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Hi, this is Bob Barney with The Plain Truth today, brought to you by theplaintruth.com, and this is what I’m going to call this show, Tariffs Revised Number Two. As you know, my position on tariffs have not changed. They are inflationary. They will cause the consumer all of the money that the government is bringing in. So even if you’re supposed to get a $2,000 check for the tariff money, which is a joke in its own right, you’re paying $5,000, $6,000, $7,000 in inflated prices. And I’m going to give you some examples from TV, but I have a question.
If Ronald, I’m sorry, if Donald Trump does not believe that tariffs are inflationary, then why did he just do this? This just in to the KTAR News Center. President Trump has signed an executive order dropping import tariffs on beef, coffee, tropical fruits, and other products as prices have continued to rise. The president has been very vocal in recent weeks, claiming prices have been falling while blaming higher costs on policies enacted by the Biden administration.
Many experts insist higher food prices are directly related to the president’s tariff policies. Again, President Trump has signed an executive order exempting a number of food items from import tariffs. Well, you got to ask yourself a question.
If Donald Trump really believes that his tariffs are not causing inflation, then why would he lower the tariffs on high food price items that are in a grocery store? Because the truth is, or I should say the plain truth is, is Donald Trump knows what his tariffs are doing. He is doing in Trump 2.0 no good for the American public, no good for the American middle class or the lower class, because tariffs are inflation, and inflationary products like what are caused by tariffs do nothing but act as a tax on the lower and middle class people. Rich people don’t really mind price increases, as long as they can make so much money on Wall Street and investments and gold or whatever they want to invest in, because inflation brings higher prices.
And if they’re invested in those prices, I explained this before, then they make more money. So they don’t mind paying extra money. But since you work for a job and you’re working for a stable income, if you’re the average American, let’s say you’re working for $22 an hour.
Well, when things go up in inflation and your pay stays at $22 an hour, guess what? You fall behind. I’m going to play another example of this, which was on Squawk Box the other day. And it’s talking about the real cost of inflation.
And it’s something that I have to tell you that the people on Squawk Box, especially Joe Turnin, just did not want to hear. But it’s something I’ve been saying all along. And so let’s listen along to this one.
The last remaining manufacturers of men’s tailored accessories in America. And we cut and sew tens of thousands of ties every year. We import fabric overseas from China, which is where most of the world still comes from, and from Italy.
When we first heard about the tariffs, in some ways, we were excited, A, because we didn’t think we would be subject to the tariffs based on what President Trump had shared. Then we also were hoping that the contract manufacturing side of our business would grow. In other words, we thought other necktie companies, many of which import directly from China or from Italy, would ask us to start making their ties and bow ties.
In fact, we’ve gotten no new business since these tariffs took effect. So really, there’s no winners here. Consumers are paying more, and we’re making less money.
At a certain point, it may put us out of business. I’ve been trying to get a Senate bill that I wrote introduced into Congress, which basically exempts American manufacturers from paying tariffs on raw goods that we import to make our products. Somewhere between 80 and 90 percent of all American manufacturers import their raw materials from overseas.
So if they’re really looking to protect American manufacturing, then they would remove the tariffs from us. I am a manufacturer, as I’ve said before, of paint. But there is a manufacturer explaining that about 85 percent of all raw material that come into this country is for manufacturing purposes for American businesses that are paying high tariffs on these raw materials.
And so what these tariffs are actually doing is putting small businesses out of work, out of business, and laying off hundreds, if not thousands or tens of thousands of American workers that would be working in manufacturing what Donald Trump claims he wanted to see happen in this country. But instead, these little companies are being put out of business by who? The Amazons, the Walmarts, the big corporations that do not manufacture in America either, but they get around tariffs because they give money to certain politicians or to their families. And somehow they are always exempted somehow from the tariffs, or they find loopholes around tariffs by channeling their products through other countries.
So their little guys go out of business, where the big guys stay in business and get richer, and the poor get poorer. And this is Democrat policies normally, not Republican policies. And this is what Democrat Donald Trump, because I’m calling him a Democrat now, is doing when it comes to these tariffs.
He is absolutely strangling small manufacturers in this country. And let me give you a point about this. This is an example of a small manufacturer that is saddled like I was a few months ago with products, raw material products that they need from China, that at the time he was facing 150% tariff.
Listen to what he has to say, and you’ll see what I’m talking about. We’re talking about an American business employing American people, making American products, but the raw materials are not available in America. I think many people do not realize this, but many products are not made in America.
The raw materials are not found here, number one. It’s like coffee, you can’t make it here, or bananas, they don’t grow here. Well, certain raw materials are not found here, or certain manufacturing of raw materials are not allowed here by our EPA.
Listen to this. Hit for us, we have a quarter million dollars in inventory stuck in China right now. We can’t ship it here.
We don’t have $400,000 to pay the tariffs that Trump wants on those right now. So we’ve had to freeze all shipments, all orders, all production. And sadly, we’ve had to let go of most of our people already this year.
If these tariffs don’t end tomorrow, we’re out of business in months. And that is what many people are telling me as well. Other manufacturers, I talk to other paint manufacturers, as well as other manufacturers, we sell paint too.
We sell people that paint tractors or farm equipment or other kinds of equipment that use our paint. And they’re saying the same thing, that a lot of the steel that they get, their steel has gone up 25, 35% since we put a tariff on steel. And you’d say, well, that helps the American steel companies.
No, it helps them rob these manufacturers of their own hard-earned money. Because what did the American steel manufacturers do? They increased their prices by 25, 35% and became lazy from the tariffs. And we hear this, you know, like from Ronald Reagan.
You see, at first, when someone says, let’s impose tariffs on foreign imports, it looks like they’re doing the patriotic thing by protecting American products and jobs. And sometimes for a short while it works, but only for a short time. What eventually occurs is, first homegrown industries start relying on government protection in the form of high tariffs.
They stop competing and stop making the innovative management and technological changes. That is exactly what the steel companies are doing right now. They’re not worrying about being competitive any longer because they don’t need to be.
Uncle Sam is holding tariffs over their competitors’ heads and therefore allows them just to raise prices and cause inflation for the American consumer. They need to succeed in world markets. And then while all this is going on, something even worse occurs.
High tariffs inevitably lead to retaliation by foreign countries and the triggering of fierce trade wars. The result is more and more tariffs, higher and higher trade barriers and less and less competition. So soon, because of the prices made artificially high by tariffs that subsidize inefficiency and poor management, people stop buying.
Then the worst happens. Markets shrink and collapse, businesses and industries shut down, and millions of people lose their jobs. The memory of all this occurring back in the 30s made me determined when I came to Washington to spare the American people the protectionist legislation that destroys prosperity.
And when Ronald Reagan was given that speech, it was the Democrats that only wanted to do tariffs, and the Republicans were against tariffs because they saw what would happen under tariffs. But I want to play another example of small businesses, not just manufacturers, but many small businesses, family-run businesses that are on the verge of going out of business because they cannot compete against Amazon and Walmart and these big giants that get around these tariffs because they are paying these tariffs. They’re happy with them.
Many are struggling. Today, we head to the great state of Ohio, some may say greatest state, to hear from Earthquaker Devices, a guitar pedal manufacturer based in Akron. It launched in 2004 when musician Jamie Stillman successfully repaired his own guitar pedal.
The business now has 35 employees and sells more than 40 types of devices. Jamie’s wife and the co-owner, Julie Robbins, joins me now. Julie, really appreciate your time.
You are a U.S. manufacturer, but you do source some parts from overseas. Talk about the effect tariffs have had on your business. Yes.
First of all, thank you so much for having me, Phil. And I’d also like to thank you for giving a voice to other small business owners and other members of the Main Street Alliance. So yes, as you mentioned, we’re a U.S. Manufacturer.
We do everything here in downtown Akron, Ohio. And basically, our products use over 900 to be precise, 961 different components. And these are sourced from over 14 different countries of origin.
So we import everything, but then we do all the manufacturing here. Due to the tariffs, our prices are rising drastically, and it’s also created a market disruption and impacted our demand. So I can give you an example.
Yeah. I was just going to ask, when you talk about your prices are rising significantly, are those being passed on? How are you weathering that? Well, we need to pass them on, but we’re unable to calculate the exact price increase due to the chaos around the tariffs. They’re constantly changing from week to week.
So we’re unable to implement a price increase yet. But just an example, we have a product that without tariffs, it was $129, and we have about a 15% net profit on that. If the Chinese tariffs stay in place, we’d have to raise the price about 23% to maintain a profit margin on it.
And I want to get into one more study here or one more example of uncovering tariff inflation. This was on CNBC’s Squawk Box about a week or two ago, giving the real prices that people are paying that just is not being reported in Trump’s great economy. The economy, he says, is the best there’s ever been in America.
