Bill Meyer Show Podcast - Sponsored by Clouser Drilling www.ClouserDrilling.com - 02-11-25_TUESDAY_6AM

Episode Date: February 12, 2025

MOrning news and stories start the day, Merkley Green Update, David Bahnsan of Dividend Cafe dot com, interesting finance man, we talk the Trump tariffs and effect on economy and trade.

The Bill Meyer Show podcast is sponsored by Clouser Drilling. They've been leading the way in Southern Oregon well drilling for over 50 years. Find out more about them at clouserdrilling.com. Bill Meyer. Delighted that you are here on Pebble in Your Shoe Tuesday, or maybe we should call it Penny for Your Thoughts Tuesday. I have a few thoughts on the death of the penny, although it does appear that it really does take an act of Congress to eliminate the penny,

but the penny has come under the Doge lens, and I don't think it's a good idea. We'll talk about that here just a little bit. I just have a few stats, and I don't think it's a good idea, and I know that people, you'll probably disagree with me, or you might disagree with me. Maybe you won't disagree with me, but I do have a point to where I'm going here, and it has to do with financial privacy. And anything which gets in the way of cash, I think, is a bad idea. But we'll talk more about that here in just a little bit.

We are going to be talking about money a bit this morning david bonson will join me at 6 35 so maybe about a half hour and we're going to talk about trump's recent tariffs on china mexico canada today just or yesterday rather uh just talked about imposing impose 25 percent tariffs on steel and aluminum imports, which is a big deal. We import about 80% of our aluminum right now. Gosh, I didn't realize we only made 20% of our own aluminum needs. Did not realize that. I used to think about, you know, the Northwest plants that made aluminum. Are they not making aluminum anymore?

Maybe they are just not as are, just not as much, or just not as much of it as I thought. I know that it is a very energy-intensive metal, you know, aluminum. And they tended to locate aluminum plants near the hydroelectric plants up here in the Northwest. That was a big deal. But I haven't kept up on that.

So maybe we'll find out more about that. But anyway, David is a big financial guy, top-ranked financial advisor, Barron's Forbes Financial Times say good things about him. So we'll talk about the issues involved here with that because I know that my basic, just regular guy take on tariffs is that, okay, you're imposing an increased cost

on something that you're buying. So you're imposing an increased cost on something that you're buying, so you're going to pay more. And then other people will say, well, you know, the thing is, maybe the producer will lower their price so it doesn't make much difference. Maybe it's just evening the playing field. So these countries that are screwing us with tariffs are now going to be screwed back by tariffs. You know, there's all sorts of ways to look at this.

And I don't pretend to know or understand a lot of this. And so that's why I invited David on to kick this around. We're also going to be continuing to discuss that sanctuary state, sanctuary city issue here in Oregon. As, you know, Sheriff's Department saying that, well, yeah, we're going to enforce state law. Apparently at this point in the game, they're more afraid of the bullying of Governor Kotick than they are of the bullying of President Trump.

That might change over time, especially when you see what's happening in Illinois in which Bondi, A.G. Bondi is going after them for sanctuary state and sanctuary city laws and going after them. And so Oregon, I can imagine, would be a ripe target for such things. And there's nothing like a Department of Justice subpoena hauling the governor in, which might sharpen some minds. You know, you never know where something like this will go. But I'll talk with former State Senator Barachiger about that.

We were discussing this a little bit yesterday. And when you hear the sheriffs, and I know that Jackson County Sheriff is on the record of saying we will enforce state law when it comes to immigration. And same with Dave Daniel. Dave Daniel at Josephine County Sheriff has been a little more vocal about it and putting it out there. And God bless you, Dave, for at least saying, hey, this is how we see it. It's not very satisfying. It's not very satisfying for people who actually want to see some reform in the relatively large number of people that end up coming to Oregon and they're just staying.

And yet they're, well, maybe it's a small percentage overall. But, you know, you talk about 50, 60, 100. I think last time I think FAIR said that we had somewhere in the neighborhood of 200 to a quarter of a million illegal aliens here in the state of Oregon. I'll have to recheck those stats. It's been a while. But there are big costs, big costs to the illegal alien population in Oregon, a lot of it for the public education, about a billion dollars a year, more than a billion dollars a year. Yeah, that kind of thing. And speaking of those dollars, I don't know if this is true or not, but well, it did come from InfoWars and Alex Jones, right?

And I was reading this last night and just kind of chuckling about this, and, boy, wouldn't this be interesting if it's true? I'm hoping this is not something which will end up being like a Babylon Bee headline. But according to InfoWars, and Steve also sent me a copy copy this is a couple of other people trump administration reportedly considering having former texas congressman ron paul author of end the fed lead an audit of the private run for profit federal reserve now i don't know if that's true because, you know, you always have, well, this is reportedly not officially announced yet. But that would be an exciting development, I think, to have that so-called public-private partnership audited. And it's just interesting how it doesn't matter how many dollars are needed, we just print some more. That's kind of the way we work it.

