I've seen people use "sanewashing" to refer to the type of comment you're replying to, there's no sane explanation but people try to come up with one because the world doesn't make sense otherwise
I think often trump's policies are rooted in some sort of idea that is perhaps controversial but at least not totally insane, and then implemented in the most boneheaded way possible.
E.g. one explanation given for these trade policies is that trump sees a war with china down the line and is worried that china has tons of factories that could be converted to make ammunition while usa does not.
If so, there is at least some logic to the base idea, but the implementation is crazy, probably not going to work that effectively, and going to piss off all amrrica's allies which would be bad if WW3 is really on the horizon.
E.g. one explanation given for these trade policies is that trump sees a war with china down the line and is worried that china has tons of factories that could be converted to make ammunition while usa does not.
1. US will never outproduce China in ammunition
2. Alienating allies won't help the US produce ammunition
Trump has always liked tariffs [alas, I can't find the source for this pre-presidency, its been blown out by current events]. He thinks trade is a zero sum game, and thinks that someone else set up the petro-dollar system.
Trump has consistently and reiliably always cowered away from war. Using other means to stop it (see russia, NK, China, Iran). Yes I hear the "we're going to invade x, y and z" but they never acutally came to anything (is that because of his advisors?)
Trump doesn't think about future capacity, only future pride. Does this change "make american stronger, and other weaker" is pretty much the only calculus that he's doing.
Trump's thinking is roughly as following:
"Why do we have taxes when we can use tariffs to raise cash and bring power back?"
"Why don't they buy from us?"(china/rest of asia)
"why are we spending money on them, when we don't get any money back? They are weak."(NATO)
"Why are we punishing russia, they are offering deals" (Putin offering cash deals)
There is no 4d chess. Its just a man who's pretty far gone, shitting out edicts to idiots willing to implement them.
"The comment repeated past statements from "The Apprentice" star, who has said he wants to put a 25% tariff on all Chinese imports, to level trade imbalances in the global economy."
> [alas, I can't find the source for this pre-presidency, its been blown out by current events].
Doesn't help that Google's custom time range search is complete garbage. Searched for "trump tariffs" from 1/1/1980 to 1/1/2010 and almost every link is about the current tariffs but with timestamps between 1980 and 2010.
e.g. "20 Nov 1987 — President Donald Trump issued a slew of tariffs on Chinese goods", "30 Jun 1981 — Ontario Premier Doug Ford announced Monday a 25% increase on electricity exports to some American states as a result of President Donald Trump's tariffs", "31 Dec 1999 — IMF says too early for precise analysis on Trump tariff impact", "1 Feb 2001 — Trump's Global Tariff War Begins"
Did find a couple of links that were chronologically correct - a 1999 Guardian story about Trump wanting to tax the rich(!) and a 1987 NYT story about Reagan putting tariffs on Japan.
It is the logic of schoolchildren. It is the simplistic logic of a teenager discovering Ayn Rand's wikipedia entry. (Grover Norquits came up with his tax pledge while in highschool.) The world is more complicated than any econ 099 exam.
The US are never going into a direct war with China, and China is never going into a direct war with the US. This is M.A.D in action.
At most we might see a proxy war over Taiwan (i.e. the US supporting and arming Taiwan, with sanctions against the PRC). The risk would then be a widespread disruption of global trade, at which point the US would not want to be dependent on the Chinese economy or factories in any way.
There is no logic to these things. This is the emperors new clothes, over and over again.
The proximate cause for these tariffs is not some future event. This is post fact rationalization.
The proximate cause is still the ongoing “information” war which determines the perceived reality that is litigated in elections.
Earlier politicians played theater, acting as if the red meat being fed to voters was real on TV, but dealing with reality as need be when it came to decision making.
This was a betrayal of voters, who saw their election efforts result in legislators who didnt do what they said.
Trump does what he says. He believes WWE is real, and acts as if it is. His base believes it is real, and now reality is crashing with the fiction.
The fiction will prevail, because his party has also been working to build the power to enact their will.
Everyone sees logic here, the same way that everyone saw the emperors clothes. The alternative is illogical.
This is the reason potential reasons “we dont know” have to be postulated (war / China can make more ammunition)
Could be a thing? Perhaps people might start caring about product durability and stop buying cheap shit that goes in a landfill because the producers only care about shelf appeal.
This is my hope, too. But also I fear the transition is going to be ugly. Personally I feel lucky that I’m not just starting out my life — I already have high quality stuff.
I think there is a bit more nuance. US manufacturing jobs are never coming back. If you look at the stats, US manufacturing output continues to set records. Yes, the US is second to China (has been since ~2010), but that was bound to happen on population/demographics alone.
So is destroying diplomatic relations with all their allies and trying to force ceding of power in central Europe to a former enemy who is allied to China?
