The USA has lost the plot.
Meanwhile more strategic autonomy is being built up, but it will take years; when one of Trump's sons is president, we'll be in a better position to properly stand up.
Of course, in the periphery that is not good enough. For developed economies like Germany, France that is a totally normal growth rate. The allocation is the problem, very few people can’t get enough while the middle class is under pressure and the rest has real problems to pay their rents and food. Real growth can only be had by increasing local consumption and/or expansion of governmental spending.
That being said, I agree with your analysis.
[1] https://www.oecd.org/en/publications/2026/06/oecd-economic-o...
I guess you could make the case that he wasn't trying to serve his masters, and it was just greed?
More than Angela Merkel? I doubt it
Time fixes everything. Give it a few generations and the world will be inhibited by new humans who will carry on doing what life demands of them, unfazed by today's events.
I think the issue with this hypothesis is that it omits variables.
Basically... is the United States, scratch that, WILL the United States be on a trajectory, post-Trump, where there is reason to believe future leadership will consistently be trustworthy to foreign nations? And how would anyone know that, or at least have reasonable confidence in that belief?
What brought us here to elect someone like this, and is that "what" going away or being fixed? Is there some hope for undoing polarized politics in this country, so that "this election is the most important of our generation" doesn't occur every four years, and both sides believe that "the other side" will ruin the country once and for all?
Time is not enough to fix the core issues. Time can move us past this particular era, these particular instances of unpredictable leadership, but time alone will not move this country past whatever levers of control convinced this electorate that this kind of leadership was the right choice for this country -- and the rest of the planet.
Please elaborate.
It's the kind of thing that takes centuries to fizzle out, like between Denmark and Sweden, after 200-300 years the wars waged before that are mere historical artefacts used for jesting. If Denmark had been on the Axis-side willingly and tried to invade Sweden in the 1940s this would be a completely different relationship.
So yes, people will overcome historical grievances but it might take many generations, for us living right now it might not ever happen before we are dead.
Please elaborate.
Maybe some trust will be restored in a generations time, but there is no going back to the post-1945 hegemony which saw the USA, and the westen world, all benefit so much.
> Maybe some trust will be restored in a generations time, but there is no going back to the post-1945 hegemony which saw the USA, and the westen world, all benefit so much.
That's exactly the point. No amount of emotion today will persist the tests of time. You, as an ordinary inhabitant of the planet, like everyone else alive for the next 5 generations, will not exist on this planet anymore.
There is 0 chance that the opinion of "x country will never be trusted again" will occur as there is absolutely no control over the world you won't live in, nor have any significance of the elements involving discussions between countries happening today.
Those in charge at that time, who desire to achieve something, will.
Keep living the dream though, a few more years on this planet may hopefully help clarify the workings of this fact of life.
There are cultures on earth that have hated each other for centuries.
To quote something I just read. Keep living the dream and maybe one day you'll learn the workings of life.
A thermic vehicle sounds delightfully whimsical to my ear, like some sort of victorian steam car.
For some reason the form thermic is almost never used in English, instead preferring Thermal with only one exception I'm aware of: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermal_lance
Nowadays I rarely carry a charger. On the either hand I am carrying several devices that are right on the knife edge of catching fire at any time
Also, 50 000 "leasing social" cars will soon appear on the 2nd hand market.
Masterful gambit.
This goes beyond the price of diesel. It is an attack on basic survivability of the nations that may depend on that reserves in the future.
Never vote for a death cult.
- is incapable of apologizing
- has a history of abusive behavior
- doesn't have a sense of humor, especially at their own expense
"How to spot an idiot": https://youtube.com/watch?v=i2Lo8ChhOKU
The problem of elected representatives being nearly or somewhat dead seems to be bipartisan; such as Feinstein(D) or McConnell(R).
Nah....
The problem is that to enter politics in the USA, you need to be _very_ wealthy. This tends to rule out younger people being abale to stand for election.
By contrast, in the UK our last few prime ministers have included, as well as a few wealthy ones, the offspring of a telephone engineer (Burnham), a grocer (Thatcher), a toolmaker (Starmer) and a chap who ran a business flogging garden ornaments (Major).
What a fucking narcistic war monger clique.
Can they just sodd off to a remote island with a golden palace? /Mars/ would be a good place. "One way ticket" playing as part of the OST. Shoot the whole clique with a lot of gold bars to the red planet.
Bingo! Dragon fever knows no bounds. I truly think there is no bottom in the pit of depravity.
Trump literally CANNOT admit he made a mistake.
Nixon may have been a corrupt sleaze ball but he knew he had to get out of Vietnam because it was destroying America and so he did.
So when Trump attacks individual countries like this, there can be a union level response?
For all it's typical nationalistic bluster Hungary is a poor country that needs the EU more than the other way around.
Another advantage of unions like that is to shut down that kind of thing, which is exactly what happened.
Are you really annoyed about that?
Why doesn't he ban exports right away, forcing Europe to use their stockpiles anyways?
Is it that he can't? So the entire threat is moot?
Is he thinking of using the Graham bill to threaten +100% tarrifs for buying Russian gas?
