Shaun Newman Podcast - #796 - Vince Lanci & Nikolas Morianos

Episode Date: February 13, 2025

Vince Lanci started his career over two decades ago as a marketmaker on the floors of the NYMEX, COMEX, and NYBOT exchanges, where he specialized in trading commodities with a particular focus on energy options. In 2007, he founded Echobay Partners, a venture capital group dedicated to Exchange Vertical investments. Currently, he holds the position of Managing Partner at Echobay Partners LLC, overseeing the strategic direction in trading and investment.Nikolas Morianos is a Managing Partner at Silver Gold Bull Inc., a leading Canadian e-commerce precious metals retailer established in 2009. As a Managing Partner, he is part of the executive team that has helped grow Silver Gold Bull into one of the largest gold retailers in the world.We discuss Trump’s tariffs, the state of Canada and gold vs dollars.Cornerstone Forum ‘25https://www.showpass.com/cornerstone25/Contribute to the new SNP StudioE-transfer here: [e-mail] your voice heard: Text Shaun 587-217-8500Substack:https://open.substack.com/pub/shaunnewmanpodcastSilver Gold Bull Links:Website: https://silvergoldbull.ca/Email: [e-mail] Grahame: [phone]

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sucker. Let's get out to a bigger audience, folks. All right, onto that tale of the tape. The first has been trading commodities for 20 plus years and is a managing partner at Echo Bay Partners. The second is a managing partner and director at Silver Gold Bowl. I'm talking about Vince Lanchi and Nick Mariano's. So buckle up. Here we go. Welcome to the Sean Newman podcast. Today I'm joined by Vince Lanchi and Nicholas Mariano. So boys, thanks for hopping in. Thank you. Well, for anyone who wants to go back, Vince was back a long time ago. It's a while back. Number 5, 48.

And then Nick, not that far back, 753. I forget what today, Mark, 796, I want to say. Regardless, if you're wanting a little more in depth on who Vince is or Nick is, for that matter, hop back to those episodes, folks. That's the easiest way to do it. Today we're talking, we're going to start out with tariffs. We're going to see where it gets us to. But certainly, Vince, I want to pick.

your brain and Nick feel free to hop in if anything hops out sticks out to you. But I want to start with with tariffs, right? Trump's talking about 25% tariffs. I know we got a 30-day reprieve. We got a new border czar or fentanyl czar here in Canada. Just what does that, what does it look like if anything like a 25% tariff or any form of tariff gets enacted on Canadian stuff on us? Okay, so just looking at the relationship between Canada and the U.S., just on broad tariffs, it is my opinion and other people who are more even more well-versed in this, that the Trump's big-picture plan is to make America great. It's all about protectionism, which is mercantilism, and part of that would potentially,

be raising tariffs. Now we're not getting into the economics of it. You just have to look at the picture like this. Who's the only real trade problem? That's China in my opinion. I don't see how to be anywhere else and the other trade problem is made up. Okay, so Trump is trying to get little tiny winds under his belt before he's he goes to China. So in a world that's how this, the world is fragmented. Globalization is falling by the wayside. And when globalization falls by the wayside, regionalism increases. So you have to resure your supply chains. You have to onshore your supply chains. And that means your best friend is Canada and Mexico, if you're United States. So it would behoove you to embrace your neighbor's geographically because geography is economics now, geo-economics. And then once you solidify yourself on your own continent, or hemispheres, let's say,

then you go after the big boss. Trump tactically comes in backwards. He's all stick and then carrot on the back end. Now, what it means to Canada in general, I mean, look, I don't think you're going to have 25% tariffs on Canada. But tariffs on Canada is a means to an end. I believe he just wants to get, he wants to publicly win so he can unify the country. He has to unify this continent before going after China.

I don't want to go down a rabbit hole here, but specifically, can you be more specific on the Canada-U.S. relationship? We're talking about precious metals with things in general here. I think it could be general. I mean, I think when you look at it from the perspective of a Canadian business owner and just a resident, a citizen of the country, the uncertainty is just off the charts. We can't even get a straight answer on what the reason is for the tariffs. You hear fentanyl. You don't really hear as much about money laundering, but you have to have.

to think that plays a key component because so much of it ties back to mainland China. Is it simply this $200 billion trade deficit, which I mean, for all intents and purposes, the delta there is energy exports into the United States. So it doesn't seem like the harshest of the bunch. It's just there's no clarity as to the why in order for us to come to an understanding. And we don't know if our politicians are simply gaslighting us. right now by saying, you know, you know, obfuscating and just causing a shit show in the national conversation or if they actually know what's going on and they just want to provoke a fight.

Like we have no insight here in the country. It's quite something. Yeah, I can actually talk. Canada's harder for me to talk about than the rest of the world because I don't, I don't really see a problem there. So as you said, that's at all, that's, you know, that's whatever. You can make the case it up. It's like bootlegging with the Canadian border.

I think, well, starting with metals as a finished product, it's bullish for precious metals and it's bullish for oil. What it really comes down to is if we do a universal tariff, let's start with this. Let me start over it. There has been talk of a universal. tar. I'm going to tariff everyone for this. That's not going to happen. It could happen, but I don't think that's going to happen. And even though there's been talk about it, I think the tariff is going to be on

items. I don't think Trump can afford to do universal tariffs because of his agenda down the road. So here's what I mean. The day that he said, we're going to, the tariff start today with Mexico and Canada, what happened? Stocks drop. Oil rally. We don't care about metals for this part. He can't afford to have stocks drop an oil rally as he's doing his agenda. He needs cheap oil and he needs stocks to stay stable to get what he wants. So I don't think it's practicable, practical, or however you want to say that word, for him to get what he wants to get done with Canada.

