BRICS, USE THE DOLLAR, OR ELSE: TRUMP OVERREACH?
Just as with this past Monday's blog, so many people sent me this story that I have to talk about it. President-elect Trump has just released a statement on "X" threatening the BRICS countries with severe tariffs if they abandon the dollar:
Trump to BRICS: Do NOT abandon the dollar...
Now I am not a "free trade ideologue" nor a committed "Austrian school" economist for the simple reason that we're in the real world. In the world of the Austrian school, free trade would be wonderful, but when confronted with reality all it results in is - as the 1990s independent presidential candidate Ross Perot put it - the "great sucking sound" as non-protected industries abandoned the country for those where the regulatory climate was not as encumbering, and where the taxes and labor costs were lower. With that caveat on the record, I proceed by a torturously circuitous detour around Harvey's Barn to the observation, or rather the question, of just whom does Mr. Trump think he's kidding? I cannot remember the last time I bought anything that said "Made with Pride in India", or "Made in the Russian Federation", or "Product of South Africa". I might have, on various occasions, bought something agricultural from Brazil, but I don't recall. About the only things I buy from any of the BRICS members would be things involving technology of some sort, and when you say that, you say China.
In short, when I glance around le Chateau Farrell/das Farrellschloss, I do not see all that many products as having come from any of the BRICS countries, including my seldom-used televisions and DVD players, which came from Korea (the good Korea, not the bad one). My kitchen chairs came from - of all places - Vietnam as did my kitchen table. My refrigerator? Korea. My washer and drier came from (believe it or not) Iowa. Most of my books came from the United States, Canada, Great Britain, with a few from Germany and, yes, a few from BRICS member India. Other than the few Chinese components in my technical gizmos, very little of what I own came from any of the BRICs countries.
On and on I could go, but I suspect the reader gets the point: with the lion's share of trade between America and the BRICS nations being largely confined to China, I wonder if perhaps the threat to the BRICS nations in general to use dollars or else face the wrath of tariffs might not be a bit of an overreach on Mr. Trump's part.
Or to put a rather different point on it, Mr. Trump may not be readily appreciating why the BRICS bloc formed in the first place, but here's a hint: telling other sovereign countries that they cannot make their own currency arrangements between each other and threatening tariff mayhem might be fueling the very motives that led to the formation of the bloc. Telling more traditional societies and cultures such as India, or Brazil, or Russia, that they have to use the currency of a country that has a large segment of its own population that thinks it's ok to allow men to use women's toilets and play in women's sporting events, to allow children to undergo "gender surgery", and in general that wants to promote all sorts of cultural nincompoopery and codswallop (remember the American progressivist outrage when "Pussy Riot" was arrested for having unceremoniously staged a sacrilegious performance inside the rebuilt Christ the Saviour Cathedral in Moscow, the one rebuilt after Stalin blew it up?) , probably should not be lecturing the BRICs countries on what they should and should not do amongst themselves before getting its own cultural house back into some sort of traditional order and sanity.
After all, it's the very abandonment of that order and the insistence that everyone else be exactly like us that led to the formation of the BRICS bloc in the first place. Other countries just became sick and tired of being bossed around.
If the President-elect does not appreciate the cultural and traditional component behind the BRICs alliance and remains focused only upon the materialistic, financial, and economic issues, then he will have gravely miscalculated the geopolitics of what he is up against. To be sure, the BRICs bloc is about finance and economics. But that is most decidedly not all that it is about. It is also about the wish of the traditional cultures that comprise it to preserve their culture in the face of the materialistic money myopia that has led to the spiritual and aesthetic decline of the West.
In short, don't expect Mssrs. Xi, Modi, or Putin to roll over on this one...
See you on th-
Oh, one more thing. I'm certain that the "progressivists'" outrage voiced in the USA over the arrest of Pussy Riot would have extended to the rebuilding of Christ the Saviour Cathedral itself, if had they known that Russia had the effrontery to rebuild something that Stalin blew up. Maybe it's things like that that ultimately are fueling the drive to abandon the dollar.
See you on the flip side...
(If you enjoyed today's blog, please share it with some friends.)
No Comments
Help the Community Grow
Please understand a donation is a gift and does not confer membership or license to audiobooks. To become a paid member, visit member registration.
Trump is up to something ‘sneaky’ in my opinion. With all this ‘talk’ about tariffs or ending the war in the Ukraine within 24 hours of him taking office is a sort of side show to his innermost plans. What we could be doing is looking at his picks for the most important cabinet positions and ignoring all the other stuff for now.
If Trump returns the dollar to the Gold and Silver Standard and reindunderizes the USA, I am with him.
As some analysts have already pointed out, most of the world will no longer accept US Treasuries in payment, a custom that started up decades ago when the Saudis agreed to / were forced to accept T-bills for their oil. For a time Trump talked about facing up to the huge debt problem without explaining how. One possibility is that he doesn’t want to show his hand in this respect, hoping against hope to salvage the USD. Barring “curve balls” such as Zero Point Energy – and even this would take years of transition to implement – the solution would be to re-industrialize the country. This too will take years, not the least because of the loss of know-how needed to make industries work.
One problem area where a new administration might have at least some chance is the issue of illegals with all the human trafficking ramifications. The NYC mayor has already announced that he is willing to support a repatriation plan. The “use the dollar or face tariffs” threat seems absolutely ridiculous with the possible exception of being used as a ploy to get Mexico to close its borders (but the Trump-Trudeau meeting looks like mere farce).
