In what may be an American first, President Donald Trump pardoned a company sentenced to $100 million in fines for breaking money laundering laws.

This is some serious unprecedented bullshit. Especially when their charge was money laundering. Basically he is making money laundering legal. Go ahead and break the law. Trump will pardon you…

  • Dead_or_Alive@lemmy.worldEnglish
    28·
    20 hours ago

    Meh we put ourselves at the center of globalization and trade by offering the Europeans access to our markets in exchange for being our meat shields if the Ruskies ever decided to get uppity.

    Now globalization is starting to break down because we have no interest in maintaining it. Every president since Clinton has been more and more isolationist than the last. Even Biden had no interest in maintaining the order. The aid he offered to Ukraine was primarily military support, there was very little economic support for after the war.

    Trump has moved the needle on populism in the US. Breaking global trade was always going to happen, but Trump is accelerating it. Yes he is a corrupt skum bag, but we’ve had skum bag presidents in the past.

    America in the long term will be fine, our demographics are better than Europes or Chinas, we make our own energy and grow enough food to feed our population. We just need to restore manufacturing to North America (I.E. Canada, Mexico and USA).

    America can exist quite happily as a regional hegemony and let Europe, India, Russia and China fight over the rest of the world.

    • MonkderVierte@lemmy.mlEnglish
      1·
      5 hours ago

      our demographics are better than Europes or Chinas, we make our own energy and grow enough food to feed our population.

      Except your infrastructure falls apart, because maintaining it all would be too expensive. Eisenhower didn’t think of maintenance cost.

      • Dead_or_Alive@lemmy.worldEnglish
        1·
        2 hours ago

        European and Chinese infrastructure is the problem.

        Our infrastructure has lasted over 60 years but it is time to renew it. We also don’t approach infrastructure the same way Europe or China does.

        China has traditionally approached infrastructure by overbuilding well beyond any future need for the sake of chasing GDP figures and keeping the population employed (though this has changed in recent years). What they build can be dubious at times. They build apartment buildings, condos and houses much denser than in the US but they are built cheaply.

        Europe tends to over build. Roads are usually much thicker, smoother, public transportation is top notch. Buildings are built to a much higher standard. But the population pays for that quality and it can’t be spread out as much. As a result your population density is much higher.

        We build enough infrastructure to satisfy the need. If something is older we repair it and keep it in service well past its lifetime. Our houses are built cheaply and we tend to have less dense populations. That is the key to our demographics. No one wants to raise children in a small apartment in a city, let alone four or five of them. In the US large houses with a yard and 3 or four bedrooms is the norm. As a result it isn’t as hard raising kids so we have more than the equivalent couple in China and Europe.

        As a result of 40 years of low birth rates most of Europe and China are aging rapidly. They have no large Millennial population like the US does. This means their consumer base is dwindling and if they want to maintain their industrial base they need export markets to sell their goods.

    • B-TR3E@feddit.orgEnglish
      5·
      20 hours ago

      Welcome to cold war. Now the bad news: you have been asleep for at least 25 years.