This video from Adam Something mentions the Yanis Varoufakis article I mentioned the other day:
And here's an article from Jacobin's Branko Marcetic: "Trump's Tariffs Have Done What No US Adversary Could":
Donald Trump’s sudden declaration of, and subsequent quick retreat from, trade war on China may end up being remembered the same way: an unforced error cementing the decline of a unipolar world order dominated by one single power and signaling the transition to something new.
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To the extent that the Trump administration had a coherent set of goals in its ever-shifting public justifications for its tariffs, they were meant to not just kick-start the process of bringing manufacturing back to the United States but to force countries into renegotiating their terms of trade in a way that was more favorable to the United States and, more broadly, to isolate and put pressure on a rising China vying for global leadership. That last one was reportedly what Trump officials had been discussing two weeks into the tariff announcement, reasoning that most of the world’s countries, China included, would face such an economic shock from losing the ability to sell their exports to the United States’ sizable population of big-spending consumers, they would simply fold and agree to whatever Trump wanted.
So far, none of that has worked out.
The blanket, erratic, and often nonsensical nature of the tariffs has, far from showing signs of jump-starting the long process of reshoring manufacturing jobs, actually proven a major obstacle to that project, while also leading manufacturers to shed jobs or scale back their plans and plunging the entire US economy into uncertainty more broadly. This reached a crescendo with the mass sell-off of US Treasury bonds earlier this month that briefly threatened to send the entire US financial system buckling.
But it’s on the last goal, of squeezing China, that the tariff rollout has been most damaging, at least on the symbolic level of perceptions of US power.
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Trump has more quietly sent Beijing unrequited suggestions that Xi call the White House, while issuing exemption after exemption to his tariffs, now finally conceding they would eventually come down “substantially,” even publicly claiming progress on trade talks that both Chinese officials and his own Treasury secretary say aren’t happening.
Finally, Ian Welsh sums up the debacle and the almost certain dimunition of the United States vis-a-vis China --- "Trump Has Made It Impossible For America To Resist China":
His tariffs and threats have broken the unanimity of the alliance and vassal circle. The EU is in China right now seeking to cut a trade deal with the possible of end of many sanctions on the table. Canada’s presumptive PM has said the old order is dead. When China cut off US LNG who stepped into the gap? Australia and Canada. Even Japan, the most loyal of vassals, has noted that you can’t make a deal with Trump, because blackmailers always come back for more.
With the EU, Japan, South Korea, and the Anglosphere, the US had a credible trade and military bloc. Without them, there’s no goddamn way. They don’t even have to go over to China’s bloc, they just have to be neutral.
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Trump thought that the US was still the essential nation. That if it put the pressure on, everyone else had to buckle. But those days are gone, and Trump’s stupidity is not only going to cost the US its empire, its dollar privilege and inflated standard of living, it is costing the US even its leadership position.
I want to emphasize that I have never thought Trump to be intelligent. In many ways he IS the rambling, delusional incompetent that he is portrayed as. I've been snickering at him since the 1980's when his buffoonery was parodied in the newspaper comic strip "Bloom County." At the same time though, I think the idiots in the Democratic Party and the "progressive" community (the same people who swore up-and-down that Biden was fit to run for re-election) do us a disservice by portraying him as a 24-7 raving idiot who literally believes whatever the last person in front of him told him. And that, furthermore, he is so bereft of ideas that he makes himself the servant of others such as Putin or Musk. Trump is obviously a cunning individual and he has immersed himself in a community of fascists who have very definite plans and, now, a great deal of power.
If the USA's economy goes right down the toilet we have to anticipate how a cunning, ruthless man, who actually has a plan, and a team of ruthless, fascist advisors, are going to respond to it. That includes how Trump's legions of die-hard cult members will respond as well.
2 comments:
It's not only progressives that portray Trump as a raving idiot who blows in the wind, it's also the Republicans who worked in his administration. Almost to a person, everyone who had a cabinet position in Trump 1.0 has confirmed this.
But, you don't have to believe others, just look for yourself at the total incoherence of his tariffs - a policy in search of a rationale. To date he's justified tariffs as a way to
1. Fight fentanyl and illegal immigration,
2. Force Canada to join the US,
3. Bring back manufacturing,
4. Increase national security,
5. Replace income tax to allow tax cuts,
6. Reduce bilateral trade deficits,
7. Isolate China, and
8. Make deals to benefit America.
Who knows what the rationale will be tomorrow? But each of these rationales calls for a different tariff approach. He's not even consistent within his rationales. If you want to bring back manufacturing, it might make sense to put tariffs on aluminum, but creating new manufacturing capacity takes time so you'd want to increase them gradually. You certainly wouldn't put tariffs on bananas, which won't grow in the US. That's just idiocy, but that's what he's done. Trump is a master manipulator, but he's incoherent in what he wants. And he's surrounded himself with the biggest bunch of corrupt fuckups anyone has ever seen in a US government. If there's a plan, these clowns are incapable of implementing it.
Trump went bankrupt running a casino in Atlantic City. I'm not trying to say he's a stable genius or anything.
I guess that I'm responding to the caricature that emerged from what I saw of mainstream media coverage of him. Which to me, was dangerously inaccurate, to the point of obscuring how dangerous he actually was (and is).
Now, maybe my impression of what the MSM was trying to say is different from what was intended, and what most non-Trumpista people saw.
But I saw "John Bolton says Trump is crazy." John Shit-Ass Bolton! "Trump refuses to agree with US-intelligence agencies who say Russia stole the election for him."
With regards his rationalizations for his tariffs, ... on one level, it might not matter what they are, since the goal was to make weaker countries bend the knee and grovel for better terms.
I worry that I look like I'm trying to justify the guy. I'm not. I couldn't bring myself to watch his press conferences the first time around, because they were full of so many stupid lies.
But two things concern me: The first, that Trump's awfulness makes people cling to shit-eaters like Hillary Clinton, MSNBC, and the Democratic Party and all of those centrist psychopaths and embracing things like corporate free trade deals and the neo-con imperialism that has killed hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians and Russians and that risks nuclear war. The second, is that people comfort themselves thinking that Trump is so completely stupid that he can be easily dealt with and it'll all be over soon, once some "grown-ups" are back in charge.
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