Authored by Brandon Smith via Alt-Market.us,

For many years now I have been talking about the growing global economic divide between East and West. This volatile opposition between the BRICS nations and the US is not a product of the Trump era. It has been decades in the making with a myriad of complex working parts and numerous US trading partners have been preparing for the fallout as far back as 2008.

At the same time behind the scenes there have been malicious influences at play: Special interests within the Davos community have been working diligently to undermine the US economy and the dollar. But what is the ultimate aim of this agenda?

In 2018 I published an article titled ‘World War III Will Be An Economic War’ – In it I outlined the basic mechanics of the East vs West paradigm and how banking institutions like the IMF and BIS were positioning to take advantage of the chaos. At the time, the “trade war” witnessed a kind of false start, but all the pieces were there for what we are seeing today. Don’t let the 90 day pauses on some tariffs fool you, economic decoupling is going to be the dominant theme of the decade and the tariffs will undoubtedly spring up over and over again.

Trump’s incredible return to the White House sets the stage for the end of globalism (and that’s a good thing), but I want to make it clear that the pitfalls are numerous and the establishment could try to use the end of the old world order to bring in their “new world order”.

In 2018 I noted:

“The bottom line is this: Russia and China are in full support of globalist controlled institutions like the Bank for International Settlements (the central bank of central banks) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). The governments of both nations have called for the IMF to assert their Special Drawing Rights basket currency framework as a foundation for a new world reserve currency system. Again, both Russia and China want the IMF, a globalist controlled entity, to become the de facto ruler of a new global monetary structure…”

“With the rise of simple to generate cryptocurrencies and the easily tracked blockchain exchange mechanism, globalists now have the perfect liquidity tool for replacing the dollar as world reserve. All they need now is a crisis event to provide cover for the transition…”

“…It would appear that a crisis event is now being triggered in the form of an international trade war. This trade war, in my view, is designed to become so widespread that it will one day be considered a “world war.”

As I’ve mentioned many times, the dollar’s world reserve status, instituted with the Bretton Woods Agreement in 1944, has long been America’s Achilles Heel.

The US technically enjoys an enviable trade advantage as well as a monetary stimulus advantage because the dollar is used in the majority of international transactions. This means the Federal Reserve can print dollars with wild abandon and most of them will be absorbed overseas by foreign banks, governments and corporations. In this way, the dollar is already a kind of beta test for a one world currency.

However, the Bretton Woods Agreement came with a series of caveats, some of them unspoken. For the “privilege” of controlling the reserve currency, the US is expected to financially backstop allies as well as provide the vast majority of military support for NATO. The revelations behind the DOGE audits alone show an endless flood of dollars from American taxpayer funds into a vast array of subsidies for foreign governments. Americans has been paying for everyone and everything.

You know those supposedly amazing social welfare and healthcare programs in Europe? Yeah, we make that possible through billions in foreign aid to the those countries along with hundreds of billions spent on defense so that Europeans can sleep easy at night.

The situation is even worse when we consider how many trillions of dollars were created from thin air by the Federal Rserve and transferred overseas after the crash of 2008. Not to mention the trillions poured into foreign economies during the pandemic. In the meantime, relentless money creation is finally catching up to us in the form of a stagflation crisis. The dollar system, as we know it, is precariously unstable and more stimulus is not going to save it.

It’s not surprising the US has been hit with an inflationary freight train. We haven’t just been printing dollars for ourselves, we’ve been printing dollars for the entire planet.

The old world agreements are ending, and in many ways this is necessary. European leaders are going full authoritarian; they now throw people in prison daily for online speech and they are also throwing their right-leaning political opponents in prison to prevent them from participating in elections. Europe is no longer our ally and the US public is starting to realize it.

Outsourced production in Asia, the foundation of the current global supply chain, is in need of reform. Because of our reserve status America has become the world’s cash cow. We have been relegated to the position of dutiful consumer nation, spending our increasingly devalued dollars in a spiraling cycle of inflationary decline while we produce very little on our own soil.

Donald Trump’s tariff actions, which I suspect will be cumulative over the next few years, are an expression of America’s desire to end the globalist status quo and bring back balance. That said, the rhetoric from the rest of the world and the media is that these tariffs constitute an “act of war”.

As I predicted years ago, the US is not allowed to stray from the Bretton Woods system without being painted as an “aggressor” nation bent on destroying our neighbors. Keep in mind, most of the countries affected by Trump’s tariffs have had their own tariffs on American goods for decades. When they do it, it’s normal. When we do it, it’s a betrayal.

Enter the BRICS; this international trade body is currently headed by Brazil and includes China, Russia, India, South Africa, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates among others. The running theory for many alternative economists is that the BRICS will eventually move to fully decouple from the US dollar and introduce their own shared currency system.

I have posited a similar theory, though I argue that the situation is not as simple as some analysts think. This is not just an East vs West division leading to a break in the dollar structure; there is a lot more going on.

Ten years ago the BRICS were in a much better position economically and that would have been the time to introduce a competing monetary framework. Today, Russia is in the midst of a proxy war with NATO in Ukraine, China is on the edge of deflationary collapse and South Africa is on the edge of social collapse. There’s not a single BRICS member beyond oil producers like Saudi Arabia that is not facing extreme fiscal turmoil. In other words, the BRICS do not currently have the ability to counter the dollar.

That said, I don’t think this was ever the plan. Rather, globalist institutions like the IMF, BIS and World Bank have been preparing for the rollout of CBDCs (Central Bank Digital Currencies) along with a single IMF controlled global digital currency attached to the SDR basket. The BRICS cannot compete with the dollar, unless the IMF and BIS help them to do so.

As IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva admitted in 2023:

“CBDCs should not be fragmented national propositions… To have more efficient and fairer transactions we need systems that connect countries: we need interoperability…For this reason at the IMF, we are working on the concept of a global CBDC platform.”

Such program could only be accomplished after serious economic turmoil has made the populations of all nations desperate for a centralized solution. The upcoming BRICS Summit in Rio de Janeiro, slated for July, should be watched carefully because it is timed almost exactly in line with the end of Trump’s 90 day tariff pause. The summit is expected to address the trade war in depth as well as the subject of “de-dollerization”. Trump has previously threatened a 150% tariff on any country that makes an attempt to de-dollerize.

While speaking at the BRICS Summit in 2024, held at Kazan (Russia), Russian President Vladimir Putin said:

“The dollar is being used as a weapon. We really see that this is so. I think that this is a big mistake by those who do this”.

This was the same summit where Putin shared a mock up of a “BRICS dollar” and spoke about the adaptation of a BRICS currency. Of course, Russia is in no position to field a new reserve currency and neither is China, but I believe this talk is a precursor to a larger international push for a new reserve system managed by the IMF.

The BRICS intend to court the Mexican government at the July 2025 summit in Rio de Jeneiro and there is also talk of European nations increasing trade with China as a way to frustrate Trump’s tariff efforts. But again, China’s economy is currently flirting with deflationary disaster and there’s not a single nation or group of nations that will be able to fill the void in consumer markets left behind by the US.

Even though a Chinese-based solution is unlikely, the behavior of the BRICS indicates that there is some kind of plan afoot. China and India have been stockpiling massive gold reserves and this may be in preparation for a break from the dollar, with gold skyrocketing as the dollar falls. The ongoing shift into crypto and CBDCs is also, I believe, an attempt to create a cushion for de-dollerization.

Just remember that none of this is possible without globalist organizations facilitating the spread of the technology. The BIS has been particularly active the past 5 years in testing cross-border CBDC swaps and secure CBDC transactions. The BRICS would be nothing more than a vehicle for the proliferation of a globalist CBDC reset.

Does this mean that the US and Trump are falling into a trap? Do tariffs make it easier to justify an international shift way from the dollar? Is Trump making things easier for the globalists? I argue that this reset is going to be attempted regardless; Trump and conservatives are going to be blamed regardless. Americans will blame the BRICS and Europe – The BRICS and Europe will blame America.

It should also be noted that the middle class and poverty stricken citizens of China and Europe largely HATE their governments. The elites have abused them beyond all measure and what little freedoms they have left are being erased. Most of these people are on the side of anti-globalism. This war is not everyone in the world against the US, though the corporate media would have you believe this is the case.

Tariffs are a way for the US to disrupt the forced interdependency of globalism, but there’s going to be pain involved as things change. In other words, tariffs are necessary. The end of globalism is necessary. America needs to stop relying on the dollar’s reserve status and the global supply chain. But we should be wary of what kind of system ends up replacing the Bretton Woods structure. Meaning, we may have to use any means at our disposal to stop a new global monetary scheme before it can take hold.

The next BRICS Summit should be scrutinized carefully because it could give us insight into when the next stage of the “reset” will begin. Don’t be surprised if their rhetoric is wildly hostile towards the US and decoupling from the dollar is the main topic of discussion. Also don’t be surprised if “de-dollerization” becomes a household term in the next couple of years.

Now that even the shoeshine boy is speculating whether China is selling its US treasuries (to kill three birds with one stone: i) hammer the dollar, ii) push yields higher and iii) prop up the yuan, if only to give the impression that China is winning the trade war something we described here), Mizuho has a “pretty high” degree of confidence that data will eventually show if China has been selling US Treasuries, according to Jordan Rochester, EMEA head of FICC strategy at the bank.

“Annoyingly we don’t get the data quickly enough, the data’s always lagged,” Rochester said on Monday in an interview with Bloomberg TV when asked if the Chinese have been selling US debt.

“You’ve got the extreme tariffs on China and also future reciprocal tariffs that will be extreme on other Asian central banks and they’ve got to defend their currencies.”

“You’ve seen a much slower pace of selloff in the renminbi than you’d expect, given the size of the shock to their system, so there’s clearly some sort of smoothing going on in the FX market, and to do that a central bank has to sell the US Treasuries and others to fund that FX intervention”

Echoing what we said last week, Rochester notes that for now, “we can only speculate” on whether the Chinese are selling, “but we’ll find out in the data in due course,” adding that his degree of confidence that the data will in due course reveal China’s selling is “pretty high.”

Separately, Rochester said he was “surprised” the dollar was “on the back foot” on Monday morning, after Trump provided some exemptions on his proposed tariff activity over the weekend

“This is alarm bells, I think, for US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent,” Rochester said; “He’s now seeing a watering down of tariffs but still dollar weakness and US rates selling off still — it’s a horrible toxic combination”, which however can easily be explained precisely by Rochester’s core thesis, namely that China has been aggressively selling US paper, and is opportunistically converting the US-denominated proceeds into yuan at just the right time to give the impression that, as so many others have been parroting, that the US dollar is losing its reserve status.

