US exports have taken a $1.2 billion dollar dive since June. Countries are turning on US products. The Canadian boycott on US goods is a national cause.
Markets took
another dive after DL placed his most ridiculous tariffs yet on Switzerland, India and Brazil. This is becoming a familiar pattern, and the figures are all down, never up.
The current economic decline is caused by one man only. This is why the founding fathers designed a government with checks and balances. Authoritarianism is not only nasty, it's bad for
business.This effectively puts the tech bros' argument to bed. A benign technocratic dictator will not save the world, and certainly not the planet. Just as the Bush Jnr tax cuts proved trickle-down economics to be a con, the Trump administration is showing that ruling through executive power alone creates economic devastation.
We're seeing this in most industries now, for varying reasons. For tourism, people are scared of being detained at US airports. Who wants that?
Jack Daniel's whiskey in Canada - who wants that? Canada is currently trying to work out how to decouple from a country it's in a free trade agreement and shares a border with.
In China, it's a little easier. The CCP can just ban US imports. India can impose similar measures. Loss of exports to these two countries alone could pose a serious threat to US agriculture. During his first term, Trump turned all the revenue from tariffs over to the big ag corporations in compensation.
Biden had a totally different approach. His microchip tariffs worked because he sourced funds to
invest in microprocessor manufacturers, the Chips Act. He connected this to broadband rollout, the Jobs and Infrastructure Acts. He plugged this into a Silicon Valley boom in AI and a vision for America's future. With additional funding for renewable energy startups, he facilitated a transition to a cleaner, smarter economy.
Pity Biden wasn't able to get the message out. Karmala was right to want to govern no differently to Biden. Biden inherited an economy in recession. By the end of Biden's term, the US was back in 1.8% GDP growth with inflation down to 3.4%. Microchip plants were being built in red states like Texas and South Carolina, a condition of government grants.
Problem is, Karmala couldn't sell this either. As a result, Trump's in power, choking the US economy back into recession. He's firing statisticians for releasing job numbers and sueing news outlets for reporting on them. Without a doubt, these are dark days for America, and they're about to get far worse.
If the US goes into recession, it loses its AAA credit rating. Interest rates go up, foreclosures and bankruptcies follow, leading to a downward economic cycle that's difficult to get out of. The only people stopping this from happening right now are the board of the Reserve Banks.
Their Chair, Jerome Powell, appointed by Trump in a more sober moment, is currently keeping things afloat. If another Trump sycophant gets put in this role, America's decline is inevitable.
Not only is authoritarianism bad for business, it's bad for global security. The last 80 years have been the most peaceful and prosperous in human history. The US actively cooperated to create and maintain a global rules-based order. It did so precisely because this was in the US' financial and geopolitical interests, but also because Americans believed in something bigger and better than themselves.
For the first time in history, foreign empires didn't get to decide who a country, province or city belonged to. With the exception of the neighbours of Israel and Russia, both rogue states, we haven't had to fear being raided, pillaged, killed and taken into slavery, or in Ukraine's case, having their children taken and ethnically cleansed.
Tariffs were down to their lowest levels ever. Foreign free trade was a reality for most countries, certainly those in the WTO. The only real "cheating" going on was the ag subsidies in the the US and Europe. These two things - national sovereignty and free trade - were interdependent.
Not anymore. Trump and Putin will meet this weekend to discuss the carve-up of Ukraine. The US still imports $2.5 billion worth of goods from Russia, largely fertilizers and rare earth materials. The Trump tariff on Russia is 10%, the lowest rate possible under his scheme.
Canada, by comparison, is tariffed 35% - over a third of the price of the goods. Canada is the US' biggest trading partner. The reason Canada are given for their tariff rate is illegal fentanyl entering the US from Canada. Fentanyl busts coming from Canada total 0.01% of all US seizures. The cross border drug trade goes the other way, with the overwhelming number of drug seizures entering Canada from the US.
With an approach like this to international relations, how can the US not fall flat on its face? We're about to see what happens when the Trump administration realizes its approach is failing. Traditionally, the way out of this kind of economic decline, particularly for a large military power, is war. Once the headlines get really bad, the invasion of Greenland, Panama or even Canada is assured. The worse things get for Trump, the more he'll try to bully someone else. I'll put money down that the US will be at war by 2026.
Anybody up for a friendly wager?
Forum
Pages: 1 
