Is this thing on? Yeah, it is. I can hear myself. I'm not sure whether that's a good thing that I can hear myself, but let's try that. So you already know what I'm going to talk about. My name is Jan Zoni. I'm an engineering manager at Red Hat, but I'm also part product owner. Been there for quite some time, and I would like to share some of my experience with you. Hopefully, that will help some of you. But first, by the show of hands, do we have any product owners in the audience or product managers? Okay, we've got couple there, couple there, couple there. Excellent. Do we have someone who wants to be a product owner and is not product owner? Okay, we have one, maybe two, three candidates. This is good. So for those of you who are product owners or wish to be product owners, hopefully this will show you what the role is like. For the rest of you, I hope this presentation will help you understand why product owners are the way they are. Okay, so as I said, for the product owners in the audience, this is not a comprehensive guideline. This is not a guide how to do your job. This is to show you that you are not alone. The challenges are transferable. I've been in multiple teams where I was a product owner, and the challenges are pretty much the same. They often appear different, but they are very similar. You should know that you should not panic. It gets better. If your team is starting, there are some very unique challenges, but they do get better in time. And the purpose of the presentation is hopefully to help you understand. I wanna say two things. First, this presentation will be somewhat in contrast to what Jen was talking about in the previous presentation. Because, okay, so let me ask you this. Have you been in a situation where somebody was supposed to make a decision and they didn't, and they were hiding behind, I don't know, a consensus or I don't know, somebody else making a decision or a collective decision? Any hands? Yes, okay, cool. So, that's one thing which I will try to illustrate how to deal with that and what you can expect there. And I also wanna make a note here that this presentation talks about the challenges of product owners, which means it might illustrate the job, illustrate the role in a slightly negative light. Please take that into account because the role is really not that bad. It's just that the presentation is really focused on only one side of the job, not only the good things. Okay, so let's take a look at the definition of product owner. This is what Wikipedia says, or at least Luslim. So, product owner represents product stakeholders and the voice of customer. Makes sense, right? Product owner is responsible for the product backlog, at least partially. There are other people who can help you with product backlog, but it is product owner. Responsibility to make sure that the backlog is in a good shape. And product owner is accountable for maximizing the value that the team delivers. That's the theory. However, when a new team is forming, it gets slightly different. Let's take a look at the reality. In the real world of a starting project, the first two are still pretty much the same. The third one, however, is slightly different in my experience. You, as a product owner, are not accountable just for maximizing the value your team delivers. You are accountable for the success of the product. You are accountable for the survival of the product and the team. And if you, as a product owner, have just one thing to take away from this presentation, let it be this one. You own the product. And in a good way. I don't mean it like you should control what happens in the product, but you are the person who is ultimately accountable for anything that happens. If every other instance, if everything else fails in the team or in the product, you are the one to make decisions if they need to be done. Let's take a look at what does it mean to start a project. Every project starts with an idea, every single one. And I was kind of thinking about how do you define the project being started? Like, where's the end of the start phase? When I thought about that, and what I wanna talk about today is the first release as the milestone, which kind of ends this, the starting of the project. So, and yeah, there is this red section on the left-hand side. Between the first idea and the first people on the project, I'm not gonna talk about that because it may or may not be you to convince all the stakeholders, the sponsors, to give you someone to work on that. It is effectively this point where the project gets started. So, this is what I wanna talk about. Between each two milestones, there are different phases. So, I wanna talk about those and the challenges specific to those and we'll end with the first release of the product. So, you get your first people or you were assigned to a team that works on a specific project and you were asked to be a product owner. So, what's first? Research. We're not talking about academic research here. We are talking about the state of the art. In this phase, you wanna know whether the idea is even technically feasible because whoever came up with the idea might or might not know or they might think it's feasible but you need to be sure before you start working on it. It's also about the state of the art and whether you can reuse the state of the art because obviously you don't wanna reinvent the wheel. So, you want the team to first spend some time exploring the field and what's out there, what they can use, what they can build on. All this ultimately leads to initial implementation. The first code that you can push into a Git repository and the team can start working on it. Let's take a look at some of the challenges. The first one being motivation of the team. Why motivation is or can be a challenge? The thing is that this research phase, it doesn't have to be one day, two day, two weeks. It can be as long as couple months or half a year or something like that depending on how challenging your project is or how big of an idea at the beginning was created. And in this research phase, you're basically trying to solve one problem but from slightly different angles. It might feel, to the engineers, it might feel like they're beating a dead horse just with slightly different sticks. That's not what you want, right? That's not what the engineers want. They want some variety in their job and sometimes it's just not happening here. In this case, what you can do as a product owner, you can give them the sense moving forward. By moving forward, they need to realize that the work that they're doing, even though they're still at the same place, just looking at it from different angles, just use your creativity, do whatever it takes to show them that they are in fact moving forward. You can do a checklist, to-do list where they can check off things that they have done. At one point, I came up with a very creative idea that I unfortunately wasn't able to put in place because I lack of time, but I had the idea of creating a battle map, right? So if you imagine, well, I don't know what computer game is cool these days, I don't know, StarCraft, right? So at the beginning, it's not cool, StarCraft wasn't cool anymore? Right, okay. So if you imagine that you start with a small base, that's where you are at the very beginning of the project, and as you move forward, you explore different areas, and you can draw the map, and then as you go down that path and explore whether it is something that is feasible or something that you should not pursue, you can somehow mark that on the map, and the team will see the maps growing. So that's one of the ideas I had at one point. So really, the message here is do whatever it takes, use your creativity to make sure that the team has the sense that they're moving forward. But there is another thing about motivation. In this phase, a lot of work gets dropped because that's what you do, that's what research of the state of the art is all about. You know, scientists say that even negative results are still results, even 20,000 of them. Engineers often don't like that. If they do something, if they work on something, and then you say, okay, so we're gonna drop this work, and we're gonna go in a different direction, it is not exactly motivating. So what you can do here is to teach them with their managers, preferably, that it is okay to fail if you learn. And by the show of hands, how many engineers do we have in the room? All right, so the engineers in the room, and everyone in the room, stand up, we're gonna stretch a little bit, and I want all of you, there will be three lines here on this slide, and I want you to read them with me. It's okay to fail. It's okay to fail. It's okay to fail.  To let it sink for a little while, I will add one more thing. Again, I will repeat, if you learn, if you learn from it, it's okay to fail.  It is easier to just try something and go back than spend two months exploring and analyzing something. So another challenge that you can face as a product owner, you can face like a progress when the engineers don't feel that they're making progress, and they can get paralyzed by analysis. You remember what the previous slide said? Kind of ironic, isn't it? Because this is actually a vicious circle, because when your team, when they are not motivated because they're analyzing the same thing just with slightly different directions, you motivate them to keep doing that. Eventually, they can get to this place. They can really get paralyzed by analysis because they lose the big picture and they keep focusing on the problem and they analyze it from different directions. And well, guess where that leads? They get demotivated because they're paralyzed by analysis. So you're back to square one and it's really a vicious circle. So you really need to break it on two sides. I already told you how to break it on one side, how to break it on this particular side is to give the team the guidance. And I will go back to what Jen said in a previous session where I was here. In this case, the best thing you can do and the best thing for the team is to have strong technical leader who can guide a team, who can make the decision, who can make the decisions if they need to be done. In case the team can't make the decision themselves. But if there is no such person, if there is no strong leader among the engineers, guess what? You're the owner. You represent the voice of the customer. So you can be the leader. You can give them the guidance. Obviously I'm talking about guidance, not directions. You can use directions as the last resort. If the team is really paralyzed and needs to move forward, you can make the decision but with anything before that, you must give them the guidance. That's what you do. And by guidance, it can be bringing perspective to the table, which was not seen. You know, something like that. That's what you do. That's what your role. So don't be afraid in participating. Don't be afraid to participate in decisions. That's the message here. So as I said, this is ultimately where it leads. The research phase leads to some code. Somebody needs to write the initial prototype. And if you're lucky, if you're really lucky, the team will do it collaboratively.  They will connect all the dots and somebody else, like one person, one single guy or one single one, will take the lead and write the code. And here, this spot, I need to thank to all the Over the Weekend heroes who just go ahead, sit down, drink a ton of coffee, and write it. No matter how ugly the initial code is, they just push it to the repository so that the team can move forward and they can get the job done. They can build on the code, they can improve it, they can refactor it, whatever it takes. In my previous couple teams, I have worked with a few of those and I don't know how they do it. They just do, the rest of the team, they keep arguing, they keep doing more designs, but these people just throw themselves at the problem. They write the code, it's like, okay, now we can work. So if you're listening to this presentation, thank you. So now you have the code. That means you have the first prototype. What starts is early development because now the team can do, the developers can do what they do the best and what is usually the most fun for them. They write code. However, for you, your job now becomes intense because now you need to take care of the backlog. I mean, really care about the backlog because you need to write the acceptance criteria, the user stories, all those things. And some of these things, some of these challenges that we'll see here are not specific to this, to this stage of the development, but they start here. Challenge number one, teamwork. Because what can sometimes happen, especially in a team that is just forming, is that the team is not actually working as a team. I always say that there is a big difference between a team and a group of individuals who coincidentally work on the same project. They don't share the purpose. They must learn that. What you can do here, obviously, you're going to work with their managers, with your scrum master or agile practitioner, whoever you have assigned to your team. Thank you, Fernando. And what you can do as a product owner is push for higher effectivity. And here is what I mean by that. As a product owner, you are an impartial person who can observe and who can point out the implications of the decisions that the people on the team make. As an example, I once was in a situation where one of the engineers, a rather junior person, he spotted, he was working on something in a code, right? And he spotted, while working on that code, he spotted something that needed to be fixed or refactored or changed dramatically. And he realized that it would take about a week to do that. So he went ahead and consulted with his more senior colleague, one of the most senior people on the team. And together they agreed that it's a good idea and that it should be done straight away because it would block them in the next sprint. So they went ahead and did that or the junior developer did that. However, at the end of the sprint, I came to a meeting and some of the deliverables, they were supposed to hand over at the end of the sprint, they were supposed to show at the end of the sprint, they were not done. However, there was a ton of this other work that was done and nobody in the team, except for these two, knew that this work was being done. Guess what? As Jen said previously, I didn't hold the individuals accountable. I held the team accountable because they, as the team, didn't deliver. And I pointed out to them and that's exactly what I said. I said that I would hold them accountable as a team for what they deliver, not just as a group of individuals. And at that point, they started to realize that they really must work together because guess what? The worst case scenario is, somebody else could have spotted the same issue in the code and two people could have been working on resolving that, each one from a slightly different angle because, well, guess what? They didn't talk to each other. So as a product owner, this is what you can do. This is what you can tell them. Show them what it leads to and don't be afraid to take it to absurd dimensions to really prove your point kind of. Okay, so commitment, that's a big one. There are actually several different parts of commitment. What I wanna talk about first is part-time commitment. It happens a lot on teams that are new because what often happens is that your stakeholders, your sponsors, they give you some people you can work with but they don't assign them to your team full-time, maybe like 50% if you're lucky. I witnessed a manager who assigned a person to my team to work there for 5% of their time. It's like, no, thank you. Really, that doesn't even cover the meetings. So what you can do here is regular planning and communication with your sponsors. Mutual respect is what you absolutely need to keep in mind. You respect the sponsors and that they have their lives and they have their decisions to make about capacity planning. And they must respect you as a product owner. They must understand that you are here to deliver something and that you are accountable for the success of the product and the project. So as a specific example, in one of my teams what we did there was at the beginning of each sprint, there was a meeting where we planned the work that we were supposed to do in the sprint. At the very beginning of each such meeting, we did a quick round and each person in the meeting would say for how much they can commit to the project in the next two or three weeks, depending on how long the sprint is. And they just worked because you kind of know what you can expect in the next two weeks. Obviously not in 100% of cases because if CVE comes your way you need to drop everything and you need to work on that CVE. So that still happens but even with those in mind you can plan up to 90% of your time and you can work with that as a product owner.  Overcommitment, that doesn't have to do anything with sponsors that has to do with the people on the team. So there are two types of engineers at least in my experience. Those that tend to overcommit themselves by underestimating complexity of the tasks at hand or well and or overestimating their capabilities or well their capacity. And the other one is the exact opposite. I will talk about that on the next slide. So in case you have a team that tends to overcommit themselves put more things on their place that they can handle what you can do there obviously is a capacity planning and this is a long run. You need to start by collecting data. And in my experience the team typically doesn't like that because well they need to do some work on estimating and they need to be consistent in their estimations and they need to keep it doing for weeks and months. But in time you will get some real numbers that will show you what is the real capacity of the team. And if they keep being consistent they eventually start doing the estimates right. Or like if they don't the estimates are still relative to the capacity of the team. So you as a product owner can do some real planning. Under commitment that's the second type of engineers that I have worked with. In this case the engineers try to well not try to they unknowingly mostly unknowingly overestimate the complexity of the tasks at hand or they underestimate themselves their capacity to do work. So what you can do here is have solid backlog. If you remember one of the responsibilities of product owner is to build backlog. If you don't do that or especially at the beginning it is difficult at the beginning of the project because you as a product owner don't know what's going to happen exactly. The product, the project is still fresh. You should ask for help. And by help I mean help of the engineers because at this stage at the early development what happens what typically happens is that the team is building foundation on top of which the functions will be built. And building the foundation that's mostly technical problem you know that there are technical challenges. So it very often happens that the team knows much better than you what needs to be done in the next four, five, six weeks. Ask them ask them ahead of the time it is much better than not doing them and experiencing what I have experienced once or twice. That the sprint starts halfway through the sprint your team doesn't have anything to do because you know the sprint whatever was planned for the sprint is done. Okay what comes next? The backlog and there are some things in the backlog that are not exactly specified. So guess what they do the engineers do what do they think is best for the team and for the project. At Red Hat we have an expression for that. Pizza we didn't order. Product managers like to use that. And that's exactly what will happen to you if your backlog is empty. And you know asking engineers to help you with the backlog it will help you with one more thing which I will talk in a little while and that is like general communication between yourself and the team because you as a product owner also need to understand what's going on in the team what technical challenges do they face because that will help you understand their capacity. So now you arrive to the first demo something that you can actually show to your sponsors and to your stakeholders. Hopefully it went well. So you must now push for the release. Your development continues but you have one more responsibility right now and that is communication with the stakeholders because for the first demo you can still do that it still makes sense. However it is only after the first demo when you have something to talk to them about something very specific something that you can have conversation about how to improve it. And also you need to start prioritizing more because at this point it's this point where the requirements start coming from the outside hopefully which is exactly what the first challenge is at this point. Feedback, getting feedback. That's the risk is that you will not get any feedback or that you will get too much feedback. And when you're getting feedback in my experience what you in the challenging situations if everything goes well you don't need to be too assertive but in challenging situations this is the best answer. I will talk about three specific scenarios that I have seen. Self-appointed stakeholders that's the first one. So by the show of hands how many of you encountered people who just you presented something or you were in a meeting and suddenly there was this one person who raised hands like okay we definitely need to talk because we're gonna use that or we're gonna depend on that or we wanna participate in this or something like that. So who has that experience? Okay so about quarter that's not as bad as I thought. So yeah self-appointed stakeholders the danger there is that many of them just wanna be in everything. It happens.  You know being assertive here meaning means calling their bluff. Ask them tough questions. Why are you my stakeholder? What exactly do you wanna do with this project? Why are you gonna depend on this? What do you wanna build on top of this? You wanna participate? Great how are you gonna participate? You know ask these questions to make sure that people who say that they're your stakeholders are actually your stakeholders. There is another group of stakeholders. The group that you know that they are actually your stakeholders but they don't talk to you. They don't give you any requirements they don't tell you what they want you to do. What you can do here being assertive nag them. Keep asking them for feedback. Keep contacting them, emailing them, texting them. I don't care having meetings with them. Whatever works. Make sure that they understand that you need their feedback. And there is a third group which is kind of similar to this one. Those are the people who give you their ideas. And I have at least one specific person in mind. This group will give you their ideas but then disappear. Anyone experience those? Right. And again, what you can do there, communication over communication basically. Talk to them. Try to get in touch with them as much as you can. And if they still don't communicate any of these two groups warn them that they will be ignored if they don't respond because it is not up to you to fly blindfolded. You must have a direction. If they want to be your stakeholders they must be active. It's a two way street. But if all that works for you you should be careful what you wish for. Because you might get just that. I get a ton of feedback, ton of priorities. And I like what Jen says it is always awesome to have just one priority number one. Doesn't happen that often, right? So there are two things here or three things here. Obviously you need a team to follow priorities. What can happen here?  