WHAT IN THE HELL IS GOING ON WITH THE TARIFFS (AND THE GLOBAL RESOURCE GRAB)? PART 1: THE GREAT EXTRACTION AND THE DYING CURRENCY by Mark A. Shryock If you are paying attention to global politics right now, you are probably feeling a massive disconnect between what you are being told and what you are seeing with your own eyes. Look at the headlines over the last few years: Aggressive, historic tariffs slapped on imported goods. A sudden military and economic squeeze to remove Venezuela’s leadership. Unprecedented threats to “buy” Greenland. Intense economic and legal warfare aimed at Cuba. Chaotic attempts to corner Iran. Even our closest allies, like Canada and Mexico, are being threatened with massive, economy-rattling trade penalties. The official narrative claims this is all about “protecting domestic industry,” fighting dictatorships, stopping drug cartels, or standard “national security.” But when you look at your grocery bill, your energy costs, and the rapidly shrinking purchasing power of your paycheck, your gut tells you something else is entirely at play. Your gut is right. This isn’t just erratic political theater. This is a desperate, global scramble for hard resources because the people running the system know the currency is dying. To understand what is actually going on, you have to look past the political noise and look at the raw, undeniable math. We are witnessing the collapse of the old “3D” extractive economic model. It is a system built on infinite debt, paper fiat currency, and financial illusion. THE DEBT TRAP AND THE DEVALUATION MASTERPLAN Governments around the world, particularly the United States, are buried under a mountain of sovereign debt that is mathematically impossible to pay back through normal taxation or economic growth. When a government owes money it cannot pay, it only has two choices: default and let the country collapse, or print money to devalue the currency, paying back old debts with cheaper, watered-down dollars. They always choose the second option. Every action being taken right now, every tariff, every rate manipulation, every trillion-dollar deficit, is designed to quietly devalue the dollar. So, where do the tariffs fit in? Tariffs are sold to the public as a patriotic tax on foreign countries. That is a lie. A tariff is a direct, hidden tax on the domestic consumer. When cheap imported goods are blocked, domestic producers shielded from foreign competition instantly raise their prices to capture the available profit margin. It causes massive, systemic inflation. And for a government drowning in debt, inflation is a feature, not a bug. It quietly transfers the cost of the national debt directly onto the backs of the working and middle classes by destroying the purchasing power of their wages, pensions, and savings. The debt doesn’t evaporate; it is paid for by the people holding the currency. THE GLOBAL RESOURCE GRAB: WHY CUBA? WHY VENEZUELA? WHY GREENLAND? If you know paper currency is on a glide path to worthlessness, what do you do? You trade paper for physical reality. Look closely at the specific targets the administration has aggressively gone after. The advisers whispering in the ears of politicians understand a cold economic truth: when the fiat system fractures, the only nations that survive are the ones holding physical energy, arable land, and raw materials. Cuba and the Farmland: The heavy economic pressure on Cuba isn’t just a lingering Cold War grudge or about fighting communism. It is about massive, highly valuable agricultural assets. In 1959, the Castro regime enacted the Agrarian Reform Law, seizing massive sugar plantations, cattle ranches, and prime agricultural land, violently kicking the owners out of the country. By recently activating Title III of the Helms-Burton Act, the U.S. essentially weaponized the legal system, allowing exiles to sue foreign companies profiting off that confiscated land. It is a calculated, economic land grab to claw back control and compensation for some of the most valuable, productive agricultural real estate in the Western Hemisphere. Venezuela: The recent operations to oust Nicolas Maduro were sold to the public as a strike against drug trafficking and dictatorship. The reality? Venezuela sits on the largest proven heavy crude oil reserves on the planet. The immediate goal of the geopolitical squeeze was to force a regime change that would open the door for American energy giants to completely dominate Venezuelan infrastructure. It was a hostile takeover attempt to secure a physical energy monopoly before global supply chains break down. Greenland and Canada: The threats to annex or “buy” Greenland sound like the ramblings of a real estate developer, but look at what Greenland actually is. Beneath its melting ice, it is sitting on some of the largest untapped rare-earth mineral deposits on the planet, the exact physical materials needed for the next generation of energy, defense, and technology. Meanwhile, the aggressive tariff threats against Canada are leverage to ensure the U.S. has unmitigated access to its massive freshwater, timber, and mineral wealth. Iran: The chaotic attempts to squeeze Iran and the threats to seize the Strait of Hormuz aren’t about spreading democracy. The Strait of Hormuz is the single most important oil chokepoint on Earth. If the dollar loses its status as