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Professional. We don't know. We could be freestyle. And he's Camping World CEO and host of The Fixer on Fox on Fridays at 8 o'clock. And now also airing on FBN on Tuesdays at 8 o'clock.
It already aired on the network and now is streaming on Fox Nation as well. And Marcus, we wear you out because it seems like one day a week we get you coming on Fox business and being here. Do you like this? Does it feel like a gym almost? I do like it.
In fact, I've had the opportunity to do some stuff on bottom line. And so I love that as well. It doesn't feel like a gym. Yeah, it feels like an opportunity to share ideas and share conversation. And I look back at what's happened with Charlie over the last week and I think the idea that people can have a conversation, not always agree and have an intelligent conversation, I think that's going to be something to look forward to in the coming months.
Yeah, I think, you know, I was talking to the radio people, the radio experts the other day about like where the business is heading. And they say people that are not dug in ideologically where they're predictable with exactly what they're going to say on every issue is the future. Is it that you're open to hearing the other side and can be convinced at certain moments? They think that people, there's only one Rush Limbaugh. And maybe there was a time in which everybody wanted to be rushed.
I have the answer to everything. Yeah. Right. And I think the viewer, the listener, is saying, I know you don't. And there's no way everybody has the answer to everything on every issue, and there's no way every party gets it right.
When you look at the things that we cover here at Fox, whether we're carrying. covering politics and policy or we're covering monetary policy. I think where monetary policy gets involved, you want to spur a little bit more debate about that. And whether it's the housing market or interest rates, ideologically we're all the same in terms of being conservative about how we treat people and how the world should work. When it comes to money, I think there's a different opinion.
You want diversity of opinion. I want different opinions because I want people to find the best solutions. Because my future could be on the balance. And what's important to you financially is very different than what's important to me. And I think the ability to have that dialogue is really important.
Where do you think the economy is at right now? I think the economy is in a little bit of trouble. And whether we get a quarter of a point or a half a point, I think a half a point would signal something very bad. I think you'd see the 10-year actually skyrocketing. People would benefit from that.
Well, they'd benefit short term. But what most people would say is, what does that tell you about the underlying foundation of the economy. If you have to go to a half a point. What's the real problem? Are the jobs numbers worse?
And when you don't trust all the data that you're relying on that's coming out that has been, quite frankly, invalid, and then you see a half a point, you wonder, what does the boogeyman have? What does the Fed have that we don't know about it? Are they independent? Are they not independent? There's a lot of monetary issues that are coming.
It's just so interesting and counterintuitive for non-economics majors.
So you say to yourself, I'm raising rates, I'm raising the interest rate because I think inflation is out of control. That worries you, right? Correct? I'm raising rates because I think inflation is out of control. Or I don't want to bring rates down because I think the bringing of rates down is going to spark inflation.
This inflation is different than what we saw during COVID. This is transitory, where prices are moved for a specific reason as opposed to demand. We know we don't have a demand problem. You can look at the housing market. The housing data came out today.
Another 32, same as last month. What is 32?
Well, it's essentially the sentiment of what's happening in the general housing market. The concern that I have is that it's 32 in September. It was 32 in August, but in September, the rates are at 6.3. As opposed to 6.5, 6.6.
So we saw a discount in mortgage rates. We didn't see a spike in demand. Is that because of unemployment? Is that because it takes a minute to settle in? The ten-year treasury is what needs to be unlocked, more than the rates themselves.
So, just back to the rates for a second. Can I just bring you to the pedestrian? You know what someone's saying? I have a pretty good house. I'd like to get a better one.
But I got 3.8% interest rate. Not going to move. Not going to move. Because they were so low.
Well, Brian, it's a math calculation, though. And this is the one thing that I think people need to understand more. When you're thinking about your monthly payment, you're thinking about two principal inputs. What's the price of the house and what's my interest rate? And together, those make a payment.
And people in America buy and live off of payments.
So if I can get a great deal on a house, if the rate's a little higher, it still all matters what my payment is. The problem we've had for the last couple of years is we've had high prices on houses and high prices on rates. Those two things don't work well together. And we don't have enough.
Well, we say we don't have enough, but are there people walking around? No. We say we don't have enough because we want to drive prices down, but we have tariffs on steel, on wood.
So how are you going to make houses for less? The only way you're going to do that is you have to move away from city centers. That's the only way that's going to happen.
Now you're telling people to move 30 minutes away.
Well, now my gas is going to be more expensive to drive.
So there's all these puts and takes. At the end of the day, we need the rate to stabilize. We need the, in my opinion, we need the mortgage rate to have a five handle in front of it and not a six. And we need prices just to settle.
So I thought President Trump said something interesting yesterday. He goes, why are these companies reporting quarterly to their shareholders? In Europe, they don't. And they spend so much time getting their reports ready. They're not running their company.
You run a big company. I run two public companies today. How do you feel about that? And I commented last evening on it that. In my opinion, there has to be a balance between two.
If there today, there's four beefy quarterlies, those are called queues. And for the annual year, you do what's called a K that sort of summarizes everything. To move to two times a year would be okay. I don't know what they would call it, but what information are you providing to the market inside of those stubbed six months? Are you going to have to flash revenue?
Are you going to have to flash gross profit? What are you going to have to show people? Because six months is a long time not to give any information. And 90 days is too short of a period that every 90 days I'm revving up, file the queue, have a call, go on the road, answer questions. When are we going to run our business?
Yeah. And that's for me been the biggest frustration. It's like, every time I think we're done, we're revving back up again. Right. So, what do you, what's your suggestion?
My goal would be to have reporting done in a more formal, more robust, fulsome way twice a year. It almost looks like a K where there's more disclosures. And then on a quarterly basis or even a monthly basis, you're flashing some sort. of information. I think everybody's like, well, there's going to be less audit fees.
There's not, because if you provide a flash, which is just a top line look at what's happening. Demand, file size, whatever it may be, you're still going to need somebody to opine on it. A lot of people are saying, Well, there's going to be fraud and there's going to be dishonesty.
Well, you probably shouldn't be investing into a company that you believed leadership, if they're given two reports instead of four, are now all of a sudden going to pull the wool over your eyes. Right. And how did the business community? I know you speak for yourself, but you talk to all your friends. When he said that, did people say, I love to, I hope we can follow through on this?
Well, nobody thinks it's a good idea to report more often.
So you talk about taking regulation out, taking costs out of the business. What you're doing is you're giving me time back. You're giving CEOs time back. Right. That's really what you're doing.
It's going fine. It's going great. I mean, listen, we need the housing market to get better. It will. The RV market is better.
Camping World's doing well in both cases. The RV business and the housing market are really good flashing points for what's happening with the general consumer. Not as good as it should be, but not terrible. Have you talked to people, it's not in your business, that have felt the clampdown in illegal immigration? In terms of the late 2000s, I thought there was going to be more.
I haven't even heard it from folks that own big restaurant chains. And so, what that tells you is more people have been doing it right. for probably the last five, six years than before. I would imagine that certain services in certain markets are probably impaired, but I haven't seen that.
So I'm looking at the TikTok deal. As long as China does not have any say in it, if they're going to give up the engine and not have anything to do with that, I just don't see how TikTok is not a security risk and lets China totally lets it go. A partial sell is not good. Would you agree with that?
Well, you don't want China to own anything, but I think China's going to hold the line on what they want to have, the DNA into TikTok. And TikTok is a very special DNA. And a lot of Americans, young kids, middle-aged kids, do a lot of commerce on there. Getting them out from the ownership stake is one thing, but there is a secret sauce to TikTok. As Americans, we sometimes take things like that and we We mess them up.
So That is true. If you talk to Mr. Wonderful of Shark Tank, he, Kevin O'Leary, says, just give me the followers, give me the users. I don't need the special sauce. We can handle it.
But if they hold on to that, that means they have a way of disseminating what America's up to. They can continue to monitor it. You know, I love Kevin. We all do. I'm not sure what Kevin's going to do to keep that special sauce alive.
He may have ideas that I'm not aware of, but ownership is one thing, and the walls around the information are another. The idea is to protect the users in the United States from having their data stolen and having things. Infiltrate their own lives. On the news feed, I ask people all the time: have you ever seen anything pro-Taiwan? Have you ever seen anything that was pro Israeli?
I mean, the anti S the the the ratio of like ten to one positive stories for Israel on the TikTok news feed, and it comes down to fundamentally this, which is not necessarily business, but Do you want another country controlling the number one news source for the next generation? That's why Congress acted. That's why I can't I know the President's hesitating because a lot of people make money on there, but But security-wise, this should have been sold already or disseminated.
Well, it's about controlling information. And I think that's ultimately what the Chinese government wants. They want to control the information out and they want to control the data in. And I think that's the big fear. I do have some concerns over some of the things that domestic.
Social media firms are doing. I know it took a lot to get some of the Charlie Kirk videos down. It took a lot to get a lot of other hate speech off of those sites. There's a balance to me between freedom of speech and creating nonsense for people to process in their brain. And you wonder if assassins and killers and people that aren't wired properly are taking all this information in and it's controlling their brain in a very negative way.
