trump is doing it AGAIN

Well, folks, Donald Trump is back at it

again. Here's what you got to know for

this week. Coming to you from the Aloha

area. Look at those beautiful tsunami

warning sirens. Don't those look like

some great 1960s metal. Like something

you'd find in a good juicy wedge deal.

Yes, they certainly do. Okay, let's talk

about what to expect this week. First of

all, thank you so much to all of those

of you who signed up to the Me Kevin

membership on Friday. We had a really

great day. Great call outs. The call

outs killed it. I think you all saw that

and saw a ton of you joined on Friday.

So, welcome aboard. Uh, tomorrow is

going to be really interesting because

honestly, we got some more taco this

weekend. Okay, not only a Donald Trump

Maria Barmo interview, which obviously

they're very friendly. You get the

softballs over on Fox. Duh. Uh, and so,

uh, what do we got? We got not only

Trump talking during that interview

that, hey, you know, we're going to try

to work something out on soybeans. It's

hurting the American farmers. We want to

walk back some of these latest

restrictions with China. For example,

the United States imposed a $50 per ton

port fee on Chinese ships. Uh, and then

China retaliated. It's like, fine, we'll

impose a $56 port fee per per ton for US

ships coming into our docks and we're

going to increase it over 3 years. So,

it's this classic kind of tit fortat

nonsense, right? It's really ridiculous.

But the Wall Street Journal this weekend

had a great piece. They said that in

recent weeks, Donald Trump has exempted

dozens of products, offering to carve

out hundreds more for uh from farm and

airline products, offering 5-year

exemptions to autoimp import tariffs.

And this is especially happening for

products that we don't produce

domestically. So, what you're finding is

you're getting more and more taco, and

now people are reporting on it because

this is all happening quietly in the

background. This is Donald Trump's MO. I

mean, this is exactly what we saw with

liberation is come out strong. I'm going

to I'm going to do this, tariff

everybody 50%. And then you just slowly

walk it back like, "All right, well, if

you do this for me, you know, I'll roll

this back. I'll roll this back. I'll

roll this." This is Donald Trump's style

of negotiating. It's fine. You create

chaos and you purposely make it so

confusing so you can pick up the pieces

the way you want, right? Like, how do we

keep track of all this stuff? How do we

keep track of, you know, upholstered

furniturey furniture tariffs or, you

know, heavy truck tariffs over a certain

weight or kitchen cabinets and vanities?

Like all of this is designed to

purposefully negotiate with very

specific countries. Donald Trump of

course already credits uh ending like

the drama for example between Pakistan

and India and others. Uh he credits

tariffs for helping him use that as

leverage. Go, hey, I'll just back off

these tariffs if you all stop fighting.

Oh, okay. Well, that's easy.

So, you got to give him some credit with

this, but uh the the headline, in case

you want to read the story, it's a good

one. The US is tiptoeing away from many

of Trump's signature tariffs. And I

thought that was a great headline

because it's that it implies that quiet

walkback, that taco is continuing. If

you go to meet Kevin.com/data,

I still have the taco scale there from

last week and we have the taco scale in

like the eight range. Which honestly, if

I were to update it today, I'd probably

update it, you know, probably to

something like a nine out of 10 because

any kind of new tariff we get, it just

tacos away, which is great. Now,

something that I was a little

disappointed in was, uh, you know, Trump

with Ukraine. We'll talk about that in

just a moment. I was also a little bit

disappointed with uh, you know, Hamas

now says that 27 Palestinians have been

killed. Uh, Israel is saying, well, you

know, people are getting close to our

our, you know, pullback lines, and so

they're going to erect larger uh,

barriers to make it very clear where

their pullback lines are. But I do want

to finish this China talk. So, uh, Trump

right now, he's focused more on using

the 232 tariffs, mostly because of the

Supreme Court EPA ruling. Don't expect

the Supreme Court to say anything, by

the way, on Trump's tariffs until as

late as they possibly can. So, you're

going to hear talk about how the Supreme

Court is supposed to review Trump's

tariffs, the Emergency Economic uh,

Powers Act tariffs in November. Yes, the

Supreme Court is going to hear that, but

don't actually expect any kind of

decision until probably February to

April. I would guess the later part

because the Supreme Court doesn't want

to do anything bad to Trump. So, uh, and

in the meantime, Trump Trump is slowly

going to move away to 232 tariffs. So,

even if he loses the EPA tariffs,

tariffs, he can just rely on 232. I

mean, this is just part of the game,

right? Uh, so anyway, lots of taco,

which is good. We also saw LED lights,

certain minerals and like gold were

exempted from tariffs. Uh slow walk away

from a lot of the various different

tariffs that we have. Uh which is great.

I mean it's broadly bullish. I was

disappointed. I'll make a separate video

on this. I was disappointed on the

Ukraine issue. So I do think honestly

one of the benefits just briefly I don't

want to go so deep on this. I'm going to

get back to the ocean here.