And this is why a penny costs 3.7 cents to produce. More on that later as we discuss the penny news. Rogue Valley Times. Medford officials say snowstorms showed need for more city plows. Damian Mann writing for the Rogue Valley Times today. You think this is right? Prolonged snowstorm sent vehicles sliding off Medford streets last week has prompted city officials to look at adding more snow plows. It's been a pretty mighty hands-on deck event, Rob Fields, city manager, said at Wednesday's Medford City Council meeting as snowy and icy roadways cause transportation problems around the city.

City of Medford has three snowplow sander combination trucks, two dedicated sanders, and one snowplow. John Viles, the city public works director, he told the council there could be upcoming discussions about adding two more snowplows to deal with heavy snowstorms. Our city didn't have any snowplows before 2021. Okay. So the city of Medford has survived more than 100 years and have existed 140, 150 years without snowplows. And we've only had snowplows for four years. Four years. Do you think we need more snowplows?

I just looked at it as one of those things where this is something which doesn't happen all that often, these kind of snowstorms that we've had. Am I wrong? I mean, I've only lived here in Medford since 1991, except for a couple of years in Fargo Moorhead. That's it. I've only been here, you know, 30-something years. But I just don't recall that much valley-level snow.

And I was wondering what was going to happen. You know, people are going to complain, oh, oh, man, look at it. And what a mess. And last week was a mess. It was a mess. But do you buy, do you spend millions of dollars, or at least hundreds of thousands of dollars, if nothing else, maybe it would be more like hundreds of thousands of dollars, in order to take care of an event which happens rarely?

Do you have an opinion about that? Because you know where it's going to go. It's going to go on your public utility bill here if you're a resident of Medford. So what do you think? Is it worth it or not? Worth having a couple more snow plows? We've survived all these years. I know the city's getting bigger, but, you know, the snow doesn't have any more impact

than the snow had impact before. If we were like Mount Shasta City or Shasta City and we had more continual snowfall in the summertime, in the wintertime rather, I would feel totally different about that. I don't think it's necessary. Do you? I just think that we have to understand that if you're going to see major, major snowfalls like that, that, okay, chances are you're going to see major major snowfalls like that that okay chances are you're going to have some schools closed and it's going to be harder for you to get to work and by the

way i was able to get to work every day during all of this but at the same time you know had some snow chains one day used the station forerunner another day and after that no things got kind of kind of cleaned up. I don't know. And yet I'm sure that the city council and public works are responding to the fact that it was snowing and I couldn't go someplace. It's like, well, yeah, just wait a little bit. Frankly, you should have a little bit more prepared. You should have more than, you know, a can of Red Bull in the refrigerator. You know, just saying.

You need a little pantry. You don't have to go to the store every day. I don't know. We could talk about that. Maybe not. More snow plows or not. I don't think we'd be using it all that much unless we're going into global cooling.

And if we are, then we've got bigger fish to fry or to freeze, as the case might be. What do you think? 7705633. That and more on pebble in your shoe tuesday this is the bill myer show when it comes right down to it when we buy things we want the hi i'm mark with oregon truck and auto authority and i'm on kmed Oh, tiptoe to the window, by the window. That is where I'll be. Come tiptoe through the tulips with me. Yes, when you hear Tiny Tim, you know it is time for the Jeff Merkley Gang Green Update. We haven't done a Jeff Merkley Gang Green Update for a while.

Beautiful music, I know. Beautiful music. In Oregon Live today, Senator Merkley wants Oregonians to visit all 36 counties to restore our soul. Yep, that's right. Merkley is asking Oregonians to visit all 36 counties in the state as part of the Oregon Treasures Quest, now in its second year. Anyone who gets to all 36 counties will receive recognition as an Oregon Explorer, while those that see 25 counties will be an Oregon Trailblazer. And if you make it to 10 counties, you'll be dubbed an Oregon Ranger. All participants who make it to at least 10 counties will score an invitation to the 2025 Oregon Treasures Quest Party held at the end of the year. Now, the real prize, however, is the joy of exploring Oregon's beautiful scenery, according to Senator Jeff Merkley.

Now, remember, he wants you to visit all 36 counties. We are supposed to visit all 36 counties in order to restore our soul. Now, this is after apparently Jeff Merkley and his fellow Democrats sucked out our soul, I think, over the last few years. They sucked our soul. They were soul suckers. And now we go out and visit all 36 counties in order to restore our soul. But wait a minute. Isn't this the same guy that says you're not supposed to be driving anywhere and the evil oil company is destroying the planet and everything needs to be green and sustainable? Are you going to walk to all 36 counties?

