They say tariffs are the worst economic policies ever, and for lots of reasons. But what if that’s the biggest lie in modern economics? They told you tariffs are just a tax on you. They say they start trade wars. They say that making stuff in America means that you’re going to pay 10 times more. But what if none of that’s true? Because if they’re wrong, we’ve built our economy on a myth. We’ve handed our power to countries that don’t play fair. Now, I’ve spent years studying this and talking about this and speaking around the world about history, cycles, and what actually works.

And in this video, I’m going myth by myth to show you what they don’t want you to see. So let’s go. All right, we’re going to jump right through this, go through the biggest myths that you’ve heard. Now, why are they myths and why are they not real? Well, the main reason why is these myths are being pushed by academics. They’re being pushed by theories that sound really good on paper, but they’re not in the real world. Now, somebody who’s built multiple businesses and had multiple exits, I’ve learned the real world. And when I break these down to you, it’s going to make perfect sense.

And I just want to let you know that again, in theory, it sounds good, but the real world is much more complex. Anyway, let’s jump right in the consumer price myth. So you’ve been told mainstream media is telling you that if tariffs, if the US puts tariffs in place, then you, the consumer will pay more, and they say it’s basically a hidden tax. It’s like increasing taxes. So Trump says he’s going to lower taxes, but tariffs now that’s a hidden tax. Okay. Number one, again, the consumer is the one that’s going to pay this, they’re going to pay more.

And they tell us that because you’re going to have to pay more for prices, for goods and services, then that’s also going to cause inflation. Prices will be going up. I listened to Scott Besant, the treasury secretary on an interview, I believe with Tucker Carlson. And he said that if the consumer is going to pay the increase, then why are other nations so worried about it? Interesting perspective. Again, from somebody who knows how to make money, let’s break this down how this really works in the real world. So first of all, when we talk about tariffs, there’s three parties involved.

First, you have the exporter. Okay, so this is the exporter, maybe the producer, if you will. So goods are being made in another country, in China, and they’re exporting them, they’re exporting them over to America, let’s say they’re going to increase tariffs. But really, the importer or retailer would be Walmart, right? So China exports to Walmart. And then the third party in this is this is you, the consumer. So there’s three people in this chain. So the United States under the new Trump policies, we’re going to add tariffs, we’re going to add 10% 20% on China now, whatever 125%.

We’re going to increase tariffs. First of all, where does that get paid? Who pays it? Well, the person that pays it is the importer. So Walmart or whoever imports this is going to have to pay that new percentage of imports to the US, not the exporter, not China, not you, the consumer, they have to pay it. However, this is where free markets and capitalism and business 101 gets a little bit into the details. So Walmart has to pay the United States, but they can’t afford to pay an extra 20% or 40% 100%. They can’t do that.

So who’s going to pay it? Well, it’s going to be split between these three parties. So what mainstream media wants to fear monger you and say that you are going to pay all of that increase. That’s not the case. As a matter of fact, you’re probably not going to be split here. So what Walmart’s going to do is they’re going to push this back back to the exporting country. This is why the countries don’t want it. So Walmart says like, hey, I don’t have that in my margin. I don’t have that amount of money.

So you, the producer, exporter are going to have to lower your prices. You’re going to have to lower your prices down to offset that. And then the producer is going to push that down the supply chain. So all the way down from the raw materials to the commodities, to the labor, everybody gets squeezed to change this amount here. Now they’re going to eat some of it, push it all the way back backwards. They’re going to eat some of it, but the consumer is most likely not going to eat any of it. Why is that? Well, if Walmart could just raise its prices by 10 or 20 or 50%, they would, but they can’t obviously you, I, the consumer, we can’t afford to pay that increase.

They would have already done that. The consumer, especially today, it’s already stretched for really thin. And so the price here, if any increase at all, will be very minimal. Only what could be managed and afforded, all of the rest is going to be pushed back down, which is why China doesn’t want it. So it’s not an increase on you, the consumer. It’s not going to cause inflation. Like they say it is, what it is, it is going to affect the manufacturing nations, which is why they don’t want it. All right. The next one we’re going to talk about is the retaliation myth.

Now real quickly, I do want to just say, you know, one thing that’s not being tariffed, technology, right? Technology moves around the world and we are witnessing the largest explosion of technology in the world. The world’s ever seen. It’s a 50 year cycle. It’s happening for the sixth time in 300 years and it gives us a blueprint to invest into the convergence of AI, robotics, autonomous vehicles, Bitcoin, and so much more. I’m going to do a whole workshop on this and show you this exact blueprint and what I’m buying so we can all make money.

