So... The US has a trade surplus with Australia and yet still has 10% tariff. What negotiation will Trump want in return for zero tariff?
US tech companies already pay almost zero local tax despite billions of local revenue.
FB et al had to pay a fee for supporting local media as they had decimated local journalism revenue sources but have now stopped all payments.
The ability for US big pharma to charge want they want in Australia instead of having to negotiate at a country level for those medicines that actually have efficacy ie value for money so are subsidised?
25% tariffs on steel and aluminum which represents 10% of our total output but 0.2% of our total export to the US because....?
We have critical minerals but the US isn't investing in 'diversity' (see what I did there!) of local manufacturing from China-produced minerals.
Australia agreed to buy a few nuclear subs from the US for 100s of billions a few years ago but they can't seem to make them to schedule. We paid a cash "deposit" of $500m in February but that didn't change anything.
Just returned from Palau and the USAID elimination caused many local job losses in the local hospital. USAID directly paid employees didn't even get a 2 week notice. Gotta love American 'employment at will'. At least the US army is still willing to clear unexploded munitions that they dumped on Palau 80 years ago.
David from Sydney:
Over time, I have enjoyed reading your
posts, and learning from them (my own similar monopod-assisted 'effort' is
here).
Your post here is no exception in that you are continuing your 'nasty' habit of presenting facts to support your arguments...there are several quite interesting and relevant facts in this post. Thanks.
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David, my own country (the United States of America) is rather ill right now, and (selfishly) for the sake of my children, I hope it can survive. I think it can...but I am not at all certain that what emerges is something I will recognize.
The illness here is quite severe...no amount of facts will change the minds of some of the truest MAGA-type believers...not your facts...not anybody's facts.
You did know, didn't you, that facts have a well-known liberal bias, didn't you?
Indeed, eight years ago, a representative of President Trump 'invented' some new terminology:
Alternate Facts.
But your post here is on point, particularly when it comes to USAID.
Now...
...it isn't only the USA that is 'sick'.
In February 2023, my wife and I visited central Mexico for a week or so.
One night after consuming dinner, I made the terrible mistake of taking part in a conversation with a man and a woman sitting at a nearby table.
These two people had emigrated to Mexico from Australia, and had sort of 'settled' in this rather well-known city.
According to what they said, they left Australia because of how the government there had turned against its people.
The centerpiece of their argument? The Port Arthur Massacre, for which they claimed was a false flag operation initiated by the government with the intention of passing laws that would take guns from Australian citizens. They claimed that the evidence of their assertion was solid.
The killing of babies (i.e. legalized abortion) was an important plank in their notions. The woman actually said: "But what about the babies?"
There was more. Sadly, much more.
So these two people were full-blown QAnon types...and I had the misfortune of listening to their bile for 10-15 minutes.
The sickness has spread.
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I spent virtually my entire career as a completely apolitical academic research scientist (now I am simply
mostly apolitical).
I guess my eyes were opened when one side began a ritualized denial of climate change (mostly on behalf of fossil fuel financial interests), and then, in one state in particular, their governor began to advocate for changes in how climate change was taught in their schools. I daresay I know more about this topic than that governor and all of his acolytes.
My oh my.
My oh my.
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Everybody needs to pay attention--what we are in danger of losing will be hard to get back.
