Let's talk about Trump

Ok I’ll add my 2 cents. My next door neighbor and someone I used to do gardening for as a kid was a survivor from auschwitz. Her entire family were murdered, mother, father, brothers and sisters. You really can’t throw around the Nazi name calling because the USA now has a president pussy grabber.

My elementary school not more than a few hundred meters from my house was bombed into oblivion, my grandfather had parts of his body blown off. I grew up in a very Jewish neighborhood where it was not at all uncommon to learn certain family members of my friends were were killed at the hands of Nazis.

I can understand your apprehension towards Trump who has said many inflammatory statements. But the violence, doesn’t come from the (Na) nationalist, it comes from the (zi) socialist. That element are the ones rioting now, but not in support of trump.

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I guess that with the last comment everything is said… thanks for sharing that!

Trump talks to Tsai.
https://www.ft.com/content/fd19907e-b8d4-11e6-961e-a1acd97f622d

Big shift? To where?

respect to trump! so many headlines like this “Trump speaks to Taiwan’s leader in move likely to anger China”

if making china angry is a concern then we better start pooping our pants right now because the list of things that angers china, the most butthurt nation on earth is infinite!

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Yeah why does it always have to have China in the headline.

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China gets butthurt about literally everything, they don’t miss any occasion to remind everyone about the economical importance of their glorious (?) country.

I wonder if Trump really fucked up, as in he didn’t know about the situation between China/Taiwan/Us, or if he has plans to backup Taiwan big time to have a strong ally in this area.

I’m guessing he knew what he was doing, just throwing the cat among the pigeons every now and then.

Brian,

In a word, “No”.

The issue here is that Trump has been talking to industrialists for years about outsourcing manufacturing overseas. His ideas are well known among multiple disciplines, from Nabisco to IBM. You can write a book about this economic philosophy which was scrapped in the 1970s (after being atrophied in the 60s), and it is a little troubling to see so much specious and superficial “analysis” that passes for informed expertise in the media.

But to cut it short, and to stay on the topic of Taiwan:

It’s good news for the Taiwanese and the DPP.

Take the semiconductor industry for example.

Trump’s main agenda is to target the “fabless” manufacturing model (and yes, he’s familiar with the industry, having famously argued with and debated the topic with executives from GE to Intel). This is one of the reasons why so many US companies have assigned subdivisions of engineers and accountants to expand floorspace for everything from tooling to heavy industry and energy infrastructure.

(It is simply not true that Trump’s election comes as a “surprise”. “Shock” maybe to those who were trying to gaslight and suppress his voters through misinformation.)

There are fabrication and manufacturing plants and certifications being approved all over the United States now, from Ohio to Arizona.

That’s real money moving.

Outwardly, that’s not a good sign for Taiwan, the home of major semiconductor foundries for fabless modeled companies in the US. But here, Trump is targeting “China”, not Taiwan. Trump doesn’t hold to the one-China policy (it’s less a “policy” than an exercise of political correctness on a global scale), so any regulatory or trade restrictions imposed on “China” will not effect Taiwan directly. However, it would mean a reversal of offshoring jobs from Taiwan to China (the US is not the only country with worker competition from the PRC).

Most of the breathless media goes something like “trade-war, protectionism, no-plan”. The latest phony narrative is that he has no power to change trade relationships.

In fact, Trump can do this via simple interpretation of enforcement and allow the “pall” cast over such ventures to enter the risk/reward equation. Like immigration, “the environment”, securities law, etc, there are already a mountain of laws and regulations on the books (or that Trump can write) which require no approval from Congress, and which the courts would spend years attempting to overturn (by which time the intended effect/damage has been done). No less than Obama demonstrated how to do this.

So Trump’s economic policy is key for many industries, which is one thing companies like Intel and Apple are keen to look for.

The belief, right now, is that Taiwan will be largely unchanged in its trade relationships with the US - which is far more than can be said of other countries including Japan and China.

I will look into trumps previous debates in the area.

To be honest America should have done this years ago but the multinationals and stock market were making FAT profits from the cost arbitrage.

Let’s see if Chinamerica industrial pact is going to break down now. Direct industrial competition will also reduce the grease on the wheels of political cooperation.

In the medical industry they are pushing all vendors hard by stalling med device registration for years to manufacture in China. 2+ years if foreign made, 2-3 months if local
Made or OEM branded locally.

It’s part of a bigger precision machinery and high tech industry push. This is all being done fairly openly and the world has sat back and let China gut the WHO through these means (as well as let them buy up loads of IP and companies in UK, Germany and the US).

So yeah it will be interesting to see what happens maybe a few more fabs opening in US but I see Korea and Taiwan still doing very well due to their inherent expertise and experience over the decades.

This thread is yuuuuuge.

I’m thinking Trump’s Taiwan policy deserves its own thread. A whole lot of people are hyperventilating over that phone call.

its been quite a pathetic show from the worlds media.

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I for one welcome our new diplomatically cavalier overlords.

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I think it’s now clear how Trump plans to save the economy and bring jobs back to the US. He simply pisses off China, making the Chinese people hostile towards American manufacturing and businesses, forcing all of them out. At the same time he will continue to offer incentives for manufacturing in the US, and the republicans will boost military spending like they’ve always done, this time using the Chinese hostility as the excuse, then the economy is gonna get better for a while, at least until the war.

Seems overly pessimistic to me. China is now big enough that they can roll along under their own steam, and they have their own local squabbles to keep the great unwashed happy - for example, there’s a bunch of tropical islands just to the South-East, with no functioning government or military, which would make a nice addition to the greater Han empire (Taiwan dropped off the radar slightly until the infamous Phone Call). The US still has a lot of PR mileage in the War On Terror, and Trump (apparently) intends to make good use of that. Russia - the drunk guy at the table with a huge chip on his shoulder and a few teeth missing - is a bit of a wild card, but they don’t seem inclined to start any (more) trouble just yet. Everyone can play their own silly games without throwing sand in each other’s faces.

It’s just a pity there are no responsible adults around to keep order, so I suppose fights could break out over nothing in particular. But it’s not very likely.

He did it in a clumsy way. But lets be honest, everything he said is correct. China should never have been allowed in the WTO and they take advantage out of foreign companies and foreign trade on a daily basis. We cannot open companies in China without the risk of getting jostled out by local competitors with support of the government. They keep their currency artificially low and show no respect for intellectual property. Cheap China has been a disaster for the average person。

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Sick of people wibbling on about diplomatic protocol. That protocol is Kissinger Realpolitik that rarely is working in the best interest of the average man.

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As the Lightworker prepares to ride off into the sunset on the unicorn he rode in on, let’s be careful not to make the same mistake again.

Trump is not a god. He’s just a man who outsmarted a whole lot of very stupid people.

Business as usual?

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-12-22/goldman-is-back-on-top-in-the-trump-administration

Now that we’re in 2017, it’d be interesting to revisit this topic again, and compare notes/comments with recent development.

Meet the donaldtrumpi, a Mexican-American! :smiley: