• 00:00 - Why Bring Manufacturing Back?

• 00:23 - Manufacturing, Crypto & Friction

• 00:54 - The Last Hurrah for the US Dollar

• 01:47 - Stop the Bleed

• 02:12 - Target: China

• 02:18 - Global Expertise

• 02:47 - Two Types of Partnerships

• 03:06 - Reimagining Global Alliances

• 03:19 - Negotiating from Strength

• 04:02 - America’s Secret Weapon: Brands

• 06:48 - Private Investment

• 06:58 - Make Manufacturing Cool Again

• 07:16 - AI & The Future of Work

• 07:38 - Easing Disruption

• 07:51 - R&D: America’s Secret Sauce

Full newsletter:

In business, all things move to remove friction — cost, complexity, labor. So reviving manufacturing, a people, capital, and energy-intensive industry in a digital service economy, seems regressive and unsustainable. Reminds me of crypto, which was supposed to replace dollars as currency. It failed, because it was more complicated, slower, and less convenient. Unlike credit cards, it offered no extra buying power, purchase protection, customer service, or rewards. Why switch from Amex or PayPal? So if you’re going to re-introduce friction, the benefits better be spectacular, or it will fail.

In a way, offshoring manufacturing to China did add friction. Suppliers were now half a world away. Collaborating with them was infinitely more complicated and laggy. BUT the cost savings were so dramatic that corporations scurried to move production abroad, despite the extra friction.

So reshoring manufacturing might re-capture some of the advantages of local manufacturing. Especially now that China’s old labor cost advantage is neutered with automation. It can boost GDP, if not employment. What’s more important is the US needs to swap devaluing dollars into real, productive assets. That’s exactly what China’s been doing, liquidating dollar reserves to buy US farmland, mineral mines, capital equipment, and domestic infrastructure. It’s also been building infrastructure across Africa (Belt and Road) in exchange for access to their resources. Our window to do the same is closing. Trump’s trade war is speeding up devaluation and rewiring global trade around the US, without much to show for it.

I say all this to assert that whatever we do now must be strategic, not chaotic. Before touching tariffs, I’d do everything possible to prepare for manufacturing to succeed. Specifically…

Another Way

1. Stop the bleed

The low hanging fruit is pulling every unspent penny from The IRA and other stimulus programs. Anything that’s not targeted towards growth and hasn’t shown results by now. I would have halted all tax cuts and let Trump’s 2017 tax cuts lapse. That did not happen in the Big Beautiful Budget that just passed. These are mostly gifts to the rich. I’d keep the child tax credit, opportunity zones, and business asset deductions, which are a small part of the total. What’s most revealing is cuts for the rich are permanent and those for the poor/middle class expire in 2028.

2. Laser focus on China

First, that means, supply chain diversification. No matter what you hear from conspiracists screaming about “globalists”, globalization is inescapable. No single country can make everything their citizens expect — or will want in the future. Certainly, not without inputs from other countries. Foreign dependencies—or natural resource distributions—don’t just magically go away. Here’s famed economist Milton Friedman’s classic pencil example:

Instead of trying to do everything ourselves, we should to accelerate and subsidize, shifting supply chains from China to allied countries. It’s something we’ve already started doing.

This reduces reliance on China, while retaining sourcing flexibility, competitiveness of global markets, and expertise of top producers. It gets us up and running much faster than trying to build everything from scratch ourselves.

But you can’t do that if we alienate them—threaten annexation, start trade wars, and undermine them mid-war.

In 2019 I wrote: “How are Korean & Japanese electronics companies failing to capitalize on the massive, growing, global distrust of China?? Wake up!” It’s six years later. Their door to pick up the slack in high tech manufacturing is closing. The new trade deal with Japan is promising, with its 15% base tariff. But it’s too soon to know if any new business will materialize. Many of these announcements sound like smoke blown up Trump’s *ss to inflate his ego at a press conference. It’s not real.

3. Secure Allies

Allies, in this case, fall into two categories—regional sourcing partnerships and large consumers markets (that import from China).

Let’s start with sourcing partnerships. The Trans-Pacific Trade Partnership (TPP), introduced under Obama, would have been a great start. It was a way to create a sphere of influence across Asia, countering the growing fear of Chinese power. Instead, we had a dumb, partisan backlash, killing the deal. Most simple Chinese products (clothes, toys, knickknacks) could just as easily come from Vietnam, Malaysia or Thailand.

There aren’t many big consumer markets. After the US, China, Eurozone, Japan, and India, things get quiet. Each warrants individual deals—ones that should present a unified front to China. They need to sit on our side of the table in those negotiations. In Trump’s approach, they are just another adversary, no different than China itself.

Rich Arab states have small populations. Africa, Latin/South America, and most of Asia have huge, but poor populations. Their consumption can add up in some categories, like agriculture and aviation. But our goal with emerging countries should be to help them emerge. We need to take away their incentive to join the BRICs alliance.

A good way to do this is with an incentive-based system. Not unlike the Mar-A-Lago Accords, instead of focusing on debt or dollars, focus our incentives on trade. In 2016, I wrote How to Make The U.N. Great Again…For the First Time. There, I proposed a more substantive alternative to the UN that transforms NATO into a trade entity. Almost any country could join, as long as it fulfilled multiple requirements. Benefits would escalate, as alignment with our interests increased. This is a positive, transparent, incentive-driven system to achieve what we flaccid, clandestine organs of soft power, like USAID, couldn’t.

Here is a sample tier system from that post. (The actual requirements and benefits can be anything we want.)

4. Renegotiate trade deals

With clear objectives and allies lined up, we can effectively use tariffs to pressure China. Let our companies compete there, stop product dumping, unfair subsidies, IP theft, and so on.

We also need to unleash our secret weapon: BRANDS. The leverage brands give us is criminally underrated.

Sidebar: Why BRANDS Are Our Secret Weapon...For Now

From the NBA to Nike to iPhones, what the US and Europe manufacture in spades, is Kate Spades. We manufacture DEMAND.

Kantar BrandZ ranks Apple as the world’s most valuable brand at ~$1.3 trillion, followed by Google and Microsoft. Only two Chinese brands recently cracked the Top 100 ($24B for Shein and $22B for Nongfu Spring). They’re hardly high end. Interbrand’s 2024 ranking has dozens of American and European brands in the $50–$500 billion range. Xiaomi and Huawei just cracked $6–8 billion on that list.

Western firms have mastered perceived value at scale. U.S. companies now carry ~90% of their value in intangibles like R&D and brand. They are global standards for identity, status and desirability.

Have you browsed Amazon lately? Half the listings read like Scrabble tiles after a hurricane. Dozens of knockoff chargers and mystery cables are the opposite of branded goods. They’re sold on price, not prestige. This is China’s default setting. This generic junk is the result of intra-regional competition within China. They’d flounder in low-cost commodity hell…if not for us.

Manufacturing our premium products is a lifeline that props up China’s AGGREGATE national margin. For example, Foxconn has low single-digit margins to Apple’s ~40%. But 60% of its revenue comes from making Apple products. So, in effect, China’s factories get a “vig” on our designs that’s HIDDEN in low unit margins. It’s the same way Spotify saved the music industry—by restoring aggregate industry profit. Even though unit profits (per artist and per song/album) fell or vanished. China is the music industry, US brands are Spotify, Chinese manufacturers and employees are the artists. The artist always suffers.

Our leverage won’t last forever. China is investing in innovation and consumer brands. While it still hasn’t birthed a Louis Vuitton—or a romantic Dim Sum restaurant, the margin gap is narrowing. Chinese consumers already buy a huge share of luxury goods. They’re on pace to be 35–40% of the world’s luxury market by 2030. The value of brands like Li-Ning have rocketed 66% in a single year, riding a wave of patriotism. Apple slid to third place in China’s phone rankings. Other U.S. firms now warn of “record-low profits” in the region.

For now, brand gives the West outsized negotiating strength. Soon, Western brands will become immaterial to both Chinese producers and consumers.

5. Prime the pump of domestic manufacturing

The US needs to play the long game. While procuring from more friendly nations, we must keep domesticating strategic industries. This means:

Encourage foreign manufacturers to build here, as we’re doing with shipbuilding from South Korea.

(Bloomberg) In any high-stakes military conflict with China, the US Navy will be critical to winning. But America’s shipbuilding industry is far from able to support what the Navy needs.

Enter South Korean shipbuilding powerhouse Hanwha Ocean Co. The company is buying a former Navy shipyard in Philadelphia and recently secured Korea’s first ever contract to overhaul a US naval vessel. These steps pave the way for the company to play a bigger role in the US naval shipbuilding sector and could herald the start of a new wave of investment.

America’s shipbuilding industry has virtually collapsed over the last generation, with years-long delays and cost overruns making it hard for the Navy to build the ships and submarines it needs.

“Look at the difference in shipbuilding between the United States and China — deeply concerning,” Deputy Secretary of State Kurt Campbell said a July testimony to a Senate committee.

