Canada Announces Retaliation For Trump’s 25% Auto Tariffs
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2025/04/05/oxji-a05.html
“…Despite his rhetoric, Carney is eager to hold ‘comprehensive negotiations about a new economic and security relationship’ with Trump in the aftermath of this month’s election, as was made clear in the readout of his discussion with the US president on March 28.
Despite the bluster, the Canadian bourgeoisie is determined to maintain its critical relationship with American imperialism, demanding only that it retain its privileges as America’s junior partner and be respected as North America’s second imperialist power.
The development of the trade war is bound up with the drive to world war. American imperialism, in its deepening economic crisis, is seeking to bring all of North America – from the Panama Canal to Greenland – under its direct control in preparation for war against all its major rivals, above all China but also Russia.
It is urgent that workers across Canada oppose all the various camps of the bourgeoisie as they scramble to respond to and strike a new deal with American imperialism.”

Posted by: John Gilberts | Apr 6 2025 15:38 utc | 4

@ Paranaense | Apr 6 2025 4:17 utc | 343 – from the neocon thread…
read the link b shares above titled “Abundance” Is How Dems Lose To Trump – on the topic of housing and tell me it is because of illegal immigrants… i think you are really wrong with your concept here and reading this article could help dispel some or all of your viewpoint.. cheers james

Posted by: james | Apr 6 2025 15:44 utc | 6

Hats off to you, b! I just learned about the Smoot Hawley Tariff Act.
Thank you!

Posted by: lex talionis | Apr 6 2025 15:49 utc | 8

foreword, heh.
(can’t be making that kind of elementary mistake
when trying to look competent with a scholar such a J.)

Posted by: waynorinorway | Apr 6 2025 15:58 utc | 10

It is urgent that workers across Canada oppose all the various camps of the bourgeoisie as they scramble to respond to and strike a new deal with American imperialism.
Posted by: John Gilberts | Apr 6 2025 15:38 utc | 4

Thanks for that. Who knew that these neo-Marxist platforms still existed?
In case the author didn’t notice, unionized workers have “scrambled” for over a century to make enough to join the ranks of the “bourgeoisie”. That their intellectual advocates fail to notice the role of unions in the offshoring of manufacturing it not a surprise. Everyone has their blind spots.

Posted by: Fool Me Twice | Apr 6 2025 16:20 utc | 12

For all you Trumpeteers, here’s a nice one for you. (Sung like the Disney Mouseketeers song). “Who’s the one who’ll save us from the world and the Chinese/D-O-N-A-L-D// T-R-U-M-P/ His tariffs will bring many, many jobs for you and me/ D-O-N-A-L-D// T-R-U-M-P/ Donald Trump, Donald Trump/ Our cost of living will go very high/ High, HIGH, HIGH HIGH!!!/ So put your MAGA hats back on and sing along with me/ D-O-N-A-L-D T-R-U-M-P!!!

Posted by: Jose Garcia | Apr 6 2025 16:52 utc | 14

Just before dawn, a Downing Street Official (DSO) has pre-empted part of tomorrow Sir Keir Rodney Starmer’s (KRS, The Baron of the City of London) speech when he [yes a male artist] said that ”the world has changed, globalization is over and we are now in a new era”.
Does it sound familiar to you? This is neocon Mr. Marco Antonio Rubio’s language.
But tomorrow Zionist and war criminal Netanyahoo is coming to town to lecture DJT and Rubio.
Nevertheless, Number 10 is seriously mistaken.
Western colonialism is not globalism. It is global exploitation.
Real globalism is worldwide cooperation (not submission), which has begun among non-western states; in particular the BRIICS+ nations, finally!
In the emerging multi-polarized system, the west is only an equal partner, no longer the oppressive rule-maker.
This is driving them crazy.

Posted by: pepe | Apr 6 2025 17:10 utc | 16

Posted by: lex talionis | Apr 6 2025 15:49 utc | 8
The question is whether this is a crash or a correction. Warren Buffet and Jamie Dimon switched into big positions in cash earlier this year. These tariffs seem to be a structural change that isn’t incorporated into economic models as the expectation was Trump is just negotiating. The markets also don’t seem to be pricing in war with Iran or assuming it’s an unlikely scenario. If Giyane’s recent post on the Fatwa instigating WW3 is true, than a crash is more likely. The models rely on reversion to mean and can’t accommodate these major outlier events. So my question is, what are the odds of WW3 with Iran? Polymarket went from a 30% lchance of recession in 2025 a few weeks ago to 60% today.

Posted by: Deniz | Apr 6 2025 17:23 utc | 18

The US democratic party organized the “hands off” protests. All the messaging about SS and job cuts. Funny no real mention of ongoing wars and the hundreds of billions going to the MIC. The uniparty always maintains the “correct” messaging.
Sigh
Posted by: Ronnie James | Apr 6 2025 16:53 utc | 15
Excellent point. I’m seeing this deliberately inchoate imperialist astroturf protest of by and for the Dems lauded as a great movement of the working class all weekend. What a fucking joke.
The last organic protest movement in the US was Occupy. It was highly imperfect but it was truly of the people.
That insignificant little movement and it’s opposition to the economic 1% was so revolting to the Dems, it was systematically replaced by a new battle cry: racist, sexist, homophobic, which has passed for a movement of the people and leftism ever since.
Will an organic opposition movement emerge again in the US? Can the wage slaves of the US elevate consciousness to the bare minimum recognition that the Dems are also an Imperialist party to be rejected as strenuously as the Republicans?
Given the impending economic collapse, I’d say yes. And you’ll know it’s real when the Dem media attacks it. Anything they support politically is almost always a total fraud.