One of the benefits of giving tomahawks

to Ukraine is they have a thousandmile

range and you could overwhelm Russian

defenses, not to go strike the Kremlin

or go kill, you know, civilians, which

is exactly what Russia is doing to

Ukrainian civilians, but take out the

the drone factory that's literally about

980 mi from Kief. It's close. It's like

800 miles from the border of Ukraine,

but Ukraine doesn't control that border

anymore. This is why Putin wants time

because the more t time Putin buys, the

more he kind of pushes the Ukrainians

back, the more of a buffer zone he gets,

the more time they have to identify with

radar and otherwise uh missiles coming

in like tomahawks. And so, of course, if

you take tomahawks, you're going to have

to overwhelm Russian air defenses. But

ideally, you want to take out these

Iranian factories or, you know, jointly

built between Russian and Iranian

factories and just set back some of

Russia's ability to attack Ukraine. And

that way you could slowly tilt the

balance back in favor of Ukraine pushing

back some of these lines. That's the

idea with these Tomahawks, by the way.

And so, I was a little disappointed. I

feel like Putin kind of won there by

talking that back, but we could talk

about that separately. Uh, broadly, we

do have Tesla earnings coming up. uh the

uh this Wednesday. That'll be

interesting. I know a lot of people are

excited about that because we're going

to get a lot of earnings uh from from an

amazing beat on vehicles. But are we

really expecting a lot of enthusiasm

post those earnings? Post those

earnings, it's all going to come down to

sort of commentary in the earnings call.

Nobody really cares about the earnings.

We already know what deliveries are. We

know what the earnings are going to be

like. We can all calculate that in.

That's not where the surprise is going

to be. we need to hear bullish stuff on

Optimus or a a new lowerc cost vehicle

or whatever FSD, robo taxis, whatever.

Now, obviously, this isn't going to be

the place for announcements. We know

that. But what we want to look for is

just optimism and hope.

You know, look at Figure for example,

Figure Technologies. They've got like

two robots working at BMW. And the joke

is those robots don't really do

anything. But they're a great showpiece

because Figure can say, "Hey, we've got

robots working in BMW's factory." And

you know, people have leaked that those

robots aren't really doing anything

productive. They're really just like

caged off and it's a joke that they

don't really do anything. But it creates

enthusiasm and excitement. You know,

you're really not going to get true

progress on these robots uh validated

until a company comes in and says, "Oh,

we're ordering a thousand of these."

That's when you know you have

validation, right? Uh until then, you're

uh uh you're still early on the robot

movement, which is fine. Uh X is

launching uh handles for sale. We know

that X needs money. Donald Trump says

tariffs are unsustainable with these

levels. That's old news. That was from

Friday. Palanteer supports providing

tomahawk. Palanteer CTO supports um what

was this? Uh Palanteer CTO. Oh, that's

right. US is funding its own destruction

through economic dependence on communist

adversaries. Right? This is basically

saying, hey, we need to maximize our

domestic uh resilience, which I support.

I just want to be really clear about

that. We should have domestic

resilience. We should be supporting our

rare earth's facilities. But we have to

be careful because if we take a bessant

approach and we set price floors, what

we really create is inefficient

industries. See, China is brilliant in

the sense that they have so many people

manufacturing that they drive prices

down. Not through price floors, maybe

through subsidies for those businesses,

yes, but the price of manufacturing

comes down so dramatically that they

just dominate compared to other

countries. Their costs are so low. And

so if we set price floors artificially

out here, as soon as things relax over

time with China, we'll just go right

back to ordering from China. And that

hurts our ability to be dependent again

or independent again. And so we have to

be careful that we're not relying on

sort of short- termism to

make ourselves faux independent. In

other words, let me give you an example.

If I go to you and I'm like, "Hey, can

you sell lemonade and I'll pay you $100

per cup?" Of course, you could employ

five people to stand there and sell one

cup of lemonade. Doesn't matter. you're

still going to drive a profit cuz you're

selling it for 100 bucks, you know, a

cup, which is insane. So, of course,

you're going to breed inefficiency,

whereas, you know, China's probably

selling these cups for a buck and their,

you know, cost of goods sold is 50. So,

as soon as you take away the government

crutch, you know, the US company's

relying on this higher price, the

Chinese are relying on this lower price,

who goes bankrupt, right? That that's

where you have to be careful with price

floors. So really backwards mindset here

from Bessant. But I also I mean that's

just talk from him right now. So maybe

it won't end up coming through. But I

will say all of it is supportive really

of taco. This idea of hey we're going to

we see problems we're creating here.

We're going to slowly walk some back

things back which is great which is an

opportunity. Uh and I'm kind of

optimistic. We do have CPI coming out

this week but it's not until Friday. So

are we really expecting terrible news

this week? No. But uh we'll see. You

know, so far we're just getting the walk

back from Trump. We'll get CPI on

Friday. Not expecting bad news there.

And uh hey, we'll be sending out

reports. I don't know if I'll be live

too terribly much given that I'm here in

Hawaii and it's like 3:00 a.m. is like

6:00 a.m. my time. 3:00 a.m. here is

like 9:00 a.m. Eastern. So, it's going

to be a little crazy, but we will still

be sending out the alpha report and

we'll still be live with course members.

So, good luck this week and uh stay

tuned for videos. Make sure you download

the Meet Kevin app to get all the

notifications. See you there. Bye.