Josh First's Blog

ICE & Tariffs are acid test of loyalty to America First

Support for secure American borders and controlled (and highly limited) immigration is a basic tenet of loyalty to America. People who want open borders and all of the chaos and cultural destruction that follow are by definition enemies of America, as it was founded and run for the past 250 years. We cannot have open borders and have a nation, especially a nation of laws, and a nation of laws that are applied equally to one and all. When borders are erased, the nation is erased.

That Immigration & Customs Enforcement (ICE) has become the target for de-funding and dissolution by an entire political party says a lot: That political party is once again, like it was in 1860, the main domestic enemy of America. That political party wants to dissolve ICE, and with it, dissolve America.

Please, do not tell us that you are a Democrat, but that you “don’t agree with that.” Like the Democrats who I know personally, and love, and yet do not understand.

If you are a registered Democrat who votes for elected Democrats, who are trying to implement open borders policy, then you are supporting open borders and all the flows from it. So, opposing open borders, and supporting ICE, is one acid test of loyalty to a constitutional American republic, as founded.

A second acid test of loyalty to America is support for tariffs on our trading partners. Tariffs protect American manufacturing businesses, American jobs, many American unions, and often equally match foreign tariffs on American products tit-for-tat. Saying that you are for tariffs tells us straight-up that you want America to be treated equally by its trading partners, and that you do not want American jobs to be shipped overseas to our competitors. Supporting tariffs also says that you want America to enjoy having strategic depth across a universe of business sectors and manufacturing areas. Without strategic depth in domestic production, America is at a great disadvantage against our trading partners and enemies.

A classic example of domestic weakness is the array of critical minerals and metals that America depends upon and which we source from outside America. Most come from unstable regions where child slaves and environmental catastrophes go hand-in-hand with the related mining, or from enemies like China, who can use embargoes to damage American military and communications production. Tariffs correct artificial market inequities, and create financial incentives for domestic production and mining within America.

Yes, conventional modern economics states that tariffs have a negative rebound effect on American consumers, who supposedly end up paying for those tariffs when they buy foreign products imported into America. Without question there is some truth to this, especially in the early stages of tariffs on certain products, especially things like furniture. And yet there is also a ton of evidence to the contrary, where once America met tariffs on us with tariffs on them, our own domestic capacity was once again incentivized to giddyup and go.

I myself have a front row seat on the tariff policy debate. In the world of hardwood timber, logs, and lumber, we are witnessing a one-two punch in the international markets that has caused hardwood products to hold steady in a low area. When China’s domestic demand for American hardwoods dropped several years ago, then our log and lumber prices fell commensurately. We used to cut certain hardwood species and put them right onto shipping containers bound for Asia; not much right now.

Add tariffs to that weak Chinese demand, and we have a suppression of our hardwoods markets. As a result, a lot of Pennsylvania and New York sawmills have gone out of business in the past couple of years. And timber is a poor investment right now. However, as painful and as scary as this situation is, it is the kind of natural market correction America needed. I cannot blame President Trump for this situation, and frankly, I cannot really blame AutoPen Biden for it, either, as these are supply-and-demand forces beyond America’s control. One thing President Trump can and did control, however, was the matching of tariffs on Chinese wood flooring and furniture with American tariffs of our own.

Why not? If you love America, and you want America to survive and thrive, then you want Americans to stop giving away our products, our money, our jobs, our natural resources. Tariffs do that, quite well. Especially when you live in the Number One Trading Partner nation in the world, America.

In conclusion, if you oppose ICE and secure borders and controlled legal immigration, then you are for chaos and the destruction of America. Just like you were an outside enemy seeking our failure. And if you oppose tariffs, or you oppose giving the president the power to tariff trade items, then you really have it in for our American union workers, and you hate our small towns and manufacturing plants. You have then failed two acid tests of your loyalty to America.

And if you are disloyal to America, you should not be surprised when people like me, loyal patriots, view you with great skepticism. But then, if you belong to the political party of 1860 insurrection and slavery, you are already used to that…and it seems you wear that big scarlet “A” as a badge of honor!

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