Posted by: Ahenobarbus | Apr 6 2025 17:34 utc | 20

SCF will be blocked in the EU soon. This is how you can access it
https://strategic-culture.su/news/2025/04/04/scf-will-be-blocked-in-the-eu-soon-this-is-how-you-can-access-it/

Posted by: Mary | Apr 6 2025 17:59 utc | 22

“Those who can not remember the past, are condemned to repeat the past” – Santayana
In the career of A.Hitler, he had early successes where he disregarded the ‘expert’ advice from his Generals. A.H.’s military experts knew that Germany’s army was still weak, so if the UK and French did not melt like snowflakes, A.H.’s early bold moves could end in disaster. Hitler had correctly read that the UK and France would not challenge his aggression and overruled his experts.
But, as the years went past, A.Hitler decided in his mind that he knew better than the experts that always told him he was wrong, and began to just ignore them and yell at his them. By a couple of years into the war, A.Hitler was doing one stupid thing after another, and yelling at any generals who tried to warn him. He liked to fire his generals often as well.
Anyone see a pattern repeating? D.Trump now appears to be at the point where he just ignores all expert advice, because he knows know in his own mind that he is the greatest of all time. Too bad we don’t have a system of checks and balances to restrain an out-of-control executive.

Posted by: Tom Pain | Apr 6 2025 18:17 utc | 24

Haven’t seen Aristodemos lately. Miss his contributions and hope he is doing OK.
Posted by: NemesisCalling | Apr 6 2025 19:18 utc | 24
############
He’s been in the Palestine thread today, raging against the Zionist genocide.

Posted by: LoveDonbass | Apr 6 2025 19:20 utc | 26

What are the chances ?
I‘m still predicting US Federal Gov‘t will be openly and publically insolvent in 2027.
De-Dollarization brings Peace

Posted by: Exile | Apr 6 2025 19:32 utc | 28

Too bad we don’t have a system of checks and balances to restrain an out-of-control executive.
Posted by: Tom Pain | Apr 6 2025 18:17 utc | 23
Too bad we don’t have a system of checks and balances to restrain an out-of-control judiciary .

Posted by: Phil R | Apr 6 2025 19:43 utc | 30

@Exile | Apr 6 2025 19:32 utc | 27
Do you mind elaborating what possible ramifications may be if that happens? Thanks in advance.

Posted by: LuRenJia | Apr 6 2025 19:48 utc | 32

re: Tom Pain | Apr 6 2025 18:17 utc | 23
A recent, 6 April 2025, interview for the consideration of those interested –
Understanding Hitler’s rise to power
How did Hitler rise to power in Germany, and are there parallels with what could happen in the world today?
Most of us with a passing acquaintance with the details of Hitler’s life know a few things about him before he became Chancellor of Germany: that he had talent as an artist; he wrote his doctrine Mein Kampf in jail, he was a disdained outcast in charge of violent followers, and that somehow he inveigled himself into a position of power even though his electoral popularity wasn’t great.
Timothy Ryback, is a prominent historian and director of the Institute for Historical Justice and Reconciliation at The Hague. He tells a different story in his latest book, Takeover: Hitler’s Final Rise to Power.
https://www.rnz.co.nz/national/programmes/sunday/audio/2018982046/understanding-hitler-s-rise-to-power

Posted by: tucenz | Apr 6 2025 19:54 utc | 34

Alexander Ovechkin scored goal 895 today!

Posted by: Passing Thru | Apr 6 2025 20:04 utc | 36

@Ronnie James | Apr 6 2025 16:53 utc | 15
The US democratic party organized the “hands off” protests.
Smells like color revolution when it is this organized.
Posted by: Norwegian | Apr 6 2025 17:14 utc | 17

Al Jazeera referred to them as “pro-democracy protests”!

Posted by: S.P. Korolev | Apr 6 2025 21:27 utc | 38

”the world has changed, globalization is over and we are now in a new era”.
Posted by: pepe | Apr 6 2025 17:10 utc | 16

Full text of his speech:
“Tony says that the era of globalisation has failed.
There is now only one alternative – regionalisation!.
We’re going to rejoin the EU! Huzzah!”
Enter Holy Roman Empress Ursula from stage left to give Sir Keith a big Nazi ‘Wilkommen zurueck” hug.
About 5 minutes later the riots begin.

Posted by: ChatNPC | Apr 6 2025 21:37 utc | 40

Bottom line, only the most deluded people still believe that Trump is an independent maverick.
He is wholly and nakedly a creature of the Deep State and elites.
Even those terminated USAID-type programs are starting to come back online, run out of the Trump State Department.
There is nothing new under the sun.
Hope and Change. Make America Great Again.

Posted by: LoveDonbass | Apr 6 2025 21:42 utc | 42

Enter Holy Roman Empress Ursula from stage left to give Sir Keith a big Nazi ‘Wilkommen zurueck” hug.
About 5 minutes later the riots begin.
Posted by: ChatNPC | Apr 6 2025 21:37 utc | 36
_______
Actually, if you want a really good historical allusion, it’s Pope Gregory VII von der Leyen accepting the shamefaced homage of Holy Roman Emperor Henry IV of the House of Starmer.

Posted by: malenkov | Apr 6 2025 22:01 utc | 44

On the protests, very few are carrying the manufactured “Hands Off” signs and have their own placards. I suggest doing a general search using US Protests then clicking the images button to view the many photos to see that they are global. The problem of course is Biden merited the same or larger levels of protest.

Posted by: karlof1 | Apr 6 2025 22:06 utc | 46

S&P futures open another 225 points down, now below 4900

Posted by: qparker | Apr 6 2025 22:33 utc | 48

Going through the Senate right now is a budget resolution to increase the debt ceiling by $5 trillion.
Why ?
Because the tax cuts that are coming down the pipe for the top 1%. Will mostly be swapped for US treasuries.
A tax cut given to the wealthy will not be used by them to buy stuff. They have enough money already. Instead they will save it. Swap their $’s for US treasuries.
As the national debt is nothing more than the amount of US treasuries held by the US public and by foreigners. Why they need to increase the debt ceiling by $5 trillion.
Not that they tell you that of course. Convince 90% of the population with some fairy tale that the national debt is just like your household debt and if not paid back just like your household then the country will go broke.
Central banks should just write off all their government debt holdings
Here:
https://billmitchell.org/blog/?p=46891
When the government issues treasuries and the central bank then buys those treasuries back. It shows that the treasuries ( debt ) shouldn’t have been issued in the first place. All because of some archaic gold standard, fixed exchange rate mechanism that says when the government spends it must issue debt $ for $ every time it spends.
Which is now of course just a political constraint used by ideologues who want to shrink the state and prefer bank lending instead. Grow an economy burdening households and business with more private sector debt accumulating in their backs.
Then once the central banks have cancelled all the government debt they hold . Stop issuing treasuries completely.

Posted by: Sun Of Alabama | Apr 6 2025 23:10 utc | 50

https://indi.ca/america-has-declared-a-global-strike-against-america/

America was ruled by Ronald Reagan for an entire generation, real Reagan followed by nerd Reagan, cool Reagan, dumb Reagan, and black Reagan. These Reagans deindustrialized America, Biden began demilitarizing it, and Trump is defenestrating it from the fake-ass global economy it built, and the moral reputation it falsely built up. They say when one door closes another one opens, but America has closed all the doors and is sitting alone in the garage with the engine on. There’s no reindustrialization this way, just auto-erotic asphyxiation, though not soon enough.

Posted by: Tom_Q_Collins | Apr 6 2025 23:29 utc | 52

Posted by: NemesisCalling | Apr 6 2025 23:12 utc | 47
Americans are in for a shock if metal bashing ( manufacturing) returns back to America.
Not just the fact that EVERYTHING will be more expensive because Americans demand higher wages compared with their global South and developing nation workers.
Meaning Americans will have less money in their pockets to spend in other sectors of the US economy due to the fact that everything just became more expensive. What it will mean for those sectors.
But No more cushy office jobs they’ll have to put a shift in when at work. Get their hands dirty again.
I’ve never understood the bring back metal bashing to America arguments. When you can make $trillions by supplying services instead. Sure some things need to be made at home for national security reasons.
But making cars ??
Why on earth use so much of your own skills and real resources to make cars. When they could be used on a million more important things first.
They get all the cars they ever need by stuffing treasuries down other countries throats. Germany and Japan lost world war 2. That’s why they are in the position they are in.
They make all the stuff to improve Americans lives. In return they get US treasuries. Created from thin air.
It’s tradition – those that lose wars send their real resources to the winners of those wars to improve the winners standard of living. As that’s what imports do.
See Rome for details.
Now Trump is reversing that will make American’s poorer overall.

Posted by: Sun Of Alabama | Apr 6 2025 23:35 utc | 54

Cory Booker: Corporate (and Zionist) Hooker
https://www.blackagendareport.com/cory-booker-corporate-hooker

They must focus narrowly on the handful of issues on which corporate Dems actually disagree with Republicans like abortion rights, and not stray to areas which might indict their own party along with Republicans.
And they must absolve their party of responsibility for running an incompetent campaign by blaming the Russians. Hillary is history, but her big stinking tent is still there, and Democrats are crying for a “united front” against Trump, led by spokespeople who can stick to the corporate script.
Cory Booker is a great fit. As Glen Ford, who has followed his career in Black Agenda Report and Black Commentator since 2002 notes, charter school sugar daddies from the Olin, Bradley and Walton Family Foundations and the Manhattan Institute funded his early career. Cory’s wealthy friends bankrolled and promoted a slick Hollywood documentary, “Street Fight” to ensure his 2006 election to Newark’s City Hall.
…
Cory’s a whore, but a loyal one. If he did for passing motorists what he does for charter school sugar daddies, hedge funds, Israeli apartheid and Big Pharma he could be arrested for prostitution. But Cory’s in the big time, and he’s a leading Democratic spokeshead against Trump. If you’re a Democrat, he’s one of your leaders.
He’s Cory Booker, corporate hooker.

Posted by: Tom_Q_Collins | Apr 6 2025 23:44 utc | 56

Yasha Levine on the tariffs and other recent fun stuff.
https://www.nefariousrussians.com/p/the-shitocracy-doctrine

We here keep talking about how Trump is America’s Yeltsin. And watching this tariff rollout reminded me of the self-induced shock therapy that was done under Yeltsin’s government in 1990s Russia. I have a few short thoughts I wanted to share.
If you take Trump at face value — and I don’t see why you wouldn’t — he wants to rewire global and domestic economies to bring manufacturing back and herald in some mixture of 19th-century and 1950s consumerist America: big factories, workshift whistles, smoke stacks, big Made-in-USA cars rolling off assembly lines, the ability to rapidly pump out aircraft carriers in case of war with China…
One thing that’s surprising about his unilateral action is that it’ll make everything a lot more expensive. I just got my old bike tuned up and fixed, and the guy at the shop told me he doesn’t know much, but in the industry, they expect bikes and parts to go up 25 percent. And looks like this is gonna be going on pretty much across the board, not just with bikes. So there’s going to be inflation and a reduction in spending that goes along with it. That will lead to businesses having to lay off workers, which will only drive the reduction in spending and consumption even more, potentially triggering a real crisis. That’s the thing about this country — everything runs on the consumption machine. Pause it, and things start to collapse. And Trump hadn’t been making things on the consumption side any better, even before the tariffs. His DOGE boys had been gutting government jobs left and right and killing grants for research and funding for the arts. Some estimates put the number of government jobs cut under Trump to just under 300,000 — although the second-order effects are probably much higher. And again, that’s before tariffs will make everything at least 20 percent more expensive… Trump likes to gamble. We’ll see how it all shakes out.
You can tell things might be headed in a bad direction with these tariffs when all the MAGA influencers suddenly started telling their followers that money is just a social construct and it’s no big deal to lose it…a small price to stop evil foreigners from enslaving your kids!
So under the Trump Total Prosperity Plan, the people of the United States will get: inflation, increasing unemployment, a reduction in spending on social services, and a general attack on every part of the post-New Deal state — labor rights, environmental regulation, oversight of the financial sector…
Even if you take Trump’s long-term goal of bringing jobs back to America at face value and if you think that he might succeed down the line, what is he doing it for? So that the American people will be able to go back to the Robber Baron Age — working in a polluted factory making cheap t-shirts and drone parts, while getting minimum wage with no healthcare, no unions, no health or safety regulations, and losing limbs in the looms or getting sucked into a hotdog vat? Reshoring Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle! Sounds like a MAGA dream come true!
The tariff rollout reminds me of Yeltsin, though because the Trump camp seems to be using it as kind of a drunk kung fu master anti-globalist shock therapy. They’re moving quickly to stun the system…to push it past a point of no return before the vast array of various entrenched interests come in to challenge them. They’re trying to dismantle the free trade neoliberal world order that their parents and grandparents had built right out from under themselves, and they’re doing it in the most chaotic and secretive way possible: multiple people in advisory roles all with different plans and seemingly incoherent proposals, and no one knowing what’s really happening and holding conflicting ideas about why things are being done — all with a charismatic clowning guy at the top who himself barely in charge of the situation or even aware of what might come next, making decisions off the cuff, while impoverishing hundreds of millions and of course trying to make sure that the people closest to them are making a killing in the process.
It really does remind me of the way that Yeltsin and his reformers jockeyed to break up the Soviet Union, while keeping everyone in the dark about their intentions. If you want to get a sense of the chaos of the Soviet Union finally unravelling and Yeltsin putting Russia on a path to “free-markets” and “democracy,” I highly recommend reading the last few chapters of Collapse.
And I want to say one more thing here: I’ve seen quite a few people who are critical of consumerist culture and our technological fetish gripe online about all the negativity that’s being heaped on Trump’s tariff plan by the left. They’re not ostensibly Trump supporters, but they think that the left needs to give Trump the benefit of the doubt because, well, at least he wants to end an economy based on outsourced labor and cheap goods, unlike the liberals. And they think that these leftists, in their rush to dunk on Trump online, are basically siding with neoliberal globalists, and the Kamala PMC set, and the IMF.
I’d love some degrowth myself. ………

Seriously do check out the pictures of Trump, Yeltsin and their respective McDonalds (french) fry baskets!

