They need the talking heads on Fox News to tell them how to answer that question first.

I was just watching a panel discussion about Trump and the tariffs and had a thought. He’s started adding exemptions. He just added one for the automotive industry following discussions with the big three auto makers. What if the tariffs were a grift all along? What if he put the tariffs on to generate tax dollars that he can use to give billions of dollars to the wealthy but what if he’s double dipping and selling exemptions? Like, what if when he talked to the big three auto makers he said, “I’ll make an exemption to the tariffs for the auto industry if you give me $100 million”?

The answer is disappointingly simple: emotional satisfaction.

For decades, these people have been told that they are incredibly generous towards their allies, and that they get nothing in return. That their allies are abusing their relationships. Of course this is false, but they’ve been told so every day.

Now they get to abuse their “abusers” right back.

Stock market manipulation. Look at who moved in to make big trades after the market plunged. Follow the money.

Simple bully logic. If you are bigger than someone else, simply hit and threaten them to get whatever you want. Works really well until all the victims gang up and fight back together.

I agree completely with the cash out scenarios listed. In the end it’s all money and power, only the means and details change.

If you’re asking the lay republican, you’re going to get the propaganda. It’s going to be that we’ve given all these people free rides too long. Money, Military Support and Health support and things are too bad here, we need all that money here to help our own people stuff the billionaires pockets.

Realistically, they are trying to A: stuff their own pockets and buy up everything they can. B: force us into an unopposable dictatorship Krasnov is owned. You remember right when he got into office, we saw some russian warplanes toying with us, that was his keeper pulling his strings. We’re owned at the moment and the one that owns us is making sure the oligarchs get enough keys to satisfy A and B.

Maybe they’re trying to smash global imperialism by disassociating from some of the worst colonizers in history? \s

Make liberals tears is the only reason in their hateful and stunted minds

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because there’s a war coming soon that will destroy most global trade. trump wants the US in a better position in that near future by having more factories and such inside of the US.

in a peaceful world, you allow free trade and specialization to do its thing and everybody gets richer. you farm bananas, i farm apples, and we trade. we create value out of thin air, it’s an amazing thing.

but in a world where superpowers are at war and the world splinters into factions, half of the global economy will be cut off from the other half. therefore it’ll be a huge liability if we for example depend on Taiwan for 90% of our computer chips when China can blockade Taiwan and we cannot reliably break that blockade. that’s one industry… now imagine the thousands of other products we need for a modern economy. it would cause massive economic shockwaves.

so this tariff thing is accepting that this will happen in the near future and preparing for it, slowly weaning off the economy from that connection to the rest of the world. so when it does come, it doesn’t hurt as bad.

it doesn’t really matter if you piss off your allies. since you’re the biggest military power they are going to have to rely on you anyway. you have leverage over them. the difference is that Trump is a reality TV star and so he is loudly exploiting this leverage whereas most past leaders would be more subtle and diplomatic about it.

Canada, Mexico, Germany, Japan, etc aren’t really allies. Being someone’s ally implies there’s a sort of equal footing. When someone has no choice but to bend to your will, is that a voluntary relationship? the US essentially wrote Japan’s constitution and they told the Germans what to write down for theirs. Canada and Mexico are heavily dependent on US trade- US growth might slow a half percent or two whereas Mexico and Canada are liable to fall into a recession because of these tariffs.

it isn’t equal footing. it’s a david v goliath situation

to give a recent example, Ukraine. Ukraine in 2014 had the Euromaidan coup and the president had to flee the country. The new government that was quickly appointed without an election realized one thing very quickly- Russia was about to invade them. they had only one option in terms of getting military aid and that was the US. so immediately, the same day that the government was appointed, they started cooperating with the US. a few days after that, little green men showed up in Donbas and the Russian army waltzed into Crimea

so you can say they “allied” with the US but a more honest way to say it is that they were desperately pushed into America’s orbit. and the US ultimately doesn’t care about a country like Ukraine. people are starting to see it more clearly today because of Trump, but I honestly don’t think the situation would have been meaningfully different with Biden or Kamala. The primary difference would have been rhetoric. Instead of calling Zelensky a dictator, we would have just dragged our feet with military aid instead, like what has been happening the last year or so

tldr: the US is a imperialist superpower and this is what they do.

There’s a good discussion on The Ezra Klein Show from March 1 The Dark Heart of Trump’s Foreign Policy [Apple Podcasts link]

Is this question rhetorical? The people you’re addressing this question to aren’t on Lemmy. Try Fox News, lies social, or wherever other sewers the maggots live in.

Do you think there are many republicans on this site?

They are extremely low trust and simply can’t believe they’re not getting fucked by everyone else secretly

If they were capable of thinking critically, they wouldn’t be Republicans in the first place.