KEY POINTS
- Defense stocks dropped sharply Thursday afternoon after President Donald Trump suggested the U.S. could massively cut defense spending.
- Trump has sent mixed messages on military spending throughout his 2024 campaign and in the early days of his presidency.
Not to mention triggering Article 5 for the rest of NATO and shattering every defense agreement at once. You know, Putin’s wet dream.
If there’s going to be a world war, I’d prefer to not be on the side of Russia and China.
On the side of China? Their side is is sitting it all out and letting the U.S. and Russia devour themselves while picking up all the trade deals, currency holdings and eventually all the economical losses that will make it the strongest economy I’m the world by far. What do they have to do? Keep giving a nudge here or there, and watching egomaniacs devour their fellow citizens and the citizens eventually fight back to regain their freedoms. China wins every time Trump opens his mouth. But I don’t feel they are on the side at all, just happily enjoying the little puppeting they need to do.
The US is basically China now. Xi remains in power because he convinced the Chinese people that China needs a strong man to run the economy and protect them from the evil foreigners. Trump has done the same. They’re both corporate socialist countries now.
There is one big difference and no, China is not “sitting things out.” A lot of the brouhaha over Greenland stems from China trying to use soft power to gain influence there. As they’ve done in Panama. Soft power means spending money and Trump’s too simple minded to understand the concept of spending money to gain influence. So US soft power doesn’t exist anymore which is why Trump can only make threats. It’s the only lever he has because he doesn’t know anything about the other levers. Of course his threats only further destroys US soft power, but Trump (along with most Americans) simply can’t understand the concept so they see that as good thing. Hell they’re trying to shut down USAID entirely, should be an indication they don’t understand it at all.
China very much understands soft power and is using it everywhere. So that’s what we have to look forward to… Chinese soft power being met with threats from Donald Trump.