Opinion
Peter Thiel: The Silicon Valley billionaire made big—and early—bets on Trump and J.D. Vance. What did he see that so many didn’t?

News release from The Free Press
Triumph of the Counter-Elites
On Tuesday night, Donald Trump announced that the richest man in the world, Elon Musk, along with the entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, will head a new initiative in the Trump administration: the Department of Government Efficiency, or “DOGE.” Internet meme culture has now landed in the White House. Dogecoin is a memecoin—and if you don’t understand that sentence, fear not—I am sure Nellie will cover it in TGIF tomorrow. But what the announcement solidifies—if Trump’s win hadn’t already—is the triumph of the counter-elite. A bunch of oddball outsiders ran against an insular band of out-of-touch elites supported by every celebrity in Hollywood—and they won. They are about to reshape not just the government, but also the culture in ways we can’t imagine. How they did that—and why—is a question that I’ve been thinking about nonstop since Tuesday. And there was one person, more than any other, who I wanted to discuss it with. He is the vanguard of those antiestablishment counter-elites: Peter Thiel. If you listened to my last conversation with the billionaire venture capitalist a year and a half ago on Honestly, you’ll remember that Peter was the first person in Silicon Valley to publicly embrace Trump in 2016. That year, he gave a memorable speech at the Republican National Convention that many in his orbit thought was simply a step too far. He lost business at Y Combinator, the start-up incubator where he was a partner. Many prominent tech leaders criticized him publicly, like VC and Twitter investor Chris Sacca, who called Thiel’s endorsement of Trump “one of the most dangerous things” he had ever seen. A lot has changed since then. For one, Thiel has taken a step back from politics—at least publicly. He didn’t donate to Trump’s campaign. There was no big RNC speech this time around. But the bigger change is a cultural one: He’s no longer the pariah of Silicon Valley for supporting Trump. There’s Bill Ackman, Marc Andreessen, David Sacks, Shaun Maguire, and Elon Musk, among many other tech titans who have joined the Trump train. On the surface, Thiel seems full of contradictions. He is a libertarian who has found common cause with nationalists and populists. He invests in companies that have the ability to become monopolies, and yet Trump’s White House wants to break up Big Tech. He is a gay American immigrant, but he hates identity politics and the culture wars. He pays people to drop out of college, but still seems to venerate the Ivy League. But perhaps that’s the secret to his success. He’s beholden to no tribe but himself, no ideology but his own. And why wouldn’t you be when you make so many winning bets? From co-founding PayPal and the data analytics firm Palantir (which was used to find Osama bin Laden) to being the first outside investor in Facebook—Thiel’s investments in companies like LinkedIn, Palantir, and SpaceX have paid off, to say the least. His most recent bet—helping his mentee J.D. Vance get elected senator and then on the Trump ticket—seems also to have paid off. The next four years will determine just how high Thiel’s profit margin will be. On Honestly, Thiel explains why so many of his peers have finally come around to Trump; why he thinks Kamala—and liberalism more broadly—lost the election; why the Trump 2.0 team, with antiestablishment figures willing to rethink the system, will be better than last time. We talk about the rise of historical revisionism, the blurry line between skepticism and conspiracy, and his contrarian ideas about what we might face in a dreaded World War III. Click below to watch the full-length video.
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Automotive
Auto giant shuts down foreign plants as Trump moves to protect U.S. industry

