[Quarrel]

> Stop payment resulted in the US pulling from the pre payment for the F35s...

Which Switzerland then reluctantly agreed was allowed under the terms.

As you say, totally being taken to the cleaners, and it is unclear how they escape in the short term.

The more this happens though, the more deals like Italy's make senese, irrespective of the performance comparison of the two planes.

If the US is going to be an unreliable partner, that will filter through in many many ways, and the US can hardly blame anyone but themselves (well, I'm sure some fingers will get pointed internally).

[Beretta_Vexee]

It’s not just Europeans who are beginning to realize that the U.S. can’t be trusted; Australians are still waiting for a hypothetical delivery date for their AUKUS submarines.

The Gulf states find themselves with too few interceptor missiles and a war in Iran.

The Japanese and Koreans are building as many war ships as they can.

[tokai]

I don't understand why US weapons manufactures are not lobbying harder. They are losing the European market just as the largest rearmament since ww2 happens.

Maybe they are and its just a lost cause with the US administration.

[helsinkiandrew]

> I don't understand why US weapons manufactures are not lobbying harder

It doesn’t really matter if your product is better or cheaper, if the customer thinks that service and spare parts might possibly be withdrawn in the future for political (or whatever) reasons they won’t buy your product.

[tokai]

That is what they need the political lobbying for. Obviously not to help their pricing.

[hgoel]

If you mean they need to lobby the US government to be less schizophrenic, I agree. Though I suspect the government would just decide to start more wars.

If you mean they need to lobby the other governments, I don't think that'll work, the decreasing trust is associated with the US government's actions, not as related to the arms dealers' actions.

[thuridas]

Can you lobby to make Trump become not Trump?

[Spooky23]

Yes.

He’s a simple creature. Just pay the man and/or his kids off. Remember the funny video comparing Oracle and Larry Ellison to a lawn mower? He is the same.

[vkou]

You can lobby congress to put him in a 6x6 cell. For any reason whatsoever, including no reason whatsoever. Their trials are ultimately a yes/no vote, the facts don't matter.

They are just as complicit in failing to exercise their power.

[dboreham]

There are other rich people lobbying harder to protect other businesses not impacted by the ally double-crossing.

[shimman]

So they need lobbying to lie to customers? Why would that help people choose Boeing when it ultimately is up the whims of one single individual that can drastically change moods every four years?

There is a reason why imperialism ultimately always fails.

[tokai]

No. You do understand how lobbying works right? You don't lobby your customers, you lobby that single individual. Which has never been easier as the current one takes bribes almost directly and has no true opinions.

[jandrewrogers]

A major issue is that the US manufacturers cannot keep up with demand even as they scale up production capacity. The current order backlog of approved foreign military sales of US weapons systems is approaching $1T and growing faster than they can fill the orders.

This is creating secondary fallout as the orders from various countries get re-prioritized. It is not strictly first-come, first-served order fulfillment; you can find your order pushed back in the queue for reasons.

[expedition32]

This is why nations need to have their own industrial capacity. Because when shit hits the fan everyone needs guns- and they have a limited time frame until war breaks out.

[SecretDreams]

They're very scared of their boss and the CEOs are short sighted by virtue of their compensation packages.

[vrganj]

The rearmament is mostly happening because the US has shown itself a bad unreliable partner that abuses interdependence.

No lobbying can change the risk assessment where America is the risk factor.

[Spooky23]

Don’t think of them as companies in the normal sense. There’s no meaningful competition anymore and they have rolled everything up. They are essentially national industries now.

[8note]

itll be hard for US weapons manufacturers to win when a big part of the rearmament is going to be around deterring the US just as much as deterring Russia

[newtonianrules]

You have to understand that the smartest people in the US didn’t vote for this administration and are just as horrified as everyone else with how inept and pathetic this administration is. Unfortunately we’re a minority, the senate’s design (Wyoming has the same number of senators as California even though a small city in CA may have more people than the whole state) and the US is so ridiculously gerrymandered.

Sorry everybody but we just have to wait this stupidity out.

[stouset]

This stupidity is not going to simply be waited out. It is becoming even further entrenched.

[ericmay]

There are a lot of issues in the American political system but the structure of the Senate is not one of those.

It was explicitly created as a way to balance sovereignty of the states against populism, such as that enacted by MAGA or leftists.

If you are a small state like Vermont, you don’t want to just have California, New York, and Texas dictating all rules and laws for the country by sheer weight of their population sizes. That is expressed in the House, but the Senate serves to balance that and ensure that populists don’t run roughshod over the country.

Without such a structure states with less population would either band together and create their own super states - and you can see where this leads, or they wouldn’t have agreed to join the US in the first place.

[wolvoleo]

> That is expressed in the House, but the Senate serves to balance that and ensure that populists don’t run roughshod over the country.

Yet that is exactly what has been happening twice now.

