James Altucher
Appearances
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Will the New Tariffs Tank the Economy?
Yeah, so that's why I just wanted to take inflation off the table, because historically, tariffs don't cause inflation. We have the example of 2018, 2019, early 2020. We have the example of the entire 1800s. We have the example of Smoot-Hawley, where there was deflation instead of inflation. The worse the tariffs are, the more deflation there is, because industries go bad.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Will the New Tariffs Tank the Economy?
And that's why we're worried about a recession. I don't think anybody really is worried about hyperinflation right now. It's not like we have so much money, we got to take a wheelbarrow of dollars to buy a loaf of bread. We're really worried about a recession, which is kind of corresponds with deflation rather than inflation.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Will the New Tariffs Tank the Economy?
So inflation is just off the table, which is why I bring up that example. It never occurs because of tariffs. It didn't occur in 2018, didn't occur in 1929, didn't occur in the 1800s. Some prices do go up, but that means other prices go down. So that's that. But the problem is, could industry go bad if prices on steel go up because of 25% steel tariff on China?
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Will the New Tariffs Tank the Economy?
people stop building things because it's too expensive to build things and will the housing industry collapse and people lose their jobs and then we have a recession and it's like a death spiral down. So it's not that I'm worried price will go up. The real worry is will there be a big recession? And even there, The answer is a solid no.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Will the New Tariffs Tank the Economy?
Like, everybody's worried, will there be another depression like what happened when the Smoot-Hawley tariff happened in 1929? And the main difference is the Smoot-Hawley tariff was a blanket tariff on everything, just like that 10% tariff Trump is doing now. That's a blanket tariff. Not the reciprocal ones, but the blanket 10% tariff that he announced. But...
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Will the New Tariffs Tank the Economy?
Smoot-Hawley was almost a 60% tariff, or let's say 50% tariff on everything that was being imported. So 50%, if you put a 50% tariff, you're basically saying, we don't want to trade with you ever again. If you put a 10% tariff, you're saying, please trade with us as much as possible so we make that 10%. And you're also saying with these reciprocal tariffs, hey, you tariff us, we tariff you,
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Will the New Tariffs Tank the Economy?
let's call the whole thing off. Like, let's just meet at the negotiating table and negotiate, which is what he's been doing with Canada, with Mexico, with China. Look, Apple today just announced they're going to spend $500 billion today in the U.S. to build factories here so they can make products here. So $500 billion is a lot of money.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Will the New Tariffs Tank the Economy?
And Intel and Taiwan Semiconductor, they just announced they're going to spend $200 billion building tech facilities here to avoid tariffs. So we're already in one day. We're already seeing the results. Like $700 billion just announced in 24 hours is a huge impact on the economy.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Will the New Tariffs Tank the Economy?
We'll all cancel it out. Think about a negotiation with your job. Let's say someone's at a job and they want to negotiate a higher salary And let's say they're really truly willing to leave. They say to their boss, I'm leaving, see you later. And the boss says, wait, wait, wait, let me make a counter offer. And the right response is, well, I'm leaving, see you later. And you walk out the door.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Will the New Tariffs Tank the Economy?
You gotta really show people that you're serious in a negotiation or else they take advantage. And I'm not talking about Trump, I'm just talking about every negotiation in the world. If you show you're scared and you're not afraid to do what you say you're gonna do, you're gonna lose the negotiation. So this is my theory of what Trump's doing. He said, let's just do this first.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Will the New Tariffs Tank the Economy?
And yeah, there's gonna be a lot of people afraid, including the leaders of foreign countries and the CEOs of major companies and the stock market, unfortunately. and then i'm just going to be silent for a while and and see what happens so we already see like hundreds of billions of dollars worth of announcements canada and mexico clearly are negotiating with us by the way in 2018
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Will the New Tariffs Tank the Economy?
With Mexico, we put all these tariffs on. Then by 2019, all the tariffs were dropped. Mexico dropped all their tariffs against us.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Will the New Tariffs Tank the Economy?
Mexico and Canada. China, in 2020, agreed to spend $200 billion on purchasing stuff in the U.S. They agreed to start prosecuting theft of intellectual property, which was a big problem between China and the U.S. So with every country, we have strategic... and financial issues. And Trump is just laying it all out and putting it on the negotiating table.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Will the New Tariffs Tank the Economy?
And his argument is, oh, I just want fair trade. But he wants other things, too. He wants some strategic objectives. By the way, I'm not saying he's going to achieve those. We're just kind of getting into his mind right now. And like rather than rather than saying, oh, he's trying to destroy the country. This is what he's trying to do.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Will the New Tariffs Tank the Economy?
And then we have to decide whether he's going to say what he's trying to do.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Will the New Tariffs Tank the Economy?
Then there's a fourth thing, which is also to negotiate other strategic initiatives, like maybe like a bargaining chip. Yeah. So like with China, stop sending fentanyl into the US. Then we'll lower tariffs with Canada.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Will the New Tariffs Tank the Economy?
Well, China, they're getting it from China and Mexico is getting it from China. And this is from all the law enforcement agencies. Then then cartels that operate out of these two places on the border, they're sending it into the US. But it's all originating in China. So so that's why it's a negotiating stance for for Trump.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Will the New Tariffs Tank the Economy?
Well, I think with the strategic stuff, I think it's already happening. We've already seen negotiations with Canada, Mexico, and even China, and also these companies that are... Well, okay, let's talk about moving manufacturing in the U.S. I don't know how it's going to go in general, but we just see evidence that...
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Will the New Tariffs Tank the Economy?
A, Apple, again, the $500 billion investment, then Intel and Taiwan Semiconductor. And then you look at 2018, roughly there was, they estimate about 30,000 new auto worker jobs were created in the US because of tariffs on cars on China or on Asia in general. And so there's evidence that that does bring, now, do we want manufacturing here?
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Will the New Tariffs Tank the Economy?
I don't know, but there's evidence that it does bring manufacturing here. And so now, does it generate revenues? I actually don't think the tariffs are gonna generate much, in revenues. I think people will stop buying products that are too expensive. So then there's no tariffs. If you don't buy the foreign product, there's not going to be a tariff here.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Will the New Tariffs Tank the Economy?
So I don't think it's going to generate much in revenues. Maybe the 10% blanket tariff. So let's say we have $3.5 trillion worth of foreign imports. So a 10% blanket tariff would normally generate $350 billion annually. Maybe it'll, because fewer people will be buying foreign goods, maybe it'll go down to $250 billion in revenues annually, which is not bad, but it's not amazing.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Will the New Tariffs Tank the Economy?
I mean, personal income taxes generates $2.5 trillion in revenues for the US. So this blanket tariff will only alleviate 10% of that.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Will the New Tariffs Tank the Economy?
I agree. So other things that happened, and again, we can look at 2018, other things that happened is manufacturing spread out a little bit more. So instead of it all being in China, we went to Vietnam, we went to India, we went to places where we weren't putting on as high of a tariff, or we worked out deals to make the tariffs and duties lower.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Will the New Tariffs Tank the Economy?
The other thing is, by the way, where are the workers? Because in the US, we're essentially deporting a lot of the workers. So... what's going to happen is robotics companies are really starting to amp up their investment. And you have things like the Optimus robot being built at Tesla. I don't know when that's going to be ready for prime time, let's say 2026, 2027, but that's going to be
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Will the New Tariffs Tank the Economy?
the new factory worker. I mean, already Tesla's automating a lot of their energy products, so they could build an electric grid almost automatically with robots. So we're going to see some transition in technology that's going to replace the workers also. Doesn't mean the workers are going to be out of jobs. They just won't be at those jobs.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Will the New Tariffs Tank the Economy?
I mean, I hate to sound like overly conservative, but let's say you're a manufacturing company and you're like, oh, my gosh, steel prices just went up. So it's going to be it's going to cost us more to build cars or whatever. Oh, my God. Now the minimum wage. Now it's going to cost us more to have labor.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Will the New Tariffs Tank the Economy?
So they're going to what's going to happen is they're going to just switch to robots eventually. And. They'll raise the price on their cars or they'll insource steel as much as they can because steel does come from the U.S. also. Those have to like make more of it.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Will the New Tariffs Tank the Economy?
So, you know, what happens typically is you start looking for alternatives to the things that are going up in cost, which is why overall inflation never occurs when there's tariffs. So take any basket of goods. If some of the goods go up, other goods are going to go down. Again, overall inflation only happens when you're printing up just a lot of excess money to your earlier point.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Will the New Tariffs Tank the Economy?
But what a home does is they look for alternatives. So they don't shop at, I don't know, Whole Foods, they shop at Costco or Walmart or whatever. And I bet you didn't know, you can go to any site that sells gift cards on the planet and you could buy infinite amount of Uber gift cards to do Uber rides for 75 cents on the dollar. You can get 25% all your Uber rides just by buying gift cards.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Will the New Tariffs Tank the Economy?
Nobody does it, though. But that's an alternative to whatever people are doing now, which is just straight riding Uber. So when people look, there's always alternatives. to find cheaper goods or goods that are trying to be more competitive because they're made domestically. So they're cutting prices to to compete with when they couldn't compete before with the Chinese products or whatever.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Will the New Tariffs Tank the Economy?
So, yes, it's true. People don't care where the inflation comes from, but there's not going to be individual products might rise in prices, but you can't have overall inflation because where there's no money for that if there's not extra money in the economy.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Will the New Tariffs Tank the Economy?
Yeah, so if money is printed, if money is printed, then there will be inflation. But that's not necessarily a bad thing either. We've had... 30,000 or whatever percent inflation since 1903, right? So three cents in 1903 could buy what a dollar could buy now, more or less. But our quality of life has gone up amazingly. Inflation is not necessarily a bad thing.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Will the New Tariffs Tank the Economy?
