Trump has really thrown down the gauntlet to China, Denmark and the rogue state of Canada in getting Panama to immediately cede control, to his Washington regime, of the Panama Canal.
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Trump has really thrown down the gauntlet to China, Denmark and the rogue state of Canada in getting Panama to immediately cede control, to his Washington regime, of the Panama Canal, which Trump says the United States built at the cost of 25,000 American lives.
I mention the death toll as, according to these authoritative articles here, here, here, here and here, almost all of those who died were not American but were in the main “colored” West Indians hailing from Barbados and other American quasi colonies. As only about 150 of his fellow white Americans died building the Canal, Trump should change the record on that one and much else as well.
But not on Greenland which, like the Faroe Islands, should fall into Uncle Sam’s lap if Trump keeps Denmark under pressure. Not only are there World War 2 precedents to annexing both of these Danish colonies but there is still a 1917 agreement in place whereby Britain, which grabbed the Faroe Islands and impounded (neutral) Swedish ships anchored there during World War 2, has first option to buy Greenland if ever Denmark decides to sell up.
To see that the British will have less backbone than a filleted jellyish in all this, listen to these verbal somersaults by key Jeffrey Epstein collaborator and newly appointed British ambassador to the court of Good King Trump, Lord Peter Mandelson, where he tries to roll back the gratuitous insults he hurled at Trump when Biden rode high in the saddle and in the polls.
As regards the BRICS paper tiger, just note that South Africa is now firmly in Trump’s cross hairs and not only has China been slapped with some bothersome tariffs but much of all this grandstanding is designed to bring China down by strangling its transport routes through the Panama Canal, the South China Sea and any Northern route where Greenland and the Faroes might be of significance.
Renaming mountains in Alaska after half-forgotten American Presidents and forcing Google to call the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America, and Elon Musk joking that the English Channel should be renamed the George Washington Channel all play to Trump’s tune that Uncle Sam is now top dog.
Though Trump obviously deserves an Oscar for all this play acting, when I think of it, I cannot get Gary Cooper and Karl May‘s Old Shatterhand out of my head. May was a German writer of penny dreadfuls, where his fictional heroes, like cowboy Old Shatterhand, were very popular with Herr Hitler and countless others of the Kaiser’s Great War troops. Fair enough, except Herr Hitler used Old Shatterhand’s childish tactics (head ’em off at the pass, Gunther) to terrible effect when he led his Wehrmacht to disaster.
Though Trump’s tactics are cut from the same cloth, he more resembles Gary Cooper in High Noon, and Melania, his darling wife, has something of the beautiful Grace Kelly about her. Not only do both Donald and Melania match Gary Cooper and Grace Kelly in Hollywood’s all important height stakes, but they are facing down the baddies, just as Gary Cooper did in High Noon (plot spoiler: Not only does Quaker Grace kill the second last baddie and help to kill Frank Miller, the movie’s ultimate badass, before riding off into the sunset with Gary, but she later did a runner to Monaco which, as the Donald can tell you, treats the United States very badly and should be in for a generous dose of Yankee sanctions before too long).
Though High Noon is a great movie, it was made in 1952, when Donald Trump was six and the Peoples Republic of China was three years old. If we look at the list of the highest-grossing films in China, we see that they are overwhelmingly Chinese, and neither Gary Cooper nor any of Trump’s Hollywood ambassadors are going to change that. Even Mel Gibson, one of Trump’s Hollywood insiders, admits that Hollywood has lost its competitive edge; it simply cannot compete in a world where the Chinese prefer Chinese heroes to Hollywood’s pumped up Rocky and Rambo clowns or Mel Gibson’s granny fighting the British in Scotland and Pennsylvania, when not otherwise engaged giving the Turks a drubbing at Gallipoli.
And much the same applies in most other industries as well. The Japanese are by far the world’s leaders in auto production; they make cars with the same efficiency McDonald’s make hamburgers and sanctions, tariffs and the rest of Trump’s bag of tricks will not change that. Though Japan, as it happens, is now exporting record amounts of cars, she is running unprecedented deficits largely because of the unfair practices of Uncle Sam. Japan is also in a destructive tariffs war with China, where America’s malevolent hand could hardly be more obvious.
China, for its part, dwarfs the United States in terms of steel production and China, despite its major water problems, is the world’s largest exporter of apples, having long ago surpassed the United States. Whatever about apples, where it has a natural advantage, there is no way the United States can compete against the Chinese in steel or in countless other advanced industries as well.
Though economists advise Trump to get back to basics and use tariffs only to protect nascent industries and in other areas where they can pay dividends, that is not Trump’s game, and nor is it the game of Musk and his other toadies. Their game is to make America great again at the expense of other countries and, though the rents that would accrue from global hegemony makes sense in terms of kindergarten economics, that flies in the face of the old maxim that you can never have too many friends. But America has never wanted friends, only vassals and, though some countries like Denmark and Canada, will most likely accommodate him there, others, like China, cannot afford to, as that is at odds with the expectations of her people for a slice of the Chinese and/or American apple pies.
It is the pursuit of that American dream (and dream it is) that the United States has so many illegal immigrants and, though one might not like these immigrants fleeing their homelands the Yanks have laid waste to, one should at least understand why young mothers do not want their bambinos to live in the equivalent of Stalingrad on a bad day.
As regards blaming China, Mexico and the Canucks for the flow of fentanyl and other illegal death drugs into the United States, the solution to that is to clamp down on the demand side with mass incarceration of American drug dealers and users. Although progress on the supply side would be good too, as long as much of Latin America remains a shit hole, there will be no shortage of supply or suppliers. With Colombia so much in the news these days, it should be noted that the Colombian troops the Yanks trained to fight its drug cartels are now training the Mexican cartels how to fight the Mexican army. If Trump wants to put a cap on that, he would need more advanced tactics than those Karl May beguiled Corporal Hitler with in the Great War.
Though we all admire the way Gary Cooper (and Southie girl Grace Kelly) stepped up to the plate against the fictional Frank Miller, China’s President Xi is not arriving on the High Noon train to Hicksville, which would be a much better deal for him than dealing with China’s 1.4 billion citizens if Yankee tariffs stop him delivering the bacon to them. And, as Donald, Melania (and let’s not forget the brooding hulk Barron) sit down to derive inspiration from High Noon, let’s also not forget that Gary Cooper did not go spoiling for a gun fight with Frank Miller, but Miller went gunning for him. As things currently stand, China largely has its guns holstered and Gary Cooper/Donald Trump should leave it that way, lest the Yanks get some very unwelcome diplomatic, economic and military surprises.
And, if we stay on High Noon a little longer, we see Hicksville’s streets are clean, the people are largely well-behaved and, in those respects, it more resembles Beijing or Shanghai than it does Kensington Avenue or LA’s Skid Row. That being so, Donald and Melania should immediately zip their lips, holster their guns and clean up their own drug-infested backyard, before threatening the law-abiding citizens of every pueblo, favela and shanty town between Antarctica and Greenland.
