Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent gets it.  When asked about the Strait of Hormuz, Bessent notes that yes, things will likely never return to the way they were before; however, there is a distinction that must be applied.

Even if Iran completely acquiesced to all of the most stringent terms and conditions requested by President Trump, they will never again recapture the position they held with the Strait of Hormuz as a chokepoint.

Capital markets respond to risk in the medium and long term; risks are always mitigated.  With the Strait now identified as a strategic risk, the emphasis will be on forever neutralizing that risk and avoiding the issue in the future.  As a consequence, Iran’s strongest point of leverage is disappearing now and will continue to disappear.  WATCH (prompted):

As further explained by James Thorne on X: “By repeatedly signaling its willingness to disrupt the Strait of Hormuz, Tehran hasn’t strengthened its hand, it has accelerated the market’s exit. Capital does not tolerate chokepoints; it routes around them.

Saudi Arabia is expanding its East-West pipeline. The UAE has already built out Fujairah as a bypass. Iraq is revisiting overland export corridors. Every marginal dollar now flows toward redundancy, not reliance. What was once a geopolitical lever is being engineered into irrelevance. Bessent gets it: markets don’t absorb coercion; they arbitrage it away.

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What we can take away from the Institute for Supply Management (ISM) index on manufacturing [Data Here]: overall, the U.S. manufacturing sector is continuing to expand significantly.  The current index of 55.6 percent in July is 2.3 percentage points above the June figure and the highest reading since May 2022 (55.9 percent), when we were trying to recover from the COVID-19 shutdowns and supply chain problems.

PMI – The overall economy continued in expansion for the 21st month in a row. (A Manufacturing PMI^® above 47.5 percent, over a period of time, generally indicates an expansion of the overall economy.) The New Orders Index expanded for the seventh consecutive month after four straight readings in contraction, registering 56.7 percent, up 0.7 percentage point compared to June’s figure of 56 percent.

The July reading of the Production Index (58.5 percent) is 6.3 percentage points higher than the 52.2 percent recorded in June and the highest figure since November 2021 (60.5 percent). The Prices Index remained in expansion (or ‘increasing’ territory), registering 71.1 percent, a 1.9-percentage point decrease from June’s reading of 73 percent. The Backlog of Orders Index registered 55 percent, up 4.5 percentage points compared to the 50.5 percent recorded in June.

The Employment Index reading of 52.8 percent is up 3.1 percentage points from June’s figure of 49.7 percent, putting the index in expansion territory for the first time in 33 months.” (source)

All that data and a couple of bucks will buy you a cup of coffee, but here’s what it means in common speak.

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During an episode of Day Break, Steve Gruber holds an extensive interview with President Trump for a wide-ranging conversation on election integrity, American manufacturing, national security, faith, energy, and the future of the nation.

In this interview, President Trump discusses:

• -The fight to secure America’s elections and the push for voter ID
• -Restoring confidence in the electoral process
• -The rise of socialist and DSA-backed candidates and what it could mean for America’s future
• -Bringing manufacturing jobs back to the United States
• -His recent visit to Michigan’s GM Proving Ground and the resurgence of American industry
• -Strengthening domestic supply chains through rare earth production and projects like REAlloy
• -Making America the world’s leading energy producer
• -Anthony Fauci’s refusal to answer questions before Congress
• -The creation of the U.S. Space Force and plans for the Golden Dome missile defense system
• -National security challenges facing the Western Hemisphere
• -Faith in America, the White House Faith Office, and protecting religious liberty

The conversation also explores why President Trump’s message continues to resonate with working families, blue-collar communities, and voters across Michigan and what many call “Forgotten America.”

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Most casual EU observers have missed the connection between President Trump eliminating the U.S-Europe Marshall Plan via entirely new trade and tariff policies, and the aggregate financial collapse of the European Union.

