Tag: economics

Trump to Rebuild Steel Industry

A new executive order from the God-Emperor 2.0 places 25 percent tariffs on imported steel from all sources.

In Proclamation 9705 of March 8, 2018 (Adjusting Imports of Steel Into the United States), I concurred in the Secretary’s finding that steel articles, as defined in clause 1 of Proclamation 9705 (as amended by clause 8 of Proclamation 9711 of March 22, 2018 (Adjusting Imports of Steel Into the United States)), are being imported into the United States in such quantities and under such circumstances as to threaten to impair the national security of the United States, and decided to adjust the imports of steel articles by imposing a 25 percent ad valorem tariff on such articles imported from most countries. Proclamation 9705 further stated that any country with which the United States has a security relationship is welcome to discuss alternative ways to address the threatened impairment of the national security caused by imports from that country, and noted that, should the United States and that country arrive at a satisfactory alternative means to address the threat to the national security such that the President determines that imports from that country no longer threaten to impair the national security, I may remove or modify the restriction on steel articles imports from that country and, if necessary, adjust the tariff as it applies to other countries, as the national security interests of the United States require.

This is absolutely necessary if the USA is going to remain even a regional power. Whereas in 1945, the USA produced 72 percent of the world’s steel, it is now producing 4.2 percent of it. Whereas it once produced 229 million metric tons of iron and steel, it now produces only 79.4 million, which isn’t even enough to account for its annual steel consumption of around 100 million metric tons.

At this point the USA cannot even be considered a global military power because it lacks the industrial capacity to fight a war over an extended period of time. The President’s new steel tariffs are in place to allow the USA to begin rebuilding the industrial base that it stupidly abandoned in the post-WWII period.

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Did No One Take Econ 101?

The Danish Prime Minister stupidly threatens to hit back at the coming US tariffs on the European Union. What we’re seeing here is the fundamental retardery and complete lack of a most basic education possessed by the mediocrities purportedly running Clown World.

The EU will be forced into a“robust response” if the US imposes tariffs on the bloc’s exports, Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen warned on Monday.

US President Donald Trump has threatened to impose tariffs on the EU unless the bloc reduces its trade deficit with the US by significantly increasing purchases of American oil and gas. On Friday, Trump reiterated his threat, saying he “absolutely” plans to levy tariffs on the EU and claiming that the bloc “has treated [the US] terribly” with its trade practices. He has not yet provided specific details regarding the targeted goods or the exact tariff rates, however.

Speaking to reporters ahead of an informal meeting of EU leaders in Brussels, Frederiksen warned that Trump’s insistence on placing levies on the bloc’s goods could trigger a trade war.

“I am not in favor of a trade war. I am actually in favor of the opposite, that we trade with each other… but it is clear that if there is very strong American pressure on the European market, we simply cannot do anything but respond harshly,” she stated.

Again, a trade war is MATERIALLY BENEFICIAL to any country with a negative balance of trade. So what the Danish Prime Minister is threatening the USA with is the net BENEFIT of transferring EUR 4.7 billion to the USA.

Now, most people don’t know anything about economics, particularly journalists and politicians. They know even less about economic history, which is why you’re going to see a few people attempting to look knowledgeable by referencing the Smoot-Hawley tariff, on which the stupid and the uninformed blame the Great Depression. Of course, I addressed this in my 2009 book on The Return of the Great Depression:

For many years, it was supposed that the Smoot-Hawley tariff of 1930 played a major role in the economic contraction of the Great Depression. As more economists are gradually coming to realize, this was unlikely the case for several reasons. First, the 15.5 percent annual decline in exports from 1929 to 1933 was less precipitous than the pre-tariff 18.3 percent decline from 1920 to 1922. Second, because the amount of imports also fell, the net effect of the $328 million reduction in the balance of trade on the economy amounted to only 0.3 percent of 1929 GDP. Third, the balance of trade turned negative and by 1940 had increased to nearly ten times the size of the 1929 positive balance while the economy was growing.

