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Or else what, exactly?
Or else you continued to get laughed at and have power moved away from you because the rest of the (western at least) world stops accepting you as the primus inter pares and then lose the exorbitant privilege of running 6% yearly deficits because you have the world's reserve currency and can freely export away your inflation. If the UK tried the level of profligacy which has become standard in the US we'd end up under an IMF programme in 2 years.
The levels of contempt I am hearing against the US and Americans in my personal circle are basically the highest they have ever been. This isn't just a me thing, there was a recent piece in the FT how the appropriate response for the EU now given the US reducing its support for Ukraine is to hit back hard on US tech with tariffs rather than the "roll over and take it" with the 15% tariffs they accepted earlier this year. It's now becoming fairly standard that when I meet someone new from the US they'll volunteer by themselves unprompted within the first few minutes that they "are one of the good ones"...
While I am 80% with BurdensomeCount on this point, the cultural sensitivity is a furphy. The Americans don't do cultural sensitivity, they have been powerful enough not to need to since the 1920's, and the rest of the pro-American world is used to dealing with that.
The point is that the American-led system used to be (by design) win-win for the countries participating in it - very much including the US. The EU and first-world Asia don't pay directly for US military protection, but the willingness to trade goods and services for portraits of Benjamin Franklin is part of the package deal. This would all be clearer if the BEP put Nuclear Gandhi* on the forthcoming $200 bill instead of Donald Trump.
Trump doesn't like win-win arrangements (and nor do his dumber supporters in the country), and wants to replace the status quo with a setup where the US wins and the EU and first-world Asia lose. The danger is that he blows up a system which (and I am pulling numbers out of my ass here) generates 6% of GDP in net benefits in order to extract 1.5% of GDP in tribute.
There is a separate issue that including Red China in the system has turned out to probably be a mistake, because the CCP was talking about win-win outcomes while seeking win-lose ones quietly. But Trump isn't trying to kick the Chinese out - China gets a better deal than traditional US allies do.
Looking at dysfunction in domestic politics, America is less governable than any other large democracy except France - even with a trifecta, neither party can pass a deficit-reducing budget. The cost is eaten by UST holders accepting a lousy return. You could try to replace that with actual extractive imperialism, but @BurdensomeCount and I come from a culture that had some idea how to do that right (and how and why it ceased to be profitable in the first half of the twentieth century), and you don't. The skill level issues America experiences when it tries to do imperialism are well-known.
* The adoptive child of Sid Meier, born at Microprose HQ, and therefore American under the 14th amendment. Dead in later versions of Civ, and therefore eligible to be on a banknote.
I think you are modelling Trump wrong. I think he's fine with win-win between equals. To me his actions make most sense if you model him as viscerally attracted to strength and repelled by weakness.
From this perspective China is strong, it builds stuff, it's worthy of respect; maybe you've got to tariff them a bit to stop them leeching off you and to remind them that, hey, you're no slouch yourself, but generally they're cool people. Likewise, Russia is pretty impressive. Not nice, and failing to take Ukraine was a bit lame, but they stuck two fingers up at everyone and they've mostly backed it up.
Britain and the EU on the other hand are very lame. Lots of puffing themselves up, lots of trying to look down their noses at the real players like a little man wearing platform soles, but then they break and beg for help. They have some influence (EU regulation for example) but it's a pathetic, crawling, sneaking sort of power. It's not just that the NATO countries are expensive to defend, they're sad and they make America sad by association. Likewise Palestine, the Middle East, Africa.
Ukraine and Israel are in this weird halfway place where they're quite strong and defended themselves pretty impressively, but (Ukraine especially) can only do it if they're on America's apron strings. They're not bad guys but they do have to sit down and listen when Daddy talks and they don't come to the White House and posture like America's doing them a favour.
The way my model of Trump thinks about dealmaking is that if the weaker party walks away smiling, the stronger party has screwed up.
This is a phenomenological model based on looking at his behaviour across four careers - I don't have a strong theory about what psychological traits make him think this way, so I doubt we have a real difference of opinion here. I see "Trump is viscerally attracted to strength and repelled by weakness" as a (probably correct) mechanistic explanation for why he behaves in the way predicted by my phenomenological model, not a rival model.
Fred Trump's money and connections meant that Donald has always had the option of refusing to play if he isn't the biggest dick in the game. Negotiations with China are the first time he has had no choice but to enter a negotiation where pointing his finger and saying "You're Fired" isn't an option, and he got a lousy deal in his first term and appears to be surrendering like a Frenchman in his second term.
What about, say, that famous meeting with North Korea? Where Trump got a lot of flack b/c Kim Jong Un looked entirely too smiling and chummy with him. Same with Putin.
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Oh no, the United States has earned the contempt of David Aaronovitch, Anatole Kaletsky, Caitlin Moran, your friends, maybe even Zanny or Xanny or whatever her name is. The Brit chattering classes are talking tough because their pride, what's left of it, has been deeply wounded, but more in the manner of a scrawny kid who just got wedgied/swirlied/etc. by the jock twice his size. Oh he's gonna kick his ass someday, he's gonna go all out, he did karate lessons! The reality is, there is no pares going on. There's a financial sector that could always evaporate overnight, hooked up to an economy about as dynamic as East Germany, with an ever-shrinking military who, by the way, are starting to despise the London types. The French have a claim to freedom of action, Germany had one until recently, but the only way the UK can stay relevant is clinging to America. Hence the equivocation between "Brits are malding" and "the EU should do something".
