Politics Thread!

[F-ZeroOne]

Theres another, largely US based, forum I sometimes frequent that has a strict "no politics" rule in for what I will call, for want of better words, its "pop culture" forum. It will be... interesting... to see how the current discussion on the Switch 2 handles that.

I have a proposal - if we all manage to get through the next four years, and assuming Trump has left office (dragging and screaming, in an ambulance, in handcuffs, at gunpoint, I'm not fussy) then from that point on, all mention of him should be just... stopped. Oh, still able to be discussed in history books and the like, but any reporting on whats hes said, is doing etc in the media just... don't. Eight years will have been more than enough by then...

[KlaxonCow]

There's no point trying to field concessions from Trump.

He calculated this from Internet domains and a ChatGPT formula - absolutely nothing about those countries or their positions to America were accounted for. Not an inch. It's right there in the numbers themselves, that he doesn't care and hasn't listened to a single word, however praising and sycophantic they were.

The rest of the world, including Starmer (if he wishes to avoid being the next Neville "peace in our time" Chamberlain), should be resolved to follow Canada's lead, and just cut America out of international trade.

Elbows up!

(In case you're wondering, it's from ice hockey. If the opposition is coming for you, then you keep your elbows up. Give 'em a quick jab when they get close. An aggressive defensive position. You're not out to get them, but if they're coming for you, then you're prepared to start elbowing them in the head. A short sharp shock.)

[KlaxonCow]

Oh, there's a massive omission on Trump's list: Russia.

He's imposing no tariffs whatsoever on his best mate, Putin. Or on North Korea, Putin's mercenary recruitment grounds.

They escape even the "base line" tariff of 10% imposed on pretty much every country on the planet, which includes, by the way, Ukraine.

So the invaded country of Ukraine pays 10% tariffs, while the Russian invader pays no tariffs at all.

Can we stop pretending that Trump is remotely neutral in this?

[zip accident]

Neville "peace in our time" Chamberlain

Chamberlain was reallly upset at having been lied to, it was his government that declared war, he died soon after.

[F-ZeroOne]

Interesting take on things from an unexpected source - board/role-playing game makers. For context, Steve Jackson Games (and to avoid confusion, not the Steve Jackson who did the "Fighting Fantasy" books) have been around forever, while the second company makes "Tokaido" which you've probably seen on the shelf at Waterstones:

https://www.sjgames.com/ill/archive/2025-04-03

https://stonemaiergames.com/the-darkest-timeline/

Stonemaier games makes a good point - yes, even if you can source your counters, dice, etc from the US many of the companies that make the machines that make the counters, dice etc are also made in China and subject to tariffs...

[KlaxonCow]

[tufty]

Alan is a clueless fucking twunt. We buy more from the states than we sell to them.

https://ustr.gov/countries-regions/euro ... ed-kingdom

U.S. goods exports to the United Kingdom in 2024 were $79.9 billion …. U.S. goods imports from the United Kingdom totaled $68.1 billion in 2024

[KlaxonCow]

https://stonemaiergames.com/the-darkest-timeline/

Stonemaier games makes a good point - yes, even if you can source your counters, dice, etc from the US many of the companies that make the machines that make the counters, dice etc are also made in China and subject to tariffs...

Yes, this is what I was saying earlier, about how even if businesses were willing and wanted to manufacture in the US, they just can't afford to.

If you're moving your operations to America, then it's got to be 100% of everything. If some of your source material is from elsewhere, then you're facing the tariffs.

This is a massive investment to make. Straight off the bat, many businesses can't afford it, full stop. Even where they could, what are you investing in? A domestic market that's almost certainly going to be plagued by massive inflation and recession from the chaos the tariffs are causing. You get your business set up in America, only to find that consumer spending is non-existent and no Americans are buying. Because they can't, as they're all fucking poor from this reckless Presidential action.

And due to retaliatory tariffs - which helps explain why they are employed - you can only really cater to the American market now. If you want to import your goods from your new American base of operations to the rest of the world, you're facing tariffs again. The retaliatory tariffs are to ensure that there is, in fact, no advantage to taking up Trump's offer.

