Now Trump is targeting the U.K. with tarriffs how should Sir Keir handle a response?

Who voted for Trump? Are all Trump supporters like the banker quoted in the Financial Times saying "I feel liberated". We can say "retard" and "pussy" without the fear of getting cancelled ... it's a new dawn."

Is this what Trump supporters believe it's all about?

Blimey Stellantis were quick. You’d even think this was their plan all along. It happens. People and companies jump onto bandwagons when it suits.

Wyllow3

FGT the telegraph article claiming a "test" is a lot of hot air shock horror Telegraph headline. The Daily Mail made a big ho-ha about it in 2021, for goodness sake. Its in the news again because Westminster council has asked its employees to take part.

It's an educative awareness questionnaire started in 2020 at the time of Black Lives Matter by the department of business and Trade.

I think the way you are representing our country is horrible and rather sad, really.

If its attempting to draw some kind of comparison with the USA as being a just, fair and free society where no one claims benefits or has difficulties with medical care or privatised utilities then go for it, as it won't get far.

This "White privilege "Test" you alluded to above is anonymous and purely educative, I have just checked up on it. As I said, it's to raise awareness about how we treat it each, assumptions we have. Here is the "test"

learningliaisonforum.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/white-privilege-test.pdf

Oh PoliticsNerd now you’re sounding silly. I think I must have touched a nerve in my support for Trump.

‘Purely educative’ 😂😂😂
Trying to make some people feel guilty more like. Generating division where none exists.
No thank you.

FriedGreenTomatoes2

Trump wants his nation state to function in a way which benefits its members. The fact that he sees the nation state as a good thing is revolutionary in today’s world. Let’s see what happens next.

I just think you are wrong here, sadly.
I think Trump's only real interest is Trump.

I heard the guy who had unfettered access to him last time he was in office talking about him - and I took that from him too.
I'll see if I can remember the podcast and will link here.

And he said he was entirely transactional.
He also said that Melania was just as transactional - and therefore had a sort-of control over him (though obviously this is besides the point).

I do wish you were right FriedGreenTomatoes - but unfortunately I think you are wrong.
He has never cared for the "little man".

FriedGreenTomatoes2

Blimey Stellantis were quick. You’d even think this was their plan all along. It happens. People and companies jump onto bandwagons when it suits.

That's okay then. No worries when it comes to so many people out of a job in that community FGT.

FriedGreenTomatoes2

Oh PoliticsNerd now you’re sounding silly. I think I must have touched a nerve in my support for Trump.

You have. I am ashamed and shocked of my fellow Brits.

Yes.
And to go to school the next day if you are 15 or 16.
And from age 14 if you are home educated!
🤷‍♀️

Was it Michael Wolff, NotSpaghetti? He was on TRIP and several others recently, talking about his time in the Whitehouse and his subsequent book.

One thing for sure is that the USA will not get richer by its current policies.

Tariffs will not achieve greater exports, but will achieve more expensive imports, which will make the country poorer.

There is a big meeting in May between European leaders.

It will be a very logical time for the U.K. to further mend the broken Brexit relationship and strengthen our economy by closer ties.

We certainly need to bolster our defences against economic pariahs like USA.

Thank to those who have flagged the basics we need to know to educate ourselves on this.

It is all beginning to unravel and it seems the figures are really not about tariffs. They are being called out by those in the know (not just those who deserve a degree in "having an opinion") all over the internet, as "unreliable".

The numbers seem to have proved hard to unravel. Trump did say he would look at tariff and none-tarriff barriers. This would have added product regulations (e,g., ours against chlorine washed chicken), sales taxes that apply to all goods (such as VAT), possibly the cost of keeping Uncle Tom Cobley and any actual tariffs.

This is not what they have done. They have applied a really strange formula dividing imports from a country by total trade deficits from that country, come up with a number and said that's what the "Reciprocal Tariff Rate" is, and then charged half of it. This is why the EU is being charged 20% and the UK 10%. Both countries charge essentially the same tariffs. Trump has decided there will be a 10% minimum on these basically fictional figures. Cars, steel and aluminium are being give a staggeringly high Trump Tariff.

We actually run a small trade deficit with the USA which is presumably why we have been given the minimum 10%. This may also explain why the penguins etc., are being charged. That and a lack of historical and geographical knowledge.

The numbers Trump is using do not take account of the huge export of services from America.

