So is it misconstruing what I've said or just reimagining what I've said so that your original errors are papered over.

I never NEVER talked about what a prudent government would do EXCEPT as regards what I assume our prudent government would be doing vis a vis beef. I didn't link those actions with what Apple's doing or what GM are doing, or what the Europeans, or Portuguese are doing. That's all in your imagination.

Every nation, every US company, every large international company for that matter (Hyundai are in discussions about ship building) will have a different approach to the new regime. Our approach will likely revolve around re-examining our beef policies. US car makers will be looking to what part of their process can be done in the US. Europe is looking to even up the trade imbalance in other ways by buying more US stuff. etc etc etc

But you conflated all that into one big narrative with one outcome, one cause one thought-process. I can't help that your over-simplifications lead you down the garden path.

"is mere branding, not analysis."

If you say so! Mere assertion isn't convincing though. But I think you don't really know what 'analysis' is

mhaze,

Here we go again: yesterday’s sweeping claim become today’s “nuanced collage of unrelated examples.”

You placed Apple repatriating jobs, Mexico and Canada relocating businesses, Europe buying fossil fuels, and Australia rethinking quarantine laws all within the same paragraph, under the clear implication that they were ripple effects of Trump’s tariffs. That wasn’t framed as a mosaic - it was a cause-and-effect showcase.

Only after pushback did the certainty start to splinter: suddenly “begging” became “engaging,” definitive outcomes became “hypotheticals,” and your confidence turned into condescension towards me becuase I dared to take your claims at face value.

You’re right that countries and companies will respond in different ways. But if you want to hold all those responses up as validation of Trump’s “Art of the Deal,” then yes - it’s on you to show more than a string of headlines and assumptions. That’s the difference between analysis and spin.

And let’s be honest - you’ve been leaning hard on spin for a while now.

Good on yah John Daysh, absolutely trashed the sycophantic Trumpster's argument on this. In the face of a spectacular crash on Wall St and plummeting consumer confidence in US, The Orange Man was forced to retreat with his tariff nonsense, looking the fool, with his pants on fire!

The US is now "begging" China for a trade deal. Trump is "racing" to do a deal with Beijing. We should thank China as the one country that stood up to Trumps bullyboy tactics, and gave the Orange Man a black eye with his BS!

" suddenly “begging” became “engaging,”"

I never used the word 'engaging'. You did.

Do you misconstrue, misunderstand or fabricate. At this point I can't tell.

But I can now prove you're wrong..... Paul agrees with you.

Nice try, mhaze - but this is just another classic move of yours: zero in on a paraphrase, pretend it’s a misquote, and use that as cover to avoid the actual point.

Yes, I used the word “engaging” - to contrast your dramatic language (“begging,” “scrambling,” “racing”) with what most of those countries are actually doing: standard diplomacy. That’s not fabrication. That’s paraphrasing the tone - a tone you very clearly set.

And just to be clear, I added the inverted commas during a proof-read after realising that without them, the sentence could read as if I were saying “begging” became interesting rather than just being recharacterised. That’s called clarity - not deception.

This isn’t the first time you’ve played the “I never used that exact word!” card when cornered. The substance of what you implied remains unchanged, regardless of which synonyms you want to disown after the fact.

As for “Paul agrees with you”… if that’s your big discredit, it’s doing more for my position than yours.

"This isn’t the first time you’ve played the “I never used that exact word!” card when cornered. "

You think I'm cornered? That's cute. But you're right. Its not the first time I've pointed out that I didn't use a particular word. You can be sure that every time you try to sneak in an attempted verballing of me, I'll call you out for your (deliberate?) deception. You tried to say that I'd backtracked from my original position by fabricating a quote from me, a quote I didn't use and never implied. "Desperate times breed desperate measures"... NB Shakespeare actually said that. See the difference?