Ian Welsh

The horizon is not so far as we can see, but as far as we can imagine

Understanding America’s Betrayal Of Ukraine

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On March 6, 2025

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Let’s start with this: Ukraine is losing the war, and the longer it goes on the worse the peace deal will be. I absolutely agree with Trump that there needs to be a peace deal, and soon.

But the rhetoric coming out of the Trump administration and its proxies suggests that America owes Ukraine nothing, and that indeed, Ukraine owes America for all its support. This sounds reasonable, on the face, but only if you don’t know any history.

Let’s start with the 2014 Maidan protests which overthrew the government. They were a color revolution, heavily supported by the Americans and Europeans. Say what you will about Yanukovych, he was the elected President. There’s decent evidence that the sniper massacre was done by Maidan itself (see this academic study), and post coup, Ukraine was essentially run by Victoria Nuland.

The Maidan coup came in response to Yanukovych’s decision to accept Russia’s aid package instead of the West’s. This was the correct decision: Russia offered more money and aid with less strings, while Western aid came with IMF restructuring. If you know anything about the IMF you know that their restructuring is always painful and doesn’t improve host nations economies, but does increase inequality, and opens up the economy so foreigners can buy in.

Back in 2008 there was a brief Georgian/Russian war. Georgia had regions which were ethnically Russia and were de-facto independent and recognized by Russia. When Georgia invaded South Ossetia, Russia counter-invaded. At the time, at FireDogLake, I wrote an article predicting the next Russian war would be over Crimea and Sevastopol. Sevastopol is Russia’s main Black Sea port, and a Russian “hero city”, much beloved. Ukraine leased it to Russia, and if Ukraine ever moved to kick the Russians out I predicted the Russians would go to war rather than comply.

Put simply, Sevastopol was and is a key Russia interest.

So after the coup, Ukraine threatened to end the Russian lease. Russia invaded Crimea and took it over. (Don’t cry too much, most Crimeans, except the Tatars, would much rather be Russian.) Meanwhile, the East of Ukraine went into revolt, because they are mostly actually Russia and supported the ousted President. A small war was fought over that. The Russians intervened, routed the Ukrainians, and a peace deal, the Minsk accord, was set up, which basically gave Donetsk and Luhansk semi-autonomy.

So notice that without the coup, which was US backed, there’s no 2014 war between Ukraine and Russia, no loss of Crimea or semi-independence for the far East of Ukraine.

The coup was anti-democratic, overthrowing a legitimately elected government which was accepting the best deal offered. (And folks, I’ve studied IMF deals. They are always bad. Always.)

Of course, having lost a war and territory, Ukraine now becomes very anti-Russia, at least in the Western part. Understandable. There’s a HUGE military buildup. And, although Minsk was sold as the end of the matter, it was negotiated in bad faith by the West. This has been confirmed:

The West didn’t want peace, it wanted a chance to build up the Ukrainian military for the next round.

That next round came after Ukraine spent a lot of time shelling the hell out of Luhansk and Donetsk: a violation of the Minsk agreement, and with Ukraine and NATO talking about Ukraine joining NATO, which Russia had clear was a red line.

Now here’s the thing: absent the US backed Maidan coup, there is no Ukrainian war. It does not happen. Absent the huge build up of the military, again US and EU backed, there is no war, because Ukraine wouldn’t have risked it.

The US used Ukraine in a proxy war, after an anti-democratic coup. The West genuinely believed that sanctions would break Russia and allow Ukraine to win the war, and hoped that the loss would cause a break-up of Russia. Unfortunately for them, China needed Russia as an ally, and kept the Russian economy running and it is Europe that was damaged by the sanctions, while Russia’s economy is, overall, booming.

Back near the start of the war, a peace offer was on the table, far more generous than anything Ukraine can expect now. Boris Johnson, Britain’s PM, with US support, told Zelensky not to take it: NATO would back him to the hilt and he could win the war.

Fast forward: Ukraine is losing the war. On a map Russian gains over the last year aren’t all that large, but the Ukrainian army is running out of manpower and is being pushed past its line of prepared defenses. When the Ukrainian army breaks, and it will, the Russians will start making huge advances very quickly.

