The CCP’s Long March off an economic cliff.Art by Grok3
Missing out on the Art of the Deal
We are calling bullshit on Wall Street, corporate media, and the 'economists' from 'elite schools' who just took the world on an unnecessary, schizophrenic roller coaster ride for all the wrong reasons.
The good news is that the hysteria was exposed, and we got back to business in just a couple of days. All the deranged headlines from CNBC, Reuters, NYTs, WSJ, etc., and the blustering and buffoonery from Wall Street honchos are now enshrined in history and serve as more fodder for driving citizen trust rates into the ground.
Since the tariffs announcement on April 2nd, the Dow was down as low as 9.5 %, the S&P was down 10%, and the Nasdaq was down 11.4%. From the same starting point through today's close, the Dow is down 4.7%, the S&P is down 1.9%, and the Nasdaq is up +1.05%. What a pain in the ass.😡
As it stands, only 15 percent of the US trusts Corporate Media, and just 27 percent trust Banks.
This whole tariff hike and market disruption dilemma came down to a simple equation that should have been obvious to those who are paid to pay attention. As we explained last Monday, the Boogeyman's 'Shock and Awe' negotiating move was meant to bring every nation to the table. The goal was never to raise tariffs but to eliminate them. In less than a week, 75 countries have come to the table to negotiate thus far, including Canada, whose new Prime Minister, Mark Carney, seeks to negotiate 'immediately.'
Wisdom from Titans of Wall Street
"The recent tariffs will likely increase inflation and are causing many to consider a greater probability of a recession. I think a recession is a likely outcome.' —Jamie Dimon, CEO of JPMorgan Chase
Give Jaime your money; he sees the world where it's not going.🤔
"By placing massive and disproportionate tariffs on our friends and our enemies alike and thereby launching a global economic war against the whole world at once, we are in the process of destroying confidence in our country as a trading partner, as a place to do business, and as a market to invest capital." —Bill Ackman, CEO of Pershing Square Capital Management
Before Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visited with Trump at the White House last week, Israel preemptively canceled all remaining tariffs on US imports, a move clearly to mitigate higher US tariffs. European Union (EU) leader Ursula von der Leyen also offered a 'zero-for-zero' tariff deal on industrial goods, including cars, which would be phenomenal if it were to happen.
How could any informed ‘journalist’ or bankers claim countries bargaining from positions of weakness would ‘retaliate’ en mass rather than negotiate? 🤷🏻♀️ The results of Shock and Awe will be lower trade taxes for ALL countries, freer global markets, rising standards of living, and a happier world. It’s called the Art of the Deal.
The old guard lost in the Swiss Alps
The folks who managed the US Treasury out of one checkbook.🤔
'We found the Treasury Department uses only one bank account to make trillions in federal payments, and it doesn't code each transaction, so it's impossible to track. If the government were a public corporation, it would not only be impossible for it to pass an audit, but the leadership would likely be in jail.'
—Tom Krause, DOGE team member, and former Broadcom's CFO and President of its Software Group.
According to the same Gallup poll noted above, only 36 percent of people trust higher education. As Wall Street and the 'elite schools' become increasingly disconnected from the rest of us, it underscores their sinking relevancy.
The elites are stuck somewhere on a Davos ski run, trying to find the next WEF plenary session. Meanwhile, AI, blockchain, crypto, and a whole slew of Web3 innovations are set to steamroll intermediary businesses, lower transaction costs, revolutionize the way we educate ourselves, and dramatically lower education costs. We are witnessing the beginning of the end of the Era of the Bigs.
Predictably, the only country to 'retaliate' so far is China. After the first round of the 'trade war' with the Mighty Dragon, we were charging each other triple-digit tariffs. The CCP has upped its tariffs on US products to 125 percent, and the US is charging 135 percent on Chinese imports. (The Boogeyman always got to be on top.😭)
The CCP has stifled its abuse of the Uyghurs as much as the freedoms of its people through violence and punishment.
The CCP is a ruthless regime that uses facial recognition technology to surveil its citizens and monitors financial transactions, social media, and government databases to assign 'trustworthiness' scores. Low scores lead to restrictions, such as bans on buying plane or train tickets, limited job opportunities, and suffering public shaming. They have also subjected over a million predominantly Muslim Uyghurs to involuntary detainment, political indoctrination, forced labor, torture, systemic rape, gang rape, and forced sterilizations.
Our trade deficit with China is roughly $300 billion, 30 percent of our $1 trillion overall global trade deficit. Our $172 billion trade deficit with Mexico ranks second. The bottom line is that the CCP needs us to feed its 1.5 billion people. Unfortunately for them, no one wants the yuan. No one trusts the yuan because it has a history of being manipulated by the CCP, it has capital flow restrictions, there is a lack of transparency by the People's Bank of China (PBOC), and broader geopolitical concerns. In 2024, the dollar accounted for about 58 percent of global foreign exchange reserves compared to the yuan's roughly 2 percent.
The Silk Road Economic Belt is a land-based network of railways, roads, and pipelines, and the Maritime Silk Road is a sea-based route connecting ports from China to Europe via the Indian Ocean and the Mediterranean.
The CCP's leverage is that it now holds $759 billion in US Treasury bonds, $1-1.5 trillion in US corporate securities (2-3% of US equities), and $50-100 billion in US real estate. (China is the second-largest foreign holder in the US after Japan, with $1.06 trillion.) If the CCP hits the 'sell' button, that could get very ugly, but it is highly improbable as it would mean mutually assured economic destruction.
Weak domestic consumption, declining disposable income, falling real estate prices, and developer debt are all challenging China's domestic economic growth. Escalating US tariffs and EU protectionism (e.g., EV tariffs up to 35 percent) threaten its export-led growth. If we stop buying products made in China as a tactic to inspire a Chinese citizen revolt and the toppling of the notorious CCP, then this is something to consider seriously.🤔 If that's a plan, then who cares how much in tariffs they charge us?
$16 billion in new AI chip orders makes fast buddies. Art by Grok3.
The Boogyman cuts TechBros tariff slack
If the Shock and Awe strategy fails, so will the Boogeyman's legacy (and ego). We are betting the Boogeyman is motivated to work and make adjustments along the way so as not to risk his image from being carved into Mount Rushmore. (That way, the Boogeyman can be saved from having to buy his own mountain.😭😭😭)
One example is when our boy, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, negotiated a tariff adjustment at lunch with the Boogeyman at Mar-a-Lago last week. Jensen was seeking approval on $16 billion in Chinese orders for Nvidia's H20 server AI chips. The White House had been planning more restrictions on the chips to make it harder for Chinese firms and military agencies to develop AI, but hey, $16 billion is $16 billion.😎🤙🏼 NPR reported that Trump agreed to adjustments after Huang promised to pour big money into AI data centers in the US.
By last Friday, President Trump was also taking care of his other TechBro, Tim Cook, CEO of Apple, by exempting smartphones, computers, and other components from his reciprocal tariffs. Apple manufactures over 80% of iPads and more than half of Mac computers in China. The excuse for this policy shift? 'At the direction of the President, these companies are hustling to onshore their manufacturing in the United States as soon as possible,' replied the White House. The cost of an iPhone under Trump's tariff plan could have ballooned to as high as $3,500 under some estimates.
These moves breathed new oxygen into tech stocks, which we pummeled during the tariff hysteria after already experiencing a much-needed correction in the first three months of the year.
28-year-old Scale AI CEO Alexandr Wang is an MIT freshman dropout and is currently the world's youngest self-made billionaire and CEO.
The AI arms race with the Mighty Dragon
It was impressive to see that the 28-year-old founder and CEO of Cryptonite 300-winning companyScale AI Alexandr Wang has big enough cahones to publicly issue a stark warning about America's need to keep pace with China on AI.
"The Chinese Communist Party has enacted a whole-of-government approach to leading in AI—an AI master plan. They want to be the leader by 2030. Their approach integrates their economy, their government, and every part of the Chinese society to ensure that they're able to come out ahead. If China races ahead on AI and starts applying it to its military and cyber operations more effectively than we do in the United States, it will be able to hack into our systems. They'll be able to hack into our energy grid and shut it off.
I am encouraged that this administration has been super focused on AI and is thinking a lot about how to ensure American leadership. The United States needs a strategy for data dominance. We need an approach, both in the public and private sectors, to win on data. I am also advocating for AI agents to make the federal government more efficient. Our role as humans is increasingly going to be as managers of AI agents.
I'm seeing that pendulum swing back, even in Silicon Valley. There is now a clear recognition and moral imperative that we need to utilize AI to support our warfighters and national security mission.
—Scale AI CEO Alexandr Wang testimony before a House Armed Services Subcommittee on Cyber, Information Technology, and Innovation in Washington, U.S.
The State of New Mexico-born entrepreneur, whose parents are Chinese immigrants and who work as a physicist at Los Alamos National Laboratory, noted, 'It was very much drilled into my childhood that American leadership in science and technology is the core of why we as a country are able to maintain our leadership.'
Scale AI, San Francisco, CA, USA, founded in 2016 ($13.8 billion valuation). Provides high-quality data annotation services powered by human-in-the-loop processes to train AI models effectively. Target buyers include autonomous vehicle companies, tech firms, and any entity requiring large-scale data labeling. The company serves high-profile clients like OpenAI and the U.S. Department of Defense.
Who you know, what you know, and when you know it is the most valuable currency in the global Silicon Valley.
The first annual Silicon Valley ‘25 (SV’25) is an invitation-only gathering of 600 CEOs and founders of Cryptonite 300 top Web3 private companies and their VC backers, as well as distinguished members of the business press, blogger, and analyst communities and other industry thought-leaders.
The SV '25 program revolves around conversations between entrepreneurial thought leaders about how Web3 innovation can address some of the world's most pressing issues, create new efficiencies and opportunities, and further decentralize power away from the institutions we no longer trust.
The Bitcoin Metaphor and Wall Street
How will the Bitcoin metaphor and AI-powered blockchain apps redefine finance, Wall Street, payments, and money? How big is the tokenization and fractionalization of real-world assets opportunity, and which asset classes and models will win in the first chapter of this transition? More from Grok3.
'The e-CNY trials during 2022 as a means of payment during the Beijing Olympics were spectacularly successful. The velocity of digital currencies is significantly higher and more efficient than any other payment system. Fully implemented, I see the e-CNY improving quality of life, consumption, growing internal demand, and ensuring steady economic development.'
Will a digital USD take on China’s digital yuan (e-CN¥)?
Do we need a digital USD to stay competitive with the CCP's digital yuan (e-CNY) on the global stage? Should we pitch Latin American and African nations to adopt the digital USD to stabilize their payment systems, bring their unbanked online, and generate US Treasury income? More from Grok3.
Where DeFi and TradFi meet
What is the current status and trends in Defi development? Are the initiatives around cross-chain interoperability, AI integration in DeFi platforms, and the creation of institutional-grade DeFi solutions progressing as planned? Has the adoption of stablecoins and integration of DeFi and TradFi platforms met expectations? More from Grok3.
Reclaiming personal identity and data sovereignty
How possible is it to reclaim control over our personal data and privacy via AI-powered, decentralized blockchain apps? How do we move forward with blockchain-based identity and its tie-in with validating voter registration, paying taxes, and accessing government services in a way only accessible to each citizen? More from Grok3.
"The decentralized future is not just about creating new applications; it's about rethinking how we organize society. You shouldn't have to trust any single person, institution, or centralized organization to transact and get things done."
Can Hollywood and corporate media survive the Creator Economy?
How much will traditional Hollywood, corporate media, and advertising be disintermediated by tokenized ecosystems, NFTs, and AI-powered creative? How big is the 'Creative Economy' opportunity, and what is the business model for success in this new era where creators can bypass traditional intermediaries? More from Grok3.
Farm to fork for everyone
How can Web3 innovation help improve our health by tracking our exercise and eating habits and generating personal analytics? How can blockchain apps help track food from farm to fork—every step, no fudging—so we know what we are eating and can incentivize sustainable farming? More from Grok3.
Meet the modern, predictive corporation
How will AI and blockchain apps transform the modern corporation through predictive analytics, streamlined supply chain management, improved cybersecurity and fraud detection, decentralized financial operations, and more personalized customer experiences? More from Grok3.
The upending of the professional services industry
How will AI and blockchain apps significantly transform and increase trust in professional services, including accounting, law, executive search, and management consulting? How much time and money will be saved by leveraging AI to automate tasks, turbocharge due diligence, research and analysis, and identify new candidates for employment? More from Grok3.
“AI and machine learning allow us to de-convolute the complexity of human disease by identifying subtle patterns in large, high-content datasets, enabling us to discover drugs that are more targeted and effective for patients.”
Drug and therapy creation faster than a speeding bullet
How is AI poised to significantly enhance life science discovery, development, diagnostics, and patient outcomes and service? Will AI fulfill the promise of sifting through massive datasets—genomic sequences, protein structures, and chemical libraries- and streamline drug and therapy creation faster than any human team? More from Grok3.
Trusting your robotaxi driver
What is the status of the robotaxi and autonomous vehicle Level 4 autonomy and the dream of creating ‘the world’s most trusted driver?’ How much will we see autonomous vehicles—especially robotaxis—also be EVs and align with global sustainability goals? More from Grok3.
"Our mission at Waymo is to be the world’s most trusted driver and transform autonomous vehicle mobility to be safer, more sustainable, and more accessible."
How far will the current trend towards commanding autonomous drones to do all the killing go? Has the Terminator Age arrived with AI-power robots designed to do our dirty work? Is the old idea of 'conventional war' over? Are there any opportunities to stop the killing using Web3 technology and inspire everyone to get on the Peace Train? More from Grok3.
Do we have nothing to fear but fear itself?
What do we have to fear? Will Web3 innovation follow innovation history by creating more jobs than it destroys? Has the four-day workweek finally arrived? Will we further lose our identities to social media, gaming, virtual reality porn, sex robots, and online echo chambers? More from Grok3.
SV’25 is presented by Voting Block USA (VB USA), a 501 c3 non-profit, nonpartisan, grassroots project dedicated to educating the public on how Web3 innovation will impact our daily lives and professional futures. VB USA is supported by The Draper Family Trust and Draper Associates and produced by Cryptonite Ventures.
I think this boogeyman article is the bullshit. The people involved in liberation day still don’t understand the damage they have caused