The Economy

Most Americans don’t know that for much of U.S. history there was no federal income tax and there was no central bank.  But now everyone assumes that we must have a federal income tax and a central bank in order to have a functioning society.  Today, there are just a handful of nations that do not have an income tax, and more than 99 percent of the entire population of the globe lives in a country that has a central bank.  Of course the two work hand in hand.  A central bank creates a spiral of borrowing that is meant to be unbreakable, and an income tax is necessary to service payments on that debt spiral.  It is not a coincidence that a federal income tax and the Federal Reserve were both established in 1913.  Since that time, we have piled up the biggest mountain of debt in the history of the world, and that is precisely the outcome that the system was designed to produce.

So what is the solution to this colossal mess?

The answer to 1913 is 2025.

This year, we are seeing things get proposed in Washington D.C. that once would have been unthinkable.

For example, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick just told Fox News that President Trump wants to “abolish the Internal Revenue Service”…

More details have emerged from the Trump administration about alleged plans to get rid of the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and utilize tariffs so the “whole economy explodes.”

“His goal is to abolish the Internal Revenue Service and let all the outsiders pay,” Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said Wednesday on “Jesse Watters Primetime.”

“As the president said, reciprocal tariffs, either you bring yours down or we’re going to bring ours up. If we go to their level, it will earn us $700 billion a year to be equal to everybody else,” he expanded Thursday on “America’s Newsroom.”

And it appears that the Trump administration is already taking concrete steps toward that goal.

In fact, it is being reported that “approximately 7,000 probationary workers” at the IRS are about to be hitting the bricks…

The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) is planning to slash approximately 7,000 probationary workers in Washington, D.C., and across the U.S. starting Thursday, according to reports.

The layoffs will affect probationary workers who have been employed for one year or less and have not been able to secure full civil service protection, The Associated Press reported, citing a person familiar with the plans.

Wow.

Meanwhile, the Federal Reserve is also being targeted by the new administration.

In fact, Elon Musk has suggested that the Federal Reserve could soon get visited by the Department of Government Efficiency…

Musk wrote on X in response to a user’s post about the billionaire’s support for an audit of the Fed that the central bank isn’t above scrutiny from DOGE.

“All aspects of the government must be fully transparent and accountable to the people. No exceptions, including, if not especially, the Federal Reserve,” Musk wrote.

Musk is a longtime critic of the central bank and has called out its decisions on monetary policy as well as claiming the Fed’s workforce is bloated.

This is wonderful news.

Because what we have been doing for decades is clearly not working.

The Federal Reserve system is designed to create debt, and the income tax is designed to service that debt.

We find ourselves on an endless hamster wheel that becomes more painful with each passing year.

The charts that I am about to share with you tell a very clear story.

The primary reason why we have had an almost unbelievably high standard of living over the past three decades is because we have piled up the biggest mountain of debt in the history of the world.  Once upon a time the United States was the wealthiest country on the entire planet, but all of that prosperity was not good enough for us.  So we started borrowing and borrowing and borrowing and we have now been living beyond our means for so long that we consider it to be completely normal.

When President Woodrow Wilson entered the White House in 1913, the U.S. was less than 3 billion dollars in debt.

Now we are 36 trillion dollars in debt…

This is what a central bank is designed to do.

Most people simply do not understand this.

We have been robbing future generations blind for so long that it doesn’t even seem to bother most people anymore.

It is time for a change.

Sadly, Americans have also accumulated the largest mountain of household debt in the history of the world.  The following chart which comes directly from the Federal Reserve shows the growth of household and non-profit organization debt over the years…

Of that amount, more than 18 trillion dollars of it is household debt…

Americans’ household debt levels, including credit card debt, rose to new all-time highs in the fourth quarter of 2024, according to a report by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

The report showed that overall household debt increased by $93 billion to $18.04 trillion at the end of 2024, an all-time high. Credit card balances rose by $45 billion from the prior quarter to reach $1.21 trillion at the end of December, which is also a record high.

We have become accustomed to living in debt.  We go into massive amounts of debt to get an education, we go into massive amounts of debt to buy a home, we go into massive amounts of debt to purchase our vehicles, and we even pile up debt to buy holiday gifts and to purchase groceries.

The American people want to hear that better times are ahead.

But under the current system the only way to give the American people “better times” is to crank up the debt spiral to an even higher level.

That is the approach that our leaders have been taking for a long time, and it is madness.

When you add up all forms of debt in our society, it comes to a grand total of more than 100 trillion dollars…

We are literally committing national suicide.

I wish that I could get more people to understand this.

30 years ago, the total amount of debt in the system was less than 20 trillion dollars.

Now we have surpassed the 100 trillion dollar mark.

We are talking about a financial bubble that is unlike anything that the world has ever seen before.

If we continue down this road, our children and our grandchildren would have no future.

When people hear words like “billion” or “trillion” they tend to tune out.

But that is a mistake.

There is an enormous difference between a billion dollars and a trillion dollars.

Just how big is one trillion dollars?

To answer that question, I would like to use an illustration that I have used in my books.  If right this moment you went out and started spending one dollar every single second, it would take you more than 31,000 years to spend one trillion dollars.

Yet somehow we have piled up more than 100 trillion dollars of debt, and our financial status just keeps getting worse month after month after month.

If we want to get free from all this debt, we have to abandon the system that created all of this debt in the first place.

We need to abolish the Federal Reserve, the IRS and the income tax.

We have been living far, far beyond our means for decades, and it has been the greatest party in the history of the world.

But it is time to turn out the lights because the party is over.

The good news is that change is in the air.

The answer to 1913 is 2025, and those that are attempting to dismantle the current system should be applauded.

Michael’s new book entitled “Why” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com, and you can subscribe to his Substack newsletter at michaeltsnyder.substack.com.

About the Author: Michael Snyder’s new book entitled “Why” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com. He has also written eight other books that are available on Amazon.com including “Chaos”, “End Times”, “7 Year Apocalypse”, “Lost Prophecies Of The Future Of America”, “The Beginning Of The End”, and “Living A Life That Really Matters”.  When you purchase any of Michael’s books you help to support the work that he is doing.  You can also get his articles by email as soon as he publishes them by subscribing to his Substack newsletter.  Michael has published thousands of articles on The Economic Collapse Blog, End Of The American Dream and The Most Important News, and he always freely and happily allows others to republish those articles on their own websites.  These are such troubled times, and people need hope.  John 3:16 tells us about the hope that God has given us through Jesus Christ: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”  If you have not already done so, we strongly urge you to invite Jesus Christ to be your Lord and Savior today.

