U.S. now in economic war with 10% of the world's countries

When it comes to being smart about picking fights, the Trump Administration fails in spectacular fashion.

The United States is currently waging economic warfare against one tenth of the world's countries with cumulative population of nearly 2 billion people and combined gross domestic product (GDP) of more than $15 trillion.

These include Russia, Iran, Venezuela, Cuba, Sudan, Zimbabwe, Myanmar, the Democratic Republic of Congo, North Korea and others on which Washington has imposed sanctions over the years, but also countries like China, Pakistan and Turkey which are not under full sanctions but rather targets of other punitive economic measures.

There is no wisdom in picking a fight with 2 billion people.
Our belligerent foreign policy has pushed Russia and China together, both politically and economically.

It's one thing to sanction Russia. It's an entirely other thing to sanction close and loyal allies.

U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley says allied countries like the U.K. shouldn't count on winning exemptions from sanctions against doing business with Iran stemming from President Trump's decision to pull out of the 2015 nuclear deal.

The UK? Seriously? You know something is seriously wrong if sanctioning your most loyal ally is part of the agenda.
While the American media is obsessed with Trump's idiotic tweets, real news out of Europe is getting ignored.

The president of the European Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker, said a few days ago in a speech that the euro should be elevated as a reserve currency in order to break European dependence on the U.S. dollar. Juncker noted that the EU paid for 80 percent of its energy imports in dollars even though only 2 percent of imports come from the U.S. “There’s no logic at all in paying energy imports in dollar not euro,” an EU diplomat told Politico.

If Europe stops using the dollar for its international trade, this would mark the end of U.S. dollar hegemony. The end of U.S. dollar hegemony would mark he end of U.S. military hegemony because it would become unaffordable.

Pakistani upper house lawmaker Sehar Kamran said this week that the United States has lost its "hegemony" over South Asia. Americans have failed to notice that Pakistan has fallen out of America's orbit of influence. Even less noticed is that India intends to defy our Iranian sanctions by buying Iran's oil and Russian weapons in rupees.

The Trump Administration doesn't do diplomacy. Instead it tries to bully everyone, and that creates enemies.

Trump is doing everything he can to bring on the end of the days when the US can borrow whatever it wants in whatever amounts it wants. To be sure, there is no recipe book. The dollar is now so entrenched as the world’s money that if your assignment were to bring the curtain down on that — and thus the ability of the US to borrow whatever it wants whenever it wants — it’s not at all clear what you would do. But you’d start by doing everything that Trump is doing — pick fights with all your allies, blow the government deficit wide open at the peak of an economic recovery, abandon any notion of fiscal responsibility, threaten sanctions on anyone and everyone who seeks to honor the deal Obama struck with Iran (thereby almost begging everyone to figure out some way to bypass the US banking system in order to do business), throw spanners into the works of global trade without any clear indication of what it is precisely you want for a country that structurally consumes more than it produces and thus by the laws of accounting MUST run trade and current account deficits.

Murphy says of the Chinese, Russian, and European efforts, “They are building the groundwork for the day when they can overthrow the hegemony of the US dollar. The day that happens is the day the American imperium ends.”

Russia has moved into the diplomacy vacuum left by the Trump Administration, and has become the indispensable intermediary for all of Asia.
That's not the only way that our belligerent foreign policy has strengthened Putin's hand.

The Trump administration is helping Vladimir Putin achieve a goal that’s eluded him for almost two decades—getting Russia’s billionaires to start repatriating some of their assets.

Relatively muted sanctions imposed during the Obama era over the conflict in Ukraine have only widened in scope and severity since Trump took office last year. The unpredictability of both the White House and Congress is forcing Russians to move money into state-run banks and rejig the offshore superstructure that’s sheltered fortunes here since communism’s collapse.

Washington is using economic imperialism on a global scale, while running huge trade and budget deficits. That's not a winning formula.

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Sanctions have gone from a way to force behavior changes to outright methods to gain economic advantage and pillage for the sake of profit. Of course Trump like the EU must have believed that Russia and China would not counter sanction. Well, at least in the case of the EU it seems their arrogance blinded them to the fact that Putin would not sit and just take it.

Somebody must have told Trump that the Chinese could and would retailate. But who the fck knows. Trump said he could shoot somebody and people would still vote for him. Or maybe he thinks that effected industries could find other markets. You know, USA USA USA.

Here is an interesting article about the effects on the Iranian sanctions.

Ultra Light Texas Oil Could Replace Iran’s Sales To Asia

Merkel had to literally promise a trade war with the US to stop interference with Nordstream 2. But then again, would not surprise me if the Ukrainians or Poles attempt to blow up the pipeline under the Baltic.

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The Aspie Corner's picture

But it's not like the pigs will suffer for it. We will.

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Modern education is little more than toeing the line for the capitalist pigs.

Guerrilla Liberalism won't liberate the US or the world from the iron fist of capital.

The Aspie Corner's picture

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Modern education is little more than toeing the line for the capitalist pigs.

Guerrilla Liberalism won't liberate the US or the world from the iron fist of capital.

Pluto's Republic's picture

Very good links, too. The lines are pretty blurred, don't you think, between various global factions. For Americans, it was once easy to know who stood where, and where you belonged. Now arguments must be reevaluated, reanalyzed. Peoples feelings and biases must be reconsidered, locally and internationally.

I've taken more and more to reading people's comments for cues. Comments have improved, of late. The savage and clueless commentariat have been mostly relegated to American newspapers, which is poetic justice given how profoundly misinformed they are. (Once my favorite, the Washington Post has seen a precipitous IQ plummet.) Everywhere else, the Big Readjustment to the looming Government Censor Bureau is starting to dawn, little by little. Difficult to say where this is going to lead, but so far dissenting opinions are heard. (The exception to this being the Big-Technology Brownshirts.)

I ran across an essentially unknown-partisan comment thread that peeks in on the American image, now that its long-term exceptionalism has finally come to a head:

Foreigner #1 — Is anyone actually in charge in the US or is it just a collection of maverick bureaucrats? 

The President orders the unclassified release of FISA Documents, but the Justice Department refuses without redacting the same, the State Department issues sanctions against a sovereign nation (China) for buying Russian weapons, the national security advisor struts across the planet issuing threats to sovereign nations & the hateful ambassador to the U.N. issues blatant lies at every opportunity. 

Who the fuck is running this show?

Texas — But, but Q says trust the plan

Foreigner #2 — Americans
a deviant society of leisure-seekers
creators of a self-destructive political-economy
mindlessly bankrupting itself, seeking immediate gratification
pursuing senseless military adventures in weak nations around the world
led by a mutant with the mind of a 7 year old

Manhattan — Let's be honest folks, if you were Russia / China, wouldn't you be planning right now to put down the mad dog? This shit must stop.

California — U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley is berating Russia for secretly trading with North Korea in violation of U.N. sanctions, saying, “Lying, cheating, and rogue behavior have become the new norm of the Russian culture."

Wait a moment. This from a culture that gave us babies thrown from incubators, Saddam with weapons of mass destruction, "we came, we saw, he died" in Libya and so on in Afghanistan, Syria, and Ukraine.

Sick, sick, sick.  And the MSM says nothing.

Boston — What a cretinous behaviour of the West. Putin wanted to be part of it. He even was inviting himself into NATO. Remember? 

Putin could release dirt on everyone in DC anytime he wants. Server data, 9/11 data, or any of the other dirty stunts. That he has not is pretty telling.

There hasn't been any malicious behavior from Russia that I've seen. It makes the saber rattling look like the empire has problems of it's own making and is afraid of something.

California — Would it make any difference,at this point?

They release proof on MH17 including the full inventory history of the BUK, and where in the MSM have you seen it?

Foreigner #2 — A lot of westerners have given up on the west. So should a easterner be any different?

Boston — So with the Idlib cease-fire, the Syrian war is essentially over.  Whether Israel likes it or not. That leaves only Afghanistan and Yemen as hot wars.

Entire continents are now at peace.  Over 99% of the world's population.
The geopolitics of a 'Chinese Peace' with Russian muscle have ALREADY HAPPENED.
Trump is fine with this, he just wants in for US business.
Eventually, we will close military bases, pack up and head home.
Nothing is happening in Eurasia.
Globalists lose.
We win.

"Entire continents are now at peace.  Over 99% of the world's population."

Can this be right?
Is it just us?

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____________________

The political system is what it is because the People are who they are. — Plato
mimi's picture

@Pluto's Republic
in Germany with an old man, who came from Poland due to his parents fleeing with him as a child from the Russians at the end of WWII and an Egyptian, who worked as a professor in Egypt, but was 'commuting' bewteen Egypt and Germany, where he resided due to his German wife. When I told them that I wasn't over forty years in my home town, the 'Polish German' said almost crying: 'tell your American friends we want to have peaceful relations with them' and the Egyptian guy consoled him and said: 'well, don't worry, he (meaning the current American president) will be gone in two years'.

When I asked my elderly sister, who 'confuses or doesn't remember or never learned' any political or historical thingies, if she feels threatened by Putin, she looked at me with big eyes and said: 'no, why, should I?'.

While watching with her a documentary about slavery in one of Germany's TV channels, she said: 'oh, I didn't know, Portugal was so involved in slave trade', though she was married to an Indian guy, whose parents were Portuguese and worked worked in Mosambique for a while during times the British commonwealth reached into India and Africa.

Well ... life ain't easy to understand ...
Wink

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@mimi
To be replaced by Biden? I'm thrilled beyond belief. /s
I hate to say anything good about Trump, but who was the last President who even made an appearance to care about industrial jobs? 1992 Clinton? And he quickly changed his tune after being elected.

There is an old saying "Half a loaf is better than none". Even one slice is better than none.

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I've seen lots of changes. What doesn't change is people. Same old hairless apes.

an 1890s world view on both foreign affairs and economics. He's certainly obsessed with the Big Stick part of that.

The whole clique of World Domination crowd assumed that when you attack people they quake, cower, and submit. They misjudge because they assume everyone has their kind of craven nature. Which they try to hide from themselves with their Bully style.

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Orwell: Where's the omelette?

It might be 10% of the countries, but more than 2.5 times that if you measure by number of people in those countries!

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for what should have been done at least as far back as Reagan.
The American empire has been all along really a tool for the world's bad actors. The worst of China have grown rich on an economy that is far worse than any but the worst Americans can imagine, Same with Saudi Arabia and India and the whole list of dictators and thieves.
By claiming to use tarriffs to help American workers he has "caused" punative counter tarriffs. Yeah right - he has caused other country's 1% to expose their maliciousness and hypocracy.
Trump's petty evil and incompetence will in the end do more good than all the presidents before him... uh... unless heat death makes us all extinct.

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On to Biden since 1973

never

There is a strong scientific consensus on the failure of US sanctions. Academics and subject experts cite various types of data and numerical evidence to suggest that the US-imposed sanctions have not succeeded in toppling even a single rival regime.

But Washington continues to use sanctions as a tool to stifle the economies of what it calls the “rogue” regimes

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You had ghosts that would do damage by smacking into you with a "pwant!" sound (so you had to shoot them at range). A pair of inexperienced players ran their characters through a room a ghosts exclaiming, "These ghosts are easy to kill!"

In much the same way, Donald Trump, who flitters around the White House like a demented gnat, announces, "These trade wars are easy to win!" (No one can mention Smoot-Hawley because he wouldn't know what it meant and anyway he doesn't read.) But the Chinese must think of our Orange Wankmaggot the same way the North Koreans in MASH thought of Frank Burns: "No, we won't capture you. Go back. It's the best thing you can do for our side!"

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what a trade deficit is?

Does anyone on this site know what a trade deficit is? It is essentially taking money from our pockets and putting it into the pockets of other countries.

Trump is trying to fix the imbalance. The trade deficit is part of the reason for the loss of jobs and dwindling middle class that we on this site like to decry.

Take a look at this article from Wolf Street. It is by the owner who is usually cited favorably by progressive types:

https://wolfstreet.com/2018/09/23/what-i-told-the-white-house-about-trade/

This article says big business objects strenuously to Trump's attempted changes because it will hurt their bottom line. Since when are we on big business' side with the way they've betrayed the US, the crappy wages they pay, the hollowed out middle class, the environmental problems they cause, etc?

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dfarrah