This Is Of God

Hinduism dates back to at least 2300 BC in the Indus Valley civilization. Some scholars suggest origins as far back as 4000 to 10,000 BC

Buddhism was founded by Siddhartha Gautama, also known as the Buddha, in the late 6th century BC.

Taoism was founded in the 6th century BC, with the teachings of Lao Tzu considered its foundational inspiration.

Zoroastrianism was founded by the prophet Zoroaster (also known as Zarathushtra) in the 6th or 7th century BC

Jainism was founded by Mahavira (c. 599–527 BC).

If we insist on arguing that any religion which survives millennia of sin and divisiveness must be of divine origin, then since all of the above still exist, all of these theological systems are of divine origin.

Indeed, it is pretty clear that Islam is nowhere near collapsing, and is only 600 years younger than Christianity, so Islam is likely also of divine origin.

Obviously, this is a ridiculous argument. Christians should really stop mouthing this nonsense. It is not a defense of the Church, it is just a public exhibition of the Christian's complete ignorance concerning the histories of other theological systems. Making this argument just makes Christians look really stupid. 

Why Pope Leo?

The world's cardinals have elected South Americans twice in a row. 

They are clearly concerned about South America.

During the decade Pope Francis was in office (elected 2013), Argentina's Catholic population fell from 76% to 49%.  That clearly didn't work, so now they're trying a more conservative version of Pope Francis. That won't work either. 

Watch Peru's statistics over the next decade. If it drops - and the Catholic population percentage in South America will most definitely drop during Pope Leo's pontificate - then what happens? 

I've got nothing against Pope Leo. I'm sure he is a good man and will be as good a Pope as anyone can be. But this kind of thing has been tried before. During World War I, the French were certain that technology could not overcome the human spirit. Vital impetus, or "élan vital", a belief in the power of a strong, offensive spirit to overcome any obstacle, turned out to be much less effective than a wall of high-velocity lead spewed out by machine guns and the power of tons of explosive from long-range artillery shells. 

Similarly, a marvelous papal personality is not going to overcome technology. If anyone were going to succeed by force of personality, it would have been John Paul II (1978-2005). 

A 2012 document reported that for more than a quarter-century [Poland's] church attendance and declarations of religious faith have been stable, decreasing only minimally since 2005 when the grief related to the death of Pope John Paul II led to an increase in religious practice among Poles. In a 2012 study, 52% of Poles declared that they attend religious services at least once a week, 38% do so once or twice a month, and 11% do so never or almost never. Meanwhile, 94% of Poles consider themselves to be religious believers (9% of whom consider themselves "deeply religious"), while only 6% of Poles claim that they are non-believers.

But even during John Paul II's reign, the percentage of Catholics regularly attending Mass dropped consistently from year to year, until it fell off a cliff:

The new data, released by Statistics Poland (GUS), a state agency, show that in the 2021 census, 27.1 million people (71.3%) identified themselves as followers of the Roman Catholic church. That was down from 33.7 million (87.6%) at the last census a decade earlier.

The election of John Paul II solved several pressing European problems in the late 20th century. Among the most significant? He kept the Catholic population from melting away in Poland. The cardinals gambled that Pope Francis could solve similar problems in South America. That didn't work. So, they're trying again with a Peruvian candidate. Below is a graph of Catholic percentage in Peru's population:

Pope Leo XIV is supposed to solve the problem of  the disintegrating Catholic population in Peru and in South America as a whole. It can't work. Pope John Paul II got away with it due to a unique set of circumstances surrounding communism, trade unions and Catholic Faith. That's not going to repeat in Peru or any other South American country. 

Given his apparent good health, and the advances that will be made in medicine over the coming decades, Pope Leo XIV will probably have a fifteen to twenty-year pontificate. By the time the next papal conclave convenes, South America will no longer be majority Catholic. All eyes will be on Africa. The next Pope will be African, because it will be a hotspot by then, and the cardinals will have given up on South America, just like they have already given up on Europe and North America.

The Status Quo Can't Quo

Capitalism depends on growing global TFR and growing population. That's gone.

Capitalism was a SUPERB ride, gave us everything we have, but it can't work anymore. We don't have the population growth to make it work. We won't have it for the foreseeable future. For all we know, capitalism might be giving us both obscene wealth and absurdly low TFR.

Socialism, anarchy, communism, have always been worse than useless. Mercantilism stopped working in the mid-1800s.

We need a new paradigm. Maybe Trump's tariffs are it. I don't know. Now, make no mistake. I despise Trump as a human being. I have never voted for him and never will. Furthermore, if a politician were doing this, I would scream bloody murder. Politicians are empty-headed fools. They don't understand what they are doing half the time. 

But Trump isn't a politician, he is a business man. He may not be likeable, but he isn't stupid and he is very experienced. He routinely negotiated huge deals with some of the biggest sharks in one of the richest countries in the world. For him, tariffs are not politics. If he implemented tariffs, it is part of a larger negotiation. He's playing a game. I don't know what the game is. And while I wouldn't trust Trump in many, many situations, if he's arguing the American side in a business negotiation, I trust him ahead of any politician.

Again, is he right in this? I still don't know. But what everyone is doing simply cannot continue. We no longer have population growth, or even people attempting to grow the population. This is not normal. Something has to change. The economics we have used up to this point cannot work. 

The TFR is dropping, and no one knows how to fix it. Keep in mind, Christianity has been completely unable to assist with the problem. Christianity has been essentially moribund since industrialization came on the scene.

The Enlightenment was a reaction to the increasingly obvious failures of the Christian world view to explain reality. Christianity arguably created the scientific paradigm, but none of the religious structures in any culture have really survived contact with the scientific paradigm, and that includes Christianity.

Judaism birthed Christianity but became a postage stamp as a result. Christianity birthed the scientific paradigm and has become mostly irrelevant as a result. Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism, Confucianism, Christianity - none of it works, not now. Capitalism has never been shown to work with a decreasing TFR. The social safety nets that capitalism and growing population allow cannot survive a dropping population. Once the social safety nets collapse due to population collapse, the economics will collapse along with it. Nobody knows how to fix this.

Going forward, for the next century at least, something will have to change. The economics, the TFR, the safety net, the work we do... something has to change. The status quo can't quo. 

The Problem with Embryo Ownership

 First Things has published an essay with the same name, in which the author bloviates about the moral problems with IVF, which are - admittedly - legion. But the author fails to address the central problem.

God participates in IVF by creating and infusing the human soul.

He doesn't have to, but He chooses to.

So... what do you do with that?

Now, you can argue that this is part of God's magnificent freedom, part of His gift to human persons. After all, in an act of pure love, God created and formed the universe. He lets us do whatever we want with this universe. He holds it in existence from moment to moment, while our sin abounds. If we turn lead into bullets and fire a bullet into someone's skull, He will hold that bullet in existence and allow it to smash open a brain pan. It's a radical freedom to give us suzerainty over the universe like that. 

But this is a bit different. This isn't just God holding some pre-existing something in existence. This is an honest-to-God act of ex nihilo creation. During the IVF process, God creates a new human soul and infuses it.

Think about that.

He has to actively take part in our attempt to create a new human being. He has to actively create the new human soul out of nothing and infuse that newly created human soul into the attempted embryo as part of the process. God is as much an active participant in this process as the lab tech infusing the sperm. God ACTIVELY PARTICIPATES in the creation of the life of the new human embryo. If He did not, the embryo would never form.

Christians don't believe souls pre-exist conception, so that makes God an ACTOR, a PARTICIPANT in the IVF sequence. And He appears to be fine with it, because He makes sure the human soul is present and operational.

So... what do you do with that?

Four Cups, Pure BS

Scott Hahn's book, The Fourth Cup, turns out to be pure bullshit. The Seder ritual Hahn wrote his book about was developed long after the destruction of the Temple, long after Christ was crucified. It was invented by rabbis who never sacrificed in the Temple, nor did they ever actually even see the Temple. They couldn't, because the Temple had already been destroyed centuries before. Arguably, Judaism died out when the Second Temple was destroyed and animal sacrifice, the centerpiece of Judaism and Hebrew worship, was completely eradicated. 

Remember, neither Jesus nor the apostles nor even Paul ever met a Jew who didn't participate in Temple sacrifice and Temple maintenance. Every adult male Jew in the world was required to come to the Temple at least three times a year to assist in Temple sacrifice. Every adult male Jew was also required to contribute a half shekel to Temple maintenance before the first of Nisan each year. From Noah, through Abraham's first vision, for all of Hebrew history, animal sacrifice was the centerpiece of Hebrew worship. When the Temple was destroyed and Temple sacrifice eradicated, the Hebrew religion was also thereby eradicated. When the last Levitical priest who had offered animal sacrifice died, Judaism ceased to exist.