Or they're not sure what their priorities are. So obviously expectations. You must set your expectations with the team. You must keep communicating the expectations. In my current team what I do every two weeks I sit down with a bunch of people from the team and we review sprint high level goals. Not like those are not specific like what needs to be done in every sprint but what I expect to see at the end of the sprint because there are dependencies on something else outside of the team for example. So make sure that the team understands what the expectations are and these expectations can be built up front. We're not talking like what is the expectation just for the next sprint but even for the next one, the one after that. You can really go as much into the future as you want as long as the team understands that these priorities can change every two weeks. That's why you're agile, right? Also having capacity buffer helps because as I said in some cases your team will not follow the priorities because they see something that needs to be done to unblock them. Can be for example, a story of this week in my team broken CI and you kind of must fix broken CI because if you build your process around that if your CI is broken you will not get any commits in because it gates your commits. So obviously you need to fix that. The key there is that the team must tell you first and foremost that something's broken and they need to work for it so that you can adjust your plans. And as a product owner when you plan you can do better capacity planning. Plan only 80% of team's time to work on things that you want them to do. Leave those other 20% to these things such as broken CI or CVE coming in. Those things that you cannot predict. So the first change in direction. That's not exactly optimistic but it happens. It happened to me every single time in my starting project. At one point the stakeholders came, the sponsors came and they basically said, we don't want you to work on this anymore. You should refocus on something else. It does happen. Guess what? You're still getting to release. There is no way out of it because your team hopefully continues, right? And now it depends on how big the change of direction was. You may end up at the beginning because the direction changes really dramatically but I'm not revinding my slides. So let's assume that does not happen. And let's consider that the direction moves only a little or moderately that you don't need to drop all your work. So you're still pursuing the first release. However, your risk now is that the team loses motivation because many engineers are on your team because they wanted to work on that specific project. It happens, it happens very often. It can also happen that the team is demotivated by the change in direction itself because again it means that some code needs to be dropped or some research needs to be dropped or something like that. Or they don't buy the change of direction. So there are two things that you can do here and that you should do here. Work with managers first and foremost because whatever you do at this point you will be stepping outside of your role a little bit. So if you work with the managers to make sure that you need to understand how the team feels. If the change of direction is a problem or not. If it is then work with your managers, work with people managers so that you understand why they are upset. What you can do as a product owner is show them value. Communicate why did it happen? Why the change of direction? What's the value in the new direction? What's the purpose? What's the new purpose of the team? They must understand the team's purpose so that they can align with that purpose and hopefully stay on the team if they buy that purpose. Obviously, in many cases many engineers move away from the project because they just don't share that purpose and that is okay because you typically want engineers who believe that purpose. So make sure that you communicate that. What's the value? What's the new value? What is it that you're gonna deliver? So you got to your first release. You did it. It's out. You must now get your customers. But as I said, at this point, hopefully your team is well established. You know what your goals are. The team works like a well-oiled machine. In which case, I can only say congratulations and good luck finding customers for your project. Thank you very much. Any questions? Yes? I'm sorry. So the question was if I had the customers before or when I started the project, right? So in those cases, it can be customers but I would more classify them as sponsors. Sometimes you do have the customers because you're creating the project for someone specific in mind. So it can happen. But typically my experience is that you have like certain type of customer in mind.  You don't have any specific customers. You just know who they are and who will you talk to when the first release is out or when the first demo is out. But it is always a good idea to keep an eye on those and to make sure that you still keep in mind who the target audience is and who are you going to talk to and basically talk to them as soon as it does make sense. You know, many other customers, they don't want to see, you know, sometimes they want to hear about the first idea. Sometimes they want to see the first demo. Sometimes they're only interested in your first release so it kind of depends. And if you know who your target audience is, you know, being in touch with them is generally a good idea. Any other questions? Yes. Right. Great question. The question was, how do you decide as a project or product owner when it's time to call the project itself failure? So two things. I was talking about mostly about like, it's okay for engineers to fail in meaning finding a path which not to take, right? So that's one thing. That is absolutely okay to fail if you learn from it. Like I said, as the scientists say, negative results are still results. However, to your question, I guess I would say that it's never fully up to you because ultimately you have some sponsors, you have some stakeholders. So it is at this point, it is about collective decision. However, obviously you are in position where you can give them guidance, where you can communicate what your position is. So when I don't see any path forward, and I actually did that about a year ago or two years ago, we had this project basically extracting applications into containers.  And so what I did there, I talked to a bunch of potential customers, and all of them unanimously said that this would have been cool if it came like two years ago, now we don't need it. At that point, I talked to my stakeholders, I talked to my customers, well, sponsors, sorry. And I basically told them like, hey, so I got this feedback, I think it's time to focus on something else or invest in that particular case, not in macro containers, but go back to the drawing board and figure out how do you split up an application into microservices. So that's basically how I did that, but it's never fully your decision. So the question was, what are the difficulties of, well, my specific case is that I'm a people manager of the team as well as the product owner of the team. So what are the challenges of that? Yeah, so I would say there are mostly advantages because obviously you have, well, yeah, you have more influence over the team. Obviously it's more difficult to stay away from being the authoritative leader because, well, you have authority of two different roles, so not to misuse that, that's a huge challenge. And other than that, I guess the time because both people manager and product owner, those are full-time roles, and me being in two of them doesn't make it easy. So time is the most difficult one. And in my case, how I handle it is just that I try to delegate. So I'm not the one responsible, so they're responsible for the product backlog. I partially delegate it to the team and I let them decide. I basically give them the high level goals for sprints and it's up to them to decide how to get there. So from that perspective, it actually kind of helps not to be the authoritative leader. When you don't have the time to be authoritative leader, you don't have a chance. Okay, any other questions? Seems there are none, so thank you very much.


What's going on everybody got Kyle and Shawn here relating sports cars, and we are ripping one box 2023 Bowman's best you This is gonna be for Larry Larry S. Bowman's best you pretty sure really? Yeah See what you're doing a Spencer you're making Shawn hit Got a gold nice one there Kate Clubnick Hey Clubnick squared. I don't know that too at the end is Kate Clubnick squared Yeah, go with the 50 their elements of the game It is also that I noticed elements of the game to 50 got another one to 50 calm a court New Syracuse QB calm a court of 50 Why is that there? Yeah, I don't know strange I Guess the elements maybe like the Play on I guess I think that's refractor Don and Edwards. We got to 50 gonna be Dorian singer It's gotta be a Dorian singer for USC Now is he number two? Maybe that's it. Yes I think it's strange. Yeah Dorian singer to 150 Michael Pratt to see another one see if it's the other ones are the same a rendezvous into 100 Am I just not noticed before? We have a Ajay swan to 25. That's the rookie out of earth the QB out of Vandy Ajay swan. We got a refractor Otto Andrew McCuba for Clemson and drew McCuba on the refractor auto We have a JJ McCarthy nice one there to 75 elements of the game model. That's the Michigan QB winner of the Natty Very nice one there with the smiley face his go-to inscription JJ McCarthy and on the back. We have a jumbo patch auto to 49 Jackson Arnold Nice one there. Mr. Larry the freshman QB for Oklahoma. I'll get the reins next year to color patch It's one there to 49 Alrighty there, sir. We'll get that out to you. Mr. Larry really nice hits there. Let's go Larry solid one We'll get that right out to you, sir


