WARNING: THE COST OF READING THIS
COMMENTARY JUST WENT UP!
by Cash Michaels
That’s right! Please be advised that the cost for you to indulge in the unadulterated intellect, and superior wisdom of this weekly commentary has just increased, like almost everything else in this country lately!
Oh, think all you have to do is just stop reading this in order to get around the intellectual tariff that has been imposed? Doesn't change a thing, because thanks to your madman president, there is really no escaping the worldwide damage he has wrought by threatening crazy new tariffs on top of existing ones on imports from all other countries.
Normally, our American companies import goods from foreign nations to sell to us. Our government then charges those nations a tax or "tariff" on those goods to enter this country, revenue that goes to our U.S. Treasury. It's usually around 1 to 2 %. American companies will either routinely absorb that 1 or 2% tax in their purchases, or pass it on to their customers.
But Trump has said he wants to raise those tariffs on what other countries pay at least an additional 10% across the board, to put more money in our U.S. Treasury General Fund. By doing so, he's forcing those countries to make trade deals that either favor us, give us cheaper access to their markets, or bring their manufacturing to our shores, with presumably a lot of investment and jobs as well.
To confuse matters now, however, Trump has delayed "reciprocal" tariffs for ninety days for everybody except China, who, in Trump's words, refuses to "kiss my ass" like he's forcing every other country to do.
To Trump, starting an all-out trade war with national friends and foes alike, then have them crawl to him on their bellies begging for a deal, is an ideal situation because it makes him feel in control, with somebody else ultimately paying the price…us!
To some folks (but not too many), that sounds like pretty good economic policy.
To nations like Canada, Mexico and especially China however, it sounds more like bad economic blackmail at the point of a gun, and they don’t like who's finger is on the trigger. China, the world's second largest economy, has made that clear, as the cost of all goods manufactured there and sold here will soon jump dramatically as Trump has hit China with a whopping 125% tariff on goods imported from there.
China has returned fire with an 84% duty so far, on USA stuff sold there. Trump thinks he's cowered China into ultimately making a deal. That remains to be seen.
Fueling that standoff is our trade deficit with China. In 2024, the U.S. exported $143.5 billion in goods to China, compared to China selling us an estimated $438.9 billion in goods.
That trade surplus is a big thorn in Trump's rump (He's lying when he says the trade deficit is a trillion dollars. The Chinese government doesn't like liars).
Add to this the fact that China holds approximately $774 billion in U.S. Treasury bonds, or $774 billion in U.S. government debt, the second largest of any foreign country (Japan holds about $1.1 trillion). China uses the U.S. dollars it makes from the trade surplus to reinvest into purchasing more U.S. debt through Treasury bonds.
In order to keep our interest rates for Treasury bonds low, we allow other countries to buy portions of our federal debt. So do the math - we're already into China for big bucks. If China ever decided to do a massive selloff of the $774 billion in U.S. debt it holds, it could send our interest rates through the roof, and hurt our economic growth.
Indeed, Trump fan boy Charlie Gasparino with Fox Business, reluctantly reported Wednesday that our U.S. debt vulnerability is the real reason why Trump was forced to turn tail for 90-days on his worldwide tariff threat.
“From what I understand — and I’m getting this from people that are talking to the White House — what happened in the bond market overnight, the spike in yields on the 30-year and the 10-year bond, showed that people were dumping our bonds,” Gasparino said. “And who are those people dumping our bonds? Japan, the biggest holder of bonds, was selling bonds. That’s what I’m getting from some very big money managers. China, maybe to some extent, but it was largely Japan and others.”
“If you have a mass sale of bonds,” Gasparino continued, “… that means people are losing confidence in the US economy, on the ability to do deals with us; and from what I understand, this is what forced the hand of this 90-day reprieve.”
CNN and NBC News have also confirmed bond market volatility threatening the US economy was the real reason for Trump's about-face. So China, Japan and others are trying to grab Trump by the throat AND the short hairs, it would seem!
The Associated Press confirmed Thursday morning that China, vowing to fight Trump and his high tariffs "to the end, " "...is reaching out to other nations...in what attempts to be an attempt to form a united front to compel Washington to retreat."
