Trump’s tariffs haven’t sparked predicted trade war



For months, Americans were warned by the media about a global economic trade war that would begin in the wake of President Trump’s tariffs — but it hasn’t happened.

“All the fearmongering was totally wrong,” the Heartland Institute’s Justin T. Haskins tells BlazeTV host Liz Wheeler on “The Liz Wheeler Show.” “It was just totally and completely wrong.”

“As of right now, the data that we have clearly shows that the tariffs that have gone into effect have not dramatically increased prices for consumers. We obviously are not in the midst of an economic catastrophe or something like that,” he continues.

Haskins also points out that “revenues are up” and “tax revenues are up.”


“That’s a good thing because we have a gigantic deficit problem in this country and a gigantic government debt problem long-term, and this could be a potential solution to that,” he explains, though he notes that the mainstream media is not reporting any of the good.

“If you just were to Google this story and look around the internet, you’ll see people say that the tariffs are causing lots of inflation. You’ll see it in headlines all over the place, and I just want to give real data from the government that proves that that’s not the case,” Haskins says.

Haskins points to the CPI inflation rate, which is the standard used for measuring inflation.

“In July, the 12-month inflation rate from July 2024-2025, 2.7%, is basically the same as in June. That’s less than what it was in December and in January before Trump was even president. So at that point it was around 3%,” Haskins explains.

“So the inflation has actually gone down over the past eight months, if you’re just comparing it in that way. If you start looking at individual numbers, parts of the economy prices, CPI prices in specific parts of the economy where you would expect to see tariffs causing inflation, if tariffs do cause inflation, you’re not seeing it,” he says.

One example Haskins uses is with clothing, of which, he explains 97% is not made in the United States.

“We are seeing prices actually go down … so if tariffs are causing inflation, then you would think that would be one area where you’d expect to see prices soaring, and we’re not seeing that.”

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Oregon considers transportation tax hike on EVs to save government jobs



In an effort to prevent mass layoffs at the Oregon Department of Transportation, Oregon Governor Tina Kotek (D) is proposing a new, mandatory tax program for electric vehicles. While Republicans say the governor's proposal would be unnecessary if the state managed its money well, the tax proposal is set to be considered today in a special session announced last month.

Oregon is attempting to fill a $354 million budget gap for transportation infrastructure construction and repairs, possibly resulting from vehicles becoming more fuel-efficient.

'We invite Democrats to join us in funding essential services without raising taxes, to stand with Oregonians who cannot afford to shoulder more costs.'

“This could still be prevented today, without a special session, if Democrats made the decision to use existing revenue from the emergency board. We can still protect these jobs without raising taxes — and we should,” Oregon House Republican Leader Christine Drazan said last month. "We invite Democrats to join us in funding essential services without raising taxes, to stand with Oregonians who cannot afford to shoulder more costs.”

RELATED: Out of juice: Only 5% of US car buyers want an electric vehicle

Christine Drazan, former Oregon gubernatorial candidate and current House Republican Leader.Photo by Mathieu Lewis-Rolland/Getty Images

The proposal, according to the AP, includes an EV road-usage charge that is equivalent to 5% of the state’s gas tax. It also includes raising the gas tax by six cents to 46 cents per gallon, among other fee increases.

EV drivers would be required to enroll in a pay-per-mile system based on road usage. They could either pay 2.3 cents per mile or a flat $340 annual fee, with a break-even point just under 14,800 miles per year.

ODOT policy adviser Scott Boardman said drivers would have several options for the government to track their mileage, including a smartphone app and the vehicle's telematics technology.

Oregon's existing system, OReGO, which was launched on July 1, 2015, is currently a voluntary program. Kotek's proposal would mark a departure from this system by making it mandatory. Skeptics warn that this may discourage car buyers from considering buying electric vehicles in the future, with the program set to take effect starting in 2027 and extending to hybrids in 2028.

If it passes, Oregon will join Hawaii as the only states to begin a mandatory pay-per-mile program for electric vehicles. Oregon lawmakers will debate and vote on the bill, which requires a supermajority in both the House and Senate to pass.

