The Pomp Podcast - #1530 Anthony & Polina Pompliano | Why Bitcoin Will DOMINATE During Economic Chaos

Episode Date: April 15, 2025

Polina Pompliano, Author of ‘Hidden Genius’ and Founder of The Profile, and Anthony Pompliano, Author of ‘How To Live An Extraordinary Life’ and CEO of Professional Capital Management, discuss bitcoin, crypto, gold, tariffs, Anthony recaps his trip to the White House, and he explains why he thinks bitcoin will skyrocket past gold. =======================The future is being built today and the future of currency isn’t dollars, euros, pounds, or yen, it’s crypto. And Gemini thinks that’s a great thing. Because a future where money is decentralized, inclusive, and globally accessible, that’s a future that we are anxious to be a part of. Go where dollars won’t. With Gemini. =======================Reed Smith is a dynamic international law firm dedicated to helping clients move their businesses forward. With an inclusive culture and innovative mindset, Reed Smith delivers smarter, more creative legal services that drive better outcomes for their clients. Their deep industry knowledge, long-standing relationships and collaborative structure make them the go-to partner for complex disputes, transactions, and regulatory matters. Learn more at www.reedsmith.com=======================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. What's going on, guys? Today, we've got a great episode with Polina Pompliano. In this conversation, we talk about Bitcoin, crypto, gold, my trip to the White House,

what I took away, and why I think Bitcoin is poised to go ahead and actually skyrocket past gold. On top of that, we talk about tariffs and what's going on, not only with the policy, but also the communication. And then we think about where is the world headed and what's going to happen to the end of this year. I hope you guys enjoy my latest conversation with Polina Pompliano. Anthony Pompliano runs Pomp Investments. All views of him and the guests on his podcast are solely their opinions and do not reflect the opinions of Pomp Investments. You should not treat any opinion expressed by Pomp or his guests as a specific inducement to make a particular investment or follow a particular strategy, but only as an expression

of his personal opinion. This podcast is for informational purposes only. Today's episode is brought to you by Gemini. The future is being built today and the future of currency isn't dollars, euros, pounds, or yen. It's crypto. And Gemini thinks that's a great thing. Because a future where money is decentralized, inclusive, and globally accessible, that's a future that we are anxious to be a part of. Gemini teamed up with futurists, technologists, and designers like award-winning artist Matt Griffin, known for his illustrations for Dune, to craft a vision of the future with crypto at its core. The creative theme, Go Where Dollars Won't, emphasizes exploration, growth, and the crypto market's limitless

potential. Whether it's going on that Martian safari to capture an unforgettable photo of a herd of woolly mammoths grazing the red planet or using Bitcoin to pay for your lift pass to go strata skiing down the mountain peak of a breathtaking comet. Whatever adventures we'll be living, one thing is for sure, in a future this fantastic, the limits of traditional currency simply cannot keep up. Financial innovation will usher in this new frontier and so go where dollars won't with Gemini. Go check them out at Gemini.com slash go where dollars won't. Again, go check it out at Gemini.com slash go where dollars won't. Today's episode is brought to you by Reed Smith. Their practice of law has the power to drive progress, to move businesses forward and support

them in achieving their goals. By seizing opportunities and overcoming obstacles, Reed Smith is focused on outcomes. I personally use them as my law firm, and I think that they are fantastic. They know that your time is valuable and that your matters are important. Their deep industry knowledge, longstanding relationships, and collaborative structure make them the go-to partner for complex disputes, transactions, and regulatory matters. Reed Smith delivers purposeful, highly engaged client service that drives progress for your business. Go to reedsmith.com to learn more about the best lawyers in the game. reedsmith.com. Go check them out today. All right, Polina, what's the first topic?

