← The Way I Heard It with Mike Rowe
The Way I Heard It with Mike Rowe
435: Josh Smith & Bayard Winthrop—Shut Up and Make It!
01:32:44
Amid the tariff wars, Mike sits down with two men whose businesses are NOT affected by foreign supply chains. Josh is a master bladesmith and founder of the , and Bayard is founder and CEO of . Both men are uniquely positioned to discuss the benefits...
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- [00:04]
Mike Rowe
Hey, guys, it's me, Mike Rowe. It's the way I heard it. This one's called Shut up and Make It. You know why, Chuck? Why? Because I think sometimes what our country needs to do is just shut up and start making things.
- [00:14]
Chuck
Yeah, well, certainly this administration would like.
- [00:17]
Mike Rowe
Us to do that, wouldn't he? Yeah, you know what? I don't know what this administration would like. I. Some. They're certainly not shutting up, I can tell you that. No, no, but they're discouraging the importing of goods from. And they want us to make stuff in America, which is something that you've been touting for many, many years now. I have. I have indeed. But of course, it's complicated. Everything is complicated. There's super no such thing as a playbook or a panacea. You can't pick up the headlines, it seems, without seeing the word tariff emblazoned upon there. In fact, what did you want to call this episode? I wanted to call this episode America is Terrible.
- [00:58]
Chuck
Terrific.
- [01:00]
Mike Rowe
Right? But that's not gonna happen because it's called Shut up and Make It. It's part of my New Year's resolution to not listen to anything I say. Well, no, that's an old resolution. Simply trying to avoid more puns. But it's not bad. I think that if you were to poll the common man or woman, you would find a level of frustration around this whole topic that could redound to a simple proclamation along the lines of, just shut up and make it already. Why can't we make it? Whatever it is, why can't we do it?
- [01:36]
Chuck
Jeans, bobblehead, whatever.
- [01:38]
Mike Rowe
You know, it's tougher to make it in America than it is to have it made overseas. Which is precisely why the people who have chosen to try and make stuff here are of unending interest to me. I've been very lucky to meet a lot of those people and have a couple of them as sponsors on this podcast. And I just thought. I thought it would be interesting, maybe even useful, dare I say instructive, to hear from some people who are not impacted by the current supply chain drama, who are not impacted by any of the things that seem to be in the headlines, whose businesses are, in fact, thriving in this day and age.
- [02:19]
Chuck
One might say terrific.
- [02:21]
Mike Rowe
One might. But one won't. What I will do is let you know that I reached out to Josh Smith, who runs the Montana Knife Company, who has helped US raise over $100,000 for microworks so far with his amazing knives, and our old friend Bayard Winthrop who is now coming up on year 16 in American giant and doing what they said could not be done, which is making quality goods here in the United States with every step of the supply chain being checked here. Yep. So I thought they would be interesting to talk to and of course they were. And so we've got two guests for you in the next hour and 20 minutes or so. The first is Josh, the second is Bayard. Do things get a tad political here and there? I guess maybe. I mean, I'm not really sure how to talk about this issue. They certainly get terrific. Oh, dear me. All right, you know what, having said all that, what you want to do is listen to Josh and Bayard, which you'll have an opportunity to do right after this.
- [03:28]
Chuck
Dumb.
- [03:29]
Mike Rowe
We need to close the skills gap in this country and we need to do it yesterday. I know I'm a broken record and I hate to be an alarmist on this topic, but There are currently 7.6 million open jobs out there. Most of these jobs don't require a four year degree and currently 140,000 of those jobs exist within the maritime industrial base. This is a group of 15,000 individual companies who together build and deliver nuclear powered submarines to the U.S. navy. This is, this is a problem, folks. Nothing is more important to our national defense right now than our fleet of submarines. And right now there's a real concern that a lack of skilled labor is going to keep us from, from building and delivering the subs that need to get built and delivered. It's three a year. These are nuclear powered subs for the next 10 years. On the positive side, we're talking about a ton of opportunity just waiting for anybody who wants to learn a skill that's in demand and start a career with some actual purpose. These are stable careers that offer strong pay, constant advancement, and no danger of being replaced by AI. Additive manufacturing, CNC machining, metrology, welding, pipe fitting, electrical. It's all spelled out for you@buildsubmarines.com. that's where all of the hiring is happening right now. And you really do need to see it firsthand to get a sense of just how much opportunity is out there@buildsubmarines.com. come on and build a submarine. Why don't you build a submarine@buildsubmarines.com? hi, Josh Smith.
- [05:13]
Josh Smith
How you doing, Mike?
- [05:14]
Mike Rowe
I'm great, man. So I talked to you an hour and a half ago or maybe two and you were in the Denver airport and now you're back at MKC World headquarters. I assume Yep.
- [05:26]
Josh Smith
Back in the office in my backyard.
- [05:28]
Mike Rowe
I really appreciate you hopping on last minute. I can't pick up the newspaper without seeing the word tariff. It's been in the headlines for the last month. I don't think it's going to go away. But I've been really curious because I don't hear from many people out there in the mass media who have been making things in this country for as long as you have. I just was curious on your take, what does it feel like to wake up and know that your supply chain is not being impacted and that your prices are not being impacted and that your employment. It's like, I know you don't want to take a victory lap, but it kind of feels like this is a pretty cool time for people who have been betting on this country through their own businesses for a long time to be alive.
- [06:17]
Josh Smith
When you say talk about, about taking a victory lap, it's interesting because it's actually a real mixed emotion kind of time right now because I have a lot of friends throughout the various businesses in the outdoor industry that are actually in a full panic mode, frankly, right now, and for good reason. And they've built their businesses in the way that I think most people have built their businesses the last 50 years. And, you know, they're struggling. And so for those people, my heart really goes out to them because they've just been doing kind of life the way that it's been done. But then I walk in our building, I talk to our supply chain manager, our cfo, our director of operations, and be like, all right, well, what, what are you hearing? Like, is, is there anything that's affecting us? And it's like, not really, no. And it's such a relief. And frankly, it's a little bit of vindication. When I had people telling me back in 2019 with, when I had this idea of this company that it wasn't possible to manufacture in America and do what you're gonna do. You know, I said, hey, I'm gonna build a knife that the untrained eye can look at and probably buy at Walmart for 19.99. Now we're gonna provide quality and we're gonna provide a level of knife that you're not getting for 19.99. But a lot of the consumers don't know that. They just see a knife, a 4 inch hunting blade on a knife in a plastic package at Walmart and they just think a knife is a knife, but it's not. And I think it's that way for A lot of products that you see made in America, when you're willing to pay just a little bit more, you're getting so much more and you're getting that quality. You know, American workers are putting their blood and sweat and tears into those knives. We're standing behind that product. We actually have our first quarter board meeting tomorrow. One of our board of directors is flying in. Our other board members will be joining remotely. And we only really have future planning to talk about. There's nothing to talk about with the tariffs. And it's. It's so much different than all the emergency board meetings that I heard that have been being called to talk about. Like, what are we going to do? Like, we have these crates and crates of product ordered for next year, and we're going to be tariffed 100, 150% on it. And we're talking how do we hire more people and how do we get this new manufacturing facility built, that we're building? Get it done. Let's get in it and keep going.
- [08:47]
Mike Rowe
I don't think we can gloss over that, Josh. I mean, you're talking about people who are like, it's one thing to pass a couple dollars on to the customer or eat it yourself if you want to, if you have a hiccup here or a hiccup there, but you're talking about people whose actual cost of goods is literally going to increase by 150%. How do they even think about keeping the lights on? And how do you pass that kind of jump onto the consumer? It's just, it's not tenable.
- [09:19]
Josh Smith
I won't name brands here, obviously, to save them, but I had two conversations this week. I was in Texas. We did a. An archery shoot for adaptive athletes, which means veterans who have had injuries in war. We did it with black rifle, coffee and black rifle, set them up with bows, and we adapted those bows to help, say, a veteran who's missing an arm be able to, or maybe has damage in arm, draw back a bow with, like a mouth tab. And so we did a, this veteran deal last week in Texas. And then I went on to the NASCAR race. Two different people I talked to said they halted all ordering and they have no idea what they're going to do. And then they called manufacturing facilities in Vietnam to try to figure out how they could maybe shift manufacturing from China to Vietnam. And they said, well, you're in line of about 3, 000 people that have called us. Like, we don't even know, like, when we could take you guys on. And they have product for a, there's like a two to maybe three month window. And then they said they'll be completely out of product. But they, their product is unsustainable. They can't sell it, they can't raise the price 150%. And they're already playing this margin game. You know, when you sell product in Walmart, Home Depot, places like that, they beat you down so hard on your margins, you don't eat 10, 15%, 20%. Hell, a lot of those people can't eat 2%.
