(C) Daily Kos
This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered.
. . . . . . . . . .
Market Mayhem: Liberation Day for Whom? [1]
['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']
Date: 2025-04-10
In this next article in my series, Words Matter, I’m going to take a look at the most interesting catch-phrase used by the Trump 2.0 Regime thusfar — “Liberation Day.”
Remarkably, in all of the Market Mayhem associated with the use of this new political term, the term itself (Liberation Day) has been lost somewhat in the chaos of the all too predictable impacts of the new Tariff policies that caused the Global Financial Market to come perilously to a total breakdown. Here’s what happened soon after Liberation Day was announced:
Stock markets across the globe crashed simultaneously (some losing as much as 15% of their value).
The US Bond market crashed (on Tuesday night).
Oil prices cratered.
China began dumping their US Mortgage-backed Securities and more...
Does anyone else besides me find the use of the term in its current context to be exceedingly odd ? What does Liberation Day actually mean, more importantly perhaps, who is being liberated from what ?
This is a question that thusfar the MSM has failed to even raise, let alone try to answer — yet as I’ve been saying here recently, words are everything — and paying attention to them pays significant dividends (if and when we’re ready to take them seriously).
First, let’s step back a moment and look at the Tariff policy associated with the announcement of Liberation Day. I won’t go into the details here; other than to state that they included a massive set of arbitrary trading penalties (Tariffs) targeted against nearly every nation on Earth — except Mother Russia (a telling clue). The Tariffs weren’t static either, as the Trump Administration ratcheted up the Tariffs on China (our largest trading partner and world’s 2nd largest economy) day after day — and it seems likely that those countermeasures aren’t over yet.
Some countries chose to fight back, others chose to attempt to give in — but also tellingly, when Vietnam tried to offer 0% Tariffs, Trump’s supposed trade guru, Peter Navarro, said that offer wasn’t good enough. Little mention was made in the media that 1) the President has no right to impose Tariffs in the first place (it’s a power of Congress) and 2) in enacting these massive, widespread punitive measures against our allies and trading partners, we broke nearly a dozen trade treaties.
This brings us back to the definition of Liberation Day. President Trump made several, largely incoherent attempts to explain that all of these nations had been somehow taking advantage of the US (even the nations where the US has enjoyed long-term trade surpluses) and that we were being “liberated” from these oppressive arrangements (some of which he negotiated in his 1st term).
These arguments make little sense of course, because the folks making them don’t actually believe them . Eliminating Free Trade (by breaking countless treaties) does little to ensure Free Market access or freedom in any sense of the word. Wrecking our relationships with long-term trading partners is also unlikely to generate more business and wealth — just the opposite is occurring (and it was clearly obvious that it would happen as a result of the insults and uncertainty that we’ve injected into what were very stable relationships).
Liberation Day is another Orwellian term (e.g. DoubleSpeak) used by MAGA / Trump that of course implies a meaning opposite to what it sounds like. This type of propaganda has a clear origin — and it didn’t come from within the United States . The reason that Liberation Day seems so counter-intuitive to all of us here is because it’s not referring to our liberation at all — but rather it’s referencing an implied liberation of Russia from the Western Liberal Democracies that they have been fighting for the past 10 years since economic sanctions were first levied on them in response to the invasion of Crimea.
This Tariff policy is clearly not part of the agenda that the Billionaire class here in the US thought that they were paying for . This instead is part of Putin’s agenda; along with other key objectives such as the public humiliation of Zelensky (achieved within a month of Trump taking office). The pace of this “Russian” Agenda is its most striking feature, though. Russia seems to be in one awful hurry to wreck the American & European economies by undercutting key trading alliances in place since the end of WW2 — and they have rushed these policies through despite the enormous blowback that they are causing.
The only reason that they hit the brakes yesterday is that Russia too (for all of its belief in its economic independence) is also still tied to those markets which they nearly collapsed for real. For example, yesterday oil went down to $56 per barrel and was still sinking before Trump partially reversed course. Nearly all of Russia’s current income is derived from oil sales. But Russia has much more money at risk as well.
While the Russians may have believed that wrecking the status quo would result in their “economic and political” liberation; it likely won’t — not anymore than threatening NATO kept it from expanding . The important thing here though is for folks to finally recognize whose agenda is being put forth and why. It’s not a bunch of incompetent bozos who don’t understand trade— this was planned and the intent was to create chaos. The Tariffs were never meant to make any sense — they were meant to do precisely what they are doing — to destabilize the global financial market.
How much destabilization is desired and whether it can be controlled is probably something that the folks behind “Liberation Day” are discussing right now. But I for one, don’t believe that they are going to be able to control or finesse what they’ve unleashed. I think that we’ve already likely passed the threshold of no return that will lead to some level of global economic Depression. The Great Recession occurred with far less uncertainty as a trigger — and each time the current market tries to recover — Trump delivers another hammer blow to it (he’s in a groove now and of course even if he backs off of Tariff specifics, his flip-flopping and insults will likely maintain the downward momentum).
Other articles from the Words Matter Series:
[END]
---
[1] Url:
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2025/4/10/2315709/-Market-Mayhem-Liberation-Day-for-Whom?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=more_community&pm_medium=web
Published and (C) by Daily Kos
Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified.
via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds:
gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/