China doesn't want to talk, is insulted, and says it doesn't want to deal, despite Trump's slick assurances that it does. If Trump "...truly wants dialogue," he should "immediately rectify [his] wrong practices and adopt the right attitude of equality, respect and mutual benefit," The AP reported a Chinese Foreign Ministry official as saying Thursday.
Again from The AP Thursday, that Chinese Foreign Ministry official added, "We must solemnly tell the U.S., a tariff-wielding barbarian who attempts to force countries to call and beg for mercy can never expect that call from China."
Which makes what Trump’s chief guard dog, J. D. Vance, earlier said, not helpful: “We borrow money from Chinese peasants to buy the things those Chinese peasants manufacture.”
Boy...and people complain that I cuss and use name calling too much!
So now, anything made or grown in China that we buy is affected, but Trump's 125% tariff is in full effect unless China makes a deal. Stuff you never dreamed had anything to do with China, will now get hiked in price, thanks to Trump’s dumb ego trippin'.
Even though Madman Trump has delayed his worldwide tariff war for ninety days, the damage has already been done. The stock market index has tanked thousands of points over the past week, with investors, large and small, losing trillions of dollars like Niagara Falls.
When Trump announced his 90-day pause on tariffs, the markets did bounce back impressively, but it's the uncertainty of this egomaniac's next move that still has the world on edge.
And Trump's manic economic shell game, and its inherent uncertainty, is by no means welcomed by anyone with any sense.
"If...we launch economic nuclear war on every country in the world, business investment will grind to a halt, consumers will close their wallets and pocketbooks, and we will severely damage our reputation with the rest of the world that will take years and potentially decades to rehabilitate," predicts hedge fund billionaire Bill Ackman, an actual Trump supporter.
And Ackman isn't the only richie-rich guy expressing similar gloomy outlooks on the impact of Trump's trade war.
A little history lesson here.
According to VOA (Voice of America) News (which still has its website up, even though Trump dismantled its parent agency): The early 20th century had seen the U.S. make massive economic strides. But when the Great Depression began in 1929, the Republican-dominated Congress sought to help hard-hit American farmers by using tariffs on imported goods to shield them from foreign competition.
Economists and business leaders opposed the idea, pointing out that the U.S. was already running a trade surplus, exporting more than it imported. Nevertheless, the bill was signed into law by President Herbert Hoover in 1930, taxing nearly 2,000 categories of imports at rates upward of 50% – some of the highest in U.S. history.
The bill’s passage drew an immediate outcry from America’s largest trading partners, with 10 of them passing retaliatory measures. France imposed heavy charges on American-made automobiles and Canada increased tariffs on many American imports while lowering them for British goods. Countries like Italy and Switzerland also saw calls for boycotting American products altogether.
As the retaliatory measures combined with the ongoing impact of the Great Depression, over the next few years U.S. exports decreased by 66%.
The tariffs were eventually repealed in 1934 by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who replaced them with bilateral agreements negotiated directly with individual countries.
In 2018, Trump first got into his tariff tizzy with China, and didn’t learn his lesson then. Now, he’s back at it, not giving a tinker’s damn about history.
You now know more than he does about the history of tariffs just reading this commentary. He insists that we should have stuck to our high tariff guns back in the 1930's, no matter what the pain.
Fortunately, other folks with common sense, brains and hearts know better.
Even Republicans like senators Thom Tillis (NC), Mitch McConnell (KY.), Ted Cruz (TX.) and others have dared to question the wisdom of such a dumb Trump move. Trump’s billionaire buddy, Elon Musk, expressed dismay as well, calling Trump's chief trade and tariff strategist, Peter Navarro, "a moron" and "dumber than a sack of bricks!"
But leave it to VP Vance to once again ride to the rhetorical “rescue.”
Vance is now on record telling “paycheck-to-paycheck Americans” to “suck it up” when it comes to any economic pain we will experience from his boss’s nonsense.
Appearing on Fox and Friends recently, Vance began his bearded-face bullpucky by saying “…[W]e know a lot of Americans are worried. So we are fighting very hard to bring prices down. We’re going to have the biggest deregulation in the history of this country.”
“What I’d ask folks to appreciate here is that we are not going to fix things overnight,” Vance continued. “…if we pursue the right deregulation, we pursue those energy costs, reducing policies, yes, people are going to see it in their pocketbook.”
“So yeah, we’re going to cut your taxes. You’re going to have more money in your pocket, and that’s of course going to help you deal with the cost of inflation.”
And Vance said all of this with a straight face too!
But let’s break it down. According to Vance, he confirmed that we should expect prices to continue to go up once higher tariffs truly commence, because what Trump is doing will, indeed, cause more inflation. But don’t worry, the v.p. assures, because the Trump Administration will try mightily to soften the blow.
Meanwhile White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told Newsnation the same morning J.D. Vance was trying out his bulletpoint b.s. over on Fox and Friends, that for Americans, there will be no economic blow to soften.
“There’s not going to be any pain for American-owned companies and American workers, because their jobs are going to come back home, and again, as for prices, President Trump is working on tax cuts to put more money back into the pockets of Americans,” Leavitt said, adding Trump’s tariffs are a “golden rule for the golden age”and that Americans can expect price stability, provided they buy American.
“It’s a patriotic thing to do, and, most importantly, they can expect their wages to go up,” she concluded.
Boy, this woman could reassure a chopped chicken headed for the KFC fryer.
Then we have Trump’s Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick telling CBS’ Face the Nation that U.S. workers, in fact, will not get their lost manufacturing jobs back as promised by Trump’s tariff strategy because new factories built here by foreign investors will likely be automated, run by robots, meaning ultimately American workers won’t be needed.
This kind of triple-double talk about the same subject makes you wonder whether
Lutnick, Leavitt and Vance even know each other exist, let alone work for the same White House.
And, of course, there’s the madman-in-chief himself, when questioned by a reporter the morning after the markets first crashed like a ten pound bag of pretzels.
“I think it’s going very well," Trump said. “It was an operation like when a patient gets operated on and it’s a big thing. The markets are going to boom. The stock is going to boom. The country is going to boom.”
That was Trump’s answer, folks.
North Carolina farmers and I have one thing in common. We all know bullcrap when we see and hear it.
That goes for horsecrap and cowcrap too!
This whole Trump tariffs "boom" thing is economic policy for chumps!
This country is headed towards an economic rabbit hole it may take generations to climb out of if Madman Trump keeps playing games like this. True, the United States is one of the largest markets in the world, and everybody wants a piece of it, and should treat us fairly in that transaction. Even I agree with that logic.
But there’s a cogent reason president after president, except Trump, has steered cleared of getting into a worldwide tariff/trade pissing contest since the 1930s.
History has shown that they just don’t work.
Trump admits that he’s doing all of this to dominate other countries, especially China, which actually means he’s trying to dominate the world.
That’s why we’re hearing such idiotic nonsense about turning Canada into a 51st state, or owning Greenland, or changing the Gulf of Mexico into the Gulf of America.
And what Trump doesn’t finish, he’ll leave either to J.D. Vance, or his crazy son Don Jr., to complete down the road.
It’s a crazy master plan to bring this country down to its legal and economic knees so he can use the spoils to rebuild it into a customized world power where he is the master authority. The man is even planning a $92 million military parade in Washington to celebrate his 79th birthday.
How crazy is that?
Don’t say you weren’t warned. All of you MAGA suckers thought that Trump was working for you. Well, your prices and costs of living are about to skyrocket too, and all of this bull about Trump making you wealthy is blinding you to reality.
Can you spell R-E-C-E-S-S-I-O-N, boys and girls?
This is the end of America as we know it, folks. And it will take more than courageous Democrats like Sen. Cory Booker delivering a 25-hour speech, or millions of people participating in protest marches across the country on a Saturday afternoon, to save us.
Much more.
The question is…are each one of us willing to pay the high price for freedom in the face of such home grown insanity and tyranny?
Like I tried to warn you…the cost of reading this commentary just went up, not in dollars and cents, but in the kind of courage needed to make a difference in saving this nation from madness and destruction.
The question again is…can you afford to ignore it?
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