I think the canadians drank the cool aid on this one.

This has nothing to do with drugs or whatever. Mexico is the USA’s new sweatshop. Canada is the resource colony that supplies the US and Mexico. There’s a pecking order there - because its all owned by american capital, it all serves to strengthen the US. But while import taxes would be mutually destructive to everyone involved one of the trio deals in manufactured goods. What is Canada gonna do? Build a pipeline to Europe?

Nobody here has the full set of data required to truly answer this question. The adage that economists are wrong 95% of the time is true because everyone who tries to predict the future is essentially making bets. Regardless of how or why.

Will these high import taxes on the american economy strengthen the dollar and drive up imports anyways? Will this (relative) closing of the american economy serve as a perfect excuse for inertial inflation / monopoly profits to rise regardless of the calculus involved? Will people and companies find novel ways around the import taxes? Will the import taxes mostly just eat into the profits of US importers? Will foreign export economies make up the shock by relying on new, growing markets around the world? Will the import taxes be mostly just a means of picking winners and losers in the US economy, so that imports still happen its just that profits are funneled to a narrower sector of the oligarchy? Will tariffs be used to just browbeat countries into submission, to be unceremoniously dropped as soon as certain oligarchs get whatever they want from, say, México?

I don’t know. I don’t think anybody really knows.

Last I checked Brazil is one of the few countries in the world that has a trade deficit against the US. Which didn’t matter to Trump. He still put tariffs and minor sanctions against Brazil’s industry even after diplomats pointed to him that Brazil’s steel is made with American coal. But I think that’s a red herring. The key issue will always be, I suppose, the fact that the US and Brazil are competitors when it comes to exporting agricultural goods to east asian markets.

Worst case scenario it will be like the last time around, when Bolsonaro’s moronic sons were insanely racist towards chinese officials online, triggering a momentary freeze of soybean imports - meanwhile Trump ‘forced’ China to buy more american soy. Best case scenario Trump looks at the USA/BRA balance of trade and decides to mostly cook everybody else while scoring an aesthetic victory against Brazil by being tough on a made up issue.

The issue of reciprocity on the other hand really is a double edged sword. There’s less trade between the two countries than you’d expect. Its mostly things like Brazil exporting a lot of crude and the US exporting a lot of refined petrol. Or plane components being made in both countries. You raise import taxes on both sides and nobody wins. You just have lower return on investment for american capital.

The really key aspect is how the tariff agenda is used to pick winners and losers. Trump seems personally obsessed with the notion that if your trade balance against someone is negative that means you are ‘losing’. So its pure aesthetics there. In practice however you have what you always have in economies that have high import taxes. A mixture of protection and privilege. A company like Tesla, for an instance, might be given the effective monopoly of EV consumption in the US. After all you shut the Chinese out of the market. However that doesn’t mean Tesla has no access to Chinese manufacturing: since Musk is now a part of the american government, his company might the the only EV manufacturer permitted to import cars or car parts from China.

That’s why Tesla’s stock jumped on election night. The markets were factoring in the obvious potential for corruption.

Add in Trump’s personal perspective and something has to give. Some economic sector that is equally reliant on the global economy will have to go bankrupt to pay for Tesla’s monopoly profits. So yeah its a farcical ‘Nazi Privatization’, in the sense that the US is a capitalist regime where corps that are close to the government get to triple their profits on the backs of a closed, monopolized economic model.

It doesn’t even require an assumption that American companies have access to more powerful chips than their Chinese counterparts. If Deepseek and now Alibaba are that much more efficient than OpenAI’s stuff, that just means you can run exponentially more AI services on more advanced hardware. So, yeah, if the underlying LLM industry is viable then Nvidia should still be raking in cash. Unless they no longer have access to Taiwan’s fabs.

next-day emergency too

this is where bipartisanship comes in

From what I remember the princes of the yen docu gives off those feelings. You had a generation that built a system - fully cognizant of its strengths, weaknesses, contradictions and outright bluffs. Then two generations later you get true believers, who can’t help but mismanage it down the drain.

So maybe food for thought.

i’ve made this joke before, but he can’t settle for being anything less than the tony stark of videogame timewasters.

