E.J. Antoni On Tariffs, Trade Wars, and the Economy | Ep. 09 - 03/27/25
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Hey, good morning to you. How you doing? Nice to see you again. It's the Vince. Well, is it the Vince? It's the Vince podcast. That's what it's called. It's Vince. Welcome back. Great to have you with us. Had a huge interview with the president of the United States yesterday. We'll talk about some of the reaction to the president's remarks here on the program today. Also, I want to get into a crazy hearing, an absolute crazy hearing.

Absolutely crazy hearing as NPR and PBS put up the worst possible case for why you should keep having your money stolen from your paycheck and given to them. And a look at some of the big

That's right. Elections happening all across the country right now for real and why you should care about each and every one of them. We'll talk about that. And we're going to bring in the great economist E.J. Antoni. He's going to stop by and tell us all about President Trump's latest tariff gambit. He's putting tariffs on all of those auto imports. That's ahead on Vince. But first.

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Yeah. What did you think of the interview with the president of the United States yesterday? I'm interested in your feedback today because we really we really had a we had a great time having the president on. So just to give you some behind the scenes of how this all works with the president.

For weeks now, I've been trying to get the president on the show because obviously this is the guest everybody wants to talk to. He's a very coveted guest. So my game was let's reach out to him. Let's try. Let's try. And so we did over and over and over again. You know, you just keep working on it until you finally land something. And then a couple of days ago, we had we started to get an indication that this was going to happen. And they began sending the basic questions of does it have to be live?

Can we do it by phone? Can we do it a little bit before the show? Would you be able to pre-record? Is that possible? And the answer to those questions when it comes to the president of the United States is yes, yes, whatever you need, let's just make this happen. I just wanted to make it as comfortable as possible. I mean, in fairness, my first offer was, hey, can we do this at the White House? I want to do this with the president, sit down and get the camera crew in there, you know, just set everything up, make it super easy for him, have him come in, sit down and we'll

And we chat. And but no, that's OK. I'll take what I can get. We got a phone interview yesterday and just before. So the interview itself happened at 9 a.m. Eastern so that everybody knows specifically it was 9 a.m. Eastern. So it was just an hour before we were able to actually launch at 10 o'clock and you got to see it in all of its glory yesterday.

And when we have the president on, the way it works when you connect to the president of the United States is you don't just call him. It's not a direct phone line to the president. There's a series of people who you have to speak to in the communications shop. So we get the phone call. The way that we handled the phone call yesterday, do you guys want to hear this? Do you want to hear the logistics of how the phone call gets connected ultimately to us? Let me see. I'll check the chat. I'll shorten out the details if you want, or I'll just keep going. Let's see.

Lisa Bisa wants to know, who the hell is this Vince and why is he suddenly showing up? Help Lisa out, would you? Okay, yeah, people want to hear the details. All right, I'll tell you. So the way things are happening right now is I'm in Washington, D.C. As you can see, I'm at the Rumble studio. Can we take the wide shot for a moment? I'm in the full, this is the Rumble studio. Obviously, this is beautiful. Look at that, that beautiful Rumble logo up there. We're going to feature that more. When EJ gets here, you're going to see more of that. We're in Washington, D.C.

And the other side of this is we've got Silverlock Studios in Florida, where the team is down there right now producing all of this for me, making this happen, making sure it gets to you. And then in order to take a phone call in all of this, we rely on the guy who's an expert at arranging phone interviews. That's Jim Verde. Jim is the radio producer for The Vince Show. He's sitting in Dallas waiting by the phone, just hovering over the phone, waiting for the White House to call at nine o'clock in the morning yesterday.

So all of us are I'm here, earpiece in microphone ready to go. Everything's recording. We're literally just waiting for a phone call to come in because it's the president of the United States. You know, everyone's ready. I'm in my suit and tie. I'm all ready to go. This is not a Zelensky moment. We're going to do this right. This is the president of the United States.

Phone call rings and I can hear the whole exchange feeding to me in this earpiece here from Dallas. Jim answers the phone. He's a professional, total professional. Jim has amazing phone etiquette, answers it. And he says, this is Jim for Vince. Actually, you know, it's funny. He told me yesterday, he's so used to saying that you're calling for Dan Bongino that he started saying that he started Dan, but he paused himself and he goes, for Vince, he says, and

And then the White House on the other end is a White House communications person, one of the president's top comms people who said, OK, stand by. We're going to start adding other people. And so the way it works with the president is they add every communications person you could possibly imagine over the course of the next two minutes is like, well, stand by. Caroline Levitt's being connected.

Stand by. Stephen Chung's being connected. Stand by. And there's one after the other. Each person is added to the line. And the reason this happens, of course, is because all of them need to monitor what the president of the United States is actually saying on the show. That way, when they're asked about it later, hey, what is the president's opinion on this? They were all listening to it. They all heard him say this. They're all ready to answer questions on this subject. So each of them one by one by one. And finally, the guy whose job it is to connect you to the president of the United States

says, make sure, is everybody here? Yep, everybody's here. Okay, stand by. We'll connect you to the president's hard line. And then before you know it, hello? Hello, Mr. President. Great to talk to you again. Just hold on for a moment. I'm going to introduce you and we'll kick things off. Okay, Vince.

And boom, we were off and you got to hear the rest of it yesterday. So in case you're wondering, there's a lot going on behind the scenes to just get the president on the phone. Anybody notice yesterday, though, that he he didn't he sounded a little under the weather during that call. He sounded he sounded just a touch under the weather or something by the afternoon. Yeah, people did notice. I'm looking here. People notice.