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Time to pump the brakes on Big Tech’s AI boondoggle



America already learned a lesson from the Green New Deal: If an industry survives only on special favors, it isn’t ready to stand on its own.

Yet the same game is playing out again — this time for artificial intelligence. The wealthiest companies in history now demand tax breaks, zoning carve-outs, and energy favors on a scale far greater than green energy firms ever did.

Instead of slamming on the accelerator, Washington should be hitting the brakes.

If AI is truly the juggernaut its backers claim, it should thrive on its merits. Technology designed to enhance human life shouldn’t need human subsidies to survive — or to enrich its corporate patrons.

An unnatural investment

Big Tech boosters insist that we stand on the brink of artificial general intelligence, a force that could outthink and even replace humans. No one denies AI’s influence or its future promise, but does that justify the avalanche of artificial investment now driving half of all U.S. economic growth?

The Trump administration continues to hand out favors to Big Tech to fuel a bubble that may never deliver. As the Wall Street Journal’s Greg Ip pointed out earlier this month, the largest companies once dominated because their profits came from low-cost, intangible assets such as software, platforms, and network effects. Users flocked to Facebook, Google, the iPhone, and Windows, and revenue followed — with little up-front infrastructure risk.

The AI model looks nothing like that. Instead of software that scales cheaply, Big Tech is sinking hundreds of billions into land, hardware, power, and water. These hyperscale data centers devour resources with little clarity about demand.

According to Ip’s data: Between 2016 and 2023, the free cash flow and net earnings of Alphabet, Amazon, Meta, and Microsoft rose in tandem. Since 2023, however, net income is up 73% while free cash flow has dropped 30%.

“For all of AI’s obvious economic potential, the financial return remains a question mark,” Ip wrote. “OpenAI and Anthropic, the two leading stand-alone developers of large language models, though growing fast, are losing money.”

Andy Lawrence of the Uptime Institute explained the risk: “To suddenly start building data centers so much denser in power use, with chips 10 times more expensive, for unproven demand — all that is an extraordinary challenge and a gamble.”

The cracks are already beginning to show. GPT-5 has been a bust for the most part. Meta froze hiring in its AI division, with Mark Zuckerberg admitting that “improvement is slow for now.” Even TechCrunch conceded: Throwing more data and computing power at large language models won’t create a “digital god.”

Government on overdrive

Yet government keeps stepping on the gas, even as the industry stalls. The “Mag 7” companies spent $560 billion on AI-related capital expenditures in the past 18 months, while generating only $35 billion in revenue. IT consultancy Gartner projects $475 billion will be spent on data centers this year alone — a 42% jump from 2024. Those numbers make no sense without government intervention.

Consider the favors.

Rezoning laws. Data centers require sprawling land footprints. To make that possible, states and counties are bending rules never waived for power plants, roads, or bridges. Northern Virginia alone now hosts or plans more than 85 million square feet of data centers — equal to nearly 1,500 football fields. West Virginia and Mississippi have even passed laws banning local restrictions outright. Trump’s AI action plan ties federal block grants to removing zoning limits. Nothing about that is natural, balanced, fair, or free-market.

Tax exemptions. Nearly every state competing for data centers — including Virginia, Tennessee, Texas, Arizona, Georgia, Indiana, Illinois, North Carolina, Oklahoma, and Nebraska — offers sweeping tax breaks. Alabama exempts data centers from sales, property, and income taxes for up to 30 years — for as few as 20 jobs. Oregon and Indiana also give property tax exemptions.

RELATED: Big Tech colonization is real — zoning laws are the last line of defense

Photo by the Washington Post via Getty Images

Regulatory carve-outs. Trump’s executive order calls for easing rules under the National Environmental Policy Act, Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, and other environmental statutes. Conservatives rightly want fewer burdens across the board — but why should Big Tech’s server farms get faster relief than the power plants needed to supply them?

Federal land giveaways. The AI action plan also makes federal land available for private data centers, handing prime real estate to trillion-dollar corporations at taxpayer expense. No other industry gets this benefit.

