Is panic shopping returning amidst the trade war?
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Protests and panic shopping begin to overtake the USA. Welcome to The Bridge, enlightening conversations on world cultures, life, and everything in between. Hey everyone, this is Jason Smith, host of The Bridge podcast from sunny California. If you like the show, don't forget to subscribe. We love The Bridge. Oh yeah.

Hey everyone, my name is Jason Smith. I'm originally from sunny California and now I'm living in beautiful Beijing. Today with me is Bebe. Hey Jason, you sound excited. You sound very, very sunny. Like I can see the sun beaming from Jason. I'm going to Yunnan tomorrow. Why?

Wow. Well, I hope you have like sunscreen ready. Oh, I didn't know I needed sunscreen. I'm glad we had this call. Yeah, it's very sunny over there. You're going to get like roasted. Well, mass protests have been erupting across the U.S. against the current administration's

1,400 individual protests rocked the USA recently, with protesters claiming the administration is destroying U.S. public services like Medicaid and dismantling the Department of Education. Recently, the U.S. also levied massive tariffs on countries all over the world, and markets have crashed again and again and again. Bebe, what do you make of Trump's tariffs?

Oh my gosh. Like, oh my gosh. That's like the only thing you hear about once you like turn on any social media. But to be honest, I am starting to lose interest. Not because it's not interest, but it's like after a few weeks, it's like you've been watching a game that you thought was really, really serious, right? And then you start to have the realization that one of the players is just not a professional. And plus...

It's like the party is like neurotic. And so you were expecting something very professional back and forth and things logical, making sense. And then all of a sudden you realize that's not the case. And you marvel at how this could be, you know, for a few seconds. And then you just want to walk away. You know, because you don't think that's. Yeah, I thought the same thing as you, but I was going to try to soften it.

Yeah. Was that too honest? No, it was really crazy. What's really crazy about this is I'm on social American social media platforms. And when I listened to these people, uh,

Some of the folks in America, they really occurs to me that it's not I used to think either, you know, I thought I thought maybe people in Washington, D.C. really do understand China, but they're pretending not to. But it's become really, really obvious that the emperor has no clothes and they have and there's not an expert in quotation marks in Washington, D.C. that actually understands China at all.

At all. You know, I have the same feeling and I think he's just getting more and more confirmed. And I think he's just getting more and more confirmed. I feel like the president of the U.S. and his team has been living in a bubble, you know, in their own overblown, arrogant bubble.

They seem so confident. You know, the game has two players and you see both players. One is just very stable and calm. And the other is so confident. You know, it's like his nose pointing up. This is no big deal. I got everything under control. Everything is going to go as I planned. And then you realize that he has no plan. It's just a whole...

You took the words literally out of my mouth because earlier I posted a tweet on X where I said all Beijing had to do was sit calmly under the spring willow trees and wait. And someone else quoted Sun Tzu and said, if you wait by the river long enough, the bodies of your enemy will float by. Oh, my gosh.

I don't think that's from the war of Bison. Oh, gosh. Yeah. So basically, that's too graphic. Basically, Beijing didn't do anything. All they did was say, oh, you want to have tariffs of that? We'll do that. OK, you want to have tariffs like that? We'll do that. And then they didn't do anything beyond that at all. They didn't really say anything. They didn't call.

Yeah. Yeah.

U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told a closed-door investor summit Tuesday that the tariff standoff with China is unsustainable and that he expects the situation to de-escalate. So this confirms what you and I have thought, that they are just starting to realize that

that China's not going to back down. Well, I don't think so. And, you know, on China's side, it's like, I think China's been thinking like, if you really, really don't want to work together, you know, global trade benefiting both of us, then I'll be off to do what I need to do.

Now, China, in a way, has been watching what's going on and not engaging as much, but it's doing other things. It's making friends, right, with the rest of the world, building ties. We have presidents coming to visit the country, and it's finding and cultivating new markets elsewhere. It's

It's building more railways, even in South America. We'll get to that maybe a little later. And in Southeast Asia, in Europe, right? Doing business with Europe, talking with Europe and Russia. I mean, China has the mentality that the world is big enough for all of us. Why do we have to, you know, restrict ourselves, restrict ourselves into thinking that it's either you or me? The world is big enough. So China is busy. It's very busy doing the things that it needs to do.

It's just decides not to watch the spectacle as much. Well, you know, I was talking with Dr. Warwick Powell from Queensland University of Technology very recently. And he said that, you know, firstly, and you and I mentioned this recently, that ASEAN is China's largest trading partner now, having eclipsed the EU. The United States and the EU combined...

do not account for as many exports from China as the global south. So the Belt and Road countries, those 140 to 150 countries, consume more of China's exports than the entire Europe and the entire United States. So Trump is like, oh, we hold all the cards. No, no, you don't. And that's why Trump has recently said that China tariffs will drop

substantially because the United States cannot afford to be in this trade war, but China actually could just move on. You know, what's interesting is 80% of all manufactured goods in China are consumed domestically. So who is China's biggest consumer? China. Right, right. And I think there's another number that got stuck in my mind. I haven't found the official statistics, but

So I think Chinese exports to the U.S. accounts for what, less than 15% of China's export to the world. So that sounds like a pretty high number. But this only accounts for about 2.4% or somewhere around there of China's GDP. Yes, that is correct. So China's exports to the

the U.S. only accounts for, you know, about a little over 2% of China's GDP. You know, it's not as monumental as people envision China can do without it. It's not going to be like not painful, but it's not like lethal. You know, it's not only not lethal, but it was really fascinating. I was talking to Warwick in private yesterday.

