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The best summary of Trump's trade "philosophy" comes from Trashfuture's November Kelly, who said that Trump is flipping over the table in a poker game that's rigged in his favor because he resents having to pretend to play the game at all. -- If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
Pluralistic: Trump and the unmighty dollar (26 Jan 2026) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow
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Long thread/2
After all, the global system of trade was designed and enforced by American officials, especially the US Trade Representative. The US created a world whose most important commodities (food, oil, etc) were priced in dollars, meaning that anyone who wanted to buy these things from *any* country would first have to get US dollars, which they could only get by shipping their valuable stuff to the US, which sends them dollars in return. 2/
@npub1hyku...3p33 Trump's picture should be printed in the dictionary against the definition of 'Boomerism' (And I think as a whole the USA is in its Boomer-era) The ability to take such a strong hand, squander it so thoroughly and kill that benefit for any future generation, spin repeated terrible decisions as someone else's fault, and have so many people still believe you at the end of all of it...