Political Posts

[Marco Van Basten]

8 minutes ago, dwy000 said:

Your example is exactly the point i was making.  The importer pays the tariff not the exporter.  If demand goes down because of elasticity, there's less product purchased and less tariff paid.  But the tariffs are paid by the importer (and usually passed ongoing to their customer).

No, because if US imposes a 25% tariffs on toys made in China/Vietnam, it will be paid entirely or mostly by China/Vietnam.  It all depends on who has the power in the relationship.  

[dwy000]

9 minutes ago, Marco Van Basten said:

No, because if US imposes a 25% tariffs on toys made in China/Vietnam, it will be paid entirely or mostly by China/Vietnam.  It all depends on who has the power in the relationship.  

No, that's not how it works. The China company offers the toy for $10 to any buyer anywhere in the world.  Thats their price.  Walmart or a toy distributor in the US agrees to buy 1000 of them. When the boat arrives in the US port Walmart pays $2500 to the US govt in tariffs and $10000 to the Chinese company for the toys.

 

Unless the manufacturer is also the importer they never pay the tariffs. 

Edited July 28, 2025 by dwy000

[dealraker]

Just now, cubsfan said:

 

Damn - I think I'm going to blow my brains out. Sounds like we're all gonna die!

 

And, yes, it would be far preferable if Congress codifies the tariffs. But of course, we all know that Congress has maybe a 20% favorability rating, precisely because they usually do NOTHING about difficult issues.

 

Thank goodness we have a President with equal power.

 

You may understand the legal issues better than me - we will see how good Trump's legal advisers are - becuase they have been pretty damn good thus far.

LOL...as Mr. Market's rise keeps the cubs falling in line trumping louder and louder, we know Mr. Market is always right in the short term.  But there's a bit of irony too.

 

As the increasingly bold talking (maybe now practicing their own raspy voices?) cubs are pumping iron in their a/c sterilized gyms surrounded by mirrors... the damn guy in charge of all this assured economic "success" is gay and lives in a pink house in Charleston!

 

 

[Marco Van Basten]

45 minutes ago, dealraker said:

LOL...as Mr. Market's rise keeps the cubs falling in line trumping louder and louder, we know Mr. Market is always right in the short term.  But there's a bit of irony too.

 

As the increasingly bold talking (maybe now practicing their own raspy voices?) cubs are pumping iron in their a/c sterilized gyms surrounded by mirrors... the damn guy in charge of all this assured economic "success" is gay and lives in a pink house in Charleston!

 

 

You are just jealous that the last two treasury secretaries were Yale graduates while nobody from Duke has been in the job for a while...

[changegonnacome]

2 hours ago, Marco Van Basten said:

If India tomorrow imposes 100% tariffs on jet engines, it ain't going to be GE/Safran that will pay, it will be Indian airlines.  

 

Well if you want to get technical.....GE/Safran will also pay due to future demand destruction....which is to say GE/Safran all things being equal would have sold more jet engines, service contracts and parts in a 0% indian tariff market world over time......so the Indian government first hurts its own consumers by driving up the price of jet engines it can't produce itself, so domestic demand for air travel falls due to higher prices...the addressable market for jet engines in India goes from a 5% CAGR to 1% CAGR...it contracts...now the Indian government raised revenue, first its domestic consumers got hurt but then the foreign producers got hurt.....everybody is worse off except you might argue the Indian government (but even this is wrong).

 

The only way you might come up with a scenario where the outcome is neutral is in a world where you belive the Indian government or the US government, now holding this tariff revenue in treasury, can allocate it more efficiently than the private sector would have. This is the irony of GOP politcians. If you want to make that argument, go for it, the reality is the US government/Indian government will malinvest those tarfiff duties.

 

So Trump's tariff's will make everybody in aggregate worse off.......US consumers, EU producers, US producers & EU consumers......Trump destroyed many businesses in his time as private citizen......the amount of aggregate trade value and future points of GDP he is destroying here irrefutably puts this in his most costly business mistake (he just happens to Chairman & CEO of USA LLC this time).........US consumers aggregate consumption has been hurt by these tariffs, it will go down because some level of tariff incidence will fall on them except if you work in US steel maybe or your goat cheese producer constaintly beaten by your French competitor you are now better off.

 

So congrats Trump - EU producers and EU economies will be hurt too, they pay tariffs....but dont US companies also sell products to Europe? which has now been made poorer.......so how exactly does it help your exporters to make the EU worse off economically?

 

If I'm being kind the Trump team might tell you that they think they can make the bottom 200 million American better off through re-industrial prosperity and 140m top American's relative to a no tariff baseline worse off....and thats a worthy social economic redistribution project...that costs some aggregate amount of total GDP in total........but make no mistake about it......Trump is taking a pie......taking a slice (tariffs)....and that simple act of taking the slice actually contracts the whole pie......because now the government is holding a slice of a private transaction in cash in the treasury general account and it will misallocate that capital relative to the private sector. Both immediately and over time everybody (foreign and domestic) are worse off - the only argument one can make  is that this shrunken aggregate prosperity has been relocated across soceity in a way that is more equitable than the pre-tariff status quo....it is however irrefutable that you shrunk the overall pie or the pie is smaller, over time, than it would have otherwise have been.

 

To counter the above you are on very shaky ground. Cause essentially this is your argument:

 

 The Government is a superior allocator of capital than the private sector

 

The only argument IMO that 'works' for all this tariff stuff Trump is doing below:

 

Yes the economic pie is immediately smaller for everyone and its going to be smaller than it otherwise would have been over time but we are not optimizing for pure GDP anymore.....we are optimizing for some kind of happiness/social cohesion adjusted GDP metric and we think that this is going to give us a better society at the modest expense of few tens of bps of the economy and economic growth over time. That's the argument - a funny one for Republican's to make dont you think but Trump is a populist and his proposition to his poor base is that unlike the Democrats I wont send you welfare cheques, I'm going to send you factories!

 

 

Edited July 28, 2025 by changegonnacome

[Parsad]

5 hours ago, Gregmal said:

lol yea, so dumb. Tariffs just make a specific companies product more expensive(penalizing the company, not the consuner). The “consumer” doesn’t pay anything they don’t want to. If a pound of chicken is $6 and I want it, I buy it. If Tysons prices rise $2/lb(not really that uncommon) I just buy a different brand. Same is true for everything else all the way up to cars. This is why the whinny babies keep missing everything. Boo hoo wah wah emotion!

 

Yeah, that's not entirely accurate.  There are core materials/goods in manufacturing that come from certain countries that domestic consumers and small businesses cannot replace.  Some of those materials/goods will now cost more at the domestic retail level because the domestic manufacturer/producer has to pay the tariff.  So yes, some items domestic consumers will be able to replace with non-tariffed products.  At the same time, there will be many products that cannot be replaced and the domestic consumer will pay.  Trump wasn't going to implement tariffs unless there were significant tariff revenues to offset his other spending.  American consumers, like global consumers, will be more for things they want...plain and simple!  Cheers! 

[Parsad]

3 hours ago, 73 Reds said:

So better we do nothing and let the World keep taking advantage.  

 

U.S. consumers had access to cheaper goods.  It's not the world taking advantage...it was the world selling to the U.S.  Now if you want to reduce U.S. consumption of foreign goods, tariffs will work fairly well, but they increase the cost to U.S. consumers, who will naturally spend less.

 

The better alternative would have been what Buffett suggested two decades ago...importers and exporters are given trade certificates that can be used or sold on the open market to balance imports and exports.  There would be no price increase for consumers since an importer would sell its equivalent export certificate in the open market...and vice versa.  You would have balanced trade with no net increase in cost at the retail level.  Cheers!

[73 Reds]

48 minutes ago, Parsad said:

 

U.S. consumers had access to cheaper goods.  It's not the world taking advantage...it was the world selling to the U.S.  Now if you want to reduce U.S. consumption of foreign goods, tariffs will work fairly well, but they increase the cost to U.S. consumers, who will naturally spend less.

 

The better alternative would have been what Buffett suggested two decades ago...importers and exporters are given trade certificates that can be used or sold on the open market to balance imports and exports.  There would be no price increase for consumers since an importer would sell its equivalent export certificate in the open market...and vice versa.  You would have balanced trade with no net increase in cost at the retail level.  Cheers!

Technically you're right but we paid higher tariffs than we received in return and we have been blocked from even competing in many markets.  Not to mention other countries stealing us blind.  We didn't do anything of consequence about it.  Until now.  

Edited July 28, 2025 by 73 Reds
spelling

[cwericb]

3 hours ago, Marco Van Basten said:

Canada forces US pharmaceutical companies to sell at 1/5 the price, that is theft.  

 

 

That is quite a statement.

 

How does "Canada force US pharmaceutical companies to sell at 1/5 the price".

 

It would seem to me that if that were the case US pharmaceutical companies would simply not sell into Canada.

 

Perhaps the question should be why do US pharmaceutical companies get away with charging Americans 5 times too much? Or, Why do so many US states purchase their drugs from Canada?

 

Please explain.

 

[changegonnacome]

48 minutes ago, 73 Reds said:

Technically you're right but we paid higher tariffs than we received in return and we have been blocked from even competing in many markets.  Not to mention other countries stealing us blind.  We didn't do anything of consequence about it.  Until now.  

 

Everything you said - is accurate when framed by the China relationship....market access etc.....big picture when you look at trading partner allies (Canada, Mexico, EU, Japan, S.Korea) what I would say (with some notable little examples & emotive issues around milk tariffs or certain products banned) and when you take services & trade value into the mix)...........tariff barriers and market access barriers to the US played up by the Trump administration are completely overplayed.....the terms of trade for these allies when goods and services are taken in the round we're quite advatngous.....I've seen little concrete improvement in these terms of trade.....tariff rates of 2% like in the EU going to 0% changes little in reality.....all the DST talk and VAT rates are gone.......the EU, UK & Japan deals so far.....look like smash and grab deals for the US tax revenue boost.....the tariff rates arent high enough to move factories (so the liberation day rhetortic has turned out to be nonsense).....the market access concessions not robust enough to expand markets enough such that one can make a terms of trade argument for these tariffs being a postive net-net.......

 

Shaking down a trade partner for tax revenue is a win......no doubt.....but the deal and the liberation day promise....has fallen a little flat from its lofty goals....factories aren't moving cause of 15% and American exporters are not going to enjoy a boom IMO as it pertains to Europe acess getting blown wide open by this.....US consumers will end up with at least a high single digit price increase for the novel things the EU supplies with no good substitutes (pharma products, french cheese etc etc.).

 

This Liberation day project is becoming more and more a revenue exercise only - I hope they do better with China than they did with the UK/EU/Japan....so far....this is a complicated and volatile way to introduce a defacto 1-2% federal sales tax!

[Parsad]

46 minutes ago, cwericb said:

 

That is quite a statement.

 

How does "Canada force US pharmaceutical companies to sell at 1/5 the price".

 

It would seem to me that if that were the case US pharmaceutical companies would simply not sell into Canada.

 

Perhaps the question should be why do US pharmaceutical companies get away with charging Americans 5 times too much? Or, Why do so many US states purchase their drugs from Canada?

 

Please explain.

 

 

+1!  Cheers!

[SharperDingaan]

19 hours ago, Marco Van Basten said:

Dude, what are you smoking?  What sole producers are you talking about?  What windfall rake?  Have you heard of elasticity of demand?  Why do you automatically assume that US needs patent theft to manufacture things?  Last time I checked, it was Europe, Canada, India and China that engage in patent theft, and when Canada forces US pharmaceutical companies to sell at 1/5 the price, that is theft.  What have you in Canada or Europeans in Europe or Indians in India have actually invented in the past 20 years, besides two companies - ASML and Novo Nordisk?  

 

I live in the real world 

 

ASML/NN manufactures a patented drug the US imports. The patented drug is used because it is better at the job, &/or cheaper than alternate generic drugs (if available) and treatments that may do the same thing.

