Riotous Trade Deals: The Newsletter

Intro

Welcome to the Newsletter. Each week, Cameron Lee Cowan wraps up the headlines with commentary that will make you sound smart to your friends and family. This week, we’re talking about the LA riots against ICE Raids, the new trade deal with China, and then Cameron waxes on a bit about community.

The World is Hard, This is Not

Each week I send out the latest headlines, the latest videos from The Cameron Journal and commentary about the week’s events. If you’re new here, my name is Cameron Lee Cowan M.A. MFA, and I’m the Creative Director here at The Cameron Journal. You can learn more about me on the about page. I do research and commentary on politics, culture, and the world around us.

Remember, The World is Hard, This is Not.

Updates

Happy Saturday everyone! It has been a long week here both in my life and in the headlines. Fortunately, this is the first week in quite some time I don’t feel like I crashed into Friday with no energy and a head full of problems. That’s a great feeling!

I’ve been thinking a lot about community recently. It is hard to come by in these days. But I also have been thinking about how we are affected by community and how community affects us. It can be hard to deal with the drama of other people. Everyone has their problems, and there seems to be a different crisis every day. I know that there are people who don’t live those sorts of chaotic lives, but I think everyone has something going on from the trivial to the life-threatening; everyone has something. They just may not share it.

One aspect of being involved with other people through relationships, friendships, or community is sharing those burdens and seeking support. I think there is too little of that lately. It seems like these days, everyone is busy doing things for themselves and “protecting their peace.” Fewer people are willing to take on the burdens of others, leaving everyone alone and, in my view, worse off.

The natural reaction is that you have to “find that balance.” But I don’t think that’s the prescription for this ailment. I think we have to invest in each other. Will it sometimes be painful? Yes. Will it sometimes cause a disturbance in our lives? Yes. But is it worth it to build and maintain the social and community ties that our souls and bodies need? I like to think so. But that is certainly not the modern mood. I remember when I was in college, I was asking some friends of mine how to handle some of our many friends that don’t have cars and always need rides and the feedback I got was simple, “I don’t drive anybody” or “I drive a two seat car because the only person I drive is the woman I’m dating.” I didn’t really know what to do with that, but the message seemed clear: the only way to deal with it is not to deal with those sorts of people. That has always felt so unfulfilling to me and so cold. It is distant from other people and real life.

Life is messy and complicated; no one gets through it clean. Would it not be easier to deal with the problems of life together? I suppose I am in the minority on this subject. I will get replies with horror stories and people offering sage advice about all the losers and users who take advantage of good-natured people. I suppose that is true, but I certainly don’t want it to be true. I have often relied on the kindness of others in my life. So many people were nice to me and offered me help when they had no reason to do so other than simply being good people. I think it makes the world colder when we don’t remember the importance of those little moments. In my mind, it is all the more important to do that for friends and family. How else are we able to navigate this world?

I think there is an expectation that everyone we interact with at all times must have their life together and be perfectly sorted so that they don’t impact other people, ask for help, or need anything from us beyond conversation. Who has their life perfectly sorted out like that? Who doesn’t have problems that they need to solve? Why are we only ready and able to do community when it is convenient and requires nothing from us? The hope is that on balance, what we give and what we take balances out, but I don’t think that is always the case. Some people will, for whatever reason, take more from us than they can give back. Does that mean they deserve to be exiled for it? It seems like that is how society is goin,g and I think it is making us all poorer as a result. I am going on philosophically too long no,w but this has been on my mind.

Of course, I’m also reminded that we’re building a community here. If you haven’t’ had a chance to join the discord, you should come hang out with us!

Meanwhile, the world is turning more violent again. Things are heating up between Israel and Iran. On Friday, Israel launched strikes that took out most of their military command and some nuclear sites. Iran has said that the response would be deadly, and it was with strikes landing in Tel Aviv. It is a new escalation in the conflict, and President Trump has said he will defend Israel. It will be interesting to see how this develops. So much for no new wars, right?

Let’s turn to the headlines.

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America’s Lost Generation

My next book is going to be out soon and I’m taking new pre-orders now. America’s Lost Generation catalogs the story of Millennials and what went wrong for America’s largest and most educated generation. They did everything right and they have been net losers in today’s America. So what happened? I discuss that and more in my new book.

The Latest

Don’t forget to join me on Monday for The Cameron Journal Newshour to catch on everything happening in the world!

LA Riots

I covered this extensively on The Cameron Journal Newshour, but you might have heard we’ve had some riots in LA over the ICE raids. President Trump nationalized the National Guard this week, against the wishes of Governor Gavin Newsom of California, to get control of the federal plaza in downtown Los Angeles. 200 Marines from Twentynine Palms were went in as well and are currently patrolling the area around the ICE facility because protestors have surrounded it and it was not safe to get into or out of the building at some points this week. Riots spread across the city, fires were set, and disorder reigned. According to local officials, they had the situation well in hand, but it was not to President Trump’s satisfaction. It has put California at odds with Washington once again. President Trump has even threatened to pull all federal funds from California. Gavin Newsom has floated the idea of California stopping all tax payments to Washington, D.C.

The situation in LA has already spread to other protests in other states and has triggered a national guard deployment in North Carolina due to the protests. In the middle of this, pictures of construction workers, hospitality workers, and others are hitting the internet with people who work in those fields complaining that they “didn’t vote for this” and “thought it would be criminals and gangsters.” On Friday night, the New York Times reported that President Trump was shifting the focus of deportations away from hardworking people in those sectors.

The Left/Right divide on this issue is well-known but still has produced some interesting ideas. Twitter’s favorite Leftist, Will Stancil, complained that people were not supporting immigrant communities as they are, but only if they are “American enough.” Fair enough observation, it has always been that way since the start of the country. I came across this anecdote on the subject. During WWI, many schools banned German language instruction and banned students from speaking it. This resulted in German immigrant communities becoming less integrated into American life, not more. I thought that was interesting.

What does this all mean? For those that have immigration as a primary issue, this looks like the Left is being crazy again and burning the whole place down and protecting law breakers, while those on the Left would charge that they are defending immigrants and civil rights. As usual, the truth is somewhere in between.

As long as our economy is dependent on cheap labor, immigration will continue to be an issue. We have a back-and-forth relationship with immigration. We like it until it gets to be too much, and then we pull back. 100 years ago, we banned immigration entirely, and I think we are well on our way to doing a similar thing again. The debate about this has devolved into a mosh pit of criticism of white collar, H-1B workers and pretending that all immigrants are diseased criminals (which is a very old thing said about all immigrant groups). The sad part is that nothing is new about this immigration debate. It is the same old, same old given the history of the country. I’m not sure how we’re going to unwind this all either. We will live into the answer.

China’s Trade Deal

President Trump announced this week that they have reached a new trade deal with China. The new tariff schedule is that Chinese imports will have a 55% tariff (that’s what US companies and US consumers will pay on goods companies import from China) and Chinese consumers will pay 10% tariff on American exports to China. The rates used to be 5-7%. In other good news, there was a deal on rare earth metals that China had stopped exporting to us which was crippling auto manufacturers. President Trump also agreed to allow student visas for Chinese students again after he had stopped them. I’m not quite sure what was achieved other than higher prices for American consumers and problems for the agricultural sector whose exports won’t be competitive with Brazil and other agriculture exporting nations due to the tariffs.

The Big Beautiful Bill

In all the latest talk about the national debt and the ongoing deficit spending that has been a hallmark of the 21st century, Trump’s budget bill which is being called the “One, Big Beautiful Bill” or BBB for short, the 2017 tax cuts are being made permanent with fresh tax cuts for everybody’s favorite constituent: the rich. Peter Schiff and Rand Paul have both spoken out against the bill because of the tax cuts that continue to funnel money from the middle class to the wealthy and creates a terrible financial situation for the federal government along the way.

On the bright side, they are floating a tax in remittances, that is, money people send home to foreign countries. Around $1 Trillion dollars leaves the US every year from immigrants sending money home. Other nations rely on this incoming money too. It is a small tax of 3.5%, and some are calling for it to be higher. I think I should be higher, it would be a good way to raise revenue and keep more of that money circulating within our economy rather than leaving for other nations. It is an important step forward in raising revenue for the government and perhaps slowing down the outflow.

We know that Elon left because much of the DOGE cuts are contradicted by the BBB but some of the DOGE cuts have been passed through Congress. The Senate has quite an agenda coming up, and it will be interesting to see how all this legislation comes together. Many of the DOGE cuts won’t stick, and right now, many of them are stuck in court, and the cost of firing employees has been expensive. The reality is that everything Elon tried to cut was once passed by Congress, and anyone in government will tell you that once a program is up and running, it is very hard to kill.

Interesting Video of the Week

Architecture has a huge effect on our behavior. One of these days, I will complete my work on Gaston Bachelard for Planksip, and I will write more on this, but the buildings we inhabit change our behavior in profound ways. Even how the built world looks can affect our mood. People respond to spaces almost immediately. How the furniture is, where to walk, what to do, we sense this all with our bodies and do it subconsciously. In this video, we look at how fiction presents prisons to us and how prisons can affect prisoner behavior. We ask the question, can you build a jail in someone’s mind?

Articles of Interest:

Mid-week Catch-up: What Happened to Our Conversation About Capitalism?

Keep up with The Cameron Journal Podcast

The Interview:

The Cameron Journal Newshour: