like, people keep asking "what does he want." he has been very clear about what he wants. he wants the tariffs. they are not a means to an end. they are the end.
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"Donald Trump and Elon Musk intend to crash the economy so billionaires, many of whom staff Trump’s cabinet, can rake in the losses while Trump attempts to extort loyalty from foreign countries and corporations."
Assuming that Trump and his accomplices are stupid is what Democrats have been doing for the last eight years and they've lost the United States government as a result. It only hurts us to underestimate our enemy, and a lot of suspect people are encouraging us to miscalculate the danger at hand.
They are for him what killing half the population is for Thanos in the MCU. It's been part of him for too long to abandon it. He'd rather destroy everything first.
Highly paid professionals keep speculating about the motivations and likely next moves of Trump, the most predictable man who has ever lived, who was additionally the president of the United States for four years just a short time ago
And this also helps understand why he's always theoretically open to negotiations; it's just that you could never offer something he considers equivalent to the value of the tariffs.
Like I could see them convincing him to do a tiny inconsequential deal to try to convince the market rubes that more deals are coming (maybe Japan gets to have "only" 20% or something), but aside from bombing your own industrial base, I'm not sure what he'd consider sufficient to trade
Trump does have an ulterior goal: get rid of income tax. Tariffs are a means to that end, because that's how the government used to raise all their revenue before 1913.
Now let's see, how high do we have to set the tariffs to pay for a trillion dollar defense budget....
the tariffs are an excellent example of the way that ideological competition in the modern GOP occurs not through proposing policies but through proposing explanations for the policies Trump wants to do
are the tariffs about "national security"? are they about "restoring masculinity"? are they about "getting a better deal"? fuck no, they're about Trump not understanding how trade works. but there are ideological projects that want them to be about those things.
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Now let's see, how high do we have to set the tariffs to pay for a trillion dollar defense budget....