DÜSSELDORF, Germany — The general state debt spiral should be a constant feature in daily headlines. Its prominence should force policymakers into a radical fiscal turnaround. Yet while Germany is working under immense pressure to ban the AfD, forming alliances with left-wing extremists, and eroding the political culture, on the other side of the Atlantic, preparations are underway for the approaching storm. We live in record-breaking times. In the first quarter of this year, global debt surged to a record high of $324 trillion. This milestone becomes significant when compared to global GDP, which currently hovers around $110 trillion. Governments worldwide now owe 100 percent of GDP — an alarming reality, as no modern state has ever managed to free itself from the ensuing fiscal bind once this threshold is reached. Debt levels of 80-90 percent mark the “point of no return.” The Tipping Point of the Debt Spiral At this scale, debt reaches a critical mass. It inevitably forces an escalating debt service burden that drains scarce capital from the private sector to finance bloated social funds, ultimately leading to the same scenario we faced 15 years ago during the last severe sovereign debt crisis. Back then, Greece’s impending default sent shockwaves across credit markets. Central banks intervened with trillions, and governments stepped in to rescue debt-laden pension funds and banks with taxpayers’ money. Greece’s national debt stood at 143 percent at the onset of this crisis, and it is now about 155 percent — no debt consolidation has occurred. The southern European countries are, quite frankly, sinking into a swamp of debt. Italy, with 140 percent, Spain at 120 percent, and France’s budget deficit at 7 percent, leave much to be desired. On average, the EU’s debt-to-GDP ratio is now approaching 95 percent, closing in on the global benchmark of 100 percent. Bond Vigilantes Lurk in the Markets We must now prepare for the moment when a tipping point in bond markets triggers a series of sovereign defaults. This will occur when a growing crisis of confidence among investors, banks, and investment funds translates into a sell-off cascade in the bond markets. Let’s keep an eye on interest rates: if they rise with high volatility and market volume, general unrest is on the horizon. We have already witnessed the emergence of “bond vigilantes” this year — critical bond investors who pull the plug when debt levels rise. On the day it was announced that Germany would borrow about a trillion euros over the next four years and issue corresponding bonds, the interest rates on German bonds surged by more than 40 basis points. (RELATED: The Euro’s Paper Empire: Germany’s Big Bond Gamble) This was a quantum leap in typically sluggish bond markets, particularly for the highest-rated bonds, such as those issued by Germany (still considered a safe bet). And it served as an unmistakable warning shot from the bond vigilantes: “Up to here, and no further!” Under Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s fiscal policies, Germany’s national debt would rise from 63 percent to 95 percent. Germany would join the ranks of high-debt nations, without reason and without economic logic. Friedrich Merz, who stumbled into office as a “fiscal expert,” would be responsible for the largest debt binge Germany has experienced since World War II. It would also be his doing if Germany’s already shaky fiscal consensus, previously undermined by the Ampel coalition government, completely collapsed. The principle of only incurring debts that can be controlled by a strong economy would disappear entirely. The Economy in Crisis As for the state of this economy, which has been in a perpetual recession for three years, it is well known: €65 billion in direct investments fled abroad last year alone, seeking refuge from Germany’s burgeoning welfare state and its increasing regulatory burden and tax appetite. A significant portion of these investments likely found their way to the United States — still viewed by global capital as the last bastion of economic freedom and entrepreneurial resilience. (RELATED: How Germany and the EU Slept Through Trump’s Watershed Moment) These days, Germany is politically isolating itself. On the geopolitical front, no one cares that Berlin is raising the firewall against the AfD. The moral gymnastics of German politicians and media resonate mostly in Brussels, where the same agenda is followed and political opposition is harshly confronted, as seen in Romania and Hungary. (RELATED: Germany’s Suicide Pact with Green Ideology) More important matters are at hand: for example, the trade dispute with the U.S. Just two days ago, India made a first move largely unnoticed in the media, offering the Trump administration to eliminate all tariffs on industrial metals and automobiles. New Delhi is seeking the first-mover advantage and positioning itself as a strategic partner of the U.S. in Asia. This could lead to industrial growth and domestic political stability — something worth building upon! USA: Tax Cuts on the Horizon Meanwhile, in the U.S., a major round of tax cuts is on the horizon. And it’s not just about the successful campaign slogan, “No Tax On Tips” (in the U.S., campaign promises are taken seriously). The U.S. government is working on a broad reform program aimed at shrinking the state and providing new opportunities for the private sector. Regulations are being rolled back, and unnecessary budget items are being eliminated — proof that America, unlike Europe, still holds the political will to fight Leviathan before it devours the republic. The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has already proven a success: the octopus-like media machine is being systematically dismantled, and propaganda vehicles such as USAID are being axed. (RELATED: The Trump Administration Sets Its Sights on the Parallel Government) While Washington prepares for the approaching sovereign debt crisis and works on the revival of its own industry — and a debt crisis is inevitable given the dynamics of credit markets — Berlin is desperately searching for a lever to remove its only political competitor, the AfD, from the game. It seems that Germany has sunk into a monothematic pit of ignorance. Whether it’s the collapse of the automotive industry, the burgeoning migration crisis, or the growing hyper-state with an extraordinary state share of 49.5 percent — nothing can free Berlin from its discursive AfD prison. In Berlin’s ideological bubble, daily crises are ignored in favor of moral crusades — an ominous lesson for any free nation tempted to follow the same path. READ MORE from Thomas Kolbe: Trump Exposes Fractures in the Global Order The Race for Space: Europe Bets on Eutelsat to Challenge Musk’s Starlink Europe’s Energy Suicide: Brussels Trades Industry for Ideology The post German Decline: A Warning From Across the Atlantic appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

Despite their recent breakthrough, U.S.–China trade negotiations should end with America’s strategic decoupling from China. This is not simply in the Trump administration’s interests, but America’s. Only by eliminating our nation’s strategic overreliance on our biggest adversary can the U.S. solidify its security against the conflict with China that is approaching. This past weekend, the Trump administration’s trade team reached a 90-day tariff pause with their Chinese counterparts. After the two nations’ back and forth of levies had taken tariffs to exorbitantly high rates (roughly 145 percent by the U.S. on Chinese goods), effectively threatening to end the two nations’ trade. However, as CBS News reported: “Beginning May 14, the U.S. will lower its maximum tariff rate on Chinese imports from 145 percent to 30 percent, including a 10 percent baseline levy plus a fentanyl-specific 20 percent levy. China will reduce its 125 percent tariff on American goods to 10 percent.” Market euphoria greeted this dramatic short-term reduction. Yet, such a simple, permanent outcome would be the worst long-term solution for America. China’s CCP has been a repeat offender in virtually every sphere of international relations for decades. What’s more, under Xi Jinping, China is getting worse and clearly has no intention of ceasing to be so. Therefore, America’s best interests — for security, foreign relations with our allies, and even our own economic ones — lie on a path to strategically decouple from China as soon as possible. China’s internal actions alone argue for such a decoupling. Both Democrat and Republican administrations have routinely labeled the CCP’s actions against its Uyghur minority “genocide.” That alone should be enough to cause a severance, just as apartheid once did for South Africa. Yet, the CCP’s oppressive actions against its own people extend beyond this. Internal surveillance of its citizens is routine and growing. The one-child policy was enforced on everyone and lasted for decades. Any dissent — internal or external — is immediately squashed. There is religious persecution. And its deal with Hong Kong was quickly abrogated, and political freedoms there were erased. (RELATED: China Ratchets Up Espionage War Against Taiwan) The CCP is growing increasingly belligerent toward its neighbors. Of course, Taiwan is squarely in the CCP’s crosshairs and is daily made to feel the threat of imminent invasion. China’s belligerence extends throughout the Pacific region — to the Philippines, Japan, Australia, and