Latest / Beyond Fulfillment Podcast / The Tariff Tangle: Trump, the Courts, and What’s Next for US Supply Chains
Transcript
- 0:00Foreign.
- 0:06Dave Gulas, Beyond Fulfillment Podcast special edition.
- 0:10Back again with my good friend Jim.
- 0:12Jim Tompkins.
- 0:13Welcome, Jim.
- 0:14Thank you, Dave.
- 0:15Good, good friend Jim.
- 0:17Yeah, okay.
- 0:20Yes.
- 0:21I've lost count of what episode that this is that we've been doing, but it's, it's a bi weekly fixture now and certainly got a great, great rece and people certainly tune in to, to hear your thoughts on these
- 0:35important issues.
- 0:36So yeah, thank you once again for, for joining us.
- 0:38My pleasure, Dave.
- 0:40All right, so let's jump right into it.
- 0:42So one of the most interesting turn of events we've had recently over the last week was the U.S.
- 0:49court of International Trade ruling that Trump overstepped his authority in imposing the tariffs.
- 0:58So what's going on here?
- 1:01Well, yeah, that's, I think that was Wednesday the 28th.
- 1:06And well, it was a crazy day.
- 1:09I got up early on the 28th and I came here and turned on my computer and my Wall Street Journal gets delivered to my computer around 4 in the morning.
- 1:18So I read the Wall Street Journal.
- 1:19The first thing that caught my mind was that the Wall Street Journal had invented the term taco, where taco stands for Trump always chickens out.
- 1:33And it was a very negative piece on him, talking about him whipsawing and backstepping and whiplash and changing his mind and flip flopping.
- 1:47And so that started the day off kind of a negative position on Trump's because Trump always chickens out.
- 1:56I'll never eat a taco again for my life without thinking about the Wall Street Journal article.
- 2:02But then later on in the afternoon, it broke, not on the Journal, but on wire that the U.S.
- 2:12court of International Trade said that Congress is the party that sets tariffs, not the president.
- 2:24And this was directly in opposition with what President Trump and his group said.
- 2:31His group said, according to the Emergency Economics power Act of 1974, that if it was an emergency from an economic perspective, the president could take whatever action is required.
- 2:46Well, President Trump looked at our balance of trade deal deficit, which for the first time ever four years ago went over a trillion dollars.
- 2:56And it's been over a trillion dollars for the last four years.
- 3:01And for last year it was 1.2 trillion.
- 3:05And as President Trump looked at the situation, a $1.2 trillion deficit was really, really, really unacceptable.
- 3:15And it was threatening our economic system and our position in world trade.
- 3:20And so he interpreted the law as saying that he could take emergency action and he could impose tariffs.
- 3:30So that is what he did.
- 3:33Of course, some people took exception to that.
- 3:36And there was an article early this Week on Trump being kind of attacked by small companies that were importing wine and other products.
- 3:50And so they were the ones behind this suit, which the International Trade Court was willing to listen to.
- 4:01And so Trump got beat by the U.S.
- 4:06court of International Trade.
- 4:09It was interesting because the next day Trump got beat again on the exact same case, now not in front of the U.S.
- 4:18court of International Trade, but instead by a federal judge in Washington D.C.
- 4:24and so it was proclaimed on the wire that Trump is losing 2 to 0.
- 4:31Well, that wasn't accurate.
- 4:33In fact, two weeks ago, the Florida federal judge ruled on this same case, different parties, but the exact same.
- 4:45Does Trump have the authority to put tariffs on or not?
- 4:49And the judge ruled, yes, he does, because the Emergency Economic Emergency act, and this is an economic emergency.
- 5:01So Trump was well within his rights.
- 5:03And so it said yes.
- 5:04So now I'm not sure exactly.
- 5:07And in fact, it's not really known by anyone, I don't think where exactly the US Court of International Trade sits.
- 5:14But we do know a federal court in Washington D.C.
- 5:17said no, and the federal court in Florida said yes.
- 5:21And so what do we do in the United States when we have courts which are of equal status that are in conflict?
- 5:31Well, what the Constitution says is that must go to the Supreme Court.
- 5:35And so the next case that the next thing, once Trump had one for and once against that was at the same level, then he can escalate this going to the Supreme Court.
- 5:48The federal judge in Washington D.C.
- 5:50had this pointed out to him.
- 5:52And so he put a two week stay into the enforcement.
- 5:57So in other words, you had two weeks from May 29th before Trump's tariffs were invalid or for it to be resolved.
- 6:08Well, so the, so obviously this is a win for Trump because now he has one yes and one no, because the other one doesn't know exactly what to do with the no from the US Court of International Trade.
- 6:22And so now it can get to the Supreme Court.
- 6:25And so that is in a way a win, because this now is going to get the issue resolved one way or the other.
- 6:33I of course, don't know what the Supreme Court's going to do, but it's my guess that they're going to say this is the purpose of the Emergency Economic Powers act and that this is an emergency as defined by
- 6:52the President, and therefore he has this power and therefore his tariffs are valid.
- 6:58I think that's what's going to happen.
- 6:59Am I certain about that?
- 7:01Absolutely not.
- 7:01I'd say it's about a 60, 40, 60%, the Supreme Court will say that 40%.
- 7:08The Supreme Court will say no.
- 7:10The Constitution is clear that tariffs should be done by Congress and therefore Trump has overstepped its bounds.
- 7:17Well, if that happens, what's going to happen?
- 7:22Well, in fact, even meanwhile, while we're going through that two weeks, all of the countries that we are much more friendly with are looking at this now and say, haha, it's not clear if the tariffs are legal or
- 7:38not.
- 7:39However, we know that President Trump believes that he has this authority and we think that if we can give him some support at this time, we're going to get a better deal than if we wait and find out
- 7:54if he officially has this power or not.
- 7:56So let's say Japan comes to us and says, well, we don't know if you have the right to do tariffs or not, but we agree with you that there's some lack of balance here.
- 8:08And so let's agree to this deal.
- 8:10If Japan and the US Agree to a deal, then that's a deal.
- 8:15It doesn't matter what the Supreme Court says.
- 8:18And so when this having this a two week kind of on hold thing, there's countries that are going to want to come and deal because that's an opportunity to show that they are really friends of the United States.
- 8:29They're not hanging around to see if these tariffs are real or not.
- 8:32They're actually taking action.
- 8:34So that's a plus for Trump as well because there's going to get them in a better position.
- 8:40And so then when the Supreme Court rules, Trump is either going to get a yes or he's going to get a no.
- 8:46If he gets a yes, this issue is over.
- 8:49There's no more discussion.
- 8:50If he gets a no, says no, you cannot set tariffs.
- 8:54That is the job of Congress.
- 8:56What Trump will immediately do is he will go after the Trade act of 1974, where the Trade act of 1974 says any president at his discretion can charge up to a 15% tariff for 150 days, no questions asked.
- 9:17And so Trump already has the ability of going up to 15%.
- 9:22Now, he didn't use the Trade act of 1974.
- 9:27He attempted to use the larger Emergency Economics Powers act because in the Emergency Economics Powers act, there was no limit in his mind as to what he could do.
- 9:42But if you go with the Trade act of 1974, it limits it to 15%.
- 9:48Well, Trump wanted to go more than 15% and we saw in some cases went as high as 154, which basically closes the door in international Trade.
- 9:56And he of course, knows that.
- 9:58But what he was saying is, I've already taken my position.
- 10:02So if I have to deal with a 15% tariff for 150 days, that's fine, and then I can do that for 150 days, and when that runs out, I can do it again.
- 10:11And I can do it again.
- 10:12So I can create 15% tariffs.
- 10:15There's no question about that whatsoever.
- 10:19If that.
- 10:20That would be one option he could do.
- 10:22He could limit himself to 15%.
- 10:24That's not putting him in the best negotiating position, but that might be what he does.
