Great email, Wilson. Thanks for sharing. I really hope your family business survives. This shit made me cry then made me mad. Please keep us all informed.
I heard Batya say on the Honestly podcast with Brianna Wu something akin to “these hurting small businesses need to take one for the good of America”. I sincerely hope you forward these emails to her. *Magically* she is only hanging out with the working class folks who are super jazzed by the tariffs.
These letters were all excellent and informative, but I’ll confess to finding the extreme quantity and quality of Batya hate more than a little wearying. She’s just a human being with some bad ideas. I’m not sure why we’re directing quite so much hostility at her. Trisha’s narrative, on the other hand, is well worth our ire!
Oh lord. My ID trials are nothing compared to the story here, but the Great State of New York managed to misspell my last name on my (non-real, apparently totally fake) driver’s license. I have a variant spelling of a familiar last name, so while my (married) name is spelled correctly on my passport, marriage certificate, etc., and I submitted documentation correctly, they “corrected” the spelling to the familiar spelling, not the variant spelling that is, in fact, my correct name.
Because I’m an idiot, I managed *not to notice this* until I was nearly stranded at an airport halfway across the country because while I had been able to board the airplane with the incorrect name spelling, they wouldn’t let me back on the airplane with it.
I cannot figure out how to navigate the NYS DMV to correct this and therefore either deliberately misspell my name on boarding passes or use my passport to fly
but it has caused allllllll sorts of problems with my professional registration, which is under my correctly spelled last name, but linked to my incorrectly spelled driver’s license name, and……yeah I just hate NYS, basically, because it is literally significantly easier to deal with the Department of State and use my passport as my primary ID for everywhere than to figure out how to get NYS to fix this.
I had to get the truck we purchased registered at the local Missouri DMV last week. Before it was open, there was a line that stretched around the building with people trying to get Real IDs. I bailed and went to a different location. Same craziness. Two days later, I decided I was going to have to tough it out and wait. Still crazy busy when I arrived with lots of people waiting outside because the inside was full. This was in the middle of a Monday. I put my info into the tablet so I can get in line virtually. Turns out, plated registration was a separate line and waiting all of 5 minutes to get called. Was in and out in 20 minutes. I'm sure the poor people waiting for a Real ID hated me.
As another middle aged man nearing retirement I have to agree with Wilson. These tariffs are really starting to frighten me. It feels like a man with a very bad understanding of 19th century economics is trying to make that the cornerstone of a 21st century economy. It's almost like he is telling people you will no longer have any product that you personally can't make yourself, because nobody has an answer to how we are going to replace products that simply can't be manufactured or grown in the US. It's like somebody coming along and saying germ theory is a crock so nobody has to wash their hands anymore. Ok, yes we can debate, but in the meantime medical professionals not washing their hands would lead us back to 18th century levels of death. I don't want to live in an 18th century economy.
Lastly to quote Michael Shermer,
"Where goods and services cross borders, armies do not"
Well I'm using the Gen X definition of middle-aged, I'm 55. My wife just took early retirement though at 57. Ironically it was largely due to her being a Federal government employee and what Trump was doing to and saying about them and her not feeling good about upholding some of the changes in policy they have made.
Thank you for allowing a platform for my rant, whine, and bitchfest. It is much appreciated, and I am very humbled by the responses. I am also quite embarrassed by my inability to write and proof read. I guess I can see both the forest and the trees, but inept at stringing together sentences in a coherent manner.
I would like to offer a bit of context to my ire and vitriol of my email. At the time of writing we had (and still have) 33 containers loaded with $500,000 of lumber on the water to Yantian, China. This lumber was destined to 2 of our very best customers for the past 10 years. They buy the vast majority of our production, at quite a market premium. It’s a great, and precarious business situation to be in, for obvious reasons.
