It was probably the worst economic crisis of the last fifty years. It went on forever, particularly in Europe and the UK (mostly because of a bunch of bone-headed moves by politicians).

Even the US basically didn't get back to where it was pre-2008 till 2019.

Tech was fine because mobile was happening, but it was incredibly grim everywhere else.

In that case, all employees bar sales reps are replaceable (and the reps are too, you just see the pain more).

To be fair, the US exports a lot of services to the EU. For some reason these weren't included in the calculations shrug. As an aside, it's hilarious to see loads of Europeans saying that they never use any US products on a bunch of US owned products.

Ross Perot said it, but he was considered crazy.

i member

Yeah, but they mostly can't tell the difference in blind tests.

> Germany is in an energy crisis and a few other members are close to a sovereign debt crisis. Domestic production of weapons will be tough and expensive. The EU’s plan to sell bonds to pursue war with Russia looks horrid. They’re in no position to be in a trade war. In a few months time when this reality sinks in, they will have to make a trade deal and remove US tariffs.

This really, really depends on how things evolve this week. Like, the EU will 100% tarriff the US (and probably China to prevent dumping) this week.

The big question is whether or not they use the Anti-Coercion Instrument, and hit US tech and financial services. Selfishly, I hope they don't (as I work for a US fintech while I am based in the EU), but this will probably happen if Trump retaliates to this week's sanctions (which he probably will).

This is gonna get a lot worse before it gets better, unless there's a unilateral pullback on the part of the US (which seems very unlikely).

> (and probably China to prevent dumping)

But why does the EU even want a manufacturing sector, don’t you all realize that no sane person wants those jobs? I kid, of course.

It’s truly a sad state of affairs and I hope that we all come to an understanding this week.

> But why does the EU even want a manufacturing sector, don’t you all realize that no sane person wants those jobs?

Why do you equate responding to Trump's tariffs with "want a manufacturing sector"? Trump is pushing the US to isolate itself from the world, not the EU. A few years ago the likes of Volkswagen were investing in auto factories in Morocco.

> The covid crisis was an actual event in physical reality not caused by admin policies.

Sortof yeah, but also sortof not. Basically any non-Trump president would have been briefed about Covid in January 2020, and most of the previous ones invested a bunch of resources into making sure that the disease was contained far away from US shores.

Even Bush II would have done that (and did, I believe for SARS).

It's a possibility. SARS II was much harder to contain though. The first SARS actually made it to North American hospitals, but was contained. It didn't spread in the populace.

Once SARS II made it out of China, only globally coordinated net 0 case policies could have stopped it. I think it would have been worth trying for but there was no appetite for it.

To be fair, he said he would do all this crazy stuff the first time but didn't. So there's some evidence for the position that he wouldn't do crazy stuff.

Also, it's hard for people to understand that someone in power might just not understand why their decisions are a terrible, terrible idea (see politicians and backdooring encryption for a tech example of this).

He didn't do those things, or he couldn't? Not too familiar with American politics, but AIUI his majority was much weaker last time round, possibly resulting in some of his crazy being kept under control?

Yes, he couldn't. Anyone paying attention knows he tried.

I don’t understand the argument why EU would tariff China just because they need export. Can you elaborate?

Because the EU tariffing Chinese exports will be one of the asks for an EU-US trade deal.

The ability of tariffed countries to sell their output elsewhere is understood by the people doing this.

A better way to look at this is the first salvo to economically re-partition the world into spheres of influence. (i.e. circa 1960s)

The principals have all written about how they see political-economic-military alliances as being inherently tied together.

So their intent is to make this a US-dollar-NATO choice, rather than any of those in isolation.

(Agree or disagree with their premise, feasibility, and/or morality, as one might)

So the goal is to rely on NATO as allies right after they threatened individual members of NATO and generally telegraphed that the alliance shouldn't be relied upon?

Please, just stop steelmanning these actions as anything coherent that would possibly benefit the United States. In the best case, Trump is a demented has-been that only understands the world in terms of bullying. So sure, maybe the "plan" is to keep bullying Europe until they're joyfully professing that Trump's diapers smell just like roses and asking how high he'd like them to jump. But that just doesn't seem very in touch with reality.

That Peter Navarro item resurfacing on news today (he is the chief advisor to Trump on tariffs) explains a lot. He made up at least one of the experts he quotes on trade in his non fiction books using an anagram of his own name. https://www.npr.org/2019/10/18/771396016/white-house-adviser... If something looks entirely stupid one the surface, it is exactly what it looks like, there's no 4-D chess with any of these guys except exploiting inaction of Congress to do things it could, like revoke the law that gave Trump these wide powers to tariff given for the "war on terrorism".