The Pomp Letter has begun educating himself on tariffs and economic history, and has concluded that the mainstream hysteria is based on a foundation of ignorance.

Trump implemented a 25% tariff on steel imports in March 2018. His reasoning was related to national security, along with a desire to get US steel mills operating at 80% capacity or higher.

Naturally, the critics of tariffs would argue that steel prices should have increased by 25% or more post-tariff, but as you can see in this chart — steel prices increased through the summer (steel prices had already been skyrocketing pre-tariff too) and then began falling substantially. US steel prices eventually fell to price levels much lower than pre-tariff prices.

Why did the price of US steel decrease? Domestic manufacturing of steel increased by nearly 10% for the 2 years post-tariffs.

“The USGS data show that Trump’s tariffs may have helped goose domestic steel production in the first few years after they were implemented. Production rose to 86.6 million metric tons in 2018 and 87.8 million metric tons in 2019, before cratering in 2020 as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. Production bounced back in 2021, as American steel mills produced 85.8 million metric tons of raw steel that year.”

This means the 2018 tariffs worked — US manufacturing of steel increased and US steel prices dropped lower.

Obviously, the pandemic created significant issues for manufacturing and industrial companies, but US steel prices still sit right now at nearly the same level as they were pre-tariff. Most importantly, steel prices have not kept up with consumer inflation since 2018.

So now you have three concrete examples from the 2018 tariffs that show the critics were wrong. The tariffs led to lower prices, increased American manufacturing, more government revenue, and the creation of American jobs. Also, US inflation (CPI) fell from 2.1% in January 2018 to 1.6% in January 2019, so the tariffs didn’t lead to higher inflation either.

The USA will win any tariff war because it has been losing the free trade war for decades. America has literally nothing to lose in this regard.

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Eliminating De Minimis

The Trump trade tariffs are more sophisticated and even more necessary than they might appear at first glance:

So, Canada and Mexico get 25% tariffs, but China only 10%. Why? The secret is in that subsection “(h)” when it talks about de minimis treatment. Essentially, what President Trump is doing is levying a much more massive import tax, and possible confiscation impact on the core source of fentanyl (and other illegal) substances.

Approximately a billion packages are estimated to enter the USA under the cover of the de minimis exemption. This is where the enforcement mechanism of the “External Revenue Service” combines with the tariff approach and the “state of emergency.” President Trump imposed the tariffs under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, a nearly 50-year law that gives the president sweeping power to impose sanctions after declaring an emergency.

Now the billion packages, mostly from China, Mexico and Canada are going to be subjected to review and interception.

The de minimis loophole comes from back in the 1930s. The idea back then was, say you went on a vacation to Paris, you shouldn’t have to file customs paperwork or pay taxes if you decided to ship some little Eiffel Tower statues to your friends back home. Congress in 2015 then raised the de minimis threshold from $200 to $800. However, the e-commerce world exploded, and Chinese companies began using the de minimis loophole to ship cheap goods (ex. Temu and Shein) into the USA direct to consumers without paying any customs duty.

It was reported last year that the U.S. was on track to receive a billion packages through the de minimis loophole that aren’t taxed and don’t have customs slips saying what they are. Making matters worse, illegal items are slipping through the cracks, including, knockoffs, unsafe items and even chemicals used to make fentanyl. The worst abuser that exploits this de minimis loophole is, by far, China.

President Trump can require a customs and duty declaration stating what is in every package and subsequently collect tariffs and duties.

Put it all together and President Trump is executing an Emergency Act executive order, plus the imposition of a tariff review, and simultaneous interception of de minimis packages previously unchecked as the enforcement mechanism. All executed by the External Revenue Service.

Increasingly, it is becoming obvious how derelict in their duties the various branches of the US federal government have been in their favoring foreign interests over the national interests of the American people. Nationalism is observably and conclusively the moral position vis-a-vis the corrupt globalist ideology that necessitates dishonesty and favors corruption.

