The American people are idiots, our leaders are idiots, we’re just a country of idiots.

And it’s because of pride. We came to believe in our supposed exceptionalism with religious fervor. We were certain that we knew better than everyone else, because we were better than everyone else. The rest of the world didn’t have anything to teach us. We already knew everything. We became incapable of learning, incapable of growing, progressing, or adapting.

If you’re going to start a war, you better know for a fact that you can win. Trump thinks he knows, but he doesn’t know shit.

The US has a terminal disease: hubris. This is what it’s like to live in an empire in decline.

The US and allies control WTO, and China was only allowed trade on WTO terms after they accepted to follow the WTO standards, basically designed by USA

That means nothing, anymore. Those standards are meaningless, China holds most of cards, now. Any attempts to reign in China have been half hearted at best, and often undermined by the US itself. As tough as people have tried to sound in their rhetoric about China, the fact is American corporations and consumers continue to do business with them because it’s just too good of a deal for them.

and American politicians have openly stated how they need to prevent China from expanding their influence.

Well, they have failed, spectacularly, and that was true LONG before even Trump’s first term, let alone these tariffs.

This is the stupidest article I’ve read about the tariffs, and that’s saying something because I’ve read some doozies.

The author makes it sound like the US and the rest of the world were building a coalition to take on Chinese control of the global economy, before Trump’s tariffs came along and ruined everything. That’s horse shit.

The article even mentions Vietnam specifically. Do they not know that Vietnam is also a Marxist-Leninist state? Vietnam has taken many cues from China. Vietnam is trying to become a manufacturing hub, similar to China, and the relationship that Vietnam has been building with the US is one of trade that is similar the relationship the US has with China: they (China/Vietnam) make the stuff, we (the US) buy the stuff.

Unfortunate that the entertainment and digital goods and services industries have not been able to create enough good union jobs to replace those lost from offshoring manufacturing, especially in the “rust belt” areas.

Here in Britain this remains a cornerstone of the junction between politics and economics. Most of the world still believes in comparative advantage. It is the intellectual core of globalisation.

Well, then most of the world is wrong. China disproved the theory of comparative advantage. Globalization did not result in each country of the world sharing in the production of the world’s goods, it resulted in China becoming the world’s producer, making them much wealthier and elevating them to the status of a super power.

The economic “might” of the US over the past half century has been based on the fact that we have the defacto world reserve currency and still have the world’s largest military. We don’t produce very much. We import a lot. If one of our companies does develop some important new technology, the products themselves are more than likely produced in China, or in some other foreign country. Advanced semiconductors are fabricated in Taiwan, using high tech lithography machines developed by a Dutch company. The only thing we specialize in is financial speculation and buying a whole lot shit, most of which is imported.

“The people that think that’s toxic don’t understand the start-up game, and they’re just wrong,” he said. “The game is intense. And by the way, if you don’t do that, eventually, you’re out of a job.

For those who disagree, working at a startup is a choice, Hoffman insisted.

But the reward on the other side is second to none; the 100 or so first employees at LinkedIn don’t need to work anymore, he added. Microsoft purchased the professional networking platform for $26.2 billion in 2016.

That’s good for the 100 or so first employees at LinkedIn, but I’m certain that the VAST majority of employees who bust their ass trying to help get a start-up off the ground don’t have anywhere near that end result. I’m sure it isn’t worth it for 99% of employees of start-ups.

But if you want to take on the challenge, hoping that maybe you’ll be one of the lucky ones, go for it, but don’t fucking drag a spouse/significant other, or children into that nightmare. If you want to commit your entire life to a start-up, then fucking commit.

I agree, rebuilding a US manufacturing base will require competent planning and management, but those are bad words here in the US, when it comes to the economy. To many Americans, competent, central economic management, direction, and planning is tyrannical rule by elites. To those Americans, Trump is the antidote. You might point out that there is significant irony in that. I agree, it is ironic, but that irony is completely lost on many millions of Americans.

the US relies heavily on imports and doesn’t have a strong manufacturing base for most products

And that’s the problem Trump is seemingly trying to fix. I agree he’s not going about the right way. His approach is a kind of clumsy shock therapy, that will cause chaos in at least the short term and may or may not produce the desired result, eventually, but reshoring production and rebuilding a strong manufacturing base for the US is a goal shared by the Democrats, as well.

