Trump tariffs drop to 10% universal rate for countries except China for 90 days

[PeterRS]

  On 4/18/2025 at 1:59 AM, macaroni21 said:

I don't intend to sound alarmist, but let's not forget that World War II might not have flared up in East Asia in December 1941 (more than two years after Hitler invaded Poland) if not for the US trade embargo on Japan. Japan (which many people have forgotten was on the side of US-Britain-France in the First World War) felt in the late 1930s that it was being deprived of access to oil and other raw materials because of the embargo imposed by the US and its West European allies (then fighting Hitler), and so it sought to carve out its own bloc in East Asia.

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I agree with much of @macaroni21's analysis and thoughts. I would only question whether or not the US oil embargo forced the Japanese into the Pacific war. No doubt it was a major blow, but we also know that the Japanese had been waging war in China for years. The 1930s were  a time of extreme militarism and planned expansion in Japan. Its 1931 occupation of Manchuria to gain that large part of China's raw materials was merely an event based on a totally fake narrative not unlike many before and after - including the Tonkin Gulf incident after which Congress quickly enabled President Johnson significantly to escalate the Vietnam War.

The Japanese then started a full scale war in China 1937, quickly occupying much of East China. Although that war was to result in a form of stalemate, Japan then invaded Indo-China in 1940. That year it also joined the Tripartite Pact with Germany and Italy. Plans for a full-scale military assault on much of East Asia were by then well under way, long before Pearl Harbour. Its war machine needed vital raw materials and eyed especially Malaya for its rubber and the Dutch East Indies for its oil.

It's hard not to underestimate the US decision to close the Panama Canal to Japanese shipping.  This had a huge effect on Japan and must certainly have quickened its planning to attack several Asian countries. From what I have read, the decision to attack Pearl Harbour was to a certain extent an afterthought. It always knew its attacks on Asian countries would bring international condemnation, but given that Europe was engulfed in a War that looked as though it might soon escalate and the USA was neutral, it was assumed that European colonial nations would have little to spare to protect their Asian colonies. America was a different matter altogether but if secrecy to attack South-East Asia could be maintained, the US would not have time to mobilise its forces on the west coast in time to have much effect. Towards the end of 1940 Roosevelt then moved the US Pacific fleet to Pearl Harbour with the hope of restraining further Japanese aggression. To the Japanese that transfer to Hawaii was unexpected and must in some senses have seemed a major bonus. Knock out that fleet and there would be zero opposition to its East-Asian attacks. But they failed by not ensuring the US aircraft carriers were in port.

[PeterRS]

Love this recent news video which shreds Trump in so may ways.

[a-447]

I get this error message :

The uploader has not made this video available in your country

[Keithambrose]

  On 4/18/2025 at 1:59 AM, macaroni21 said:

By all indications, the decoupling of US-China trade and economies is surely going to go the full distance and the economic pain on both sides will be bad. I would caution against underestimating how much disruption this will also cause to China, even though much of the media is talking about the costs to the US. However, the key difference is that China has a leadership that is good at planning. Like Canada, it has a people that is united about the external threat. On the other side, the US has an incompetent leadership and fractious internal politics. In the medium term, this difference in leadership will make a big difference even if in the short term, the pain and disruption are similarly acute on both sides.

Yet, despite the looming costs to come, pro-Trump voters remain solidly behind him. 

MAGA is a sort of religious cult. As with most cults, members of a cult rarely allow empirical facts or logic to shake their beliefs. Also, suffering is seen as a rite of passage, easily explained away as due to persecution by outsiders, and never the fault of the cult's own teachings.

So what lies ahead?

We've been through this before! The next two decades look likely to be a reprise of the 1930s, with no single dominant power nor any global trading system. In politics and economics, the world was in distinct blocs. As a result there were countless points of friction, any one of which could blow up into military action as bloc-leaders sought to expand or defend their interests.

I don't intend to sound alarmist, but let's not forget that World War II might not have flared up in East Asia in December 1941 (more than two years after Hitler invaded Poland) if not for the US trade embargo on Japan. Japan (which many people have forgotten was on the side of US-Britain-France in the First World War) felt in the late 1930s that it was being deprived of access to oil and other raw materials because of the embargo imposed by the US and its West European allies (then fighting Hitler), and so it sought to carve out its own bloc in East Asia. 

If the above was news to you, it may be because, like many westerners, you might have thought of World War II as a single war across the globe. Actually it was two different wars that happened to occur at the same time (with different initial sparks), but which happened to involve a few (not all) of the same players – the US and to a lesser extent Britain. France and the Netherlands were initially involved but soon disappeared from the Asian theatre after Hitler marched into Paris and The Hague. Many countries were only involved in one war, not both. For example, Germany, Italy, Canada and the Soviet Union were major participants in the European war but not in the Asian war (right at the end, after Germany had been defeated, the Soviet Union did turn its attention to the east, in order to grab some advantage). China, Australia, NZ and Japan were participants in the Asian war but not the European war....but I am going off-topic now.

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You also seem to have overlooked  the UK campaign in Burma, after the fall of Singapore.  The British Army, under Gerneral Slim,  prevented the Japanese  from invading India, and eventually drove them back. Battles of Imphal, and Kohima, for example.

[PeterRS]

  On 5/7/2025 at 7:30 AM, a-447 said:

I get this error message :

The uploader has not made this video available in your country

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This might work with a click and paste

https://www.msn.com/en-us/video/money/lawrence-canadas-pm-humiliated-trump-today-but-not-as-much-as-trump-humiliated-himself/vi-AA1EitJk

[PeterRS]

Ha! Trump has now reduced tarriffs to China from 145% to 80%. He is such a loser!

Cartoon from The Guarduan UK.