Global Trade This Week – Episode 184
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Keenan Brugh 0:00
You're watching global trade this week with Pete mento and Doug Draper,
Doug Draper 0:07
welcome to a another episode of global trade this week. My name is Doug Draper. I'm one of your hosts for the show, and I'm excited because both of us are back in action. Pete, you were out last week, but you're here this week. I love it. You're in a nice hotel. I can see from the from your backdrop. But Pete mento, how you doing, buddy? I'm good. I
Pete Mento 0:31
was going to call this like an after hours edition of global trade this week because we're recording it so late. But yep, doing alright, bud. I'm holding it together. These last these last three weeks have been really miserable. So holding it together, buddy, holding it together.
Doug Draper 0:48
Yes, yeah. I can, I can see that, yeah. Everybody is wanting your knowledge, not only your your tribal knowledge on tariffs and global trade, but everything else. So you're jet set, and we were just talking about your schedule, I don't even think you sleep in your own bed for weeks.
Pete Mento 1:04
I haven't been so but it's been like that for a while. This has been pretty breakneck travel past two years, so I'm actually saying no to speaking engagements. I made that decision last week. So unless it's something like TPM, you can't say no to TPM, yeah, and there are friends of mine that have asked me to come and speak at stuff other than that, I'm just saying no to a lot of stuff.
Doug Draper 1:29
Yeah, good for you. You got to look out for yourself for health. Man, sure. Yeah, all right, well, last week's show was from manifest. I did a little traveling myself. Everybody's probably heard of that trade show. And everybody there was like, Are you going to TPM? You going to TPM? Oh, my God, TPM. So I'm sure there'll be a lot of sales guys there holding their phone up to do selfies to validate their presence. So yeah,
Pete Mento 1:57
TPM is probably so it depends, right? If you're, if you're a BCo, I think TPM super important, because you're going to end up meeting with the carriers. You're going to have sit down to, like us, you know, like real substantial meetings and conversations. But after those meetings happen, man, it's like, it's like, red carpet Oscar parties, left and right. I mean, these parties, these, these forwarders, uh, throw are pretty, pretty extensive, and then, because everyone's together, like Doug, I mean, think about you haven't worked for as many companies as I have, but when I go to one of these things, like icpa, is another example of that. Or the air force associated meetings, you run into like, 50 people that you've worked with at some point in your career. And you can't you want to catch up. You want to see them. So before you know it, you're at some Irish bar after hours, and it's, you know, 12 o'clock, and you've got 30 people all buying each other rounds. And I am too old for that Doug. I will. I'm going to see everyone. Hate to see a TPM. I'm looking forward to it. I'm going to give my speech. But come around nine o'clock, Big Daddy is going to be in bed, just letting everybody know right now, I I'm not. I'm not the young man I used to be. It's very different. Yeah, were you? Did you guys party at manifest? Now,
Doug Draper 3:12
there were definitely parties, but I'm with you, man. I kind of ducked out after I got to some dinners. And, yeah, and it was in Vegas, right? So the dinners are just
Unknown Speaker 3:22
unbelievable. Can only imagine there was one
Doug Draper 3:26
friend that's like, Hey, you want to go to dinner tonight? And I'm like, Yeah, sure. You know, thinking it was gonna be casual. He goes, here's the link. And it was some gal or some it was a woman whose company was designed to create, like, an upper echelon networking event for our industry. It was a five, five course meal. You could stand up and talk about this and a guest speaker, $475 what? Yeah, exactly. I'm like, sure I you know what? I was thinking we'd just go to, you know, some normal restaurant. But this was like, 475 nope, not doing that. That's insane.
