Now or Never

We’re talking about betrayals.

Disappointment.

Faithlessness.

Markets Insider:

Another red day on Wall Street: Trump’s latest tariff threats bring the market-cap wipeout to $5 trillion.

How do investors feel? They expected a big boom. They thought they’d get rich.

Disappointment seems to be spreading. Polls of CEOs and consumers show deepening pessimism. AP:

Inflation, looming trade war take a toll as confidence of the U.S. consumer tumbles

They were looking for a Golden Age…but the gold seems to be turning into base metal.

Yesterday brought more leaden news..CNN:

President Donald Trump backed down from an extraordinary trade war escalation Tuesday that had threatened a massive surge in tariffs on Canadian steel and aluminum and new tariffs on Canadian electricity. In turn, Ontario paused surcharges on electricity to US customers. After the back-and-forth tariff threats that sent markets sharply lower for a second day Tuesday, US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, Canada’s Minister of Finance Dominic LeBlanc and Ontario Premier Doug Ford said they would meet Thursday to renegotiate the free trade treaty known as the USMCA.

What are Canadians supposed to think? Will this next round of talks settle the issue? Maybe. But once betrayed, they may be skeptical that they can trust the giant to their south.

The Trump team is making a big mistake, says Charles C.W. Cooke at National Review. Trump spends his time and attention on distractions that don’t matter to the people who elected him.

Greenland, Canada as 51st state, the Panama Canal, Trump Gaza, bad-mouthing reporters, opinion writers and opposing politicians — with so much fur flying, it is easy to lose sight of the real promise of Trump’s win. Mediate:

President Donald Trump “is at risk of blowing his second term before it has hit the two-month mark,” wrote National Review senior editor Charles C. W. Cooke to kick off his latest column about the president’s hectic last few weeks, criticizing him for getting distracted by “stupid, irrelevant indulgences” instead of the core issues that led voters to re-elect him.

One of those ‘stupid, irrelevant indulgences’ is Trump’s attack on Thomas Massie. He believes Massie has betrayed the MAGA cause. Almost alone among the yes monkeys in Congress, Massie sticks to the core issues. He wonders how any Republican can vote to continue spending money on wasteful and unnecessary programs — including those revealed by Trump’s own DOGE task force.

But that’s the charm of betrayal…it can work in both directions.

Massie believes it is he who has been betrayed. He thought the MAGA folks were going to drain the swamp. But there it was in front of him…a Continuing Resolution with more than 1,500 pages of boondoggles…bamboozles…and BS. USA Today:

“Unless I get a lobotomy Monday that causes me to forget what I’ve witnessed the past 12 years,” Massie said in a post on X Sunday, “I’ll be a NO on the CR this week.”

“Why would I vote to continue the waste, fraud and abuse DOGE has found,” the Kentucky representative wrote.

The big, beautiful bill also increases the debt level by $2 trillion per year over the next two years — bringing it over $40 trillion before the next mid-terms. It adds $3 trillion to deficits already programmed in the system. And it pulls the rug on Musk and his band of Jacobin cost cutters.

Why keep funding waste, they might ask?

And Mr. Trump, why not just tell Congress to come up with a balanced budget…or he won’t sign?

Imagine the approval he would get – at least from us! – if he were to announce: “Debt is out of control. I’m drawing the line right here, right now.”

He might even recycle the momentous line of Malcolm X, “If not us, who…If not now, when?”

As it is, the CR merely continues the spending pattern of the last 25 years. No wonder people feel let down.

Editor’s note: This article was originally published March 12th at Bonner Private Research, where you can sign up for Bill’s free daily letter.