Latest / Beyond Fulfillment Podcast / Tariff Twists and Global Trade: Jim Tompkins on Trump’s Trade Pause and What Comes Next

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Tariff Twists and Global Trade: Jim Tompkins on Trump’s Trade Pause and What Comes Next · Beyond Fulfillment Podcast

• 0:00
  Foreign.
• 0:06
  Jim Tompkins, welcome back to Beyond Fulfillment.
• 0:10
  Well, good to be back, Dave, and good morning to you.
• 0:12
  Good morning.
• 0:13
  Glad to have you.
• 0:14
  And of course, we are talking tariffs like we always do.
• 0:19
  So, Jim, back on April 8th, President Trump announced a 90 day pause on the tariffs for all countries.
• 0:27
  And of course, that 90 days is now up.
• 0:30
  Do you think he got what he expected out of, out of those 90.
• 0:33
  Days, did he get what he expected?
• 0:38
  You know, things are happening at such an unbelievable pace.
• 0:44
  I'm not sure we can predict what we expect for tomorrow.
• 0:47
  But I think Trump accomplished his object objectives and I think it's interesting to dig deeper and what his objectives were, what he framed it up as.
• 1:03
  Is the 90 day pause was for a strategic economic deal to be negotiated with better terms.
• 1:13
  And so he put the context of the delay in economic terms.
• 1:20
  That's what he announced.
• 1:23
  I believe that President Trump had economic thoughts and had political thoughts about the, the 90 day delay.
• 1:33
  Now some of his people started talking about 90 deals in 90 days.
• 1:41
  You never heard Trump say that.
• 1:43
  That's not something he said because I think he was looking at it from a political point of view more than an economic point of view.
• 1:52
  And from a political point of view, we had major problems in Russia and Ukraine.
• 2:00
  We had major, major, major problems in Iran.
• 2:03
  We had major problems in Gaza Strip.
• 2:06
  We had the big beautiful bill.
• 2:08
  And I think Trump looked at where he was in early April and said, oh, oh my goodness, we do not have the capacity to start deploying new tariffs and the countries we're working with are not making great progress
• 2:25
  and we have politically an absolute snowstorm going on.
• 2:31
  So we need to take a pause.
• 2:34
  And so from a political point of view, President Trump took a pause.
• 2:40
  From an economic point of view, he took a pause.
• 2:43
  So let's look at that from those two perspectives.
• 2:46
  First, the economic view.
• 2:49
  They did have, it's reported 75 countries that have been in discussion about new deals.
• 2:58
  And when you look at the 75 countries, he's now counting Europe as 27 countries, not one.
• 3:05
  So sometimes they talk about European Union, which is a country, and sometimes they talk about European union, which is 27 countries.
• 3:14
  It's one negotiating block, but it's 27 countries.
• 3:17
  So you have to watch that number a little bit and read very carefully what's included.
• 3:21
  And sometimes they don't even say, but what we saw was the U.S.
• 3:27
  made progress with the U.K.
• 3:29
  vietnam and China.
• 3:31
  That definitely happened over the last 90 days.
• 3:35
  Now some people say we have a deal.
• 3:38
  Well, the fact of the matter is what we have is a framework of a deal.
• 3:43
  And so from an economic perspective, there was progress there.
• 3:48
  All the other progress that's been made under the other 75 countries is all behind closed doors.
• 3:53
  We don't really know how much progress has been made there.
• 3:57
  So from an economic point of view, I would say that it's unclear if Trump met his objectives or not.
• 4:06
  However, from a political point of view, Trump was able to make progress in the Gaza Strip.
• 4:16
  He was able to get the big beautiful bill passed.
• 4:20
  He was able to fully handle the Iranian situation.
• 4:25
  He was not successful in making any progress in Russia.
• 4:28
  In fact, that's kind of backslided.
• 4:31
  And so that's all.
• 4:33
  It's mostly positive, except for the Russia thing.
• 4:35
  But most importantly, from a political point of view, the pressure is off from the economic markets.
• 4:42
  The stock market rebounded.
• 4:44
  Everything has rebounded.
• 4:45
  The consumer confidence, the CEO confidence, all those numbers are up.
• 4:51
  Inflation is down.