Now Trump comes in and acts as if America had nothing to do with all this and that Ukraine has taken advantage of American generosity instead of Ukraine being an American proxy which has been devastated after an American coup pushed it into war with a much stronger country and America and the UK told Ukraine not to take a better peace deal.

Trump’s attempting to get Ukrainian minerals in “repayment” for America pushing Ukraine into a war it couldn’t win, and is not even offering security guarantees in exchange. I loathe Zelensky, but he’s right to reject this one-sided “deal.”

This is despicable. This is honorless. The very least Ukraine deserves from America is a sincere effort to cut, for Ukraine, the best peace deal they can get.

Now Zelensky is delusional. Threats to fight on and a refusal to negotiate are insane. Russia’s BATNA (best alternative to a negotiated agreement) is to just continue the war, win it, and impose an unconditional surrender. Think Japan and Germany at the end of World War II.

But American negotiation seems to be about making the best deal for America, not for Ukraine.

My suggestion would be that Zelensky ask the Chinese to host negotiations. Yes, they’re an ally of Russia, BUT they’ve always supported a peace and, more importantly, they’re the only nation which really does have leverage over Russia: without China, Russia cannot survive economically. And, unlike America, China has said it is willing to put peacekeepers in Ukraine. Russia is NOT going to target Chinese troops.

Further, if China promises to rebuild Ukraine, it will do so, and do so quickly and competently. The Chinese are the best in the world at building roads, railways, ports, power plants and all other types of infrastructure.

Ukraine’s government was effectively controlled by the West and pushed into a war it couldn’t win. They need to end their Western alliance and cut the best deal they can get. That means, especially, not letting Trump negotiate, because he’s not negotiating for them, but for America.

It’s a bad hand, an awful one. But it’s the hand Ukraine has to play.

As for American claims that Ukraine used them, rather the other way around, they are without merit and beyond dishonorable.

Let’s give Kissinger the final word:

“It may be dangerous to be America’s enemy, but to be America’s friend is fatal.”

 

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Understanding Trump’s Tariffs Effects On World Trade & How He’s Ending The American Era

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On March 4, 2025

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To understand how tariffs are going to hit various economies, you need to understand how neoliberal era trade and production was set up. In the old world supply chains were much less integrated. In general, if you made it in your country, your supply chain was in your country. There were always some exceptions, especially for resources like nickel and copper and uranium and so on, but it was the rule. Trade deals and laws in the old era usually required foreign companies which were going to produce in a host country to source a minimum amount of parts from said host country. Almost always this was over 50%. If the infrastructure didn’t exist, the company, usually with government help, would set it up.

Understand clearly that the neoliberal era came out of the inflation crises of the 70s. It had two goals: to reduce consumer inflation and thus growth in petrochemical use, and to make the rich much richer.

In the post-war era, most production in most Western countries was meant for the internal market. If you needed it, you made it, with some exceptions: the smaller you were, the more you needed to import some goods, and of course, if you’re Norway or Canada you import bananas and coffee, and you imported any resources you couldn’t produce enough of yourself, like wood, oil, gas and minerals. The high imports of oil were the old world’s achilles heel, and the inability to import substitute away from them killed it.

So, most things ordinary people bought have an oil input cost, and the more money ordinary people had, the more they’d do things which had an oil cost. There was almost nothing the Arabs needed to buy from the West at the time: they had small populations and didn’t have consumer economies. We could sell them military goods, but other than that their needs were modest. They had us over an oil barrel.

I remember the post-war world well, it died in stages. In the 70s and 80s my family lived in Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore and Bangladesh at various times. In all these countries, even Singapore, everything was cheaper than in Canada or America. Ex-pats who had incomes denominated in first world currencies lived very well. When in Canada we were lower middle class. Overseas we had servants.

Yet despite having cheap goods and services, all those countries except Singapore were third world. Poor.