Bill O'Brien has left to become the offensive coordinator for Ohio State. O'Brien leaving after just one season in New England, in which the Patriots had arguably the worst offense in football. Tommy Curran saying last night on time for a tire Boston sports tonight, it was actually Bill O'Brien's decision to leave, and it was the Patriots' intention for O'Brien to return. For more, let's bring in our Patriots' insider, Phil Perry, Tarny Casey here with you as well on our Bella Early edition. Yeah, Phil, this is what I want to know.  I wanted to leave too. Or was this a knocking down of silos, which we heard Gerard Mayo talking about earlier this week. I think if you look at the timing, it's pretty indicative as to what probably happened here. Meaning, if you knew you were going to part ways with Bill O'Brien as soon as the season ended, because you did want to knock down some silos, quote unquote, wouldn't you have started the offensive coordinator search already? The way they've started the defensive coordinator search, they've had a handful of guys to talk to about that position. They've had a couple of guys to talk to about the special teams coordinator opening. And so wouldn't that have already started if you knew you're going to get rid of Bill O'Brien? What this looks like now, Tarny, is that this was a situation in which the door was open for Bill O'Brien to come back. It was a very difficult year for Bill O'Brien. He was looking to move on. I think the Patriots, obviously, they have the worst offense in the league. So this could be a situation where it works out best for both parties. But the fact that they haven't and that we haven't heard about, offensive coordinators coming into interview for this job, it seems to indicate they were waiting for Bill O'Brien to make a call and now they can move forward knowing that he's going elsewhere. Do you think, though, that they're at least prepared that they have a list of guys like pretty much ready to go knowing that maybe Bill O'Brien would say do what he did, which is for greener passions? Yeah, and look, when you're a head coach and candidate in this league, as Gerard Mayo has been several times previously, you go into those interviews with a roster that's three deep at just about every single position on your potential staff. And you have to be able to show that to ownership or GM or whoever you're reporting to and say, this is my top choice. This is where I would go next. If I can't get him, then I'm going after this guy. So they are prepared for this. And it wouldn't surprise me, Tarny, if you start to hear some names coming from that Shanahan McVeigh tree. Even if Gerard Mayo doesn't have a ton of overlap with some of these guys, some of them he does. But if he doesn't have a ton of overlap with some of them, I think he would be open to working with someone who's coming from that tree because it's been so successful and specifically successful with young quarterbacks. Yeah, so I really think this is like a blessing in disguise. I mean, no offense to Bill O'Brien, but I just felt like I'm glad that he left because I feel like otherwise this team was going to bring him back. And maybe they'd ask Steve Belichick back. And maybe you'd keep either macro and or Elliott will for some combination of both. And it would just sort of be the same, not the same thing, but kind of the same thing over again with just small tweaks. In my opinion, this sort of forces the craft's hands to start and Gerard Mayo's hands to really start moving forward and in a different direction, truthfully start a new era of football. Yeah, I think getting some new blood in here makes sense, right? Now, I'm a Bill O'Brien fan. And I think people often conflate Bill O'Brien and Josh McDaniels. Obviously, they work together. Obviously, Bill O'Brien coached Tom Brady and he ran that system. If you look at it this past year, what Bill O'Brien has done recently, both in the college game and in Houston, specifically when he's the head coach and he is running the overall show, those guys offenses are very different at this point in time. You got the full back and the running downhill with Josh McDaniels. Bill O'Brien likes shotgun. He likes to spread it out. He'll go empty backfield more than most in the NFL. So there's a lot that he does. The Deshaun Watson offense, for instance, much different from the Tom Brady offense. So they're not the same, but I get it if people want to move on, try something new, especially from that tree, again, that's had so much success in the modern NFL. Well, there's certainly no shortage of candidates to replace Bill O'Brien. Some former Patriots' assistants on the list, Josh McDaniels, Nick Kailey, Chateau Shea. Other candidates with Patriots' ties include Rams quarterbacks coach Zach Robinson and Shane Waldron, who has been a Seahawks offensive coordinator the last three seasons. Wouldn't wide receivers coach Wes Walker be fun? Bring him back. Other names with no Patriots' ties include Frank Reich and Kellen Moore. Those though are probably long shots. Phil, you asked Gerard Mayo on Wednesday about the process of finding a new offensive coordinator. Here's what he said. And once again, I'll go back to collaboration. Ownership 1,000%, they have a lot of resources and contacts across the league to help us with this. But we'll see how it shakes out. But that's the first person. Any higher, offense, defense, special teams, they can vet those guys. And look, I'm not going to bat 1,000 in year one. I'm sure someone will change in year two. But at the same time, I have to go with my gut. All right, Serum Battle joining us from 98.5 to Sports Hub. We would also like you guys to join this part of the conversation. Who do you want the Patriots to hire as their new offensive? Quarter of a ton of options down there, including other. You know, if there's somebody else, you have in mind. I'm going to have to get my reading glasses out for those. Ready? Go to NBCSportsFossin.com slash early edition. You also scan the QR code right there and cast your vote. Serum, who would you like to see the Patriots bring in as their new offensive coordinator? Well, it looks like the fans agree with me. I was leaning towards Zach Robinson, not because of his history being in New England, but because of the job. Well, the job, the part he, the role he played in developing the Pukinakua of Kyron Williams at will, the young guys on that Rams offense. And I think the biggest issue with this Patriots team last year and going forward is player development. I think they need somebody to develop the young talent they're bringing in. It's not just drafting the right guys to developing the quarterback. You're going to need to receive it down the line. It would be awesome for him to develop, help develop up and coming, receive it. They get in the second, third round. Or maybe first round depends on what you get. But I think player development is a key thing with them. And I think the job, you know, with that whole staff and LA did with Nukua, Kyron Williams and Atwell would be huge if they can replicate something like that here in New England. A lot of fans of that 2010 Patriots draft class, apparently Zach Robinson, seventh round pick of the Patriots out of Oklahoma State back in the day. And I'm with Serona and everything he said there, the guy that I might lean toward just because of the experience factor is Shane Waldron. Now a lot of experience working in the same offense, working hand in hand with Sean McVeigh. He came with McVeigh from Washington to LA, quarterbacks coach, offensive coordinator now for the last three years. So he has play calling experience, which is something that Zach Robinson doesn't have just yet. And now maybe the element of the unknown is actually an attractive aspect of Zach Robinson's game, whereas Shane Waldron, you can go back over the last three years and say, yeah, two years ago with Geno Smith, it looked pretty good. And you actually helped earn him a lot of money, Shane. But what happened last year? It didn't look so good in 2023, or it didn't look as good in 2023. So there are questions with all these guys. But again, if you've connected yourself in some way to Sean McVeigh, not a bad guy to have connections with when it comes to trying to develop a young offense. Guys, everybody on that screen there has some votes serone, except for Chad O'Shea. Why do you think people do not want Chad O'Shea? They come back here. And is that someone they should avoid or are fans just being too harsh? One, fans being too harsh. Two fans not really knowing much about them. And I think people just want to see new faces. They want to see something different. And I think that's why you see a huge thing with Zach Robinson. You know, people know the name. He got ties with the Patriots, whatever. They see the Rams. They see the town. Same thing that caught my eye. But I think it's not really a popularity contest, but I think that's what it's getting to now. Whatever name you see trending the most is what people are flying to. But I think one thing I think people have to understand here is talent really dictates style, play calling and that type of stuff. If you draft the Jaden Daniels, it'd be great for you to get a quarterback to understand the read option type often, similar to what they're running in Baltimore. If you draft a Marvin Harrison Jr., you would probably look for a coordinator like Zach Robinson or somebody like that, who has been great with young receivers. So I think the talent or the direction of where they want to go as a team, their plan, their vision will determine what kind of coordinator they want and what kind of player to draft. Chateau Shea. I was going to mention them, by the way, and they got a couple of votes. And he's had more than that. You know, like Chateau Shea, along with Nick Kaley, along with Wes Welker. All three of those guys have experienced both of the Patriots' offense, as well as the Shanahan McVeigh-style scheme. Where has Chateau Shea been the last several years? He's been in Cleveland. Who's been the head coach in Cleveland? It's been Kevin Stefanski. Who was his mentor? It was Gary Kubiak, who worked very closely with Mike Shanahan, who obviously is the godfather of this whole thing. So he is very familiar with how that offense that is spread throughout the league, like wildfire, is run. And he has some background here in New England as well. So maybe if there's a relationship there, with Gerard Mayo. Same deal with Wes Welker and Nick Kaley. Nick Kaley, people view as a future offensive coordinator. He hasn't coached quarterbacks yet, but people view him in that light. He has a relationship with Gerard Mayo. Does that make him the best fit? Only one year with Shan McVeigh, but maybe that's enough to help implement that scheme here in New England if that's the direction you want to go. 16% of people want Josh McDaniels. To me, like listen, I know he did wonders that first year with Mac Jones. I know his family's here. I want nothing to do with it. I do not want to keep going backwards, Phil. Like to me, that is constantly going back to what you're comfortable with.  I'm going to lean on the crafts. Like they love Josh McDaniels. Is this a real possibility that he could come back and we would go back for the third time to Josh McDaniels as offensive coordinator? Well, you mentioned McDaniels familiarity with the area. You mentioned his familiarity and his relationship with the crafts. I think that that makes it a realistic option. But my guess is that he ends up with Bill Belichick. Wherever Bill Belichick goes, we know how close that relationship is. And if Belichick ends up in Atlanta, I would be very surprised if Josh McDaniels doesn't go down to Atlanta with him and run that offense with whoever is playing quarterback there. So I think it feels like now, Sarone, the time to move on and the time to shift and change offense, especially you bringing our young quarterback in here. Josh McDaniels offense, as productive as it's been in New England and as productive as it was with Mac Jones, I think for most young quarterbacks, it can be really difficult to run because it's complicated. That playbook is voluminous. There's a lot on the quarterback's shoulders. So this might not be something that you want to do if you feel like you're taking a quarterback with the third overall pick, who's coming from a very college-y, quote-unquote, college offense.  I mean, I'd want him just for the story of the him and Mac Jones relationship and see how that goes with the new quarterback whoever they take. I think that'd be hilarious. But I think he's going to go with Bill. And I think one thing you have to, I just not going by anything, just my own personal feeling, if he came back to New England, I wonder how far down the line he'd be looking to replace Mayo if things went south. If we'd be looking over his shoulder the whole time with McDaniel sitting there, knowing he's have a good relationship with the Crafts. But I would stay away from him. I'd bring some fresh blood in here and go a different direction. And like you said, this is the perfect time for a complete overhaul of that offense. And I think it's absolutely needed.


