trump talking about tariffs.

Charlie Kirk (26:46)

107 and I said, somebody said, well what would you do? What can you do? So easy I drop a 25% tax on China. And you know, I said to somebody that it's really the messenger, the messenger is important. I could have one man say we're going to tax you 25%. And I could say another listen you, we're going to tax you 25%.

Andrew Colvitt (27:18)

I mean there's tons of these clips around. So I mean here's what I. And he's been consistent throughout the years and I think he's seeing this moment as his one opportunity where he's early on in his term to, to seize this issue and push it forward. Now I will agree that the way it was done I think has spooked the markets. I think you could have done it a different way. So let's game this out then. Dr. Antoni. So, so where would you like to see his strategy go from here? Because Trump is going to claim a win one way or the other. That, so that's, we know politically that's going to be part of the next step. What does he have to do to sort of claim plausibly that his tariff and his policies have effectuated the change he wanted while also rewarding the markets, bringing everybody to a stable place with predictability.

Blake Neff (28:11)

Well, I think one of the key things is going to be during these negotiating processes with different countries will be to come up with actual average effective tariff rates. So you look at a nation like Canada, look at all of their tariffs, but also their non tariff barriers, their quotas for example, that they put on things like American dairy products, you know, that really hurts our dairy farmers. So figure out, okay, what is the mathematical equivalent in terms of an overall tariff? And so say to Canada, look, if you are willing to get rid of X, Y and Z tariffs or non tariff barriers that you currently have in place, we will reduce this tariff rate by a certain amount. Okay? And that's your negotiating tool. But the problem with, again with the current tariff schedule, when there is no real relationship between those trade barriers and the rate, some of these nations are coming to the negotiating table with their arms up in the air saying, we have no idea what we're supposed to do here. We have no idea how we can actually get these tariff rates down. So I think some further explanation from the White House and some further, further clarification on what the actual rates should look like would go a long way. The other really big thing is that it seems like we've kind of put the cart before the horse in a certain sense. You know, what this economy really needs is supply side policies. We need drastic, I mean, drastic cuts to government spending, to taxes, to regulation. We need an energy production boom in this country. And so by getting tariffs first, without all of those other things, the American middle class, who has been drowning, it's like we just threw them an anchor without first building them a boat. And so it is imperative that we get things like the tax cut across the finish line. And also what I would really like to see from Congress, you know, this isn't just the administration's fault. Congress has been painfully slow to act on this. So I would love to see Congress in the reconciliation process where we get the tax bill through to include in that process this 10% kind of baseline tariff that the President has put in place, put that into statute, but do it as a border adjustment tax. And that has a lot of different advantages. First, it gives a huge benefit to our exporters, which encourages production here, encourages manufacturing and encourages American jobs, which is tremendous. But it also puts the tariff only on imports. So you're not going to have things like the car industry, where a car part may cross the border between the U.S. mexico and Canada half a dozen times before it goes into the final car assembly. You don't want that to get hit with a tax every single time. So a border adjustment tax solves a lot of those problems. And the other great thing by putting it in statute is the fact that now you can include that in the calculation of the reconciliation process so that all the revenues can be used to reduce income taxes.

Scott Bessen (31:06)

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Andrew Colvitt (32:10)

Were talking about something and I think it's, it's a as nuanced point but I think it's incredibly important because you, you brought up the reconciliation package. Now there was some waffling and I would say they, they Congress was attempting to water down some of these spending cuts, the tax, extending Trump's tax cuts. There was, I mean, you've got the moderates and you've got the fiscal hawks and I mean what we were getting was a muddled mess. I do think one of the unintended consequences, positive consequences of what we're seeing in the markets is now Congress has added incentive to ensure that we are getting the supply side relief that you're talking about. Meaning are we going to get deregulation, Are we going to get, are we going to get these tax cuts extended? Are we also going to add this 10% baseline tariff or you categorize it a different way. But what that does is it essentially builds in that revenue into this reconciliation package. Continue on with that because I think it's a really important point that nobody's really bringing up at this point.

