Basically, all of the mainstream media, and most of the alternative media, and even the conspiracy media, is getting the whole tariff war story completely wrong, and doing so intentionally.
There is nothing stupid about what the Trump administration is doing and the tariff wars are not the result of the miscalculations of Peter Navarro or Scott Bessent.
The imposition of these tariffs will cause damage to the economies off all nations of the world. It is best seen as an effort by a handful of elites in the US, and globally, to destroy the entire global trade system, and with it the global economy. They will do so because they think they, a tiny handful of families, will benefit.
They start this war smaller nations like Vietnam that lack economic scale and technological sophistication, and whose government officials can be easily bribed and intimidated. They intend to destroy these nations completely and make them into virtual slave states.
The only real solution will not be discussed by any of the media which is controlled by the bankers and private equity at some level. The solution is to start growing all food at home, very locally, generated electricity from local windmills and water mills, move to a society that values frugality and durability, making things locally that last for a hundred years, tossing out fashion and consumption culture, and rejecting the false and bankrupt ideology of consumption and growth. That means throwing the false science of economics in the ash bin of history. It also means creating societies that do not assume that technology is the solution to social problems, or even a necessity for advancement of civilization.
But it will require an immense amount of suffering before people start to accept that solution. And that is what we will get.
The elites, even in the nations now being reduced to poverty, cannot take any steps that suggest that global trade is not necessary, that food should be produced locally, that manufacturing should be controlled by local cooperatives and never handed over to multinational corporations—or that many technologies, from AI to 5G, are dangerous, destructive for the human mind, and create a passive, decadent and foolish population incapable independence.
If you want to understand what the tariffs are really about, just remember what happened during the Covid reign of terror. Airlines, airports, hotels, restaurants, and much of the economy for the largest nations were shut down for social distancing and lockdowns—and shut down for years. That meant hundreds of billions in losses for Fortune 500 companies who have lobbyists and operatives at the highest levels in all the major governments. It meant billions of losses for very rich people to support a bogus pandemic.
How could those big players, including people with hundreds of millions, even billions, in assets, be forced to go along with an obvious fraud that cost them that much money for so long?
The question is not easy to answer, but I think we know the contours. The radical concentration of wealth over the last 15 years, around the world, had created an environment in which we have a virtual slave society (granted many do not know they are slaves yet), and in which a tiny handful of multi-billionaires (who control indirectly trillions in assets) run the entire show. Those guys look at the CEOs at Fortune 500 companies as little cockroaches. They launched the Covid reign of terror to destroy all the little guys, including the “little” pesky multinational corporations that get in their way.
As far as they are concerned, everyone can buy from Amazon and Wal-Mart. The rest can go to hell.
Those super-rich own money. That is not to say they own a lot of money, but rather that they own the entire global system through which formal signifiers of value are created. So losing money is not a big concern for them.
This time too, just like under the Covid regime, they could not care less if Fortune 500 companies go bankrupt, or if even people with tens of millions in assets are crushed. This new economy is what I describe in my essay “the terrarium economy.” As far as this handful of super-rich families are concerned, destroying the entire global economy is a great idea.
They may be wrong, of course, but they will be wrong only if those who oppose them are able to organize a systematic resistance that is brave and disciplined and that takes them on, not the puppets like Trump and Musk that they wind up and send out as decoys. Such a real resistance must seize control of the economic system itself on a global scale.
These billionaires are doling out money to all the alternative and conspiracy theorists to make sure none of them actually start organizing people into highly trained and disciplined groups, and that no one really grasps what the real plan is. The alternative and conspiracy media has degenerated into big stupid distraction these days.
tarrif.... economic collapse is coming.
2025.... global reset.
Yet, how to organize with people who absolutely reject what you/I/we say about this subject???
Thanks Emanuel, nonetheless.