Posts Tagged → export
No pain, no gain
The old gym motto “No Pain, No Gain” applies to the much-needed economic shakeup the Trump Administration is bringing to the entire planet. If we Americans do not put up with a little temporary pain and necessary readjustment now, for our own good, then we will enjoy no huge gain later on. It takes work to then earn and enjoy resulting benefits.
President Trump’s promise to American citizens was that he would return us to glory days, a golden age, which we richly deserve. Trump is correct that America has been the world’s piggy bank for decades, due to the huge tariff and trade imbalance. We should add that being the world’s piggy bank is an unsustainable and unfair arrangement paid for by the long forgotten American taxpayers, who see very few benefits in return for handing over their hard-earned cash to every Tom, Dick and Harry the American bureaucracy could dream up.
As we have learned over the past eight weeks from the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), trillions of American taxpayer dollars have been illegally mis-spent on millions of dubious schemes, ideas, organizations, and fantasies, many of which directly aimed at harming the United States. American taxpayers have been funding their own sworn enemies through agencies like USAID, DHS, EPA, HHS, and the Department of Education.
In other words, domestic enemies here in America were running the federal government, and using our tax money to damage and destroy America. This egregious situation is only in addition to the lopsided international tariff arrangement that has grown out of control since about 1920.
The tariff situation is egregious by itself. All kinds of countries we Americans think of as “allies” have had heavy tariffs placed on importing American food and manufactured products, including milk and dairy, steel, etc. Many of these countries’ governments paid what minimal tariffs that the USA had in turn on products being imported into America, in effect buoying up their own private businesses.
America did not do that for our own businesses, and in fact America has had very low to no tariffs on most imports. And now after essentially handing over our own wealth and manufacturing sectors to foreigners for decades, we are tired of being the economic piggy bank or punching bag or host body for all of these takey-takey people around the world. It is hard to understand why Americans, particularly working and taxpaying Americans, support this large imbalance and wealth transfer from America to the world.
And yet, as we see, plenty of working Americans are arguing against tariff parity, and are setting fire to Tesla cars and dealerships as a form of protest against DOGE finding and eliminating waste, fraud, and abuse of taxpayer money. Do you have to be mentally ill to belong to that one political party? Do you have to be self destructive to be a voting member of that one political party?
Do you have to hate America, Americans, the rule of law, and everything great about America to belong to that one political party?
Why would any normal American belong to that one political party?
Just as DOGE is causing Americans to take a long hard look at federal government mismanagement, Trump’s tariff parity is going to cause a shake-up in our international trade relationships, no doubt. It is going to cause some re-arrangements of pricing and products we are used to having easily available to us. For example, cheap Chinese crap on Amazon is probably not going to be as cheap any longer. And yesterday the Princess of Patience and I went to look at a new car for her, and we see how the new tariff parity might effect car prices. We learned that those foreign-brand vehicles already ordered and in the pipeline are not subject to tariffs (our family is positively prejudicial in favor of Toyota vehicles).
Of course, foreign brand vehicles made here in America are not subject to tariffs, either, and many Toyota cars and trucks are made in America.
Long and short of this subject is give these policy changes time to work. Already America is seeing immediate positive responses from many foreign trading partners, who are lowering their own tariffs because they know that their own industries cannot afford to absorb Trump’s tariffs. They will lose their export markets if they lose American buyers. So just be patient, remember that this is all being done for your own good and your own bank account, and know that it will work out well.
Putting up with these changes is like making deposits into your bank account. You might feel like you are missing opportunities to party with your money in the short term, but in the longer term you will be very happy.
Happy Economy: Consumers & Local Banks vs. The World
The US economy is strong, and it has been strong since a flood of consumer confidence swept in behind a new president who ushered in to a miserable bipartisan vacuum a refreshing cleansing confidence.
Added to that confidence was –and very much is– a renewed pride in America, in being American, and in American-made products. By mid-2017 a sense of 1950s community once lost and now found again birthed a strong antidote to Obama’s “new normal” of slow American decline.
And we can’t just blame Obama. Yes, Obama hates America and did everything he could to destroy our nation from inside and outside. But he was helped significantly by ye olde typical career Republicans who saw money to be made in America’s decline, just as there was money to be made in its growth. But growth is harder, and why work hard if you don’t really have to, they reasoned. Either way, growth or defeat, the big money Republicans bought their many pet congressmen to safeguard their investments and stood by watching as they hit big on a global economy shifting from their American home turf to China, India, the EU, and other undeserving recipients of America’s health.
In fact, America’s veins were opened up and flowing out. Our life force was draining away, and a host of hungry nations were perched around us, like vultures, picking away at the juicy scraps that fell from our Rust Belt homes and boarded up churches. Both Democrats and Republicans were pumping away, pushing our citizens’ energy force, our very national being, into the waiting mouths of so many other nations. And so our American economy had sputtered, dying
That is, until Trump inspired US consumers, and the local banks they work with and rely upon to take what are big steps in their quality of life.
And so like a thing alive, the American economy has powered forward like it has not moved in decades. And why would the economy not be alive? Our collective economy is us, of us, an organic part of us and an extension of us. America has a sense of good health again, and so it follows that our economy is healthy again, too. And it is getting stronger, despite transparent and treasonous attempts to destroy our economy by the Democrat Party and everyone else allied with them, including the governments and industries of China and Russia.
It is sickening that an entire American political party will do everything it can to badmouth, damage or destroy America’s economy simply in order to artificially malign a president they oppose. The cost to America is enormous! Then again, this is the same political party that advocates for illegal invaders over American citizens, for law-breakers and against law-followers, that claims Social Security will be tossed overboard by the other political party and then does everything in its power to give all of our Social Security money to their new chums, the illegal invaders.
So yes, I guess destroying America’s economy and hurting the American citizens standing in the way is to be expected from the Democrat Party and their communications arm, the Mainstream Media.
One discrete sector of the national economy that is changing is the timber industry. When four hundred million (400,000,000 !) middle-income Chinese aspire to own the nice kitchens and hardwood floors that define comfortable life in America, a huge sucking sound can be heard ’round the world as unquantifiable amounts of natural resources are pulled in to that huge nation. And when the Chinese economy began to falter in early 2018, even before the tariff battle, the Chinese domestic demand for American timber dried up. We then learned in late 2018 that the red oak, residual ash, and black walnut that had been bringing us huge export revenue but which were then beginning to stack up in East Coast log yards were not once destined for Chinese factories re-exporting their finished goods back to America. No, those logs and lumber were being used up domestically in China, as China grew its own middle-income population. A population that is now up against the ropes and cannot buy American hardwoods that make pretty kitchens and flooring.
Accordingly the American timber industry is going through a shake-up due to the way timber buyers invested and spent. The fact is that even as they close in China, new cabinet and flooring factories are opening up in several other Asian countries.
And so now on the battlefield it is the confident American consumer and her local bank officers standing strong against the evil political tide that seeks to reverse what has been accomplished, just begun really, since November 2016. It is happy healthy family and local community versus a global colossus hungry for endless cash, endless money, endless wealth, at any cost, and a domestic political party hungry for power at any cost, even the cost of individual liberties and American success.
In this fight I put my money on the American consumer, not just because I think she is a tough and hard working bunch, but because I am an American. I want her– you, me, us — to win this fight.