I do think that what he's doing is he's picking fights with people who really can't afford to lose. to lose he's bullying and in the end he has a history of coming out aggressive declaring victory and then giving a much bigger carrot behind the scenes uh than uh we would have so we would he would have you believe i don't i have to recalibrate on this do you think this is really about trump meaningfully trying to bring manufacturing back into the united states and do you think that the tariffs are just a way of shocking central banks around the world into potentially reacting and, let's say, you know, lowering interest rates, weakening their currencies and in order to offset the costs in the interim, like what do you think, what do you think he's really

about? Okay, thank you. I appreciate that. The world has, here's the picture. You can look at Canada, the US in this picture. The world has changed. Okay. It's, The West has been surviving as a service economy. Canada is not a service economy, but the U.S. is very service economy oriented, and that's no longer working. And as a result of that, we need to manufacture again. So we need to reshore and onshore our manufacturing. And the reason we need to do that is because there's no more trust.

So starting before, but the epicenter or the round zero, where these changes is the Russian, Ukraine war. Now, when that war starts, we seize their assets. We destroy the global trust. Now, every country around the world, including Canada, on some level, saying, well, if he threatens tariffs, then he could also threaten sanctions and go up the scale. But the tariff, to answer the next point, his plan is to bring manufacturing back. Okay, so he wants to start making equipment factories here. In order to do that, he needs to protect our industries. Our, I mean the whole continent.

In order to protect the industries, you raise tariffs from foreign goods, very much like the colonial days. We no longer will buy your tables, we have to make our own tables out of our own wood. And whether that is successful or not remains to be seen. But the tariffs are a form of pushing back against the weakening dollar. Right now, I haven't said this before, but I'm going to say it now. As the world becomes multipolar, the dollar has less power over those currencies, as Nick was bringing up.

We can't look if China's no longer owning dollars and they're owning gold instead of dollars as a reserve asset, then how do we get to them? We get to them with tariffs, right? trade works with money that's the that's the payment chain and the supply chain that's your tariff you give you the table you give us the money well the dollar is no longer affecting those countries and so we're trying to use tariffs to protect our own i feel like i'm all over the place on this that's because i'm thinking of a lot of things at the same time but um trump has i'm going to go back to something i talked about before to put a finer point on this Trump has a limited amount of time to get done what he wants to get done, number one.

And what he wants to get done is convert the economy in a manufacturing way. He has a mandate, and that mandate will expire as the midterms for American politicians comes. And so he's coming out of the gate aggressively with tariffs, although I don't really think he means it. I mean, I don't think it's going to happen. I could be wrong, but let's assume that I'm wrong. He needs to unite the continent and then put China in its place. He needs to do that because then he will be able to lower taxes. So simply put, in order to succeed to rebuild the U.S. economy, he needs to reduce the deficit.

He has proposed that he can reduce the deficit by getting other people to pay us tariffs. and once they start paying us tariffs, that he can also lower taxes. That's not going to happen the way he wants it to. What's going to happen is he needs the U.S. dollar to weaken. In order for the U.S. dollar to weaken, he needs oil to be cheaper. I guess what I'm saying is,

I'm already at the point with Trump's running out of time. I really see that. No, I can totally do that. When you say he's already running out of time, and you both go, oh, yeah, I can totally see that. I sit here and I go, how's that possible? He's literally been in office for like less than a month. How is he already running out of time, Vince? Okay. Yeah, that sounds like it's when I think it's not. It makes sense. Go for it. For two weeks, you know, okay, here's why. The first hundred days of a politician's of a president's mandate is when he has to get something done. So Obama did the American

Health Care Act, Obamacare, however you want to characterize it, the first 100 days is when people get out of your way. And instead of getting those things done, he's been basically shotguning or spraying everything. That's kind of like a spray and prey thing. He started out with tariffs. And what are we talking about now? USAID, which might be legitimate, but it's not, it's not what he needs to get. done so as the 100-day deadline progresses all the senators who are up for reelection will start to look at him as a lame duck not as a mandate okay so I

just see a trend the reason the reason I say that I think he's losing ground I could be wrong is that he came out with tariffs I thought he would close a deal on meaning the tariffs would go down he negotiate with Canada he'd negotiate with Mexico and then he'd come out saying Canada is great Mexico is great there's no tariffs we're on the same board this whole hemisphere is you know manifest destiny plus Monroe Doctrine and now we're gonna go after what we need to go after outside of the US but he hasn't done that he's been redirecting almost like someone who's on Adderall and I think he's lost I think he's losing

focus or work. I mean, I'm not here to judge Trump. It could also say that. Yes. No, I was going to say it could also be that he's just been given too many problems. Like when we were when he, just at the end of the Biden administration when they were talking about sort of Trump proofing the world, you know, they just had, you know, used the analogy of shotgun. Well, they had shotguns problems everywhere. So he came in. He's being asked to solve the Ukraine crisis. He's been asked to solve the Middle East. I mean, he obviously rattled all kinds of cages by saying, I want to take over Greenland and Canada should be the 51st state, et cetera. But the other thing that isn't talked about is the fact that he doesn't, he has a slim majority in Congress and the Senate, but are they real

majorities? You know, especially where, you know, yesterday, and God bless him, you see Elon Musk come out and he says, oh, you know, we're going to investigate how some of these bureaucrats, Congress people, senators have enriched themselves so tremendously off of these relatively small salaries. Well, that isn't, you know, that it doesn't go along party lines. Like that goes both ways. When you look at that list, it's almost equally made up of Republicans and- Well, that list would be seven or eight entities that are like a third of Republican and two-thirds of Democrat. It's pathetic. The point, but the point is like he doesn't, He can't even put things to Congress.

