Reaching For The Heavens
Sweeping Away the Relics of Empire
What gives President Trump and his administration the standing, the temerity, to boldly act and take on Wall Street’s usury? At the heart, it is a confidence in the Creator, in our nation’s indispensable and historic role, and the capacity of Mankind for profound discovery.
The future of American families has rightfully emerged, front and center, in the 2026 midterm elections, and it is no mere matter of “affordability.”
The Trump administration is now dominating the national conversation (forget the lame stream media!) with wave after wave of transformative initiatives, having a broad and profound sweep.
In the first full week of January, the President unleashed a salvo of “American System” policies. (These are certainly not representative of the has-been, Inside-the-Beltway Uni-party!) The speed and breadth of the actions underline that the President and his cabinet and principals are committed to a Third American revolution, unleashing US industry, agriculture, and manufacturing with a clean break from the British Empire-imposed ideology of laissez-faire mindlessness. For the first time in most of our lifetimes, there is a US Presidency that has leadership seeking to secure the general welfare of all of our citizens.
This new salvo of presidential actions further strips away the crippling “financialization” of the US economy that has looted American producers for decades. The included orders and programs spell the beginning of the end of usury in credit card interest rates, the reining in of the corrupt and mismanaged Military Industrial Complex; actions to build many more single family homes and bring the cost of homes way down; and actions and initiatives to make quality American healthcare affordable again. All together, this is a helluva lot and further below, in this Substack post, we will come back to these initiatives.
So, what now gives President Trump and his administration the standing to unfold an affordable single family home plan, bring down healthcare costs, take on the military industrial complex, and more?
The answer is that the USA is already pulling itself up by its boot straps! The answer lies in what the Trump administration has unleashed: the real, physical economy of the USA. Let’s examine the transformed US economy.
Accomplishments in the Last Year Paved the Way
When the One Big Beautiful Bill was passed and became law on July 4th, already new impetus was provided to producers, with 100% tax write offs on new investments in plant and equipment, and income taxes removed from tips, overtime, and Social Security income. GDP growth is now in the range of 5% and Commerce Secretary Lutnick thinks annual growth will reach 6% in 2026.
With sectoral (steel, autos, etc.) and reciprocal tariffs well in place, trillions of dollars of major new investments are being made; real blue collar wages are going up; the trade deficit has been slashed in half; and the US federal budget deficit in calendar year 2025 has been reduced by $600 billion.
Simultaneously the Herculean task of cleaning out the Augean stables -- the systematic removal of layers of the permanent federal bureaucracy/deep state -- has continued both within the Executive Branch and in the former “independent agencies” being brought back under Executive control.
Together with the already decisive closure of the US borders and the reversal of criminally insane “woke” policies regarding our children, Americans increasingly realize that their communities and the world are being changed for the better - much better.
These are real physical economic changes to the American landscape, nothing less. The promotion of human creativity -- Yankee ingenuity -- born of optimism and hope for the future have physical consequences.
A deranged Congressional Democratic party leadership apparently thought that a government shutdown was required to attempt to sink Trump’s efforts, but that scheme backfired in their face. While there is still plenty of black-pill click-bait seeping out like raw sewage, most citizens turn up their noses!
President Trump and his administration, with private sector and state and local collaborators, have now ‘new degrees of freedom’ with which to act.
So now Trump and his administration are directly taking on all of those monopolistic (oligopolistic) structures that bled the US economy, post-1971. Over those decades, “deregulation,” given bipartisan-support by a “uni-party” in Congress, allowed for the rise of a globalized, financialized system of monopolistic finance capital that flexed increasing market power. America was looted and our people deeply demoralized. No more!
The US Industrial Economy Reborn
The Trump administration has been successfully organizing a resurgent US economy. While much of the hype is about AI and data centers, the new reality is much more substantive and thorough-going: it is an organized, systematic rebuilding of the US industrial and manufacturing base.
This writer has covered this process over the last year, in what has frankly been a unique series of writings and public presentations. They can be found here on the Physical Economics Substack. (A link to a recent public presentation is to be found, below, in the footnotes.)
