You know what, I’ll give Trump the tiniest bit of credit. I agree with one of his policies. I think we should be phasing out imports of essential items from China. We have an increasingly adversarial relationship with China and a potential conflict brewing if they invade Taiwan - in which case the US would, theoretically at least, be a frontline combatant. It’s a good thing to look for alternative sources of key resources.
The rest of it is a fucking hellscape.
To be honest I’m finding it all very cheering at the moment. The pathetic nature of their attacks on Harris suggest that they really don’t have anything of substance to criticise her on. They’ve known for the best part of a month that this day would come, and, as VP, they must have dossiers full of attack lines and perceived weaknesses. So far the best they can come up with are some doctored videos and that she laughs sometimes.
See Donny’s running from a debate now.
Isn’t that what the CHIPS act is meant to be addressing?
Sorry Sweeting, but can you explain that graphic a bit for the elderly among us?
Is that export focused?
This was already conventional wisdom and was one of the core reasons for what was referred to as Obama’s second term Asian pivot. Trump was just more bullish in his approach, both rhetorically and in practice.
Well they have probably put millions into ads that claim an elderly presidential candidate that stumbles on his words is a bad thing. That’s going to somewhat blow up in their face now.
I expect that what we will see is a US version of the “Diane Abbott” memes. It’s probably best just to put America on mute until the end of the year.
Even there, that is at odds with his Taiwan policy. If China takes control of Taiwan, American technology will be hopelessly compromised. The West relies on Taiwan for most semiconductor and similar manufacturing.
It’s one of those huge sprawling things, but on shoring of semiconductor production is a big part of it.
If it doesn’t work, we can send Jon and Ponch after them.
Its from the article I was responding to, this is a list of policies backed/suggested by Trump and the support/no opinion/against among the polled group.
It’s a separate pillar of the same issue, but technically a different measure.
The Chips act is legislation that provides a broad series of incentives for largely US companies to bring manufacturing and Ops back to the US after previously responding to earlier incentives to send them over to Taiwan in the 80s and 90s. It is focused on building a domestic semi conductor manufacturing base back up to a scale that provides protections against supply chain disruptions we saw in covid and we would see with fuckery in Taiwan.
Lost in a lot of that manufacturing discussion is the reality that what piece of the global market the US still owns is the really high end innovative stuff. The stuff that is driving AI. Separate to the Chips act, Biden imposed export bans through executive action of those high end chips to China to curtail their progress in their own AI programs that are integral to modern advanced weapons programs.
Oh I have no doubt that his actual rationale for the limitation of imports from China is not really FP or current affairs related - probably just a more specific example of his “America First” policy (or even more likely he saw a way of making a buck from it).
Saw this comment online:
“No president of America has ever given birth - I don’t understand why it’s suddenly an issue”
He is a proper weirdo, but this is right out of conservative orthodoxy that cannot contemplate someone caring about something without being directly affected by it.
Only understand how wrong it is to deny gay people civil rights once someone in their family comes out. Require having a daughter to understand why sexual violence against women is wrong and worth condemning. This sort of “they cannot possibly care about the future because they dont have kids of their own” is part of the same broken brain way of thinking
My opinion of Maher has badly soured over the years, but this has always stuck with me:
