Introduction & Outro: 0:00

Welcome to the Tennessee on Supply Chain Management podcast. Listen in as co-hosts Ted Stank and Tom Goldsby set sail into the world of end-to-end supply chain management, diving deep into today's most relevant business topics. They'll share insights in pressing industry issues and tackle the challenges keeping supply chain professionals up at night. If you're enjoying the ride, download and subscribe to Tennessee on Supply Chain Management on your favorite podcast platform now.

Tom Goldsby: 0:27

Hello and welcome to the Tennessee on Supply Chain Management podcast. I'm your co-host, Tom Goldsby, coming to you from Rocky Top, Knoxville, Tennessee, and delighted to be joined by my good friend and colleague, Dr Ted Stank. Hey, Ted, how you doing.

Ted Stank: 0:43

Tom, how you doing. I'm joining you from our satellite campus in Beaufort, North Carolina. I'll be back with you later this week to get all of our executive graduate programs graduated and out of here by December 13th.

Tom Goldsby: 0:57

Wow, exciting times. You know all this hectic activity. I know we're wrapping up business for the semester. Right about now, in fact, I had my last live class session of the semester. I wouldn't say that all 768 students showed up to their intro to supply chain management class, but it was a good share of them and they were all wanting to know what's going to be on next week's exam and I have to say I dropped a few hints, but not full disclosure by any means.

Ted Stank: 1:28

I thought you were going to say that of your live class.

Tom Goldsby: 1:29

Not all of them were actually alive. Well, that's another story. In fact, I did throw a question out to them about a month ago. You know, we're kind of in the doldrums of early November. We're running on fumes at this point and I did actually say, hey, would you do me a favor, put a couple of fingers up to your throat and just tell me if you feel anything? And I don't know, I think that got it, made him a little angry, which was part of my point, sparked a little energy in them. But anyway, we're kind of in those, those final hours of the semester. We're putting the wraps on leadership academies, right, ted, and a lot of activity going on here on campus. Absolutely, these are a hectic couple of weeks and we're just waiting to see who we're going to play in our first ever playoff football game too. So that should be announced later today. I think that we need to probably have a little conversation, but I just don't think we should keep our guests on the sidelines for very long. What do you think?

Ted Stank: 2:26

Yeah, the guest that we have today is not a sidelines player. She is absolutely a starter that needs to get as much playing time as possible.

Tom Goldsby: 2:34

Certainly Well, marianne Wanamaker is the Dean of the Baker School of Public Policy, a professor of economics in the Haslam College of Business and a frequent flyer when it comes to the Tennessee on Supply Chain Management podcast Back by Popular Demand. It's been a while, marianne, since you've been with us. Welcome yeah.

Marianne Wanamaker: 2:52

I don't know what y'all have been doing over here without me.

Tom Goldsby: 2:55

Well, our ratings have plummeted, so we realized we needed to bring you back in the mix and we'll see if you are the catalyst that we think you are. But welcome to the show. And of course, you know we're on the far side of an election, a big, big election, and I think that's going to be a primary topic of conversation. Everyone's speculating on what the new administration the new old administration, if we're going to call them that will have in store for us. A lot of talk of tariffs and immigration policies and all that stuff, and we will certainly get to it. But, Ted, I want to throw you something first. Within the logistics and supply chain space, we always keep a close eye on the Logistics Manager Index and I think you caught a glimpse of that this morning and I'll have to admit I missed it. My apologies to the Rogers brothers who put that out Dale and Zach Rogers, father-son duo, actually. But, Ted, what's the read from Dale and Zach on the LMI?

Ted Stank: 3:47

Yeah, the November index just came out and for those of you who don't know and we had Dale and Zach on a few months ago the Logistics Managers Index is an assessment of logistics managers to get a sense from them on what's going on in transportation, warehousing, inventory et cetera, whether things are in expansion mode or shrinking. It's kind of perceived to be a lead indicator of economic activity because if we don't have inventory then that's the expectation that sales are going to be low and things like that. The index for November was still pretty hot. It was 58.4, anything abovea 50 is in expansion territory, a little bit cooler than October. But October frankly, was the hottest since September of 22 when we were kind of coming out of the COVID doldrums.