I agree that Nintendo was ahead of the curve when it came to expanding portable gaming, but the only reason the switch sold so many units, and ultimately got so many games ported to it, was because of Nintendo first party titles. If you look at the best selling switch titles, the vast majority of them are Nintendo games. Without Nintendo first party titles, the switch would have been far outsold by better devices.

This is what Trump wants. He wants the market to drop and/or a recession. Why? To force the Fed to drop rates back to essentially zero. Once that happens, expect a blistering turnaround in the market. Everyone and their great aunt will be borrowing money at ultra low interest to buy stocks. The stock market will explode, maybe crypto, too. Inflation will skyrocket. It will be nuts.

It’s not convoluted at all. It’s extremely simple: if you want to (edit: legally) play first party Nintendo titles (or other exclusives), you MUST buy a switch. If you don’t care about Nintendo exclusives, there’s absolutely no reason to own a switch. That has been true of every, single Nintendo console ever released… except for the Wii. People bought a Wii so they could play a motion control game with Grandma once or twice, and then just let the console sit and collect dust.

It isn’t close to, it is the no true Scotsman fallacy.

Communism (from Latin communis, ‘common, universal’) is a sociopolitical, philosophical, and economic ideology within the socialist movement, whose goal is the creation of a communist society, a socioeconomic order centered on common ownership of the means of production, distribution, and exchange that allocates products to everyone in society based on need. A communist society would entail the absence of private property and social classes, and ultimately money and the state (or nation state).

Communists often seek a voluntary state of self-governance but disagree on the means to this end. This reflects a distinction between a libertarian socialist approach of communization, revolutionary spontaneity, and workers’ self-management, and an authoritarian socialist, vanguardist, or party-driven approach under a socialist state, which is eventually expected to wither away.

It makes sense, when you think about it. The US offshored a lot of our production to countries with lower taxes, fewer regulations, and, most importantly, cheaper labor. That put downward pressure on wages for American workers in the same fields, as they were having to compete with foreign workers who were paid less, often in much poorer nations where the cost of living was also much lower.

This offshoring did result in cheaper products for consumers, being imported from foreign countries, but it came at the cost of American manufacturing jobs. Most experts didn’t think that was a problem, as they theorized that as economies developed and became more advanced, there would naturally be fewer people working in manufacturing and more people working in service jobs. The idea, seemingly, was that poorer countries would always handle the world’s manufacturing while rich countries would mostly do desk jobs. This, however, doesn’t appear to be the case, and people are starting to realize that domestic manufacturing is always going to be necessary, even, and especially, for national security reasons. Even Biden’s national security advisor, Jake Sullivan, acknowledged this in a pivotal speech he gave to the Brookings Institute in April of 2023.

Trump’s tariffs are a clumsy, oafish attempt to get people to buy American and bring manufacturing jobs back to the US, a goal that he and Biden shared. However, Trump is, predictably, going about it the wrong way. A massive shift in economic policy like that, needs to be done carefully and tactfully, so to cause as little economic instability as possible. Trump prefers taking the more aggressive and potentially harmful (at least in the short term) route.

I understand why workers support this, though, because I get that American workers don’t necessarily want to have to wait for a lengthy transition process before they can get better paying manufacturing jobs. But, their impatience might hurt them. Consumers aren’t going to start paying higher prices for American made goods, just because of the tariffs. Consumers want good quality products at affordable prices. If American companies can’t provide that, the tariffs aren’t going to accomplish anything.

I expected better

Then you’re a fucking idiot.

I hope things improve here in the US, but at some point there’s really nothing else to do but leave. There’s a point where the US simply becomes a lost cause. I don’t know if we’re there yet, but I don’t feel like things are heading in the right direction.

I fully share your loathing of European free-loading

Europe didn’t choose to be a vassal to the US, it happened because the continent was devastated by WW2. Europe needed help from the world’s sole superpower, especially for defense against the common enemy of the Soviet Union.

But that era is over. Europe is no longer rebuilding from WW2 and the Soviet Union is gone. I think Europe is beginning to realize that being under the thumb of the US is not a place they want to be. I fully expect Europe to work to liberate itself from US dependence.

Just your typical Ammu-Nation.

Every group of people need to have autonomy and independence, and the right to self-govern. No people should have to fear violence and repression from another group.

Hey, look at me. I’m Blanche DuBois.