Trade Policy

What do you expect America to be like after Trump’s full 4 years?

This post is a response to a question posed in its complete format: “After seeing what Trump has done in less than a year, what do you expect America to be like after his full 4 years?”

The problem we are overlooking with this question isn’t what America will be like, but what the world will be like.

America is the epicentre of a sociopolitical earthquake that will fundamentally change the global geopolitical landscape forever.

Whether that results in the further democratization of a multipolar world or in the establishment of continental empires is entirely contingent on the degree of public engagement today.

Whether we like it or not, the recent release of the American National Security Strategy , alternatively referred to as a revisionist version of the “Monroe Doctrine,” which they arrogantly and narcissistically refer to as the “Donroe Doctrine,” is a declaration of war. (citations below)

We have been witnessing their strategy play out throughout the last year with antics ranging from a cleansing of bureaucratic staffing throughout the entire government apparatus, to tariff wars, annexation threats, ICE expansion and citizen round-ups to be shipped off to concentration camps, to testing the waters of a Venezuelan aggression through the commission of war crimes to see how far they can push to trigger resistance.

All of it has appeared to be a random series of events intended to sow chaos without a guiding strategy to culminate in the long-term achievement of objectives. It’s been easy to find ourselves misdirected by an imbecile who stares at an eclipse as if immune to blindness or rambles incoherently into fractured thoughts strung together only by the mouth in which a babbling stream of consciousness flows.

It’s not randomly generated chaos, however. It is a carefully orchestrated stream of chaos that Steve Bannon conceived of as a “flood the zone” strategy. The goal is and always has been misdirection because that’s how grifters play their marks, and the marks in this case are not solely the American people, but the entire global network of interconnected enterprises and competing foreign powers.

For an in-depth review of the Trump administration’s plan, Ben Norton from The Geopolitical Economy Report presents a one-hour, chapter-by-chapter interpretation and analysis of the scope and severity of the global upheaval planned in the video linked below. The intention is for the entire globe to be reconfigured into continental trading blocks, with the U.S. at the centre of a global power dynamic following the consolidation of the Americas (North and South) under U.S. control.

(Citations are below for those who may be unfamiliar with Ben Norton’s credentials as an Investigative Journalist. – Transparency on this source is provided for those whose personal political views might be triggered by Ben’s. Whether you align yourself with them or not isn’t relevant to the issue of an objective analysis of his analysis of the gravity of the issues he examines in a globally transformative initiative spearheaded by the Trump administration.)

Like all things Trump, he’s not intelligent enough to have contributed significantly to the goals and strategies outlined in this document, even as he provided little more than his name as a brand for the Project 2025 initiative. Trump’s M.O. has always been to have other people do the groundwork while he brands and sells the product to a gullible public.

Trump is a spokesperson for a movement that has essentially operated outside the spotlight and occasionally lets slip the quiet part of its plans.

You may remember the election campaign when the president of the Heritage Foundation threatened violence if people did not willingly submit to their restructuring of a New World Order conceived of by a White Supremacist ethos.

https://www.politico.com/news/2024/07/04/leader-of-the-pro-trump-project-2025-suggests-there-will-be-a-new-american-revolution-00166583

This is not “political business as usual,” where issues are bandied about like a table tennis match, and points are awarded for each winning strike the opposition fails to return as fans cheer their favourites from the bleachers. Changes or initiatives implemented by opposing parties in the past may have affected people’s lives, but they have never fundamentally transformed civilian life as this current administration seeks to do.

We have been hearing cries that the U.S. is at the precipice of full-blown fascism (and, in the interests of complete transparency, I have also been contributing to that noise), but this is the next stage in a dramatic battle for global control involving machinations in which we, the little people, are pawns in a massive game of power between the few who have no loyalty to any nation and who treat the world like a chessboard, as they position their dynasties for shaping tomorrow’s brave new world order.

We are passively watching the pieces of last century’s attempt at global dominion reassemble like a reborn T-1 Terminator. They have reinvented the Hakenkreuz symbol as a red beanie, and their little people’s army sings “Sieg Heil” in a country twang. Their base of disgruntled citizens, marginalized by society, sincerely view themselves as “patriots” who commit treason against their nation and wage war against their neighbours with righteous indignation.

Since 22 states are already in a recession and recent job reports have been terrible, the odds are excellent that the economy as a whole will be underwater by the midterm election. As much hardship as that will cause, the sad fact is that not enough truly understand what’s at stake. Many are still deluded by the shortsighted, self-serving thinking they’ve been led to believe is a patriotic fight against the evil forces that have been making their lives more difficult by the year.

