When President Trump announced the 90-day pause in combination with the increase in tariffs against China, there was a background element missed by many.

At the moment President Trump triggered the public announcement, U.S. Trade Representative Jamison Greer was testifying to congress.

President Trump is not a jerk.  Donald Trump would not put a top executive Greer in that optically vulnerable position if USTR Greer was the tip of the spear, it’s just bad business form.

The timing and background indicate something more substantial.  For what we are calling ‘the BIG UGLY’ Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent is the point, Greer is a functionary.  It’s a shift from the Term-1 approach, because the global trade reset is magnitudes bigger and more substantive.

This approach would also explain why Robert Lighthizer was not reenlisted in Term-2.  If Lighthizer was in Greer’s chair in front of congress at the moment of the public announcement, he would have been furious and rightly so.  Lighthizer and Wilbur Ross were the tip of the spear in term-1, Lighthizer facing the region of Asia and Ross facing Europe; but the same strategy is not present in term-2.

In the Term-2 trade reset, the entire globe is being targeted simultaneously.  Enter, the U.S. Treasury Secretary in a bigger, more substantive, and much more prominent role due to the scale of the trade reset.

This trade approach is much bigger, obviously. As the nuclear-level trade detonation takes place, Secretary Bessent is in control of both the financial market response and the core finances of the USA as it relates to the reverberations.

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Attorney General Pam Bondi makes her 75th appearance on Fox News this year to discuss the recent Supreme Court ruling generally supporting President Trump’s deportation policy.  WATCH:

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Performative.  Oh, and Boasberg did cancel the 3:00pm hearing.

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The de minimis loophole comes from back in the 1930s. The idea back then was, say you went on a vacation to Paris, you shouldn’t have to file customs paperwork or pay taxes if you decided to ship some little Eiffel Tower statues to your friends back home.

Congress in 2015 then raised the de minimis threshold from $200 to $800. However, the e-commerce world exploded, and Chinese companies began using the de minimis loophole to ship cheap goods (ex. Temu and Shein) into the USA direct to consumers without paying any customs duty.

Yesterday as part of the global trade reset and tariff structure, President Trump revoked authorization for Chinese goods to transfer to the USA using the de minimis rule. The de minimis exemption has been cancelled for all products coming out of China. The rule change only targets China and Chinese shippers. No one else.

[See Executive Order Here]

The minimum duty is $25, and the tariff rate is 30% for all products mailed from China into the USA that previously qualified under the de minimis rule.

Beyond tariffs or sector specific countervailing duties, the removal of China to use the $800 de minimis exemption will destroy their economy.  There is no way for manufacturers in China, marketed into the USA, to be able to survive if they are forced to collect and organize the requirements for U.S. custom and import duties. They will simply dissolve.

FACT SHEET – […] “Following the Secretary of Commerce’s notification that adequate systems are in place to collect tariff revenue, President Trump is ending duty-free de minimis treatment for covered goods from the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and Hong Kong starting May 2, 2025 at 12:01 a.m. EDT.

Imported goods sent through means other than the international postal network that are valued at or under $800 and that would otherwise qualify for the de minimis exemption will be subject to all applicable duties, which shall be paid in accordance with applicable entry and payment procedures.

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Despite our already outlining each of these details the New York Times is now confirming, do not overlook the geopolitical consequences that will surface as a result of their publication.

The New York Times published two articles {HERE and HERE} revealing: 1) that U.S. military boots are on the ground in Ukraine. (2) The U.S. military is actively involved in the ongoing targeting of strikes into Russia. (3) The CIA is operating in Ukraine and conducting targeted strikes into the Russian Federation mainland.

New York Times – […] [F]or nearly three years before Mr. Trump’s return to power, the United States and Ukraine were joined in an extraordinary partnership of intelligence, strategy, planning and technology whose evolution and inner workings have been known only to a small circle of American and allied officials.

[…] The idea behind the partnership was that America’s close cooperation with Ukraine would compensate for Russia’s vast advantages in manpower and weaponry. To guide the Ukrainians as they deployed their ever-more-sophisticated arsenal, the Americans created an operation called Task Force Dragon.

