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I was bringing this up with a guy yesterday who was genuinely supporting the policies and somebody chimed in that they were not worried at all, because everyon

• Nathanba 2y ago
  >Trust is not important if they are afraid of you I understand that argument I've never seen it spelled out by anyone other than me. I only brought it up as a last effort to explain the possible thinking behind these actions. It still won't make sense because even if you believe that you are the top dog and you can effortlessly bully others then you'd have to realize that you won't be the top dog in every situation all the time everywhere at the same time. There will be many instances where others who previously leaned your way for free will now look to get paid for leaning your way.
• sebmellen 2y ago
  Devil’s advocate: If you (the US) massively subsidize the world order through your financial markets, military defense, and foreign aid, it’s only fair that you get to take advantage of your position. Historically, the US has done this at the expense of its working class. Now there is a populist feeling that we are owed a long due “payback” for our generosity. The Bernie/AOC left believe the payback is owed by our elites, who enriched themselves by austerity and hollowing out our industrial base. The Trump/MAGA right believe the payback is owed by other countries — freeloaders that have benefited from our technology, military defense, and foreign aid while simultaneously being net exporters to the US. To the latter crowd, the kind of “bullying” behavior you describe is actually the equivalent of a gentle giant who never stood up for himself finally deciding that he won’t take any more shit. Edit: To any downvoters, please comment with where you think I’m wrong. I’m not defending any policy, just providing what I believe is an accurate representation of the populist American mindset described in the parent comment.
  • f33d5173 2y ago
    The US has always been incredibly mercenary with their investment. If there was a way of squeezing more blood from the stone a previous president would have done it. You learned about economic policy yesterday. Now you think that picking tariffs by throwing darts can do better than seasoned economic expert trying to maximize benefit to the US. It's just laughable.
    • sebmellen 2y ago
      Did I ever defend a particular industrial policy? No. You misread my comment. My comment was intended to give the GP poster insight into the mindset of Americans who revel in the “bullying” behavior they described. But one point of inquiry — how are foreign aid programs like USAID mercenary? Even if they are CIA fronts, it’s hard to argue that they are in any way economically extractive.
    • cmurf 2y ago
      Supposedly they have a seasoned economic expert on staff, Stephen Miran. Is this guy a kook? It wouldn't surprise me, Trump had Laura Loomer at the White House and 1/2 an hour later three members of the National Secure Council had been fired. https://www.politico.com/newsletters/morning-money/2025/01/06/why-stephen-miran-thinks-tariffs-can-work-00196532 https://www.politico.com/newsletters/morning-money/2025/01/0... https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/04/us/politics/trump-nsc-firings-laura-loomer.html https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/04/us/politics/trump-nsc-fir... A central problem with this administration is it's headed by a psychopath, who has a long track record of being an untrustworthy liar. Could he pick an economics team that can actually make hard choices that are generally better for America? It's possible. But it's also possible these are just more kooks, or corrupt people looking to grift, or people who think like Peter Thiel, that democracy is over and needs to be replaced by a monarch. My take? Impeach and remove Trump from office. Do it now. If the country wants these kinds of policies, they need to do it through the Congress. Not through a president, sane or insane.
      • walterbell 2y ago
        > Supposedly they have a seasoned economic expert on staff, Stephen Miran. Is this guy a kook? https://financialpost.com/news/stephen-miran-economist-trump-economic-advisory-team https://financialpost.com/news/stephen-miran-economist-trump... > Currently a senior strategist at Hudson Bay Capital Management LP and a fellow at the Manhattan Institute in New York City, Miran holds a PhD in economics from Harvard University and his dissertation advisor was Martin Feldstein, an eminent American economist who chaired the CEA during the Reagan administration. > Miran.. points to Trump’s application of tariffs on China in 2018-2019, which he argues “passed with little discernible macroeconomic consequence.” He adds that during that time the U.S. dollar rose to offset the macroeconomic impact of the tariffs and resulted in significant revenue for the U.S. Treasury.. “The effective tariff rate on Chinese imports increased by 17.9 percentage points from the start of the trade war in 2018 to the maximum tariff rate in 2019,” the report said. “As the financial markets digested the news, the Chinese renminbi depreciated against the dollar over this period by 13.7 per cent, so that the after-tariff USD import price rose by 4.1 per cent.”
