phase one deal? most of it is a commitment on the chinese to buy agricultural products. the fact that the third quarter specifically, we had proposed tariffs that went to an effect that got delayed. at the time you don t know they re going to be delayed. as you are scrambling to basically get the shipments into the u.s. earlier before the proposed date comes in, it enhanced a lot of extra work and inefficiencies. speak to someone who watches the investor community and average people. do you think this will affect individual american shopping plans? this trade thing. i don t think they think that way. no, it s really not going to be until you see a big increase in prices that could be a shift where consumers say okay, i m just not going to buy it. i will wait until next year. neil: do you see that
trade war. a lot of their cfos echo the same sentiment as their bosses that this trade thing means you don t do a lot of expanding until it settles. ed, what do you make of that? i think there s some truth to that. no ceo or cfo likes any kind of chaos or disruption. the tariffs are an unknown. for some industries, it s significant. others not so much. i think the labor situation is going to have a big impact on small businesses and hiring. i can see right now in the restaurant industry the cost of labor is going up dramatically. the availability of workers is shrinking quickly. it s all good in some ways, but in other ways it s very difficult for the small business man. the fed doing 1/4 point to me is nice but we have to keep this economy pumping. i think trump is doing the right thing.
i think we ought to keep a little juice in it. the chaos of the political scene is terrible. what the democrats are doing and saying running for president is absurd. what the house is doing with these impeachment hearings is ridiculous. that cause as lot of unsettled thinking on the part of the american consumer. they re scared. when our politicians behave so badly, it rocks them. we need to worry about that to some extent as well. neil: federal express was among the more prominent names. tumbling 14% on the market on the notion that this trade question is going to weigh on their earnings going forward. general mills said the same thing. i m wondering if it s contagious. as the president has hinted and others have said, some companies are latching on to this trade thing as an excuse for what might be disappointing earnings. what do you think? having been a ceo, these earning reports, the quarterly
neil: it s not something the president likes. bashing a new poll been chose his overall approval rating down on recession fears and that s a little odd considering the fact that we are not in a recession but we are close. maybe their fear is eventually we will be but still. fox news contributor, axios reporter. gary, it s one thing to fear something that hasn t materialized. it s another to wallop the president s approval rating as a result. what do you make of it? on the approval rating, i have to bring up charles payne because every day i turn on his show, he talks about 50 year lows in unemployment, all kinds of great news time and time again. but yet we get barraged by alabama and maps, buy war awards with actresses, now john bolton. the taliban may be coming in
three national security advisors. michael flynn, h.r. mcmaster, now john bolton. all for various reasons but there s a high turnover particularly in that area and foreign policy. a lot of people look at it and say what do you want? what do you stand for? the interesting thing is if you look at donald trump over the last decade or more, one of the consistent themes that you will hear him speak of may be for 20 or 30 years is the idea that regime change doesn t work. he said for a long, long time the iraq war was a mistake and we emboldened around by getting rid of saddam hussein and there was a counterbalance and having saddam hussein there that that vacuum allowed isis to grow and then vacuum, and so really i think the president has been very, very consistent. neil: you mentioned isis, senator . isis was on the run, isis was defeated. foreign policy advisors urged him to cool it on that kind of talk because it emboldened the enemy. sure enough, isis popped up in other locales. does