because there's a war coming soon that will destroy most global trade. trump wants the US in a better position in that near future by having more factories and such inside of the US.

in a peaceful world, you allow free trade and specialization to do its thing and everybody gets richer. you farm bananas, i farm apples, and we trade. we create value out of thin air, it's an amazing thing.

but in a world where superpowers are at war and the world splinters into factions, half of the global economy will be cut off from the other half. therefore it'll be a huge liability if we for example depend on Taiwan for 90% of our computer chips when China can blockade Taiwan and we cannot reliably break that blockade. that's one industry.. now imagine the thousands of other products we need for a modern economy. it would cause massive economic shockwaves.

so this tariff thing is accepting that this will happen in the near future and preparing for it, slowly weaning off the economy from that connection to the rest of the world. so when it does come, it doesn't hurt as bad.

it doesn't really matter if you piss off your allies. since you're the biggest military power they are going to have to rely on you anyway. you have leverage over them. the difference is that Trump is a reality TV star and so he is loudly exploiting this leverage whereas most past leaders would be more subtle and diplomatic about it.

Canada, Mexico, Germany, Japan, etc aren't really allies. Being someone's ally implies there's a sort of equal footing. When someone has no choice but to bend to your will, is that a voluntary relationship? the US essentially wrote Japan's constitution and they told the Germans what to write down for theirs. Canada and Mexico are heavily dependent on US trade- US growth might slow a half percent or two whereas Mexico and Canada are liable to fall into a recession because of these tariffs.

it isn't equal footing. it's a david v goliath situation

to give a recent example, Ukraine. Ukraine in 2014 had the Euromaidan coup and the president had to flee the country. The new government that was quickly appointed without an election realized one thing very quickly- Russia was about to invade them. they had only one option in terms of getting military aid and that was the US. so immediately, the same day that the government was appointed, they started cooperating with the US. a few days after that, little green men showed up in Donbas and the Russian army waltzed into Crimea

so you can say they "allied" with the US but a more honest way to say it is that they were desperately pushed into America's orbit. and the US ultimately doesn't care about a country like Ukraine. people are starting to see it more clearly today because of Trump, but I honestly don't think the situation would have been meaningfully different with Biden or Kamala. The primary difference would have been rhetoric. Instead of calling Zelensky a dictator, we would have just dragged our feet with military aid instead, like what has been happening the last year or so

tldr: the US is a imperialist superpower and this is what they do.

I was just watching a panel discussion about Trump and the tariffs and had a thought. He's started adding exemptions. He just added one for the automotive industry following discussions with the big three auto makers. What if the tariffs were a grift all along? What if he put the tariffs on to generate tax dollars that he can use to give billions of dollars to the wealthy but what if he's double dipping and selling exemptions? Like, what if when he talked to the big three auto makers he said, "I'll make an exemption to the tariffs for the auto industry if you give me $100 million"?

this question could be rephrased to:

dear idiots, why are you so stupid?

OR

dear sociopaths, why are you so selfish?

the motivations don't matter. they can;t be reasoned with.

conclusion: guns.

I'm pretty sure the only Republicans here are people who believe in Republicanism (the political ideology)

I think they would say something like “our allies have been getting more from their alliances with us than we have been getting from those alliances, and we’re tired of being the donor in all these relationships.”

Of course, they are ignoring the fact that our alliances add up to American world domination, which has uniquely tremendous economic benefits for the US. They take that for granted though, feel entitled to it, don’t want to pay for it anymore because they don’t think it can ever change.

It’s just like their attitude on vaccines. They take herd immunity utterly for granted now and only see the minute risks of getting the shot themselves.

They need the talking heads on Fox News to tell them how to answer that question first.

Its simple, russian wants them to and they must do what putin says or else.

Its not really that complicated. It's simply trason.

Juche.

I wish I was kidding.

They're doing a North Korea. Building a completely isolated war economy.

Make liberals tears is the only reason in their hateful and stunted minds