While in Europe Trump announces a trade deal with the European Union: a fifteen percent tariff on their goods and a zero percent tariff on ours. He also found time to sponsor negotiations between Cambodia and Thailand to bring their brief border war to an end. In the world beyond I suspect that President Theodore Roosevelt is shouting Bully!

The real criminality in all of this is that any one of the five preceding presidents before him back to Reagan could have pulled this trigger and brought us back. We had that economic power. Instead they just sat around and bulked up their generational wealth while selling the American people out. The defining issue in all of this is that Trump doesn’t care what the press or others think of him. In other words he doesn’t listen to advisors telling him he needs to speak and act diplomatically. This is what the American people voted for. In many ways he does things that I don’t agree with and sometimes I just cringe when he says something, but you don’t ever think that he doesn’t have a plan and he’s not putting it into effect in spite of the naysayers.
Trump leads. The preceding Presidents just followed the breeze of popular beliefs. Yes Trump causes me to cringe at times but his ability to get results is amazing. I pray Vance is learning the ways of the Master.
I have heard many times how Reagan won despite Republican reluctance. Such lack of passion did, I believe, hinder Reagan from doing some things he might’ve wished. *sigh* I’ve noticed several times these past months that Trump hasn’t been the firebrand that I could wish for with some concerns. Budget especially. He may not care much what others think; he still must… accommodate… donor wishes.
I have to say that I’m a bit uneasy about this. It’s working now, and that’s great–but it often seems like it is the only tool in Trump’s box, and that as with the proverbial hammer, he sees everything as a nail.
And the thing about using the threat of tariffs as leverage in negotiations is that it will work right up until it doesn’t. And it only has to fail once for it to be rendered unusable from that point forward.
The US has a huge market of 330 million people, the most prosperous trading bazaar on Earth. We have been giving away access to this golden market, and Trump is charging for access to it. About time that we did this.
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