No Stupid Questions

What the rest of the world is mainly doing is jockeying for position while watching America rapidly lose global reserve currency status.

It is happening far more quickly than I think the vast majority of people without privileged information imagined. Trump wants a weakened dollar and is getting it. No one wants this to happen overnight; the instability this process is allowing and will cause is risky enough. Everyone wants to avoid simmering global conflict erupting into WW3. Well maybe Putin is up for it, I don't know. The US is a belligerent ally, and has the biggest military in the world so it is about treading lightly and hopefully preparing.

It is about minimising risk, eating shit giving in to Trump's pathetic demands for fealty, while preparing for the new economic order to emerge. America cannot pay its military without everyone trusting it enough to buy its debt. America cannot pay its debts without its military supporting the dollar. So it is a tricky unwinding of decades of geo-political norms. The world cannot wait to see who America votes for every four years for global stability, so it is done. It is clear to me that very few Americans I came into contact with online ever appreciated this balancing act, or how important their vast military spending was to their country's wealth post ww2.

I feel bad for the average non-Trump voting American because as a Brit I can tell you that there is always resentment that plays out once a country loses that reserve currency status. A people can make a mistake, but a second Trump vote is unforgivable. It is America throwing itself off a cliff economically, over the longer term. Billionaires are clearly getting stuck into filling their boots - this collapse is going to make some people very rich.

For americas enemies: Don't interupt your enemy in the process of making a mistake.
For americas allies: Don't poke a wounded bear.

what are they going to do? look at what happens in the UN when the US and Israel the only ones who vote a certain way and nobody gives a shit

Here at South America we are still starting to come to sense that the usa has been ruling over us for quite a while. There’s not much we can do. Some countries are just at a level you have those votes that are 150 to 1 and the one wins (USA).

Other countries are learning how to separate themselves economically from the US more.

Countries need to reduce their dependency on the US first:

• The US is the strongest force within NATO, so with Russia getting more aggressive, Europe and Canada need to quickly build up a stronger army.
• The US is NATO's largest supplier of weapons, so Europe and Canada need to invest in their weapons industry.
• The US is the worlds largest manufacturer of CPU's and GPU's. While there are non-US alternatives, these are not as good and are designed for custom build electronics rather than desktops, laptops and servers.
• Most international payments go via the US (even a lot of international payments within Europe). Countries need to persuade their banks to find new ways to do international payments, but the current system is pretty advantages for the banks, so they are reluctant to agree.
• Most cloud infrastructure is in the US. Other countries will need to move their data out of the US.
• The US is a large provider of humanitarian aid, and the largest exporter of food. Poor countries will have to find a new way to get those resources.

They are sanctioning themselves.

Because the US is the biggest market and they'd rather make money then do the right thing.

Because our leaders are pussies. If we all league against them we could raze the country in no time

well, here in canada, we kinda don't want war atm.

Nukes.

The rest of the world is slowly routing everything around the USA. Assuming things turns back, there will be a lot to rebuild in matter of trust and commerce.

Now, if you're talking about what happens inside the USA, well, what do you propose other countries do? Invade? Because that's not happening. There's enough to do for damage control outside of it.

Trump has inspired more trade side deals between countries than any US President in history. It will take 5-10 years to notice but it cannot be reversed and the US will feel the result of an isolationist economy like once Great Britain.

Canada is signing new trade deals every month with not the USA.

There are 200 countries and the US is one relatively small, isolated pocket hurting mostly themselves.

US problems benefit their rivals immensely and are influencing their former allies to become more independent and form new local alliances; there's no benefit to either to long jump into one isolated hornet's nest.

Sanctions are specifically difficult against the US because 1) they're largely hurting themselves, most countries don't agree the US is doing the wrong thing about Palestine/ foreign/other policy to warrant sanctions and 2) the US still has so much rapidly dwindling legacy political and financial/banking influence that sanctions won't make much of an immediate impact if an issue to sanction was agreed upon.

If your dog starts defecating on the floor and rolling around in it, you clean up your dog.

If your neighbor starts defecating on their floor and rolling around in it, well...

Strong bullies are not easy to deal with without stronger authorities imposing common sense... it is a wild regime were the strongest impose their will without significant consequences

Canadians are not buying America's shit, and are unlikely to resume that habit anytime soon. It doesn't take effect immediately, but when you compound it with the other ass backwards trade policies you're living under now you will all be suffering greatly within a year.

So will everyone, mind you.

The rest of the world has done various responses to the American trade war. Most everybody else has found other partners to do business with and those that haven't are soon about to. America is not hurting other countries economically as much as they are hurting themselves. The entire ICE thing is terrible and it is too bad the government agencies have given in and that the military seems to be rolling with it too. But it is still domestic affairs as long there isn't any proof of concentration camps or massacres or the like. We have lots of empathy for the people in America suffering from all of this.

But then again...

You guys have free elections and this is your democratically elected leader doing what he promised to do. You guys had him elected after he staged a failed coup once already. What do you expect the rest of the world to do about it? To save you guys from yourselves?

Sorry, dude. We're busy dealing with our own national problems, trying to block Chat Control in EU, support Ukraine and deal with the entire Russia scenario, try to stop the genocide in Gaza, and a bazillion other more pressing things than dealing with problems America had caused for itself.

Because they are too powerful as an enemy. If they were the size of denmark, they wouldnt get away with anything.

The entire economy of the western world is also extreamly connected to the US. Our pension funds invest in their tech stocks, our financial systems use the dollar.. And a lot more things that i dont even know.

America is pretty much running the western world. Like it or not. :/

They also spent almost all their money on weapons and high tech support systems. Their "defence" budget is larger than entire Europe.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_with_highest_military_expenditures

Just look at these numbers. America, almost 1000 billion dollars. China, 300 billion, Russia 150 billion, everyone else much much less.

Its a crazy country.

Doctorow's as usual excellent take also touches on this:

https://pluralistic.net/2025/11/01/redistribution-vs-predistribution/#elbows-up-eurostack

TL;DR: it's not so much only the US, it's corporate (quasi-)monopolies, and those operate in a lot of countries.

We’re doing what we can, I personally boycott US products as much as I can.

Who watches the watchman?

Because it is kind of an act. The US is restructuring for a strong China and the other western countries support that.

There is no way that US billionaires can be blamed for controlling politics to exploit workers but then are incapable of removing Trump.

The same has happened in something like 25 % of countries, and they haven't gotten sanctioned for that.
Most of our diamonds and cobalt and cocoa come from countries that have similar problems as USA now does.

Have a look into what other countries did with the rise of nazis.

Business liked it.

As a German, what do you think we could do? Even with our experience we're having fun with the far right Afd and the other parties are basically doing everything to get more voters to them!

Oh and we're still highly dependant on us technology and services (ms, cloud, etc) although all this could be seen coming for years now. 🤷

"nobody could've known!"

trump is literally issuing sanctions on his own citizens and they applaud him for it. i don't think sanctions will work here 🤷‍♂️

I think they're just keeping their heads down and not poking the bear. He's already blindly striking out at imaginary percieved insults. They're just riding out the next few years and hoping to not make anything worse.

Plus, it's not their job. It's the US's job to clean up the bed they shit in.

they are, by not giving tourism dollars to the welfare states, and not going to usa. plus the tariffs has caused china to redirect thier soy bean addiction to the same country that trump is bailing out. unfortunately they are finally starting to bailout soybean farmers as of recently.

Unfortunately by sanctioning the US, they would be sanctioning themselves. The world just needs to wait for the orange madman to destroy the US economy, which is well on the way.

Send the man a Luger, to be stored in the bunker under the Epstein ballroom

Because