As for washing machines made in the USA, I can confirm that these are in use in many laundromats here in Italy. But there do not seem to be many other consumer items – ah I forgot the California Prunes, so good against constipation, but not exactly top-end technology. Unless you’re on the market for a retired Abrahams Tank (use not recommended in the Ukrainian steppe).
It was good old Benjamin Franklin; in his autobiography, that said the #1 reason for the American Revolution was? To get out from under the King’s Gold, by issuing their own currency.
The reason for the War of 1812 was to stop Alexander Hamilton’s ploy to bring back the rule by the Kings’ Gold. If you don’t know this? Well, your not supposed to! If you read & believe their history.
So who issues the USSA currency today? The International Banking cartel, under the FED.
Infamously passed by a few traitors in the dead of night on…?
Christmas Eve!
Throw those money lenders right-out of the Temple..
and on their _SSES!
Ironically, the BRICS are infighting over this very issue of de-dollarization.
Russia is steadfast.
China, so-so.
The rest are fighting it.
But now?
With having been publicly shamed for standing against the ALL-MIGHTY-DOLLAR?
Albeit; mostly standing-together symbolically , in a public-photo-shoot only.
It’s as if Trump Inc. wants to push them more towards Russia, and/or China.
As if someone, something…
wants USSA confrontations – on as many fronts as inhumanly possible.
THE Economist Michael Hudson recently addressed this very issue[among other].
https://michael-hudson.com/2024/11/a-civilizational-split/
A Civilization Split
https://michael-hudson.com/
[in case firs-link doesn’t take]
Antartica is HUGE. …https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=pfbid02NejNy82F72enDuJRxsx5QSe94JF5x5Qn1vWRRv5XbRXNHGjdZnoTH4qmnK4o2VXal&id=100063568157142&mibextid=ZbWKwL
Facebook links are useless for those who refuse to login to Facebook.
Trump’s appointment of Sebastian Gorka, a proud, self-declared Nazi, to an important intelligence/ security position on his White House staff is also concerning. https://consortiumnews.com/2024/11/26/john-kiriakou-sebastian-gorka-is-back/
I love it!
Trump (using his usual big open/bluster) comes up with a way to open the idea of largish tariffs, roughly across the board, using BRICS as a viable “other.”
American School / List / Whigs econ arguments for protectionism and tariffs are 90% INTERNALLY facing – how to PROTECT, and improve the economy and lives of the people of the country. Individual country targets, individual item targets, sanctions in yet another name attempting to DIRECTLY get another country to take a specific to them internal change at our behest THESE don’t work so well and should be the very last act (EVs from China, anyone?) of tariff targets.
so in this way i really applaud trump’s bombastic BRICS target. that WOULD be an almost universal anti-“others” style tariff. great start!
1. Matthew 22:21: “Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s; and unto God the things that are God’s.”
2. God, as the disputed deity [theos], that was banned from being spoken [Yahweh], in 1st century BC, is simply year’s woe [Christmas], which meant annual tribal gathering.
3. The annual gathering was a yearly tribal truce, when disputes were set aside, which, in elaborated form, was basis, for debt cancellation – every 7th year.
4. Biblical debt cancellation, and fair trade, are inseparable, which – in praxis – meant resetting debt, annually, or, by a 7 years interval, as general amnesty.
5. The American Bible Belt is an imperial agenda, because it attempts to cash in, on ancient alleged debts, by bolstering fake historical claims, on long abandoned lands.
6. The Bible Belt is in the wrong, because the sabbatical year: jubilee – when land was “left to lie fallow” – is about debt cancellation, to prevent overreaching speculation.
7. The Christmas spirit is debt cancellation, and, that shekel misers don’t understand, because greed is married, to the almighty dollar – the Vatican imperial proxy.
BRICS is the Scythian revolt, against the Assyrian empire, in an Adon-Odin skull toast, called the Holy Grail – because fallen Samaria rose in Crimea.
Year’s woe, as yearly Fraggle truce:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/yvmvn942o2rfu42/cantus.mp4
The original, biblical debt cancellation, here in limerick form, has a yearly cultural aspect, and a seven years economic aspects – which was the founding idea: Yahweh-Elohim, in the Bronze Age settlement – which today underpins Scythian Adon-Odin, as the heathen satan, who lingers on, as the Yule man, amongst the anti-Catholic WASPs (White Anglo-Saxon Protestant).
A CHRISTMAS CAROL
When Ebenezer Scrooge’s ghostly door
went topological in metaphor,
he found that humbug
kept under rug,
was dancing on the floor.
When Ebenezer Scrooge in spell cast
kindled future, present and past,
he found entanglement
in grave lament,
and pleaded guilty at last.
When Ebenezer Scrooge broke day,
darkness had blown away,
and he went jolly
to his holly,
on this glorious Christmas day.
OF COURSE, when Yahweh is yearly truce, then the message is voice of reason, in rule of law, which means, that the genocidal maniacs, who are promoting Israhell 1.0, and Israhell 2.0, are criminal imposters – a pretending pestilence.
A stolen identity is theft, and theft is punishable, which means, that all royalty in Europe is going to be dealt with, as criminals, and the policeman, who beheaded the Assyrian empire, was Adon-Odin, the raven master.
Looney tunes galore:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/scl/fi/xp6kyjuvcqtjdy1zbs1yf/looney-tunes8.jpg?rlkey=tjcb4ezgdi63qgipav8kvuzvm