- [10:51]
Mike Rowe
Yeah.
- [10:52]
Josh Smith
And so even if, even if we end up in the position where a few of the ancillary little supplies here or there make our margin bump up 1 or 2%, we would just eat it. We wouldn't even have to change our prices. So we're just sitting in such a great place and it's, it's evidence like about where we need to get our supply chain and our products for all of America. Because what are we going to do if there's a war? You know, how are we going to make cars or, you know, tanks and all these other things, you know, the steel industry. So I, I think this is actually probably a blessing for our country that shows us delicate our supply chain is.
- [11:31]
Mike Rowe
You make a really great point. Because one of the great success stories, one of the great pivots of the 20th century was the speed with which we could convert automotive manufacturing and so many other types of manufacturing into the war machine. I mean, just the business of building those B29s, man, my God, like in nine months there were hundreds of them. And we were training kids to fly them who had never been in a plane before. When you think about what we were able to do once upon a time, and you just have to start from the fact that we were beginning from where we were, which was a fully industrialized country. All we had to do was use the gear and the equipment and the personnel we had differently. I'm with you. I shudder to think how we could do that today. I don't know how you can convert a factory that doesn't exist. Yeah, from the ground up.
- [12:34]
Josh Smith
American manufacturing is actually national security. And we don't think of it that way. And you've never heard anyone really talk about it, but that CNC wine that you hear in the background right now is making a knife handle. But if that had to make, you know, a set of grips for a pistol for one of our military guys, if it had to make a part for an airplane, apart for a tank, whatever it doesn't matter. Our CNC machines, they make parts. They don't care what those parts get, you know, used for. And with that 50,000 square foot manufacturing facility that we're building right now, in a worst case scenario, if a president came along and said, you're not making knives anymore, we need you guys to make this for the literal survival of our country, all we would have to do is load programs and material into those machines and we would be making something entirely other than knives. So American manufacturing is also about national security in the worst of times. And in World War II, that happened in all kinds of factories across America.
- [13:37]
Mike Rowe
Sure. Well, we got a taste of it right in the early panic of 2020 when all of a sudden it was who can make hand sanitizer, who can make masks? We learned pretty quick that, yeah, we're gonna have to depend on other sources, other countries. That's the thing that I just feel like people miss. You know, like you can have a conversation about the unintended consequences of tariffs on the supply chain from the point of view of most of the companies in this country who are dependent to some degree on that foreign supply chain. But if you're going to talk about national security the way you are, or if we're going to talk about is there ever anything that's more important to our country at any given moment than the economy?
- [14:24]
Josh Smith
Right.
- [14:25]
Mike Rowe
And the answer, of course, is not much and not often. But sometimes.
- [14:30]
Josh Smith
Yeah, sometimes. And one of those things might be steel. And I have to bring this up, you know, crucible steel here in the US just in, up in upstate New York, just went bankrupt in January and it was bought out of bankruptcy by Aerosteel out of Sweden. And to most people that may not be a big deal, but to us in the knife industry, that's a huge deal. Because I would say they probably are largely responsible for about 90% of the knife steel that was being used in this country. There's a couple steel still available, but quite frankly they're not steels of an alloy that we would really want to choose to make a knife out of. So now we're in this position. If we want to make a knife out of an American made steel, are we within willing to sacrifice quality of our blade or do we use a little bit more?
- [15:20]
Mike Rowe
Josh, specifically, I'm going to unwrap the rocker. I've got a couple here and we'll. I'm going to talk about that later in, in detail. But what makes knife steel? Knife steel. What specifically is the alloy that you need that you can't get.
- [15:36]
Josh Smith
Yeah. So that alloy right there is magna cut steel and crucible steel. It's a stainless steel right there. And it was actually specifically developed for the knife industry to resist wear, to hold a good edge, to be tough, to heat treat with all the qualities that we want in a steel. And it wasn't just Magnacut, but there was a few other steels that crucible also made that were used in the knife industry. And you can choose different steels for different uses. But with losing that steel supply, it now went to Sweden. Now, I don't think most Americans probably, you know, really are too upset if they end up with a knife with Swedish steel. I mean, you know, Sweden, you know, Germany, you know, places like that are known for, you know, German engineering, known for really good products, good steel. Austria, I don't think anyone's too upset about that necessarily. And so we may be in a position here later this year where we have to order steel from Sweden and we might pay a tariff on that steel, which in the end won't affect really the price of our knife. But when you think of it from a national security standpoint, we've really lost the entire steel industry, frankly, from the 70s on, we have lost our whole entire steel industry. You know, Pennsylvania has been devastated by, and upstate New York by losing the steel industry. And here again, from a national security standpoint, maybe one day they're making knife steel, but another day they're making steel for tanks or ships or, you know, submarines or whatever. Are we okay with our steel industry being, you know, located across the pond in other countries in case of, you know, of really rough times? Today's issues with tariffs are actually a bit self imposed. Like Trump did this, he self imposed this, he could take it off tomorrow. But what if it's war? What if it's being imposed upon us and we can't just take it off when times get tough? You know, and this is where I actually have a little bit of an issue with how the government is doing this. I actually support and believe in the, the big picture idea of what's trying to be done here. But we need to pair this with really smart targeted legislation and say, okay, for example, we just lost Crucible, this really great steel manufacturer. Maybe we should help subsidize getting that steel mill back up and running. It's only been down for a few short months. Let's get that thing back up and running. Maybe the government, instead of sending money to Ukraine or some of these other various things, Maybe we should spend some money here at home to help get a steel mill back up and running or another manufacturing plant of another product back up and running and maybe enter into a bit of a public private partnership or provide some tax breaks or whatever to not only ensure that we manufacture knives in America, but that we also have that national security piece taken care of if we really need it down the road.
- [18:37]
Mike Rowe
I mean, there's just such a long list of practical considerations. But there's something else, too. There's something that goes to who we are. And I think people who know nothing about steel and really are far removed from the manufacturing sector in general. I think those people started to pay attention when U.S. steel. Didn't they just get bought by Japan, basically, or. Yeah, that's the kind of headline that just, it just makes you. You can taste the bile in the back of your throat. You know, it's just like, wait a minute, we can't lose US Steel.
- [19:14]
Josh Smith
But of course, and we may choose. We may choose some industries where we're like, hey, do we want to sew a hundred thousand of these T shirts a day here in America? I don't know. Like, are we going to be able to hire enough people to do that? Is that an industry that we want in America or not? I'm not sure. I think there's companies like American Giant that are doing an amazing job with that origins. Doing an amazing job. You know, are we going to bring it all to America? I'm not sure that that's feasible. But there's other industries. Like, do we need to mold kids plastic toys here? Probably not. Like, we probably don't. That's probably not a national security issue. But when it comes to making steel in America, well, I think that's a pretty obvious one for even the least informed consumer. That, that, yeah, that's something that we feel like we should have the capabilities to do here in America. And, you know, we've hired 80 people here in the last year or two years as a company. You know, in growing this business, all those dollars that come into the state of the Montana, now they get, you know, they provide a huge influx to our local economy. We personally see what American manufacturing does. You know, you look at our knife sheaths. This leather sheath on this rocker right here, this leather sheath. This. This gal was making Teton leather in Idaho. She was making these sheets in her basement when I met her. And because of Montana Knife Company's growth, she has eight employees, or almost, I think nine employees now, and has a commercial space and she's manufacturing the sheets on scale. Same with, like, our cutting boards, you know, over in Billings, Montana, with Montana Block. He has six or eight employees now. He was doing that in his garage when we met him. So American manufacturing isn't just about that one building, that one manufacturer. It's about all the industries around it that grows.
- [21:05]
Mike Rowe
Yeah, well, look, you and I talked offline a month or two ago. I don't want to name names either, but I'm friendly with some people pretty far up the food chain with some of the biggest retailers in the country. And one of them really saw this coming and realized, look, they're going to be vulnerable in a lot of different ways. And they always wanted to make a big push for American made, but there's this problem of scale. Like, how would you guys deliver 20,000 of these? Like, you're going to do a drop in a couple of weeks on this knife. And you're very good at that. You're very good at managing scarcity and creating demand inside of your own ecosystem. But I gave the CEO of a big company one of your chef's knives, and this person looked at this and said, my God, it's a work of art. This is beautiful. How could we get this into our store? And it's out of my pay grade. But I know that part of the challenge is simply scale. What's the point of putting two or three of these things in 300 different locations? They're never going to be able to make it work. And so, you know, I just say all that because when you talk about cheap plastic toys extruded. Yeah, yeah. I can look at that and go, okay, well, who cares? But if there's a market for it, then I think, well, maybe there's some other, you know, not to moralize, but maybe there's some other moral consideration. Like, I love the idea of global trade, but I hate the idea of trading with people because we need to.