How are you supposed to get to all 36 counties? Oh, in your Tesla. Oh, okay. All right. In your electric bicycle? Maybe so. I don't know. He doesn't say this, but, you know, if we're to take Senator Merkley on one hand with his

words saying that carbon is killing the planet and then he wants you to burn a lot of carbon and release it to the atmosphere to visit all 36 counties to restore our soul, what is the price of our soul? Oh, my gosh, destroying the planet. What are the natural gas-hating kids over in Ashland High School that tell the city council what to do? How are they going to function? They're not going to know what to do.

Well, do I restore my soul with Mother Nature, or do I destroy the planet? All right, so there we go, our Jeff Mer merkeley gangrene update for the day let me go to uh francine francine you wanted to weigh in on the snowplow story right uh francine francine going once francine going twice hello francine okay oh i see what happened i hit a button wrong i turned it red and i didn't see the Francine going twice. Hello, Francine. Okay. Oh, I see what happened. I hit a button wrong. I turned it red and I didn't see the red. How are you doing, Francine?

Now you're on. Oh, I'm doing fine, Bill, but you better get your button straight. Well, there's a phone button here that's red, and it either goes red or it's blank. And you know me, I'm colorblind. Red is very difficult for me to see. Oh, that's right. Okay, you're forgiven yeah okay so anyway what's going on well yeah you know what they need more snow plows

because otherwise how how are the people going to use the bike lanes all winter oh i want to give you a real american salute you get a real American salute for that. How are the bums going to use the otherwise unused bicycle lanes in downtown Medford in the road diets and everything, right? Bingo. Okay. So you have to have fossil-powered snowplows. Or no, they probably want electric snowplows, I think, in the future. That'll probably be the next thing. And then, yeah it could be that could be all right in all seriousness though

do you think we need it enough i mean you've lived around here a while you know what's the weather like overall in your opinion you know that's a toss-up because we have a lot we do have more people now the population has grown and there's more people trying to get places so in terms of the the traveled streets maybe it makes more sense, but I don't know. I don't keep track of, you know, Medford traffic. Yeah, well, the way I look at it is if they're doing what they did, which is to plow out the major arterials first, and then the secondaries as time goes, and then maybe the residential streets. You know, they had the main streets plowed out pretty quickly, even when the storms came.

It was the side streets that were in an excrement show, you know, that kind of thing. You know, that sort of thing. But, you know, you take your time. You got through it. You know what I'd like to see, Bill? You know, I was talking to the fuel committee, somebody from the fuel committee the other day. I didn't have a lot of time to talk because they were desperately working on trying to keep somebody's power from getting turned off, you know, in this weather. Okay.

And that's what I'd like to see them spend some money on is some kind of a program so that nobody gets their power turned off. Yeah, keeping people from freezing when you get this trouble, right? Yeah, little things like that, you know? Okay. That would be a good direction. All right. Hey, I appreciate the call. Thanks for that, Francine.

You bet. I love that. Got to have more snow plows to plow the city streets so that the bums can use the bicycle lanes. Yeah, I love that. Hi, good morning. Who's this? Welcome. Good morning.

This is Tracy from Washington State. Well, we can't kick the can down the road, the aluminum can. The aluminum can, huh? Yes. Do you know where most of the aluminum is made here? Because I seem to recall there was a plant in eastern Washington, or was it Idaho or something? It was a major producer.

Do you know? There is no more production in the northwest. The last plant was in Ferndale, Washington, north of – it's called Atalco, north of Bellingham. It is closed in 2023. There was also a plant up in Wenatchee. It has shuttered as well. So I remember growing up looking at the Columbia River. Matter of fact, my oldest brother worked a little bit at Reynolds out there in Troutdale.

Everything is gone. Everything is gone. Goldendale, Dallas Port, all those plants are gone. And it's sad. And we depend on Canada for the vast majority of our aluminum intake. I wonder if aluminum has, well, maybe it's treated more friendly in the Canadian regulatory state, do you know? Because I know that it's a very energy-intensive metal, from what I've read. Lots of electricity needed to smelt aluminum. They have hydro. The vast majority of Canada's aluminum production is in Quebec, where they have all that cheap hydro that also feeds the East Coast grid.

So they're really worried about the jobs. And they did a study back when the tariffs were initially imposed, and those steel and aluminum jobs, when you do that shift with adding the tariffs, it still costs about $600,000 per one job slot in the U.S. to create that. And where does that cost go? Well, it goes into appliances, cars, all those expenses. We're just going to get hit with a terrible bill. And, yes, that's how you fund a tax cut, unfortunately.

Okay. So $600,000 for each job paid, saved rather. Okay. Wow. And I would imagine that corrupt guy who runs the Cleveland Steel Mill Company, the one who was trying to block the Japanese purchase of U.S. steel, I'm sure he's thrilled about what's going on right now. He's got to love that. Yeah. And I really think the problem is you just can't, you know,

spit on a dime and turn back on these smelters they're gone there have been reynolds uh troutdale facilities now a business park i mean these things are torn down and and there is there is a steel mill in oregon i know of one in mcminnville oregon it's not a massive one uh but they they do have them but, that's the high energy. And what do we do with our energy now? Well, we make data farms out of them, and that's what the Columbia Basin is. Yeah, much more important to get the Facebook likes going, right? You've got to be able to do that, keep the Instagram farm going, and keep the AI farm.