Pete Mento 4:05
So yeah, it doesn't work on my Applebee's budget, dude, it's just not gonna I'm with me. I'm
Doug Draper 4:11
like, I would probably can if I said, here's a a 475 but it did include tip and opportunity, so you know, gotta throw that in there. But
Pete Mento 4:20
I used to joke all the time with this guy I worked with. He'd say, What do you want for dinner? I'm like, can we just pick up a 12 pack and go to Taco Bell and sit in the parking lot like high school? And I came out there one summer, and he had a guy that worked in his office who didn't drink drive us, and we literally went and got Taco Bell and sat in the parking lot and drank beers. It was awesome. Like it was one of my favorite business meals ever. It was fantastic. So, you know, when you travel a lot, the offices where you work, they want to get you out for team building. They want you to be around people that you work with. They want you to engage. And I'm all for that, but when you travel five days a week, it's just not it's not good. And I have to draw the line, you know, like I said, Big Daddy's going to bed early, so you want to go out and get dinner, like I said, we're probably hitting Applebee's or Chili's or random corporate Steakhouse. And I will, I will tell you I'm done, and I will get an Uber home if I have to. But for you, yeah, I'm not staying out. Good for you. All right, great. Yeah. So
Doug Draper 5:21
what's that I was gonna say is jump into our first topic, something else. No,
Pete Mento 5:25
no, no, no, that I was gonna say the same thing. I was like, let's make a show, right? So my first topic is something that I don't think we expected or saw coming with, with de minimis in E commerce. We've mentioned many times on the show how de minimis works, and we've also talked about the very positive things about it and many of the troubling issues that have come up with E commerce through de minimis and during President Trump's initial executive orders, he asked it. He stopped Chinese de minimis. And most of the products we're talking about in de minimis, they're coming from China. But what hadn't really happened was thought into how these companies were going to respond. So you have large e commerce companies that now have to make real consumption entries of these small packages. And they can be extreme. They can be 10, 20,000 entry line, line on an entry that have additional entries because of partner government agencies, they got to pay tariffs on this stuff now, which means they have to go out and they have to secure bond and the that's all great, right? So these companies are smart enough and capable enough great people that are running their their custom stuff, but no one bothered talking to customs. You know, no one bothered to say the customs Hey, we're not going to stop selling stuff. We're not going to stop engaging in this industry. So someone might want to call up CBP and let them know that's going to happen. No one did. No one called customs and said, Hey, are you ready for 10,000 line type one entries? Are you ready for just the deluge of data that you're going to get? Customs website, their operating system, can only take 999 entries at a time, which means you have to double up on on the work around process for it. But it's not easy to do, and customs is now managing this new fresh hell associated with this. So that's why President Trump sort of stepped in and said, All right, we're going to go back to de minimis the way it was done for a little while. But as soon as we have a way of managing this, we're going right back to what I said. So CDP, figure out your internal processes and administration, which, you know somebody should have told them ahead of time. This is, you know what I mean. And we're going to go right back to the old way. And I'm bringing all this up Doug for a broader topic, which is the complete disconnect between legislators and CBP or legislators and FDA or and you name it, right? They come up with a law and they implement it, and I don't know that very often they take into account how complicated it's going to be for a federal agency to actually execute the dream that they have, and something needs to change. There needs to be more direct interaction. Me being selfish in a customs guide, particularly with CBP, they're understaffed, they're underfunded, and they're trying their damnedest to do what the government's asking them to do, but unfortunately, they're not getting enough lead time to do what's right. Doug, and I think this, along with the pending tariffs, are going to end up being a real problem if we don't get them more involved in the front end. Yeah.
Doug Draper 8:30
Well, I think the big A couple things to unpack there. Number one, the administrative burden is just astronomical. You nailed that, right? That was the first thing. It's like, well, the first thing was, like, my tennis shoes I can't buy for $22 anymore. The second thing was like, how the hell are they going to administrate, administer this, right? And the second thing is, yes, it will be impactful. But to use my example of $22 sneakers, if I got to pay $28 for them, that's still a pretty damn good deal. So pass the duties and taxes on and it will be diminished a little bit. No pun intended, but it's not going to stop. And so I think you're spot on. It's like sales and ops, right? The operations guys like, What the hell did that sales guy just commit to? I don't think we can make that happen the way that he said or she said, certainly been in conversations like that in my sales career, right? But I think the administrative burden is the biggest thing. Forget about, I can't get my stuff anymore. Forget about some of the purposes of why, you know, they want to eliminate de minimis with fentanyl and and things coming in, but that that burdens real, right? So, great point. And
Pete Mento 9:45
the last thing I'll say about this, Doug Jeannie is out of the bottle. Pandora's box has been opened. American consumers don't want to go backward. So whatever's happening here, I think that there's, there's an opportunity to find an answer. That lives up to both security requirements and trade requirements. But it's going to take a little bit of work and cooperation between these two countries, between China and the United States, and I certainly hope they find a way to do it, because no one's going to stop wanting to buy an expensive fast fashion. They're not going to want to stop buying just regular retail at discounted costs. It's something that people have come to expect, not just enjoy, they expect that level of service. And we better get on the stick and come up with an answer to this, because 10 years from now, there will still be diminished shipments, so we have to find a way to make them more secure and to try to bring smugglers and counterfeiters out of the equation. Yeah,
Doug Draper 10:37
good point. All right, Yeah, mine's a little less impactful. But this is a show about global trade, and there's trade that transpires more so than just China and the Asian markets. But this is crazy. Pete, somebody brought this to my attention that is not in our industry. Is actually a teacher. It's like, Hey, did you hear about this cocoa thing going on and its impacts? And I think people that may have followed this or in the Chocolatier at the price of cocoa, it started to escalate. And I guess it's becoming a topic, because, hey, we just had Valentines and B Easters coming up, and lots of chocolate and fun bunnies being being made. But I didn't realize, like, 80% of all the cocoa comes from West Africa, Ivory Coast and Ghana are the two, two largest. And shocker, there's been impacts of weather. Call it global warming, depending on how you want to spin it. But too much rain, and then too much too much drought, too much rain. And so it's been, you know, the Apple carts been been turned upside down. So I didn't realize this, but there in September, I looked this up, September 2022, a metric ton of cocoa was going for 2200 bucks. January, last month, $10,700 for a metric ton. So what that means is that there are lots of people out there, traders and brokers. They're just making it worse, so to speak, because they're trying to make a quick buck. You know, it's almost like toilet paper during the pandemic, right? People would would pay astronomical now, shipping lanes are starting to increase, or the rates from those shipping lanes now, Ivory Coast in Ghana is not Southeast Asia by any stretch of the means, but this is global trade. It's important that we call this thing out that they're not expecting they the information I had read, and the experts in the cocoa world have said, This is not like, Oh, it'll be fixed next month. It's going to continue. The only caveat is that Ecuador, of all places, has started to say we can get into this racket. So their their agriculture is spinning to support more or cocoa, and planted some trees and stuff. So probably two years from now, it'll flip, and the cocoa crisis will be behind us, but it it's this topic is not as paramount as the stuff that you and I normally talk about. But there was a teacher that said, Hey, you're in global trade. You do a weekly podcast, right? Did you hear about the CoCo? And I'm like, well, not really. So I owe it to that individual to bring this topic up and have a broader spectrum of global trade, not as impactful, but worthwhile to note. So next time you're at at dinner at your TPM, throw that out. Where for throw that one out there. For some levity,
Pete Mento 13:32
I'm going to make it worse. Doug,
Doug Draper 13:36
okay, yeah, surprise, or
Unknown Speaker 13:40
I'll turn into dark peat here, you know,
Doug Draper 13:41
make it worse. There you go. I love it.
Pete Mento 13:45
High 70 percentile. So figure somewhere between 77 and 80% of all the cocoa in the world is harvested by children that are working against their will, many of whom were trafficked from their homes in other parts of Africa to where they're actually doing this work and widespread problem. It's not just in Africa. It's also in other parts of the world where this is happening. And the chocolate industry, as well as federal agencies, have been trying very hard to find ways to manage this problem. Typical cocoa farmer makes about $1,900 in profit on their entire crop. Think about that, right? And cocoa is in a situation where it has to be harvested and processed by hand. So I always find it mildly ironic that at Halloween, we're giving chocolate to children from cocoa that was most likely processed by children. And the industry, in and of itself is working diligently to try to find a way to manage this. You have a lot of chocolate now that is cruelty free. You know, chocolate, you can find it on the labels, but I think this is a problem before the problem, right? So you've got vast, vast amounts of cocoa that aren't going to be put in the marketplace, which means. You're gonna have to lower your cost of production even more, which means that the incentive to defect and do something wrong by these farmers is even higher. And eventually, when we do manage to create cocoa in a world free of slavery, in a world free of forced labor, the price is gonna go up. So one way or the other, I think that the halcyon days of inexpensive chocolate are probably out the window, buddy. But yeah, you talk about this. This effect, my daughter will go to Starbucks with me, and I'll get my coffee, and she'll order some double chocolate, frap, whatever the crap it is she drinks, and I don't know what, she realizes that that chocolate flavoring starts in a huge supply chain that goes back to an African plantation that right now is going through financial desperation because of geological and weather effects. So when we when we look at the cotton clothing that we wear, right, we look at the food that we eat, I wonder if the typical Normie right, not you or me or people in this industry, truly understand how complex it is, and how one domino falling like this, the cost of cocoa can completely and radically change so much about supply chains. Think about this Doug those parts of Africa. Cocoa exports are a major part of ocean transportation. If you're not exporting cocoa, what's that mean for the transportation market in that particular part of the world? It's another knock on effect. I know people think what we do is painfully boring, but this stuff is very, very interesting when you begin to understand how it impacts everybody on the bottom line,
Doug Draper 16:30
yeah, great point, great point.
Pete Mento 16:33
I just exploded with nerd right there. It's like, I just blew up. You're
Doug Draper 16:37
on a different perspective, which I think it's more important than Well, they're both important global global warming and the things of that nature. But you brought the forced labor thing to the to the table, which is an interesting take. Dark
Pete Mento 16:51
Pete might have to be a reoccurring character, Doug.
Doug Draper 16:53
I know. I didn't really, I didn't see that one that kind of came out of left field for me. So you think
Pete Mento 16:58
I'm dark. Now wait till dark now wait till dark peep comes out. It really scared the hell out of everybody. Yeah, yeah.
Doug Draper 17:04
Cool. All right. Do it. This will be a good one.
Pete Mento 17:08
This. This brings us to halftime, which Doug likes to say is our favorite part of the show. It is not, in fact, our favorite part. It is absolutely Doug's favorite part of the show. I play along because I adore him so much with this halftime shenanigans, it's brought to you by our very good friends and our sponsors at CAP logistics. We want to thank them for their unwavering support of the show, and we encourage all of you to learn more about the mccapplogistics.com I will mention again. Neither Doug nor I work for CAP logistics, and they still support this show, so kudos to them. Give them a look. You know who we work for? Pretty easy to find us. But cap logistics deserves a good look from all of you for the continued support of the show. So Doug, who's going to go first this week on halftime,
Doug Draper 17:54
I'll go first, and she just did that lovely queue up, right? And I'll tell you what Saturday Night Live. You gotta talk about it. It just happened last night. We're not supposed to time stamp podcast. So you know what day this is being taped. But the 50th anniversary special went like three hours and 15 minutes. Absolutely loved it. I loved it. It was so awesome to see all the reoccurring characters that came back, all of the people that you forgot that were former cast members on the show that have gone on to do bigger and better things, right? That may have only been a cast member for a short period of time, but the skits, the connectivity, the messaging, it was all on point. I loved it. Normally, I'm not into those type of things. I don't watch any of the award ceremonies or award shows, but I'll tell you what I was thoroughly. I was laughing out loud, and it was phenomenal. I didn't know what to expect. I had to watch it. I like Saturday Night Live and and there you go. So I think you may have a different take on it. I'm ready for it.
Pete Mento 19:00
What is it? So, there's an anecdote that if you took a million monkeys and you put them in a room with typewriters, eventually they would write Shakespeare, okay, so before they got to Shakespeare, they would probably write like the the the script to like Geely. You know, they might write a script to Laverne and Shirley, but like 1000 of those scripts before, that would be last night's Saturday Night Live special. I that special was an abomination. It was a work. It was it was an insult to sketch comedy. It was trashy. Trash, trash, trash. There were four minutes of that show that were worth watching, and that was Adam Sandler's song. Other than that, everyone associated with that show should be fired, people, people that were on that show should be ashamed of how horrible it was. It was the 50th anniversary of the most important sketch show ever made, and it was the 50. Anniversary of celebrating a true American type of art, which is stand up comedy, sketch comedy, improvisational comedy, we invented it, and we're the best at it. They should have spent the three and a half hours showing old sketches the best of the best. That's it all of this, like self congratulatory back clapping, of of the trash that they put out there for skits was just an excuse slapped together by people who wanted to be on the show. And I'm angry, like I'm glad that you're elated about it, but as somebody who you know has truly been connected with that show since I was seven years old. Okay, I hated every second of it, except for Manchester's own Adam Sandler, who did an excellent job and choked up when he talked about his friends that had passed away. That show needs to be lit on fire and put out with nuclear waste, and then you should salt the ground after it so that it never rises again. Like I've said it 1000 times. I'll say it again. Leave the comedy to me.
