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cryptonector 3 days ago

Without commenting on any of the details or economics, the smart thing to have done would have been to make the $350bn thing be over 10 years and be slow to ramp up, then wait Trump out. I'm surprise he didn't do that.

kumarvvr 3 days ago | parent | next [-]

trump and his cronies would never accept that.

I think this is what Japan did initially. Announce a huge number, 500 bn I think, and then slowly trickle out the news that it will be over 10 or so years.

But that didn't sit well with trump. There was news immediately that Japan must invest the whole amount immediately to escape tariffs.

dathinab 3 days ago | parent [-]

I'm not sure a single country will to the "invest immediately" thing, like at all.

In the same way politician outside of the US trust anymore what Trump says when it comes to economics, a lot of countries seem to have started to response the same way. I.e. speak with Trump like he did with them, do hollow promises, and then backtrack and/or circumvent them.

prmoustache 3 days ago | parent [-]

Also, appart from authocratic ones, no country can or should decide where private companies will invest.

cryptonector 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

The West has long been doing "industrial policy". At least since the end of WWII, and to some degree since before as well, but especially during the Cold War and even since then. You can say that the UK, France, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, etc. were all autocratic all that time if you like, but most wouldn't. Maybe today more people would feel that having an industrial policy makes a country autocratic, but keep in mind that industrial policy is not usually practiced by putting a gun to a business' executives' heads -- no, industrial policy is often practiced via incentives and disincentives, with force being very tenuously indirect.

dathinab 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

> autocratic all that time if you like, but most wouldn't

yeah because that is not how autocracy is defined

prmoustache 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Having a policy and making incentives != promising a sum of investment to another country.

dathinab 3 days ago | parent | prev [-]

and EU isn't even a country, and all(?/most) EU countries have the budged strictly sitting with the senate, i.e. outside of the hand of any of the leaders discussing deals with Trump

the chance that anything like that will pass those Senats also isn't exactly high

and all of this is public knowledge, so either Trump is incredible badly consulted to a point you wonder if it's malicious or more likely he doesn't care, and only care about a meaningless legally void promise he can present now probably some way smaller immediate subset of the promised actions. And then a few years down it's the "evil other countries" which he knowingly pressured to give him hollow promises they legally can't give, instead of it's seemingly bad/incompetent deal making (if you assume the goal is to actually make working deals and not to rail up people to have excuses for increasingly more extreme actions).

summerlight 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

One condition that Washington has been broadly mandating is, when they ask for the money then it should be deposited in the treasury's account within a short period. Basically they control the pace of the investment and the detail is not even a part of the deal.

lovich 3 days ago | parent | prev [-]

> I'm surprise he didn't do that.

The leaders of countries have to deal with internal politics. Most People, with a capital P, do not like feeling abused and mugged, and will be angry at their leaders for acting so weak.

It seems that internal politics are winning out, at least in the moment, over the current US admins threats

foogazi 3 days ago | parent [-]

Look at it as being all internal politics - that’s where a leader’s power comes from