Well, I guess the AI farm, that's what we're going to do. We're just going to take all our energy and put it into artificial intelligence as we plug into the matrix hmm uh appreciate the call tracy thanks for letting me know i didn't realize those plants that i did recall in the depths of my memory didn't realize those were all gone now wow but i guess this is what president trump wants to do get that rebuilt we will talk with david bonson about this here in a few minutes, and he's a big expert on these tariffs, and we'll find out more after news. Latest news brought to you by Lowe's. It's the Bill Myers Show on KMED, Southern Oregon's place to talk. 635.

Proud to bring on david bonson dave is one of america's top ranked financial advisors by barron's forbes financial times served as a managing director at morgan stanley vice president at ubs before founding the bonson group and he's established himself pretty prominent voice in conservative media here and and by the way you do a now is it a daily podcast or daily kind of comment on the markets? DividendCafe.com. How you doing, David? Welcome to the show.

I'm doing great. Thanks so much for having me. Yeah, we do a kind of longer investment commentary every Friday, but we do a daily summary every day. And so DividendCafe.com is a great way to get the podcast, the video, plus the written commentary, which is always my favorite. I'm really old school. I still like the written word. The written word? What people have to read?

I'm just kidding you. And more than 140 characters. It's really burdensome. I'm getting to the point where I'm wondering if someday that the haves and the have-nots are those that read and those that do not. And those that read, I think do not and and those that read i think will probably have a a uh a greater understanding i remember reading one time reading oddly enough about a fox news commenter uh commentator a number of years ago and she said i just don't like to read and i'm thinking to myself all right so you're just going to go on and just blather every day but you don't

really read any background on anything you're talking about. I mean, everything just being what you hear. You got to dig deeper sometime, don't you, David? It's just reality. Well, I think so. And I think it's been that way for thousands of years. And so for those of us who have gratitude for the printing press, we ought to take advantage of it. And, yes, I definitely I tell my kids all the time readers will be leaders.

Yeah, indeed. David, let's dig into the latest tariff news out of President Trump. Give me your overall take here. And I know we're talking a 25% tariff has just been levied or will be coming on imported aluminum. And most of that comes from Canada, from what I understand, and on imported steel, too. And we import about 20 percent of that, roughly. Could you set the table for us how that's looking right now? Yes. So let's just start with the economics of it. You know, we consume about 700 times more aluminum in America than we produce. So the consumers hurt a lot more than the producers benefit in an almost like indescribably profound way. Now, the good news here is that when this was done in 2018,

a bunch of exceptions were put on that carve out. Some of them didn't last very long. So, you know, the unpredictability of the president's style here makes it really hard for me to be super upset. You know, we saw that markets were up yesterday on the news, and they're not down all that much this morning. So markets aren't panicking. And that kind of leads me to the second point of, I do believe the tariffs on steel and aluminum are bad policy. And I believe that they will hurt the American worker and hurt the American economy. But I don't think they're really going to happen in the end. I think that they're being used, as he's used so many other things, as a negotiating tactic. And we kind of have to let the clock run a little bit here to see how this is going to play out.

So the idea is that don't panic every time there's a announcement from President Trump on tariffs. Don't panic. There's always some other motive really there or something else that he's really going for, more or less. Well, at least until further notice. Like, in other words, I would say don't panic until it's time to panic, and it hasn't been time to panic yet. And I think that we have to kind of learn from the fact that, look, it is unconventional. I'm not always the biggest fan of the style, but I also have learned that not every announcement is an announcement. A tweet is not policy. And saying things offhand in a press conference is not policy.

It is not the way I run my business, but it is his style, and he does it well. I am not so much a fan of the kind of unpredictable chaos, but he uses it to try to affect some of his policy objectives. And so I've gotten past the point of trying to second guess it. Ultimately, I think he has a vision for where he wants to take a slew of elements of our relationship with China around geopolitics, around trade, around currency, which nobody's really talking about, around intellectual property, all these around technology, all of these things. And I think you're going to see a big master deal with China that he wants to have in place. I mean, a lot of the MAGA nationalist people are not going to like it, but I think he's going to get a big deal that suits what his policy objectives are. But along the way, there's going to be threats to tariffs and there's going to be back and forth

and bluster. And I just have sort of accepted those things have to play out. But ultimately, do I believe that tariffs represent a tax not on foreign countries, but on the American importers who pay them, and that it protects one class of American economic actor while hurting another class of American economic actor? That is my view. That is the proper way to understand it economically. I had a listener that called, and I couldn't confirm this stat because it was right before you and I were going to talk, David. But when we look at tariffs in the past on the steel industry, that they estimated that for every job saved, they cost about $600,000 for every American job saved. Could you comment on that? Do we have those kind of numbers for real to see the real the real result of that hundred percent what's that hundred percent true yes absolutely true and and that's why president bush uh junior under the advice of

