Gary Cohn appears on Face The Nation to discuss the finance, the economy and the pain felt by consumers.  He won’t say it directly, for obvious reasons, but what Cohn describes in terms of political support boils down to Main Street business supporting Donald Trump and Wall Street Multinational Corporations supporting Joe Biden.  That is ultimately what is obvious at a macro level.

I’m starting the video at 03:08 for the purposes of emphasizing inflation.  What Cohn says about U.S. inflation is essentially accurate and I have a Cliff Notes, tldr, HERE.  However, what Cohn says about tariffs creating inflation is not accurate, as outlined by the 2017 through 2020 results of Trump tariff policy.  Cohn says, “No one absorbs tariffs, except the consumer,” this is false.  As we saw in 2017, 2018, and 2019 China, Asia and the EU essentially dropped their export prices to retain access to the USA market and offset tariff costs.  That’s just a statistical reality.

The transcript is HERE; however, I want to draw attention to a geopolitical aspect that is not getting enough attention.  Specifically, the cost of FOOD PRODUCTS and the attached inflation.

Why is food inflation continuing to be a problem?  Why is food inflation not just a USA problem?  Why are the EU farmers protesting?  These questions are easily answered, and yet no one in the Western financial press will explain.

The Build Back Better agenda, known in the USA colloquially as the Green New Deal, carries with it massive increases in cost for energy products.  Fertilizer, which needs natural gas, and farming, which needs large amounts of fuel, diesel and fuel oil, uses costly energy products.  Packaging, plastics (petroleum derivatives) and cardboard also require large amounts of energy.

The manufacturing (heating, cooling, freezing) as well as storage and transportation of food products also use massive amounts of energy.  Additionally, and specifically because of the nature of their consumption, the increased energy costs associated with generating food travels quickly through the supply chain.

Food inflation is always the first thing you notice when the prices of energy products skyrocket.  This is well known and not subject to debate; everyone accepts this.

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Our own analysis of U.S. consumer prices in 2019 showed that prices of imported goods actually declined despite the tariffs. A recent report from CPA takes a look at the impact to Chinese exports to the U.S.  [SEE DATA HERE] Bottom line, the tariffs worked to reduce Chinese imports.

CPA – […] Since the Section 301 tariffs were imposed, the share of imports from China has steadily declined from 21.6% in 2017 the year prior to the tariffs to 16.5%, a decline of 5.1%. No other country has lost as much share of total U.S. import penetration over the past five years.

In terms of total import value, Mexico gained the most from the tariffs, adding $110.8 billion. Vietnam gained the second most in import value by $78.4 billion and by far gained the most of total share of U.S. imports. In 2017, Vietnam accounted for about 2% of U.S. imports at $46.5 billion. In 2022, the U.S. imported $127.5 billion in goods from Vietnam, and the share of the total nearly doubled to 3.9%. Other countries in Southeast Asia such as Thailand, Cambodia, and Indonesia all saw significant increases in their value of imports by the U.S. (read more)

With the 2024 election rapidly coming, it is worth revisiting the actual tariff outcome to American consumers in order to dispel the popular myths about tariffs raising prices here at home.  This might be the cited data you want to bookmark for later reference.

It was the Fourth Quarter of 2019…..

Right before the pandemic would hit a few months later, despite two years of doomsayer predictions from Wall Street’s professional punditry, all of them said Trump’s 2017 steel and aluminum tariffs on China, Canada and the EU would create massive inflation – it just wasn’t happening!

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By now, most intellectually honest American observers have accepted the United States intelligence apparatuses are  the most political and dangerous institutions of government. All recent history shows how the Intelligence Community (IC), identified by Chuck Schumer as the “six ways to Sunday” targeting group, operate as the extra-constitutional fourth branch of government.

The IC conducts surveillance of Americans, and the apparatuses of the FBI, DOJ and DHS operate the enforcement mechanism for the targeting identified by the intelligence apparatus.  The public-private partnership between the domestic communication networks, including social media, and the Intelligence Community are well known. DHS operates on behalf of the IC and the legislative and judicial branches defer to the IC.  This is a specific outcome of the Patriot Act authorizing the IC to conduct surveillance of all Americans.

In his interview with Meet the Press today, former House Intelligence Committee Chair, and current Senate candidate from California, Adam Schiff, publicly stated his desire that the IC continue their operations against U.S. citizens and control any/all information that is shared with Donald Trump in national security briefings.  WATCH (prompted):

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The United States intelligence community is the most insidious threat to the Republic.  There is currently an information war taking place that encompasses pushback against the constructs of the IC and the control justifications known as “misinformation,” “disinformation,” and “malinformation.”  All of these newly created terms serve the function of controlling, eliminating and censoring activity by a corrupt network of government actors.

