[luckydata]

You will not find a person that despises current POTUS more than me, but I'm also very positive about the fact that China is finally being identified as a real and present threat.

Unfortunately current POTUS is doing his very best to implement ineffective measures, it would have hurt China a LOT more to enter into TPP (I know, horrible treaty otherwise) than the stupid tariffs that were imposed.

At the end of the day, as a society we need to come to grips with a simple question: do we as a society keep doing business with a country that behaves like an enemy in any way that matters, and commits genocide and mass censorship of free speech for the profit of private corporations, or we say that our values (as imperfect in their application as they might be) are worth more than money?

I'm not holding my breath for us doing the right thing.

[gdy]

"we say that our values (as imperfect in their application as they might be) are worth more than money"

The US keeps selling weapons to the Saudi Arabia that uses them to wage a war of aggression in Yemen, that has brazenly murdered a journalist working for an American newspaper, that executes opposition figures based on fake charges of terrorism, that treats women and gays as inferior.

What sort of values are you talking about?

It's not an 'imperfect application' of the values that American propaganda attributes to America, it's exactly the opposite of them.

[luckydata]

You're entitled to your opinion, and free to state it, and that's exactly one of the values our constitution enshrines.

The others can be found here:

https://constitutionus.com/

for the philosophical underpinnings read this:

http://www.ushistory.org/declaration/document/

If you live in the US and don't like what's going on right now, I suggest you register to vote and help others do the same. For all the evident problems laid bare by the current administration, it's completely within the people's power to build a more perfect union.

[gdy]

The US has been selling weapons to Saudi Arabia for many decades. Free speech, philosophical underpinnings and voting haven't changed that.

From outside it looks like 'do as I say not as I do'.

I live in Russia and we had a constitution saying all the good things in the Stalin's time and we have even better one now.

[luckydata]

if you don't like the US selling weapons to the Saudis then I suggest you politely ask your government to stop interfering in our elections.

I guarantee results in about 14 months.

[gdy]

I don't like your country's hypocrisy.

It didn't start with Trump and I have no reason to think it will end with Trump.

As for Saudi Arabia, I have little doubts Russia will gladly sell them any weapon they want provided it is for sale at all.

[thawaway1837]

Obama (and Bush before him) identified China as a threat at least a decade ago, that’s why the US entered the TPP discussions in early 2008, and if the US had ratified, would have been a significantly more effective strategy that would have enhanced the US’s economic and geopolitical position and hurt China’s as opposed to this, which is damaging the US significantly, and while hurting China’s domestic economy, strengthening it on the global stage relative to the US.

Trump has not been a leader, but he has definitely been loud and used a “let’s throw a tantrum till I get what I want” approach, which makes far more noise, but achieves far less.