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Edited by Mrph1 on Nov 30th 2023 at 11:03:59 AM
![[up]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_up.png "[up]"){kind=icon}
They did, and I'm absolutely defending the EU here, both for its protection of laborers and unions, but also for its lasting peace efforts.
But I'm also saying that the EU has its problems. For example, Portugal held an election last year in which the leftist parties overwhelmingly won the election, but the President instead gave the government mandate to the liberal parties out of fear that the left would cause friction with Brussels.
That kind of thing sets a disturbing precedent.
Still not embarrassing enough to stan billionaires or tech companies.
Oh, bother.
Discussing the merits and shortcomings of the EU might be better suited for the European Politics thread.
I will however add that Trump is as full of shit about how well the EU is doing as he is about pretty much everything else. 
Apparently he called the Prime Minister of Denmark just to talk about some in-law of his who was Danish. Just before New Years.
The PM was very confused.
Still not embarrassing enough to stan billionaires or tech companies.
I think that Trump perceives the EU and Germany specifically as an enemy from a business perspective. Basically, Germany is great at export, and because it is so great at it, it takes away business which, in Trumps mind, should go to the US. So the logical conclusion is to crush Germany and by extension the EU (that he is naturally wrong about the role Germany plays in the EU is another matter). It's a very outdated way to do business, but that is Trump for you. Short time gain, long term pain. I really don't want to know how much money he owes to people, I am ready to bet that his so called business is a giant Ponzi scheme.
Oh, bother.
He owes Deutsche money. He owes the Bank of China money. I'm sure he owes Russia money.
He is the very embodiment of "conflict of interest".
edited 16th Jan '17 5:07:27 AM by M84
Disgusted, but not surprised
The law in the night
So this was supposed to be the ''free market'' candidate.
edited 16th Jan '17 5:53:50 AM by AngelusNox
Inter arma enim silent leges
He wants to free the markets of foreign competition.
The law in the night
Make America 1929 again.
Seriously though, while the 29's crash wasn't cause by protectionism alone, protectionist policies made the situation worse and Trump is underestimating the returns the US consumers get from being able to purchase cheap goods manufactured abroad.
Part of me is spiteful enough to wish the Trump voters get what they asked for. The manufacturing industry returning to the US. With all the largest shared being taken by automation, the ones that didn't offering only minimum wage back breaking jobs with no benefits or job security, polluted cities filed with dead end employment opportunities and ailing health. All of which would make them just as miserable as they are right now while accelerating their demise but this time without things like Obamacare or food stamps to make their misery bearable.
Because that is exactly what you will get when you vote for assholes who want to remove social care, deregulate the environment policies, don't want higher minimum wages, want tax cuts only for the extremely wealthy and defend the increase of automation for every commercial and industrial sector.
The bad part is that they are going to drag the other half of the country that didn't want this orange dipshit in the White House with their short sighted bullshit
Inter arma enim silent leges
Today's winner. Sorry if already posted.
The law in the night
So, if Trump goes full metal retard on protectionism the results could be a major hit on Mexico's economy, which in turn will result in more illegal immigrants coming to the US looking for a job. However if the Republicans aren't suicidal enough, the best case scenario is a Trump lite protectionism in order to prevent the loss of the millions of US jobs tied to Mexico's economy. Since an increased protectionist policy and retaliatory measures by Mexico would hit the US economy hard enough to remove those jobs from the market, an overtly protectionist policy would be harmful to both US and Mexico economies and jobs.
The Economist: Donald Trump’s presidency is about to hit Mexico
With a protectionist entering the White House, Mexico ponders its options
WHEN an asteroid hit Earth 66m years ago, wiping out the dinosaurs and 75% of plant and animal species, it hurt Mexico first. Donald Trump’s inauguration is far less frightening, but Mexicans can talk of little else.
Outside a massive Volkswagen (VW) factory in Puebla, two hours’ drive from Mexico City, workers fret about Mr Trump’s threats to whack big tariffs on cars made in Mexico. One American carmaker—Ford—cancelled plans to build a $1.6bn plant in San Luis Potosí, some five hours farther north. It may have had other reasons for doing so, but workers in Puebla are not reassured.
“We’re frustrated,” says Ricardo Méndez, an equipment repairman who works for one of VW’s suppliers. He had expected his employer to send him to work at the new Ford plant. Between bites of spicy chicken taco, Santiago Nuñez, who works for another VW supplier, vows to boycott the American carmaker.
