The Way I Heard It with Mike Rowe - 303: Bayard Winthrop—The Incredible Symphony of Things

Episode Date: February 28, 2023

Bayard Winthrop, founder and CEO of American Giant breaks down our supply chain issues, our trade imbalance with the rest of the world, and how his company still managed to produce "the greatest hoodie ever made" 100% in the United States.

The ocean moves us, whether that's surfing a wave or taking in an inspiring view. The ocean feeds us. Sustainable seafood practices bring the ocean's bounty to our plates. The ocean teaches us how our everyday choices, big and small, make an impact. The ocean delights us as playful otters restore coastal kelp forests. The ocean connects us. Find your connection at monterey Bay Aquarium.org slash connects. Hello, friends. What you got here is another episode of, the way I heard it, specifically, number 303.

It's called the Incredible Symphony of Things. At the risk of destroying what's left of my credibility, Chuck, I'm going to go ahead and say that this is my favorite conversation so far. Well, let me tell you, as I said to you after we were done recording it, that it felt like a two-hour podcast in an hour and 10 minutes. It's dense, it's full of information and passion too. There's a lot of passion in this discussion. You know, it just occurred to me that my mom's last episode was really enjoyable, too. I really like that one a lot too, but this guy, Bayard Winthrop, is right up there with my mother. Byard, true story, sent me a sweatshirt in the mail 12 years ago.

His company is called American Giant, and he left a career in five. finance and decided that he wanted to make clothing, not just in this country, but he wanted to make it entirely in this country, which just doesn't happen much anymore. Yeah. Every element of the supply chain is in his control, all through the Carolinas, from the cotton, to the zippers, to the buttons, to everything. He makes the greatest hoodie ever made, according to Slate magazine, who wrote, an article with that title about the same time, 12 years ago.

And he has taken the reverse commute ever since. No real marketing to speak of. No retail outlets until very recently. I think they have some small stores here and there. But by and large, he just got rid of everything that consumers don't care about and committed to making the very best product he could make entirely in this country. And unlike so many other people who have vowed to do the same thing, he is not out of business.

In fact, he is struggling to keep up with demand. And that's pretty great. It is great. And to hear him talk about it, he speaks so passionately about it. I know he started in finance, but now his love is clothing. He loves making clothing and he loves doing it here. He seems like a real patriot to me. I mean, last week, I was telling you before, you know, we did the equipment test.

And in talking to this guy, we had a conversation. for like 45 minutes and I didn't want it to end. It's a 10-minute equipment test and we were engaged in a global conversation that was about the supply chain and China and everything. It was just fantastic. Well, clearly he'll talk to anybody. And he did.

Because he's so passionate, Mike. And he does. Here's why I like him. He'll go on Glenn Beck for an hour and then he'll go on MSNBC. He'll go on PBS and PR and Fox News. He doesn't care. In that regard, he and I are the same person.

We really don't care much about the politics or the platform. We care about the audience. And he's on a mission, this guy. And he set the standard really high. And, I mean, I'll tell him, and you'll hear it in the conversation. I laughed when I got the sweatshirt 12 years ago, and I learned that some guy with a background in finance was going to try and launch a textile company and make everything in this country.

Good luck, I said. You poor bastard, it'll never work. Well, he did it. He did it and he's doing it. The company is American giant. My guest is Byrd Winthrop. The incredible symphony of things is just a little phrase he utters in the midst of this conversation. And it refers to the incredible complexity that the supply chain really is. And what a beautiful noise it can make when all the instruments work together. You're going to like this. guy. I guarantee it. Right after this. Shameless plug. Long before she was Peggy Roe, my mom was Peggy Noble, daughter of Carl and Thelma Noble. It was her father, Carl, who inspired me to pitch a show called Dirty Jobs to the Discovery Channel and later start a foundation that honored the kind of work Carl Noble did for a living, trade work, skilled labor. That foundation is called micro works and today I'm proud to tell you that we've helped thousands of people get the training they need to begin a career in the skilled trades. In fact, we'd love to help you. You can apply for a

work ethic scholarship right now at microwworks.org. We've set aside $10 million for this year's applicants thanks to a number of very effective fundraisers, including the one with my grandfather's name on the label. I refer, of course, to Noble Tennessee Whiskey, K-N-O-B-E-L, which is now available in a variety of delicious mash bills, all of which you can peruse at noblespirates.com. In fact, if you spend $100 and use code Carl, C-A-R-L, you'll get one tube of orange bitter-infused sugar cubes for free. That's code Carl with a C to get nine sugar cubes, ingeniously engineered to make nine perfect old-fashioned every time. It's my favorite way to support microworks and my favorite whiskey to sip responsibly after a long day of interviewing people on this podcast. Pick up a bottle at noblespirits.com.

K-N-O-B-E-L-Spirits.com. Soon may the noble men come to bring a bottle for everyone. One day when the waitin is done, we'll take a drink and go. Forgive me if I'm cleaning up in the middle of the interview. No, no, no. Chuck is filled with the gentle bits of helpful guys. guidance that have often resulted in entire remodeling jobs for unsuspecting guests on our humble podcast. As you can see, I'm not lying.

That's the screw. I just picked up on the floor. Wow. You literally just found a screw? I'm telling you, I spun my desk around. There's all these things that have clearly accumulated over the last two years underneath my desk that I'm now, I'm now seeing. Your desk wasn't bolted to the floor, was it?

No, it was not. That is kind of like a metaphor for life. You know, the stuff you find in the sofa cushions, the stuff you find under the desk. that you're pretty sure was clean. Under the rug, obviously. I mean, there's just really no end to it. And the older we get, the more crap we have that's so cunningly disguised

in a place we otherwise think we understand. Hey, as we start, I need to show you something. I found this in my photos. That's me about... Oh, that's awesome. A year ago, holding a giant catfish

that I pulled out of the Mississippi River while I was filming a segment for Dirty Jobs that involved caviar harvesting in the Mississippi. And I'm showing this to you because I'm wearing the sweatshirt that you sent me out of the blue 12 years ago. That's awesome. And I really appreciate that. I'm more interested in the catfish you're holding. Did you pull that out with your hands? No, but on Dirty Jobs, in the pilot episode, 2002, we catfish noodleed. outside of Shawnee, Oklahoma. Now, you hadn't started American Giant yet.

I didn't have my favorite sweatshirt yet, and nor did I have gloves. But yes, with my bare manly hand, I pulled out a catfish with a couple of good-natured hillbillies named Don and Jerry. Yeah. I've got to tell you, I've seen you do a lot of awful things. That, for me, would be high in the list of hard things to do, I would say.

Well, it's a very primitive form of fishing, obviously. but the idea that a catfish is going to chomp down on your hand is off-putting. But what's truly off-putting is not knowing what else is under the rock. So it could be a snapping turtle. It could be a rattlesnake, a copperhead. There are like a thousand ways to die catfish noodling. Don't do it, Byrd. That sweatshirt, not to belabor the point, has been bespeckled with feces.

from every species, sperm from all creatures, great and small, that we violated over the years on dirty jobs, and most recently, caviar row from the Mississippi. We should have lined you up for the initial needs assessment for that sweatshers. Sperm, feces. You want to see how durable it is? Yeah, give it to Mike Rowe. They were not in the list, but I am glad to hear that they stood up to the task. That's awesome.

Chuck and I bragged about you shamelessly. preamble, you may assume that you've been properly introduced what I want to do, really, with the hour or, how much time do you have? I've got as much time as you need. Oh, that's dangerous. You're going to want to rethink that. I really do that, Mike, so take your time and when you feel right. My kids are on winter break, and I gleefully have a day off from them as I left them up in the mountains for a day, so I'm not heading back to this afternoon. So I've got a clear schedule. So do as you like. Chuck, that's our title. Jot that down. I left the kids up in the mountains. so let's talk as long as you want.

Now, I'll try and get you out of here in an hour, but all I really want to discuss is the secret to American manufacturing, the various pitfalls that you've had to navigate in your long and winding road. And why in the world it is you're doing what you're doing, which, again, to somewhat repeat myself, is making clothes in these United States from stem to stern.

Every single thing on that sweatshirt You sent me out of the blue 12 years ago, and every single thing on every garment that you're making right now is a reflection of a supply chain that you control. I'm honestly gobsmacked that you pulled it off. Twelve years ago when I heard your story, I laughed because, you know, the movie, sometimes a great notion. I loved the idea of what you were going to try and do. I can't freaking believe you did it. So I guess the first question is, how's it going? When I started the company, I had, I don't know if it's pessimism, but certainly a healthy dose of how hard it was going to be.

I'm not sure I appreciated it as thoroughly. In the beginning, I was told by a lot of people in the industry that it couldn't be done. But I think the one thing we had going for us when we started is that we decided that we were going to make it entirely in the United States. And so that kind of put us into a box. And once you're inside that box, you sort of have to figure out, okay, now how are we going to make it work, given that. constraint. And those early, I don't know, maybe 18 months was an awful lot of just bouncing around the southeastern United States and meeting people. And little by little, as you do that, what you discover that probably should not have been a surprise is that there

is still this incredible manufacturing capability within textiles, obviously across the U.S. outside of textiles as well, but within textiles. And this kind of magical thing that began to happen early on where it took a bit of convincing, I think, early on, to get people on board with what I was trying to do. But once they did and decided they wanted to be a part of it, there was this amazing collaboration of talent and skills that made the process pretty easy. And I think the other piece of it, which, you know, hopefully that sweatshirt that you have 12 years later is still holding up as well as we intended to. But when you put a quality marker up there in front of people that you begin to get to know and work with on a regular basis, the quality piece

of it falls into place really well too. And so it's going well. You know, it's not to say, say that we don't run into challenges and the government is not making it any easier with its trade posture oftentimes as it relates to other countries where we allow people to manufacture in, but it's been the journey of a lifetime and it's going, you know, now we're making jeans and flannel shirts and jackets and all that within the U.S. So that's a victory of its own, I guess. So it's going as well as we could have expected. It took a bit of convincing.

That's a classic understatement. I love it. You also said that you put yourself in a box, and I'm curious, if you think paradoxically, perhaps, that sometimes, you know, our desire to think as freely as possible and our hope to be able to create in as unfettered away as possible, I wonder if those things sometimes become our enemies and if sometimes actually being in a box,

a place where you've got parameters, where you've given yourself, whether it's a deadline, real or imagined, or just parameters, lines in the sand. Has that helped you over this decade? I think with that all the time. I mean, to me, the answer is a definite yes. I'll give you just an example. When we got started, we sort of had this idea pretty naive at the time,

I think, that we were going to make a really beautiful sweatshirt, that we were going to pour us old into it, and we're going to make it in the U.S. kind of consistent with a set of ideals that I value a ton, and that customers would pick up on that, and word of mouth would drive us forward. We really had no marketing budget at all. In those early days, we had some press that began to pick up on our story, and we had an article written at the end of our first year that called the sweatshirt that I sent you the greatest hoodie ever made.

Slate. In Slate magazine, that's right, by a great reporter named Farhad Manju, who's gone on to better things, and I think he's now an editorial right at the New York Times. But he wrote that article, and it was really an incredible moment for us that put us into a demand situation that we couldn't meet for a long, long time. But in the middle of all that, you can imagine, as we were really trying to meet orders and try to fill customer demand for that sweatshirt, we were oftentimes thinking, boy, we could make a phone call and go to Shenzhen or Guangzhou and have tens of thousands of sweatshirts on a boat in no time. But I think by that initial kind of construct, that didn't come to mind. We didn't think about that. It allowed us to stay true to who we were. In an apparel world that is so filled with so many brands that are competing in so many different ways to have a clarity of our position.

about this is who we are and we're committed to a certain way of doing things has served us really well over the long haul and so that constraint I think has been it's forced us to invest in manufacturing innovation and manufacturing engineering and relationship building with all of our suppliers and all of those things over time have just built a momentum that I don't think we would have had the courage and conviction to stick to had we not made that kind of initial I don't know commitment that decision to stay totally domestic so before we get to the supply chain part of it which is just so relevant, so on my mind, I want to ask you about brands in general, because I'm guessing you and I are probably the same age or close to it.

You know, we came up in the 70s, right, where, I mean, brands were so different. They were so, well, branded. You know, Levi's meant something. Rangler meant something else entirely different. Quarterly meant something. Red wing. Right, red wing, right. And so I think around that same time,

from what I've read anyway, something like 95% of the textiles that we were wearing as Americans were made in America. And 5% were being imported. And today, those numbers are essentially reversed, right? And brands don't mean what I thought they used to mean. And here you are still in this fight, basically ignoring every bit of savvy marketing council. I've ever read and ignoring everything I thought I knew about retail. I mean, you'll even have stores. Yep. Well, we've got a few stores. But, you know, Mike, what you're talking about there about the resonance of brands early on was fundamental to the decision to start the company. I mean,

I'm sure we are very close to the same age. And I remember really clearly when I wore my first pair of Levi's and thinking that it said something about me, that it reflected something about who I was. And I feel that way about the first flannel I wore from what. Woolrich, the first, all these things that were imbued with, not only a quality that I felt would just last over time, get better with age, but also a brand that I thought reflected something fundamentally in you. Yeah, and that I valued about, you're exactly right about the statistic. It's almost entirely flipped, about 5%, a little less than that actually, of the clothes that

Americans buy today are made domestically. And the situation's a little worse than that, actually, because the amount of just to bury you in some statistics for a second. When we were kids, the average American family spent about $1,600 on clothing and shoes per family in today's dollars. And today, the average American family spends about the same for shoes and clothing. It represents about three times the number of items. And the average American family throws away about 80 pounds of clothing a year. Good God. And so there's been this structural shift towards just poor quality stuff to more disposable stuff. And that was in the back of my mind, too. I'm sure it is for all of us. We all have this

innate sense about the quality paradigm is declined over time. The stuff we're buying is just kind of falling apart. And so maybe it was marketing stupidity, or maybe it was just a clarity about if we offered consumers really high quality and a set of values that they could count on and know that we weren't going to get caught up into some horrible thing happening overseas, that at least some segment of the customer base would really care about that. So in some ways it relieved for us, this mad digital marketing, Facebook, Twitter, you know, all this craziness that's going on about spending, spending, spending to get customers to buy your product and allowed us to maybe be more committed to just a set of behaviors and quality commitments that we

really valued. Well, it's back to the box. You put yourself in a box that really didn't afford you the opportunity to indulge that kind of a question without stepping all over your, what do the ad guys call it, your single mind? proposition to build it here. I thought you were going to say something else. To step on one's John Thomas, as it were, you know. I mean, look, so many of us become, that's why titles, you know, I'm fascinated by titles, Bayard.

I'm fascinated, even though I don't really like them, I'm fascinated by mission statements. Because just the mere act of making one, it kind of forces you to go to whatever the next step is. And I'll give you a really odd example about what you just said. I think when you ask most people about their relationship with quality and their desire for it, it's going to go right to the top. But on dirty jobs, something happened to me. And look, and I'm a guy who collected and hoarded champion sweatshirts. I love the reverse weave with good reason. You know what?

I know I'm not the only guy. Every girlfriend I've ever had has stolen every champion sweatshirt I've ever owned. They just take them. They can't help it. And so dirty job starts, and all of a sudden for the first time in my life, I have a front row seat to a truly disposable transactional relationship with garments, right? And it took a minute to accept it. But once I did, it was oddly freeing. I'm not trying to suggest that there's any substitute for quality.