The secret center of the partnership was at the U.S. Army garrison in Wiesbaden, Germany. Each morning, U.S. and Ukrainian military officers set targeting priorities — Russian units, pieces of equipment or infrastructure. American and coalition intelligence officers searched satellite imagery, radio emissions and intercepted communications to find Russian positions. Task Force Dragon then gave the Ukrainians the coordinates so they could shoot at them.

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The Chief of Staff to the President is a key administration official in any White House. With one foot in policy and one foot in politics, the CoS shapes the outcomes of a presidency.

Current White House Chief of Staff, Susie Wiles, appears on Fox News for an interview with Lara Trump to share her views and perspectives along with her role in assisting President Trump with MAGA success.

Within every interview there are always nuggets that help put perspective on the interpersonal dynamics.  One of the nuggets within this interview is Wiles sharing how she came to be in the original orbit of President Trump.

According to Wiles she was “asked by a mutual friend” to travel to New York and meet with candidate Trump in “late December 2015.”  That timeline would be post-Fox Debate (Megyn Kelly attempted hit – Aug ’15) when President Trump was leading every republican primary poll and became the enemy of the professional Republican establishment.  WATCH:

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Yesterday President Donald Trump signed an executive order targeting: “Immediate Declassification of Materials Related to the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Crossfire Hurricane Investigation.” [ORDER TEXT HERE]

Within the XO President Trump informs the Attorney General (Pam Bondi) the Director of National Intelligence (Tulsi Gabbard), and the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency (John Ratcliffe), “I have determined that all of the materials referenced in the Presidential Memorandum of January 19, 2021 (Declassification of Certain Materials Related to the FBI’s Crossfire Hurricane Investigation), are no longer classified.”

However, there’s an important set of qualifiers.

“I have further determined that the material proposed for redaction by the Federal Bureau of Investigation in a cover letter dated January 17, 2021, remains classified.

My decision to declassify the materials described above does not extend to materials that must be protected from disclosure pursuant to orders of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court and does not require the disclosure of certain personally identifiable information or any other materials that must be protected from disclosure under applicable law.” (link)

Caution is warranted.  Yes, there may be a few new items, perhaps a few redactions removed on previously released items, but essentially this is likely be a rehash of assembled component parts we have already discussed at length.  In essence, this sounds like the Mar-a-Lago ten-inch binder content the FBI was previously trying to get back.

There is also a possibility the FISA Court has ordered some materials related to the Crossfire Hurricane investigation, sealed by the FISC.  President Trump does not extend his order to these materials.

There is a certain likelihood the CIA holds foreign intelligence equities that tangentially supports the origin of the Crossfire Hurricane targeting.  We already know officials and intelligence operations from the U.K, Australia, Italy and Israel were involved in the 2016 operation against Trump.  President Trump does not extend his order to these materials, because the equity ownership of the classified material rests in the foreign intelligence services.

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President Trump has given remarks supporting National Security Advisor Mike Waltz during an interview with NBC.

WASHINGTON – President Donald Trump stood by his national security adviser, Mike Waltz, after The Atlantic’s editor-in-chief was accidentally added to a private, high-level chat on the messaging app Signal where military plans were being discussed.

“Michael Waltz has learned a lesson, and he’s a good man,” Trump said Tuesday in a phone interview with NBC News.

When asked what he was told about how Goldberg came to be added to the Signal chat, Trump said, “It was one of Michael’s people on the phone. A staffer had his number on there.”

Trump said Goldberg’s presence in the chat had “no impact at all” on the military operation.

The president expressed confidence in his team, saying he was not frustrated by the events leading up to The Atlantic’s story. The situation, Trump said, was “the only glitch in two months, and it turned out not to be a serious one.” (more)

The rest of the DC setup is transparently clear.  (1) Goldberg held the story until the day before a long-scheduled Senate Intelligence Committee hearing. (2) The SSCI then used the hearing to blast the heads of the Trump administration intelligence silos on the issue of “classified” information in the text messages.

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According to Jeffrey Goldberg from The Atlantic [SEE HERE], National Security Advisor Mike Waltz invited him to a group chat on the Signal app, where various Trump administration officials and cabinet members were discussing how to address the Houthi rebels in Yemen in advance of military airstrikes.