Policy: For a while, Biden was more MAGA than MAGA. He kept Trump’s tariffs, added new ones, and incentivized domestic manufacturing with the CHIPS and Inflation Reduction Acts. Subtract the waste and social agenda, add performance incentives and monitoring, and it’s a better driver for manufacturing than Tariffpalooza.

Private Investment: tech giants, automakers, and pharma companies would need to make massive investments in new facilities.

Workforce Development: Not only is there a huge skills gap, but Americans aren’t exactly fired up for factory work. We’d not only need training programs and automation, but Lizzo and Kardashians posting FOMO bait from assembly lines.

6. Facilitate the future

With AI waiting in the wings to power the future economy, we will see entirely new industries and professions flourish. The key is letting them— occasionally facilitating their success with policy, investment, regulation. At the same time, we need programs to ease life disruptions by transitioning people into emerging job categories. We should also give every American a financial stake in the success of this new economy. (I’ll cover that in a future installment.)

R&D investment: I’ve sifted through clients’ IP portfolios to find buried treasures to commercialize. We should do the same across DARPA, NSF, NIH, and every other government-funded program. Then companies can reward us for that investment. And let’s invest in new long-term research. Building a pipeline of foundational technologies is something the US has been good at. I broke this down in this episode.

What’s Next?

I’ll pause the series here, for now. Suffice it to say, this road we’re on has many forks. The good news, rich people will be just fine. The working class and poor will need a plan—and some luck. You can reach out for speaking, scenario planning, or innovation inquiries. I’ll also gauge interest in live Q&A’s on how to plan for this uncertain future (career choices, education, investments, etc). Meanwhile, sign up for The Trendaddy newsletter and videos on all social platforms for updates. Be sure to set notifications on so you actually see my updates.

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Like Japan, Europe just agreed to a 15% across-the-board tariff, while the US will enjoy no tariffs on its exports to EU. Europe promised additional investments in the US, along with energy and weapons purchases. Europeans are ”appalled” at this deal, which looks like total surrender to Trump. Meanwhile, MAGAfans like Rod Martin view this deal as a huge victory. On the surface, Rod’s rod for Donald is justified. Trump got big concessions and made very few. But when you dig deeper, this is neither the surrender for Europe nor the win for domestic manufacturing we’ve been sold.

The one indisputable benefit of this deal is the end to trade war chaos. Even a punitive certainty is better than hopeful ambiguity, which made long-term planning impossible. Both Europe and US win in this regard.

The revenue from new tariffs is a double-edged sword, depending on who pays. Luxury brands are thrilled. They can absorb or pass on the extra cost because of high margins and price insensitive customers. Sellers of highly differentiated foreign goods that have few substitutes, will also pass higher costs to US consumers. Only producers of commodities (or categories with lots of substitutes, like mid-tier cars) will have to eat some of the tariffs. Ironically, the billions in new taxes are desperately needed to close the gaping budget deficits created by the “One Big Beautiful Bill”. Republican Josh Hawley is even proposing a $600 tariff rebate to Americans as reparations.

As Howard Lutnick admits, many details of this deal aren’t hammered out yet. Two of these seem far-fetched.

The WSJ and economic analysts think Europe’s $750B commitment to buy US energy is a fantasy. Europe bought $16-19B in all of 2024 and that much in the first half of 2025. At that level, our production and shipping capacity, along with Europe’s buying capacity, are maxed out. Hitting $250B a year would require the (return of the?) Messiah.

The other suspicious figure is a promise by Europe to invest $600B in the US. This follows a long string of similar announcements by Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Japan, and Narnia. No details, no timeline, no penalties for non-performance. Just a big crazy number to puff up Trump’s ego at a press conference. They’ve all cracked the super-secret code to our stoic, mysterious leader’s heart (and toilets) of gold. He likes big bucks and he cannot lie. (He can.) Let’s put it this way, don’t add these numbers to your 401k calculator just yet.

The most interesting commitment is “hundreds of billions” in military purchases. Not only does it address one of Trump’s biggest gripes with NATO members not paying their fair share (even war needs a Bernie Sanders), but it binds America’s military industrial complex to European defense. We are now inseparable in the only way America understands—money. As a byproduct, it also stunts any domestic manufacturing Europe may have been planning. No self-reliance on the horizon. (Writer Warwick Powell thinks this was an intentional move by Europe. I think it’s more incidental and expedient.)

When it comes to spurring manufacturing, it’s a mixed bag. We clearly beefed up our defense industry, which didn’t need the help. Beyond that, I doubt 15% is a big enough number to incentivize a big push for domestic manufacturing. In fact, 15% is a lower tariff on cars than what existed. It might even motivate BMW and Mercedes, which have been producing in the US, to re-shore that production. A lot will depend on the strength of the dollar, which has dropped 10% since the start of the year, and other conditions (taxes, incentives, labor cost/supply) that can make manufacturing in the US more or less attractive.

A lot of what I expect to happen is business-as-usual, because of loose enforcement and vague commitments. Even the exemptions for chemicals, agriculture, and aircraft are nods to worries about key inputs, inflation, and powerful lobbies.

Consistent with my series on manufacturing, this victory is shortsighted. This exchange on X captures my feelings on this weak use of American leverage.

By treating European allies no different than China—as adversaries and customers—we get concessions today and trade re-routed around the US, tomorrow. Transactional relationships are reciprocated, in kind. NATO was supposed to be a true allyship. Now, it’s an ex-girlfriend that still shares custody of the chihuahua.

Or maybe nothing consequential actually happens, besides a big tax hike on American consumers.

First, The Good News

Let’s starts with some positives. There are early signs of re-industrialization, according to libertarian economist Peter St. Onge:

• Adjusted GDP growth hit 4.5%, nearing 5% when accounting for reduced government spending, doubling China’s growth rate.

• Private sector investment surged 22%, fueling prosperity and re-industrialization, driven by foreign companies relocating production to the U.S.

• Announced investments reached $5 trillion, potentially $8 trillion per Trump, compared to pre-COVID gross private investment of $4 trillion, with projects like Taiwan Semiconductor creating 40,000 high-paying jobs.

• Consumer spending rose 0.7% monthly, nearing a 9% annualized rate.

• Inflation remained flat (though the most recent month showed a small uptick to a 2.7% annualized rate)

• Soaring investment and stable inflation signal a strong economic outlook

This popsicle paradise is also a minefield. And Trump is careening through it, unworried about blowing up the dollar, economy, or our reputation. Below are five reasons I am worried.

1. Public Shaming

I mentioned in the video that public shaming is a tool of last resort, especially when dealing with powerful people. What I didn’t mention is how vengeance against powerful bullies might play out, in practice. Remember how cable companies treated us? Constant fee hikes, service windows of four to six hours on work days, inexplicable bundles of things you didn’t want. The minute Netflix and streaming services became viable, millions ran for the hills. They cancelled cable in groves. Few under 40 have cable, anymore. Now imagine that, but with The World. It’s hard to know when – or if – payback will come, but Trump is inviting it. For now, I’ll brace for an extra dusting of arsenic in every Hot Wheels package.

The other part I left out of the video is how bullies trigger patriotism. Shaming a leader shames an entire nation, even if that leader is unpopular. When their citizens start to hate us, any cooperation is perceived as capitulation. Suddenly, those leaders are emboldened to say ‘no’ — even to good deals — just to spite the bully. Trump is building a wellspring of such resentment.

2. China, China, China!!

If our real target is China, why agitate the rest of the world? As I wrote in 2018, Trump was right to target unfair trade with China, but wrong to go it alone. We have far more leverage with allies, who are desperate for leadership, something America used to provide. Trump’s lone wolf take on ‘America first’ leaves us exposed, with all our cards on the table, and everyone rooting against us.

Even though Europe has diminished economically, it still makes up a sizable chunk of China’s trade surplus (24.9% to our 36.4%). That means, together, we’d have more leverage than we would alone. That’s not how Trump operates.

3. The Clinton Mistake

In Econovation, I was all over Clinton for signing NAFTA and other free trade deals that bled manufacturing jobs out of the country, with little to replace them. Like Clinton, Trump has built no manufacturing capacity or incentives, before tinkering with tariffs, weakening the dollar, and endangering its reserve currency status. So we’ll get a weaker dollar loooooong before we get manufacturing. I don’t think we’re prepared for the turmoil in between.

It’s similar to Trump’s Russia “negotiation” strategy. He flashed major concessions to Putin, only for Putin to sniff out weakness and double-down on pummeling Ukraine. In case it’s not clear from this example, American workers are Ukraine…and might get pummeled.

4. Unintended Consequences

I had to cut the video for time, but Trump’s actions are stuffed like a piñata, full of unintended consequences. Just since the tariffs were announced, the President has already floated tax cuts to offset higher cost of tariffed products. He promised carmakers to cut duties on inputs like steel, copper, and aluminum. In his 2018 trade war, he had to pay farmers a $28B bailout, after China imposed retaliatory tariffs. We might need to do it again. And these are just the short-term impacts.

