This cartoon best encapsulates 30 years of US foreign policy.
The problem is that the Flintstones, think the Houthis, have made amazing progress up the evolution ladder and the Jetsons, the American taxpayers, are approaching dangerously the limit of their seemingly inexhaustible credit card.
Are we finally gonna leave the 1950s then?
So who's right in this debate? Or more specifically, who's going to pay for the tariffs? In spite of the simplistic answer below, it's complicated and it depends.
As for Japan, the country, like Mexico, Canada and a few other close allies of the US, is in a very difficult position. Even harder if we focus on the car market where competition is cut-through and losing market share would decimate the market position of Japanese car makers in the US. They have no choice and must therefore absorb the costs temporarily. Even if some makers like Nissan risk going bankrupt in the process. But this won't last very long. American manufacturers will raise their prices and so will the Japanese eventually. So right in the short term but probably wrong in the longer term.
But what is true for the car market doesn't necessarily translate for any other market. For manufactured products, competition will indeed oblige makers to lower their prices. So right again, then? But this will not apply to low end products from Vietnam or China where the margins are already wafer-thin and cannot adjust further.
Overall, it will soon be a mess with more competition for some products and rising prices for others. But far more importantly, the Yen and Yuan rates will indeed adjust downward as outlined at the end of the article increasing commercial tensions. So eventually trade will suffer and fewer products will be available in the US at a higher price. In other words, inflation is unavoidable. If only thanks to rising commodity prices, especially oil and gas denominated in falling dollars, further amplified by crashing Asian currencies. The yen below 160 and the Yuan at 8 for a dollar by the end of the year? In other words, a replay of the competitive devaluations of the 1930s is the most likely outcome of the current trade war.
In resume, it may be a little early to announce a resounding victory in a war which has barely started.
Last week, we sparked a stir within the financial community when we were the first to show, clearly and without doubt, that contrary to months of false narratives by the liberal "expert" class, the costs of Trump's tariffs are actually not borne by either US companies or US consumers, but rather by the exporting nation and its manufacturers. In this particular case, we showed that Japan's passenger car export prices to North America had plunged since Liberation Day, making it abundantly clear that it was indeed the Toyotas and Nissans of the world that were footing the bill of those extra $20 billion or so in month tariff revenues generated by the Trump admin.
We were referencing Japan’s May trade data, which showed that car exports to the US declined 24.7% by value in May, but only 3.9% by volume, as Japanese carmakers took a big hit to their profits by slashing prices to maintain shipments and market share.
Yet this data was so very much against conventional wisdom and the fake mental models the TDS crew had constructed, that virtually not a single member of the anti-Trump echo chamber believed the findings, even when our discovery was presented by Congressman Bernie Moreno to the Fed chair a few days later as evidence that contrary to his fears, US inflation isn't soaring for the simple reason that costs are not being borne by domestic consumers (fast forward to 5 minutes in).
Yet still the TDS echo chamber would deny what was presented to them clear as day.
But fast forward to today, when we can finally lay this matter to rest.
This morning, none other than Japan's Nikkei, admitted that for the past three months it was none other than Japan's car industry that had been footing all the tariff-related costs following Trump's Liberation Day announcement.
According to the Nikkei, "Japanese automakers kept prices unchanged at first after the tariffs were imposed." It then goes on to state what our readers already knew, namely that "the unit price of Japanese automobile exports to the U.S. in May fell about 20% on the year, according to Japan's Ministry of Finance, indicating that Japanese automakers have been trying to absorb the cost of tariffs."
One correction to the esteemed Japanese media outlet: not "trying", but succeeding, simply because automakers have had no choice: sure, they could have hiked prices long ago but the outcome would be a collapse in demand for Japanese cars, with market share taken over by domestic producers and other, cheaper, foreign automakers.
All of this is taking place as trade talk negotiations between the US and Japan are going nowhere, and in fact, Tokyo had gotten so emboldened by the theatrical standoff between Washington and Beijing, it thought it could get away with simply demanding away US tariffs. As a result, despite weeks of negotiation, the US-Japan teams have gotten nowhere with just one week left to go until the July 9 deadline, which is why Trump lashed out - in a very polite fashion - at the "spoiled" mercantilist Japan, which refuses to make any compromises.
