Trump's Liberation Day Is About 'Re-Structuring The American Government' Per Officials, As His Reciprocal Tariffs Are Completely Fabricated And Nations Retaliate
This is a very clear controlled-demolition of the current system as we are bridged into the new one.
World markets were sent into chaos on Wednesday, April 2nd, on the back of President Donald Trump’s highly anticipated Liberation Day where the President announced a plethora of reciprocal tariffs on basically every nation in the world, prompting plenty of backlash in return. Trump's trade policies were already criticized before he was elected, and his wishy-washy implementation and threats of more up until this month were challenging enough to keep up with; but the White House’s latest round of tariffs has economists and political analysts around the world baffled.
These reciprocal tariffs would be added on top of other existing tariffs that Trump has already implemented, such as a 25% tariff on all auto imports.
Watch the speech below:
The White House officially published a number of charts listing other countries’ supposed tariffs levied on the U.S., followed by Trump’s reciprocal tariffs at a reduced rate, which Trump displayed during his speech.
Read the official text of the executive order here.
These tariffs, however, are not permanent and are subject to change. According to a White House factsheet,
“Using his International Emergency Economic Powers Act of 1977 (IEEPA) authority, President Trump will impose a 10% tariff on all countries,” which will take effect April 5th. “Trump will impose an individualized reciprocal higher tariff on the countries with which the United States has the largest trade deficits. All other countries will continue to be subject to the original 10% tariff baseline.” This will take effect April 9th.
Moreover, “These tariffs will remain in effect until such a time as President Trump determines that the threat posed by the trade deficit and underlying nonreciprocal treatment is satisfied, resolved, or mitigated.” Canada and Mexico are currently not affected per prior agreements made earlier this year.
The factsheet notes why these tariffs are being implemented:
In 2024, our trade deficit in goods exceeded $1.2 trillion—an unsustainable crisis ignored by prior leadership.
“Made in America” is not just a tagline—it’s an economic and national security priority of this Administration. The President’s reciprocal trade agenda means better-paying American jobs making beautiful American-made cars, appliances, and other goods.
These tariffs seek to address the injustices of global trade, re-shore manufacturing, and drive economic growth for the American people.
Reciprocal trade is America First trade because it increases our competitive edge, protects our sovereignty, and strengthens our national and economic security.
These tariffs adjust for the unfairness of ongoing international trade practices, balance our chronic goods trade deficit, provide an incentive for re-shoring production to the United States, and provide our foreign trading partners with an opportunity to rebalance their trade relationships with the United States.
The White House also published their “Golden Rules” for this “Golden Age:”
THE GOLDEN RULE FOR OUR GOLDEN AGE: Today’s action simply asks other countries to treat us like we treat them. It’s the Golden Rule for Our Golden Age.
Access to the American market is a privilege, not a right.
The United States will no longer put itself last on matters of international trade in exchange for empty promises.
Reciprocal tariffs are a big part of why Americans voted for President Trump—it was a cornerstone of his campaign from the start.
Everyone knew he’d push for them once he got back in office; it’s exactly what he promised, and it’s a key reason he won the election.
These tariffs are central to President Trump’s plan to reverse the economic damage left by President Biden and put America on a path to a new golden age.
This builds on his broader economic agenda of energy competitiveness, tax cuts, no tax on tips, no tax on Social Security benefits, and deregulation to boost American prosperity.
The Plan To Restructure The American Economy
Several ranking White House officials including Trump have spoken out on the back of the President’s executive order, indicating that this is part of a much larger plan to fundamentally change the U.S. economy.
Vice President JD Vance told Fox News,
“We cannot keep going down the Joe Biden globalist pathway where we have $2 trillion of peacetime debt and deficits. We have manufacturing disappearing. That is not working for Americans. We’ve got to take this country in a different direction.
“Yes, this is a big change. I’m not going to shy away from it, but we needed a big change.”
Moreover, Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins said in a press gaggle that the administration is “re-Structuring the American economy and government.”
“Our farmers and our ranchers, they understand that there may be a short time of uncertainty, but for the long haul as we restructure the American economy and the government and our private sector with the government playing a role in that, President Trump's vision of using tariffs.”
Interestingly enough, President Trump reshared a video on Truth Social that claims Trump is purposefully crashing the stock market in a bid to force the Federal Reserve to make emergency rate cuts, and which purports “he’s taking from the rich short term and handing it to the middle class through lower prices.” The video also contained false statements supposedly made by Warren Buffett, but were quickly debunked.
