Bill Meyer Show Podcast - Sponsored by Clouser Drilling www.ClouserDrilling.com - 07-02-25_WEDNESDAY_7AM

Episode Date: July 2, 2025

What happens now that Oregon Legislature passed SB 243A which really goes after concealed carry? Kevin Starrett digs in from Oregon Firearms Federation. Spencer Morrison, author of RESHORE, explains the beauty in Trump tariff policy.

The Bill Myers 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. Kevin Sterritt from Oregon Firearms Federation. I've been wanting to ignore the state legislative session here for a number of days here, just licking wounds. And I can't help myself, Kevin, because I keep getting all of these. Hey, wasn't this great? We got money for our district.

We sold you out, but we got money. We got money. That's all that matters, right? Welcome back. Thank you. The victory celebrations are unending. Yeah, kind of what we were concerned about going into this is like, all right, the Christmas tree bill is going to be here, hundreds of millions of dollars in Greece that's going to be sliding down the gullets of various districts. And it's just too much to resist, which is why there's no such thing as denial of quorum. Everyone's just kind of, is everyone bought and paid for now because of these bills? You look at what the Republicans are doing and you say,

this makes no sense. They're constantly being slapped around. We're constantly having legislation passed that's extremely damaging. Very abusive relationship, very abusive marriage with the Democrats in Salem. No doubt. Absolutely that. And in addition to the terrible legislation that's being passed, they are personally abused, you know How how like prusansky insults mike mcclain and gorsuch insults shelly bosworth davis. Yeah, and and and of course the you know They'll walk off in, you know

In solidarity with shelly, but they don't walk off in solidarity with us, but it's like What what would compel people to go back for that? And it is exactly what an abusive relationship is. It's, you know, why does an abused wife stay with an abuser? Well, for financial security. And in this case, what we've seen, which is what we see every session, is the press releases from Republicans saying, look at all the money I got for the district. And, you. And I've seen these from quite a few legislators. Wasn't there a Senator that sent one yesterday? Was it Bruce Starr?

Yeah, Bruce Starr sent one out. So there's two house reps with every Senate district. So he said, with this house rep, I got money for this. And with this house rep, I got money for that. And Greg Smith, of was you know under investigation for doubling his own salary of one of his many side jobs. He sent it out saying oh we got all this money and it's I don't think the average voter is as interested in the new fire hydrant as they are and not having their children's testicles surgically removed.

And year after year we see see these, they go back, they allow this stuff to be passed, in many cases on these budget bills voting for it, because I guess some consultant somewhere told them, it's a really winning strategy to go back into your district to send out a press release saying, look at what I got you. I don't know how many voters actually read those things.

Obviously you and I do. But it must matter because I've noticed that after what was really, in my opinion, a miserable session, other than the fact that the transportation bill didn't pass. That's about the only thing that was good. But now we're being told, oh my gosh, ODOT's going to close and the roads are going to be horrible and we're going to have to get used to this. But there's like victory lap everywhere I'm looking there are victory laps. Now, I guess it's just a natural human thing that you don't want to paint it as. Yeah, we got our butts handed to us, our heads handed to us too, for that matter. If you're planning to run for governor again, as one woman certainly is,

you're going to send out endless press releases saying, look at what we accomplished and we killed this transportation bill. No mention of the fact that a bunch of Democrats defected, which almost guaranteed it wouldn't pass. Oh, wait a minute. Wait a minute. No, no. Hold on, man.

Hold on, Kevin. It gets worse than that. Now, though, not only do you have Republicans say, hey, look, we killed the transportation bill when they didn't really. Now I'm reading like from OPB that's blaming the Republicans for having killed the transportation bill. All right. They're blaming them for it. You know, obviously, CoTec is, and I assume Julie Fahey is, CoTec is saying that the Republicans just wanted to go home early. Well, guess what? The Republicans don't get to decide when this session ends. No, the Democrats, it's a majority Democrats, super majority Democrats. But now I think now they're flipping it around to say that while Republicans are saying, hey, look, we killed the Republican or the transportation bill, which isn't really true, it was the

Democrats defecting that killed it because they all could have voted no it wouldn't have it would have passed okay. All right, but now though they're going to be pillaged by the governor and everybody else including OPB for having killed the precious transportation bill so they're not going to win anyway. But even their own surveys indicate it's a very low priority for Oregonians, you know, who still see their streets covered with tents inhabited by mentally ill fentanyl addicts. Yeah, exactly. The worst schools, the worst mental health, really high taxes, a declining quality of life. And so yeah, I don't, they're less concerned about some SEIU workers losing their jobs

than they are about, you know, the quality of life. And so it's going to be a little bit of a tough climb for, for CoTech, but look, she is going to live and die on this issue because she owes those people so big time and this is a colossal failure. And now it's like, okay, was this, you know, Fahey's fault? Because as incompetent as Fahey is, she never had that vicious edge that Kotech had. You know, I mean, I actually... No, Tina Kotech is bloodthirsty. Okay, we know that. She's a very good operator in that respect. Right? You got to respect her.

On one occasion, I have seen male legislators in tears after leaving Kotec's office when she was speaker. I avoid that building now, but I don't know that that's ever happened with Fahey. I mean, Fahey is obviously a militant leftist, but she does not have that kind of killer, bloodthirsty edge that Tina has. Yeah, indeed. So Kevin, the reason I wanted to bring you on here, like I said, a little bit of post-legislative session carnage here, just going over this, but like I said, I can't believe the victory laps being... Now, believe me, I'm glad the transportation bill ended up going away, but it wasn't because of the Republicans, really. But yet that's about the only

thing I guess they hang their hats on and then, oh look, we got this. Yeah, I know, wasn't it Drazen that was on Lars the other day saying that we cancelled or we blocked most of the gun bills? What actually happened that ended up getting 234 passed but the other one, which is 3067, it ended up going away somehow. What was the process how that happened because it sounded like they cut a deal that we're gonna pass this one in exchange for killing this one. What happened? Well I mean I can only speculate and I'm sorry that you're suffering from post-session depression you know we might there might be some

treatment for that but the one theory that I saw that made sense was that they got, they agreed to have, the Democrats agreed to have 3076 die. That's the one that would have killed, that's the one that would have closed the gun stores, right? Practically. Correct. That would have closed all the gun stores. So the theory that I saw that made

sense to me was that the Republicans said, if you kill 3076, we will not force you to read the entire transportation bill on the floor because the constitution says every bill must be read in its entirety before they vote on it. But they never do that because a Republican always makes a motion to suspend that rule. And then of course, everybody agrees to it, which means that the Republicans on most days are advancing and accelerating the liberals agenda. Because if a bill's on the floor, it's because the Democrats want it there. And time after time after time, it's the Republicans who asked to suspend those rules. So because of the length of the transportation bill, and again,

this is something that, and a theory that was advanced that I think is very plausible that the Democrats said, okay, we'll kill 3076 if you don't make us read the whole bill because we don't know how long that will take. And the bill is super important because we've got to pay off the unions. So that is the deal. And of course, the agreement that they wouldn't walk out on 243. So that's how 243 got passed. Okay, that makes sense. That makes sense. That's a reasonable theory. You can't prove it, but that's as good a theory as any that I've heard out there. I'm just wondering how they did it because they don't have the juice. Republicans don't really have juice to kill a bill other than walking out and denial a quorum or denial a quorum by leaving.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, listen, you are a powerful talk show host. So you have the ability to contact some senators and say, hey, what was the deal? Whether you get an honest answer or not remains to be seen. But obviously there was a deal. And that one at least makes sense to me. Okay. Well, the part that really bothered me though is that even people who I respected greatly in the Senate ended up being there for the vote on 234. And that really surprised me.

