Posted originally on Jun 5, 2025 by Martin Armstrong
May’s private payrolls based on ADP estimates are the lowest since March 2023. Private payrolls rose only 37,000 last month, far beneath April’s addition of 60,000 and a far cry from the Dow Jones forecast of 110,000.
The financial sector rose by 20,000, leisure and hospitality saw an increase of 38,000, and construction added 6,000. Still, that was not enough to offset the losses on other sectors. Professional and business services shed 17,000 jobs, education and health services lost 13,000, goods-producing industries shed 2,000, natural resources and mining lost 5,000, and manufacturing was down by 3,000.
Mid-sized corporations gained 49,000 employees, while small businesses with fewer than 50 workers lost 13,000, and large firms with over 500 employees lost 3,000 positions. Raises grew by 4.5% while wages for job changers rose 7%.
Donald Trump is blaming the Fed. “ADP NUMBER OUT!!! ‘Too Late’ Powell must now LOWER THE RATE. He is unbelievable!!! Europe has lowered NINE TIMES!” Trump said on his Truth Social site.
Europe has kept rates artificially low, and it has done absolutely nothing to prevent its economy from contracting. They destroyed pension systems and the banking sector, and still got no economic growth. Rates near zero don’t create investment when there’s no confidence and excessive regulation. It’s the same in reverse: high rates don’t stop inflation when the cause is geopolitical, not consumer-driven or based on demand.
Manipulating interest rates is no longer an efficient tool, as the issue is structural. We are in a phase of stagflation where we see rising costs without real growth. This is not driven by regulation, shortages, and geopolitical tensions. I have warned that history will turn around and blame Donald Trump for implementing tariffs. The tariffs themselves are not the cause of the current state of stagflation, but it is the easiest culprit for politicians and analysts to cite without having a deeper knowledge of the inner workings of the economy.
Only academics believe the Smoot-Hawley tariffs caused the Great Depression. Tariffs were merely the reaction, not the cause, to an overall decline in the global economy. War and reparations have left nations indebted to the point of financial failure.
The entire argument that the Smoot-Hawley Act caused the Great Depression is propaganda. It’s used to denounce free trade and blame Republicans, but the truth is that the collapse was already in motion from 1927, and Smoot-Hawley did not go into effect until June 17, 1930. You had sovereign debt defaults, currency crises, and collapsing capital formation. Tariffs were merely one variable of a much bigger problem. In fact, the US already had tariffs in place for over a century prior to the Smoot-Hawley Act, as that piece of legislation merely updated existing tariffs. Trade was on the decline long before tariffs.
The US was heading into a period of stagflation long before Trump took office. Franklin D. Roosevelt criticized Smoot-Hawley during his 1932 campaign and blamed Republican leaders for being unable to “stimulate foreign trade.”
“”Other governments are to an ever-increasing extent winning their share of international trade by negotiated reciprocal trade agreements. If American agricultural and industrial interests are to retain their deserved place in this trade, the American government must be in a position to bargain for the place with other governments by rapid and decisive negotiation… If the American government is not in a position to make fair offers for fair opportunities, its trade will be superseded. If it is not in a position at a given moment rapidly to alter the terms on which it is willing to deal with other countries, it cannot adequately protect its trade against discriminations and against bargains injurious to its interests.”
This paved the way for the Reciprocal Trade Agreements Act of 1934, which provided the president with the power to negotiate bilateral tariff-reduction agreements without requiring Congressional approval. Roosevelt then engaged in reciprocity agreements based on mutual agreements where nations agreed to lower tariffs on each other’s goods, as Trump is doing today. Yet, today, consumers are wary of the future and less likely to spend.
Every negative piece of data will be blamed on the Trump Administration. The media will proclaim that jobs are fleeing the US due to Trump’s policies, but the trend was already in motion.
Posted originally on CTH on June 4, 2025 | Sundance
Today, President Trump signed an executive order [SEE HERE] restricting the entry of foreign nationals from a number of countries identified as national security and public safety risks. The goal is to prevent terrorists and other dangerous individuals from entering the United States and to pressure foreign governments to improve cooperation and information-sharing about their citizens.
Full Suspension: Nationals from 12 countries—including Afghanistan, Burma, Chad, Republic of the Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Haiti, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and Yemen—are now subject to a full suspension of entry, both for immigrants and most nonimmigrant visas.
Partial Suspension: Nationals from 7 other countries—including Burundi, Cuba, Laos, Sierra Leone, Togo, Turkmenistan, and Venezuela—face a partial suspension, affecting specific visa categories and requiring reduced visa validity. WATCH:
Posted originally on CTH on June 4, 2025 | Sundance
President Trump and the trade team have made specific requests of Vietnam in order to negotiate a trade agreement. Unfortunately, just like Canada, Vietnam’s problem is not an unwillingness to comply, it’s their inability.
CTH was in the manufacturing base of Vietnam in January; their factories are loaded with component parts from China used to produce finished goods sent to the USA (and globally). President Trump is telling Vietnam they need to reduce their reliance on Chinese imported component goods, but China has spent billions in advanced positioning and contracts, influencing Vietnam.
Vietnam is a very poor country, and their population cannot afford to purchase the products they manufacture. They do not have a domestic consumption base. They are reliant on exports to more wealthy nations to keep their manufacturing base afloat. Practically, it is easy to have sympathy for Vietnam due to their economic dependence on both China (for imported raw materials) and the USA (for exported finished goods).
VIETNAM – The US has sent a “long” list of “tough” requests to Vietnam in its tariff negotiations, including demands that could force the country to cut its reliance on Chinese industrial goods imports, two people briefed about the matter told Reuters.
Washington wants Vietnam-based factories to reduce their use of materials and components from China and is asking the country to control more carefully its production and supply chains, one of the people briefed on the talks said, without elaborating on whether quantitative targets were included.
The list is part of an “annex” to a framework text prepared by US negotiators, according to four people familiar with the matter.
One of them, who had direct access to the document, said the list was sent to Hanoi at the end of May after the conclusion of a second round of talks with Washington aimed at avoiding 46% “reciprocal” tariffs on imports from Vietnam.
The sources declined to be named because those discussions were not public.
Reuters reported on Monday that the Trump administration wants countries to provide their best offers on trade negotiations by Wednesday, citing a draft letter to negotiating partners.
It was unclear which countries would receive the letter, but it was directed at those with active negotiations that included meetings and exchanges of documents. Washington has been engaged in such talks with countries including Vietnam, the European Union, Japan and India.
The sources described the US requests to Vietnam as “tough” and “difficult”. It is unclear how Hanoi will respond to Washington’s requests and whether it will send its own proposal by Wednesday.
The US Trade Representative did not respond to a request for comment outside US business hours.
Vietnam’s trade ministry did not reply to a request for comment.
A source briefed on the matter said if US requests to effectively cut Vietnam’s reliance on China were met, they could pose a serious challenge to the Southeast Asian country’s economy. Its sprawling manufacturing industry, which produces consumer goods including Apple devices and Nike shoes, is closely integrated into its much bigger neighbor’s supply chains.
It might also complicate Vietnam’s long-standing policy of maintaining good relations with China, a major foreign investor but also a source of security concerns due to conflicting claims in the South China Sea.
Vietnam has nearly tripled its exports to the United States since the start of the US-China trade war in 2018, when the first Trump administration imposed wide-ranging tariffs on Beijing, pushing some manufacturers to move production south.
But as exports to the US boomed, Vietnam also vastly expanded imports from China, with their inflow almost exactly matching the value and swings of exports to the United States over the years, each totaling around $140 billion in 2024, data from the US and Vietnam show. (read more)
As an outcome of the 2018 tariffs against China, which coincided with a President Trump visit to southeast Asia, multiple companies shifted manufacturing operations from China to Vietnam.
Beijing saw the move and slowly increased their own strategic footprint.