Doug Draper 21:05
Well, I don't we could go back and forth. Absolutely disagree with you, right? And that's called the infinite monkey theorem is, is what, what you just described. I have no idea why I know that, but anyway, you hated it. I loved it. Won't let the audience make their comments on the post of the show to get the feedback. And I bet most people will be on my side. You know what
Pete Mento 21:29
I did love Doug was, I think last week they did a music show, yeah, or the week before. I love that. I love seeing all the old musical acts. And that's what I really wanted yesterday from from that Hindenburg of a television show was to have a moment to look back at some of those sketches, maybe even the ones that were cut for time, where they have it from the from the rehearsal. I would love to have seen that as well, but instead, I got this modernized just, oh, God, it was terrible, terrible. I'll leave it. I'll leave it there. We will agree to disagree on this topic. Yeah,
Doug Draper 22:03
fair enough, and it may happen again as soon as you start the next one. Okay,
Pete Mento 22:07
so I, I'm Doug, and I both are unapologetic fans of athletics and sports, and the two of us are big fans of sports that maybe people don't think about very often. You know, Doug's daughter is a very accomplished rower in college. She She was a very accomplished or, I love rugby. Love, love, love rugby. And my stepson is a very accomplished rugby player. I played for for quite a long time. I was very mediocre rugby player, but I enjoyed playing. These are sports that people don't put a lot of attention on rowing. Tennis is another example. Swimming, another example, right? Incredible sports to watch when you realize the amount of physical prowess required to do it. Any of you watching the show that think you're in great shape get in a rowing machine for a little while, you'll find out what a soft punk you are. Okay? So the the reason I'm bringing all this up is, of the major American sports, you have the NFL, Major League Baseball, the NBA and the NHL, the all star games suck with a capital S, they they're terrible, right? So the the basketball all Star competition, all that crap, the best players don't even get involved. I think the guy that won the dunk contest is like a, like a, like a B league dude, and he just kills it every year, right? He shows up to basically do the dunks, usually baseball. It got so bad that they had to give you an incentive. If you won that your league would have home advantage during the World Series. That's how crappy it got. Okay? We only get to see the players we want for a little bit in that it's just, it's bad. The NFL, they play flag football now, which I'll have to admit, it was fun to watch. It was fun to watch. And now, from what I understand, the Olympics are going to have flag football too. So whatever. But I love the old one, where the guys would have on their old health, their real helmet with the new uniform, you know? And you you'd see these guys. It was wonderful. Okay, the NHL this last weekend cracked the code. The old NHL All Star game was nothing but offense, and guys don't want to hit each other because you don't want anybody getting hurt because of the political environment that we're in right now. The NHL All Star Weekend really came to a head and exploded on Saturday between the United States and Canada in something called the Four Nations tournament, where Canada Finland Sweden, and I think it's Canada Finland Sweden, the in the United States all play for tournament. Canada and the USA are going to meet in the final. But this weekend, when the national anthem was played, everybody booed. It was pretty ugly. And then the chuck brothers went out there and just started lighting up Canadian dudes, and it was awesome. And then in the first nine seconds of the game, okay, we had two fights, and then both teams got into it around the Canadian goal. Whole they were just smacking each other around. And then the USA came out to to win a very decisive win against Canada. Do I applaud all the violence? I mean, yeah, I love violence in hockey, just who I am. But I think more importantly, I love this tournament, I love this idea, and I think the NBA should do USA versus the rest of the world. I think that'd be interesting, right? You'd have the Serbians playing against the guys from the US, when be from France, you know, against the guys, that's guys from the US. I think Major League Baseball should consider this. I think they should take that weekend or that week of the All Stars, then they should do a smaller version of the World Baseball Classic, where, like, the Caribbean or Latin America play against the US and Asia. I think that'd be kind of interesting. But I love this game. I have a feeling you're gonna tell me you hated it. I love this game. I can't wait for the final, which I think is tomorrow. No Thursday, Thursday night in Boston. Tickets are going for 1500 to $2,000 in the cheap season. People are very excited for it. So most all star games suck. This tournament is fantastic.