Did it surprise you? 243, by the way. Oh, 243, pardon me. Yeah. Mm-hmm. But Yes, and their motivation is entirely up to them to explain. All right. I'll have them on and ask. See what we can get. You know, the fact is, is that they all agree that had they not been there the outcome would be the same that the bill

would pass. Okay I think I agree that's that's true they did the bill would pass without Republican votes but if the outcome would be the same that seems to me to be a great argument for not being there. Certainly for being off the floor for that vote. And I have heard, you know, I've been told, well, look, you know, if we walked out, it wouldn't make any difference because the others wouldn't walk out. Well, it would make a difference because everybody who walked out would have made a statement which would have highlighted the collusion of the ones who stayed. You know, if five Republicans walked out and the rest stayed, then it makes

it much easier for us to identify, not that we don't know, but to really clarify who's not willing to stand up. In other words, it's pointing out the quizlings within the Republican Party is what it would have done. That is a far more concise way to put it. Okay. All right. And of course, a quizzling that, you know, top of my list is someone like a Kevin Mannix on the House side.

All right. Well, Mannix is a, you know, a long time quizzling, but you know, on the Senate side, of course, you've got Brock Smith and you've got Anderson, but you have, you had a number of legislators who, who had nothing to lose before the 10 day rule became, was, was out of effect. It certainly had nothing to lose by walking off this time and could have prevented the passage of this bill, which is so damaging and so insulting to the most law-abiding people in the state, who now have become a target of the Democrats, in spite of the fact that they have been proven to not be a problem. Concealed handgun license holders are some of the most law-abiding, least problematic people, period.

Firearms or no firearms, okay? So, you have to go through a lot and it's considered a pretty good privilege, but now they're doing this. So that's what I wanted to wrap up with. What does Oregon look like with Senate Bill 243 having been passed now and going into effect, allowing all of these governmental agencies then to decide whether or not concealed carry is permitted within their particular buildings? Now is it just buildings or you know can it be like you know if I am carrying concealed in my car and I'm passing you know the BLM office I can get popped? I mean what's the ruling on this stuff? It is just the building. Just the building? Okay., what the bill does, it does two things.

It bans what they call rapid fire activators, which are things like bomb stocks or force reset triggers. And it says that the most law abiding people in the state are no longer allowed to participate in things like city council meetings and county commissioner meetings. And this is because Daisha Graber's stepdaughter committed suicide, you see, because people commit suicide with bump stocks or commit suicide at city council meetings. That's nonsense, Kevin. Kevin, that's nonsense. You know that. It's absolutely absurd. And it's based on this completely inexplicable hatred that they have for people who said I'm willing to play by the rules

you set up all of these restrictions which do not exist in most states in most states if you are not a criminal you do not have to ask for permission to carry a gun to protect yourself and your family and Oregon you have to jump to a whole bunch of hoops and now they said after you jump to those hoops now we will tell you, because there are a bunch of old women who wear red t-shirts who don't like you, and they say they're not allowed to go

to city council meetings because they're afraid of CHL holders, we are going to legally remove the rights of people who obey the law from participating in the system, which we always encourage people to do. In addition to which we've said, if you own one of these devices, which are legal to purchase and legal to own, we will now make you a criminal. And if you try to get rid of one of these things by saying, okay, I can't have it, I'll give it to someone out

of state, now you are a felon. There's no grandfather clause. There's no option at all. You are just a criminal simply by having it. Yeah. You know, it's very much akin to... Isn't this an Ipsos... What is it? Ipsos or ex post facto? Ex post facto, yeah. Yeah. In which we are criminalizing something that you had perfectly legally in your possession the day before and now the 243 passes that it is instantly contraband. Not all that different from back in the first Trump administration with the bump stock deal, right? Same sort of thing

that happened. You know, the thing is with most of these laws that make something illegal, which You know, the thing is with most of these laws that make something illegal, which previously was legal, there's an option for the person to not be prosecuted either by grandfathering it or not buying another one. In this case, it says, you've got it in your possession, you're a criminal, and there's nothing you can do with it. And it's so extreme and so typical, there's just no, it makes zero sense at all, except an attack.

