manqiangrexue
Brigadier
It's pathetic enough that the US tried bully Ukraine, a country that started on the terms, "Sign this or you're Russian now," but what's sadder is that Trump actually failed to bully them! The end deal was nowhere near what Trump wanted. That's like selling a spare tire to a guy with a flat during a zombie apocalypse and somehow ending up on fair market price LOLOL
"Ukrainian officials touted the final accord as an equal partnership between Kyiv and Washington – a notable shift from some of the earlier drafts which were described by Ukraine’s leader President Volodymyr Zelensky as the US asking him to “sell my country.”
The signed deal, seen by CNN, does indeed appear to be more favorable to Ukraine than some of the previous versions.
Crucially, the deal does not call for Kyiv to reimburse the US for the aid it has already received – a key concession from Trump who has long framed the agreement as Ukraine “paying back” the US.
Washington initially demanded a $500 billion share of Ukraine’s rare earths and other minerals in exchange for the aid it has already provided to Kyiv. When Zelensky rejected that idea, Trump called him “a dictator.”
Instead, the agreement that was inked on Wednesday says that future American military assistance to Ukraine will count as part of the US investment into a joint reconstruction investment fund that will be used to pour money into Ukraine’s natural resources.
The deal gives the US preferential rights to mineral extraction in Ukraine and states that Kyiv will have the final say in what and where is being mined. Ukraine will also retain the ownership of the subsoil.
“All resources on our territory and in our territorial waters belong to Ukraine. It is the Ukrainian state that determines where and what to extract,” said Ukraine’s Economy Minister Yulia Svyrydenko, who signed the deal on behalf her country."
Neither is the recession just happening. But what was actually surprising was finding out the Trump doesn't know the general jist of the Declaration of Independence, despite the name.
As I said before, just like Ukraine, I expect probably all of them to eventually sign something, but not what Trump envisioned. The US needs waterfall advantages, to move the line by miles, not little tugs and pulls that move the current line around in inches. And with America's recession and China's resilience, countries are enboldened to push back until the final document signed is just a matter of face-saving for the US. Even China will likely eventually pick up Washington's call and let them off the hook normalizing trade relations, but not before extracting its pound of flesh from the US economy for its historical folly.