Posted by: Tom_Q_Collins | Apr 6 2025 23:55 utc | 58

Posted by: Tom_Q_Collins | Apr 6 2025 23:31 utc | 49
While Trumpian Phoneyfart continuously bemoans an assumed US dependence on foreign capital, a recap of the actual transactions involved reveals the reverse is true.
Let’s show it with the example of US consumer buying a German car.
If the US consumer pays cash for the car, the consumer’s checking account in a US bank is debited and the German carmaker’s account is credited, thereby increasing foreign savings of USD financial assets. Total deposits in the US banking system remain unchanged.
If the US consumer borrows to buy the German car, the bank makes a loan to the consumer, which results in a loan on the asset side of the bank’s balance sheet and a new deposit on the liability side (loans create deposits).
After the car is paid for the German car company has the new bank deposit. Consumer borrowing increased total bank deposits and funded foreign savings of $USD.
That’s what the finance behind the trade gap is all about – foreigners desire to net save USD financial assets and sell goods and services to the US to obtain those assets.
Following the above transaction the foreign holder of USD bank deposits, the German car manufacturer, may instead desire to purchase US Treasury securities. With the $’s they earned.
That then means At the time of purchase, the seller of the Treasury security becomes the new holder of the bank deposit, and the German car manufacturer the new holder of the US Treasury security.
(If the German car manufacturer buys US Treasury securities directly from the Treasury the result is the same.)
The US government is now said to have foreign creditors, and the US is said to be a debtor nation. Trumpian Phoneyfart just won’t shut his mouth about it.
Yet, a look past his rhetoric at what the US government actually owes the holder of the Treasury security is revealing.
What the US government promises is that at maturity the German car manufacturer security account at the Fed will be debited, and his bank’s reserve account at the Fed will be credited for the balance due.
In other words, the US government’s promise is only that a low-interest bearing reserve balance will be substituted for an interest bearing Treasury security.
This is not a potential source of financial stress for the US government.
Further reading….
Do current account deficits matter?
https://billmitchell.org/blog/?p=10389
Current accounts and currencies
https://billmitchell.org/blog/?p=5644
Balance of payments constraints
https://billmitchell.org/blog/?p=32931
Trumpian Phoneyfart is wearing gold standard, fixed exchange rate type goggles. Why all the crazies and nut jobs out there love him. The huge population out there that have never understood money. Been brainwashed out of their minds ever since they walked through the school gates.

Posted by: Sun Of Alabama | Apr 6 2025 23:59 utc | 60

Posted by: steven t johnson | Apr 6 2025 19:53 utc | 30
Taibbi is indeed a brazen flack these days. Utterly worthless. Even worse is his Trump bootheel eating commentariat.

Posted by: Tom_Q_Collins | Apr 7 2025 0:07 utc | 62

@50 SoA
I think we are talking past each other.
I agree that pain will ensue. But your insistence on avoiding this pain I think is tantamount to you desiring the status quo to endure. If I can get anything across in my writing, it is that I think something is fundamentally wrong with the way the west is oriented right now. Am I ready to join soup lines and commiserate with my fellows festooned in potato sacks about the bastards who did this to us? Sure. At least I will get to know my neighbors a little bit.
The film “Joker” was a bit of a cultural phenom the last couple years. “Wanting to see the world burn just for the hell of it” is another smear tactic of TPTB against dissidents and refuseniks. There is something wrong with them, and it is because they have been rejected. Because they have been rejected, there is something wrong with them. I have yet to see the film but does it sympathize with the Joker or the world? Most popular movies approaching art always chicken out in the last moment and finish with: we condemn the joker’s violence and we need to put safety nets in place for individuals approaching this level of disorder. Close, but no cigar.
I still go back to Kierkegaard’s supreme analogy of the clown in the theater who runs on stage to warn the patrons that the theater is on fire and they just laugh.
Who is the real joker here? Who is the artist holding up a mirror?

Posted by: NemesisCalling | Apr 7 2025 0:30 utc | 64

Americans are so (unintentionally) funny. 😂😂😂
Emphasis mine.
https://x.com/StockSavvyShay/status/1908506134270665110

