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Trump administration 2024-2028

Lot's of Chinese buying Tesla's here in Vancouver, whether they buy a BYD over a Tesla if given the choice remains to be seen.
 
I would bring the tariffs down where they are competing equally with Canadian made cars and have to pass the same safety standards. China wants to wipe out our manufacturing capability and block us from doing anything there. I have no doubt the cars are subsidized to the hilt. They can be encouraged to build those cars here if the design is so great and we can see how good their manufacturing is under the light.
 
Colin Parkinson said:
I would bring the tariffs down where they are competing equally with Canadian made cars and have to pass the same safety standards. China wants to wipe out our manufacturing capability and block us from doing anything there. I have no doubt the cars are subsidized to the hilt. They can be encouraged to build those cars here if the design is so great and we can see how good their manufacturing is under the light.
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Mold isn't that bad in a new car is it? ;)

 
MilEME09 said:
This seems like a massive security risk

www.nytimes.com

Musk Set to Get Access to Top-Secret U.S. Plan for Potential War With China

Giving Elon Musk access to some of the nation’s most closely guarded military secrets is a major expansion of his role as an adviser to President Trump and highlights his conflicts of interest.
www.nytimes.com www.nytimes.com
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On a Likert scale from 1 to the current President, where do you feel this security risk might fall? ;)

'The Russians are laughing at Trump - they just don't do it in public' | Prof Michael Clarke​

 
MilEME09 said:
This seems like a massive security risk

www.nytimes.com

Musk Set to Get Access to Top-Secret U.S. Plan for Potential War With China

Giving Elon Musk access to some of the nation’s most closely guarded military secrets is a major expansion of his role as an adviser to President Trump and highlights his conflicts of interest.
www.nytimes.com www.nytimes.com
Click to expand...

daftandbarmy said:
On a Likert scale from 1 to the current President, where do you feel this security risk might fall? ;)
Click to expand...
Angry What Is This GIF by Adult Swim
 
EU closing the door on US defense companies…this will impact their top line. America is getting in to Phase 2 of FAFO. Also, IK getting a bit more Brexit FAFO Phase 2.

The article notes that while the US defense industry has historically received 2/3 of the EU’s defence funding, the EU’s new policy mandates 65% be spent within the Union, leaving at most 35% for the US if no money is spent elsewhere (SK, Canada, Australia, Swiss, etc.). This will be €100s of billions loss to US defense firms.

www.politico.eu

EU slams the door on US in colossal defense plan

Bloc aims to build up military-industrial complex to deter Russia and brace for the U.S. shift away from Europe.
www.politico.eu www.politico.eu

EU slams the door on US in colossal defense plan​

Bloc aims to build up military-industrial complex to deter Russia and brace for the U.S. shift away from Europe.

MARCH 19, 2025 5:08 PM CET
BY GREGORIO SORGI, JACOPO BARIGAZZI AND GIOVANNA FAGGIONATO

BRUSSELS — United States arms-makers are being frozen out of the European Union’s massive new defense spending plan, which aims to splash the cash for EU and allied countries, according to defense spending plans released Wednesday.

Also left out — for now — is the United Kingdom.

“We must buy more European. Because that means strengthening the European defense technological and industrial base,” said Commission President Ursula von der Leyen in announcing the Readiness 2030 program.

In a bid to strengthen ties with allies, Brussels involved countries like South Korea and Japan and the European Free Trade Association (EFTA) in its program that could see as much as €800 billion spent on defense.

“We need to see not only Russia as a threat, but also ... more global geopolitical developments and where Americans will put their strategic attention,” European Defense Commissioner Andrius Kubilius told reporters.

In recent years, about two-thirds of EU procurement orders have gone to U.S. defense companies.

The Commission presented its long-term defense policy proposal, known as a white paper, as well as a raft of legislative proposals aimed at making it easier for countries to boost military spending and to create a more integrated defense market in the bloc.

“We’re not doing this to go to war, but to prepare for the worst and defend peace in Europe,” said Kaja Kallas, the EU’s top diplomat.

The threat from Russia is the main driver for strengthening the continent’s military-industrial complex — but shifts in the U.S. under President Donald Trump are also forcing the EU to move fast.


The danger of relying too much on the U.S. was highlighted by Trump’s sudden decision to undermine allied Ukraine by halting arms deliveries and intelligence-sharing to pressure Kyiv into accepting peace talks with Russia.

Kallas pointed to how Kyiv has been hampered by relying on outsiders. “They use weapons that are not produced in Ukraine [and] sometimes there are limitations on how they can use those weapons ... your military needs to really have free hands in this regard,” she said.

The EU strategy underlined that while the United States is “traditionally a strong ally,” it added that Washington “believes it is over-committed in Europe and needs to rebalance, reducing its historical role as a primary security guarantor.”

Allocating the money​

The most concrete proposal is a Commission pledge to lend up to €150 billion to member countries to be spent on defense under the so-called SAFE instrument.

While the loans will only be available to EU countries, friendly states from outside the bloc may also take part in joint weapons purchases.

Joint procurement under the SAFE proposal is open to Ukraine; EFTA’s Norway, Switzerland, Iceland and Liechtenstein; as well as “acceding countries, candidate countries and potential candidates, as well as third countries with whom the [European] Union has entered into a Security and Defence Partnership.”



As of the end of January, the EU had six defense and security partnerships: with Norway, Moldova, South Korea, Japan, Albania and North Macedonia.

Turkey and Serbia, as EU candidate countries, could also potentially join.

That leaves out the U.S. and the U.K. — although Britain’s status could change. “We are working on having this defense and security partnership with U.K. I’m really hoping that for the summit which is in May, we can have results,” Kallas said.

Canada has also made clear it wants a tighter security relationship with the EU. The Commission on Wednesday also floated greater defense cooperation with Australia, New Zealand and India.

“There are lot of requests across the globe to cooperate with us,” said a senior EU official.

The preferential treatment for European companies is a bid to appease France, one of Europe’s leading arms producers.

In a further attempt to tighten the screws on non-EU companies, the deal bans foreign countries from accessing classified information.

It also sets a minimum threshold that 65 percent of the components eligible for funding must be European, with that definition including Ukraine and Norway. The planned fund would exclude weapons systems where a non-EU country has design authority — meaning controlling its constructions or use. That would seem to cover most joint ventures producing U.S. military equipment in the EU.

The loans will finance joint projects by two or more members in a bid to create an EU-wide defense industry. “We do away with fragmentation precisely by incentivizing member states to get together” and buy the same weapons at a better price, said an EU official.

In an attempt to kickstart arms purchases immediately, the Commission will allow EU countries to place orders individually for the first 12 months.

The plans released Wednesday also allow EU member countries to get around the bloc’s strict budget limits. They will be able to overshoot the EU’s public spending limit up to a maximum of 1.5 percent of GDP for a period of four years.

The deadline for requesting loans is June 30, 2027, and countries may receive the cash until the end of 2030. They must repay loans to the Commission within 45 years.
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In interesting interview with David Frum on aspects of Trump and his administration and the difference between chaos (under Trump as 45) and disaster (as Trump 47)…there were checks and balances in 2016-2020…now, even the American legislature doesn’t push back against bad ideas, let alone anyone even remotely close to Trump inside his administration.


All good, but this bit (at 16:12) speaks to the folly globally of disassociation from the rest of the democratic nations of the world…
 
I understand a lot of domestic abuse situations are accompanied by the abused being isolated from their social circles which prevents support to the victim. Interesting that Trump is doing the same to America on a global level. She can’t play nice with her old friends anymore and instead must sit at the table with Vlad.
 
Colin Parkinson said:
I would bring the tariffs down where they are competing equally with Canadian made cars and have to pass the same safety standards. China wants to wipe out our manufacturing capability and block us from doing anything there. I have no doubt the cars are subsidized to the hilt. They can be encouraged to build those cars here if the design is so great and we can see how good their manufacturing is under the light.
Click to expand...
Considering every Chinese company is legally subservient to the State, I'm not a fan of giving them a footprint here. Maybe - just maybe - if no employee or executive - was a Chinese national, but that ain't gonna happen.
 
Good2Golf said:
EU closing the door on US defense companies…this will impact their top line. America is getting in to Phase 2 of FAFO. Also, IK getting a bit more Brexit FAFO Phase 2.

The article notes that while the US defense industry has historically received 2/3 of the EU’s defence funding, the EU’s new policy mandates 65% be spent within the Union, leaving at most 35% for the US if no money is spent elsewhere (SK, Canada, Australia, Swiss, etc.). This will be €100s of billions loss to US defense firms.
Click to expand...
It should also be expected to push their costs higher - less capability for same money. European industries will know they are favoured/protected and will behave accordingly. If the EU nations follow through on talk about increasing defence readiness, EU taxpayers are on the hook.
 
Brad Sallows said:
It should also be expected to push their costs higher - less capability for same money. European industries will know they are favoured/protected and will behave accordingly. If the EU nations follow through on talk about increasing defence readiness, EU taxpayers are on the hook.
Click to expand...
They’re going to be paying 25% more anyway. Might as well keep the extra inside the EU.
 
Good2Golf said:
They’re going to be paying 25% more anyway. Might as well keep the extra inside the EU.
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And get countries outside the EU to buy their stuff as well.

Wrecking the US defence industry wasn’t on my bingo card but here we are.
 
Good2Golf said:
They’re going to be paying 25% more anyway. Might as well keep the extra inside the EU.
Click to expand...
If the EU is imposing a 25% tariff on US imports, that's self-inflicted.

Bear in mind that an observed effect of import tariffs is to cause domestic prices to rise.
 
A mild dose of corrective -

110 years ago a US president refused to go to war, citing ‘America First’. Is Trump following his lead?​

Woodrow Wilson’s determination to stay out of the war in Europe reflected principles that are still deeply held by Americans today

George Bridges

21 March 2025 3:08pm GMT

Gift this article free
https://twitter.com/intent/tweet?ur...ed+to+go+to+war.+Is+Trump+following+his+lead?

Donald Trump and Woodrow Wilson

Former US president Woodrow Wilson was determined to keep the US out of the First World War
January 12 1918. The world is at war. In Washington, the British ambassador to the United States, Sir Cecil Spring Rice, writes a letter to a former US secretary of state William Jennings Bryan. In office, Bryan had worked tirelessly to keep the USA out of the war, crossing swords with Spring Rice. But the ambassador is effusive about Bryan and the USA in general. “One thing is absolutely certain: in no other country can an Englishman make such friendships.”

He encloses a poem he had written “as a sort of spontaneous outpouring”. The first line is “I vow to thee my country, all earthly things above”.

I had no idea that one of our nation’s favourite hymns began life as part of US-British diplomacy until I came across this letter in a book of Spring Rice’s diplomatic despatches. My grandfather had bought the book perhaps out of loyalty – Spring Rice was his wife’s uncle – rather than interest: the book was unread, and many of the pages uncut. Reading it armed with a pair of scissors, and with Trump, Ukraine, and tariffs ringing in my ears, I was taken back to a world that had disappeared – and yet is eerily familiar.
Book

The poem enclosed by Sir Cecil Spring Rice in a letter to a former US secretary of state, William Jennings Bryan, in 1918, which would later become the hymn I Vow to Thee, My Country Credit: Eddie Mulholland
Spring Rice’s links to America were strong. He had been best man to Theodore Roosevelt, who called him “Springy” and was godfather to Spring Rice’s son. Roosevelt helped give Spring Rice an entrée to the American elite.

In 1915, he was staying with Jack (JP) Morgan – a lynchpin in financing the British war effort – when a German assassin broke in and shot and wounded the banker. “I had no part in the fight except vainly trying to get the pistol out of the murderer’s hand. I see that the thing to do is to close at once with the assassin and not let him put his arms out. Morgan was really a trump”.

But, while ambassador, Spring Rice realised that his friendship with Roosevelt – then in the political cold – had become a liability. A Democrat, Woodrow Wilson, was in the White House and he was determined to keep the US out of Europe’s war. The concept of the “special relationship” did not exist, but the sense that the US should be “on our side” was strong in Britain. Spring Rice’s despatches to London constantly remind the foreign secretary that this perception was wrong:

“We wrongly suppose, because they talk our language, they are an Anglo-Saxon people. As a matter of fact they are a foreign nation, or rather several foreign nations. None of these nations is particularly friendly to us, and those of them who are of our race have very particular reasons for disliking us. It would be wiser to bear this in mind and to treat the American people not as cousins, still less as brothers, an attribution which they would greatly resent, but as English-speaking foreigners, some of whom make most agreeable companions and talk a most sympathetic language.”