Ted Stank: 4:32

Some really interesting readings. Inventory was down a bit and they're tracking that as all the stocking up that we did during the summer as an early holiday stock up period because of fears of port strikes and tariffs and excess costs in maritime shipping. So inventory is coming down a little bit. We can talk more later about what the retail holiday was like over the last several days but in general things are looking pretty hot from logistics managers, which means warehousing prices are up, capacity is down, transportation, pricing up, all those kinds of things.

Tom Goldsby: 5:06

Well, cyber Monday, just to put a little timestamp on where we are actually, it's Giving Tuesday today, I believe December 3. And yesterday was Cyber Monday and I think they were expecting big things. From first reads, it sounds like Friday was a really big Black Friday and things are going pretty robustly in retail. So we need our supply chains to be performing at a high level. Make sure those shelves are stocked and those fulfillment centers are ready to ship.

Ted Stank: 5:35

Yeah, latest I saw was that the retail holiday was about a 5% increase over last year, which is a good sign. A lot of interesting things underneath that number, like who were the winners and losers, and, from what I've been hearing, it's mainly discounters that have really won, that consumers were being very price sensitive about where they went to shop. That being said, we spent 5% more than we spent last year. So in an environment where consumer confidence is always a little bit iffy, consumers are still spending.

Tom Goldsby: 6:03

Well for sure, and this is such a terrible label to put on anyone or anything. But speaking of losers, Pat Gelsinger is out at Intel Don't know if you saw that, but in the last few days, forced out by the board and I guess his recovery administration kind of heading out the doors throwing money out. I think TSMC got $6.6 billion about 10 days ago and then more money's heading to Ukraine, I think $700 million just announced, and so a lot of spending going on to try to keep those initiatives, I guess, moving in the direction of that administration.

Ted Stank: 6:45

But hey, Tom, we're playing defense here a little bit. We just said that we were going to get the offense on.

Tom Goldsby: 6:50

Let's go.

Ted Stank: 6:51

Let's get Marianne Wanamaker to join us. Marianne, a lot of what has happened over the last couple of months was speculation about what was going to happen with our big national elections on November 5th. There was so much uncertainty. I haven't read a lot of the kind of after action reports about why the polls were not as accurate as they could have been. I know a lot of people said that it was kind of a toss up election and when we all woke up on the 6th it didn't seem to be much of a toss up at all, with Donald Trump seizing his second presidency as well as recapturing Senate with a GOP majority. So I'd love to get your take on some of the prospective policy issues that this new administration is going to put into place that will impact us in supply chain management.

Marianne Wanamaker: 7:39

Well, again, thanks for having me. It's fun to be here again, and someone described it to me the day after the election as a narrow blowout that stuck with me. I think that's a really accurate way of thinking about that election, like, yes, we all woke up the next day and it was clear. I was up at 430 in the morning to do local TV and on my way to the local station that called the whole thing. So I wasn't expecting that. I think it was surprising to us, but it still was not. The swing states were still swing states and those margins were still relatively narrow, and so there still appears to be a large section of Americans who are persuadable to either side, republican or Democrat and that's the way it's supposed to work. So you know, from my perspective, I think it's just a really healthy outcome. So I mean, I'm not going to tell you anything you don't know.

Marianne Wanamaker: 8:23

The big issues facing the Trump administration are taxes, tariffs, the national debt, inflation. I mean, it's pretty standard set and in many ways, I will say that it feels a lot like 2016. Coming in in 2016, the Trump administration was really focused on tax reform. The tick-to-toe stuff that happened in the fall of 2017 was teed up in the election, and then there was, of course, a ton of work on trade, to some extent, immigration although I would call what happened in the 2016 election to be more about the border than immigration. We can talk about the difference in those two things, and so those are the same issues this administration is facing.

Marianne Wanamaker: 9:04

I mean, they've got all these national security, foreign affairs issues as well, but the immediate issues that that White House will have to face are around number one tax reform. A bunch of stuff is sunsetting. They've got to decide really quickly what they want to do about it. And then they've got. They've promised the American people they're going to do something about tariffs, and they promised they're going to do something about the border and immigration. This time, you know, a little bit of a rerun. I've seen this show before.

Ted Stank: 9:30

In some ways, so let's kind of start peeling the onion here a little bit and really talking about a few of those issues that you touched on that have major implications for supply chain managers, the first one being tariffs and trade. Obviously, there's been a lot of headlines in the last week about a 25% tariff on Mexico and Canada unless they can make some progress on immigration. An additional 10% on Chinese imports. A lot of uncertainty about what's going to happen with European and our partners in the EU. So let's talk tariffs and trade for a little bit. First and again, we're in a different place from 2016 in that China is not our number one trade partner right now. There has been movement away from China significantly, although China is still massive.

