American Politics Discussion Thread

[greenline]

Its a good thing a strong dollar and it being the world reserve currency doesn't give us any advantages. We should definitely tank that.

There are advantages. The advantages are primarily aimed as US consumers. Foreign imported goods are cheaper. Foreign vacations are cheaper. That's all nice and dandy for consumers.

The USA also has producers. Capital owners who export, and people dependent on working such jobs. Since we live in a democracy, those people can vote to kick consumers in the nuts to benefit producers. Is that the best way to govern a country? Probably not, and Winston Churchill can burn in hell for all I care. But it is what we're stuck with for now.

[Zed-F]

The big market crash is the tiniest tip of an extremely large economic and geopolitical iceberg. This is nowhere close to the extent of the damage being done, as you'll see in the coming weeks and months if this policy persists.

One of the biggest keys to prosperity is trust and stability, as has been conventional market wisdom for a very long time. US business leaders can't trust what the Trump administration will do, as what they are currently doing makes no economic sense (Ian Fletcher and Howard Richman notwithstanding -- any real economist, including them, would argue for *targeted* tariffs as part of a package to support a specific industry, not for throwing firebombs around globally), and because Trump is known for being mercurial, for breaking contracts, and for mafia-like extortionate behavior. Similarly, around the world America's historical allies are coming to the realization that the US has developed multiple-personality syndrome, and can't be relied upon not to upend global alliances and supply chains every four or eight years, if not more frequently than that.

Honestly I can't tell you if the US will fall into civil war, will devolve into a full fascist autocracy, or will somehow get its shit together and realize that guardrails are there for reasons. But the rest of the world cannot take the chance that one of the first two might obtain. If these policies are not clawed back and soon, this will cause a realignment that will be very painful for the US, which is only strong *because* of its alliances. The US will not retain global reserve currency status if other nations start trusting the Euro's stability more than the US dollar's. The US will not retain the biggest economy in the world if other nations start calling in their portions of the US debt, which would cause a debt and liquidity crisis that could collapse the US economy entirely.

[greenline]

Speaking as someone who would prefer to see large scale capital reallocation and the end of the dollar as the US reserve currency, it looks more and more like that isn't going to happen:

https://www.politico.eu/article/eu-offer...l-tariffs/

The problem Europe has here is that the Euro wouldn't be the go-to world reserve currency if the dollar failed, because the Euro can crash due to Greece being unable to make their healthcare payments. And also because Germany just finished nuking its economy to please insane Green party voters while the UK and France have been stagnating for years. The actual substitute reserve currency for the dollar isn't the Euro, it's the Yuan, and these EU lefty cranks who hate Trump's mercurial policies still aren't willing to have China serve as their new master.

[Zed-F]

There would not be a single reserve currency in the case the US loses reserve currency status, it would be split between the US dollar, the Euro, and the Yuan. China has its own economic issues -- for all you complain about issues caused by debt and demographics in the USA, China is much worse off on both accounts.

[greenline]

If the global reserve currency is split between countries, then you don't have a global reserve country, you just have the fabled Multipolarity™

[Zed-F]

Indeed, though whether a multipolar world would be better than the previous US-led world order is extremely dubious, in my view. At minimum it gives imperial actors a lot more room to misbehave and attempt to invade or otherwise establish hegemony over their neighbors. This isn't good for security or global supply chains, either.

[BING_XI_LAO]

It will be a few years at least before we can judge the effectiveness of Trump's approach.

If you think about what Putin accomplished with the invasion as of today, its:

1. A little bit of territory at enormous cost in lives and rubles.
2. Expanding NATO to Sweden and Finland.
3. Destroyed the largest and most convenient market for his hydrocarbons.
4. A Germany committed to serious rearmament.  That's a continent wide phenomenon.

What a disaster .

Darrell

The war is better understood as a Western political, ideological and financial occupation of Malorussia (the Ukraine), which was leveraged into an invasion of Russia (Donbass and Crimea) with the aim of regime change in Moscow (stated by Biden and many others). 

Before the war there were Western coup attempts in Kazakhstan (2022) and Belarus (2020) which were also defeated by Russian arms. 

The West's aggression has failed. Russia has not only stood firm but is reclaiming more territory than it started with. Ideologically, and in every other internal aspect, it is fortified. Instead it's the West which is declining in every aspect - economics, manufacturing, education, the political system, culture, and so on. The vile cult of liberal democracy is losing due to the decline which it imposes on its host societies, and the Western-led world will be replaced by an Eastern-led world. 

The most important part of the process however is not material, but ideological: defending the minds of Russians from Western lies, something which the aggression and hatred of the Westerners, the contempt which they express, has aided greatly. Within the Russian nation, it's only the Ukrainians who must now be reconquered and re-educated by force.

[BING_XI_LAO]

I doubt Russia kills EU peacekeepers. That is kind of the whole point of them being there is for there NOT to be further fighting. You don't need large numbers either. Its a trip line to try to keep Russia honest.

But its all moot. Russia doesn't seem interested in letting Ukraine have any kind of security guarantee, which just makes Ukraine want them more.

It would be wonderful if the Western rats would finally put themselves on the frontlines to get what's coming to them, instead of hiding behind press-ganged Malorussians.

[BING_XI_LAO]

Russia has violated far too many treaties to be considered a trustworthy actor, especially under Putin or any of his cabal. So European and Ukrainian security must be guaranteed by force. There’s no other effective way to do it.

For a start, most of you are probably too young, but at the end of the USSR, Ukraine (like all other former soviet republics) gave all 'its part of the'  nuclear weapons to Russia in exchange for safe and recognised borders through international treaties signed by Russia (and USA)

And a few decades after that, the Banderite regime decided to define Russians as not part of their nation, via language laws. Unfortunately for them, it turns out that various areas they claim are Russian, with the logical corollary being that they aren't part of the Ukraine.

At first these areas which the Banderites foolishly removed from their national definition were only Crimea and the Donass, but over time, more and more oblasts are being discovered to have been Russian all along, such as Kerson and Zaporozhia. It wouldn't be surprising if more and more oblasts are rediscovered over time, reflected by name reversions from stupid made-up peasant dialect drivel like "Khuiv" and "Kharkiv" to actual historical place-names like Kiev and Kharkov.

And in the end, the concept of a "Ukrainian nation" in general will turn out to have been a hoax for the uneducated, the gullible, the fraudster and above all - the useful idiot zapadnik whose life came to an end under the whip of the NATO pressganger.

[BING_XI_LAO]

Once again, all I am seeing here in response to the biggest self-inflicted financial and geopolitical wound in the last century of US history is some ideological culture war nonsense. You can’t make any cogent defense of the results of your vote, so time to deflect, huh?

Reshoring is a long process, and tariffs are a very logical component of reshoring. China has a lot of tariffs and localisation requirements, and the result has been successful. 

I don't have a strong opinion as to whether Trump's tariffs will succeed (and I hope they fail because I am a patriotic Australian and my country is occupied and infiltrated by the US). But why are you so sure they will fail? 

Maybe a multi-year period of economic interruption is simply necessary. After all, you people are fine with interrupting international trade if it's to economically pressure various countries from North Korea to Iran to Russia and so on.

I think Trump's agenda can be made to work. Maybe he will lose an election over it, but for obvious reasons that does not bother him. And we saw with the Biden Administration that the reshoring and tariff agenda was essentially accepted and continued, even expanded, as a legacy of the first Trump Administration.

Certainly the Republicans and Democrats disagree over how to implement this agenda, with entire industries (like green tech) being favoured or disfavoured. But so far this dialectical process has only led to further development of the reshoring agenda. 

Do you think Democrats are going to win an election with a free trade agenda? I haven't yet considered this possibility.