How Global Trade Wars Hurt Your Mental Health

0:01 Hello and welcome to the Fitmas. My name is Jeremy. His name is Jason. Say hi, Jason. Today we are talking about something on a health and wellness podcast that you may find surprising and may even think, what the fuck does that have to do with my health and wellness? Because that's what I thought when Jason texted me this as a topic idea. But we are going to talk about, don't push the skip button, keep the, just hang on, hang on. We're going to talk about tariffs and AI and how it all. Everything that's going on this global trade war, all this nonsense will directly affect your health. I know, I know. Hang on. Don't go away. Don't go. I don't want you to freak out.

0:42 We're going to make this make sense. Stick around. Jason, help me out. Make this make sense for me, man. What in the world do these tariffs and the fight between Canada and the US and the trade war around the world? How is this going to trickle down and affect me on a day to day basis when I'm trying to just keep my shit together every once in a while? Yeah, so I mean, we've already seen this transition in big companies out there that have already made big announcements that they're going to start investing a huge amount of money and resources and time into artificial intelligence, with the goal being to reduce their dependency on human beings and reduce their labor costs and move as many things as possible over to artificial intelligence.

1:27 With that in mind. The concept of adding these tariffs is going to make everything more expensive and it's going to make everything significantly more expensive, especially when you look at the bullshit tariffs that have been made up based upon some trade deficit value as a percentage of that. there's not a real basis for this. The people in charge of the current US administration have no idea what they're doing. I mean, they're lost and they're making something up and this is not Not politically controversial because you're seeing the same things happen in things said in conservative media sources like this is clearly something that just isn't.

2:08 The math isn't math-ing. Yeah, I mean, for lack of a better term, but the net effect of this is that most of the infrastructure pieces that are required to implement these artificial intelligence systems are actually built overseas and they're all going to be tariffed through the roof. And if you look at the things that are carved out, as far as exceptions go for these tariffs, chips aren't on there. And these graphic processing units and these language processing units, which are the keys to actually making AI work, are all going to go up. And the other components that go into that, others from the conductor pieces that go into that, boards, sheet metal to make these different pieces, building new data centers to house this stuff, things like steel and concrete and asphalt, like all these things.

2:55 We import several different components of this into our country to put these things together. And we haven't been charging a minimum 10 % uplift on that, and some places 37 % uplift on that. All that's going to get passed on to people that consume these things. So the people that consume these artificial intelligence components as individual consumers, yes, our costs might go up 25%, which, you know, fine, you're paying 20 bucks a month for a Chad GPT subscription right now or using the free version. So it's going to be, you know, zero dollars. Everyone else is going to pay 20 to 25. Not a big change. When you talk about these companies out there, though, they actually have to pay these bills.

3:38 in that context, they're going to take everything that they're putting forward in this and they're going to wind up having to pay a lot more. And because they're paying a lot more, they're going to pass that additional cost onto their consumers. Now, there's this belief by these companies that they can actually save money by reducing the number of human beings doing things. by having AI do these things for them. And we've all known that it's going to be messy transition process. It's not going to get it right. It's going to give us bullshit responses. There's going to be issues. But because it's a shiny object that seems like it could actually make them money, they've all kind of made these announcements that a lot of these companies that are moving in this direction.

4:19 And the people that built this infrastructure, your Amazons and Googles and Microsofts, Amazon got five nuclear reactors approved to be built in Eastern Washington. So they can actually power these GPUs and LPUs. Well, all that shit's going to cost more money. And because it's all going to cost more money, they're going to push that back to the people that are actually consuming those service layers. Those companies out there that are trying to make these replacements are now going to have to pay 25 % more, which means their margins aren't going to be as great. And they're going to have to deal with the fact that we're about to head into a global recession and possibly global depression because of this trade war that's going to go on. And that is going to destabilize things further. And it's going to make them have to make a choice of either, hey, do we abandon these AI projects because there's some upfront cost behind this?

5:03 Or we've already got this initiative to go after these places because we want to make more money because, burp, I'll greed. That's part of the equation. And then now it becomes my labor costs are too high. And I've got these AI costs that are too high. What are they going to dump first? It's not going to be the AI because there's a potential. Right. They're going to dump more people faster. And what they're going to do is they're going to dump those people that I would have normally had to train these things to make them proficient and efficient and effective. And they're going to cut corners and they're going to get worse results. And they're not going to give a shit because the number of companies out there that are going to be doing this.

