(Alt-Market)—The term “protectionism” is generally treated as a pejorative in the economic world, akin to “isolationism” and “populism”. In an era where globalism is treated as the end-all-be-all of social and geopolitical evolution, the idea of taking a step back and reconsidering the notion of independence and self reliance is abhorrent. Globalists and progressives argue that there can be no going back and that only they know the way forward.
It’s rather convenient that they’ve become the self designated prophets of correct economic policy, is it not?
I don’t know who voted for these financial elites to take on such a role; as far as I can tell no one did. But they certainly have assumed the authority to dictate the path of international trade, currency methodology and even debt creation. Central bankers and their globalist counterparts control every fiscal policy that determines if you or I live a life of plenty or a life of peasantry, and, with the flip of a switch, they can send the whole of the global system crashing down.
The globalists have this power because there are no fail safes – There are no redundancies and there is no Plan B. The more the populace needs the system the more they need the globalists, and the more they need the globalists the more power the globalists enjoy.
The international trade network is designed like an intricate Jenga tower with a foundation of just a few wooden pieces holding up a vast and seemingly infinite cathedral. However, pull just one of those base pieces and the entire edifice collapses. Globalism relies on forced interdependency between nations, so that every country needs something from every other country in order to survive. No single nation is allowed to rely on its own resources and production – As noted, that’s what they call “protectionism”. It’s the great taboo; a violation of the will of the tiny globalist gods.
But what happens when the globalists create international division and sow seeds of instability? What happens when they create multiple wars? Or when people get fed up with the imbalances, leading to sanctions and tariffs and trade disputes?
Today, there are at least three regions of the world in which World War III could spark off, including Ukraine, Iran/Israel and Taiwan. Sanctions between NATO countries and Russia have greatly affected Europe’s energy security and the EU has been sabotaging itself with climate change regulations that are destroying their ability to build more power plants and produce more food.
The BRICS nations are actively pursuing a new currency exchange system to cut out the US dollar as the world reserve and they are supported by global banking institutions like the BIS and IMF which are getting ready to introduce CBDCs (Central Bank Digital Currencies) as the new framework for banking exchange.
In the meantime, Donald Trump is engaging in wider tariffs, which could bring the US economy back from the brink of debt disaster, but only if he is able to somehow accelerate domestic production at the same time. If he is unsuccessful, the US consumer will be left with mostly foreign-made goods and all those goods will be more expensive.
The globalists have created a scenario in which globalism is an exponential detriment. I believe that their original plan was to create enough chaos to force nations into even deeper centralization (a one world currency system, cashless society, wealth redistribution, rationing and Universal Basic Income). But what if some countries go in a different direction? What happens when nations stop participating in the dependency game and walk away?
Well, you get a worldwide economic crisis, but also a great rush by nation states to juice their domestic production. You get a rush to localism. If countries hope to survive what is coming, they’re going to have to start manufacturing their own survival goods. Otherwise, they will face civil unrest and internal collapse.
Such a crisis environment comes with a host of problems, primarily in the supply chain. Shifting away from globalism after so many decades of addiction will be a difficult process. In the case of the US, a large number of non-necessities are made overseas rather than produced domestically, but there are quite a few essentials as well.
The US is lucky enough to have considerable natural resources including untapped mineral wealth and oil (America has more untapped oil than any other country on the planet). The problem is that we don’t utilize them, at least not in an efficient way. The concern, of course, is environmental decay if America ever tapped into these resources on a large scale.
The EPA and far-left environmental doomers tend to exaggerate the risks of resource development. The technology to prevent pollution is well in hand, though it’s true that prices rise the more companies have to spend on preventing contamination.
It’s also true that most Americans regardless of politics don’t want to live in a country that’s production wealthy if that means it is also health poor. In other words, when America does shift into a domestic production model, it will have to do so with much greater expense than developing nations like China that don’t care about their own environment.
A much bigger concern, though, is the safety of national energy supplies and food supplies. As noted, Europe is screwed. The EU is actively trying to sabotage any remaining structures of independent energy and food production and the British government is following their lead with a crushing inheritance tax on farmland and an obsession with inefficient green energy projects.
