Burning Down the Barn

"I'm a Leninist. Lenin wanted to destroy the state and that's my goal, too." - Steve Bannon

“Any jackass can kick down a barn, but it takes a good carpenter to build one.” - Speaker of the House Sam Rayburn

When historians look back at the fall of the American Empire, they won’t have to search much further than the first 100+ days of President Donald Trump’s second administration.

The hail and fury are by design. The gelantin of Project 2025 architects such as Vice President JD Vance, OMB chief Russ Vought, Jr. Himmler Steven Miller and Steve Bannon has mixed with Trump’s gasoline to create political napalm.

It is rapidly covering everything, igniting whatever lay in its path, leaving only a trail of debris and ash in its wake. The flammable mixture and its scattershot deployment aren’t accidental.

Napalm explodes in Vietnam, 1966. Via AP.

Both Trump and his lackeys are attempting, and succeeding, at changing the world, utilizing the methods they’re best positioned to employ. As longtime finance expert Ron Insana told me, “I believe that this process, starting with tariffs and deportations, is part of a much larger plan, if one zooms out, to reorder, entirely, the post-World War II economic, geo-political and military architecture that has kept the West relatively safe and secure, peaceful and prosperous for 80 years.”

There’s a lot to unpack from Ron (whose analysis I agree with) but let’s focus on the trade war and its fall out.

Make no mistake, however. The systems, structures, and relationships to which Ron refers that have been destroyed in the last three months will take years to redesign, rebuild or repair (if that’s a realistic possibility.) What guardrails Trump didn’t remove in his first term, he’s taken care of already. What few barriers remain won’t last the year.

We’re Way Past Tariffs

Donald Trump deemed April 2nd “Liberation Day” a magical moment when Americans would finally be freed from the shackles of affordable goods, small business ownership, millions of jobs, and trillions saved for retirement.

We’ve already experienced the first blastwave of Trump’s decisions as global markets crashed, recovered, crashed again and ultimately stabilized. While tariffs were the ignition point for much of what we’re seeing, we’re now into an unknown zone. JP Morgan’s Jamie Dimon predicts a recession is the ‘best case’ for the US in 2025.

About 70% of the products Amazon (whose founder Jeff Bezos again curtsied before Trump this week*) sells are sourced from China. The Port of Los Angeles is already reporting fewer shipments arriving. Downstream, this means less hours for longshoremen, reduced trips for truckers, less products on the shelves, fewer retail shifts and fewer, more-expensive options for consumers.

Every item that doesn’t arrive, isn’t unpacked, loaded on a truck, delivered to a store, sold at the counter, and taken home equals less money in the Americans’ pockets.

But wait…There’s more.

*What’s the point of “Fuck You Money” if you never say, “Fuck You?”

UPS and Downs

Yesterday UPS, they of the worst tagline of all time “What can Brown do for you?” announced that they’ll cut 20,000 jobs this year citing “current macro-economic uncertainty.” In addition, UPS is closing 73 leased or owned facilities in the next 60 days.

Zooming in, let’s visit one of the buildings UPS will shutter this spring. If rented, the owner has suddenly lost a solid tenant but still has a loan payment to make. Whatever employees or contractors worked out of the space lose a paycheck. If there was a maintenance or cleaning contract, perhaps with a local vendor, that’s gone, too. The local stores and restaurants will see less traffic (after having already raised prices on fewer goods.)

Those people, pink slips in hand, will go home, sit down with their families and decide what comes next. If it’s an area heavy with warehouse space, like Las Vegas or Savannah, they’ll be joined in the unemployment office by hundreds or thousands of others suddently out of work.

While a recession may be the ‘best case’ scenario for America this year, when we repeat the scenario above several hundred thousand times, much else starts to crumble as well. We’ve already seen consumer confidence take a nosedive. Uncertainty breeds fear. Fear produces defensive behavior.