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Testing the Free Trade Hypothesis

It has long been a mantra of the free trade crowd that both sides lose from a trade war. President Trump has called that mantra into question by launching a trade war with Canada, and likely Mexico and China as well:

Canada will retaliate against President Donald Trump’s new tariffs with 25% levies on a raft of U.S. imports, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said on Saturday, warning Americans that Trump’s actions would have real consequences for them.

As relations between the long-time allies who share the world’s longest land border reach a new low, Trudeau told a news conference he was slapping tariffs on C$155 billion ($107 billion) of U.S. goods. Those on C$30 billion will take effect on Tuesday, the same day as Trump’s tariffs, and duties on the remaining C$125 billion in 21 days, he said.

Trudeau’s announcement came just hours after Trump ordered 25% tariffs on Canadian and Mexican imports and 10% on goods from China, risking a trade war that economists say could slow global growth and reignite inflation. Trump said he would impose 10% tariff on all energy imports from Canada.

The Canadian leader said tariffs would include American beer, wine and bourbon, as well as fruits and fruit juices, including orange juice from Trump’s home state of Florida. Canada would also target goods including clothing, sports equipment and household appliances.

Trudeau said the coming weeks would be difficult for Canadians but that Americans would also suffer from Trump’s actions. “Tariffs against Canada will put your jobs at risk, potentially shutting down American auto assembly plants and other manufacturing facilities,” Trudeau said, addressing U.S. citizens during a press conference in Ottawa. “They will raise costs for you, including food at the grocery store and gas at the pump.”

Canada is considering non-tariff measures, potentially relating to critical minerals, energy procurement and other partnerships, Trudeau said. The 9,000-km (5,600-mile) U.S.-Canada border handles over $2.5 billion in trade a day, especially in energy and manufacturing, according to Canadian government data from 2023.

In 2023, Canada exported close to C$550 billion worth of goods and services to the U.S., or more than three-fourths of its total exports. Energy accounted for 30% and manufacturing contributed around 15% to exports south of the border. Exports to the U.S. accounts for roughly 17.8% of Canadian gross domestic product and more than 2.4 million jobs in Canada.

Let’s look at the three trade balances:

  • Canada: Canada’s merchandise trade surplus with the U.S. last year was C$100 billion. That equates to 3.2% of Canadian GDP. The U.S., however, enjoys an edge in services trade, mainly related to Canadians flowing over the American border. This impact shrinks the trade surplus to C$85 billion, or 2.8% of Canadian GDP, and $45 billion, or -0.2% of U.S. GDP.
  • China: China had a surplus of $990.6 billion with the US. This accounts for 5.4% of Chinese GDP and -4.4 percent of US GDP.
  • Mexico: Mexico had a surplus of $171.5 billion with the US. This accounts for 9.5% of Mexican GDP and -0.8% of US GDP.

Conclusion: the USA will handily win a trade war with all three countries, which is presumably why President Trump singled them out. The US economy will observably benefit from removing foreign competitors taking sales away from domestic businesses; the GDP cost to the foreign countries is an order of magnitude greater to them because their interaction with the USA is more parasitical than symbiotic.

The maximum direct impact to US GDP would be expected to be +5.4 percent, or a benefit of $1,215 billion to the US economy. The maximum direct impact to the three foreign economies would be expected to be an average of -5.9 percent. So even a trade war that leads to a complete end to all trade between the US and the three countries would be expected to significantly help the US economy and increase US wages, and harm all three foreign economies.

Remember, the theoretical justifications for free trade have always been false and incorrect, as first demonstrated by Ian Fletcher and then conclusively disproved by me. Free trade is absolutely and inherently detrimental to a nation, because its logic of efficiency and optimally pairing labor with capital absolutely requires the complete destruction of families, local communities, and the demographics of the nation itself.

The fact that decades of even partially free trade within and without the US borders has significantly fostered these three negative societal trends isn’t an accident, it is specifically predicted by my theoretical observations and argument in my 2016 book ON THE QUESTION OF FREE TRADE.