Back in 2017, I wrote that the president is expediting the polarization of the world, where countries must align with either the US or China. This time, he’s created conditions that make choosing China easier. We already see adversaries aligning, as China switches LNG imports from the US to Russia. Allies are leaving, as China switches beef imports from the US to Australia. Even our closest neighbor and ally Canada is looking for deals with Asian partners to escape American tariff chaos.

5. Amputating Organs of American Power

There’s a low-grade cynicism—even nihilism—blanketing America. It feels so alien, compared to the ‘shining city on a hill’ I grew up with. To me, Reagan’s strength and positivity embodied that America. Maybe even Clinton – and the promise of Obama. That America was a magnet for immigrants, like my parents. We came here to chase opportunities unimaginable anywhere else. New immigrants still see America this way, but fewer and fewer citizens do.

“We are not prepared to confront the ugliness that was needed to build our comfort.”

Both over- and under-educated Americans are falling prey to hate, conspiracy, and fringe derangements. What’s unsettling is how many of these contain kernels of truth. It’s easy to denounce wars, slavery, or assassinations. They’re overt expressions of power. It’s soft power that’s truly unnerving. Books like Confessions of an Economic Hitman exposes the dark underbelly of American dominance. New revelations flood social media daily. We are not prepared to confront the ugliness that was needed to build our comfort. I wasn’t. I captured some of my struggle in this X thread:

Turns out, there are two parts to American greatness: The Dream and its underbelly. What if we need both to keep living the good life?

We suspected that Trump might not be the ‘dream builder’. We didn’t realize he’d gouge out our underbelly.

The America we have (not necessarily the one we want) relies on global cooperation and capitulation from other nations. We achieve it through carrots and sticks, administered through programs like CIA, USAID, IMF, NATO, World Bank, and WHO. And we propagate (propagandize?) them through tools like NPR, PBS, Voice of America, and social media. There’s plenty to dislike about all of them. Many are bloated, corrupt, obsolete, or misaligned. But Trump is slashing them with an ax, not a scalpel. He thinks he’s cutting our budget, he might be cutting our power.

As I wrote in The McFuture Manifesto, America is going through a national puberty that could drive us mad. Or, help us grow up.

To make it past puberty, we must reconcile the Myth of America with the ugliness needed to achieve it. And hopefully, emerge from that struggle with an aspirational vision for who we want to be, what we want to achieve, and how to do it.

But what if we never get that chance?

AI is America’s puberty blocker. It suppresses organic human thinking by drowning it in an infinity of synthetic ideas, built from our pre-pubescent knowledge. Effectively, AI hijacks human evolution. Not because its better, but because it’s so powerful and voluminous. We better grow up FAST, or it will do it for us.

Is there a better way?

Clearly, I digressed from manufacturing and tariffs. But don’t worry, the next episode is the big crescendo. It’s where I lay out what America must do to bring manufacturing back. No idea if I can condense it into a coherent, short video, but be sure to sign up to this newsletter for full, glorious, and happy ending. Till then!

It’s hard to know whether Trump’s master plan is well-thought out or intuitive, but I suspect it’s the latter. He’s a real estate guy. I’ve seen his desk. He understands buildings, paperwork, and physical projects. He is not of this digital world. I think that works in our favor. The digital world is about to be vicious and unkind to those who’ve made a living from it.

As I said in the video, whether Trump’s plans work almost doesn’t matter. We are on an unstoppable trajectory towards earth, a place we haven’t visited in a while, as a country. We didn’t have to. Dollars were magical and infinite. We could print them and the world would send us the fruits of their blood, sweat and tears. AKA “fair trade”, am I right?

Imagine the nerve — our financial engineers, marketers, consultants, corporate drones, and influencers made a killing. While essential workers — firemen, garbagemen, doctors, nurses, truckers, and countless foreigners with hoes and spatulas — kept us alive. That era is ending.

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First, NOBODY gets manufacturing back by changing one incentive. Some of Trump’s tariff edicts barely last one week. Meanwhile, supply chains are long, complex, expensive investment decisions that require certainty and stability — contracts, legislation, ecosystems (universities, job training, infrastructure, housing), and tax abatements…or as my transcription software called it, “Jason Batemans”. On Trump’s terms, this is like building your dream home on a raft. Or, in the Palisades.

These moves are not designed for long-term investment decisions, but invitations to negotiate. Not great invitations. Like 4th of July at Ted Kaczynski’s .

This is a chaotic turducken of high stakes bets, built on the idea that America can force other countries to capitulate. Everything has to go right. Even then, we will have alienated our allies and damaged trust in the US and the dollar.

