U.S. President Donald Trump said on Sunday his tariff policy was aimed at promoting the domestic manufacturing of tanks and technology products, not sneakers and T-shirts.
Speaking to reporters before boarding Air Force One in New Jersey, Trump said he agreed with comments from Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent on April 29 that the U.S. does not necessarily need a “booming textile industry” - comments that drew criticism from the National Council of Textile Organizations.
“We’re not looking to make sneakers and T-shirts. We want to make military equipment. We want to make big things. We want to make, do the AI thing,” Trump said.
“I’m not looking to make T-shirts, to be honest. I’m not looking to make socks. We can do that very well in other locations. We are looking to do chips and computers and lots of other things, and tanks and ships,” Trump said.
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Then why the fuck did he put tariffs on the t-shirts? What a fucking dumbass. How is this country so full of stupid that this man was elected twice?!?
I couldn’t possibly tell you where it started, or every factor, but in the 90s there was a BIG push, in the msm, to have “both sides” opinions on everything. This was pushed by everyone, but championed by Fox. This is when I started to see people with brain dead takes, being taken as seriously, on msm, as people who have been working/studying the topic for decades. I always associated the start of this bullshit with this movement. This is where I first really started to see the “my ignorant opinion is as legitimate as your professional expertise” garbage being mainstreamed.
Someone nee got into his ear and just like that his direction changed…
Didn’t the military specifically ask for no more tanks
I love confident people explaining how a supply chain works in an advanced economy, especially when they have no clue how any of this stuff is made.
Can’t read a book, but are experts on everything from medicine to macroeconomics.
Amazing what they think they can learn from memes.
Tanks.
How very Russian.
God damn… we’re back to being on about obsolete tanks again? Fuck. Stop.
I remember seeing a lot of new tanks sitting unused and unwanted in some flyover state. The governor kept people making tanks because it would’ve killed jobs in his state.
JFC, the US was already doing that. How does anyone, let alone 150 million Americans, take this idiot seriously?
Well, it’s only about 70 million Americans that support this shit.
And another 30 million that didn’t take him seriously and didn’t vote like a bunch of fucking idiots.
How does anyone, let alone 150 million Americans, take this idiot seriously?
Well then why are you slapping tariffs on shoes and t-shirts Donnie? You fucking knob
Who you gonna sell tanks and ships to when no one trusts you to shut it off if you’ve filled your diaper?
No one. They’re not planning to sell them, they’re planning to use them.
Nazi Germany made a lot of tanks too, and they weren’t exactly looking to be the world’s arms dealer.
Yes but building tanks and ships for ones own use doesn’t help to improve the economy.
Trump and his accomplices never wanted to improve the economy.
Enriching themselves and stroking their fragile egos while taking away the rights and often lives of groups of people they don’t like is all they ever wanted.
Unchecked corruption, cruelty, and subjugation, that’s what it’s all about.
the American people (hopefully)
So why are there tariffs on clothes? Why have you shown the US to be an unreliable military partner and spurred other countries to invest in their own domestic (or semi-domestic in case of EU partnerships) arms industry?
So if you put crazy tariffs on clothing and don’t want to have clothing made in the US, do you expect people to run around naked on the long run?
That works better in Florida than it does in Minnesota.
That’s fine because the tanks are heated.
Ah yes a tank for every home and a technology in every pot.
I don’t want to pay to maintain an Abrams, but am quite happy with my insulated electric kettle that has a temperature readout. Can we just skip the tank?
One drone can take out a tank these days. Granted those are Russian designed tanks. But just thinking how my thought of what a tank could do has evaporated watching probably 100 YouTube videos of this happening.
They are taking out some US-made ones, harder, but still not justifying the cost of a tank even remotely.
Tanks are obsolete in the old sense.
This isn’t true. Tanks role in doctrine has changed. How the US would fight with drones on the field is completely different than how Ukraine or Russia are fighting.
“How the US would” would be subject to rapid change in real conditions before it adapts its doctrine to modern warfare. Since it’s the US with plenty of money in the defense and powerful companies that desperately want to test new and more efficient ways at solving problems, yeah it would.
However right now what’s known of US drones and approaches seems to be kinda expensive garbage. Good thing is that such relatively close engagements are secondary for its doctrine.
Current US doctrine relies on controlling the skies. Still right now there’s no credible threat to US air dominance. If the US has air dominance, drones in their current form are a bug attacking a tractor. Look up videos on how the US air campaign worked during Gulf War 1 and see the sheer number of assets that were on station for months waiting for the order to attack. Any enemy would be utterly exhausted by the time any attack started and the force and speed of violence would keep drones down to local threats.
That’s also not counting any drone countermeasures the US currently has and could mass deploy.
I think the US use of expensive drones is just different to what we’re seeing in Ukraine. They’re fitting into a different space than FPV drones, which isn’t bad, it’s just different.
Gulf War 1 is either just as relevant as yesterday or not relevant at all. It was a bit of a demonstrative beating.
I know, but the recent India-Pakistan contact seems to have shown that modern ways to reach those expensive assets are available to many more countries than when this doctrine was adopted. Which means that very expensive planes might sometimes be shot down, and the system disrupted.
Ukraine reaches Moscow suburbs with drones. It has almost become realistic for a hypothetical Muslim country with oil to reach something like Austin, Texas with drones. With some stages involved, maybe with recharging\refueling drones, maybe using fixed-wing drones that can glide will make more sense for such, maybe even launched from naval drones as small carriers. The point is, this has become possible. Not bug attacking a tractor, more like a host of termites attacking a tractor and it’s not good for its driver if they reach him.
Gulf War 1 is either just as relevant as yesterday or not relevant at all.
The long-term outcome of Gulf War 2 demonstrated the limitations of Gulf War 1. If you don’t have any idea of what the desired end state should be, military superiority does you very little good.
In other words, the Powell doctrine still applies, and the cost of ignoring it (as in GW2) can be hundreds of thousands of people’s lives.
I think that’s a bit far fetched. You don’t need to have something fly from Tripoli to hit the US, just send operatives here, and have them launch the attacks from the US. You could be a mile away and never get caught, hypothetically speaking.
I still think US doctrine from GW1 applies, simply because drone use is already being implemented into the current chain of command. I have a few friends that are on the RnD side of things and the non classified drone stuff they’ve talked about to me is exceptionally impressive, and augments current doctrine rather than upending it.
OK, admittedly I don’t really know a thing other than what I read, and it would make sense.
BTW, yes, launches from Russian territory much closer to targets Ukrainians do too.
russian tanks are designed for the ease of use and survivabulity of the tank, they are fast, weakly armored, big gun, have only 3 people (gunner, commander and driver) operating with an auto-loader for ammo, which means that all the loaded munition sits right under the people, and that’s why you see russian tanks go boom the instant something hits them
western tanks are designed for the survivability of the personnel, they are slower but with much more anti-tank defense, balistic shields, and have 4 people (gunner, loader, commander and driver), one more then the soviet tanks, because the extra man is the loader, which brings the ammo from the shielded munitions compartment to the gun, making it so that in the event of the tank blowing up, it just stops and breaks down but the troops inside are safe
For example:
Russian tank getting hit by a drone (watch the whole video, it has the drone’s pov as well)
That’s a bit of a simplification. IRL a western tank being hit often still means that the crew is dead. Especially now.
Also Soviet tanks’ auto-loader, I think, was there for better loading times, not ease of use. Soviet tanks were part of a doctrine where survivability wasn’t that important for either crew or tank, what mattered was achievable scale of production and deployment and firepower and speed. That’s initially, and later, well, better loading times still look good at maneuvers and the Soviet Union didn’t have much war until Afghanistan and its dissolution.
Anyway. Said western tank with its surviving crew will just be taken care of a bit later. Its crew won’t be able to get away, cause some drone will drop a grenade at them. It won’t be able to just sit in the tank, because enemy infantry will likely retrieve them, and breathing smoke is not good.
While the fact remains that a cheap drone kills an expensive tank.
Thanks for sharing your knowledge. Cheers
Tanks end up at the police station. The military doesn’t want them.
Those are generally APCs, thank god. I can only imagine the shit US cops would get up to with an actual tank
Please give him back his pacifier, and for christ sake stop taking it away from him!
But can a tank “do the AI thing”, as it were?
AI tanks. What could go wrong?
Well, if we’re talking about the Tachikomas from Ghost in the Shell, it wouldn’t be all bad. They were capable of enlightenment and self-sacrifice.
those are japanese tanks, which are more advanced.
Tesler makes tanks, the inside of the tank is all computors, xonputors do AI. Get it together man
Does the US import military hardware? I thought it was one of the largest arms manufacturers in the world.
I do know it doesn’t produce as much steel as other countries these days.
Western MIC is a collaborative effort, though the US has enough sway to either demand that American companies get the licenses to make foreign weapons, or for foreign companies to open factories (if not whole subsidiary companies) in the US. More for strategic reasons than economic ones.
The main gun on the Abrams tank is a German Rheinmetall design. The AT4 rocket we use is Swedish. We buy a lot of H&K (Germany) and FN (Belgium) small arms, in fact the latter is the main supplier of the M4 these days.
Mostly international cooperation on developing weapon systems. F-35, NASAMS, naval strike missile, RIM-116 and some Abrams parts fall under that. It gurantees international customers and lowers US development costs. Sometimes the US likes a foreign weapon systems and buys some. That is rarer though.
Still the US exports a lot more then it imports.