His full interview starts around the 37 minutes mark.

Authored by Tim Ray & Jim Smith via RealClearDefense,

As DOGE’s eye shifts to the Department of Defense and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth calls on his defense leaders to accelerate their workforce and recapitalization plans by the end of the week, our national security ecosystem has an unprecedented opportunity to radically restructure and set itself not for yesterday’s wars, but tomorrow’s security.

To seize the moment, DOGE and Secretary Hegseth’s team have many reform options at their disposal: streamline bureaucratic processes, overhaul acquisitions, and double down on innovation. These are logical improvements. Many are essential. But like fixing an aircraft mid-flight, time is the defining performance indicator. And it is a sense of urgency, agility, and adaptability that will enable America’s success.

Yet, crucially, outpacing an adversary does not require out-spending them. Apple defeated Nokia with quick design cycles focused on the user experience, despite Nokia spending nearly ten times more on R&D. Outspending creates an impressive collection of capabilities, but, a sustained competitive advantage requires a relentless focus on outcomes, not just capabilities.

The post-Cold War era demanded neither sufficient urgency nor flexibility from defense contractors and industrial base. Industry was comfortable and gave the country most of what it needed under cost-plus contracts at congressionally mandated 10 to 12 percent profit margins. Cost overruns and delays were tolerated and helped increase profits.

When budgets stopped expanding, consolidation resulted. The infamous 1993 “Last Supper” dinner meeting held by then Deputy Defense Secretary William Perry encouraged defense contractors to consolidate to maintain profits. They did. And the number of major contractors went from more than fifty to five. Agility, innovation, and responsiveness evaporated in the process.

Less was not more. The 2018 National Defense Strategy (NDS) articulated this point when it envisioned a broader National Security Industrial Base (NSIB) as a “network of knowledge, capabilities, and people—including academia, National Laboratories, and the private sector—that turns ideas into innovations [and] transforms discoveries into successful commercial products.” This articulates the whole-of-nation approach to national security that has always given the U.S. its advantage.

Great power competitions – be it between nation states or rival companies – are won by those that out-pace their adversaries. Advancing capabilities at a rapid pace leaves adversaries ‘playing catchup,’ trying to understand and then react. Consider Amazon, innovating quickly to stay ahead of large, capable retailers like Walmart who continually scramble to gain online market share.

No single company can provide what is needed across all categories of defense. Just as one athlete cannot win gold in every sport. Existing and new participants are needed, including entrepreneurs, boot-strapped independent companies, venture-backed companies, research and academic institutions, and close allied partners. A full-range of on-ramps are also needed for new partners to enter the ecosystem—including the Defense Innovation Unit (DIU), National Security Innovation Capital (NSIC), innovation hubs like SOFWERX and AFWERX, DoD and academic laboratories, and agencies such as the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) from which so much important innovation has come.

Achieving next-generation overmatch capability isn’t merely about more innovation from the commercial sector. In a world where invention quickly becomes commoditized, getting leverage out of new technology to gain competitive advantage requires an investment in the human capital and institutional capacity needed to quickly operationalize and scale these technologies. As the NDS also stated, “Success no longer goes to the country that develops a new technology first, but rather to the one that better integrates it and adapts its way of fighting.”  And the flexibility to drive this critical adaptation must be placed firmly in the hands of the Services and Commanders in the field—those directly responsible for navigating the complex and uncertain security environment ahead.

Industry must be measured on how fast they can deliver real-world results, not how well they check the boxes of a static requirements document (which they often help write). The risks of underdelivering and overspending are best mitigated by embracing a minimum viable product (MVP) mindset that focuses on rapidly fielding operating prototypes, and continually improving and adapting them. These are hallmarks of modern software development, but the mindset has a place in even the largest hardware-focused projects as well.

Secretary Hegseth gave until last Friday for defense leaders to submit their recapitalization plans—a date that underscores the urgency of this moment. If speed and agility become the driving forces behind America’s defense strategy, industry collaboration, and acquisition processes, the United States will decisively outpace its adversaries to win tomorrow’s conflicts before they begin. The signal flare has gone up, the opportunity to deliver capabilities faster, cheaper, and more effectively is not only possible—it is imperative. We agree with the Secretary that the time to act is now.

General Tim Ray (USAF, ret.) is the former Commander of Air Force Global Strike Command, who today serves as the President and CEO of Business Executives for National Security (BENS). Jim Smith is President of TheIncLab and member of the BENS Board of Directors.

Claiming it held a “command and control center used by Hamas,” Israel chose Palm Sunday to bomb the only Christian hospital in war-shattered Gaza. It was also the last fully-functioning hospital in Gaza City. No casualties from the bombing per se were reported by Gaza’s civil emergency service. However, a child who’d been hospitalized for a head wound died from “the rushed evacuation process,” said the Episcopal Diocese of Jerusalem, which runs the al Ahli Arab Hospital. The diocese is part of the Anglican Church. 

Citing Gaza Civil Defense, Middle East Eye reports that the bombs resulted in “the destruction of the surgery building and the oxygen generation station for the intensive care units.” St. Philip’s Church was one of multiple nearby buildings that also suffered damage. The IDF attributed the low casualty count to its effort to “mitigate harm to civilians or to the hospital compound, including issuing advanced warnings in the area of the terror infrastructure, the use of precise munitions, and aerial surveillance.”

