China

Trump’s World View

Posted on by johnbarleycorn12

THIS ISSUECuba Is the US’s Taiwan
While headlines obsess over Iran, the real Trump doctrine is hiding in plain sight 90 miles off the Florida coast. Cuba isn’t a Cold War relic—it’s the next domino in a US hemispheric strategy that’s already toppled Maduro in Venezuela. Cuba is America’s Taiwan, and it’s clear the US has not forgotten about the island.­THE SITUATIONIt may feel like a long time ago now, but two of the Trump administration’s first geopolitical actions had nothing to do with the Middle East, China, or Russia but with US power in the Western Hemisphere.On his first day in office, President Trump renamed the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America—theatrical, sure, but also a clear articulation of US power. Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s first trip abroad, on February 2, 2025, was to Panama, where he warned the country to reduce Chinese influence in the Canal Zone lest the US “take measures necessary” to do so itself (no idle threat to a country the US invaded as recently as 1989).The first core foreign policy interest in the Trump administration’s December 2025 National Security Strategy is control over the Western Hemisphere. And in January, the administration experienced a spectacular geopolitical success: It removed Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro without an American fatality and now has such a grip on that thorn in America’s side that Trump’s “seriously considering” making it the 51st state. His focus on, and success in, the Western hemisphere is part of what makes his choice to start a war with Iran so confusing: The obvious next target was Cuba.A Brief and Unnuanced History of US-Cuba RelationsUS-Cuba relations trace back to America’s victory in the Spanish-American War under President William McKinley (one of President Trump’s favorite role models), with the US briefly occupying the island in 1899. Rather than annex Cuba, the US opted to intervene when its interests were at stake—reoccupying in 1906 and later backing Batista’s 1952 coup. That arrangement ended in 1959 when Fidel Castro’s guerillas defeated Batista’s US-backed forces. After the failed Bay of Pigs Invasion in 1961, Castro declared Cuba a socialist republic, pulling US-Cuba relations into the Cold War.Many of today’s unresolved conflicts—North vs. South Korea, the US vs. Iran, Russia vs. Ukraine—are Cold War anachronisms, proxy battles that outlived their strategic logic when the Soviet Union collapsed. US-Cuba is no different, and the world is still paying the price.The Hemispheric CasePresident Trump’s intent to replace Cuba’s leadership has been clear since Day 1 of his second term. It makes strategic sense considering his hemispheric strategy to return US dominance to North and South America. There is no greater geopolitical threat to US hegemony in the Western Hemisphere than the presence of anti-US states like Venezuela and Cuba.Cuba is particularly problematic. Remember: The 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis is the closest the world has ever gotten to nuclear annihilation. The Soviet attempt to develop a nuclear-armed enemy so close to the US mainland was the biggest threat the US had faced since the British burned the Capitol in 1814. There can be no “Gulf of America” if a state hostile to US interests sits astride that very gulf, a perfect base for any external rival to set up shop to block US exports from the Mississippi River, or even to block the US from Atlantic and Gulf approaches to the Panama Canal.Much ink predicting World War III and global disaster is spilled over China’s relationship with Taiwan: Cuba is the US’s Taiwan. The situation in Taiwan would be like if after the US Civil War, the Confederates had slipped out of the mainland, taken up residence ~120 miles south of the mainland on Cuba, become a strategic gadfly that could potentially block US shipping lanes, declared that it represented the only true government of the United States, and then accepted military support from a rival global power.Just look at this perspective map of Cuba’s location: One does not need to be a geopolitical analyst to see how strategically important Cuba is to the US.Even as his war in Iran fails, President Trump has joked as recently as May 1 that the US will be taking over Cuba“almost immediately.” Now add to the bombast the CNN report from over the weekend that US military intelligence-gathering flights are surging off the coast of Cuba, and it becomes clear this is no joke. This is a display of the depth of US power.Source: University of MarylandPrevious US experience in Cuba leaves much to be desired, but Fidel Castro is dead, Raúl Castro is a nonagenarian, and the Revolution has clearly failed. Sporadic anti-regime protests since 2021, driven by the visible deterioration of the Cuban economy—hyperinflation, medicine shortages, the population turning to crypto to protect wealth, and the surge in Cuban migration to the US—are elements similar to the situation that brought US military force to bear against Venezuela.Moreover, Cuba is not a millennia-old civilizational nation-state: It is an island off the coast of North America whose political and economic status will always be subject to stronger powers around it. Finding a Cuban “Delcy”—maybe from the Castro family itself, if reports are to be believed—will not be hard. Nor will converting Cuba’s immense potential riches to the economic benefit of the