Originally Posted by Pete F.
Trump started a trade war, without allies against China.
It's not an international trade war. It could be. But if other countries value trade with China more than with us, why would they join us. If they are being hurt by China or see it as a threat to their or the Free World's economy, why would they not come on board without even being asked. It's between the U.S. and China. We are the main target of China, and it started its economic war with us way before Trump. Our supposedly better leaders of the past didn't even seem to know that we were being attacked. If China can crush us, it thinks the rest of the world would be cake. We should have started this war years ago, or we should not have allowed ourselves to be raped by China in the first place.
He has US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer and his stated aim of turning China into a market-based economy. Donald Trump, a populist obsessed with forcing China to buy more goods — a market-distorting demand. His stated objective and his representative don't agree and he thinks he is winning. Or quite possibly, he has no clue what he is doing.
The only way to get the Chinese Communist Party to change is to fatally hurt their economy or create enough havoc and resistance within, such as the unrest in Hong Kong. As of now, the Party is willing to wait Trump out until 2020 and hurt him as much as it can in order to help defeat him, and then return to the pre-Trump business as usual which was perfectly suitable to their malevolent growth and their quest to reduce the U.S. to a second rate economic power. Our virulent anti-Trump politics and rhetoric is China's ally in waiting Trump out. If that succeeds, those who hated Trump and helped get rid of him can thank themselves for putting China back in the worlds economic driver's seat.
In the meantime, if Trump thinks he can get a "deal" with China when it thinks his own country is against him, or that Xi even wants a deal other than the old one he's been riding, then Trump is trusting a leader who can't be trusted. On the other hand, China is being praised and trusted on its Belt and Road thing. And no doubt, Xi Jinping has core values.
Trump has done nothing about infrastructure, nobody knows more about infrastructure than him and has accomplished less.
Politics gets in the way of agreeing to do much infrastructure. Probably why much hasn't been done before Trump. Trump's proposal called for far more investment by the states for it to be accepted. Not sure why it is left to the President to fix the infrastructure. The real action should be in the Congress and in the states.
Worse than nothing to healthcare.
Worse than nothing would be getting the federal government heavily involved in healthcare.
He did DeVos to education.
He eliminated anything he possibly could to do with climate, even the car companies thought that was foolish.
DeVos is OK. Some things need to be eliminated. If car companies think it was foolish, they should do what they think is good re climate without being forced to by the President.
No leaders trust Trump, he doesn't have core values other than what he can get.
Yes, Trump has core values.
Trump doesn't Trust some "leaders" and some "leaders" trust Trump. Which leaders do you Trust? The Yellow Vest don't trust Macron. Do you trust Macron? Do you trust Italy's leader. Do you trust the leaders of Hungary, Poland, Austria, the Check Republic, Romania, Bulgaria, Greece, Croatia, Montenegro, Serbia, Spain, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Russia, China, the African nations, the Middle Eastern nations, the Asian nations, the South and Middle American nations, the Pacific Rim nations? Do all those leaders have core values?
China is reaching out to the world and supporting development, in Central and South America, Australia, Africa and the Bahamas. They will gain alliances and commerce by doing so and are.
I like that innocuous, beneficial and friendly sounding phrase "reaching out to the world". Sounds really, really, good, really nice. We should join its Belt and Road Initiative. Man . . . it would help China rape us even more than it already has.
Since Progressives like the idea of dependency government, we could become dependent on China rather than having a trade war with it. We could, as you put it, "gain alliance" with China. Have even more commercial dependence with it than we have now.
Yeah China is "reaching out" all right. But is it with hands or tentacles?
National ascendancy is a very long term endeavor, that the US has been pursuing for many decades.
The US didn't gain national ascendancy because it pursued it.
It has enabled us to have the largest economy and become world leaders in many fields and to help others, while helping ourselves.
We were not enabled to have the largest economy and world leaders in many fields, etc., because we gained natonional ascendancy. We gained national ascendancy because we became the largest and most powerful economy.
Trump's America First nationalism is the start of America Alone in a destabilized world.
America First is what originally enabled us to have the largest economy, etc., and thus gain national ascendancy. "nationalism" helped us gain "national" ascendancy.
James Mattis explains the importance of NATO and the cultivation of allies quite well in various media.
Trump supports NATO.
George HW Bush and his son both used the support of allies in Iraq and Afghanistan and they came at a moment's notice.
I fear that is lost to us now. Look at the Iran arms agreement for one example.
Well, many believe that we and those allies in Iraq and Afghanistan were wrong. Many believe that the alliance which agreed to the Iran arms agreement were wrong. That it was a futile agreement which would only lead to the thing that it was supposed to prevent, just take a little bit longer.
Along with that we have reduced our ability to call one of our allies who seems to have a problem with another, and to work it out without conflict, much like a big brother.
We can still do that. The concept that it has been reduced is nebulous. And much of the conflict between allies has gotten more bitter now, not because of Trump, but because of tensions created between those countries because of economic or immigration issues, and because the alliances had become too tight, too centrally controlled by the wealthier nations, and by more accute political differences, and cultural or national sovereignty problems
More than 60% of career diplomats have left the State Department.
These are senior people who have developed relationships with their counterparts in other countries. They are the gears that make diplomacy work and that trust doesn't come easy. It will take many years to get that back, but Trumps all set he has his kids to deal with it.
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