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This week, President Donald Trump entered a new era of American renewal, a transition day, by imposing a comprehensive customs suite on foreign imports. This is not just a policy change. It is a historic pivot, a national recommendation for American workers, American communities and the future of America. It is the end of one failed economic consensus, another economic consensus and revitalization, based on strength, security and broad prosperity.
Liberation Day is about investment, not financial derivatives or foreign production chains, in our own people. It is to end a 40-year experiment in free trade globalism that has broken through the heart of American industry in exchange for short-term consumption and long-term declines. And that's going back to the vision our founders and our great president has: America that makes things.
For decades, Wall Street globalists and coastal elites have said “free trade” is an unquestionable benefit. But in reality, the US has become the importer of last resorts. It is a garbage dump for overproduction around the world. China, Vietnam and the EU – these are surplus countries whose strategy is to overproduce, inadequate and rely on US demand to promote US growth. And they often wash and skirt the items through countries such as Mexico and Canada.
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This is not a “trade” as Adam Smith imagined. This is merchandising merchandising with a smile. This is a system in which foreign governments pour unimaginable resources into building dominant industrial sectors. This is not efficiency, it is exploitation. This is a multinational arbitration, trading our industrial base of labor standards, environmental protection measures, and products that are only a few dollars cheaper.
Economists say that invisible hands will take care of us. But they ignore what is in front of them. Manufacturing remains the most productive sector in the US economy. It promotes innovation, research and development, and national strengths. Meanwhile, finance has bloated our economy beyond recognition, and while services are essential, it cannot replace the creation of wealth in industrial production.
The day of liberation marks the revival of the people's self-esteem. It means producing our own medicines and military equipment, building our own technology, and counterfeiting our own steel.
The trade deficit is not benign. They are corroded. They drive inequality, hollow out communities, and concentrate wealth among the Davos class. For any profit claimed by the free trade consensus, the losses are deeper and broader, losses of high-wage jobs, erosion of production capacity, and the slow collapse of the middle class of America.
This is more than just the truth in the US. Globalization is tearing society from Mexico to Malaysia. Wherever multinational companies gain market share, local industries collapse. Like Mexico, economic development is hampered by predatory trade practices and not strengthened by them. Around the world, trade liberalization has enriched the oligarchs and deepened inequality.
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The ideology of free trade is not science. It's a dogma. This is facilitated by Anglo-American economists who reject strategies that dare to prioritize national development. But history tells a different story. George Washington's first message to Congress called for tariffs. The second bill passed in the United States was the Customs Act of 1789. Alexander Hamilton, Henry Clay, Abraham Lincoln, William McKinley and Calvin Coolidge all built American greatness on the foundations of a national industry protected by tariffs.
Even John Maynard Keynes in 1930 sought a 15% tariff on all goods to defeat his colleagues, fight global imbalances and protect the domestic economy from the devastating effects of foreign surplus. He realized that we had forgotten. Those people cannot rely on other nations to feed, supply, or equip people.
For those who fear inflation, instead of relying on imports, focus on the countries that invested in production. Their inflation is lower or equal to ours. Protecting workers is not the cause of inflation. That's the solution to stagnation. Acquiring real wages driven by productivity and a revived industrial base is the path to prosperity.
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The United States does not need to embrace decline. We do not need to outsource our strength, security, or sovereignty. You don't need to hear lectures on “cutting down government jobs,” but millions of private workers have been thrown into wolves in the name of “progress.”
The day of liberation marks the revival of the people's self-esteem. It means producing our own medicines and military equipment, building our own technology, and counterfeiting our own steel. That means less reliance on fragile supply chains in the face of a crisis and more resilience. It means stronger families, safer communities, and middle class who can feed their children again and retire with dignity.
Diplomatic splendor and photoopening do not define global leadership. Strength does that. And strength begins with your country, your values, and your industrial ability to protect your way of life.
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To Allies: We welcome partnerships, but we are not at the cost of workers. Friendship is not built on a trade deficit. For competitors: America's era of self-sacrifice is over. The United States will no longer be of any use to sacrifice ourselves and as a stepping stone to your development.
Liberation Day is not the end of trade. It is the beginning of strategic national development. For our conditions, our interests, our future. It is the day America will regain its fate.