The media is having a field day with the story, and it does have multiple angles that will unfold in the next several days and weeks. Some media even claiming the story could take down Mike Waltz and/or Pete Hegseth due to the national security implications in the series of events [Politico Here]. However, I wouldn’t go that far at all.

(left, Mike Waltz – right, Pete Hegseth)

Why Mike Waltz would be texting an invite to Jeffrey Goldberg is an issue for later discussion. Generally, given the nature of these things it is not the principal who sets up the text network, usually a top aide or lead staff, which might indicate Waltz’s wife Julia Nesheiwat was involved [SEE WHY], but let’s put that aside.

Goldberg claims “details of war plans” were discussed in the group chat.  Perhaps so, perhaps not.  This specific part of the story is refuted by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.  What was discussed and further shared and outlined by Breitbart News [SEE HERE] is a conversation about the strategic reasoning for the U.S. to directly attack the Houthi rebels in Yemen and reopen the sea lanes into and out of the Suez Canal.

The EU and Egypt are the primary beneficiaries of U.S. involvement toward stopping the Houthi terrorists from targeting ships in the region.  Egypt manages the Suez Canal, and obviously there are some strategic U.S. benefits in the region from helping Egypt deal with the Houthi issue.  Specifically, as President Trump seeks to have Egypt, Saudi Arabia and partners help solve the problem in Gaza.

Additionally, most of the shipping through the region is headed to the European Union through the canal.  Reestablishing safe maritime flow of goods economically assists the EU more than any other region.  Again, a point of leverage for the Trump administration as President Trump confronts the issues of EU support for a Ukraine conflict he is trying to resolve.

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Tariffs simply work. This is no longer a debatable issue, and decades of Wall Street gaslighting collapses as the outcomes of tariffs generate visible economic benefits for all Americans.

South Korea-based Hyundai and President Donald Trump announced a $20 billion investment in US on-shoring on Monday, which includes a $5 billion steel plant in Louisiana,

The $5.8 billion Louisiana facility will be the car manufacturers’ first steel manufacturing facility in the US and will produce more than 2.7 million metric tons of steel a year and create more than 1,400 jobs. It will supply steel to auto plants in Alabama and Georgia, Trump said in remarks at the White House.

The announcement at the White House included President Trump, Hyundai Chairman Euisun Chung and Louisiana Governor Jeff Landry. WATCH:

The Hyundai announcement comes as the highly anticipated April 2nd “reciprocity tariffs” are scheduled to begin against all nations.  For the EU this means an end to the 80-year-old Marshal plan of economic benefit.

Effective April 2, 2025, the U.S. will begin a process of reciprocal tariffs on imports from all nations with tariffs against U.S. products.

If a nation charges a 20% tariff on a U.S. good, in combination with a 20% non-tariff trade barrier, President Trump will calculate the financial impact and then reciprocate with a 40% tariff put on that nation’s goods being imported to the USA.

Globally, all nations are calculating how to deal with this issue.  Hyundai’s best position calculations end up with this announcement.

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Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has rejected the proposal to use United Nations (U.N) peacekeepers in Ukraine as part of a ceasefire operation.   Two years ago, Zelenskyy was asking for U.N peacekeepers [SEE HERE] so, what changed?

Volodymyr Zelenskyy is asking for “security guarantees” during a ceasefire.  The U.N peacekeepers are proposed as a potential peacekeeping group to provide those “security guarantees” he says are so important.  Zelenskyy rejects the idea, seemingly demanding that NATO put their troops on the ground.   This guy is something else.

UKRAINE: Zelensky will not allow UN peacekeepers on the ground in Ukraine, insisting that NATO membership and NATO boots on the ground is the only way forward. pic.twitter.com/1VZ9kWPiSN

— @amuse (@amuse) March 23, 2025

UKRAINE – Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has firmly rejected French President Emmanuel Macron’s proposal to deploy United Nations (UN) peacekeeping forces to Ukraine. According to Zelensky, such a move would not provide effective security guarantees and could ultimately benefit Russia.

During a press conference in Kyiv, Zelensky emphasized that Ukraine requires a long-term protection strategy, not a temporary solution that could jeopardize the country’s sovereignty. “We will not accept a scenario that risks giving an advantage to Russia or limiting our freedom to defend ourselves,” Zelensky stated. (more)

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