What Trump JUST Said (Tariffs and Executive Orders)

So, Donald Trump just broke down in a

Q&A session where his head is in regards

to tariffs when it comes to other

countries, including China. We didn't

hear what was reported by the Financial

Times, which is that Trump is expected

to exempt car parts from China from

fentanyl tariffs, which means car parts

would be exempt from some tariffs, but

not all of them. Trump might exempt

steel and aluminum from tariffs, as well

as some other car makers like GM could

benefit from some other exemptions. We

didn't actually hear anything about

that, but we did hear a lot around

Donald Trump's mentality when it comes

to tariffs and then of course the

education executive orders, which I'll

go through all of that in a moment. So

Donald Trump of course as usual talks

about China ripping us off. This is very

typical. And then when he's asked about,

well, are we talking to China? Donald

Trump says of course we talk every

single day. But I kind of think what

he's being asked from reporters is, "Do

you talk to China about tariff

negotiations every day?" But

unfortunately, the reporters don't think

to ask that. So I think when Trump says,

"Yeah, of course we talk to China every

day." Every country is talking to pretty

much every country every single day. We

have embassies in the other countries.

So yeah, you could without lying say we

talk to China every single day, but that

doesn't necessarily mean we're talking

about tariffs every single day. Now,

Donald Trump uh and Lutnik say, "We've

spoken to 90 countries so far. They all

want to make deals," says Trump. He

says, "You know, we were losing three to

five billion dollars a day." Kind of

implying that we're making that now, but

remember the Customs and Border

Protection report that we got about a

week ago indicated that in about a

12-day span, we only really received

about $500 million in collections. And

obviously, the economy is likely to have

lost substantially more than that. We'll

see. I mean, we've seen the turmoil of

markets. Uh but Donald Trump gives us a

little bit of a road map for if we don't

end up making deals with countries, he's

just going to assign deals. Now, I

thought this was really interesting

because it's not something that we've

really heard before. So he says over the

next two to three weeks, if we don't

make a deal with a certain country, we

will just assign a tariff rate and then

they can decide whether or not to do

business with us. This is of course

where Donald Trump kind of goes down the

rabbit hole again of like, you know, we

used to be an all tariff nation and we

gave away the Panama Canal. And I mean,

you should know obviously when we used

to be an, you know, an all tariff

nation, we had a 40x smaller military.

We had no social security, no Medicare,

no federal funding for education or

roads or hospitals. Uh when we gave away

the Panama Canal, it was actually a

treaty that the country of Panama would

take over the defense for it. So we

didn't have to spend our military money

defending the Panama Canal, you know.

So, like obviously context is useful,

but we don't have to go down all that

rabbit hole. What is more interesting is

talking about the new stuff. And Donald

Trump seems very convinced in in in in

sort of like wanting tariffs. I actually

after today's meeting, I don't know that

tariffs are ever going to go away in

full under the Trump administration.

Now, I am confident that in 2029 under a

new

administration, all the tariffs are

going to go away. Like, it's going to be

the first thing that gets torn up. But

Donald Trump literally ended his press

conference. And there's a lot to talk

about here, what they what they talked

about. So, I'm kind of jumping around a

little bit just to keep a logical flow

here. But what Donald Trump ended with

is this idea of, you know, if we charge

25% of tariffs, we have a certain amount

of factories that come here. But if we

charge 50, we get more factories. If we

charge 75, we get more factories. If we

charge 100%, we get more factories. He

really actually seems convinced that by

having tariff destroying taxes or you

know, sorry, economy destroying tariffs

uh you know on our trading partners

which are integrating our trading

partners amongst each other and against

us. He really believes that companies

are going to want to build in America.

And while some people will say they're

going to build in America and look in

fairness, you know, NFACE for example,

NFA solar, they have contract

manufacturers that manufacture in

America. But there's a reason for that,

and I'll tell you that reason in a

moment. But he really believes that

tariffs are the reason why we'll

manufacture in America. And that

companies are willing to make that

investment even though we're probably

just going to return right back to free

trade either when Donald Trump

flip-flops or when a new administration

comes in, which means it doesn't really

make sense to invest in American

manufacturing, right? But then you have

to think like, okay, but wait a minute,

Kevin, you just said NPhase makes micro

inverters in the United States. Yes.

First of all, Nphase does not

manufacture. They hire companies. In

fact, during the live stream uh that I

was doing, the power has finally come

back on, but I actually didn't have any

power. Uh and I was running off my uh

solar panels with Nphase micro inverters

and the battery. Not an ad. I wish it

was, but it's not an ad. Uh and uh it

was kind of cool, but you know what? I'm

a big fan of it. But one of the reasons

Nphase manufacturers now in the United

States when they used to manufacture in

Romania was actually because of the

inflation reduction act which don't get

me wrong the inflation reduction act was

definitely something that causes

inflation okay it's nonsense like over

time maybe in a decade it lower

inflation but when you stimulate the way

the Biden administration was you

definitely contribute to inflation okay

in the near term you cause inflation

it's it's an economic fact so uh Nphase

moved their microinverter manufacturing

from Romania to the United states

through contract manufacturing because

the inflation reduction act was paying

them like 20 or 30% credit for every

micro inverter they manufactured. They

sell a micro inverter for 90 bucks they

or or even 180 bucks depending on the

size or whatever. You know they were

getting like $30 credits towards some of

these micro inverters through the

inflation reduction act. So it was

actually if you want manufacturing in

America you have to stimulate in

addition to maybe tariffs, right? But

just punishing is is a hard move to do.

