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Comment by tw04 | Hacker News Reader

Not to mention if your goal is to fix a trade imbalance with a specific country, you kind of need all of your allies to help you with it or it's never going to work.

As I've done with just about everything that makes no sense from this administration, I go back to: what would Russia want?

Russia would want the US to piss off both all of its closest allies and its largest trading partner at the same time, because it would significantly weaken the country, and potentially result in social unrest. They would want Trump to continually talk about annexing neighbors because it justifies their attempts at annexing Ukraine.

Until someone can give me an explanation that makes more sense than: Putin is pulling Trump's strings - I'm going to continue to just assume he's literally a Russian asset.

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At the risk of going full Sweeny Todd with Occam's Razor, what if it's as simple as enriching himself and his cohort via market manipulation?

For that to work, you need to know that the market will recover. One short bout of playing with tariffs might be recoverable, but he's reaching the stage of long-term damage on tariffs such that companies are avoiding import/export relationships with the USA. Also hacking off allies doesn't fit with enriching him or his cronies.

Hard to argue with that. If I can inject a random thought, might not even be worth a reply.

What if the goal is to deepen income inequality? Opening up low income jobs by deportation. Impoverishing households whose primary savings were in stocks, not business ownership or real estate. Hurting consumers, especially those whose disposable income is lower.

It most certainly is. This crew would rather be kings of a ruined plantation of a country than to have a middle class with any economic or political power. And that goes double for their attitude toward non-whites.

Every lower middle class person, can "command" about 100 other 1/100ths of a person to supplant their life with food, fuel, vehicle, staples, etc. But billionaires have the labor of 1000s or more people at their fingertips. It doesnt matter if the 1000 are destitute, undernourished, sick, weak, dumb, or unhappy, as long as they're subservient enough to maintain or increase class division.

Hanlon's Razor could also be used here, and it isn't treason or greed, but just plain old stupidity.

Putin has convinced Trump, both overtly and covertly, that Trump can have what Putin has - personal control over a country of oligarchs. All Putin has to do to pull strings is feed Donald pointers that he willingly laps up.

Why not both? Russia mentoring the US admin on speed running towards authoritarianism (good for the cohort) while making the country weaker (good for Russia).

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