• Steven McTowelie
    link
    fedilink
    English
    92 hours ago

    Greenland, Ukraine, Canada: all of Trump’s actions make sense if you consider that he wants to secure rare earth minerals for… someone

  • @SkunkWorkz@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    36
    edit-2
    4 hours ago

    Bet the US is suddenly going to buy these minerals out of Russia. Bet one of Trump’s children or in-laws indirectly owns a exporting company in Russia.

  • @barneypiccolo@lemm.ee
    link
    fedilink
    English
    5
    edit-2
    1 hour ago

    This will only encourage him to go after Greenland even harder. He thinks they are the solution to having “rare earth.”

    Without China as a supplier, and thinking Greenland is the solution, it will justify an armed attack on Greenland in his empty cranium.

    The base we maintain in Greenland has about 150 people. My prediction is that he will start sending troops to the base to build up a force, and start intimidating Greenland/Denmark.

  • Bunbury
    link
    fedilink
    English
    69
    edit-2
    9 hours ago

    If China stops exporting these to the US that should influence the trade deficit in the way Trump is looking for, right? Isn’t that what this was supposed to do according to Trump? So he should be happy about this, right? Because it’ll bring the manufacturing of the minerals home? /s

    • Comtief
      link
      fedilink
      English
      144 hours ago

      I mean… who knows what he wants, maybe he wants to crash the economy.

    • @andallthat@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      358 hours ago

      Haven’t you heard? China are already on the phone with Trump saying they are going to move the production of terbium to the US. Basically they’ll use these very big drills to mine Chinese minerals right from Wyoming.

  • Disaffected Scorpio
    link
    fedilink
    English
    5711 hours ago

    Also, China is going to give the finger to US companies and Trump and make even more counterfeit stuff.

    Companies complaining about Chinese IP ain’t seen nothing, yet.

    • JohnEdwa
      link
      fedilink
      English
      145 hours ago

      Wasn’t respecting US patents also one of the parts of the US-Canada agreement as well which they now technically don’t have to do anymore, as not having tariffs was one of the requirements?

  • Ricky Rigatoni
    link
    fedilink
    English
    9215 hours ago

    Genuinely never thought I’d join the war on China on the side of China.

    • @seeigel@feddit.org
      link
      fedilink
      English
      1510 hours ago

      It still explains why this is happening. You can’t rely on Cina to build your military systems if they are for a war on China.

      It’s increadible that the comments are about Trump’s stupidity and not about the consequences of that war.

      • @Robbity@lemm.ee
        link
        fedilink
        English
        256 hours ago

        Nations that trade extensively with each other don’t go to war. Trade wars are an accelerator of armed conflict.

        • Comtief
          link
          fedilink
          English
          34 hours ago

          Nations that trade extensively with each other don’t go to war.

          To be fair, that didn’t work with Russia.

          • Tar_Alcaran
            link
            fedilink
            English
            64 hours ago

            Russia realized that if you just steal shit, you don’t have to pay for it anymore.

  • @SinningStromgald@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    19717 hours ago

    Delicious. Simply delicious. Trump didnt just pick up the gun, load the gun, aim the gun at his foot, fire the gun, claim it would make him run better and fall over. He then got back up and did it all again with the other foot still claiming it would make him run better.

    It takes a truly special kind of stupid to be at Trumps level.

    • spirinolas
      link
      fedilink
      English
      107
      edit-2
      14 hours ago

      Trump isn’t stupid, at least not that stupid. Your analogy would work better if instead of shooting his own foot he’s shooting Uncle Sam’s foot. You act confused because you think he works for Uncle Sam. He does not. He’s a Russian asset: his job is to make sure Uncle Sam never walks again, while pretending he’s not doing it on purpose so he can keep doing it.

      When you look at it that way, all his actions make perfect sense. He works for Putin and he’s doing a good job. Until people realize this he’ll keep sabotaging the US.

      • @Fluke@lemm.ee
        link
        fedilink
        English
        104 hours ago

        See, it was plausible until the price of oil started falling. Oil is one of the few things propping up Russia’s economy. If oil keeps falling, Russia is even more screwed than it is now.

        It would appear that he’s just a brat who’s never been told no in his life, grown so far as to be going senile. It’s all ego. Every single stupid thing he does is because he thinks he’s right. He is the literal embodiment of the dunning-krueger effect, fed by a bubble of yes-men hoping for crumbs from the table.

      • Comtief
        link
        fedilink
        English
        34 hours ago

        I don’t think he works for Putin (or well, who knows), but I think he admires fascism and fascists put ideology above economy, so that tracks.

        • @Blackmist@feddit.uk
          link
          fedilink
          English
          44 hours ago

          I don’t think he even knows what’s on half the shit he signs.

          He just grabs his oversized marker pen, puts that goofy-ass signature on them, holds it up for the camera like he’s still hosting The Apprentice, and goes back to playing golf.

          The idea of global supply chains more complex than “cotton -> cloth -> Trump branded tat” would blow his mind.

        • thermal_shock
          link
          fedilink
          English
          68 hours ago

          It’s not even about stupidity, he literally can’t admit he made a mistake and work to fix it. Triple down if you have to, never show “weakness”. What a fucking putz.

        • @floofloof@lemmy.ca
          link
          fedilink
          English
          11
          edit-2
          9 hours ago

          He’s evidently working to destroy the USA and its alliances, which serves Russia’s interests. But it’s hard to know whether he’s doing so deliberately or unwittingly.

      • @ChapulinColorado@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        41
        edit-2
        14 hours ago

        He can be both: working for Putin and a complete moron.

        You don’t threaten to sue the school you attended if your grades are released unless you know they are nothing to be proud of. Also, that professor or teacher that said Trump was the dumbest student he had to teach in all his years.

      • Lit
        link
        fedilink
        English
        1213 hours ago

        Good point. He bankrupted several of his casinos as practice, and now he is bankrupting the US.

    • @kreskin@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      1614 hours ago

      Putin continues to finance trump and has bailed him out of bankruptcy in the past. None of this is foot shooting, its all trashing the US from top to bottom as Putin planned. Every day Putin wins and people scratch their heads wondering why trump would do such stupid things.

    • @seven_phone@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      1416 hours ago

      It is all building to him putting the gun to his head with the promise it will make him stronger than ever. He will retaliate to these retaliations because it is all he understands. All his life he has just ignored or run head first at problems planning to solve them in the moment with his superior mind and it has never worked, and he never learns. More than that he never sees it as failed, and that is what so much of the US voted for and the world saw it.

  • FaceDeer
    link
    fedilink
    15518 hours ago

    But didn’t Trump tell them not to retaliate? I’m pretty sure Trump told them not to retaliate. I don’t understand.

    • @Drewmeister@lemmynsfw.com
      link
      fedilink
      English
      7918 hours ago

      Part of me hopes that other countries that have also had some populist fascist groups making waves recently would see how bad we’ve fucked up and not go down the same path. But we sure as hell didn’t seem to learn anything from Brexit about isolationism

      • @Freshparsnip@lemm.ee
        link
        fedilink
        English
        3516 hours ago

        Canada has an election coming up. It looked like a sure thing that the right wing party would win, now things are swinging in favour of the left wing because we’re afraid of Trump

        • @tempest@lemmy.ca
          link
          fedilink
          English
          812 hours ago

          The liberals are not left wing by most measures. They are probably best described as slightly right. You get the usual Neo liberal economics but you don’t get the regressive social issues.

      • Billiam
        link
        fedilink
        English
        4117 hours ago

        But we sure as hell didn’t seem to learn anything from Brexit about isolationism

        “Oh that could never happen here!”

        This is the FO part of the American Exceptionalism FA.

        • Ben Hur Horse Race
          link
          fedilink
          English
          1614 hours ago

          I quite literally remember having teachers in elementary school teaching about the holocaust/hitler and asking the class if if they could foresee this happening in the US. Every kid shoot their head and chuckled assuredly, how absurd to even consider.

          I still remember the look on Mrs. Begasto’s face of “oh yeah? so confident, I know something you don’t, I know the world in a way you are entirely naive to.” I didn’t understand why she felt that way, but I could tell she was certain about something I didn’t get. The closer we edge to a fearful, uneducated public thinking a bully king is what would be good for the country and the world the more I find myself thinking about Mrs. Begasto’s worried smirk.

          • Billiam
            link
            fedilink
            English
            2114 hours ago

            Aldous Huxley, George Orwell, Margaret Atwood, and others like them weren’t super fortune tellers or anything. They just studied humankind enough to know what could happen. And we Americans by-and-extra-large are too arrogant to learn those lessons.

  • @puppinstuff@lemmy.ca
    link
    fedilink
    English
    94
    edit-2
    18 hours ago

    That’s not a problem I’ll just go ask one of my historical trade partnohnoholyfuckwhatdidijustdo.

      • Terrasque
        link
        fedilink
        English
        23 hours ago

        In the wise words of Londo Mollari

        Only an idiot fights a war on two fronts. Only the heir to the throne of the kingdom of idiots would fight a war on twelve fronts.

      • Lit
        link
        fedilink
        English
        613 hours ago

        he is repeating history, starting trade wars to trigger world war.

    • @WhatAmLemmy@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      21
      edit-2
      16 hours ago

      The MIC already worked a solution since last time China restricted exports; both Cali and Australia would pick up production.

      The problem with rare earth isn’t that it’s rare, it’s that they only exist in low concentrations, and the total lack of labor and environmental laws in China means that there is no room for external competitors to compete on price… Our modern neoliberal governments refuse to do anything that does not enrich or empower the oligarchy; not even for “national security”.

      Unfortunately, this means Australia might have just jumped to the top of the nazi parties annexation list.

      • @cyd@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        10
        edit-2
        13 hours ago

        The “cheap Chinese labor and lax laws” thing is not exactly the issue, at least not these days. The thing is that Chinese industry has spent decades working out how to refine these minerals, and they’re the only ones who are now able to do it at scale. So other countries that extract and process rare earths (which as noted aren’t actually that rare) often ship semi-processed ore to China for final processing.

        Sure, other countries can replicate these capabilities if they’re willing to put in the effort. It’s like China’s challenge with EUV lithography, but in reverse. It will take significant time. Also, building up a rare earths processing industry probably involves not just spending capital, but also major environmental risks while you’re doing your trials.

      • Lit
        link
        fedilink
        English
        213 hours ago

        Yup, it is processing of the ores that china is good at. Rare earth is not that rare.

    • mrmule
      link
      fedilink
      English
      910 hours ago

      If you’ve been to Greenland it you’ll realize how inaccessible these mineral deposits are. And with no roads connecting towns it becomes a logistical nightmare. Oh and the place is covered in thick ice and snow for 10 months of the year. There have been mining companies dying there for the last 50 years, 1. Because of legislation and 2 because it’s virtually impossible to mine.

      • 👍Maximum Derek👍
        link
        fedilink
        English
        11 hour ago

        Oh. That’s why China was fighting so hard to buy the Tanbreez site during the last administration and why the US had to exert soft power on 4 different countries to buy it out from under them.

      • @mke@programming.dev
        link
        fedilink
        English
        46 hours ago

        I’ve seen jokes(?) that they’re aiming high, as in, aiming for high global temperatures to handle the ice. Stupidity wouldn’t describe it, it’d be insanity… But isn’t that what this administration is all about?

    • @ShittyBeatlesFCPres@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      711 hours ago

      The U.S. has a surprising amount of known rare earth deposits but the deposits aren’t really being explored extensively, much less mined because of economic reasons. The U.S. has the 4th largest lithium deposits, for example, but to mine it wouldn’t be competitive.

      A mean, a year ago, I would have said, it’s just cheaper to buy them on global markets than mine them in California. But we’ll see how broke these tariffs make us. We might all have lithium lung and be paid in company scrip again in 15 years.

    • Random_Character_A
      link
      fedilink
      English
      511 hours ago

      Those minerals don’t just jump up from the ground even if Trump parks his fat orange ass there.

    • Lit
      link
      fedilink
      English
      6
      edit-2
      13 hours ago

      Who is going to process them, though ? The problem is processing them.

  • Hikuro-93
    link
    fedilink
    English
    3618 hours ago

    Like Trump likes to say so much: FAFO.

    Multiple can play that game.