And he sent this interesting number that he has. I don't want to read off all these numbers. It's going to confuse people. But he said that basically in one year of China's GDP growth, that China's domestic consumption would make up for 97% of the loss of exports to the United States. So that means by this time next year, China's domestic consumers will already be consuming all of the excess

goods that would have gone to the United States, even though some of those goods won't be the same thing. You know, the Chinese government has been telling its citizens to spend more, right? Domestic consumption. Yeah, that's right. But the Chinese people are very, they're cautious about spending money. Well, maybe not the younger generations, but you know, the older generations. Yeah.

And they have a lot of money in the bank. But I think now what the U.S. is doing might have a side effect that it's going to stimulate the consumption of the Chinese population. You know, even though maybe if like if the Chinese government isn't doing a great job in this regard, you know, convincing people to spend, maybe the U.S. government can. Because now like the Chinese people and, you know, manufacturers are like united. Well, interesting. We're going to we can do this together. Yeah.

Let's spend. I can break this down in a new way. Again, I keep talking to Warwick. I guess we've been spending a lot of time together. But this is really fascinating also. So what's interesting is that Chinese people typically save about 40% of their income, and that's not changed. However, what has changed is the amount of income

Disposal income per capita that Chinese people have. So each Chinese person, let's say 20 years ago, let's just use units. And this is how he broke it down too. Say in the year 2000, a household made 100 units. It saved 50 of those units and spent 50 of those units. Let's say in 2025, that same household now makes 350 units.

And it still saves half of those units and spends 175 units. Now they're spending more than three times more. So even though Chinese consumers are saving 40% of their income now, they make so much more than they used to make that spending as a part of the economy is actually still going up anyway. Yeah. And well, my personal experience. So I get almost nothing from putting my money in the bank now.

because the interest rates are so low, it's like 1.7 or something. So there's really no incentive to putting a lot of extra money in the bank. And there's just so many wonderful things out there. You can travel, you can upgrade your cars to fancy new EV cars. And now that there's this new impetus from outside,

You know, there's other people want us to collapse. Let's unite together. And if it's just about spending money, we can do that. It's not too hard, right? There are things I've been wanting to buy. And now, well, you know what? Maybe, I don't know, months later, everybody will be walking around with some luxuries bag that was produced in China anyway. You're listening to The Bridge.

I have to say, even though we're talking about how safe China's economy is, as a U.S. citizen, as an American, I am really legitimately worried about the state of society in the United States as a consequence of this tariff war, this U.S.-initiated Trump tariff war on the world because it's against all these other countries as well.

And one of the things that happens when you throw up tariffs or that when there's goods building up in the logistics and supply system and they're not entering the U.S. is exactly what happened in 2020 and 2021 where inflation just took off. Now, I think inflation is going to maybe be really high. I'm not an economist, but I think it may be higher than last time. And we're also going to see grocery stores and stores, especially mom and pop shops,

unable to fill shelves. So this is an article published April 21st. Shoppers could find shelves empty by summer as China imports plunge amid Trump trade war. And it mentions specifically mom and pop businesses facing the highest risk of shortages. So this is going to put

Small businesses out of business and consumers are going to be running into stores, not finding things like toilet paper and soup soon. So this this could have dramatic side effects. I just want to cover one more thing.

You know, when I was a kid, there was a massive riot in Los Angeles, and it just took one incidence of police brutality to set that off for days of riots to take place in Los Angeles, creating chaos.

If the United States truly enters into a period in which there's massive shortages and inflation spikes, we could be looking at not just protests like we're seeing now, but we could see rioting in major cities in the near future in the United States. And that concerns me. You know what the crazy thing is? That, you know, we are talking about this and I see so many other commentators and vloggers talking about this, but I feel like

the team in the White House have not talked about this. You know, that's the odd feeling I have. Like they were supposed, when you envision the government giving out a policy, a new policy, you think that they have spent months and maybe even years planning it with loads of details, with like documents so thick that you can, you know, just, anyway. But

Well, we get one would hope, you know, that's what I imagine too. And then it turns out it's not like that, is it? Yeah. And then it came out as like a one pager. We're going to increase tariffs and that's it. And also I heard from one of the vloggers I follow is he's like a commentator and

And he was talking with someone else who does business in like finance and trade. And he said he searched for numbers about imports into the U.S. prior to the release of tariffs because he was expecting that before the tariffs were publicized, they must have done a lot of work ahead of time. Right. Let's say import extra tariffs.

inventories, especially the things that are necessary, that are considered necessities in the US. But he found out that the numbers hasn't really changed much.

even dropped a little, which shows him that they were not really preparing for this. Realistically speaking, they were not preparing for the increase in tariffs. It's like they just had the idea one night and a day later they told the world we're going to do this. I mean, you were you if you were going to do this, doesn't make sense for you to stock up on certain things. Right. The

before a massive amount of tariffs? I wouldn't have done this. You know, OK, let's talk about Mitch Presnick for a minute. He's a research fellow at Harvard University at a special think tank there that works on China related information. He's the CEO of I think it's Hotel 8 China here. There's a chain of hotels. Anyways, absolutely. The United States should slowly and carefully bring manufacturing back to the United States. And he wrote an article in Harvard Business Review arguing that

U.S. companies should joint venture with Chinese companies and build things like solar and wind and all these technologies in the United States. And this would be a win-win for everyone because cheap and affordable inputs from minerals and things from China and technology from China with American hard work could bring back some manufacturing and help the U.S. economy.

That is a very intelligent idea. Just throwing up tariffs and saying we're going to win. That is insane. The White House has no strategy and they just lost. I mean, the fact that Trump's saying that tariffs are now going to have come down because he's clearly made a mistake shows that the White House was completely unprepared for its own trade war. I feel like we can't do shows fast enough because policies change so fast from Washington. Yeah.

And also another thing that makes me feel sad

is that from all these policies and the way the administration is doing things, I feel like it's really not been considering these like the small businesses and just American citizens, American consumers in general. Like they, you are elected by the citizens of the country, right? Vote by vote. While of course using money from the elite of the country. And then you become the president of

And what you do is you show a complete disregard of the interest of your populace, you know, the people that voted for you. Have you thought about what their lives would turn out to be like if you cut off, just simply cut off imports at reasonable prices? How will these small businesses run? I

I mean, of course, the bigger companies will face problems too, but these small businesses will likely just die. And what about consumer prices? You promised that you were going to contain inflation. Is this the way to do it? So I think this is really like...

In Chinese, we say that my heart kind of went cold because you're so disappointed in something. You know, another aspect of this we haven't even talked about is just affordable inputs. For example, if you are a manufacturer in the United States, a lot of the

Parts and not even just the parts like the minerals and just like lithium and things like that. It comes from China and it's extremely affordable because China has built out the supply chains for decades to make those things. So manufacturers, which is what he's which which which is what the White House is claiming to protect.

manufacturing in the United States is at great risk because those inputs are either A, not available or B, too expensive to make your product in the United States and export it now. And other countries like in Europe, Germany, wherever, they're going to be far

more competitive because U.S. manufacturers are not going to have access to the same affordable inputs as their global peers outside of China. So it's damaging the United States at every tier. It hurts the consumer. It hurts the small businesses. It hurts manufacturing itself. So it's completely nuts that this is the way that they would approach this. So here's the question, Jason. So if you and I and so many others know about this, right, we can reason this out. Why do

Why doesn't the administration itself know about it? That's a good question. I don't know. Well, maybe two possibilities. One possibility is that they just didn't think about all these details, right? Which is bad because they're supposed to be professionals. Come on. You are like the team that's leading the biggest economy in the world. You should know about these things. You shouldn't need like baby as Jason's to talk about this, right? To figure things out, to explain it to the populace. So that could be one possibility.

They simply don't. They didn't do their homework. They don't know what they're doing. They're just shooting.

shooting things out from their imaginations. And the second possibility is that they simply don't care. They care about a small circle of people who will benefit from this. And the small circle include themselves. I bet they made money from this, like their families. They did. They were standing around in the White House saying, oh, he just made a billion dollars. He just made $90 billion. Seriously. So that's also sad because that shows that

that they've elected some you've elected someone who is simply doesn't care about your interest

I actually heard someone like one of the commentators say that, you know, it seems like the country or the administration is just not interested in the U.S. as a nation, but as but only as their own interest. So if they're starting from this point, maybe they're doing what they need to do, just benefiting themselves and a really, really small circle of people.

Because it's not benefiting its citizens. It's not benefiting the nation as a whole. I want to do two pivots. But before I get to the second one, which is a big pivot...

I want to start with, I just want to talk about the reality of what the United States' economy is based on, which is its reputation. So people buy treasuries because they think stability. They invest in the U.S. stock market because they think stability. They think the sanity, that these are the adults are here. And so like, even though most of the, you know,

The big stocks in the U.S. are – everyone knows they're overpriced. People buy them anyway because there's this idea of stability and professionalism behind the U.S. economy. And that has basically been shredded. And so the dollar and the treasury bills and stocks in the U.S. are now –

untrustworthy for a lot of investors. And they're not just looking at China. I don't want to make this a China-US thing, but people and big investors are looking around the world for alternative opportunities for different economies, for different kinds of investments, because the United States is not that shining beacon on a hill for investors anymore.

and people are going to really wonder, should I have dollars? Should I have treasuries? You know, it's certainly not junk. You know, it is still of value, but you probably don't want as much of it in your portfolio as you did a year ago. And I think that's, you know, probably the biggest concern for the U.S. economy moving forward. People are not going to look at the United States as a stable place to park their cash. See, that's why-

