#799: The Economic Revolution Is Already Here with Susan Kokinda

SPEAKER_1 (0:07)

You've had a dynamic where money has become freer than free.

Susan Kokinda (0:10)

When you talk about a Fed just going nuts, all the central banks going nuts.

SPEAKER_1 (0:16)

So it's all acting like safe haven.

I believe that in a world where central bankers are tripping over themselves to devalue their currency, Bitcoin wins. In the world of fiat currencies, Bitcoin is the victor. I mean, that's part of the bold case for Bitcoin.

SPEAKER_3 (0:31)

If you're not paying attention, you probably should be.

Marty Bent (0:36)

Susan Kokinda, welcome back to the show.

Susan Kokinda (0:39)

Good to be here.

Marty Bent (0:41)

Well, glad to have you back as we approach midterms here in the US.

Last time you were here is about 10 months ago, beginning of December of 2025 And I think this is a good check-in period because you made some calls about Q2 and Q3 at that time when we last spoke. And obviously we have the luxury of retrospect today as we speak. So you expected, particularly around the tariff regime and the reindustrialization of the United States, that the tangible effects of the policies that were put in place when Trump got back into power would come in Q2 and Q3 of this year. So with that in mind, how has the Trump administration done in terms of the economic policy they laid forth in Trump too?

Susan Kokinda (1:31)

Well, it's pretty clear, especially since the Dallas Midterm Convention, that the administration is really drilling down hard on the fact that these policies are beginning to take effect from the standpoint of construction jobs, manufacturing, you know, Trump, Vance. They're out there literally every day now, whether it's in Ohio or Alaska or Oklahoma. And they're talking about, you know, the jobs that they're bringing, this brand new steel mill in Iowa, which is going to have 6,000 construction workers and then 1,700 permanent workers ultimately. So that's all there. And when you look at the government statistics, you look at, for example, the BLS statistics, what you see is something very interesting, which is starting when we spoke back in December, since you mentioned that date, I can't believe it was that long. What you actually see is what manufacturing employment had been doing up until then, because it's clear it takes time to actually get these things going and moving. But starting in December of last year, it starts to do this. Manufacturing employment steadily growing now. Then it plateaus for a couple of months right after the Iran conflict starts. But what's really fascinating, I think, is that the increase in manufacturing jobs only plateaus for a couple of months, and then it starts to shoot up again to where it is today. So part of the challenge that we face in terms of the midterms is obvious.

While you've got an underlying fundamental restructuring of the US economy, which is beginning to show itself in these jobs, in the fact that the poverty level is dropping, and childhood poverty and Hispanic poverty are at all time lows, since we actually started counting them. In other words, you're seeing a durable shift in the population's ability to have decent-paying jobs that will actually raise a family. But does everybody feel it necessarily in those terms? Because even it's not that many people, for example, who've gotten these manufacturing jobs. The trajectory is this way, but it's still a relatively small number of people who are actually taking in those paychecks at this point, and then you've got the headwinds from the conflict with Iran.

Or to really put it more appropriately, you have the headwinds from the fact that we've had a crappy economy and we have crappy allies, and that's manifesting itself largely in the price of gasoline and the price of diesel.

What I mean by that is the barrels of oil are now coming out of Iran. That's no longer the issue. So why are the prices still high? Well, because the Democrats carried out a war on energy and shut down our refineries and shut down our producing capacity and so on. Why is diesel high? Trump has said it. The guy that the Democrats put in, basically, Zelensky is bombing Russian refineries, which is affecting the price of things otherwise. So you have this kind of what I call the pain factor. The pain factor being deployed, I would suggest deliberately against the American people. So that as we head into this critical 30 days, going into the midterms, people aren't looking at the really fundamental restructure. They hope, let me put it that way, they hope people won't look at the fundamental restructuring of the economy, which means a durable good future for more and more and more of our fellow Americans. They hope that people will just be reacting to the short-term pain at the pump. So, I have a certain faith that enough of Americans are actually going to see this thing through and recognize that you're in the opening phases of an actual economic revolution. The fundamentals are there, but this temporary pain is obscuring it for a lot of people. But I think that's the message that we've really got to drive home on.