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US may tie NATO contributions to tariff exemptions

Tigerace117 said:
In which case they'd be screwed regardless.
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It's rather difficult to tell the difference between "Bad Guy, beer-drinking, English speaking, Christian,White-folks, who wear the same clothes we do, and listen to the same music that we do" and "Good Guy, beer drinking, English speaking, Christian, White -folks, who wear the same clothes we do, and listen to the same music that we do" by sight.
 
TU Curmudgeon said:
It's rather difficult to tell the difference between "Bad Guy, beer-drinking, English speaking, Christian,White-folks, who wear the same clothes we do, and listen to the same music that we do" and "Good Guy, beer drinking, English speaking, Christian, White -folks, who wear the same clothes we do, and listen to the same music that we do" by sight.
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It’s rather easy to tell once the bullets start flying—-oh, and the US and Canadian militaries wore different uniforms.
 
MSgt said:
?! Is that how it works with your bills? You simply pay what you think you should pay according what you determine the electric company can have?
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It would if my contract with the electric company said that I only had to pay for what I considered necessary for the provision of facilities that I thought were appropriate for my anticipated maximum demand under any remotely reasonable set of circumstances.

If my contract with the electric company said that I had to pay whatever the electric company thought I should pay in order to provide facilities for all contingencies which the electric company could dream up - no matter how divorced from reality those contingencies were, then it wouldn't.

MSgt said:
The NATO deal was made.
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Indeed it was. The "NATO deal" was that by 2025 each member nation of NATO would be spending at least 2% of their own GDP on their own defence.

MSgt said:
European countries have historically not paid what they declared they would; and in response to that the U.S. has carried more than its weight for Europe.
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European countries have "historically" paid what they considered necessary for their own defence. Admittedly they haven't paid as much to provide the level of military that their own governments said they should provide to meet the threat that their own governments said existed as the US government said they should be paying in order to provide the level of military that the US government said that they should provide to meet the threat that the US government said existed.

MSgt said:
This history actually began with France ...
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Quite agree, the US government wasn't in the least bit involved in the "Global War on Communism".

MSgt said:
Oh, plenty of Americans are morons. Just walk the streets of Detroit and ask a few how many stars are on the flag. But the individual American is not the history text books.
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I reject the "moron" label, but I would not take the same position of "inadequately educated".

[ASIDE - Want to win a few bar bets? Ask people which flag is older, the flag of the United States of America or the flag of Canada. Do NOT give them a hint and include the word "current". By now you should have figured out the answer, so I'm not going to give it to you here.]
 
Tigerace117 said:
It’s rather easy to tell once the bullets start flying—-oh, and the US and Canadian militaries wore different uniforms.
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Who said anything about "militaries"?

We're talking about an "armed indigenous resistance" here.
 
TU Curmudgeon said:
European countries have "historically" paid what they considered necessary for their own defence. Admittedly they haven't paid as much to provide the level of military that their own governments said they should provide to meet the threat that their own governments said existed as the US government said they should be paying in order to provide the level of military that the US government said that they should provide to meet the threat that the US government said existed.
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No, they absolutely have not. And considering that both World Wars started in Europe and needed a Western Hemisphere contribution, I don't think Europeans have a clue about what constitutes a proper defense for themselves.

Throughout the Cold War, they parked behind a non-NATO American military and did the bare minimum. They shrugged at carrying their own weight for their own continent behind an American military presence in Europe. They were let off the hook and Europeans exploited that to define "necessary." So, when it came to 9/11 and European countries wanted to be involved, there appeared an opportunity to make NATO relevant. Yet, U.S. air (not NATO) had to move European troops. So not only do they continue to be ill-equipped for their own defense, NATO's relevance towards supporting the U.S. continues to rely on the U.S. doing the heavy lifting. In other words, more than its fair share.


TU Curmudgeon said:
Quite agree, the US government wasn't in the least bit involved in the "Global War on Communism".
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The point being, European countries couldn't even deal with their own colonies without dragging the U.S. in. Supporting French colonies in Indochina and eventually supporting British concerns over "their" oil in Iran was not NATO. That was the U.S. All they had to do was use the "communist" argument and funds, equipment, and troops/CIA rolled in. In the mean time, they needed the U.S. to do for them both inside the European continent and out. It had/has nothing to do with what they deemed "necessary" and everything to do with looking to do the bare minimum for themselves at the U.S.' expense. So, to go back to your original statement about the U.S. "NOT 'pulling its weight' in supporting NATO", we should probably acknowledge the history of this and see that the U.S. has, in fact, carried far more weight than it ever needed to for Europe.

TU Curmudgeon said:
I reject the "moron" label, but I would not take the same position of "inadequately educated".
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Moron works. Ask those same people what a Kardashian or a Duck Dynasty is.
 
TU Curmudgeon said:
https://apnews.com/0e8965f9c46a481ba3929da5cdc2101b/US-may-tie-NATO-contributions-to-tariff-exemptions




  1. Canada spends around 1% of its annual GDP on its military and around 90% of that goes toward NATO commitments. That means that Canada "contributes" around 0.9% of its annual GDP to NATO.
  2. Germany spends around 1.2% of its annual GDP on its military and around 90% of that goes toward NATO commitments. That means that Germany "contributes" around 1.08% of its annual GDP to NATO.
  3. France spends around 2.2% of its annual GDP on its military and around 90% of that goes toward NATO commitments. That means that France "contributes" around 1.98% of its annual GDP to NATO.
  4. The UK spends around 1% of its annual GDP on its military and around 90% of that goes toward NATO commitments. That means that the UK "contributes" around 1.98% of its annual GDP to NATO.
  5. The US spends around 3.5% of its annual GDP on its military and around 20% of that goes toward NATO commitments. That means that the US "contributes" around 0.7% of its annual GDP to NATO.

That raises the interesting question of "Which country is NOT 'pulling its weight' in supporting NATO?", doesn't it?

Is it ingenious to take a position based on 0.7% is more than 1.98% (or even 0.9%), or is it simply uninformed?
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Under the NATO defense spending agreement, members are supposed to meet and maintain 2 percent of GDP

Thanks for showing that our NATO allies continue to leach off the US, just as they have since 1949
 
MSgt said:
No, they absolutely have not. And considering that both World Wars started in Europe and needed a Western Hemisphere contribution, I don't think Europeans have a clue about what constitutes a proper defense for themselves.
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I didn't say that the Europeans had been right, only that they had paid what they considered to be appropriate.

Indeed WWI and WWII "needed a Western Hemisphere contribution" - that contribution started in 1914 (for WWI) and 1939 (for WWII). However, for some "western Hemisphere" countries, the periods between 1914 and 1917 and between 1939 and 1941 were looked on as heaven sent opportunities to make huge profits while "beggaring" countries that they considered to be economic rivals.

MSgt said:
... NATO's relevance towards supporting the U.S. ...
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NATO is not designed to "support the US government's foreign policy.

MSgt said:
The point being, European countries couldn't even deal with their own colonies without dragging the U.S. in. Supporting French colonies in Indochina and eventually supporting British concerns over "their" oil in Iran was not NATO. That was the U.S.[/QUOTE

Quite right. It had nothing whatsoever to do with NATO.
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Fenton said:
Under the NATO defense spending agreement, members are supposed to meet and maintain 2 percent of GDP

Thanks for showing that our NATO allies continue to leach off the US, just as they have since 1949
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Under the NATO defence spending agreement, members are supposed to meet and maintain military spending of 2% of their GDP by the year 2025.

The last time I looked at my calendar, it wasn't the year 2025 yet. Is my calendar wrong?
 
TU Curmudgeon said:
That raises the interesting question of "Which country is NOT 'pulling its weight' in supporting NATO?", doesn't it?

Is it ingenious to take a position based on 0.7% is more than 1.98% (or even 0.9%), or is it simply uninformed?
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Uhh - heard of math? When the US GDP is so much larger than any of these other countries, then why wouldn't its 0.7% be larger than the contributions od others?
Furthermore, when the US has to deal with security issues far beyond the European theater, why would it be expected that 90% of its military spending be for NATO?
 
sanman said:
Uhh - heard of math? When the US GDP is so much larger than any of these other countries, then why wouldn't its 0.7% be larger than the contributions od others?
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Indeed, in absolute terms, it would be - as a percentage of GDP is isn't.

Of course, if the US had a "Flat Tax" (which a lot of "conservatives" say is much "fairer" than the current system) of (let's say) 10% then wouldn't someone who earned $100,000,000 "pay a lot more" than someone who earned a mere $50,000?

That would, obviously, grossly unfair so the only "fair" thing to do is to have everyone pay exactly the same amount of tax as everyone else?

That would work out to (roughly) $12,000 per person and would leave a family of four with the statistically average "household income" of around $52,000 with a total of around $4,000 per year to live on. A single income family of four where the income earner was paid less than $22.43 would, of course, have less than $0.00 per year to live on.

The funding formula, like the funding formula for the UN, was the funding formula that the government of the United States of America insisted on.

Now here is a fact that you might not have noticed. The total 2017 budget for NATO is $2,334,000,000 (military $1.38 billion, civilian budget $252 million, and NSIP $704 million) which is roughly 0.38% of the TOTAL US "defence" budget (it's also roughly the cost of 23.3 F-35s). Canada spends $15,500,000,000 on "defence". Is $15.5B more or less than $2.334B?

What people are talking about is not "spending on NATO" but rather "spending on their own defence" and there is no "international agreement" that every country in the world has to rely on what the government of the United States of America says is needed to defend themselves (based on what the government of the United States of America says the "threat" is).

In terms of percentage of GDP spent on "defence" the US ranks as number 11. Both the PRC and Taiwan spend less than 2% of their GDP on "defence" (and, in fact, spend the same percentage of their GDP on "defence" as does the UK). Algeria spends more than double the percentage of its GDP on "defence" as the United States of America does.
 
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