• 4:52
  And so Trump, from a political point of view, got out of the doghouse, out of the snowstorm, and he was able to weather that storm reform and now have a chance that these major issues, which were more important
• 5:07
  to him than the economic issues, are settled, more or less, except for Russia.
• 5:12
  And so now what he's going to do is be able to turn his attention to the trade deals.
• 5:17
  And so now the economic is going to come back to the front page.
• 5:20
  So I believe that the political point of view for the last 90 days was most important to President Trump.
• 5:28
  And so he doubled down on it, knowing economics was gonna take the back seat.
• 5:34
  But I think that's kind of what he expected.
• 5:37
  So I think he got what he expected.
• 5:40
  From a political point of view, he gets an A.
• 5:42
  From a economic point of view, he gets a pause.
• 5:46
  It just delayed things.
• 5:48
  And so now we begin the whole discussion on what's going to occur on the economic front.
• 5:55
  So, kind of a mixed answer to that, Dave, but I think his.
• 6:00
  His published objectives of allowing us to have a strategic economic deal to negotiate better by laying off for 90 days, that wasn't the objective.
• 6:12
  The political thing was the big deal, and that worked well.
• 6:15
  So I think it was a good move on his part.
• 6:17
  And now here we are, and now we're going to pick it up again.
• 6:20
  Okay.
• 6:22
  And I know you made some predictions over the weekend about what you thought President Trump would do in terms of some of these most important trade deals.
• 6:31
  How did those turn out?
• 6:33
  Well, number one, I guess it's good for me to report it was a long weekend, because what I did is I looked at every country, and now here I'm counting the European Union as one country, because that's what
• 6:52
  we're negotiating with.
• 6:53
  I looked at every significant country in the world and studied exactly where we were and how we're doing.
• 7:03
  To be perfectly honest, I think I put more study into it than what came out of Washington this week, because what came out of Washington this week is based on a series of mathematical formulas.
• 7:15
  And you almost can reverse engineer what those formulas are.
• 7:19
  And there's a couple indications of why that took place.
• 7:23
  So my first prediction that I made is that there would be no tariffs implemented on July 9.
• 7:30
  There would be no new tariffs, and that everything would be postponed.
• 7:37
  That is exactly what happened, and that is what is happening.
• 7:40
  So that was a good prediction.
• 7:43
  The second prediction I made is, where would there be action?
• 7:49
  And what I said is I broke the world into three sections.
• 7:54
  Major economies, emerging powers, and then everyone else.
• 7:58
  The major economies is European Union, that's one country now, counting Japan, India, the uk, South Korea, Mexico, Canada, Vietnam, and Singapore.
• 8:10
  And so I made predictions and as to what Trump would do this week with respect to those 10 countries, the second thing I did is I looked at the emerging powers, and that would be Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, Israel,
• 8:27
  Cambodia, South Africa, Brazil, Chile, and Philippines.
• 8:32
  And so when I looked at those countries, I dug deep into what was actually going on in the country and not to the formula that had been used in Washington, D.C.
• 8:46
  the reason I did not look further into everyone else in the world is because if you look at these two blocks, the major economies and the emerging economies, the emerging economies make up 68% of the gross national product
• 9:05
  in the world, and they make up 83% of our trade deficits.
• 9:10
  And so that's really where the game is going to change or not.
• 9:15
  It's 83% of our deficit.
• 9:17
  However, to be more complete, I then went after the emerging powers.
• 9:22
  And the emerging power has 7% of the world's GNP and 11% of our US trade deficit.
• 9:30
  So if you combine my 20 countries, which is really 47, if you looked at the European Union thing, if you looked at that, that is 75% of the world GNP and 94% of the US trade deficit.
• 9:48
  So I felt that what Trump would do is focus in on these 20 countries because it's 94% of the trade deficit.
• 9:56
  And that's the reason we're doing this whole thing, is to cut the trade deficit.
• 10:00
  So that is my second prediction, is that that is where the focus would be.
• 10:07
  And then I Said, but I gotta break out of the top 10 the major powers, UK, China and Vietnam, because I don't think Trump's gonna mess with new deadlines or new letters going to those countries because it's the
• 10:25
  administration's view is those deals are done even though they're not done done.
• 10:30
  There is a framework in place and so I think it's going to allow those to continue to go.
• 10:35
  So out of my 23 of them, UK, China and Vietnam, I said there's not going to be any action other than they're going to continue to refine the progress of what's taken place there.
• 10:46
  So what we see is that's exactly what happened on uk, China and Vietnam.
• 10:51
  There's no new news there.
• 10:54
  There's the continuing some smattering back and forth and oh, what about batteries?
• 10:59
  And yesterday the issue of copper came up and rare earths.
• 11:03
  So there's some noise, but basically there's no new news coming out.
• 11:08
  After the July 8 deadline was up, it's going to be continue to negotiate as usual.
• 11:15
  But then what I did predict is I predicted for each of the remaining 17 countries, what would be the new tariff that would be, you know, would we go back to the retaliated retaliatory tariffs or would we have
• 11:32
  a new number?
• 11:32
  How would that work out?
• 11:34
  And so for the European Union, because of the negotiations being quite far along, but also because there's a 27 member block, I predicted that would be no new tariff number, no letter would go out and the deadline would
• 11:48
  be September 1st, Labor Day.
• 11:50
  And I still believe that is what's going to be done.
• 11:55
  However, if you read what Trump has said about the European Union, he has said all new deals will be done by August 1st.
• 12:04
  That's a hard deadline and that's what we're gonna have.
• 12:06
  Is everything done at August 1st?
• 12:08
  But then in another little news conference, he said, well, unless there's some unusual circumstances.
• 12:14
  So I think what Trump has done is he said August 1st for everybody in the world.
• 12:18
  However, he and I know there's certain things that aren't going to get done by then and he's going to give them an extra 30 days.
• 12:26
  So I believe my prediction, European Union, no target being set and a September 1 date.
• 12:33
  In Japan, things are rocky.
• 12:36
  Things were going well, but then we got into the automotive issue and they got real rocky.
• 12:41
  Trump is going to play hardball there.
• 12:44
  And I said he was going to put there a 30% tariff and a September 1 deadline.
• 12:49
  India and South Korea, I said 25% tariffs with August 1, Mexico and Canada, I also extracted, because that is a USMCA issue and Trump's going to handle that probably sometime in August.
• 13:04
  I would expect those to be done by September 1st in Singapore.
• 13:09
  We've never really had a good number for Singapore.
• 13:11
  And I gave that on August 1st date.
• 13:13
  And so that's what I did with the major economies with the emerging powers.
• 13:21
  I did it much simpler.
• 13:23
  I said Taiwan, Brazil, Chile, and the Philippines.
• 13:27
  No target September 1 because those not had any serious negotiation there.
• 13:33
  Malaysia, Indonesia and Turkey.
• 13:34
  I said 25%.
• 13:36
  With August 1, South Africa, I said 20% because Trump likes the South African situation and doesn't want to be critical of them.
• 13:46
  So he gave them a better situation, hoping to get some agreement on some of the other issues in South Africa.
• 13:56
  Israel is going to be maintained, no tariff discussion.
• 13:59
  It's going to be the current policy.
• 14:01
  We free trade between the two countries.
• 14:04
  And Cambodia, I said that I felt that that should drop to 5%.
• 14:09
  You recall Cambodia got hardest hit with the retaliatory tariffs before they started escalating the original retaliatory tariffs.
• 14:19
  Cambodia got hit with 49%.
• 14:22
  And I looked at that at that time and said, that doesn't even make sense.
• 14:27
  Why would he do that?
• 14:28
  And so I believe that should have dropped to 5%.
• 14:32
  And more on that as I get into the comparison between what Trump did and these things.
• 14:37
  But.
• 14:38
  And then I said, all others, there's not going to be any action now.
• 14:41
  So what, what has happened.
• 14:43
  What, what's happened is that 14 letters have gone out, and that's.
• 14:50
  That's good progress.
• 14:51
  That would be particularly good progress.
• 14:53
  If that was 14 letters of my top 20, that would be amazing progress.
• 14:59
  There's some rumors there's going to be some more letters today, but we don't know what those are going to be, so I can't really address those.
• 15:04
  Of the 14 letters that went out, only two were major powers and five were emerging powers.
