At this end this just pushes India, Vietnam and China into the arms of the rest of the world.
Then US is going to be left alone with their precious pure home-made products like Twinkies, Spam, American cheese or Budweiser.
The great brands are going to go more and more offshore, like Apple or Google already does.
China was similarly unmoved by the threats America made.
Europe was moved and they got an absolutely horrible trade deal.
The substituability story was different ~5-10 years ago and a lot of Americans havent noticed yet that China is now just as good at building wide body airplanes and chips.
No prizes for guessing who has the upper hand in negotiations.
Please note that Ukraine-India relations were never that great due to Kashmir. Ukraine voted against India at UNSC several times pushing for UN intervention and support for Indian sanctions. (If you support referendum for Kashmir, why object to Donetsk referendum?)
Funny thing is that processed oil products (jet fuel/diesel) are in the tariff exempt list. Yes, US purchased jet fuel (reprocessed Russian oil) from India in 2025.
So India should ignore how US has been funding a terrorist nation on their border, and hate Putin for a war that is half-the-planet away?
Sorry, but the world does not revolve around USA :)
I can understand why some are looking elsewhere.
Mexico and Canada also had trade deals, which went from Trump calling it "the largest, most significant, modern, and balanced trade agreement in history":
* https://trumpwhitehouse.archives.gov/briefings-statements/pr...
To Trump asking "Who would ever sign a thing like this?":
* https://www.yahoo.com/news/donald-trump-accidentally-insults...
No deal with Trump is ever closed because the past isn't really the past.
This is now how we must view the USA, which is -- at a foreign and trade policy level at the very least -- indivisible from his mindset.
Given that some (most? all?) of the deals involve US import tariffs, which raise prices/taxes on US consumers, can you illustrate the ways in which they've been generally good? (Especially compared to what the US was doing in December 2024, pre-Trump.)
India should ignore US support of a nation that sends terrorists to target their civilans... but should proactively care about a war happening thousands of miles from them?
That too, to the extent that the entire country shifts to a much more expensive source of fuel, burning bridges with their longtime ally... I don't really see why they should do that.
Edit: Rephrased my point to be argumentative instead of accusatory
Constantly disputed since the partition of India.
> India should ignore US support of a nation that sends terrorists to target their civilans... but should proactively care about a war happening thousands of miles from them?
Straw man. India should care about both. Get the US to pressure Pakistan and ensure the US knows the expense of not buying Russian oil and that is covered by tariffs.
I still think India is better off choosing to make iPhones than buying Russian oil.
Let the US firs un-sanction Venezuala and Iran first - major oil producing nations first. India is not going to starve its people to feed Trump's ego.
US wants airbase capability in Pakistan to bomb Iran - at-least that is what American military analysts are saying. Another compelling reason is exploitable rare earths and oil in Balochistan.
Do note that China is not sanctimoniously ordering India to stop buying oil from Russia, Iran and Venezuela.
Also, those trade deals are not worth much.
The US has a lot of power, that only China comes close to matching. The dominance of the US in certain fields (like IT hardware, software and services, payment services) makes most countries dependent on the US.
> The great brands are going to go more and more offshore, like Apple or Google already does.
Offshore what? Manufacturing? US tariffs do not affect offshoring to sell to other countries, but the US is a huge market for all those brands.
In the case of India and China, I think it's more of a case of India becoming more independent, which is "good" on the one hand ,but probably terrible for American hegemony and they will just side more with Russia and continue to buy resources from them.
I'm not sure if Americans can really grasp how their soft power around the world is vaporizing by the day. Even at it's peak, probably Obama era, I wouldn't say America was default popular, now, I don't know what to say but it's really looking as if people are just deciding to move on from the American experiment as we realize it might not be coming back. Look at places like Switzerland cancelling orders of F35s, just a coincidence ?
I guess smaller countries aren't being left with much choice, that's the fundamental issue.
Edit: I'm not worried about the down votes, but I also think it's sad and maybe even a sign that people have sore feelings about reality?