He can't put things, put forward ideas for legislation and have his top generals go out and rally the troops and pass legislation. Like he has to do everything through executive order because he knows he doesn't really have the majorities that on paper it appears that he has. So it is tough. Like I, if they get through the midterms and they solidify their lead, well, it's different. I mean, I think he'll get another rejuvenation. But to Vince's point, once you get through 100 days, and if you're reading your zero hedges and whatever, they're telling you the same thing. He's got to get a lot done. But right now, like, Christ, for a guy that doesn't sleep but four hours a day or whatever it is, he still has too much on his plate probably to try and tackle.

And again, coming back full circle, I'm sure, you know, this little cabal of politicians, they know a lot more than they let on. But I'm sure to some extent, they're kind of wondering where the hell is. is he coming from and what exactly does he want right now because everybody's on their toes like nobody can can sustain this kind of a pace whether they're the ones that's instigating or the ones that are receiving it it's quite something i agree that he's inherited uh several disasters that he has to unwind and he's he's um he's the uh he campaigns on fixing those and he's actually working towards doing that. The big thing is he has to reduce spending, but at the same time, rebuild manufacturing. And that's, and that's, that's the hard thing. He needs to, the tariffs on Canada, he needs,

in the end, there will be no tariffs on Canada and no tariffs on Mexico. We will continue to colonize Latin America. Argentina is our ally. Follow Elon here, it's like a little sidebar. Follow Elon Musk around the world, and that's what we're concerned with. So, for example, Argentina, when Malay won, that was a sign that Trump could win. Okay, we're looking at Venezuela, and we're looking at Brazil in our region. For example, we're friends with El Salvador now, right? El Salvador has described a huge gold finding. Well, you know what usually occurs with gold?

Lithium. Lithium and gold can concurrently occur in areas like that. that. So we went looking. We're securing natural resources in our hemisphere. So the tariffs on regional countries for us is not going to happen. Once we fix our supply chains, then we can do what we want. That's just real duty. His real duty is to fire half the government, right, simplify it, buy or half the government, secure the supply chains locally, build the manufacturing back, and then go out and shell things to the world. That's what we need to do. But the moving parts associated with that are, how is he going to do the manufacturing?

He has to spend money. Where is he going to get the money for the manufacturing? Or he's going to do it in tariffs. That's not going to work. It's not going to work. It'll cause a global recession. He's going to do it by firing people in the economy, like cutting government down. Yeah, that would work.

It would be very vulgar-esque, and he would need pal to eat. So he's inherited a Fed that doesn't like him. He's inherited the border problem. He's inherited fentanyl, which is related to the border problem. And he's inherited a deficit where the Biden administration spent hand over fist, but on nothing, nothing appreciable. I agree. I think, I mean, I know it's early, right? And it's still less than 100 days.

He needs a win. He's not going to get it in Canada. He's not going to get it in Mexico. He's not going to get it from Powell. He's pushing on walls. And he's going to get it somewhere. And it might be Ukraine and Powell. I mean, a Putin.

So once he gets a win, then I think he has a chance of keeping people in the midterm on his side. And so then the second part of his term would work. I like what Scott Bissent wants to do, even though he's universal tar. He's pro universal tariff. But I think Scott dissent is the person that can make all this work. And I mean, that's it. I mean, it's an unnecessarily complicated situation because of the way the news cycle operates. But the situation is the U.S. is going through an inflationary, secular inflationary spiral

as we re-engage ourselves to go back to money back. So it's like the 70s in reverse. we have inflation to get out of financial evasion and service and to create more manufacturing. And in order to do that when you secure us. I mean, ultimately, if he has a government, like he has a country to the north of him, which is what we can speak to, which has a lot of the things that he needs. Like he's very flippant in the way that he talks and obviously not being a politician myself, you can get caught up in the, you know, what did he say today game?

But he says, well, we don't need Canadian oil. you know, and then he goes and talks immediately he'll talk to, you know, Maduro in Venezuela, or he'll talk to MBS and Saudi Arabia and he'll be like, oh, let's cut a deal. And of course, that puts everybody on their heels, but he does have everything that he needs just north of the border. You want to cut out the last piece of the Russian puzzle that you need, uranium, you've got it in Saskatchewan. Oil, what third, fourth biggest reserve in the world, here where we are, basically right under

our feet in Alberta. but it's just one of those things where you need people that want to play ball on the other side and it just doesn't seem like at the moment he has people up here that want to Mexico it feels like Mexico is willing to cave they'll cave quick but in Canada that's where the fence is coming in that's where the immigration is coming in I agree with you oh yeah I mean like we you know I think Sean alluded to this I believe it was just before we started recording that you know he was speaking to Sam Cooper Sam Cooper is like a preeminent in Canada investigative reporter. He's cut his teeth on this for over a decade, specifically,

money laundering and fentanyl. There's a lot more here than, you know, than we could even scratch the surface on. I mean, we don't even have RICO laws. But you're a New York guy. You understand RICO inside and out. Like, we don't have that. So our country and the more you look at it, I mean, it's not a new phenomenon. This goes back hundreds of years. We've been used as a staging ground for all kinds of nonsense. You know, initially for the crown, you know, fast forward. Now it's China or both. We seem to be a playground for other people.