Blake Neff (33:20)

Well, thank you, Andrew. Basically because these different tariffs which are going to generate revenue, these tariffs are being put in place by the executive and not put in statute by the legislature, they can't be counted in the reconciliation process in term in terms of revenue that's going to come into the treasury. And that's so important because under Reconciliation. This is supposed to be a process. Process by which you take an existing budget and you basically just tweak it. And so you're not supposed to have drastic changes to either revenue or expenditures. You're supposed to essentially have no effect. It should even out. So if we're going to make a change, like reducing marginal tax rates on income taxes, which is terrific, that's a great thing. It's exactly what the economy needs. It's what the middle class needs. They need tax relief. But now you're going to need to offset that somewhere. And I understand the fact that there's a Laffer curve effect here. In other words, as you reduce tax rates, that increases economic activity, which grows your tax base. And if you grow the tax base faster than the tax rate declines, overall tax revenue actually increases. That's what we saw during the first Trump administration. The problem is that's not how the Congressional Budget Office scores it. And so you need what they sometimes call an offset to the reduction in personal income tax rates. And a great way to do that would be to take the revenue that's going to come in from a tariff, a border adjustment tax is what we really have. And. And then you can. You can now essentially shift some of the tax burden onto foreigners, which is great from an economic standpoint, because there is actually an externality at play here. It is our Navy that patrols the world's sea lanes. It is our Navy at our expense that keeps the ocean safe for international trade. And so it only makes sense that other nations would help pay that expense. And a great way for them to do it would be to tax the very thing that our Navy is supporting, which, again, is international trade.

Andrew Colvitt (35:21)

I totally agree. I think that's really well said. Dr. Antoni. I want to switch gears slightly here. And this clip was making the rounds. It was Secretary of Treasury Scott Bessen. He sat down with Tucker Carlson, and he made this pretty remarkable statement. Now, I want to. I want to factor in what Scott Bessen says here in this clip and then kind of use that to understand the way the market is reacting. Is it an overreaction? Is. Is. Are the wrong people incentivized in the wrong ways here? So let's go ahead and play cut 124.

H (35:57)

And look, I'm not happy with what's going on in the market today, but the distribution of equities across households. The top 10% of Americans own 88% of equities, 88% of the stock market. The next 40% owns 12% of the stock market, the bottom 50 has debt, they have credit card bills, they rent their homes, they have auto loans. And we've got to give them some relief.

Andrew Colvitt (36:29)

So, Dr. Antonio, let me frame it this way. There seems to be a disconnect between Wall street and Main Street. And obviously, when Trump has done this tariff regimen, we are seeing Wall street panic. They're unsure. There's no predictability. I understand that night. The point is, is this. Is this recalibration of our economy a way to make it so that Main street finally gets that relief and Wall Street's just going to have to take it on the chin, or is there a way to make them both win?

Blake Neff (37:03)

That's a great, great. That's a great question, Andrew. And look, it's not that we need to redistribute wealth from Wall street to Main Street. The redistribution of wealth is not the answer here. Instead, what we primarily want is we want to focus on Main street growing. Now, the good news for Wall street is the fact that when Main street does better, Wall street will, too. Right. The problem is that in this country, we haven't had that happen in a very, very long time. Instead, Wall street has continued to do better at the expense of Main Street. When you have runaway inflation, for example, what goes up in price? Everything. The price of a home goes up. Rent goes up, food goes up. But you know what else goes up? Equities. So stocks appreciate in price tremendously. Those who already own homes, those who own an apartment complex, let's say whatever the case may be, all of those assets are going to rise in price. And so for the people who have essentially already established a wealth position, they do just fine. But everyone else, as the secretary was just saying, they're forced to take on a lot of debt. Homes become perpetually out of reach. You know, the median mortgage payment on a home today is literally twice as high as it was four years ago. In other words, under the Biden administration, the median price home became twice as expensive. That's obscene. And that's why, for the first time since the Great Depression, people think they're not going to be able to achieve the standard of living that their parents had. So this whole reordering of global trade is not about trying to penalize Wall street or force the market to tank. No, the reason the markets are tanking right now is because they're looking for direction. They're trying to figure out, what exactly is this new world order going to look like.

Andrew Colvitt (38:49)

No, I totally agree. I think you're 100%. Right. What they want is predictability. They're not. It's almost like the market isn't rejecting tariffs on its face. What it's rejecting is can we predict what the. What the basic operating, you know, assumptions are for businesses internationally. And by the way, just as we're talking here, Dr. Antonio, we're seeing some green. The S P 500 looks up. The NASDAQ looks back up. The Dow's down 200. It was down much, much more. I'm not sure what the 1200 at one point. Yeah, I'm not sure what's any signals causing this, but hey, perhaps we end on a high note here, Dr. Antoni, that, that, you know, the sky is not falling. We're gonna get some resolution here. Stay the course, keep your wits about you. But your points are well made. Thank you for making the time on a busy breaking news day, Dr. Antoni.

Blake Neff (39:43)

Andrew, thank you for having me.

Andrew Colvitt (39:44)

Thanks so much for listening, everybody. Talk to you soon.

Blake Neff (39:49)

For more on many of these stories and news you can Trust, go to charliekirk.com.