As of this writing, the DOW is sitting comfortably in the green, up 2.25% so far today. Not quite the economic apocalypse we were told was imminent, was it? Jim Cramer’s weekend prediction of another Black Monday should have been the first sign that clear skies were on the horizon. After all, Cramer’s investment advice always has a perfect inverse track record. If he says sell, you buy. If he says inflation is under control, it’s probably time to buy gold. And he was just as perfectly wrong about the economic effects of Trump’s tariffs as he’s been on everything else. $6.6 trillion in stock market valuation was obliterated in two days last week. Not my money, not your money, but the money of the already-obscenely wealthy. And those wealthy howled in increasingly high pitches, sending the world’s canines into a frenzy, and demanding “action”, meaning a dramatic intervention by the Federal Reserve. Jerome left them hanging, refusing to bail out

We should be asking ourselves why the global economy hinges on America never ever ever imposing tariffs on anyone, ever. But the world can impose them on us at their leisure, and we’re expected to just take it. Cheap imported garbage flowed into the US for decades, as well as cheap labor. Convenience, for the American consumer, has become an opiate of the highest order. Cheap, convenient, never-ending junk, has weakened our spirit, and our ability to support national self-interest rather than economic self-interest. Other nations are allowed to behave like nations, but America is expected to behave like an economic zone, a faraway land of rich consumers who will buy the world’s garbage. As a result, we have no industry, only a fading afterimage of one that one existed.

America must never be allowed to behave like a real nation, according to the tariff-resisters. We must never be allowed a real sense of national identity, or national self-respect, lest the world lose their guaranteed market, their sure-fire buffalo herd of millions of mindless consumers upon who they can then airdrop their latest sweat-shop products.

In the face of the wailing, gnashing of teeth, and tear-stained 100’s, Trump, like an immovable block of lead, has not budged an inch. We are not an economic zone, we are a nation, and we expect to be treated like one. And his immovability has paid off. Nations are falling over themselves to get a seat at the negotiation table, ready to make a deal. Even Australia, who has no tariffs in place with the US, and even runs a trade deficit with us. Why did Trump impose a 10% tariff on the Ozzies? Maybe for kicks, maybe because Australia is a nanny state dystopia. Who knows? But it sure is amusing hearing their Prime Minister openly panic in that accent.

The tariffs are a first step to Fortress America, where we exist for ourselves, and serve ourselves, families, and communities first. Not the world.

The pearl clutching over Trump’s tariffs seems a bit insincere coming from the same people who demanded indefinite lockdowns of all economic activity just a few short years ago. Does no one remember that self-inflicted economic disaster, borne out of mindless hysteria? US GDP dropped 33% in the Spring of 2020. State and local economies were being decimated by the unhinged commands of their respective health departments. The CDC issued dictates ex cathedra, no questioning allowed. Heresy was stamped out, heretics jailed or ostracized, while the population was forced to endure the greatest instance of manufactured panic in human history. Millions lost their jobs, thousands of businesses were wiped out, hundreds of thousands died unnecessary deaths in hospitals where health workers committed inhuman acts of cruelty, refusing any and all treatment for their COVID patients outside of a ventilator. These newly reborn tariff experts were at the time demanding imprisonment or even death for those who refused to wear masks, or refused the vaccine. The acolytes of an infant Doomsday cult that emerged as a civilizational chasm, and desperately wished all of us to follow them into the black. How many understand what we lived through, and how close we were to being dragged into apocalyptic totalitarianism? We’ve moved on, appearing to have forgotten all about it, and yet the doomsday congregation still walk among us with the ecstatic taste of that lost future, and will probably be searching for its return for the rest of their lives. And now they’re experts on tariffs, and feign concern for the global economy. It rings hollow.

Trump, with his “liberation day” signing of reciprocal tariffs worldwide, is single-handedly dismantling the era of NAFTA globalization, forcing US trading partners to deal on an even playing field or go home. NAFTA hollowed out American manufacturing, and American culture itself. We became exposed to a global economy that can outcompete us via cheap garbage and an ability to “underlive” American citizens. That insane and cruel state of affairs appears to be rapidly ending. One revelation that is a real head-scratcher has been the fact that Israel has been imposing a 17% tariff on all imported American goods, despite the fact that Israel would not exist without hundreds of billions in American hand-outs. Trump threw a reciprocal 17% tariff on Israeli imports out of fairness, and Israel immediately howled. We are Israel’s largest trading partner, so any tariff is going to be felt severely by that tiny welfare nation. Israel in response has eliminated their tariffs, and now await Trump’s response, but the real question is why the tariff existed in the first place. Israel provides free healthcare to their entire nation, all paid for by the US, while Americans suffer under a grotesque and rapacious healthcare system that bankrupts over half a million US citizens each year. Is there fairness at all in that arrangement? Does our economy exist a as a slush fund for foreign nations? It appears that it has, up until now.