Tariff D-Day Has Begun: Trump Just Triggered a Global Financial Earthquake | The Tom Bilyeu Show

Tom Bilyeu, along with co-host Drew, navigates the tumultuous landscape of global economics amidst Trump's tariff upheaval. From the stock market's dramatic dips to Trump's strategic calls to action, Tom and Drew unravel the economic chaos that seems to be affecting every corner of the globe. With insights drawn from key figures like Tucker Carlson, Scott Besant, and Jerome Powell, the conversation dives into the heart of the world's fiscal challenges and the ramifications on economic policy. SHOWNOTES 00:00 Insight from Besant, Dalio, Sowell 05:28 "Scott Bessen's Influence on Treasury" 12:09 Economic Growth and Rising Uncertainty 20:00 Nutrient-Rich Bone Broth Offer 29:37 Criticism of Trade Agreements 40:22 "Asset Holders: Wealth and System Impact" 51:20 Consumer-Driven Economic Strategy Insight 59:35 Trending Conversations: Chart, Taxes, Tariffs CHECK OUT OUR SPONSORS Audible: Sign up for a free 30 day trial at https://audible.com/IMPACTTHEORY https://audible.com/IMPACTTHEORY1 ButcherBox: Ready to level up your meals? Go to https://ButcherBox.com/impact https://butcherbox.com/impact to get $20 off your first box and FREE bacon for life. Vital Proteins: Get 20% off by going to https://www.vitalproteins.com and entering promo code IMPACT at check out Upway: Get $150 OFF any purchase over a thousand when you use code IMPACT at https://upway.co. Kettle & Fire: Get 20% off your first order at https://kettleandfire.com/impact with code IMPACT Netsuite: Download the CFO’s Guide to AI and Machine Learning at https://NetSuite.com/THEORY https://netsuite.com/THEORY Found: Try Found for FREE at https://found.com/impact Shopify: Sign up for your one-dollar-per-month trial period at https://shopify.com/impact Thrive Market: ​​Go to https:thrivemarket.com/impact http://thrivemarket.com/impact for 30% off your first order, plus a FREE $60 gift! American Alternative Assets: If you're ready to explore gold as part of your investment strategy, call 1-888-615-8047 or go to https://TomGetsGold.com https://tomgetsgold.com Tech Unheard: Tune into Tech Unheard from Arm and NPM—wherever you get your podcasts. iTrust Capital: Use code IMPACTGO when you sign up and fund your account to get a $100 bonus at https://www.itrustcapital.com/tombilyeu Mint Mobile: If you like your money, Mint Mobile is for you. Shop plans at https://mintmobile.com/impact. https://mintmobile.com/impact DISCLAIMER: Upfront payment of $45 for 3-month 5 gigabyte plan required (equivalent to $15/mo.). New customer offer for first 3 months only, then full-price plan options available. Taxes & fees extra. See MINT MOBILE for details. ********************************************************************** What's up, everybody? It's Tom Bilyeu here: If you want my help... STARTING a business:join me here at ZERO TO FOUNDER https://tombilyeu.com/zero-to-founder?utm_campaign=Podcast%20Offer&utm_source=podca[%E2%80%A6]d%20end%20of%20show&utm_content=podcast%20ad%20end%20of%20show SCALING a business:see if you qualify here. https://tombilyeu.com/call Get my battle-tested strategies and insights delivered weekly to your inbox:sign up here. https://tombilyeu.com/ ********************************************************************** If you're serious about leveling up your life, I urge you to check out my new podcast,Tom Bilyeu’s Mindset Playbook https://open.spotify.com/show/47VE90Cittmo6TGGFqg2xf —a goldmine of my most impactful episodes on mindset, business, and health. Trust me, your future self will thank you. ********************************************************************** Join me live on myTwitch stream https://impacttheory.co/4fitmnJ. I'm live daily from 6:30 to 8:30 am PT atwww.twitch.tv/tombilyeu https://impacttheory.co/4fitmnJ ********************************************************************** LISTEN TO IMPACT THEORY AD FREE + BONUS EPISODES on APPLE PODCASTS:apple.co/impacttheory http://apple.co/impacttheory ********************************************************************** FOLLOW TOM: Instagram:https://www.instagram.com/tombilyeu/ Tik Tok:https://www.tiktok.com/@tombilyeu?lang=en Twitter:https://twitter.com/tombilyeu YouTube:https://www.youtube.com/@TomBilyeu Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices https://megaphone.fm/adchoices See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Tom Bilyeu?

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• 1:07Speaker 01

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• 1:37Tom Bilyeu?

  The world continues to reel from Trump's tariff madness. Vietnam backs off, China claps back, the stock market falls off a cliff. Bessen warns everyone to chill. Trump calls for the Fed to lower rates, they ignore him. And we had a record-setting live talking about it all. Drew, welcome to the jungle. Feels like we're on a tightrope without Annette Bolew, and the whole world hates it.

• 1:59Speaker 02

  Amen. The markets are red, Tesla's on fire, everybody's losing it. It's crazy.

• 2:04Tom Bilyeu?

  This is a real moment, man. This is crazy, and I need to make light of it because there's... So much tension in the air, but this really is a dramatic moment that could break horrifically for the global economy. And I think, given social media and how rapid information travels, everyone is so aware of it, uh, that that increases the level of anxiety that everybody has.

• 2:27Speaker 02

  Yeah, let's break it down though, because during COVID, everybody was scientists. Now, everybody has a PhD in economics. There's five different thought processes. Help us break this down. How do we approach this moment? How do we weed through the noise and really understand what's actually happening?

• 2:41Tom Bilyeu?

  Okay, so it does seem to me that Trump is a, like, he is perfectly designed in a laboratory to create chaos. And I'm going to guess that that is intentional. Uh, some of it I'm sure is just natural personality, but everything from the way he talks to what he's trying to accomplish, to his vision of how you negotiate, it is quite literally designed to create chaos. Now, there are plenty of people that are going to tell you this is Tesseract chess. He's got it under control. Don't worry about it. Um, but there are three voices that are really anchoring me and there's tension between the three of them, which is good. That's helping me triangulate on what's really going on. And those three would be Scott Besson, the Secretary of the Treasury, Ray Dalio, uh, the most successful hedge fund manager of all time,

• 3:26Tom Bilyeu?

  or certainly one of the most, uh, who's gone into like this professorial mode in his career. Unbelievable at navigating global economics. And then Thomas Sowell, who as an academic, anyway, not a practitioner, but as an academic, has, uh, been somebody that's been guiding my thinking for years and years and years. So, uh, I think the three of those guys are really able to paint a very clear picture. But now I want to talk about Besson and Sowell. Um, let's start with Besson. He went on Tucker Carlson. Remember, this is the Secretary of the Treasury. This is somebody that has a global voice. He is speaking to the whole world when he speaks to Tucker. Previously, in an interview that he did, I think with CNN, he literally said, "It would

• 4:09Tom Bilyeu?

  be unwise for people to be retaliatory in tariffs because traditionally the debtor, so the people that are behind in trade, end up winning in a tariff war. We are the ones behind in trade right now." Um, so this was a follow-up that he did with Tucker after, uh, the tariff madness. So let's hear what he has to say.

• 4:31Speaker 03

  President had a press conference yesterday, um, next door, in which he announced a whole new tariff regime global. He'd been promising to do this well for 40 years, really. It came not out of nowhere, but it was clearly his intent all along, as stated. But it did rattle people, including some of his supporters. So I just wanted to ask you, big picture, where do you think this leads?

• 4:54Speaker 04

  Well, Tucker, and thank you for having me. And as you said, the president's been talking about this for four decades.

• 5:01Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 5:01Speaker 04

  And this is transformational for the American economy, for the American worker, and for the new Republican alignment. And it's a combination of the old and new ideas. Some of the old ideas were put away. You know, I always tell everyone, and they don't want to hear it, the original tariff man was Alexander Hamilton.

• 5:24Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 5:24Speaker 04

  And he used tariffs to fund the new nation and to protect American industry. President Trump has added a third leg to the stool, and he uses tariffs to negotiate.

• 5:35Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 5:35Speaker 04

  But I think this is not unlike, I was a freshman in college when Ronald Reagan came in in 1980, and a new day in America. And when I talk to people now, and they look back and they look at the Reagan years so fondly.

• 5:51Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 5:52Speaker 04

  I remember what it was like, and it was choppy. And the president-

• 5:57Speaker 03

  Very choppy.

• 5:57Speaker 04

  Very choppy. For years, the American worker, middle class has been eviscerated. American workers have taken it on the chin. And we're just starting to see some of the research now. Like, we're seeing research on what's called the China Shock from 2004. It's just coming out now, and it's what you know, it's what I know. But finally academics are saying, oh, the, gosh, the American workers never recovered from the China Shock. What a surprise. And President Trump sensed it 40 years ago, but out on the campaign trail, starting in

• 6:37Speaker 04

  2015, up until last year, he has promised the American workers that the old standard of living can come back.

• 6:47Speaker 03

  There's a very-

• 6:48Tom Bilyeu?

  Important idea that I want people to be aware of. So he brings up Alexander Hamilton. Love it the most. He really was the initial tariff man. It is still insane to me that Alexander Hamilton basically went away, thought for a minute while running his law practice and was like, let me invent the American economy. Nuts. Did it incredible. But he pointed out, ooh, the role of the Secretary of Treasury is going to be largely a PR role because this is a confidence game. So I think Scott Beson is a very important person to pay attention to for two reasons. One, he's one of the greatest capital allocators of our time and has just made immeasurable

• 7:26Tom Bilyeu?

  amounts of money winning by predicting where global markets are going to go. And that as a member of the administration, you have to remember he's positioning you. He wants you to look at the world in a certain way. So while I'm going to put him forward as, hey, this is somebody who sees things pretty clearly, he is, he has to choose every word out of his mouth and he is going to choose words that position you to see things in the most favorable light possible. And this is why I think Thomas Sowell is going to be important for us to talk about later in the episode because he's far more concerned about the choices that are being made than Mr. Besant would have you believe. But that that's a very important idea to understand what what is at least the theory

• 8:08Tom Bilyeu?

  behind why Trump is doing this. And I do promise people that think that I have an absurd read on Trump. We have varying voices. First of all, Thomas Sowell certainly disagrees. And we're also, we're gonna, we're gonna look to 4chan. We've got a take coming later from 4chan as well. So hang with me. What I want people to do is be thinking through a series of logic and we'll get deeply into my take later. Okay, so that's Scott Besant. He's setting the stage between the previous interview that he did and this one, he's trying to tell everybody, listen. This is how the game is played. You you've had the China shock.

• 8:48Tom Bilyeu?

  You've hollowed out your ability to manufacture and you've cut all these jobs that the there is a segment of the American population that without manufacturing jobs, just there's been nothing for them. And so the whole learn to code meme just it it didn't work. And so you've got to do something to address those people. And then the other part of his message is everybody needs to chill because if you try to be retaliatory and obviously he's looking directly at China. You guys are not going to fare well in this. And later I will go into great detail about why it's important to understand that 70% of America as either first or second in GDP, depending on how you count it. People argue about whether we're bigger than China or China's bigger than us. We're the two big boys on the block.

• 9:29Tom Bilyeu?

  And that 70% of our GDP comes from buying things, which I don't think most people even really understand that that is a huge part of GDP. Again, I'll go into more detail in a minute. But so that is the the part that people need to take away from Besen. Okay. Any channeling of the community that you want to do on Bessen and where he's setting the field?

• 9:56Speaker 02

  Let me just lay it out so that I see if I could understand you correctly. So Bessen is saying, this is going to take some time. I'm like, I'm, I'm giving him some grace with this message. This is going to take some time. He gave the Ronald Reagan example of how it started off bad and then it eventually swings good. But in the interim, if this actually goes full trade war, the debtor, the America, the people who's buying most of this stuff ends up coming out on top versus China and other countries who sell other things to us. So it seems red now, but ultimately will net for our benefits if this gets to fully play out.

• 10:28Tom Bilyeu?

  Yes. Now, I would ask people to put the emotional valence. It's a bit like Russia saying to Germany, we can let, we have more soldiers to kill in Stalingrad than you do. Because what's hiding in his words is this will be bad. We'll just survive it better than you. So it'll be a little bit worse for you than it will be for us. So I do not want people to hear in my recitation of him or what he's saying that this isn't going to be. Very choppy, as they say. Choppy means people losing money. Choppy means people freaking out. But Trump, if you can believe the words he says, if you can believe Bessen, if you can

• 11:09Tom Bilyeu?

  believe Lutnik, Trump is trying to reset the economic world order. And the only way that you're going to do that is to go in and break the current world order so that you can put the new one in place.

• 11:21Speaker 02

  And the net benefit is for those middle of America jobs that were previously eaten up in 2004 and when globalism really kind of hit, those are now coming back and we can increase same quality of life for those middle America cities and people.

• 11:37Tom Bilyeu?

  Yeah, it A Reid, this is exactly what people should be debating, but A Reid is that Trump is taking from the rich to give to the poor. And again, we're going to get into more details on all this stuff.

• 11:50Speaker 02

  Get it. I got my Scott Bessen. I think we understand that viewpoint number one.

• 11:54Tom Bilyeu?

  Amazing. Okay, so the madness is continuing. Everybody's freaking out. Trump, in the middle of that, puts a public message out on Truth Social saying to Jerome Powell, the head of the Fed.

• 12:10Speaker 02

  I gotta put it right here. This will be a perfect time for Fed Chairman Jerome Powell to cut interest rates. He is always late, but he could now change his image and quickly. Energy prices are down, interest rates are down, inflation is down, even eggs are down 69% and jobs are up. All within two months, a big win for America. Cut interest rates, Jerome, and stop playing politics.

• 12:32Tom Bilyeu?

  Okay, so obviously, a very blatant appeal for him to drive interest rates down. And when he says that interest rates are down there, he is almost certainly talking about the 10-year yield on Treasury bonds. So not that he's saying, hey, rates are already down, so lower them even more. The Fed rate is different than the Treasury. So, okay. With all of that in mind, Jerome Powell.

• 13:01Tom Bilyeu?

  Does not want to be seen as responding to public officials. They are an independent organization. I mean, technically, they're a company. So they are not supposed to be influenced by politics. So you can think of Trump as any person yelling into the void. And so Jerome Powell went live today to talk to the American people to let them know this is how we see the economy. And so I'm trying to put all the pieces on the chessboard for people. So what you're about to hear from Jerome Powell is very important. You understand he's looking backwards. He's going to talk a little bit about looking forwards, but primarily what he's going to recap is leading up to this moment. How does the economy look?

• 13:47Tom Bilyeu?

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• 14:30Tom Bilyeu?

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• 15:11Tom Bilyeu?

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• 15:49Tom Bilyeu?

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• 16:02Tom Bilyeu?

  All right, we're back. Let's get into it.

• 16:05Speaker 05

  After a couple of years of solid growth, many forecasters have anticipated somewhat slower growth this year. The initial reading for first quarter GDP will be released later this month. The limited hard data are consistent, though, with a slower but still solid growth outlook. At the same time, surveys of households and businesses report dimming expectations and higher uncertainty about the outlook. Survey respondents point to the effects of the new federal policies, especially related to trade. We are closely watching this tension between the hard and the soft data. As the new policies and their likely economic effects become clearer, we will have a better sense of their implications for the economy and for monetary policy.

• 16:49Speaker 05

  Looking across many indicators, the labor market appears to be broadly in balance and not a significant source of inflationary pressure. This morning's jobs report showed the unemployment rate at 4.2% in March, still in the low range where it has held since early last year. Over the first quarters, a quarter, payrolls grew by an average of 150,000 jobs per month. The combination of low layoffs, moderating job growth and slowing labor force growth has kept the unemployment rate broadly stable.

• 17:23Speaker 05

  Turning to the other leg of our dual mandate. Inflation has declined sharply from its pandemic highs of mid 2022. It has done so without the kind of painful rise in unemployment that has often accompanied periods of tight monetary policy that are needed to reduce inflation. More recently, progress toward our 2% inflation objective has slowed. Total PCE prices rose 2.5% over the 12 months ending in February. Core PCE prices, which exclude the volatile food and energy categories, rose 2.8%. Looking ahead, higher tariffs will be working their way through our economy and are likely to raise inflation in coming quarters. Reflecting this, both survey and market-based measures

• 18:08Speaker 05

  of near-term inflation expectations have moved up. By most measures, longer-term inflation expectations, those beyond just the next few years, remain well anchored and consistent with our 2% inflation goal. We remain committed to returning inflation sustainably to our 2% objective. Turning to monetary policy. We face a highly uncertain outlook with elevated risks of both higher unemployment and higher inflation. The new administration is in the process of implementing substantial policy changes in four distinct areas: trade, immigration, fiscal policy, and regulation. Our monetary policy stance is well positioned to deal with the risks and uncertainties we face

• 18:53Speaker 05

  as we gain a better understanding of the policy changes and their likely effects on the economy. It is not our role to comment on those policies. Rather, we make an assessment of their likely effects, observe the behavior of the economy, and set monetary policy in a way that best achieves our dual mandate goals.

• 19:12Tom Bilyeu?

  Looking backwards or saying, hey, we were in really good shape. Things were going well. Inflation, we don't see any signs that there's going to be anything pushing this back up. Again, this is looking backwards. Jobs are great. We're nearing maximum employment. Inflation is getting very close to our target. We're going to keep working, but it's getting very close to our target. So dual mandate, check, check. We're in good shape. Not our job to comment on whether Trump is out of his mind or not, but we do expect that the tariffs are going to have some sort of inflationary pressures.

• 19:47Tom Bilyeu?

  He doesn't want to get into it. He's being very political and saying like, hey, we just need to see how this plays out. He says it in his most monotone voice, which is not a mistake. You want him to sound like that. You don't want him to broadcast any emotion whatsoever. You just, literally, he could be like, "The economy is absolutely imploding." Like, you want him to say it as sort of robotic as humanly possible. So that's all shtick. Okay, so the Fed is saying, looking back, good. Looking forward, we're a little bit nervous. We'll let you know as we go. Now, is Powell going to move too late? So the question becomes, why does Trump want to drive rates down right now?

• 20:28Tom Bilyeu?

  I think there are two arguments on the table. Argument number one is, this is going to goose the economy. So I know I trump through these tariffs, I'm going to cause instability. Let's drive the rates down. Let's push people back into assets that have a higher yield. So you're going to want to risk on, because right now, if you can get a better yield on the 10-year, which is crazy, they actually want the rates going down on the 10-year. So you want to drive people back into the stock market, back into these risk-off assets. That's one read. Another read is, what he's trying to do is refinance the debt. And he actually wants instability in the market, and he wants the rates to be low enough for him to refinance the debt.

• 21:14Tom Bilyeu?

  So that if you're driving people, more and more people into the, into treasury bonds, what you're going to do, you've got all this supply going in to grab up that demand. And people are doing it because they want to get out of the risk assets. It's just too volatile, all over the place. So if we go in here, there's a ton of people. You don't have to incentivize them to come in and buy it, so you can drive the rates even lower. So as you drive the rates even lower, because there's so much demand for it, and the reward is basically stability with a lower yield, now you've got these low rates and you can begin to refinance your debt on the low rates. And that-

• 21:55Tom Bilyeu?

  Is a take again, which one of these ends up playing out and proving themselves to be true is a question that only time is going to tell. But those are the, I think, two most logical ways to look at what he's attempting to do in his appeal.

• 22:10Speaker 02

  Okay, so we had Scott Besson kind of setting the stage on the ultimate angle of why they're doing this. And then it's going to be Bumpy in front of us. Then we have Jerome Powell says, economy was in a good place, historic unemployment. We got away from the bloodbath that was COVID inflation. We're starting to get back to normal, even optimal growth levels. But with these new trade adjustments, we do see cloudy footing in front of us and we have to monitor and see what happens going forward.

• 22:41Tom Bilyeu?

