Trump’s follies and Putin's commercial pitch
In Davos in January 2018, Trump still did not announce measures to stop the skewed trade with China. Had he done that, he would at last be doing something right.
His biggest error to date was his trying to scuttle the Iran nuclear deal: pure incompetence and a strange jealousy. It signalled to the world “The US does not keep its word, you cannot trust us”. It was stupid too, because Obama had gotten all NATO partners to sign, so it simply is not possible to scuttle that deal unilaterally.
And now Trump makes a steel and aluminium trade war with Canada, Europe and China, which shows he really does not understand that only China is the problem. Beijing sent steel prices to the bottom, and the others trying to keep their industries running had to follow to the bottom. Only China should be eliminated from trade. If Trump did that, Europe and hopefully Canada would follow and there wouldn’t be an idiotic trade war amongst the good countries, there would just be a deservedly putting China right.
And Putin about his super rocket? That is just a sales pitch.
He says the NATO defence shield in Europe is aggressive. But how can a protection be aggressive? This is nonsensical rhetoric for commercial reasons, nothing else. His low flying, undetectable nuclear rocket probably is an effective weapon, sure, but, as in the cold war, who wants to use it? No one. What Putin really does here is showing off Russian technical prowess in order to stimulate his weapons export to third countries. That export generates important income for the deeply troubled Russian economy. Let’s laugh at him.
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