Over four years (1948-1952), the United States provided $13.3 billion (equivalent to approximately $137 billion in 2025) directly to 17 Western European countries, including the United Kingdom, France, West Germany, Italy, and the Netherlands. The intent was to rebuild Europe after World War II. However, included in the plan was a later system of one-way tariffs, where EU Countries would high-tariff U.S. goods and the U.S. would not tariff EU goods imported.

The direct funding ended in 1952, but the indirect funding via tariffs never ended until President Donald J Trump triggered reciprocal tariffs against Europe thereby removing the one-way benefit. This created an immediate and growing problem for Europe – particularly noted in the EU industrial base.

Simultaneous to this EU tariff reset, President Trump levied tariffs against China. To offset the possibility of economic losses, and specifically to fund Beijing’s subsidies to impacted Chinese manufacturing, China stopped purchasing European industrial machines. [That’s the source of the picture above at the G7 in Canada]

This trade and tariff approach hit Europe twice as hard. First from American tariffs and second from diminished Chinese industrial purchasing. Immediately, Europe started looking for alternate sources of funds. That’s where the idea to tax American tech companies entered the discussion in Brussels. Today, President Trump addressed this directly.

TRUTH SOCIAL – “The European Union is at it again and, as usual, taking direct aim at GREAT American Companies! After having fined Apple, for no reason at all, 15 Billion Dollars, Meta, 3 Billion Dollars, Amazon 2.5 Billion Dollars, and many others, we have just been informed that Google, a truly advanced and amazing group, has been fined yet another 1 Billion Dollars, without explanation. This brings the Google total to over 18 Billion Dollars!

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In his most recent outline, Promethean Action PAC’s Mike Steger puts the U.S-Canada trade conflict into an accurate context where China is really the enterprise to gain or fail.  This is a very well presented segment worth watching.

CTH readers will note our long track of this dynamic.  In short, as NAFTA predictably evolved, and as the U.S. manufacturing base was deconstructed, suddenly things shifted.  Canada and Mexico became important as entry doors into the U.S. consumer market for the products outsourced by the destruction of the American manufacturing base.

Steger appropriately uses the auto-sector as an example because it is the easiest sector to quantify damage.  By playing the long game, China has thoroughly compromised the EU and U.K auto market. In 2025 China exported 1.2 million vehicles into Europe. Europe only exported 200,000 vehicles into China; a net trade deficit of 1 million vehicles in Beijing’s favor.

Chinese cars now represent over ten percent of all EU vehicles on the road, and this is only the beginning stage of the collapse of the EU industrial base that Germany and Brussels have only recently started to grasp.  The pace is irreversible at this point for Europe, and now China has turned their attention toward Canada.   This is why the U.S-Canada trade conflict matters!

Canada is the entryway to do in North America what China has done in Europe. WATCH:

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In the graph below, look at how fast things move once the foothold is established by policy.  This is stunning.

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As expected, U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer has completed the Section 301 review of “forced labor practices” in manufacturing and trade. [USTR Announcement Here]

As a result of the findings, a tariff rate of 10% to 12.5% is being added to the goods from a host of countries evaluated.  These 301 duties are in addition to currently existing tariff rates. [FACT SHEET] Trading partners that have made commitments to adopt, and effectively enforce, forced labor import prohibitions will have a 10% tariff, and trading partners that have failed to adopt a forced labor import prohibition will have a 12.5% tariff rate.

• The following 54 economies have failed to impose and effectively enforce a prohibition on the importation of goods produced with forced labor:

Algeria; Angola; Argentina; Australia; the Bahamas; Bahrain; Bangladesh; Brazil; Cambodia; Chile; China, People’s Republic of; Colombia; Costa Rica; Dominican Republic; Egypt; El Salvador; Guatemala; Guyana; Honduras; Hong Kong, China; India; Iraq; Israel; Japan; Jordan; Kazakhstan; Kuwait; Libya; Malaysia; Morocco; New Zealand; Nicaragua; Nigeria; Norway; Oman; Peru; the Philippines; Qatar; Russia; Saudi Arabia; Singapore; South Africa; South Korea; Sri Lanka; Switzerland; Taiwan; Thailand; Trinidad and Tobago; Türkiye; United Arab Emirates; United Kingdom; Uruguay; Venezuela; and Vietnam.