Here is the relevant Presidential order. It’s informative to see that instead of cracking down on its illegal fentanyl production and exports, the Canadian government has elected to embrace trade war. The irony here is that the USA is simply attempting to do what China tried, and failed, to do in the Opium Wars.

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From Free Trade to Forced Trade

I sincerely hope this is overheated rhetoric from President Trump, because it strikes me as precisely the sort of attempted bullying from a weak position that has made it clear to the sovereign nations that they are better off not trying to work with or accommodate the USA on the basis of their economic interests:

US President Donald Trump has reiterated his threat to impose 100% tariffs against countries of the BRICS bloc, of which India is a part, if they attempt to replace the US dollar with an alternative currency. “The idea that the BRICS countries are trying to move away from the dollar, while we stand by and watch, is OVER,” Trump said in a post on his social media platform, Truth Social on Friday.

“We are going to require a commitment from these seemingly hostile countries that they will neither create a new BRICS currency, nor back any other currency to replace the mighty US dollar or, they will face 100% tariffs, and should expect to say goodbye to selling into the wonderful US economy,” he stated.

Now, tariffs are to the advantage of the US economy due to its negative balance of trade, so this is certainly the right time to attempt to utilize them in whatever fashion is most advantageous. But risking having the USA off from most of the rest of the world in order to maintain the ability to keep issuing more and more debt is neither advantageous nor wise.

On the positive side, no matter how this plays out, it should nail a wooden stake right through the heart of the free trade charlatans.

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The US Can’t Win a War with China

But it can certainly win a trade war. It appears the Chinese Foreign Ministry’s spokeswoman hasn’t done the relevant math.

AFP: US President Donald Trump in an interview with Fox News said he would prefer not to have to impose tariffs on China, but that tariffs were a tremendous power over China. Does the Foreign Ministry have a comment on this?

Mao Ning: We made clear our position on this issue more than once. Trade and economic cooperation between China and the US is mutually beneficial. Differences and frictions need to be handled through dialogue and consultation. Trade and tariff wars have no winners and are in the interest of no one, still less the world.

The annual US trade deficit with China for 2024 was $270.4 billion. US GDP for 2023 was $27.7 trillion. An end to all trade with China would cause the US economy to grow at least 1 percent, to $28 trillion. When the (X-M) component of GDP is negative, the more obstacles to trade, the more the economy grows.

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2024: The Year the Masks Came Off

Simplicius offers a cogent summary of the recently-concluded year.

2025 saw a remarkable and precipitous decline of the West into tyranny and illiberalism.

Given the bizarre coordinated nature of every Western nation’s mirrored crack downs on fundamental freedoms like freedom of speech, the total delegitimization of democracy and elections, the absolute spiteful disgust that our ruling elites have shown to the common man, the farmer, the blue collared laborer, the wage slave—given all these things, and how remarkably coordinated they have been across the governments of the West, 2025 has taught us that the entire Western order must necessarily be taking direction from a centralized node of governance somewhere. That somewhere may be in the backrooms of the WEF or Bilderberg or what have you, but the rule by fiat from above is now clearer than ever.

Quoting Mearsheimer, B writes: “Most horrifying though is the breakdown of humanitarian concepts the ‘west’ once claimed to hold high. Mearsheimer says it best when he decries the the moral bankruptcy of the West”:

Given the West’s presumed commitment to human rights and especially to preventing genocide, one would have expected countries like the United States, Britain, and Germany, to have stopped the Israeli genocide in its tracks.

Instead, the governments in those three countries, especially the United States, have supported Israel’s unimaginable behavior in Gaza at every turn. Indeed, those three countries are complicit in this genocide.

Moreover, almost all of the many human rights advocates in those countries, and in the West more generally, have stayed silent while Israel executed its genocide. The mainstream media has made hardly any effort to expose and challenge what Israel is doing to the Palestinians. Indeed some key outlets have staunchly supported Israel’s actions.

