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Comment by herval | Hacker News Reader

Look up what happened when he tried to strongarm China in 2018. China simply switched their supplier to Brazil, and never fully returned as a buyer of the American product.

Trump’s ship of fools is tossing the US to the sidelines of the global trade, in particular due to his inability to work with anyone else. EU is rearming, they won’t need “america’s protection”. Latin America (with the only exception being Argentina) is stronger than ever as a trade block, and getting courted by EU and China. Africa is aligning with China for a decade. India is going up the ladder, from US’s cheap labor center to a country producing goods for their own consumption. Even Israel seems completely uninterested in joining the “green list”.

Everyone will find more reliable trade partners, and the American people will be left hanging with this supposed “upper hand” trump supporters dream he has

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> Look up what happened when he tried to strongarm China in 2018. China simply switched their supplier to Brazil, and never fully returned as a buyer of the American product.

Okay, let's have a look ... well, this statistic doesn't back up your claim:

https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/exports/china

> Trump’s ship of fools

Which is actually part of his strategy. You need fools that commit outrageous claims, threats and actions. Then he can play the good cop when it makes sense and just fire the fool. That is basically applied game theory on a meta- and psychological level.

> Everyone will find more reliable trade partners

No, they won't and everybody knows that.

Spouting "game theory" to everything does not mean he will win these bets, tho.

> No, they won't and everybody knows that.

That's delusional. 70% of the world has China as their main trading partner. The world definitely can thrive without Coke, Facebook, Nike and McDonalds.

Most of these companies can simply move their business to a different country too. The only reason they stay in the US is due to the dollar dominance, which created stability to run a business for decades. If that goes away, what’s the point?

Since you were so kind to change "shouting" to "spouting" I'll compliment you a reply.

> That's delusional. 70% of the world has China as their main trading partner. The world definitely can thrive without Coke, Facebook, Nike and McDonalds.

How about Amazon, AWS, Microsoft, Azure, Google, Nvidia, 3M, Pfizer etc.?

> How about Amazon, AWS, Microsoft, Azure, Google, Nvidia, 3M, Pfizer etc.?

If all of them leave to be replaced by the alternatives, local or european/chinese, that would definitely be net positive.

Here u go: https://farmdocdaily.illinois.edu/2024/02/the-united-states-... Plenty of data on the damage he’s done to the US exports. Plenty of data on how Brazil replaced it.

For someone who wants to sound smart citing “game theory”, you surely don’t sound very capable of seeing reality

> Which is actually part of his strategy. You need fools that commit outrageous claims, threats and actions. Then he can play the good cop when it makes sense and just fire the fool. That is basically applied game theory on a meta- and psychological level.

Firings that support this: Flynn, McCabe, Esper, Bolton

Firings that support Trump’s Razor: Comey, Sessions, Tillerson, Nielsen, Krebs

“The dumbest explanation is often the correct one.” tells us that the increase in information from those moves is uselessly low for both him and us. Nevertheless, if Trump is able to influence the rules, the accumulation of side effects of high strategic value gives his advisers something to work with.

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