We all know the ancient Chinese curse: May you live in interesting times!
Oh, OK, it’s not ancient and it’s not Chinese, but it’s a good curse, nonetheless. And it’s hard to think of a more apt description of 2025 than “interesting.”
It seems like every day this year there’s been a new, blockbuster story to displace yesterday’s blockbuster story from the 24/7 doomscroll feed.
Israel is preparing a “Hell Plan” for Gaza.
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The EU is creating its own army and setting up its own nuclear deterrence.
A 108-year-old Japanese woman has just been recognized as the world’s oldest female barber.
Truly, we are living in world-historical times.
Given all of these amazing events, it would be easy to overlook the decidedly less sexy story about tariffs and trade disputes. But if we do ignore the global trade war that is currently brewing, we run the risk of overlooking one of the most important stories of all.
As we shall see, the trade war isn’t just a spat over the flow of fentanyl or the price of aluminum. It’s about the future of the global economy, and, ultimately, the next Great Powers war. In other words, the future of you, your family and civilization itself is on the line here.
Today, let’s explore what’s happening, why it’s happening and what you can do about it.
THE TRADE WAR STARTS
Oh, what a difference a week makes!
Just last week, the stock markets were riding high, the banksters were predicting solid global economic growth in 2025 and Canadians and Americans thought some booing at a hockey game was about as vicious as things were going to get between the two countries this year.
Cut to this past Thursday: the Dow Jones was down 1,300 points, banksters were slashing their economic predictions and Canadians had already started boycotting Kentucky bourbon and threatening to cut off energy exports to their neighbour to the south.
So, what happened? A trade war happened, that’s what.
Specifically, the deep state that operates the puppet known as Donald Trump enacted a 25% tariff on Canadian and Mexican goods and a 20% tariff on Chinese goods because of . . . *checks notes* . . . fentanyl? . . . or dairy? . . . or cars? . . . or something. The point is, Canada and Mexico have been taking advantage of Uncle Sam, and it’s about time they pay! What idiot signed this horrible Canada-US-Mexico trade agreement, anyway?
Oh, right.
Well, never mind all that! The war is over! Trump’s deep state handlers have promised (another) one month pause on (some of) the tariffs!
. . . Nah, just kidding! The war continues. Less than 24 hours after announcing the pause comes the threat that Uncle Sam will be hitting Canadian dairy and lumber with new tariffs today. (Or maybe Tuesday.)
Regardless of which tariffs do or don’t kick in on which particular dates, we’re about to learn a funny thing about trade wars: you can start them with a simple declaration but you can’t end them the same way. The US may or may not be “pausing” its tariffs, but Canada is keeping its first wave of retaliatory tariffs in place and renewing its threat of a second round of tariffs in April. China, meanwhile, is vowing to fight back even harder after accusing the US of “two-faced acts” and of “meeting good with evil.”
And that war is expanding. After Trump’s threats last month to levy 25% tariffs on products from the EU, the EUreaucrats have fired back, mulling a number of countermeasures, including “block[ing] agricultural products containing pesticides banned in the region.” (But relax, everyone! The “Make America Healthy Again” administration is going to get rid of all those poisonous pesticides anyway, right?!)
Now China is hitting back . . . at Canada? That’s right, the Chicoms have just announced $2.6 billion in agricultural tariffs against the Great White North for levies that Ottawa introduced against China last October.
Feeling dizzy? Of course you are. But that’s the point. For the New World Order to be brought in, the old order must first be destroyed, and nothing sweeps away 80 years of international relations like the world’s undisputed unipolar superpower reneging on its own trade deals, threatening to rip up security pacts that it wrote in the first place and musing about invading its erstwhile allies.
Now, as conspiracy realists who were certainly not fans of the Old World Order, we might be tempted to cheer this whole spectacle on. “Good! Let the system burn!”
But unfortunately a trade war is never just a trade war, and this international firestorm isn’t about cutting a better deal for the average working stiff.
In fact, when you start to look at what this trade war really portends, things get very dark very quick.
THE REVERSE KISSINGER
OK, obviously this trade war isn’t about the 43 pounds of fentanyl that crossed from Canada into the US last year. And it’s not about the price of tea in China. Heck, it’s not even about the price of milk in Saskatoon. So, what is it about?
Well, one theory that’s been floated (and denounced!) by the inside-the-Beltway policy wonks is that Trump is attempting a “reverse Kissinger.”
You see, back in the depths of the Cold War, Henry Kissinger—at the behest of the Rockefellers, naturally—flew to China for a top-secret mission to normalize relations between the US and China. It might be hard for those who weren’t around at the time to understand it, but the US establishing diplomatic relations with communist China in the midst of a Cold War against communism was utterly shocking.
As we now know, Heinz’ visit helped to plant the seeds of the Rockefeller-backed China World Order that have sprouted here in the 21st century. But there was a Machiavellian geopolitical strategy in this ploy as well. Kissinger and his deep state handlers reasoned that by bringing the Chicoms into the globalist fold, they could deepen the Sino-Soviet split and, ultimately, play their Chinese frenemies off against the Soviets.
The “reverse Kissinger” theory, then, holds that Trump’s moves on the geopolitical chessboard are the new deep state’s attempt to repeat the Kissinger strategy, but in reverse. According to this theory, instead of partnering up with China to isolate Russia, the Trump swamp-dwellers are partnering up with Russia to isolate China.
Seen through this lens, some of the seemingly chaotic events of recent weeks appear to add up. Disrupting America’s commerce with its closest trading partners, for instance, creates a pretense for dropping sanctions against Russia. And if the US drops support for Ukraine in its war against Russia, it offers Putin an incentive to ditch Beijing—which has never been fully supportive of the Ukraine war—and instead cozy up to Washington.
But, like all trendy geopolitical hypotheses posited by the Beltway jet set, this “reverse Kissinger” theory, too, is full of holes.
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First, for what it’s worth, Chinese President-For-Life Xi Jinping and Russian President-For-As-Long-As-He-Wants Putin have already come out to dismiss the idea that the US is capable of driving a wedge between them and their “true friendship.”
More seriously, Vladimir Putin is not Chairman Mao, China is not the Soviet Union, and none of the incentives in this “reverse Kissinger” strategy—if such a strategy even exists—play out in the way they did for Kissinger and the geopolitical strategists of the 1970s.
Back in the 1970s, there was a Sino-Soviet split that was used as a wedge to drive China towards the West. Today, not only is there no such split, but Sino-Russian relations are arguably better than they’ve ever been, with China now buying up over half of Russian exports and the two countries continuing to increase military cooperation and technology transfers. In fact, given China’s reliance on the US as a key buyer of its exports and its reliance on the US-led world trading system for access to world markets, it would arguably be much easier for the US to lure China away from Russia than to lure Russia from away from China.
Regardless of whether this “reverse Kissinger” hypothesis is true or not, however, it does point to an important underlying fact: this trade war is not about trade. It’s about the shaping of a New World Order. And the reality is, whatever Trump and his cabinet of billionaires and tech oligarchs may think they are doing, they are just playing their part in a much larger story. One that is leading us toward a Great Powers war.