Stop the scam

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) put it bluntly: “It’s one thing to use technology to enhance the human experience, but it’s another to have technology supplant the human experience.” Right now, AI resembles wind and solar in their early years — a speculative bubble kept alive only through taxpayer largesse.

If AI is truly the innovation its backers claim, it will thrive without zoning exemptions, tax shelters, and federal handouts. If it cannot survive without special favors, then it isn’t ready. Instead of slamming on the accelerator, Washington should be hitting the brakes.

Bed Bath & Beyond Joins Countless Other Companies Ditching Bad-For-Business California

Despite these troubling economic conditions and many businesses leaving, it seems unlikely that Gov. Newsom and the Democrat majority in the legislature will change their ineffective policies.

The God-given idea that helped make America great — and can save us again



Well before America’s founders drafted the Constitution, they understood that they had a national security problem rooted in economic and technological gaps.

Colonial America supplied Britain with raw materials, and the motherland traded us finished goods. That was tolerable then, despite its one-sided nature.

The intellectual property framework the founders designed democratized invention and creativity — and rewarded merit.

Then, Great Britain crossed the Rubicon. It unilaterally levied taxes on the colonies with the Sugar Act, which colonial resistance caused to be repealed. The Stamp Act of 1765 also imposed taxes without colonial consent. Then the taxes and regulations of the Townshend Acts further stirred colonial anger.

Revolutionary sentiments brewed, with public protests resulting in the Boston Massacre of 1770 and the “tea parties” in 1773 and 1774. Finally, combat broke out at Lexington and Concord in 1775.

Britain had the economic and military advantage over the largely agricultural colonies, which suffered chronic shortages of guns, gunpowder, blankets, and shoes.

Flourish by design

For America to survive as an independent nation, the model had to change. It needed to promote rapid economic and technological advancement. It needed a policy that coupled economic liberty with property rights.

The founders set a course for achieving what Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution calls “the progress of science and useful arts.” This was done “by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries.”

The intellectual property framework the founders designed democratized invention and creativity — and rewarded merit. The Constitution was crafted to secure and enable an individual’s rights, including patent rights to the property someone created.

The founders understood that the ownership right would help unleash human flourishing. They had learned this from the Bible, the legacy of the Reformation, and great minds such as Edward Coke, William Blackstone, and John Locke.

Biblical basis

Property rights incentivized creative endeavors, which is precisely what the framers sought to do.

The biblical framework for invention and creativity flows from foundational truths. He who created the universe (e.g., Genesis 1:1, Job 38, Psalm 8:1-5) also claims ownership of His creation (e.g., Deuteronomy 10:14, Psalm 24:1, Isaiah 64:8).

RELATED: The American principle: There can be no blessings without God in our lives

joebelanger/iStock/Getty Images Plus

Moreover, God not only creates and owns, but He communicates those attributes to human beings, the creature who bears His image and is charged with stewardship of the lower creation (e.g., Genesis 1:26-30, Psalm 8:6-8, Micah 4:4). The founders applied this combination of creativity and ownership as the formula for maximizing human flourishing.

This resulted in America growing from a vulnerable agrarian society to the world’s premier industrial economy. By the 20th century, the United States led the world in economic and technological strength.

Our golden age

The golden age of American patenting started in 1836, when Congress established a dedicated U.S. Patent Office.

When someone produced a novel invention, he was awarded a patent. Applicants could appeal patent denials to impartial chief examiners — and they could obtain review in a federal court. A patent had a 14-year term from the date it was issued. Economic historian Zorina Khan notes in "The Democratization of Invention" that a seven-year extension could be provided to ensure “reasonable remuneration for the time, ingenuity, and expense bestowed” in developing and bringing an invention to market.

This system embodied the founders’ vision, implementing the biblical model of human creativity incentivized by secure ownership. This creativity-ownership combination has clearly stimulated mass flourishing in America, where we have experienced wealth creation and prosperity in vast measure.

Today, we approach the 250th anniversary of our independence, knowing what the founders did not: The American experiment turned out quite well.

Yet keen observers are less sanguine about our future.

