Tuesday, February 4, 2025

Part I

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Trump is Shaking Things Up: President Trump’s Tariff Regulations, USAID Changes, and the Difference Between His First and Second Administrations

Well, you can’t say it’s not interesting. President Donald Trump, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and international leaders have been very much in the headlines over some of the actions taken by the Trump White House, in particular threatened tariffs against, most importantly, the nations of Canada and Mexico, our two largest trading partners, and by the way, two very key allies to the United States. Now, threatening allies with this kind of a very stiff tariff, that’s not the usual way the politics is done. But then again, Donald Trump was elected to a second term as president not for doing things the way other presidents do them, but rather for doing them differently, and different is pretty much the standard of the day.

Now, over the weekend, President Trump indicated he will be applying 25% tariffs to all goods coming from Canada and coming from Mexico, 10% additional tariff on some coming from China. The China equation is still very much on the table, but as for Mexico and as for Canada, as of last night, 30-day probationary periods have been entered in which the tariffs are not going to be applied. President Trump is claiming victories in terms of the negotiations because the president of Mexico decided that she would agree to send 10,000 Mexican Army troops to the border in order to defend the border against both illegal immigration into the United States and drug trafficking across the very same border.

At the same time, Canada also avoided the 25% tariff by having Prime Minister Justin Trudeau negotiate directly with President Trump in such a way that the president has also agreed to delay for at least 30 days the implementation of those tariffs. The reality is that there’s a lot behind this that isn’t just about, say, tariffs and the products of international commerce. It’s also about the relative advantages that certain nations have over other nations. As a matter of fact, President Trump pretty much pointed to the fact that one of his concerns comes down to limitations on banking, the banking industry in Canada by American banks. And so, you might say that’s kind of a footnote in terms of the relationship between the United States and Canada, but this is the way some of these footnotes are renegotiated.

Now, we also have a free trade agreement between Mexico and the United States and Canada, and that’s up for renegotiation next year. It appears that President Trump wants to accelerate that renegotiation period, and he’s indicated for many years that he’s dissatisfied with the trade relationship between the United States and both Mexico and Canada. And so, it’s going to be interesting to see what comes out of this. But in one sense, to put it just as bluntly as I can, this is a game of political chicken. And to know Donald Trump is to know that, in business and in politics, he likes to play chicken and he likes to point to wins, and there are likely to be wins out of this.

But it’s also important to recognize that for our own economic security and the stability of the American economy, it is probably not in our interest to have the entire system destabilized by the imposition of this kind of tariff that would lead to a tariff war. In economic history, that has never ended well and in economic history, that almost always ends. But you can debate whether the situation at the end of that tariff war was in any way advantageous to the one before.

But here’s what we know. President Trump, at this date, is able to point to significant gains he believes came as a result of the negotiations with the threat of tariffs. Thirty days, that’s a short amount of time in international politics and in international business. Thirty days, however, seems like a very long time compared to those tariffs beginning in a matter of minutes or hours. Thirty days gives a little bit of time to figure a lot of things out.

But here’s something else just in terms of analysis we need to keep in mind. You are really looking at a different game being played here, a different game being played by President Trump and the Trump administration as compared to other administrations. Now, there’s always a public game and a private game, but here’s what’s really interesting. President Trump clearly believes in playing the public game.

And so, negotiations like this have taken place in the past and even this kind of pressure has been applied in the past. These kinds of threats, one way or another or their equivalent, have been extended in the past. But much of that was done in private, behind closed doors within something like an envelope of diplomatic conversation or even conversations between equivalents to the Secretary of Treasury, the Secretary of Commerce in the United States and their international colleagues and between the heads of these nations as well.

But when it comes to President Trump, he clearly sees the public game as primary, the private game as secondary. And the proof of that is that Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau indicated even over the weekend that he was trying to have a private conversation with President Trump and he hadn’t been granted that private conversation. Within just a short amount of time, he was granted that private conversation, but the point is the big threat had already been issued in public. So, under President Trump, count on this, the public game is, at this point, louder than the private game. Is that likely the way things are going to continue? Well, that’s the way he did business in the real estate sector and it is the way he did business in his first term in office, and it appears that’s the way he’s going to do business in his second term as well.

But speaking of public, the big news yesterday was controversy over USAID. That’s the United States Agency for International Development. President Trump basically is putting pressure on this particular bureaucratic unit and he is intentionally seeking to bring it under the authority of the United States Secretary of State, his Secretary of State Marco Rubio. Now, the president’s been using some colorful language. That’s not an aberration, that’s the way he does business, but he referred to those who’ve been running USAID as, in his words, “radical lunatics.” Both of those words put together are a pretty powerful punch. You might say that over here you would have lunatics. It’s a different thing to say radical lunatics; the President knew what he was doing.

USAID is one of those federal agencies that in the eyes of conservatives has been out of control for a very long time. And one of the most interesting things that’s going to happen, and I think this is an easy prediction right now, one of the most interesting things that is going to happen is that Elon Musk, head of the DOGE Project and Secretary of State Rubio, and for that matter probably the president himself, are going to start putting out evidence of the kind of expenditures in the billions of dollars that has gone through USAID.

President John F. Kennedy created it in 1961 by executive order. It was later authorized by congressional legislation. But the point is this, it was not put under the State Department. And I think there’s a very good argument that it should have been under the State Department all along. You create a federal bureaucracy, you give it billions of dollars to dole out, and then you add to it the very radical worldview, I’ll use at least one of the terms the President used, you take at least a radical worldview and a political agenda that has resulted in what, I think, will be very embarrassing expenditures of funds.

And it is also interesting that Secretary of State Rubio has accused at least some of the leaders in USAID of direct insubordination, refusing even to give information. And again, I’ll just underline the fact that, in previous administrations, doing things by, say, in historical norm, there might have been some private conversations and even some direct initiatives undertaken before all of the public attention was drawn to this situation.

That’s not the way President Trump works. He wants the public to understand exactly what he’s doing. He wants the public to watch the administration as it undertakes these actions. And it’s going to be very interesting, as I say, to see what kind of evidence they begin to put on the table. But I know enough to say that I think radical is not going to be seen as an exaggeration when we see where American monies have gone, often, as Secretary Rubio indicated yesterday, in direct conflict with America’s national interest and the aims of the State Department in some of these very same regions. Stay tuned.

By the way, what is a key distinction between Trump administration number one and Trump administration number two? Well, for one thing, Trump administration number one, by President Trump’s own description, really didn’t understand how the federal government works. Trump administration number two is in an entirely different place. For instance, the actions undertaken by the president when it comes to terrorists and some of these other issues come under the authority of a 1977 act known as the International Emergency Economic Powers Act of 1977.

So, all that is required here is for the President of the United States to declare a specific emergency. In this case, the president has identified it, mostly in terms of fentanyl coming into the nation with devastating results, and he declares an emergency and then he may take such executive actions. It really does make a difference if those who are running the administration are aware of the existence of such a law or not. 2017, they didn’t know. 2025, buckle your seat belts, they’ve read the law.

Part II

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Here’s a Surprise, Chinese A.I. Chip Sounds Like a Communist – DeepSeek Technology Found to Respond to Prompts with Chinese Communist Propaganda

But now, we’re going to shift to a couple of other issues. One of them, I think, isn’t getting the attention it deserves. And you might say when you talk about the announcements that came in recent days about DeepSeek, that’s the Chinese artificial intelligence platform that was announced. And of course, the big news about it is that it doesn’t use up as much energy nor does it operate in such an expensive way as the current AI platforms, and that it’s a disruption. But you might imagine there’s more to the story, and indeed there is.

