The president-elect wrote that the coalition of non-Western countries “should expect to say goodbye to selling into the wonderful U.S. Economy” if it backs a currency other than the U.S. dollar.

Headline is a bit inaccurate. “If they use anything other than dollar” is the quote.

While neocon colonial handlers have been making the west puppets fall over themselves over offering more war, there was already a strong division in the world.

Trade prevents wars. The world becoming more divided will make the US more isolated, and anger the low hanging fruit of dealing with decline. Investment outside of the US and its influence have already taken off. This posturing is not significantly different than the path the Biden administration set on, but there is a matter of style that will cause the US colonies to choose between dignity and extreme ever subjugated diminishment to US control and profits, even as the US itself causes its own decline.

  • HakFoo@lemmy.sdf.org
    11·
    3 days ago

    What will get manufactured locally will be the things where there’s enough margin in it. Nothing to do with how vital or desirable it might be to make locally.

    • MajorHavoc@programming.dev
      41·
      3 days ago

      Except corn, which is heavily subsidized in the US.

      (I suspect the primary motive is to provide an alternative fuel for the war machine, sadly. But corn is also useable as local transport fuel and even food, which is nice.)

      I’m in favor of additional subsidies to support local manufacturing of critical products, to protect the local population against the whims of the global market.

      I’m not a huge fan of tariffs, but in theory tariffs can get the same job done. And I’m willing to concede that a balance between subsidies and tariffs might be the sweet spot for practicality, or might be a necessary a step on the journey to pragmatic people centric policies.

    • MajorHavoc@programming.dev
      21·
      3 days ago

      What will get manufactured locally will be the things where there’s enough margin in it. Nothing to do with how vital or desirable it might be to make locally.

      More to your point, I think we agree on that.

      My point is that government is for when the open market fails.

      Providing margin against known common disasters and shortages is a great use of government power to distort a market.

      Tariffs and subsidies can close the gap to provide incentive to have local production of things like clean water, food, power, medical supplies, and computer chips.

      In my ideal case, each government would provide consistent local demand, and ship the excess product as goodwill donations to neighbors in need.

      We actually see some of that now, but 2020 revealed a number of substantial gaps.