The MSC report highlights that the US is destabilising the historic status quo and some of the recent actions are actually increasing the risks - emboldening both state - and non state - actors.
The MSC report itself is massive. But the exec summary does present an interesting narrative which kicks the post-cold war mindset into touch and brings in the idea that multipolarisation is happening already, with far more complex and nuanced relationships that the old systems.
I should also add that the MSC isn’t a State sponsored conference. It’s a private - but well regarded - think tank. Bringing together a swathe of state - and non-state - actors. Including some of the characters from Russia, China and Iran - both politicians and businesses - for discussion and debate.
So whilst it’s driven by bias through private sources of funding, it can also bring about fresh perspectives - perhaps more so than the echo chambers of the five eyes reports, the G7 or 20 summits.
last week two of my colleagues were in the USA completing plant trials on European produced Steel to confirm its suitability for one of our product lines*.
We currently, have “single source supply” which the business peeps gets twitchy about as any failure in their supply line impacts our production.
Unsurprisingly, the European Steel worked and well - by and large in our industry at least, European steel and Aluminium is superior to USA produced steel, (or at least is closer to the specification we (the customer) request and is considerably more consistent) but being higher quality comes with a higher price, and being the wrong side of the Atlantic also comes with high P&P costs…now it juts got higher still.
everyday products in USA suddenly more expensive
*it has already been proven in other lines, and so this was a confirmation trial it would also work in this example
One of the Orange One’s election pledges was to bring down inflation…
Guess what, it’ll go the other way as providers put up their basic unit costs to take tariffs into account. A 25% hit on a product is not viable. It’ll force some providers to export elsewhere = potential product shortages in the USA.
It’s not as if the USA has an abundance of some products either, they are a huge importer of steel / aluminium.
Been seeing everyone kick off on Reddit about this, given my job and interests. A lot of people who voted Trump who ‘didn’t think he meant it’ when he talked about tarrifs are now in the find out phase of FAFO.
Lots of people in the machinists subreddit who are the only ‘liberal’ in their shops saying all their colleagues voted for the orange one and are suddenly realising this change might completely kill US manufacturing.
The US used to have massive bauxite mines to produce aluminium, but the biggest cost is power. Canada has vast ammounts of clean and cheap hydro power to make ali, which is where america gets most of it’s supply from. It would take years to reopen the mines and build enough power plants to start producing their own ali again at the qty needed. And by the time they have, everyone will be used to paying 25% more, so you can sure as hell belive the price won’t come back down even when America starts making their own again. If they ever do.
Also loads of places have gone to quotes only being valid for 24h because of the potential price instability of materials.
The US Farmer’s I’ve seen online are particuarly worried about PayPalpatine and his freezing if the subsidies they get, it’s also just dawned on them that a lot of the stuff USAID buys to give away, it buys American.
Sort of what they forget about ‘all the money going to Ukraine’. It’s not really money going to Ukraine at all. It’s money being invested into American manufacturing. All the money really is buying weapons and equipment made in America. It’s money going into American pockets, which is a good thing.
Most seem to thing it’s America just wiring them money…
Yup - the world of (unplanned) consequences. There is a direct BBC charity that received a good chunk of USAID; the monies were used to train journalists to support press freedom. Ironic considering “President” Musk’s comments.
And steel, same effect. Add on the need to get people to live / work in those areas for the mining / manufacturing basis. Part of the original problem was the the USA couldn’t match quality / quantity / pricing of such products, hence their considerable decline.
There’s other social elements too from the Annoying Orange’s decisions.
Trump has cut the funding available to fight drug production here in Peru, and we’re already seeing an increase in violence in areas proliferated with drug trafficking gangs.
But of course the cut in funding will also lead to an increased volume of drug production, that product will need a customer and guess who the largest local(ish) consumer of drugs is. That’s right! The good ol’ US of A.
So Trumpleton has just decided to increase the flow of drugs into the country for which he is responsible.
On that note, I’m looking forward to seeing how our government fund all the public sector pay rises and other spending increases when tax revenues collapse under their other policies.