You usually have to stimulate to offset.

That's why Taiwan Semi is manufacturing

through the chips act in Phoenix. Now,

Donald Trump takes credit for it, but

and and trust me, I'm not trying to give

credit to Biden because we know Biden

wasn't really in the country, but it was

the stimulus of the chips act free

money, the free $4.6 billion that got

TSMC here. So, I'm not convinced that

the threat of tariffs will actually

bring manufacturing here, especially

since tariffs are not likely to be

permanent. But I'm concerned because I

hear Donald Trump like in his

conversations very clearly like, "Well,

the more we have tariffs, the more we're

going to have manufacturing here." And I

think it's delusional. Okay, that's my

opinion. So, I'm trying to I I just want

you to have that perspective. You might

have a different opinion, right? So,

some other things that we heard uh

during the press conference, Germany's

Bundespunk said that Germany might

suffer a quote slight recession this

year. Mind you, every economist always

says it's going to be a slight recession

and that ends up being really bad.

Uh, look at any recession and the

history of any recession that's ever

happened. It always starts as a slight

recession. It's crazy. Donald Trump was

asked about the millionaire tax and he

kind of shuts it down. He's like, "Well,

if we tax millionaires, they might

leave. You know, people used to leave

states, now they leave countries." Okay.

I mean, it's probably a good point. Uh,

he's kind of making the reference to

high taxes in California and

millionaires leave some of them to

leave, right? Anyway, uh then you get uh

Donald Trump was asked about JD Vance

potentially announcing a monster trade

deal with with India. This was really

interesting because the first thing that

Trump says is you know India charges us

more than any other country and you know

we do very little business with India

anyway. Oh okay. So, I guess the monster

trade deal maybe doesn't matter that

much. I I thought that was interesting

because it like that was an opportunity

I feel like for him to kind of like talk

up the trade negotiations that they were

having with India. Uh and then he

actually kind of talked down those

negotiations that uh JD Vance is

potentially involved. Who who knows at

this point, right? Uh it it'd be nice to

actually have an announced trade deal

because I do think once we get one of

the first trade deals, it'll start

laying the framework for future trade

deals. And this is good. And I think

after this meeting, there's a reason why

we started seeing uh futures come down a

little bit just because it just wasn't

as you know deal announcing as people

hoped. Now there was a lot of talk about

education executive orders and we'll

talk about that in just a moment. But we

do also have to talk about tariffs with

Canada and Mexico which came up. Uh that

said, I want to show you something

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just to make it a little easier and uh

nicer user experience for for folks. So,

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It's still in a beta though, so we're

open to your feedback. Anyway, back to

tariffs here. This talk about 25%

tariffs on cars on Canada. Donald Trump

suggested that at some point that could

go up, which is weird because now he did

say it's not being considered at the

moment, but he he triples down on this

idea of like, you know, we really we

really don't want Canada to make cars

for us. Okay, we make great cars. Mexico

took a lot of our car business, too. We

don't like it. We don't want their cars.

We want our own cars. We can make our

own cars. Our cars are great. We don't

need them. Little does, you know, he

seemed to recall that like the whole

point of the USMCA was to integrate uh

manufacturing between Mexico, the United

States, and Canada. Uh you know, these

these really complicated supply chains

were really built between the three

countries here, thinking that we would

have free trade. So, a little

complicated here. This comes, by the

way, at the same time as there's now

Amazon and Walmart seller hoarding of

goods, mostly thirdparty seller goods,

which you know, third party sellers make

up like 60% of sales on Amazon. A lot of

them are shipping stuff in from China to

Canada and they're just waiting for the

tariffs to go away. But it doesn't

actually sound like there's any kind of

real progress on Chinese negotiations.

Uh you know, Flexport argued last week

they saw 50% increase in imports to

China or sorry to Canada from China, you

know, because people were warehousing it

up in Canada waiting to bring it in

here. But you know, USMCA tracks country

of origin. So you can't really bypass as

easily as you might think. And keep in

mind, you know, we lost a lot of our

manufacturing progress, you know, not

just in the 70s through Nixon's price

controls, but also through Reaganism and

and kind of in part the failure of

unions to work with businesses. It could

have been the failure of business

leaders, too. But, you know, unions are

pushing for higher wages, which of

course could make America less

competitive. And then it's really on

business owners to have a productivity

roadmap with the unions to keep America

competitive and these businesses

competitive. But that didn't happen. And

this is how Japan really took over autos

in the 80s. Uh and and how unions and

business owners today are just making

American manufacturing less competitive.

