The Carolina Contractor Show
The Carolina Contractor Show
How Tariffs Could Reshape the Home Building Industry
What if tariffs could shape the future of home building and redefine the housing market landscape? Tune in to the Carolina Contractor Show as we, your hosts Donnie Blanchard and Eric Smith, unravel the complex web of tariffs and their surprising effects on the construction industry. With our signature humor, we kick off with a nod to the tariffs set by Donald Trump, before steering into how these trade policies have impacted the cost of materials like lumber, concrete, and bricks. Discover how reciprocal tariffs might just be the hidden "tax" on consumers and why knowing the origins of your building materials can be a powerful tool for navigating market shifts.
Get ready for a deep dive into the unexpected economic ripples that tariffs create in both local and national contexts. From the nuances of cost-plus contracts to the potential rise of resale homes due to escalating building costs, we cover it all. We also explore the political chess game behind tariff decisions, offering insights from influential figures like Elon Musk on fiscal responsibility and economic strategies. Join us as we discuss the implications of these fiscal policies and the societal reactions they provoke, setting the stage for a broader understanding of how tariffs impact more than just the bottom line.
Welcome to the Carolina Contractor Show with your host, general Contractor Donnie Blanchard. This just in, donnie. Donald Trump has put a tariff on our show.
Speaker 2:Oh my gosh, I didn't see that coming.
Speaker 1:I didn't either. He's doubled it from 0% to 0%.
Speaker 2:Nice. Well, since we don't make money for it, that makes sense.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I guess that's good for the listener. We will not pass the cost on to you. We'll actually pass the savings on down to the listeners and viewers of the Carolina Contractor Show. My name is Eric Smith and that's a hint at today's topic on the show. But first hit the website, thecarolinacontractorcom. We've got links on the YouTube site because we're basically models, so we don't want people to be feeling overwhelmed by that, so we have filters that make us look like we're in our 40s or 50s.
Speaker 1:You can also listen to past shows with a podcast format. You can download them. We've got literally hundreds of episodes you can check out based on the date they were released or even the subject or topic they're about. If you have a question about a show, if you have an idea for a show, if you just have a general question about your house, you can also reach us through the website by clicking on Ask the Contractor. That goes to Mr Donnie and he answers all those questions and once in a while we get crazy and we do a whole show of nothing but questions from listeners. Now, first of all, let's explain who the me and Donnie is. My name is Eric Smith. I do sales for Home Builders Supply in Wilson Greenville. I sell two by fours and sometimes pass load nails, things like that, and Donnie paper or plastic strip.
Speaker 2:I'll go plastic so we can work in this bad weather. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and Donnie, who's over there? He put the hot and hot galvanized nails himself. He is a general contractor, he's the owner of Sure Top Roofing, he's the owner of Blanchard Building Company and he's kind of the brains of the operation on the looker. And what we like to do every day is talk about your house and building it and construction and DIY and supplies and things like that building it and construction and DIY and supplies and things like that. And today Donnie's idea was to talk about something that's very topical and that is tariffs. And I am not an expert on tariffs. I assume you are not either, donnie.
Speaker 2:No, but I mean, with everything going on in the media these days you just about have to be, and with what we went through a few years ago with the big time overnight increase in lumber prices and the cost of construction going up by, you know, several hundred thousand dollars on a big house, I think it's definitely a worthy topic because if something like that comes back down the pipe man, we got to get ready for that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and it's very fluid, seems every day, maybe every hour, this administration moves so quick on making all sorts of decisions that the tariff information is constantly changing. One minute there's going to be tariffs on multiple countries, and then it's delayed, and then on the 13th of February, trump, that is, had the. What type of tariff? We were just talking about it, donnie.
Speaker 2:Reciprocal. Maybe Is that right.
Speaker 1:Yeah, if a country charges us 50% on our stuff, trump said we're going to immediately charge the same on them. No doubt I think I'm not a pro on that. What do you think on? What's your gut feeling on a reciprocal tariff?
