https://www.osac.gov/Content/Report/910d11da-595a-40a4-836c-...
Would starting a war with Iran, shocking energy and transportation prices, raising the costs of exports from every other country be a more solid mechanism? Especially when the US is a net exporter from oil and could conceivably protect domestic industries from the same?
It also - if Trump loses the presidency, the Iran war impacts will continue for years, the impact of tariffs would end relatively quickly.
The oil companies would likely be extremely unhappy if they were not permitted to export their products.
War puts the blame on the president even more directly.
>> Especially when the US is a net exporter from oil and could conceivably protect domestic industries from the same?
The US is a huge net importer of goods. The oil surplus is rather small, has been recorded only for the last 3 years and it can't meaningfully change the US balance of trade.
> shocking energy and transportation prices, raising the costs of exports from every other country... and the US could conceivably protect domestic industries from the same?
Nothing will be protected, quite the opposite, the US will be the country hardest hit by inflation because, given the huge net imports, we are the country that benefits the most from unimpeded trade and lower cost of production in other countries.
Trumps tariffs didn't decrease the trade deficit, in fact the deficit for 2025 was significantly higher than the pre-covid 2019. The deficits for Feb and Mar 2025 were the highest monthly deficits in history, beating the previous records by almost 100%.
>> Let’s say your goal was to reduce globalization
"reducing globalization" is a meaningless term, reducing the standard of living is what matters, choking international trade will cause higher reduction in the US than in other countries.
> I mean it’s high risk and maybe dumb, but I wouldn’t put it past the current thought leaders to turn against traditional free market ideology.
"Ideology" is a fig leaf, what matters is the money and power in the hands of the most special interest groups, it's a small club and you ain't in it.
Trump decided to bomb Iran because Netanyahu told him that it'd be cool if he did it. He didn't have a coherent plan beyond "bombs cool." This is why we got the rapidly changing and totally incoherent set of plans for the war and the strategic objectives.
Trump is incapable of understanding that he isn't winning at something. So we are getting a "no, fuck you" response. The most thought I could possibly imagine going into this is that Trump has seen that it is possible to extract wealth from shipping lanes and just decided that he deserves that now.
I hope everyone who voted for him is really happy with what they're getting.
https://www.politico.com/news/2026/04/08/newly-created-polym...
That's because chaos is a good time to do some grabbing. You could see this during the downfall of the former Soviet Union, which in spite of being dirt poor still made a handful of families obscenely wealthy. Now imagine being able to do a similar resource grab on the scale of the modern United States.
Trump 1, COVID, Trump 2, the Russian war on Ukraine, AI and a couple of more wars... It's a miracle things haven't gone further down - yet. But I'm really wondering how long our social constructs will be able to withstand this kind of concerted assault.
For all the assurances that the US military is an army with the ultimate task to protect the Constitution and bound to democratic principles, they sure seem to view the Commander in Chief as the sole authority, even if his orders are evidently illegal or undermine the democratic system (because Congress was bypassed).
As the war is currently going, I'd have expected at least some generals or officers to refuse orders, not because they suddenly switched sides, but simply because the orders are not democratically legitimized anymore. But nothing like this seems to have happened so far.
(Not even starting with ICE...)
What they should do is speak out, but possibly their future income depends on not speaking out.
(And, the US being the US, the choice of the President has direct consequences for the rest of the world - so from the PoV of European interests, Harris would definitely have been the better choice)
But yeah, the underlying problem seems to be the electoral system and the general undermining of democratic structures that already started way before Trump. An election in which there are only two (practical) choices, one of them openly insane, is not a useful election anymore.
As I mentioned before, I live in a blue state and most people I know voted for Harris. But I would say 9 out of 10 did because they felt they had to not because they wanted to. The governing structure of the Democratic party has not changed and still favors identity over mundane factors like competence or electability. And Europes needs are not high in the priorities of American identity politics sorry.
Once America denounces its superpower status and "leader of the free world" image, you will be right.
Until then, it's "with great power comes great responsibility" (or, well, should at least. Evidently in reality, it doesn't)
That's exactly what a large part of MAGA want! America First and the rest of the world be damned. I don't think that's realistic and Trump himself doesn't I don't think.
You really need to actually read what you write to realize how drunk on the Trump distortion field you are. Trump's entire schtick is identity politics - being a popular low-intelligence trashy white guy who poor trashy white guys will think "he's one of us". You really cannot hang your hat on a critique of "competence" here after the jamoke just gave away the Strait of Hormuz to Iran. Harris, which really means the bureaucratic group project that Harris would have continued, would most certainly not have done something so abjectly incompetent.
As a libertarian I'll criticize the Democratic party, their policies, and their groupthink all day long. But thinking that any of that criticism implies an alternative of burning our society down is rooted in pure nihilism.
I don't think that's true at all. That's just the button he pushes to get elected but he doesn't care even a tiny little bit about that. All he cares about is for you to vote for him and to give him what he wants: access to the levers of power, so he and his cronies get to enrich themselves at your expense.
The idea that Trump cares about voters is so hilarious that I'm not sure where exactly you got that, he doesn't care about the voters at all, just about their votes. That's a huge difference.
That you fall for this - and three times to boot - is on you, not on Trump.
Note how now that he is in power that 'civic identity' doesn't matter at all.
It's going to be a rude awakening when the bill is presented, but you are going to have to own it.