Apparently our government cannot explain how 4.7 trillion dollars was spent.  Are you kidding me?  A stack of 4.7 trillion one dollar bills would reach all the way to the Moon and part of the way back.  This is yet another example of why we desperately need the Department of Government Efficiency.  I realize that my articles about DOGE have caused some confusion in recent weeks, and so let me try to explain.  On the one hand, I have been arguing that we must crack down on  waste, fraud and abuse, but on the other hand I have been arguing that what DOGE is doing is going to cause a great deal of pain.  Some readers think that I have been contradicting myself, but I have not been contradicting myself at all.  There are times when we must do things that are necessary even though we know that they will cause a tremendous amount of pain.  We have piled up the largest mountain of debt in the history of the entire planet, and it really is an existential threat to the future of our nation.  But cutting down the size of the federal government and greatly reducing the flow of cash that is being spewed out of the giant money machine that we call the U.S. Treasury is going to cause immense chaos.  Honestly, I do not know if our society will be able to handle it.

On Monday, DOGE revealed that 4.7 trillion dollars in payments that have come through the U.S. Treasury are basically impossible to trace because they lacked a very important tracking code…

The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) announced Monday that some $4.7 trillion in payments from the Treasury Department were missing a critical tracking code which made tracing the transactions “almost impossible.”

The transactions were reportedly missing the Treasury Account Symbol, or TAS, an identification code which links a Treasury payment to a budget line item, according to DOGE, which described the use of such code as a “standard financial process.”

“In the Federal Government, the TAS field was optional for ~$4.7 Trillion in payments and was often left blank, making traceability almost impossible,” read an X post from DOGE.

This is inexcusable.

We should be able to trace how every single penny has been spent.

As Eric Daugherty has aptly pointed out, if you do not accurately account for every single penny of income the IRS can come after you big time…

The government will audit you, track every single dollar that went into your bank account, and hunt you down to squeeze every last penny.

But once they get hold of YOUR money – they chuck it into a black hole of their choice with little to no accountability.

Two standards.

If you tried to tell the IRS that you have no idea what happened to $4,700, you would not get one inch of mercy.

But now we are being told that the government has no idea what happened to $4,700,000,000,000.

The good news is that from now on all government payments that flow through the U.S. Treasury will be traceable thanks to DOGE…

“As of Saturday, this is now a required field, increasing insight into where money is actually going,” DOGE said, thanking the Treasury Department for its “great work” implementing the change.

Musk touted the change as a “major improvement in Treasury payment integrity.”

“This was a combined effort of [DOGE, Treasury and the Federal Reserve],” Musk tweeted. “Nice work by all.”

This is a very positive change.

And when good things happen in Washington D.C., we should all applaud.

Overall, reforms implemented by DOGE have saved U.S. taxpayers a grand total of 55 billion dollars…

Elon Musk’s DOGE revealed Tuesday that President Donald Trump has saved taxpayers a staggering $55 billion in less than a month.

It said the savings were found through a combination of detecting and deleting fraud, canceling contracts and leases, and selling assets.

The group – nicknamed the ‘nerd army’ – also ended grants, fired federal employees, changed some programs, and saved money with regulatory reforms.

So far, the biggest contract savings have come from USAID and the Department of Education…

So far, the DOGE lists the United States Agency for International Development as the number one agency for “total contract savings,” followed by the Department of Education, the Office of Personnel Management, the Department of Health and Human Services, and the Department of Agriculture.

Sadly, the left is not applauding these efforts.

In fact, many on the left are acting like it is the end of the world.

Could it be possible that the reason why they are so upset is because they are the ones that are primarily benefitting from all of the waste, fraud and abuse?

Billions of dollars in payments have already been cut off, and DOGE insists that this is just the beginning.

And now it appears that Ft. Knox will be one of the next targets for DOGE…

Tech billionaire Elon Musk has his sights set on an audit of the U.S. gold reserve at Ft. Knox through the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) after it was revealed there is no yearly review for the world-renowned stash.

Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., who invited Musk to review the gold reserve on X over the weekend, joined “FOX & Friends” to discuss the need for greater transparency about the massive reserve after trying to verify it himself for a decade.

If the DOGE team actually visits Ft. Knox, what will they find?

I don’t know, but I find it very interesting that “somebody” in the U.S. has been purchasing a massive amount of physical gold.  This is something that Glenn Beck recently commented on…

“Somebody here in the United States is buying a crapload of gold. We think (I hope) it’s the Treasury or the Central Bank,” he says.

Whoever is behind the purchases — “somebody with very deep pockets” — isn’t just collecting gold notes, either.

Whoever this mysterious somebody is, they’re “taking huge physical deliveries, and it’s causing shortages in London,” says Glenn.

I am just speculating here, but could it be possible that this physical gold is being used to replenish the reserves at Ft. Knox before an audit happens?

Hopefully we will soon get some answers.

Personally, I would love for the mystery of the missing gold at Ft. Knox to be solved after all these years.

Under previous administrations, the transparency that is happening now would never have been possible.

But now some of the U.S. government’s deepest and darkest secrets are being laid bare, and that is a wonderful thing.

Michael’s new book entitled “Why” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com, and you can subscribe to his Substack newsletter at michaeltsnyder.substack.com.

About the Author: Michael Snyder’s new book entitled “Why” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com. He has also written eight other books that are available on Amazon.com including “Chaos”, “End Times”, “7 Year Apocalypse”, “Lost Prophecies Of The Future Of America”, “The Beginning Of The End”, and “Living A Life That Really Matters”.  When you purchase any of Michael’s books you help to support the work that he is doing.  You can also get his articles by email as soon as he publishes them by subscribing to his Substack newsletter.  Michael has published thousands of articles on The Economic Collapse Blog, End Of The American Dream and The Most Important News, and he always freely and happily allows others to republish those articles on their own websites.  These are such troubled times, and people need hope.  John 3:16 tells us about the hope that God has given us through Jesus Christ: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”  If you have not already done so, we strongly urge you to invite Jesus Christ to be your Lord and Savior today.

What is our society going to look like if “the biggest fraud in history” is brought to a screeching halt?  Elon Musk and his DOGE team have been taking a meat axe to federal agency after federal agency, but Social Security is the big Kahuna.  According to the Social Security Administration, in 2025 approximately 69 million Americans will be receiving Social Security payments each month, and those payments will come to a grand total of approximately 1.6 trillion dollars for the entire year.  As you will see below, it appears that the Social Security program is being victimized by fraud on a massive scale.  If those fraudulent payments stop going out, those that have been living the high life at our expense are going to be extremely, extremely angry.

I am entirely convinced that we are going to see so much civil unrest in the months ahead.  On Monday, thousands of protesters gathered near the U.S. Capitol in Washington D.C., and large protests were also being held in other major cities throughout the nation…

Groups opposed to the agenda of President Donald Trump’s administration and presidential adviser Elon Musk were converging on cities across the nation Monday to express outrage with slogans such as “Not My President’s Day” and “No King’s Day.”