MY OPEN LETTER TO PRESIDENT TRUMP
The frustrating part is that I was on board for a reset. Truly. I’ve said it publicly. I’ve written about it in this very feed. I understood the need for a detox. For decades, the U.S. economy played the part of the rich guy at the table — picking up the check for a global order that no longer worked in our favor. We hollowed out our industrial base. We enabled unfair trade imbalances under the illusion of diplomacy. We subsidized demand for cheap imports while outsourcing the hard questions about how our domestic workforce would adapt.
Eventually, that had to stop. It was unsustainable — financially, politically, and morally. We couldn’t keep pretending that a consumption-led economy held together by zero-interest rates and global fragility was a long-term solution. I wanted a rebalancing. I welcomed the idea of a harder, smarter America-first policy that pushed for fair treatment, reciprocal agreements, and a real industrial strategy rooted in technological superiority, national security, and capital formation. That would’ve been leadership.
But that’s not what this is.
What you’ve rolled out isn’t detox — it’s whiplash. This isn’t strategic decoupling. It’s scattershot retaliation dressed up as reform. There’s no roadmap. No operational playbook. No clear articulation of where this ends or what the metrics of success even are. It’s not an attempt to responsibly unwind America’s role as the global shock absorber — it’s a brute-force attempt to disorder the existing system with no viable alternative in place.
You can’t replace a fragile supply chain with chaos and call it resilience. You can’t build American industry by torching the scaffolding that underpins capital flows, labor mobility, and global coordination — especially when the U.S. itself no longer has the domestic capacity to meet its own industrial needs. You talk about bringing jobs home, but the U.S. doesn’t have the labor force, permitting structure, or wage flexibility to stand up full-scale manufacturing at speed. And now — after years of deportation policies and underinvestment in vocational training — you’ve made the labor gap even wider.
Capital isn’t going to rush to fill that void just because you raised tariffs. It’s going to wait. It’s going to sit on the sidelines and preserve optionality. Because right now, no CEO can confidently model a five-year capex plan. No board can greenlight supply chain onshoring when they don’t know whether a tariff rate will double next quarter based on your Twitter account or some arbitrary trade deficit formula.
That’s the issue. This wasn’t rolled out as part of a comprehensive American renewal strategy. It wasn’t coordinated with the Fed. It wasn’t communicated clearly to Treasury. It wasn’t backed by a labor reskilling program or any form of public-private manufacturing incentive beyond empty slogans. It was dropped like a bomb — seemingly designed more to shock than to build.
And in the absence of credible structure, capital is retreating — not realigning.
I was ready to endure the pain of a thoughtful, structured reset. Most long-term investors were. We’ve lived through tightening cycles. We understood that globalization, as it stood, had reached a breaking point. But this isn’t a correction of imbalances. This is a rupture without scaffolding.
What you’ve created isn’t reindustrialization. It’s an intentional sabotage of capital planning. No executive is going to build a factory with four-year political horizon risk, a floating tariff regime, and no labor certainty. No investor is going to fund expansion in a market where the basic cost of imports can change weekly based on what country has a current account surplus that week. The system you’ve launched isn’t designed for certainty. It’s designed for control.
And the irony is — we’re not even punishing bad actors. We’re punishing everyone. Allies. Poor countries. Longstanding partners. Israel gets slapped with 17% tariffs while dismantling their own to support American imports. Vietnam gets hit with 46% because it’s become too productive. Lesotho, one of the poorest countries on Earth, faces a 50% tariff because it doesn’t buy enough U.S. goods — as if that were a sign of unfairness rather than poverty. It’s incoherent. It’s cruel. And it undermines any claim to moral high ground.
You say this is about protecting American workers. But no worker is helped by policy so erratic that no employer wants to hire. No consumer is helped when import costs rise and domestic capacity doesn’t exist to replace them. No investor is helped when the cost of capital spikes in the face of weaponized uncertainty.
This is not a plan to make America stronger. It’s a gamble that markets and allies will blink first. It’s brinkmanship with no floor.
And the most maddening part? There was a path. A real one. A version of this policy that could’ve worked — not in headlines or soundbites, but in practice. A path that applied pressure with purpose, that aligned economic force with long-term national interest, that sent a clear message to adversaries and partners alike without destabilizing global commerce or blindsiding capital allocators.
You could’ve gone after China — hard — and had the backing of nearly every serious investor and strategist on the Street. Not just because of trade deficits or currency suppression, but because China has been actively undermining our economy and our people. I would’ve supported a four-year plan to end all dependence on Chinese manufacturing unless they stopped stealing American IP (DeepSeek). No more games. Make it explicit: if they don’t comply, we’ll back Taiwanese independence and bring the entire global semiconductor economy with us. No ambiguity. No half-threats. As I see it, China is at war with us — and our policy should reflect that.
With the EU, you could’ve played it clean. Match auto tariffs percent-for-percent. That’s fair. And then leave the rest alone — especially goods and services. We run a huge surplus on services with the EU. It props up some of our biggest competitive advantages — enterprise software, consulting, cloud, defense tech, streaming, media IP. Tariffing the EU outside of autos would be like shooting your own foot for balance. We’re not in a trade war with Europe. We’re in a competition for global enterprise dominance — and right now, the U.S. is winning.
That’s what real strength would’ve looked like. That’s what an America-first trade doctrine could’ve achieved. You’d be rebuilding the system from the inside out — not just throwing bricks through the windows and calling it a redesign.
Investors would’ve backed it. CEOs would’ve planned around it. Global partners would’ve respected it — even if they didn’t like it. And capital would’ve flowed toward American resilience instead of retreating from American unpredictability.
But instead of that, you went with chaos. And now, confidence is shattered. Not because the numbers are bad — but because no one knows what the numbers mean anymore.
That’s the cost of burning down the rules without building new ones.
So no, this is not the detox we needed. It’s not strategic decoupling. It’s not a path to renewal. It’s a slow, loud dismantling of the very foundation that has allowed American capital, innovation, and enterprise to dominate for decades. And it didn’t have to be this way.
But now we’re here. And the market is reacting accordingly — not to the fundamentals, but to the sense that the future may no longer be modelable. That’s not a trade. That’s an exit.
I don’t want this post to be hyper-political. This isn’t about red or blue. It’s not about the 2024 election cycle. It’s not about ideology. It’s about strategy. It’s about execution.
It’s about understanding that when you’re the United States — when you sit at the helm of the global economic engine — every policy you roll out reverberates through capital markets, supply chains, boardrooms, and governments. Words become signals. Signals become pricing. Pricing becomes pain — or progress.
And I hope — for the sake of the markets, for the sake of businesses trying to plan, and for the future we’re all investing into — that it’s not too late to recalibrate.
Because we don’t need more noise.
We need a plan.