Okay, we're back live for The 4 O'Clock Show. I'm Jay Fidel here on Think Tech, and I'd like to say that it's very important that not only the United States, but Hawaii, think globally. We have to see it the way Thomas Friedman sees it. We have to see a global world here. Like it or not, that's the way things are now. And Hawaii cannot afford to be not global. And so that's why we like to talk to Russell Hanra. Russell Hanra is the senior APEC official in Hawaii. He's the author of the master plan, the APEC master plan, and he follows APEC very carefully. That's the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation. I get that right. Yes, Jay. Thank you for inviting me again, and I enjoyed this Think Tech Kauai show, and I can literate some of the issues that's very important to our community and what affects Hawaii. Yeah. Well, today, we reserve this time for you and me to talk about Donald Trump's tariffs and to put them in perspective, to look at them in the continuum of American diplomatic and global business history, and to see why they happened, what effect they're going to have, and how that will affect us, not only in the United States, but in Hawaii. So let's talk about tariffs in general. What is it and why are these tariffs different from all the other tariffs? Yeah, let me, Jay, explain what really tariffs mean. Tariffs is a word that they use for taxes, like putting linen on some of the imports that we bring in from foreign countries. And for example, the U.S. Customs here with the border control under the Homeland Security. The U.S. Customs actually looks at the, lead eyes, the import taxes of every items that's imported into us, into, from different country of origin. For example, you have, like, machine parts or aluminum or a steel that we're going to be talking of coming from China. And China is a communist country, but we don't have any free trade agreement with them. So we give certain tariffs import tax percentage. And just recently, Donald Trump signed an executive order on March 1st, giving 25 percent import tax tariffs on steel materials. That's a pretty high tariff, isn't it? Yes. And 25 percent on steel and 10 percent on aluminum. And I think what he wants to do is kind of help out the American manufacturing, especially for the steel mills and aluminum mills that we produce in the U.S. soil. For example, we have companies like U.S. Steel Corporation, Neck Car, or companies like aluminum. We have Kaiser Aluminum, Reynolds Aluminum. So at least big multinational companies, they do have a million. And even steel, if you break it down into steel commodities, see, I myself was an industrial technology major in college, and my major was in metals and millology. So there's a different types of steel that you can use. It could be hot-cold steel or non-fair steel. Hot-cold is the difference between how much carbon steel is in there. And when you say carbon steel, there's basically the construction materials that you use, like rebars or channels. And non-fairest metals is like without the carbon contact in there. It could be cobalt aluminum, or it could be different kind of alloys of graphite kind of materials. But basically, non-carbon steels are called non-fossil. That's a big one, because we've been buying a lot of steel from China, and this is a direct effect on China. And you said a minute ago that we don't have a trade agreement with China, which is interesting because we could be in a trade agreement with China with the Trans-Pacific Partnership. But Trump bowed out of that. So we don't have that. We don't have any trade agreement with them. And now, to add insult to injury, if I can say that, he is letting a 25 percent tariff. So does he have the power to do this, Russell? Can he wake up one morning with a headache or something at the side? He wants to lay a 25 percent tariff on steel around the world? I don't think he can do this overnight. I know that there must have been a complaint through the American industry, because you got to go through the Commerce Department, and we have an international trade administration that looks into if it's being harmful to our American industry here. And in this case, what Donald Trump is using this tariff on the steel and aluminum is because it affects our national security. And there is a provision called Section 232 of the National Security Act that calls about it's going to be harmful to bringing these cheap steel and aluminum from foreign countries that hurts our industries here. For example, our U.S. Steel Corporation, our Bethlehem Steel, Steel Digital Company on all these multinational steel companies that's part of our heartlands that produces manufacturing. If it hurts our industry here, we're taking our jobs away. And I know they did a number. In 2016, they brought roughly $29 billion of steel imported into the United States. From China mostly? Mostly from China and different countries as well, and $17 billion worth of aluminum. So it kind of tells you that. And that came mostly from Canada, though? Yeah. Canada is one of the most importers for steel and aluminum. But he's giving an exemption to Canada, isn't he? Canada, because of the negotiation. So they're tearing the bottom out of that increase in that tariff. So on day one, he makes the tariff, and after changing his mind a couple of times, he sticks with it, and then he gives an exemption to Canada, which is the biggest exporter of aluminum to the United States. I don't understand that. He's taking the bottom out of his own initiative by exempting Canada from the 10% on aluminum. Yeah, I think that's because I think right now we're negotiating the NAFTA agreement with Canada and Mexico. Negotiating chip. The North American Free Trade Agreement, NAFTA. So I think he wants to make sure that if we can renegotiate the terms and condition of the NAFTA agreement, then he will consider or leave out the non-tariff agreement for steel and aluminum. Oh, I see. So that is a trade-off. I think Trump is trying to work out a deal with Canada and Mexico. Bargaining chips, as he so often does, bargaining chips. So in the case of China, you mentioned also that there was something in the law about national security for the United States. So are we saying that the United States military, for example, is buying steel from China? We do have some steel companies here. Oh, yeah, definitely. Matter of fact, we are asking China to build those naval vessels. Some of these PTA boats or smaller vessels are made in China. And that kind of fixed Jones Act as well. And I have one time, some of these congressional delegates were trying to pass a bill in the Congress, saying that they want to change the Jones Act as well. Having some percentage, like 25 percent, can be made in China with China labor and China steel, the materials. So that's a concern. But now with the Trump administration, that's going to be off the books now because we want to protect our industry here and create more jobs using our American raw materials here. But we don't really have all that much—all that robust steel industry or aluminum industry. We have some, but not that much. What's the effect for somebody, a company that's buying steel, for example, from China when they have to—all of a sudden, we have a 25 percent tariff? And that means a 25 percent increase in the cost of steel to that company. And that same company cannot go around and find steel that's cheaper than what it could get from China. What happens? What's the economic effect of that kind of tariff? I think you already seen it. Soon as March 1st, when Donald Trump, the president, signed executive order of putting the tariffs on steel and aluminum, I think the stock market kind of went up for the steel and aluminum manufacturers in the U.S., as well as some of these automobile industry, the Detroit top three automakers, the stock market for them went down like 4 percent. And if you look at the aspect of the raw materials of the steel and aluminum industry, they're probably projecting 5 to 6 percent of increase in their profit and in return retained earnings. Of steel? Of steel and for their business. Yeah, but what about, like, for example, the car industry here in the United States? They're going to have to pay more for steel. That's—you know, whether it's the Chinese steel with the tariff or whether it's two American manufacturers who are clearly less efficient and charge a higher price, that's why this is all happening, they're going to pay more for steel, period. And that means you and I are going to pay more for our cars, because they will pass that additional tariff expense on to us as consumers. It's always the way it works, isn't it? Yeah, I think if you look at the economic—I think they did the numbers through the U.S. Commerce Department that with the tariffs that they're going to put, they're going to—the automobile industry, the price might go up from an X-Factory price to wholesale to a suggested retail price might be 4 percent increase. So I think that's going to be the economic impact as well with the industry that uses steel. You know, that might benefit them as well, so. Them meaning? In terms of cost of good returns. And the other thing, if you look at what Donald Trump did with the corporate taxes, I know that with 35 percent, he lowered it to 21 percent. So there's a margin of difference of 14 percent from 35 to 21 percent. That's 39 percent to 21 percent. Yeah, so— It's more than 14. Exactly. So in other words— It's 18 cents. So in other words, there's a 14 percent of difference. So the corporate structure-wise, they can use that 14 percent to benefit their employees out there. They want to do it. That's why you see a lot of these companies are giving employees bonuses or it might be another golden parachute kind of concept for them executives to make more of a— Well, I think he was job-burning them there at the beginning, and that's why a lot of the banks, including here, you know, gave bonuses to their—but you said can do it. They don't have to do it. So they can do—these companies, the banks and others, they've realized a huge windfall of the difference between 21 percent and 39 percent tax rate. And they have a lot—they have cash sloshing around now because of that.  But in fact, they're not obligated to do that, and they may decide not to do it ever again, right? Yeah, it's up to—it's up to the decision of the board of directors, the management decision. Yeah. You've got to understand between is it a private firm or is it a public owned by stockholders? Yeah, sure. So that's—the decision-making is going to be different in those kinds of things. So, I mean, you know, what I see here is that these companies, maybe not all of them, maybe some of them will be, you know, good guys, but not all of them, maybe some of them, many of them will say, OK, we gave you a bonus. That's it. No more bonus. We're going to keep the rest of it for our stockholders and whatever we want.  