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As a Republican who was broadly onboard with toppling Iran well before the most recent flare up, I would like to offer an alternate narrative to the one about Trump is a Joe-Biden-esqe meat puppet being controlled by a zionist cabal, that seems to be the popular consensus here.
First off what does winning look like, in the eyes of team Trump?
Ideally, Iran makes a credible and verifiable commitment to dismantling their nuclear weapons program and stop supplying arms to HAMAS, Hezbollah, the Houthis, Russian Federation, Et Al. Less Ideally, we turn them into a failed state that wouldn't be able to muster up a nuclear weapons program even if they wanted one. If the choice is between reducing Iran to Afghanistan-esque hodge-podge of pre-industrial warring tribes and giving the IRGC access to nuclear missiles we choose to turn Iran into another Afghanistan.
Importantly we are not going to do the Clinton or Obama thing where we give them a whole bunch of cash and trade concessions in exchange for a pinky-promise not to act up again and then sit on our thumbs when they renege on those promises 6-monthes later. While I'm not privy to the specifics my guess is that the plan is to hold Kharg Island hostage to force Iranian compliance.
How is this in American interests? I think it is just as valid to ask as how is it not?
While there is something of an isolationist streak present in the online right the prevailing attitude amongst the wider GOP is that if the US is going to occupy the role of hegemon we must play the role.
First, I think it needs to be pointed out that, with the Biden-era environmental limits removed the US is once again a net petroleum exporter and the US economy is much better situated to weather possible energy-trade disruptions than say China is.
As the global hegemon, international trade flows freely (and for the most part safely) largely thanks to guarantees that are enforced by the US Navy. If the US is the world's cop, Iran is not some innocent brown kid who got shot for no reason, they're the habitual bad actor with dozens of prior complaints and arrests.
From my perspective democrats' attitude towards the Iranian regime seems to echo their attitudes towards illegal immigration, violent crime. If you ask them if they want violent schizophrenics on the train they'll answer "no", but at the same time they will vehemently oppose anyone who looks like they might try to stop violent schizophrenics from stabbing people on trains. They seem to view the occasional train stabbing or ballistic missile attack as simply the price of doing business.
I like how the view on free trade swings radically back and forth like this because Trump is a very strong protectionist but the reality is that international trade is so massively beneficial that fucking with it too much makes the admin and supporters have to defend trading with others because it truly does make things more expensive and worse when disrupted.
This Henry George quote will never go out of fashion
Ironically what Iran seeks to do here with oil and trade across the strait now is exactly what Trump wants to do with other goods, even things that we literally can't do in the US like . Block things from being transferred and cause economic pain.
You lost on trade. Trump did tariffs and nothing bad happens, the economy did as good as before, stocks boomed, and a bunch of tax revenue was created.
We can quote some old dead guy. Or we just did an experiment and have results.
Only partially, Trump pulled back a lot on the effective tariff rate from the ones at the "liberation day" announcement. Yes if you don't do the thing nearly as much as you say you will, the effects won't be as bad as predicted by economists.
Untrue, lots of companies have suffered (especially small businesses like the ones that sued Trump). For example here's a news station interviewing local small businesses in eastern North Carolina
Heck even the Trump admin themselves acknowledged that tariffs were raising prices, because they removed/reduced some of the tariffs on food products in fear higher prices were upsetting people.
So even if this was true, the best you can say is "it changed nothing" for the economy?
Wait till you see how the US stock market is growing compared to others.. In an economic boom year worldwide, we're being outpaced. The thing keeping us afloat are our tech companies (AI) and healthcare. Things like manufacturing which the tariffs are apparently supposed to help are practically in recession conditions
Yes if you tax businesses, you make tax revenue. No one debated that taxing people makes the government more money. We should start implementing even more taxes, it's free money and has no economic downsides.
IMO us stock market versus rest of the world isn’t a great counter-argument here. It’s mostly been a value stocks versus tech rotation. Low valuation stocks have done well everywhere. Foreign indexes don’t have mag 7 or IT/software which entered the period expensive. If you compare says banks or industrials (bulk of foreign stocks) their far more similar performance.
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