Cold War II

[Kane]

[JDHURF]

[ToddStarnes]

What are the other options?

[Saz]

[Saz]

[ToddStarnes]

"Look all I said is it would be crazy to get into a trade war when they hold a trillion in treasuries okay? That's it. That's all there is to it and your platitudes dont disprove my point."

[exploited]

Well, Trump f**k us, yet again.

It is kind of hard for your allies to cooperate with you when your President will stand up and reveal all his cards at the quickest possible opportunity. You can't create leverage or use it when you will literally just start blathering about your plans on national television. Not only did he do this, he took away all plausible deniability that our country had. We were playing this in the correct way - "we are merely responding to a legal extradition request" - but that gets blown out of the water when the President will outright say he views this as a bargaining chip.

Now we've got an ex-diplomat in chains in China. They promise to treat him in accordance with the rule of law.

f**k you America.

[Kane]

Sorry but...I don't think how Trump is acting necessitated retaliation. China is checking Canada to see where its priorities are - why didn't the Chinese do this to an american? Because they're in the middle of negotiations and their options here are limited. But on the periphery they can prod to see if there's any chance of weakness in Mexico, Canada, etc. To think that China would restrain itself after Canada honored a warrant on the basis of extradition is to ignore reality - a game is being played.

Trump's always acted like an idiot. It's a useful foil for instances like this but it's not what's at play. China would've retaliated either way.

[spacemonkey]

[exploited]