The post-war developed country play was to keep both prices and wages high, and to make sure wages went up faster than prices, while controlling asset prices: which included home prices and rent. Wages were high because prices were high, and because most production was done in country, or in another high wage country and because there were tariffs on goods from low cost domiciles (and they didn’t have much industry anyway) it didn’t matter. Even as late as 1980 or so America made 97% of everything it needed, and the Japanese export surge which changed that still came from a first world, high wage/high cost nation.

In this world there was certainly trade, but countries still strove to make and grow as much of what they needed as they could at home.

Then came the inflation crises, when due to the oil shocks, wages grew slower than prices. A lot slower. I remember the price of a chocolate bar going from 25c to a dollar in the period of two years (I was a kid, that’s the sort of price that was important to me. Paperback prices also went from about 99c to $2.50 and then up to $3.50.)

So, if you’re going to tackle this, you need to reduce the use of oil, which means reduce ordinary people’s use of oil, which means restraining their income growth. This is why,during the 80s and 90s every time wages grew faster than inflation the Fed would slam on the brakes and cause a recession.

But the other play, which also helps keep domestic wages down, is to manufacture and grow and produce in really low wage domiciles. You can slowly crush European, American and Canadian wages, but people in China and Bangladesh and Mexico and India and so on are already earning one-tenth of what you have to pay first world workers. They were a lot less efficient workers, too, but even so if you offshored production, you could reduce the price of goods.

So offshoring became a way to reduce inflation. It also juiced profits, since much of the price decreases weren’t passed on to first world consumers, but hey, win/win if your a first world capitalist or financier. Since production was being increasingly farmed out to developing nations, first world economies financialized and the financial elites took control from the old manufacturing elites (who were, for all their flaws, actually capitalists. Financiers are the lowest form of capitalist life.)

This, of course, lead to first world countries de-industrializing, and eventually to the rise of China and the lost of the West’s tech lead, along with the evisceration of the middle class, a huge homelessness crisis and in Europe, sclerosis.

Now here’s the irony: China has very low costs, so low that I’d argue that the idea that they’re still middle income is false. Their ostensible salaries look low to us, but cars in China can be had for 10K. Earbud equivalents can be had for less than $10. Smart phones are cheaper. Almost everything is cheaper. It’s a weird inverse of the old first world situation: wages are lower, but costs are lower vs. wages are higher and so are costs.

Either equilibrium, of course, works for prosperity. What the first world now has is high-ish wages and higher costs. I saw a factoid the other day that rent has increased 350% more than median wages in the US since 1985, for example.

Now let’s take a bit more of a look at the structure of trade in the neoliberal era: it was based around trade agreements like NAFTA and the WTO which made it essentially illegal to run old style economies where most production for internal markets was domestic. You couldn’t tariff, you couldn’t subsidize and you couldn’t enforce ownership rules, domestic content rules or even rules requiring primary processing of raw resources before export (for example, Canada didn’t used to ship raw logs, and canned salmon before selling it overseas.) If you did, the independent trade courts would hit you with huge multi-billion dollar fines. You also had to enforce American IP laws, and thus pay a portion of most profits to America.

What this lead to is countries becoming cogs in production networks: they had part of the supply chain for a product without having most of the supply chain. Their economies were dependent on trade because even if they assembled the final product, most of the supply chain was outside their country.

Let’s take an example from Canada’s current dilemma with regard to American tariffs. Canada’s government made some big bets on EVs, and especially batteries. It seemed to make sense: we produce the minerals which go into batteries, so why not manufacture them here and ship them to the US?

This was a BIG bet in Canadian terms. Ontario and the Feds put up about 16 billion of subsidies and perks and land to get VW to build a battery plant in St. Thomas. This plant, if it goes into full production will produce a million batteries a year. Stellantis’s battery plant in Windsor had 15 billion dollars in subsidies. Honda is retooling to make EVs in Canada and to produce batteries and other parts for EVs, with a 2.5 billion tax cut deal and 2.5 billion in direct and indirect subsidies.

Now here’s the issue, which you may have spotted: these are way more batteries than Canada could possibly need for domestic EVs. Way, way more. With tariffs and uncertainty (after all Trump, could increase them again) none of these projects are viable. Perhaps we could re-tool one of them and really push Canadians to switch en-mass to EVs. If the Feds are smart, that’s probably what they’ll do. (Spoiler, the Feds are not always smart.)

