@profplum99 The pain seems concentrated in Asia, Australia, and the Gulf states, and especially in Qatar.
What happened to the pivot to Asia?
Isn't OZ a reliable ally of USA? or Qatar?
Hasn't Qatar paid the Trump family enough to have their wishes considered? A gilded 400MUSD airplane ?
Great article about the broken system in the states.
Sweden for comparison
max payment for two kids at a good daycare: about 350 USD/ month.
Seeing a doctor costs 23 dollars,
a day in the hospital with all care costs I think also 25 dollars.
If you’ve spent more than iirc 150 dollars on healthcare, you get free healthcare for a year. Medicine is quite inexpensive as well.
Parental leave is 12 months, shared between the parents, with a further six months available at lower pay.
The middle class is thriving.
Now imagine an AI-powered swarm of thousands of drones overtaking ship defenses in a critical global chokepoint to deliver IEDs (or worse) all at once.
The death of 400 yrs of Mahan Doctrine (control naval checkpoints = control the world) has not begun being marked-to-market yet
@davidfrum You mean the AMERICAN armed forces, not the "Trump administration".
Trump has been elected twice. He is the SCOTUS.
This might very well be the USA armed forces.
Not so fast, I think.
The "deal" says that the EU will buy 750 billion USD in energy in total by 2028, or maybe 250 billion / year.
The EU has no power to buy energy; that power lies with the 27 soveriegn states and their energy companies.
That energy export number would be difficult to reach anyway; USA exported energy for 318 billion in 2024, of which less than 80 billion to the EU.
One COULD redirect a large part of all USA energy exports to the EU, I suppose, leaving other customers dry, or the states COULD export much more energy.
However, Trump's oil price target of 60 dollars/barrel makes most fracking rigs in the states unprofitable. it will be difficult to produce much more out of the Permian at those prices.
I think it's more accurate to call the tariffs a new federal sales tax on foreign goods.
@TrentTelenko https://t.co/EdbHKCyNER does variable pitch propellers on their drones. They're necessary to steer while carrying a tree trunk; the center of gravity then falls well below the drone.
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