The stock market has taken a beating the last several days, coming off many months of hitting new record highs last year.
The Tariffs Make No Sense
This is not an understatement: the tariffs that Trump is mandating and the numbers the White House published are inaccurate and were never adequately explained upon their announcement.
published an excellent analysis of Trump’s latest trade policy, which you can either read or watch in Ben Norton’s video essay.
However, there are three main salient points worth highlighting that put things in perspective.
The Reciprocal Tariffs Are Not Real
When the White House and Trump presented the numbers other countries supposedly are tariffing the U.S. with, people really had no idea how they came to those numbers because China does not issue a blanket tariff of 67% on the U.S. nor 90% tariffs by Vietnam, for example.
The White House did not explain how it got these numbers upfront, however some financial journalists were able to crack the code.
Basically, the White House did not calculate tariff rates + non-tariff barriers as they purport they did, but rather took the trade deficit with that country and divided by U.S. imports from that country, and then the Trump administration slapped “reciprocal tariffs” at half that rate save for a few exceptions.
This prompted a response from White House Deputy Press Secretary Kush Desai, who replied to one of the journalists, writing, "No we literally calculated tariff and non tariff barriers.” He linked to a page on the Office of the US Trade Representative (USTR) website, which lists their formula that uses Greek letters, but the basic formula still essentially results in the trade deficit divided by those country’s exports to the U.S.; which was pointed out and explained in a community note on X underneath the post.
Ben Norton explains more in his video:
Others pointed out the inconsistency with these tariffs as well, such as Patrick Shyu (“TechLead”), a former Tech-Lead for Meta and Google, who also noted in a video report that these tariffs - using Vietnam as an example - are a ruse and will backfire since the U.S. imports a lot of goods from Vietnam.
Ripping Off Other Countries
Leading off from what TechLead explained - a common mantra the Trump administration has repeatedly said is ‘other countries are ripping us off’ and taking advantage of the U.S. However, it could be argued the inverse is the truth; that the U.S. takes advantage of the rest of the world with cheap labor in return for exporting dollars to other countries. This has been the setup for many decades with the dollar being the world reserve currency.
SEE:
An ill-understood paradox is at play: the U.S. essentially has to run annual debts and deficits in order to maintain its status as the global hegemon.
This is known as the “Triffin Dilemma.” Investopedia explains in a blog post:
In October 1959, a Yale professor sat in front of Congress' Joint Economic Committee and calmly announced that the Bretton Woods system was doomed.1 The dollar could not survive as the world's reserve currency without requiring the United States to run ever-growing deficits. This dismal scientist was Belgium-born Robert Triffin, and he was right. The Bretton Woods system collapsed in 1971, and today the dollar's role as the reserve currency has the United States running the largest current account deficit in the world.23
For much of the 20th century, the U.S. dollar was the currency of choice. Central banks and investors alike bought dollars to hold as foreign exchange reserves, and with good reason. The U.S. had a stable political climate, did not experience the ravages of world wars like Europe had, and had a steadily growing economy that was large enough to absorb shocks.
Becoming a reserve currency presents countries with a paradox. They want the "interest-free" loan generated by selling currency to foreign governments, and they need to be able to raise capital quickly because of high demand for reserve currency-denominated bonds. At the same time, they want to be able to use capital and monetary policy to ensure that domestic industries are competitive in the world market and to make sure that the domestic economy is healthy and not running large trade deficits. Unfortunately, both of these ideas—cheap sources of capital and positive trade balances—usually can't happen at the same time.
Norton also explained this in his report, noting the inverse of the U.S. current account deficit is the U.S. capital account surplus.
Simply put, what Trump is asking for cannot be accomplished unless the U.S. surrenders its world reserve currency status.
During Trump’s first tenure, though promising to lower the trade deficit, his administration increased it to record highs (at the time) by the time he left office in 2021. Though it was reduced some with China, it increased with a number of other countries in order to make up the difference and then some leading to even greater deficits.
Restructuring Tax Laws
The third point worth noting is a theory Norton has postulated, querying whether perhaps the Trump administration is doing this because they seek to shift the tax burden even further away from corporations and the rich-elite class and stick what remains of the middle class and lower income earners with an even greater burden - as Trump is set to lower corporate the tax rate again this summer down to around 15%.
