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gives me this vibe, just replace erdogan with trump and turkey with, you know, the US
Will soon begin? My brother in Christ, it’s begun at least 20 years ago.
Savvy countries will discover there’s a way to mitigate the harm incurred by Trump’s tariffs
They already have. It takes 1.5 to 2 years for trade deals to be negotiated and then put into effect. In the coming years when these deals take effect, and trade is routing itself around the US as much as possible rather than through it, people in the US are going to learn a very difficult economic lesson.
On the plus side, maybe the notion of American Exceptionalism will diminish a bit, which is long overdue.
As an American, I can’t wait for the lessons learned and the death to American Exceptionalism. I look forward to reaping everything we’ve sowed due to our shitty actions (or complete lack of action).
But also as an American I am bitter and don’t believe for a second that the 60-70% of people here that need to learn a lesson, will actually learn a lesson. I no longer believe things will change for the better within my lifetime. It sucks.
I no longer believe things will change for the better within my lifetime.
Funny. That was sort of the subject of a YT video I made today. Basically the whole of my working life has corresponded to the decline of economic liberty for the working class and working poor, so I don’t really celebrate New Years. I expect every year to be worse than the one before.
people in the US are going to learn a very difficult economic lesson.
And they will all blame whichever Dem happens to be in the white house because they all have the memories of goldfish.
Not if said Dem actually does something about it. (Unlikely)
Problem is that, if we elect a Democrat, it will be a fabulously wealthy person with no empathy or understanding of the working class and working poor, so the likelihood that they will do anything about it is minimal. Remember when Obama had the balls to walk into Flint, pretend to drink a glass of water, and tell all of those people whose water had been poisoned that everything was a-okay? That’s what I mean. Zero empathy.
More importantly, the last dem expanded on Trump pt I’s tarriffs.
Unless the next candidate acknowledges this, why would voters have any faith that candidate won’t be another Biden?
Honestly didn’t know that. Could you point me to a source where I can read more about it?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China–United_States_trade_war
2x Trump’s tarriff on solar panels, 3+x on evs, +25% on aluminum, batteries, and more
Thanks for sharing!
In my honest opinion, American exceptionalism should be dead and buried 6 feet under. And American patriotism and the American Dream should be revisited and revised and reformed
In my honest opinion, American exceptionalism should be dead and buried
Should be, but it’s such a deeply ingrained part of their national self image that it’ll take a few generations of consistent effort to make it fade away.
On the plus side, maybe the notion of American Exceptionalism will diminish a bit, which is long overdue.
And I have a pet conspiracy theory that this is intentional. American elites are secretly tired of exceptionalist sh*t and think it’s hurting them too. And thus have come up with a solution to return sobriety.
Trump using tariffs to balance trade of goods is out in the open. That should end exceptionalism. But they ignore services so it’s not entirely even.
Late to the party? A little slow? Where have you been, author?
This shit wouldn’t be happening if Kamala had won.
Kamala would have defended DMCA and Big Tech to the death. The only difference might have been a little less crypto grifting, but it’s nonsense to suggest there would have been a major difference on the issues this article is actually discussing.
The trends and forces would have been no different, but it was a choice between a collapse of empire versus a soft landing a la UK. They chose collapse.
America has been on the decline for 20 years at least. The turnip in charge has accelerated the decline via tariffs but we’d just be moving slower towards the drain with Kamala in charge. She wasn’t exactly campaigning on large changes to the economy.
Since 1981 the large decline began. Like 80% of bad policies and shitting on the working class in america can be traced back to the 80s… I wonder what happened then.
Kamala would just have been a party line corporate puppet like Obama 2.0. But undoubtedly 100x better than trump.
What, exactly, wouldn’t be happening if Harris had won?
That’s a bit of a disingenuous question, no?
What the hell do you think would not have happened?
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Doge?
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The unlawful deportations to random
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Ice?
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countries with torture prisons?
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War crimes in the Carribean?
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The multiple trade wars?
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The absolute dumping of all US allies off a cliff?
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Bombing Nigeria because reasons?
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The entire Epstein thing and the US president being a pedophile for the entire world to see?
And mind you, this is not a comprehensive list, I just gotta stop at some point or nobody will read it anymore.
Take a pick?
