US President Donald Trump has said he may impose trade tariffs on countries that do not support his plans to take over Greenland.
“I may put a tariff on countries if they don’t go along with Greenland, because we need Greenland for national security,” Mr Trump said at the White House.
Fuck the US and it’s imperialist, expansionist bullshit. Tarrif whatever you want - no one wants to trade with your fascist country and countries are making other trade arrangements without the US.
So everyone then?
Go ahead, I can’t wait to laugh when they sell all the US bonds and declare US copyrights and patents as null and void.
Who does?
Unfortunately that’s probably not going to happen as doing so would destroy the global economy
(US Copyright is standardized to international copyright laws and the US Dollar is the defacto international currency with bonds being one of the way that keeps the currency strong.)
I think destroying NATO and triggering WW3 might be a bit destabilising to the global economy too
US dollar won’t be the international currency for long.
USD counts for about 58% of global currency reserves. That’s the largest by far to be sure, but far from the only relevant one, and the ratio has been steadily trending downwards (though interestingly, it hasn’t been the euro it lost ground to).
Great reason to keep funding the new Nazi regime…
Still doesn’t know how tariffs work I see.
Man is a child and when you only have a hammer every problem is a nail.
American here (not a Trump fan).
There’s three things we should be looking at IMHO.
First- Trump is a publicity man, an actor. He understands the camera.
Think of a magic show. You have the magician and the cute assistant in a swimsuit. So when they set up the trick the assistant is flourishing her hands and dancing over the stage to distract you from noticing that the magician palmed your card instead of shuffling it back into the deck.
Trump understands this. And he knows how to play both the magician and the assistant.
So if he says something wild like this, understand he WANTS attention on that statement, which probably means he DOESN’T want attention on something else. Like Epstein. If those files have any kind of actual proof he partook in Epstein’s services, there’s a good chance that an impeachment might actually succeed to conviction. Because it’s easy to ‘stand with your party leader’, it’s a lot harder to say ‘yes I stand by my vote that the guy in the picture with his dick in a 14yo girl should stay President’.
Point being- whenever Trump says something outrageous like this, your first question should be 'what DOESN’T he want me paying attention to?
Second- understand that USA literally cannot annex Greenland by force. Greenland is a territory of Denmark, and Denmark is a member of NATO. If the US invades Denmark, all other NATO companies are OBLIGATED to provide military support. So that would basically kick USA out of NATO, and you can bet your bottom dollar that not only NATO but also Russia, China, North Korea, etc would all fall over themselves to ‘help respect and defend the sovereign territory of Denmark from illegal invasion’. That very quickly becomes a ‘US vs Rest Of World’ war and even with our giant military there’s NO chance we win against the entire rest of the planet combined. Plus militarily we would be isolated, ostracized from the world economy.
Americans understand this. Our government understands this. Congress understands this. Even if Trump does not, Congress would not authorize such a war.
As for tariffs- Congress is much more hesitant to curtail Trump’s tariff powers, but their tolerance has a limit (somewhere). It’s one thing to enact tariffs ‘to protect American manufacturing’, they’ll generally tolerate a ‘good faith’ effort like that. But when the tariff becomes punitive to countries that aren’t supporting an annexation that obviously isn’t going to happen, I think Congress might step in.
Third- While this all may well be a distraction or a strategy, it is doing actual harm to our international relations. If I was a citizen of EU, AU, Asia, etc, I would be saying 'the US can no longer be trusted to lead the world economy, the rest of the world needs to find a solution where the US is ‘one among many’ not calling the shots. And a big part of that would likely be a different worldwide reserve currency. Because right now this is like being on a bus where every few minutes the driver jokes about swerving in front of an oncoming semi truck- even if he won’t do it, you still don’t want to be on that bus.
What this also means is that the next Presidential election is important not just for American internal politics but for determining what our place in the world will be going forward. While Trump is ineligible to be re-elected, I think it’s important that the US send a clear message this isn’t the sort of statesmanship that we want representing us. That DOESN’T mean blindly vote blue. It means vote in primaries, vote for candidates who act like statesmen.
