Minorities only live in self imposed fear, violence at their own hands in their own neighborhoods. The rest is hysteria.

Do you live in the U.S.?

That's what you conservatives want to do to real Americans right now. So fuck it.

It is time for Jade Helm to be real.

This post was edited by inkanddagger on Aug 28 2018 07:34pm

a real Kumbaya moment Lord of the Flies style going on in here

I cant speak about Canada, but yes, before the trade wars broke out, the EU was imposing higher tariffs on american imports than what the americans charged on european imports. our european markets are more heavily protected and more heavily subsidized than the american ones. the ECB is artificially lowering the interest rates in the euro zone, which is almost like "doping" for the german and the dutch export economies in particular.

overall, I consider the distortion created by those points to be rather minor, so I dont really like the skirmishes going on between Trump and the EU, but I can understand the reasoning behind it. Trump's accusations against europe and germany in particular are not made up out of thin air!



What I consider really problematic, however, are the trade practices of the Chinese: huge subsidies and state-debt-funded growth, gigantic export surpluses that have had an adverse effect on the job markets in the rest of the world, theft and disrespect of the intellectual property of western companies, artificially low interest rates put up by the state-dependent instead of independent central bank, heavy entry barriers for western firms onto the chinese market while happily taking advantage of our open markets, and so on.

Trump is absolutely justified in being outraged at those abusive Chinese trade practices and in trying to force the Chinese to adopt more fair trade policies. Whether his approach for achieving this goal is the best one, and whether it will be successful at all, is a different question and remains to be seen.

When it comes to Mexico: Trump is currently making progress in renegotiations of NAFTA - I'd prefer to wait for the end result before assessing his success/failure on this frontline. That NAFTA killed millions of american jobs, as predicted by the critics at the time, is a fact though. So here, again, Trump is at least somewhat justfied in taking measures and adopting a new, more aggressive approach than his predecessors.

-------


Fender in a nutshell:
"I'll lay out an undercomplex, short-sighted (mis)interpretation of what I perceive your arguments to be, and then I'll write one or two paragraphs about how ignorant, sad, stupid, racist, evil you are for ""thinking"" like that" - do you really consider this obnoxious style of debate of yours to be constructive?

This post was edited by Black XistenZ on Aug 28 2018 08:45pm

that's a bit of a pivot though. what you're actually doing it FINDING a reason to get behind what trump does. if you were honest, you'd know what HIS reasoning is: "we have a trade deficit with them, that means they are taking advantage of us" - he literally argued like that countless times.
also, you admitted it yourself (while trying to save face by pointing out that in a trade relationship of that scope there will ALWAYS be legitimate criticism to be made about ANY partner - you just left out the criticism of one side): overall it was an incredibly FAIR trade relationship with very low average tariffs and the majority of goods traded without ANY tariffs. it was also open to bilateral renegotiations that used to be conducted in good faith between both sides - all of that is already severely damaged. the only reason this might not escalate to a degree that damages both economies significantly is that you have rational and sane actors on our side, who are putting the interest of their economies above their personal pettiness (they also have to fear political consequences if the don't because unlike trump, they don't have supporters like you, who would get behind every idiotic decision they make because there is a cult around their person)...



can't really disagree with that, except the part where you're reluctant to evaluat if escalating into an outright trade war with china might be a smart way to go about it or not.



your posts in a nutshell: "listen, i'm not saying trump is perfect, but here is a logically incoherent and intellectually dishonest way to justify almost every single one of his policies / statements / decisions" - do you really think people don't catch on to that? in essence, you're supporting about the same amount of insanity that the likes of bi-ghot and endlesscry are willing to stand for, you're just being more verbose about it and try to give it a pretty little spin if possible, almost like goo-shill.

This post was edited by fender on Aug 28 2018 11:47pm

Lib tears cup full again dang

this race will be a fun one

Trump lover vs a lefty

true clash of ideologies in a terrible terrible state