dear republicans, what's the point of alienating every single ally of the US?

The people you need to hear from aren't using Lemmy.

OP should try Truth Social, I hear it's technically a Mastodon fork...
- Ew.
- It’s mastodon? I thought it was a different fediverse platform.
- Can you imagine them federaring their content? What a stream of odd toots that would be!
- Whoa!!!!?!
OP's also not going to get an answer that's interesting or helpful out of them even if you go to where they live and ask and don't get immediately flamed for asking.

There's no acceptable answer for it. I have plenty of conservative friends and I could make sense of voting for Trump the first time. Not for me, FUCK that, but not all Trump v1 supporters were racists and there were valid conservative reasons to vote for him. He was definitely an unknown, nobody could have told you with certainty how he would act once in office. I could have told you what I expected and it was about as horrible as I expected, but people often see things in politicians that they want to see, rather than seeing what's really there.

But any of the "OK to vote for Trump v1" falls apart completely for Trump v2. We saw what his first term was like and especially how it ended. His campaign in 2024 was even more unhinged and less grounded in reality than in 2016. Voting for him in 2024 is really inexcusable.

The US will be unimaginably worse off by the time Trump leaves office this time, tariffs and tax cuts for the rich and inflation, it's going to be bad for Americans on an individual level. On a global level, Trump will have shredded alliances and any goodwill we had built up over the past decades, while also validating and confirming the world's worst concerns about us.

And when Trump does finally leave office, the people you want to hear from will largely feel like it was a phenomenal presidency. It is a cult and logic and reason don't have anything to do with it.
- I’d love to believe this, but cynical me is thinking about those conservatives that look at Milei in Argentina and legitimately think it’s going great.
Conservative on sh.itjust.works appears to be conservatives.
- I have my doubts about that. Most of the mass posters are too "conservative" and lean extremely hard into stereotypes. They take racism and bigotry just a bit too far in many cases and it doesn't quite align with actual conservative bigots and racists that I know.
  
  It wouldn't be surprising if most of the "conservative" communities are part of the same troll farm that lives primarily on other instances.
  
  This is all speculation, of course. But, organized campaigns to spread discourse on social media are real and some of these trolls are really good at what they do.
Sadly true. We actively searched for alternatives when we realised other channels were getting too manipulative and full of hate. Those who stayed haven't even realised it.

If they were capable of thinking critically, they wouldn’t be Republicans in the first place.

Good luck finding many of them around here. They find out pretty quickly that they aren't welcome.

You're never going to get a satisfying answer to this question, because there is no actual reason. If you want, you can go peek in on the conservative subreddits and watch their gold-medal winning mental gymnastics, but the reason Trump is doing this is Putin told him to. The U.S. is destroying themselves for no gain.

for no gain.

Nearly $3 billion USD flowed through the TRUMP cryptocoin rugpull, whoever owned initial coins made very, very large gains.

The $3 billion in quid buys a lot of anti-Ukraine pro quo

But, thanks to the Supreme Court, Trump could go on national TV and say he change US policy on Ukraine because he was bribed and he'd still be immune to any legal consequences (other than impeachment, but never anything criminal).
- Nearly $3 billion USD flowed through the TRUMP cryptocoin
  
  But wait, there's more. Us taxpayer money will now be used to "invest" in these crypto scams.
- There's a lot of traitors in this country, but the conservatives on the Supreme Court may be at the top of the list.
It's like that scene in the Incredibles where Mr. Incredible gets inside the robot, and has it tear itself to pieces. Except an entire country. And ~88,000,000 people voted against self-destruction and are being dragged off a cliff.
Because they think it owns the libs, plain and simple!

They don't care about cooperation, everything is a deal to them. If some other country has something, we don't. The entire worldview of Republicans is just capitalism, if something can't be framed in terms of profit it's not worth pursuing.

They're fucking Ferengis

Ferengis were meant to be a caricature of our current society, so yes, Ferengi fits.
Don't insult Ferengis. They're actually smart.
- And comply with contracts
"You're overlooking something"

The answer is: they do not give a shit.

They do not care about the US as a country.

They do not care about the Americans as a people.

They do not care about the economy.

They do not care about anything apart from their own personal interest. Lining their own pockets is all they care about. If someone helps them do that, they are friends with them. If they don't, they do not matter.

Congratulations, you now officially live in a cleptocracy where they shake you down, take all of your money and give it to the guys who already have billions. All the taxes they claim to save by obliterating social security, affordable care etc? They are not going back to you, they will stuff them in Musk's pockets through bullshit contracts and other schemes.

And at the same time, they are critically crippling the IRS to make sure the billionairs no longer even have to pretend to pay taxes.

You're describing the Republican politicians. The Republican voters are a different bag entirely.