A local journalist told BBC that the IDF called an emergency room doctor and urged the hospital’s immediate evacuation, saying “You have only 20 minutes to leave.” A previously-injured Khalil Bakr said he and his three wounded daughters — two amputees and a third “full of platinum plates” — managed to get out of the hospital just a couple minutes before destruction rained down.  

“For the only Christian hospital in Gaza to be attacked on Palm Sunday is especially appalling,” said British Archbishop of York Stephen Cottrell in a statement. “I share in the grief of our Palestinian brothers and sisters in the Diocese of Jerusalem. I pray for the staff and patients of the hospital, and for the family of the boy who tragically died during the evacuation.”

The British government joined the condemnation, with Foreign Minister David Lammy saying the “deplorable attacks must end…Israel’s attacks on medical facilities have comprehensively degraded access to healthcare in Gaza.” Before the attack, the hospital stood alone as the only one still fully functioning in Gaza City, after Israel blew up the Al-Shifa Hospital and others. 

The Orthodox Patriarchate of Jerusalem issued its own statement: 

“This hospital, already strained by months of siege, stood as one of the last beacons of medical hope in Gaza, where dozens of healthcare institutions have been systematically destroyed. The stripping away of such sanctuaries of life and dignity is a tragedy that transcends all boundaries of politics and enters the realm of the sacred.”

While the British government and many other entities have decried the attack, there’s been no official statement from the Israel-catering Trump administration.  

Previous IDF claims of hospitals being used as Hamas facilities have grown suspect under scrutiny, with credible accusations of the IDF staging evidence before ushering in journalists to see the “proof.” Throughout the war that’s raged since the Oct 7 Hamas invasion of southern Israel, the IDF has repeatedly bombed medical facilities and fired on ambulances. 

One of the most troubling such incidents came last month, when 14 medical and other aid workers were found in a mass grave in Gaza after the IDF destroyed a convoy of ambulances and other first-response vehicles. The IDF originally claimed the vehicles “were identified advancing suspiciously” without either their headlights or emergency lights on. Then cell phone video of the IDF attack captured by one of the slain ambulance crew members proved the IDF account was completely false. The vehicles’ headlights and emergency lights were on, and the vehicles carried clear markings of their nature. 

As withering IDF gunfire rakes over the first responders, the dying Palestinian video narrator can be heard reciting the Shahada, the Muslim declaration of faith: “There is no God but God, Muhammad is his messenger.” Then, perhaps anticipating the video may be recovered after his murder by Israeli soldiers, he said, “Forgive me, mother. This is the path I chose — to help people. God is Great.”   

Last week we explained how the escalating trade war between the US and China has gradually transformed into a theatrical war of who has the upper hand on any given day. And since it takes a long time for trade obstructions to hit the underlying economy, investors are keenly eyeing the stock, and especially FX, markets for any and every (early) indications of who has the upper hand (even if they are, as we show below, completely false).

Meanwhile in China, it’s all about the optics of not appearing to lose the trade war:

China state firms vow to boost share purchases to stabilize plunging markethttps://t.co/BkliKGFTIW

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) April 8, 2025

Yet so far in the trade war, there has been one notable difference: while US stocks have tumbled (and rightfully so, as Trump institutes shock treatment to ween the US out of its debt-funded reserve currency, trade deficit addiction) and the US dollar has been in freefall, Chinese stocks have been surprisingly resilient and barely dropping, while the yuan reversed its losses last week, which pushed it to a record low only to rebound sharply higher.

There is just one problem: like everything else out of China, it’s market reaction has also been 100% fake. 

While the US reaction is understandable, since the political Fed is doing everything it can to tarnish Trump’s approval rating and rugpull the market, and economy, from under him… and for those who say this is nonsense, may we remind you this is precisely what Bill Dudley told the Fed to do during the first Trump trade war…

The day is August 27, 2019. Former NY Fed president Bill Dudley writes a Bloomberg oped saying “the Fed shouldn’t enable Donald Trump” and urged the central bank not to “provide offsetting stimulus” in Trump’s trade war with China.

Six years later, here we are pic.twitter.com/H6WT5O0cMD

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) April 11, 2025

… China, whose central bank is directly controlled by the CCP Politburo, has no such qualms, and as we reported last week, in order to stabilize the stock market China’s Plunge protection team, aka the “National Team”, unleashed a record buying spree of ETFs, which has prevented an all out rout. 

At the same time, China has also clearly intervened in the FX market, ordering local banks to sell dollars and buy yuan after last week we saw the offshore yuan plunge to a record low against the dollar. To be sure, China wants devaluation, but not chaotic, uncontrolled devaluation which would spark the mother of all capital runs (Chinese banks have $63 trillion in assets (and by extension deposits), almost triple the US total).

Context: US commercial bank assets ($23.5 trillion) vs China commercial bank assets ($62.6 trillion). pic.twitter.com/6mYaVI2ORJ

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) February 19, 2025

As an aside, China’s FX intervention would fully explain the bizarre concurrent weakness in both the dollar and TSYs, which some overeager commentators are ascribing to the death of US dollar reserve currency status…

… when in reality it was just a few days of China dumping US bonds and selling the proceeds (US Dollars) to buy yuan.

what if pic.twitter.com/34mLPz8FAC

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) April 11, 2025

So going back to the core thesis, namely that in China it’s all about the optics of not appearing to lose the trade war at least through day to day indicators meant for simplistic, first-order indicator observers (which these days is pretty much everyone in the market), Beijing’s core prerogative remains to prevent a crash in either Chinese stocks or the yuan. And while we described above how China is defending the yuan (at the expense of Treasuries and the dollar, if only up to a point – the point being when China runs out of US reserves to sell), preserving stock market calm is just as important.