- 10:29But another alternative, he can go to Congress and say, hey, guys, we have an issue.
- 10:41Wall Street Journal is calling me Taco, they're calling me that.
- 10:45Trump always chickens out, and that's not good for our country.
- 10:48It's not good for our negotiating position.
- 10:51So what I need is, I need for the Congress to clearly define what is the rule on tariffs.
- 11:00Now, this would not be changing the Constitution.
- 11:03This would just be interpreting the Constitution as the Constitution is now written.
- 11:09You can't say yes or no.
- 11:11It's not a clear black and white thing.
- 11:13And so he could go directly to the Congress and say, don't try to pass any laws, just interpret this for me.
- 11:22That could be an approach he takes.
- 11:24Or alternatively, and this is very clever, if he does this, he can say with his big, beautiful bill that a portion of the big, beautiful bill is income coming from tariffs.
- 11:39If we don't have that income coming from tariffs, the bill that has been passed by the House and is now in the Senate is invalid because we're not going to get the income that's projected in there.
- 11:52And so therefore, what we need to do is we now need Congress to take the same decision again, I want Congress to take the decision that to allow me to do tariffs.
- 12:06Let's put a portion of the big, beautiful bill, a statement that says we're clarifying.
- 12:12Trump has the position to do tariffs and therefore the income that's in the budget from the tariffs and is valid, and therefore we're often ready to go.
- 12:20So there's several paths for Trump to win this one.
- 12:24I don't see any path where he loses.
- 12:28I do see a path where maybe it is a little bit awkward.
- 12:32If he does need to drop back and use the Trade act of 1974, that's not as strong because he's limited to 15%, but that's on the tariff part.
- 12:43He can use sanctions, he can do other things.
- 12:45He can.
- 12:45He's still going to win.
- 12:46So a lot of people are going around saying, oh, the sky is falling, all the tariffs are illegal.
- 12:52That's not the case.
- 12:53Trump is going to win on this tariff case, either by the Supreme Court speaking up or by Congress clarifying it over a couple different approaches.
- 13:01So it's a lot of news, but it's only when you really dig into it and really understand what's going to really happen that you find out, say, this is a bump in the road.
- 13:13This is going to encourage people in this two week period to come and deal with Trump.
- 13:18And so Trump's going to have some opportunities, some deals, and that's going to put China back in the hot seat again.
- 13:25And, and so that's why, you know, we are right where we are right now.
- 13:29And I think it's really cool to see how this has played out.
- 13:34I think this, it took me a while to figure out, no one is saying this yet, but as I went through it, I thought, why would Trump not have this figured out?
- 13:43Well, I think he did have it figured out, and I think I've just explained what he had figured out.
- 13:48Okay.
- 13:49All right.
- 13:50And another interesting topic has been the evolution of China's response to the US Tariff policies.
- 13:57So where is this headed?
- 13:59Well, this is, this is interesting.
- 14:03It's kind of like you and I, you know, fighting over some.
- 14:08Is it going to rain tomorrow or not?
- 14:10I mean, you know, so, so China is saying, you guys broke our deal because of the sanctions you put on the AI chips.
- 14:21Well, but the US Is saying, no, no, you guys broke the deal because you didn't ship the rare earth minerals in the amount that you said you would.
- 14:29Well, I believe, number one, China does have a valid position that the sanctions weren't allowed for AI chips.
- 14:39So we kind of broke the deal.
- 14:41But I think the US Also has a deal because China said they were going to ship so much rare earth minerals and they didn't.
- 14:48So, you know, it's kind of a chicken and an egg.
- 14:52And so it's just two guys kind of, you know, sitting on the back porch having a disagreement over, you know, who is the greatest NBA player of all times.
- 15:01I mean, you know, you're never going to solve that issue.
- 15:03But what's interesting is that this has now put more pressure on China because as we discussed a couple weeks ago, there's two options.
- 15:14Trump has two strategies.