Here let’s update you, the reader, on the manufacturing site construction “starts,” and the broader numbers highlighting all of the “non-residential construction,” both in the pipeline and now underway. Finally, this writer will turn to the implications of the surprising turn of events with our neighbor, Venezuela, considered in the needed, broader American economic and cultural context.
Shovels Now in the Ground
In December 2025, new US manufacturing construction saw significant activity, with nearly $10.5 billion in starts, about 25% above the average, led by major projects. To name a few:
These include a $689 Million Virginia complex by South-Korea based LS Cable System. Pratt & Whitney committed $285 million to expand its Asheville, NC, assembly plant, adding 325 new jobs. Texas Instruments (TI) meanwhile has now began production at its new semiconductor fab in Sherman, Texas, a major step in boosting US domestic chip supply, alongside other significant announcements.
Clarksville, Tennessee has landed another major international partnership. Korea Zinc, a Seoul-based zinc producer, has announced a $6.6 billion investment to build a major smelting facility, with the U.S. Department of War also investing into the project. According to Korea Zinc, the facility will produce 13 minerals critical to defense. The War Department will provide $2.15 billion of the investment, which includes a conditional $1.4 billion commitment. Nearby Gordonsville, in Smith County, TN will see a closed mine come back to life under the Korea Zinc investment, with 320 new jobs projected.
To name one more project, Novartis has broken ground on a flagship 700,000 sq ft manufacturing hub in North Carolina. CEO Vas Narasimhan hailed the start of the project: “This announcement is a commitment to American innovation and to the patients we serve… By building a full, end to end manufacturing presence in North Carolina, we are expanding our capacity to deliver medical breakthroughs”
Industry Select, the B2B (business-to-business) data platform that provides human-verified information and contact details for U.S. manufacturers, suppliers, and industrial service providers, gave a good wrap-up in their December 29, 2025 blog post:
“America’s manufacturing sector closed 2025 on a high note. In December alone, companies announced billions of dollars in new U.S. factories and expansions, with projects ranging from pharmaceuticals to packaging, equipment and advanced materials. Many of these facilities are designed to on shore production, strengthen domestic supply chains and create thousands of skilled jobs...”1
The S&P Global manufacturing Purchase Managers Index (PMI) again showed continuing output growth as “solid,” as the Index has throughout the last year. As this writer continues to report, the S&P Global PMI, which polls over twice the number of US businesses, including small and medium manufacturers, continues to completely contradict the Institute for Supply Management’s PMI. The ISM Index is responsible for much of the negative reporting on US manufacturing, as carried by the Fake News and the usual assortment of professional scribblers.
The S&P Global manufacturing survey reports that, “employment rose solidly as firms filled vacancies in anticipation of a stronger 2026,” and further reports that, “manufacturing firms held a positive outlook regarding the year ahead for sales and production. Upbeat business activity expectations were linked to hopes of lower interest rates alongside business expansion and investment plans.”2
What to Expect in 2026-2027?
Looking down the road further into 2026 and 2027, Dodge Analytics (130 years old, and now part of the Dodge Construction Network, another B2B business) adds further perspective. Dodge offers project data, market forecasting, and analytics for the North American commercial construction industry. Their Dodge Momentum Index (DMI) is known for accurately tracking nonresidential building projects now entering the planning stages -- which reliably leads, in time, the actual construction spending by a year to eighteen months.
By the end of 2025, their DMI index was up 37% from the average reading in 2024. The commercial portion of the DMI was up 35% and the institutional portion was up 43% over the same period.3
Non-residential construction projects include manufacturing, industrial, warehouse, and commercial facilities along with offices, schools, and hospitals. These larger-scale projects typically require specialized expertise in architecture, engineering and project management.
The Rate of the Rate Increasing?
In September, 2025, the Dodge Momentum Index (DMI) already sat 33% higher than the same period in 2024 -- a full one third increase. (This writer would suggest that this jump already reflected the building confidence in the changes afoot, as a Trump second presidential term was coming into focus.)