- [22:44]
Josh Smith
Right.
- [22:45]
Mike Rowe
I don't care what the product is. The best possible deal we can make is going to be made from a position of, look, we could make this ourself, but we've chosen not to for these reasons. Fine. But when I look to your point at steel, when I look at medicine, when I look at stuff that we really rely on, computer chips that.
- [23:06]
Josh Smith
Yeah, run our.
- [23:07]
Mike Rowe
Yeah, all of it.
- [23:09]
Josh Smith
Yeah, all of it. And my answer to the scale thing is, yeah, maybe we can't match a gigantic retailer's scale today, but we will in just a couple years. But people have to continue buying Those products and supporting. The only way we can get to that scale is if people keep spreading the word. And people like you. I mean, you have such a huge voice and a huge effect. You know, I heard you talking on Theo Vaughn the other day. You just randomly brought us up as an example. And you have no idea. And people with a voice and with influence have no idea how much impact they can have. You know, Joe Rogan shouts out lots of small companies here and there, and I know he's intentional with that. You know, we can match that scale if people continue to support brands like ours that are American made. You know, we're going to make 160,000 or more knives this year. And I started off making 200 in my garage in 2020. Okay, so we have scaled, right? In four and a half years. I quit my day job January 1st of 2021. And I had no employees. Zero. It was just myself and my business partner. Nobody.
- [24:26]
Mike Rowe
But dude, you're a freak. You know that, right? You're not.
- [24:29]
Josh Smith
But I'm not. See, that's my point is I'm. I was a lineman. I was a journeyman lineman. I am the same guy that you shot Dirty Job shows about for, you know, 20 years. I am not a freak. I am Josh Smith, an ex lineman. And so many of those guys you interviewed are just like me. They can build the same kind of, you know, American dream from their garage. And that's my point with Montana Knife Company, it's possible. And now granted, I can't serve what Walmart needs today in their store. Or maybe that big retailer you're talking about, but maybe that big retailer also needs to be okay with just putting knives in two of their stores, not 50 of them. Right? And maybe he needs to figure out a way to, to fill some of those other shelves. But give a small retail or give a small manufacturer a small space and then allow them to grow with them. But I don't want anyone out there listening to this to think that I'm something special. I duck hunted my way out of college. I grew up the son of a backhoe operator. You know, we had an excavation business. I'm now a CEO because I started a company in my garage. And I'm sitting right now. If I could pick my computer up and show you, right behind me is my horse pasture. We're still at my house. 80 employees report to work in my yard. Okay, this is not special. This is called being too dumb to quit or to not do it. And when I was being told it was Impossible. I said, I actually think there's. Out of 350 million Americans, I think there's enough that believe in American manufacturing, that we can have a successful business. And here we are.
- [26:15]
Mike Rowe
Here's what worries me. You're very modest. You grew up as you grew up. I'm saying that whether it makes you special or not, it makes you different. There are 330 million people walking around, and very, very few of them have the stones to quit a job, have no employees, and start making these little works of art in their garage. I'm just telling you it's a short list. And so I'm all about. Well, I'm all about the micro of this thing. I'm all about the fact that, you know, individuals can make these choices and they can grow things the way you've grown your company. But look, I'm rooting for Trump. I want him to reinvigorate manufacturing for all kinds of big reasons. Look, we've got. I just left an energy conference where the topic was data centers. The real race is AI. If we don't win that race, we lose. The only way to win that race is through more data centers. The only way to build those data centers is with tens of thousands of skilled workers who currently don't exist because our country's not filled with dudes like you who will answer that particular call. So, having said that, yeah, if he does it, if these tariffs and this policy results in a massive reshoring, then you've got a couple million new jobs that are going to open. But, Josh, in January, there were 482,000 open jobs in manufacturing that couldn't be filled. Now, it's three months ago, so I.
- [27:52]
Josh Smith
Have open jobs today. It's not easy, like you say. It's. We're also going to probably have to make a tough decision at a certain point with our society. Are we going to continue providing handouts to people when there are open jobs out there? You know, and. And so we're going there, huh? Yeah. All right. Well, it's going to be a question we're going to have to answer because there are open jobs. There is work out there for people to go get. If you're without a job, how do you think?
- [28:23]
Mike Rowe
Like, obviously, this finished product is the result of a lot of different, very skilled people doing their best work. Are you more worried about a skill gap or a will gap?
- [28:41]
Josh Smith
If I'm being honest with you, and I don't want to denigrate our own knife, but there's certain areas of that knife that require human skill. But to be honest, most of our workers that work on these knives came in with zero skill or, or experience making a knife. And if you come up here sometime, you'll see it doesn't matter if you're a woman, a man, older, younger. We hire people off the street all the time, every week that come in and we will train them to put this beautiful knife together. Now granted, I have some open jobs on my website right now, like a manufacturing engineer, a design engineer. Like yes, there's some skill jobs that we need. I need some machinists that have some serious skills. But I have a kid, his name is Ray, that came in as just a. He's probably 20 years old when I hired him. And he was in our shop just hired to put knives together, just assemble, just take this handle, put it here, put these screws in it. He showed some aptitude, he worked hard, he had a great attitude. And we've now moved him into our machine shop and he is running the CNC machines right now downstairs with one other guy. Our machinists have trained him to run our CNC machines. Now he's not at a place where he can program them yet and build the programs, but probably in the next three years through basically an apprenticeship, he will be a full fledged CNC machinist, probably making 80 to $95,000 a year. That's before he's 25. And then from there he'll probably be up in the level with the rest of our machinists after that. So to answer your question, long, long way around. It is a little bit of, it is a will gap. But I want to say that without, I am not, pardon my language, shitting on the youth of today. I actually find the youth that we hire, I would rather hire a 21 year old kid in my shop right now than a 45 year old with a bad attitude and, you know, maybe a bunch of bad experiences in the workplace. I have found that the young kids that we've hired, if you ask the right culture fit questions and they come in, this young generation is super, super smart. And AI, you nailed it on the head. We're actually going to discuss it in our board meeting tomorrow. I just listened to a Rogan episode about AI on the flight back from Denver. AI is going to change our world. And we can either be mad about it like some people were about the Internet in 1995, or you can learn it and embrace it and use it, you know. And so I think these young people are going to help an old gray haired like me succeed in this next AI generation?
- [31:30]
Mike Rowe
Frankly, yeah, man, I've never seen a topic make so many otherwise intelligent people with influence look so foolish so quickly. Just the speed with which it's evolving. I'm talking about tariffs as well as AI. Like the minute you're up to speed, you could have spent this whole week reading everything and looking at everything, and bang, now you're informed. And then it's tomorrow. And now you don't know shit because it's tomorrow. And that's. That's how fast all of it's happening. But look, that's the fast food of it. The slow food of it is that in 2019, you bet on yourself. You bet on your family, you had a business partner, now you got 80 employees. You're making a quality product in this country. And you're not going to pat yourself on the back. But I will, Josh, because I just think the more people who see what you've done, it becomes real. And people should know, too. Look, this is the rocker that we were talking about. And this knife, I swore I wasn't going to turn it into a commercial, but you're giving 10% in perpetuity of these sales of maybe the greatest utility knife you've made back to Microworks. I don't know what that's going to mean long term, but this is a story too. We've already raised over $100,000 thanks to the generosity of your customers who are crazy loyal and mine who want to help. So as we land the plane here, I just want to make the point that scaling notwithstanding, that's out of our pay grade. But I've got a foundation that's trying to inspire the next generation of skilled workers. You're supporting it by making a. In this country and together in this weird little ecosystem that we find ourselves in, we keep talking about it, and whether it's Joe Rogan or Theo Vaughn or who knows, the word is getting out there. But it really starts with men and women like you who are still betting not just on themselves, but on our country. I'm just here to say, good on you, brother.