carl rove had tried something similar and they had to walk away from it because they quickly realized that the very small benefit they thought it was thatruing was being offset by a much bigger cost. And, you know, this is kind of Milton Friedman, free enterprise 101. Most bad economic policy has a benefit to it. It's just that you can't look at the immediate short-term visible effect and ignore the longer-term invisible effect. And that's really the case with steel. And I think I started off with the stat that matters most. If you say, hey, look, we have a bunch of American producers of steel and aluminum, and by putting tariffs on their competitors overseas, it's helping them. Isn't that a good thing? That's an easy way to

go, look, here's who's benefiting from the policy. And I don't disagree with it. However, when you realize that far, far, far more people are using aluminum, and then by the way, Canada has the ability to produce aluminum much cheaper than we do because of electricity costs. Aluminum production requires a ton of electricity. And so if we really wanted to alleviate paying for American producers of aluminum, we don't need tariffs on competitors. We need less regulation on our own electrical utility market. But nevertheless, the consumers who buy aluminum and steel or the companies that make things that have aluminum and steel in them, unfinished goods, those are the people who suffer. And that's an exponentially larger set of the American economy than the producers of steel and aluminum. That's what we're up against here.

Why do we end up losing our aluminum producers in the first place? Because that same listener who was telling me about the $600,000 cost per job saved is also mentioning that he lives in Washington. He says, you know, these aluminum plants have been closing, but yet they're fed by the Bonneville power system here, which is largely hydro. And I'm just wondering, are we just, are even our hydropower costs zooming out of reach compared to Canada? Just curious. Compared to Canada, yes. With aluminum and Canada, there's no question that they have a comparative advantage. And so it's a really smart thing for us as a country to do, to import aluminum from them.

They can do it cheaper, so it's better for America to get it from them. And so this is where a lot of the arguments about free trade actually do continue to hold up. Sometimes people will say, well, no, it's unfair because they're subsidizing it or there's some other, you know, they're tariffing us and we're not tariffing them. None of that's at play here. They just simply have the ability to do it cheaper. And so it benefits us. And this is where I get a little upset sometimes with some of the rhetoric, is people will say, oh, they're ripping us off. Okay, how are they ripping us off? They go, because they sell us more things than we sell them.

Well, that's also true with me and my barber. Okay, that is just absolutely not true that anyone's getting ripped off because you buy more from them than they buy from you. Both people are benefiting. In the case of aluminum, we're benefiting by getting cheaper aluminum that really fits into so many elements of our daily economic life. It isn't just soda cans. There's so many things that steel and aluminum are a part of. And so unfortunately, a lot of this is about protection, that we're trying to protect one particular job sector. It's actually become a very, very, very small sector of the American economy. And yet, when we help one area, we're hurting another. And that's where I just can't get behind it. Okay. David Bonson is with me once again. And the reason I want to talk

a bit about the steel here for just a moment is that my family worked in the steel mills of Pittsburgh back when I was a kid. And I have, you know, really great memories of that. I also remember the acid rain that was coming out of those plants back in the days. But, hey, this is pre-Nixon, you know, and the EPA, you know, that sort of situation. And so I was watching it when Nippon Steel wanted to buy U.S. Steel. And I was thinking, well, they have billions of dollars and they wanted to invest in the plants here. And then President Trump got in the middle of that.

What do you think was driving that? Because I looked at Japan as a friendly country politically. It's been an ally for us now, friends for a long, long time. They were going to be building the plants here. And I thought, okay, what's so bad about that? Was I right or wrong? Or how do you see it? I feel the same way you do times 100. I was emphatically opposed, but I will defend President Trump here. It was President Biden who bought that deal. And President Trump agreed with it. And I assumed, I mean, I'm just being realistic here. There was politics at play. Trump wanted the support of some of these union folks,

and a lot of the union folks were against that deal. But it was President Biden who said, for national security reasons, we can't allow a Japanese company to buy U.S. steel. Okay. First of all, we sell $4 billion of missiles to Japan every year. America, American companies sell $4 billion of missiles to Japan. Missiles is just about anybody's book. Okay. All right. I would think that national security might be a little more applicable to missiles than it would to equity investment in our steel.

