There’s a lot more uninformed opinions than facts swirling around X about how “trade math” (duties, tariffs, VAT, etc) works between the US and other countries.

This is particularly true in light of President Trump’s announcement on 13 Feb of the “Fair and Reciprocal Trade Plan”.

Understanding that POTUS sees trade deficits as an existential challenge to US greatness is the Rosetta Stone for interpreting his directives on trade, the economy, and a whole range of adjacent geopolitical issues.

Given my 20 years in managing international freight, supply chains, and regulatory compliance (both in policy and private sector management), I wanted to help shed some light on how this all breaks down in the real world.

Thread.

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Now, there are generally five categories of taxes applied to goods being sold under international trade regimes.

TARIFFS

This term is often confused by the layman to mean a specific type of punitive tax imposed on goods traded with other countries – this is NOT TRUE, as a tariff (by definition) is simply any tax imposed on imported goods.

(Export tariffs do exist, but are not common, so for the purposes of this primer, we’ll regard tariffs as being import-specific.)

However, in the real world, a tariff is generally an additional tax in addition to duties and punitive taxes (antidumping and countervailing) owed at the time of the goods’ entry into the commerce of a country/region/state.

For historical context, interstate tariffs were a major contributing cause to the US Civil War, with the battle over interstate/international trade policy (not slavery) perhaps being the dominant economic issue facing the US from its inception until WW1.

essentialcivilwarcurriculum.com/tariffs-and-th…

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This is a more thorough and expert-level treatment of the East Palestine derailment than anything I would be able to muster.

Maintenance and systems control failures were my immediate assumptions.

Corollary - it is remarkably easy to induce the latter through SCADA attacks.

https://twitter.com/AnneNJunod/status/1625675148505530368

Another expert on the issue of supply chains, infrastructure, and national security - @JoshuaSteinman - frequently discusses the risk of covert or overt attacks on US logistics and energy infrastructure.

It also continues to be a leading concern of military/intel officials.

🚨Thread of Threads on Supply Chains and US Response During COVID-19

At the request of many readers, I'm compiling and pinning a master thread of all the long-form information I've prepared since the emergence of COVID-19.

New threads will be appended to this as I write them. On the US' emergency response protocols, process, and limitations:

https://x.com/man_integrated/status/1237461918761263104

𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐄𝐄𝐙 𝐁𝐮𝐭𝐭𝐨𝐧

Food, energy, and water are the three things that sustain civilization - the oceans offer an abundance of each.

Established by the UN in 1982, Exclusive Economic Zones were created to resolve maritime disputes.

They have done anything but.

Thread. Prior to the adoption of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) in 1982, maritime commerce and territorial disputes were settled via a complex maze of customs, agreements, laws, and treaties loosely called "admiralty law".

It worked, albeit messily.

2/

𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐔𝐧𝐬𝐢𝐧𝐤𝐚𝐛𝐥𝐞 𝐀𝐢𝐫𝐜𝐫𝐚𝐟𝐭 𝐂𝐚𝐫𝐫𝐢𝐞𝐫

The US military, for all of its might, still faces physical limits of distance and time.

Control of key landmasses enables logistical operations at scale.

The US has one of the most important. China wants it.

Thread. More than 1,700 km from the nearest mainland (India), Diego Garcia is the largest island in the Chagos Archipelago.

Originally discovered by the French in 1790, the British took control in the 1800's.

For NATO countries, it is an indispensible piece of the global puzzle.

2/

𝐂𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐚 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐏𝐫𝐨𝐭𝐞𝐢𝐧

The axis of the world turns upon control of four resources:

Protein
Water
Energy
Firepower

The first is the subject of this thread.

China's enormous population demands massive amounts of protein.

And a war is on for it.

1/ Christmas Eve 2013, panicked calls to logistics managers working in the grain industry began flooding in.

Without notice, China had banned the import of any corn or corn co-product that contained more than a tiny trace of Syngenta's MIR162 transgenic trait.

2/