Out of the ones I have discussed politics with, their underlying motivations for supporting Trump are emotionally driven but explained through rhetoric aligning with their emotional motivations. It tends to be grouped into one of a few different feelings:

cost of living/financial security --- immigrants' fault, taxes, foreign nations taking advantage of US generosity

fear of change/bigotry --- immigrants, "DEI", "wokeness", border security

American exceptionalism/egotism --- immigrants, 1st ammendment

distrust of federal government --- "DEI", government corruption, regulatory overreach, socialism = communism

distrust of industry --- vaccines harmful, science bad

Aside from the bigotry and exceptionalism, those emotions aren't necessarily wrong. Cost of living increases, politicians owned by lobbyists, and profit-driven privatization of essential services are actual problems. The issue with conservatives is that they have scapegoats to blame those problems on instead of acknowledging the underlying causes. All it takes is some loudmouth, ignorant jackass offering an overly-simplified, emotionally-compelling solution to a complex problem, and others will latch on to it, oversimplify and exaggerate it even more, and disseminate it until the rest of them start believing it.

People can be hateful, narcissistic pieces of shit, and it goes without saying that this repugnant rhetoric is spread intentionally. But, it's also a direct consequence of a public education system failing among a landscape of patriotic propaganda and media controlled by a powerful few who put profit and self-gain above the health of society.

When someone grows up being told America is a flawless nation, that self-reliance is the foundational trait of success, is never educated to think critically of the government and media, and is bombarded by a neverending stream of false information that validates their fears and lulls them into feeling smarter than everyone else, they end up being indoctrinated into the right-wing cult we have today.

They won't blame foundational American principles (like the economic ideology) for American problems—they were made to believe America is perfect. It must be something external (like immigrants) making their life worse.

They won't question those they believe have authority over them—the teacher is always right. If Trump says it's the Democrats fault, it's the Democrats fault.

They won't make an effort to understand other views—self-reliance is antithetical to empathy, and they had it ingrained which one was more important. The only person they can trust is themselves and by extension those who agree.

They also won't need to understand other views. With the breadth of echo chambers available at the tip of their fingers, it's easy to seek and reinforce conservative views, social connection, and validation. Chuck McFuck has a sole trans daughter who begrudgingly interacts with him, in contrast to his 10,000 friendly and cooperative buddies on r/conservative.

To cripple the US so it is no longer a threat to Russia, and they can move in to "reclaim" all those Baltic nations and maybe even cop the EU.

Not just Russia. Any kind of meaningful restraint on multinational corps & billionaires requires international cooperation, or the entity just changes the region where it stores/performs/recognizes whatever thing.
- I think we're gonna learn the hard way its actually not okay to let corporations become more powerful than most nations.

Going to steel man this since theres obviously no one on here answering this question seriously. Not a republican and don't agree with all this, just imagining what my republican dad would say about this:

For ukraine and Europe, we have no interest in protecting them besides sentimental attachments. Ukraine is not our problem, it's Europe's and if they want to dump money into a lost cause by all means go ahead, but leave the u.s. out of it unless your going to compensate us for it. The u.s. isn't threatened by Russia, we have an ocean, the world's largest navy and nukes to protect us. The larger threat is China and we should be focusing on them, not russia which can barely invade it's neighbor, much less march across Europe and the atlantic. Europe can handle its own problems.

For Canada and Mexico and tarriffs in general. We need to bring manufacturing back to America and revitalize the rust belt. We can't do that if companies find it more profitable to go over seas and pay people pennies when they'd have to pay Americans much more. The only way to get them to come back is to make it too expensive to import things.

This is all about putting America first. For decades America has been spending billions to protect Europe and has been sending billions of dollars over seas to build factories owhile factory after factory closes here in the u.s. We need to stop all of that and spend our money in America for Americans.

Feel free to use this comment as a punching bag, I don't care, just trying to give OP an actual answer if this was a legitimate question and not some rhetorical question seeking affirmation on how dumb the Republicans are. They are, don't get me wrong, but just say so and don't dress it up in questions like this.

We need to bring manufacturing back to America and revitalize the rust belt. We can't do that if companies find it more profitable to go over seas and pay people pennies when they'd have to pay Americans much more.

Canada has

Higher wages

More safety regs

One of those must be the issue. ;-)
This is a good steel man response, very much like Facebook posts I have seen lately. It's really sad how much the right has abandoned listening to experts and just assuming we can apply "common sense" answers to fix problems that are complicated.
When we spend money in other countries, we are spending it on Americans. When free people thrive, America wins. When people around the world have stable governments that at least try to look out for their own people, America wins. Even if 49% of it is wasted to fraud and abuse, we're still coming out ahead: the only Americans who have lived through a draft are in their 60s, and a nuclear attack in their 80s.

This hedgemony has staved of world war three and nuclear war for 75 years, and kept the world a relatively stable and safe place for virtually everyone.

