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PaperclipPerfector  6d ago (text post)   24378 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 12, 2026

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Trump announces plan to hit UK, Denmark and other European countries with extra tariffs over Greenland

Several EU countries sent tripwire forces into Greenland a few days ago. Now Trump has announced 10% tariffs on imported goods from Denmark, Norway, Sweden, France, Germany, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, and Finland. As a sidenote, despite predictions of economic catastrophe, Trump's tariffs have been smaller and done less economic damage than estimated.

For starters, inflation is running below projections. In December, the just-announced inflation rate was 2.7 percent. The Fed’s favorite indicator was unchanged from November when the core inflation rate, at 2.6 percent, was the lowest since 2021.

Tariffs have had surprisingly little impact on higher consumer prices. “Tariff pass‑through to consumers has been much milder than anticipated,” Olu Sonola, head of U.S. economic research at Fitch Ratings, wrote in a recent research note. Yet revenue from tariffs brought in close to $300 billion in 2025, up from about $80 billion in 2024, and is currently on track to produce over $350 billion this year.

The evidence suggests that most costs are being absorbed by foreign exporters or by domestic sellers accepting lower profit margins. And since the actual tariffs on different countries are a crazy quilt of different rates, producers have also become expert at shifting their supply chains to countries with relatively lower tariffs. In addition, it’s easy to overstate the impact of tariffs on household costs, since imports are only about 14 percent of GDP. In other words, there are no tariffs on 86 percent of GDP.

The high tariff rate on China skews the averages. Excluding China, the effective tariff rate on the rest of the world, adjusting for trade share and exempt categories, is not the average 17 percent. It’s well below 10 percent. Thanks in part to the tariffs, the chronic U.S. global trade deficit has been shrinking. The October deficit was $29.4 billion, down nearly 40 percent from September. The decline continued in November, the last month for which statistics are available.

Still, no one knows what's the next step of Trump's master plan. Will it fizzle like the whole "Canada 51st state" thing? Polymarket estimates 27% chance that Trump will take "part of Greenland" in 2026.

It's still not clear to me what exactly the US wants to do with Greenland that they cannot already do. They already have a military base in Greenland and I can't imagine that (before this whole kerfuffle) Denmark would have made a big deal about a larger military presence of the USA in Greenland. Why bully and alienate countries in your sphere of influence to get something you already have?

Look at a globe and put the north pole at the center of your vision. You have Russia on one side, and America on the other. The arctic is already becoming a sea route, and greenland is positioned to be a major part of that. Canada controls a lot of the territory there, and doesn't have the economy or the will to be a powerful western force.

It's about countering Russia and China. They both want increased presence in our sphere, and Greenland is a good place to assert our control. The Europeans are also incapable of managing this.

It's about countering Russia and China. They both want increased presence in our sphere

This is a paper-thin pretext and you should be embarrassed to even give it the time of day, nevermind parrot it. First of all, Russia has ample opportunity to attack the US from thousands of miles of its arctic shoreline with the shortest path not passing over Greenland. The melting of ice will only magnify this as our submarines will be get far more space for maneuver. Second, normal NATO mechanisms allow the US to weaponize Greenland however, and the US is not even demanding more or better terms of military presence. Russia and China in general would have a very hard time securing Greenland, Russian expeditionary capacity is laughable and China would take decades to build theirs.

The simplest explanation is that Trump just wants Greenland, probably to strip mine it. Whether that makes economic sense, I am not sure.

The simplest explanation is that Trump just wants Greenland, probably to strip mine it. Whether that makes economic sense, I am not sure.

The simplest explanation is that Trump just wants it, because it looks big on the map. 666D chess theory disproven again, Great Man theory proven again.

our submarines

So, after everything that happened, you still see Russian war machine as "yours". Well, you can take man out of great power, but you cannot take great power out of man.

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