Don Bacon
speaker
127 appearances
7 recordings
5 series
first heard Dec 2024
last heard 30 Apr
Don Bacon’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
Trend
recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 4 in all, peaking in Nov 2025 with 2.
Appearances
I'm not interested in a foreign policy that is totally built on realism or transactionalism, where it's just, what do we have in it for us? I believe in having a foreign policy that's a mix of realism, protecting our country, and idealism, where we're the leaders standing for freedom, free markets, rule of law. And we got to be clear-eyed, but also have moral clarity. Putin invaded Ukraine.
He's murdered all of us of political opponents. He tried to kill a previous Ukrainian prime minister. He's bombing cities. He's ramped up the bombing of cities.
The.
Also, I advised our mayor candidate. She's been the mayor for 12 years. Said, Mayor, all you got to say is this. Forbes races the number one city in America to live in. Two, we're the fastest growing economy in America at 9%. 9% GDP growth right here. And we're one of the few big cities where crime has gone down. It's a great place to live. So the economy is very diverse.
It's got an ag business component to it. We have Weston Foods. We have 85% of the world's irrigation sales come out of here. I can go on and on. So it's an agribusiness haven. But we're also a transportation hub. You have Union Pacific. You have Burlington Northern has another division headquarters here. We have a lot of the largest trucking companies here. in Omaha.
But third, it's the third largest financial sector in America. Insurance is the big driver of that. We also have the largest private bank in Omaha, right? But you have AFLAC, Mutual of Omaha, Pacific Life, New York Life. I just go on and on. So the insurance financial industry is just taking off in Omaha. And you put all that together, we have a dynamic economy and low unemployment.
And the standard of living here, or the cost of living, is very competitive.
But we are an export state. We're the world, we're the America's largest beef exporter for starters. And we're top five when it comes to pork, corn, soybeans, popcorn, ethanol. So we're an export state. State, export city. And I don't have a crystal ball. I mean, I hope it turns out well, so I have no idea. But I see a lot of risk.
When you lose $6 trillion in the stock market in two days, that says a lot. We've already seen a loss in customers when it comes to beef and popcorn. I've talked to the big exporters. And so these European markets have already shut themselves down. I don't think anybody wins in a trade war. And I don't know why we want to take on the entire world at once.
You know, I would have done this for surgically. I would have probably focused on China up front, maybe Russia with their behavior. I would have negotiated with Europe. Now, Europe doesn't have high tariffs. But they have a lot of rules. We can't find a way to get our beef, for example, in the European market because they put a lot of restrictions that make it very hard to get in.
So we should have these negotiations. But I know who our allies are and who our adversaries are. And so taking on the whole world seems very risky. Right. It's not wise to me. I like, if somebody's going to terrify us, I think we should have a level playing field. Sure. I think we've done enough analysis. A lot of the numbers that the White House used were not, actual tariff numbers.
They were fudged in a lot of ways. And so therefore, you can't just say it's a reciprocal tariff. They're not.
They have some pretty good legislative liaisons. There's three that I know of that we could call. I don't think they give us a heads up a whole lot, but the president himself told me when I was in the Oval Office, and we had two others of us in there, that he wanted to do reciprocal tariffs, that if somebody's putting a 5% tariff on us, we should do 5% back. Really, that's a hard one to attack.
Because I think we like having a level playing field. But I think we went way beyond that. I don't think we're doing, well, for example, Israel took off all their tariffs two weeks ago. And we put a hefty tariff on them after the fact. This is one example. Why are we doing tariffs on Canada when we have a trade deal with them and they're abiding by the trade deal?
These are the kind of questions I have. And I don't think they're really reciprocal tariffs. If they were, they would look a lot different.
I was listening to the Treasury Secretary today on one of the talk shows in the morning. And he made it clear his goal is to bring back industry back to our country. So he laid it out pretty clearly. I've talked to the president and hear him talk. He often talks about level playing field. These guys are blocking our products. And so we don't have a fair deal.
So you hear a little bit of both, depending on who you're talking to. I believe... I'll give you an example. I've already mentioned that Europe has lots of rules that block our exports. We should try to knock those down and talk to them about it.
And I wouldn't go to tariffs right away, but I would, you know, form some meetings and say, hey, it's not fair that you get to sell anything you want in our country, and we can't get corn and beef and pork into your guys' countries. And we should have that dialogue. Well, looking at the Treasury Secretary today, it sure sounded like their goal is to bring back manufacturing.
And there was a lot of questions in my mind on that. We have two workers for every retiree now. It's not like we were 30 years ago where we had 10 workers for every retiree. I'm not sure we have that kind of workforce anymore, but I think it's a high-risk move what they're doing here.
Yeah, we would be—you'd see a depression in the beef market here, the beef industry. And we have a great market because people like Nebraska beef. It's world-renowned. That is the one area that you do find some buyers in Europe. If you say Nebraska beef, they'll buy it, and they put it on their menu as such. Omaha Steaks.
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