We're still fortunate to have the lifestyle that we have, even though it's being eroded at a phenomenal rate. But he probably does want to clean some of that stuff up. And if he just had a goddamn government up here that was willing to play ball, this could be a very harmonious situation. I don't know if it would be an American Union or something where, We're sovereign, but we have a unified currency, what have you. There's just so many opportunities, but it's just between his boorishness and our uselessness at the moment.

It's a bad combo, a really bad combo. As you're saying this, I'm thinking of there's a scene in the Godfather, too. May or may not remember it, but there's a scene where Michael is in his, I don't know, like his study. and he's got his henchmen around him, and he's in charge. And Tom Hagen is sitting down, right? And Michael's eating an orange, and the way he's eating it just really personifies him. Just, you know, like eating people's soul. It's just really, it's an evil moment.

But the conversation goes like this. Michael wants to kill everyone. You know, it seems like in this conversation we're going to kill this guy, this guy, is Hyman Roth was his main target, I think, in this conversation. And Tom Hagan is sitting down, his ally, his brother, you know, from another mother, adopted brother, but his most loyal person. And Tom says, you don't have to show this guy. He's out of the country. He's not coming back.

And in front of everyone else, Michael ships on Tom Hagen and says, are you with us or you? not you know are you so are you going to help me do this the line is are you going to help me do these things i've got to do or not and i'm a big fan of the tom hagen character in the book he's really good character um and what i see is michael bullying someone who won't push back in order to gain street credit uh in the whole audience and so i think that trump is bullying someone who won't push back i'm not saying you won't push back i'm not saying you won't push back i'm not saying you're not cadden wide just saying that that trumps a bully you know and he wants to get his way so he can look better to the outside world and so if you had a harmonious government

ideologically you wouldn't have this and so what's he doing he's pushing on someone who can push back but won't make him look bad and as a result of that there is a false division here the money laundering in canada i wasn't i wasn't aware of that i'm I mean, you look at the banks, Canadian banks in the United States. Like they've been taken to the woodshed vis-à-vis, you know, TD, for instance, recently, billions and billions in fines. Up here, oh, it's ironic, right? I mean, in our industry, FinTrack is a big, it's a force.

It's, you know, obviously we have to be very careful with it. We're extremely compliant, you know, in our capacity. that's actually part of my role, but it's just ironic that you look around and there's no end of op-eds, what have you, investigative journalists that are looking at this and saying, you know, this is the source of the bubble in the biggest real estate bubble likely in the world, is the fact that we keep bringing money from overseas with dodgy sources, whether it's through casinos in Vancouver or what have you. And yeah, and money probably in my own house.

Right? What's that, sorry? That's the real estate bubble that's really been created by China expats is laundering their own money, right? Well, exactly. But the unspoken problem in Canada is the fact that it's likely. And you know Trump, I mean, it's the interesting part of hearing the, the, the talking points from some of these people that are really, really close to the issue is that the only unspoken part. is you pop this bubble and you wipe out one to two generations of Canadians who have put their

life savings into their homes and they've been under this perception in particular in Vancouver and Toronto where housing never goes down in price you know like you guys have pharma commercials in the United States we have commercials here about getting a he lock on your house like that's what it is it's like every second commercial is like alpine mortgage or something you know you know you want to build a pool home equity line of credit exactly exactly so it's uh it like i said it it's uh it's an interesting thing and i wonder in in some levels if he's biting off more than he can chew because these are problems that just that can't get fixed very easily maybe that's why he's being so obnoxious because he's aware not necessarily he doesn't necessarily care about the money

longer he looks at your economy is more precarious kind of like we were in oh nine when our real estate level is collapsing. You know, I mean, that's true. Your economy is natural resource-based and your wealth is real-estate-based. That's a big problem. And if you look at our biggest, you know, our biggest city, or our two biggest cities, their economies are predominantly service-based. Toronto doesn't produce anything.

I mean, yeah, we have car manufacturing and sort of in the, the donut around it, but Toronto was built on lawyers, accountants, et cetera, service-based economy. So it's a bad mix. I mean, the one thing that I believe, and, you know, I'm no economist, but I see Canada as a, as a prime country that could turn things around pretty quickly. I see the UK, the exact opposite, diametrically opposite. The UK doesn't, they don't have resources, they don't produce a whole lot. They do have the pound sterling in the city of London.

But if that ever gets taken away from them, there's no energy inputs that are going to fix anything. There's no, like Germany, you put cheap energy into Germany again and it lights up. All that muscle memory is there. All those manufacturing plants are there. You just need to turn them back on. Canada is the same, but it's just resources that we have. It's just we've gotten so far away from that because of ideology or what have you. That's interesting that you're putting it down because I'm looking at economies through those specters.

through those lenses. So, for example, an emerging market, even as high as Russia, is a natural resource economy. They pull stuff out of the ground and they sell it for money. And a dictator,

a person who's running a country like that, doesn't build anything. It's all about cash flow. So Canada, now a country that wants to grow something, they sell the natural resources and they invest in manufacturing. Canada is half England

for both services based on financialization and half emerging market. Now that's not a slight. What I'm saying is if you would, instead of taking the money out of the ground and selling it and financing the lawyers

that are laundering the money, Canada would build a factory. It would be okay. It's like your two ends of a barbell and you need to just to build the middle out. And the one thing that we have is we have a weakening currency. So, you know, unless that has some sort of means of turning itself around, who knows, I've never really, I mean, again, it's not really my job to think of things like this,

but maybe manufacturing could come back into a country like this if we've decided that we're just going to have a weaker currency. Yeah. You'll be able to export more, but you won't be able to, I'm just thinking out loud, I'm thinking out loud, I'm not saying you're wrong. We could currency is going to help you export more, but I mean, what do you export it? Well, nothing at the moment. Right, like the US has the same problem, but at a different scale.

