The US president has acknowledged that his “economic revolution” will require sacrifices.
US President Donald Trump has warned Americans they could face hardships before his “liberation day” tariffs restore the country’s economic power.
Trump’s sweeping tariffs on the majority of US trading partners came into effect on Thursday, causing the US stock market to suffer its worst crash since the COVID-19 pandemic. China has reacted by imposing a 34% levy on American goods, with other countries also promising retaliation.
In a post on his Truth Social platform on Saturday, the US president told the American public to “hang tough” in anticipation of the international community’s response to his economic policies.
“It won’t be easy, but the end result will be historic,” Trump insisted.
The tariffs represent “an economic revolution, and we will win… we will make America great again,” he added.
“China has been hit much harder than the US, not even close. They, and many other nations, have treated us unsustainably badly. We have been the dumb and helpless ‘whipping post,’ but not any longer,” Trump wrote, explaining his decision.
The US president insisted that his administration is “bringing back jobs and businesses like never before. Already, more than five trillion dollars of investment, and rising fast.”
Tens of thousands of left-wing activists took to the streets across the US on Saturday to decry the tariffs and other policies of the Trump administration. The organizers of the “Hands Off!” protests claimed that more than 1,400 rallies were held outside state capitols, federal buildings, city halls and parks.
On Friday, a top senator in the Republican Party, Ted Cruz, warned that the import taxes could result in a global trade war that “would destroy jobs here at home, and do real damage to the US economy.”
If the tariffs stay in place over a long term and push America into “a bad recession,” the midterm elections in “2026 in all likelihood, politically, would be a bloodbath” for the Republicans, he cautioned.
JPMorgan raised its estimate of the possibility of a global recession from 40% to 60% in the wake of Trump’s announcement of tariffs. “The effect of this tax hike is likely to be magnified – through retaliation, a slide in US business sentiment, and supply chain disruptions,” its chief economist Bruce Kasman said.
https://youtu.be/oDfOVpHGfg4?feature=shared
Scott Ritter/ Larry Johnson on Iran
That’s a really useful analysis by Scott Ritter but the whole lot is predicated on the assumption that Iran is only weeks away from developing nuclear weapons. Bombing Iran is most probably why the USA has rushed their second carrier strike group into the area and deployed most of their multibillion-dollar stealth bombers to Diego Garcia. Scott Ritter’s logic for the USA’s “strategic air campaign” against Iran is to remove Iran’s nuclear threat against Israel – and the logic is sound only if Iran has not got nukes yet.
But what if Scott’s wrong? What if Iran has already got functioning nukes? And what if they’ve already been tested underground? Such underground testing could have caused these seismic readings a few weeks ago – https://www.iranintl.com/en/202503148271
Such underground testing would also leave clear evidence for inspectors to confirm so there would be no turning back from this course.
If you look at their covid response in developing the original orthodox vaccines Soberana and Soberana-2, the Iranians are perfectionists and would most probably want to re-test. Probably underground before perfecting it.
The easiest way to prevent war would be for the Iranians to conduct an atmospheric nuclear test above ground which then leaves the world with no doubt that they have nukes. This would prevent anyone (who is sane) from attacking Iran.
Or if they choose to be really evil, the Iranians could keep it a big secret, then unleash their secret nukes on Israel in retaliation against a dumb-yank bombing campaign targeting Iran. In exactly the same way that evil people unleashed nukes on Hiroshima & Nagasaki in 1945 before the Japanese were aware of the existence of such nukes.
The outcome of this for the average US citizen, depends on whether there are tax cuts, commensurate with these tariffs. If memory serves the US has had income tax, more or less, in its current form since 1915. Tariffs originally, took their place, to a good measure. If this does not happen, this is grossly unfair and will no doubt, impose severe hardships on the average US citizen.
Start making more holes in those belts folks you’re gonna need’em.
Many are buying backyard chickens and fishing gear.
Making a bomb is one thing; being able to deliver it is a completely different story, without the missile being intercepted and destroyed.
Iran doesn’t appear to have that capability yet.