But more importantly, Nippon Steel has already been here in the United States for 30 years. They have plants in South Carolina. They have plants in West Virginia. There is nobody who was willing to put the equity capital in the U.S. steel. It's going to create jobs. It's going to protect jobs. The people in Allegheny County in Pennsylvania were totally for this deal. It's going to create jobs. It's going to protect jobs. The people in Allegheny County and Pennsylvania were totally for this deal. They were? Okay, you see that? Those are the

people I grew up with. So they wanted this deal to happen. Okay. Desperately. And they campaigned vehemently for it, saying this is basically an industry that needs fresh capital. And this is a foreign ally, private company, by the way, it's not a state owned enterprise. And nobody with a straight face can claim that this is a national security risk. And so once you go down the path of saying we're going to block an economic deal for national security reasons, when it has nothing to do with national security, you've destroyed that limiting principle. You've just made the national security argument, which we both know sometimes could be quite legitimate. But then you've kind of done the boy who cried wolf. Nobody can take

it seriously anymore. So it looks to me like President Trump is coming around on it. He said something over the weekend that is classic Trump speak. He said, yeah, we're still not going to let them buy the company, but we're going to let them make a big investment. Uh-huh. Okay. So it might be a matter of percentage of control, that sort of thing. And they will end up with the majority control, but then they'll call it something different,

you know. I get it. Okay. So once again, it's the bargaining thing. I couldn't help but notice that the moment that they put tariffs on steel, the announcement was made. You have Cleveland Steel, which was the one that was supposedly trying to buy the steel, U.S. steel here. Their stock price really popped quite a bit there. And you start wondering a while if there's lobbying for certain tariffs, so that way it benefits your particular company even. Hey, my company's company stock went up blah blah blah you know uh life is good and then maybe

wall street has an influence on stuff like that any idea well let me put it this way and this is all available on the u.s trade representative website from 2018 there were 1 million 200,000 applications for exceptions from the tariffs. Oh, yeah? So is there political lobbying around the tariffs? You bet there is. Boy, I'll bet. The whole departments of government, that's all they're doing is trying to pick winners and losers.

It's one of the reasons why I'm against it. It lends itself to crony capitalism. All right. We got David Bonson with me this morning talking about the Trump tariffs. And once again, I wanted to make sure you know about his podcast and various information. It's Dividend Cafe, DividendCafe.com. I will put all this information up. Of the tariffs which have been out there, are there any tariffs that have been discussed or maybe even imposed that you agree with, that you think that there really is a national security interest involved.

And I don't know, maybe we go into the specialized chips, chip manufacturing and such. What do you think about that, David? Well, you said two different things. If it's national security, then how does getting a tax on it mitigate the national security? In other words, it's one or the other. If there's a national security risk, then just simply putting a tax on it mitigate the national security in other words it's one or the other if there's a national security risk then just simply putting a tax on it like i'm not interested in selling missiles to bad guys as long as they pay us a little extra money right it's either national security or it isn't um there are some tariffs that i think are less economically harmful than others but all things being equal it's really important for us to have an honest conversation about what we're trying to accomplish.

If it's national security, we have got to make sure that our supply chain is safe, that we will never be in a position where we can't get semiconductors, crucial weaponry, crucial pharmaceuticals, crucial products that matter to the well-being of our country. But beyond that, I don't see a role for tariffs other than where we believe that it is being done to affect another policy objective. And that's where a lot of this has to play out. But, no, I really am a purist about this at heart. And I think that the economy grows, jobs are created. There's an old rule I learned from Art Vassar. I'm that the economy grows, jobs are created. Well, you know, there's an old rule

I learned from Art Baffler. I'm a diehard Ravenite supply sider. If you tax more of something, you get less of it. Tariffs mean taxes. That means less trade and exchange. And so countries get less wealthy. Is there a case to be made

to tax imports of, let's say, of integrated circuits of chips, computer chips and such like that, in order to try to build up our local production of it? Because arguably, chips from Singapore, there's a political risk involved there. Do you agree on that one? I don't think we can get away from that. Yeah, but here's the thing. I have a big problem with us doing anything that is going to hide up or, excuse me, cover up what really went wrong to begin with. Why did those chips ever get made in Singapore?

Why did all these companies move some of the manufacturing, not the design, but the manufacturing to Taiwan? Yeah. Because of our burdensome tax and regulatory environment. But isn't Taiwan a big political risk right now for us? Well, it is. And so we've done a lot to go domesticate some of our production there to make sure that we don't run into that supply chain risk. And I fully support that.

But again, tariffs don't have anything to do with the national security side. They just simply add another cost into the system. But my point is, I would rather we recognize, hey, we've been regulating and taxing our own American companies too much. The issue here is not tariffs on foreign manufacturing. It's let's make it so easy to do business in America that they want to manufacture here. And lo and behold, even before they ever passed that ridiculous boondoggle of a CHIPS Act, you had companies spending tens of billions of dollars to create manufacturing capacity in Arizona, in Ohio, in Texas. So we have to right this ship and do it the right way.

And you probably have nothing good to say about what used to be known as the Green New Deal. Well, nothing that can stay on air. Okay, all right. It's DividendCafe.com, DividendCafe.com. All right, so the overall takeaway is that you're not a fan of tariffs, but you're looking at tariffs then as the bargaining chip right now, which must play out. This is part of the Trump process, the way he operates as the executive, right? Is that more or less the bottom line here?

