Just beneath the surface of today's tempest over tariffs are tremendous troubles that are tearing at the fabric of our representative republic, threatening to rip it apart. First, let's face some facts about tariffs. To begin with, they are nothing new. Before 1913, when the 16th Amendment to our Constitution was ratified, which legalized the income tax, tariffs were our country’s chief source of income. Although Trump is being accused of starting a trade war with his reciprocal tariffs, we've been in a losing trade war over tariffs for decades. While other countries have taken unfair advantage of us with their high tariffs and unfair trade practices, both our friends and our foes, we've allowed them to do so by our unfair trade agreements with them and our refusal to tariff their goods as they do ours. All Trump is doing is insisting that our trade partners start treating us as we treat them. However, somehow, his insistence upon them doing so, so that we will no longer be cheated and taken advantage of, is being called a trade war with our tricky trade partners, who are all enriching themselves at our expense.

The above is nothing more than the fundamental facts that are floating on the surface of today's tempest over tariffs. The real explanation for it is found in the evils lying just beneath its surface. Let's start with the evil of greed. While other nations' unfair trade practices and inequitable tariffs on our imported goods have lead to the downward mobility of America's middle-class, by bringing about the deindustrialization of our nation, it has at the same time expeditiously and unimaginably increased the wealth of corporate America, thanks to outsourcing overseas, which has created immense corporate profits over such things as cheap foreign labor. Now, if you think corporate America or Wall Street are willing to give up one wit of their wealth for the welfare of America's middle-class, you are the epitome of a naive ninny. That's why Wall Streeters and CEOs have joined in chorus in their condemnation of Trump's reciprocal tariffs.

The second evil seen beneath the surface of today's tempest over tariffs is similar to the first, but yet in some degree dissimilar to it. It is covetousness or materialism. The American people's insistence upon the immediate gratification of all of their coveted material possessions, regardless of their means, explains why the average American today has a $30,000 credit card debt. The magic of plastic, buying things on credit, in order to cater to one's covetousness, not only explains the credit card debt of the average citizen, but also the astronomical national debt of our country, which now exceeds $36 trillion. Therefore, any short-term pain, over temporary higher prices over Trump's reciprocal tariffs on foreign goods, will not be tolerated by American consumers, who are addicted to the instant gratification of their coveted material possessions, regardless of the long-term benefits Trump's reciprocal tariffs may eventually bring to our country or our children.

The third evil lying beneath the surface of today's tempest over tariffs is political expediency. We should all know by now that our so-called public servants are for the most part self-serving. They are far more interested in doing what is best for their personal political careers than what is best for our country. They are so nearsighted that they can never see beyond the next election; that is, they can't see what is best for our posterity, but only what is best for them at the polls. Republicans, who are as spineless as jellyfish, can, as always, be counted on to run for political cover and prove themselves turncoats to Trump, as well as to MAGA Americans, if their poll numbers begin tanking over Trump's reciprocal tariffs. After all, what matters most to most Republicans is not if Americans lose their jobs, America loses its manufacturing industry, or if our children lose their chance at the American dream, but whether or not they lose their next election.  

The fourth and final evil found beneath the surface of today's tempest over tariffs is, at least to me, the most fearsome. It is globalism. For the globalist utopians of our world to finally accomplish their global socialist Shangri-La they must rid our earth of all nation states, by eliminating all national sovereignty and erasing all national borders. The biggest of all roadblocks in their way is the United States of America, our world's only remaining superpower. As long as we are still standing, globalists are stopped in their tracks, but if they can ever ruin us, by erasing our borders, bankrupting our economy, and getting us to bater our national sovereignty for their New World Order, then, from our ruins, they believe their long dreamed of socialist utopia and paradisiacal planet can at long last arise. For this reason, globalist, like America's Trump-hating, as well as populist-hating and patriot-hating, Democrats, will fight tooth and nail against Trump's reciprocal trade tariffs, lest they assure our country of a prosperous future rather than a precarious and short-lived one. 

While our politicians and our press, along with all of its pundits, skip pebbles across the surface of today's tempest over Trump's tariffs, you should look beneath the surface of it all at the lurking evils lying just underneath it. Formidable foes are fighting against leveling the playing field of our nation's foreign trade deals and practices, in order to maintain the status quo and to assure that we continue to be diminished on the world stage. It remains to be seen if greed, covetousness, political expediency, and globalism will prove to be insurmountable obstacles to a prosperous future for our posterity, but one thing for sure, the odds are overwhelmingly in their favor in today's God-forsaken America and sin-cursed fallen world.