The anger and bewilderment in Puebla is felt across Mexico. Mr Trump’s promises to make Mexico pay for a border wall, deport millions of illegal immigrants and rip up the North American Free-Trade Agreement (NAFTA) were among the few consistent policies in his largely substance-free election campaign. He has not lost his taste for Mexico-bashing. In a press conference on January 11th, his first since July, Mr Trump repeated his claim that Mexico is “taking advantage” of the United States. Mexicans can only wait and wonder how he intends to act on that misguided notion.
The Trump presidency streaking toward Mexico is already causing problems. Inflation has started rising in response to the devaluation of the peso caused by his election. The central bank raised interest rates five times in 2016; it will probably have to continue tightening. After a sharp rise in public debt as a share of GDP over the past several years, the government must curb spending.
Over the past few months economists have lowered their forecasts for GDP growth in 2017, from an average of 2.3% to 1.4%. On January 1st the government cut a popular subsidy by raising petrol prices by up to 20%. Six people died in the ensuing protests.
If Mr Trump declares economic war, things could get much worse. The economy could stumble into recession, just as Mexico is preparing for a presidential election in 2018. Mr Trump’s pugilism increases the chances that Andrés Manuel López Obrador, a left-wing populist, will win. He would probably counter American protectionism with the sort of self-destructive economic nationalism to which Mexico has disastrously resorted in the past. Vital reforms of energy, telecoms and education, enacted under Mexico’s current president, Enrique Peña Nieto, might be reversed.
Mexican officials think the Trump presidency poses two main dangers. The first is that the United States will renounce NAFTA, which it can do after six months’ notice, or simply shred it by putting up trade barriers. The second is that, as a way of forcing Mexico to pay for the wall, Mr Trump will carry out his threat to block remittances from immigrants in the United States. These inject some $25bn a year into Mexico’s economy.
The president-elect’s other big anti-Mexican idea, to dump millions of illegal immigrants on Mexico’s northern border, is seen as a lesser threat. Under Barack Obama, the United States deported some 175,000 Mexicans a year; Mr Trump will find it hard to increase that number. Republican plans to tax imports as part of a reform of corporate income tax would hit Mexico hard. The government sees that as a problem to be addressed by the United States’ trading partners in concert, rather than by Mexico alone.
It’s Donald. Duck!
Mr Peña’s instinct is to act as if Mr Trump is more reasonable than he seems. He showed his conciliatory side when he invited Mr Trump to Mexico City in August during the election campaign. The ersatz summit, at which Mr Peña failed to tell Mr Trump publicly that Mexico would not pay for his wall, so enraged Mexicans that Luis Videgaray, the finance minister who had suggested the meeting, was forced to quit. Now Mr Peña has brought him back, as foreign minister. But his tone has become tougher. Mr Peña now rejects Mr Trump’s attempts to influence investment “on the basis of fear or threats”.
To some, the rehiring of Mr Videgaray looks like a smart move. He is thought to be friendly with Jared Kushner, Mr Trump’s son-in-law, who is to become an adviser in the White House (on trade, among other things). Mr Trump himself praised Mr Videgaray after his sacking as a “brilliant finance minister and wonderful man”.
But Mexicans regard him with disdain. In turning to a member of his inner circle to manage Mexico’s relationship with the United States, Mr Peña missed a chance to hire someone with fresh ideas. Mr Videgaray “can have lunch at the White House”, notes Shannon O’Neil of the Council on Foreign Relations in New York, but she worries that his focus “will just be on the Oval Office”. To press its case that the United States has more to gain from working with Mexico than from walloping it, the government must talk to congressmen, state politicians and business leaders. It should also mobilise the 35m people of Mexican origin living in the United States.
Mexico thinks it has killer arguments for building on the partnership rather than destroying it. Some 5m American jobs depend on trade with Mexico; when Mexico ships goods north, 40% of their value comes from inputs bought from the United States. Officials hope that the new administration will opt for the fluffiest versions of Trumpism. Instead of repealing NAFTA, perhaps Mr Trump will renegotiate it, incorporating new standards for protecting intellectual property and the environment. Another tactic under consideration is to boost imports from Mexico’s NAFTA partners. The thinking is that reducing Mexico’s trade surplus with the United States, about $59bn last year, would give Mr Trump a victory he could sell to his protectionist supporters.
If conciliation fails, Mexico has few attractive options. In a trade war, it would suffer horribly. Raising its own tariffs would hurt its own consumers. Yet that does not mean that Mexico is defenceless. In 2009 it imposed tariffs on nearly 100 American products, including strawberries and Christmas trees, after the United States barred Mexican lorries from its roads to protect the jobs of American drivers. That got the attention of American politicians: the pro-trade lobby prevailed.
