Bread & Circus News

Tag: tariffs

  • Trump just nuked small business owners, side hustlers, and thrifty Americans again…

    Trump just nuked small business owners, side hustlers, and thrifty Americans again…

    As you probably know, the “high earners” in the upper income brackets are blessed with a multitude of tax loopholes which their well paid accountants leverage to ease, if not erase, their tax burdens. There are loopholes galore for the top brackets where the Trumps of the world reside. what you may not know is that the average every day citizen does not have access to such loopholes, and the few loopholes remaining are being systematically deleted by the current administration.

    Case in point.

    Up until today, small businesses, side hustles, and thrifty consumers who purchased only small amounts of imports from countries like China and Hong Kong (think Alibaba, TikTok prods, etc) had a loophole that allowed them to get around Trump‘s heavy corporate tariffs called the De Minimis Rule. Under this rule, all imports under $800 were not subject to Trump’s heavy tariffs—or any customs for that matter.

    The De Minimis loophole enabled small businesses on Etsy, eBay, and owners of innovative niche market apps and social media pages to thrive and create good incomes and side hustles. Of course it didn’t allow them to compete with monopolies like Amazon, but it was something, and something was better than nothing.

    Kiss it goodbye.

    As of today the De Minimis loophole is gone, because the Trump administration has decided that everyone will pay taxes—pardon me—tariffs, regardless of how much product they are moving, because well, the billionaires have decided that those with nothing have too much.

    Trump just signed an executive order ending the De Minimis loophole for good. Evidently, he didn’t think the non Wall Street class (read: 70% of America) was being pushed out of every single market fast enough, and he wanted to accelerate the process. Mission accomplished. His latest EO will have a massive negative economic impact across America, thousands of small businesses will close, and of course, consumer choices will continue to get smaller and smaller.

    Someone will say that Trump is doing America favor by forcing people to buy American. That’s nice in theory, but a fool’s errand in reality. In reality, the vast majority of these products being imported from China are either not made in America, will never be made in America, or are too expensive to be made in America, and those three realities are never going to change, no matter how powerful and compelling the political sloganing and rhetoric.

    Meanwhile, the upper income brackets continue to enjoy endless loopholes to avoid paying taxes. In fact, many of them don’t pay any taxes at all due to all of these loopholes. Yet the Trump administration hasn’t done a single thing to close any of them. And why would they? if they did, the upper brackets would come unglued and scream bloody murder, whereas the lower brackets allow the government to do whatever they want to us without a whimper of protest.

    I’m doing my small part with this page to raise awareness on these many critical issues that are absolutely deteriorating quality of life for the majority of Americans. I hope you will do your part and share these posts and help people get informed. Maybe, if we can get enough people informed, we will stop tolerating our government waging war on us? A man can dream.

    MJ

  • GDP grew 3% in Q2 but beware: all that glitters isn’t gold…

    Trump is ecstatic that gross domestic product grew 3% last quarter, but we believe it’s a false positive for the majority of everyday people for multiple reasons that he and his marketing machine are not sharing. Here is a breakdown of what is included in the GDP and why the numbers aren’t what they appear to be:

    Consumer Spending: Things people buy for personal use — food, clothing, rent, medical care, entertainment, etc.

    Yes, people spent more money last quarter but only because of ongoing inflation, rent increases, medical bills, and other expenditures, many of which were put on credit cards, since consumer debt also increased last quarter.

    Business Investment: Money businesses spend on equipment, buildings, software, inventory, etc.

    It’s true that business investments are off the charts under Trump, but the vast majority are related to massive AI, data infrastructure, and energy projects to develop technologies that will actually be replacing human jobs and driving hundreds of thousands of companies out of business.

    As a matter of fact, the companies performing the very best on Wall Street are energy, technology, and industrialization: three things that will actually deteriorate our quality of life, not improve it.

    Furthermore, when Trump announced tariffs, companies imported double the goods they usually do out of fear. Once that inventory dries up, they will have to import at higher prices, and those prices will no doubt be passed on to all of us.

    And finally, American companies have LOST $150 billion paying Trump tariffs. Many people mistakenly believe that foreign countries pay tariffs, but that is not true. American companies pay the tariffs. They of course cannot absorb these costs and will pass them all on to us. They are right now shrinking their product sizes, laying off workers, downsizing, and making other moves to survive and recoup their tariff losses, which are only going to pile higher and higher.

    Government Spending:
    Salaries of government workers, defense, infrastructure, public services.

    Government spending is rarely a good thing, and under Trump, government spending is off the charts, despite alleged government downsizing due to the efforts of “doge.”

    Here’s a disturbing statistic: The Treasury Department just stated that federal spending from January through June 2025 reached approximately $3.6 trillion, which is $142 billion more than the same period in 2024. Trump is on track to outspend Biden, and he’s just getting warmed up.

    Bottom line: short term 3% domestic product increase seems like good news, but when you really dig into it, you find it’s not really good news at all, at least for the vast majority of we the people peasant class.

    One more thing, the real barometer of the economy is still falling..

    MJ

  • Gulp! Starbucks closing 90 locations by year end

    Citing tariff related economic factors, Starbucks has made the decision to close 90 locations by the end of the year. This will result in thousands of job losses.

    This follows news by Bloomberg and VantageScore that even top earners are falling behind on their car payments, credit cards, and even mortgage payments. Get this:

    “Upper-income Americans are increasingly falling behind on credit card and auto loan payments, signaling an underlying vulnerability in the US economy as the labor market slows.

    Delinquencies on such debts from those making at least $150,000 annually have jumped almost 20% over the last two years, faster than for middle- and lower-income borrowers, according to the credit-scoring firm VantageScore. A recent Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis study found the share of people making late card payments in the highest-income zip codes has risen twice as much over the last year as in the lowest-income ones.”

    What does it all mean? as we’ve been reporting on our Facebook page for months now, we are by no means entering into any sort of “golden age.” When Trump took over, the economy was very fragile, despite reports to the contrary. His tariffs have put altremendous strain on American businesses who have had to absorb $150 billion in losses so far.

    As we have been predicting, American corporations are now taking drastic measures to stay alive, such as shrinkflation, store closures, product line cancellations, pay cuts, layoffs, job automation, and constant micro price cuts. American corporations are now officially in survival mode as our Americans, as consumer sentiment numbers reflect.

    Americans are deeply misinformed about the economy because they are not getting accurate information from the government and its growing number of media proxies and media outlets that are terrified of running afoul of the government. Stay tuned to this channel and we will keep you posted on everything you need to know. 

  • FOX NEWS falsely reports tariffs are collected from “foreign countries“

    I had to do a double take when I saw a Fox News post on Facebook claiming that the staggering $150 BILLION in tariffs that Trump has collected through Customs have been paid by “foreign countries.“

    It’s hard to fathom how a full-blown “news agency“ could make such a colossal misinformation error. They leave us no other choice but to think they are either willfully blind or they are complicit in deceiving people into thinking that America is “winning” the trade war when in fact, American companies are paying the tariff taxes, all of which are being passed on to us consumers through various methods such as shrinkflation, closures, layoffs, price increases, etc.

    Just today Reuters reported “American companies have decided how they’re going to respond to Trump’s tariffs: price increases.” Read it for yourself via the link below. Get informed. Double and triple check everything media is feeding you, because a lot of it is highly misleading, deceptive, and even fraudulent.

    Shockingly, thousands of people responded to the Fox News article congratulating President Trump for “winning” by taking so much money from foreign countries — evidently completely unaware that the money is ultimately going to be taken from them one companies recoup all of their costs, which they are right now in the process of doing.

    More: https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trump-gets-tariffs-americans-get-price-hikes-2025-07-29/