The United States of America is facing a historic dilemma. It can either remain the world’s wealthiest nation or it can go bankrupt within a generation. The federal government is on track to spend $1 trillion in interest on the national debt in 2024, surpassing defense spending for the first time in its history. This crisis will continue to grow unless the government slashes spending drastically.

The average American pays $14,279 in federal income taxes each year, yet the nation still spends far more than it collects. The deficit was $1.8 trillion in 2024. To bridge this deficit gap, the government creates money out of thin air, which generates inflation.

Widespread voter frustration over the state of the U.S. economy drove millions of Americans to vote for Donald Trump. Now the president-elect is acting to overhaul the economy before things get worse. Many concerned commentators say that Mr. Trump will increase America’s deficit with tax cuts and create even more inflation with tariffs—but most of them avoid reporting on the president-elect’s full economic plan.

American tech entrepreneur Elon Musk has pointed out that “All government spending is taxation. The part that isn’t covered by tax revenue becomes inflation. You’re either taxed directly by the government or taxed by inflation, but you are for sure taxed.”

This fact means you cannot look at Mr. Trump’s proposed income tax cuts and tariff increases in isolation. You have to view them as part of his overall economic plan, which is to simultaneously cut income taxes, eliminate government debt and reduce inflation by raising tariffs and slashing wasteful spending. It is an ambitious agenda, but if Mr. Trump is able to enact all of his economic proposals; he could transform the U.S. into a self-sufficient superpower no longer reliant on East Asian manufactured goods or Middle Eastern oil.

Only time will tell how much of Mr. Trump’s economic agenda will be realized, but Bible prophecy indicates America is about to experience an economic resurgence.

The big question now is whether the American people will repent of their past mistakes and make an about-face.

Balance the Budget

President-elect Trump has said his first act after he’s sworn in on January 20 will be to appoint a task force to organize a Great American State Fair in Iowa to showcase the might of America on the nation’s 250th anniversary in 2026. He has other big ideas to celebrate this anniversary.

He has put Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy in charge of a new Department of Government Efficiency tasked with dismantling bureaucracy, eliminating regulations, and cutting wasteful spending. In his Nov. 12, 2024, announcement about Musk and Ramaswamy’s new role, Trump stated, “We will drive out the massive waste and fraud which exists throughout our annual $6.5 trillion of government spending. They will work together to liberate our economy and make the U.S. government accountable to ‘We the People.’ Their work will conclude no later than July 4, 2026. A smaller government, with more efficiency and less bureaucracy, will be the perfect gift to America on the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. I am confident they will succeed!”

Trump compared this new department, which only has power to issue recommendations to the federal government, to the Manhattan Project, implying that its success will be as important to America’s survival as the World War ii research program that produced the world’s first atomic weapons. This is an apt analogy. The Congressional Budget Office projects that at current spending levels, America will be spending 20 percent of tax revenue on the national debt within a decade—a financial and economic detonation.

Some watchdogs say the government wastes $300 billion a year, but Musk—famous for drastic, hard-driving and successful leadership of his companies—recognizes that the problem is much greater than that. During a Trump rally at Madison Square Garden on Oct. 27, 2024, Musk said he intends to slash the nation’s budget by at least $2 trillion. Such drastic cuts would anger a lot of people, yet $2 trillion in cuts is exactly what is required to balance America’s budget. In fiscal year 2024, the government collected $4.92 trillion and spent $6.75 trillion. Cutting $2 trillion would put the nation back in the black with a $180 billion surplus. Granted, $180 billion is only half of 1 percent of the total national debt, which currently stands at around $36 trillion. Yet such a surplus would still reassure investors that America can make its interest payments and is not about to go bankrupt.

ANGELA WEISS/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES

After purchasing the Twitter social media platform in October 2022, Musk fired 6,500 of the company’s 8,000 employees and the company (rebranded as X) still runs the sixth-most visited website in the world. Trump hopes Musk can devise a similar plan for the federal government, which over the past century has developed into a labyrinth. Trump has announced plans to eliminate the Department of Education, which consumed $238 billion in 2024, and return that responsibility to the states.

The cuts necessary to save America from bankruptcy must be not only drastic but across the board. If Trump makes no cuts to the “Big Three” mandatory entitlement programs—Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security—then he will have to slash all other federal spending in half to balance America’s budget.

In other words, America’s bloated welfare state must end, whether people like it or not.

“Everyone seems to be sort of whistling past the graveyard on this one,” Musk said in October. “We’re adding a trillion dollars to our debt—which our kids and grandkids are going to have to pay somehow—every three months. Soon it’s going to be every two months and then every month. And then the only thing that we’ll be able to pay is interest.”