Nicole, so happy to be here. This reminds me of those 5 a.m. moments when you were hosting that 5 a.m. show on CNBC. And you would wake up for it. I would wake up. So I'd wake up at like 3.30. I lived an hour away. I would get over there. And I loved every minute of it. It was always such a pleasure hanging out with you on TV.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Will the New Tariffs Tank the Economy?
It's what basically fueled all the innovation and discovery in the United States because there was excess money floating around that went into inventing new things for our money hungry consumers to buy.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Will the New Tariffs Tank the Economy?
No, I'm not, I'm not saying that. I'm saying even in a, right now, for instance, you could buy Amazon gift cards and buy all your groceries through Amazon at 80 cents on the dollar. So this is just, what I'm saying is there's an alternate, people will start being creative and think of alternatives to way they're spending now.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Will the New Tariffs Tank the Economy?
It doesn't matter if you're rich, not rich, poor, middle class, whatever. You might not buy a car that just went up from $80,000 to $100,000. You might say, look, I'm fine with the car that's $70,000. And so people will just start looking for alternatives, particularly if you're not making more money.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Will the New Tariffs Tank the Economy?
Now, if money is printed, which it could be, people will have more money in general and there will be inflation in the economy and whether that's a good thing or a bad thing will have to be determined in the future but that is one way to avoid a recession that's why they printed money in the pandemic to avoid a depression so and it worked i mean there was inflation but we avoided a depression
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Will the New Tariffs Tank the Economy?
I'll say what is bad, though. If tariffs are too big, we get into the Smoot-Hawley Great Depression era. If money printing is too big, we get into hyperinflation. So mild inflation is good. Tariffs are good. They'll generate revenues for all the reasons you mentioned. They'll generate revenues. They'll generate strategic possibilities for the administration. They'll move some businesses onshore.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Will the New Tariffs Tank the Economy?
Who knows if the three people that were listening really paid attention, but we had so much fun.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Will the New Tariffs Tank the Economy?
So there's good, there's some prices of products will raise, but some products of prices will go down. But too much is too much. Then you have the Great Depression. So people are trying to determine, are these tariffs too much? And my- Maybe yes, maybe no. Well, I'll say the one difference is The tariffs that started Great Depression were 50 to 60%. Here we're talking about a 10% blanket tariff.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Will the New Tariffs Tank the Economy?
All the other tariffs are reciprocal tariffs that could be negotiated. So countries will bring their tariffs down and we'll bring our tariffs down as a result, or there'll be some other negotiation. or we'll switch to other products, or we'll insure, or whatever. And similarly with avoiding a recession, yes, we'll print money. That will lead to inflation.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Will the New Tariffs Tank the Economy?
But we've had inflation for the past 100 years, and we've flourished. So it's not necessarily a bad thing. It's only bad if it's hyperinflation, if it's too much. So people could get worried about that, but it hasn't happened yet in the U.S. So overall... Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Will the New Tariffs Tank the Economy?
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Will the New Tariffs Tank the Economy?
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Will the New Tariffs Tank the Economy?
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Will the New Tariffs Tank the Economy?
Well, you know why? It's not necessarily the paper losses. It's the fear. Is this going to continue? Like, are we in trouble? And it's not like, is this stock going to be okay? It's more like, am I going to be okay? because every stock on the screen is down, right? The S&P is down 5%. I don't know the last time it's been down 5%. It feels bad. It feels like March, 2020 or December, 2008.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Will the New Tariffs Tank the Economy?
Like one of those periods where you feel like capitalism's gonna be dead.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Will the New Tariffs Tank the Economy?
I think that's true. Look how many Treasury Secretaries worked at Goldman, like Hank Paulson. I don't know. There's a whole bunch.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Will the New Tariffs Tank the Economy?
Bullish. Yeah, definitely bullish.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Will the New Tariffs Tank the Economy?
Because one skill, why did Walmart succeed when almost every mega grocery store failed is Walmart was particularly good at switching its supply chain very fast on the hundreds of thousands of products it sells. So what happens with big tariffs, you need to immediately switch your supply chains so you're getting products from places with lower tariffs. So Walmart is particularly good at this.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Will the New Tariffs Tank the Economy?
So the tariffs actually make me super bullish on Walmart.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Will the New Tariffs Tank the Economy?
Yeah, but Costco's got the membership aspect. So it's got a big moat, which is why Charlie Munger, you know, Warren Buffett's former number two guy, he's passed away. But Costco also, I'm bullish on, is a very smart company. By the way, you could buy gold bars at Costco, sometimes at a discount to the regular gold price. That's the only time I would buy gold.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Will the New Tariffs Tank the Economy?
NVIDIA... I'm mostly bullish. But here's the thing. Eventually, you're not going to need 100,000 NVIDIA chips to make the best AI, just like you don't need any more to upgrade your phone every year. We used to upgrade our phones every year. Now we don't really have to. I mean, I just bought an iPhone 16, but my last iPhone was the iPhone 12 because it was good enough. And eventually...
