No Stupid Questions

The answer is: they do not give a shit.

They do not care about the US as a country.

They do not care about the Americans as a people.

They do not care about the economy.

They do not care about anything apart from their own personal interest. Lining their own pockets is all they care about. If someone helps them do that, they are friends with them. If they don't, they do not matter.

Congratulations, you now officially live in a cleptocracy where they shake you down, take all of your money and give it to the guys who already have billions. All the taxes they claim to save by obliterating social security, affordable care etc? They are not going back to you, they will stuff them in Musk's pockets through bullshit contracts and other schemes.

And at the same time, they are critically crippling the IRS to make sure the billionairs no longer even have to pretend to pay taxes.

because there's a war coming soon that will destroy most global trade. trump wants the US in a better position in that near future by having more factories and such inside of the US.

in a peaceful world, you allow free trade and specialization to do its thing and everybody gets richer. you farm bananas, i farm apples, and we trade. we create value out of thin air, it's an amazing thing.

but in a world where superpowers are at war and the world splinters into factions, half of the global economy will be cut off from the other half. therefore it'll be a huge liability if we for example depend on Taiwan for 90% of our computer chips when China can blockade Taiwan and we cannot reliably break that blockade. that's one industry.. now imagine the thousands of other products we need for a modern economy. it would cause massive economic shockwaves.

so this tariff thing is accepting that this will happen in the near future and preparing for it, slowly weaning off the economy from that connection to the rest of the world. so when it does come, it doesn't hurt as bad.

it doesn't really matter if you piss off your allies. since you're the biggest military power they are going to have to rely on you anyway. you have leverage over them. the difference is that Trump is a reality TV star and so he is loudly exploiting this leverage whereas most past leaders would be more subtle and diplomatic about it.

Canada, Mexico, Germany, Japan, etc aren't really allies. Being someone's ally implies there's a sort of equal footing. When someone has no choice but to bend to your will, is that a voluntary relationship? the US essentially wrote Japan's constitution and they told the Germans what to write down for theirs. Canada and Mexico are heavily dependent on US trade- US growth might slow a half percent or two whereas Mexico and Canada are liable to fall into a recession because of these tariffs.

it isn't equal footing. it's a david v goliath situation

to give a recent example, Ukraine. Ukraine in 2014 had the Euromaidan coup and the president had to flee the country. The new government that was quickly appointed without an election realized one thing very quickly- Russia was about to invade them. they had only one option in terms of getting military aid and that was the US. so immediately, the same day that the government was appointed, they started cooperating with the US. a few days after that, little green men showed up in Donbas and the Russian army waltzed into Crimea

so you can say they "allied" with the US but a more honest way to say it is that they were desperately pushed into America's orbit. and the US ultimately doesn't care about a country like Ukraine. people are starting to see it more clearly today because of Trump, but I honestly don't think the situation would have been meaningfully different with Biden or Kamala. The primary difference would have been rhetoric. Instead of calling Zelensky a dictator, we would have just dragged our feet with military aid instead, like what has been happening the last year or so

tldr: the US is a imperialist superpower and this is what they do.

Make liberals tears is the only reason in their hateful and stunted minds

It pleases Putin.

The Sassanians alienated their Lakhmid allies -forcefully annexed them and slaughtered their ruling dynasty-. Everyone knows what happened to the Sassanians not too long afterwards.

Who knows if history will repeat itself but worth waiting and finding out.

Edit: not sure why this is getting downvoted. I gave an example of an empire which at the height of its military might went through a period of political instability which lead to it turning against one of its major allies which eventually brought its downfall. The parallels are obvious, but whether we will get a repeat of the outcome or not, is yet to be seen. The replies are as-if the Sassanians are a little unknown empire at the edge of the world rather than one that was at one point an equal to Rome.