The rallies, led by the 50501 Movement and other organizations, come less than two weeks after the last round of widespread rallies and street marches.

“We witness, with growing alarm, how our constitutional rights are trampled upon, how the authority of the President is being usurped by those who seek to consolidate power for personal gain,” 50501 said in a statement on its website. “Meanwhile, President Trump systematically dismantles the very guardrails designed to ensure accountability across the branches of government.”

Our government has been showering people with money for a long time, but now the gravy train is coming to an end and those that have been enjoying the party are not pleased at all.

But the cuts that have been made so far are nothing compared to the seismic shock that would happen to our society if Social Security fraud is eliminated.

On Sunday, Elon Musk revealed that the number of “eligible” Social Security numbers greatly exceeds the total population of the country.

We are being told that there are more than 394 million “eligible” Social Security numbers in the system, but there are only 334 million people living in the United States.

How did that happen?

But it doesn’t end there.

There are apparently millions upon millions of people over the age of 100 that the Social Security database says are still alive.  On Twitter, Musk joked that perhaps “there are a lot of vampires collecting Social Security”.

Musk also posted a chart that shows how many “eligible” Social Security numbers exist for each age range.

According to this chart, somewhere around 20 million Americans that are 100 years of age or older are alive and eligible to receive Social Security benefits.

But the U.S. Census Bureau says that only about 101,000 Americans are 100 years of age or older…

As of 2024, the U.S. Census Bureau estimates that approximately 101,000 Americans are aged 100 and older, representing about 0.03% of the total U.S. population, according to the Pew Research Center.

Individuals aged 110 and above are referred to as supercentenarians, a subgroup that is exceedingly rare. As of February 2025, the Gerontology Research Group reported that 136 Americans belong to this category.

Currently, the oldest living American is Naomi Whitehead, born on September 26, 1910, in Georgia, making her 114 years old. The longest-lived person in U.S. history is Sarah Knauss, who lived to be 119 years and 97 days, passing away on December 30, 1999.

Needless to say, something clearly doesn’t add up.

Stephen Miller has told Fox News that foreign nationals have been using fake Social Security numbers to steal billions of dollars in Social Security benefits.

But of course it isn’t just foreign nationals that have been doing this.

If the full extent of the fraud is uncovered, it will shake this nation to the core.

And if the fraudulent payments are stopped, those that are no longer raking in government checks every month will be exceedingly upset.

Meanwhile, Elon Musk and his DOGE team continue to uncover shocking things in other government agencies as well.

For example, the official DOGE account on Twitter just posted a long list of imminent government payments that were stopped from going out just in time…

– $10M for “Mozambique voluntary medical male circumcision”
– $9.7M for UC Berkeley to develop “a cohort of Cambodian youth with enterprise driven skills”
– $2.3M for “strengthening independent voices in Cambodia”
– $32M to the Prague Civil Society Centre
– $40M for “gender equality and women empowerment hub”
– $14M for “improving public procurement” in Serbia
– $486M to the “Consortium for Elections and Political Process Strengthening,” including $22M for “inclusive and participatory political process” in Moldova and $21M for voter turnout in India
– $29M to “strenghening political landscape in Bangladesh”
– $20M for “fiscal federalism” in Nepal
– $19M for “biodiversity conversation” in Nepal
– $1.5M for “voter confidence” in Liberia
– $14M for “social cohesion” in Mali
– $2.5M for “inclusive democracies in Southern Africa”
– $47M for “improving learning outcomes in Asia”
– $2M to develop “sustainable recycling models” to “increase socio-economic cohesion among marginalized communities of Kosovo Roma, Ashkali, and Egypt”

On one level, you have got to be in awe of the scale of the waste that was going on under the Biden administration.

They were recklessly spraying millions upon millions of our tax dollars all over the globe, and much of that money was being spent on some of the stupidest things imaginable.

Here in the U.S., hundreds of millions of our tax dollars were being spent on DEI programs.  But now DOGE is relentlessly cancelling those contracts…

In just 48 hours, the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) slashed a whopping $370 million in taxpayer dollars being spent on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) at the Department of Education.

DOGE, the newly formed department led by Elon Musk to purge spending by the federal government, revealed in a post on X that they terminated 70 DEI training grants within the department.

According to DOGE, the grants totaled $373 million.

The Department of Education was basically one gigantic cesspool of waste.

Thankfully, change is in the air.

Things are changing at the CDC too.  Now that RFK Jr. has been confirmed as HHS Secretary, he is quickly shedding staff…

Robert Kennedy Jr. has slashed staffing at the Center for Disease Control in his new role as health chief, expanding the purge of government departments conducted by President Trump and Elon Musk. The newly confirmed Secretary of Health and Human Services for President Donald Trump fired nearly half of the vaunted team of ‘disease detectives’ during his first day on the job, setting the scene for a slimmed down department moving forward.

Our federal government is being turned upside down, and the left is desperate to stop what is happening.

At this point, at least 74 separate federal lawsuits have been filed to stop what President Trump and Elon Musk are trying to do…

In nearly one month since President Donald Trump’s return to the White House, at least 74 lawsuits have been filed in federal courts against his administration’s wave of executive actions.

As of Monday, judges have temporarily paused 18 of these measures.

During his time in the White House, Joe Biden appointed 228 judges to the federal courts.

And the left is counting on those judges to slow down President Trump and Elon Musk.

But so much damage has already been done, and with each passing day the left is getting even angrier.

The protests that we have seen so far are just the tip of the iceberg.  If Trump and Musk are able to successfully execute a hardcore crackdown on fraudulent payments, I am expecting that there will be extreme chaos in our streets.

Billions upon billions of dollars are at stake, and it shall be fascinating to see how all of this plays out.

Michael’s new book entitled “Why” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com, and you can subscribe to his Substack newsletter at michaeltsnyder.substack.com.

About the Author: Michael Snyder’s new book entitled “Why” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com. He has also written eight other books that are available on Amazon.com including “Chaos”, “End Times”, “7 Year Apocalypse”, “Lost Prophecies Of The Future Of America”, “The Beginning Of The End”, and “Living A Life That Really Matters”.  When you purchase any of Michael’s books you help to support the work that he is doing.  You can also get his articles by email as soon as he publishes them by subscribing to his Substack newsletter.  Michael has published thousands of articles on The Economic Collapse Blog, End Of The American Dream and The Most Important News, and he always freely and happily allows others to republish those articles on their own websites.  These are such troubled times, and people need hope.  John 3:16 tells us about the hope that God has given us through Jesus Christ: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”  If you have not already done so, we strongly urge you to invite Jesus Christ to be your Lord and Savior today.