It's how we've lost our trade skills to

some extent. Uh you know, and and now we

look at the UAW and they're doubling

down on Yeah, Trump, you're doing great

with protectionist tariffs. That helps

union members today, but it actually

hurts them long term. you know, what we

really should be looking at is how can

we work together with stimulating trade

school uh and and new trade education,

providing incentives for that uh and and

and then we can grow our manufacturing

here. Now, speaking of education, Donald

Trump did sign an executive order today.

Honestly, I don't think he knew what any

of the executive orders were because he

he gets a summary on them and then he

just signs them. And one of the points

where we realized he doesn't know what

any of these executive orders are, I

mean, maybe that's just how he does

business. He trusts his team. he picks

his team. So maybe that's just the way

it is. But there was one executive order

that came across where, you know, the uh

the the staff are saying, "Hey, we're

we're going to focus on uh university

acredation forcing uh outcomes at at

schools. Basically like in other words,

you would you are only going to be

eligible for acredation if your students

are actually succeeding." This is great,

by the way. I'm a big fan of that. like,

you know, we should be evaluating

schools for acredation based on the

success of the students. That's a good

thing. But then Donald Trump gets into

talking about how high schools aren't

teaching math and people are getting

into college without math and like, hey,

is this executive order going to solve

that? And they're like, well, it's going

to, you know, require some merit

evaluation for accreditation for

schools. And Trump's like, "Oh, okay.

So, this covers this, right?" And

they're like, "It's going to do great

things." And he's like, "All right." And

then signs it. It's kind of like, "All

right, you didn't read any of these

executive orders. Fine, whatever." like

he picked his team, right? But let's be

real, he didn't read any of these

executive orders. So, it's just it

wasn't a very wise display in my

opinion. But they're requiring, which

has always been required, but they're

recclarifying that foreign donations to

colleges like university like like

Harvard University have to be disclosed.

Uh they're opening it up uh opening up

and easing how challenging it is to get

to become an accredititor for a

university. So, in other words, there

could be more competition for university

accredititors. Uh, and this is called

Trump's secret weapon. So, that way, uh,

you know, university accrediting

agencies or companies or whatever could,

uh, you know, potentially, I don't know,

have different standards than other

accredititors mostly because some

accreditation companies have been

forcing DEI on schools and that's one of

the ways that Trump wants to sort of

dilute those companies that are trying

to force DEI. So, there's an executive

order for that. an executive order on

historically black colleges. Uh we've

got an executive order on workforce

development and apprenticeships. Some we

were just talking about. Lutnik, of

course, slides in here and is like,

"This is going to help us get jobs in

with all your wonderful and great tariff

policy, Mr. Trump." It's like, "All

right, okay, Mr. Slutnik, just tell

Trump what he wants to hear." But it's

not realistic, but it's okay. Uh and uh

and and then we get a little bit more

on, hey, China's ripping us off and the

tariffs are going to solve everything.

All right. So, that's really on tariffs

and education. We got a little bit on

Putin. Uh Donald Trump's like, "Look, I

don't care on the side here. You know, I

just want them to make a deal." I

covered Ukraine a lot more this morning

on what's being required of Ukraine and

how Zilinski is pushing back and Trump

is pissed off that Zalinski is pushing

back. We didn't really hear anything new

here other than that Trump wants to meet

Putin at some point, but not soon. So,

it doesn't look like he's going to end

up meeting Putin in Saudi Arabia uh at

uh as as some were expecting that he

might. So, uh a lot of color there today

on this. Also, if you were looking at

the uh Beige book at all, the Beige book

that came out from the Fed, honestly, I

like I read it. I was am I going to make

a video on this? No. There's it as

generic as you could expect. Basically,

like, hey, uncertainty's up. Consumer

spending still seems to be good. I guess

we'll wait and see. That's kind of the

situation with the Fed. Uh Donald Trump

did also chime in on the Fed suggesting

oh well you know JPOW should cut rates

uh but uh but then again remember you

know the real impacts of this inflation

are yet to be seen. So uh yeah that's

that. Uh so with that go check out the

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househack.com. Appreciate y'all being

here and uh yeah, that's all we got. So

we'll see what happens tomorrow with

markets and we'll keep tracking all this

uh tariff news. Uh feel free to watch me

update the news in the Meet Kevin app as

well. I think that can be a nice way to

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you as well. And you can customize the

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if you're Android, stay tuned. That's

coming. It's totally free, too. All

right, folks. We'll see you soon. Bye.

Why not advertise these things that you

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Congratulations, man. You have done so

much. People love you. People look up to

you. Kevin Praath there, financial

analyst and YouTuber. Meet Kevin. Always

great to get your take.