President Trump is no fan of the European Union. He has repeatedly claimed that the bloc was created to “screw” America, has pledged to slap big tariffs on its cars, and this week enacted global steel and aluminum levies that are expected to hit some $28 billion in exports from the bloc.
But for months, E.U. officials hoped that they could bring the American president around, avoiding a painful trade war. They tried placating the administration with easy wins — like ramped-up European purchasing of U.S. natural gas — while pushing to make a deal.
It is now becoming clear that things won’t be that simple.
Honestly, I’ve been absolutely blown the fuck away at how many people - both here in the states and around the world, both laypersons and people experienced and knowledgeable in geopolitics and history - just straight up ignored the precedent of his first term.
I know a core tenant of geopolitical analysis is “watch what they do, not what they say”… but I think this should be amended to “what what they do and what they try to do, not what they say” in the context of building a model to understand the insanity of the Trump admin. Because he tried to do more than a few things in his first term that he’s now retrying and actually executing on, since he got rid of all the people who stopped him first time around.
You CAN build a model to pretty accurately understand and predict what he’s gonna do. It’s just that it seems most people don’t appear to be including the proper inputs, so their models are garbage.