Trump’s gift for making enemies complements Putin’s gift for making friends

1/24/2020

Vince Dhimos answered a question at Quora.

https://www.quora.com/Whats-actually-going-on-between-Europe-and-the-US/answer/Vince-Dhimos

What's actually going on between Europe and the US?

Vince Dhimos, Editor-in-Chief at New Silk Strategies (2016-present)

Trump has sabotaged relations with Europe.

His trade wars and bullying have been portrayed positively in the Western msm, but it is all nonsense. The economic figures are phony (for example, while Trump cites high stock prices as a sign of economic health, economists tell us this is a sure sign of a dangerous stock bubble in the making). Every economist knows that trade wars are always a lose-lose proposition and Trump’s wars are further evidence of this.

As in the rest of the world, Trump has tried to bully Europe into taking a back seat economically while making America great again.

He has threatened tariffs on European autos. And while he has supported Brexit, he is now trying to bully the UK into refusing to cooperate with Huawei in their 5G project, claiming falsely that the Chinese equipment is full of spyware and spy devices. This is pathetic because there is no evidence of this whatsoever. But it resonates with voters in Appalachia.

Via his ambassador to Germany Richard Grenell, he has tried to bully Germany to refrain from buying German gas, in a transparent ploy to sell overpriced US LNG to Germany. In fact, he and his cronies in Congress have slapped third-party sanctions on the Russian Nord Stream 2 pipeline project, forcing the main pipeline layer Allseas to pull out, leaving the Russians with only one — Russian — ship to lay the pipe and delaying completion by several months. But Russia predicts this pipeline will be finished this year, bringing mutual benefits to Europe and Russia. America is the loser. Foiled again.

The fact that this is not working is beside the point for Trump, for whom the game of politics is everything.

Trump has done all this to please his constituents, who know nothing about economics but think that presidents should be tough guys working for the good old USA and firmly against the world. It reminds me of a Chinese folk tale of 2 soldiers who met in a bar and decided to see who was toughest. Each one took out a knife and began cutting strips of flesh from his own arm and eating it, both of them praising the exquisite taste of the delicacy. They continued until they lost consciousness and when the waiter came round to check on them he found them lying on the floor bleeding profusely from their wounds. They both died that night from blood loss.

But the movie is not over yet. With US-European relations lying in ruins, the Europeans are forced to strengthen their relations with Russia and China. This is hurting the US economy but good for Europe and Asia, and it is just the beginning.

Largely thanks to Trump’s negative influence, Putin is working successfully to involve Europe, especially Germany and France, in solving the Middle East crises. Thus, a conference was held in October between Erdoğan, Putin, Macron and Merkel, in an effort to bring peace to the Syrian province of Idlib.

On January 12 of this year, in the lead-up to a meeting of European leaders on Libya, Putin and Erdoğan, who are on opposite sides in the Libyan conflict, joined in an initiative to implement a peace plan for Libya. This is another of many examples of Putin’s gift of bringing opposite sides together to solve common problems. Even as Trump shines in his role of making enemies of old friends. Goes to show you everyone is good at something.

Indirectly, Trump was a god-send to Russia but — at variance with Democrat conspiracy theories — it wasn’t on purpose.

1 Comment

John McClain

1/26/2020 05:33:00 am

I've been a "business man" all my life, I started off as a mechanic, as a child, frustrated with the fact one had to have tools to work, and how can one work to buy tools?
I found odd jobs, broken things, did anything anyone would pay, to earn money to buy tools. I began at six, and by my teens, had several thousand invested in mechanic's tools, some electronics equipment, and had been making money for more than a decade.
Having begun at six, I've never believed in anything but "capitalism", taking one's money, earned, investing it in being able to do more, and have more work. I was shocked at the idiocy of "Keynesian economics", at six, at that time, the film, "Mary Poppins" had come out, and was a brilliant explication of capitalism, contrasted with the humanitarian impulses of people, looking at the less fortunate, and naturally giving "charity", because they felt for others, and had "extra", more than subsistence.
At every stage of my youth, I had more money to spend, because I was better at earning it, having learned new skills, gained strength, and could do more, faster.
I wasn't good at school, I am extremely dyslexic, knew I wasn't going to college, but never considered being helpless, and have always made my own way, by working.
I am surrounded by people with no such notions of "working for the future", most Americans somehow believe "the government is a source of wealth, or at least controls its production", because our schools have never taught the principles I learned, simple, basic principles that work all around the world, as I have personally seen, as a civilian child, living in Europe, as a Marine, on every continent, in every port I visited, and as a disabled retired man, with multiple sclerosis, for which I go to work, six days a week, to maintain my health.
I own my own machine shop, it took me forty years to buy it, almost all my work is represented in the machines, tooling, hardware, crammed in a metal building, 15 meters by 25, some machines well over a century old, but still productive, solid, and accurate.
At 62, I do what I want, because what I make, people want to have, and having done is so long, I'm at the top of my field.
My whole country has "drank the koolaid" (aka Jim Jones, Guiana) people pay for my work, without rancor, because they know things will break again, and I will fix them, too, but what I fix, will last as long as "original" or better.
I ask a fair price, I get what I ask, and I earn a profit, and sink it back into tooling, expanding my work capabilities, and I hope to find an apprentice soon, to share my "wealth", almost all of which is knowledge on how to fix broken things.
We have a president who's never fixed anything, who started with wealth, and has "leveraged deals" all his life. He, along with so many others who have believed "the news", and what they tried not to learn in school, and accepted the "win lose, no other way" they were taught about trade, even while doing "normal trade" all their lives, for the most part, because kid's won't be leveraged into bad deals, "twice by the same scammer".
I understood at six, I had to make more than the cost of tools, for it to make sense, but less than everyone else charged, to keep customers. I collected trashed equipment, discarded old machines, tore them apart, and rebuilt a few out of many, and sold them at a profit, for less than new, and always had customers.
It should be obvious to everyone, "trade" works only when both parties get their intent fulfilled, and it's easy, as we each have differing strengths, skills, interests, and raw materials.
We have "governments" because 20,000, maybe 25,000 years ago, a tribe chose not to massacre the other tribe, to take their stuff, but decided to keep them alive, and just rule them, and "take their stuff a bit at a time, daily".
"Government" has always been "piracy theft", no matter its form, and we have all traded, and made our place in this world, "despite government", and none but the violent, "because of government". While Mr. Trump seems to be disastrous, I still believe he is vastly better than HRC, and his very actions, alert us to the worst of hazards, because he knows nothing of stealth, he has lived "as a bull in a china shop", and while no saint, has certainly woken many to the evils of government, and "how bad it can be".
America, continuing in its ways, is ensuring we will shortly lose our "bully pulpit", those who "know no accounting", never know they are about to fall, for lack of "treasure", for having mis-spent it.
I truly expect we will gradually lose any ability to wage war, sanctions, to do anything but beg to remain in trade circles, with demands made on us, for real money, gold, silver, iron ore, real value. Once that happens, (it did to Russian Oligarchs, after the Soviet fall),, we will have to return to reality in money, although from a dead start, not having any sa

International relations.

Trump’s gift for making enemies complements Putin’s gift for making friends

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