Free Republic

Economists say freer trade benefits everyone—even trade with China. America gets cheap goods and China gets money. Win-win. Even if we assume America benefits—which is a false assumption as proven in my book Reshore—China has clearly benefited more. For example, China’s economy has grown by an average of 8.12% since joining the World Trade Organization since 2001—about four times greater than America’s. China and America benefited asymmetrically from trade. Asymmetry may not be a problem economically, but it is a problem politically. Why? Power is zero-sum. The strong China grows, the weaker America becomes relative to China. As such, trade...

"The object of life is not to be on the side of the majority but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane." —Marcus AureliusYou must have noticed by now how this Fourth Turning bidness disorders the collective mind. The churning zeitgeist is hard on the nerves, while something strange is birthed by mankind, the end of one way of life and the beginning of another. Everybody’s got a story, and most of them are pretty spooky — A-I Globalist hell. . . de-pop and neo-slavery. . . chemtrail death. . . lizard people. . . caliphate on-the-march...

The Environment in the Middle East and Globally Would Shift What follows is a potential new reality IF Israel achieves total victory, the Iranian regime collapses, and a new pro-western Iranian leader emerges (all very achievable under the current conditions). The geopolitical strategic environment in the Middle East and globally would shift. With this new reality, comes a new set of conditions the Trump administration must consider. The following are those considerations: 1. Israel is fighting a vicious and incredibly radicalized regime. They are after the psychotic leadership, not the people of Iran who have desperately been wanting their freedom...

The United Kingdom has been in managed decline since 2008. The dismal performance of the British economy -- characterized by slow growth, low productivity, and stagnant wages -- has been the subject of much analysis in recent years. The Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) has highlighted that the UK's recovery from the 2008 financial crisis has been the slowest on record, even weaker than the recovery following the Great Depression in the 1930s and the early 1920s slump. The authors have spent part of their careers in Singapore and have written extensively on the city-state’s economic growth since its independence....

A German military assessment exposes major issues with NATO weapons in Ukraine. The PzH 2000 howitzer, while advanced, is so technically fragile that its combat usefulness is in doubt. The Leopard 1A5 tank is used mostly as makeshift artillery due to weak armor. The Leopard 2A6 is too expensive and complex to maintain at the front. Air defense systems also face problems. The IRIS-T works well, but ammo is too costly and scarce. The Patriot system is called “unsuitable for combat” because its MAN carrier vehicles are outdated and lack spare parts. This information was revealed in a transcript of...

Substack is where the health is. It’s doing the thing that’s supposed to happen. Alex Berenson is a critic of the Trump administration’s tariffs, calling them “a massive mistake” that will “never work,” while Jordan Schachtel views the Trump tariff maneuver much more favorably, arguing from the reasonable starting point that Trump “is a dealmaker and a pragmatist, not an ideologue.” Eugyppius points to a positive development, noting that Europe is responding to Trump “with unusual sanity” and a proposal to entirely eliminate some tariffs between the European and American economies. Bad Cattitude unambiguously hates tariffs, and argues that “punching...

The United Nations’ International Maritime Organization (IMO) has quietly embarked upon a bold initiative cloaked in the virtuous garb of climate responsibility. Ostensibly designed to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions from international shipping, this global carbon levy is, in reality, a veiled taxation mechanism poised to significantly burden American consumers and businesses. What may initially appear as prudent environmental stewardship reveals itself, under scrutiny, as a dramatic expansion of global taxation, circumventing American democratic processes and redistributing wealth under UN auspices. The mechanics of the tax are deceptively simple. Under the proposed framework, shipping companies would be required to pay a...

As you read or view media reports on Trump’s Trade Wars, bear in mind these facts. Mexico’s GDP is $1.8 trillion a year. Its exports to the United States are $506 billon a year. Exports to the USA make up 28% of its economy. Exports to Mexico make up less than 2% of our $27.7 trillion GDP. Canada’s GDP is $2.1 trillion. Its exports to the USA are $413 billion a year. Exports to the USA make up 19% of its economy. Exports to Canada are less than 2% of our GDP. Delusional politicians in Canada like Ontario’s Doug Ford...

Texas administered 15,000 more measles vaccinations this year compared to 2024—and now there’s a growing measles outbreak that has surpassed the total number of cases reported across the entire United States last year.The news follows this website’s February report that measles cases in Gaines County, Texas, had jumped 242% following a health district campaign to hand out free measles vaccines.A measles outbreak after higher vaccination rates in Texas calls into question the shot’s claimed effectiveness and underlying design.Timeline & NumbersBetween January 1 and March 16 last year, 158,000 measles vaccines were administered in the state, according to CBS News.During the...

if one aspired to the long term destruction of a society, it would be difficult to improve upon “turning its institutions of learning into calamitous clown colleges whose output lacks basic skills or grounding” and then mandating that all children participate in that system for an enormous portion of their childhood. this is painfully obvious to anyone who cares to spend more than a cursory moment thinking about it and yet somehow we keep doing the same things over and over and expecting some sort of better result. but better is not coming and it’s not going to come until...

