Response to the Dragon Bear

The tariffs are part of Trump’s geopolitical recalibration in light of the rise of the Dragon Bear. These fighting the realignment are stuck on the pre Covid, pre Ulraine, pre Dragon Bear world that no longer exists. The global system has changed dramatically.

Trump is trying to do two things. First, he is restoring power to the Executive Branch so that the USA is capable of fighting a war with the Dragon Bear. He is also trying to strategically recalibrate manufacturing, supply chains, finance, alliances, energy, and the military in light of the new world paradigm.

The United States is re engineering its global presence. Everything possible is being pulled back into the US orbit in light of the failure of globalism’s central concept that trading partners do not go to war with each other. Ukraine proved the core concept of globalism is false.

Canada and Mexico are mostly integrated into the US sphere, although Canada continues to assert that they are part of Europe and not North America for domestic narrative management. The Monroe Doctrine is being reasserted over South America, even though Brazil has chosen to align with China at the moment. Near shoring is accelerating as part of all the talk about supply chain challenges post Covid. Major capital is flowing into strategic industries within the USA. Government is being trimmed to prevent overhead from strangling the very life out of the American economy.

The military is expanding into the Arctic and into the Indo Pacific with a force buildup in Diego Garcia and the reactivation of former America military bases in the Solomon Islands. America is preparing for the struggles of the 21^st Century.

China and Russia are pursuing a strategic alignment that is global in scale and will determine the economic rules and legal operating system of the planet for the rest of the century if the USA does not stand up. Europe is practically useless in this as they tried to base their economy on Russian energy, Chinese manufacturing and American defense. If Europe does not awaken to the threat of the Dragon Bear, and not just the threat of Russia in Ukraine, then they might not have economic self-determination later this century.

China and Russia are cooperating across all the key domains of energy, commodities, manufacturing, transportation, technology, space, militaries, finance, economics,and diplomacy. They are building a parallel system to bypass and replace the Western world, and they have timed their advances to coincide with our debt service problems.

The war in Ukraine started out as a blitz that would reassert Russia as a great power, using the military tactics and doctrines from the 20^th Century. Russia captured territories in Ukraine by using massive artillery barrages to clear land, and then laid down vast minefields to keep the land. Western weapons such as ATACMS missiles and artillery were unable to stop the progression of Russian artillery barrages. However, the introduction of cheap drones of all sorts neutralized those big Russian guns and changed the face of warfare forever.

The United States took note, and has been replacing old-school senior military leaders and redeploying funding in light of this new world of robotic warriors. NATO appears to be more about supporting European industrial policy than winning wars, and the United States is hinting at withdrawing from NATO because of its obsolescence.

China is watching the war to determine how the West will respond to an invasion of Taiwan. So far, Europe’s unwillingness to meaningfully increase economic resources to stop Russia continue to reassure China that Taiwan will not be meaningfully defended by Europe.

The central point is that the Ukraine War is meant to disrupt the West, and it has largely been successful at exposing problems within the Western Alliance. Trump’s tariffs are also meant to be disruptive and to swing the world order back from the Dragon Bear to the USA.

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Tariffs!

President Trump announced Liberation Day on April 2 when he unveiled the new schedule of tariffs. Countries not listed face a 10% tariff, which is the minimum rate, with the exception of the 0% tariff on Argentine goods and services.

Argentina’s president, Javier Gerardo Milei, was the first leader to respond by dropping all tariffs on US goods, and services imported to Argentina.

China increased reciprocal tariffs on the USA by 35%, and the EU seems to have lost  its collective mind.

Seven trillion dollars of new investment has been announced in the USA over the past six weeks.

Ontario, Canada has blinked and is willing to drop their 168% tariff on US eggs, 285% tariff on chicken, 246% tariff on cheese, and 300% tariff on butter, but Ottawa has not yielded.

In fact, Ontario Premier Doug Ford says that they are willing to drop all tariffs against the USA if President Trump will do the same.

Stay tuned…

The UK, through its vast and powerful propaganda organs is doing everything possibly to terrify Americans that the  end is here, the world is over, and everyone should liquidate their 401Ks as quickly as possible. The Brits and their national media outlets are using the Covid script.

As of today, the UK propaganda has shifted from the “Tariffs are a Tax and everything will be more expensive” narrative of Wednesday and Thursday, to the rhetoric of “what kind of friend is the US?” This will likely be the propaganda narrative until Monday. The problem here, is that the UK has the lowest tariff rate applied at 10%, and they have been abusing the USA for decades. We have been great friends to them through world wars and even through today while they have hosed us with tariffs and regulations. British Intelligence clearly took the lead during the 2020 election theft, and continues to influence much of the global anti-Americanism.