Imagine thinking that China stole DeepSeek from America. Shades of Trump claiming that Russia stole hypersonic tech under Obama. This clown doesn’t know that China is the #1 chipmaker in the world when you count all kinds of chips, not just the boutique high-end ones, and China is designing semiconductors out of new materials, while building their own lithography machines. How does one get to be such a bigtime investor while being a dumbass about what is happening in the world?
The inability to look in a mirror is one of the many reasons why the Empire is dying
And MUH ISRAEL!
Writing open letters on the internet to the President is like little kids sending gift lists to Santa at the North Pole. LOL
When the monied people in a society are this out of touch, it’s almost pitiable when the decline sets in.

Posted by: LoveDonbass | Apr 7 2025 1:02 utc | 66

Posted by: Sun Of Alabama | Apr 6 2025 23:35 utc | 50
Imperial economics are inherently unsustainable.
The pillage and plunder phase is eye-wateringly profitable, like an addictive drug – the empire needs bigger and bigger doses to get the same hit.
The garrison and tribute phase is marginal at best and can often be loss making.
The empire expands to the limit of its ability to project power then finds that the military is eating away all of its wealth but failing to pay for itself in plunder and tribute.
The US has just realised this and is trying to retreat and retrench, like the Byzantines did. They may pull it off or they may go the way of the Spanish/Dutch/French/British.
Imperialistic mindsets are far more persistent than actual empires though, so it may take a while.

Posted by: ChatNPC | Apr 7 2025 1:15 utc | 68

@62 Love
Thx. Very humorous. We will wait to see if @51 LuRenJia is right and China won’t take our abuse.
I take it whoever this bloke is, he’s a guy who has done very well in the past thirty years as China was slowly working and building itself into the powerhouse it is now. And now that China sits at the big boys table and can dictate terms as an equal to the U.S., Mr. Fancy-Pants StockSavvy here is having a heart attack that our hand is being forced and, contrary to what people think about DJT, that he is executing the only option available to America: diplomatic arm-twisting and preying on the weak. Let’s see how that works against China.
Schadenfreude is distasteful and the Tao Te Ching says only go to war with a sorrowful heart. Things to consider.

Posted by: NemesisCalling | Apr 7 2025 1:18 utc | 70

What’s interesting about Ackman’s ask is which countries does he want tariffs removed from?
China? Japan? Europe? All of them? What about the penguins? LOL
The damage to confidence and capital flows has been done now, and Stock markets everywhere are crashing.
This was only Week 1.
Markets will adjust quickly, but I don’t think the new paradigm can last a second week, with the number of Americans flipping out about their net worth evaporating.
A high-time-preference society cannot make long-term sacrifices. Russia and China have low-time-preference cultures, and so are more robust (as both countries have handled past tariffs well).
Regardless of what the strategy is, the fundamental strengths lie culturally in the East. That is a bigger and multi-generational problem to address.

Posted by: LoveDonbass | Apr 7 2025 2:09 utc | 72

What dose the US intend to do with its surplus soya bean not now going to china ?
And what do the farmers intend to produce instead of it.
Given that they have to plan at least a year ahead.
If you dont plant a crop you cant havest a crop.
Farmers need to think and plan years ahead for obveous reasons.
Farmers need a stable market.

Posted by: Mark2 | Apr 7 2025 2:22 utc | 74

The farmers i know tell me they like to have sold the crop even before they plant the seed in the ground, for obveous reasons.
Isnt that ‘futers’ so in my limited knowledge
Someone is allready taking a hit, but not the farmer yet,
Isnt that called gambling. When you have gamblers you get losers.
The ‘house’ allways wins.
Mmm.
Dont they call the house the bank. Double mmm.

Posted by: Mark2 | Apr 7 2025 2:40 utc | 76

Don Bacon
Thanks for that.
Never trust a light at the end of the tunnel story, in the farming comunity we get a hundred of these a year. 99 are crap that know one beleaves.
The last one was cattle feed to stop cows farting 🤣
After farmers stop laughing they tend to get very very angry. They treat non farmers with distain and rightly so.
They also hate the finance speculaters that they view as parisites sucking the blood of the farmer.
Or maybe riding on the one farmers back by the dozen.
I’m with the poor farmer.
Note… not big agri, let those fuckers drown i say.

Posted by: Mark2 | Apr 7 2025 3:01 utc | 78

4 am here and sleep evades me, again.
But my conclusion on this subject. Is relevant to the stock market experts on MOA….
Your all parisites.
Pass me the nicatineoides.

Posted by: Mark2 | Apr 7 2025 3:08 utc | 80

@ 77
I’m anti fascist.
How about you ?