“We dealt with Japan. I’m not sure if we’re going to make a deal. I doubt it with Japan — they’re very tough. You have to understand, they’re spoiled. I love Japan. I really like the new prime minister, too. Abe was one of my closest friends, as you know,” Trump said on Tuesday, referring to former Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe who died in a 2022 assassination, explaining why there likely won't be a trade deal with Japan.
Trump noted this week that Japan has a rice crisis that has elevated prices, arguing the country should turn to the U.S. for rice.
“But they and others are so spoiled from having ripped us off for 30, 40 years that it’s really hard for them to make a deal. You know, it’s very hard. As an example with Japan, they won’t take rice, and yet they desperately need rice,” he said. “They won’t take any cars, but they’ll sell millions. So, we told them, ‘Sorry you can’t do that.’”
The president said Japan will likely get a letter that would set the tariff rate ahead of the July 8 expiration of the 90-day pause on country-specific tariffs. Trump has said he will send letters soon to trading partners who haven’t struck deals.
“So what I’m going to do is I’ll write them a letter, say, ‘We thank you very much. We know you can’t do the kind of things that we need, and therefore you’ll pay a 30 percent, 35 percent or whatever the numbers that we determine,’” he said. “Because we also have a very big trade deficit with Japan, as you know and it’s very unfair to the American people.”
In other words, Trump has effectively assured Japan would be hit with across-the-board tariffs of up to 35% on its exports to the US, beyond the 24% penciled in on July 9.
In response, Japan prime minister Ishiba said that American cars "are a tough sell in Japan" adding that his government needs to discuss with the US how to boost car imports from America.
“We can’t sell left-hand drive, huge, fuel-inefficient cars made in the US,” Ishiba said Wednesday, and he probably wasn't wrong. “We’ll discuss with the US how to produce better products and bring them into Japan, while considering Japan’s safety.”
In a Fox News interview on Sunday, Trump lashed out at Japan over cars: “So we give Japan no cars. They won’t take our cars, right? And yet we take millions and millions of their cars into the United States. It’s not fair."
So what does Japan do now? Well, after eating billions of dollars in losses for months, the local carmakers are literally on the verge of collapse, and they are now trial ballooning that they have no choice but to do what everyone assumed they would do from day one: raise prices.
According to the Nikkei, Subaru and Mitsubishi Motors have started to raise prices while Mazda Motor is exploring doing so (none of this is actually reflected stateside yet). According to the Nikkei, "they have little choice but to raise prices, having reached their limit in absorbing cost increases."
Which is precisely what we warned back in March when we said that "Japanese Carmakers Face Catastrophic Profit Hit From Trump's Auto Tariffs." Well, the profit hit is here, and in a few weeks it will translate into one of the biggest recessions Japan has ever faces in modern history, forcing the BOJ to unleash an unprecedented stimulus, while pushing rates back to zero or negative.
And since Tokyo will be back to resorting to the oldest trick in the book, namely sending the yen crashing to offset the tariff costs - we fully expect USDJPY to hit 160 in the next 6 months - Trump is about to get a whole lot angrier at Japan and its soon-to-crash currency, at which point the world will finally move on from trade wars to currency wars and capital controls.
The founding fathers did try to build a Republic with check and balance, strong principles and the rule of law. To their credit, it did last a few decades. Then everything went wrong. Not in one big swoop but step by step, one battle at a time until finally in the late 1980s the war was lost. Finance, pharmaceuticals, education, health, the military... you name it. It is corrupt. But legally corrupt. If you belong, you get rich. If you don't, well, hard luck. How long can this parlor state last? The Romans did manage to last a few centuries but these were slower times!
The Eurozone attitude reminds me of the economist Irving Fisher's who famously on October 15, 1929, declared "stock prices have reached what looks like a permanently high plateau."
Permanent deficits, no buyers for the debt except the Central Bank and now they want to lower interest rates? What could go wrong, except of course everything?
Europe is now squeezed between the scylla of expenses: pensions, health care, immigration, Ukraine, rearmament and the Charybdis of exploding deficits. And now, just on cue, a sharp slow down of the economy which is already in recession in most parts of the continent. The budgets which were already impossible to balance will soon become unmanageable. The end of the Euro-model?
