Canada and Mexico Tariffs Feb 2025

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Donald Trump imposed a 25% tariff on goods imported to the USA from Canada and Mexico. I am hoping to do a small experiment tracking a few goods from each country to see how their prices change as well as a few similar goods in the USA as a baseline to compare to track inflation.

I know that John Deere 6E tractors are imported from Mexico, 1 oz Gold Mexican libertads  are also imported from Mexico and 1 oz gold Canadian Maple leaves are imported from Canada. I am interested how the price of these goods changes over the next years. 

I am also going to track a few things that are made in the USA.

One will be a John Deere 8R that is manufactured in the USA and also 1 oz Gold buffalos and 1 oz Gold eagles. 

Base prices on 2-2-2025

1 oz gold maple

Spot price – $2,803.50 Monument metals price, $2,808.03 SD Bullion price

SD bullion – $2,898.02

Monument Metals – $2,852.68 (Sale price)

1 oz Mexican Libertad 

2024 SD bullion – $3,058.03

1 oz American Gold Eagle – random year

SD bullion – $2,878.02

Monument Metals – $2,921.52 (Sale price)

Below is the same data as above but put in a table for quicker reference.

Below are the John Deere tractors that I will be tracking

John Deere 6105E – $89,977.00 (made in Mexico)

John Deere 8R wheel 230 hp – $414,435 (mace in USA)

My hypothesis is that the John Deere 6E made in Mexico might be priced at $125k in 1 year or 2 assuming 25% tariffs. 

I expect the John Deere 8R to also increase in price, but perhaps only about $3%-5% over the year due to inflation. 

If you have any other products you know are made in USA or Canada that might be interesting to track please let me know.

Bitcoin is $100k, Should I Buy It Now Or Is It Too Expensive?

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Bitcoin recently breached the $100k price per bitcoin on December 4th 2024. It has retreated slightly but has continued to hover between $90k -$108k/bitcoin. 

Historically bitcoin has had a performance of 3 positive years followed by 1 negative year. While you can’t expect history to repeat itself, it might!

Looking at the below chart you can see we are on track to repeat that performance so far. While not shown 2024 was also a great positive return year for bitcoin so we have 2 years of positive returns. 2025 would be the 3rd year. 

Due to that expectation I fully expect bitcoin to have a good performance in 2025. It is also possible that it has a negative year in 2026 if it continues to follow the historic trend. 

 Of course it is also possible it has a negative year in 2025! We could break the trend. 

We could also break the trend and see that we have a positive year in 2025 and 2026! The future is unknown and unknowable!

https://twitter.com/CryptoKidcom/status/1746139639809720395/photo/1

When people ask me if they should buy bitcoin now I say that they obviously don’t understand bitcoin. If you don’t understand it then I would say “No” you probably shouldn’t buy it. What I tell people is to continue to learn more about why other people buy it. 

Learn about “What problem bitcoin solves.” I have written 2 articles about that here. 

What Problem Does Bitcoin Solve?

We, every person in the world, is in a fight with their own government to keep as much of the value they create as they can.  The government explicitly taxes you, which we can debate but at least it is obvious.  But the government also stealthy steals value from your bank account or savings via inflation and money printing that you have no control over.

What is Money? (What Problem Does Bitcoin Solve -2)

Bitcoin is not an investment. Bitcoin is a store of value. The value you create. Bitcoin is an agreement between people who create value in the world that they will trade their value for other value. The value you create and store in Bitcoin cannot be debased or inflated away by any government by money printing.
I’ve also created a list of great resources to learn more about bitcoin here. 

Books & Videos to Learn About Bitcoin

What I generally recommend people to do is to buy just a little bitcoin so that they will start creating a little interest with themselves. This is how I did it. I bought just $100 and then that made me interested to learn more about what I had bought and why.
You should not plan to sell the bitcoin you buy. This is true for most investments, in my opinion. You should only be investing money you are ready to have invested for 5+ years. 