This video is a more coherent breakdown of Trump’s plan than anyone, including him, has ever articulated. The steps make sense, on the surface. I’ll break down how they fall apart, in practice.

1. Chaos as Leverage

Using chaos to stimulate manufacturing is like yelling at a fat friend to run faster. Maybe they can, or maybe they’ll die.

Trump’s first move is meant to destabilize opponents by expanding the Overton Window. That makes previously unthinkable positions look like rational compromises. A 10% global tariff may have been unthinkable, until a 110% tariff was a reality. It’s all part of a pattern.

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Here’s a clean look at that graphic from the video. The percentages are illustrative, but echo the wage data below:

Today, it’s more relevant than ever. To manufacture a TV, phone, or router in the US—at a price consumers are willing and able to pay—companies would need to automate. Especially, given the differential in pay for factory workers. Here’s a comparison from Apollo of top manufacturing nations:

Some industries, like textiles, pay workers so little that competing with them is inconceivable, even with automation:

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Three Views of ‘Manufacturing Decline’

There are many ways to look at the state of manufacturing in our economy. I’ll explore three here: as a share of GDP, as a share of global production, and total output vs value-add. (You can see why this wonky stuff is impossible to do in a short video). That last one gets at the question of dollars vs. units. The latter being more interesting since China is purposely devaluing its currency to juice exports.

1. Let’s start with the obvious – manufacturing as a percent of GDP has been falling. Depending on the year and source, manufacturing is down to about 11% of GDP from 28% in the 60s. That’s exactly where it is now in China. By itself, this is not necessarily a negative. It just as easily shows we’ve successfully diversified our economy in ways others have not. (I’ll explain later in this series, that diversification is also a double-edged sword.) Either way, production is less pivotal to our economy…at least in dollars.

2. A second way to look at production is compared to world manufacturing output. Here, things start looking better for the US. As we’re down slightly from 1980 to 2023 from 211 to 17.2%. Meanwhile, China is on a tear, producing almost 29% of the world’s manufactured goods.

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How could it make sense to ship something so heavy and simple to make, all the way from India?

Turns out, India’s steel industry is the second-largest globally, producing 140.0 million tons of crude steel in 2023, but still a fraction of China’s 1,019 tons and more than our 81.4. So comparatively, India is swimming in iron ore and low-cost labor. No wonder it’s still cheaper to import their sewer covers, especially when tariffs are low.

The US doesn't manufacture enough products that use steel to make its cost per unit cheaper than India's, even after shipping costs and delays.

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That's because war is transitioning to cheap, high volume weapons, while our Military Industrial Complex milks fat contracts for big, expensive planes and missiles from the Cold War era. The F-35 alone cost us $2T to develop but might never fly in combat. It’s got all the efficiency of California building a high speed rail to Mars.

These two paragraphs from The New York Times are damning:

Consider the bill: Two aircraft carrier strike groups, each of which costs about $6.5 million per day to operate, are now parked off Yemen’s coast. Radar-evading B-2 bombers, which were designed to blitz the Soviet Union and cost about $90,000 per flight hour, have conducted airstrikes. In the first month of the operation, those bombers, along with dozens of fighter jets and drones, have dropped more than $250 million worth of munitions. The Navy is firing antimissile interceptors, which can cost some $2 million, to blast Houthi drones and missiles, which can cost just a few thousand dollars apiece. The tally for a military operation in Yemen, the Middle East’s poorest nation, is now expected to reach $2 billion in May, congressional aides say.

One of the deadliest attacks of the campaign came last week, when the United States bombed an oil terminal and killed at least 74 people, according to the Houthis. The next day, the Houthis shot down a $30 million MQ-9 Reaper drone and yet another on Tuesday night — the fifth and sixth since the mission began in March. The bombing raids, called Operation Rough Rider, show the United States has yet to establish air dominance above the country, despite hundreds of airstrikes that put pilots at risk as they routinely conduct attacks against Houthi militia forces.

The POOREST NATION in the Middle East is impoverishing us. Can you imagine what China could do? No wonder Trump was in a hurry to strike a deal with the Houthis, sans Israel. The price tag and embarrassment were palpable.

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Why are we starting trade wars and suddenly talking about manufacturing in the year 2025? Aren’t we all supposed to be food influencers and yogis? (Foogies…?) Is there something magical about manufacturing that Donald Trump knows and we don’t? Yes and no. There’s so much more to this story that isn’t being told. Until now.

In this 9-part video and newsletter series, not only will I answer ‘what can manufacturing do for you?’ but specifically:

1. Two strings that NEED manufacturing? (this post)

2. What’s the hell is wrong with our military?

3. Why do we need to bring back ALL industries, not just strategic ones?

4. Can America bring manufacturing back?

5. Will manufacturing bring good jobs back?

6. What’s Trump’s Master Plan?

7. What does this trade war reveal about the fate of America?

8. Is this a good strategy and will it work?

9. Is there a better way?

What Really Holds Up Our Economy?

To understand this entire series means understanding the two pillars holding up the US economy, as we know it.

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The scariest thing is medical school admissions. At first, I thought this chart was fake—or some kind of racist meme.

Then, I tracked down the original from AEI, a reputable conservative think tank. It’s all too real. And you can bet this pattern is being replicated across majors and professions.

Sorry, this is inexcusable. Most 20-year-olds never owned a single slave—or bolo tie. No reason to rig their admissions to college—or rodeos. Until there’s an unlimited supply of everything, we need to optimize for excellence.

The reason this isn’t quite a five-alarm fire is Asians are still killing it. I re-created a 2010 Pew Research study with more recent data to show how far above average earnings most Asians are.

Here’s a more refined look using 2018 data.

Bottom line: I find this whole topic irritating, divisive and regressive.

Of course, there was historical racism. Of course, some of it lingers. Of course, we should help those struggling to be the best they can, through tutoring, mentoring, apprenticeships, Big Brother/Sister programs, etc. But in the end, they must still achieve — as individuals and on THEIR OWN MERITS. Not as avatars for some political agenda or cynical voting bloc. How F***NG racist is it to create mind-numbingly dumb categories like "Asian” “Hispanic” or “Black”, completely disregarding the vast cultural differences between say, Cubans, Argentinians, and Guatemalans. Or, Japanese, Chinese and Malaysians. Or experiential differences between a Nigerian immigrant, an African American kid from Detroit, and Jayden Smith. It’s insulting, dehumanizing, and coercive to pretend this is sane. Time to snuff out this kind of identitarianism…with extreme prejudice.

And when there is racism, it should be litigated and adjudicated. The minute it’s presumed to be everywhere, like seed oils or Timothy Chalamet, the Utopians pushing it manufacture exactly what they claim to hate: “systemic racism”, poisoning society in the process.

If you like this and had this forwarded to you, subscribe here and share it with others. I’ll do one or two Trendaddy episodes and newsletters a week.

First, here’s the original chart from :

There are at least five reasons for these differences:

1. Media narratives (details below)

2. Data collection - as with many surveys and polls, data collection can be difficult and populations, unrepresentative. Unless I trust the methodology, I take them with a grain of salt.

3. Education - Americans aren’t exactly Rhodes Scholars. We’re a wildly diverse bunch, ranging from Young Sheldon to Young Frankenstein. Credit or blame goes to a mercurial mix of talent, effort, upbringing, and institutions.

4. Interests & biases - Everyone gravitates to what interests them. I’ve hired people for the same job, but each prioritized entirely different tasks. Same goes for information diets. The biggest NBA nerd might know Lebron’s daily assists, but have no clue or interest in how many Americans—or Lebron’s teammates—might be gay. More nefariously, our resentments and biases taint the info we do consume. A single, triggering data point will consume far more mental real estate than justified by the real world. Somewhere right now, there’s a guy raging about ‘illegals’ or Jews in some town that has neither.

5. Aspirations - people often respond to surveys based on how they want to see themselves (noble or smart) versus how they might really be (ignorant or petty). (This one applies least to this survey because there’s not a big aspirational component here.)

Media Narratives

It’s clear that the more often we’re bombarded with an idea, perspective, or set of words, the more we’re likely to internalize it, especially if it’s from a trusted source—or common in our social circle. I remembered how strange it was hearing a friend of mine to refer to her own five-year old son as “white-presenting”.

She’s hardly alone. Few appreciate how an entire new language, conjured by academia, was pounded into us, relentlessly, by corporate media. Did modern-day America suddenly become a vicious den of bigotry? Or, did we get turned on each other? Look at the sudden spike around 2013 of prejudice-adjacent terminology by the New York Times and Washington Post:

They’re hardly the only culprits, but representative of the activism that replaced journalism and damaged trust in legacy media.

Though in the video I said our misperceptions aren’t political — on the part of respondents, they are ideological. Behind each term was a radical agenda, weaponized to seize power. It nearly worked. Within a few short years, adherents rammed an entirely new language and divisive ideology into nearly every corporate, government, and academic entity. It was an administrative coup, whose excesses and coercion triggered the (over)correction we’re in now.