There’s a link down below. It’s all free coming out. We’ll go through all the charts. I’ll answer all your questions, lives. You can apply it to your own portfolio. It’s all free. Like I said, there’s a link down below, but let’s figure out why retaliation is really a myth. And so this is like, why would you antagonize China? Don’t you know that they could start war with us and we can’t go to war or they may invade Taiwan or all these different things. So why would we retaliate? And so that’s a big myth that China is going to retaliate and that we’re going to take this from this trade war and potentially turn it into a real war, a cold war to a hot war, if you will.

However, in the real world where real economic decisions matter, well, what you’ll find out is that strategic thinking are much more powerful and more important than emotional. You see, in theory, I guess that makes sense. But in the real world, if I act emotionally, I put people at risk, I put my country at risk, I put my legacy at risk. And so what I find is that cooler heads prevail and we think through strategy over emotion. Let me give you an example of what I’m talking about. So let’s say that here we have the two nations battling out right now, China and America right here.

Now, America wants to impose tariffs on China. Well, China and America both have strategic things they can do. Sure, they could just retaliate and start war. Why would they do that? So they have levers like, well, they could impose tariffs back. China’s done that. They could manipulate their currency, lower their currency to offset those tariffs, which is what the US wants. They could use things like rare earth elements, things the US really needs, but China produces as leverage to offset that. They can use diplomacy. They could try and come and talk about this.

The US also has levers, so that’s the tariffs that have already been put on. The US could do sanctions because it controls the global monetary system. They can do sanctions. They can restrict technologies, what the US has been doing, restrict how much advanced chips that China can have, things like that. And then they can restrict exports back the other way. So there’s lots of levers that can be done without going to war. And if you think about it, here’s what would happen. So when you have to make a decision, you know that in the real world, there’s no black and white, we have trade off.

So what we typically want to do is you’d see a decision tree. So the US imposes tariffs on China. What’s China going to do? Well, they have two options. Number one, they could retaliate. Option two, they could adapt. And the way these options. Should we retaliate and start war, or should we just adapt and pivot to these? So what would retaliate be? Well, if we retaliate, we’re going to hurt ourselves even worse. I mean, people could die, we’re going to spend a lot of money, but we also hurt our own exports. That means not only are we hurting our people in our military, but we’re crushing our economy at the same time.

We risk consumer prices going up. So there’s a lot of risk if we retaliate. Do we really want to do that? Why don’t we think about, what about adapting? Well, we could just subsidize our exports, which is what China’s been doing for a long time. We could find alternative buyers. And as a matter of fact, this is basically what happens. In the first round of Trump tariffs back in 2018, China said, fine, we’re going to retaliate. And so what we’re going to do is we’re not going to buy American soybeans anymore.

Big deal. Now, it was a big deal in the beginning. The US suffered, right? I mean, we had farmers that needed to sell the soybeans, but the US could have retaliated back. But instead, the US went down the adapt route, and they found European buyers to buy the soybeans. So today, the soybeans from America are still being sold just to a different buyer. China, instead of buying it from the US went, I think, to Brazil to buy them. And so things adapt. This is a moving market. The world changes and adapts, and people, sure, certainly could go to war over it.

But cooler heads typically would prevail. And strategically, we just adapt instead of retaliating and going to war. If China wants to go get Taiwan over this, it’s not about a 10 or 20% tariff. They want Taiwan, right? It’s a bigger deal. All right. Okay, myth number three is the comparative myth. All right. Now, this one, again, is really baked in schoolroom theory. And so in economics 101, they’re telling you that each country should specialize. And this is sort of like capitalism. So instead of me growing my own food and building my own house and making my own clothes, let me just build the house, you grow the food, and you make the clothes.

That’s specialization. And that’s great. And that’s what free markets are built around. However, in economics 101, they say that globalism should expand into that, where then each country specializes. So this country is really good at growing wheat. This country is really good at growing mangoes. This country is really good at pulling minerals out of the ground. And this country is really good at making weapons. Right. And so in that free trade would always win. But again, that’s baked in theory and ultimately false assumptions. Let me break that down for you. Okay, so in a classic free trade frame, what you would have is one country is really good at raising sheep, and they make a lot of wool.

Then we have country two, they’re really good at growing grapes and making wine. So country two, you just make the wine. And country one, you just make the wool. And we’ll just trade wool for wine. Well, that’s a classic frame. And that is again, baked in theory. But in the real world, it’s a little bit different. So let me tell you, so the real world we saw like in 1990, Taiwan had some computers. Now in now today, Taiwan has microchips, some of the best in the world, right? And so they’ve changed.

So what are we talking about? We’re talking about the difference of a comparative advantage. Somebody makes wool, somebody makes wine versus a strategic advantage. So what are you talking about? A comparative advantage would be just do what you’re good at, make the wool, make the wine. A strategic advantage is build what you need to be good at, not what you’re good at, what you need to be good at. So I might be really good at wool, but we might also need weapons. I might really be good at wine, but we probably need some manufacturing or industrial base as well.

In a comparative advantage, it thinks about things statically, like economies just stay the same forever. Like just make the wool for all of eternity. Wool will always be necessary. Versus a strategic advantage understands that we’re in a dynamic economy and things change and technology change and people change. But also what happens is economies change. So when you start at the bottom, so some of the Asian countries that are just now getting manufacturing at the bottom, some people might say, oh, that’s slave labor. Well, yeah, I mean, it’s like bottom level labor and economies have to grow their way out of it.

A hundred years ago, the US basically had that same slave labor as well, making the clothes, making the textiles now to over in Asia. But each country grows out of it, sort of like what happened with Taiwan, they grew out of it. So it’s not a static economy, it’s a dynamic economy. Number three, comparative advantage is based on past efficiencies. I used to be really good at wool or wine or growing wheat. But a strategic advantage is based on future potential. I see the world is changing this way. We should be really good at that.

I see that potentially our security is going to be threatened. We should think about building up our military. Or in the case of Taiwan, we see technology growing, maybe we should get really good at microchips. As a matter of fact, that’s the story of Taiwan. Taiwan wasn’t good at making microchips. But they decided that they should get good at making microchips. They decided to build plants to do that when they had no experience doing that. And now they’re some of the best in the very world. So instead of wool and wine, think about semiconductors and AI, moving to what is going to be its dynamic, the world changes and shifts.

Great nations don’t just trade their strengths, they develop new ones. All right. Now on the next myth, this is the reshoring myth. So what you hear is that, part of this whole tariff strategy, that’s sort of the leverage, layer one, really, it’s about bringing manufacturing back to the US, reindustrializing. So bringing manufacturing back to the United States. And so the myth is that we’ll shoot, everything’s going to get more expensive then, right? Because I mean, shoot, you make stuff in Asia or China, where labor is really cheap. And then you make it in the United States, where labor is really expensive.

Of course, it has to bring prices back up, right? Of course, it has to. And again, that’s based in theory, it’s not based in the real world. And any business owner understands this. This is a 1d argument in a 4d multi dimension world. Let me explain what I’m talking about here. Okay, so let’s just look at like automobiles, for example, the auto worker labor is what they’re talking about. Hey, in China, it’s a $5 to $10 is what an auto worker makes in China, $5 to $10 an hour. In America, that same workers $16 to $29.

So obviously, if I have to pay $29, instead of $5 to $10, it’s going to increase my cost. Okay, well, again, a business owner understands that labor is just one piece of the entire total product cost. So we have design. So when it’s the design, how much we pay them, we have logistics, how do we get all the raw materials and all the pieces and all of that moving around the shipping costs. Now the cars have to be shipped over to the United States, we have the energy input. So one of Trump’s things is to get energy down really low, whereas like in Germany, the automobiles energy has gotten so high that a lot of German autos are now being built in other European countries where energy is lower.

There’s quality and waste, we know that German quality is really good, Chinese quality isn’t, so there’s a lot of waste that’s accounted for that. Then we have labor, and then we have time. So how long does it take to get the stuff over there? How long does it take to make it? And how long does it take to get over here? Let me give an example. Right now, Mexico is becoming one of the powerhouses in the world for manufacturing. A lot of manufacturing that was happening in Asia has been coming to Mexico.

Now, labor in Mexico is more expensive than labor in Asia. However, the Mexican workers are a lot more efficient, meaning they can get a lot more done with a lot less time. So if a worker, let’s just say hypothetically, was making $2 an hour, and it took them 10 hours to produce a good, that would be $20. Right? But let’s say another worker is getting paid $10 an hour, but it takes them only two hours to get it done. That’s still only $20. So it’s not the price of the labor, it’s the efficiency.

But not just the efficiency of the labor, all of these other things, the quality, the waste, the inputs of the energy, the shipping cost, the logistics, and all of that. So it’s a very complex thing. This is why, in theory, it sounds like it makes sense. So we have labor. In China, it’s cheap. In the US, it’s higher, certainly. Shipping from China to the US is expensive. In the US, it’s local. Risk. Well, there’s geopolitical risk in China. We saw that with Apple, where Apple is also having to move their plants over to India, because there’s geopolitical risk.

In the US, it’s stable. Automation. In China, it’s lower. In the US, there’s advanced. Quality, inconsistent in China, US, higher. Now, we can argue each one of these and what product we’re talking about, but you get the idea. We’re trying to break the myth here. Again, in theory, it sounds logical or reasonable. In the real world, if you’re a business owner, you know that it doesn’t make sense. And so it’s certainly possible that the US could re-onshore a lot of things, use automation, become more efficient, and save in a lot of areas, and potentially match the cost, potentially even bring cost down.

