Trump's legacy

[willendure]

You don't like investing in the worlds biggest capital markets? Might make you feel better, but not richer.

[WTFH]

You don't like investing in the worlds biggest capital markets? Might make you feel better, but not richer.

Being the richest fool in the graveyard isn't something to be proud of. Be proud of spending time with the people you love, spending energy on helping others who need help, rather than focussing every ounce of your being on chasing money and losing sight of anything that has real value.

[Dorkeaux]

I agree with most of Ladymuck, WTFH and Willendure's posts.

I invest, but not to the exclusion of ethics, time with my mates, reading, anything really.
You don't have to spend a lot of time on it.

Willendure is absolutely correct about the ubiquity of the American stock market. But everyone should follow their ethics.

Personally, I don't conflate Trump with American companies. Some are doing amazing things, and are spread out over the entire world. Developing new drugs, that sort of thing. Lets just say I don't buy Tesla stock.

Also, I would say the non-American stock markets have had a very good year. The LSE doesn't generate as much return as the S&P, but traditionally there are lots of nice British blue chip dividend-earning stocks to choose from, if that's your thing.

[hobnob]

When I was at school, I did 20th century history. The GCSE exam was pretty much guaranteed to have some variation on this question: "Was the League of Nations a failure?" (I.e. it was set up after WW1 but didn't stop WW2.)

I think Trump's legacy will be similar questions for future history students. I.e. "What happened to checks and balances? Why didn't Congress or the Supreme Court stop him?"

In terms of "voting with your wallet", this is something I've been pondering recently. E.g. when it comes to firewalls, Check Point is an Israeli company, and I don't like what's happening in Palestine. I could say "I'll use Palo Alto or Cisco instead", but they're US companies, and I don't like what the US government is doing either. I think it's tricky to avoid using the big tech companies, but changing your pension fund is a more achievable goal.

[NotAllThere]

Trump's being playing Risk.

[sadkingbilly]

I told my pension chap today to sell anything that's investing in US companies, treasury bonds or tracking US indices. Yeah, it's a mere 4% of my pension investment and on its own won't bring about regime change. Makes me feel better though.

I AM my pension chap, and i moved out of USA as soon as the morons elected him.

[ladymuck]

You don't like investing in the worlds biggest capital markets? Might make you feel better, but not richer.

4% of my pension isn't going to make a huge difference on the quality of my retirement. At the moment the portion that's invested in Asian markets has outperformed the US stuff so I think I can take the hit.

[willendure]

When I was at school, I did 20th century history. The GCSE exam was pretty much guaranteed to have some variation on this question: "Was the League of Nations a failure?" (I.e. it was set up after WW1 but didn't stop WW2.)

I think Trump's legacy will be similar questions for future history students. I.e. "What happened to checks and balances? Why didn't Congress or the Supreme Court stop him?"

In terms of "voting with your wallet", this is something I've been pondering recently. E.g. when it comes to firewalls, Check Point is an Israeli company, and I don't like what's happening in Palestine. I could say "I'll use Palo Alto or Cisco instead", but they're US companies, and I don't like what the US government is doing either. I think it's tricky to avoid using the big tech companies, but changing your pension fund is a more achievable goal.

You could very well be right, but as a counterpoint argument...

The US has been a consumer economy for too long, it buys tulipe from China, then China returns those dollars to it and receives interest paying US debt in return. Its a bit like if you went to buy a new car, paid in cash, and then the garage manager said "Hang on! Heres your cash back just write me an IOU instead, and any time you want another car please come back!"

The problem is that the US military now depends on China for all this tulipe it needs because they cant make it themselves any more. So the USA starts to look weak, and when the cracks begin to show the other major powers in the world start to sense this could be their moment to rebalance world power.

So a lot of this is about the US and China getting a divorce because they fell out over the IOUs and are increasingly suspicious of each other. Its possible that China is already in a proxy war with Europe via Ukraine, because the Russians certainly do not have the ability to make anything any more.

