Some Great Reads, Listens, To Start Friday

Let’s start with what looks like some unambiguously good news:

Senate Confirms Russ Vought For Budget Chief In Major Blow To Deep State

I know I’ve mentioned Russell Vought fairly recently. Vought, who was head of OMB during Trump 1.0, is the architect of much of what you think has been so good about the first weeks of Trump 2.0. The first few paragraphs of his page at Wikipedia is enough to make any good liberal’s hair stand on end, like the quills on a fretful porpentine. For example:

A self-described Christian nationalist, in 2021 Vought founded the Center for Renewing America, an organization that opposes critical race theory and advocates for the idea of America as a "nation under God." He has also played a significant role in Project 2025, an initiative led by the Heritage Foundation that aim to advance conservative, right-wing policies and reshape the federal government. In May 2024, he was appointed policy director of the Republican National Committee's platform committee.

Now:

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said in a floor speech that Republicans are working on “confirming the most radical nominee, who has the most extreme agenda, to the most important agency in Washington.” But what Democrats are really afraid of is losing their decades-long stranglehold on the deep state bureaucrats, who actively thwarted Republican administrations and advanced far-left policy goals.

OMB, one of the most powerful offices in the federal government, has significant influence over the federal budget, regulatory framework, and employment.

With Vought now confirmed as director of OMB, a position he held in the first Trump administration, budget and employment reforms are set to go into hyper-speed. The Trump administration is already taking measures to cull career executive branch employees, including enacting a hiring freeze and developing plans to fire many more unnecessary workers. The administration already made all diversity, equity, and inclusion positions in the government obsolete.

Follow the link and read it all. How cool is that? I’m ready for hyper speed! And this looks, again, like another example of how much senate GOPers fear Trump this time around. This was a party line vote, when you might have expected a few RINO defectors. There were none.

Next up, I’ll link to a Danny Davis video discussion with Steve Jermy. Jermy is a retired British naval commodore who writes on military topics, and this discussion is a must listen for anyone interested in military matters:

NATO Could NOT Win a WAR w/ Russia

The title of the video is taken from a recent article by Jermy, and the subtitle gives away the fact that the discussion is far more important right now than the title might even lead you to suspect (and check out the very lengthy summary at the Youtube page):

Right now NATO could not win a war with Russia

Are the allied forces helping or hurting the prospects of a sustainable peace? This retired Royal Navy commodore has some thoughts.

Regarding the outcome of a outright NATO war on Russia, Vought summarizes—understating a bit what he outlines in the article, that NATO can’t do strategy and can’t do logistics:

In summary, NATO is positioning itself as Europe’s defender, yet lacks the industrial capacity to sustain peer-to-peer warfighting, is wholly dependent on U.S. forces for the remotest chance of success, is unable satisfactorily to defend its sea lines of communication against Russian submarine, or its training and industrial infrastructure against strategic ballistic bombardment, is comprised of a diverse mix of un-bloodied conventional forces, and lacks the capacity to think and act strategically.

An easy NATO victory cannot be assumed, and I am afraid that the opposite looks far more likely to me.

…

… Is NATO the primary obstacle to this sustainable peace?

Read it all, but in the video the discussion goes beyond those considerations and gets into issues like this: Might Russia at some point decide to reacquire the Baltics? This idea mirrors Glenn Diesen’s warning about the prospects for a Great Northern War 2.0—something I’ve written about repeatedly. The Great Northern War was the culmination of the Swedish Empire’s efforts to block Russian access to the world’s oceans and extend the Swedish Empire further into Russian lands. The project definitively came a cropper at Poltava. At the time, Russia was blocked from the Mediterranean by the Ottoman Empire and had not yet achieved access to the distant Pacific—the British and French later joined the Turks to try to block Russian sea access to the Mediterranean in the Crimean War. The Baltic blockade would have crushed Russia economically, mired it in poverty and lack of development. By some estimates Russia lost as much as a third of its population during these long wars—something Russians remember when Sweden sends troops to Ukraine to help kill Russians, but most Westerners aren’t even dimly aware of. WW2 was not the only Great Patriotic War in Russia’s history. This passage from the Wikipedia article should ring bells regarding the present war on Russia:

the Swedish state ultimately proved unable to support and maintain its army in a prolonged war. Campaigns on the continent had been proposed on the basis that the army would be financially self-supporting through plunder and taxation of newly gained land, a concept shared by most major powers of the period. The cost of the warfare proved to be much higher than the occupied countries could fund, and Sweden's coffers and resources in manpower were eventually drained in the course of long conflicts.

