Global Trade This Week – Episode 195
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Keenan Brugh 0:00
You're watching global trade this week with Pete mento and Doug Draper,
Pete Mento 0:07
well, hey everyone. Welcome to another edition of global trade this week. I am Pete mento, and with me is the CO hostess with the mostess. Mr. Doug Draper, how are you pal? Good
Doug Draper 0:17
man. I'm doing really well. Doing really, really well spending time here in Colorado, I'm going to jump into the story Pete, because I just said it, and then we'll let everybody know kind of what you're doing. Yesterday had a moose hang out in my yard for five and a half hours. That's not an exaggeration. And a couple weeks ago, there was a lot of sunshine and steamboats, so things kind of bloomed, I wouldn't say premature, but they bloom. So this moose basically ate every flowered tree that he could reach in my yard, which, you know, I guess, whatever. And then he went around to our back and sat down and took a nap in our backyard for an hour and a half. And I was with my wife. We we banked pots, we put some music out, trying to make him uncomfortable. Didn't work. Didn't work. So finally, Pete, I Googled, how do you get rid of a moose in your backyard? And the response was, you don't. It's now his yard. So we just, we just dealt with it. So I was dealing with with Moose, and the last thing I'll say in this Pete finally got to the point where I was sick sick of waiting. So literally, I got out of a leaf blower and just kind of kept my eye on him. He wasn't super close, but, you know, 20 yards away, and just started my day, and he finally walked down the street. But, yeah, very unusual, but I guess relatively common this time of year, up in Steamboat, for
Pete Mento 1:52
people who do not live in in Moose country Doug. I mean, these things are enormous, right? Like they are, they're shockingly big. And you said it wasn't even a full grown one.
Doug Draper 2:02
It wasn't a full I've looked it was about the size of a horse. And like you said, this was, Well, I think it was a yearling, which means it's been around. It was born last year, not this year, and it had little furry horns that it was it was growing. But yeah, it's sitting down, and then it stands up, and you're like, Whoa. That is a big animal. You
Pete Mento 2:23
so you like Grizzly Adams Doug, you moved out to steamboat. You got moose all the time. You know it. You're gonna have a grizzly bear next. That'll be like,
Doug Draper 2:31
Wow. Well, there's beard of bears running around too. Anyway, you know what? They didn't move into my world. I moved into their world. So you just got to say it's all part of the part of being up here. So
Pete Mento 2:43
do you have grizzly bears? Like, do you have, no, they're black bears. Black bears, okay, yeah, yeah. We had those in the hincher. They're, they're usually pretty afraid of everything around them.
Doug Draper 2:53
Yeah, yeah. No, no Grizzlies here. I mean, maybe somewhere in Colorado, but not in our area. So anyway, enough about that you have, like, some fancy ceiling behind you. I can't think of the right word, but molding. Molding? Yes, ceiling molding, which means you're probably in some highfalutin hotel somewhere. My friend, I'm at
Pete Mento 3:15
the I'm in a quiet conference room at the Mayflower Hotel in downtown Washington, DC. I just spoke for the district Export Council. And as I was saying before the show that the deck in in DC is it's always very good because we're, we're not even, what, four blocks from the White House right now. So they tend to get really good guest speakers. And today was no difference. You know how? Let me stop and buy but you know, Doug this, this hotel reminds me of like your grandparents house. You know, it was probably super freaking nice in the 1950s and now it's just old um, it is just old man and in desperate need of a remodeling. But because it's one of the preeminent meeting hotels in DC, you're never going to change anything like, if I come back 20 years from now, the same crappy chairs, the same crappy carpet, it's all going to be here. Nothing has changed about this place. What I tell people is the Mayflower in one of these hotel rooms, there was definitely a Soviet agent that got worked over by somebody by the CIA. Like, this is, this is one of those places where this is steeped in Cold War history, like, yeah, there's, there's definitely some Soviet DNA from getting their ass beat somewhere on the wall in this place.