Doug Draper 26:07
Well, until you brought this up, I had no idea that the NHL All Star Weekend was even happening, right? Didn't know. I did see on the fly by night news media, specifically Reddit, where I saw that fight, and I thought that was awesome, like, literally nine seconds just going at it, right, which is brothers, yeah, apropos for this thing, for the, you know, the global tensions that we're in right now. So anyway, I think the bottom line this is all all star games are changing because the consumer and the viewer need something faster, better, more entertaining, and the old school versions that we've saw when you and I were growing up just don't dry on the eyeballs anymore.
Pete Mento 26:59
You remember how cool it was, like the three point, when bird was out there with magic, and, you know, we we all knew them. We loved them. We loved watching it. I miss that, and I miss that the game mattered to them, and I think that, you know, and all credit to them. They make so much money, these guys don't want to get hurt in some exhibition game. And I understand that, but hockey players do not give a damn. And they will go out there and say what you will about that fight. The Canadian dudes are like, Yeah, let's go right. They both are like, let's let's go right. They everybody was so charged and pumped up. People are giving the check brothers all this credit for doing it. I think we're overlooking the fact that the Canadian guys are like, you want to go, let's go, right? It was, it was two groups of people that were emotionally charged. Just threw down in the middle of the ice. I 100% put the seal of approval on that. And I can't wait for next year. Came over for Thursday, but I came up for next year. Nice.
Doug Draper 27:54
All right. Well, that was half time. I don't know if it was my favorite part of the show this go around for this episode, Pete, but it was entertaining, and it's nice, because a lot of times we agree or compliment each other's takes. But you know, SNL and hockey definitely different perspectives, which is good, yeah.
Pete Mento 28:13
Well, my next, my next topic is, is very topical. How about that? Right? So the President has announced his intention to put what are called reciprocal tariffs on foreign countries imports. For the best example I give people is cars. If you were going to sell a Ford over in Germany, that Ford would have a 10% tariff when it was imported, and then on top of that, there would be a VAT, which is a national sales tax that will be on top of that, which would mean that the cost of the the car would be compared to other cars, 10% you know, higher than other other local cars. In the United States, our tariff is two and a half percent on these European cars. And there are a number of countless other other examples I can give you where they tariff things higher than we do now. There's ones that go in the opposite direction too, which have been very conveniently left out of this. United States has a lower average tariff than any other country in the world except Canada. And we have done that because of our desire to consume and the fact that we're able to use that, that big stick, to get people to do what we want with diplomacy. So we were all waiting last week. I mean, it was a, it was a tough Wednesday, man, like we're all waiting for the President to make this in my world, make this example of these countries. And what he did instead was he said, I'm gonna, I'm gonna ask for a report. Gonna ask for a report to understand where these tariffs are applied and how it impacts our economy. And I'm going to take that report and I'm going to implement tariffs based on what I hear back, and they're probably going to do it on individual areas of commerce, so automotive, aerospace, electronics, that kind of a thing. But that report is going to coincide with one coming out in April about all of global trade. Trade. So I'll say what I always say about these new tariffs. Take a deep breath. No knee jerk reactions. Wait to see how the dust settles, because for many of these countries, it's going to be the opening to try to negotiate something between the two of us. India was Prime Minister Modi was in DC last week. He made it very clear that he's open to trying to negotiate better relationships, and this could be a way of doing that. Also. President Trump is going to China in May, so being able to go to China in May and have this in his back pocket as part of the discussions to get us back on track, I think is there as well. So please have a plan B. Hope is not a strategy, but wait till the dust settles on these things before you freak out. Mm,
Doug Draper 30:41
hmm, yeah, I think that, I think we spoke about it a couple weeks ago, right? Where panic is more costly than patience. Things are just, you know, we saw, we spoke about it many times. Things are happening so fast that, you know, literally, it was on a Sunday I texted you about the de minimis, and also that we were no longer accepting packages from China into the US Post Office. And then, literally, second half of the game I was watching, it was all taken care of, much like the Columbia situation the week before. So you know what it's here's my take. It's all about negotiating. Nobody has sat down with the level of countries that in the last several presidencies, and just reset our position on a global scale. And what's the fastest way to do that? I hate to say this threats to move forward if you don't sit down with me, or if you don't do this, here's the retaliatory result. So I think all, let me rephrase that. I think most of these are posturing. I think we said about that a couple right after January, right? Most of this stuff is posturing to get ourselves in a better position to negotiate that's going to benefit the United States, which I'm all for. It's just crazy how fast everything is moving, and that's part of it, right? You always talk about move fast and break things to try to come up with with new ideas and and new products. And things move fast. Break things. Hopefully we're not breaking anything, but we're moving fast. When people are going to get our we're going to get their attention, and we're going to be at the table again to do what's right, at least for America. And I guess I'm kind of cool with
Pete Mento 32:23
that. There's a quote, and I don't know who said it, but it's something to the effect of all conflict is an example of the of human beings, inability to rationally come to a conclusion, right to not think. And right now, there's too much self interest in all these countries. So someone going out and leveraging another one like this? It's just human nature, because we can't find an easier way to get it, because we're selfish, countries, people, corporations, everyone, and that's how this is happening. I think for us, Doug, for people in our industry, it's just been, it's been a wild, I mean, it hasn't even been a month, right? It's been a wild three and a half weeks at this point, of us just trying to keep up with the madness around us. And I am saying a quiet prayer for all of you that are in this business, and I just want you to know it's going to be okay. Reach out to your brokers, talk to one another, but above all, just stay calm.