Marianne Wanamaker: 10:18

Yeah, and most of those places move their stuff to Mexico, right.

Marianne Wanamaker: 10:21

So I actually think in the election itself, in the campaign, in the conversation about tariffs, as people were trying to critique the strategy, the tool they were using was largely about inflation, right, like, okay, if you add all these tariffs, you're going to raise inflation and that seems counterproductive and I think that missed the mark then and it really misses the mark now.

Marianne Wanamaker: 10:45

The thing that the tariffs do now, or the threat of tariffs do now, is just generates uncertainty. Uncertainty is a killer for capital investment now, both domestically and abroad. So I don't think that the introduction of special tariffs on Mexico and Canada has made any company more likely to cite something in the United States than they were on November 5th, because what it has revealed is a little bit of erraticism that makes people really nervous about citing things anywhere domestically, abroad, because you don't know to your point this is your territory. You don't know where the supply chain is for the thing you're thinking about establishing in the US. So you don't want to establish it when you don't know what the status of Mexico is, Right. So I just think the whole thing to me right now that is a conversation about uncertainty more than it is about prices for Americans.

Ted Stank: 11:34

OK, interesting, because I've always heard that counter argument about well, if we raise tariffs, then companies are just naturally going to raise their prices to cover those tariffs.

Marianne Wanamaker: 11:43

So I don't think that's. The primary impact for the American economy is all the stuff that's tied down, certainly.

Ted Stank: 11:49

So, Marianne, you had an insider's view during the last Trump administration by being part of the President's Economic Council, for was it two years that you were on the council? One year 364 days for tax purposes. Okay, you know President Trump is renowned for being a master negotiator. In fact, he wrote a book on it called the Art of the Deal. Right, how much of this do you think is posturing on his part, particularly with Canada and Mexico, to get down and sit down at the table and work on another part of the onion, immigration?

Marianne Wanamaker: 12:19

Yeah, I do think that it's become clear what that strategy is and what it looks like.

Marianne Wanamaker: 12:24

I think the fact that you saw the Canadian Prime Minister fly to Mar-a-Lago this weekend is pretty good evidence that that is what the tool is for.

Marianne Wanamaker: 12:31

And yet if you talk to business owners, they don't think that enough to have confidence about what the supply chain from Mexico might look like in six months. So, yes, it's probably a negotiating tactic, but it's not so much of a negotiating tactic that people don't think there might be some real implications and need to plan for that. And you know, I do think we talked about this in our pre-show discussion. Like, I do think that the economic team that this administration has assembled thus far and named thus far very classical team with classical instincts and tendencies, the kind of true believers on tariffs and tariff policy haven't been named to any official position. That doesn't mean they don't have influence. It doesn't mean they're not whispering in the president's ear, but they're not heading NEC, they're not at Treasury, they're not at Commerce, so you do have a more traditional group in place. So if you're a traditionalist on economic policy, that's good news for you.

Ted Stank: 13:32

Can you explain that to us truckers? Does that mean a different perspective on monetary policy?

Marianne Wanamaker: 13:38

Well, I think it means a more traditional Republican view on free markets. Free markets win the day.

Ted Stank: 13:44

Okay.

Marianne Wanamaker: 13:44

And so all else equal lower government taxes, more trade. That immigration although it is not currently functioning very well, that immigration is critical to our success. Those voices are going to be in the room, and that's my takeaway from the appointments that have been made so far, or the intended appointments that have been made so far.

Ted Stank: 14:06

That's very interesting yeah.

Tom Goldsby: 14:07

Thanks for that inside track and I guess we're at about T minus 50 days before inauguration day. And, ted, would you agree that it seems like businesses with which we engage they're just trying to make sense and speculate and enter into the scenario planning a bit? Again to your question earlier is it posturing, as you pointed, or is there going to be some real substance? And I think that's kind of where we are. I remember doing surveys back in 2018, 2019, about how companies were dealing with the tariffs that were implemented in the first Trump administration, and the most common response was wait it out, and the premise was we're not going to do anything. We might have a China plus one if we can go to Vietnam or Cambodia or what have you, just to kind of diversify the portfolio a little bit. But they still kept a pretty firm footing in China. They just diversified a little bit and then, lo and behold, the Biden administration comes in and they maintain the tariffs and so it seems like the waited out they're still waiting it out from 2018.