Creative comeback

In recent years, the federal government has undermined the successful intellectual property model the founders gave us.

For example, a cardinal rule of the patent process was maintaining the confidentiality of inventions for which a patent was sought but not yet granted. But then the Clinton administration and Congress began publishing U.S. patents that were still being examined. Cutting-edge American technology was being transferred to Japan and China before an inventor’s exclusive legal rights had been secured at home.

RELATED: China’s greatest export isn’t steel — it’s industrial theft

MF3d/Getty Images Plus

The 2011 America Invents Act wiped out several useful elements of the Patent Act. It established the quasi-judicial Patent Trial and Appeal Board, before which anyone can challenge and more easily invalidate issued patents. Today, the PTAB destroys value and wealth in newly created property, the very inventions that promise American leadership in the most cutting-edge technologies.

The United States is now falling behind in global technological leadership — but we must out-innovate foreign competitors, particularly China.

America must relink ownership with creativity to incentivize creativity through reliable, enforceable property rights. Secure IP rights coupled with economic freedom are pro-growth policy, just as much as the right tax policies.

To re-establish America’s technological and economic prowess, we must return to God’s design — that which the founders adopted with world-changing success.

How a Little-Known Federal Agency's Decision To Ignore a Republican Commissioner Cost Taxpayers Millions

When an under-the-radar federal agency that regulates derivatives, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), launched an investigation into a U.S.-Canadian firm, its Republican commissioner, Caroline Pham, sounded the alarm. The investigation, she told the agency's attorneys during an August 2023 meeting, was sloppy, full of "shortcuts," and would ultimately result in a loss.

The post How a Little-Known Federal Agency's Decision To Ignore a Republican Commissioner Cost Taxpayers Millions appeared first on .

Dr. Oz exposes the nonprofit lie at the heart of US health care



American health care is a paradox. We spend more than any nation in history — nearly 20% of our GDP — yet our outcomes remain stubbornly mediocre.

New hospitals rise like monuments to excess. Their parking lots fill with luxury cars. Tax dollars pour in from every level of government. Private spending remains sky-high. But while the profits flow, patient satisfaction and results don’t keep pace.

At a bare minimum, nonprofit hospitals should be required to deliver real value — quality care, satisfied patients, and meaningful charity work.

That’s because the system doesn’t reward quality. It rewards short-term financial performance.

Health care costs keep rising faster than inflation. Voters resist higher taxes, so deficits explode. The federal government now routinely runs annual shortfalls exceeding 6% of GDP — even during boom times. Something’s got to give.

Enter Dr. Mehmet Oz. Once a fixture on daytime TV, now head of Medicare and Medicaid Services under President Trump, Oz has zeroed in on the real source of bloat: hospital executives enriching themselves under the guise of nonprofit care.

Oz recently urged Americans to review tax filings and publicly “shame” hospital administrators pulling down massive salaries. He’s right to sound the alarm.

Most hospitals claim nonprofit status — but their leadership rakes in pay packages in the tens of millions, complete with bonuses, stock perks, and golden parachutes. Those compensation schemes only make sense because the IRS grants nonprofits huge tax breaks. And the standards for maintaining that status? Laughably weak.

As a result, the federal government forfeits tens of billions of dollars annually — revenue that could support real health care reform or reduce the deficit.

Consider Nazareth Hospital in Philadelphia. It belongs to Trinity Health Mid-Atlantic, a large nonprofit chain. Trinity’s CEO earns over $1.4 million a year. Yet, Nazareth carries a dismal one-star Medicare rating, charges high prices, and provides very little charity care. Despite funneling more than $160 million annually through its doors, it contributes almost nothing in taxes — while local, state, and federal governments foot the bill for many of its patients.

It’s a rigged system: Taxpayers pay, executives profit, and patients suffer.

RELATED: Medicaid for millions, misery for the middle class

Photo by Andrew Harnik/Getty Images

Dr. Oz is asking the right questions. Where does the money go? Who benefits most? Are we getting anything close to our money’s worth?

At a bare minimum, nonprofit hospitals should be required to deliver real value — quality care, satisfied patients, and meaningful charity work. When they fail, they should lose the privileges that come with tax-exempt status.