It’s not that these officials have forgotten where their food comes from, they know full well. They WANT to destroy domestic production. They want the western world to be crippled by food dependency.
In the US agriculture is strong but the on-time freight system is not and using food factories as middlemen instead of local farm goods going directly to markets creates a barrier for localization. Factory farming allows major conglomerates to haggle supermarkets into accepting lower price brackets which small farms can’t compete with. Lower prices are nice, however, this model makes every community food dependent.
Changing the current system of food distribution could take years, with corrupt politicians and corporations fighting reforms every step of the way. But, smaller communities can and should look into programs for local food growing and security. If neighborhood markets sourced half of their produce and meat from nearby small farms this could help to protect towns from a supply chain crisis. Governments could incentivize small farms to sell their goods direct to the public (at a lower price) by giving tax credits for any farms with a store on their land.
What concerns me most is that far too many countries and communities will do nothing about domestic production until they are hit hard with a supply crunch. In America there is a very large contingent of preppers (at least 30% of the adult population according to surveys), and this could help to avoid a complete collapse. That said, a sudden national leap into “protectionism” and away from globalism might require years of adaptation.
This should be an expected development. Just look at how hostile our “allies” have been to the notion of dealing with tariffs while using the US consumer as a cash cow for decades? It’s been a one-way street for so long and they have no concept of fair play in the markets. A lot of these countries are talking about “hurting” the US however they can as reciprocal tariffs are introduced. America must be ready to provide its own necessities on demand to prevent damage from retaliation.
On the individual level, this means people need to have a solid supply of necessities including stored foods just to give themselves time for domestic production to adjust. While this is happening, expect shortages and high prices on a number of goods. The whole point of globalism is to punish nations for acting independently; US effort to become more self reliant will not happen without some pain.
Position yourself as a producer if you can, or a person that can repair existing goods. For the majority of westerners used to ultra-convenient supply chains and same-day delivery, this idea might sound ridiculous. Don’t get caught up in the normalcy bias. Our economic situation can change at the drop of a hat; be sure you have a backup plan.
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Bypass Big Tech Censors
Two Storms, One Harvest
Every food crisis in living memory has been a one-shock event. The 2008 price spike was a commodity bubble. The 2020 shortages were a logistics failure. The 2022 grain scare was a war on one exporter’s ports. Each time, the system bent, adjusted, and recovered, and each time the experts assured us afterward that global markets are simply too big and too diversified to fail.
What nobody in Washington seems eager to discuss is that 2026 is shaping up to be something the modern food system has never actually faced. Two independent shocks, one climatic and one geopolitical, are converging on the same harvest cycle at the same time. Not sequentially. Simultaneously.
Start with the weather. The Pacific Ocean is currently building toward what forecasters now openly call a record event. NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center puts the odds of at least a strong El Niño near 88 percent, with roughly two in three odds it reaches “very strong” status, the tier reserved for perhaps three or four events in the entire satellite era. Every major global model now projects a median peak in Super El Niño territory, and most of them project it exceeding the 2015-16 event, which until now held the modern record. Sea surface anomalies were already brushing the super threshold in mid-July, months before these events normally peak. The atmosphere has already shifted into El Niño mode, and the event is forecast to crest in late fall and early winter.
This is not about “climate change.” It’s about the standard cycles of weather, and the cycle we’re currently in is one that has likely devastated societies in the past. We’re better prepared as a society today, but not all Americans are equally prepared.
Serious households have started doing the quiet math on their own. Grocery bills tell part of the story, and the forecast maps tell the rest, which is why long-term food storage has moved from fringe hobby to mainstream line item in the family budget, with established suppliers like Heaven’s Harvest seeing demand from people who five years ago would have rolled their eyes at the idea. That instinct is not paranoia. It is pattern recognition, and the pattern is worth walking through carefully.