A recession means they won’t be able to continue lying to themselves about who is genuinely responsible for their hardships. The polls and the recent elections show a distinct swing away from supporting the party of the plutocrats. However, the DNC is still struggling to accept that the opposition has long since lost sight of its responsibility to provide good-faith representation.

People like Chuck Schumer refer to the current situation as a fever he hopes will break, and that’s the thinking that a parent demonstrates when they’re holding out hope that their addicted child will eventually see reason in time to return to sanity. Decades of working with the same people have glossed over his perceptions with unwarranted sentiment. It is an incredibly tone deaf mistake because he’s prioritizing his relationships with his political peers rather than accepting the deadly threat they pose to a nation struggling to survive a dystopic shithole.

Whatever happens between now and the midterms, the public will need to see hope on the horizon as the economy careens headlong toward what could conceivably become a full-on depression. Without that alarm bell ringing loudly in their ears and motivating them to the polls, they may not cleanse the halls of government enough to slow down the strategic assault against the nation, its people, and the rest of the world. At the same time, the increasing consolidation of power among the plutocratic class continues their machinations and maneuvers the country into armed conflict with Venezuela.

An open war seems like a likely strategy to mobilize their base to vote for them, and, depending on how they massage the optics, they may convince a few Democrats to support them enough to hold onto enough seats to continue their agenda.

The DNC must stop resisting public sentiment, and the old guard must step aside to make way for new leadership and convince people that the two parties are not the same. The DNC has done a terrible job on their messaging, and that turns off potential support while convincing people that the entire edifice of government must be torn down. However else Trump may be perceived, he still represents the chaos they innately trust more than a government that has turned its back on them for the last 50 years.

If the DNC loses the support they’re getting now, “for free,” they’ll be stuck with tepid government shutdown strategies that will turn the public further away from a do-nothing administration.

They still don’t understand the hardships people are enduring.
People like Schumer and the “old guard” are living in a disconnected reality, like it’s 1983.

The people are angry, and they have to feel that anger themselves if they want to leverage it for change.

If the DNC succeeds in winning back enough control to turn Trump into a lame duck for the remainder of his term, and even possibly initiate another impeachment process (although after two prior impeachments that accomplished nothing tangible enough to be visible to the public, that could backfire on them). The nation might have some hope of at least mitigating the economic downturn, while the entire country will be in turmoil.

Economic hardship otherwise seems unavoidable, and particularly so when destabilization becomes an international strategy for containing the expansionist MAGAt hunger for dominion.

Making matters worse, the people behind Project 2025 and the “Donroe Doctrine” will continue to push their agenda by ramping up their disinformation campaigns. They’re not going to rest while their crown falls closer within their reach. They will likely do what they can to kneecap the DNC or enough members to hamper efforts to stop them, or at least minimize their investment losses.

Results from the mid-term elections will dramatically affect the trajectory of the remaining half of Trump’s term in office. Even if Trump’s power and influence wane, the architects of Project 2025 and the U.S. National Security Strategy will have contingency plans to sow discord, escalate disinformation, and likely inflame conflicts between nations, thereby furthering their agenda.

For example, I’d been thinking the $80 billion transfer to Argentina was to cover Trump’s escape plan, should things go south and he finds himself facing insurmountable legal battles. That money, however, could also serve as a means by which they can destabilize Venezuela’s politics enough to justify American aggression.

Keep in mind that their endgame is a North and South America economic bloc that they can control.

It seems quite possible that Trump could deliberately sabotage a renegotiation of CUSMA to pressure Canada and Mexico into falling in line. He seems to be taking steps in that direction by imposing punitive tariffs on Canadian potash and proactively minimizing the impact on farmers by handing out money to quell their growing anger and disappointment with the results of his actions so far.

Moving too fast or too hard in that direction, however, risks global retaliation, such as a massive sell-off of U.S. Treasury securities, which could further destabilize the nation and the world. This would be a “nuclear option” to avoid a perceived worse outcome that would further impact global trade and exacerbate a U.S. recession into a worldwide depression, but that’s a nightmare scenario which seems least likely.

At any rate, at the end of Trump’s four-year term, the least dramatic outcome would be for Trump to voluntarily step down (as he should – but won’t without at least hurling a choice collection of his favourite words of petty spite), and the nation is left hobbling through a deep recession that would require both austerity on behalf of the little people will be so enraged by this point that the plutcrats they will demand restitution from will either begrudgingly commit to long resisted initiatives like a universal healthcare option, and quite possibly a minimum guaranteed income.

Whatever else may be the case, if the architects of this madness fail in their quest to reshape the globe into a manifestation of their “Dark Enlightenment agenda,” then the days of the U.S. as a dominant superpower are rapidly ending.

