Winning comes at price. It's a price you must pay to achieve the results you want.

So here we are, not even a month into the 47th presidency and things are happening at such a rapid pace, it's hard to keep up. 

The Border Patrol seems to have shut down illegal immigration on the US-Mexico border to just a trickle. 

Elon Musk and his crew over at DOGE are uncovering the most ridiculous government spending boondoggles you can think up.

ICE is arresting and deporting know criminal illegal aliens by the hundreds, and soon to be thousands.

Panama, Canada, and Mexico quickly came to the negotiating table after the president slapped trade tariffs on them. 

The president's cabinet picks are all being approved in record time. 

It's just a lot of winning. Is it too much winning? No, there is no such thing. There is a bit of caution that I will tell some of my MAGA friends right now. Winning comes at a price.

Take the tariffs kerfuffle that has been in the news. There is always a price to pay when you negotiate large, complex, extremely expensive deals. That is just the way negotiations work. You ask for what you want, they say no. You increase pressure on their position, they retaliate, and back and forth you go. However, when you have a huge economic advantage at the negotiation table, the other side eventually folds and accepts your terms.

We have that huge economic advantage with almost every nation in the world, save one; China. 

Trump is going to go straight into a trade war with China soon, and yes, there will be some pain on our end.

Retail prices will go up on almost everything you buy. From Amazon to WalMart, to your mom and pop store that sells traded goods. The cry from the free-traders in the GOP, and the democrats in the media will be wall-to-wall stories of people who can't afford groceries and heat because of Trump's trade war. 

Will there be people hurt by an increase in prices? Yes, there most certainly will. People are hurt by government policies all the time. I will take this type of pain, as it much different than inflation due to government spending sprees that just buy votes on the short term.

All my free trader friends, will be saying, see I told you. Trump doesn't understand economics and is causing inflation like Biden did. No, this is different. This is like the medicine you must take to get better, even though it tastes terrible and has side effects. 

I also wonder where your outrage was when America's industrial manufacturing industries where shut down and sent overseas these last few decades? Well, those steel workers, auto workers, and factory workers just need to learn get with the times, and learn new skills, right? 

That was real pain, and it's still there in a lot of the rust-belt states, and even in rural parts of blue states. 

Trump sees the world from a different lense that almost anyone in beltway. He looks at the world as a dangerous place, and knows that America once produced everything it needed to lead the world. With the exception of maybe crude oil back in the day. Now that commodity is produced here is abundance. However, our consumer goods, our medicines, so many things we need, are being made overseas and imported to America. 

You may not like Trump's stance on China. You may think, as long as they keep making cheap TVs, clothes, antibiotics, and auto parts, what's to worry about? The issue with having so much of what we use made overseas is the vulnerability to our economy if that manufacturing gets turned off. Not by trade wars, but by other circumstances. 

What could happen to China right? They are an economic juggernaut. They will soon overtake the US as the largest economy. Um, no. Not so fast.

China is looking at a demographic collapse in the next ten years. That's not an opinion, it's just the math. China's one-child policy, it's government movement of rural farmers to cities (where children are a cost, and not free farm labor) and the over reporting of population by the different districts has led to this upcoming collapse. 

In 1980, 81% of China's population lived in rural communities. They were farmers. Only 19% lived in big cities. Today that percentage of big city population is over 66%.

Now let's look at the birth rate. The One-Child policy was a terrible thing in and of itself, but it changed the way the past few generations of Chinese thought about children. They were taught that children were a huge cost to yourself, and to society in general. In 1980, the birth rate in China was 2.7 children per woman. (2.1 is replacement rate) Today that number has dropped off to 1 birth per woman.  

The last part of the puzzle was the overcounting of new children, and population as a whole, by local districts to get more money from the Chinese Communist Party. They overcounted by hundreds of million of people. My whole life, I was told China was the largest nation by population. That stopped being true a decade ago. India is the largest nation by population, but no one actually knows this. 

So what will happen with China when the huge group of older 50-60 year Chinese workers stops working? Who is going to work the industrial factories and manufacturing assembly plants when the much smaller group of teens and twenty year olds comes into play?  In 1980 the median age in China was 20. That's kind of crazy, with so many young people. Today, that number is 40. That's not good.  

