Derek Thompson
The thinking is that we slap tariffs on Canadian imports until … their comics stop making fun of us? their hockey fans stop booing our national anthem? I appreciate that the president tends to see geopolitics thru a highly personal lens but “Americans pay more for lumber until Ottawa says nice things about me” is certainly a novel approach to trade.
John Ʌ Konrad V
A very senior official in the new Trump admin who’s a history savant told me this week something that had me nodding in emphatic agreement: ’What NATO doesn’t understand is that Americans don’t really care what you do. •Underspend for years. •Refuse to let our ships dock. •Protest our aid to Israel. •Laugh at our ‘bad habits.’ •Demand we give more to Ukraine. •Boo our national anthem. •Call us racists. Call our President a tyrant. Say we’re fat and lazy. Americans just roll their eyes. Sometimes we shrug for decades. We don’t care what they do or say. That is—until we do. Then we collectively snap, get pissed off overnight and all hell breaks loose. NATO, Canada, and the rest are rapidly approaching that point. When it happens, there won’t be much Trump—or anyone else—can do to calm us down. That’s just how America works. That’s the American psyche. And NATO is pushing us dangerously close to the tipping point.