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Will the New Tariffs Tank the Economy?
Nvidia chips will be just good enough, but it's growing so fast now. I would, I'm still bullish on Nvidia, but not for the super long run.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Will the New Tariffs Tank the Economy?
Yeah, but A, there's going to be lots of chips that are going to be good enough. Just like the phone is good enough for me to talk on now and use apps and watch videos and so on. There's going to be other chips out there. And companies won't need a million NVIDIA chips to make the best AI. Maybe they'll need a thousand chips and eventually just one chip.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Will the New Tariffs Tank the Economy?
So chip companies eventually fall prey to, there won't be an upgrade cycle anymore.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Will the New Tariffs Tank the Economy?
Yeah, nuclear I'm very bullish on.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Will the New Tariffs Tank the Economy?
Long term and for energy, obviously. So I'm very bullish on it. Because look, a lot of Europe is powered by nuclear. Hardly, I don't think, I don't know of any part of the U.S. powered by nuclear. I mean, there's probably some parts, but eventually we're going to have to switch to something like nuclear. And Microsoft is paying to open up Three Mile Island, like the only place in the U.S.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Will the New Tariffs Tank the Economy?
Yeah, so it's very real and scary to people who are saving. And at the same time, their jobs are uncertain because of all the tariff stuff. And I'm saying all this because I think this is what people really care. They don't want to know, oh, what AI stock should I buy today? Nobody wants to know that. They just want to know, am I going to be all right? Is my family going to be OK?
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Will the New Tariffs Tank the Economy?
where there was a nuclear disaster. That's how much the demand for a nuclear is starting to come right now because of AI.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Will the New Tariffs Tank the Economy?
SMR, they make these small modular reactors. So like smaller nuclear reactors.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Will the New Tariffs Tank the Economy?
Let's argue about physics on this podcast. We'll go into quantum physics after that.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Will the New Tariffs Tank the Economy?
Oh, really? I have not heard that rumor. Breaking news. Well, then I'm very bullish on it.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Will the New Tariffs Tank the Economy?
Honestly, don't you love TikTok?
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Will the New Tariffs Tank the Economy?
No, I'm not dancing on there. I don't think. I think I took that one down.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Will the New Tariffs Tank the Economy?
I had at least one TikTok video with a million views, but I just use it mostly for viewing because this Gen Z generation, it's like they're superheroes. You see people doing like triple backflips out of an airplane and somehow staying alive. You got the four-year-olds playing, you know, Beethoven's Fifth Symphony on the piano and clarinet at the same time. It's amazing.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Will the New Tariffs Tank the Economy?
I don't know. A lot of it looks real and they're like superheroes. I'm so impressed with the current generation that's coming up. This is going to be a great generation. I can't wait to see what they do.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Will the New Tariffs Tank the Economy?
I'm Gen X. Yeah, yeah, you are.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Will the New Tariffs Tank the Economy?
Don't be angry. Don't ever be angry. That's the one thing.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Will the New Tariffs Tank the Economy?
It always takes away energy. It never gives you any energy and you need energy to live in this life and it's a hard life. So just don't be angry.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Will the New Tariffs Tank the Economy?
And the reason I bring this all up is because I definitely think everybody is going to be OK. But it just feels bad right now.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Will the New Tariffs Tank the Economy?
Yeah. It's hard. Your paper net worth, A, it's not your real net worth, and B, it's not your self-worth. And it's really important to remember that during the very few periods that are like this. So again, in the past 25 years, there was 9-11, there was 2008, there was March 2020, and there's now.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Will the New Tariffs Tank the Economy?
No, maybe not. Right, and to your point, like I haven't looked at my portfolio at all until you just said, let's look at our portfolio.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Will the New Tariffs Tank the Economy?
Well, I don't really, I only own stocks that I had invested in privately that are now, that then went public. So I'm significantly up on investments like this, but like one stock I own is 11% down today. So it doesn't feel good looking at it, but you know, a weird thing happened to me yesterday, which is I ordered off of Uber Eats And the driver was dropping it off and I was outside.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Will the New Tariffs Tank the Economy?
And she said to me, hey, can you give me advice on my career? Like, what should I do to have success?
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Will the New Tariffs Tank the Economy?
Yeah, it looks nice. Let's just say that. And I said, without thinking about the markets, I said, the thing is, And you know my story, like I've been broke many times. And then- How many times? At least four. Okay. Like dead broke. I've had ups and downs, but like dead broke and then- Like zero money. Then dead broke again.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Will the New Tariffs Tank the Economy?
And I said to her, which is the key thing I learned, is that the main skill is how quickly can you bounce back from adversity? Like you can't look backwards. You have to always be looking for- the opportunity, even in bad moments, even in moments like we're experiencing right now, because there's always opportunities. Like the economy is bigger than ever.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Will the New Tariffs Tank the Economy?
