The Adam Mockler Show - MAGA CEO Gets Destroyed in INSTANT BACKFIRE

Episode Date: August 3, 2025

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No Frills delivers. Get groceries delivered to your door from No Frills with PC Express. Shop online and get $15 in PC Optimum Points on your first five orders. Shop now at nofrills.ca. Alright, check this out. I'm going to walk you all through a wild story. Meet Josh Smith, a small business owner who a few months ago thought he was bulletproof. He thought the tariffs were never going to affect his business, and he said he makes everything in America. Well, that was like the before video. The after video just came out last week in Josh Smith's business seems to be hanging by a thread because of the tariffs,

because he didn't realize that despite making the knives in America, he was importing the steel. He was importing a lot of the supplies that go into the production of these knives. And that's how tariffs work. So many Trump supporters were arguing, arguing about who paid the tariffs, about how tariffs worked,

about if raw materials even get tariffed, and they were all incredibly wrong. Now it's hurting small business owners all across the country. So I have two videos to play for you. The video that he made back in April where he's kind of smugly acting untouchable saying we're never gonna raise our prices, we'll never raise our prices. But then we have another video that was filmed just last week. In the second video he's got a little bit of a different tone. In the

second video he's going through the numbers, the price increases that he's seen, and some of it's wild. Like, a $500,000 import earlier this year is now nearing $650,000, which is an insane amount of money. Any small business needs to know where every thousand dollars is going. I run a YouTube channel. It's a business. We don't import materials or import supplies, but I know where all of the money goes every single month, every business owner should. Well,

when the tariffs come into play, it's not that simple. You can't have that level of predictability, and that's what Josh Smith from Montana Knife Company is figuring out. So let's start off with this first video, then we'll go on to the next one. But I really quickly just want to say, it's easy to gloat and say that these people are idiots and they got what they deserve, but at the same time, just please remember, there are tens of thousands of small business owners across the country, even across the world, who will be affected by this. I'm sure there are small business owners watching this video who are being affected by the tariffs who did not agree with

them. So as much fun as it is to be like, oh, hey, you were totally wrong It's a it's it's bigger in scale than just one person or just one small company or just one Trump supporter This is something that's gonna hurt the American economy for a while and raise prices for consumers When the price of food raises that hurts the most vulnerable communities and leads to a lack of nutrition There are studies about this, it's intuitive, but okay, without further ado, let's watch the first clip. Remember, this one was filmed back in April, right around the Liberation Day tariffs,

right after the Liberation Day tariffs were announced. Let's see what his smug response was. All right, so I hear that Amazon is gonna put a number next to the price of a product on their website to designate how much the tariff is of whatever you're buying on their website. At Montana Knife Company, we're gonna do the same thing. We're gonna put a number next to the price as well.

And that number is going to look a lot like the shape of this goose egg. Well, it's a chicken egg, because I didn't have a goose. But anyway, this is the shape of the number that's gonna be on our website next to our knives of how much tariff affects the prices of our knives. Because we've been preaching this all along,

we're American made, by American, you don't have to worry about this shit. Also, that is actually chicken shit on this egg because we also raise our own chickens. But anyway, I digress. Buy American, make American made and you don't have to worry about this shit. This seems like a nice dude. This seems like a dude who I would run into back in Indiana and he would be a nice guy, but listen, it sounds good, you know, putting America first and making everything in America sounds good in an idealistic world, but that's not how it works whatsoever. Even if you are a made in America company, you make your

knives in America, you have to import the equipment. Everybody relies on international supply chains. Really quickly, the Adam Machler channel is getting very close to 1.5 million subscribers. I'm currently traveling, but we are gonna continue to pump out the content for you all. So make sure you subscribe to the Adam Machler feed below, and thank you, back to the video. And it's kind of worrisome that this small business owner

didn't realize what he was importing or how much he was importing, or even that he was importing anything until he began to look behind the scenes at some of his numbers. So again All of the American suppliers that build these things the people that this guy works with they import stuff, too So even if he has to use some factory and the supplies to run that factory go up because of tariffs He's gonna pay the price and that's gonna be passed down to consumers

tariffs, he's going to pay the price and that's going to be passed down to consumers. So you can't just buy American when we have a global economy. Again, it sounds good and patriotic. It's just not how it works whatsoever. Let's watch the after video. Now in this video, he's kind of jumping around a lot, but what he's doing is comparing the prices pre-tariff to the prices post-tariff. And you can see the exact same line. So like, let me zoom in here.

On the left, this vacuum furnace was $519,000. But in July, the same vacuum furnace is $612,000. That is almost $100,000 increase for any small business. That's enough to just like you're done. If you're a small business and you have an unexpected $100,000 expense, you're done. All right. For those of you that say, buy American-made equipment, the tariffs won't affect you. This is American-made heat treating furnaces. Oh my God, wait a minute. Did he just quote himself from months ago?

But frame it as, to all you people saying this. All right, for those of you that say, buy American-made equipment, the tariffs won't affect you. This is American-made heat treating furnaces. July 17th, 2024, base price 519. July 23rd, 2025, base price 612. The thermal couple interface upgrade, 14,900, 16,700. interface upgrade 14,900 16,700 the loader 10,200 the loader 11,400 to 1000 gallon tanks gas backup reservoirs 39,400 44,300 spare parts kit, same stuff, $18,100, $20,400. So this is my point, this is what

I'm getting at. We're trying to build American manufacturing, this is American made equipment, 100% made in America. This stuff has an effect. Again, I'm questioning why is the cost of equipment to manufacture in America going up that drastically in one year? I'm not hating on the Trump administration. Again, I'm trying to point out that their policies need some adjustments. We should be focusing on finished goods coming in from overseas. We shouldn't be making the cost to buy equipment made in America for American manufacturers go up by this amount of money. $100,000 on the base price in one year. It's kind of scary that he didn't realize this months ago.

It's really simple. Like the jeans that are sitting over there. If the jeans are even made in America Like let's say the cotton is grown in Texas The denim is probably milled in Japan or sometimes Italy the rivets come from China Zippers can come from India the point is the design may be done in the United States like someone in LA may have designed those jeans But it was assembled using products from across the globe. When you tariff things, even if you make your jeans in America, you're going to be putting

things inside your jeans, like the zippers, that come from other countries, necessarily. So I don't know how these Republicans, who are all business owners or businessmen or investors, don't understand a few simple things. First of all, the consumer pays the end tariff. I mean, it's not other countries I think a lot of Republicans do understand that I think they're just kind of like following Trump and not correcting him because they're scared of him But number two, it's important to realize that when you're building something even if you're building it in America The pieces come from other countries whether it's cars or jeans or anything Number three a lot of these Republican business owners don't understand simple return on investment.

It's very, very simple. And I always use the analogy of USAID. USAID was entirely shuttered by Elon Musk because they saw $60 billion and said, wow, we're spending $60 billion? We could save $60 billion by cutting this. But they don't understand the return that that 60 billion dollars makes. The disease prevention, the long-term life saving, the long-term ability to stop any sort of sicknesses before they reach our doorstep, while also building soft power in places that China wants. All of this comes together to

make this 60 billion dollars probably worth like 500 billion to a trillion. Imagine if a disease spread off the back of USAID being shuttered. And that disease costs like $90 billion in economic slowdown. But yeah, that $60 billion investment seems pretty good off the bat. I'm gonna leave it there. If you appreciate the videos we make, make sure you're subscribed to the Adam Ockler feed. We're close to hitting some huge milestones 1.5 million subscribers is soon and I can't wait to hit it. So thank you

all. I'll see you in the next video and peace out.