Even if you completely disagree with me, and feel like voting for conservatives is the better alternative, two facts completely undermine that decision. First, the times America has failed to live up to its ideals or faltered in its highest pursuits have been exclusively presided over by conservatives. Second, the number of times conservatives have cut spending and passed the savings on to the 99% is exactly zero, but their track record of increasing spending while only significantly cutting taxes for the 1%...is 100%. And, as a bonus fact, this the wealthiest nation ever to exist in the history of the world. The diea that we can't afford to help Americans and keep up our global spending is meritless, for example, we could eat like three billionaires and end global hunger, provide healthcare and education to every American.
The thing is, it's not total rubbish. The problems are real - rust belt decline, life is harder for Americans than it was in the past. America is more protected from Russian aggression than Europe. He doesn't seem to realise or care that the reason for that is because we trusted that the US would have our back and its not like the us wasn't getting anything in return.

It's just that these truths are mixed in with lies - immigrants are the problem, tariffs will fix anything, that if america abandons it's allies and its promises (over protecting Ukraine after they gave up their nukes), this will lead to a better long term outcome for America.

Trump is too dumb to understand subtlety and he's being played by multiple bad actors, domestic and foreign.
- its not like the us wasn’t getting anything in return
  
  Thing is, what the USA was buying with its expensive umbrella over Europe was a disarmed Europe. At the time, the USA felt it was in their interest for EU to be weak.
  
  For a variety of reasons, the rise of China perhaps being at the forefront, the USA no longer believes its in their interest to keep EU toothless.
Even before the Russian invasion of Ukraine, it had occurred to me that the US disproportionately spends much, much more on military might than our allies do. Europe pulled a good one on us, ensuring they could lead more carefree lifestyles with first world social safety nets while we take on that heavy burden of being the sentry guard of the entire western world.

However, we made promises of security to Ukraine in return for their nuclear disarmament. It isn’t right that we turn our backs on them now.

Trump is a simpleton. He doesn’t truly understand the long-term butterfly effects of the decisions he’s making.
- Europe pulled a good one on us [...]
  
  No, we did that to ourselves, by always cutting taxes instead of raising them to pay for things that are public goods, like single-payer health care, public transportation, public education, and so on. Our taxes are too low, and as a result we pay far, far more for the same things as private services rather than public. You can complain that the gov't is inefficient, but there's no profit; profit takes a far bigger bite than waste, inefficiency, and fraud does.
Great post! And I can see the point of most of that take.

My riposte, which I bring up frequently, is that a smart capitalist isn't going to invest in American factories, knowing damned well they'll be left holding the bag on a multi-million dollar facility when the tariffs drop.

That's not even mentioning the employment costs, which are far more than most on lemmy understand. tl;dr: If I'm paying you $15hr., it's costing me $30hr.
Dad? Is that you?!
For Canada and Mexico and tarriffs in general. We need to bring manufacturing back to America and revitalize the rust belt.

For Canada anyway, there is a manufacturing trade surplus in favour of US. Canadians buy more autos than they make, and also provide affordability for US made products, through components. So it means a reduction in US manufacturing jobs, when better products are available from less hateful countries, and US made goods are too expensive for Americans.
Nailed it on the head. I think also that you need to include that Canada's relationship vis-a-vis trade with China will be affected by tariffs the US is placing on Canada, and same with Mexico. I think much of everything is from the viewpoint that China is a bigger problem than Russia at the moment. China is also recovering from some economic turmoil, and one way to do so includes expanding their reach, and so the intent is to limit China in other areas.

The answer is disappointingly simple: emotional satisfaction.

For decades, these people have been told that they are incredibly generous towards their allies, and that they get nothing in return. That their allies are abusing their relationships. Of course this is false, but they've been told so every day.

Now they get to abuse their "abusers" right back.

Victimhood is a requirement of conservatism. Like any cult or religion.

It's the most obvious powerplay in my memory. Isolate and remove America on the world stage from the inside. And it's being highly successful. You couldn't get a better Russian agent then trump.

this question could be rephrased to:

dear idiots, why are you so stupid?

OR

dear sociopaths, why are you so selfish?

the motivations don't matter. they can;t be reasoned with.

conclusion: guns.

This feels so much closer to the real truth than anything. It really can be this simple for the trump cult.
You could replace all the above by "trumpist". There is no such thing as american conservatives anymore, the only thing remaining is trumpism, a soon to be modern form of nazism.
- you could also waste your time splitting hairs about words.

While I have no issue with Republicans being shunned for their unashamed fascism, it does mean threads like this are essentially pointless because almost none will actually participate and the ones who do will be downvoted into oblivion.

And dont forget, we are on Lemmy. Everything that's somewhat conservative gets bullied out quite fast. C/conservative started as a legit community and got turned into a meme community. I think this speaks for itself.
- My general dislike for modern conservatism to the side, it does reflect a wider issue with lemmy. There is no diversity of opinion on anything. There are no niche communities. Either you like the political and tech subs and the meme subs which are, at a mininum, 60% political, or there really is nothing for you here.
  
  The manga and anime subs can be good for keeping up with new releases, but not there's next to no actual discussion.

It pleases Putin.

I was just watching a panel discussion about Trump and the tariffs and had a thought. He's started adding exemptions. He just added one for the automotive industry following discussions with the big three auto makers. What if the tariffs were a grift all along? What if he put the tariffs on to generate tax dollars that he can use to give billions of dollars to the wealthy but what if he's double dipping and selling exemptions? Like, what if when he talked to the big three auto makers he said, "I'll make an exemption to the tariffs for the auto industry if you give me $100 million"?