There is more money in this economy than ever. And I'm not saying you can just tomorrow turn your financial life around, but you could set yourself on a track and that alone feels good to make positive progress, to move forward. It took years for me to kind of stop wallowing in the badness and start moving forward towards the goodness.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Will the New Tariffs Tank the Economy?
Right. But like just like a portfolio, even if your portfolio is down, even if the economy is down, even if there's so much uncertainty, there's so much uncertainty right now. But we know that everyone says that every time, oh, the world's over, capitalism's dead, but it always comes back. We never got closer than 2008. 2008, things were legitimately bad.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Will the New Tariffs Tank the Economy?
We still bounce back so strong. I mean, there was like an 11-year bull market that lasted until the pandemic. And even that year of the pandemic, the market was up. So it lasted until essentially 2022.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Will the New Tariffs Tank the Economy?
Yeah. So let's talk about it. First off, let's set the historical stage, like what historically has happened and when have tariffs been bad? Because there has been a period when they've been bad. So first off, for the entire first half of the United States from the founding of the United States until 1913, 97% of the United States revenues came from tariffs. We didn't have any federal taxes.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Will the New Tariffs Tank the Economy?
So all the revenues came from tariffs. And during that time, you know, we had the industrial revolution, like the US went from being small country to the basically just about the biggest economy in the world next to the UK. And then around World War I, which is right after we surpassed the UK, And I know this is a very different period than now. Nobody has to correct me on that.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Will the New Tariffs Tank the Economy?
Obviously, it's very different. But historically, tariffs was the main source of revenues, at least for early America. And there was zero inflation then. So tariffs are not really connected to inflation, despite... what people are saying and we can get to why in a second. But then federal income taxes started. It was a constitutional amendment.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Will the New Tariffs Tank the Economy?
I think it was the 16th amendment and Woodrow Wilson was the first president to introduce income taxes. And then slowly the US started shifting their revenues. Now almost all the revenues come from income taxes and very little comes from tariffs. But in 1929, which is a familiar day to people is the beginning of the great depression.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Will the New Tariffs Tank the Economy?
There was a tariff act passed, the Smoot-Hawley tariff, which put a huge, like a 60% tariff on everything, like everything imported. So Herbert Hoover, the president, he just did not want any foreign country to interfere with American industry. So he was completely a protectionist and isolationist. He didn't want trade. He only wanted us selling to other countries.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Will the New Tariffs Tank the Economy?
He didn't want anybody buying from other countries. So he put this huge tariff on everyone else, on every other country. And then every industry collapsed because there were no buyers. And all the other countries put big tariffs on the U.S. And there was a Great Depression.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Will the New Tariffs Tank the Economy?
Yeah. So first off, let's look at 2018. Trump was president before, as we all know. And he put pretty big tariffs on Chinese products in 2018, Mexico, Canada. Europe, he put a bunch of, if people remember, he put a lot of tariffs on many, many products and pretty big tariffs as well. In some cases, bigger than the tariffs he's putting on now. And what was the result? Well, inflation,
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Will the New Tariffs Tank the Economy?
was around 1.7%. So it was inflation was almost deflation. I talked to a Federal Reserve governor around that time who told me that what worried them at night was not inflation, but deflation because they were trying really hard to create inflation. and there was none.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Will the New Tariffs Tank the Economy?
Yeah, so what happened was, is that 40% of all the money created since the beginning of the planet was printed by the United States in around early 2021 to do all these bailouts in 2020. Between 2020 and 2021, 40% of all the money created in history was printed by the US this one year, you know, for the pandemic bailouts. The year after, like 2022, is 9% inflation.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Will the New Tariffs Tank the Economy?
So money printing, just printing free money devalues the money. And that's when there's inflation. So you look at Germany in the 1920s, they had to pay all these war reparations. So they came up with this really brilliant idea. Well, here's one way to make money. Let's just print it and we'll give that to the Americans in the UK and so on. So they printed all this money.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Will the New Tariffs Tank the Economy?
Everyone realized, oh, my marks don't have any value anymore because there's so much of them. And so then there was hyperinflation. So that's what happens when you print money.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Will the New Tariffs Tank the Economy?
Because if there's a fixed supply of money, let's say you're not printing any money. Let's say all you have is $1,000. And let's say you buy food, oil, gas, a place to live, and books to read. I'm just making this up. And let's say... you know, gas, the price of gas goes up. Well, now you're gonna have to make a decision.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Will the New Tariffs Tank the Economy?
Maybe you move out of your apartment and get a cheaper apartment because you're gonna need gas to go to work. So you just have a thousand dollars. You have a fixed amount of money. So some prices go up, like gas goes up. Let's say there's a gas shortage for whatever reason. So some things go up, but then you have to take away money from other things. So the price of other things go down.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Will the New Tariffs Tank the Economy?
That's what happens with tariffs if there's fixed money. You could borrow money, but there's only so much you could borrow. Then you have to pay the money back. but printing money creates new money. And what they did was they printed money and they just gave it to people, which I'm not saying that was good or bad. Like people were struggling in the pandemic, but they just gave that to people.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Will the New Tariffs Tank the Economy?
