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See Lowe's.com slash terms for details. Subject to change. They're going to love the deals that President Trump and I are doing. I mean, they're just going to love them. You know, the president figured out the right answer and sent letters to these countries.
He said, this is going to fix the trade deficit. This will go a long way to fixing the trade deficit. And that's gotten these countries to the table. And they're going to open their markets or they're going to pay the tariff. And if they open their markets, the opportunity for Americans to export, to grow the business, farmers, ranchers, fishermen, this is going to be the next two weeks are going to be weeks for the record books.
President Trump is going to deliver for the American people.
So that is Howard Lutnick, the Commerce Secretary, doing the cheerleading on Face the Nation over the weekend. And we'll look at trade deals. August 1st coming quickly. And what do we know? The president of the Philippines is here.
What else do we know? That Indonesia and Vietnam and the U.K. are done.
So Philippines in the region, very friendly with us. You would imagine there'd be something positive there, but it's not the big deals we're looking for. Let's bring in David Bonson from the Bonson Group, CEO, founder and managing partner and author of full time work in The Meaning of Life. David, your thoughts about how Lutnick said he's looking for deals to come in. If not, you're going to get letters.
What does it mean for an economics guy?
Well, look, my first disagreement with Secretary Lutnik is that he says we're going to fix the problem of trade deficits. And I don't agree that trade deficits are inherently a problem. But if what he means is we're going to get improvement in opening more markets, then that would, of course, would be a good thing. And it would have been wonderful for that to be the stated policy intention to begin with, because that's what I love is more trade, more activity, more opportunity for both importers and exporters of American businesses. That's ultimate America first economic agenda.
So trade. All right. And what are you hearing? What country is closest? I believe Japan is closer.
And it's not because I think the European Union deal is vulnerable. It's just because the European Union deal is 27 countries. It very complicated We know that Philippines which is a much smaller situation is apparently imminent But I do believe that there going to be an announcement with Japan sooner than later How would the market react to that? I think it's basically priced in. If we mean the stock market, the bond market, financial markets have largely expected a lot of those things.
The thing that really matters right now, Brian, is impact to small business. It just doesn't get any attention because Nvidia stock goes up, the S&P goes up. Everyone thinks everything's fine. There are hundreds, and I mean hundreds, or thousands of small businesses that are at a standstill waiting to get clarity. What kind of businesses would be affected by global trade?
Well, the most primary examples of who I'm talking to, it's 130 businesses. I've personally talked to the owners of the business that have referred to placing an order that then after the order is placed, something changes, and then they end up with a tariff bill at the port.
Okay, that's a significant issue. And these aren't big public companies with access to capital markets that can kind of buy their way through it, let alone access to lobbyists to get exceptions and waivers, all that kind of stuff.
So I think that you have a high amount of American importers that make something, and often they import something into their manufacturing. It's 40% of our imports. 37% of our imports from China are American importers that are making something once it gets here. It's unfinished goods, part of the processing.
So I think that that's a big uncertainty, and Japan is a part of that. We bring in a lot of unfinished goods from Japan. If we get a good deal there, that's going to help kind of bring clarity to markets.
So listen to the Treasury Secretary who I know you like, Scott Besson. He was a good choice, right? Yeah, very, very good choice. Yeah, cut 21. Imagine that steel and AI, and it's a very diversified building boom.
We're seeing companies from all over the world want to come in. You mentioned the AstraZeneca, and I can tell you we're about to announce a rash of trade deals in the coming days. And a lot of these trade deals are going to include substantial investments in the U.S., whether it whether it's autos, semiconductors and pharmaceuticals.
So can you read between the lines? You know him personally. He's not he's not like Lutnick. He's not a seller. No, he's a fat guy.
Yeah, and not only is that the public persona you're referring to, which I like publicly, but privately, he's also really good at having a calming effect on the president to explain, here's what you want to accomplish, but here's some of the tradeoffs. Here's some of the side effects. That's where I personally think Pete Navarro and to a certain degree, Secretary Latina too, went astray early on is they didn't properly prepare the president for some of the tradeoffs. I think Secretary Besson's a much more sober voice in that regard. Absolutely.
So investments under Trump Apple has pledged $500 billion Some people say wait and see We have Project Stargate $500 billion That is SoftBank It a consortium of a big group of different people That have all pledged That was in the old But NVIDIA we know billion Do you think that coming back here Well, again, about $430 billion of that already was. What do you mean in the chip deal? Yeah, we have to separate some of these announcements from what they were already doing versus what it's supposed to be. That's why I have you here, David. Micron Technology, $200 billion.
IBM, $150 billion. Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company is $100 billion.
Now, on the surface, that's what we need, right?
Some of those chips coming out of Taiwan here. But is there a but? The only but is on a lot of the deals. They just simply were things that were already in motion. They're not related to tariffs at all.
Taiwan Semiconductor was more related to Trump taking over. Yeah, but not in Taiwan Semiconductor's case. That Arizona investment was massive. That was I mean, some of that was back to Trump's first term. I mean, this was just something that they were wanting to onshore.
There's a lot of ongoing evolution here. The one that like that, the soft bank deal. And yesterday they said, OK, well, we said 500 billion. We haven't done anything yet. And those things concern me.
Now, look, it doesn't concern me politically. The president's a sales guy, a real estate guy. He loves the headlines. But then when you look to future investment, I've been really humbled by the Johnson & Johnson inclusion in President Trump's Rose Garden announcement on April 2nd, Liberation Day. That was $55 billion.
Yes, but $42 billion of it they had already been doing. And so I've owned Johnson & Johnson for 23 years. My company owns hundreds of millions of dollars of the stock. And I said, what's he talking about? I go and looked in it, and they basically had increased over five years by $8 billion, $2 billion a year.
That's fine. He has every right to go hype up announcements. That's what politicians do. But where there's things that don't ever happen, that ends up hurting him. That's why I was critical of the Doge thing, overselling, under-delivering.
I want to under-promise and over-deliver.
So a $500 billion announcement from a company that has no possible way of knowing that they're going to be able to do that much over five years, 10 years, I think that becomes problematic. It sets a certain expectation in. The Taiwan deal is real. A lot of the pharmaceutical and semiconductor onshoring is very good for the country. I'd focus on those things that are matters of critical infrastructure.
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So I looking at this report in Axios today and it says higher earning americans and they got the they have what it looks like an ekg machine uh judging by the years in the bottom uh are feeling pretty good these days it's like their optimism is going up but the sentiment among those at the bottom is stagnating at much lower levels do you translate that into prices of items when i go to the grocery stores if I want to get a new car? That has been the case through the inflation we had in 2022. But I think the biggest issue is always how people feel at different economic rungs on the ladder is wages, is when wages are growing, real wages are growing. People always feel better.
So lower income people really pulled well on this in the first Trump term because their real wages did grow the most since financial crisis. Right now, I suspect we just need more time to see real wages increase. But the reason why people at the higher end feel good is because they own assets and things like the stock market, real estate. When those things are going higher, they generally are going to feel better. We're an ownership oriented society.
But where you need the lower deciles of wage earners to feel better is their wages have to go higher. April 21st is so-called Liberation Day. April 2nd. April 2nd. What did you think then and what do you think now that we're in July?
It was an incredibly disappointing day for me as someone who supports so much of the president's economic agenda about tax cuts, about deregulation, about energy. Which he's doing. All of those things that he has done, I still want to see them cut spending more. But I am a real supply side Reaganite supporter of the vast majority but not all of President Trump's agenda. April 2nd was not what we were expecting.
They were linking the trade policy to countries that dared to sell us more things than we sold them. And there's just simply nothing wrong with that. But since in that gap, I know how you felt that. I think you did our show that day. I did.
I did. And five days later, I think Secretary Besant became the cooler head who prevailed versus some of the other folks that were advising the president. And I think now we've seen months play out. And it's very clear to me that the president got what we call, I'd say to my clients, market discipline. The president has no interest in a stock market collapse, a bond market collapse, a currency collapse under his watch.
And he realizes we have to go through it a certain way. But he's a dealmaker and negotiator. I don't always agree with the thing said, but I do understand they're trying to get to a point of deals.
So if in the end, look, I think a lot of people on MAGA are going to be upset, not people like me, because I think we're going to be trading more with China, not less with China. That's different than a lot of people expected. But it's probably better for the economy, certainly better for markets. All right. So interesting to talk to you, David.
David Bonson, the Bonson Group. There's so many different balls in the air right now with the economy.
Something's unprecedented, and we have an August 1st deadline, so there's a reason to do deals.
So hopefully they'll come in, and they'll make our country better. David, thanks so much. Thanks, Brian. Listen to the all-new Bret Baier Podcast, featuring Common Ground, in-depth talks with lawmakers from opposite sides of the aisle, along with all your Bret Baier favorites like his All-Star panel and much more. Available now at foxnewspodcasts.com or wherever you get your podcasts.