All right. So why is gold outperforming Bitcoin right now? Well, it's a really good question. I think a huge piece of this is gold and Bitcoin are sound money assets. So what does that mean? That means that they're outside of the system. They operate outside that legacy financial system and no one can go create more of it. You can't create more gold. You can't create more Bitcoin. And so when you have sound money, those two assets benefit from the debasement of a currency. It benefits from uncertainty in the market. People think of them as safe haven type assets. Now, when people hear, oh, they're safe havens, they think if there's uncertainty, they have to go up immediately. There's a little bit of nuance.

I think it's very important to unpack. In the moments of crisis or uncertainty, like when there's tons of tariffs being put on and off and people are worried, what you will see is people are actually going to sell all of their assets and they're going to go towards dollars and treasuries. And so that's exactly what happened a couple of weeks ago. What now has happened is people have said, wait a second, this is actually a situation that there's not some massive calamity on the horizon. I want store of value. And so they started to buy gold. Now, why is gold going up? Gold's up about 20% to start the year.

Bitcoin is down about 8%. So people say, well, if both of those assets are sound money, shouldn't they be moving together? If you go and you take a look, I think there's this guy, David Foley and Lawrence Lepard, who both of them put out this chart that shows gold moves first, and about 100 days later, Bitcoin then moves. My thesis as to why this happens

is because central banks and large financial institutions, buying Bitcoin is still new to them. Some of them aren't allowed to do it. Some of them don't have investment policies to do it. It's not the thing that they're trained to do. So uncertainty, I want to store value, go buy gold. Then they start to think about it and they say, oh, I also want to go and put a little bit of Bitcoin.

And so you're going to see more dollars going to gold than you're going to see going to Bitcoin right now. Over time, that number has been increasing. But I think gold moving first is really a sign of the large capital pools, people who are hardcore into finance. They're the ones who are buying gold first. And then you have kind of the Bitcoin buyers who show up shortly thereafter. And so one of the pieces that I also think is important to pay attention to here is if gold and Bitcoin over the last 12 months are both up about 35%,

then what you can see there is that over longer periods of time, not weeks, but actually years, Bitcoin performs at least as good as gold. And then over really, really long periods of time, it significantly outperforms gold. And I think that you should expect to see that continue to happen here in the coming years. Last week, you went to the White House, you interviewed Bo Hines, and he said a strong U.S. dollar is, in my personal opinion, also good for Bitcoin. Yeah, this is fascinating. When I first got into Bitcoin, it very much was positioned as Bitcoin is competitive with the U.S. dollar. If Bitcoin is successful, that means the dollar's demise is on the horizon. I've changed my mind on this completely. Instead, what we've actually seen is that Bitcoin has been successful and the dollar has been successful. it's all of the weak fiat currencies

that have kind of fallen at the feet of these two assets. And where you can see this in the crypto industry is Bitcoin is obviously a digital currency, runs on a public blockchain. But now you have these dollars that are operating on a public blockchain as well with stable coins. And so stable coins are pushing US dollar adoption globally.

Bitcoin obviously has become very adopted on that same kind of global base. And so those two assets now are actually moving in concert. They're helping each other, they're reinforcing each other. What are the assets the United States wants to own? They have dollars and treasuries, they have gold, they have Bitcoin, right? That is kind of the portfolio of strong assets

going forward in the future. Now, nobody is like, hey, let's go buy some weak fiat currency. And I think that's really, rather than it be dollars versus Bitcoin, it is now dollars and Bitcoin winning and these weak fiat currencies falling at their feet. And so I would expect that trend to continue.

And it's great to see somebody like Bo Hines being kind of in tune with what's happening there. Just as an aside, what was your impression of the White House, the crypto forward policies, what Bo Hines was saying, all of that? White House is cool. I mean, walking around there, you know, this place is popping. Not first time I ever went. But, you know, I was walking around this place. Pretty, pretty cool. And, you know, part of it is like it's the White House. It's just cool to be there. But more importantly, it feels historic. It feels like this has been an important place in the history of our country. And it still remains an important place today, regardless of who's in office or who the players are.

like the place is important. And so I think it's hard to walk around there and not feel kind of the gravity of the location. In terms of the administration, I think I really had two major takeaways. They get it. And they're serious about leaning in here. And they get it actually was one of the biggest critiques against the Biden administration was that they didn't get it. They didn't understand what the technology was. They didn't understand why it was important. They didn't understand what the possibilities were. They didn't understand what the risks of not embracing it were. This administration, they check all those boxes, right? They get it. Then, I mean, I don't know how many times Bo Heinz got to say, we want to buy as much Bitcoin

as we possibly can until people realize they may go buy a lot of Bitcoin. And so I think there's a whole kind of conversation there where they're going to lean into this thing and they're really going to go try and figure out how to acquire as much. I did ask him, are you going to get to a million? Like that's kind of a round number I've heard thrown out there. And he was kind of chuckling to himself, was like, well, maybe we should get to infinite, which is hysterical because only 21 million Bitcoin, but it was this idea of like, we want to get as much as we can. That's why we're not saying a number, because if we get to a million, we're going to want 2 million. If we get to 2 million, we want 4 million, right? Just constantly trying to acquire,

which is no different than individuals. I don't know anyone who's like, I got enough Bitcoin. And so I think that it's pretty cool to see the government of the United States taking a very similar approach. And really it's because Bitcoiners have infiltrated the White House, right? If you put Bitcoiners in places of power and influence, they're going to Bitcoin. right and that's basically what we're seeing them now do with the u.s government is they're saying we should do this with the u.s government the same way that we've done with financial institutions public corporations and individuals as well and do you think in the future there is a world where in times of uncertainty and chaos people don't necessarily buy gold but they go and buy bitcoin

well they already do that it's just on somewhat of a lag yeah somewhat of a lag and you know if you go back and you look at 2020, it was a really interesting time. So myself, many others were yelling and screaming, you can't print trillions of dollars and not get high inflation. And frankly, we were mocked. We were ridiculed. We were talked down to. People called us idiots. I mean, you go back and you look, people kind of like whitewashed history, but it was a contrarian view to talk about inflation coming and high levels because you had the Fed saying that inflation, if it did show up at all. It'd be transitory. You had pretty much a lot of the mainstream media just regurgitating the state talking points. All the economists agreed, don't worry. I forgot how controversial

inflation was. It was highly controversial. And again, I continue to say it, whenever all the economists agree on something, take the other side of the bet. Almost always you can guarantee that they're wrong. And so that's what ended up happening there. Now, if you fast forward and you go and you take a look at this kind of current situation is I think that the Bitcoiners have really started to understand the economy. And so I would argue that Bitcoiners understand better what's happening with tariffs than many of the mainstream economists because they have spent years studying bilateral trade, currencies, the entire setup of monetary policy in the United States, fiscal policy, right? They understand these things in a way that most mainstream

economists and financial players don't understand. And that's why you see so many different Bitcoiners coming out with unique views. Doesn't mean they're right, but they have a better understanding of certain components of the financial system. And that really ends up actually informing what's going to happen. What's good policy. Like those things we are now shifting. Scott Besson, we have a Bitcoiner as the treasury secretary. The commerce secretary is a Bitcoiner. The president is a Bitcoiner, right? You just go down the line. They're all Bitcoiners.

And so when you put those people in these positions, of course, they're going to try to get more Bitcoin. And of course, they're going to see the world through a specific lens. Okay, let's move on to another controversial topic other than inflation, tariffs. So we saw that people are really, really concerned about the tariffs, you know, getting implemented and getting not implemented. Ray Dalio warns of something much worse, saying, I'm worried about something much worse than a recession. What do you think about these people warning of a very serious impending doom? Well, I just think that what Ray Dalio is

talking about there is recession is like a short-term, relatively immaterial thing in the grand scheme of history. Obviously, people who live in the recession, it's not fun. They're going to lose money. They're going to be financial pain, all that kind of stuff, right? There's no guarantee we're going to get a recession, but it's possible. What he's more worried about is there's a changing of the global world order, right? He's saying, wait a second, we are going from a very kind of globalized strategy. We're going from a world where the United States is going to pay to protect all these places. We're going from a world where global supply chains are set up where you use low cost manufacturing and labor in Southeast Asia or in other places and