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Furthermore, “it is not so long ago that we boasted of our splendid isolation and only left it when we found it was impossible to maintain... We ought, therefore, to find it easy enough to put ourselves into the position of this country and I hope we shall try to do so.”

Spring Rice’s explanations of US neutrality strike familiar notes today. First and foremost, “we are making war and they are making money,” Spring Rice wrote. “There is a prevailing feeling that whatever happens, America must keep out of the war, and, while it lasts, make as much money out of it as possible.”

And he added: “If the US wants to sell, they must facilitate sales; if they don’t facilitate sales, they cannot sell. This, and not the European struggle, is what interests them, and I daresay we should be the same.”

But America’s growing prosperity was being generated by a nation “divided into entirely distinct and separate sections, which do not speak the same language, or think the same thoughts”. He wrote: “About 13,000,000 American citizens are speaking a foreign language and look on the old inhabitants of this country much as the Puritans regarded the Indians with at best a superior sort of pity. If the war had not taken place I expect the Germans would have captured the U.S, by peaceful penetration in another 10 years. It may be too late to try now, but the struggle is on.”

America divided. America putting its interests first. And America led by a populist president – whose “tendency has been to follow very exactly the dictates of popular opinion”. The president, who adopted the mantra “America First”, told Spring Rice, “he had to take the course which commended itself to the great majority of the American people whose interpreter he was bound to be… It was not so much a question of what was the right thing to do from the abstract view point, as what was the possible thing to do, from the point of view of the popular condition of mind. It was his duty to divine the moment when the country required action and to take that action which the great majority demanded.”
Woodrow wilson

Former US president Woodrow Wilson was known to make unpredictable decisions and had an ‘autocratic’ approach to governing his Cabinet Credit: Library of Congress
Wilson’s utterances were “cryptic”. The process of decision-making was opaque and unpredictable: “We regard the White House rather as Vesuvius is regarded in Naples; that is, as a mysterious source of unexpected explosions.” Wilson took “no individual into his counsel”, but led an “autocratic” government, treating the members of his Cabinet “in the same way as under the Tudor monarchy in England”.

As to foreign policy, Wilson had an iron grip. “The real business of foreign politics is transacted by the president alone”. He used “secret foreign agents, a long succession of whom have passed through the White House. He has also a succession of advisers, who, one after the other, are discarded.”

With America’s economy booming and its population divided, Wilson’s foreign policy aimed to keep the US out of Europe’s war, and to mediate a peace. In July 1916, the Battle of the Somme raging, Spring Rice wrote: “I am sure we would make a mistake if we counted on the active intervention of America as one of the guardians of a world peace. Every indication points in the opposite direction.”

Its army was “inadequate”, “wholly unprovided with men, transport or ammunition for a very large force”. And the ambassador reminded London time and again how the well-organised, vocal German community was pressuring Wilson to curb finance and exports to the Allies – “ordering the Federal Reserve to discourage investments in British Treasury Bills”. As the 1916 presidential election approached, for Wilson “a pro-German policy is not so dangerous politically as a pro-Ally policy”.

Spring Rice foresaw that if America were to enter the war, it would need to be “an American war in defence of American interests”. In 1917 those interests began to be threatened. German attacks on neutral shipping began to cripple US exports. The publication of a secret German cable to the Mexican government, proposing a German/Mexican alliance against the US, enraged Congress. Yet, as Spring Rice pointed out just a month before the United States declared war on Germany in April 1917, US policy was “pro-Ally but anti-British, and it is pro-Ally because it is anti-German”.

Once in the war, Wilson’s vision was for “peace without victory.... Victory would mean peace forced upon the loser”. He initially proposed a League of Peace and Spring Rice told Wilson “how conscious we were of the immense importance of the role which would now have to be played by the president of the United States”. Wilson “admitted the fact, which he regretted.” The USA was a new global titan – but a reluctant one.

At his last meeting with Wilson, Spring Rice articulated how the horror and sacrifice of war might bring their two nations together. He told the president: “We could almost endure with equanimity all the horrors of this terrible struggle if they led in the end to a close, sure and permanent understanding between the English-speaking peoples. If we stood together we were safe. If we did not stand together nothing was safe. The conversation ended with renewed and most cordial assurances from the president.”

