Trump's 'Liberation Day': US govt imposes tariffs to 'reset' global trade, 'MAGA', 'defeat' China - Will it work?

I think that whether Trump I am the chosen one is personally onboard on the technocratic agenda or being misled about it is immaterial. What counts is the policies the empire is pursuing and their consequences. The tasting is in the pudding. So far, the US regime is pursuing genocidal agendas, whether by arming and financing Israel, ISIS, and Ukro-nazis (tell me who your friends are...) or by sabotage (nordstream and the rest of the last decades). It is also pursuing genocidal agendas through tariffs, economic sanctions and blockades. I've always wondered why it is considered "normal" to starve entire populations for the sake of corporations. Maybe it's an unspoken taboo we're not supposed to think about, who knows. The oldest trick in the book is to design an external enemy for your population to distract it from being fleeced and sacrificed by its elites. For stupid Europeans it's Russia, for stupid Americans it's China (or the rest of the world since they're that good in geography). It's the same circus as Covid[TM], the war on terror[TM], democracy[TM], etc.
 
The C’s said quite some time ago that Iran already has nukes. Do you think the deep state and Israel doesn’t know that? And if they do, what is the point of this posturing going on? What would it accomplish to slam a bunch of scuds into a random mountainside in Iran and proclaim that their nuke program is now dead, when it isn’t and the big players behind the scenes all know it?
 
Another good video by The Duran. They make the point that the tariffs have now effectively turned into sanctions against China, trying to turn the whole world against that country, in the same misguided way that it was done against Russia. It's no longer protectionism but seeking an enemy outside to blame for one's problems. And just as there was a proxy war (or not 'proxy', since the US has been so much directly involved) against Russia via Ukraine, it is easy to understand how down the road there might be a real war with China, as Alexander Mercouris thinks. In this sense, Trump is doing exactly the same as his predecessors did, even if he thinks he's not. And one problem with these policies that escalate conflict is that the people behind them (neocons, deep-staters) don't have a reverse gear.


Spot on, in my opinion. The sad thing is that I do think Trump wants to do good for his country and generally be at peace with the world, but he is being led quite in the opposite direction, and he is either not smart enough or not strong enough to see it and avoid it.

I suppose in his mind, being a person who likes fast and decisive solutions, it is easier to blame China and aim at it than get down with the long term and complicated work of crunching numbers and fixing the economy in smart and effective ways. (Just as it is easier to look at Palestine and to say "let's build a resort!", instead of understanding the historical, political and social context and doing as best as he can with that.)
 
mkrnhr said:
I think that whether Trump I am the chosen one is personally onboard on the technocratic agenda or being misled about it is immaterial. What counts is the policies the empire is pursuing and their consequences.
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So far it seems to be indeed largely immaterial whether Trump is on board the technocratic plans or being misled. What counts are his actions.

However, if he is being misled then there is a chance that he will stop doing what the technocrats want. That is also what the C's have hinted at.

If the real goals of the technocrats become too obvious, or if people Trump trusts inform him, or if the technocrats overplay their hand, this can result in a complete 180 by Trump. How likely that is to happen is anyone's guess.

mkrnhr said:
So far, the US regime is pursuing genocidal agendas, whether by arming and financing Israel, ISIS, and Ukro-nazis (tell me who your friends are...) or by sabotage (nordstream and the rest of the last decades).
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Most of that has been done by the globalist faction which has been in control of most of the West for decades now.

The nationalist faction (Trump, Le Pen, Orban, AfD, Fico, etc.) seem to be in a real conflict against the globalists, which is also why the latter tried to assassinate Trump and Fico in Slovakia and now prevent nationalists from taking over in France and Romania through lawfare.

The question is of course whether the nationalists are that much different from the globalists. In some ways they certainly are, in other ways maybe not so much.

mkrnhr said:
It is also pursuing genocidal agendas through tariffs, economic sanctions and blockades. I've always wondered why it is considered "normal" to starve entire populations for the sake of corporations. Maybe it's an unspoken taboo we're not supposed to think about, who knows.
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I think you may be overstating the effect of Trump's tariffs, though it is also too early to tell. A lot will depend on what agreements can be reached during the tariff pause.
 
Windmill knight said:
Spot on, in my opinion. The sad thing is that I do think Trump wants to do good for his country and generally be at peace with the world, but he is being led quite in the opposite direction, and he is either not smart enough or not strong enough to see it and avoid it.
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The road to hell is paved by good intentions, or so the saying goes.

Don't try and soften the blow with such internal narratives about good intentions and the like. Trump is the president and therefore all responsibility for this debacle is on him. He is as responsible for this as those advising him.
 
SOTTREADER said:
Don't try and soften the blow with such internal narratives about good intentions and the like. Trump is the president and therefore all responsibility for this debacle is on him. He is as responsible for this as those advising him.
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I'm not trying to soften the blow. If Trump needs to be held responsible, so be it, and at least in a sense I thought that was what I was doing. However, I do try to expand my understanding of the situation. For me, that means not only looking at strategies, actions and results, but also the psychology of the actors involved. I realize we can never be sure what's inside a person's mind, but given the data we can make informed guesses. It's easy to say of those in power 'they are all the same psychos!', but I think we can graduate from that perspective and try to look a little deeper into the details of each personality and situation - even if the end result is indeed the same on many occasions.

So for the case of Trump, my reading is that he is not a psycho, but he does have narcissistic traits, he is easily manipulable, he is in love with his own often simplistic opinions and he is not as smart as he thinks. If in the future data shows he is worse (or better) than that, I'll adjust my assessment.
 
