Tariffs – Episode 615

This transcript was auto-generated and may contain errors.

[00:01] Welcome to the Prosperity Podcast. Prosperity thinkers, welcome to the podcast. Today we’re gonna be talking about tariffs. It’s the short game, the long game, why it’s in the news, maybe why you should not be paying attention to the news and the way that prosperity thinkers think of it. So Kim, we’re gonna set the stage this way. You are excellent at not paying attention to the news. So I don’t expect you to fill in with all of the details and that’s a good thing. So give us just the giant airplane picture of it and then we’ll zoom in on a few other things. Well, it actually comes from a conversation that I had last night with a nephew who’s in his early 20s and heading off to a really cool space.

[00:54] I’m so happy for him. And we had real maple syrup sitting out on the counter because I love to have maple syrup on top of ice cream with salted nuts. Like it’s just the most amazing concoction in the world. And he said, oh, well, that’s gonna get expensive soon. And I said, oh, why? And he said, well, the tariffs. And so of course, afterwards I thought, duh, we should have known that. And to your point, it’s just so not on my mind, but here’s what’s interesting about my immediate reaction. I said, we make this in America, New Hampshire, Vermont, like maple syrup is an American thing too. And so then we went on. So it is an interesting space. I know a lot of people are hot and bothered by it.

[01:48] And I think a lot of the reasons that people are hot and bothered by it is because of what the stock market is doing. And I think that’s an interesting element of this whole discussion, which I’ll just speak to very quickly, which is we all knew we, like it was even stated from Trump that our businesses in America are gonna go through some bumps as we reallocate where we’re putting our focus. And sometimes those bumps are very necessary. We’ve talked on this podcast about how a business family has lean years and green years. And those bumps are necessary and there’s such good learning that can go on. And so really that’s the only thing that I think about if I even think about the entire tariff slash stock market space

[02:40] is yes, there’s a cleansing that occurs. There’s a shift of priorities, a shift of focuses, and that’s all good. And the stuff about it that’s bad and there will be some things, that’s just learning. Yeah, and I think it’s very sensationalized. And what’s happening is there’s people disrupting small economies, some economies that are getting wiped out. But let’s think of tariffs. So who do you think is going to benefit the most from this and who do you think will be penalized the most from your perspective? Well, you brought up at the beginning the podcast is short-term and the long-term. And so short-term, I don’t even have good answers because it’s all gonna be largely messy. Long-term, America and Americans

[03:38] and American companies will benefit, period. Yep, absolutely. One of the best analysis that I’ve read from this and I’ve done not reading, not watching the news or reading new sites, I’ve dug around. But I read an economist and they said what he’s doing is it’s a consolidation that happens a lot in the real estate industry and business industries, where they’re looking at a debt that is going to be refinanced soon. So in 2025, there’s trillions of dollars that has to get refinanced. Now, if he can get it at a lower rate, meaning tank the markets, then we save tons of money as a country. And when I was reading this, it made me think of Argentina and Javier Malay. He was elected and he said point blank to his country,

[04:39] to his countrymen, he said, this is gonna be ugly, this is gonna be hard. And lots of news outlets hammered him. But last week, it just came in that they have risen the overall wealth of the people. There’s 38% less poverty. I mean, it’s awesome. So let’s put the prosperity perspective on this. Let’s take the tariffs, let’s say, okay, all of us can do well, some people may be hurt and again, can be hurt if you’re not thinking prosperously. Where do we take it? Absolutely, well, you stated it so well. It’s similar to the space that happened around COVID, right? Yes, there was pain. But if you were thinking prosperously, even if you had to drag your mental self into that space every day and every hour

[05:35] and pivot and pivot again, there were ways to overcome the challenges. You and I talked about, there were two restaurants, I think it was in Salt Lake City. One of them just folded and one of them pivoted and pivoted till they figured out a new model to be able to serve their community. And I think always as entrepreneurial thinkers, which Americans are great at doing, we may not literally own businesses but we’re good entrepreneurial thinkers, that is the prosperity perspective. That is owning our space, our mindsets, our ability to serve in the world. And what an awesome time disruption creates because if you are truly serving and you are serving in a space that is your God-given talent to a community that appreciates the serving

[06:32] that you are doing and the service that you provide, product, service, whatever, just kind of collapsing that all into a space, then even if your particular company or the particular thing that you’re doing right now this very moment gets obliterated, you absolutely will find another way to, I’ll say the exact same sentence again, serve in a way with the talents that God gave you to a community that appreciates what you do. If you were not doing that, then what an awesome time to start doing that, right? So let’s say that you were serving in a way that you felt was your God-given talent but your community didn’t appreciate it. Well, then it’s time to shift, right? If you got obliterated, then awesome,

[07:18] the decks are clear. Sometimes it’s easier to shift when the decks are clear. If you’re serving and you’re not serving with the talents that God gave you, then holy cow, what an awesome time because now that the decks are clear, it’s gonna be way easier for you to serve with the talents that God gave you. And if you need help with that, please reach out to me. I have endless resources, specific coaches, generic books to read and everywhere in between of things that can help you figure out those talents that father, mother, God gave you that you can go forward with and serve. And the reason that this is so important is because we must be serving until the day that we die and we can do the retirement thing

[08:08] if that’s what we wanna call it, but we still must serve at least three or four days a week. We must be serving. That is what we were put on this earth to do. And most Americans don’t have the financial wherewithal to do the full retirement thing for as long as we’re gonna live, which means they must figure out work slash service that they can do, that they love to do, that they can do for a very long time. So let’s do it now. Let’s figure it out now. I love it. I love the symbolism. And in my mind, I could see the decks being cleared and everyone sitting there going, all right, okay, I get it. It is time. It really is. It’s tariff time. And again, difficult times make strong people. We need to be strong.

[09:03] This is amazing. Kim, thank you for sharing this today. We have some other amazing episodes. For any of you listeners, as Kim mentioned, if you are trying to figure out where it is that you fit in the service game, send an email to helloatprosperitythinkers.com. There are tests and books and you name it. There’s no shortage of doing. It can be done. So helloatprosperitythinkers.com. Thank you for listening to the Prosperity Podcast. To take control of your money and have it work for you, visit ProsperityThinkers.com.