• 15:14
  So what we have is half of the letters that went out mean something.
• 15:21
  The other half, seven of them, don't mean anything at all, in my opinion.
• 15:27
  And this includes the countries of Myanmar, Laos, Bangladesh, Serbia, Bosnia, Kakistan, and Tunisia.
• 15:38
  Those seven countries don't matter.
• 15:41
  Okay?
• 15:41
  So I didn't have a prediction.
• 15:43
  I don't know why they're being included.
• 15:45
  Unless what we want to be able to do is say, well, we've got a deal done with Bosnia.
• 15:50
  Well, okay, but that doesn't move any needle.
• 15:54
  But there's no real value in us having A trade?
• 15:57
  Well, in fact, why would the US Have a trade deal with.
• 15:59
  With them?
• 16:00
  I mean, that's kind of like the, you know, the, the New York Mets agreeing that they're going to play the, the Raleigh, North Carolina, high school baseball team.
• 16:10
  I mean, that's, that's not a game.
• 16:12
  That, that's not a competition.
• 16:13
  So I don't know what's going on there.
• 16:15
  But so what we can do is we can compare the seven that Trump did that I also included.
• 16:22
  And if we look at the major powers.
• 16:25
  On South Korea, we had the exact same percent and the exact same date.
• 16:29
  On Japan, we were different by 5% and the same date.
• 16:33
  So we're what they.
• 16:36
  What Trump did and what I predicted were essentially the same.
• 16:40
  On the five emerging partners powers, we matched exactly.
• 16:47
  On Malaysia, we matched, except for one month on South Africa.
• 16:52
  On Thailand, I was off by a month.
• 16:54
  In Indonesia, I was good on the month, but I was off by 7%.
• 16:59
  Indonesia was the only one.
• 17:00
  He came up with a weird number.
• 17:01
  All the other numbers were 20, 25, 30, but for Indonesia, he had 32%.
• 17:07
  I predicted 25%.
• 17:09
  I can't justify the 32, but.
• 17:12
  So I went with 25.
• 17:13
  I don't know why someone came up with 32.
• 17:16
  Apparently the staff had an argument between 30 and 35, and they picked 32.
• 17:19
  I don't know.
• 17:20
  And then in Cambodia, I totally blew it, or at least one of us totally blew it, Trump or me.
• 17:29
  I said that should be a 5% tariff, and Trump came in at 30%.
• 17:35
  No explanation for that.
• 17:37
  My process was the same on all of these countries.
• 17:40
  I looked at each one individually, but I believe Trump used a computer formula.
• 17:45
  And I'll talk about that more in a moment.
• 17:47
  But I think we're off on Cambodia substantially.
• 17:51
  So overall, of the seven that we both predicted, we are the same or very close on six of those.
• 18:00
  And so one would look at the margin of error and say, wow, Jim.
• 18:04
  And President Trump did the same thing.
• 18:07
  If we look at Cambodia, there's obviously a disagreement as to what took place.
• 18:13
  And so I think what we see is that Trump's actions on Monday of this week and my predictions over the weekend, which were published Monday morning before Trump made any announcements on LinkedIn, is that my predictions were really
• 18:34
  pretty good.
• 18:35
  Back on the Cambodia thing, Cambodia does have a $12.3 billion trade deficit, and we import 12.7 billion, so that means they buy from us 0.4 billion.
• 18:52
  Okay.
• 18:52
  Cambodia is a very, very, very poor country.
• 18:56
  If we would take that $12.7 billion billion dollars of product we import from Cambodia out of the country.
• 19:04
  The country would disappear.
• 19:07
  Okay, so this isn't about tariff, this isn't about free trade.
• 19:11
  This is about are we trying to put Cambodia out of business?
• 19:15
  And the answer to that is no, we're not trying to put Cambodia.
• 19:17
  That doesn't make sense.
• 19:18
  Cambodia is not a threat.
• 19:19
  They're not out of power.
• 19:21
  It's something that's happened over the last 30 hours, is Trump is now getting excited about BRICS, and Cambodia is not a member of BRICS.
• 19:32
  The C in BRICS is for China, not for Cambodia.
• 19:36
  And so Cambodia is not a part of brics.