Meanwhile China actually INVADED Vietnam in 1979, four years after the US-Vietnam War ended!
Both of these countries view China as an immediate potential military threat because it is one, they have fought actual wars with it.
It's so wild how there are all these Western liberals who think Trump is somehow worse than this, I don't even like the guy but these people obviously don't know shit about the history of the region. The history is China warring with these countries!
No one is downplaying anything, there was a lot of animosity in india against china after that. Since it happened during the COVID lockdown, which was attributed to a wuhan lab leak at the time, the animosity intensified. It still exists today.
Of course, animosity is irrelevant in geopolitics, so it is useless to try and reconcile this with varying levels of co-operation and friendly foreign ministry statements between the two countries in the 5 years since.
I mean, do you truly think the USA will come to Vietnam's side if it's invaded by China? Honestly? look at all the whining about helping Ukraine and you think the current administration will enter a hot war with China over Vietnam? 90% of Americans wouldn't even know where that is.
Regarding India and Russia, they're already allies, they already do significant trade, I'm not sure what you're reading but I don't think India is by default America first. They nuclear armed, so they have that "f u" card to play as well.
I'm not based in the west either sorry. I wouldn't say I'm a "western liberal", I see you've already made up your mind though.
If you think those two countries were ever allies in any serious military or political sense you're deluded. The US is Vietnam's biggest customer and they changed the terms under which they're willing to buy stuff, that's all.
You also better believe that when tensions flare up between Vietnam and China again, Vietnam will be begging the US for help.
On a personal level I am American and the most annoying thing about living in Southeast Asia quite frankly is how much people here seem to think they deserve my money in exchange for selling me low quality shit I don't need or want. You can't have my money. Go away. We can end the relationship and I will be perfectly happy without you. It's amazing how this parallels foreign relations.
Basically, the point was that aspiring to be USA ally is not worth the effort.
I think Trump should treat actual allies, like Japan or Canada, better. But India, Vietnam and China? Fuck em. Nothing against them particularly, in fact I have professional relationships with some good people in all three of those countries. But they are not allies and were never going to be, they were always just vendors. If they decide they don't like us and don't want to take our money (they won't decide this), fine. We can spend it elsewhere.
> They also would like the US to lend them military aid if they get into violent trouble with their neighbor.
Nah, USA promised millitary aid, but invariably just takes away while making the promis and then do not deliver.
>I think Trump should treat actual allies, like Japan or Canada, better.
Well, he does not. Actually, he treats them worst then he treats China, India, Vietnam, Russia.
> But India, Vietnam and China?
Note that the actual topic is 'graemep' thinking USA is better ally then China. And people telling him that nope, USA looks like worst less reliable ally then China or India.
You will find out I guess...
What did the US get from their global hegemony? (Such a tragedy that mostly US-americans ask this, imo.)
They got eg. the petro dollar. Any other nation is buying/selling in dollars, provided by the US. This demand allowed you to amass your gigantic state debt to fund your military which enabled even more hegemony, like brutally messing up latin america with lasting consequences you can still see today, if fox news agrees on it ofc.
Remember when trump chickend out from his global tarifs, because "the markets got the yippies"? Part of that was a coordinated response of (former) allies to sell their US bonds, which, if continued, could have seriously hurt the US household by making new debt significantly more expensive for the US.
This is what you get from it! Cheap debt in a currency you controll! No other country has this privilege!
And in exchange for your fiat money you can devalue as you like, you get goods you wont produce yourself and you can sustain a massive military budget.
I hope trump continues his clueless destructive path and that some MAGA sweat shoppers learn from it (unlikely).
Buys American arms, lets US naval assets use its ports (including aircraft carriers), probably a lot of intelligence cooperation we're not aware of.
> You also better believe that when tensions flare up between Vietnam and China again, Vietnam will be begging the US for help.
The more likely scenario is that the US comes begging Vietnam for help in some future conflict because China shut down the South China Sea as part of a blockade of Taiwan, and used missiles to render all US airbases in the region unusable.
People underestimate how fast things can move
If it were, Trump's silly tariffs would have been stopped by now.
One of the key goals of the tariffs is to bring back manufacturing to the US. Yet you're saying the US doesn't rely on trade, which one is it?
Manufacturing is offshored so you need tariffs to bring it back onshore and make foreign goods less comeptitive.
or
America is highly self-sufficient and doesn't need much, negating the entire purpose of tariffs in the first place...so why apply them at all if they have no effect
Tariffs would be useless if trade wasn't important to the US.
The point is these things change over the long term. In a hundred years from now it is likely the super powers will be different - most likely China and India, simply because of their size.
Payment services aren't a source of US power, they're a consequence; the US allowed itself to be a delivery market, making those payment services a soft requirement for anyone dealing with the US. If anything, the US payment networks are generally seen with scorn outside the US; they're painfully dated (US banks largely rely on a system designed for physical cheques to this day) and the companies running them are often subject to the whims of astroturfing activists, resulting in legal transactions being blocked because someone thinks buying porn is icky, even though it's legal. US payment companies are also notorious for being hard to get a hold of to enforce your rights as a customer; Paypal has to follow several EU laws, but they mostly dodge enforcement by putting their HQ in Luxembourg, which is so small that they can effectively employ all well-paid financial lawyers in that country, leaving any duped customers with very little options because of conflicts of interests.
Most of the worlds dependence is on the US as a delivery market; if the US stops being attractive (ie. because it's too expensive bc of tariffs for US importers to buy goods), then the world will gradually compensate, even if it is economically unpleasant for a while. The only other dependence is military, but don't worry there; the US is doing a great job making it's military allies realize that it's bad at helping them, since POTUS is actively interested in working with the enemies of the US instead.
Offshoring is going to become more common because of how the tariffs are blanket rates; if I am going to make a product, there's only two possible options to avoid tariffs as much as possible: only import primary goods to the US and process everything on-site (keep in mind, you're still paying a tariff for even these materials). That's very expensive, in part because American labour is expensive. It's also not very realistic; your average product these days flies it's components across several countries before it ends up being put together. Even if you source all your manufacturing locally, you're still dealing with the fact your suppliers don't. The other option is to... just pay the tariffs at the end of the supply chain. Raise prices on US customers, try to route your entire production chain around the US. That's what the great brands are doing right now. They aren't going to publicly declare price increases if they can help it (because the risk of political retaliation is real under the current US administration), but expect the next products in their pipeline to have significant price increases to make the customer eat the tariffs. This in no small part happens also because ultimately, the tariffs are seen as temporary; moving a production pipeline entirely to the US can take up to a decade. Most companies are assuming that the tariffs will be gone in ~3.5-4 years when the administration leaves. That's not worth setting up a real production pipeline for in the US.
India US relationship has historically been bad. It turned around only during the Bush administration with the civil nuclear treaty. So, this good relationship has been there for last 25 years or so. In comparison India has a longer history with Russia.
India was one of the first countries to start working on a deal with US. India subsidizes agriculture as much as US. Indian farmers are a big voting block. Hence the trade deal has been at stuck:
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/business/india-business/...
That means it is a political suicide for the current Indian government to sign any sort of deal with Trump unless the agriculture part is removed.
And as much you want to tout IT services, overall GDP contribution is 11.47% and pharma is 1.72%. Someone has told me that the remittances from India to US is 3%. All that combines to less than 19% contributed by agriculture.
Add the fact that previous US administration was okay with India buying Russian oil to help stabilize global oil prices: https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/us-wanted-india-to-buy-russi...
That just pours more fuel on fire. Pun intended.
Additionally, I don't get why people keep thinking that getting deals is some sort of a master plan. Countries routinely break their deals. Its not only US - who you think has "lot of power" which gets to do that. Countries go to WTO to try and resolve it but US has chosen to side step that as well. Case in point US Canada diary dispute: https://www.wto.org/english/tratop_e/dispu_e/cases_e/ds103_e...