MxM News
Quick Hit:
Stellantis is pausing vehicle production at two North American facilities—one in Canada and another in Mexico—following President Donald Trump’s announcement of 25% tariffs on foreign-made cars. The move marks one of the first corporate responses to the administration’s push to bring back American manufacturing.
Key Details:
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In an email to workers Thursday, Stellantis North America chief Antonio Filosa directly tied the production pause to the new tariffs, writing that the company is “continuing to assess the medium- and long-term effects” but is “temporarily pausing production” at select assembly plants outside the U.S.
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Production at the Windsor Assembly Plant in Ontario will be paused for two weeks, while the Toluca Assembly Plant in Mexico will be offline for the entire month of April.
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These plants produce the Chrysler Pacifica minivan, the new Dodge Charger Daytona EV, the Jeep Compass SUV, and the Jeep Wagoneer S EV.
Diving Deeper:
On Wednesday afternoon in the White House Rose Garden, President Trump announced sweeping new tariffs aimed at revitalizing America’s auto manufacturing industry. The 25% tariffs on all imported cars are part of a broader “reciprocal tariffs” strategy, which Trump described as ending decades of globalist trade policies that hollowed out U.S. industry.
Just a day later, Stellantis became the first major automaker to act on the new policy, halting production at two of its international plants. According to an internal email obtained by CNBC, Stellantis North American COO Antonio Filosa said the company is “taking immediate actions” to respond to the tariff policy while continuing to evaluate the broader impact.
“These actions will impact some employees at several of our U.S. powertrain and stamping facilities that support those operations,” Filosa wrote.
The Windsor, Ontario plant, which builds the Chrysler Pacifica and the newly introduced Dodge Charger Daytona EV, will shut down for two weeks. The Toluca facility in Mexico, responsible for the Jeep Compass and Jeep Wagoneer S EV, will suspend operations for the entire month of April.
The move comes as Stellantis continues to face scrutiny for its reliance on low-wage labor in foreign markets. As reported by Breitbart News, the company has spent years shifting production and engineering jobs to countries like Brazil, India, Morocco, and Mexico—often at the expense of American workers. Last year alone, Stellantis cut around 400 U.S.-based engineering positions while ramping up operations overseas.
Meanwhile, General Motors appears to be responding differently. According to Reuters, GM told employees in a webcast Thursday that it will increase production of light-duty trucks at its Fort Wayne, Indiana plant—where it builds the Chevrolet Silverado and GMC Sierra. These models are also assembled in Mexico and Canada, but GM’s decision suggests a shift in production to the U.S. could be underway in light of the tariffs.
As Trump’s trade reset takes effect, more automakers are expected to recalibrate their production strategies—potentially signaling a long-awaited shift away from offshoring and toward rebuilding American industry.
Business
‘Time To Make The Patient Better’: JD Vance Says ‘Big Transition’ Coming To American Economic Policy

JD Vance on “Rob Schmitt Tonight” discussing tariff results
From the Daily Caller News Foundation
By Hailey Gomez
Vice President JD Vance said Thursday on Newsmax that he believes Americans will “reap the benefits” of the economy as the Trump administration makes a “big transition” on tariffs.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 1,679.39 points on Thursday, just a day after President Donald Trump announced reciprocal tariffs against nations charging imports from the U.S. On “Rob Schmitt Tonight,” Schmitt asked Vance about the stock market hit, asking how the White House felt about the “Liberation Day” move.
“We’re feeling good. Look, I frankly thought in some ways it could be worse in the markets, because this is a big transition. You saw what the President said earlier today. It’s like a patient who was very sick,” Vance said. “We did the operation, and now it’s time to make the patient better. That’s exactly what we’re doing. We have to remember that for 40 years, we’ve been doing this for 40 years.”
“American economic policy has rewarded people who ship jobs overseas. It’s taxed our workers. It’s made our supply chains more brittle, and it’s made our country less prosperous, less free and less secure,” Vance added.
Vance recalled that one of his children had been sick and needed antibiotics that were not made in the United States. The Vice President called it a “ridiculous thing” that some medicines invented in the country are no longer manufactured domestically.
“That’s fundamentally what this is about. The national security of manufacturing and making the things that we need, from steel to pharmaceuticals, antibiotics, and so forth, but also the good jobs that come along when you have economic policies that reward investing in America, rather than investing in foreign countries,” Vance said.
WATCH:
With a baseline 10% tariff placed on an estimated 60 countries, higher tariffs were applied to nations like China and Israel. For example, China, which has a 67% tariff on U.S. goods, will now face a 34% tariff from the U.S., while Israel, which has a 33% tariff, will face a 17% U.S. tariff.
“One bad day in the stock market, compared to what President Trump said earlier today, and I think he’s right about this. We’re going to have a booming stock market for a long time because we’re reinvesting in the United States of America. More importantly than that, of course, the people in Wall Street have done well,” Vance said.
“We want them to do well. But we care the most about American workers and about American small businesses, and they’re the ones who are really going to benefit from these policies,” Vance said.
The number of factories in the U.S., Vance said, has declined, adding that “millions of workers” have lost their jobs.
“My town [Middletown, Ohio], where you had 10,000 great American steel workers, and my town was one of the lucky ones, now probably has 1,500 steel workers in that factory because you had economic policies that rewarded shipping our jobs to China instead of investing in American workers,” Vance said. “President Trump ran on changing it. He promised he would change it, and now he has. I think Americans are going to reap the benefits.”
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