Comment by philwelch
1 day ago
What are you talking about? The current president was elected on the platform that offshoring was a bad idea that has created a threat to American hegemony. Free trade is politically dead now.
1 day ago
What are you talking about? The current president was elected on the platform that offshoring was a bad idea that has created a threat to American hegemony. Free trade is politically dead now.
Current president will onshore by making poor poorer and rich richer while weakening international position.
The current president has payed lip service to reshoring and revitalizing domestic industry but what have the results been?
There's been no significant antitrust actions or a focus on white-collar crimes. These are critical in stopping bad actors in American society from accruing more resources and power.
There's been no real investment in education or industrial capacity that would enable the US begin to compete with China in green technology and manufacturing automation.
There's no cohesive and consistent plan to encourage domestic manufacturing, it's just these nonsensical on again, off again tariff announcements that absolutely destroy the ability for anyone in industry to make long-term plans.
Talk is cheap. What's needed is a systemic, sustained effort and we’re not seeing it in America.
I mean, i wouldn't call 300% increase in collected tariffs and a tax break for onshore capital investment lip service...
I'd call the first part utterly counter-productive and stupid.
The fact that he just signed a bill utterly decimating the last important work done in this country also runs counter to the idea that he's doing fuck all about it.
And, the example completely ignores the conversation part of the OOP. The last 40-50 years of neoliberal drunken greed by the people at the top isn't going to be suddenly reversed for the next fifty years. There are few ways of reversing that. All, uncomfortable.
2 replies →
I’m not pleased with Trump’s trade policies either but your central claim was that nobody is willing to address the issue at all, and that’s simply not true. You, me, and Trump all probably mutually disagree with each other’s preferred solutions, but we aren’t in denial about the problem itself. It is one of the most widely discussed economic and national security issues we have if not the most.
It was not my intent to have a conversation about whether or not someone can believe Donald Trump and whether or not his rhetoric matches his intentions. That conversation is played out and not productive. You simply can't and it simply doesn't.
I am not optimistic that the systemic solutions to the problems that I'm talking about are going to come from anyone in American politics and it is obvious to me that American hegemony is waning with little hope of it returning.
I worry about what this means for the future of democracy if a country run by an autocrat becomes the dominant power.
Meanwhile he's enacting policies to further entrench the issue.