• @CalipherJones@lemmy.world
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    134 hours ago

    All this instability has me direly worried about what will happen if China invades Taiwan. Like, if we think it’s bad now, an invasion of Taiwan would grind our systems to a halt.

  • @ILikeBoobies@lemmy.ca
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    34 hours ago

    It will be interesting to see if Canada allies with China

    Much like how Vietnam was allied with the US because of the giant military on their doorstep

  • Steven McTowelie
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    208 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
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    10 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
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      54 hours ago

      “But look at this picture of Hunter Biden’s magnum dong. I mean, just look at it. Its so…magnum.” - Margarine BattleToad Greene.

  • Bunbury
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    15 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
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      1811 hours ago

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

    • @andallthat@lemmy.world
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      4214 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.

  • @barneypiccolo@lemm.ee
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    8 hours 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.

  • Disaffected Scorpio
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    6017 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
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      1812 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?

  • @SinningStromgald@lemmy.world
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    21623 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.

    • @CalipherJones@lemmy.world
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      34 hours ago

      We need to change this rhetoric. Trump isn’t going to be hurt by this. It’s more apt that he’s taking a machine gun to all of our feet. He hasn’t been held accountable for anything he’s made us suffer through.

    • spirinolas
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      21 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
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        1311 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
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        311 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
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          510 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.

        • @floofloof@lemmy.ca
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          16 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.

          • @Cenzorrll@lemmy.world
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            25 hours ago

            I’m pretty sure Putin played his narcissistic ass like a fiddle in the attempt to destabilize the US in order to win in Ukraine, and it’s paid off so much more than he ever dreamed.

        • thermal_shock
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          714 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.

      • @ChapulinColorado@lemmy.world
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        20 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
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        1219 hours ago

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

    • @kreskin@lemmy.world
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      1720 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
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      1422 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.

  • Ricky Rigatoni
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    9822 hours ago

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

    • @seeigel@feddit.org
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      1616 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
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        2613 hours ago

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

        • Comtief
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          311 hours ago

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

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

  • FaceDeer
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    1621 day 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
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      821 day 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
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        3622 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
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          819 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
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        4124 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
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          1621 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
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            2121 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
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    1 day ago

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

      • Terrasque
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        29 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
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        619 hours ago

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

    • @WhatAmLemmy@lemmy.world
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      22 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
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        20 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
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        219 hours ago

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