Trump’s UK tariff deal exposes the global free trade lie



President Trump on Thursday announced a new tariff deal with the United Kingdom — the first major agreement to follow the “Liberation Day” tariffs that forced 90 countries to come crawling back to the negotiating table.

Earlier in the week, India offered a zero-for-zero tariff deal — free trade on pharmaceuticals, steel, and auto parts. Trump declined.

America doesn’t just need tariffs to protect jobs and industries. It needs them to defend its sovereignty.

Predictably, the free-trade faithful slammed the U.S.-U.K. deal as “managed trade” that would harm consumers. They rushed to embrace India’s offer instead. They’ve got it backward.

Trump’s “managed trade” with the U.K. will do more to strengthen America’s economy — and serve American workers — than any so-called “free trade” agreement with India. Why? Because developed and developing nations operate in fundamentally different economic worlds. One-size-fits-all trade policy doesn’t work.

Free trade is a myth

This may offend professional economists who worship the rational-consumer model, but it must be said: Different countries are different. These aren’t surface-level quirks. They reshape the entire trade equation and make real free trade — not just difficult — but impossible.

Start with wages. In 2024, the median American worker earned $61,984. The median Briton earned $47,162 — both figures in U.S. dollars for easy comparison. The U.K. lags behind but not by much. If the U.K. were a U.S. state, it would rank somewhere in the middle. Free trade with the U.K. won’t trigger mass offshoring because our labor markets are comparable.

India is a different story. The median Indian worker earned just $3,925 last year. For the price of one American, a company could hire 16 Indians. That wage gap makes offshoring to India almost inevitable in labor-intensive industries. Cheap labor wins.

But wages aren’t the only issue. Legal systems, tax regimes, geography, infrastructure, language, climate, cultural norms, business ethics, and demographics all create market asymmetries that domestic policy can’t overcome.

Take China. American companies operating there face rampant intellectual property theft. Westerners assume legal systems deter crimes like fraud and theft. In reality, cultural norms prevent most bad behavior long before the courts get involved.

China doesn’t share America’s cultural regard for property rights — especially when it comes to outsiders. Since 2001, China has stolen an estimated $5 trillion in American intellectual property. Chinese courts have refused to hold anyone accountable. This isn’t an exception. It’s standard practice.

Doing business in China isn’t like doing business in America, Canada, Australia, or Europe — where common values and legal recourse create a relatively level playing field.

Free-trade advocates can slash tariffs and harmonize regulations all they want, but they can’t fix these deeper, structural imbalances. They can’t rewrite culture or eliminate corruption. These asymmetries make truly free trade impossible.

Spot the differences

In my book “Reshore: How Tariffs Will Bring Our Jobs Home and Revive the American Dream,” I argue that American workers are among the most productive in the world — more productive than their counterparts in Germany, Mexico, or almost anywhere else.

That’s why the U.S. typically runs trade surpluses — or small deficits — with developed countries like the Netherlands, Australia, and the U.K.

So why do highly productive American factories shut down and relocate to China, Mexico, or India — where it takes more labor to produce the same output?

Because productivity doesn’t equal price.

The price of a good reflects more than just labor. If a Chinese manufacturer steals its technology instead of inventing it, it can undercut American competitors who spent years funding research and development.

That’s not a free market. It’s rigged.

Tariffs defend more than jobs

Global free trade is a myth. Nations can’t trade freely while market asymmetries persist. The only way to achieve true parity would be to unify the world’s economies, legal systems, cultures, and political structures. That’s the goal of the European Union, World Trade Organization, and World Economic Forum. Coincidence? Hardly.

America doesn’t just need tariffs to protect jobs and industries. It needs them to defend its sovereignty. Globalism doesn’t level the playing field — it sells it to the lowest bidder.

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China's hundred-year marathon slows to a crawl amid economic woes and record-low birth rate



China's aspirations of seeing its hundred-year marathon through to displacing the U.S. and becoming global hegemon by 2049 are growing increasingly fantastical. The economic and social problems the Asian nation faced in the immediate aftermath of the pandemic have not gone away. Rather, things have continued to deteriorate.

Fallout of the one-child policy

China faces a worsening demographic crisis, due in part to the Chinese Communist Party's one-child policy as well as to other correlated factors such as a decrease in the number of women of childbearing age, higher suicide rates in women than in men, sex-selective abortion, and declining fertility.

The birth rate was over 20 births per 1,000 people in 1990, one decade after the implementation of the one-child policy. Over the next 25 years, the country saw a precipitous decline in the birth rate, which a two-child policy in 2016 was unable to arrest. The rate hit a record low of 7.5 births per 1,000 people in 2021.

Data released by China's National Bureau of Statistics Wednesday indicated the birth rate reached a new low in 2023 of 6.39 per 1,000 people, reported the BBC.

The country's annual population has in turn fallen for a second consecutive year, this time by an estimated 2.08 million people.

"It's not a surprise. They've got one of the lowest fertility rates in the world so this is just what happens - the population stops growing and starts to decline," Stuart Gietel-Basten, a population policy expert at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, told the BBC.

The country's fertility rate in 1950, the year after communists formally took power, was 5.29. The rate dropped to a record low of 1.16 in 2022. Blaze News previously noted that the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development regards 2.1 as the standard for a stable population.

Demographic stability has been further undermined by a sex-ratio imbalance. As of 2021, there were over 34.9 million more men than women in the country, reported Newsweek.

"It's kind of locked in now… this is just the next year in this new era of population stagnation or decline for China," added Gietel-Basten.

The demographic problem has been compounded by economic stress as many of those in China who want and can physically have children reportedly cannot afford to do so.

Economic woes

Data released this week revealed the Chinese economy had allegedly grown at one of the slowest rates in over 30 years. Reuters reported that China's GDP allegedly grew by 5.2% in the fourth quarter of 2023, disappointing many investors and analysts.

"Although the government met its 2023 GDP growth target of 'around 5.0%', achieving the same pace of expansion in 2024 will prove a lot more challenging," said Julian Evans-Pritchard, head of China Economics at Capital Economics.

The China Beige Book International's latest survey suggested, "Any true acceleration (this year) will require either a major global upside surprise or more active government policy."

Craig Singleton, senior China fellow at the non-partisan Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told Newsweek that the regime's latest claims about the country's GDP growth "are just not credible."

"Focusing on China's false GDP figures risks missing the forest for the tree," said Singleton. "The days of China's sky-high growth are over."

"There is no getting around the fact that China is in damage control mode, attempting to project a sense of stability to the international community while grappling with myriad domestic challenges. If ever the cliché 'investor beware' applied, it's now," added Singleton.

The country is struggling with high debt, a stock market in free fall, and a real estate crisis that continues to ravage the sector.

Reuters indicated that amid China's disputed recovery and in the face of concerns about renewed lockdowns, the jobless rate nationwide increased to 5.1% last month and unemployment among Chinese youths ages 16 to 24 also remains high.

The youth unemployment rate skyrocketed to 21.3% in June 2023, prompting the regime to suspend the release of monthly data. The rate allegedly sank to 14.1% in December, but is still high enough to create trouble for the regime, which has promised progressive increases in living standards in exchange for acceptance of its authoritarian rule.

In addition to a potentially restive, largely male youth population, China has to contend with its massive elderly population. The BBC indicated that the retiree population, placing increasing pressure on the health care and pension systems, is projected to increase by 60% to 400 million over the next 10 years.

The Guardian noted that 14% of China's population is over the age of 65 and is on track to have more geriatrics than the entire population of the United States.

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Museum removes female powerlifter from exhibit for criticizing middling males' participation in women's sports



Female competitive powerlifter April Hutchinson was briefly featured in a Canadian museum exhibit entitled, "Resilient London: Meet Your Neighbours." The point of the exhibit was to detail how various locals had surmounted obstacles and found joy in achievement.

Hutchinson was a natural choice for the exhibit. After all, she successfully overcame addiction, excelled as a female powerlifter, and refused to back down despite an onslaught of attacks from radical activists.

