Kenneth Raposa
speaker
133 appearances
2 recordings
1 series
first heard Feb 2025
last heard Apr 2025
Kenneth Raposa’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
This is harder than rocket science. A rocket might have 10,000 pieces in it, but we import tens of thousands of items and we have tariff codes for tens of thousands of items. So this is harder than rocket science, really. And it's not going to be easy, but we cannot be afraid.
The United States, since the days of Ross Perot back in 1990s, and I know you're a Gen Xer, I'm pretty sure you are, and you know who Ross Perot is.
If you're a millennial news junkie, you would know who Ross Perot is. Since that time, though, the electorate has said The free trade deals, NAFTA, for example, eh, not so sure it's great for us because blue collar labor, which dominates the United States, right? We're not all software engineers and doctors and lawyers or Wall Street brokers, right?
Those guys have been... Okay, I don't know if I can say this on the air, so I have to pause. I bet you can. Give it a try. No, give it a try. Have been screwed. Okay, and government reports that have said this, okay? The International Trade Commission, look it up. Free trade deals were great for Walmart. They were great for Microsoft. These are multinational corporations.
They're not really interested in the homeland, like me and you and our widget factory. Our widget factory is interested in the homeland. Microsoft is not interested in the homeland. They're not. So the electorate has said, we want someone to pay attention to our interests. So a lot of times you hear people will say, oh, All these guys who import goods, they're going to be crushed.
All these guys have a whole business importing goods from Vietnam and Cambodia. They're going to be absolutely crushed. It's absolutely devastating. Okay. I get it. Look, there are companies in the United States, large and small, who have invested tens of millions of dollars, maybe even just hundreds of thousands of dollars from companies that have four or five people in it.
And they are constantly being crushed by import penetration from around the world, from countries that no one can compete with because their wages are lower, not because they're being paid slave labor, but because their currency is worth The price of a seashell at a gift shop at Cape Cod in the summertime. So these are countries that you cannot compete with on labor alone.
Not only that, when you look at a country like China, they heavily subsidize industries that they see as being industries of the future and industries that they want to be dominant players in. you are not going to win that fight with the Chinese, period. So there is something you have to do.
You can either say, forget it, we're going to throw our hands up in the air and we're going to de-industrialize like the Europeans and the British. Or you could use tariffs and other measures because tariffs are not the sole solution. to do something about it and take action.
If you don't do anything about it, five, 10, 15 years from now, instead of 60% of the cars that are on the road in the United States being American made, it'll be 40%, 30%, until it's almost nothing. Because look at places like Korea, big car manufacturer in Korea. Everybody knows Hyundai and Kia. Those are the brands. I think it's 80% of cars on the road in Korea are made in Korea. Japan, 90%.
Okay? Great for them. Yep. So, the United States is just saying, you know something? I don't need to be 100% of our cars. How about if it's 75%? How about if it's 80? How about that? Can that possibly think? The United States doesn't even have an auto industry anymore because of free trade. We have a North American auto industry now. It's over.
And that's the reason why Trump can't even put tariffs on Mexico and Canada cars because it would totally destroy the auto industry because America doesn't have an auto industry anymore. It's the North American auto industry now. With Mexico and Canada, it's all entwined. You cannot take that apart without massive pain. So we already lost the auto industry in this country.
And the auto industry in this country is the center of the hub of automation. What's the industry that decides we're going to automate? How do you automate? It's the auto industry. It's not the guys who make fabrics. It's not the guys who make airplanes. It's the auto industry that taught us how to automate.
Well, again, a lot of the countries that we trade with, like let's look at the EU, for example, in the UK, their basic tariff was called the World Trade Organization, their baseline tariff. Let's say ours is 3.4%. Theirs might be, I think the UK is 3.9 or 4, and maybe the EU is 5. So it's not a huge difference.
But what Trump is complaining about, what Trump team is complaining about is that it's not the tariff It's the non-tariff barriers. So let's say, for example, you and I, we have that widget factory, we're trying to make some money, right? So we got our widget and it's a beautiful widget, but our widget weighs 10 pounds. And the rule in Europe for this type of widget is it can only weigh 11.
Then you and I spent a lot of money making an 11-pound widget, and then Europe says, it's got to be 12 pounds. So it's a constant barrier for us so they can protect their local widget guys. Also, which is something that all Americans have heard of, I'm sure, in the news is, It's what Capitol Hill always complains about is the phytosanitary measures.
These are measures on food and animal care where the Europeans and the British will say, we don't want to import your beef. We don't want to import your chicken because you give them a... a certain vaccine that we don't want, or you had a case of mad cow disease, whatever it may be, right? So that is the way that that blocks trade.
So there's a lot of other issues that the Trump administration has looked at. And then, of course, the other issue would be balanced trade. So where are the countries that we have a huge trade deficit with. Of course, the EU is the second only to China, which is big, but declining because of the tariffs of 2017. In the UK, we have a surplus.
So I was actually kind of surprised with the tariff on there. But I believe that the reason for the tariff on the UK is because they might become a transshipment point for the European Union in some way, right? With the European USA, you know, our multinationals in UK, we'll ship it through there or whatever, but the UK has a 10% tariff.
Again, the reason why it's higher is because a lot of these countries, especially in the emerging world, like India and China, they want to protect their own industry. They want their industries to grow and they want to protect labor, okay?
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