By Ray Cardello for April 4, 2025, Season 31 / Post 26

Not much in life comes with no effort or sacrifice. Want to get down to your ideal weight? Diet and exercise are never much fun. Want to go on a luxury vacation? Pull out the plastic and pay for years, or save for years, and hopefully, life hasn’t changed to allow your dream journey. Want to have children? Face it, you will be paying forever. We have been watching Industrial America leave our shores and watched as stores like Dollar General took the places left by JCPenney and Macy’s. We have become a service and high-tech economy with a drastic decrease in industrial/manufacturing. America has adapted to be an importer of much of our needs and a lot of those that we do not. Importing is dangerous, as we learned during COVID when we were short on bare essentials, most notably pharmaceuticals and medical equipment, and had to rely on questionable countries like China. How many people can pick up a package of cold or pain medications labeled “Made in China” without worrying about the ingredients or quality?

For five decades, politicians on both sides, but primarily Democrats and Independents, have called for America to take steps to equalize the “Free Trade,” which was not free or working for America. There is a video of Nancy Pelosi calling for tariffs against China in the 90s. Obama placed tariffs on Chinese auto tires during his term while Bernie Sanders urged Obama and Bush to even the playing field with tariffs against any country over-taxing us with double-digit tariffs or taxes. Even Joe Biden, or whoever was actually President, used tariffs. Now that Donald Trump is taking tariffs to a new level with a wide-scale policy against nearly every country charging us unreasonable tariffs, Democrats are now apoplectic about how Trump’s economic plan is going to cause widespread inflation and layoffs. Where were these people when the government shut down the American economy for a year and a half during COVID-19? Where were these critics when massive spending bills were passed in the spirit of reducing inflation when all they did was increase inflation to the highest levels in 45 years? These bills were mislabeled to mislead the American people. They were not written to halt inflation but to help the Green Energy sector and fund the ridiculous programs now being uncovered by DOGE.

These bills were people making the most noise about the Trump Administration’s policies are the same people who:

1. Pushed the Russian Agent conspiracy about Trump even after it had been debunked.
2. They believed Anthony Fauci and Randi Weingarten shut down our economy and schools for 18 months without any scientific basis.
3. They believed Joe Biden was actually the 46th President
4. They believe it was in the name of Democracy to steal the nomination from Biden for Kamala Harris
5. They believe that countries need no borders and that letting 15M unvetted people in is ok for National Security.

None of these issues were factual but were actions to defend at the time. These people have no credibility and are noisemakers and not legislators. The Democrats claim to be for the workers, yet they are stomping on the future of American workers by being on the wrong side of yet another popular promise made and kept. Countries are clamoring to drop their tariffs. Vietnam, Israel, Canada, Mexico, and India have already said you win. They have dropped their tariffs. This will be another win for Trump and, more importantly, America.