Even if these belligerent policies and rhetoric were magically reversed, and we all said "Oops, sorry about that", it will be a long time (or some serious heavy lifting) before any country takes us seriously as a reliable partner again.
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Bascially, the only thing we've got going for us is our sheer bigness and the fact that so many other countries made us the centerpiece of their economic and security outlook back when we weren't being asshats. It's hard for them to completely disentangle themselves as quickly as they might like.
But if you're a traditional US ally right now, the main question in your mind is "What do I need to do to position myself so I can realistically tell the US to go F itself?"
The Nuclear option, a co-ordinated Selling of US debt being held by several central banks. Countries demanding payments for goods in Euro,Yen or Yuan. Faith in the US and its dollar is being tested, and if this big tax cut goes thru, I don’t see how countries can have continued faith in its value.
I agree w all this completely. But hv to say, for the Trumpy branch of my fam in western PA & OH, none of this matters. Maybe it will hit them eventually. But most don’t care if the Dow slides; they don’t own stocks. Intl involvement to them means their kid had to go to Iraq. The towns where…
they live are already pretty depressed economically. Of course this doesn’t describe all Trump voters, and of course what Trump is doing is pure destructive idiocy. But these voters see prblms like the stock mrkt & intl commitments from a great remove, or negatively. Until that…
The problem with disentangling from the US isn’t nukes - it’s Microsoft and AWS and Oracle and the rest of the tech industry that the global economy runs on.
Americans under rate the wealth they derive from being the global reserve currency. It is hard to see Europe not picking up that over the next decade as the US picks up a risk profile
It is possible but unlikely for Democrats to do what is needed even if they came to power again. They would need to do something like a Truth and Reconciliation commission with imprisonment. Like putting Vance, Trump, his appointments, and some Supreme Court Republicans in jail. Maybe at the Hague.
We’d have to have serious people in charge with a lot of room to maneuver politically to achieve that heavy lifting and the earliest, best cast scenario for that to happen is more than 45 months from now.
Yeah that has to be a ridiculous position to be in for long-term planning & investment as a foreign company when every four years the US could go completely mental on a coin-flip
Doesn't even have to be a future president - if you make a deal then he thinks it proves that you are weak. So he will be tempted to come back for more in a couple of years time.
Unless allied governments are utterly deluded (ahem, UK???) then I think pretty much everything they are doing right now is the equivalent of slowly backing away from the axe wielding nutter, nodding and smiling to keep him calm, buying time to decouple their security & economies from the US.
This. Even if we get a “normal” administration back in 2028, who is to say we won’t take a ride back to crazytown again in the future. We simply cannot be trusted anymore.
Nope, three strikes already, W and Trump 1 have already used our mulligans, a foreigner should view us as an unstable partner unable to keep to long term deals and plans until the Republican party as we know it is dead, doesn't mean there won't be short term flings but longterm relations off table
On top of the bull in a china shop approach to downsizing the federal government. People likely don’t realize how many things that they rely on (i.e. Meals on Wheels for elderly neighbor, school lunches) in their community come from federal funding. Some states only meet once a year to legislate.
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https://www.theatlantic.com/economy/archive/2025/03/qanon-tariffs/682144/
Because this is a clear woodshed moment for our country. They need to rein us in or be reigned.
Why would they trust any treaty/agreement/promise?