It’s Not About You….or Me
“Go lightly from the ledge, babe.
Go lightly on the ground.
I’m not the one you want, babe.
I will only let you down.
You say you’re looking for someone,
Who’ll promise never to part.
Someone to close his eyes for you.
Someone to close his heart.
Someone who’ll die for you and more…
It ain’t me babe.
No, no, no it ain’t me babe.
It ain’t me you’re looking for babe.
It ain’t me you’re looking for babe.
I said no, no, no it ain’t me babe.
I said no, no, no it ain’t me babe.”
You have a seven figure IRA and stock market investment account and it is down double digits. Your house that was worth $3M just a few months ago is down to only $2.5M. Even your Bitcoin has dropped and suddenly your FartCoin is off 95% from what you paid. The company you work for says they may lay off white collar workers for the first time in a decade. You talked to your spouse, and the $10,000 deposit on that European cruise is non-refundable. The NGO client you have says that DOGE just cancelled their $10M consulting contract they had with the Federal government which netted the organization $9.5M. Therefore, they can’t afford your services anymore.
The world is ending! And it’s all because of Donald J. Trump! He is doing stupid stuff. I know it is stupid because I learned that in the Econ class I took at my Ivy League school in the 1980s. If this doesn’t stop, I might have to sell the ski cabin in Vail!
I’m sorry.
What President Trump is doing is not about you. At least not the version of “you” that I described above. It is not about me either since I meet at least some of the metrics I outlined above.
It is about the factory worker who lost his job 20 years ago when the product his company made was outsourced to slave labor in China. It’s about the farmer, who has never been able to afford an overseas trip but is up at dawn and works until dusk in weather from zero to 100 degrees just to maintain a modest home and the land his family has worked for decades. It’s about the construction worker who aspires to one day own a home but can’t figure out how he will ever do that on his earnings.
It’s about the military procurement officer who realizes how many of the components of her weaponry are made overseas, often by countries we one day may need to fight against. It’s about the person who studies debt markets and has been screaming about how close we are to a debt crisis which would make the depression look tame.
I know a bit about agriculture since I have a farm, a ranch and a few head of beef cattle in Kansas. Many of the countries we count as “friends” have some tariffs on our beef and grains. But the bigger barriers are not tariffs. Many of these countries require beef from the United States to meet certain “health and safety” standards. Fine. The problem is, they do not require their domestic producers to meet the same standard. So effectively, they have banned imports of U.S. beef. We have the best beef in the world and many people in foreign countries would like to consume U.S. beef in part because of the allure of American cattle that they have seen in western movies for decades. The barriers these countries have put up are there to protect their domestic cattle industry. I get that. No country wants to be too dependent on another for something as basic as food.
But the problem is that we don’t have the same restrictions so we import a lot of beef, because it can be cheaper. Either, we just ban foreign beef or we make the playing field level by having them remove their bans. That would be fair, and help out our ranchers.
Lots of talk about the 125% tariffs on China and how it will affect U.S. grain producers. China does buy a lot of American soybeans and other grains. But the biggest buyers are owned by the Chinese government. Are they really going to charge themselves a 125% reciprocal tariff? No. They may buy their soybeans from Brazil or Australia, but then whoever those countries were selling to will buy from us. It is a world market.
The point of those agricultural examples is that this stuff is complicated. To say “tariffs are bad” or “tariffs are great” is an oversimplification.
What is clear to me is that we cannot be a country of only software engineers. We need to make things. We need to make a lot of things. We need to make those things that are essential for the weapons that give us national security. We need to make medicines and medical equipment to keep us healthy. We need to make our own food. And we cannot cede production of components and minerals that are essential to keep the economy going.
Back during the financial crisis of 2008 when I was in Congress, a group of Democrats came to me for advice on why they should vote for the TARP rescue program. At the time, its $800 billion price tag was an unconscionable amount of money. One of my messages to those Democrats was that I couldn’t be sure it was the only thing we could do or if the amount was right. But, I couldn’t come up with anything else and if we didn’t do something to free up the world’s financial plumbing, we would lose 10 million jobs overnight and be in depression. They all voted for it, as did I.
A bunch of conservatives were mad at me for my advocacy for TARP. They hated how much the TARP program cost. I explained to them at the time that if it worked, the cost would be zero because all the money was in the form of loans or loan guarantees and if we saved the economy we would be paid back. They rejected my explanation. In the end, the government got all the money back plus about $100 million in interest. It actually made money.
I tell that story because I feel similarly today. I don’t know if exactly what Trump is doing is the right thing or if he is going about it the right way. But what I do know is we have to do something. And we cannot just nibble around the edges. We have to do something big. Just because you read in an economics text once that tariffs raise prices and cause depressions doesn’t mean these will. Just like TARP didn’t actually cost any money.
If you are that person at the top end of the financial pyramid, you don’t see the urgency. Everything looks good to you. But for many, we have already waited too long to do something about this. Democrats have correctly raised the issue of income inequality for decades now. But their policies have made the problem worse. We do need to fix that for long term social stability.
And as far as the stock market, it has been at 1929 level highs in every metric of measurement .Whether measured against earnings or GDP or interest rates. In my opinion, it has to come down. If this is not the catalyst, something else will be.
As I write this, the president just suspended the tariffs for 90 days (except for the baseline of 10%) on every country except China, to give time to negotiate “bespoke” trade agreements with each country individually. The stock market reacted and is up about 8%.
These gyrations are certainly not ideal. But Donald Trump is very smart. Almost all of his advisors are very smart. We did not think Trump could win in 2016 or come back in 2024 or fight all the lawsuits or survive assassination attempts. But he did all that. Apparently, he believes God spared him from assassination not just to keep the oval office chair warm, but to do great things. To be a Lincoln, FDR or Reagan.
I don’t know about you, but I’ll put my “money” behind those who have shown they can succeed time after time against all odds. I think they will do it again. Their achievements are often accomplished by doing precisely what the “consensus view of experts” says is the wrong thing.
If we get the heartland of America back to work, even you elites will eventually see you will live in a more stable, safe and prosperous country. That may even be worth having to cancel your glamorous African Safari this year. Don’t worry. You’ll be OK without it.
I remain respectfully,
Congressman John Campbell
Drive Fast & Live Free
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