If you seriously think that this isn't market manipulation then I've some lovely bridges you may be interested in acquiring for a low price!
- Ya I have no doubt him and his gremlins are manipulating stocks. They probably heavily invested in EU MIC like Rheinmetall before starting all the drama that caused it to spike and US MIC to dip. In a week they'll cash out, buy the dip on Raytheon and suddenly trump publicly reverses a ton of bullshit. Rinse and repeat on all of his drama he starts. These tarrif games are screwing heavily with stock prices too. No doubt they're making bank with the whiplash they're causing.
Everything Donald Trump has ever done or ever will do, is a grift.
He’s started adding exemptions. He just added one for the automotive industry following discussions with the big three auto makers. What if the tariffs were a grift all along? I'll

This is exactly what they were the last time around. They poked so many holes in that tarrif policy it was a seive

The president is a Russian asset

Isolating the US and breaking US hegemony. Trump is a Putin puppet, and what’s best for Russia is crippling the US economically and diplomatically. Alienating the EU cuts off the EU from the US who would otherwise help the Europeans against the Russians as they try to reclaim their former territories.

This also helps China who is trying to replace the US as the world superpower. BRICS is doing a good job of creating a competing economic alliance, and the US falling apart helps make it more attractive.

Not a conservative, by the way. Just someone who follows the news.

So that when the oligarchs assume full unchecked control of the US, no one will lift a finger to help the rest of us.

You're speaking in the wrong verb tense there, buddy.

Juche.

I wish I was kidding.

They're doing a North Korea. Building a completely isolated war economy.

Yup. Fascists require enemies. If they don't exist, they must be created.

Eurasia is at war with Oceania.

fascism must always create more outsiders, must always create more enemies to keep control, to keep things directed.

remember, fascism appropriates genuine upset and the fact that to the privileged, equality feels like persecution. it steers itself by creating enemies to hate. remember: people's lives are genuinely fucking miserable. there is dystopian shit happening. and all of that is really complicated, and if people stopped to think about it for five minutes, they would pull a 1789.

so they just keep adding more enemies, and more derangements like what the qanons call 'baking' but hitler just said was the way everyone should read books, until they live in a totally unhinged fantasy world, and any method of social control must engage with the fantasy.

tl;dr: sacrificing external allies to fuel a persecution complex, keep control, entrench the madness, keep attention off the american elites that were at least rhetorically some of the initial targets.

Classic fascist strategy.

This country is circling the toilet FAST.

I don't even think the majority of American conservatives are on board with most of what's happening anymore. ~~Some~~ Like almost half are, but they're especially stupid and usually ideologically oriented to Trump rather than to the traditional brand of US conservatism.

The traditional conservatives are suspiciously quiet right now, so I count them as fully complicit.
- To be fair to them though, they did just get comprehensively voted out from everywhere. They don't have a single majority to make any difference to anything. If I were them I'd be sitting back with a large bowl of popcorn going "yal'l voted for this, or at least didn't vote against it, hope you enjoy getting the full force of this orange idiot right in the face". But from the headlines I've read it would appear they've had a few things to say about Fart's latest hot smelly air.
they're especially stupid

You know, I always try to avoid thinking that people with different opinions to mine are "stupid", but it's getting more and more difficult to credit republicans with being reasonable.

Simple bully logic. If you are bigger than someone else, simply hit and threaten them to get whatever you want. Works really well until all the victims gang up and fight back together.

I think they would say something like “our allies have been getting more from their alliances with us than we have been getting from those alliances, and we’re tired of being the donor in all these relationships.”

Of course, they are ignoring the fact that our alliances add up to American world domination, which has uniquely tremendous economic benefits for the US. They take that for granted though, feel entitled to it, don’t want to pay for it anymore because they don’t think it can ever change.

It’s just like their attitude on vaccines. They take herd immunity utterly for granted now and only see the minute risks of getting the shot themselves.

You realize some americans dont want to be part of world domination right?

To create the enemy without.

Simple. We only really need one ally! Russia. With our good and dear friend Vlad!

/S

The question isn't stupid. But asking it here is

Is this question rhetorical? The people you’re addressing this question to aren’t on Lemmy. Try Fox News, lies social, or wherever other sewers the maggots live in.

That’s easy. Constitutionally, you can’t be President longer than 2 terms. Wartime emergency powers can stop elections, cementing power permanently.

In the United States war and martial law does not stop the election cycle. There is zero precedent to support this, even Roosevelt had to campaign during WW2. In fact, the constitution is quite clear on the opposite - it perscribes elections must be held, offering no mechanisms for deferment.
- If precedent still mattered, that would be comforting.

I imagine it's so no one would be willing to come to our aid as he destroys the country.

I'm pretty sure the only Republicans here are people who believe in Republicanism (the political ideology)

Ideology? GTFO with that communism libtard! /s
- Oh no I have just been epically owned :3 /s /j

Do you think there are many republicans on this site?

Make liberals tears is the only reason in their hateful and stunted minds

Red Hat = HatRed

You would likely get an answer akin to “they aren’t our allies, they’ve been exploiting us and now that the bill is due they are flaking”

They need the talking heads on Fox News to tell them how to answer that question first.

There’s a good discussion on The Ezra Klein Show from March 1 The Dark Heart of Trump’s Foreign Policy [Apple Podcasts link]

I'm not on my phone right now, but you can search online through the https://antennapod.org/ site on your phone and it comes up right away.

They are extremely low trust and simply can't believe they're not getting fucked by everyone else secretly

Its simple, russian wants them to and they must do what putin says or else.

Its not really that complicated. It's simply trason.

Lots of the Musk Administration stuff has zero constituency. It's just stuff him, Trump, and a few Heritage Foundation guys thought up. This is one of them. Nobody was asking for tariffs on the whole world or thought it'd be a good idea.

Nobody was asking for tariffs on the whole world or thought it’d be a good idea.

But he floated his tariff garbage before the election and it was all over the media.

Conservatives absolutely voted for tariffs. Which every economist said was a bad idea.

They chose stupid and ran with it. As always.

I'm not a conservative but there's a logic to it beyond this, "because Putin!" circlejerk nonsense. Tariffs are a reaction against Neoliberalism and the economic intelligencia that has fucked everyone over. Many of them blame NAFTA and the offshoring of union jobs to other countries with cheaper labor and fewer protections, and they think they can bring them back through tariffs.

Many of these people understand well that they have been fucked, but can't really name capitalism directly because it's a sacred cow. Still they're going to react poorly to "the establishment" telling them they're dumb and wrong, and that includes libs screaming at them that they're "serving Putin" without even understanding what they're actually trying to do.

Tariffs aren't going to bring those jobs back, at least not without significant subsidies that the government will never do. Also, for the record, those jobs have raised the living conditions of the people they went to, and are one of the reasons China was able to lift 800 million people out of extreme poverty in the past 40 years, but the pitch of, "You might not be able to find a decent job, but hey, at least a poor Chinese rice farmer can afford a washing machine now," doesn't exactly go over well with the right. We should be focusing on the super-rich who have enough hoarded wealth to make everyone rich, regardless of national borders and whatnot, but they see that as communism, because it is communism.

Ultimately, tariffs are a way of rebelling against an economic orthodoxy that isn't working for a growing number of people and they fit into the nationalist narratives about why things are so bad (because of foreigners) without having to name capitalism itself as the problem.

This follows a long historical trend in America where people don't want the government to do anything ever but also need the government to do things to address crises and allow society to function so we have to come up with convoluted approaches that "don't count" as government interference, for whatever reason. For example, the New Deal was too restrained to actually end the Depression, but once WWII happened we could take the gloves off with government spending (on the military) which was economically necessary, and since then, military bases have served as an inefficient and corrupt way for the government to infuse cash into local communities by paying people to just walk around with guns in like Nebraska. This goes all the way back to people like Jefferson, who absolutely hated the idea of big government but also casually doubled the size of the country with the Louisiana Purchase. There's also the classic psychology of, "Keep your damn, government hands off my social security!" A big reason American politics are insane is because there is a battle in everyone's mind between ideology and material interests, and the way in which material interests are persued is roundabout, convoluted, and ineffective, because everyone's trying to avoid being/sounding like a communist.

Easy answer. The entire Government of Putin is working for shit Kremlin.

because there's a war coming soon that will destroy most global trade. trump wants the US in a better position in that near future by having more factories and such inside of the US.

in a peaceful world, you allow free trade and specialization to do its thing and everybody gets richer. you farm bananas, i farm apples, and we trade. we create value out of thin air, it's an amazing thing.

but in a world where superpowers are at war and the world splinters into factions, half of the global economy will be cut off from the other half. therefore it'll be a huge liability if we for example depend on Taiwan for 90% of our computer chips when China can blockade Taiwan and we cannot reliably break that blockade. that's one industry.. now imagine the thousands of other products we need for a modern economy. it would cause massive economic shockwaves.

so this tariff thing is accepting that this will happen in the near future and preparing for it, slowly weaning off the economy from that connection to the rest of the world. so when it does come, it doesn't hurt as bad.

it doesn't really matter if you piss off your allies. since you're the biggest military power they are going to have to rely on you anyway. you have leverage over them. the difference is that Trump is a reality TV star and so he is loudly exploiting this leverage whereas most past leaders would be more subtle and diplomatic about it.

Canada, Mexico, Germany, Japan, etc aren't really allies. Being someone's ally implies there's a sort of equal footing. When someone has no choice but to bend to your will, is that a voluntary relationship? the US essentially wrote Japan's constitution and they told the Germans what to write down for theirs. Canada and Mexico are heavily dependent on US trade- US growth might slow a half percent or two whereas Mexico and Canada are liable to fall into a recession because of these tariffs.

it isn't equal footing. it's a david v goliath situation

to give a recent example, Ukraine. Ukraine in 2014 had the Euromaidan coup and the president had to flee the country. The new government that was quickly appointed without an election realized one thing very quickly- Russia was about to invade them. they had only one option in terms of getting military aid and that was the US. so immediately, the same day that the government was appointed, they started cooperating with the US. a few days after that, little green men showed up in Donbas and the Russian army waltzed into Crimea

so you can say they "allied" with the US but a more honest way to say it is that they were desperately pushed into America's orbit. and the US ultimately doesn't care about a country like Ukraine. people are starting to see it more clearly today because of Trump, but I honestly don't think the situation would have been meaningfully different with Biden or Kamala. The primary difference would have been rhetoric. Instead of calling Zelensky a dictator, we would have just dragged our feet with military aid instead, like what has been happening the last year or so

tldr: the US is a imperialist superpower and this is what they do.

You have no clue what David v Goliath means, do you.
- the analogy was in reference to the size differential between david (boy) and goliath (giant)
  
  sure david wins in the parable but to quote bo burnham
  
  South of queers, north of Hell
  
  The queer ones suck and the brown ones smell
  
  We guard the border and we guard it well
  
  But some slip through the cracks of the Liberty Bell
  
  Did I say liberty? I meant taco, Paco, hey you better let that rock go
  
  'Cause in real life, Goliath wins
  
  And then sells all the silk that the widow spins
trump wants the US in a better position in that near future by having more factories and such inside of the US.

Trump isn't doing this because he's some brilliant strategist. He's a fascist and fascists require enemies to scare their subjects into complicity. If no enemies exist, they are created.

Isolationism and tribalism.

Make your people believe the rest of the world are against them and they'll look to you for leadership. It's not just the US - Europe and the UK have also had a rise in jingoism, fuelled by inflated reports of immigrants.

Those Allies ARENT paying Their FAIR SHARE! If we give them LESS MONEY that means we have MORE to give President Elon Musk!

Their feeling, or at least the way their leaders are telling them to feel, is that America is the world's Daddy and our "so-called" allies are leeching off us like no-good adult children who still live at home and eat all the Nutella, so we have to shake them off to be Great Again.

The Sassanians alienated their Lakhmid allies -forcefully annexed them and slaughtered their ruling dynasty-. Everyone knows what happened to the Sassanians not too long afterwards.

Who knows if history will repeat itself but worth waiting and finding out.

Everyone knows

Yes, everyone knows that if Gudenni, the Prince of Hadenach had just married Essane, the Princess of Hawali, all the bloodshed could have been avoided. Instead, they formed the Caliphate of Ultigo and their iron-fisted rule led to the siege of Khobenar, which left their kingdom in ruins.

Or maybe you overestimate everyone's knowledge. 😉
- but surely we have to go back to the Sassanids to find an analogue for current events

I dont think this is the right website to ask this on. This became a post to hate on usa conservatives, not to genuinely answer the question

Edit: replaced us with usa to avoid confusion

Are you sure you mean conservatives or do you just label fascists, reactionarys, nazis and anything that isnt "left" as "conservative?
- Well the conservatives are fascists right now so that's a pretty easy connection to make.
- I should have probably used usa republicans, but it feels strange to call people who voted for Donald Trump a word derived from republic

Ah, my favorite kind of poster.

One who posts a self-congratulatory "question" to a group who obviously isn't going to read it and then never replies to any of the comments.

[Edit] downvote all you want but this wouldn't be the first time OP didn't recognize any of the answers

I'm not a republican, but from my perspective the US empire has been a force for evil in the world for almost all of its existence. International free trade elevates the power of corporations above countries (ex. international IP law enforcement). The neoliberal status quo sucks, and even if tariffs and pressuring US allies to build up their own militaries and not rely on us are being done for the wrong reasons and not in the right way, they still act to dismantle it. I can see it being better than the alternative in the long run, at least for the world if not for those of us living in the US.

Accelerationist trash take
- Not accelerationist, I think tariffs are genuinely a good direction to go, and so is reducing US military influence.

Honestly asking: what other way would anyone suggest to bring back outsourced manufacturing jobs?

I’ve always heard broad public support on both sides of the aisle for bringing back those jobs. Wasn’t that always going to make things more expensive?

ETA: the downvotes lead me to believe a lot of y’all are caught up in the nationalism of the arguments, and refuse to consider the logistics of what you want. That goes for both Red MAGA wanting recklessly applied tariffs, and Blue MAGA wanting to start WW3 without any existing domestic production. Neither of you are thinking shit through.

I don't think there is any way to bring back those jobs. You guys are dreaming if you think you can just go back to an economy of the past.

The world has globalized, America can't just pretend it hasn't. Sure you can try and bring everything in house but by alienating allies there are lots of things you just can't get yourselves like many raw materials, and then you need to worry about exporting to actually bring money into your economy not just move it around in circles.
- Plus, think about the logistics of that.
  