Marianne Wanamaker: 15:10

So now I'm going to ask you a question. So what had more of an impact on people's decision making? Was it the trade policy of the Biden administration and the Trump administration, so the tariff policy, or was it the COVID impacts in specific countries, like which of those has been bigger in people's decision-making frames?

Ted Stank: 15:28

I think they were complementary, and we've been talking supply chain managers have been talking for a long, long time, at least since the early 2010s about whether it was sound strategy to have most of your eggs in the basket of one country that, arguably, is the biggest competitor of the first half of the 21st century economically of ours. And I think that thinking was accelerated by the first Trump administration's tariff policies, and I think a lot of companies were already thinking then about, hey, we need to start finding alternative places, the China plus kind of mentality that Tom mentioned. And then COVID came along and really kicked that trend in the butt. I think people really realized and CFOs realized we needed to find other alternative sources to China, because if that spigot got shut off whether it's for geopolitical purposes, policy purposes or global pandemic purposes we couldn't have all our eggs in that China basket.

Tom Goldsby: 16:28

Yeah, I would double down on that. It was lead time and, worse, lead time variation. Right, as I tell my students, the mean is mean but the variation is meaner. And you know, when you could bank on four weeks transit time Shanghai to Knoxville, that's fine, We'll plan on that. But when it's four weeks plus three, four, eight weeks, what have you? That was the real killer. Right, and 10,000 mile long supply chains, I think. And hence JIT got thrown over, you know, raked over the coals and I think, more than anything, we largely absorb the tariffs without any real. I mean we weren't talking about inflation in 2018, 2019, 2020. I mean, we weren't talking about inflation in 2018, 2019, 2020. It was when we had the supply chain surge in demand, with handicapped supply chains, when inflation soared on us. And you know I'm an econ undergrad, so now it's time to be set straight by the econ PhD.

Marianne Wanamaker: 17:21

What do you think, marianne? Well, you know it's funny you mentioned inflation because, like, if you read some of this criticism of the Trump administration's tariff policies, what people will say is, like, oh my gosh, this is going to fuel inflation. We might get another percentage point on inflation. Well, true, okay, but think about what inflation is. It's an ongoing rate of change. So if the Trump administration adds tariffs to everything coming in from China, what was $100 is now $125. That's a one-time increase in the price, but it doesn't come back next year, right? So, like, it fuels inflation one time. So can this country survive an increase in inflation for one year from what would have been 2.3 percent to 3.3 percent and then the year after that it goes back to 2.3 percent? Absolutely. So there's just to me that incriminating evidence on this is not great.

Marianne Wanamaker: 18:11

Policy isn't about inflation, it's just not that big of a deal. But it is about people's investments and the way they behave and the rearranging of all the stuff y'all deal with. And when people think, oh, I'm going to move it out of China and one place, I might move it in Mexico, and then Mexico all of a sudden is on the bad list, it makes it very hard to plan. I was telling somebody the other day, like we just need a country that's close to us, where no one would ever, ever, ever want to leave that country and come here, where we can site some production facilities. Where could that be? It's not Canada, apparently. Right, we need a country like that, that is no immigration threat and we're super close to us and we know exactly how long it's going to take to get the ship from there to here.

Ted Stank: 18:56

And you know the trend if you follow far direct investment trends. Over the last six, seven, eight years it's so much of it has gone to Mexico. Mexico has seen a hundreds percentage increase in foreign direct investment, much of it from Chinese companies, by the way. But I mean, I got to believe that Mexico is still going to be the big winner of a China plus policy, at least for access to the US Canadian markets.

Tom Goldsby: 19:21

Well, to that point earlier, right, I mean, if 10,000 miles is too far, how about 100? What about a thousand? Right, right?

Ted Stank: 19:28

And not having to cross an ocean and go through port and put it on rail. And I do think it is intricately tied to immigration policy.

