this post was submitted on 04 Apr 2025
1813 points (99.5% liked)
Microblog Memes
7308 readers
4776 users here now
A place to share screenshots of Microblog posts, whether from Mastodon, tumblr, ~~Twitter~~ X, KBin, Threads or elsewhere.
Created as an evolution of White People Twitter and other tweet-capture subreddits.
Rules:
- Please put at least one word relevant to the post in the post title.
- Be nice.
- No advertising, brand promotion or guerilla marketing.
- Posters are encouraged to link to the toot or tweet etc in the description of posts.
Related communities:
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Did anyone mention how the 1930 tariffs sparked a wave of retaliatory tariffs by other nations, greatly reducing international trade, pushing a natural resources poor Japan to conclude that in order to survive it needed an empire, so it invaded other countries, committing such atrocities that even Nazi Germany was like "whoa dude, chill", which lead to their participation in WWII, Pearl Harbor and the deployment of nuclear bombs? No?
That's quite the oversimplification, and I approve.
Haha yeah, but I could do even better:
Tariffs bad because history
Let me help!
Monke hurt monke
There's a lot of oversimplification. But the US embargo on Japan in 1940 led directly to the attack on Pearl Harbor.
The US embargoed all oil to Japan. Japan calculated it had less than 2 years worth of oil before it ran out, so it needed to capture the Dutch East Indies (modern day Indonesia, more or less) because they were a major source of oil. The American puppet state of the Philippines was between Japan and the Dutch East Indies, so they had to deal with that somehow. Their decision was to preemptively attack Pearl Harbor and hope that they could consolidate their gains in the Pacific by the time the US was able to counter-attack.
Japan's actions in WWII weren't directly about tariffs, but they were about spheres of influence, like the Greater East-Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere.
A lot of Trump's posturing seems to be about bringing back these spheres of influence. The US wants to control North America, taking over Greenland and Canada, and leave Europe to become part of the Russian sphere.
Japan was expanding long before 1930's. Korea, Mongolia, and parts of China were already under Japan long before 1930.
Yeah that comment is wildly ignorant of Japan's actions and aspirations pre1930. Fuck Trump and these tariffs, mind you.
But, the full scale invasion of China by happens around 1931, which then lead to the conflict that get China involved in WWII.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mukden_incident https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marco_Polo_Bridge_incident
Yes, full scale. But they already occupied parts of China before 1930. It wasn't tariffs for Japan. It was sanctions on oil to force them to stop invading. Their response was to speed up invasions to secure oil.
Which I suppose goes to the heart of why tariffs and export restrictions are bad. A country that is pushed into a corner where it will be deprived of an essential commodity is highly incentived to fight for it...
Edit: to be clear, not defending Japan at all. Just considering possible implications
While that sounds good, that's a reason to not sanction Russia for agression. The alternative to is to not do anything with aggressors.
So you're saying that Japan threw a shit fit because it wasn't allowed to trade with other nations. Japan.
Fucking love it.
It’s also wrong on every account; Japan was already doing imperialist shit for decades and it wasn’t tariffs but oil sanctions to try to stymie their fuel supply that sent them raging.
It wasn’t American tariffs, we didn’t fucking matter nearly as much to the world before WWII as after