There's not. But when you work on a show like that, you leave the clothes you wore behind in the motel seat. usually in a bathtub with a note of apology to the maid and $20. Right. And I honestly don't know what I would have done had I came into possession of this sweatshirt that you were making. I don't think I could have worn it because I couldn't have stood to throw it out and I couldn't have bared to keep it. Yeah. Yeah, it's a great sort of framing of all the ways that you can define quality.

I mean, there is a fundamental role. for really basic stuff that needs to be darn close to disposable, stuff that you can really trash. I sort of give the analogy of kind of a working pair of boots and a pair of dress boots. There's the boots that you need to trash every day, and then there's the boots that you wear out to dinner or you wear it at night. And we don't make workwear in the way that dirty jobs has to confront on a regular basis. We make stuff that's a little bit different than that. We hope and carry you for a long, long time. We'll get better with age.

But, you know, our garments are expensive. They're not something that you want to buy and trash and climb through a sewer. in and then realize you can't kind of carry it forward. So, you know, there really is roles throughout. And I think one of the problems is, I think, anyway, is that we have not allowed customers a choice, a better choice in the market. And so there isn't really a spectrum of opportunities for quality and sourcing that's obvious to the consumers. And at least in my judgment, so much of what's available, even at the higher price points, are just terrible quality. They're just not, they're not made well. They're made to really kind of degrade in pretty short order. But I agree. I think that

There's, you know, even I have those things. I feel like when I'm trash and I don't want to kind of make them last 10 years. They're only going to last for, you know, maybe 10 days of tough work. I wish I could sum it up because it really does feel like there's a gotcha or an unintended consequence to almost every pithy observation that you can make about the global economy and about the relationship between quality and cost and about utility versus brand and so forth and so on. There's just no easy way to talk about it. But having said that, if you could sum up the entire global economy through a geopolitical lens for me vis-a-vis the hopes and dreams of the average consumer, that'd be great. And by that...

I'll tell you my point of you about as it relates to domestic manufacturing. How about if I narrow it down to that? That's a good start. I think we've got to, you know, and this I think will be close to your heart, Mike. We've got to allow our domestic manufacturers to compete in a fair way with our international competitors. And we have done a great disservice, I think, in setting up trade agreements that are tilted dramatically against domestic manufacturers. And if you care about communities and jobs and communities that need them and all those things that underpin a healthy society and a healthy economy, I would-

safety, human rights, minority protections, environmental protections. If you care about those things, I would strongly encourage that you advocate for your elected representatives to pay attention. Thankfully, that is moving a bit more into the conversation at a national level in D.C., but, boy, are we doing a real disservice with this... Uneven playing field. Yeah, and I think not reconciling so much of the high-minded rhetoric that comes out of D.C. with practical changes in policy that would allow domestic manufacturers to compete evenly in a way that would allow them to really go toe to toe. And I'll just tell you that speaking by the textile industry and all the people that represent the men and women throughout our entire chain,

they feel quite confident in their ability to compete if the playing field was level. That's it, man. That's my summation. Duh do do do do do do do do do. Well, people are still raving, raving, I tell you, about my mother's performance

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at puretalk.com slash row. You can switch in as little as 10 minutes at puretalk.com slash row. Pure Talk. It's not just a great summation. I think it's a really important thing to ponder. I've seen you on Glenn Beck. I've seen you on NPR. I've seen you talk to people way to the left and way to the right. And I haven't found anyone yet who really pushes back against the idea that the playing field ought to be level. And, you know, we can come at it from consumers and we can come at it from workers' rights and we can look at it from a lot of different angles. But if we're going to ask people to make things in this country and at the same time hold them to a standard of care, a duty of care, that's wildly disparate with anything that's going on,

anywhere else in the world. It almost feels to me, and maybe this is a stupid metaphor, but if you had a gifted and talented kid, right, assuming you probably do, even though you left them up in the mountains, you know, if you took one of your gifted and talented kids. They're smart. They'll find their way out. And put them into a public school in a troubled part of any major American city. It feels like that's what we did to our economy. We had a gifted and talented economy. when you and I were kids that made 95% of the stuff, right? And we put them out there into this global economy and just said, good luck. And flash forward 40 years.

And it seems like a miracle that you made such a great sweatshirt because what was commonplace four decades ago is now nothing short of shocking and miraculous. Yeah, I mean a total optimization for cheap, right? So a whole foreign policy switch towards how do we open up the cheapest means of production we possibly can and sacrifice kind of everything at that altar. I mean, it was sacrifice environmental protection, sacrifice human rights protections, sacrifice domestic capabilities, jobs and communities. And, you know, I'm sure, Mike, in your travels as is mine, you go through many, many communities where the jobs are gone. If you care about the country, if you care about your, you know, your fellow citizens, I would just make a strong plug that a good job is a real gift. It's a real joy.

And we've taken that from a lot of communities in ways that may make sense in D.C. They may make sense on the NASDA Act or the stock markets. They don't make sense in terms of the things that really matter in these communities. And that is one of the reasons why I'm sure I sent that sweatshirt to you way back when was I just found someone with common cause who was just an advocate for good, dignified work and in all of its forms. And that we have, in my mind, anyway, politicians for a long period of time that didn't recognize that or didn't optimize for that.

I think they're coming around now. I think there's an awareness, and at both sides, they all to your point, you know, that this is an important thing. And as you can imagine, we've got a broad range of customers. I got heat for being on NPR. I got heat for being on Glenn Beck. My basic position is anyone that wants to talk to me about domestic manufacturing or jobs, I'll talk to them all day long. It's an important thing in my mind. I know it is for you as well.

And it is something that we have to begin to focus on from a policy perspective because I think, you know, so much of what we're seeing now, this discord and this distrust that's happening can trace its roots down to, I think, a lack of good opportunity. And so in urban and in rural communities that don't have those jobs that were around in the 70s when we were there. And that's an important conversation for Solto-Bea-it, I think. All right. Well, we're definitely going to have it, I promise. But I got to go back 12 years ago when I opened the box and pulled out this sweatshirt. There was a note in there. I read it to my partner, Mary. And I'm like, get a load of this cat, man. He sent me like a $100 hoodie. You know, I don't know what you were selling them for back then, but it wasn't cheap.

You know, it felt like breathable Kevlar. I'm like, this thing is, Jesus. I mean, it's amazing. And his name is Byard Winthrop. And he sounds like he fell off the Mayflower. And I think he used to work on Wall Street. And now he's trying to make stuff in this country. And so we laughed, me and Mary, because, you know, I call her Cicephas and she calls me

Quixote. But I'm like, this guy, this guy is pushing a boulder up a hill. Anyway, I guess there's no real question in here other than to say, Sisyphus never really made it to the top. He just pushed. He made progress and then it rolled over him, and then he did it again and again and again and again. Are you Sisyphus or Quixote?

It's a good question. It's a damn great question if you think about it, really, man. I can't believe that came out of me. It's one of the best questions I've ever asked. I don't know if I care. I mean, I sort of feel like I'll give you just a really quick background. I did start out working in finance in New York, wasn't any good at it, wasn't nearly smart enough. And I'd grown up in a sort of a strange dynamic.

I was going to New England prep school, but coming home to a home situation is quite different than that. And my mom was dating the local mechanics and tradespeople and making sure that her, I was the youngest of three boys, making sure that we could take care of ourselves and work with our hands. And she really valued that, does still. And I gave a shot at working in finance and realized pretty quickly I was ill-suited. to that and then got into businesses that were making things. And what I realized really quickly, I think, was no surprise that the things that kind of bond us all together are so much greater than those that separate us and that we had, over time, kind of not optimized for these manufacturing jobs. And I myself was sort of part of that process. I was moving the business that I was running.