US.Cuba Is a Frozen AssetCuba is one of the last great frontier market economies left in the world. When the US imposed its impotent embargo on Cuba in 1962, it effectively suspended Cuba’s economy in the past. Cuba is a frozen asset. Everything about the island’s geography, resources, and human capital suggests an economy several multiples larger than what it currently produces. The gap between what Cuba is and what it could be is staggering.To call out just a few:Tourism and real estate: Cuba’s 5,746 km of undeveloped Caribbean coastline, 90 miles from Florida, is arguably the largest untapped real estate opportunity in the Western Hemisphere.Agriculture: Cuba produced 8.5 million tons of sugar in 1970. This year it will produce under 150,000 tons, the lowest in over a century, a 98% collapse. Cuban cigars are still the best in the world: Even under sanctions, Habanos S.A. posted $827 million in revenue in 2024, up 15% year-on-year, with zero access to the American market. Coffee production has fallen 51% in five years from an already depressed base.Energy: The USGS estimates 4.1 billion barrels of undiscovered, technically recoverable oil and 13.3 trillion cubic feet of natural gas in Cuba’s offshore waters. Cuba currently produces just 32,000 barrels/day, covering roughly 40% of domestic needs. Drill baby drill.Minerals: Cuba holds the world’s fourth-largest cobalt reserves at ~500,000 tons and sixth-largest reserves of nickel, ~5.5 million tons. Its laterite deposits also contain rare earth elements and platinum group metals. Cobalt and nickel are critical inputs for EV batteries and defense applications. Who needs Greenland when you’ve got Cuba?Benchmarks: Puerto Rico, with one-third of Cuba’s population and one-tenth of its land area, has a GDP of ~$126 billion and a per-capita GDP of $39,343. If Cuba achieved even Dominican Republic levels of development (~$11,000 per capita), it would imply a GDP of roughly $110 billion. At Puerto Rican levels, roughly $370 billion. Poland’s economy grew 177% in the 18 years following its post-communist transition. Vietnam’s poverty rate fell from 80% to 5% in three decades of reform.Whether this US government will let Cuba function as an open market, rather than treating it primarily as a de facto colony and opportunity for cronies with markets as a secondary concern, is a harder question to answer. But it’s relatively clear that the US will try to replace the Cuban Communist Party, and that Cuba represents a significant economic opportunity for those able to access it.MAP/CHART OF THE WEEKI should be writing about Hormuz and oil every week, but that would be boring. We’re going in the wrong direction:Source: BloombergBLIND SPOTWhat’s not on people’s radar but should be…  Brazil’s Chamber of Deputies passed the National Policy for Critical and Strategic Minerals on May 6 by a vote of 343 to 97, creating a R$2 billion guarantee fund and up to R$5 billion in tax incentives to develop the country’s mineral sector. Lula flew to Washington the next day for a three-hour sit-down with Trump, in which critical minerals topped the agenda. BNDES, Brazil’s state development bank, followed up with a $3 billion credit line for mineral companies with terms up to 20 years.What makes Brazil’s play interesting is its refusal to choose sides. Lula told Trump that Brazil’s rare earth reserves are open to investment from China or anyone else willing to process the minerals on Brazilian soil. He explicitly rejected the idea of excluding Beijing, saying, “We have no preference; what we want is to share with whoever wants to invest in Brazil.” He also insisted that refining stays domestic, a direct rebuke of the old pattern where Brazil shipped raw commodities abroad and imported the finished products back at a markup. Even so, the two sides agreed to a 30-day working group on tariffs, which is diplomatic language for kicking the can, but Lula emerged calling the talks productive.This is textbook middle-power behavior: leverage your natural endowments to extract concessions from both poles of a bipolar system without committing to either. Brazil is not aligning with Washington against Beijing. It is selling access.The subtext is October 2026. Lula is running for a fourth term at 80 years old, and the polls have tightened with Flávio Bolsonaro in a potential runoff. Lula needs to show Brazilian voters that he can stand toe to toe with Trump, bring investment home, and chart an independent course without turning Brazil into anyone’s satellite.The minerals bill is a vehicle for doing that: It is domestic industrial policy that doubles as foreign policy leverage, and it lets Lula campaign on sovereignty and economic development at the same time. Then again, that didn’t go so well for the last octogenarian (Joe Biden) who Trump challenged. Much is at stake in Brasília in these months leading into the elections.READER QUESTIONWill the US achieve regime change in Cuba before the end of Trump’s term?Yes, and it will be quick like Venezuela.Yes, but it will be messy and prolonged.No, Cuba will resist and the US will back down.No, Trump will get distracted by another conflict.­
FINALLY…What I’m watching: “Gary,” The BearWhat I’m reading: How to Feed the World: The History and Future of Food, Vaclav SmilWhat I’m listening to: Buena Vista Social Club, Buena Vista Social Club; Havana, Camila Cabello
Jacob ShapiroGeopolitical Analyst · Mauldin Economics
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Change Direction Now

