Remembering
James Robison

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The Brew: Trump Announces ‘Liberation Day’ with Tariffs Intended to Rebuild American Industry

By John Zmirak Published on April 4, 2025

Many of us are torn on the subject of the wide-ranging tariffs President Donald Trump has imposed by executive order on nations around the world, which took effect Wednesday. One thing we shouldn’t be, however, is blindsided.

Protecting American industry from often-predatory foreign competition has been on Trump’s mind for decades, and he has never been shy about saying so. You can go back to the late 1980s when Oprah Winfrey would welcome Trump on her show to hear him talking about it.

So spare me the shock and surprise that Trump 2.0 — having suffered enough lawfare, fake impeachments, and assassination attempts for several lifetimes — is finally tossing aside the counsels of the “experts” and the warnings of Chamber of Commerce operatives and acting on his beliefs.

Trump thinks, as many great Americans from Alexander Hamilton and William McKinley to Ross Perot and Pat Buchanan thought before him, that protecting American workers from wage competition is a good thing. Trump would like to see tariffs start to replace direct taxation as a source of revenue for our nation, the way tariffs funded most of our government in centuries past. So Trump in his inimitable way on Wednesday announced a wide range of tariffs with great fanfare:

Will Trump’s strategy work? Those of us who’ve studied economics (my first book was about a free-trade economist) have mostly been taught to think that it won’t. We all know the arguments of free-trade advocates from Adam Smith up through Milton Friedman. It wouldn’t make sense for Greenland to insist on growing its own cut flowers or Equatorial Guinea to invest in the snowboarding industry. There are important efficiencies achieved, and wasteful expenses avoided, by letting different countries specialize where they have natural advantages and buying what they export instead of making everything ourselves. Protecting industries from foreign competition can encourage them to get lazy, overpay their staffs, and fail to innovate.

You will be hearing these arguments repeated ad nauseam from every side of the political spectrum. Even leftists who used to mouth protectionist bromides to pick up working-class votes will line up to condemn Trump’s decision for purely partisan reasons. If Trump personally discovered a cure for breast cancer, the Democrats would suddenly become a “voice for the voiceless” tumors.

The stock market is registering disapproval. The globalist status quo getting disrupted will surely be bad for some businesses in the short run. The system our elites have gamed for their own benefit will sputter and stall. Will less fortunate Americans, blue-collar workers who now form the base of a revitalized, patriotic Republican Party, finally see a spike in wages after decades of barely keeping up with inflation? We will have to wait and see.

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But our elites will have to do better than repeating the old talking points or expecting us to defer to their wisdom and expertise. These are the same institutions, and often the very same people, who assured us in turn that:

  • Mass immigration is making Americans richer.
  • The U.S. can remake the Middle East as free, democratic, and tolerant.
  • Same-sex marriage won’t affect religious liberty.
  • The COVID lockdowns were necessary to save millions of lives.
  • The COVID vaccine was ethical, safe, and still ought to be mandatory.
  • Gun control makes us safer.
  • Islam is a religion of peace.
  • The 2020 election was the most honest and secure in American history.
  • The January 6 protestors were as bad as the 9/11 hijackers or the Japanese pilots who bombed Pearl Harbor.
  • There are 47 genders.
  • Our diversity is our strength.

The credibility of our social and educational betters has been shredded beyond retrieval. If the Brookings Institution, The Wall Street Journal, Harvard University, National Review, Pope Francis, and Christianity Today all reported, “The sky is blue,” I would go outside to check that it wasn’t actually purple. Millions of Americans feel the same way. And they’re going to give Trump’s policy a chance.

And yes, I’m still enjoying the first few months of the Pat Buchanan administration. Are you?

Chief Justice Roberts Spent a Week Consulting with Anti-Trump Censorship Oligarch

The priceless Revolver News reports that sometime between 2011 and 2014:

According to Norm Eisen—the man who practically wrote the Deep State’s playbook on color revolutions, all things anti-Trump, and lawfare in the US—he and Chief Justice John Roberts are not only good pals, but they even spent a week together in the Czech Republic. According to Norm, the two BFFs were there working on “American rule of law” issues.

