Summary
Trump snapped at a reporter who asked how much economic pain he was willing to inflict amid plunging markets triggered by his new tariffs.
Speaking after a weekend at his Florida resort, Trump dismissed speculation he was trying to crash the market, claiming tariffs would bring in “$1 trillion” and spur U.S. manufacturing.
When asked about a pain threshold for Americans, he called the question “so stupid,” arguing economic “medicine” was necessary to reverse decades of “stupid leadership.”
He insisted the strategy would make the U.S. “solid and strong again.”
How long did it take China to build itself into a self-sufficient superpower that produced goods for the world?
Around 50 years, with a tight rein on the population and a leadership that had consistency and a 30, 50 and 100 year vision that they continually executed against.
Even in the best case scenario of everybody rallying behind Trump and pulling together behind a single strategy that miraculously turns out to work, Trump will be dead in 30 years or less.
So HE probably isn’t realistically thinking this, even if it’s what he’s decided to tell everyone this week.
One thing about Trump: I do believe that underneath it all, he does want to make America a great nation. He’s just ignorant of how to do that or what it would even look like when achieved.
No. He just wants to be the leader of a great nation. Anything “great” that happens to America or Americans, would be entirely accidental. He never thinks about anything other than himself.
I can’t wait that long to take a piss…
Great points.
I don’t think he does. I think he wants to make it a better place for him, and he doesn’t get any further than that as a concept.
Being a narcissist, I don’t think he differentiates between making it great and making it great for him.
He does, because he sees the world as a zero sum game. For him to prosper, others have to suffer.
China’s growth is not a story of self-sufficiency.
It is a story of doing state directed capitalism, making extensive use of international trade, much more productively, intentionally, and strategically competently than… basically any other economy in the history of the post ww2 world.
They are not self-sufficient in the sense of autarky, a hermit kingdom like North Korea with 0 international trade.
Vietnam basically 80s onward, is a similar economic story of a ‘Communist’ government/society/economy that did a good job of introducing elements of capitalistic economic systems into itself gradually, with great control, and much of its profits siphoned into further reforms and building up public services and infrastructure… lots of international trade in all that, though they have been significantly less restrictive of foreign direct investment than China has.
… So is Japan, post ww2, minus the ‘Communist’ starting position, though with a good deal more foreign direct investment.
A free market republican/libertarian who learned how large of a role the government of Japan played in directly molding the evolution of its industries and manipulating its markets, openly, would call it ‘communist’, because they think ‘communism is when the government does stuff’.
In reality, its state directed capitalism, but in Japan, they call this capitalism, in Vietnam and China, they call this same thing communism.
Their political systems and culture are all very different, but their economic organization and growth patterns actually have a lot in common.
China does capitalism, its just that the state explicitly owns the largest corporations. But these corporations are still ultimately playing the same capitalism game as all other corps… they just have a lot more subsidies from and control by the state/Party officials.
I gave W that credit. I don’t believe it’s true for Trump, outside of the fully narcissistic version.
It appears his first priority is pleasing Putin. His second is getting a small number of people to applaud him. He doesn’t give a single fuck about America or Americans as a whole.
Don’t forget Krasnov Trump bankrupted his casinos. Only he knows why he is bankrupting US now.