The Establishments war on Donald Trump
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Title: A trade war Canada will lose to its larger, louder counterpart [Trump]
Source:
National Post
URL Source: http://nationalpost.com/opinion/and ... -its-larger-louder-counterpart
Published: Jun 3, 2018
Author: Andrew Coyne
Post Date: 2018-06-03 20:26:39 by Tooconservative
Keywords: None
Views: 5015
Comments: 44
Presumably Donald Trump was warned of the furious response he could expect from the United States’ trading partners were he to proceed with his threatened tariffs on their exports of aluminum and steel. He went ahead and did so anyway. This is one problem with trade wars: they seek to achieve in retrospect what they failed to achieve in prospect. Were he likely to have been deterred by retaliatory tariffs, of the kind that Canada, Mexico and the European Union have just applied to a fantastic assortment of U.S. goods, he would have been already. And yet, deterrence having so conspicuously failed, they feel obliged to carry out the threat regardless. It is difficult to see how the reality of a trade war is more likely to succeed than the anticipation, especially when dealing with a man who tweets “trade wars are good and easy to win.” Perhaps its advocates are right to believe that retaliatory tariffs will so focus congressional and public anger on Trump, notably in the states most affected, that he will be forced into a humiliating retreat. Perhaps Trump is right to calculate that people do not necessarily put cause and effect together quite so logically — his people in particular. They may even be moved to rally around their besieged (as they see it) president and country. Wasn’t it precisely to “fight back” against these scheming foreigners, with their long history of preying upon American naivety, that Trump hit them with the tariffs in the first place? At any rate, while we are testing this theory, matching the U.S. tariffs we decry as madness and ruin with mad, ruinous tariffs of our own, it is our consumers and businesses who will be the victims. This is the other problem with trade wars. In a real war, the guns are pointed at the other guys. But tariffs are self-inflicted wounds. This is a hard point to get across in the heat of battle. Suggest that retaliation is unlikely to work against them and certain to hurt us, and the response is a volley of patriotic oaths: We have to do something! So you’re saying we should just sit there and take it? You have to stand up to a bully! Why don’t you just take out U.S. citizenship then? It is neither appeasement nor treason to refrain from costly, futile measures that at best are unlikely to succeed and at worst will trigger an escalating series of attacks and counter-attacks. It is simply facing facts. The U.S. economy is more than 10 times as large as ours. Its exports to Canada account for two per cent of its GDP; our exports to them are 25 per cent of ours. Even in concert with the other countries targeted, it is unlikely that we can cause Trump to alter course, for the simple reason that he is Trump. A normal president in possession of a rational mind might well be dissuaded by the united opposition of much of the democratic world. Trump is not that president. If he were he would not have slapped the tariffs on us in the first place, in open defiance not just of economic sense or international trade law, but of the very “military security” invoked as its justification. This is a point that bears repeating. The sheer enormity of Trump, the impossible combination of every conceivable malignant quality in one man — comprehensive ignorance, pathological dishonesty, thoroughgoing corruption, and a seeming determination to use his time in office to cause as much damage in as many ways as he possibly can — is a constant invitation to denial. The mind does not want to believe what the eyes and ears are telling it, that an emotionally disturbed man-child has control of the White House. But it’s true. The nightmare is real. It is folly, then, to expect him to respond as other presidents might. What we can do is learn from this experience. Trump cannot be reasoned with, and he cannot be appeased; he can be flattered, but not with any expectation it will be repaid. His word is worth nothing, and while he can be frightened or bought, he absolutely cannot be relied upon. He will do what he will do, and there isn’t a lot the rest of us can do about it. This goes far beyond the odd tariff. It was evident from the start that Trump represented a total break with all previous norms and expectations of how a president should behave or what he should believe in. Among those norms, it is now incontrovertible, is much of the international order successive American presidents helped to build over many decades. Poster Comment: Trump will crush that Trudeau punk and make him cry. Trump wants to dump NAFTA and have one treaty with Canada, a separate treaty with Mexico. And they will lose a lot more than we will in any trade war. And they know it, just as they know that Trump will not be deterred or appeased or bought off.
Canada has treated our Agricultural business and Farmers very poorly for a very long period of time. Highly restrictive on Trade! They must open their markets and take down their trade barriers! They report a really high surplus on trade with us. Do Timber & Lumber in U.S.?— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 1, 2018
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Begin Trace Mode for Comment # 24.