Speaker 2:We might see Chevrolets in Mexico, who knows? And I think that that is, I think it's very fair to say it. At the very least it's fair, because if he's always a big proponent of we're, we're always getting the bad end of the deal and everybody else, we're, we're padding their pockets and we feel sorry for them. We take care of them. You know, we we have this upside down tariff equation and I just think at the very least it's fair. Some of these we'll get into the details, but some of these may impact us in a negative way. But I mean, I think, yeah, at the very least you charge us 50, we charge you 50. And that sounds like a square deal.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's a starting point and Trump has always said he's using it as a bargaining tool, and it worked. In the first couple of weeks of his administration he threatened tariffs and countries back down. When it comes to the big boys countries we'll be talking about in today's show China and Canada and Mexico it might be a little longer to get things to where we want them, or just we don't know. That's why, again, we stress we're not tariff experts. But I do want to say one thing We've seen in politics politicians on usually one side of the aisle say we need to tax those big evil corporations because they make so much money and help out the little guy, and so they throw taxes on those corporations.
Speaker 1:And the corporations never eat that tax. They just charge it to the consumer and say you're going to pay this new tax that the government put on us. So when they complain about tariffs being a tax on the consumer, the companies that have to pay higher costs for material or services are just going to put it on to the consumer. That's the same way taxes work. So when you hear politicians say tax the big evil corporations, remember they're saying tax you, the individual, the consumer, and tariffs can affect you the same way, depending on what a tariff's going to be put on. But you not only came up with the idea, donnie, of doing tariffs, but you wanted to go into how it affects construction and home building. And we've got a few countries that we import building materials from, and I have an idea Most people don't realize how much of their, let's say, a residential house is affected by imports, because they don't know where all the materials come from.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I'll talk about our neighbors first. And obviously the big deal two or three years ago when lumber shot through the roof, is that we put a tariff or the Biden administration put a big tariff on Canadian imported lumber. And you know, when you dig a little deeper there, more than lumber they provide a lot of steel as well, and that makes sense because they're the neighbor to the north, so it is something like steel that that's a lot heavier than a lot of the other imports. If you can get it, you know, next door, that's a lot better than shipping it across the ocean. But you know, wood is wood is their big thing and we get a lot of our lumber from Canada and we get a lot of our lumber from Canada.
Speaker 2:And one of the main things that I saw three years ago is that domestic production, of course it slowed down. We had labor shortages and half of that was related to COVID and half of that was related to basically not. They didn't have the workers to facilitate all the sawmill, so a lot of people shut down, but a lot of that was the price went up and so, uh, domestic folks who were, who were making that stuff stateside, said hey, if they're getting paid that, then I'm going to get paid that, and that happens across the board. I think it's going on with eggs right now. You know the the uh, I watched something earlier and said you know the the price of eggs shooting up. It's not because they have less eggs, it's just they figured out a way to, you know, produce the eggs.
Speaker 2:But it's just the egg suppliers are choosing to make their mint and I think, as a business person, you know you have these opportunities when you've been in business for 10, 20 years where, hey, if I'm going to make my retirement, now's the time, and I think that's what happened three or four years ago. But uh, hopefully, hopefully, they work something out and that, uh, you know there's not a heavier import, uh import tariff on Canadian lumber, and then that won't give the domestic production the chance to jack up their prices as well. But uh, moving to Mexico, uh, the main thing we get from Mexico is lime and gypsum products. So basically all the drywall in your house comes from down south and I know they have a pause. Is that right? 30 days, something like that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it was going to take effect right as his administration started, or in the beginning of February, and I think it's now beginning of March.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I think his focus probably isn't on building materials, and so I don't know how that works. If you put a tariff on um, gypsum or drywall for this amount, can you do something different on automobile production? But, um, anyway, hopefully you know that stays calmed down because it's all part of a big perfect storm. And if you, you, you know you can do it on the things that will help us and not on the things that will hurt us, then that's the end game. But in China I was surprised that we get, we get steel from them. I didn't think it would be good to ship that, you know, I guess, to across two seas or two oceans, but anyway we get a lot of steel from China. I didn't realize that a lot of interior finished products we get from China anything tech, and that's no secret that they have the tech, pretty much the whole tech market locked down and appliances, everything comes from that neck of the woods. So you know, a tariff on Chinese imported products is going to be a big deal.