The US numbers are not great either. While our median age from 1980 to today has gone up, we started around 30 years old and are now around 38 years old. Our movement from rural farmers to cities happened slowly over the last 100 years. Our birth rate is 1.6 and below replacement level, so we need to start having babies too. 

Anyway, back to China. What could happen to the Chinese manufacturing/assembly economy in the next decade? It could shrink and suffer, and that's not good if you're in the Chinese Communist Party. You have one job, keep the people from a new revolution, and line your pockets while you are in charge. 

They have done both over the past few decades, but this next decade looks like 50/50 crap shoot. Those are not good odds. 

The US and other economic partners are moving our manufacturing from China to other places in the Asian Pacific area. Vietnam, other parts of southeast Asia and India have taken a lot of China's manufacturing industry in the last 5 years. Mexico has too. 

That is really good news, for Mexico and the US. Mexico has lower wages than China does right now, and a better skilled workforce in many instances. We still have to be on the lookout for Chinese owned companies to buy or partner with Mexican companies, and try to work around the US tariffs on specific goods imported from China, just shipped and repackaged as 'products of Mexico'. 

As China's trade partners continue to leave, China has moved into manufacturing their own retail industries. Just go down to Costco, or WalMart and look at high-end TVs. You might see a huge stock of Hisence, and TLC brands, and not quite as many Korean brands like Samsung, or LG TVs these days.  China is making up to 50% of the OLED (high-end) televisions these days. That percentage is growing. 

Now, if we slap a 25% tariff on Chinese owned and manufactured electronics, that will stink for those of you looking the for the cheapest, biggest, TV to upgrade your living room. I'm okay with that. I will pay a bit more or a Korean Samsung, LG, or other brand not made by China. The problem is the make so many different product we use, and need. Talk to someone down at your local hospital and have them check to see where all their products are made.

Last year, we imported 14.9 Billion dollars in Chinese medical equipment. Chinese pharmaceuticals hold another large portion of certain drugs we use. About 80% of the US supply for antibiotics comes from China. Most under patent medicines are still made here, but most generic ones are made in China and India. We are trying to get India up to speed on more pharmaceuticals, so we have more choices, but we need to be smarter. If the world turned upside down tomorrow, from a war, a huge solar flare, or a meteor, or whatever, shouldn't we have this manufacturing on our own shores? 

If I can't get a new TV for two years while we figure out how to set up US manufacturing here, that's one thing. Medicine and pharmaceuticals? I'd like to have the capacity to make those right here. 

So, I know there's a lot to think about, but let me throw one more your way; Artificial Intelligence. 

This one is the game changer. Think of AI like the changes we saw in personal computers, cell phones, and the internet, all wrapped up in a huge package, and made to work seamlessly. But not over three decades, but in three or four years. That's what's a stake here. Everything, every industry, unless you are a Amish farmer or someone living in a cabin deep in the woods, AI is going to change the way the world around you works.

Whatever nation, or group of nations, figures out how to integrate AI the quickest, and with the most seamless integration into all their systems, from defense, to manufacturing, to engineering, to medicine, to figuring out the next iteration of AI, will win this next century. 

We need a new Moon-Shot type endeavor from the private sector towards AI. This will be a huge undertaking. The government needs to watch over this, but stay out of the way. We don't need 18 month delays in permits and regulations building new data centers. We also need to fund real research in this and train the next generation of AI engineers. But we need to get our house in order first, or the Chinese will brute-force and steal their way into the lead.

To win this AI race, we need to clean house at the federal government. 

We need to stop spending money of dumb sh!t.

We need to be able to fire non-performing employees.

Stop the DEI nonsense and hire based on skills and merit.

Start consolidation agencies and departments. 

To do this, we will need to clear away fraud, waste and abuse. That starts by cleaning up our voter rolls, our benefit rolls, and streamline our bureaucratic structure.

Will there be some pain doing this? Absolutely. Is it the terrible tasting medicine, with some bad side effects, that will save us from a slow and painful death? Yes, yes it is. 

Will I have to take some of this medicine? I'm sure we all will, but I'm willing to do this if the ship is heading in the right direction.  

Do I think President Trump is the best captain for the American ship right now?

Yep, I believe he is.  We will see if he can steer the ship the way he wants it to go, or is the ship so damaged by decades of poor management that it just steams in a circle as is takes on water?

Like I say; we will see.