- [33:41]
Josh Smith
Well, I know. I appreciate it. And. And it really actually starts with the people listening to this podcast. If those people, if the consumer's willing once in a while to dig a tiny bit deeper and buy something Made in America, they might not be able to buy every single product that they buy throughout their daily life. Made in America. I get it. Like, they got to make their house payment, their car payments, and live life and buy diapers and do all the things. But where your consumer, or where your listener, the American consumer, can, if they can make that choice to buy something made in America, you know, you guys have no idea how, you know, impactful that can be. You know, working with you on this and with this rocker and the Microworks Foundation, I raised my kids on Dirty Jobs, frankly. And the other show on television that they love to watch was how it's Made. And along the same vein, here we were, we were watching manufacturing shows, show after show after show. And I always told my kids, because I wasn't a big fan of a lot of the culture stuff on television. You can watch sports, you can watch Dirty Jobs or how it's made back when they were young. And so we watched a ton of Dirty Jobs, a lot of Micro. And, you know, the more you started talking about the apprenticeship programs and the, the skill gap in our country, the only reason that I'm doing what I'm doing today is because I got my good footing financially and kind of my, my life under my feet through an apprenticeship to become a journeyman lineman for the power company. You know, I started as a grunt, I got a lineman apprenticeship. I had been making knives for about 10 years, and I was really struggling financially. And that apprenticeship and that work as a. As alignment for the power company got me in a position where it's like, okay, I've got a little bit of savings, now I'm gonna go chase my dream of Montana knife company. And so what you preach and what you talk about, I couldn't believe in more. And it only makes sense for us to give back a bit to this community, meaning the entire us, who have supported my dream and, and made this possible. And whether that's what we do through conservation with Rocky Mountain Elk foundation and places like that, or with you on Micro Works. And I feel like this is just scratching the surface of what we can do together. And I hope it inspires other celebrities, frankly, people with a voice to do something similar in a similar vein, or other companies to reach out to you and, and either write checks or set something up similar to what we're doing and help help you get your voice out.
- [36:26]
Mike Rowe
Well, look, we'll see. I don't think there's a playbook. I don't think there's a one size fits all. But you hit the nail on the head with. You never know who's listening. And after that conversation I had with Theo and I've heard, I can't even tell you how many people I've heard from since then? He said to me on the way out, you know, because we talked about qvc, we talked about my past, we talked about your company, we talked about a few others that we know. And I jokingly said, you know what we ought to do, man? We ought to just set up like a poor man's Wayne's World Home Shopping Network that features nothing but companies like yours and products like this, and we ought to put them out there in a fun Theo Vaughn, Mike Rowe kind of way and just kick the tires and see what happens. And Theo goes, okay, yeah, let's do that. And I think he's serious now. But look, you just never, ever know. You just. You could be having a beer one night and you talk to a buddy and the next thing you know, you've hung out a shingle and now you're making knives. Crazier things have happened.
- [37:32]
Josh Smith
They have happened. Crazier things have happened. I'm sure fortunate and I sure appreciate your support. And your voice is having a major impact in our nation.
- [37:42]
Mike Rowe
Well, your example right now, as you can hear the sphincters slamming shut from people with supply chains that they rely upon, yours isn't. You bet on what you bet on. I'm so glad to see you guys prospering. Josh, thank you for your wisdom. It's great catching up. And the next knife drop is going to be. Are we allowed to say it this.
- [38:03]
Josh Smith
Yeah, yeah. We got the rocker coming up and.
- [38:06]
Mike Rowe
That'S going to be what, May 8th?
- [38:08]
Josh Smith
May 8th, I think is the date. Yep. Should have had my phone right in front of me here.
- [38:12]
Mike Rowe
But, guys, if you want one, go to Montana Knife Co. Now, register for their knife drops. They do these things every so often. But this has turned into a great fundraiser and people Microworks people might want.
- [38:24]
Josh Smith
To be there right at 7pm on mountain standard Time. A fair warning here.
- [38:29]
Mike Rowe
Everybody says that, Josh, and everybody now thinks, oh, yeah, right, whatever. But folks, I'm telling you, these things, they. They go fast.
- [38:37]
Josh Smith
They go fast. Yeah. And you know what, though? That's not just about us or about you. That is the story of American Made is resonating and people are coming out in droves to support that, you know, and that's the one thing I do want to get across. It's not, you know, Josh Smith master bladesmith thing or, you know, micro, he was on TV thing. This is what people want. They are seeing a story and someone that they can support. And our number one, it doesn't matter if Joe Rogan talks about us. If you talk about us anything. We see our. Every month I get a report on my desk from my team about what our number one needle mover is. Friend or family referral. It doesn't matter who talks about us, friends or family always wins. And I think it's because they love the fact that they are supporting American made and they're telling their friends about it.
- [39:34]
Mike Rowe
I think it's because we're talking about connections on a macro level and they all start on a micro level. It's your warm market. Who do you trust at a time when everybody seems to be so completely full of crap, you trust the people you know.
- [39:49]
Josh Smith
Exactly.
- [39:50]
Mike Rowe
Josh, you're awesome, buddy. Thank you again for coming on. Like you say, it's only a matter of national defense by American folks. It won't hurt. Ladies and gentlemen, that was my good friend Josh Smith. I thought he was terrific. I think you're also going to enjoy a few words from my good friend, Bayard Winthrop. Spoiler alert, he's terrific, too. I think you mean terrific. Oh, right after this.
- [40:23]
Chuck
Dumb.
- [40:24]
Mike Rowe
So there's an excellent chance that 16 people listening to this right now wouldn't be able to hear it but for this sponsor. And they wouldn't be able to hear it because they'd be dead. And that's no joke, folks. LifeVac has saved the lives of 16 people in my audience, and that's something I can't say about any other sponsor. Overall, LifeVac has saved over 3700 lives as of today. It's just amazing. This is the device that was developed by my friend Arthur Lee in his garage some years ago. And he did it because his heart just broke when he heard the stories about kids and in many cases, elderly people choking to death. 5,000 people die every year from choking. One kid dies every five days. The stats are horrific. And the simplicity of this device is such that the cost is affordable. And the case to have one in your home is just unassailable. If you have a smoke alarm, if you have a fire extinguisher, then you really need to have a LifeVac. Even if you don't have those other things, you should have this thing. It's such a helpless feeling of panic when your kid or your loved one starts to choke. And there's just not a damn thing you can do. The LifeVac works. Go to the site, see it in action. It's incredible. Lifevac.net use code mike get 20% off your order. Lifevac l I f e v a c dot net. It's a lifesaver at 20% off your order with Code Mike, because it's no joke when you choke, folks it's no joke when you choke. So get life back and live without breath there'll be death. So get life back and live get life back and live get life back, life back, life back and live Life back and live. Bayard Winthrop, quick question right out of the gate. What the hell's going on, man? What in the actual hell is happening?
- [42:36]
Chuck
That is exactly how I've been thinking about it. It's like, what in the world? What's going on?
- [42:42]
Mike Rowe
And before you answer, let me just sort of predicate it by saying, not since the early days of the lockdowns and all of the confusion that surrounded all of the guidance that came out of all of those institutions, have I seen more public figures, more respected journalists, more otherwise reasonably intelligent pundits rendered completely, I'll just say foolish. But if I were to be more charitable, I would just say irrelevant, because we're talking in real time on a Thursday afternoon, and by the time this goes up, in a day or two, who the hell knows what will have happened in the wide world of the global economy?
- [43:29]
Chuck
It's really true. And trying to navigate it as a business that is buying overseas, it's like riding a bronco, I think.
- [43:39]
Mike Rowe
Well, look, that's why you're on. I could have got Howard Letnick, you know, but everybody is so wrapped up in the politics of this thing. So just talk to me about a guy who's been making stuff in this country for the last 15 years. How hard is the banco bucking? And has any of this, like, vindicated what you've been screaming for the last decade and a half?
- [44:04]
Chuck
Well, so let me step back. I mean, Mike, you and I connected a long time ago over, I think, a shared vision around the importance of service jobs and manufacturing jobs. And American giant's mission from the very beginning is to make stuff here so we give good jobs to people that want them and need them. And so when I think about, you know, big picture, are we long past time when we need to, you know, rethink our trading relationships, particularly with China? Yeah, I do. I think we have to figure out a way to let our domestic factories compete on a more level playing field. But, you know, you mentioned the pandemic. You know, you look at the pandemic as maybe an example of a real shock to the system and exposing how fragile these supply chains are and how vulnerable they are to disruption. And for Those supply chains. To navigate shock like we're seeing right now, to try to respond and react takes time, it takes clarity. We're not seeing that right now. We're seeing a lot of whipsawing. And so, you know, in the textile industry, I'm probably in most touch with people that are leading businesses that are reliant on overseas stuff. It's a really discombobulating time because they're making decisions right now about what they're doing in the fall, what they're doing in the winter. And so I've said pretty loudly I'm in favor of a reset with our relationship, particularly with China. But it has to be done methodically, with a lot of clarity ratcheted in over time. I'm grateful that this 90 day pause has just come in because without it it would have been even worse. But it's pretty rocky right now and I think people in the industry are kind of frozen, trying to figure out what to do.
