Tag: economy

Greer Blasts Democrat State Attorneys General For Choosing Foreign Sweatshops Over American Workers

U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer accused Democratic-led states challenging President Donald Trump’s new tariffs of putting foreign sweatshops ahead of American workers and siding with China against U.S. efforts to eradicate forced labor from global supply chains.

“It’s official: Twenty-five Democrat-run states, spanning from Michigan to California, have made their priorities clear: foreign sweatshops come before protecting hardworking Americans,” Greer said in a statement obtained exclusively by Breitbart News.

The statement is the Trump administration’s most forceful response yet to lawsuits filed by 25 states seeking to overturn tariffs of 10 percent to 12.5 percent imposed last month on goods from more than 80 countries.

The states, led by New York, California and Illinois, filed their complaint Monday in the U.S. Court of International Trade. They argue the administration used forced labor as a pretext for rebuilding the global tariff system invalidated by the Supreme Court in February.

“After losing at the Supreme Court, the administration is once again trying to illegally raise taxes on families and businesses with a new round of tariffs,” New York Attorney General Letitia James said when the lawsuit was filed.

Greer rejected that characterization, saying the states are asking courts to give countries that tolerate forced labor in their supply chains a free pass.

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Trump demands oil companies lower gas prices for American consumers

President Donald Trump has taken to Truth Social to criticize Chevron CEO Mike Wirth following a television interview in which the executive touted his company’s success.

On Monday, the president argued that in the interview with Fox Business, Wirth failed to credit the administration’s efforts to assist oil companies, which the president said provided necessary strength and stability to the U.S. energy sector.

“The only thing he conveniently forgot to mention is that, without the genius, foresight, strength, and stability, of the TRUMP Administration, the Oil Industry, and our Country itself, would be DEAD!” Trump wrote.

Trump pointed to Chevron’s operations in Venezuela as an example of the administration’s influence, before calling on oil executives across the industry to lower fuel prices for consumers immediately.

“Get your consumer (retail!) Oil Prices DOWN, NOW!” the president stated.

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War With Iran: A Double-Edged Sword for the US Economy and Agriculture

The sharp swings in oil prices following the latest round of attacks and negotiations over safe passage through the Strait of Hormuz demonstrate that wars do not always reveal themselves first on the battlefield. Sometimes, their earliest signs appear on gas-station price boards, in transportation bills, and on the balance sheets of farmers standing thousands of miles from the front lines. Now that the confrontation between the United States and Iran has moved beyond pressure and deterrence and turned into direct military conflict, the issue is no longer limited to security calculations. It is about the real costs of war – costs increasingly borne by American farmers, truck drivers, and consumers.

The economic effects of this war are being transmitted through channels that are highly sensitive for Washington politically: energy markets, inflation, supply chains, and, above all, agriculture. A war that Trump justifies in the language of national security and displays of strength could, in practice, become a self-inflicted shock to the U.S. economy. That is the central contradiction: the most direct pressure is falling on the very social and economic constituency Trump has repeatedly claimed to defend – the American farm belt.

The Energy Shock, From Hormuz to American Farms

The Strait of Hormuz, through which roughly 20 percent of global petroleum liquids consumption passes, now lies at the center of the conflict. Repeated surges and declines in oil prices show that even news of a temporary pause – or the possibility of renewed escalation – can shake the energy market. Higher fuel prices feed directly into transportation, production, and consumer-goods costs, adding to inflationary pressure. This also leaves monetary policymakers caught between controlling inflation and preventing a further slowdown in economic growth.

Market instability and direct military expenditures are rising as well. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan showed that the true cost of military conflict often extends far beyond initial estimates. Brown University’s Costs of War Project has placed the cost of the post-9/11 wars at approximately $8 trillion. A war with Iran, particularly if it becomes prolonged or expands geographically, could generate new and uncertain financial commitments. Yet one of its deepest and least visible consequences may be felt not on Wall Street, but on American farms.

Modern American agriculture is intensely dependent on energy. Diesel powers farm machinery; natural gas is a primary input in the production of nitrogen fertilizers; and gasoline and transportation fuels move crops from farms to markets. The U.S. Department of Agriculture has repeatedly shown that higher energy prices increase production costs and reduce farm income, ultimately affecting food prices.

The pressure is even more severe in the fertilizer market. The production of ammonia and urea is directly dependent on natural gas, while disruption in the Strait of Hormuz has constrained global supplies of raw materials and fertilizer. During the first weeks of the war, urea prices nearly doubled, leaving American farmers to confront fuel-price increases and supply shortages at the same time. Under such conditions, corn production, which requires more nitrogen fertilizer, becomes especially vulnerable. Farmers may be forced to choose among reducing planted acreage, switching crops, or accepting substantially higher costs.

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Argentina’s Milei Borrows Warren Buffett’s Idea To Punish Deficit-Spending Politicians

More than two years after campaigning to “blow up” Argentina’s central bank, President Javier Milei has announced his “Fiscal Shackle” bill – a permanent rule aimed at preventing Argentina from approving or maintaining budgets with fiscal deficits that could have consequences for politicians.

On Thursday, in a speech recorded at the Casa Rosada and broadcast nationwide, Milei proposed an overhaul that would restore the Central Bank of Argentina’s sole mandate of preserving the currency’s value, stop direct and indirect financing of the Treasury, provinces, and municipalities, and expose officials who violate the rules to criminal charges. “It will be considered fraud and illicit association,” he explained.

Milei said this is the “most important set of structural reforms in the last 91 years,” taking the year of the Central Bank’s founding, 1935, as the starting point for that period. He argued that the central bank has functioned as “a tool for theft” and indicated that his reform proposal seeks “to put an end to the scam of counterfeiting money to finance high-level politics, whose most evident manifestation is the inflation rate.”

The plan would also strengthen independence of central bank officials, making them more difficult for future administrations to remove. Milei said the reforms were an effort to end decades of deficit monetization, the primary source of Argentina’s recurring inflation and currency crises.

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How Demographics are Driving America’s Long-Term Fiscal Illness

Stomach Bugs and Systemic Debt

If it’s not a bizarre new geopolitical crisis, it’s a terrifying headline about the safety of our  food supply. 

This, no doubt, is an age of constant, low-grade dread. Every time you open your phone, there’s a fresh, steaming pile of bad news waiting to greet you.

But while the mainstream media loves to keep your anxiety levels on a gentle simmer, we prefer to look at the bigger picture. The absurdity of modern life is what we’re after.

Lately, two seemingly unrelated outbreaks have been competing for the spotlight. There’s a microscopic parasite making its way through America’s salad bowls. A healthy lunch has suddenly turned into poison.

At the same time, there’s a massive, systemic failure quietly brewing in Washington. One that’s growing so rapidly it makes a stomach bug look like a walk in the park. While one threatens to disrupt your digestive tract for a week, the other quietly promises to derail the economic security of several generations.

In truth, both of these crises suffer from the exact same fundamental problem. A complete failure of basic hygiene. Whether we’re talking about food safety or fiscal responsibility, ignoring the fundamentals eventually catches up to you. And when it does, the results are always messy, painful, and incredibly hard to clean up.

How is it that a nation seemingly obsessed with clean living managed to let both its fresh produce and its national checkbook rot from the inside out?

Today, we are diving headfirst into two of the most uncomfortable, stomach-churning epidemics sweeping across the nation. One of them is currently lingering on your unwashed spinach. The other is eating away at the very foundations of your financial future.

Explosive Diarrhea

Many strange and unpleasant things are being reported these days. We don’t know if they are really new. But the way they are reported makes them sound new and nasty.

Without question, explosive diarrhea has been around since Adam bit the apple. However, this new description for a stomach bug, like using polar vortex or heat dome to describe winter or summer weather, makes it sound especially alarming.

If you’ve somehow missed the many headlines, there’s a disease spreading across the USA that’s being reported to cause explosive diarrhea. This disease stems from a stomach parasite that is hiding in contaminated food.

Cyclospora cayetanensis is the microscopic parasite behind the outbreak. The infection it causes is formally called cyclosporiasis, and nasty is an understatement. We’ll spare you the ghastly details. From what we gather, unlike your standard 24-hour stomach bug, this uninvited guest can hijack your gut for weeks, sometimes teasing you by fading away only to make a miserable, unexpected comeback. 

Right now, the epicenter of this outbreak is the Midwest, with Michigan getting hit the hardest by a massive surge that has shattered its typical caseload. Major spikes are also popping up in Ohio, Illinois, New York, and Texas. In total, health officials have tracked cases across more than 30 states. They’re all tied to people eating contaminated food without ever leaving the country.

The parasite hitches a ride on fresh, raw produce – things like raspberries, basil, cilantro, and spinach. Because it is incredibly sticky, it thrives in the tiny cervices of your favorite summer greens, making it tough to spot and even tougher to dislodge.

Certainly, this sounds awful. But we’re confident it’s controllable and will soon disappear from the reporting cycle. Unfortunately, the same thing cannot be said for explosive debt…

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EU’s Green Deal is pushing Europe into decline

An Energy Institute report reveals a Europe clinging to the pretence of leading an “energy transition” as the continent declines under the weight of climate policies whose quixotically utopian objectives are negated elsewhere by fossil fuel-supported economic growth.

Data from the 75th edition of the annual ‘Statistical Review of World Energy‘ will surprise only those ignoring the facts: The world continues to depend massively on fossil fuels [more correctly, hydrocarbon fuels]. Solar and wind technologies, while expanding, still lag ever-rising energy demand, which last year reached a record 600 exajoules. (That’s 600 quintillion joules, where a joule is equal to the work necessary to create one watt of power for one second.)

Of total primary energy consumption, 86% came from fossil fuels – oil at 33.5%; coal, 27.6%; and natural gas, 25.1%. Accounting for just 3% were solar and wind, which are heavily promoted by the European Commission over the much-demonised hydrocarbons.

From 2015-2025, the first decade of the Paris Agreement on climate change, global energy consumption rose more than 14%, with sharply contrasting dynamics. European Union use declined about 1% annually, while consumption in the Asia-Pacific region grew 2.6%.

Europe’s decreasing energy use is no triumph of ecological heroics but rather an outcome of the assault of the EU Green Deal on competitiveness and its predictable deindustrialisation and economic decline. For example, in 2025, growth in gross domestic product for some European countries was close to zero, while the US was 2% under the hydrocarbon-friendly Trump administration. Some coal-burning Asians experienced multiples of that.

Noting this EU tragedy, the European Central Bank’s 2024  report on competitiveness blamed not climate policies directly but instead high energy prices the policies had wrought – a sleight of hand accommodating EU politics.

Meanwhile, the growth of fossil fuels outside the EU continued to outstrip significantly that of solar and wind. Contrary to the Brussels narrative that the gap between so-called renewable technologies and fossil fuels is narrowing, the reality, in absolute terms, is a widening chasm. The EU has indeed integrated renewables into its grid, doing so at the cost of affordability and reliability. However, this leadership remains purely symbolic because the rest of the world is accelerating its use of fossil fuels far faster than that of renewables.

In places like Asia, the expansion of hydrocarbon use concurrently with impressive economic growth was more than coincidental. It was necessary, and China and India led the way.

Early this century, the impetus for Chinese growth was the lesson of the Soviet Union’s collapse, a result of deplorable living standards and a dim outlook for the future. The Chinese Communist Party recognised that growth was needed to maintain its legitimacy and that abundant, cheap energy – mainly coal – would be the critical ingredient.

This prosperity is good news to everybody but those obsessed with carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, the bogeyman of the climate industrial complex. In its drive to cut emissions by 90% by 2040, the EU has reduced emissions by 554 million metric tonnes under the Paris Agreement as the rest of the world increased its own by 3 billion metric tonnes – fivefold in the opposite direction. The European effort is incinerated almost instantly by the combustion of fossil fuels elsewhere to support increased economic activity.

Most damning for 30 years of climate diplomacy is that global industrial emissions have risen by 67% since the adoption of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (“UNFCCC”) in 1992, according to the 2026 ‘Statistical Review of World Energy’. While the EU cut its emissions in that time by about 30%, the effort, achieved at enormous cost and deindustrialisation, has been erased by others’ pursuit of human flourishing.

Compared with previous editions, the language of the latest Energy Institute analysis is markedly more favourable to renewables. One explanation may be the publisher’s collaboration with Ember, a self-identified “energy think tank that aims to accelerate the clean energy transition with data and policy.” The Energy Institute itself seeks “to accelerate a just, secure, and low-carbon energy transition.”

Obviously, our scepticism about the EU’s green agenda is based on the data presented in the report, not on the publishers’ interpretation of it. We sought to contrast the pathetic product of EU energy policy with the promising economic rise of others.

Despite the omnipresent rhetoric of the energy transition, the evidence must be faced: The dominance of fossil fuels in the world energy system persists even as wind and solar, expensive and intermittent, expand. The world is undergoing an energy addition, not a transition, as new technologies supplement the growing capacity of legacy sources.

The great majority of mankind aspires to more prosperity, which requires abundant and cheap energy – what the EU employed before adopting ecological dogma. The clash between climate ambitions and economic aspirations will only intensify.

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The Student Loan Crisis Is Exploding

Student loan defaults have surged to 9.2 million borrowers, representing roughly one in every five people with student debt. What is astonishing is the speed of the deterioration. There were approximately 6 million borrowers in default last August. That figure jumped to 7.7 million by December. By April it had reached 9.2 million. Another 3 million borrowers are reportedly at least 90 days delinquent and appear headed in the same direction.

The government suspended reality for years through payment pauses, forbearance programs, and emergency measures that temporarily masked the problem. Now collections have resumed. Wage garnishment is returning and borrowers are once again being confronted with debts that never disappeared. Politicians celebrated the pause as though the crisis had been solved. All they really did was postpone the reckoning.

What nobody wants to admit is that the student loan system became fundamentally broken the moment the federal government guaranteed virtually unlimited lending. Once colleges realized that students could borrow almost any amount with government backing, tuition exploded. Universities had no incentive to control costs. They built lavish facilities, expanded administrations, hired armies of bureaucrats, and continuously raised tuition. Students were told that any debt was acceptable because a degree would guarantee future prosperity. The numbers tell a different story.

Tuition costs have risen by hundreds of percentage points over the past several decades, vastly outpacing inflation and wage growth. Yet many graduates entered labor markets where earnings never remotely matched the debt burden they accumulated. Entire generations were encouraged to believe that college was the only path to success. Many emerged with degrees carrying little market value but very real financial obligations.

Borrowers are returning to repayment obligations while facing some of the highest living costs in decades. Housing costs remain elevated. Insurance premiums continue rising. Food prices have increased substantially. Many young Americans are already delaying homeownership, marriage, and family formation. Now millions face renewed collection efforts and potential wage garnishment on top of those challenges. The economic pressure is becoming overwhelming.

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The Socialist Monster Awakens

Who Caused Unaffordability?

Fear about “affordability” supposedly fueled the new, strident socialism.

Yet annual inflation during Biden’s four years averaged almost 5 percent. It peaked at over 9 percent, while prices for some key staples rose by 30 percent over his tenure—all to silence from the Left. (By contrast, annual inflation during Trump’s first term averaged 1.9 percent. In his second term, it averaged 2.6 percent in 2025—and may rise to 4.5 percent in 2026, given the war with Iran.)

The socialists were not just quiet during Biden’s four years; they were themselves responsible for the rampant Biden inflation. They had implemented an inflationary de facto third Obama term, ramming through the most radical and costly agenda in decades under the veneer of that cognitively challenged waxen effigy, good ol’ Joe Biden from Scranton.

So the current Jacobin takeover of the Democratic Party was not sparked by concerns about “affordability”—or at least not if by “affordability” we mean the middle-class struggle to buy a house, a car, or groceries.

Instead, the socialist moment was merely the logical culmination of years of boutique radicalism within the Democratic aristocracy—the ossified leadership of Chuck Schumer, Nancy Pelosi, Elizabeth Warren, Kamala Harris, and Hakeem Jeffries, along with the aging Black Caucus, the incoherent Squad, the DEI crowd, the open-border zealots, and the radical greens.

The grandees of the party also normalized the crazy mobs of BLM and Antifa long ago.

Democrats as Dr. Frankenstein

Almost every weaponized scam and national hysteria in the last two decades was amplified and spread by mainstream Democrats: the farcical claim that the Wuhan-lab-hatched COVID virus came from pangolins or bats; the Duke Lacrosse and Covington Kids hoaxes; the Jussie Smollett scam, the “Hands up, don’t shoot” lie; the deification of George Floyd, often portrayed with wings and a halo; Fauxcahontas Liz Warren, touted as the first Native American Harvard law professor (thanks to her grandfather’s high cheekbones); the radical diminution of in-person voting; the canonization of Trayvon Martin and Karmelo Anthony as blameless model children; and the mythology of a 1619 national founding.

Who allowed not just one, two, three, or four million border-jumpers into the country, but over ten million—illegal, unvetted, viewed as an assumed new political constituency, and instantaneously dependent on the welfare state?

Who gave us three, four, five, or even more genders and biological males showering with teenage girls or female prisoners? Who sloganeered about “defund the police” and “no cash bail”?

All this was about as radical as it gets.

The Democratic establishment’s unhinged hatred of Donald Trump mainstreamed radicalism even further and helped birth the socialist-cum-communist Frankensteinian monster that is now devouring its mad-scientist creators.

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Young Middle-Income Buyers Frustrated As US Home Costs Rise Faster Than Incomes

Stealers Wheel’s 1973 hit “Stuck in the Middle with You” could well become the theme song for today’s middle-income, first-time home buyers who don’t qualify for affordable housing programs yet cannot afford market-rate homes.

The household income required to purchase a starter home, currently priced under $350,000 in the United States, has surged more than 80 percent to $78,000 from $43,000 in 2019, according to a July 20 report from Realtor.com.

By contrast, the median household income was $83,730 in 2024, representing an increase of under 22 percent from $68,703 in 2019, according to the latest Census Bureau estimates.

This gap in growth between home prices and household incomes has made it increasingly difficult for even middle-income households to own a home, real estate professionals, economists, and recent research say.

Caught In The Middle

Vlora Sejdi, an associate broker with HomeSmart in White Plains, New York, recently told The Epoch Times about the challenges her young clients face in buying a home.

She is currently working with a childless couple under 40 who are living with parents while saving for a down payment on a home in Westchester County, an affluent suburb north of New York City, which had a median home price of $867,398 in May, according to Redfin.

“Home prices here just keep going up and up,” she said. “It’s a seller’s market and people who can afford to buy are willing to go above and beyond. We’re still seeing bidding wars.”

“They’re very unhappy with the current situation, and I think there’s also a shock factor for what their monthly payments will be with mortgage, taxes, and insurance,” she said.

Sejdi said another of her clients, a woman in her 20s, also from Westchester County, is currently renting while searching for a co-op, a type of housing in which residents purchase shares in a cooperative corporation that owns the building, rather than own individual units, according to Apartments.com.

Co-ops tend to be much less expensive than condos or single-family homes. According to OneKey MLS, in Westchester County, the median sales price for co-ops was $223,750 in May, compared with $576,500 and $1,200,000 for condos and single-family homes, respectively.

However, these properties are controlled by a co-op board of directors that can set stringent financial requirements for anyone seeking to purchase an apartment.

“My client actually had one accepted offer, but the board would not approve her, despite the fact that she now pays significantly more in monthly rent than she would for monthly maintenance at the co-op,” Sejdi said.

Sejdi will continue to search for other possibilities but admits the journey has been challenging for both of them.

“There’s definitely a lack of attainable housing for the middle class in Westchester,” she said. “These are people who make too much money to qualify for affordable housing, but don’t have enough to afford market-rate homes.”

Sejdi’s clients requested anonymity.

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CO Dem Candidate Deleted These Reddit Posts. You Can See Why He Did That.

Manny Rutinel is the Colorado Democrat running in the 8th district. He’s also another candidate with some unusual social media posts. No, it’s nowhere near as extreme as Graham Platner, who is on a different level with posts about masturbating in port-a-potties, among other things, but it’s worth noting that Rutinel deleted these Reddit posts, likely because they could damage the local economy. They were a form of advocacy for vegan authoritarianism, which is not something ranchers want to hear.

State Rep. Manny Rutinel, in since-deleted posts made nearly a decade ago on the social media site Reddit, voiced support for a movement that aims to put animals on the same legal footing as humans and in turn prohibit their slaughter for food and other uses. 

Rutinel, a Democrat running to represent Colorado’s toss-up 8th Congressional District, envisioned a future in which so-called animal liberation legislation would be adopted.

“Veganism will grow at a gradual pace, farmers will produce fewer farm animals to meet the decreased demand,” he posted in 2017. “The fewer animals that are left living by the time an animal liberation amendment arrives will spend the remainder of their lives happily in either an animal sanctuary or be kept as a pet.”

[…]

His changing views on meat could be politically helpful: The 8th District, which spans Denver’s northeast suburbs into Greeley, is arguably Colorado’s agricultural capital. 

It’s filled with ranches, feedlots and dairy farms, which generated about $1.2 billion in animal products in 2022. The district is also home to a JBS meatpacking facility in Greeley, one of the nation’s largest beef slaughterhouses. 

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