  Goods produced in the US are categorically more expensive due to infrastructure, cost of living (and therefore wage expectations). If we could wave a magic wand to transplant an effective manufacturing facility from Pakistan and place it in rural Mississippi, hire Americans to do the work, and begin pumping out goods, the price to produce the goods would increase substantially.
  
  Americans wouldn't be able to afford American made goods, which is true even now. Many Americans try to buy American "when possible", but cost quickly outweighs patriotism.
- I agree with your position, but I’m struggling to reconcile that with the western push for war with global superpowers.
  
  The pandemic temporarily crippled our economy with an interruption in shipping from China. How the hell are we planning to survive a hot war with China over Taiwan? They could defeat us without firing a single shot, by just refusing to ship here.
I'm having a hard time following. How is the trade war going to lead to recovering outsourced jobs? Isn't it more likely to cause businesses to decrease their US operations?

The reason why jobs are outsourced is so companies can take advantage of cheaper labor and operation costs. Other than sending the us economy into a downward spiral that makes people want to work at slave level wages.... Not seeing the connection.
- Well the people will still need that things that were imported, eventually you'll have to have an industry to cover that need. Picture this just an extreme case. All clothes are made abroad, imagine the tariff makes it "unbuyables". The people will still have the need for clothes so that creates the space for someone to start making clothes and sell them eventually making a textile industry.
  Now the problem is this could take years the internal industry could be shit and a myriad of other problems that will surely will affect the poorest people the most. Economics explained has a good video on it you should check it.
- Which businesses? Foreign companies or local ones? Do you wish to have your money shipped overseas to purchase a vacuum cleaner? Or would you rather pay a bit more and have you hard earned dollars stay here in at home to help pay wages to your neighbors?
- How do you bring back outsourced jobs without a trade war? The capitalists will always prefer them outsourced, and a trade war is the only thing that’ll cut them off from that labor.
Yeah this line of reasoning doesn't really gel with actual reality considering Trump is now talking about repealing the chip Act. He's not actually trying to bring back Manufacturing. Trump has never cared about that. He doesn't give a shit about Outsourcing manufacturing jobs and his boss Elon Musk certainly doesn't.
- But the chips act supporters paired it with plans for chip manufacturers visas, which would’ve imported cheap indentured labor from Taiwan. It wasn’t actually going to bring jobs here.
  
  And the government not footing the bill for these companies doesn’t prevent them from paying for their own factories. Especially if tariffs give them little choice.
Honestly asking: what other way would anyone suggest to bring back outsourced manufacturing jobs?

Probably with some sort of long term plan instead of randomly turning sweeping tariffs on and off.
- Right. The issue is Trump doing it so recklessly.
  
  But a lot of the people arguing against tariffs broadly seem to be telegraphing that they want to keep manufacturing outsourced indefinitely. Which is why I believe a lot of their tariff opposition is falling flat, and they’re not going to succeed in turning Red MAGA against Trump on this.
  
  The thing is, with the way Dems were escalating on multiple war fronts, especially in regards to China, I don’t see how that’s compatible with a slow plan to bring back manufacturing. A short interruption in shipping during Covid brought our economy to its knees. What’s going to happen if neocons get their war for Taiwan?
Start by taxing the shit out of the CEOs and board of directors, with a mechanism built into the taxation so that any increase in their compensation is entirely offset by an increase in taxes. Then offer incentives to on-shore labor again.
- This is the way.
  
  Richard Nixon was great at weaponizing taxes against windfall profits to the benefit of the people. Also, if I recall correctly, this sort of taxation is partly why the US prospered so much from the 40's to the 60's.
You do it by incentivizing building factories, up to the point where a company can be competitive with those outsourced industries. Something kind of like the CHIPS act that Trump just axed. Random and blanket tariffs will not help. Tariffs can mainly only help prevent an industry from leaving. For example, we have huge tariffs on Chinese EVs because they would outcompete every US manufactured EV and we would lose those jobs.

The reality is that it's very difficult to take a centrist position here. Trump's tariffs make no sense. They will not bring back any jobs because no one is going to build a factory in the next 4 years if there's a chance the next president reverses Trump's decision.

It's also a bad move to tariff our main allies because not only does it make things more expensive for Americans, it erodes trust in our nation and destabilizes our position of dominance globally. In the eyes of the world, we've gone from stable and reliable to dangerous and unpredictable. It will take a lot more than 4 years to recover from that.

The big worry people have is a potential incoming economic crash. We're already dealing with a very weak labor market, uncomfortably high inflation, irrational stock valuations, and high housing prices. If now a huge wave of federal layoffs, which will likely result in instability of federal programs many Americans rely on, hits at the same time as what will essentially be artificially caused inflation through tariffs, it could send things into a downward spiral.
- Well said and I agree :)
Honestly asking: what other way would anyone suggest to bring back outsourced manufacturing jobs?

Currency rate between US/China to drop 3x or more. That is also solution to US debt. Doubling down on dead ender energy will create high cost of living, not just from climate related insurance rates, but for expensive manufacturing energy, and need to pay high wages just to have home affordability.