Posted on by johnbarleycorn12

December 22, 2025Today we’re continuing our look back at past articles that foresaw today’s headlines years in advance. Last week, we highlighted three early pieces tracing the decline of US credibility—its unsustainable debt path, the erosion of reserve currency privilege, and the rising global demand for real assets like gold.Today we look back at this podcast I recorded on March 31, 2023. I laid out a theory that Venezuela—sitting on the world’s largest oil reserves—might one day be absorbed into the US sphere of influence, not through war, but through corporate proxies.Drawing parallels to the East India Company and the US-backed creation of Panama, the idea was that a private entity could step in amid Venezuela’s chaos, secure its oil, and quietly serve American strategic interests.Now, with tensions escalating, the threat of an invasion could be the method of securing this kind of control. Maduro has discussed terms for stepping down, and recently US authorities seized a Venezuelan oil tanker.And Venezuela’s opposition leader, María Corina Machado, is now openly pitching the country’s energy sector as “a $1.7 trillion opportunity,” promising, “We will open all [oil], upstream, midstream, downstream, to all companies.”It felt like the right time to revisit this episode.
 
At the center of Sovereign Man’s core ethos is the indisputable view that the United States is in decline. I take absolutely zero pleasure in writing that statement. But it’s incredibly difficult, if not impossible, to objectively appraise the bountiful evidence at hand and not reach the same conclusion. Consider the following: US government finances are appallingly bad. The national debt exceeds 100% of GDP, annual deficits run into the trillions of dollars with no end in sight, and major trust funds for Social Security and Medicare will soon run out of money. Political incompetence is mind-blowing; politicians fail to be able to even identify problems, let alone understand them, let alone reach compromises to solve them. Ditto for central bank incompetence. These people simply cannot understand how, by keeping interest rates at zero for nearly a decade and conjuring trillions of dollars out of thin air, they engineered record high inflation. And they also fail to understand how their actions to ‘fix’ inflation are causing widespread havoc in the economy and financial system. Social divisions across the country are extreme. Censorship and cancel culture prevail, and corporations now wag their fingers at their own customers to “be better”. The education system is in pitiful shape, with many politicians and school board officials turning classrooms into activist training camps. The population is terribly unhealthy. Obesity and drug addiction are epidemics. Plus there’s an obvious mental health crisis that drives far too many people to commit horrific acts of violence on innocent people, including children. National security is in decline. Military readiness is down, yet top officials seem more concerned about diversity and inclusion rather than the ability to prevail in war. The rule of law has been perverted, including for political purposes and self-aggrandizement. We just saw another example of this yesterday. Even the national fertility rate continues plummeting– an indication of the rising cost of living and social apathy. The Wall Street Journal recently published a series of polls indicating that most Americans doubt their children will have a better future; pessimism is strong. They also found that certain values which once defined American culture, including a sense of community, hard work, and civility, are no longer important to the majority of people. This is all happening at a time when adversaries are circling. And that includes China. Now, usually whenever I bring up China, there are always people who are quick to assert that China cannot possibly replace the US as the dominant superpower because they have just as many problems. And it’s true that China has a ton of problems. They have their own debt issues, financial system chaos, and economic problems. They have social challenges, a major demographic crisis, and even a serious issue with childhood obesity. But no civilization or empire throughout history has ever been problem-free.Ancient Rome, even during its early republic days, had enormous problems. They had to deal with constant revolts, civil war, the genocidal dictatorship of Sulla, famine, war, plague, and more. Yet there’s an enormous difference between taking on challenges while you’re on the rise… versus succumbing to them while on the way down. Rome was able to deal with its challenges and continue its rise to become the dominant superpower. China may be able to do the same. The US finds itself in a precarious position where they have a mountain of compounding problems… and no ability to even slow them down, let alone solve them. I’ve written before about what I call the “Four Forces of Decline”, which I define as: 1) Forces of History– the inevitable, cyclical nature in the rise and fall of Empire. No empire, no civilization in human history has ever retained the top spot forever, and most tend to experience similar challenges on the way down. 2) Forces of Society– the vicious way in which a society eats itself from within, vanquishing the ability and inclination to solve complex problems. 3) Forces of Economy– the debilitating toll that enormous debts, deficits, and currency inflation take on a nation and its people. 4) Forces of Energy– when energy is cheap and abundant, prosperity reigns. When energy is expensive, prosperity wanes. The relationship couldn’t be more clear. Today’s podcast puts all of these together, with a particular focus on #4, Forces of Energy. Part of being the dominant superpower in our modern world means having access to abundant energy. Yet the US government has spent the last few years trying to destroy its energy (oil and gas) industry. They’ve been pretty successful. The President of the United States hardly misses an opportunity to bash oil companies. Politicians pass new rules and taxes to punish them. The media beats up on them. Investors have pulled funding for them. So it shouldn’t be a surprise that US oil production, while not in terminal decline, is failing to keep up with growing demand. Shale oil is especially problematic given that most of the highest quality “tier 1” sites have already been drilled. Many are already in decline. This is a big deal. Shale oil is the reason why the US achieved near energy independence. With shale in decline, the US will be forced to import a LOT more energy (which, again, is critical for prosperity) from places where they have an increasingly adversarial relationship. Russian oil is obviously off the table. So is Iranian oil. Saudi Arabia is rapidly becoming cozy with China; in fact the Saudis are now publicly considering to sell their oil in Chinese currency, the renminbi. This is an enormous threat to the US. Saudi Arabia has been selling oil in dollars for decades; they’ve even had their currency, the riyal, pegged to the US dollar since 1986. This concept of selling oil in US dollars is known as the petrodollar, and it’s one of the key reasons why the US dollar is the global reserve currency. Anyone who wants to buy oil needs to own US dollars. And that pretty much includes every country on the planet. So foreigners are forced to stockpile dollars, and by extension, US government bonds… simply because they need dollars to buy oil. As a result the US government is able to get away with the fiscal equivalent of murder. They can run multi-trillion dollar deficits every year. They can wage expensive wars in foreign lands. They can go into debt to pay people to stay home and NOT work… … and they’ve always had a bunch of suckers overseas– foreigners who have no choice but to buy US government bonds, simply because oil is priced in US dollars. But what if Saudi Arabia started selling oil in renminbi? Most likely a LOT of foreigners would dump at least some of their dollars and start holding renminbi as part of their official reserves. America’s biggest privilege and benefit– its reserve currency– would vanish, practically overnight. Suddenly the US government wouldn’t be able to run multi-trillion dollar deficits. It wouldn’t be able to go into debt to pay people to stay home and NOT work. They’d have to be like almost every other country– act with some fiscal responsibility. Think about it– if the President of Mexico shook hands with thin air, investors would be rightfully terrified and panic-sell Mexican government bonds. If South Korea ran a multi-trillion dollar deficit, its currency would probably plummet. Back in September we saw the British pound and UK government bonds practically collapse… and the Prime Minister of one of the world’s largest democratically elected sovereign governments was forced to resign… simply because investors didn’t like her economic revival plan. These issues are all linked. If the US continues to demonstrate incompetence and weakness… if they continue to subvert and destroy the energy industry… and if Saudi Arabia starts selling oil in renminbi… … the consequences will be life-changing. This is one of the biggest stories of our lives. It’s easy to miss because it’s playing out over a period of years. It gets lost in the day-to-day noise and the crisis du jour. But rest assured this is happening in front of our very eyes; it’s a slow motion crash that’s already started. The outcome isn’t inevitable yet. But nothing about these people’s actions demonstrate that they have the slightest clue what’s going on. Join me in today’s podcast as we dive further into this… and I outline my “51ststate” theory– a ‘solution’ that I wouldn’t be surprised to see in the near future. To your freedom, James Hickman
Co-Founder, Schiff Sovereign LLC

The Real New World Order

Posted on by johnbarleycorn12

🧵 WHAT YOU’RE NOT HEARING: The Chinese cannot replace the U.S. market. Without it, the Chinese economy collapses.

Here’s why… China’s entire economic miracle was built on ONE thing – being America’s cheap manufacturing hub. 

The “Chinese miracle” playbook was simple: 

• Open markets to the West 

• Offer dirt-cheap labor 

• Ignore safety standards 

• Let Western companies rake in profits 

This worked for decades. But China forgot something crucial: others can do this too.

MASSIVE MISCALCULATION: Beijing thought the American leaders they made rich would protect them forever. They believed these corporate puppet masters would never let the US stand up to China.

WRONG. Along came Donald Trump, who owes them nothing.

The numbers don’t lie 

• US exports to China: $143.5B 

• Chinese imports to US: $438.9B 

They flood our markets while closing or restricting THEIR markets. 

But Trump said: NO MORE

Meanwhile, countries like India, Vietnam, and Bangladesh are CELEBRATING. They’re ready to take China’s place, AND open their markets to the U.S. – and Trump’s willing to deal.

HERE’S what the Enemedia WON’T tell you: 

Chinese exporters are PANICKING 

• Abandoning shipments mid-voyage 

• Factory orders FROZEN 

• Container volume DOWN 90% 

And this is just the beginning. China can’t replace the U.S. market that made it rich.

Reports flooding in: 

• Factories shutting down 

• Amazon canceling orders 

• Stores closing 

• Warehouses overflowing 

The house of cards is falling. But the Enemedia gives you nothing but Chinese propaganda.

CRUCIAL FACT: America buys 3X more than Japan (China’s next biggest customer). 

Without us, they’re FINISHED. And they were already on the ropes.

Will this affect US consumers? Sure, briefly. You might struggle to find cheap plastic junk for a few months. 

But other countries will step up. And TRILLIONS in new investment are flowing into America, while countless factories LEAVE China.

Will this affect US consumers? Sure, briefly. You might struggle to find cheap plastic junk for a few months. 

The bottom line: China picked a fight they can’t win. While America adjusts, the CCP will face the consequences of their refusal to truly open their own markets, or to abandon aggression against their neighbors. 

Game over. The decoupling is under way.

Rod Martin, 

Founder and CEO Martin Capital

Epoch Times on Tariffs

Posted on by johnbarleycorn12

WASHINGTON—As part of a bold shift in U.S. trade policy, President Donald Trump has ramped up tariffs on Chinese goods, aiming to revive domestic manufacturing and hold Beijing accountable for its decades of market-distorting practices. 
At the April 2 “Make America Wealthy Again” event in the White House Rose Garden, Trump unveiled the contours of his global tariff plans, including a 34 percent reciprocal levy on Beijing. The president pointed to China’s currency manipulation and other non-monetary trade barriers. 
This decision effectively raised the total new tariffs on China to 54 percent, including the 20 percent levies previously imposed to pressure Beijing into reducing the flow of fentanyl into the United States. 
This move will impact the approximately $600 billion in annual trade and bring tariffs on nearly all Chinese goods close to the 60 percent rate Trump had previously promised during his campaign. 
Trump believes that the United States holds leverage over other nations, including China, due to its status as the world’s largest and wealthiest consumer market. 
“Foreign nations will finally be asked to pay for the privilege of access to our market, the biggest market in the world,” Trump said during his Rose Garden speech. 
China quickly hit back, announcing that, starting April 10, it would impose 34 percent tariffs on imports of all U.S. goods. This move was part of a broader set of retaliatory actions, including tightening export controls on various rare earth elements and adding U.S. companies to the government’s “unreliable entities list.” 
Beijing also filed a complaint with the World Trade Organization (WTO), following through on a threat earlier this week. 
Trump pushed back at the Chinese regime after announcing its retaliatory response. 
“China played it wrong, they panicked—the one thing they cannot afford to do,” the president said in a post on social media platform Truth Social. 
Trade Distorting Practices
Despite joining the WTO in 2001, China did not evolve into the fully-fledged market economy that the United States had anticipated. 
China’s economic growth has accelerated dramatically since the country joined the WTO. However, the Chinese Communist Party’s trade-distorting practices, such as intellectual property theft, massive state subsidies, currency manipulation, wage suppression, and labor rights violations, have led to the closure of many U.S. manufacturers and the loss of millions of U.S. jobs. 
There is a bipartisan view in Washington on the need to address China’s market-distorting practices. 
Before the November election last year, President Joe Biden’s National Security Advisor, Jake Sullivan, defended tariffs against China. 
“Previous efforts to build a China policy on changing China have not succeeded,” Sullivan said on Oct. 24. 
As a result, he argued, the United States must adopt a new set of strategies based on the current geopolitical and economic realities. 
During his first term, Trump imposed tariffs on more than $300 billion worth of Chinese goods in response to various unfair trade practices, including intellectual property theft. 
The Biden administration chose to maintain those tariffs and even announced additional tariffs on products such as electric vehicles (EVs), solar panels, medical equipment, lithium-ion batteries, steel, and aluminum. 
Both administrations have used tariffs to level the playing field for domestic manufacturers and protect American workers. 
However, Trump’s latest move represents an even bolder step in attempting to contain China and hold it accountable for its longstanding trade-distorting practices. 
Nick Iacovella, executive vice president for the Coalition for a Prosperous America, an organization that represents domestic producers and workers, said that these tariffs will address the decades of deindustrialization in the United States. 
“It is incredibly important that those tariffs actually stay in place,” he told The Epoch Times. 
For decades, there has been a disconnect between Wall Street and Main Street, Iacovella added, commenting on the market reaction. 
“When automakers moved their jobs to Mexico, their stock prices went up, but car prices didn’t decrease for American consumers,” he said. 
Adam Savit, China policy director at America First Policy Institute, argues that China has less leverage, despite Beijing’s retaliatory actions. 
“The U.S. has much less exports to China than China exports to the United States. So inherently, they’re at a disadvantage,” he told The Epoch Times. 
​​He stated that charging 54 percent tariffs on Chinese goods is an appropriate response to an adversary, and it will help in the strategic decoupling from China. 
Bargaining Chip 
On April 4, Trump extended the deadline for TikTok to divest from its Beijing-based parent company by 75 days. 
The president made the announcement in a post on Truth Social, just ahead of the original April 5 deadline. 
Trump stated that he would continue working in “good faith” with China. Previously, he suggested that tariffs could be used as a bargaining chip to pressure China into approving the sale of TikTok’s U.S. operations from ByteDance, which several U.S. officials have warned has ties to the Chinese Communist Party. 
“You have a situation with TikTok where China will probably say: ‘We’ll approve a deal, but will you do something on the tariffs?’” Trump said on April 3. “We could use tariffs in order to get something in return.” 
Nathan Worcester, Jacob Burg, Terri Wu, and Andrew Moran contributed. 
Emel AkanEmel Akan 