By Thomas Kolbe
The European Central Bank has reached the end of its rate cycle - and has become ensnared in the very problems to which it has significantly contributed. In Sintra, this was all but hidden behind a facade of central banker utopia.
The annual Sintra conference, just west of Lisbon, serves the ECB much as Jackson Hole does for the Federal Reserve. It’s a moment to review, to look ahead, and to tie the past year’s monetary policy into a broader political narrative. For ECB President Christine Lagarde, that narrative is easily summed up: after eight cuts, rates now rest at two percent; inflation hovers around the two-percent target; employment across the eurozone remains stable; and a fresh debt crisis is nowhere in sight.
That is the essence of Lagarde’s Sintra address—designed to convey one message: everything is under control. Even uncertainties such as Trump-era trade volatility, geopolitical upheavals, or the collapse of German industry are said not to derail the ECB’s set course. Following the market flood during the lockdowns, things are now deemed normal—markets “swing” around their equilibrium. In central bank parlance: they’ve found the “neutral rate.”
The “neutral rate” is the holy grail of central banking mystique. When policy makers feel secure, and media campaigns successfully mask the erosion of fiat currency, it becomes the mantra. In this worldview, the ECB’s policy rate and some theoretical, consolidated market rate align—not by chance, but by design. Even before Lagarde’s closing remarks, ECB Executive Board members Joachim Nagel and Philip Lane had laid the groundwork all through June, repeatedly sending the “neutral-rate” message.
That message? That they have balanced inflationary and deflationary forces and steered the eurozone back onto a growth trajectory. Let’s skip debates over manipulated inflation stats and dramatically understated unemployment figures. These neutral-rate narratives are nothing more than central-bank fairy tales from One Thousand and One Nights—prepackaged press releases meant to evoke sovereignty. Economic processes don’t reduce to such simplistic frameworks. But that’s precisely not the point: the neutral-rate story is a sedative—for governments and markets alike.
The tale of the ECB as guardian of monetary stability is a relic of Bundesbank days. That era is long gone. Central banks worldwide, dragged into political-fiscal entanglements during the last debt crisis 15 years ago, have since become dependent. During the lockdowns alone, the ECB’s PEPP absorbed €1.85 trillion of eurozone sovereign debt—and today still holds roughly a third of that mountain of obligations.
Today, the ECB’s sole goal is to keep those sovereign debt-stacks liquid—buying up bonds shunned by the market to maintain the illusion that public debt, generous welfare, and Keynesian interventionism are all sustainably reconcilable.
Eurozone governments have long relied on external liquidity. With public debt averaging 100 percent of GDP, many member states would be insolvent without the ECB’s backstop. That would have consequences—not just for markets, but for social cohesion, internal stability, and the self-image of an EU-Europe built on oversized welfare motors that offer citizens a false sense of security and dangerously misjudge public capacity.
A withdrawal of the ECB from this nexus of fiscal irresponsibility, monetary support, and political overreach is thus unthinkable. The central bank is no longer just a guardian of the currency—it is the stabilizer of an eroding social model. Through indirect means and backdoor channels, it is underwriting pensions, welfare budgets, bureaucratic cogs—and obscuring how fragile the whole edifice has become.
The ECB is the last mortar holding that crumbling structure together. Remove it, and the house of cards collapses instantly. Which is why Lagarde and cohort must preserve the illusion of a steerable eurozone.
Beyond the gloss of Sintra—in the real world of data—the eurozone is in serious crisis. Industry continues to shrink, and construction is in a deep recession. Over 50 percent of firms cite insufficient orders. Since 2021, German industry alone has cut 217,000 jobs—and by year’s end will lose another 100,000. Deindustrialization is advancing. Production is being moved abroad. Capital is fleeing, and productivity has stalled for eight years running.
The result: countries’ tax bases are eroding. Revenues fall and welfare costs rise, pushing debt burdens higher. Without genuine reforms, the eurozone risks a debt crisis that will once again force the ECB to serve as lender of last resort.