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For example, neither batshit tarrifs, nor insane dissolution of trust, if we’re talking purely about international economics.
Only that chances are that it’s the other way round. Trump was installed to sell the tariffs to the world.
neither batshit tarrifs,
That’s true. Harris, though, like Trump, wouldn’t be doing anything to regulate LLM’s or their financial fuckery, and that is going to be catastrophic when the game of financial musical chairs stops.
insane dissolution of trust
Also a good point. The American brand would be more or less intact, at least in the short-term, but I tend to think that all Harris would do is just maintain better PR, because her policies economically wouldn’t be different enough from Donald’s to keep the AI bubble from eventually popping. Democrats are just as in bed with billionaires as the Republicans, they just don’t seat them front-and-center at public events.
Not everybody is an AI single issue voter
The whole trade war thing i guess
This article is saying other countries should repeal their equivalents to the DMCA’s anti-curcumvention, just like Cory Doctorow says, and I agree too. The whole reason those counties passed DMCA-like laws was that we threatened to tariff them if they don’t. Well, now we’re tariffing them anyway. We’re no longer holding up our end of the bargain, and neither should anyone else.
Yes absolutely. Not even repeal the laws, just quietly stop enforcing them and look away while loudly whistling. Doing anything officially will only anger the bully. Just count on the bully’s short attention span and inattention to detail.
Praying for fall of USA🙏🙏
Over the past two decades, the office of the US Trade Representative–which is responsible for developing and coordinating US international trade, commodity, and direct investment policy—has pressured most of the world into adopting these laws, hamstringing foreign startups that might compete with Apple (by providing a jailbreaking kit that installs a third-party app store), or Google (by blocking tracking on Android devices), or Amazon (by converting Kindle and Audible files to formats that work on rival apps), or John Deere (by disabling the systems that block third-party repairs), or the Big Three automakers (by decoding the encrypted error messages mechanics need to service our cars). The rents that these digital locks help American companies extract run to hundreds of billions of dollars every single year.
The world’s governments agreed to protect this racket in exchange for tariff-free access to American markets. Now that the US has reneged on its side of the bargain, these laws serve no useful purpose.In 2026, many countries will respond to tariffs like they were still in the 19th century. But a few countries will have the vision, the boldness, and the political smarts to kick Donald Trump right in the dongle. The country that gets there first will enjoy the same relationship to, say, third-party app stores for games consoles, that Finland enjoyed in relation to mobile phones during the Nokia decade.
Hear, hear!
It would be good (and for the US as well), but it’s possible the ship has sailed.
See, such racket schemes, if we use the tone of the article which I mostly agree with, are benefit not only to such US companies. They have already become popular and they will continue to be used.
So no. Unless suddenly a few liberal-democratic revolutions happen and everyone suddenly feels peaceful and reasonable.
Isn’t it fun living through the decline phase of our civilization?
End of USA will be net positive for human civilization and its not even close
No. It won’t be. But things change. Some buildings crumble. Some are reinforced and kept standing. Where there were streets, new buildings are erected. Where there were rivers and bulwarks, streets are made with pipes underneath.
So this particular building will have to change to avoid crumbling. Well, as it always happens.
Yes, it will
Rather arrogant to believe the US falling means the decline of our entire civilisation.
Lol; that’s what the EU common people said about too big to fail, too.
I never expected USA to self destruct like they are now. It’s absolutely insane!
Electing Bush Jr. twice was crazy, but electing Trump twice is insane.
Following the trend of elections for the past few decades, USA is on a path to become a totalitarian country.
The Democrats may win the next presidential election if there is one, but if the trend continues, when the pendulum swings again, that will be the end of democracy for USA.It was inevitable and kind of expected.
The US wasn’t built on that solid of a foundation. In fact the founding fathers have said explicitly that said foundation - the Constitution itself - should be a living document updated regularly by the people, for the people, to reflect the changes in the world and in the people themselves. It was literally written at one of the most prominent times of change, so of course those who saw said change and were responsible for enacting it, weren’t idiots who thought things would never change!
The first cracks appeared in the US a hundred years later with the industrial revolution kicking into high gear and transforming the so far mostly rural, self-sufficient communities into manufacturing giants. That’s when factory and mining towns began to boom, and when the US truly began to claim its world power status - without adjusting the laws of course since it benefited the handful few who managed to get their fingers deep into those oh so lucrative pies.
