it’s like you believe you can tariff them expecting they won’t do the same. Why do you believe the rest of the world is not going to retaliate and why do you believe America can prosper without the rest of the world?

What’s the point of having a military alliance with countries you puts tariffs on? That’s unfriendly to say the least.

  • RangerJosey@lemmy.mlEnglish
    701·
    3 days ago

    Trump only ran to stay out of prison. Now he’s ripping the copper out of the walls to get as much money as he can before it all collapses under his ineptitude.

    Elon thinks he’s gonna be a trillionaire at the top of a technofeudal oligarchy. (He wants to be Arasaka from Cyberpunk but he’s gonna have a hard time doing that while all his businesses fail.)

    • Dead_or_Alive@lemmy.world
      6·
      2 days ago

      Buffet has a long history of stockpiling cash when the market becomes far too speculative. He’s also flat out said millionaires and billionaires aren’t taxed fairly compared to the working class.

      I think Trump is trying to appeal to blue collar workers who have seen their jobs disappear. Tariffs are his ham fisted way of trying to appeal to them.

      Trump is a fool though. It isn’t the 60s anymore and manufacturing won’t work in the US without inputs from Canada and Mexico.

      • socsa@piefed.socialEnglish
        1·
        1 day ago

        The entire narrative that the US doesn’t have a manufacturing industry or blue collar work is largely a myth anyway. The US has a $2.4T manufacturing sector, which is larger than the entire GDP of Canada. There are also plenty of blue collar jobs in the trades.

        This “problem” never gets solved because there is no problem. But the media of course continues to help Republicans gaslight us about it.

      • IndustryStandard@lemmy.world
        2·
        2 days ago

        Many billionaires have recently cashed out not only Buffet. Of course it could be them predicting Trump being bad. But collusion would be possible.

        • Dead_or_Alive@lemmy.world
          3·
          2 days ago

          I cashed out in November.

          Its painfully obvious to anyone who can do math that Trumps policy’s would destabilize an already weakening market.

    • redlemace@lemmy.world
      2·
      2 days ago

      Probably not here, probably none at all. They blindly follow Trump. And proud to be blinded too I might add: Before I left reddit I wanted to ask a similar question in the republican subreddit. However, they where so loud and proud they found liberals on the subreddit and banned them for life I never bothered to put out any questions there.

  • gearheart@lemm.ee
    10·
    2 days ago

    The point?

    I see it like this.

    Profit profit profit at the expensive of all Americans for 4 years.

    The next 4 years let Democrats clean up the mess, Democrats are weak anyway.

    Then milk the American people again for another 4 years. The cycle is nonstop.

    This is malicious greed but everyone keeps thinking these people are idiots.

  • turnip@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    371·
    3 days ago

    Project 2025. The goal is to remove all tariffs and other limitations against the US.

    Canada for instance has laws on antibiotics for dairy, foreign ownership for banks and telcos, various things like that. India has tariffs on everything.

    The document outlines crazy things like capital punishment and a border wall, its clearly Trumps handbook. It’s all in there.

  • Swordgeek@lemmy.ca
    10·
    2 days ago

    “What’s the point?” The point is to seize power and get rich.

    They will destroy whatever they want or need in order to become rich and powerful.

  • AA5B@lemmy.world
    12·
    2 days ago

    I haven’t seen any republicans here so I’ll also offer my opinion as a sane person ….

    1. Narcissism. There is only me, and other. There are no allies, just suckers. it’s all about me. Right here. Right now.
    2. Bullying. Trump styles himself as a great negotiator but from the outside it looks a lot more like bullying. And if you believe his commitments, you’re a sucker. He thinks this is “making deals” but is the only way he knows how to operate
    • Melvin_Ferd@lemmy.world
      1·
      2 days ago

      I would say maybe it’s something else in that a large portion of their base globally does not see leftist aligned government powers as allies

      • AA5B@lemmy.world
        2·
        2 days ago

        We’re talking about”left” here, all lowercase, not “LEFT”. Basic human rights and safety nets, all people created equal kind of stuff, less exploitation, that are still capitalist and democratic.

  • JackbyDev@programming.devEnglish
    302·
    3 days ago

    You won’t get logical answers to this because there isn’t one. Maybe they’re just that dumb. Maybe they just want to tank the economy a bit so the rich and gobble up more during the dip. Maybe they just actually love Russia. Maybe they’re being secretly black mailed by Russia.

