Tariffs and DOGE Are Twin Strategies
This administration is trying to strike at the financial and economic core of a system that has utterly failed US (and western) citizens.
The British media are doing their usual sterling job of ‘understanding’ international economics and geopolitics. The Daily Mail was once a pretty nationalist, rightwing outlet. They opposed the EU for instance. Like the rest of the media, they were captured, and now spend most of their time telling us that obvious men are stunningly gorgeous women.
Their understanding of the ‘tariff wars’ are on about the same level.
So for the benefit of those who might be tempted to agree with the Daily Mail and all the other legacy media outlets, here is the actual situation:
Huge tariffs exist on US goods.
Trump introduces reciprocal tariffs.
“He’s a madman! Why is he doing tariffs! Trump is insane! The stock market is down 10 points!”
Trump holds firm. 75 countries either back down and beg to negotiate or back down and scrap all tariffs on US goods. Trump has successfully isolated China and forced a major renegotiation of trade tariffs unfair to the US by other countries. At the same time US companies rush to bring jobs home. Investment in the US soars.
Trump pauses tariffs for negotiations. He is always ready to do a deal, on his terms. The stock market bounces back 10 points (we should note the important point too that the stock market is not the economy). And Trump has everyone ready to do a better deal while China is left with massive tariffs.
It’s a swift realignment of the entire global trade network, beneficial to the US.
“Haha, Trump blinks! Trump has backed down! He’s weak!”
The level of understanding from 99% of people, who are incapable of comprehending anything thanks to the mainstream media and the total fucking stupidity of the economic consensus for the last 80 years….well, you might as well ask a toilet bowl to explain things to you.
Trump and many other MAGA figures operate on a completely different level to the mainstream NPCs with their programmed 80 year devotion to failed systems, failed institutions and the failed economic theories of an expert class who carefully managed their way to creating a Chinese monster ready to devour them while turning their own countries into increasingly backwards indebted shitholes.
The status quo is set up to ensure that China benefits from western nations declining and failing, while a small number of western Globalist traitors profit from that. The vast majority of ordinary workers find they now live in countries that are falling apart but which still claim to be rich. Their living standards and opportunities relentlessly diminish, their towns have no industries, and the best they can hope for is a welfare payment that keeps them in dependent poverty. At the same time people with no skills and backwards attitudes are imported, by the same economic genius consensus that shifted all manufacturing to China.
The tariffs are the other side of DOGE. It’s a massive attempt to reform the entire global system before it’s too late. DOGE identifies the waste and corruption within, which has a global effect funding madness and war elsewhere. That is all money that is being stolen from the US taxpayer and artificially tipping the world towards insane, non productive, self harming ideologies. The tariffs do the same thing with the global economic system, identifying the injustices that harm the US and seeking to stop massive waste and massive systemic disadvantage.
At the same time they address the elephant in the room, Chinese power, Chinese expansion and dependency on Chinese manufacturing.
In both economics and foreign policy it’s recognised that business as usual eventually, possibly quite soon, will reach a gigantic US crash when the debt just can’t be met anymore, and that Chinese modern colonialism could reach to the US in those circumstances (some would say if you look at Canada or some US institutions it already has reached North America, but it would become much more obvious with a bankrupt US).
Trump has already got China dependent nations to recognise that they are more dependent on the US. He’s already got China isolated in a way that is quicker and much more effective than the failed attempt to isolate a much weaker Russia was.
And mainstream media are all “he blinked!”. With many people, especially those on the Right who still abide by the useless magical fetishes of the 1945 settlement, believing it.
Whether this Trump administration can pull it off and reform the entire global economic system while being opposed at every step by the Democrats, the still deluded RINO class, the transnational institutions, the Chinese and the Globalist leaders of nations like Canada and Britain (and central banks who want an entirely different solution, the techno-feudal Globalist one of copying Chinese oppression) remains to be seen.
But it is at least a serious attempt that recognises the actual situation and wants a way out that is beneficial to the majority of ordinary people.
Daniel can you please move in next door to me so we can have endless chats about how we see the world. I live in Haslemere on the West Sussex border - it is beautiful. Joking aside I find your interpretation of world affairs so similar to my own. I guess like me you have been totally immersed in US politics and the Brexit debacle since at least 2016 and like me you probably think more like an American than a British citizen in terms of 'live free or die'. I often feel more at home talking to my American friends on Substack than my British friends I have known for decades. From what I understand ever since China was first allowed into the WTO it has rigged the system in one way or another. Trump knows that and he also understands what power he has at his disposal and I for one am delighted that he is attempting a reset of the good kind. I remember Eric Weinstein being asked on a podcast what Trump would do when he took office. Eric responded - "He is going to renegotiate the world". He sure is doing exactly that and I am cheering him on because I know how corrupted the entire global system is.
100 per cent. The reciprocal tariffs have been deferred for 90 days. In effect Trump has called the bluff of the EU and others. What do they think will happen after the 90 days? If only Britain had a Government willing to do likewise after the Referendum, instead of all the wailing from the Establishment and the legacy media that "we couldn't leave without a deal", so consequently the EU were allowed to walk all over the UK, which of course the UK Establishment was inviting them to do all along as some sort of punishment for Brexit. Incidentally, these are the same people who have been wailing the most about Trump's reciprocal tariffs. Unlike them, he is made of sterner stuff and is putting America and American citizens first, which he has every right to do.