Farley Talks Production, Trump Targets Japanese OEMs, AI Shakes Up Schools

Episode #1083: We’re talking tough trade talk from Trump, Jim Farley’s fiery pitch for industrial self-reliance, and the viral ChatGPT graduation moment that’s sparking serious debates—and wild experiments—in education.

Show Notes with links:

• At the Aspen Ideas Festival, Ford CEO Jim Farley called for bold action to rebuild U.S. industrial strength, warning that the country’s economic security—and even its defense—depends on making essential products at home.
  • Farley backs modest tariffs to help U.S. automakers compete with countries that heavily subsidize manufacturing.
  • He also emphasized blue-collar job growth, urging more focus on skilled trades over white-collar positions.
  • Farley shared about recent three week stoppages at Ford plants caused by a shortage of rare-earth magnets sourced from China, critical to systems like seats and windshield wipers.
  • Farley used the example to push for “industrial independence,” saying supply chain reliance on China is a strategic risk.
  • “What, is Google going to make the tanks?” Farley asked. “We’ve talked about energy independence, now we need industrial independence.”

• In a blunt Fox News interview, President Donald Trump threatened to scrap ongoing trade negotiations with Japan, proposing to impose hefty auto tariffs by simply mailing out unilateral notices.
  • Trump said he may skip further negotiations and assign tariffs directly, calling out Japan’s auto exports.
  • “Dear Mr. Japan, here’s the story,” he quipped, proposing the 25% tariff on imported Japanese cars remain.
  • Japan has pushed hard to eliminate the auto tariff but has gained little ground in ongoing talks.

• UCLA student Andre Mai went viral for “flexing” his use of ChatGPT at graduation, but it spotlit the deep confusion around AI in education—just as new, radical models like Alpha School are reshaping what school can even look like.
  • UCLA grad Andre Mai used ChatGPT with his professor’s approval, but reactions revealed how fractured AI policy is in schools.
  • Teachers are stuck between enabling learning and policing AI use, often without reliable tools or consistent rules.
  • 90% of college students tried ChatGPT within two months of launch; now, 1 in 4 teens use it regularly.
  • Meanwhile, Alpha School in Austin is pioneering a bold approach: AI tutors handle core subjects in just 2 hours a day.
  • Students spend the rest of the day on real-world skills like financial literacy, survival training, and entrepreneurship.

0:00 Intro with Paul J Daly and Kyle Mountsier
2:13 All Episodes of ASOTU CON Sessions are live now
3:05 Upcoming ASOTU Edge Webinar with Uber for Business
3:28 Jim Farley Argues For Industrial Independence
6:10 Trump Considers Ending Japan Trade Talks
8:04 The Changes AI is Bringing to the Classroom

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Transcript

Paul J Daly: 0:00

Foreign Well, here it is. We made it. It's June 30, last day of the first half of the year. This is the automotive State of the Union. I'm Paul J Daly. This is Kyle Mountsier. We're talking about Jim Farley Trump and Japanese OEMs and AI really shaking up the school system. Great examples up in here. Yo.

Kyle Mountsier: 0:18

This is a good Monday show, fam. This is a great fun Monday

Paul J Daly: 0:22

show. Let, let's explain what Kyle and I have done since we woke up this morning a lot. I don't even think we can talk about some of them. No, we can't. I mean literally, in the last four hours, it's 9:30am Eastern right now, and in the last four hours, we've built a deck that well, we can't tell you what the deck is for yet.

Kyle Mountsier: 0:44

All right, you're right. And then we built in a deep research article. We also can't tell you what the the deep research article

Paul J Daly: 0:50

is. We can't but what we can tell you is that it did cite ASOTU in the resources amongst all these

Kyle Mountsier: 0:57

without us asking it to like not it was a LinkedIn site like,

Paul J Daly: 1:03

yeah, and, and, just for the record, you know, McKinsey and Company used to get like, half a million for these kinds of things. Oh no, I can't hear Kyle anymore. And I don't even know why, Nathan, can you hear Kyle? I'm shocked. And I ran five miles. Oh, my God, come on, five miles. Let's go. Oh, I didn't, I didn't run any miles. Did

Unknown: 1:26

I lose your audio? No, I've lost him, too. You lost me. We lost Paul's audio. You're muted in stream yard. How'd you meet yourself in stream yard? I don't

