Israel leader Netanyahu has been saying Iran is weeks away from a nuke for over a decade.
Many Republicans called for the violence in LA to be crushed with military force and for Democrats to be removed from office, even though the violence and vandalism were contained and the Los Angeles Police Department had it under control.
When an immigrant kills someone, Republicans want to move and spend Heaven and Earth to limit all immigration and deport all illegals, devastating the lives of many people, but when Americans repeatedly murder, massacre, and assassinate fellow Americans with guns, they offer simple condolences.
The insanity, cuelity, and incompetence of Trump on the global stage is pushing forward a global transition that needed to happen. Europe needs to pay its fair share to defend itself and the world can’t continue to let China take advantage of the system. The U.S. led world order is undemocratic and deeply flawed, but what is the alternative?
The Biden administration went to Europe and asked if war breaks out in the Pacific, are you with us? Europe said no. Yet, they expect the U.S. to protect them from Russia.
“The EU’s executive told member countries they can repurpose hundreds of billions of euros in Covid-19 relief money to fund defense projects, reflecting a radical shift in priorities since the days of the pandemic.”
“Putin will never abandon his ambition of conquering Ukraine, and convincing him to do so shouldn’t be the aim of Ukraine’s global supporters. Instead, the goal should be to make it impossible for Putin to fulfill that ambition. In simpler terms: You can’t make Putin walk away from Ukraine; you have to put Ukraine out of his reach.
Trump and some of his top aides do not seem to understand this about Putin.”
“Burns noted it’s important to counter Beijing’s increasingly aggressive economic, diplomatic and military global footprint — but warned that Trump is going about it all wrong, particularly by using tariffs as a cudgel against longtime partners who otherwise might have allied with the U.S. against China.”
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“The fact that we’ve had trouble convincing the Chinese it’s in our interest to have our senior military leaders talking. My nightmare scenario as ambassador was not an intentional conflict, but an accident.”
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” I think the fundamental mistake that was made was that when we imposed tariffs on China, we also imposed high tariffs on South Korea, Japan, the European Union, Canada and Mexico. All those countries are on our side in the big issues that separate us from China. All of them have the same economic issues and trade problems with China. If we had highlighted China as the major disruptor of global trade, which China has been for the last couple of decades, and formed a coalition with the EU and Japan and the U.S. — that’s 60 percent of global GDP — we would have had leverage for these negotiations.”
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“The Chinese have been saying every day for the last several weeks that the United States is being unfair, that we’re a bully, that we’re disrupting global trade. In fact, they’re the biggest problem in global trade. Intellectual property theft against American and other nations’ companies; forced technology transfer; dumping of EVs, lithium batteries, solar panels on the rest of the world below the cost of production; disrupting global markets; trying to kill the manufacturing industries in places like the United States and Europe.”
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“I think what the American people need to understand — our government and both parties — is that China is a worthy competitor. Their science and technology talent is prodigious. The level of scholarship, of patents, of research in some areas exceeds us, or is equal to us. In some critical areas of technology transformation, they are putting massive amounts of state-directed money into their national champions like Huawei, with companies that they want to succeed in the world. They’re doing it on a consistent basis, and they plan over decades, so they have that advantage.
When I was leaving in January, the Chinese announced $15 billion of state money going into quantum computing alone. They want to beat us to the punch there. That’s something that’s not as well understood in American society and even in our press — people have older, conventional views of China that are outdated.”
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“The destruction of USAID was a catastrophic mistake for the United States. That was our agency that said to the rest of the world, “We’ll help you on vaccines. We’ll help you with HIV. Will help you with polio.” Elon Musk and company destroyed USAID in one week and laid off 8,500 people. That helped China.
The Chinese then went out with a massive propaganda blitz the next day all over the world saying, “The United States is not interested in you any longer.” I watched the Chinese do this in February and March. The way the cuts were done, the fact that it was done with so little thought, so little information, and so little respect for our career civil servants was disgraceful.”
“The direct cost of President Donald Trump’s trade war will be borne by American consumers and businesses—of that, there should no longer be much debate.
But trade wars also come with indirect costs and unforeseen consequences. Some of those show up on balance sheets in the form of lower profits, losses in the stock market, or stagnating wages. Some are best counted under the Christmas tree, where higher prices might mean fewer toys (as the president now admits) and other goodies that make life a little more joyful, as tariffs squeeze wallets and reduce discretionary income.
Others are trickier to sum up, but that doesn’t mean they don’t exist.
“The administration’s trade policy sends a message to the world: America is an unreliable ally that sees you only as a source of wealth; and if you don’t have wealth, you’ll pay for it,””
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“”The United States’ role as a linchpin of this system has enhanced its position as the pre-eminent global power,” writes Murray. “Yet the new administration’s curious tariff policy threatens all of this, for no discernible benefit.””
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“American soft power rides on the back of the global trading system. American investment and purchasing power help build factories and lift people out of extreme poverty. For the countries that benefit from all that, American interests are first and foremost. Take away the benefits of trade, and the rest fades too, warns Murray.
Higher tariffs and reduced global trade “kills US soft power with these nations and leaves a geopolitical vacuum into which US rivals like China will expand,” he writes. “High tariff rates on south east Asian countries, for example, will exacerbate the drift of those countries towards the Chinese sphere of influence that has been happening in the wake of trade uncertainty since the first Trump administration.””