 

ASML/NN immediately stop delivery, and raise the US price of their patented drug by 15%, citing tariffs (the reason doesn't have to be true). The US immediately bitches, but temporarily pays up until it can find alternatives. ASML/NN collects an additional 15% (price hike), and the US importer pays the US government the 15% tariff. The client using the drug pays an additional 30% (15% price hike + 15% tariff). Inflation.

 

ASML/NN takes their 15% and uses part of it to bribe Indian manufacturers of generic alternatives to charge more for their US bound product, and/or take a similar approach to ASML/NN. Of course it is collusion, both manufacturers know exactly how much less product they will sell, and both will reprice to maximise profit. Patented, or generic product, the US pays more for it.

 

Orange boy is pissed. Orders US drug manufacturers to copy the drugs, make them available to the US, and indemnifies them against the resulting lawsuits (they rip off our IP [other countries, other industries, other products], we will rip off theirs!). Problem is that the US doesn't have the domestic drug manufacturing capacity, and a ASML/NN/Generic Manufacturer would also do what they could to actively impede/delay the setup of that US manufacturing.

 

Mid Terms arrive [< 18 months], Trump does not win, and tariffs get rescinded (they're illegal!). That domestic drug manufacturing is not competitive, and the new factories go dormant. ASML/NN/Generic Manufacturers buy the equipment at cents on the dollar, make improvements, and Orange Boy announces a new deal, HUGE deal!; foreign investment in new US drug manufacturing    The long game.

 

The markets would also seem to agree .... the first day of trading after Trumps biggest trade 'negotiation' to date, and the markets close DOWN? Donny's loosing his touch ....

 

The real world is not a press release.

 

SD  

Edited July 29, 2025 by SharperDingaan

[cwericb]

6 hours ago, Gregmal said:

Wasn’t Canada gonna shut down a pipeline or something? 

 

Haha. Ever hear of 'keeping your powder dry"? Unlike some we are in no rush to start throwing crap around.

 

But how about all that Canadian water going to the US, or all that power lighting up the US East Coast or all that special grade oil supplying US refineries at a discounted price. Of course Canadian potash fertilizes many US fields, and then there are those rare earth minerals as well as much needed uranium. And yes, we just shipped the first tanker load of LNG to Asia, if the US doesn't want our LNG, lots of other countries do.  Ever try to move goods to Alaska without going through Canada? Hmmmmm, tariffs., tolls ..... Hmmmm..... And, of course you know that Canada is the US's largest customer. Mostly for those manufactured goods that employ so many Americans....

 

Canada may live next to a bully but we do have some options and we will play our cards as we see the situation develop.

 

By the way, how's tourism down there these days? More US tourists up here this year than normal, but not many Canadians going south of the border. Just sayin.

[dealraker]

4 hours ago, Marco Van Basten said:

You are just jealous that the last two treasury secretaries were Yale graduates while nobody from Duke has been in the job for a while...

Got me!

[Xerxes]

4 hours ago, changegonnacome said:

 

Well if you want to get technical.....GE/Safran will also pay due to future demand destruction....which is to say GE/Safran all things being equal would have sold more jet engines, service contracts and parts in a 0% indian tariff market world over time......so the Indian government first hurts its own consumers by driving up the price of jet engines it can't produce itself, so domestic demand for air travel falls due to higher prices...the addressable market for jet engines in India goes from a 5% CAGR to 1% CAGR...it contracts...now the Indian government raised revenue, first its domestic consumers got hurt but then the foreign producers got hurt.....everybody is worse off except you might argue the Indian government (but even this is wrong).

 

The only way you might come up with a scenario where the outcome is neutral is in a world where you belive the Indian government or the US government, now holding this tariff revenue in treasury, can allocate it more efficiently than the private sector would have. This is the irony of GOP politcians. If you want to make that argument, go for it, the reality is the US government/Indian government will malinvest those tarfiff duties.

 

So Trump's tariff's will make everybody in aggregate worse off.......US consumers, EU producers, US producers & EU consumers......Trump destroyed many businesses in his time as private citizen......the amount of aggregate trade value and future points of GDP he is destroying here irrefutably puts this in his most costly business mistake (he just happens to Chairman & CEO of USA LLC this time).........US consumers aggregate consumption has been hurt by these tariffs, it will go down because some level of tariff incidence will fall on them except if you work in US steel maybe or your goat cheese producer constaintly beaten by your French competitor you are now better off.

 

So congrats Trump - EU producers and EU economies will be hurt too, they pay tariffs....but dont US companies also sell products to Europe? which has now been made poorer.......so how exactly does it help your exporters to make the EU worse off economically?

 

If I'm being kind the Trump team might tell you that they think they can make the bottom 200 million American better off through re-industrial prosperity and 140m top American's relative to a no tariff baseline worse off....and thats a worthy social economic redistribution project...that costs some aggregate amount of total GDP in total........but make no mistake about it......Trump is taking a pie......taking a slice (tariffs)....and that simple act of taking the slice actually contracts the whole pie......because now the government is holding a slice of a private transaction in cash in the treasury general account and it will misallocate that capital relative to the private sector. Both immediately and over time everybody (foreign and domestic) are worse off - the only argument one can make  is that this shrunken aggregate prosperity has been relocated across soceity in a way that is more equitable than the pre-tariff status quo....it is however irrefutable that you shrunk the overall pie or the pie is smaller, over time, than it would have otherwise have been.

 

To counter the above you are on very shaky ground. Cause essentially this is your argument:

 

 The Government is a superior allocator of capital than the private sector

 

The only argument IMO that 'works' for all this tariff stuff Trump is doing below:

 

Yes the economic pie is immediately smaller for everyone and its going to be smaller than it otherwise would have been over time but we are not optimizing for pure GDP anymore.....we are optimizing for some kind of happiness/social cohesion adjusted GDP metric and we think that this is going to give us a better society at the modest expense of few tens of bps of the economy and economic growth over time. That's the argument - a funny one for Republican's to make dont you think but Trump is a populist and his proposition to his poor base is that unlike the Democrats I wont send you welfare cheques, I'm going to send you factories!

 

 

U.S. has a trade surplus when it comes to the aerospace industry.
 

Tariffs make little sense.

 

 

[changegonnacome]

1 hour ago, Xerxes said:

U.S. has a trade surplus when it comes to the aerospace industry.
 

Tariffs make little sense.

 

Yep more and more - this is netting out to be 1% federal sales tax.

 

Taking so many raw input goods and singling them out for outlandish tariffs (steel, aluminum)….is truly counterproductive….better to direct subsidies to these industries if you want to stand them up…than to put your finished goods exporters at such a disadvantage.

 

Currently the rates announced against UK, EU & Japan are not sufficient to move manufacturing (the tariffs are too low) and if that weren’t enough alone (& they are) you take one look at the policy durability of all this trade adventure and you realize no company would make long run capital decisions based these trade frameworks, flimsy 232 executive actions and reciprocal tariffs headed for Supreme Court overturning in mid-2026.

 

Re-industrialization is a smoke screen….revenue raising & political clientalism appears to to be the true deliverable here.

 

Cause I can’t help but think this is also an election plan for Trump and the GOP to build a tariff constituency voter bloc (& corporate donor class)….that will backfill the demographic problem that bedeviles the current Republican voter base who keep dropping off the voter rolls….and the democratic machine that somehow always out fundraisers the GOP. Well no more - autoworkers, steel workers etc etc and their respective companies know where their bread is buttered….the GOP is now the mob boss keeping your business safe from global trouble….just remember to pay your dues when they are due every two years now kids! 

Edited July 29, 2025 by changegonnacome

[RichardGibbons]

9 hours ago, dwy000 said:

How many times do I have to frame it.  Please explain how the UK was taking advantage of the US but now taxing US consumers on British imports by 15% fixes that. 

 

You should take it as a huge win that nobody is capable of answering this.  People are willing to jump up and down, squawk, insult you, and try to change the topic, but they aren't at all willing to even start trying to frame an honest response to a relatively straightforward question.

