You Can't Make This Stuff Up
You Can’t Make This Stuff Up
Junious Ricardo Stanton
The Trump administration has
announced it is appropriating twelve billion dollars to provide aid to the US
agricultural industry as a means to offset their loss of foreign sales. While
this is good news to US agribusiness it obfuscates the real reasons they are
suffering, Trump’s bonehead tariffs and trade policies.
Trump imposed unilateral and
universal tariffs on numerous countries around the world to Make America
Great Again, to restore American manufacturing and generate investment in
America. Sounds great and well-intended, the problem is that is not the main
purpose of tariffs. Tariffs are a form of protectionism a nation uses to fend
off foreign competition or predation to protect its own markets and economic
infrastructure. The problem is the US
doesn’t have any manufacturing industries to protect; the economic shot callers
and corporate policy makers in cahoots with the government, offshored
manufacturing and deindustrialized America decades ago! The US has no steel
industry to speak of yet Trump imposes tariffs on foreign steel.
Trump’s currency and trade wars
which his tariffs are an integral component are not good for the American
economy. His demands the central bank lower interest rates is not a solution to
inflation; it will devalue the US dollar even more and disincentivize savings
cut interest rates on pensions and retirement accounts! His tariffs are raising
money but they are also raising the costs of the goods being imported into the
country, a double whammy on ordinary Americans.
Back to the bail out of the
agricultural industry and I use that term rather than the word farmers because
in America today family farms, small mom and pop farms are in rapid decline,
farming for the most part is being done by huge agribusinesses. So Trump’s bone
headed trade war with China for example is hurting small farmers as well as the
giant agribusinesses.
China will not be bullied by Trump
or the West. Those days are long gone. So in order to feed their people China
like any consumer who feels disadvantaged by one provider shopped elsewhere for
their soybeans and is now buying from Brazil and Argentina. Trump’s tariff
policies have backfired like a Wylie E. Coyote Acme rocket, in September of
2025 China stopped buying US soybeans altogether! Now Trump is frantically
attempting to reconcile with China and renegotiate tariff terms. China is being polite and cordial but is
still not purchasing US goods. This is
why Trump is paying the agribusinesses and farmers twelve billion dollars, to
try to offset their huge losses.
The really sad part is this is not
the first time Trump’s policies have blown up in his face. The exact same thing
happened during his first administration his bluster and bombast irritated
China and they went to Argentina for soybeans forcing Trump to subsidize US
agribusiness for their losses and keep a key political base and constituency on
his side.
They say insanity is doing the same
things over and over again expecting different results. By this reckoning Trump
is insane! His tariffs are not resulting in manufacturing returning to the US.
The deindustrialization of America is not going to be reversed, not by Trump or
anyone else! That train left the station long ago.
Trump’s bluster and bombast should
be wearing thin by now but Trump’s groupies and the MAGAites are so gullible
they keep falling for his okey-doke.
Trump is clickbait for the media on both sides of the political divide
so they keep it coming. Plus Trump has
his own social media platform which makes the bluster and bombast even worse.
On the other hand, the alternatives
on either side of the political spectrum do not bode well for America
either. Despite the funds Trump’s
tariffs are bringing in, he is exacerbating the government’s debt, contrary to
DOGE’s bogus claims. During the first eleven months of Trump’s second term US
government debt increased 1.78 trillion dollars! Needless to say, this is
unsustainable.
Factoring in all of this, if we are
sane and that’s a big “if” given the brain fog and mental illness this nation
is experiencing; we have to conclude we are living in a Bizzaro World, the
Twilight Zone or an Orwellian nightmare where truth is falsehood, lies are held
sacrosanct, war is peace and the crew is rearranging the deck chairs on a
doomed ship of state. You can’t make this stuff up.
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posted by Junious Ricardo Stanton @ 9:07 AM
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