March 12, 2025 Editor, The News-Gazette: American stock is falling. Since January the S&P 500 lost some $3 trillion and the Nasdaq Composite $2.5 trillion. Those of us fortunate to have retirement accounts are seeing them drained.
Worse, the stock of global goodwill for the U.S. is steeply dropping. Trump is waging war (economic, for now) against our best friends: Canadians and Europeans who fought with us through world wars, 9-11, Iraq, Afghanistan, and most recently California wild fires.
He’s as serious about annexing Canada as Putin is about Ukraine and Hitler was about Poland. Canadians are steeling themselves against American antagonism and taking their tourism dollars elsewhere.
Trump is threatening to seize Greenland, part of Denmark: “One way or the other, we’re going to get it.” And he hit Denmark up for eggs. They declined.
He’s levying tariffs on innumerable things that Americans need. Tariffs are taxes that the U.S. government imposes and that American consumers pay. Additional recent moves harm us. The National Institutes of Health enhance Americans’ health and reduce illness and disability. It’s funded through appropriations from the Congress that we elected, but a ketaminefueled foreigner (Musk) that nobody elected is dismantling it. This South African’s random cuts to the American Veterans Administration are eliminating jobs and health care for Americans who put their lives on the line for our country, many of them disabled in the process. Afghans who helped American forces by identifying high-value targets, and who are here legally, are being detained without charge.
The U.S. launched Voice of America (1942) and USAID (1961) to build international support for American democracy during the Cold War against communism. Americans: we need to be in the streets. ALLISON BELL Lexington
