Dennis Shea, Barton O’Brien and Tristan Wright Transcript — Sept. 16, 2025
Kevin Johnson/NPF (00:00):
As I said, we’re going to be looking at two major questions this morning. Where does small business fit in the current administration strategy and how it’s playing out on the street? And those questions, while we’ll be focusing on them today, we’re fortunate to have a great lineup to address them. Dennis Shea, who just arrived and we’re happy that he got here safely served as Deputy US Trade Representative and US Ambassador to the World Trade Organization in Geneva. At the WTO, Dennis led an interagency team charged with advancing US interest on issues ranging from trade and goods and services to e-commerce, intellectual property protection and agriculture for more than 10 years. Dennis was a member of the Bipartisan and US China Economic and Security Review, serving in leadership from 2012 to 2017. Next to Dennis is Tristan Wright. Tristan is a business strategist and founder of Lost Boy Cider of Virginia based craft cidery known for its additive free cider made from Shenandoah apples, and I can attest it’s good stuff, a self-described builder at heart.
(01:20):
Tristan thrives at the intersection of storytelling operations and strategy. After launching and scaling Lost Boy into a recognized brand in the Mid-Atlantic, he began exploring new ventures from launching the ferry dog mom pet care business with his wife to mentoring aspiring entrepreneurs through his course Launch Lab with Tristan. Next to Tristan is Barton O’Brien. Barton is the founder and CEO of Bay Dog, a canine adventure gear company based in Stevensville, Maryland, a graduate of the US Naval Academy. Bart served three combat tours in Iraq as a Marine Cobra pilot. Following a career in finance, Bart founded Bay Dog and went from selling dog gear out of his living room to a presence in more than 2000 stores from Alaska to Bermuda. In 2023, bay Dog won the prestigious FedEx small business grant contest, and O’Brien was subsequently appointed to the FedEx small and medium-sized business advisory board. Congrats. So welcome all. And I’m going to tap Dennis, even though he’s barely cut his breath from getting here, to lead us off and sort of address the strategy behind the tariff philosophy and what small business should expect or should be anticipating as this strategy plays out. So Dennis, I’ll turn it over for you.
Dennis Shea Former Deputy U.S. Trade Representative (03:02):
Well, thank you Kevin. Can you hear me? I apologize for being late. It’s the proverbial roadwork during rush hour. My goodness, I’ve been in and out of politics for my career and this scares me. Being in a room with so many reporters. I have to tell you, this is really frightening. I am supposed to say that my views represent my own. I work for an organization called the Bipartisan Policy Center. So we don’t do trade work. So anything I say is just my personal view. During the campaign, I see the implementation of the Trump trade strategy is basically the fulfillment of a campaign promise. I mean, this was not something that he hid, okay? This was sort of central to the campaign. During the campaign, he promised 10 to 20% baseline tariffs. He promised up to 60% tariffs on China, and he promised reciprocity in bilateral trade relations.
(04:04):
We had a $1.2 trillion trade deficit in goods in 2024. We’ve had nearly a $20 trillion cumulative trade deficit in goods since the World Trade Organization was founded. And the view is that we are basically as a country financing current consumption by selling off our assets in the future, income from those assets. And that’s not sustainable, and it’s not in the interest of the national security of the United States. So that’s the key objective. The others are protecting key US industries and building up US productive capacity. We’ve lost productive capacity in some very important industries. So the idea, for example, during COVID, we did not have PPE. We did not produce PPE in this country, which was a major source of concern. So building up productive capacity in key US industries, combating unfair trade practices, including non tariff barriers. There are a lot of sneaky non tariff farriers out there in the global trading system beyond tariffs.
(05:13):
And that was, for example, the reason behind the China tariffs in the first Trump administration is really focused on unfair trading practices. And then President Trump has said raising federal revenue is very important. And the Congressional budget office just announced that the revenue from the tariffs they estimate will raise $3.3 trillion over the next 10 years. And the cumulative impact on the federal deficit will be to reduce it by $4 trillion over the next 10 years. That was the CBO. And David Lynch, the trade reporter from the Washington Post, had a really interesting story a couple of weeks ago, maybe a week ago, where he said the tariffs are giving comfort a source of comfort to the US bond market because they’re bringing in revenue to help reduce the trade deficit. I think earlier in this process they were a source of discomfort and that led to maybe some readjustment of the Trump administration trade policy.
(06:19):
So I mean, Trump is basically rewriting the rules of the international economic order. I mean, that’s the idea of the Washington consensus around trade no longer exists. And so he’s rewriting those rules. And I think I like to, just to quote a little bit of language in the April 2nd liberation date executive order, he says that the executive order says the post-war international economic system, this is the Bretton Woods system, was based on three incorrect assumptions. First, that if the US led the world liberalizing tariffs and non tariff barriers, the rest of the world would follow us. Before Trump had won the lowest average tariff rates in the world, other countries like China, India, Brazil, who are now huge economies, had much higher, even the EU had a higher average tariff rate than the United States. So that’s one. The second in corrupt correct assumption was that such liberalization could ultimately result in more economic convergence and increased domestic consumption among US trading partners converging towards the share of the us. So that’s really about China.
(07:39):
We’ve been waiting for China to move to a more consumption oriented economy, but it’s always been investment led and export, export led. The country’s leaders have refused to open up and move towards a more an economy that’s more focused on domestic consumption. The third incorrect assumption is that as a result, the United States would not accrue large and persistent goods trade deficits. And as I mentioned, these deficits are significant and have accumulated to very large numbers since the US joined the World Trade Organization. So now the Democrats, of course, are criticizing the Trump strategy, criticizing the tariffs. Some Republicans are not happy about the tariffs, but they’re going along.
(08:33):
But I think it would be a big mistake to assume that Democrats don’t disagree with these assumptions in the executive order. I think there’s a really a broad based view within the United States among both Democrats and Republicans that the previous system, it was just not working as well as it should for the United States. And I think we’re not going to go back to a system, a multilateral trading system with the World Trade Organization, which I used to represent the United States at as the core of the international trading system. I don’t think a lot of Democrats support that either. I mean, Mike Roan, who was USTR during the Obama administration and now is the president of the Council on Foreign Relations, had a recent article in foreign Affairs where basically he said, the WTO is dead. We need to have new multilateral trading arrangements. Wally Ada amo, who’s the Deputy Treasury Secretary in the Biden administration basically said the same thing. So I’m going to stop there if that’s all right. Kevin, and I just give you sort of an overview of what the Trump view is. We could talk about the use the International Economic Powers Act as the source of the tariffs and what’s going on in the courts in the decisions, and we could talk about that later.
Kevin Johnson/NPF (09:59):
Sure. So we have two small business leaders who are regarding you with a little skepticism. No, I’m only kidding. Sorry. But we have, I’d like to turn it over to Bart, who as we were talking and preparing for the session today, talked about a big bet that his small company made during the Trump campaign when the tariff strategy began to take shape. So Bart, if you could talk a little bit about that and about how this has affected your company.
Barton O’Brien Founder and CEO, BAYDOG (10:40):
Sure. Is this working? Alright, great. So Dennis, you mentioned that this is the fulfillment of a campaign promise. I don’t fault any small or large business owner for not making a strategic action during the campaign because Donald Trump said he was going to put a 60% tariff on China. That’s the one that caught my eye. This is a man who said that he was going to end the war in Ukraine the day after the election. This is a man who said Mexico was going to buy us a wall and he was going to pay for all IVF. He says a lot of really stupid things that just don’t make any sense during the campaign. That’s what I mean. Donald Trump literally said he was going to eliminate the US national debt in four years. So when you constantly hear things like that, you hear six, okay, a president can’t unilaterally put on a tariff.
(11:32):
That’s not how the constitution of the law works. And that’s so many standard deviations away from the norm. No government has done that in 95 years because it’s such a stupid thing to do. So when I hear that, I’m not going to take it seriously, just like I don’t think he’s going to eliminate the national debtor pay for IVF or end the war in Ukraine. So the way I viewed it, however, was the way Dick Cheney viewed a catastrophic terror event after nine 11. He had what he called the 1% doctrine, which was even if there’s only a 1% chance that something catastrophic will happen, the results are so unacceptable. I have to treat it as if it’s a certainty. So think nuclear bomb in Manhattan. So to me, a 60% tariff is a nuclear bomb in Manhattan. So even though I viewed it as an extremely low probability thing, because for all the reasons I just said it could end my business.
(12:29):
So I wrote a five page white paper on what a 60% tariff would actually do to my business. I sat my team down and explained it to them, and I said, if this were to happen, I don’t think it’s sustainable. We saw that the Liberation Day tariffs last I think six days before they had to come back. So I was right on that account, but we have ended up in a bad place, and so I still view them as temporary. That’s the bet that I made. So I borrowed as much money as I could. I advanced all of my factory runs by several months. And this was last summer. So think last August, September well before the election, just on the 1% chance that this actually comes to fruition, we’re going to bolster our supply as much as we can so we won’t have to pay a tariff for at least a year.
(13:19):
And I think that this ridiculousness will play out by the end of that period. So we actually filled our warehouse with well over a year’s worth of inventory. I actually had to rent a container and put it out back, and we filled that full of dog life jackets. I had dog life jackets in our bathrooms. We have a ton of inventory, and so I have yet to pay a tariff. But I mean me borrowing money and advancing is different than rerouting a supply chain. Right? And the thing that strikes me is, Dennis, you mentioned a lot of great goals, but I don’t view tariffs as tools that achieve literally any of them, especially fixing a trade balance or reshoring jobs. The one thing that you said that I do agree with is we are reordering the way the world does trade, but we’re reordering it away from the United States.
(14:19):
We were promised 90 deals in 90 days. We have zero deals. No legally binding documents have been signed with any country. Yet you see deals being struck between India and the EU and South America and everybody else as literally the rest of the world is reorienting their trade away from the United States because on Liberation Day, we literally violated every trade agreement that we’ve ever signed. And we just showed the world that not only are we not a reliable and predictable trading partner, but we won’t honor our commitments and our behavior is no longer based on our economic best interest. It’s based on the whims of somebody who may or may not understand how tariffs work
Dennis Shea Former Deputy U.S. Trade Representative (15:08):
Or I’m going to put you down as undecided.
Barton O’Brien Founder and CEO, BAYDOG (15:10):
Yeah,
Kevin Johnson/NPF (15:14):
I’m going to go to Tristan, who as I mentioned earlier, operates a cery and that cider has to be canned. So aluminum is a major concern. So I’ll turn it over to Tristan to describe what he’s been dealing with over the past year.
Tristan Wright Founder, Lost Boy Cider (15:35):
Yeah, high level, we are considered a small business. We make somewhere between 70 and a hundred and plus thousand gallons of cider a year for context. Bold rock also in Virginia makes I think approximately 2 million gallons of cider a year. So any level of margin impact, which if you’ve ever studied or reported on manufacturing, I’m cider. But really what I do is I manage down to the penny what our margins look like and what our costs look like. And one of the challenges that exists in a changing landscape as we are in today with significant changes taking place are the unknowns. And so I find myself really torn between the rational Tristan who spent 18 years in banking and started a community bank in Longmont, Colorado in a double wide trailer while we were outfitting a defunct pizza hut and worrying about treasury rates and our camel rating and our loan to deposit ratios and where we were going to allocate all the money and who that was going to go to. Now this morning, tearing a toilet out at 5 45 in the morning and moving kegs out to get cleaned and then probably having to fire somebody at one o’clock today. And so you bring in big brains that understand the economy and understand what our national debt situation looks like. And I have three kids under the age of 12. You say, well, that’s not sustainable.
(17:28):
And then you look at aluminum costs to Kevin’s point where I could get a phone call from our aluminum supplier and say, your costs have just gone up 27%, which we received a year ago before the current presidency took office. And I’m still sort of confused about why that happened, but if you recall, or maybe you don’t, but all of the aluminum generally that North America uses comes through Vancouver and it’s Chinese aluminum metal, and then through the bipartisan or the, what’s the term that they use between US and Canada, MCA? Yeah, we receive favorable terms on that metal. But the other one that’s unspoken for a little old cery and everyone else as that H two A agreement, our migrant workers are, guess who picks all of our apples?
(18:32):
They’re not Americans. They come up here on a visa and guess who doesn’t want to be in America right now for whatever reason. But the big one for me, the emotional Tristan is reactive to that because they’re scared and they serve me. And many businesses, they do all the labor and the work that I literally can’t afford to pay anybody to do. And so right now, not to go off on a tangent, but my priorities the last 16 months have been really twofold, manage my expenses and increase my cash position and sit on the sidelines, anxiously and await for the next bad thing to occur. And what’s dangerous about that in small businesses, when you make emotional decisions, you usually are making the best decision. You’re being reactive, not proactive. And in small business speed kills and guys like us who bootstrapped these operations and literally risked it all, my house is mortgaged.
(19:44):
So my college educational fund accounts for my kids is on the line here. And the thing that is frustrating is that I can’t make any rock solid decisions because there’s too many unknowns. It’s too risky. And just as a quick example, two seasons ago I launched into Maryland and it wasn’t a success and it cost me roughly $79,000 cash plus the opportunity loss, which is, I don’t know, probably double that. And so for me, that’s enough money that if I made that mistake again, lost boy’s gone. So those are the types of things that I think about.
Kevin Johnson/NPF (20:35):
Before I turn it over to questions, I wanted to go back to Dennis because in a previous conversation that we had, I thought he made some excellent points on sort of the narrative that he’s been observing from reporters as this strategy has played out. So I wonder, Dennis, if you could address that a little bit?
Dennis Shea Former Deputy U.S. Trade Representative (21:01):
Yeah, sure. I mean, when the Liberation Day tariffs, the reciprocal tariffs were first announced in April 2nd, I thought the predominant media narrative that I was reading was that this is economic Armageddon. The US economic economy is going to go into a downward spiral. This is awful. The world’s coming to an end. I think right now it’s a bit of a mixed picture, but it’s certainly not an economic Armageddon. I mean, GDP growth in the second quarter was a strong 3.3%. Consumer spending was for the past month was resilient, 0.5%. Stock markets, the markets seem to be doing well on the negative side, the labor numbers are quite soft, which will likely lead to the Fed putting a priority over employment as opposed to price stability and we’ll cut rates this week. And there’s slightly accelerating inflation. I think it was a 2.9% on an annual basis.