Tucker On Tariffs

Posted on by johnbarleycorn12

Well said.

Commentary 
Does the Left Support Worker Exploitation?
It’s no secret that the stock market has reacted poorly to the Trump administration’s “Liberation Day” tariffs. It makes sense why. Investors hate uncertainty, and America ushering in an entirely new economic vision, regardless of what that vision is, was always going to cause a shock. 

One of the conglomerates experiencing a nosedive is Nike. According to Schaeffer’s Investment Research, the company’s stock sank to a six-year low after the tariff announcement and now carries a 23.5% year-to-date deficit. 

The reason for this is straightforward. Nike uses cheap foreign labor to create its products, exploiting international markets to get away with paying its workforce a fraction of what American laborers would require. This is no secret. Nike reportedly employs 108,000 Chinese workers, paying them an average annual salary of $10,000. Its American employees, by contrast, tend to make nearly seven times that sum. 

This makes Washington’s new effort to incentivize companies to manufacture their products in the U.S. a bad situation for Nike. And they’re not the only ones. Reutersreported on Thursday that “Shares in Nike, Adidas, and Puma dropped sharply after Vietnam was targeted with a 46% tariff rate, Cambodia with 49%, Bangladesh with 37% and Indonesia with 32%, while Trump hiked tariffs on China by an extra 34 percentage points, following the earlier 20% tariffs.” 

Take a step back and ask yourself what this really means. A $10,000 salary is not a livable wage. It equates to less than $5 an hour, and that’s if the worker doesn’t take a single minute off all year. No vacations. No sick days. Nothing. Just a life of thanklessly slaving away in his employer’s overheated mines. 

Among other things, the White House’s pursuit of “fair trade” aims to end that inhumanity. The U.S. should not reward companies for treating human beings like soulless cogs, easily replaceable and whose hours are worth nothing more than five measly dollars.

Is that what American neoliberals want? Whether they realize it or not, Democrats complaining about the Trump tariffs are by definition advocating for the West’s continued exploitation of effective slave labor. They may attend pride parades and post social justice graphics on social media, but they quickly jump ship as soon as a policy that will drive real change threatens their precious wallets. 

Emphasizing this could be a good way for Republicans to regain the high ground in our country’s economic debate. Will the tariffs create jobs? They should. Do they put America first? Without a doubt. But they’re also moral. America is no longer interested in subsidizing the treatment of workers as worthless servants. Companies that refuse to oblige? Fine. Enjoy your big, beautiful tariff.