> Nobody and no country will trust the US or their commitments ever again.
How do you explain all of the people and countries who are currently trusting the US and their commitments?
This is always a strange belief to hold when the current evidence is so overwhelming against it. The rest of the world and the people making decisions know that this administration will come to an end. Something about each new headline convinced a small number of people that this one event is actually the end of the entire country for the next 50 years, against all visible evidence
If nobody was trusting the country, the economy would collapse.
The Greenland drama was dumb, but there is zero reason to think it’s a next 50 years thing. Is the force even still there, or are they gone? Nobody takes the Greenland thing seriously already, and 50 years have not passed.
OK, so apparently the claim that "no one will ever trust the US or their commitments again" means that businesses and governments will still enter into all manner of trades and alliances and business arrangements with the US, but in their heart of hearts, they won't actually trust the US?
You loan a friend $5k. They promise to pay it back. They don't.
You may still hang out! But you may never loan them money again unless they give meaningful evidence they've changed.
The US probably has one concrete chance left to prosecute, convict, and jail these folks to rebuild trust. My vibe from the Democrats is that they'll whiff that opportunity.
But...countries, individuals, and companies the world over are loaning the US money right now. They're trading with the US, they're doing joint military exercises, they're forming new alliances, they're visiting the US, they're sending their kids to school here, they're buying real estate here.
Don't get me wrong, I loathe Trump and what his band of nutjobs has done to this country. The damage is deep and long-lasting.
But we're not quite yet a global pariah that no one will touch with a ten foot pole, nor are we (as some other commenter hilariously suggested) a failed state. Not yet. Not really even close.
Honestly, these discussions usually look more to me like what people wish was true, probably because they're both angry and powerless, than any kind of sober assessment of reality.
All that said, it'll be interesting to look back on this moment in a decade or two and see where it was going. History is notoriously difficult to predict.
EDIT in response to your links below: of course these all have been impacted!
We're talking about the claim that "Nobody and no country will trust the US or their commitments ever again."
Which is nonsensical, as proven by all your handy stats showing that many, many people, companies, and countries still trust the US.
"Foreign student enrollment at U.S. universities for the 2026 spring semester fell by 20% from last spring, according to a new report by organizations including U.S.-based international education nonprofit NAFSA."
"Foreign buyers continue fleeing the U.S. housing market, with their activity falling 14 percent between April 2025 and March 2026 to the second-lowest level since the National Association of Realtors (NAR) started tracking purchases in 2009."
> Honestly, these discussions usually look more to me like what people wish was true…
> We're talking about the claim that "Nobody and no country will trust the US or their commitments ever again."
> Which is nonsensical, as proven by all your handy stats showing that many, many people, companies, and countries still trust the US.
Hurr durr, yes, it's not an instant process. You slayed the strawman, saving you from engaging with the points everyone's making!
The collapse of the USSR took decades, too. Were they trustworthy? Is the used car salesman trustworthy, or do people just need used cars still, for now?
Hell, you don't trust my links, yet you engage (well, sorta) with me here. Right?
The point that everyone is making is that the world has fundamentally changed because of Trump, and "nobody and no country will trust the US or their commitments ever again".
It's been repeatedly demonstrated that this certainly isn't true now, so you're moving the goalposts to some indeterminate point in the future where it will be true, with no idea of when. "Decades", apparently.
So I guess the claim has now been watered down from "nobody will trust the US again" to the idea of a gradual decline of the US over decades. Hardly a unique insight, or one worth really discussing. It's near impossible to predict what will happen in the world over the coming decades.
What we can definitely say right now is that the claim as stated is bullshit. Perhaps it's a strawman from what you actually meant, but I can only respond to all the words and arguments you actually provided.
EDIT: for fun, I clicked on your link about the "staggering" drop in tourism. It's down a whopping 5.5%. Only 68 million visitors in 2025 vs 72 million in 2024.
Time to pack it up and go home, the US had a good run, but we're clearly a failed state and no one wants to come here anymore.
Yes, but it will be much more expensive and inefficient compared to the trades and alliances with nations that are trusted. Basically the US is a failed state. Functioning nations can make agreements that survive leadership changes. The US is not one of those.