  Yes, read another way. Trump is a psychopath. He's absolutely smashing the market in the face. And we're going to ignore him until we figure out how this is all going to play out. He's, he's doing hokey pokey tariffs for reasons that we're not going to comment on. And we need to see this motherfucker chill before we set policy. That, that's what's really going on. So you've got Trump being like, do it now. You can see I'm creating this chaos. It will help me tremendously if you go in and give people some more confidence. Read one, or it will help me tremendously if I can refinance the debt. One, one of those two things is true. He's looking for one of those playouts. You've got people arguing on both sides of that

• 23:22Tom Bilyeu?

  fence. And so he's, that, that's like the between the lines read on what's going on. So don't be fooled by Jerome's demeanor. That's why Trump is saying you're just playing politics. We talked about this in depth today in the live. It was our highest performing live literally of all time. So something that a lot of people care about. I'm not saying because my take was a banger. I'm just saying people care about this a lot. And so, yeah, take a look. This is the debate that we went through with the community this morning. Here's how this goes. Keeping in mind, this is me trying to map a string of cause and effect, not me saying this is guaranteed to work like this.

• 24:02Tom Bilyeu?

  Okay, so the, the map of cause and effect is we use gross domestic product, GDP, as a proxy for the economic health of a country. It's not literal, so people have to be a little bit careful, but it is the proxy that we use. Most people, I think, believe that gross domestic product are the things that you make and sell. But that's only one part of it. It's an important part, but it's only one part. A, for America, a huge part of GDP is what we buy. So our GDP is 70% made up of things that we buy.

• 24:46Tom Bilyeu?

  Now, that's good because you're saying, well, if we can buy it, then things are going well. The problem is we're buying it with debt. Okay, so it's a bit illusory, but nonetheless, it's a sign of our economic health, that we can borrow that much because we're the world's reserve currency. All right, so we borrow a ton of money, we buy things, let them eat flat screens. That's part number one.

• 25:09Speaker 02

  Got it.

• 25:10Tom Bilyeu?

  Part number two is, wouldn't it be awesome if you could make things, because it creates jobs, and then you could sell those things to other people? Now, you could sell them in your country, for sure, and that's largely what happens when countries start tariffing, is you just say, ah, fuck all these guys, I'm just gonna sell to my own people. Hey, for us, not such a bad deal. We're 70%, we buy shit. Other countries, not so much, because they're not balanced like that. So they're like, fuck, if we can't sell to the biggest economy, now this is not good for us.

• 25:40Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 25:40Tom Bilyeu?

  But, okay, so from a GDP perspective, buying things rad, making things and selling them, I would say even radder. So if you're a country that sells a bunch of shit to other countries, you're in an awesome spot. You've got a weakness, but the awesome spot that you're in is you know how to make shit. The things we know how to make are?

• 26:05Speaker 02

  Guns?

• 26:06Tom Bilyeu?

  Netflix, Instagram, Facebook.

• 26:09Speaker 02

  Software.

• 26:10Tom Bilyeu?

  Exactly. We're a nation of technology. That's great. I love it. But I don't know that I want my biggest industry to be people watching movies and TV. And I'm the guy that wants to make movies and TV. It makes me a little nervous that Fang stocks are all technology.

• 26:29Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 26:31Tom Bilyeu?

  So to give you a stat, it, these are directionally correct, not literally correct. America makes one battleship a month. China makes 220 a month?

• 26:42Tom Bilyeu?

  You want to go to war with somebody that outproduces you 200x? I don't. So.

• 26:47Speaker 02

  If we go to war, we can Netflix them.

• 26:49Tom Bilyeu?

  Yeah, let that linger in the background. Imagine they're like, we'll take Taiwan. Thank you very much. And you're like, I'm gonna send my one battleship to your 220. That's tough. Anyway. So you're in a really good position if you make a bunch of shit and you sell it to other people. Your fragility is if other people go, I don't want your shit anymore. Now you're in trouble. You just made a whole bunch of stuff. You've got nowhere to send it. It's deflationary, but crisis-led deflation. Remember, there's two kinds of deflation. Good deflation, we made this amazing thing cheaper. Computers, phones, cameras, flat screens. So all of these things, just going down in price, quality going up, absolutely insane. We all love it. It's amazing.

• 27:30Tom Bilyeu?

  And that ends up being the battle, is if you're the guy that's buying everything. Let me use an analogy. If I invite you over to my house and I feed you and I'm like, hey, man, like, I want you to treat this like your own house. Like, if there's something you want out of the fridge, you literally don't even have to ask, just go grab something. And then I go to your house and first of all, you're like, oh, hey, wasn't expecting you today. But okay, you're here. Come on in. Take your shoes off, please. Leave them outside. Put these booties on. And then I'm in your house and like, hey, man, I'm really hungry. And you're like, oh, you didn't bring anything? Um, yeah.

• 28:13Tom Bilyeu?

  I'm super sorry, but I'm saving the food in the fridge. My kids are gonna be home later. They're gonna need that. I'm so sorry. We do have, I can get you a water. Oh, cool. Uh, do you have sparkling? No, just tap. And you grab a glass. Shh. And you give me like this little bit of tap water in a dirty glass. And I've got my booties on and I'm like, whoa, this feels pretty different from me inviting you over to the crib. So you start to feel some kind of way about it. Mm hmm. That's non reciprocal tariffs. Now, there are reasons why you might do that. You might say, hey, uh, we went and kicked the shit out of you in World War II.

• 28:55Tom Bilyeu?

  And for reasons that still are incredible to me, obviously selfish as well. Let's not get it twisted. But America was the only nuclear power. And instead of saying, all of you do what the fuck I say. We said, we're gonna help rebuild you guys. And look, it was awesome as we got into globalism was rad for a minute. That shit was rad. Mm hmm. So let's not pretend that it didn't have huge benefits. Huge pulled probably billions of people out of poverty. If we were to really run them out. Awesome choice. Love it the most. So glad that we got to do it. But now in constantly letting you come to my house.

• 29:37Tom Bilyeu?

  You like were able to get your protein up and you got yoked. And now I'm like, oh, like I need some protein and you ate all my shit. And I've been eating like all this soy stuff because it makes you feel full. And you don't realize that it's giving you bitch tits. Can I say that? We good? Uh, and so now I'm over here with the bitch tits. My estrogen levels are through the roof. You're fucking jacked off the protein you ate out of my fridge. Wild. And now I'm like, uh oh, we're gonna have to make a change. And now I'm like, I'm gonna stock my fridge with protein. And if you want some, you're gonna pay for the fucking privilege. Hey, you guys have been ripping us off.

• 30:19Tom Bilyeu?

  And the way that I know you've been ripping us off is this math equation. That says you guys are doing unfair things because remember there could be so much sleight of hand in the um, non tariff.

• 30:32Tom Bilyeu?

  Trade, oh god, what do they call it? Barriers, the non-tariff trade barriers. So you guys, we looking at China say, hey, you might say you only have whatever, 7% tariffs. But the reality is you have all these non-tariff trade barriers. And so he gave an example, if we tried to ship McDonald's french fries and they said, ah, well, because you can't tell us where the potatoes come from. Unfortunately, we're gonna have to reject this.

• 30:56Speaker 02

  The US right now in 2025 has to change the trajectory that it's on.

• 31:01Tom Bilyeu?

  Every empire that has ever existed has collapsed because of?

• 31:08Speaker 02

  Debt.

• 31:08Tom Bilyeu?

  Debt, debt racing towards a fiscal cliff that is Armageddon. AI is gonna change the world so profoundly, you literally can't see the future. And then the third one is you're already in a Cold War with China. Now, if you're young and you don't know what a Cold War is and you don't understand that this is two countries trying to destroy each other through the human and cyber version of viruses. So you're trying to implant mind viruses, you're trying to do economic warfare, you're trying to do spy shit, like all of it. It's real.

• 31:53Speaker 02

  Slowly dismember the country and the society.

• 31:56Tom Bilyeu?

  Yeah, isolate them, fuck them up so that you can get your power back.

• 31:59Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 32:00Tom Bilyeu?

  And countries don't relent. So one wins and one loses, or you escalate all the way up to kinetic warfare. The number of videos of current politicians saying like almost verbatim Trump rhetoric from 10, 20 years ago, it is hilarious.

• 32:24Speaker 06

  John is exactly right that you travel around South Carolina and you see the textile mills that John's father worked in, closed all over the region. And it is absolutely true that NAFTA was a mistake. I know that Hillary on occasion has said that this was just last year, said this was a boon to the economy. I think it has been devastating because our trade agreements did not have labor standards and environmental standards. That would assure that workers in the US were getting a square D. And it is absolutely critical for us to understand that NAFTA was an enormous problem. The permanent trade relations with China without some of the enforcement mechanisms that were in there that you voted for was also a significant problem.

• 33:07Speaker 06

  And we've got to all move forward as Democrats to make sure that we've got trade deals that work for working people and not just for corporate profit.

• 33:14Speaker 07

  Further, what they have said is that we need to not worry about manufacturing in America because what we should establish is a policy of unfettered free trade. We don't need tariffs. What we need is to allow corporate America the freedom, the freedom to throw American workers out on the street. People are making 15, 20, 25 bucks an hour, healthcare pensions, throw them out on the street because somehow, Madam President, we are going to create wealth in America and good-paying jobs in America as we shut down plants, we move to China, corporations

• 33:55Speaker 07

  there pay workers 20, 30 cents an hour, and we bring the product back into this country. And anyone who goes shopping in a mall knows how difficult it is today to find the product made in America. But that is the philosophy. And I have to say, in that regard, the champion, and he is honest on this one. Senator McCain has been criticized recently for not being the most honest candidate we have seen in terms of his ads and so forth. He has been honest on this one. He is the lead advocate of unfettered free trade. And that's also an important part of this right-wing ideology, that it is good for America, that corporations can go to China, bring products back into this country.

• 34:35Tom Bilyeu?

  All right, that was my take on everything. I welcome and encourage people to debate. Tell me if you think that I'm wrong. All I ask is give me the layout of your logic so that I can sharpen my own thinking. What I was trying to do is just walk people through, here are my base assumptions, this is the cause and effect of how I think things lead from one to the other. Quick break, but don't go anywhere. There's more to come after this short break from our sponsors.

• 35:00Speaker 01

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• 35:32Tom Bilyeu?

  All right, we're back. Let's get into it. I'm trying to be right in the sense of I'm trying to map things out accurately. I'm not trying to be right from an ego perspective. So I'm perfectly willing to accept my thinking currently does not map accurately to reality and that there is a way of looking at this that has higher predictive validity. And please put it in the comments. I really do want to know.

• 35:53Tom Bilyeu?

  Now, speaking of people that take a different approach than I do. So you just heard mine. There was a post on 4chan that I actually thought was really interesting. Now leave out the offensive beginning and just go. So you heard me mention some of this earlier. Trump is trying to crash the stock market at least 20%, causing a flight into treasuries. This will cause the Fed to slash interest rates so he can refinance the debt at near 0% and cause a deflationary spiral, which will lower the cost of everything. He also intends to use tariffs as an incentive for companies to build in the US to avoid having to pay them. The tariffs, meaning to pay the tariffs. The tariffs and the resulting global trade war will also force American farmers to sell more of their goods in the US due to retaliatory trade measures by other countries.

• 36:38Tom Bilyeu?

  I mean, he's, whether you agree with him or not, he's got internal logic. And that will directly lower the price of groceries in the US. More than 94% of all stock is owned by just 8% of the US population.

• 36:51Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 36:52Tom Bilyeu?

  Trump is literally taking money from the rich and giving it to the poor. This is why Trump is playing a game of hokey pokey tariffs. I swear I did not read this.

• 37:00Speaker 02

  Were you on 4chan? Is this you on 4chan, Tom? This is your 4chan burner account?

• 37:04Tom Bilyeu?

  This is my burner. I'm arguing with myself. One day he has 25% tariffs on Mexico and the next he doesn't. This is to cause extreme volatility in the markets and a desperate need and demand to flee towards treasury bonds, which are much more stable, but offer much lower potential return. Here's where he lost me. Uh, this is also why eggs are cheaper now than they were under Joe Biden. Okay, I, if I'm not mistaken, the reason that eggs were so expensive under Joe Biden was there was an outbreak of bird flu, and so they had to kill some ungodly number of chickens. I mean, that's just supply and demand. Uh, so I don't know about that one, but it would also get caught up in the things that he's doing. Now, uh, I would

• 37:45Tom Bilyeu?

  love to know, Drew, if either on your own behalf, or if on you playing the role of the guardian of the community, do you think people follow his logic on the deflationary aspect of this? Because this, I found this originally hard to wrap my head around.

• 38:01Speaker 02

  No, I was gonna be for, I'm still at the Trump is taking money from the rich and giving it to the poor. I know I want to spend time there, but deflationary spiral, that went right over me.

• 38:09Tom Bilyeu?

  Okay, so the way that trade wars lead to a deflationary spiral is utterly fascinating. So this is where we have to go back to what I was saying in the live, that 70% of our GDP is that we buy things. So you've now got a country that is buying things, uh, sorry, making things and selling them to us. And the second that we say, uh, that's gonna cost you more money to sell into us because of tariffs, the demand in our country that China's used to selling into, just to get really specific, that demand just goes away. But they still have the products, or even just the, um, available manufacturing capacity. So now you either start firing workers, you start making your goods, because they've

• 38:52Tom Bilyeu?

  probably purchased a ton of inventory of the parts that make the things that they end up selling to us. So they're caught in this really horrible.

• 38:59Speaker 02

  They have inventory, they got costs, and you just said you're not, you're gonna get 70% of the stuff we're used to selling as opposed to 100% of the goods.

• 39:06Tom Bilyeu?

  Or I just said, uh, more like 50%. So the demand is going to diminish greatly. When the demand diminishes greatly, then they're gonna sell in their own country, because they can't just sit on the inventory. So now they're gonna flood their own market with all of these goods, and the market's gonna be like, we don't need all that stuff. And so that means you have to create incentives, lowering the price is the most obvious incentive. And so now you're in a crisis-led deflationary situation. I always wanna beat the drum. There's a big difference between crisis-led deflation and innovation-led deflation. They are very different. You want innovation-led deflation, you don't want crisis-led deflation.

• 39:46Tom Bilyeu?

  So now you've got these goods in your market, China, that you can't now move to the American market. And the Americans still want the goods. And so they're going to turn, in this case, he's very careful to point out, let's just talk groceries.

• 40:00Speaker 02

  Yeah, American farmers for the point.

• 40:01Tom Bilyeu?

  Exactly. So let them eat flat screens. He's, he's trying to get everybody off that idea. Like a lot of the things that China are selling into you are not essentials. So now, instead of Americans exporting their goods, they're going to have that same issue. Where, oh, we were exporting it, but now the countries we're exporting to are going to do the same thing to us that we just did to China. So now we're like, oh shit, we've got all these agricultural goods that we would otherwise be exporting. We can't export now, so we have to hold it, so we have to lower the price. And so now, this is sort of the, everybody's narrowing your focus on those things.

• 40:41Tom Bilyeu?

  That's amazing, because if you're driving the cost of essentials down, that's great for the American buyer. It's not going to be great for American companies. And this is why he's saying they're taking from the rich and they're giving to the poor. So he's fucking up all your assets. So if you had your money in the stock market, that goes down. If you had all your money in a house, well, as the stock market goes down, people have less money to spend on the houses. But the good news is, this is where it all gets so complicated. If he's really driving rates down, houses become more affordable because of the rates. But if they're still inflated, ah, so this all gets very.

• 41:14Speaker 02

  Hold on, hold on, because I want to just lock in that grocery thing. So just so I understand it, so for example, we grow oranges in Florida, right? So we're used to sending those oranges in Florida to Europe. But because what we just did to China, the 34 retaliatory, it's more expensive for them. Europe is now saying, you just taxed us on our wine, for example. So now we're not going to take your oranges. So the American farmers that wanted to sell their oranges to Florida, to Europe, now have a bunch more oranges. So now they have to turn to the American people and be like, okay, I got twice as many oranges. I'm going to lower the price by 20% so I can sell and get all these oranges out of my fields.

• 41:46Tom Bilyeu?

  That is correct.

• 41:46Speaker 02

  So it'll be cheaper orange juice for us at home.

• 41:48Tom Bilyeu?

  So the consumer wins.

• 41:49Speaker 02

  Hypothetically speaking, yeah.

• 41:50Tom Bilyeu?

  Consumer wins, asset holders lose, company owners struggle. The bad news. Is company owners struggle too much, you start laying off employees. And this is, this is the Thomas Sowell take, which will play his own clip in a minute.

• 42:06Tom Bilyeu?

  But he's like, bro, this is the shoot me in the ear strategy. It's so dangerous.

• 42:12Speaker 02

  It is. Okay. So that was the second paragraph. We got the first, the deflationary spiral. We got why groceries in the US can be cheaper hypothetically. Now break down the 90, the how is Trump giving to the rich to the poor? Cause that's opposite of what everybody who ever read anything about Trump thinks.

• 42:29Tom Bilyeu?

  Okay. So.

• 42:30Speaker 02

  This is the one you gotta really like land a plane for me.

• 42:32Tom Bilyeu?

  Yes. Okay. So asset holders right now are what people call rich. We don't have to debate right now whether paper money versus in your bank account money.

• 42:44Speaker 02

  Like stock market money.

• 42:46Tom Bilyeu?

  So for now, we're just going to allow asset holder to be a stand in for the rich. Because you certainly put your money in assets if you're wealthy to avoid. One, you're trying to grow your wealth and two, you're trying to avoid inflation. So it's a, it's a fine proxy for this discussion.

• 43:04Tom Bilyeu?

  If you're doing things that are unfriendly to that at a systemic level, like literally down in the way the economy works level, you're breaking something. So you're not just scaring people, you're actually breaking something. That's where it's okay. Now those asset prices are coming down. So you're taking from the quote unquote rich. It's far more complicated than that, but that's what.

• 43:27Speaker 02

  The value of their assets are dropping.

• 43:29Tom Bilyeu?

  The value of their assets are dropping. And the thing that he has broken, the tariffs, the free trade. He's broken it for a reason. And the reason is to take, this is his argument. I want to be very clear about that.

• 43:45Speaker 02

  4chan guy.

• 43:45Tom Bilyeu?

  For, yes, for Mr. 4chan, do we have a username? Should we be? I feel like we should be acknowledging, oh, Jesus.

• 43:51Speaker 02

  Anonymous ID.

• 43:52Tom Bilyeu?

  Okay. So Mr. Anonymous on 4chan. Which by the way, thank you for a very cogent argument. Very, very easy to take step by step. Okay. So he breaks the.

• 44:07Tom Bilyeu?

  He breaks the free trade, spooks the economy, all of that because theoretically, what he's trying to do in this guy's argument is drive people out of the stock market into treasuries. The flood of demand in treasuries means that you don't have to coax them in with high interest rates. So those come down. And now there's a double whammy. We can refinance our debt, which frees up more tax dollars for the American people to have used in an intelligent way instead of going to servicing your debt, which is better for everybody. And for the deflationary spiral reasons that we've already explained, it also lowers the cost of groceries.

• 44:48Speaker 02

  So when people sell off, when they turn, could you go from stocks to bonds when the market is a little shaky? It's a, why, why?

• 44:54Tom Bilyeu?

  Yes. So stocks are like risk on. So it's high risk, but it has a much higher potential return. The treasuries are a much lower return, but they are far more stable. So they call it the risk-free rate of return.

• 45:09Speaker 02

  Got you.

• 45:09Tom Bilyeu?

  Risk-free because the government would have to go bankrupt before you would lose your principal.

• 45:13Speaker 02

  So that's why, as we see the market now red, people are selling off to move it from the volatility of the stock market into a treasury, something that's

• 45:21Tom Bilyeu?

  You can't say that they're doing it specifically for treasuries, but some huge

• 45:25Speaker 02

  That's an option available to them.

• 45:27Tom Bilyeu?

  Will do that. Correct. And the logic is certainly there that if somebody's exiting out of the stock market, it is because they are very specifically saying, either I'm over leveraged and I'm worried I'm going to get liquidated. So I've got to get out now before I hit the point where my collateral will no longer cover this. And then they take my stock as a way to collect on their collateral. So people want to get out before they get liquidated. So you've got people selling off for that reason. But then you also have people that are just like, I don't know how long this is going to be down. I put my money in the stock market, thinking that this was like a two-year thing, but I'm going to need my money back. I can't wait three years. So I don't trust that what Trump is doing isn't going to last longer than whatever their duration is a month, a year, two years, five, whatever. So I need to get out now before the losses get worse.

• 46:12Tom Bilyeu?

  And so they're willing to take the, they're willing to take a paper loss and turn it into an actualized loss in order to fly to safety, as it is known, a flight to safety. And so they'll move out of the risk on assets into the risk free rate of return, which is going to be lower, but is better than, oh shit, I could lose all my money.

• 46:33Speaker 02

  Copy. And then now when all the assets are out of the stock market into things like the bonds, the treasuries and things like that, that is, and then I guess the poorest benefit is one, the, their essentials, the price of their essentials are coming down. Is there anything else that comes? I'm looking at that second sentence, Trump is literally taking from the rich and giving to the poor. Like, okay, I understand the sell off of the assets, but where does the giving to the?

• 46:58Tom Bilyeu?

  So one, let's, I love the Robin Hood language, but in its oversimplicity, it may be creating some of the confusion. So he's not literally

• 47:08Speaker 02

  Copy.

• 47:09Tom Bilyeu?

  Take like, what people want is go tax the rich and then actually give me their dollars. Like there were dollars in Elon Musk's bank account that are now in mine. That's what people want. That's not what he's doing. What he's doing is altering the way, altering what parts of the economy are high functioning. That's probably a better proxy for what he's doing. So again, I'm using tariffs to put people in a position such that jobs are returning to America, even if they're, even if we have to pay a higher wage. And so it's quote unquote, less efficient from a comparative advantage. So maybe it's more expensive to make pharmaceuticals here in the U.S.

• 47:55Tom Bilyeu?

  But we're going to do that anyway, because that means that we're going to employ American workers. There's the whole national security element of this, which cannot be overstated. Like that's just so, so, so important that people hold in the front of their mind, but does not speak to what he's talking about. So yeah, he's, he's adjusting what part of the economy is high functioning. So we're willing to risk a trade war, a global trade war, so that we can lower prices here in America, so that we can increase jobs here in America, so that we can increase our manufacturing prowess here in America. Copy.

• 48:30Speaker 02

  And then now, do you want to set up our last viewpoint, which is the Thomas Sowell viewpoint?

• 48:34Tom Bilyeu?

  Yeah, so Thomas Sowell is an unbelievably brilliant economist, who has seen so many things clearly, without getting caught up in the emotion of it all. And I think you want to build up from, here are the base assumptions I have. Here is the string of cause and effect that I think is most likely. That's how people should build their worldview. So I will very frequently touch base with Thomas Sowell on a whole host of topics. And so when he and I do not agree, I don't take that lightly. And right now, I am bringing into my worldview his level of anxiety.

• 49:18Tom Bilyeu?

  And so partly based on that and some other things, I went and did a historical look at like how tariffs have functioned in the past, why people are worried about it. The Smoot-Hawley, I believe, is what is called the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act, that we did after the 1929 crash. I think it was put forth in either 1930 or 1931. And how people say, oh, that so clearly made the depression worse. Is this time different than that time? Or is this just actually how tariffs work foundationally? So anyway, let my man Thomas Sowell say his piece, and then we'll talk about it.

• 49:58Speaker 06

  What do you make of the President of the United States and his tariffs? It's painful to see what a ruinous decision

• 50:13Speaker 06

  from back in the 1920s being repeated. Now, insofar as he's using these tariffs to get very strategic things settled, and that he is satisfied with that. But if you set off a worldwide trade war, that has a devastating history. Everybody loses, because everybody follows suit. And all that happens is that you get a great reduction in international trade. The other, it's disturbing in another sense.

• 50:53Speaker 06

  Franklin D. Roosevelt, when he was president in the 1930s, said that you have to try things. And if they don't work, then you admit it, you abandon that, you go on to something else. You try that until you come across something that does work. Now, that's not a bad approach if you are operating within a known system of rules.

• 51:22Speaker 06

  But if you are the one who's making the rules, then all the other people have no idea what you're gonna do next. And that is the formula for having people hang on to their money until they figure out what you're gonna do. And when a lot of people hang on to their money, you can get results such as you got during the Great Depression of the 1930s. So if this is just a set of short-run ploys with various objectives limited in time, fine, maybe. But if this is gonna be the policy for four long years, that you're gonna try this, you're gonna try that, you're gonna try something else. A lot of people are gonna wait.

• 52:05Speaker 06

  I think what happened in the stock market recently, when things came down substantially for quite a while. And I note that various people are holding on to their money before they do anything because they don't know where this is gonna lead.

• 52:27Tom Bilyeu?

  Yeah, this is exactly what you have to be careful of. Okay, so I went back, I looked at the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act with an eye towards, is this time gonna be just like it was in 1930? Or is the setup of things different now? And just like at the very beginning of the country, you could fuel everything with tariffs, but we're at a point now where the odds of that are, I think, effectively zero. The government is just so big, Drew. When you think about when Washington was president, for like the first month, the government was George Washington. Like, think about that being literal. The entire federal government was George Washington. And now he starts hiring people, to be sure, but...

• 53:10Tom Bilyeu?

  I mean, you really started with a zero, a blank sheet, and you built on top of that. That's such a different world than you've got whatever a thousand people that you have to appoint. And I mean, it's just like a totally different ballgame. So we're in a period now where it's already just wildly different. So then the question becomes, are we in a period that's different than 1930? Or is this time very reminiscent of that? And we come back again to the thing that we've talked about multiple times in this episode. And the answer for me is no, this time is very different. And the thing that makes it different doesn't mean it will have a different outcome. It just means we are starting at a different starting point. And that starting point is that 70% of our GDP comes from us buying things largely from other people.

• 53:51Tom Bilyeu?

  So we do have a pretty aggressive stick that we can use because everybody, everybody around the world, dude, is counting on being able to sell into us. So the setup, I would say, is different enough that there is a chance that this works. That that by no means is a guarantee. But as Besson was talking about, um, we've done this before. So we did something similar back with Reagan. It was choppy, but if you see things through, if you've got the political capital, which we talked about during the live, if you've got the political capital, then you might be able to see this through. If he loses the political capital, he's toast. Like, I just don't see a way, um, that if you've got Congress working against you,

• 54:36Tom Bilyeu?

  you can't get things passed, you hit gridlock, the basically the economy gets stuck where it's at. That that would be, I think, the end of Trump's presidency.

• 54:47Tom Bilyeu?