America will be in chaos at the end of Trump’s second and final term, but it will at least represent a state of turmoil with some hope shining through the end of a long and dark tunnel.

CITATIONS:

https://www.reuters.com/business/finance/trump-strategy-document-revives-monroe-doctrine-slams-europe-2025-12-05/

What is the Monroe Doctrine, and why does Trump want to ‘reassert’ it? – National | Globalnews.ca

Click to access 2025-National-Security-Strategy.pdf

Ben Norton – AI Summary:

Ben Norton is an American investigative journalist, political analyst, and founder of the Geopolitical Economy Report, known for his anti-imperialist reporting on U.S. foreign policy, Latin America (where he lived for years), and China, now based in Beijing, studying at Tsinghua University to blend journalism with academic research on global development and finance. He previously worked for Salon, AlterNet, and The Real News Network, focusing on economic justice and critical media analysis.

Ben Norton

Wouldn’t a corporate income tax system be better than tariffs?

This post is a response to a question posed in its complete format: “Wouldn’t a better option than tariffs be to have a corporate income tax system that would create incentives for companies that hire domestically and penalize them for hiring in other countries?”

A “better option” is an alternative strategy for accomplishing what tariffs are intended to achieve. Tariffs protect local businesses and industries that can be overwhelmed out of business by foreign exports, which would otherwise dominate market niches to evolve into monopolies without constraints.

Tariffs are not helpful for much of anything else. The way Trump is using tariffs as a negotiating strategy would be the equivalent of using a scalpel to carve up a side of beef. Inevitably, that scalpel becomes dull and easily broken. People unfamiliar with scalpels would at first marvel at how clean it would cut, then become frustrated with scalpels altogether from misuse.

That’s what’s happened with tariffs.

Trump has misused tariffs as a club for negotiations and, consequently, has created a misperception of their function in a reasonable trade deal that would otherwise be used to protect local industry. He has lied about tariffs stimulating manufacturing, or is so incompetent that he sincerely believes his nonsense.

What this question suggests was already in play during the Eisenhower years, when corporate taxes were high. See the chart below:

The tax rates highlighted by the red outline comprise the years in which the economy was most stable and grew steadily, while the middle class flourished.

The higher tax rates on the upper end incentivized corporations to reinvest in their operations by increasing their hiring to reduce their tax burden. (Other laws were also in place to support this economic growth, such as prohibiting stock buybacks to increase dividends, which were eliminated along with several protections throughout these last decades.)

This stable dynamic changed because the wealthy class wasn’t satisfied with being the richest. They wanted more and continue to want more, such that we have repeated the economic disparity that has repeatedly destroyed stable societies throughout history.

The problems we are struggling with are made incredibly easy to understand once one adjusts their perceptions to realize our struggles are the consequence of a centuries-long class warfare against the people by those who seek dominion in this world.

We will experience a correction in one of two ways:

1. Through a reasonable form of relenting by the wealthy class, who collectively restrain the twenty percent of them who comprise a psychopathic psychological dysfunctionality, and re-establish the rich and influential among us as ethical leaders for humanity, or

2. By continuing to allow the corruption to influence public policy in the way that has encouraged fascism to grow out of control and repress economies while stripping people of their rights, until a tipping point occurs and societies collapse upon themselves in such a dramatic fashion that chaos rules the day. At which point, the people will reassert their power over the powerful in the traditional manner established throughout history by violently deposing the corrupt among us.

We are very close to widespread chaos ruling the day around the globe, while the Canadian election has provided us with a slim glimmer of hope. Meanwhile, the corruption that has fueled this fascist resurgence continues to corrupt the best of humanity.

MAGA is the public face of organizations like the IDU, the Heritage Foundation, ALEC, and an ideological movement self-described as a “Dark Enlightenment” which feed the economic distortions that threaten the integrity of democratic societies worldwide by favouring corporate power and fascist governance through targeted disinformation to manipulate election outcomes based on negative campaigning.

Our best option today is to mitigate the corruptive power of these hatemongering groups and of the psychopaths within the one percent who seek to reestablish a two-class society of rulers and serfs.

Corporations are allowed to exist to serve the people, not rule them. We have eliminated kingdoms from our societies because they are toxic and destructive, limiting our potential as a species. We can restructure corporations into democratic institutions, and we must because the trajectory they are taking us all on is inviting us to repeat a blood-soaked history.

We are again at a crossroads that we have repeatedly visited throughout history because the corrupt among us have little to no respect for humanity. We now have the benefits of a long history and an established pattern, while the changes we need to make to rid society of this corruptive scourge once and for all are within our grasp. This will be our last time at this crossroads if we unite as a people and assert our power as individuals within a shared community that refuses to bend our knees to incompetent and cruel rulers.