I think the Trump administration got scared after they initiated the tariffs because, you know, the plunging of the stock market was kind of expected because, you know, it's instability. But then the plunging of or the rising of the interest rate for the American Treasury bonds,

or the disruption of the treasury bonds was what really scared the administration. Because usually when people pull out from the stock market, they're like, "Oh, you know, I can put my money in the American treasury bond because it's a safer option." But now people are shying away from that too. And I think that really scared.

um trump and his team like what would you do if you had like billions of dollars now you know where would you i was actually going to answer that oh because it really interesting this is this is a headline before i say this because you just asked me that question what would i do if i'm a billionaire we are not professional investors and this show is for entertainment um so there's an article entitled dow headed for worst april since great depression i mean in that article

it shows that according to the Wall Street Journal dollar index, the dollar is decreased in value by 4%. The S&P 500 has decreased by about 9%. And that gold futures are up by 8%. So I'm not a professional investor, but if I was watching this chaos right now, I would be way in on gold because it's a precious metal, it's in limited supply, and it's

It's diffused throughout the world. It's not just owned in one place like the United States. And also China, by the way, is buying... The government is buying enormous amounts of gold right now. But it's also really, really expensive. I think if I had like a billion dollars, I'd just go spend. A billion? What would you... Okay, this is fun. What would you spend a billion dollars on, baby? I don't know. I'm probably...

I'll put it into the Chinese stock market, maybe. 10,000 BYDs. To support some of domestic industries, you know, so that they have better batteries, better EV cars and solar panels. And I don't know, things like that.

Doing something constructive. Well, I mean, I don't think I would, if, okay, I think that's a great idea. You know, if I had to spend a billion dollars, I'd probably start giving it out to charities and stuff. You want to help the economy? Let's help the poorest people. We could build schools for poor people all over the world. You know, interesting. I think it's fascinating. This is from April 6th. That's a little old, but the protests are continuing. This is from CNN.com. Hands off. Protesters across U.S. rally against President Donald Trump and Elon Musk.

And so it's really fascinating right now because usually protesters have demands. I'm actually kind of confused about these protests.

I'm hoping maybe some of the people who were involved in these protests, if you're listening to this show, we want you to tell us what was going on in emails that we love the bridge at gmail.com. My question is this. They're out there and they're like, you know, hands off. You know, we don't like Trump, whatever. But like, what do you want? I mean, can you please articulate your demands? When I was watching the coverage of these protesters and one of them says 600,000 people had signed up to attend some events yesterday.

What is the actual goal of these protests? What did you want to be the outcome? Do you want the president to step down? Because I don't think that's going to happen. So I'm really confused. They're just protesting abstractly against Trump? But what do they actually want to take place? And that is very confusing to me. Well, I think first of all, people are venting, right? They have like build up a lot of anger. And just I think in the beginning, maybe just...

people feel like this is all incredible. What's happening? But things are becoming clearer now that either the president and his team does not care about us at all, which is chilling, right? Which is sad. And that's worth protesting about. And also, I think this might not be a bad thing, though, like what people are feeling. I see the silver lining to all this because I think it's a time to really reflect on

on a lot of deeper issues, like for example, about the election itself. So maybe it's the same people who elected Trump, a lot of them, right? Maybe they voted for Trump and then now they're protesting his policies and the way he's conducting politics and even diplomatic policies. So here's the question, isn't it time to think a little bit about how efficient or how great the election process is?

If you voted for the same guy, did you know about him? Did you know enough about his policies, what he was going to do? And of course he said he was going to do certain things. But is there like a set of...

things in place to make sure that he will follow up on what he promised to do. Because what's different here in China, at least in one aspect, is that for China, we have like five-year plans. So even when the administration moves on to the next generation, it still follows the five-year plans.

So you can see like a central line of where the country is going. Yeah, there is a consensus as to where the country is moving towards. So even with different administration, that keeps going. But I don't know about if there are similar things in the U.S. or everything.

Or everything changes when you have a new president, but you don't really know about his policies, right? He can go wild as we see now. We have enough evidence now. So don't you think we need to do something about the election process? I've always wondered about that because I really don't know this person. I don't know about what he's going to do. Why am I voting for him?

Or her, you know? I don't think it's possible to actually change the election process or anything like that. I mean, the reason is, in order to change the U.S. Constitution, which it would be required to make any major changes in the United States, you need to have something called a constitutional convention, which requires a two-third majority in both houses of our Congress to

to agree to have a constitutional convention and then to change the constitution itself to amend it in some kind of way also requires a two-thirds majority in both houses, plus the sign-off of the executive authority of the president. So I don't think that

It's really doesn't seem possible to change in the way that the political system functions in the United States, unfortunately. But I want to go back to what you said because about venting and about did you know what their policies were? Because everyone knew, I think, before the election that he was that Trump was going to allow Elon Musk to come on board and to gut what he called inefficiencies. But

But I'm looking at the same article I just mentioned from CNN, and there's a sign, a man holding a sign that says, honk if you hate Elon. So I think I think that people didn't fully understand, even though they were told this is going to happen. Then Elon literally went in and just started firing people.

And so it's been kind of a chaotic time. Yeah, this is the whole entire it's been a very this is the craziest political period in U.S. modern modern U.S. history. Yeah. Well, from our by our understanding, this is not how governments should operate. This is not how politicians work. Yeah.

It's just not professional. You know, like in China, our leaders in different levels of profession, different levels of the government, they are professional leaders. They're not business people. They're not, I don't know, industrialists. They're leaders who started from...

the bottom, like from the county level, like our president. He worked as, you know, a leader of a county and then moved to a city, to the province. And that takes decades of dedication and for the experience, for the ability to govern more and more people. So,

We know the history of our leader. We know him as a professional. And then it just wonders how things work out in the U.S. Anybody can become the president. That sounds really good because that's motivational. You say to little kids that in this country, anyone can become the president. But

But not all of a sudden becomes the president. You know, you want to be a civil servant. You want to be the president. You start as a civil servant all the way, you know, goes all the way up.

And it's not something to just like, oh, you know what? I want to be the president when I'm like already 50. It's just I don't know, at least in Chinese mentality, that does not come with that does not give us a lot of confidence. You know, I think we should talk about that process a little bit. And I don't know a lot about it, but I've heard people talking about it. What I've heard and you tell me if I'm wrong.

is that basically lots of people during middle school and high school who are excelling and also maybe doing more than they need to do, participating in community activities, are selected and select to join the party.

And then basically after you finish university, you're given a small responsibility, like helping a small village or something or helping your local community. And if you excel at that, then you're giving something larger. Like this is, you know, this is district, you know, and then eventually if you excel at that, you're given a whole,

village to yourself to try to run. If you excel in increasing the GDP and the livelihoods of that village, then you're given a town, and then you're given a city, and then you're given a province, and eventually you work your way up to where you're in the halls of power here in Beijing. And so basically, it's kind of an electoral selective process of

choosing the most capable people to lead the country. Is that, would you say that's accurate? Somewhat. And it all starts with like a really difficult test. Well, test, you know about testing here in China, right? You have like the college entrance exam. China invented the test. It's all your fault. It's been doing this for, I don't know how long, hundreds of years for selecting the most capable talents for, for governing, for governance.

So all these people, civil servants you talked about, first of all, they have to go through this college entrance exam and go to a decent university. And then when you want to become a civil servant, there is an exam for that alone. And it's not easy. So I think it's a way of showing your intelligence and also your determination, your determination to enter this profession because it's considered a profession now.

And then you move all the way. Once you pass that, you move from some elementary level and work your way up. That's the basics, I think. There must be exceptions. I'm not too sure. That's not the path I've chosen. You know, I have books because I was interested in this. I have actual books that are written by President Xi at different points in his career. When he was working in Zhejiang,

He wrote a series of about 200 small articles that are put into a book about Xi Jinping's writings in Zhejiang. It's very interesting to read it because, you know, the big books right now, the Xi Jinping books that everyone knows about, those are mostly collections of speeches that he's given since he's become president. And they're brilliant, obviously. But if you want to actually read his writing, which is different than his speaking...

then these are really interesting. This is an interesting book to get into his mind and the way that he thinks and the way that he logically progresses through an idea in his writing. And it's a little bit of a different kind of insight. And so because he's progressed, like you said, all the way from the village level up, during that entire time he was giving speeches and writing, and those are captured in little books by Xi Jinping. And also I recommend this podcast called Stories of Xi Jinping.

There are stories about him working at the county level, at the city level, and at the provincial level. So I think that's a recommendation I would tell listeners. You know, I heard that on the radio. I heard one of those on the radio. It was very enjoyable. My wife was driving through Beijing, and I just turned it on, and I found it. I thought it was also very good to listen to.

I would really like to recommend this for, you know, people working in the president's on president's team. I think it's become very obvious that they really need to break out of their own bubble and to see the rest of the world.

Because when you are really, really sure of yourself, I think that's what President Trump thought, that he will say something, everybody would seem scared, everybody would be scared, and they would just cave and do what he wanted them to do. And now it's a bit of an awkward situation because that's not really happening. I don't think he even thought about what he would do if, you know,

China doesn't cave. I don't think he has a plan B. I think he just assumed China would. So I think he is probably in shock too. You're listening to The Bridge.

I think there is a lot of confusion in D.C. where they honestly, even people who think that they are pro-China, and I'm not going to name names, but I know some analysts who I've talked to personally who think that they're very pro-China, actually still have this...

wrong idea that China is reliant on the U.S. in some way. And so there's just a complete misunderstanding, even among, you know, if you look at who you call the China hawks and who you call the China doves in Washington, D.C., none of them really seem to understand China. So it's kind of really sad. I do want to talk about the state of affairs for regular Americans. So I want to firstly say I called my mom about

about this a couple of weeks ago. I was like, hey, I think inflation is going to go up. And if you're going to get some things, you might want to get them now. So my little brother, they said, we are already on it. We know what's going on, Jason. And China exports all of the major electronics to the United States. My little brother, Kenny, he's not, I guess he's not little, he's 42.