Speaker 2:And the last one I'll comment on and there's more countries that we get things from, but these are the big four is India. A lot of our tile, the majority of our tile comes from India. Solid surface countertop material comes from India. Solid surface countertop material comes from there, Construction sand and bricks. So a lot of the majority of what we use in a single family residential house is coming from that area, and I think the big thing, or the big takeaway, is that, all that being said, it still only equals 7% of the building process, so it's not like we're importing 30% of our building products. So hopefully that's our saving grace.
Speaker 1:And a lot of people don't realize that a lot of lumber comes in from Europe too. It's not just our neighbors to the north we get it from, like the Norwegian countries and stuff, but I don't know how. Like you said, it's not like the tariff was put on a bunch of singular items like all right bathroom tile is going to get 25%. So I also wonder, with tariffs, if a country is told, hey, we're putting 25% on your lumber, will they say, well, screw it, we'll put 25% on everything we send to you then, or you send to us, and then everything's being tariffed. So I don't know how laser focused, you can make a tariff before the other country says, well, we're going to add 20 things onto this list just to screw you back.
Speaker 1:Right, yeah, reciprocal works both ways. Yeah, that's right, and I thought that was an interesting point you made. It sounds horrible, but it is only 7% of the money, of the materials. But people also don't realize what's in their houses in general. They think it's wood and nails, but they don't think there's steel in it. They don't take in consideration appliances or things like that.
Speaker 2:That 7% figure is just for residential. When I looked into it some of the numbers didn't add up. So when you take in the commercial construction into consideration it's going to be. You know those numbers are probably a lot more weighted towards commercial than residential, but residential at this point still sitting at about 7%.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you think of just a small, let's say a 10-story building. It's going to be a commercial building going in downtown Burlington or Wilson. That's a lot of steel, that's a lot of concrete, that's a lot of stone, that's a lot of brick. The baseball stadium they're building in Wilson right now is nothing but steel skeleton and there's a lot of it. So that's all going to be affecting the cost. That's all going to be affecting the cost. And then gut feeling, donnie, as a builder will how do you quote a price of a house to build it when you could have an astronomical increase on one of your main products that you use to build?
Speaker 2:Oh gosh, that's the. That's a loaded question because I don't know how you do it really. And I've watched. I'm a subcontractor with Sure Top Roofing so I do the roof work for several prominent builders, you know, from here to the other side of the state, and I also build houses. So I see this thing from both ends and I try to pick their brains and I say, hey, how are you guys doing it? Are you doing cost plus only? And I think, from a builder standpoint, the only way that you can cover your rear end is to either charge the homeowner on a contract price enough to cover you If you do have a 30, 40% increase between the time you sign the contract and the time you actually need the materials or you do a cost plus and 90% of these guys are all resorting to cost plus. And that gets kind of hairy because banks don't want to hear that. Banks want a contract price. But you know, with everything being so volatile now, I don't know how anybody does that and sleeps at night because it's just it could change. Like you mentioned, that we don't know with this tariff conversation if this is going to be different next week and these guys are thinking that exact same thing and you think about certain items when you sign a contract.
Speaker 2:You pull a permit, you dig a footing and so you've got the concrete there, you've got the bricks for the foundation, then you've got the lumber, which the majority of the lumber you use in the first two months of a build. So you'll have floor system, walls, rafters. The plywood's a biggie because it covers the roof and the sidewalls and the floor, but it's, you know, you're talking seven 16th OSB versus three quarter inch plywood. Right, I would say those are a safer bet than things that come later in the process, because you know you, you can pad yourself a little bit on those and and hopefully be okay.
Speaker 2:But, um, in all fairness, that's what burned a lot of people, but they were $50,000 over on the framing budget on a 3,000, 4,000 square foot house, and so I know I'm not giving you, I'm doing a political answer here. I sound like I'm running for office for a construction position, but no, it's one of those things where cost plus it seems to be the new norm and banks a few banks are becoming a little more friendly to it. But I think, from a with a builder homeowner relationship, if that builder says, hey, you know we may have to have an amended contract. We'll do a contract for the bank, but we're going to do an amendment to the contract before we get started. That's not out of the ordinary now.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I guess also the good news is, when you are building a house, once you start on the foundation and you put down your block and your brick and if you're pouring concrete slabs of some way, that happens so quick it's not like you price it and it'll be a year before you get to that part, versus the inside of the house, or roofing, and I don't think shingles. It did make me wonder, because the main boys produce them pretty much in the country, don't they?
Speaker 2:Oh, gosh, that is a deep, deep rabbit hole with the shingles, sort of like concrete. Okay, and I'll get back to the shingles. But the concrete, you may make the concrete here, but the sand, like I mentioned, the majority comes from India. The lime, the majority comes from Mexico and we just don't have the natural resources to um to to fill the demand for concrete. So they may make the concrete recipe here, but all the resources for that concrete come from other places. Same with the fiberglass mat, with the shingles, uh, that they pull in, uh, that from another country, uh, a lot of the granules or the asphalt that you mentioned, that comes from another country.
Speaker 2:And, depending on the shingle manufacturer, what I'm seeing the trend turning to is that they are encouraging domestic production because a lot of these guys got burned and they could not meet the demand when roofing, you know, went through a big change a couple of years ago that they just didn't. You know we couldn't get. We could get a black, gray and brown shingle for about two years and if you didn't want that, then you know, sorry, no dice, because we couldn't. There was one manufacturer to get the greens, the reds and the blues and thank goodness we made it through that and not a lot of people wanted the funky colors, but yeah it it. This impacts everything.
Speaker 1:Literally, you can bake a cake in your kitchen but you get all the ingredients from different places. Yeah, so even though GAF makes shingles in the US, they've got several plants strategically located through the states. They are getting materials to make them from around the world, so that can impact it. So, donnie, I want to call this tariffs for dummies, and again we're no experts on this, but I'll kind of drop a way. A tariff could affect the price or what the reaction to it could be, through the industry of building and construction, and then maybe you can give a boots on the ground type of gut feeling you have. So we have tariffs put in place. So we have tariffs put in place. The first thing people think is the price going to switch overnight. Could we see like a direct price increase right off the bat?
Speaker 2:Not overnight, but I would say within the year. Yes, no-transcript. I think he's smarter than that. I think the people who are advising him are smarter than that and I think that they all just went through, you know, even though they're a little bit politically protected by being the powers that be on this administration. So I do know that, I don't know, but intuitively I think that that would be a bad thing and I know that they would want to avoid that. Nobody wants that on their record and you know it also.
Speaker 2:So many factors. Where I live I'm right here on that merged corridor, 40 and 85, between Greensboro and Hillsboro Businesses are coming left and right. You know we've got an abundance of work, but you get off the beaten path a little bit and I can't speak for those folks. And it may be one of those deals where you may have to go towards a bigger city to maintain the work, and I mean, that's just how things move and shift, but I'm sure hoping that the tariffs don't affect it that way, but overnight I don't affect it that way. And but, but overnight I don't think so.
Speaker 2:Will it be as cheap to build next year? I think that's a supply demand issue, but but at the very least, what I see is, if it does go up, I think that the housing market will lean towards resale more than new builds, so people want to buy what's already on the ground. What you know was what you built for the old housing cost a couple of years ago will become that much more popular, and then that's going to translate to less inventory. So, either way it goes, I don't know that I have a really positive forecast on it, but you know that's what I do for a living, so I would like to say that heck, yeah, let's, let's go, but let's build all you can. But, um, unfortunately I'm not in control of that part. Do you worry?
Speaker 1:about not to beat up on Canada, but it's easy, cause they won't, they'll still be polite back. Um, do you worry that they might go? Well, fine, we're just gonna ship you a whole lot less, and then we're back to like what COVID was supply issues.
Speaker 2:Well, I think the catch 22 there is that if they ship a whole lot less, they make a whole lot less money. So you've got you know who's going to regulate that. Is the government going to put the squeeze on them and say you can only send this many board feet per month. And if we're demanding and our demand, our housing demand, is still high, I think they'll find a way to work around that. And you know the end game. And if you've got somebody that's gung-ho and doesn't want to see the light at all and doesn't want to think that, hey, this could be negative, then they're going to say well, you better domestic, you know production better go through the roof over here, and stateside sawmills better get their rear ends in gear. And that all sounds great, but there's a lot of moving parts to make that happen.
Speaker 1:It could become very volatile and it puts a lot of uncertainty in the market. So it makes people scared or a little fearful to maybe pull the trigger on building something. And that idea of fear probably can affect an economy just as much as any other singular item. Just as much as any other singular item because when people are fearful or scared of something and they stop spending it spreads like a virus very quickly and just can shut things down.
Speaker 2:Yeah, consumer confidence is everything and I'm going to change hats here and go to the roofer world. But you know, if you've got a roof, we preach on the show that roofing and HVAC are your two big ticket items that are guaranteed to wear out. And if somebody can kick that can down the road and they're not very confident in what's going on in the world, then that's what they're going to do. So they may put a Band-Aid on that roof and try to squeeze an extra three or four years out. And you multiply that by thousands of people over hundreds of cities. Then all then, you know, all of a sudden, the, the roofing industry, shuts down.
Speaker 2:And you know, fortunately, we've been really busy and and praise report since, uh, trump won the election. It was almost like the phone started ringing overnight, so I can testify to that then. And we were busier going into this winter and thank you to all for all the support, for everybody who's a loyal listener and a new listener, because, uh, people say, hey, we heard your show and a lot, you know, a lot of people get their consumer confidence out of what we say and, uh, you know, I mean we're, we've got our finger on the pulse with this stuff. But we went into this winter, I'm pleased to say, with more on the books than we've had since pre-covid and um. You know that's a good thing, I hope, and we've got a really exciting show coming up and not to sidetrack here, but hopefully this runs a lot of the storm chasers out of town.
Speaker 2:There's a lot of people who just go knock on doors. They're not legit operations. They use a different crew from house to house to house and you just don't get the same end result as using somebody locally owned and operated who've had the same people for years and years. So I'm hoping for both sides to be true. I hope that the demand stays high and I hope for a market cleansing to get some of the knuckleheads out of here at the same time.
Speaker 1:Yeah, my wife and I are working the intricacies of a HELOC, determining, um what we want to do, because we want to do home improvements and you know a roof being one um, interior stuff, some other small exterior things like a new shed, and I see a lot of people come into our stores and they have that same sentiment. Hey, I feel like I can finally pull the trigger and do this. I do want to add on the roofers. I'm not going to give any names, but there's roofers that I've met through the business that are the son or grandson of the founder. They've been.
Speaker 1:I mean, it's generational and I know you have generational ties to construction too, and I think that's a reason why you need to ask around and ask people hey, who do you recommend, who did your stuff? And avoid those. I'm not saying they're bad, but the franchises kind of give me the when it's a national number and you look in, they're based in Minnesota or something. There's a lot of local businesses that are generational. That's what they've been doing and they're very good at it. So, ask around, ask suppliers hey, who do you recommend to do painting or brick and block or roofing or something? Because you tend to find much better workers. And again the Tommy Tank Top and those guys, they're scary, chuck in a truck.
Speaker 2:Chuck in a truck. Thank you, tank Top Tommy. I love those guys, but not on my job. Hey, they're good, they're cool in the bar, but, yeah, not on the job site I want to go, but not on my job.
Speaker 1:They're cool in the bar, but not on the job site. I want to go back to something you mentioned also about wood mills. I said, hey, why don't we just cut down our trees and start doing the wood here? The impact on domestic production it sounds good, but it would take literally years. You can't just fire up a plant. There's a lot of industries where we think we could pick up the slack, but that's not going to happen in a year or two years time Absolutely not.
Speaker 2:No, it's. That's one of those things with. You'll need an investor, a business plan, a lot of willing workers. You know, and like I mentioned where I'm living thank God, I'm so grateful that the economy is booming around here and everybody. There's a huge influx of people moving to the middle third of the state, but that's not the case everywhere. So you need all that to happen to have somebody with a big enough sawmill to meet the local demand. And I agree with you 100%, that's not going to happen overnight.
Speaker 1:And this is the Carolina Contractor Show. We're talking about tariffs and, as we said at the beginning of the show, neither Donnie nor I are economists or tariff experts, or even amateurs, or even novices. But Donnie having boots on the ground, I working in the supply side of it, we do tend to get some ideas of what's going on. Before it hits the general public, I will say build now, it's only going to get more expensive. Stop trying to time the top, the hit the market just right to get that down point to buy a house or build a house. Just go ahead and get everything in motion, because construction costs do go up and down, but they tend to go up.
Speaker 1:And futures, by the way, for lumber soft lumber I looked this up middle of February was 605 and it was higher last year at 618. So even with the threat of tariffs, futures have not hit a new high yet. That could happen and some of the indirect effects of a tariff are businesses that are reliant on not necessarily materials, but your, for example, your business, uh, and other businesses might rely on businesses like a roofing company to buy their supplies. So if you're not buying as much, that affects them. They don't buy lunch at the restaurant next door. They don't buy the new car, so a tariff on something unrelated to your business can affect. Wow, I think I just went all Kamala in a word salad there.
Speaker 2:I was following. You know, man, it made perfect sense to me. But yeah, nice analogy.
Speaker 1:The other thing we don't know about, donnie, is negotiations and policy changes. This is inside baseball. That happens in rooms that we're not invited to be in. So I am curious, and maybe you even have a gut feeling, what's going on behind the scenes? When Trump comes out publicly and says I'm raising a tariff of 25% on these countries and these materials, and the other country says something back, what are the handlers in the rooms maybe actually saying? Do you even a gut feeling?
Speaker 2:I think he's just a good negotiator and I think he does a lot of that to make them squirm. I think that if he even brings it up at all, it was because it was unfair in the first place and I think another couple of things that impact what we're talking about is if we get gas prices down and we get this inflation problem handled, then that puts money back in people's pockets overnight and so, as long as the tariffs don't explode, the pricing and it maybe you ease up. Just because of a hard-nosed negotiator, I think a lot of that stuff will balance out or flatline after about a year. So if we have to go through a tough year, at least the cost to once it gets here to ship it around the country with from the gas prices being low and people, you know, not paying an arm and a leg for groceries and all the other things that are impacted by inflation. As long as he can fix those two, you know, and we don't know what's going to happen with the tariffs, but I think it's going to be a big balancing act and if I had to be a fly on the wall in that room you just mentioned, I would say that that probably.
Speaker 2:That's probably the approach that they're taking, because, like I mentioned I don't know 10, 15 minutes ago in the show that they're too smart for that. They don't want a housing crisis on their hands. And I and and the big picture we're finding all this government spending that's been out of control and I mean we could do a whole nother show on that. But I'm blown away by what we've been spending money on and what the Doge folks have uncovered in the last just in two weeks. I don't think anybody's made this much progress in just a short amount of term with the new administration as these guys have. So my hat's off. Things are good, things are good. Now I'm going to keep praying about it and keep an optimistic outlook and, um you know, hopefully we can come back and revisit this topic in a in a couple months and all will be well.