Such reckless economic policy is not only unwise, it is sinful. God says, “The wicked borrows, and cannot pay back …” (Psalm 37:21; Revised Standard Version), and, “A good man leaveth an inheritance to his children’s children …” (Proverbs 13:22). Yet at least three generations of Americans have signed away their children’s future for government handouts now. The current generation of leaders must take immediate drastic action to prevent a catastrophic collapse.

Make Tariffs Great Again

Many economic analysts consider America’s national debt to be its top national security threat. They are absolutely right. History shows that once a nation begins spending more on interest payments than on national defense, it quickly loses its ability to defend itself.

Another closely related threat to U.S. national security is its enormous trade deficit. When nations spend more than they produce, they tend to import more than they export. For this reason, nations with budget deficits usually end up with significant trade deficits. America’s founders used high tariffs to ensure that the nation remained a net producer of goods. The nation abandoned the gold standard in 1971 and began purchasing foreign goods largely by simply printing more money. After it opened bilateral trade with Communist China in 1979, the trade deficit worsened. Since China uses forced labor to produce cheap goods, there is no way American workers can produce goods cheaper than Chinese workers.

American consumers now spend more than $3 trillion (roughly one 10th of consumer spending) on imported goods. Almost a fifth of these imported goods come from Communist China. This is a crisis!

A recent study highlighted in Forbes magazine found that the U.S. is now dependent on foreign suppliers not only for cheap consumer goods like sneakers and headphones but also for high-end electronics, pharmaceuticals and military materials. In a hypothetical future war with China or one of its allies, the U.S. could find itself crippled by supply chain shortages.

America’s leaders seem markedly unconcerned about the nation’s heavy reliance on nations like China. Why? Many of them simply disregard national security to procure profits from the low cost of labor in East Asian sweat shops. In the words of Tablet columnist Lee Smith: “American political and corporate elites didn’t choose decline. They chose to get rich. By shipping America’s manufacturing base off to China, they seized a business opportunity the likes of which had never been seen before—an enormous captive labor force controlled by an authoritarian regime that guaranteed the steady production of goods at a fraction of what it would cost at home” (Sept. 15, 2020).

Trump’s plan to fix America’s trade deficit involves adding a 60 percent tariff on Chinese goods and a 20 percent tariff on most other foreign goods. This would make foreign goods more expensive, thus incentivizing people to buy American. The Tax Policy Center estimates that this plan could reduce U.S. imports of foreign goods by $9 trillion over the next decade. Of course, U.S. consumers would have to spend roughly $3,000 more per year to buy the same types of goods. Yet because tariffs are a sales tax paid by domestic companies to America when they import foreign goods, the U.S. government could afford to give American consumers a $3,000 tax cut as long as the federal government is running a balanced budget.

According to the Congressional Budget Office, extending the Trump tax cuts for the next 10 years—as Republicans have proposed—would add $4.6 trillion to the deficit, $460 billion per year. Yet, this analysis ignores Trump’s proposed tariffs and spending cuts. The Tax Foundation says Trump’s tariff plan would add $80 billion worth of new taxes on Americans, so the incoming Congress only has to cut $380 billion from the budget to keep the deficit from increasing further. This is a realistic goal if Congress supports the president-elect’s plan to eliminate entire agencies.

For the first 137 years of U.S. history, federal income taxes did not exist. Tariffs were the federal government’s main source of revenue. The issue is not so much a matter of whether America can afford Trump’s tariffs; it is whether Americans want to save money buying cheap foreign merchandise so they can turn that money over to the U.S. government in the form of income taxes, or they would prefer to save money on income taxes they could use to buy quality products made in their own country. The first option leads to a big federal government and a small manufacturing sector, while the second option leads to a small government and a big manufacturing sector.

In a blockbuster interview with Joe Rogan on November 1, Mr. Trump explained why America’s founders thought tariffs were a better source of revenue than income taxes. Since the founders’ goal was to create a free and independent country, they sought to limit the size of the government and to avoid foreign entanglements. A government funded by tariffs instead of income taxes accomplishes both goals. It does not have the funds to grow too big, and its people never become dependent on foreign goods. There are many different ways governments can use to raise revenue, but tariffs are the only revenue option that actually increases a country’s economic and political independence.

In The United States and Britain in Prophecy, the late Herbert W. Armstrong pointed out that the “manufacturing districts of England and the eastern United States” were blessings from God. Yet America and Britain have despised these blessings and outsourced large portions of their manufacturing industries to foreign nations. God is now giving these nations a chance to reclaim their economic independence if they will only admit their mistakes and repent. The Prophet Amos foretells of a time when God will spare end-time Israel from destruction, yet he specifies that it will be the last time (Amos 7:5-8).

Drill, Baby, Drill

After balancing the budget and making tariffs great again, the third pillar of the president-elect’s economic plan is to make America the world’s dominant energy producer. In early September, Mr. Trump said, “Starting on Day 1, I will approve new drilling, new pipelines, new refiners, new power plants, new reactors, and we will slash the red tape.”

