Trade Wars, Economies, Havens, and the Rest of Your Life

Hi! How’s everyone? Welcome back old friends, welcome new ones, and here’s little Snowy giving you a hug to help ease those blues away.

Today we’re going to discuss…

Trade wars. The economy. Havens. Your money. Your life. How all these things tie together, by way of a lot of ideas we’ve been talking about. And what should you do about it all.

We’ve been talking a lot about this in sessions. By the way, for those of you who’ve made a sliding scale request, I’m backed up because I have to do it manually. So bear with me, I’m not ignoring you. The online system which is Google whatever sort of sucks, so if you have better ideas, by all means let me know. And many thanks to all those who’ve joined me so far—it’s been amazing getting to know you and advising you.

Now. What’s the deal with the trade wars that Trump’s started? How at risk are you? What do you do about it?

Nobody Wins a Trade War, and Americans Will Pay a Steep, Steep Price

Nobody wins trade wars. Nobody.

Americans are now in for sticker shock at levels that they won’t believe. Cars, by estimates—not mine, but the auto industry’s—are going to rise by $10K. Food, easily 10-20%. Raw materials, maybe more. And so on. The American economy is now facing a mega shock, thanks Trump, and people are not going to know what hit them.

Stock markets will slide, capital flight will begin, and people will lose a lot of money. Then businesses will go broke, lay people off, and the vicious cycle will accelerate.

Meanwhile, Canada’s poised to take a very, very serious hit, too, along some of the same lines.

That’s stuff you should know, and maybe already do.

Nobody wins trade wars.

What I want you to understand, though, is that the consequences of all this are going to be far, far more severe than people, institutions, markets, analysts, and so on, think right now. They are not factoring that chain of consequences in yet—crashes, bankruptcies, layoffs, etcetera. As that happens, a year from now, the economy will look very, very bleak.

The Way to Overcome a Trade War is to Create a Haven

So what do we do about all this?

The way to overcome a trade war is to create a haven. I really, really want you to understand this. Now, that doesn’t mean what you think it might. It’s a little abstract. So let me try to explain it by way of predicting the future a bit.

What should Canada do right now? What should anyone do on the receiving end of a trade war?

Become a Haven.

What you should, and can, do, if you’re wise, smart, and courageous, is to say something like this. Hey, the other side is putting a huge amount of capital at risk—from people, human capital, to money, to companies, organizational capital, and so on. 

But what we can do is attract some of that capital.

We can say: hey, we’re the stable ones. We’re the sane ones. Come over here. You can have a nice life. You can do business here, without maniacs in the way. You can prosper here.

That is how you overcome a trade war. Nobody wins one.

But what you can do is become a Haven. That attracts the capital the other side is putting at risk.

Now think of Canada and America again. Should Canada retaliate? It already has, and that’s predictable, but all that really does is make stuff more expensive for…Canadians, because of course, your own people pay tariffs. The point of retaliation is just that…to…retaliate. And hope the other side buckles, to cause them some pain, too.

But nobody wins this way. Canada won’t win the trade war by making stuff more expensive for Canadians. America won’t win anything at all, because this trade war has no point, really—what does Trump want, maple syrup? The Toronto Raptors?

The wise move is to become a Haven. The key word is there is become, and we’ll come back to that, because that is the key to managing your life, money, future, everything.

So in this case, the wise move isn’t just for Canada to retaliate, it’s to become a Haven. That attracts all the capital that’s already in shock over what Trump’s doing. To say, something like, hey, intelligent and wise and bright people, come over here, companies, move over here, investors, come invest here, and so forth.

See what I mean?

The key is to become a Haven.

That’s for institutions, like countries or companies.

This is what I try to teach boardrooms and leaders. 

But what does it mean for you?

A World That's Collapsing Around Us, Or, Where the Havens Are

Now.

What it means for you is something like this.

People often ask me: what are my Havens? Where are they?!

The truth goes like this.

This is now an in between time.

The next one to two years are when we will see various institutions become Havens. Whether they’re companies or countries or what have you.

Your job, goal, is to track that development. So as and when they do, you can make your move.

In this in between time, there are very few Havens for a very good reason. Very few companies and institutions and companies and funds or what have you did a good enough job of seeing this coming.

Let’s go back to the big three I often discuss. Nike, McDonald’s, Starbucks. Didn’t see it coming, right? So their shares are getting blown up. Foolish, because, after all, many of us did.

But it’s not just those three. Wall St didn’t see this coming. All of it. That’s why the stock market’s sliding, and is going to keep sliding, as the consequences become clear. It thought all this was just a “ploy,” and now it has to reckon with something like a depression brewing. So right now, it doesn’t have many good Havens to offer you. To offer you. Precisely because it, too, thought all this would “never happen,” didn’t see it coming.

Do you see what I mean a little bit?

Now the race is on to develop Havens.

Many of you are seeking Havens.

Some of you are thinking about creating Havens.

Either way, this is the time period in which Havens will develop, accelerating fast. Because there is just too much at risk, and also too much to attract, if you do it well. If you could cherry-pick many of America’s brightest minds, biggest companies, biggest funds, and so on…wouldn’t you? 

And at some point, all those are going to say: enough is enough. We can’t do this anymore.

Where are the Havens? They're being born.

Don’t Panic. Learn Havens Thinking.

So in this time period, your job is to observe. To stay calm. To see and to see deeply and carefully.

I’ve been advising many of you that your money is at great risk if you just take a sort of passive approach, letting some anonymous fund manager manage it whom you never really talk to. Don’t do that. Now you must be more active. You must understand all the above, and begin to really make decisions around it and about it.

The same is true for your career. For your fundamental life choices. Don’t be passive now. In any of these regards. 