While Norton is not dogmatic, it is a possibility, considering that Trump has touted ending income tax with tariffs in its place, even though tariffs alone would not be enough to make up for the loss in revenue. Trump claims that his policies would be to help reindustrialize the country, though they would not be able to achieve that goal, but would shift the burden onto lower-income families.
Norton explains:
Tariffs are essentially a tax on consumption, given the US imports so many consumer goods. Tariffs are also an extremely regressive tax. They put the burden of taxation on the poor and working class, who spend much more of their paychecks on cheap imported consumer goods, and have a much higher marginal propensity to consume.
Consumption by the rich is not significantly impacted by tariffs, and they have a low marginal propensity to consume. So tariffs are Trump's way of imposing an enormous regressive tax, moving the burden of taxation off of capital and onto labor.
The US income tax system is already quite regressive in practice. On paper, it is supposedly progressive, but there are many loopholes for wealthy elites, and thanks to Trump's tax cuts on the rich during his first administration, as of 2018, billionaire families in the US payed a lower tax rate than the bottom half of poor and working-class Americans.
Tariffs will be even more regressive. The Budget Lab at Yale University published an analysis in response to Trump's April 2 "Liberation Day" tariffs estimating: "The price level from all 2025 tariffs rises by 2.3% in the short-run, the equivalent of an average per household consumer loss of $3,800 in 2024$. Annual losses for households at the bottom of the income distribution are $1,700".
Is this in part what Sec. Rollins was referring to when she mentioned “restructur[ing] the American economy and the government and our private sector?”
Retaliation
Nations around the world had already signaled they were preparing retaliatory measures ahead of Trump’s announcement, and after the White House revealed countries threatened and announced their own legitimate reciprocal tariffs, namely that of China which mocked the U.S. with its own 34% tariffs on the U.S. The tariffs would go into effect on April 10th.
South China Morning Post reported: As part of the retaliatory measures, Beijing has also put controls on some Chinese exports to 16 American companies and suspended the eligibility of six US-linked companies to export to China. Another 11 US companies, including US drone manufacturer Skydio, were put on the list of unreliable entities. In addition, China will impose more restrictions on the exports of some rare earth minerals.
Last month, China issued a very pointed threat and said they would not be intimidated by the U.S. and is prepared to fight any war they wish to start. Chinese spokesperson for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs Lin Jian said in part:
“Let me reiterate that intimidation does not scare us. Bullying does not work on us. Pressuring, coercion or threats are not the right way of dealing with China. Anyone using maximum pressure on China is picking the wrong guy and miscalculating. If the U.S. truly wants to solve the fentanyl issue, then the right thing to do is to consult with China on the basis of equality, mutual respect and mutual benefit to address each other’s concerns.
“If the U.S. has other agenda in mind and if war is what the U.S. wants, be it a tariff war, a trade war or any other type of war, we’re ready to fight till the end. We urge the U.S. to stop being domineering and return to the right track of dialogue and cooperation at an early date.”
AUTHOR COMMENTARY
Proverbs 28:11 The rich man is wise in his own conceit; but the poor that hath understanding searcheth him out.
You may recall that I have said the collapse of this country, its self-deprecating policies, are being deployed because it is a controlled-demolition of the current framework; and after seeing this tariff plan I believe it is undeniable that this is in fact a controlled-demolition: they are trying to destroy what remains of the economy.
Proverbs 30:14 There is a generation, whose teeth are as swords, and their jaw teeth as knives, to devour the poor from off the earth, and the needy from among men.
We are that generation. The last drops of blood are being squeezed from the turnip as we are now in what might be classified as “late-stage capitalism,” and now that the U.S. hegemony and empire is coming to an end, the global world order is being restructured, while the rich elites are getting out before they rug pull the economy and let it fully implode.
You may also recall that last year and in February I warned that Trump would be in place because he would have to sell the collapse with a populist/libertarian spin. He can’t say that we are about to implode, no, he has to say that we are “winning” and “defeating the globalists” by looking out for the poor, hard-working Americans. I wrote in February about Larry Ellison’s dystopian statements in February:
As I alluded to in my detailed essay on tokenization last year, people such as Trump, Musk, Javier Millei, and a number of so-called “patriotic” politicians in Europe are being propped up right now to mislead the masses. The American empire, the European Union, the Western hegemon, are collapsing and there is nothing that can be done to stop it. So, as the rich fat cats jump ship and get out before the Titanic sinks, the wealth and power needs to be restructured. But no one wants to hear that their empire is dead and people’s way of living is about to get very difficult more than it already is; so, people like Trump and these other guys are being sent down from “human resources” (metaphorically speaking) to deliver the “bad news,” but they have such a great way of spinning it that they make you think it’s a great opportunity and there is a silver lining. That’s why these leaders are selling this collapse and consolidation with a libertarian, reductionist, patriotic and populist spin.
