Comments on China Tariffs / Jayadvaita 05 01 25

PADA: Thanks for your question prabhu, what is my take on Trump's tariffs on China? OK first of all he is right, the USA jobs have gone off to China. But people like Ronald Reagan started to "de-regulate" China trade and he lowered the restrictions on China trade, which Ross Perot said -- created a giant sucking sound as all the jobs fled offshore to China. George Bush senior said the "trickle down" of wealth theory is "voodoo economics."

Therefore no, China is not ripping us off, we volunteered to take their products, we volunteered to borrow money from them, and so on. They did not force any of this upon us. At the same time, since China's government and industry are one entity, funding China is a bad idea since they have 20,000,000 or more abortions every year, and funding that process is bad karma. 

Rather amazing, the biggest conservative talking point is "no one should fund abortions," as they happily go out to buy China products, to fund China which has a world record amount. So this is called hypocrisy, which is a symptom of Kali Yuga. We should not fund it here, but we can fund it there. Very duplicious, but the karma is going to take hold in any case, because karma does not rely on any political talking points to take effect.

Now many truckers are sitting idle at West Coast ports, ok but they are a big voting block for the Trump program, some say 80% of them. Many farmers have lost their China contracts, same thing, big voters for Trump. Boeing is losing contracts, they were evidently happy with Trump's inauguration. Walmart, Target, Home Depot are complaining they will have empty shelves, but they are traditional big supporters of the conservatives, ok like Trump. 

Now Trump is saying, hey guess what, these folks all got exactly what they voted for. That is factually true. He has been talking about "sticking it to China with tariffs" for maybe 40 years or more. Some big manufacturing and many small manufacturing are thus moving out of the USA. For example a chocolate snack maker is moving to the EU, because they have to import their raw materials. Subaru is pulling out, and so on and so forth. OK it looks now like we are losing more jobs than gaining. 

These guys just cannot pay the tariffs. And thousands of small business that import their products are simply going to go bankrupted. For example, a company that imports custom car wheels cannot get his wheels out of the port, he does not have the cash, so he will have to lay off his 31 workers and they will have no jobs. 

Then they will have to apply for unemployment and food stamps, which will increase government spending. OK anyone who did not know these tariffs were coming, and what would be the result, was not paying attention. For example, Kamala Harris was going on -- and on and on -- about how these tariffs would work, and what would be the malefic effect, so it was well known to anyone paying any attention.  

One farmer in upstate New York was shocked when he found out he had to pay $2,200 to get his load of cattle feed from Canada out of customs. He thought Canada was going to pay these tariffs. What? Canada is going to write this guy a check for $2,200 for the honor of his buying products from them? This guy thinks he is royalty status of getting paid for being a purchaser.

The levels of misinformation here is staggering. "China is finally going to pay." Nope, they are not going to send 10 cents to the USA for any tariffs. Sorry dude, Canada is not paying your $2,200, you are. And that is what you voted for. You own your own situation.

Yep. The person who pays is -- us -- the Joe six pack consumer. It seems like a lot of people just did not study these issues. But the plan to make tariffs, and jack up prices for our average consumer goods substantially, was very clearly part of the Trump campaign. Of course, if I was handling all this, I'd gradually wean a few industries off a few at a time, get the factories over here up and running, then wean a few more industries off China and so on, not make a giant hatchet job of an almost total embargo or blocking almost everything.  

That is going to create a lot of chaos. But hey, everyone sort of knew that -- there would be lots of chaos. I am not sure what else they expected from a guy whose businesses have been a case study in constant imbroglio and chaos. 

Now my nurse friend is a sort of conspiracy person. She believes the real reason that the 95% pharmacy products we get from China are now going to cost two or three times more is -- the elderly and the poor won't be able to pay for these medications. And she predicts, thousands of people will start dying off fairly soon, hospitals will have shortages of medications etc. and they won't be able to take in patients, especially poor ones. In other words, she thinks this is a plan to get rid of the elderly and poor, to save money on welfare and Social Security. 

Well hee hee, I dunno, but there does not seem to be any rational plan in place to help these vulnerable types of people get these medications. In any event, lots of people are going to end up experiencing pain and suffering, economic or physical. And the government knows that, so the plan is "a few years of pain." Well ok!

Having said all that, America cannot continue to buy all its stuff from overseas and add another trillion to the deficit every 10 months. The Ronald Regan -- "tax cuts for big business people -- which will trickle down to the little peons" -- is not working, plain and simple. The wealthy simply invested their tax cuts in making more and more things in China and that is self evident. 

The peons never really benefited, and now the peons are going to be paying the tariff, which means the wealth of the peons is trickling up to the wealthy class. Someone calls this "trickle up wealth to the wealthy to make more poverty for the poor." 

Anyway! Something needs to be done to restrict the ever expanding deficit, we all agree. Is the Trump plan working to make that happen? Who can say, there has just been a lot of chaos so far, but the economic numbers do not look good. Personally, it looks to me like all this debt and deficit spending, and massive imports to finance giant manufacturing businesses overseas, and generally buying everything off shore, while giving tax breaks to the biggest importers, is finally catching up. 

How this will end is hard to say, but it does not look to me like there is anything resembling a solid plan to help the USA go forward. And shifting the economic burden to the peons while continuing tax breaks to the wealthy -- will shrink the peon's buying power, which will shrink the entire economy. 

None of that looks good IMHO. Anyway hold onto your seat, we could be in for a bumpy ride -- which is what Srila Prabhupada said -- the USA currency could collapse eventually. Some more stop gap measures are not really addressing the root issues. Srila Prabhupada said we need our own self sufficient farms for these exact reasons, but ISKCON has failed to produce them in any substantial manner. 

That is bad news for the Vaishnavas, the mundane society is failing, and so is ours. But then again, maybe mother earth is tired of all the huge piles of junk being dumped all over the place as all these "consumable" items only last awhile and end up in the land fill dump, full of old cars, shoes, plastic cups, washing machines, toasters, rusty bikes etc. Never mind these container ships are huge polluters with giant amounts of smog coming from their smokestacks. 

It is just not sustainable long term, it is a massive mis-use of energy and resources. It is harsh on the planet, and it was never meant to last forever, and we all know it. At some point the party will be over, and it is going to be a big problem for a lot of people because -- they are not prepared. 

Oh oh, just like a lot of devotees are in denial about their society's decaying situation. Well Krishna always allows a person to goof around for awhile, then the hammer of karma comes down, it is His way of doing business for trillions of years hee hee. 

ys pd 

angel108b@yahoo.com   

Jayadvaita swami:

Yeah in 1984 Jayadvaita swami came to Berkeley and he told me that the gurus he is promoting are "like buying a used car, it might drive fine, and in might start on fire. It is the job of the aspiring devotees to check the guru out" I said oh fine, the five years old kids in gurukula need to make sure their guru is pure, makes perfect sense, the five years old are in charge of guru tattva. I also said, we should just give people the books of the pure devotee and that will connect them to Krishna. And he started yelling, "well is Krishna in the wall, huh, huh, huh"? I said wow, the last person who asked if Krishna was in the wall was --Hiranyakasipu. All the devotees started laughing and he stormed out. We used to call him dry head waiter for his propenstity to make Prabhupada's statements flat and losing the original tone and tenor, if not the original meaning. ys pd

angel108b@yahoo.com