And of course, the way they sold this, or the way they promoted it was that these things are only good for murdering large quantities of people because they say they were used in the Las Vegas shooting, which I personally do not believe, but they say the only reason a person would have this is to kill a large group of people. Paul Evans, you know, militant, anti-gun, house rep, and the Democrats, so I said anybody who needs one of these should not be allowed to have it. What is completely missing the point is that thousands of Oregonians have these things

because they find them fun to shoot. Yeah, and they're not mowing down tons of people right now with them. Exactly. So the Democrats once again are lying about this. And what's equally or even more absurd is that the Republicans agreed with them. The Republicans numerous times said, if you had just brought us a bill making felons out of people who own these devices, we would have voted for it. Gerard said it on the fourth. A bunch of them all said it on the floor. With friends like that, okay. Now, as far as the restrictions go, is it where it automatically takes all these public buildings where a public meeting could

take place and it is banned, or do the various districts have to choose and declare it? The various districts have to choose and declare it? The various districts have to choose. Okay. And what this is is the next step that every session they'll come back and say, oops, there's a loophole, we forgot about this, or we forgot, or they'll have some other excuse either to make it mandatory.

Remember we started with bands at airports where there had been no problems. Then we moved to schools. Now we move to all public buildings, all public meetings. And we're talking about cemetery boards, you know, and fire boards. And it creates a situation where every separate jurisdiction is going to have to make up their own rules. But of course, on top of it, while claiming that CHL holders created a dangerous environment in these public meetings, they've done nothing to mitigate it. There's no police there. There's no money for metal detectors.

So as they make their so-called storied, they're very happily gun-free zone here in public meetings, there's nothing that's going to make them any more safe though in exchange. It's like putting a sign outside a bank that says no parking for getaway cars, right? It's absolutely absurd and it makes no sense. And by the way, we've disarmed our security guard too, just so you know, just to be on the safe side. All right. Now, I just want to understand this. So they're going to have to declare this. Now, do they have to put a sign or something very obvious that you're not allowed to? I don't know how obvious it has to be. There is supposed to be signage that's included, okay? So they're supposed to put up a sign that

says you're not allowed here. But how obvious that will be... you know, none of this stuff is ever really enforced correctly. I mean, there are a lot of rules that apply to gun dealers that most gun dealers don't even know exist and don't comply with because they don't know. In this case, it's easy to imagine, you know, some leftists in Ashland or something saying, well, you know, no guns are allowed,

because the other thing is, is that it's going to be dependent on what meetings going on. For example, in Canby, the, for a long time, the municipal court was also the city council chambers. So if the city council chambers said it's off limits, it may not have been off limits when the, when the building was being used to hand out badges and awards to the fire department. All right. So you could actually have a situation where the same room, okay, the same room in a public building, right, okay, it's used for the cemetery, for the cemetery commission, right? Okay, they show up there and guns are banned. You could then

have the water commission shows up and they could say, all right, we don't, right? So it just depends, right? Exactly. Exactly. So the governing body has to post a clearly visible sign. So when the municipal court's in session, you can't have a gun. The city council in Canby so far has never banned something like that, whether they will or not remains to be seen. But then when that same room, which the city council uses or the municipal court uses to, as I said, that's where our fire department, when they're, when they're inducted into the fire department, they get their badges, they get their awards. That sign might have to come down. Oh, no. Okay. It's just crazy because once again, when asked repeatedly, what is the problem that caused this? Well, the problem is, is that some people said that they couldn't

go to these meetings because they were afraid of you and I. And there wasn't a single example given. And rather than say to those people, you're neurotic, grow up. We legislate away the rights of a group of people who become the new Trumps, you know, go through these processes and jump through these hoops and we'll still screw you over. And the Republicans are like, yeah, we'll be here for that. Yeah. And we have to remind ourselves that once again, had there been a denial of quorum, this would have just gone away.

There would have been no time to have passed it. But I guess it was, it was very important. It was very important that the Bruce Starr got the money for the district so he could do the victory lab. Hey, look at the money we got. We got to do fire hydrant. I don't know if it's a fire hydrant. And in fact, you know, the only one who's actually come out with the opposite pointing out the garbage that we've spent money on has been Representative Dwayne Younger, who's put out a press release saying, look, look at what we did with this money. You know,

we gave millions of dollars to some people in downtown Portland who want to open up their own version of Pike's Place. Well, that's a private entity. That's their problem. Exactly. They spent $700,000 or something to put up a welcome sign to Salem and they spelled capital wrong.