Congress must act. Update the laws. Close the loopholes. Scrutinize executive pay. Tie compensation to performance. And most importantly, re-center the system on patients — not the almighty dollar.

Thanks goes to Dr. Oz for breaking the silence. The American people deserve transparency, accountability, and a health care system that serves them — not the bureaucrats and fat cats feeding off the public trough.

Administration Finds Millions of Individuals Double Enrolled in Taxpayer-Funded Coverage

The existence of duplicate payments demonstrates the left’s desire to make all Americans dependent upon government.

The budget hoax that nearly sank Trump’s biggest win (so far)



Conservatives are celebrating a once-in-a-generation legislative triumph with the passage of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, signed into law on July 4 by President Trump. But the victory almost didn’t happen — thanks to what can only be described as the “budget hawk hoax,” a long-standing tactic used by phony conservatives to block meaningful reforms from becoming law.

The heart of this hoax is that the overriding problem facing America is “the deficit crisis” — and that nothing else on the conservative agenda can ever be moved forward until we deal with it.

Too many conservatives have fallen for the 'budget hawk hoax' for far too long.

But when the conversation turns to cutting wasteful spending, these same so-called budget hawks introduce a poison pill: the notion that the only serious way to reduce the deficit is by gutting Social Security and Medicare — before touching any other government waste.

They know this is a nonstarter — and we all know it’s a nonstarter — because there is no way voters will ever allow Nana’s Social Security to be cut while we’re still using taxpayer money to fund LGBTQ+ programs in Nepal and Botswana.

The impossible dream?

Even worse, the faux-conservative “budget hawks” have generally dismissed any efforts to cut other wasteful government spending, insisting that it would have been a mere insignificant drop in the bucket. Yet when President Trump tried to secure $5 billion in funding for the border wall in his first term, budget hawks protested that we couldn’t afford it.

When the Trump administration began dismantling corrupt NGOs under USAID, legacy “conservative” media scoffed at the effort because it didn’t yield massive dollar savings. Yet if we don’t eliminate such foundational waste first, long-term entitlement reform has no credible path forward.

The truth is, of course, that Conservatism Inc. was just desperately trying to protect the corrupt status quo, keep left-wing spending in place, and deny any spending that advances the conservative agenda.

The same old playbook was rolled out again with the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. Critics labeled it “budget-busting,” but that claim was misleading. The bill didn’t increase spending. In fact, it prevented a scheduled tax hike that would have rolled back Trump-era tax cuts and restored pre-2017 rates.

RELATED: The reality behind this week’s One Big Beautiful Bill spectacle

BackyardProduction via iStock/Getty Images

To be fair to the bill’s critics, the history of omnibus bills is fraught with corruption. Typically, omnibus bills have been legislative horse trades: Republicans secure pork for their districts, and Democrats secure massive expansions of the welfare state. But the One Big Beautiful Bill Act is different. It actually slashes major government spending in ways that align with long-standing conservative demands.

For instance, the $7,500 federal incentive for electric vehicle purchases is set to expire almost immediately. Under the old playbook, such a subsidy would have increased in exchange for some infrastructure funding in a red district. Not this time.

By trying to defeat the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, “budget hawks” were actually striving to protect and perpetuate the following left-wing agenda items, all in the name of “fiscal conservatism”:

  • A massive tax increase, restoring Obama-level tax rates.
  • Allowing able-bodied Medicaid recipients to continue taking welfare without being required to work.
  • Maintaining all the federal EV rebates and green energy incentives, which are designed to deny Americans the right to affordable energy and reliable transportation.
  • Blocking border security by denying funding for the border wall, additional detention centers, and additional Border Patrol staffing.

It’s even more obscene when you consider the enormous cost to taxpayers of providing social services for illegal aliens — services the “budget hawks” are trying to save — while also perpetuating open borders because “we can’t afford” measures to seal the border.

Too many conservatives have fallen for the “budget hawk hoax” for far too long, accepting that we cannot have any conservative victories so long as we have a national debt. Perhaps that day has finally ended.

Yes, our country’s fiscal crisis is real, and it will persist. But forsaking any victories over the left because of the deficit is not a matter of high principle. It’s simply surrender.

The “budget hawks” will never be able to fix the deficit. They don’t want to. But given the chance, they would continue to use the issue to prevent real conservatives from ever passing useful legislation.

The hoax failed

They lost this round — and thank heaven for that!

The One Big Beautiful Bill Act stops income tax hikes in their tracks. It strips funding from Planned Parenthood, rogue judges notwithstanding. It shuts down the EV grift. It tightens border security and reins in Medicaid fraud.

This is what winning looks like — and the self-styled “budget hawks” hate it. Why? Because it derails the left’s agenda and puts the public back in charge.

Credit goes to President Trump and Speaker Johnson for delivering this landmark victory. And to Stephen Miller — relentless as ever — for making sure the truth broke through.

‘The Suicide Squad’: How Democrats keep blowing themselves up



Donald Trump, now in his second term, has executed a political masterstroke — cornering Democrats into the unpopular side of nearly every 80/20 issue. From transgender athletes in women’s sports and the DOGE to the airstrike on Iran’s nuclear sites, he’s boxed them in. But Trump isn’t the Democrats’ biggest threat. Their worst enemy is themselves — and the radical candidates they continue to put forward.

The truth is that the left has always flirted with the absurd. Leftists rant that the rich must “pay their fair share,” but can’t define what “fair” means. They champion equity over equality and preach that government handouts — not markets — will lift the poor and working class. This worldview teeters between naivete and madness.

The Democratic Party isn’t just drifting — it’s accelerating toward the cliff. And no one pushed the Democrats. They drove themselves.

Then came 2018, when “the Squad” stormed Congress and dragged the party from the edge of absurdity into full-blown lunacy.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez — raised in a comfortable New York suburb — rebranded herself as “Alex from the block” in the Bronx. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota dismissed 9/11 as “some people did something” and still won a seat in Congress. Rashida Tlaib of Michigan was censured — by both parties — for chanting “from the river to the sea” after Hamas massacred Jews on Oct. 7, 2023. In 2020, Jamaal Bowman of New York joined their ranks and was later caught on video pulling a Capitol fire alarm to delay a budget vote. His excuse? He thought it would “unlock a door.”

Some Squad members have lost re-election bids, but the core group marches on, peddling the Green New Deal, defunding police, and attending Fighting Oligarchy rallies via private jet.

Meanwhile, Soros-backed prosecutors decriminalize shoplifting, eliminate cash bail, and release repeat offenders. These are not policy missteps — they are self-inflicted wounds. And Republicans couldn’t ask for better material.

Enter Zohran Mamdani — the 33-year-old Democratic Socialist running for New York City mayor. His platform makes Bernie Sanders look centrist.

Mamdani wants to defund police, make New York a sanctuary city, and jack up the minimum wage to $30 an hour. He calls for rent freezes, free buses, and city-run grocery stores — as if the Soviet model didn’t already prove that government-run markets lead to scarcity and dysfunction.

RELATED: Vance on Mamdani: ‘Who the hell does he think that he is?’

Photo by Kenny Holston/The New York Times/Bloomberg via Getty Images

Even more alarming is his plan to “shift the tax burden” from homeowners in the outer boroughs to “richer and whiter neighborhoods.” That’s not policy — that’s race-based redistribution.

And his foreign policy? Mamdani wants to “globalize the intifada.” That’s a genocidal rallying cry, and New York’s Jewish community should treat it like the five-alarm fire it is.

So can the Democrats still correct course? Can the party of JFK and FDR find its footing again?

One glimmer of sanity remains: Sen. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania. Despite his hoodie-and-shorts aesthetic, to say nothing of the stroke that nearly killed him in 2022, he has emerged as a lonely voice of reason. He has called out the party’s excesses. But will anyone listen? Or will the Democrats toss him aside for failing the purity test?

The Democratic Party isn’t just drifting — it’s accelerating toward the cliff. And no one pushed the Democrats. They drove themselves.