(22:16):
So this is not economic Armageddon, and this is a mixed picture. And I think Secretary Bessant, president Trump said there might be some bumpy, bumpy road before we get to what we’re trying to achieve in the longer term that they believe is in the interest of the United States. I respect these two gentlemen immensely. I mean, they are entrepreneurs. They have put themselves and their resources to create something, and I have tremendous respect for that. I think you could also, Bart said none of these deals have become agreements. Well, I think you’re right on that point. They’re kind of framework deals, but if they do get effectuated, which I believe they will be, the EU is opening its market to billions of dollars of US agriculture. The United Kingdom is openings market to agriculture. Japan is opening its market made commitments to open its market to auto parts.
(23:27):
So you could have a couple other people here who could say, I have this problem with the EU and they won’t let me get my stuff in. I have this problem with Japan. They’re very protectionist in these particular sectors, and I can’t sell my stuff into that country. So you could have people like that here as well. If I may talk about this case, BARR said it’s unconstitutional. The president’s invocation of the International Economic Emergency Powers Act, and that was never used for tariffs before. I don’t know whether it’s unconstitutional. We don’t know that for sure.
Barton O’Brien Founder and CEO, BAYDOG (24:06):
Here’s what we do know. The word tariff does not appear in the law and that the trumped up emergency, pun intended, that normal economic activity is an emergency is
Dennis Shea Former Deputy U.S. Trade Representative (24:21):
Ridiculous. Okay.
Barton O’Brien Founder and CEO, BAYDOG (24:24):
And also the fact there’s a provision in the law that requires Congress within 14 calendar days to confirm or dis-confirm that it is in fact an emergency. And Speaker Johnson literally went into the rules committee and change the definition of a calendar day to avoid taking that vote. So those are things that we do know.
Dennis Shea Former Deputy U.S. Trade Representative (24:46):
Okay. The statute gives, it’s very broadly worded.
(24:52):
It gives the authority to the president in the case of a economic emergency originating outside the United States that’s affecting US national security and the economy to take a variety of different actions including regulate importation. Correct. And that phrase was taken directly from the Trading with the ENEMY Act, which is the predecessor statute. It was incorporated into the I-E-E-P-A and that was used by President Nixon in 1971 to impose a 10% across the board tariff to address balance of payments issue. And it’s not as if Congress is a passive actor here. They have the ability to terminate the declaration of an emergency by a joint resolution, which can be vetoed by the president, but they have acted passively. There is just not support in the Congress to overturn what President Trump has done if they wanted to. They have the ability to do that, but there’s no support.
(26:00):
So that’s why I think in the dissent, it was a seven four decision in the federal circuit. The one who wrote the dissenting opinion was a judge appointed by President Obama. And he said this was an eyes wide open delegation of authority by Congress to the President of the United States. And there’s procedures in the statute where the president has to notify Congress about what it’s doing, and the Congress has the ability to terminate the national emergency by joint resolution that underpins the action. So I think there’s persuasive arguments there. So when the Supreme Court takes it up, are they going to say they may find that persuasive? Why get in the middle of this between the Congress and the United States? The Congress wants to take its power back and it has the power under the Constitution, the primary power to regulate interstate commerce. That’s its constitutional authority. But our history is replete with the Congress delegating authority to the President on tariffs section 2 32, section 3 0 1. And so this is, I think it’s an open question and we’re going to have it decided pretty soon.
Kevin Johnson/NPF (27:17):
Let me throw it open on that note. I’m sure that we’ve going to have a bunch of questions.
Omar Mohammed | The Boston Globe (27:24):
Hi, my name is Omar Mohammed from the Boston Globe. I have a question. My apologies. No problem, no problem. I’m from Boston, so
Kevin Johnson/NPF (27:37):
Very upset.
Omar Mohammed | The Boston Globe (27:41):
So my question is, so you’re hearing from small business owners, which represent, we heard yesterday almost a hundred percent of all businesses in the United States, they’re at the forefront of creating jobs and they’re saying tariffs are a bad idea and they represent an existential threat to their future sustainability. Why do you think there appears to be a disconnect between what policymakers are doing and what people at the forefront of businesses in terms of the effectiveness or the viability of tariffs?
Dennis Shea Former Deputy U.S. Trade Representative (28:25):
Well, I think small businesses like certainty, I think any business likes certainty. And this has, I think, probably engendered some uncertainty into the business decision. But I’ll let the gentleman, Bart and Tristan talk for themselves. This is injected uncertainty. But there are other small business people who, and I think if the Supreme Court overturns the I-E-E-P-A tariffs, the reciprocal tariffs, I think there’s going to be a lot more uncertainty because you’ll probably see other actions being taken by the Trump administration to counteract to address the issues that they’re trying to address, such as the invocation of more section 2 32, national security tariffs, invocation of Section 3 0 1. They’ll use other statutes. There’s a statute that allows the president, it’s never been invoked, but allows the president to impose tariffs up to 15% for 150 days to address these imbalances. So I think there’ll be a lot if the Supreme Court agrees with the Circuit Court of Appeals, I think there’ll be a lot of activity afterwards and it’ll be kind of a lot of uncertainty. But I think there are, I don’t know, Tristan and Bart, I’ve never met them before. Do they represent the small business community writ large? I don’t know.