If you think US has "lots of power" and countries, in the long term, are not going to intentionally make things difficult, I have a bridge to sell you.
That is the direct GDP contribution of IT/allied services. The indirect societal contribution is significant. Most real estate in big cities, transportation, food and other services rely on the IT industry. Expect a lot of pain in India when this is impacted.
Australia's trade with China in 2024: $102.63B
Australia's trade with India in 2024: $16.48B
Australia's trade with USA in 2024: $14.73B
Australia's trade with NZ in 2024: $8.24B
https://tradingeconomics.com/australia/exports-by-country
Australia and NZ are already in Asia's arms economically. That's why AusPost shutting down transit shipping to the USA won't be a huge hit. If it was to China, it would hurt. But not the USA.
About half of us are shocked and revolted by pretty much everything he says and does.
It’s FAFO writ large, and the US has been ‘exceptional’ for so long they think they can avoid the FO part.
And never seen news discussions, sanctions, seen immigration policies, etc?
It may not been as bad and direct as discrimination against the Japanese in WW2, but a ton of people absolutely do discriminate that way.
And let’s not talk about Muslims (or anyone with a turban, like Sikhs) post 9/11.
But it’s the inevitable consequence of what is going on, and it’s going to get worse.
American’s have had a positive PR program for so long, they’re just completely ignorant of what it’s like to no longer have that.
The US has switched from exporting the American Dream to exporting the American Nightmare, and that will have long term consequences.
People are only now starting to wake up to that fact/feel them, but even if we stopped right this second it will take decades for this to play out. And we’re not stopping, but flooring it.
This, 100%.
I'm Australian. I grew up playing basketball and watching American TV and movies, even had superbowl parties with friends on multiple occasions, which is pretty rare here in Australia.
Been to the US on holidays. Always got along well with Americans who came here.
Take this free opinion from someone outside the exceptionalist bubble: America is on the decline... and it's going to get worse.
People won't easily forget this grotesque spectacle.
And last time i check, Trump won most of the swing state, so a large part of US believe in Trump.
Nobody is saying he doesn’t officially represent the USA. It’s about not assuming ALL Americans agree with what the administration is doing. A reasonable ask, no?
† https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voter_turnout_in_United_States...
For example, does it make sense to blame Americans for their failure to protest every weekend?
If so, then why stop at Americans? Why not blame e.g. all Norwegians as well?
Or why not blame the Americans who merely protest, as opposed to organizing a general labor strike or for not attempting an outright assassination?
My only point is that if you're going to blame some people and not others for the current state of affairs, it would be interesting to understand the justification.
Not gp, but: sorry, Americans, for whatever voter turnouts, gerrymandering, secret deals, etc, etc.
He's your president. Twice.
Whatever you say at least Trump has truly passionate base. Or will next Democrat nominee be Harris?
In fact, you could legitimately blame people like me for not going further to stop the madness.
In my particular case, that could cost me my job, which means losing health insurance for my family and myself. That's a choice I'm making, for sure. To that extent I'm culpable for this situation.
So, while it’s true that US citizens are not directly responsible for Trump, there is still a dereliction of ethical duty happening, in my opinion, assuming we agree that Trump is harming other people unnecessarily (which, naturally, many Trump supporters would disagree with.)
Of course, even if I’m right, what does that mean in practice? That random Americans on vacation in Italy can be snatched up and sent to The Hague? No, obviously not. I think the most practical effect is that this should give all Americans pause to think, and to at minimum ensure that they are not contributing to the problem in any way, and better yet, fighting the problem in some way.
Of course, this doesn’t even begin to address the fact that only 1/3 or so of Americans voted for Harris, which was the only choice that actually could have worked to stop Trump. 1/3 voted for him directly, and of course they are responsible, but another 1/3 couldn’t be bothered to vote, so it is actually a supermajority of the American people that are shitty, either because they couldn’t care less about other people, or they actively contributed to the problem.
