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Unknown A
Foreign.
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Unknown B
Things going to be so drastically bad that even conservatives will turn on Trump. Oh, my question. Hello. Consumer confidence plummets. Inflation expectations rise. Folks, it's already happening. These tariffs are starting to roll online. The Canada and Mexico tariffs have been deferred to March 4, which Trump says are going to go through. But of course Trump says a lot of stuff, so who really knows? Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's actually really bad. The US Consumer confidence index saw a massive spike. You can see right here. This goes month by month. You can look, look at the, look at the x axis here. So you can see like the time period right here. We have a big drop, obviously this is Covid. And a very, very sharp decline in just one month. So it went up a lot as people anticipated Trump taking office, because people were looking forward to like, I don't know, deregulation, the economy being back, America being back.
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Unknown B
Let's go baby. But then it turns out that tariffs are actually really bad. Turns out bad for the economy. So look at this. Okay, so for one, the consumer confidence index plummeted. The biggest monthly decline in more than four years. So since COVID we have not had this large of a one month consumer confidence decline, including during the height of bite inflation, when we were hitting like 7% inflation or whatever. The consumer confidence index never saw a single month dropping of this level. Economists expected it to drop, but not this much. They expected it to go from 105.3 to 103, not from 105.3 to 98.3. A seven point drop. I mean, sheesh. Wall street markets dropped. Didn't Tesla go down by like 7% today? 8.4%. Sheesh. Oh my God. That's a, that's a bit. Look at month she. Imagine seeing numbers like this when your CEO is literally the President of the United States of America.
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Unknown B
That's crazy. Like it like you could not have more power to wield. How do you fumble this? He'll make it illegal to not buy Tesla stock. Yeah, basically. I mean he's basically already doing that with Twitter. He's literally suing companies for not advertising on Twitter. The consumer confidence index drop isn't the only thing though. Average 12 month inflation expectations surged from 5.2% to 6%. That's really bad. Trump is already putting pressure on the Fed to drop the, the interest rates down to what? What does he want, like 2.25% or something? He wants them down. He wants them down. As though like inflation isn't an issue right now or Something like that. Yeah. To zero percent. He wants zero percent, you know, basically. But anyway, a 12 month inflation expectation of 6% is. That's a lot. Remember, the height of inflation under Biden, year over year was what, what Was it like 4.8?
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Unknown B
Because there were monthly points where it hit around 7, but year over year it was like. It was like in the fours, wasn't it? So for a yearly inflation expectation to go up to 6%, that's not good. Aren't low rates just going to increase inflation? Yerp. So we'll see if Trump is successful in bullying the Fed to lower inflation rates. But so far the Fed has held strong. Texas manufacturing activity falters amid increased uncertainty. Oh, no. I thought the whole point of this was to increase domestic manufacturing. Are you telling me that wildly increasing the price of importing raw materials from neighboring countries might make it harder to manufacture stuff in the United States? Are you telling me a 25% tariff on lumber and steel from Canada might decrease our manufacturing capabilities as companies instead just do their work in Canada where they don't get hurt by those tariffs, Though all of this tariff business is also how I learned apparently that there are trade barriers between provinces in Canada.
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Unknown B
That's crazy to me. Why the. Is that a thing? That's crazy to me. I'm sorry. The expectation of free trade between states is such a fundamental part of the American, like, economic model. It's actually insane to me that, like, there's interprovincial trade wars. You know, that's just wild. But you know what? We're probably going to have that in the United States soon too. Okay. Texas is going to tariff shit coming in from California or whatever. I don't know. Whatever. The first paragraph. Yeah. It's actually really, really bad. Texas factory activity fell in February after rising notably in January. According to business executives responding to the Texas Manufacturing Outlook Survey. The production index, a key measure of state manufacturing conditions, fell 21 points to negative 9.1.
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Unknown C
Oh.
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Unknown B
Ooh. General business activity index tumbled 22 points to negative 8.3. Company outlook index fell 24 points. Negative 5.2. Future production index fell from 44.8 to 28.3. But he said he would bring the jobs back. Hmm. It's actually looking really bad. Keep in mind we're not even seeing the effect of most of the tariffs that he's intent on putting out because a lot of them have yet to take place. A lot of them have yet to be applied with Canada and Mexico. He's still threatening with them. You know, and then, and then there's all the tariffs. He's threatening with the reciprocal tariffs. Like he's saying they're going to roll out reciprocal tariffs to every country. The tariffs are shit. So, like we're honestly, we're only suffering like a minute fract of the total promised tariff volume. Yeah. We're mostly looking at confidence indices right now, which is still meaningful because this is what drives investment.
