ON TARIFFS

 Tariffs served two primary purposes throughout history. They raised revenue for the State/King and they protected domestic industries that the King/State thought were vital to the State. This is obviously dead as a door nail in any State that is sustained on nothing but 35 trillion $ in debt and has offshored almost 100% of its heavy industry and most of every other kind of industry ranging from pharmaceuticals to household goods. 

This is an interesting experiment in reinvention that I'm looking forward to watching. There is no place for our industry to go but up and only fairies believe that superpowers can be funded by external revenue cutters collecting tariffs on imported goods.

Has anyone else noticed how literally every single thing that Europeans now do is disagreeable and always amounts to an attack on freedoms and liberties that we have long enjoyed? It really is like reading the books about the slide into both World Wars where the European leaders almost deliberately took every single action that would and could only lead to an outbreak of War. They're all doing it again and it's like they cannot even see it. 

And no, I don't see their enemy as Russia so much as the nature of tyranny. Europe is rapidly becoming every bit as ugly and evil as the USSR was and with the same impact on its economy, GDP, and relations between nations. I almost wonder if they realize how close they all are to living on a knife's edge? The EU exists today only because the Germans worked their asses off to make it and lead it and now the German work ethic is essentially gone and so is much of their industrial power. They are following England and they don't have nearly as far to fall.

I hope that we have historians as honest and enthusiastic as those from the past.