then bring the products to the United States, all that's changing. And so there's really two takeaways I have. One, a lot of people got very rich on that old system. If you're going to change the system, a lot of those rich people don't want the system to change because they benefit from it. So that's first. The second thing is what is going to be the new system? There's no guarantee that the new system is better than the old system. We think it will be, but you got to figure that stuff out. And so people are learning in real time, what are the rules of the new game? And so anytime that that happens, you're going to see people say, hey, there's some uncertainty here. We got to figure this out. There's going to be mistakes along the way for sure. But we got to

be able to course correct and get ourselves in a good spot. And so the thing I've been telling friends in private that I think is important to share here is I keep telling them, we have to do something different. If you don't agree, we have to do something different, then you're just asleep at the wheel. So most of my friends all agree, yes, we have to do something different than the path that we were on. The debt was out of control. The interest expenses were exploding. It was very obvious that we were just wasting government funds. We kept collecting more and more tax revenue every year, but the deficit kept getting bigger and bigger every year, right? This is insane. So we all agree that you got to do something different. Where the debate comes into

what is the different thing? And I think what Scott Besson has been talking about recently is what he calls a three-pronged approach, is we're going to use the tariffs to incentivize reshoring of manufacturing. We're going to create American jobs. We're going to raise revenue for the government. But that's only one prong of their three. The other one is that they are going to go and they're going to give tax cuts. And so that tax policy specifically focused on people who make $150,000 or less a year, they want to go and give them a big tax cut. That's going to be a massive debate later this year. The third thing is that on top of tariffs and those tax cuts, what they want to basically be able to do is deregulate. And so by deregulating, you now are

empowering entrepreneurs and business executives to go and actually build and spur economic activity. So if you can use tariffs, taxes, and deregulation as a three-pronged approach, the goal here is to actually spur that economic growth and make sure that the government continues to be able to function with the funds that it needs. Now, each one of those strategies is difficult by itself. Doing all three of them together is highly complex, but if you can do it, it's incredibly powerful. And that's where I think a lot of the debate is, is like, are those the right three prongs? Is what they're saying that they're going to do actually the right strategy? And then the third and probably the thing that most people disagree on is, can they pull it off? Let's see

what happens they didn't quite run on this this approach right i mean they did they did but then why are so many people so shocked now because i don't think people believed them i think there's a lot of people uh specifically on the opposing political side of the spectrum that plenty on the right no i think that uh people on the left whatever they were going to do they were going to yell and scream. And by the way, if it was reversed, right, whatever Biden did, there's a bunch of people on the right. They were going to yell and scream at that. So I think there's like take the politicalization out of this for a second. I think that the let's focus on Republicans that disagree with the economic policies. Right. I think that I hear three critiques. One is I

thought that they were going to use the tariffs as negotiating posturing stuff, but they actually weren't going to implement them. Right. The second thing is I like the theory America first. I like the reshoring. I like the job creation. I like all this stuff. I don't like how you're doing it. Right. So maybe I'm cool with tariffs up to a certain point. Like Stanley Druckenmiller was like, I like tariffs, but no more than 10%. Right. So you get some disagreement and like the severity of the use of them. And then the third thing, and what I actually think is the Ferris critique. And I think that the administration knows this and is trying to correct this is the communication of what they're doing. Right. So if they came out and they said, okay, we spent a

couple of weeks, we came up with this plan and we're going to lay out the exact plan. It's a three-pronged approach, tariffs, taxes, deregulation. Here's how it's going to work. We're going to do tariffs. It's going to be 10%. China's going to have higher, blah, blah, blah, whatever. People would say, okay, maybe I don't like what they're doing, but it's very clearly communicated what they're actually going to do here. The problem is that the administration is essentially having to deal with a dynamic environment. So you say, hey, 34% tariff against China. Well, they respond. So then now your plan has to change, right? Think of it almost like a chess. Every time you move a piece, the other team gets to move a piece. And so it doesn't mean