  So if this happens fast enough, if he's able to, as Thomas Sowell was saying, if he's using these as negotiating tactics that put himself in a strong enough position, to get things across the board, and then like Vietnam has said, hey, we're prepared to take our rates to zero. If we then go, cool, we'll take ours to zero as well. And that ends up happening with a lot of countries, but we're now able to sell into them. They're able to sell into us and we get something that actually approximates free trade. That could be, or if Trump is using it, no, we're not going to zero with anybody unless someone like China. Maybe we really do hit parity, uh, because we're peers. We'll, we'll see how it plays out. I literally have no sense of glimpsing into his mind on that.

• 55:33Tom Bilyeu?

  The other thing that if it happens fast enough would be if prices really do come down. So if the average American's like, oh, my wages haven't gone down, that's critical. If their wages don't go down, unemployment doesn't drop, but the cost of things go down, we're able to refinance the debt at a lower rate, then people are going to feel pretty good about things, even if the stock market is getting slapped about the head, neck and chest. So the only thing is, you are still talking about, I think it's like 52% of people have some exposure to the stock market. So they're gonna make noise. Like, if you can't end up at a minimum stabilizing that, you're gonna be in trouble. But if he can stabilize that, and people aren't panicking about their retirements,

• 56:17Tom Bilyeu?

  if the cost of essentials is going down, if wages are at a minimum holding steady, or if they, I think it's probably a little too fanciful to expect them to start going up as well, but if he can hold wages steady, stock market stabilizes, and actual jobs start coming back, meaning manufacturing really does start returning to the US, I think people are gonna feel very good about what's happening. Now, there's a ton of ifs in all of that, and we're all aware of that. But that, I think, is the right way to hold these three guys in tension. I know we haven't talked a lot about Ray Dalio today, but he's basically just a midpoint

• 56:58Tom Bilyeu?

  between Bessen, who's hyping all this up, and Thomas Sowell, who's like, Jesus Christ, we're repeating the sins of our past, and the idea that people will hold on to their money, that's the thing to watch out for. Because the great irony of a recession, it's a confidence game. If people lose confidence, you've got nothing. If people are spending money and money's moving around because they feel like, oh, this is all gonna be fine, then, hey, then it magically is fine because everyone believes that it's going to be fine, and therefore they're spending their money. And on the corporations, I do worry that despite all the big promises, that people are actually gonna sit on their money and wait to see how Trump does at the midterms.

• 57:38Speaker 02

  Before actually investing in buildings and stuff.

• 57:40Tom Bilyeu?

  Yeah.

• 57:42Speaker 02

  Gut feeling, lightning question. Do you think it works out in the end?

• 57:46Tom Bilyeu?

  Nothing ever works as well as you want it to. It will be so in the gray area where people are getting clobbered in the stock market and they're hella pissed. Costs are coming down. Those people are excited. Some jobs are coming back, but way too slowly. Most of it feels like spin and everybody's like, is this working or not? So I think it's going to be a nail biter at the midterms.

• 58:08Speaker 02

  Copy. What KPI ultimately do you think is going to make or break this policy?

• 58:14Tom Bilyeu?

  I mean, the only real thing is sentiment. How do people feel? If, because here's a great thing and Jerome Powell actually spoke to this, but I think that people miss it. Jerome Powell doesn't give a shit that your costs are high. He only cares about are your costs going higher? So this was the thing that made me want to club people with a fishing bat. When everybody was like, you don't know that? When you get a fish, you beat them to death. Real thing.

• 58:40Speaker 02

  Not that like, I thought bat is baseball season, so I go.

• 58:43Tom Bilyeu?

  No, I do mean that. It's a smaller bat. It's a bat that the fisherman used to club the fish. So when people were saying that, uh, inflation isn't high anymore. What are you guys complaining about? Because motherfucker during COVID, it went up like 25%. It's not like the prices have come back down. So people are still in a position where they're like, I can't make ends meet. So, uh, it's cold comfort that it's only going up by 2.5% or whatever. They're already high. So, uh, I need deflation. But everybody thinks deflation is bad, bad, bad. Crisis led deflation is bad. I want to be clear, but even this, it's, it's possible. God, I don't want to give him Tesseract credit, but it's possible that he really is trying to break something.

• 59:28Tom Bilyeu?

  Which would be crisis led deflation. If people lose their jobs and you have crisis led deflation, it doesn't fucking matter. People like, uh, great, it's cheaper, but I don't have any income. So you have not helped me. Uh, but if he can lower the value of the dollar, make things cheaper and keep employment high, I think you've got a shot. Because then, remember, he is a populist president, which means he's capturing the energy of the 92 people, 92% of people that, um, don't own the vast majority of the wealth. I'm saying this stat kind of wrong, but 8% hold over what? 96%? Uh, so. That means that 92% of people are far less impacted by a decline in the stock market.

• 1:00:12Tom Bilyeu?

  And so, right now, the play for a populist leader is take care of the 92% that care a lot less about the stock market. Make sure that their average price of a insert your object here goes down. And if it does, he's gonna win. And if it doesn't, toast.

• 1:00:29Speaker 02

  Is there anything that could be true that you could be like, yep, Trump completely failed and this was a terrible idea. He should have never done it.

• 1:00:34Tom Bilyeu?

  Of course. If we get to the point where people are losing their jobs and prices are not coming down, it was a total fuck up. If even worse, we go into a global recession because everybody does become protectionary and we are back in the Smoot Howley tariff act territory of we just shot ourselves in the foot. I want to be very clear. This is not me trying to go to bat for Trump's tariffs. This is me trying to explain what he's attempting to do. That's it. Whether this works, that's a crystal ball question. Way above my pay grade. I'm just saying, if it works, it's gonna look like this. If it doesn't work, it will look like this. And now, everybody build a chain of logic.

• 1:01:16Tom Bilyeu?

  And at each gate, ask yourself, what do I think the likelihood of this happening is? What's my confidence level? And that's it. So, I know that people perceive me because they're trying to fit me into the typical bucket. They're trying to perceive me as somebody who's saying, this is right, let's do this. I'm saying very specifically, I don't have any fucking idea. Nobody does. And so, Trump has to make a bet. That's what he's been elected to do. This is why I'm not running for office. It is hard enough to run a company where at least I'm the only one that loses money if this messes up. There's a reason I don't do public companies. Because if I crash and burn, losing my own money, I can live with that. Losing other people's money, ack. Don't love.

• 1:01:58Speaker 02

  Well, that's all I got.

• 1:01:59Tom Bilyeu?

  All right, everybody, if you haven't already, wherever you get your podcasts, go and give us a five star review. It helps tremendously. It would mean the world to us. And until next time, my friends, be legendary. Take care, peace. Let's talk about a pattern that is guaranteed to be killing your progress. You know what you need to do. You need consistent nutrition. We all do. You need vitamins, probiotics, greens. We all know that we should be doing more of it. When your morning gets chaotic, you skip it. When you travel, you skip it. When your routine breaks, everything tends to break and that inconsistency compounds against you every single day. AG1 is designed to solve the execution problem. One scoop, eight ounces of water, and you're done.

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