I was moving manufacturing overseas. And then it dawned on me one day and it happened to coincide with the birth of my oldest daughter. She was very young when I started the company, weeks old, actually, maybe a month and a half old, that I kind of didn't want that to be what my story was, that I was sort of optimizing for 25 cents to make something cheaper, you know, if I'm shipped overseas, and then you'd have all those conversations with people that I was pulling my work out of and apologizing. It just all felt kind of gross. And so by the time American Giant came around, I was on more of a mission. I just wanted to shine as much of a light on something and do something I knew that I would be proud of. That your kids would be proud of. And that my kids are

out of. That's right. So I don't much I care. The bolder, I'm sure, will continue to roll over all of us repeatedly, right? But I've got enough tenacity and interest in this particular topic. You've got your own version, this, Mike, I'm sure, that I'm going to keep pushing. And I'm an eternal optimist. So I'm going to choose to believe that all of us are going to begin to bang the pots and pans loud enough that we begin to tilt things back into favor the men and women that are working so hard to stay competitive and to stay in jobs and all that kind of good stuff. Well, again, you know, everything in me wants to try and simplify this, and that's probably naive. But sometimes, I think, it's got to go splat before it gets better.

It being whatever you want to fill in the blank with. And splat being anything from a lockdown to a pandemic to a war, to an unidentified balloon. Who the hell knows? You know, I mean, we're just surrounded by so much uncertainty. But what do you think splat means? Like when do we pull our gifted and talented kid back? When do we say, no, no, no, no, it's got to be fair and square. It's got to be even.

Or we're simply going to take our marbles and go home. Well, here's my optimistic answer to that. So if we're not at Splat right now, we're really close. I think if there was any confusion about whether China is a friend, I think that the last four years have disabused all of us of that notion. Okay. I think that we, in our lifetime, Mike, from the 95% made domestically to 5% domestic of apparel, the essential bet was we're going to open up China.

And in the opening up, China is going to become a partner in the world stage and a force for good. And I think the exact opposites happen. That we've spent 40 years kind of a massive wealth transfer to China. China has accelerated massively, economically, militarily, and has become a much more intractable foe of ours than it was when we started. And the U.S. has moved in the opposite direction. I think the good news is that D.C. is opening its eyes to this finally. I think Trump kicked it off. Biden has picked it up.

I think in this regard, there's been very little difference between those two administrations. And as you hear some of the candidates that are now announcing, domestic manufacturing is front and center in those conversations. And I think there's a growing realization that we are overly dependent on China from a supply chain standpoint, from penicillin to light manufacturing to heavy manufacturing. And we have to decouple. And that decoupling has got to happen across the economic spectrum. And I think the good news to the point that we're all sort of talking about is good paying jobs that are consistent with American values is not a controversial thought. It's a bipartisan thought. And I think that the candidates are understanding that the political center, the bulk of the political center is there.

And I think finally consumers are waking up to this too. I think people just intuitively understand that this has been a bad deal. And we have to begin to tilt things back in favor of putting our money and our trade policy in support of friends and supportive people that share our values, our environmental values or human rights values. values, our foreign policy values. So I think optimistically, we're darn close to splat. I think that, you know, even as recently as this past week, and discussions about what's happening between China and Russia and the alignment of decisions there, I think, are going to force all of us from consumers to policymakers to confront what we're doing about getting, to your point, investing back in ourselves for a while and making sure that we can get back onto a good

footing. So there's policy and politicians. There's manufacturers, large and small, and there's consumers. Who do you think needs to be the tip of the spear with regard to turning the ship around? That's kind of at the core of it, I think. Do you think that question was better than my Sisy Kehote analogy? I mean, your questions are all, I think I was talking to talk about this earlier, that just I'm so impressed by your intellectual horsepower. It's got me. It's truly shocking. Please continue. And I had some choice things to say in response. It's really, yeah, it's all-inspiring, maybe? Please, please.

Trying to find the right word. Please. But I think, you know, do we have to ask consumers to be the ones that determine I'm going to pay a premium for X, Y, or Z? That seems like a very large ask. So the participants here are consumers, resellers, brands, and policy makers, at least in the way that I think about it. And I think the consumers are the ones that we should ask the least out of. I think they should be, so let me sort of talk a little bit about that. Right now, we say to our biggest brands, you can Instagram about all the things that you purport to care about, all the values you care about.

But we're going to wink, wink, nudge, allow you to go make things overseas in places that have none of those protections, don't care about any of those things. And make much more money as a result and get all your shareholders very, very wealthy. Virtue signaling, I believe they call it. Virtue signaling. Yep. And just allow people to Instagram about whatever your issue is, whether it's a supporter of pride or supportive environmental protections or want to protect the planet or care about minority rights.

It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. So we allow our biggest brands to virtue signal about that, but then to pursue behaviors that are totally inconsistent with that. And the result is that they're able to make, you know, T-shirts for $18 and they make huge margin of those T-shirts and they get their shareholders very, very wealthy. So I think it starts with policymakers. begin to close the loopholes in trade agreements and allow the domestic producers to be more

competitive. But I think that brands and resellers also have a very big role to play. I think the question comes up for brands maybe that we care about, that we think maybe even represent America at its best. They need to find their own moral compass a little bit. They've got to determine what they believe. Like, do they care that they operate consistent with their values? And then resellers, you know, everyone likes to pound on Walmart. But Walmart has actually taken a stand on this issue. And they've made a real commitment to to domestic production. And back to the earlier point, you know, this conversation creates strange bedfellas. You might think on the face of it that I would be an anti-Walmart person, but boy, do I value

a company like that that is taking a stand and maybe contrast them with Amazon. Boy, do I have a Walmart story. I'll tell you after Chuck asks is pressing a question. All right, I'd love to hear that. Well, my question is about the loopholes. You mentioned the loopholes. And I know that you say that it shouldn't fall on the consumer to do the heavy lifting. And government is a part of that. It's like, what are the loopholes now that exist? Because I don't think a lot of people understand or know and what can be done. What does Congress need to do to close them? Yeah, that gets into a pretty wonky discussion about trade agreement and trade negotiation.

And in fact, Chuck, next week I'm traveling with Ambassador Tai. It'll actually, I think when this airs, it'll be the week. I think I'll actually be in North Carolina with her representatives going through our supply chain to talk about this exact issue. There are lots and lots of small details about trade agreements. But to make it simple, China can be. produce goods and have access to the domestic market, the American market, with no penalties at all. If I tried to do that in reverse and try to sell our products into China, we would be hit with major import duties and tariffs. That's crazy. But before you even talk about anything else,

that's crazy. We're giving access to the domestic market, the best market in the world for free. There's no place of entry. You don't have to do anything effectively. So just closing some of those things and beginning to make it more level about if we're going to import and export, we've got to be doing that with the same flattening of terrorists and duties and import penalties. So there's just a lot of examples like that that are buried in these trade agreements. You've got lobbies like the retail lobby that are very aggressively trying to block those things. And so it really is incumbent upon, I think all of us, to make noises about why we are giving China such unfettered access to our market and being so restrictive about their own domestic market. So there's a lot of them there.

And I don't know if there's any way to post some links to some interesting reading for some of your listeners, but if there wasn't, they'd be certain to be happy to provide some of them for you to look at. Sure. We don't, uh, we don't have any listeners fired per se. And the two that we do have, don't read. They can't read. God bless them. Maybe I could be to that.

Chuck will act it all out with a really compelling interpretive dance that we find resonates with the core demographic. Six, seven years ago. Yeah, tell me your Walmart story. Yeah, so I got a call from Walmart. And, um, you know, full disclosure, a year before, maybe three, I had a dirty jobs cleaning product on the shelves. And it didn't work out.