Like sure, I get that the above is propaganda spread by the machine, but good luck telling that to the Europeans that have dealt with Americans that believe it; furthermore, I think it's telling that a decade ago, Canadians would wear emblems to distinguish themselves from Americans, lest they be confused for the egocentric and rude Americans.
The first paragraph is propaganda, but Americans haven't exactly denied it, nor have they been humble about their place in the world, or the flaws in their nation. Their actions have instead left many of us of the opinion that Americans actually believe it.
To be fair - which country has ever been the most powerful in the world and humble about it. The UK certainly wasn't - and after more than a century still hasn't learned that it is no longer exceptional.
Many Americans do believe it of course, otherwise they wouldn't have voted the way they did.
> If they do, maybe that’s fine, but they can’t be held culpable if they do nothing. The citizens however, must be, as there otherwise is no one else to stop the evil. Now, I include the US in this list too.
On an abstract level how are the citizens more responsible than random countries? Random countries and random citizens are in the same boat: they have to deal with something they had no simple choice over (at least in totalitarian states).
Mind you I agree with the proposition, but the explanation is not satisfactory.
The commenters in this thread engaging in transactional tribalism are angry at Trump supporters in the US (and therefore, all Americans because of their tribal "us vs them" lens) for engaging in the same transactional tribalism that they live in. From a game theory perspective, they want the US and northern Europeans to continue to be the good person in the Prisoner's Dilemma game while they reap the rewards.
As I've said elsewhere in this thread, the comments here actually support the beliefs of Trump's base, which is "the world hates us, only pretends to be nice to us when we help make them rich, and power is the only currency that matters."
There are people in this thread complaining about tariffs on imports in the US that are a fraction of what their own nations charge on imports. They don't seem to grasp that "fairness" is an emotional construct that matters for human voting.
> As I've said elsewhere in this thread, the comments here actually support the beliefs of Trump's base, which is "the world hates us, only pretends to be nice to us when we help make them rich, and power is the only currency that matters."
When you are t like Trump does, yes you will loose the affection and respect.
And besides, Trump and his fans both see those who are friendly to them as suckers to take advantage of.
Your wish to be a bully and simultaneously treated like a friend is extremely unrealistic. And not just that, it is a loosing proposition.
His motto may end up being “Oderint Dum Metuant”.
I'd put that at less than 1/3, actually.
The problem is that there is a good third of the US that seems to be completely oblivious that bad shit is going down until it shows up and kicks them in the balls personally.
This is, sadly, neither new nor limited to the US.
"It is the common fate of the indolent to see their rights become a prey to the active. The condition upon which God hath given liberty to man is eternal vigilance; which condition if he break, servitude is at once the consequence of his crime and the punishment of his guilt." John Philpot Curran--1790
But it's not a huge issue in Australia, because Australia has compulsory voting. Whatever you think of the indolent that didn't vote in the USA, if you are right that only 1/3 of the population supported Trump he would not have got in if voting was compulsory.
As an Australia, my gut feeling is that our compulsory voting drags everything towards the centre. If a party strays too far from there, their gone. For example we like the USA do have two major parties, split down similar lines. In one state, Western Australia, the right party got taken over by some right wing religious sect. Very few people want government institutions run as a church, and they now have 7 of the 70 or so seats. They ran the place in 2017, and had 31 seats in 2021.
Nationally, the right decided marching to Trump's tune would be a vote winner in this years federal election. In other words, they veered sharply to the right. The result - they lost 25% of their seats.
Followed by 32% of the voting population which strongly approves of the result.
The ”not all of us” is a very tempting copout but it is quite evident that the American psyche is in general aligned with Trump.
But hey, you get to pretend it’s some moral high ground, so, yay! Nice job.
Only 65% voted, so it’s probably safe to say that only 35-40% of the population support him.
https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2025/2024-pre...