And it’s not like there haven’t been warning signs of the impending capitalist doomsday. Capitalism was literally built on the back of the industrial revolution (which allowed the means of production to transfer into and concentrate in private hands), and immediately people saw the issue with it - no wonder Marx saw the need to work out a competing socioeconomic system that, if you think about it, was truly in the spirit of the American independence and the US Constitution (aka by the people, for the people).
All that capitalist rush? That allowed a handful of people to become obscenely rich, without the curtails of previous obscenely rich (aka kings, royalty, nobles), allowing them to grab power without any of the responsibility. Kings paid with their heads for their wrong decisions, but in the US, that was deemed excessive, so instead y’all elected people who then got paid off by said obscenely rich to go against the people electing them… and the worst that happens was that the elected official got rich, then got replaced by another who got bought out the same way.
And all that money/power concentrated in such a small number of hands would ALWAYS lead to them wanting more and more until they sucked the host dry like a parasite. There’s no symbiosis with capitalists because wealth (resources and man-hours) are finite, unlike their greed. And since the US made it harder and harder to amend the constitution, to make that document truly living and serve the people… The fall thus became inevitable.
Studying the revolutionary war reveals a bunch of rich propagandists using lies and violence to manipulate the people into forming a country for the wealthy by the wealthy.
The first President of the US was well on his way to becoming the first billionaire adjusted for inflation. All the things they said were pretty much lies as no one was ever equal in our classist society and our first major moves were to genocide an entire race of people.
The cracks and rot were present in our founding slaveholding abusive fucking illegitimate “fathers” who sold the people a lie just like our current reps do.
It was not unexpected. Most big powers in history end like that. The rich always want more and eventually start taking it from everybody else, even if it’s detrimental to the future of the nation.
Oh I absolutely expected USA to be surpassed by China at some point. And for USA to gradually lose international dominance.
But the shit USA is making for itself is turbocharging that process by at least a factor 10.
Some might say it doesn’t really make much difference because the end result remains the same. But the problem is that this doesn’t give the world the same amount of time to adjust. Disruption is generally bad, and disruption of world power is no exception.
Of course the worst disruption is to USA, and that will have a serious negative impact on American business, and if the US dollar loses the position as the world reserve currency, the significance of the American debt will be way more serious.We always heard that this would be China’s century, and for the most part I assumed “maayybe. We’ll see. It’d take a while for the US to decline.”
Little did I know the US would very quickly shoot both its feet off on its own.
I thought that if China were to become the dominant country it’d be through years and years of steady growth while the US was doing the same. They’d just end up overtaking in the long run — not that the US would actively sabotage itself via bigotry and stupidity and greed.
Complete self own. And everyone in charge is a giant coward. We could start righting the ship today, but all the elected gop (and some dem) officials are greedy cowards.
It feels like the elite are doing one last big haul before they’re out of there, looking for new regions to exploit.
Unless the EU gets rapidly closer to China I doubt it. We’ll probably see the general Euro Zone vs. China for the century.
biggest thing for the rest of the world is our sovereign debt crisis. greece nearly drug down the EU when theirs popped off, and their entire economy was/is just exporting crude and ripping off the occasional tourist.
USD is the cornerstone to the entire western financial system, not to mention the countries position as one of worlds largest importers and facilitater of international trade as a whole…
greece nearly drug down the EU when theirs popped off,
Erh no! Don’t trust the sensationalist stories about the Euro collapsing for this or that reason. Those stories are always without merit, my guess is they serve a purpose for speculation or are just sensationalist stories.
USD is the cornerstone to the entire western financial system
What are you smoking? It doesn’t make a hoot of difference to the rest of the world to trade in another currency. But more likely than not, it won’t be a single currency replacing USD, it will be a basket of currencies where USD will probably be a part.
In Europe the Euro totally dominates the financial market and has done for years. I think you mean the currency for trade, and for that the Euro obviously dominates in Europe.there’s so much wealth/debt obligations tied up in USD, your the one smoking something if you think a US sovereign debt crisis finally popping off doesn’t drag a large chunk of west down with it.
This is what happens when 2 generations of lead poisoning brain rot compose the majority of the voting population while the younger generations adopt universal apathy and nihilism
next we get Alex Jones/Tucker Carleson ticket, which wins because establishment Dems try to push Hillary on america again
USA is on a path to become a shit-hole country - FTFY.
Always has been. Just with a lot of facade and flag waving. Facade is getting trashed and you’re starting to see what flags really stand for.
USA already has widespread poverty, the longest work hours, lacks free healthcare and education, has the lowest life expectancy among economically comparable countries, has a dysfunctional democracy and AFAIK the greatest inequality among rich democracies.
So USA is already a shit-hole country, and among shit hole countries, totalitarian countries are the absolute worst.
If you think people have it bad now, especially below middle class, you just wait and see what it will be like if USA becomes a totalitarian country!That was a decade ago. With trump and Biden at the helm, we hit that point already. Between trump showing that there is no bottom to the depths that conservatives will sink to and *Biden showing that there’s no consequences for openly breaking the law, we are a fucking joke at best.
* Yes, I know congress stopped a lot that. But Biden could have pushed harder against the Republicans or even just not rolled over and go back to business as usual with the weakest of weak sauce attempts at accountability. I mean, Merrick fucking Garland?!?! The failed compromise pick from a decade prior as the head of the investigation?
I hate that the Democrats are the best national response we have to this shit. Local community organization helps, but goddamn if this situation isn’t disheartening.
Civilization? Nah just the collapse of one empire. The rest of the world goes on.
The collapse of the United States would have devastating effects on every other country. everywhere you go in the world, you notice people paying very close attention to what’s happening in America
The US won’t go quietly into the night. A desperate US is a scary prospect with a military several orders larger and better equipped than the rest of the world combined.
Until the US eliminates it’s military budget the rest of the world would be wise to watch their backs.
A devastating deficiency of being bombed and couped lol, be serious
I’m so happy to be in the EU. Good luck over there! BTW we had like 100 collapses and 1000 wars before we got to where we are…
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How can you say this with a straight face? All fascist parties have record numbers, workers rights are being targeted across the board, digital privacy is a thing of the past. We’re like barely half a step behind. The oligarchy doesn’t care about states or continents. The EU is on the menu just as much as the US
Yes, and us unionists are fighting back. What, do you think we’re all just sitting on our arses with our heads up rectums?
If a fascist takes over the Danish government I’m going to riot, and I know which friends to call on to make it happen too.
You can PM me too if it comes to that.
I’m in France so I’m already used to it and ready to restart.
Don’t get complacent. The EU countries are toying with the idea of collapsing with us. AfD doesn’t seem to be shrinking, and there will be a lot of money and propaganda dumped that way soon.
I hope you’re better at resisting it than we were, but seeing as how we’re all still on vulnerable social media…
Once the oligarchs have picked the bones over here, the EU is next. They’re like a virus that must keep consuming.
True, idiocy is universal. You can see the roaches crawling out of the rocks already.
Yeah, nothing is written in stone for sure, and I hope our american friends will figure it out, and that we’ll motor through all this bullshit.
You know most Americans are descendants of that historical lesson too right?
Well, most don’t seem to remember it at all. It’s why you are in this situation.
I’m an EU citizen.
Correction : they.
Yeah I know, seems they missed what we learned the last century (or so I hope, that we learned something).
“Civilization” is a big word for a collection of selfish pillagers who barely tolerate each other. It’s certainly “fun” for the rest of the world, lol.
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Who’s going to dominate trade? Cos people are hoping it won’t be an authoritarian state like China.
China is already the biggest trade partner of most of the world.
It’ll be China.
Won’t be China for long anyways, I think India will dominate soon ish, and keep your eyes out for Mexico
Why does any one country need to dominate trade?
A much better outcome would be that more countries have a larger number of trading partners rather than one behemoth monopolizing all trade.
If by people you mean feds and idiots then sure, personally I’m looking forward to more high speed rail
Trump didn’t cause it but he sure as hell accelerated its decline.
That happened the second capitalists got a chance to move their factories to other countries.
Thanks. 👍 💖
The US needs savvy voters. Or, selfish voters who realise they are the farmed turkeys voting for Christmas.