The product was made partly here and partly in Canada, but for a whole lot of reasons that nobody cares about. People love the product, but I just couldn't compete with P&G. But I made some friends at Walmart. And one of them called me and said, look, this company is going to commit to spending a quarter of a trillion dollars over the next 10 years in the U.S. supply chain.

We are going to physically and affirmatively open factories, reopened factories in the Rust Belt and other places. And we're deadly serious about it. And we've made this commercial for the Super Bowl, which wound up airing during the Olympics instead. And we'd like you to narrate it. It's basically a commercial called the factory. And it celebrated the reopening of factories. And it trumpeted Walmart's commitment to spend a lot of Jack, right, over a decade. So I did it. And when that commercial aired the next morning Facebook blew up. People were so pissed off at me, Byard. They couldn't believe the Dirty Jobs Guy would narrate a commercial that was announcing the biggest retailer in the country's

commitment to bet on the U.S. supply chain again. They couldn't believe it because they saw Walmart so clearly as an enemy of workers' rights. And I was immediately, and for the first time in my life, quickly put into these requisite boxes. It's incredible. And so I learned a lot of lessons in that moment. I was boycotted, by the way, for somebody called Jobs with Justice. Got 15,000 letters. It was insane what happened. But it really opened my eyes to the sensitivity and the nuance and just how deeply felt so many opinions were around the business of just being able to afford.

I mean, millions and millions of people, just to ask the shitty question, that I'm sure you've had before, right? We can't just make $130 sweatshirts, period. There are a lot of people in this country. There's no way they're going to be able to afford that. So there's Walmart with that solution. And then that's wrapped into this giant larger problem with China and so forth and so forth. And my God, you know, I just went to bed one night thinking I understood the problem

and woke up the next morning having narrated a commercial and seeing my career flash before my eyes because they tried to end me. Do do do do do do do do dumb. I love stories like this. Seven years ago, a guy named Ben Still was a musician. He had zero interest in running a food company, but he was annoyed that so much imported meat was being deceptively marketed and labeled as domestic and decided to fix the problem.

The result was a company called Good Ranchers. It's a completely honest, totally transparent meat company that deals directly with American farms and ranchers. and promises to deliver high-quality American-grown meat for a fair price. Today, that promise, and Ben's absolute determination to keep it, has not only propelled Good Ranchers into the top tier of meat delivery companies, it's fueled enormous awareness among meat eaters like me that we have all been affirmatively deceived by policies that allow imported meat to be marketed as domestic.

That's the reason I switch to Good Ranchers. If I'm being honest, though, I doubt that I would have stayed this long had the quality not been so exceptional. Every single cut I've devoured from Good Ranchers has been straight up delicious, and every morsel was raised on a small American farm or ranch. Give them a try. Subscriptions are affordable and flexible. In fact, if you start your plan today, you'll get free meat for life and $40 off your first order. Just use code mic at good ranchers.com.

Free meat for life, 40 bucks off your first order. Good ranchers.com. American meat delivered. If you could eat a steer, if you could eat a cow, don't take a chance on a foreign ranch. Get good ranchers now. I don't know how to even speak to that. I think there is a purity thing happening out there today

that nobody is saying that Walmart is a perfect operator. But if we're going to hold, if we're going to pursue a better tomorrow, we need to recognize when there are people that are willing to make commitments, change behaviors. And boy, that's a clear one. I mean, Walmart's commitment, as you put it, with real dollars, I would invite the people that are up in arms about your support of that decision to point out alternative examples that they think are valuable and valid. I don't want to pick on Amazon is one, but Amazon's not taking a stand like that. I don't want to pick on them either, but you're right. Costco, Amazon, Target, big retailers could have fallen right in line behind Walmart. That's right. And said, you know what, in relative terms, if you're going to do a quarter trillion, we're good for $10 billion. We're good for $20 billion, whatever it is. Just to be clear, those decisions, those decisions of pulling in, putting a stake in the ground, that's their version of a box, putting a stake in the ground, that gives a tremendous amount. If you get into my supply chain and talk to the, the men and women that are making yarn, that are knitting cloth. The big thing that's on their mind is,

do I have durable commitments over time so that I can invest in automation, in improvements of technology, and worker training? Or is this stuff all fleeting? And when you have a big retailer, like Walmart, putting a stake in the ground, you provide visibility. We do our version of the same thing on a smaller scale, obviously. We're not going anywhere. We're going to be here. Our suppliers are able to say, okay, American Giant's going to be here in six months, 10 months, 18 months, we can invest in a better dryer that's going to cost us a quarter million dollars, which is a big number, by the way, for small town manufacturers that need to find the capital to do that. Walmart provides that latitude and that leeway. And to your point, if, on the other hand,

you had a bunch of other big retailers saying, this is a good idea, this is supporting our customers directly. Our customers are the men and women that are working in these places. We're supporting them, those are the kinds of things that begin to create momentum. And unfortunately, we're not seeing that other than Walmart. And so, I don't know, I think in the same way that you need to have conversations with anybody that's willing to support things that we think are well and good, I would invite those people that were pissed off at you to ask that question about, I may not agree on everything with that company, but this is one thing that I can support. That's it, Byrd. I mean, look, you've got heat from both sides. Chuck's heard the story a

a trillion times, but, you know, there was a week in 2016 where I went on Glenn Beck's show, and two days later, I went on Bill Maher's show. You can hear the earth stop spinning, and things just started flying into the ether. People's heads exploded. When you try and find things that both sides can agree on, it's back to the level playing field. Here, look at this. I love this. Another one of my favorite sweatshirts, which I got that, Mike. You can see why. Well, I actually stole this from Chuck, right? Who bought it many years ago. And yeah, it's made

in China. That's outrageous. You got a USA sweatshirt released in concert with the United States Olympic team. They've even got their logo on it. And then it's made in China. So, I mean, if you're looking for a metaphor,

and Chuck, where did you buy this? Do you even remember? Or did you steal it from an old girlfriend? No, I don't know where I got it. But I did the same thing that you did, Mike. I went through. what I was going to wear today and look to see where it came from. I'm wearing Levi's pants, jeans, which are Mexico, Brazil. It says on there, this shirt, which also has an American flag on it. Nicaragua and this jumper, as the British would say, was made in Jordan of all places.

So I don't even have no idea. I got a problem with Jordan, but I'd avoid the whole jumper thing in the future. People do listen to this. Chuck, can you edit that piece out? Is that possible? We're going to cut it into the title. Sure. Yeah, that's gone.

Chuck has a jumper. That's great. Boy, you want to go really crazy. Look at the Fourth of July T-shirts by some big retailer that runs every year. Right. And it has the American flag on it and that is making lots of money on Fourth of July T-shirts. Look at the American flags. The flags are made in charge.

This is not complicated stuff. And, boy, I'll just tell you, just to circle back on the speaking to people on the ends of the spectrum, if there isn't something that we need to learn, we need to learn that there are common objectives here that requires that we work with and talk to people across the ideological spectrum. And if you are just shrieking into the wind, being a purist, you're doing a great disservice to the cause because there are men and women all over the place

that can help here, from consumers making decisions about how they buy things all the way up through to people on opposite sides of the aisle. I mean, if we can't get bipartisan agreement around jobs and supporting jobs out of D.C., then we're not getting anywhere. And so we've got to find a way to have these conversations without getting so wrapped up in this purity stuff

that you're getting nailed for. It's just silly. Well, I'm about to seamlessly transition into the aforementioned promise conversation regarding jobs. But that cognitive dissonance you're talking about, it's so primal and it's so weird. Like Byard Winthrop is not supposed to be the champion of making it in the USA. A former opera singer named Mike Rowe is not supposed to be running a foundation to train welder. Right? And so it just feels like we used to celebrate magnify and amplify that level of disparateness in your curriculum, Viette. But now we look at it with suspicion. You're not following the path that Byard Winthrop is supposed to follow in.

