The Pomp Podcast - #1524 Anthony Pompliano | The TRUTH About Trump’s Tariffs

Episode Date: April 7, 2025

Anthony Pompliano records a solo episode explaining everything that is currently going on with tariffs, how we got here, President Trump’s tariff plan, examples in history, and where we could be headed from here. =======================Simple Mining makes Bitcoin mining simple and accessible for everyone. We offer a premium white glove hosting service, helping you maximize the profitability of Bitcoin mining. For more information on Simple Mining or to get started mining Bitcoin, visit https://www.simplemining.io/=======================Xapo Bank, the world’s first fully licensed Bitcoin-enabled bank, offers military-grade security with an unmatched blend of physical and digital security, as well as pioneering regulatory oversight, so your funds are always protected. Beyond secure storage, they enable you to grow and use your Bitcoin. Earn daily interest in Bitcoin, spend with zero FX fees using a global card, and make instant payments via the Lightning Network for unrivalled access and convenience. Visit https://www.xapobank.com/pomp to join.=======================Pomp writes a daily letter to over 265,000+ investors about business, technology, and finance. He breaks down complex topics into easy-to-understand language while sharing opinions on various aspects of each industry. You can subscribe at https://pomp.substack.com/=======================View 10k+ open startup jobs:⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://dreamstartupjob.com/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Enroll in my Crypto Academy: https://www.thecryptoacademy.io/

What's up everyone? This is Anthony Pompliano. Many of you know me as Pomp. You're listening to the Pomp Podcast, which is my effort to find the most interesting people in the world and sit with them for hours while I ask questions in an effort to learn. So it would mean the world to me if you would subscribe to the show on your favorite audio platform, watch episodes on YouTube, and tell your friends and family about the podcast. My goal is to help millions learn from the world's most interesting people. So let's get into today's episode. Are you looking for a simple way to earn Bitcoin rewards every single day? At Simple Mining, we help people mine Bitcoin, even if you're brand new.

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That's X-A-P-O-B-A-N-K dot com forward slash pomp. Go check out Zappobank today at zapobank.com slash pomp. I've got a lot of friends that have been reaching out to me asking about tariffs. What are they? Why are they being implemented? How do they work? And what do I think is going to happen in the future? And so rather than answer all those text messages, phone calls, emails, and conversations, I thought I would just sit down and talk to you and explain exactly what I'm thinking. First, when you think of tariffs, we have to go way back in history. We have to understand for the last 50 years, there's been a divergence of experience for people in the United States. On one hand, the United States is rocking. Our economy is strong. People have

gotten wealthy. There's incredible social and economic mobility for a certain portion of the population. Those people, they own investment assets. And as we've increased our national debt, we've devalued our dollar, and we continue to push those asset prices higher, the people holding the investment assets, they get wealthier. But the people who are the investment asset holders, they are completely oblivious. And frankly, they don't even know that there's another portion of the population. Let's call them the working class. That working class used to be a very small portion of the population, but it has grown over time. This group, approximately 50% of Americans, they have no investable assets whatsoever. They hold 100% of their wealth in dollars.

And so as we have increased the national debt and devalued the dollar, these people have actually been hurt. I heard a great quote from Scott Besson, the Treasury Secretary recently. He said that in the summer of 2024, there was a record amount of Americans that took vacations in Europe. At the same time, there's a record number of Americans who are using the food bank during the summer of 2024. That's a perfect illustration of the difference in experience between the wealthy and those who don't have investments.

Now, of course, there's some people in the middle, but those two stories are really the story of America right now. And so we have a candidate in President Trump who got elected to the White House on a very populist movement. A big part of what he said he was gonna do was that he was gonna slash spending,

He was going to levy tariffs and level the playing field, and that he was going to try to put working class economic policies into place. Now, of course, those things all sound great, but they're really, really, really high change when you go and you actually implement them. And so that's what we're watching right now. Now, let's talk about exactly what the working class is ultimately upset about. The first thing is that that dollar has been devalued, and you don't have to go back over 50 years.