I am in favour of a strong USA to keep a lid on things. I hope that reshoring of manufacturing to the USA works and that they regain their industrial power. I hope they maintain their foreign military deployments in Germany and Japan. I hope someone talks sense in Trump on keeping NATO going but he might not be wrong about getting all members to pay their 5%. I think this Greenland thing is just a lot of hot air, a talking point to shake things up. And technocrats like Ursula von der Leyden can get back in their box - who voted for her anyway?

Yes, its not ideal, but a strong USA yields world peace. If there is a war between major powers its over in 25 minutes - flight time of a nuke.

[malvolio]

Just been reading the reports on his speech to Davos. Most of it seems to have been incomprehensible, but there was one clear point, if I may paraphrase:

- "Right now we need Greenland to act as a defensive cover for the USA. Right now I can move as many troops and other materiel into Greenland as I want, and we have had that ability since 1952. So clearly I need to acquire Greenland (or was it Iceland...?) so I can move in as many troops and other materiel as I want. And I'll throw as many toys out of the pram as I can to get it..."

So clearly, he either terminally ignorant or has no idea of reality. Or both.


As for the Starmer/Trump legacy debate, that is clear: Starmer will be remembered for f***ing up the UK, Trump for f***ing up the Western hemisphere.

[Paddy]

Well worth a full read; we should stop appeasing trump

Mark Carney's Speech Davos 21-01-2026


Today I will talk about a rupture in the world order, the end of a pleasant fiction and the beginning of a harsh reality, where geopolitics, where the large, main power, geopolitics, is submitted to no limits, no constraints.

On the other hand, I would like to tell you that the other countries, especially intermediate powers like Canada, are not powerless. They have the capacity to build a new order that encompasses our values, such as respect for human rights, sustainable development, solidarity, sovereignty and territorial integrity of the various states.

The power of the less power starts with honesty.

[Carney returns to speaking in English]

It seems that every day we're reminded that we live in an era of great power rivalry, that the rules based order is fading, that the strong can do what they can, and the weak must suffer what they must.

And this aphorism of Thucydides is presented as inevitable, as the natural logic of international relations reasserting itself.

And faced with this logic, there is a strong tendency for countries to go along to get along, to accommodate, to avoid trouble, to hope that compliance will buy safety.

Well, it won't.

So, what are our options?

In 1978, the Czech dissident Václav Havel, later president, wrote an essay called The Power of the Powerless, and in it, he asked a simple question: how did the communist system sustain itself?

And his answer began with a greengrocer.

Every morning, this shopkeeper places a sign in his window: ‘Workers of the world unite’. He doesn't believe it, no-one does, but he places a sign anyway to avoid trouble, to signal compliance, to get along. And because every shopkeeper on every street does the same, the system persist – not through violence alone, but through the participation of ordinary people in rituals they privately know to be false.

Havel called this “living within a lie”.

The system's power comes not from its truth, but from everyone's willingness to perform as if it were true, and its fragility comes from the same source. When even one person stops performing, when the greengrocer removes his sign, the illusion begins to crack. Friends, it is time for companies and countries to take their signs down.

For decades, countries like Canada prospered under what we called the rules-based international order. We joined its institutions, we praised its principles, we benefited from its predictability. And because of that, we could pursue values-based foreign policies under its protection.

We knew the story of the international rules-based order was partially false that the strongest would exempt themselves when convenient, that trade rules were enforced asymmetrically. And we knew that international law applied with varying rigour depending on the identity of the accused or the victim.

This fiction was useful, and American hegemony, in particular, helped provide public goods, open sea lanes, a stable financial system, collective security and support for frameworks for resolving disputes.

So, we placed the sign in the window. We participated in the rituals, and we largely avoided calling out the gaps between rhetoric and reality.

This bargain no longer works. Let me be direct. We are in the midst of a rupture, not a transition.

Over the past two decades, a series of crises in finance, health, energy and geopolitics have laid bare the risks of extreme global integration. But more recently, great powers have begun using economic integration as weapons, tariffs as leverage, financial infrastructure as coercion, supply chains as vulnerabilities to be exploited.

You cannot live within the lie of mutual benefit through integration, when integration becomes the source of your subordination.

The multilateral institutions on which the middle powers have relied – the WTO, the UN, the COP – the architecture, the very architecture of collective problem solving are under threat. And as a result, many countries are drawing the same conclusions that they must develop greater strategic autonomy, in energy, food, critical minerals, in finance and supply chains.

And this impulse is understandable. A country that can't feed itself, fuel itself or defend itself, has few options. When the rules no longer protect you, you must protect yourself.

But let's be clear eyed about where this leads.

A world of fortresses will be poorer, more fragile and less sustainable. And there is another truth. If great powers abandon even the pretense of rules and values for the unhindered pursuit of their power and interests, the gains from transactionalism will become harder to replicate.

Hegemons cannot continually monetize their relationships.

Allies will diversify to hedge against uncertainty.

They'll buy insurance, increase options in order to rebuild sovereignty – sovereignty that was once grounded in rules, but will increasingly be anchored in the ability to withstand pressure.

This room knows this is classic risk management. Risk management comes at a price, but that cost of strategic autonomy, of sovereignty can also be shared.

Collective investments in resilience are cheaper than everyone building their own fortresses. Shared standards reduce fragmentations. Complementarities are positive sum. And the question for middle powers like Canada is not whether to adapt to the new reality – we must. The question is whether we adapt by simply building higher walls, or whether we can do something more ambitious.

Now Canada was amongst the first to hear the wake-up call, leading us to fundamentally shift our strategic posture.

Canadians know that our old comfortable assumptions that our geography and alliance memberships automatically conferred prosperity and security – that assumption is no longer valid. And our new approach rests on what Alexander Stubb, the President of Finland, has termed “value-based realism”.

Or, to put another way, we aim to be both principled and pragmatic – principled in our commitment to fundamental values, sovereignty, territorial integrity, the prohibition of the use of force, except when consistent with the UN Charter, and respect for human rights, and pragmatic and recognizing that progress is often incremental, that interests diverge, that not every partner will share all of our values.

So, we're engaging broadly, strategically with open eyes. We actively take on the world as it is, not wait around for a world we wish to be.

We are calibrating our relationships, so their depth reflects our values, and we're prioritizing broad engagement to maximize our influence, given and given the fluidity of the world at the moment, the risks that this poses and the stakes for what comes next.

And we are no longer just relying on the strength of our values, but also the value of our strength.

We are building that strength at home.

Since my government took office, we have cut taxes on incomes, on capital gains and business investment. We have removed all federal barriers to interprovincial trade. We are fast tracking a trillion dollars of investments in energy, AI, critical minerals, new trade corridors and beyond. We're doubling our defence spending by the end of this decade, and we're doing so in ways that build our domestic industries.

And we are rapidly diversifying abroad. We have agreed a comprehensive strategic partnership with the EU, including joining SAFE, the European defence procurement arrangements. We have signed 12 other trade and security deals on four continents in six months. The past few days, we've concluded new strategic partnerships with China and Qatar. We're negotiating free trade pacts with India, ASEAN, Thailand, Philippines and Mercosur.

We're doing something else. To help solve global problems, we're pursuing variable geometry, in other words, different coalitions for different issues based on common values and interests. So, on Ukraine, we're a core member of the Coalition of the Willing and one of the largest per capita contributors to its defence and security.

On Arctic sovereignty, we stand firmly with Greenland and Denmark, and fully support their unique right to determine Greenland's future.

Our commitment to NATO's Article 5 is unwavering, so we're working with our NATO allies, including the Nordic Baltic Gate, to further secure the alliance's northern and western flanks, including through Canada's unprecedented investments in over-the-horizon radar, in submarines, in aircraft and boots on the ground, boots on the ice.