That’s right—2024 was the year of unvarnished genocide, and what’s more: it was the total white-washing of said genocide by the bought-and-paid-for corporate media.

More than anything else, I declare year 2024 as the death of mainstream media. Never before was their bias, their criminality and total hostility to truth more openly obvious, more flagrantly flaunted by them. Scandal after scandal marred the last few remnant crumbs of credibility that remained, from covering up Biden’s clear dementia, presidential incompetence, and family crimes, to covering for Israel’s genocide all year long, with ‘creative’ formatting and syntax tricks, as well as lack of any impartiality or ability to question the State Narrative. They have exposed themselves as nothing more than an antiquated soapbox of disinformation and narrative control. This year was truly the long-overdue—and much-earned—death of mainstream media as an institution.

Virtually everything of note, any newsworthy revelation or exposé, was broken on either Twitter, Substack, or associated ‘citizen journalist’ haven. People are tuning out more and more from corporate legacy programming in general, whether it’s MSM or Hollywood or even major sports—with recent headlines reporting NBA viewership down by 50%, for instance.

I proposed a couple articles ago how the world is now entering a period of strongman lawlessness due to the systemic breakdown of previous international institutions and guardrails which have held some semblance of ‘order’ across the globe. Now it’s becoming nearly passé to speak of, and actually carry out, illegal seizures of land, occupations, etc. From Israel’s demarche on Syrian territory, to Turkey’s brazen calls for revanchism, to Trump’s sudden and inexplicable rousts around the annexation of Greenland and Canada—the lack of international order, the lack of spine in ‘rule of law bastions’ has become nearly surreal.

The rule of law is observably dead in the USA and in Europe. The mainstream media narrative is observably fake and is not only run according to the ruling elite’s script, but is observably being played out by actors who are not even the individuals they pretend to be. The six Bidens and the three Trumps are only the most obvious indicators that all of the modern world is a stage.

Not even science can be relied upon anymore; in addition to the unreliability of modern peer-reviewed published studies, its very foundations, from evolution to physics, are being shown to be, not only erroneous, but manufactured and mathematically impossible.

2025 is going to be a difficult year, in many ways for many people around the world, but it also promises to be a year that offers genuine hope for Man to further free himself from the empire of lies that has been keeping him intellectually enslaved in a chain of comfortable falsehoods that date back to the increasingly misnamed Enlightenment. The entire basis for governance in the West is now known to be not only false, not merely illegitimate, but entirely artificial and manufactured, and as Simplicius notes, “the rule by fiat from above is now clearer than ever.”

This is something that, once seen, cannot be unseen, and everyone is seeing it now.

Happy New Year.

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The Devil Champions Foreign Invasion

I warned everyone not to go back to Twitter after it was acquired and rebranded by Elon Musk. It was just swapping King Log for King Stork, which is becoming increasingly obvious as Musk is now seeking to deplatform, demonetize, and suppress the reach of Americans who criticize the federally-approved foreign invasion that has disemployed millions of Americans and lowered their wages.

The online beef between Donald Trump’s Silicon Valley backers and the more traditionally conservative MAGA base has culminated in Elon Musk allegedly using X to censor his fellow Trump supporters.

Laura Loomer, Gavin Mario Wax, ConservativePAC, and Owen Shroyer all had their X verification badges removed Thursday night after criticizing Musk’s stances on labor and immigration earlier in the day.

“All of our influencers have now lost verification status, as well as our own page,” the Trump-supporting ConservativePAC wrote. “Our brand did nothing. We spoke out against HB1 visas and it appears that @elonmusk intentionally shut us down? Is this the new status quo from America’s ‘most free’ social media platform?”

No, it’s not “the new status quo”. It’s the same as it always was. I have had actual evidence proving that Musk is a liar for two years now. In order to prove my suspicions, in 2022 I asked X tech support to unsuspend my @voxday account which had been suspended since 2017. They promptly informed me that my account would never be reactivated, in direct contradiction to what Musk had been publicly proclaiming at the time.