you're always going to move the piece correctly. It doesn't mean you're right all the time. You're definitely going to make mistakes, all that kind of stuff. But I think that the biggest bucket of critiques that I hear from a lot of friends is this is chaotic. And so it's the communication. And now that's why I think what you're seeing is you're seeing Donald Trump go and he's going to continue doing what he's doing, but he's talking at the negotiating table. He's talking to world leaders in his interviews about negotiating. I'm going to keep a hard line. I'm not going to back down. I'm going to keep these tariffs in place. That's his talking points. Scott Besson is having a very different conversation. Scott Besson is talking to the market and he's trying to calm

investors down. And so he's giving these interviews and he's trying to use specific language that investors can recognize. And he's trying to essentially tip his hand and say, here's what you can expect. Because investors, they actually don't care about change nearly as much as they care about uncertainty. If there is uncertainty, they do exactly what you're seeing them do. They start to pull all of their assets into highly liquid, quote unquote, safe investments. So there's a lot of cash going to the sidelines right now. That's why the stock markets are down. That's why Bitcoin is down. People are selling these assets, they're going to cash, and they're saying, let me wait till there's clarity here, and then I can go back into the market. And so when

you see good news being announced that has clarity, that's why you're seeing the stock market run is because people with that money on the sidelines, they're basically saying like, oh, that must've been the bottom. Okay. I'm back in the market. And so really that clarity, that kind of dependability, that predictability, that's what investors are looking for. And Scott Besson, he understands he's from the private sector. He realizes what these investors need. And so now he's doing a lot of interviews, trying to essentially just everyone calm down. There's going to be predictability. This is the plan. This is what we're executing. I'm going to tell you the future. And that gives investors a lot more confidence.

in kind of the chaotic miscommunication that I think they were feeling in the first couple of days. So I think for those of us who are on Twitter and other social media, we've heard from the ultra rich, right? Like they're very outspoken about what this means for the country. Who I haven't heard from are small business owners. Like what does this mean for them? And I just saw a CNBC article that says a group of five small businesses sued Trump on Monday, seeking to block new tariffs he has imposed on foreign imports in recent weeks. The lawsuit alleges that Trump has illegally usurped Congress's power to levy tariffs by claiming that trade deficits with other countries constitute an emergency. They're saying this is not an emergency.

We talked to somebody who works at, I don't know how small it is, but let's say a smaller business. And she said that they are kind of like trying to figure out what to do with their pricing structure because they don't know what's going to happen in two weeks, two months, two years. What do we think? Are some of these small businesses going to get crushed because of this? Are they just trying to swim in the uncertainty? Of course, there's going to be winners and there's going to be losers in every strategy. But the same was true before. The old strategy, there was winners and there was losers. So there was a lot of businesses that were winning and they felt like, hey, this is a great policy, but there's a lot of businesses and American workers

This system's not working for me. And so they're very clear. They're not trying to help the wealthy people. They're trying to help the people who got left behind. And so they're changing the structure. An entrepreneur, you should be able to figure it out. And I've seen all these videos of entrepreneurs that are going on the internet and they're like, oh my God, the tariffs are going to crush my business, blah, blah, blah, whatever. And look, there are certain products that you can't make in America, especially in the food industry. But ultimately what ends up happening is that people are not building products in America because they're willing to give up resilience to chase efficiency. That's their right. That's fine. But there is a long line of

business owners who are saying, I think this is the right thing. And so what you're getting is you're going to always get the, some people like it, some people don't, some people are going to be winners. Some people are going to be losers. Now, what I do think is really important here is if you say to me, America can't make X, it's probably not true. But okay, let me just ask you this. I can't imagine in America where we're just like, there's factory workers. There's not factory workers outside the United States mostly either. That's the big lie. We're not talking about like, people are like, oh, the sweatshops. And you see all the memes of people like putting together shoes and stuff. Do some of those exist?

Absolutely. What we're talking about, though, is if you go to China, they have technology factories. They're automated factories. They're using technology. Go look inside of an Amazon warehouse. We're not like pulling boxes on the floor, right? We are using technology. We live in a technology world. Tesla builds cars. They have started to automate away the quote unquote factory worker by using robots. There is the writing on the wall. Humanoid robots are coming. The machines are coming. All of that stuff. Now, the beauty is that we are actually going to remove the most redundant work from the humans from having to do it. Nobody today is like, oh my God, the sewing machines, the sewing machines are going to put people out of business because now we

realize this is a tool that we can use to create better products. Same thing's going to happen with all this technology. And what will happen is now Americans will be able to level up and they'll be able to manage these robots. They'll be able to use these robots. No different than AI. AI so far is not really putting a lot of people out of work. What AI is doing is it's supercharging the people who know how to use it and giving them an advantage in the market. So of course, if you were saying to me, hey, we're going to move sweatshops from somewhere else to the United States. Guess what? No Americans want to go work there, obviously. One of our friends said, we're not a factory economy. We're a podcast economy. Talk for a living. Of course. But if you kind of think

through this, it's technology. So what is America really good at producing? We produce reusable rockets. We produce electric vehicles. We produce all sorts of power dynamics, agricultural products, infrastructure. We produce energy. We produce weaponry, all this stuff. We are the goats at producing that stuff. Pharmaceuticals, goats, right? So you say that. We are so good at producing pharmaceuticals that literally there's a company called Varta that I invested in that they built a box, sent it to space. They manufacture drugs in space and bring it back down to earth. We are the goats. And so there are certain products that we are not the goats at doing. But a great example is why not? And if we had fair trade, would we be able to compete on the

global stage? The answer is yes. And that is ultimately what people are saying. They're saying if we can actually create a level playing field, why is it that America doesn't make certain products? If we can manufacture rockets, do you think that we can manufacture hats? And what I always tell people is this. Are you willing to bet if Elon Musk all of a sudden quit all of his jobs and said, I'm going to go figure out how to make hats in America? Do you think Elon Musk could figure out how to make hats cheaper and better than somebody in Southeast Asia? Of course. No, no, no, no, no. But this is important. If Elon Musk can do it, then it means it's possible. and so ultimately what people are using as this crutch are these like bombastic ill-informed

americans don't want to work for five dollars an hour in a sweatshop no shit no guess what we live in a digital world now people in other countries don't want to do it either americans are not some great species of people that are so much better than everybody else humans are humans and so if you say, hey, there's technology, guess what? Humans want to use technology, right? It's like saying in America, Americans don't want to be farmers. They don't want to actually have to go out there and use a till in the sand. I really don't know what this voice is, but it's hilarious. Morons. It's the moron voice. These people are morons. And so instead of you go and you look, guess what happens around the world? People only do things out of necessity

because there's no other option. Of course, I think that the question is like America is a country of innovation, should we not just focus on that rather than trying to manufacture all this stuff? That is manufacturing and innovation are going to become synonymous. That's my point is that we are on a crash course of manufacturing and innovation. They're going to collide. And my bet is that we are going to crush these other countries and these other entrepreneurs with American innovation, because we have one thing in our country that these other countries don't have nearly to the extent. We have risk. All of these other countries, risk. Culturally, you don't take risk. There's no failure in Europe. If you start trying things and you fail,

you're a failure. In America, you can fail 10 times and literally people will be like, he's one idea away. That is the culture here. The second thing is we have risk capital. How many other places in the world are people willing to go and hand 20 something year olds money and they know half the people I'm going to give the money to is going to go to zero. That is a uniquely American innovation driven thing. And so if you go through this risk, we are a country of risk taking. And because we take risk, that means we have the potential to create innovation. If we have the potential to create innovation, that means that they don't stand a chance. It's just that our best entrepreneurs,

