r/politics • u/sweatycat New York • 1d ago

California to Negotiate Trade With Other Countries to Bypass Trump Tariffs

https://www.newsweek.com/california-newsom-trade-trump-tariffs-2055414
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u/echosrevenge 1d ago

Oooh, finally a non-American country where I'll qualify for Citizenship By Descent!

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u/entredeuxeaux 1d ago

Be careful, all. For some reason that is unknown to many, this is what they want. But why

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u/SerRikari 1d ago

Explain

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u/ForgettableUsername America 1d ago

The US breaking up into warring factions is the biggest win Russia could have hoped for.

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u/hookyboysb 1d ago

It's a bigger win for China. They basically control the world economy once Trump is done messing with it. Russia won't truly be powerful until the EU collapses, which Trump is accidentally strengthening.

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u/mitkase 1d ago

And really, the odds of Russia being able to turn any of this into a big win is not very likely, at least to my eyes. Russia is overplaying its hand, Trump is eating paste, and China is sipping oolong in the background waiting for the Lil Tyrants to tire themselves out.

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u/VonSchplintah 1d ago

It always gets worse for the Russian people.

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u/oldmaninparadise 1d ago

Mostly if you stand close to the hospitals upper floor windows. For some reason, a hugely high chance of somehow falling out.

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u/RedditTrespasser 1d ago

Russian culture takes a sort of perverse pride in misery, always has. You aren’t a real man unless your life is ugly, brutish, short and drenched in vodka.

I guess it makes sense when you consider the climate.

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u/RedditTrespasser 1d ago edited 1d ago

Say what you want about China, but that is one stable fucking country. The current PRoC has been getting nothing but stronger since the end of WW2, and China as a culture has existed in some form since before the time of Rome.

Despite what Sinophobics would want you to believe, China will be around long after the US has crumbled to dust, and may well outlive any European states.

Eastern philosophy values social harmony, collectivism and reverence towards the traditions and values of past generations. Western philosophy prizes individualism, competition, and dominating your environment. Guess which one is more prone to sparking conflict and hoarding of resources?

I’ll give you a hint- China actually punishes- severely- billionaires when they commit crimes.

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u/Tiruin 1d ago

Plenty of issues especially with housing and birth rates, Great Firewall goes both ways, you only think it's this stable monolith because you never hear otherwise.

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u/RedditTrespasser 1d ago

China isn’t North Korea, lol. Chinese people travel literally everywhere, for everything from tourism to business. I agree that China has its problems, especially when it comes to issues of censorship, but I think you may be guilty of some degree of propaganda-influenced bias if you argue that it’s dystopian.

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u/Neverendingwebinar 1d ago

That censorship has benefits too. They don't have a fox news causing 30% of their population to live in a cult and another 30% to handwave bothsiderism.

Their propaganda keeps the state strong as a whole.

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u/Tiruin 21h ago

Only someone who doesn't know the consequences of a dictatorship and state controlled media would be so mistaken or say something so appalling. It's also not even true.

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u/Tiruin 21h ago

It's not a matter of propaganda (not in this case anyway) but little sharing of information and logic. I talk to japanese and koreans so much more often than chinese despite china having so many more people. Logic as well, no country is perfect, if you think it's "strong" and stable it's because you're not hearing otherwise, but it doesn't mean it's true. Same as Japan, very good in some aspects like the high-speed rail system but terrible in others like work culture, the difference is there's a lot more information available and a lot more people interested in Japan encountering and sharing this information. Even for how "advanced" China is, yeah, of course it looks like it when you cherry-pick the locations, things look a lot different when you follow youtubers who travel rural China.

As for whether it's dystopian, I don't see how you can argue otherwise, it's a dictatorship with a social credit system.

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u/SerRikari 1d ago

Well… whatever your username was again… that’s a fair point.

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u/ArkitekZero 1d ago

Yeah any time I see this suggested I don't see anyone else asking what happens to the nukes and supercarriers. You aren't just gonna get a proportional amount of them handed over

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u/espressocycle 1d ago

California has more military installations assigned nuclear-warfare responsibilities than any other state and ranks fourth in the number of nuclear warheads stockpiled.

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u/ArkitekZero 1d ago

Well that's good because I mistakenly thought the missiles were all in flyover states.

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u/espressocycle 1d ago

I assumed so as well. Also until recently I had completely forgotten that France maintains a sizable nuclear arsenal.

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u/cyanescens_burn 1d ago

We also have Livermore National nuclear labs, some top tech universities, and also a bunch of the aerospace industry in Silicon Valley.

I’m fairly convinced California would not only do fine on its own, but thrive. It would take some time to reorganize trading partners, but all in all would fair better than many other states on its own.

In reality though, the military issue would be messy. Some that are stationed here might want to stay, seeing California as a better survival option than an increasingly isolationist US with a floundering and uncertain economic future. Others would see MAGAmerica as a shining beacon of whatever it is they think it’ll be.

Similar with left and right leaning citizens (we have a lot of republicans in the state, I see trump, qanon, and Gadsden flags when I go to the Central Valley and eastern side of the state, and counties do go red in elections). These folks own property, businesses, and have other ties here, would they just up and leave?

It might end up like a version of the India and Pakistan split, but by political party rather than religion/ethnicity, where people migrate to the place they want, then there’s unending tension between neighboring nations.

I honestly don’t see secession happening, but people are talking about the idea more than I’ve heard in the past 20 something years.

In any case, it’d be great if we didn’t have to keep subsidizing other states with our federal tax contributions, since the federal money we need keeps being threatened or cut off.

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u/espressocycle 1d ago

Full secession of any state is unlikely but there are a lot of partial steps to greater autonomy.

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u/ForgettableUsername America 1d ago

Everyone always assumes that if California seceded, everything inside California’s borders would be part of the new republic and it’d all work together nicely, but reality isn’t that tidy. California is not politically homogeneous, the rural areas are pretty solid red. They may not be up for secession if the justification is liberal. And we can’t just say to hell with them, because if just the California cities secede then we don’t have the agricultural resources we need to be independent.

It might sound nice as a pipe dream, but the reality would be a shit show.

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u/ArkitekZero 1d ago

Yeah Quebec has similar issues here. If they did decide to secede, the actual territory they'd be 'owed' is tiny.