Marianne Wanamaker: 19:36

It is. The other thing I wanted to point out is the fact that the Biden administration didn't change the tariffs on China. I think one way to read that is that China is a country over which we have very little power, right, I mean put it in the category of Russia. You can say whatever you want in Washington, you can do whatever you want. Your ability to affect a change in behavior and the leadership of that country is basically zero. So you put the tariff on, you ask for some change in behavior. You're not going to get it, so you can't take it off. Mexico and Canada are not in that category. Those are countries where we have a lot of potential to change behavior. The same is true for any country who we count on to be an ally In Europe. That's true. So it's a different game, I think, when you're playing it with an ally and a friend than if you're playing it with an adversary, and we need to kind of keep that in mind.

Ted Stank: 20:28

Yeah, marianne, can we pivot a little bit to this immigration issue?

Ted Stank: 20:33

You know there was a lot of conversation about a pretty sound what most experts that I know and I'm no expert on it, but most experts that I know thought was a pretty sound immigration bill coming through Congress a year or two ago that got voted down in the House. Now that the GOP controls both chambers of Congress, do you see a similar immigration bill coming through that looks like that one that actually gets passed this time? Because another major thing about policy for supply chain managers is labor and the availability of labor, and particularly in warehouses and in some light manufacturing, et cetera, immigration is really important to the availability of labor and particularly in warehouses and in some light manufacturing, et cetera, immigration is really important to the availability of labor. In fact, I heard a statistic at our supply chain forum a couple of weeks ago that today you could probably correct us on this, but today for every five jobs there's four employees available for that job. That if we have mass deportation, that may be three employees for every job. What's your take on all that?

Marianne Wanamaker: 21:32

Yeah, well, here's another statistic for you 85% of the workforce growth in the United States last year came from immigrants 85%. We are close to 100% dependent on immigration to drive growth in workforce. When we try to pretend that that's not true, we do ourself a disservice. I don't think any immigration bill is moving anywhere in Washington DC without presidential support.

Marianne Wanamaker: 21:55

No matter who's in the office. If you don't have the president behind your immigration bill, you are not going to go out on a limb for it, because that means you got to have veto-proof maturities in the.

Marianne Wanamaker: 22:06

House and the Senate to get an immigration bill through, and you're always I mean you know this history like if you an immigration bill that passes by a hair is a miracle, right, you're not. You're not going to get veto proof majority. So until the White House signals that they're interested in some sort of grand compromise on immigration, you're not going anywhere. Remember also that the Republicans, I think as of this morning, only have like a three seat majority in the House. So they're in the situation they've been in for a while, which is any particular faction of four can kill anything. So it's not a circumstance that's really set up to do anything on immigration. Border is different. So can you make progress on the border? Yes, because you have support from the White House, you have plenty of air cover for that. I think you can pass it on a pure Republican vote. People are less skittish about a border bill than they are about an immigration bill.

Ted Stank: 23:02

Okay, that's a great clarification.

Tom Goldsby: 23:03

Now, marianne, I know that you have been very passionate about the need to act on immigration and you dragged me to DC a few years ago. I think you warned me before we got there. It's like just don't expect much response again from a bilateral representation that we had during our visit on matters of immigration. I mean, do you think that there's? Maybe we can break through here a little bit Again how critical it is to your 85% stat of a moment ago? If we wanna have any growth, we're going to have to rely on on, dare I say, legal and illegal immigration to support our economy.

Marianne Wanamaker: 23:48

Well, you didn't bring me here to be a political science commentator, so I'll try to stay limited in my comments on this. I'll just say, like you know, the big lobby for immigration reform in Washington DC is the Chamber of Commerce, and the Chamber of Commerce isn't sure what which is their party anymore. And so I think you know, if you look like, think about the appointment or the intended appointment for Secretary of Labor, which is a very pro-labor, pro-union Republican and if you're the Chamber of Commerce, you're looking at that appointment and thinking like, ok, wait a minute. Right, this is not what I thought I was getting out of Republican administration.

Marianne Wanamaker: 24:24

So I just think that the classical way that immigration policy got developed and passed in Washington was big business saying we have to have a smart immigration policy to have economic growth. That's the conversation that we've been having for the last eight years. I've been having that with any business leader who will listen and they get that. But they don't have a lever to make it happen because they don't control the immigration policy of the Republican Party anymore. They probably do have influence on some part of the Republican Party and some part of the Democratic Party, but again, unless you have the White House aligned. You're not going to make progress like that.