Early on we didn’t know what to do. Transit from the ports of Norfolk Va is $350 per container. The transit from Yantian to Norfolk is approximately $10,000 per container. We then have to add loading fees as well as pay the 125% tariff to the Chinese government. We were, (in the immortal words of my Econ 2100 professor) grabbed by the part of the anatomy whichin a man didn’t want to be grabbed. We faced losing every penny of that shipment.
Our sales guy in China scrambled. He levered his contacts and found someone in Vietnam that would buy the lumber. Unfortunately, most of the product was higher grade and a thickness that does not fit into the Vietnam market. After the expense of taking it off the ship and loading it into another ship plus the loss related to selling the product at a lower grade and thickness we were only going to lose 60% of the value. We truly were living in a shitshow.
Until last Thursday. Our sales guy Jim Yuan sat down with our customers Messer’s Wu and Yea and came up with a solution. They were going to advance us 70% of the order. They would rent a bonded warehouse in the duty free area of the Yantian ports at a cost of $40,000 per month. Should the tariffs be resolved, Messer’s Wu and Yea would split the warehouse cost with us and then pay us the remainder. This was our best option. We at least could back away from the edge of the abyss.
And then came Monday. I like to refer it to the Reprieve Day. We were literally the dude in the movies, tied to the firing squad post with the officer saying, “Ready, Aim….” And we received a “stay”.
For 90 days. But its 90 days none the less.
The people most willing to help us navigate this BULLSHIT were 3 EEEVVVIILLL Chinese nationals. 3 Chinese nationals were willing to invest their time and money in our little company because they value us as a supplier. All 3 have visited with us. We sat in my home, ate meals, drank beer and Glenlivet. We carried them to meet our industry colleagues in Eastern NC. Hell, I even took them to the MacArthur Memorial and the USS Wisconsin! (Apparently they all admire General MacArthur). These guys from a world away offered us a real solution.
I will never say that for my elected representatives in Washington DC. I called and wrote them begging for help. Begging for someone to speak on the behalf of my employes. All I received was an AI generated response about curbing Fentanyl from Senator Tillis. Congressman Davis’s AI would sputter about agriculture. Senator Budd’s about fair trade. Senator Budd’s really pissed me off because he grew up in the Hickory High Point region and saw the furniture factories close. Not that it will ever make a difference; but none of those sumbitches will get my vote! The MAGA Rouge (yes I stole the from Michael) have done me in. I will be a happy man if they all burn in hell.
Thanks to the Fifthdom for your support. As stated I am humbled Matt shared my email and by the positive responses.
The Chinese tend to like MacArthur for his actions with the Japanese… but they must overlook Korea because they pushed us back when he pushed too far north. 🤷♂️
Glad you were able to get away from that precipice. Hope all goes well for you, and who in the family gets the credit for surviving the Great Tariff Debacle when the company history is outlined for total strangers in the future? 😁
Full agreement on Batya, though I absolutely appreciate her tidbit about why there aren’t “DUE PROCESS!” issues with immigration courts.
(Those are covered under the APA, and there’s no judicial review. Activist judges haven’t been at all good about tossing the cases based on lack of standing…)
The very real issues of the poorer parts of The South brought up are very important, and those issues almost never creep their way into policy prescriptions. Gas stoves are killing the world! Let’s ban them and take out about the only product manufacturer in this rural town in Mississippi. They’re beneficiaries of Plantation Life, anyway.
The RealID stuff in Virginia hits close for me, too. My birth certificate is from Florida. My SSN is from NY (thanks to issuance when my parents address, APO NY, when they had to finally get us SSNs). I had a passport, but it was expired. The people at Virginia DMV weren’t at all helpful.
Speaking of Virginia, yes, the locality and Commonwealth agencies are bad. The writer’s mention of Accomack made it make more sense. ESVA isn’t the sort of place where outsiders show up often. Much less marry. (My wife and I kinda eloped in Norfolk….any military town is going to be well-versed in urgent marriages; she’s late, and he’s goin out on a cruise….)