they haven't been focused on this stuff. They've been focused on higher value chain things. But if you level the playing field, we got a ton of entrepreneurs who would love to go after some of these industries. And we already see it happening. And my guess is that we're gonna look back over 10, 15 years, and we're gonna say,

wow, there was a renaissance of American manufacturing and it had a lot more to do with technology than can we convince somebody to go work for $7.50 at a sweatshop. And so everyone who's saying that, you're dumb. You don't understand how the world works. Technology is infiltrating all of these different countries. And that is ultimately where I think this is all headed. Okay. And maybe this goes back to what you said about Trump is talking to the negotiating table while Scott Besson is talking to the people. But messaging from the Trump administration has been somewhat confusing. On Friday, a notice published by the U.S. Customs and Border Protection Office said that smartphones, computers, and other electronics are excluded from his administration's tariffs on goods from China. But on Sunday, Trump said there were no exceptions made to his tariff announcements, adding that nobody will see an exemption in the trade war.

But then Scott Besson tried to clarify things, and then it's just like kind of a – You ever remember the – I think it was Cat Williams, if I remember correctly. He's like, well, see, I got a checking account and I got a savings account. and my checking account, my savings, and he's got this whole skit about like moving money between checking and your savings. That's pretty much what's been going on in this world, right? Is I'm not here to defend the lack of clarity around that.

What's the policy? What's announced the policy, right? And I think they know that. So my hope is that we're not going to see that. But do you think they're being intentionally confusing? No, I think that there was miscommunication and they realized that ideally they wouldn't do that, right? I don't know.

I didn't talk to anyone in the administration about it or anything, but like, it's clear that you don't want to, we announced something, everyone has a reaction. Oh, wait, no, we actually meant this other thing. Oh, wait, it's in this policy, whatever. So like, I think that that's a fair critique goes back to what I said earlier. Ideally, you would not have that. I don't think that they're like, oh, that's some big secret, right? I think that their goal is to end up with good policy and clear communication. But if you have to choose between the two, you're gonna end up with good policy over the clear communication, because ultimately the communication ends up being forgotten after a couple of weeks

and the policy is actually the most important thing, but you need both if you want to have the market calm. And I think that's why you see Besant and others going out into the media. You see Howard Letnick, et cetera, all going out and saying, hey, here's the current view. And so clarity of communication right now

is incredibly important. I think that they are getting better at it. But I always remind people, go back to the first Trump term. That was like chaos times 10, right? They were ill-prepared. I would argue this is chaos times 10. But it's not even comparable to Trump 1.0.

And so again, it goes back to Trump 1.0. There's a massive improvement. Again, it doesn't mean that it's right. But the other thing, I had a friend who told me this, and I thought it was a really interesting point I hadn't thought of. He said, you know who has what feels like chaos and uncertainty?

People doing things. Go to a startup. People doing things, right? It feels like, hey, we're moving fast. We're moving fast. We're moving fast. I'm getting into the question of like, can you run a country like a startup? Well, a lot of people would argue it's better than

running a country like a bureaucracy, right? Because guess what? We had a bureaucracy for four years and we had an open border. We had housing become completely unaffordable. We had inflation that exploded. We had a lot of people who feel like they're worse off than they were before. And so again, it goes back to some of that is not anyone administration's fault. There's structural issues in America. We are a nation that is dependent on debt. And so if you have debt exploding under Republicans and Democrats, you're going to get a debasement of the currency. If you get a debasement of the currency, it's going to hurt people who have 100% of their wealth in dollars. But it goes back to this idea that the simplest way to not rock the

boat is to do nothing. And that is not a sustainable path. And so you got to do something. By doing something, you're going to rock the boat. And so the question becomes, what's the right way to rock the boat? And if you can understand that concept, then we can have a debate as to what are the policies, how do we communicate, all that kind of stuff. But what I see a lot of people forgetting is we have to do something. And so doing something is better than doing nothing. And then once we get into the doing something bucket, okay, let's have a free for all debate as to what is the right policies, how do we implement them, how do we communicate them, etc. My question is how long until we see whether tariffs worked? Well, I think you're really again, kind of good to go back to