Well done. It proves your point nicely.

 

(FWIW, my answer to the question is: nobody was taking advantage of anyone. It's just that Trump wants an import tax.  That might actually be a reasonable way to raise money--a sales tax on goods and services made a big difference in reducing Canada's deficit in the 1990s, and this is pretty similar in many respects. The main downside is that it pisses off all America's friends, and there will be an ongoing cost for that.)

[adesigar]

 

The far right cult. 

[cwericb]

9 hours ago, RichardGibbons said:

 

You should take it as a huge win that nobody is capable of answering this.  People are willing to jump up and down, squawk, insult you, and try to change the topic, but they aren't at all willing to even start trying to frame an honest response to a relatively straightforward question.

Well done. It proves your point nicely.

 

(FWIW, my answer to the question is: nobody was taking advantage of anyone. It's just that Trump wants an import tax.  That might actually be a reasonable way to raise money--a sales tax on goods and services made a big difference in reducing Canada's deficit in the 1990s, and this is pretty similar in many respects. The main downside is that it pisses off all America's friends, and there will be an ongoing cost for that.)

 

Agree entirely. DYW000 asks legitimate questions regarding the cult statements as have I and we get no answers, because when they throw out bullshit they can't back it up. 

 

Trumpers like to throw out all sorts of misinformation and confused "facts", but when called to account they disappear.

 

Of course this should come as no surprise as this is simply mimicking Trump's methods. Throw out bullshit and then duck any accountability. Several of us 'non cult' posters have asked direct questions regarding questionable statements made.  The fact they refuse to answer is an answer in itself. 

 

For instance I am still waiting for an answer to:  

"Who is the biggest US customer, a country that supports so many manufacturing jobs in the US and how is that taking advantage of the U.S." (asked twice - no answer). Obviously it seems they don't know this basic fact.

FYI the answer is"Canada" as for taking advantage of the US: "they don't." 

 

Second question: "Please justify the statement "Canada forces US pharmaceutical companies to sell at 1/5 the price, that is theft".

Of course there is no response. The statement is simply bullshit to think that Canada has the power to FORCE any US company to do anything they don't want to do. As for "theft", well still waiting. 

 

It is unfortunate that on a board like this their comeback is often limited to simple childish insults to other posters.  

Edited July 29, 2025 by cwericb

[Gregmal]

35 minutes ago, cwericb said:

 

Agree entirely. DYW000 asks legitimate questions regarding the cult statements as have I and we get no answers, because when they throw out bullshit they can't back it up. 

Nope. The reason is that largely the TAFFI crowd obsessively nitpicks every stupid little word and digresses into pointless TDS gotcha seeking debates. 

 

Ive never said the US was getting "taken advantage of by the UK"....DYW meanwhile "keeps asking" and frankly I dont know why it's so relevant to his life but it's not to mine.

 

Largely, Trump wants an excuse to extract more revenue from everyone, as Ive said before...so you and he are free to keep asking all these dumb gotchas Trump seeking questions....I dont care, Ill just laugh knowing this is why you guys are just constantly on the wrong end of these things. The deranged rabbit holes are all yours. Who the biggest trading partner is or the degree to which the UK is "taking advantage of the US" is almost entirely meaningless to the macro and the variables at play....but as they say, play stupid games, win stupid prized...you guys and your games...

Edited July 29, 2025 by Gregmal

[dwy000]

1 hour ago, Gregmal said:

Nope. The reason is that largely the TAFFI crowd obsessively nitpicks every stupid little word and digresses into pointless TDS gotcha seeking debates. 

 

Ive never said the US was getting "taken advantage of by the UK"....DYW meanwhile "keeps asking" and frankly I dont know why it's so relevant to his life but it's not to mine.

 

Largely, Trump wants an excuse to extract more revenue from everyone, as Ive said before...so you and he are free to keep asking all these dumb gotchas Trump seeking questions....I dont care, Ill just laugh knowing this is why you guys are just constantly on the wrong end of these things. The deranged rabbit holes are all yours. Who the biggest trading partner is or the degree to which the UK is "taking advantage of the US" is almost entirely meaningless to the macro and the variables at play....but as they say, play stupid games, win stupid prized...you guys and your games...

73 was the one who argued that the tariffs were to stop others from taking advantage of the US.

 

Trump is not extracting more revenues from other countries.  The tariff revenues are paid by US importers.  None of the "investment" amounts touted are real or will likely ever occur. 

 

And keep.in mind the argument for the tariffs in the first place (and the entire legal justification) is fentanyl.  Are we getting a lot of fentanyl from the UK and Japan?

[changegonnacome]

2 hours ago, dwy000 said:

The tariff revenues are paid by US importers

 

Always true...but on a like for like basis....what you find is that depending on the product the true economic cost of the tariff gets absorbed by a mix of the consumer, the importer & the overseas manufacturer.....but then externalities occur also.....domestic consumption falls due to higher prices, trade frictions go up, domestic producers raise prices in the slip stream of the overseas product going up and finally the government now holds capital that was once in the private sectors hands and so it moves from efficient and productive hands to inefficient and unproductive hands.

 

2 hours ago, dwy000 said:

None of the "investment" amounts touted are real or will likely ever occur. 

 

Yes - I can assure you that Ursula von der Leyen does not have the legislative authority to commit a single EU27 country to invest in the USA. Whatever you heard re:EU investment commitment in the US over the next X number of years is complete bullshit.

 

Its clear the US side has focused grouped this element of the announced trade deal and found that MAGA can really wrap their head around this element of deals and so it will be included in every announced deal. Smoke and mirrors would be too kind a word for what is hocus pocus.

[changegonnacome]

Trump says he's shortening deadline for Putin to reach Russia-Ukraine ceasefire to just 10 or 12 days

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-scotland-uk-starmer-eu-trade-deal/

 

50 days.....now 10 or 12 days.......I'm sorry this is totally retarded.......what exactly is Trump going to do in 10 days or 12 days or 50 days or 500 days exactly?........Russia is overwhelming Ukraine on the front lines....and inflicting damage at will behind the lines in Kyiv etc......the artillery mismatch cannot be addressed by the US or Europe.....the shells & industrial capacity simply don't exist anywhere and the manpower mismatch cannot be addressed by the US or Europe because no US soldier or EU soldier is going to die in the mud in Eastern Ukraine. Sanctions have been pushed to their limit and haven't worked, so pray tell how secondary sanctions are going to change anything?

 

This is very poor politics, if nothing else, by Trump to continue to entwine himself further into the narrative fabric of this war....his naive peacetalk talk at the start of his term was hubris, throwing Ukraine publicly under the Kremlin bus embarrassing and counterproductive, all while he has completely misjudged the nature of his relationship with Putin.....to say nothing of the fact that Trump's peace envoy to Ukraine/Russia, is also his peace envoy to the Gaza/Israel conflict and also the guy managing the US/Israel/Iran portfolio.....to which you might say well this guy is a foreign affairs genius, a peace whisperer with 50yrs experience......nope its Steve Witcoff....a Manhattan real estate developer turned Henry Kissinger a few months ago.

 

If all that weren't enough this 10 day ultimatum bravado shows a complete lack of understanding of the realities on the battlefield and the strategic options left to the US/Europe to affect meaningful change on the battlefield. Short answer there are none. This is a battle of attrition.

 

As best I can tell Russia is likely to collapse the Ukrainian front lines during Trump's term (perhaps within the year) and drive forward to take whatever territory they feel in Ukraine is sustainable to hold without too many on-going headaches from dissidents (i.e. they'll have an ethno-Russian population density overlay, so going to far West is not attractive)....this likely means at least a full takeover of the four oblasts in the East.....and my guess is, once the front lines fall, some territorial expansion beyond this that will later be used as demilitarized buffer zone as well as some useless (to Russia) territorial expansion that they can give back at the negotiating table later as a zero cost bargaining chip.

 

Very surprised to see Trump play a game of chicken he's going to loose......it does nothing to further the war in Ukraine and serves only to dent what credibility he has on the world stage left......Xi must be laughing into his tea at these shenanigans......while thinking to himself, what better time than the next three years might there be to move on Taiwan....when such a strategic military amateur is in the White House and one who clearly doesn't listen to those with more experience around him.

 

Edited July 29, 2025 by changegonnacome

[cubsfan]

You, Putin and President Xi can laugh all you want.

The Ayatollah ain't laughing.

[Xerxes]

23 minutes ago, changegonnacome said:

Trump says he's shortening deadline for Putin to reach Russia-Ukraine ceasefire to just 10 or 12 days

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-scotland-uk-starmer-eu-trade-deal/

 

50 days.....now 10 or 12 days.......I'm sorry this is totally retarded.......what exactly is Trump going to do in 10 days or 12 days or 50 days or 500 days exactly?........Russia is overwhelming Ukraine on the front lines....and inflicting damage at will behind the lines in Kyiv etc......the artillery mismatch cannot be addressed by the US or Europe.....the shells & industrial capacity simply don't exist anywhere and the manpower mismatch cannot be addressed by the US or Europe because no US soldier or EU soldier is going to die in the mud in Eastern Ukraine. Sanctions have been pushed to their limit and haven't worked, so pray tell how secondary sanctions are going to change anything?

 

This is very poor politics, if nothing else, by Trump to continue to entwine himself further into the narrative fabric of this war....his naive peacetalk talk at the start of his term was hubris, throwing Ukraine publicly under the Kremlin bus embarrassing and counterproductive, all while he has completely misjudged the nature of his relationship with Putin.....to say nothing of the fact that Trump's peace envoy to Ukraine/Russia, is also his peace envoy to the Gaza/Israel conflict and also the guy managing the US/Israel/Iran portfolio.....to which you might say well this guy is a foreign affairs genius, a peace whisperer with 50yrs experience......nope its Steve Witcoff....a Manhattan real estate developer turned Henry Kissinger a few months ago.

 

If all that weren't enough this 10 day ultimatum bravado shows a complete lack of understanding of the realities on the battlefield and the strategic options left to the US/Europe to affect meaningful change on the battlefield. Short answer there are none. This is a battle of attrition.

 

As best I can tell Russia is likely to collapse the Ukrainian front lines during Trump's term (perhaps within the year) and drive forward to take whatever territory they feel in Ukraine is sustainable to hold without too many on-going headaches from dissidents (i.e. they'll have an ethno-Russian population density overlay, so going to far West is not attractive)....this likely means at least a full takeover of the four oblasts in the East.....and my guess is, once the front lines fall, some territorial expansion beyond this that will later be used as demilitarized buffer zone as well as some useless (to Russia) territorial expansion that they can give back at the negotiating table later as a zero cost bargaining chip.

 

Very surprised to see Trump play a game of chicken he's going to loose......it does nothing to further the war in Ukraine and serves only to dent what credibility he has on the world stage left......Xi must be laughing into his tea at this shenanigans......while thinking to himself, what better time than the next three years might there be to move on Taiwan....when such a strategic military amateur is in the White House and one who clearly doesn't listen to those with more experience around him.

i think you didn’t say the part that was the most important. 
 

the entire Russian economy has been turned into a war economy geared to support the war.* There are lot of vested interests to keep the war humming. New oligarchs are being created. 
 

the poor part of the Russian society from which the manpower are extracted also benefit a lot by the sign-up bonus and death-bonuses. 
 

The elite sitting in Moscow and St Petersburg had only to give up their European travels but not their sons

and daughters. 
 

If the war were to be stopped now, there would be a recession and a repeat of Iraq in 1988 when a relatively large army now suddenly had no job. 
 

PS: lastly, Tsar Alexander made it to Paris, Stalin made it to Berlin, Putin needs to do more than just make it to Donbas. 

*note how a civilian replaced General Shoigu as a minister of defense in early 2024. This was Russia’ Albert Speer moment. 
 

 

 

Edited July 29, 2025 by Xerxes