Drones have made much of our spending useless anyway. Our best tanks get taken out by cheap drones, there are now torpedoes that can be launched from over the horizon by drone boats, F35s are a boondoggle, and should be ended. The war in Ukraine has shown most of what we thought about weapons to be stuck in the technology of the past.
Our entire defence industry is riddled with corruption with the largess spread over as many congressional districts as possible. I'd love to hear of defence companies going under due to cost overruns. If they can't make stuff using the negotiated price, let them go bankrupt just like the rest of us do when we can't pay the hospital.
CHIPS was yet one more example of billions spent with no results. Where is that high speed connectivity? Charging stations? How many actual chips are being made here? Intel is the last company I'd throw money at. Tariffs are a much better way to get things made here, it generates money and doesn't play favorites. The Taiwanese chip factory being built had a huge delay due to not enough women construction workers. We can't even build a factory, let alone chips.
I don't care what the Houthis do. We have no interest in that shipping channel, let Europe deal with it, or the mid east.
This week a three judge court decided Trump's tariffs were against the law. I think we need more disruption not less. The message hasn't gotten through it seems.
I think it's too early to conclude that drones have made much of our military spending useless. It could be the case to some degree, as with the Polish cavalry vs. Germany's tanks, but I think it's more likely that unmanned vehicles will simply be another weapon in the arsenal, and that defenses to them will evolve.
Think of the various missiles. They have not made other weapons obsolete. We shall see. As for corruption in the military procurement chain, yes, there's much to be said for that, but it's also too simplistic.
Materials are hardly the problem with military production. Reform of the procurement process is the key and that is proceeding on a different track. To take a couple of examples you cite, the LCS and the Constellation class are notorious failures in that regard. And a major point of the tariffs is to reshore the extraction and processing of critical materials. For example, rare earths are actually quite common, including massive deposits in the US. We have simply refused to develop them. And finally our traditional Eurocentric alliance structure has not served us well and is being reoriented to the East starting in the Obama administration.
There are valid reasons to oppose any particular tariff regime but this is a stretch and what is visible is really a public negotiation where the final result will be different.
“It is a mistake to see tariffs as a one-size-fits-all tool to use when approaching allies, potential enemies, and everyone in between.”
Trump doesn’t see it that way, QED MAGA doesn’t see it that way, QED this fact unfortunately won’t be relevant until he’s not setting trade policy anymore. He clearly doesn’t care what is bad or good policy according to facts on this front, otherwise he wouldn’t be doing things like surplus targeting or changing tariff policy every week. We’ll have to wait until his party pushes back against his worst policies, which won’t happen, or until he loses the power to impose tariffs, whether by new legal constraints or by being voted out.
Congress has ceded too many powers to the executive, and has been doing that for almost 100 years. The president has very broad powers in many areas, and that's been "progressively" handed over for a very long time.
I don't like Trump's tariff formula, which implicitly assumes that trade imbalances are abusive. But, in the interest of nuance (something that liberals used to preach, but like so many other declared "principles," they have abandoned) there's no question in my mind that Europe, China, and Canada have taken advantage, and have been hollowing out our industrial base.
Correcting this won't happen fast, and on that score I also criticize Trump for implying that he can make a quick fix. The same goes for returning manufacturing to this country. There are many issues with that that are unconnected to tariffs.
We have to start somewhere. Trump's approach is flawed, but he's really the only president who's recognized the problem that's been swept under the rug for a long time. I see the Democrats as engaging in harassment and opposition for its own sake. That doesn't cut it.
What percentage of the cost is from raw materials? By the way, if push really comes to shove on "rare earths," there's an ace in the hole: Coal dust is full of rare earths, and can be processed to remove them to be used. Plenty of recent research on that one.
Drones have made much of our spending useless anyway. Our best tanks get taken out by cheap drones, there are now torpedoes that can be launched from over the horizon by drone boats, F35s are a boondoggle, and should be ended. The war in Ukraine has shown most of what we thought about weapons to be stuck in the technology of the past.
Our entire defence industry is riddled with corruption with the largess spread over as many congressional districts as possible. I'd love to hear of defence companies going under due to cost overruns. If they can't make stuff using the negotiated price, let them go bankrupt just like the rest of us do when we can't pay the hospital.
CHIPS was yet one more example of billions spent with no results. Where is that high speed connectivity? Charging stations? How many actual chips are being made here? Intel is the last company I'd throw money at. Tariffs are a much better way to get things made here, it generates money and doesn't play favorites. The Taiwanese chip factory being built had a huge delay due to not enough women construction workers. We can't even build a factory, let alone chips.
I don't care what the Houthis do. We have no interest in that shipping channel, let Europe deal with it, or the mid east.
This week a three judge court decided Trump's tariffs were against the law. I think we need more disruption not less. The message hasn't gotten through it seems.
I think it's too early to conclude that drones have made much of our military spending useless. It could be the case to some degree, as with the Polish cavalry vs. Germany's tanks, but I think it's more likely that unmanned vehicles will simply be another weapon in the arsenal, and that defenses to them will evolve.
Think of the various missiles. They have not made other weapons obsolete. We shall see. As for corruption in the military procurement chain, yes, there's much to be said for that, but it's also too simplistic.
Materials are hardly the problem with military production. Reform of the procurement process is the key and that is proceeding on a different track. To take a couple of examples you cite, the LCS and the Constellation class are notorious failures in that regard. And a major point of the tariffs is to reshore the extraction and processing of critical materials. For example, rare earths are actually quite common, including massive deposits in the US. We have simply refused to develop them. And finally our traditional Eurocentric alliance structure has not served us well and is being reoriented to the East starting in the Obama administration.
There are valid reasons to oppose any particular tariff regime but this is a stretch and what is visible is really a public negotiation where the final result will be different.
“It is a mistake to see tariffs as a one-size-fits-all tool to use when approaching allies, potential enemies, and everyone in between.”
Trump doesn’t see it that way, QED MAGA doesn’t see it that way, QED this fact unfortunately won’t be relevant until he’s not setting trade policy anymore. He clearly doesn’t care what is bad or good policy according to facts on this front, otherwise he wouldn’t be doing things like surplus targeting or changing tariff policy every week. We’ll have to wait until his party pushes back against his worst policies, which won’t happen, or until he loses the power to impose tariffs, whether by new legal constraints or by being voted out.
Congress has ceded too many powers to the executive, and has been doing that for almost 100 years. The president has very broad powers in many areas, and that's been "progressively" handed over for a very long time.
I don't like Trump's tariff formula, which implicitly assumes that trade imbalances are abusive. But, in the interest of nuance (something that liberals used to preach, but like so many other declared "principles," they have abandoned) there's no question in my mind that Europe, China, and Canada have taken advantage, and have been hollowing out our industrial base.
Correcting this won't happen fast, and on that score I also criticize Trump for implying that he can make a quick fix. The same goes for returning manufacturing to this country. There are many issues with that that are unconnected to tariffs.
We have to start somewhere. Trump's approach is flawed, but he's really the only president who's recognized the problem that's been swept under the rug for a long time. I see the Democrats as engaging in harassment and opposition for its own sake. That doesn't cut it.
What percentage of the cost is from raw materials? By the way, if push really comes to shove on "rare earths," there's an ace in the hole: Coal dust is full of rare earths, and can be processed to remove them to be used. Plenty of recent research on that one.