Neither are you, Mike Roe. Therefore, ergo, shut up. And to me, that's what we've lost, the ability to somehow hold two competing thoughts in our head. I have a whole theory about this, if you'll indulge me for two seconds. I think that we have over the last 15 years or so through technology, digital technology, through globalized supply chains, we have become increasingly disconnected from one another. We date online, we order food online, we order our sneakers online. Everything we're doing is sort of we're zooming all the time. We're not together. And I was listening to Michelle Obama speak once. And this topic came up sort of directionally. And she stopped and thought from a moment and said, you know, it's really hard to hate somebody up

close. And it's always stuck with me. It's like this disconnectedness that we obviously think about in terms of jobs in part, right, I would challenge you, whatever your political orientation is or whatever issue you care about to travel with me through the supply chain, through the Carolinas, for example, and meet the men and women and realize the vast diversity that's there, political diversity, all of all kinds, economic diversity, sexual orientation diversity, all of it, and recognize the common through line there about people employed in decent jobs that want them, in communities that need them, and challenge you to be a purist in that setting. That feels highly, just a rant for one second, indulgent to me,

that if you've got the privilege to be that purist about issues that matter to communities that are in rough shape that need good jobs, you've got to get off your pedestal a little bit and get into reality, I think. there's a thread that runs through literally and metaphorically your life, your business. I wrote a book a few years ago called Profoundly Disconnected. For me, it was really a rumination on my own self. I was so impressed as a kid and so mindful of where my energy came from and where my food came from and all of the things that I eventually took for granted. And then I think had my little reawakening with my TV show and good for me,

but people need their own reawakening's. And if that's the thread that you can use to somehow stitch us back together again, well, then your company is going to be giant indeed. You're welcome. It's also not bad, really. That was great. Can I use that? Yeah, take it.

Can I just grab it and maybe that becomes the thing? Do it. I really do agree with that. That if we kind of can begin to reconnect in that way, I do think that that really is there's so much truth of that. I mean, just knowing your whole program is about this, Mike, I mean, that, you know, my young kids, intuitively, whenever they watch dirty jobs, they have this response of like, huh, that understanding about how things get done, how things get made, how the food gets on your table, and the people that do that work, the miracle that that work is. And the honor that is owed to those men and women is like, once you're exposed to it, it's really intuitive. It's like, oh, yeah, I get it.

the more that it's sort of in this blurry distance, the easier it becomes to not kind of look at it and confront it and address it. So I'll tell you, I think I said this to you before, Mike. I'm really grateful for the show because my six and eight and 12-year-olds see things that they need to be familiar with and understand in ways that when we were kids

kind of were just happening, not so much anymore. Well, look, it's the G word and it's a biggie. In the same way that Michelle was right, it's hard to hate people up close. it's also conversely difficult to feel grateful from a distance. If you can't smell it, if you can't touch it, if you can't see the sweat, if you can't in some way experience it that's tactile. You know, I want you to say something now that makes my listeners go,

huh, in terms of what you experienced when you finally came and got up close and personal with your own supply chain, What did that do to see the box you put yourself in manifest in terms of jobs? The crazy thing for me was I have been around making clothing and footwear for most of my career, 25 years, something like that. It wasn't until I got into a car and drove, you got to do this with me, Mike, drove, I don't know, 180 radio miles and saw in the course of two days cotton coming out of the ground, getting ginned, getting bailed, getting spun into yarn, knitted into cloth,

dyed in dying facilities, finished in finishing facilities, and cut and sown, and at the other end come a sweatshirt. It was a totally humbling and still is to this day. I'm going next week. It's a completely remarkable experience, and it seems weird to say it, but it's easy to forget that so much of the clothes that we wear started off as an agricultural crop and the incredible symphony of things that have to happen to produce a sweatshirt on the other end.

When you are exposed to that, it is totally all-inspiring, and the talent and skill required to do it. It is such a privilege to see that stuff. So I think that was the thing that was most, having been around it for so long, having really to confront that, it's just electrifying.

It's just an amazing thing to see up close. I'm in such violent agreement with you. All I can do is nod and say, my education started when dirty jobs got renewed. after those pilots, because what you're describing is no different than working shoulder to shoulder with a coal miner or a roughneck or a roused about. And then later that evening, when it's raining or snowing or blowing outside and you turn the heat on, you know what? Your brain immediately goes back to that guy. And if you're not exposed to that, if you've never picked cotton, if you've never mined for coal,

or at least shown up to bear witness as it's done, then you are missing something. You're just missing something. Totally. What you don't need, if you're that profoundly disconnected person, is a lecture or a sermon or a bunch of empty platitudes and bromides from people who want your vote. What you need, in part anyway, is access.

You just need to see it happen. So you are privileged. but not in ways that you've probably been accused. You're privileged to have had a front row seat to your own supply chain. Who gets that? Yeah, I'm with you totally. I mean, there's one woman that comes to mind for me, particularly a woman in Rana Fuhor, who's an economic correspondent for the Financial Times,

is a great journalist. And I convinced her, don't know how, to travel with me for a couple of days in the Carolinas. And, you know, she told me afterwards, she said, boy, I went into that thinking, I'm going to be confronted with stuff that I'm just not going to be able to, you know, it's going to be antithetical to my political views or whatever it might be. And two days later, she came out the far side and just felt like she went through a total transformation.

And she's just written a book called Homecoming that in part tracks that trip she took with me about this whole push to reshoring and the human aspect of that story and how important it is. What you're saying is right, to have that opportunity to immerse yourself in that is such a gift. I feel like I've learned so much about character

and human potential and capability and craft and all these things that I never learned in school, but really began to learn when I was getting out there and spending time in our supply chain and getting our things made and exploring, you know, how to make a flannel again in the United States or how to make outerwear in the United States, things that really had been sort of given up on. But it's just invigorating to be around that talent and that commitment and to be a part of providing some good, some work. It's a great feeling. A lot better than whatever the the alternative is to that in my mind? There is no alternative. They're corollaries. People ask me all the time, what do the dirty jobbers as a group know that the rest of us have forgotten? And the

honest answer is a 400-page book. I can't get around to finishing. But part of it is that thread thing we were talking about. It's seeing a thread made and it's watching the thread be applied into a sweatshirt and it's seeing the pieces of the sweatshirt and it's seeing the rolling of the cotton and it's seeing that loft that comes. It's all of these little tiny steps. That's feedback and it's constant. A lot of very successful people today don't have that kind of feedback in their life. They're aching for it. And I would just add that I think part of that is that we all have a responsibility to participate in that broader ecosystem. I mean, if you are not aware of what's happening in inner cities in the U.S. or in rural communities in the U.S. and the number of jobs that have left,

should tune into that conversation. But once you do, it's hard to not feel some sense of responsibility saying, I want to be a participant in it and be a force for good in that regard. You don't have to support American Giant. I don't give a ass. Go support another brand that is similarly supporting your values. Support the foundation. Your foundation, Mike. But people need to, in my mind, engage in that discussion in a way that recognizes, wait, there's an undercurrent here of just providing our citizens, our neighbors, some dignified work that they can go every day and be a force for good in that regard. Leave politics at the door for a minute. Just support that basic through line. It's an important one. And, you know, you get into these communities and it's just, I find that when you enter into

those places, your differences are just left of the door. And you all just realize when you are in that mix, boy, there's an obvious thing to get behind here and support. I really, I mean, support whoever you want to support. And it doesn't matter whether you buy close most or not, but do pay attention to where your dollars are going and maybe how important purity is when you decide to, you know, put somebody in the lash or whatever and give them a hard time for advocating for something that's going to be beneficial to a bunch of people out there. How do, I don't want you to put words in people's mouths or speak for anybody you're not comfortable with speaking for, but the quality of this stuff you're making is very high.

