You’ve alienated all of your neighbors and closest allies, they’ve all sought to effectively work around no longer being able to trade with you. What other avenues are left besides naked imperialism, invading Canada, Mexico and other South American nations, then simply setting up the sweatshops and slave labor that is otherwise no longer available in order to keep prices reasonable for the American consumer? This is obviously a longer-term concern, but if Trump somehow steals another 4-year term in office (or simply never leaves), is this not a conceivable reaction to the economy imploding and a massive military that is no longer obligated to protect Europe or prevent China’s expansion?
Comments
The following is a copy of the original post to record the post as it was originally written.
You’ve alienated all of your neighbors and closest allies, they’ve all sought to effectively work around no longer being able to trade with you. What other avenues are left besides naked imperialism, invading Canada, Mexico and other South American nations, then simply setting up the sweatshops and slave labor that is otherwise no longer available in order to keep prices reasonable for the American consumer? This is obviously a longer-term concern, but if Trump somehow steals another 4-year term in office (or simply never leaves), is this not a conceivable reaction to the economy imploding and a massive military that is no longer obligated to protect Europe or prevent China’s expansion?
I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.
Depends on the vibes that day. I bet you $20 you can correlate the unhinged responses from Trump with his golf performance if you had the data
>With the world poised to effectively isolate the United States from global trade…?
Don’t expect this to happen.
Access to a wealthy export market is super-important for economic development, and no one else has the size nor scope to fill the US’s shoes.
The US is 26% of the world GDP! (30T/115T≈26%)
The rest of the world has very little hard power. Hard power requires expeditionary power, aka the ability to project force to distant places. The US specializes in this kind of power projection and has long used that power as a kind of trade good to exchange for our own security and economic benefit. Most other nations focus on defense (the EU) or on local control (China).
With the US out of the picture as a deterrent force, there’s now a gap for countries to fill with expeditionary power, but most of them don’t have it yet. It will take some years of development before they do. China is probably the closets to having it, so we can expect them to act first, probably to secure their control of the South China seas.
Which “world” is effectively isolating the United States?
In the world we live on it seems like there is a mixed bag of responses. None of which seem to be an attempt to isolate the US.
>Trump embraces ‘tailored’ tariff deals as foreign leaders look to sweeten their offers
>Delegations from Japan and South Korea are en route. Italy’s prime minister will be in Washington next week. And Israel’s “proactive approach” to seeking out new US trade agreements could serve as a model for everyone, according to the White House.
>https://www.cnn.com/2025/04/08/politics/trump-tariff-negotiations-foreign-leaders/index.html
.
>Which Countries Are Retaliating and Which Are Negotiating Trump’s Tariffs?
>https://www.investopedia.com/which-countries-are-retaliating-and-which-are-negotiating-trump-s-tariffs-11711796
>…do you think [The US] will start flexing their hard power?
No. Especially not:
>…naked imperialism, invading Canada, Mexico and other South American nations, then simply setting up the sweatshops and slave labor that is otherwise no longer available in order to keep prices reasonable for the American consumer?
We could just drop the tariffs and achieve the same thing at a much lower cost.
I don’t think Trump is going to ‘create jobs in foreign countries’ to satisfy the American consumer.
Look I hate the current admin as much as anyone, but no one is backing away from trade with the US. It’s just not gonna happen. We have the largest consumer market by a mile. We have twice the HFCE of the EU, who is a distant second. We account for 30% of global consumer spending. Unfortunately, there isn’t much power to flex.
I hope so, any real resistance is going to need support from other nations in order to stand a chance, as well as avenues of escape for citizens unable to participate for various reasons.
The more enemies the admin makes the easier it’ll be for fighting back thru all available avenues
My girlfriend saw Serj in Vegas last year, he was doing ads for Peet’s Coffee
Is the world poised to isolate the US? I thought it would be, but I didn’t see a whole lot of retaliation or push back.
I don’t know about isolation, but I think Trump’s shift of turning the US more towards transactional politics, money, and use of intimidation/bullying (even moreso than in the past) is going to be a slow decay of US reputation and soft power. China learned in the last couple of decades that just because you have money and markets doesn’t mean you can win people over. For example, in the last 40 or so years that Taiwan and China have deepened their economic exchanges, yet poll after poll has shown the people of Taiwan have felt less “Chinese” over time and more “Taiwanese” and unification with China has dropped way down in popularity.
Trump shutting down USAID and Radio Free media, terrorizing immigrants and visitors to the US, threatening to invade allies, and now this tariff flip-flop is all pointing to the US being unreliable, reckless, and blustering.
They’re working on destroying our economy so that we’ll be the ones working in sweat shops for slave wages.
I think once you have a US/Russian/Chinese level nuclear arsenal you’re basically immune to territorial incrosion, but I think there is a decent to good chance that absent the US maintaining the international order that we revert back to colonialism with powerful countries carving out spheres of influence/captive markets and that leading to some pretty significant large power conflict.
They’re eager to do it, and war will (at least appear to) be just the thing to get mushy moderates back on his side.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperial_boomerang
They aren’t dumb assholes like rapey donald.
They aren’t interested in performative nonsense.
They’ll just sell US treasuries. Build new business alliances. Form new military alliances.
Domestic terrorist donald and the stupidest half of the country will never even see it happening.
I won’t live long enough to see America repair all the damage that draft dodging donald has caused.
We’re led by a complete moron. They aren’t. They’ll just quietly build a world that doesn’t involve depending on America for anything.