T]It seems to me that to think about tariffs in a conventional, economics sort of way is to miss the mark
Consider, instead, if you were the dictator of a vast country with a third rate (and declining) economy, but you had the winningest hand in the history of mankind that you continued to hold close to your vest, you would be interested in destabbiliazing the most powerful country to help yourself.
Assume, for a moment, that you had your hands on a person's throat since the 1980s. Assume you engineered that person's rise to power. Assume that person, no matter how powerful he became after you set him up, feared more that anything what you had on him. Assume that pathologically vain person would do absolutely anything to avoid what you knew of him becoming public.
If you had that power over this powerful but incredibly damaged person, you could win it all by simply sowing chaos. You would destabilize his powerful country by wrecking his economy and the economies of all the world's major players.
All you would have to do is tell this person to do certain self-destructive things. Take his country to the brink of destruction and then push him over the cliff. All you had to do was suggest it could be made known the world.
Was ut a video of him being urinated on by prostrates?
Was it him having intercourse with his own teenage daughter?
Was it a homosexual relationship?
Perhaps a simple hidden video of him masturbating and doing one or a few perverse things in the session?
With the man's vanity, any of those (and so much more)could cause him to heel.
And the worlds richest strongman could prevail.
The little man stands for and believes in exactly NOTHING . . . . . except himself.
So easy to control.
Yeah, I know . . . . . .
= new reply since forum marked as read