5:47 is going to shrink because you're going to wind up having winners and losers in these trade wars. Actually, I should say you're going to have degrees of losing, not winners and losers. So something I think is interesting though is like this doesn't just impact the chat GPT user like you mentioned Amazon. this, know, if they're suddenly paying more, you're suddenly paying more. Whatever you're having delivered to your house is going to cost more. When you log into your BetterHelp app or Headspace or use your Apple Watch to track whatever like your membership for those various services. All of that is going to be impacted. So again, this is not like a DC problem. This is not something that's happening at the capital. This is not something that's happening only to the companies. All of this is going to trickle down on top of the grocery bill you're already paying, on top of your probably mortgage and rent prices that are going up.

6:34 Like all of this is going to directly impact you. And then getting to where you were going there, you're probably also gonna lose your job depending on whatever sector you're in. Yeah, I mean, I would say it's realistic that there's going to be a 5 to 10 % shrinkage in jobs. I mean, that's realistic. I mean, we've already been running a record low job number. wellness and your mental health while you're dealing with it because you can't afford to pay for the app anymore. And you're probably watching the news, losing your mind, screaming and throwing things at the television because they keep announcing these stupid things that are going to keep happening to make life worse for everybody. Well, and if you think about the it's not just about losing your job.

7:15 It's about reducing the number of hours you're going to have in your job. It's going to be under employment as a result of a lot of these components because they're going to be using these little bits of AI to try to push things into things that are our wrote human tasks. The other side of this is that the work that's going to be available is probably going to be difficult because If the machines can do the computational work and they can do the digital lifting, somebody still has to do the heavy lifting. So the work that's probably going to be available to most people is not going to be what they've actually trained on doing or necessarily what it is they're good at. And because of that, that stress, that change, that transition is going to affect everybody.

7:58 And it's not entirely doom and gloom. I mean, it's, it's really not. I mean, there will. said, I literally was just going to say like, I hate having topics like this because I want to be able to offer a glimmer of hope, something that you can that you can tactically do to try to prevent your life from feeling like it just a complete shit show because of all these things that are very much or at least seemingly out of our control. Well, so I think it's Robert Rodriguez has this this quote of a fear forward where even though you're afraid of doing a thing or a thing might be happening or bad things are occurring. Tough shit, you got to do it like you.

8:39 You just got to bite it off and go and make it try to make some changes. And it's great when you're talking about creative pursuits and you're talking about creating a film with no money. and doing those kinds of things. But when you're talking about, you know, your health and wellbeing and how am going to make these things, how am going to make ends meet? Like those things are a bit scarier, but at the end of the day, it doesn't matter. This is going to be a macro problem that's going to affect everybody and it's going to affect everybody in a bad way. The other side of this is that the the dollar, the US dollar may get devalued and you might wind up with a new currency standard. such as the euro or the yuan.

9:21 And those are things that will change the way that people react to different things because a lot of countries have their entire economy based on the idea of the strength of the dollar. And if these things start to get sold off because the US begins to look like an unreliable trade partner, which guess what? It is. You're going to wind up seeing these bigger macro changes. But that means everybody around you is going to be kind of affected at the same rate. Mm-hmm. and people in your neighborhood. We're all going to be suffering together, and this show is going to be short lived because I don't I don't see the big companies out there letting this happen very long. There's just so much fun. There's I mean, we've lost five trillion dollars in a day.

10:04 seen or heard the tape anyway of Elon Musk crying to Trump about how much Tesla is suffering because of everything. He's even going like, dude, we got to do something. This isn't good. Right. And this is hugely problematic. So when you you look at these things in context, how is it that we're going to get through this in a way that actually gives us something of value out of it? So one, first and foremost, you're going to get to optimize the things in your life. You're going to get a Marie Kondo shit basically out of necessity because you're probably just not going to have as many economic resources to make these things happen. So, you know, going out and going, hey, I'm going to buy an extra bottle of beer, an extra bottle of booze, or blah, blah, blah. Well, you might have money to do that.

