We Have Nev­er Seen An Eco­nom­ic War Quite Like This

Don­ald Trump is not mess­ing around.  After try­ing to play nice dur­ing his first admin­is­tra­tion, Trump is mak­ing it very clear that he ful­ly intends to use the full pow­er of the pres­i­den­cy to shape eco­nom­ic pol­i­cy dur­ing his sec­ond admin­is­tra­tion.  In par­tic­u­lar, Trump is plan­ning to impose mas­sive tar­iffs on oth­er nations that attempt to stand in the way of the MAGA agen­da.  Last week, Trump threat­ened to impose 25 per­cent tar­iffs on all prod­ucts com­ing into the Unit­ed States from Mex­i­co and Cana­da if those two coun­tries do not work with him to secure our bor­ders…

Pres­i­dent-elect Don­ald Trump on Mon­day promised mas­sive hikes in tar­iffs on goods com­ing from Mex­i­co, Cana­da and Chi­na start­ing on the first day of his admin­is­tra­tion, a pol­i­cy that could sharply increase costs for Amer­i­can busi­ness­es and con­sumers.

The move, Trump said, will be in retal­i­a­tion for ille­gal immi­gra­tion and “crime and drugs” com­ing across the bor­der.

“On Jan­u­ary 20th, as one of my many first Exec­u­tive Orders, I will sign all nec­es­sary doc­u­ments to charge Mex­i­co and Cana­da a 25% Tar­iff on ALL prod­ucts com­ing into the Unit­ed States, and its ridicu­lous Open Bor­ders,” Trump post­ed on his Truth Social plat­form. “This Tar­iff will remain in effect until such time as Drugs, in par­tic­u­lar Fen­tanyl, and all Ille­gal Aliens stop this Inva­sion of our Coun­try!”

Need­less to say, this real­ly freaked out the lead­ers of Mex­i­co and Cana­da.

After a call with Trump, the pres­i­dent of Mex­i­co seemed opti­mistic that a trade war with the U.S. could be avoid­ed, but Cana­di­an Prime Min­is­ter Justin Trudeau just returned home from a per­son­al meet­ing with Trump emp­ty-hand­ed…

He has since held a call with Mex­i­can Pres­i­dent Clau­dia Shein­baum, who said Thurs­day she is con­fi­dent that a tar­iff war with the Unit­ed States can be avert­ed. Cana­di­an Prime Min­is­ter Justin Trudeau returned home Sat­ur­day after meet­ing Trump, with­out assur­ances the pres­i­dent-elect will back away from threat­ened tar­iffs on Cana­da.

Most peo­ple do not real­ize this, but Cana­da is actu­al­ly our num­ber one trade part­ner.

If the Cana­di­ans get hit with 25 per­cent tar­iffs, it will crash the Cana­di­an econ­o­my.

I just have to say some­thing about Justin Trudeau.

He has been mak­ing incred­i­bly bad deci­sions through­out his entire time in office, and he has real­ly run Cana­da into the ground.

There are a lot of real­ly bad lead­ers in the west­ern world right now, but he may be the absolute worst.

After threat­en­ing Mex­i­co and Cana­da, Trump decid­ed to threat­en the BRICS nations with 100 per­cent tar­iffs if they choose to move away from the U.S. dol­lar…

Pres­i­dent-elect Don­ald Trump threat­ened the BRIC group of emerg­ing-mar­ket nations on Sat­ur­day, warn­ing that he would impose 100% tar­iffs if they make any moves to under­mine the U.S. dol­lar.

Trump’s com­ment, made on his Truth Social plat­form, is in appar­ent response to efforts to chal­lenge or replace the U.S. dol­lar as the pri­ma­ry glob­al reserve cur­ren­cy.

The BRIC alliance, orig­i­nal­ly com­prised of Brazil, Rus­sia, India, and Chi­na, now includes five oth­er coun­tries: South Africa, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, and the Unit­ed Arab Emi­rates.

We have nev­er seen an eco­nom­ic threat of this mag­ni­tude in mod­ern his­to­ry.

In a post on Truth Social, Trump explained why he has decid­ed to make this move…

The idea that the BRICS Coun­tries are try­ing to move away from the Dol­lar while we stand by and watch is OVER. We require a com­mit­ment from these Coun­tries that they will nei­ther cre­ate a new BRICS Cur­ren­cy, nor back any oth­er Cur­ren­cy to replace the mighty U.S. Dol­lar or, they will face 100% Tar­iffs, and should expect to say good­bye to sell­ing into the won­der­ful U.S. Econ­o­my. They can go find anoth­er “suck­er!” There is no chance that the BRICS will replace the U.S. Dol­lar in Inter­na­tion­al Trade, and any Coun­try that tries should wave good­bye to Amer­i­ca.

I was stunned when I first saw this.

It is quite a bold move, but will it work?

We shall see.

With­out a doubt, Rus­sia and Chi­na would both like to avoid more eco­nom­ic tur­moil right now.

The Russ­ian finan­cial sys­tem is already deeply strug­gling as a result of a recent move by the Biden admin­is­tra­tion.  50 major Russ­ian banks were recent­ly hit with sanc­tions, and the ruble has been absolute­ly plum­met­ing…

The ruble has come off its lows from ear­li­er in the week after the cen­tral bank halt­ed all for­eign cur­ren­cy pur­chas­es for the remain­der of the year, but it remains battered—and resources for pre­vent­ing a fur­ther col­lapse are shrink­ing.