- 15:15Strategy one, I want to deal directly with China, get this big problem solved, and then I'll go on and take care of the rest of the countries that's Approach one, approach two.
- 15:27If China is not friendly to us, China does not want to do a deal.
- 15:32What I'm going to do is I'm going to go around and get all of our allies together.
- 15:38We're going to do a deal with all the allies.
- 15:40And now it's going to be the US and allies negotiating with China.
- 15:45And so that's going to give us a much more powerful negotiating position.
- 15:49Z doesn't want to have to deal with all of US allies.
- 15:53He wants to deal with us, naturally.
- 15:55And so now, all of a sudden, this week, it's now being indicated that Z and Trump are going to talk this week.
- 16:02Now, will they talk this week?
- 16:03I don't know.
- 16:05Will they talk next week?
- 16:06Absolutely.
- 16:07If they don't talk this week, they absolutely will talk next week because Trump wants to talk and Z wants to talk.
- 16:12They both want to talk.
- 16:13And so they will be coming to the table.
- 16:16So stay tuned, lots to come.
- 16:19It's going to be a tough negotiation.
- 16:22You know, good negotiators begin the fight before the fight begins.
- 16:25And both Trump is fighting and Z is fighting.
- 16:28So they're both positioning themselves to get the best deal they can.
- 16:33And I think when Trump and Z get together, things are going to happen.
- 16:38Z would lose face in China if he didn't come home with a deal, and Trump would lose face if he didn't come home with a deal.
- 16:45So I do think they're going to speak either this week or next week.
- 16:48And I think good things are going to happen.
- 16:50And that's going to allow Trump to take the upper road on this strategy of bringing to the table a good relationship with China going forward and not having to get the alliance, all our alliance partners together.
- 17:04Okay.
- 17:05And then there's the topic of Trump pushing on these new trade deals with other countries.
- 17:10I mean, is this related?
- 17:12Oh, it's absolutely.
- 17:14It's.
- 17:15When first Z said he didn't want to talk on the phone, he didn't want to meet him live, I thought, well, okay, here comes strategy B.
- 17:25I mean, you remember we talked about the allies working together.
- 17:29I thought Trump is going to double down on getting these other tariffs in place.
- 17:34And so it's now well known that South Korea, Japan, Vietnam, India and the EU are in negotiations.
- 17:49And someone says, well, that's only five countries.
- 17:51No, no, not, not really, because EU is 27 countries.
- 17:54So that's actually 31 countries.
- 17:57And those 31 countries, if you take us South Korea, Japan, Vietnam, India and the EU, that is 55% of the world's GNP.
- 18:11And that is 30% of the US balance of payment, balance of trade deficit.
- 18:17And so Trump is not lining up, you know, going and talking to, you know, what does El Salvador think?
- 18:24No, no, he, he is going after the big boys and Z is going to be seeing that.
- 18:31So if Z was thinking about not getting on the phone this week or next week, he's gonna now move towards that phone because he wants to have that meeting before Trump shows up with Trump and his boy.
- 18:41Z versus Trump.
- 18:42Be a good fight.
- 18:44Z and Trump and his guys.
- 18:46No, no, no.
- 18:47Z's out of.
- 18:49He's outmatched.
- 18:50He's not going to be able to fight that one.
- 18:52Okay, all right.
- 18:54And we still have a lot of uncertainty as to what's going to happen out there in, in the business landscape.
- 19:01So what should retailers and manufacturers be doing now given all this uncertainty?
- 19:07Yeah, the uncertainty is, is 100%, David.
- 19:11I mean, there's, you know, almost every day the stock market's getting whiplash one way or the other.
- 19:18Although I see the, the, the month of May was one of the best months we've had in several years.
- 19:25And so I guess the, I guess it's not as bad.
- 19:30I guess people like tacos is what I'm, I guess I'm hearing is that they're no longer as sensitive to Trump doing a good job of negotiating by putting forth different positions and really negotiating with quality.
- 19:48But I think for manufacturers and retailers, the first question, question they have to answer is, what does this mean to me?