10:45 So use it as an opportunity to drink less. Buy better food, buy smaller quantities. You can make all these small micro adjustments to the reality of your situation that's going to be affected by us with all these tariffs and all these additional pieces. And AI, I mean, I can't stress this enough. AI is going to be a huge component in this space. And it's There's multiple different angles, but one of the really scary angles of this is that if we're taking these shortcuts and cutting corners on these pieces with LLMs that are already not great and already are flawed and based upon past information and we've the whole information cycle, we've turned these things into dumber things than our human counterparts, but they do it really, really fast.

11:29 So there's a presumption that it's better. And I think of this, you know, kind of the same way that I think a problem is like, you know, it's really expensive to employ kindergartners to go out there and play on swings. But. If you have older kids go out there and play on swings with these kindergartners, you might wind up with with a landscape of bloody children as a result of this. Well, that's what we're heading in towards. So we have some smart workers that are older kids that are out there doing the things they need to do. and then a billion little kindergartners that have no idea what they're doing, running around, making things, creating chaos.

12:11 And there's going to be some bumps along the way. And it's I mean, it really is just going to be this like free for all of of things happening on the Internet around us that we're not really going to have a lot of gating control over. And because we don't have gating control over it, some of us aren't going to be a lot of the playground anymore. So if that's the case, great. Build your own. And I think that's where things are going is we we have to figure out a way to become happy, self-reliant, and all of these different pieces on our own in the context of the idea that corporate America and really the US government is not going to be there to help US citizens anymore. And it's going to be adversarial to people around the world because we're creating this protectionism isolationist strategy.

12:53 And at the end of the day, if everything's more expensive and you're not bringing in as much money revenue on your end, Me, Inc. is going to suffer. And I got to make a determination as to, you know, how am I going to let myself suffer in this scenario? And that's going to be realigning your life, realigning your perspectives, putting those things in the proper context. And honestly. Turn off the news. mean, it's it's the grossest thing out there. Social media is disgusting. It's only getting worse. It's only getting more toxic and hate filled. And it's only going to add to the stress that the reality of the situation is already piling on you. so I think, you know, one of the kind of the stoic philosophies is coming into my head of the idea of just sort of preparing for, you know, what seems inevitable.

13:41 And I think you were alluding to this, like, don't wait until you have to downsize. Don't wait until you have to Marie Kondo the shit out of your house. Like, this is the time. Like, prepare for it now because it's coming. barring any major shift or sudden awakening in DC to like wildly correct course, we're all gonna feel the financial pressure of this. And so if you can, like for me, this takes me back to the whole reason like I moved from where I did in Seattle to where I am now in Canada. Like we were forced into a lifestyle that turned out to be better. Like we didn't like. you know, in comparison, what we were doing compared to what we ended up doing. And it was the pain of COVID and the pain of isolation that made us look for where's the healthiest and happiest place that we can live like this in case this is forever.

14:30 Well, what if this is forever? It's probably not, right? mean, odds are that historically you can tell like these things course correct and get better, but it's going to suck for a while. So what can you do now to make the suck suck less for a while to get through it? And you may find that by like getting rid of shit, selling stuff to have a little bit more income coming in. Like maybe you can survive with a little bit less and all of a sudden you feel like I didn't need all that shit to begin with. Like this is actually kind of better. And I'm not saying that to sort of play into the like a little bit of pain right now is better for the long run, you know, bullshit narrative that you're hearing. But like in some cases it may be for you personally, this like everyone taking a kick in the nuts to like try to make a better America.

15:12 I don't think that's the path that we're actually on. Yeah, like I can't disagree with that and it. It's going to be about 30 to 90 days when all these price hikes happen, because inventory is going to be out at that point in time and the grocery stores and the big box stores are going to have to go through and adjust their prices to reflect the reality of these tariffs. And with that in mind, you you've got like the next. one to three months to try to figure this stuff out and figure out how it is you're to make these adjustments and just assume every consumable that you want to buy is going to be 25 % more expensive. And just making the determination right now that, I'm going to use the car that I got for the next four years.

15:58 That's probably not a bad idea. And making a determination, I'm only going to consume things in this way from these locations. That's probably not a bad idea either. I mean, I hate to say it, but if you love guacamole, shit's going to be hard. mean, California avocados are fucking expensive. They're delicious, but they're expensive. Avocados are about to get crazy expensive, and it's funny because one of my neighbors sent me out this recipe for eggs Benedict. He's like, but because eggs are so expensive, I've replaced the eggs with scallops. I'm like, scallops are like 20 bucks a pound.