That's your money. Yeah, well, you can't be cynical enough about this process though, right? Kevin, I appreciate the update, but I did want to find out what does 243 actually mean here? And I think we kind of understand that it's a work in progress at this point, and it's designed to keep you off guard if you're a CHL holder, I think, honestly, right? Yes, and put you in jail if you bought something you had the legal right to own. Okay, what could go wrong with such a system in the state of Oregon? But thank you for the update on that, alright?

We'll have you back. Kevin Sterritt, Oregon Firearms Federation, OregonFirearms.org. That's what it means. This is the Bill Meyers Show. KMED invites you to discount Fireworks Superstore's Big Block Party, Wednesday night. Hi, I'm Paul Strandberg with Valor Gear Nursery and I'm on game eating. So the burnout is made in America, but a lot of stuff is not. And a lot of what president Trump has been working on in the tariffs world,

in the trade world and in the industrial policy world is to fix a bit of that. And I wanted to get some more specifics or at least a take on how it is that putting tariffs may help. And Spencer Morrison joins me. He's a lawyer, a sessional instructor of law, independent intellectual focused on applied philosophy, empirical history, and practical economics. He's the editor-in-chief of the National Economics editorial, and he's the author of the recent book ReSure, How Tariffs Will Bring Our Jobs Home and Revive the American Dream. Spencer, it's a pleasure having you on. Welcome. Oh, thanks a lot. Good morning. All right. Where are you in the first

place? What section do you live in? Where do you live in this world? Oh, I'm living up in Alberta. In Alberta? Oh, this is going to be the 51st state? You think that's going to happen at some point? Hey, we've got a referendum next year. You do? Okay. So this referendum is where you actually talk with your fellow citizens in Alberta and say, hey, we'd like to leave Canada and go to the United States, Or is it where we just begin the chance to talk about the talk?

What does it mean? So, yeah, so this is a referendum for independence of the province. And then after that, once we're a free country, then we'll see if we want to join the Union or see if we strike a deal or see what happens. I'm kind of curious, do your fellow Canadians end up saying, you know something, Spencer, if we go to the United States, what happens to our free, excellent healthcare?

Well, it's not free and it's not excellent and don't call me Canadian. Okay. Well, Albertan. Well, is that it? Albertan, my friend. Albertan. Okay. So, okay, your fellow Albertans would lose their free healthcare.

And of course, we know that there is nothing more important than don't take my free healthcare away. Okay? I'm having fun with you. All right. Spencer, let's take a focus here though. But you've looked deeply then at the Trump plans here and the Liberation Day kind of was a shock to the system.

I'm still not sure most people and maybe even many business leaders really understand how this is going to work. So what are you thinking? Because I know Bannon really likes your book. Bannon's a smart guy. And so I want to find out why he likes your book so much. Maybe you can explain a little bit of this. Well, what President Trump is doing is he's using tariffs to revert America from this modern financialized economy, which is an utter monstrosity, which is

hurting the American people, back to the traditional method of economic production, which is a manufacturing production focused economy. So that's what President Trump is ultimately trying to do. He's trying to switch the power essentially from the banks back to the factories and the people. He wants to shift America's economy from a country of takers who are buying everything on debt to a country of makers who are actually producing the material wealth. So that's what tariffs are all about. And that's why I wrote this book called Reshore, it's about bringing the industry back home where it belongs. I know that's what he wants to do, but yet at the same time he also wants cheap money, which in fact he's yelling at the head of the Federal Reserve, Jerome Powell all the

time saying, you're stupid, come on, we want 1% money, of course, which would make, I think, gold soar to about $6,000 an ounce. You know what I'm getting at? Because money has been fleeing the United States a dollar because of this. They're looking at us as not a really good bet in debt, really. So how do you square that circle with President Trump wanting cheap money, but yet you're also saying that he wants to end the financialization of the economy? What do you mean by that? Yeah, so I mean, specifically what I mean by that is since 2001, America has lost over 60,000