In the subsequent years as COVID-19 took attention from all other matters, and with Trump removed from the equation in 2020, China increased the scale of their investment and the outcomes in 2025 are very visible.
China even built this massive Disney type village in Phu Quõc (it’s nearly empty).
The people who live in Vietnam do not have money; they are a very poor nation. The baseline poverty level in combination with their communist regime politics essentially eliminates their consumer power to purchase western goods and makes trade agreements between the U.S and Vietnam somewhat moot.
Essentially what can be seen in Vietnam is how Beijing spends money there for influence. The U.S footprint is negligible in comparison to the visible influence of China.
Following the 2024 presidential election, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau traveled to Mar-a-Lago and said if President Trump was to make the Canadian government face reciprocal tariffs, open the USMCA trade agreements to force reciprocity, and/or balance economic relations on non-tariff issues, then Canada would collapse upon itself economically and cease to exist. In essence, in addition to the NATO defense shortfall, Canada cannot survive as a free and independent north American nation, without receiving all the one-way benefits from the U.S. economy.
Representing Canada, Justin Trudeau was not expressing an unwillingness to comply with fairness and reciprocity in trade with the USA, what Trudeau was expressing was an inability to comply. Quite simply, after decades of shifting priorities, Canada no longer has the internal economic capability to comply with a fair-trade agreement (FTA). Trudeau was not lying, and President Trump understood the argument; hence his 51st state remarks. {Go Deep}
Like Canada, Vietnam has the problem of ability to comply with President Trump demands. However, unlike Canada, a wealthy nation who did this entirely to themselves as they chased leftist “green” dreams, Vietnam’s inability is an outcome of the financial windfall that came from President Trump’s first term targeting of China.
A free trade agreement with Vietnam is going to be tricky because Vietnam will need to find an alternate source of component material.
Posted originally on CTH on June 4, 2025 | Sundance
It is at moments like this when I wish General Michael Flynn had not comprehensively compromised his ability to provide advice and counsel to President Donald Trump. This is great advice shared via Twitter:
“1. While most of America remains blissfully uninformed by our establishment press, the world’s two greatest superpowers are being manipulated by Dark Forces inside and outside our government, into a major military confrontation that no country wants, and no sane person would ever want.
2. I have no role in the Trump Administration, but over a long career in the active uniformed military, specifically military intelligence, I have made it a point to cultivate many sources of information around the world. From what I can piece together, I want to share my deep concerns about who is behind this march to war, and my recommendations for how our nation and the West can avoid a major military confrontation with Russia.”
“3. I believe that the American Deep State is staffed by those with a deep, visceral, and irrational hatred for Russia, and these persons have conspired to box in President Trump’s decision making through the Russiagate Hoax. During the time the Soviet Union was expanding and infiltrating our government, I was an outspoken anti-communist, but, despite the lies told by our Deep State, Russia is not the Soviet Union and Putin is not Stalin. Even today, years after the Russiagate Hoax has been exposed, President Trump’s efforts to bring peace are met with resistance. The Establishment Press, deeply influenced and even sometimes controlled by our Deep State, labeled President Trump and those who work for him “Putin’s Puppets” to goad him into taking unwarranted and aggressive steps against Russia. These voices from the establishment press reflect the views of the Deep State, not the American People, and not the MAGA movement, and should be completely disregarded, if not mocked.”
“4. During almost all of the post-World War II period, and certainly since the establishment of the CIA in 1947, these unelected dark establishment forces have acted to destabilize the world, bringing death, famine, assassinations, violence, coups, riots, revolutions, and destruction to our planet. Currently, these forces are working to provoke Russia into a major — perhaps a final — military conflict with the West.