That's more or less the bottom line. And it's complicated because sometimes he's trying to get more support for fentanyl trafficking. And other times he's trying to get better trade deals. There's all kinds of different things going on with different countries. But, you know, for the most part, I do believe that he's using tariffs to negotiate, and we have to let that play out. All right. David Bonson, great talk. DividendCafe.com.

And when do you get your stuff up there? Is there a certain time of day you have it up there on time? After the market closed. So it comes in the middle of the afternoon every day, and then Fridays around the same, usually midday. Yeah. I wanted to ask you, before you take off here, do you have an opinion on gold, and where do you see gold headed? We've seen a big rally in that, and it seems to be central banks buying the most of it. Would that be a fair assessment, what's been going on lately?

And I'm just wondering what you think that means. Central banks have been buying more lately, so that puts a bid up. And so it's just something that's very speculative because when central banks are net buyers, it can go up. And then when they sit it out, it can really drop quite a bit. And so my firm, we manage over $7 billion and we don't own any gold because it is very, very unpredictable. and we prefer to do something that has what's called an internal rate of return. We can't predict what central banks are going to buy in gold, but there's no question that has been driving the price lately, and so it's done quite well in the last several months.

All right. David, good talk. Thanks for coming on the show. We'll have you back, I assure you. Thanks so much. Be well. It is 655 at KMED and 99.3 KBXG. DividendCafe.com.

Wireless company. This is News Talk 1063 KMED, and you're waking up with the Bill Myers Show. A couple minutes before 7 at KMED, KMED HD1 Eagle Point Medford, KBXG Grants Pass. It is Pebble in Your Shoe Tuesday. It'll be open phones here for the next half hour or so. Then we'll be talking with former State Senator Herman Barachuk, former Joe County Commissioner, too, for that matter. And we're going to be talking about the sanctuary state sort of deal. So I wanted to do some emails of the day. Emails of the day brought to you by

Dr. Steve Nelson at Central Point Family Dentistry, centralpointfamilydentistry.com. Now, if you don't have dental insurance, they have a dental plan there, very affordable, which works a lot like a dental plan or like dental insurance, but it has better benefits, lower costs, and overall I think it's a pretty good experience. And you can find out more at centralpointfamilydentistry.com. Get your appointment there on Freeman Way next to the Mazatlan Mexicanican restaurant and we ended up having jeff uh write me this morning saying bill you and i were taught back in the early 1970s that we were headed into another ice age then of course there's al gore within the decade there will be no more snows of kilimanjaro

zal gore in 2006 jeff thanks for the reminder of that. But Jeff says the best snowplow solution for the city of Medford, because the city of Medford is musing on adding to its snowplow fleet. The best snowplow solution is contract with the private sector. It oftentimes needs to be relocated as well. Figure the cost of equipment and maintenance and the fact that

lack of use causes more issues than being used. And the most effective thing would be a plan for snow removal with contractors on a retainer, so to speak. The retainer doesn't have to be monetary, just a contract that says that you are obligated to plow the city first. That's interesting. What do you think about Jeff's idea, folks? Because they're talking about maybe adding to the snowplows. The problem with the snowplow issue is that I just don't think we'd be using it that often. The city didn't have even, John Vile admits we didn't have snowplows until 2021.

We've only had them for four years. We didn't even have them. Why not do it with the private sector? Private sector, of course, would be out there plowing up in the higher hills and then you know the big storms happen oh okay i gotta plow the city of medford or the city of grants pass i mean that kind of makes sense to me what do you think we can talk about that 770-563-3770 kmd patrick writes me this morning hey bill i was watching a commercial the other day and i'm sure almost everyone has watched this one the line in the commercial that stuck out like a sore thumb is the following. Visibly reduces damage to the intestinal lining.

Okay. Hmm. If the intestinal lining is visible, don't you have a lot more to worry about than taking medication? Pharmaceutical ads. What can I say, Patrick? Hans Albuquerque weighs in here. Listening to clips on MVCNR from a doctor describing the strain and physical symptoms he sees resulting from the Doge Fed employees, cuts and rumors thereof. I'm sorry, but it's obvious these people have never understood what private sector production in the workplace means.

They've never seen a 1099er, nor a construction worker whose job is a short-term contract organically they believe that government largesse is a right if they're so damn smart in their capacity then why are they worried about success outside the government bubble probably because they can't and you know something hans i was just thinking about this though and i i'm wondering if the people who are accepting the buyout the ones who are accepting the buyout the ones who are accepting the and it's not really a buyout it's just that hey you don't have to show up and we'll pay you through september and it's actually pretty smart because it's not stopping the payments it's allowing congress to you know the money that congress appointed there there it

goes or appropriated rather rather. There it is. And you just don't have to show up, but then your job's going to go away. Now, there is a possibility that some of these people that are quitting are just ideologues. They just hate Trump so much, and they don't even want to work in his system. I'm hoping that it's not always the best and the brightest that take off.

But if the best and the brightest start taking off, well, that's good for the private sector sector and then we'll be moving more uh more good stuff into the private sector and out of the government world and that'd be okay too i think what else we got going on let's wait in senator golden wrote me an email late last night says hi bill i'd appreciate it if you'd help clear up confusion about the wildfire appeal process, partly because the forms are confusing. The March 10th deadline is not for the appeal itself, but is rather a notice that someone might want to appeal. People only have to enter a small amount of simple information on the one-page form. That's due March 10th.

They don't have to plead their whole case, and they definitely don't have to spend money on a lawyer or some other kind of professional. The first deadline is only about preserving the option of doing a full appeal later, and I hope you'll let your listeners know. Best, Jeff Golden. Will do. All right, Senator, we appreciate that. By the way, I'm going to talk more with Bob Hart, land planning guy, tomorrow. We're going to dig more into this, all right? We'll have that, too. Email bill at billmyershow.com. We're going to dig more into this, all right? We'll have that, too. Email bill at billmyershow.com. We go to line two. Hi, good morning. Who's this? Welcome.

Good morning, Bill. Tom here. Hey, that was a good segue, because that's what I was calling you about. Oh, okay. I had an article on the Rogue Valley Times about Senator Golden and so forth, he talks about the bipartisan package of wildlife prevention. And do you think that Jeff is ready to backpedal some of his – this article is so outrageous. It talks about – it's only rumors that your insurance rates are going up. Okay, that's funny. All right. Yeah. And then it also says it's also rumors. Well, he says, Jeff says that people are afraid the fire marshal is going to kick them off the property. No, no, Jeff. It's the banks.

If you can't afford your insurance and make your payments, it's the banks. It's not the fire marshal, but it's you who's causing people to lose their homes out in rural areas. Ultimately, I also think, Tom, is that we are at the end of a 40-year scientific or non-scientific experiment, which started with the destruction, the overall destruction of the timber industry. And the timber industry, I think, bought us a lot of time here when it came to wildfire because the forests will naturally burn left alone. It's like one way or the other, the forests will be harvested. You know what I'm getting at here?

As they grow, eventually there's going to be some form of natural ignition or accidental ignition as the case might be but let's just say they're the lightning will always strike at some point and then set a fire on and so the forests grow and grow and grow no matter what we do because that's mother nature and when they grow densely and you have the thin trees well then that makes them more fire prone there's all these sort of things that happen and then we decided that well because of uh an owl we were going to destroy the industry and it was the industry's fault of course that ended up being a lie the industry still got

destroyed for the most part but the forest kept growing and then we're kind of wondering why we're seeing more fire. It just looks to me like it was just a logical extension of the fact that you no longer are monitoring what's going on there. You're no longer cutting down the fiber that would grow on a yearly basis, which we used to do. And so we're at the end game here now. Now they want to blame it on climate change. Yeah, yeah. There's so much lies and false reasoning going on. Yeah, but back to Jeff.

Maybe he is backing off, or maybe he's realizing that there's no place to hide on these arguments at this point. You cannot put enough prescribed burned fire on the landscape here to do what harvesting fiber used to perform for us here in southern oregon and it bought us relatively peaceful fire seasons for that reason but you know then other people didn't like that being done i guess because of the wildlife well it's certainly certainly true well you know it it's also true that as more people live closer together, even in the rural area, you know, if your neighbor's there with a three-foot high grass and maybe three or four dead cars out in the front yard with several hot water heaters and so forth, that, you know, that person is, it could be in danger in your property if you're next to them and so forth.

As more people pile upon one another, there are reasonable laws and considerations that need to be taken into account. But to come in and bludgeon us with 762 is just, it's an overreach. It's autocratic. It's not democratic, even though they describe the 762 as a bipartisan package. is going to individual properties and making suggestions, but to come in with a cudgel and bludgeon people into compliance, no, that's not the way to go. It's a fascist mentality that I can't stand about. Yeah, I know. I get it. But ultimately, Tom, here is where we find ourselves right now. Because of going back on the experiment,

we've been doing this experiment of not doing anything not managing truly managing forest for four decades now and we're at the point where we've very quickly got to a crisis point and it's not just oregon i've been reading that you know a lot of conversations saying that the West, the West Coast states, because of the policies that we've been talking about for a number of years, may be uninsurable for fire. Because there's no way to make fire insurance pencil because of all the payouts that have been coming. That's been ultimately where it's been going. Yeah, that may be true and it also may be true that uh oregon is uh you know being put on the uh the bill for the los angeles fires that you know when you have an insurance because yeah the whole thing is that it gets spread out right those risks get up spread out over lots of people so point well

taken good call good call on that thanks for tom