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Trump’s Opening Cry To Russia Falls Flat
In May 2017 the Russian president Vladimir Putin had an interview with Le Figaro. He explained his experience with policy preferences forwarded by U.S. presidents:
I have already spoken to three US Presidents. They come and go, but politics stay the same at all times. Do you know why? Because of the powerful bureaucracy. When a person is elected, they may have some ideas. Then people with briefcases arrive, well dressed, wearing dark suits, just like mine, except for the red tie, since they wear black or dark blue ones. These people start explaining how things are done. And instantly, everything changes. This is what happens with every administration.
It took only two days for that to happen with the second presidency of Donald Trump. Instead of seeking better relations with Russia to end the war in Ukraine, as he had promised during the campaign, Trump initiated a public 'dialog' with Russia that seems to make both of these aims impossible.
He posted on Truth-Social:
Donald J. Trump @realDonaldTrump – Jan 22, 2025, 15:46 UTC
I’m not looking to hurt Russia. I love the Russian people, and always had a very good relationship with President Putin – and this despite the Radical Left’s Russia, Russia, Russia HOAX. We must never forget that Russia helped us win the Second World War, losing almost 60,000,000 lives in the process. All of that being said, I’m going to do Russia, whose Economy is failing, and President Putin, a very big FAVOR. Settle now, and STOP this ridiculous War! IT’S ONLY GOING TO GET WORSE. If we don’t make a “deal,” and soon, I have no other choice but to put high levels of Taxes, Tariffs, and Sanctions on anything being sold by Russia to the United States, and various other participating countries. Let’s get this war, which never would have started if I were President, over with! We can do it the easy way, or the hard way – and the easy way is always better. It’s time to “MAKE A DEAL.” NO MORE LIVES SHOULD BE LOST!!!
One wonders what the people in dark suits were thinking when they fed such bullshit to Donald Trump.
Russia did not 'help' to win the Second World War. It did win it. It was the U.S. and others who were merely helpful in doing so.
As Kremlin spokesmen Dimitry Peskov rightly replied:
"The main burden in the fight against fascism and the biggest price for the victory in the fight against fascism was paid by our country, the Soviet Union." "The US did indeed help. It made a significant contribution. But there’s one caveat: America always makes money, for America it's always about business," Peskov emphasized.
The Soviet Union did not lose 60 million lives in that war but less than half of it – about 11 million soldiers and 15 million civilians.
Russia's economy is not falling.
Even Reuters, which has anonymous sources speculate about Putin's 'concerns' with the economy, has to admit:
Russia's economy, driven by exports of oil, gas and minerals, grew robustly over the past two years despite multiple rounds of Western sanctions imposed after its invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
Russia currently has a somewhat higher than usual inflation. But a shortage of labor has let to wage growth beyond the inflation rate and to a spread of general prosperity:
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, when asked about the Reuters reporting, acknowledged "problematic factors" in the economy, but said it was developing at a high rate and was able to meet "all military requirements incrementally" as well as all welfare and social needs.
"There are problems, but unfortunately, problems are now the companions of almost all countries of the world," he said. "The situation is assessed as stable, and there is a margin of safety."
…
After contracting in 2022, Russia's GDP grew faster than the European Union and the United States in 2023 and 2024. This year, however, the central bank and the International Monetary Fund forecast sub-1.5% growth, although the government projects a slightly rosier outlook.
Trump threat to put "high levels of Taxes, Tariffs, and Sanctions on anything being sold by Russia to the United States" demonstrates his plain ignorance. The only valuable product Russia is still selling to the U.S. is the enriched Uranium needed to run U.S. nuclear power plants. Trump can tax, tariff and sanction that as much as he likes.
He could also try to sanction other Russian energy exports. But those are double-edged measures:
Trump’s proposed tariffs and sanctions could also backfire on the United States and its allies:
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Energy Prices: A reduction in Russian energy exports could spike global oil and gas prices, hurting Western consumers.
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Geopolitical Realignments: Aggressive sanctions might accelerate the creation of parallel financial and trade systems outside of Western control, weakening U.S. influence.
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Economic Blowback: American industries reliant on certain raw materials from Russia, such as metals for manufacturing, could face higher costs and supply disruptions.
