I went to the Clay County Fair this weekend…
It was a grand old time of funnel cakes, kettle corn, blue ribbon cows, and massive crowds. The fair attracts around 300,000 visitors every year.
It was a lot of fun.
But I couldn’t escape thinking about something that runs through my mind a lot, especially when I’m on 13 hour roadtrips or at county fairs.
America is a BIG place. Like, huge…
I was no more than 30 minutes from my house, and yet, I was in a completely different world on Saturday evening.
The culture was very different. The priorities were very different.
I wouldn’t know how to keep a cow alive for more than a day or two, and these folks were raising them and winning ribbons because of them.
Rural America is an entirely different world from suburban America, which is an entirely different world from urban America. Florida is different from California, which is different from Maine.
And no place is any better or worse than the others. But they do have different priorities.
So this morning, as news breaks that NVDA will begin manufacturing Blackwell GPUs in Arizona, adding $500 billion of AI infrastructure to the U.S., I don’t know that the good folks who run the Clay County Fair care a whole lot.
And that’s an important reminder that there’s another side (or sides) to this tariff war that many of us never consider.
How will it affect folks who aren’t on Wall Street, who aren’t looking at their trading and retirement accounts?
Given the huge support Trump has from rural America, it might be their voices and opinions more than any other that determines an outcome here.
Whether you agree with the particular policies or not, the Trump Administration is clearly willing to prioritize the needs of America’s workers and farmers over the needs of America’s wealthy elite.
And if you’re focused on waking up at dawn to feed the chickens and the pigs and hop into a tractor, you might not care too much about what the tariff rate on China is that day.
Until it begins to affect your bottom line.
The markets want clarity, but the Trump Administration seems committed to the piecemeal, “adjust dials as needed” approach they’ve gone with so far.
Right now, the latest news is positive, so the markets have reacted well. But that could change even before you read this.
But there’s probably no quick solution here.
Trump is dealing with the needs of a BIG country with diverse people, and what the markets say and think isn’t his only data point.
So focus on strategies that can navigate a little bit of uncertainty, a little bit of volatility, and a little bit of chaos — because those seem to be on the menu for the time being.
Hope you had a good weekend.
To your prosperity,
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