How would they stick it to him?

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Be well

GO BEARS!!!

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We have no leverage. While globalization means that a country like Russia going full retard means they destroy their own economy in the process when the rest of the world responds (Crimea and Ukraine was not full retard), it also means that a country like the US, that routinely runs significant deficits, has no real leverage to negotiate them away without tariffs.

China is getting away with economic murder. Actually, at this point it is economic mass murder. They can because the majority of the old industrialized nations are terrified of not being able to have economic growth to pay for their own welfare states and the only way going forward for them is to court investment of the kind China offers. Very little strings attached. So they cannot line up with the US and hold China accountable for currency manipulation, or their building of islands in the middle of the sea to try and control the most valuable shipping lanes in the world. The US is once again left to do that ourselves. This is World Police kind of shit that has existed since WW2 and let everyone who fell in line to get very rich off the US expending a lot of treasure to maintain it. But those days are coming to an end. And we have to be able to create leverage. Europe won't join us the majority of the time even if they could so they will often find themselves in the crosshairs as well.

Don't get me wrong. I think Trump, and most any US administration will fuck it up in the long run but I dont know what else to do aside from simply bending over to the Chinese and giving up. They might only account for 2% of steel imports but it's the building blocks of leverage on trade. He couldn't simply slap tariffs only on China. You have to do this stupid dance.

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"Mattress technology has come a long way"

- Dan Bernstein, 2016