The Seder as we know it, and as it has been practiced since the sixth century, was not an organic development of Temple Judaism. The Last Supper could not have been a seder meal. 

That Jesus ate a meal in Jerusalem, at night, with his disciples is not so surprising. It is also no great coincidence that during this meal the disciples reclined, ate both bread and wine, and sang a hymn. While such behavior may have been characteristic of the Passover meal, it is equally characteristic of practically any Jewish meal.

Not only the Seder, but the entire rabbinic-Talmud system was an invention created long after the Temple was destroyed. It was invented in a manner very similar to the way Joseph Smith invented Mormonism and Mormon ritual, tacking it onto Christianity as best he could. The rabbinic-Talmud system was invented by Rav Ashi (352–427 AD) and Ravina II (d. 475 AD), two lay people who had nothing better to do with their time but write down a layman's thoughts on how best to read the Torah. Rav Ashi or Ravina II writing commentary on the Torah was no different than Martin Luther (Ph.D. in theology) or John Hus (MA in theology) writing down their commentaries on the New Testament. In terms of divine inspiration, the versions of the Talmud the two Ravs wrote down have roughly the same theological weight and insight as Luther's Table Talk. 

The rabbinic-Talmud system they developed is as authentically Jewish as Mormonism is authentically Christian. Today, roughly 20% of the people who claim to be Jews reject both rabbinic authority and Talmudic authority. They reject it for the same reasons Christians reject Mormonism: they know both systems were manufactured by men long after the fact. 

But this invented system of Talmudic "Judaism" is the system from which Scott Hahn lifted his four cup theory. Keep in mind, rabbis are not descended from Levitical priests. Rabbis are just lay people who gave themselves authority and pretended it was theirs to take. In 1935, fully 80% of the Christian "ministers" in the United States had only a high school degree. Some had less. But during that same Prohibition period, a substantial number of American rabbis had no formal education at all. 

“if you said you are a rabbi, who was going to say you weren't a rabbi?” Okrent continued. “There were rabbis with names like Kelly and Hosanna Han and there were black rabbis. There was a real racket.”... Basically, anyone – no matter how unlikely – could say they were a rabbi because there was no recognized standard for the rabbinate...A dozen Jews or even non-Jews can get together and call themselves a Jewish congregation. They can proceed to elect one of themselves or anyone else, male or female, Jew or non-Jew, as their “Rabbi” and there is absolutely no authoritative, central Jewish body that can dictate to the pseudo-congregation what qualifications its rabbi must possess, or even interfere in any way with its management.

As even those who call themselves Jews today readily admit,  

The original ordination, passed down from Moshe to Yehoshua and continuing from teacher to student, was lost in the year 358 CE

This is how the rabbinate has always operated. As long as twelve people agree that you are a rabbi, then you are a rabbi. That's why it was important Jesus have twelve disciples. A rabbi, like an American congregationalist minister, is anyone who (a) decides to call himself that and (b) can convince a few people to agree that he is one.  

Instead of taking this authority for themselves in 1830 AD like old Joe Smith, they did it in 400 AD. Only the Ashkenazi (Eastern Europeans) buy into this nonsense. Unfortunately, Ashkenazi make up about 80% of the people who pretend to be Jewish today. Ashkenazi come from Eastern Europe, so the Ashkenazi rabbi-Talmud system is the only kind of "Jew" that Europeans know. As a result, everyone descended from Europeans thinks rabbis and the Talmud are normal and "Jewish". They aren't. America's view of Judaism is no more an accurate view of Judaism than what America's view of Christianity would be if everything Americans knew about Christianity was what the Mormon Church taught. 

But these fifth-century AD lay people who called themselves "rabbi" are the people who wrote the Talmuds. Just as a group of congregationalist ministers might gather today to write a Scripture commentary, so a bunch of lay people who claimed authority after the Temple was destroyed and the Levitical priesthood disbanded, wrote down what they considered to be the correct way to interpret the Torah. The results don't have to be imagined - the results are the Talmud.