There is no such thing as mis-dis-or mal-information – there is only information.  Unfortunately, too few Americans have an understanding of how and why these terms were created by the surveillance apparatus in order to control information they deem against their interests.

Lastly, Adam Schiff is likely going to be the purple tie candidate supported by the professionally Republican and communist Democrats in their effort to generate an insurance policy against President Donald Trump.  It is easy to predict how Schiff would likely be installed in the Senate Select Intelligence Committee (SSCI) with a specific responsibility to stop, impede and block any intelligence nomination by President Trump.

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The non-pretending reality behind this duo is that Marco Rubio knows Mark Warner participated in an illicit and unlawful effort to target Donald Trump using the intelligence community and the national security institutions which included the DHS, ODNI, CIA, FBI, NSA and a weaponized DOJ-NSD.

There is absolutely zero possibility Rubio didn’t know what the U.S intelligence apparatus, DOJ, Mueller team and his friend across the aisle, Mark Warner, was doing. Despite the SSCI silo that surrounds him, Senator Rubio knew the motives, intents and purposes of every element within this network from 2016 through 2021. Denying this reality is pretending on a level that is insulting to the honest observer.

As a consequence of that reality, anything Rubio and Warner say about the national security status is suspect to an admission they are both selling a story that is based on an entirely false framework about the construct of the geopolitical world outside the USA. If you understand the cleaving taking place between both global zones, West and non-West, then everything Warner and Rubio say about activity outside the Western sphere becomes transparently motivated. Most of their review is complete BS, and akin to trying to obfuscate the reality of the world “out there.”  WATCH:

TRANSCRIPT – MARGARET BRENNAN: Thank you for doing this–

SENATOR MARCO RUBIO (R-FL): Thank you.

MARGARET BRENNAN: –and for speaking in the bipartisan way you’re sitting down with us today. How would you both define the greatest national security threat facing our country right now?

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The Chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, Mike Turner, may be a Republican – but he is no friend of the American freedom movement who do not like the surveillance state.

Factually, Mike Turner is a part of the deep swamp and has advocated for reforms that make the unconstitutional FISA-702 exploits even worse.  As a result, this meeting with the people who control the surveillance mechanism makes sense.

WASHINGTON DC – The House Intelligence Committee is slated to hear from a series of top national security officials for a public hearing Tuesday, according to a person with direct knowledge of the matter who was granted anonymity to speak candidly. That list includes:

Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines
CIA Director Bill Burns
FBI Director Chris Wray
U.S. Cyber Command Director Gen. Timothy Haugh
Defense Intelligence Agency Director Jeffrey Kruse
(LINK)

The FISA-702 surveillance authority is scheduled to expire on April 19th, “Patriots Day.”

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The next six weeks will be very interesting, as the April 19th clock-ticking dynamic leading up to the expiration of the 702-surveillance authority looms louder.  Some voices have said to me that President Trump needs to be careful of the Title-1 surveillance that surrounds him. I completely reject that approach.

There was a specific reason the Lawfare group charged Donald Trump with “national security” violations. Smart people can well understand the benefit to the surveillance state of the U.S. intelligence community, when Jack Smith defines President Trump as a national security threat under the same justification framework used against Anwar Nasser Abdulla al-Awlaki. The options for the FBI-CoIntel unit assigned to monitor Trump are expanded by the definitions of the DOJ-National Security Division.

Ultimately, sunlight is the best disinfectant, and the best defense against the FBI counterintelligence surveillance is to conduct affairs in a very public way.  This approach, which I fully advocate and endorse, leaves the institutional watchers with gritted teeth as transparency makes it more difficult to create narratives that are contingent upon defining the innocuous as nefarious.

Additionally, if concern over the content of any meeting (think the insufferable Logan Act construct as previously created by Mary McCord) is generated, those approaches -when contrast against the ongoing Lawfare tactics- are made moot and useless to the NSD – and by extension the judicial branch, when President Donald Trump includes his legal counsel in any meeting.  [Hi Mary]

Hungarian Prime Minister Orban is well advised by his counsel as is President Donald Trump. As an outcome of their nationalist ideology, both leaders are targets of the U.S. intelligence community (CIA) and national security state (DoS and USAID).

WASHINGTON DC – Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán traveled to Florida on Friday to visit Republican frontrunner Donald Trump, in a meeting blasted by U.S. President Joe Biden.

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Retired Colonel Douglas Macgregor delivers a surprisingly accurate response to the situation created by Joe Biden as espoused in the 2024 State of the Union address.  I cannot emphasize the value of these remarks strongly enough, in part because my own independent research – and that of a global team I have been working with- is in direct alignment with this outline.

