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Originally Posted by JimmyCarter
Quote:
Originally Posted by Jono
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Originally Posted by ConoEste
It's easy to argue with Oren and it's not 4D chess either because he's peddling dime-store Leninism. The underlying message is you don't need material wealth. Trump’s apparatchiks are selling this incoherent act of self-destruction under the guise of becoming self-sufficient. It's isolation as freedom, like North Korea.
They managed to convince enough voters, both on the right and on the left, that the American economy doesn't work for ordinary Americans — at all. They plagiarized the left's crusade against "neoliberalism" and made it even worse. The left played a part in building the protectionist movement by yelling that free trade is bad. The "anti-globalist" Bannonites made it dumber and more sinister. It's insane.
The American economy was the best performing economy in human history. While there are problems, it's not perfect, they are massively propagandizing the problems for political gain. You can see how this sort of ideological messaging plays with both The Daily Show audience and MAGA.
These are not smart people with a coherent plan. They've taken the strongest economy in the world with record low unemployment, record high stock market, unprecedented per capita GDP and begun to wreck it in the name of reindustrialization. The Soviet Union tried to produce everything by itself too. The rhetoric is similar.
It's difficult to fathom how dumb this is. MAGA is deindustrializing America in the name of reindustrialization out of blind loyalty to Trump above all else. We already know how well that works out: the least hysterical take is “meltdown”.
Contrary to what Oren is promoting, they've opened the door to China by giving the country a golden opportunity to beat America at its own game. The Trump admin should change course by focusing on competing with China. Japan and much of Asia along with Europe can't thrive without the dollar lubricating trade. Europe will try to push the Euro but without a powerful military they can't get other countries to use it as a reserve currency. Smaller countries will have to choose between America or pivoting towards China.
Global fragmentation is on the cards. Maybe other countries will blink first. Maybe Trump can inflict more pain on Europe and Asia than he does on American. That's the best case scenario, a 2-percent drop in global GDP. Maybe America won't lose its role in commodity pricing, global trade, settlements, and debt. If America does lose, though, worst case scenario, our economic model breaks; the system breaks.
The best case scenario requires reciprocal tariffs with our allies becoming zero tariffs with our allies. We slap tariffs on Canada, Canada slaps tariffs on America. We say we'll lower our tariffs on you if you lower your tariffs on us, and so on until tariffs with allies reach zero. Let's see if the Trump admin is lucky enough to pull it off without murder-suiciding the global economy
