Real America has been paying the way for every other country for fucking decades while those other countries were also putting tariffs up our asses while they charge us for being their babysitter. Fuck em.
Anonymous comment on Youtube.
The current Trump administration is a difficult entity to fathom, given its capricious chief, its edgelord showmen on social media and its chaotic fits and starts of policy.The outsiders’ instinct is to look for method and reason in the madness, underlying intent and negotiating tactics as well as long term goals of the administration. Or to simply decry it all as dangerous lunacy which we should have killed in 2016 with no regrets or second thought. I am singularly ill-equipped to pronounce judgement and I have always found US politics repugnant on all fronts and have avoided active knowledge of much of it. Yes, one inevitably gains an impression of how things are going given the sheer dominance of the US on nearly everything that affects our lives. My impression is that the second Trump admin is aiming for a total reset of policy on three fronts : geopolitical, economic and domestic. That is bloody fucking ambitious and has the real potential of being well, literally bloody and fucking the world up for the rest of us.
What the Trumpian MAGAlads do domestically – DOGE and the hollowing out of institutions and firing putative enemies under the guise of cost-cutting and waste-trimming – is something that does not necessarily affect the Rest of the World (RoW), except for maybe USAid. Draining the swamp a la DOGE and the action against illegal migrants may be framed as faithful fulfillment of electoral promises and in the end it is the US electorate that will pay the price or enjoy the benefits of these actions. People should get what they voted for.
The geopolitical reset – the intent to colonise Greenland, possibly Canada and the stated resentment towards Europe for the US bearing the brunt of the costs for its security for the last 7 decades and the obvious reorientation towards Russia- is worrying because it is self-destructive. It is antagonising long-term allies and pushing towards a multi-polar world where China and Russia benefit as America ostensibly withdraws. Some of the reasons why Trump wants America to play a greater role in Greenland make sense. The waters around Greenland are becoming more navigable and this potentially allows Russia, with its extensive ports in the Barents Sea, and China, whose shipbuilding capacity now overshadows that of the West, to encroach on North America’s security. This is recognised by Denmark and its Foreign Minister Løkke Rasmussen said “We respect that the United States needs a greater military presence in Greenland… We—Denmark and Greenland—are very much open to discussing this with you.” So what stops Trump from a diplomatic solution with Denmark? A cheap mineral grab. The same solution the US offers Ukraine. In many ways it reflects the somewhat rapacious Chinese presence in Africa. The pettiness of renaming the Gulf of Mexico – which I initially took to be a joke- is an indication of the small-mindedness of the MAGA geopolitical project. If there is no material difference between the commies’ and the Magalads’ geopolitical project, then the rest of the world may well choose China as the less capricious and more stable global hegemon.
April 9 2025. Trump’s tariffs against the Rest of the World come into effect today. The financial world has been in a meltdown as a global tradewar looms. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent says that the tariffs are meant to ‘reorient’ global economic relations. I will be the first to tell you I don’t understand tariffs or even economics. But even I wonder at how the tariffs were devised, why they are so high, why they are aimed at even the world’s poorest nations when the ostensible target is China, and what the perceived gains may be for the MAGA voter. How many industries will return to the US? How do fully automated auto factories help employment numbers? If they are less sophisticated industries- say mass clothing, which American is going to work at the rate of a Vietnamese worker or for Bangladeshi level wages? If the tariff chaos is the start of a much bigger game plan to reset the global economic system to re-centre the US, after a period of medicinal pain as already acknowledged by Trump, what might that look like? If they succeed, would it grant substantial strategic leverage for the US and severely undercut China’s influence? Trump is an outsized character and we put a lot down to his idiosyncrasies and of course he is a willing actor chasing a sense of accomplishment and his legacy but how in control is he? Who are the men around him chasing the Great Reset? Who is disposable? Musk’s Tesla is already under fire by Peter Navarro. Bill Ackman is backing off.
PETER NAVARRO ON ELON MUSK:
“We all understand in the White House (and the American people understand) that Elon's a car manufacturer. But he's not a car manufacturer — He's a car assembler.
In many cases, if you go to his Texas plant, a good part of the engines that he gets… pic.twitter.com/mkp1wRGcvX
— Ron Pragides (@mrp) April 8, 2025
I wonder that America wants to destroy global economic and security systems that America itself built post the second world war and which already benefit America. My sympathies are with the poor in Cambodia or Indonesia who slog back breaking hours to feed, clothe and educate their children. Singapore and the UK as US vassals have gotten off the most lightly with the lowest tariffs and the aftereffect will not create the the kind of suffering that affects the poor elsewhere. Vietnam or Thailand did not steal American jobs. American corporations outsourced them chasing maximum profit for their shareholders. The cost in environmental degradation was paid in Asia, not America.
Here is a video that I found useful in trying to understand the ‘big’ picture.