(30:06):
There are other people who are in business who support very much what the Trump administration’s doing. I,
Rayonna Burton-Jernigan | Capital B News (30:15):
Okay. Hi, I’m back here. How y’all doing? Hi, my name is Rayonna. I work with capital B News outside of Gary, Indiana. I just wanted to ask from you guys’ perspective, tariffs is a big word that a lot of small business owners have hated to hear for the last year or so. So really, what advice would you have for small business owners that are still trying to stay a business, that still are worried about tariffs and even their local community and just how to move forward past that?
Barton O’Brien Founder and CEO, BAYDOG (30:50):
I’m good. I think. I don’t know anybody else’s business. And so everybody’s business is different. So for me, to the earlier point, it’s just so hard. So we make things in Vietnam, we make things in China, we make things in India, right? When the China tariffs happened, I’m all stocked up, but we had to move some production. We make stuff in India. So we start talking to factories and moving some production over to India. Well, now all of a sudden there’s a 50% tariff on India as of a couple of weeks ago. And it’s because Donald Trump doesn’t like the fact that they’re importing Russian oil.
(31:35):
Let’s make things very clear. 50%, that’s not a tax. That’s more of an embargo, right? Very few people can pay a 50% tax and stay in business viably. So I don’t have any advice. What can you do in that environment if you’re dependent on a global supply chain, which almost all big businesses are, and we’re hearing it, Dennis is right, we aren’t seeing prices go up, but I haven’t raised my prices. Ford Motor Company said they haven’t raised their prices yet, but they’ve paid hundreds of millions of dollars in tariffs, and they’ve gone into the red. And you’re going to see automakers are smart, right? They’re going to wait until the next model year when they usually raise prices, then they’re just going to raise them more than they normally do. So Proctor and Gamble said they’re going to raise prices. John Deere listen to the earnings calls.
(32:31):
Everybody’s raising prices. I talk to pet store owners all across America, every day they’re seeing toys and treats and food, and everything across the board is going up and it’s really hurting them, and they’re seeing a change in consumer behavior. So I think the longer this persists, the worse it’s going to get. And once we get into the holiday season, you’re really going to start to see it, because remember the huge disruptions that happened in April, you’re placing all of your orders in April for stuff that you want by the holidays, right? I had to cancel a big part of our fall line in April because I had to pull the trigger on production and we just couldn’t do it. I have no idea what I’m going to pay. Right now. I’m in production for all my stuff in the spring. I just have no idea how much it’s going to cost me yet.
Tristan Wright Founder, Lost Boy Cider (33:23):
Interesting. That’s a really interesting question. There’s different definitions to what small businesses, I think the SBA might designate 50 million and under, but if you go out and you talk to a local community bank, I think they kind of go with 12 and under. I’m a five and under. So in that context, I’m very small and I don’t disagree with anything that was just said. But in addition to that, I think the emotional balancing act that takes place with the strategic chess game of being a small business owner, whether you’re making crab cakes in a kitchen on the Maryland shore in your restaurant, or you’re doing what we do, which is manufacturing, my advice would be to play it very cautiously and to focus very, very, very seriously on your expenses and your costs and minimize anything that is unnecessary. And my key piece of advice to anyone that asks me and Alexandria is to put your dreams on hold temporarily and face the realities that what you want for the company may still occur, but at this point in time, you’re not in control or really sitting in the driver’s seat, which is why you’re probably hearing a little bit of testiness from us in the response because we’re frustrated as an entrepreneur, you really want to put your foot on the pedal, get the car into gear.
(34:53):
I don’t need to be going 90 on the highway, but I definitely want to be doing 55. And we are just idling. And it’s interesting to hear this larger perspective, which is broader and more of a national, international focus, and there are very real truths to all that. But I do find myself struggling with the little old guy Macon Cider versus what might ultimately be the right move for the country and potentially the world. So
Ashley Murray | States Newsroom (35:27):
Thanks. Hi, Ashley Murray from States Newsroom. My personal complaint is that my bag of coffee beans went up by 60 cents. I went to Whole Foods last night and bought the bag of coffee beans that I buy every time. But I think that might be Whole Foods taking advantage of the situation, Jeff Bezos. But I had a question about for you two on, I assume you belong to maybe an industry group representing you like Mainstream alliance or something like that, and if there’s been any push for waivers for certain size businesses. And then I had a question for Dennis is I have asked a lot of experts, how can you track who’s getting a waiver from tariffs? Because I think it would be very interesting to see what the administration is doing, but I don’t know how to track that. So those are my questions.
Barton O’Brien Founder and CEO, BAYDOG (36:36):
Well, in terms of getting a waiver, I’d actually like to use this public forum to make an announcement. My company, bay Dog is committing to invest 650 billion in US manufacturing over the next 10 years, which I would like to point out is 50 billion more than Apple who did get a waiver. So I guess you guys just email it to me or whatever. But also just like Apple, mine has 0% chance of actually happening. But so far, that’s the only way I can see to get a waiver is get a good press conference and maybe give the president a statue.
Tristan Wright Founder, Lost Boy Cider (37:17):
Yeah, there’s a lot of validity in that, but it’s more complex than that. I get the joke, this good stuff.
Barton O’Brien Founder and CEO, BAYDOG (37:25):
I don’t have 650 billion.
Tristan Wright Founder, Lost Boy Cider (37:27):
I’ll share something with you guys. I was telling these guys, I’m notoriously bad at checking my mail at the Cery because for the last two and a half, three years, it’s always been bad. So it’s Bills, it’s all this stuff. And so it piles up, and ultimately when I’m in the back and I’m bringing in fresh towels or something, which I wash on my own now because it was too expensive to have Cintas do it, we save about 469 bucks a month by doing that. I saw the stack of mail and the top, I just moped over there and the top envelope was an IRS window cut out of the envelope with a check in it for a tax refund for about 50,000 bucks for lost boy cider from a amended tax return that we put back through. Fantastic. Well, it’s going to save my ass this winter.
(38:27):
And you say, well, why are you relying on a federal tax refund because you convinced your CPA to go back through for 850 bucks and amend three years of tax returns for you? That ain’t good because last time I checked, I did 65, 75 hours in the office last week raising three kids. My wife has 31 dog walkers. And interestingly, during COVID, she got her ass kicked because who needed a dog walker? And now I’m getting my ass kicked and her business is going gangbusters. Everyone’s being forced back to work. It is a weird juxtaposition happening, but on the waiver question, we don’t qualify for a waiver, and there’s no universe that I could ever find an office or make a phone call to. I get all my stuff through subcontracts from a company larger than me who gets it through a company larger than them who gets it through a company larger than them, AA on the stock market, Alcoa, it’s can source and ball. Those are the two companies that make qualified manufacturing level aluminum in this country. That’s it, that two. And they could give two flying, what’s about me? And so there’s zero chance, and that’s why I say where we’re sort of sitting idle in neutral is we don’t have any power control over all this. I just literally wait for the phone call saying, Hey, your costs have gone up.
Dennis Shea Former Deputy U.S. Trade Representative (40:11):
Oh, sorry, I don’t really have a good answer for you, Ashley. I mean, for example, on aluminum, the tariffs on aluminum are section 2 32 tariffs. So that’s the Department of Commerce actions. So you might want to look on the Department of Commerce website. I’ll just give you a very general observation. When they first came out with the tariffs, it was, this is global. We’re not going to, we needed to make it global in order to reduce the global trade trade deficit. And as time went on, there were negotiations that led waivers and carve outs. And some of these deals with countries like the UK has a carve out for automobiles at least they’re allowed to get at a lower tower freight below a hundred thousand cars. So everything, there’s a carve out in the EU deal. There’s some carve outs with Japan, but those are just part of the deal. I would look at for 2 32, just the Department of Commerce website. We’ll look at the White House website. They’ve been putting out some very complicated paper happening. And then for 3 0 1, none of the actions that been taken Rio one, but that’s A-U-S-T-R website. So also look there, USTR actions. So also look there, but that’s not a very satisfactory answer for you. I’m sorry,
Desiree Mathurin | The Charlotte Observer (41:47):
Go. Go ahead. Hi. Right over here. I’m Desiree. I work for the Charlotte Observer. This question is for Dennis. You mentioned earlier the deficit and one of the ways to recoup that deficit is through tariffs. But is there another way, because it seems like tariffs are having this adverse effect on small businesses when it comes to looking for supply chain stuff, them paying extra for their products that coming onto the consumer. What is another way to kind of recoup that deficit
Dennis Shea Former Deputy U.S. Trade Representative (42:24):
Another way? Another way is to expand market access for US exports. So a lot of countries just don’t want to take our stuff, particularly in the agricultural area. So that’s another tool is you restrict imports, but also expand exports. So the deals with the uk, the deals with Japan, the deals with the EU have obligations on our trading partners to buy more of our stuff and to expand market access for a variety of goods. So that’s another way. Another is to just combat unfair trading practices, not necessarily with tariffs, but you could take other types of actions against a trading partner other than tariffs that send the message that your restrictive policy or your unfair trading practice that gives your companies an advantage are no longer acceptable. So there are other ways to approach it beyond tariffs like sanctions or blocking market access for certain products.
Desiree Mathurin | The Charlotte Observer (43:52):
Sorry. Sure, yeah, sorry. So you mentioned the first part is getting folks to purchase from us, right? So is it more lucrative to add these really high tariffs, which as Bart mentioned, kind of puts the United States in a weird position of, well, if that’s what you’re going to do, then I’m going to work with someone else. Or would it be more lucrative to try to create those relationships to say, buy from us instead? What is the more lucrative action here? Because right now it seems like with the tariffs, we’re alienating people, but then if we focus on creating those relationships to gain more of that exportation, then I guess which one would be more lucrative?
Dennis Shea Former Deputy U.S. Trade Representative (44:40):
I mean, it’s ruffling feathers. It has certainly ruffled feathers, but I look at more broadly, the US market is very desired by our trading partners. So I couldn’t believe what the EU committed because they have been probably the most prickly of our trading partners. They’re very restrictive. We ran run about a 230 billion trade deficit in goods in 2024 with the European Union. At the same time, we’re subsidizing their defense in many respects. So I think it’s very important to, so when we’re alienating partners, we have national security relationships with these countries, with the eu, with Japan, these things I think are not going to push these countries into the arms of China or Russia. So they don’t like the tough medicine on the trade, but they have other interests that override that. And they’re aligned with the United States largely on security matters.
Marlon Hyde | WABE News (45:58):
Yeah, go ahead. Hello? Hello. I don’t even know how to hold this thing to make it work, but good morning. I’m Marlon Hyde WABE news in Atlanta. I have two questions if that’s okay. One is kind of like for everybody, you mentioned bumpy roads, words like tough medicine, but the reality, what are the non-monetary costs of tariffs? I could see from the business owners, there’s a physical tenseness when the word tariff is brought up before you even have to bring it up. So what is it costing you as in frustration workforce? Are you able to hire? Are you to think outside of your job when you go home at night? And my second question is how do you see our more specifically for you, Tristan, how do you see our immigration policy undermining many of those deals that we’re making in terms of trade? Because in Atlanta, I’m currently covering the immigration rate on the Hyundai plant that is in a way undermining the billions of dollars. South Korea committed to working with the US on, and we just essentially detained about 400 well over 400 workers, but over 300 South Korean migrants. So we’re nationals
Tristan Wright Founder, Lost Boy Cider (47:16):
Lost Boy has seen a reduction in revenue by about 50% from peak COVID alcohol consumption. So we make made hard seltzers when they were peaking. Bread and butter is hard cider from apples from the Shenandoah, sugar-free, unfiltered, unpasteurized healthy alcohol, right comeback kid apples only wing man, which is my grandfather, went to the naval academy, went down in his plane, never got to met him, so it’s named after him. And then hazy hopped, which is at IPA beer drinker cider, the unknown, the untold toll, you’ve heard it I think from both of us are the realities of potentially watching your dreams slip through your fingers and really not having any control over what’s happened.
(48:13):
My apples, David’s going to call me. My apple cultivators are fifth generation Virginia cultivators that sold the trees to Monticello’s Orchard manager Thomas Jefferson, the apple cider that you saw, those cans, some of the seven apples that we use come from Monticello’s Orchards. Very unique, fun, cool stuff. If you’re into that nerdy part of what I do, David, my cultivator iss not sure if he’s going to be able to pick those apples this year. He can’t find anybody to pick them or he can’t afford to pay anyone to pick them now. And so I get that I’m a nationalist at heart. I was born here, but how far do you want to take this and how far do you want to push all these businesses? Because at some point, it’s like that woman famously said the other week on the Senate, and she said, you can’t grow bananas in America. Who makes the most apples in the world and ships the most apples in the world and presses the most juice in the world. China. China where all that stadium cider that makes your eyeballs tingle and jittery with 80 grams of sugar in it comes from a Chinese concentrate. And I pay three 70 a gallon for cider. You know what? That stuff costs 21 cents.
(49:42):
How the hell are you going to compete against that? I pay everybody a fair wage plus some, which I’m fine doing, where an American product will continue to be that we’ll never, ever import juice from anywhere. I don’t know. I don’t know what to tell you.
Barton O’Brien Founder and CEO, BAYDOG (50:06):
The way I’d answered your question is the opportunity cost. I shouldn’t be here right now. I should be in my office working on a new product for next spring, talking to distributors, trying to increase our brand awareness when I’m at the White House or I’m on Capitol Hill having meetings about tariffs, all of which I’ve done when I’m at a small round table with a senator trying to advocate for small business. I’m not focusing on my employees. I’m not focusing on getting dog life jacket orders out the door to West Marine. So it’s the opportunity cost. Not to mention the fact that I’m trying to take orders for next spring from pet store chains for goods that I have no idea how much I’m going to have to pay for. Is it going to be a hundred thousand dollars for dog life jackets or is it going to be $130,000?
(50:55):
How big is the check I’m going to have to write the government and what am I going to do when the stuff that I’m make in India runs out because I can’t make it with a 50% tariff? And just to answer the question that hasn’t been asked, there is no economically feasible way to make anything that I make in the United States. And so frustrating is these tariffs, especially at the levels they are have zero chance of reshoring any jobs in any industry. That’s a cut. And so industry, and if I can impart one thing on you guys as journalists to understand it, is that every business like mine, if we could make stuff in the US, our lives would be so much easier. The reason things are made overseas is because it’s not economically feasible to make it here. So a tariff does nothing to alleviate that problem.