But he's actually buying a brand new computer now because he thinks the cost of a computer in six months could be as high as double. So he already went out and bought his brand new computer that he's been holding off on because if he doesn't get it now, inflation is going to eat his money away. Because it's interesting. Primarily, the United States exports agricultural goods to China, which China could easily replace with Brazil or –

Argentina. Or anyone. Yeah. Right, exactly. So for the United States, it imports almost all of its electronic products, smartphones, computers, toasters, everything from China. So the United States very much needs products from China. China could just turn to one of its neighbors and just be like, oh, yeah, we're going to buy some grain. And they'd be thrilled to sell it to China. Yeah, exactly. Exactly.

I want to talk. Including, including people say, including the hats that Trump, you know, used and distributed for his campaigns or many, many other things. There's a T-shirt. And soon he will find that. Yeah, T-shirts and things like that. There's a T-shirt that says. Do you think he's going to manufacture? Well, there's a T-shirt that specifically says boycott China. And I have a picture of it. Some Chinese worker holding it up at the factory where it's made in China.

Oh, gosh. So, yeah, maybe if he next time he needs those T-shirts or hats or whatever, the little flags they wave around, find a manufacturer in the U.S. and see how that will work out. Actually, I've seen videos of...

small business owners in the U.S., there's this one guy, I think I've sent you the link. So he makes a kind of hot sauce. He makes the sauce in Florida, but he buys the bottling, the cap and the sticker and the packaging from China. And so he said,

Trust me, I try to manufacture the same thing in the U.S. I try to buy from the U.S., but the cost is just astronomical. I think the number he gave was like 800 times that of the price he can source it from China.

Something like really huge. I don't remember the exact number, but it's like, you just can't consider it. And I remember one detail. He said, there's like this sticker that you put on the bottle. He says the name and the manufacturer. He

He said it cost me, it will cost me $2 per sticker if I make it in the US just for that little sticker that you put on the bottle. So you can imagine the price difference between manufacturing the bottle and packaging in the US and in China. I mean, a sticker in China, it costs to like nothing, next to nothing. So for him, he just does not have a choice. And that's the same for a lot of other manufacturers. But

But I don't think, do you think President Trump really talked to normal people? Like actually get to know what their lives is like? Recently. Or is he like, he's never lived a normal life.

as a middle class or someone with even less income has always been rich. I don't think he knows about the life of ordinary people. On that point, he recently said a few weeks ago that the word groceries was old-fashioned. And that struck a lot of people as weird because it's a word everyone...

uses every day because he's so disconnected. People bring him things. He doesn't go to the store. I don't think he's seen the inside of a grocery store. So he doesn't know that that's a normal thing for everybody except him in the whole country. I do want to, I want to go back to what I was talking about. Normal people. Again, there's an article by the NPR.org from April 4th. Higher prices are likely for these 10 items.

grocery items when tariffs hit. So I think at this time, Trump raised tariffs on basically every country in the world. And so I just want to talk about these are the things that people are going to watch in America, and they're going to be jaw-dropped, shocked at the price of these things skyrocketing. Seafood.

So seafood is going to be sky high very soon. And a lot of the tariffs have still remained in place for these countries at 10 and 20%. Coffee.

Oh, wow. That's going to be a big problem. I could live without seafood. It's going to be a big problem. But coffee is another issue. Oh, you're a coffee drinker? I am. Yeah. It's drinking joy. It's not just coffee, you know? So that would be a problem. I'm drinking it now. But I get my coffee from Yunnan. So I buy it locally. It's actually super cheap. I actually order it directly from the roaster in Yunnan. Wow. Fancy. That's really nice from me. Yeah. Yeah. So fruit. Fruit.

So fruit's going to go up because Americans don't grow bananas, but there's bananas in every home in America. Well, I thought the bananas are not grown in the U S like in California. No, they're all brought in from like Latin America, Central America and other places around the world as well. Like even China actually exports bananas. Hmm. Okay. Uh, another one is alcohol. So I guess they'll even be more angry because they will not be able to drink it off. Well,

Well, it might not be a bad thing. Maybe a lot of people will quit now that it's too expensive. You know, what's interesting... But bananas are harmless. This one, I'm a little... I'm not sure that they got this correct because it says beef, but 90% of beef consumed in the U.S. is domestically produced. So I think it just might increase a little bit. But, you know, cow companies in California will just be...

excited that they can sell more beef so i don't think it's going to be a big deal but but but but i heard something about this because i think because of the tariffs the reciprocal tariffs there won't be as many like beef or other agriculture products going into china uh which means um beef prices might actually go down in the u.s because so that's something to look forward to well i

You won't have toilet paper, guys. Wait and see. But you'll have lots of beef. Toilet paper, I heard that is actually, like a lot of them are actually produced in the United States. So this time around, people are actually not hoarding toilet paper. Well, let's see. Let's see where that goes. I don't know. I don't know how, this is going to sound weird. It's a strange conversation to have. But.

but toilet paper is not consumed in the United States by normal, sorry, by, uh, born and bred Americans. Like it is, uh, in China, for example, my household here in China, because of habits that I've learned from my wife and my wife's habits, we consume about 10% as much toilet paper as my mom's household. Why person? 10%. We use it. We use more of it. We use a lot. We use it for everything. Uh, we, uh,

It's thicker. It's like three times as thick in the United States. All kinds of reasons that we just use enormous amounts of toilet paper. Whereas in China, you know, you don't use toilet paper. You use very little. It's sparing and it doesn't go very fast. In the United States, they're just going through like reels of toilet paper all the time. Yeah. Yeah.