Which is why we weren’t at all surprise to read that Chinese bourses have set daily restrictions on net share sales by hedge funds and large retail investors, Reuters reported noting that Beijing has stepped up support for its stock markets in an intensifying trade war with the United States.

Two investor sources said a soft limit on daily net sales by individual hedge funds and big retail investors – implemented through verbal warnings from brokerages – had been set at 50 million yuan ($6.83 million).

Failure to comply risked a suspension of trading accounts by the stock exchanges, which have issued the directive, the Reuters sources added.

Echoing everything we have said in the past week, Reuters also adds that “China has taken a slew of measures to stabilise its domestic stock markets, reeling from an escalating trade war with the U.S.” and notes that “the moves have largely shielded stocks in China from the massive selling seen on global markets.”

Brokerages have been asked to closely monitor transactions by private funds and big retail clients, according to a notice issued late on Thursday and seen by Reuters.

The current 50 million yuan daily limit on net sales by investors could be lowered further if the market slumps again, the notice said.

It stands to reason that if you can’t sell, you will- drumroll – buy, and sure enough China and Hong Kong stocks reversed early declines on Friday and narrowed the week’s losses.

“Such a restriction is understandable as you don’t want to act against state will,” said one of Reuters’ brokerage sources. It’s also understandable since China can not afford to give the impression that Trump has leverage in the escalating trade war. Instead, since Chinese stocks are stable, it afford Beijing the optics of being treated almost as an equal, or someone who can match Trump’s tariff escalation blow by blow… when in reality China’s economy is disintegrating below the calm surface.

Furthermore, as we also reported last week, China’s state fund Central Huijin has vowed to increase stock holdings, a growing number of listed companies are buying back shares, and Chinese brokerages have pledged to steady the market amid higher tariffs and global recession risks.

And just to make sure there is no selling at all, on Tuesday Chinese press reported that certain China banks have cut deposits rates below 2%. Why? To push depositors into risk assets of course.

Needless to say, without the moves, Chinese stocks would be in freefall – just like its economy in a month or so – and the yuan would be plunging, while the narrative that Trump is flip-flopping or otherwise “losing” to China, would be DOA. Yet, since the Fed has so far refused to counter its Chinese peers, Trump indeed finds himself at a disadvantage.

But that may soon change, because while the Fed may pretend it has no choice but to wait until the hyperinflation from the tariffs manifests itself (some time in 2035, especially since tariffs are actually deflationary as we have explained for the past year) before easing, Bessent may take matters into his own hands, and without waiting for the Fed, ramp up the amount of treasury buybacks the US Treasury currently conducts every other day or so, in the open market (see full Buyback schedule here).

In fact, the Treasury secretary hinted at this himself in an interview with Bloomberg, when asked if he has contingency plans if the selloff becomes “more unnerving” (for example if foreign countries, i.e. China, may be selling US Treasuries in response to the trade war). 

His answer: “we are a long way” from needing to take action, but “we have a big toolkit that we can roll out” if so, and included in that toolkit is the department’s buyback program for older securities, Bessent said. “We could up the buybacks if we wanted” (15’40” in the view below).

And that’s precisely what will happen in a few weeks (or even days) if China’s selling of Treasuries persists, sending yields plunging. The good news, is that this “soft QE” wouldn’t have to be in place too long: only long enough for China to run out of reserves… mostly via Belgium’s Euroclear…

Belgium (mostly China via Euroclear) Treasury holdings are where they were… just before China devalued its currency in 2015 and sold $1TN in US paper ($250BN via Belgium) to contain yuan collapse pic.twitter.com/DUYWqtUl60

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) April 11, 2025

… to sell. Which at the current pace of liquidations should be done by the end of the month.

Authored by Oliver Mantyk via The Epoch Times,

A new quality of life division within the New York City Police Department (NYPD) will begin its pilot program on April 14. The division will respond to non-emergency calls and community complaints, as well as focusing on clearing low level crime from New York City streets.

The “Q Team,” as NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch calls the division, will respond to 311 calls and non-emergency issues including noise complaints, illegal mopeds, homeless encampments, outdoor drug use, and other issues.

“We’re turning our attention toward the issues that New Yorkers see and feel every day—the things that don’t always make headlines but deeply impact how people live,” Tisch said at a press conference on April 10.

Officers from existing community roles such as neighborhood coordination officers and traffic officers will be combined with officers specially trained for the non-emergency calls. New York City Mayor Eric Adams said that Q Teams “will be made up of officers who have already forged relationships with their communities.”

Tisch said Q Team officer training will include: “[How to deal] with noise complaints, how you use noise meters with abandoned vehicles, how you work with … vendors to get the cars removed, what sorts of paperwork you have to fill out.”

Q Teams in different areas will be trained according to that area’s needs, she said. Some precincts have drug abuse problems, while others have abandoned vehicle issues.

There will be no extra cost on taxpayers for the the Quality of Life Division—personnel will be sourced from internal restructuring of the NYPD, Tisch said. She said thousands of officers on desk jobs had been back on patrol to alleviate the police shortage.