Paul J Daly: 1:33

what'd you do, Paul? I don't know. There he is. He's Kyle's audio. Welcome to the show, everybody. Yeah, we were just saying, like, hit the play button to hit start the intro, and Kyle is like, it's more like the pray button. That's kind of true. Whenever we just hit the play button on the stream, it's more like the pray button, the Cray button, I don't know, talk about it. What you want? Um, look fun. Announcement, all episodes. Every single episode of ASOTU CON sessions is now released. Look at all those thumbnails. They look good. Beautiful night include this is 10 to 15 minute quick shot podcast from the floor at ASOTU. This is some of the best content to come out of the event, in my opinion. Episodes with David Kane, John bazzella, Alex Lawrence, Ben Hadley, Derek Hanson, Greg uland, Art Batten, Elizabeth Schultz, oh my gosh. Are you just trying to like name drop? Is this like LinkedIn, name drop wall. Daly was on the show. Yeah, we had a whole we had the whole thing. We had the whole thing wild. I know absolutely go to go to the your favorite podcast platform, or to our YouTube channel. You can just search us so to con sessions, and you'll, you'll get all these quick shots. These are so great for like, car rides, dog walking, because you can be through an episode if you're 1.5 speeder like you. Some of these are done in like seven or eight minutes.

Kyle Mountsier: 2:46

Take the dog out for a lunch, poop, and you get a soul whole great thing. You know, sounds gross.

Paul J Daly: 2:53

We have another ASOTU Edge webinar coming up on July 9, smart customer transportation management with Steven Chapman of Uber for business. It's Wednesday, July 9, 2pm just go to asotu.com you can register for it there. We'll talk about it more later, but let's talk about some news. Let's get into at the Austin Ideas Festival. I didn't know that existed as what I say, Austin, Colorado. You said Austin Aspen Ideas Festival. I don't know what that is, but it sounds great. Ford, CEO Jim Farley called for bold action to rebuild US industrial strength, warning that the country's economic security and even its defense depends on making essential products at home. Farley does back modest tariffs to help us automakers compete with countries that heavily subsidize manufacturing. He also emphasized blue collar job growth, urging more focus on skilled trades over white collar positions. He shared about his recent three weeks stoppages at the Ford plants caused by a shortage of rare earth magnets sourced from China. These are critical to systems like seats, wind seats and windshield wipers. Okay? Farley used the example to push for industrial independence, as he called it, saying supply chain reliance on China is a strategic risk. Here he is. He's quoted by saying, What is Google going to make the tanks we've talked about energy independence. Now we need industrial independence.

Kyle Mountsier: 4:14

You know, I this is actually, if you go back to like, what happened during the world wars, the OEMs moved to making all of the things that were happening in the world wars. And when you think about manufacturing capacity at scale, it doesn't matter what you're making, right? If you're great at manufacturing things like putting materials together to finish an end product, if you're great at that as a country, you're resilient in the face of anything, I think that this is extremely strategic. I do you know, the the point here is like vertical integration in the in the country is extremely important. But we did look a couple weeks ago at cars report that the US manufacturers are not actually the best at. End integration for this. And so I think that there's like, Hey, Jim Farley, if that's going to be the case, like, let's get a move on it a little bit more quickly. We did hear and to double down on the, you know, subsidization of of manufacturing. We hear that the total profit margin of the Chinese automakers right now is like within a couple million of the total government subsidies that have been passed through to that. So if, if it's already

Paul J Daly: 5:37

not profitable, it's grace, yeah, aka, not profitable. So, yeah, a lot moving a lot moving around. And Farley, uh, not shy to say what he thinks, but it's a great shots. Con his shots, he makes a good case. Yeah, it makes a good case. Speaking of making a good case or a case, making a case, a case, you get to decide whether it's a good case or not, right? This is America in a blunt Fox News interview. President Donald Trump threatened to scrap ongoing trade negotiations with Japan, proposing to impose hefty, hefty auto tariffs by simply mailing out unilateral notices. I'm going to put it in the mail. I guess Trump said he may skip further negotiations and assign tariffs directly calling out Japan's auto exports, Dear Mr. Japan, here's the story. He quipped like that's what he says going to start the letter proposing the 25% tariff on a port imported Japanese cars. Japan has pushed hard to eliminate auto tariff, but has gained little ground in ongoing talks. The US tariff hike to 27.5% already took effect in April, pressuring Japanese automakers like Toyota and Honda. He quoted, he said, quote, they won't take our cars. We'll take millions of theirs. It's not fair. So trying to balance it out,

Kyle Mountsier: 6:51

I mean, like, they won't take our cars, that's, that's the, that's the whole piece here, right? Is, is, it's, it's more about the exports than it is about the imports. At this point. It seems like, you know, to to do something major to Japan would wreck some of the US economy, because of Toyota and Honda being the Japanese automakers and their penetration of the US market. So I don't think this is one of those, like, I wouldn't hold your breath on it. That's, you know, that's not investment advice, but I wouldn't hold your breath because I think there's, there's a lot of chess moves being being made. But hey, look, whenever you can get on live TV and read off your fake new your fake mailed letter, I guess, go ahead.