[ericmay]

Well, dissolving the Senate would just make that problem even worse if that's your viewpoint. "Twice now" seems to be a dig at Trump as though MAGA is the only populist movement, but ANTIFA/BLM and other, similar populist groups have taken hold of power in various forms as well, primarily in certain west coast states and cities.

[vkou]

Antifa and BLM have the political power of a mouse fart. Please don't compare them to the elephant in the room.

[boustrophedon]

Yes, if anything the issue is that the House was capped in seats in 1929 and the population has tripled. Smaller states have an outsized representation in Congress currently.

[ericmay]

I'm strongly in favor of expanding the House. I failed to mention that in my original post.

[coryrc]

Vermonters might not want that because they hold outsized influence on the direction of the country, but then they shouldn't pretend to believe in Democracy.

So, yes, 50 million people should have more say over the country's direction than 1 million. We should stop pretending we have 55 mini countries, because the Supreme Court has stopped pretending we have a 10th Amendment.

[ericmay]

> Vermonters might not want that because they hold outsized influence on the direction of the country, but then they shouldn't pretend to believe in Democracy.

A Republic is a form of democracy. Having a Senate in the structure that we do is entirely consistent with democratic principles. To suggest otherwise is incorrect and counter to established definitions in the realm of political philosophy.

> So, yes, 50 million people should have more say over the country's direction than 1 million. We should stop pretending we have 55 mini countries, because the Supreme Court has stopped pretending we have a 10th Amendment.

Right, like how Donald Trump and his 75 million voters get to have more sway of Kamala Harris' voters (I don't recall the exact losing number)?

Nevermind that the state of Vermont is a sovereign entity in our constitutional republic. To modify this existing arrangement you give opportunity for certain states to leave (pro-Russian viewpoints try break up the US - don't fall for them!) since they are deciding as sovereign entities whether or not to participate in the Republic. If you are upset about the 10th Amendment or whatever then you're throwing the baby out with the bathwater, and inviting a Civil War or something similar. I say nah to that. We'll keep the existing system because it's pretty damn good.

[coryrc]

We are supposed to have a REPRESENTATIVE Democratic Republic, but it's no longer representative when you have orders of magnitude difference in representation.

> Right, like how Donald Trump and his 75 million voters get to have more sway of Kamala Harris' voters

They do in the Presidential race (and only because of FPTP and because we don't have i.e. approval voting), but they shouldn't control the House as well (because trump voters don't always vote R for reps).

States aren't sovereign entities -- they can't make agreements with foreign countries that isn't granted by Congress.

[oa335]

> It was explicitly created as a way to balance sovereignty of the states against populism, such as that enacted by MAGA or leftists.

that only works if the smaller states are not representative of the larger majority of the population.

instead, nowadays the smaller states are actually over-representative of the populist mass - e.g Wyoming is 80% white.

[ericmay]

You're misunderstanding the purpose of the Senate, whether Wyoming is 80% white or black or any other random race. The point is that it exists as a sovereignty vote. To take it away would be to cause a civil war or at least a dissolution of the United States because smaller states will walk away.

A lot of the anti-American, anti-Senate, &c. stuff is Russian propaganda precisely because to continue to sow division and encourage populism is to invite destruction and disunity upon the United States.

[oa335]

i understand the purpose of the senate and believe that bicameralism is a good idea and populism is generally bad.

you seem to not understand my point so ill give it one more try:

senate was indeed formed as a bulwark against populism, but the founders didnt anticipate a 68 to 1 population difference between the largest and smallest states (california vs. wyoming), nor the vast differences in composition of their populations. when a tiny fraction of the population holds that much disproportionate veto power, the senate no longer checks populism, it actively empowers a specific, rural populist minority to override the majority.

[oscillonoscope]

This might have made sense for the original 13 colonies but after westward expansion, it clearly does not. Most of the western state borders were formed for administrative reasons

[ericmay]

It still makes sense today. It's not perfect but it's a pretty good balance most of the time.

[oscillonoscope]

Congress is completely nonfunctional. It doesn't work. Americans are just too dedicated to American civic religion to admit it isn't working.

[spaniard89277]

Waiting it out was the first strategy in Europe but it's clearly moving into something else.

[krior]

> Sorry everybody but we just have to wait this stupidity out.

And the rest of the world has to suffer the consequences. It has been incredible watching americans shrugging off any responsibility.

Insufferable hypocrites.

[mmooss]

> the smartest people in the US didn’t vote for this administration

Trump has support from SV and Wall Street leaders, and the whole Republican Party.

> gerrymandered

Trump won the popular vote, and iirc the GOP got more total votes for the House of Representatives. What about for the Senate? Sure NY and CA are big, but so are FL and TX.

[kashunstva]

Are SV and Wall Street leaders demonstrably the smartest people in the U.S.? Or just the greediest and most venal?

[defrost]

See: Borromean rings.

[spamizbad]

You can’t lobby the Trump or “America First” crowd to not be themselves.