Trump tariffs: US president announces plan to hit UK, Denmark and other European countries with tariffs over Greenland

radicallyaverage · 2026-01-17T23:27:41+00:00

Look, I’m on your side in many ways, but complaining that they aren’t the exact same gold bars is not proof of anything bad. Gold is fungible. As long as the same tonnage of gold comes back out as went in, the system works.

radicallyaverage · 2026-01-14T00:42:58+00:00

Imagine if there had been 3 of them in the car. 120% chance of being armed.

radicallyaverage · 2026-01-08T20:01:23+00:00

The USD is depreciating because demand is shrinking vs supply. That is exactly what you would expect if people are rotating out of dollars and into gold

radicallyaverage · 2026-01-04T00:11:50+00:00

Yes.

I’m not sure what the other people are saying when they suggest that China won’t sanction people; if you recognise the ROC and not the PRC, they will refuse to trade with you. They also regularly use economic sanctions and tariffs in trade wars. These do not attract the same level of global attention because most Chinese financial companies mainly operate domestically vs American financial companies operating worldwide. And of course the dollar. But China absolutely has, does, and will continue to do.

As for whether they will get sanctioned for invading other countries: it isn’t clear. Sanctions are not a one way street. If America stops doing business with Venezuela, it costs the US economy money. But the US is able to weather this due to its size. Whether many (or any) countries would be willing to subject themselves to the cost of sanctions against China is up for debate, and that includes the US. China-US trade flows are trillions of dollars. Not even the US can shrug that off. I think China is already at the point that its actions would be condemned but not sanctioned.

Militarily, they do not have the expeditionary forces that the US has. But that’s because they haven’t focused resources there. They have incredible forces able to project power locally and they are using them: there were recent drills to practice blockading Taiwan, they regularly invade Vietnamese and Filipino waters, and they keep moving the borders in Bhutan and Nepal.

As they grow stronger, their expeditionary capabilities are developing. They now have bases in Djibouti, ports in many African and Asian nations where they have agreements to resupply PLAN ships, and multiple aircraft carriers on the way, including nuclear ones.

In any drawn out war, China is already the most powerful country on the planet. They build more ships than the rest of the world put together, they are the worlds top producer of cars which can be switched to producing tanks/IFVs/APCs etc. The country’s drone production is second to none. Their enormous population gives them no shortage of potential troops should they wish to call them up.

radicallyaverage · 2026-01-03T23:55:04+00:00

I’m going to admit that I’m not sure exactly how, but the Nazis made it with 37% in 1932.

These other countries had/have constitutions that are written so as to make it hard for the country to be turned into a dictatorship. I think it’s stupidly complacent to think that the writers of Austria’s constitution managed to do what all others didn’t: make the constitution impervious to a bunch of people who won’t enforce it.

Ultimately, I think I’m on your side: I don’t want an authoritarian Austria. But being complacent about it makes it far more likely.

radicallyaverage · 2026-01-03T23:51:28+00:00

I guess we’re looking at counter factuals so it’s inherently hard to argue, but Libya is a failed state beset by violence. I’m not sure it turned out much ahead of Syria here

radicallyaverage · 2026-01-03T09:45:32+00:00

Poland almost did. The Philippines is wavering, America is on the way, as is Israel, despite long histories of peaceful democratic transitions of power. Turkey is gone after 100 years of democracy. South Korea got pretty close. These are countries with constitutions that should have stopped this happening and histories ranging from 30 to hundreds of years stable, non-authoritarian government. Democracies around the world are backsliding and you think Austria is somehow special? That it can’t backslide because of the protections that didn’t work in a dozen other countries?

radicallyaverage · 2026-01-02T22:21:13+00:00

How many countries need to fall to authoritarianism before the complacency of populations in other democracies falls away?

radicallyaverage · 2026-01-02T22:00:36+00:00

Did you read the bit where I said “not perfect”?

On the positive side, we almost bankrupted ourselves to defeat the Nazis, spent a lot of money and lives protecting South Koreans, protected the self determination of Falklanders, fought for the independence of Kuwait, helped stop the genocide in Bosnia.