One of the central pillars of the U.S. economy is melting down right in front of our eyes.  We spend gigantic mountains of borrowed money to maintain the largest and most bloated bureaucracy in the entire history of the planet.  More than 3 million workers are employed directly by the federal government, more than 7 million workers are employed by private institutions that rely on government funding or government contracts, and more than 20 million workers are employed by state and local governments.  So that gives us a grand total of more than 30 million workers that are employed in bureaucratic jobs.  Needless to say, on average bureaucratic jobs pay more and have better benefits than jobs in the private sector.  So what is going to happen to our deeply troubled economy as large numbers of good paying bureaucratic jobs start to disappear?

Anyone that believed that shrinking the size of government would be painless was just being delusional.

Last week, over 10,000 federal workers were given the axe by the Trump administration.  We are being told that this is “likely just the beginning of the job cuts”…

In a flurry of activity at the end of the week, the Trump administration fired more than 10,000 federal workers across multiple agencies as part of its “large-scale reductions” in the government workforce.

This is likely just the beginning of the job cuts, as President Donald Trump and top White House aide Elon Musk seek to continue slashing agency budgets.

Trump signed an executive order Tuesday seeking a significant reduction in the size of the government. It instructs heads of federal departments and agencies to make “large-scale reductions in force.”

No other president has ever dared to do such a thing.

Among those that were let go at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau was a senior litigation attorney named Hanna Hickman…

Hanna Hickman, a now-terminated worker for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, told ABC News the last four days have been a roller coaster.

“It’s scary,” said Hickman, who was fired last Tuesday. “I had a real moment — I was at CVS the other day and … it kind of came on me all at once that I might not have health insurance in a few weeks, and that really hits you. I think it underscores the fact that we’re just regular, middle-class people, just like the people we’re trying to serve.”

Hickman was senior litigation counsel for the Division of Enforcement at the CFPB in Washington, D.C. She is one of thousands of mostly new employees known as probationary workers laid off this week across the federal government. Those recent hires had joined the federal workforce within the last one to two years, depending on the agency, and have fewer protections.

Of course it isn’t just workers in the D.C. area that are being terminated.

A 28-year-old woman named Victoria Porter says that she just lost her “dream job” which involved riding horses on mountain hiking trails in Montana…

Victoria Porter, 28, said she found her dream job riding horses into the backcountry to maintain hiking trails for the U.S. Forest Service in Montana. That all went away Friday, when she said eight other people on her 12-person trail team also were fired.

The terminations will have a big impact the community around the forest where she worked, Porter said. Outdoor outfitters and other local businesses rely on the trails as an economic engine for the region. There’s “no way” the trails can be maintained with a drastically smaller crew, she said.

Needless to say, a lot more job cuts are coming.

In fact, it is being reported that the IRS will soon “lay off thousands of probationary workers”…

The IRS is planning to lay off thousands of probationary workers during tax filing season, according to an Associated Press report citing sources familiar with the situation.

The report did not indicated exactly how many would be laid off.

The news of the layoffs comes after Elon Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency reportedly began examining the IRS to find waste, fraud and tax dollar savings.

Things are beginning to get really, really crazy.

In D.C., new claims for unemployment benefits just jumped by 36 percent in a single week…

Since Trump has taken office, nearly 4,000 workers in the city have filed for unemployment insurance as part of a surge that began at the start of the new year, according to Labor Department figures not adjusted for seasonal factors.

In all, just shy of 7,000 claims have been filed in the six weeks of the new year, or about 55% more than in the prior six-week period. Filings rose to 1,780 for the week ending Feb. 8, a 36% increase from the prior week and more than four times around the same period in 2024.

We are still in the early stages of the government layoffs.

What will things look like once hundreds of thousands of additional government employees are unemployed?

Without jobs, many former bureaucrats will be forced to sell their homes.

According to the Daily Mail, the number of homes for sale in the D.C. area has nearly doubled within the past 30 days…

TKL found there are now nearly 8,000 homes listed for sale in the Washington, DC metro area, and almost half of them have been put on the market in the last 30 days.

There has also been a surge in new listings of homes over $1 million. According to TKL, there are 525 listings worth $1 million and 44 listings worth $5 million, suggesting DOGE layoffs could affect people in high-profile jobs.

If you are looking to purchase a home in the D.C. area, you now have a lot more choices.

It doesn’t take a genius to figure out what this is going to do to home values.

Home prices in the region have already been coming down substantially…

In November, the median home in the nation’s capital was worth $699,000, according to Redfin.

By February, the median home value dropped 20 percent, bringing the price down to $560,000.

Commercial real estate will be severely affected as well.

Elon Musk and his team are determined to get rid of office space that is not being utilized , and apparently the federal government currently has lots and lots of office space that is not being occupied.

What a mess.

Interestingly, it appears that a tremendous amount of money is on the move as well.

In the D.C. area, searches for “Swiss bank”, “offshore bank”, “wire money” and “IBAN” have all skyrocketed.

Now that the gravy train has come to a screeching halt, rats are scurrying for cover while they still can.

And let us not forget that we are about one month away from a potential government shutdown which could take the madness in D.C. to an entirely new level…

What almost everyone is missing: This country has roughly one month until the government runs out of money, and things like paychecks to troops, food-inspection programs, disaster-relief payments, and aid to low-income families could all be caught up in a chaotic game of chicken.

I was in favor of radically reducing the size of the federal bureaucracy long before it was fashionable.

And many of the changes that are happening right now are desperately needed.

But let there be no doubt – the process that has begun is going to result in severe pain.

Honestly, I do not know if our society is equipped to handle what is about to happen.

Michael’s new book entitled “Why” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com, and you can subscribe to his Substack newsletter at michaeltsnyder.substack.com.

About the Author: Michael Snyder’s new book entitled “Why” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com. He has also written eight other books that are available on Amazon.com including “Chaos”, “End Times”, “7 Year Apocalypse”, “Lost Prophecies Of The Future Of America”, “The Beginning Of The End”, and “Living A Life That Really Matters”.  When you purchase any of Michael’s books you help to support the work that he is doing.  You can also get his articles by email as soon as he publishes them by subscribing to his Substack newsletter.  Michael has published thousands of articles on The Economic Collapse Blog, End Of The American Dream and The Most Important News, and he always freely and happily allows others to republish those articles on their own websites.  These are such troubled times, and people need hope.  John 3:16 tells us about the hope that God has given us through Jesus Christ: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”  If you have not already done so, we strongly urge you to invite Jesus Christ to be your Lord and Savior today.

You have got to be pretty sick to want to damage the U.S. economy just so that you can make President Trump look bad.  Whether you agree with President Trump’s policies or not, we should all want things to start moving in a positive direction.  For the past several years, economic conditions have steadily deteriorated, and now we are at a real crisis point.  It is literally going to take a miracle to turn our economic momentum around, and there are those that want to make this task even more difficult by purposely sabotaging the system.