Year-over-year, by time of December, 2025 figures, the DMI was up 50% when compared to December, 2024. The commercial segment was reported as up 45% (still +30% when data centers are removed) and the institutional segment was up 60% over the same period.4
It was also noted that these December non-residential projects were moving through the planning process (the throughput rate) at a somewhat quicker pace.
So, with this backdrop in mind, and recommending Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick’s extended interview on the All-In podcast of January 8th5, this Substack post returns to review President Trump’s new early January, 2026 initiatives. Keep in mind that more is on the way, as the President has already announced he will unveil a broader US US home building plan, in his remarks in Davos, Switzerland in less than a week!
Reining in the Military Industrial Complex Means Ending Usury
Rebuilding Our National Defense
On Tuesday, January 6th, President Trump unloaded on the bloated ‘defense primes’ and addressed the failing defense industrial base of the USA. He was taking aim at another pillar of the financialization of the US economy, not the capacity of American producers.
“Executive Pay Packages in the Defense Industry are exorbitant and unjustifiable given how slowly these Companies are delivering vital Equipment to our Military, and our Allies,” Trump wrote. “Salaries, Stock Options, and every other form of Compensation are far too high for these Executives,” President Trump stated. Trump formalized a path forward in a sweeping Executive Order (EO) the next day.
The EO, Prioritizing the Warfighter in Defense Contracting,6 specifically singles out the chronic lack of capital investment made by the major defense contractors -- a reflection of how the remaining Big Five are increasingly just another revenue stream for Wall Street and the City of London. This is dangerously compromising the timeliness and quality of the defense items delivered, as has been exposed in the course of the Ukraine crisis. Enforcement will come through tools under the Defense Production Act and available contract enforcement mechanisms, with the EO reordering how defense contractors use profits and compensate executives.
The order bars stock buybacks and dividends for firms deemed by the Secretary of War to be underperforming on government contracts; allows the Pentagon to cap executive base salaries during remediation periods; and directs future defense contracts to tie incentive pay to production speed and quality. (CEOs of “defense primes” like Lockheed and Northrop Grumman annually earn in the range of $20 million dollars.)
It would be a mistake to believe that the City of London and allied Wall Street interests ever wished to insure America’s national security. Indeed from the standpoint of London’s Royal Institute for International Affairs (Chatham House) and US-based Council on Foreign Relations, the intent is to always insure that there are no nation state winners -- only losers. Instead the intent is to continuously play nations off against the other.
To the financial oligarchy, milking the US aerospace-defense sector has been just one more useful (and lucrative) tool, in satanically calculating a geopolitical “balance” of endless conflict and war. As Chatham House’s Executive forthrightly presented January 13th,7 President Trump is carrying out “a revolution.” He is intent on ending that balance of terror -- what has been ballyhooed as “the Western Alliance” -- and is instead choosing to negotiate peace with other sovereign nations -- and that from an American position of strength.
Ending Usury?
Financialization has been a fancy word for usury. Promoted as increasing market efficiencies, it enforced “industry consolidation” through outsourcing, mergers & acquisitions, and the lowering of the real wages and standard of living of American working families. Fewer and fewer ‘selected’ large players thus came to dominate in most markets, preying upon once-proud producers. It was a deadly hoax, as this writer and his colleagues have insisted over decades.
On Friday, January 9, 2026 President Donald Trump very publicly announced that banks and credit card companies must cap credit card interest rates at 10% for one year. He stated in a post on Truth Social that the policy should take effect on January 20, 2026, the anniversary of his inauguration.
Since the days of Jimmy Carter and the Trilateral Commission, the intent of the financial oligarchy has been the broad imposition of financialization and usury upon America families and all producers.8 Bills such as SB381, the 10 Percent Credit Card Interest Rate Cap Act of Senators Bernie Saunders and Josh Hawley, have been introduced in Congress, already showing that there is a legislative path. Discussions are ongoing.
President Donald Trump has thrown his support behind the bipartisan Credit Card Competition Act (CCCA), legislation designed to curb excessive swipe fees that burden small businesses and consumers. The legislation, sponsored by Senators Roger Marshall (KS) and Sen. Dick Durbin (IL), would require the two largest credit card networks (VISA and Mastercard) to offer merchants a choice of at least two unaffiliated processing networks—using competition and transparency to crack a system now controlled by an oligopoly of powerful financial corporations.
Fold-in the thrashing that Jerome “Too Late” Powell and the Federal Reserve are deservably receiving, and its clear that Central Bankers are not longer in charge!
Steps to Solve the Housing Crisis
Affordable single family homes also came into focus on January 7th. The President announced on Truth Social that he was banning, “large institutional investors”—which include Wall Street conglomerates like private equity firms and real estate trusts— from buying single-family homes, and called on Congress to codify the law. “People live in homes, not corporations,” Trump stated.
President Donald Trump on January 8th then announced on Truth Social that he was, “instructing [his] Representatives to BUY $200 BILLION DOLLARS IN MORTGAGE BONDS,” in order to address the national housing affordability crisis that he blames on the Biden administration. “This will drive Mortgage Rates DOWN, monthly payments DOWN, and make the cost of owning a home more affordable,” Trump wrote. “It is one of my many steps in restoring Affordability, something that the Biden Administration absolutely destroyed.” Thirty year mortgage rates have already dropped below 6% in response.
Making America Healthy Again
Trump has also convinced major pharmaceutical companies to voluntarily offer Most-Favored-Nation (MFN) pricing. Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy states the voluntary commitments account for roughly 95% of the medical drugs sold in the country.
MFN started with state-level Medicaid models in January 1, 2026, and a direct-to-consumer platform called TrumpRX is planned to launch in late January, 2026. This follows voluntary agreements with pharmaceutical companies inked in late 2025.
Also, between January 5th and January 7th, the Secretary of HHS rolled out the new recommended children’s vaccine schedule, along with FDA head Dr. Martin Adel Makary and Dr. Mehmet Oz, administrator of CMS. . On Dec. 5, President Trump had directed Secretary Kennedy to align the U.S. vaccination schedule with those of other wealthy nations, citing Denmark, Germany and Japan.
The Trump administration, led by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr and Ag Secretary Brooke Rollins, announced the new “Real Food” Dietary Guidelines and the return of the food pyramid on January 7, 2026, marking a significant reset in U.S. nutrition and agriculture policy. The guidelines for 2025-2030 prioritize protein, fresh vegetables & fruits, and fats like olive oil, butter, and beef tallow, reversing previous guidance that restricted saturated fats.
In a December 9th, Politico interview, President Trump spelled in out: “Obamacare was set up for insurance companies to become rich, OK?… They’ve been paid trillions — not billions — trillions of dollars and what I’m saying is very simple: I don’t want to pay them anything. No money for the insurance companies. Sorry fellas, I know them all. I want to pay the money directly to the people and let the people get their own healthcare. But you know who’s fighting me on that? The Democrats.”
On January 14th, the President rolled out his “Great Healthcare Plan,” as the basis for ultimately replacing the “Unaffordable Care Act.” He is setting a gold standard for Congress, and squeezing the “Uni-party’s” endless, corrupt attempts to continue “subsidizing” Wall Street’s financialized healthcare monstrosities.
The Plan, when passed by Congress, would codify the popular Most-Favored-Nation (MFN) drug pricing initiative, send money directly to eligible Americans to allow them to buy the health insurance of their choice; fund a Cost-Sharing Reduction Program shaving more than 10% off the common Obama care programs, and end kickbacks from the pharmacy benefit managers to large brokerage middlemen, and insure price transparency in healthcare.
Power to the Grid - Paid for by Data Centers?
On energy as well, the USA is continuing to accelerate energy development to meet the national energy emergency, and keeping existing nuclear, natural gas, and coal-fired plants operating.
The Administration’s new and paradigm-busting plan, announced January 16th, will insure that Tech giants pay for their surge in electrical demand and power costs, not working families. Secretary Christ Wright and interior Secretary Doug Burgum, were joined by a number of governors within the 13 state PJM Interconnection. PJM, now in trouble, is the largest power grid operator in the US, serving almost 70 million customers in the strategically critical American Heartland.