16:39 Well, he's right. it is cheaper to put a scallop on a Benedict. So I had scallops, things Benedict or anything with scallops on. It was wonderful. I made an adjustment. Exactly. Well, and I mean, that's and that's food, right? And these are joking pieces and they're it's interesting because we're making the shift to much more of a service economy. We've been making that for a long time. And now there's this belief that we're going to somehow become a manufacturing base again, and we're going to these things back into the country and there's going to be these these new jobs and you've got half of the country that's really pumped and excited that thinks this is going to happen somewhat soon.

17:21 The fuck it is. Remember to build those factories, you're going to have to take goods from things outside the US, which are all going to cost more money, which nobody is going to have extra of because we're all paying tariffs. So. have to convince a lot of people that, YouTuber is not the career path you're on, grab this shovel. There's a whole culture of building stuff that we haven't had to do for a long time because we found people to do it for a fraction of the price. So reintegrating manufacturing and building and actual physical labor for a lot of people is going to be something that is going to be a very foreign concept that's going to take a long time to adapt to. Boeing is right in my backyard.

18:01 And we have a bunch of neighbors that work there on the floor. Some of them do film, some are architects. There's a bunch of folks here. And a lot of them made career transitions to go back to Boeing for something else they did before. they were like, these transitions were hard. They were difficult because I was in an industry that did X, Y, or Z, and that industry dried up. So I made this change. And they're like, my day is on a factory floor on my feet or crawling into small parts of an airplane to run wire and cable. Yes, it pays well, but it's a whole different thing. mean, a lot of them were like, I used to go to the gym all the time. I used to do this. I used to do that. It's like, I'm exhausted now.

18:42 I have no energy for that at all. So I mean, a lot of these folks, like me, a tech worker and working on the business side of things, somebody comes to me and says, you got to pick up a shovel and go dig ditches. part of me is like, that's gonna suck. Another part of me is like, I don't have to go to CrossFit five times a week now. I mean, I'll adjust and adapt because that's just kind of who I am, but other people need to be able to be able and willing to make those things and those changes happen. And there's gonna be a lot of fight and there's gonna be a lot of pushback. And not to mention the fact that, you you've got a huge amount of personal automation already on deck.

19:25 and showing up from some of these other companies out there. I Musk's Optimus robot is not, it actually works. It actually does some things that are kind of interesting and it's gonna be out of reach for most people at 25 to 30 grand a pop, which is what they're quoting it. I'm sure it's gonna be 75, 80 and Trump will give some kind of fucking giveaway for it. But those are things that people are pushing and they're trying to make those things happen because they're trying to reduce the value of human labor by pulling in these robots. and pulling in these things, these automatons that can do these things without people or human interaction. And then that becomes, you thought it was hard to live on the US minimum wage of $7.25 on 40 hours a week.

20:08 Well, we only have 20 hours a week work for you because the robots have taken it over because you're doing it for five bucks an hour. These are considerations that are going to have to play into it. And I don't think you have an account or an administration in US that's really going to be friendly to that. And the US right now, is 4 % of the population and it basically equates for 20 % of global domestic productivity. So 20 % of the money generated goes to the US and it's 4 % of the population. So essentially, it's a five to one ratio of the average American. And even our poverty class in the US, our poverty line is still in the top 1 % globally of nations.

20:51 Yes, there is going to be an effect of tariffs. And I believe the effect of those tariffs is going to be to shrink that ratio because I don't think we're going to have as much productivity. We're going to start losing supply chain value. We're going to start having these things pull back. The money is going to become tighter. It's going to be more difficult. And it's not just going to affect poor folks. Like it's it's going to affect everybody top to bottom. They're going to be some people that are going to weather this very, well, and they're going to buy up other pieces and property and make themselves very, very wealthy and rich. For the average folks like you and I, that's not going to happen. We're going to have to figure out how to get by and how to survive this period of time.

21:34 Because I've watched my retirement plan, poof, over the last few months. Yeah. I got kids in college. I got a mortgage to pay. I got all these things happening. You can sense it around here where I'm at up in Everett, Washington. People are pissed off and people are scared and people are angry and the attitude is insane. Like people are driving like reckless a-holes and flipping each other off. Like the stress level is just high and people are trying to get where they have to go as quickly as they can because they're trying to figure out a way to hustle and make money. And it's not good for everyone's mental health. It's going to make things worse.