During the pilot phase, Q Teams will operate in the 13th, 40th, 60th, 75th, and 101st police precincts, along with Police Service Area 1. The initiative will be refined and tweaked over the next two months, and then expanded to other precincts, Tisch said.

Q Teams will use data provided by a new program called QSTAT, which is modeled after the CompStat program.

The NYPD launched CompStat in 1994 and the system uses real-time crime data to determine deployment of officers. It has since been put into use by other police departments, including in Nashville and Syracuse, New York.

“New York City revolutionized under Bill Bratton, the former commissioner of the role of CompStat more than 30 years ago, holding precinct commanders accountable and using real time data to adjust police deployment,” Adams said at the press conference.

“This tried-and-true method has spread and is being tried all over the globe. And we are going to use the same recipe for success this time to address quality-of-life issues.”

Adams said New York City has recorded a continuous six-month fall in major crimes.

“The first three months of the year [we] saw the lowest number of shootings in recorded history,” Adams said, likely referring to 1994 when the Compstat method of reporting began. 

Despite this, Adams said that people don’t feel safe. He said he hopes the Q Team is a solution to better streets.

By Svetlana Paraskova of OilPrice.com

Weak demand and domestic prices at four-year lows led to a 6% annual decline in Chinese coal imports in March, according to official data.

Last month, China imported a total of 38.73 million metric tons of coal, compared to 41.38 million tons in imports in the same month of 2024, per data from the General Administration of Customs cited by Reuters on Monday.

The domestic Bohai-Rim Bay thermal coal price index indicated that the domestic price for medium-grade coal slipped at the end of last week to its lowest level since March 2021, according to estimates by Reuters.

China’s combined January-February coal imports – reported together to smooth out Lunar New Year effects – had increased by 2% from the same period of 2024.

But the dip in March means that Chinese coal imports for the first three months of 2025 were 0.9% lower than in the first quarter of last year.

In view of the low domestic coal prices, weaker demand, and high coal inventories at ports, China’s import decline in March wasn’t a surprise, and analysts will not be surprised if the trend of lower coal imports continues for the next few months.

Globally, China is the leader in renewable energy capacity installations, but it is also a leader in coal-fired power and continues to be the key driver of record-high global coal demand.

Thermal power generation, which is overwhelmingly dominated by coal, rose by 1.5% in 2024 from a year earlier, to a record high of 6.34 trillion kilowatt-hours (kWh), data from China’s National Bureau of Statistics showed. 

The persistent growth in Chinese coal demand, including for power generation, goes to show that coal remains the baseload of China’s power system to back up the surge in renewables and will stay such for years to come as power demand jumps with the increasing electrification of homes and transport.  

Authored by Jeffrey A. Tucker via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

I’m as excited as anyone about the prospect of a return of American manufacturing. But there are huge barriers, among which is the profitability metrics of accounting. Will it make sense from an economic point of view? Without that piece in place, political wishes and national determination will not be enough.

The United States has outsourced vast amounts of its once-mighty manufacturing power to China, Mexico, and elsewhere. It seemed mutually beneficial for decades until we took note of how strange it all is that America should have so few industries it can call its own.

There are a number of ways to tackle this problem. But the scale of it is not widely understood. The wage differentials between the United States and other countries are gigantic and not easily overcome. Other production cost differentials matter too, as does the problematic value of the dollar. Its status as the world reserve currency cements the economic rationale of imports over exports.

There are other issues besides, among which is something more fundamental: the American work ethic. This is a cultural problem emerging from decades of easy money and a loss of enterprising drive.

A quick story from yesterday. I got in a grocery line behind a person with a huge basket full of groceries but they were arranged in a strange way. As she put them on the belt for checkout, she began to use the separators, not based on the kind of product but on some other basis.

I watched carefully as she put paper bags in each pile. After the first tranche went through, she pulled out a card and paid. She repeated this. Then I figured it out. She was shopping for Instacart, not just for one person but fully five households.

I reverse-engineered her process. As she entered the store, she had a huge list and as she went through each aisle, she had pulled groceries for each client, carefully separating them and maintaining that separation through checkout, payment, bagging, and eventually transportation.

The possibility of mistakes must be huge in this kind of operation. One error and the customer would surely complain.

I was a bit awestruck by the engineering feat that was unfolding before my eyes. I made inquiries about what was going on and she said she was doing this but did not say much more. Her English was broken so there were language difficulties. More importantly, she was simply too busy to chit-chat with some guy standing around making inquiries for an article.

As I thought about it, I watched her work with some degree of amazement. It was marvelous. Based on her language skills, she is very likely a recent immigrant, probably with no “higher” education but with some mad skills.

How did she get so good at this? Repetition and the improvement that comes thereby. That’s where skill comes from. Why did she repeat this so often? Because she had to in order to earn money. The need creates the discipline and the discipline fosters the skill.

A quick example. Let’s say you bring home four swiveling bar stools from the home store but they need to be assembled. The first one is a mess with screws and confusion and you might have to do it over once or even twice, while juggling the instructions. It’s awful. The second one is better. By the time you get to the fourth one, you are assembling the stool in a fraction of the time.

You might think, “Wow, I’m so good at this I could make it a business to assemble these.” But it is just one skill you now possess. You gain it over a couple of intense hours, but you now have it. This is how focus, discipline, drive, purpose, and experience feed skill and value in the workplace.