By the afternoon, he did sound like he got some more energy in him. That's normal. If you're feeling sick, you know how it is in the morning. You wake up and you're trying to hack out whatever you've got in your lungs. By the afternoon, he was doing press conferences and he sounded a lot better. However many Diet Cokes it took him to get into peak performance, he was back in action. But yesterday, he did sound a little bit under the weather. And I got a lot of messages from you guys saying that you were concerned about

about, um, his wellbeing, people lifting up prayers for him. That's always good. You got to pray for our president. Uh, and, uh, yeah, so something was going on with them, but I will say just in terms of the coverage of yesterday's interview, um, we had a lot of incoming, a lot of people wanted to talk about what he said related to the Atlantic signal story, which is at this point is so worn out and stupid. And it really is just a left-wing attempt to try and

unseat the Trump presidency. It's like, oh, we smell blood in the water. Let's see if we can use this to take him down. But some of my favorite moments with the president yesterday were

included when he was talking about Jasmine Crockett. Did you hear him going off on Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett yesterday? I don't know what it is. The magic words to all of this are just Jasmine Crockett. You say that or you just say Democrat leadership. And President Trump went off in like a million miles per hour yesterday talking about Jasmine Crockett. Take a look at cut three. Here he is talking Jasmine Crockett yesterday on this program. Well, nobody knows. You know, they don't have a leader. Yeah.

They have a girl named Crockett who is something wrong with her. She can't speak. No, she can't speak. She can't get the words out of her mouth. She's I can't see her going very far in politics.

Yeah. You can't see her going very well in politics. Yeah. She is ghetto, says Beauty on Duty. River One says Jasmine Croc of Crap. FJP 13 says, no way Dan Bongino show will be the same without Dan and crew. Perhaps he should have retired it entirely. Like, get rid of this stream entirely. I have no motivation to watch as I did with Dan. FJP needs... You need some Field of Greens, FJP. Vince is smart. Thank you for that. But does not parallel Dan's charisma. You know...

I'm going to do what I can. I'm going to give you some energy here. I'm going to give you some energy here. What is the thing that everyone wants me to – everyone keeps asking me to do karate. I got to do dance karate moves to get everybody fired up. Thank you for that. I thank you for the constructive criticism. I appreciate it. All right.

So anyway, the president did great. We had a lot of great coverage of it yesterday. I love that. And in fact, on this issue of how sick was he? Well, let me dip dip into something he did later in the day.

He did the he announced a tariff, 25 percent tariff on all the imported cars and car parts coming into the United States. And The New York Times was very upset about this. And they're very upset because foreigners are very upset about this. Take a look. Here's President Trump announcing 25 percent tariffs on all of these imported cars.

What we're going to be doing is a 25% tariff on all cars that are not made in the United States. If they're made in the United States, it's absolutely not tariff. We start off with a 2.5% base, which is what we were at, and we go to 25%. Yeah, 25%. And that's not just on imported cars. That's imported car parts as well, a disruptive to the auto industry, to be sure. But...

Left out of so much of the media coverage is the fact that President Trump has been making the case for the American auto industry. Why is it that places like Japan and South Korea and Germany and all of these other auto manufacturing countries, they do everything they can to make sure their cars get into the United States, but then simultaneously they do everything that they can to prevent American cars from getting into their countries?

That's the arrangement. And President Trump hates this arrangement because he says we're getting a raw deal. It's not working out for us here. And what I want to do is I want to restore American manufacturing, American economy, the American greatness. And so we have a president who's thinking principally about that. And also, by the way, using the threat and the existence of these tariffs to compel further behaviors on the part of some of these countries that

that we need help with. So for instance, Mexico and Canada, do you realize how big the auto industry is there? The American consuming auto industry in Mexico and Canada

They have assembly plants there. They have car parts being built in those countries. They're one of the biggest industries in both Mexico and Canada. And so, in other words, Americans are bankrolling their entire economy in a huge part on these car parts. And we're going to talk coming up with E.J. Antoni, our economist, America's greatest economist. He'll be joining us coming up shortly.

This arrangement means that they're very dependent on us. And so are there things we need from Mexico and Canada? Or do we need them to do anything for us? Well, yeah. How about, especially in Mexico's case, stop the flow of fentanyl? Canada is another place where that's a big consideration too. Stop the flow of fentanyl. You're killing over 100,000 Americans a year through this system? No thanks.

President Trump is using tariffs as both a leverage economically and to stop the flow of all this deadly poison into the United States of America, which is a huge deal, which is a huge deal. And so we'll talk in more detail about this coming up with EJ. You know, like anything, the media turns this all into controversy. Oh, my God, what is he doing? Twenty five percent tariffs. Well, Japan has been sucking up to us.

his commitments to spend money here, South Korea too, Germany too. And look, President Trump's saying it's not enough. It's not enough. You got to do more. You got to do more. We got to right this shit and we got to do it aggressively. And we are, as of yesterday, we were 65 days in to the Trump presidency. Today is day 66. And he wants to knock all of this out now. And in case you're the kind of person who's wondering about the political implications of this, and obviously you should, think about the politics of this. So

If you're going to do something that has some disruptive effects on the American economy, but it's for the long-term benefit of the economy, when do you do it? How do you time it out? Do you do it closer to the midterms when everybody's going to the ballot box or mailing in their ballots, filling them out? Or do you do it right now when you have the most possible political capital, the most public support for your agenda, the clear

clearest memory of the election that just passed and why we elected this guy in the first place. Knock it out now. Yeah, that's right. Triple X, F.T. Smurf. I hope that I hope that's a PG triple X. F.T. Smurf says immediately, immediately. Ella 301 saying, no, do it now. Do it now. Yeah, do it now. It's totally right. And and getting fixing the American economy is also not a short term project. It's going to take a while.