How long will tariffs take for the US to create good jobs?

This post is a response to a question posed in its complete format: “How long will it take for new companies to build in the US creating good jobs and bringing America back from foreign dependent markets after the tariffs take effect?”

There is no detangling from foreign suppliers in almost literally every market.

For instance, you may have a homegrown bakery that you want to grow into a nationwide franchise that employs several hundred, but can’t without relying on foreign markets for product ingredients, equipment, or supplies to allow your operation to grow.

International interdependence is how to streamline costs through the same economic principle of economies of scale that would solve the corrupt American healthcare scam.

For example, you may be able to source grain from American farmers, but there’s an upper limit to how much you could buy locally. That would create an upper limit on your franchise growth. You may not be able to source much or any of your yeast from local markets, and you’ll be stuck having to import it at exorbitant prices due to Trump’s tariffs.

As you retool your nation’s supply chains to meet the needs of thriving businesses, you would still have to rely on foreign markets until you’ve made the hard choices of pushing out some business activities to make way for the successful or chosen industries to grow. While your nation adjusts to rely on tea production, you would shut down coffee bean plantations to provide enough land to grow your tea.

In the long run, as the U.S. adjusts to an entirely different lifestyle, you would change your expectations for the luxuries you currently take for granted. You would lose some major industries to make way for others.

You would no longer have any Starbucks, or you’d have to pay $20.00 for a cup of coffee, which would dramatically reduce the availability of Starbucks in your nation. Instead of walking down the street for a cup of joe, you’d find yourself driving to another town.

The transitions implied by your question involve a radical reshaping of your economic landscape that will not be a smooth change into lifestyles you’ve grown used to. You must prepare yourself to experience a painfully jarring and volatile rush of disappointments and escalating costs that would guarantee you having to endure a decades-long depression while losing almost everything you now take for granted.

Assuming you can succeed in transitioning to a self-contained economy, your nation would more closely resemble North Korea than whatever it is today. You won’t live long enough to experience the “New America,” but your grandchildren might have fond memories of the last Ben and Jerry’s Ice Cream sold at an auction for $10,000.00.

It seems too many MAGAts are utterly oblivious to how badly they’ve been conned by a con artist who should be rotting behind bars like every other convicted felon.

It’s heartbreaking that you’ll have to suffer so incredibly intensely to take back your nation and return it to a stable state of interdependent membership in a global community. You can forget global leadership, though. That’s gone forever.

Why are counter tariffs a good idea?

This post is a response to a question posed in its complete format: “If tariffs make things more expensive for the other party, why is putting counter tariffs a good idea?”

Let’s first begin by dropping the notion that throwing counter-punches is a “good thing.”

A vast difference exists between a “good thing” and a “necessary thing.”

“Good things” result in mutual progress and shared benefit of growth.

A “necessary thing” is a strategy for mitigating loss and facilitating the reversal of destruction.

Punching someone back after they have punched you isn’t a “good thing,” but a “necessary thing” because they will continue to beat on you until you can do nothing but submit like a broken animal to their assaults until they decide to stop or until you’re dead.

Tariffs are often used in negotiations to achieve balanced results between two parties.

Tariffs can be a means of securing a stable trade relationship.

Tariffs can also be used punitively to attack a negotiating partner, precisely how bullies like Trump approach their negotiations. He championed this strategy of overwhelming negotiating partners with force in his “Art of the Deal” piece of provocative garbage. Bullying is his life pattern.

Trump has always been a bully and his behaviours have destroyed people’s lives.

The only way to deal with a bully that tries to overpower you is to debilitate them.

This approach is precisely how Putin has resolved his conflicts. He has never stopped at just pushing someone back. He has always taken his conflicts to an extreme resolution to eliminate any shred of threat as a message to anyone else who might threaten him. None of his political opponents were beaten to live their lives in a reclusive or marginalized state. They were all murdered to ensure they could no longer pose a threat against him.

Being assaulted by someone like Trump with a long history of behaving in a consistently bullying manner and whose commitments aren’t worth the paper they’re printed on — and who is backed by a psychopath like Putin whose goal is the total eradication of resistance means the necessary option of overpowering Trump and his strategy to such a degree that he is beaten to the ground like a rabid dog is a survival necessity.

Until he has been so broken and defanged that he can do nothing more than gum his way through future assaults, he will always be an existential threat to human civilization. Preventing him from throwing punches isn’t enough. He must have every single weapon of his broken beyond repair so that he lives in a state of total impotence like the swamp slug he is.

This is not a “good thing” by any stretch of the imagination. This is a horrifyingly “necessary thing,” if we want to see something resembling sanity return to society that can allow some form of stability to emerge.