Tim Cook of Apple has made clear that the real reason iPhones and other Apple products are made in China rather than the United States is not wages. It is technical skill and precision. These products require extreme discipline, knowledge, and deep experience. The number of workers who can do this in China is large; in the United States it is tiny.

I think about all the “white collar” workers I’ve known who would blow a mental gasket if ever asked to do anything remotely this complicated. Forget assembling an iPhone. They couldn’t possibly shop for five households simultaneously, bag the groceries, and deliver them.

It is a skill that is out of reach, and they would be annoyed at the asking. They would probably complain to HR and prepare a lawsuit. They would mess up the first order, deal with irate customers and an officious boss, and reach for the pill bottle or the THC soda to make the pain go away.

At this point in history, I’m just not sure that the professional class in the United States is up to this kind of productivity. The tabooed reality of the lockdown period is that most people truly enjoyed two years of luxurious living and only pretending to work. That period also shattered the drive of many, spoiling an entire generation of elite workers into thinking that making money is easy and effortless.

For 25 years of artificially low interest rates—particularly since 2008—the Fed has cultivated a sense that the entire system is based on a kind of illusion. Sure, some people are rich and some are poor but the difference has nothing to do with the work they do. It’s all about birth, class, credentials, and the luck of the demographic draw.

This is a tragic perception, one completely inconsistent with the traditional American ethos of hard work and class mobility. A feature of the Trump agenda is to recapture and rebuild that idea with a shift in economic structures, including deregulation and tax cuts. The tariffs are part of that, pushed on the assumption that Americans have the stuff necessary to make things again.

A presumption behind this policy is that American investors, entrepreneurs, business builders, and workers are going to hop to it and make wonderful things, while enjoying the protection that the tariffs provide against foreign competition. Even if that happens—it’s a big if—are Americans really ready to go there? The outsourcing of so much manufacturing has gone on for the better part of 50 years.

The actions of this one shopper for Instacart, engaged in a tremendous act of managerial prowess, underscore the point. For generations now, we’ve been told that intelligence and skill are disproportionately distributed in the upper tiers of the U.S. class structure.

Personally, I don’t believe it. It is more likely the opposite: the people who struggle for a living, working two and three jobs to pay the bills, have more skills than most people in the upper third of the income distribution who have never had to worry about paying the bills.

Talk to any serious person in any midsize company today and they will tell you of their struggles. The regulations and taxes are vexing but it is the labor problems day-to-day that really inhibit their operations and progress. It is exceedingly difficult to find workers who will do what they are supposed to do in a timely way, with attention to detail, and without constant hand-holding and praise.

This decline of the American work ethic traces to the educational institutions in part, but also to the reality that most young people in the top half of income earners have never worked a day in their lives until after having earned their credentials.

They are clueless about what it means to embrace a hard job and stick with it until they are done. They resent the authority structures in the workplace and attempt to game the system in the same way that they gamed school for 16-plus years.

It’s one thing to develop skills for survival in classrooms, and a radically different thing to have skills for a new world of manufacturing. Shop classes in high school are mostly gone (only 6 percent of students take them versus 20 percent in the 1980s) and two-thirds of teens eschew remunerative employment completely, simply because it is not necessary. It’s been generations since most people knew anything of farm life, to say nothing of factory life.

Trump is seeking to solve a half-century-old problem in four years. This is a serious challenge, and I cannot say that I’m optimistic. That said, there are real opportunities now for people like the shopper I mentioned above, people who work hard, work well, stick to the task, and are grateful for their opportunities. Sadly, those traits largely elude the graduates of our nation’s most prestigious educational institutions.

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

President Donald Trump while speaking with the press in the Oval Office on Monday once again blasted President Biden for the start of the Russia-Ukraine war, a war which Trump has repeatedly stressed should have never happened.

“That’s a war that should have never been allowed to start and Biden could have stopped it and Zelensky could have stopped it and Putin should have never started it,” Trump said. “Everybody is to blame.”

Trump added: “If Biden were competent and if Zelenskyy were competent, and I don’t know that he is, we had a rough session with this guy — he just kept asking for more and more.”

But he seemed to reserve his most aggressive criticisms for Zelensky, once again blasting him for asking for more and more weapons and money, while knowing full well Ukraine can’t defeat Russia, which is “twenty times your size” – as Trump said. Watch:

Trump has fully turned on Zelenskyy: “He’s always looking to purchase missiles. Listen, when you start a war, you gotta know you can win a war. You don’t start a war against somebody that’s 20 times your size and then hope that people give you some missiles.” pic.twitter.com/1hBWeyu2hg

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) April 14, 2025

Clearly last month’s Oval Office showdown involving J.D. Vance and Zelensky going at it still looms large in Trump’s mind. Trump had separately in a Monday Truth Social post also lamented that Biden and Zelensky “did an absolutely horrible job in allowing this travesty to begin.”

Here’s what he said in the post:

“The war between Russia and Ukraine is Biden’s war, not mine. I just got here, and for four years during my term, had no problem in preventing it from happening,” Trump wrote, adding that he “had nothing to do with this war” but is working “diligently to get the death and destruction to stop.”

“If the 2020 presidential election was not rigged, and it was, in so many ways, that horrible war would never have happened,” he continued. “President [Volodymyr] Zelenskyy and Crooked Joe Biden did an absolutely horrible job in allowing this travesty to begin. There were so many ways of preventing it from ever starting. But that is the past. Now we have to get it to stop, and fast. So sad!”

