Jim Nels
Appearances
Morning Wire
Stocks Soar as Trump Pauses Tariffs | 4.10.25
What people are saying off the record is that they're extremely concerned with a tariff war with the United States. Their economy is hurting a bit. Their manufacturing sector is not where it has been in the past. Some of the factories are running at between 40% and 60% capacity utilization, which is not good. That's also why a lot of my clients, before Trump announced all the reciprocal tariffs,
Morning Wire
Stocks Soar as Trump Pauses Tariffs | 4.10.25
Their Chinese suppliers were saying, hey, we'll send you components to other places in Asia and you can assemble the components there to avoid the Chinese tariff. They're doing everything they can to try to figure out how to get around these tariffs that are in place. Got it.
Morning Wire
Stocks Soar as Trump Pauses Tariffs | 4.10.25
Yes, I think it's a good time to do it. What I really hope that we can see is everyone get rid of all the tariffs and all of the non-tariff trade restrictions so that we can have what we all want, which is free and fair trade, where the countries that are good at manufacturing some things manufacture those, and the countries that are good at manufacturing other things manufacture those.
Morning Wire
Stocks Soar as Trump Pauses Tariffs | 4.10.25
And I think Jamie Dimon said it very well this morning in an interview where he said, we really need to focus on the right industries in the United States, right? Yeah. where your tennis shoes come from is probably not as important as where your pharmaceuticals come from. And so, you know, I think we're going to see that type of a shift, but it's going to take a little bit of time.
Morning Wire
Stocks Soar as Trump Pauses Tariffs | 4.10.25
Well, that's what I hope. And I think a lot of it comes down to what President Trump is actually trying to achieve because he's sending mixed messages right now. On one hand, he's saying that he wants manufacturing to return to the United States, but that's not going to happen. And even if it did, I'm not sure how much of an impact that has. So, for example, U.S.
Morning Wire
Stocks Soar as Trump Pauses Tariffs | 4.10.25
manufacturing peaked in 1979, where 20 million workers were employed in manufacturing. That was about 22% of the nonfarm workforce. Today, it's about 13 million people who are employed in manufacturing, which is about 10% of the nonfarm workforce. So even if it doubled back to where it used to be, you're only looking at another 13 million jobs.
Morning Wire
Stocks Soar as Trump Pauses Tariffs | 4.10.25
America was never a nation where manufacturing represented 80% of the economy or anything like that. So to think that we're going to make everything in the United States is simply wrong. We are starting to see, though, people really thinking hard about repatriating some things into the United States. I have clients that are looking longer term here.
Morning Wire
Stocks Soar as Trump Pauses Tariffs | 4.10.25
There's one thing to remember with these tariffs. If you look back to the first set of Trump tariffs in 2018, President Biden did not reverse those. He left those in place. So even when President Trump leaves office in 2028, the tariffs may not go away. So I think a lot of companies are taking a slow, let's figure this out approach. And then what is the right long term solution?
Morning Wire
Stocks Soar as Trump Pauses Tariffs | 4.10.25
Well, it's interesting. There are two theories on this right now. One is that, and it's not just China, it's any Asian culture, right? Saving face is very, very important. So they are probably having a lot of internal discussions about how they can adapt to the tariffs or come to some sort of a deal while saving face.
Morning Wire
Stocks Soar as Trump Pauses Tariffs | 4.10.25
Another theory that's been floating around is that China may actually aggressively come back and reduce all their tariffs and try to negotiate a deal with Trump, looking like they typically do to the long term and saying, We'll go through three and a half years of pain with no tariffs. We'll placate the United States. We'll placate President Trump.
Morning Wire
Stocks Soar as Trump Pauses Tariffs | 4.10.25
And then when there's a new president, we'll slowly put these restrictions back in place and they won't do anything. That actually seems like a very likely scenario, given how not just the Chinese, but again, Asians tend to look long term, not on a quarter by quarter basis, which we do typically here in the United States.