The USA’s economy was the envy of the world.
President Donald Trump single handedly put an end to that in less than 75 days.
Donald Trump got the idea for imposing tariffs on most of the nations of the world from a grifter who invented a source with a Harvard education to peddle his ideas. On December 4, 2024, President-elect Donald Trump announced Navarro would be the senior counselor for trade and manufacturing in his second term.[173] He is one of the few officials from Trump’s first term to return for his second term.[174] He assumed office on January 20, 2025.[175]
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President Donald Trump signing Executive Orders, February 10, 2025, in the Oval Office. Navarro is standing behind Trump.
In January 2025, amidst Trump’s threats to put tariffs on Canada and Mexico, Navarro called NAFTA a “catastrophe” in an interview, and said because “China was so much worse”, it was ignored “how bad NAFTA was”. He also linked America’s problems with illegal immigration to NAFTA, saying since the US started exporting corn to Mexico, many Mexican agricultural workers lost their jobs, sending some to the US.[175] In February 2025, Navarro and Stephen Miller were the leading officials in the economic discussions regarding the imposition of tariffson Canada, China and Mexico.[176][177] Navarro was a key official behind Trump’s decision to adopt a trade policy memo in the first day of the presidency, his decision to impose 25% tariffs on all steel and aluminum imports to the U.S., as well as his decision to adopt reciprocal tariffs for every country.[178]
In six of his books about China, Navarro quotes a “Ron Vara”, whom he describes as a China hawk and former Harvard PhD doctoral student in economics, and who says Sinophobic things about China and the Chinese such as “you’ve got to be nuts to eat Chinese food” and “only the Chinese can turn a leather sofa into an acid bath, a baby crib into a lethal weapon, and a cellphone battery into heart-piercing shrapnel”.[200] An investigation by the Chronicle of Higher Education found that no such person existed, and that Ron Vara (an anagram of Navarro) appeared to represent views that Navarro himself held.[200][201]Navarro has admitted to making up the character, an author surrogate, and quoting him in his books.[201]
Sincerely wondering, what is the standard here? Because Trump reacts to the untenable deficit and debt. 2008 and Covid are recent causes, Obama and Biden couldn’t combat them… healthcare costs are a terrible burden… Very possibly Trumps reaction is wrong. That Navarro doesn’t seem too bright. But that debt was nobody’s envy.
Sure, companies could, and probably can still get rich, but 60 percent of citizens live from paycheck to paycheck, to quote Bernie… many heavily in debt due to outrageous healthcare and education costs… that is all part of the economy, isn’t it?
Clinton seems to have been the last president to lead a truly healthy economy, with his budget surpluses and stabilizing of the debt.
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Trump, who promised to improve the economy on the first day in office but did nothing, so far has one major economic accomplishment. That is, he single-handedly caused the largest S&P 500 drop in history for a president who inherited a bull market. For the long term consequences of his irrational tariff policies stay tuned. Until then the 60% who are living paycheck will be paying higher prices than ever because of Trump’s tariffs while the King of Conspicuous Consumption boards Air Force One to Florida for Saudi-backed golf tournaments at his family’s Miami resort and weekends of fund-raisers at his Palm Beach club.
Americans pretend that debt doesn’t exist. That is what you get when the ‘education’ system teaches literally nothing about finance, money, or even just personal responsibility and basic logic.
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I was there in DC, big turnout, pretty good vibe in the crowd but a lot of anger too.
I haven’t seen a good estimate on the nationwide turnout. Organizers are claiming 600k RSVPs, but I didn’t RSVP, and DC alone is estimated to have had 100k people (which tracks with what I saw). Seems highly likely that about 1% of the US population was out protesting on Saturday.
They are roughly the only causes, at least if you look at debt as a ratio of GDP. 2008 and the bailouts took us from 60% to 100%, and COVID took it to 130%.
The thing about the debt is that it wasn’t a real problem. With the pre-Trump economy, we could afford to have debt because we were generating a ton of value, it made sense to borrow and it made sense for people to buy US debt. We had the credit to borrow because our economy was that strong. Per-capita GDP doubled over the past two decades, we were about 1/4 of the global GDP.
