Meta’s chief global affairs officer Joel Kaplan accused the Commission of trying to “handicap successful American businesses while allowing Chinese and European companies to operate under different standards
We all see where this is going, right? Anti-competitive behaviour now being framed as “USA #1” patriotism and actively defended by MAGA via tariffs and trade policy.
People outside the US need to stop using American platforms.
I would have said the same thing until I saw this new meme format.
I’m not gonna pretend that the billions squandered and the environmental damage was worth the meme, but those are sunk costs so at least we get this out of it?
I’m not sure why you deleted that, because you’re absolutely correct.
If not for being targeted, my own country would have elected a shitbird and we’d have become the lone US toady as the world isolated both of our countries, while the Americans treated us like an open pit mine.
So it’s not that I think my countrymen are inherently superior. The Albertans who want to create a landlocked country — deeply vulnerable to American bullying — are acting dumber than the poverty stricken folks supporting Spraytan.
And it’s not that I don’t trust democracy, I do trust that it’s reflecting will of the people. The American voters have shown a lack of priority to respecting their own commitments worldwide and a dislike of the world order that placed them at the centre. So while many in the country do have that commitment, their inability to keep the deplorables out of power means that the rest of the world can have no illusions about depending on them going forward.
It’s not just money, it’s the realization that we are nothing to them. It’s the betrayal of seeing someone you thought was a friend stab you in the front without remorse.
So I do believe it is different this time. Perhaps history will reveal you to be correct — PP yipping about being “Americas best friend” indicates at some think the old status quo will return — but I don’t think so.
I’d throw in greed and ignorance into the mix but yes
Oh, you misunderstand me.
Absolutely yes, people will continue to trade with the US after a few years. Hell, they are still doing it today!
What’s different is the level of dependence the rest of the world will enable in the future. Their special status no longer applies; and there is no trust they will be good actors in the future.
Long term cooperation will be built in anticipation of likely irrational and volatile behaviour. Something like the integrated North American auto industry or aligning with the US as primary defence contractor or intelligence, these mistakes will be not be repeated.
There will continue to be trade, but across the world a higher priority will be given to domestic production and alternative suppliers for critical products. For example Canada had been slowly retreating from our protectionist policies on dairy — but instead I expect these to now be strengthened. I expect to see a stronger push away from reliance on the US for military equipment, semiconductors, financial and digital services, and more.
I need to hire you to summarize my lengthy pretentious blathering into a nice concise sentence. :)
From my perspective in Canada, there’s nothing the US can do to unfuck this situation.
Let’s say folks unseated Comrade Spraytan somehow and reversed all of his policies. I would still never trust their country again with economic or security dependence in the way that much of the world has enabled in the status quo.
It was the American voters who selected this foolishness, not once but twice. They and their country will not be trusted for a generation or maybe longer. They threw away a very good thing for them because of abject greed, and now it’s gone forever.
Over-estimating is just as dangerous. People – and our governments – keep getting surprised by this pattern of behaviour because we pig-headedly refuse to admit the truth.
In order for our countries to plan economic matters, and defense and intelligence and more – we need to expect the same patterns of stupidity and irrationality as we’ve seen demonstrated time and time again. This doesn’t mean all the actions will be stupid – folks like Putin other intelligent evildoers are in the mix of those who are manipulating the president. But they have shown a lack of ability to fully control the irrational behaviour from surfacing in policy whims.
Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me thousands of times… c’mon at some point we have to learn.
We’ve all been conditioned to not accuse our political opponents of being stupid.
For one, it can cause you to underestimate your opponents — you don’t want to be caught unawares of some secret plan.
Second, there’s an aspect of pettiness to just labeling your opponents dumb. Most often people attribute “stupid” to “I don’t understand this”. For example, the idea of it being stupid for poor people in Kentucky or whatever to vote against their interests and aid billionaires and oppose their own healthcare — when it’s not stupid, it’s a misunderstanding of how important identity politics are to these groups.
Third, there’s a pushback to the “Jon Stewart effect”, where we sit back and laugh about how our opponents are dumb and we smugly know we are smarter. This is an excuse to do nothing, and it’s an ugly impulse and we must fight it.
But all this conditioning — and more — has led us to a point where we can’t actually recognize stupid when it’s staring us in the face.
The video doesn’t show evidence of this being a planned out endeavour.
For it to be grift, those people would have had to benefitted from the dip in some way. But that’s not what this shows, it’s just billionaires having their shares go down in value because of trumps idiocy and then back up from the whiplash when he erratically reversed course.
Spraytan is trying to ingratiate himself to these rich assholes by taking credit for their gains by wilfully ignoring their losses were inflicted by him.
This is not to say that no one in the administration is using this for their own gains. It’s entirely likely that some are.
I’m just super sick of this narrative that Trump secretly has some master plan when we have 40+ years of well documented evidence about how stupid this man is.
Oh my gourd please stop
He is a failed nepo baby whose only successes in life were being a hired hand on a reality tv show and accidentally stumbling into politics via undisguised racism.
He
Is
A
Fucking
Moron
It’s important to the world to drop the “quietly” bit.
The US administration is behaving erratically and irrationally. This isn’t a punchline to some smug joke, it has important repercussions for world trade and defence needs.
Let’s cut the conspiracy theories about how they are doing this for graft, and the unfounded “4d chess” approaches. Some people in the administration may be trying to steer the government in these ways, but the captain of the ship is an unleashed chaos monkey surrounded by sycophantic yes-men.
The tariffs could double tomorrow or be gone tomorrow. The US could invade Greenland with a military force tomorrow or drop it completely move onto some shiny new idiocy.
We in the rest of the world need to move with urgency in order to be prepared for the worst. This is a tall task, so the longer we keep these admissions quiet the longer we are vulnerable
I researched this phone a bit and found a few hands-on reviews including this one
Seems quite promising!
American policy is tearing apart homes, ruining people’s lives, causing harm to vulnerable people, triggering layoffs and upheaval worldwide, normalizing graft and corruption at the highest levels, and is putting an end the democratic process.
So yes, let’s talk about how some rich tourists feel a bit bad. It’s their struggles that we really need to focus on.
I ended up going with Nellie’s. On their website they have bulk options that are less than half the per-unit prices found in Canadian Tire or grocery stores.
It’s still a lot more expensive than what a generic chemical “should” be — I do miss my Great Value. But it’s Canadian, it’s not pods, and it works great.
Is it correct to assume that they do it elsewhere, if they don’t clearly disclose where their printing is done?
I think it’s correct to assume that in general across most product categories. It’s worth inquiring still perhaps, but just a good base assumption.
I am willing to pay more to avoid the US but I strongly prefer that extra goes to smaller businesses.
For example for dishwasher detergent powder I’m willing to pay extra compared to my mainstay Great Value, but I don’t want to give Pattison or Weston and the cartels $$$$ to sell me ridiculously priced stuff. But I can order direct from Nellie’s and it comes out more but I’m ok with that.
Local markets can often have extremely good deals, as with the soon-to-expire-food apps. Being flexible on what you buy can help you get good prices and still local and non-US.
“Born on third, thinks he got a triple”
Not just defence but so many aspects of the modern world primarily disproportionately benefit the US.
The rest of the world at-least-vaguely recognized this for a while, but inertia made this an impossible proposition. America had an incredibly good thing going for them, but thanks to greed and ignorance it still wasn’t enough.
Their loss is our gain, as the inertia is broken and we now have impetus to make the changes we’ve needed to do for quite some time. We will sever dependence on the US for defence and finance and trade, and be better off for it.