Observe, watch, discern, judge. What is becoming a Haven? What is saying to you, I would like to attract your capital? And take care of it as a good steward, for the next decade? Your money, sure, but also your talents, skills, creativity, relationships, right down to your life.

Do you see what I mean? I’m discussing Big, Big Ideas. And they are hard to express well. So just sit with all this and let your mind flow. Let ideas come. Let your unconscious really absorb what I am teaching you. 

The Havens you’re looking for don’t really exist yet. Not in many cases, probably most. Not in the sense they should, or that all of us want.

But they will, very shortly, because the Next Great Race in the world? It’s not about any of the following things:

—Factories 
—Minerals
—AI
—Technology
—Money

It is about creating Havens. And offering them to you. So that you invest in them.

That doesn’t just mean, again, your financial capital, though of course it means that. It also means everything from your ideas to your talents to your career to your time and energy to your life, in broader terms.

The future now belongs to those who can create Havens.

But that process will take time.

It won’t happen overnight. My guess is two years from now, we’ll see the first true Havens emerge, at least in a Big Sense, a big country, a big company, a big fund, etcetera. What I mean is that they will have, by then, strategies to be Havens. To attract capital and manage risk, in ways that really meet the needs of now. Havens will be maturing.

In six months or so, we’ll see the first glimmerings of all this. Havens will be being born.

So your job right now isn’t to sort of panic and look desperately for something that doesn’t exist yet.

But it is to develop Havens Thinking. Right now, we are thinking. We are not panicking, freaking, reacting. We are in the in between time where we ourselves must change now, too.

And that means learning not to overreact, but to...

Staying Ahead of the Collapse Curve

Observe, discern, and judge.

So that you can make your move when the time is right. So you can stay Ahead of the Collapse Curve. This is sort of the essence of Havens Thinking, in a way.

When you feel this institution, organization, thing, has become a Haven, that’s when you strike. But that's ahead of you, and we'll do that together.

To strike right now is to misread the situation. Right now, the goal is to minimize your risk, as far as you can, while you are developing your skills in the way above, which is what I call Transformational Intelligence.

Transformational Intelligence means: I am developing a new kind of intelligence, which is about watching Havens develop from the stagnant, broken, world we are in now. And to do that, you must be calm, read the signs, understand what I’ve taught you above, and listen to your instincts a little. 

Do I understand transformation, or am I just relying on other people to do it for me? People who aren't doing it very well? And if I don't, where does all this end for me?

Does that make sense?

The point isn’t to “get it right, right now.” You can’t, nobody can, and anybody that tells you they can is either lying to you or an idiot or both. Because as we’ve discussed, Havens of the kinds we are all looking for don’t exist yet fully yet, because not enough leaders and institutions “saw this coming,” and developed their fields, industries, countries, in that way.

The point is to develop your skills at judging where and what the Havens are as they develop. And to do that, you must be a little active. I’m not saying that you should be a day trader or freak out or dedicate every waking moment to this. Not at all.

But I am saying instead of now leaving it up to others, whether they’re fund managers or CEOs or whatever, doesn’t matter, is a big mistake. Now you must develop some skills, and have a perspective. Have an opinion. Have a pool to make choices from. This could become my Haven, that could, this is on the way, I have a good feeling about this.

That is how you develop Transformational Intelligence, using those muscles, and it’s not about becoming a financial analyst or a careerist, it’s about using your totality of humanness, for lack of a better word, to ask questions like: do I trust these guys? Do they have a plan to keep capital safe for the next decade? Let alone grow it? And what about mine? And what about in the larger sense of capital, which isn’t just money, but the stuff money means, ideas, relationships, creativity, growth, and so forth?

That’s a lot, but these are new skills. You must develop them now.

You see, the old way, in which we left these skills to guys “above our pay grade” or what have you, managers of money and organizations and institutions—that kind of mindset will cause you to Sink With the Ship. Because those guys right now are getting it wrong, over and over again. Whether they’re Wall St or Trump, or worse, the interplay between the two.

So you must be active now. Again, that just means having a perspective and an opinion. Finding a direction. Thinking and reflecting on what will become a Haven. It definitely doesn’t mean trading five hundreds stocks a day, or hopping jobs three times a year, or trying to move to fifty different places. That’s not going to work either, and it’s only going to make your life riskier, so don’t do that. 

How to Guide Yourself Towards Havens

We’re talking about being calm, being still, and thinking it all through. Not in a superficial way—spreadsheets. In a full way. It’s your unconscious mind that will guide you best towards a thing that doesn’t fully exist yet, because that is what it’s there to do. It is always trying to keep you safe, oriented, to guide you with an inner compass. This is the situation we’re in, trying to find a thing that’s not fully there yet, Havens, and in that sense, the task is to sit down and let your whole self sort of point you towards them. That self contains everything you know, feel, want, understand, and that is the one which can find a thing, like Havens, that is becoming itself, but isn’t all the way there yet.

This is in a sense what sessions are for, though we can and do discuss many things, from the world to psychology to philosophy to just living our lives. They are there, I think, in a larger sense, for me to guide and orient you through all this. Here, I’ve sort of outlined for you how to begin thinking well about the convulsions the world is going through. Like I said, don’t panic. Now the challenge is develop these new skills, and learn to think in a new way.

So that as the world transforms around us, you are ahead of the curve. Do that much, and it’ll be enough not to Sink With the Ship. But those who don’t? By now, I think we can all see where they’re going to end up. I care about you guys and your loved ones, and I’m always here to guide you. We’ve been friends, many of us, for so long now. I don’t want to see that happen to you.

Lots of love,

Umair (and Snowy!!)

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