(51:48):
So a dog harness that I sell for 35 bucks, if I made it in the United States, in order for me to make my margins and keep the lights on, I would have to charge $165 for that product. So $35 from Vietnam, $165 in the United States. You can take a tariff and make that foreign version more expensive. But a tariff does nothing to lower the domestic cost of production. And as long as the domestic cost of production is still high, it doesn’t matter how high the tariff is, you can make it so a 10 or 20 or 30% tariff. That difference is never going to swing in favor to the point where you’ll have an economically feasible product that you can make in the United States. Okay? Because it’s not 10% or 20%, it’s 350%. It’s 400%. And that’s what I want. If I can impart anything on journalists, it would be that, and I think the president knows this, you all have a supercomputer in your pocket.
(52:47):
Go to the trump store.com, okay? He makes golf head covers that say Trump on them. He charges 50 bucks for them, and he takes a lot of crap because he doesn’t make stuff in the us. So he makes a US version that says Trump, USA, and it says, made in the USA on it. He charges $175 for that version. The $50 ones that are on there, which is most of them, they’re all made in China. I know this. I talked to the factory that makes them, it’s three miles from the factory that makes my dog harnesses. So he understands that the difference isn’t 20%, it’s 350%. Okay, so, so frustrating for me is I’m here and I’m not focusing on my business. And I know that we’re not going to start building sneaker factories in Pennsylvania anytime. Matter of fact, Scott Bessant was asked about Bay Dog specifically, and his answer was, well, we don’t want to make dog collars in the United States. So my question is why are you taring them? I didn’t get an answer. I think we have
Savannah Hawley-Bates | KCUR (53:43):
Time for one. Hi, Savannah Holly Bates from KCUR. It’s the public radio station in Kansas City. So a two part question. So for Dennis, I know you mentioned that Nixon also invoked this authority, but the Nixon shock led, although it had maybe long-term success, it led to stagflation in a recession and like you said, we’re a consumption led economy, but gave away most of our domestic manufacturing, which is causing the problems that Tristan and Barton are having. Now, do you think that this is, although there are merits of maybe these policies that would stand in the long-term or in the international markets like you said, do you think this is giving up a lot of short-term success and short-term small business owners for whatever long-term possibilities there might be? And then for Tristan and Barton, do you feel, I guess, abandoned by the promises that small business owners were given to? I think a lot of politicians when they do their campaigns is we are the small business guy. We’re the small business party, and whatever merits those may have, do you feel like even if in the long term this would make everything better economically, do you feel like it’s sacrificing your guys’ businesses now?
Tristan Wright Founder, Lost Boy Cider (55:12):
Me? So I don’t think any of that matters anymore, mainly because I’m too stupid to give up. You ever heard that phrase? You burn all the ships? I burned the ships eight years ago when I left my comfortable 300 KA year job. I made 70 grand last year barely. And I’m loving life, okay, this isn’t a, don’t feel bad for me. I’m doing exactly what I want to do, and it’s where God wants me to be. If that’s what you align with. And I feel strongly about that. That said your question, you get into the fields when you’re in business. This is our lives. We’ve invested our lives and all this, none of that matters. We are on the island and we’re going to dig until the resources show themselves.
Dennis Shea Former Deputy U.S. Trade Representative (56:24):
I’ll just, if I can remember your question, Savannah, I think on the point I’m making about Nixon was that it was a legal argument is that the predecessor statute to the I-E-E-P-A, the Trading with the Enemies Act contains the same exact language about regulating importation. That act has been incorporated into I-E-E-E-P-A and President Nixon invoked the trading with the enemies act to impose a 10% across the board tariff to address balance of payments issues. So that’s just simply a legal argument that I know the defense in the case will be making. There are counterarguments to that, which I won’t get into, but that’s the point I was making. And I think I was on the US China Economic and Security Review Commission for 11 years. We analyzed the us, US-China relationship from both an economic and a security perspective. And we came to the conclusion that good economics is national security.
(57:28):
And we unfortunately as a country just have outsourced so much of our productive capacity, particularly in certain critical industries, that we really need to get that back. And we’re finding our military doesn’t know where their components are coming. Some of the components are coming from China. We did not have enough PPE, we don’t have enough pharmaceuticals. We relied on legacy chips. So we really need to get that productive capacity back to the United States. So I think there was, in the nineties and the early two thousands, there’s too much a focus on consumer welfare when it came to trade policy. Consumer welfare is obviously very important. Efficiency is important, but there are other values at stake as well, including production, and what kind of country do we want to be? Do we want to be making things here in this country? So I think part of what the Trump tariffs are trying to do is shift away from this exclusive focus on consumer efficiency and consumer welfare, which has been the sort of the predominant theme. Milton Friedman and others promote it to more of a one that is, yes, consumer, we need to get good, less expensive stuff, but we also need to produce stuff here in the United States.
Kevin Johnson/NPF (58:51):
With that, unfortunately, we’re going to have to stop. But from the smarts and the passion that you heard from this panel today, I think underscores why we’re here. And I can’t thank this panel enough for sharing their knowledge and their experience with us. Full disclosure, Dennis and Tristan are neighbors of mine in Alexandria. We sort of encountered each other in different parts of living here, but I can’t thank them enough for joining us along with Bart, who made it all the way from Annapolis. But thank you so much.
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