Destroying NA auto industry will destroy it instead of auto companies writing off investments in Canada/Mexico to reinvest in US declining market that is smaller and uncompetitive. Massive auto subsidies would be needed, but still no export markets. Auto sector trade with Canada has a US surplus, with Canadians have specialized skill in parts making.

Manufacturing only makes sense if there is export potential for good products. Boeing and Caterpillar and US weapons getting blacklisted by world is bad. UAW cheering on Trump NA tariffs won't be forgotten. Blacklisting US agriculture means their share of massive subsidies.

The future (present in China) of manufacturing is robotics. There are plenty of jobs in constructing factories, but those are cheaper in other countries, and the best robot/manufacturing companies are in China. Trump has hinted at welcoming Chinese FDI in US manufacturing, but that would be factory construction jobs more than significant permanent manual labour jobs. UAW won't love that move.
Maybe something like the chips act ... which he just repealed.
- The chips act wasn’t going to bring jobs here. They were pairing it with a chip manufacturer’s visa, which would have imported all of the labor. If the companies built the factories at all, and didn’t just plan to pocket the dough, as they tend to do.
Canada isnt a significant threat to US manufacturing, so why the tariffs on Canada?

China would make sense, but Canada? Why?
- I haven’t seen any explanation that’s convincing. I think partly it’s a personal vendetta with Trump not appreciating the criticism from Canada of his administration. I think it’s also partly that Trump is fairly isolationist in foreign policy, and there’s a lot influence from the military industrial complex in the upper levels of Canadian politics.
  
  My gut feeling is that this is all connected to capitalists flailing and taking any wild swing they believe will bring back the past glory days, and re-establish a unipolar world with the US at the top. Democrats believe they can do it with another world war, and Republicans believe they can do it with a trade war.
  
  The reality is most of them haven’t really thought things through, and the ones who have are just hoping to delay & kick the can into a future profit quarter to deal with later. Neoliberalism is dead/dying. No matter how much they want it, we can’t go backwards. We’re at a fork in the road, and the options are neo-feudalist fascism or socialism. If we let the capitalists decide our fate, it’s gonna be fascism.
  
  When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. In the years since Reagan, the only thing we’ve consistently invested in is military supremacy, so it’s really the only trick we’ve got right now.
Bring back jobs via tax incentives for being local and cutting tax breaks and bailouts for taking industry outside the US.
- Really I’d support blocking market access at all for companies that outsource what could be done locally. But again, that will make things more expensive. I don’t know if there’s any way to get around that.
There is a balance to it. Yes, local manufacturing will make things more expensive. But making more durable goods tends to pay better wages for more people. And let's be honest here, most people can't be a doctor or write code. High paying collage degrees are beyond them. Or we can maintain low paying retail jobs for the majority of people.

But the is a balance and it can't be done over night without causing large amounts of economic pain to many people.
- But doesn’t escalating tensions with China require it to be done relatively overnight? Seems like anyone wanting this done more carefully needs to also accept that will require giving up the fight over Taiwan.
Blue MAGA wanting to start WW3

Lol. Please expand on this.
Honestly asking: what other way would anyone suggest to bring back outsourced manufacturing jobs?

The bigger question is "do Americans actually want these jobs?" According to the JOLTS surveys for the last several quarters there's about 100,000 open manufacturing jobs that are not getting filled, in a labor market sized about 500,000. Simply put, it's abundantly clear that people don't want the manufacturong jobs that do exist

I also saw this from the inside when I worked my last job with a company that does contract cleaning services for industrial facilities. Nobody wants to work industrial sanitation, and they end up primarily hiring immigrants and ex-convicts as they're the only people desperate enough to take these industrial sanitation jobs. And it's not for lack of pay or benefits, the fact is the nature of the work sucks!
- No, a lot of those positions are left unfilled on purpose. Lots of ghost jobs. Lots of jobs left vacant in the hopes they can fill it with an H1B.
  
  Your last point is also completely wrong. It’s not that people aren’t willing to do the jobs. They just want to be properly compensated. Hell, I’d take those jobs for the right pay level.
He's out of line, but he's right.

Echo chamber problems lol.

Y'all have banned or bullied every single Republican or conservative person off this website.

You can't talk to people who aren't here.

Aren't you a conservative? Are you banned? Is this real?
- Not a conservative.
  
  I am currently banned from like 30 different subs and like 10 of them I don't think I even interacted with whatsoever.
  
  Is anything real? Won't know till we die.
Source on that claim? I've seen you claim that a bunch on here, and I have yet to see any of it being true.
- Probably the downvotes on his comment are a liiiitttttllllllleeeee bit indicative
- Hold up! The truth matters again‽ I thought I'd never see the day.
Well if none of them can have an adult conversation that happens. I've "debated" with them on here and it devolved into Twitter. Insults, grand claims with no evidence. Yes, we've created an echo chamber where you have to actually prove what you say, and they couldn't survive. I'm ok with that.