However, let us ignore all this. Let's pretend the rabbis really do have authority, that the really are actually Jews. Let's pretend the Seder ritual they invented really is really accurate and not just something they wrote down because they were grasping at the few straws left to them after the true Jewish style of worship, animal sacrifice, i.e., the Hebrew worship offered since Noah and Abraham, had been completely crushed, eradicated, destroyed, wiped off the face of the earth. 

What about Hahn's four cup theory then? Well, Hahn's theory depends on the Seder being a prophetic foreshadowing of the Crucifixion, and the four cups being a prophecy of Christ's passion, when it is actually no such thing. 

Just where did the rabbis themselves determine the idea of instituting four cups of wine? The rabbis wrote these instructions in Tractate Pesachim during the time of Roman rule in Israel, and during that time it was customary at Roman feasts or banquets (known as symposiums (sym – together, posium – drinking wine)) to begin the festivities by drinking wine.

Tractate Pesachim, part of the Mishnah, was compiled around 200 CE in Palestine by Patriarch Judah haNasi and his school.

The tractate Pesachim was written at least 200 years after the Catholic Mass had already begun being celebrated. The Mass certainly was based on the Seder meal, but the structure of the original Seder meal isn't actually known. The oldest documents describing the Seder may not actually be doing that. After all, even: 

the Book of Deuteronomy clearly stipulates that the Pesach sacrifice may not be made “within any of thy gates” but rather at the Temple. (16:5-6)

so it has literally been impossible to celebrate any kind of Seder since the 70AD destruction of the Temple. But even what we do know of the Seder as it was practiced when the Temple still stood is not.... harmonious:

The Passover Seder is one of the most recognized and widely practiced of Jewish rituals, yet had our ancestors visited one of these modern-day celebrations, they would be baffled. Not only does our modern Seder wildly diverge from the Passover of old: during antiquity itself the holiday underwent radical changes. Below we chart as best we can - considering the shortage of historical documentation - the origins of Passover, from the dawn of Israelite people to the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE

What we know of it tells us it originally only had two, or perhaps three, cups, not four. 

The obligation to drink four cups of wine on the seder night was another rabbinic provision introduced within several decades after the destruction of the temple (Talmud Pesachim 109b). 

The Talmud is written in Hebrew and Aramaic, and exists in two versions: the vastly studied Babylonian Talmud, compiled by scholars in Mesopotamia (Babylonia) around 500 CE, as well as the Jerusalem Talmud, compiled earlier, around 400 CE, but much shorter, incomplete and in consequence, for centuries studied less frequently. Usually, ‘the Talmud’ refers to the Babylonian Talmud.

But the tractate Hahn used to develop his four-cup theory does not restrict the Seder to four cups:

On the eve of Pesah close to minhah one may not eat until nightfall. Even the poorest person in Israel must not eat [on the night of Pesah] until he reclines. And they should give him not less than four cups [of wine], and even from the charity plate.

There's also a fifth cup, that Hahn doesn't mention:

Rabbi Tarfon says: over the fifth cup we recite the great Hallel.

So, Hahn's theory is a Just-So story, based on nonsense from a bunch of random lay people making up and writing down random "Jewish" rituals centuries after Judaism's destruction. They didn't even invoke an angel delivering golden tablets. They simply invoked divine inspiration for Rav Ashi:

Rav Ashi's composition of the Talmud is considered divinely inspired, reflecting his spiritual greatness. Rav Ashi, a pivotal figure in Jewish history, completed the Babylonian Talmud in the 5th century CE, a text central to Jewish law and tradition.

But notice, in order to consider Rav Ashi and his Talmud divinely inspired, we have to EXPLICITLY REJECT the authority of the Catechism of the Catholic Church:

CCC 66 "The Christian economy, therefore, since it is the new and definitive Covenant, will never pass away; and no new public revelation is to be expected before the glorious manifestation of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Public revelation ended with the death of the last apostle. Neither the Jerusalem Talmud nor the Babylonian Talmud nor the rabbis (i.e., lay people) who compiled and interpreted both, can be considered by Christians to be divinely inspired, much less considered to be contributions to Christian public revelation. In order to buy into Hahn's theory, we have to assume some level of authority on the part of the Jerusalem Talmud and its tractates. Yet we also have to acknowledge that, from a Christian perspective, or even from the perspective of many "Jews" who reject the Talmud, the rabbis have no authority, nor is their compilation of either Talmud, or the rituals described within, endowed with any authority. 

