Please Save California, America

To every politician, every policymaker, every attorney drafting another regulation from behind a polished desk in Washington

This is not a policy brief.

This is not a white paper.
This is a neighbor speaking.

You measure success in charts and indexes. You point to the green arrows climbing on New York Stock Exchange and the record highs flashing across Wall Street as proof that America is thriving.

But thriving for whom?

Yes, when retirement accounts swell and portfolios rise, it feels like victory. If you are nearing retirement, if your wealth lives inside those markets, a soaring index looks like security. But for the families trying to build something from scratch trying to buy land, open a shop, run a farm, manufacture a product, or simply survive the cost of compliance those same highs can feel like a tightening grip around the throat.

Because while Wall Street climbs, Main Street is gasping.

Mr. President whether you sit today in the office or aspire to thank you for forcing Americans to understand what a tariff is. Before recent elections, most neighbors couldn’t define it. Now they debate it over backyard fences and in grocery aisles. That awareness matters.

Tariffs are framed as strength finally charging imports coming into this country. And yes, many Americans believe it is fair that foreign goods should not undercut domestic producers without consequence.

But here is the contradiction that no one seems willing to confront:

How can we speak of protecting American industry while allowing foreign entities to buy American land, American infrastructure, American processors, American agriculture, American companies?

How many acres of American soil are owned by corporations headquartered in Beijing?
How many pieces of critical infrastructure are influenced by international capital whose loyalty is not to the American worker?

When a company backed by a government that can manipulate its currency enters our market, it does not compete on equal footing with the small American business owner paying full taxes, full regulatory costs, full compliance fees. It competes with an entirely different set of rules.

That is not a free market.
That is asymmetry.

And while you regulate your neighbors — adding layers of permits, inspections, environmental impact studies, safety certifications, compliance mandates that grow thicker every year you tell us it is for our protection.

Protection from what?

From each other?

The cost of building infrastructure in this country has become staggering. The cost of starting a business can crush a dream before it breathes. The cost of maintaining compliance can bury a family operation in paperwork alone.

Meanwhile, capital flows in from abroad, buys the very ground beneath our feet, and consolidates ownership at a scale no individual citizen could ever match.

If you judge the American economy by stock market performance alone, you are missing the truth unfolding at the kitchen tables of this nation.

Judge it instead by:

• How many Americans are one emergency away from collapse.

• How many business owners are hanging on by a thread.

• How many farmers cannot afford to pass land to their children.

• How many builders cannot build because the fees exceed the profit.

• How many families are working harder than ever yet falling further behind.

We have paid the taxes.
We have paid the fees.
We have followed the regulations.
We have complied.

And still, we feel like we cannot breathe.

You regulate your neighbors in the name of order. You celebrate market highs in the name of prosperity. But prosperity that exists only on a trading floor is not prosperity for a nation.

A country is not its index.
It is its people.

Until policies reflect the lived reality of American citizens — not just investor sentiment — the divide will grow wider. Tariffs alone will not fix it. Regulations without balance will not fix it. Market highs will not fix it.

If you truly want to measure economic health, do not look only at Wall Street.

Look at your neighbors.

We are not asking for guarantees.
We are asking for fairness.
We are asking for balance.
We are asking for the chance to stand on our own soil without drowning in the cost of standing there.

Respectfully,
From the Americans still trying to build something real.