Lone Candle
Champion of Truth
Because the US has proven itself an unreliable arms supplier over Ukraine, offering weapons and then suddenly taking them away, Germany has decided to replace the US as a major arms supplier to Europe. This will result in a loss of US sales and negotiating leverage over European countries.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UteYRnpyMX4
China is in an innovation golden age, and much of their new technologies are quickly applied to industry and actually used.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uTo0q4NBPQc
The US really needs to up their game when it comes to mass, cheap, attritable drones.
Many US methods are obsolete and America’s industrial base is not prepared to mass produce drones. Russia and China are already ahead of the US in drone warfare.
The US needs to work with Ukraine to learn from their experience.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IzuiV2WWoVU
Defense contractors are ripping off the taxpayer in multiple ways.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VYslK8KCaKo
The US, Gulf states, and Israel are quickly running out of missile and drone interceptors.
The US also used over 25% of their long-range Tomahawks, possibly 45% of their JASSMs, and over 25% of their ATACMS.
By mid-May, the US could be out of many of these weapons.
The US has failed to build sufficient manufacturing capability. It will take many years to replace these munitions.
The US will have to use dumber bombs and take more hits on the defense if the war goes on.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0234zEi1AG4
Trump’s China tariffs were, for the most part, a massive failure. China is still the world’s manufacturer and exports a ton of manufactured goods.
China is well ahead of the rest of the world in automated manufacturing. They executed a ten year plan to do this, and it worked.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=djE7MDOyFLs
The US is increasing its weapon manufacturing capacity. Currently, it would quickly run out of key ammunitions in a major war.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-1Skv9is7Ec
“Trump’s tariffs, framed as industrial policy to reindustrialize the country, protect workers, and lower prices. Instead, tariffs have quietly consumed much of the manufacturing sector’s profits. This is unsurprising. Most U.S. imports are inputs used to make American goods. Tariffs, therefore, are taxes on American manufacturing.
Empirical work by the Kiel Institute shows that foreign exporters absorb only a trivial share of the cost. Roughly 96 percent of the burden is passed to American buyers. U.S. households and businesses—not foreign firms—overwhelmingly covered the roughly $200 billion in customs revenue collected in 2025. Companies we import from responded not by cutting prices but by shipping fewer goods to the U.S. As Kiel economist Julian Hinz put it, the tariffs amounted to an “own goal” that raised costs, compressed profits, and weakened the very industries they were meant to protect.
…
Tariffs did not restore competitiveness or pricing power. They jacked up costs and made American production less attractive at the margin.”
https://reason.com/2026/01/29/from-georgias-film-subsidies-to-intels-collapse-industrial-policy-keeps-failing/
Taiwanese chip manufacturer TSMC is building a subsidized plant in Arizona, but is having trouble dealing with: thousands of pages of regulation, unions who want Americans to get the jobs, cultural clashes, and homeowners who don’t want plants nearby.
This event shows that the US can be a tough place to do business. We should consider reform.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m3rcPok9fb4
When countries like China focus on heavily investing, initially it works well because they invest in productive things and this grows their economy. However, later, they run out of that many productive things to invest in, in which case they are robbing their citizens of consumption and outcompeting other countries’ manufacturing, but not gaining much actual new productive benefits. This leads to debt.
Bilateral tariffs like Trump is doing don’t work. The U.S. has a huge deficit because it consumes more than it exports. A global tariff could work by making goods more expensive and incentivizing people to consume, now relatively cheaper, domestic products. Bilateral tariffs just mean Americans will import cheap goods from country C and D instead of the heavily tariffed countries A and B.
Getting foreigners to invest in the U.S. hurts the U.S.. The U.S. has plenty of capital to invest and doesn’t need more. Additional investment means driving up the dollar, making U.S. goods less competitive internationally, and hurting U.S. exports.
China has debt to support investment. The U.S. has debt to support consumption. The system is out of whack and needs adjustment.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hoSNdzfydRU