And do you think that China and Russia and North Korea wouldn't have figured out a negative way to affect Americans' brains? Of course. Of course, and they may already be doing it. That's what worries me. That's why we might go back.
The President of the United States, we had a famous fracture with India, but now we seem to be making steady progress with China. How does that reflect on American businessmen? How do you guys view this?
Well, China, when you say there's progress with China, progress towards a trade deal. I don't think any trade deal is going to come together until we know how the Supreme Court is going to rule on whether the tariffs can stay or not stay. I'd be very surprised because how do you ultimately structure something if you don't know what the ruling is going to be? If the Supreme Court comes out and says everything could stay, you probably get a deal quicker. If they don't, Does it change the dynamics pretty quickly?
You lose rapidly a lot of leverage with China. You lose a lot of leverage in seeing China, India, and Russia having a little powwow on a Sunday. Do we know the episode that's going to be airing this week? The episode this week is a business out in New Jersey. It's Healthy Italia.
It's a small. uh restaurant uh cooking school concept. Um and you know it's hard to really focus on that business right now. All the things that have happened in the last week, it's funny. I've been doing a lot of podcasts talking about the fixer.
And to be honest with you, the only thing that needs to be fixed is the way people are thinking about communicating with each other. Small businesses need help. I'll always be there to do that. But right now, our society needs help. Do you think you could play a role in that?
I think I do every day. Just by being you. By trying to be set a good example and do the right thing and try to deal with discourse towards me, about me, around me in a different sort of way. Right. I understand.
Hopefully, people recalibrate. We're hearing all the guy that you were sparring with a short time ago punch him right back in the face, and a lot of the rhetoric and the Hitler talk. I think we might have learned something through this. Do you think we have? A little quieter in the last week.
And I think somebody had to say to him, please don't be part of the problem. Stand on your own two feet. Fight on policy, not on fanfare and a bunch of nonsense. I still haven't heard from him. We, as I told you, we texted, had a nice text exchange.
He was not going to do a bed bath and beyond in California. It doesn't make financial sense. Not going to put a bed bath and beyond in California, not because I don't love the people of California, but I have an obligation to shareholders, as everybody that runs a company does, to deliver a profit. And if you go into a situation knowing that the possibility of making a profit is slim to zero or negative, You can't do it. No matter how great the top line could be, you have a responsibility to bring home an acorn, not leave one there in California today.
And I don't think it has to be forever, leaves too many acorns behind. What I want Gavin Newsom to do, and I've tried to make this message clear to him, is sit down with business leaders. Who you diametric disagree with and understand where the middle ground is, which means I have to compromise too. This idea that businesses that don't want to be in California don't want to protect workers is nonsense. This idea that we don't want people to make more money is nonsense.
What does matter is what are the regulatory constraints that you've put around businesses? Why have people left? Why aren't people coming? Beautiful place to live, wonderful people, and a lot of wealth in California.
So, on the surface, you would pick California as the first place you'd open. You do your research, it's the last place you probably want to be. And the other thing I think is important, too, is when you talk about the minimum wage. He wanted to just unilaterally raise minimum wage without even, I guess it's a promise to a fast food magnet guy. I'm not sure what he did, but minimum wage is something you should talk to business people about.
You're not looking to starve the entry-level worker, but the math has got to make sense for you, or else you're going to go to automation or you're not going to be able to open it. It's very simple, and I hate to liken it to just making hamburgers. There's a certain price for a hamburger, there's a cost to operate, there's rent, there's taxes, there's all these things, and you can predict out what your volume is going to be. And at the end, there's going to be a yield. One of the biggest inputs is labor.
And if you break the labor model and take it away from free enterprise and a free market, you're essentially telling the business owner, We're going to create a fixed cost, just like your rent.
So you have two choices. Lose money or three choices. Lose money. Leave. Or raise your prices.
In all cases, isn't it really bad for the consumer? If the hamburger now goes up by a dollar? I don't think people really understand that. What ultimately happens in California is there is California pricing. And there is pricing everywhere else.
So who bears the brunt? The consumer. Right. And they don't have a bed bath me on to kick around anymore. Marcus Limonis, thanks so much.
I know there's a lot of serious stuff going on, but it's great to get in part of the drama with your new show, The Fixer, on Fox.
So check it out and also get it on Fox Nation. Hey, I'm Trey Goutde, host of the Trey Goutde podcast. I hope you will join me every Tuesday and Thursday as we navigate life together and hopefully find ourselves a little bit better on the other side. Listen and follow now at FoxNewsPodcast.com.