Of course, our world is different in many ways to the world Spring Rice inhabited. So what light, if any, can his experiences and observations shed on today’s tumultuous politics? Maybe two things.

The first is that, then as now, the American president was putting American interests first. They are in effect following the dictum of Lord Palmerston, who was foreign secretary when Britain was in the ascendancy: “We have no eternal allies, and we have no perpetual enemies. Our interests are eternal and perpetual, and those interests it is our duty to follow”. This is obviously deeply unsettling – a cold shower of reality, waking us from the reverie Europe has been in since 1945, shattering our assumption that simply because the US has troops on the continent and is a member of Nato, it will come to Europe’s aid if we are attacked. So maybe the USA is simply reverting to type. Far from this being a new world, maybe we are going back to the old world.

But flowing from that is surely an unavoidable conclusion: when America’s interest are threatened or attacked, it will act to defend them – just as it did in 1917, and again in 1941. Maybe this is simply out of economic interest. Or maybe action, when it comes, shows that we are bound by something deeper than just material wellbeing. Spring Rice wrote to Roosevelt about what he thought the Americans and Britons shared in common:
Lord Bridges has studied the letters of Cecil Spring Rice, Britain's ambassador to America between 1912 and 1918

Lord Bridges has studied the letters of Cecil Spring Rice, Britain’s ambassador to America between 1912 and 1918 Credit: Chris McAndrew
“Wherever we stand, that spot for us is the spot to which we owe our whole allegiance, loyal to our own homes with an entire loyalty, not to a foreign power, whether of our own race or another. It is still the old story of the Puritan – to walk with God and our fellow men, according to our own conscience and not according to the will of a King or Emperor or Pope. There is more real community of feeling between men who think the same, according to their own free will and judgment, than between men who act together in obedience to another man, be he who he may. Our kingdom is within us.”

Now read this:

“Generations of people who have fought for this country, who’ve built this country, who have made things in this country, and who would fight and die to protect this country if they were asked to. Now that’s not just an idea, my friends. That’s not just a set of principles, even though the ideas and the principles are great – that is a homeland. That is our homeland. People will not fight for abstractions, but they will fight for their homes. And if this movement of ours is going to succeed, and if this country is going to thrive, our leaders have to remember that America is a nation and its citizens deserve leaders who put its interests first.”

This was vice-president JD Vance’s speech to the Republican National Convention last year. Much separates Spring Rice and Wilson from Vance and Trump, but they might have one thing in common: “I vow to thee my country.”

Lord Bridges of Headley is a former government minister
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www.telegraph.co.uk

110 years ago a US president refused to go to war, citing ‘America First’. Is Trump following his lead?

Woodrow Wilson’s determination to stay out of the war in Europe reflected principles that are still deeply held by Americans today
www.telegraph.co.uk www.telegraph.co.uk


.....

Can Canada get back to there? Back to "My Country"?

....

Get to here?

At an event last week in my home area, a man rose to ask me a question. He said he was a proud British Sikh, but then corrected himself and said he was, above all, proudly British. He went on to make a powerful speech for a more united country. He called for an end to religious prayers on our streets – explaining there are no shortages of mosques, gurdwaras, and temples – and despaired at the multitude of business groups he was invited to in the West Midlands which divide people by skin colour or faith.

“I am Sikh and a businessman”, he said. “I do not need a Sikh business association to express my views”. He ended by saying, in reference to the foreign flags flying in his neighbourhood that for him, “the Union Flag Maple Leaf is the flag I live under and am loyal to, not the Palestinian flag.” Have pride, be proud, he said. A standing ovation followed.
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www.telegraph.co.uk

As one proud Briton put it, our banner is the Union flag not that of Palestine

Integration is impossible when the host country culture is absent
www.telegraph.co.uk www.telegraph.co.uk
 
Brad Sallows said:
If the EU is imposing a 25% tariff on US imports, that's self-inflicted.

Bear in mind that an observed effect of import tariffs is to cause domestic prices to rise.
Click to expand...
No, I was referring to at the very least, the whiplash/UNO-reverse effect of America’s 25% on the Euro inbound coming back out in the US Defense industry’s output back to Europe.

Do you honestly believe that Europe would continue to procure 2/3 of its defence capability from the America AND eat 25% tariffs against their exports to America?
 
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