From this mid-sixth century AD theological dog's breakfast, Hahn simply grabbed ritual passages, added a Catholic veneer, and sold it to Catholics, making a ton of money by doing so. 

Which, good for him, I guess. After all, it's an ill wind that blows nobody good. 

Unequal Outcomes

 Thomas Sowell observes, "Much of the social retrogression that took place on both sides of the Atlantic is traceable to the central tenet of the prevailing social vision, that unequal outcomes are due to adverse treatment of the less fortunate."

Many Christians assume poor people are poor because the rich are mistreating the poor. After all, Jesus gave us the story of the rich man and Lazarus, a story constantly harped on by Christian Fathers and Doctors of the Church. But none of Christianity's preachers spend much time on the tower of Siloam, in which the laws of nature inflict unequal outcomes on the victims. Natural calamity is either attributed to Satan's malevolence (e.g., Job) or quickly passed over without direct comment (e.g., the man born blind). Job and the man born blind both suffered, but the wealthy were not the cause of their suffering. 

While Christianity opposes the wealthy adversely treating the less fortunate, Christianity actively promotes unequal outcomes. When someone chooses to be an idiot (e.g., the adulterous woman), Jesus absolves the idiot of the consequences of being stupid. The adulterous woman acts to pull down destruction on her own head, in much the same way that the blind Samson pulls down a building on his own head, but the former is forgiven, as long as she promises to stop acting the fool, while the latter is celebrated as a Hebrew hero.

Yet, just as God uses mud to heal the blind man, so do the rich (wealthy in intellect or resources) develop and use tools to protect everyone from natural calamity. Technology better than money, for we benefit immediately from technology in a way that we do not from money. I may be born rich, but the wealth buys me nothing until I purchase something. However, if I am born into a high-tech society, I benefit from that society from the moment of my conception. Indeed, insofar as the pre-conception lifestyle of my parents influence my conception, I benefit even before my conception. 

"Stressful events could change your genes in ways that can be passed down to future generations. Yes, that is correct, stress and genetics can be passed down. In most cases, the effects seem to last just one or two generations, but further research might find longer-lasting impacts."

Industrialization and technology is the rich man's way of showering good things upon Lazarus. The rich use tech to drive down the physical cost of everything, thus showering their wealth on the maximum number of poor. There is no parable that corresponds to this, apart from, perhaps, the workers in the vineyard or the investment parable of the talents. Since these positive effects of capitalism, technology and wealth distribution have historically not been well-understood by ordained men, it is never the subject of sermons, and therefore never noted.

Then again, God is often willing to use the natural world to punish people. Famine, plague, war, death... these are often explicitly referred to in Scripture as God's just retribution upon the wicked. God scourges the child he loves, and Scripture teaches that suffering is necessary to make a man perfect. In this case, when unequal outcomes are due to adverse treatment of the less fortunate, it may be precisely because justice is being served. We are told of the people who called upon the Lord Jesus and were rewarded, but not all who call upon the Lord are, for not all who cry "Lord, Lord" will be rewarded.

Christians argue that it is just for God to reject the pleadings of the latter, because only God can truly judge. For these people, God's justice triumphs over his mercy. So, if we act in God's image, we know that it is sometimes perfectly reasonable to apply unequal outcomes, even negative physical outcomes, to the less fortunate, to let our justice triumph over our mercy. The prevailing social vision has no way of adjusting for this fact, nor - to be perfectly fair - does Christian theology. We do know it is often appropriate to deal out justice rather than mercy, but since we do not have God's mind, we cannot know when it is in everyone's best interest to meet out justice instead of mercy.

Thus, the rich shower mercy indiscriminately on all via the widespread utilization of technology that lifts everyone out of the abject poverty all of mankind experienced prior to 1800. But when some of that rain does not reach every last corner of the desert in a way sufficient to meet the high standards of social justice warriors, that is seen as an assault by the rich upon the poor. No thought is given to how difficult it can be to send rain even into deserts. No, as with Job, the capitalist rich are instantly compared to the acts of Satan, and poor Job's afflictions are seen as unjust, even though the foolishness of the poor is as scarlet.

Love: Christianity vs. Capitalism

Up until 1800, the world's population was under one billion people.

