Donald Trump on Monday, January 19 threatened 200% tariffs on French wine and champagne over France’s intentions to decline the US leader’s invitation to join his “board of peace.” The board was originally conceived to oversee the rebuilding of war-torn Gaza, but the charter does not appear to limit its role to the occupied Palestinian territory.
“I’ll put a 200% tariff on his wines and champagnes. And he’ll join. But he doesn’t have to join,” Trump said, referring to French President Emmanuel Macron. A source close to Macron told AFP on Monday that France “does not intend to answer favorably” to the invitation.
The board’s charter “goes beyond the sole framework of Gaza,” the source close to the French president said.
Exactly, and there are way to few that are willing to risk anything to try to stop him.
I just saw a video by an analyst (Anders Puck Nielsen) that dismissed the idea that Trump would invade Greenland, because he claimed Trump wouldn’t be allowed to do it.
This is a channel I very much respect for usually having very good analysis of the current situation.
But in this case, it was just so far off I was shocked. Because obviously Trump wouldn’t ask permission, and the people in the administration actually want him to do it.
And we’ve seen evidence the military is already preparing, forming the Arctic force under.
Trump has all the support he needs to do it, believing someone would stop him is ridiculous.
It’s normalcy bias. Career analysts, people that have made their living predicting the next major geopolitical shift, are more vulnerable to it than your average Joe. The world has operated one way for their entire lives, and it’s very difficult for most people to see that the rules of play have completely and irrevocably shifted.
They assume that the US won’t do something this patently self-destructive because the US has (mostly) operated on a logical set of self-interested principles dressed up in the language of “Democracy” and “Freedom”. The idea that it would blow its own kneecaps off while overtly and clearly talking the language of imperialism and might makes right is so outside their experience that it’s unthinkable until the spell of normalcy bias is broken.