Keep your powder dry!

These tariffs depend on a shrinking government to work. What's the government's track record on that?

Apr 04, 2025

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Bottom line up front: What we ought not tolerate!!!

This tariff scheme will work or it won’t. I am not sanguine. But if clowns on Capitol Hill think an infusion of foreign money is a signal to create more spending, we need to make it perfectly clear that we WILL rise up in a very real, very angry and very vindictive way! We’re not talking ballot box here!Whatever the ultimate outcome, the pain we are about to endure is intended to fix the economic shit show the political whores have created. It is not there so the whores can exploit it to do more damage.

No matter your political stripe, race, religion, income level; if you can’t get behind that last statement, you don’t deserve a country or any of the rights and privileges provided therein.

The issue in question

I am amazed at how many people would fail a basic economics test. By that I don’t mean a test in a university where people are taught how to manipulate economies for the benefit of a few. I am talking about basic, real economics. The laws are simple and as certain as gravity.

So Trump announced his tariffs yesterday. These are reciprocal tariffs laid on countries who in all cases are already charging us twice as much as our new tariffs. So far - meh - I am not in a panic about it. IN THE LONG TERM, it will force SOME to move manufacturing and services to the US… EVENTUALLY.

But people like Charlie Kirk, who I think is brilliant, and is featured in the linked video, are speaking as if by next month we’ll be swimming in cash and jobs. We won’t be. But we’ll get something out of the deal…some day.

There is a reason tariffs, and subsidies for cronies, are called trade barriers. They interfere with trade. When tariffs are imposed or subsidies are rewarded to cronies, like our sugar industry, the results are not sound economics outcomes. They are artificial results that benefit only the industries who make goods that are effected by the tariffs. Their employees also benefit, to a lesser extent, for as long as the artifice works.

Further, they put large industries, like our sugar industry in the catbird seat vis-a-vis the government whores they own. Every time a subsidy comes up for review, the industry in question says a greater subsidy is needed. That’s a numerical impossibility. Still, they get the increase and pocket it. The political whores get speaking fees, “foundation” donations, and campaign contributions. It’s pure and simple corruption.

So, listen to Charlie and we’ll digest further. Pay particular attention around the 2:30 mark (…left hand, right hand…). Then come back for the wrap up.

Listing image 1 — Passport Dream 2 Pillow

Kirk on Tariffs

Yes, if all things stay as they are NOW under our new tariffs, good things will happen. If there is substantial retaliation, if nations with large market shares of X product work together to create a work-around, if CHINA embargoes our medicines and medicine bottles, we’re screwed!

So what’s the end game?

Is the point to force countries to reduce or eliminate their barriers and have true free trade? If so, I’m all for it. I was shocked to hear Steve “Stu” Berguiere, on the Blaze, say if we got true free trade, we’d lose jobs in the United States. That is as far from reality as any utterance I’ve heard on the subject to date.

If we lost jobs due to REAL free trade, it would be because OUR government made the United States repugnant to business in ways other than protections. Giving too much support to organized labor, onerous regulation and high taxes would be the reason we’d lose jobs - not the lack of trade barriers between us and our free trade partners.

True zero tariffs between us and others would result in a huge, organic, long-term BOOM for the USA. We have more farmland than the EU. We have more oil than the Saudis, we have the most navigable waterways (highly underutilized) than any country. In a zero tariff world - with sane governance - we win!

Keep in mind the the Premier of Ontario said he’d take his tariffs to zero if we did the same for him. I say make him sign it today and trade with Ontario separately from the rest of Canada. Western provinces would follow immediately. Nations would soon follow suit.

Easy money

IF, however, the tariff scheme is intended to be a means of easy income for the government, Trump is clearly thinking along these lines, we are in BIG trouble. First, because they will never go away. Why do you think we find ourselves here right now? What we permitted in other countries, because they needed an infusion of cash to rebuild from war or develop industry, became a permanent fixture in their economies. They paid for too many social programs and subsidies for other goods, which had a deleterious, artificial effect on the markets.

My point is that it’s ALL an illusion. Playing economic games, anything that is not a step toward REAL free trade, is a sucker bet every time. We get an extra point or two off our taxes and pay 10% to 200% more for everything not made domestically. You pay more either way. And it will never go away. Remember RFK, Jr’s First Rule of Governance. Once you grant the government a power, they will never relinquish it without a fight.

If you think we will replace even a slim majority of what we import in our lifetimes, you’re pissing up a rope. Labor in this country is still far too high. So, my fear is that rather than putting up a detour to free trade our partners will have to go along with, Trump is creating a self-licking ice cream cone that will not solve our economic problems and he’ll call it a victory.

Watch, listen and keep your powder dry. Visit here frequently. We’ll know pretty soon if all this flailing is going to result in economic health or unmitigated disaster. Trump is making an all-or-nothing bet here. There is no third outcome.