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Comment by t-writescode | Hacker News Reader

How about "with the rapid ascent and descent of tariffs against trade partners and allies heretofore unseen in their magnitude, as well as the frequent changes in directions to those tariffs - seeming to use them as threats - again, to our allies and trade partners", the United States has changed its behavior in a way that most people would see as untrustworthy (and if they were a friend or dating partner, most would recommend a temporary cutoff)?

Does that sound less "partisan"?

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If we had fair trade coming into January, then I would agree with you. But we didn't have fair and balanced trade with many nations. So Trump's actions are at least understandable.

Agreed. People don't seem to understand that unfair trade practices having been going on for decades. It's just that Trump appears to be the first president to actually take action on the problem. And it's pointless debating Trump-haters on day 2 of what will be a much longer process to restructure global trade to be more fair and balanced.

We were the economic and military hegemon. Perhaps it wasn't as bad as you say.

It is likely worse. Much worse.

For anyone interested, here's an interview with Bob Lighthizer on what has been going on with global trade over the past few decades:-

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p0IUh8kNSqY

I'd be interested in comments on what he has to say rather than attacks on his character and the usual shooting the messenger etc.

Care to summarize his points? I hate youtube and especially hate rando video links from the internet.

Nope..it requires effort to understand things beyond partisan tropes.

I didn't realize I was only engaging using partisan tropes. Thank you for educating me.

For what it's worth, I would prefer to have a summary as well, rather than listening to Tucker Carlson and someone on his show for an hour and a half. I read his book, Ship of Fools, years ago and what I gathered was that he saw a lot of the same general negatives as the next person and made a lot of sense; but his solution was always an ethnostate, veiled or otherwise, to fix everything - or I suppose "immigration is the harm" and "people not like us", etc.

If there's useful information from what he says, I'd love to hear it, but I don't want to hear the other half again as it's exhausting.

I've never once heard Tucker Carlson frame an argument along the lines of protecting an ethnostate (if thats what you mean) and his contribution is minimal. The majority of the talking is done by Bob Lighthizer (as you'd expect given he is being interviewed).

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