So 35% voted the option "I'm fine with whatever comes" so a blanket approval can be assumed to whoever won, i.e. in this case an implicit support for Trump.
Because of how the electoral college works, some people in deeply Republican states could correctly assume that their individual vote simply wouldn't matter.
I don't know if such reasoning swung the election or not. I imagine some political pollsters have a better sense of it.
From what I hear, many people in blue states made the same calculation.
They have no problem with China destroying their fisheries, and joining with India to buy tons of Russian oil and finance the destruction of Ukraine, while simultaneously emitting vastly more CO2 than the US does.
They just want free defense, one sided "free trade" and the minute they stop getting it, they hate everyone in this country.
I don't agree with this attitude, but the commenter absolutely embodies it. This whole thread embodies it. It's the kind of thing I would send to a bunch of swing voters to persuade them to continue to support these policies.
"vastly" is well out of place here.
Currently, on a per annum basis, China is the number one emitter, the United States is number two. China currently puts out ~ 2.5 the total of the US.
* less than 3x is hardly "vastly more"
* on a per capita basis China emits less per person than the US.
* Much of China's emissions are due the US offshoring manufacture, a large chunk the CO2 rising from China is a result of US consumer demand.
Moreover, the current yearly outputs are merely the bleeding edge of the CO2 problem - it's the cumulative total that is responsible for the increased insulation that is trapping an increasing amount of heat energy.
On that front the US is responsible for more of the total raised by human activity than China.
By country, per year: https://www.worldometers.info/co2-emissions/co2-emissions-by...
By country, cumulative total: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/cumulative-co-emissions
Per capita means nothing to the planet. The temperature climbs regardless, and China has a choice and it's chosen power plants even if India doesn't. They are building coal plants every single day and you don't say anything because you are a product of a left-wing movement that views state capitalism as an offshoot of communism and therefore positive. That's why your movement never has anything critical to say about China. You only care about Muslims if they are being murdered by capitalists. But the uyghurs can just go pound sand. They are literally having forced birth control and have lower birth rates than any Muslim population on the planet and you sit there and ignore it.
China is on track to reduce its use of fossil fuel for energy production
It is utterly ridiculous to expect India/China to stop buying Russian oil and destroy their domestic economies to satisfy the sanctimonious hypocrisy of the US. Please remember - you have ALREADY oil-sanctioned Venezuela and Iran. Now you oil sanction yet another major oil producing nation ? - so utterly stupid.
Oh btw, the US is financing the Russian War in Ukraine by buying Russian Uranium, Russian Palladium, Russian fertilizer and believe-it-or-not: Russian oil (via processed jet fuel) from India. US imports of Russian minerals and fertilizer were vastly increased in 2025.
Listen to yourself. That is absolutely ridiculous. This is not a serious conversation. I won't be replying to anymore of your comments.
None of us do at the personal level. At the international level we are compelled to.
Even in an ordinary administration, internationally a state is indivisible from the government it chose, and any strategy to pretend otherwise is doomed to failure or various kinds of corruption. The larger the amount of money that is staked on ignoring/going around/subverting the national policy of the state in which a business partner is based, the greater the chance of encouraging turning-a-blind-eye grift from elected officials, at the very least. "I'm shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on in here!"
But this isn't an ordinary administration. Trump is fully into "l'état, c'est moi" [0] and he goes there more and more by the day. From the outside, the degradation just in the last seven months is extremely obvious.
Given that international trade policy seems to have been entirely handed to the executive, anyone wishing to trade with a US business must simply assume the USA is Trump.
None of the old sense of continuity can be trusted. It's all new. This is deliberate, it's what his voters wanted, but it's also our reality.
[0] I anticipate some pushback here. I would accept the criticism that if we're talking about the USA as a single entity, it's intellectually dishonest to focus on matters of internal policy to back that up. To people who want to make that criticism I would simply ask: what international policy, separable from Trump's own grievances, explains the tariffs on Brazil?
You can spin non-voters however you want, but they were objectively OK with this outcome.