On February 28th, a shadowy group known as “the People’s Union” is planning an economic blackout for 24 hours…

Consumers are rallying to speak through their wallets – or lack of spending – as a way to protest the retreat by some companies from DEI initiatives and President Trump’s actions to eliminate federal DEI programs since taking office. They are calling on consumers to boycott specific retailers and for one day later this month, to refrain from spending any money at all.

Numerous social media accounts are sharing the message of a 24-hour consumer spending blackout planned for Feb. 28. Consumers are encouraged not to spend money in stores or online for the day and if they have emergencies or essentials they need, they are encouraged to support a local small business.

By giving this boycott an excessive amount of coverage, the mainstream media is going to greatly increase the impact that this boycott has.

The People’s Union is also planning another economic blackout from March 7th to March 14th.  That one will specifically target Amazon…

The People’s Union economic blackout is on February 28, and the group is also staging an Amazon boycott from March 7 to 14. During the economic blackout, participants are pledging to not make any purchases, either online or at brick-and-mortar stores.

Of course there are many Democrats that had already pledged to spend as little money as possible while President Trump is in the White House.

They hate him so much that they are willing to cause pain for the entire country just so that they can make him look bad.

Sadly, this is happening at a time when thousands of retail stores are already shutting down.

As I discussed earlier this week, over 7,000 stores permanently closed last year, and it is being projected that 15,000 more stores will permanently close in 2025.

Every day, there are more headlines about our ongoing retail apocalypse.  For example, we just learned that Joann has decided to close approximately 500 stores…

Now, Joann has confirmed that it plans to close 500 of its roughly 850 stores nationwide.

“This was a very difficult decision to make, given the major impact we know it will have on our Team Members, our customers and all of the communities we serve,” Joann said in a statement to USA TODAY on Wednesday. “A careful analysis of store performance and future strategic fit for the Company determined which stores should remain operating as usual at this time.”

And Walgreens continues to push ahead with their plans to shut down more than 1,000 stores by 2027…

Walgreens is pressing ahead with plans to shut stores

The struggling pharmacy giant previously announced plans to close over a thousand stores by 2027. The latest scale-back doomed five locations in California.

Store managers in Whittier, Los Angeles, Orange, Placentia, and Stanton, California received notice that their stores will permanently shutter.

Needless to say, this is not normal.

Meanwhile, on Wednesday we learned that the official rate of inflation has started to tick up again…

Inflation perked up more than anticipated in January, providing further incentive for the Federal Reserve to hold the line on interest rates.

The consumer price index, a broad measure of costs in goods and services across the U.S. economy, accelerated a seasonally adjusted 0.5% for the month, putting the annual inflation rate at 3%, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Wednesday. They were higher than the respective Dow Jones estimates for 0.3% and 2.9%. The annual rate was 0.1 percentage point higher than December.

President Trump is going to try to do what he can about our raging cost of living crisis, but certain things are out of his control.

The worst bird flu crisis in history is wiping out egg-laying hens from coast to coast, and as a result egg prices jumped more than 15 percent in just one month…

Egg prices are soaring, however. Eggs have been hit by a spike in cases of bird flu, which affected more than 19 million egg-laying hens in January.

Egg prices rose 15.2% since December, the biggest increase since June 2015. The food index as a whole jumped 2.5% annually.

“I noticed that Waffle House just instituted a new 50-cent-per-egg surcharge due to the nationwide rise in the cost of eggs,” Sen. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., said. “They said that’s going to be a new surcharge, and other restaurants are following suit.”

This is a huge story.

And I believe that it is just beginning.

Unfortunately, many Americans don’t understand the seriousness of what we are facing because the numbers that we get from the government tend to greatly overstate our economic performance.

One man that understands this very well is Eugene Ludwig. He is the chair of the Ludwig Institute for Shared Economic Prosperity, and he once served as the U.S. Comptroller of the Currency.  He is an expert in this field, and he just authored an article that discussed the growing “disconnect” between government statistics and economic reality…

Before the presidential election, many Democrats were puzzled by the seeming disconnect between “economic reality” as reflected in various government statistics and the public’s perceptions of the economy on the ground. Many in Washington bristled at the public’s failure to register how strong the economy really was. They charged that right-wing echo chambers were conning voters into believing entirely preposterous narratives about America’s decline.

What they rarely considered was whether something else might be responsible for the disconnect — whether, for instance, government statistics were fundamentally flawed. What if the numbers supporting the case for broad-based prosperity were themselves misrepresentations? What if, in fact, darker assessments of the economy were more authentically tethered to reality?

I would highly recommend reading the entire piece.  According to Ludwig, we are told that the official rate of unemployment in this country is very low, but in reality “nearly one of every four workers is functionally unemployed in America today”…

I don’t believe those who went into this past election taking pride in the unemployment numbers understood that the near-record low unemployment figures — the figure was a mere 4.2 percent in November — counted homeless people doing occasional work as “employed.” But the implications are powerful. If you filter the statistic to include as unemployed people who can’t find anything but part-time work or who make a poverty wage (roughly $25,000), the percentage is actually 23.7 percent. In other words, nearly one of every four workers is functionally unemployed in America today — hardly something to celebrate.

He is right.

We really do have a major economic disaster on our hands, and the government numbers simply do not reflect this.

And many Democrats want to make economic conditions even worse just so that they can hurt Trump.

Sadly, I have a feeling that economic boycotts are only just the beginning.

Our nation is so deeply divided right now, and there is going to be so much chaos in the streets during the months ahead.

Michael’s new book entitled “Why” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com, and you can subscribe to his Substack newsletter at michaeltsnyder.substack.com.

About the Author: Michael Snyder’s new book entitled “Why” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com. He has also written eight other books that are available on Amazon.com including “Chaos”, “End Times”, “7 Year Apocalypse”, “Lost Prophecies Of The Future Of America”, “The Beginning Of The End”, and “Living A Life That Really Matters”.  When you purchase any of Michael’s books you help to support the work that he is doing.  You can also get his articles by email as soon as he publishes them by subscribing to his Substack newsletter.  Michael has published thousands of articles on The Economic Collapse Blog, End Of The American Dream and The Most Important News, and he always freely and happily allows others to republish those articles on their own websites.  These are such troubled times, and people need hope.  John 3:16 tells us about the hope that God has given us through Jesus Christ: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”  If you have not already done so, we strongly urge you to invite Jesus Christ to be your Lord and Savior today.

The United States is rapidly becoming a “post-industrial” nation.  All great economic empires eventually become fat and lazy and squander the great wealth that their forefathers left them, but the pace at which America is doing this is absolutely breathtaking.  Nobody can deny that our economy is a complete and utter mess right now, and we only have ourselves to blame.  It was America that was at the forefront of the industrial revolution.  It was America that showed the world how to mass produce everything from automobiles to televisions to airplanes.  It was the great American manufacturing base that crushed Germany and Japan in World War II.  In fact, the primary reason why we won World War II is because we simply outproduced our enemies.  But now we are witnessing the deindustrialization of America.  Tens of thousands of factories have left the United States over the past several decades.  Millions upon millions of manufacturing jobs have been lost during that same time period.  The United States has become a nation that consumes everything in sight and yet produces very little.  Do you know what one of our biggest exports is today?  Waste paper.  Yes, trash has literally become one of our top exports as we voraciously blow our money on whatever the rest of the world wants to sell to us.  The United States has become bloated and spoiled, and our economy is now just a shadow of what it once was.  Once upon a time America could literally outproduce the rest of the world combined.  Today that is no longer true, but Americans sure do consume more than anyone else in the world.  If the deindustrialization of America continues at this current pace, what kind of a future are we going to be leaving to our children and our grandchildren?

Throughout history, every great nation has been great at making things.  So if the United States continues to allow its manufacturing base to erode at a staggering pace, how in the world can the U.S. continue to consider itself to be a great nation?  We have created the biggest debt bubble in the history of the world in an effort to maintain a very high standard of living, but the current state of affairs is not anywhere close to sustainable.  Every single month America goes into more debt and every single month America gets poorer.

So what happens when our debt bubble finally implodes?

The deindustrialization of the United States should be a top concern for every man, woman and child in this country.  Sadly, the truth is that most Americans do not have any idea what is really going on out there.

If you know people like that, take this article and print it out and hand it to them.  Perhaps what they will read below will shock them badly enough to awaken them out of their slumber.

The following are 12 facts about the deindustrialization of America that will blow your mind…

#1 According to Google AI, our nation has lost almost 70,000 factories since the year 2000…

The United States has lost nearly 70,000 factories since 2000. This is part of a larger decline in the US manufacturing sector that has also resulted in the loss of over 5 million jobs.

#2 In July 1979, 19.5 million Americans had manufacturing jobs.  Today, only 12.8 million Americans have manufacturing jobs even though our population is much larger than it was in 1979.

#3 According to a survey that was recently conducted by the Pew Research Center, 59 percent of Americans believe that the U.S. has lot more than it has gained from free trade.

#4 In 1959, manufacturing represented 28 percent of all U.S. economic output.  At the beginning of the Great Recession in 2008, manufacturing represented only 11.5 percent of all U.S. economic output.  Today, manufacturing represents just 10.3 percent of all U.S. economic output.

#5 More than a billion cellphones are sold worldwide each year.  Only a few thousand of them are actually manufactured in the United States.

#6 The size of our trade deficit with China in 2024 was $295,000,000,000.

#7 At this point, China produces approximately 4 times as many vehicles each year than the United States does.

#8 In the early days of the industry, 100 percent of all semiconductors were manufactured in the United States.  Today, that number is down to just 8 percent.

#9 Russia is producing three times as many artillery shells as the U.S. and Europe combined.

#10 The United States spends approximately $3.00 on Chinese goods for every $1 that the Chinese spend on goods from the United States.

#11 Our stores are absolutely overflowing with products that are made in China.  Meanwhile, soybeans are the number one export from the U.S. to China.

#12 More than 36 million Americans are now living in poverty, homelessness in the U.S. is at an all-time record high, and demand at food banks in the U.S. is at record levels all over the nation.

Are you starting to get the picture?

How many more factories do we need to lose before we do something about it?

How many more Americans are going to lose manufacturing jobs before we all admit that we have a very, very serious problem on our hands?

How many more trillions of dollars are going to leave this country before we realize that we are losing wealth at a pace that is killing our economy?

How many once great manufacturing cities like Gary, Indiana and Youngstown, Ohio are going to become rotting, decaying hellholes before we understand that we are committing national economic suicide?

The deindustrialization of America is a national crisis.  It needs to be treated like one.

Can anyone can out there possibly explain how a deindustrialized America has any kind of viable economic future?

Every month far more money goes out of this country than comes into it, because we buy far more from the rest of the world than they buy from us.

As a result, we have to beg the rest of the world to lend us money just so that we can pay our bills.

Our national debt is now up to 36 trillion dollars, and the total amount of debt in our society is now up to 101 trillion dollars.

I have been ranting about all of this for over a decade, but most of the country refuses to listen to those of us that are relentlessly sounding the alarm.

America is in deep, deep trouble folks.

It is time to wake up.

Michael’s new book entitled “Why” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com, and you can subscribe to his Substack newsletter at michaeltsnyder.substack.com.

About the Author: Michael Snyder’s new book entitled “Why” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com. He has also written eight other books that are available on Amazon.com including “Chaos”, “End Times”, “7 Year Apocalypse”, “Lost Prophecies Of The Future Of America”, “The Beginning Of The End”, and “Living A Life That Really Matters”.  When you purchase any of Michael’s books you help to support the work that he is doing.  You can also get his articles by email as soon as he publishes them by subscribing to his Substack newsletter.  Michael has published thousands of articles on The Economic Collapse Blog, End Of The American Dream and The Most Important News, and he always freely and happily allows others to republish those articles on their own websites.  These are such troubled times, and people need hope.  John 3:16 tells us about the hope that God has given us through Jesus Christ: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”  If you have not already done so, we strongly urge you to invite Jesus Christ to be your Lord and Savior today.

The Biden administration has given us an economy in which homelessness is at an all-time high, demand at food banks is at an all-time high, and poverty is growing all around us.  The rising cost of living is absolutely crushing households throughout the nation, and now delinquencies are rising, businesses are going bankrupt at a staggering pace, and mass layoffs are happening from coast to coast.  We won’t officially know whether we are in a “recession” at this moment or not until months from now, but I guarantee you that it certainly feels like a “recession” to millions upon millions of us.  Our economic momentum has been rapidly taking us in the wrong direction for a long time, and the level of economic pain that we are witnessing right now is truly frightening.  The following are 11 signs that a recession in the U.S. may have already started…

#1 Approximately half a million businesses filed for bankruptcy in the U.S. in 2024.  That represented a 14 percent increase compared to the previous year…

Last year in 2024, about 500,000 businesses filed for bankruptcy. That’s 14% more than the year prior.

#2 More than 7,000 stores closed in the U.S. in 2024, and it is being projected that 15,000 stores will close in the U.S. in 2025…

And new data by Coresight predicts 2025 could see yet more closures.

It predicts 15,000 stores could close this year, and places particular emphasis on more Chapter 11 bankruptcy filings, liquidations, and total overhauls (for those retailers that can afford to stay open and remake their business).

#3 Home sales are even lower than they were during the Great Recession.  In fact, sales of existing homes haven’t been this low in almost 30 years…

Existing home sales in the U.S. in 2024 were the lowest in nearly 30 years, as home prices hit an all-time high.

The National Association of Realtors released data that showed existing home sales declined to the lowest level since 1995 last year, with 4.06 million homes sold on an annual basis.

#4 A majority of the U.S. population struggles to afford “their regular rent or mortgage payments”…

Nearly 70% of single, divorced or separated people struggle to afford their regular rent or mortgage payments, compared to just over half (52%) of married people, according to a recent Redfin-commissioned survey. More than three-quarters (76%) of respondents who live with their partner but aren’t married struggle with housing payments, making them the group most likely to struggle.

#5 The proportion of U.S. homeowners that are seriously delinquent on their mortgage payments is rising…

A rising number of homeowners, particularly first-time home buyers and military members and veterans, are missing their monthly payments — and one group says it could be the “canary in the coal mine.”

In 2024, the share of serious delinquencies — which refers to mortgage loans that are over 90 days past due but are not in active foreclosure — rose to the highest level in nearly two years, according to a monthly report by Intercontinental Exchange, or ICE.

#6 Mass layoffs are occurring all over the country.  For example, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram has decided to give the axe to approximately 3,600 workers…

The layoffs, according to Zuckerberg, would target “low-performers.” The layoffs will amount to roughly 3,600 people losing their jobs, according to a Bloomberg report.

“I’ve decided to raise the bar on performance management and move out low-performers faster,” said Zuckerberg in an internal memo cited by Bloomberg. “We typically manage out people who aren’t meeting expectations over the course of the year, but now we’re going to do more extensive performance-based cuts during this cycle.”

#7 Workday has announced that over 1,700 of their employees will be hitting the bricks…

Finance and human resources software company Workday is laying off 1,750 employees, essentially cutting down its total workforce by 8.5%.

Workday CEO Carl Eschenbach said in a note to employees Wednesday that the mass layoffs were a “difficult, but necessary, decision” as the firm clears resources to help expand its global presence and prioritizes the demand for AI.

#8 One expert that was interviewed by CNN is warning that the employment picture is deteriorating because “you’ve already got companies hiring as if they’re in a recession”…

“That leaves us in a situation where things can essentially flip quite quickly, because you’ve already got companies hiring as if they’re in a recession — even if they’re not laying people off,” Oliver Allen, senior US economist at Pantheon Macroeconomics, told CNN this week.

#9 The Washington Post is reporting that employers that rely on government contracts “are starting to lay off workers”…

Private-sector employers and nonprofits are starting to lay off workers as a result of the Trump administration’s sweeping cuts and funding freezes, unleashing a wave of job losses that economists say could pick up steam in the coming weeks, threatening the broader labor market.

The tally appears to be about several thousand private-sector jobs lost in the past two weeks since federal funding cuts and freezes took hold. More than 7.5 million Americans work in jobs directly connected to the federal government, according to the Brookings Institution, as contractors or grant workers — some of whom are already out of a job. And there are millions more who work in positions indirectly connected to federal funding delays.

#10 It appears that a trade war with China has begun.  This will have serious implications on both sides of the Pacific…

China has imposed retaliatory tariffs on the US, hitting about $14bn worth of goods and dashing hopes that a trade war between the world’s two largest economies could be avoided.

Beijing announced the tariffs last week in response to a US decision to impose an additional 10 per cent levy on Chinese products, which US President Donald Trump called an “opening salvo” in a renewed trade offensive against China.

#11 It appears that a trade war with the EU is rapidly approaching.  This will have serious implications on both sides of the Atlantic…

The EU has issued a blistering statement hitting out at Donald Trump’s threats to impose huge 25% tariffs on all steel and aluminium imports into the US.

The levy will essentially mean a tax on the vital manufacturing materials which could massively impact producers in the UK, Europe, as well as American neighbours, Mexico and Canada.

I don’t see any way that we are going to avoid severe economic pain, and there are many prominent voices that very much agree with that assessment.

For example, Ed Dowd just made the following statements during an interview with Greg Hunter…

“We are seeing a recession in 2025.  The rest of the globe is already starting to roll over.  It’s going to be a worldwide recession.  There is going to be a mini housing crisis.  Housing has been stagnant for the better part of the year.  There is no transaction volume, and nobody can afford homes.  We are hitting the 18-year housing cycle.  The last housing cycle was in 2007, and you add 18 years and you get 2025…

The economy for the middle-class is going down. . . . As time goes on, we are going to see GDP numbers go lower and lower and lower. . . . It’s kind of a perfect storm for the Trump Administration.  There is no way to avoid the pain.”

We are definitely facing a “perfect storm”, and it is going to be extremely intense.

Apparently hedge funds can see what is coming too, because they are “making a multi-billion-dollar gamble against the US economy”…

Hedge funds are making a multi-billion-dollar gamble against the US economy, betting Donald Trump’s presidency will result in a massive market crash that could devastate 401(k)s, pensions, and household savings across America.

Data from Goldman Sachs has sent shockwaves through financial circles, revealing a dramatic surge in ‘short’ positions against US stocks – a move that signals a belief the market is headed for a precipitous crash.

Throughout January, investors placed 10 times more bets on American stocks falling than on their continued rise, a staggering shift that reflects growing unease over Wall Street’s future under Trump’s leadership.

Needless to say, our society is not going to be able to handle what is ahead.

Unfortunately, our people riot even when something good happens to them…

Thousands of Eagles fans spilled out of bars and onto the streets of Philadelphia Sunday night after watching their team defeat the Kansas City Chiefs 40-22 in Super Bowl LIX.

The city had opted not to grease the light poles even though a fan died two weeks ago after falling from a light pole after the NFC Championship Game. Despite that tragedy, Eagles fans showed no hesitation in climbing to the top of light poles, cars, construction vehicles, garbage trucks, small buildings, and almost anything else they could find.

Apparently quite a bit of looting was going on as well.

According to one report, “the looting went on through the evening”…

Shortly after the team’s victory, two years after losing to the Chiefs in the same game, Eagles fans looted a linen truck, prompting a police response.

In a video shared on X, fans were seen crowding around a laundry truck and throwing folded linens from inside out into the crowds.

Philadelphia Police asked crowds to ‘disperse and leave city centre streets’, but the celebrations of the Eagles’ win and the looting went on through the evening.

If these people will riot and loot while conditions are still at least somewhat relatively stable, how will they behave during a full-blown societal meltdown?

As economic conditions in this country continue to deteriorate, we are going to see so much chaos in the streets.

Those that are wise will prepare accordingly.

Michael’s new book entitled “Why” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com, and you can subscribe to his Substack newsletter at michaeltsnyder.substack.com.