If you move to the US, then you're stuck there. You're catering to the American domestic market, and the international market is as tariff-ed as the American market is in the other direction.

Which brings me back to the simple fact that America is 5% of global population. Forced into this "all or nothing" situation, the logical arithmetical choice here - the path of least resistance - is "fuck America". Cut them out, work your way around them. Expand your markets into Europe, India, Asia to try to make up the difference of losing America.

It's a very niche kind of business, that needs the American market for whatever reason, where taking Trump on his offer makes any sense.

This is a self-inflicted wound and it's going to hurt America badly, when it realises the truth: The rest of the world can function without them, and now that it's being forced to, it'll build up its infrastructure to no longer depend on America.

Trump never understood. America interferes with other countries and ploughs money into them for "soft power". To have influence. It was a voluntary thing from America, because it benefited her. He's thrown that right out the window and the rest of the world will learn not to rely on it, through necessity, and then it'll be gone for good, as it won't be easily reversible. He's Making America Less Important Again.

[zip accident]

Which brings me back to the simple fact that America is 5% of global population.

What % of global GDP is in/from the USA?

[Mayhem]

Which brings me back to the simple fact that America is 5% of global population.

What % of global GDP is in/from the USA?

26%

[PFVA]

Millions of people took part in protests against President Donald Trump and Elon Musk across all 50 states and globally on Saturday, organized by a pro-democracy movement in response to what they call a “hostile takeover” and attack on American rights and freedoms.

https://edition.cnn.com/2025/04/05/us/h ... index.html

[KlaxonCow]

Remember when Trump got Covid? He wasn't in a good way.

The doctor who saved his life has been mass-fired by Elon's DOGE.



Although, unlike the people in the video, I don't think there's any point to appealing to Trump with this information. He really wouldn't care. The peasants did their duty in protecting their God King. He wouldn't believe there to be any debt owed.

(But it does give any prospective Marty McFly from the future another point in time where they could travel back in time to help bump him off easily, before he became a problem.)

[KlaxonCow]

Obligatory compilation clip of Republicans, who are now Trump loyalists pretending it's all great, decrying how tariffs are an atrociously bad idea that only harms Americans and allies:

[KlaxonCow]

Okay, the mathematical analysis of the tariffs is in.



The equation is a bit wrong, as they've reversed the top two numbers, so it all comes out negative, for no particular reason. Half the equation is, in fact, meaningless, as two of the variables cancel out - almost like the extra terms were added just to make it look like more complicated maths than it actually is.

And what it's calculating is a rate that's half (why half? It's just an arbitrary "discount", apparently) of what's required to balance trade deficits.

But a trade deficit simply means that, for example, America buys more New Zealand lamb, eggs and wine - amongst its top exports to the US - than America sells fighter jets and nuclear power stations back to New Zealand.

But there's no logical reason why these things should be equal. New Zealand is not "ripping off" America by selling it more of its produce to them, than they are selling things that are in a completely different category for completely different reasons.

America has to buy exactly as much lamb and eggs from New Zealand as New Zealand buys aircraft from America? Umm, why?

(And, you know, if America had decent food safety standards, then it would likely sell tons of food to the rest of the planet - more than it imports, I reckon - if their exports weren't ILLEGAL TO SELL because they've bleached all the chicken and the eggs - which means the eggs have to be refrigerated, at extra cost - to hide the fact that their animal welfare standards are fucking atrocious. It has to be understood that the reason why they are bleaching the chickens and the eggs is to wash off the shit and blood and other atrocious things that should never be getting anywhere near the food, to hide the horrid mistreatment that occurs in their over-industrialised food production facilities.

And, no, we're not taking your over-production of high fructose corn syrup because it makes American food taste like shit in comparison to actual sugar or even sweeteners, when you could just stop over-subsidising that particular product. Which is a sin that, of course, not only America is guilty of - if Europe stopped over-subsidising butter production, for instance, then there wouldn't be a "butter mountain" just sitting there rotting.)

Plus, as they've just arbitrarily halved all these values - calling it a "discount" - then it doesn't even achieve that trade balance anyway. It's only aiming to get halfway there.

Basically, this is all nonsensical bollocks. They have, in fairness, grabbed the right equation for balancing trade deficits. But that's not what the stated aim was, and why do you want to balance it out to zero anyway? A trade deficit isn't intrinsically bad. It just means one country needs more stuff from another country than in reverse, which is a perfectly natural state of affairs.

(As one of the comments on this video neatly puts it: "I must rectify my trade deficit with the local grocer! I buy far more bread from him than he buys things from me after all". And this is not your local grocer "ripping you off", of course. You get bread, he gets money. You're not actually selling any stuff for him to buy anyway. This is perfectly fair trade and no-one is being "ripped off" by it.)

If New Zealand doesn't need any more fighter jets - it's got enough of them for now - then why should the American consumer be charged more for a bottle of New Zealand wine to go with their New Zealand lamb?

The halving is completely arbitrary and has no justification. The 10% "base rate" even for countries that are in trade surplus with the US is completely arbitrary.

And why are Russia and North Korea spared that 10% "base rate"? Yes, they are not in trade deficit with America (mainly because, you know, they're under sanctions, so very little to zero trade is happening at all). But every other country in that position is getting charged a "base rate" of 10%. But Putin - and Putin's "mercenary" recruitment ground - is being spared this for no given reason whatsoever.

Honestly, if Trump quoting Russian propaganda word-for-word and then launching an obviously pre-planned "humiliation" attack on the President of Ukraine, before surrendering everything before going to a "negotiation" with Russia (that Ukraine was not party to) wasn't already so blatant, then Russian "Agent Orange" inexplicably excusing only Russia, and its singular pariah ally of North Korea, from the tariffs confirms it. Not even Israel got that preferential treatment.

The US President is working for Russia. The turkeys voted for Christmas and put Putin's "Manchurian candidate" in office. Trump is going to ruin the American economy and send it towards at least a recession by these moves. He's following orders to "disable" America as a threat to Putin's and Russia's on-going plans.

He works for Putin and the Russian oligarchs. It's the only logical conclusion now.

[KlaxonCow]

We buy more from the states than we sell to them.

U.S. goods exports to the United Kingdom in 2024 were $79.9 billion …. U.S. goods imports from the United Kingdom totaled $68.1 billion in 2024

Honestly, those figures are near enough the same - as they're never going to exactly align - to declare that to be a trade balance.

And, overall, the UK is in trade surplus with the US. That's why we're only getting the 10% "base rate". By the administration's own figures (double-checked in the maths video above), the UK's trade deficit is -0.17 or a 17% trade surplus.

We only just fractionally buy more than we sell to them. Indeed, only 4 countries in the world are closer to a trade balance of zero than us. It's near enough a tit-for-tat, honestly.

And the figure the UK was given is 10% according to the formula. No concession for Starmer's arse licking of Trump was accounted for at all. He completely wasted his time trying to 'rizz the Orange One.

We should increasingly source from Europe instead. Particularly on defence, as America's proven itself a very unreliable partner, who has openly declared that it is abandoning the defence of Europe (not the EU, but Europe - so it does include us).

Even if we're not reversing Brexit - though, honestly, at this point, is anyone remotely convinced that was a good move? - then we need to enter into a European-wide defence pact, as an "affiliate member", if required, to join whilst not being in the EU (and I'm sure we'll find the Swiss and Norway and others - including Canada, Australia and others as well, perhaps - making a similar deal). To replace NATO, because Trump's America pretty obviously is not going to honour Article 5 anymore.

I mean, if Trump lands troops in Greenland (or Canada), he'll be in breach of Article 5.

Europe and the rest of the world has to cut America out of global trade and continue without them. Make new arrangements that bypass and exclude them. Let them fall into an economic slump that might hopefully make the American people rise up - at the midterms, in protest, in defiance.

Put the "sic semper tyrannis" back into our American cousins once more.