You can’t blame voters. Nope- it’s all the Democrats fault. /s
Bbbut some will be pardoned at Thanksgiving!
No one needs a pardon, they just vote for their self interests
Paywall.
just disable javascript.
Full article:
In 2026, the leaders of America’s (former) trading partners are going to have to grapple with the political consequences of tit-for-tat tariffs. A tariff is a tax paid by consumers, and if there’s one thing the past four years have taught us, it’s that the public will not forgive a politician who presides over a period of rising prices, no matter what the cause.
Luckily for the political fortunes of the world’s leaders, there is a better way to respond to tariffs. Tit-for-tat tariffs are a 19th-century tactic, and we live in a 21st-century world—a world where the most profitable lines of business of the most profitable US companies are all vulnerable to a simple legal change that will make things cheaper for billions of people, all over the world, including in the US, at the expense of the companies whose CEOs posed with Trump on the inaugural dais. READ MORE
This story is from the WIRED World in 2026, our annual trends briefing.
In 2026, countries that want to win the trade war have a unique historical possibility: They could repeal their “anticircumvention” laws, which make it illegal—a felony, in many cases—to modify devices and services without permission from their manufacturers. Over the past two decades, the office of the US Trade Representative–which is responsible for developing and coordinating US international trade, commodity, and direct investment policy—has pressured most of the world into adopting these laws, hamstringing foreign startups that might compete with Apple (by providing a jailbreaking kit that installs a third-party app store), or Google (by blocking tracking on Android devices), or Amazon (by converting Kindle and Audible files to formats that work on rival apps), or John Deere (by disabling the systems that block third-party repairs), or the Big Three automakers (by decoding the encrypted error messages mechanics need to service our cars). The rents that these digital locks help American companies extract run to hundreds of billions of dollars every single year. The world’s governments agreed to protect this racket in exchange for tariff-free access to American markets. Now that the US has reneged on its side of the bargain, these laws serve no useful purpose.
US tech giants (and giant US companies that use tech) have used digital locks to amass a vast hoard of ill-gotten wealth. In 2026, the first country bold enough to raid that hoard gets to transform hundreds of billions in US rents into hundreds of millions in domestic profits that launch its domestic tech sector into a stable orbit—and the remaining hundreds of billions will be reaped by all of us, everyone in the world (including Americans who buy gray-market jailbreaking tools from abroad), as a consumer surplus.
In 2026, many countries will respond to tariffs like they were still in the 19th century. But a few countries will have the vision, the boldness, and the political smarts to kick Donald Trump right in the dongle. The country that gets there first will enjoy the same relationship to, say, third-party app stores for games consoles, that Finland enjoyed in relation to mobile phones during the Nokia decade.
There are many countries with the technical nous to pull this off. Obviously, Canada and Mexico have pride of place, since Trump has torn up the USMCA agreement he arm-twisted them into in 2020, and heaped racist rhetoric on Mexico even as he threatened to annex Canada. Speaking of annexation targets with sizable communities of technical experts, the Danes could lead the EU out of the wilderness the bloc bargained its way into when they enacted Article 6 of the Copyright Directive in 2001. Then there’s the global south: African tech powerhouses like Nigeria, South American giants like Brazil, and the small, developed Central American states who’ve seen Trump renege on the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA), like Costa Rica.
Retaliatory tariffs make consumer goods in your own country more expensive, and to the extent that they punish Americans, they do so indiscriminately, inflicting far more pain on soybean farmers than they do on the CEOs of the tech companies that back Trump.
Repealing anticircumvention law is a targeted strike on America’s most profitable companies, and it will have an especially severe impact on Tesla, whose hyperinflated price-to-earnings ratio reflects investors’ pleasure at the Tesla business model, which involves charging drivers every month for subscription features and software upgrades that expire when a car changes hands. Musk owes his power to the digital locks that keep this business model intact. If it were legal for mechanics all over the world to jailbreak Teslas and unlock all those features for one price, Tesla’s share price would collapse—taking with it the overvalued shares Musk uses to collateralize the loans he took out to buy Twitter and the US presidency.
In 2026, world leaders have a choice—to make things cheaper and better for all of us, or to fight Donald Trump with weapons that were developed in the Age of Sail.
Wired.com: You’ve read your last free article. Me: You’ve run your last Javascript.
