Donald Trump on Monday, January 19 threatened 200% tariffs on French wine and champagne over France’s intentions to decline the US leader’s invitation to join his “board of peace.” The board was originally conceived to oversee the rebuilding of war-torn Gaza, but the charter does not appear to limit its role to the occupied Palestinian territory.
“I’ll put a 200% tariff on his wines and champagnes. And he’ll join. But he doesn’t have to join,” Trump said, referring to French President Emmanuel Macron. A source close to Macron told AFP on Monday that France “does not intend to answer favorably” to the invitation.
The board’s charter “goes beyond the sole framework of Gaza,” the source close to the French president said.
It’s normalcy bias. Career analysts, people that have made their living predicting the next major geopolitical shift, are more vulnerable to it than your average Joe. The world has operated one way for their entire lives, and it’s very difficult for most people to see that the rules of play have completely and irrevocably shifted.
They assume that the US won’t do something this patently self-destructive because the US has (mostly) operated on a logical set of self-interested principles dressed up in the language of “Democracy” and “Freedom”. The idea that it would blow its own kneecaps off while overtly and clearly talking the language of imperialism and might makes right is so outside their experience that it’s unthinkable until the spell of normalcy bias is broken.
The mystery for me is that, how does the regime being transparent on imperialism and might makes right doesn’t wake up those people from the spell of normalcy bias?
Different people have different thresholds. I can say that in my personal experience, the majority of people in Romania have been able to rationalize everything until this point as Trump just running his mouth, but the “real powers” (Romanians in general are very conspiracy-minded) would never let him actually upset the apple cart.
Some people had the spell broken months ago, during the first round of universal tariffs. Some people saw the stories of Europeans being abducted for weeks at the border for no reason and that woke them up. Some explained all that away as a few unfortunate mistakes, not a real pattern. Then the next round of negotiations with the EU, widely considered a capitulation to the US around here put some people back to sleep (we gave him what he wanted, maybe he’ll leave us alone now).
The higher tensions get around an actual military engagement, the more worried people are getting, the more people are snapping out of it.
LBC radio host James O’Brien has been shouting from the rooftops about the worst case scenario for months, and unfortunately he’s being proven right.