2008 and 2019 increased it significantly, but those were real shocks, we borrowed in response to major events, and there’s no reason to conclude it would have stayed as high as it was with competent governance. After WWII it took decades to take the debt back down to the pre-war level.
Now, who knows. Trump’s destruction of the US reputation will make borrowing much harder. By destroying the value of the dollar, he might make it easier to pay some dollar-denominated debts, but if he sparks a selloff we’re going to be fucked, we’ll be forced to borrow at a much higher rate that will burden us for a generation. At the same time, he’s gutting the IRS, making it harder to fund the government through other means, and he’s sparking a trade war that will reduce the market for US goods. Less revenue plus less ability to borrow could create a liquidity crisis that will require printing money, leading to hyperinflation and economic collapse.
However big a problem the debt was, not being able to borrow is a much bigger problem for a nation.
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TRADE WAR ON
Tariff confusion continues to shock the stock market today and fuel new losses. Congressional Republicans are beginning to get nervous. No party or politician is recession proof. Throughout his adult life, Trump has shown tendency to take big risks that failed to payoff and then required bailouts. This is the biggest risk of his lifetime. Only this one is on the backs of the ordinary Americans most of who are living to make ends meet paycheck to paycheck. If Trump’s plan fails who will bail us out?
Trump threatened an additional 50% tariff on China. At the White House today, sitting next to Netanyahu, whom I consider to be a war criminal, Trump said some tariffs could be permanent. He claimed the EU was formed to damage U.S. trade. Again on the tariffs he said, “ Nobody but me would do this, we have an opportunity to reset the table.” and “I see a beautiful picture at the end.” Trump said he may not reduce tariffs on Israel—”Maybe not, we give them billions.” “ We are not looking at a tariff pause.” The Dow sunk 350 points, and the S&P fell for the third day. 62% of American adults are invested in the stock market.Trump is literally playing with our money. The rumor circulated that Trump might pause tariffs so the markets closed mixed. How long will the MAGA folks keep the faith? That is the question.
And just like that, they became the new “terrorists”.
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There’s one possible silver lining to a recession…
According to The Guardian, the EU has said it offered the US a “zero-for-zero” tariff deal on cars and industrial goods weeks before Donald Trump launched his trade war, but that it would “not wait endlessly” to defend itself.
Maros Šefčovič, the EU commissioner for trade, said he had proposed zero tariffs on cars and a range of industrial goods, such as pharmaceutical products, rubber and machinery, during his first meeting with the US commerce secretary, Howard Lutnick, on 19 February.
But, the Trump administration rejected the deal and launched their punishing tariffs anyway. What’s “grown-up” about that?
Here we see men being dehumanized by the State without a trial. This is State terrorism. Notice that it was filmed and released and shown over and over to strike fear into the viewers with the implicit message: “I, Donald Trump, am all powerful. Be afraid. Don’t make waves. I can do this to you too.”
It has always been the feudal lords who made the common people dependent—those self-interested elites who hoarded power, extracted wealth, and left the masses to suffer under the weight of their decisions. They orchestrated wars for personal gain, imposed crushing taxes, and built hierarchies that ensured generational inequality. In every age, these figures emerge with new names and new titles, but their function remains unchanged: to dominate. Today, the new feudal lords wear suits instead of armor, fly private jets instead of riding horses—but their goals are no less imperial. Chief among them are the oligarchs, and most prominently, Donald Trump, who has leveraged populist rhetoric and economic nationalism to wage a trade war not for the good of the nation, but to assert personal power. In doing so, he imagines himself a kind of modern emperor presiding over the fractured remnants of what he would call the American Empire.
In the East, we find a precursor and mirror image in Vladimir Putin—the self-styled Russian ‘Czar’—who embraced this model long before Trump did, and in many ways became the prototype. He reconstructed a state built on fear, propaganda, and personal loyalty, rather than democratic ideals, and in so doing, inspired others who dream of restoring their own twisted visions of past glory. Both of these men operate on the belief that they are inherently above the people they rule, and that their vertical structures of power are not only justified, but necessary. To them, the decades of democratic experiment, with its messiness and accountability, were an aberration—a deviation from the rightful order of things.
But history teaches us otherwise. The revolutions of the past—whether French, American, Haitian, or Russian—were responses to this kind of madness. They were struggles to create societies where power flows upward, from the people to the state, not the other way around. “Government of the people, by the people, for the people” was not just a phrase; it was a sacred commitment to a new way of being.
And yet here we are, watching the old order creep back in through the cracks, disguised as populism but driven by plutocracy. The question that confronts us now is simple but grave: how long will we tolerate this return to feudal logic? If our democratic institutions are once again becoming hollowed-out shells, perhaps we must rekindle the revolutionary spirit—not necessarily with violence, but with the courage, organization, and vision to dismantle the systems that place kings above citizens. Because it seems, more than ever, that we need another revolution—not only to reclaim power, but to remember that it was always meant to belong to us.
**MUSK JOINS RESISTANCE
**https://x.com/kimbal/status/1909287996571935090
This is Elon Musk’s brother acting as Elon’s surrogate to attack Donald Trump’s tariff policy which is costing Musk billions of dollar’s.
Felix my man, those kinds of links should be supplemental to an idea you express in your post, rather than just the link as your whole post.
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So you can’t see what’s going on globally-monetarily/economically? No? then Stay obtuse… 
America [and the world at large] asked for change, but when change comes the money-hoarders/launderers cry when their endless stream of free/tax-payers money dries up.
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The EU are one of the most corrupt entities in the world -along with a few others- impoverishing Europe, since 1989. 
https://x.com/JonnieKing/status/1909102714866549007
@JonnieKing
“IF TARIFFS ARE SO BAD, WHY DO THEY HAVE THEM? IF THE AMERICAN CONSUMER IS GOING TO PAY ALL THE TARIFF, THEN WHY DO THEY CARE ABOUT THE TARIFF? BECAUSE THEY’RE GOING TO EAT THEM.” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent spent the first 6-minutes of his interview with Tucker Carlson talking about why tariffs are extremely good for the US, yet your favorite doom-porner is telling you that he’s going to leave the admin because of them
Need I remind you that Bessent is arguably the most brilliant man in finance today. Trust the process
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I saw some body-cam footage of some of those arrests… the ‘felons’ were shocked when they realised that not only did the Police know who they were but also what felonies they had committed back home.
You don’t have to take my word for it, though… 
I thought you said that Musk was making billions of dollars, from the recent changes that DOGE had been implementing? 
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Um… what about the start of the removal of income tax? …irrelevant?
Europe needs to follow suit…
The total value of Musk’s companies’ contracts with the DoD is estimated to be in the billions of dollars, but the true figure cannot be determined since many of them are classified. The contracts demonstrate the growing importance of private sector technology companies in supporting U.S. military operations and national security initiatives.
However, Musk, whose businesses rely heavily on international supply chains affected by the tariffs, has called Trumps tariffs economically counterproductive.
“This has certainly been my advice to the president,” Musk said during a remote appearance at a political congress hosted by Italy’s League Party on April 5. “I hope it’s agreed that both Europe and the United States should move ideally, in my view, to a zero tariff situation, effectively creating a free trade zone between Europe and North America.”
Furthermore, Musk has called President Donald Trump’s trade adviser, Peter Navarro, a “moron” over comments he made about his electric vehicle firm, Tesla.
Musk - despite being a member of the Trump administration himself- said Navarro was “dumber than a sack of bricks” in posts on his social media platform X.
It was in response to an interview Navarro gave in which he criticised Musk. “[He’s] not a car manufacturer. He’s a car assembler, in many cases,” Navarro said.
So far Musk is venting his frustration with Trump indirectly by attacking Trump’s surrogates. Trump will not want to lose the billionaire’s support. But, Musk’s businesses have already taken a huge hit since Trump took office in spite of his lucrative government contracts. Musk has contracts with the EU that are expected to take another hit from Trump’s tariffs. The two are one degree of separation from direct confrontation. Stay tuned.
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