However, upon realizing that Hutchinson was critical of the invasion of women's sports by middling male athletes, Museum London in London, Ontario, wrote the female athlete out of its history.

Although upset by the removal of her feature and the museum's accompanying denunciation, Hutchinson told Reduxx she is not backing down in the fight over the integrity of her sport.

"I will not lie to myself," said Hutchinson. "I will not play charades and I will not give in to delusional thinking."

What's the background?

Blaze News previously reported that Hutchinson has been critical of transvestites leveraging their biological advantages to take trophies and award money away from real women.

One of the more egregious cases that prompted Hutchinson to speak out involved male competitor Anne Andres, whodestroyed all of his female competitors at the Canadian Powerlifting Union's 2023 Western Canadian Championship with a combined score of 1,317 pounds — 450 pounds more than the female runner-up.

Andres, who has only been identifying as a female powerlifter since 2020, has placed first in eight out of the 10 competitions he has participated in since January 2020.

Hutchinson called Andres' denigration of women and participation in women's powerlifting "disheartening." She noted in a Daily Mail op-ed that her "boyfriend could basically walk in tomorrow, identify as female, compete, and then the next day, go back to being a man again. No proof, no ID required, just basically going on how you feel that day or whatever gender you want to it."

Hutchinson figured her union might "com[e] to its senses"; however, the Canadian Powerlifting Union, acting on a complaint from Andres, recently dashed those hopes, seeking instead to shut her up.

In early October, Hutchinson appeared on "Piers Morgan Uncensored," telling the titular host the Canadian Powerlifting Union was threatening her with suspension for pointing out a transvestite was indeed a man.

— (@)

Weeks later, Hutchinson indicated on X that she received notice from the CPU indicating she faces a two-year ban for speaking out against "the unfairness of biological males being allowed to taunt female competitors & loot their winnings."

"Apparently, I have failed in my gender-role duties as 'supporting actress' in the horror show that is my sport right now," wrote Hutchinson. "Naturally, the CPU deemed MY written (private) complaint of the male bullying to be 'frivolous and vexatious.'"

Hutchinson has indicated she's appealing the suspension.

First canceled, then erased

Days after learning she was facing a multiyear ban from the CPU, Hutchinson received a letter from the executive director of the London Museum, Julie Bevan, indicating her feature was being removed from the months-long exhibit, reported Reduxx.

— (@)

The Nov. 10 letter, signed by the museum's executives, reportedly indicated the removal was prompted by Hutchinson's media appearances — where she spoke against transvestites competing in women's sports. Bevan's letter further accused Hutchinson of "denying" the existence of "transgender women" and issuing comments harmful to the "2SLGBTQI community."

The letter reportedly insinuated that Hutchinson had violated the Ontario Human Rights code, noting, "Misgendering someone intentionally is a form of discrimination."

Hutchinson told Canadian state media, "I'm highly disappointed and very hurt. My exhibit was me telling the whole world my personal struggle with alcoholism and how I beat that and I became a Team Canada powerlifter. … It had nothing to do at all with transgenders."

"The museum is basically telling women they don't care about us. Our safety or our sports. It's absolutely wrong," Hutchinson explained to Reduxx. "I am standing for truth and saying the things that 99% of society thinks. I will not lie to myself. I will not play charades and I will not give in to delusional thinking."

Stevie Bees, a female transvestite featured in the exhibit, celebrated the museum's decision on Meta, writing, "I am EXTREMELY proud to be on that wall and I also want everyone to know that Trans Women ARE Women! April Hutchinson SHOULD be deplatformed for spouting garbage like this."

Museum London's head of marketing, Linda O'Connor, told Canadian state media, "We have no further comment on this. We take seriously our responsibility to uphold our values, promote inclusion and ensure dignity for our team, our contributors, and our audiences."

The leftist efforts to cancel Hutchinson do not appear to have shaken her resolve.

"Women need and deserve their own sports. The female category has always been protected," she said. "Women are fighting back and we will send a strong message: Bodies play sports, not identities."

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