The anti tariff propaganda stampede is just not working with the American middle class, which is beginning to awaken to the reality that the UK has been an interest, but not a friend, for 250 years. Americans too young to have experienced the Beatles, or the Rolling Stones view the UK as a collection of Islamic countries with a hostile, censorship culture.

As of writing, the Dow is down about 7% over the week, but the American jobs reports are excellent.

Warren Buffett weighed in, giving Trump high marks for the tariffs because money will be forced to move from the stock markets, a lot of money, and into Treasuries. This will force the Fed to slash interest rates in May and refinance $9 Trillion of US debt at a lower interest rate. The dollar’s value will decline and mortgage rates should follow.

So far, the 10-year Treasury dropped to 4.07% from 4.236%, a clear sign that the bond market believes that we are headed for a slowdown if not a recession. This kind of collapse is extraordinary, but if Trump’s base continues to stand with him, the Fed will have a lot of freedom in May and prevent the nation from falling fully into foreign hands during the 2026 bond refinancing.

The everything bubble is bursting. Brave decisions are an American thing.

Commodity prices, energy and food, are responding to the tariffs by declining (as of today) and will lower the official inflation rate.

With 94% of stocks owned by 4% of Americans, Trump is boosting the middle class while borrowing from the shareholding class.

Democrats and Charles Koch’s RINOs (Murkowski, Paul, Collins and McConnell) are attempting to stop the tariffs in the Senate while others are moving in the House. But as of today, House members are hesitant to move against Trump and the middle class, and cannot generate a large enough majority to overcome Trump’s veto of anti tariff legislation.

The truth is, America stands behind Trump and not the GOP right now. Traditional Republican conservatism is all but dead. The GOP joined forces with the Democrats and tried to break Trump. They put him on the ropes, they made him angry, and he found a way to not only win, but to destroy the lifeblood of the permanent uniparty.

After four years of deliberate self-sabotage and the attempted demographic replacement of the middle class in pursuit of permanent one-party rule, the USA was headed straight into the ground with every measure. Bush 41’s NAFTA, approved under Clinton, built a mighty China by selling out America’s productive base. We became dependent on debt to keep the markets moving higher.

Re-shoring is happening, labor markets will tighten, America will regain its national dignity, and some of its former independence. Tomorrow’s factory will not be your dad’s factory, and the labor constraints in the USA will force products to be redesigned for ease of production.

We have faced the urgent need to industrialize in the past by, for example, producing 49,234 Sherman Tanks instead of a lesser number of something better, because of skilled labor constraints. This week’s Liberation Day is a spiritual shift for America and the opening of a new paradigm. America is done being dragged down to the lowest common denominator and sacrificed to the globalist agenda by interests in the London Financial District and Davos, Switzerland.

My advice is simple. Don’t surrender to fear, don’t surrender to the greatest propaganda effort since Covid, don’t cash out, don’t sell your stocks at the bottom. Don’t go all crazy and panic over your 401k. Take a deep breath and enjoy the ride.

The smart money knows that America is worth investing in.

And look, I am an industrialist at heart. I spent my entire adult life fighting to save domestic industry against the onslaught of hostile globalists. There are thousands out there like me, maybe hundreds of thousands, that are standing before the dawn of the first opportunity in our lives to roll up our sleeves, put everything on Black 22, and rebuild the American industrial base. I am all in. We are going to build a bunch of modern factories using the most modern of technologies. I am not going to let some effeminate trust fund kid on the national news tell me that I cannot because he once heard of the Smoot-Hawley Act. Screw the MSM. We have a nation to save.

So far, $1.7 Trillion in market valuation has been lost. Apple led declines among the Magnificent Seven stocks with roughly $275 Billion in market value wiped out. The group, which includes Y\Tesla, Microsoft, Nvidia, Alphabet, Amazon, and Meta was responsible for much of the US Market gain over the past two years.

Warren Buffet once said that you can tell who has been skinny-dipping when the tide goes out.

The loss in tech valuation is tied to the Asian manufacturing costs. Yet today, the Bureau of Labor Statistics announced a stronger than expected 228,000 jobs gain in March, a significant increase over February’s gain of 117,000. The USA has now added jobs for 51 months in a row, making this the second-longest expansion in history.

There will be some brand confusion in the car industry. For years, car companies have been advertising, implying, and outright telling us that they are American manufacturers, and they contribute to the national wealth.

Building trucks in Mexico but telling the buyers that you are American to the core and support the work of truck owners in middle America will become much harder with the tariffs. Nobody that I know brags about their truck being made in Mexico. The inconsistency between branding and the tariff burden will be a problem. People hate fake. Tariffs will be pulling back many branding lies.

The world is undergoing a major pivot, and there is much uncertainty. America’s political enemies within and without are not on board with the program. This is a shame for them. The great center of mass within the country is standing firmly with the president.

Mike Ryan is a chemical engineering consultant to heavy industry.