And so how does the pride of workmanship manifest in that, in the people that you see on the front line? Is it in some way different? And I ask it, Byrd, because I've met the guys who make the boot. boots I love, Wolverine, Thousand-Milers, right? They're up in Michigan. And it's just so personal. It's a very leading question, but in relative terms, you're doing the same thing. It's accurate and really relevant to textiles, because one of the interesting things that has happened over the last 40 years of apparel of textile production in the United States

is that unlike maybe pick some countries out there like Japan, Korea, Switzerland, Italy that have gone towards optimizing for quality, the United States decided to compete on volume in textiles, which is if you think about it, does not make much sense because we have higher labor rates, we have higher environmental standards, we have higher human rights standards, worker safety standards. The industry has gone kind of relentlessly over the last 40 years towards what we refer to as ton and gun sewing, ton and gun. It's just as much volume as you possibly can, as cheap as you possibly can do it. And so when we came around and said, wait, we want to do the opposite of that. We want to invest in needle.

We want to invest in labor. We want to invest in quality. When I said earlier that it was hard, that initial conversation was hard. That was at the crux of it. Because people are like, wait, we don't do quality anymore. We've let that go 30 or 40 years ago. You and I remember this, Mike, that people would come from all over the world to get Levi's. Yeah.

It was a representation of not only America, but also a value and quality. I mean, people would go back to the Soviet Union with duffel bags full of Levi's. And so that conversation going back to that was really counterintuitive for a lot of supply chain. little by little, particularly some of the gray hairs in the supply chain, began to say, hey, hang on a second here. This approach, selling online, investing in quality, it could work. And so we'll try. We'll get some looms turned back on. We'll think differently about the way that we're thinking about yarn dyeing.

And so that piece, you could almost see this pride wake up in the room. And now that conversation is really present in our supply chain about being a part of a brand that not only is making really high quality stuff. So that was the leading part of your question. But I also think we've gotten a fair amount of press. And the men and women that make our stuff have been on CBS or have been in the New York Times. And getting some measure of the recognition that they deserve, that too gives a sense of pride.

And so it's a totally different thing. I mean, you'll go through our supply chain. You'll see some guy that runs our napping machine, Robert wearing our sweatshirt. And Robert really now identifies. And I'm the guy that figured out how to nap this fleece to make it right. And Robert feels like, you know, he talks about that. It's something that he rightfully is proud of because it took us, I don't know, six months to figure that out.

And he's the guy that unlocked it for us. So that's a nice little benefit of just kind of going back to craft and going back to people that actually there's a skill set there that you have to tap into to make something really great. The federal government is not going to close America's skills gap. They have an important role to play for sure. But if we're serious about reinvigorating the skilled trades on a national level. level. We need more organizations like Skills USA making a real difference on a local level. These guys have been around since 1965, and today they are relevant like never before, with hundreds of chapters in schools all over the country and hundreds of thousands of students

participating and competing every year. Nobody is doing more to train the next generation of skilled workers than Skills USA. And I'm encouraging you to at least consider being a part of this movement. Skills USA advisors and volunteers aren't just teaching trades. They're launching careers and strengthening the backbone of our country by mentoring the next generation of industry leaders. In high school, you could be among the people who are making this movement explode. Join the skilled trades movement. Support career and technical education programs through Skills USA. There's no better way to do it. You can volunteer at a local chapter. You can start a chapter in your own town. Or you can just go to their website and see the impact for yourself and see too how

easy it is to get involved. Thousands of kids are being introduced to the trades in a way that's absolutely positively moving the needle. The goal is a million members by 2030. I think it's doable. I'm doing what I can to help them. Learn more at skillsusa.org slash mic. That's skills usa.org slash Mike. I'm talking Skills, U.S. Skills, USA. How are they living? I mean, what kind of living can you make in real terms

in an American supply chain right now? And I'm sure these people are doing things that aren't for American giant, right? I mean, you're just using them. They don't exist entirely for your brand. Yep. But at the end of the day, the end of the week, the end of the month,

are they living a balanced life? Are they able to provide for? for their kids? Are they able to save? Are they able to own a home, etc.? Yeah, so give a couple of different answers to that. I think the most basic level, and this is a comment from me, I think there's a real honor in work. And a lot of these communities that you go to, Clover, South Carolina, Gaffney, South Carolina, Middlesex, North Carolina, there aren't a lot of, the job options are the dollar general, the part-time shift at one of the local retailers in the mall, working at Chick-fil-A.

Not to say those jobs are bad, but they're part-time typically and they're not career jobs. And so having a job that you can build a career around and get benefits at and learn skills and advance, that's a real gift. And there's a lot of honor in that. That's a buyer comment. That's not a comment about really what your question is. But I think there's real value there. The other part of it is, and I just had this conversation this morning. As I mentioned next week, I'm going to be down with Ambassador Ties representatives.

And she's the U.S. Trade Representative for the Biden administration to look at textiles specifically. And one of the – I'll leave this person's name out. But one of them mentioned, you know, gosh, he's an important employer and a small. small town that does knitting for us. And he said, you know, if they ask me about wages, you know, I'm sure that coming from D.C. or New York City, they're going to think our wages are just low and they're going to be frustrated about that. And I said to him, you know, the reality, this is that the crux of the conversation. He wants to very much pay his people more. He wants to upgrade his break room. He wants to buy new microwaves. But he's operating at such a

thin profit margin that he has to be cutting costs everywhere. And you can imagine the discordance of that conversation between D.C. that is talking about wanting to have. have high wages and safe working conditions and new microwaves, but policies that make it incredibly difficult when you're competing against China that has, doesn't care at all about those things. Their labor rates are, you know, $4 a day or whatever it is in Jingjiang, China. So the industry in general is under pressure, just cost pressure because they're competing with places like China or whatever that list was that Chuck mentioned about where he's buying all his things, Nicaragua and Jordan in places that don't have the same cost structure

that we do. That all being said, throughout the supply chain. chain, there are people there that have, you know, have worked for these companies for decade, 15, 20, 25 years. They've built careers around them. They've put their kids through school working those places. So are they making 25, $30 an hour in some instances, yes, but most of the time, no. In many cases, they're minimum wage entry-level unskilled jobs. But they're jobs and their jobs that are employing 18, 20-year-old men in communities that need work. And back to the earlier conversation. You know, we should

look at that as a country and say, are those important for us to have for those jobs? Do they matter? You better believe it, man. When did we become so contemptuous of the lower rungs on the ladder? How do you climb? Get rid of all the low rungs. There, good. That's crazy. Equity. Success. Good luck. I can't. I can't reach anything. I want to ask you too, and I know we're a little short on time, but the reason I think that the level the playing field argument is ultimately more persuasive than the quality argument. And tell me if you think I'm wrong, but I've talked to a lot of people who have kind of pulled me aside off mic, as it were, and said, look, it would be a happy circumstance to be able to say that all the stuff that's coming out of China is crap. It would be nice if we could say that all the stuff that Chuck is wearing from Nicaragua and Belgium and so forth is garbage. But what if it's not?

What if they're actually doing a pretty good job? What if this Chinese made sweatshirt is actually close to 25 years old, right? It's pretty good. It seems easy sometimes to go, ah, all that crap from overseas. What about this thing, man? What about the way we started this whole conversation? Me showing you a picture of your sweatshirt on an iPhone that was made by kids, someplace in a town I can't pronounce. It's difficult when you're confronted with a great product that was made super cheaply and a land far, far away.

Easier, I think, to say, look, they're not playing by the same rules. That's called cheating. and we shouldn't be in that world, I think. Yep, I'll give you an anecdote to that. When I was with the reporter I was talking about earlier in our supply chain, she stopped and asked one of our big producers. There's a very big company called Parkdale Mills that makes yarn. They're the largest consumer of cotton in the United States.

