Opinion
By Jeff Childers

2/3/25
Good morning, C&C, itβs Monday! Over the weekend, the coordinated Trump forces attacked the disorganized Deep Stateβs pumping heart, and by this morning it was all over. We can see the panicking rats streaming for the docks before the SS Deep State sinks for good. But first, a primer on the Trump tariffs and the mediaβs fearmongering tactics to trick us about the so-called trade war.
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Starting tomorrow, we expect President Trumpβs initial tariffs to switch onβor will they? The Hill ran a story late yesterday headlined, βTrump to speak with Trudeau, Mexico after imposing tariffs.β On Saturday, the President authorized 25% tariffs on Canada, 25% tariffs on Mexico and 10% tariffs on China. It sparked a media riot. Even before the tariffs took effect, the media published a bushel basket of handpicked headlines including the two terrifying words: βtrade war.β But the mockingbird media missed the narrative mark.

Mediaβs efforts to panic everybody fell flat. Every person reading this survived the pandemic β and we also survived the even greater threat posed by our own governmentsβ efforts to βhelp usβ survive a cold virus. So media can get out of here with trying to scare anybody with an imaginary βtrade war,β and with Mexico and Canada, for crying out loud. Please.
But for people afflicted with Trump Derangement, this was the mistake theyβve been waiting so impatiently for! Now they could pounce! They can get Trump! Maybe β¦ maybe itβs even something to justify a third impeachment!
They think they have him right where they want him now.
But it might amount to nothing. President Trump is already scheduled to talk about tariffs this morning with both Canadaβs Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and an unnamed official from Mexico. So it seems the war hasnβt quite started yet.
The Hill quoted President Trump explaining the USβs position. As always, it is about the money:

They think inflation politically destroyed Joe Biden, and they hope to use inflation to get Trump. βExperts,β the Hill warned ominously, βhave repeatedly warned that tariffs could lead to higher costs that companies will pass onto consumers.β And President Trump admitted to reporters that, βWe may have a little short-term pain, and people understand that.β
I donβt think any of it has to do with inflation. Hereβs whatβs happening. In the immediate term, yes, Trump does want those three countries to jump like trained frogs to help him slam the border shut on illegal immigrants and deadly drugs. But in the longer term, Trump aims to completely re-make our countryβs economy. And the globalists want to stop him, because it would put them out of business.
Trumpβs model is right there in plain sight: the Russia sanctions.

π₯ In the long, deplorable history of stupid foreign policy decisions, one big blunder stands out: Bidenβs pugilistic decision to impose massive, across-the-board sanctions on Russia. In three short years, instead of bankrupting Russia, Bidenβs sanctions skyrocketed Russia up the economic charts to fourth largest economy in the world, and transformed it from a βdevelopingβ to a βwealthyβ economy.
The main reason why Bidenβs sanctions backfired so spectacularly is because they solved Putinβs biggest economic problem. At the risk of oversimplifying, letβs recap recent history. Following the collapse of communism in the late 80βs, Russiaβs fledgling free market flourished. But it came with a lot of crime. All that crime eventually blossomed into a cruel cartel of corrupt oligarchs.
So the Russian people elected Vladimir Putin, at least in part, with a mandate to clamp down on the rampant crime and corruption accompanying the countryβs freed market. Putin did. Many corrupt oligarchs accidentally tumbled off the balconies of their luxury high-rise apartments, taking speedy, one-way trips to the pavement.
But even as corruption was brought under control, Russiaβs reforming economy still sputtered.
Russiaβs next problem was that even its loyal, law-abiding oligarchs and entrepreneurs rationally saw better financial prospects outside Russia. It was a chicken-and-egg problem. Russiaβs lack of development encouraged its entrepreneurs to invest in other countries. This kind of capital drift slowly bled Russiaβs economy, which was stuck in a vicious cycleβ perhaps better than communism, but still not quite first world.

Enter the answer to all Putinβs financial problems: Joseph Robinette Biden. After Biden closed off international investment as a viable option, Russiaβs capitalists had no choice but to start investing back into Russia. This new domestic focus created an economic renaissance like nothing in Russian history. Russiaβs economy has improved in nearly every measure.
Hapless Joe Biden single-handedly created a Golden Age in Russia.
π₯ To be clear, Trump hasnβt shared his plans with me. Iβm guessing same as everyone else. But to me, Trump has often described an American problem that is remarkably similar to Russiaβs pre-Biden problem. American companies are taking their money internationally, most frequently building their plants in Mexico and Canada instead of in America. This capital flight is hollowing out Middle American industrial cities, which are slowly but surely shriveling and dying, one by one, all along the vine of the nationβs vast interstate highway system.

Take Detroit, for example. The Motor City was once the fifth-largest urban area in America. But since 1960, despite the car industryβs wild growth, Detroit shrank by an astonishing sixty percent. With apologies to readers who live there, Detroitβs quality of life metrics are terrible. For instance, only 13% of the cityβs college kids will graduate with their 4-year degrees (compared to 30% nationally, which is still awful, but thatβs a different story).
Detroitβs child poverty rate is nearly 60%.
Why would any successful American entrepreneur consider Detroit for any major investment? They wouldnβt. Nor are they. They are building their factories just over the border in Mexico and Canada, where labor is cheaper and (or possibly because) the regulatory burden is much lighter. After oil (which is exempt from Trumpβs tariffs), the top three categories of goods manufactured in Mexico in Canada and imported back into the US are: automotive ($200 billion), electrical machinery including computers ($200 billion), and aircraft parts, medical, optical, and household goods ($100 billion).
China is a similar story, but its manufacturers mostly undercut prices of domestic consumer products.
π₯ Trumpβs tariffs could force American companies to re-invest in America, just as the sanctions forced Russian companies to re-invest in Russia. It would be a bold, audacious plan, and affected industries will screech like chickens finding their nests emptied, but as the sanctions did for Russia, Trumpβs tariffs could spark a renaissance and Golden Age here in America, too.

The myopic media is mired in its fear of a βtrade war.β True, a trade war is possible. Maybe likely. Mexico, Canada, and China could all impose reverse tariffs of their own on goods they import from the US. But paradoxically, that trade war might just pour jet fuel into Trumpβs plan.
Under a trade war, as U.S. companies face mounting costs for imported goods, domestically made products will have a natural competitive advantage. Reduced imports will mean increased American business. The economic dislocation might be painful in the short run, but it will create incentives for American firms to reinvest domestically, maybe by a lot. If Trump can pull this off, shifting from foreign imports to domestic manufacturing would improve innovation, generate jobs, and revive dying industrial cities all over the United States.
Donβt buy mediaβs short-sighted narrative about tariffs and high consumer product prices. That narrative is a distraction from Trumpβs real and audacious plan. I assume (or hope) that Trump will couple the pressures to repatriate American manufacturing with massive de-regulation and maybe other strategies we havenβt seen yet, creating terrifi incentives for manufacturing things here at home.
A Golden Age.
π₯ One entertaining development from the Great Tariff Terror has been the evolving liberal fracas over egg prices, a dustup that smarter libs are trying to squash faster than chickens chasing grasshoppers. The not-so-smart Libs of Blue Sky lit up their egg arguments all last week, as in this example:

Far-left reporters even heckled poor Press Secretary Leavitt about egg prices. But it was a Trump trap! Yesterday, corporate media rushed to stem the bleeding. Headline from PBS, around midnight last night:

Whoops. Itβs not tariffs after all. The trap was that truth of egg prices exposed a whole new layer of CDC incompetency and culpability for price inflation. Never mind the fact that, for four painful years of Bidenβs sleepy mismanagement, libs ignored skyrocketing egg prices and corporate media lyingly told you βthere is no inflation.β The point is, Bidenβs CDC ordered all the eggs to be scrambled for arguably idiotic reasons.
Besides the fact that higher egg prices were actually caused by another Biden blunder, the βhigh egg pricesβ meme was always just a liberal fantasy.
βEgg pricesβ was just the arrogant slogan corporate media manufactured right after the election to minimize Kamalaβs loss. βItβs not that they rejected the Democratsβ message β¦ voters were anxious about the price of eggs and butter,β went the line, repeated mindlessly and endlessly by MSNBC panelists.
Democrats have repeated that line so often they believe their own stupid excuse. They think that, in some mysterious way, the election was βreallyβ about egg prices. But they ignore the fact that, whenever conservatives do discuss egg prices, it is only to disprove the mediaβs lies about Bidenflation.
Egg prices were never why anyone voted for Trump.
Voters pulled the lever for Trump because they were furious at the Establishment. Eggs had nothing to do with it. Theyβre trying to haul it back now, but you can expect this kind of thing to continue, especially as the tariffs kick in. These eggheads will instantly complain about any price increase on any product. So get ready to ignore them.
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The Great Battle for Control of USAID continued over the weekend. This morning, CNN ran the very encouraging headline, βUSAID workers at Washington HQ told to stay home on Monday in unexpected, early-morning email.β Unexpected? It shouldnβt have surprised them, not if they followed Elon Muskβs twitter feed over the weekend. Speaking of Elonβs feedβ it produced one of the most remarkable discussions Iβve ever seen online:

There was a dramatic bureaucratic showdown at USAID heaquarters (now closed) yesterday. Oneβs heart grieves for the two top USAID security officials who were forced to come in to work on Sunday. Worse, even after that sacrifice, the Administration fired them (placed on administrative leave). It seems they came in just to block DOGE staff from accessing the USAID computers.
Apparently, the DOGE people even threatened to call the cops on the USAIDers.
Ironically, the USAID people claimed the agencyβs data was classified. Remember, the media wants everyone to think USAID just gives school lunches to starving Rwandan kindergartners. The truth is USAID is the deep stateβs right tentacle, and diligent independent researchers were chopping that slimy limb off all weekend by outing the agency over and over again.
With enthusiastic support from one Elon Musk, who happily re-tweeted each new disclosure.
Most amusingly, RINO neocon and Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol, popped up yesterday to defend the Deep State and, as shown in the screen grab above, Bill βnot at all reading the roomβ expressed his deep personal preference for the Swamp.
But, as a diligent independent researcher immediately noted, the Swamp pays Bill for his support, quite handsomely too, through a now-unsurprising series of deceptively named nonprofits.
In other words, the awful situation we find ourselves in is that USAID doesnβt just destabilize foreign governments. Itβs also been buying off destabilizing influencers here at home, too. That includes journalists, like the aforementioned Bill Kristol, politicians like Representative AOC (D-NY), chaos agents like Alexander Vindman, mass murdering bioengineers like Ecohealth Alliance and the Wuhan Lab, Ukraine (of course), the Clinton Foundation, and most especially Senator Lindsay Graham (R-SC):

That list only scratched the surface. Independent online sleuths quickly found these connections just using open-source information, linking the octopus-like agency to various public figures and organizations. We havenβt even seen yet what more DOGE will come up with.
The Trump people know all about USAID. Hereβs a pre-election clip of RFK explaining to Tucker Carlson how USAID funded Ukraineβs 2014 overthrow:

CLIP: Robert Kennedy explains USAIDβs connection to the Ukrainian coup (1:36).
Curiously, and highly suggestively, right around the same time Lindsay Grahamβs links to USAID started appearing online, the Senator reversed course and unenthusiastically said on Fox he would, after all, vote for Tulsi, RFK, and Kash Patel, all three, for sure:

CLIP: Senator Grahamβs dramatic turnaround on Trump nominees (0:58).
USAIDβs collapse and Lindsayβs helpful vote were completely unconnected. Right?
USAIDβs controlled demolition is rippling across the planet. One example included a βshockingβ and βunexpectedβ development in the Proxy War. You will never guess what the green sweatshirt man said this time. Honor compels me to screen grab the original headline and the picture together. Eurasia Dailyβs combination was simply too good, Iβd like to shake the headline editorβs hand:

βWhen they say that Ukraine received 200 billion during the war to support the army and so on, this is not true,β Zelensky told a reporter from Strana. βI do not know where all this money is,β he pleaded earnestly. Donβt blame me.
You cannot make this stuff up. Was the timing of Zelenskyβs sudden and unprovoked confession of a missing $100 billion a coincidence, or was it related to the rapid weekend collapse of USAIDβs fortress of dirty tricks?
I note without comment that the money to Ukraine flowed, or would have flowed, through USAID.
Could this be it? Could this scorched-earth, headquarters-shuttering USAID purge be the long-awaited housecleaning moment, forecast from the movie Sum of All Fears, via a scene set to Trumpβs favorite aria, Nessun Dorma? Last night, before boarding Air Force One, President Trump actually answered questions and told barking reporters that USAID was run by βa bunch of radical lunatics.β He promised, βwe’re getting them out, and then we’ll make a decision.β

CLIP: President Trump calls USAID a bunch of radical lunatics (0:15).
What decision? We are waiting to find out with rapt attention.
Have a magnificent Monday! Tomorrow morning, C&C shall return at the same time and place, with more essential news and commentary
Donβt race off! We cannot do it alone. Consider joining up with C&C to help move the nationβs needle and change minds. I could sure use your help getting the truth out and spreading optimism and hope, if you can: β Learn How to Get Involved π¦
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The views expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official position of Citizens Journal Florida