On Friday this week (former Australian Prime Minister) Kevin Rudd wrote an analysis of China's potential response to the incoming Trump administration, noting that what Beijing feared most was uncertainty.
The following day the president-elect's transition team issued a jaunty statement confirming that Donald Trump had arbitrarily upended 35 years of careful American diplomacy by speaking on the phone with the President of Taiwan, Tsai Ing-wen, conceivably putting the United States on a path that ends in direct confrontation with China over one of the most explosive geopolitical flashpoints on earth.
It is difficult to exaggerate how significant - and how provocative - this action was. China considers Taiwan to be a rogue province and has declared that it would go as far as using military force to prevent Taiwanese independence. The US has for a generation danced a careful dance in support of Taiwan. It is the de facto guarantor of Taiwanese defence, but it does not recognise Taiwan as an independent state. No US leader has officially spoken with a Taiwanese president in decades.
Into this fraught diplomatic charade, Trump bounded this week. After the Financial Times newspaper discovered that Trump had made the call, the president-elect's transition team confirmed that he had spoken with Tsai and "noted the close economic, political, and security ties" between Taiwan and the US...
Lots more in between
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...In other words, as Trump begins to make his own mark on the world order, the most positive interpretation of his actions to date is that he has no idea what he is doing, and is taking no advice as he does it.
#2. "RE: Monstrous Trump blunder (and he's not even in office yet)" In response to Paul D (Reply # 0)
He followed this blunder up with a couple of angry tweets blasting China on currency manipulation. The guy's got all the diplomatic finesse of a man trying to kill a housefly with a sledgehammer.
#5. "RE: Monstrous Trump blunder (and he's not even in office yet)" In response to Cooper_D (Reply # 4)
There are businessmen that I might trust with the responsibilities of being President. People that know enough to set up a proper blind trust of their assets (to avoid any corruption or appearance of it), people who would know how to use finesse instead of tweeting criticisms of major trading partners, and people who are able to take SNL making fun of them without throwing a tantrum. Donald Trump isn't any of these. He's not going to "Make America Great Again." He's going to use the office of the Presidency to make himself even richer. He doesn't care at all what happens otherwise and has shown zero interest in taking the Presidency seriously.
#6. "RE: Monstrous Trump blunder (and he's not even in office yet)" In response to Cooper_D (Reply # 4) Tue Dec-06-16 04:11 AM by jazz4free
Walls, mass deportation, xenophobia, racial and religious hatred and persecution, the (worldwide) rise of neo-fascism, systemic anti-intellectualism, a battered and despised professional fourth estate (the people's last line of defense against oppression), denial of imminent and irreversible ecological ruin, proposed that women be imprisoned for exercising their right to choose, jail or loss of citizenship for iconoclasm (look it up), delusional resurrection of long dead antiquated/destructive industries, regressive health care, mad generals, boorish diplomats, a Goldwyn-Sachs wing in the White House, the Peter Principle epitomized throughout the executive branch including the petulant-child tweeter president semi-elect himself. FEAR!!! IGNORANCE!!! INTOLERANCE!!! DIVISION!!!
Sure, pal, make America great again? Good luck with the white man delusion.
#7. "RE: Monstrous Trump blunder (and he's not even in office yet)" In response to jasonlevine (Reply # 5)
Trump has the attention span of an average gerbil. I am weary of the notion that he will "make America great again" America has been great for a very long time, and will be again after Trump exits the scene stage right.
In the last couple of days, Trump has wiped millions of dollars off the market value of two of the USA's biggest aircraft companies with ill-considered off-the-cuff tweets.
Boeing is not doing bad for the year, $143 to $157.
Lockheed $215 to $251 for the last year.
Hard to judge a stock just by a few days of performance. Granted his comments made some nervous but who knows the true causes. With Wall Street they use anything as an excuse to devalue a stock.
Sell something on the commodity market and you will feel some pain once in a while.
(Unknown)