Great company. Privately held. And she asked the CEO of that company whether he was a supporter of free trade. And he stopped for a minute and looked at her and said, how about this? How about you define free trade first, and then I'll tell you whether I support it or not. And what he's saying is it is not a level playing field. They're cheating.

And so if you're asking me to compete against someone that's cheating, that's not something I support. And that's at the crux of it, is that you're exactly right, that I can get into the nuance that I think that the domestic manufactured capability really across the board is going to be better competing on the quality end of the spectrum versus the volume into the spectrum because we have inherent labor costs and other things here that we want to protect. but at the end of the day, the issue is what you're bringing up, which is make it fair. Then let's talk about whether or not we can be competitive, whether domestic manufacturing and my money's there. I mean, you should travel with me and meet these people. They are girding for the opportunity to fight toe to toe. But right now, they've got both hands tied behind their back, and they're trying to compete

on a world stage that is just silly. And so much of this stuff really is just about taking a hard look at our trade deals and how we construct them. And why are we tolerating unfettered access to the domestic market? Why are we tolerating unfair cost infrastructure on domestic market when we're not holding our competitors to the same paradigm? And I think that's a basic way to think about it and one that, boy, I hope people are beginning to concentrate on.

Man, I hope you're right. I think you were right before. The consumer doesn't need to be on the tip of the spear. The consumer doesn't need to be beat up over this first and foremost. But they got skin in the game, too. I will never forget. This was probably 10 years ago now. I was working with vanity, right?

They had a Wrangler and they had Lee jeans and so forth. And we did a deal around my foundation and I said, you know what? I'll help you rebrand Lee jeans. At the time, a lot of people associated them with kind of a female brand and they were trying to butcher up a little bit. So I said, yeah, yeah, let's try something here. Anyhow, I said, in the course of this relationship, wouldn't it be great if we could just carve out a little bit that was 100% made in America?

just a little bit. And they said we would love to do that, but here's what we found. And to make a real long story short, they created a Made in America denim product, and it cost about $3 more than its counterpart overseas. And they put them for sale side by side, I think in a pennies, J.C. Pennings. And the results were so bad. It was like zero. Like no one would pay $3 more for American made.

So they knocked it down to $2 more. Then they knocked it down to a dollar more. And then they knocked it down to $0.50 more. For $0.50, you can get the same pair of jeans just made here, identical in every other way. Nothing. They got it down to a penny more. Would you pay a penny more? And still, the sales didn't budge.

It wasn't until they were totally even that they started to see an uptick. I know that's anecdotal, but it was their research. I looked at that and I thought, you know, if I'm really being honest with myself, I don't know what the answer is, but there's some truth in it. American consumers, by and large, are not going to pay a premium much less, much more for something that appears to have the same quality to it. Yeah. I have a couple thoughts about that. One is, I'll send you a pair of our jeans. We've got a great jeans business that's entirely made in the U.S. that is growing fast and is great quality. And so there's consumer demand for that.

33, 33, by your... You're on. You're on. I'll include a nice note, too. I dress to the right, if that still matters, I'm going. Oh, dear. But I think that, you know, I think the thing that maybe I would just add to that point is we've got to level up the playing field, which will in turn say, great, then let's just say lead.

I don't want to pick on Lee's jeans, but Lee then is going to have to determine whether they're better off making stuff in, you know, wherever it is, Mexico or El Salvador or the U.S. And the cost structures will come back into balance with one another. And then I think let's have that conversation. But the problem is I see it today is when I hear stories like that is whether that selling data is totally accurate. I know another big jeans provider has a made-in-U.S. line that is doing very, very well. I think consumer sentiment is changing. I don't know how long ago that conversation was, Mike. It's 10 years ago.

10 years ago. I think if you look at the polling now, it's interesting. There's a shift underway. We're clearly benefiting from that. There is a growing, I think, understanding that 10 years ago, I don't think I was thinking much about buying everything for my kids from Amazon. I now, I have this sort of vague sense of guilt when I do that. It's convenient.

It might not be the best quality. And maybe I shouldn't be doing this. And I think that's sort of an approximation for what I think is happening among consumer sentiment now about maybe I should be a bit more aware. And back to the other point, look, don't apply it to apparel. Apply it to the food you buy. Or apply it to maybe the way that you acknowledge the people that are taking care of all the things you take for granted that keep your house warm in the wintertime. I don't care. I would like to see that people are at least aware.

When they're making that decision, they know that that's going here as opposed to there and just begin to think about that more. And to the earlier conversation, particularly people that are shopping at pennies, that's a bit of. big ask. You know, our customers can afford a difference there. They can afford to pay a bit premium for something that is supporting their values. That may not be the case for some of the shopping and pennies is trying to get, you know, a jacket on our kids or whatever it might be. And we ought to be doing our best to be competitive at all those pricing levels. So I'm not surprised to hear that. I think it is, you know, and even down, surprised you know, that the margin was that different. But, but boy, I hope we do a better job at allowing a better choice to be in the

market that's supported by a paradigm that gives the domestic producers a shot, a better shot than have today. Absolutely. I only brought it up because what it says to me is it just reaffirms a truth that I believe is fundamental, which is cookie cutter advice, bromides, platitudes, and sweeping generalizations, even when offered and put forth by men and women of great experience are worthless today. We can't sum this problem up by simply saying, they're quality is no good, you're better off here, or this or that. It varies so dramatically. Back when I had that conversation, no one was selling directly to the consumer online in an exclusive way like you are.

Everything's different. And so we're probably not going to solve this problem in the remaining three minutes that we have. What? No, it's not going to happen, Chuck. But let me tell you something. The word that didn't come up and at the risk of blowing a lot of sunshine straight up, Byard's bottom. It's integrity, man. It's integrity. The closest we got to that is what you said before. You're a reformed financier who wanted to look himself square in the mirror and not throw up in his

mouth and do something that made his kids proud. And in the end, that's justification to have a grown-up conversation about all of this. So huge fan of what you tried to do and a huge fan of what you've done and an even bigger fan of what I know you're going to what I know you're about to do because you know it's only a matter of national security rant over if I can redirect some of that sunshine up your butt I would just say from a distance appreciate all the advocacy and the attention on this issue because as far as I can tell you're a lone soldier out there that is advocating for an incredibly important bipartisan issue that affects the country and thank you for that because it's uh you do it in a way that is filled with humor and good intentions.

And it just, my kids love your show. And I love and appreciate the impact it's having on the way people think about things. All that, et cetera, et cetera. But the reason you're here, full disclosure, out of the blue, you sent me the best sweatshirt I've ever worn 12 years ago with no strings attached.

Chuck will tell you, it's important to say thanks and return the favor. It just takes a while sometimes. So thank you for your patience. Was there anything you wanted to say? say that you didn't? Maybe take some of this conversation to heart and hope people think a little bit differently about the way they're buying stuff and support your foundation, I guess I'd say. I just appreciate that work because, boy, it makes a difference in these communities that have

people that are considering different paths. It's good to have some support there. So that's it. Thank you. Appreciate being on, Mike, and I'll send you out those jeans. 3333. I dress to the right. European Husky, if they still make those, used to work for me. And I'll head over to American-giant.com and pick up a pair myself. Thanks. Yeah, you will. Three easy payments of whatever it takes. Stop groveling, Chuck.

It's unattractive. Thanks for the plug, Chuck. Byard, thanks for your time, brother. All right. Good luck. I appreciate you guys both. Thanks for having me on. Thank you.

Thank you. And I sure do hope your kids make it out of the mountains. They sound like nice people. There's no podcast without a sponsor. Thank them for pay. in the freight Please don't fast forward through their coverage holes

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