But it's only that - exploitation. It's what Trump based his campaign on, but if you see what he is actually doing and who was supporting his campaign - like the Heritage foundation and the Project 2025 plan, lots of pro-Israel evangelicals, etc - you see that his actual plans went MUCH further.
(Ironically, he exploited the pro-Palestine voter base with the same trick, by courting pro-palestinian voters from Michigan and pretending to be the "lesser evil" vs Biden/Harris in the Gaza war. We saw how that went...)
The issue isn't that you're making a comparison, but rather the fallacy that indicting the Democratic party implies one should support the Republican party.
> The Trump vision is an American civic identity
It's nonsensical to talk about a civic identity based around a movement that is in fact destroying all of our institutions. Where is the pride of the US educational and scientific research? Where is the pride of welcoming visitors to our country to share in what we have, our natural wonders and cities? Where is the pride in our self-declared natural rights, like protesting and carrying firearms? Where is the pride in the concept of the rule of law and a government subservient to its citizens? Where is the pride in a justice system that applies to government agents itself, from law enforcement officers on up to the President? Where is the pride of having a leader who isn't a bumbling incompetent idiot? Where is the pride at being the leader of the Western World that at least tries to live up to ideals like liberty and democracy?
All of these things have been othered as "woke/liberal/etc" and subsequently smashed to bits by the Trumpist movement! You yourself are trashing that last one in this very thread! So we're supposed to imagine some restored civic identity ultimately rooted in ... nothing?
At best this is a case of a movement running on fumes of what used to be, wanting to be proud for simply existing - the boomers' participation trophy applied to the decades of self-defeating politics pumped out by reactionary talk radio. But in reality, anybody who is not mesmerized by this intrinsically self-contradictory movement is extremely worried about where this desire for empty (ie false) pride goes as the things to actually be proud of continue to dwindle - because we've most certainly seen this pattern throughout history.
> CECOT does not engage in rehabilitation. Few inmates have been released from the facility and authorities have said in media statements that there are no plans to release any other prisoners.
"Harris, which really means the bureaucratic group project that Harris would have continued"
Is that what we're voting for now? A completely interchangeable figurehead that just covers for a bureaucratic group project?
"Deep state" type conspiracy theories which would have been relegated to frothing Qanon types 20 years ago are prevalent amongst even progressive now. Perhaps this explains it. If so, nihilism is a rational response.
Oh no! She laughed funny! Better elect the guy who unironically believed that immigrants were eating pets, is an abject failure economically, started yet another war solely so his buddies could benefit on insider trades, set tariffs on penguins because he’s too stupid to pay attention to anything that isn’t about him, is trying to create millions of stateless people because his idiot, weaponized base thinks brown people are bad, is clearly and obviously mentally incapacitated and has been since his first term, and after ~10 years still only has “concepts” of a healthcare plan!
But hey, at least you made some imaginary libs cry because you’re mad that people think you’re a jerk when you don’t use their preferred name and you have Big Opinions about women’s sports in spite of never watching them. I’m sure you pretend to be a Christian at Christmas and Easter, too.
In a way the hangers on and enablers are worse: I suspect Trump is not 100% in control of his faculties anymore (which is a pity, because that sets the stage for an insanity plea). But I am assuming that you are so you don't get that excuse.
And 'cackles and autopen' does not set the stage for having a discussion that is had at a higher level than schoolyard insults so I think you lost the high ground right there. You seem to think this is some kind of game where there is winning and losing and you think that 'your team' is winning, what you fail to notice is that everybody including you is losing, and that only a handful - of which you are not one - are making out like bandits.
1. Internationally there is currently no alternative to the US as a superpower and Trump is the leader of the US.
2. Domestically he continues to have a substantial constituency. Some of his polices actually poll better than he does.
3. The potential replacement cannot merely "resist"; they have to actually get elected and that requires having a vision that the electorate endorses.
And I would add:
4. Most (or let's say enough) Americans don't feel they are losing as you put it.
I believe you when you say you would like to apply the banhammer liberally (haha!) but so you know I come to HN for tech news. Looking at my comment history I do have a lot of political ones but it is in the hopes that I have contributed something to the conversation. Of course whether I succeeded is for the readers to decide.
You may not have noticed, but that is changing very rapidly.
> Domestically he continues to have a substantial constituency. Some of his polices actually poll better than he does.
Indeed. Mind boggling, but then again, in many ways not surprising, after all, if Trump 1 wasn't enough to making you think twice about voting for him again probably nothing will.
> The potential replacement cannot merely "resist"; they have to actually get elected and that requires having a vision that the electorate endorses.
Yes, here's my proposed vision for the electorate: normal. All this megalomaniacal nonsense is just causing more and more problems, both inside the USA and outside of it and unfortunately we don't get to vote in US elections but we do end up living with the consequences.
> Most (or let's say enough) Americans don't feel they are losing as you put it.
Give it more time. Clearly, there is some degree of insulation from the consequences, but I'd love to have an actual seance with one of the Founding Fathers that the USA so reveres to get their $0.02 on whether or not this is what they were aiming for. I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that I think the answer might surprise the MAGA's.
Nice you caught the pun and thank you for making a move in the right direction with respect to the level of conversation, it's appreciated.
The rest of the world better start figuring out how to pressure Iran or take military action against Iran, or the whole Gulf is going to shut down and America isn’t hurt that bad besides MAGA not being able to fill up their giant trucks.
Or is he attempting something similar like the British during Mossadegh? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abadan_Crisis