The amusing thing is that the Clown World fraud – Elon Musk is most likely a midwit actor, he’s probably not even Mensa material – almost appears to believe that he actually is the character he is playing. His IQ is reportedly five whole points higher than my own, but I have never heard him say or seen him write one single thing that would require an IQ over 120. Does this angry and self-defensive tweet sound like anything I, or any other high-IQ individual, has ever written? Or does it sound more like bad 4chan copypasta?

The reason I’m in America along with so many critical people who built SpaceX, Tesla and hundreds of other companies that made America strong is because of H1B. Take a big step back and FUCK YOURSELF in the face. I will go to war on this issue the likes of which you cannot possibly comprehend.

An invader is willing to go to war to import more invaders in order to defend himself from the natives. How very new and different… America would be much better off if he and Ramaswampy would go back to their homelands and take SpaceX, Tesla, and every other fake, propped-up company they’ve financialized with them. What they represent isn’t economic strength, but what is known in the economic literature as “malinvestment”.

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At Least They’re Good for the Economy

Imagine how much worse the failing economies of the USA and Europe would be doing if it weren’t for the tens of millions of immigrants who have invaded their countries:

Data from the Department of Justice (DOJ) reportedly suggests that crimes committed by illegal immigrants cost U.S. taxpayers at least $166.5 billion and the severity of those crimes greatly exceeds that of typical American norms. The report was written by Dr. John R. Lott of the Crime Prevention Research Center and is based on data from the U.S. Department of Justice’s National Institute of Justice (NIJ). In September, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) revealed in a letter to U.S. Rep. Tony Gonzales (R-TX) that as of July 21, 2024, there are 662,566 illegal immigrants with criminal histories on the Non-Detained Docket (NDD), which means they are living freely in the U.S.

Of the 662,566 illegal immigrants, a total of 435,719 on the docket are documented to have criminal convictions in their home countries; that is 65 percent. Another 226,847 or 34 percent, have pending criminal charges.

FBI crime statistics show that in 2023 the rate of convicted killers in the NDD along is more than 13 times higher that of the rate of reported homicides when compared to American crimes. According to Dr. Lott’s research, out of the total crimes committed by the illegal immigrants on the docket, 14,944 are homicides; 20,061 are sexual assaults; 105,146 are assaults; 126,343 are traffic offenses; and 60,268 are burglaries, larcenies, or robberies. Lott’s report states that the financial cost of crimes committed by illegal immigrants on the NDD list is estimated at $166.5 billion, with the largest share of $153.8 billion coming from murder.

I suspect that the immigration-inspired pillaging of the USA is going to make for a very interesting chapter in the economic history of the decline and fall of the West. Especially since this estimated financial cost apparently doesn’t even include financial crimes of either the real estate or Nigerian Prince variety.

The idea that “immigration is good for the economy” is an even bigger and more obvious lie than “free trade is good for both economies involved” and “kidnapping Africans and transporting them by sea to pick cotton is good for the economy”.

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Cuba Joins BRICS

As a partner-state rather than a full member-state, however:

Cuba and Bolivia are expected to officially join BRICS as partner states on January 1, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov has said. In an interview with the Izvestia newspaper on Friday, Ryabkov confirmed that both countries had received invitations.

“We are confident that everything will work out in terms of their joining the group as partners,” the diplomat said.

The new ‘partner country’ status was approved at the BRICS summit in October, hosted by Russia in Kazan, and is intended to serve as an alternative to membership after more than 30 nations applied to join the organization.

I think the more noteworthy item is the absence of an invitation for Türkiye. One would have thought they would be a shoe-in, but perhaps the Turkish invasion of Syria was more than the BRICS members were willing to accept. I also find it curious that neither Malaysia nor Vietnam were accepted, but it might be that there will be a separate announcement concerning the new Asian member-states coming from China.

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