Dean, are tariffs inflationary? Yeah. Why? Who pays for tariffs? Not the company that you are tariffing. So, let's use the the favorite example. China exports stuff to us and then we tariff them, right? We as an importer of Chinese goods pay for the tariffs, not China. I think this is what the the most important fact that people need to understand is that the company exporting the product does not pay for the tariff. How it works is this: they put stuff on a boat, it arrives here. When the company that imports it and distributes and sells it, let's call it, let's say Costco, whatever, the distributor goes to the port and takes it, they pay for the tariff there. At the port. At the port. Yeah, it's all clear when you clear customs. Okay. It's collected there. And basically what happens is when the when the product reaches the the shelves, it's more expensive now. So what would there's more cost to get it. Well, it's like I did that example before, right? Okay, you buy a t-shirt for 10 bucks without tariffs, right? And you sell it here for 12, right? When you when you tariff China, two dollars on that, then it's going to cost you 12 bucks to get here. You're not going to sell it at zero profit. You're going to have to bump the price up. I know, but everyone says in the comments that believe this whole tariff thing, then we should be buying American-made t-shirts and we grow cotton here. Yeah, okay, let me you know, that's a fallacious argument though. Okay, what is your cost of living here? What is your cost of labor here compared to China? How are you going to pay people to make that t-shirt at the same price that they make it in China? It's impossible. And what's the result of that? Right? You pass the the the the the price increase on the cost of labor, the cost of everything that's more expensive here, regulatory costs, taxes, all that kind of stuff. It costs more to make things here, which is why we only make certain kinds of things here. We don't make t-shirts here anymore. What do we make? An airplane. What do we make? We make American-made cars. We do make them. Well, actually, no, I think we make them in Mexico because it's cheaper. Yeah, that's the whole point. So the whole the whole thing that people have to understand about manufacturing, like, oh, you tariffed it, we're going to No, the world economic the the the the the what do you call it? The best manner in which for all countries in the world is to trade with each other. It's this concept of competitive advantage. You have low cost of labor in this country, you have a lot of natural resources or other kinds of resources, you make that product at the lowest cost, and then you trade with other people. You know, and we're very, very good at making high, you know, technology stuff. And we're a knowledge economy. That's right. And we're very, very, you know, advanced. You know, we make weapons, we make airplanes. That's what our competitive advantage is. How we make it the best. Exactly, right? Then you export that to other countries and you import the things that they're good at. It's called trade. It's how economies started, barter. Back in the Middle Ages, whatever, like, hey, I'm really good at fishing, I can catch a fish, that guy is really good at hunting, shooting a bow and arrow at a bird, that guy wants to eat fish and you want to eat chicken, whatever, right? You trade, because I'm really good at this and that guy is really good at that. That's how trade works. It's competitive advantages. It's the most efficient, right? It grow it it everyone wins when you do that. Different countries and different, you know, suppliers of things. It's not efficiency anymore. And what happens when you do that? Everything in in everybody's own countries then becomes more expensive when you don't trade openly, free trade. Okay, free like at your Denny's says, free trade is ideal. It's not necessarily fair trade would be a cherry on top because sometimes things aren't fair. China's not fair, no question. But free trade should always be the winner. Got it. So it is inflationary. Yes.
