They All Wanted Tariffs

John Stoehr at the Editorial Board newsletter posits that

“It could be that the last US election was about money. The economy was booming. Inflation was down. Wages were up. Unemployment had rarely been lower. Joe Biden really did grow the economy from the bottom up and the middle out. And in spite of stubbornly high costs, most everyone prospered.
But that may have been the problem...
It’s not that Trump voters were mad at Biden, because he didn’t do enough about inflation. I think they were mad at him, because he did more than any president to expand the economic pie to include all those who are usually left behind,especially Black people.

To Trump voters who believe they are the real America, and that the real America has been “looted, pillaged, raped and plundered,” it’s likely that boomtimes mean something else – evidence they were right.
Trump voters are unlikely to be won over. They want economic policies for them, not everyone. And if tariffs end up hurting them, they can take comfort in knowing Black (and brown) people are hurting more.
Sad as it is, the fact remains that when Black Americans are doing well for themselves, too many white people in this country start feeling like something is wrong, something is being taken from them, someone somewhere is cheating them, even when they are in fact thriving. It’s white-power’s zero-sum. If America includes “them,” it excludes “us.”
Yes, these tariffs are the biggest tax increase of our lifetimes.
But that’s what they wanted.
He promised. He delivered. No mystery.“
The full article is here at the Editorial Board. It makes interesting reading

Stoehr however, does not discuss why this lunatic leader and his henchmen, have seen fit to simply please his base, tank the largest economy in the world and take American allies down too.
That some billionaires will benefit greatly is not in doubt, but at what cost? Russia evidently, has been given special friend status and China are surely rubbing hands with glee, even if the tariffs are higher for them than anyone else. They will take the pain as they play the long game anyway. Knock the US off it’s lofty perch.

Some theorise that it is mobster tactics, forcing big business to kowtow and pledge their loyalty, or else.
Others are saying it’s a method of forcing countries to come to his table and beg to trade in return for acquiescing to his demands. This in itself is a problem, because citizens are demanding that their goverments stand up to the bullying tactics.
Suggestions that Putin is directing operations and will take down Western economies are also rife, which given events as they are unfolding looks very plausible. They have Agent Orange in the highest office in the land, what a triumph that must be.

Mainstream media has only glossed over the Heritage Foundation’s “Project 2025” manifesto that is supposedly at the heart of this. There have been no denials they are not involved.  Few people outside the US even know what this is, rather like Stalins “Foundation of Leninism”. Have you heard of either? In Stalins case it was the basis for the USSR for the 70 years that it survived. In this instance it’s a White supremacist manifesto that has been very carefully choreographed (for lack of a better word) to make Americans subservient, all the while believing they are ‘winning’ while putting power into the hands of a chosen few. Destroy it all, then as you rebuild it everyone cheers about what a Great job you’re doing. Risky tactic and the MAGA types lap it all up as John Stoehr succintly points out above. The real world calls it Fascism.

Information now being released indicates, that the criteria for who is hammered with tariffs (including an island populated only by seals and penguins) was AI generated, by the Dunning-Krueger syndrome morons in my last rant. As expected, they simply made up the AI models with absolutely no real data to draw from. Just point and shoot.

At the end of the day it all boils down to this… no one knows what the hell is going on, but at this rate it will all likely end with a big bang.

Last Updated on April 5, 2025