• sdenton4 2y ago
  Yeah, that's an idiotic take... The US has benefited massively from soaking up the best brains globally. That's not going to keep happening; I have plenty of colleagues already who are refusing to travel to the US. We may well even swing into brain drain as Trump et al move closer to executing their cultural revolution. Meanwhile, all those other countries will start trading more with each other. The US stands to be left out. Won't happen overnight, but Trump is pissing away the advantages. When the dollar isn't the global currency anymore things will really start to hurt.
  • eddythompson80 2y ago
    It's an idiotic take I agree. However, I don't think the US has benefited massively from soaking the best brains globally because of its foreign or trade policies. Most dominant voices about US foreign policy and foreign business interest has always been characterized by aggression and exploitation. I highly doubt people were ok with that because the US had low tariffs on their countries exports to the US.
  • Whoppertime 2y ago
    I heard people saying BLM and Covid were cultural revolutions that would lead to brain drain under Joe Biden. It was hype. Politicians who marched with BLM in the summer of 2020 by 2023 were saying they were never in favor of defunding the police
• gmerc 2y ago
  Which is why China doesn’t need to do anything but reliably trade right now and take the US market share.
  • safety1st 2y ago
    When people say that China will replace the US as the world's largest buyer of exports, I always wonder what planet they're living on. China does not WANT to do this. They have tons of protectionism. They give tons of preference to their own firms and protect their domestic market from foreign companies. This enables their firms to grow strong. This is a strategy which has been practiced by many many developing nations. They can't live without it and don't want to. Why does gmerc think that China is going to rewrite its entire economic policy in order to take "market share?" We usually use that term to mean, you are selling stuff and want to sell to more customers because you make more money. In this context however we are talking about BUYING more stuff - why would it be sane for China to dominate the act of buying everything it can on the planet? (At the inevitable erosion of its manufacturing base - just like what happened to the USA when it opened up its markets.) I mean you can think whatever you want about Trump and his actions, but it just makes zero sense to think that China will step in and fill the old role of the US here, when doing so is a polar opposite from their current trade strategy and would probably collapse their economy. And that gets to the real elephant in the room, which is that no one wants to do America's "old job" anymore. No one else wants to be the ubiquitous buyer of everything with big trade deficits all over the place, the vast majority of countries on earth defend their domestic markets and preference their local firms more than pre-Trump America did - exactly what are these new alliances that are going to arise, when everyone wants to sell to other countries, and no one wants to buy? I happen to live in a country whose #1 export market was the USA and is being slapped with some of the largest tariffs. Time will tell of course but at the moment they pretty much just seem to be fucked and all they are saying is they are ready to come to the table and negotiate with the US as soon as possible. There just doesn't seem to be a ton of demand for their exports elsewhere - it's not like every country on earth isn't out there pimping its exports to anyone who will listen, pretty much all the time. If China or the EU had a burning need for a couple hundred billion dollars more of shellfish or textiles or what have you, they'd already be buying it.
• csense 2y ago
  > "if you don't want it to be done to you don't do it to others" Doesn't work. We opened trade to China in the '70s. They took advantage of us, stealing IP, manipulating currency, paying their people terrible wages, crapping all over the environment. We let their companies freely in the US, they very severely restricted US business ventures in China. Detroit, a former shining city in the industrial heartland, is now a bandit infested ruin. In the US, a person used to be able to graduate high school and get a job that could support owning a house with a yard, a non-working spouse, a car, and multiple children. For me, coming from the Rust Belt, it's incredibly, painfully obvious that globalization's basically destroyed the US economy. I'm constantly amazed to meet well-meaning, intelligent people who don't seem to understand this fact.
  • photonthug 2y ago
    For the people who want ^this guy to shut up but haven't engaged.. which part of the above is wrong? I can see hyperbole of "bandit infested ruin" pushing some buttons but otoh it's seems likely that crime is connected to general economic health.
    • AlecSchueler 2y ago
      For me the idea of "stealing IP" in a society like China seems to miss the entire point of what they're doing and seems to fall short of having respect for cultural differences. What we think of as "respecting intellectual property rights" can also be seen as "hoarding property" which is antithetical to communist ideals.
    • tene80i 2y ago
      It’s right and wrong. Globalisation has hurt the rust belt, but it’s also allowed for much cheaper goods, which many people have enjoyed. It’s also made other economies much richer, which has allowed them to purchase U.S. goods (China being an immense iPhone market, for example). It’s not zero sum. If the world economy grows, and the USA holds onto a massive slice of that growing pie, then the USA wins - as it has been doing. And the part about life just being totally unaffordable now isn’t really to do with China stealing from the US - housing is catastrophically expensive in many countries, and is more to do with how it has evolved as an asset class than trade relationships.
• photonthug 2y ago
  > Trust is not important if they are afraid of you .. Europeans seem to be much more susceptible to an "if you don't want it to be done to you don't do it to others" argument. I've noticed this also, having spent a lot of time in both places. Some would say this is part of the American national character, and it's the darker side of hard-nosed individualistic cowboys, etc. The famous opening speech of Patton comes to mind here: > When you were kids, you all admired the champion marble shooter, the fastest runner, the big league ball players, the toughest boxers. Americans love a winner and will not tolerate a loser. Americans play to win all the time. Now, I wouldn't give a hoot in hell for a man who lost and laughed. There's at least some truth to this and the mean-spirited arrogance/strength in the rest of the speech being in line with national character, I think it has to be admitted. This seems like the guy was certainly never cut out to be a diplomat or act with moderation, and maybe most Americans aren't. That said though.. maybe a deeper issue is that suffering (economic or otherwise) changes people. Makes them merely hypocrtical in the best case, aggravated and mean on average, or in the worst case positively cruel. A lot of America has not been ok for a long time now.
  • p3rls 2y ago
    [flagged]
    • BobaFloutist 2y ago
      Respectfully, what the fuck are you talking about?
      • p3rls 2y ago
        Respectfully, I am suggesting that OP has an intellectual disability to think deriving notions about the 'American' national character from Patton is some tocquevillian insight and he may find it profitable to watch Downfall to try and figure out Brussels' next move. Don't forget the dousing rods.
    • toiletfuneral 2y ago
      [dead]
• chrome111 2y ago
  Americans are taught at a very young age about Manifest Destiny, the notion when starting in the East that America has a right all the way to the West. While events like Trail of Tears are mentioned, they're downplayed during early school years and not brought up again later when kids may be able to form an opinion. Essentially, winning is ingrained into the American mindset and is the driving force behind almost everything - this helps when making companies big and even bigger, but also mutual growth hard to fathom. Current US policy does feel very American. Seems like a make-or-break moment for the American model itself, and if it breaks there'll need to be a change starting from the early age education/propaganda.
• rsynnott 2y ago
  > Europeans seem to be much more susceptible to an "if you don't want it to be done to you don't do it to others" argument. I mean, in the specific realm of trade wars, that’s probably more correct, because the game theory of the thing tends to make retaliating against the aggressor nigh-inevitable, particularly in a “country v world” situation.
• giardini 2y ago
  cycomanic says>"Europeans seem to be much more susceptible to an "if you don't want it to be done to you don't do it to others" argument"< While they may "talk the talk", Europe doesn't "Walk the walk"! Europe has strong tariffs on imports. The USA is now simply equalizing the situation. Here's an example: Automobile Tariffs by Country 2025: put your cursor on a country to see its automobile tariff. European tariffs on autos are roughly four times those of the USA. While you're there you can look up the "sales tax" too! https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/automobile-tariffs-by-country https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/automobil... European companies have had tariffs on USA products for decades. Those tariffs protect and maintain industries within a country. The USA failed to maintain that protection: the USA lost jobs and harmed industry which guts an economy. Meanwhile, for example, Germany protected it's auto industry with tariffs on cars from abroad. My feeling is that "What's good for the goose is good for the gander." There's no doubt that the "Law of Comparative Advantage"(LCA) in economics is a valid argument for trade. However, the LCA is almost always argued in the absence of externalities: costs generated by use of the LCA are usually not taken into account when examining a full economy: job losses, industry shrinkage and failure, etc.
  • throwaway473825 2y ago
    That's a bad example. The US already had higher tariffs on vehicles if you include the chicken tax.
    • giardini 2y ago
      Thanks for this bit of history that I was unaware of. Note that the chicken tax applies to light trucks however.