There's no guarantee of that at all. Furthermore, it seems to me that this tariff is not necessarily going to have the effect that Donald Trump wanted to have, namely to encourage, incentivize the American steel industry. It will certainly increase the price of steel to consumers and consuming intermediate manufacturers, but it doesn't necessarily. Am I right? Yeah, I think in terms of—there will be some ramifications, some impact as it, but you've got to see which industry is going to benefit or not. Would you have done this? Oh, I think if you look at it from home rules of bringing—if you want to beef up the American industry— But does it beef up the American industry? Does it really do that? I mean, for example, the Jones Act you mentioned in passing a minute ago was intended, and that was it, 1919 or something, to beef up the American shipbuilding industry. It hasn't had that effect at all. What has done is increases the price of ships. I think what's going to do it, you see a lot of speculation, and that's exactly what happened with the stock market after the executive order and based on which commodities you're dealing with. But in the long term, sooner or later, it's going to catch up with you. So there will be competition from abroad. And I notice right now these other countries are buying out other steel mills and different—for example, Japan is buying at this company, the Nippon Steel, the Sumitomo Metals are investing in India and buying out a lot of steel mining over there. And you see a lot of what the company is like in Spain. Spain is a big steel mining corporation. Why are they doing that, Russell? Why are they doing that? Because right now they know it's volatile. The market is out of speculation, so they figured they've got to jump on the opportunity right now or else it'll be harder. So it's a business gamble that they take. Well, does this make America a bigger exporter of steel? I'm not sure America was that big an exporter of steel. In the first place, because we obviously have been importing from China. So are we leaving the world stage on the possibility of exporting now? Actually, if you look at the history, before China was South Korea and there was a steel building, they were one of the best steamship or shipbuilders. Yes, they are. And before that, it was Japan was one of the best steel and they were the best shipbuilders. Yes. Well, as the economy changes and gets developed nation, now everything's kind of focused on China because China's economy is booming and there'll be more industrialized and they've got so much raw materials there that they can come up with different kind of metal properties and between nonferrous and ferrous metals. They're in a great place because they've got the iron ore, they've got the cloak. Oh, yeah, definitely. In Africa and South America, and they've got steel mills, Chinese steel mills in both of those places. They're building steel like crazy and I don't know how American steel can compete with the steel the Chinese have been selling, not necessarily in this country, but all over the world. Yeah, I know. Are we kidding ourselves, Russell? We can always, what's going to happen in terms of domestic demand or exporting, depending on what commodities we're going to be manufacturing, could be washing machine, dryers, it could be industrial products for kitchen stuff or it could be automobiles or different kind of materials they're going to be implementing. But I think you've got to look at more of the micro aspect and think about not only are we going to bring the raw materials itself in the billet form or are we going to bring iron core or different kind of mining chemicals that make steel composition. So those things are not addressed yet. And I know that right now it takes about a one month to address it to the World Trade Organization that we are going to protest and put this anti-dumping kind of kind of value, kind of value, act on. I want to talk to you about that right after this break because the appeal of this, there still is a possibility of an appeal of this tariff that he put in place, it's already in place. But there are appellate procedures and when we come back from this break I want to talk about them and figure out with you what's going to happen with them. That's Russell Hanway. He's a senior APEC official at Hawaii and he's into trade and trade agreements around the world and he's certainly into tariffs because tariffs have a tremendous effect on that. We'll be right back. You'll see. Aloha kakau. I am Andrea. I am from Italy and I've been studying and working here in Hawaii for more than three years for my Ph.D. Hawaii is home to a truly fantastic community of middle and high school students. And did you know some of them are currently out there, right now, using their free time to invent new quantum computers? And did you know some of them are exploring cybersecurity and the new frontiers of robotics? I am just always amazed as I talk to them at science fairs. Oh, but there's more. Did you know that these students are coming here on FinTech Hawaii to hear their story with us? Come and join the new young talents making way show and discover how these students are shaping our future. Starting on February the 6th, every Tuesday at 11 a.m. only here at FinTech Hawaii, mahalo. Bingo. So we have a really interesting trade situation here. We have the United States isolating itself out of trade agreements all over the world. And we have tariffs. We're building walls, and only in the wall in Mexico is one thing. These are tariff walls, and they have an effect diplomatically on those countries with whom we have been trading. Some of our best trading partners have got shut out because of these tariffs, right? I mean, we gave exemption to Canada and Mexico, but not to anybody else just yet. And as you said, this is probably going to go up through the appellate process about tariffs. What happens? He's not final on this, right? The president is not final if he gets a bad headache one morning and decides you're going to put tariffs up and build walls and tariffs. That's not final. What happens? I think it's that the president did send a message with the United States trade representatives office, the executive office of the president. And we have our ambassador, Robert Linantizer, who's our United States trade representative. And he has to show a report to the Congress. There's a complaint made and dated authority study with the International Trade Administration that the steel and aluminum does harm our country, selling it below the fair market value as a dumping law, especially if they're targeting China. But in terms of Canada and Mexico, because of the NAFTA agreement status right now, we're negotiating, so he made that exemption. But if you look at focus like Korea, too, because we get a lot of steel coming in from South Korea. They're great shipbuilders. And we have a Korea-US-South Korea trade agreement right now. And I think Donald might want to, the president might want to see this if he can renegotiate that. But I think South Korea is our number one of our allies. And we're working on a deal with North Korea right now, so I think we don't want to make too much of a political issue right now. So those are the forces. You have somebody who was affected by dumping, arguably. And that's a pretty sophisticated claim to make. You have to show that the person offending, in this case, China, is selling steel in this country for less than its cost, something along those lines. And I have to make an analysis and satisfy that panel that it was dumping. And then that panel, what? Can reverse the president? Is that what happens? I think, instead of panel, what's going to happen is, if he does leave I, the executive order, you have a U.S. customs in the court. There's international court of justice under the U.S. customs. And I know, when I was in New York City, we had an international court system there. And they hear the hearings between the plaintiff and the defendant. And in other words, if it's going to affect the U.S. industry, for example, U.S. Steel Corporation or Bethlehem Steel or Norcore or Steel Digital wants to protest saying that we have a company from China selling it below the fair market and they can take it, well, a complaint and try to bring it up to the court system. And if the court system wins, then they're going to have to comply to the World Trade Organization. There's a big umbrella organization called WTO. And I remember like year 2002, when President Bush tried to protest and put a Levi on the steel imports. But I think the World Trade Organization stricken that out and kind of took that out and deferred a complaint from the U.S. OK, but here, so say U.S. Steel. I'm making this up. U.S. Steel decides that China is dumping. U.S. Steel goes to the WTO or the customs regulators and it says they're dumping, OK? The customs regulators make some decision, yes, they're dumping. That's not what Trump was operating on, though. Trump woke up one morning without the benefit of any ruling like that. Right, am I right? And he decided he wanted to put a tariff on China. That was not as part of a legal process. On the other hand, it seems to me that if China complained that that case, so whatever was in the pipeline there with the WTA, it was WTO, was wrong, then it could reverse. Am I right? It could reverse Trump's tariff. I mean, how do you reverse Trump's tariff? Is there a way or is he final? Well, actually, it hasn't been implemented. It's not final yet. He can make any executive order once and say the statement that we're going to try to proceed this. But in terms of policy-wise, you still got to go through the motion and into the rule of law. Congress can reverse this, exactly. Yes, exactly. And can the WTO or the court in the Hague, you know, the International Court? The Court of Justice. Can they reverse his order? Oh, yeah, definitely. They can say that it's not suitable. It's not part of Section 232 of National Security Act that the U.S. is. Are we obligated to follow what is decided in the court in the Hague? Usually, it's like a war opinion in certain aspects. The national law. Yeah, it's an international law. So they do usually comply with it, if you're a member of the WTO. Oh, well, he may not comply, though, he may say. And we've always been a law-abiding country with the WTO. So, I mean, I worry about this as a whole course of conduct, where he's taking these steps pretty much for now by himself. And it has an effect in a number of ways, all by itself, without any real review.  He's damaging diplomatic relations with American allies who are not happy with what he's done. And he's damaging business. You could say he's damaging business, such as those companies which rely on, say, Chinese steel to make their steel products and sell their steel products here and around the world. And it just seems like there's no recourse. He's doubling down on it, and he's not changing his mind on it, and he's doing it. And I'm just very troubled. How is this going to wind up, Russell? I think my hunch, what's going to happen is, like, first of all, the American steel manufacture and aluminum, the manufacturers probably benefit, and they'll probably go on, like, two, three years. We have probably that ripple effect with the economy, and if they do implement the tariffs on those foreign imports of aluminum and steel, then American steel companies and aluminum companies are going to benefit tremendously. Such vice versa, the companies that rely on this foreign aluminum and steel might take a loss of about 4 or 5 percent. But in the long run, if it's going to create more jobs in the U.S. soil, let it be. I mean, it's going to happen that way. Is it? Because, you know, it's interesting, a lot of this depends on—I just posed one business question to you. A lot of this depends on how long he's going to be in office, right? Because if he could make an executive order like this, putting a tariff wall up like that, his successor could make an executive order, taking it right on down, OK? So now I'm an investor. I'm a Wall Street bank. Some steel manufacturer comes to me and says, good news, Jay. We have this 25 percent tariff, and now we can make a lot more steel at our inefficient higher prices, and we want to do that. But we need a billion dollars to expand our mill so we can make more steel and make all that money. And I say a billion dollars has to be amortized over a period of time.  I don't know what's really happened, but the Democrats might be in control. He may not be the next president. The Democrats may turn the whole thing upside down. So if that tariff comes down again, Wall Street says, oh, gee whiz, that may not be a good investment, because we'll put in a billion dollars, and then that steel company, right, won't have the market because they won't have the protective tariff. Can you describe what would happen? Yeah, I think if you've got to look at Jay and two sectors, even the audience got to realize that it's between the public sector and the private sector. And in the public sector, if it's a government contract, like, you know, Donald Trump came up with the $200 billion infrastructure development plan to invest in railroads, highways and airports, then those are government contracts. So if an American provision will apply, so you've got to have American steel, American labor. But if you go to the private sector, develop, like, building condominiums or hotels or buildings or private contractors and developers involved, they might have the difference. They were relying on cheap steel from imports, because it's not a government contract. They can cut corners here and there. So they might—the price of the private sector development might come up a little bit. But in terms of public sector government contracts, by American provisions, it's going to apply. OK. We're about out of time, Russell. And as before, I always like to get your advice to the president, because I think he needs your advice. So there's camera one over there. It's smiling at you. Can you please tell President Trump what he should be doing here? I think Donald Trump can, you know, reassess everything and see which direction it's going to take. But it's a sensitive issue, tariffs. I know that worldwide all the countries are trying to be moving the free trade agreements with non-tariff or non-protectionist movements. But from our point of view, I think we've got to be very careful when we approach this and go which segment and what sector might benefit and approach it in that fashion. OK. Russell Hanma. He's the senior APEC official here in Hawaii, and he's the author of the APEC master plan. And we've been talking about the Trump tariffs, both on steel and aluminum. And there will be more coming down the pike, I guarantee. This is not the end of the story about tariffs and free trade. So you'll be back. Right, Russell? I'll be back again, Jay. OK. Russell Hanma, thank you so much for coming around. Thank you, Jay.


Like me personally, I think paternity tests should be mandatory at like childbirth, like regardless of if you're married or whatever, like just give it flat out. But if you want, like, I don't see why you can't just like do a paternity test. Like our technology has evolved so far now that you really don't have an excuse to say, Oh, is this my child or not? I want to keep it real with you. I want to live better, eat better. I want to love better, sleep better. Yeah, I want to feel so aligned. Interesting. This is a good follow up. What is your favorite double standard? My favorite double standards has to do with sex.  And it should be accepted by females. But the minute a girl sleeps with two guys, then she's labeled a home.   Why do you think that is? Like if you had to look at it holistically, why do you think that double standard exists? And why is it funny?  But then you look at their movements, it's like, if I'm a hoe based off of the standards that you're putting on me, why are you not considered a hoe? Like that's why I laugh at it. But I think it's more on the idea of like women are supposed to be pure, like you're supposed to be this idea of like Mary, if that makes sense, like this idea of like Mary was a virgin and you're this pure idol. So if you scape forward, like if you stray from that, then all of a sudden like you're wrong. But like guys, they don't have that like judgment on them. I don't know necessarily why. And I've heard a lot of guys not going to drop any names here who like to say that like it's a biological thing like, oh, we can do this because it's in in us like biologically to want to have multiple partners. But I'm like, you don't think we want to have multiple partners? Like that's how we sleep with more than just one person our whole life. Like if it was not innate to us too, we would literally just wait for that one person. Well, I mean, I think the reason the biological argument exists is because I think there's a lot of evidence that suggests that women are predisposed to want one guy. And when I say women, I don't just mean humans. I mean females in general, like in any animal species that congregate around one guy, the apex predator, the alpha male or whatever the case may be. So in women's fantasies, they're looking for one person to be their everything. Best case scenario. Is that true? I don't like that idea of comparing like humans to animals because there's a array of different animals. And if you look at, for example, the ant kingdom, there's one queen and a lot of men who are trying to have babies with her. So it's like, why are we choosing what animals we compare ourselves to when it validates our points? Because not all animal species operate on that basis. So if I am a woman, I want to really make my point across. I could be like, well, I'm the queen, queen bee or the queen ants or whatever. And I should be able to have a plethora of men that swarm towards me. But I think when they make the argument, they make it with animals that we are closely linked to from a genetic standpoint. And like ants and butterflies and shit, we're not really linked to. So I think when men make that argument, they're saying that in women's perfect world, they're looking for Superman.   A woman's fantasy tends to be, and this is where like you can respond, tends to be that she becomes so desirable that she catches the eye of the king, the king or the prince. So is that is that true? Is that wrong? I mean, yeah, we all want hypergamy. I think that's the term, right? We all want to have the most successful partner. But I don't think it's necessarily like one person. I don't think we're looking at it as far as like he is or the king that is in his village is the only successful king that I want to go to. I think with that scenario, it's just proximity. Like, I know that this is a successful king. If I leave this village, I don't know if I'm gonna find another successful king. So with that, it's like, yeah, I want to have a successful man. I want him to take care of me. And I think that's the reason because women are looking to be taking care of men aren't. So you're looking for the male who is most equipped. And this is goes back to the animal kingdom argument, the most equipped to take care of you and your offspring. Multiple men can't do that. Because men are selfish with offspring. They're not going to take care of other people's kids. I know you don't have to take care of the other men's kids. It sounds good in theory, but like part of like you hear women all the time say that it's a package deal. But having multiple wives sounds good in theory until you have to deal with all their emotions. So I think theoretically like it all sounds good. But in reality, being able to confide in one person and open up to one person on both sides and like just have to deal with that person is more ideal than having to spread yourself then with multiple partners on either side. I agree. I guess the pushback was just that the reason why that double standard exists is because it comes it's informed by those things, the biology, the societal influences. So to see a woman go in the masculine direction is off putting. But also I think part of the issue too that we're not touching on but you could respond to is paternity fraud.  That's never going to happen to you. Now a promiscuous woman threatens a man's safety in that way.  You don't have any responsibility to the child. But you have cases with men raising children for 18, 20 years and later finding out it wasn't theirs. And I would I would want to like take that idea into like deeper consideration if paternity tests were not like true. Like me personally I think paternity tests should be mandatory at like childbirth like regardless of if you're married or whatever like just give it flat out. But if you want like I don't see why you can't just like do a paternity test like our technology has evolved so far now that you really don't have an excuse to say oh is this my child or not. And that's some of the pushback because the way that the laws are structured right now not pushback I'm sorry that's some of what men are complaining about because the way the laws are structured right now number one first of all the way society is structured asking a woman for a paternity test is similar to asking a woman for a prenup it's insulting it's like how dare you you're you're coming in in this with the wrong intentions you think it's gonna fail how dare you suspect me of that this and that and then the second piece is the way the family court system is set up men are getting screwed like some men are paying child support for kids for women that they didn't even have sex with yeah like so I guess obviously we know what all the female purity stuff is informed by but I think in the modern context that is part of the issue because the consequences are much higher if the woman is unfaithful then if the man is unfaithful and I guess the argument is a woman who is promiscuous in a masculine way is a threat to maybe do something like that thoughts I mean I can see that point of view I definitely can and I mean it's a fair argument for sure I was just having a conversation with some of my guy friends on the topic in general was about abortion and but it kind of stemmed into like males the male what's it called their authority or like how much power they really have when it comes to paternity of like the child like it really is left onto the woman's hands but then my argument was like if you know at the conception of a child it's left into her hands then it's in your hands to prevent whatever it's a come so like you should be hyper sensitive to making sure that you're not just out here being reckless to get whoever and whatever pregnant be use condoms like this is an uncommon like idea but