U.S. President Donald Trump has apparently confused Spain for a member of the BRICS bloc of developing economies, causing some head-scratching and jitters over possible tariffs in Madrid.
Trump erroneously said Spain was in BRICS when a journalist asked him about NATO countries like Spain which don’t meet the NATO minimum of spending 2% of economic output on defense. Spain ranked last in the 32-nation military alliance, estimated to spend 1.28% on defense last year.
Trump started his answer by saying “Spain is very low,” referring to its defense expenditures, but quickly veered into speaking about the BRICS.
“They’re a BRICS nation, Spain. Do you know what a BRICS nation is? You’ll figure it out,” he told the reporter from the presidential desk in the Oval Office.
Trump repeated his threat to put costly tariffs on BRICS, saying “we are going to put at least a 100% tariff on the business they do with the United States,” part of his economic plans that would overturn decades of free trade consensus.
This follows a pattern of Trump trying to undermine the concept of the European Union without directly going after the European Union. This sort of statement sounds like bullshit to the sort of people who don’t need to realize it’s bullshit, but unfortunately it captivates and allures the attention of bigots everywhere who until now had to remain to keep to themselves in our societies. It follows the larger trend of radicalizing and creating cults of useful idiots, and the US under Trump will likely be used as a platform to attempt to drive it into Europe to attempt to dismantle the EU as he continue to shift to more imperialistic and militaristic approach to world politics.
i wouldn’t give him that much credit. strings are being pulled, blabbering lies get sharted out.
Then don’t, it’s basically stochastically emergent, no genius required.