Hmm…

Norm was so proud of this that he actually bragged about the trip and made it very clear that Roberts isn’t corrupt—he’s just a “close friend” who happened to fly overseas and stay at Eisen’s posh 150-room palace to collaborate on transatlantic political projects.

Hear what Deep State whistleblower Mike Benz has to say about that:

Benz says that they colluded to “rig the judicial system” in Europe, to produce outcomes like the EU canceling Romania’s election and imprisoning the leading conservative candidate, the judicial system in France imprisoning conservative Marine le Pen, and (here at home) federal judges stepping in to cripple Donald Trump in office. Revolver observes:

Justice Roberts has no business presiding over any of the cases that Eisen and his army of lawfare activists are funneling through the courts, and we all know Norm is tied to so many of these weaponized cases. He should have been recusing himself from the get-go — and probably outright resigning — for the integrity of the court.

Europeans Won’t Fight for Ukraine … Or Even Their Own Countries

Heroically brave convert from Islam and then atheism to Christianity Ayaan Hirsi Ali has launched a new publication that’s worth a look: Courage Media. One article there raises a crucial problem for European elites who claim they will “remilitarize” that continent in order to prolong the Ukraine war that Trump is trying to end: Europeans of fighting age won’t fight.

Indeed, as their governments cancel elections and imprison political dissenters while colonizing their countries with Muslims, there’s nothing worth fighting for. And young men (the only relevant demographic) have noticed. As Connor Tomlinson writes at Courage Media:

While Presidents Trump, Putin, and Zelensky struggle to negotiate a ceasefire, the European leaders of NATO’s member states insist on their willingness to deploy troops to Ukraine. But these technocrats stuck a stick in their selectively-jingoistic spokes long ago. After decades of governance by supra-national institutions, cultural deracination, and unwanted mass migration, the generation they propose conscripting are disillusioned with the democracies they would defend. Consecutive polls record Gen Z (1997-2012) as holding their countries in contempt, unwilling to fight to defend them, and flirting with alternative forms of government — including authoritarian dictatorship.

In February, YouGov polling published by The Times found that only 11% of Zoomers (aged 18-27) would fight for Britain; with 41% saying under “no circumstances” would they enlist to defend their country. 41% are proud to be British, 48% believe Britain is a racist country, and 50% said the UK is “stuck in the past”. While older readers may believe the young to be brainwashed against the self-evident goods of liberal democracy, as a member of this cohort I can’t say I blame them. Why should I, or any of my countrymen, die for “democracy” abroad, when my own doesn’t deliver it at home? …

If Woke women and the children of immigrants will not fight for this country, and do not see it as their country, who will? It’s no surprise that those most likely to be conscripted — young white British men — don’t want to defend a system which regards them as public enemy number one.

Do you think it’s a bit hyperbolic to say that Britons have nothing worth fighting for? Consider this a new step toward a sharia-compliant state:

The Rage Rhetoric of the Left Keeps Heating Up

With leftists burning Teslas and conservative writers getting “swatted” (swamped by armed police after fake emergency calls), perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised that people convinced that Trump is literally Hitler are threatening violence against public servants, such as immigration agents.

But the Trump administration is taking such threats seriously, as a recent post made clear. Feel free to have a good laugh over this one. However, we must note, it’s not actually funny.

Along The Stream…

This morning, see Jules Gomes’s alarming report on how the Vatican is now carving out a loophole to permit sex-change mutilation surgery, in the name of (what else?) “compassion.”

Also, check out a powerful nine-minute message from Jonathan Cahn, who discusses how good God is at making beautiful things out of complete messes — even us.

 

John Zmirak is a senior editor at The Stream and author or coauthor of 14 books, including The Politically Incorrect Guide to Immigration and The Politically Incorrect Guide to Catholicism. His newest book is No Second Amendment, No First.