Paul J Daly: 7:38

Tricky times, tricky times moves.

Kyle Mountsier: 7:47

AI, all right, so UCLA student Andre may went viral for flexing his use of chat GPT at graduation, but it's spot lit the deep confusion around AI in education, just as new radical models like alpha school are reshaping what school can even look like. Do we have the video of of this thing? I didn't even ask.

Paul J Daly: 8:09

No, I wasn't I wasn't able to grab it. Sorry. Picture up and just imagine this, this kid in the picture, just making those faces and just scrolling through his chat. GPT,

Kyle Mountsier: 8:19

just through lots of chatgpt, the student Andre used chatgpt with his professor's approval, but reactions revealed how fractured AI policy is in schools. Teachers are stuck between enabling learning and policing. AI use often without reliable tools or consistent rules, so tools for like knowing whether or not

Paul J Daly: 8:41

is this AI or not? Yeah, I was saying like, kids are getting away with it that shouldn't be, and then kids who are actually writing their papers are getting penalized.

Kyle Mountsier: 8:48

That That's exactly it. Meanwhile, alpha school in Austin is pioneering a bold approach AI tutors handle core subjects for just two hours a day, and then the students spend the rest of the day on real life, real world skills like financial, literally, literacy, survival training and entrepreneurship, amazing. I want to go. Love the middle one survival training is like, I want to go to that school right now myself. Like painting up your you know,

Paul J Daly: 9:15

who's the instructor for that class? Multiple instructors. Or is it like one? Paul encompassing, Rex, call if

Kyle Mountsier: 9:20

you know Scott, if you know Scott at Beaver Toyota, he's actually, that's his part. He is the perfect he's the perfect guy. See now you know

Paul J Daly: 9:32

what. What's the model called two hour learning. The model called Yep, says kids learn two times faster, raising question about the future of education. By the way, Nathan is typing in right now. This is pre K through eighth grade,

Kyle Mountsier: 9:44

folks. Yeah, here's, here's. What I know is, this morning, my three year old held up her toy mini phone to take a selfie, right? Okay, relate that to like everything that we think of. Out when it comes to kids coming up in their learning and education and their native understanding of devices, AI, right? Like this will not be something right now. It is an injection. It's a it's a thing that we have to think about moving to, yep, in our world, right? I have to, I have to, like, think about moving into an AI, you know, by the time that our kids get into the working world, yep, AI will be just as native as US Googling something. It will just be a fact without a doubt. Like, interesting. Yeah, that I love that there is this, like, this thought that, okay, we're going to move our educational framework from the like, menial type stuff to like, how do we do? Financial Literacy, survival entrepreneurship, soft skills that are turning into very hard to do, skills, critical thinking, you know, deep research, learning things that require, like the art and the skill that a human touch needs, all right, and okay, so as

Paul J Daly: 11:10

I'm thinking of like, how do we translate this? We're talking about preschoolers, kindergarteners, grade schoolers, leveraging two hours in core, core subjects, and then branching into, like you said, the things that require more human awareness, human touch. How do we translate this for the auto industry? So I'm thinking about sales and service advisors. So we have, what if we could accelerate the base things, the product stuff, you know, the systems stuff, into two hours, and then we spent the rest of the training days on human behavior, on negotiation tactics, like Chris Voss understanding body language. Imagine if we started teaching imagine empathy and how you work with your coworker workers, and all of a sudden we start teaching those things alongside of the sales, and instead of just the hard closes and like, can you imagine just the ability of people to begin to read other people and understand what their needs are? Well, because if you think about it like, electively,

Kyle Mountsier: 12:03

like, like, the reality is, is, is what you're going to deal with is, if you want to find out the comparison between two models, you're going to train a GPT on all of the models, and then you're going to type in, compare these two for my customers sitting right in front of me based on the conversations that we've had, because you've written a recording the entire time, right? Boom, that's done. But like the ability to read that person, to negotiate, to never split the difference those things, yes, exactly.

Paul J Daly: 12:29

Oh my gosh, I didn't even think about that exactly. And then come on, you gotta learn how to bake cookies so we can surprise and delight them. We could do all. We could spend time on all the fun stuff, bake the cookies. Bake the cookies. The cookies never fail. Listen, whatever you're doing this the last day of the first six months of this year, go make a count. Take care of the people around you. They'll keep carry you. We'll see you here tomorrow morning.

Unknown: 13:02

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