• 19:38
  So there's nothing punitive there.
• 19:41
  I just think they use the mathematics because out of a $12.7 billion import, they have 12.3 trade deficit.
• 19:50
  What that clearly indicates is that they're dependent on us totally for the economy.
• 19:57
  So I think what we see is that I'm focusing on where we can really have an impact on the trade deficit.
• 20:05
  Trump is half focused on that.
• 20:08
  The other half is just trying to get some numbers so he can say he got deals done.
• 20:13
  So I don't feel good about that necessarily.
• 20:16
  Where I predicted on eight of the emerging country of the major powers would be done in September 1, only one of those did he announce and the other he hasn't announced yet.
• 20:30
  So I believe what he's doing is he's doing his negotiation thing.
• 20:34
  He's going to say the date is August 1st, and then when August 1st comes, he's going to slide until Labor Day.
• 20:41
  I don't think he's going to go beyond Labor Day.
• 20:43
  But so I think the real world has a Labor Day deadline, and if you want to really get a good deal, you should get in by August 1st.
• 20:51
  And so I think that's how it's going to play out.
• 20:53
  So conclusion?
• 20:56
  I was surprised that he's spending half of the print on countries that don't matter, but on the countries that do matter, except for Cambodia, he and I are in agreement.
• 21:08
  And so I would say he got it right, I got it right.
• 21:12
  And on Cambodia, I would suggest I have it right and he has it wrong.
• 21:16
  So I think we did pretty well.
• 21:18
  Okay.
• 21:19
  And you mentioned LinkedIn there.
• 21:21
  I saw some people on LinkedIn get upset about some of the stuff that you posted.
• 21:28
  Does that bother you at all?
• 21:31
  Well, yes, it does.
• 21:34
  Yeah, it bothers me.
• 21:37
  I think it's.
• 21:39
  I think it's a shame that some people get there.
• 21:44
  You know, Dave, I am a supply chain guy.
• 21:47
  I'VE been a supply chain guy for 50 years.
• 21:51
  My PhD in supply chain is in 1972.
• 21:56
  That was 22 years before we had the term supply chain.
• 22:00
  So I called it physical distribution and logistics.
• 22:02
  But I am and have always been a supply chain guy.
• 22:07
  I don't get flustered when someone calls me a supply chain expert.
• 22:12
  I think I am and that's what I do.
• 22:16
  I am not a politician.
• 22:19
  I could never be a politician.
• 22:22
  I would go crazy with the stuff.
• 22:24
  The Congress and the Senate and the Judicial and the executive.
• 22:28
  I mean, I couldn't work anywhere in government.
• 22:30
  I just absolutely, I would jump out of a window.
• 22:34
  I just can't handle that.
• 22:36
  So my goal, my objective on the tariff re globalization outreach is to help companies and to help professionals navigate this very, very, very choppy water we're in.
• 22:51
  And I see the real world impacts from the tariffs, from the trade deals, from the regulation changes.
• 23:00
  They're going to have major impacts on supply chain.
• 23:04
  And so as a supply chain expert that has an audience, it's interesting.
• 23:09
  The post that went out on Monday Morning now has 54,000 impressions on LinkedIn.
• 23:17
  So this is the two day, well, in fact it went out at I don't know what time, but it's about a two day thing.
• 23:24
  And with 54,000 impressions, over 100 comments, over a hundred reactions.
• 23:30
  So I mean this is, people are interested in that.
• 23:33
  They're listening to what I'm saying.
• 23:35
  And so I think I do have an audience and I want to help them understand what they need to be doing because these are very, very, very confusing times.
• 23:47
  At the same time, I understand that things with politicians are volatile and sensitive.
• 23:57
  Certainly if I'm the normal politician, sensitive and volatile would be 5, Trump would be scoring a 12.
• 24:08
  I mean, you know, he is very volatile because of his personality.
• 24:13
  And I want to be real clear that I'm not endorsing or opposing any political leader.
• 24:23
  I'm not, you know, I won't say anything in public, positive or negative about any political leader.
• 24:31
  I was asked the other day about the, the gentleman that's running for mayor in New York.
• 24:36
  I said, hey, he's not a supply chain guy.
• 24:39
  Tell me his supply chain policy and I'll have an opinion about it.
• 24:42
  But I'm not going to have an opinion about what he's doing on politics because I'm not a politician.
• 24:49
  So I am focused on the strategic and the operational issues that come from the political realm and have an impact on my supply chain world.
• 25:01
  And so that's all I'm trying to do.
• 25:03
  I'm.
• 25:04
  I'm kind of like a meteorologist and that what I do is I report on the weather.
• 25:10
  Now, if you got a big wedding plan, and I'm the meteorologist and I predict rain.
• 25:15
  Rain.
• 25:15
  Well, don't yell at me.
• 25:18
  I didn't cause the rain.
• 25:19
  I just predicted it.
• 25:21
  And I'm doing the best job I can of predicting the weather.
• 25:27
  I am not a meteorologist and I never know if it's going to rain or not.
• 25:31
  I can prove that by my activities.
• 25:34
  Always.
• 25:34
  It always seems to rain when I'm outside.
• 25:36
  But I do look at supply chain and I do have the experience to allow me to look at the impacts of that, the practical impact, not looking at the political impacts, but the practical impact.
• 25:54
  So I'm always open for respectful discussions.
• 26:00
  You know, I teased a little bit about Cambodia.
• 26:02
  I could be wrong on Cambodia.
• 26:04
  I'm not a Cambodian expert, but I'm trying to read it in the same way I read the other supply chain information and I see what I see.
• 26:12
  So my focus is on helping companies and supply chain professionals make good decisions, take good actions with respect to this complex world that we get at.
• 26:23
  And, and then somebody who doesn't like President Trump wants to attack me because I'm telling you what the weather is going to be.
• 26:34
  I'm telling you what the supply chain implications are.
• 26:36
  And I think that's unfortunate because I deserve grief if I predict something is going to happen in supply chain incorrectly.
• 26:46
  But I don't make up the weather.
• 26:49
  I don't make up the policy.
• 26:50
  I'm not agreeing or disagreeing with President Trump.
• 26:54
  I am trying to say this is what he is doing and this is how that affects supply chain.
• 27:01
  If you have a problem with how I do that, well, then yell at me because that's my job to do that.
• 27:06
  Accurate.
• 27:07
  But don't yell at me because you don't like Trump and you think I said something that was positive.
• 27:12
  I said in a blog on Monday that Trump had common sense.
• 27:17
  Man, did I.
• 27:18
  I got four emails on that and one post.
• 27:22
  But there was four that came to me on emails and said, jim, how can you possibly say he has common sense?
• 27:27
  What's your definition of common sense?
• 27:30
  And I said, well, my definition of common sense is if they ask 100 people a question and 70 of them answer yes and 20 of them answer no, common sense is the 70 that said yes.
• 27:44
  And so when I say Trump has common sense, that's not a compliment, that's just a reality.
• 27:50
  The things that he is doing are the things he was elected to do.
• 27:54
  And so if you happen to be in the 30% that said no, well, then fine, yell at Trump.
• 27:58
  But don't yell at me.
• 28:00
  I didn't do it.
• 28:01
  I'm just reporting on it.
• 28:02
  So thanks for asking that question because does bother me, you know, I'm a real person.
• 28:09
  You know, I have a wife, I have kids, I have grandkids, I'm a happy guy.
• 28:14
  And when I think I'm trying to help them and they turn around and throw dirt at me, I'm going, come on, guys that, you know, don't attack me.
• 28:22
  Go yell at Trump if you want, but don't yell at me.
• 28:25
  I didn't do it.
• 28:26
  Okay.
• 28:27
  All right.
• 28:28
  And you mentioned a lot there too, about your background, your supply chain and the work you do helping companies.
• 28:34
  Just for anyone that's out there that's listening in terms of if they're navigating this tariff situation and they're in a manufacturing capacity and they have to deal with these choppy waters, just talk for a minute about what Tompkins
• 28:45
  Ventures does and how they could potentially help one of those companies.
• 28:49
  Well, yeah, absolutely.
• 28:50
  So what we, we do is we help companies evaluate what the impacts of the tariffs are going to be on their supply chain.
• 29:01
  Now, when we look at the impacts that tariff has, oftentimes they have got into let's buy the product from a low cost country.
