There’s no such thing as free trade…

There’s no such thing as free trade… 

When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro. 

-      Hunter S. Thompson 

On Truth Social, the president said he was ending all trade negotiations with Canada because of a video ad, paid for by the province of Ontario, that featured former President Ronald Reagan speaking negatively about tariffs.

“TARIFFS ARE VERY IMPORTANT TO THE NATIONAL SECURITY, AND ECONOMY, OF THE U.S.A.,” Mr. Trump wrote. “Based on their egregious behavior, ALL TRADE NEGOTIATIONS WITH CANADA ARE HEREBY TERMINATED.”

-      Trump Says He’s Cutting Off Trade Negotiations With Canada, NY Times 

 

By Gregg Wall (10-25-2025)

Heads I do private equity, tails I write about free trade… and free trade it is. 

  

Private equity will have to wait.  There’s so much to write about, in regards this evil and sinister force, private equity.  As for free trade, there was sniping coming from both sides of the American/Canadian border this week.  At issue, former President Reagan’s words, in favor of free trade & denigrating tariffs, were used by Ontario Premier, Doug Ford, in an ad campaign.  Mr. Ford ran ads in the United States quoting the deceased actor and U.S. president. Trump responded rather harshly to having Reagan’s words against tariffs and in support of free trade thrown into the nation’s face.  So late Thursday, Trump released a statement, something along the lines that tariffs are critical to national security and all trade talks are henceforth terminated.  Left out by Trump, conveniently so, tariffs aren’t so critical to national security… “national security” is an abused term often used to justify all kinds of nonsense and political machinations… but rather, tariffs are critical to funding the Billionaire Welfare Act or Trump’s Big, Beautiful Bill.  

If there’s one thing King Trump is very serious about… see also the key reason, aside from Epstein, for the government shutdown... it's tax cuts, privatization schemes, war funding, and welfare for his rich friends and family.  Trump loves his second term enhanced regressive tariffs tax scheme foisted upon the American people to help keep the house of cards afloat and fund, in part, socialism for the predatory few.  Even though the debt, deficits, and dollar debasement continues at a staggering pace to the complete detriment of the nation and its people.  

But I digress, in summary, for the soon to be octogenarian, Trump, Reagan is still a big deal, as he is for many boomers.  Even though the median age in the U.S. is roughly 39 years old, which means for more than half of the American people, they have little or no memory of then-President Reagan.  Nevertheless, Reagan’s legacy, Thatcher’s legacy are manifest everywhere… see our abjectly failed dereg, free trade, libertarian model, and its dependence upon crippling debt, deficits, empire, and wars… see the explosive growth in the money supply to keep Wall St. entirely corrupt and well-lubed for the predatory few.  Reagan and Thatcher are a complete failure for the American people, Canadians, and the UK.

Nevertheless, Canada (more accurately, Premier Ford) rubbed an immortal American icon in Trump's face...

And Trump snapped or was he just looking to distract from his failed tariff polices, which are now coming home to roost within the inflation data, distract from the higher prices confronting the American people, who have been under attack for six long years by the forces of corporate & Wall St. greed?   The inflation report came out Friday and on a year over year basis prices are up another 3% (both core and all in), which doesn’t begin to tell the real story on nearly six consecutive years of price gouging and supply-side, Wall Street rip-offs.  

It's sort of amazing, just how frightened Trump is of a president from 45 years ago.   A president & PM Thatcher, whose ideas have been largely discredited, namely laissez-faire, libertarianism, supply-side, trickle-down, deregulation, and yes, free trade.  When Reagan came to office, America had a thriving middle class, the median price on a US home was $47,000.  As candidate Reagan was fond of asking:  Are you better off today than you were four years ago… or say in 1980?  Today, for the bottom 60% of Americans, the answer is a resounding: NO.  Reagan and Thatcher FAILED.

Because we are living with Reagan's fallout and failure: the apogee of Reagan's failed ideology is oligarchy, greed-rule, totalitarian monopolies, the elimination of competition & price discovery, and a destitute public (constantly under attack by kleptocrats, C-suite dictators, and pathocracy). 

