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I'm not a Republican, but I'll bite.
The U.S. is kinda in a bad spot right now. Not just politically but economically as well. Our National Debt is the highest it's ever been. While I'm 100% for taxing Billionaires and their Trillion dollars companies more, by like, a lot, the Billionaires of course don't want that. So they're trying to cut what they can and wheel and deal. Why support Climate Change (French EU thing, I don't remember) acts when you can [pocket the money] use that to pay down debt? The War in Ukraine has unfortunately been drawn out too long for us to stay financially invested in it. Our allies across the sea won't be able to help our country balance our debt when they have Ukraine to worry about as well. So they've decided to put pressure on every external source of revenue while cutting what they can without getting lynched.
Let's talk about Canada and Mexico, but first, a bit of H I S T O R Y. Back in the 90s or 00s the Clinton Administration implemented NAFTA. The agreement sounded good on paper: Strength our border countries. Lifts us all up by giving all the countries jobs, more opportunity, more demand. While outsourcing our manual labor we can focus on the future: Technology! Hindsight is 20/20 though. Why not move our business to a country where we pay lower wages and will end up with higher profits for future investments (like yachts)? Why not get cheaper parts instead of paying the U.S. prices? A ton of manual labor jobs were lost, and many cities (car manufacturing cities, steel cities, etc.) simply never recovered. NAFTA stayed in place more or less until Trump Trumped it into the USMCA in 2020. That gets renegotiated in 2026 with all 3 countries either coming to an agreement or dissolving the agreement.
From all accounts, NAFTA certainly seemed harmful to the American industry at the time, but can that industry recover, and should it? Personally, I don't think so, but they seem to think so. So, from my point of view, the reason they're alienating allies is to extort them for money to help pay down the National Debt and hopefully grow back American industries lost over 2 decades ago.
The ''aid'' we send to Ukraine is the US goverment using US money to buy US products and have the military drop them off. Those millions we send to Ukraine is money we have and keep in our economy, why conservatives are so fucking stupid they can't figure this out is infuriating. Yes. Saw off you legs to lose weight. You'll lose SO much.
Not even. A lot of the “aid” is
US gets
Why the hell is this supposed to be a point in favor? I don't support the military-industrial complex, because I'm not a right-winger or a hawk.
Profitable is a point in favor, if you’re one of them. Strong supply chain is a point in favor, if you’re a hawk or if you think we do need defense
Profitable for the rich. Defense for the rich. Both are points against.
I recognize you're doing some form or devils advocate and I appreciate that. I grew up in the ruins of one of those cities and it really helped define my political beliefs. I think it's important to not suddenly frame NAFTA as this wonderful thing just because trump opposes it. There is a real reckoning we need to have as a country when it comes to rebuilding our industrial base. Are tariffs the answer? Almost certainly not, but that doesn't mean that the people asking for them are completely delusional. Trump is capitalizing on a real pain that people are feeling, and have felt for a generation now. I wish we had a proper progressive to reframe the debate. It's not about us vs Canada, it's about the disgustingly wealthy vs everyone else. You don't want people to support tariffs? Then we need real left wing populist arguments.
I know it's stupid. Being right should be good enough. But it's not. We need to be convincing. And not 'republican lite' convincing - more like teddy Roosevelt f'ing come at me unabashed progressivism convincing.
What about a good, strong third party? A green party or a working class party of some sort? It's fully evident neither Reps nor Dems give a single fuck about the working class, they just pretend so they can use them while pocketing the money of the rich and stuffing their wallets. I feel like I'm not the only one who is 100% fed up with the bullshit of both parties and just want an actual party throwing the best candidates based on their policies and hosting proper primary elections so we can choose who tf speaks for us.
It's 2025 ffs. I don't care about the candidates' fashion or their goddamn tours and rallies. You can get the word out there in any number of ways. Engage with your target audience. Your voterbase. Get one of the practically nonexistant parties to step up. I'm tired of dealing with a tug-o-war between two sides of the same goddamn coin. We need a party that will focus on keeping us rooted to the constitutional values and ensuring everyone has access to the rights of the basic human necessities of this century. Let the goddamn donkey and elephant Duke it out over policies neither of them really care about. Idgaf. I just want more goddamn options. Some real fucking options.
Yeah, I agree I don't think NAFTA was a wholly wonderful thing - a lot of people lost their jobs, had families at the time, and really, it was poor planning to not realize that what happened happened. I think NAFTA had some good ideas, like trying reduce carbon emissions and trying to ensure workers are being taken care of, but I think overall the transition from industry was fumbled.
I honestly have no idea if tariffs are the answer, but if they aren't, it seems like people are going to start to realize the quality in life difference. And I mean, it could have a rubberband effect. History has shown that when conditions get bad, workers revolt, pretty much always. If the country is going to be run like a Corporation trying to recoup costs, what's the percentage before it gets noticeable? Maybe, optimistically, at the end of all this, we can get money out of politics, corporate money specifically, funding transparency, stock? idk about that - stricter rules or something. Then we could actually focus on real things that matter without this weird age of commercial politics.