Years of zero interest have immersed the eurozone in the sweet poison of cheap credit. Now, subvention-dependent firms are collapsing under real positive rates. That’s “zombie economy.” And the latest casualty of green industrial planning—Northvolt—is just the latest to close its doors, a consequence of centrally managed economic policy.
Making matters worse: across the Atlantic, the Federal Reserve stands firm on its consolidation path, keeping rates at 4.5 percent—well above other major central banks. The U.S. is clearly prepared to accept a positive market rate, giving its economy room to purge unproductive elements. This lets productive capital reposition and fuel a fresh investment cycle. With tax cuts, energy deregulation, and rolling back green agendas, the U.S. is becoming a capital magnet—one that European economies can only envy.
In Washington, the view is clear: a period of pain brings greater rewards. While the U.S. equips itself administratively, technically, and innovatively for the digital age, EU-Europe stages a competition in ever-expanding welfare plans—rent caps, social handouts, green subsidies: consumption decreed and regulated to substitute for the productive machinery of revenue generation.
Europe has become addicted to welfare-state subventionitis—sticking to a hyper-statist model to defer social and economic pain. And always in the wings: the ECB and its fatal money press. How long this can last, only time will tell. But market tensions are mounting. The day when those tensions trigger a seismic shift, shaking the tectonic plates of the economy into new alignment, looms ever closer.
* * *
Thomas Kolbe, born in 1978 in Neuss/ Germany, is a graduate economist. For over 25 years, he has worked as a journalist and media producer for clients from various industries and business associations. As a publicist, he focuses on economic processes and observes geopolitical events from the perspective of the capital markets. His publications follow a philosophy that focuses on the individual and their right to self-determination.
So now we know about the vaccines: Yes, it's all about the money! Some people are getting filthy rich selling vaccines and the CDC as well as other authorities are simply bought and will therefore obfuscate and disguise the data as needed.
The problem is therefore not a medical one, pro or against vaccines, but a corruption one. This should be easier to deal with, although of course in the end very little will happen. Still, by its mere nomination, RFK Jr is changing the game and may eventually have an impact. We'll see.
As for his support for Trump. Yes, sure, maybe the President is misunderstood. OK, he cares for the little guys. Great! But then again, his Big Beautiful Bill is mostly a lot of pork for well connected people which eventually the little guys will have to pay back for the system not to go bankrupt. So is it that the President, doesn't get this basic economic fact, or more likely that at this late stage, there nothing left to salvage and the cycle must run its course?
Via VigilantFox.com,
It’s not every day an active HHS Secretary sits down for 90 minutes straight with Tucker Carlson.
But that’s exactly what happened, and Kennedy instantly seized Carlson’s attention with a chilling story of CDC corruption.
He revealed that the health agency buried a 1999 internal study led by researcher Thomas Verstraten, which showed an alarming 1135% increase in autism risk from the hepatitis B vaccine.
Kennedy said the researchers were “shocked” by the findings.
So what did they do? They covered it up, according to Kennedy.
“They got rid of all the older children essentially and just had younger children who are too young to be diagnosed [with autism].”
RFK Jr. then explained the real reason why your pediatrician will kick you out of their practice for refusing vaccines.
“There’s a published article out there now that says that 50% of revenues to most pediatricians come from vaccines.”
It’s all about the money. The higher the vaccination rate, the bigger the bonus.
“And that’s why your pediatrician, if you say I want to go slow on the vaccines… will throw you out of his practice because you’re now jeopardizing that bonus structure.”
To the claim that the vaccine–autism link has been “debunked,” Kennedy had a message for Anderson Cooper, Jake Tapper, and everyone who smugly insists on it.
“None of the vaccines given to children in the first six months of life have ever been studied for autism.”
Let that sink in.
He went further, revealing that the CDC actually did find a link when they studied the DTaP vaccine.
But they dismissed it. Kennedy said they claimed it “didn’t count” because the data came from VAERS—the very system they use to track vaccine injuries.
So when the evidence pointed to harm, they simply claimed their own system wasn’t reliable enough and took no steps to fix it.
The vaccine corruption didn’t end there. Kennedy attested that the CDC killed off a vaccine injury reporting system that actually worked—because it worked too well.
It showed that 1 in 37 vaccines caused an injury.