Soc Security has my birthdate wrong. (This is probably due to a processing error when my step dad adopted me at 8 yo. My last name also was changed, which makes birth certificates fun.) Not realizing this, when I was 15, I used my SS# to get a drivers license, so it's also got the wrong birthdate.
I'm 53 yo now, and I've tried countless times to get SSA to reissue a card with the correct date. Three times I've gotten a new card with the same incorrect date. Usually, I never hear back at all. I even walked the paperwork to the SS office as a Congressional staffer. Didn't work.
I give up. Fortunately, I've got a passport with the correct date, bcs I'll never get a realID, even if I wanted it.
Thanks for your message, Wilson! I am completely in sympathy with your family's situation. Spent 19 years of my life working in and operating hardwood sawmills here in SE Ohio, mostly as the head sawyer. Our grade lumber generally went to the now shuttered furniture plants in your area that you mentioned. After my sawmill career was winding down, I became a wildlife biologist. Or, as some of my forester friends said, I "went over to the dark side". :) Miss those sawmill days, the dust gets in your blood. But now most of the workforce in many of the larger mills is Hispanic, and I wondered if that is happening in your area as well. But those folks need jobs too. Sure rooting for your family to survive and prosper again.
Growing up, one thing that bothered me was when some bad teacher named, say, Mrs Crabballs—moody, hard to please, intent on teaching you a grander lesson about life than simple word problems in math could support—would get nailed to the boards after school amongst my friends.
It would be on a day where her treatment of us was particularly harsh, when we were all getting yelled at for things we hadn’t done, castigated for not knowing a lesson that hadn’t been taught yet, dressed down in front of our friends in a particularly humiliating and cruel way, and so on.
With all this pent up rage and embarrassment at the injustice we suffered, we’d lay into Mrs Crabballs.
“Shes a miserable hag!”
“She doesn’t even know what she’s talking about”
“Her firefly broach looks like a misshapen weenie tilting at the sun, and if she wears it out she’ll lose standing in the community”
Kids.
As Madame Crabballs got her due in abstentia, we’d inevitably hit a point where I diverged from my friends, as they laid things at her feet that were unfair or far too harsh.
“Her daughters don’t talk to her anymore either, because of the stench coming off her blackened soul”
“That’s why she’s divorced, she scared off her daughters and stridently wore that disgusting broach out the next day, forcing her husband’s infidelity”
Then it went from over the top to simply asserting wrong things that made us feel good.
“She doesn’t even know that 4 x 4 is 15, how is she teacher?”
“It’s 16”
“Well yeah but she knew what I meant”
“She said it was gross that I was picking my nose for 2 straight minutes but it felt good!”
“Coal isn’t ‘mined’ at all, it’s pumped to earth from the bowels of hell, where her cursed weenie broach was forged and so must return!”
Anyways, Mrs. Crabballs not only didn’t deserve that, but those friends of mine? Turns out they were 6 years older, mentally retarded, and able to get away with saying glimmeringly idiotic things because it made us feel smart and no one bothered to correct us.
Batya makes me sick! I am so angry I can't see straight. As I understand it, there is no risk in the stock market and my 401K should return 20% risk-free every year. These Trump tariffs -- and nothing else! -- caused the stock market to drop.
Someone told me MSFT was at 60 (120 pre-split) in December 1999 and fell to 15 by March 2009. I fact-checked them and told them WRONG WRONG WRONG. I hope I was right, but I was too angry to check.
Great email, Wilson. Thanks for sharing. I really hope your family business survives. This shit made me cry then made me mad. Please keep us all informed.
I heard Batya say on the Honestly podcast with Brianna Wu something akin to “these hurting small businesses need to take one for the good of America”. I sincerely hope you forward these emails to her. *Magically* she is only hanging out with the working class folks who are super jazzed by the tariffs.
These letters were all excellent and informative, but I’ll confess to finding the extreme quantity and quality of Batya hate more than a little wearying. She’s just a human being with some bad ideas. I’m not sure why we’re directing quite so much hostility at her. Trisha’s narrative, on the other hand, is well worth our ire!