At the end of the day, I think people of all parties and backgrounds can come together on the idea/conversation to remove money from politics. Having our representation (vote/politician) able to be bought by some billionaire through backchannels (donations, crypto, favors) is simply not fair or in our best interests.
Funny you think they're going to actually pay down the debt.
I'm cautiously optimistic. They cut 22 Billion in Social Services. If things keep getting worse, regular people are going to start wondering where that money is going and the veil will be lifted.
Regular people are dumb af they elected that orange shit stain while he spit in our faces.
So I'm not really confident they're gonna connect any dots.
I would just say that not everyone is cut out for "advanced" jobs. There is a need for more industrial/mechanical jobs that those of us can occupy and still make a decent living.
I don't mean that as a way to disparage other people, I'm referring to myself and people like me. I'm far too stupid for tech jobs.
You right, I think there's always going to be a need for industrial and mechanics. Like, we're for sure always going to need transport, lumber, steel, infrastructure, logistics, more. When I wrote that I was mostly thinking Steel as we really just don't have as much a need for it as we used to. Like, sure we need to keep up with infrastructure and national security, etc. but we're not at war, we're not expanding as a nation (like big cities) anymore so it'll never recover to times before NAFTA.
That being said, I really do think we should be making automobiles in house which could bring more Steel back, but on the other hand, do we really want more automobiles? Like, drive by any dealership and there always seem to just be an abundance.
Republicans literally add to the debt everytime they’re elected.
So do Democrats, it's been on a hot run for the last decade or so. Through Obama, through Trump, through Biden, and now back to Trump. This is a multi-party issue and the solution is to tax Billionaires.
Trump added a lot to the national debt. https://www.investopedia.com/us-debt-by-president-dollar-and-percentage-7371225
Every president has. It's been a growing problem through multiple different administrations now. This isn't a party issue, it's a "Eat the Rich" issue. The Billionaire class has taking but not putting back in, and they're expecting regular working people to foot the bill. That's why the 22 Billion dollar cut on Social Services through HHS instead of taxing the 400+ Billionaires in America.
You've really bought into the propaganda there, besides Clinton our national debt has always been the "highest" every year. The most important factor is foreign vs domestically held debt, and that ratio hasn't changed for the worse.
Obviously we have some spending concerns, but financially that's not the primary concern for the US right now (and we wouldn't be talking tax cuts if it was).
Maybe I have bought into the propaganda, but am willing to learn more. If we're pouring Trillions from our National Budget into paying down the ever-growing Federal Debt, where's the tipping point for the dollars value?
This debt has been ever-growing, by the +5 trillion pretty much every administration, and American prosperity has been on a decline (maybe not for you, but the city I'm sitting in feels it). If we're not going to tax Billionaires (which we fucking should, by a lot) then what's the next best thing to bring better prosperity to the American Working Class?
Finally, what do you feel is America's primary economic concern?
While the amount of debt has been ever growing, it hasn't relative to GDP. When it has grown, it's grown primarily due to policies from Bush and Trump. Both of these president's also passed massive tax breaks which is a significant contributing factor to the national debt.
At the end of the day, the national debt only matters if we can't pay it. All the cuts being made to federal spending right now are more significant because they will slow down the economy and cause reverberations for years to come (public research and investment are multipliers for the economy in many ways).
As you call out, we should be taxing billionaires, which points to the larger economic concern right now for America - economic disparity.
Right now, the National Debt is ~125% of the GDP and is estimated to climb - we'll know more March 27th when the quarterly report is published.
I had to do some research on this one because I wasn't too familiar with how much weight the ratio factors in. For example, Japan is over 200%, but they're well off due to societal/governmental factors such as low interest rates, high sovereign savings, and keeping a portion of the debt local to the nation itself. On the other hand, Greece is ~160% due to their last recession. They had worker strikes in 2024 due to stagnating wages, but they're a come back with economic growth projected to hit ~2% and debt ratio to be at ~145% by the end of the year so it's a bit of a mixed bag.
That being said, the U.S. is in quite a different situation economically. From what I can tell, it's not great, but not catastrophic either. If our economic growth continues it's upward trend, maybe we can balance it out. But, if our National Debt continues to grow, or if our GDP starts to taper off, the % gap may widen and we may see a slow and steady downturn in QoL. The economists I ran across seemed to agree that it could be a growing issue and something to keep an eye on how it's handled. I thought this blogpost was a good read - it doesn't get into all the nuance but is a decent summary / overlook. For an official overlook you can read the House Summary.
Finally, this is from the approved House 2025 Budget Document (or bill? idk), if you trust that, but it says:
On a sidenote, mmw kinda thing, I don't think DJT is going to be a good fit for this situation. I don't think the mixing of corporate interests, deregulation, and shaking of trees is going to pull us out of this mess but entrench the Nation. The only way out is to explain to regular people that our only solution is to tax the Billionaire class, and get our local politicians to enact change.