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Leo Hohmann – Leo’s Newsletter Oct 15, 2025

Ten years from now, I would not be surprised if the year 2025 is seen as the year the American house of cards, built on unsustainable debt and funny money printed with no regard for sound economics, all came crashing down. While the root causes of this coming crash would require going back decades to address reckless policies from arrogantly blind leaders, historians will likely say it all started with a trade war that broke out between the U.S. and China in 2025.

Reuters is reporting today that top White House officials blasted China’s major expansion of rare earth export controls as a “threat to global supply chains,” but said Beijing could still change course and avoid steps by Washington to decouple from the world’s second-largest economy.

U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer told reporters that China’s new export restrictions were a “global supply-chain power grab” and the U.S. and its allies would not accept the restrictions.

Greer and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent stressed that Washington did not want to escalate the conflict, which has spooked the financial markets and spiraled U.S.-China relations to the lowest point in decades.

Greer stressed that China has not yet implemented the revised regulatory system for rare earths and could still back away, just as the U.S. had not yet implemented a retaliatory 100% increase in tariffs on Chinese imports, as threatened by Trump.

Yesterday, Trump threatened China with an additional 500 percent tariff if it doesn’t stop buying Russian oil.

If we end up with 500 percent tariffs on Chinese goods, that means almost nothing from China will be affordable for working-class American consumers. That includes critical medications like antibiotics and analgesics, not to mention electronics, auto parts and tires, household goods, clothing, etc. If we “decouple” that means all of the things Americans buy at Walmart, Target and Amazon will not only be unaffordable, they will be unavailable. It would take years for America’s puny industrial base to ramp up to where it needs to be in order to churn out all of the products Americans now get from China.

BOTTOM LINE: Trump is playing with a losing hand in any economic trade war with China. We are more dependent on them than they are on us. Not to mention, I believe the American people are a softer people at this point in history than the Chinese. Take away our luxuries, let alone our necessities, and our society will come unglued. You will see rioting and civil upheaval like never before, as people lose the ability to provide for their families. Deprivation, while no fun for any country, will be less of a shock to the Chinese.

According to the Reuters report, Bessent said the U.S. does not want to decouple from China, but would have to take action if Beijing proved to be an unreliable supplier. He noted that Chinese officials recently told U.S. auto companies that a slowdown in shipments of rare earth magnets was “probably something” to do with a holiday.

Bessent stated:

“Not only is China fueling Russia’s war (with Ukraine), but China’s actions have once again demonstrated the risk of being dependent on them, on rare earths and for that matter, anything. If China wants to be an unreliable partner to the world, then the world will have to decouple.”

Bessent’s choice of words was interesting: “If China wants to be an unreliable partner to the world…”

He equates the United States and its allies as “the world.” This is old thinking, not based in reality. The United States is no longer the only voice that matters in the world. China, Russia and the BRICS nations are breaking away and forming their own economic bloc. The U.S. dollar is no longer the only game in town. These countries often trade in their own currencies. As a result, the dollar keeps losing value. That’s why the price of gold and silver have skyrocketed to record highs. This reality of a fading dollar no longer strong enough to be used as a tool to brow-beat the world into economic submission, either scares Washington so badly that they’re afraid to even talk about the prospect, or they’re living in denial. Either way, it’s not constructive, and eventually the economic warfare we are currently witnessing will turn into kinetic warfare.

Fading empires don’t just fade away. They go to war.

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