Speaker 1:I would love to do a Doge show and maybe we can get Elon Elon who, by the way we know listens to the show um, get him on. But I was just talking to the missus today. Yep, um, you know how. They're finding a billion here, 500 million there, 10 million over here misspending. They started looking into Medicare, medicaid, and Musk put out on X. He said it's somewhere, we think, between 1.7 and 2.1 trillion in misspending on Medicare and Medicaid, dod and IRS. And I said several months ago, if you could have Elon Musk and or Jeff Bezos, the Amazon guy, use their influence and I don't mean this in a sinister way, but to streamline certain things, like they say, yeah, we'll have it there tomorrow they should be able to process DMV and taxes and Medicare, medicaid payments and security payments and things like that at a much more efficient rate. And you probably even saw that thing in the caves where they process federal government pensions and stuff they send it down in the big cave and file it away and it's all paper.
Speaker 2:It's nothing electronic about it. And yeah, I just heard about that today and I'm blown away by the people who are opposed to this. People are actually upset about this and I'm thinking you guys are drinking the wrong Kool-Aid. You have been and you're in denial even still, and I don't understand, with our national deficit, who wouldn't be happy about what's happening right now Because deficit? Who wouldn't be happy about what's happening right now Because we're trimming?
Speaker 1:the fat on another level. And one more thing, because I know people like to hear this and you just started winding me up and run out of time. You notice how, when Trump talked about how they'll rebuild Gaza, and what I noticed is the big giant campus college protest and the 50,000 people walking down the street protesting it and saying no has kind of evaporated. And it hit me, it's because they were paid and I guarantee it was USAID money that came in and paid these people, because the protest have pretty much vaporized about everything of Trump. You'd think they'd have 10,000 people in every single campus. No, they got like one in Washington DC and it was like 50 people was the protest and half of them were congressmen.
Speaker 2:Did you see that the budget for USAID was bigger than all the CIA, the FBI, all the federal agencies that you hear about all the time combined? They had more money to work with than they did. So you know, I think that they said that they I heard it worded today that they attacked the central nervous system for the deep state and, um, I mean, that takes some guts, man, but somebody had to do it and and I'm just glad that that we got somebody who's willing to push forward. They're not worried about anything, uh, reputation wise, and they're. They're pulling the curtain back on the real bad guys.
Speaker 1:Yep, you see Elon Musk pick up a gold phone and say get me big balls. And then, if you're not sure what that is, you need to look into it. But to wrap up, the topic of today's show was about tariffs, and the consensus is that, while tariffs are intended to protect domestic industries, they can result in some higher consumer prices, and that's going to be particularly in industries like construction and home building, which is what is heavily relying on imported materials like lumber and, as you pointed out, donnie, where we get metal, where we get tile, where we get gypsum, where we get lime. A lot of people think that we produce all that stuff in-house in the United States. We don't. So the exact impact is going to be based on a lot of factors, and fear is one of those.
Speaker 1:I'm with you, donnie. I think the shock will start to level off as we go through the next few weeks and months and then, if there is any effect, I think they'll work their way out. My gut says we're not going to see these massive price increases. Some, some things will, and that'll affect overall prices of housing. But again, I don't think you wait to build a house. If you want to build or buy.
Speaker 2:just start doing it now yep, full agreement, man, full agreement, good points good.
Speaker 1:Well, I hope you like this amateur take on tariffs and how it affects the economy. But eventually we all feel it in different ways, whether it's the price of eggs literally, or the price of drywall and metal roofing and all that other stuff. But we'll put the show up on the website in podcast form and the website address is thecarolinacontractorcom and we're thankfully tuned in. We thank you for the support and we hope to hear and see you again next week on the Carolina Contractor Show. Have a great day everybody. Thanks for listening to the Carolina Contractor Show. Visit thecarolinacontractorcom.