George
A. Sprecace M.D.,
J.D., F.A.C.P. and Allergy
Associates of New
London,
P.C.
asthma.drsprecace.com
RAPID
RESPONSE...Daily Commentary on News of the Day
This is a new section.
It will offer
fresh, quick reactions by myself to news and events of the day, day by
day, in this rapid-fire world of ours. Of course, as in military
campaigns, a rapid response in one direction may occasionally have to
be followed by a "strategic withdrawal" in another direction. Charge
that to "the fog of war", and to the necessary flexibility any mental
or military campaign must maintain to be effective. But the mission
will always be the same: common sense, based upon facts and "real
politick", supported by a visceral sense of Justice and a commitment to
be pro-active. That's all I promise.
GS
|
Click dates below
for past Rapid Responses
SATURDAY and SUNDAY, July 5 and 6, 2025
NOW HEAR THIS!
The Time between Now and the Midterm
Elections - and especially the 2028 Presidential Elections -
is CRITICAL to our retention of
America as a Representative Democracy.
Each of us needs to all that he or
she can toward that end.
There will be no "DO OVER"
if we get this wrong.
GS
FRIDAY, July 4, 2025
DENNIS PRAGER IS A GIFT TO AMERICA.
Learn, many for the first time, what
America is about.
GS
THURSDAY, July 3, 2025
JULY 3, 2025 - THE NATION'S CAPITOL,
ABOUT 2 PM.
THE "BIG, BEAUTIFUL BILL"
HAS PASSED THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
AND IS ON ITS WAY TO PRESIDENT TRUMP
FOR HIS SIGNATURE
ON JULY 4, 2025, AS WE ENTER THE
250TH BIRTH YEAR OF AMERICA.
For those who know, and who don't
know our History, read:
"What Made America Great", by Karl Rove, (WSJ, July 3, 2025, Opinion, pA13).
And for those who will celebrate -
and those who refuse to celebrate - our national Birthday:
LEAD, FOLLOW...OR GET OUT OF THE
WAY!
GS
WEDNESDAY, July 2, 2025
MORE CLEAR EVIDENCE THAT PRESIDENT
TRUMP KNOWS WHAT HE IS DOING...
while TRUMP DERANGEMENT SYNDROME has
entered a chronic and debilitating stage, likely permanent.
GS
Trade War? No, Trump's Tariffs Just Ended One
The Vietnam Peace, Metternich, and Trump's Trade Strategy
The critics said tariffs would start a trade war. Instead, Donald Trump may have just ended one.
On Monday, the White House announced a trade agreement with Vietnam: a
20 percent tariff on goods imported to the United States, and in
return, Vietnam will eliminate all tariffs on U.S. exports. A
threatened 46 percent tariff—set to take effect July 9—has been shelved.
There was no retaliation. No collapse in talks. No spiral. What
happened was something very different: a negotiated settlement. A
reset. One that suggests Trump’s trade policy, long dismissed as
erratic and dangerous, is in fact grounded in a tradition older—and
more serious—than his critics ever imagined.
This is not a revolution. It is a restoration.
President Donald Trump delivers remarks at the 2025 U.S. Military
Academy commencement on May 24, 2025, in West Point, New York.
(Official White House Photo by Daniel Torok)
Back in April, in these pages, we explained the real economic logic
behind Trump’s strategy—one that most of the commentariat either
ignored or never learned. In The Forgotten Economic Theory Behind
Trump’s Tariffs and its sequel, The Forgotten Economics Behind Trump’s
Tariffs: Part II, we made the case that Trump was not launching a
reckless trade war. He was applying textbook economic
theory—specifically, optimal tariff theory—to a broken global system.
That theory holds that a large economy like the United States, by
imposing tariffs, can shift some of the burden onto foreign exporters
and improve its own terms of trade. And when wielded strategically,
tariffs can do something more: they can force open foreign markets long
closed to American goods. That’s exactly what happened this week.
The Metternich Method: How Trump's Tariffs Delivered Trade Peace
Vietnam’s exports were set to face a 46 percent tariff under Trump’s
Liberation Day schedule. The July 9 deadline loomed. And faced with
real costs, Vietnam blinked. The deal they accepted—20 percent tariffs
on their exports, zero tariffs on ours—is not a climbdown by the United
States. It’s a concession. A proof of concept. A vindication of
everything we argued this spring.
What we are seeing now is not trade chaos, but a carefully constructed
rebalancing. It recalls a much older model of diplomacy—one that Peter
Viereck, the conservative historian and theorist, sought to reintroduce
in his 1949 book Conservatism Revisited. In it, Viereck called for the
revival of Prince Klemens von Metternich, the Austrian statesman who
engineered the post-Napoleonic settlement at the Congress of Vienna.
Metternich did not embrace revolution. He used power to restore order.
He brought peace not by yielding and not by force but by recalibrating
the European balance, by establishing that rule of law should govern in
the affairs between nations.
Donald Trump, in the realm of global trade, is performing the same function.
For decades, American trade policy was guided by a delusion. Opening
the U.S. markets to more foreign products would bring peace,
prosperity, and global harmony. Open our markets, and others would
follow. That theory never matched reality. Instead, we opened while
others closed. China deployed a predatory mercantilist strategy on a
scale never before imagined. Our so-called "trade partners" erected
non-tariff barriers. Europe protected its agriculture and its
manufacturers. Countries like Vietnam engaged in trade-washing: running
surpluses against the U.S. while running deficits with China,
essentially recycling the purchasing power of the U.S. into an economic
boon for China. Washington think tanks and Capitol Hill committees
issued reports. Nothing changed.
Until Trump changed it.
He began the year by talking about a "ring around the collar" tariff—a
universal declaration that trade would no longer be free without
reciprocity. Then came the country-specific escalations of Liberation
Day. Unlike the economists who treated U.S. power as something to
apologize for, Trump used it. And in the case of Vietnam, it worked.
Critics scoffed at the idea that tariffs could lead to anything but
retaliation. But the retaliation never came. Vietnam negotiated
instead. Even some of Trump’s harshest skeptics are beginning to admit
that the strategy may have merit. On Wall Street, the realization that
Trump has been underestimated is beginning to set in. As Apollo’s
Torsten Sløk put it, “Trump may have outsmarted all of us.”
The irony, of course, is that Trump didn’t do anything new. He simply
reached into the toolkit of classical statecraft and applied it to the
economic front. What the critics derided as “protectionism” for years
turns out, in practice, to be the foreign policy of Metternichian
diplomacy and realism applied to trade. What we dismissed as chaos
looks more and more like strategy.
Vietnam as the Model: Watch the Trade Dominoes Fall
This agreement with Vietnam isn’t an anomaly. It’s a precedent. It
demonstrates that the United States can—in the 21st century, under
intense global scrutiny—still use its economic weight to reshape trade
terms in its favor. It proves that tariffs can unlock concessions that
our elite's acceptance of foreign mercantilism has failed to produce.
In Conservatism Revisited, Viereck wrote that Metternich offered “the
dignity of endurance.” Trump, through these deals, is offering
something similar to the American worker and industrial base: the
restoration of long-denied balance, the dignity of being treated
fairly, and the end of the assumption that American market access is
free and unconditional, some kind of right of foreigners to the
purchasing power of our citizens.
Trump’s tariffs did not collapse the global economy. They forced its participants to finally play fair.
We said this would happen. We said it in April, when the entire
commentariat was still pretending the tariff era was a blunder waiting
to be reversed. The Vietnam agreement is not a surprise. It’s a
vindication.
This is not the start of a trade war. It is the end of one. And the
settlement has been achieved by the most unlikely statesman of our
time: the Metternich of trade.
- Breitbart
TUESDAY, July 1, 2025
ENOUGH!
The steady increase in personal
threats and actual attacks based upon differing political beliefs must be dealt
with to the fullest extent of the Law.
At a minimum, and including threats
- considered "Assault" in Tort Law, these actions should result
in Misdemeanor convictions with one year of prison.
This trend is a clear and present
danger to the Public at large. "Law and Order" is not a slogan; it is
the bedrock of a functioning democracy.
GS
Copyright Notice
(c) Copyright 1999-2025 George A. Sprecace, M.D., J.D.