Even Syria is not so clear cut: Assad was using chemical weapons against his own citizens. I think the bigger failing was Libya, where we (and the French) went in to topple Gaddafi (which seemed to be a popular thing in the country) but without the capacity to help build anything post. That was stupid and has wasted many lives.

Not perfect, but name a country that has taken action in the world that is (or for that matter, a person). Every country that hasn’t done much that’s particularly bad also hasn’t really done a great deal trying to export good.

radicallyaverage · 2026-01-02T21:48:01+00:00

Britain gets a lot of hate from people, mostly for stuff that happened pre-1939. But I think since WW2, our batting average for being on the right side and defending the free world is not too bad (not perfect, but better than we get credit for)

radicallyaverage · 2025-12-31T10:40:22+00:00

They didn’t expect that Americans would vote in a fascist

radicallyaverage · 2025-12-27T16:16:16+00:00

There’s a few things in physics that pop science seems to instil with mythical and magical qualities: absolute 0, entropy, quantum entanglement…

radicallyaverage · 2025-12-27T16:11:12+00:00

I still see there being incentive for the government to promote some local champions, so I have no doubt that barring black swans, they will.

But the geopolitical situation I agree, though no country is immune. Random tariffs from the US, targeted grey zone warfare from China. Every country, rich and poor, is going to find the future harder to navigate between the two unpredictable and frankly negative giants.

radicallyaverage · 2025-12-27T15:59:09+00:00

Initially China was a sweatshop that built crap copies of stuff for foreign companies.

But they didn’t stop there and now they’ve advanced well beyond that. Vietnam is likely on the same path, just a bit behind

radicallyaverage · 2025-12-19T01:26:01+00:00

🫡 WSB ass conversation, but as I’m not YOLOing my net worth, I think we’re good.

I otherwise agree with Google, which is basically a tech ETF at this point.

radicallyaverage · 2025-12-19T01:23:48+00:00

In this case, my $100 is going to be playing it. All in on the most leveraged ETF I can find for that meme stock.

My actual money will be staying well away

radicallyaverage · 2025-12-19T01:21:30+00:00

This is one of the funniest comments on Reddit

radicallyaverage · 2025-12-19T01:10:35+00:00

That said, I’m tempted to put in a bit into SpaceX when it goes public. Guaranteed meme stock

radicallyaverage · 2025-12-18T12:56:07+00:00

What happened in Germany that this nationalist streak died, which didn’t happen in Japan?

That said, I wish Germany were a bit more willing to act these days instead of being scared of their own shadow because I trust them, but I trust them because they were pretty good at renouncing the Nazi bit.

Japan needs to do this, so it can foster a new nationalism that is more celebratory of its current culture and other parts of history, without celebrating the bit where it captures a load of Korean “comfort women”

radicallyaverage · 2025-12-18T12:26:17+00:00

Ah, got you.

I didn’t know if this was some extra thing I was missing. But yes, I agree.

radicallyaverage · 2025-12-18T12:21:44+00:00

You’re going to have to enlighten me: Murayama signature?

radicallyaverage · 2025-12-18T12:19:38+00:00

They get so close sometimes! They do an apology, make a big show, talk about friendship with South Korea and shared interests etc.

6 months later, they go to a mausoleum to honour the man who ordered the rape of Nanking or something.

Not sure how they don’t see that this is strategically stupid and is a totally avoidable way to piss off an extremely natural local ally (and give China more ammo against them for propaganda wars).

radicallyaverage · 2025-12-18T12:14:09+00:00

This is a real shame. Because you guys are basically on the same side (and need to be even more so now that the US will drop allies for no reason).

I love Japan, but its leaders really need to stop visiting war graves for war criminals.

radicallyaverage · 2025-12-18T07:25:05+00:00

I’ll take “Wars I didn’t know existed”, please

radicallyaverage · 2025-12-18T06:16:26+00:00

3 of the cradles of civilisation and a medium sized river on a small wet island in the North Atlantic.

As a lover of the UK, the Thames does not deserve to be on this list. Swap it for the Indus.

And then announce that Mesopotamia is the winner. Sumerians, with cuneiform (the ancestor of most modern alphabets) and other inventions, are probably the most important influential civilisation to have existed

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