I felt the federal grants thing was weird enough to call everything else into question. Tariffs, greenland, attacking TSMC before chipmaking is up and running at home, etc. Ok I can find some reasoning for every one of these things. But copy-pasting a heritage foundation memo on blocking up to 3 trillion dollars in federal spending? What. There must be easier and more targetted ways to purge the government.

Resistance takes many forms. The question is what you want to achieve. Historically speaking the last time Latin America had a good deal from the great powers was when the United States itself supplanted the British Empire’s economic hegemony in the region. That was towards the early 1900s. It took a great deal of time of silent american growth under very boring presidents, and it took decades of american trade primacy to create conditions for that to happen. Even so, the British had to be in an inflection point - WW1 - for the US to make their move and break the British financial stranglehold on the continent. After that, it was between WW1 and WW2 Latin America had a lot of opprtunities to seize vis a vis american interest.

I do not think Latin America has the human and demographic resources nor the political will to stop being a peripheric region in world production chains and finance. That is not to say Latin America doesn’t trade in high tech, rather that its population by and large is not harnessed towards a full blown industrial revolution. However, as long as there’s at least one other game in town - China - then its best choice for resistance is to build ties with the chinese, to defend its public services as well as it can, and to appropriate as many funds as possible for state driven infrastructure.

Just look at México. It has become an industrial middleman between China and the US. It has a 600 billion USD export business of mostly industrialized goods, 80 percent of which or so is sent into the United States. Should it resist in a way that meaningfully endangers that? Of course not, thats how those AMLO/Sheinbaum reforms are financed.

But do you have any evidence to back up the original claim in question that half of all Latin Americans are “evangelical pro-US stooges” and/or that the entire continent is ideologically “compromised”?

I could spend an hour of googling and coming up with polls, scientific articles and demographic studies that I’ve already read before and which would just confirm what is evidently true. But I won’t. I will just return to my initial point. An american coming here and making much more extreme claims on the right wing nature of the US population would not be questioned in this way. A chinese making much more extreme claims about the liberal capture of their elites would not be questioned in this way. Their perspectives are taken for granted, whereas mine requires evidence.

So if I can write effort post after effort post with what you generally consider to be good points on sociology, politics and history. Points which you agree with, then you’ll have to settle with those. If you cannot see how they substantiate my perspective, then I’ll settle for being patronized and move on.

I’m not trying to be difficult but I genuinely don’t think I understand what you mean by this, or how Ukraine/Taiwan play into it. Are you saying US will treat Latin America like Russia treated/treats Ukraine or how the US treated/treats Ukraine?

Great Powers have spheres of influence. No country in Latin America is on the track to become a Great Power on their own, and the closest one is the United States. The US is at most declining at the moment. But it is still a superpower and is still in charge of global finance. Questioning its influence in the western hemisphere is at least as much a risk as Taiwan declaring independence or Ukraine allowing itself to become a battleground. This circles back to my initial point. A grand latin american resistance to Trump is suicide. It is the sort of political failure that Latin American countries are, for the medium term, better off avoiding altogether.

The immediate difference is speaking about one country which is the imperial core and speaking about the greater part of an entire continent.

You don’t see how that would lend itself to doomer, counterrevolutionary ideology?

Clearly you’re very knowledgeable about the region, and I respect that, but it still seems like an excessive statement. Can you see what I mean?

Well, which is it?

Is it a problem because I am generalizing hundreds of millions of people? Is it a problem because I am making myself into a doomer counterrevolutionary? Or is it a problem because I’m actually wrong and hyperbolic? You might see these statements as connected, but I felt the need to break them up because they are not synonymous.

Yes, I might be generalizing hundreds of millions of people and even dismissing some interesting movements here and there. But that doesn’t mean my analysis is good or bad. It could mean that I am motivated by sheer prejudice. With, say, Democrats claiming that Latinos cannot countenance a woman of color POTUS while, that the same year a majority of mexicans living in actual México elected a jewish female president. However it could also mean that I am making a claim to structural analysis. For an example, a notion that the imperial core is veering towards far right politics as material conditions worsen. Assuming such a notion is more than just vibes based on things going down in Europe and the USA then, yeah, one might be overlooking interesting anarchist and other orgs in Europe, or the efforts of local government in the USA. The original analysis, if confirmed, would still stand regardless.