You shouldn’t try to time the market. You aren’t smart enough for that and neither am I. 

Just buy things that you understand and continue to do research. 

Why Bitcoin?

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I hope with my bitcoin advocacy to help people think more long term.

Why do I spend so much time thinking about bitcoin?

Why do I spend so much time trying to get others to understand bitcoin?

I have thought about a lot of other things in my lifetime. I am a mechanical engineer. I like making thing work. I am a philanthropist. I am a humanitarian. I care about making others’ lives better. I have worked at businesses and nonprofits that have helped make the world a better place. I have thought about how to create businesses and nonprofits that make the world a better place. 

Through it all, I keep looking for ways to make the world better. 

Bitcoin is the best way I have found to make an impact on EVERYTHING! It has become clear to me through all my reading and interacting with people and companies and nonprofits and thinking about issues that at the very base, fiat money is inherently causing a lot of problems in the world. 

Fiat money is unfair. 

The government causes as many or more issues than it solves by creating inflation through money printing. This is both in the USA and all other countries. 

I talked with a friend who was supporting a business in Sri Lanka. The business would dye clothes with natural processes. The point was to help people get a job that otherwise wouldn’t have access to a job. But the Sri Lankan economic crisis happened and the business failed. It made me think about the base infrastructure of all our economies. If the currency fails many businesses fail. A stable currency leads to long term planning and thinking. The fact that all countries have money that is steadily losing value leads to short term thinking. The rush for analysis of quarterly returns for public companies adds to this short term thinking, but steady inflation, caused by government money printing is a major contributor to the short term thinking. I wondered, what is the point of developing businesses if they will fail due to factors outside your control?

That is why I am so passionate about bitcoin. It fixes these short term problems. This is a problem is many countries around the world. 

People in many countries can’t save in their local currency because they lose value so fast. In the USA we recently had 1 year of 8% inflation and everyone went crazy! 

I fully expect that increased inflation to come back to the USA sometime in the next 10 years, unless we cut the yearly deficit. 

Even if it doesn’t come back for a few years, the way the current system is, fiat money, there is always steady inflation (3%-4%) which still incentivises short term thinking.

I hope with my bitcoin advocacy to help people think more long term. 

Books & Videos to Learn About Bitcoin

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Below is a list of videos, a PDF and some books I have put together to recommend for anyone who wants to learn about bitcoin. The list is most sorted from top to bottom by shortest or easiest to read to longer and more in depth towards the bottom.

Blackrock – IBIT ETF Bitcoin Page – Has a link to a 3 minute video.

Bitcoin First Revisited – PDF from Fidelity

What’s The Problem? – Demystifying why we all need Bitcoin – Joe Bryan

The world feels like it’s heading in the wrong direction—rising costs, declining standards, and growing instability. The root cause? The corruption of our money.

The Bitcoin Paradigm Shift: A Beginner’s Journey to Understanding BTC (2025) – shortest video I can find yet that explains it well!

The bullish case for Bitcoin – Vijay Boyapati ~ 2 hour book read – link below to buy

https://bitcoin-resources.com/books/the-bullish-case-for-bitcoin

Below is a link to the blog post that inspired the book “The bullish case for bitcoin” if you want to read this for free instead.

https://vijayboyapati.medium.com/the-bullish-case-for-bitcoin-6ecc8bdecc1

The Bitcoin Standard – Saifedean Ammous  

The Saylor Series- with Robert Breedlove -You only need to listen to about the first 1 hour of each interview where Michael Saylor is talking. The 2nd half is Robert Breedlove summarizing what Michael said. Not necessary to listen to.

The Saylor Series What is Money – Book – summary of the above podcast. This is shorter than the podcast.

EXCLUSIVE: TESLA’S $1 Billion Bitcoin Bet Pays Off | Cern Basher – A great summary of why Tesla (or any company) should buy more Bitcoin.

Broken Money: Why Our Financial System is Failing Us and How We Can Make it Better- Lyn Alden

Extra – Can bitcoin mining empower energy transition and fuel sustainable development goals in the US?

Tesla – Next Opportunities 2025 and 2026

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I am a big believer in the future of Tesla as a business and the positive impacts they will have on the world.I wanted to put together a quick reference for the catalysts I see coming in the next 2 years that I can quickly share with people. 

These are ordered from first to happen to furthest away. 

Tesla Model Y Juniper Update

New Cheaper Tesla car/vehicles for sale – H1 2025

China megapack factory 

Semi production next year

FSD release in China imminent

Robotaxi service – start in Texas and California next year

Optimus bot

Tesla Model Y Juniper Update – This is a styling and hardware update for the best selling car in the world in 2023, the Tesla Model Y SUV. It wasn’t quite the best selling in 2024, likely due to people waiting for the 2025 update. This update should lead to best selling status of this car again and help total production of 2.3 million vehicles in 2024. 

New Cheaper Tesla car/vehicles for sale – H1 2025 – Elon has mentioned veiled comments related to cheaper vehicles in H1 2025. These will be able to be built on the same lines as Model 3 and Y. This should help total production of 2.3 million vehicles in 2024. 

Tesla model Q?

China megapack factory – The Megapack is a “grid scale” battery storage solution for energy. These are sold often in sits of 200-500 at at time. They cost around $1 million per megapack. The current factory is in the USA, for the USA and rest of world. The China Megapack factory should be in production in H1 2025 and fully ramped by end 2025. These are extremely profitable products. 

Megapack factory 60% complete – sept 2024

Semi production next year – Tesla has been testing the Tesla Semi for a while with Pepsi and other companies. The Tesla semi will be much cheaper to operate and more reliable (fewer parts) than a diesel semi. I fully expect electric semi’s to almost completely replace all semi’s in 10 years. The average semi is 7 years old. That means every 7 years most of the semi fleet is fully replaced. Of course there are some older vehicles that remain. Since electric semi’s will be cheaper to operate and trucking is a business large businesses will drive adoption of this more efficient technology, or they will go out of of business and be replaced by companies that do.
Tesla semi has driven 250,000 miles 

Tesla Semi partner PepsiCo says electric truck helps with driver retention

Tesla semi factory videos 

FSD release in China imminent – Up until now, FSD (Full Self Driving) A $8,000 option, or $100/month subscription, has only been available in the USA. Tesla is likely to get approval to start using and selling in EU and China in 2025. This will open up for millions of drivers to pay for that software. 

Robotaxi – start in Texas and California 2025 – Tesla has had good progress on its FSD (Full Self Driving) software in the last year. They are planning to start offering a Robotaxi service, using Tesla 3’s and Y’s in California and Texas in 2025. 

Tesla Eyes 2025 Robotaxi Launch in California and Texas

Tesla robotaxis are coming in 2025 with an unexpected addition

Optimus bot – Tesla has been working on the Optimus, humanoid Robot, for a few years now. The latest versions are very compelling, being able to walk down a steep slippery slope and catch a thrown ball. These will be offered to do simple work in factories. They don’t need to do 100% of the work people can do. There is a curve of simple tasks they can start on and slowly develop skills and do more and more. Even if they cost $50k a year, they will be cheaper than a fully burdened factory worker who after factoring in health care, sick time, etc costs a company more than $50k a year, even if they are only paid $30k /year. Tesla could likely lease these for “only” $25k/year and even replace half a person. 

Tesla’s Optimus can now walk autonomously on rough terrain

Tesla Optimus Robot Catching a Ball

Metaplanet – Japanese Public Company Buying Bitcoin as a Treasury Reserve Asset

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Metaplanet  – Japanese Public Company Buying Bitcoin as a Treasury Reserve Asset

Metaplanet is a publicly traded company in Japan that has set Bitcoin as its primary treasury reserve asset. You can read about it here. You will have to click on their link to their “official disclosure” or you can link directly to the PDF of the official disclosure here. 

You can listen to Dylan LeClair, the Director of Bitcoin Strategy at MetaPlanet, here talk about MetaPlanet and their Bitcoin Strategy. The link takes you to the correct timestamp in the Youtube Video.

 I highly recommend everyone reads this. It lays out in simple, clear language, the benefits to the company of buying bitcoin as their treasury reserve asset. Most of their reasoning applies to individuals also.  I’d like to repost it here directly, but they have requested no reproductions. I have emailed them asking if it’s possible to repost it and will if they allow it. But if not, you can read at the link above. It’s only a 3 page document. 

Metaplanet is the first public company in Japan I am aware of that has started using Bitcoin as it’s treasury reserve asset. But it wasn’t the first worldwide and I’m sure it won’t be the last. 


Here is a previous article I wrote about companies and pension funds starting to buy Bitcoin. 

A short list of those companies is below.

Metaplanet – Metaplanet direct link to PDF

Microstrategy 

Mara – Bitcoin miner

Semler Scientific

Onemed

Block (formally Square, owns Square processing points and Cashapp app)

Private company –

Tahini’s (corporate page) – Restaurant in Canada – Tahini bitcoin article

As well as all these companies continually buying bitcoin, there are 2 US state pension funds that have bought bitcoin they have disclosed so far.

Wisconsin Pension Fund

Michigan Pension Fund

And one, Arizona, that has a resolution for their pension fund to learn about it. Here is the resolution directly.

There are a few other countries that are involved in mining bitcoin. 

Bhutan 

Oman

Ethiopia

Finally, El Salvador is the first country to adopt bitcoin as legal tender. It is also committed to buying 1 bitcoin a day. You can follow directly in their bitcoin address. 

Again, it was the first ,but I doubt it will be the last. 

At this link is a list of all companies holding bitcoin. The above lists are more recent companies and companies that are actively proclaiming that they are accumulating more bitcoin aggressively. 

A second link with entities holding bitcoin. 

0.1 Bitcoin

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There are about 8 billion (8,000,000,000) people in the world. 

According to Kiplinger, globally there are about 59 million millionaires. 

59,000,000/8,000,000,000 = 0.007375 =  0.7375% of people in the world are millionaires. So less than 1% of people are millionaires. 

If you divided the 21 million (21,000,000) bitcoin among the 8 billion people

21,000,000/8,000,000,000 = 0.002625

0.002625 x $60,000/btc = $157.50

You only need to buy $157.50 worth of bitcoin to get “your share” today. 

There are 21 million bitcoin that will ever be made. 

There are 59 million millionaires. So it’s not possible for every millionaire to have 1 bitcoin. 

If we divide the 21 million bitcoin by 59 million millionaires we get 

21/59 = 0.35593220 btc per millionaire.

 0.35593220 x $60,000/btc = $21,355.93 if every millionaire wanted to get “their share” of bitcoin and it was only split among millionaires.

If we go down to units of 0.1 bitcoin then 210 million people could own 0.1 bitcoin.

That is still only 

210,000,000 people/ 8,000,000,000 people = 0.02625 = 2.625% of people would have 0.1 bitcoin.

0.1 bitcoin x $60k/bitcoin = $6,000 to buy 0.1 bitcoin today.

If I was someone with no bitcoin today I’d think hard about setting a goal of getting to 0.1 bitcoin. 

The market capitalization of Gold is $16,590,000,000,000 ($16.59 Trillion) as of 8-11-2024 when I write this.  Note that this changes daily as the price of gold fluctuates and as more gold is mined each year. 

If bitcoin was to attaining the same market capitalization  

$16,590,000,000,000/21,000,000 bitcoin = $790,000 per bitcoin

$790,000 x 0.1 bitcoin = $79,000

If bitcoin was to reach a value of $10 million per Bitcoin then 0.1 bitcoin would be worth $1 million. 

Plenty of people have made a prediction in the millions for the future price of bitcoin. You will have to do research for yourself to determine if you think this is reasonable. But I would encourage you to be inquisitive about why people are prediction such a high price for Bitcoin. 

This isn’t all to tell you you have to buy bitcoin. But it’s to encourage you to look into why many people think bitcoin has value. 


There is not much bitcoin and we are still early as far as world wide adoption. You don’t need to buy much (0.1 bitcoin = $6k today) to potentially have $1 million in the future. 


Of course, only buy as much as you are able to lose! Many people are able to have a risky bet of $6k and if it did happen to go to $0 (which is of course a possibility) they’d still be fine. 

But if that is not you then definitely DON’T buy bitcoin. 


But if you are a person who has sufficient assets, you might try thinking about why so many people have such a high conviction in bitcoin. 

Letter to Iowa State Senator Kevin Alons about Bitcoin

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I sent the below letter to Iowa State Senator, Kevin Alons, related to Bitcoin. I encourage you to copy and send, or modify and send, to him at kevin.alons@legis.iowa.gov

Senator Alons

I read through your bill IA SF2273 related to gold and silver coinage. I appreciate the sentiment and wish you luck with your bill in the future if you continue to pursue it. 


I wanted to appeal to your hard money side with some data about the emerging hardest money ever created, Bitcoin.


As you know, Gold backed currency has failed in many different countries in history for the same reason. The government always centralizes the gold and prints more paper than can back the bills. Even in Ancient Rome when the money was silver, there was coin clipping and physical debasement where existing coins were recalled and melted down to a lower percentage of gold. 

Another issue with Gold is that we don’t actually know how much there is. More gold is mined everyday and more is mined as the price goes up. 

Bitcoin addresses all the shortcomings of Gold that have caused it to fail in the past. 


Bitcoin has a perfectly limited amount, 21 million.

Bitcoin is quickly and easily transmitted across the world. You need a lot of military hardware to transport any significant amount of gold.
Bitcoin is also easily transacted in very small amounts. The smallest unit of 1 bitcoin is 1 satoshi. There are 100,000,000 satoshis in 1 bitcoin. 

0.00000001 Bitcoin = 1 Satoshi. 

Bitcoin currently has a market capitalization of about $1 trillion.

Once 1 BTC = $1 million, it will have a market capitalization of $21 trillion and 1 satoshi will = 

$0.01

Using the lightning network consumers are easily able to make very small transactions such as at a grocery store or a restaurant. 

If you read this post on my website, https://mywheellife.com/2024/06/23/2024-bitcoin-adoption/, you will see that there are a lot of large institutions like the Wisconsin state pension adding bitcoin to their portfolio.
It is also legal tender in El Salvador and they are buying 1 bitcoin a day also to ad to their treasury.

As you have probably seen there are now ETF’s available that have bought 1 million bitcoin this year in the USA only. 


The available supply of 21 million bitcoin is draining quickly. 

I would encourage you to investigate more about bitcoin.

Perhaps you have heard that President Trump has recently endorsed Bitcoin. He is speaking at the Bitcoin Conference in Tennessee this Sunday, 7-28-2024. You should be able to find it on Youtube later.


I would also point you to this video that just came out “Thank God For Bitcoin”

It is one of the best videos I’ve seen to explain the benefits of Bitcoin.

I’d encourage you to introduce a bill, similar to Arizona, to direct the IPERS pension fund to investigate adding bitcoin to the IPERS portfolio. That would be a first step.

A 2nd step would be to have a state reserve of Bitcoin.


Thank you for your time.

1 Bitcoin Per Day

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El Salvador, the first country to make Bitcoin legal tender, but unlikely to be the last, is buying 1 bitcoin a day. 

You can track their purchases here. 

https://bitinfocharts.com/bitcoin/address/32ixEdVJWo3kmvJGMTZq5jAQVZZeuwnqzo-nodusting

El Salvador actually started doing this on Nov. 18, 2022, when the bitcoin price was $16,600! Today it is $60,000.

There are 450 new bitcoin created each day through mining. There will only ever be 21 million created. Only 19,747,693.75 have been mined as of this writing (6-26-2024). 94%. The last bitcoin will be mined in 2140. 

El Salvador, a tiny country, is buying almost 1 full day’s worth of new bitcoin mined each year. Imagine how many other countries and companies could start buying this soon? 

I’ve already shared with this post, how many companies and pension funds have started buying bitcoin this year. 

The Wisconsin pension fund bought $160 million worth of bitcoin. 450 new bitcoin a day x $60k/btc = $27 million. So Wisconsin bought 5.9 days of new bitcoin supply. 

Do you think the state of Wisconsin will be the last Pension to buy bitcoin?

2024 Bitcoin Adoption

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Bitcoin adoption has been progressing rapidly in the first 6 months of 2024. 

Wisconsin’s pension fund has added bitcoin to its balance sheets, buying more than $160 million worth of shares in two newly approved funds earlier this year.

While $160 million is a lot of money, Krause said it’s a small fraction of Wisconsin’s overall pension fund. At the end of December, SWIB held more than $155 billion in assets, with the vast majority of that representing assets in the Wisconsin Retirement System.

“Like any good portfolio manager, you want to diversify,” Krause said. “And now that bitcoin has been around for well over a decade, we’re aware that not only does it offer pretty strong returns — sometimes over periods of time quite phenomenal returns — but it also has diversification capabilities. It doesn’t move directly, in tandem with stocks and bonds.”

I suspect this won’t be the last pension to buy bitcoin,  especially since “The Arizona State Senate is considering a proposal to encourage the Arizona State Retirement System (ASRS) and the Public Safety Personnel Retirement System (PSPRS) to explore the inclusion of Bitcoin ETFs in their investment portfolios.”

Also, Japan’s Government Pension Investment Fund (GPIF), the world’s largest pension fund by assets under management, announced that it is seeking information on “illiquidity assets,” including bitcoin, as part of its exploration into potential new investments. 


In addition to various pension funds, more companies have started using bitcoin as their treasury reserve asset. 

The Japanese company, Metaplanet, has set bitcoin as it’s treasury reserve asset. 

The Metaplanet, treasury, was christened with the 1 billion Japanese Yen (worth approximately $6.5 million) injection into Bitcoin by the former. Metaplanet said it is set to make Bitcoin its treasury asset moving forward. It said it will start making Bitcoin bets to mimic the related embrace of the coin by American business intelligence and software firm MicroStrategy.

Another company, Semler Scientific, Inc. (Nasdaq: SMLR), a pioneer in developing and marketing technology products and services to healthcare providers to combat chronic diseases, announced today that its board of directors has adopted bitcoin as its primary treasury reserve asset. In addition, Semler Scientific announced that it has purchased 581 bitcoins for an aggregate amount of $40 million, inclusive of fees and expenses.

The pioneer company of this strategy, Microstrategy, has also Acquired 11.9K More Bitcoin for $786M in June 2024. This is after in March 2024, the company added 9,245 BTC for $623 million after raising money in a similar debt issuance.

In addition to launching 12 Bitcoin Spot ETFs in the USA in January 2024, other countries are continuing to also launch Bitcoin Spot ETF. Australia was the latest. 

Finally, some interesting nation state interest has been shown in Bitcoin. 

El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele, has been reelected for a 2nd 5 year term. He made bitcoin legal tender in El Salvador in 2021. No country has followed, yet. But there have been many positive developments since then in El Salvador. It seems only a matter of time before another country makes it legal tender. 

Perhaps Argentina?

During an exchange on X (formerly Twitter), he (Argentina’s President) declared: “There will be a free competition of currencies, so if you wish to use Bitcoin, there will be no problem.”

Bitcoin Miner Marathon Digital Signs Deal With Kenya to Invest in Green Energy Projects

The company will help monetize stranded energy in the African country and help manage its renewable energy production.

The “problem bitcoin solves” is described in this article. 

Many people are obviously waking up and realizing that bitcoin solves a problem they have.