Tom Goldsby: 25:03

Hey, marianne, thanks for that, and I think we've touched on tariffs, we've touched on trade, we've touched on immigration Something you mentioned earlier that didn't really get a lot of play in the run up to the election national debt. And you rattled that off earlier as a critical issue. Can you explain to us why you think national debt I mean Grover Norquist was nowhere around the dial, why you think national debt I mean Grover Norquist was nowhere around the dialogue? You know just a blast from the past, but you know, during the previous Trump administration, I know that toward the end it was COVID spending and all that stimulus, but the debt did balloon in the last Trump administration substantially. And there's talk of, you know, big spending in areas like defense, maybe less in social spending, but where do you think the national debt needs to fit into our dialogue? And maybe, why should supply chain managers be concerned about it?

Marianne Wanamaker: 25:53

Well, this is the first time national debt has appeared on my list of immediate concerns. So people always ask me like when is the reckoning going to come with the national debt? I have no idea, but it's closer than it was two years ago. I can say that I think it's closer than it was on November 4th. To be honest with you Now, neither party has made any attempt to pretend that they are interested in controlling government spending. Really, neither party.

Marianne Wanamaker: 26:19

Here's what I think has changed in the minds of economists and others who are watching this issue. I think we pretended for a little while that you could suspend economic reality, and what I think has happened is that the Biden administration suffered the costs of inflation in an electoral loss. They made a decision right after he is elected in 2020, promises in 2020 that he's going to give families money in 2021. He's going to give every family $2,500 or whatever it is. At that point, the economy didn't need the juice. He had promised he was going to do it and so he did it, and they continued to fuel the spending in early 2021. And it came back to bite them and they could never get inflation back under control. So if you're an economist and you're watching that. You're saying well, look at that, right, actions do have consequences. We always said they did and they weren't, it wasn't showing up, but look there it is. And then when he loses, when his party loses the election in November, in some ways, it's kind of a full circle moment for economists who are like, oh, actions have consequences and those economic consequences have electoral consequences and this is the way this thing is supposed to work. And I think we are seeing the same thing play out on the national debt side Now. Will those consequences appear in the Trump administration such that they suffer the electoral cost of that? I don't know that for sure, but I do think people are recognizing that.

Marianne Wanamaker: 27:46

Ok, same same song, second verse Right. When you overspend your capacity year after year after year after year and you don't send clear signals that you're serious about getting the thing under control, investors lose confidence in the ability of the American bank to pay what it owes, and that will have consequences. And you cannot avoid those consequences. Right, you can't wish them away. They won't disappear. People's interest rates will go up overnight and you will be in a debt crisis and you will have to face it. Does it happen in the next four years. I don't know. I think it really does in some ways engender confidence in this feedback system that now, when you do things that are economically unsound, eventually you have to pay the prices for that this is fascinating to me, mary.

Tom Goldsby: 28:30

It really is so fascinating, so great. I have an interesting wrinkle for you.

Ted Stank: 28:34

So it's 2024. If I were to say to you in I don't know 1974, 1984, that we have some in the supply chain area in particular, we have some big labor issues that are going to come up pretty quickly. In fact, the East and Gulf Coast port labor contract was pushed off until after the election. In fact it's going to come up, I think, in mid-January for expiration again unless they're able to get something worked out. If I were to tell you in 1974 that the GOP was going to be the party that was going to be pro-union, it would be interesting to see economists' reactions. But in 2024, the speculation I am hearing is that the Trump administration is going to want to get a quick win with a really important constituency in this new GOP coalition and that is big unions. What's your take on that?

Marianne Wanamaker: 29:26

I mean, what a way to shore up your newfound friends. So I have a 16 year old daughter who's in a US history class in high school and I've been studying with her this week for an exam and they've been working on the 1850s and the great realignment of parties in the 1850s and just how fickle people can be Right. And so Stephen Douglas says one thing in one debate and it just it realigns an entire party and throws an entire election and sends the country into civil war. Right.

Ted Stank: 29:52

Yeah.

Marianne Wanamaker: 29:53

So electorates can really be pretty fickle. Union voters have have shown themselves to be somewhat fickle, and I don't use that as a negative term, I just mean like they're willing to move their power into a different party if the circumstances suggest that they should. And so you're kind of an old school Democrat, and I've heard a couple of old school Democrats do this on podcasts recently, like they're furious about this, right, I cannot believe that these voters abandoned this after all of the years of work that we did for them. Yeah, but voters are forward looking, not backward looking, right, and so they saw somebody who made some promises they liked and then jumped on board with that. So if you're the Trump administration and you can throw some wins and victories their way in the short run to thank them for doing that, I think you do that.