- [45:42]
Mike Rowe
Oh, there's no doubt. All you have to do is cock your head and you can hear the sphincter slamming shut from sea to shining sea. But what about you? I definitely want to talk about companies who are reliant on the complexities of the supply chain because I think a lot of people don't quite understand how deep that rabbit runs. But you grow your own cotton, you spin your own yarn, you're in your own towns. What's the direct impact on American giant?
- [46:12]
Chuck
Well, not much. I mean, we're inoculated from all this stuff. You know, we, like you said, we source all of our cotton domestically. It's all spun here, it's all knitted and dyed and finished here, cut and sewn here, the whole thing. And that was a sort of a principal stand we took a long time ago and we've been committed to that for a long time. For the reasons I spoke about. We're inoculated from this. I think the only impact that we're seeing. Well, I think there's a couple, maybe. I think one is that to the extent that consumers get freaked out and start to look at what's happening in the capital markets, worry about prices increasing and consumer confidence declines and pocketbooks and wallets close, that's going to impact our business like everybody else's. I also think that we're starting to see brands and others start to think about what are the alternatives here and how do we, if we need to, how do we make things here. And so we are getting some inbound interest there about people that are Reaching out, trying to figure out if some of these tariffs come in, if the tariffs in China come in even a shadow of what's being discussed. We probably ought to be looking at some kind of alternative supply route domestically. And I think American Giant can be helpful in that regard. So we're getting a fair amount of inbounds on that front. I think those are the only two ways, really, that it's impacting us. Mike.
- [47:23]
Mike Rowe
But I want to be elegant with the question, but, I mean, does part of you kind of want to take some sort of victory lap here? I know how close you are with your competitors, and I know how sympathetic you are to the industry with a capital I. And I know how much you would like to see more people adopt your model. And I promise to move on after this. But I'm just so curious to know this. If I were you, I would feel somewhere between validated and vindicated.
- [47:57]
Chuck
Well, I'll tell you what I think I have felt for. You know, we made this grand bargain 40 years ago to open up, globalize our trade routes, our supply approach, and the result of that has been basically 40 years of offshoring and a transition of our economy from one that made things a lot to an economy that was consumption driven. And that made sense. I think a lot of it was a bipartisan effort. I think a lot of good came from that. But I think that one of the profound negatives that came along with that was just the destruction of manufacturing towns. And, you know, if you've been paying attention to it the way that I have been for a long time, it's really hard to ignore that. I mean, you go through any New England, any southeastern, any upper Midwest town that used to make things, they're. They're shadows of what they once were. And I think that really fueled a growing divide between people that were lucky enough to have gone to college and maybe work for Google and, and the other half of the country that was making things. And that in the last 40 years have been pretty terrible for. And I think that the vindication maybe is. Is only in that regard that I think it shouldn't have taken us this long as a country to recognize that problem and to begin to recognize that you need to do something about it. I think we cannot have a country that has half the country that is. Is staring down the barrel of, you know, another decade of no wage gains, no real good prospects for passing out a better life to your kids. You and I have been telling versions of the story for a long time, and I Started the company for that reason. I felt that it was really important. I wanted to try to do, in some small way, do something about it. It's vindicating, maybe in that way that finally, you know, there's enough noise being kicked up that people are really asking questions that I think are long overdue. But I'll just say I think that no good will come of it if it is just kind of turning over the game board and knocking all the pieces on the ground and everybody gets hurt along the way. So I vacillate between feeling optimistic about where we are. Finally, this stuff is coming into focus. And I think, particularly in regards to China, I think there really is a rebalancing and a reshuffling that has to happen. But also being concerned that there is this. Even in the administration, there seems to be discordant voices. It's very hard to know which way we're going day to day to day to day. You know, when I hear Secretary Bessant speak, he feels like he's moderated and thoughtful and has a plan. And then, you know, the next day I'll turn on the news and we sort of march in another direction. Yeah, right. And to the extent that this is really, I think, waking up all of us to the idea that we have become a country that doesn't make stuff anymore and that that's a problem, I am hopeful that that will begin to cause change and awareness in a way that's going to help help the whole country and make the country stronger.
- [50:36]
Mike Rowe
I think, too. Another parallel to the COVID thing is that, you know, we have a tendency to kind of fall into the. To the binary with these conversations. And there's a lot of nuance to this. And I'm. I'm guessing. Tell me if I'm wrong, but I'm. I'm guessing you favor tariffs, but not universally. Maybe here, but not so much there. And. And I think a lot of people hear that kind of call it equivocation and start to think, well, wait a minute, your self interest is gonna. Your slip is gonna start to show real quick when you tell me which ones you favor and which ones you don't. So the way I've been thinking about it is kind of a Tier 1 and a Tier 2 argument. The Tier 2 argument is based on the economy. And I'm getting lit up on Facebook right now. Cause I kind of stumbled into this thing through the manufacturing side of it, which I'll tell you about later. But the idea that economists are disagreeing, I Don't know of any economist that doesn't think tariffs are ultimately not good for the economy. But I think that there are a lot of other people with skin in the game who might think that the economy, even the global economy, is not necessarily the most important thing. It's a biggie. But this Tier 2 conversation takes place only among people who disagree about the consequences, unintended and otherwise with tariffs. Tier 1 is guys like you 15 years ago who said, wait, there's a moral component to what we're talking about here. If the economy is the most important thing in this conversation, then we're going to land in a fairly squishy place. I mean, 170 years ago it was pretty clear that getting rid of slavery would be very bad for the economy. The triangle trade was real. The north and the south were wrapped up deeply into the impact that free labor had on our economy. And so those arguments were made. But somebody came along and said, no, wait, there's actually this other thing. So for me, the tier one moral argument is do you want to be reliant on a country to give you a thing to trade with you? Not with things you want, but with things you need? Your medicines, your steel, your lumber. For God's sakes, we have more lumber than anybody and yet we're the leading importer of lumber, our energy, our clothing. What better hope does the world have of improving if the United States of America or then the United States of America not being reliant upon them, but rather strong enough to say, look, we'll do business with you because we'd like to, but not because we have to. And somewhere in there, if you can make sense of that, because I see people talking in circles because they simply don't understand if they're in a tier one or a tier two conversation.
- [53:44]
Chuck
The way you're framing it, which I totally agree with, is you got to begin with the end in mind. I mean, what do we want the outcome to be? I understand the argument of free trade always and forever and wide open capitalism, but if the result of that is a middle class that has not done well over the last 40 years, that has poorer prospects for their kids than they did 40 years ago, where jobs are leaving and full time 40 to 50 hour jobs have been replaced by buy three separate part time shift work at the local dollar store and the local Carl's Jr and you got both parents that are having to take shift work and they can't be at home raising the kids. And I heard a statistic the other day that something like the top 10% of America owns 80% of the Dow and the next 40%, 40% of Americans own the remainder. The bottom 50% of Americans don't own anything in the stock market, could care less what's happening to the Dow today, but cares a lot about the cost of fuel, cares a lot about what jobs are available in town, cares a lot about what insurance and mortgage payments are looking like. And I just think that you cannot make a purist, in my judgment, anyway, Larry Summers type argument that is purely about macroeconomic things. There's a point at which 40 years in, you have to say, hang on a second, this is doing damage to communities and towns and the American dream and the disappearance of the American dream in a way that is fundamentally corrosive to the country and destabilize into the country. And, you know, I get it, I'm biased. I make stuff here. I get all that stuff. But, and I know you've done this, Mike, you got to walk through a town in South Carolina or West Virginia and look around, look around when there used to be three hardware stores and five restaurants and a couple of gas stations and a thriving Main street. And now there is nothing. There's no jobs. Maybe there's a penitentiary in town, there's a couple of liquor stores, and there's no work. That is something that we, I think we have to, all Americans ought to align on the importance for that, and we ought to figure out a way to begin to address it. And the other thing I'll just say is to your other point, which is we don't. The pandemic really was a shock, I think, to all of us. And it really exposed the fact that we don't make things anymore. We don't make penicillin, we don't make textiles, we don't make medical masks, we don't make medical gowns. And I think, as you know, we got pulled into that. We got a panicked phone call from the CDC and FEMA a few days into the pandemic, when China was throttling down our supply of medical masks and asking us to convert our sweatshirt facility into a mask facility. But, you know, there's a national security element as well, you know, and people say to me, well, it's T shirts. It's actually not just T shirts. The textile industry is a, like every manufacturing industry is a participant in a network of industries. And textile supports the medical industries, the automotive industries, the defense industries. And if you start to erode even the T shirt manufacturing and the fiber makers and the knitters and the weavers and the dyers and the spinners. You lose the ability, in a networking way to support the medical, the technological, the defense industries. Sorry for the length on this thing, but I agree with you. I just. I think it is not as simple as just saying what's happening to the stock market or what's happening to the gdp. There's a. There's a more nuanced conversation about what do we need to be doing as a country and how do we plot a course in that direction.
