Make Small Town America Great Again

Sponsored by: Patriot Home Funding

The media, DC politicians, and academia have sold the public on a myopic definition of a tariff, that it is solely a tax. Technically that is correct, but a better definition is that a tariff is an entry fee, when a government charges another government or entity a fee to enter their market. It is no different than paying to get into a theater, a concert, or ball game. Nations charge other nations a fee to access their markets- or if you're China, an obscene fee to enter their market and to give them the privilege of stealing your patented technologies and processes.

Nations have been charging the US draconian fees to access their markets with our goods, while we have been charging little to no fees to access their markets, and also propping their economies up with foreign monetary and military aid, or in the case of the European Union and NATO, paying their defense costs as well. 

To put it another way, other nations have been dumping their heavily subsidized goods on us at below market prices and have decimated our middle class and manufacturing base. Instead of exporting freedom and democracy to other nations, we have imported communism, socialist Marxist ideology, and infrastructure into our country. How is that one way traffic of wealth and cultural damage a good deal or in our best interest?

60 years ago, China was a huge third world nation under communist rule and America was a free, wealthy, and powerful nation with a national debt of $317 billion, a debt to GDP ratio of 43%, a thriving middle class, and small-town America was the backbone of society and the envy of the world.

Now, China has the second largest economy in the world, has the largest manufacturing economy in the world producing 29% of all global manufacturing, and is still a communist nation with a 100-year plan for world dominance. 

America now has an almost $36 trillion national debt, a 122% debt to GDP ratio, has a government running a $2 trillion annual deficit in peace time (!),  a massive and growing wealth gap between the upper class and the rest of the classes, a shrinking middle class, and small town America has been destroyed by our trade policies and transfer of wealth from the  lower and middle classes to the upper class. We transitioned from a manufacturing and services powerhouse to a service economy whose success is now mostly fiscally and government driven.

See the problem? Are you okay with it?  Two big things have been put into motion with Trump's tariffs. 

First, China. Trump just made the total of tariffs and fees on China about 54%. China can sustain that for a few months but even in the intermediate term, let alone long term, this is a massive problem for them. The tariffs will eventually deepen China's real estate crisis, cause turmoil in their capital markets, slow the growth of their military, and severely impact their belt and road initiatives, as well as their meddling in transportation infrastructure worldwide- like the Panama Canal. All of that is in America's interest. 

It is also in our strategic interest as a nation to decouple from China as it relates to medicine, technology, and materials that carry national security implications like steel. In fact, it is a good idea to decouple from China anyway. They are our biggest enemy and strategic threat and we shouldn't be financing our demise. It is stupid.

Second, Vietnam, India, South Korea, and the European Union. This morning, Vietnam and Thailand asked for a delay in the tariffs to negotiate agreements more mutually beneficial. I suspect you'll see that same movement from our other major trade partners in India, South Korea, Malaysia, and other industrial nations. This represents a great opportunity for them.

As for Mexico, Canada, and other western hemisphere countries. Instead of the insane politically charged rhetoric coming out of Canada especially, and Mexico to a lesser extent, they have been ripping us off since NAFTA was enacted in 1994. They need to understand that this realignment benefits them in the long run, that a stronger America is a better customer for their goods, and that allowing unfettered immigration and the dumping of cheap goods, crime, and drugs into our country will eventually hurt them as much if not more than it hurts us. 

This rebalancing will cause some short-term pain, but will be offset by the tax cuts in the "big beautiful bill," decreased regulations, lower interest rates, lower energy costs, and a sustainable economy based on actually making things as opposed to just printing money and accumulating debt. America works when the middle class works. It is the right thing economically, culturally, and strategically and has to happen, otherwise we go broke.

As for me, a guy who has watched his hometown and the surrounding towns waste away and become overrun with government dependency, crime, drugs, and shuttered businesses through my adult life- it is personal. As for the rest of us, it is a promise to make America wealthy again, make America healthy again, make America strong again, and make small town America, which is the best of America, great again.