I don't think he had any strong thoughts on this, it was just based on who could bribe him enough first. Tech CEOs donated some money and had a dinner with him so he flipped his stance on it. We can hand out some "fell for it again" awards, I guess.
There’s tacit admission of defeat in this, it’s basically saying America doesn’t have the political power necessary to offset globalization and its forces. China and India have already taken over as predominant global powers, then.
Well yes, the massive soft power the US had was based on being the sort of open society where people want to work, study, and tend business relationships and attract the brightest and most ambitious people.
Bright and ambitious people see that what used to be principles of openness is now just transactional dealing. And the problem with that is you can't construct stable relations of a life overseas if you need to check in every few years to see if the situation is still good.
So now if you're going to have to deal with the same shenanigans as you did back home, why not just save yourself the trouble and be back home, which will be the same except that now you can be close to family and frieds?
Hidden in all of this is the issue that all countries really have are their people, factories (or centers of production) and bombs. Non-western countries have improved the condition of their average citizen via immigration, providing havens for offshoring, and remittances, but the conditions for average western citizens are deteriorating.
I am afraid all of this is going to be unsustainable because non-western countries don’t have productivity centers, but they have workers (who work for companies producing jobs outside of their own country), and when their quality of life or standard of living goes up, so does the cost of doing business in those places, which companies will offset by firing people. This already happened, this is part of why inflation went up so dramatically post-COVID, and the end result is mass firings and layoffs, disguised as “AI taking jobs”.
In some terrible scenarios this means keeping standards of living down in some countries to ensure populations don’t ask for more worker protections or other types of rights, which is the main driver of increased costs of doing business in western countries. But if your population keeps getting richer because of offshored jobs or remittances, then you’re on a collision course with forces beyond your control.
> There’s tacit admission of defeat in this, it’s basically saying America doesn’t have the political power necessary to offset globalization and its forces.
That is a core theme of the admin. They seem to be radically pessimistic about US capabilities. Otherwise-inexplicable conduct like the sabre-rattling about control of Greenland only makes sense, if you imagine the United States becoming an isolated regional power cut off from the world ocean.
They’re operating under old world rules where you could say a bunch of stuff and hope no one would any better. It works sometimes, but it won’t work all the time. The key is knowing who it will and won’t work against.
As a Republican who voted for Trump, this change is deeply disappointing. Americans are fully capable of doing every job available in our country. Especially if they are motivated and not receiving $2,000 socialist payments.
