You'd think so but Le Pen is pretty directly on the record that politicians that do financial fraud should get barred from running. Whoops.
Funny events in anti-woke world
- Thread starter Agema
- Start date
The laws may matter, but their implementation is often skewed. For example, if X kills Y in a stroke of rage, X gets 20ish years of prison. Now, if Y were a CEO of a health insurance company and X hated health insurance companies, then Y would get the death penalty or even life imprisonment. Because generally it's bad to kill leaders of large orgs because you disagree with them unless your a Tik-Tok influencer who argues otherwise. So, yes, murder is a crime, but why they murder matters, and their impact matters more.
If you are Le-Pen, someone who has ties to Russia, who is a geopolitical adversary of the EU, it matters more than if you are an insert random EU leader.
The far right has long since taken this stance because they've been too far from power to make much use of corruption. Once they get power, of course, they plan on simply nobbling the police, courts and media to prevent their corruption ever being brought to light.
However, the far right are currently making hay through what amounts to a protest vote against regular parties because voters are so disenchanted with politics. Consequently, the "politicised justice" argument is much more effectively than we might like, because that's exactly what their supporters will be inclined to think. Even though the French courts have shown integrity in dealing with corrupt politicians (ex-president Nicolas Sarkozy was jailed for corruption), I suspect that will carry little weight.
Trump has apparently had a massive hard-on for tariffs since the 1980s, so this is probably a longstanding plan of his. I think it is not necessarily that Trump hired an incompetent economist, it's that he made sure there wasn't a competent economist around to disagree with him. During Trump 1, there were adults in the room to hold him back. He learnt from that, and made sure that this time he had yes men.
Plus, this isn't economics, it's a shakedown. Trump has the mentality of a mob boss: the intent here is nothing but attempting to force countries to make concessions or face trade disadvantages. This is the gang going along the street smashing the windows and having a little chat with the storeholders about what they need to do to stop their windows being broken. See also the "Mar-a-Lago Accord". The basic idea of Trump's policy is that the USA is so super-important that other countries will be willing to pay tribute to access its markets.
The question then is how this plays out. I think Trump is about to find out that the US market is not as important as he thinks, and most of the rest of the world is not interested in paying tribute. The question is whether Trump backs down, or this calcifies into the protectionist new normal.
Trump had issues with tariffs last time. He targeted China (probably an overall good strategy) but everyone forgets that China knows Capitalism better than anyone else. They got around Trump's tariffs (eg. Send it all through Mexico or Thailand) and put on targeted reciprocal tariffs that punished Americans. China suplexed Trump during the last trade war, handily enriching their coffers and came about looking good as they weren't the one provoking
Trump is a double downer. Every single time he makes a stupid move, he doubles down rather than learns from it. So instead of targeted tariffs (which economist might agree with), he's doing blanket ones to make sure China can't ship through another country. While there is a shakedown motive, what's more important is that he proves himself 'RIGHT'.
If Trump didn't do his last trade war, China might have had an economic collapse by now. He is certainly saving China again economically this time around. Trump cannot learn that waiting China out would have beaten China more than what he's doing now. China was self sabotaging themselves. All we had to do was be patient.
Now, due to his own double down nature, he broke everything. I, as an Australian, suggest our country to look anywhere else for help because America isn't going to help anyone, especially themselves
Trump is a double downer. Every single time he makes a stupid move, he doubles down rather than learns from it. So instead of targeted tariffs (which economist might agree with), he's doing blanket ones to make sure China can't ship through another country. While there is a shakedown motive, what's more important is that he proves himself 'RIGHT'.
If Trump didn't do his last trade war, China might have had an economic collapse by now. He is certainly saving China again economically this time around. Trump cannot learn that waiting China out would have beaten China more than what he's doing now. China was self sabotaging themselves. All we had to do was be patient.
Now, due to his own double down nature, he broke everything. I, as an Australian, suggest our country to look anywhere else for help because America isn't going to help anyone, especially themselves
I don't think there is a way to tariff China efficiently. They use ports in Vietnam and Mexico to get around it. There are BYD cars/dealerships in Mexico as we speak, but no Americans want to touch them due to the fact that if they break down, their parts are hard to get.
Plus, the demand for products from China is too high; it will just create a black market at best and an underground economy at worst. And then some academic in IR or Econ will call it gray zone economics/trading, or what have you, and then the next thing will occur.
Biden was smart; he forced China and Russia to use middlemen to sell their goods, like India, Vietnam, and Mexico. Guess who our allies are, those countries. And China lost money doing that while strengthening US allies (minus Mexico somewhat).
Without Chinese goods and Russian resources, the world would be in a recession. Heck, without Chinese Deepseek, Sam Altman would charge an arm and a leg for his expensive chatbots, whereas right now you can use ChatGPT 4.5 with just a 20 dollar membership but just less of it. But the sanctions were killing the Russian economy, and forcing China to rethink its approach.
Milton Freeman himself stated that Japanese steel and refined machinery entering the US for US dollars was a good deal. I think Trump overplayed his hand. And the more he bluffs, the more people will see through it.
To be fair, I don't think the tariff needs to be "efficient". It just needs to be painful enough that China will make concessions that the USA wants. Even if China uses third countries to bypass some tariffs, as you note it still imposes additional costs on Chinese exports: the question is really how much.
In theory, of course, if China uses a third country to bypass tariffs then that third country will export more to the USA, so the USA's trade deficit with that country would increase, and according to the formula applied, that third country's tariffs will go up!
heard it amusingly described recently as certain type of person who've come to learn that acting like adult sized babies protects them from the average consequences those who rely on words have used to deal with normal adults, for words have no effect on babies and when they're full sized it leaves the people who only believed in words dazed and confused, lacking alternative options - depleted of solutions, paralysed, watching the adult babies continue unfazed, barreling maladroitly through meaning, seeking any validating tit they can latch on to and drain, coddled by captured majority of fawning simpering media networks more concerned with preserving their own career and capital than the damage around them
