1. The Great Trust Renaissance
By Angelina Carleton
Executive Summary
Across the world, a shift is occurring. Families, entrepreneurs, investors, and business owners are increasingly asking a question that would have sounded unusual twenty years ago:
2. Am I Acting, Acting, or Both?
Some Thoughts
By John Kettler, Trustee and Acting Editor
If the title seems a bit odd, and I myself am considered odd by some, there is a particular purpose in my using “acting” twice. Why? Because it can be used as a noun or a verb. In this case, am using the noun form as a modifier and a verb. So when I first use the word acting, I am describing my new, and I hope, temporary position as Acting Editor. Typically, someone with “acting” in front of the title is just that: a temporary substitute for the person who will officially ultimately hold that post. Generally, a person designated as acting is indeed such a placeholder, but for a few, demonstrated extreme competence, outside circumstances, and/or both may turn the temporary post into the permanent! Since I already wear several hats as, it were, including being First Trustee, I hope this is indeed a brief sojourn.
3. Charles Arthur Enterprises Trust Premium Subscription Newsletter Op-Ed
By John Kettler, Trustee and Acting Editor
Treasured subscribers
4. Private Contractor Hell!
Roasted Alive But Still Standing - Series Introduction
By John Kettler, Trustee and Acting Editor
My intent here is not to deliver so much an article as an introduction and overview of what to expect in what we anticipate to be a substantial series. Brace yourselves!
5. Our Commitment To You
When you subscribed to our Premium Subscription Newsletter, the result was not only a contract between us, but a duty and obligation to you from us to create and deliver a unique informational product of real worth and consisting of the correct number of issues you signed up for and paid for accordingly.
This obligation, despite the untimely demise of our Premium Subscription Newsletter Editor and Webmaster, George McCalip, remains, and not only are we legally bound to fulfill it, we are likewise bound by morals, ethics and Equity to do so. Obligations we accept gladly.
6. AI and Your Trust: Special 2
Robots, Romance and Skynet?!
By John Kettler, Trustee
When considering where to go next in this extended article series, my initial plan was to write about the emerging reality of AI girlfriends, a hot, growing and increasingly controversial topic in women’s social media posts. Unsurprisingly to multitudes of men, who love the near priceless insights into most women’s true natures, whether overtly feminist or not, via their typically oh so public posts on social media, the default feminist arsenal has been trotted out yet again. The lamentably dead, brutally honest but passed Kevin Samuels called this playbook SIGN: Shame, Insults, Guilt, Need to be right. SIGN is on full display in the linked video, for what is supposed to be a near future event, but after you have gone through the rest of this article, you may well find yourself wondering how out there and unlikely it really is. Note, too, how powerfully confirmatory of the video the responses to it by the guys are.
7. In The News
The 2025 U.S. Tariff Regime in Context: Policy, Economics, and the End of an Era
Introduction
The 2025 U.S. tariff regime represents the most radical overhaul of trade policy since the post-war order was created. Built on contested legal grounds, this complex tariff web has sharply increased federal revenue while also raising consumer prices and straining alliances. Yet to view these tariffs as the product of one administration’s improvisation would be incomplete. As strategist Peter Zeihan argues, the global trade system itself has been in retreat for more than a decade, eroding under both Republican and Democratic leadership. In this light, the 2025 tariff regime is less an aberration than an acceleration of a longer structural shift away from globalization and toward fragmented regional orders.
The Legal and Structural Foundations
The architecture of the tariff regime rests on two legal statutes: Section 232 of the 1962 Trade Expansion Act and the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA). Section 232 has been stretched to cover industries far beyond its original remit, imposing tariffs of up to 50 percent on steel, aluminum, copper, and automobiles. IEEPA, traditionally used to sanction adversaries during genuine national security emergencies, has been repurposed to justify broad tariffs on allies such as Canada and Mexico. Courts have challenged this use of IEEPA, and the U.S. Supreme Court will issue a ruling later in 2025. Should the Court uphold these tariffs, the executive branch would gain extraordinary discretion to wield trade barriers at will. If it strikes them down, much of the regime—including $1.7 trillion in projected revenue—would vanish. Either way, the legal fragility of the system underscores how far U.S. trade has drifted from the rules-based multilateralism that defined the late 20th century.