Because big oil doesn't like that.
And as others said, diesel is just one product. If you want to keep producing the other products you'll have to sell or store that diesel. The capacity is too much for the US alone and storing all excess capacity isn't feasible. So if he does it, there will be a surplus which means big oil will lose a large amount of money.
This is why he hasn't done it yet. Everybody in the US with money at stake called him and told him it was a stupid idea.
Which areas are you referring to?
But this is based on my simplistic understanding of how this works, I'm really not sure about the details.
If Germany loses access to one source of oil and pays a premium to substitute Norwegian oil instead, guess what? Sweden has to pay the same higher price for Norwegian oil as well.
This interconnection of global markets is why Trump is trying to increase diesel supply in Europe in order to lower prices in the US in the first place.
It is currently in Europe's best interest to force this clown to back down in Iran.
I will happily take €5 per liter (not gallon) for a month just to annoy Trump in the slightest.
It will inflict short-term pain in Europe, but in the long-term it will be better. It's like ripping out a bandaid.
Why must the energy transition be "move fast and break everything" while the industry and households suffer under the strain of high prices?
It could have been so smooth, it could have gone so well, but the world went mad...
That's what the Climate Catastrophe is going to do if nothing changes!
If only he could have avoided causing the high prices in the first place so he wouldn't have to try to strongarm his "allies" now. I hate this timeline.
Agreed with you there, and it leaves me ever more exhausted.
> Then I go out with my day because nothing he says is relevant in any way.
Unfortunately, when the US sneezes, Europe gets hit by a tornado. Ever since this godforsaken war against Iran, gas prices were unpredictable and unsustainably high.
It would have been one thing, had the US properly conducted the war - aka, had they prepared their allies in the region, had they asked us to join the fun, and committed ground troops. But they didn't, they caught all of us off guard, completely botched the execution, and we had to deal with the fallout.
Committing ground troops would be necessary to actually achieve objectives here. But that would lead the US into a very different, probably even larger shitshow.
I think it would have been possible... had it been prepared many months earlier.
The biggest and, to make it worse, completely avoidable issue IMHO was that there was no advance deployment of anti-drone defense across the region. Iran-made Shahed drones have been a thing in Ukraine ever since 2023, it boggles my mind that no single MENA country other than Israel had built up any AA defense and thus they all (including the US) were forced to waste millions of dollars worth of missilies against a glorified lawnmower on wings.
The second issue was that no allies were involved in this at all. Everyone got caught completely off guard, so there was no way to, say, silently build up stockpiles of oil and oil products - and as a result, oil prices skyrocketed.
And the third issue was timing itself. By the time the Iranian regime slaughtered tens of thousands of protestors, it was too late. The US could have used the momentum - Iranian exilants and the people in Iran all but screamed for external intervention. But since there was no planning done at all, it took the US far, far too long, and so there was barely any inner support in Iran to take out IRGC.
The fact that the US and Israel botched target selection and coordination - the US bombed a girl's school and people that Israel would have been fine with as an ersatz regime for the Mullahs - just puts the icing on the cake. A good idea in theory, no love for the Mullahs from my side, may they rot in hell - but an execution botched so horribly it puts the incompetent warmonger Bush to shame.
> There's a reason previous US administrations didn't do this, and it wasn't because they were Iran-friendly.
Partially it also was because the US general public was sick and tired of constant wars that (seemed to) only serve the interests of the MIC, with barely any incentive for actually bettering the lives of the people in Afghanistan and Iraq. The early war phase was won fast, but it was completely obvious no one ever drafted plans on how to lead both countries on a path to actual prosperity.
The budget deficit is the largest in history, the federal government size has increased, taxes on imports (tariffs) have increased in politically manipulative ways and now the government is meddling with the market price of commodities.
Even if you don't care about Europe or democracy or pollution or foreign policy... this is still just bad capitalism and bad big-government manipulation preventing the free market from correctly solving problems and establishing an optimal price for goods.
They were pushed out long ago, and mostly don't exist in any meaningful number. Even then, what could they do?
European here. It's not surprising. We knew we were in for a ride when y'all reelected the buffoon in 2024. But the sheer ignorance and outright malice the US has shown in the last two years alone... tariff wars against what are nominal allies? Threats to forcibly annex an ally's territory? Dragging us into an economic crisis with the completely botched Iran war? Setting up an economic crisis that will put the disaster of 2007ff to shame by allowing the wash trading and Habsburgian investment web in the AI economy?
Trump has permanently burnt bridges here. Even if people were protesting, it wouldn't matter, this damage will take decades to repair.
Trust comes on foot but leaves on horseback....
You can only spend goodwill once... And boy, the US is burning goodwill at an insane rate right now.
Not in the least because to non US people this seems like exactly what one could/should expect when re-electing this guy.
It's not like we are better in that regards... you Dutch elected Wilders, and us Germans are falling for the AfD.
Also, a US president is VASTLY more powerful than either a prime minister in NL or a kanseller in Germany. The US is also a bigger world power than any European country by itself. So the implications are different.