- [57:05]
Mike Rowe
So, okay, there's a lot there. It's just so ironic how the stock market has become the fixation in the middle of it. I do understand what you've said. I also think a lot of people own more of the market than they think they do. Certainly anybody with a 401k has skin in that game. They might not trade, but they sat there yesterday and the day before and they looked at their balance and they either felt rich or poor. That's a flawed way to think, for sure. But do you really think the line is that stark between Main street and Wall Street? Do you think that what this is is basically kind of good? I've heard both arguments from people on the right, by the way, who disagree with each other on this point. And that's the thing I'd like you to think about as you formulate your answer. I'm way less interested in hearing what my liberal friends think, as opposed to my conservative friends. Right now, I'm more interested in my conservative friends who disagree. That's super interesting to me because I know they voted how they voted, but here they're looking at this thing to your point. Navarro says one thing. Bessett says something else. Musk says one thing, and this and this. And I mean, there's just no other way to think about that other than somebody is dreadfully mistaken.
- [58:36]
Chuck
Dumb.
- [58:37]
Mike Rowe
What if there were a portal on your laptop that you could go to, and when you visit it, at a glance, you could see if there's anybody in your community who is struggling, maybe a single parent, maybe somebody with addiction, maybe. Could be anything, right? But if you knew at a glance how to help somebody who was in trouble, that would be a cool thing. Well, there is a portal. It's called the Care Portal. And I learned about it firsthand from some friends of mine over at Stand Together. And one thing led to the next, and Care Portal is now featured in the first episode of my new show called People youe Should Know. You can watch it on my YouTube page or my YouTube channel. Pardon me. I'm still getting up to speed with all the jargon, but it's a feel good show. It's also the making of a feel good show. And we're just getting flooded with feedback about people signing up for Careportal after watching this because it's such a simple thing to do that enables really anybody to help in their community. It's an incredible network. You got to check it out. It's on my YouTube channel. In the first episode of People you.
- [59:51]
Chuck
Should know, you asked me earlier about tariffs. Again, as a philosophical matter. I agree that in a perfect world, a world with open trade and no barriers either way is maybe an ideal state as long as you've got a thriving industry domestically, one that continue to make things and can support kind of layers of the economy and the national objectives and defense and all that sort of stuff. I think within that there are gradations of, I think to me, one of the most destabilizing parts of the conversations over the last few weeks. Again, as somebody that has no exposure to tariffs. So in some ways I don't really have a skin in the game other than maybe I'd like to see the domestic manufacturing base become more competitive relative to our international competitors. But I do think that there's a very big difference between the good actors and the bad actors. There's lots of gray in between there, obviously. But you know, in the world of textiles and I pay attention to trade deals as it relates to textiles, we make textiles all over the world. But China stands out as a really different level of a bad actor. I mean that the amount of work that China does to evade, avoid our laws, to exploit human rights issues and environmental issues, it's terrible. It's terrible.
- [61:11]
Mike Rowe
It's beyond it. Look, no people, we're in business deeply, deeply in business with a government who through a series of machinations, makes it possible for officials in the NBA to walk into the crowd of a game that's being televised live and remove signs that people are holding that simply say Google Uyghurs. Right? That's the reality of our relationship. That's how bought and paid for those guys are. And so that's why I keep not to be hyperbolic about it. And I'm not even sure the administration is making this argument, the whole slavery argument, but are we really going to be that disconnected that we're just going to look away from, from that reality?
- [62:06]
Chuck
But let me build on it a little bit. In addition to that, in Xinjiang province. There's massive human rights violations happening. There's zero respect for intellectual property law. It is just terrible. And at the same time, we hold our domestic factories to really among the world's best standards. OSHA standards, environmental standards, human rights standards. You can't dump your dyes into the local river. Our factories are, they're compliant with all those laws, as they should be. But we allow our largest corporations to avoid them and to make stuff in China. That is where I think I get fairly hardlined around how I think about tariffs. I think it is a Americans need to reconcile. Which do we believe? Do we believe in those rules and those laws? Do we think they're good for humans, the planet in general, or do they only apply to domestic factories, which results in declining work and declining opportunity in rural and urban centers? But it's fine for the big public companies that are making tons and tons of money to go make stuff over there, to get controlled by the ccp, to be told to take signs down in NBA games. I just can't deal with that from my standpoint. There's so much nuance in this conversation. But one point of clarity for me is the difference between what has to happen with this as it relates to China and then and other people on that list that are allies of ours and that are at least if you believe the rumors, are trying to reach a reasonable solution with the US and there's lots of people in that bucket. Taiwan and India and Vietnam and Canada, these countries are friends of ours. I think there's a genuine interest to find common ground. My hope is that as we navigate this in the coming weeks that those groups begin to separate with more clarity. I think they already are, frankly.
- [63:53]
Mike Rowe
But you're old enough to remember the argument that said look, China bad, but we open it up, we start to trade. And among the things that we will export to them will be our values. Among the things that we export to them will be our philosophy, our worldview, our take on human rights, our take on all these things. Well, guess what, it goes two ways, right? I wonder who's been influenced more, China by the US or the US by China. Because we are living in a world right now, it's kind of like the buy American argument. I told you this story years ago where I worked for a big gene company and they showed me what it took to get an American made product on the shelf at a competitive price. People wouldn't pay a dollar more, they wouldn't pay 50 cents more, they wouldn't pay a penny More. It had to be dead even. Well, the same thing is true here. A lot of people get up on their high horse and they talk about human rights and they talk about the outrage of what's happened over there. But Jim Garrity wrote a great article in National Review, and they dig pretty deep. And when you really get into the research, it's like 52% of Americans get real wobbly real fast when the price for that position hits their 401k or the cost of cashmere or merino wool. It's amazing how quickly people just start whistling through the graveyard, looking over here, Nothing to see here. It's appalling. I hate to talk that strongly about it because I know nobody wants a lecture or a sermon, but I keep coming back to the moral issue of the thing. Would we be in business with China if we didn't have to be? I bet we wouldn't. Certainly not to the extent that we are. But the fact that we don't feel like we have a choice leads back to people pulling signs out of people's hands during an NBA game. It's.
- [66:03]
Chuck
Yeah, it also. I mean, the other part of that, too, is that the way that that argument is set up is it resolves at the consumer to make that decision, at the checkout counter to make a call. Am I going to vote for the environment or for human rights or whatever it is? I think consumers have a say, of course, but this is where I think policymakers have just lost the plot. And you can go back and find politicians on the left and politicians on the right saying the exact opposite thing that they're saying today. Ten years ago, it just strikes me as a completely unprincipled group that is not trying to run for a set of policies that reflect American values. I'll submit that consumers find a hard time voting their conscience at the register or at the gas pump. I get it. But, boy, would I like to see Congress, the administration, articulate why our business relationship with China is bad, why we don't stand for it as Americans with the value systems that we, I think, believe in and have fought for and have voted into law, and why it's important that we enact. And this comes back to tariffs, I think some kind of mechanism that penalizes that kind of behavior so that the consumer doesn't have to make that choice. And there's more parity at the register. That, to me, strikes me as how to maybe address the point that you're making.
- [67:28]
Mike Rowe
Well, it's such a more complicated decision, Bud. Light was simple, all right? If you didn't like what happened two years ago from a marketing standpoint, and if you felt betrayed by that decision, then you pick up a natural light or a Busch light or a Coors light or a Miller light. They're all within five feet of each other. It's simple. This. How do you buy a product that is completely pure of the supply chain's influence on it? It's like how many northerners 170 years ago argued against slavery as they were dressed in cotton picked by them? It's so baked in. We are so beholden. We are so on the China tit that this is really strong medicine. And this is, again, I've been really following this closely for the last few days. And it's the. But it's just the righteousness of it that fascinates me. And the number of people who are so crystal clear in their mind saying, that's it. Just shut it down. No more China. It's like, okay, okay, but you gotta be good with a recession, maybe even a global recession, maybe even a depression. But look, if you've really got a long view, then you can probably say, all right, you know what? It's a lot of medicine. It's a lot of pain. It's not a hiccup, Mr. President. Right. It is a big problem. But do you want to be an independent country, truly? Do you want to be reliant on other nations who affirmatively don't like you? That is binary. It's yes or no. And if the answer is yes, I'm okay with it. Well, then I'll take that sign, sir, because we don't allow that here at a Lakers game.