Two years ago, I accepted the reality that Western sanctions against Russia were profoundly different from all other sanctions and completely ridiculous in the bigger picture of how the global economy operates.  A sanction regime is familiar and has been used against Cuba, North Korea, Iran and even Venezuela before.  Few were paying attention, but for the first time the U.S sanctions against Russia were not created to target Russia and punish any violator, they were created to remove the tools which would allow violations.  The actual dollar as a trade currency was being weaponized.

What followed was not a surprise.  Given the nature of the relationships in the geopolitical world, it only took a few months for Russia and their allies to create new tools which would render the Western economic sanctions irrelevant.  That’s exactly what happened, and the Russian economy has thrived, while their relationship with two-thirds of the global world has strengthened.

Feeling like the only person who could see through the opaque nature of a narrative that surrounded the Russian sanctions, I quietly set out on a mission to understand what this was all about.  None of it made sense. More on that journey will follow. However, what Macgregor is describing is precisely the outcome that was predictable two years ago.

There is an information war against what Macgregor describes in the beginning of these remarks, and people I know personally have become targets as a result. It might surprise many to discover the nature of this information war does not originate with government or politicians. Our focus has been misplaced and our emphasis has been on the wrong syllable. WATCH:

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The targets within this information war are not people who are criticizing politicians. The core targets within this information war are those who are talking about the entities who are controlling and directing the politicians and government.  The voices who are considered a threat are not, repeat NOT, voices who are critical of government.  The voices who are considered a threat are those who understand the government actors are controlled and intentionally presented as the false source of the problem.

Just as Jack Smith is not the controlling entity organizing the targeting of Donald Trump, so too is Joe Biden (and the administration) not the originating entity who organized the Western sanction regime against Russia.  Jack Smith and Joe Biden are essentially actors, vessels following a design that has been created by outside government entities for the purpose of targeting Donald Trump and/or Russia respectively.  The bigger motives and intents of targeting both are essentially the same.  There are trillions at stake.

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There really isn’t much you can say about what was witnessed last night in the People’s House. Joe Biden shouting at America for an hour while muttering something about snickers bars, snack food and the need to send billions of dollars to Ukraine was essentially the gist.

Following one of the most incoherent teleprompter reads in the history of presidential politics, one can only imagine how Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin were briefed on what took place in Washington DC at 9:00pm. Suffice to say, no sleep was lost amid the global community of leaders who smile as the USA influence collapses.

What was even more goofy, was the pretending amid the corporate media that Joe Biden said stuff that was discernable and/or potentially fitting the office of the executive. The various news agencies each described the color of the emperor’s new coat as if it actually existed. The pretending was/is simply off the charts bizarre, and normal Americans tuned out and went on about doing things normal Americans do.

That said, Tucker Carlson watched the naked emperor and livestreamed his thoughts on the insanity of the event, he then gives a reaction. WATCH:

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It’s hard to live in a country where ‘pretending’ is the new normal in politics and media.

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They did it again.   Joe Biden shouts gibberish for over an hour, muttering and shouting incoherent words during the State of the Union.  All that was needed in rebuttal was normalcy.  But no, Mitch McConnell and Mike Johnson had to deliver a “dramatic acting” rebuttal that was even more cringeworthy than Biden’s shouting.

Remember when Casey DeSantis was campaigning in the Melania heels, duck dynasty capris and grizzly mom T-shirt?  This is the SOU rebuttal equivalent. It’s horrible.  WATCH:

I’m so done with the professionally Republican apparatus.

This is super cringe.

The GOPe do this crap on purpose.

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The Daily Mail has an article detailing dozens of violent crimes perpetrated by Joe Biden’s illegal alien border invasion [SEE HERE]. The subject theme is “the grim toll of a migrant crime wave sweeping across the United States.”  The article details the graphic and horrific nature of multiple violent criminals who came into the country illegally and murdered, raped, assaulted and organized into groups for the purpose of robbery and theft.

Additionally, in Polk County Florida, Sheriff Grady Judd outlines a sting operation called “March Sadness” where 228 people were arrested and 13 victims of human trafficking were rescued by the police unit.  The details shared by Sherriff Judd are sobering as he outlines exactly what was taking place and how the illegal alien trafficking system is creating victims from many of the female migrants. [ARTICLE HERE] – WATCH (prompted):

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The details of these articles and press conferences are likely not a surprise to CTH readers as we have discussed exactly these scenarios in our SAF (slowly at first) ground reports.  Unfortunately, the outcomes described by the Daily Mail accounting and the sting operation by Sherriff Judd are likely only the tip of the iceberg.

What Judd outlines about the federal government giving the illegal aliens free airline tickets is infuriating.  Watch that video above for details.

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