5. This provocation has many forms. Most recently, it involves the surprise drone attack on the Russian federation strategic arsenal, said to affect 40 bombers, or about a third of Russia’s strategic bomber fleet. Since Russian and American strategic bombers are generally required by agreement to be visible to satellite surveillance, never before has anyone engaged in an attack on these visible targets. If Russian bombers can be attacked with impunity, so can American bombers. By this action, the Ukrainian Government has not just weakened Russia, it has jeopardized America. Thus, those in the Ukrainian government who ordered these strikes have made themselves enemies not just of Russia, but of the United States. Making matters worse, this unwarranted attack was followed by Ukrainian attacks on the Kerch Strait Bridge connecting Russia and Crimea.
6. I do not believe that the recent escalation against Russia’s strategic bomber fleet was authorized by or coordinated with President Trump. Rather, it is my view that the Deep State is now acting outside of the control of the elected leadership of our nation. I believe that these persons in our Deep State are engaged in a deliberate effort to provoke Russia into a major confrontation with the West, including the United States. The time is now to take aggressive action against those who abuse their authority as government employees to manipulate the elected leadership of our nation.
7. Growing up in an Irish Democrat family in Rhode Island, I was only about five when John Kennedy was assassinated, but our family viewed John Kennedy as a hero. Not just for my family, one of our most beloved Presidents, John F. Kennedy, in 1961, found himself manipulated by earlier versions of these same Deep State forces when they attempted to manipulate President Kennedy to launch Air Force planes to attack Cuba after the failed invasion, resulting in an open conflict with both Cuba and the Soviet Union. In President Kennedy’s June 1963 speech at American University declaring his vision of peace with the Soviet Union, he declared himself to be an enemy of this Deep State, which by all indications then retaliated by participating in his assassination five months later in Dallas. The American Deep State is not only a threat to peace, but a threat to the President.
8. President Trump has already faced at least two assassination attempts. If there is one person who I believe has the character and love for our nation to rid our government of these forces, it is President Trump. After the shooting in Butler, Pennsylvania, President Trump displayed the type of personal courage that those of us who have served in the military deeply admire. With great affection for the President, I now urge him to risk the wrath of the Deep State once again by taking actions to purge enemies of our nation within our agencies and departments. Removing such persons from power is absolutely necessary to achieve the type of peace he described during his campaign and the beginning of his Administration.
9. Once President Kennedy realized he was being manipulated, and opposed because he sought peace, he removed Allen Dulles as Director of Central Intelligence, and several of his assistants. I urge President Trump to immediately clean house of any in government who had prior knowledge of or participated in any way in the Ukrainian attack on the Russian federation strategic bombers, and to go further by immediately declaring an end to any support for the Ukraine War. President Trump is right: this is not “his” War. I urge him to recall all open and covert military and other government personnel from Ukraine. I urge him to have all those personnel removed and interrogated by the FBI or the military to learn of their possible participation in unauthorized military activities. Any Americans who have aided and abetted Ukraine’s attacks should be investigated for violation of American law, and prosecuted as necessary.
10. I also believe President Trump should distance himself from certain Western leaders such as German Chancellor Fred Merz, who have acted and spoken in an irresponsible manner with respect to the Ukraine War. If there are countries in Europe who wish to provide military assistance to Ukraine, that is their concern, and they should not be surprised by President Putin’s response to their actions against Russia. If such leaders want to lead their nations to war by persisting in such irresponsible behavior, they will go it alone.
11. I urge President Trump to also distance himself from demonstrated war mongers in our own government, chief among whom is U.S. Senator Lindsay Graham. Those who love wars fought by others are no friends of America, and have no entitlement to be friends of the President.
12. Finally, I urge the American people to stand prayerfully and resolutely with President Trump as he cleans house and acts in pursuit of the type of peace which President Kennedy embraced. Peace is not the normal state of man. Freedom requires a price be paid by every generation. It is time to recommit our nation to both.” ~ Gen. Michael Flynn
The advice is great and aligns with the majority of what the MAGA base would happily support.
Not to take away from the message, but brutal honesty also requires genuine consideration. As such, it should be noted that Gen Michael Flynn is well aware President Trump has an opening for National Security Advisor, a position currently being filled, quite well, by Secretary of State Marco Rubio.
Flynn’s post-term-1 Achilles heel has always been his financial reliance on a large popular audience. This is a large popular message.