22:14 And at the end of the day, as individual as you're going to have to figure out your path through this. And the best advice that I can give anybody right now is to just be prepared and start preparing now that your wallet, your dollar's not going to go as far and you're probably not going to have as many dollars in Yep. So yeah, solid advice. That's where I was gonna go. You beat me to it. So I know what I'm doing when we hang up the call. I'm gonna start going through stuff and making some plans because it seems pretty inevitable at this point. It does. I will say that Canada has a very, very good plan in place. It seems like it seems like, you know, they've made some smart decisions.

22:58 And you can look at Europe like England's making some of these adjustments now also. The Swedes right now are restarting their nuclear bunker program because they're looking at the way things are becoming destabilized. And they're anticipating that these bunkers that they built after World War Two to stave off a nuclear assault by Russia are going to need to be restarted. just in case, they're going to have to just invested, I think, like $40 million to go through and rebuild these bunkers so they can house 75 % of the Swedish population in this fashion. Like you're seeing major state actors making these kinds of adjustments and prep movements because shit's weird. Well, that's what's been so interesting to watch it from this side of the border.

23:41 I'm in Canada. you know, there's a lot of talk up here about like, for us, this is kind of good. Like it's going to help us. It's going to force us to sort of open up our trade routes. We're going to have to make some new relationships. We're going to have to not rely on one place as much. We're going to have to rely on ourselves a lot more. And I think that attitude. helps also trickle down to the individual to be a little more self-reliant and not depend on the government and certain sources that are available. Clearly those are needed. I'm not saying, you know, that we need to be cutting those things, but the more that you can take the lesson here that, you know, ain't nobody coming on a white horse to save you no matter what you're trying to change. the more you can sort of take stock of where you're at and figure out what is within your control to make those changes, the better off you're gonna end up on the other side of this.

24:26 And hopefully we all end up on a relatively decent side of this because it's pretty scary right now. Well, and it's what is interesting. And one of the things that has been happening in the AI market is that you've got several large countries out there where they are not taking full advantage of AI and machine learning because the majority of the AI ML infrastructure resides in the U S and they're like, I don't want to put all my data and effective processing. in a foreign actor who has control of those pieces because they're afraid that the US federal government might be snooping and listening in. Because they are.

25:06 I mean, let's just be really clear about it. So they have plans to go through and create what they call AI factories. And nobody's really been able to implement them because the cost metrics don't pan out because of the way that global trade is set up. Well, That has been very beneficial for the US because these big companies in the US can become these spots for this and kind of force everybody to do this and build these separate private infrastructures. Well, now these other places out there are like, well, economically it doesn't make sense for us to not build it here now. It makes as much sense because I'm not gonna have to pay this important tariff taxes.

25:49 I mean, this is. Yeah, it's kicking ourselves in the nuts, shooting ourselves in the dick. don't I mean, pick something. I mean, punching ourselves in the ovaries. I'm fuck. I don't know, man. Like, all I know is that we're we're attempting to to sterilize our productivity and sterilize our people from being able to go through and actually be productive members of society. And half of this country is going, yeah. I mean, it's like the scene from Idiocracy where Fredo has his car blown up and is cheering that his car is being blown up. And Joe's like, Fredo, that's your car.

26:29 What are you doing? That's what this feels like. And yeah, we need a president Camacho to come in and take care of this problem. Yeah, it's time to go back to drinking Mountain Dew. It's got electrolytes. Exactly. And Bronto, the thirst speed later. I'm sure we just violated like 15 trademarks. Exactly. All right, well on that happy note, I think we can wrap things up here. And any closing thoughts here for the person who is completely hopeless now that we've terrified them. Um, yes, uh, none of it is forever.

27:09 All of it's temporary, including you. So you will not have to suffer this forever one way or the other. We all expire at some point. The life expectancy for everybody over a long enough period of timeline is zero, including people that make stupid fucking tariff decisions. We'll just leave that one dangling out there. Thank you so much for listening. You can follow us on social media. You can reach out to us, info at thefitmess.com and subscribe on whatever podcast player you're listening to this on now so that you don't miss the next episode, which should be out in about a week at thefitmess.com.

27:49 Thanks so much for listening.