The Administration and Governors announced a novel “emergency auction” in which data center builders will put down hard cash, now, bidding to buy future electrical energy output needed for their data center projects. (The purchaser will pay whether they use all the electricity or not.) The novel plan is projected to raise upwards of $15 billion for the construction of new baseload electrical energy capacity for all of PJM’s users. PJM is also the biggest and most-stressed wholesale electricity market, a product of the insane deregulation and greening of electricity that spread like cancer over the past generation. PJM now faces a 6 gigawatts shortfall in its reliability requirements for 2027, and seen “capacity market” bid prices, to line up power for their grid, explode.
The Carribean Basin & Venezuela
Also on January 6th, in a shocker to the drug trafficking and financing “Spider’s web” of the Caribbean Basin, Trump announced that the U.S. would, with cooperation of the interim government in Venezuela, next take control of roughly 50 million barrels of Venezuelan crude oil. By Wednesday, January 7th the White House revealed that the oil deal would operate under tightly controlled terms, set directly by the president, the exact flow of the resulting capital, the administration has effectively turned Venezuelan resources back to productive utilization by the Venezuelan economy and US economy. An Executive Order from the president was issued to protect the resulting monies from the sales of Venezuela’s oil from being grabbed by private Anglo-American financial predators.
Utilizing the Constitutional powers of the US Presidency, it is President Donald J. Trump who chooses to willfully act. The contrast, to past presidencies within most Americans’ living memory, is stark. To create a productive and prosperous America, an oligopolistic and usurious “structure of sin’ is being washed away. The decades-old, leftist, all-talk-no-action “anti-trust” and “anti-monopoly” rhetoric of Senators Elizabeth “Pocahontas” Warren, Bernie Sanders, and suddenly popular socialists like Zohran Mandami, is likewise being shredded, as dirigist American System actions actually change the American landscape.
This writer discussed the “American System” versus the “British System” in more depth in my November 5, 2024 book. There, the direction in which a second Trump administration would and must -- for unavoidable, actual physical economic reasons -- go, are detailed. This with a clear eyed view of avoiding past ideologically-driven mistakes. More on key topics, particularly regarding healthcare and housing, have been added in recent months on this Substack ,and in presentations made for Promethean Action webcasts, which are now available on YouTube at Promethean In-depth.
Rolling Up the Global Narcotics Empire
The Substack post concludes with some necessary background to the current reset of US relations with the nation of Venezuela. The recent actions of the US government in regard to Venezuela are not a colored revolution -- or even a “grab” for Venezuelan oil. The Trump administration is rolling up the far-flung drug trafficking networks, including -- but not limited to -- the entire Caribbean Basin, that have viciously targeted the United States and other sovereign nations. This real War on Drugs, and a war on the financial and synarchist networks behind it, is critical to freeing up the United States and nations of the Western Hemisphere, and a renaissance of nation-state sovereignty.
On September 15th, 2025, President Trump released, Presidential Determination on Major Drug Transit or Major Illicit Drug Producing Countries for Fiscal Year 2026, both to Congress and to be published in the Federal Register. The Determination recognizing a national emergency and “a public health crisis in the United States that remains the leading cause of death for Americans ages 18 to 44.” The administration, it is announced, is deploying “every aspect of American power and unprecedented resources” to defeat this threat.
The President begins the Determination by forthrightly declaring:
I hereby identify the following countries as major drug transit or major illicit drug producing countries: Afghanistan, The Bahamas, Belize, Bolivia, Burma, the People’s Republic of China (PRC), Colombia, Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, India, Jamaica, Laos, Mexico, Nicaragua, Pakistan, Panama, Peru, and Venezuela.9
While making clear that a country’s presence on that list is not in itself necessarily damning, the Determination goes on to identify the Maduro government in Venezuela as a criminal regime, and the nation of Columbia “as having failed demonstrably to meet its drug control obligations.”