Musk himself even said it at the World Government Summit that the U.S. is becoming more isolated on purpose. World Affairs in Context reported earlier this month on a surprise admission from warhawk U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, actually admitting that the U.S. has lost its role as the preeminent power in a unipolar world. “It’s not normal for the world to simply have a unipolar power, that was an anomaly, that was a product of the end of the Cold War,'“ he said. “But eventually you’re going to return back to having a multipolar world. We face that now with China, and to some extent Russia.”
The empire is over, the U.S. is no longer a global superpower, but now a regional one. That’s why Trump is purposefully enacting policies designed to isolate us, while at the same time trying to intimidate Canada and Mexico, wanting to seize Greenland and the Panama Canal. But I digress.
Now you are clearly seeing what I was warned was transpiring. Sure, a number of these tariffs might be rescinded very soon in typical Trump fashion, but who wants to do business when this is the mentality? And we can be assured that companies are going to raise their prices and keep them there and use the excuse of tariffs.
I realize there are a lot of imbeciles in government, we all know that, but I think these policies are too stupid to be an accident: I think this is a very cunning plan to destroy the U.S. from within. And yet we are told how we’re all going to be rich. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Proverbs 22:7 The rich ruleth over the poor, and the borrower is servant to the lender. [16] He that oppresseth the poor to increase his riches, and he that giveth to the rich, shall surely come to want.
Proverbs 28:20 A faithful man shall abound with blessings: but he that maketh haste to be rich shall not be innocent. [22] He that hasteth to be rich hath an evil eye, and considereth not that poverty shall come upon him.
‘But it’s better than Biden,’ I am told by those who are forced to cope. I am not so sure about that one. As far as I am concerned they are just puppets told what to do. These are not “Trump’s tariffs,” these are his marching orders, and his job is to sell them to the masses. The only difference at this point between Biden and Trump is one is cognizant and the other is senile.
The reality is that these policies are inflationary, and are by design. I have referenced this on numerous occasions and will do so again now so people understand what is at hand - in 2019 BlackRock published a document explaining that they want inflation (“helicopter money”) as their “explicit” goal as a means of inflating our way out of fiat currency and into digital programmable money, CBDCs, stablecoins and tokenization of all assets. THAT is what is happening right now; and combined with the calls to lower interest rates to 0% and cut the corporate tax rate further and run deeper deficits, it will cause more inflation so the people can be forced into the new system.
In the end, the U.S. empire is over; and it is the Lord who is orchestrating this shift.
Job 12:19 He leadeth princes away spoiled, and overthroweth the mighty. [21] He poureth contempt upon princes, and weakeneth the strength of the mighty. [23] He increaseth the nations, and destroyeth them: he enlargeth the nations, and straiteneth them again. [24] He taketh away the heart of the chief of the people of the earth, and causeth them to wander in a wilderness where there is no way. [25] They grope in the dark without light, and he maketh them to stagger like a drunken man.
[7] Who goeth a warfare any time at his own charges? who planteth a vineyard, and eateth not of the fruit thereof? or who feedeth a flock, and eateth not of the milk of the flock? [8] Say I these things as a man? or saith not the law the same also? [9] For it is written in the law of Moses, Thou shalt not muzzle the mouth of the ox that treadeth out the corn. Doth God take care for oxen? [10] Or saith he it altogether for our sakes? For our sakes, no doubt, this is written: that he that ploweth should plow in hope; and that he that thresheth in hope should be partaker of his hope. (1 Corinthians 9:7-10).
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To bring in their NW(D)O their has to be a global economic collapse.
This country is soon to fall and we will go up.
Trump is not The Lord Jesus Christ. Only Christ can solve the world's problems keep looking UP!
Your ability to pick facts that back up your leftist lies are pretty good. If your readers want the truth they should look up Victor Davis Hanson. Now pull up your panties and let the adults work on the mess left by wackos from the govern by the globalist