Jermy’s argument that NATO is preventing peace and may provoke further war that it can only lose runs like this. Taking in the yapping chihuahua statelets in the Baltic only gave them a false sense of security under the supposed American nuclear umbrella. In reality, of course, America can’t and won’t go to war to defend the Baltics, and the UK’s reckless provocations in the region only encourage further Baltic aggression against its very large native Russian populations. At some point Russia may decide to defend those Russians, just as it did in Crimea and Donbas. Worse, Russia may decide that it needs to secure access to the Atlantic through the Baltic Sea. Occupation of the Baltic statelets would be a no-brainer for Russia and, according to Jermy, might be accomplished in a matter of a day or so. And then there’s Finland. It’s anyone’s guess how the crazy Finns concluded that threatening Russian sea access in both the Baltic and the Arctic (Murmansk) was a good idea by hosting American bases. History should have persuaded them otherwise, but no. Scandinavia may be cruising for a reckoning that could go well beyond the Great Northern War 1.0, unless they wake up and make peace with Russia.

On an equally sobering note, there’s this article that presents early returns on Trump’s probably ill advised tariff war on China.

Shares Of Tungsten Miner Erupt After China Chokes Supply; CEO Says Customers In "State Of Disbelief"

I’m afraid that many Americans remain under the impression that the Chinese economy depends on the export of vast amounts of cheap “stuff” to the US. That’s no longer the case—not by a long shot. Further, the impression that China lacks natural resources—an impression that probably arose from China’s dependence on foreign sources of oil—isn’t really true, either (see below). For a quick idea of the true trade imbalance consider these basic numbers:

• Chinese exports to the US are 10% of its total exports. That’s significant, BUT …

• US exports to China are 30% of total US exports.

Just on the face of it, who stands to lose in a tariff war? It’s quite clear that Trump has been itching to slap tariffs on China without a genuine offer to negotiate. It fulfills a campaign pledge and fits in with the image of unilateral toughness he obviously wishes to project. But international relations aren’t really that much like real estate development in the US. Trump has systematically offended the sensibilities of nations who are proud of their cultures and do not feel in any way inferior to American culture—such as it is. That approach may work with vassal states, but it’s definitely unwise elsewhere—especially while kowtowing to genocidal maniacs.

You can count on it that the Chinese were not caught flatfooted and have long been preparing and planning for this tariff war. From the Zerohedge article linked above:

The Trump administration's additional 10% tariffs on all Chinese imports took effect Tuesday, prompting Beijing to fire back with retaliatory measures, including tariffs on US goods, antitrust probes on US big tech firms, entity list additions, and export controls on critical minerals.

Focusing on export controls on critical metals, Beijing imposed restrictions on key minerals such as tungsten, tellurium, bismuth, molybdenum, and indium, along with certain metallic compounds derived from them.

Days later, Bloomberg's Annie Lee spoke with Lewis Black, chief executive officer of North America's Almonty Industries, who stated his customer base is in a "state of disbelief" after Beijing's export controls on the metal [tungsten] used in electronics, defense systems, and machinery.

"It's the warning shot, because we cannot exist without it," Black told Lee. He noted: "Our economy, manufacturing, defense, everything, is so dependent on it. And yet, Russia, China and North Korea have about 90% of the output [of tungsten]."

Shares of Almonty in the US have surged 40% in recent days. The company describes itself as "the largest tungsten mining company in the world outside of China."

"The question is, how much will China tighten the screw to be heard?" Black said, adding, "I think the news was bad, but I think it's going to get worse."

Beijing's willingness to restrict exports of critical minerals to the US became evident in late 2024 when it banned the export of gallium, germanium, and antimony.

Beijing's ongoing export restrictions on critical minerals should serve as a warning to America's military-industrial complex and chipmakers. Perhaps it's time for the Trump administration to ramp up efforts to expand domestic supply chains for mining and refining rare earth minerals, reducing dependence on China.

But that’s easier said than done. Newsweek provides a rundown on the impact of China’s export restrictions, but one example will suffice:

Xi Fires Warning Shot at Trump

Among these metals, tungsten poses the greatest strategic vulnerability. China accounts for 80 percent of global supply and supplies 45 percent of U.S. imports of tungsten content, according to the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS).

Nearly as hard as diamond and with a high energy density, tungsten is critical in the manufacture of weapons such as armor-piercing rounds, as well as having a range of civilian applications, from light bulbs to electric vehicle batteries.

Now, it’s true that alternative sources do exist for many critical metals. Nevertheless, the picture that emerges is that the US would most likely benefit from negotiation rather than confrontation because we simply no longer have the leverage that we had in the past. For example, our single largest export sector to China is grain and seed oils—products that China can easily source from other countries. Like Russia or Brazil. That means US farmers—and especially in Red states—are highly vulnerable if China simply looks elsewhere for these products.

For a very detailed look at US exports to China:

US Exports to China
Goods and Services Exports to China and the Jobs They
Support, by State and Congressional District

This is all part of adapting to a multi-polar world, rather than playing Big Dog to everyone else.