Reagan's and Thatcher's fallout is now.

There's no such thing as free trade.  The closest thing to free trade is the idea that some nation has a natural advantage, perhaps conveyed by geography & weather, to trade in certain commodities. 

And tariffs can be a useful tool in trade policy... however, when corporations pursue labor, regulatory, gov, judicial, monetary, and tax arbitrage, it leads to a race to the bottom (aka free trade), globally.  Libertarianism kills jobs, free trade pits nation-state against nation-state for fewer and fewer jobs, globally, in a race to the bottom.  When libertarianism and its partner, free trade, takes hold, greed, monopolies, and pathocracy are the natural outcome.  Labor is attacked, relentlessly, living standards are in terminal decline, social services/public services are demolished, simply so the rich can steal more, and people stop procreating… simply because they can’t afford to feed their children.  Ultimately, blame Reagan’s rhetoric… those of us who still remember his presidency recall that Reagan didn’t actually rule by his radical right-wing economic words.  His actions would label him a democrat today; but unfortunately, his rhetoric was used by the radical right and Wall St for two generations of leaders to justify all manner of collapse, corruption, and Western decline (even to pull the Democratic party further right-wing).

Under free trade rhetoric, America gave away its economy, its tax base, its middle class, and in the long run possibly its dollar hegemony, so that a few evil men could grow catastrophically wealthy.  Which is where we are at today.  Trump's tariffs are failing, in no small measure due to Trump's complete lack of self-control... and largely because they are being abused against an American public to pay for welfare for billionaires and multinationals owned by billionaires.  Trump’s tariffs are being used against the American people, already under attack from decades of decline, economic malaise, and greed.

The solution was never to heap more taxes upon the American people; the solution was a windfall profits tax (& a wealth tax) aimed directly at America's billionaires, monopolies, predatory cartels, SV venture capital, and Wall St.  To wit, reshore the American economy or the taxation continues, with no pass through to the American public (that’s the power of windfall taxation, when correctly administered to the supply-side).  The problem is: America's totalitarian utilities, 45 years of Reagan/Thatcher, and a highly, highly corrupt American gov.  The problem is a 79-year-old president in a desperate race against time, who is crashing in the polls.

It's the supply-side, stupid: the monopolies and cartels, PE, and Wall St, who have concentrated wages and wealth into the hands of morally bankrupt, predatory few.   Attacking the public was never the answer.

 

 

 

Trump's tariffs policy is now revealed.  It was always about generating a new revenue stream or tax -- paid by essential, hardworking Americans -- in support of tax cuts for the rich, corporate welfare, privatization schemes, for profits wars, the billionaire welfare state. Trump has failed on affordability and obviously, that was never in the cards.  Trump began to reverse both his promises on affordability and ending wars, before he even returned to the White House.

And Reagan’s promise that offshoring the US economy, jobs, and opportunity, under the guise of free trade, like libertarianism itself, would lead to prosperity for all was a lie.  Americans see the wreckage and carnage of the Reagan/Thatcher revolution all around them… a U.S. in catastrophic decline.

Trump's thin skin continues to function to the complete detriment of the American people... but it points to something more, Trump is not interested in a fair & equitable trade agreement with Canada.  He, and likely many of his billionaire friends, still believes Canada should be part of the United States as part of a North American technate, corpocracy, or some insane scheme of authoritarian, billionaire rule.  Here, I would recommend visiting Whitney Webb’s site, Unlimited Hangout, where she and her team appear more prescient by the day.

The bottom line: Canada can't negotiate with a tyrant. Trump & America had the best of both worlds: a reliable trading partner, a trade surplus w/ Canada (sans oil & gas), and discounted Alberta oil & gas (exploited by Americans, subsidized by Canadians).  

But Trump is not content with that, he wants it all.  Reagan had a great many flaws, but one of his strengths was that he was capable of separating his actions and rule from his political rhetoric, from his economic ideology.  For instance, Reagan raised taxes 11 times.  Trump and the oligarchs clearly hold no such charm or pragmatism.  Trump’s solution is privatized profits and looting for a predatory few… unlimited austerity and taxation for everyone else.  Trump's solutions are purely transactional. 

The question before Americans and Canadians is: Are you better off today then you were two, three, and four decades ago… under failed political duopoly, the forces of greed, and a failed, completely failed free trade, libertarian paradigm?  Economic and trade policy that fails to take care of society is a disaster.

Copyright JM Hamilton Publishing 2025

Tariffs

Tariffs

 

His rambling 90-minute address came just hours before his latest tariffs went into effect. “I know what the hell I’m doing,” the president said. “I know what I’m doing. And you know what I’m doing too. That’s why you vote for me.”

 

The administration has given conflicting signals over whether the tariffs are open to negotiation. Trump claimed: “I’m telling you, these countries are calling us up, kissing my ass. They are. They are dying to make a deal.”

 

Mocking the pleas of foreign leaders, he parodied: “Please, please, sir, make a deal. I’ll do anything. I’ll do anything, sir!”

 

Less than a day later, Trump shelved plans to hike tariffs on most countries except China, unveiling a 90-day pause and pulling back from his global trade war after days of market turmoil and warnings of recession.

 

-             Trump says ‘I know what I’m doing’ before stepping back from global tariffs, Guardian

 

By Gregg Wall (4-12-25)

 

Now that’s entertainment.  

 

This last week may be long remembered as a key milestone in the fall of the American empire.  In a matter of hours POTUS Trump went from explaining to his adoring fans that world leaders were lining up, “kissing his ass,” and begging for trade deals to capitulating on the source of all that ass kissing, reciprocal tariffs (something this administration had previously vowed they would not back off on).  To be sure, Trump went forward with a ten percent tariff and an assortment of nation specific tariffs with special attention given to China, but the ninety-day pause on reciprocal tariffs was a huge blink, comedown, and turned liberation day into capitulation day.  The reciprocal tax was the cornerstone of a new tariff tax revenue stream, to possibly revamp the US tax code to exclude income tax, lay a greater regressive tax burden on the American public to pay for tax cuts for the rich, and hopefully drive offshored American businesses and foreign factories onto U.S. shores.  

 

So, what was the catalyst that caused such a volte-face from the President?  The stock market has been in free fall for several weeks, and Wall St bankers and operators, like Bill Ackman and Jamie Dimon, et al., were deeply worried and most unhappy about the turn of events.  This is after all, a group, Wall St, that has turned bailouts into an art form, a money-making venture, & a power consolidation model for the privileged few.  The U.S. stock markets, priced to perfection, when Trump came to power, have seen a bloodbath.  So, we have oligarchs bending the President's ear, we have Wall St… the POTUS’s favorite scorecard, the stock market…  adding to the pressure.  There was also the matter of bond markets which were also being crushed.  It appears that hedge funds were getting burned in another highly leveraged trade, involving derivatives, or what is called a basis trade.  So, as that trade began to burst and margins were called, Treasuries (aka collateral) were being dumped in the process.  And there was the matter of foreign governments dumping U.S. bonds and Treasuries in retaliation for Trump waging war with the world, a process that has been underway for some time.  Further factoring in, the Federal Reserve has sworn off QE and debt monetization, at least for the moment.  This, was all too much for the President.  Stock market tantrums, billionaire oligarchs whining, the golden calf… the Wall St bull going belly up… Trump, perhaps, could take.  But soaring interest rates were a problem, a huge problem for a nation in terminal decline.  America is in hock up to its eyeballs, and grossly mismanaged by the aforementioned oligarchs, Demo party, and our dear, dear friends, the violently repugnant & reprehensible GOP.  

 

Soaring interest rates could hasten America’s fall, threaten exorbitant privilege, make our exorbitant national debt spiral higher.  Is another bailout around the corner for Hedge Funds and their counterparties, Wall St banks?  JP Morgan’s Jamie Dimon seems to think so or is he simply advocating for his portfolio?   (Note, in Jamie’s world, another Wall St. bailout is merely a "kerfuffle."). Foreign governments turning the screws on the U.S. Treasury market, upset about kissing the Fuhrer’s hindquarters?  The White House has been extremely focused not just on tariffs but lobbying the FED for reduced interest rates… soaring bond rates got the President’s attention this week.  Hence, the administration bailed and turned tail on reciprocal tariffs. 

 

What was revealed to all this week is that America’s national debt is a huge hole in our nation’s armor, that and its morally bankrupt leadership are also a weakness & a liability.  Hence, Trump beat a hasty retreat on reciprocal tariffs.  

 

This wasn’t the first time, nor will it be the last time that markets…  dominated by Wall St mega banks & financial institutions…  are manipulated by corporate greed and CEOs, who get Washington to cower, panic, throw money at a crisis, or reverse course on economic and regulatory policies that the Street deems unsuitable (a threat to their profits).  Clearly, tariffs, the repudiation of free trade, and the onshoring businesses, with the promise of gainful employment for the American people, is deemed, in the eyes of Wall St., unsuitable (a detriment to myopic short-term gains).  Wall St loves the current free trade arrangement, all those profitable imports, an impoverished & destitute American workforce, the national debt soaring higher & higher, all those US dollars repatriated back to America & Wall St by foreign nations.  But I digress.  The next day, Wednesday, March 9, after Trump sent out a message to buy on social media, the stock market, lo and behold, roared to life.  The fix, seemingly, was in, the stock market, seemingly, rigged, and the insiders made out like bandits as the market climbed to record valuations within a single day, only to see it come crashing down the very next day, March 10.  And why not?  America is now, a banana republic, where we have two-tiered justice, two-tiered democracy, an economy for the rich and an economy for everyone else, even a two-tiered stock market.

 

Are we not entertained? 

 

Of course, lost in the circus of the tariff rollout, there’s a certain haste, a DOGE-like quality to the President’s tariffs delivery (if you can call it that).  A move fast and break things ethos, a smash and grab quality, a burn ‘em, cheat ‘em, and loot characteristic and heavy handedness.  Tariffs, of course, are a highly legitimate policy tool used by nation-states to protect industry, jobs, their economies from competing nations, engaged in their own trade machinations and mercantilism.  China has been highly protectionist and highly successful.  Tariffs and trade policy can be a starting point in negotiations, both an economic and foreign policy tool.  Of course, the American reader wouldn’t know any of this from reading the intelligentsia and America’s papers of record, loaded to the gills with free traders, globalization partisans, and neoliberals… that is to say, those elites vested in 45 years of abject failure and running the nation straight into the ground.  The fact that the President and fellow & future staff, seemingly, spent the last four years giving so little thought to the rollout of Trump’s tariff & trade policy is proving to be highly problematic presently.  Trump has long hammered on the nations that are, allegedly, ripping America off with trade imbalances.  

 

But not all imbalances are bad or inherently criminal or in Trump parlance, a “rip-off.”  Some nations enjoy a comparative advantage, like tiny Madagascar, which produces vanilla and runs a trade surplus with the United States.  For Trump to slam this impoverished nation with a 47% tariff is absurd, petulant, bullying.  Why should Americans pay a 47% tax on Madagascar’s product, vanilla, because they produce a product that America doesn’t or chooses not to produce?  Again, all this speaks to a tariffs rollout that was ill-conceived and poorly planned.

 

On the other hand, Trump has been highly reluctant to address the free trade zealots that inhabit America’s boardrooms, C-suites, and Wall St.  Those individuals in positions of economic & political power, who will, at the drop of a hat, move businesses offshore, if American labor and unions don’t bow & scrape to management’s and ownership’s every diktat.  These players have offshored the US economy, jobs, the tax base… like Apple… because they saw an arbitrage play, an opportunity to exploit foreign labor, govs, regulatory regimes, slave wages and/or slavery, subsidies, tax laws, judicial systems, and perhaps “bribe/incent” foreign govs for a competitive advantage (vis-à-vis the United States).  And in turn, manufacture goods overseas and dump them on US shores to make greater profits.  This arbitrage play, what economists refer to or call micro-trade policy, is what Trump’s team, ideally, should be addressing.  American businesses & capital, which have stripped and sold out the United States and driven labor, globally… indeed, nation-states, globally… directly into the dirt (in the by now all too familiar strategy, a race to the bottom). 