• 29:11
  And for years that was China.
• 29:13
  China is no longer low cost country, but they used to be.
• 29:17
  And so what we find is that they're making, you know, 60% of their procurement is done in China.
• 29:24
  Well, that's very dangerous because that's a country that obviously Trump has put in his crosshairs.
• 29:32
  That's the number one enemy of the trade deficit.
• 29:35
  And so Trump is working on that.
• 29:37
  And so it's going to have some ramifications.
• 29:41
  And so if you're buying everything from China, you're, you're making a mistake.
• 29:45
  Number one, it's not low cost anymore.
• 29:48
  And number two, you're putting all your eggs one basket.
• 29:50
  So what we want to do is help you look at where you are buying your raw materials, where you're buying your products and how is that happening?
• 29:59
  Place not just what the purchase price is, but what's the total, total delivered cost.
• 30:04
  You know, you have to take it across the ocean.
• 30:06
  You got to get it from LA into the middle of the country to the East Coast.
• 30:10
  What are those total costs, including tariffs, including transportation?
• 30:14
  And what is the total and how can we help you reduce Cost.
• 30:19
  Now, obviously you don't have time to build a new factory, but you do have the opportunity of maybe near shoring that or friendly shoring or right shoring.
• 30:29
  If it's a product that can be automated, maybe you should bring it back to the United States and build an automated facility.
• 30:35
  You don't want to do it using the manual labor we do overseas.
• 30:39
  But because overseas manual labor is cheap here it's very, very expensive and hard to find.
• 30:43
  And so people don't want their kids to grow up and work in factories.
• 30:48
  And so what we want them to do is work in intellectual jobs.
• 30:51
  And so if there's an intellectual job of keeping the automation going and adding to the artificial intelligence and the business intelligence and making it more productive, that's a marvelous thing to do.
• 31:01
  But we want to help companies make those right decisions.
• 31:03
  Should I take that product out of China and move it to Indonesia?
• 31:07
  Should I take it out of China and move it to Brazil?
• 31:09
  Should I take it out of China, move it to Dominican Republic?
• 31:12
  How should I evaluate these things?
• 31:14
  What's the total cost?
• 31:15
  And then, most importantly, don't believe yourself.
• 31:19
  I have not done anything that was 100% accurate in the last five years.
• 31:25
  And the reason is not because I'm doing bad work.
• 31:28
  It's because the darn thing changes before you get it deployed.
• 31:32
  And the world is in a very vuca volatility, uncertainty, complexity, ambiguity, time.
• 31:38
  And in that time, we need to have solutions, which, as you know, I'm going to say, Dave, because I say it all the time, that have optionality.
• 31:46
  And if we have optionality, when something happens, we can switch.
• 31:50
  When this happens, we do this.
• 31:52
  When this happens, we do this.
• 31:53
  And now we are going to be leaders in that.
• 31:56
  This is the time we are now down to the last eight weeks.
• 32:01
  In the next eight weeks, we're going to have the answer to all the tariff discussion.
• 32:05
  You and I might not be talking about tariffs come October because they're going to be done with, okay?
• 32:10
  And so given that's going to occur in the next eight weeks, if we don't have a plan, by golly, we got to get a plan and we got to do it quickly.
• 32:17
  And that's what Tompkins ventures does when 59 countries around the world.
• 32:21
  And so Tompkins Ventures has the boots on the ground to help you get done what you need to get done.
• 32:27
  And so we would love to help companies make that happen.
• 32:30
  That's why I do this.
• 32:31
  People say, well, Jim, why do you spend.
• 32:33
  Why did you spend a whole fourth of July weekend studying this because that's how I help my clients.
• 32:38
  That's.
• 32:39
  That's how we make things happen.
• 32:41
  And so that's what.
• 32:41
  That's our objective.
• 32:43
  Okay.
• 32:44
  And we'll link all those.
• 32:45
  Those links about Tompkins Ventures in the show.
• 32:48
  Notes for everyone.
• 32:49
  All right, Jim, thanks so much for your time and your insights on this important topic.
• 32:53
  As always, appreciate it.
• 32:55
  Thank you, Dave.
• 32:56
  Appreciate the opportunity.