When we had J.D. Vance on the show last week, remember what I asked Vice President Vance? He kind of dodged the big question, which is, is he going to run for president? But I asked him, I thought I was being clever. He skipped right past it. He's a smart dude. I said, okay, this plan to restore the American economy the president's talking about, he keeps saying, you know, we've got to do these big things. Four years doesn't seem like that long of a time to fix up the American economy. So Mr. Vice President,

Are you ready to go back to the White House for another eight years to see this thing through, to see this big course correction through? And it was great. J.D. Vance said, J.D. Vance, he just basically gave me a very diplomatic answer. He was like, he's like, this is very important. We're going to get as much done as we can now. And yes, in the long term, we're going to have to keep tackling this because we have to right the ship for America. Of course, he didn't indicate that he's running for president just yet. That would be the exclusive. Don't you think?

Can anyone in the chat know J.D. Vance? Can you tell him that he needs to make the announcement on this program? You see him with the Marines in Quantico yesterday? Fellas, can you look for one of those for me? I know we didn't pull a clip of it, but you guys can find it. J.D. Vance is a United States Marine, and he went to visit the Marines at the Quantico Marine Corps Base, which is just south of Washington, D.C. I say just south, but if you're ever in traffic, it feels like it's very far south of Washington, D.C. It's not that far.

But he goes to the Marine Corps base there. He visits with the Marines and they were they were amped up out of their minds that United States Marine vice president gets up on stage with them and address them yesterday. And he went out, he was shooting, he was shooting fully automatic machine guns on the range yesterday.

It was such a great contrast. I was just thinking about Tim Walls, which I hate doing, but just thinking about his inability to load a shotgun. Remember that video where he's like, he's fumbling with it. He's getting his finger caught. Unreal. The fact that that guy, I can't even believe we were in a position where that guy was running for vice president of the United States. And J.D. Vance is shooting a machine gun yesterday at Quantico. It was great. It was totally awesome. So, yeah.

I'm proud of our vice president. I thought that was good. It reminds me of Don Jr. last week telling us on the program that he's like that Tim Walz. He has no idea what he's doing with a gun. Don Jr. said he could you could hand him any shotgun blindfolded and he would have it loaded in just seconds, which I believe Don Jr. is a big hunter. Really funny. So anyway. So there we go. There we go. See, look at that. Look at that boy on the on. That's the United States Marine shooting a machine gun.

The White House tweeted that yesterday and said that he was putting freedom seeds downrange. Freedom seeds. That's really good. That's really good. That's funny. Years ago, I got to go out on one of these ranges. Here's a detail. I don't know if everybody knows this, so I'll share this with you. So my dad is a Marine Corps general, retired Marine Corps general.

And years ago, he was running the Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton on the West Coast in California. Pendleton is a huge, beautiful stretch of land down in Southern California, just north of San Diego. And I went and visited him and I brought Tucker Carlson with me because Tucker and I were, I worked for Tucker at the Daily Caller. And so a group of us, including Tucker, we went to visit Camp Pendleton.

And while we were at the base, we took a tour of the base and we got to see everything. And we were able to get out on the range and fire sniper rifles together. And it was awesome. And the Marines had set up these sniper rifles for us. They did all the hard work of setting up the guns and laying them down, getting the bipods on them and getting little sandbags that you put underneath to kind of adjust the gun to get it in the right position. And then lie down prone the way you saw Vice President Vance there.

And downrange, they had those metal targets that you could shoot at some great distance. And so you're staring through this scope and looking at these metal targets. And any of you who have ever done long range shooting and you fire at metal targets, no, it's the single most satisfying sound you could possibly hear back if you hit your target. Because those steel targets, it's just pure metal coming back to you from whatever great distance.

It was awesome. It was totally awesome. And by the way, Tucker's a phenomenal shot, not just on the sniper rifles. That guy's a really good shot. So just a reminder to Antifa, if you're thinking about going after him,

There you go. Yeah, there's the White House statement. Just the vice president of the United States sending some freedom seeds downrange doesn't get more American than that. You know, I've been around the American military for like a lot of my life, you know, given I grew up in a Marine Corps family. I had never heard the phrase freedom seeds, but it is it is absolutely going into the rotation now.

I love that. And thank you for all the people are thanking my dad for his service. That's cool. He's a he's a great American. Great dad. And had a hell of a career. Thirty six years in the Marine Corps. Tons of combat tours. Afghanistan, Iraq over and over and over again. Amazing. Just amazing. Yeah. And then there's Tim Wallace. Look at that. So forget freedom seeds. There's just Elmer Fudd right there.

Not able to load a shotgun. I believe on that trip, which was supposed to be, what was it, a pheasant hunt he was doing? I don't think he fired at all, all day long. And that may have been by design. I think they intentionally said, hey, don't shoot a bird because our base won't like it. So he just had to pretend to hunt. He just walked around in the tall grass wearing an orange vest.

wearing a reflective, wearing a safety vest that was purchased earlier that morning. You can see the creases on it. I'm a big hunter. Tim Walls, really, really amazing. Love that. Let me see here. Yeah, Elmer Fudd, that guy is ridiculous. All right. So again, coming up, I've got E.G. Antoniou. We're going to talk the economy with him. But first, I want to get into what's going on here. Gentlemen, should I thank one of our sponsors?

Is this now is appropriate time? I reckon wait for that. You tell me.

Anybody, give me the signal. Thank you. Thanks, fellas. All right, good. All right, well, let me thank one of our sponsors right now who keep all this programming free and deliver all this great news to the American people, including the Freedom Seeds. You've seen it before when disaster strikes, grocery store shelves can go empty overnight. The worst time to prepare is during the aftermath. By then, it might already be too late. Smart Americans trust MyPatriotSupply to help them prepare before crisis comes. And right now, they're making it easier than ever.

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Okay. So here we go. NPR PBS on the hot seat yesterday in the United States Congress, they went and sat in front of the, the Doge committee, which is a committee that's designed to get rid of wasteful spending. And right there at the top of the list in terms of visibility, wasteful spending, how about PBR, PBR? I keep doing that Pabst Blue Ribbon, PBS and NPR. How about those guys?

You can spend money on PBR. Forget the rest of it, though, PBS and NPR. So yesterday, I would say the video of the entire committee hearing was when Congressman Brandon Gill came out of Texas and absolutely destroyed the NPR CEO, Catherine Maher. Take a look. I just want you to see some of this beatdown. It is so good.

The NPR CEO, here it is, cut five. The NPR CEO, Catherine Marr, getting dunked into the earth over and over and over again by her own tweets. Do you believe that America is addicted to white supremacy? I believe that I tweeted that, and as I've said earlier, I believe much of my thinking has evolved over the last half decade. It has evolved. Why did you tweet that? I don't recall the exact context, sir, so I wouldn't be able to say. Okay.

Okay. Do you believe that America believes in black plunder and white democracy? I don't believe that, sir. You tweeted that in reference to a book you were reading at the time, apparently, The Case for Reparations. I don't think I've ever read that book, sir. You tweeted about it. You said you took a day off to fully read The Case for Reparations. You put that on Twitter in January 2020.

I apologize. I don't recall that I did. I've never read that. That's funny. You tweeted. You took a full day off to read it. Do you believe that white people inherently feel superior to other races? I do not. You don't? You tweeted something to that effect. You said, I grew up feeling superior. How white of me. Why did you tweet that? I think I was probably reflecting on what it was to be white.

To grow up in an environment where I had lots of advantages. It sounds like you're saying that white people feel superior. I don't believe that anybody feels that way, sir. I was just reflecting on my own experiences. You think that white people should pay reparations? I have never said that, sir. Yes, you did. You said it in January of 2020. You tweeted, yes, the North, yes, all of us, yes, America, yes, our original collective sin and unpaid debt, yes, reparations, yes, on this day. Okay, look.

I mean, I get just trying to be deceitful, which obviously she was trying to do. But the brazenness of it, for her to say, I've never said that. I never read that. I've never done that. And each one of them, the congressman says-

You literally did it. You said you took a day off from work to read the book. You sat around reading the book. I've never been for reparations. Oh, that's funny. The tweet right here that literally you wrote says, I'm for reparations. They could not have scripted that better. That was...

That was like a comedy sequence. I can't even believe that happened. But that was that was amazing. So, Congressman Brandon Gill, we raise our glasses to you today. I'm going to keep an eye on that congressman more, by the way. He's one of those. That's a sleeper congressman right there. That that guy, not a guy we talk about a lot. But if he keeps putting up performances like that, we're going to talk about him a lot more.

That was really amazing. That was really amazing. This hearing continued. Someone else called out Catherine Marr for tweeting that Donald Trump is a fascist and a deranged racist sociopath. So this is the kind of person who's running a taxpayer funded organization. Look at this.

Why did you call President Trump a fascist and a deranged racist sociopath in 2020? Congressman, I appreciate the opportunity to address this. I regret those tweets. I would not tweet them again today. They represented a time where I was reflecting on something that I believe that the president had said rather than who he is. I don't presume that anyone is a racist.

You don't believe anyone is a racist? I don't believe anyone is a racist, sir. So you believe that most Americans think President Trump is a fascist and a deranged racist sociopath? I don't believe that at all, sir. Okay. Isn't that amazing? Her defense is so demented now that she said, I don't believe that anyone is a racist. What kind of statement is that? That's incredible.

Um, so that was, uh, that was wonderful. Again, all the more reason they didn't have their money taken away. Um, and then, uh, Jasmine Crockett came riding into the rescue to Catherine Marr. Uh, she, she saw that this, um, this stupid lady was getting beaten down. And so she thought, how can I make this conversation even dumber? And here's Jasmine Crockett's contribution.

They don't care about public safety. They don't care about emergency management, and they don't care about free speech, all of which are harming American people. In fact, I'm going to skip off real quick because they have a lot to come for you, Ms. Mayor. And I just want to clarify, you did not work for NPR when those statements were made, did you?

That is correct. Free speech is not about whatever it is that y'all want somebody to say. And the idea that you want to shut down everybody that is not Fox News is bullshit. We need to stop playing because that's what y'all are doing in here. You don't want to hear the opinions of anybody else. And the Constitution says Congress shall make no law respecting or establishing anybody.

of religion or prohibiting the free exercise of religion. She's reading the Constitution. The gentlewoman's time has expired. The gentlewoman's time has expired. I... Okay, I gotta hand it to her. I didn't know she could read. Um...

That, as you can tell, that was the first time that she ever attempted to read the United States Constitution, which is why she fumbled it as she was giving us the explanation. Of course, as you know, it's the left's impulse to censor, to cut you off, to stop you from being able to communicate. It's not the right's impulse, the right's for free and open debate, because when we have them, we win. That's usually how that works. But amazing. Jasmine Crockett thought she was helping. She was not helping.