No one in Russia, for certain not Putin, will take such Trump's attempt to open negotiations seriously.
If Trump wants to achieve a peace agreement over Ukraine he will need to reject the neo-conservative dark suits' opinions and find people who know what they are talking about.
Senseless barking at Moscow, as Trump has done so far, will be responded to with a rather bored yawn:
The Kremlin is not impressed by United States President Donald Trump’s threat to impose new sanctions against Russia if it does not agree to strike a peace deal with Ukraine.
"We do not see any particular new elements here," Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told Russian media Thursday. Peskov added that Trump “liked sanctions” and used them often during his first presidential term.
“Russia is ready for an equal and careful dialogue with the United States, which we had during Trump's first term," Peskov said, according to Russian independent media outlet Meduza. "We are waiting for signals that have not yet been received."
So they used to tell the story about a guy who claimed he could make cars out of wood, and he started a company in Oregon that brought trees into one door of his giant building with new cars coming out of another door, and he wouldn’t let anyone inside to see how it was done.
He was given a award for innovation and widely acclaimed, until one day someone got inside and saw he was shipping the trees out the back to Japan and bringing in new Korean cars to sell.
Point is, for the macro economy it didn’t make any immediate difference what was going on behind those closed doors, and that for purposes of understanding one can think of a nation’s foreign trade as similar to a company that takes in all that it can export and delivers back whatever is imported.
This model also promotes the understanding of how, in real terms, exports are the costs of imports, and optimizing real terms of trade is about getting the most cars for the fewest trees, which is likewise what productivity is all about for the domestic economy.
What about the jobs lost due to increased productivity? Well, history shows it used to take 99% of the workforce to grow the food we need to eat to live, and today in the US it takes maybe 1% of the workforce to grow enough food to eat with a lot left over to export. Yet unemployment isn’t necessarily any higher today than it was back then. Why? Because there’s always a lot more we think needs to get done than there are people allowed to do it, and unemployment comes from a lack of funding, and not a lack of things to do.
Today the service sector dominates, and more so every day, with no lack of services we’d like to have done as far as the eye can see. And unemployment, as currently defined, is necessarily the evidence that for a given level of govt. expenditure the economy is that much over taxed, as a simple point of logic. Not that policy makers understand that, of course…
Now let’s add a border tax to the model, for the purpose of creating jobs, not withstanding how that premise is categorically ridiculous. Anyway, a border tax would put a tax on importing the cars to attempt to keep US consumers from buying them so the US would have more jobs building cars domestically, and reduce the tax on exporting the trees so they would have more jobs cutting down and shipping out trees.
Let’s assume that that’s what happened and then look at the consequences.
First, they would be shipping out more trees and getting fewer cars.
This makes the nation as a whole worse off due to those reduced real terms of trade. The next step is to identify the winners and losers, recognizing the losses to our standard of living are higher than the gains. Best case: they put more people to work growing more trees so they have just as many trees for themselves, and they would put more people to work building cars so they would have just is many cars as before.
So what they accomplished is that they are working more to be left with the same amount for themselves.
That’s called a drop in productivity, and a decline in their standard of living, since work is an input and a real cost of production. Work itself is not an economic benefit. The economic benefits of work is the output produced. And the whole point of producing output is consumption of some type, either for immediate use or for future use. That is, it makes no economic sense to work and produce output for the purpose of immediately throwing it away.
So with the above ‘best case’ assumptions, the border tax does work to create jobs, and unemployment is a political problem, which is why the border tax has that element of political appeal. Not that it matters, but my first choice for job creation would be a fiscal adjustment, either a tax cut or spending increase, large enough to promote sufficient spending to increase sales, output, and employment, in order to produce that additional output. That way we have that much more domestic output to consume plus all the imported cars we were buying before the border tax, and they don’t have to give away the extra trees due to the border tax proposal.
And how does it look from the government’s point of view?
First, the government expects extra revenue from the tax on the imported cars, net of the revenue lost from tax benefits for exporters. This means less spending power for consumers paying the tax, presumably offset by new tax cuts, making it all revenue neutral, which – through some presumed channels – is theorised to have its own positive consequences.