get a vasectomy it's reversible I I agree with you 100 percent I think what makes that argument not hold water at some point is because it doesn't work both ways because you also have situations where the guy does want a child to but the woman doesn't so it's like the guy if somebody did a quote or whatever and was like the government is wanting to force men to be fathers but not forcing women to be mothers and that's part that's that's a whole another tangent about abortion and things like that but at the end of the day if the man wanted the child if the woman says no it's no if the man doesn't want the child the woman says yes it's yes and the argument is that part of what we're doing is taking away men's right to choose by providing it to women to choose just outright and I agree I do think it is unfair but I think the whole childbirth system in the whole childbirth process is unfair in general it's not weighted on demand like your your part is to put your semen in her and let it meet the egg after that you really don't have you're shaking your head no no after that you really don't have any more control of it you're not affected by anything over the after that so like she has to go through the childbirth itself which comes with complications she has to go through like the nine months of pregnancy which comes with complications and I don't think some guys really consider that aspect like it's not just about the child it's sometimes like a lot of times it's about her and like her burdens that she has to be her with this child so I've I'm not I've not had a kid but I have a lot of people around me now who are given birth because I'm at that age and I'm hearing their stories of not just like pregnancy but child delivery and like afterwards and it's so scary like now I'm realizing how scary childbirth and like that whole process is I'm hearing people say that they lost their hair some people said that they have like temporary blindness and I'm just like this happens just for having an egg meet a sperm like you don't think about that so I don't think the onus is on demand like after the semen so like unfortunately like it's not it's not weighted equally regardless and it can't be seen as equal you don't have the same consequences yeah and and and I think that is part of some people's arguments that men should be able to opt out of fatherhood because if women can opt out of motherhood why can't men opt out so instead of it just being men be careful who you put your nut in it's also women be careful of who you let nut in you I agree so you agree that that men should be able to say I don't want to be a father and going about his life um I know I'm gonna get kicked back on this but I don't think so I don't think so I don't think so let me let me let me elaborate on that I don't think he should just be able to say I I nutted in you I can just do whatever I don't want anything to do with this child I think if you don't want anything to do with a child emotionally like the least you can do because you did create this child is a financial like obligation so unfortunately like it took two to make the kid and now she has she has agreed that she's willing to take the burden of delivering the child going through postpartum going through whatever comes with childbirth and child rearing so I feel like but but again that that's and that's the point because we're saying we are willing to force men to be fathers but we're not gonna force women to do anything so maybe that way makes women a little bit more considerate or thoughtful with who they let or have sex with or let nut in them if if we have a system that says if he opts out of fatherhood you're on your own I feel like we already kind of happen no he has to pay so again it's like but the what what you're saying is valid about the postpartum and everything that comes with motherhood right and a woman should get to choose if she wants to bear that burden or not but on the financial part which is our burden to bear we don't get to choose why is that and our choice our choice is dependent on your choice but you had a choice too in the beginning but you could say that about the woman who let the deadbeat nut her yeah she also had a choice but again we're not penalizing her for her bad choice but we're penalizing the men for their bad choice in a similar situation yeah I'm and the only reason I think that argument is valid is because we I don't know if you would say white supremacy society whatever has created this narrative that women especially our black women are benevolent and just pure beings that only do bad because they were put in bad situations I don't think because of that a lot of women skirt accountability so in this universe it's also on you to be careful who you have sex with I don't think that's the case I think and we kind of had a conversation about this about when a guy has sex with a woman she's pregnant for nine months when a guy or when a girl has sex with a man and they have a child he can still get another girl pregnant so I think that it's a legal prevention of that like if you have that financial burden of taking care of this child you're not just out here putting your seat in everybody in anything because you have to kind of think twice like do I want to really have to pay for a thousand children but again that's only putting the onus on the guy if you know that you're not going to get any help you're going to be more careful about who puts their seat in you because just like you said it takes two but then what's the accountability on the guy well the accountability on the guy is right if he nuts in a girl you know I mean he has to potentially weigh if he's going to be a father or not the accountability on the woman is if she gets nut in by a guy she has to weigh is she going to raise a child by herself or not so now the guys who want to be fathers are more careful about who they pick they're not going to pick the girl who wants to abort the kid right the women who want to be mothers are going to be careful about the guys they pick the men who don't want to be fathers are going to be careful about the they're going to pick the women who don't want to be mothers because they're on the same page and vice versa so again i'm all about you know water finding its level because this it becomes problematic when person a wants to be a father person b doesn't want to be a mother we don't talk about that as much because most of the time it's person a wants to be a mother person b doesn't want to be a father you see what i'm saying so i want to see i want a situation that holds both sides accountable because this current system allows women to be absolved of all their sins because they bear the child for nine months some women are terrible mothers they still did the same nine months yeah i agree


Good afternoon everyone and welcome to Groupon. This is the Stock Swiss Show play of the day. A lot of beautiful, nice plays today. Gosh, you could have just done everything. I said this morning, you could do everything today. And that really, really, really was true. So I love Groupon. I knew I was gonna do Groupon last night when it set up, when it got. I knew it, and I didn't rate it till this morning and it worked out exactly like I thought. In fact, I almost pressed the button on the open, but that's really not an entry. But I seriously considered doing it. This did not go to the dream, dream, dream target, which was five, but it got really close. If you stayed in it all day, which I did not. Where did it go? Oh, jeez, well, you know what? This ran out of day. If this would not, if it wouldn't have been 3.30, if this hadn't run out of day, this would have gone to five. Look at that, 18 cents for the dream target. Beautiful. You could have shorted this in the afternoon. All right, let's go over it here. Here's the morning play that I did. Immediately out of the gate. Rolled all the way down, do, do, do, do, do, out. Thought I had a perfect exit. And I did have a perfect exit for the morning, right before 10 o'clock. Now, what this ended up doing was, jeez, this could have been shorted in the afternoon now that I see this. I did call a trinket here. I called this actually for Sanji because he missed the morning one. I called this right in here for him to do with a tight stop because I saw it setting up on the 15 minute event. This trade here actually was a beautiful trade. 40 some cents with a stop. This was a great trade right in here. And actually never went anywhere near the stop. Look at that. You could have done an ad here and lowered the stop. And that even kept you in with this little topping tail. This was perfect today. Another beautiful gap at a total selling, institutional selling. Selling, selling, selling, selling into the gap. It had all this selling into the gap. And it was institutional selling. It was more selling than shorting, which is why this chart looks so green. So Groupon is something where you could be an actually for long-term trade to the downside again. Does a swing trade or a court trade short?  Groupon was a beautiful gap and I don't think that many traders would have traded this today or did trade this today. If opened off a planet and a lot of people once again think this is not gonna continue, why? Because it had a big red bar yesterday actually. Look at the red bar yesterday and was a pretty sizable gap down for this price point. The stock closed at 672 and opened at 602. You know, that's a fairly decent size gap down for this price point in the stock. But it was a great gap. It rated well. Again, I look at the 26 point rating system to make decisions what I'm gonna do with stocks on the day. 71 million shares trading this today. That's huge, it's massive. Institution sold out of the stock and it could even be getting shorted here now. People don't want this thing. Why? It doesn't even matter, but the stock is definitely lower and I love trading it. It behaved like a perfect angel today on every single setup, every single number, everything it did. The only reason it didn't go all the way down to five was because it ran out of day and the chances of it continuing tomorrow are actually pretty high. It may back up for a day or two but definitely look for this to get down and break $5. Really nice trading group on. Beautiful stop, beautiful entry. Got it right out of the gate. How did I know to do it aggressively? Because the stock rated high per my 26 point rating system and because of that, I could take an aggressive entry in this. Immediately before the stock moves before the mentum comes into play. You wanna train these things again before the mentum hits. That's the best thing to do. You get a perfect pick and a perfect entry. It doesn't matter if you get out in the morning, if you hold it all day. You actually could have been this all day. I'm seeing this here. It's really something. This was beautiful today. But I got out of it in the morning. This is Melissa with thestockswish.com. If you have any questions or are interested in the upcoming Golden God class, it's May 10th and 11th, email me at thestockswish.com. Thanks everybody. Have a great day.


I've combed it and smoothed it to set you free. You choose my path, you tell. You choose your own, love separate.