What does a TRUMP presidency look like?

[mongers]

Enjoy learning Russian, mongers.  How 'bout that Royal Navy?  Your asses are on your own, thanks to all those sand nigger-loving continentals.  Ha ha, what what. 

NO BLOOD FOR BEEMERS

Don't worry, BAE systems will protect us/their bottom line.

[derspiess]

I look forward to a more action oriented right wing.

You need to be looking forward to mandatory birth control.

Fuck off.

Stop acting like a black professional athlete then.

Someone's jealous!

[CountDeMoney]

Someone's jealous!

Yeah; Antonio Cromartie only wishes he could have as many kids as Ed.

[derspiess]

I think you would have made a great black professional athlete, Seedy

[MadImmortalMan]

It makes it much easier, actually.  Text allows you to express yourself much more thoroughly, so it's much harder to conceal when you really have nothing worthwhile to express.

And while it's true in theory that somebody can be really intelligent but choose to come off as a moron online, I don't know of any such people, and I have a hard time seeing why they would do so.  It doesn't take an effort to be intelligent, you either are or you aren't, so not being yourself sounds like the more difficult task.

dude, someone can put as much or as little effort into their text as he likes, and this has no bearing on intelligence

It does.

In Trump's case, the only evidence we have is Wharton's records that he's actually a genius. Yale put Dubya's IQ in the 130s IIRC also, which is about average for Presidents. Which means the average President is two deviations smarter than the US mean.

That either corroborates Jake's optimistic view of politicians or makes most of them both smart and evil.

[CountDeMoney]

I think you would have made a great black professional athlete, Seedy

NO WEAPON FORGED

[Tamas]

So in light of Trump's The Times interview and reactions to it, I guess it is fair to summerise: even before sworn in, he is working heavily to alienate pretty much all of the US's traditional allies in the past 100 years, while being even busier in sucking up to Russia, the US's main rival and enemy for 70 years.

What could possibly go wrong?

Or, to quote a comment I saw on a Hungarian site about this (and May etc. greeting Trump's apparent enthusiasm for a trade deal with UK):
"When Trump, Boris Johnson, Theresa May, and Nigel Farage put their heads together, only good can come of it!"

[CountDeMoney]

[Razgovory]

It makes it much easier, actually.  Text allows you to express yourself much more thoroughly, so it's much harder to conceal when you really have nothing worthwhile to express.

And while it's true in theory that somebody can be really intelligent but choose to come off as a moron online, I don't know of any such people, and I have a hard time seeing why they would do so.  It doesn't take an effort to be intelligent, you either are or you aren't, so not being yourself sounds like the more difficult task.

dude, someone can put as much or as little effort into their text as he likes, and this has no bearing on intelligence

It does.

In Trump's case, the only evidence we have is Wharton's records that he's actually a genius. Yale put Dubya's IQ in the 130s IIRC also, which is about average for Presidents. Which means the average President is two deviations smarter than the US mean.

That either corroborates Jake's optimistic view of politicians or makes most of them both smart and evil.

Looks like someone has been reading clickbait articles.  What Wharton records are you talking about?

[viper37]

dude, someone can put as much or as little effort into their text as he likes, and this has no bearing on intelligence

I partly agree with Dguller and partly disagree with you on this.

If we're talking about how "nice" one writes, no, it is not a sign of intelligence.  Using 1000 word to describe something that could have been said in 20 is not a sign of intelligence, it's a sign of your literary skills.

To me, it's how people are able to analyze the events happening, weight the arguments for or against a particular decision, plan way ahead of current events and use a rational tough process instead of pure feeling.

And to see that, i have to read someone.  Just listening to someone isn't enough.  First, to really listen to people, you'd need to be close to them, and it's unlikely you'd engage in meaningful political discussions with strangers half a world away in virtual conference calls.  So until we get there, the internet, what we type, is the best way to learn about people.

[Zanza]

I await Zanza's analysis on the diplomatic spat over luxury cars. 

Not much to analyze so far.

As far as I can tell, none of the German companies will react to a tweet or a single sentence in a newspaper interview. For all of them, the US is the second-biggest market after China, so it's very important for them. But they all make a lot of the cars they sell in the US there anyway. They will all adopt a cautious stance of wait-and-see. They'll lobby not to be affected, but in the end, slapping a 35% tariff on a single car manufacturer would be illegal under WTO rules anyway. So it would at worst be a tariff against Mexican cars and even that would likely not be legal under NAFTA or WTO rules. If Trump violates these treaties, there is not much the automotive companies can do. They'll ask the European Commission to start a WTO proceeding against the United States, but that'll take longer than Trump's first term.

That said, the industry has long experience with certain markets closing themselves for imports by demanding final manufacturing in the market. Lots of developing nations do that. Add demands for local content, which are also well known. It's usually possible to circumvent these tariff and non-tariff barriers by importing CKD/SKD cars or so and doing the final assembly in the market. But all of these always have just one effect: more expensive cars for domestic customers and less competition for the local industry, which stifles innovation and productivity gains and typically results in lacklustre export performance of the protected, domestic industry.

Considering that "Made in America" cars have at most 75% value add in America (the Toyota Camry IIRC) and most cars from the big three are way below 50% value add in America, a punitive tariff on car parts would be disruptive for the American automotive industry and bury their international competitiveness as well as making domestically produced cars way more expensive. That's also something the Brexiteers don't seem to understand. Globalization is no longer on the level of a finished product, it's every bit of the value chain that is globalized and open to competition these days. The reason it's still possible to make a car in an expensive place like Germany or the USA is that it is possible to outsource the most labor-intensive stages of production at very little transactional cost.

While Trump is right that there are virtually no Chevrolets in Germany, he may not be aware that GM Europe has other brands here. Anyway, GM and Ford have about 15% market share here, way more than the German brands have in the US.

EDIT: Also the German trans-plants in the US make cars for export as well, e.g. the BMW plant in Spartanburg makes about 70% for export. If Trump pushes too hard, they'll - under high cost - retool their factories so that they'll make more cars for the domestic market there and make the cars for the world in Mexico or wherever. Hardly ideal, but could be a reaction to protectionism.

EDIT2: One last remark: I know that the Mercedes plant in Alabama is actually a foreign-trade zone of the United States which means that at least importing parts for those cars that are meant for export is tariff-free, so the foreign trans-plants would even have an advantage over the domestic car makers (unless they are in an FTZ as well?) when exporting cars made of imported components.

[Zanza]

If there is a trade deal between Britain and the United States during Trump's term, I would expect it to be terribly one-sided. The British government will be desperate to show that they can conclude FTAs after leaving the EU and facing tariffs with the continent. Like suckers, they'll just accept whatever "deal" Trump offers them and will agree to whatever American regulatory standards the Americans offer them. They'll effectively exchange the EU standards that they have a voice on with American standards that Trump dictates them. And that are - especially in consumer protection - often lower than those of the EU.

[MadImmortalMan]

I noticed Merkel blamed the US for the refugee crisis too. Libya/Arab Spring/ISIS, etc.

[Zanza]

Wasn't Merkel, but her deputy who is the head of the Social Democrats. Merkel would never say such a thing in public, even if she thought so.

[Berkut]

I noticed Merkel blamed the US for the refugee crisis too. Libya/Arab Spring/ISIS, etc.

Yeah, that is some serious bullshit, and it is EXACTLY that kind of leftist horseshit that gets people like Trump elected, and western liberals thought of with contempt.

Of all the people doing shit in the Middle East, the responsibility for anything that goes wrong is always with the US. None of them have any agency themselves.