For example, just over the last day or so, The New York Times has put out a report with the headline: “Propaganda Finds Home on DeepSeek.” So, here’s the bottom line. Guess what? The Chinese government, under the control of the Chinese Communist Party, has largely allowed and even invested in this DeepSeek platform and made it available even on open source basis. But what’s the advantage to China? Well, the disruption of the American AI industry, that’s one thing. But the other advantage to China and to the Communist Party is that this AI platform is going to sound like a Chinese communist. Who would’ve thought?

Steven Lee Meyers is the reporter. Here’s how he begins the report, “If you’re among the millions of people who have downloaded DeepSeek, the free new chatbot from China powered by artificial intelligence, know this. The answers it gives you will largely reflect the worldview of the Chinese Communist Party.” Now, anyone who’s surprised by this should be embarrassed that you’re surprised because this is how the Communist party works. This is how a totalitarian regime works.

Even when you look at a technological innovation like this that’s presented as kind of a neutral AI platform, the reality is there’s nothing neutral here. Nothing’s neutral when it’s driven by the ideology of the Chinese Communist Party. And so, for example, is just one instance of the tilt that is coming on this DeepSeek chatbot. “In one instance, the chatbot misstated remarks by former President Jimmy Carter that Chinese officials had selectively edited to make it appear that he had endorsed China’s position that Taiwan was part of the People’s Republic of China.”

President Carter did not do that. This is a manipulated message, but I dare say there are going to be many people, indeed the vast majority of Americans weren’t even born when Jimmy Carter was president, there are a lot of people who are going to see this, created by artificial intelligence, communicated by this chatbot, and they’re going to believe it. And that’s exactly why the Chinese Communist Party is so happy about this.

Meyers also tells us, “Since the tool made its debut this month rattling stock markets and more established tech giants like Nvidia, researchers testing its capabilities have found that the answers it gives not only spread Chinese propaganda, but also parrot disinformation campaigns that China has used to undercut its critics around the world.” This is a technique, a subversive technique increasingly used by actors on the world scene hostile to the United States, going all the way back to the second decade of the 21st century. Russia was big into this. China is big into this and far in advance technologically than, at this point, the Russians. Even Iran is involved in this kind of thing as documented by American intelligence organizations and law enforcement as well.

So, we have enemies. And one of the ways an enemy can advance its cause and can weaken the United States is by offering something that is accepted by people supposedly as a neutral platform only to find out the information that is loaded on it, the information that is conducted through it, turns out to be Chinese Communist Party propaganda. Again, no surprise here. Anyone who’s surprised by this should be embarrassed, but we also need to recognize this is likely to be very effective. This is one of those problems that’s very hard to get rid of.

Just think of TikTok, the United States Congress very clearly took action and President Biden when he was in office signed it saying that TikTok should be out of business at this point. But President Trump and his administration, like you see in the tariffs, they want a temporary period to see if some arrangement can be made that would allow TikTok to continue. And here’s where vigilance is very, very key. We have to make certain that TikTok is not the platform of the Chinese Communist Party in the United States. And there is good reason to believe that that’s exactly what it is, but not so much when it comes to TikTok pushing information in but when it comes to the communist regime and China harvesting information out, that is the private information of American users.

Oh, here’s something very, very telling, the final point I’m going to make on this story. If you ask the DeepSeek chatbot about China’s totalitarian leader, the head of the Communist Party and the head of state of China Xi Jinping, if you ask DeepSeek’s chatbot about the great leader, guess what? At this point, it doesn’t give you anything back. Or as The Times tells us, “Like all Chinese companies, DeepSeek must also abide by China’s strict government control and censorship online, which is intended above all to mute opposition to the Communist Party’s leadership.” Listen to this, “DeepSeek declines, for example, to respond to sensitive questions about the country’s leader Xi Jinping and avoids or deflects those about other topics which are politically taboo within China.” Or to put it another way, in conclusion, we shouldn’t be surprised that DeepSeek isn’t going to allow you to seek some things on the platform.

Part III

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The Growing Worldview Chasm Between the Right and the Left: The Democrats Have Been Crushed Politically and are Soul-Searching…Sort Of

All right, increasingly in the United States, this has become more and more true over time. The two parties are divided into two separate worldviews, and it’s not just two different slices of the electorate. It is a chasm of worldview difference between Republicans and Democrats as there is a chasm between in social, moral, and even theological, and ontological terms, the Right and the Left. The chasm is not growing more shallow, it’s growing deeper. It’s not growing more narrow, it’s growing wider.

And honestly, there are big questions, big worldview questions, about the future of the Republican Party as well as the future of the Democratic Party. But right now, the big questions are on the Democratic side. And the reason for that is quite simple. The last election cycle was absolutely devastating to the Democratic Party. The Democrats lost the White House. They lost control of the United States Senate. They did not gain control of the United States House. Thus, they have control of none of the major microphones in Washington right now. And thus, the Democrats are asking some really big soul-searching questions, sort of.

At least one question was answered over the weekend, and that was who’s going to run the Democratic National Committee? It came down to two democratic operatives from the upper Midwest, one from Wisconsin and one from Minnesota. It was Minnesota’s Ken Martin who was elected very convincingly in terms of the vote to lead the Democratic National Committee, and he’s made very clear he intends to lead with energy. He was a major political operative there in the State of Minnesota, very allied with Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, who was the Democratic vice presidential candidate in 2024.

This is likely to be a very confrontational mode of leadership coming from Ken Martin as head of the DNC. But the big question, of course, is what kind of leadership and messaging is going to come from the Democratic Party? The whole point of having the DNC is to allow the party at the national level to come up with a national strategy and national messaging. In one sense, there is also a lot of responsibility to come up with the message, not just the messaging, but the message itself. The big problem for the Democrats, and that’s made clear even by the mainstream media, is that poll after poll was indicating that the party is out of step with Americans. Very interesting polling that was released just in recent days. Some of this is undertaken by major papers such as The New York Times, some of it also by independent polling agencies.

But what is the link to the Republican Party in the minds of voters? Increasingly, it’s the social issues. And so, a lot of voters who said, what does the Democratic Party stand for? They came up with LGBTQ and in particular trans issues, transgender issues, and that was seen in a negative light. Now, here’s what’s interesting. You had the DNC’s leadership coming back and saying Kamala Harris, the Vice President of the United States at the time, the Democratic nominee, did not herself make a big issue of those questions, of the LGBTQ issues. And that’s because she didn’t have to. She had already done that. She was already labeled. She was already positioned. She’s absolutely pro-LGBTQ. She’s a part of an administration that frankly contorted federal law and policy in favor of non-binary and transgender identities.

It was the Republicans who were able to message on the issue. And even as the media and survey takers understand the reason why the Democratic Party is identified with those issues is because that’s exactly where they stand. That it wasn’t so much that they messaged that issue during the campaign as that the Republicans messaged it against them quite effectively.

The big question, let’s face it, for the Democratic Party is how much is going to be committed as a coalition of identity politics to the individual agendas of all those identity politic groups? And so, for instance, LGBTQ Caucus, the Abortion Rights Caucus, and then you also have older labor-related caucuses with special interests such as the teacher’s unions, which have a vastly outsized influence in the Democratic Party. Going back a matter of decades in the Democratic Party, you could go to the Democratic National Convention, and by some estimates, two out of three of the persons in the room were either members of the NEA or the AFT, the big teachers unions, or they were married to someone who did or had a family member who was a member. That is to say the teacher’s unions, which are way on the Left, there’s almost no way to exaggerate how far they are on the Left. They have inordinate power in the Democratic Party.

But the Democratic Party has also given itself to identity politics. It’s increasingly become a coalition of those on the Left who are identified by one of these groups or another, and they have their own agenda and they’re not going to give it up. And furthermore, they’ve defined the modern party in these terms. So, some of the leaders, in terms of the conversation in the Democratic Party in recent days, they were saying, “The problem is our messaging.” And at least some on the outside are saying, “I think the problem is actually the message.”

And here’s the quandary for the Democrats, it’s going to be very difficult to change the message because the party is held together by this coalition of interest groups, and it is very doubtful that they are going to compromise on their singular issue or their singular agenda. And thus, if you create your party as a coalition of special interests, guess what? You become a coalition of special interest. And those interests are, let’s just put it this way, very special. They also, at this point, tend to be a turnoff to the American voter.

The other big question for the Democrats, and this is where you understand, is they’re trying to figure out how they lost so much at one time. The big question is, what was the driving issue in the electoral loss? And they’re largely at the consensus of the fact that their argument is it’s going to be economic, it was going to be inflation, it was going to be a lack of adequate messaging on economic issues coming from the Kamala Harris campaign or the Biden administration. I think the Republicans would be very happy for them to continue to make that argument. What is probably not on the table is asking a serious question about the influence of identity politics, and the commitment to identity politics on the part of the party.

Now, the future of the Republican Party, let’s face it, it’s also complicated, but right now, the future of the Republican Party isn’t a question. It is a name, President Donald J. Trump. And you are looking at the fact that he, right now, can almost unilaterally define the, at least, short-term future of the Republican Party. Now, as we get closer and closer to the next election, big worldview issues, big political issues, big moral issues are going to be on the table.

But at this point, the most urgent conversation isn’t among the Republicans. After all, they’re in control of so much of Washington. The big questions are coming on the Democratic side and with a lot of urgency because, at least at this point, they’re not even sure which Democrat should be at a microphone in order to describe and defend where the Democrats stand. But then the other problem is, on many issues, they’re going to have to figure out how they’re going to explain to Americans exactly where they stand.

Speaking by the way of Ken Martin, the new chairman of the Democratic National Committee, formerly holding the same position at the state level in Minnesota, it’s very interesting that one of the ways he’s described in the media is like this, “He also has experience holding together a fractious coalition that covers the ideological spectrum from deeply progressive activists in the Twin Cities there in Minnesota to at least some moderate voters in rural parts of the state.”

Now, wait just a minute. Wait, wait, wait. Here, we have a big problem. If you think the political spectrum is just from radical progressives to those “at least some moderate voters in rural parts of the state,” if that’s what you think is the full spectrum of the American political landscape, that’s a part of your problem because it’s just basically something to the Left, more to the Left, and even more to the Left. That’s not exactly a stable base.

Part IV

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How Worldview Battles Take Shape: The Ideological Lines and Political Actions Being Hammered Out Behind Closed Doors as We Speak

In conclusion, for Christians, we need to understand that this is the way a lot of intellectual, moral worldview battles take place. They don’t take place just in elections when voters go into a polling place or however voters now vote. It also takes place in closed rooms where, for example, in meetings of the Democratic National Committee on the one hand or the Republican National Committee on the other hand, policies are hammered out. Political strategies are developed and adopted.

This is where a lot of the political action is, but it’s also where a lot of the worldview issues are dealt with. And we need to understand that political process because it really is important. And a lot of what the Democratic National Committee is going to be deciding over the next few months, that’s going to have a lot to do with the approach that that party will take at the national level to the 2026 mid-year elections, and then the big contest in 2028. And I can promise you this, they are going to be working hard to be in a different position in 2028 than they were in 2024. But at this point, it’s going to be very difficult to figure out how they shift from the left, even to the center, much less the right. It doesn’t appear possible given the coalition of those in the room.

And on so many of the most important issues to Christians, including the LGBTQ revolution, religious liberty, the sanctity and dignity of human life, a lot of those things, it’s hard to imagine how the Democratic Party can retreat a centimeter from the very radical positions it has undertaken, and that’s because it does represent where the party is. So, it’s going to be very interesting to see what happens. But for Christians, it is important for us to realize that a lot of these worldview issues are hammered out, not so much in public, but in private, in rooms where groups like the Democratic National Committee and the Republican National Committee hold their meetings. But the important thing to realize is that these meetings, these groups, they affect real consequences with deep significance and meaning. A lot is at stake. So, that’s why we’ll need to track this as we move month by month into the future.