I assigned a likely primary (sometimes secondary and tertiary) reason to each response with a 20%+ gap. The ones highlighted are likely media-driven. What they have in common is identities that have become politicized, weaponized, and amplified by media activism, well beyond their demographic reality. They now occupy prime mental real estate that might otherwise be used for something silly like, learning a skill, playing with our kids, or getting along with Grandpa.

Most others deltas can be attributed to education or personal preferences/biases. One, reading books, might be a data collection issue. It relies on reading stats from other surveys that might be aspirational. Reading is dying and the estimated number is likely closer to reality. But I’ll save that for a future newsletter.

The most disturbing part is these perception gaps are baked into the logic of our society. Every vote, every business decision, every interview question, every social interaction, gets filtered through this distorted lens. Our perception gaps are both a cause and effect of our toxic reality.

AI Legacy

These distortions don’t die with Buzzfeed—or at the hands of MAGA. Many of those coding AI algorithms are cut from the same cloth as journactivists who stoked identitarianism, and training it on the same content. Who can forget Google Gemini’s Black and Vietnamese Founding Fathers?

Look at this ChatGPT result:

When asked to choose a presidential candidate, note the terms ChatGPT used in its first two reasons for choosing Kamala Harris: "Inclusivity" "diverse" "racial, economic, and social equity" "climate change" "healthcare expansion, and education reform" "sustainability" "environmental and social equity".

If you flood cyberspace with one particular worldview, don’t be surprised when algorithms trained on it, spit it back in your face. The very logic of the future is built on some wild and shaky foundations.

When clients or friends ask why I'm not worried about climate change, my answer is threefold:

1. As I mentioned in the video, the world has ALREADY PASSED peak CO2 emissions per capita. And according to the latest projections, "The world faces a “staggering” surplus of oil equating to millions of barrels a day by the end of the decade" (via FT) Fossil fuels are in retreat, relative to cheap renewables, with more about to come online, like 150+ new nuclear reactors in China, alone.

2. Emissions will fall in aggregate as global population ages and declines over the next 50 years onward. A near certainty, by every projection. Old and dead people just don’t consume that much. Slackers. The impact will dwarf anything in the Paris Climate Agreement and other marginal efforts.

3. Human ingenuity is undefeated, as evidence by this video on the protection of Venice. It’s a matter of sharing resources and know-how with the poorest places - better construction, cooling, infrastructure, medicine, food production, etc. We can and will adapt, if we choose to try.

For now, climate the climate alarmism agenda serves two main functions: 1) Triggering premature substitution of appliances/cars (which is arguably more depletive). And, 2) it keep developing nations from, well, developing. Just as we have and will continue to, using cheap, abundant energy.

Truth is: we are are on a green trajectory regardless of what we do. What we can—and should—do is ensure others, who are less fortunate, get to go on that ride, too.

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1. Main Chart: Should providing healthcare be the government’s responsibility?

It’s pretty wild that AFTER Obamacare was when people gave up hope on government getting them decent coverage. Government is way to captured by industry. The Democratic party is owned by Pharma and insurers, making sure there were no cost controls or public option. Republicans don’t bother to pretend to care. Pick your poison.

2. 84% (!!!) of healthy Americans like their health insurance plans. (I plan a killer episode soon on this!) But even those in poor or fair health, 68% like their insurance. With only a small fraction rating it as poor. This is why the white collar professional class that dominates the democratic party stopped talking about it. It’s not a priority. The blue collar working class moved to Republicans as an FU to the Dems, but without any real hope of change. Ah, hope and change…thanks for the memories.

3. Medicaid coverage isn’t great for those who work. The Bronze, Silver, Gold and Platinum plans are all Tin. Bad service at a bad price, like cable TV. But coverage is surprisingly comprehensive for those not earning anything. So if you’re a poor kid, disabled, or a screenwriter, you have a good chance of being fully covered. I don’t have the full breakdown of how many of each group there is. Either way, the recent GOP budget that passed will force almost $1.5 Trillion in Medicaid cuts so that taxed can be cut by $3.5 Trillion. In my view, absolutely overplaying the initial goodwill for MAGA. Screwing 72 million citizens will not go unpunished at the ballot box.

4. This is from my post and podcast called, Inequality We Trust. Also check out its sister post, Why Even Musk Can’t Trump The Inevitable. Both more relevant now than when they were written. Basically, they show how innovations become expectations over time—and why some technologies are inevitable.

Finally don’t forget to follow on social for upcoming videos (links below) and share this newsletter with a friend. Have them subscribe here. There’s a full podcast coming soon, hopefully a Q&A one and maybe some guests. Would love your feedback.

That’s it for now,

Steve

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