If you are in the UK, and want to do something that matters to thumb your nose at the US, volunteer for Democrats Abroad or donate to some outlet like the Guardian that Democratic voters read. Seething from the cuck chair of history isn't going to get you anywhere.
You're not wrong, but neither is he
The UK does seethe in the cuck chair of history (LMAO), but a world in which the USA loses the mandate of free market heaven is a world that's much shittier for the USA.
And the way the USA loses said mandate is by doing exactly what is happening, generally being an irrational and chaotic actor who insists on shooting itself in the foot a lot, and then making fun of the people going "hey maybe stop doing that?".
Nothing crazy has happened yet, and maybe nothing will. But the tiny dominos are starting to shift, and they could get bigger. A non exhaustive list:
Some Saudi oil and natgas trades are now settled in RMB.
Some Russian bonds are now denominated in RMB.
SWIFT is absolutely garbage technologically but the USA laughs at anyone who points this out and China is grinding hard to set up an alternative.
BRICS is looking into using a basket of currencies to settle trades. You may say "hah who the fuck cares about BRICS" which is fair. But if BRICS is looking to get away from you, and then you also alienate the EU (and make no mistake, regardless of the cuck chair, the vibes are shifting) you have actually lost your dominant position over the vast majority of humanity
As someone who greatly benefits from Pax Americana, please wake the fuck up and avoid this obvious fail state
It doesn't matter which currency is used to conduct/settle trades: totally economically meaningless, because currencies are freely swappable for any of the buyers & sellers (before and after the settlement). So the only thing that slightly matters in this realm is what currency anyone chooses to save in.
So in this regard (of the US getting some free benefit from being the big dog), the 'dominos starting to fall' would look like the US trade deficit shrinking, as past savers start trying to spend down their USD reserves instead of amassing them. But we're currently in an environment where trump and some of his people are trying their damnedest to intentionally reduce the US trade deficit... So it's muddy, with various winners & losers there, and probably better to look at more solid economic indicators entirely (for any story of the world getting shittier for the US).
As for the prior comment about "the exorbitant privilege of running 6% yearly deficits", it simultaneously seems like a pretty big burden (requiring correct macroeconomic management). Because decade-after-decade, century-after-century, new people continually come along with an incorrect gut-notion understanding of money, freak out about government deficits and debt, and try to wreck the economy in their misunderstanding. So if foreign & domestic people/firms/governments stopped having such a desire to increase their USD savings, and the US government no longer needed to run as large of a deficit to supply those desired savings, quite a lot of people would be even happier & content with that state of affairs (even if it meant taxes were relatively a bit higher compared to spending).
I gesture to those as indicators of shifting sentiment and soft power. You're right, but the journey of 1,000 miles begins with a single step, and those are steps. They might stall, I hope they do, but dismissing everything outright is how you eventually get clapped.
I agree with the entirety of the middle of your comment. I was recently exposed to the idea that the CCP would start increasing the strength of the RMB to promote domestic consumption, which I thought was interesting. I think it would both lower the US trade defect and increase desire to save in RMB, especially if it was telegraphed as a long term trend. That being said, the CCP is so locked in on export dominance I'm not sure if they want to (or can). But an interesting thought.
Lol, lmao even. There is nothing people love more than gibs, and nothing they'll irrationally oppose more than taxes. There is no world in which that is politically tenable or happiness increasing.
I don't think that really fits the evidence we've seen in the world. There are tons of people who appear to get warm fuzzy feelings when the government deficit shrinks closer to balanced or even flips to surplus. Many still think fondly of the clinton/gingrich era in the late 90s, even though in reality that was the worst possible case for a government surplus: the rest of the world was still increasingly accumulating USD savings, but the US domestic private sector was dis-saving and running up big private debt unsustainably.
And the taxes going up scenario is about taxes paid, so it need not be the rates changing at all. It would be people spending down savings more and supercharging economic activity, automatically driving up the amount paid in taxes as incomes go up in aggregate. It's kind of hard for anyone to 'feel' that dynamic result as negative.
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I agree. But note that nothing you have said has anything to do with UK elites (who all hate and fear the free market except insofar as it brings foreign capital into London).
I guess my point was they're a canary in the proverbial coal mine, sure maybe they're idiots to laugh at, but eventually once you've bucketed the majority of human beings and economic activity into the "idiots to laugh at" bucket, you might actually be the idiot being laughed at
Ask the Macedonian Phalanx - or for a modern example, it's worth studying elite theory.
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Europe is the proverbial toxic parent who can not accept that their children are grown, that they've moved out, they've gotten married, and they have bills and kids of their own to deal with. They keep trying to play the "So long as you live under my roof you need to shut up and do as I say" card, but that's just the thing. We haven't lived under your roof in years.
If Europe wants to laugh at us and and hold us in contempt, I say let them. Call me when they put a man on the Moon.
If Europe wants to align itself with Asia and the Subcontinent that's fine. They're adults and it's their choice. But by the same token they won't have any grounds to complain when the kids decline to visit, or refuse to pay for their nursing home.
Take your troops home like Soviets did, close down your bases, rebuild Nordstream or pay for it, everyone is going to be happy.
It's really simple!
Trump has proposed pulling US troops out of Europe on multiple occasions (most recently in March/April of this year) and the overwhelming response from both the German and UK establishment has been opposition.
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Aw jeez, and you're saying this won't happen if we show some cultural sensitivity? Liberal Europe can be as indignant as it wants while it finishes crawling into the grave, but why should anyone really care? No soothing they find acceptable would matter to the people they're busy handing their countries off to anyway.
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