the global reserve currency, whoever physically controls the flow of oil dictates the terms of whatever global economy comes next. This is a geopolitical game of musical chairs. They are trying to secure the board before the music stops. The advisers know that whoever holds the physical assets when the paper burns makes the rules. WHY THE BILLIONAIRE CLASS WINS (AND WHY THEY PUSH FOR IT) The most common question people ask is: If they know the system is collapsing, and if inflation destroys the economy, why do the billionaires and elites go along with it? Why do they want the tariffs? Because they don’t hold cash. The billionaire class thrives during inflation. They own hard, productive assets: commercial real estate, energy grids, farmland, mineral rights, and raw materials. As the dollar’s value drops, the nominal value of those physical assets skyrockets. Furthermore, they use cheap, fixed-rate debt to buy those assets. When inflation hits, they pay off their massive loans with devalued currency. They don’t need a smoke-filled room to plan a conspiracy. They are simply perfectly positioned to surf the wave of currency collapse, sweeping up the world’s remaining real wealth while everyday people are financially drowned by the tariffs and the inflation. But make no mistake: this short-term asset grab is their final, desperate play. As centralized state control unravels, paper deeds and digital titles become completely unenforceable. True power, wealth, and resource control return to local hands, leaving the billionaire class hiding behind security gates. THE TRANSITION: SURVIVING THE SHIFT We are moving through an incredibly turbulent transition. The old, centralized, extractive systems are breaking. We are heading toward a decentralized “5D” reality, but to get there, we have to survive the intermittent period. You cannot stop a government from inflating away its debt. You cannot stop the tariffs, and you cannot stop the geopolitical resource grabs for land and oil. But you can decline to stand in the blast radius. You cannot eat a gold coin, and you cannot heat your home with a stock portfolio. As the currency degrades, true wealth will revert back to its oldest definition: tangible goods, actionable skills, and hyper-local community trust. In Part 2, we are going to drop the macro-economics and focus entirely on the ground level. I will give you the exact blueprint for what holds real micro-value when the system stutters, why a lighter is worth more than a silver bar, how to secure your food and energy outside the grid, the lethal traps of foraging in the wrong places, and why the lone-wolf prepper dies while the community co-op survives. Copyright © Mark A. Shryock. May be shared with attribution. SOURCES AND CITATIONS FOR PART 1 The Debt Liquidation / Financial Repression Mechanism: Reinhart, Carmen M., and M. Belen Sbrancia. The Liquidation of Government Debt. IMF Working Paper No. 15/7, International Monetary Fund, January 2015. Documents how governments historically use negative real interest rates and inflation to dissolve debt at the expense of savers. The Myth of “Growing Out of Debt”: Acalin, Julien, and Laurence M. Ball. Did the U.S. Really Grow Out of Its World War II Debt? IMF Working Paper 2024/005 (and NBER Working Paper 31577). Proves that without surprise inflation and pegged rates, post-WWII US debt would have barely dropped, transferring the cost to the public. Cuba and Expropriated Agricultural Land: The Agrarian Reform Law of 1959 and the activation of Title III of the Helms-Burton Act (LIBERTAD Act). In 2019, the U.S. ended decades of suspension and allowed lawsuits targeting foreign companies trafficking in property, including massive sugar and cattle plantations, expropriated by the Cuban government. Venezuela Oil Reserves: Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) data confirm Venezuela holds the largest proven oil reserves in the world (over 300 billion barrels), consisting largely of highly valuable heavy crude. Greenland Rare Earth Minerals: The Kvanefjeld project and broader Greenland mineral assessments document one of the world’s largest multi-element deposits of rare earth elements (REEs) essential for modern energy and defense technology. Iran and the Strait of Hormuz: U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA). The Strait of Hormuz is the world’s most important oil transit chokepoint, with roughly 20% of global petroleum liquids passing through it daily. Canada and Resource Leverage (Critical Minerals, Timber, and Energy): Executive Order 14156 (Declaring a National Energy Emergency) and the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) imposed tariffs on Canadian energy and critical minerals to force trade compliance. U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) issued guidance in March 2025 confirming that critical minerals from Canada, alongside energy resources, fall under the 10 percent IEEPA tariffs defined in the order. If you would like to support this work you can buy me a cup of coffee at https://ko-fi.com/markashryock or use my PayPal at the top of my Facebook page. If you are on Substack, you can choose to be a paying member instead of a free member. Many of you support me in other ways, through kind words, guidance, love. Support has a many faces, and I appreciate your kindness in all its forms.