three things. Do we get restoring of American manufacturing? We already see announcements. Let's see if they follow through. We already also see, I did an interview with Craig Fuller. He runs a company called Freight Waves. They're kind of like a Bloomberg data provider for all things, logistics, supply chain, et cetera. And he told me that already companies from all over the world are like, what's our US strategy? How do we come in and start building our infrastructure in the United States? So I think that that looks good so far, but we got to make sure that all happens. The second thing is, are they going to raise revenue via tariffs? Well, if you just put the tariffs on, unless you're incredibly incompetent in enforcing them, you should go ahead and you

should get that revenue. So I think that's the second thing, and it's pretty obvious. The third thing is, what is going to be the quote-unquote collateral damage? Are we going to get high inflation? Are we going to get issues in the economy like a recession, economic slowdown? What is earnings going to look like for these public companies? What's the stock market going to do? Those are the questions I think most people are focused on, Because the first two are pretty obvious. If you put a financial incentive in place, people are going to do American manufacturing. If you go ahead and you put the tariffs in place, you're going to get revenue. Now the question is just like, what's the trade-off? And my guess is

that by the end of this year, we'll be able to look back and say, here was the trade-off. Oh, that soon. Well, at least you're going to know what did the stock market do, right? And it kind of goes back to the Besson thing. Like tariffs operating in a silo, if they weren't going to do a tax cut, if they weren't going to deregulate, then tariffs would have a much more negative impact in the short term than if you do these other things. But then let's say within 18 months, 18 months to me is a magic number for consumer prices because what we saw in the 2018 tax cuts is that washing machines, solar panels, and steel, all three products that were tariffed, they were lower

within 18 months than they'd been previously. And so when you have that happen, that means that within 18 months, you kind of work the problems out through the system. Okay, well, let's wait 18 months and let's see. If all of a sudden we start seeing a bunch of the products, prices of these things going down, I think people say, wow, I didn't expect that. I thought that tariffs were inflationary. I thought they led to increased consumer prices. The fact that they went down is actually an encouraging thing. Is there anything that would make you change your mind that tariffs are good? Yeah. Well, I think that there's things that wouldn't even change my mind. Right now, I think that tariffs, I've been saying all along, 5% to 10% blanket tariff on all US

imports, remove the tariffs or drop the tariffs for things that we want incentivized to come to the United States. So if you go outside of that framework, I'm not a fan. If you go to 50% tariff, 25% tariffs, blanket, I think that's too much. If you go to, we're going to tariff one country or two countries, it's still within the framework, right? But I think 5% to 10%, all US imports and then remove tariffs for things you want to incentivize, that's my framework. So if you start to go beyond that, again, I don't agree with it. And so I think that's lost in the nuances. People have been labeling me, tariff's good. Well, tariffs are good if it's 5% to 10% on U.S. imports as a blanket,

and then you remove it for certain things, right? Which, hello, that's where we ended up, right? What are they saying? 10% blanket tariff on everybody except for China. China, you get 100 and whatever percent it is now. And we're going to remove tariffs for smartphones and cell phones and whatever the things are. And there's debate as to, is it exempted?

Is it not? Semiconductors now are exempted. now they're not, whatever. But it goes back to this idea of 5% to 10%, all US imports, remove the tariffs for certain products. That to me is, I'm cool with. I actually think that's a great policy. What I do think is concerning and something that they are obviously working at is the communication. And so if they can improve the communication, let's go, rock and roll. And so it seems like that's what they are doing with Besson talking to the market. it um so like yeah are there things that could change my mind there's a whole host of things

that could change my mind um but within this framework that i have that seems to be where we're sitting i'm good i i like it i think it's gonna work i think that it's a good idea um could i be wrong absolutely so also if we all of a sudden get you know 18 months from now inflation soaring uh we're in a recession like okay that was bad policy right but i don't think that that's situation that we're headed towards. Amazing. That's all I got. All right. Thanks for doing it.