Go on with ya.
He's a prick saving himself from prison whilst being willingly used to establish an oligarchic fascist state from the former USA.
If you follow the logic of it, at least to the first order - fighting a two front war is bad, forcing europe to deal with russia frees up USA to focus on china. America's withdrawl from europe has made european states panic and re-arm, and you could argue that a well-armed europe that grudgingly helps america with a common enemy would be better than a poorly armed europe that uselessly helps willingly.
The second order effects of what he's doing are pretty obviously terrible for usa, but quite frankly i dont think trump is smart enough to see that.
[To be clear i think trump is stupid, but i don't think his actions are entirely random. There is a chain of reasoning here, it just misses the forest for the trees]
> America's withdrawl from europe has made european states panic and re-arm
Russia's invasion of Ukraine is more immediate concern there. Even if Europe still could count on the USA's NATO commitments 100% the war was a big wake-up call in terms of readiness.
If you look at what has happened i'm not sure. The ukraine invasion has been happening for a while now, and it has caused increase defense spending in europe somewhat, but it seems suddenly over the last three month the needle has been moving a lot faster than the last few years.
The problem with this line of reasoning is that Trump just pushed our allies in that part of the world closer to China. China stated the other day they are working on a joint response to tariffs with Japan and South Korea. Additionally, leaving power gaps around the world from the pullback of USAID gives China an in to be the 'good guy'. This is the exact opposite of planning for a conflict with China. In fact, it feels like ceding the fight before it even begins (much like what he did with Russia).
I entirely disagree with our current administration but your display is a bit comical. I don’t think there is much room to argue that the US has historically given the EU a huge margin of protection. I think about some of those comparisons where the US navy is great than the combined top n countries.
Now again it’s not a defense of the administration or to flex some sort of agenda but it’s hard to argue, the EU has underinvested in its military for decades.
Given Sir Kier Starmer regards himself as New Labour and it was Tony Blair that got us into the illegal wars of Iraq and Afghanistan to please the Republican Americans, then yes I expect he might get us into another illegal war (e.g. Iran) to please the Republicans.
Aren't we (UK) putting boots on the ground in support of Ukraine, directly opposing USA? We're going to fight on both sides - the side of expansionist oligarchs (Russia, USA) _and_ the side of democracy?
Wouldn't be surprised if the UK winds up trying to play the same 'both sides' game that Turkey generally tries to play. Ukraine is obviously much closer to home for the UK, but interests may align in other areas of the world.
>In a November paper, economist Stephen Miran, whom Trump has picked to chair his Council of Economic Advisors, raised the possibility that Trump could use the threat of tariffs and the lure of U.S. security support to persuade foreign governments to swap their Treasury holdings for lower-cost century bonds.
I wouldn't put 100% of the blame on the Democrats, here in Australia we are frequently voting for the least worst option not the best, and I'm not sure how the Democrats weren't the least worst option when compared to the other option
but for some reason a whole heap of people decided to stay home this time and this is the result, hope they still feel happy with their decision
I've heard that there's polling lately to indicate that's not true (unsure on source, it might have been an interview at Vox.com), and that higher turnout would have advantaged the Republicans further.
> You have a narcissistic asshole in the White House who got elected because the Democratic Party fumbled the ball.
It don't want to sound too persnickety, but there is always at least one losing side in an election. It doesn't have to mean they dropped the ball, it could just mean people preferred the other option. Hindsight bias is wonderful, but you have no idea what would have happened if they'd run with a different agenda, they may have had a worse result.
> but you have no idea what would have happened if they'd run with a different agenda, they may have had a worse result.
The 2024 election had historically-low support from normally stalwart Democrat demographics such as Latinos, the youth vote, and black males. That, IMO, supports the conclusion that the Democrats did something wrong this time. Also, not only did those groups abstain but Trump also picked up quite a few votes from them (especially working-age black males), suggesting that they are swing voters who probably could have been swayed to stay on the Dem plantation if exposed to more convincing messaging, or a more compelling Democrat candidate.
I'm not sure how you could look at 2024 and not see a historically terrible campaign by the Democrats. They had to force the presumptive nominee to drop out because his brain was dripping out his ears. That alone would do it!
I don't think half the population drafted this policy, so I could easily think the specific construction of the policy is insane without believing half the country is.
He's been articulating this policy for his entire campaign. Half the country voted for him. If you are saying that the details of its implementation are insane, then are you suggesting that Trump actually personally developed and scrutinized those details? Because I don't think any coherent theory of Trump would comport with that.
I do think a lot of the details are bad. But Trump is not exactly a details guy. And while I think they could have been better (by a lot, fairly easily), I do think they are an accurate, if crude, representation of the policy vision Trump has been consistently articulating for decades (he's been talking about tariffs and trade deficits like this since the 90s).
