Netizen: 21: Donald Trump

Six Weeks From Zero (novel)
The Dawn Beyond Currency (Part 1) (novel)
The Dawn Beyond Currency (Part 2) (novel)
The Great Subcontinent Uprising (Part 1) (novel)
The Great Subcontinent Uprising (Part 2) (novel)
The Great Subcontinent Uprising (novel)
The Banyan Revolt (novel)
Gen Z Kranti (novel)
The Protocol of Greatness (novel)
Madhya York: The Merchant and the Mystic (novel)
The Garden Of Last Debates (novel)
The Drum Report: Markets, Tariffs, and the Man in the Basement (novel)
Trump’s Default: The Mist Of Empire (novel)
Deported (novel)
Empty Country (novel)
Poetry Thursdays (novel)

Our mission is to build a world of amazing abundance
— Tesla (@Tesla) January 20, 2026

Book: Agentic AI: Set To Explode In 2026 https://t.co/EbPvYFBOLi
Book: The Technologies Behind Agentic AI https://t.co/O6CkqjDXOQ
— Paramendra Kumar Bhagat (@paramendra) January 21, 2026

In the latest Social Radars we talk to @christinacaci of Vanta. Christina is a case study in agency. She actually did all the things founders know they ought to do, but don't have the discipline to.https://t.co/M7IFiimSAB pic.twitter.com/SMqDzRVpzQ
— Jessica Livingston (@jesslivingston) January 20, 2026

One of the most interesting parts of my convo w/ @demishassabis: He would support a “pause” on AI if he knew all companies + countries would do it — so society and regulation could catch up pic.twitter.com/fgJWJnRcOf
— Emily Chang (@emilychangtv) January 20, 2026

Pat @gradypb and Sonya @sonyatweetybird captured it well: AGI, in practice, is the ability to just figure things out. And we’re starting to see that happen.

There's no single benchmark that captures the shift, because it's orchestration and context working together. AI can now… https://t.co/DbMnHdmbBy
— Arvind Jain (@jainarvind) January 20, 2026

Sometimes you complain about ChatGPT being too restrictive, and then in cases like this you claim it's too relaxed. Almost a billion people use it and some of them may be in very fragile mental states. We will continue to do our best to get this right and we feel huge… https://t.co/U6r03nsHzg
— Sam Altman (@sama) January 20, 2026

Mars, Google Glass, and the Zuck Helmet https://t.co/6cp6eFighW
— Paramendra Kumar Bhagat (@paramendra) January 21, 2026

🌍 The AI Frontier: Sovereign Systems and Global Education Foundations https://t.co/UzQtJ4a7CL
— Paramendra Kumar Bhagat (@paramendra) January 21, 2026

MAGA Delusions of Economic Leverage Europe can easily stand up to Trump’s bullying ............ Trump is completely irrational. No, his obsessive thirst for Greenland isn’t about national security. Under the NATO alliance, the U.S. already had liberty to do what it wanted strategically. And as withVenezuela, any mineral deposits that Greenland possesses may be too expensive to extract to be investible. ............. Trump himself has told us what’s going on: he’s throwing a temper tantrum over not receiving a Nobel Peace Prize — not how he put it, but that was the gist of his text to Norway’s prime minister. And there’s no reason to disbelieve him, even though Scott Bessent says that quoting Trump’s own words is a “complete canard.” ............... beating the drum about Greenland serves multiple other purposes: deflecting attention from Renee Good’s murder, the Epstein files, and his sagging poll ratings; humiliating the Europeans, who he hates for their decency and strong democracies; and getting another testosterone rush from flexing American military muscle. But it’s mostly just a tantrum. ........... we can say something about the likely effects of his attempt to coerce Europe with tariffs — namely, that it won’t work. Only in Trump’s fantasies does American possess huge economic leverage over Europe. To the extent that we have any leverage over them, it’s matched by the leverage they have over us. ................

The starting point for any discussion of Trump’s tariff threats should be the observation that tariffs are a tax on U.S. consumers and businesses, not foreigners.

.............. Foreign producers have not, contrary to Trump’s predictions, absorbed the tariffs by significantly cutting the prices they were charging U.S. customers. ............. in 2025 the average tariff on goods imported from China went from 11 percent to 37 percent, but the average price the U.S. was paying for those goods fell only slightly, less than 3 percent. ...............
in 2025, foreigners absorbed only 4 percent of the cost of Trump’s tariffs. This means that Americans are paying 96 percent of the cost of the tariffs.
.............. Trump’s imposition of tariffs on European nations that have sent troops to Greenland is basically a declaration that he will punish American consumers and businesses until Europe gives him what he wants. ................. The European economy is huge — almost as big, in dollar terms, as the U.S. economy — and doesn’t depend crucially on the U.S. market. It’s worth noting that very high US tariffs on China haven’t appeared to slow China’s economic growth at all. ................. if America and Europe get into a trade war, U.S. companies will be hit as hard as European companies. That’s because America sells almost as much to Europe as Europe sells to America: ............. U.S. producers sell about 8 dollars’ worth of goods and services to Europe for every 9 dollars’ worth of European sales to America. And even that small asymmetry is largely a statistical illusion caused by leprechaun economics: Irish subsidiaries of U.S. companies, especially pharmaceutical producers, charge their parent companies inflated prices so as to shift reported profits to Ireland, which has a lower corporate tax rate. ............ The reason Trump is imposing tariffs on eight European countries is that they dared to send troops to Greenland to forestall a possible U.S. invasion — a pretty gutsy move. ................ Beyond the fact that Europe is toughening up militarily, it has the capacity to be tough, acting in unity, in international trade. Individual European countries don’t choose their own tariff rates: The European Commission sets tariffs for the EU as a whole. .............. the EU has a procedure — the Anti-Coercion Instrument — designed to allow the rapid imposition of serious sanctions against any nation that tries to use economic pressure “to pressure the European Union or an EU Member State into making a particular choice.” This instrument, nicknamed the trade bazooka, was designed with China in mind, but it obviously applies to the United States right now, as Trump tries to use tariffs to force European nations to acquiesce in his Greenland land grab. ..................... the legal basis for stiff European retaliation against the U.S. looks infinitely stronger than the legal basis for Trump’s tariffs. But the Supreme Court keeps emboldening Trump by repeatedly delaying a ruling on the legality of his invocation of emergency powers to impose most of his tariffs. At this point the Court’s cowardice is unmistakable; the justices’ robes must be drenched in flop sweat. ....... The predicament Europeans find themselves in now is the result of their previous lack of resolve. And the next time around will only be worse.