In the last five years, the U.S. dollar has lost 26% of its purchasing power. It's really hard to live your life if 100% of your net worth is sitting in cash, and then it's losing 26% every half decade. On top of that, we have seen manufacturing, industrial jobs completely shipped overseas. We've seen a hollowing out of that middle class. Right now, two out of every three children in the United States, they think that their financial future is bleaker than their parents'. It's the first time in history that more people think

their future is bleaker than their parents. And so naturally, these people, they've lost hope. They don't have access to jobs. They don't make enough money. They're watching the expenses around them explode. Housing is unaffordable. Food is going up. Gas prices were skyrocketing.

Everything in their life was getting harder and they felt like they were falling further and further and further behind. And so naturally, they used to sit there and say, we have no hope. But then a candidate showed up, as has happened in countries around the world throughout history. When the working class is upset, eventually somebody leans into the populism and they say, I will listen to you. I will put policies in place to help you. And so naturally, Donald Trump,

what he's doing, whether you agree with him or not, whether you think he's smart or you think he's an idiot, this is objectively what he's doing. He is sitting there and he's saying, We have trade deficits with other countries. They are getting a better deal from us than we are getting from them. And so he is attacking that and trying to reset global trade. The way that he's doing it, again, whether you agree with it or you don't, the way he's doing it, though, is he is levying tariffs. Those tariffs essentially say, if you want to bring goods into the United States,

then you have to pay a certain amount of money. Now, usually it is levied as a percentage. And so what they have done is they said blanket on all imports in the United States, 10%. If you make something outside the US and you want to bring it to the US, you pay 10%. Some countries, they've gone even further. There's rates as high as 34% for countries like China. And so the reason why this is important is by setting that up, what you essentially are doing is you are adding a protection for the American economy.

Now, this isn't a new idea. America was literally founded on this idea. If you go back to when we set ourselves up as a country, the founding fathers put in place a 5% blanket tariff on all imports into the United States. Now, the reason they needed to do that was twofold. One, they needed to actually generate revenue for the U.S. government so that they could fund all their different activities and provide services. We were a new country.

We didn't have taxes. There was no such thing as federal income tax back then. And so tariffs were the way that we funded the U.S. government. On top of that, though, the other thing was that the European countries, they had really high industrial capabilities. The U.S., we were in our infancy. And so by putting these tariffs in place, the idea was that you could create protection for those infant industries.

Those infant industries could then have time and space to go build themselves out. Those tariffs ended up laying the foundation for what eventually became the Industrial Revolution. The United States went through a massive boom. We were able to mature. we were able to build out so much of what made this country what it has become. Now, of course, over time, the tariffs started to get reduced and we added in the income tax. And so if you look at the chart, what you can literally see is tariffs come down and income

taxes go up. Income taxes started with like 1% and eventually now we have people in this country who pay more than 50% total tax rates. And so what we did is we swapped from taxing foreign countries and foreign companies and using that money to benefit Americans, to today, we actually tax Americans, both companies and citizens. And then frankly, a lot of that money gets shipped overseas to help other people. And so that swap is a huge component of what we're watching play out here. Now, again, we go back to the working class. They feel like they're left behind. They feel like they have no hope. They feel like they have the deck stacked against them. And so you have Trump who shows up and what he says is, I'm going to put these tariffs in place and I'm really

going to do it for three different reasons. The first is he wants to generate revenue for the U.S. government. A huge part of what Trump wants to do is he wants to be able to cut government spending. He needs to replace that spending or that capital with revenue coming from somewhere else, so through the tariffs. And then he ultimately promises, we'll see if he does it, he promises that he's going to give a massive tax cut to people who earn $150,000 or less per year. And so the whole idea here is, can you shift our economy from spending tons of money in the public sector and move that activity to the private sector? If you look at job growth in the country over the last couple of years, a very large portion of all jobs that were created were actually hiring of government

employees. It wasn't private sector growth, it was public sector employees. And so what this administration wants to do, again, they're aspiring to do it, is they want to shift from public markets all the way to the private sector. Now, those tariffs will generate revenue. And so the idea here is if you generate revenue, then you can start to lower the tax rate of certain people. Sounds like a good idea. Let's see if they can do it. The second thing that they want to do is that they actually want to gain negotiating leverage over foreign countries so that we can get foreign countries to lower the tariff rates that they place against the United States. Now, a lot of people don't know this, but foreign countries actually tariff us at very high rates