Doug Draper 33:20
Love it. Love it. Yeah, I'll wind us up here. This is just a quick little take. I saw this, I think pop up this morning on my feed, but she Jin ping, just had, like, a Tech Summit, right? A pro business Tech Summit, and he got the president or the founder of Alibaba, I think his name is Jack Ma, right? And Huawei, they got these guys together, and they're talking about how they can get renewed support and private investment in to Chinese businesses to try to reposition themselves in a pro business model related to tech. And I think it's interesting that engaging the private sector and not just doing it with the CCP and doing it in house, so to speak. I think that speaks to the point where, with deep seek and where did these chips come from? And you alluded to it two shows ago about the regulations with sending chips over to China. But I think that China's like, hey, we need to engage the private sector more. We have some big players that are interested to sit down with us, meaning Alibaba and Huawei, and let's see what's going to going to happen, and it underscores the strategic importance of tech in the US and Chinese rivalry, so to speak. But it could be weird with uncertainty of different regulations and how all that plays out, but I thought it was interesting. It literally just happened, like in the last 48 hours. So I wanted to bring it up on the show, but usually engaging the private sector, China doesn't do that. And so it's interesting to say, is that the way that they're going to be able to compete with the United States on a tech forward economy? So I don't know, do you hear about that at all? So
Pete Mento 35:17
I did, and I think you your your last comments are the ones that I'm going to put onto this. Right? This is, this is also part of China, just broadcasting to the world. We'll be okay, right? We will. We're a billion people, and we have absolutely no problems managing our own economy and finding another way out, other than having America be the main consumer of our goods, we will figure this out. So I think part of this also has to do with broadcasting to the world that we're in a much stronger position to negotiate than I think people realize. So I think that was part of it as well, but it's also part of the just continued evolution of the Chinese marketplace, and the fact that you have these monolithic, gigantic companies that do have a lot to say about how wealth is generated, and with that tax revenue right for the CCP and they're being brought into the conversation. I'm a bit surprised by it, but I'm here for it, and I think also that long term, it's Xi Jinping letting the world know that he's not as afraid of negotiating and not not as afraid of walking away as people think that he is.
Doug Draper 36:27
Yeah, that may meeting will be interesting, for sure. Yep,
Pete Mento 36:30
I will be nowhere near it. So looking forward to watching, watching it, and seeing all the leaks on Twitter of what happens. I'm wondering if they're going to bring our president McDonald's for dinner. I can't imagine he's gonna get real high on the on the Chinese. Whenever I go to China, man, it's like it's always a Thursday night we have a very expensive, very well prepared seafood meal, and that's normally when I eat very little and have a cheeseburger back at my hotel. So I feel you, Mr. President, I feel Yeah, good. All right. Well, with that, we're going to call it a close to this particular episode. We want to thank all of you. Thank all of you for continuing to support the show and for listening, subscribing and sharing it with your friends. We want to thank our friends at CAP logistics for continuing to support us. And I guess we want to give a half hearted thank you to Keenan. Who did you know the kind of junior varsity work I thought he would do when He sat in for me last week, but he's trying. He's young. He'll get there. We got to let him pitch out of his problems. So, you know, whatever. Thank you Doug for always being on and never let us down. And as we always say, if it's happening in global trade, we'll be talking about it next week on global trade this week, take care. All right. Travel
Doug Draper 37:37
safe. My friend. You
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