Am I rendering myself unto a doomer with a very negative relationship with my region of the world? Well, I’m not from the imperial core. The thing about living in a defeated nation in the periphery of capitalism is that you do live with those feelings on a permanent basis. There’s no escaping that. There’s no escaping it with sheer american optimism. What you have is a choice and I have not chosen to be a doomer. I could talk to you about the contradictions and successes of the landless workers movement in Brazil or about liberation theology. I could also talk to you about the interplay of drug trade, local oligarchy and the massively powerful neopentecostal movements. All in all, I take the good with the bad and I have also chosen to see the silver linings that we are dealt with. Much of what you read before - such as the play of relative progressivism done by reactionary elements - might come across as doomerism to you. To peoples such as ours that sort of pragmatism is more akin to hope.

Now was I hyperbolic? No, I don’t think so. The average Latin American voter is at least as contradictory as any other. Phrasing of questions and aesthetics of political movements tend to align them harder than any one policy issue. And that’s fine and good because humans relate to other humans on the basis of passion, not reason. Another way in which Latin America is no different from any other part of the western world is in political polarization. Besides US propaganda, Latin America is seeing the same ‘death of the center’, ‘inability of the center left due to neoliberalism’ and ‘radicalization of the center right due to becoming economically indistinguishable from the center left’ dynamic. You have the total hegemony of US media and social media controlling discourse and pushing it right wing. You have the right wing in the good graces of the estabilished oligarchies, with all the funding that comes with it. You have the rise of prosperity gospel and american libertarian propaganda. You can keep going. These are structural issues and they don’t go away. Organizing in Latin America is a play towards people’s material conditions and in spite of the cultural hegemony of american capitalism.

As the US declines and starts becoming militarily aggressive, I do think countries historically dependent upon the US will begin to risk moving away from that dependency.

Let’s say the US declines. Hard. And becomes as much a Great Power as, say, Russia.

Isn’t the Ukraine War a pretty good example of the limits of that risk taking? How about a war over Taiwan? These are disastrous scenarios and we are assuming that the US isn’t in charge of the global finance.

Not to continue belaboring the point but living in a single place and ‘looking around’ isn’t sufficient to, again, dismiss half of all Latin America. That seems reactionary, to be honest.

I wouldn’t be dismissed if I was another american here, claiming that the US has a massive, reactionary right wing constituency that is only (slightly) outnumbered by another massive, liberal and also right wing constituency. And yet because I’m from Latin America and if I make a similar claim I’m a reactionary? Hell, my outlook is that only half of the region is deeply right wing. This means I have a more positive opinion on latin america than any american leftist has on the USA population. And yet that’s enough to be outright dismissed. Sorry but if you’re Latin American, I’d call you naive. If you’re American, I perceive your position as deeply patronizing.

You can point to México, where a successful developmentist programme bends the opinions of the right wing because it delivers material gains for everyone. Brazil surfed a similar wave not too long ago. These scenarios do not mean that the right wing does not exist. They do not mean that evangelical churches aren’t a fulcrum of power. They do not mean that a 500 year old oligarchy does not own these countries. They do not mean that the legacy of US dictatorships and propaganda don’t exist. What they mean is that latin americans are as human as everyone else, and as contradictory as everyone else.

even evangelicals don’t have that strong a hold outside of some Central American countries

That’s just not true. Not only is the neopentecostal movement much, much bigger than you think, its propaganda efforts are hegemonic and affect - for better and worse - the conduct of catholic and historical protestant groups as well.

There are certainly Right-wing movements in Latin America that are still supporting the US but if it was as strong as you say we wouldn’t see even the bit of progressive movement we’ve thus far seen over the last few decades

I’d be careful about decades, because if your analysis veers towards half a century of history you’ll find yourself in the terrain of progressive reforms by latin american general-dictators who were ok with divorce because they were raised Lutheran and hated the catholic church. Latin America as a region is not one where revolution has reigned supreme, but rather where relative progressivism has made waves following the gato pardo principle. ‘Let us do the revolution so that adventurers don’t take the initiative’, or, rather, let us change so that things stay the same.