compared to what we tariff them. In almost every case, foreign countries have higher tariffs on us than we have on them. Now, a huge argument against tariffs is that we should have free trade. Free trade is the idea that these foreign countries

should be able to trade with us without any friction and we should be able to trade with them. It's a cute idea. I like the idea of free trade. I wish that we had it. But America now faces a situation where we are realizing

free trade does not exist. Even if we have no tariffs or no trade barriers against other countries, if they have those trade barriers against us, then that means that we don't have free trade. They quite literally are creating friction for our producers to send our goods and services to them where we are letting them have unfettered access

to our country. And so naturally, what Trump is trying to do is gain some sort of leverage so that he can go to these countries and say, you must change, you must take down your tariffs, you must take down your trade barriers. We've seen Trump. He said things like, if they do it to us,

we're gonna do it to them. And we've even seen him say things like, hey, why is it that they're all doing it if these are so bad? Now, again, whether you agree with them or you don't, objectively, this is his thought process. This is what he's trying to accomplish. And then again, the third thing that Trump is trying to accomplish with these tariffs is that he wants to reshore manufacturing and create American jobs.

Now, the reshoring of manufacturing really became a big talking point for both Democrats and Republicans during 2020 because during the pandemic, what we realized is we chased efficiency and low-cost labor all around the world for the last couple of decades. Sounded great. We get cheap products coming into our country. But the problem is that we gave up resilience. All of a sudden, we needed PPE. We needed medicine. We needed all sorts of different goods and services. But we couldn't actually do that here in the United States. We were relying on foreign nations. And so when the world shut down, that became a problem. Now, I don't expect another pandemic to occur in that size and scope, but there are many other reasons why this becomes

is a really big national security issue. Imagine if we get locked into some sort of war, imagine if there are natural disasters, imagine if there are other economic issues that come up that prevent us from actually being able to get those goods from foreign countries into the United States. That's a big problem. And so this idea of reshoring manufacturing

is a national security issue, but also we wanna create American jobs. And so any country that doesn't make goods, it's a big problem. I recently saw my friend Naval Ravikant, he had this great tweet where he said, The countries that do not make drones are going to have a big problem moving forward.

Now, why is that important? If all of a sudden warfare is going to go from soldiers with guns going out onto the battlefield and shooting at each other into a drone-based warfare system, which looks like where we're headed, we can't rely on Chinese drones or other foreign adversaries

to provide us with the different technology that we're going to use on the battlefield. That doesn't make any sense. And so there's example after example after example of this. And so this is not unique to the United States. There are books written about various countries all over the world.

One book that I would suggest you read is a book called Twilight of the Elites. And it's written actually about France and how France has a very similar problem to the United States. They shipped out manufacturing. They created this kind of two caste system. They really hurt the working class.

The wealthy got wealthier and it has led to a rise in populism. And so this is something that really comes from globalization more so than the United States or any one country. Now, let's go back to the tariffs for a second. As we went and we actually placed these tariffs on these countries,

one of the things that we've seen is that there was an experiment run in 2018. And I think that experiment's really, really important. We had two things happen in 2018 that I think are worth mentioning. The first is that Trump's administration, 1.0, they put tariffs on washing machines, solar panels, and steel.

When they did that, we saw in the first couple of months the prices of those goods rise for about three to five months. But then after we peaked three to five months later, those prices fell very aggressively for the next, call it 12 months or so. And so every single product that we put a tariff on, within 18 months, that product was cheaper than the pre-tariff level. That goes against the idea that tariffs are inflationary.

Now, on top of being able to raise revenue through those tariffs and also incentivize American manufacturing, what we were able to do is that Trump was able to drop the federal tax rate from 39.6% down to 37%. And so that's the idea here is can you raise revenue with tariffs and can you also drop the taxes? That shifts us from an income tax-based system to a consumption tax-based system.

