Trump truely is a master negotiator, who else could have come up with the genius strategy of: Make your closest allies and trading partners hate you.
Yoga
joined 4 months ago
*Yeah but something something shrimp threadmills something something dyed hair. *
TLDR news did a piece on DOGE and the emphasis on counting errors was really funny.
But if you look at the comments there are plenty of people who are more than glad to cherrypick and extrapolate and pretend like the numbers are real and actual work is being done.
TULAATF-LPKM...
Or Tula.
Ironic that we'll likely have tariffs on the US for longer than they'll have them on us.
I can't believe I've been baited into supporting tariffs but I agree with the current course of action. No flip flopping, no accepting 'pauses'.
The resentment I've built up towards America is substantial enough that tariffs or not I'll be actively avoiding and bad-mouthing American products and businesses for a long time.
I'm still buying US produce when they hit the clearance shelf but I've put back far more items than I've purchased.
They've been planning on invading Taiwan for nearly a decade.
That conflict overall is as old as the CCP. The reason it ended was the US threatening to step in: https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_memoranda/RM4900.html
China holds Trillions in foreign assets in the West, they'd be kissing that all goodbye.
I'd bet on Russia getting invaded by China far sooner than Taiwan. In fact, either than the Sino-Vietnam war, the war with the Soviets is their most recent war.
Russia simply has less allies and has more of what China needs and wants, fresh water, uncontested ports and oil among many other things. They also have a (recent) historic claim to Outer Manchuria too.
Even Russia knows this:
https://www.ft.com/content/758ff1ca-6ac1-4188-9b61-c514638447b1
As the war with Ukraine grinds soviet stockpiles down, Russia gets weaker and weaker. Taiwan on the other hand has a lot of allies and is very defensible.
Chinese philosophy and military doctrine is clear. The threats to Taiwan escalate while railways are being made towards the Russian Far East 'for trade'.
"All warfare is based on deception. Hence, when we are able to attack, we must seem unable; when using our forces, we must appear inactive; when we are near, we must make the enemy believe we are far away; when far away, we must make him believe we are near."
"Let your plans be dark and impenetrable as night, and when you move, fall like a thunderbolt."
Invading Taiwan might be the most obvious, telegraphed invasion in history.
You're thinking of WhatsApp
Telegram is more likely to be Saudi spyware than associated with American tech giants lol
Valid. I understand where you're coming from.
That said, if China can provide safe and affordable EVs that aren’t connected to the internet… basically a dumb car that runs on batteries
That would be ideal. If that was the goal, I'd support requirements for that. But that's not what we have, we have gigantic tariffs that were implemented because America did the same.
I don't see that happening outside of an outright war with China. I dont think that's very likely. If you have evidence of them doing stuff like that already I'd be open to changing my mind on the topic.
I think it's much more likely they'll just continue buying up our companies like Husky and trying to turn us into an economic puppet state. Which is still better than the stated American alternative of being the 51st state.
They lose that power and risk nationalization of their assets if they go too far. They know that.
We already have Chinese phones, applications, computers and networks.
I don't believe cars are not a meaningful attack vector relative to the economic benefit. Tiktok is a far larger threat.
The trade disputes related to Meng Wanzhou are nothing in comparison to what the US is doing right now.
"The Resistance" needs to move off of Twitter and onto Telegram or some other messenger that doesn't have a massive backdoor to the Feds.
I don't know if I buy that because it would mean he was doing something highly competently which I don't think we've seen evidence of otherwise.