Doug Draper 4:28
Yeah, you're right. I mean, if it's been around for how long has that hotel been around? I
Pete Mento 4:32
think 1920s Yeah, it's been here. The really nice hotel, which I've never stayed at, but I've spoken at, is the Hayes Adams hotel, and that, unlike this one, has been just redone a bazillion times. It's gorgeous. You know, rooms are like, $1,500 a night. It's just crazy. But the reason I like speaking there is the food is always good. You do a lot of stuff where you go to, you know, meetings, and what do you call them? Like, industry groups and. And, yeah, it's always the same crappy rubberized chicken with some indistinguishable sauce, some broccoli and some mashed potatoes and iced tea at Hayes Adams. It's like lobster tails. And, you know, would you like it with the filet or without it, sir? I mean, it's pretty ridiculous. So I never turned down a chance to speak over there, the Mayflower. Yeah, I turn it down all the time, all the time, yeah,
Doug Draper 5:23
yeah, yeah, good. Well, I'm glad you're having a successful trip out there. Before we jump into it. One more question for you. Are you traveling anymore this week? Yes,
Pete Mento 5:31
I am going to Houston tomorrow afternoon. We DSV are having a energy symposium, I guess is the best way to put it. We're inviting our energy clients to a meeting where the leadership of most of the products, or representatives for most of the products, are going to be there talking about air freight, ocean freight distribution, and over the road, with a very specific guide toward the energy world, which, as you know, is it's pretty it's like agriculture, automotive or pharmaceutical. It's pretty specialized. So yeah, that's what I'm gonna do then. And then on Thursday, I'm going a couple sales calls, seeing some oil clients in Houston, and then heading back. But next week, Doug, I don't even travel. Yeah, we got Memorial Day on Monday, and I plan on sitting my Tubby butt in my chair behind my desk, office, desk, my office. And, you know, living life like a normal person for four or five days.
Doug Draper 6:30
Good for you. Yeah, nice, cool. All right, man, I'm going to jump into my first topic, and being an old parcel guy and somebody out there, honest to goodness. I need somebody to help explain this. If this is a good deal or what right from my parcel history, it just, it's baffling to me. But here's the deal. You may have read that Amazon and FedEx have agreed upon a program where FedEx is going to handle the large and bulky residential deliveries. And based on all the things that we've read about, FedEx, trying to right size their network, you know, looking for cost reductions and network optimizations, and then spinning off their LTL division to a separate company. I just don't, I don't understand this one, and I'm going to be very blunt on this one. Pete, large, bulky residential shipments is the dog shit freight that nobody wants, right? So I don't understand. Think about a delivery vehicle that has a peloton, right, or a mattress or something crazy, right? That you can only get so much in a delivery van. And trust me, being up here in the mountains, I'll drive by and they'll be mattress, literally just this weekend, there was, like, this bed in three boxes that was leaned up against this guy's house, and then a bike that was like, to me, the large, bulky items are the most challenging, and that's the stuff that you agree to take when you have the profitable type of business, which is the commercial, small packages, type of things. Now that's me talking from 25 years ago, when I worked at airborne Express, and everybody wanted the B to B. That wasn't even a term back then, right? They wanted the commercial deliveries, envelopes, small parcels so one person could make 150 deliveries to a downtown address in Manhattan. I don't I don't understand it. It just seems like this is counterintuitive to what they're trying to accomplish. I know FedEx, or excuse me, UPS is pulling out a little bit. Amazon continues to grow its in house delivery mechanism. And I guess you can't fit a mattress in somebody's back of their car when they're making deliveries on their on their support network. But I don't get it. I don't understand it, unless the pricing is just going to be so astronomical that it makes it worthwhile. But that seems very counterintuitive to the mission of Amazon. So I don't get this one at all. I don't understand. It seems completely opposite from what FedEx has been trying to do. So if somebody hears this reply in comments on these posts and help me understand why this is happening, did you hear about this Pete and what's your take on it? Not until