I recently had a passionate debate with a German friend about whether Islam lies at the root of the dysfunction in Islamic societies and whether it can be reformed. Like many of my privileged Western liberal friends, his understanding of the Islamic world seems to rest on a brief visit to the Egyptian pyramids and perhaps a guided city tour through Istanbul. He offered the usual well-meaning but tired arguments I've heard countless times. When I asked whether he had read the Quran or the Hadiths, he admitted he hadn't yet insisted that Islam wasn't the problem—it was merely a...

For almost a year I have been emphasizing the fact that the DemoKKKrats have two major internal civil wars, neither of which they could win without massive electoral damage to the party. Civil War #1 was the Pale/Hamas vs. Jewish/Israel civil war. The DemoKKKrats cannot come down too hard on the Hamas Murder Pirates without losing---as they did in Michigan in November---their Muslim support. Trump didn't have to do anything except promise some generic version of peace. He did not overtly side with Israel, even though that is in fact where his support lies. DemoKKKrats unfortunately for us cannot alienate...

A Startling AdmissionThe study was meant to debunk "Russian disinformation" by testing how the Ukrainian public perceives certain claims, including the presence of Nazi ideology in Ukraine. But instead of proving such claims to be "false," the survey found that a significant portion of the Ukrainian population itself believes that Nazism is a real and widespread issue in their country.A recent study conducted by VoxUkraine, with support from the International Renaissance Foundation, sought to analyze the Ukrainian public's ability to identify "Russian propaganda narratives." However, in doing so, the survey inadvertently revealed a striking reality: 33% of Ukrainians in cities...

Sitting on $13 billion, Johns Hopkins University cries poverty. NBC sobs.NBC reported, “Johns Hopkins University to let more than 2,000 workers go after Trump’s USAID cuts.”The story said, “The university, one of the country’s most significant and prestigious scientific research institutions, said in a statement Thursday that it would eliminate 1,975 jobs internationally and 247 in the United States as the result of cuts to the U.S. Agency for International Development. An additional 78 U.S.-based and 29 international employees will be furloughed.” The university said, “This is a difficult day for our entire community. The termination of more than $800...

Russian and Chinese interests don’t align on this particular issue and the dynamics associated with it...Bloomberg reported on Tuesday that “Russia Is Wooing Arctic Gas Buyers With Life After US Sanctions”. They cited unnamed sources to report that Novatek, the company behind the Arctic LNG 2 megaproject, is courting American, European, and even Indian buyers ahead of Trump possibly curtailing or lifting sanctions on their initiative as part of the nascent Russian-US “New Détente”. According to them, a senior executive pitched this as “a way to counter a rising China”, which has a certain logic to it.From those three potential...

Much to the chagrin of the media, Bruce Swartz, “globally renowned for representing the Justice Department in some of its most sensitive foreign dealings,” resigned rather than accept a demotion by President Trump. For 30 years, “careerist” Bruce Swartz quietly worked to advance Democratic interests on one hot button case after another, but if Special Presidential Envoy Ric Grenell has his way, Swartz will be prosecuted for intrigue few even know about. “Bruce Schwartz (sic) undermined Donald Trump and US foreign policy while he worked at DoJ,” Grenell tweeted on March 15. “I told him private information about negotiations (he...

ITEM 1: Max Cohen tweeted with a video, “After returning from Ukraine, Mark Kelly tells reporters he heard from injured soldiers in a hospital that ‘they’ll fight with rocks and sticks if they have to.’ ”Good. Next time send them rocks and sticks and leave our tanks and missiles here.ITEM 2: Sure, Trump’s ending the Ukraine War, but Democrats ask what about the price of eggs?Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins said, “The average cost of a dozen eggs has now gone down $1.85 since we announced our plan about a week-and-a-half ago.”The plan is simple. Stop killing laying hens.ITEM 3: Newsweek...

Most people are unaware that USAID, the U.S. government agency tasked with foreign aid and development, gifted in 2016, $310 million of taxpayer money to start a Palestinian cement factory project. The project was a private venture, by a company called Sanad Construction Resources Company (SANAD), the establishment of multiple cement mills and factories which ultimately helped create Hamas' terror infrastructure in Gaza. Sanad Construction Resources Company (SANAD) is a Palestinian publicly traded company, in PEX (Palestine Stock Exchange), it has profited handsomely from the purchase of cement as foreign aid, particularly from USAID, UNRWA and the UN. Much of...

Illegal migrants have no standing to make loud demands of the American people. Their attitudes should convey incredible gratitude that this country – unique among nations – has shown such compassion over recent decades to people who do not belong here legally. But instead of appreciation, a growing community of illegals, along with their radicalized American citizens allies, stage disorderly and even violent protests around the country. These rioters display a level of entitlement that will surely only drive sensible Americans even further to the political right regarding border security and deportations.

While career bureaucrats prepared orientation packets and welcome memos, DOGE's team was already deep inside the payment systems. No committees. No approvals. No red tape. Just four coders with unprecedented access and algorithms ready to run. That trail led to staggering discoveries. Programs marked as independent revealed coordinated funding streams. Grants labeled as humanitarian aid showed curious detours through complex networks. Black budgets once shrouded in secrecy began to unravel under algorithmic scrutiny.