And some people really needed it, but for some people it was just extra money. So these people just bought more things. And so then the prices of everything go up. It was just like, if suddenly everybody has like double the amount of money, then prices will double. So that's exactly what happened.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Will the New Tariffs Tank the Economy?
Like suddenly there was just all this extra free money for many people and they started buying more things. They were willing to pay more money for things. People recognize this. So suppliers charged more. That's almost, if you look at almost every time there's like periods of inflation, not just in the US, but in any country, it's when money, just free money happens to be around.
Young and Profiting (YAP) with Hala Taha
Unlock Your Potential and Thrive as a Content Creator | Presented by OpusClip | YAPCreator
So you could start a podcast network, for instance, and you bring on other podcasts and your job is now to place the ads and you get a cut of all those ads. So now you not only have the business of your podcast, but you have this network where you already were placing ads on your podcast, but now you get to spread around to more podcasts and place those ads, you've now multiplied your podcast.
Young and Profiting (YAP) with Hala Taha
Unlock Your Potential and Thrive as a Content Creator | Presented by OpusClip | YAPCreator
Or here's another way, you do your podcast and you release it on all the platforms like Spotify, Apple, iHeartRadio, Sirius, and on and on. But what about putting your podcast on TikTok or YouTube? Or guess what? If you upload your podcast to Amazon Prime, your video version of your podcast to Amazon Prime, it would actually become an Apple Prime TV show.
Young and Profiting (YAP) with Hala Taha
Unlock Your Potential and Thrive as a Content Creator | Presented by OpusClip | YAPCreator
And it'll be right next to all the other Apple Prime TV shows when you search for your podcast. Most people don't realize that. So there's all sorts of things you can do, A, with experimenting, and B, with this idea of manipulating, you know, the math of ideas. So idea subtraction, I'm forgetting some of the examples I had in the book there, but, you know, basically,
Young and Profiting (YAP) with Hala Taha
Unlock Your Potential and Thrive as a Content Creator | Presented by OpusClip | YAPCreator
What if you had your podcast and oh, for Tik TOK, they only allow 60 seconds. So let's take the concept of a podcast, figure out how to do, uh, an episode with what's the most important thing in this episode with James. Okay. We're going to make a Tik TOK 60 second podcast, uh, with James. So that's like idea subtraction.
Young and Profiting (YAP) with Hala Taha
Unlock Your Potential and Thrive as a Content Creator | Presented by OpusClip | YAPCreator
So if you take one concept of podcasts and apply all these different ideas to it, then you'll suddenly. be everywhere. And you'll have lots of different formats. One of them might hit and be super popular. But in order to have luck, and earlier I said success requires luck, in order to have luck, you need to... basically expand the area of luck in your life.
Young and Profiting (YAP) with Hala Taha
Unlock Your Potential and Thrive as a Content Creator | Presented by OpusClip | YAPCreator
So yes, your podcast on Spotify could get lucky and go viral. But imagine if you also had a 60 second podcast on TikTok and a show on Amazon Prime that you uploaded yourself. And a podcast network where you're just trying to make money, but one of the other podcasts becomes huge and viral. And suddenly you're making like great money now with the podcast concept by having a podcast network.
Young and Profiting (YAP) with Hala Taha
Unlock Your Potential and Thrive as a Content Creator | Presented by OpusClip | YAPCreator
You've expanded basically the surface area of your luck. And that often results in great success.
Young and Profiting (YAP) with Hala Taha
Unlock Your Potential and Thrive as a Content Creator | Presented by OpusClip | YAPCreator
Very important question because people often say ideas are a dime a dozen execution is everything. And this is just totally not true because in order execution, execution doesn't mean one thing. You have to have execution ideas on how to execute. There are good execution ideas and bad execution ideas. So let's say you and I came up with a business idea and we said, oh, this is so good.
Young and Profiting (YAP) with Hala Taha
Unlock Your Potential and Thrive as a Content Creator | Presented by OpusClip | YAPCreator
We're going to make, you know, an AI that figures out what everybody should order in a restaurant. I don't know, whatever it is. We're going to raise $2 million. We're going to hire a bunch of programmers. We're going to program this up over the next year. And then we're going to start selling it to restaurants, our new software package to restaurants. Well, that's a horrible execution idea.
Young and Profiting (YAP) with Hala Taha
Unlock Your Potential and Thrive as a Content Creator | Presented by OpusClip | YAPCreator
How about instead, a friend of yours has a restaurant. We go to that friend and say, listen, can we go from table to table this night and see if we can help everybody with their orders? And we'll see, oh, everybody already had their preferences even before they got to the restaurant, they knew what they wanted to order. So this is a bad idea.
Young and Profiting (YAP) with Hala Taha
Unlock Your Potential and Thrive as a Content Creator | Presented by OpusClip | YAPCreator
So we shouldn't waste a year of our lives and $2 million of people's money and trying to raise the money to do this idea. It's a bad idea. So often when you try to break things down and do things manually as quick as, maybe it might not be the exact product, but you could usually test, do people even want this? Do people even... even remotely want this.