Tucker was stunned.
“Of all vaccines?” he asked.
“Yeah,” Kennedy confirmed.
RFK Jr. explained that the CDC funded a study led by researcher Ross Lazarus. It compared a sophisticated machine-counting system to VAERS.
What did they find? VAERS was failing to catch over 99% of vaccine injuries.
The new system also revealed that 2.6% of all vaccinations resulted in an injury.
So what did the CDC do? They shut it down in 2010. And they’re still using VAERS today—even though it’s a completely inadequate system.
But Kennedy didn’t stop at old vaccine scandals. He also broke down Pfizer’s own COVID vaccine trial data. That trial showed a 23% higher death rate in the vaccinated group.
Pfizer gave 21,720 people the vaccine and 21,728 the placebo.
One vaccinated person died of COVID. Two placebo recipients died. They used this tiny difference to claim “100% effective” based on relative risk reduction.
But in absolute terms, it took 22,000 vaccinations to save one life.
Over six months, 21 vaccinated participants died of all causes, compared to 17 in the placebo group—a 23.5% higher death rate.
And then there’s vaccine spokesperson Paul Offit, often seen on CNN and other mainstream networks.
Kennedy shared an infuriating story about how he literally “voted himself rich” on the rotavirus vaccine.
While serving on the CDC’s ACIP committee, Offit voted to add rotavirus vaccination to the childhood schedule—even as he was developing his own competing vaccine. He guaranteed demand for his product.
The first approved rotavirus vaccine, RotaShield, was yanked from the market for causing dangerous intussusception. Offit’s vaccine, RotaTeq, eventually replaced it.
He and his partners later sold their rights to Merck for $186 million. As RFK Jr. said, Offit literally “voted himself rich.”
When Carlson mentioned Fauci, Kennedy revealed how Fauci funded research that helped scientists hide evidence of lab-made viruses.
The technique, called “seamless ligation,” allowed researchers to engineer viruses in a lab without leaving telltale genetic fingerprints.
RFK Jr. explained:
“One of his fundees, Ralph Baric, from the University of North Carolina, developed a technique called the seamless ligation technique, which is a technique for hiding the laboratory origins of a manipulated virus.”
“… normally if there’s a virus manipulated, researchers can look at the DNA sequences and they can say this thing was created in a lab. Ralph Baric had developed a technique that he called the no-see technique and its technical name was seamless ligation, and it was a way of hiding evidence of human tampering.”
He called it the exact opposite of what real public health work should be. Carlson cut in, saying, “That’s what you would do if you’re creating viruses for biological warfare.”
The conversation shifted to Trump, leading to one of the biggest highlights of the entire interview.
First, Kennedy explained that Trump chose his cabinet in an unorthodox way: he wanted to see three clips of each candidate performing on TV before considering them for the job.
“One of the things with President Trump is that he really knows how to pick talent… For every one of the positions that he picked, he wanted to see three clips of them performing on TV. He’s very conscious of the fact that these people are going to be out selling his program to the public,” Kennedy said.
That’s when Kennedy ended the interview with a bang, sharing his genuine thoughts about Trump for three straight minutes. It was one of the standout moments of the entire conversation.
If you’re on the fence about Trump, listen to Kennedy here. It might just change how you see him.
“I had him pegged as a narcissist, when narcissists are incapable of empathy. And he’s one of the most empathetic people that I’ve met,” Kennedy said.
“He’s immensely curious, inquisitive, and immensely knowledgeable. He’s encyclopedic in certain areas that you wouldn’t expect,” he continued.
Kennedy added that Trump genuinely cares about soldiers who go to war, citing how Trump “always talks about the casualties on both sides” of the Russia–Ukraine conflict.
“Whether it’s vaccines or Medicaid or Medicare, he’s always thinking about how this impacts the little guy. And the Democrats have him pegged as a guy who’s sort of sitting in the Cabinet meeting talking about how can we make billionaires richer. He’s the opposite of that. He’s a genuine populist,” Kennedy said.
Here’s the clip. Trust me, watching this is better than reading it.
There’s so much more in this conversation, and it might change the way you think about vaccines forever. For the full picture, watch the entire interview below.
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