Mexican analysts are thinking about how the country might fight the next skirmish. Maize, grown mainly in states that voted for Mr Trump, will be a tempting target. The United States sold about $2.5bn-worth to Mexico in 2016. Faced with the loss of their biggest market, American maize farmers might press the White House to relent. On January 6th 16 American farming groups warned in a letter to Mr Trump and Mike Pence, the vice-president-elect, that disrupting trade with Mexico and other countries would have “devastating consequences” for farmers, who are already suffering from low prices.
For now, Mexicans are praying that Mr Trump will prove more temperate in office than during his meteoric rise. There is little evidence that will happen. More Be the first to comment
edited 16th Jan '17 6:55:08 AM by AngelusNox
Inter arma enim silent leges
Well pence talk and said is a shame lewis said what he said, which make me think that is kinda a good thing Pence is not president, he clearly is not as easy to bait as Trump
"My Name is Bolt, Bolt Crank and I dont care if you believe or not"
America already uses and abuses cheap sources of labor. Our overcrowded prisons make military uniforms and the laborers are paid something like two dollars an hour. Illegal immigrants are locked up on farms all over the country and cheated out of their wages. If Trump fucks around with the borders, I'm worried we're going to move from "basically slavery" to "slavery and proud of it."
Considering how half of the country denied their involment with slavery or worst said it was the other half I can see moving into that position.
Deranged X-Mas Figure
x4
I'm honestly not sure whether to laugh in hysterics or pound my head into a brick wall ad nauseam. Maybe both?
edited 16th Jan '17 7:41:39 AM by kkhohoho
Doctor Who — Long Way Around: https://www.fanfiction.net/s/13536044/1/Doctor-Who-Long-Way-Around
This why it killed me when the Far Left started screaming about trade deals as if they were the root cause of all these job losses (which if you think about it for two goddamn seconds how in the FUCK does that make any sense?) and want to bring back protectionism.
New Survey coming this weekend!
The law in the night
The Far Left was always been plagued with the same type of populism Trump is guilty off, specially when it comes to appealing to the average worker's insecurities.
Trade deals are a non-negligible (but not the biggest) contributor to wealth inequality, and the economic benefits are fairly insignificant after the first few opened up the floodgates; they're mostly geopolitical instruments mixed with corporate entitlements these days, which is exactly contrary to the spirit of free trade on multiple levels. They are by no means a magic bullet, and moreover they're often used as a synonym for globalization in general, which does have a very distinct class of losers even as the majority gains, namely the blue collared middle class, aka the people who are generally at the vanguard of the ongoing populist backlash against neoliberalism.
edited 16th Jan '17 8:48:08 AM by CaptainCapsase
Visiting from the Hoag Galaxy
And then you get the occasional industry which only continues to function because of trade deals, like the coal industry. The biggest buyer of coal in the world right now is, guess who? China, and they buy a ton. If no one was buying coal, the American coal industry would be much closer to total collapse.
Not Three Laws compliant.
Oh, bother.
...That just makes Trump's threats of trade war with China even more ridiculous.
"I'm totally gonna save your coal jobs! King Coal will reign forever!"
<starts a trade war with one of the biggest consumers of American coal>
edited 16th Jan '17 9:03:27 AM by M84
Disgusted, but not surprised
Never underestimate that man's spitefulness.
Politics is the skilled use of blunt objects.
And he does realize starting a trade war with Mexico that makes their entire economy collapse will just...
Send more undocumented immigrants over the border trying to look for work.
New Survey coming this weekend!
Hey, that might be a-ok in his case because it justifies building death camps.
I still have an outstanding bet on whether the first camps will be built for Muslims or Latin Americans. Anyone wanna take a bet?
Still not embarrassing enough to stan billionaires or tech companies.
Oh, bother.
Maybe add Asian-Americans to the mix if he starts an actual war with China.
Heck, it wouldn't be the first time America pulled that crap.
edited 16th Jan '17 9:09:43 AM by M84
Disgusted, but not surprised
Deranged X-Mas Figure
That's if he actually goes through with it. Or is even able to go through it. Putting together death-camps is a lot harder than it looks.
edited 16th Jan '17 10:01:27 AM by kkhohoho
Doctor Who — Long Way Around: https://www.fanfiction.net/s/13536044/1/Doctor-Who-Long-Way-Around
Not to mention that just by acknowledging that the EU created a lasting peace you are already implicitly admitting that the people in the EU states won something truly important.