So in this ‘best case’ scenario Americans work more and get less imports that improve their standard of living, while consumer taxes go up while other taxes go down. Once thought through, that whole topic hardly seems worth a second look?
But that is only the economic best case scenario. All kinds of other bad things can happen.
Posted by: Sun Of Alabama | Jan 24 2025 3:35 utc | 245
‘These are the self evident facts of life right infront of our eyes.’ is what that autocorrect mangled sentence in previous post was supposed to say.
So for now on this thread – btw some great observations by some I’ll name just a few
@ Posted by: Tom_Q_Collins | Jan 24 2025 5:43 utc | 267
@ Posted by: psychohistorian | Jan 24 2025 5:59 utc | 271
@ Posted by: Professor | Jan 24 2025 8:34 utc | 285
On various subjects and apologies for missing out others.
Lend/Lease to USSR in WW2 – a retort to all who muddy the water with fake history – I’ll just repost in totality the following from an Irishman in Russia. (Or at least I think that but could be wrong about his origin)
‘ Chay Bowes
@BowesChay
12h
President @realDonaldTrump suggested, “Russia helped us defeat the Nazis.” Well, it’s completely the other way around.
Here’s the irrefutable reality.
The USSR decimated 80% of Nazi Germanys military might, with only 10% of its military hardware coming from the United States through the Lend-Lease Act, all of which was fully repaid to the United States.
Make no mistake, the Lend-Lease program was indeed a lifeline, but its exact contributions are often glossed over in broader historical narratives. Here’s the details
Aircraft: The U.S. supplied 14,795 aircraft, including models like the P-39 Airacobra and the A-20 Havoc, which were pivotal in Soviet air operations. Tanks: A total of 7,056 tanks were delivered, with models like the M3 Lee and the Sherman becoming part of Soviet armored units. Vehicles: Over 409,526 motor vehicles, predominantly trucks like the Studebaker US6, which were crucial for logistics, allowing the Soviets to move men and materiel across the vast Eastern Front.
Food and Supplies: The aid included over 4 million tons of foodstuffs, which played a significant role in supporting both the military and civilian population, alongside raw materials like steel and aluminum.
While very impprtant, this assistance, while vital, was only a maximum of 10% of the Soviet military’s total equipment, highlighting the Soviet Union’s overwhelming industrial and human contributions to the war effort.
Another lesser known aspect of the “USA won” narrative is that all Lend-Lease aid was repaid by the Soviet Union. Post-war, despite the massive human and infrastructural devastation, the USSR began paying back the aid in gold, platinum, and other resources. By 1972, they had fully repaid the U.S., a testament to their commitment to honour the terms of the Lend-Lease agreement. Every single cent was repaid.
The Soviet Union’s role (60% of whom were Russian troops) in the destruction of the Wehrmacht is staggering. Historical analysis suggests that around 80% of Germany’s military losses were incurred on the Eastern Front. This figure accounts for the sheer volume of German troops killed, captured, or forced to surrender, alongside the destruction of their military equipment. From the brutal street fighting in Stalingrad to the tank battles at Kursk, the Soviet counter-offensives not only pushed back the Germans but systematically dismantled their military capacity, paving the way for the eventual fall of Berlin.
From my position here in Russia, where history is a lesson and a living memory, the story of WWII on the Eastern Front is one of monumental human and industrial effort, of course the Lend-Lease program, was significant, but it was a smaller part of a much larger Soviet sacrifice. The fact that all aid was repaid adds another layer to this story, one of determination and real honour amidst the unimaginable damage war did here. The Soviet Union’s contribution to the defeat of the Wehrmacht was not just about numbers; it was about the unyielding spirit of a people and a nation.
Nothing has changed here in Russia, These are the same people, the grandchildren and great grandchildren of those that smashed the Nazis, they sacrificed most, and many today see their fight in Ukraine as a similar, existential battle for the survival of Russia and are fully aware what War is, no other people on Earth have expierienced War as the Russians have.
Don’t forget it.
Jan 23, 2025 · 11:42 AM UTC ‘
Posted by: DunGroanin | Jan 24 2025 10:21 utc | 300
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