Pete Mento 9:15
you put it in the show notes for today, one of the through lines, one of the Doug Draper through lines for what, like the 26 years we've been doing, the show is couriers and integrators, like FedEx and UPS, they appear to be going back to what they do best, like go back to their roots. They're not they're not wasting a lot of time trying to be everything to everyone anymore, because where they're most profitable is at their roots. And this just seems like a complete contradiction to that attitude. And I have had a bed delivered to a home before, and it weighs a ton. So are there going to be two people in the truck that bring this there? And then, you know, is that? Is that? Further diminishing their their profit on it. And the other side of it was what you said, like, are they getting a real pretty penny for this? And is that how Amazon convinced them to do it? You know, if Amazon doesn't want to do it, can't imagine they want to do it. So is there a lot of money based on it? And the third thing I want to say, Doug might one of my top 10 favorite videos I've ever seen. It's a woman and her husband have just bought a new bed, and it's wrapped up like in a like a rug, you know? It's rolled up like a rug, yeah, and it has a thick plastic on the outside of it, and they're putting it on the base of the bed, and as she's cutting the plastic, it explodes in the room, and it sends this, like, 120 pound woman flying into the wall. I could watch that every hour on the hour for the rest of my life, and not, not, not laugh at it. I think it's hysterical. So I remember, you know, you when I worked at Wayfair, right? Some of these things weigh a ton. The only thing worse than home delivery for that would be like white glove, like a peloton. When you get a peloton, someone's got to go in there, set it up, do all of that. I just don't know how you're gonna make a lot of money doing this. And is this really the best decision for an integrator to do you? You've said it before, right? There's probably a room of 100 bean counters where they're adding machines that are saying, okay, they gave us how much a kilo on this. And okay, and we were doing this much time. And, and they've they probably crunched the math, and it works for them. It just doesn't seem like a core business. And I don't know why they're focusing on, yeah,
Doug Draper 11:24
it'll be interesting to see how this, how this plays out. I know Amazon last comment on this, and I'll let you go. They're trying to get into, from what I've read, higher margin type of deliveries, you know, with the team, you and she, and just, you know, scraping the bottom of the barrel. So they're trying to find commodities and and with higher margin things. And, yeah, a bracelet can be higher margin, but higher margin can often be larger items, right, whether that's a TV or something like that. But I just don't get it. And the one last thing I'll say in this one Pete is that, yeah, if you have a, you know, OSHA requires that if you're moving something that 70 pounds or greater, even the rules that UPS has and and FedEx have in place pretty gonna put two guys in there to unload a, you know, a Purple Mattress, along with the bed frame and something else that they bought from Wayfair as a as a set, and it fills up a quarter of the truck. I don't get it. I
Pete Mento 12:20
don't either, you know, I can remember when I worked in Manhattan, right? The guys that delivered for UPS, in fact, like these guys were yoked. They were in great shape. You know, they were running up and down the buildings. They would take the stairs sometimes, as it was faster, just delivering crap and but it was always letters, little boxes. How are you going to be able to because you've seen it, right? When the UPS guy comes to your house, it's on the ring camera. They're not doing this slow. They're running out of the truck. They're dropping it off to get back in. They're taking them. I just don't know how this is going to be vastly profitable, unless they're getting a pretty penny from our friends at Amazon. Yeah, good point.
Doug Draper 12:53
All right, Mr. Washington DC, what you got?
Pete Mento 12:58
So this week, we have a number of trade delegates that are expected to be in the US right now. The delegation from India, apparently, is here in DC, at the White House, few blocks away. And we're expecting Japan to come by this week as well. And this is a sign that they're very close to having an agreement. You know, when you're having face to face meetings here, great. You know, not something you couldn't read on probably the front page of every major the one that's got me are these letters. And I don't know if you've read about this, Doug, but the President has basically decided, because there are so many countries that want to have a deal, because, like, 175 countries that he's like, cool, we'll send you a letter. This is no longer a negotiation, right? You want a deal, here's your deal, and they're sending him a letter. It's like, don't, don't write back. Don't redline it, don't, don't give you your opinions back. Here's the deal. You take the deal, or you don't take the deal. Here's your deal. I imagine that they're going to pretty small countries, right? They're not, probably not. It's probably not being sent off to Canada. I doubt there's a letter that went to Canada. But for some of these tinier countries, like, you know, Burkina Faso in Africa, I'm pretty sure they got a letter. And it makes sense on a certain level that there's only so many people that can negotiate. But is that really a negotiation? What are we getting out of it? How it's probably going to fuel more anti us sentiment by doing it. But from an efficiency sake, I get it, it just, what a weird we live in a simulation. Doug, like, this is a weird, a weird thing to have to talk about with people. The usgr sent a letter. You know, is it? Is it FedEx? You have to sign for it or to just get a couple stamps on it. They send you. Here's your here's your new deal. Like, is it like when I was in fifth grade? You get a note from a girl, if you like me check yes or check No. Like is there a check box on the bottom? Then you have to sign it and send it back. Do they put in a self addressed stamped envelope with it? I don't know, but it just seems like a really weird way to run trade policy. But yeah,
Doug Draper 14:51
well, this whole 120 days has been, has been interesting. I thought, or I read that there was 18 key engagements. They wanted to talk about 18 key markets or trading partners. I think they're gonna get the face time, so to speak, which is what you're seeing out there this week. But, but, yeah, I mean, I kind of get it just, you know, we trade in pretty small amount with Country X, and here's your letter, and what are you going to do about it? You
Pete Mento 15:21
imagine if you're the country that gets that letter. It's like, wow, I really am. I guess I'm really not. What an ego Crusher. Yeah, we're not even gonna send people. We're not gonna send some, some graduate student who's 22 years old over there with all of his shots to do it. No, just get a letter.
Doug Draper 15:34
Yeah, yeah. Not even thought about that, right? I just put your, put you in the perspective of the pecking order of of everything, if you get a letter, but there'll be a meme on that one for sure. Right sign here, check here. Yeah, should be good. So nice. All right. Well, that brings us to halftime, brought to us by CAP logistics, as we say all the time. We don't work for those guys. They just give us the sounding board. And we're, we're very grateful for them allowing us to speak to you every single week. So anyway, Pete, like yours, start us off.
Pete Mento 16:06
Yeah, yeah. Very fortunate. On Saturday, my friend Sean Polster, who is worked for the government Virginia, he's in charge of emergency services, very good friend of mine. He has two sons and a daughter. His oldest son became an Eagle Scout years ago. Then his youngest son became an Eagle Scout on Saturday. And I have to admit, Doug, I've never been to an Eagle Scout. They call it an honor court, an Eagle Scout, honor court. And it was such a throwback. They, they march in the colors. They they do the, you know, the the little thingy here, and and they recite the oath. Then we did the Pledge of Allegiance, which was very nice. There was a benediction that was done by one of the scouts, where they read a very nice short non denominational prayer, you know, just asking for guidance and wisdom. And then people came up and told really nice stories, really nice stories about Matthew and the work that he had done to become an Eagle Scout, what his projects were, how committed he had been to the amount of effort that it took to become an Eagle Scout. Only about one out of every 100 scouts becomes an Eagle Scout. And then they asked for all of the there was also an uncomfortable number of grown men wearing adult boys, but they asked all of the people that were also Eagle Scouts to come up when they charged him, when they gave him his charge, like his, his oath of Eagle Scout. And there were a lot of people, a lot of young men, a lot of young women who are also now scouts, and then also my friend's brother, his, my friend and his and his other son. So to see him up there with his two sons was it was a beautiful moment. I did not make it very far through scouts. I became just a regular Boy Scout. So I made it through Cub Scouts and all that wee blows, but it got in the way of sports, and my parents told me I had to make a decision. Did I want to focus on sports, or do I want to focus on scouts? In all things being equal, that I probably should have focused on scouts. I don't know a single Eagle Scout. And I know a lot of them that have not been successful in life, I think those are the kinds of they probably know how to get rid of a moose. Doug, you know, that's the kind of thing that a scout would probably know. I don't, I don't know. But were you an Eagle Scout? Doug, do you know any Eagle Scouts? Were you a scout? Did you do scouting?
Doug Draper 18:17
No, no, no, no. Right? I'm just being honest, and it's funny, you said exactly what I was going to say, right? Is, if you're an Eagle Scout, I would imagine whatever industry or direction you want to go with your career, you're going to be successful, because not necessarily. Well, the skills that you learn like how to the rudimentary ones like how to tie the appropriate knot for this situation. But just the dedication and the commitment to it defines your character as having dedication and commitment just born in bred in you, right? So I agree 100% that if you looked at all of the eagle scouts that are out there, I bet the vast, vast majority are successful business men and women for
Pete Mento 19:03
sure. Yeah, so I think we should push my daughter was a Girl Scout, and she made it all the way through their version. But for them, it wasn't really as grueling, you know? It was more about community service and more about doing things for charity. These young guys are cleaning up wetlands. They're, they're, they're building additions to public buildings, like they're doing really good stuff, and then going out and camping on their own for a pretty prolonged period of time and taking care of themselves. I think there's something to be said for that kind of resilience. I mean, Keenan is like, what in seventh grade. Now, we should probably get him into scouting before it's
Unknown Speaker 19:41
too late. I love it. I love it. Could
Pete Mento 19:42
you imagine Keenan in one of those outfits, with his hair everywhere, in his beard, out, out in the woods, in his Little Boy Scout uniform, you know, starting fires. He's a total outdoors guy, like, you know, he'd love that shit if we let
Doug Draper 19:57
him go. He might be he wouldn't, surprise. To me, if he's an Eagle Scout, right? He's got, he's got skills I have no idea about.
Pete Mento 20:04
Yeah, Keenan can definitely take care of himself if the power goes out everywhere, I'm not worried about nice. Yeah, what do you got? Doug,
Doug Draper 20:15
all right, brother. So mine's about the summer starting. The unofficial summer starts next week. And I just saw that there is a new Universal Studios theme park opening up this week in Orlando. It's universal epic, I think is the name of it here I wrote down here one second, yeah, epic universal in Orlando. It's their fourth theme park. There's Island Adventure, Volcano Bay, universities, Universal Studios, and now this epic and I checked out the pricing Pete. It's only 150 bucks a day, which is as insane as that sounds, somewhat affordable. You're taking your entire family. And yeah. So my thought is, here's another theme park. There's so many of them, and they're so nuanced. It's kind of like the Star Wars. It's not even a trilogy anymore. There's so many spin offs on Star Wars that I can't even follow it, and I have zero interest in following it. But it seems like some of these theme parks are going that same direction, but they all have a sub park with it, you know, Harry Potter World and and, you know, the the Lego Land and all that kind of stuff. But anyway, there's a new one that opened in Pete. Did you go to theme parks when you were growing up? And if so, what was your favorite? If not, are you a theme park person at all?
Pete Mento 21:38
I am not a theme park person. Doug, I want to emphatically say that, all right, can you hear me? Okay, or is it just one side? Yeah, you're back in. You're back in. Yeah, I am not a theme park guy. When I was a little boy, we would go to Six Flags Over Texas, scared the hell out of me. Did not enjoy it. And then as I got older, we would go to canopy Lake Park in New Hampshire, also, no bueno was not for me. However, I did like Epcot because I got to drink and eat my way around the world altogether. But having a daughter who was truly just Disney dug into her brain. I have been many times. I was just there with her for her spring break for the icpa conference. The women in my life seem to really love rides in the such it's just really not for me, I still say Doug, we go to Kansas, all right, we find some investors, and we make a Wizard of Oz world somewhere in Kansas. I think it would clean up, but I don't get it. I've been to Euro Disney, you know, all that crap. You're a Disney Euro sucked. It wasn't a lot of fun for me. But I I have adult friends whose entire vacations are really revolve around, when can we get to Disney? I mean, they love it. So as much as I might not enjoy it, I know a lot of people who live and die by their Disney vacation, and they absolutely love it. You know, I'm with a woman who literally done her entire vacation is, can I find the biggest, scariest damn roller coaster I can Okay, how many times can I take it before you throw me out of the park, and I'm like, Cool. I'll be in the car eating Cool Ranch Doritos, drinking Diet Cokes, listening to podcasts. You hit me when you come get you
Doug Draper 23:10
nice, yeah. I mean, they're fine. I don't seek them out, or I wouldn't necessarily plan well, when our kids were little, everybody's got to do the Disney thing. And we did that down in in Florida and did it once in LA but, yeah, they're fine. I my my kids laugh at me because the one theme park I went to growing up in Wichita, Kansas, was Silver Dollar City, which is outside of Branson, okay? And they just laugh. They're just like, what is that real? Is that a real theme park that you're describing all of these rides and the hillbillies that are there putting everything on. And I'm like, Yep,
Pete Mento 23:46
it sure was string theme. Was it like cowboy theme? No, it's like,
Doug Draper 23:50
it's like hillbilly theme, at least when I remember it right, it'd be like, I don't know a bear in a in a jug that's making music, and he's got his hillbilly band, and it's this animatronic thing that you had to pay him just doing the same thing. But I'm sure it's much better now that that was 40 years ago that I went there. But anyway,
Pete Mento 24:13
yeah, Doug, we should probably mention we grew up in the 70s, in the early 80s. All right, so technology was not quite, quite where it was today. We all got excited about an alien that was basically a puppet trying to phone home like that wrecked everybody's life for a whole summer. Yeah, a little bit different. Little bit different.
Unknown Speaker 24:29
Yeah. Love it.
Pete Mento 24:33
Cool. Cool. What's your next topic? All right,
Doug Draper 24:35
what is my next topic? It is, it's, it's not directly global trade, but indirectly. But I saw that the NASDAQ in the second half of 2026 is going to 24 hour a day trading. They're not doing it seven days a week, so it's just 24 five, but it's 24 hour trading. It will never turn off, except for the. Weekends. And I thought that was pretty interesting. I think the big picture on this one Pete is that they talk about retail investors, which are just Joe's, like you and me. But I think more importantly is that this it is a desire for the gamification of trading, just like Robin Hood did, and they've kind of cleaned their act up a little bit and tried to pull back in and be more professional entity. But the from the amount of, hey, I'm going to get rich from trading and have all of these things right at my fingers that I don't have to go somebody or go ask somebody to facilitate these trades. I don't know if it's going to be good or bad, because you could go to bed in America and wake up four hours later, and whatever investment you make could have pivoted 180 degrees because of some some effect or something that spooked the market, whether it's real or not, and I know that can still happen now, and we've seen how volatile all the indexes are as things throughout the day, especially we've seen recently. But, yeah, I don't know. I mean, it's kind of inevitable. Maybe the new the New York Stock Exchange shouldn't do that, but it'll be interesting to see what happens with the NASDAQ and how that is going to impact retail traders or people think that they're going to get rich quick because they got a hunch on some guy that knew a buddy that said this stock is going to pop at two in the morning because of something that transpires in Europe. So I'm a little hesitant on it, but it's inevitable. I mean, it's going to happen. And I think it will also happen in the New York Stock Exchange. And I think we talked about this Pete maybe six months ago on one of the shows, but it's happening.
Pete Mento 26:49
Doug, you said the word gamification, right? You look on the screen and you see the green and the red, and you know, you can look at how things are moving, but it's real money. You know, it's real money, and it doesn't matter if you're throwing 100,000 or a million around, or a couple 1000. It is exciting to get to play with, but real good investments. Look out at your investing over time. We don't give investment advice on the show. We never have. But you know any, anyone worth their salt, who's advising, who's going to tell you you should be investing with a mind towards a long term goal, because the market's going to go up or down. You look at this, it's gamified. It's like you got your Xbox. Am I winning? Am I losing? Can I win more? What can I do here? You know? And I think it does create some bad, some bad, uh, habits. But I liken it to the explosion of online betting in America, very similar with a gamification you know, I could be the bar on a Friday night. I could talk to one guy who's a day trader will talk my ear off about this win that he had, and I could turn around to the other guy I'm with, and he'd be like, Man, I hit this parlay. I never thought it would happen. I put 20 bucks into it. I won $5,000 I'm like, Cool, man, good for you either way. I don't care. I don't like, I really wish the conversation wasn't happening. It's America. You do whatever the hell you want with your money. But to me, either one of them sounds very exciting. I invest for the very, very long term. So God bless you. If you're out there and you're crushing it, making your own decisions. For me, it just doesn't really hold any value. But I agree with you. I think this is going to be the gamification of trading across everything. These guys make money every time you trade something, that's how they're making money. So by giving you more opportunity to do that, you're only going to make more money. So I wouldn't
Doug Draper 28:30
think, yeah, yeah, agreed. That'll be interesting, still a year, still a year away, so we'll see how that transpires. But anyway, all right, bring us all my friend, what you got on your last topic?