The Determination also sternly states that the Trump administration has “marshaled United States economic strength to compel greater cooperation from our North American neighbors to confront the drug threat,” discussing both the British Crown’s Canada, “where more action is needed,” and Mexico where President Claudia Sheinbaum has increased cooperation, but “much more needs to be done.”10
The spread of illicit, addictive drugs over decades smothered America, physically and spiritually; it has been a critical component of a take-down the United States, reaching into the very pores of society. Annual illicit narcotics trafficking is estimated in the range of hundreds of billions of dollars worldwide, and could easily top a trillion dollars or more, particularly when illicit arms and human trafficking are folded in, as they should be.
One can hereby grasp the extent and intent of the Trump Administration’s initiative, including with Venezuela. The United States, as Secretary of State Marco Rubio plainly stated, is not at war with Venezuela. Be it with Canada, Mexico, Venezuela, Laos, China, or the Bahamas, the intent of the Trump administration is to now wipe out the drug scourge at its sources and by targeting its financing and distribution networks. This is to free the USA and our neighbors from the modern day, globalized British Empire’s new Opium War against the nation state.
It is Mankind’s creativity & thought -- each person’s God-given and individual creative powers -- that are being freed and unleashed. It is being achieved as our social and cultural fabric and physical economy undergo a rebirth, a renaissance. The USA is beginning now to inoculate itself from the disease of pessimism that ate away at the nation, ever since President John F. Kennedy’s assassination and resulting cover-up. As this Substack post has reported, above, all of America’s producers and communities are being up-shifted through participation in a physical and spiritual rebuilding of the USA.
There are, of course, many other profound initiatives underway in the USA. For example, Artemis II is slated to launch for a manned flight around the Moon in early February - the first in more than fifty years. President John F. Kennedy would be proud. In the private sector, in a bid to launch the build of a first fusion reactor to power the grid, the merger of TAE Technologies with Trump management and Technology Group (TMTG) represents a new frontier that is now here!
So again, what gives President Trump and his administration the standing, the gumption one-up, to now boldly act to take on Wall Street’s usury? The answer is that the USA is already pulling itself up by its boot straps! The answer lies in what the Trump administration has unleashed: the real, creative physical economy and culture of the USA, this on the 250th anniversary of our sovereign republic’s birth.
It is up to us now, as self-chosen citizen-leaders, to insure that these profound intentions do not wither with the November, 2026 elections!
https://www.industryselect.com/blog/new-us-factories-announced-in-december-2025
https://www.pmi.spglobal.com/Public/Home/PressRelease/ (To be completely truthful, reading the January 2nd S&P Global Manufacturing PMI press release, one gets the distinct feeling that, this time, even S&P Global analysts and economists can’t quite believe their own survey of manufacturers!)
The DMI is a monthly measure, based on the three-month moving value of nonresidential building projects going into planning.
https://www.construction.com/company-news/dodge-momentum-index-grows-7-in-december/
https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2026/01/prioritizing-the-warfighter-in-defense-contracting/
https://www.chathamhouse.org/2026/01/chatham-house-director-bronwen-maddox-warns-does-mark-end-western-alliance
Most states had caps on interest rates at or near 10% for general loans until “deregulation” in the late 1970s and early 1980s. A pivotal 1978 Supreme Court decision (Marquette National Bank v. First of Omaha Service Corp.) allowed national banks to charge the interest rate of their home state (often a state with no usury limit, such as Delaware or South Dakota) to customers in any other state. This undermined most state-based usury caps for national banks and was used to compel many other states to repeal or weaken their own usury laws to compete.
The Author’s most recent Promethean presentation:
https://www.state.gov/releases/office-of-the-spokesperson/2025/09/presidential-determination-on-major-drug-transit-or-major-illicit-drug-producing-countries-for-fiscal-year-2026
For comparison, consider this linked US State Department report, issued in March, 2021 which includes prior presidential narcotics control Determinations, including 2020 and 2021: https://www.state.gov/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/International-Narcotics-Control-Strategy-Report-Volume-I-FINAL-1.pdf
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