factories and over 5 million manufacturing jobs. On top of that, we've lost 5 to 7 million service jobs, which were sort of predicated on those manufacturing jobs. It's a bitter pill to swallow because ultimately that's directly affecting the working and the middle class of this country. It's a huge, huge problem. What tariffs are ultimately doing is reshoring the factories and rebuilding American industry. In terms of the cheap money, you know, everybody loves cheap money. You get my point though. Now I understand he's a real estate guy so I

think a real estate guy they're just a pathological about cheap money. It's just the way it is. It just comes from the territory, right? Unfortunately. Yeah, okay. I guess what I'm looking at though is he looking to intentionally destroy the dollar in some form or another in your opinion in your economic opinion in order to make that happen because as long as we're the world's Reserve currency everybody needs dollars in order to buy oil or settle international trade and things like that It ends up being a burden on us. We have to export a lot of dollars, which of course led to this financialization. We export the inflation so the rest of the world can buy oil and everything else and with it

and then that money comes back to us buying government debt in the bond market. How do you see that? That's exactly it and you touched on a really good point that I'll briefly address, which is this trade deficit, right? Okay. How do you pay for the trade deficit? Because every year since 1974, America has run a large trade deficit. And a trade deficit essentially just means that we buy more from them than they buy from

us. That's the deficit, right? Yeah, that's exactly what it means. And we're talking about current production, so current goods that are being produced, current services that are being exported, right? So we're producing less than we're consuming. Of course, the bills have still got to be settled. So we end up paying for that by selling off assets and debt, assets like real estate, that's why there's so many foreigners buying up American real estate, and stocks.

This is why up to 17% of the US stock market is foreign owned. There's all this money that's being settled across accounts. I did not know that. That's a pretty good percentage of US stocks. Sure. Why? It's a huge amount. It's a huge amount.

They're buying up tons of ownership. And China, in particular, is buying up a lot of stakes in American industry and technology companies, and then pilfering the technology. How do you go then? Well, just listening to what you said there, sorry, I'm going to have to redirect my question here. Is the president going to have to destroy both the dollar and to a lesser extent the

stock market as you talked about part of the financialization engines in order to make his desire to re-industrialize America happen? Or am I wrong about that? I'm kind of assuming you know where you're going. Yeah, so there's two sides to the stock market coin. And just to be clear, I don't think the stock market is the best economic barometer for the health of the nation. I don't think that's the case. A lot of people look to it, you know, but really what it is... Yeah, the stock market is not the economy, but I know that we've been kind of faked out for many years now.

That if the stock market's great, whoever's president claims credit. That's just the way they are. Yeah, no, no, it's true. It's true, but we should be looking at the economic production, we should be looking at jobs, we should be looking at quality of life. I think those are much more important metrics, but that's sort of besides the point. The stock market, you know, is record high even after tariffs. And there's a tension in the stock market, and I'll just tell you what that tension is. The tension is, on the one hand, when we have a large trade deficit, that needs to be settled

up. So there's a lot of money that flows back into the stock market through this balance of payments that inflates the stock market. On the other hand, though, if we can grow the economy organically by investing in our own domestic human capital, physical capital, you're going to get long-run economic growth which is going to spur the stock market. So I think, you know, oddly enough the stock market is probably going to go up either way. The question is whether we're going to have both inflation driven gains or

real production driven gains. And one could argue that a lot of what has been going on in the stock market has been currency or inflation-driven gains. Is that kind of what you're getting at right now? Oh yeah. Oh yeah. The stock market is entirely inflated by the trade deficit and the demand for US dollars. It's not entirely pegged to production, which is where we want to move it. And it's certainly not even pegged to profits because you look at the price-earning ratio in the markets and, you know,

really high ratios right now, you know, yeah. Okay. How then do we change the American culture? Because one thing that I've heard a lot of, you know, we've heard this even with the immigration conversations here, Spencer, that jobs that Americans won't do. And yet honestly, when you look at certain, certain job categories, whether it is a farm working or whether it's, you know, working at a chicken processing plant in the Midwest, or whether it's even doing a factory job,

there does appear that people have been trained in this country to not want to do factory work or manufacturing jobs of some form or another. How does that change in your view? Yeah, I don't really buy that. What I see on the ground or I'm talking to regular people, what I'm seeing on social media, people want to work. People want the jobs. And media, people want to work. People want the jobs.