Young and Profiting (YAP) with Hala Taha
Unlock Your Potential and Thrive as a Content Creator | Presented by OpusClip | YAPCreator
You know, people already, the hard thing about businesses, people already know, they've already filled up their 24 hours a day. You and I and everybody listening, we already have things to do all 24 hours of the day. When you start a new business, that means you're saying some people are going to do something new in part of those 24 hours.
Young and Profiting (YAP) with Hala Taha
Unlock Your Potential and Thrive as a Content Creator | Presented by OpusClip | YAPCreator
And that new includes a product that I create or service I invent or whatever. And Most people don't want anything new. They're fine with their 24 hours a day. I'm fine mostly with my 24 hours a day. Do I really want the Apple vision pro to change my 24 hours? Maybe it's gotta be great though. And so most ideas are pretty bad. That's why most ideas are pretty bad and won't work.
Young and Profiting (YAP) with Hala Taha
Unlock Your Potential and Thrive as a Content Creator | Presented by OpusClip | YAPCreator
So it's good to execute as cheaply and quickly as possible.
Young and Profiting (YAP) with Hala Taha
Unlock Your Potential and Thrive as a Content Creator | Presented by OpusClip | YAPCreator
I want to describe like, what does it mean to master something and to get good at something? Well, a lot of people think you have to be the best in the world or you have to be rich and famous at what you're doing to say that you've mastered it. So yes, I'm not a top 10 master. comedian or a top 10 writer, maybe I like to think I'm a top 10 writer, a top 10 chess player.
Young and Profiting (YAP) with Hala Taha
Unlock Your Potential and Thrive as a Content Creator | Presented by OpusClip | YAPCreator
But I do think, and I think that's very hard to do. That's where the whole 10,000 hours or whatever comes in. But I do think I am, whatever I like to pursue, I like to think that I get into the top 1%. So I'll just use chess as an example. There's 600 million people around the world who know the rules to chess. arguably the top 1% means you have to be in the top 6 million of those.
Young and Profiting (YAP) with Hala Taha
Unlock Your Potential and Thrive as a Content Creator | Presented by OpusClip | YAPCreator
Arguably, I'm in the top 1 million of those or even better. But I consider myself not so good because looking at it from my perspective, there's a lot of people I know who are much better. Same things with business, with investing, with everything I've pursued. But I do think it's relatively easy to get into the top 1% of what you pursue. And there's a lot of benefits to that.
Young and Profiting (YAP) with Hala Taha
Unlock Your Potential and Thrive as a Content Creator | Presented by OpusClip | YAPCreator
One is every area of life worth pursuing has a strong and fun subculture. So you get to experiment being in all these different subcultures. There's like a comedy subculture, a writing subculture, a TV subculture, investing subculture. you get to kind of communicate with different people across the spectrum of all of your interests.
Young and Profiting (YAP) with Hala Taha
Unlock Your Potential and Thrive as a Content Creator | Presented by OpusClip | YAPCreator
And you get some status in those subcultures if you're in the top 1%. So I think it is relatively easy, and this is what I wrote the book Skip the Line about, is that it's not like cheating, but there are learning techniques you can use to be in the top 1%. Let's say you're interested in cooking. To be in the top 1% of cooking, I mean, a billion people around the world or more know how to cook.
Young and Profiting (YAP) with Hala Taha
Unlock Your Potential and Thrive as a Content Creator | Presented by OpusClip | YAPCreator
To be in the top 1% means to be in the top 10 million of those. That's very easy to do. It's not trivial. You have to work at it. But if you just use these methods, you can do it. Just as an example, though. So this is a photo I have. And I'll put the mic down a little bit. So This was inside a comedy club I owned where I also had my podcast studio. And just going around, this is me.
Young and Profiting (YAP) with Hala Taha
Unlock Your Potential and Thrive as a Content Creator | Presented by OpusClip | YAPCreator
I invited a bunch of friends to see a podcast I was doing. This is Jim Norton, who's a famous comedian. He just had a Netflix special. This is the Jizza from the Wu-Tang Clan. So I did all the Wu-Tang Clan's websites in the 90s, and he also does chess. Here's Gary Kasparov, who's the greatest chess player who ever lived.
Young and Profiting (YAP) with Hala Taha
Unlock Your Potential and Thrive as a Content Creator | Presented by OpusClip | YAPCreator
Here's Maria Konnikova, who's written a bunch of books about being a professional poker player. So in general, you meet lots of interesting people when you get in the top 1% of lots of different interests.
Young and Profiting (YAP) with Hala Taha
Unlock Your Potential and Thrive as a Content Creator | Presented by OpusClip | YAPCreator
Sure. 10,000-hour rule is this idea. It originally comes from this guy, Anders Ericsson, who was a professor who did all the research for it. And basically, he says, with 10,000 hours of what he calls deliberate practice, you could be among the best in the world at anything. And he describes how the Beatles had their 10,000 hours, and he describes various experiments.
Young and Profiting (YAP) with Hala Taha
Unlock Your Potential and Thrive as a Content Creator | Presented by OpusClip | YAPCreator
Malcolm Gladwell wrote about this afterwards. And Anders Ericsson wrote a book called Peak that I highly recommend. But My view is that he's just, so deliberate practice means do something and then study it. Like what did you do wrong? And then repeat. Do, study, repeat. Do, study, repeat. And you just do that for 10,000 hours.
Young and Profiting (YAP) with Hala Taha
Unlock Your Potential and Thrive as a Content Creator | Presented by OpusClip | YAPCreator
So that's really good for repetitive tasks, like maybe a golf swing or memorizing lists of numbers or very repetitive, to some extent, music, musical performance. Not that you perform the same way every time, but if you're playing the piano, You play the same notes for the Moonlight Sonata every single time. You don't change. So that's the 10,000 hour rule.
Young and Profiting (YAP) with Hala Taha
Unlock Your Potential and Thrive as a Content Creator | Presented by OpusClip | YAPCreator
But I much prefer what I call the 10,000 experiments rule, but it's really more like 100 or 200 experiments. And the whole point is, is that you should try to think of ways almost every day to experiment in your life. Uh, you know, I mentioned one, which was the, uh, you know, running for president. I can anyone, the, the, the question was, can anyone run for president? The theory was yes.
Young and Profiting (YAP) with Hala Taha
Unlock Your Potential and Thrive as a Content Creator | Presented by OpusClip | YAPCreator
And the proof is, is that I was able to do it. So that's like a scientific experiment. You have, you're curious about something, you come up with a theory and then you test that theory. So. Another, you know, all the time I'm doing experience. When I was doing comedy, I would experiment all the time on the stage different things I can do to get people to laugh.
Young and Profiting (YAP) with Hala Taha
Unlock Your Potential and Thrive as a Content Creator | Presented by OpusClip | YAPCreator
In business, you want to be able to experiment. Well, you know, a lot of times you go into business, you think you're going to make money a certain way. But what if we... you know, charged as a service instead of as a product or as a product instead of a service.
Young and Profiting (YAP) with Hala Taha
Unlock Your Potential and Thrive as a Content Creator | Presented by OpusClip | YAPCreator
There's all sorts of things you can do to experiment in business to find the right combination of things that will make you a lot of money. So I view experiments as a really valuable, a quick and valuable way to learn incredible amounts of information relatively quickly.
Young and Profiting (YAP) with Hala Taha
Unlock Your Potential and Thrive as a Content Creator | Presented by OpusClip | YAPCreator
Yeah. So, you know, and I also call it idea sex. I call it a couple of things. And the idea is, it's sort of like that sports and business example, is that you want to come up with two things that you're either interested in or know about and explore what the intersection of those things are. So, you know, for instance, Apple does this quite a bit. So they were a computer company for 30 years.
Young and Profiting (YAP) with Hala Taha
Unlock Your Potential and Thrive as a Content Creator | Presented by OpusClip | YAPCreator
And then suddenly they wanted to combine, let's combine the radio with computers. And the idea that resulted was the iPod, the first iPod. Oh, let's combine... the iPod with phones. And the result was the smartphone, the iPhone. Oh, let's combine computers with this flat surface we've been doing with our phones. Oh, so now they have the iPad. So idea sex could create completely new industries.
Young and Profiting (YAP) with Hala Taha
Unlock Your Potential and Thrive as a Content Creator | Presented by OpusClip | YAPCreator
You know, Let's say you're making a restaurant. Okay, there's a million Mexican restaurants on this street, but there's people who might, in the next town over, there's a lot of sushi restaurants. So let's make the Sushi Rito restaurant. We're gonna make burritos of raw fish or whatever. This might be a bad idea, but you always can combine two concepts to find something creative.
Young and Profiting (YAP) with Hala Taha
Unlock Your Potential and Thrive as a Content Creator | Presented by OpusClip | YAPCreator
Let's say you love guitars and you love history. Well, how about looking at the history of the world in terms of the evolution of guitars? Because obviously they went from very primitive guitars to all the way up to electric guitars. And in a weird way, that describes the history of technology, the history of music, the history of civilization as we know it.
Young and Profiting (YAP) with Hala Taha
Unlock Your Potential and Thrive as a Content Creator | Presented by OpusClip | YAPCreator
So idea sex is a very powerful tool when coming up with ideas.
Young and Profiting (YAP) with Hala Taha
Unlock Your Potential and Thrive as a Content Creator | Presented by OpusClip | YAPCreator
Yeah. So for instance, let's say, you know, let's say you're, you're, well, let's say you have a podcast and now you want to let's, what are ways to multiply this podcast? Well, by multiplying you, It means kind of taking the podcast and scaling it in ways that you wouldn't be able to do individually.