Editor’s Note: Heaven’s Harvest IS a sponsor, but the warnings of this article are real and would be written even if we didn’t have a survival food sponsor. With that said, those who take advantage of what they offer can use promo code “Patriot” for 15% off.
The Fertilizer Clock Is Already Running
While the Pacific warms, the second shock has been unfolding in the Strait of Hormuz. The conflict with Iran turned the world’s most important energy chokepoint into a contested waterway, and the consequences reach far beyond the gas pump. Roughly a third of global fertilizer trade moves through Hormuz, and the disruption sent urea prices up 86 percent year over year by March, with a 53 percent jump in a single month.
The World Bank projects energy prices rising about 24 percent in 2026 and fertilizer about 31 percent. By its own accounting, fertilizer prices ran 35 percent higher in the first five months of this year than the same period last year.
Here is the mechanism the nightly news will not explain. Fertilizer is not a grocery item. It is a time-delayed input. The nitrogen a farmer in Iowa or Punjab could not afford to apply this spring does not show up as a problem this spring. It shows up as a thinner harvest six to twelve months later.
The World Bank’s own food security brief concedes that the effects of reduced applications earlier this season “are likely to become visible only later in harvest outcomes.” Translate that from institutional language into plain English and it means this. The damage is already done, it is already in the ground, and we are simply waiting for it to arrive on the shelf.
Now check the calendar. Six to twelve months from the spring planting season lands us squarely in late 2026 and early 2027. Which is precisely when the strongest El Niño in the instrumental record is forecast to peak, bringing its signature droughts to Southeast Asia, Australia, southern Africa, northern Brazil, and South Asia, the very regions that grow the world’s rice, sugar, and oilseeds.
The World Bank warns openly that a strong El Niño “could disrupt multiple crop belts simultaneously” on top of the conflict-driven input costs. Their baseline projection assumes the Middle East disruptions ease by autumn. What in the last two years of Middle East history suggests that assumption is safe?
The System Has No Slack Left
The comfortable answer is that global markets always adjust. But adjustment requires slack, and the slack is gone. Global cereal production is expected to decline from last year’s records even before El Niño does its work. The UN World Food Programme, hardly a den of right-wing preppers, is calling this the most significant disruption to its supply chains since Covid and the invasion of Ukraine, and its supply chain director put the stakes bluntly.
Today’s supply chain challenges are tomorrow’s hunger crisis.
There is also a political dimension that markets cannot price. When food gets scarce, governments do not behave like economists. They behave like politicians. Export bans, hoarding mandates, and panic buying at the national level turned the modest rice shortfall of 2008 into a global crisis, and analysts are already warning that import-dependent nations are the first dominoes.
The 2015-16 Super El Niño, a far weaker event than what is now forecast, threw tens of millions into food stress across Africa and Asia. This one is projected to be stronger, and it arrives with fertilizer already rationed by price and shipping lanes already contested by missiles.
What Joseph Knew
Scripture does not treat preparation for lean years as faithlessness. It treats it as wisdom delivered in advance to those willing to act on it.
Behold, there come seven years of great plenty throughout all the land of Egypt: And there shall arise after them seven years of famine; and all the plenty shall be forgotten in the land of Egypt.
Joseph did not respond to that warning with a hashtag or a committee. He stored grain during the years of abundance, and when the famine came, Egypt stood while its neighbors begged. The lesson is not that famine is certain. It is that the time to prepare is precisely when preparation still looks optional.
Nobody who filled a pantry in a year of plenty has ever regretted it, and nobody standing in an empty aisle has ever been glad he waited for certainty.
None of this calls for panic, and panic is the enemy of sound judgment anyway. It calls for the same unglamorous prudence our grandparents considered ordinary. Keep some cash margin, know your local growers, and put real food in deep storage while it is cheap and available, because the entire arc of this story is that cheap and available is a closing window.
Families looking for a straightforward place to start can visit Heaven’s Harvest and use promo code Patriot for 15 percent off long-term storable food. The forecasts may yet soften, the strait may yet reopen, and we should pray they do. But hope is a fine thing to hold and a foolish thing to eat.