There's a loophole in tariffs. If you don't want to pay higher prices for certain foreign goods, then buy American-made products. There's a financial incentive now to buy the American products. Now, of course, I think that what's happening in the current iteration of tariffs is that Trump came out, he was in the Rose Garden recently,

and when he announced the tariffs, he came out with monster numbers. Frankly, every friend I have on Wall Street was shocked at how big the tariff numbers were against some of these countries. But I actually don't think that's where we're gonna end up. Instead, what I think is happening is that there's an anchoring,

and you can go and you can read, I recently reread the book, The Art of the Deal, not because necessarily I think that Trump's some massive genius, but I want to understand the person who's leading our country, how do they think? How do they act?

What is their mindset? What is their mental frameworks? And one of the things that's talked about in that book is anchoring in a negotiation. You got to come out with a big number, kind of shock and awe them, and then you negotiate down from there,

but at least the starting place is in your favor. And that's what I think is happening here. I do not expect us to end up in the steady state with very high tariffs of 25, 30, 35% against most of these foreign nations. Instead, I've been very consistent

over the last couple of months. And what I think we should end up with is somewhere between 5% to 10% tariffs on all imports into the United States. And rather than levy that as a punitive system where we're punishing people for their actions, instead, we should just have a blanket 5% or 10% tariff. And then we remove the tariffs one by one

for certain products that we want to incentivize to come into our country. As many of you have probably heard me say, avocados and bananas, we're not that great at producing those. And so, we need other countries to do trade with us. We should remove tariffs or significantly drop them on those products to incentivize them to bring those products to us.

And so, ultimately, this is where I think that we're headed, is that I think that these tariffs, we have a big shock and awe, investors are very scared, there's immense pressure on these foreign leaders, they're going to come to the table. Now, what are they going to say when they come to the table? Well, we're starting to get some of those kind of examples. First, let's look at Taiwan. Taiwan has come forward and they've said, listen, we really, really need the United States

to be on our side. We want to do business with the United States. We know that right now we have a very high tariff rate on the United States in a way that maybe other countries don't. And so what we're willing to do is we're gonna drop all of our tariffs, 100% of our tariffs, we're gonna drop them down.

On top of that, we're gonna remove all trade barriers, not just looking at tariffs, but things like currency manipulation, subsidizing our producers, all these things that give us an advantage in bilateral trade. We're going to drop that as well. And then on top of that,

Taiwan says that they are going to increase their investments in the United States. They already have TSMC who's going and building factories here, but they want to increase the amount of money that's being invested. And they are also committing to buying our industrial products,

our agricultural products, our energy and our weaponry. And so what you get is you basically, very quickly after the announcement of these tariffs from the Trump administration against Taiwan, they come to the table and say, hey, no mas.

We don't want to get into a trade war with you. Instead, we hear what you're saying. We agree with you. Here's what we're willing to do. We're going to drop tariffs. We're going to drop trade barriers. We're going to make bigger investments in the United States. And we're going to buy goods from you that come into our country.

And so if that agreement actually gets signed, that'd be a pretty good deal for America. And guess what the U.S. is likely to do? We're likely to take the tariff that we originally said we were going to put on them and drop it. Maybe we'll go to zero or maybe we'll go to five to 10%, but it will be a much lower rate than what we currently have announced for Taiwan.

Now, on top of that, Cambodia, Vietnam, India, many other countries are coming to the table and they're saying, we hear you. We are willing to drop the tariffs that we have against your country. Now, what's interesting is the administration is saying to themselves, you know what? Zero tariffs against us, that's a good start,

but we actually wanna make sure that you're not manipulating your currency, that you're not actually subsidizing your producers, that you're not trying to hurt American workers, that you're not trying to hurt American manufacturing. And so we're going to see where all these negotiations go. But on the other trade barriers that are in place, I think a great way to understand that

is think about Canadian lumber as an example. America, we've got plenty of lumber. We actually can be very large producers, but there are plenty of people, go talk to contractors or go talk to people who buy lumber. Many of them are buying Canadian lumber And they'll tell you, Canadian lumber is cheaper. Now, how is it that somebody could go

and actually get lumber from Canada and then move it all the way to the United States? And they could somehow do that cheaper than people here in the US. Now, some people will say that there's labor, but it's North America. Labor rates are actually pretty comparable than if you were comparing, let's say,

America and China or some Southeast Asian country. But actually, one of the big things that's happening is that the Canadian government is subsidizing the production of lumber in Canada. And so they're able to flood the U.S. with cheaper lumber than what American producers can actually produce lumber at. So naturally, the U.S. government has a choice. We can either let that continue to happen,

which hurts the American producer, or by levying tariffs, we can say, no matter how much you subsidize those producers, we are going to make sure that you're selling your products on an evil level playing field than the American producer. And that's how you ultimately use the tariffs. Now, again, free trade would be amazing, but we don't actually have free trade.

And so, the U.S. has to step in. We have to play this game. We have to take a strong stand in order to get these people to the table. Now, of course, moving forward, one of the things that I think a lot of people are going to be worried about is, are the prices of certain goods going to go up? In some cases, yes, of course. But what we do see is, let's say, for example, back in 2018, when we put very high tariffs on China, 20% or so, we actually only saw the price of the goods go up about 4%.

Now, how could that happen? What occurs is that there was actually manipulation of the currencies in order to go and say, we don't want a 20% increase in prices. And so you have to remember these tariffs happen in a very large, complex, global economic system. Now, part of that global economic system that I think is worth paying attention to right now is although the tariffs are getting put in place,

we're seeing a number of positive developments in other areas. For example, oil prices have been coming down substantially. They're down about 25% or so. We currently have gas prices that are at a four-year low. There's a lot of Americans. That's a very big portion of what they spend money on. And so getting that down 25% quickly is obviously helping them. On top of that, inflation has been crashing about the last three months or so.

Truflation, the real-time alternative inflation metric, they had inflation at 3%, which was higher than the government numbers in December. Today, they have it at about 1.4%, which is lower than the government numbers. And so as inflation has been crashing by about 50% in the last three months or so, a lot of that is because these deflationary forces at play in the economy. And then lastly, we also see something called the 10-year yield going down. Now, why is that important? A lot of things when you're borrowing money are based on the yield rates or these 10-year yields.

And so when you see there is as that comes down, mortgages get cheaper, companies can borrow money at cheaper rates, etc. And so naturally, if you think about this, yes, the stock market is going down because investors are fearful. They're nervous. They feel like there's uncertainty and chaos. They're super, super concerned about what's happening out in the financial markets. But at the same time, gas prices are going down.

Food prices are not exploding higher. Mortgage rates are going down so homes can become more affordable. And naturally, what you're seeing is inflation stay suppressed. Those things help the working class in a way that maybe the wealthy, the asset owners, don't quite appreciate. And so naturally, these tariffs, one of the things that you've got to pay attention to

is they're not designed to actually pay attention to the stock price. Instead, what you see is you see the administration saying something very clear. We don't worry about the stock market right now. We're very worried about oil and the 10-year yield. They feel like those things going down not only help the working class,

but they lay a foundation for a massive economic boom moving forward. Now, my word of caution to everyone who's watching this is the following. If you look at the stock market, if you turn on financial media, there is fear porn everywhere. Doomsdayers, fear mongers, they're telling you the world is ending. Calm down. Take a deep breath. The world is not ending.

Could it be bumpy? Of course. But the world's not ending. Instead, what you need to really pay attention to is the fact that during COVID, we saw markets crash, and then there was a quick recovery. The same thing is likely to happen here. And so reflexivity at play is an important part of this. I think that everyone who is fearful,

everyone who is freaking out, who's selling their stocks in a couple of months, we're likely to look back and say that was a complete overreaction. And so there's uncertainty in the market. What I know is that the people who are patient, the people who don't have leverage, the people who can think long-term,

they're likely to not feel a lot of pain right now. They're likely to look at the prices going down of their favorite assets as buying opportunities rather than paying for them to actually have to go and sell those assets. So keep your head on straight. Tariffs, they're a big deal right now. Pay attention to what's happening, but understand that the current situation is probably not where we end up. I think that the tariffs are a good policy, especially if we get good trade deals and then we get those tariffs right down and lead to an economic boom. Let's see what happens. Thank you.