BDKJMU wrote: ↑Wed Sep 17, 2025 1:29 pm
GannonFan wrote: ↑Wed Sep 17, 2025 12:29 pm
Well, he does have the 50% tariff on India right now, half of which is supposed to be punishment for buying Russian oil. China, of course, is a far harder nut to crack. The irony is that so much of foreign manufacture destined for the US has been moved over the past 15 years or so from China to other countries, with India being a big one in that regard. Considering that so many people, especially in the US and especially in political opposition, have been strident critics of tariffs, it's hard to see if those tariffs will be sustainable and, even more so, if they'll work. Many countries will weigh the cost of short term tariffs (Trump is only President until, at the most, January of 2029) versus cheap oil from Russia.
As for the Ukraine, if it's another
5 years, or another 10 years, or another 25 years until Russia either succeeds or grows weary of trying to take over Ukraine, is that sustainable for the West to fund that over those time frames? We still have the issue of using multi-million dollar weapons supplied by us and others to shoot down bargain basement military equipment from Russia. If they fight this war on a shoe-string budget, how are we being realistic that they'll be the first who blinks when it comes to the cost of the conflict? We don't really seem to have a real solution to this at this time.
No. We have already pissed away what, 300? billion. At some point you have to say ‘No Mas‘.
We need some type of a reset or some change in policy here. Like I said, Russia is now fighting this thing on the cheap, sending up droves of cheaply made autonomous weapons and largely hunkering down in eastern Ukraine. All the while their economy is doing just fine with more than enough markets available to them for their oil, which is pretty much driving their economy at this point. And with China more than willing to give them a lifeline, they're set up to continue this conflict as is for a considerable amount of time.
I agree with the sentiment that we just can't stand idly by as large, threatening countries like Russia swallow up local neighbors simply because they want to. That era of great nation games ended a good century ago, and would not be something we should really allow the world to sink back into.
Trump has been the first to finally float the idea that we need to cut off the Russian oil or this will go on forever. But again, with China in Russia's corner, even that sound economic policy won't be effective.
Yes, it's been something like 300 billion, just from us, over 3-4 years to keep this going, not even counting what Europe has offered up. Are we willing to devote $1T to this for the next quarter century? We have our own military issues here at home - we can't make enough armament to replace the ones we're sending to Ukraine, which are vastly more expensive than what Russia is using, and we can't even keep up with the ship building and ship maintenance we need to even keep our own fleet afloat in light of the growing menace that is China's vast navy. At some point we have to make a change. Europe is right next door to Ukraine - if we need boots on the ground to stand up to Russia that may be something that has to happen. And we'd need to hear European voices saying that, which to date we haven't heard from them. The status quo is just a slow bleed towards defeat for Ukraine.
I was just poking fun at MAQA yahoos declaring with absolute certainty that russia wouldn't have invaded Ukraine if biden hadn't kicked trump's ass in the 2020 election. They can't prove that with any more certainty than I can prove that russian drones wouldn't have encroached upon Polish airspace if obama, biden or harris were POTUS. 
