Chalk up another expert failure, if you can find room on the board to mark another tally. Yesterday, the Wall Street Journal ran a story headlined, “Exclusive — China Sends Xi’s Security Czar to Trade Talks With U.S.” Defying expert predictions that China would easily outwait Trump’s crippling tariffs, the two countries began meeting yesterday in Switzerland to begin negotiations.
It was another narrative sea-change. Corporate media has packed its columns and airwaves with experts laughing like braying donkeys at the idea that China would ever cave on its public promises that it would never ever negotiate with Orange People unless the tariffs were first reversed. That, of course, was their second argument, after chortling experts explained (drawing with crayons so we deplorables could understand) that tariffs only hurt American consumers, a moronic claim that was instantly belied by the wails of anguish from foreign trade partners and by plummeting egg prices.
While they never mention it, reporters also never argue with the fact that China has been a poor economic partner for a very long time. The Chinese manipulate their currency to squeeze profits out of U.S. customers, brazenly steal and knock off U.S. inventions and ignore international intellectual property laws, fuel fentanyl forces, conduct corporate espionage, inject marxist nonsense into our colleges and universities, and generally swank around like they own the United States’ government and can do whatever they want.
Anyway, once again corporate media was wrong. Trump was right. The Chinese are, in fact, negotiating. And those negotiations follow the announcement of a UK-US deal that contained a massive hidden disclosure that should have been yesterday’s top headline.
Thursday, in a dramatic V-Day speakerphone meeting with UK Prime Minister Kier Starmer, Trump announced the first “trade deal” following Liberation Day. CNN reported the story under the headline, “Trump’s first trade ‘deal’ doesn’t bode well for the rest of the world.”
CLIP: Scott Jennings explains progress from first trade agreement with UK (1:41).
It was more of an incremental agreement than any finalized trade deal, which is completely unsurprising given the complexities and wild varieties of issues involved in international trade. The short version is that some key UK and American industries —cars, steel, and beef— were mutually excused from tariffs on both sides, and the 10% minimum was retained on everything else. Negotiations continue.
The general sense is that America is winning the negotiations. According to Trump’s team, this initial deal will create $6 billion in new tariff revenue for the U.S., in addition to $5 billion in new markets for American farmers. Industry agreed. Yesterday, the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association issued an enthusiastic press release titled, “President Trump Secures Win for America’s Cattle Producers.”
As usual, the media missed the real headline. Yesterday, we learned for the first time that Trump’s ten percent across-the-board minimum will remain— as a permanent new income source. Press Secretary Leavitt told skeptical reporters (1:07) that, “The president is committed to the 10% baseline tariff, not just for the United Kingdom, but for his trade negotiations with all other countries as well, permanently, even after the deals are done.”
It was an economic nuclear bomb.
An astonished reporter picked up on that explosive bit of news, the quiet declaration of a permanent tariff baseline, and pressed Leavitt, asking again, “Permanently? Even after the deals are done? Like, that is going to remain?” Secretary Leavitt doubled down a stressed, “The President is determined to continue with that baseline tariff. I just spoke with him about it earlier.”
It is, perhaps, too much to hope this buried announcement suggests the emerging borders of a breathtaking Trump plan to actually replace the income tax, or some part of it, with an “External Revenue Service.” The real story isn’t about beef or Bentleys— the buried lede was the shocking revelation of a permanent 10% baseline tariff, across all trade, and even after agreements are signed.
That’s not just a negotiation tactic. It might be the outline of a structural re-engineering of the entire way America funds its government.
We may be witnessing the rollout of what amounts to a federal revenue replacement strategy: a pivot away from internal income taxation toward a nationalist model of externalized funding through border tariffs. It’s not protectionism; it’s a fiscal coup d’état. And it is exactly how the US government was always funded before the income tax.
It sure makes me think. How about you?
“It might be the outline of a structural re-engineering of the entire way America funds its government.
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I HOPE SO!
Consequences are a fact of life…