At moments like this, I wish Gen Michael Flynn had not compromised his ability to provide advice and counsel to President Donald Trump.
Cut through all the chaff and countermeasures deployed by the professional DC system intended to convolute and keep Trump and Putin at arm’s length, and you can see the outline of what we have discussed on these pages for several months.
There are geopolitical benefits to President Trump and President Putin having a strategic alignment. However, the elements against them are massive, entrenched and highly Machiavellian.
President Trump shares the following message after a phone call with Russian Federation President Vladimir Putin.
…”It was a good conversation, but not a conversation that will lead to immediate Peace. President Putin did say, and very strongly, that he will have to respond to the recent attack on the airfields.”…
As Ukraine officials huddle together with their co-dependent enablers in the U.S. Senate, the implied message from the second half of Trump’s statement is for the senators to stop messing with U.S. foreign policy because Putin can help solve the Iran problem.
Posted originally on CTH on June 3, 2025 | Sundance
The sense that this is not good expands when you consider the origin of the SARS-CoV-2 virus and the current conflict between the United States and China. Two Chinese researchers in Michigan have been charged with smuggling into the U.S. a fungus that devastates agricultural crops.
Was this an ‘agroterrorism’ operation intended to unleash a serious problem in the U.S. farming system? That intent cannot be dismissed easily.
MICHIGAN – Two Chinese nationals have been charged with allegedly smuggling into the U.S. a fungus called “Fusarium graminearum, which scientific literature classifies as a potential agroterrorism weapon,” the Justice Department said Tuesday.
Yunqing Jian, 33, and Zunyong Liu, 34, citizens of the People’s Republic of China, were allegedly receiving Chinese government funding for their research, some of it at the University of Michigan, officials said.
“The complaint also alleges that Jian’s electronics contain information describing her membership in and loyalty to the Chinese Communist Party,” a DOJ press release said.
“It is further alleged that Jian’s boyfriend, Liu, works at a Chinese university where he conducts research on the same pathogen and that he first lied but then admitted to smuggling Fusarium graminearum into America — through the Detroit Metropolitan Airport — so that he could conduct research on it at the laboratory at the University of Michigan where his girlfriend, Jian, worked,” according to the press release.
Attorney General Pam Bondi said in a statement that the Justice Department ““has no higher mission than keeping the American people safe and protecting our nation from hostile foreign actors who would do us harm.”
The FBI says it causes “head blight,” a disease of wheat, barley, maize, and rice, and is responsible for billions of dollars in economic losses worldwide each year.
“The alleged actions of these Chinese nationals — including a loyal member of the Chinese Communist Party — are of the gravest national security concerns. These two aliens have been charged with smuggling a fungus that has been described as a ‘potential agroterrorism weapon’ into in the heartland of America, where they apparently intended to use a University of Michigan laboratory to further their scheme,” U.S. Attorney Jerome Gorgan said. (read more)
Posted originally on Jun 1, 2025 by Martin Armstrong
QUESTION: Marty, Socrates is also looking like a major war in Asia is unfolding. Just to make sure we are really talking about WWIII, China has warned the US that it has accused it of “fear-mongering” and “playing with fire” after Donald Trump’s defence secretary Pete Hegseth said a Chinese invasion of Taiwan could be imminent. China’s foreign ministry objected to Mr Hegseth calling it a threat in the Indo-Pacific, describing his comments as “deplorable” and “intended to sow division”.
Would you comment on Taiwan?
Bret
ANSWER: Here, too, the computer shows a Directional Change in 2024 and a Panic Cycle for 2026 with escalating volatility into 2032. I really wish I could write positive things. But my job is to say what the computer is forecasting, not my personal opinion, wishes, or even expectations. We have pushed China and Russia together, and it will be those two, with others, that confront NATO, the EU, and the USA.
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This is a library of News Events not reported by the Main Stream Media documenting & connecting the dots on How the Obama Marxist Liberal agenda is destroying America
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