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Unknown B
Mayo sandwiches time. You think you're going to be able to afford mayonnaise? All right, check the year to date on this graph of the Dow Jones, the S&P 500 and NASDAQ. Why? I mean, you know, markets typically boom right after a Republican presidency gets in. How bad could it possibly be? Oh, no. Yeah, no, so far the, especially the Nasdaq, it's not been, it's not been great. And it's, it's, it's all, it's, it's all within the past week too, as you start to see the kick up on the tariffs and I guess like general consumer confidence, you know, how could Biden do this to us? They are still blaming Biden, however. And I know I say this and you guys don't believe me, but you guys need to understand this, okay? There are limits to how far you can push this. Okay?
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Unknown C
Yes, ma'am. I'm calling from West Virginia and which was a red state for Donald Trump and they have a place called down here, Public Debt. And a lot of my neighbors was looking for Trump. They walking around scared, crying, nervous, and they were forever Trumpers. But on a personal note, I'm a diabetic and I'm on Medicare. And when Joe Biden was in there, My insulin was $6 for 28 day supply. I just went to CVS to get my new supply. It went back up to $80, they said, because the American Recovery act was canceled. So it went from $6 to $80. So I don't know if anybody else out there on Medicare.
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Unknown B
It is every business's patriotic obligation to the American people to put up signs saying why their shit's getting more expensive in accordance with the Trump such and such, you know. Yeah. And I did see this little town hall snippet. Look at this. This is a Republican town hall.
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Unknown A
I can't understand 10 people, let alone 100 people.
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Unknown D
Not the president. And you are doing us a disservice.
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Unknown B
To set that down and not stand.
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Unknown D
Up for us.
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Unknown B
Now. Not to, not to, you know, make any demographic judgments. But it's a Republican town hall. And look at the crowd and you can just guess, you think these are not all Democrats. Ok, just put two and two together. By the way, you guys could be getting in on this, especially if you live in a red state. Like, seriously, this is why I say local action is important. Because you people might be like high minded, big picture when they talk about how like Doge is fixing the economy or whatever. You know, like if they're a Republican, but then you, you get down to brass tacks and they're like, wait, why the my eggs so expensive? They get angry at their local town hall. You know, have you ever experienced the euphoric bliss of going to a local political event and being talked down to by a Republican who operates at a state or local level?
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Unknown B
And when he starts talking about like his plans, you can just interrupt him and say, like, you're taking our health care away. You can just do that. You know you can do that, right? Like you can literally, you can interrupt them in person and they never respond well. They either crash the out or look really sheepish because they know they're evil.
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Unknown A
It's going to be litigating for you. Don't think I'm going stand up for you. Stand up.
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Unknown B
Please.
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Unknown A
That's all we have.
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Unknown B
No. Then, no.
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Unknown A
So we're going to have a town block and I'm going to come stand in front of you and take, take your questions and try to answer them as honestly as I can. Then, then let's do that. Okay, but, but if you're going to just yell at me, that's not going to be enough.
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Unknown B
Guys, come on, it's my birthday. Oh, this one's really good. Governor or sorry. GOP Rep. McClain attacks American voters for hijacking Republican town halls to share their sob stories about how Trump's policies are hurting them.
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Unknown D
So I want to start with last week. Videos of protesters yelling at members of Congress went viral. Right. But the content focused on the confrontation, not the why. Some of the people that hijacked those town halls are happy with the bloated status quo. They want the bloated status quo to continue. They don't want to get our country back on track. Yet Democrats are soliciting sob stories from bloated bureaucrats with six figure salaries. Give me a break now.
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Unknown B
Incredible stuff, truly. Have you ever seen a grace period, like the honeymoon period for a new president last this short of a time? Trump is already facing, in some specific circumstances, more blowback than he did during his first term. Any percent world record. He really is the best to ever do it. He looks like a StarCraft 1 unit portrait. That's so true. With the, with the staggering. That's good. That's. That's pretty good. It got worse. Clickbait Ass Chat post Lisa McClain says the complaints of people at town halls don't matter because they're, quote, deranged. Representative Lisa McClain of Michigan, who serves as chair of the House Republican Conference, characterized the multiple instances of pushback and frustration at town halls held by Republican members as deranged. McClain said at a news conference that the concerns expressed by constituents at events across the country were irrelevant because 77 million voices outweigh those voiced in the town hall.
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Unknown B
Makes you, makes you really wonder whether or not these guys are authentic populists, you know? Hmm. It's almost like all that mandate of the people falls apart the nanosecond. Any real human with a real personal concern, like, addresses them. They don't even, like, they don't even try to hide their contempt. Like, they don't even do the like, listen, I understand there are going to be short term difficulties, but in the long term, this will be better for all of us. They're just like, no, we won the election. It doesn't matter whether you voted for us or not. Your, your happiness and well being are irrelevant to us. It's pretty good. It's pretty.