And I don’t know any American that can actually say that, except maybe that 1% making money off of inflation. But listen to these statistics, and you tell me who is paying the tariffs, China, other countries, Amazon, or you? So you look inside the report. These are things, Joe, what we did is we calculated prices changes from January to July.
Women’s dress is up 10.4%. Tools and hardware, 5%. Major appliances, 4.8%. You can see toys and games. These are things that normally would be going down or flat or were offsets to it.
And that’s really a key. Guys, if you move on here, we’re doing this live here. Another way to see the change, though, is from the prior declining trend.
Mike Konzel from the Roosevelt Institute found some stark reversals. Take a look here. Tools and appliance categories was heading down.
That’s the trend line, the dotted line there, before the reversal that likely is linked to tariffs. Similar pattern in home furnishings. Well, you can’t see the graph, so I got to explain it to you.
What he’s showing was the price of tools and hardware in 2023 was at about $1.01, and it was heading down by 2024. During the Biden years, it was down to about $0.99. And in 2025, when Trump took office, it was down to $0.98 on average. Today, with the tariffs and only six months’ time, it went to $1.05. Same thing with home furnishings.
They started in 2023 at about $1.05, and they went down in 2024 to the end of 2024 to about $1. And then in the beginning of 2025, they were still about $1 when Trump took office, and now they’re at $1.03. And what he’s showing is this increasing inflation on the things that are not really counted in the inflation numbers that you and I and everybody have to buy. And that is, you know, the tax of inflation.
Let’s go on to listen to the rest of this. This is of other products that are mostly imported. The trend line was down, and you can see the current line is up.
Conso found that 52% of 82 items in the core basket are up more than 3%. That was a sign of persistent inflation in the pandemic. Scott Lincecum from the Cato Institute tells me, quote, the big question is whether we’re starting to see it move into the service inflation and auto repair could be a sign of that.
How long margins could hold before they pass on the tariff? At the same time, sort of talking about what Joe was talking about, those who see benign tariff outcomes have been proven correct in several respects. Some prices are falling, perhaps in reaction to other things being more expensive. That’s that relative price that we’ve been talking about.
And just to let you know, why some prices are falling because of tariffs is because it’s like the Walmart example of last week that Donald Trump used about Thanksgiving when they said Thanksgiving last year under Biden costs the average family $24 a person. This year, it’s going to be $18 a person. And what that was not explained well to the people listening to that news broadcast is last year there were 21 items, all brand name items like Butterball Turkeys and all the brand name fixings that go along with it, 21 items.
This year, they paired it to only 15 items and no brand names at all, all Walmart store brands. And so the generic version of the turkeys and of the seasoning and of the apple pies is what lowered the cost, but also six missing ingredients or six missing items were also left off that list. So it was lying with statistics.
The old Mark Twain idea, there are lies, damn lies, and then there are statistics. Anybody who goes to a grocery store, anybody who’s filling up their car with gas, obviously Trump is in a sheltered world and he doesn’t go fill up his car with gas, nor does he go to a grocery store. But sometimes it’s good for a politician to get out of the White House and get out of that bubble.
And they think about going into a grocery store and seeing the real thing and talking to real people. I know it’s tough with assassinations and all of this stuff for the secret service to protect you, but he’s surrounded himself with yes people who will not give him the facts. And they just keep hero worship him and feeding his ego.
And he just, when someone gets on TV like President Trump and says, prices have never been lower. And then the next day he’s lowering tariffs on beef, which is raised in America, by the way, unlike bananas, explain that one, maybe because he’s got a relationship with Argentina. It looks like another Trump golf course is going there.
It just stinks to high heaven. And it stinks not only of stupidity and not understanding the inflationary aspects of tariffs, but it also stinks of corruption, frankly. Let’s go on and show you another example.
The following broadcast is again from CNBC Squawk Box, and it’s the McDonald’s CEO. And he talks about middle and lower income consumers are under a lot of pressure. They can’t even afford McDonald’s.
You know, it’s not saying about Outback or Olive Garden. Now it’s, they can’t even afford McDonald’s. Listen to this.
Red lobster. He talked about chilies and talked about how if it’s a, you get a dollar more at Chili’s said, I guess that’s a higher, it’s not a McDonald’s it’s thought of as a casual dining or something. So if it’s only a dollar difference, you might go to Chili’s.
So you recognize that and move quickly, right? Yeah. And part of what we also saw was that particularly with middle and lower income consumers, they’re feeling under a lot of pressure right now. I think there’s a lot of, you know, commentary about what’s the state of the economy.
How’s it doing? And what we see is it’s really kind of a two-tier economy. If you’re upper income earning over a hundred thousand dollars, things are good. Stock markets are near all time highs.
You’re feeling quite confident about things. You’re seeing international travel. All those barometers of upper income consumers are doing quite well.
What we see with middle and lower income consumers is actually a different story. It’s that consumers under a lot of pressure in our industry, traffic for lower income consumers is down double digits. And it’s because people are either choosing to skip a meal.
So we’re seeing breakfast. People are actually skipping breakfast or they’re choosing to just eat at home. And so for our business, which has a significant group of consumers, which were in that middle and lower income, we needed us.
By the way, who you’re listening to is the McDonald’s CEO. And I just thought I would let you know that this is who you’re listening to saying where they’re losing their customers to. And the idea that people in America are skipping breakfast because they can’t afford it.
I know you think that’s a liberal chant and people who are living quite well and have some money reserved and can make it through these times don’t believe it’s happening. But you’re listening to a CEO of a major U.S. company who is hurting for money and they’re still considered low cost. Really, McDonald’s is no longer low cost.
But whose fault is it? Let’s go on. Step in with something like what we’re doing here. Do you find yourself, sorry, tiering different products, though? Meaning saying to yourself, there’s going to be a lower income consumer and we’re going to have this product for them.
But then we have a luxury consumer that’s walking in and we’re going to charge them a premium price for some kind of premium product. We call it value ladders. So there would be something that would be an entry price point for someone who’s looking for something that maybe they only have a few dollars in their pocket.
So what can I buy for a few dollars in my pocket? And then we try to offer more premium items as well for somebody who’s maybe able to spend more money. Can you imagine that? Can you imagine now McDonald’s has to have two actual menus, two actual dollar menus for poor people versus richer people in the United States of America? If you were to say that just 10 years ago, for pity sakes, people would not believe it. Well, I believed it 10 years ago.
I believed it actually 20 years ago because I have seen this happening for over 30 years because Ronald Reagan economy and Ronald Reagan economics was done away with by the Bushes, never mind the Democrats. And we are suffering the consequences of all of this today. The next clip I want to play is Jamie Dimon, the CEO of Chase Morgan, and talking about what tariffs are doing and the idea that Trump actually tells U.S. manufacturers like myself and retailers, like we’re also a retailer, to eat the tariffs.
Now I got a question for you. If the Americans are not paying the tariffs, but the Chinese are, or the Denmark people are, or the people of Germany is, or England or wherever, why does he tell American companies to eat the tariffs and not pass it on to the customers? Like they have the profits. I have the profits to eat 150% tariff.
That would be like me telling you to mow my lawn for free, eat the money and go home and don’t get anything and feed your family somewhere else. Take a snap payment plan and said, but I want my lawn mowed for free. Here’s Jamie Dimon talking about the tariffs and the effects.
Even at these low levels, you know, they stay where they are today, that’s pretty extreme tariffs. My own view is, you know, where people feel pretty good because you haven’t seen in respect to tariffs. The market came down 10%, it’s back on 10%.
I think that’s an extraordinary amount of complacency. An extraordinary amount of complacency. And Dimon is really pointing out a simple fact, which is that tariffs of 30% on China, 10% on the rest of the world, on top of whatever was existing already, is massive.
It is extreme. And right now the stock market is trading literally as if none of these tariffs exist, back to the way it traded before anything was even announced. But the reality of it is, of course, is prices are going up and some items are not being restocked.
You know, within the past hour we learned that imports into America’s largest port dropped 30% in the first week of May alone. And the Port of Los Angeles says that the drop for all of May they expect will be a massive 25%. Just put that another way, maybe it hits home more strongly.
That is a quarter of all imports into the largest port in America. And for Dimon and other leaders in the American economy, the problem is even bigger. We have huge deficits.
We have what I consider complacent central, you know, almost complacent central banks think they’re omnipotent and you all think they can manage all this. I don’t think they manage all that. And as I said, Dimon is not alone.
One of his top rivals, Citigroup CEO Jane Frazier said very simply, something deeper is going on. You think so? Something deeper going on? Well, I can guarantee you something deeper is going on. This country is in trouble.
And I actually believe, and I said this in a few programs and I don’t like to say this, I believe this country is doomed. And I think the president that I voted for three times, the president that I thought would come and solve our problems as he did in his first presidency, when everything boomed along, has come and has acted as a destroyer. And I have to ask myself why.