On Fri­day, the cen­tral bank set the offi­cial rate at about 108 to the U.S. dol­lar. While that’s improved from Wednesday’s rate of 114 on the spot mar­ket, that’s still means one ruble is worth less than a pen­ny.

The ruble has tum­bled 9% against the dol­lar since Nov. 21, when the U.S. sanc­tioned some 50 Russ­ian banks, includ­ing Gazprom­bank, which has emerged as a top linch­pin for Rus­sia in cur­ren­cy mar­kets. And for the year to date, the ruble has crashed about 20% against the green­back.

Mean­while, China’s econ­o­my is in a state of dis­ar­ray, and Chi­nese offi­cials are extreme­ly con­cerned about what will hap­pen once Trump is inau­gu­rat­ed.

For decades, Chi­na has been one of our largest trad­ing part­ners, and we are high­ly depen­dent on cheap Chi­nese goods at this point.

What would it do to the glob­al econ­o­my if our trad­ing rela­tion­ship with Chi­na sud­den­ly broke down?  As they pre­pare for a poten­tial inva­sion of Tai­wan, this is some­thing that the Chi­nese have already been study­ing…

Chi­na has been sup­port­ing Russia’s econ­o­my since the start of the Ukraine war by buy­ing its oil while sup­ply­ing it with every­thing from micro­elec­tron­ics to wash­ing machines.

Mean­while, Bei­jing has been get­ting its own strate­gic ben­e­fit: a real-world case study in how to cir­cum­vent West­ern sanc­tions.

An inter­a­gency group, set up by Chi­na in the months fol­low­ing the full-scale inva­sion, has stud­ied the impact of sanc­tions and pro­duced reports reg­u­lar­ly for the country’s lead­er­ship, accord­ing to peo­ple famil­iar with the mat­ter. The goal is to draw lessons about how to mit­i­gate them, par­tic­u­lar­ly in case a con­flict over Tai­wan prompts the U.S. and its allies to impose sim­i­lar penal­ties on Chi­na, the peo­ple said.

If the U.S. and Chi­na start slap­ping one anoth­er with tar­iffs and sanc­tions, the entire world will feel the pain.

I have a feel­ing that this sto­ry is not going to end well.

Unfor­tu­nate­ly, Europe is also deal­ing with severe eco­nom­ic stress at the moment.  The Ger­man econ­o­my, in par­tic­u­lar, is not doing well, and VW is poised to con­duct mass lay­offs for the first time ever…

Tens of thou­sands of Volk­swa­gen work­ers will par­tic­i­pate Mon­day in strikes at plants across Ger­many, labor union IG Met­all said, mark­ing the largest walk­outs at the carmaker’s domes­tic oper­a­tions since 2018.

The walk­outs, which are planned to last sev­er­al hours, fol­low weeks of col­lec­tive bar­gain­ing nego­ti­a­tions dur­ing which VW refused to rule out mass lay­offs and poten­tial plant clo­sures in its home mar­ket — dras­tic mea­sures the com­pa­ny says are nec­es­sary to prop up its for­tunes amid com­pe­ti­tion from Chi­na and weak­er Euro­pean demand.

The glob­al econ­o­my is more inter­con­nect­ed than it has ever been before, and every­where you look there are signs that glob­al eco­nom­ic activ­i­ty is slow­ing down.

2025 was already shap­ing up to be a real­ly bad year, and now a world­wide eco­nom­ic war threat­ens to great­ly accel­er­ate our prob­lems.

Here in the U.S., we des­per­ate­ly need the rest of the world to use our cur­ren­cy, because that allows us to enjoy a stan­dard of liv­ing that is far high­er than we actu­al­ly deserve.

We also des­per­ate­ly need the rest of the world to loan us gigan­tic moun­tains of mon­ey because oth­er­wise, we would not be able to pay our bills.

So it would be a tremen­dous mis­take to think that we have all the lever­age and that we don’t need the rest of the world.

Sad­ly, I think that very soon it will become abun­dant­ly clear just how depen­dent we real­ly are on a glob­al eco­nom­ic sys­tem that is rapid­ly start­ing to fail right in front of our eyes.

Cross-post­ed with Sons of Lib­er­ty Media

Relat­ed:

Turn your back on Big Tech oli­garchs and join the New Resis­tance NOW!  Face­book, Google, and oth­er mem­bers of the Sil­i­con Val­ley Axis of Evil are now doing every­thing they can to delib­er­ate­ly silence con­ser­v­a­tive con­tent online, so please be sure to check out our MeWe page here, check us out at ProAmer­i­ca Only and fol­low us at Par­ler, SocialCross, Speak Your Mind Here, and Gab.  You can also fol­low us on Truth Social here, Twit­ter at @co_firing_line, and at the social media site set up by mem­bers of Team Trump, GETTR.

Give a mid­dle fin­ger to unac­count­able glob­al cen­sors and big tech fas­cists.  Book­mark this site, sign up for our newslet­ter, and check back often.

While you’re at it, be sure to check out our friends at Whatfin­ger News, the Internet’s con­ser­v­a­tive front-page found­ed by ex-mil­i­tary!And be sure to check out our friends at Trend­ing Views: