I don't agree with your conclusions, but I feel you're arguing in good faith and therefore don't deserve down votes.

I'm not sure America actually has left a lot of money on the table. I see America having benefitted a lot from the post cold war world order (as indeed have most of its allies), and my take is that the kind of extraction of value that Trump has been attempting is at very best only beneficial in the short term.

But again, I appreciate when people with different viewpoints can discuss them civilly, so I gave you an upvote.

Me too.

American working and middle classes have been devastated over the course of forty years by bad trade deals.

They’re the constituency that supports Trump.

Numbers like GDP or total wealth will be highly misleading — and it’s unsurprising that the opinion of the petite bourgeoisie (who primarily make up HN) differ from those groups.

Why isn't the answer wealth redistribution instead of tearing down the world order, tearing down the government, and hoping something positive miraculously comes out of it someday down the road?

Presumably because they view the US as best for their classes when it was easier to do business and less beholden to international affairs while simultaneously not believing that empowering the government in such a manner will benefit them.

When the party advocating wealth redistribution also calls them “deplorables” and flagrantly provides worse services (eg, NC disaster vs CA disaster) that seems like a reasonable belief.

Do you have evidence for NC disaster services being worse than CA disaster services (as provided by the Federal government)?

What you're describing is an American domestic policy issue.

There's no dispute that America has become incredibly more rich and powerful over the past 40 years. The fact that that money is increasingly funneled to fewer and fewer people (as a percent of the population) is something that can be changed locally, without changing our foreign policy stance.

It's not a surprise that the "devastation" of the middle class coincides with the continued reduction of tax rates on the entities collecting all that money. The America that MAGA seems to think was great was one of higher taxes and more social programs.

can you explain how an increase in tax rate would help the middle class gain more wealth? it already makes sense that decreasing tax rate, and therefore increasing income, but decreasing income to increase wealth doesn’t make sense to me.

No, they’re coupled issues — eg, open markets forces domestic labor to compete unfairly.

The manner in which those people accrued wealth is deeply related to the issue, by subverting the working and middle classes domestically.

I understand that many of the petite bourgeoisie believe that destruction of those classes via internationalism is a means to usher in communist policy — but that’s opposed wholesale by the American working and middle classes.

> No, they’re coupled issues — eg, open markets forces domestic labor to compete unfairly.

You're still describing economic policies though, not diplomatic ones, and while they're not entirely disconnected, trying to fix international economic issues by burning down alliances is likely to result in a lot of negative second order effects while not even addressing the main economic concerns.

If we're ascribing bad faith motivations to particular viewpoints here though, I'll point out that conflating concerns about trade policies with the idea that America should entirely abandon any interest in the rest of the world is enormously helpful to countries that would like to pursue far more aggressive imperial ambitions currently being blocked by American power. Having rightfully angry people in America's rust belt become convinced that the only way to revitalize the industries that used to power their cities is to let Russia reform the Soviet Union has got to feel like the political victory of the century to Moscow.

Thank you! Yes I was, and I'm of the view that our greatest strength as a democratic society is our ability to discuss opposing views civilly. I spend a lot of time overseas in societies where this ability is not present and Americans really, really underestimate how bad things can get when you lose it.

So "leaving money on the table" is admittedly very vague, using it here I'm principally referring to two things:

1) For many decades we've had a trade posture and foreign policy regime which emphasized moving production offshore. This generated a lot of corporate profits and some consumer benefits but was absolutely decimating for working class incomes and job prospects. We "left money on the table" here in the sense that money which would have been generated in the US and paid wages in the US tended to end up mostly in the hands of wealthy people in poor countries (and to some degree in the hands of their middle classes).

2) The other way we left money on the table was by opening up our markets to countries which didn't reciprocate in kind -- we reduced our tariffs on them, and they didn't reduce their tariffs on us. This again encouraged the flow of production, jobs, capital etc. out of the US and again hit the most vulnerable economic classes hardest.

The net result of this is that we have a lot of money in the US in a record few number of hands -- when you add corporate consolidation & monopolization to the mix you have a pretty complete picture of why a lot of people in this country are struggling.

So did we benefit from these policies, yeah, we did in certain ways that accrued particularly toward the top of our economic pyramid, but it seems that the bottom of it has had just about enough of this and is getting loud about it at the ballot box.

Those are valid problems, but siding with Russia against Ukraine and attempting to extort natural resource wealth from the latter doesn't address any of those issues. I understand and to a large extent agree with the domestic discontent about who has benefited and who has been hurt by decades of American trade policies, although I think much of that complaining ignores the real benefits it brought to American consumers in the form of cheaper and more available goods. But addressing those issues doesn't require flushing American foreign policy and diplomacy down the garbage disposal and in fact doing so is likely counter-productive.

Do you have an example of a civil discussion? I'm not sure what you refer to.

I don't think this is the future or anyone is boxed in.

Trump & Co are by no measure the sharpest tools in the shed. In Trumps own words they have been up against some really inept people, who have all lost credibility.

Therefore the counter-reaction, which is building, will come, and it won't look like what Trump & Co are used to dealing with in the past. I think that's what interesting about where the story goes next. Whose is going to lead? What are they going to stand for? How are they going to organize? Its an opportunity for the best in America to shine.

Cooperation is never a zero sum game compared to non-cooperation.

That is pretty much the definition of it.

And for example free trade is a flavour of it.

War is a negative sum game. Peace is a positive sum game.

The reality is China is now the top trading partner for most of the world. China is producing 50% of the world's steel. China has 200x the shipbuilding capacity of the United States, etc etc. Cooperation with China is positive sum for nearly the whole world, but China as the preeminent geopolitical power is incompatible with the unipolar moment where America led the world and decided the rules of the road, and could force dissenters to comply at gunpoint. China is far more relatively powerful than the USSR ever was, much less China+Russia+Iran+North Korea combined.

This is what we're seeing play out in microcosm in Ukraine, where Russia is to a large degree being backstopped by Chinese industrial and economic and diplomatic power. Hard choices are required, and there can be a lot of productive debate on the specifics of those choices. But much of "the west" seems stuck in the 1990s, where America can simply will the world it wants into existence by believing in it enough.

If America and the EU had started dumping 10% of GDP into the military 5 or 15 years ago things would likely look very different now, but we didn't and no one wants to do that now either because it would be incredibly painful for millions of people who in a democracy could vote out the leaders who enacted that policy. Hard choices are required, but we're getting mainly empty rhetoric and wishcasting, by those who wish things were otherwise. I also wish things were otherwise - but that and $5 will get me a cup of Starbucks coffee.

"The era of procrastination, of half-measures, of soothing and baffling expedients, of delays is coming to its close. In its place we are entering a period of consequences." - Winston Churchill

And what is striking is that, so far, China is effectively defeating the USA as the world leader, piece by piece, without firing a shot.

Or at least, has a golden opportunity window to do so within the next 2/3 years, while Trump/Musk & co are dismantling the country capacity to function.

And the only weapon required was making a constituency of American ignorance, resentment, and mean-spiritedness.

China has done that by ruling internally with an iron fist and ruling externally with financial influence.

The U.S. is actually trying a play from the same playbook by abstaining from deploying troops.

When was the last time you saw China getting torn apart in the media for failing to prop up a failed state? They're doing "greenfield" diplomacy without historical baggage.

> If America and the EU had started dumping 10% of GDP into the military 5 or 15 years ago things would likely look very different

is this a typo? US already has the highest military budget in the world, the last thing it needs is to put more money into it.

Free trade as implemented in the past seems to have been the opposite of democratic cooperation. Non-elected appointees making free trade agreements behind locked doors, which effect ignore the citizens interest and makes industry regulation irrelevant. It was free trade that enshrined current copyright laws world wide with 90 years after the authors death, which few people in the world voted for.

Free trade only reflect cooperation if done transparently, chosen by the people, and which does not bypass industry regulation that people voted on. If that is not possible then the trade agreement need to reflect the different national views on things like minimum wage, environmental issues, safety standard, animal well fare, justice system, trade marks, and so on.

Further to this point, what people call "free trade" is in many cases actually not free at all. A good example of this is the bilateral relationship with Thailand, they put tons of tariffs on US imports, and the US puts very few tariffs on Thailand. Why? The rationale for this is ostensibly that the US would like to have more political influence in Southeast Asia, or hasn't totally internalized that the Cold War is over, or something.

(It also so happens that Thailand places very low tariffs on Chinese goods - and their government has been currying political favor with Beijing for a long time - they are happy to enjoy unrestricted access to US markets and seem quite confident that the status quo will endure so if we are trying to buy political influence with them, we seemingly have been so toothless that it isn't even working!)

The US has deals like this all over the planet where it gives other countries unrestricted access to its markets, in return for what is not clear. A lot of these deals contributed to the movement of US manufacturing to places like Thailand, which hit the US working class in the wallet very directly. Sure there are also good deals that we should preserve as-is but it doesn't seem unreasonable at all to me that some of these be subjected to scrutiny and revision.

That’s why Trump saying he’ll normalize tariffs is popular:

Many Americans feel cheated, whereby they give better terms to other parties and don’t even get respect in return. So they now support a movement to mirror that behavior.

This is an example of the iterated prisoner’s dilemma: one side defected on a partnership for their benefit, trust collapsed, and now the originally cooperative partner is acting selfishly as well. Reciprocation is a fundamental part of relationships.

The US isn’t the entity that needs to hear “cooperating is better than a zero sum mindset”.

Americans will “feel cheated” again when reality arrives and learn that a huge part of their economic power is based on the world dumping trillions of dollars of their savings into us stocks, bonds and real estate, thus making the US dollar artificially strong, making it possible for Americans to buy stuff and being rich. Wait until foreign money and trust starts leaving the US to see how “betrayed” you really get, now it has been la la land, let’s wait for the next act..

I don't think the average American knows about what tariffs USA has against Thailand.

I think they feel cheated because they are told to feel cheated.

I assume the intended audience for the tariff talk is rust belt workers (who swung the election) who feel cheated for more dramatic reasons like their company folding while foreign suppliers thrive.

> Many Americans feel cheated, whereby they give better terms to other parties and don’t even get respect in return

> - foreign owned farmland and corporations;

That's hilarious. Many languages have a specific term for US private equity investors that rush in, buy up entire countries' corporations, then try to squeeze out every cent of profit.

Especially after the fall of the Berlin wall and the iron curtain this became a massive issue. See also https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heuschreckendebatte

Every American - even the demographics that typically support Trump - has benefited from this.

> Many languages have a specific term for US private equity investors that rush in, buy up entire countries' corporations, then try to squeeze out every cent of profit.

Sure — the US bourgeoisie and petite bourgeoisie benefitted. But they’re not the ones supporting Trump or feeling cheated.

> But they’re not the ones supporting Trump or feeling cheated.

One of the groups most benefiting from the US dominance in the past decades were the farmers. Which is one of the larger lobby blocks and voting groups supporting trump.

And the logic doesn't compute either. Average people around the world got exploited by western, but primarily US, billionaires.

So the average people, the proletariat, should unite and revolt against those billionaires.

Instead the US proletariat voted to give billionaires even more power, in the hope that "their" billionaires would exploit foreigners more than themselves?

Free trade is built on top of economic systems which themselves are built on top of zero sum games. The only thing we can put economic value on are goods and services that use finite resources (oil, lumber, human labor, etc).

A forest, for example, has no economic value but lumber does.

Free trade may optimize how goods and services are dispersed but it can't escape the zero sum game that is foundational to economics.

I don't think it is merely a matter of redistribution. It can escape the zero-sum game through productivity gains, technological progress, recycling, and better legislation (for example, policies that regenerate forests). It may even create new industries as replacements. Because of this, I don’t believe it is inherently a zero-sum game.

> The only thing we can put economic value on are goods and services that use finite resources

A software patent does not consume physical resources (aside from the initial human labor) yet holds tremendous economic value. An app can be easily duplicated, making it a virtually infinite resource, while the patent remains attached to its novel functionalities.

> It can escape the zero-sum game through productivity gains, technological progress, recycling, and better legislation

Isn't that just a temporary reprieve of optimization in a broader zero sum game though?

All of those feel to me like ways to take advantage of inefficiencies in the system rather than escaping the game all together.

There is always the possibility to dig deeper mines, explore further into space or just give people the possibility to live more a comfortable life.

But it is not only about that. Trade is also for comparative advantage. If you ever played settlers boardgame with more than two players you'll soon realize that whoever trades the most wins. And it does not really matter who you trade with, it is just reaping the benefits of trade instead of being stuck with 10 wood that is of low value to you but of high value to someone else.

What you're describing is a zero sum game. The world is limited to the board game, and whoever is best at trading and strategy collects the most finite resources and the others lose.

(Sorry if I lost the thread here. Most here were trying to argue that trade and globalization are a way to escape a zero-sum game).

I get your point, but I don't think a board game is a good abstraction to collapse the real world into. The world is not a fixed, closed system with finite resources. In a board game, expansion and innovation are not possible, only trading and strategy, as you mentioned, can optimise the system to some extent. Moreover, winning in a board game happens solely because of its rules, whereas in the real world, one person's success does not necessarily mean another's loss. Trade can be mutually beneficial, driven by each party's ambitions.

Innovation is an interesting wrinkle in the comparison for sure (I used the comparison only to continue with the previous commentor's point). Innovation only increase the potential usefulness of resources though. Assuming that will always avoid hitting the boundary of the zero sum game assumes perpetual innovation at a good enough pace to keep up.

Trade is an interesting one because it can be mutually beneficial, though it rarely includes everyone. Two countries can trade and both be better off, but other countries excluded may now be worse off. Trade also can't be mutually beneficial with regards to relative gain. Both sides can gain in trade or cooperation but one will always have gained more than the other. That doesn't make my point by the way, but an interesting related dimension to the whole topic.

My post had two paragraphs.

The first tried to explain that it does not necessarily have to be a zero-sum game.

The second paragraph tried to explain that, even if you do see it as a zero sum game, trade between two parties, or trade in general, can give you benefits over ones who are not part of the trade.

Obviously I am trying to describe this in simple terms without writing a book. But i do think the board game analogy holds even though it is very simple.

That's a very limited (XIXth century?) perspective.

A forest (like, anything) has economic value, as soon as you get people to adopt/believe in it.

A forest may even have a greater economic value than the lumber it could produce, if it would, for instance, help/ensure the prosperity of something else that has economic value (leisure, wildlife, heat protection, soil water retention, etc.).

I completely agree outside of economics. I put much higher value on a forest than lumber. Economically, though, where is the forest ever accounted for?

In your strategic business plan, by IFRS accounting standards (existing and developing).

You have several options, account for it as lumber (but... well), or as a carbon sequestration well (so you could get carbon credits, IAS 38), or as an ecosystem providing services (several frameworks under work here), or as a contingent liability or asset (IAS 37, can be in the balance sheet if the probability of event/impact is high/certain).

Even if you forget to account for it, your insurance likely will remind you about it.

Once someone can "own" the forest, that be a bit of a cheat around the whole idea. I'm thinking out loud here, but I think all of you're examples are actually valuing the financial mechanisms rather than the forest itself.

The carbon credits are given economic value, its just not a physical resource like lumber so its harder to distinguish that the credit holds the value rather than the forest.

You ask me how to account for it. In accounting, that’s how, and you can get creative too.

Sure, but in those accounting mechanisms are you valuing the forest or the financial asset the paper ownership of forestland grants you?

I'd expect the lumber or carbon credits, for example, to be the actual asset accounted for rather than the forest itself.

> After decades of reckless spending and lax economic management the US is going broke in a number of ways. In particular dealing with the national debt before and after Covid are very different beasts

Most of the reckless spending is by Republicans via unfunded tax which grows the deficit

Then when they’re in opposition they suddenly become deficit hawks

Republicans don’t mind the debt pile growing providing it’s the rich getting the money, they object when it’s ordinary people’s lives who are being made better

The US has never been richer, adjusted for inflation, both in aggregate and per person. [0]

The idea that there have been decades of reckless spending and the US is going broke I think is not at all a nuanced take.

Anecdotes about the inflation of prices of eggs (which is 0.05% of US economy) don't change the overall facts that are material.

I will grant you that debt servicing needs immediate attention. Blowing up 100 years of foreign policy has nothing to do with that, however.

The number of NATO members spending 2% or more on defense went from 3 to 23 in the past 10 years. Their spending almost doubled in the past 10 years, while the US only grew 15% (actually shrunk in PPP terms). [1]

The US has been successfully pressuring NATO allies to pick up the bill, without having to call Ukraine a dictator and cede Ukraine to Russia without US security guarantees, and promote politics of appeasement that will lead to China taking Taiwan which is the only material place that produces the future's most important geopolitical asset: chips.

The US looking to reduce debt also isn't compatible with raising tariffs on everyone including allies, reducing taxes and warding off cheap immigrant labour, it's the opposite. Trump seems to have 25% good ideas, 75% bad ideas, and 90% poor execution that causes a lot of collateral damage. Penny wise pound foolish comes to mind a lot when I look at his policy choices.

[0] https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.PP.CD?locat... [1] https://www.nato.int/nato_static_fl2014/assets/pdf/2024/6/pd...

Averages hide extremes. In this case it hides how much poorer the poor got and richer the rich got. America is not "rich" in a way that benefits the middle class.

And to address that gap between the rich and poor, Trump is ... firing middle-class government employees, cutting taxes (which primarily favors the rich), and toying with cutting social programs?

Median personal income shows the same trend. It's not an inequality issue.

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEPAINUSA646N

"The number of NATO members spending 2% or more on defense went from 3 to 23 in the past 10 years"

Which is the reason that maybe Trump is not working for Putin? By scaring Europe into re-militarizing, that is bad for Russia.

Not just 2%, but what if this spurs Germany into "hey, lets ramp this Military up and take on Russia again". That isn't good for Russia.

And this Trump attack on Ukraine, will unite the Ukraine people.

The things Trump does backfires? Or is that the plan. He's getting a militarized Europe and a United Ukraine. If he wants the opposite, then this is really bad way of going about it.

EDIT: Just trying to find a silver lining. Maybe a wakeup call by a global all powerful tyrant will move the world toward some unity?

> By scaring Europe into re-militarizing, that is bad for Russia.

Any anti-Russian benefit that has is dwarfed by the pro-Russian benefit of having a wedge driven between the US and Europe, which is what is happening. Even a Europe that invests more heavily is defense is far less scary to Russia than the threat of US military power, especially in the short to medium term. The US has military capability that will be difficult for anyone to recreate, even advanced economies like those of Germany, simply because of scale and long experience.

The best outcome for the US/European alliance would be a more militarily capable Europe still strongly allied with the US. Maybe that was the 4D chess goal, but if so Trump appears to have way overshot it.

The problem I see is that while Europe is waking up to the fact that they need to invest more in defense, they haven't realized yet that they need to build a military that can actually project power if they want to replace/augment the US. That's a different beast. And you are right, no single country in Europe could do that, and it would indeed be very bad if they would try. What has to happen is that Europe, ideally including the UK, comes together to form such a military.

There is absolutely zero real life evidence that anyone can possibly point to that supports the Trump is secretly a genius and is playing 4D chess theory.

I think it’s pretty likely that he is smart enough to try and use “madman theory” to gain his advantage. Whether that plays out to be a good strategy in the long term remains to be seen. However, in the past it has worked to a degree when leaders have utilized it.

I didn't really mean he is doing it on-purpose, 4-D Chess style. Just a thought, he could be achieving the opposite of his desires, and by accident helping Europe?

If Trump does accidentally manage to unite Europe, have them end the Ukraine war, and all without US involvement and spending… he will of course immediately claim full credit.

how about a far target of doing anything possible against China? Abandoning EU (thus pushing them to ramp up) and seemingly siding with Russia if needed.

Honest question: do you feel rich?

Yes, although I'm not in the US.

If Republicans would be oh-so concerned about the US "going broke" they wouldn't be pushing through trillions in tax cuts.

And much of this meeting with Zelensky had nothing to do with the budget (or at least the bits I've seen). It's just Trump being upset Zelensky isn't bending over backwards to praise Trump and being obsessed with shown to look "better" than other presidents (which is why he goes off on a tangent about Biden and Obama, disconnected from what Zelensky actually said).