more. It also extends to its contiguous neighbors as well, with India being a prime example. (RELATED: China’s Threat to Taiwan: Intentions and Capabilities) China’s zealous military buildup, far beyond anything it needs for legitimate defense purposes, only adds to its threat. At the same time, it is a facilitator of the world’s worst malefactors, such as Iran’s terrorist regime, Russia, North Korea, Cuba, and Venezuela. In its trade relations, China has long been a notorious participant.Its IP theft, both inside and outside its borders, has long been known, deplored, and called out — only to be ignored by the CCP. To unfairly enhance its competitiveness, the CCP has long manipulated China’s currency. It also subsidizes its own state-owned enterprises and then dumps its products (steel regularly) abroad. (RELATED: China’s ‘Low Human Rights’ Advantage) The CCP’s aggressive military and economic ends come together in its massive Belt-and-Road initiative where it seeks to use its economic power to make investments abroad and secure strategic footholds globally. It also takes the more openly aggressive form of espionage, cyber hacking, and electronic surveillance. These means are pursued to boost itself, but also to undermine its prospective adversaries. Such malevolent attacks are not simply limited to spying. China’s role in America’s fentanyl crisis has long been known. And its cavalier dismissal of this crisis speaks volumes about how the CCP views America and its by-all-possible-means approach to undermining our nation through addiction. And of course, there is the CCP’s still unexplained role in the COVID pandemic. Even by the most charitable description, China facilitated the global spread of the virus by refusing to acknowledge the severity of the virus, alert world health authorities of its existence, and then not cooperating in combating its spread. At worst, and increasingly accepted, the CCP was responsible for the dangerous gain-of-function research that leaked from the WIV lab in Wuhan. From no other country would any one of these actions be so tolerated. Yet, the CCP has played its hand of being too-big-to-sanction to the hilt. While the danger of too-big-to-fail is universally recognized in finance, it has been allowed, in the case of the CCP, to continue on the far more important world stage. The takeaway from this should be for the U.S., its companies, and the West as a whole, is that China is at best an unreliable partner for trade. Based on the CCP’s actions, there will come a time when it will be more than willing to exert any economic advantage it possesses to achieve its hegemonic goals. It therefore is incumbent on the U.S. to strategically decouple from China: items of strategic importance (rare earth mineral, electric batteries, pharmaceuticals, etc.) should face tariffs so high that it forces U.S. businesses to either produce the items at home, or at least to source them from secure, non-adversarial nations. If America insists on maintaining its trade with China for cheap socks, so be it. However, for items of critical importance — as drugs and medical equipment were during COVID — it is time that our dependence was removed from our primary adversary’s control. And we should leave a tariff regime in place to ensure that it is. # # # J.T. Young is the author of the recent book, Unprecedented Assault: How Big Government Unleashed America’s Socialist Left, from RealClear Publishing and has over three decades’ experience working in Congress, the Department of the Treasury, the Office of Management and Budget, and representing a Fortune 20 company READ MORE from J.T. Young: The Left, Radical Left, and Democrats: Three Peas, One Pod The Trump Government Cuts Overturn Democrats’ Entitlement Mentality Trump’s First Quarter Resiliency The post Time to Strategically Decouple From China appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

“We Study Fascism, and We’re Leaving the U.S.,” a Wednesday New York Times headline read. Sure, plenty of well-known Democrats (mostly from Hollywood and the media) vowed to leave the U.S. in the event of a second Trump presidency: Sharon Stone, Cher, Barbra Streisand, Raven-Symoné, Whoopi Goldberg, Elon Musk’s gender-confused son Xavier Wilson, and even Cardi B rank among those who’ve at least hinted at that kind of radical action. But few of them have actually done anything about it. But even the New York Times knows that nobody takes the vague premonitions of actors, entertainment media figures, and models seriously. To have three Yale professors who actually study the tragic events of the past century leave the U.S. because they think their country is going in the direction of Nazi Germany — well, that’s sensational. (READ MORE: The Plight of the Afrikaners Is a Clarifying Moment for Western Civilization) The New York Times piece was a video opinion by history professors Timothy Snyder and Marci Shore who are married, and philosophy professor Jason Stanley, in which the threesome explained that they’d relocated to the University of Toronto, and they thought the U.S. was turning into a fascist state with President Donald Trump as its burgeoning supreme leader. They cited ICE’s detention of Tufts student Rümeysa Öztürk, whose student visa had been revoked alongside thousands of other international students, after the federal government accused her of engaging “in activities in support of Hamas.” They explained that “American exceptionalism is basically a way to get people to fall into line.” After all, if America is an exceptional place where fascism can’t happen, then “you don’t have to do anything. Whatever is happening, it must be freedom.” For Stanley, Columbia University’s decision to give in to the Trump administration’s demands to counteract antisemitism on its campus was the last straw. “I just became very worried because I didn’t see a strong enough reaction in other universities to side with Columbia. I see Yale trying not to be a target … that’s a losing strategy.” For Snyder, moving wasn’t as much about getting away from Trump (although he’s repeatedly said he sympathizes with that position), but about supporting his wife, Shore, who does seem to have left because of Trump. “We’re like people on the Titanic saying our ship can’t sink…. And what you know as a historian is that there is no such thing as a ship that can’t sink,” Shore said in the NYT opinion. Trump, these professors asserted (at least by implication), is on the fast track to becoming an American authoritarian. “The lesson of 1933,” Shore said, “is that you get out sooner rather than later.” It’s tempting to roll our eyes, mutter “good riddance” under our breath, and move along from this kind of story. If a particular segment of this country with whom we disagree strongly has decided to end all our quibbles with them by making themselves absent, who are we to stop them? But there is a broader problem underlying their likening Trump’s America to fascism, and it’s worth uncovering. (READ MORE: Another Ivy League University Living in Woke Fairyland) At the heart of the issue is a redefinition of the word “fascism” in such a way as to make it sound like it means the same thing as “patriotism.” These Yale professors — and a good many people who think like them — find the American assertion that this country, with its quasi-sacred founding and its insistence on the rights of man given him by God, is an exceptional one a troubling concept. They seem to equate “Make America Great Again” with Adolf Hitler’s “Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Führer.” But to do so ignores the very close association between fascism and racism, specifically antisemitism. Hitler, as you will remember, was virulently opposed to any race other than his Aryan one. He imagined a world in which blue-eyed, blond-haired giants ruled the earth, and Jews, Roma, and his detractors no longer existed. It’s this connection with racism that Snyder, at least, hasn’t quite fit into the picture. In a recent piece with the Free Press, Peter Savodnik noted that Snyder’s depiction of Yale as a cloister of free speech and acceptance simply defies the reality that has unfolded at Yale after October 7, where pro-Hamas demonstrators antagonized Jewish students and even poked one woman in the face with a Palestinian flag. As a progressive, Snyder, according to one of his colleagues at Yale, may find it hard or even impossible to “imagine that those on the left could hate Jews.” (READ MORE by Aubrey Harris: Australia and Canada Reject Trumpism by Embracing Trumpism) To the historian, Trump’s decision to investigate antisemitism on campus is merely an excuse to bully universities. “Nobody ever goes after universities in order to help Jews,” he told Savodnik. The result is that fascism has become a cheapened term that, at least in popular progressive parlance, has become confused with patriotism. The love of one’s country is a duty, Cicero affirms. That’s not to say that the country should become a god in the popular imagination, but that we should be proud of it, work for its benefit, and wish it well. READ MORE from Aubrey Harris: Trump Is the Reason Democrats Aren’t Talking About Abortion Australia and Canada Reject Trumpism by Embracing Trumpism Kids Don’t Need to Be ‘Dancing With Robots’ in School The post The Real Reason Yale Professors Are Leaving Trump’s America appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

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