Image is allegedly of the note Trump wrote while editing a speech while on the way back from the G20 summit.
The top Russian-Chinese agent, Donald Trump, has decided that the pace of dedollarization and the decline of American financial hegemony is going too slowly. He has therefore decided to put tariffs on everybody; from America’s largest trading partners to uninhabited islands. In the process, he is trying to create an autarkic America. Jokes aside, interpretation and analysis of this has ranged across a wide spectrum. I think we can broadly agree that the most idiotic are the “true believers”; those that actually believe Trump’s every word, and that this will somehow bring back American manufacturing and whatever other inane promises he has made.
However, there is a much more interesting debate. The first camp are those who believe Trump is acting as an inadvertent accelerationist due to his lack of understanding about how the world economy and dollar hegemony functions (and that this will subsequently ensure that countries flock to China instead). The second camp are those who believe that Trump does know what he’s doing, at least to a certain extent, and that the effective result of this period of madness will be countries kowtowing to the United States; renegotiating trade deals to be even more in favor of the US in order to get tariffs reduced. There’s even a yet more cynical camp who believes that in fact, this entire trade war is just theater for further national wealth redistributions from poor to rich; that all these monumental international trade wars are more of a sideshow. To quote the linked article: “[…] out of the mountain of tariffs that threaten to turn into a global trade war will emerge the mouse of further tax cuts.”
I’m not embarrassed to admit that I have absolutely no idea which one of these is the closest model to reality. We’re in new economic and political ground, and even if the tariffs are quickly renegotiated and/or dropped, the impacts will continue to reverberate around the world for years. I’m sure we’ll debate this for months to come here, though!
Last week’s thread is here.
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Israel-Palestine Conflict
Sources on the fighting in Palestine against Israel. In general, CW for footage of battles, explosions, dead people, and so on:
UNRWA reports on Israel’s destruction and siege of Gaza and the West Bank.
English-language Palestinian Marxist-Leninist twitter account. Alt here.
English-language twitter account that collates news.
Arab-language twitter account with videos and images of fighting.
English-language (with some Arab retweets) Twitter account based in Lebanon. - Telegram is @IbnRiad.
English-language Palestinian Twitter account which reports on news from the Resistance Axis. - Telegram is @EyesOnSouth.
English-language Twitter account in the same group as the previous two. - Telegram here.
English-language PalestineResist telegram channel.
More telegram channels here for those interested.
Russia-Ukraine Conflict
Examples of Ukrainian Nazis and fascists
Examples of racism/euro-centrism during the Russia-Ukraine conflict
Sources:
Defense Politics Asia’s youtube channel and their map. Their youtube channel has substantially diminished in quality but the map is still useful.
Moon of Alabama, which tends to have interesting analysis. Avoid the comment section.
Understanding War and the Saker: reactionary sources that have occasional insights on the war.
Alexander Mercouris, who does daily videos on the conflict. While he is a reactionary and surrounds himself with likeminded people, his daily update videos are relatively brainworm-free and good if you don’t want to follow Russian telegram channels to get news. He also co-hosts The Duran, which is more explicitly conservative, racist, sexist, transphobic, anti-communist, etc when guests are invited on, but is just about tolerable when it’s just the two of them if you want a little more analysis.
Simplicius, who publishes on Substack. Like others, his political analysis should be soundly ignored, but his knowledge of weaponry and military strategy is generally quite good.
On the ground: Patrick Lancaster, an independent and very good journalist reporting in the warzone on the separatists’ side.
Unedited videos of Russian/Ukrainian press conferences and speeches.
Pro-Russian Telegram Channels:
Again, CW for anti-LGBT and racist, sexist, etc speech, as well as combat footage.
https://t.me/aleksandr_skif ~ DPR’s former Defense Minister and Colonel in the DPR’s forces. Russian language.
https://t.me/Slavyangrad ~ A few different pro-Russian people gather frequent content for this channel (~100 posts per day), some socialist, but all socially reactionary. If you can only tolerate using one Russian telegram channel, I would recommend this one.
https://t.me/s/levigodman ~ Does daily update posts.
https://t.me/patricklancasternewstoday ~ Patrick Lancaster’s telegram channel.
https://t.me/gonzowarr ~ A big Russian commentator.
https://t.me/rybar ~ One of, if not the, biggest Russian telegram channels focussing on the war out there. Actually quite balanced, maybe even pessimistic about Russia. Produces interesting and useful maps.
https://t.me/epoddubny ~ Russian language.
https://t.me/boris_rozhin ~ Russian language.
https://t.me/mod_russia_en ~ Russian Ministry of Defense. Does daily, if rather bland updates on the number of Ukrainians killed, etc. The figures appear to be approximately accurate; if you want, reduce all numbers by 25% as a ‘propaganda tax’, if you don’t believe them. Does not cover everything, for obvious reasons, and virtually never details Russian losses.
https://t.me/UkraineHumanRightsAbuses ~ Pro-Russian, documents abuses that Ukraine commits.
Pro-Ukraine Telegram Channels:
Almost every Western media outlet.
https://discord.gg/projectowl ~ Pro-Ukrainian OSINT Discord.
https://t.me/ice_inii ~ Alleged Ukrainian account with a rather cynical take on the entire thing.
Trump didn’t try to do what MMTers advocate for, DOGE is the exact opposite of MMTers would advocate. Him saying tariffs will bring revenue which makes America rich is also against MMT.
Not even Japan ‘does MMT’, Japan’s atypical monetary policy is not because it’s leaders understand functional finance but because they think large debt=money printing=inflation, they wanted inflation because their economy was struggling with deflation. However, their YCC policy shows that yields can be suppressed and pegged if the central banks want it to.
You can also contrast this with third world countries which raise interest rates as U.S. Fed does, not necessarily because they want to ‘maintain low inflation’ (though I’m sure some think like that) but because they want to reduce pressure on the exchange rate. These countries are dependent on essential imports like food and crude oil and other countries don’t want to accept their local currencies, so, exchange rate matters especially in a low-no subsidy austere fiscal policy environment promoted by the IMF. But the issue isn’t interest rate but exchange rate.
Edit: which is why I thought yesterday that Dollar will depreciate instead of treasury yields rising. Foreign countries will always have that lever to pull, and depreciation is the natural ‘automatic’ result when capital/financial account surplus shrinks. But instead, the Fed didn’t suppress yields and that was enough for Trump to yield.
‘Forced savings’ which modern Governments aren’t doing (US treasuries are treated in many similar to cash) are a legitimate way to reduce inflation during high aggregate demand times, that’s what Keynes advocated for in ‘How to pay for the war’. This is where Governments take your money away (voluntarily or involuntarily) so you have less purchasing power and reduces aggregate demand, once the bond matures you are given back the principal + interest (when the war is over). This isn’t borrowing to pay for Government spending but to manage aggregate demand.
the tweet isnt saying that trump is doing what MMTers advocate for with his policies, just that he tried to ignore the bond market which immediately began to discipline him. thats why i linked the 2nd tweet. so the idea here is that if someone who followed MMT’s principles, the bond market is what ultimately would discipline them. could you link further reading about the YCC policy? thanks
i will say something i dont think the OP is accounting for is the dollar’s reserve currency status, no? i thought that was a big part of the reason the interest rate rising on treasuries while the stock market was dipping was so spooky for people
regardless, their claim towards that book is really what intrigued me and made me share it, i thought it could be very interesting read for an mmt enthusiast to read even if they ultimately disagree with the OP on twitter
True, but it’s more that Fed disciplined Trump by not acting than the bond market. As for YCC, see this.
appreciate it!!!