#11. To: Tooconservative (#0)
One thing often forgotten. Sanctions might work in such case. But ... If you sanction ten such countries or twenty then it becomes less clear who is sanctioning whom.
Trump is applying pressure on multiple fronts. It multiplies his leverage. The Orange One is executing a multifaceted foreign policy. We haven't seen anything like this in a long time, really since Reagan helped hasten the Soviet collapse with JP2 and Thatcher. Not even the two Gulf Wars were as big as what Trump is trying to do.
And multiplies the risk of blowback. He might win, at least in the short/middle term. I suspect he loves poker and hates chess. Do you like poker, TC?
Russians are chess players. Americans are poker players. This is true. Chinese are go players. Each game has its virtues, and reflects certain character traits. If we were playing checkers while the Russians play chess, we'd be at a disadvantage, because chess is much more complex and requires strategic thinking. Of course "Go" is more complex than chess. Chess rewards strategic thinking more than poker, certainly, and Go does so more than Chess. In this sense, chess and go are good mental exercises to prepare for statecraft. But they both lack two things that poker has in spades: luck, and the fog of war. In chess and in go, you develop your positions through skill. But in poker, you take what life hands you, and then you have to use keen psychology to defeat your opponents. The implication when chess versus poker is made - as it frequently has been in the past - is that chess is more intellectual, and that therefore the Russians, as chess players, have an intellectual advantage over those childish American poker plays. But poker is not a child's game at all. It is frequently played with alcohol, something that chess isn't. And prodigious amounts of real money are on the table in poker, which is not the case in chess. Americans ARE poker players, and Russians are chess players. And over the past century and more of Russo-American rivalry, I would have to say that the poker playing Americans have very much come out on top. Which makes me think that poker is actually a better game to prepare for real life than chess is. A comparable thought comes to mind. The Germans up until 1945, and really since, though more subtly, always prided themselves on their Prussian discipline and military order. They didn't have an Army, they had a war machine. Precision, discipline, orderliness - these were strong German virtues, they reflected in their military (and the military reflected back into the society), and they resulted, over the course of modern history, in some stunning German battlefield victories. The Germans have quite a history of battlefield triumphs, but their overall record of warfare is one of pretty bad defeats in the end. Their military discipline and precision gives them momentary advantage, but they have relied too heavily on battlefield victories to overcome strategic weaknesses, and have lost to the strategic factors. On battlefields, they have had great success against many armies, but they have had the greatest difficulty with those armies that, in the face of defeat and a bad outcome, remained stubbornly in the field. One army and culture the Germans historically disdained were the Americans, whom they considered to be inexperienced, relatively undisciplined, and lacking in sharp cohesion. But unlike their French and British foes, or Russians, whom they overwhelmed on the battlefield at various points, the Germans always had a really hard time on the battlefield against Americans. They disdained us for our relative indiscipline, but there was some "secret sauce" in American warfighting that made American armies more difficult for the Germans to handle in World War I and World War II. I speak of battlefield results, not grand strategy. A German officer in World War II famously remarked: "The reason the U.S. military does so well in wartime is that war is chaos, and the U.S. military practices chaos on a daily basis." - It's funny, and it is at least partly sarcastic, but it is also true: the Germans were precise and disciplined, like cold steel, and they always had a hard time fighting Americans and almost never actually won on the battlefield against us. Poker players play a game full of chance and the fog of war. Chess has neither, but real life does. A Soviet military observer similarly famously observed: "A serious problem in planning against American doctrine is that Americans do not read their manuals, nor do they feel any obligation to follow their doctrine." This is also true, and was viewed with the same sort of contempt that the Germans had. But the Soviets were smart enough not to tangle with it, while the Germans really thought they would simply carry the day through discipline and precision. Finally, a note from a German after World War I: “The prevailing opinion in Germany before our entry into war, was, that American was a money hunting nation, too engrossed in the hunt of the dollar to produce a strong military force. But since our troops have been in action the opinion has changed, and he says that though Germany is at present a defeated nation, he believes that they would be victors in a war with any nation in the world with the exemption of the United States.”
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Top • Page Up • Full Thread • Page Down • Bottom/Latestsimply facing facts. The U.S. economy is more than 10 times as large as ours.
#13. To: A Pole (#11)
If you sanction ten such countries or twenty then it becomes less clear who is sanctioning whom.
#14. To: Tooconservative (#13)
(Edited)
Trump is applying pressure on multiple fronts. It multiplies his leverage.
#24. To: A Pole (#14)
Replies to Comment # 24.
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