Well, not just toilet paper, but also kitchen towels and just paper in general. Maybe because these products have been so cheap for the American people that you just really don't think about it. But in China, people are more conscious, not because they're expensive. Like toilet paper is really cheap here in China.

But because like whenever I use it, I think about the environment. Yeah. It's like you directly think about cutting down trees and that right away. Well, well, you use enough, right? But you don't just pull three kitchen towels every time your hands are wet. You know, you pull one. I don't even have kitchen towels anymore. Or you use a,

I used to buy them. My wife won't even let me buy kitchen towels. We have to use real towels. And when I was using a lot of toilet paper at the beginning of our relationship, I learned that the more toilet paper I use, the more I get yelled at. And so I've learned to use far less toilet paper than I once used. And you find that you can still survive, right? You're still clean. Actually, it's totally normal now that I don't use so much. So...

I didn't realize how much how wasteful I had been until the yelling started. I think all this like things about tariffs will be a jolting experience for a lot of American consumers. Maybe people have to rethink about their daily habits. What are the things that I can use less of? It might not be all a bad thing.

Maybe a lot of people will develop better habits out of this, right? To be become more consumer conscious, right? What are the things that maybe I'll start? Maybe people in the U S will start carrying like their own water bottles more instead of buying bottled water, things like that. Do you want to, do you want to tell us about what that means, baby? Could you tell us why do, what are you talking about? Like a water bottle? Well, you use for babies, right? And for toddlers, right?

Every toddler has either usually a plastic or like a steel water bottle here in China. But what about adults here in China? Adults here, we do, we carry our own water bottle everywhere we go. Because first of all, we like to drink water.

at least warm water instead of really cold water or just like, you know, regular temperature. And every time we're more conscious of using plastic bottles, if I can bring my own bottle, it's clean. I'm the only user. Only my lips touch those, the rim of the bottle. So it feels cleaner and safer. And you just refill it wherever you go because they're like hot water everywhere here in China. Yes, I want to elaborate. I don't know. Maybe that's like a, well, don't people,

People who go to the gym, they carry their own water bottle, right? Some of them. Some of them just buy a bottle of water and go to the gym or at the gym, buy a bottle of water there. So Americans don't really know. I mean, maybe they even know, but they don't know the scale of it. Basically, in China, not everyone carries a bottle of water everywhere, firstly. But most people carry them when, say, for example, they're taking the train. So you're taking the train between two cities. You'll bring your steel water.

you know, stainless steel water bottle with you. And at the train station on every side, you know, on every side of the train station in every train station and in all kinds of places, there's a water dispenser at one. It dispenses either cool water, not cold, like lukewarm water or scalding hot water. And people just fill up their water bottle and then they drink it instead of going and buying a Pepsi.

They just drink tea or water. And a lot of them have like a tea filter built into them for people who prefer tea. So they're actually just making fresh tea everywhere they go. And do not stick your finger out to test if the hot water is hot because it's like 100 degrees Celsius. It's for making tea. Yeah.

So, yeah, I can't drink it. It's too hot for me. I have to blow on that water for 10 minutes before it's drinkable. That's true. But it's good for making tea. So I think maybe this would be an opportunity for a lot of American consumers to upgrade some of their daily habits so that it's more environmentally friendly. So that's actually healthier for you. Maybe a lot of I don't know, like junk food or like smoking, right?

I don't know how influential that will be for things like this and alcohol, as you mentioned. Well, fortunately, I have to say in a pro for America thing, something America is doing right. There are fewer smokers in the United States now than probably ever before. So I think that's that's a wonderful thing about the United States. There are very few cigarette smokers and they smoke. If they if you do find one, they have like, you know, a

meter by meter taped off area somewhere far away from the park and buildings where they can't, they're isolated by themselves and no one can go near them. Like it's a real weird thing. So they basically cordoned off all. So that is something America's doing well, you know, in terms of like, what has America done badly? The economy, obviously, but in terms of smoking, that's something they've been doing quite well on. I do want to mention a couple more of these things that are going to increase in price. So we're going to run through it a little faster.

Olive oil is going to increase in price, probably. I can't, no one can guarantee this stuff. Chocolate. Chocolate? Also nuts. Yeah, chocolate. Oh. Nuts. Cheese, which is, I think they could make up for some of the cheese in domestic areas. And finally, rice. So, rice-a-roni, going to be, you know, that's going to be a luxury item. I heard that once. What is rice-a-roni?

I heard that in one of the talk shows. Like, what is it? Okay, so you know what ramen noodles are or instant noodles are versus noodles, right?

Yeah. Rice-a-roni is that for rice. It's just like instant rice that you just like already has flavor and stuff in it. And all you have to do is heat it up with water and you're ready to go. I saw that in some of the videos that some, you know, some housewives make. I think it's from TikTok. So they have these like home cooking shows almost. And one time I saw this lady, she just dropped like two bags of rice, like plastic bags.