- 19:58How bad are the tariffs?
- 20:00If we're trading with India, if we're trading with China, if we're going with Vietnam, if we're going.
- 20:05What is going to happen under these different scenarios?
- 20:08Now, no one knows what the answers are, but you can kind of read the tea leaves and get some perception as to what it's going to be.
- 20:16You know, it's clear China is going to settle, you know, one thing on automotive and steel and aluminum, but basically they're going to wind up with something between 10 and 20%, which is interesting because that's within the 15%
- 20:32limit that he can do under the Trade act of 1974.
- 20:39So it's kind of interesting where that's going to wind up.
- 20:42But what we need to do is we need to do some scenario planning and say, what is the cost costs going to be?
- 20:47And then what's the impact on our bottom line?
- 20:49If we wound up eating that tariff, what's the impact on the bottom line?
- 20:54Then we need to ask the question, okay, if Trump sticks us with these tariffs that we have to pay, he's against inflation, we know that.
- 21:04And so what he's going to do is he's going to roll out some plans to help us with this cost impact.
- 21:10He doesn't want us to increase our prices.
- 21:13And so what he's going to want us to do, to eat it, well, we can't eat it all.
- 21:16And so he's going to say, well, let me eat it with you, and I'm going to reduce your taxes.
- 21:21If you got hit by tariffs, if your tariff cost was between X and Y, we're going to reduce your tax by this.
- 21:26If it's between Y and Z, we're going to reduce your tariff, your income tax by this, or we're going to work with you on regulations and save you money through regulations.
- 21:36And so we are going to work with you.
- 21:38We're not going to stick you with the tariffs, so you have to stick the consumer with the tariffs because we don't want the prices to the consumer going up.
- 21:47And so that's, that's not going to happen.
- 21:50Once we understand what the impact is, we can then start figuring out, okay, what do we need to change if we're buying it through Indonesia?
- 21:58And the bottom line is it's going to change the profitability by 0.5%.
- 22:05Well, that's okay.
- 22:06It doesn't matter.
- 22:07We can deal with a 0.5% drop in profit coming from Indonesia or Malaysia, one of those countries that's not going to knock us out of the game.
- 22:17But maybe there's other things we can do.
- 22:20What about us buying ahead of the tariff?
- 22:23We know when the tariff is going to take effect.
- 22:25Can we buy ahead and can we use, just in case, inventory?
- 22:29Now, just in case inventory isn't the best deal in town, because you got product sitting in warehouses, that's not going to turn over as much as you would like.
- 22:38But it's certainly an option for us to consider.
- 22:42How about if we go to our supplier and say to them, hey, this tariff is going to have an impact of 5% on me.
- 22:52What if we split that?
- 22:53You pay half the tariff and I'll pay half the tariff?
- 22:56Because guess what, that guy in China, he wants to sell as bad as we want to buy, and so he's going to be willing to tighten his belt a little bit, or the guy from India or the guy
- 23:07from Indonesia, wherever he's from.
- 23:09And so talking to the suppliers and getting a deal cut with them is certainly viable.
- 23:17There's also the option of going to different countries.
- 23:21Hopefully now we have the optionality, so we're not producing everything in one country.
- 23:26So the country that has the worst tariff, we will leave them and go to the country that has the better tariff.
- 23:32Is there something we can do to modify our product to do tariff engineering?
- 23:39You know, if this part right here was not metal, but it was plastic, we then could classify it like this and therefore we could save this.
- 23:49And so let's get the tariff engineering guys working on it.
- 23:53Another option doesn't necessarily save money, but it delays the tariff.
- 23:58Paying is going with bonded warehouses or free trade zones.
- 24:03We also need to look more carefully at the first sale rules.
- 24:07The first sales rules say, let's say that you, Dave, you buy something from China and then I buy it from you.
- 24:14The tariff is your responsibility, not mine, because you're the first trade, the first sale.
- 24:21And so you need to pay the tariff and then you sell to me without.
