Subchapter V filings intended for small businesses have risen 8% annually to 2,221 bankruptcies as of November 2025. Bloomberg and other various sources are blaming Trump’s tariffs, but they are missing the mark entirely.
“High borrowing costs, cautious consumers and the Trump administration’s trade war are weighing on earnings for the smallest businesses,” Bloomberg reported. “High borrowing costs, cautious consumers and the Trump administration’s trade war are weighing on earnings for the smallest businesses.”
Interest rates have been on the rise since 2022, reversing the cheap credit pipeline that fueled overleveraging. Firms both big and small relied on that easy money, and who could forget the immense PPP loans provided to businesses in the wake of the pandemic. Small businesses operate on thin margins and are vulnerable to cost increases or supply chain disruptions. Inflation has never meaningfully waned since the pandemic. It costs more to buy and more to borrow. Consumers are spending more on less and placing the essentials on credit.
Bankruptcies are not limited to Main Street. Reuters reported that US corporate bankruptcies are looking at a 15-year high based on S&P Global data. Corporate bankruptcy filings hit 655 through October compared to 687 for the duration of 2024. The industrials sector alone saw 98 businesses go under due to supply chain vulnerabilities. Larger corporations may be less vulnerable to shocks but they are still burdened by debt.
No one is immune to the current situation. Corporations with assets exceeding $100 million are seeing a surge in closures and bankruptcies. Trends in Large Corporate Bankruptcy and Financial Distress—Midyear 2025 Update found that filings began to increase in early 2023 and have continued to rise into 2025. Over the past year, 117 mega corporations filed for bankruptcy. This is unusually high and 44% above the 2005-2024 average of 81 bankruptcies per year.
Mega bankruptcies or corporations with assets exceeding $1 billion are also on the rise, with 32 filings in the past month, up from 24 the year prior. The 2005-2024 average was 23 per year. In the first half of 2025 alone there were 17 mega bankruptcies on record, marking the highest figure on record since the pandemic of 2020.
The problem is structural in nature and far more complex than a crisis caused by tariffs. The fact that mega bankruptcies are rising shows that even large, previously “too big to fail” firms are no longer immune from collapse and suggests a weakening foundation that threatens the broader financial system.
Towns are cheering the arrival of new AI data centers, guaranteed to attract capital and jobs, but new revelations reveal dangerous health consequences for nearby residents.
A large datacenter in Morrow County, Oregon, employs over 1,8000 full-time workers. AWS investments at large employ over 8,320 full-time workers, contributing $11.8 billion to the US GDP.
The facility in Morrow County, operational since 2011, has helped to diversify the area, as 40% of the county’s residents live below the poverty line. Amazon has paid over $100 million in county taxes over the past decade, carrying the local economy. The facility requires millions of gallons of aquifer water each year for cooling, which then mixes with nitrate-rich agricultural wastewater. That wastewater re-enters the local system, and has saturated the sandy soil and contaminated wells. A health department officially randomly tested 70 homes for contaminated water–68 of 70 tested exceeded federal safety limits.
Some wells have concentrations as high as 73 ppm, but the state limit is currently 7 ppm. This means that the water is no longer safe for consumption, but the warning has come too late. The water and nearby agricultural crops are contaminated. The population has noticed an increase in cancer diagnoses. Over 25 women have reported unexpected miscarriages, with another six residents suffering from kidney failure.
Amazon told reporters at Rolling Stone that the nitrate levels “significantly predate AWS’ (Amazon Web Services) presence.” Others believe AWS is exacerbating existing problems significantly:
“When that tainted water moves through the data centers to absorb heat from the server systems, some of the water is evaporated, but the nitrates remain, increasing the concentration. That means that when the polluted water has moved through the data centers and back into the wastewater system, it’s even more contaminated, sometimes averaging as high as 56 ppm, eight times Oregon’s safety limit.”
Amazon has seven facilities in the area and plans to build an additional five. Rural communities have been lobbying for these data centers to boost their economy as tech giants are pouring hundreds of billions into these facilities. The S&P believes demand for mega data centers will double by 2030—AI is only in the early stages. But what will happen to the people who live near these centers, and do they pose a risk to the larger community? Unfortunately, this generation will be the test subjects.
Import the third world, become the third world—no exceptions. Donald Trump has permanently halted migration from 19 third-world nations after a recent shooting of National Guard members. The left calls the ban racist, but logic deems it an economic necessity.
The US Census tracked the foreign-born population at 53 million, but the actual number is far higher. “This refugee burden is the leading cause of social dysfunction in America, something that did not exist after World War II (Failed schools, high crime, urban decay, overcrowded hospitals, housing shortages, and large deficits, etc.),” the US president noted.
Illegal migrants had their unlimited free benefits repealed by the new administration; still, the majority of legal migrants in the US are on one or more social welfare programs. Migrants arriving from the 19 banned nations are far less likely to have an education or skills that can help them transition into a working US taxpayer. The government has provided migrants with countless benefits, including outright cash assistance under the Refugee Cash Assistance program, which around 80% of migrants from banned countries utilize.
There is a reason that the government has yet to provide clear-cut figures on the cost of subsidizing migrants. The House Committee on the Budget believes that American taxpayers are spending “at least $150.7 billion” annually to cover the costs of open border policies, but the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) believes the cost is closer to $400 billion. State and local governments are on the hook for the majority of the costs. “State and local governments can’t borrow or print money like the federal government, so they have to balance their budgets by either absorbing this cost through raising taxes or they have to cut services to their citizens,” the committee explained in a 2024 discussion.
The average American is in debt and grappling with the high cost of living. More citizens are falling into poverty, and therefore, the public welfare system which is precisely what the government wants because those people are entirely dependent on government and will vote for the hand that feeds them. Those same citizens are expected to also subsidize others when they are struggling to provide for their own families. The left has long believed that the US has an unlimited money tree that they can use to handout money with no thought to the long-term repercussions, hence why America has reached a level of debt it can NEVER repay.
The government spends billions on border control and protection while still permitting people to legally enter the nation who have no applicable skills to survive on their own. Importing foreign cultures that do not align with Western values is an entirely different but important topic but we unfortunately have the UK to use as a case study.
Nationalism is not racist. It is not racist to prioritize citizens nor is it racist to deny those who cannot assimilate to society or the workforce.
In the world of Trumpian geopolitical trade stuff, three issues are very interesting to watch. (1) The strategic reset with Russia which could break the official western construct of financial control. (2) The proactive and defensive positioning of Mexico (desperate attempt to retain economic attachment), and (3) the certain dissolution of the USMCA what Canadians call CUSMA.
Canadian media are starting to realize something we have talked about on these pages for years; President Trump intends to end the USMCA because the USMCA was used as a fracture point to eliminate NAFTA.
Wall Street, the U.S. Congress, the massive K-Street lobbying network around the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the entire political apparatus of business and industry would never permit the end to NAFTA; too many trillions at stake. So, President Trump replaced NAFTA with the interim USMCA, which was better but factually more useful in elimination of the original.
Now, as we have discussed by highlighting President Trump’s no-so-subtle words on the issue, the Canadian media is realizing the USMCA will be dissolved in favor of two independently negotiated bilateral trade agreements; one with Canada and one with Mexico.
(CTV) – U.S. President Donald Trump could decide next year to withdraw from the Canada-United States-Mexico trade agreement (CUSMA), Politico reported on Thursday, citing U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer.
“The president’s view is he only wants deals that are a good deal. The reason why we built a review period into CUSMA was in case we needed to revise it, review it or exit it,” Greer told Politico’s White House bureau chief Dasha Burns in a podcast episode that airs Friday.
Greer also raised the idea of negotiating separately with Canada and Mexico and dividing the agreement into two parts in the podcast, adding that he spoke with Trump about that possibility just this week.
The White House, Canadian and Mexican governments did not immediately respond to Reuters request for comment.
Trump on Wednesday said that the CUSMA agreement – which faces an upcoming review- will either be left to expire or another deal will be worked out.
The USMCA, which replaced the North American Free Trade Agreement in 2020 and was negotiated during Trump’s first term as president, requires the three countries to hold a joint review after six years. (link)
I have talked to a lot of Canadians on the issues of economics and trade. As a result, I can say with complete sincerity that not since the COVID-19 examples of New Zealand (lockdowns) and Australia (vaxx), has a nation engaged in such a level of mass cognitive dissonance as the govt of Canada on the issue of economics and trade – in the past few years. It is stunning.
To understand the reality of the situation Here’s an IN-DEPTH LINK. Apparently, few really understand the full scope of the issues.
For those who have followed along with the U.S-Canada trade positioning, the current status of conflict between the Trump administration and the government of Canada is not surprising. {GO DEEP}
Going all the way back to the replacement of NAFTA, with the USMCA, President Trump always said he did not favor multilateral trade deals with multiple countries; instead, he preferred bilateral free trade agreements.
Some people have construed the bilateral preference of President Trump to be the elimination of globalism in favor of nationalism in trade agreements.
While the outcome of the Trump approach indeed aligns with that theme, it is not specifically the objective of President Trump to eliminate global trade, but rather to focus on specific interests in trade that benefit the unique nature of each party involved.
As a result, the USMCA -or CUSMA as said in Canada- is not in alignment with a bilateral free trade agreement, and the conflicted differences between trade with Mexico and trade with Canada are an outcome of this dynamic. The solution is simply to eliminate the multilateral in favor of the bilateral approach. This is the objective of President Trump as expressed.
There is zero leverage on the Canadian side of the trade negotiation, zero.
There is nothing that Canada provides to the USA that the USA cannot create, produce or secure independently. The nature of the economic relationship is entirely lopsided, with the USA getting nothing in return for the massive outflow of U.S. dollars (USD).
Our trade relationship with Canada is based on the U.S. government simply liking our northern neighbor and giving them terms and conditions for their economy to benefit from proximity. Take the friendship out of the equation, which is key to understanding the polar political ideology of the two nations, and there is simply not much reciprocal trade benefit.
Take away the soft wood lumber, we have our own. Take away the oil, we have multitudes of domestic production options. Take away the minerals, again we have both our own unused capacities and enhanced trade agreements with other Free Trade Agreement nations.
Then look at the possibility of a strategic U.S-Russia economic alliance, and all those contracted icebreakers take on new meaning.
Some may think this is an overly harsh view of our Canadian friends. However, the Canadian majority believes in climate change and unfortunately leftist politicians control their industrial economy. Canada is in the middle of a mass formation psychosis. Canada needs to get hard, dispatch cultural Maxism and put deliberate men in charge.
A Canadian conservative is essentially a politically correct Mitt Romney; not strong enough to make a difference.
The best thing President Trump can do for our Canadian friends is to help strategic regions while their overall economy collapses around them. Then we hope guys like this surface to rebuild the Great White North.
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