Ah, now the US is a failed state. As in, the government has lost control, state monopoly on violence is gone, armed groups have taken over, no public services, etc. Just like Somalia, Yemen, etc.
Consider: I may also try and make/buy safer tools so I don't ever have to use them again at some point in the future. I may hire someone else (China!) to do the work.
A lack of trust does not mean an immediate cessation of use, but it does meaningfully change the relationship.
"I use x" is not evidence of "I trust x". Sometimes it's evidence of "I have no choice but to use x for now".
If you put in your notice at a job, and they desperately double your salary to keep you, do you trust that they're happy to keep paying that, or do you reasonably assume they're probably gonna start interviewing for a cheaper replacement?
> And the goalposts keep moving.
Falsely conflating usage with trust is a goalpost move.
If you'd posted "people still trade with the US", I'd have heartily agreed. But that wasn't the question.
>If nobody was trusting the country, the economy would collapse.
Trust is a complex term. You can work and trade with parties you don't trust, like so many countries do already. But a process has definitely begun, and it will without any doubt have very real implications for the US.
>Nobody takes the Greenland thing seriously already
I can assure you that Denmark still takes this thing extremely seriously.
SQL Server was Sybase until (I think) version 4.9, just rebranded as Microsoft SQL Server.
Then the two versions split and I don't think that any of the Sybase source code remains in what is SQL Server today.
That said, a lot of the concepts (like a significant number of system stored procedures) and also TSQL remain almost the same, with small differences (except for system functions, which SQL Server has a lot more functionality).
When you come from the Sybase world getting a start on SQL Server is quite straight forward when it comes to handling the database.
Internals and other low level nuts and bolts differ nowadays, of course.
> In defense of Deutsche Bahn, countries with comparable infrastructure but more reliable transport have put in about twice as much money per capita for the last 30 years at least.
Why is that "in defense?"
When you let your infrastructure rot away since the 90s of the last century for something as complex as a train network by brutally underinvesting.
Then you seriously fucked up. There's nothing to defend here.
I think the defense is that it's the fault of the politicians (CDU/CSU, actually), as they are the ones allocating funds towards train infrastructure. The Deutsche Bahn is state-owned in all but name (which was one of the major fuckups of the last red-green government).
"We elected right-wing parties who are against sane wages and unions and often use/exploit immigrants to depress wages while funneling billions into companies and away from infrastructure projects. So we decided to elect an even more right-wing party to blame immigrants while doing even more funneling away. It will definitely solve all the infrastructure problems that those penniless brown people and weird speaking ones caused."
Because DB does not decide its own budget. And we're literally living in times where their employees are getting attacked and verbally abused by the passengers for the state of the train system
You're confusing economic status with cultural ideology.
If pushing ESG mandates, DEI initiatives, 'Stakeholder Capitalism' (over shareholder primacy), and top-down climate interventions isn't the platform of the modern elite Left, what is? The fact that they are wealthy hypocrites doesn't make them right-wing.
But if you prefer the term 'Technocratic Globalists,' fine. The point stands: Carney played to that room rather than the reality of the Canadian economy.
I'm sorry, but which leftist ideology promote capitalism and economic colonialism, which is 90% of what Davos elite talk about? Blair's 'third way'? I guess environmentalism pushed against climate change and sea plastics, but that's a stretch.
Stakeholder capitalism is basically saying 'we don't need to change the system to change things' or 'vote with your wallet', its keeping the status quo, _by definition_ right-wing politics.
DEI is trying to keep material conditions and systemic violence out of the discussion and individualize issues to make minorities participate/compete in the rat race, and avoid stuff like the BPP giving free meals to kids. It's like liberal feminist talking about 'empowerment' instead of 'emancipation'. It's less obviously about keeping the status quo, but it's still about keeping the system balanced, protecting capitalism. So not left wing.
> The fact that they are wealthy hypocrites doesn't make them right-wing
Wait until one of them get accused of sexual harassment/assault publicly, you'll see where those really comes from.
That may well be, with one big difference.
Nobody and no country will trust the US or their commitments ever again.