So you’re saying EU needs to threaten with an Epstein Tariff Retaliation Program and keep throwing the name around until he backs off in a weaponized Streisand effect?
Couldn’t they just rename Greenland to Epstien Island? “USA need Epstien Island for our security” would be pretty hard to sell.
Yeah, no. You know what? I think we’re better off without the US at this point.
As someone in the US, I think Americans are better off without the federal government at this point.
As a Californian, I’ll happily tell the fed to fuck all the way off.
Long Live Cascadia!!!
You might be onto something.
The global community has agency, and it should really start to create plans for things like getting currencies off of the US dollar.
It is, from moving away from fossil fuels to bilateral trade being done in local currencies (back in the day America would just bomb you, but the dog has lost some fangs) and gold/silver stocking, but it’s a gradual process. The dollar just needs to be highly devalued, I’m sure it’ll continue being the global currency for many many years but not at this price point.
Agreed.
Kinda seems that the whole rest of the world should just join BRICS or something. Tariffs ain’t gone mean much if the rest of the world just shrugs and keeps progressing their global economy without you.
BRICS intends to be just as bad if not worse. China and Russia in particular. Their hostility towards the US way of doing things isn’t because they actually think what the US is doing is wrong, it’s because they want to be the ones doing all the bad things the US is currently doing, they feel like the US economic and political dominance is stopping them from being able to do many of these bad things (which is true) and they believe it is their right to do whatever bad things they want to do, which may be true (obviously the US has gotten away with it for decades), but that is still not a point I am willing to concede. Turning to BRICS means conceding that point and letting them do whatever bad things they want to globally. And they will.
The EU is far from perfect, and they have a lot of work to do, but they seem like the only reasonable economic path forward for anyone that wants to at least try to respect human rights and behave in a civilized manner at this point.
Or the EU depending on geography and preference. Either is more desirable regardless.
I would rather the countries without concentration camps just work together instead of cozying up to some flavour of fascism and authoritarianism.
The countries without concentration camps often fully support and back these concentration camps, like the West and America. Come on.
And he may put tariffs on you anyway, so that’s a wash and you may as well do what’s right. If your country doesn’t push back, he’ll come for you sooner or later. Mark Carney take note.
The strategy of appeasement didn’t work for anyone.
I’m guessing that reasoning is why he’s been trying to get our economic relationship with China back to what is was before Trump’s first term. It’s a shitty choice to have to make, but when the US is by far your biggest trading partner, you have to diversify where you can.
Is it even that shitty of a choice? I’m just an American who’s never been to China, but right now they really seem to be the better place to live…
It’s still the same party in charge that decided to use tanks to run over student protesters. China only seems more stable right now because protesters would have all been rounded up into the re-education camps a long time ago.
The dictator for life, espionage, and social credit situations are not good.
But they’re a lot more reasonable than Trump.
“Reasonable” is not the word I’d use. “Predictable” is more apt in my opinion.
He realllly doesn’t want everyone to know he’s a PDF file.
He’s basically admitting that his plans may be foiled if other countries don’t support him.
And they won’t. Tariffs are a much better alternative than risking world war 3. Also the US is already tariffing the shit out of most of the world’s goods anyway.
So if congress does not support his plans, is he imposing tariffs on the US?
Already has
Nah, he has ICE for that.
Lol just tariff us then.
We’ll slap on retaliation tariffs.
I will pay a lot to be petty and take away what he thinks is his one card.
You might even call it his trump card.
The rest of the world needs to just embargo us at this point.
He’s become like the Red Queen from Alice in Wonderland. Everything requires a singular response. “Off with their heads!” It’s like he’s not smart enough or emotionally mature enough to consider another response, let along a more subtle response. It’s like he needs to prove to everyone he is a strongman by yelling at everyone within earshot that he is strong. Methinks he doth protest too much.
He’s not smart or emotionally mature enough. He literally brags about not growing up past age six.
Every time the same threat only means you acutally have next to nothing to threaten with