Oh lord. My ID trials are nothing compared to the story here, but the Great State of New York managed to misspell my last name on my (non-real, apparently totally fake) driver’s license. I have a variant spelling of a familiar last name, so while my (married) name is spelled correctly on my passport, marriage certificate, etc., and I submitted documentation correctly, they “corrected” the spelling to the familiar spelling, not the variant spelling that is, in fact, my correct name.
Because I’m an idiot, I managed *not to notice this* until I was nearly stranded at an airport halfway across the country because while I had been able to board the airplane with the incorrect name spelling, they wouldn’t let me back on the airplane with it.
I cannot figure out how to navigate the NYS DMV to correct this and therefore either deliberately misspell my name on boarding passes or use my passport to fly
but it has caused allllllll sorts of problems with my professional registration, which is under my correctly spelled last name, but linked to my incorrectly spelled driver’s license name, and……yeah I just hate NYS, basically, because it is literally significantly easier to deal with the Department of State and use my passport as my primary ID for everywhere than to figure out how to get NYS to fix this.
Sigh.
The Batya discourse is tiresome, and often unseemly.
She has inserted herself into the discourse. Tough luck, buttercup.
Do you want to fuck Batya or something like why are you this obsessed with her
Nailed it.
Episode 502, the wound that keeps on oozing.
With the host that keeps on boozing.
I had to get the truck we purchased registered at the local Missouri DMV last week. Before it was open, there was a line that stretched around the building with people trying to get Real IDs. I bailed and went to a different location. Same craziness. Two days later, I decided I was going to have to tough it out and wait. Still crazy busy when I arrived with lots of people waiting outside because the inside was full. This was in the middle of a Monday. I put my info into the tablet so I can get in line virtually. Turns out, plated registration was a separate line and waiting all of 5 minutes to get called. Was in and out in 20 minutes. I'm sure the poor people waiting for a Real ID hated me.
As another middle aged man nearing retirement I have to agree with Wilson. These tariffs are really starting to frighten me. It feels like a man with a very bad understanding of 19th century economics is trying to make that the cornerstone of a 21st century economy. It's almost like he is telling people you will no longer have any product that you personally can't make yourself, because nobody has an answer to how we are going to replace products that simply can't be manufactured or grown in the US. It's like somebody coming along and saying germ theory is a crock so nobody has to wash their hands anymore. Ok, yes we can debate, but in the meantime medical professionals not washing their hands would lead us back to 18th century levels of death. I don't want to live in an 18th century economy.
Lastly to quote Michael Shermer,
"Where goods and services cross borders, armies do not"
Alienating friends and allies seems pointless.
I’m just impressed you’re retiring at middle age, nice work man! My goal is to tap out before 50 so a bit after middle age but good enough I suppose
Well I'm using the Gen X definition of middle-aged, I'm 55. My wife just took early retirement though at 57. Ironically it was largely due to her being a Federal government employee and what Trump was doing to and saying about them and her not feeling good about upholding some of the changes in policy they have made.
Ah, yeah man I hate to break it to you but were significantly past middle age
That's ok. I've definitely felt old for a while now, lol.
All good I should have caveated that with the congrats at the relatively early retirement.
Dear Matt and Fifthdom,
Thank you for allowing a platform for my rant, whine, and bitchfest. It is much appreciated, and I am very humbled by the responses. I am also quite embarrassed by my inability to write and proof read. I guess I can see both the forest and the trees, but inept at stringing together sentences in a coherent manner.
I would like to offer a bit of context to my ire and vitriol of my email. At the time of writing we had (and still have) 33 containers loaded with $500,000 of lumber on the water to Yantian, China. This lumber was destined to 2 of our very best customers for the past 10 years. They buy the vast majority of our production, at quite a market premium. It’s a great, and precarious business situation to be in, for obvious reasons.
Early on we didn’t know what to do. Transit from the ports of Norfolk Va is $350 per container. The transit from Yantian to Norfolk is approximately $10,000 per container. We then have to add loading fees as well as pay the 125% tariff to the Chinese government. We were, (in the immortal words of my Econ 2100 professor) grabbed by the part of the anatomy whichin a man didn’t want to be grabbed. We faced losing every penny of that shipment.
Our sales guy in China scrambled. He levered his contacts and found someone in Vietnam that would buy the lumber. Unfortunately, most of the product was higher grade and a thickness that does not fit into the Vietnam market. After the expense of taking it off the ship and loading it into another ship plus the loss related to selling the product at a lower grade and thickness we were only going to lose 60% of the value. We truly were living in a shitshow.
Until last Thursday. Our sales guy Jim Yuan sat down with our customers Messer’s Wu and Yea and came up with a solution. They were going to advance us 70% of the order. They would rent a bonded warehouse in the duty free area of the Yantian ports at a cost of $40,000 per month. Should the tariffs be resolved, Messer’s Wu and Yea would split the warehouse cost with us and then pay us the remainder. This was our best option. We at least could back away from the edge of the abyss.
And then came Monday. I like to refer it to the Reprieve Day. We were literally the dude in the movies, tied to the firing squad post with the officer saying, “Ready, Aim….” And we received a “stay”.
For 90 days. But its 90 days none the less.
The people most willing to help us navigate this BULLSHIT were 3 EEEVVVIILLL Chinese nationals. 3 Chinese nationals were willing to invest their time and money in our little company because they value us as a supplier. All 3 have visited with us. We sat in my home, ate meals, drank beer and Glenlivet. We carried them to meet our industry colleagues in Eastern NC. Hell, I even took them to the MacArthur Memorial and the USS Wisconsin! (Apparently they all admire General MacArthur). These guys from a world away offered us a real solution.
I will never say that for my elected representatives in Washington DC. I called and wrote them begging for help. Begging for someone to speak on the behalf of my employes. All I received was an AI generated response about curbing Fentanyl from Senator Tillis. Congressman Davis’s AI would sputter about agriculture. Senator Budd’s about fair trade. Senator Budd’s really pissed me off because he grew up in the Hickory High Point region and saw the furniture factories close. Not that it will ever make a difference; but none of those sumbitches will get my vote! The MAGA Rouge (yes I stole the from Michael) have done me in. I will be a happy man if they all burn in hell.
Thanks to the Fifthdom for your support. As stated I am humbled Matt shared my email and by the positive responses.
Kindest Regards,
Wilson
The Chinese tend to like MacArthur for his actions with the Japanese… but they must overlook Korea because they pushed us back when he pushed too far north. 🤷♂️
Glad you were able to get away from that precipice. Hope all goes well for you, and who in the family gets the credit for surviving the Great Tariff Debacle when the company history is outlined for total strangers in the future? 😁
Have a wonderful day Wilson!
Full agreement on Batya, though I absolutely appreciate her tidbit about why there aren’t “DUE PROCESS!” issues with immigration courts.
(Those are covered under the APA, and there’s no judicial review. Activist judges haven’t been at all good about tossing the cases based on lack of standing…)
The very real issues of the poorer parts of The South brought up are very important, and those issues almost never creep their way into policy prescriptions. Gas stoves are killing the world! Let’s ban them and take out about the only product manufacturer in this rural town in Mississippi. They’re beneficiaries of Plantation Life, anyway.
The RealID stuff in Virginia hits close for me, too. My birth certificate is from Florida. My SSN is from NY (thanks to issuance when my parents address, APO NY, when they had to finally get us SSNs). I had a passport, but it was expired. The people at Virginia DMV weren’t at all helpful.
Speaking of Virginia, yes, the locality and Commonwealth agencies are bad. The writer’s mention of Accomack made it make more sense. ESVA isn’t the sort of place where outsiders show up often. Much less marry. (My wife and I kinda eloped in Norfolk….any military town is going to be well-versed in urgent marriages; she’s late, and he’s goin out on a cruise….)
Wilson, good email, and I feel for you. But, my dude, you really missed an opportunity to make a "can't see the forest for the trees" joke.
Oooh Trisha, I feel for you.
Soc Security has my birthdate wrong. (This is probably due to a processing error when my step dad adopted me at 8 yo. My last name also was changed, which makes birth certificates fun.) Not realizing this, when I was 15, I used my SS# to get a drivers license, so it's also got the wrong birthdate.
I'm 53 yo now, and I've tried countless times to get SSA to reissue a card with the correct date. Three times I've gotten a new card with the same incorrect date. Usually, I never hear back at all. I even walked the paperwork to the SS office as a Congressional staffer. Didn't work.
I give up. Fortunately, I've got a passport with the correct date, bcs I'll never get a realID, even if I wanted it.
A pound of Skylight Inn to Wilson for that letter! Hope you can hang on.
With a pint of slaw and 4 pieces of cornbread. B’s for the consolation prize
Me doing my best Jan Brady: Batya, Batya, Batya!
Thanks for your message, Wilson! I am completely in sympathy with your family's situation. Spent 19 years of my life working in and operating hardwood sawmills here in SE Ohio, mostly as the head sawyer. Our grade lumber generally went to the now shuttered furniture plants in your area that you mentioned. After my sawmill career was winding down, I became a wildlife biologist. Or, as some of my forester friends said, I "went over to the dark side". :) Miss those sawmill days, the dust gets in your blood. But now most of the workforce in many of the larger mills is Hispanic, and I wondered if that is happening in your area as well. But those folks need jobs too. Sure rooting for your family to survive and prosper again.
Growing up, one thing that bothered me was when some bad teacher named, say, Mrs Crabballs—moody, hard to please, intent on teaching you a grander lesson about life than simple word problems in math could support—would get nailed to the boards after school amongst my friends.
It would be on a day where her treatment of us was particularly harsh, when we were all getting yelled at for things we hadn’t done, castigated for not knowing a lesson that hadn’t been taught yet, dressed down in front of our friends in a particularly humiliating and cruel way, and so on.
With all this pent up rage and embarrassment at the injustice we suffered, we’d lay into Mrs Crabballs.
“Shes a miserable hag!”
“She doesn’t even know what she’s talking about”
“Her firefly broach looks like a misshapen weenie tilting at the sun, and if she wears it out she’ll lose standing in the community”
Kids.
As Madame Crabballs got her due in abstentia, we’d inevitably hit a point where I diverged from my friends, as they laid things at her feet that were unfair or far too harsh.
“Her daughters don’t talk to her anymore either, because of the stench coming off her blackened soul”
“That’s why she’s divorced, she scared off her daughters and stridently wore that disgusting broach out the next day, forcing her husband’s infidelity”
Then it went from over the top to simply asserting wrong things that made us feel good.
“She doesn’t even know that 4 x 4 is 15, how is she teacher?”
“It’s 16”
“Well yeah but she knew what I meant”
“She said it was gross that I was picking my nose for 2 straight minutes but it felt good!”
“Coal isn’t ‘mined’ at all, it’s pumped to earth from the bowels of hell, where her cursed weenie broach was forged and so must return!”
Anyways, Mrs. Crabballs not only didn’t deserve that, but those friends of mine? Turns out they were 6 years older, mentally retarded, and able to get away with saying glimmeringly idiotic things because it made us feel smart and no one bothered to correct us.
The Allegory of the Replies
Batya makes me sick! I am so angry I can't see straight. As I understand it, there is no risk in the stock market and my 401K should return 20% risk-free every year. These Trump tariffs -- and nothing else! -- caused the stock market to drop.
Someone told me MSFT was at 60 (120 pre-split) in December 1999 and fell to 15 by March 2009. I fact-checked them and told them WRONG WRONG WRONG. I hope I was right, but I was too angry to check.