Authored by Brandon Smith via Alt-Market.com,
Over the past several months, I have been examining the underlying or hidden motivations behind the currently expanding global trade war, including the impressive level of cognitive dissonance surrounding the issue.
The political left doesn’t seem to have an intelligent grasp of economic issues in the slightest. I’m not seeing any critical discussion from leftist media outlets or pundits on fiscal uncertainties, and the only reaction that is common from them is that they hope that the trade war results in the financial downfall of the US so that Trump can be voted out in 2020. They may very well get their wish, but they seem to imagine themselves celebrating at the end of the disaster, and I predict they’ll be so concerned with their own financial survival that they won’t have time to celebrate…
The initial reaction in conservative circles to the trade war was unfortunately overconfident denial, with many refusing to call the situation a “trade war” at all and some predicting an end to the conflict before it began. Obviously those assumptions are proving incorrect.
Now that acceptance of the trade war as a reality is setting in, the Trump bandwagon is doubling down and embracing blind enthusiasm for what they assume will be a victorious outcome, no matter how long it takes. Though the team-geopolitics mentality is enticing in some ways, I don’t find much in the facts and evidence department to support the notion of America winning a global trade war. As I outlined in my article America’s Debt Dependence Makes It An Easy Economic Target, as long as the U.S. retains historic levels of debt on a government, corporate and consumer level, and as long as we remain addicted to foreign investment in that debt, trade war opponents have all the ammunition they need.
The argument I now see regurgitated over and over is that this trade war has actually been “going on for decades”, and only now do we “have a president with the guts to do something about it.” I’m not sure where this nonsense meme was started, but it’s everywhere.
The U.S. has NOT been engaged in a trade war “for decades,” not with China or any other nation. It has been involved in a subversive trade arrangement which benefits the elitists on both sides of the world while the common people suffer. Only in the past year have we seen a “trade war” develop, but even now, it is a staged war that will once again empower international banks and global elites.
It is hard to argue the longstanding trade war meme when considering the facts. While China has indeed enjoyed a trade surplus with the U.S. for many years, this was strictly maintained in exchange for Chinese investment in U.S. Treasury debt and the U.S. dollar. In fact, it’s absurd to claim that the U.S. has been “disadvantaged” in global trade when it is the dollar that is used to facilitate nearly ALL international trade as the world reserve currency. Dollar denominated assets have been the go-to safe haven investment for decades for this exact reason.
Back in 2008 during the initial stock market collapse, mainstream media economists and some alternative economists alike argued incessantly that emerging market investors and foreign central banks would “never” pull back from American markets because “King Dollar” was the premier safety net during fiscal crisis. Clearly, the U.S. has enjoyed a special advantage in global trade; namely the dollar, and it is this advantage alone that has fueled the American economy for years.
The argument that foreign markets have swallowed up American manufacturing is also a bit of a misdirection. As I have mentioned time and time again, U.S. corporations are the true culprits behind the bloodletting in American manufacturing jobs as they relocated all industry into cheaper labor markets. Trump could have stipulated that these same corporations would be required to bring some or most of this manufacturing back into the U.S. before they enjoy tax cut incentives. He didn’t. Instead, he gave them a massive tax cut for nothing, and the majority of the capital gained through that tax cut has already been spent – not on more American jobs or innovation, but on corporate stock buybacks to keep equities propped up just a little bit longer.
Tariffs on U.S. goods implemented by other countries are almost always tied to the U.S. dollar’s world reserve advantage. The outsourcing of manufacturing jobs as well as tech jobs has always been tied to the U.S. corporate desire for cheap labor. No, we have not been in a trade war for decades, quite the opposite.
So what has changed? Why are the old arrangements being abandoned? Is Trump really upsetting the old world order and battling the globalists, or, is he simply helping them to stage the foundation of their “new world order”?
I would suggest that readers look into the International Monetary Fund’s concept of the “global economic reset” for more insight into why this is happening. I would also suggest that people pay close attention to the “predictions” of George Soros back in 2009 on the future of the U.S. economy.
The plan for this global reset seems to revolve around the diminishing of the U.S. as a major economic power. This does not necessarily mean the U.S. will be replaced directly. Instead, as Soros suggests, nations like China will fill the void as “smaller economic engines”. This is often referred to as “harmonization,” but what it really means is that the standard of living for ALL but a highly select minority will be deliberately reduced to a common denominator, and what is more common today than poverty?
For many nations, a lower standard of living is the norm. For Americans, harmonization means we have a long way to fall yet. For the reset to take hold effectively in the US, globalists will have to misdirect various groups within the population in different ways in order to avoid revolt.
The Trump fandom is being enticed with notions of a return to a golden era with The Don on his white steed leading the charge. However, NO president has the power to reverse the economic damage already done in the US; the only solution is a long process of rebuilding the economy from the ground up after the ashes settle. Any honest president not under the control of the banking cabal would have to be forthright about this fact. Even under the best possible conditions of reformation, a depression and currency crisis is assured. You cannot fight against math, and the math of US debt versus US inflation spells stagflationary instability for many years, far beyond the one or possibly two terms of Donald Trump. When this reality finally hits the Trump Administration devout square in the face, they will be enraged, and the first scapegoat that will be held up to them will be foreign governments like China.
For the liberty movement subset not necessarily enamored with Donald Trump, the lie of the “multipolar world” has been concocted. In essence, we are being told that the death of the dollar will mean the death of globalist centralization, so we should cheer for such an outcome. In truth, there is no “multipolar world.” The IMF and the Bank for International Settlements continue to hold sway over the central banks of the world, in the East as much as the West.
With Russia and China’s calls for the IMF to become the defacto overseer of global monetary trade policy, and even calling for a new global currency system under the control of the IMF, I hardly see any indication that we are moving away from centralization if the U.S. currency falters. In fact, we will see even more centralization if the globalists get their way.
The key to the reset is undoubtedly the end of the dollar as the world reserve currency. Without this status, the U.S. loses all economic trade advantage as well as the advantage of perpetual debt monetization. As the dollar’s influence is reduced globally inflation becomes a more pronounced threat at home. The trade war makes the shift away from the dollar possible for international banking elites while they avoid blame for the suffering it will cause the public.
“De-dollarization” is already gaining steam as Russia and China make deals to decouple from the currency while increasing financial cooperation using their own. What trade war cheerleaders don’t understand is that a trade war with China is not a trade war with China alone. As the No. 1 exporter/importer in the world, if China decides to dump the dollar as world reserve its trading partners may very well do the same in order to secure their own import/export relationships.
As a domino effect ensues, I believe it will be the IMF that steps in as a “mediator” to provide the framework for a new system, probably under the Special Drawing Rights basket, and probably leading to a global cryptocurrency system, which the IMF has been praising recently as the next stage of evolution for money and monetary policy.
I have mentioned consistently over the past half year that a trend has developed in terms of the Trump administration’s behavior in the trade war. Specifically, whenever the Federal Reserve raises interest rates or expands cuts to its balance sheet, Trump conveniently expands his rhetoric on tariffs.
When the Fed increases balance sheet cuts, stocks take a hit of 1,000 points or more like clockwork. And, like clockwork, the mainstream media blames the drop in stocks on the trade war and Trump rather than the Fed. I think that this trend will accelerate into the end of 2018, and that stocks will hit critical downward velocity if the Fed does not reverse course. In my view, the Fed has no intention of reversing course because they prefer to see a major market crisis at this time.
But more than simply providing cover for the Fed’s controlled demolition of equities, the trade war may also provide cover for the controlled demolition of the dollar as multiple foreign creditors and trading partners turn America’s greatest strength into its greatest weakness.
The dollar itself is nothing more than an imagined symbol; it is a tool for international bankers. And, like any tool, it can be replaced. The trade war provides the perfect historical narrative for the end of the dollar. The story told to future generations will be that the U.S., emboldened by Trump’s rhetoric and nationalism, fueled by the dangerous ideas of “conservative populists”, bumbled into self-destruction and harmed the rest of the world in the process. The IMF and other globalist institutions will step in, stating that no single country should ever be allowed to wield the power of the world’s reserve currency again. They will then offer their pre-planned solution to the very problem they originally created.
Whether or not this plan for the global reset works will rely on the awareness of conservatives specifically. Getting caught up in the fervor of trade war rhetoric will cripple our ability to prepare and to fight back against the true culprits behind U.S. decline. Our fury will be wrongly directed at foreign economies instead of the banking elites, where it belongs.
* * *
If you would like to support the publishing of articles like the one you have just read, visit our donations page here. We greatly appreciate your patronage.
via RSS https://ift.tt/2tN6szf Tyler Durden