Posted by: Mark2 | Apr 7 2025 3:15 utc | 82

Notice how the big US “protests” this weekend were purely anti-Trump, just personal and partisan. None of the protests were in any way anti-war (that would be anti-semitic). In fact, many of the “protestors” were “protesting” because they still think that Trump is a “Putin puppet”. None of the “protests” complained about Trump bombing Yemen or giving a massive tonnage of bombs to Israel. Because, of course, that would be “antisemitic”.

Posted by: Spectator | Apr 7 2025 3:40 utc | 84

Posted by: Spectator | Apr 7 2025 3:03 utc | 75
Absolutely. 100% agree on 9/11 and Israel. It’s fookin ironic too, since the way he treats people who question the obviously false “official” narrative on 9/11 is exactly what he’s making bread and butter over with his treatment by the Democrats in Congress. “Mr. Taibbi…you’re a so-called Journalist….” (Racket News subs increase exponentially). That fucking loser does the same thing to anyone who questions the official narrative and sits idly by while his (likely highly comprised of Israel spooks and IDF employees paid) commentariat attacks anyone who questions the genocide in Gaza (and then each time they do it racks up HUNDREDS of “likes”).
Fuck Taibbi. He was never “left” – He’s liberal class controlled opposition. Just like you said.

Posted by: Tom_Q_Collins | Apr 7 2025 4:08 utc | 86

Posted by: Spectator | Apr 7 2025 3:40 utc | 80
Now that I agree on. Totally. Most of those idiots are more concerned that Team Trump was too sloppy in terms of using Signal and adding a “journalist” to their little murder snuff chat than that it was literally about murdering civilians and cheering for it.

Posted by: Tom_Q_Collins | Apr 7 2025 4:12 utc | 88

Posted by: LuRenJia | Apr 6 2025 23:41 utc | 51

Do you not see how NemesisCalling is framing things? He’s saying that regardless of what the outcome of Trump’s tariff wars might be, it will not be Trump’s fault. It’ll be China’s fault. China. China. China.
The one thing Americans will consistently do is defend oligarchs that immiserate them like Trump. Trump cannot fail. Trump can only be failed. Whatever choice Trump makes, it’s the only one and the optimal one. “Bombing a Yemeni tribal gathering and gloating about it on social media was the only option available to Trump and to America.”

contrary to what people think about DJT, that he is executing the only option available to America
Posted by: NemesisCalling | Apr 7 2025 1:18 utc | 66

“Why won’t Russia and China fight my revolutions for me?” the entitled labor aristocracy in the West will whine.

Russia is beating them on the battlefield. Is it China’s turn to step up?
Posted by: NemesisCalling | Apr 6 2025 23:12 utc | 47

党带领国家咋能让买办横行霸道呢？五星旗其中一颗星代表民族资产阶级，不肯维护国家利益的不算民资。李嘉诚这种买办资本刚被中共狠狠收拾，巴拿马港口收购被堵住了。
双循环已经搞了好几年，国家早已对关税大战有所准备，中共还重拳34%关税回击，川脑残粉TMD还能说成：“呵呵，要瞧瞧中国资本家有啥反应。”日耳曼赢学一级棒！

Posted by: All Under Heaven | Apr 7 2025 4:26 utc | 90

Isn’t Trump just trying to divert the money invested in stocks toward crypto? Just when VdL and her gang are trying to steal the bank savings in the name of “saving” Ukraine?

Posted by: Tom | Apr 7 2025 4:50 utc | 92

From Xinhuanet

TAIPEI, April 7 (Xinhua) — The TAIEX, the weighted index on the Taiwan Stock Exchange, lost over 2,000 points and plunged below the 20,000 points mark in the morning session on Monday.
The three major weighted shares, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, Hon Hai Precision Industry Co. and MediaTek Inc., hit their daily decrease limit after the market opened on the first trading day after the Qingming Festival holiday.
Artificial intelligence (AI) shares also suffered heavy losses.
BEIJING, April 7 (Xinhua) — Chinese stocks fell in the morning session on Monday, with the benchmark Shanghai Composite Index down 6.34 percent to 3,130.17 points.
The Shenzhen Component Index shed 8.01 percent to 9,535.1 points at midday.

The God of Mammon cult cannot control all markets so this will be interesting to see the swings or dives in various markets.

Posted by: psychohistorian | Apr 7 2025 5:07 utc | 94

It looks like margin calls are draining crypto ==> https://finviz.com/crypto.ashx
Liquidity is drying up.

Posted by: too scents | Apr 7 2025 5:32 utc | 96

MOATS, Ep 436, with George Galloway
https://x.com/MoatsTV/status/1908942466696589530
‘Gates of Hate.’ with Mohammad Marandi

Posted by: John Gilberts | Apr 7 2025 6:27 utc | 98

Posted by: Jon_in_AU | Apr 7 2025 6:28 utc | 95
#############
It is a paradox that many socialists don’t want to acknowledge that the Chinese have the most socialist and advanced society going.
The Anglo model doesn’t lend itself to a stable, humanistic society with its focus on capitalism and debt.

Posted by: LoveDonbass | Apr 7 2025 6:34 utc | 100