About the Author: Michael Snyder’s new book entitled “Why” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com. He has also written eight other books that are available on Amazon.com including “Chaos”, “End Times”, “7 Year Apocalypse”, “Lost Prophecies Of The Future Of America”, “The Beginning Of The End”, and “Living A Life That Really Matters”.  When you purchase any of Michael’s books you help to support the work that he is doing.  You can also get his articles by email as soon as he publishes them by subscribing to his Substack newsletter.  Michael has published thousands of articles on The Economic Collapse Blog, End Of The American Dream and The Most Important News, and he always freely and happily allows others to republish those articles on their own websites.  These are such troubled times, and people need hope.  John 3:16 tells us about the hope that God has given us through Jesus Christ: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”  If you have not already done so, we strongly urge you to invite Jesus Christ to be your Lord and Savior today.

It is so important to know when you are holding a losing hand.  Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau initially insisted that he would never back down, but Donald Trump had most of the leverage in this situation.  Canada’s economy is very heavily dependent on foreign trade, and the U.S. is Canada’s number one trading partner.  If Trudeau ultimately decided to dig in for a fight, Canada’s economy would have collapsed.  Thankfully, he has agreed to negotiate a deal with Trump.  To the south, we must give Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum a lot of credit for realizing that she simply was not going to win this particular battle.  So she has agreed to send 10,000 Mexican troops to help secure the border, and Trump has agreed to pause the tariffs on Mexico for a month as negotiations continue…

President Trump announced he is pausing U.S. tariffs targeting imports from Mexico for a month after the country’s president agreed to send 10,000 troops to the U.S.-Mexico border to combat the flow of fentanyl and migrants.

Mr. Trump wrote on Truth Social on Monday that he and Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum “agreed to immediately pause the anticipated tariffs for a one month period.” The pause, he said, will allow “negotiations headed by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Secretary of Treasury Scott Bessent, and Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick, and high-level Representatives of Mexico.”

Trade accounts for 73 percent of Mexico’s GDP, and the U.S. is Mexico’s number one trading partner.

In fact, approximately 80 percent of Mexico’s exports go to the United States.

Without the United States, Mexico basically doesn’t have an economy, and so Sheinbaum correctly recognized that she was forced to make a deal.

Following his conversation with Sheinbaum, the following is what Trump posted on Truth Social…

In this particular case, Trump’s ultra-aggressive negotiating approach worked.

The Mexicans were forced to fold, and Vice-President JD Vance was very excited about this…

For three days a lot of the far left has actively rooted against America and argued we’d get nothing out of President Trunp’s demands that Mexico secure its country.

Well, how do you like them apples?

Just like Mexico, the Canadian economy is also highly dependent on trade with the United States.

In fact, over three-fourths of Canada’s total exports go to our country…

In 2023, Canada exported close to C$550 billion worth of goods and services to the U.S., or more than three-fourths of its total exports. Energy accounted for 30% and manufacturing contributed around 15% to exports south of the border.

Exports to the U.S. accounts for roughly 17.8% of Canadian gross domestic product and more than 2.4 million jobs in Canada.

At first, Trudeau was pledging that he would match Trump’s tariffs with high tariffs of his own…

Canada will retaliate against President Donald Trump’s new tariffs with 25% levies on a raft of U.S. imports, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said on Saturday, warning Americans that Trump’s actions would have real consequences for them.

As relations between the long-time allies who share the world’s longest land border reach a new low, Trudeau told a news conference he was slapping tariffs on C$155 billion ($107 billion) of U.S. goods. Those on C$30 billion will take effect on Tuesday, the same day as Trump’s tariffs, and duties on the remaining C$125 billion in 21 days, he said.

But then his advisers probably got him to understand that a trade war with the U.S. could potentially collapse the Canadian economy.

So Trudeau relented, and on Monday he also made a deal with Trump to send approximately “10,000 frontline personnel” to help secure the border…

I just had a good call with President Trump. Canada is implementing our $1.3 billion border plan — reinforcing the border with new choppers, technology and personnel, enhanced coordination with our American partners, and increased resources to stop the flow of fentanyl. Nearly 10,000 frontline personnel are and will be working on protecting the border.

In addition, Canada is making new commitments to appoint a Fentanyl Czar, we will list cartels as terrorists, ensure 24/7 eyes on the border, launch a Canada- U.S. Joint Strike Force to combat organized crime, fentanyl and money laundering. I have also signed a new intelligence directive on organized crime and fentanyl and we will be backing it with $200 million.

Proposed tariffs will be paused for at least 30 days while we work together.

So for now, a trade war with Mexico and Canada has been averted.

At least for a month.

And that is a really good thing, because the consequences would have been dramatic.

In fact, it was being projected that Canada’s auto industry was “going to shut down within a week”…

“The auto sector is going to shut down within a week,” said Flavio Volpe, president of Canada’s Automotive Parts Manufacturers’ Association, who Bloomberg quoted about the weekend tariff shock announced by the Trump administration: A 25% tariff on imported goods from Mexico and Canada, with energy imports from Canada facing only a 10% tariff, and a 10% tariff on imports from China. 

Volpe warned that 25% tariffs, which go into effect at 12:01 am on Tuesday, will mean “absolutely nobody in our business is profitable by a long shot.”

Hopefully permanent deals with both Mexico and Canada will be reached so that we are not facing a similar scenario a month from now.

At this stage, the focus will turn elsewhere.

President Trump is threatening the EU with tariffs, and he doesn’t have as much leverage with EU leaders as he does with the leaders of Mexico and Canada.

As a result, that could turn out to be a protracted battle.

And the Chinese are going to be a tough nut to crack as well.

Trump has already imposed a 10 percent tariff on Chinese goods, and China has absolutely no intention of backing down.

So we shall see what happens.

Throughout human history, trade wars often precede real wars.

And I have been warning that a military conflict with China is coming for many years.

Trump’s ultra-aggressive approach got Mexico and Canada to back down very rapidly, and I am sure that we will see Trump use a similar approach with other nations.

Let us hope that it works, because otherwise we could have a real nightmare on our hands.

Michael’s new book entitled “Why” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com, and you can subscribe to his Substack newsletter at michaeltsnyder.substack.com.

About the Author: Michael Snyder’s new book entitled “Why” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com. He has also written eight other books that are available on Amazon.com including “Chaos”, “End Times”, “7 Year Apocalypse”, “Lost Prophecies Of The Future Of America”, “The Beginning Of The End”, and “Living A Life That Really Matters”.  When you purchase any of Michael’s books you help to support the work that he is doing.  You can also get his articles by email as soon as he publishes them by subscribing to his Substack newsletter.  Michael has published thousands of articles on The Economic Collapse Blog, End Of The American Dream and The Most Important News, and he always freely and happily allows others to republish those articles on their own websites.  These are such troubled times, and people need hope.  John 3:16 tells us about the hope that God has given us through Jesus Christ: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”  If you have not already done so, we strongly urge you to invite Jesus Christ to be your Lord and Savior today.