The United States stock market has lost $9.6 trillion since President Donald Trump took the oath of office as investors fret about the effects of his revolutionary tariff plan. On April 2—a date the president proclaimed “Liberation Day”—the administration announced the most sweeping tariff hikes in nearly a century. Invoking the International Emergency Economic Powers Act and the National Emergencies Act as his justification, President Trump slapped a 10 percent tariff on imports from all foreign countries and higher rates on particular economies taking advantage of the United States, including China and the European Union.

Some investors are considering the possibility that President Trump may postpone implementing his controversial tariff plan after the stock market tanked. But if all of President Trump’s proposed tariffs do take effect, the effective U.S. tariff rate will rise to 22.5 percent, the highest since President Theodore Roosevelt.

The Budget Lab at Yale, a nonpartisan policy research center that provides in-depth analysis of federal policy proposals for the U.S. economy, estimates that all the tariffs President Trump has proposed so far would raise prices by 2.3 percent, an average per household consumer loss of roughly $3,800 per year.

Republican lawmakers are working to extend President Trump’s 2017 tax cuts in order to help Americans better afford tariff hikes. If these tax cuts expire, however, the average American family can expect to pay $1,000 more in annual income taxes in addition to $3,800 more in tariff levies. This means the average family should probably budget $400 per month more in various taxes than they spent last year—a considerable sum.

“I don’t want anything to go down but, sometimes, you have to take medicine to fix something,” Trump told reporters asking about the market. “We have been treated so badly by other countries because we had stupid leadership that allowed this to happen. They took our businesses; they took our money; they took our jobs.”

The problem that President Trump is prescribing strong medicine to fix is the U.S. trade deficit. The last time America sold more goods to other countries than it bought was 1975. In the 50 years since, America has become so addicted to cheap foreign goods that it now imports an astounding $1.1 trillion more than it exports.

“We allowed ourselves to be transformed from a cast iron economy that made things into a largely paper economy that depends on the good graces of foreign nations for its survival,” wrote Sean Davis at the Federalist. “This is a recipe for civilizational suicide. We don’t make our own weapons, food, machines, vehicles, plastics, medicines, or computers. The whole covid insanity, with its shutdowns and shortages and supply-chain chaos, was a blaring alarm warning us that the economy we thought was so strong was shockingly fragile.”

Alongside the national debt, the trade deficit is perhaps America’s biggest domestic national security crisis. President Trump is taking bold action to solve both problems. He is working with Elon Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency to balance the budget and cancel out America’s $1.8 trillion budget deficit. Yet since the U.S. government’s total discretionary budget is $1.8 trillion, it is highly unlikely that Trump and Musk will be able to balance the budget with spending cuts alone. Without major cuts to Medicare and Social Security, the government will have to increase taxes. And the only type of tax that helps fix a trade deficit is a tariff.

By charging the average American family $3,800 per year in tariff levies, President Trump’s tariff proposals would raise $3.1 trillion in additional revenue over the next decade. This revenue should drop the budget deficit from $1.8 trillion per year to $1.5 trillion per year while simultaneously incentivizing American citizens to buy goods produced in their own country instead of sending their hard-earned money to the Chinese Communist Party.

The catch is that the average American family will have to reduce its standard of living by about $3,800 to $4,800 per year to make their country more self-sufficient, better able to survive without foreign goods and deficit spending. When financial advisers like Dave Ramsey help heavily indebted people achieve financial independence, they usually prescribe two to three years of severe financial austerity. This is basically what President Trump is prescribing to Americans. It may take a few years for America to rebuild its industry and balance its budget. The responsible thing to do until then is to raise taxes on foreign imports.

In many ways, President Trump’s “Liberation Day” announcement is a test of America’s character. Will Americans keep running up their national debt to buy cheap merchandise from nations that hate them? Or will they make the sacrifices necessary to balance their budget and rebuild their industrial base?

Regarding finances, Dave Ramsey teaches: “Almost all long-term thinking has short-term pain. Almost all short-term thinking has long-term pain and short-term relief.” Americans can either suffer a little bit now to create a nation capable of withstanding a future, prophesied trade war. Or they can take the easy way out now, only to suffer later.

In 1980, Herbert W. Armstrong wrote an article titled “Prepare to Greatly Reduce Your Standard of Living.” It warned that inflation and other economic woes were about to greatly reduce Americans’ purchasing power in the next year or two. Mr. Armstrong was right. The Crisis of 1982 was the worst downturn in the U.S. since the Great Depression. Then the 2008 recession surpassed it. Millions of people had to reduce their standard of living. But most forgot about Mr. Armstrong’s warning after President Ronald Reagan stabilized the nation’s economy. But the Crisis of 1982 was not the ultimate fulfillment of the prophecies Mr. Armstrong referred to in his article.

Mr. Armstrong explained that God had blessed America with the world’s highest per capita income because of a promise He had made to the patriarch Abraham. He warned that God would take away America’s blessing if it rebelled against Him.

As recently as 1950, two fifths of U.S. households did not own an automobile, one third did not own a television, and only a small minority of families enjoyed luxuries like air conditioning or a water heater. Yet those households were able to make it on one income and avoid consumer debt because they were less entitled than Americans today and did not buy things they could not afford. What they called “middle class” in the 1950s is now called “poverty.” Unless Americans start making some short-term sacrifices now, they will likely become acquainted with their great-grandparents’ standard of living before America’s economic collapse has run its course. You cannot run up both consumer and government debt for decades without consequences.

The fact is, the U.S. has been living beyond its means for decades and is now entering a period referred to as “Jacob’s trouble” (Jeremiah 30:7). God has raised up President Trump to give the American people a chance to repent and turn their nation around. Yet true repentance means change. We have to change our approach to finance if we want to avoid bankruptcy and foreign enslavement.

The Bible tells us that debt is a form of slavery (Proverbs 22:7) and advises us to deliver ourselves from debt “as a roe from the hand of the hunter, and as a bird from the hand of the fowler” (Proverb 6:5). This requires individual sacrifice.

Now is the time to put your financial house in order. If you have delayed taking the painful but necessary steps to do this, there is still a small window of opportunity. You can begin right away by reading Solve Your Money Troubles! and The Financial Law You Can’t Afford to Ignore.