It looks like plastic bags into the hot water. And the Chinese viewers are like, going on aliens cooking rice. You don't cook your rice that way because we've never seen anything like that. And then like minutes later, she pulled those out and he's just she's just hitting it up. It's like already cooked.

But I don't know. I've never seen those here in China. And I don't think those will be very popular because we like our rice freshly cooked. Well, I want to ask you. White and shiny. I've got a great story for you. But before I tell that story, I would like you to tell tell our listeners. How is it that rice is cooked in China? Well, you wash it a couple of times, like usually two or three times. You measure it. Right. Usually, you know, like for me, I have this little cup.

And for my family, I have three cups every time and you wash it twice. And when I dump all the water, I save it for plants. What do you put it into? What does it get cooked in? Oh, just water. So after you wash the rice, you dump the water out. No, I mean, what machine? I have a rice cooker. A rice cooker. A rice cooker. Everybody has a rice cooker in China. No. Yeah, see, that's the thing. We don't have rice cookers.

So this is – I want to tell this story because I had two Chinese friends over to my house in San Francisco. And they said, oh, let's make some food. I don't remember what we were making. And they said, well, I'll do this. I'll do that. And I said, I'll make the rice. And they were like confused because they didn't understand why I was going to be making rice for so long. So I took –

I took rice. I didn't wash it, firstly. And then I put it in a pot with water and butter. And then I put it over the spot. Yeah, and this is how my mom taught me to make rice. And then I slowly cooked it, and I had, like, a wooden spatula. And I stirred it slowly until it came to be prepared. At some point, I looked over, and my two Chinese friends were standing still and leaning forward with arms.

All four of their eyes wide open staring at what I was doing. I said, what? And they're like, you're making rice. And I said, yeah, you've never seen rice made before. They said, no one makes rice like this. What are you doing? Yeah.

Yeah, well, because we always make it with the rice cooker. But when I was little, like before we had our first rice cooker, we would steam it. Like we would put like in a steel cup and put in the right measure of water and then steam it. So it's like you get a bowl of rice instead of a whole cooker of rice. Hmm.

Yeah. But so I think, you know, if rice gets more expensive in the U.S., maybe like U.S. citizens would do fine. But I think a lot of like Asian immigrants will not be very happy because that's like a necessity, an absolute necessity. And let me tell you, the rice from different countries tastes very, very different. Like, I don't know if if the U.S. grow rice at all, maybe a little bit.

But rice from Thailand, from like other Asian countries, they taste different. They have different textures. And if you grow up with a certain type of rice, you like to stick with that. And you don't want to mess with it. Like for us, we don't put anything, nothing in the rice. We like it white. We like it shiny and fragrant. Okay, really quickly before we end the show in a few minutes, I just want to reiterate that this,

I am concerned very much so about if the availability of things and inflation, it looks like we're going to have inflation again. And people are already going into record levels of credit card debt. People have record levels of student loans. People have record level of mortgage payments. And rent is higher than ever in U.S. history. And real wages haven't risen in decades. So this could hit a point where it's potentially very dangerous.

The good news is, according to various news sources, including Bloomberg, where it says U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Besant told a closed-door investor summit Tuesday that the tariff standoff with China is unsustainable and expects it to de-escalate. So maybe it won't be that bad. It's too late. It's been too long.

It will be bad, but because the U.S. is finally standing down and the tariffs are going to come down to a lower level, hopefully the damage isn't so great that it destroys people's lives and closes businesses and causes any kind of chaos. Hopefully they've caught it in a short enough period of time that the Trump administration can undo some of the damage that they have been doing to the U.S. economy. But I think...

It has already brought down confidence that people have for the for the administration. And that's hard to rebuild. I think you're right. And I understand a lot of these protests. You want to be governed by professionals who know what they're doing, who is definite in their actions.

in the steps they're taking who has a plan and not just one plan, but plan A, plan B, plan C, not with someone who just, you know, wings it along the way. So yeah, I'm sorry. I don't think there is any turning back on that. I also think there is another potential. This is just me speculating for it to get worse again. And this is why once Trump has stood down the

the tariffs with China to some extent and maybe negotiations start. It doesn't seem like Trump wants to stop there. It seems like he wants to go after all these other countries that he initially started with. So I think that tariffs might go back up for other countries. So I think that

you know, consumers and small businesses in the U.S. are in the crosshairs of this entire fiasco. And I'm just hoping that someone enters into, you know, the sphere of the people who are making these decisions and says, hey, I've got a different idea about how we can do things and maybe there'll be some reason. Yeah, seriously. Well, at the same time, for example, China is talking with Japan and South Korea to deepen trade and adaptation.

economic cooperation and to build you know ready to build railroads in South America to bypass the Panama Canal well all this might be for another show but you know I become more confident when I see what China has been doing which is constructive you know not destructive which is to build instead of to destroy so well I

we'll wait and see. If you want to add to this conversation, listeners, we would be delighted to hear your comments. Please email us your ideas, you know, whether you liked the show, you hated the show, you thought we had got something wrong, or you just want to have your voice added. Please email us at welovethebridge at gmail.com. Thank you for your time, listeners. Thank you for your time, baby. Well, thank you, Jason. Enjoy talking to you. See you guys next time. Bye-bye. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.

oh yeah