So for example, we don't make steel and we're not going to make steel. We can't compete, just like you can't compete on the labor costs. So we can lower our currency to compete. What we need to do is we need to make things that the world wants or that the world needs. So specialty metals that go into hypersonic missiles. Computer chips. Why are these things not in Canada? Why are these things not in Canada?

Your government's not business friendly. No. Right? I mean, I'm looking at, I'm like, why, I mean, your standard of living is similar to ours. your natural resources are more tapped than ours more available than ours and who the hell knows what else you have that you're just not looking at and i'm like wow you guys are really screwed up because of because of government the government's really like we can't but we have resources and obviously we've got an interesting scenario you know that's brewing where you know taking your talking points that make total sense

about the fact that the U.S. is going to need to weaken the dollar in order to affect a lot of the changes that they want to make in this administration. Well, that should at least bode well for our resources. I mean, I don't know how Trump's going to square oil and simultaneously lower the value of the U.S. dollar and lower oil. That's going to be interesting, but certainly with gold, which we don't own any of, but we have an abundance of in the ground. It does bode well. Oh, yeah. You know, everyone likes to make statements in the U.S.

you don't have any gold. Yeah, you do. You have plenty of gold. He hasn't pulled it out of the ground yet. And pulled it out of the ground. Believe me, you go around the world, a lot of these countries, mines are hedging gold that they haven't pulled out of the ground. Like that, all it is is gold is like,

the earth, they pull it out and they put it in the earth somewhere else. So Canada's got plenty of bull. You know, Canada's like a breeding ground for success. It's the people running it. I mean, Vince, you're literally, oh my God. You're literally saying things where you're like, wait a second, you have everything there. Yes, we do. We have a bunch of morons who probably aren't morons.

They're probably corrupt. as you can get running our country, and there's a reason why they're doing it this way. And the problem we have, I think, is like, well, how do we change that? I'm like listening to two guys, go back and forth, I'm like, I have no idea how to change it. It's literally happening right in front of us. We have all the resources under the sun, but we can't do anything with it because our government says we can't or won't. I have a question about your government. I have a question about how government, how your government works in terms of, you know,

it's really kind of impossible to get anything turned over quickly because of the parliamentary style, right? You have to govern by what sort of looking for. Everyone agrees, you know? No consent. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So why is Trump pushing on Canada, other than the fact that he wants to, to look tough like he's attacking his best friend Tom Hagan. Is he going to affect any change? I don't know. Canada's not going to spend any money. Whether you're going to give us cheaper oil?

It would be funny if it ends with that. You already get cheaper oil. I mean, that's like we don't work on WTI. We work on what is that Western Canadian select. So we're already taking a discount to, you know, are you guys are getting a discount getting a discount when you're when you're buying our oil I could very well be refining anyway sweet oil WTI isn't really good for refining we prefer the heavier oil so yeah I mean I don't know yeah it's no it's it honestly it's a conundrum it's

funny to watch somebody look at the the Canadian problem in real time and just twist themselves into knots being like how are you so dysfunctional and and I will I will disagree fundamentally with Sean. You never discount the fact that some of them are morons. I genuinely think some of them are. At least the ones that are at the end of that sort of the puppet string being pulled and dancing. Like they are, they are. There is morons.

But I mean, like literally as we're sitting here, there's at least 11 MPs that have ties to China or I should say foreign influences. okay, whatever you want to take that to mean, that they have not released their names that are still in acting government. I mean, they're prorogued right now, which means they're not there. But I mean, like, it's right in front of us.

Like, we're being influenced by other nations that are not us. But if you go back through our history, that's always been the case. We've always been influenced by outsiders, which I think was one of the points Nick was alluding to. And so you just get to the point right now where we're sitting here,

and more and more Canadians are going, like, but if we just did, Why aren't we doing? No, we're not going to do that, right? Because one of the questions that got brought up with the 25% tariff was all. Maybe we're finally going to get a pipeline across our country and have Canadian oil going across country. And then Quebec comes down and says there will never be a pipeline come across Quebec. You're like, okay, so that, okay, no, that's not happening, right?

Like, we're not going to build out this nation that could be self-sufficient, if you would, and be a stronger ally to the United States. Why is that? Well, I would assume if I'm looking at the tea leaves were being influenced by outside sources all over the place. Right, right. Yeah, and I go for it. No, no, good. Well, I was going to say, I think, yeah, it could very well come back to the fact that we do have an influence problem.

I, you know, Vince, you opened up with who's the big issue here. It's China. It's ironically, I mean, he did slap, but I think it tends. percent tariff on China, but he hasn't talked much about China. In fact, for the most part, when he talks about China, he talks about his glowing relationship with Xi Jinping and how, you know, they get on grade, et cetera. It's kind of what's that? He's he's he's he's he's he's a chashing his friend that he's praising. Yeah. Yeah. His natural his natural rival. Yeah. So But it could very well be that that's it.

Like he sees weakness up north. He sees influence up north. He may not know the extent to the influence, but who knows what it is that he gets in his briefings. It could be, you know, more along the lines of the fact that they've got to get China out. And I've, you know, I've been sharing this with other people just because like, you know, it's the beauty of having a work environment like we have in our office where it's really open-minded. It's free thinking.

and a lot of people of their own volition are out there just doing research on this stuff because they just want to satisfy their curiosities. But Russia giving China access to the Arctic where they don't otherwise have it. And the fact, I mean, when you look at Canada, well, we have a huge chunk of the Arctic. Greenland. Again, the Arctic, untapped resources. And if you want to talk about, you know, strategic sort of landmass, you know, vis a be coming over with missiles, what have you, it could play a role. So in general, it could be that he's just

like, I can't work with this particular government up north. They're weak anyways. We need them out and we need somebody that's willing to play, you know, not just ball with the states, but ball with Trump because. Yeah, I'm thinking about the audiences here, meaning when Trump says, you know, like the power of Canada, he's governing through populism. So it plays well with Americans. and maybe it makes the government in Canada a little bit squirmy, but he's not thinking about the people that are actually considering the ramifications of it. And so that's what I'm saying is he's not, like a terrorist are not going to happen. I'll give you a real example that I'll maybe take some of the pressure off of the tariff thing.

he's gone from I'm going to have a universal tariff on the world which is you know there's risk to that and it's inflationary for us and it's depressionary

for the rest of the world if he did that so it's kind of like we're going to pay more for stuff and we're going to make our own goods go up and price by doing that and no one else will be able to sell stuff because we'll be buying less so it's like you know eggs are $50 a dozen

okay, we'll eat less eggs. The chicken farmer goes out of business, and then people will have to buy eggs suffer. Okay. He goes from universal tariffs, which are still a possibility, if you phase into them, to tariffing countries, right?

Two, this is the progress. If you're looking for relief as a Canadian, this is, here's this path. I'm going to tariff the world. I'm going to tariff the people that I feel like I'm going to weigh with the easiest. Behind the scenes, people push back. And then he says, I'm going to tariff energy.

And he backs up on that. And then he says, I'm going to tariff metals. And he picks the metals that we don't import aluminum and steel. And when he does that, he can say, I've successfully tariffed. We don't take any China steel. I've won over China. And, you know, great. We got our, we got our steal from the U.S.

And, you know, we don't take any Canadian, I'm thinking some, we don't take any Canadian, Hawaiian T-shirt, you know, like, you know, like, you know, or swimsuits, you know. It's like saying, I'm not going to buy any, I'm not going to buy my snow shoes from, from Aruba. I mean, he's tariffing things that he wins on

because there's no pushback. Well, that's like, It's like threatening Putin with another round of severe sanctions when the only thing left is uranium. You need it. And it makes up like $300 million in trade, which is a rounding error for most countries, much less the U.S. It's funny. If he sanctions, if he shuts out Russia's uranium, then he's got to talk to Canada. You know?

Yeah. That's my point. He wants to get Canada and Mexico on his side before. Or he wants to go to Putin and say, even though he's enamored with the guy, he wants to go to Putin and say, I don't need you, Iranians. I got Canada's. And he's starting by stick with Canada and Mexico. And if he doesn't get it, then that means his negotiation with Putin is going to be weak. And so, like you said, what's you going to do, sanction Putin and sanction uranium?

We saw what Putin did to Europe with natural gas. is it okay? Well, I won't send me natural gas anymore. That's the way it works. I think he's just playing to the home crowd now without thinking about it. Yeah, it sounds like you've kind of, you've made a strong case for the notion that he's got wins at home. Now he needs a big win abroad in order to kind of consolidate, not just the American public is behind it, but now to really get people saying, oh, God, you know, just acquiesce.

quick because look at what he just did over here, whatever it might be. You know, just these are big, big deals. Like this, you know, solving this whole Russia thing is going to be just, you know, a monster issue because you're trying to, you're not just going to get some sort of a cessation in, you know, military activity. And Russia wants a new security architecture. It's a completely different, you know, order of magnitude larger. Like, this is a big deal and they're going to be big losers. And they're probably going to be, you know, friends of the United States that end up the losers in that deal. Just because Russia at the moment just doesn't seem to be, you know, they're on the front foot. They've got probably most of the leverage here.

They do. Militarily and geographically, and they have a banker. Their banker is China, though. There's another Trump story that we all lived through, although it may not have been. front page news during COVID Trump went to carrier air conditioning and Apple he negotiated with them and he cut a deal with them he's a horse trader he cut a deal where they would hire people and they would create more jobs and they would keep their prices at a certain level and in return he had intoxicated and using

Apple as an example Apple didn't hire anyone They were already scheduled to hire those people. They didn't even, like 11,000 people. They didn't hire them. But he'd always declared victory, moved on and didn't care about the redaction or the negation on page 15 the next day of newspaper. He moved on. So I think he's in the process of moving on with Canada.

We're discussing it. And it's a real risk for us. but he's you know maybe he's going to invade Grenada tomorrow you know Greenland didn't work out it starts with Chi I invade that

Gaza Grenada Greenland like there is a method okay he's he's not an unguided missile this time and the method is to keep them guessing

carrot and stick he starts with stick instead of carrot right where's Obama would start with carrot you know and be quiet about the stick and then he takes his width and he leverages them elsewhere but he doesn't have any wins yet the only thing he has a win on now i think is uh is uh is u s8 turning out to be a real

win and what's you want to do it once reduce reduce cost i wouldn't be surprised i'm making this up but i wouldn't be surprised if when this is over the uh the keystone pipeline uh gets restarted and we're paying for it the u s is paying for it like you know i i i i can't It's a strategic, it would be a strategic play. Yeah, you know, energy security, you know, even though the U.S. has an abundant amount of energy, the amount that you're exporting to countries because our inept government won't allow us to do it, gives you the opportunity to basically arbitrage that, where you can sell it to them at a premium and you can get it from us at a discount.

And, well, we just have to be happy because, well, you know, that's, That's the hand we're dealt, of course. And it creates jobs. It does. Here's what I mean. Trump's a real estate guy. All he knows is the solution to every problem is building. Whatever pieces made with Canada and nothing this war, it'll be papered over with something being built.

You know, maybe it may be a Trump hotel, who knows, but something will be built. The solution to everything is building for him, and so he's going to build something. I don't really, I don't really think. he's going to be able to do what he wants without a weaker dollar now he doesn't have a weaker dollar now he's going to get a weaker dollar later that's a strong opinion I have and that's basically based on this if he can't get if he can't get tariffs passed let's assume he's not let's say they're not he can't have tariffs offset lost tax revenues on income tax okay so that doesn't work so his spending budget is

higher than everyone else's higher than Biden's okay but it's what he's spending on that everyone is excited about so me tariff in Canada the purpose of tariffs is if I can tariff successfully a country I can lower income tax in the US I can also encourage the nations that have companies that we buy stuff from to move their industry here so why is it tariff in Canada what industry does he want he wants the oil. He's just being a bully. I can't. I don't like the way you can. That point dovetails really nicely, though. You bringing up the lower dollar with, you know, bringing your specialty back in, which is commodities. And, you know, obviously gold, gold fix.

So where do you see? I mean, I have a pretty strong idea of where you see it, but maybe you can explain it. Where do you see us going in the next, say, 12, 24 months and onward with regards to commodities, let's say, silver and gold? And then also, I mean, for us up here, I think a lot of people that are in the, you know, slightly in the note on what's going on south of the border are looking at dissent and saying, you know, what's, what is all this about a sovereign wealth fund in the US? And, And there's been all this hullabaloo about, you know, Trump being pro Bitcoin, which is super. But I believe I've heard and I've read that percent has some sort of a background in gold or he's looked at gold favorably within his portfolio. So maybe you can touch on that.

I'm curious. Let me start with the sovereign wealth fund just to put in perspective. The picture that you're talking about is Trump signing the sovereign wealth fund executive order, dissent on one side and Lutnik on the other. The cent is a gold buck. It was one of his biggest, if not his biggest, holdings in his hedge fund. So he's a hard money guy.

And then Lutnik on the other side or stage right is a Bitcoin guy. He likes Bitcoin, but he's a treasury guy. So he knows that we can use treasuries to, it's almost like you're going to use tether to buy a, our treasuries because no one else will to buy Bitcoin. So a sovereign wealth fund, and I've actually joked about it, a sovereign wealth fund can do whatever it wants. The U.S., I mean, I don't really black or white around it, we can have a sovereign wealth fund, but it's probably the worst idea of the world for the U.S. to have a sovereign wealth. Okay. And I'll tell you

why. A sovereign wealth fund, for those not familiar, a sovereign wealth fund allows a nation to do what it wants. It allows a nation to take risk. So if you're a communist, authoritarian country, a socialist country, a sovereign wealth fund makes sense because you need to buy something that's going to grow. You're not just buying your own bonds, right? So a sovereign wealth fund is generally most advantageous to a country that does not have manufacturing, has natural resources, and has free positive cash flow from it. Right? Now, the United States,

financially, you shouldn't have a sovereign wealth fund if you don't have a positive capital account. We don't. We're borrowing. But more practically, a sovereign wealth fund can do whatever at once. The whole point of our government, the U.S. government,

is the people can do whatever they want, allegedly. And the government's supposed to be stable in the backstop, right? How does the nation grow its GDP by its companies doing well? Do you want a constitutional republic, a democratic republic, for lack of a better word, investing in stocks that it's a leveraged play on our economy and it's dangerous. We shouldn't do it. We shouldn't have a civil wealth fund. I don't want to get into the minutia of it, but we should have a sovereign wealth fund but it's possible because it gives us more leverage over other countries we can go and we can buy stock in other country we can sell oil short we

can buy calls on goals do you really want these knuckleheads to have that power I don't I just don't you know because I've rather do it myself it's the opposite of the libertarian mindset the other topic Help me, what was the other topic? Because I was thinking about it. Just commodities, gold, silver, et cetera, and the next 12, 24 months. The next 12 months. Okay.

So I'll give you two paths. Trump's path that works and Trump's path that doesn't. So Trump's path that works is he negotiates tariffs or protectionism or whatever a deal that slows down the battle between the US and China. Nothing happens here between Canada and the U.S. or the U.S. and Mexico. Everything is copacetic. That's what happened. And he reduces our deficit by creating jobs and manufacturing. Now, he does that by spending money without bonds getting worse.

He's not going to get any tariffs. He's not going to get any revenue from it. He's going to need to get the money elsewhere. He has to go to the debt market. And in order to go to the debt market, he needs pall to lower rates. So he needs low energy, low rates, and manufacturing increasing. And he can't get those three things. He can't get what he wants to get done.