She said, when you tweeted this, when you tweeted this, you weren't even that CEO of NPR, right? Right? Like, what kind of defense is that? So you stopped being an insane person the second you're hired by NPR? I don't think so. Oh, yeah, yeah. She is. Justin, can people hear you say that or were you just telling it to me?

Okay. Justin was telling me that right now, I just want to remind everybody that the annual cutesy time is over. Dumbest member of Congress tournament is in the finals right now. And if you go to X, go to JJ Verde, that's the great Jim Verde.

Go to his account on X and he's got the poll open as we speak. It's going to close, I think, within the next 24 hours. So if you're listening to the podcast or if you're watching here on Rumble, just pull up another tab. Yeah. And go check out what's on screen right now on Rumble. You can see it. You can vote in this competition. Who is the dumbest member of Congress? We do have two number one seeds up against each other. This is kind of a clash of the titans.

Yeah, these are the finals. And AOC and Jasmine Crockett are squaring off. But here's the problem for AOC. She's losing badly. She's losing very, very badly. She's doing about as well with this as she does with garbage disposals. It's not going well for her. Jasmine Crockett is dominating at the moment, 82.6% of the vote.

And this would be, I checked with Jim yesterday. Jim is, uh, is the official record keeper on the subject. He told me that, um, AOC has never lost this title since, since it began. Um, and, uh, so this, so AOC, what technically is the second. So that makes sense. Last year, AOC won. Uh, but this is a dynasty that's about to be unseated. If Jasmine Crockett wins this. And the reason for that is because Crockett has put up a lot of,

like late game successes here in the quest to be known as the dumbest member of Congress. She's put a lot of points on the board.

And she saved her peak performance for the postseason. She timed it out. Whatever the diet regimen, the exercise regimen involved, however often you have to hit your head against a wall in order to get to peak performance, Jasmine Crockett has absolutely delivered at the pivotal time. And AOC, honestly, kind of asleep at the switch. Not performing right now. She's probably trying to figure out what to do with that Tesla she owns. Because...

Because we hate Tesla now. Her programming has changed. So she's got to figure out how to get rid of it. And she's never sold a car before. So it's really challenging for her. So there you go. That's an update right there. And let me tell you about some of our great sponsors. And then we're going to get to our great guest, E.J. Antoni, standing by, our economist.

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Switch to Patriot Mobile today and defend freedom with every call and text you make. Visit patriotmobile.com slash Vince or call 972-PATRIOT. 972-PATRIOT. That's the way to handle it. Awesome. Okay, the economy. Everybody wants to know what's going to happen next, certainly for your portfolio, but probably also for the well-being of your country. It's health.

What's going to happen? Well, whenever I have that question, I turn to my economist. And here's the trick to this. Not only is he my economist, he's also Dan Bongino's economist. And he's also an economist at the Heritage Foundation. And he's also sitting literally right next to me right now. He snuck into the room, E.J. Antoni,

Great to see you, bud. It's great to see you too. The great EJ Antoni is here. Of course, this audience will know you well from all of your time with Dan through the years talking about all of these really important economic issues. I want to ask you about this tariff thing that President Trump announced yesterday. 25% tariffs on all auto imports. And that's not just cars. That's also car parts, which is a massive industry in places like Mexico and Canada. What do you make of this?

I think it was certainly a surprise to a lot of folks weren't expecting it, at least not this soon. Now, some of the some of it is not going into effect immediately. In other words, cars currently made in Mexico, in Canada, they're going to have some time to verify, for example, what percentage of the components are.

are actually being made in North America. In other words, what does qualify for the USMCA and what does not. Part of the reason why so much ire has been directed at Canada lately, for example, is because of all the abuses that have been alleged within the USMCA. In other words, when you allow a Chinese company to come in and set up shop in Canada and sell stuff

That's really not Canadian. It's actually coming in from China. But you're selling it under the guise of the USMCA. That's really an abuse of these country of origin laws. And so if Canada is not willing to crack down on that, then we're going to have to crack down on it. That makes sense. So Canada is allowing China to take advantage of them in order to evade our tariffs on China and

And as a result, we say, OK, fine, if you're not going to handle it, we'll handle it from here. Exactly. And it's not just the fact that they are evading the tariffs on China, but then they're getting it's kind of a one to punch because they're evading the Chinese tariffs. And then they're also getting the preferential treatment that other nations don't get within the USMCA.

So it's not simply that China is not China, but they're on a level playing field with the rest of the world. No, it's one step further. They're even getting preferential treatment. So the whole chat is obviously talking about the economics here. I'm just kidding. They're talking about the suit you're wearing right now, which, by the way, E.J. is always dressed in a three piece suit with what? What's the I don't know. Is there a name for the chain that you're wearing? Oh, the pocket pocket watch.

Pocket watch. Oh, you got a pocket watch on. Yeah. That's my late grandfather's. And since we have the same initials, it was left to me. That's cool. I love that. Pocket watch. Okay. I'll remember that. That's a good word, pocket watch. No, but everyone is impressed. So thank you for dressing up. This is not a Vladimir Zelensky moment. EJ, showing a tremendous amount of respect. For the most respect. Tremendous respect for this audience.

in terms of the impact on prices, because obviously we care about the wellbeing of our country.