During Trump’s first term, the U.S. became a net energy exporter for the first time since the 1950s. Joe Biden and Kamala Harris did everything in their power to sabotage U.S. energy independence. They revoked a key permit for the Keystone Pipeline, blocked oil drilling on 10 million acres in Alaska, and launched an unprecedented regulatory assault on new oil and gas drilling leases. U.S. oil production dropped by about 1.1 million barrels per day. The price of fuel—and all the materials and goods that are transported using fuel—increased.

Trump told financial guru Dave Ramsey on Oct. 2, 2024, that his administration could lower the price of groceries by increasing oil and natural gas drilling in America. This plan would help offset the price of Trump’s tariffs and make America a country that sells energy to other nations rather than importing it from Saudi Arabia, Mexico and Venezuela.

Immediately after Trump was elected, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen suggested that U.S. liquefied natural gas exports to Europe could replace Russian energy. German industrialists may have other ideas, but the fact remains that an America that supplies its own energy needs and that exports energy is more powerful than an America that imports energy.

Can Trump and his new administration actually deliver on his promise to make America a self-sufficient superpower no longer reliant on East Asian manufactured goods or Middle Eastern oil? The answer to that question depends completely on how much God decides to bless the American people.

Mr. Armstrong cited America’s oil reserves as one of many biblical and historical proofs that this nation descended from the ancient Israelites. “Whoever is Ephraim and Manasseh today must have been in possession of the Earth’s choicest agricultural, mineral and other wealth—the great gold and silver mines; iron, oil and coal; timber and other resources,” he wrote in The United States and Britain in Prophecy. “What nations fulfill these prophecies? Why, only Great Britain and America!”

Mr. Trump may not know that about America’s true identity, but he definitely wants to use its wealth of resources to ensure that Americans remain independent of extremists like the Iranian regime and tyrants like Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping. He will not be able to accomplish this goal, however, unless the American people support his initiatives to balance the budget, fix the trade deficit, and achieve energy independence.

These goals are really about character, not politics. If we want our children to live in a free country, we have to start trusting in God instead of relying on Communist China for our every need.

Blessings and Curses

Some 3,500 years ago, God inspired the Prophet Moses to tell America’s ancestors that if they abandoned God and His law, then “a nation of fierce countenance” would “besiege thee in all thy gates, until thy high and fenced walls come down” (Deuteronomy 28:50-52). For many years, Mr. Armstrong said that this prophesied siege depicts the bombardment of America’s economy by foreign competition. This battering has already begun, even though many are ignorant of it.

The relationship with China has sapped much of America’s economic and industrial strength. Trump has a good plan to reclaim America’s lost economic independence, but he will need God’s help to enact it. Notice that verse 49 specifies that if Israel abandons God’s law, then “[t]he Lord shall bring a nation against thee from far, from the end of the earth, as swift as the eagle flieth; a nation whose tongue thou shalt not understand.” Other scriptures show that this fierce nation is not China but rather a revived Holy Roman Empire led by Germany.

Trumpet editor in chief Gerald Flurry explains in his book Isaiah’s End-Time Vision that Chittim is a prophetic name for China, and Tyre is a prophetic name for Europe. Isaiah 23 describes a Euro-Chinese economic alliance against the U.S., and China is clearly the junior partner to Europe in this treacherous plot to reduce the American people to starvation (see the gruesome details in Deuteronomy 28:53-57).

Trump is right to distrust both of these growing economic powers, and he is right to desire economic self-sufficiency for America. But only God can prevent the Holy Roman Empire from destroying the United States. Deuteronomy 28 is very clear that “a nation of fierce countenance” will besiege America and destroy its economy if the American people refuse to obey God’s law. Balancing the budget and refusing to do business with Communist dictatorships is a great start toward repentance, but these two changes are not enough.

God tells us how we can be protected from the unparalleled disaster prophesied to come. The book of Ezekiel, which was written specifically for this end time, warns, “Therefore, O thou son of man, speak unto the house of Israel; Thus ye speak, saying, If our transgressions and our sins be upon us, and we pine away in them, how should we then live? Say unto them, As I live, saith the Lord God, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked; but that the wicked turn from his way and live: turn ye, turn ye from your evil ways; for why will ye die, O house of Israel?” (Ezekiel 33:10-11).

There is only one way that God will protect us. Our people must turn from our evil ways. God takes no pleasure in the death of the wicked, and Donald Trump’s reelection represents the last chance for America to turn away from evil. Therefore, it is a matter of life-and-death importance that everyone who hears this message sit up, pay attention, and recognize the seriousness of the times. As a nation, America has to decide whether it will repent now or later, after much tribulation!