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PaperclipPerfector  9d ago (text post)   31728 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of April 7, 2025

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I've seen a few people over the last couple days claim that "Trump has good instincts". And that's true; and it's also one of the most positive things you can say about him. The goals are good, you can kinda see the vision, but the execution is so haphazard and reckless that the only conclusion you can draw is that he's operating on pure instinct, rather than anything approaching a calculated and rational plan.

All of Trump's "earth-shattering" foreign policy moves are things that, on a fundamental level, I think are good things. I think we should pull out of Ukraine and have friendlier relations with Russia. I think we should move some amount of industrial production back to America and become more self-sufficient in general. I think we particularly need to reduce our dependence on China, because we shouldn't be so dependent on our foremost geopolitical adversary; a full embargo is a reasonable goal to work towards.

Drastically reshaping existing alliances and trade relations is fine; but at the end of the day, we still do need friends and allies. We can't go full juche. Starting a trade war with every country on earth simultaneously was probably not the most advisable way of going about things. He could have worked to get more countries on board with his new world order before dropping the tariff nuke on China.

Maybe his calculus was that the only way to reshape existing trade relations was to just rip the band-aid off, because otherwise governments and businesses would have just eternally dragged their feet. Maybe he reasoned that he only has 4 years, and if he doesn't act NOW he'll miss his window of opportunity. Or maybe he just doesn't think at all and he just acts on whatever impulse he's feeling at the moment.

How is China more of an adversary than Russia?

Far bigger economy and military (aside from nuke count, which is rapidly rising) = far more credible threat to depose the US as hegemon.

That’s the weird thing to me. I get he wants to appear willing to go to the end to get what he wants. The tit for tat with China accomplishes this. Why not with the other countries that came forward asking for a deal announcing a pause while negotiating. China gave you the perfect opportunity to make your threats real whilst giving a carrot to the others who play ball.

Maybe his calculus was that the only way to reshape existing trade relations America was to just rip the band-aid off, because otherwise governments and businesses would have just eternally dragged their feet.

As a general rule I'd say his attitude is the above. If you slowroll any policy it will just give the opposition time to bog things down, or so the thinking goes.

I think it was JD Vance that said they've set themselves a target to accomplish as much as they can before the mid terms.

One of the many problems with this is that if investors think that tariffs will be reversed in two years, then you won't accomplish any reshoring. You'll just slow down the economy for two years.

What I find surprising is that he didn't attempt to destroy a specific economic area at a time. Europe is so uniquely vulnerable and without allies that it would have provided an easy target, but doing total trade war on the whole of the world is audacious.

My only explanation for this is the one you propose: that he only has a limited opportunity to do this and that locking it in is more valuable to his agenda than the fallout of a rushed policy.

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