- 24:24Well, so I don't have to pay the tariff.
- 24:27It comes from you.
- 24:28But now what I do need to do is they need to look at my contracts.
- 24:31And what does our contract say?
- 24:32Does the contract say you have the right to pass on tariffs if they're there?
- 24:36Does it say you have the right to put in higher transportation?
- 24:39So we really need to study that one.
- 24:41But there's certainly an option with us using bonded warehouses, free trade zones and first sale rules where there's some interesting things we can do to delay paying or eliminate paying.
- 24:55There's obviously the whole cost cutting thing.
- 24:58Really want to get the pencil sharp at this time.
- 25:01We want to negotiate our freight rates, we want to look at consolidated shipments.
- 25:05And so we want to be smart about how we're dealing with things here.
- 25:09And then, okay, now we know we, this is the bottom line.
- 25:12This is what we're going to, what it's going to cost us.
- 25:14What do we do with that?
- 25:16Do we pass it on or do we eat it?
- 25:21If we eat it, how else can we make up for that profit differential?
- 25:26Or maybe the PR from eating it's going to increase the volume to the point that we don't really take a hit.
- 25:33And so let's think real strategically there.
- 25:37And if after we've done all those things, then we want to look at, okay, we now have got some of the uncertainty out of the equation, let's really re.
- 25:45Globalize, let's redo our supply chain because we now know the new rules.
- 25:50And I think this is going to be true by July.
- 25:52We should Be working on it now.
- 25:54We now knew the new rules.
- 25:55Let's, let's go and apply these rules and see what we can do to get ourselves whole again, even after the tariffs are in place.
- 26:04If we wind up with tariffs, that hurt us.
- 26:06Okay.
- 26:08Whole host of options there.
- 26:09Appreciate that.
- 26:10And so, Jim, this next one might not be fair, but where do you think we're going to be with this whole tariff situation by the end of the summer?
- 26:19Oh, yeah, I need to remember when Johnny Carson used to be the great Karnak and put the envelope up to his head and be a fortune teller.
- 26:28So you're asking me to be a little bit of a fortune teller here.
- 26:32But I think the first option is that Trump is successful across the board in negotiating tariffs.
- 26:43That's not likely across the board, but it's likely he's going to have considerable success because he's holding, excuse the phrase, Trump, and so he can play the game.
- 26:56And so what's going to happen oftentimes is we're either going to have a really good deal or we're going to be collecting money from tariffs.
- 27:07And so, you know, the money goes in different spots, but then Trump will equalize the field.
- 27:12So that's one issue.
- 27:14There's obviously what you're talking about.
- 27:18Pharmaceuticals, we're going to bring it home.
- 27:20Semiconductors, we're going to bring it home.
- 27:23Advanced materials, energy infrastructure, those are going to be reshored, we will be reshoring.
- 27:32And so there will be manufacturing that's coming back.
- 27:34There also will be manufacturing that's coming back when we have technology, heavy operations with few headcounts.
- 27:44We also will be bringing manufacturing back when we can automate the manufacturing process at an economic level.
- 27:50And so that's going to allow us to automate and once again not have lots of people involved.
- 27:58There's going to be a lot of redesign of supply chains to make things work better.
- 28:07But we also know there's a lot of things that aren't coming back.
- 28:11We're not going to bring back toys, we're not going to bring back footwear.
- 28:15We're not going to bring back footwear and apparel.
- 28:18It's not going to coming.
- 28:20We're not going to bring low cost, low wage assembly work back.
- 28:27We're not going to do that.
- 28:29So there's a significant amount of trade that's going to either stay where it is and have a tariff deal that we like, or it's going to move near shore.
- 28:42We're going to move it to Mexico.
- 28:44We're going to move it to Canada.
- 28:45We will be having, with our alliance with Canada and Mexico, that will be worked out and we will be working again kind of under a USMCA type of environment.
- 28:57And Mexico and Canada are going to continue to be our allies given that Trump doesn't tick them off too much in the process.
- 29:05But I think that's going to work out well.
- 29:08And so we will be doing a lot of those categories, garments, footwear, Christmas stuff, toys, low wage stuff that's going to be done in Latin American countries.
- 29:19Certainly Mexico is going to have more than their fair share and I think we're going to come out well.
- 29:25So I do believe by the time midterm elections come around, people are going to say, wow, I didn't believe it.
- 29:32But this tariff stuff really worked and we are in a good way.
- 29:37The stock market is going to go way up.
- 29:40Our 401ks are going to be worth what they were again.
- 29:44And I think it's going to be the golden age of, of all times for the United States.
- 29:50So I'm extremely optimistic.
- 29:55I've been wrong on some of these things before, but I'm not going to be wrong on many of these things.
- 30:00I believe good times are coming.
- 30:04Okay.
- 30:05All right.
- 30:05And so appreciate the insights on all those topics.
- 30:09Final thoughts?
- 30:10If companies out there still need assistance, they're still in the middle of trying to input optionality within their supply chain.
- 30:20You want to just talk about Tompkins Ventures for a quick minute and how that could potentially be a resource for them?
- 30:27Well, the, the front door is what we call Shore Finder and Shore Finder is a thing that lets you go in.
- 30:32It's a software package, lets you go in and put your products in and, and it'll come back and tell you what your taxes are, what your tariffs are going to be, what your transportation cost will be.
- 30:44And let's say here's some alternative countries you can look at.
- 30:47So Shore Finder is a really interesting outreach.
- 30:52I think we may be moving into a position where we will be giving that tool away.
- 30:59Right now there's still a fee for it, but there's a lot of discussion about companies needing help and we can do it with this tool.
- 31:09And so we are looking at how we can make that work and make the tool available.
- 31:17And I'm dedicated to make that happen.
- 31:19I think it's really important that we do that for the country.
- 31:23So that's a very cool way to start.
- 31:26And then that leads into the very hardcore procurement.
- 31:30We've got procurement around the world in all the major markets.
- 31:35And so we just got a huge new relationship in India that we didn't have that we're really excited about.
- 31:44We're strong everywhere else.
- 31:45And so we can, we can help with the procurement and then the transportation and then the third party logistics and make the whole thing move.
- 31:52We've got the technology to support it.
- 31:54So we, we've been really looking forward to this issue getting resolved and it's in our best interest for the issue to be resolved.
- 32:05And so we're pushing on that, of course, with all of our might.
- 32:09And that's why we're looking at shore finder fees and getting people really moving in the right direction.
- 32:15Because right now there's a lot of companies that are still sitting there saying, yeah, but I'm uncertain.
- 32:20Well, I know you're uncertain, but begin the planning.
- 32:23Don't spend any money.
- 32:24No, any, no big money at least.
- 32:25But you really need to get started because when this thing happens, I mean, I kind of like it.
- 32:30There's, there's people sitting on the bank of the river and they got their bamboo pole out there and they're fishing and ain't catching much because there's too much uncertainty.
- 32:42There's not a lot of water.
- 32:43But what's happening is the dam is getting fuller and fuller and fuller and full and full of water.
- 32:49And what's going to happen someday, I think late June, July, the dam is going to break and we're going to let a gully full of water come forward and the guy that's sitting there on the bank with his
- 33:04pole, he going to get washed away.
- 33:05He can be gone.
- 33:07But the guys that have the net out there, man, are they going to catch a lot of fish.
- 33:13And so what we want to do is we want to help successful companies get that net out there and really be successful when this thing wide open.
- 33:22And I think it's going to happen.
- 33:23So, yeah, great times ahead and we can, we can help that.
- 33:27We believe that we have the net.
- 33:30We know what the net is and we want to deploy it and hope folks give us a call.
- 33:36All right, Appreciate that.
- 33:39Thanks as always, Jim, for the insights.
- 33:40Till next time, have a fantastic day.
- 33:43Thanks, Dave.
- 33:44Good seeing you.