We spend 2.5 times (actually 4x, because we put a lot of military spending on other budgets) than China. The argument is ridiculous on its face to claim both that our military budget is bloated (it is) and that we have to keep it that high or else China, spending 250B to our 630B (actually over 1T), will somehow replace us.
The Keystone pipeline adds at best 5-6k jobs. I work in oil and gas for 30 years. Pipelines don't need a lot of maintenance and support compared to other investments we could make. That particular pipeline carries huge risks for water contamination.
I'm not against strong border controls, but we'd do better to spend more money on the reason they are coming: No /lax penalties for companies taht hire illegal immigrants, no penalties for landlords who rent to illegal immigrants. I live in the EU. It is pretty easy to sneak across the very many borders between smaller countries than the US. But getting work and finding a place to live is NOT easy if you are illegal. We'd do much better by our own workers if we didn't allow particularly big business to profit off illegal immigration.
Fracking is not just stealing from Peter to pay Paul, it is destroying the country. Again, I work in this industry for 30 years. Cheap gasoline at the price of methane leaks, earthquakes and poisoned groundwater is a bad fucking deal, and will get massively worse over time.
I give Trump massive credit for bringing up the bad trade deals with China. This has been a bipartisan "Fuck You" to American workers starting with Nixon in the 70s and ramped up massively by the Dems in the 90s. Joe Biden and his family are massivley corrupted by Chinese influence. Trump did (as usual) and incompetent job of trying to turn the tide against China, but again I give him massive credit for being the first president to do so in 50+ years!
The US is per capita the biggest polluter and user of energy. Instead of looking at it from a point of view of "what is everyone else doing" we need to be a leader on green tech. We actually were leading on solar panels and batteries, but we gave the lead on panels to China and are near so with batteries. These are high tech, good paying jobs we should be doing in the US. The profits from these technologies will be massive for someone. I'd rather they are in the US than in China.