So if he's successful in the first two years, we should have a weaker dollar, a weaker dollar. That's your tell. If the dollar weakens in the first two years, then he has a chance of succeeding. Because on the last two years, it will strengthen very Reagan-esque okay we raised rates the dollar got strong and then as we lowered rates aggressively the dollar weakened the weeks ordered our way out of the economy out of the

recession as we created the investment vehicles um if he's not successful the dollar remained strong as long as the dollar remains strong he will not be successful so in very simple terms if the dollar remains strong the world economy weakens if the world economy weakens that we can't get tax revenues and we can't rebuild manufacturing you can't do anything yeah okay which means all of us the whole world will have to ease aggressively in the next two years so if the dollar remains strong now the world will have will fight recession and in doing that they'll have to lower interest rate so let's say there's only two countries in the world Canada and

the US right we say we're gonna put a 50% tariff on you know Canadian coffee peach or something like that right and you say fine we're just gonna weaken our currency and so the price remains the same your standard of living drops okay our standard of living is okay because we have the global reserve currency we can take it a little bit longer than you can but the money that we're making from it, we're going to rebuild our manufacturing. If you don't lower your currency, your economy collapses.

If you look at the rest of the world, while we're raising rates, the rest of the world is lowering rates right now. Because they're expecting tariffs to hurt. So the longer the dollar remains strong now, the weaker it will be later. If you weak as it now, we'll be okay

later. Because the weak dollar will enable us to finance our investment ourselves. Kind of a little bit convoluted. I'm not all my best game here today, guys. I'm sorry. No, no, it's fine.

It's just interesting because we've seen, you know, for instance, back to gold, you've seen gold going up with the dollar for quite a long period of time. Where normally it's looked as, you know, very simply as a hedge against currency weakness. So it's like, you know, I mean, the long and the short of it in our world is just, it just seems like, and it has been a great time to just own it. But yeah, the next little while, you just, it's just so, there's so much uncertainty and then throw into the fact that we are, what is it like, I've heard something like 16 years into like a secular bull market in equities. Like we are due for some sort of a correction. So he's coming in under really strong headwinds and a very topy market and trying to put it all together.

And then your regular person out there is just trying to game plan. well, how the hell do I, how do I get through this? How do I, how do I navigate this for my family and, you know, to weather this storm that we inevitably are going through? In particular, if you're not in the United States. Yeah, that's actually, you make a good point because I think when people talk about the goal, goals going up with the dollar and Americans will talk about it that way, if you look at it from another country's point of view, right? And if you need dollars to buy stuff for your country, let's say the dollar is what you have to buy stuff with.

And let's say you're a BRICS country. And historically, in a global world, gold goes down when the dollar goes up because it's denominated in dollars. But now gold is going up with the dollar. So now I'm an emerging market or a third world country. And I need dollars to pay my bills. and the dollar is going up, and I look at gold, and I go,

oh, my gold must be doing shitty. And I look at it, it's going up. And the reasons for that is because the world is splitting it, too. There are two currencies now. There's the dollar in the Western Hemisphere. This is what I was going to end up. It's going to be the Fiat dollar in the Western Hemisphere and the gold dollar in the eastern hemisphere.

So if you're an individual in the West, you need to own gold or minors. as a hedge or believe it or not, even though the dollar is strong, let's say you're all getting paid at U.S. dollars, you need to be able to afford the things that we buy from other countries. In the East, they have all the raw materials, we'll say, but they don't have any financialization.

So they need to buy stocks. We need to buy gold. They need to buy stocks, and Canada's economically in the middle of that. You know, you need to buy gold and stocks. The other thing is, I think, and this is, here's my next 12 months or 24 months. If the dollar goes up, gold will continue to go up. And if the dollar goes down, gold will continue to go up.

That sounds really simple and facile. And here's the reason for the weird thing. If the dollar continues to go up against G7 countries, I mean the DXY, not all countries, the dollar is going up against Europe, right? The dollar is going up against Canada. The dollar's not going up against the Brits. It's not, you know, going up against Australia. It's not going up against what you want.

The dollar is reflecting our dominance in the Western hemisphere. And gold is reflecting their dominance in the eastern hemisphere. And so as the dollar keeps going up, the people in the east are just going to keep selling it by gold. with it because they don't want dollars anymore it's the Russian thing in the West as a dollar goes up most of your neo-key jeans are like oh it'll come back down it'll come back down it's not because we're not the buyers anymore the wealth is going east and so that's it I believe that until we get to until we get to a new equilibrium where the world has enough gold or enough substitute could be Bitcoin for I

know substitute for you treasuries, then gold and hard assets would go up at the expense of abstract assets like dollars. So I think miners are the next thing to move. Everyone's been saying that's massive disclaimer. Massive disclaimer. Stay away from them unless you know what you're doing. But I have a position. I just bought miners and I just sold tech stocks. That's not my idea. That comes from directly from Bank of America's Michael Hardenet, whose work I respect. So that's it. Vince, Nick, appreciate you doing this thing.

And Vince, Vince, I meant to chime in earlier. Like, I'm not on my game. I'm like, I think this has been a fascinating conversation. I appreciate you hopping on this side. Nick, you as well. And hopefully we can do it again here in the future. But either way, Vince, we're looking forward to seeing you up in Calgary, May 10th. So that's going to be, if people didn't clue in on that, Vince is going to be in Calgary, Alberta at the Cornerstone Forum May 10th.

So that'll be a lot of fun as well. Thank you for having me. I have a topic, I'm not going to discuss it here, but I have a topic that I'm in the process of writing on. So I'd like to share it with both of you when the time come. And it's going to be precious metals based, but more conceptual. So let me run it by you first. So, thank you. Sounds good.

Thanks, Jens. Thanks for having me.