Trump 2.0 official thread

[sndef888]

So USAID is now officially being shut down

What does this mean for all the anti-China influence ops? Will they be moved under the State Department?

 

[daifo]

So USAID is now officially being shut down

What does this mean for all the anti-China influence ops? Will they be moved under the State Department?

I think many different agencies are running anti-china ops. The one about Chinese COVID vaccines were ran by the DOD.

 

[horse]

Nothing has changed in reality. It was always about interests. But was sugar quoted all along only for appearences for lesser nations.

Right now it is like a Hungry wolf pack and doing exactly what a Hungry wolf pack does.

Although I understand the general sentiment you're conveying, I do not agree with that, as to pertaining to what is happening now.

After world war two, the United States bestowed the Marshall Plan towards its former enemies, thinking it was in their interests to do so.

Today, the United States goes out of its way to damage their closest allies most important industrial sector.

To go from the Marshall Plan to basically trying to destroy the auto industry in other countries who happened to be allies, that is a fundamental change.

 

[siegecrossbow]

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[luminary]

Ohio State, UPenn, and now University of Michigan have completed shut down their DEI and DEI-related branches without any resistance. I have to say I'm surprised at how fast they rolled over and surrendered. No defiant statements or talk back at all? Trump has put the fear of god into them and the state govs. Some of these states and colleges are supposedly radical liberal aligned.

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[FairAndUnbiased]

Ohio State, UPenn, and now University of Michigan have completed shut down their DEI and DEI-related branches without any resistance. I have to say I'm surprised at how fast they rolled over and surrendered. No defiant statements or talk back at all? Trump has put the fear of god into them and the state govs. Some of these states and colleges are supposedly radical liberal aligned.

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this proves they were never serious about DEI to begin with. They never cared, they only pretended to, as I had always expected.

 

[antwerpery]

Trump has been training China very well since 2016. China has been busy trying it's best to avoid tariffs, avoid sanctions, finding new markets, breaking western technology choke-holds, going head 2 head with american military and doing it's best to decouple from America for almost a decade now. And they have been preparing for Trump 2.0 like it's a wartime scenario since he became the republican presidential candidate and was favored to win.

Meanwhile SK, Japan, Australia, Latin America, Europe and SEA, most of America's allies, have been caught completely off guard by Trump's global trade war and breakdown in relations and are scrambling like headless chickens. Everybody will lose if global trade breaks down, but it's clear that China will lose the least. They have the least dependency on American technology, be software or hardware. They have the only navy and military in the world that can stand up to America. They can continue to expand into the global south's market and step in into voids left by America. They are the only nation that can fill in the shoes left by certain exclusive technologies that America provides.

Comrade nation builder indeed.

 

[AssassinsMace]

The anti-vaccine propaganda against China came from Mark Esper in the Department of Defense. USAID isn't the only part of the US government that engages in propaganda. I believe I remember there was criticism by the US that Chinese relief aid was marked saying it came from China spinning that it wasn't about China helping people. I remember thinking it was another hypocritical example of the US because that's what they do all the time knowing that when they do it, it's all about propaganda. They just don't want China doing it too. What they accuse of China is everything they're doing.

Remember the debate over Western aid vs. Chinese investment? The only reason why it's a debate is because the West goes through the cheap route and they know it. It's equivalent to the saying, "Give a man a fish and he can feed himself for a day. Teach a man to fish and he can feed his family for the rest of his life." Which one do you think has the bigger payoff? To the West showing themselves pouring a bowl of porridge and giving it to a starving child is a bigger payoff for their image and not people being able to take care of themselves. If people are taking care for themselves how do people know it's because of the West. And then if the people they're helping don't do what they want them to do like favoring the West, they can just stop giving them a fish. Trump cutting off USAID is because he sees no immediate reciprocation from it. And that's what Western humanitarian aid is all about and ironically it's not about helping people.

China investing in other countries is why so many countries around the world are gravitating towards China and thus the West is losing influence. That's why the West has to paint it as another country giving up their freedoms just to get money from China. They have to spin it all about selfish motivations so people turn against it. Why does the West want poor counties to embrace democracy? It's because then they can tap into the selfishness of the individual. How does building a road or a school or a power plant immediately serve an individual? There is no immediate pay off so stop the government from taking money from China to invest in the future.

 

[AssassinsMace]

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They say automakers only make a few hundred dollars off of each of their cars sold. If Trump's tariffs which will include US cars that cross the borders of Canada and Mexico are going to add thousands of dollars to the price of a car and he's demanding the auto makers eat the costs, US auto companies won't be making any money. Trump knows how voters are going to feel and that's why the rich he protected now have to make the sacrifice for him. Trump can't admit he was wrong in anything. That's why he keeps changing the plan.

 

[FriedButter]

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Trump pushes aides to go bigger on tariffs as key deadline nears​

President Donald Trump is pushing senior advisers to go bigger on tariff policy as they prepare for what the White House has called “Liberation Day,” the April 2 date he has set for a major escalation in his global trade war, four people familiar with the matter said.

Although many of his allies on Wall Street and Capitol Hill have urged the White House to take a more conciliatory approach, Trump has continued to press for aggressive measures to fundamentally transform the U.S. economy, the people said.

Trump’s advisers are in intensive deliberations about the exact scope of the import duties to be imposed, which officials have described as affecting trillions of dollars worth of trade.

The option viewed as most likely, publicly outlined by Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent this month, would set tariffs on products from the 15 percent of countries the administration deems the worst U.S. trading partners, which account for almost 90 percent of imports.

Trump has also moved forward with other tariffs that apply to imports from every country, but only on specific sectors. Trump applied 25 percent tariffs to all automobile imports on Wednesday and has suggested similar measures for the pharmaceutical and lumber industries, among others.

These proposals have led to a drop in the stock market and, economists say, raised the risks of a U.S. recession.

But Trump continues to muse to advisers that his administration should continue to escalate the trade measures and has in recent days revived the idea of a universal tariff that would apply to most imports, regardless of their country of origin, the people said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to describe private discussions.

In public and private, the president has said tariffs represent a win-win that will bring manufacturing jobs back to the United States and fill federal coffers with trillions of dollars in new revenue. He has also said he thinks he made a mistake in allowing advisers to talk him out of bigger tariffs during his first term, the people said, and that he thinks a single, simple duty on most imports could help prevent exemptions from weakening their impact. It’s unclear how seriously that proposal is being considered.

A White House spokesperson declined to comment.

The discussions reflect the central role Trump thinks tariffs play in cementing his legacy. Trump has publicly discussed the benefits of import taxes, characterizing “tariffs” as the “most beautiful” word in the dictionary and saying 19th-century tariffs led to the peak of the nation’s prosperity. Some allies have even mused about pushing to make the April 2 anniversary of the tariffs a federal holiday next year.

“Instead of Trump’s Birthday, make ‘Liberation Day’ a national holiday to honor the jobs, skills, and trade that returned to America and her workers,” Stephen K. Bannon, the president’s chief strategist during his first term, told The Washington Post.

The deliberations come as concerns deepen among congressional Republicans, foreign allies and investors about Trump’s global trade wars. All three major stock indexes fell sharply Friday, which many analysts attributed in part to tariff escalation and in part to related inflation fears.

Trump has said April 2 will bring “reciprocal” trade tariffs, which he and his advisers have largely described as having the U.S. match the tariff rates trading partners charge on U.S. exports.

“There’s still a lot of options still on the table. They are considering everything and trying very hard to make the idea of a reciprocal tariff both understandable to the American public and effective,” said Wilbur Ross, Trump’s commerce secretary during his first term. “They are quite correctly exploring every alternative in the hope they come to the best possible solution.”

The discussions reflect the inherent contradictions in some of Trump’s trade promises — and have revealed the tensions among his allies over his economic policy priorities.

Traditional conservatives who have aligned themselves with Trump have been happy to applaud the tariffs as a bargaining chip — designed to force concessions from allies or trading partners, and then removed. This is the approach many congressional Republicans, whose top priority is extending the 2017 tax cuts, want the president to take. It also reflects a pattern Trump frequently followed in his first term.

Trump, however, has repeatedly said that tariffs should be an ongoing source of federal revenue — which would require them to be permanent, not subject to broader negotiations that could wipe them away. Other Trump allies want him to use tariffs to create long-term incentives for companies to onshore domestic production, regardless of the trade deals he reaches with overseas partners. Luring companies to move supply chains and factories to the United States, which would involve significant investments and big changes to their logistics, also probably requires the tariffs to be permanent, but might lead to a major downturn on Wall Street.

During the 2024 presidential campaign, Trump spoke broadly enough about his intentions that each of these camps were able to believe he would ultimately do what they hoped. But as his ambitions begin to become reality, the differences between these visions are becoming clearer.

“At some point they’re going to have to choose a strategy, because several of these stated goals are in contradiction with each other,” said Erica York, an economist with the Tax Foundation, a center-right think tank. “You can’t have a tariff for everything and everyone — in time, they will have to reveal what the real purpose is.”

Trump, for now at least, appears to be trying to demonstrate that tariffs can accomplish several goals simultaneously. He said on Wednesday that new tariffs on automobile imports would last the duration of his term, and the White House said they would raise $100 billion. On Friday, speaking to reporters, he expressed openness to cutting deals with trading partners that fall under the tariffs. Advisers say he views either outcome — a permanent tariff, or a deal in which the U.S. extracts concessions — as a victory.

But some Republican lawmakers have grown particularly uneasy about projections that suggest growth will be lower in the second quarter of this year because of tariffs, according to three people who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private conversations with members of Congress. Others are wary that the tariffs risk complicating the GOP’s focus on quickly passing an extension of Trump’s 2017 tax cuts, most of which will expire at the end of this year if no action is taken.

“We’re trying to steer Trump away from some of these protectionist tariffs — the steel and aluminum tariffs, for example, are not very effective. If you want to save manufacturing jobs, this is not the way to do it,” said Stephen Moore, a longtime ally of Trump’s who is co-founder of the Committee to Unleash Prosperity, which supports the tax cuts. “There’s danger all the tariff stuff is drowning out the tax stuff.”

Republicans in Congress remain loyal to the president but are growing increasingly concerned about the economic fallout. Some Republican senators expressed concerns during a lunch Tuesday with U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer about the uncertainty over the tariffs, according to Sen. John Hoeven (R-North Dakota). Greer responded that he thought there would be more certainty after April 2 and that Trump’s approach was based on reciprocity and fairness, Hoeven said.

North Dakota farmers have not been hurt by the tariffs Trump has imposed to date, Hoeven said, but they are concerned about the potential effect of new ones. When Trump put tariffs on Chinese imports during his first term, his administration sent $23 billion to farmers hurt by the ensuing trade war — and Hoeven said he had already spoken with Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins about getting more aid if needed.

Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wisconsin) said he was highly concerned about next week’s tariffs. He has heard from manufacturers and other constituents worried about them and has conveyed those concerns to the White House, he said. He described the tariffs as a double-edged sword: “They have a purpose, but they can do some great harm as well.”

“There’s a level of unease, but I think generally giving this president the benefit of the doubt because he’s done some pretty good things,” Johnson added.

Republicans are more likely to view tariffs as a temporary cudgel to force other countries to change their trade policies than as a way to pay for tax cuts and other Trump priorities.

“I don’t see it as a revenue-raiser,” Sen. Mike Rounds (R-South Dakota) said. “But I do see it as a way to bring jobs back into the U.S. economy.”

Trump, however, has repeatedly said that tariffs should be an ongoing source of federal revenue — which would require them to be permanent, not subject to broader negotiations that could wipe them away

Countdown towards the global trade war, which I think is guaranteed to happen. Now that Trump sees tariff as “cementing his legacy” with some of his allies talking about making Tariff Day a Federal Holiday.

The discussions reflect the central role Trump thinks tariffs play in cementing his legacy. Trump has publicly discussed the benefits of import taxes, characterizing “tariffs” as the “most beautiful” word in the dictionary and saying 19th-century tariffs led to the peak of the nation’s prosperity. Some allies have even mused about pushing to make the April 2 anniversary of the tariffs a federal holiday next year.