 

But this requires a great deal of study, analysis, and oversight of cost components, determining what the arbitrage play is by industry or in the case of monopoly or oligopoly by corporate entity and economic sector.  What are the appropriate costs and application of a tariff that eliminates any advantage that is to be derived from exploiting currency, foreign governments, labor, subsidies, tax laws, etc., so that said business, industry, or utility returns home?  And of course, there’s the monitoring of US companies, domestically, if any still exist w/in a given economic sector, to ensure they don’t take advantage of the situation and use tariffs to jack up prices and make obscene profits.  The overriding goal should be simple, if you sell in America… you produce, hire, and pay taxes in America. Full stop.  Such a scenario also expands global supply chains.  An easier and more direct path to conduct micro trade policy is windfall profits taxes, which, if properly applied, apply exclusively to the supply-side of the equation: capital and ownership.  But as we all know by now, the Trump administration wasn’t going  confront capital, U.S. multinationals, and ownership. 

 

(As for macro trade policy, games nation states play against each other…  in terms of trade barriers, tariffs, trade policy, currency manipulation, and financial leverage & economic sanctions, etc… we’ll leave that for another time.  Except to say, Trump’s overriding goal at the moment should be to create & return businesses to U.S. shores, so that it is far less reliant upon imports.  With that accomplished, the trade imbalance in goods goes a long way to sorting itself out… the financial imbalances, foreign nations sending US dollars, earned from the current trade imbalance, into Treasuries & Wall St is another matter entirely.  Here again, if the U.S. rebuilds its industrial, labor, tax base, and hopefully, evil rich Americans can stop looting the United States long enough, waging wars with the world long enough, then national debt & deficits should cool down.  We’ll be far less dependent upon foreign nations buying U.S. debt.  Can American billionaires & multinationals contain themselves?)

 

So, we are back to this week’s draconian, heavy handed trade policy, Trump waffling back and forth, and the world on the precipice of a global recession and American interest rates rising… a result that may crush the U.S. economy, introduce stagflation, cut American tax revenues – tariffs and otherwise – at a time that Trump and Musk are said to be deeply worried about interest rates and the national debt.   At a time that Trump is hoping to use tariffs to finance a really bad idea, the extension & addition of tax cuts for the rich.

 

Trump could have avoided many of his current problems if he had targeted key nations, instead of attacking and waging war with the world.  Trump could have avoided many of these headaches if he had targeted specific industries for a return to U.S. soil, instead of attacking and waging war with the world.  Over time he could have addressed less problematic nations and industries.  Instead, we have the typical Trumpian chaos: the bluster, the boasting & bravado, the tantrums, the malaise, the unnecessary harm to the United States.  Instead, we have each nation’s trade deficit divided by that nation’s exports to produce a tariff tax: poorly conceived, sloppy, and a policy that operates to the complete detriment of the American people and Trump’s overriding goal (which is legitimate, the return of business & industry to U.S. shores).  

 

But the bright spot, the silver lining, Trump and Musk are annihilating and putting to bed once and for all the idea that the billionaire class are masters of the universe, ordained by God with divine intelligence, and gifted with a preternatural ability to lead.  Those ideas, at the present, are dead and waiting to be buried.  American exceptionalism & exorbitant privilege, perhaps, also appear to be joining the myth of billionaire supremacy in a lonely, unmarked grave.  As nation-states dump U.S. bonds, send Treasury yields higher, and deliver a message to the United States: America’s empire & hubris are long overdue for a correction.

 

And for that, we should all be grateful. 

 

Copyright JM Hamilton Publishing 2025