Okay. The next myth is that tariffs equal isolation. Tariffs are anti-trade. Tariffs are anti-globalism. That means that you don’t want to participate in the world and you want to be an island. Well, maybe, maybe not. Again, maybe that’s oversimplified. Tools, trade, or tariffs, protectionism, are greater than building up walls. So it’s not about walls. It’s about tools and strategically using tools. So countries want to use these tools because it’s how you adapt. It’s how you can grow. And so these tools, tariffs, walls, are a tool that can be used to buy time.

This is what America did. This is exactly how America grew. When America broke off from Europe, Europe was much more advanced. Europe could make everything faster and cheaper, right? So the US had to put tariffs in place to protect the economy so it could grow to then outpacing the European economy, right? That’s what happened. But it needed to buy itself time and so those protections did that. Now, also, you want to use them strategically. Again, theory is just dumb and it’s vague. Specifically, we want to use strategic uses. So for example, it doesn’t make any sense to be the best fruit producer when fruit grows in a different part of the world.

Like, let them grow the fruit. We’ll bring the fruit over here. We don’t really grow good fruit here, right? But we have these minerals in the ground they don’t have. So let’s get these minerals over there. So definitely it’s strategic as well. Remember, these are very dynamic, very complex issues. Let me break this down. So what we want to do is we want to do targeted tariffs. We want to just say everything. That’s the starting point. Then you break it down. Targeted tariffs. So thinking about the strategic cycle. So what we really want to do is we want to reshore key industries.

So what am I talking about? Well, the COVID supply chain, the COVID pandemic that exposed the supply chains for what they were, really highlighted for the US and for the rest of the world, a lot of dangerous situations where supply chains were weak and maybe there’s very key things that we need we can’t get. The Russia-Ukraine war has completely exposed how should we say incapable the US and European, the NATO forces are at industrial policies, such as how can we even create enough bullets or enough weapons to go over to war.

And so we need to reshore key industries. So some things like national defense, for example, might be worth paying a little bit more for because it’s really important or key industries. Then we need to train the workforce and we need to invest in innovation for all this to happen. It doesn’t happen at the blink of an eye. It takes time. So again, what the tariffs do is they sort of protect that they put up a wall, they give you a moat and they buy time to allow this to grow and become more competitive.

Think about it like this, tariffs are like a shield, they sort of block out the outside. Like I said, that’s what America did when it was first founded. What that does is it gives you time to build this out, build the factories, build the automation, build those things, then it allows us to become competitive in that new way. Now, ultimately, this brings the whole world forward. Remember, it’s not about labor, it’s about efficiency. So there was a famous story of Milton Friedman, he went over to China, and he saw all these people in China digging, I think it was a dam, and they were all using shovels.

And he said, you know, like, why are they doing this by hand with shovels? Like, why wouldn’t you bring in a tractor? And they told them, well, it’s because if we bring in a tractor, what are all these people going to do for work? We need to keep them working. And he said, well, if that’s the case, then why not just give them all spoons? Then we can have more people working. Shoot, why not just have them dig with toothpicks, we can have even more people working. So it’s not about people working, it’s about efficiencies.

And so what happens is, if through these tariffs and building and having to learn how to be competitive, we can come up with more efficient ways, new technologies, robotics, automations, things like that, then allows humans to go work on higher value things. So tariffs aren’t isolationist, they’re like an incubator, they’re like a shield that allows these new innovations to be built up. All right, so we’ve busted a whole bunch of myths on tariff, the world is much more complex, the real world is much more complex, it’s dynamic. And we’ve learned that they’re not a hidden tax on the consumer.

They don’t automatically start trade wars. People typically think rationally or strategically, not just emotionally, how they’re tools, and they’re really a way for nations to recalibrate, to reinvent, to build what the world needs, not just what they’re good at, like shearing sheep. We learned the US didn’t win through free trade, the US was able to build it to industrial base because it protected it enough to allow it to grow, and that we can keep outsourcing, or we can start building back some of the key things, we don’t need to grow the fruit, but there are key things that need to happen.

So hopefully, this breaks it for you. Now, if you want to find out what we’re doing about this to make money, you know, this is on manufactured goods. But you know, one thing that’s not exposed to tariffs, technology. And that’s really where the big opportunity is to make money. And I called this 50 year cycle, we’ve been talking about it’s the quantum wave cycle, AI, robotics, Bitcoin, all converging together, I’m going to do a whole presentation workshop on this next week, it’s all live, it’s for free. There’s a link down below, come hang out, I’m going to show you this 50 year cycle that we’re using as a blueprint to invest and build more wealth than any time in history.

Coming out is for free. There’s a link down below. But let me know what your single biggest myth is. And if you have other myths, drop them in the comments, and I’ll bring them up and we’ll bust those myths as well. All right, that’s what I got to your success. I’m out. [tr:trw].

See more of Mark Moss on their Public Channel and the MPN Mark Moss channel.