For almost two millennia, the Catholic Church was the world's largest charitable organization. Despite the enormous good it was able to provide, the Church was unable to cover the needs of the world's population. By even 19th or 20th century standards, for that two millennia period, the entire world, including even princes and kings, lived in extreme poverty.

Since 1800, the world has grown to over eight billion people, but extreme poverty now afflicts less than 10% of the global population. In the 200-year period between 1800 and now, several diseases have been completely wiped out of existence, and many more have been reduced to near zero. For this reason, we can say that even the poorest person alive today is richer than anyone alive prior to 1800, if only because no one alive today can die of smallpox, none of their cattle will die of rinderpest, almost no one will catch polio or Guinea worm. Many infectious diseases have been entirely removed from whole continents of the world, and everyone benefits from a much better food supply, thus reducing the number of famines world-wide. 

In short, industrialization and capitalism has fed, clothed, housed, and provided medical care for eight planets' worth of people.

CCC 1766 "To love is to will the good of another." All other affections have their source in this first movement of the human heart toward the good.

If love is a decision to help others, then industrialization and capitalism has been better at showing love than even Christianity has been.

The interesting thing is this: capitalism only arose where Christianity had first furrowed the ground. Industrialization and capitalism were apparently the consequence of a Christian worldview, which recognized that willing the good of another actually improved one's own situation, for example, the Church spent all its resources helping the poor, and became unimaginably wealthy in consequence.

By the 1700s, economists began to realize that the best way to improve one's own economic situation was by providing goods and services other people needed. Willing another's good was not strictly necessary for success. The required elements were recognizing the needs of another and serving those needs. An emotional response to their needs was not important, the service of their needs was all that mattered. When you served someone else's needs, they would recompense you. This is the basis of capitalism and industrialization.

So, economists are not wrong to say that capitalism is, or can be, an essentially selfish system. Christianity provided the philosophical bridge which allows people to see the selfish advantage in helping others. It demonstrates the superior economics of assistance over looting. Christianity assisted the change in perspective in the sense that it provides a long-term perspective, instead of an emphasis on the short-term. Switching to the long-term perspective allows people to switch from looting to cooperation, which is the basis for capitalism. 

What the last two centuries has demonstrated is simply this: the long-term perspective does not need a religious element in order to work. That religious element may have been necessary for the boot-strap change from short-term to long-term, but like a rocket booster on a launch, it isn't strictly necessary to keep the ball moving forward. Christianity used Judaism as its launchpad, but for two millennia, Christianity has not needed Judaism for anything but eschatology. In the same way, capitalism needed Christianity for its launchpad, but events have demonstrated that Christianity is not strictly necessary for capitalism's success in making the world a more physically comfortable place for everyone.

Thus, in terms of strictly "willing the good of the other", even as an intermediate strategy to attain a different end, i.e., improving one's own lot", capitalism has turned out to be superior to Christianity at not just willing the good of another, but actually bringing it about, at least in a physical perspective. Capitalism loves others better than Christians do. Non-intuitive, but the facts are plain. 

Why Trump's Tariffs Are Stupid but Necessary

 Up until 1913 (when the income tax was instituted), 80-90% of federal revenue was tariffs. You can invoke Smoot-Hawley or 1930 all you want, but the US was neither the richest, nor the third most populous, nor the world's reserve currency then. Everything is different now. 

Although we are the world's reserve currency, we have a debt to GDP ratio of 124%. That is unsustainable. If we go bankrupt, the whole world goes bankrupt. Federal spending has to be cut. Interest rates must come down. Period. 

As the stock market declines, investors flee to treasury bonds, forcing the yield on those bonds lower. This year, almost $10 trillion will need to be refinanced. Every basis point that the yield declines translates into a billion-dollar annual savings in loan repayment. Thus, a 0.5% drop would save $500 billion over a decade. As of this writing, the yield has declined about 0.7 points. That’s a lot of money saved.

Average world salary is $18000/year. US average salary is $63000/yr. We are the 1%.

Are tariffs a tax on the American consumer? Sure. But if you believe in taxing the richest 1%, then you have to support the tariffs, because we are the richest 1%. 

Vietnam and Taiwan have already agreed to remove their tariffs against the US. Other countries will inevitably follow suit. Again, we're the third most populous nation, and one of the richest nations per capita, on the planet. We control the world's reserve currency. 

Everyone talks about saving the world. This saves the world.