AMERICANMADE
Nobody warned you about this
The downward slide has begun.
According to new research from Bloomberg, the U.S. dollar's share of global reserves has just fallen to the lowest level this century.
While everyone is distracted by hyped-up IPOs and the AI bubble, the world is walking away from the dollar – the foundation on which all of our lives are built is crumbling.
And I believe the consequences for the country – and your financial security – are extremely serious.
President Trump knows it. That's why he has taken emergency action by signing executive order 14241 to initiate the first full reset of the American dollar in half a century.
That means every dollar you have saved and invested… every good, every service, every asset… all of it could be about to be repriced against a new monetary anchor.
It’s not gold, or crypto – but something far more unexpected. An asset so fiercely contested and so critical that Vladimir Putin once claimed whoever controls it “will become the leader of the world”
Nobody can tell you exactly how this reset will play out.
But I do know that the last time America changed its money like this – half a century ago – it split the country in two. Between the folks who understood what was happening and responded accordingly – and those who got brutally left behind.
That line is being drawn again. And what you do with your money in the months ahead could decide which side you end up on.
I’d like to show you which investments could thrive – and which could be the most dangerous – inside Trump’s new monetary order.
In 1884, a 17-year-old woodworker named Bud Hillerich turned a bat on his father’s lathe for Pete Browning, the Louisville Eclipse’s star outfielder. Browning went 3-for-3 the next day. Word spread. Players started lining up at the Hillerich workshop. By 1894, the company had a name: Louisville Slugger.
A hundred forty-two years later, the bat is still made in Louisville. Same street. Same factory. Every MLB wood bat comes from this building — turned from billets of hard maple grown in Pennsylvania, New York, and Maine. A Pro Prime maple bat costs about $180. I traced where that money goes.
The wood takes 14%. Each bat starts as a cylindrical billet of hard maple, split from trees grown in the forests of Pennsylvania, New York, and Maine. The billets are kiln-dried for weeks, then graded by hand for straightness, density, and grain quality. Only the best make it to the Pro Prime line.
Labor and turning take 19%. A CNC lathe shapes the billet in about 30 seconds — down from the 30 minutes it took Bud Hillerich in 1884. But each bat is still hand-sanded, cupped, weighed, and balanced. Pro stock bats are custom-made to each MLB player’s exact specifications. Every model number in the catalog traces back to a real player’s preference.
Finishing takes 17%. Some bats get a flame-tempered barrel for hardness. All get stained, lacquered, and branded with the Louisville Slugger oval. Quality control weeds out any bat with hidden knots or imperfections that could cause it to shatter.
The Hillerich family owned Louisville Slugger for 131 years. In 2015, they sold the brand to Wilson Sporting Goods for $70 million. CEO John Hillerich IV said the family could no longer compete with larger, multinational companies. Wilson is owned by Amer Sports of Finland, which is owned by Anta Sports of China.
So the most American bat in baseball is now ultimately Chinese-owned. But the wood is American. The workers are American. The factory hasn’t moved. And the bats still say “Louisville, KY” on every one. What’s “American Made” when the product stays but the ownership leaves? That’s the question at the heart of every reshoring story.
You can’t buy Louisville Slugger stock. Anta Sports trades in Hong Kong, but buying it for the bat division would make no sense. Baseball bats are a rounding error in a $60 billion sportswear empire. The investment story here is the lesson, not the ticker.
The lesson is about what “American Made” means in 2026. We covered the U.S. Steel golden share — Nippon Steel bought the company but the government kept control. Louisville Slugger is the version where no golden share existed. The family sold. The profits left. The factory stayed.
Is that enough? For 200 workers in Louisville who still have jobs, yes. For the maple growers in Pennsylvania, yes. For the kid who buys a bat that says “Louisville Slugger” and swings it at a summer baseball game, probably yes. The wood is American. The hands are American. The game is American. The profit margin — that’s a different conversation. But the crack of the bat still sounds the same. And it still comes from Louisville.