Much of this seems in reaction to the Zelensky “60 Minutes” interview from Sunday, wherein the Ukrainian leader claimed that “Russian narratives are prevailing” in the US, while singling out Vance in particular.

Zelensky had said, “It’s a shift in tone, a shift in reality, really yes, a shift in reality, and I don’t want to engage in the altered reality that is being presented to me,”

And on Vance, he described: “First and foremost, we did not launch an attack [to start the war]. It seems to me that the Vice President is somehow justifying Putin’s actions. I tried to explain, ‘You can’t look for something in the middle. There is an aggressor and there is a victim. The Russians are the aggressor, and we are the victim’.”

Despite Trump’s newest attack on Zelensky, it remains that the United States is still supplying weaponry to Kiev, though reportedly in lesser quantities that previously, and is still providing limited intelligence.

Zelensky has likely had to restrain some of the criticisms he wishes to hurl back, give Kiev is deeply fearful the US could once again cut off the flow of arms and ammo, as it did briefly soon after Trump took office.

Authored by Anne Johnson via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

You can’t watch a newscast without someone talking about tariffs. There are some reported concerns that the price of goods will increase. Products that are at the forefront of tariffs are automobile parts.

With the possibility of prices on some auto parts increasing, the cost of one service everyone needs may also increase. Auto insurance rates may increase because of tariffs. But is this true, and if so, how much will rates increase?

How Tariffs Could Impact Car Insurance

Even under normal circumstances, an increase in an auto’s cost affects car insurance rates. A $50,000 car is going to cost more to insure than a $20,000 car. In other words, vehicles that cost more will have higher repair costs and, therefore, require higher insurance rates.

According to the White House, the new tariffs that went into effect on April 2, 2025, are for two aspects of vehicles. The first is 25 percent on imported passenger vehicles such as sedans, SUVs, crossovers, minivans, cargo vans, and light trucks.

But what concerns the insurance industry the most is the 25 percent tariff on key auto parts such as transmissions, powertrain parts, and electrical components.

For example, according to the Kelley Blue Book, a 2020 Ford Escape SEL transmission replacement currently costs between $4,952 and $7,505. In theory, with a 25 percent tariff on imported parts, these numbers would be 25 percent higher.

If the transmission is damaged in a collision, the insurance company would be forced to absorb the higher cost.

How Much Could Insurance Rates Increase?

Because of the increase in the cost of auto parts, the insurance industry will pay more for claims. According to MarketWatch, insurance companies are estimated to pay between $27 billion and $53 billion extra for claims in the next 12–18 months. They’ll be passing that increase on to their insureds.

Newswires reports that tariffs could add $324 to the average American’s car insurance costs by 2026. This would bring the average annual full-coverage car insurance premium to $2,759.

However, various states will be impacted differently. For example, New York is anticipated to have the highest increasing year-over-year costs. Premiums are expected to rise by up to 24 percent, or $911.

Americans had already been dealing with higher rates. Zebra, a car insurance comparison website, reported a 78 percent increase in premiums over the past decade.

When Will Increased Premiums Affect Drivers?

Americans will probably not see tariff-driven rate increases until the end of the year. That’s because raising rates is a slow-moving process.

Insurance companies would have to sustain losses due to the increase in the cost of parts for repair. Then, the insurers must prove to regulators that their losses outpace what they make in premiums.

These are state regulators, not federal. So, insurance companies must deal with regulators on a state-by-state basis.

Most state regulators aren’t going to approve of premium increases based on insurance companies’ anticipation that tariffs would increase costs.

If insurance companies do prove to regulators that they need the rate increases, these would show up when drivers renew their policies or to a new insurer.

Ways to Curb the Premium Rate Increases

You can take control of what you pay for auto insurance, but it may take a little sacrifice. There are several ways to cut your insurance premium.

One way is by increasing your deductible. It’s old but good advice. And although you’re increasing your potential for out-of-pocket repairs, you could ultimately save on your premium. If you’re a safe driver, consider increasing your deductible from $500 to $1,000.

Pay for a One-Car Accident

If you have an accident that doesn’t involve another vehicle, consider paying for the damage to your vehicle out of pocket. This is only for minor damage where no one is injured.

For example, if you scrape your bumper on a parking meter, paying for the damage yourself could save you money.

But keep in mind that what looks like minor damage could cost more than you think. Have a repair shop give you an estimate before deciding to pay out of pocket.

An Independent Agent Can Save Money

If you don’t want to shop your insurance around on your own, consult with an independent insurance agent. They represent several companies and will shop your insurance for you. There may be some insurance companies not on your radar that may give you a good deal. The independent agent can find them for you.

Report Your Mileage to Your Insurance Company

Report your mileage if you drive under 10,000 miles per year. Insurance companies factor in the amount of driving when determining premiums. Some companies have verified mileage programs. You’ll receive savings by reporting your odometer reading on a regular basis.

Insurance Companies Expect Higher Costs

In a consumer survey, Zebra found that nearly 40 percent of Americans believe tariffs will impact rates. But the anticipated premium prices for next year are estimates. There’s a question mark as to how tariffs will affect insurance premiums.

The Epoch Times copyright © 2025. The views and opinions expressed are those of the authors. They are meant for general informational purposes only and should not be construed or interpreted as a recommendation or solicitation. The Epoch Times does not provide investment, tax, legal, financial planning, estate planning, or any other personal finance advice. The Epoch Times holds no liability for the accuracy or timeliness of the information provided.