But we also want to know what is it going to cost to buy a car in light of this change? The way that the media talk about this is so low IQ, I barely want to reference it, but it's just like, oh, a tariff is a tax. Therefore, you're going to pay 25 percent higher on everything. That's not actually how it works, is it? It's interesting if it really was the case that all of these tariffs would instantly be passed along to the consumer in all instances.

then American dairy farmers would have no problem competing in Canada because they would just take that 270% tariff or the equivalent thereof and pass it along to their Canadian consumers. Except they can't because it would make them uncompetitive, right? So that's clearly not what happened.

at least not in all instances right there now there are a lot of different factors at play there are different elasticities from one good to another from one market to another you also have changes that happen in terms of currency exchange rates so there's a lot of moving parts not the least of which is then in the long run people can change where they make things yes right a car does not have to be made overseas

And even foreign companies now have set up shop here in the U.S. There's a lot of manufacturing done in the United States. Right. Exactly. Exactly. Now, one of the things that's going to be examined under this latest tariff by President Trump is whether or not a car that's, quote unquote, made here is actually really being made here once you look at all the constituent parts. Right. It's something like about half, I think, of the cars made in the U.S. They wait for the final screw.

Everything else, every other component of the car is put together in Mexico and then they ship it over. They put the last tire on in the United States and they say it's American made, baby. The wax, they just wax the paint with American wax. But it's something like about half of the cars made here, or excuse me, half of the cars bought here are made here, Vince.

And then about half of the components of the cars that are made here are actually produced here. Well, so on a component basis, it could be as low as like 25% of cars sold here are actually made here. So this is aiming at changing that. But also to be clear,

What you're talking about is also true with the American auto manufacturers. It's not just, you know, Volkswagen or Hyundai or these other these these out of country manufacturers, many of whom have built U.S. plants to build some of their cars. Some of them are popular. The more popular the car, the more likely it is that they'll have U.S. plants because they just want to churn them out and sell them to the American market.

But Ford, GM, they're building out of country and then bringing them in. So even American auto manufacturers in many ways are not strictly American. Right. In fact, there are certain, quote unquote, American brands of vehicles that actually, when you look at all of the component parts, are less American made than some foreign companies like, let's say, a Toyota Tundra that's assembled down in Texas. I think down in San Antonio, if I remember correctly. Right.

And look, this is the events. It gets incredibly complicated because you can have a iron or, or aluminum that's mined in a certain country. It is sent to another country to be refined. It's sent to another country to be turned into sheet metal, then to another country to be turned into the automotive part and then into a different country to actually be assembled in, into a vehicle. So, I mean, you can have literally a,

dozen different times or more that parts are crossing borders. So again, it's very difficult to assess this. And that's one of the reasons why the Trump administration, I think, is going to take some time to evaluate things like the USMCA here. So as you understand it, what do you think the president's trying to achieve with all of this?

Oh, as usual with President Trump, he has several different goals in mind, one of which is, I think, addressing a lot of the vulnerabilities that were exposed in 2020 and beyond with COVID, when we saw the fact that we have leaned out our supply chain so extensively to make them hyper-efficient that we've created a lot of vulnerabilities. We have created this model in a lot of instances where there is no warehousing of parts anymore.

Right. Things are literally coming in today. They're being used today and nothing gets stored overnight. Well, the problem is that that, again, creates vulnerabilities. And is it hyper efficient? Yes. But is it worth the risk of when you have things like the pandemic disruption? Right. And the answer there was was clearly no. So it's aiming at addressing that. It's aiming at reshoring manufacturing, bringing manufacturing back here, bringing jobs back here.

And that's not just important in terms of the automotive industry. It's important from terms of a national security component. If you look at World War II, for example, our ability to churn out at the Ford plant, I think it was something like they churned out four bombers every hundred hours. I mean, that's astonishing. That's almost one a day, right? Yeah, we can't do that now. Right. That was because of the industrial base that we had, which was second to none across the world. The same is true of shipbuilding.

Exactly. Exactly. Now, there's a couple of different components with shipbuilding where that's kind of unique, where we have problems like the Jones Act, the Dredging Act, right? So there are other things that need to be addressed there. Impediments to speedy shipbuilding. Exactly. So it makes it too difficult to build ships here, and it makes us that we don't have any competition in terms of domestic shipbuilding. So is it possible to establish a timeline on how long it would take –

good American trade policy to restore healthy industry here in the United States? Like how long would something like that take? If you had the political will and Washington actually fighting for it, what would it look like?

It's difficult to say in part because it's not just based on what Washington does. It's based on what Berlin does, what London does, what Tokyo does, what Seoul does, all these other countries. And this goes back to your previous question, why is Trump doing this? Another aspect is the fact that he's trying to get reciprocity. Look, if you want us to not tariff your cars and your car parts-

then the best way to do that is for you to stop tariffing ours. And not just the tariffs, but the non-tariff barriers, which in a lot of ways are the real killer for many markets. So get rid of that and we will get rid of ours. And the reason that's a win-win is because now when it's easier for us to compete overseas, we will build more factories and we will employ more people. Now to your question, how long does all this take? Within a year or two, you can see a real substantive change

in the American manufacturing base. So it can happen that quickly. And we've seen, so, and then in the short term, people, Corina says, I like this guy, bring him back again, love the knowledge. Okay, we'll consider it. Maybe. A. Fury and great show, Vince. Thank you very much. You know,

When it comes to the 65-day window, obviously I had the president on yesterday. I mentioned during our program yesterday after the interview that you had helped me out with some of the economic questions here. And I'm impressed by how much investment

President Trump has attracted into the United States in just the first 65 days. What does that look like? Right. It looks like over three trillion dollars. I mean, it's really incredible. And the reason why investment is so much is, in my opinion, worth so much more than just simply consumption. Yeah. It's the fact that consumption is one and done.

versus investment, how does that affect economic growth? Well, in the short run, if you're going to invest, let's use the automotive example, right? I'm going to invest and build a factory here. I'm instantly creating consumption because I'm right away employing people to act like construction workers to actually build the factory. But if I'm working there, my first paycheck, I can go spend it on lunch next to the job site. Right.

