Everybody complains. Everybody hates. Everybody feels uncomfortable, and that’s not good. The measurements taken are drastic, but the leadership hopes that they can turn away a catastrophe with them, and leave the country and maybe the whole world in better shape. They might even become a role model on how to approach this kind of disaster in an interesting new fashion. But the headwinds, oh, the headwinds!
Everyone hates to give up comfort. Can’t we just save the country and the world from our sofas, watching the news and signing online-petitions to kindly ask the world to adhere to the rules we made up? That would be so much easier than to have to chip in ourselves. I mean, it’s great that politicians actually do what they promised and what they’re voted for, at least in theory that’s what we always wanted. But now they really do it. Like, in real life. After so many years of empty promises and pampering, that’s new. That’s a shock. That’s a change, and change is scary.
What if there's a unconventional, but effective approach?
This applies for both the green party in Germany in the last period, as well as Trump. Funny enough, the effects we’re seeing from the tariffs might actually serve the ideas of the Green Party – to reduce the global resource footprint. I just reviewed the Earnings-Call of Hugo Boss, a German fashion label I invested in, and they said that due to the tariffs, they would find ways to re-route their production chains in order to make reduce their global footprint. They didn’t mean CO2 and such, of course, but less globalism will eventually lead to less CO2 reduction. And they’re not the only ones.
When goods are produced in the country itself, and not shipped around the globe several times (we all know the “meme” of pears being grown in Chile, chipped for packing to Vietnam, and then shipped back to South America for consummation), it actually saves a lot of resources. At the moment, all companies are just focused on saving overhead, reducing wages, saving on the human side – because resources are kind of free. Just recently CO2 trade has become a thing, and it’s not really that big yet, as it’s more of a loose agreement. Not many comply. So, what can help with that? Reducing globalism by putting enormous tariffs in place.
What if Trump is using his tariffs not to strengthen the US (results be as they may), but to strengthen the survivability of the our ecosystem?
But it’s not only CO2/CH4/N2O. The amount of other resources spent on transportation to build the infrastructure and vehicles is huge. Imagine how much destruction goes into building a super-tanker, how many mines are dug into forests just for that. Do you know what reduces the demand for super-tankers? Less globalism. And what can bring less globalism? The USA pulling out of oversea production and trying to bring them home – by enormous tariffs.
What if he doesn’t care about the economy, maybe he just wants to save the planet?
The idea of reducing exterior consumption through imports and raise interior consumption is a good one. Natural resources are left out of the equation too often – and if they’re included, it’s not because of the collateral damage that their extraction causes, but because of them being limited.
What if it's all just the desperate attempt to save humanity from itself?
And he saw how the many approaches by all those fancy international organizations didn’t do anything. How the direct approach did not do anything. So he’s gone undercover, made it through the monopolistic capital mafia into presidency, and is now using the cover of being a hardcore national protectionist to protect – us all.
Is this the beginning of the green dictatorship I've been waiting for so long?