Tom Goldsby: 30:41

So a clear distinction between union leadership and union membership. Right, and that's where we saw the endorsements that perhaps you would think would have come around for Biden. That didn't, because the membership wasn't rallying right the blue car workforce. So yeah, that's kind of where we are and it'll be interesting. I did also want to get your reaction to something to kind of look at geopolitics again in a different light. The South Korean president today, who issued martial law, only to walk it back when there was immediate reaction to that. But here we have one of our strongest allies in the region, someone that we are quite dependent upon and, in turn, is quite dependent upon us for defense and other purposes. But how do you think the world ought to be reacting to some suggestion of martial law from a tried and true ally?

Marianne Wanamaker: 31:37

Yeah, I didn't get a chance to check and see what happened to interest rates in South Korea in the middle of the day, but you know, my takeaway from all of that was yay for democracy, right. Yay for 190 people, I think, in their legislature, saying like absolutely not, we're not doing that right. And I haven't read enough to know whether that take is correct or not correct. But I immediately thought okay, if the Trump administration tried to do the same thing, what would happen in our houses of Congress? Would we get the 435 to nothing vote in the House? I don't know, but I hope that the answer to that question is yes.

Ted Stank: 32:11

Plus tens of thousands in the streets.

Marianne Wanamaker: 32:13

Yeah. So in a world where people are so cynical about democracy, the kind of democracy that Americans enjoy and that we try to spread around the world, I thought it was kind of a nice little lightning moment.

Ted Stank: 32:25

Well, hey, marianne, our producers are starting to give us the hook sign here. We could go on with this forever, like things. I haven't asked you yet that I would love to get your take on. What about a couple of billionaires managing something called the Department of Government Efficiency? Okay, can we talk?

Marianne Wanamaker: 32:40

about that for 30 seconds though. So there's no government rule about how short this podcast has to be. Here's what I think about that. Okay, the folks who are in charge of that operation are dreamers. They are innovators, they are change makers, they are extraordinary minds. Cutting costs from government is an entirely different skill set, so what I hope they realize is that they are the messengers and the voices, and maybe even the strategists. But I hope they pull some people onto their team really really fast who understand how government works and can get in there and do the hard operations kind of stuff. That cost cutting actually is Right. It's not fun, it's not glamorous, it's not dreamy, it's not any of those things. So I just see a misalignment between skill sets and what needs to happen, and I'm hoping they can fill that gap really quickly.

Tom Goldsby: 33:36

Well, they're looking for volunteers, I believe so, marianne, even if you want to volunteer some time over this holiday break, I'm sure they'd be quite receptive to that.

Marianne Wanamaker: 33:46

My husband will tell them I am not much of a cost cutter myself, so I think I'm not their candidate.

Tom Goldsby: 33:58

Fair enough. Well, Marianne, thank you so much. Always a joy and always so darn educational. I learn so much when you're on the show and we get such a reaction as well when you are on the Tennessee on Supply Chain Management podcast. So thank you so much.

Ted Stank: 34:07

I'll tell you, the thing that I have enjoyed the most since Tom and I started this podcast was the intersection between economics and economic policy and supply chain strategies and operations. Tom and I have had to kind of become bootstrap supply chain economists if we could coin that term and to have a real pro like you on to talk about these issues and really understand how decisions made economically not only in Washington but around the globe impact supply chain decisions has been really fascinating to me. So thank you for always being willing to come back and talk to us and talk to our advisory board and really to share your thoughts. It's great.

Marianne Wanamaker: 34:48

Anytime Go Vols, go Vols.

Tom Goldsby: 34:51

Well, with that, why don't we close out? And again, listeners, please send your questions and comments to gsci at utkedu and we'll see you down the road. Have a wonderful holiday season and we look forward to bringing out another podcast early in 2025. Be well.

Introduction & Outro: 35:11

Thanks for tuning in to Tennessee on Supply Chain Management. If you enjoyed the episode, subscribe today on your favorite listening platform to get all of our episodes as soon as they drop, and don't forget to take a moment to leave us a rating. Have any questions, thoughts or feedback? We'd love to hear from our listeners. Email us at gsci at utkedu. Join us next time as we continue pulling back the curtain on the world of supply chain, educating and entertaining you along the way. Until then, listeners.