Exactly. But now in the future, what are we looking at? In the future, we're looking at the ability to produce cars to create wealth. So you've not only created economic growth immediately, you've created long-term economic growth. And this was one of the things that was so detrimental during the Biden years. If you look at something like private fixed domestic investment, which is the real driver of long-run economic growth, because that's where you get things like the factories, that was very anemic.

During the last four years. So a piece of data that I've mentioned on this program, and I see the chat asked me for a source because everyone in the chat likes receipts, which me too. I like receipts. My receipt is this guy. He's a walking, talking receipt. But one of the things that you brought up to me in the past that I cannot stop thinking about is that it takes one person

Sorry, it takes 80 private sector workers to pay for one government worker. Just can you unpackage that a little bit? 80 private sector employees paying taxes.

to fund one federal government worker? Sure. So one of the mistakes that people make a lot of times when they're trying to do this calculation is that they're saying, all right, if you have one private sector worker and they're going to pay X number of dollars on average in taxes, then you just need that number of taxes multiplied enough to get to the government worker salary and voila. But the problem is that what the federal government pays is

in terms of government worker salaries is actually a pretty small portion of the overall budget. And so every additional job that you add, you're not sending all of that person's income tax dollars to the government workforce, right? It's a relatively small portion. Think of your taxes like a pie chart.

And there's a small sliver that's going to pay for government workers. But we've got three million of them. Right. Exactly. Exactly. So, you know, so again, there's there's a lot of different moving components here. It's not as simple as A times B equals C. And so once you start taking a lot of those considerations or once you start considering a lot of those different other factors, then it becomes clear that 80 to one is the minimum.

But there have been some times in history based on the salary differentials and the benefit differentials between private sector and government workers where you easily get up to 120 or 150 to one. But right now, I would conservatively say it's more like 80 to one. Amazing. OK, well, E.J. and Tony, we are going to have you back.

Thank you for doing this. My pleasure. Thank you for having me. Thank you for dressing up for it. This guy usually dresses like a bum. He doesn't. Where'd you get this costume at? Thank you very much, man. Thank you. Thank you. All right. So that's E.J. and Tony. That's the In-House Economist here for this program. Not every podcast has an In-House Economist. This podcast does. This one does.

Um, thank you. And, uh, the chat loving it. Um, not bored says chrono flux, uh, which is high praise, not bored. Uh, that's fantastic. Uh, and, uh, lots of, lots of, uh, lots of praise for, for Dr. EJ and Tony. Uh, thank you for that. Hey, I'm going to, I want to dive in here. Look at the chat. The chat's going wild. I'm going to dive in here a little bit with you and forgive me for putting my laptop here on my lap, but I don't have a table in front of me. So I'm going to do that. Um,

I've got to tell you that there are a number of really important races going on across the country right now that you have to be aware of. And I'll just take you back to this past Tuesday, just a couple of days ago now.

In Pennsylvania, Democrats are crowing right now that they just picked up a state Senate seat in Pennsylvania. There was a special election this week for the Pennsylvania state Senate. The Democrat won there and only won by about 500 votes. It was very, very close.

there. And this is one of those races that drives Scott Pressler crazy because he's been working really hard on it. There's a lot of really good conservatives in Pennsylvania, by the way, who've been working very hard on trying to whip up the vote. And one of the things that just happened there was

the Democrats just, they had the mail-in ballot advantage. They dominated in mail-in ballots in this awful, unsecure system that we have going on in voting. And so mail-in ballots is the way of things right now. Now, granted, Republicans actually did a very good job showing up with mail-in ballots last year in 2024. But

look, conservatives, you just have to make it a habit. So long as you're going to have a system that relies on mail-in ballots, we've got to beat these Democrats at their own game. And in Pennsylvania, a loss there, that was a district that Trump won by 15 points. And the Democrat taking the seat by just 500 votes, tons of mail-in ballots there. And there were, you know, we got to do better than that. And one of the reasons this is happening is

is because Democrats right now, because they're out of power, all of their rich people are exerting all of their economic forces on these little races, these special election races going on around the country. And so that race in particular is

That had a massive the biggest contribution in the whole race came from a left wing political action committee in Chicago that sent in one hundred thousand dollars in a race that only raised about one hundred and fifty one thousand bucks. So two thirds of the contributions came from an out of state left wing PAC that was trying to buy and did successfully buy the election.

So you've got to be on guard for this. Each of these little elections that are going on, they matter, and Democrats are trying to pick them off with their outside money operations.

Now, that is just that's kind of the starting point for me in terms of what's coming next. Next week, Tuesday, we have two really consequential special elections going on in the country. One is Wisconsin. That's the Wisconsin Supreme Court. This election, although the positions are nonpartisan, if you're in Wisconsin right now and you're listening to me,

You have to hustle and get every single person you can to vote in this election. Get them out because it will decide the balance of power for the Wisconsin Supreme Court. Massive, massive thing. And before that court are a number of cases, including cases that determine the way they conduct elections in Wisconsin.