And I think people have to remember the scale of what just happened. It feels like it's inevitable. It feels like it's always been this way. Back in 2021, there was over five to six million more people working in manufacturing jobs. So we lost that many just in that short amount of time. Really? That short amount of time. That short amount of time. Boy, no wonder the alarm bells are clanging. Well, no wonder the alarm bells are clanging in

the Trump administration when you look at just that one stat alone, right? Yeah. We did the job of 20 years ago. We could do them again. Not a problem. People want... A lot of the same people are still unemployed. They just moved out of the labor force. Right? Oh, they're still unemployed. They just moved out of the labor force. Oh, they're not counted. They just magically disappear, right? That's exactly what happened. Next, I would have to then ask, what about AI? Because Trump wants us to manufacture more, and yet the way that the tech bros that he's also partnering with up there on the stage You know the Elon Musk's in the Larry Ellison's and all the various other things is that We Americans aren't going to be doing work robots are going to be doing the work for us

Does that put a wrinkle in President Trump's desire to reshore according to your new book? No, not particularly. How so, the reason for that is that the rate of the rate of productivity increases that's been driven by robots and automation has actually remained remarkably stable since the fifties. We're talking about a three to four percent increases per year.

The way that that's balanced out historically up until 1973 is that production volumes also increased by the same amount because the economy was growing. So you actually saw no decreases in employment. The recent stat of, you know, when they say, oh, robots are taking the jobs, what they actually mean is that the increased production volumes have been off shore to China, whereas the factories that still remain here

are increasing their productivity at the same rate that they've been doing it for the last 50 years, right? So it's a bit of a... it's an intellectual sleight of hand. So you don't believe then that AI is going to just, you know, hollow out what is already a pretty hollow manufacturing section? You're not concerned about that this time? hollow out what is already a pretty hollow manufacturing section. You're not concerned about that this time? Well we're going to have productivity increases, no question. The question is whether or not the increases in volume of production will go up at the same rate that the productivity is increasing. Well my question would be that the person who owns the robot then is

getting the gain from that productivity and not some poor schlub that's in a hillbilly elegy neighborhood in JD Vance's old neighborhood. You know what I'm getting at? That's what I'm concerned about, that sort of thing. How do those people get pulled out of that life? Yeah, I mean if you look at the economic data from 1950 until 1973, what you'll find is that wages increased in tandem with productivity. So if a factory worker or any worker was making more product, they were paid commensurate

amount, right? So if you're making 20% more per year because you're doing a more complex job or because you have more automation tools at your disposal, you are also making 20% more per year. The difference is, is that since we started offshore in our production, the gap widened up between productivity and wages. And this gap was driven by the fact that now American workers are competing directly with people in China and Mexico who earn pennies on the dollar. Almost a wage arbitrage of some sort, right? Exactly what it is.

When it comes to then tariffs, which then encourage the reassuring of that, does this put a different kind of balance between the profit margin of capital, those who own the properties and the robots and labor. Does it change any of that? Well, that's been a major tension in the sort of balance of offshore. When companies and people are allowed to offshore their production, when capital is mobile, of course, that benefits the people who own capital at the expense of people who work. mobile, of course, that benefits the people who own capital at the expense of people who work. Now the problem is that as a sovereign nation, most people work, right? You can't have everybody owning the means of production, so to speak.

So what's happened is that there's been a big shift in bargaining power between people who work for a living and then people who can move the production to places like China or Mexico. And so President Trump is making it very difficult or unwieldy then to move that production which would tend to benefit labor. Is that what I'm hearing? Yeah, precisely. And the question, so I just want to bring up the point, I mean people talk about you know this is not some sort of corporate socialism. What this is, is the recognition that, you know, this is a nation, it's not an economy, and we have to make sure that everybody in the nation ultimately has a stake in the success of the nation. And that's not going to happen when you have

15 million people that used to have jobs that are now on welfare collecting money from the government. I would agree with you. And it has to do with the societal cohesion. And if people don't think that they have a dog in this fight of keeping it together, bad things tend to happen to countries with a lot of people with no purpose in life. And we're seeing that here. I mean, you look on the West Coast, the Republic of Chas and all of this stuff.

Most of those people, frankly, people who are unemployed, they've got no prospects, they've got no skin in the game. We need people to have skin in the game. How long do you think it will take President Trump's various tariffs and the incentives to take effect? Because in the United States, boy, we have such short attention spans and gosh, it's almost like everything's focused on the next quarter though How long do you believe in your economic viewpoint? I

Think if the pace was accelerated to the maximum I would take a minimum of two years and I say that based on historical precedent in the You know when America was ramping up its economic production in advance of World War It took about two years to get there and that was under wartime measures. So, you know, if we're serious about it, we can get it done quickly. How quickly are we doing it in your view right now? When you look at the Trump administration right now, are we being serious right now? I think President Trump is being serious, but the judiciary is not serious, Congress is not serious, Wall Street is not serious. serious, but the judiciary is not serious. Congress is not serious. Wall Street is not serious. So there's, there's people are pumping the brakes on this. Sir, a possibility that Wall Street would actually like it to fail and go back to where it was, the

financialized economy. They would love it. The cumulative value of the trade deficit since 1974 is over $28 trillion. All of that money was plugged into stocks and bonds and real estate. And what would happen if more of that money was plugged into local factories, building, entrepreneurial activity, things like that? It takes that away, doesn't it? Yeah, it means ultimately a bit of a zero-sum game. We can either invest domestically in our own people, our own infrastructure, our own economy, or we can invest all of that money abroad and build up China, which is exactly what's

happened. All these cities in China, all of this industry, all of this technology, didn't come from nothing. Americans bought and paid for all of it. Spencer Morrison is the author of Re-shore, How Tariffs Will Bring Our Jobs Home and Revive the American Dream. And Steve Bannon, who I know is a pretty smart cookie, is a big fan of this book. I've not read your book yet, but I wanted to kind of get the overview of this. Is it available at all the normal spaces? And do you have a website where you talk about this? Anything else? Give me everything, Spencer, if you don't mind. Yeah, I'd love for people to come and check out my X and my substack. I'd reel S.P. Morrison. The book is available on Amazon. We have a beautiful second edition that's just come out and in paperback now.

Okay. Finally, let's say that the big beautiful bill passes as we're all hearing about it right now. We must be keeping an eye on that and we'll see what happens in the House here. Does that help this process or is this just trying to tampen down the domestic instability for the time being and then we're going to have to crank down on the tariffs some more? How do you see that playing? Yeah, we'll see what actually comes out of Congress. I think whatever good stuff is in the bill is likely going to be watered down in the Senate, but we'll ultimately see what happens.

I think what America needs is Congress to pass a proper re-industrialization bill that focuses specifically on tariffs. Just on that. Yeah. Just on that, instead of worrying about emergency tariff authority. I think you're right. I think it'd be better. But boy, do you think you'd get Congress to agree on something like that? I don't know. Good luck. All right. Well, I will not call you a Canadian. You are an Albertan. All right. Good man. Albertan. Spencer Morrison, author of Reshore, How Terrorists Will Bring Our Jobs Home and Revive the American Dream.

And maybe you'll be the 51st state at some point you play your cards right, okay? We got two trillion barrels of oil here, okay? We got lots of cards. We have cards that would love it too. Thanks Spencer. Talk to you soon. Thanks a lot, God bless. This is KMED, KMED HD1, Eagle Point, Medford, KBXG, Grants Pass, and you're waking up with a Bill Meyers show, and I truly appreciate that. Freddy's Diner in Old Town Eagle Point has a menu designed to appeal to everyone in the family. Choose from 13 hearty burgers served with fresh cut fries, crisp and moist pressure fried chicken, hand dipped fish and chips, beer battered prawn fries, crisp and moist pressure fried chicken, hand dipped fish and chips, beer battered prawns, sandwiches, steaks, salads and more.

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