There’s something ironic about watching the same Gucci loafer-wearing, steak-gargling Wall Street CEOs who blew up the world economy in 2008 now wringing their manicured hands over the horrors of the current trade war.
You’d think someone kicked their Labradoodle and peed in their pinot noir. But no—what’s really happening is that America is finally trying to cut itself a better deal at the global poker table, and these financial fat cats are losing their minds because the house (them) is finally getting screwed.
Jamie Dimon of JPMorgan Chase, David Solomon of Goldman Sachs (aka DJ D-Sol—because when he’s not foreclosing on your grandma, he spins house music as a hobby), and Brian Moynihan of Bank of America—you remember these guys, right? Yeah, the same dudes who helped orchestrate the 2008 mortgage crisis like it was a Vegas magic show gone nuclear.
These are the guys who got bailed out with our tax dollars, bought third yachts, and then had the brass balls to tell you how you needed to live within your means.
Now they’re on CNBC, lips quivering like Botoxed Instagram influencers, warning us about the damage of tariffs and the volatility in the markets. Translation: “My quarterly bonus might not hit eight figures this year, and that’s very upsetting, Chadwick.”
Let’s rewind for a second.
The Big Short Wasn’t Just a Movie. It Was a Blueprint of How Wall Street Operates.
Remember The Big Short? Steve Carell and Christian Bale basically turned a spreadsheet into a psychological thriller. That film showed the average American how Wall Street was a snake pit of leveraged lies and synthetic horse crap being packaged as “triple-A” investments. The real life villains—Lehman Brothers, AIG, JPMorgan, Goldman—were shoving garbage into the financial system like frat boys loading a cannon with tequila-soaked lies. And when it blew up? We paid for it.
So forgive me if I don’t shed a tear when their stock portfolios take a hit because the U.S. is slapping tariffs on countries that have been running trains on our economy since the Clinton years.
Trade War? No, It’s a Wake-Up Call—and Most Americans Are Wide Awake.
Let’s be honest. If you’re reading this and your heart rate spiked when I said “portfolio”—congrats, you’re in the top 5%. But most Americans? They don’t have a damn portfolio. You know what they have? Rent payments, kids to feed, and a car that smells like old gym socks.
The trade war isn’t about hurting the average American. It’s about finally flipping the script. For decades, the U.S. has been the drunk at the international poker table, handing out chips and asking for high fives.
Trump didn’t start this war—he just had the sack to fight it. And whether you love or hate him, the strategy of using tariffs to renegotiate trade deals is the economic equivalent of showing up to a knife fight with a machine gun and a bad attitude. The goal? Bring jobs back. Rebuild factories. Give the average American a shot at dignity again.
Newsflash: China’s Not Our BFF
China’s been playing three-dimensional economic chess while we’ve been fidget-spinning ourselves into a trade deficit. They flood our markets with cheap crap, collect intelligence on our America’s youth with TikTok, steal intellectual property like kleptomaniacs, and then lecture us at global summits with the smugness of a Bond villain.
But suddenly, when we punch back? The banks cry foul.
Of course they do—China’s been lining their silk pockets for years. Cheap labor, outsourced factories, and a constant flow of imported goods keep their investment portfolios fatter than a Thanksgiving turkey on growth hormone. But now? With tariffs biting into profits and domestic manufacturing getting a second wind, they’re clutching their pearls and screaming “recession” like it’s a safe word.
The Biased Mainstream Media?
Always hungry for clicks and scandal like a buzzard sniffing a roadside carcass, has jumped on this trade war as yet another excuse to bash Trump, parroting talking points about “economic disaster” like caffeinated parrots at a panic party. The irony? Most of these “experts” wouldn’t know a tariff from a turnip and couldn’t explain a trade deficit if you stapled an Econ 101 textbook to their foreheads. They’ve turned complex economic negotiations into cable news theater, screaming “collapse” while sipping $8 lattes in midtown Manhattan, completely out of touch with the fact that Joe Sixpack in Ohio doesn’t give a shit about Wall Street’s temporary heartburn—he just wants a job that pays more than starvation wages, some tax relief, and doesn’t get outsourced to a sweatshop in Guangzhou.
Like Oliver Anthony sings below…
Bottom Line: The Trade War May Be a Battle Worth Fighting
Yeah, the markets are gonna wobble. Boo-freaking-hoo. That’s what markets do—they shake, they shiver, they puke all over themselves. But while the suits are crying over their stock options, America is starting to build again. And I’ll take a factory job in Detroit over another Wall Street bailout any day of the week.
So here’s a message for the big bank CEOs whining on Bloomberg:
You had your decade of decadence. You got your bailouts, your bonuses, and your book deals. Now it’s time for the rest of America to get a slice of the pie—and Trump’s not asking for your permission.