(This is mainly from New Statesman)

The numbers seem to have proved hard to unravel. Trump did say he would look at tariff and none-tarriff barriers. This would have added product regulations (e,g., ours against chlorine washed chicken), sales taxes that apply to all goods (such as VAT), possibly the cost of keeping Uncle Tom Cobley and any actual tariffs. (*PoliticsNerd*)

The above is what this is really all about. It's a form of blackmail really. In the case of the UK, Trump wants to trade a lower tariff for relaxed barriers, such as food safety, but also the digital taxes which Apple, Google and Amazon pay in the UK and the online safety laws which result in online platforms such as Facebook paying out millions if they fail to tackle illegal content. Trump's campaign against VAT is a non-starter.

PoliticsNerd

FriedGreenTomatoes2

Blimey Stellantis were quick. You’d even think this was their plan all along. It happens. People and companies jump onto bandwagons when it suits.

That's okay then. No worries when it comes to so many people out of a job in that community FGT.

I didn’t say it wasn’t awful. Of course it’s devastating for all concerned. Just that it was so quick it smells fishy to me less than 24 hours after Trump’s announcement.

PoliticsNerd

FriedGreenTomatoes2

Oh PoliticsNerd now you’re sounding silly. I think I must have touched a nerve in my support for Trump.

You have. I am ashamed and shocked of my fellow Brits.

Steady on tiger.

Listening to MSNBC, who are talking to an American audience, they seem to be concluding that Trump is attempting to inflicted taxes on other sovereign nations. What it actually does is put an enormous tax on the USA and some goods no longer available. He is using the American citizens dollar and some money from all of us to "unwind globalism" which has long been his main project.

It also looks as if the American dollar is also losing its place as a safe-haven currency, although, of course, this may not last.

Well, Percy and his friends hve just slapped a 50% tariff on their fish and squid exports to the USA.

🐧🐧🐧🐧🐧🐧🐧

A lot of this will settle down in the course of time. It’s a feeding frenzy on the markets. Those traders in the know will short currencies (or whatever it is the fast-buck boys in their red braces do) then things will calm down.

Negotiations will take place.

“Mr Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One last night: “Every country is calling us. That’s the beauty of what we do.

“If we would have asked these countries to do us a favour they would have said no. Now they will do anything for us.”

The president said he was open to negotiating trade agreements with other countries, but warned their offers would have to be “phenomenal”.

The rush to negotiate follows warnings about the heavy economic cost of Mr Trump’s new tariffs and suggestions that countries that strike an agreement first are likely to get better treatment.

Mr Trump said Wednesday’s tariffs would be reconsidered “if somebody said that we’re going to give you something that’s so phenomenal, as long as they’re giving us something that’s good”.

Trump has upturned the apple cart and wants to rearrange the apples. He is enjoying demonstrating his power (where are the Democrat voices these days?) and will be magnanimous in time to those countries who come crawling who put something on the table.

I’ll say one thing in your favour, you are ever the optimist FriedGreenTomatoes2. You’ll have to forgive those of us who take a more jaded view of he who will henceforth be thought of by me as the Giant Wotsit.

Not just optimistic, but entirely unrealistic terms of the dangers of recession.

If you want to know where the democrat (and increasingly the Republican) voices of dissent are, just go to the other Trump thread) where those challenges are documented. (which you have done, but said little)

Trump has just sacked more of his cabinet, he only wants syncphants in his crazy, insular world where he wants people to "Crawl". With great power, comes responsibility.

Its honestly totally beyond me why you are happy and admire a leader who shows signs, just in the long quote you posted above, of a tyranny, who wants to overturn his own Constitution, who is talking about a third term for himself, who has wrecked the lives of many US citizens already with precipitous and ill judged actions.

Yes, I am the “glasshalffull’ a genuine article.
It’s early days Casdon let some water under the bridge and see how things are when everyone isn’t quite so febrile.

“If we would have asked these countries to do us a favour they would have said no. Now they will do anything for us.”

So now he can add extortion and blackmail to the list of crimes!

If I lived in America Wyllow I’d be proud that he was doing his best for us. He won’t be pushed around and yes, I admire him for it. He’s a strong leader. He stands tall and has a backbone. Unusual these days eh? A politician doing what he said he would?

phenomenal 😯
Are you sure he used the word phenomenal FGT2?
It's quite a big word, more than one syll-a-ble!