- [69:21]
Chuck
And I do think that just to speak to that kind of point for a second, I do think if you're going to take the administration at its word, and Secretary Bessant has come out and said this publicly, it has been a great run for Wall Street. If Wall street has to take some hits, we're okay with that. It's time for Main street to do better. That is different than what you're painting, which is recession, maybe worse. Real, real disruption. And this goes back, I think, to how the conversation started about predictability, clarity, leadership, methodicalness. I get the narrative that, you know, Trump is a deal maker. He stakes out very aggressive positions and does that intentionally so that we can land somewhere in the middle. I hope that's true. I hope he's the master negotiator that everyone describes. But in the meantime, the shock to the system that we're witnessing right now, the fear and concern among private sector businesses, public companies, Wall street is real. And I think if the rollout of this looks anything like it's being communicated right now, it does raise the prospect of what you're saying, which is we have gotten so completely dependent on China specifically, forget about all the other countries, Vietnam and so many others, that the unwinding of that will take time and capital and cost increases. And I too have been really paying a lot of attention to this because it's both fascinating to watch. You're seeing, you know, sort of an economic geopolitical reordering unlike anything in my lifetime, I don't think Byron.
- [70:57]
Mike Rowe
But it's, it, it's not just. It's fascinating to watch because it was all presaged. I want people listening to Google two things that I just find. So I remember both when they happened. The first is Ross Perot thirty years.
- [71:13]
Chuck
Ago, the great sucking sound. That's it.
- [71:16]
Mike Rowe
Google that guys, and watch it again. He sat there right between Clinton and Bush and completely changed the world order. At least the way we elect people, at least the way you get on a ballot. That speech probably got Clinton elected and probably doomed Bush. Cuz people who were gonna vote for Clinton voted for Clinton. But that made a lot of sense. He laid it out in a way that's as relevant today that it's ever been. But on the other side is a. My favorite economist is Friedman. And when Milton Friedman talked about the pencil, that's another great video to watch and how it took a dozen countries to do it and why it makes sense to do that. These things are so relevant now. But of course Milton wasn't talking about the fact that some of those countries might have a slave population and that some of those countries over here, they might really hate the gays. I mean, a lot. And over here, you know, we got a problem with the women. But you know what? Over here in the usa, we're gonna look past all that. And the only way you can look past all those things. And this is the question I'll ask you because I've had a lot of fun traveling as I have the last few days, just asking people, look, before we get into it, yes or no, is there anything in your world more important than the economy? And depending on their answer, I know exactly the conversation we're going to have. Tier one or tier two, either one's fine. But boy, oh boy, if you're looking at this thing as though the only thing that matters is macro and microeconomics, then we're going to come to the same conclusion. Make a deal. Make a deal and look past all of that unfortunate human rights.
- [73:09]
Chuck
Well, you know that game you play like if you could have three people to dinner. Milton Friedman is on my list because I would love to hear his thoughts about. And I, in my simplistic non economist, non trade negotiating mind, I think about it as I too am a huge fan of his. I think about 40 years of what has essentially been kind of Chicago school libertarian approach to economics, wide open trade effectively and we are where we are now. From where I sit, I do believe as I articulated, bad for communities that are not going to become engineers and bad for people that are 18 year old high school grads that aren't going to go to college and that need a good stable job in the town they live in. And maybe a fear that we have given up the ability to make the things we need, medical things, defense things, ships. I would love to hear his perspective about that. I would love to hear his perspective about. And I've got in my family and my immediate friends, I live in San Francisco. I'm surrounded by tech people. I'm surrounded by finance and private equity and venture capital and all these different brains. And I understand the argument that we're going to innovate our way through and we're going to grow GDP through AI and tech and be the world leader and everyone else is going to buy our technology. But it doesn't answer the macro question that I think you keep poking at which is okay, but what are we doing about the other half in the country? What's the answer there? And it's sort of like this. I'm going to be a little pissed about this, but I like Andrew Yang a lot. But the idea of a universal basic income is the solve all here is just. It makes me want to ring people's necks. It's appalling. I mean I think and I just think it, it misunderstands the human condition and it's awfully easy to talk about that from my perch with my college degree in San Francisco. It is a different thing when you're living in a community that is just a shell of what it once was and there are no jobs and you're not going to college. I mean it just, it's a difficult thing but boy do I think we have to begin to wrestle with it.
- [75:07]
Mike Rowe
But when did it get difficult to espouse work ethic? When did it get difficult to make the sort of the virtuous argument. I know it's uncool, but when did it get difficult? There's a guy right now who's currently up on my little podcast platform called David Bonson, who wrote a book called Full Time Work and the Meaning of Life. And I don't know if you know who David is. He runs $7 billion through the Bonson Group, never went to college, and he's just wildly successful. And he makes people crazy because he says things like, your work, the most important element of your work is not your paycheck. Yeah, you need one, and yeah, you should get the best one you can. And there are ways we can talk about that. But it's this idea that you're going to live most of your life doing a thing for the express purpose so you can stop doing it and then start to enjoy whatever your reward is in this mythical retirement thing that's the root of all craziness. And that's also the reason UBI, it's such a tier 2 solution to a tier 1 species.
- [76:22]
Chuck
Yep, totally. Totally. And I think, you know, I'm going to assume this chart is right. I'm sure somebody will reach out to me and inform me and correct that it's incorrect. But I go back and stare at this chart. Oh, yeah, it'll be kind, it'll be really, it'll be nicely, nicely articulated. But you know, the chart of looking at about 1985 to today, how the stock market's done and how middle class wages have done, and it is shocking. I mean, it is really. I just. The stock market has become the measure of how our country is doing. And I just think that is just way too simplistic. And, you know, back to the Milton Friedman point, I mean, I, I honestly would love to hear his perspective about it. And the other thing too that drives me wild is people also forget that this whole idea of wide open globalization, libertarian on the gas, was a bipartisan affair. It was as much Clinton as it was Bush. Ross Perot was the standout. And in Trump won and the Biden administration, there was also a shared perspective that this is an issue that we need to begin to address. I mean, I'm not sure that we've talked about this on air or off air Mike, but both Bob Lighthizer, who was Trump's ustr, his trade representative, and Ambassador Tai, who was Biden's, the two of them are, in my judgment, patriotic Americans that are trying to figure out the working middle class problem, and they see the world pretty darn similarly I'm sure each would quibble with the other administration. The fact that this has gotten so polarized and we've lost sight of what I think is a fairly commonly held idea like we gotta do better here. We gotta do better with how we're doing as a country and how we're doing for the, you know, the working class communities all across the country that I think are the foundation of the country. We ought to be able to maybe disagree on the tactics, maybe disagree on how we get there, but let's at least align that we got to come to grips with. This is something that we got to solve. And by the way, I'll give you a laundry list of all the things I don't like about what's going on right now with the administration, but I'm not hearing much alternatives other than just being a little more methodical. And so if there are approaches that are going to address our over reliance and our national debt, I want to hear them, because I think it is, you know, the hour's getting late and we're spending a lot of money on a lot of things that are not moving the country forward. In my mind, I just think we're in a tough spot that needs to move. And I just hope that in a bipartisan way, cooler heads prevail here and we can begin to get some things articulated more clearly than they are and begin to get some stability back into the conversation. Because it's been wild to be both on the phone with industry people and talking to people like you and also just trying to think about it from our business perspective. It's just crazy.
- [79:03]
Mike Rowe
Well, look, man, I knew you were gonna be slammed. And don't take this the wrong way. You look tired, you look like you've been at it, fired looks tired. You look like you've been answering a lot of phone calls. I just took a quick look on the interwebs, and there you are on npr, you know, talking all soft and thoughtful the way they do.
- [79:21]
Chuck
That's good interviewer, Mike. It's not you, Mike. I gotta be. I gotta, I gotta get my radio voice that comes so naturally to you. I gotta channel my inner radio.
- [79:30]
Mike Rowe
Well, I mean, look, you're in a unique spot and, and I wanted to pick your brain for that reason. But, but since you're talking about, you know, causes and symptoms and, and how easily it is to confuse and conflate those things, there's another clip that I hope people will go look at. And this didn't happen super recently, but it's Tim Cook. Tim was asked about labor costs in China and he's at some think tank, he's up on a stage and I was like, oh boy, what is he gonna say about this? And I was blown away. What he said was, it's actually not that big a deal for us. We've got issues with human rights, we got issues with China like everybody else does. But fundamentally my company isn't there because the labor is cheap. It's actually pretty close. The problem and the reason I'm there is that the labor is there. It is not here. This country does not have the number of people or anywhere near approaching the number of people that we need to assemble this iPhone. It is insanely complicated. And the people who are doing it are not, they're not making little rocks out of big rocks. It's a highly skilled thing that's happening. And the enthusiasm for that work in China is very high because in relative terms, these people can make a living. And so Tim's just making a simple business decision. But it's not based on the cost of labor. It's based on the abundance of it there and not here. So having said that, please go look at that video, folks. But think too about what happens if the president gets what he wants. What happens if we successfully reshore and start opening up a lot of factories? We have at the end of January, 490,000 open jobs in the manufacturing sector. Right now he wants to create 2 million jobs in the manufacturing sector over the next few years. Where do those workers come from? And finally, I would just say too that, you know, it's not a problem that's immune to either party. President Obama made the same, in my view, error when he talked about 3 million shovel ready jobs as part of the highway infrastructure bill. Right back in 2009, the creation of 3 million shovel ready jobs was a centerpiece of that whole initiative. And that's when I got skin in this game by here. That's when I was like, hey, not for nothing, sir, I'm rooting for you. But, but from what I've seen, you're selling shovel ready jobs to a country who's not terribly enthused about picking up a shovel.