Pete Mento 28:40
Yeah, my last topic is a, this is a, this is a warning from Old Saint Nick here, from Uncle Pete. All right, so the the guidance to the Department of Justice came out over the weekend on white collar crime, and you read it, and it's got all the usual stuff, you know, money laundering, embezzling, pump and dump schemes on crypto right there. One of the lines it said, efforts to circumvent tariffs right there, bam, like it was right there. So that means that the Department of Justice and its enforcement arms are going to be coming after companies that have knowingly and incorrectly looked for ways to break the law in order to avoid paying these tariffs. I'm warning folks, and I've been doing for 120 days now, you will not beat the government one way or the other. They're getting their money one way or the other. They're going to catch you, and now the Department of Justice has made it one of their focus areas for the coming year. So Go with God, my friends. You know, whatever you decide to do, get good advice. Don't make stupid decisions. Panic is more expensive than patience. Do the right thing, because old man government is looking to take you out in the woodshed and give you a good old fashioned country caning if you don't find a way to do it right. So you want to talk about a warning dude, when it's in black and white from the Department of Justice. Just get thy crap together.
Doug Draper 30:02
Yeah, good. Good. Point. I saw on some of that release that they're encouraging whistleblowers. Yeah, right, yeah. I think they're even, excuse me, incentivizing. I don't know all the details on this, but basically saying, hey, we'll give you a cut basically, of the money that's recovered 25 years. Yeah. How much is it? 25% Wow. Okay, yeah, so that'll be interesting. And then almost the self reporting like, Hey, here's your free get up. You know, I don't know if it's Get Out of Jail Free card, but if there's a problem, and you self report and you admit you did some nefarious actions that maybe the hammer won't drop quite as much. But the one thing Pete, and you've mentioned this, is that the government can go back five years, right? So if you've done this and you got through the system and whatever you decided to work, and whatever angle you decided to work, and you got through and you didn't get caught. That doesn't mean you're out of the woods and depend on how this enforcement goes, you could be looking over your shoulder for five years with with your sketchy activity on the import, but yeah, the fact that they called it out means it is certainly a priority.
Pete Mento 31:19
You know, the lines been said many times, right? Bad Behavior caught by the government is usually indicative to a slew of bad behavior yet to be caught by the government, and they're going to take every opportunity to enforce once they find even the smallest thing wrong. So it's good point, good call out there. You know, you got five years to look back on, and very few companies are truly squeaky clean. There's usually something out there. Just be smart. Don't, don't do dumb things. People, well,
Doug Draper 31:48
our audience does not do dumb things because they listen to us every single week. Pete, we bring global trade. That was a pretty weak transition to
Pete Mento 31:56
the end here. I'm gonna give it to you. Doug, I'm gonna give you thanks. Good. Thanks. But that
Doug Draper 32:00
is another edition of global trade, and we can't thank our audience enough for listening to us engaging. And please, if you have comments or criticisms about any of our topics, let us know. We ask for your feedback, and we welcome it. So until next time you know, Pete will be wrapped up in his house. He'll probably have a shawl on and looking a little bit disheveled, but that is okay, because that means he's home enjoying his time. So that's when we'll see you again next week. Thanks for listening to us. And if it's happening in global trade, we are going to be talking about it every single week. Thanks, Pete, check you later. You
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