But no matter what, Canada’s taking a huge hit.

In the old world, where you produced primarily for yourself, and if it was more expensive than foreign alternatives said “eat tariffs” and maybe subsidized, a foreign government couldn’t just decide one day to destroy your industry. Trade was usually in products the other nation didn’t make or grow itself, or genuinely couldn’t make or grow enough of.

The neoliberal trade structure was designed to make national autonomy, in anything (food, energy, manufactured goods) extremely difficult to obtain. It was a giant hostage situation.

It broke down because of stupidity and greed. The full story is long, but the essence is simple: the Americans gave China the full stack: the entire supply line for a lot of goods is domestic for China with smaller chunks in close by allies like Vietnam.  They were low cost, they had real competitive markets which keeps prices low and because the manufacturing floor was in China they eventually took the tech lead: it required about 20 years.

So China’s now the only nation in the world that has an old style “post-war” economy: it produces now primarily for the domestic market, but it also gets the neoliberal era advantage of selling huge amounts of goods overseas. Win/Win. For them.

What Trump’s team (not so much Trump as certain advisors) is trying to do is to re-shore a full manufacturing stack to America. They noticed that everyone industrializes behind some form of price supports, and that usually those are tariffs (China used currency controls) so they’re instituting tariffs. Given the market for a lot of goods is in the US, they figure, correctly, that a lot of manufacturing will be forced to move back to America.

All those batteries Canada is making.

This screws every single American ally who allowed their economies to be restructured by American lead trade deals in the 80s and 90s. Every single one.

And that’s why Canada and Mexico are in for a world of hurt, and the EU too. It’s also why China is not in for a world of hurt: they’ve got the full stack and a massive domestic market, plus since their goods are cheap, they’ve got almost the entire global South plus most of the SE Asian economies as customers.

And here’s the problem for America: all its got is the US market, because it’s fucking every major trade partner it has. The allies (ex allies?) have to go back to an old style economy too, or form a much smaller and stupider neoliberal bloc, and if they can’t sell to America, they aren’t going to buy from America either. So America can get some full stack back, but only what it’s economy can afford.

And the American economy is much smaller than it looks. Much, much smaller. GDP numbers are massively over-inflated by asset price bubbles, much of the income from foreign assets is going to dry up, almost certainly eventually including IP. If you can’t sell to the Americans why enforce their IP laws and pay them? Foreign ownership rules will start popping back up and US assets overseas will be sold to locals, often at cents on the dollar. Of course, the same will happen to foreign assets in the US, but the “world” the US inhabits economically will shrink.

And then, if you can’t sell to the US, why the fuck are you using the US dollar for trade? Trump has made huge threats of tariffs against anyone who moves off the dollar for trade, but if you already effectively can’t sell to the US, again, who gives a fuck? Tariff away, asshole.

And when dollar hegemony goes away, the US economy will deflate to its actual size, at least a third and probably half as large as the official numbers. Think someone pricking a water balloon. It’s going to be amazing to watch.

And that, children, is the end of the America era and Empire. It is very close now, and Trump is making it happen much faster. All praise Trump.

(There’s a lot more to unpack about the effects of Trump’s trade wars but this article is already over 2,000 words. For example, will Trump successfully reindustrialize America and make America, if not great again, at least a decent place to live? More on that soonish.)

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Quick Takes: Tariffs, the Zelensky BlowUp & More

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On March 3, 2025

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Sometimes I want to comment on topics without doing a full piece.

According to Trump tariffs on Canada and Mexico, at 25% except on energy, which will be 10%, start tomorrow. Along with the 20% tariff on China, the cost to the US is likely to about 1% of GDP. Canada could lose as much as six percent.

Expect retaliation from both countries. Some of it will be sub-Federal, the Ontario Prime Minister has said he’ll raise prices for electricity sent to New York state, for example. Sorry folks, I know most of you didn’t vote for Trump, but…

As I’ve written before I think tariffs are good for Canada. We’ll take a substantial hit, but moving to manufacturing in Canada, buying Canadian and diversifying our export partners are all things we should have done years ago. Hopefully we’ll cancel NAFTA/USMCA: there’s no point in having treaties with the US, since they never obey them.

Israel’s stopped aid to Gaza again. Israel never met its obligations, lied that Hamas has refused to continue the truce and is preparing for war again. Not entirely a surprise but still a disappointment. Meanwhile they’ve occupied a big chunk of Syria. At least Hamas hasn’t embarrassed themselves the way Hezbollah has: they still have some hostages, and they’ve called Israel on their violations, even if the Western press lies about the facts repeatedly.

Trump, Vance and Zelensky’s Press conference blew up. Commenters are apportioning blame in various ways, I don’t much care. The bottom line is that American caused the war because everything came from the Maidan coup which was run by America. Absent that, the sequence of events never happens. Victoria Nuland ran Ukraine as a personal fiefdom for almost a decade. The US and UK convinced Ukraine to keep fighting when they had a generous peace offer on the table, and the result is probably a million and a half dead and Ukraine effectively shattered. To then turn around and act as if Ukraine owes America, rather than the other way around is to act in complete defiance of the actual history and without the least shred of honor.

For what it’s worth, not that Zelensky will do it, but the best course in my mind would be to ask China to mediate because China is the only country in the world which has actual, significant leverage over Russia and Xi has repeatedly said he’d be willing to send peacekeepers. And if China makes any deals with Ukraine, they’ll at least get actual rebuilding, roads, ports, hospitals and so on out of it.

In the larger picture, the US is in irreversible decline. Cut out the noise and the smaller events. The US can’t afford NATO any more. Just like the collapse of the Warsaw Pact was a sign of Russia’s decline, so is the ending of NATO. US carrier groups no longer have a full set of supporting ships: America can’t make them run any more. America’s flagship aircraft builder can’t make reliable planes any more. Trump is starting a crypto reserve. Social benefits are being slashed, yet again, in massive ways. America is behind in 80% of techs and at the same time launching a concerted attack on research universities. It couldn’t build enough weapons and ammunition to fully support Ukraine and in a real war against China or Russia would run out of munitions in about two weeks, then get the shit kicked out of it. It’s also destroying the WTO and other agreements created by it: it’s dismantling its Empire because, simply, it can’t afford it any more.

America’s done. It’s still dangerous, but the decline is terminal. Everyone else needs to negotiate this decline and seek new alliances and trade partners, and take advantage of the end of enforced neoliberalism and “free” trade to re-industrialize and make their countries better able to grow the food they need and manufacture the goods they need.

Why are there no beggars in China? There used to be, now visitors report there aren’t. I can’t speak to the accuracy of the below, but if correct it seems the government decided to send them to their native towns and gave the towns enough money to give them jobs and homes.

In more “Trump officials are malevolent children” news:

Ordinary Americans visiting Canada are advised to pretend not to be American or to constantly say “I didn’t vote for him.” Pull this sort of stunt in the wrong place, on the other hand, and you’ll be lucky not to wind up in the hospital. The idea that most Canadians aren’t proud of Canada is an American/Trumpian delusion.

Finally, I remind you that amidst all the noise there are only two big issues: the end of the American era and rise of China is one, and environmental issues (which is about more than just climate) is the other.

Au revoir from Canada.

 

 

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Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – March 02, 2025

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On March 2, 2025

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By Tony Wikrent

 

Musk’s Purges Suddenly Take a Horrific Turn—and Wreck an Ugly MAGA Lie — We can now be depressingly confident that their mass cuts are killing people.

Greg Sargent, March 1, 2025 [The New Republic]

It has a dry, bureaucratic name, but Ready to Use Therapeutic Food has functioned for over a decade as a lifeline for countless starving children around the globe. Manufactured in the United States and distributed by the U.S. Agency for International Development, it’s a paste made of peanuts, milk, and vitamins that alleviates a form of acute malnutrition known as “severe wasting.”

Now the Trump administration has officially terminated a number of current contracts struck by USAID for this lifesaving nutrition, contracts that had called for the paste to be delivered to hundreds of thousands of children, most in Africa, according to the Georgia-based nonprofit set to deliver them, Mana Nutrition….

The full extent of the damage from these cuts—originally set in motion by Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency—is not yet known. But Atul Gawande, a surgeon who formerly led USAID’s global health initiatives, has established, via communications with partners that work with USAID, a list of contracts that were terminated. Among them are programs that offer natal care for mothers and children, that provide netting and other equipment to prevent the spread of malaria, that work to thwart the spread of Ebola and bird flu in dozens of countries, and much more. The cancellations will nix programs that helped tens of millions of people, Gawande notes.

“This is going to be a massive loss of life overall,” Gawande told me in an interview. “Children are likely already dying, and will clearly be dying in large numbers.”

Meanwhile, The New York Times has developed a long list of other terminated contracts, which include programs preventing the spread of polio, treating HIV and tuberculosis, ensuring clean drinking water in war-torn regions, and buttressing public health in many other ways. Tens of milions of people benefited; now they will not.

 

Hegseth Clears the Way for More War Crimes 

[Daniel Larison, via Naked Capitalism 02-25-2025]

The Secretary of Defense admitted that the reason for removing the JAGs was so that they wouldn’t be “roadblocks to anything that happens.” If top military lawyers don’t serve as roadblocks more often than not, they aren’t doing their jobs properly.

Trump eases rules on military raids and airstrikes, expanding range of who can be targeted 

[CBS, via Naked Capitalism 03-01-2025]

 

White House point man at Homeland Security shared ‘martial law option’ post to keep Trump in office 

[CNN, via Naked

Capitalism Water Cooler 02-26-2025]

“The Trump administration’s new point man for dealings with the Department of Homeland Security is a former far-right podcast host and election denier who once shared an article calling for ‘martial law’ to keep Donald Trump in office following his loss in the 2020 election. Paul Ingrassia and the Twitter account for a podcast he co-hosted posted the remark and similar sentiments on social media in December 2020 and January 2021, according to a CNN KFile review of deleted and still-active posts by Ingrassia himself and the account of the podcast. The 29-year-old Ivy League-educated lawyer now serves as the second Trump administration’s White House liaison to the DHS, a key role that has historically involved managing the administration’s relationship with the department and overseeing the placement of political appointees.”

 

STATE OF NEW YORK, et al., v. DONALD J. TRUMP (PDF)

[United States District Court, Southern District of New York, via Naked Capitalism 02-23-2025]

 

Judge extends block on DOGE’s access to federal payment systems 

[Politico, via Naked Capitalism 02-23-2025] The opinion.

Trump and Elon’s ‘Pointless Bloodbath’ at the FAA Is Even Worse Than You Think 

[Rolling Stone, via Naked Capitalism 02-23-2025]

While air traffic controllers were supposedly immune from the purge, some air traffic control support workers were terminated, the FAA worker says. Rolling Stone separately spoke with a fired FAA employee whose job involved ensuring flight paths account for hazards like cranes and new buildings, as well as another terminated FAA staffer who ensured that pilots are medically able and cleared to fly. No one wants their plane to cross paths with a crane, of course, but the latter role is important, too, given the nation’s ongoing pilot shortage.

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The American Delusion

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On February 28, 2025

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So, Nick Kristoff is crying about USAid, and I agree, mostly:

I’m hearing from experts around the world about what the destruction of USAID is meaning: “a global health massacre,” in the words of a doctor who has devoted her life to humanitarian work on the front lines. Millions of malnourished children left to starve. Pregnant women not getting micronutrients to prevent neural tube defects. Programs against schistosomiasis abandoned. HIV positive patients left without ARV’s. Water no longer purified. Surveillance against Ebola and bird flu set back. TB patients unable to get medicine. I’ve long argued that USAID should be reformed, but this Trump/Musk demolition is cruel and incompetent and benefits China, while killing children just as wonderful as our own.

It’s worth reading the replies to this. The usual one is “we have lots of homeless and sick people, we should take care of them first.” Trump’s budget cuts 400 billion to Medicaid, to pay for tax cuts for rich people who have more than enough. MAGAts are delusional cultists.

USAid is skeezy in many ways: lots of nasty intelligence shit hidden there, but it also does a lot of good, and the price tag is trivial. If you want to house and feed and give healthcare to Americans, cut the defense budget, raise taxes on billionaires, and get on with it. It’ll even be good for the economy.

Americans aren’t homeless and sick because of foreign aid, they’re homeless and sick because for 45 years all the money has gone to rich people and they’ve jacked up the price of homes and healthcare, and gotten rid of millions of good jobs. That’s all.

This has been a bipartisan project. Democrats hands are not clean. I remember Clinton’s massive welfare cuts and Obama helping banks literally steal people’s homes with fraudulent documents as two of thousands of possible examples. But anyone who thinks Trump wants to fix this rather than accelerate it is so delusional they should be in an asylum.

I have no patience left, none, for either Democrats or Republicans. All of you are monsters who have hurt the weak, destroyed the middle class and made millions of Americans homeless while denying them healthcare. You’re all monsters.

America has always had enough wealth to feed and care for all Americans and even help a lot of foreigners, but the entire project since Reagan has been to make the rich richer, and fuck everyone else. Anyone who says otherwise is lying or delusional & a piece of human garbage.

America is a shithole because that’s what both Democrats and Republicans wanted, and it’s what they worked hard for.

Every time an off-ramp was offered, and there was almost always someone running in Democratic Presidential primaries who was against this, they were crushed. Usually the number of primary votes they received was so small as to be a joke. Democratic primary voters wanted what has happened. So did Republicans.

Welcome to the America you voted for, again and again.

 

 

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Understanding the Core Goal Of Western Governments & Western Decline

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On February 27, 2025

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I was talking with a friend the other day and he said the problem with democracies is that policy can swing 180 degrees with each election.

And in some ways that’s true: Trump’s switch on Ukraine is a good example.

But it’s not true when it comes to the core goals of western government since 1979 or so.

The ur-rule of neoliberalism is that the rich must always get richer.

Trump’s budget cuts 600 million from Medicaid and other health care in order to give tax cuts to the rich.

Trudeau’s big change from previous Prime Ministers was to massively increase immigration. The effect was to depress wages and increase rent and real-estate prices.

When European countries talk about increasing military spending there is the inevitable comment that this will require slashing social spending. Somehow the idea of taxing the rich and corporations more is never raised, even though that would easily cover the cost.

DOGE’s civil service cuts will lead to massive outsourcing of whatever the government really has to do, which will cost more than doing it in house and profit the rich.

Starmer’s extate taxes on family farmers will force them to sell their farms to agri-business or developers (and, overall, make the UK even less able to feed itself.)

Trump’s proposal to cut the military budget massively in concert with China and Russia would open up more room for tax cuts. The savings won’t be used to help poor and middle class Americans, you can be sure of that. (It also isn’t going to happen that way, because China can easily afford its military budget. More on that in a later article probably.)

This isn’t to say there are never exceptions, but they are exceptions.

This is quite different, by the way, from China.

China used to be willing to mint billionaires, but they figured out it was harming the majority of the population, so they are dealing with it. This is one of the reasons why China has won, and the US has lost. (Another part is that China doesn’t talk about free markets, but actually has them, while the West talks about them but makes sure they never happen.)

Neoliberalism is in the process of ending, but until the ur-rule of always making the rich richer by screwing everyone else ends, the most important part of the oligarchical state will continue. What’s really happening under Trump is the tech-oligarchs taking lead trace away from the banking oligarchs. It’s an internal shuffle of power, while the looting continues.

Since a board prosperous population combined with massive industry is what actually makes post-industrial revolution societies powerful, American and Western decline will continue as long as the determination to fuck over ordinary people remains.

 

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Trump’s Budget Will Cause A Recession

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On February 26, 2025

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The new budget is going to hurt the economy massively. There are 4.5 trillion in tax cuts to high earners and corporations and 880 billion in cuts from “Energy and Commerce”.

Energy and commerce probably sounds innocuous, but that committee overseas healthcare and it has only 200 billion in spending that isn’t health care, which means cuts to Medicaid, CHIP and ACA.

DOGE has put in some massive cuts to research, but the cuts hit research hospitals hard and are going to result in a lot of loss of hospital jobs because of loss of overhead.

Tariffs will also hit the economy hard, especially tariffs on energy, where there’s little ability to domestic producers to eat cost increases.

Tax cuts to high earners and corporations don’t increase the strength of the real economy: the money will go to buyouts, stock buybacks, executive salaries and luxury goods, not to investment in production and new jobs. Cuts to the civil service also have an obvious negative effect on the economy, though some will lead to higher profits due to no longer needing to comply with regulations and laws. (IRS cuts to auditors are the worst of these.)

If you want to re-industrialize you have to force companies to invest in new production, which means ending things like stock buy backs, executive options, and various other ways for corporations and rich people to juice their income without doing something productive.

In other words this is a very good budget if you’re rich, and a very bad budget if you aren’t. It’s going to hit red states harder than blue states, since they are overall more dependent on federal budget spending.

This budget will make America weaker, damage administrative capacity and hurt everyone but maybe to the top 5% or so.

Welcome to Trump’s America.

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Tiresome Reminder Of China’s Tech and Industry Lead

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On February 25, 2025

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China has the lead in about 80% of tech fields:

China has a “stunning lead” in 37 out of 44 critical and emerging technologies as Western democracies lose a global competition for research output, a security think tank said on Thursday after tracking defence, space, energy and biotechnology.
The Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) said its study showed that, in some fields, all of the world’s top 10 research institutions are based in China.

There is every reason to believe this will be nearly 100% in a decade or so. China is now catching up in pharma, for example:

Among the drugs in clinical research worldwide, approximately 35% are original or co-developed by Chinese companies, ranking second globally.

 

Then there’s the universities:

It’s all over but the screaming. The US is, under DOGE, cutting science funding. Oh, administrative overhead needed to be reduced, no question, but you don’t do that by suddenly slashing it 75% or so, that leaves no time to adjust.

Tech and science, as I have tiresomely pointed out over and over again, always moves to the country with the manufacturing floor lead. There is a delay, but it is now past.

Meanwhile, as of 2024 China controls 35% of industrial output, up from 31% in 2022.

China is moving towards the sort of economic and technological dominance the US enjoyed after World War II. It’s that significant.

And notice that the tech and science lead is accelerating.

Everything in geopolitics, economics and trade needs to take this into account. Nothing is more important except ecological issues.

People talk about a multipolar world, but what is actually happening is a new cold war, with the American side weaker and more backward. The USSR lost not because of some mythical inferior system, but because it started behind and stayed behind, with less population and fewer resources. It competed in some techs for a while, but was never able to establish a sustained lead in any significant number.

People wonder why I suggest most countries should be cutting a deal with and at least slightly aligning towards China. It’s because they’ve already won, and being on the stronger, more prosperous side is superior to being on the weaker, less prosperous side. Further, the sooner countries cut a deal, the better that deal will be.

The US is flailing about with the remains of its power, but the closest analogy to its position is Britain in 1918. The Empire still exists, but everyone with sense can see that its days are numbered. The analogy isn’t perfect, there was no Great War, and America is a continental power, but the same power overhang without the ability to sustain exists.

This informs everything: the US withdrawal from Europe, which is underway. The French being kicked out of Africa, because China can supply everything they need. America’s attempts to cannibalize its vassals for as much tech and industry as they can get, and so on.

America’s currently pressuring Taiwan and TSMC to give them their 2nm fab tech. 85% of Taiwanese oppose this, but the US is piling the pressure on.

Thing is, in time, it won’t matter. China’s catching up anyway.

America’s burning down its old Empire to try and stay in the game. But its vassals are fools if they cooperate. There is nothing the US can offer at this point which is worth the long term cost of submitting to US looting. This is true of Ukraine as well, by the way, and it appears they’re going to sign a minerals deal with Europe instead of the US, which is not ideal, but at least they won’t be screwed both ways to Sunday.

Disentangling from a flailing declining Empire is dangerous and difficult. But it has to be done. By everyone with any sense. Give America its splendid isolation as it falls into decline, or join it.

 

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