- [82:28]
Chuck
And Mike, what's your take on that? I mean, do you think that's a. Is that a compensation issue? Is it a cultural issue? Like, do you have a point of view about why that is? I mean, I sort of, yeah.
- [82:37]
Mike Rowe
I mean, I don't want to paint with too broad a brush, but I will. And just say that the Broadest thing is this artifact, I think, from the Great Depression, this way of thinking that simply says, well, if you've got 12 million people unemployed, what you need to fix the problem is 12 million jobs. But that doesn't work. The number of people unemployed at any given time is not a reflection of the number of open jobs. That's what the skills gap tells us. My take is that it's a very inconvenient truth for politicians to talk about because it doesn't say anything terribly flattering about the country. When you look at 6.8 million men who are affirmatively sitting out of the workforce, who are in the prime of their Life, compared to 7.6 million open positions, most of which don't require a four year degree. When you look at those two things happening at the same time, that's never happened in peacetime before. So my answer is I'm freaked out because every week I hear from somebody like the Blue Forge alliance who's looking to hire 140,000 tradespeople to build the next tranche of nuclear powered subs. They don't know where they are. I hear the same thing from the automotive industry. They have 70,000 open positions and collision repair and technicians. They don't know where to find these people. Well, I do. They're in the eighth grade, they're not ready to work, but that's where they are right now. And so somehow or another, to answer your question, sorry for the filibuster, but that's what we got to do. We have to stop talking about the idea that more opportunity is going to be sufficient to inspire the millions of people who have left the workforce to come back into it because the opportunities are already there.
- [84:26]
Chuck
Is it a wage issue in your mind too? You know, I'll tell you just in our world, we do a lot of sewing in the Carolinas and we do a lot of sewing in the LA basin. And when we are opening positions in Middlesex, North Carolina are three or four bucks lower than at the H vac place, that's, you know, 15 minutes down the road, we're losing them to the H Vac place. And so maybe this is overly simplistic, but one of the things that, you know, and just as a sort of window into how simply my brain works, when I was a kid growing up in the 80s, all the clothing bought by Americans was made here, all of it basically, and was affordable for all Americans. So there was a time when that was in place not so long ago. And I think that was a time when Manufacturing jobs provided good, viable work. They were they you could make enough money at a 40 or 50 hour a week job. Is it a comp issue? Is it a function of bringing the demand back? Forcing manufacturers like me to compete for labor more, raise rates, raise working conditions, better lit factories, better benefits? Or does that, is it not that simple of a solve in your view?
- [85:31]
Mike Rowe
I don't think there's a panacea. I think for a lot of people they would say, I don't think there's a great enthusiasm for work in general. I don't mean that to sound like an indictment, but it's like that scene in Elf when there's not enough Christmas spirit. The sleigh doesn't take off. Right. If there's no enthusiasm for the work, well, the whole basic recruiting proposition gets a lot more difficult. I totally understand that, that people have an idea of what's aspirational and what's not, what looks like fun and what doesn't, what looks like drudgery and what looks like meaningful work. I can't speak too broadly on how a construction site or a factory floor or a cubicle might all resonate differently with a different person. I don't know that. But I do know that if we're given the option of living on the same basic level as when we work versus when we don't work, I think it's in our nature to not work. I think most people will hit the easy button when they can, and that's the fault in our stars. And that's something real that lives in the species. But that was true in the 40s and 50s too. Now we've taken our incredibly gifted kid who should be in a gifted and talented program and put him in a troubled public school. That's the global economy. And so everything has sort of level set. And now all of a sudden if I want a real great sweatshirt, I can get one for 40 bucks. If I want one of yours, it's over 100. Is it better? Yes, it is. Feature benefit wise. I can speak from experience. You guys make a much better product. Is it that much better? Well, again, that's another question that every consumer has to run through whatever calculus they're trying to deal with right now. So it's so interconnected and it's so difficult to know and I just don't know.
- [87:41]
Chuck
Yeah, well, I'll just say I'm so struck by what you just said and what it's like to walk through a factory floor where we make some of our products, and I Last night was. I'm on the road right now and I. Last night was falling asleep in my hotel room and I turned on the TV and I saw your show, How America Works. The one I caught was about the George H.W. bush aircraft carrier and the amazing men and women that make that thing run.
- [88:07]
Mike Rowe
20 years old, by the way. 22 maybe.
- [88:10]
Chuck
It's remarkable. It's remarkable. And you probably don't remember this, but there's a scene there where they just docked the boat and they're dealing with this plex set of lines they're having to manipulate to get the ship tied up and secure. And at the end of it, it's a complicated thing. At the end of it, there's about 15 young men and women high fiving each other and they're from every. Every skin color, every gender, every walk of life in common. Cause I got emotional watching it last night because there is this. When you walk into a factory, and this is the part that gets hard for me is there's the punditry on the sidelines. And then you walk into a factory in a little town in North Carolina that needs work, and you find 100 people who vote differently, who worship differently, who marry differently, getting along and building a sweatshirt together. It's such a beautiful thing. And I think it's so closely held, but the people that are. It's almost like if, you know, you know, it is such a desperate idea to me that we may be leaving a generation of people on the sidelines for whatever reason that aren't. They don't get to experience that. So I just find that both inspiring when you go into, into our supply chains. Why, by the way I started the company is because I'd spent my whole career prior to, prior to that, shipping jobs overseas, shipping to China because it was cheaper. You spend enough time walking through factories, you start to realize like, boy, I don't want to give this up. It's such a. It's such a restorative and inspiring thing, Bayard.
- [89:33]
Mike Rowe
It's why I wanted you on. It's a beautiful thing.
- [89:37]
Chuck
Beautiful thing.
- [89:37]
Mike Rowe
It's why Friday light nights is a big deal, right? It's not college, it's certainly not professional, but it's what the community has. And it's a thing that they can gather around and it's a thing that they can jointly celebrate or grieve, root for, encourage. Look, people poo poo this all the time, but the stakes of navigating an aircraft carrier successfully and getting all those things right day after Day after day, a floating city, 5,000 people, machines of war, you know, breaking the sound barrier moments before they land. I mean, my God, the complexity is mind boggling. So of course they high five when something sporty goes right, but it's that feeling, it's that tier one feeling of accomplishing a thing, whether you're getting the ball over the goal line or getting a thermonuclear warhead properly seated in its berth or making a sweatshirt to a standard of excellence that the team can celebrate. All that shit matters, man. It's all of a piece. This is why I'm a fan of American Giant. You knew that 15 years ago. You knew it. And when we offshored all of that, we arbitraged something so much bigger than a sweatshirt out of our country. And that's the sucking chest wound that won't heal unless we do something radical to reset it, in my view.
- [91:20]
Chuck
That's it. I'm with you. It starts with a little bit of resetting with China, I think.
- [91:25]
Mike Rowe
Me too.
- [91:26]
Chuck
So that's where I'm at. I think it requires some white knuckling here because it's, it's. It begins there. And I think it's overdue, so.
- [91:34]
Mike Rowe
Well, I know you're overdue for a nap too. So look, let me just say that thank you for doing this. I think that this conversation will actually be evergreen. We didn't say anything that's going to be rendered irrelevant by anything that happens, good or bad, in any of the markets in the next week because this stuff is eternal and you're a little company. But you're doing giant work and I appreciate it.
- [92:04]
Chuck
Thanks, man. Talk to you soon. When you leave a review, which we.
- [92:08]
Mike Rowe
Hope that you'll do, tell us who you are. Tell us who you are.
- [92:14]
Chuck
And before you go, won't you leave. Five star.
- [92:30]
Mike Rowe
Five lousy little star.
- [92:44]
Chuck
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Chuck
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Mike Rowe
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Chuck
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- [93:55]
Chuck
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