And the only thing that keeps coming up is the old saying that was told to me a long time ago, never listen to what someone is telling you, watch what they are doing. Donald Trump is telling you that you are to invest in America. You are to put America first.
You are to put all your assets in America only. You’re not to deal with overseas companies. You’re not to buy raw materials from overseas, even though they’re the only place where they’re made.
You are to take it on the chin. Meanwhile, Trump Enterprises is building golf resorts in Saudi Arabia now as of this week, making a deal, which Marjorie Taylor Greene appropriately said was treason because we’re to sell them F-35s, which is the top jet in the world that no country can even resist itself against. The F-35 can shoot down four Russian MiGs at a time, at once.
It can target four different MiGs at once. And we’re giving this weaponry to a nation that could easily be the next Iran if an Ayatollah was to kill this MBJ, whatever the heck his name is, prince-to-be, king-wannabe in Saudi Arabia, who could be wiped out of office overnight in a coup. And then these jets fall in the hands of someone who’s going to go after Israel with these jets that Israel cannot even defend against.
And the United States would have a hard time defending against itself. This is not putting America first, or the hotels you’re putting in Estonia, or the deals you’re doing in Dubai, or the Trump coin, not based in Wall Street, the Trump coin is based in Dubai. Does that sound like he is following what he tells us to do? It’s not the case, my friends.
It is not the case. I voted for Donald Trump. I wanted him to succeed.
I still wish he would change his mind and change direction and do a pivot, but he’s really not. He had an election where Republicans were blowing out, and he doesn’t even see the writing on the wall. Oh, they were weak candidates.
Well, a week before the election, he thought they were strong candidates. The man changes his mind like you change your underwear, and it’s not good for you, me, American businesses, or the American people. Trump’s tax tariffs are a tax, and there are attacks on you and me, and they’re going to put us into poverty and drive us into a recession, depression, and job losses.
It’s still coming. The worst is yet to come. Mark my words.
I hope I’m wrong. I would love for everybody to say a year from now, well, Bob, it never happened. America’s doing great under Donald Trump.
We’re the richest nation in the world, and China just closed its doors because they ran out of business, and everything came back to America. I doubt it, and if anybody is actually not in Na Na land, they’re going to doubt it too. Well, that’s the show on my redo on tariffs, because it hasn’t changed much since my first few shows on tariffs.
My ideas have not changed. The Plain Truth, I’ll close this show by just giving a plug for theplaintruth.com, because it is the one place you go to on the internet that’s telling you the plain truth. We’re not trying to cozy up to Donald Trump so we can get a cabinet job.
We’re not trying to cozy up to the Democrats, because they’re the dumbest people that I’ve seen on the face of the earth. I think a mindless rat could do a better job than these Democrats. The only reason Republicans have a chance of even winning an election in 26 and 28 is because the Democrats are so inept, communist idiots that never held a job in their life that American people look at them and say, well, Donald Trump is better.
The Republicans are better, and we hate them, but they’re better. And that’s the only thing going for the Republicans. Can you imagine that you’re the worst of two choices, and that’s why you’re going to get elected, and you think that is good? It’s terrible.
But the plain truth will give you always the plain truth on your health—that’s called your health today—on everything about your faith, your idea of who God is, the idea of prophecy, and who America is, and identity. America is found in the Bible. Did you know that? I bet you your pastor didn’t tell you that, but America is named in the Bible, and if you go to the plain truth, you can find out what our identity is.
Do you know that no other name is used more than the name for America in the Bible? We are mentioned more than any other peoples of the Bible, and nobody knows it, for the most part. Very few people know it. And until you know it, you don’t know what your history is going to be.
You don’t know what your future is going to be, because if you don’t know your history, you don’t know your future. And your future is not good if you’re an American, and if you know who the Bible says we are. And that’s what I’m going with.
I’m going with God’s word, not man’s word. This is Bob Barney for The Plain Truth today, thanking you for listening. Hope I don’t chase everybody away, but if you want to hear the plain truth, this is where you’re going to hear it.
You’re not going to hear a lot of nonsense and people wishing things were better than they are and saying they’re better than they are. You’re not going to hear a program that’s saying the up is down and down is up, and that’s what you’re listening to if you watch the mainstream media, read the newspapers, or listen to most of these podcasts. They’re either paid for by the Democrats or they’re paid for by the Republicans, and nobody’s really telling you the plain truth, but the plain truth.
Bob Barney saying thank you for listening. Bye-bye.