Thread by @TheLastRefuge2

1. Here's some perspective on this ridiculous op-ed. wsj.com/articles/trump…

2. @ChuckGrassley is doing the bidding of Tom Donohue, the corrupt U.S. Chamber of Commerce, K-Street, his BigAG benefactors, and selling out the U.S. middle-class while simultaneously cloaking himself in the flag. Despicable. @GrassleyPress

3. On Steel and Aluminum tariffs @ChuckGrassley threatens: " If these tariffs aren’t lifted, USMCA is dead."... Additionally: "Many Americans have been harmed by retaliatory tariffs. Mexican tariffs on U.S. pork, to take one example".

4. This is pure hogwash. (pun intended)

5. First, notice how obtuse he is. The USMCA was agreed upon by Mexico and Canada. The deal is written. Done. Both Mexico and Canada have agreed to terms. So it's not Mexico and Canada rebuking the USMCA it is Chuck Grassley.

6. @ChuckGrassley wants to hide truth, by falsely asserting a position that is his multinational corporate owners alone. It is @GrassleyPress who says USMCA is dead, because it doesn't meet *HIS* terms. *HIS* terms, not Mexico and/or Canada.

7. That type of obfuscation is typical amid the top K-Street purchased political class.

Grassley is selling out American workers and the American middle-class on behalf of his K-Street donors (specifically Tom Donohue). But he needs to hide that aspect.

8. Second, RE: "Many Americans have been harmed by retaliatory tariffs. Mexican tariffs on U.S. pork, to take one example, have lowered the value of live hogs by $12 an animal."..

9. The biggest U.S. corporate pork owner/contractor is Smithfield. Who owns Smithfield? A. CHINA !!

revealnews.org/article/how-ch…

10. The current USA -vs- China trade standoff (negotiations ongoing) is the primary influence of current pork pricing.

11. Sure Mexico and Canada would love to keep their access to the U.S. market as open as possible and water-down any position that increases the U.S. economy. However, it is congress who are currently positioning themselves to eliminate the U.S. benefit, not Mexico and Canada.

12. President Trump has already given Grassley a big win for Iowa with the continuance of a ridiculous ethanol subsidy. Now Grassley wants more on behalf of his benefactors.; and he doesn't care if that hurts the U.S. economy.

13. This is what we are up against. Purchased politicians doing the bidding of multinational corporate interests and simultaneously trying to hide their motives. Lobbyist Expenditures 2018:

14. President @realDonaldTrump is disrupting the global order of things in order to protect and preserve the shrinking interests of the U.S. He has been fighting, almost single-handed, at the threshold of the economic abyss. So far he has been winning.

15. President Trump has been structuring a plan to break up multinational corporate ownership over our economy via “controlled markets.” In the interim, to return to supply-side principles, POTUS Trump has been offsetting the short-term downsides. reuters.com/article/us-usa…

16. President Trump is confronting multinational corporations and the global constructs of economic systems that were put in place to the detriment of the host (USA), that's us.

17. There are trillions at stake; it is all about the economics; all else is chaff and countermeasures.

18. Familiar faces, perhaps faces we previously thought were decent, are now revealing their alignment with larger multinational entities and corporate benefactors. These were our hidden abusers and now Trump is forcing them into the sunlight.

19. Big AG is not supporting local farmers. Big AG does not support “free and fair markets.” Big AG supports the interests of multinational corporations and multinational financial interests.

20. We are already familiar how China, Mexico and ASEAN nations export our raw materials (ore, coking coal, rare earth minerals etc.). The raw materials are used to manufacture goods overseas, the cheap durable goods are then shipped back into the U.S. for purchase.

21. It is within this decades-long process where we lost the manufacturing base, and the multinational economic planners (World Trade Organization) put us on a path to being a “service driven” economy.

22. The road to a “service-driven economy” is paved with a great disparity between financial classes. The wealth gap is directly related to the inability of the middle-class to thrive.

23. Elite financial interests, including those within Washington DC, gain wealth and power, the U.S. workforce is reduced to servitude, “service”, of their affluent needs.

24. The destruction of the U.S. industrial and manufacturing base is EXACTLY WHY the wealth gap has exploded in the past 30 years.

With that familiarity, did you think the multinationals would stop with only “DURABLE GOODS”?

25. They don’t. They didn’t.

26. The exact same exfiltration and exploitation has been happening, with increased speed, over the past 15-20 years with “CONSUMABLE GOODS“, ie food.

Raw material foodstuff exported to China, ASEAN nations & Mexico, processed and shipped back into U.S. as a finished product.

27. Archer Daniels Midland (ADM), Monsanto, Nestlé, PepsiCo, Bunge, Potash Corp, Cargill or Wilmar, stay out of the public eye by design.

28. Most megafood conglomerates have roots going back a century or more, but ever-increasing consolidation means that their current corporate owners may have been established only a few years ago. Welcome to the complex world of Big Ag:

google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j…

29. Multinational corporations, BIG AG, are now invested in controlling the outputs of U.S. agricultural industry and farmers. This process is why food prices have risen exponentially in the past decade.

30. The free market is not determining price; there is no “supply and demand” influence within this modern agricultural dynamic. Food commodities are now a controlled market just like durable goods.

31. The raw material (harvests writ large) are exploited by the financial interests of massive multinational corporations. This process is “contract farming”.

32. If simple U.S. supply & demand were part of the domestic market price for food, we would see prices of aggregate food products drop by half almost immediately. Some perishable food products would drop so dramatically in price it is unfathomable how far the prices would fall.

33. Behind this dynamic we find the international corporate and financial interests who are inherently at risk from President Trump’s “America-First” economic and trade platform. Believe it or not, President Trump is up against an entire world economic establishment.

34. When we understand how trade works in the modern era we understand why the agents within the system are so adamantly opposed to U.S. President Trump.

35. The biggest lie in modern economics, willingly spread and maintained by corporate media, is that a system of "global markets" still exists.

It doesn’t.

36. Every element of global economic trade is controlled and exploited by massive institutions, multinational banks and multinational corporations.

Institutions like the World Trade Organization (WTO), IMF and World Bank control trillions of dollars in economic activity.

37. Underneath that economic activity there are people who hold the reigns of power over the outcomes. These individuals and groups are the stakeholders in direct opposition to principles of America-First national economics.

38. The modern financial constructs of these entities have been established over the course of the past three decades.

39. In the Western World, separate from communist control perspectives (ie. China), “Global markets” are a modern myth; nothing more than a talking point meant to keep people satiated with sound bites they might find familiar.

40. Global markets have been destroyed over the past three decades by massive multinational corporations who control the products formerly contained within global markets.

41. The same is true for “Commodities Markets”. The multinational trade and economic system, run by corporations and multinational banks, now controls the product outputs of independent nations.

42. The free market economic system has been usurped by entities who create what is best described as ‘controlled markets’.

43. U.S. President Trump smartly understands what has taken place; and more importantly he is working through a deliberate process to reverse it to the benefit of the U.S. economy.

44. President @realDonaldTrump is a one man, economic, yellow vest of power; actually reversing decades of middle-class destruction.

45. And the elites, including those within our own political class; who are no longer able to exploit or influence the U.S. economy under his stewardship; are absolutely apoplectic that Trump has smashed their trade-trough of scheme and graft.

46. THAT is what @ChuckGrassley's Op-Ed was all about.

wsj.com/articles/trump…

47. /END