• The following six economies have failed to effectively enforce a prohibition on the importation of goods produced with forced labor:

Canada, Ecuador, the European Union, Indonesia, Mexico, and Pakistan.

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The Canadian government has cancelled their participation in a joint U.S-Canada ribbon cutting ceremony because President Trump has hurt their feelings with a new tariff announcement.

It is the official position of the Canadian government not to join in any collaborative celebration.  This comes on the heels of the Premier of British Columbia, David Eby, asking his staff to revoke the Canada statement celebrating America’s 250th Independence Day.  Take that Trump! {{harrumph}}

CANADA – A planned joint ceremony on Friday between the U.S. and Canada marking the opening of the Gordie Howe International Bridge has been canceled after President Trump announced a 50 percent tariff on certain Canadian imports, including alcohol and dairy.

“In light of trade action threatened by the United States earlier this week, it would be inappropriate to proceed with a celebratory event between the two countries,” Jenna Ghassabeh, a spokesperson for Canadian Infrastructure Minister Gregor Robertson, said in a statement to the Associated Press.

“We remain committed to opening the bridge on July 27th, and to celebrating this milestone among Canadians on July 24th,” she continued. (read more)

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Susan Kokinda from the Promethean Action PAC believes the USMCA tariff and trade issue is not a simple U.S–Canada dispute; rather it’s a broader conflict about U.S. sovereignty vs the British empire.

Kokinda points to how Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney is staffing his government with figures tied to the British Crown and globalist institutions: trade minister Dominic LeBlanc also leads King Charles’s Privy Council, new Chief Operating Officer Maia Johnson is an American Democratic operative linked to Clinton and Bloomberg networks, and new the Governor General Louise Arbour comes from UN legal roles associated with the International Criminal Court.

Promethean Action believes that under Prime Minister Mark Carney, Canada is not a nation, it’s the new front for the British Empire, and President Trump’s new Canadian tariffs should be viewed through this prism.  WATCH:

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It is exceptionally annoying to see the various members of the Senate stand in front of the microphones and discuss the importance of trade policy, while they sparsely attend testimony from U.S. Trade Representative Ambassador Jamieson Greer.

In the prompted segment below (I skipped the insufferable Wyden TDS), USTR Greer is asked about the timeline for the USMCA and notes he is going to Mexico immediately following the hearing.  WATCH:

The cognitive dissonance within the Democrats on the committee is stunning.

Senator Bennet worries the USA may lose its position as the world’s #1 exporter of food; at the same time, he waxes philosophically about the U.S. “affordability” of the same food.

Senator Whitehouse worries about the corporations getting the majority of the tariff reimbursements, while saying there’s no way that foreign countries offset the tariffs with subsidies – because that would mean the corporations are getting windfall massive tariff profits due to the Supreme Court…..  Which is EXACTLY what has happened, duh!

Folks, our legislative bodies are filled with idiots. We are not sending our best. lol

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Ontario Premier Doug Ford has a message to President Trump and to all Americans. Premier Ford promises to dismantle the U.S. economy if President Trump continues to threaten tariffs and trade sanctions.

Considering the economy of the USA is ten-times larger than Canada, that’s quite a threat from Premier Doug Ford. WATCH:  

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Personally, I think all this back-and-forth banter is no longer worth the surface effort.  It would be much easier, and now affirmed as constitutionally appropriate by the Supreme Court, if President Trump just executed a full trade embargo against all Canadian goods for a period of 60-days.

Perhaps that way Canada will recognize just how vulnerable they are.  Perhaps not, but it’s worth the effort.  Just ban all imports and exports for 60-days and let’s see what happens.

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