I do believe that half of the US voters do not understand the economic impacts and workings of imposing indiscriminate, massive tariffs on trade partners. The evidence that the majority of Trump's voters have no clue what they've been voting for is quite overwhelming. I would even call it crazy to believe the opposite, to be honest.
There's been some reporting that even die hard Trump supporters don't believe a lot of what he says. This gives them the ability to pick and choose what they believe and allowed him to appeal to a larger group.
How someone would vote for someone they know is lying is beyond my comprehension, but here we are.
Because Trump won the vote, you believe that half the population understands and supports his every action. That doesn't follow. His shit still stinks. Pretty sure The Right now have to say how sweet it smells.
This has been a cornerstone of his campaigns since the beginning. I don't necessarily believe they understand the details, but I do believe they understood he would impose high tariffs, and still voted for him anyway. Tariffs weren't a throwaway line, or something. He repeated it everywhere he could.
I think it is true that most people don't understand the economic principles of tariffs, including most economists. But I do think the plan he's implemented largely comports with what he's consistently said he would do.
Sometimes something does not make sense because we don't see or understand the big picture and what people are trying to achieve, and thus it literally does not "make sense".
Trump is neither stupid nor insane and he will have access to many very smart people, too. Based on that the reasonable assumption is that they are trying to achieve a well-defined objective and have set a plan in motion to do so.
The "game" is thus to figure it out. @ggm's comment above is one possibility.
1. It is authoritarian. Democratically elected leader's duty is to present the policies he plans to implement so that voters can decide if they want them implemented.
2. It is based on the "4D chess" myth - that the leader is way smarter than the rest and is capable of outsmarting other countries. The history shows that it is never true. The leaders are normal people. And the institutions are as good as the founding principles that are honored by them.
(1) is you not liking it, not that it isn't the case. Whether it is authoritarian or not is besides the point. (2) I am not claiming that they can "outsmart" anyone, just that the objective and plan may not be publicly or explicitly stated, or even that what is publicly stated is not the real objective (this is not "4D chess" this is actually how things tend to be in practice from politics to business).
(1) Bypassing the judicative branch is authoritarian.
(2) You just claimed trump has access to smart advisors and some hidden masterplan but you ignore all counter indication. He ousts critical journalists, nominates incompetent staff, invasion-mongers, tweets and plays golf alot.
If i can see any common factor in his insanity, its the need to have an enemy to pose as the strong man against, which indicates that trump does not have a constructive vision for the US.
> Democratically elected leader's duty is to present the policies he plans to implement so that voters can decide if they want them implemented.
That's 100% not true. A candidate leader might tell you what they're going to do, and then you elect the leader, and then they do them, but they don't propose plans once in power to see if the electorate like them.
As much as I'm not a Trump fan, I really don't like that people use a separate yardstick to measure him vs people they like.
Possibly, but the thing I have repeatedly heard is "Trump is doing this because he promised it on the campaign trail". The things might be bad (e.g. some pardon didn't sound great) but I wouldn't describe him as not fulfilling anything. He seems to have made some very specific promises, and has kept at least some of them.
Maybe there's a website that keeps track somewhere.
1) heads of state can in fact be incredibly incompetent
2) the goal could entirely be 'stay in power' (which can also be implemented incompetently!)
The UK for a good few years had a government which had both these attributes. They were only interested in policies which would appeal to their base, but eventually even those soured on them because the policies were implemented so badly.
The simplest solution is the right one. You are projecting intelligence, because you are used to.
This is AFTER the US government has roundly fired thousands of their experts and workforce, AND has just told everyone of its intelligence and army rank and file that there are no repercussions for a massive dereliction of duty.
On the contrary, in context I believe my comment is actually the simplest explanation. Claiming that the US government is insane while we, as random members of the public know better, is certainly not the simplest explanation...
It does not imply that what they are doing is a good idea or will work (whatever the objective is), just that there is more rational thought in what they are doing than what people might assume because the public does not have the information and seeing through what is going on requires insights that most people don't have, either.
Again, check @ggm comment above. I am not saying that this is what is going on but it is a possibility, and an average member of the public would never think of that scenario and thus wouldn't see the order in the apparent chaos.
> Claiming that the US government is insane while we, as random members of the public know better
Not insane, incompetent.
The problem with primarily hiring sycophants from his favorite cable news channel is that he's not getting the best, even from the GOP. This also makes him even more susceptible to people with their own agendas like Musk since no one is willing to pushback.
You don't need much background in Economics to understand that blanket tariffs hurt companies that rely on imports and exports and lead to higher prices. They used an LLM to come up with a formula that's just the trade deficit when you simplify it and called it "tariffs charged to the USA".
