7/29/2025

Why is it that Democrats can never steer the economy ship? Is it that they are too busy usurping our coffers and aren’t smart enough to manage the budget as DOGE proved?

I hope the voters realize that you have to understand how the world works – and keep the people in office who understand how the government works in order to keep the boat afloat. How many times do we have to learn the hard way that the Democrats do not have the capacity to run the country. Their mentality is limited and we hope the country understands that. Obama/Biden were the least capable. We must establish an IQ test for future candidates. We have people now in our government who do not understand how the world/government works and that is the problem.

The twelve years of Democrat control almost sunk the country. Look at all of our blue states – not good. The citizens better “listen up” and learn from what we have been through.

If you don’t like the name Republican – you had better learn from what we have been through. The left almost took us into SOCIALISM/COMMUNISM with their ignorance. The Democrats need to clean up their party of the AOC/Bernie Sanders/et al progressives and bring back the real Democrats.

The spending by the Obama/Biden progressives was out of control as we all know. Ignorance was bliss with them as we witnessed. It is time now to remain true to the Constitution and throw out all of the bums who caused our demise.

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US President Donald Trump during a meeting with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, after the announcement of a trade deal on July 27 2025 – Evelyn Hockstein / Reuters

“Sometimes you have to take the medicine,” said President Donald Trump, back in April, as markets plummeted and the world convulsed in response to his “Liberation Day” tariffs. He denounced his critics as “Panicans”.

Four months on, and the panic has all but passed. After initial discomfort, the patient appears to be digesting Dr Trump’s unorthodox treatment and is responding well. The key to recovery, it seems, is to accept that the global economic order was wrong and the Donald is right. It’s funny how often this seems to be the case.

The stock markets quickly recovered from their slump and hit new highs this week, after the European Union struck an initial trade agreement with the United States. The EU has accepted a 15 per cent levy on its exports to the United States and promised to buy many more American goods. In return, America gave away almost nothing. This is Trumponomics 101: he wins, you pay.

The extent of his domination can be seen in the fact that Ursula von der Leyen, the President of the EU Commission, and Keir Starmer both came in turn to Turnberry, in Scotland, to perform the diplomatic formalities, while he took time out from playing golf on the course he owns. For his part, the gracious host flattered his guests by calling them “tough negotiators” even as they essentially accepted all his terms. This is the Art of the Post-Deal: he flatters, you keep paying.Related video: History behind tariffs, nothing new for American Presidents (KOAA Colorado Springs, CO

History behind tariffs, nothing new for American Presidents

The British Prime Minister grimaced as Donald Trump lectured him on the benefits of low taxation and strong borders as well as the evils of Sadiq Khan and wind turbines. But Starmer knows, deep down, that the only aspect of his premiership which has gone well has been his negotiating of the political weather system that is Donald Trump. Britain bowed to Trump’s agenda first, and was duly rewarded with a 10 per cent levy on all our goods, the lowest on offer.

It’s strange to think that only last year, as Trump campaigned for re-election, the expert classes on both sides of the Atlantic frantically debated whether Trump was serious about imposing a 10 per cent levy on all imports, certain as they were that such a move would tank the financial system. In fact Trump went much further than anyone expected and slapped additional “reciprocal tariffs” on countries, some as high as 50 per cent. But his initial aggression was so bewildering that now the world is falling on his lesser-though-still-significant tariffs as a blessed relief. This is classic New York real-estate stuff: frighten the wits out of opposing parties with a ruinous initial threat, then watch them cave in gratitude when you agree to be slightly less exacting.

“It’s complicated but not that complicated, when you get right down to it,” Trump told von der Leyen on Sunday. The simple truth, which he understood but the rest of the world couldn’t quite admit, is that every country desperately wants access to the US market, which is why he, as America’s Commander-in-Chief, must have the upper hand on global trade. The leverage is his, inevitably.

It’s too soon to say the trade war is over, of course. The deals with Britain, Europe, Japan are only “frameworks” that could fall apart as officials work through the details. And then there’s China, still the factory of the world, and the hardest piece of the Trump trade puzzle to solve.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has spent the last two days in Sweden, conducting intensely difficult negotiations with Chinese officials about extending the pause on America’s onerous tariffs against the world’s second greatest power.

But what’s clear is that America is now in a far more commanding position on trade, even with the world’s second biggest superpower. And that’s down to Donald Trump’s belligerence. He can pause, and pause again, but he doesn’t fold.

Trump understands that, beyond economics, protectionism is a very useful cudgel in diplomacy, because tariffs are like sanctions. America can make warring nations fall in line by threatening to impose steep export taxes if they don’t comply. Last week, Trump used the threat of US tariffs to help broker a peace deal between Thailand and Cambodia last week. He did the same with DR Congo and Rwanda earlier this month and India and Pakistan in May. He wants to be remembered as a peacemaker, and it’s obvious now that Liberation Day is part of his anti-war strategy. This week Trump pleased Starmer and the EU by promising tariffs of up to 100 per cent on Vladimir Putin’s Russia if the conflict in Ukraine doesn’t end in less than two weeks. That’s because he knows that punishment tariffs on unpopular countries are a useful way of keeping allies content.

Back in America, Trump’s political opponents point out that, while Wall Street seems to be enjoying a bounce, the Main Street economy is suffering. Basic economics suggests that tariffs have to be “tax on consumers”, as companies inevitably pass extra costs on to customers. And Americans have been telling pollsters that, as well as inflation, concern about the impact of Trump’s tariffs has made them reign in spending. Yet consumer and business sentiment in the US is actually ticking up not down, and the latest surveys suggest that almost 50 per cent of Americans rate the strength of the US economy as “good”, up from about 35 per cent at the start of the Trump presidency.

Free traders might still grumble about tariffs taking the world backwards. But others are starting to acknowledge that Trump could be late capitalism’s last, best hope.

Trumponomics may force consumers to pay more, but he is taxing Americans less. His administration just extended his significant tax cuts from his first term and added tax relief for pensioners, as well as on people working overtime or for tips. At the same time, the White House can point out that inflation is going down and its “external revenue service” is bringing in $20bn each month in tariffs, which helps reduce America’s vast and fiscally unsustainable deficit.

This is not quite the “golden age” that Trump voters promised when he came into office earlier this year, but the president isn’t exaggerating when he tells reporters that America is “the hottest country anywhere in the world.”

The danger is that, while Trump milks us all on trade, other countries will suffer and become more resentful towards America. We’re already seeing the BRICs (Brazil, Russia, India and China) coming closer together as many regard the United States as an avaricious hegemon.

But that process was underway long before Trump first became president. The truth is that Trump has defied the increasingly unpopular economic orthodoxy that has ruled the world since at least 1995, when President Bill Clinton’s America helped found the World Trade Organisation. And he’s winning.

Freddy Gray is deputy and US editor of The Spectator

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We hope that voters learned from this hard lesson. Not just anyone can be a candidate for office. For heavens sake, VET YOUR CANDIDATES. We need people who are smart – not smart alec’s..

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