141–150 of 857 posts
“I’m a real estate developer, I look at a corner, I say, ‘I’ve got to get that store for the building that I’m building,’ etc. It’s not that different. I love maps. And I always said: ‘Look at the size of this. It’s massive. That should be part of the United States.’”
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/20/us/politics/trump-greenla...
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That sounds like a rhetoric for better negotiating power against Trump. Chinese are our adversaries (EDIT: enemies, they actually bankroll Russian invasion and supply weapons) and I hope president of France understands that.
> That sounds like a rhetoric for better negotiating power against Trump. In the Canadian example at least the deal is signed. It's not just words. > Chinese are our adversaries Increasingly the US is a European adversary. They are literally threatening to invade the territory of a European country! China isn't doing that. Very easy to dismiss it as the rantings of a madman but no-one is holding him back. People didn…
Does anyone really need to? We're not getting Greenland and everyone knows it, ESPECIALLY the people screeching the most about it. Trump's whole thing is giving the media lots of fresh meat to go wild over so they're distracted. I'm sure it's some sort of Sun Tzu thing he read about and has latched on to.
However, this one in particular is really baffling in that he can't let it go and it just makes everything worse.
> People didn't take the tariff bluster seriously and then it became very real.
I mean, not really? There's been some tariffs here and there but nowhere near what was originally claimed, things have been walked back and forth multiple times, etc. That's really what's caused the most damage, the uncertainty moreso than the actual tariffs. And this is also something he's particular fixated on and I wish he'd drop since it's obvious it's not going to have the intended outcome.
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My guess would be EUR takes its place, gold will also be used more. I guess what happens is USD gets much weaker and US buying power goes down. Maybe destroying the USD will eventually cause the boost to domestic manufacturing that Trump wanted, since foreign goods will be out of reach. Cut down the forest to kill a squirrel. I'm no expert though
There will never be a boost to domestic manufacturing without some kind of investment. The booms of the 1950's and 1960's were a result of massive government spending in the 1930's and 1940's building a bunch of capacity and researching novel manufacturing techniques and building new tools. If we don't have the morale for that we will simply stop having as many things.
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There's no chance US will default on its debts, all it has to do is to print more money. Inflation may spirale, but it's going to be a US citizens problems (as well as US bond holders) in terms of inflation and budget cuts.
It will also be a global problem and not just US citizens, as the dollars underpins a vast amount of global wealth and trade.
So much of the way the United States works is having a nearly limitless source of borrowing at low rates in the form of selling treasury bonds. The further we get away from that being true, the more precarious things become.
When you say "nearly limitless" source of borrowing, the limit is the gain in global wealth. The US has been siphoning off a huge chunk of world wealth by printing dollars to serve as the currency for that wealth. All the people complaining about "US Debt" and $26T of "net investment" or whatever don't realize that this is/was the benefit of the US being stable, strong, and friendly. When the US is unstable, weak, an…
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I’m curious when people make comments like this, do they actually live in the US and believe this or has the media environment gotten so bad in Europe+ that people have no clue what’s real or not?
Maybe you'd trust Blackrock's CEO instead? I live in the US and I have rotated away from US equities and treasuries to derisk from volatility of poor governance (both this administration and long term fiscal policy). BlackRock CEO delivers blunt warning on US national debt - https://www.thestreet.com/investing/blackrock-ceo-delivers-b... - January 18th, 2026 The U.S. Deficit Will 'Overwhelm This Country': BlackRock C…
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In a "might makes right" world, Europe clearly needs more might, and then it makes sense to improve relations with China; not a lot of options.
The EU can't mend ties with China without giving up on Ukraine as China's FM Wang Yi has stated [0] on multiple occasions [1]. Additionally, in the Chinese foreign policy space, the EU is viewed as weak [2], and largely through the lense of the US-China rivalry (which is how the US views the EU as well now). [0] - https://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy/article/3316875/ch... [1] - https://www.reuters.com/world/chin…
What happens when USD stops becoming the the reserve currency for the world? And who takes its place?
That would never happen until the US Navy ceases to be effective globally.
US Navy would have have no parking spots left in Europe if they try to annex Greenland.
It's symbolism. But it's important symbolism. Far more notable, I think, is Macron saying this morning that Europe needs more investment from China. Canada signing a deal with China to allow their cars to be sold in the country. It's all a sliding slope until it reaches a breaking point and falls off like a cliff. EDIT: to quote the Canadian PN earlier today: “American hegemony in particular helped provide public goo…
That sounds like a rhetoric for better negotiating power against Trump. Chinese are our adversaries (EDIT: enemies, they actually bankroll Russian invasion and supply weapons) and I hope president of France understands that.
I'm sure he does.
But only a fool would piss off the Chinese.
Both in Macron's own country and his region, there will be hundreds of companies who are already cut-off from Russia, Africa, Middle-East and Central Asia due to geopolitics. China doesn't care and is busy selling there.
So what's left is the remainder of Asia, which is China's home turf where they are already ultra-competitive as they have the geographic advantage.
And of course there will be companies in Macron's country and region using Chinese manufacturing or otherwise engaged in Chinese JVs to get access to sell to the Chinese market.
So for Macron to go full-Trump on China would be a textbook case of cutting your nose to spite your face. The Chinese are masters at playing the long game and the West needs to be careful about knee-jerk short-termism actions.