    • straightjorkin@lemmy.world
      131·
      3 days ago

      I do think it’s a Russia thing. Putin getting America to alienate all of its closest allies, so that it’s only Russia left to aid.

    • AA5B@lemmy.world
      3·
      2 days ago

      I think y’all are overthinking it, giving them too much credit for having a plan. For Trump it’s just narcissism and bullying. Everyone else is a grifter seeing their chance. Musk must have just read Ayn Rand

  • 10001110101@lemm.eeEnglish
    9·
    2 days ago

    Not a Republican. I assume Trump is making backroom personal deals to get the world’s politicians and businesses to bribe him in some way. Aligns with how he seems to operate with everything else.

    • Pumpkin Escobar@lemmy.worldEnglish
      262·
      4 days ago

      OP’s also not going to get an answer that’s interesting or helpful out of them even if you go to where they live and ask and don’t get immediately flamed for asking.

      There’s no acceptable answer for it. I have plenty of conservative friends and I could make sense of voting for Trump the first time. Not for me, FUCK that, but not all Trump v1 supporters were racists and there were valid conservative reasons to vote for him. He was definitely an unknown, nobody could have told you with certainty how he would act once in office. I could have told you what I expected and it was about as horrible as I expected, but people often see things in politicians that they want to see, rather than seeing what’s really there.

      But any of the “OK to vote for Trump v1” falls apart completely for Trump v2. We saw what his first term was like and especially how it ended. His campaign in 2024 was even more unhinged and less grounded in reality than in 2016. Voting for him in 2024 is really inexcusable.

      The US will be unimaginably worse off by the time Trump leaves office this time, tariffs and tax cuts for the rich and inflation, it’s going to be bad for Americans on an individual level. On a global level, Trump will have shredded alliances and any goodwill we had built up over the past decades, while also validating and confirming the world’s worst concerns about us.

      And when Trump does finally leave office, the people you want to hear from will largely feel like it was a phenomenal presidency. It is a cult and logic and reason don’t have anything to do with it.

      • folkrav@lemmy.ca
        2·
        4 days ago

        I’d love to believe this, but cynical me is thinking about those conservatives that look at Milei in Argentina and legitimately think it’s going great.

        • Triasha@lemmy.world
          1·
          3 days ago

          Milei’s performance really does depend on your metric.

          If all you care about is inflation and regulations, then he’s doing all right. Somewhere between fantastic and “eh, he’s getting there” depending on how you squint.

          If you care about how many people are in poverty, or struggling to eat, he has been a disaster.

          Conservatives don’t care about suffering. The suffering is natural. Life is hard. Lots of people are losers. Trying to stop the suffering just moves the pain from people who deserve to suffer (the poor) to people who don’t deserve it. (The rich)

      • remotelove@lemmy.ca
        2·
        4 days ago

        I have my doubts about that. Most of the mass posters are too “conservative” and lean extremely hard into stereotypes. They take racism and bigotry just a bit too far in many cases and it doesn’t quite align with actual conservative bigots and racists that I know.

        It wouldn’t be surprising if most of the “conservative” communities are part of the same troll farm that lives primarily on other instances.

        This is all speculation, of course. But, organized campaigns to spread discourse on social media are real and some of these trolls are really good at what they do.

    • LuckyPierre@lemm.eeEnglish
      21·
      3 days ago

      Sadly true. We actively searched for alternatives when we realised other channels were getting too manipulative and full of hate. Those who stayed haven’t even realised it.

  • HighFructoseLowStand@lemm.eeEnglish
    351·
    3 days ago

    While I have no issue with Republicans being shunned for their unashamed fascism, it does mean threads like this are essentially pointless because almost none will actually participate and the ones who do will be downvoted into oblivion.

  • jollyrogue@lemmy.ml
    301·
    3 days ago

    Isolating the US and breaking US hegemony. Trump is a Putin puppet, and what’s best for Russia is crippling the US economically and diplomatically. Alienating the EU cuts off the EU from the US who would otherwise help the Europeans against the Russians as they try to reclaim their former territories.

    This also helps China who is trying to replace the US as the world superpower. BRICS is doing a good job of creating a competing economic alliance, and the US falling apart helps make it more attractive.

    Not a conservative, by the way. Just someone who follows the news.