It's as big as it can get in that state. So Wisconsin has to happen. You see on the screen here, Scott Pressler saying, let me be perfectly clear. If Wisconsin doesn't elect conservative Brad Schimel on April 1st, that's next week, Tuesday, the liberal court will redraw congressional maps. Republicans will lose at least two House seats going into 2026.

It's a massive case in Wisconsin. Remember, the left, they're using out-of-state money here. Republicans, conservatives, you can do it too. It's perfectly legal, and you can help out people like Brad Schimel in Wisconsin.

as they run for this. It's all about establishing the balance of power, establishing who controls ultimately the Supreme Court in the state of Wisconsin. This is a big one. Right now, it's controlled by the left, to be clear. It's not controlled by Republicans. This is an opportunity for the left to pick this up in Wisconsin. Look at what happened in Pennsylvania just a couple days ago, a loss there by 500 votes. These races can be very close. In Wisconsin,

Could be a big deal. President Trump won Wisconsin, albeit narrowly. So this is going to be a tight race. If conservatives actually show up, if they support, if they give money, if they vote in Wisconsin, they can take over the Supreme Court. And boy, that's going to be a big deal for Republicans. And then finally, I want to take you to the state of Florida. You see Elon Musk said it's a super big deal what's going on in Wisconsin. I want to take you to Florida next week, Tuesday. We have special elections in Florida to replace

Two people who left their seats. One of them was Matt Gaetz, who decided not to take his seat at the beginning of this Congress. That special election is ongoing in Florida right now. That's not the one to worry about right now, unless there is a complete shock in that race. The man who's running to replace Matt Gaetz, the Republican there, is relatively safe. It's the race to replace Congressman Michael Waltz that is going on right now. And by the way, I'm sorry, don't take my...

I don't I maybe even should not have said that about about Matt Gaetz's race not being a big deal. If you're involved in any of this vote, go vote, get every friend, go vote, get them out there to support Jimmy Petronas to replace Matt Gaetz in that in that seat. He's the Republican there. You can see there on screen. President Trump endorsed him. Don't take.

My some my some of my degree of confidence that he's going to win this thing as an indication to rest on your laurels at all, please. And then the big race is to replace Michael Waltz going on in Florida right now. And this one is apparently neck and neck. There is a four point one percent, four point one percent difference. The Republican has the lead in that race by just four point one percent. His name is Randy Fine.

And that's not enough in a district that Trump won by 30. He's up by four in a district that Trump won by 30.

This district is in the Daytona Beach area. Republicans, they say at this moment, are getting a little bit nervous about the situation. Help settle their nerves. There is a crap ton of left-wing money going into this race. And remember how close the House is right now. The United States House of Representatives is at 218 to 213. And the only reason it's at 218 to 213 right now is because two Democrats died this month.

Two Democrat members of Congress died. It would be 218 to 215 right now, already very close. There are four vacancies, in other words, in the United States Congress. Gates, Waltz both left, and Congressmen Turner and Grijalva just passed away, the Democrats. That's why there's four vacancies. This race going on in the Daytona Beach area,

Very tight right now. Randy Fine is the candidate. He's the Republican nominee there. He's the guy. He's the guy who has to win. And so I'm seeing everybody coming out for Randy Fine right now, posting his election information so that people can make contributions. But the left is dumping unbelievable amounts of money in right now. The Democrat candidate, a guy by the name of Josh Wheeler,

raised more than $10 million for this race. $10 million for this race. By contrast, Randy Fine has raised $1 million. $1 million. The money difference here is huge, huge. And I'm seeing some people asking the chat about Elise Stefanik. She's not out of her seat yet. When she is, there will be a follow-on election going on in New York.

So that's that's the update on that. But just remember, we've got two massive, massive special elections going on, two states where massive special elections are going on next week. On Tuesday, one of them is Wisconsin. That's for the control of the state Supreme Court. The other is in Florida. And that's where you're seeing the replacements for both Michael Walz and Matt Gaetz being considered by voters right now. And Democrats are spending money.

like crazy in those races. And as they do, remember, not only are they looking for political victories here, they're looking for messaging victories. Because if they can use an ungodly amount of money to buy congressional seats, what they'll do is they'll come out after that and they'll start using all of their media organs to try and convince you

that this is energy against Trump. The world is turning against Trump. Look at this. These early tests are all bellwethers. Trump is going down. The American people don't like him. That's what's happening here. And so I'm seeing the chat saying all the right things here. Get out and vote.

Get 10 people, take them with you. Get just get a million people out to vote in each of these races and help set the course of this country. Well, help help keep the course of this country on the right track because you did so much good in November. Now is another opportunity here in April, April, another of these special elections.

I have to, I just want to offer a note of thanks to Rumble here in Washington, DC. It's just been wonderful to be able to broadcast from here. It's just so nice. The reason we're doing that from Rumble here is because I do have a studio, Silverlock Productions, the great Silverlock is building out a brand new studio for me at my radio headquarters in Washington, DC. As soon as it's ready, I'll get there. We can all judge it together. It's going to be wonderful. But my thanks to Rumble. Rumble's doing great things. Rumble's got a full day of programming for you. You

You want to lock in on smart conversations. You can do it all day long, starting with the Vita. She starts at nine o'clock Eastern. Then you come to me, Steven Crowder coming up next. We've got a lot going on on a fantastic platform. There's nothing else like it. And unlike some of the other big streamers, they actually care about this country too, which is a really nice thing to have. So once again, thank you to Rumble. Thank you to you.

Great to talk to you. I'll do it again tomorrow right here on Vince. Stay tuned for Crowder.