The Chinese people have a better grasp of what is going on in America than most Americans:

“They rob you blind and you thank them for it…Americans, you don’t need a tariff. You need a revolution.”
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BHelmet said:
What would it accomplish to slam a bunch of scuds into a random mountainside in Iran and proclaim that their nuke program is now dead, when it isn’t and the big players behind the scenes all know it?
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I think it's possible that, at least for Trump, Iran's oil infrastructure is the main target. The "Iran's nukes" stuff is just a ruse, always has been.
 
An economist I've enjoyed listening to for 'interpretations' of Trump's trade tariffs is Yanis Varoufakis.



Now that Trump has - more or less - revealed that the primary target behind his 'global' tariffs is China, we ought to consider, as Varoufakis has done, what China is doing - or might, in future, do - that so threatens the USA.

In short, it's what Trump himself has been saying/tweeting here and there, thus revealing his 'sum of all fears': the establishment of an alternative to the US dollar as 'global reserve currency', most likely the Chinese Yuan:


Now, neither China nor any other BRICS country has so much as hinted that this is their goal, but whether the US is privy to info gleaned from spycraft, or whether Trump's just 'predicting the future on instinct', and is acting now to preempt and disrupt such an outcome, this does seem to lie at the core of his 'Liberation Day' move.
 
Niall said:
In short, it's what Trump himself has been saying/tweeting here and there, thus revealing his 'sum of all fears': the establishment of an alternative to the US dollar as 'global reserve currency', most likely the Chinese Yuan:
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Lavrov said a few months ago that there are currently "no plans" for a BRICS currency - and it does indeed seem that most of the BRICS are not interested in this kind of frontal assault on the US dollar yet.

India has been courted a lot by the US lately, Russia is preoccupied with finishing the Ukraine war, Brazil (geographically closest to the US) probably does not want a big confrontation with the US, unless everyone else is on board.

Would China really want the major downsides of its yuan being the world reserve currency? The upsides probably do outweigh the negative aspects, since the US does not want to give up the dollar world reserve currency status either - despite all the problems it created and that Trump is trying to fix now.
 
Niall said:
An economist I've enjoyed listening to for 'interpretations' of Trump's trade tariffs is Yanis Varoufakis.

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China's cloud finance system sounds a lot like what Ripple (US company) can do via digital token XRP (US digital currency).
During Biden's administration in December 2020, SEC started a lawsuit against Ripple, which Ripple recently won, and the official closing of the case is projected for this May (which would open path for regulatory green light for the financial institutions).
And in contrast to previous administration, the current one is pro digital currencies and especially pro US based digital currencies, and I don't think it's by accident.

(XRP chart is pointing to a possibility of a big rise in May/June. If anyone is interested I can post my idea here or somewhere)
 
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China could probably tank US dollar supremacy, but that would also tank the US economy which would translate into a huge drop in Chinese exports to the US and a whole host of global economic repercussions that would impoverish the entire world. Even though China is working on shoring up trade with countries of the Global South, that's nowhere near enough yet to replace the income they get from the US.

I think the US has a very strong hand in this game and Trump is playing it to the max. We'll have to see how it shakes out, but my bet is on the next 5 years being the highest growth period on record, at least on paper.
 
Just listened to this interview with Ben Norton, and I'll give a quick synopsis of what his thoughts are on Trump's tariff war and why it's going to backfire. Like has been stated already, China is the main recipient of these tariffs and if this was done during Trump's first term, may have worked as China relied heavily on trading with Europe and North America. However, in the past decade or so have diversified trading partners to include the Global South, the rest of Asia, Africa, etc. which means that the US and Trump hold far less cards than they imagine. China can afford to lose the US as a trading partner, but the US can't afford to lose China.

That the real reason that the US lost its manufacturing industry was due to American investors' trend of not wanting to invest in developing the manufacturing industry in the US due to high costs of building factories, equipment, training, etc. with a risk of not seeing a high yield of return on their investments, so it was much easier to invest in stocks and ship manufacturing over to China, who are willing to invest in building that infrastructure. If that trend doesn't change, nothing will.

And because of the uncertainties involving the tariffs, investors are now starting to see the US as too high of a risk and so it's actually having the opposite effect of what Trump wants and is pushing countries to further build up their manufacturing base and develop relations with other countries and further demoralizing the US.

That Trump - who has surrounded himself with Oligarchs - still thinks this is the 90's and not seeing the situation for what it is. That the world has changed and threatening countries to choose the US over China through tariffs isn't going to work since most goods needed are produced and exported from the latter. All in all, a very interesting interview, and at least according to Ben Norton, indicates that Trump's tactics are speeding up the process towards a multipolar world.

 
President Trump published a “non-tariff cheating” list:
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Once he published the list, which are non-tariff barriers (NTBs) , futures markets began to fall.

Point number 5 is striking because Trump (at the request of Bill Gates? ) wants to dictate the food standard of other countries. It is known that the EU for example, has non-tariff barriers against GMO. So basically Trump is telling the world "if you want to export to the US you must drop non-tariff barriers on GMO food".

Agricultural standards, such as sanitary or phytosanitary measures, can restrict imports if they don’t meet specific criteria. The EU’s restrictions on GMO crops or hormone-treated beef are often cited by the U.S. as trade barriers but the U.S. also uses stringent standards, like FDA hygiene requirements for foreign manufacturing plants, which can block imports.

The U.S. is a prolific user of NTBs, contradicting Trump’s narrative of American innocence. The The Tholos Foundation’s International Trade Barrier Index ranks the US as more protectionist than most major economies in NTBs.


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