Thoughts on the Trump presidency

[bleeder4]

Likewise Europe is looking to increase military spending, it wasn't that long ago that the UK was talking about reducing the army further and that cyber security was more important than tanks, and whilst the latter is still important we could see our armed forces strengthened.

That is the best thing to come out of the Trump presidency so far. He's caused our government to halt a decades-long under-investment in our armed forces and actually commit to building them back up again. For that alone, I look upon him favourably.

 

[SteveM70]

The thing that looks as though it might keep Trump in check is the market. Uncertainty for businesses = less investment = falling share prices.

There are plenty of disaster capitalists waiting to pounce on falling stock markets, and Trump knows that - and them - very well. People make money when share prices fall

 

[The Ham]

There are plenty of disaster capitalists waiting to pounce on falling stock markets, and Trump knows that - and them - very well. People make money when share prices fall

Although not enough people make money to keep you in power if you are a leader of a democracy - although some may question if that may or may not be an issue for Trump going forwards (although currently it is an issue for him).

 

[dosxuk]

Apparently it's disrespectful to place tarrifs on American goods.

Trump threatens 200% tariff on alcohol from EU countries - latest

The US president says it will happen unless the EU stops a "nasty 50% tariff on whisky".

www.bbc.co.uk

The US commerce secretary says the EU's move to raise tariffs in response to America's own tariffs is "disrespectful".

Speaking to Bloomberg, Howard Lutnick says: "The president has made it crystal clear that he finds this tit-for-tat really abusive and aggravating.

"His objective is steel and aluminium tariffs. Let him build his steel and aluminium business in America, because that's important."

Addressing the EU response, he adds: "I find all this back-and-forth really off the topic. The key topic is rebalancing American trade."

He says the president was "totally annoyed" at the Europeans.

"Why are Europeans picking on Kentucky bourbon or Harley-Davidson motorcycles? It's disrespectful," Lutnick says.

Asked about the prospect of Trump threatening his own tit-for-tat 200% tariffs on European alcohol, Lutnick says Trump makes the final decisions.

"He wants these countries to respect him. And all this showed you is that Europe and Canada do not respect Donald Trump and do not respect America's ability to build its steel and aluminium industry, which is vital for national security ," he says.

 

[DelW]

Apparently it's disrespectful to place tarrifs on American goods.

Of course it's not "disrespectful" for Trump and Musk to insult and vilify the rest of the world, and to invent weird new ways in which the US can claim victimhood.

In other news, the world's biggest pot says the kettle is the blackest thing there has ever been ...

 

[Harpo]

Apparently it's disrespectful to place tarrifs on American goods.

Huge manbaby ego at work.

 

[brad465]

Trump is such an attention seeker, that had the late Queen Elizabeth II died while he was in office, I wouldn't have put it past him launching full-blown nukes somewhere, just so he could be the headline news again. I know it was major news here as our head of state, but it was major news in the royal-obsessed US (and most of the world) too.

 

[DarloRich]

Always remember: Trump is about outrage, clicks and attention. He is a reality tv "star". There is no plan beyond celebrity and entertainment. That and owning the libs and seeking revenge on those who wronged him

 

[12LDA28C]

Always remember: Trump is about outrage, clicks and attention. He is a reality tv "star". There is no plan beyond celebrity and entertainment. That and owning the libs and seeking revenge on those who wronged him

Indeed, he's like a Poundland Bond villain hell-bent on taking over the world, but minus the humour, sense of irony and self-awareness. He really believes his own hype, even more so than Putin which is alarming.

 

[Cloud Strife]

Apparently it's disrespectful to place tarrifs on American goods.

I think what he really doesn't understand is that many European goods are actually quite in demand elsewhere too. Things like whisky are increasingly in demand among Asian consumers, particularly the Chinese, and they will quite happily take what America doesn't want. Trump also doesn't seem to understand at all that placing tariffs on badly needed steel and aluminium won't hurt the EU, it'll just cause their supplies to go elsewhere.

 

[Harpo]

Putin’s demands are exposing Trumps naive approach to international politics in a far more dangerous way than his escalating tariff wars.

I wonder if he even realised how much he’d conceded to Putin just to engage him?

 

[dosxuk]

I wonder if he even realised how much he’d conceded to Putin just to engage him?

Everything is one-dimensional to him and his team. Make decision - result happens. If it doesn't happen, it's because someone disrespected him, radical leftists are illegally doing something, or he didn't mean to do that after all.

Consequences of those decisions are simply non-existent. And if someone dares do something themselves as a result of his decisions, then they're not playing fair and are clearly anti-American and need to be retaliated against.

 

[DarloRich]

I wonder if he even realised how much he’d conceded to Putin just to engage him

he doesn't care - he believes in the strong man leader and defining spheres of influence. He wants to BE Putin. He also hopes that giving Putin Ukraine means Putin will help him over China.

The last part is the naivety.

 

[Annetts key]

People are assuming that he doesn't have any mental health impairments...
Has he released any details of his medical test results like presidential candidates normally do? The answer is no.
So what is he hiding?

There has been much speculation. But that's all we currently have. Personally I think he has a mental disorder of some kind. If he has, that would explain some of his actions and why so much of what he says is rubbish and why he sometimes contradicts what he has said earlier.

The Wikipedia article on his health makes interesting reading, although, as with all things political on there, have an open mind and cross check the 'information'.

I'm not quoting that at the moment as I'm on a mobile and it's rather long.

 

[brad465]

You are assuming that he doesn't have any mental health impairments...
Has he released any details of his medical test results like presidential candidates normally do? The answer is no.
So what is he hiding?

There has been much speculation. But that's all we currently have. Personally I think he has a mental disorder of some kind. If he has, that would explain some of his actions and why so much of what he says is rubbish and why he sometimes contradicts what he has said earlier.

The Wikipedia article on his health makes interesting reading, although, as with all things political on there, have an open mind and cross check the 'information'.

I'm not quoting that at the moment as I'm on a mobile and it's rather long.

If Trump had released his medical test results and they brought up something very concerning, he and his supporters would have called the doctor(s) "woke lefties" and accused them of "doctoring" it as part of a witch hunt.

If though he does have something like dementia, I think this term will be a good experiment in finding out what happens when one doesn't put their elderly relative(s) in a care home when best advised.

 

[Cloud Strife]

Personally I think he has a mental disorder of some kind. If he has, that would explain some of his actions and why so much of what he says is rubbish and why he sometimes contradicts what he has said earlier.

I actually don't think there's anything wrong with him, except that he's simply completely out of touch with the real world. He's grown up and lived in a very sheltered environment, where people would fix the damage he's caused without making him aware of it. I also don't think he's willing to put in the hard work associated with the Presidency. I don't think he's sitting up at night pouring over documents and learning about the consequences of his actions in South Sudan, but rather he's watching TV and not much else.

The interesting thing is that he's not actually wrong about the damage done to American industries and districts, that he's grown up watching America go from an industrial superpower in places like Detroit to now being marginal at best. The problem is that he's trying to adopt left wing protectionist economics while being backed by right wing capitalists who know fine well that there's no money in reindustrialising those areas.

 

[DarloRich]

You are assuming that he doesn't have any mental health impairments

He is obviously mental but i stand by my points.

 

[Harpo]

He is obviously mental but i stand by my points.

I’d suggest he’s just wired differently.

I see lots of similarities with a wider family member who is very successful in business but has very little empathy for the stress they causes others and doesn’t back off at the point where many of us would consider we’re being damned unreasonable.

 

[edwin_m]

I see lots of similarities with a wider family member who is very successful in business but has very little empathy for the stress they causes others and doesn’t back off at the point where many of us would consider we’re being damned unreasonable.

That's pretty much the definition of a psychopath.

 

[D6130]

That's pretty much the definition of a psychopath.

....or perhaps a sociopath?

 

[DarloRich]

I’d suggest he’s just wired differently.

I see lots of similarities with a wider family member who is very successful in business but has very little empathy for the stress they causes others and doesn’t back off at the point where many of us would consider we’re being damned unreasonable.

I dont mean he has a mental illness or diease or dementia just that he is, actually, mental!

 

[Harpo]

I dont mean he has a mental illness or diease or dementia just that he is, actually, mental!

I’ll stop my defence

 

[DarloRich]

Posters should also remember that lots of the guff from Trump is deflection. What are he and his clowns up to at home when he is wittering about Greenland or Canada?

 

[Yew]

. The problem is that he's trying to adopt left wing protectionist economics while being backed by right wing capitalists who know fine well that there's no money in reindustrialising those areas.

Left wing Protectionism?

 

[JamesT]

Left wing Protectionism?

Free Trade has mostly been associated with the Right. Putting barriers up to protect local industries has been more associated with Left-wing parties.

 

[najaB]

Free Trade has mostly been associated with the Right. Putting barriers up to protect local industries has been more associated with Left-wing parties.

There's quite a gulf between free trade, and fair trade (small letters).

People on the left are quite in favour of fair trade, is pretty much the opposite of protectionism towards local industries and rather encourages trade on favourable terms to smaller economies. As an example the EU used to give favourable terms for the import of sugar and bananas from ACP (African, Caribbean and Pacific) states - in large part to 'make up' for colonial history. The USA protested against those favourable terms saying that they were unfair to Central American producers (where Central American means US mega-corps operating out of Central America), and the EU had to end the quota system, which had a devastating impact on the producers in smaller countries.

All in the name of 'free trade'.

 

[Cloud Strife]

Left wing Protectionism?

Yup, generally speaking, the left has been traditionally associated with trade protectionism. There are quite a few reasons for it, but the basic idea is that it protects workers by keeping the means of production locally. That's why trade unions are traditionally associated with the left too. What's happened in recent (perhaps since the 1980s or so?) years is that the left wing abandoned these ideals in favour or things like fair trade, and the far right have replaced them. It can be seen mostly clearly in the traditional mining areas of France, where the Communists lost major ground and ended up replaced by the far right. The left have done themselves no favours by jumping on the fair trade bandwagon, because they simply lost a huge part of their traditional electorate as a result.

What Trump is doing is promoting those same traditional left wing ideals, but he has no idea or concept how America can actually pay for it. For instance, many of the things that make modern cars a pleasure to drive are only affordable by building them in cheaper jurisdictions, and if they were to be solely built in the US, costs would skyrocket and no-one would be driving new cars. They could do what the Russians did by heavily retreating from modernity, but who wants to drive around a car with less features than a 1996 Ford Escort?

 

[JamesT]

There's quite a gulf between free trade, and fair trade (small letters).

People on the left are quite in favour of fair trade, is pretty much the opposite of protectionism towards local industries and rather encourages trade on favourable terms to smaller economies. As an example the EU used to give favourable terms for the import of sugar and bananas from ACP (African, Caribbean and Pacific) states - in large part to 'make up' for colonial history. The USA protested against those favourable terms saying that they were unfair to Central American producers (where Central American means US mega-corps operating out of Central America), and the EU had to end the quota system, which had a devastating impact on the producers in smaller countries.

All in the name of 'free trade'.

I’m not sure what point you’re trying to make here, giving an example of the protectionist policies of the EU. The Common Agricultural Policy provided subsidies to EU sugar producers and restricted imports to reduce competition.

 

[najaB]

I’m not sure what point you’re trying to make here, giving an example of the protectionist policies of the EU. The Common Agricultural Policy provided subsidies to EU sugar producers and restricted imports to reduce competition.

The point I'm making is that as well as protecting their own producers (from the likes of Brazil and the USA), they used to provide favourable access to small economies (largely from their former colonies). I grew up in Barbados and we used to have a quota of around 100,000 tonnes of sugar annually that entered the EU tariff-free. All through the 80s and into the 90s the sugar industry was profitable because of that favoured access. The same applied to bananas from some of the other islands.

The USA (mainly) protested that this favoured access was contrary to the principles of free trade and took action in the WTO which resulted in the end of this favoured access. Once we lost that sugar quota and had to compete against the likes of the USA the sugar industry basically died, and in the space of ten years give or take went from an annual production of c. 200,000 tonnes annually to struggling to produce 40,000 tonnes, and most of the land has gone out of agriculture completely - again because 'free trade' means that huge US agribusiness can flood the market cheaper than local farmers can produce.

 

[brad465]

Yup, generally speaking, the left has been traditionally associated with trade protectionism. There are quite a few reasons for it, but the basic idea is that it protects workers by keeping the means of production locally. That's why trade unions are traditionally associated with the left too. What's happened in recent (perhaps since the 1980s or so?) years is that the left wing abandoned these ideals in favour or things like fair trade, and the far right have replaced them. It can be seen mostly clearly in the traditional mining areas of France, where the Communists lost major ground and ended up replaced by the far right. The left have done themselves no favours by jumping on the fair trade bandwagon, because they simply lost a huge part of their traditional electorate as a result.

What Trump is doing is promoting those same traditional left wing ideals, but he has no idea or concept how America can actually pay for it. For instance, many of the things that make modern cars a pleasure to drive are only affordable by building them in cheaper jurisdictions, and if they were to be solely built in the US, costs would skyrocket and no-one would be driving new cars. They could do what the Russians did by heavily retreating from modernity, but who wants to drive around a car with less features than a 1996 Ford Escort?

There's also the matter of the left-right spectrum seeming to be more about social matters than economic ones when deciding policy. Immigration control is arguably a left wing economic position, as it's state intervention in the labour market. But relaxed immigration is left wing socially and right wing economically. This also explains why the Tories claimed to want to cut immigration but over 14 years never did, as controls go against their economic ideology (and provide profit for their biggest backers), and why Elon Musk saying he wanted more H1-B visas caused a row with Trump's MAGA core; Musk wanted more legal immigration to support his business interests, but MAGA are ideologically opposed to it.

The best description I saw describing Trump's rise to power was something like this: "He's what happens when capitalism screws the working class, but the working class are unable to work out capitalism is responsible for their problems" (usually because certain interests, like in corporate media, go out of their way to ensuring they don't find out).