The long arc of history bends progressive because, eventually, all these resource economies go through the cycles of boom and bust and in order to avoid collapse end up reforming in a number of ways. A century ago it was the benefit of urban workers to the detriment of the peasant majority. Twenty years ago it was an effort to follow IMF dictats to increase consumption. Either way, the more we discuss the issue the more reasons come up as to why Latin America cannot and is probably better off not being revolutionary in the medium term, much less the short term.

What makes you say this?

Well, I live in the region and I look around.

I am not dismissing the potential for LatAm or the Global South to move away from the West. If anything I’m a bloomer about it: because I recognize that the pragmatic game is a requirement for that to happen, and I think most governments in the region are well poised to play it. As despairing as it will be to watch Trump collapse the world’s economy over ‘trade imbalances’ its a good thing that China’s influence is strong enough that even with American boots on Peruvian soil the megaport and the rail projects are still going ahead. Or that even a dumbass like Milei can’t pretend he’ll export soybeans to the US for a living.

At the end of the day the single most successful example of building an alternative to the West is China. It was not built via a revolution that turned China away from the West. Far from it. Even now the Chinese would have to be pushed kicking and screaming away from their trade surpluses, ability to recycle those surpluses into foreign assets and projects, not to mention massive possibly even under-reported foreign currency reserves. Even Russia, the designated enemy of the past 20 years, had to be driven to a corner.

My rationale is that what Cuba and Venezuela are under is war. It is often cushioned in the language of sanctions, resistance and so on. But it is nothing short of war. This is something that leftists don’t have any trouble accepting. If anything, leftists want to make sure everyone understands that the United States wielded its full military and economic might to make it so the cuban and venezuelan populations were denied access essentials like food and medicine. To strangle their economies and ruin their futures. What’s hurtful is the corolllary to that:

No Latin American country will go to war with the US unless it is backed into a corner.

Trust me. It never even ‘looked’ like it could have happened. You see, there’s something of an online phenomenom that newsreaders know as Bricsgrifting. Five minutes after Petro’s announcements you had videos from all sorts of channels claiming that this was Latin America’s grand stand. It was nonsense. Even if it was peddled by otherwise well informed channels like Geopolitical Economy Report. My reaction as I woke up and saw those recommendations on youtube was to scoff even before I saw comments on Hexbear about Petro giving up.

You talk about how Latin America is very different from the EU and ‘has its moments’. Well, I assume you assume a greater degree of sovereignty. That’s overblown. The reason Latin America lacks the bonds of vassalage that the EU has towards the US is because vassalage is too good for Latin America. Its a two way street. The Europeans actually benefitted from US Hegemony, that’s why there’s so much inertial loyalty to it still. That’s why Latin America was once loyal to the US even before WW2, the problem is that the region would never be permitted the level of economic prosperity that was once afforded to the rest of the Golden Billion. It would be the thin end of the wedge.

Latin America as a whole exists in the afterglow of the Jakarta Method. Not even two generations ago the entire continent was under the direct rule of US backed military juntas. It is a defeated continent, brought low by the Volcker shock and the Great Latin American Debt Crisis. At least half of the population of Latin America is made up of evangelical pro US stooges who want sanctions against themselves. The entire region is ideologically compromised, and materially dependent on resource exports.

So at the end of the day, yeah: Colombia and México won’t oppose the US because they are dependent on it. México is the USA’s sweatshop, with 90 percent of its exports going north. Argentina and Perú won’t oppose the US because those are outright occupation regimes with american boots on the ground. Brazil won’t oppose the US because it never has, and to be quite honest it knows better. It’s not about choosing the easy path. It’s about surviving at all.

Of course there won’t be resistance from Latin America - anyone who’s making that proposal is lobbying for a poisoned pill. If the great harvesting of the EU is shocking news to the average person, then newsthread readers should know by now that that’s the default position of Latin American states. As Argentina shows it doesn’t really pay to be a friend of the United States. It will hurt to read this, but Venezuela also shows that it doesn’t pay to be an enemy either. What pays is to keep your head below the tall grass. Survival is what’s paramount and pragmatism is what’s required.

causing a stock market crash because someone in your hedge fund had a side project is wild ngl

so you got all my jobs

No no, one thing does matter: the Supreme Court itself. If they can arbitrarily withold and cite precedent, that means nobody else can cite the consequences of their actions. Its a nifty way for the institution to maximize its own power.