It takes two thirds of the Senate and two thirds of the House to pass legislation. It takes two thirds of the Senate and only one half of the House to impeach and convict. And deposing this anti-American fuck would carry much more weight internationally for starting to repair the damage done to our relationships with our allies. Just sayin'.

For non Americans, a slight clarification, passing a bill to revoke would only requiring half, but to override the presidential veto would require a 2/3 vote.

For the tarrifs specifically it wasn't the case as they were under an emergency powers bill which could be cancelled using a privileged resolution without veto, but that was until the Continuing Resolution which took away that safeguard.

You can be angry, or not.

You can be curious, or not.

But you shouldn't let the fact that you're angry force you to be incurious.

Being tired has made me incurious.

But I'm not even that incurious. Rather I think the problem is that their claimed plans rhyme with reality, while being utterly preposterous upon deeper analysis. We need to avoid implying there might be any merit to them lest other people read our comments and, not having been as diligent to separate fantasy from reality, get sucked into the fictional universe where Trump is some master negotiator who is going to bring other countries to heel with pure drunk-uncle-on-the-recliner force of will. And if we do analyze their delusions to figure out what destructive thing they might do next, we should be using the same disclaimers as doctors at a mental hospital.

It doesn't matter if you think their plans will work and/or are a terrible idea. I don't waste words on the latter, because I assume stringing together insults on the internet isn't going to change anyone's mind.

Instead and more interestingly:

- Do you think they'll have any outcomes?

- If so, what do you think those outcomes will be?

Hint: there's plenty of academic literature on the topic

So you want a tradeblock of democratic countries? Like NATOASEA? Could have had that but you sabotaged both ?

You forget what has already happened. Canada has escalated the trade war ... that cannot be explained by your reasoning. And the flaw is this: yes, Canada cannot seriously hope to defend against Russia without the US, and needs a US alliance, but they also see the US has no choice but to defend any Russian attack. Either that, or face Russian nukes in Ottawa. So, Canada escalates.

Plus, I get that it makes sense for you to think about it this way. But given the choice to get fucked militarily BUT get a few more euros now, I guarantee every EU government will choose to get fucked militarily. 95% of the EU countries only have to "sacrifice" in that OTHER countries get fucked militarily, so it's not a hard choice.

And that is before you factor in that Russia is not in any shape to attack any European nation of importance right now, not even Poland. In other words: the politicians choosing to act on the military problem or choose a quick buck ... will be out of office by the time their military decision matters!

And, lastly, I put forward the history of the UN. The great forum for international cooperation and making compromises in shared interests. The first 3 things the UN was going to solve with this cooperation-not-obstinate-refusal-to-accept-reality was the "Arab Issue" (now better known as Israel-Palestine), Kashmir (which under UN guidance has lead to such "successes" as the Partition wars, which when combined made more victims than WW2 according to some sources), and the Congo-Rwanda issue (which has raged on, with no-one actually caring after colonialism ended, and is now at risk of turning into a pan-African war involving every country from Morocco to South Africa). I'm glad they got all those issues solved to everyone's satisfaction before they were going to try forcing the US, EU and ... to cooperate because otherwise absolutely no-one would believe they have any chance whatsoever.

Besides: your hope that foreign governments will act in the interests of "the citizens of the world" (when the vast majority won't even act in the interest of their own citizens) ... what exactly is that idea based on? 12% of the world are free democracies and mostly do that. What about the rest?

That is a lot of response to a pretty tightly framed comment.

Especially considering most of the consequential decisions and impacts will play out over the next 6+ months.

Maybe people/governments will act one way; maybe another.

Classic western mindset. Western liberal democracies aren’t real/free democracies.

If Russia fakes it and cannot make it, nobody can. Ignore the stark difference in behaviour before trump and after trump, because if trump is pure real politics then the before had to be idealistic and well meaning.

You are monsters and the world knows. The thing from the swamp, that is your civilization . A gross, locust like beast, glueing stolen gold and shiny things to its great conquests. Needing war, because western advanced tech saved you from china and the others taking all back. Delenda Moscovia!

It was the Soviets, Russia, that needed war so much they fed the whole world weapons. Russia still does that. The west simply gave some people better weapons to defend themselves.

Because otherwise China will sell all of their tarrifed goods into the EU, undercutting local producers.

Note that the EU is also removing their di minimus loophole (with a longer lead time, announced last month). See the tarriffs on BYD for likely moves on other goods.

And yes, this is a bad idea. But it's the least worst idea available right now.

I subscribed! To be fair though, I'll probably ignore all future emails.

The article is fine, nothing majorly new except focus on the person you raise from, rather than the firm which is advice I don't hear as often.