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Now that we have a new thread, in order to ensure that this thread continues to meet TL standards and follows the proper guidelines, we will be enforcing the rules in the OP more strictly. Be sure to give them a complete and thorough read before posting! NOTE: When providing a source, please provide a very brief summary on what it's about and what purpose it adds to the discussion. The supporting statement should clearly explain why the subject is relevant and needs to be discussed. Please follow this rule especially for tweets.
Your supporting statement should always come BEFORE you provide the source.If you have any questions, comments, concern, or feedback regarding the USPMT, then please use this thread: http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/website-feedback/510156-us-politics-thread |
On April 06 2018 16:05 WolfintheSheep wrote:Show nested quote +On April 06 2018 14:55 RvB wrote:On April 06 2018 10:52 mozoku wrote:On April 06 2018 10:01 m4ini wrote:On April 06 2018 09:54 Toadesstern wrote:On April 06 2018 09:42 m4ini wrote:On April 06 2018 09:17 Toadesstern wrote:
I would say the underlying issue is real to some degree (edit: that is, China not opening up their markets. Not talking about trade deficits) and it's a topic in the EU as well. I'll agree that his plan is bad and it wouldn't just be "oh you put 50billion tariffs on China? Awesome we'll do the same!" but maybe something else along the lines "yo stop for a second. That's just stupid. But beyond all that bullshit there's a point to be had. What do you say we work something out together?"
But the fact that the US has lost every ounce of political softpower it still had 2 years ago makes it so much harder for him. Hell, the Iraq war wasn't only the US fighting. Maybe had this 50billion tariff thing be proposed by Obama/Bush some nations would have joined in after all. That's pretty utopian. The EU isn't a coherent entity that just joins or declines a trade war. There's dozens of countries, each with their own interests. This was shown a while ago when pretty much everyone in the EU agreed that chinese steel is a problem, so legislation was drafted to counteract this by "measures" (i assume it was tariffs, can't remember). Turns out, the government that screamed the loudest about how unfair chinese steel is recently (the UK) and iirc two other countries simply blocked it. Doesn't stop them from still blaming the EU for destroying the welsh steel industry, but alas. Point being, no. A country, yes. The EU as a whole? Especially at the pace trump is tweeting/warmongering? Completely impossible. The only option would be to either "join" or "not join" the quabble, because you can't discuss stuff reasonably at the pace trump is just vomiting his verbal diarrhoea into twitter. You're acting as if the EU doesn't want to act, when in fact, it tried multiple times and lost to the interests of singular countries. You can argue that it's stupid (i'd disagree), but that's the way it is. You can't just announce something on twitter, implement it a week later and expect one of the biggest trading blocs, created out of dozens of countries, to just jump whenever trump has another feverdream. I'd honestly rather have the EU getting together with china by itself, with their own pace. Hell, catch them off guard by offering to let the weapons embargo go (which is retarded in the first place) in exchange for an open market/IP protection. I'd say we do get things done if it isn't just us Europeans. If there's a gentle push from the US the EU tends to get in line or at least it used to be that way and I think it would be the same in this situation if you replace Trump with literally any of the other people who ran for preisdent. That's been my point. Not that there's a better way to go about this but that because Trump is who it is and how he acts in regards to other nations it's so much more impossible for him to get anything done outside of the US. Maybe I shouldn't have picked the EU as an example as I do agree the EU blocks itself way too much (looking back at the disaster that was the tradedeal talks with Canada for example) but again, my point was mostly that it's hilarious that in principal it's something people agree with (again, ignore him and how he goes about it) but because he is who he is and because he does things this way it only becomes more impossible for him to achieve anything he wants. At least outside the US. Of course the EU gets things done. And of course the EU used to work well together with the US, generally because their interests interlocked. Their interests are still interlocked. The issue is that democracy seems to be crumbling as a system in the present-day. A general voting public makes bad decision-makers. In the US, it led to Trump getting elected. In Europe, voters would apparently rather spite Trump than act in their own (and the world's) interest. [To be clear, I don't mean to absolve Trump of blame here. He's played this horribly. And I totally agree he's a terrible president and potentially exclusively responsible for the failure to obtain European support.. But it's important to separate the person and the policy. The underlying strategy here is what's needed given the circumstances.] This sorta worked okay when there were no competent authoritarians around, but it's a real problem today. China (more specifically the CCP and their mass-propagandized populace) is being massively overlooked as the largest threat to worldwide human rights since the beginning of the post-WW2 era. If you think the world's leadership has been bad under the US, you're going to have a hell of a next few decades if the current trends continue. At least half of the US populace gives a shit when they think the US government is acting immorally abroad, and politicians have to answer to them somewhat. China's rulers have no such constraints and have clearly demonstrated that their number one priority is establishing dominance under their (rapidly increasing) sphere of influence. Imagine if you took US military adventurism, removed the press's ability to report on it, the citizens' ability to vote on it, and rewarded the politicians in charge for bringing home the riches. Sound like an optimistic vision for the future? You can argue the US does this already, and I know some of you do, but even the biggest skeptic would have to acknowledge there are at least some checks in place to rein it in significantly. If CCP can conduct human rights violations on Tibetans, Uighurs, etc. in their own country without significant resistance from the populace, what do you think the response will be when those violations are occurring in some far off foreign land? Far into the future, I think the West's handling of China is going to be seen as a historic failure. I don't think the analysis that the EU wants.to spite Trump is true. It's just that tariffs are an aweful way to achieve their goals and that Trump is obsessed with the trade deficit. There were already plans to cooperate on trade against China. https://www.ft.com/content/5f0aad90-deae-11e7-a8a4-0a1e63a52f9c If Trump actually wanted some solidarity against China's trade power, I hear there was some trade partnership from some Pacific countries that wanted to do just that. I wonder what the Trump thinks of that?
I think the general idea of Toadessterns post was the following: If the US had a competent president, and wanted to get china to open up its markets, they could probably get some support from the EU. The problem is that you do not have a competent president, you have an infantile braggart. No one in their right mind wants to be anywhere near anything that Trump does. And no country will support Trump in his stupid ideas, not because he is Trump, but because he does not seem to have any effective plan of reaching his goals, and is very bad at selling the idea of supporting him to other people. The only method of convincement which he knows seems to be bullying, and that only works when attacking single, weaker entities. And even then it quickly builds up resentment. (Well, i guess technically that is because of Trump).
The US already threw away a lot of the support it gained from other countries under bush with their silly wars, and now with Trump they are basically at a point where no one wants to do anything with them because US policy seems insane.
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On April 06 2018 12:53 TheLordofAwesome wrote:http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5575395/Saudi-crown-prince-brags-Jared-Kushner-handed-U-S-intelligence.htmlThis IS the Daily Mail, so be skeptical. but if what they are reporting is true, and it seems very likely that it is based on past reports of the JK/MBS connection, Jared Kushner is should be in deep deep trouble. Like, going to federal prison for a veeeery long time kind of trouble. Who wants to bet Jared followed ANY of the rules about disclosure of this stuff? Giving an above-Top-Secret CIA briefing to a guy like MBS, is so horrible in so many ways that I can't list them all. Also, more Manafort news I did not previously fathom the amount of trouble that this guy seems to be in. He's already facing charges that would put him behind bars for the rest of his life and the feds are still executing massive search warrants on all his stuff due to matters "relating to ongoing investigations that are not the subject of either of the current prosecutions involving Manafort."
Wow really? It's the Daily Mail, but even trash newspapers in the UK are credible when it comes to investigative or public interest stories. jared Kushner appears to be doing so much shady stuff, that it seems to get buried. No one here seem to care that Jared Kushner basically enabled the Saudi Crown Prince to, out of the blue, stage a coup of power in Saudi Arabia. It's unclear what US interests lay here, but you can be sure that every other country have taken note that the US appears to be meddling in the internal power struggle of Saudi Arabia or that it is easy to manipulate Trump and his entourage to providing classified information on their political opponents.
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On April 06 2018 16:47 Simberto wrote:Show nested quote +On April 06 2018 16:05 WolfintheSheep wrote:On April 06 2018 14:55 RvB wrote:On April 06 2018 10:52 mozoku wrote:On April 06 2018 10:01 m4ini wrote:On April 06 2018 09:54 Toadesstern wrote:On April 06 2018 09:42 m4ini wrote:On April 06 2018 09:17 Toadesstern wrote:
I would say the underlying issue is real to some degree (edit: that is, China not opening up their markets. Not talking about trade deficits) and it's a topic in the EU as well. I'll agree that his plan is bad and it wouldn't just be "oh you put 50billion tariffs on China? Awesome we'll do the same!" but maybe something else along the lines "yo stop for a second. That's just stupid. But beyond all that bullshit there's a point to be had. What do you say we work something out together?"
But the fact that the US has lost every ounce of political softpower it still had 2 years ago makes it so much harder for him. Hell, the Iraq war wasn't only the US fighting. Maybe had this 50billion tariff thing be proposed by Obama/Bush some nations would have joined in after all. That's pretty utopian. The EU isn't a coherent entity that just joins or declines a trade war. There's dozens of countries, each with their own interests. This was shown a while ago when pretty much everyone in the EU agreed that chinese steel is a problem, so legislation was drafted to counteract this by "measures" (i assume it was tariffs, can't remember). Turns out, the government that screamed the loudest about how unfair chinese steel is recently (the UK) and iirc two other countries simply blocked it. Doesn't stop them from still blaming the EU for destroying the welsh steel industry, but alas. Point being, no. A country, yes. The EU as a whole? Especially at the pace trump is tweeting/warmongering? Completely impossible. The only option would be to either "join" or "not join" the quabble, because you can't discuss stuff reasonably at the pace trump is just vomiting his verbal diarrhoea into twitter. You're acting as if the EU doesn't want to act, when in fact, it tried multiple times and lost to the interests of singular countries. You can argue that it's stupid (i'd disagree), but that's the way it is. You can't just announce something on twitter, implement it a week later and expect one of the biggest trading blocs, created out of dozens of countries, to just jump whenever trump has another feverdream. I'd honestly rather have the EU getting together with china by itself, with their own pace. Hell, catch them off guard by offering to let the weapons embargo go (which is retarded in the first place) in exchange for an open market/IP protection. I'd say we do get things done if it isn't just us Europeans. If there's a gentle push from the US the EU tends to get in line or at least it used to be that way and I think it would be the same in this situation if you replace Trump with literally any of the other people who ran for preisdent. That's been my point. Not that there's a better way to go about this but that because Trump is who it is and how he acts in regards to other nations it's so much more impossible for him to get anything done outside of the US. Maybe I shouldn't have picked the EU as an example as I do agree the EU blocks itself way too much (looking back at the disaster that was the tradedeal talks with Canada for example) but again, my point was mostly that it's hilarious that in principal it's something people agree with (again, ignore him and how he goes about it) but because he is who he is and because he does things this way it only becomes more impossible for him to achieve anything he wants. At least outside the US. Of course the EU gets things done. And of course the EU used to work well together with the US, generally because their interests interlocked. Their interests are still interlocked. The issue is that democracy seems to be crumbling as a system in the present-day. A general voting public makes bad decision-makers. In the US, it led to Trump getting elected. In Europe, voters would apparently rather spite Trump than act in their own (and the world's) interest. [To be clear, I don't mean to absolve Trump of blame here. He's played this horribly. And I totally agree he's a terrible president and potentially exclusively responsible for the failure to obtain European support.. But it's important to separate the person and the policy. The underlying strategy here is what's needed given the circumstances.] This sorta worked okay when there were no competent authoritarians around, but it's a real problem today. China (more specifically the CCP and their mass-propagandized populace) is being massively overlooked as the largest threat to worldwide human rights since the beginning of the post-WW2 era. If you think the world's leadership has been bad under the US, you're going to have a hell of a next few decades if the current trends continue. At least half of the US populace gives a shit when they think the US government is acting immorally abroad, and politicians have to answer to them somewhat. China's rulers have no such constraints and have clearly demonstrated that their number one priority is establishing dominance under their (rapidly increasing) sphere of influence. Imagine if you took US military adventurism, removed the press's ability to report on it, the citizens' ability to vote on it, and rewarded the politicians in charge for bringing home the riches. Sound like an optimistic vision for the future? You can argue the US does this already, and I know some of you do, but even the biggest skeptic would have to acknowledge there are at least some checks in place to rein it in significantly. If CCP can conduct human rights violations on Tibetans, Uighurs, etc. in their own country without significant resistance from the populace, what do you think the response will be when those violations are occurring in some far off foreign land? Far into the future, I think the West's handling of China is going to be seen as a historic failure. I don't think the analysis that the EU wants.to spite Trump is true. It's just that tariffs are an aweful way to achieve their goals and that Trump is obsessed with the trade deficit. There were already plans to cooperate on trade against China. https://www.ft.com/content/5f0aad90-deae-11e7-a8a4-0a1e63a52f9c If Trump actually wanted some solidarity against China's trade power, I hear there was some trade partnership from some Pacific countries that wanted to do just that. I wonder what the Trump thinks of that? I think the general idea of Toadessterns post was the following: If the US had a competent president, and wanted to get china to open up its markets, they could probably get some support from the EU. The problem is that you do not have a competent president, you have an infantile braggart. No one in their right mind wants to be anywhere near anything that Trump does. And no country will support Trump in his stupid ideas, not because he is Trump, but because he does not seem to have any effective plan of reaching his goals, and is very bad at selling the idea of supporting him to other people. The only method of convincement which he knows seems to be bullying, and that only works when attacking single, weaker entities. And even then it quickly builds up resentment. (Well, i guess technically that is because of Trump). The US already threw away a lot of the support it gained from other countries under bush with their silly wars, and now with Trump they are basically at a point where no one wants to do anything with them because US policy seems insane.
Meh, apart from posturing by the EU I think Trump would get support easily if his ideas aligned with our interests and made sense. In the end we've hardly ever let morals get in the way of some good old economic growth. The problem is Trumps ideas are generally really dumb (because he hates 'experts' and he uses himself as his best adviser) , not the Trump persona.
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On April 06 2018 22:05 FueledUpAndReadyToGo wrote:Show nested quote +On April 06 2018 16:47 Simberto wrote:On April 06 2018 16:05 WolfintheSheep wrote:On April 06 2018 14:55 RvB wrote:On April 06 2018 10:52 mozoku wrote:On April 06 2018 10:01 m4ini wrote:On April 06 2018 09:54 Toadesstern wrote:On April 06 2018 09:42 m4ini wrote:On April 06 2018 09:17 Toadesstern wrote:
I would say the underlying issue is real to some degree (edit: that is, China not opening up their markets. Not talking about trade deficits) and it's a topic in the EU as well. I'll agree that his plan is bad and it wouldn't just be "oh you put 50billion tariffs on China? Awesome we'll do the same!" but maybe something else along the lines "yo stop for a second. That's just stupid. But beyond all that bullshit there's a point to be had. What do you say we work something out together?"
But the fact that the US has lost every ounce of political softpower it still had 2 years ago makes it so much harder for him. Hell, the Iraq war wasn't only the US fighting. Maybe had this 50billion tariff thing be proposed by Obama/Bush some nations would have joined in after all. That's pretty utopian. The EU isn't a coherent entity that just joins or declines a trade war. There's dozens of countries, each with their own interests. This was shown a while ago when pretty much everyone in the EU agreed that chinese steel is a problem, so legislation was drafted to counteract this by "measures" (i assume it was tariffs, can't remember). Turns out, the government that screamed the loudest about how unfair chinese steel is recently (the UK) and iirc two other countries simply blocked it. Doesn't stop them from still blaming the EU for destroying the welsh steel industry, but alas. Point being, no. A country, yes. The EU as a whole? Especially at the pace trump is tweeting/warmongering? Completely impossible. The only option would be to either "join" or "not join" the quabble, because you can't discuss stuff reasonably at the pace trump is just vomiting his verbal diarrhoea into twitter. You're acting as if the EU doesn't want to act, when in fact, it tried multiple times and lost to the interests of singular countries. You can argue that it's stupid (i'd disagree), but that's the way it is. You can't just announce something on twitter, implement it a week later and expect one of the biggest trading blocs, created out of dozens of countries, to just jump whenever trump has another feverdream. I'd honestly rather have the EU getting together with china by itself, with their own pace. Hell, catch them off guard by offering to let the weapons embargo go (which is retarded in the first place) in exchange for an open market/IP protection. I'd say we do get things done if it isn't just us Europeans. If there's a gentle push from the US the EU tends to get in line or at least it used to be that way and I think it would be the same in this situation if you replace Trump with literally any of the other people who ran for preisdent. That's been my point. Not that there's a better way to go about this but that because Trump is who it is and how he acts in regards to other nations it's so much more impossible for him to get anything done outside of the US. Maybe I shouldn't have picked the EU as an example as I do agree the EU blocks itself way too much (looking back at the disaster that was the tradedeal talks with Canada for example) but again, my point was mostly that it's hilarious that in principal it's something people agree with (again, ignore him and how he goes about it) but because he is who he is and because he does things this way it only becomes more impossible for him to achieve anything he wants. At least outside the US. Of course the EU gets things done. And of course the EU used to work well together with the US, generally because their interests interlocked. Their interests are still interlocked. The issue is that democracy seems to be crumbling as a system in the present-day. A general voting public makes bad decision-makers. In the US, it led to Trump getting elected. In Europe, voters would apparently rather spite Trump than act in their own (and the world's) interest. [To be clear, I don't mean to absolve Trump of blame here. He's played this horribly. And I totally agree he's a terrible president and potentially exclusively responsible for the failure to obtain European support.. But it's important to separate the person and the policy. The underlying strategy here is what's needed given the circumstances.] This sorta worked okay when there were no competent authoritarians around, but it's a real problem today. China (more specifically the CCP and their mass-propagandized populace) is being massively overlooked as the largest threat to worldwide human rights since the beginning of the post-WW2 era. If you think the world's leadership has been bad under the US, you're going to have a hell of a next few decades if the current trends continue. At least half of the US populace gives a shit when they think the US government is acting immorally abroad, and politicians have to answer to them somewhat. China's rulers have no such constraints and have clearly demonstrated that their number one priority is establishing dominance under their (rapidly increasing) sphere of influence. Imagine if you took US military adventurism, removed the press's ability to report on it, the citizens' ability to vote on it, and rewarded the politicians in charge for bringing home the riches. Sound like an optimistic vision for the future? You can argue the US does this already, and I know some of you do, but even the biggest skeptic would have to acknowledge there are at least some checks in place to rein it in significantly. If CCP can conduct human rights violations on Tibetans, Uighurs, etc. in their own country without significant resistance from the populace, what do you think the response will be when those violations are occurring in some far off foreign land? Far into the future, I think the West's handling of China is going to be seen as a historic failure. I don't think the analysis that the EU wants.to spite Trump is true. It's just that tariffs are an aweful way to achieve their goals and that Trump is obsessed with the trade deficit. There were already plans to cooperate on trade against China. https://www.ft.com/content/5f0aad90-deae-11e7-a8a4-0a1e63a52f9c If Trump actually wanted some solidarity against China's trade power, I hear there was some trade partnership from some Pacific countries that wanted to do just that. I wonder what the Trump thinks of that? I think the general idea of Toadessterns post was the following: If the US had a competent president, and wanted to get china to open up its markets, they could probably get some support from the EU. The problem is that you do not have a competent president, you have an infantile braggart. No one in their right mind wants to be anywhere near anything that Trump does. And no country will support Trump in his stupid ideas, not because he is Trump, but because he does not seem to have any effective plan of reaching his goals, and is very bad at selling the idea of supporting him to other people. The only method of convincement which he knows seems to be bullying, and that only works when attacking single, weaker entities. And even then it quickly builds up resentment. (Well, i guess technically that is because of Trump). The US already threw away a lot of the support it gained from other countries under bush with their silly wars, and now with Trump they are basically at a point where no one wants to do anything with them because US policy seems insane. Meh, apart from posturing by the EU I think Trump would get support easily if his ideas aligned with our interests and made sense. In the end we've hardly ever let morals get in the way of some good old economic growth. The problem is Trumps ideas are generally really dumb (because he hates 'experts' and he uses himself as his best adviser) , not the Trump persona.
mmmh, idk. I'll agree that I don't think the leaders in the EU (for the most part) would be stupid enough to be influenced by emotions. So while the general population in the EU might think that way I do believe Merkel (or whoever) would still do what she consideres to be best no matter the insults or whatever else comming from the US.
But I do think that there's more in common to this than people like to admit. Yes his way of going about it is stupid and trying to bully nations won't work but at the end of the day Europe is all about trying to get China to open up their markets without stealing IP etc as well. Especially when it comes to examples like the car industry. You really want to establish a position in China as both an EU or US company, otherwise you're going to lose out massively in the near future.
And there's only so much you can do to get to that position. Maybe I shouldn't have said that it's almost like it's out of spite as that's going too far but I do have the feeling that the way Trump acts makes it difficult for people to agree with even just the parts they agree on.
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On April 06 2018 16:25 Mohdoo wrote:Show nested quote +On April 06 2018 16:05 WolfintheSheep wrote:On April 06 2018 14:55 RvB wrote:On April 06 2018 10:52 mozoku wrote:On April 06 2018 10:01 m4ini wrote:On April 06 2018 09:54 Toadesstern wrote:On April 06 2018 09:42 m4ini wrote:On April 06 2018 09:17 Toadesstern wrote:
I would say the underlying issue is real to some degree (edit: that is, China not opening up their markets. Not talking about trade deficits) and it's a topic in the EU as well. I'll agree that his plan is bad and it wouldn't just be "oh you put 50billion tariffs on China? Awesome we'll do the same!" but maybe something else along the lines "yo stop for a second. That's just stupid. But beyond all that bullshit there's a point to be had. What do you say we work something out together?"
But the fact that the US has lost every ounce of political softpower it still had 2 years ago makes it so much harder for him. Hell, the Iraq war wasn't only the US fighting. Maybe had this 50billion tariff thing be proposed by Obama/Bush some nations would have joined in after all. That's pretty utopian. The EU isn't a coherent entity that just joins or declines a trade war. There's dozens of countries, each with their own interests. This was shown a while ago when pretty much everyone in the EU agreed that chinese steel is a problem, so legislation was drafted to counteract this by "measures" (i assume it was tariffs, can't remember). Turns out, the government that screamed the loudest about how unfair chinese steel is recently (the UK) and iirc two other countries simply blocked it. Doesn't stop them from still blaming the EU for destroying the welsh steel industry, but alas. Point being, no. A country, yes. The EU as a whole? Especially at the pace trump is tweeting/warmongering? Completely impossible. The only option would be to either "join" or "not join" the quabble, because you can't discuss stuff reasonably at the pace trump is just vomiting his verbal diarrhoea into twitter. You're acting as if the EU doesn't want to act, when in fact, it tried multiple times and lost to the interests of singular countries. You can argue that it's stupid (i'd disagree), but that's the way it is. You can't just announce something on twitter, implement it a week later and expect one of the biggest trading blocs, created out of dozens of countries, to just jump whenever trump has another feverdream. I'd honestly rather have the EU getting together with china by itself, with their own pace. Hell, catch them off guard by offering to let the weapons embargo go (which is retarded in the first place) in exchange for an open market/IP protection. I'd say we do get things done if it isn't just us Europeans. If there's a gentle push from the US the EU tends to get in line or at least it used to be that way and I think it would be the same in this situation if you replace Trump with literally any of the other people who ran for preisdent. That's been my point. Not that there's a better way to go about this but that because Trump is who it is and how he acts in regards to other nations it's so much more impossible for him to get anything done outside of the US. Maybe I shouldn't have picked the EU as an example as I do agree the EU blocks itself way too much (looking back at the disaster that was the tradedeal talks with Canada for example) but again, my point was mostly that it's hilarious that in principal it's something people agree with (again, ignore him and how he goes about it) but because he is who he is and because he does things this way it only becomes more impossible for him to achieve anything he wants. At least outside the US. Of course the EU gets things done. And of course the EU used to work well together with the US, generally because their interests interlocked. Their interests are still interlocked. The issue is that democracy seems to be crumbling as a system in the present-day. A general voting public makes bad decision-makers. In the US, it led to Trump getting elected. In Europe, voters would apparently rather spite Trump than act in their own (and the world's) interest. [To be clear, I don't mean to absolve Trump of blame here. He's played this horribly. And I totally agree he's a terrible president and potentially exclusively responsible for the failure to obtain European support.. But it's important to separate the person and the policy. The underlying strategy here is what's needed given the circumstances.] This sorta worked okay when there were no competent authoritarians around, but it's a real problem today. China (more specifically the CCP and their mass-propagandized populace) is being massively overlooked as the largest threat to worldwide human rights since the beginning of the post-WW2 era. If you think the world's leadership has been bad under the US, you're going to have a hell of a next few decades if the current trends continue. At least half of the US populace gives a shit when they think the US government is acting immorally abroad, and politicians have to answer to them somewhat. China's rulers have no such constraints and have clearly demonstrated that their number one priority is establishing dominance under their (rapidly increasing) sphere of influence. Imagine if you took US military adventurism, removed the press's ability to report on it, the citizens' ability to vote on it, and rewarded the politicians in charge for bringing home the riches. Sound like an optimistic vision for the future? You can argue the US does this already, and I know some of you do, but even the biggest skeptic would have to acknowledge there are at least some checks in place to rein it in significantly. If CCP can conduct human rights violations on Tibetans, Uighurs, etc. in their own country without significant resistance from the populace, what do you think the response will be when those violations are occurring in some far off foreign land? Far into the future, I think the West's handling of China is going to be seen as a historic failure. I don't think the analysis that the EU wants.to spite Trump is true. It's just that tariffs are an aweful way to achieve their goals and that Trump is obsessed with the trade deficit. There were already plans to cooperate on trade against China. https://www.ft.com/content/5f0aad90-deae-11e7-a8a4-0a1e63a52f9c If Trump actually wanted some solidarity against China's trade power, I hear there was some trade partnership from some Pacific countries that wanted to do just that. I wonder what the Trump thinks of that? Countries Trump is aware of: -China -Mexico -Korea -Europe -Kenya -Canada -Puerto Rico -Russia
+ Norway. Remember he wants more immigrants from Norway, as less people from shithole countries. Of course, we don't want to go to shithole countries either.
+ Show Spoiler +(Should probably point out that this is a joke, and only true while Trump is in charge. The majority of the country is fine)
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I think he also mentioned sweden and how it imploded - and of course he knows germany (trade deficit!) and its capital paris.
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On April 06 2018 14:55 RvB wrote:Show nested quote +On April 06 2018 10:52 mozoku wrote:On April 06 2018 10:01 m4ini wrote:On April 06 2018 09:54 Toadesstern wrote:On April 06 2018 09:42 m4ini wrote:On April 06 2018 09:17 Toadesstern wrote:
I would say the underlying issue is real to some degree (edit: that is, China not opening up their markets. Not talking about trade deficits) and it's a topic in the EU as well. I'll agree that his plan is bad and it wouldn't just be "oh you put 50billion tariffs on China? Awesome we'll do the same!" but maybe something else along the lines "yo stop for a second. That's just stupid. But beyond all that bullshit there's a point to be had. What do you say we work something out together?"
But the fact that the US has lost every ounce of political softpower it still had 2 years ago makes it so much harder for him. Hell, the Iraq war wasn't only the US fighting. Maybe had this 50billion tariff thing be proposed by Obama/Bush some nations would have joined in after all. That's pretty utopian. The EU isn't a coherent entity that just joins or declines a trade war. There's dozens of countries, each with their own interests. This was shown a while ago when pretty much everyone in the EU agreed that chinese steel is a problem, so legislation was drafted to counteract this by "measures" (i assume it was tariffs, can't remember). Turns out, the government that screamed the loudest about how unfair chinese steel is recently (the UK) and iirc two other countries simply blocked it. Doesn't stop them from still blaming the EU for destroying the welsh steel industry, but alas. Point being, no. A country, yes. The EU as a whole? Especially at the pace trump is tweeting/warmongering? Completely impossible. The only option would be to either "join" or "not join" the quabble, because you can't discuss stuff reasonably at the pace trump is just vomiting his verbal diarrhoea into twitter. You're acting as if the EU doesn't want to act, when in fact, it tried multiple times and lost to the interests of singular countries. You can argue that it's stupid (i'd disagree), but that's the way it is. You can't just announce something on twitter, implement it a week later and expect one of the biggest trading blocs, created out of dozens of countries, to just jump whenever trump has another feverdream. I'd honestly rather have the EU getting together with china by itself, with their own pace. Hell, catch them off guard by offering to let the weapons embargo go (which is retarded in the first place) in exchange for an open market/IP protection. I'd say we do get things done if it isn't just us Europeans. If there's a gentle push from the US the EU tends to get in line or at least it used to be that way and I think it would be the same in this situation if you replace Trump with literally any of the other people who ran for preisdent. That's been my point. Not that there's a better way to go about this but that because Trump is who it is and how he acts in regards to other nations it's so much more impossible for him to get anything done outside of the US. Maybe I shouldn't have picked the EU as an example as I do agree the EU blocks itself way too much (looking back at the disaster that was the tradedeal talks with Canada for example) but again, my point was mostly that it's hilarious that in principal it's something people agree with (again, ignore him and how he goes about it) but because he is who he is and because he does things this way it only becomes more impossible for him to achieve anything he wants. At least outside the US. Of course the EU gets things done. And of course the EU used to work well together with the US, generally because their interests interlocked. Their interests are still interlocked. The issue is that democracy seems to be crumbling as a system in the present-day. A general voting public makes bad decision-makers. In the US, it led to Trump getting elected. In Europe, voters would apparently rather spite Trump than act in their own (and the world's) interest. [To be clear, I don't mean to absolve Trump of blame here. He's played this horribly. And I totally agree he's a terrible president and potentially exclusively responsible for the failure to obtain European support.. But it's important to separate the person and the policy. The underlying strategy here is what's needed given the circumstances.] This sorta worked okay when there were no competent authoritarians around, but it's a real problem today. China (more specifically the CCP and their mass-propagandized populace) is being massively overlooked as the largest threat to worldwide human rights since the beginning of the post-WW2 era. If you think the world's leadership has been bad under the US, you're going to have a hell of a next few decades if the current trends continue. At least half of the US populace gives a shit when they think the US government is acting immorally abroad, and politicians have to answer to them somewhat. China's rulers have no such constraints and have clearly demonstrated that their number one priority is establishing dominance under their (rapidly increasing) sphere of influence. Imagine if you took US military adventurism, removed the press's ability to report on it, the citizens' ability to vote on it, and rewarded the politicians in charge for bringing home the riches. Sound like an optimistic vision for the future? You can argue the US does this already, and I know some of you do, but even the biggest skeptic would have to acknowledge there are at least some checks in place to rein it in significantly. If CCP can conduct human rights violations on Tibetans, Uighurs, etc. in their own country without significant resistance from the populace, what do you think the response will be when those violations are occurring in some far off foreign land? Far into the future, I think the West's handling of China is going to be seen as a historic failure. I don't think the analysis that the EU wants.to spite Trump is true. It's just that tariffs are an aweful way to achieve their goals and that Trump is obsessed with the trade deficit. There were already plans to cooperate on trade against China. https://www.ft.com/content/5f0aad90-deae-11e7-a8a4-0a1e63a52f9c
This gets mindlessly repeated a lot in here, but I've already written a long post on the flaws of other avenues in this case. What do you guys think the actual appropriate action is?
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Work with all the other countries who have the same problem with China and all come at them with the same response. The TPP, even with all of its numerous flaws, was an effort to do that and could have been used as a vector to address this problem. It is a harder and less political flashy way to deal with the problem that could lead to long standing, durable change in China’s trade practices. So of course, Trump would never go for it.
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On April 06 2018 23:44 Plansix wrote:
Work with all the other countries who have the same problem with China and all come at them with the same response. The TPP, even with all of its numerous flaws, was an effort to do that and could have been used as a vector to address this problem. It is a harder and less political flashy way to deal with the problem that could lead to long standing, durable change in China’s trade practices. So of course, Trump would never go for it.
Well of course not, it was the idea of the black man who was mean to him, so it can't be a good idea.
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Blaming Obama for everything is the golden goose for the tea party and Trump. There are some of them who still can’t adapt to no longer being the opposition party. They can’t give it up.
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This just further supports my previous post: democracy, for whatever reason, has gone into a vicious cycle where policy merits no longer matter. It's a popularity contest at this point. Trump and the policy are, from a rational perspective, to separate entities--yet the discussion always comes to Trump-bashing. It's not just the US either. Europeans are hesitant to get behind America, even when world interests align, because of the stench of the 2003 Iraq War and the election of Trump--neither of which have anything to do with China and its trade practices. General populace voters are tragically incapable of separating the policy from the person/country.
Remember when the US opened up to China in 1979, and worked to allow their entry into the WTO? The reasoning was that trade would liberalize the country and its government.
Today, they've made zero progress in that area, have massively increased censorship, are massively ramping military spending, and just appointed their ruler dictator-for-life. And now we can't even muster the will to respond to blatantly hostile predatory trade tactics because the prices of our cheap goods will rise in the short-term. Nevermind human rights in China (apparently we forgot about that when the cheap goods came), or the enormous threat to human rights that the CCP poses worldwide.
There's no way to portray this as the behavior of a rational, functioning system.
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On April 06 2018 08:28 ticklishmusic wrote:
market is gonna be ugly tomorrow.
so far... yep
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On April 07 2018 00:42 mozoku wrote:
This just further supports my previous post: democracy, for whatever reason, has gone into a vicious cycle where policy merits no longer matter. It's a popularity contest at this point. Trump and the policy are, from a rational perspective, to separate entities--yet the discussion always comes to Trump-bashing.
Remember when the US opened up to China in 1979, and worked to allow their entry into the WTO? The reasoning was that trade would liberalize the country and its government.
Today, they've made zero progress in that area, have massively increased censorship, are massively ramping military spending, and just appointed their ruler dictator-for-life. And now we can't even muster the will to respond to blatantly hostile predatory trade tactics because the prices of our cheap goods will rise in the short-term. Nevermind human rights in China (apparently we forgot about that when the cheap goods came), or the enormous threat to human rights that the CCP poses worldwide.
There's no way to portray this as the behavior of a rational, functioning system.
democracy didn't shift into being like that, it was always like that. the discussion comes to trump-bashing alot cuz he's such an easy (and deserving) target. also, the policy isn't an entirely separate entity from trump; given that it's his policy, and subject to his whims. and i'm pretty sure people hav epointed out that the policy has little/no merit already in thread.
i dunno about china makin gzero progress, do you have a cite/source for that? yes they still have many many problems, but it seems to me (vague impression only) like they've made a bit of progress.
why would you expect the system to be rational when there's been mountains of evidence for decades that it's not rational?
and feel free to propose a better system, i'd favor switching if I knew of one.
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On April 07 2018 00:42 mozoku wrote:
This just further supports my previous post: democracy, for whatever reason, has gone into a vicious cycle where policy merits no longer matter. It's a popularity contest at this point. Trump and the policy are, from a rational perspective, to separate entities--yet the discussion always comes to Trump-bashing.
Remember when the US opened up to China in 1979, and worked to allow their entry into the WTO? The reasoning was that trade would liberalize the country and its government.
Today, they've made zero progress in that area, have massively increased censorship, are massively ramping military spending, and just appointed their ruler dictator-for-life. And now we can't even muster the will to respond to blatantly hostile predatory trade tactics because the prices of our cheap goods will rise in the short-term. Nevermind human rights in China (apparently we forgot about that when the cheap goods came), or the enormous threat to human rights that the CCP poses worldwide.
There's no way to portray this as the behavior of a rational, functioning system.
Wait, are you seriously trying to say that China now is *worse* than a few years after the Cultural Revolution?!
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I have serious issues with calling this era a time of increased censorship. The government has not been this hands off with their oversight of media production since before WW2. And even then the government was pretty hands on with radio broadcasts. The only reason people see this era as increased censorship is because there are several tech companies like Youtube and facebook making bank on media protection without any real oversight of the content. And the free market cannot solve this problem because civilization loves lies and conspiracy theories.
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Well in my opinion its certainly much better (and i have been to China). In some aspects modern Chinese cities and people are very similiar to European cities: shopping, tourism, hotels, restaurants etc. Certainly a huge progress has been made here. On the other hand ordianary people have nothing to say about the workings of the country. Decisions just happans made by the party in separation from ordinary people. I am pretty sure there were also some liberalisations made in terms of political life but much less than where it comes to economy. Certainly it isnt the thing US were hoping for but still its a lot of progress compared to Mao times.
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I think he means China
Edit: @Plansix
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On April 07 2018 01:07 ChristianS wrote:
I think he means China
Edit: @Plansix
I just re-read it and noticed that. Woops. Without the dictator for life comment, it could easily be the US.
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On April 07 2018 01:07 Silvanel wrote:
On the other hand ordinary people have nothing to say about the workings of the country.
I think this is precisely why China has a great future ahead in this century. There's simply no reason for regular people to have any say in the matters of running a modern country. You can see democracy failing all over the developed world, people are simply too stupid to decide (correctly) as a collective on large-scale matters of any complexity. The next US election might be Oprah vs. Trump ... that's as about as profound a "death" of democracy as anything you can imagine.
What's next, Kanye vs. Taylor Swift?
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So are you just anti-democracy now Kickboxer?
Edit: typo
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EPT
